Here you go, the first real chapter. It's set in Daredevil 1x02. A lot of it it's basically the same as what happened between Claire and Matt in canon. But things will diverge from canon eventually. And yes, I will dive into Sage's past and what happened since she woke up in this parallel world eventually. There will be flashbacks etc during the story.

Also, I changed some small things in the prologue. First, Sage's parents died in a car accident. Second, she lived with the Dursleys from when she was one until she was seven, then the social services found out about the abuse and finally allowed her to go live with Sirius (and yes, Uncle Vernon ended up in prison where he belonged). Third, she's born in 1986 in this universe, so in 1996 when she woke up she was 10, and now, in 2015, she's 28 going on 29 (since she's still born the 31st of July like in canon).

Hope you like this chapter, tell me what you think!

Chapter 1

January 14th 2015, Hell's Kitchen (NYC), USA – Earth-199999

Sage wasn't new to dealing with emergencies, not in her old world, and not here, living in New York City – the same city that had been attacked by aliens three years ago – and with the profession she had chosen. She still didn't particularly liked being woken up in the middle of the night though – on her night off nonetheless – by banging on the door and a barrage of fast-spoken Spanish from the other side.

Sage grumbled and got up from her very soft, warm and comfortable bed, opening the door of her apartment. It took a little while for her still sleep-addled brain to understand what Santino was telling her. There was an injured man in the dumpster. Sage shook her head, thinking to herself 'why is it always me?' before telling Santino to come with her and help her. She lived on the tenth floor and even with the elevator (an old one that didn't work more often than it did) she wasn't strong enough to carry a grown man alone up to her house.

It took some maneuvering to bring him to her house but they managed, lying the bleeding man on the floor. Sage instructed Santino not to tell anything to anyone and then she was left alone with the unconscious man.

As soon as the door had closed behind her, she ran to retrieve her medical bag, kneeling at the man's side. She quickly put on a pair of latex gloves and checked on his injuries. He had various stab wounds, a head injury that was bleeding profusely and that would probably cause him a concussion and his pupils were unresponsive to light.

While she could treat his external injuries, without a CT scan she couldn't say if he had internal bleeding as well, and he would also need an X-ray for possible bone fractures.

She was just about to call the hospital where she worked, when the man grabbed her wrist in a lightning fast movement, startling her and almost making her drop her phone.

"No, no calls." The man said, in a tone that sounded more like an order. He still had his hand around her wrist, stopping her from bringing the phone back to her ear. His grip was tight but he was still being careful of not hurting her, she could tell.

"It's okay. I'm just trying to help." She tried to reassure him, putting a hand on his bicep to calm him down, but making sure she wasn't touching any injuries. The man shook his head, repeating 'no' once again. His gaze bounced from place to place, never fixing on a single point.

"We have to get you to the hospital."

"They'll kill everyone."

Sage furrowed her eyebrows, not understanding what he was talking about. "Who?"

"The men who did this. They'll kill everyone in the hospital to get to me," he said with a grunt, trying to get up from the floor.

"Whoa. What are you doing?" Sage asked rhetorically, trying to stop him from getting up. "You can't…You've lost a lot of blood. I think you might have been stabbed."

"I have to leave." He said, ignoring her pleas and getting up on shaky legs. He took three stumbling steps, impressive given his numerous injuries but still very stupid. Sage shook her head. She came in contact with stubborn patients every day, the best way to deal with them was to make them realize their limits on their own.

"You want to leave? Door's that way." She pointed in the opposite direction from the one he was heading. The man groaned in pain and turned around slowly and with clear difficulty. He barely managed a step forward before he fell to the floor, heavy as a bag of rocks, unconscious.

Matt startled awake, the sound of the ambulance sirens blaring outside and booming in his ears. He didn't recognize where he was. His heightened senses were assaulted by smells, sounds and sensations that let him know he wasn't in his own apartment. He was lying on a couch, the rough fabric uncomfortable on his sensitive skin.

He heard a heartbeat close to him, slow and steady, the rhythmic inhale and exhale, the heat radiating from their skin, the smell of rubber gloves and disinfectant, the swish of long hair on cotton fabric, the pleasant scent of honey, lemon and lilies – a natural scent, not the one that came from chemicals. Their feet shuffled forward. They were bare, as were her legs. She was wearing a pair of shorts that brushed against the smooth skin of her thighs. A young woman then.

"Are you gonna listen to me this time?" She asked him. She had a pleasant voice, warm, low, husky.

"Where am I?"

"You're in my apartment."

"Who are you?"

"I'm the lucky girl who pulled you out of the garbage."

Matt realized a little too late that there was something missing from his face. He didn't need to touch it to realize that his mask wasn't there anymore but he did it anyway.

"You've seen my face."

Matt heard her shrug in apology. That was confirmation enough though she responded verbally as well. "Yeah."

"Great." Just what he needed, a stranger who could potentially recognize him.

"Your outfit kind of sucks, by the way."

Matt noticed that she seemed completely unfazed by the fact that there was a man bleeding on her couch. That let him know that it wasn't the first time she had to deal with an injured stranger.

"Yeah, it's a work in progress." He answered, trying to get up but feeling pain cursing remorselessly through his body. He felt the woman's hands settling on his shoulders and even with gloves and his shirt separating their skin, he could feel their warmth. They were small and delicate, but with long fingers. Her wrists were thin and seemingly fragile but the way she was pushing him back towards the couch – making sure to avoid where he was wounded – let him know that she was stronger than she seemed.

"Okay, I really wouldn't try to move too much. You've got two or three broken ribs, probable concussion, some kind of puncture wound, and that's just the stuff that I know about. And your eyes, they're nonresponsive to light, which isn't freaking you the hell out, so either you're blind or in way worse shape than I thought."

Matt's lips curved in a wry smile. "Do I have to pick one?"

The woman shook her head before biting her lips in indecision. Finally, she asked, "do you mind telling me how a blind man in a mask ends up beaten half to death in my dumpster?"

"The less you know about me, the better." For both of us.

He heard her sigh in clear resignation before concentrating back to his injuries. "The wound on your side... knife?" She raised his shirt to see the covered wound.

He could feel dry blood glued to the wound but no fresh one. "Probably. Ah!" He tried to move away on instinct, a stab of pain irradiating from the wound on his side.

"I think I got the bleeding stopped, but I can't tell how bad it is internally without a full series of X-rays, so..."

Matt shook his head. "No. No hospitals."

She sighed again and he could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "This is my night off. I'm really not looking for some guy to die on my couch."

"Are you a doctor?"

"Yeah." He thought so. At least he had lucked out on that.

"Most people, they find a bleeding masked man in the garbage...they call the police."

She chuckled. It was a charming sound, like tinkling bells. "You know a lot of people who found bleeding masked men in the garbage?"

"Why are you helping me?" Matt asked, knowing she was trying to avoid the question.

She shrugged. He heard her fidgeting a little, playing with her gloved fingers in nervousness. "I'm a doctor, as we already established. That's kind of what I do. Help people."

Matt detected no lies in her words, but there was more to it than that, he knew. He let it go for now though.

"You got a name at least?"

He felt her hesitate, unsure if she should answer or not. Matt couldn't blame her.

"Sage." She said in the end. Her heart didn't skip. She had given him her real name. "Don't suppose I get to know yours?"

She wasn't really expecting an answer, he knew. Matt shook his head again and kept silent.

He heard her raise her arms, feeling the air shifting. "All right, I'll call you M."

"M?"

"Like Masked Man? M." Then she snickered, clearly having thought of something funny. "Or, if you'd prefer, M&M…M&M's?"

"M is fine." He said, rolling his eyes but then stopping when even that small movement caused him pain.

"Well then, M. Rest. Make sure you're stabilized. We'll figure the other stuff out later." He heard her moving things around, the sound of a zip, then slipping the gloves off her hands.

Matt reached for her naked hand, feeling her soft skin even through his gloves. He noticed she startled a little, not expecting the gesture. "Thank you, Sage." He said sincerely, looking in her general direction.

Her lips rose in a smile, small and shy, hesitant. "You're welcome."

She heard him gasping and ran to his side. "What is it? What's wrong?" She asked, though she could tell he was struggling to breathe.

"I can't breathe." He sounded panicked. Sage used the stethoscope to feel his chest and realized immediately what was wrong. "You've got air in your chest. It's collapsing your lung." She explained to him while quickly putting on a new pair of gloves. "I'm gonna relieve the pressure, but I'm gonna need you to hold still, okay?"

She disinfected the area of the chest below the collarbone then took the needle from her bag. "Here we go. This is going to hurt." She warned, inserting the needle between the second and third rib. The hissing sound it released let her know the air had left his right lung. M took a deep breath and Sage mimicked him, relieved. "Good. Just breathe normally."

After a few gasping pants, sounding like an asthmatic, his breath returned to normal.

"Okay, look…don't want to tell me your name? Fine. I can understand that. But, can you at least tell me what the hell happened to you and why?"

"They kidnapped a boy." M said, sounding more tired than he looked, and that was saying something.

"Who did?"

"The Russians." He explained. "They've been running a human trafficking ring out of Hell's Kitchen. Took over when the Italians folded up. Two days ago, they pulled a kid out of the back of a van. Beat his father while he watched."

Sage felt fury at those words, her hands tightening into fists without her conscious will. Cowards. "So, you went after them…"

M nodded. "I knew the kid would still be alive. At least until they took him out of the city. I tracked the Russians to a warehouse not far from here. Thought I was being smart, how fast I found them." His voice took on a bitter tone. "Turns out, I wasn't."

"They were waiting for you." Sage said in realization.

M nodded again. "And I walked right into it."

"They took this kid just to get to you?"

"Yeah, I've been making their lives...difficult lately."

But you're blind, Sage wanted to say. She didn't though. Clearly it didn't matter that he was blind if he could go after criminals – not only Russians, she had heard about others as well. Thieves, rapists. How he could fight against them she didn't know but he clearly could. "This is what you do?" She asked instead, perhaps a little flippantly. "You make life difficult for bad men?"

"It's one way of putting it." M answered with a small laugh.

"No offense, but you don't seem to be very good at it." She said, half-teasing, half-serious.

He laughed again, immediately after gasping in pain. "Yeah, well, you're catching me on an off night."

She licked her lips, turning serious, needing to know. "Did you at least find the kid?"

M shook his head. "No, he wasn't there. I barely made it out myself. I was careless. Stupid."

Sage sighed. She was doing a lot of that tonight. "And I presume that these same men who took the boy, they're out here now, searching for you…?"

She looked at him when she didn't receive an answer and noticed that he seemed like he was listening to something. "M?"

"Someone's coming."

Sage frowned. "Wait, what?"

"There's someone in the building, a man, going from door to door." He explained, still listening intently to whatever he could hear outside. "He's on the third floor already. Smells like Prima cigarettes and discount cologne."

Heightened senses. Of course. That explained how a blind man could fight the Russian mob. "You can smell a man on the third floor?" She asked him, helping him sitting up on the couch.

She could feel, now that she was so close to him, how strong he really was, his body honed to be a fighter. She could smell the sweat on his skin, mixed in with the strong scent of blood. It wasn't unpleasant. He was certainly an attractive man, even in this state. Not that it mattered, of course.

"You'll smell him soon enough." He said with a small chuckle, warm puff of breaths hitting the shell of her ear. "He really likes that cologne."

She hummed in response, stepping away from the couch and putting some distance between them.

"You're looking at me like I'm crazy, right?" He asked her when she didn't comment on what he had told her.

"Maybe a little." She grinned, unable to deny it.

"There are some things I haven't told you about me, Sage."

Sage raised her right eyebrow. "Technically you haven't told me anything about you. All I know is that you're very good at taking a beating."

"That part I got from my dad." Sage recognized the look he was sporting in that moment, that sad, faraway look of someone who had lost their parents way too soon. The look of an orphan.

Matt stumbled to the kitchen and browsed through the first drawer in search of something sharp. "This all you got?" He showed Sage the small kitchen knife in his hand, hoping she would tell him she had something bigger somewhere.

Sage scoffed. "Yeah, it's for vegetables, not a knife fight."

Matt nodded, figuring he was going to manage. "He's at your neighbor's door." He took two steps towards the front door before Sage stopped him.

"You kidding me? Hey!" Sage said, putting a hand on his chest to stop him in his tracks. "You can barely stand up. Where do you think you're going?"

"That's what the knife's for."

Sage scoffed again. "Like you pointed out, it's not exactly a machete. No, let me deal with this."

"How exactly do you plan on dealing with this?"

"I don't know, by talking to him? Nobody has to get hurt, okay? Not in my home. Just stand over there on the side and be quiet and I'll get rid of him. Please."

Matt nodded and went to stand on a corner, close enough to the door to intervene if things went sideways but far enough away that the man on the other side would not be able to see him.

Sage quickly got rid of the evidence that another – injured – person had been there. They heard a knock at the door a moment later.

Sage waited a few moments. She shuffled her feet noisily, making sure the person on the other side could hear her. "Who is it?" She called out, voice taking on a scratchier edge, like she had just gotten out of bed.

"NYPD, ma'am. Please open the door." The muffled voice of the man on the other side said.

"Okay." She answered. "I'm coming." She brushed his arm while passing, then squeezed his bicep in warning. Her heart was slow and steady, like it had been all night. How was she always so calm? Was she because she was a doctor and she was used to deal with stressful situations or was there more to it?

"Sorry to bother you so late, ma'am." The fake policeman said once Sage had opened the door. Matt heard the man swallowing, his heartbeat accelerating, his palms getting clammy, his breath shortening and for a moment Matt was confused at his reaction. It didn't take long for him to understand that the man was responding to Sage's appearance and he grinned.

She was beautiful – of course. Foggy would tease him relentlessly if he knew.

"My name is Detective Foster, with the 65th Precinct."

"What can I do for you officer?" Sage asked, her tone changing, taking on a sweet, flirty quality. He heard her playing with a lock of her hair, hips leaning against the open door in an obvious provocative pose. Matt suppressed a chuckle.

"We had a bit of a disturbance a few blocks from here." The man answered. Matt heard his heavy boots coming forward, closer to her, and he tensed, ready to intervene if there was any need. "We're asking everyone if they've seen or heard anything unusual in the past few hours."

"Oh. What kind of disturbance?"

"Armed robbery. Some dickhead in a black mask shot up a bodega on 38th. Owner put up a fight. Perp fled on foot, leaving a trail of blood in this direction."

"Oh, my God. It's terrible."

"Probably long gone by now, but just in case, you know." He said, and Matt heard the movement of her head going up and down in a nod. "Of course."

"You see anything, hear anything tonight?"

"No, I'm sorry. I was sleeping. Only the banging on my door woke me up."

"Just being thorough." The man said. "You have a good night, ma'am."

"Thanks. You, too." Sage said but the man lingered. "Is there something else you needed?"

"No. Hum…no. Goodnight." He finally left and Sage closed the door with a sigh.

"See? No reason to get all stabby." She said to him, her voice back to normal.

Matt nodded, knowing the real reason why the fake policeman had believed her was that he was too distracted by her appearance – he had even said something under his breath about the color of her eyes – and her (fake) flirting to really pay attention to her words – though even Matt himself would have found it difficult to notice that she was, in fact, lying. She didn't betray any sign of nervousness – no stuttering, no flushing skin, no fluttering heartbeat, no nervous tick.

"You weren't kidding about that cologne." Sage shook her head in disgust. "Does he bathe in it?"

But Matt wasn't really listening anymore, distracted by a conversation happening a floor above. A boy had opened his door and was answering the fake cop's questions. Unfortunately, he wasn't having as much luck as Sage with convincing the cop that he knew nothing. He was stuttering and he was clearly afraid, his heart beating like a rabbit's.

As soon as the boy had closed his door, Matt heard the fake cop picking up his phone to call someone.

He was out Sage's apartment before Sage had even finished talking.

"M, what are you doing?"

"A boy. He talked with him. The fake cop didn't believe him. How did he know about me?" He asked her in a low voice.

"Santino." Sage said with a swear. "He's the one who found you and helped me bring you upstairs."

Matt nodded. "Has he seen my face too?" He asked resignedly.

Sage nodded, then shrugged. "Yeah. Sorry."

Matt shook his head. It didn't matter at the moment. He took a fire-extinguisher from the wall and followed the man's voice and his steps down the stairs.

"What are you doing?" She asked him again when she noticed he was holding the extinguisher suspended over the banister, waiting. At the right moment he let it go and hit the man over the head, rendering him unconscious.

Sage huffed a breath of relief. "Well, at least he's out. What do we do now?"

"Sage, go upstairs and get the boy."

"Why?" He heard the muscles of her forehead shifting in a frown of confusion.

"We're gonna need help carrying Detective Foster to the roof."

"What the hell are we going to the roof for?"

Matt gave her a sharp grin in return. "Less chance of someone in the building hearing him scream."

Sage huffed again, this time in exasperation. "Of course, you were going to say that. Why did I even ask?"