Sarah leaned her head against the front door after she locked it, trying to breathe steadily. She hadn't seen that side of Matt in a while, and she had nearly forgotten how terrifying he was when he wanted to be. Her head was spinning with confusion as she slowly started to come down from the fear-induced adrenaline rush that had kicked in when he'd backed her into the wall. She had been positive at that moment that he was going to go full Daredevil on her to keep her from taking the bribe and turning him in. So why hadn't he?
Running a shaking hand through her hair, she crossed the room back to the dining room table, where she began gathering the photos together to put them back into the folder. She flipped the folder open, forgetting that there were still more photos inside, and she was immediately greeted by the gory sight of a half-flattened body on a sidewalk, surrounded by police tape. Her stomach turned. She vaguely remembered reading about this one in the news: a junkie had thrown himself off the roof, and his friend who had been shooting up in the same room swore he had seen Daredevil knocking the guy around beforehand. But he couldn't seem to say for certain if it had been real or a hallucination, and soon enough the news had dropped the story.
Oddly enough, this one almost bothered Sarah more than all the others. One of the most unnerving things about Matt—of which there were many—was the way he seemed to get so consumed by his temper. She was willing to bet that if he were ever to kill someone, that's how it would happen: he'd be interrogating a lowlife somewhere and would simply go too far, throw him over the edge of the building. No chance to calm down or change his mind; just a split second decision that ended in a dead body.
Sarah closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. Maybe looking at more photos wasn't a good idea. She stuffed them all back into the folder before letting her gaze fall on the ceramic shards that now littered the floor. Reluctantly, she grabbed her dust pan and brush and slowly knelt next to the broken pieces. One more glaringly obvious reminder that no matter how comfortable they had started to become with one another, Matt Murdock was still a violent, dangerous person.
Matt had pinned her to a wall by her throat, scared her to the point of passing out. Matt had threatened to break her arm, then dragged her into an alleyway and terrified her. Matt had left her with a bruised arm and the sound of his hands slamming into the dumpster echoing in her ears for days. Matt had repeatedly used his size and strength to manhandle and intimidate her, taken every opportunity to show her that he was willing and able to hurt her.
Matt had also helped her after Ronan attacked her. Matt had been gentle and quiet and bandaged her hands, even after she had busted his lip open in a panic. Matt had given her ice packs, and taken care of her father's traffic ticket. Matt had asked Claire to help her, despite knowing the risks. Matt had agreed to look after her father for her, and taken it upon himself to track down Ronan after what he had done to her. Matt had given her his jacket and helped her through her panic attack.
But that was the problem, wasn't it? The man couldn't seem to pick whether he wanted to hurt her or help her.
Sarah couldn't seem to muster the energy to get back up and go throw out the broken mug she'd cleaned up, choosing instead to sit back against the wall tiredly. She turned her head when she heard a tiny scratching noise, and she spotted the mouse lingering under her dining room table.
"Don't you come in here unless you have advice for me," she warned the rodent.
He simply twitched his tail. Useless mouse.
When Sarah was younger, her father had been an adamant supporter of Pros and Cons lists, no matter what the problem was. Making a physical list felt too silly in a situation like this one, so instead Sarah made a mental one in her head:
Pros: Almost too many to count. She could buy a new life for both her and her father, in a different country—on a different continent. He could get proper healthcare and she could go back to playing piano full time. No more letters from the electric company threatening to cut her services off. No more hoping the price of her father's medication doesn't increase again. No more Ronan or Jason or sleazy cops. No more staying up at night wondering if she was doing the right thing partnering up with a wanted vigilante.
Cons: It made her heart hurt in a strange way to think of Matt going to prison because of her.
The thought was ridiculous. She had no obligation to protect someone who constantly showed little to no regard for her own safety and privacy. But nagging questions kept popping into her brain anyway: What would happen to Matt in prison, locked away with the same criminals he had put there? What would happen to the streets of Hell's Kitchen without him? Since they'd first made their deal, Sarah had started closely following mentions of Daredevil in the press—a habit she would never mention to Matt—curious to see what he did with his time when he wasn't with her. A few times a week, stories cropped up of people who owed their lives and safety to a mysterious man in a black mask. His presence in the news would only increase if his identity was exposed: a blind lawyer becoming a vigilante would be a national story. Would she feel guilty seeing Matt's face splashed across the newspapers, hearing news anchors condemn him on TV?
She groaned in frustration and slid her knees up so that she could rest her forehead on them. She turned her head slightly to see the mouse still staring at her. Judging me, probably.
"What do you care?" she whispered resentfully at the small mouse. "He doesn't even like you."
The mouse, clearly offended by the comment, scurried back into the kitchen, and Sarah remained sitting on the floor alone, a dustpan of broken pieces on her lap.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The rest of the weekend passed in a similar haze of internal debate. Sarah wished that she had someone—anyone—that she could talk to about it, to get a clear opinion. But the only person who knew enough about the situation to have an opinion was the one-man Matt Murdock Support Group known as Foggy Nelson, and there was no way he was going to be able to give her any unbiased advice. (Yes, please send my best friend to prison, Sarah. And me as well, possibly. Seems like a good idea.) So, she spent much of the weekend alternating between thinking about her dilemma and carefully avoiding doing just that. After the first few hours, she had shoved the envelope of money into her nightstand drawer so that she didn't have to look at it anymore.
Monday at Orion was predictably tense for Sarah, who found herself constantly on edge, thinking that Jason or someone else was going to bring up the bribe at any time. But no one did, and her workday ended up being mercifully short. She had just come back from another inexplicably detailed errand of no apparent importance, and was settling into her desk to answer emails when she heard Jason's muffled voice coming from his office. She frowned when she glanced at the phone on her desk and saw that the line in his office wasn't in use. Jason used his work phone almost exclusively; he was constantly buzzing her on the intercom to have her put him through to various numbers. So to hear him on his cell phone at work was attention-grabbing, and it was only made worse by the way his voice got louder with each sentence. Jason never raised his voice; it was one of the things that made him so intimidating.
"—not today, everything is just about to kick off and I—"
Sarah paused her typing, trying to pick up snatches of his conversation. It sounded like whoever was on the other end of the line kept interrupting him.
"—not here all the time like I am, they don't understand how important it is—"
There was a long silence, and Sarah strained her ears to hear more. She was listening so closely that she jumped noticeably when the door to Jason's office banged open dramatically. Despite the theatrical entrance, he seemed as unruffled as usual when he emerged from the office, save for a strange tightness to his usual wide grin.
"Sarah. You can go home for the day," Jason informed her, slipping a heavy coat on over his suit. He always dressed like it was freezing outside, even with the late spring temperatures starting to build into summer. "I have some business to attend to."
Sarah glanced at the clock on the wall; it was barely past two in the afternoon. Any other day she would have jumped at the opportunity to leave so early, but today she was desperate to stick around and find out what that phone call was about. "Are you sure?"
Jason's answer faded on his lips as his phone buzzed with a new text message. He scanned it, then sent a look of trepidation upwards, towards the ceiling. Sarah followed his gaze in bewilderment, but didn't see anything.
"Actually, go ahead and take tomorrow off, too," Jason said distractedly, not even bothering to follow up the instructions with his usual plastic cheerfulness, as he usually did. Instead he just turned and headed for the staircase, still tapping at his screen. Sarah watched him as the door swung closed behind him, and she could have sworn she saw him start to head upstairs—to the fourth floor—instead of down to the exit.
Sarah sat there dumbly for a minute before starting to gather her things. She wasn't sure if she was glad to have these extra few hours of thinking before having to make her decision tonight. She felt like she'd exhausted the arguments for either decision after thinking about nothing else all weekend, and she still hadn't figured out what to do. She bit her lip as she slung her purse over her shoulder. There was one person who she knew could help make her feel better, even if he couldn't actually give her any advice on the situation. As she exited the building, skirting past the new and unfriendly security team at the entrance, she pulled her cell phone out of her bag.
Her father answered after a few rings.
"Hey, Dad. I got off work early today. Mind if I come over?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
If the past few days of introspection had made Sarah lean towards taking Matt's side, stepping foot into her father's apartment Monday afternoon had the opposite effect. Glancing around the apartment as she set her purse aside, it not only became easy to imagine taking the money, but almost like a betrayal not to. Her eyes swept over the blank walls—all of the pictures had now been banished to the stacks in the corner of the room—and the thick layer of dust that had settled over most of the shelves and windowsills. Then she frowned at the pile of unopened newspapers stacked against the wall next to her dad's recliner, still stuffed into their plastic sleeves. Her father used to read the news religiously every day. There were more than a few dirty dishes around the room, and the trash needed to be taken out.
But Mitch himself seemed to be having a relatively good day, and he greeted her with more clarity in his expression than she had seen him show in a while.
"What a nice surprise," he exclaimed, greeting her with a warm hug. "Some special occasion that they let you off work early?"
She smiled at him weakly and shook her head. "No, they just…didn't need me anymore today." Due to mysterious phone calls.
Mitch nodded, then his face lit up excitedly. "Hey. You know what was on sale last time I went to the grocery store? Those peanut butter cookies you used to like. I got three packages."
Sarah laughed softly at his enthusiasm as he disappeared into the kitchen, mostly because she did used to love peanut butter cookies growing up, and the fact that he could recall that was comforting in a bittersweet way. As alien as the apartment looked, and as out-of-character her father acted these days, there was a part of him that was still Mitch, and catching glimpses of that person was always simultaneously painful and comforting.
While her father was in the kitchen, Sarah allowed her mind to wander longingly. Once her father had the proper therapy and support that he needed—that she couldn't provide on her own—maybe she would get to see those glimpses of the real Mitch more often. Once his mind wasn't taxed with finances and worrying about her health, he could focus more on staying healthy and present. They could stock the entire kitchen—which, in their new house far away, would be large and full of windows—with foods they loved, like the peanut butter cookies. The image was tempting, to say the least.
"Hey, do you know who won the game last night?" Mitch called from the other room. "I fell asleep on the couch before I could watch."
"I have no idea. I can look it up," she called back, getting up from her perch on the arm rest of the couch and making her way over to her father's desk. She shook the mouse to wake up the ancient computer that he refused to replace. The local news was his homepage, so she scanned it to see if the scores were listed anywhere. She found them, and was just about to read them off when a photo of a familiar face caught her eye: the sandy-haired police officer who had played the 'Bad Cop' to Aaron McDermott's 'Good Cop' in the station. It was just a small picture, inserted next to a quote he had given the newspaper about safety regulations for some fluff piece on an upcoming marathon. According to the caption, is last name was Donovan.
Forgetting about the sports scores, Sarah quickly opened Google in another tab and typed in the officer's name along with the words 'NYPD 15th Precinct' to see what would come up. His name appeared in several police blotters and articles, the first of which she went ahead and clicked on.
"Are you on a church website, there?" she heard from behind her. Her father leaned over to look at the photo on the screen, which only showed Donovan from the neck up, making it difficult to tell he was in uniform.
"Hmm?" Sarah said, distracted by the police blotter she'd just brought up and only half listening. "No. Why?"
"Well, that's one of the Jehovah's Witnesses that came to see me a few times."
It took Sarah a second to fully register what he'd said. She whipped her head around to get a better look at Mitch, trying to figure out if he was just having a moment of confusion. But his eyes were lucid and clear of uncertainty.
"This…this guy?" she said, pointing at the photo on the screen. "Are you sure? Maybe he just looks like him?"
Mitch shook his head resolutely. "No, no, that's definitely him. Him and a dark-haired guy with a funny nose."
Sarah recognized the description immediately, and entered Aaron's name into Google the same way she had Donovan's. A photo came up of him and two other police officers; all three of them were dressed down, but she could barely make out that they were wearing police sweatshirts. She looked back at her father, who was squinting at the photo.
"Yes. That one on the left, there," he said, pointing directly at Aaron.
Her stomach dropped. If those two had been at her dad's house, she was positive it hadn't been on any police-sanctioned business. Not with the way they had acted in the police station and at her apartment.
"Have they come to see you in a while?" she asked Mitch.
"I'm not sure." He paused to think about it, but she could tell he was struggling. Dates and time were the most difficult thing for him these days. "It…seems like it was recent."
"Okay. Okay," Sarah said, trying to keep her voice patient. She desperately wanted more information, but didn't want to push him. And the thought that those cops had spoken to her father, come into his home and pretended to be there on a mission of good—the thought pissed her off, and she didn't want Mitch picking up on that. "Listen, just…don't answer the door for them anymore, okay? Don't talk to them."
"Why?"
How was she supposed to explain to him what was going on? That they were undercover cops, but that she had no idea if they were really working for the police or someone else entirely? Would he remember if they showed up again; would he say something to them that would just put him in further danger?
"I've just seen a lot on the news about people getting robbed after getting visited by guys like that," she lied, relying on her father's inherent acceptance of sensational stories he saw on the news. "You…you never know if they are who they say they are. I know it seems like they're trying to help, but maybe they're not."
"Oh, I know that," he replied, surprising her. "I've never been a religious man. All this talk of eternal paradise just for following the correct writings in the right book? I know when something sounds too good to be true, and what those guys are peddling is sure included in that."
The truth behind his words hit her hard. She had been holding out hope of a golden ticket to get her and her father to a paradise of sorts—maybe not the Heavenly kind, but the kind without Orion looming over them. But he was right; it had sounded too good to be true because it was. If those two were working for Orion…Matt would probably never make it to prison. Whoever that money came from didn't want him arrested; they wanted him dead. Giving her the first 20,000 up front had been smart; when she'd been holding all of that cash in her hands, it had been hard to imagine ever giving it back. But now, looking at the computer screen and seeing Aaron's pixilated face smiling back at her, she realized it had probably never really been hers to begin with. Even if Orion would let that much money walk away, the Sarah who walked away with it wouldn't be the same person she was now. The picture she'd had in her head of a safe place for her and her father slowly faded away
Sarah had thought that when she finally made her decision, it would be like an epiphany. Instead, it hit her very slowly, a piece at a time. The news that Aaron and his partner weren't who they had claimed to be wasn't shocking, but it made the correct path that much more undeniable.
"I have to go, Dad," she said suddenly, turning to her father.
"What?" Mitch protested. "You just got here."
"I know, I'm—I'm sorry," she said as she stood up from the computer chair. "But I just realized I have to go do something."
A wave of guilt swept over Sarah as she surveyed her father, who stood there with the package of cookies in his hand, looking taken aback by her sudden exit. She knew that Mitch had no way of knowing what she had almost been able to give him; the stress-free life that they could have happily lived elsewhere. It's not like he would know the opportunity he was missing, but she would. And as much as she was convinced it wouldn't have really ever worked, it still felt like she was letting him down.
She stepped forward and hugged him tightly, wrapping her arms around his neck like she used to when she was younger.
"I'm really sorry, Dad," she whispered in his ear.
"It's not that big of a deal, Sarah," he said, clearly confused by her strong reaction but dutifully trying to cheer her up. "They're only cookies."
"I know," she said, breaking away from the embrace. She felt tiny pricks behind her eyes, and hurriedly grabbed her things, avoiding meeting his eyes. She kept her voice as light as she could. "I'll come over soon and we can eat cookies and do some—some spring cleaning, okay? I'll bring pizza. Maybe I'll even get mushrooms on it."
"As pizza is meant to have," Mitch agreed.
When she reached the door, she turned and dug through her bag until her fingers curled around her stun gun. She opened the drawer of the side table next to the door and held the stun gun up for her father to see before dropping it into the drawer.
"Keep this here, okay? Just…just in case you ever need it," she told him.
Mitch wrinkled his brow. "Well, what are you going to carry? Hell's Kitchen isn't the safest neighborhood."
She held up her key ring, which had a large canister of pepper spray dangling off of it. "I'll be fine. All I do is go to work and go home, anyway."
That was technically true, for the most part. Although if she didn't feel the usual twinge of guilt she always got from lying to her father, it was only because it was drowned out by the storm of other emotions spinning around her head as she closed the door to his sparse apartment behind her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
A little over half an hour later—after taking a brief detour to her apartment—Sarah found herself standing in lobby of the fifteenth precinct.
"Hi," she said nervously, catching the attention of the desk sergeant. He looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place from where. "I'm—I'm here to see Officer McDermott?"
The man craned his neck to look at the clock. "He's still on his meal break right now, but he should be back in about ten minutes or so. If you wanna wait over there, I can let him know you're here when he gets back. What's your name?" he asked, grabbing a pen and shuffling some papers around until he found his notepad.
Sarah paused for a second before answering. "Sarah."
He poised the pen over the paper and looked up at her expectantly, waiting for her last name. She just returned the look innocently, hoping he wouldn't press for one.
"…okay," he said finally, writing down only her first name. "Sarah. If you don't mind taking a seat on the bench over there, he'll be back shortly."
"Thank you," she told him, glancing down at his nametag. Mahoney, she repeated mentally. She was slightly -reassured by how normal he seemed; calm and professional, like an actual cop and not someone playing a role.
She settled onto the wooden bench and crossed her legs. Her hands were shaking slightly, and she crossed her arms to conceal it, distractedly looking up at the television mounted on the wall but not really paying attention to what was happening on the screen.
"You alright?"
Sarah looked over to see Sergeant Mahoney surveying her with a concerned look. She hadn't realized she'd been nervously bouncing her foot, and she stopped immediately.
"Yes," she said. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just, uh…cold by the door, is all," she told him. It wasn't necessarily a lie; the cool breeze from the rainy day blustered in every time the front door opened, chilling the room slightly.
Mahoney looked unconvinced, narrowing his eyes at her. "You're one of Nelson and Murdock's clients, aren't you? You were in here a few days ago."
Sarah's eyes widened slightly as she faltered before answering reluctantly. "Yeah."
He nodded, looking down at his papers and then back up at her. "You sure you don't want either of them here with you? I know they aren't too busy. You've gotta be one of the only clients they've got at that place."
She tucked her hair behind her ear nervously. To be honest, maybe they should be here with her, to make sure she didn't dig herself any deeper into a legal hole. But part of her wasn't even sure they would show up, considering the circumstances. It made her feel oddly alone.
"No. I'm just here to talk about something. I don't think it's anything I would need them for," she lied. The front doors opened again, letting a gust of wind in. She shivered slightly, although she wasn't sure it was actually due to the cold.
The sergeant sighed and glanced back at the room full of cubicles. Turning back to her, he gestured towards a cubicle in the far corner of the room.
"You can wait for him at his desk, if you want. Just don't draw a lot of attention to yourself, okay? You aren't technically supposed to be back there without an officer accompanying you, but…no one really listens to that rule," he said quietly with a small shrug.
"Oh," Sarah said, caught slightly off guard. "Um, thank you."
Mahoney just nodded, giving her a strange look as she opened the short gate through the partition dividing the waiting room from the office area, making her way back to the desk Mahoney had pointed to. She glanced at the nameplate on the table to make sure it was Aaron's before taking a seat in front of the desk.
While she waited, Sarah stared at a pile of papers and zoned out, letting her brain imagine all of the awful consequences that could come from this decision. She was so deep in her thoughts that it took her a few minutes to notice her own name on one of the papers she was staring at. It was scrawled on a small sheet of paper that was sticking out of a folder. She blinked, then glanced around quickly. Sergeant Mahoney was busy filling out paperwork, and the few other cops that were in the room were similarly preoccupied. She leaned forward and craned her neck to read what was written: it was just a list of five names, and hers was third on the list. She vaguely recognized the other four names as other Orion employees, although she didn't know any of them personally.
Glancing around again, Sarah quickly slid her phone out of her jacket pocket and snapped a photo of the list, fairly positive that she wouldn't be able to remember the names on her own. She shoved her phone back in her pocket and let her gaze sweep over the rest of his desk in search of anything else interesting, but she didn't see anything. She was tempted to just leave the envelope of cash on his desk and haul ass out of there, but she was too concerned that somehow the money wouldn't find its way back to him, and then she'd have a whole other problem on her hands.
"Sarah," came a voice from behind her. "I was so hoping to see you here tonight."
Aaron circled around the desk and settled into his chair, giving her an excited smile. The sight of him looking so certain of his success set off a spark of irritation somewhere inside her head.
"Alright, so let me just get a pen and paper and a recorder if I can find it," he muttered, opening his desk drawers and digging through them.
"Actually, I…" Sarah trailed off nervously before taking a deep breath and continuing, "I came to give you the money back."
Aaron halted his pen-finding efforts and looked up at her in confusion, as though he assumed he had misheard her.
"I'm sorry?" he said.
Sarah slipped the envelope out of her purse and slid it across the desk to him. "All twenty thousand is still in there."
"I don't understand, I, uh, I thought we were on the same page here," Aaron said with a nervous chuckle. Something about the unease in his expression made Sarah realize suddenly that he had someone to answer to in all of this, and that they wouldn't be happy if he couldn't get any information from her or the other names on his list. But she found that she had no sympathy for his predicament.
"No, we weren't on the same page," Sarah told him, noting that her voice sounded much less shaky than she felt. "I told you that I don't know anything, and I don't. I can't take money in exchange for information that I don't have. I'm sorry."
Aaron rubbed his hand across his mouth before leaning back in his chair and forcing a much more strained smile. Sarah found herself wondering if he had used this same fake-friendly routine on her father when he'd shown up at his place, made Mitch think he was there to help him as he invaded his privacy and took advantage of her father's muddled mental state. The idea of it made her skin heat up as that spark of irritation slowly burned into full on anger.
"Listen," Aaron said, his voice carefully light and amiable, which only served to make him sound irritatingly condescending, "you're a nice girl—"
"You don't know that," Sarah interrupted him suddenly. "You don't know anything about me."
The smile finally slid from his face completely, and he looked around before leaning forward and speaking in a much harder voice than she had heard him use yet.
"I know that the moment you walk out of this station today, this deal is off the table. That means if you wake up in a hospital two months from now because this guy lost it and broke half your bones, your ass is going to prison, too. Do you get that? Do you understand at all what's happening?"
The Good Cop façade was gone now, and Sarah felt a tiny flicker of victory at making the cop show his true colors, despite the slight rush of trepidation that his words had triggered. If he was going to arrest her, he at least had to do it without the stupid, sycophantic friend act he had been playing up.
"I think I do understand," she said, surprised at how calm she sounded, considering how fast her heart was pounding. She stood up hesitantly, and he made no move to stop her. Apparently Matt had been right about that, at least; at this point, Aaron had nothing solid to arrest her on. That didn't mean he wouldn't be able to dig something up, and she wanted to leave before he could get inside her head with doubts again. She turned to leave. "Sorry I couldn't be more help."
"I guess you aren't as smart as I'd hoped you were, then," Aaron called after her in a carefully disappointed voice, causing her to turn back.
"No, I guess not," Sarah agreed simply, not bothering to argue. Reaching into her bag, she dug out the King James Bible she had taken from her father's place. She tossed it onto Aaron's desk, where it landed with a loud thump. "You left this at my dad's place, by the way. Thought you might want it back."
She only caught a brief glimpse of the surprised look on Aaron's face before she turned and hurried out of the cubicle area, past Sergeant Mahoney and out the door, trying to ignore the apprehension twisting in her stomach as the full impact of the choice she'd just made started to set in.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Once she was outside the station, she took a deep breath of fresh air, which helped calm her down slightly. It was still drizzling, leaving the streets mostly empty of people, but she found that she didn't mind the slight rain. She got to the end of the block and stopped, ducking under a covered bus stop and reaching for her cell phone. As she scrolled through her contacts to find Matt's number she rubbed her shoulder, which was aching from where the thick stacks of money and heavy Bible had been weighing her purse down. Her finger hovered over his contact name as she completely blanked on what to text him.
Sarah was so absorbed in her phone's screen that she didn't even notice someone else duck into the covered bus stop and hover nervously nearby.
"Please don't make that phone call."
It took Sarah a second to realize that she was being spoken to. Looking up from her screen, she was startled to see Foggy standing there with his hands in the pockets of his rain coat, looking more serious than she had seen him look since the night she met him, when his best friend was bleeding out under a scaffolding.
"Matt filled me on what's going on. I'm guessing you're on your way to the precinct and that you're about to call Matt and give him that heads up," Foggy said, gesturing towards the phone in her hands. "And he made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that I was to steer clear of you, and the police station, and anywhere else where I might end up handcuffed. But obviously I don't listen to Matt when he tells me what to do, so here I am, really, really hoping that I can change your mind."
Sarah shook her head, trying to explain. "Foggy—"
"Just, listen, please. Matt is my best friend. He's like my family, except not as loud or obnoxious. And…sometimes I still feel so angry with him for the choices he makes. The danger he puts himself in, the extremes he goes to. But I move past it, because I know that he does it for good reasons. He's a good person. One of the best. And maybe one of the dumbest," he added as an afterthought, before shaking his head and continuing his speech. "But he's dumb for the right reasons. Because he wants to help people. Maybe you don't know him well enough yet to see that, but I do."
Sarah started to interrupt again, but found that she didn't want to. Foggy's words were having a strange effect on her: simultaneously digging at the small part of her that felt guilty while also fueling a strange sense of relief that there was at least one other person on the planet who would believe her decision to be the right one. So she let him continue.
"I know that you and Matt don't have the best history, but you guys have been better lately, right? Maybe not best friends, but better than this, at least. I mean, this would literally be selling him out, Sarah. Like, actually selling his identity for a bunch of cash," Foggy said slowly, causing the guilty feeling in her stomach to stir even more.
"I know. I gave the money back, Foggy," she said quietly, cutting him off before he could continue his speech.
"Well—what—you did?"
She nodded.
Foggy threw his hands up. "Then why did you just let me say all of that?"
Sarah shrugged, crossing her arms uncomfortably. "I don't know. Kind of felt like I deserved to hear it, I guess."
"You just let me lecture you because you thought you deserved it?" Foggy clarified, eyebrows raised. "Are you sure you aren't Catholic, too?"
"Maybe I should be. I do like incense," she offered. "That was a good speech, though. I can see why you're a lawyer."
"So, you really didn't turn him in?" Foggy asked. "That's great. When are you going to tell him? He's been freaking out all weekend."
"Like, throwing things?" she asked knowingly, but Foggy just frowned and shook his head.
"What? No. Like being all withdrawn and angsty. This has really been weighing on him," he told her. She looked down and fidgeted with her phone case.
"Well, maybe you could tell him," she suggested hopefully.
"Some reason you can't?"
"I kind of get the feeling he won't want to talk to the girl who almost just sold him out," she told him with a dry laugh. "And if he does, it's probably not in a friendly way."
Foggy watched a few people go past as he considered it. Finally he rolled his eyes.
"Alright. I'll be your go-between," he said begrudgingly, then pointed a stern finger at her. "But just this once. You and Matt need to learn how to use your words and not your fists, already. Or your bottle openers, or whatever. Between the two of you, I feel like I'm refereeing a WWE match."
"Tell that to him," she said defensively.
Foggy gave her a meaningful look. "I have."
They didn't say anything else for a few moments, until finally Sarah slowly stood up and shouldered her purse.
"You going home?" Foggy asked.
"Yeah. At some point. First, I'm going to stop by the liquor store and blow my food budget on alcohol instead," she told him with a strained smile. "Because apparently today is a day for making questionable decisions."
"Alright. Well, I'm going to try to go find Matt, then. Let him know he can come down off high alert."
"Where is he?"
"Who knows? He left the office a little while ago. But I figure I'll check the boxing gym or church first. Those are usually the two options when you're involved."
Sarah gave him a slightly alarmed look at the idea that Matt often went to the boxing gym because of her—whatever that meant. She also had no idea why she would have any effect on his church attendance, but she was too tired and eager to go home to push either subject.
"Well…good luck with finding him," she said, pausing at the overhang of the bus shelter to glance up at the grey sky, which was still drizzling gloomily.
"Hey," Foggy said, and she looked back at him over her shoulder. "You made the right call here. You really did."
She wasn't sure yet if she fully believed that, but she let the words reassure her anyway as she made her way down the block.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
A short while later, Sarah let herself into her apartment—carrying a brown paper bag containing the cheapest vodka the liquor store offered—and automatically secured all of the locks on the door behind her.
She shivered slightly; the rain that had felt so refreshing before had now seeped into her bones and all she wanted was a hot shower. Eyeing the bottle of vodka thoughtfully, she unscrewed the top and took a deep swig, screwing her face up at the awful taste. Satisfied, she left the bottle on the counter while she went to take a shower.
Half an hour later, when her hot water finally ran out, she emerged from the steamy warmth of her bathroom in pajama pants and tank top. She toweled her hair as she shuffled into the kitchen and grabbed a tumbler from the cupboard. The plan was to drink away the nervous buzz under her skin while doing more research on the two shady officers, or maybe on the other names on the list. Instead, she ended up doing the drinking while gazing distantly at her laptop, which remained closed.
Sarah had just finished her third sizable shot of vodka and was beginning the feel a pleasant numbing sensation when she heard a knock. Automatically, she looked at the window, but there was no one there; it wasn't even dark out yet. She turned her head to the front door. A brief flash of nervousness ran through her—at what point did she start feeling so anxious every time someone came to her door?—but it was dulled by the alcohol already making the rounds through her veins.
When she looked through the peep hole, she wasn't sure if she was relieved or not to see that it was Matt standing outside. She undid the locks on the door and opened it slowly. Matt was dressed more casually than she had ever seen him—save for the night she had stitched him up—wearing a simple black t-shirt instead of his usual work suit. She wondered where Foggy had ended up finding him. He held the top of his cane with both hands, rolling it slightly between his thumb and index finger as he seemed to debate what to say. She kept a hand on the door while she waited.
"I spoke to Foggy a little while ago," Matt said finally. "I was…hoping you and I could talk."
Sarah gave him a cautious look, trying to ascertain his mood. It could be difficult to tell with his glasses on, but he looked calm enough. Not in the midst of a violent panic, at least, and that was a step up. He was sporting several new bruise—the most conspicuous being a dark one blooming just under the sleeve of his t-shirt, and another ringing the bottom half of his left eye. His knuckles were a painful-looking red and several of them were split; obviously he had had a busy couple of nights. Her earlier decision had made sense at the time, but now being face-to-face with him so soon after their last encounter, she felt a tinge of doubt creeping back into her mind again.
"You do have the option of saying no," he reminded her quietly when she didn't respond after a long pause.
Sarah twisted her fingers around the doorknob as she watched him. There was no point in making a choice and then chickening out of it later, she supposed. She nodded slowly and stepped back from the doorway to allow him through. Once she had redone the locks behind him, she returned to her chair at the table and picked her glass back up. If there was any sure-fire way to help keep her reservations away, it was to drown them in alcohol. Matt didn't take the other chair at the table. Instead, he positioned himself leaning against the wall across the table from her.
"You gave the money back," he said quietly, without any preamble.
Guess we're jumping right into that conversation.
"Yeah," Sarah said simply.
"Why?" he asked, a tinge of disbelief in his tone.
Sarah wasn't sure how to answer that. She considered telling him what she had found out about the two cops visiting her dad, but that didn't really answer his question. Not trusting the bribe had been what made her realize what her decision had to be, but it wasn't why she had made it. She wasn't sure how to put her reasoning into words quiet yet, so instead she tucked her damp hair behind her ear and tossed back the shot of horrible vodka in her glass, focusing on the warmth it brought to her chest rather than the taste. She made a face as she brought the glass back down.
"What kind of drunk do you get?" she asked suddenly, temporarily ignoring the question he had just posed to her.
Matt's brow furrowed in confusion. "What?"
"You know," she said, grabbing the bottle and pouring a bit more liquor into her glass. "Everyone becomes something when they drink. Are you…a cheerful drunk? Or a sad drunk, or a loud drunk?"
"I guess it depends on why I'm drinking," Matt said after a moment of thinking about it. Sarah considered his answer as she swirled the clear liquid around in her glass.
"I become a talkative drunk," she informed him.
"I remember."
Right. Sarah also remembered the last time she'd been drunk in front of Matt, although it was a blurry recollection. She'd been sitting on the kitchen floor, and she couldn't remember half of what she had said, beyond the fact that it was all too personal and too blunt, and some of it had been vaguely inappropriate. She didn't particularly want a repeat of that, but she also really didn't want to stop drinking. Not tonight.
She tilted her head as she looked at him, and an idea occurred to her. She immediately recognized it as a bad one, but her alcohol-fueled brain didn't particularly care. Before she could change her mind, she reached for the bottle of vodka, sliding it across the table towards him. Then she waited.
Matt raised an eyebrow at her, still leaning against the wall and fingering the loop on his cane with one hand. "What are you doing?"
"Well, right now what I'm doing is drinking alone. And if I learned anything from my dad, it's that drinking alone makes you an alcoholic. So…" she gestured clumsily towards the bottle, "I want you to drink with me."
"Sarah, I don't—" Matt began, already shaking his head.
"You said you wanted to talk," she interrupted him adamantly, fueled by a mixture of the alcohol and her adrenaline rush from earlier. "And there's no way I can have this talk with you while you're sober and I'm already three drinks deep. Plus, I'm—I'm guessing your weekend was probably as bad as mine, so…you could probably use it."
There was a long silence. She wasn't sure why she wanted him to drink as well; maybe part of her just wanted to know that he would do it, after she had—begrudgingly—put all of this faith into him. Maybe part of her was just tired of him always being the one with the upper hand all the time.
"Three drinks deep, huh?" Matt repeated quietly, before pressing his lips together in a grimace and looking down. "I'm…guessing that's not because you're celebrating your decision."
Sarah shook her head wordlessly. A shadow of guilt flitted across his face, although she wasn't entirely sure why; she'd have been drinking tonight regardless of which choice she made. Finally he jerked his head in what she assumed was agreement. She uncurled herself from the chair—pausing for a second as it caused her head to rush slightly—and went into the kitchen, where she reached into the cabinet for another glass tumbler like her own. Her fingers hovered over the glass for a few seconds before she reconsidered, reaching instead for the only non-breakable cup in her cabinet: a clear plastic measuring cup. Matt probably wouldn't be pleased with the selection, but she really didn't feel like cleaning up any more glass shards.
When she returned to the room, Matt was sitting in the chair across from her empty one. When she handed him the cup he seemed surprised by the lightness of it, and he ran his fingers over the handle and the rim.
He cocked his head slowly. "This is a plastic measuring cup."
"Just incase your drinking personality is anything like your sober one," she said quietly. She felt a little bad when he visibly winced at the comment, although he made no attempt to refute it.
Matt picked the vodka bottle up and poured a small amount into the plastic cup. Then he paused, the bottle still hovering over the rim, and raised his eyebrows at her questioningly. Sarah blinked in surprise. She wasn't sure why he was giving her control of the situation—when it was almost always the other way around—but she found herself oddly curious to see how far he was going to let her push it. She bit her thumbnail as she studied him, then shook her head silently. He sighed, but filled the cup more before setting the bottle down.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she acknowledged that she was testing him, and that testing a man who had very recently proved himself to be a ticking time bomb was an extremely bad idea, not to mention reckless. Then again, so was drinking cheap vodka with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, and here she was. She took another swallow of the harsh liquor.
Matt sniffed his drink before making a disgusted face. "That's, uh…definitely bottom shelf stuff."
Sarah's lips quirked up slightly as she examined the clear liquid in her glass. "Worse, I think. If there was, like, a trap door that led to alcohol so cheap that it didn't warrant living on the bottom shelf…that's where you would find this."'
Matt didn't look pleased by that information, but he raised the cup and, to her surprise, downed the contents in one go. He winced slightly, but otherwise took the taste of alcohol gamely, considering how much worse it must have been with his heightened senses. There had to have been several shots in the cup, and Sarah's eyes widened as she registered how much alcohol had just hit his system.
"You're not, uh…you're not still super angry with me, right?" she said nervously.
"No," he said. It was difficult to tell if the slightly pained look on his face was from the alcohol or her question. "I think I got most of that out of my system last night."
Sarah's gaze swept over his newly-bruised knuckles again as he set the empty cup back down.
"Are Sundays really that big of a crime day?" she asked. "I thought everyone was supposed to be resting."
Matt shook his head in disagreement. "People go to church on Sunday, start thinking too much about their sins. Then they take it out on the city."
Sarah wasn't entirely sure if he was talking about the criminals or himself, but she observed the way his face had darkened as he spoke, and it pulled at the tiny thread of nervousness that hadn't been drowned out by the alcohol. The smart part of her brain was telling her this was a good time to stop, that it wasn't too late to not get the scariest person in Hell's Kitchen wasted with absolutely no idea of how it would affect him. But the restless, adrenaline-battered part of her wasn't listening. She straightened up and reached for Matt's cup, then her own. She poured a considerable amount of liquor into both, and saw Matt's eyebrows raise slowly as the level of liquid did the same.
"We're going to play a drinking game," she said resolutely, having very little idea where she was going with this. "But it's probably not going to be fun at all."
"Not really much of a game, then," he pointed out.
"Not really," she agreed.
"How do we play?"
"Well…mostly I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions," she explained, aware of the slight slur in her speech. "And if you don't answer, you have to drink."
There was a pause. "So…when do you have to drink?"
"Oh, I'll be drinking anyway," she assured him. "Don't worry about that."
Matt exhaled a mirthless laugh which bordered on a scoff, wetting his lips as he considered the information.
"Do I get to ask you anything?" he asked finally.
Sarah pursed her lips as she considered the question, then shook her head. "No."
Matt tipped his head back in exasperation, before fixing her with a doubtful look. "And how are you enforcing these rules?"
She shrugged, lifting her bare feet up and tucking them under her so that she was sitting criss-cross in the chair. "I guess I can't."
He leaned back in his chair, tracing his finger around the edge of his cup while Sarah waited for his response. Finally he gave her a vague gesture to go ahead. Sarah was caught off guard by his agreement, and realized she hadn't actually thought about what she would ask him. She found a question tumbling from her lips anyway.
"How much of what that cop told me was true?"
Matt's face darkened, and Sarah wondered with a flutter of nervousness if maybe she should have started with a lighter subject matter. Too late now.
"You mean his speech about how I'm a coward and a psycho?" Matt asked calmly, though there was a bitter edge to his tone. "Guess it depends on who you ask."
"I mean the people from the photographs. How…how much of that did you actually do?" she asked hesitantly.
Matt looked conflicted as he traced the edge of his cup without speaking for a minute.
"Are you sure that this is something you want to hear about?" he asked carefully.
"Yes?" she replied, not intending for it to come out like a question, but it did anyway.
He looked unconvinced by her answer, but simply shook his head and leaned forward to rest both arms on the table before answering. "I didn't kill Anatoly Ranskahov. Fisk did. He left a black mask there to frame me while he was planning to blow up the Russians."
Sarah almost wanted to laugh at how matter-of-fact he spoke about these things, as though they were all normal, everyday occurrences. Except that it wasn't funny.
"What about the others he showed me? The—the one with the stab wound. And the other guy. With the broken arms. Did you…" she trailed off uncertainly.
"Torture them?" Matt finished calmly after a short silence. "Yes."
Sarah inhaled deeply at that. Her head felt like it was spinning slightly, although it was difficult to tell if that was from the alcohol or the conversation. The information itself wasn't surprising—after all, Matt had been torturing Yates the first time she'd ever seen him—but it was still unsettling to hear out loud.
Matt clearly picked up on how his candid answer had affected her. He frowned as he undoubtedly heard her heartbeat increase slightly.
"You said you wanted to know," he reminded her.
"Yeah…I guess I did," she agreed faintly.
Matt took the vodka bottle and refilled his glass, before tipping it towards Sarah's glass and pausing. She nodded, and he filled it before setting the bottle aside again.
"Do you want to stop?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head adamantly, then reached for the folder that Officer McDermott had left. Matt took another drink as she pulled out the photo that had been bothering her most, of the mangled body embedded in the sidewalk. She laid it down in front of Matt despite knowing he couldn't see it.
"This…this guy. The junkie who flew off the roof." It wasn't technically a question, but she knew he'd understand what she was asking.
His jaw tensed up at the mention of the man, and Sarah immediately knew that the heroin-addled roommate had been correct when he said Daredevil had been there that night.
"I didn't kill him, if that's what you want to know," Matt said darkly. "Doesn't mean I didn't hurt him."
"Why?" she whispered. "What did he do?"
Matt was quiet for so long that Sarah almost thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he reached up and took his dark glasses off, bringing them down to rest on the table. He kept one hand on the glasses while with the other he tapped his index finger against the measuring cup he held. The agitated tapping might have alarmed her had he not taken his glasses off just then, allowing her a glimpse at the sadness and guilt that accompanied the anger on his face.
"He murdered someone. An old woman who Foggy and I were representing, who—who I was supposed to be protecting. He killed her because Fisk wanted to draw me out." Matt's scowl twisted into a bitter smile. "And I didn't hurt him half as bad as he deserved. If I hadn't had a more important goal that night I'd have stuck around with him a little longer."
There was a long silence as his words hung in the air. Part of Sarah desperately wanted to end the drinking game and stop asking questions, stop getting answers that only made Matt's dark side even clearer. But a stronger part of her was curious, and wanted to know more no matter how quickly it made her pulse jump.
"Do you…do you like it? Hurting people?" she asked tentatively.
A strange sadness flashed across Matt's face, and he didn't answer right away. Sarah had no way of knowing how much her question reminded him of another one posed to him by someone else, not too long ago. And how badly that had ended. He moved his mouth like he was going to answer, then paused, wet his lips, and brought the glass up to take a deep swallow. Of all the questions he could have chosen not to answer, Sarah wished it hadn't been that one. It was a few minutes before he broke the silence.
"Do you have more questions?"
Sarah had a lot more questions. She had a whole folder full of photos that held nothing but questions, possibly with answers she didn't want to know yet. She studied his face, which she so rarely got to see without the dark glasses or mask in the way. A question she'd had a long time ago came to her head.
"How old are you?" she asked curiously.
"You couldn't Google that one?" he asked nonchalantly, but she could tell he was thrown by the question.
"I've been told I can't use electronics when I'm drinking," she replied simply.
Matt looked unimpressed by her reasoning, and sighed deeply before answering. "I'm twenty-eight."
"You seem older," she noted, observing him over the top of her drinking glass.
He lifted his eyebrows at the comment, but didn't say anything about it. "Do I get to ask how old you are?"
"You can't tell? Your…super whatever can't guess ages?" she asked, motioning her hands in what she thought was a vaguely mystical way.
"I can ballpark it," he said. "Nothing exact."
She nodded, looking at him for a long moment. "Twenty-six."
Matt leaned back in his chair, gazing unseeingly at the clear liquid in his cup for a little while. When he spoke again, his voice had grown serious once more. "The things that officer told you…they got to you."
"Kind of," she admitted, eying Matt warily, but he showed no reaction.
"So why not tell him right then?"
Sarah struggled to try to form what she wanted to say into the right words. "I don't like people who do that. Who get in my head like that. I don't trust them. He was just…trying so hard to get me to believe what he was saying. It felt—I don't know. Manipulative, I guess. Jason does the same thing. It's like…they think if they're really nice to me, I won't even notice that they're not actually trying to help me. Like I can't tell the difference between nice and good."
"So…the nicer people are to you, the less you trust them," Matt said contemplatively, leaning his head back against the wall behind his chair with a faint, crooked grin. "Must be why you're sitting here with me."
"You're not always the…friendliest company," she acknowledged, picking her words carefully. "But at least you're straightforward about it."
Matt gave her an odd look that she couldn't read. She shrugged and took a drink of the vodka, forgetting to toss it back quickly. The taste of it flooded her tongue, and she made a face. "Ugh. This really is bad. It tastes like nail polish remover."
"Why are we drinking it, then?"
"I don't know," she said. But she did know, and the words came pouring out of her mouth anyway, painfully honest in the way only drinking made her. "Because I'm mad at you. For not having any faith in me. And I'm mad at myself. For not turning you in, and—and also for ever considering turning you in to begin with. So now we both have to sit here and drink bad liquor. That's just…the rules."
Matt gave a startled laugh. "You…you're joking, right?"
"No," she said, giving him an offended look. "If I was joking, you'd know. I'm a very funny person."
"Why would you feel guilty for thinking about turning me in? After…?" he trailed off. Neither of them needed him to finish his sentence.
Sarah chewed her lip as she thought about it. "Because it was selfish. You…you scare the hell out of me sometimes, Matt. But you help people. And…you hurt people too; I know that, I'm not dumb. But mostly you help. And if I turned you in, I'd be taking that help away from people who need it, just—just to help myself. And that's…not the kind of person that I like to think I am. Not the person I hope I am."
"You wouldn't have only been helping yourself. You could have paid off your father's debt," he pointed out. "Gotten him out of town."
"And then what? You go to prison and I start over in, like, Iceland or somewhere, and everything here in Hell's Kitchen just…stays the same. Orion still gets to make money off of hurting people, only now with no one trying to stop them," she said hopelessly, before leaning forward over her glass of vodka, which she kept clasped in both hands as she fixed Matt with an searching look. "Do you really think anyone else is going to step up and try and bring them down besides you? Or actually have a chance in Hell of doing it?"
Matt's expression was difficult to read as he took a drink. She followed suit.
"Things are going to get more complicated now," he pointed out. "You know that, right?"
Sarah thought of the cops watching her dad, of Jason and his mysterious phone calls, of the list of names she'd seen at the precinct. All things that made the situation even more complicated than Matt knew. But things they could talk about tomorrow.
"It's not like things were ever all that simple," she said finally.
"You seem pretty calm about it," he said. She wondered if he was thinking about her panic attack a few days prior.
Sarah leaned back, letting her head tip backwards so that she was staring at the ceiling. "Well, I've been sort of low-key panicking for the last…three days straight? At some point you just run out of energy. I mean, if Orion or the police are going to come after me, then I guess they will. Not much that I can do to stop it."
"I won't let that happen," Matt argued. "To you or your dad."
She brought her head back up to look at him, ignoring the dizzy sensation that the movement caused.
"You never brought him up," she said after a pause. "My dad, I mean. When they made me that offer."
"I told you a long time ago that I wasn't going to go after your father," he replied simply. "It wasn't contingent on you keeping my secret."
Sarah swallowed hard, unable to respond. When she remained silent, Matt slid forward in his chair a little, leaning forward intently.
"I know that you took a big risk today, not turning me in," he said slowly. "Don't think that I don't understand what you passed up. But I'll keep you and your dad safe. I owe you that much."
Sarah watched him closely, trying to decide if she believed him. Emboldened by the alcohol pumping through her bloodstream, she hesitantly reached out and lightly pressed two fingers against the pulse point on Matt's throat, just below his jaw. His skin was warm from the alcohol, and he hadn't shaved in a few days, so his facial hair felt rough. He stayed very still, his face carefully composed, but his unfocused eyes were alert and trained directly on her.
"So…when do I magically know if you mean it?"
"I don't think it really works like that," he said softly. She could feel his low voice vibrate under her fingers as it traveled up his throat.
"That's not fair," she whispered.
"I know."
She held her fingers to his pulse for another moment, during which she could have sworn his heartbeat was faster than a normal one—but she was drunk, and out of the two of them she wasn't the one who could read a heartbeat like a book. She let her hand fall back down to her lap and looked at him sadly.
"So, when I tell you that I'm not going to turn you in, you know I'm telling you the truth. But you could lie to me all day long and I wouldn't be able to tell."
Matt turned his attention back to his drink, contemplating her words. "Do you think I am? Lying to you?"
Sarah looked away from him uncertainly, running her finger around the rim of her glass.
"I thought you didn't get to ask any questions," she said finally.
"Are we still playing the game?"
Sarah resumed fidgeting with her damp hair as she watched him contemplatively, waiting for the rational part of her brain to tell her that she shouldn't believe him. It didn't come. Exhaling deeply, she got up and went into the kitchen, where she grabbed a glass tumbler from the cupboard. She returned to the table and set it down in front of Matt.
He reached out and touched the glass, looking bewildered for a moment before a small smile tugged at his lips.
"Please don't throw it," she told him. "I only own so many dishes that don't have weird shit drawn on them."
Matt nodded as he poured the rest of his alcohol out of the cup and into the glass. He raised his glass slightly and Sarah mirrored him, then they both drank. When Matt brought his glass back down he looked oddly torn.
"I'm sorry about that night," he said quietly. "What I did."
"It wasn't really a nice mug," she admitted. "I think I got it for subscribing to a magazine."
"Not just the mug," he said pointedly. "I know that I—I undid any sort of trust we might have had in the span of about five minutes. I'm sorry about that. I don't…want to go back to what we used to be."
"Then don't act like you used to," she replied, then softened slightly at the guilt that passed across his face again. "And…I'll try not to either. Starting now. It'll be a drinking pact."
Matt grinned weakly, but tilted his head at the empty vodka bottle. "I think we're all out."
Sarah was briefly disappointed, until an idea occurred to her which made her laugh softly, but which she also felt oddly compelled to carry out. Unsteadily, she held her hand out with her pinky extended, resting her elbow on the table. Matt wrinkled his brow at the action, and she waited expectantly.
"You know what a pinky promise is, don't you?" she prompted.
"I know what one is, yeah," he said, raising an eyebrow. "I haven't made one since I was about seven."
"Well, then you're overdue, I think," she said stubbornly.
Matt looked thoroughly unconvinced. Sarah exhaled lowly in disappointment and she was about to pull her hand away when he reached out and caught her pinky finger with his own, linking the two. She looked down at their hands. The pact didn't look like a child's pinky promise—between his bloody and bruised knuckles and the white, raised scars across her palm—but it did the trick. Tomorrow they could deal with the cops and Orion and every other problem they had. Tonight, Sarah just desperately wanted to feel like someone was on her side, and sitting there with Matt and their two empty glasses, she finally felt like he was.