Author's note: With the release of Elektra, my muse got even more Tattoo/Typhoid Mary inspiration, and during the first viewing, she whacked me with this idea. And when muses whack, it's best to write. Anyway, reviews are greatly, greatly appreciated, and I hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, so please, don't sue little old me.

There's a sort of sedated thrill in her eyes, a twisted, wicked glee that isn't quite pronounced enough to be sadistic. Sometimes it's dreamy, unfocused, sometimes it's so sharp it can stab. But it's never too anything more than evident, it never crosses that line into the almost manic gleam that you see in most of the cliché, Hollywood villainesses.

Decay spreads from her fingertips into the greenery, poisoning it, her venom turning everything black as life swiftly ebbs. A trail of black death follows her, she leaves nothing but despair in her wake. And all the while, I can see the ecstasy it brings to her. Sweet misery fills her, and sweet misery she gives.

I didn't always understand her. I didn't always know. All of Kirigi's team has a gift, everyone one of us. Or so I once thought. And then I touched her, the forbidden one, the tainted one, the Treasure. I learned then that where the rest of us have gifts, she has a curse.

So ironic that it is the woman who is cursed. She is Woman, fallen, cursed, just like in the Garden of Eden. She looks like she could be Eve. She is beautiful, perfect. She is sweetness wrapped around bitterness, and she is always cold. No human warmth touches her, no contact, and no warmth can survive her cold poison.

Once upon a time she could have had a gift. She could have possessed warmth and life inside her beautiful, exotic form, and her eyes could have been light with a stillness and calm that only those in the Chaste possess. Not the darkness, the inhuman black and blue.

But I'm selfishly glad they failed in rescuing her. I'm glad she hates Stick and the Chaste the most of Kirigi's Five. If the Chaste had found her, then I would never have met the fallen Eve, the Woman now Lilith, made of decay and of cold.

There's a stillness to her that I cannot comprehend sometimes, and I realize it is her hatred taking over, her body giving into the cold, empty yet consuming feeling that her whole existence is now founded upon. The hatred for the gaijin, the hatred for the new Treasure.

Her replacement. She intends to kill her, but Kirigi, smart, clever, controlling Kirigi doesn't even know, can't even see or fathom the betrayal of the one he took under his wing, a possession he won from his father. I still don't know if I plan to just take the new Treasure for Kirigi, or kill her for Typhoid.

That cruel and sedated excitement has returned to her eyes again, as she hears the gaijin and the Treasure and the father. Her hands spread out a bit more, her fingers touch more life and take more away, and I can see the thrill border on the pronounced sadism she usually steers clear of. The Treasure, now tainted, covered in rust, looks to the newer, shinier Treasure, and she lusts of the kill, her hatred so strong now she lets it become almost manic.

I sit down and take off my robe and know my decision. I cannot resist Eve and her poisoned fruit. I'll do anything to taste the decay in her mouth, her tongue the only fruit I hunger for, and I will risk Satan's jealousy for her favor.