PERSONAL SPACE: Hi everyone! This is my first story about Daredevil, and also my first one in English (I'm italian).

I'd really like to thank my beta, InsertImaginativeNameHere, for helping me with grammar. If you can read this fanfiction is mostly thank to her who cleaned up the mess I've made! Thank you for your work and your patience!

I let you guys read the first chapter, I hope you like it, and if you want to let me know what do you think about this (both positve and negative opinions, of course), please leave a review. :)

Chapter 1: A morning like any other.

It was a morning like any other.

Matt Murdock opened his eyes when he heard the wake-up call of his alarm-clock, and like every morning the world caught fire around him. He pushed the white button to turn it off and a metallic female voice informed him that was 7 a.m.

Time to get up.

He moved with usual attention to his body, but this time he didn't feel any pain. The night before he hadn't gone out for his usual patrol of Hell's Kitchen, so there were no fresh injuries to care about, but he realized that only some minutes later, when he stopped moving like an automaton and started to really wake up.

He got up and went to the bathroom; he really needed a shower.

The day before was one of those day you can't really define as "busy" or "chaotic" or "crazy". It was all those thing together and more. He, Karen and Foggy didn't really get a moment's peace.

Since they had managed to get Fisk and put him where he belonged, they had become really famous in Hell's Kitchen and their number of clients had gone up in a staggering way; and the real news was that some of them could really afford to pay them.

For the first time since Matt could remember (not counting the period in which they didn't speak to each other), he and Foggy had to work different cases on their own, with an outstanding Karen who did her best to help both of them and at the same time took care of the potential clients waiting for their moment.

As result, they barely had anything for lunch and went home after midnight.

Matt stood near the window for some time, listening the voices of the city, trying to figure out if someone needed his help.

When nothing came up, he gave a sigh of relief, let himself fall on his bed and fell asleep still wearing his work suit.

When he got home last night, he had considered changing from those clothes to the Daredevil ones directly, and after he resolved to not go out, his body and his mind didn't have the strength to change his outfit for more comfortable sweatpants and t-shirt.

-Foggy. Foggy. Foggy. Foggy. Foggy...-

He had just taken the first step into the bathroom when his phone began to ring, saying the name of the one who was calling him.

Matt sighed and went back to the kitchen where he had left it. If the caller had been Karen, he would have left it to ring and called her later, but it was Foggy, and since he had discovered his secret, morning calls had become a sort of habit. His partner phoned him just to check if Matt had reached home safe enough to call Claire to stitch him up.

If Matt hadn't picked up, his best friend would probably have run to his place to check if he was ok, and he didn't want him to worry, so he answered the phone as fast as he could.

-Hey, buddy. Are you ok? It took you a long time to pick up...-

Matt couldn't avoid smiling. Foggy's concern had always moved him, even if his friend never treated him like he was made of glass, and that was also one of the reasons that led to not telling him about his second job.

-Yeah- he answered -I'm ok. I was having a shower-

-Oh. Sorry. But... are you ok? I mean... you know-

-Yeah. Last night I stayed at home-

-Really?- even someone who wasn't blind could hear the relief in his partner's voice.

-Too tired-

-So...see you at the office?-

-Yeah. Leave me a donut.-

Matt hung up the phone and finally managed to reach the shower. He changed the suit and went directly to the "Nelson & Murdock" main (not to mention only) office.

When he arrived at the office, after he had paid the cab he took from the apartment to his work place, he saw with relief that no clients had shown up yet. Foggy and Karen were already there and they were waiting for him so they could have breakfast together.

It was a habit started by Foggy the moment they started to talk to each other again after the fight they had about the discovery of Daredevil's true identity. Just like the regular phone calls.

Matt wasn't bothered about the new routine.

The weeks he had passed without Foggy were the worse since his father's death. Foggy wasn't just his best friend, or his partner at work.

When he almost lost him because of his second job, at the beginning he thought he could manage to take care of himself alone, but soon he began to miss his useless chats, his way of non-stop complaining about, well, basically everything.

It was the complete opposite to his own way of life.

Since he had lost his sight, when the other senses had increased their intensity, he had gradually begun to only speak if it was absolutely necessary. Everything was so loud around him that he didn't feel the need to add more noise to the noise; besides, he wasn't someone who liked to have company.

As a kid, even before his dad's death, he didn't have many friends. At school he spent all the time studying or doing his homework. His father wanted him to be a good student and build for himself a better future than he had, and Matt spent all his time trying to do that for Jack, to make his father proud of him. In the afternoon he used to go with his dad to the gym, where both worked for a better life, with opposite methods. After the accident, being blind was reason enough to be excluded from the social life of his schoolmates, but he didn't really complain about that. His teachers used to say that he looked and acted much older than an 8 years old boy, maybe because he always had to help his father work things out with the money that Jack earned from his fighting, and that wasn't simple sometimes. As a result, Matt didn't wear expensive clothes, and didn't go to other kids' birthday parties, because often he didn't have the money to buy them a present.

So, in a certain way, being blind made things easier on that point of view.

He focused even more than before on his books and when his father died things simply got even worse. His senses began to increase, and after Jack had gone, being alone in a children's home, full of noise. Everything was simply in chaos and he really thought he would go mad.

Even in the church, or in the little chapel of the orphanage, he couldn't find peace. It was like when his dad died, some kind of shield had fallen, allowing the rest of the world to reach him all at once, forcing him to stay in his bedroom, his hands covering ears, in a desperate attempt to deaden sounds around him.

Then Stick stepped in Matt's life, just to leave him when he started to consider him like family.

But Stick didn't want a son. He wanted a soldier, ready to kill on his orders. Matt would never be like that. His mentor had understood that values of the Catholic religion and the education Jack Murdock had given to him were strong inside the young boy and so he decided to let him alone again.

Since that moment Matt convinced himself that he would pass the rest of his life alone, and years had passed. He grew up, but he couldn't manage to have a stable relationship with an other human (or animal) being. He had tried with a dog, but it didn't suit him.

Then, that day, his first in college, a computer mistake made him meet a weird guy who was trying to enter a Punjabi course just because he had a crush for a girl.

He had asked for a single room, because he didn't want people feel sad for him or (worse) treat him like something delicate. He had hated that ever since he was a kid.

Foggy was different and soon Matt had discovered the warm of a real friendship and since then they had become inseparable. Finally he had a family again, and he had almost lost everything all over again because of something he did.

The night after the fight, he felt so guilty and in pain that he couldn't eat without throwing up and the following days were terrible. He went to the office only late in the night, often after his patrol in Hell's Kitchen, when he knew Foggy wasn't there (Karen sometimes was, but he had no problem with her), and used the day to sleep and recover after being the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

Everything seemed to go the right way, even without his best friend (after all, he still had Karen), but he felt so lonely that he wanted to cry out in joy when, after Ben's funeral, Foggy went to him and they decided to move on, trying to rebuild their friendship and to take down Fisk.

Morning calls and breakfast were part of their new friendship, but Matt didn't care. He would accept everything if the reward was having his family back.

-You're late- Karen said as a morning greeting

-Sorry-

-We're hungry, man! Get up earlier next time!- protested Foggy, but Matt could perceive his friend's smile behind that.

-Yeah. I bet you ate at least two or three donuts before even arriving here!-

-No way!-

-Four?-

-Screw you, Murdock!-

But he was already laughing, and Matt sensed from his breath he really had eaten them, two, or maybe three. He smelled strawberry, chocolate, and maybe custard and... was that Marci's perfume?

He smiled and took the donut and cup of coffee Karen was offering him with a smile and a soft "thank you". He really needed coffee to wake up.

-What's the agenda today?- Foggy asked Karen suddenly, his mouth half full of his breakfast.

-Don't know yet- she answered -but you have to be in court at 4 p.m. for the kid who's being charged for some money stolen from an old woman outside the bank.-

Foggy nodded. That was an easy case, because at the time of the robbery, it had shown that he was having a test in school, so he was definitely innocent.

Like they had foreseen in the morning, the judge decided to drop charges against Peter and the two partners came back to their office in a very good mood. They didn't have any other cases for that day, and it was almost dark outside, so Foggy dismissed Karen for the rest of the day.

-So?- asked Foggy

-So what?-

-Last night-

-I told you. I stayed at home. We left the office after midnight, remember? I was so tired I feel asleep still wearing my suit-

-Which one?-

-Are you serious?-

-I can't feel your heartbeat, remember? How do I know if you are telling me the truth?-

Again? Seriously? Matt sighed. He could understand Foggy's concern about Daredevil, and even that he felt betrayed, but he really couldn't get why he continued to question everything he said to him.

I lied once, to protect him and Karen, and almost lost him.

He would never make the same mistake again.

-Why should I lie to you?-

-Because you care about him, kid-

Matt froze.