It was a quiet winter night in Hell's Kitchen - or at least as quiet as it could ever be in a neighbourhood like this. The ambiance was still punctuated by the sounds of glass breaking in dark alleys, the strays prowling the streets that barked and howled at the moon, the screaming fueled by domestic disputes and the ferocious wailing of sirens that overpowered them all. The clouds billowed in the pitch-black sky, ominous and sinister. Karen walked back to the office, visibly shivering, but not from the cold. Her breath came and went in puffs that looked like miniature ghosts swirling in the air. Her temples ached with a reckless abandon. Her heartbeat rang in her ears as she struggled to process what just happened less than an hour ago.
She loved this city, although more often than not it felt like the stuff of nightmares. But this wasn't a nightmare. This was real life. Wesley was right, she realized. Hell's Kitchen was polluted; a cesspool of filth, and one that no amount of cleaning could exterminate. Even she couldn't deny this truth, for all her idealism. Fisk, his fellow drug lords and their minions were like cockroaches, ever expanding and terrorizing by the second. He all but ruled the city with an iron fist and a pocket full of money. Crime lingered in every corner, the foreboding feeling of Death permeating the air itself. It seemed to seep through your skin, leaving behind a layer of grime that remained no matter how many showers you took. Karen should know. She tried before, scrubbing herself raw until she could no longer tell whether it was his blood or her own that mixed with the cascade of water before running down the drain.
This wasn't the first time she took someone's life. This wasn't the first time she had blood on her hands that wouldn't ever disappear, fresh scars on her soul that would never fully heal.
She had never felt so alone.
Karen's mind flashed back to when Wesley abducted her, stole her away into some sort of basement. When he condescendingly played at recruiting her to work under Fisk. When he threatened to kill off every single person she knew and loved, making her own death a slow, living one before he ultimately executed her. His sneer when she lunged for the gun, pointed it at him with bared teeth and manic vengeance in her eyes (fingers shakily tracing the trigger). How he all but spat in her face even when her fingers traced the trigger. She glared at him, trembling but unafraid. Adrenaline surged through her veins, but there was a hint of something else there too; latent and lurking just beneath her porcelain skin. She felt like another person entirely.
She shoots him a total of seven times.
One. He jolts back, but it's not enough to subdue him.
Two. Blood splatters across his business suit, ruining his pristine white shirt. A brief guffaw escapes his mouth, as if he can't believe he's getting shot by a secretary he took hostage, of all people.
Three. He's already dead at this point, he must be, but the leer is still there on his weaselly face.
Four. Five. Six. Seven. She fires them all in quick succession. She feels something deep within her come alive as she watches Wesley's life force leave his body. That rush of energy knocks the wind out of her and for a second, she thinks she enjoys it. Maybe she was powerful after all.
I need to get a grip, Karen said to herself while rummaging through her pockets. She haphazardly brushed off loose tendrils of hair as she took out a pair of keys. The lighting of the neon signs around the building made it look as if they were soaked in ink. Karen didn't mind, though. It was always so dark here, the dimness nighttime brought with it cast shadows everywhere such that any semblance of colour was a welcome diversion. I'm half-sick of shadows, she quoted wryly. That was one of her favourite poems in high school.
Karen muttered a few swear words when she noticed her fingers were shaking too intensely to function. She took her time fiddling with the keys, absentmindedly gazing at the handmade "Nelson & Murdoch" sign in front of her. We should really get that fixed. Who'd want to hire a law firm too cheap to afford their own plaque? She shook her head, adding another item on her to-do list. With one final shove, she unlocked the door.
"Welcome home." A deep, solemn voice called out. Matt. It was borderline affectionate, the way she thought of him. She'd be lying if she said he didn't cross her mind every now and then. What am I doing? He's my employer. And my co-worker. She had to stay professional.
"Hi", she managed.
"What's wrong?" He already intuited something was off from her tone of voice alone, and Karen was both grateful and annoyed at his powers of perception. In most cases it was a blessing…but this time, it felt more like a curse.
"Nothing, I'm just…tired." She hung her overcoat up on the rack and made her way into the lounge. Matt was seated on an armchair, reading a book in Braille. His perpetually tinted glasses were on the table next to him.
"Bullshit." He closed the book and stood up. Karen involuntarily flinched. "Tell me what's the matter," he said in a voice that showed concern yet commanded honesty.
(She remembered that night when he shed all pretence of stoicism and cried his heart out in front of her, too shaken and overwhelmed by the cruelty of the world. She offered him words of solace, but bit her lip at the thought of him finding out about her past. They both knew how dark the realms beyond their little apartment could be. It seemed as though their inner demons were exactly the same, the only matter of difference being how they coped with them. I can't do this alone, he had told her. She smiled almost bitterly. Neither could she. I'm nothing more than a jumble of broken nerves.
"You're not alone, Matt. You never were."
You have Foggy. You have me, she wanted to say to him, but the words were stuck in her throat and never came out. She swallowed them all down, knowing that Matt would understand. She reached out and enveloped him in a hug, offering him what little warmth she had left to give. Matt silently accepted, wrapping his arms around her. He buried his face in her neck, wetting it with his tears. Karen let him weep as freely as he needed. These days, she felt like crying too. They held on to each other for dear life, cradling one another for the rest of the night. Matt's stifled sobs were the only sound that echoed around the room.)
She wasn't ready to tell him. At least, not just yet.
"Some guy harassed me on the street. I dealt with him, but it's been a long day. I just want to get some sleep." She sighed. She excluded the part where she purposely avoided going back to her apartment. She didn't want to be alone, with today's ordeal still looming over her psyche. She needed company. More specifically, his company. Matt had such a calming aura. Even when he first found her sprawled on the floor, coated in her colleague's blood with panic and desperation in her eyes, she felt comfortable around him, the closest thing to safe. She knew he and Foggy were the only people she could trust the minute they offered to represent her as attorneys. After being framed by the corrupt shitstain that was her former workplace, she felt such a profound loss. Of what, she didn't know. Everything felt like a goddamn conspiracy theory nowadays. But she was just beginning to reach the epiphany that sometimes the only way to survive in this world was to take and take until there was nothing more it could give. The world had already stolen enough from her; she wanted to reclaim something back. Her dignity. Her life. She had nothing left to lose anyways. Death burned all her bridges before she had a chance to do it herself.
Matt took the bait. He respected Karen enough to know when not to push her limits. But it still bothered him to see her so obviously traumatized. He knew everything there was to know about her, as far as he could tell. After working with her for a little over six months, Matt learned to acquaint himself with her breathing and speaking patterns. He was so hyper-aware of her presence, of the unconscious tics that endeared him like a moth to a flame. He knew the way she'd stutter when she was tense, how she'd pace back and forth whenever she was in a train of thought, he could even sense when she was lying, just from the pitch of her voice alone.
And he knew how a quirk of the brow or a flash of his signature crooked smile could make her heart beat just a little more faster than usual.
But he didn't know her face.
Instead, he just settled on giving her a penetrating stare. Which really didn't help. Whenever their eyes met, Karen swore he was staring directly into her soul.
He knew that underneath that meek exterior lay a relentless seeker of truth and justice, someone who'd been to hell and back yet clung unto every vestige of her humanity. Her resolve was forged in steel, and yet there was so much fire in her. She was not naïve. She was no ingénue. Her conviction was unwavering, uncompromising. Beautiful.
"Beautiful", he uttered, almost unconsciously. Karen froze, slowly turning her head to look at him in disbelief.
"What?" She asked, caught off guard.
"I just wanted to say, I think you're beautiful." Those words would have sounded saccharine if it came out of anyone else's mouth, but Matt made them sound like truth.
Karen shook her head, so accustomed to Matt's extraordinary, heightened senses she temporarily forgot he couldn't actually see her. He slowly started walking towards her. She stared at Matt with renewed vigour, noticing the fluidity of his movements, the grace with which he navigated and interacted with his surroundings. It was otherworldly. Almost as if…
No. She caught herself. There's no way he's the man in the mask.
"You don't even know what I look like, Matt. Don't flatter me." Karen intoned wearily. Matt tilted his head, his hand imperceptibly tightening on the cane he didn't need. As much as he didn't want to admit it, she was right. He couldn't, and never will, see her face. But there were other ways of seeing.
"Can I…" he trailed off, the words not quite strung together and left hanging in the air. He gestured towards her face and Karen's look of confusion turned into an understanding one.
"Of course, Matt." She took his hand in hers and lifted it up to graze her cheek. That was all the encouragement he needed.
He memorized every detail as he caressed Karen's face at an agonizingly slow pace. His fingers traced an intricate design as they explored the planes of her forehead, traveled across her prominent cheekbones, and then rested somewhere near her lips. Karen gasped, letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding in, and it was Matt's turn to shiver when his thumb brushed against the warm recesses of her mouth.
There weren't enough words to describe this experience, and Matt knew that where words failed, action prevailed.
She fit into his arms perfectly, their bodies locked in an embrace, swaying as if in a dance to a song with no music. The words left unspoken between them persisted in a comfortable silence.
From a distance, it almost looked as if he was nuzzling her neck.
Remember what you told me? You're not alone. We can make it through this together.
Suddenly, a crash came from upstairs, most likely caused by a wild Foggy. Karen's suspicions were confirmed when she heard the resounding shriek that wasn't of pain, but of exhilaration. She surveyed the scene and saw her friend standing near the top of the stairs with a shocked expression on his face. Pieces of his cherished Batman figurine lay shattered on the floor, but his focus stayed on the two co-workers. So that was the noise.
"Oh my fucking god, you guys! Get a room!" He shouted in mock-disgust before rushing into the den, inadvertently leaving behind the remnants of his favourite caped crusader.
Karen rolled her eyes. Foggy, you have the worst timing ever. "Should I…"
"Just ignore him. If he can recover after that Star Wars trailer, he'll be alright." He gave her a genuine smile at that, one that reached his unfocused eyes and made her insides twist in the most delightful way. Karen suppressed a giggle, reveling in the moment.
"KAREN! I need to talk to you!" Karen groaned and reluctantly let go of Matt, immediately missing the comfort of his arms.
"Looks like I've got my work cut out for me." Stealing one last glance at her friend, she leisurely approached the stairs, deliberately dragging her feet all the while. She bumped into the monkey balloon that was still floating in the corner.
"By the way, I never got to thank you for that balloon you gave me."
"Oh, it-it's no problem. I'm glad you like it."
"I love it." Those three simple words weren't even meant for her, and yet Karen could feel the effects they had on the erratic rhythms of her heart.
A beat passed.
"Anyways, I think Foggy's waiting, so I'll let you go." He chuckled and sat back down on the chair, reaching around for his spectacles.
"Okay. I'll talk to you later. Coming, Foggy!" Karen exclaimed with a laugh.
She had never felt more alive.