A/N: Written for Frost on Maples for the Stocking Stuffer fic exchange at The Beta Branch! It's still winter, right? ;)
We Who Live
"Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The signs began to pop up the last week of October, slick and shiny against the grimy walls, flashes of color against stone gray. She passed them without really seeing them. It was hard to go more than a few yards without seeing some advertisement or another, especially for rentals. Another old tenement building converted into overpriced condos. Nothing new about that.
The fences, emblazoned KEEP OUT in black and high-vis orange, went up sometime in November. She couldn't remember when exactly, because November was a hard month and she'd buried herself in her work at Nelson and Murdock. Five gunshots and the imposing figure of Wilson Fisk still haunted her dreams, though less often than they once had. She'd even managed to stop drinking her meals. It was easy to ignore the scaffolding that followed the signs, planks of rough wood draped between a web of steel bars. Something was always being renovated in New York. Nothing to see here; move along.
Now it was December. Flimsy strings of lights and plastic wreaths dotted the windows, and the same weary Muzak covers of Christmas favorites played in all the stores. There was a bite in the air and that smoky tang that reminded her of snow. It wasn't cold enough yet, but it was cold enough to cut right through her flimsy knit gloves and cheap coat while she walked to the office, clutching her steaming coffee.
She didn't know what was different about that morning. Maybe it was the noise of the machines inside, the buzz of saws and the pounding of jackhammers, the crumble of masonry. Maybe it was appearance of large steel dumpsters, piled high with the detritus of the building's old occupants. Whatever it was, suddenly, she saw.
Karen stood across the street from the tangle of scaffolding and the unholy noise of jackhammers and crumbling masonry and sobbed into her overpriced Christmas latte, because it wasn't just another tenement building being converted into condos.
It was Mrs. Cardenas' building.
She took the stairs two at a time up to the offices of Nelson and Murdock, desperate to get inside before anyone else could see her red eyes and wet cheeks. She dumped the remains of the latte down the sink in the kitchen and blotted furiously at her eyes with a paper napkin. Despite her best efforts, the tears simply wouldn't stop. Karen threw the napkin away angrily and found another, this time for her nose. God, she hoped Matt and Foggy had decided to sleep in. The thought of going to pieces again in front of either of them made her stomach twist anxiously.
"Karen?" Matt's voice called from his office. She cringed as she heard his chair scrape against the floor. "Is that you?"
Karen swore under her breath. Of course, he would be in the one time she wanted the office to herself. "Yes, it's me," she croaked loudly, wiping futilely at her eyes with her sleeve.
Matt appeared in the kitchen doorway a moment later. He wore his usual gray suit and a concerned expression. "Is everything all right?" he asked, idly tapping a couple fingers on the trim around the doorway.
Karen swore again silently. "I'm fine," she lied aloud.
Matt raised an eyebrow and her insides squirmed guiltily. "Are you sure?" he asked, but it was more of an observation than a question and they both knew it. "You sound upset."
Upset was just a diplomatic way of saying yes, I heard you crying your eyes out in the kitchen, Karen thought sourly. She moved to wipe her nose again before she remembered he couldn't actually see her. Matt seemed to settle into the doorway and she bit her lip, hesitating. She didn't want to bring her burdens to him, really, she didn't, but….well, it was Matt. He looked so peaceful and so…understanding that she couldn't lie to him again.
"No- uh, yes," she blurted. "I mean, I am upset. I saw- It's Mrs. Cardenas. They- they started gutting her building today."
A lump swelled into her throat and she choked into silence. Matt went very still. His face seemed to harden, all but for a single muscle in his jaw that twitched slightly. Karen watched his knuckles slowly whiten on the wooden trim. A chill she couldn't explain raced down her spine. Surprised, Karen forgot her grief enough to raise an eyebrow. They had all worked on Mrs. Cardenas' case, of course, and her death had hit them all hard. But there was something different about Matt's reaction that Karen did not understand. Like it was somehow even more personal than just working on the case. Like he knew something-
"Show me," Matt interrupted before she could say anything. His voice was as tight as his fingers on the door. Karen took his arm and they went out into the cold.
Together, they stood across the street from the building and took it all in: the buzz and clash of tools, the crash of ceramic tile meeting steel dumpster, the musty smell of mildewed drywall and the chalk taste of gypsum in the air. Tears stung Karen's eyes again, but there was something bracing about the feel of Matt's woolen sleeve under her fingers, and the comfortingly warm and sturdy flesh underneath. Judging from the way his shoulder pressed against her own, he needed the reassurance of physical contact as much as she did.
A particularly large load of debris roared down one of the battered metal chutes jammed into a fifth-floor window. It crashed into the dumpster below with a bang and a large cloud of dust. They had fought so hard to keep this from happening, she thought. So many hours chasing through reams of documents, piecing everything together, hassled every step of the way by Tully's (later Fisk's) legal team. That one memorable evening fixing the pipes with Foggy in Mrs. Cardenas' ruined apartment. After she died, there was nothing Karen and Foggy had been able to do to keep the loose coalition of building residents together. They'd taken the money and ran, leaving the building open to development.
Suddenly hot, acid rage sliced through Karen's grief. "It's not fair!" she shouted, though only Matt was close enough to hear her over the din. "After everything…I mean, Elena gave her life and Fisk still gets his way!"
Matt stiffened. Karen glanced up and almost recoiled from the naked anger that flashed across his face. The expression was gone before she'd registered it, replaced with grief and a touch of guilt. Matt's throat bobbed several times before he gently freed his wrist from her grasp and put an arm around her shoulders. "We did everything we could, Karen," he said, and Karen couldn't decide if he was trying to convince her or himself.
She shot him a puzzled look, even though he wouldn't be able to see it. Again, there was something about Mrs. Cardenas that Matt was taking very hard and very personally. Karen didn't understand. He'd been involved, but she'd always had the impression that it was she and especially Foggy who had been close to Elena Cardenas. They'd simply had more contact with her.
So why did Matt seem so…guilty?
"Life belongs to the living," Matt added, interrupting her thoughts, "and we who live must be prepared for changes."
"What?" Karen asked, confused.
"Just…something I read somewhere," Matt replied. He sounded uncertain despite the wise words.
She wanted to ask what troubled him, she should ask, a real friend would ask, but the thought of what other secrets might come to light if she did gave her pause. Karen swallowed her own guilt and looked back at the construction site. "Yeah, well, this change sucks," she said bitterly.
"Agreed," Matt said fervently.
Still, there was something about Matt's words that made Karen feel a bit better despite her disappointment. She hated the changes to Elena's community, hated them (and Fisk) violently, but she could only hate them because she was alive. Karen snorted softly at the absurdity of the thought. Sure, it was pretty screwed up, but so was she.
Matt squeezed her shoulders comfortingly, as if he'd somehow sensed her thoughts. She was alive, and she wasn't alone. That was a change that didn't suck, she thought. With that, Karen took a deep breath and said a silent goodbye to Elena and everything that they had fought for. Matt took her arm, and together, they walked home.