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zero i know you previously asked for any dex questions, but since we both adore elektra too, and because of your post on dex headcanons, i’d love to be able to know any and all headcanons you have for elektra! (and if there are any dex overlaps in there you know that i for one i’ll be a very happy guy, trust.)

hello! thank you so much for asking, that makes me really happy! elektra means the world to me, and i could talk about her forever. especially when she’s written with the depth, tragedy, and emotional volatility she deserves. i reject the “sociopath” label the mcu tried to place on her and instead see her as someone with undiagnosed bpd, shaped by grief, war, and abandonment. i lean more toward her comic origin (with some tweaks), but these headcanons are based in her mcu version, specifically the one played by elodie yung, just expanded with emotional nuance, character history, and a lot of love. and yes, there’s definitely some overlap with dex in here, because they’re both characters i adore for a lot of similar reasons: identity issues, loneliness, and the inability to ever really fit in without hurting someone. here’s everything i’ve got so far: (forewarning this is long lol)

i don’t like elektra’s mcu orgin so i made one of my own combined with her comic book orgin and of course the mcu story.

- elektra was born in 1984 in phnom penh, cambodia, during the final stages of vietnamese occupation following the khmer rouge regime. her cambodian mother, krisna (or christina in the comics), was a classically trained dancer and painter, who met hugo natchios, a wealthy greek diplomat, during a cultural initiative meant to rebuild the arts after the war. they fell in love quickly. he offered her safety and opportunity, and she offered him a depth of humanity he didn’t know he lacked. elektra’s earliest memories are of movement, silk rustling, her mother’s fingers stained with paint, and the distant sound of unrest beyond guarded walls.

- growing up between cambodia and greece, elektra was raised in wealth, but under strict discipline. her father believed structure bred success, and so from age 3 onward, her schedule was meticulously controlled. she was enrolled in ballet and traditional apsara dance, taught painting and languages, and expected to master at least three sports by the time she was ten. she gravitated toward tennis for control, soccer for aggression, and painting for relief.

- she began martial arts around age five. first karate, then muay thai and later judo. her instructors always noted how intensely focused she was, almost unnervingly so. she didn’t smile during practice. even as a child, she moved like she was trying to burn something out of herself.

- when she was seven, her mother bought her a guinea pig and let her name it. she chose “sai,” not knowing yet the weapon by the same name, she just liked how it sounded. sai was small, skittish, and nipped at strangers, but let elektra hold him like a heartbeat. he died during one of her long training trips to greece, and she didn’t speak for a week.

- elektra’s mother, died when elektra was eleven. it wasn’t sudden, she’d been sick for years, though no one ever told elektra exactly what kind of sickness. the family avoided words like “cancer,” as if pretending it wasn’t happening would stop it. elektra knew something was wrong. she heard it in the way her father’s voice changed, saw it in the way her mother’s limbs grew thinner, the way she stopped dancing. by the time krisna passed, elektra was already halfway feral from the grief that had been building.

- what no one knew was that krisna had been associated with a man named stick. an american who operated in the shadows, who spoke of destiny like it was a burden and not a gift. krisna wasn’t one of his warriors, but she knew about the war behind the war. she’d crossed paths with the chaste during the vietnam war while aiding refugees and had seen things no civilian was supposed to see. it left her with scars she never talked about, and a quiet understanding that her daughter might one day need protection from a world that didn’t make sense.

- so when her mother died, it wasn’t entirely surprising to elektra when stick appeared. he showed up like a ghost. uninvited, unnamed, but her father let him in. hugo natchios didn’t know how to deal with a grieving daughter. his answer was rigidity. tighter curfews, more school, less emotion. when elektra screamed or lashed out or cried, he looked through her like she wasn’t real. he didn’t know how to be soft. he didn’t believe in softness. but he trusted discipline, and when stick promised to make her strong, hugo agreed to let him take her.

- from ages 11 to 14, elektra trained under stick around the world. russia, japan, the mountains in tibet. she wasn’t just learning how to fight. she was learning how to endure. he broke her down in every way imaginable. physically, emotionally, psychologically. she learned to hold her breath underwater for four minutes. to dislocate her shoulder to escape a chokehold. to hide her tears until they turned to fire.

- stick was harsh and manipulative, but he was consistent in a way her father never was. he never coddled her. he told her when she was being stupid. when she was wasting her pain. he never lied to her about the world, only about his intentions. and elektra, still a grieving child, confused control with safety. she let him mold her because it was better than drowning.

- but by fourteen, something shifted. she’d grown strong, too strong, and stick, sensing her volatility, began to pull away. she was too emotional, he said. too much like her mother. she wasn’t ready. so she returned to her father, polished on the outside but raw inside, a weapon with no purpose.

- from fourteen to seventeen, she tried to play the role of the natchios heir. school, languages, social functions, polo matches. she was good at pretending. but something was always off. she didn’t connect with people. she kept everyone at a distance. her father praised her poise and ignored her rage. they never once spoke about her mother again.

- when elektra was seventeen, her father was assassinated. he was shot outside a gala, a political hit disguised as robbery. elektra saw the body. it was the first time she cried in years. the grief came back like a cracked rib, never healing, always aching.

- and then, like clockwork, stick returned. he didn’t say sorry. he didn’t say he missed her. he just said, “you ready to stop wasting time?”

- he told her there was a war. that her father’s death wasn’t just random. that there were forces greater than politics at play. and he gave her a mission: go to columbia university. get close to matt murdock. test him. tempt him. train him. break him if necessary.

college life:

- she attended columbia university for political science and classics, where she was known as brilliant but erratic. she’d ace every exam, then disappear for weeks. professors called her “promising but undisciplined.” her peers admired her beauty and feared her temper.

- she was technically a political science major, but she rarely went to class. she audited art history, comparative mythology, and one ethics course she nearly burned down from the inside.

- she never lived in dorms. she had a private loft downtown, paid for in blood money and old inheritance. stark white walls, black floors, antique weapons on the walls like art. barely furnished. barely lived in.

- elektra is bisexual. her first kiss was with a girl at age 10, and it didn’t even occur to her that it was “different” until years later. she’s attracted to power, precision, and passion, regardless of gender. but she rarely allows relationships to last. love is dangerous. sex, however, is something she uses to reclaim power. she’s often accused of seduction as manipulation, but for her, it’s about control and temporary safety. the vulnerability comes after, in the quiet moments she usually sabotages.

- she attended a few elite social events. frat parties, fundraisers, gallery openings , but only to test people. she liked watching men squirm under her gaze. women flirted with her; some she flirted back with. some she took home. none she kept.

- she didn’t care about grades, she cared about ideas. especially ones that justified or challenged her worldview. she loved ancient political philosophy and mythic tragedy. she annotated her copies of plato and euripides like battle maps.

- her favorite subject was comparative mythology. she wrote a 20-page thesis arguing that modern warfare was just a repetition of the iliad, but without the honor.

- she painted in secret. the university had a locked art room that no one used at night. she’d break in, barefoot, headphones in, and paint until sunrise. her work was violent. angular, abstract, mostly red and black. she never signed anything.

- elektra never mentioned her parents. when people asked, she said, “they’re gone,” and left it at that. she wore her mother’s old ring on a chain. no one ever saw her take it off. grief lived in her body like a parasite. controlled by precision, soothed by routine, but never removed.

- she wore designer clothes like armor. black leather gloves, silk blouses, boots she could run in. red lipstick, always.

- she never carried a bag, only a switchblade in her jacket pocket and a phone with three contacts: stick, a burner number for forged IDs, and her fencing instructor.

- she didn’t expect to fall in love with matt. in fact, she fought it at every turn. she was sent to manipulate him. and when she realized she couldn’t, she hated him for it. then she loved him for it.

- matt made her want to be soft, which terrified her. being good felt like weakness, and being vulnerable felt like surrender. she wanted to show him the world as it really was. dirty, cruel, full of gray, but she also wanted him to show her how to believe in something again. she sees their relationship as doomed but eternal. she saw the way matt touched the world, listening to it, trusting it, and something in her cracked. he didn’t see her as dangerous. he saw her as real.

the ten years in between season two after she dropped out:

bangs & blood: the early years (age 20-23)

- in the first few years after leaving stick and columbia, elektra cut her hair short and gave herself micro bangs with a dull pair of scissors in a hotel bathroom. they were uneven and made her look feral, but she loved them.

- she took low-level assassination work at first. arms dealers, traffickers, corrupt officials. nothing personal. nothing she had to think about. just blood for gold.

- she started working with a fixer named delphine, a french-cambodian woman who found her jobs, helped her set up new IDs, and occasionally slept with her when things got too quiet. they weren’t in love, but they shared a mutual tenderness. two women on the run from ghosts.

reputation & recklessness: the mid years (ages 24-27)

- by this point, elektra had become a myth in the underground. no name. just whispers. she’d take out an entire convoy and vanish before the bodies hit the ground.

- she started working freelance for organizations adjacent to the Hand. never fully knowing what they were, but suspecting. she didn’t care. if the pay was good and the mission was clean, she took it.

- she started wearing red in small ways. red gloves. red boots. red on her lips.

- she fell in love with a woman named asra, a smuggler in istanbul who played violin and knew ten ways to kill a man without spilling blood. elektra let herself almost soften. they lived together for seven months. cooked together. read together. elektra kept a plant alive. but elektra couldn’t stay still. and asra couldn’t keep loving someone who came home with broken ribs and blood under her fingernails. they broke up on the roof. it rained. elektra didn’t cry until three days later. alone. with a mouthful of broken glass and a cracked rib.

scars & survival (ages 27-29)

- this is when the scars started piling up. stab wounds. bullet grazes. rope burns. she stopped bandaging her wounds properly. part of her wanted to feel them. wanted to see the damage she caused. to herself, to others.

- she carried a small sketchbook. never showed it to anyone. inside: drawings of faces she couldn’t forget. matt. delphine. asra. stick. her parents. sai the guinea pig.

the final years before season two (ages 29-30)

- she took one last contract. one that involved stuffing several bodies in the back of a car, the one referenced by jacques duchamps.

- she kept her micro-bangs, letting them grow into the softer fringe we see in season two, framing her face with that intentional softness masking her ferocity.

- she found about her father’s investments in roxxon. elektra returns to audit, neutralize and take control of the money funnel.

- elektra returned to hell’s kitchen to untangle the financial ties her family’s legacy had to the city’s corruption, and to protect what remained of her father’s empire from being weaponized by the hand or fisk’s network.

the events of season two (canonically from mid-late 2015, age 31)

- she hadn’t spoken to stick in years before he reached out again through a burner phone drop. when she answered, she didn’t say hello. just, “how bad is it?” and he said, “they’re already here.”

- she smoked again during this time. only when she felt empty. it helped slow her thoughts down. matt hated it, so she made sure to do it on rooftops before he arrived.

- she kept her distance from matt’s friends, not out of cruelty, but because she didn’t want to be seen by anyone else through his eyes. when foggy mentioned her name once in passing, she stood across the street from nelson & murdock for three hours and didn’t go in.

- she didn’t want to manipulate matt this time. she wanted him to want her on his own. but she couldn’t stop herself from teasing, prodding, pushing. she didn’t know how to connect without drawing blood.

the events of the defenders (mid 2016, age 32)

- elektra remembers everything from her death. the feeling of the blade. the helplessness. the cold. when she came back, she was in sensory shock for months. sound hurt. color hurt. she barely spoke. she screamed in her sleep.

- she speaks greek in her sleep. it slips out like instinct. soft, broken words from her childhood. her cambodian is locked deeper down, rarer, tied to her mother’s voice, but it comes out once when she hears windchimes.

- she touches her old sai and feels sick. the weapons used to feel like extensions of her hands. now they feel like old bones. she trains with swords instead. clean. impersonal. distant. she’s trying to strip her identity bare.

- she chooses to die with matt not because she wants to die, but because she wants to choose something real. and he’s the only real thing in her unraveling life. she thinks she deserves death. but dying with him feels like her first act of love since coming back.

(spring 2016 - present day mcu, 2027)

- she wakes up beneath rubble with broken ribs and blood in her mouth. the building is caved in around her but her body heals. slowly, painfully, but with a kind of monstrous resilience she hadn’t known before. she’s alone. matt is gone. the hand is gone. stick is dead. everyone is gone. and for a brief moment that feels like freedom.

- she crawls out through the sewers and walks for miles. barefoot. half-conscious. bleeding through her clothes. but no one sees her. she’s a ghost again, for the first time in a long time.

- she takes a fake name. something simple. she doesn’t use “elektra.” she doesn’t want to be found. she gets forged documents. opens a bank account in some neutral country under one of her father’s old shell corporations. cashes out everything that was hers.

- she doesn’t know who she is without death. the problem with being a weapon is that when the war ends, you don’t know what to do with your hands.

- she cuts her hair. short. bangs again. sometimes she bleaches it. sometimes she dyes it black. she doesn’t want to look like the woman who died under midland circle. she doesn’t want to look like the black sky. she doesn’t want to look like herself.

- she tries dating. sometimes women. sometimes men. she never lets them stay over. she doesn’t sleep through the night. she flinches at fireworks. her lovers tell her she’s unreadable. one tells her she looks like someone who’s already grieving. she leaves in the middle of the night.

- she avoids new york for a decade. won’t even fly over it. the city feels like a grave she dug with her own hands. a grave she chose to die in. a grave she almost dragged matt into. she tells herself he’s dead. it’s easier that way.

- when she finds out he’s alive, it’s through a whispered name on a job she turns down. matt murdock. alive. she cuts off her handler and throws her burner phone into the ocean. sometimes she watches him. from rooftops. through windows. never close enough to be sensed. just close enough to remind herself that he is real. that she was real. that their story didn’t end where she thought it did.

- by 2027, she’s 43. her body aches when it rains. her scars are thicker. she sleeps lighter. she moves quieter. she hasn’t killed in months, but the impulse lives in her chest like an old wound that never stitched shut. she’s not redeemed. she doesn’t want redemption. she just wants clarity. peace. herself.

- she hasn’t said her real name in years. but when she finally does, just once, it feels like blood and salt and silk in her mouth. it tastes like home.

other shit idk

- elektra’s emotional world is vast and unstable. she feels everything, all the time, and no one ever taught her what to do with it. her father valued restraint. her mother encouraged expression. elektra, caught between, never learned balance.

- her borderline personality disorder went undiagnosed, misread as volatility, hysteria, arrogance. she splits quickly, especially in intimate relationships. one second she loves you like you’re oxygen, the next she’ll burn you down to escape the feeling of being small. her empathy is inconsistent. when she’s emotionally regulated, she can be deeply compassionate. but when she’s splitting, especially under stress or betrayal, she detaches. suddenly everyone is the enemy, and she doesn’t flinch when she hurts them.

- elektra is not a sociopath. she doesn’t lack empathy, she fears it. intimacy terrifies her. if she lets herself feel for others, she opens herself to being abandoned, betrayed, or changed. so she compartmentalizes. violence is easier than vulnerability. her inability to form secure attachments isn’t from lack of feeling, it’s from too much. she feels so deeply that she cannot risk being known. pain taught her to keep people at sword’s length.

- her moral compass isn’t broken; it’s fluid. she believes in justice, but she doesn’t believe it works in a straight line. she sees morality as situational. if the system is corrupt, then you have to go outside it to fix things.

- during her teen years with stick, she learned not just to fight, but to read people. he taught her how to manipulate, charm, disarm. how to smile while disarming someone. how to weaponize femininity.

- elektra has a complicated relationship with her body. she doesn’t see it as something to be admired, just something to use. it’s a weapon. a shield. a thing to control. compliments about her beauty confuse her. she’s heard them all her life, and they always felt hollow. she doesn’t know how to respond, except maybe with a smirk or an eye-roll. sometimes she looks in the mirror and doesn’t recognize herself. especially after a fight. not because she’s physically hurt, but because she’s emotionally detached from what she’s capable of doing.

- elektra speaks greek, french, khmer, english, mandarin, korean, chinese, and japanese. she code-switches easily depending on who she’s around.

- she was classically educated. tutors in poetry, literature, ancient philosophy. she has whole passages of sappho and euripides memorized.

- she has a sharp sense of humor, but it’s dry, dark, and cutting. she doesn’t laugh easily, but when she does, it’s unguarded and childlike. like a glitch in her armor.

- she reads often. mostly old philosophy, greek tragedy, and brutal war memoirs. she also has a fondness for old cookbooks in languages she doesn’t speak.

- she drinks her coffee black, boiling hot. she likes bitter things, it makes her feel grounded.

- she sleeps with a blade under her pillow, even when she doesn’t need to. even in matt’s bed. especially in matt’s bed.

- even now, elektra returns to painting when she needs to center herself. it’s private. she never shows anyone. most of her work is abstract. shadows, blood-red shapes, jagged geometry. it’s the only way she knows how to speak to herself without breaking something. she doesn’t call it art. she just calls it “breathing.”

- she doesn’t celebrate her birthday. not because she forgot it, she remembers every detail, but because it doesn’t feel like her anymore. it belonged to another version of her.

- she starts frequenting a quiet café on the lower east side. no one there knows her name. she sits in the corner. wears sunglasses inside. drinks her coffee black. she scribbles in a leather notebook in khmer and greek. poems. meditations. things she wishes she’d said. sometimes she sketches matt’s face from memory. sometimes sticks, though she doesn’t know why.

- she finds one of her old sais in an antiques market in chinatown. stolen during the fall of midland circle. marked with her initials. she buys it in cash, tucks it in her coat, and walks out without a word.

i know this is very long lol. there’s just so much to elektra, and still so much that’s unknown. the frustrating part is that most of her story, at least what we’ve seen in the mcu, is tied entirely to matt murdock and stick. both are important parts of her life, but it sucks that her arc has been so defined by men. she’s such a rich, layered, and fascinating character with her own pain, past, power, and contradictions. and elodie yung brings so much depth, elegance, and danger to her that it feels like we’ve only scratched the surface. i really hope we get to see her return, this time with her story. her choices, her agency, her version of survival. but for now, these are the headcanons i have.

#such an insightful read!!#loved your vision op #elektra natchios #daredevil

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