AN: Aaaand I'm back. With another chapter. Because this fanfiction is now my baby and I feel bad leaving you all to think that something happened when a different thing happened. This gets real sappy. Like sappy sappy. But I figured it would work, considering exactly what this plot is, so sappiness is excusable? It gets kinda medical and action-y, a little less moving dialogue and beautiful poetry, but I'm saving all that for next chapter, worry not :)

To explain: if you didn't notice last chapter, I cut out parts of the torture sequence because I thought this would stay a oneshot and I didn't need to go into such great detail. Obviously, this is a little more explicit, but I was careful to make sure there were no inconsistencies in the plot so everything flows. I do describe stuff in greater detail in this chapter, but keep it in mind that there was a period of about 20 minutes between the time Claire refused to call Matt and the time she actually called him in the last chapter, which should help make her wounds a bit more explainable.

Idk but without further ado, here is Chapter 2!

Disclaimer (that applies to every chapter): Do you recognize it? Yes? Then it doesn't belong to me.

"I love you." Rage flooded onto the man's face, his hand swiftly bringing the butt of the gun down on the left side of her head. She shied away from the blow, the cold metal instead smashing right into her ear.

He straightened up, aiming and cocking the gun at her head in one fluid motion. The phone fell to the floor, forgotten. His finger moved quickly, as sharp as a death sentence.

Claire quickly threw herself away from the shot, her rib cage and spinal cord protesting the sudden movement. The small bullet almost miraculously richocheted off her bonds. Before the business man could respond, she straightened up and forced herself away from the column, snapping her knee into his groin.

The link she'd weakened earlier shattered under the pressure, and she collapsed against the floor of the parking garage, her support lost. Before the man could crawl back up to his feet, Claire surged up once more, bracing herself against the bloodstained concrete cylinder and planting the heel of her injured foot straight into his skull.

A moment later, she pulled herself off the unconscious and possibly dying man, fumbling for the steadily beeping phone. Claire flipped it open clumsily, the stabbing, heart stopping pain of her broken fingers and toes slowly ebbing away into blessedly cold numbness.

She could faintly hear Matt shouting at her from the phone, but when she jerked her head around to position the phone all she could hear was fuzziness. The edges of her vision began to blacken.

He wanted her to tell him something. All Claire wanted was to wrap herself in his robe like she had when they'd first kissed, to fall asleep by his side and never wake up. He wanted to know where she was.

As if in a dream, she described her surroundings to him, trying to focus on his voice like he'd asked her to do a few seconds before.

"There's a- I think I'm- I'm in a parking garage." She could hear him, his breath and hispounding steps, heavy and fast like he was running. The sound was comforting. He was still alive. Fisk's men hadn't gone after him yet.

The sudden loss of sensation kicked her years of med school into gear almost automatically, categorizing and diagnosing her wounds within a few seconds. A compound skull fracture, a fracture where the laceration tears through all skin, bone, and tissue layers protecting the brain, cracked her skull and ruan through the middle ear section of her left ear. She absently realized that if she lived, she would most likely suffer from sensorineural hearing loss and be at least legally deaf in one ear.

"I meant what I said. I love you." She paused for a moment, gulping for air, suddenly unable to move air in and out of her lungs.

"No-nothing changes that, okay?"

"Just hold on Claire. I'm almost there." Something in her head brought itself to her attention. He needs landmarks, a past memory recalled. Almost instinctively, she murmured the name of the nearest skyscraper into the phone. A few words came through.

"And what shall I hold on to, hmm? I've got my hands full already, y'know." Her weak attempt at humor was forgotten as she focused on timing her own, shallower breaths with his deep, quick ones.

She tried to stumble away from her unconscious captor, dragging her right foot with her as she crawled as far away from him as she could manage. Her heart thudded through her chest, fast and weak, like a captured animal.

Her hand slipped on a patch of liquid, twisting her ribs and spine. Ouch, she thought. Definitely bruised vertebrae and broken ribs. Cautiously she poked at her side. A sharp, stabbing pain sounded through her nerves. Maybe even a hairline fracture in the scapula?

Claire sprawled againt a parking barricade, using her other hand to push blood-soaked hair out of her face, crimson smearing into her skin.

*************** line break *********************

She was roughly pulled out of unconsciousness, black fuzz retreating to edges of her field of vision.

Matt was bent over her, his sightless eyes staring at a spot just past her bruised forehead. His hands, capable of so much damage, of so much suffering, of so much good, were propping her up, trying to get her to respond to his voice.

"I'm here. I've got you. I'm here." He began struggling to pull her up, trying his best to gently lift her limp body into his arms without jostling the broken bones he must've heard when he shook her awake.

"God, Claire. I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry..." Claire curled up in his arms as the bright flashing lights of the paramedics' ambulance and police cars around them bounced off the walls of the parking lot.

"Stay with me." She murmured to him.

"Stay with me."

"I don't see how I can go anywhere else." He managed to respond, helping the paramedics strap her into a gurney.

Someone inserted a needle into her arm, shooting her full of liquid ice cold exhaustion. The last thing Claire saw was a man helping Matthew up into the ambulance next to her.

AN: Were y'all surprised? Should I keep going? I hope I explained the medical terms well enough, and that this would be pretty in character considering the trauma I just put Claire and Matt through! Let me know if you need a deeper definition or something. I'm also considering also posting an optional ending where she doesn't make it out alive, as well as this one. Please write a review so I can know if you guys wanna see it, and thank you for reading :D