A/N: Okay, so I know I told a few of you that I would have this up several days ago, but then real life got in the way, as it sometimes does. But here it is now! Also, a couple of you have asked if I have any particular actress in mind for Sarah. The short answer is no, I'm sorry! I haven't been writing with anyone in particular in mind. I do have a clear image of what she looks like in my head, but it's not based on a real person.

As always, thanks so much to everyone for the feedback! As a side note, it always pleasantly surprises me how many of you read the other reviews and take the time to PM me with your opinions on what other readers have said/predicted. It's a lot of fun-it makes it feel more like a community. You guys are the best group of readers I've ever had on this site, by far! I've been on here for a long time under a few different pen names, and you're my favorite readers. Don't tell the others.


Chapter Nine: Mending

It wasn't until Foggy was gone and the apartment was silent that the excessive strangeness of the night really set it. Sarah glanced around, taking a moment to fully comprehend that she was in Matt Murdock's apartment—in Daredevil's apartment—a place she never thought she'd see. In fact, she had never really thought about where he lived at all. After a while of sitting in the chair, her adrenaline faded and the exhaustion caught up to her. She realized she needed to move around or she would fall asleep, so she slowly stood and paced around the living room area, inspecting various areas of the room and occasionally throwing a nervous glance back at the unconscious man to make sure he wasn't awake. He probably wouldn't appreciate her nosing around his place, but it's not like there was much else for her to do.

Matt had no real decorations, which she guessed made sense; she wasn't sure how advanced his weird abilities were, but even he probably couldn't see paintings. Sarah spent so much time interacting with him as his Daredevil persona that she sometimes forgot the man behind the mask really was blind. But sure enough, his apartment was spotted with reminders: his white cane leaning against the wall next to the door, the lack of a television or any wall hangings, a bookshelf full of Braille translations and audiobooks. The most glaring sign that the apartment's resident had no sight was, quite literally, a glaring sign: a giant flashing billboard outside his window, which made the living room brighten and darken like a nightclub. No sane person with working eyes would be able to live here; at least not without some heavy duty curtains.

Sarah was careful not to touch anything, save for one of the Braille books on the bookshelf. She flipped through it curiously, having never really seen a Braille book up close before. As she was putting the book back on the shelf, Matt's burner phone rang. Hurrying back over to where it rested on the coffee table, she picked it up and answered hesitantly.

"Hey," Foggy's voice came through the line, more familiar this time than the last. "How is he?"

"About the same," she said, settling back into the armchair. "He's still out, but his breathing and pulse are fine, and the bleeding hasn't started again."

"Good, good."

She glanced around the room for a clock, but didn't see one. Obviously, she reminded herself. She pulled the phone away from her ear for a second to check the time: 6:15 am.

"You getting ready for court?"

"Yeah, I'm at the courthouse now. I've never done a case without Matt, though. Kinda nervous, to be honest."

"I'm sure you'll do fine," Sarah reassured him automatically. In reality, she had no idea if Foggy was a good lawyer or not, but it seemed like the polite thing to say. "Are they going to ask why he isn't there?"

"Probably. But, you know, blind guy. I can just say he walked in front of a bike messenger, or something, and they'll feel bad and not bring it up again."

Sarah gave a brief, tired smile at that. "Good plan. I'll let you know if anything changes here."

"Oh, wait!" Foggy said. "I was calling because you should put a blanket on him."

"What?"

"The last time he was super out of it, he got really cold from the blood loss. Just go in his room and grab a blanket and throw it over him, okay?"

She glanced at the doorway to Matt's bedroom warily. Being in his apartment without his knowledge was one thing, but something about going into his bedroom seemed just a bit too far. But Foggy clearly sounded concerned about the issue, and it made sense.

"Okay," she said reluctantly. "I'll grab him one."

"Also, I don't know how fond you are of the whole serial killer aesthetic, but if you're looking for something to wear that's not, you know, covered in blood, you can grab a shirt out of the bottom drawer of his dresser. He won't care; half of them are mine, anyway."

Sarah wondered briefly if maybe Foggy was actually the crazy one. There wasn't the slightest chance on earth she was about to go digging through Matt Murdock's dresser, much less actually wear something she found in there. She had a feeling she would have a hard enough time explaining why she was even there without also having to explain why she was wearing his clothes.

"Um…I'll think about that. Anything else?" she asked.

"Nope. Just that if he wakes up, tell him he's an idiot for me."

"Tell the unstable vigilante that he's an idiot?" Sarah repeated doubtfully, casting a wary eye over at Matt. "I kind of feel like this whole phone call is you trying to get me killed."

"Alright, alright, I'll tell him that myself. I gotta go now, court's starting soon."

"Good luck."

As Sarah hung up the phone, she reluctantly stood to go get a blanket from Matt's bedroom. She felt for the light switch on the wall, hoping that he had some sort of working light in his room. Blind people still needed to have lights for their visitors, right? She finally found it and clicked the light on. His bedroom was just as sparse as the living room. She immediately spotted a blanket folded up at the end of his bed. As she grabbed it, she raised her eyebrows at his choice in bedding. Silk sheets. Would not have predicted that.

Sarah hurried out his bedroom with the blanket it hand, still feeling oddly intrusive about being in there. As she draped the blanket over Matt, she took the opportunity to study his face—something she had never had the chance to really do before tonight. It always bothered her that he could read her so easily while not being able to see her at all, while she usually had to try to guess what he was thinking based on just the bottom half of his face. She'd seen him in his day attire a few times, but even then, the dark sunglasses were almost as good at hiding his expression as the mask was.

But now, his face was exposed and oddly vulnerable. It crossed her mind yet again that he looked young; maybe in his late twenties, like her. Sarah wasn't sure why she had assumed he was older than she was. Being a vigilante just seemed like something that someone her age wasn't old enough to do. Then again, she felt the same way about Lauren getting married and having a child, so maybe she was just trailing behind her peers.

The long cut on Matt's forehead had stopped bleeding, and Foggy had applied a small bandage to keep it closed. He had a busted lip, and a scrape on his jaw. The beginning of a dark bruise was starting to bloom under his right eye. He had numerous smaller injuries littering his arms and torso as well, which she had seen before covering them with the blanket: small cuts, scrapes and bruises in various stages of healing. Sarah wondered briefly how often he looked like this when he dropped by her place, and she just couldn't tell through the costume and the mask.

The contrast between the man on the couch and the vigilante who regularly showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night was strange and unbalancing. Sarah shook her head, trying not to think about it too much. She was running on only a couple hours of sleep, and her thought process wasn't exactly at its peak. Looking for something to distract her from the exhaustion, she made her way into the bathroom to clean herself up.

When she finally looked in the bathroom mirror, Sarah frowned at the image. Foggy hadn't been kidding about the serial killer aesthetic. The entire front of her light blue sweatshirt was covered in blood and dirt; there was no way all of that was going to come out. She still had dark streaks left on her arms, despite having tried to wash it all off earlier. There was a smudge of red on her forehead as well, from where she must have unintentionally used a bloodstained hand to push the hair out of her face.

Seeing all of the blood under the bright bathroom light somehow made her more aware of it, and Sarah finally registered the sickening coppery smell coming from her clothes. She wrinkled her nose and quickly unzipped the sweatshirt, peeling it off and throwing it on the counter. Without the sweatshirt, she looked noticeably less gory: the tank top and shorts she was wearing as pajamas still had some spots of blood from where it had soaked through the outer layer, but it was a definite improvement. She scrubbed the blood and dirt off of her hands and face as best she could, watching the dirty water swirl down the drain. Finally, she splashed some water on her face to keep herself awake before taking a last glance in the mirror and exiting the bathroom.

Sarah ran a hand through her hair tiredly as she came back out into the living room, then glanced over at the couch. She stopped dead as her eyes landed on the empty cushions where Matt's unconscious body had just been. He wasn't there.

Shit. Not good.

She barely had a few seconds to register that he wasn't where she had left him before she felt a strong hand grab her arm and yank her backwards, towards a doorway where Matt had been standing just out of sight. He roughly pushed her against the door frame, holding her in place with a vice-like grip on her shoulder. His left arm—the injured one—hung at a painful looking angle, and he swayed slightly on the spot.

"What are you doing in my apartment?" he demanded hoarsely.

Sarah's eyes widened at the edge of panic and confusion in his normally even voice. Clearly Foggy had been right about the concussion, which was not good. A disoriented and on-edge Matt was a dangerous Matt: slightly less intimidating, but much more unpredictable. And that was really not something she wanted to deal with right now, no matter what state he was in physically. She licked her lips nervously as she kept her eyes trained on his face, watching him warily for signs of that the tightly coiled tension in his body was about to snap.

"Whoa, whoa. Hey. Calm—calm down," she said shakily, trying to keep her voice low as she looked up at him apprehensively. "I'm here to help you."

Matt was breathing heavily with the effort of standing, and it seemed like he was having difficulty focusing on what she was saying. His eyes darted around her general direction, as though he couldn't pinpoint exactly where her voice was coming from. She could see the blood seeping through the bandage on his torso, where he had clearly already re-opened the wound with his movements.

"Where…where's Foggy?"

"Foggy is fine," she said quickly. "He had to go to court. For your—your custody case. Remember that? He'll be back soon."

Matt furrowed his brow and hesitated, suspicion and confusion lingering on his face. Sarah took advantage of his lack of focus to slowly inch to the right, trying to slip out from under his grasp on her shoulder. She hoped that he was too out of it to notice, but there was no such luck. He immediately tightened his hold and shoved her back against the doorframe harder. His face paled slightly at the effort it took, making it even more obvious that he wasn't at full strength. Sarah knew from experience how much his grip could hurt when he wanted it to, and this was nowhere near that level. But Matt at minimal strength was still a lot stronger than she was, and she winced at the impact of her back hitting the hard doorframe.

"Stay there," Matt said through gritted teeth, bowing his head for a moment as a wave of dizziness clearly washed over him. He swayed harder, although his grip didn't loosen. "What—I don't…what's going on? Why are you here?"

Good question, Matt. Maybe because I'm stupid.

"Okay, I'll—I'll explain all of that, but—Matt, y-you're hurt. You really need to lie back down," Sarah pleaded. She held a hand out in front of her in a placating gesture, realizing too late that in his disorientated mental state he might interpret it as a threatening motion. His left hand came up lightning fast to grab her wrist, quickly trapping it in a painful hold. He grimaced as the sudden movement caused his injured shoulder to shift, and though his grip was strong, his hand was shaking slightly.

"Wait, wait, wait," she exclaimed, but the sudden outburst just made him clutch her wrist even harder as his jaw twitched in agitation. She bit the inside of her cheek and kept as still as possible, trying not to startle him. He was clearly having difficulty determining what was a threat and what wasn't, and she was worried that if he got too far from reality he would easily snap her wrist with one good twist.

"Don't…don't do that," she tried again nervously, this time in a much lower voice. "Please. I'm not trying to hurt you." The words sounded almost comically ridiculous coming from her, as his much larger frame towered over her. "I'm—I'm trying to help you. And….you're going to pass out again i-if we don't get you back on the couch. Okay?"

There was silence except for Matt's labored breathing, but the color was steadily draining from his face, and she knew he couldn't deny what she was saying for much longer. She remained frozen in place as she waited for him to respond, feeling vaguely like she was waiting to see if a bomb would go off. Finally, he nodded his head jerkily in assent and slowly released her wrist, although he kept his tight grip on her shoulder. She suspected that by this point it was mostly to keep his own balance.

"I'm—I'm going to help you get back over there. Just…please don't freak out on me…okay?" Sarah said, still keeping her voice as quiet and calming as she could. Matt didn't respond, tilting his head down again as he swayed heavily to the side.

She slowly reached out a hand to steady him, holding her breath nervously as she did so. She hoped it wouldn't trigger any instinctual violent response in the clearly tightly wound vigilante. Matt tensed at her touch, but didn't recoil or make any move towards her. She wasn't sure if the lack of response was a good thing, or if it just meant that he was even more strung out than before. Either way, she needed to get him back to the couch. Blood was slowly trickling out of the bandage on his shoulder, running down his chest in small rivulets. He didn't seem to notice.

"Okay," she muttered, keeping one hand on Matt's waist and bringing the other up to gingerly grasp his uninjured arm, which was still extended towards her as he held onto her shoulder. Slowly she stepped to the left, towards the couch, and he stumbled along with her. "This should be…super fun…"

Without the support of the bedroom doorway behind her, Matt's full weight leaning on Sarah's shoulder was much heavier. Clearly he had used up the last of his energy getting off the couch and over to the doorway in record ninja time, so the trip back was much slower. They took it one small, unsteady step at a time, with Sarah keeping a wary eye on his face and quietly continuing to remind him that she was trying to help, that they were almost back to the couch where he could lie down. He gave no indication that he could hear her, but she kept it up anyway, if only to reassure herself.

As they reached the sitting area, Sarah tripped over one of the large combat boots that Foggy had removed from Matt's feet and hastily discarded earlier. She stumbled, throwing them both off balance, and Matt gripped her shoulder painfully hard as they both tried to regain their balance. She hissed through her teeth as his nails dug into the skin on her shoulder, hard. They finally made it to the couch and he fell back onto it heavily, letting his head fall back against the back of the couch. Sarah dug around in the bag for more gauze, frowning at the sheen of sweat covering Matt's forehead. His eyes were closed; it looked like maybe he had passed out again.

She found the gauze and kneeled on the couch next to him. He was slumped in a sitting position, making the angle to work on the wound slightly less awkward than when he had been lying down. She discarded the blood soaked bandage and pressed the fresh gauze to the freely bleeding wound on the front of his shoulder. Matt didn't move, which didn't seem like a good sign, but his breathing was slowly returning to normal.

She kept pressure on the wound for about ten minutes, during which he gave no signs of being awake, or even of being alive, beyond the steady rise and fall of his chest. When it seemed like she had managed to stem the flow of blood, she awkwardly taped the gauze down like she had seen Foggy do earlier. Sitting back, she rubbed her wrist and frowned in dismay at the fact that even in his current state of bleeding half to death, he still found the energy to knock her into a doorway or two. She hoped when he woke up again he'd be lucid enough to let her explain what was going on without attacking her.

"Gosh, Sarah, thanks for saving my ass," she muttered to herself resentfully as she threw the gauze and tape back into the bag with a little more force than strictly necessary. "I promise not to be super scary and push you around anymore."

"I can hear you," Matt said quietly, with his eyes still closed. Sarah looked up in surprise, automatically leaning away from him. She could feel her face heating up in embarrassment.

"I…thought you were unconscious again," she admitted.

"I was. Just woke up," he said, then groaned as he sat up a bit more. Seeing that he was again capable of movement, Sarah slowly stood and moved to the nearby armchair, where she perched uneasily on the armrest, ready to retreat farther if necessary.

"Are you…feeling less violent now?" she asked hopefully.

"Where's Foggy?" he asked instead of answering her question.

Sarah crinkled her brow in concern. "You don't remember us talking about this?"

Matt hesitated, then shook his head. "Not really. Just…bit and pieces."

He still seemed disoriented, but he was much calmer now, although Sarah suspected it might just be the exhaustion from standing and moving around. Either way, she was relieved.

"Foggy's in court," she informed him. "You had a custody case today. Do you remember that?"

"I…yeah. I think so."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at his confused answer, trying to figure out just how bad his concussion was. She remembered the advice the doctor had given her for helping her father on days when his memory was especially bad. She wasn't sure if the same thing could be applied to concussive memory loss, but it was worth a try. Start big, start general, the doctor had said. Memorized facts, things with no personal connection. Then you can get more specific: people he knows, events.

"Okay, um. I think you probably have a concussion," she said hesitantly. "Maybe a pretty bad one. Let's…let's figure out what you remember, okay? Um…what year is it?"

Matt gave her an exasperated look, but she waited expectantly anyway.

"…2015," he said finally.

"Hey, good job," she said cheerfully. "Uh…what are the…names of the continents?"

"Are you kidding?" he said, casting his blank eyes up at the ceiling.

"Just trying to figure out how broken your brain is," she said with a shrug. He sighed and listed the continents successfully. Sarah nodded encouragingly, surprised that he was actually going along with this. "Okay, good…do you remember what your court case today was supposed to be about?"

There was a much longer pause at this question. "Custody case. Lisa…Lisa Worley. We were trying to help her keep her kids. Her husband's…cruel. Controlling. Using the kids as pawns."

Sarah nodded. She actually had no idea if half of that was true, beyond the fact that it was a custody case to keep a woman's husband from taking her kids. But it sounded like it was probably right. Still, it was clearly more of a struggle for him to remember that than the year or the continents.

"Okay," she said. "Do you remember anything that happened tonight?"

He leaned his head against the back of the couch and stared unseeingly at the ceiling for a long time.

"Just…parts of it. I tracked down a few guys who were connected to the one I was telling you about. Benny Florence. Found them at an empty warehouse. They were holding a kid there. I think it was a cop's kid, like you said," Matt told her, and Sarah winced. "I took them out, but not before one of them got me pretty…pretty good. I made it a couple of blocks but then I—I wasn't paying close enough attention. The scaffolding I landed on wasn't attached to the building right. I know I called Foggy. And I remember him showing up. And then…I was here. With you."

He seemed to have a pretty good memory of what had happened that night, which she figured that was a good sign. Maybe his brain wasn't totally scrambled, then.

"Foggy called me when he couldn't get you out from under the scaffolding on his own," she explained. "And then he needed help getting you back here and fixing you up, so…that's why I'm here. I, um, I don't think he realized. That you probably…wouldn't want me here."

Matt didn't say anything for a few moments, and she tried to figure out if he was slipping back into unconsciousness.

"How did you guys get me here?"

"Um…" she began reluctantly. She had kind of been hoping that particular subject wouldn't come up. "Well, we put you in a shopping cart."

There was a long pause.

"…a shopping cart," he repeated blankly.

"Yes. I'm pretty sure we stole it. From a homeless person. It's, uh…it's over in your kitchen right now," she said, gesturing helpfully towards the cart.

"And no one noticed that?"

"Oh. Well, we—we covered you up. With a…dirty blanket," she said, wincing.

He frowned in annoyance, but didn't say anything about it, and instead reached up a shaking hand to slowly peel back the bandage on his shoulder. He ran his fingers over the gash running over his shoulder and down his chest.

"We, uh, we figured it would need stitches. But...neither of us knows how to do them," Sarah said apologetically.

"I'll show Foggy when he gets back," Matt said, and she nodded. He coughed a few times, wincing in pain each time it caused his body to shift. She realized she probably should have gotten him something to drink when he woke up.

"I'll get you some water," she said quickly, standing up from her position on the armrest.

Sarah went into the kitchen and surveyed the cabinets, trying to guess which one the drinking glasses would be in. She reached up to open the one farthest to the left.

"Next one over," came Matt's hoarse voice from the couch.

She glanced back at him sharply, thrown off guard by his ability to pinpoint exactly where she was, even from the other room. He wasn't even facing her, although she supposed that didn't really matter for him. Slowly she moved her hand to the next cabinet and opened it; sure enough, there were several stacks of glasses inside.

Sarah grabbed one and filled it with water, bringing it back into the room. Matt raised his eyebrows slightly as she handed it to him.

"It doesn't have anything weird printed on it, does it?"

Sarah pursed her lips in embarrassment as she recalled her drunken ramble to him about the glass he'd chosen. She decided against responding, figuring there was nothing she could really say that wouldn't just make it more embarrassing. Instead, she changed the subject.

"Seems like you don't usually get this…injured," she said, gesturing towards his bandaged torso. "What happened? Just too many guys?"

Matt shook his head. "Not really. Seven, I think."

She raised her eyebrows. Seven seemed like kind of a lot to her. "What happened to the little kid?"

"He'll be alright. He was pretty scared, but they didn't hurt him. I think they were waiting to see if his father would cooperate. The police came quick when they heard that it was a cop's kid in there."

Sarah nodded. "So…did you figure anything out? Why that guys name was in Yates' notebook, or who's hiring his friends?"

Matt shook his head, taking another drink of water and leaning his head back again.

"I didn't really get a chance to ask any questions. Mostly I had to focus on keeping the kid out of the fight."

Sarah observed him silently from her perch on the armrest of the chair. His breathing looked oddly controlled, like he was concentrating on keeping it steady, and he sat at an uncomfortable looking angle, carefully keeping his weight off of his left shoulder as he leaned back.

"Your…your shoulder's hurting you a lot," she noted, and Matt gave a short nod.

"It's dislocated," he said casually.

Sarah blinked in surprised. She had dislocated her shoulder once in high school and it had been incredibly painful; she couldn't imagine how he was just sitting on the couch keeping quiet about it. "What? Seriously? Why didn't you say anything?"

He gave her a blank look as though the answer was obvious. "I can't push it back into place on my own. And relocating it will make the cut open up more. It'll need to be stitched closed right afterwards and…I assume you probably aren't very eager to volunteer. I can wait for Foggy."

Sarah understood what he was actually saying. Helping him with his shoulder would require her to come a lot closer to him than she was generally comfortable with, seeing as how every time he'd been within three feet of her since they'd met he had been threatening her. They were both very aware of that fact. Ninety percent of her brain remembered those encounters and told her to just let him wait for Foggy. But she watched him clutch the blood soaked gauze to his chest as he fumbled in the first aid kit for more, looking incredibly…human. Like a normal, injured person instead of a blind, crime-fighting vigilante. The small, ten percent of her brain that wasn't screaming at her to leave registered something almost close to sympathy. She kicked herself as she realized what she was about to suggest.

"I…I can do it," she said, unable to hide the reluctance in her voice. "If you show me how. Foggy won't be back for a few hours. You could bleed out by then."

He stopped messing with the gauze, but didn't say anything for a long time. She couldn't read the expression on his face; maybe it wasn't just the mask that made it difficult to tell what he was thinking, after all. What she could see was the effort it was taking him to ignore what must be incredible amounts of pain in his shoulder. There was no way he could sit there for another few hours like that until Foggy got back.

"You're sure?" he said finally.

"Um…not particularly?" she said honestly. "But I'm offering."

There was another long pause as he considered what she said.

"I'll walk you through it, then."

"Right. Okay," she said, but didn't move from her position on the chair.

"Step one," he said slowly. "You can't really do it from over there."

Sarah's face flushed and she slowly got off the chair. Cautiously, she took a seat on the couch next to him. Now that she was so close to him, she was suddenly very aware that without her bloodstained sweatshirt she was only wearing a thin tank top. She pushed the thought from her head as Matt indicated his injured arm just above his elbow.

"Put your hand here," he said, and she hesitantly complied. "When I tell you to, pull it towards the back of the couch as hard as you can. Alright?"

"Okay," she said, keeping a wary eye on him as he leaned forward, away from the direction she'd be pulling.

He gave her to signal to go, and then slowly rotated his shoulder while she pulled on his arm. The muscles in his arm tensed with the effort, and she could feel them like steel under her hand. She was reminded yet again of the danger lingering right under the surface of the man she was so foolishly sitting inches away from. Finally she heard a hollow popping noise as his shoulder slipped back into place. She made a disgusted face at the sound, and it didn't help when she looked down at the cut on his shoulder and saw that, sure enough, the movement had opened the wound even more, and it was bleeding copiously.

Matt took a few seconds to recover from relocating his shoulder, and then pressed more gauze to the wound, grabbing the first aid bag off the floor with his uninjured arm.

"Okay. Can you sew?" he asked her, and she nodded. "Good. Stitches aren't that different."

Sarah threw him an extremely doubtful look at that statement, but didn't bother arguing. He rummaged around in the bag with one hand and withdrew a pair of latex gloves, which he handed to her to put on, followed by a thread and needle, and then a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. He quickly instructed her on how to sterilize the needle. When she was done, she started to thread the needle, but he shook his head.

"Not yet," he said, handing her a pair of tweezers. "There's still metal in there."

"Metal? Metal from what?"

"Barbed wire."

"I…what?" Sarah asked, confused.

"That's why it looks like it does. I got slashed with something…box cutter, I think. And then I wasn't fast enough to avoid the next guy. He had a—a bat. With barbed wire wrapped around it. Got me right in the same spot," Matt explained.

"Holy shit," Sarah whispered.

"I think there's still a few barbs in there. Can't sew it shut until they're out."

"You…want me to dig around in your open wound for tiny pieces of metal?"

Matt grinned faintly. "I'd appreciate it, yeah."

Sarah silently looked up at the ceiling in disbelief, then back down at Matt. Sighing, she hesitantly lifted the tweezers up to the wound on his torso.

His hand came up to lightly catch her wrist, and she stilled immediately.

"Sterilize it with the alcohol first," he reminded her quietly.

"Right. Right, sorry," she said, and he let her wrist drop. She shook her head and quickly sterilized the tweezers. "Okay. Um…do you know how many…barbs are in there? Or…where?"

"Three. Start at the bottom, there's one close to the surface."

The cut extended down over his shoulder, ending down near his collarbone. Sarah pushed her hair behind her shoulder and gingerly held the tweezers up to the wound. She cringed at the sight of the tweezers going into the wound, and averted her eyes as she took a deep breath.

"This will probably go better if you don't look away the whole time," he said pointedly, gritting his teeth in pain.

"Sorry," she mumbled, not even bothering to wonder out how he could tell she wasn't looking. She turned her gaze back to the bleeding cut.

"Don't like blood?"

"No, the blood is fine. I can handle blood. It's more the whole…jagged, open wound full of sharp metal that's grossing me out."

Luckily, she found the barb he was talking about fairly quickly. The piece of metal was slippery, and it took her a few tries to pull it out. The pointed metal barb caught on his flesh as she extracted it from the wound, and out of the corner of her eye she could see him tense as he clenched his hands into fists. She gave him an uneasy look as she dropped the small, bloody barb on the large cloth she'd spread out on the coffee table. One down, she thought. She leaned in to dig out the next one, occasionally flicking an apprehensive glance at Matt's reactions.

"You're nervous," he said quietly as she tried to get a hold on the next tiny piece of metal.

Sarah bit her lip and kept her eyes trained on the tweezers. She knew as soon as she sat down that he'd be able to hear her heart pounding nervously, but she had hoped he wouldn't bring it up. "Are you ever not creepily listening to my pulse?"

"Can't help it. Quiet room, and your heart is loud. You're…on edge."

She looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. His gaze was directed somewhere over her shoulder, and he was clearly waiting for her to respond. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say; they both knew his statement was true, and why.

"You're two inches away from me and you kind of look like you're about to hit someone," she noted softly, nodding towards his clenched fists. "Are you really surprised that I'd be nervous?"

"No," he admitted after a pause. "It's why I didn't ask you to help me. I'm not…" He pressed his lips together before continuing. "You think I'm going to hurt you while you're helping stitch me up?"

"Hard to say. I was trying to help you earlier and you slammed me up against a doorway with no real problem," she reminded him, and she was surprised to see a flash of guilt across his face. The expression looked vaguely familiar, like maybe she had seen it on half of his face before and not been able to place it.

"Sorry…about earlier," he said, and again Sarah blinked at him in surprise. She didn't think she'd ever hear Matt Murdock apologize to her, of all people. He continued quietly, "You…you can stop. If you're that nervous. It's fine."

Sarah sighed, tempted by the offer, but ultimately continued with her task. She managed to extract the second barb reasonably quickly, as well. "If I let you bleed out on your couch, then what was the point of getting out of bed to help drag you back here in the first place?"

Matt nodded silently, tensing again as she finished wiggling the second piece of metal out of the wound. They didn't speak while she worked on the third one, which was the most difficult to come out. She noted briefly that while the muscles in his chest contracted in pain again, he didn't let his hands curl back into fists. She wondered if that was for her benefit.

Finally, three tiny, bloody pieces of metal lay on the coffee table, and Sarah had fully lost her appetite for the next few years. Unfortunately, the process wasn't done yet. She picked up the thread and needle from where she had set it on the cloth, and waited for Matt to tell her where she should begin.

"Start at the top. Go in at a ninety degree angle. Stay close to the edge, but not so close that the stitches will rip out."

Sarah nodded, and she had to grudgingly admit that the process itself did sound fairly similar to sewing. She bit her lip and stuck the needle through his skin near the top of the wound, close to the back of his shoulder.

The stitching part of the process went much smoother than the barb-removing portion had. After a while of her stitching without speaking, Matt seemed to notice as well.

"You're better at this part. I thought the needle would bother you."

Sarah shook her head. "Blood is fine, needles are fine. I'm used to those. I, um, I used to pierce people's noses for ten bucks my freshman year of college. I did most of the girls on my hall." Sarah was rambling; she knew that. It was something she often did when she was nervous. "So I can handle sticking a needle through skin just fine. But I don't have as much experience with, um…digging around in a wound with tweezers."

The two of them were silent for a few moments as she threaded the needle through his skin.

"You used to pierce girls' noses?"

Sarah raised her eyebrows at the fact that he had chosen to focus on that part of her explanation, but talking helped keep her awake, so she answered.

"Yeah. Um, noses, cartilage, whatever. A few eyebrows. I pierced a girl's belly button once, but, um, she yelled so much that it kind of freaked me out, so…I never did any more belly buttons after that."

Sarah was barely listening to herself as she chattered quietly, focused instead on keeping the stitches even and not wincing at the way the thread pulled at his skin around the ragged edges of the wound. She was in the middle of some mild piercing horror story before she even realized how long she had been talking.

"There was one guy who asked me to pierce his septum, but, um…I didn't realize that…he was actually on a lot of acid…at the time, and…"

Sarah's trailed to a stop as Matt slowly leaned his head back against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. She rolled her eyes at herself, realizing that maybe the mindless chatter was helping calm her down, but it was probably annoying to him. She continued inserting the needle in silence for a minute before he spoke.

"And what?"

Sarah looked up at him in surprise.

"Oh. I didn't…think you were listening. I was just…talking. About nothing."

"I noticed," he said dryly. "But keep going. If you want. It, uh…it helps distract from the needle going through my skin. Plus, your…your hands shake less. When you're busy talking. So…if you want to keep going. I don't mind."

Sarah paused, and then continued her story. She talked quietly for a while about various things: light, unimportant topics that didn't require any focus. It helped keep her awake, and Matt relaxed slightly as she went along. Eventually she had only a little bit of the wound left to go.

She pushed her long hair over her shoulder again, wishing she had thought to put it up in a pony tail before she left her apartment. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Matt slowly cock his head to the side like he was focusing on something.

"You're bleeding," he said.

Sarah glanced up at him, then craned her neck around to get a look at the back of her shoulder. Sure enough, there were several deep scratches from where Matt's short fingernails had accidentally dug into her skin, with a few thin streaks of died blood underneath. She turned back to face him.

"That would be your handiwork," she informed him lightly as she resumed stitching.

He nodded silently, and she thought she saw that brief flash of guilt again, but she couldn't be sure.

She shrugged. "It's barely bleeding. I mean, on a scale of one to, you know…you, it's like a two. I'm surprised you could even tell." She paused and then squinted at him. "How can you tell?"

"I can smell the blood. Can taste it, too, actually. In the air. Tastes different than my own."

Sarah wrinkled her nose in disgust and shook her head. "I knew that the answer would be bizarre and creepy, but I asked anyway," she muttered.

Matt exhaled shortly in what might have been a laugh, but ended up as a pained grimace.

Finally, Sarah was done with the stitches, and Matt instructed her on how to tie them off properly. It took her several tries to get it right, but eventually she was successful.

"Okay. All done. I know it took a while, and they're not as neat as some of these other ones you have, but I—I think they'll hold. Probably. Maybe your nurse friend can redo them, or—what?" she said nervously as his face darkened.

"My what?" he asked carefully.

Sarah cringed as she realized her mistake. She cautiously moved to stand up and put some space between the two of them. "Um. I didn't mean—I don't really—"

Matt's hand on her arm made her pause. It was just a light grip, probably meant to grab her attention more than actually keep her there, but she froze all the same.

"Calm down," he said. "I said I wasn't going to hurt you, and I meant it. Just…what do you know about…her?"

"N-not much. Foggy just mentioned her briefly."

"What did he say?"

"Just…just that she's a nurse. And she usually helps you with this kind of stuff," Sarah said, and Matt raised his eyebrows at her, clearly catching on that this wasn't the extent of what she knew. She continued reluctantly. "And that she's out of town…and she's the other number in your burner phone." Sarah paused, then figured she might as well get everything out in the open. "Also that her name is Claire," she finished finally.

Matt stared at her in slight disbelief. "So…everything he knows about her, basically."

"I don't think he meant to tell me that much," Sarah said quickly. "It just came up, because…well, it didn't make a lot of sense for him to call me if there was someone who, you know. Actually knows what she's doing."

"She never asked me to name all the continents, at least."

"That's a thing," she said defensively. "For concussions. I think. But my point was, it only came up because I asked. He said Claire couldn't come, and there was no one else, so…here I am."

He nodded, but didn't say anything. Sarah glanced at the time on her phone, wincing when she saw that she also had a missed call and a voicemail from work.

"Foggy should be back in the next hour or so, though, so he can…can…what on earth are you doing?" she said incredulously as she realized Matt was slowly starting to stand up from the couch.

"It's fine," he insisted, and indeed he stayed surprisingly steady once he got to his feet, though he still looked disturbingly pale. "I'm only getting up for a minute. I just want to change clothes."

She looked up at the ceiling again in exasperation, but didn't say anything. If he passed out in his bedroom while trying to change clothes, that was on him. He stumbled into his room and closed the door behind him, reemerging a few minutes later in sweatpants, a zipped up sweatshirt, and a pair of thick socks. She blinked at the sight of him dressed like a normal person, minus the injuries on his face. He slowly made his way back over to the couch, where he dropped back down into his seat heavily.

"So…why are you here?" he asked, apparently continuing the conversation where they had left off.

Sarah stared at him. "We…we just established that. Like, maybe three minutes ago. Please tell me your concussion isn't that bad."

"I—no, that's not what I meant," he said with a weak grin. "I know what brought you here, I just meant…why did you come? You could have said no. To Foggy. If I bled out under a scaffolding somewhere, I would've been one less thing for you to worry about. I know the thought must have crossed your mind."

She looked down at couch, fiddling with the thread and needle on her lap. Yet another topic of conversation she had been hoping to avoid, if only because she didn't fully know the answer herself.

"Briefly," she admitted, knowing that he'd probably be able to tell if she lied. "But then what? Just keep working at Orion for the rest of my life? That's right back where I started before I met you. You're kind of my ticket out of there."

"So…just a business decision, then?" He didn't sound very convinced.

She didn't know how to explain why she had decided to come; it didn't even really make sense to her. Finally she just settled on telling him what had first come to mind when she had been debating her decision to come earlier that night.

"I don't know. You…helped me with my traffic ticket," she said

He raised his eyebrows skeptically. "That's not really on the same level."

"Well, no, but that's not really…what I mean. It's not just the ticket," she explained, fumbling her words as she tried to figure out how to word what she wanted to say. "I guess, more specifically…when you found out about my dad and—and his…problems, you had every opportunity to use it against me. And no real reason not to. I think—I think we both knew that. But instead, you helped me. I'm still not one hundred percent sure why, but you did. So…" She shrugged uncomfortably. "So here I am."

Matt paused, then opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but was interrupted by the ringing of his burner phone on the coffee table. He leaned forward slowly to grab it and flipped it open.

"Hi, Foggy," he answered. The response on the other end must have been enthusiastic, because he grinned slightly. "Yeah, Foggy, I'm alive."

While Matt talked to Foggy, Sarah glanced down at her own phone again, and the voicemail icon mocking her from the notifications screen. Clearly her absence had, in fact, raised some eyebrows. Most likely Ronan's creepy, poorly groomed eyebrows, to be exact. She contemplated listening to the message now, but was distracted when she heard Matt say her name.

"Yeah, I, uh, I showed Sarah how to do it," he was saying into the phone. Sarah assumed he was talking about the stitches, and she waited while Foggy presumably responded on the other end. "No, I don't think she did," Matt said, tilting his head in her direction. There was a pause while he listened to what Foggy was saying. She narrowed her eyes at him, wanting to know what they were saying about her.

"Are you serious? No, I'm not—I don't—fine." Matt sighed in frustration, then grudgingly held the phone out to Sarah. "He wants to talk to you."

Sarah took the phone from him hesitantly. "Hello?"

"Hey! Matt sounds…alive. I heard you stitched him up. Good job."

"Yeah, it…it went alright," she said. "Did you win your case?"

"Sure did! You can tell old bloody Murdock that Nelson is doing just great on his own. All of the legal prowess with none of the gore."

Sarah glanced over at Matt, who looked irritated by the entire situation. "I think he can hear you alright on his own, actually."

"Probably. Ears like a bat. How did it go when he woke up?"

"Um…" Sarah began uncertainly, glancing back at Matt. He had that unreadable expression on his face again, but she knew he was listening. "Kind of like I expected. But it got better."

"Well that's good. And he let you fix him up alright?"

"Mostly," she said, then added in a whisper, "He got very annoyed when I made him recite all of the continents."

"We just established that I can hear him, why would I not be able to hear you?" Matt said from the couch. Sarah just shrugged apologetically.

"Well, if you think he'll be alright on his own for a bit, I'll be there in maybe half an hour," Foggy said. "You can go ahead and go to work, if you want."

"Yeah," Sarah said, thinking of the ominous voicemail on her cell phone. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

As they ended their conversation and hung up, something Sarah had wondered the first night she met Matt occurred to her again.

"How do you know which number is calling you?" she asked Matt curiously as she handed him the phone back. None of the numbers were saved under any sort of title to differentiate them.

"Different ringtones," he said, slipping the phone into his sweatshirt pocket.

"Right. I guess it wouldn't be a very good idea to have our names in there."

He suddenly looked suspicious. "What do you have me saved as in your phone?" he asked slowly.

Sarah's mind flashed to the tiny devil emoticon currently saved as his contact.

"Nothing conspicuous," she answered innocently.

"Sarah."

"I have you saved as 'Daredevil, AKA Matthew Murdock,'" she said seriously.

Matt exhaled in annoyance. "You don't get to talk to Foggy anymore. He's rubbing off on you."

"He seemed nice," she said hesitantly, not sure what her standing was as far as discussing Foggy went. Historically, the subject had been a shaky one for them; she didn't want to push it.

"He is. He's the best person I know," Matt said, surprising her with the blunt honesty of his statement.

"Yeah, I…I gathered as much. Um…well, he's going to be here soon. And I'm late for work," Sarah said, frowning at the thought of the long and certainly unpleasant work day waiting for her. "So I'm going to head out. You'll…be okay here, right?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," he said tiredly. He slowly started getting to his feet again. "Hang on a second."

Matt slowly made his way into his bedroom again, then came back out a few moments later with a dark blue sweatshirt in his hand. He came to a stop in front of her and held the sweatshirt out. She gave him a questioning look.

"It's almost ten in the morning," he explained. "People might notice you walking around in a tank top stained with blood."

Sarah's glanced down at her clothing. Her shirt had only gotten more bloodstained as she was stitching him up, and her shorts hadn't faired much better. Muttering a quick thanks, she took the sweatshirt from him and zipped it up over her clothes. It was too large on her, and she had to roll the sleeves up a few times in order to use her hands, though luckily the large size meant it covered most of her shorts as well. She frowned down at her appearance.

"It looks like I'm not wearing anything underneath. People are going to think I'm a flasher."

Matt shrugged. "Better than a murderer."

She reached down to pick her backpack up off the floor and started to throw it over her shoulder.

"Sarah," she heard Matt say, and was surprised to feel a hand touch her upper arm lightly to halt her. She looked up at him to see an oddly hesitant look on his face. He let go of her arm and shoved both of his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. "I just…wanted to say thank you. I know I haven't…done much to deserve any help from you. But you came anyway. I'm…I'm glad Foggy called you," he said seriously.

Sarah stared at him, stunned. If there was one thing she was even more shocked to hear from the vigilante than an apology, it was a thank you. Maybe it's the concussion talking.

"Um…you're welcome," she said finally, realizing she hadn't responded. "I, uh…I guess it's safe to assume that you probably won't be dropping by tonight?"

Matt shook his head tiredly. "Foggy'll never let me go out tonight. He does this thing where he makes up reasons to linger around the apartment to make sure I don't go anywhere. I think he thinks I don't know what he's doing."

Sarah noticed that Matt talked about Foggy with the same affectionately annoyed tone that Foggy had used when talking about him a few hours previously. She suddenly found herself wishing she could stick around and see how the two of them interacted in person, just to satisfy her curiosity about the more human side of Matt. But she knew she couldn't afford to be any later to work than she was already going to be.

"Okay. Good. Um…I'll see you when you're…feeling better," she said awkwardly, shouldering her bag.

Matt nodded as he slowly lowered himself back down onto the couch, looking exhausted. Sarah took a last, contemplative glance at him, and then left the apartment.


A/N: Okay, so this chapter was a little unusual in that it was just one long scene with no particular action. But don't worry, we'll get back to Orion/Ronan/Sarah's dad/mysterious dead coworkers soon enough!