In general, Matt Murdock preferred to fight hand-to-hand over using a weapon. The temptation to lose control was already great enough when Matt was fighting criminals with his hands; anything that made it easier to inflict damage only made the chance of slipping and going a step too far more likely. However, if his adversary was the one who chose to bring a weapon into the fight, Matt wasn't necessarily above using it against them. When it came right down to it, there were a lot of things he wasn't above.
In this particular scenario, the two men on the roof had brought knives to a fight they had already been certain they were going to win: two of them against someone much smaller, someone they had already injured. So the use of Sarah's kitchen knife—serrated and much sharper than the ones the two men had brought with them—seemed only appropriate, and as Matt knelt in front of the taller of the two men and pressed the blade against his skin, he found no sympathy for him.
"What does Ronan want with her?" Matt asked, his voice deadly calm. He had already asked him the same questions he had posed to the other man: who Ronan was working with, what he had hired them to do, where they were supposed to meet him. Unfortunately, he'd been unable to shed any more light on those topics than his partner had.
"No clue," the man said immediately, but his heart jumped a few ticks. Matt pressed the blade of the knife—which was already coated in a good amount of the man's blood—harder against his throat.
"Don't make me ask you a second time."
"What do you think, man?" he spat out, his pained tone turning frustrated. "He didn't say outright, but…shit. The way he talked about her, it—it's not hard to take a guess."
"And you have no problem delivering someone to a fate like that," Matt noted, clenching his jaw, moving on before he could dwell on that part too much. "Are you two the ones who have been following her?"
"No. No, I swear I'd never seen her before tonight," he said frantically. "We got an address and a key, that's it. Anything else going on with that chick is Ronan himself doing it."
"How do you know he hasn't hired other people?"
"Ronan? That guy doesn't have enough money for that."
"Enough to catch your interest, though."
The man would have been smart to not answer. Unfortunately for him, he made the mistake of continuing to speak—apparently with the hope of swaying the vigilante who was currently pinning him against the brick wall at a painful angle.
"It sounded like an easy job," he ground out. "We didn't—we didn't know you'd be here, we wouldn't have—"
His words turned into a strangled his of pain as Matt kept the pressure of the knife even, but tightened his hold on the man's arm and twisted it harder.
"So, you only came because you thought she would be alone and easy to get to," Matt said, his voice low and harsh. "You really think that's helping your case?"
Matt breathed in deep through his nose, trying to ignore the way everything in him was itching to beat this man to a bloody pulp. It had infuriated him to hear the two of them eagerly discuss their plans for Sarah as they had tracked her across the roof, so confident and gleeful in their mission: two grown, armed men against one injured woman they had assumed was alone. It had made him angrier that they had almost been right, that she almost had been caught alone. That if they had gotten into her apartment before she'd been able to call him, he never would have gotten to her in time.
And farther down, a small, irrational part of him just wanted to hurt the two men for bringing the devil in him out to fight in front of the one person whose trust he had been trying so hard to keep. And if Sarah's heart rate and speechless shock before she left the roof were any indication, he might have just lost that trust.
The man took advantage of the brief pause in Matt's interrogation to try to make a grab for the knife. But Matt caught his arm easily and wrenched it the other way, then flashed the knife down from his opponent's throat to the front of his shoulder, driving the blade in just below his collar bone: not a lethal target by any means, but an extremely painful one.
The man gritted his teeth and knocked his head back against the wall.
"Jesus! Listen, listen, how about you can t-take the money, okay?" he said, still foolishly trying to negotiate. "It's almost a thousand bucks."
Matt grew still, and when he spoke again he couldn't keep the deep disgust out of his voice.
"You're telling me less than a thousand dollars is all you needed to deliver a girl to a man that you knew was planning to hurt her?"
"I…I…" the man stuttered, before falling silent. He panted raggedly, obviously trying and failing to come up with another plan to get out of the situation. Matt cocked his head at the silence.
"You two were so talkative when you were stalking her across the roof," he observed darkly. "What happened?"
He received no answer. It was frustrating how little information he was able to get out of him; Ronan had been smart to not divulge anything to them about his whereabouts. But surely the man had to know something Matt could use, if he just kept pressing for more.
Matt gripped the handle of the blade harder, prepared to give it another twist—or perhaps find a more painful placement. But in the silence, beneath the man's thundering pulse, Matt could hear a softer, more familiar heartbeat floating up from a few floors down, accompanied by an equally familiar voice. Sarah was swearing softly to herself, and he could smell soap, disinfectant, and blood.
He paused reluctantly, grinding his teeth as the sound pulled him back from the temptation to beat the man bloody. He had to remind himself that the longer he stayed up here trying and failing to learn something new, the longer Sarah would be down in her apartment, alone. He inhaled deeply, focusing on getting himself back under control, before turning his attention back to the person on the other end of the knife.
Matt kept the end of the interrogation quick, but that didn't mean he didn't make it painful.
Several floors down, Sarah cursed under her breath as she pressed an alcohol-soaked cloth against the deep cut on her foot.
"…kind of asshole just cuts people's feet up," she muttered angrily.
The smart of the rubbing alcohol provided some distraction, at least, from the events of the night. She didn't want to think about how close the two assailants had come to hurting her, and she didn't want to think about what was happening to them on the roof right now, even if she knew they fully deserved whatever it was.
She reached for a bandage and glanced at the clock: about twenty minutes had passed since she'd left the roof. Mrs. Benedict had poked her head out of her apartment as soon as she had heard the sound of the stairwell door open and close, and Sarah had distantly heard her asking concerned questions, but she'd had no energy left to answer her before retreating to her apartment. The deadlocks felt useless now, but she had bolted them anyway. Automatically she had found herself heading into the kitchen, where she had grabbed a bottle of whiskey from on top of her fridge and taken a deep swig, wincing at the sting but welcoming the slight numbing sensation, before placing the bottle back in its spot. She had then limped into the bathroom, which was where she found herself now, perched on the bathroom counter as she wrapped her foot in a tight bandage.
True to his word, Matt wasn't long. Sarah had just finished wrapping her foot when she heard him tap on her window. She gingerly hopped down from her perch on the bathroom counter, testing her weight on her foot before unsteadily making her way over to the window to let him in. His black-clad outline on the fire escape was no different from usual, but somehow tonight he looked so much more like Daredevil than he had in a long time.
Sarah began to walk back towards the couch, but stopped when she glanced over her shoulder and saw that Matt wasn't moving from his spot in front of the window. His shoulders were tense, and his posture was still faintly reminiscent of a fighting stance, though he didn't seem to realize it.
"You're limping," he noted quietly. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah." Sarah folded her arms and pulled her sweater tighter around her as she swept her gaze down to her bandaged foot. "I, um…I think it might need stitches at some point. Do you think that maybe your friend Claire would be able to help me out again?" she asked him hopefully.
"I can see if she'll answer. She's working the day shift lately, so she's probably sleeping," Matt said, reaching for a zippered pocket on the side of his black pants.
"No, no, don't wake her up," Sarah protested before he could withdraw his phone. "It's not that bad, I can go after work. It's not like massively bleeding or anything. Besides, I can't be late today. Jason has some big meeting he wants me to help him prepare for, or something."
Matt didn't look happy with her decision, but he didn't argue. "Alright. I'll let her know you might be stopping by the hospital later, then."
"Thanks."
"You're not hurt otherwise?" he said, taking a step closer and reaching a gloved hand out towards her previously-sprained wrist, which now ached dully once more from when she had landed on it earlier.
Still on edge from being chased earlier, Sarah instinctively tensed, shifting her weight onto her back foot as he stepped nearer to her. It wasn't a conscious reaction; her fight or flight instinct was still on hyper drive, and as Matt had not-so-tactfully pointed out the other night, flight was pretty much her default setting.
Matt stilled, immediately picking up on her reaction. Something flickered across the bottom half of his face and he slowly retracted his hand, stepping back to his original position in front of the window.
"Sorry," he said shortly, stepping back.
A pang of guilt hit her chest, and Sarah closed her eyes briefly and shook her head.
"Matt, no, it's not—" she started to explain, but he abruptly moved onto the next subject.
"I don't think you have to worry about Ronan sending more people after you," he said, the softness in his voice replaced by a business-like tone. "From what the guys on the roof had to say, he has pretty limited resources. With any hope, he'll think these two took the money and skipped town."
She was relieved to hear that Ronan was still as mildly incompetent as ever, and that he didn't have as far of a reach as it had seemed lately. Never knowing where he was made it feel like he was everywhere, but she knew that wasn't true.
"They didn't know where he's hiding out?"
Matt shook his head regretfully. "No."
Sarah bit her lip, trying to ignore the way her heart fell at the news.
"What about the cops?" she asked. "How does someone just make the police not come?"
"All he needs are a pair of cops who will respond to the alert saying they're nearby and will check it out. Then…they don't."
It wasn't difficult to guess which cops Ronan might have been able to talk into taking on that particular responsibility. Sarah sighed and ran her hand through her hair. "Good thing I don't happen to know two cops who really don't like me, then, right?"
"We don't know for sure if it's them, but…it seems like a safe guess. The plus side is that it's not a great plan. There's always the chance other cops will be nearby and decide to respond to the call as well. Obviously it worked this time, but it's shortsighted. He's getting cocky."
He's always been cocky, Sarah thought. Short-sighted and arrogant, which mixed well with his general disgusting demeanor and obsessive tendencies. But she didn't say any of that out loud, not wishing to talk about Ronan any more than she had to. Right now she was doing alright at keeping her mind from wandering to dark places, and she wanted that to continue.
"How'd they get through the front door?" Matt asked, interrupting her thoughts.
There was a short pause as Sarah hesitated.
"They didn't," she said reluctantly. Matt just cocked his head, his mouth a grim line as he waited for her to elaborate further. "I opened the door. They…they didn't get inside, I went outside."
Matt rubbed his mouth in agitation, and when he spoke his carefully controlled tone was betrayed by the twitch in his jaw. "Why?"
"Mrs. Benedict was out there talking to them. I couldn't just stay inside and let something happen to her," Sarah said, recognizing the frustrated tone that so often preceded a lecture from Bossy Bodyguard Matt lately. She quickly continued, hoping to avoid it. "And I know it was stupid it was to leave the apartment, so can be maybe just…skip the part where you yell at me for that, please? You can be extra grouchy about the next thing."
If the way he pressed his lips together tightly was any indication, he had been about to do just that, but he held back. Instead, he reached up and pulled his mask off tiredly, then used his forearm to wipe some of the sweat off his forehead. Sarah blinked as she caught sight of blood running down the side of his face; it hadn't been very visible near his ear and jaw line when he'd had his mask on, but now she could see it clearly, bright red against his skin. It was coming from a small gash near his left eye that cut across his temple. Another pang of guilt hit her; she hadn't even thought to ask if Matt was hurt, despite the fact that he'd been the one actually fighting tonight.
"Your face is bleeding," she said in surprise. "I didn't think…it didn't even look like you even got hit."
"Barely. The cut's from earlier," Matt said with a dismissive shrug. "I didn't bother putting a bandage on it when I got home, and it reopened during the fight."
Sarah winced as she looked closer at the cut on his temple.
"I didn't realize you went out tonight. Or, last night, I guess," she said, still disoriented by what time it was.
"Yeah. For a few hours. I stopped by here a little after midnight, but you were sleeping. I didn't want to bother you."
Sarah fidgeted with her hair as she studied the exhausted vigilante in front of her, and the way he barely seemed to register the blood running down his face.
With a sigh, she paced—with only a slight limp—into the kitchen and got a small bowl and a clean dish towel from the cupboard, filling the bowl with hot water from the tap. On her way back she grabbed the first aid kit off of the counter—it seemed as though it was always within easy reach these days.
When she came back into the living room, Matt was still leaning against the windowsill, frowning slightly as he listened to her rummaging around. He turned his head towards her when she stopped beside him, not saying anything, but she could tell from the way his head moved slightly to track her movements that he was closely focused on what she was doing. The coiled tension in his form almost made her want to step away again, but she reminded herself that it wasn't aimed at her.
She set the items in her hands down, then slowly lifted herself up onto the window sill, careful not to put too much pressure on her sore wrist. She perched on the wooden ledge, angling herself towards him and curling one leg underneath her, letting the other hang down so that her bandaged foot brushed against the wall of her living room.
"What are you doing?" he asked her quietly.
"I already cleaned a bunch of your blood off of this windowsill once," she said, keeping her voice purposefully casual as she dipped the cloth into the hot water. "I don't need you bleeding all over it again."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know," Sarah said. She lifted the damp cloth up to Matt's face, pausing for just a second before pressing it gently against the cut on his temple. She watched his reaction carefully: he was tense, but he didn't make any move stop her.
"I'm sorry," he said suddenly. "If I just took us back a few steps. Again."
"You didn't."
He looked doubtful. "I know that what happened up there didn't…sit right with you."
Sarah was quiet for a second, trying to formulate the right words for what she was thinking as she dipped the cloth back into the bowl. The blood immediately began to diffuse into the water. "I just…the whole torture thing is kind of a new concept in my life, you know? I have to cover my eyes when Lauren makes me watch Game of Thrones, and that's just on a screen. I'm not used to it up close and personal. I mean, I kind of hope that I never get used to it, if that makes sense? But…it doesn't mean that I don't get that it was necessary. And I'm not asking you to apologize for it, Matt."
Matt didn't reply right away, and when he did it was so quiet she could barely hear him.
"The first time I ever met Claire…I ended up in a similar situation with a guy up on her roof, too," Matt said. She could tell he was gauging her reaction to what he was saying. "He ended up in a coma."
Sarah's hand wavered slightly at Matt's confession as she brought the damp hand towel back up to his face. She took a steadying breath before she pressing the cloth to his skin again, gradually cleaning the blood away.
"How, um…how did Claire react to that?" Sarah asked carefully. She remembered how calm Claire had been the night she'd met her; it seemed like very little could ruffle the woman. Probably from being a nurse in a city like Hell's Kitchen.
"She seemed to understand, at first. She kind of helped me do it, actually. But…in the end, it drove her away," he said, then faltered for a second before correcting himself. "I drove her away. That side of me. I almost lost Foggy because of it, too."
Sarah thought it was interesting how he talked about his darker personality traits almost like they were a separate person within him, but she didn't point it out. She slipped a small disinfecting pad out of the packaging.
"This'll sting a little," she warned him softly before pressing the alcohol pad to the cut on his face. She focused on what she was doing for a minute, grateful for the excuse to get her thoughts together before speaking. "You being capable of violence isn't a new and shocking aspect of your personality for me, Matt. I've met that side of you more than a few times."
"I know."
At the look of guilt that passed over his face, Sarah realized that Matt was misinterpreting the point she was trying to make.
"Meaning that if I was going to bail, I would have done it already," she clarified gently.
Matt furrowed his brow as he considered what she was saying, leaving her to continue her ministrations in silence. Sarah looked down at his gloved hands and noticed for the first time that, despite the dark color of the fabric, the dried blood covering them was still clearly visible.
"Does it…does it ever get to you?" she asked him tentatively. "Hurting people like that?"
"Not so much while I'm doing it. It's a means to an end," Matt said, then after a moment's hesitation he continued. "But after it's done…yeah. It takes a toll."
Sarah felt a mixture of relief and guilt wash over her. Relief that Matt did, in fact, struggle with the things he did, and guilt that his conscience had taken another hit over something he'd done for her. A part of her wanted to tell him she was sorry for adding to that toll, but she had a feeling that it wouldn't go over well. Instead, she just pressed a small white bandage to the cut on his forehead, closing the wound up temporarily.
"That's the best I can do."
Matt flashed her one of his half-smiles, though it was tired. "Thank you."
"It's no problem," she said with a small shrug, returning the smile. She had actually been relieved to have something methodical to focus on, to keep her mind from wandering too close to everything that had just happened. "Thanks for getting out of bed in the middle of the night to come save me."
"I haven't forgotten that you did the same for me."
"I think moving scaffolding is a little less dangerous than fighting knife-wielding bad guys," she speculated, then thought about it for a second. "Although I did have the added disadvantage of you still being kind of a dick at that point, so…"
Matt let out short, surprised laugh. "Implying that I'm not one now?"
"You have your moments."
They sat there in silence for a few minutes before Matt spoke.
"How long until you have to be to work?"
Sarah squinted at the clock on the wall, then groaned: it was almost seven o'clock in the morning. "Ugh…like an hour and a half."
"I'll stay with you until you leave. Just in case."
Sarah took a good look at him, studying the dark circles under his eyes. "How much sleep did you get between getting home last night and me calling you?"
Matt shrugged the question off. "I'm fine. I'm awake."
"That's not what I asked," Sarah retorted. As she spoke, she realized that she was unintentionally mimicking the same words Matt so often said to her when she avoided his questions. If the faint grin that ghosted across his face was any indication, he'd noticed as well, but he still didn't answer her.
"You said yourself that you don't think anyone else is coming. And it's already getting light out," she said as she glanced out of the window. "I'm okay. You can go home and get some sleep."
It was obvious to both of them that Matt wasn't going to listen. Sure enough, he just raised an eyebrow at her, looking thoroughly unimpressed with the suggestion.
"You know that's not about to happen."
Sarah leaned her head back against the window frame, observing him. It occurred to her that she hadn't really noticed when Matt had stopped haunting her apartment out of fear that she would turn him in and instead started sticking around to keep her safe. At some point he had just become a regular presence at her place, and strangely enough, she found that she no longer minded. In fact, the longer they sat together in the window sill that early morning, the more Sarah's anxiety slowly eased, and in the back of her mind she began to wonder if the reason meditating on her own hadn't worked was because the meditation wasn't what had been calming her down after all.
She tried not to think about what it said about her that the only person who could make her feel better lately was someone as messed up as Matthew Murdock.
Sarah's day at Orion was long and strange. The meeting Jason had been so adamant about her preparing for never happened; whatever important person he had been anxiously waiting on didn't show up for the appointment. Sarah was instructed to stay in the office in case the mystery guest showed up late, but the hours passed and no one came, though Jason came out of his office at regular intervals to make sure. Five o'clock came and went, and she still hadn't been given the green light to leave.
Finally, she got up from her desk and knocked lightly on Jason's open door to get his attention.
"Jason?" she said, her hushed voice sounding loud in the silent office. "It's…it's almost six." My foot is killing me and I'm going to fall asleep at my desk.
Jason looked up from his computer, observing her thoughtfully. Sarah shifted her weight to her uninjured foot uncomfortably.
"Did you ever meet Wilson Fisk?" he asked her, seemingly apropos of nothing.
Sarah blinked. "Um…no, not really. I saw him come into the building once or twice to do business, but I think he was busy doing other things most of the time." Like blowing up Hell's Kitchen and fighting with masked men. "Mostly I just dealt with Wesley."
He nodded slowly, then gestured to the seat in front of her. "Please, sit down."
Sarah groaned internally. She had really been hoping he would just tell her she could go home.
"Mr. Fisk is…a very interesting man. Not the most stable character, certainly," Jason said once she was seated. Sarah had to physically restrain herself from raising her eyebrows at that comment coming from a man who occasionally smeared other people's blood all over his own clothing. "But hard-working. Enigmatic. And undeniably the glue that held much of Hell's Kitchen together. He had all different kinds of businesses on his plate, and he managed to juggle all of them with little in-fighting between his employees."
Sarah wasn't sure if she was supposed to look impressed or not; the man had been a criminal king pin, not a saint—and he did get caught in the end. She settled for nodding with a vaguely interested look on her face.
"He had enough safety nets in place to ensure that no one could just step in and take over the reigns. But that doesn't stop a lot of people from desperately trying to build up their own enterprises in his absence, wanting to fill his shoes. Do you know what the problem is with trying to fill Wilson Fisk's shoes, Sarah?"
To be honest, Sarah's sleep-deprived mind was having a bit of difficulty following this long speech at all, and she was caught off guard when he asked for her input. "Oh. Um…"
"It's impossible, is the problem," he answered for her. "It took him years to get his fingers into that many pies, and no one can just replace him."
"That's…what I was going to say," she mumbled in agreement.
"A lot of people think that his assets are in a sort of legal purgatory because of how many people are laying claim to them. And in a way, they're right: all of his stakes in various companies—shipping yards, stock exchanges, legal firms, clinics—have been tied up in red tape for months. But it's not because there are too many people trying to claim his assets. There's just one, and that one person has been taking their time making sure all of those safety nets are secure before splitting up the empire. But it's going to happen soon."
Sarah was paying closer attention now. She couldn't help thinking that it seemed slightly ominous for him to be sharing all of this with her.
"I want a piece of that empire. I don't want to take over all of it, by any means. But my goal in life is not to be the head of security forever, Sarah."
He so obviously worked outside the parameters of his job description that she had almost forgotten 'head of security' was his official title, and not just a more general 'creepy executive'.
"I think you're very interesting. Would you like to know why?" Jason paused, but Sarah got the impression she wasn't really expected to answer. Sure enough, he continued. "Because you have no loyalty to anyone here. Everyone else in this place wants to claw their way to the top, and they make alliances to do so. But you…you just watch everyone."
Sarah kept her face carefully neutral, still not sure where he was going with this. "Why are you telling me this?"
"I want up. You want out. If you help me to get the stake in this company that I deserve…I'll end your contract once I'm in charge. You and your father's information will be wiped from the company records completely."
Sarah was wide awake now. The deal sounded like Round Two of 'Here's A Zillion Dollars To Turn In Daredevil', but he hadn't brought the vigilante up yet.
"Help you how?" she asked slowly.
Before Jason could answer, there was a knock at the door. Standing in the doorway was a girl maybe a few years younger than Sarah that she vaguely recognized as an employee she occasionally saw on the second floor.
"Sorry to interrupt," she said. "The tech guys need you to approve some things before they can install them. They're in the second floor control room."
Jason nodded, his signature broad smile fixed on his face. "Thank you so much. I'll be right there."
The girl glanced briefly at Sarah and then disappeared from the doorway.
"We'll continue this conversation tomorrow," Jason told Sarah, getting up from his desk. "I have a lot more that I'd like to discuss with you."
Sarah tried not to look disappointed. It seemed as though Jason's rambling lecture had finally been getting to something important, and now she had to wait until tomorrow to find out what it was.
A few minutes later, as Sarah began to walk to the subway station so she could finally go see Claire at the hospital, she saw a dark-haired woman with a baby in her arms getting out of a nondescript black sedan as the driver unloaded a stroller from the trunk. The woman placed the baby in the stroller, smiling at him affectionately and wiggling her fingers over his nose. As she pushed the stroller past Sarah, an object fell out of the netted storage area near the bottom.
Sarah bent down and picked up the toy; it was a tiny, white stuffed rabbit.
"Excuse me," she called out, catching the woman's attention. "I think you dropped this."
"Oh, thank you," the dark-haired woman said with a charming smile. She had an interesting accent that Sarah couldn't quite place. "My son would have been very upset if he'd lost his favorite toy."
She took the toy from Sarah. The small stuffed animal looked out of place in her finely manicured hand, especially next to the prominent diamond ring on her engagement finger. The baby in the stroller began to fuss, but his mother didn't seem bothered.
"He has his father's temperament sometimes," she told Sarah. "He doesn't like it when he doesn't get his way."
As the woman leaned over and made quiet shushing noises for the baby, Sarah caught sight of something glittering near the neckline of her dress. After a moment, she realized it was a pair of square, black cufflinks, strung onto a chain to become a necklace. It seemed like an odd choice in jewelry to her. The cufflinks seemed to catch the baby's attention as well, and he reached a tiny hand out to try to touch them as they dangled over him.
"I think he likes your necklace," Sarah noted.
The woman shook her head at the baby, tucking the chain back into her dress. "They won't fit you yet, love."
Then she gave Sarah another polite smile before continuing on her way.
As Sarah reached the corner, she glanced over her shoulder. She frowned as she saw the woman enter the front door of Orion, the security guards hurrying to hold the door open for her and the stroller. Personally, she would probably never bring a baby into that building, but she'd seen many family members of the employees there come and go as though they didn't comprehend what a dangerous, evil place it was. Or maybe they just didn't care.
It wasn't until Sarah had actually arrived at the hospital that she realized she didn't have any knowledge of where to find Claire beyond what wing she worked in. She made her way to the ER, which luckily was crowded, full of doctors and patients for her to blend in with. Finally, after circling the area a few times, Sarah spotted the familiar woman standing next to a patient's bed, taking their pulse. She lingered awkwardly at the perimeter of the curtained-off bed area until Claire looked up and noticed her. She finished up with her patient and walked over to Sarah.
"Hi," Sarah greeted her as she fidgeted with her purse strap. "Um…sorry to just kind of drop in on you like this—"
"It's alright," Claire said tiredly, sounding as calm and unperturbed as she had the first time they met. "I got a heads up you'd becoming by. Come on."
Sarah followed Claire into an unoccupied examination room down the hallway. Luckily, the wound on her foot only needed a few stitches, and Claire finished the job up quickly and with minimal pain. She had immediately noted that the cut was a knife wound, disapproval heavy in her voice. Sarah could only shrug guiltily, remembering how Claire had cautioned her to be careful, specifically saying that she didn't want to see Sarah end up in her emergency room. And yet, here she was.
"How are your other injuries healing?"
"I think everything is pretty much back to normal," Sarah said, her hand unconsciously drifting to her throat. Her fingers brushed against the area where dark, finger-shaped bruises had so recently been. "My skin doesn't look like a bad watercolor painting anymore, at least."
"You look even more tired than the last time I saw you," the nurse noted, somehow sounding both sympathetic and reproving.
"Yeah," Sarah said, not even bothering to pretend she wasn't as exhausted as she looked. "I, um…I don't really sleep much these days, I guess. And when I do, it's not…I don't know. Restful."
Claire frowned at that. Then with a sigh, she strode over to a locked cabinet that sat in the corner of the room and inserted her key. She rummaged through the contents before emerging with a small pill bottle in her hand, similar to the bottle of antibiotics she had given Sarah.
"Technically, I'm not giving these to you. I'm not prescribing them to you, and I'm not recommending you take them," Claire said sternly. "But I am telling you that…I've had my nights with bruised skin and no sleep, too. And these helped me to fall asleep and not have nightmares for a while, until I was able to do it on my own again."
Sarah gazed down at the pill bottle in Claire's hand, knowing she should probably hand it back. Maybe the nurse had enough restraint to use them the way they were intended—as a temporary crutch during difficult times—but Sarah wasn't so sure about herself. She scolded herself with the same advice she'd always wanted to give her father in similar situations. Just turn them down now so that you aren't tempted later. It's that simple.
Instead, she slowly reached out and accepted the small bottle, then opened her purse and dropped it inside.
As she made her way through the hospital's main lobby, towards the front door, she didn't notice a familiar police officer catch sight of her and pull out his cell phone to make a call.
Sarah stepped out into the humid air, pausing as she glanced over at the subway stop But for some reason, the thought of going home made her stomach turn. So did the thought of being alone. She pulled out her phone, checking the time. It was still early. Almost without thinking, she found herself dialing a now familiar number.
"Hello?" Matt answered on the second ring.
"Hey," she said. "Are you still at work?"
"I was just about to leave. How did things go with Claire?"
"It went really well," Sarah said, leaning against the low brick wall that separated the parking lot from the sidewalk. "She's a million times faster at stitches than I am. I was only there for a few minutes."
"Good. Is everything alright at your place?"
"I don't know," Sarah admitted. "I didn't go home."
There was a pause on the other end of the phone.
"Where are you, then?"
"Still outside the hospital. I don't—I don't really want to be at my place right now," she said, hating how silly that sounded but pressing on anyway. "I thought I might go get something to eat at this sort of shitty diner down the street. Their food isn't great, but they're cheap, and no one I know goes there. I was wondering if maybe…you wanted to come."
Matt took a few moments to respond, and Sarah bit her lip. She didn't know why she called Matt instead of Lauren, or even her father. Maybe it was because he was the only person she felt like she could be around without worrying that she was putting them in danger. Matt's whole life was built on danger, whether she was in it or not.
"Yeah, I'll be there," he said finally. "What's the address?"
The hospital wasn't far from Matt's office, so Sarah didn't have to wait long on the bench outside the diner before she saw Matt walking up the sidewalk, clicking his cane in front of him. She wondered if he actually relied on the cane at all; constantly using his senses to figure out what was around him had to get tiring after a while, didn't it?
The waitress' nametag read 'Gracie', and she had dark red hair and a button nose. She was also very clearly interested in the handsome blind man seated in her section.
"Let me know if you guys need anything," she said enthusiastically after introducing herself by name and taking their drink orders. "I'll be back in just a few minutes to check on you."
Her gaze lingered on Matt as she spoke, and he gave her an easy, charming smile in return.
"Thanks, Gracie," Matt said, his tone far more amiable than Sarah had ever heard it. "We'll be sure to let you know if we have any questions."
Sarah raised her eyebrows at him as the waitress walked away. She was used to seeing him smirking, or the crooked smile he sometimes gave her. On rare occasions, she got a flash of his full smile if she said something that made him laugh—though usually that wasn't on purpose. But this smile was very different: pleasant and charming, but carefully constructed.
She shook her head, deciding she would never understand the many different personalities of Matt Murdock, and turned her attention to the menu.
"What are you getting?" she asked him.
"I don't know. I can't tell what's on the menu."
"Why not? Can't use your superpowers in public?" she muttered, scanning the list for something that wasn't fried.
"It's laminated," Matt said, holding the menu up. "I can't feel the ink."
Sarah paused her search and looked up at him. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but she couldn't help letting a short laugh escape her lips at the sight of Matt brandishing the menu with an mildly annoyed look on his face. It seemed absurd that he could take out entire groups of armed men with no problem, but he couldn't read a menu in a cheap diner.
"What?" Matt asked, raising his eyebrows at her.
"Nothing," she said, trying to school her face into a sober expression. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I just hadn't thought of that. Matt Murdock's one true nemesis: lamination."
Matt sent her a glare from behind his dark glasses, though the corner of his mouth curved up almost imperceptibly. The sight only made her laugh more, covering her mouth to try and stifle the sound. It was the kind of laughter that only ever came to her from extreme tiredness, and she had always had difficulty controlling it.
Gracie the waitress appeared next to them with a bright smile, which wavered slightly as she looked from Sarah to Matt and the differences in their demeanors.
"I was going to see if you have any questions, but if you…need a minute?" she said uncertainly.
"She might need another minute to decide," Matt informed the waitress casually, nodding in Sarah's direction, before adopting a serious tone. "She's been busy laughing at me for not being able to read the menu."
The waitress gave Sarah a scandalized look, and Sarah stopped laughing abruptly.
"What? No, that's not what—" she protested, but the waitress had already turned her attention back to Matt with a sympathetic smile.
"I'll go see if we carry Braille menus. I'm so sorry about that."
She cast Sarah one more disappointed look before walking away, leaving Matt with a slight smirk playing across his face as she turned her back.
"That was rude," Sarah told him.
"I should say so. Making fun of a blind person in public."
Sarah glanced over at the counter, where she could see that the redhead was very obviously recapping what had just happened to some of her coworkers, shaking her head in disapproval. Turning her attention back to Matt, Sarah shot him a dirty look that she could only hope he picked up on.
"Our waitress thinks I'm the devil now," she whispered resentfully.
"Well, she has that one backwards, doesn't she?" he said with a wicked grin that looked much more at home on him than the broad, practiced smile he'd given the waitress earlier.
"I'm starting to regret being seen in public with you," she informed him.
Matt just laughed, and Sarah smiled back, feeling more normal than she had in days. This was almost—almost—something that ordinary people did: go to dinner, have awkward exchanges with the waitress. It felt like something that might have happened in her old life. She wasn't sure if her persistent headache was finally starting to fade, or if she was just getting better at ignoring it, but the tension in her neck felt a little looser than it had in a while.
Her need to hang onto that feeling of normalcy was probably why she carefully avoided steering the conversation towards anything regarding Orion or Ronan, and to her relief Matt didn't bring them up either. She held off on mentioning her conversation with Jason earlier that day; she wanted to wait until she had some answers, and right now all she had were more questions.
After a few minutes, Gracie the waitress reappeared.
"So, I checked with my manager and unfortunately it looks like we don't carry any menus in Braille," she told Matt apologetically. "But I'd be happy to go through it with you if you have an idea of what you want?"
She leaned over Matt's shoulder, letting her long hair brush against his chest as she discussed possible menu selections with him.
Sarah watched the flirtatious exchange in fascination. As the waitress walked away, glancing back over her shoulder at Matt, Sarah leaned back and tilted her head speculatively.
"Huh."
"What?"
"Nothing," she said innocently, but upon Matt's skeptical expression she relented, leaning forward over the table as she explained. "The first night I met Foggy, he told me that you were usually a bit hit with the ladies."
Now it was Matt's eyebrows that went up. "Did he?"
"Uh huh. And obviously I thought he was…you know…insane."
"Obviously."
"But it turns out you do know how to be charming. It's very weird to see."
"I'll never understand how the two of you found the time to cover so many topics while trying to stop me from bleeding to death."
She shrugged, stirring the straw around in her Coke. "We're multitaskers. Plus, you were the only thing we had in common."
Their food arrived quickly, and in between regular check-ins from Gracie the waitress—who really was very sweet, if a bit overly-attentive—the conversation flowed shockingly well. Sarah hadn't really given much thought to inviting Matt to dinner, beyond her irrational trepidation of being alone and her desire to be out of her apartment. It hadn't really occurred to her that she might have fun talking to the vigilante about non-crime related subjects, but to her surprise that was what was happening.
"—but Greg is British, and when he gets flustered he gets, like, really British. So when he's around Lauren's mom—who is awful—he gets really nervous, and just starts speaking in these weird British idioms, which just makes Lauren's mom angrier because she thinks he's making fun of her using slang she doesn't get."
As Matt laughed, Sarah checked the time and realized they had been there for a while. She tried not to think about the fact that she would have to go home to her empty apartment soon and deadbolt herself in.
"I'll be right back," she told Matt, slipping out of the booth to go use the restroom.
As she was washing her hands, Sarah got a good look at herself in the mirror and winced. Maybe it was just the direct comparison between her and the beautiful waitress, but she felt as though she looked especially rough today. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her face was pale with exhaustion. But, she reminded herself, at least her skin was no longer covered in cuts and bruises.
She pushed the bathroom door open and turned the corner, then stopped abruptly.
Sitting in her place on the other side of the table from Matt was Ronan, his smug sneer and beady eyes instantly recognizable. The sight hit her hard, like a punch to the stomach.
She blinked a few times to make sure she was seeing things correctly. But there was no mistaking it. He was sitting right there, speaking with Matt. And judging from the look on the vigilante's face, he was well aware of who he was talking to.
As Sarah watched Ronan's lips move, his eyes flicked automatically in her direction, as though he had been checking the doorway for her to reenter. When his gaze locked with hers, a fervent grin lit up his face. Her stomach turned at how genuinely gleeful he seemed to see her.
"Sarah," Ronan greeted her lazily, as though he hadn't been obsessively stalking her for weeks. He only had to raise his voice slightly for it to carry the fifteen feet or so between them. "Long time no see."
Sarah slowly approached the table, her foot moving of their own accord.
"What do you want?" she heard herself ask as she came to a stop a few feet away. Up closer, she could see a nasty scar on his face from where she had gotten him with the stapler.
"I just wanted to say hello. I happened to see you sitting in here and thought I'd stop by and introduce myself to your friend," he said casually.
Sarah's eyes flicked to Matt and then back to Ronan, her heart pounding in her chest.
"Great. You've said hello, now leave." Sarah tried to sound firm, but her voice shook slightly.
"Why? We were having a good chat. I was telling him about how you and I used to work together, and how well we got along."
There was a sickening suggestive tone to his voice, and Sarah chewed her tongue angrily to stop herself from responding and giving him more fuel to flame whatever love-hate thing he seemed to have going on for her. Matt was oddly silent, and Sarah was struck with the heart-sinking realization that he couldn't do much of anything in this situation. She hadn't invited Daredevil to dinner, she had invited Matt Murdock, and as far as everyone in the diner knew, he was an ordinary blind man. There was little he could do without blowing his cover.
Ronan's beady eyes darted from Sarah to Matt, and he smirked.
"I know who you are."
Sarah's stomach dropped in the few seconds before Ronan continued.
"You're that blind lawyer the police were talking about. One of the ones Sarah hired to chase the cops away. I was wondering how she could possibly afford to hire a lawyer, but…I think I can take a good guess at how she's paying for your services." Ronan paused, a mock thoughtful look on his face. "Aren't there two of you on the lawyer team, though? Do you just split who gets her which nights?"
From the way Matt's fingers twitched around his cane, Sarah could tell he was itching to place them around Ronan's throat. But instead, he just kept his face carefully arranged into a neutral expression that was somehow still surprisingly intimidating with the dark glasses.
"You need to leave now," he said, in a tone that would make many sane people back off. Of course, it seemed to have the opposite effect on Ronan.
"Ooh, you're a little bossy. Good. She likes authority figures." Ronan leaned in to stage whisper to Matt, "It's a daddy issue thing."
Matt opened his mouth to reply, but Ronan was already speaking to Sarah once more.
"You know, I've really missed that deer-in-the-headlights look of yours. Pictures just don't quite do justice to it."
Sarah glared at him, anger shooting through her at the reminder that he had been in her apartment and touched her things. "Stay away from me, Ronan."
His taunting smile abruptly turned hard. "Don't be rude, Sarah."
Ronan suddenly slid out of the booth to stand up, and in a flash Matt did the same, angling himself so that he was just slightly in front of Sarah. His posture was misleadingly relaxed: one hand lightly holding his cane and the other casually slipped into the pocket of his pants. Sarah was willing to bet was she only person in the diner who could see the coiled tension below the surface of his skin. Ronan surely couldn't.
Sarah could see Ronan sizing Matt up, clearly weighing Matt's height and build against the fact that he was blind. She didn't like the predatory look in his eyes as he looked the lawyer up and down. Of course, he had no way of knowing that the man standing in front of him was the same one who had broken his arm and generally beaten the shit out of him in Orion months ago. If he had, Sarah was willing to bet that he wouldn't be wearing the gleeful sneer that currently graced his face.
To her intense relief, Ronan seemed to decide that a confrontation with Matt wasn't worth it. It made sense; Ronan only ever picked fights that he was one hundred percent sure he would win, meaning either the other person had to be much smaller, or Ronan had to be much more heavily armed. A lack of sight didn't appear to be enough of a handicap for the man to be interested.
"Down, boy. I was just getting up to leave. It was nice meeting you, though. I'm sure I'll run into you around somewhere," Ronan said, lazily backing away from the table.
Matt's smile at Ronan's words was almost feral.
"I'm sure you will."
Ronan's grin slipped just slightly, as though some part of him could sense the danger standing in front of him. He gave Sarah one last purposeful look up and down, and then he was out the door, disappearing into the crowd outside.
The diner suddenly felt hot and claustrophobic, as though the number people inside had multiplied by ten. She hadn't realized that actually seeing Ronan again—for the first time since he had attacked her—would affect her so badly, but it was fully hitting her now. The tight feeling building up in her chest wasn't as bad as what she'd felt in the police station, but it was rapidly approaching it.
Through the haze Sarah felt a hand on her arm, and she flinched at the contact. She turned her head slightly and saw that Matt had a dark, concerned look on his face.
"Let's get you outside."
"What?"
She was vaguely aware of Matt fishing some money out of his wallet and tossing it on the table before he took her by the crook of her arm and gently steered her towards the side door of the restaurant. No one seemed to bat an eye at the sight of a blind man leading her out of the diner—but he always did manage to make it look like he was the one being led.
They emerged not onto the crowded sidewalk but into a side alley separating the diner from the building next door.
Sarah looked down the alleyway at the sidewalk, distantly registering that Matt should be following Ronan and not standing next to her. "Y-you shouldn't stay here—you should go after Ronan—"
"Ronan went down into the subway across the street," Matt cut her off. "There's no way for me to follow him there without attracting a lot of attention. Besides, I'm not leaving you here alone."
She shook her head desperately, unable to accept the idea that Ronan had been so close and yet somehow managed to disappear again.
"No, we can't just—just let him go like that—"
"I said, I'm not leaving you," Matt repeated sharply.
The alley was nearly empty, save for a few waiters smoking cigarettes near the other end, but Sarah still felt like she was suffocating in a crowd somehow. She struggled to breathe in and out normally, determined not to let the panic in her chest wash over her fully like it had last time.
"I don't—I can't be here anymore," she whispered. Matt just nodded, seeming to understand what she meant.
"Come on," he said, and with a hand on the small of her back he guided her out of the alleyway and towards the sidewalk.
They didn't speak on the way to Matt's apartment, remaining in silence as he unlocked the front door and held the it open for her to go inside. Matt nodded towards the couch and Sarah shakily took a seat, resting her head in her hands as Matt disappeared into the kitchen. She could hear the sound of the tap running before his footsteps came closer to her once again.
He pressed a glass of water into her hands before crouching down in front of her, a frown creasing his brow. She quickly drank half the glass in one go, only now realizing how dry her mouth was. When she brought the glass back down between her knees, her hands were shaking badly, causing the water to slosh around. Matt put his hands over hers, steadying her grip on the glass, and waited wordlessly as she tried to calm down.
Unlike back at the police station, this time Sarah wavered at the edge of a full blown panic attack but didn't quite go over. It slowly became easier to inhale fully, and once her heart realized she wasn't in immediate danger it gradually stopped racing.
"You with me?" Matt asked her calmly as he picked up on the changes in her pulse and breathing.
"Yeah," she said with a faint nod, her face heating up slightly as she realized how much she had just fallen apart. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize."
She laughed harshly. "Why not? I'm an idiot and thought that I could actually go out and eat a—a meal in a diner for an hour like a normal person, and now look what happened."
"You have nothing to apologize for," Matt said bluntly, then his jaw ticked. "It was my fault that he was able to get that close to you. I should have been more focused on what was going on around us, but I was…" he faltered slightly, then shook his head with a shrug. "I just wasn't. So I'm sorry. That won't happen again."
Sarah didn't blame Matt for not picking up on Ronan's presence, but she also couldn't force herself to fully believe that something like that wouldn't happen again. In fact, it began to feel like a foregone conclusion that Ronan would succeed in getting to her after all. Her stomach twisted violently at the thought.
"Can I use your bathroom?" she asked, pulling her hands out of his and setting the glass on the side table.
"Yeah," Matt said, standing up again and nodding to the door next to his bedroom. "It's over there."
Sarah closed the bathroom door behind her and leaned over the sink, taking a deep breath. She clamped her eyes shut, but was only met with a barrage of unwanted images:
Ronan grabbing her by the hair and dragging her across the desk. Being slammed into the filing cabinet and the heavy blow of his hand against her face—once, twice, three times. Ronan's tongue in her mouth and the scent of stale cigarettes as he pinned her with his whole body, his hands tearing at her shirt, nails digging into her skin. His fingers closing around her throat. Blood pouring from his nose and the gash on his cheek and him staring at her with more hatred than she had ever seen someone direct her way.
She snapped her eyes open once more, catching sight of her pale face in the mirror. Her knuckles were visibly white as she gripped the edge of the counter.
"This is dumb," she whispered fiercely to her reflection. "Stop being a child."
Feeling no less stupid for talking to herself in the mirror, she shook her head ruefully and opened the bathroom door to step back out into the living room.
Matt was in the kitchen, pouring another glass of water for himself. Something about the way he carefully kept his attention on the running water instead of her made her think he'd probably heard her heartbeat skyrocket once again in the other room.
Sarah heard her phone chirp inside her purse, alerting her to an unread text message. Her stomach dropped as she slowly leaned down reached into the bag to pull it out. She already knew who it would be from.
Interesting choice of guard dog, the text read. Couldn't find anyone at Orion who still thought sleeping with you was worth the trouble? It's okay. The game is more fun with a little competition.
Sarah's skin crawled as she read the text. It wasn't even particularly graphic—not compared to some of the inappropriate comments he had made to her since she began working for him—but it confirmed that his obsession was now at least partially fixated on Matt. In Ronan's twisted mind, anyone he saw her with had to be after the same thing he was; there was no way anyone would be on her side unless they were getting exactly what Ronan wanted in return.
"What's he saying?" Matt's voice came from beside her. She hadn't even heard him approach over the pounding of blood in her ears.
She glanced up at him, slightly reluctant to answer. "He's talking about you."
Matt raised his eyebrows. "Yeah? What about me?"
"Just the same thing he says about everyone he sees me with," she said quietly with a shrug. "Since I'm not sleeping with him, he imagines that I'm sleeping with everyone else. I think…I think seeing me with you really made him angry."
Sarah didn't mean to let the nervousness slip in her voice, but it did, causing her voice to break a little on the last word. She hated that someone as clearly unhinged as Ronan could affect her like that; she didn't want to think of her actions in terms of what would set off his obsession even more.
Matt's expression was a strange mixture of concern and barely contained anger; more importantly, it didn't hold any of the pity she so dreaded seeing there. All the same, she was still embarrassed by how strongly she had reacted to her encounter in the diner.
"I'm sorry. Shit. This is so stupid. I didn't—I didn't think seeing him would affect me that badly. He didn't even touch me." Sarah slid her hands over her face tiredly as she breathed in deep, then muttered, "I wasn't always this pathetic."
For once, the barrier of her hands actually did muffle her voice so much that Matt couldn't understand her.
"What?"
She moved her hands away from her face, running them through her hair. "I said, I wasn't always this pathetic."
A flash of anger crossed Matt's face at her words, though she wasn't if it was directed at her or Ronan.
"You aren't pathetic. You were assaulted. I saw how badly you were hurt that night. He beat the shit out of you—he tried to rape you, Sarah." Matt's words hit her hard, and she physically flinched at hearing him so candidly phrase it in exactly the way she had been avoiding since it happened. He softened is tone a little at her reaction. "I know you don't like to talk about it. But pretending like it wasn't a big deal doesn't make it go away."
"I'm not pretending, I just—I can't make everything a big deal," she said desperately. "Th-there has to be some sort of hierarchy for all of these—these stupid, shitty things going on. I can't deal with Jason and whatever the hell he wants from me, a-and the police not doing their job, and my dad—" her voice waver dangerously, and she took a deep breath to steady it. "I can't waste time letting Ronan affect me like this when there are so many other things that could go so wrong so fast if I lose my focus."
As the words came out of her mouth, she started to realize how true they were. She was spending all of her time trying to defuse too many bombs at once, and one of them was bound to go off soon.
"Listen to me," Matt said, his voice quiet but firm. "I know there's a lot happening all at once. But if there's anything all of these people have in common it's that they underestimate you. You're the one who's going to come out on top of all this. I'll make sure of it. I promise. Okay?"
"Yeah," Sarah said, but she couldn't quite muster the energy to sound convinced.
Matt sighed at her doubtful tone, cocking his head in contemplation for a second. Then he his hand up between the two of them with his pinky extended. She looked down at it in surprise, and he raised an expectant eyebrow.
"Come on. This is your thing," he said calmly when she just stared at him, the corners of his mouth quirking up slightly. "I know you take these seriously."
Sarah laughed shakily and linked her pinky finger with his own. Inexplicably, that was what finally pushed her over the edge. Her throat closed up, and to her alarm she realized that her determined effort to get through the ordeal without crying was quickly crumbling. She covered her mouth with her free hand and squeezed her eyes closed, trying and failing to tamp it back down.
When Matt heard her breathing hitch, he tugged her forward and wrapped his arms around her tightly. Sarah slipped her arms around his waist, curling her fingers into the fabric of his shirt as she buried her face against his chest, desperately relieved to have anything to anchor her.
Sarah hadn't realized how long it had been since someone had really, properly hugged her—not the awkwardly loose hugs Lauren tried to give her from around her giant stomach, or the distant hugs she got from her father, who was already starting to recognize her less and less even as she hung onto him. But this was different: a source of comfort she hadn't felt in a long time, coming from one of the last people she would have expected.
"You're alright. You're alright. I'll keep you safe, I swear."
He repeated the promise over and over into her ear as she sobbed into the front of his shirt.
Sarah wasn't sure how long they remained that way—it felt like a long time but she knew it probably wasn't. But when she finally pulled away she felt significantly less hopeless than she had before. The wild crushing feeling that had been weighing down her chest had gradually lifted, leaving her too tired to even be self-conscious over her breakdown.
"I, um…I should probably go home soon," she said. The idea of being in her apartment still wasn't an appealing one, but the idea of sleep was. She was so focused on the thought of actually getting some sleep that she missed the way Matt frowned at her words.
"Sarah, listen—" he began, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by the sound of his phone vibrating on the counter, accompanied by a computerized female voice.
"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy."
Matt winced apologetically. "I have to take that. Foggy's been trying to find this paperwork that we badly need for a trial, and our deadline to file is in just a couple of hours…"
"Yeah, of—of course," Sarah said, gesturing towards the ringing phone. "Go deal with that. It's important."
"I'll be just a few minutes," he told her, grabbing the phone off the counter and heading towards his bedroom. "You and I have more to talk about."
Sarah nodded numbly as he disappeared into the bedroom. Then she made her way back over to the couch, dropping down onto the corner cushion and curling her feet underneath her. She leaned her elbow on the arm rest and propped her head up with her hand.
The exhaustion washed over her suddenly, taking her a bit by surprise. She closed her eyes, just to rest them for a minute while Matt was on the phone. The quiet murmur of his voice in the other room was last thing she was aware of, the words themselves becoming background noise before she slipped into a troubled sleep.