AN: An idea I haven't been able to get out of my head, written down in the hopes of preserving sanity before the season drops. Focused on how the Defenders interact, and the impact Elektra's (surely doomed) resurrection has on Matt, and what he'd do to save her. All 9ish chapters will be up before the show is released. Also available on AO3. Reviews highly appreciated :) Happy reading!

The alien heartbeat was too steady, too calm as it sent Luke hurtling into the wall. The bricks broke and crumbled, the fine dust tinkling down onto the unbroken skin. Danny's thrumming fist was making short work of the Hand, but if they kept rushing him together he wouldn't last much longer before one of them landed a lucky shot. This fight needed to end soon, before the woman started throwing one of the more breakable vigilantes around the room. Jessica was already bleeding, the copper hanging like a tear in the atmosphere.

As Luke groaned to his feet the air to Matt's right whistled with sudden violence, a fist he hadn't heard punching into his awareness – and then his face. He rolled with it, lip splitting, and retaliated with a decisive kick to the empty space where the man's gut should be. The victory of his contact was short-lived; two more barely heard warriors materialised around him, weapons slicing through air, aiming for armour. The alien heartbeat was marching closer, their steps resounding with the surety of the invincible while Danny bellowed his rage and swung his fireball fist. A katana screeched across Matt's shoulders, his armour deflecting the hit more through luck than textile strength; any more than a glancing blow might be enough to break through. Matt silently cursed himself. He had felt his suit weaken months ago, knew it needed Melvin's attention, especially after the beating on the rooftop –

Focus, Murdock. Listen and react.

He swung his club in a wide arc, buying time and space to narrow his world. Luke and Danny could handle themselves, Jessica too. He needed to focus, track the breathing. There. Four of them were on him, two charging his back. Matt smiled.

A sweeping kick unbalanced one and distracted the other, a well-timed punch crunching a muffled throat into silence, the body landing with an inelegant thwump. A leaping twirl of deadly heels and another breather dropped. The other two were drawing their swords, clearly no longer caring if he heard them. The one he'd unbalanced was quickly regaining his stance. Matt let himself centre firmly in the present, in the immediate world around him. Nothing existed but the three threats, the blood-slicked floor, and his own muscle. He let the room fade into an ignorable background, barely keeping tabs on his comrades, on the heartbeat that was somehow different. Wrong.

The world shrank and the devil grew, each strike blending into the next as though following a learned dance. Each blow found its mark, and each hit fell dully, as though from far away. The devil had no pain. That would come later.

Danny's shout broke through his raging haze. As the last breather fell into irrelevance, the alien heartbeat spiked and both Luke and Danny cried out. Matt turned into the sound, expanding his awareness to encompass the room once more. It took him half a second to take it in.

Luke – burnished oak and muted honey, skin whose heat was uniquely confined – knocked back and surrounded by susurrating blades.

Danny – cedar and expensive aftershave, his fist pulsing like a comet – on his back, his heartrate suddenly slower, his breathing a shallow draught, blood like spice intensifying on his temple.

Jessica – cheap whiskey, leather and lavender – panting but still on her feet, her sawing breath loud with pain and fear, echoing off the wall to her back.

The heartbeat, the woman with long hair whose smell – lotus and embers – was familiar but tainted with the same wrongness that rang through each beat of her marching heart. Her twin blades, blurred by blood, paced closer to the cornered PI.

Matt raced forward, skidding slightly on cloth and blood, his already racing heart skipping into a gallop as air sucked past the woman's teeth.

"The hell are you fighting us for?" Jessica snapped, retreating, words flying from her hunched frame, carrying the weight of pain.

"I must."

The world stopped, frozen in a flicker. Breath halted. Muscles seized. It couldn't be. It couldn't be.

"Elektra?!" He felt her turn her head to him. Knew she was looking right at him. Her heartbeat didn't change. It didn't sound like hers. He inhaled again, needing proof, needing to know. The scent was the same but wasn't. It couldn't be. It was a trick.

"You know my name." The accent was perfect. The confused tone identical to his fading memories. The melody of her speech could never be duplicated this perfectly. It was impossible. Her voice was as real, as tangible as it had been on the roof that night. It came from an unfamiliar heartbeat, an altered scent, but it was real.

It was her.

For one perfect moment, Matt felt the sun shine inside him, piercing through the heavy clouds that had filled him since the night he last wore these horns. Elektra was alive! She was here, with him again, still strong, still beautiful, still –

The moment shattered.

Still the Black Sky.

"E-Elektra, it's me," he gasped, his heart dizzy. "It's Matt. Matthew."

He felt her step forward. Her heartbeat as steady as it had been since she arrived. Distantly, the others moved, maybe spoke, but every part of Matt Murdock was focused intensely on the woman who had died in his arms.

She took another step closer, her heart cloaked in composure. Her smell rolled over him as she stopped and he felt a dazed smile kidnap his lips. He could almost see her. He could hear her hair slide over her shoulder, feel the warmth of her breath twist around her teeth, her lips as they parted, to say his name, to heal the deep fissure in his heart that had crippled him since the day those lips had turned still and cold.

"I don't know you."

Shock paralysed him. He heard the hilt of the dagger whirl, felt the heat of her fist drawing closer. The force of the blow surprised the tiny part of him that still functioned. It crashed into his temple, sending ripples of blackness through his mind as he struggled to stay conscious, sending him sailing into the damp wall, crumpling into it, sagging down.

Elektra turned away from him.

The air stung as it rasped down his throat. Smells, sounds, impressions careened through each other, losing detail and comprehension as he leant against the unyielding slab of concrete, heart silently cracking.

He raised his head after her, willing himself to see, to make sense of the spiralling sensations. She was pacing back to Jessica, her gait measured, unhurried. In control. Jessica was hurt worse than he'd realised – blood painted the outline of her leg. She was trapped between the wall and the Black Sky.

A sudden rage whose howl was pain ignited in Matt, flooding through him, steadying him. He pushed off from the wall and leapt, landing clumsily in front of Jessica, whipping his head around to face Elektra. He could taste the two bloods on her daggers. She didn't slow.

"Elektra! Listen to me!" It was her, it had to be her, she was Elektra long before she was ever the Black Sky. "It's me! It's Matt! You know me, you know me!"

Her footsteps clicked on, unhindered. Sweat creaked against the hilt as she tightened her grip.

"You remember me! Roscoe Sweeney, the Yakuza! London, the roof! Nobu - Fogwell's Gym! You remember me, you wanted to be good, you –"

She was close enough to touch. Her voice was a caress, rolling over his cheeks and sending an ache through his unhealed heart.

"I am not good."

The blade pushed through his armour with a grating pressure. It sank through his flesh, scraping under his ribs with skilled precision, slicing into him with indifference.

Icy fire exploded through him. It stole his breath. His strangled gasp rolled past her face, so close to his, close enough to kiss. They were joined by the icicle inside him. She was smiling. Her heart beat steadily on while his began to falter.

It was a moment, brief and exquisite with two unbearable pains. Then Elektra withdrew her blade and stepped back, vanishing into the descending darkness as the world tilted and Matthew Murdock fell into icy flames.