Hello, everyone! First off, JESSICA JONES, y'all. I'm all finished with it, so if you've watched it let me know what you think! But please try not to post any spoilers in the reviews, because I know you guys like to read each others' reviews and some of you might be total slackers who haven't seen it all yet.
Secondly! I'm very sorry if I didn't get around to replying to your review last chapter. You guys know I try to respond to every review, but I've been crazy busy and just didn't have a chance this time, but know that I read and appreciate all of them! On that note, I love how many new reviewers have binge-read the entire story in one go, or long-time reviewers who say they re-read all the chapters, because the word count for this is at around, what, 140,000? Which means that you guys binge-read something that is longer than some of the Harry Potter books. That is dedication, and I love you for it.
LASTLY, the next time I post will not be this story, but rather the Christmas one-shot, probably in about two weeks. So make sure you keep an eye out for that, and then the next chapter of WTWD will be up shortly after that!
Chapter Sixteen: Meetings
Sarah woke up the next morning to the sound of her front door slamming and a familiar female voice calling out her name.
"Sarah! Time to get up, we have a baby shower to finish planning!"
She covered her pounding head with her pillow and groaned; even from the next room, Lauren's voice seemed excessively loud this morning. She didn't bother moving when she heard her bedroom door open.
"Do you realize your apartment smells like a frat house?"
Sarah slide the pillow off her face and inhaled, then almost gagged as she smelled the stale scent of cheap vodka in the air.
"Oh, god," she said, wrinkling her nose. "It does."
Lauren made a face as she came to stand next to Sarah's bed. "Scratch that, it's you. You smell like a frat house. Partying hard last night?
"I would definitely not classify it as partying. And I didn't drink that much," Sarah lied, a wave of nausea hitting her as she sat up slowly. She clamped her mouth shut for a few seconds as she waited for it to pass. Lauren raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Are you sure? Because you smell so strongly of alcohol right now that I'm worried just breathing the same air as you will give my kid fetal alcohol syndrome."
"That's not how that works."
"Well, if Child Protective Services shows up at my door, I'm directing them to your inebriated ass," Lauren informed her.
"It's too early for you to be dramatic," Sarah groaned. "Why are you here, anyway?"
Lauren gave her a thoroughly unimpressed look. "We need to finish planning the baby shower that's in less than two weeks, and you said that I could come over today to take a final look at what you put together. Remember?"
Sarah scrunched her face up guiltily as she searched her memory of the night before. She remembered the beginning of the night clearly. She and Matt had finished the entire bottle of vodka between them, and when he left it had still been surprisingly early in the evening. As always, it wasn't until she was done drinking that the full effect of the alcohol had hit her. She vaguely remembered receiving a text from Lauren asking if she was free to do baby shower planning the next night.
"I thought you said you were coming over sometime around…later than now? Nighttime?" Sarah asked blurrily, rubbing her eyes. Her mouth was dry and her head felt like it would explode.
"I did. Then you told me you had today off, so I asked if we could meet up in the morning. And you said, and I quote…" Lauren began, scrolling through her texts on her phone, "'Come over whenever you want.' Then you said, 'Please bring me a grilled cheese.' And finally, 'Don't ever let your baby get drunk.'"
"Well…that seems like good advice," Sarah defended, then after a pause she added hopefully, "Did you bring me a grilled cheese?"
"No."
Sarah huffed and leaned her head back against the headboard. "You show up here at the crack of dawn, being loud as hell, and you don't even bring me a sandwich."
"Crack of dawn?" Lauren laughed and leaned around Sarah's nightstand so that she could reach the curtains, which she yanked aside. Bright sunlight streamed in and Sarah cringed and brought her blanket up over her eyes. "Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but it's past noon."
"You're a monster and I'm taking your key away," Sarah grumbled into the blanket.
"Okay, how about we go to the diner on the corner to do the planning, and I'll buy you a grilled cheese there," Lauren offered. "It'll help your hangover."
Sarah nodded grudgingly before untangling herself from her covers and struggling out of bed. When she stepped foot into the living room, the smell of vodka only got stronger, which didn't help her already queasy stomach. Her eyes landed on the dining room table, where the folder of graphic photos was still laying open, with the photo of the addict she had been questioning Matt about still sitting in plain sight. She hastened over to the table and grabbed the photo, intending to stuff it into the folder. She hadn't looked at any of the photos beyond the one with the addict—the flattened body on the sidewalk had been graphic enough—so she was startled to see a familiar face in the photo that had been beneath it: James Wesley, the man who had roped her into this situation in the first place. In the photo he was slumped over in a chair with several large red spots blooming through the front of his white dress shirt. She stared at it in shock.
"What are you looking at?" Lauren asked curiously from across the room. She started walking over to the table, causing Sarah to snap out of her state. She hastily placed the photo of the addict on top of the stack, covering the photo of Wesley, and snapped the folder shut.
"Bills," she said quickly. She shoved the folder into her large purse and turned back to Lauren, determined to push the jarring photo out of her mind. She hadn't liked Wesley in the slightest, but she also hadn't been expecting to see a photo of his dead body first thing in the morning.
Her friend gave her a slightly doubtful look, which Sarah pointedly ignored as she threw her purse into her bedroom. Returning to the living room, she opened the window to let some fresh air in before shuffling into the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker. Lauren remained lingering near the table, where she cast a significant look at the two tumblers still sitting next to the empty bottle of vodka. "Well, at least you weren't drinking alone. Who was your lucky drinking buddy?"
"Hmm? Oh, um—no one. A friend," Sarah said distractedly, then shook her head and corrected herself. "Not a friend. A person. That I know."
Lauren rolled her eyes. "That clears things up. Is this friend-not-a-friend anyone that I know?"
Sarah shook her head as she messed with the buttons on the ancient coffee machine, trying to get it to work properly. It just made a weak whirring noise.
"Were you guys measuring your shots or something?"
"What?" Sarah asked confusedly, before turning around to see Lauren holding up the measuring cup—which also undoubtedly reeked of liquor—with a questioning look on her face.
"Oh. Uh…yes. Yes, we were," Sarah lied. At Lauren's dubious expression, she continued. "They're supposed to be exactly one and a half ounces, you know."
"How very meticulous of you."
"One of the lead causes of binge-drinking is not knowing how much a proper shot is," Sarah told her innocently.
Lauren scoffed, picked up the empty bottle and dangled it upside down. "Yeah, wouldn't to drink too much."
"This coffee maker is not going to do its job," Sarah said, purposefully changing the subject. "I'll get some at the diner. Are you ready to go?"
Fifteen minutes later, after Sarah had brushed her teeth and changed out of her rumpled sleep clothes, she and Lauren entered the old diner on the corner of Sarah's block. A waitress approached them as Sarah helped Lauren slide into the booth before settling into her seat on the other side. She placed her order of grilled cheese and coffee, and the waitress turned expectantly to Lauren, who was eyeing the menu thoughtfully.
"I'll take pancakes," she decided.
"You want maple syrup or blueberry?"
"Neither," Lauren said slowly, frowning at the menu before looking up at the woman. "Do you have onions?"
The waitress stared at her blankly. "Onions?"
"Yeah. Or, like, chives?"
"With your pancakes?" the waitress asked doubtfully, looking over at Sarah for confirmation. Sarah just nodded at her seriously, and the waitress rolled her eyes and wrote down the order before walking away. Once the two of them were alone again, Sarah pulled her notebook out of her bag. She had been using her lunch breaks to make invitations and her subway commute to plan the menu and activities, and surprisingly had managed to pull together a halfway decent plan for the shower.
"Okay, this is the list of people I invited. Take a look at it and make sure I didn't miss anyone, or invite anyone you actually hate," Sarah said, handing the list to Lauren. "Why do you know so many people whose names begin with Mary? Mary-Kate, Mary-Louise, Mary-Margaret, Mary-Jo…"
Lauren shrugged and sipped her water. "Lot of Irish girls in my old sorority. Speaking of both sororities and the Irish—there will be booze there, right? I mean, not for me, obviously. But for everyone else."
"I cannot talk about alcohol right now," Sarah complained as her stomach turned in protest of the subject.
"You have to talk about alcohol right now. The party is in like ten days and a good two thirds of that guest list will not show up unless there are mimosas involved."
"Of course there will be mimosas, do you think I'm going to sit through a whole party with your mother there and no alcohol to numb the experience?"
"Fair enough. I was thinking we could make a drinking game out of how many times she manages to bring up things that she dislikes about Greg. Like, take a drink every time she…" Lauren's words trailed off as she looked down at the table and raised her eyebrows. "Who is that?"
Sarah gave her a confused look before following her gaze to her phone, which she had accidentally set to silent. The only indication that it was ringing was the tiny devil emoticon in the center of the screen. Remembering the last time Matt had called her while Lauren was present, Sarah snatched the phone before her friend could.
"Hello?" she said.
"Who is it?" Lauren whispered, and Sarah ignored her.
"Did I wake you up?" Matt asked over the line, presumably picking up on the sleepy rasp that still hadn't been chased away by coffee. Sarah frowned at the faint amusement in his voice.
"No," she indignantly. "It's one in the afternoon, I was already awake."
"You've only been awake for forty-five minutes," Lauren pointed out helpfully.
Sarah batted her hand at her friend in annoyance, idly wondering how well Matt's senses worked over the phone. Could he pick up on background noises as easily as he could in person, or was he limited by how powerful the cell's microphone was?
"Are you with someone right now?"
"Um, yeah," she said, narrowing her eyes at Lauren, who was trying to lean across the table to hear more of the conversation, but was prevented from doing so by her oversized stomach. "But I can step outside."
Lauren shot her an offended look. "What? You came here to help me with planning and now you're abandoning me?"
Sarah covered the mouthpiece of the cell phone, and pushed the notebook towards Lauren. "I'm literally going to be right outside for like, five minutes. Here, look at this list of foods and cross off everything that makes you throw up nowadays. I can't keep track."
With that she slid out of the booth and towards the exit, looking behind her to see Lauren examining the list and already shaking her head while crossing several items off. Sarah stepped outside and whined slightly at how bright it was; she'd left her sunglasses on the booth inside.
"Hungover?" Matt asked at her pained noise.
"I feel like I got hit by a bus," she told him, leaning back against the front window of the diner. "You?"
"About the same. I was just…returning your call," he said.
Sarah stomach dropped slightly. She had called Matt? When? She scrunched her eyes closed, both to block out the sun and in an effort to remember the night before. Sure enough, a fuzzy memory of calling him after he left floated to her mind, though for the life of her she couldn't recall what she had intended to say. Thankfully it sounded like he hadn't answered.
"Sarah?" Matt's voice brought her out of her mental self-reprimand.
"Yeah?"
"I asked if I could come over later to talk about what the plan is for you going back to Orion tomorrow."
"Oh. Yeah, that's fine," she said absently, then changed her mind. "Actually, my apartment still kind of smells like cheap vodka. What about your place?"
Matt didn't mind the relocation, and they agreed upon a time to meet before hanging up the phone. Sarah's headache was in full force by the time she stepped out of the bright sunshine and back into the diner.
"Casual afternoon call from Satan?" Lauren inquired as Sarah slid into the booth. Sarah winced, dismayed by how perceptive her best friend constantly proved herself to be.
"It's—it's just an inside joke," she lied weakly. And the punchline is that I'm working with—and occasionally getting very drunk with—a dangerous and unpredictable vigilante. Isn't that funny?
Lauren eyed her with a mixture of concern and skepticism, but apparently the phone call hadn't been alarming enough to warrant a lecture, because she merely slid the food list back across the table to Sarah. "I crossed out all of the stuff that will make me vomit all over whatever dumbass slogan onesies and Pinterest crafts people will show up with."
"Why are you having a baby shower if you already think you'll hate all of the gifts?" Sarah asked in exasperation.
"It's free stuff, Sarah," Lauren said insistently. "I don't have to like the stuff, I just have to obtain it. It's tradition. Besides, I know I'll like whatever you get me, which is all that matters. You're an excellent gift-giver."
"So I should return the onesie that says 'My Mom Is A MILF?'"
"Don't joke. You remember Amelia Wendell? She posted an Instagram the other day of her baby wearing a shirt that said 'Free Hugs.'" Lauren threw up her hands in disapproval. "Free hugs? Why would you encourage random strangers to touch your baby? It's bad enough when people I don't know want to touch my stomach, much less my actual child."
The waitress came back with Sarah's grilled cheese and black coffee, along with Lauren's confusing order of pancakes and sliced onions. Sarah wrinkled her nose in disgust as her friend happily began eating the combination, but the nausea and headache from her hangover slowly receded as the two of them continued their shower planning over their food.
Later that evening, after returning to her apartment to shower and do all of the chores she had neglected over the weekend, Sarah began walking over to Matt's apartment. On the way there, she contemplated whether it would be awkward to see him without the haze of alcohol to dull the tension. They'd been getting along surprisingly well until the cops had messed everything up, and now after their night of drinking she found that she wasn't quite sure where they stood.
She was standing at an intersection and fiddling with the music selection on her phone when she felt a strange prickling sensation go down the back of her neck, as though she was being watched. Her head snapped up and she looked around her, searching the crowd for—who? There were so many possibilities these days. Jason? Ronan? The cops? Or maybe someone whose face she didn't know yet. She didn't see anyone acting out of the ordinary, save for the elderly couple behind her who huffed in annoyance that she didn't immediately cross the street when the walk sign came on.
Sarah shook her head, reminding herself to watch her coffee intake better—it always made her jumpy. A small part of her brain hesitated as she approached Matt's building, wondering if it wasn't such a good idea to go inside. But as far as anyone knew, Matt was just her lawyer. It wasn't that unusual for her to be meeting with him a few days after being brought into the police station, she reassured herself. But the feeling of being watched stuck with her right up until she stepped into the lobby of his building.
She knocked on Matt's door, but there was no answer. She frowned, not bothering to knock again; it's not like he wouldn't have heard her the first time if he was home. She waited for a few more minutes, and was just about to fish her phone out of her pocket to call him when she heard a voice from behind her.
"You're a little early."
Sarah, still slightly on edge from earlier, stifled a surprised yelp as she whipped around. She hadn't even heard Matt come up the stairs.
"Oh. I, uh…guess I was walking faster than I thought," she muttered as her heart rate returned to normal.
Matt's face flickered slightly at her tense reaction, but he didn't say anything about it. He stepped around her to unlock the door, holding it open so she could go inside. She crossed her arms and looked around his living room while he slipped his jacket off in the hallway behind her. The giant billboard outside his window flashed, and she watched it idly as he brushed past her to enter the kitchen.
"You want something to drink? Maybe something…non-alcoholic," he suggested as he turned on the faucet and poured some water into a glass.
"Non-alcoholic sounds good for the next ten years or so," Sarah agreed, coming over to lean against the opposite side of the counter. "Which should be around the time my hangover finally fades completely."
He grinned as he handed her the glass of water. "I figured from the voicemail you left that you might not feel excellent this morning. It's why I waited til later to call you back."
Sarah blinked, thrown by this information. Voicemail? Shit. No more using my phone while drunk.
"Yes," she said falteringly. "The voicemail…from when I called you. On the telephone."
"My burner was charging in my apartment, so I didn't check it until this morning."
"Mhm," Sarah murmured, drinking from the glass of water as she tried to remember leaving any sort of message on Matt's phone.
"You have no idea what I'm talking about."
She winced guiltily. "I'm sorry. I told you I shouldn't use electronics when I've been drinking. Was it embarrassing?"
"No. It wasn't that bad," he assured her, but the way his lips twitched up made her think otherwise.
Sarah just hummed disbelievingly.
Matt shook his head, but he looked amused as he pulled his burner phone out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket, flipping it open and pressing a succession of memorized buttons. Then he handed the phone to her to listen to the message. Sarah held it up to her ear hesitantly. After a few seconds, she heard her own voice come through the phone, tired and clearly intoxicated but still comprehensible.
"Hi," Phone Sarah began, and there was such a long pause afterwards that Sarah began to wonder if she had drunkenly left him a one-word voicemail. "So, I think that I meant to say this before you left, but um…I hope you aren't going out tonight. I mean, I just—I'll feel bad if I made you get completely sloshed and then you went out and got—like—scaffold-ed again. It's a Monday. People don't commit crimes on Mondays. You could probably take the night off—shit." Phone Sarah's voice became slightly farther away. "I just spilled my water everywhere. Dammit. What was I saying? I don't know. Anyway, the other reason I called was just to say…I'm glad you came over tonight. I, um, I like it better…when we're on the same side. Okay. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye." Matt held up a finger as the message apparently ended, so Sarah waited. Sure enough, there was a clattering sound as Drunk Phone Sarah dropped her cell phone, then she heard her very muffled voice—"Goddamn everything"—before the line finally clicked off.
Sarah closed her eyes as the message ended, shutting out the view of Matt and the vaguely amused smirk on his face.
"That's embarrassing," she muttered.
"I liked it," he replied. "I'd never heard someone try to use scaffolding as a verb like that before."
"Very funny."
"Lot of strong language, though."
Sarah groaned, frowning down at the buttons on the ancient cell phone. "How do I delete this mess?"
Matt chuckled lightly, holding his hand out for the phone. "I'll delete it later."
She dropped the phone into his open palm and he pocketed it again.
"Moving on from that," she said firmly, eager to turn attention away from her drunken self and the uncomfortable honesty that always accompanied it, "I have a lot to catch you up on."
Matt gestured towards the living room, indicating that she should sit. Sarah settled on the couch, tucking one leg underneath her. She noticed that Matt moved to sit on the couch next to her, then after a moment's hesitation took the arm chair across the table from her instead. Her first thought was that he was trying to give her space due to his actions the night she had been offered the bribe. She recalled how oddly close they'd been sitting the night before—close enough for her to reach out and feel his pulse—and she found herself again noting the difference between moving past something while drunk and trying to do the same while sober. Conversations about drunken voicemails were easy, but that didn't mean everything was fine.
Pushing the thoughts aside, Sarah filled Matt in on the things she hadn't told him last night: Jason's weird behavior during his phone call, her father recognizing the two cops as the fake Jehovah's Witnesses, the list of names on McDermott's desk.
"Who was on the list?"
"Orion employees," she told him. "Four of them, plus me. I guess people that they think might be connected to you?"
Matt frowned. "What are the names?"
Sarah swiped through the photos on her phone until she got to the one she had snapped in the police station. She rattled the names off to him, then glanced up from the screen to see him frowning, apparently not recognizing any of the names on the list.
"They don't ring any bells."
"So, you don't have a whole network of spies running around Orion? Because that'd be kind of impressive."
He cracked a small grin at that as he shook his head no. "One is enough trouble."
Sarah narrowed her eyes at him, not sure if she should be offended or not.
"Speaking of trouble…what about the cops and my dad? You don't think they'll go back to his place, do you?"
Matt considered it, then shook his head. "I don't think so. If they were really that certain that you were the one working with me, they would have already gone after him. They wouldn't have messed around with bribes."
She nodded and looked down, not as confident in that theory as he was.
"I'll still keep an eye on his place, just in case," he promised. "But I don't think that's the way they'll go. Five names on that list…Orion can't afford to go after the families of each person on the off-chance that they're the guilty one. It'd bring too much attention and suspicion. It's easier to just offer the bribe to everyone and see who takes it."
"So all of that with the photos and bringing me down to the station…you think they did that to everyone on the list?"
Matt leaned forward, wetting his lips before speaking carefully. "I think that you work in close contact with the head of Orion security, and you've been involved in two major encounters with Daredevil on company premises. So they might be watching you a little more closely than the others on that list."
Sarah's heart sank. She'd been hoping that the list of names meant that there wasn't as much suspicion leveled against her as she had previously thought. "Yeah. That makes sense."
"So I guess the question is, what happens now that you turned the bribe down? Do they believe you and drop it, or do they push harder?"
"Honestly, I'm not sure they've been keeping Jason updated on it at all," Sarah admitted. "He seemed so frazzled by whatever calls he was getting yesterday that he barely gave me a second glance."
"That's a good thing," Matt said. "Let's hope it stays that way."
"I guess we'll see when I go to work tomorrow," she said, trying to keep her tone light, but the nervousness ebbed through.
Matt was quiet for a moment
"Just use your best judgment. If it seems wrong…get out of there. Call me. On either phone."
Sarah chewed her lip and nodded, trying to ignore the slight twist of anxiety in her stomach. They continued discussing the new information for a while, but they were just going in circles; until she went into work the next day, there was no way of knowing where they stood with anything.
"I should probably go," Sarah said eventually, tired of thinking about the unpleasant day she had in store for her tomorrow. "Are you going out tonight?"
"I don't know," he said with a smirk, leaning back in his chair. "Do people commit crimes on Tuesdays?"
Sarah groaned and ran a hand over her face, muffling her response. "I'm probably about to if you keep bringing that voicemail up."
The smirk didn't leave his face, but he nodded and answered her original question. "I am going out. Not for a another couple of hours, though. I have paperwork to do."
Sarah slid her hand off her face and gave him an odd look. "You live a weird life, you know. Paperwork followed by masked crime-fighting."
"It's unorthodox, I'll give you that," Matt said, standing and striding over to the kitchen counter, where he picked up his regular cell phone. "I'll call you a cab."
"No, no, I can walk," Sarah protested. A cab from Matt's place actually wouldn't be that expensive—definitely not as expensive as a cab from her father's apartment—but she felt odd having him pay for one anyway, especially since she had been the one who had suggested meeting at his place.
"It's getting dark out," Matt said.
"How do you know? Can you hear the sun setting?" Sarah muttered. Matt gave a short laugh but didn't offer an explanation.
"I'll call you a cab," he repeated firmly.
Sarah watched him carefully, unable to figure out his motivations, as usual. Was he more concerned about Orion's watchful eyes than he let on, or was he just acting out of lingering guilt over the other night? Whichever it was, her mind flashed to the feeling of being followed she had experienced earlier, and she reluctantly agreed. "Alright. Thank you."
They both carefully steered the conversation away from work as she waited for the cab to arrive, which was about ten minutes after Matt ordered it. He let her out the front door and she was halfway to the staircase when she heard his voice behind her.
"Hey," he called after her from his position leaning against the doorway, and she turned around, readjusting her bag as she threw him a questioning look. "For what it's worth…I agree with what you said in your voicemail."
"That…people don't commit crimes on Mondays?" she asked confusedly.
He chuckled slightly and shook his head. "Not that part. That made zero sense. I meant the bit at the end."
Sarah furrowed her brow as she recalled the message he'd replayed for her. She smiled warmly at him when realized what he meant. "Good to know."
Much like the pinky promise had, his words helped make her feel less alone as she got in the cab to go home. In fact, her good mood lasted throughout the night, to the point where she didn't even notice that she was being watched again as she entered her building.
The next day, Sarah waited for the other shoe to drop. But it didn't. Jason was in and out of the building most of the day, barely acknowledging her until he called her into his office shortly before her lunch break. She opened the door hesitantly, choosing to linger in the doorway rather than actually enter the room. Jason barely paused from the forms he was filling out.
"After you finish up whatever you're working on, I need you to take those packages to the post office. You can use your lunch break to go so that you don't get behind on your work," he said pleasantly, as though giving her a chore to do during her break time was doing her a favor. She glanced over at the stack of small boxes in the corner.
"Sure," she said warily, still put on edge by the apparent lack of any knowledge of the bribe on his part. He was acting completely normal—although normal by Jason's standards was still fairly unsettling and odd—but Sarah was having a difficult time buying it. She turned to leave the room, and he called out after her.
"One more thing. You'll be spending most of the day outside of the office tomorrow. You probably won't want to wear heels. You haven't forgotten how to drive a stick shift, have you? I know it's been a while, but I hear it's like riding a bike."
Sarah was taken aback by the question. She did know how to drive a stick shift—her father had taught her as a teenager—but she had never owned a manual car, nor had she ever mentioned to anyone at work that she knew how to drive one.
"How do you know that?" she asked him slowly.
Jason continued writing out the forms, not bothering to look up at her. "You'd be shocked at how detailed my employee records are, Sarah."
He gave her no more explanation, but as usual, something in his tone made her think he meant more than he was saying. But there was nothing she could do to address it at the moment, so instead she simply nodded and returned to her desk. As she settled into the creaky office chair and brought up her email, she could only imagine what a employee file on her might say: Can drive a manual transmission. Former pianist. Often stutters. Currently working with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Enjoys tea.
Her fingers stilled over the keyboard. If Jason had detailed files on her, he probably had them on the other four employees on the list. Files that might indicate why he suspected them of being involved with Daredevil. He might even still have files on Yates, and by some long shot it might help her figure out why he had been killed, or by whom. Of course, that was assuming that she would ever manage to access Jason's files, which seemed doubtful to say the least. Despite that, she filed the idea away for later.
A delay on the subway combined with a two block detour to get around a construction site left Sarah waiting at the end of a long line at the post office with only about ten minutes left on her lunch break. She stood on her tiptoes, trying to see around the blonde woman standing in front of her—and the ten or eleven people standing in front of the blonde woman—to see what the hold up was. The only employee working behind the computer looked to be roughly two hundred years old, and was moving at a painfully slow pace. She checked her watch nervously. Maybe Jason would be too busy to notice if she was a little late coming back.
She had no such luck. No more than two minutes after the time she was supposed to have returned, her phone rang. Jason was on the other end, calmly inquiring as to where she was. She apologetically tried to explain about the subway delay, but he seemed disinterested. He simply instructed her to return to the office as soon as possible after dropping off the packages, then promptly hung up.
Sarah rolled her eyes as she juggled the boxes in her arms, trying to slip her phone back into her purse.
"You can go in front of me, if you want," said a tentative voice in front of her.
Sarah looked up from her phone to see that the blonde woman in front of her had turned around to face her, and was smiling sympathetically.
"I wasn't trying to eavesdrop," the woman said apologetically. "But it sounded like your boss wasn't happy you were going to be late. I don't know how much time it'll save you, but by all means…" she gestured for Sarah to cut in front of her.
"Thank you so much," Sarah said gratefully, skirting around her as she balanced the boxes she was carrying. "I didn't realize there would be such a long line or I would have tried to get here earlier. My boss is kind of a punctuality freak."
"I get it. I used to work for a big company that had a lot of those kind of egos at the top; I know how stressful it can be."
"But not anymore?"
"No. The place I work at now is small—like, really small. There are only three of us. So I can pretty much take as much time as I want so long as I stop and get Chinese food for lunch on the way back," the blonde woman said jokingly.
Sarah smiled back at her. After spending all day with dour Orion employees or faux-cheerful Jason, talking to someone who was being genuinely friendly was oddly refreshing. "I'm Sarah," she found herself saying.
"Karen," the woman replied.
"There's, um, a good noodle house down the block from here that you should try. They just opened up a couple of weeks ago."
"I might have to check that out," Karen said. "One of my bosses is ridiculously picky about where he eats, so it'd be nice to find another restaurant we could add to the list."
Sarah was about to reply when she felt her phone buzz. Thinking it might be Jason again, she dug it out of her bag and glanced at the screen. Instead it was a text from Matt's daytime phone.
Everything okay?
She balanced the boxes in one arm and clumsily typed out a reply with the other hand. Shockingly okay. My biggest task today has been going to the post office.
Good. Be careful.
She put her phone away and turned her attention back to Karen. "I take it you like your bosses more than I like mine, then."
Karen smiled good-naturedly, but there was an oddly bittersweet look in her eyes. "They're pretty much the only things that have kept me from packing up and leaving this city sometimes."
They chatted amiably until they got to the front of the line, when a second employee finally appeared and opened up another window, so that the two of them finished their transactions at almost the same time.
Karen was replying to a text on her own phone as they exited the building, and Sarah opened her purse to shove the shipping receipts inside. As she did so, the strap snapped, causing her purse to fall open and the contents to spill out onto the floor of the post office.
Sarah swore and knelt down to collect everything that had tumbled from her purse. She noticed too late that the folder of photos she had shoved in there the previous day had fallen open, spilling a few of the graphic photos onto the ground. She hastily snatched most of them up, but one had slid closer to Karen, and the blonde woman glanced down at it as she picked it up.
Even upside down, Sarah could make out which photo it was: James Wesley, slumped in a chair and wearing his blood-stained dress shirt. She knew the picture was graphic—though certainly less so than most of the others in the folder—but she wasn't expecting Karen to have such a strong reaction to it.
All of the color drained from the other woman's face as she slapped a shaking hand to her mouth. When she looked back up, Sarah was startled by the haunted look in her bright blue eyes.
"Why do you have this?" Karen demanded in a shaky voice.
Sarah narrowed her eyes questioningly. The picture was disturbing, but there was no way it invoked that strong of a reaction. Had Karen known Wesley? Sarah looked around warily, unsure if the floor of a post office was really the place to have this conversation, but no one was around them.
"Did you…did you know him?" she asked, nodding towards the picture that Karen still clutched in her hand. "James Wesley?"
Karen nearly flinched at the sound of the name, which was answer enough for Sarah.
"No. I—I didn't," Karen said, shoving the photo back at Sarah and standing up. She brushed her skirt off and grabbed her purse. "I have to go, I'm sorry."
With that she shouldered her purse and made for the front doors. Sarah blinked, startled by her sudden exit. If this girl had known Wesley—and clearly not in a friendly way—she could very well have been in a situation similar to Sarah's. Or maybe Sarah was crazy, and Karen was just a normal person who got reasonably upset when surprised with photos of corpses. But she had been kind, and funny, and if there was some way Sarah could help her out then it was worth a shot.
"Wait!" Sarah called out, shoving the rest of the papers into her bag and rushing after Karen. She lightly caught her arm as she went through the door. "Listen. I—I know what kind of guy Wesley was. Maybe…I can help you."
"No," Karen said, shaking her head firmly before glancing over her shoulder, clearly eager to leave. "You really can't."
"James Wesley ruined my life," Sarah told her steadily. Karen softened slightly at her words, appearing to listen a bit more intently. "In fact, he's still doing a pretty good job of ruining it. Like…like he never died."
"I'm sorry," Karen said gently. She pursed her lips and looked down, as though she was carefully choosing her next words. "Sometimes it feels like I can't shake him off either."
Sarah fumbled in her purse for a pen and scribbled her cell phone number onto the back of a gum wrapper, which she handed to Karen.
"I know this seems weird, but just…if you ever want to talk. It's a big city. You don't meet a lot of people who—who get what you might be going through," she finished lamely, not wanting to give away too much about her own situation without knowing anything about the other woman in exchange.
Karen looked at her warily, before slowly reaching out and taking the paper. "No. I guess you don't."
Customers were approaching the exit that the two women were currently blocking, so Sarah backed away to let them through. When they had passed, Karen was gone.
Because of her late return from her lunch break—during which she had been able to eat no lunch at all—Sarah had to stay late at work to finish up some paperwork and filing. It was dark by the time she got off the subway stop near her apartment. About half a block from her place, she passed by an alleyway and happened to glance down it, then did a double take. There was someone standing at the other end of it, a good sixty feet away.
Sarah strained her eyes harder as she squinted down the dark alleyway, trying to figure out if she had imagined it. No. There was definitely someone standing there. Whoever it was was tall and broad shouldered, and stood completely still, facing her—watching her?
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that it wasn't Matt—the silhouette wasn't right, nor was the behavior—but she whispered the vigilante's name anyway, just to be sure. She did it so softly that no one with normal hearing could possibly make it out—and sure enough, the dark figure showed no indication that it had heard her. Not Matt, then.
She shivered, disturbed by the way the shadowy figure still wasn't moving, and hurried away from the alleyway and towards her apartment. She already had her phone out and her finger hovering over the button to call Matt, but she stopped. Under the bright lights of her lobby, with several people around, she felt suddenly as though she was over-reacting. Just because someone was standing in an alleyway didn't mean they were watching her. It could have been someone taking out the trash, or a homeless person looking for a spot to sleep. It could have been anyone.
But that was the worrisome bit, a part of Sarah's brain argued: It could have been anyone.
When she reached her apartment, she spotted an official looking notice taped to her front door. She ripped it off and scanned it before groaning and resting her head against the doorframe. It was a notice from the water company, informing her that until she paid off the late fees on her account, her water had been shut off indefinitely. No soothing hot shower tonight. She angrily crumpled the notice up and threw it into her already overstuffed purse before letting herself into her apartment.
Sarah knew that Matt was coming over later that night, but she was so on edge from the events of the day that she still jumped violently when she heard his usual knock from the fire escape.
When she went open the window she saw that he was leaning heavily against the railing. She stepped aside to let him in, and he slowly pushed off of the metal support and hoisted himself through the window. She was surprised when he stumbled just slightly upon landing—barely enough to notice had it not been for the way he'd always silently landed on past visits. Once his feet were on the ground, he rested against the windowsill tiredly. The window itself remained open, allowing the cool night air to come inside.
Now that Matt was illuminated by the light of her apartment, she could clearly see the blood running down the side of his neck.
"You're bleeding," she pointed out, as though he didn't already know.
"Yeah. Courtesy of our cop friends."
Her eyebrows went up in surprise. "What happened?"
"I did some research, found a couple of addresses for the names on the list you gave me. Second one I went to, McDermott and Donovan were there," Matt said, inhaling painfully before continuing. "Sounded like they offered this guy the same deal they offered you, only he tried to skip town with the cash advance. He was already packed when they showed up. They weren't happy."
Sarah felt a pang of guilt; the same idea had crossed her mind, but she had quickly realized that twenty grand wouldn't have gotten her as far from Orion as she needed. Definitely not as far as the full reward—the zeroes tacked onto the end of that figure had been enough to get her as far away as she could have wanted, and occasionally that thought scratched at the back of her mind, begging her to imagine what might have been if she had picked the other choice.
Pushing the thoughts aside, she took a few steps forward until she was next to him, and stood on her tip toes to try to get a better look at where all of the blood was coming from.
"Can you take your mask off?" she asked him tentatively.
After a beat, he did so, pulling his mask off slowly and tossing it on the dining room table in front of them. Sarah frowned at the matted blood that covered one side of his neck, along with the entire back of it. It looked like there were several cuts all over the area. She knitted her brow, confused as to how he had gotten such an injury.
"No offense, but…McDermott and Donovan don't really seem like the kind of guys who could get the drop on you like that," Sarah said uncertainly.
Matt shook his head. "Wasn't them. Donovan was unconscious, and I was just about to have the pleasure of breaking McDermott's nose for a second time when the guy they'd been threatening came up behind me. I wasn't even paying attention to him. He smashed something over my back—one of those big glass vases, I think."
Sarah looked at him in surprise. "Wait, the guy you were saving did this?"
"Apparently he thought he could still get the full reward if he brought me in," Matt said with at harsh laugh. "By the time I realized what he was about to do, I didn't move quite fast enough. It wasn't a very effective plan on his part. Mostly just annoying."
"Is annoying really the right word for this?" she asked, before catching sight of the back of his shirt, which was torn and wet with more blood. There was enough of it that it had smeared all over the white windowsill. She looked back up at his face in disbelief. "You're bleeding all over the place. Why didn't you go to Claire's and get stitches?"
"She's at work. And anyway, I don't need stitches. I just need to get the glass out," he said, raising his eyebrows at her hopefully.
There was a pause while his words sank in before Sarah tilted her head back and cast her eyes towards the ceiling in exasperation. "And you remembered that digging sharp things out of people's skin is my favorite thing to do."
"I'm sorry," he said with a tired, crooked grin. "You can say no."
Sarah ignored him as she glanced around the living room, which opened into her kitchen. Neither the kitchen overhead light nor the side table lamps next to her couch provided a bright enough light for her to go about finding glass in a wound.
"There's not enough light in here to do much of anything. Come on," she said, crossing the room to her bedroom door and opening it. Matt brushed past her and she got a good look at the way his shirt was torn along the upper part of his back, allowing glimpses of bleeding skin to show through. She glanced back at the window, which had dark streaks of red going down the frame. Shaking her head, she switched on the overhead light and the bright desk lamp, then gestured towards her desk chair. "You can sit there, if you want. It's better lighting."
Matt nodded, then reached behind his shoulders and pulled his shirt over his head in one swift motion. Sarah blinked, suddenly feeling oddly self-conscious about the fact that they were in her bedroom. He didn't seem to notice her reaction—which was reasonable, given the amount of sharp glass currently biting into his skin.
"I'm, uh…going to go get the first aid kit," she stammered, then quickly left the room.
She grabbed said kit—a new, better-equipped one that she had thought to buy last time she was at the drug store—from the bathroom, pausing to give herself a disapproving look in the mirror before returning to the bedroom, grabbing one of the wooden dining room chairs along the way and dragging it along with her.
Matt was already straddling the desk chair, leaning forward over the back rest. He turned his head a fraction when she entered the room, where she noticed he was running his fingers over a row of records that were neatly lined up on a shelf next to her desk.
"What records are these?"
Sarah tilted her head to read the titles that his hand was hovering over as she positioned the dining room chair behind him. "Well, the ones you're touching right now are in the R section. So Rachmaninov, Richter, Rubinstein…the usual suspects."
His mouth quirked up as she rattled off the pianists' names affectionately. "I didn't know you had a record player."
Sarah opened the first aid kit and set it on the desk before settling herself down cross-legged on the chair. "I don't. I had this really nice old one that belonged to my mom a long time ago. It was her dad's before that." She paused and shrugged. "But I had to sell it."
"I'm sorry."
"It's alright. I mean, it paid for my rent that month. I probably could have gotten more, but I carved my name into it when I was little, and I guess not everyone wants a record player that has 'SARAH C' scratched across the top," she said lightly.
She reached over and twisted the neck of the desk lamp so that the bright light was aimed directly at Matt's back. The bruises and blood that covered his skin were numerous—some old, some obviously newer. It was clear which area had glass embedded in it—the skin all over his upper back was bloody and inflamed.
"Jesus, Matt," Sarah breathed out.
"It looks worse than it is. I would assume."
She just shook her head but didn't argue.
"So…what'd you do to him?" she asked hesitantly as she took a few disinfecting wipes from the first aid kit and began cleaning the blood away.
"Who?"
"The guy who put all of this glass in your skin."
Matt shrugged dismissively. "He was in his fifties and pretty overweight. Didn't take more than a hit to knock him out."
"That's it?" she asked carefully. "No…breaking bones or comas?"
"Not worth the effort," Matt said bitterly. Sarah found herself strangely relieved to hear that Matt hadn't lost his shit on the man, as much of a cowardly act hitting him with the vase had been. They fell into silence as she sterilized the sharp tweezers, remembering the steps from the night she'd had to dig barbed wire out of his shoulder.
"You have a lot of books," he noted after a while of her working on the glass in his skin. She wondered if he had been using his senses to observe her room during the entire stretch of silence, and glanced around quickly to make sure there was nothing embarrassing he might be picking up on. Luckily, she had just cleaned the apartment the day before.
"I don't have a lot of time to read them these days, but yeah. I was always that girl who kept all of the assigned reading from high school and college." As she looked at the books lining her shelf, Sarah remembered the way Matt had been able to pick up on the indents that Yates' writing had left on his notepad, and she wondered how extensive the ability was.
"Can you read normal books?" she asked curiously as she began wiggling another tiny shard of glass out of his skin. She glanced up at Matt's profile and saw that he looked slightly offended. "What? I don't know a lot of other blind people with superpowers, or I'd probably…you know…ask a friendlier one."
Matt sighed but answered her question anyway. "I can, in theory. By feeling the ink on the pages. But…it's difficult. It takes a lot of concentration. Just reading a printed flyer is exhausting, so a whole book would probably take me forever. It's a lot easier to just get audiobooks."
"Not Braille?" she said curiously.
"Braille is fine. It's quicker to read than ink. But it takes up a lot of space. One law book could take up half of the top shelf on your bookcase."
Sarah glanced at the bookcase in question. "Oh. Wow. So, yeah…audiobooks make sense."
"Or digital Braille. But regular ink is definitely a last resort."
"But you have a regular Bible on your nightstand," she commented absently as she recalled seeing the book and noting how odd it was the night she had helped Foggy patch him up. As soon as she said the words she realized her slip and mentally kicked herself.
Matt turned his head slightly, his eyebrows raised disapprovingly, but not looking entirely surprised.
"Not that I was prying into your stuff. I went into your room to get you a blanket the last time I had to dig sharp stuff out of you," she explained awkwardly, waving her hand in the general direction of his previously injured shoulder. "Sorry."
He shook his head before facing forward again.
"It's fine. I could already tell you went in there, anyway. My whole apartment smelled like you."
There was a pause.
"I'm sorry, you're saying I smell?" Sarah asked worriedly.
"You don't smell bad," Matt clarified with a laugh. "You just smell like yourself. Your shampoo and your soap and…whatever else."
"Huh. So, if you could pick up on my scent just from me walking around your apartment, how strong is it when you're sitting right next to me?" she asked curiously. Personally, she thought it sounded like an awful experience—being able to smell people even when they weren't around—but Matt spoke about it casually, as just a fact of life.
"I get used to the scents of people I spend a lot of time around," he explained. "Plus, you don't wear a lot of perfume, which is nice. Sometimes someone with a lot of strong-smelling body spray will walk by, and I can taste it in the air for hours, even if I try to block it out."
"Like Mrs. Benedict and her obsession with White Diamonds perfume?"
Matt's broad shoulders moved as he laughed. "It's awful. A lot of old women wear that scent, but she just wears so much of it. Foggy was the one who met with her the first few times, and he warned me about how strong it was. I avoided meeting her in person until Foggy was too busy to go one day. The day I met you, actually," he noted.
Sarah remembered Matt and Mrs. Benedict strolling out of the apartment complex that day, and wondered how differently everything might have gone if Foggy hadn't been too busy that day. She never would have seen the scar on Matt's face and put two-and-two together. He never would have had a reason to track her down later that night. She wouldn't be digging glass shards out of someone's skin using the light of her desk lamp.
"Maybe I'll try getting her better smelling perfume for Christmas," she murmured as she dropped another bloody glass bit onto the paper towel she had spread out on her desk. "But my point—before we got off track talking about your weird bloodhound sense of smell—was that if there's any book that seems liked it'd be a pain to read in normal ink format, it's the Bible."
The tension returned to Matt's shoulders, and she wrinkled her brow in confusion at the change from the light mood he had been in just a moment ago. She wiped away a trickle of blood that was running down his back, deciding not to push the subject if he wasn't going to elaborate. After a few long moments of silence, he spoke.
"It was my father's," he said shortly. "I don't keep it to read."
Sarah paused her ministrations and glanced up, uncertain of what to say. But Matt was facing forward and she couldn't see his expression. She remembered the articles she had looked up when she had researched Matt so long ago; she knew that Jack Murdock had been murdered after a boxing match when Matt was a child. Letting her eyes linger on the wounds that littered his back—physical proof of the violence that Matt seemed barely able to keep a lid on—she wondered how much if it had been shaped by what had happened to his father, and how much of it was just innate.
"I'm sorry," she said finally. They fell into silence as she finished pulling the glass out of his skin. After about ten more minutes, she was finished. She winced sympathetically as she looked at how much glass was now laying on the bloody paper towel on her desk. A dark bruise was forming over most of the right side of his back, and she absently reached out to trace the edge of it. Matt turned his head slightly at the contact, but didn't say anything.
"All done," she said softly, retracting her hand. "Looks like it hurts."
He shrugged. "It's not bad."
"Do you want some painkillers or something?" she asked him. Then her lips quirked up slightly. "Maybe more vodka?"
Matt made a face. "Ugh. Definitely no more vodka."
"How about water instead?"
"Water sounds great, actually," he said with a tired nod.
Sarah started to stand up and then stopped as she remembered the notice that had been taped to her door. She sat back down. "I don't have any."
He raised his eyebrows at her in bemusement. "Nice of you to offer, then."
"I forgot that my water got shut off," she explained apologetically. Then, realizing how irresponsible and pathetic that sounded, she hastily added, "They're doing, um, some kind of maintenance, I think."
If he picked up on the small lie—which she was hoping he hadn't, given his slightly disoriented state—he didn't call her out on it. Instead, he just nodded absently, wincing as he ran his hand over the back of his neck.
"I'll go across the street and get some bottled water," she offered, grabbing her wallet and pulling a ten dollar bill out, which she shoved in her pocket before picking up her keys.
Matt shook his head, standing unsteadily and reaching for his shirt, which he slowly pulled over his head. "Don't do that. I'll have water when I get home."
Sarah put a hand on his arm to pause him. "I literally just got done digging a ton of glass out of your skin. Just—sit down for, like, ten minutes while I go get water. It's only across the street."
He must have been tired, because after a pause he nodded his head in reluctant agreement before sitting down heavily in the chair again. She studied the dark circles under his eyes and the exhaustion that lined his face.
"You can lie down if you want," she offered tentatively.
He nodded briefly again. "I might."
Down at the corner store, Sarah grabbed a few bottles of water out of the cooler section. She quickly paid and crossed the street back to her apartment, looking around warily for any dark figures standing in the shadows. She didn't see any.
The elevator door opened on Sarah's floor and she stepped out, lost in thoughts of men in dark alleyways and blonde women in post offices. It occurred to her that she should probably fill Matt in on both of those when she got back. She froze as she came around the corner and caught sight of the front door to her apartment.
It was open.
She was positive she had closed and locked it behind her when she left. There was no way Matt had gone out the front door instead of the window, much less left the door wide open behind him. Her mind immediately jumped to the shadowy figure in the alleyway from earlier.
She slowly crept down the hallway, straining her ears for sounds of a fight, but she didn't hear any. In fact, she didn't hear anything at all. She knew Matt was out of it from the injury and exhaustion, but he couldn't be that distracted that he'd let himself be caught off guard by whoever was in her apartment, right?
Sarah fingered the pepper spray that hung from her key chain, resting her finger on the bright red button on top. She tried to remain as quiet as possible as she paused outside the open door, peering into the apartment. She could only see the living room from this angle, but it was empty and quiet. Stepping into the apartment, she quickly glanced into her bedroom: the bed was vacant, and to her surprise, the bedroom window was open, allowing a cool breeze to drift through the curtains.
A noise off to Sarah's right caught her attention, and she whipped her head around. For a moment, she felt a rush of relief when she saw that it was only Lauren, standing next to her dining room table.
But Sarah's relief quickly faded when she took in the rest of the scene: specifically, the black mask and tattered, bloody gloves that Lauren was holding in her hand. Then the blood streaked across the windowsill that she had clearly been inspecting when Sarah walked in.
Lauren looked up from the bloody windowsill and held the black mask up slightly, letting it dangle from her fingertips as she fixed Sarah with a wide-eyed, distrustful look.
"So, I'm guessing this is who your friend-not-a-friend is, then."
