What they wouldn't do

by Lazydaily

matt and OC that works for Fisk. For TTS

32. Chapter 32

Matt's kiss with Sarah was far from the most romantic setting one could think of, though it was strangely fitting for the two of them.

He was still in his Daredevil costume, a layer of sweat and dirt clinging to his skin and dried blood lining the creases of his gloves. There was a large, deep bruise radiating pain across his thigh from where he'd caught a baseball bat earlier, and he was bleeding somewhere midway down his back. They were arguing on the rooftop of her father's building, and he had just given her a series of half-assed recycled excuses for the way he'd been acting. Explanations about isolation and duty—things that Stick had drilled into his head, words that didn't feel like his own even as he said them. The only truthful things he'd said so far were his confession that she was the only bright part of his nights—something he maybe should have made sure she knew before things got this complicated—and, of course, pointing out that he was solidly a part of the life that she rightfully wanted to leave behind.

And then she'd kissed him, caught him completely off guard in that way she somehow always managed to do. All those times he'd nearly kissed her and then held back, not wanting to step over that line and ruin things, and now she'd gone and blown past it herself. When it came down to it, he knew this probably was a bad decision, and he suspected she did, too. Crossing this line would just be piling another complication on top of the already dangerous and fragile situation they were caught in. He knew in the rational part of his brain that he shouldn't kiss her back, but that was so much harder to remember when she was hovering on tip toes in front of him, the warmth of her hand still splayed against his chest and the scent of her citrus shampoo saturating the heavy summer air around him.

Matt could feel her breath skating across his jaw as she waited uncertainly for what was probably only for a few seconds. He felt the tiny, nearly imperceptible shift as she started to pull away, and then before he knew what was happening his hand was on the back of her neck and he was kissing her, more roughly than he probably should have—but really, he shouldn't have been doing any of this, should he? That thought lingered somewhere in the back of his mind, vastly overshadowed by the distracting counterpoint that Sarah tasted like mint and green tea with a slight, sweet hint of honey.

His hand slid down to her waist, where the breeze drifted lazily between her skin and the thin fabric of her t-shirt, picking up all of the scents that he had grown so used to around her, but which were now a little darker and heightened by the heat that flushed through her skin.

Sarah's fingertips ghosted across his neck and jaw, her touch maddeningly light against his skin in contrast to the intensity with which she returned his kiss. Then she caught him off guard again, pressing herself closer to his chest and arching her back to seal the space between them. The last of his careful restraint dropped away, and he tightened his grip on her waist, his fingers curling into her lower back as he drew her closer to him hungrily so that her hips were flush against his own.

At some point, the normally overwhelming noise of the city had faded to a muted thrum, drowned out by both of their heartbeats hammering in his ears, so it was especially jarring when a police siren screamed by directly underneath them, breaking them both apart.

As soon as they pulled away from each other, a low panic hit him. He'd come here to tell her they needed to take a step back, that he needed time to figure out if Stick was right about them being bad for each other. And now he'd done the one thing that was going to make that even harder on both of them.

"I have to leave," he forced out unevenly. It was a cop out. He could hear the chatter on the radios in the police cars; they were headed towards a car accident, not anything he could help with. But he needed to extract himself from this situation, and he knew that was the easiest excuse, as shitty as it was.

The city was uncharacteristically quiet that night, offering Matt no opportunities for distraction from his own thoughts, so he soon gave up and made his way home. For obvious reasons, he found it difficult to fall asleep that night, his mind preoccupied with countless questions. But for all of the guilt and complexity that surrounded what had just happened, the main thing that stuck with him when he finally drifted off was the memory of Sarah pressed tightly against him, and the overwhelming feeling of rightness that had come along with it.

Matt woke very suddenly the next morning, and it took him a few frazzled seconds to piece together that there was someone banging on his front door. He stumbled out of bed, his muscles protesting at the much quicker rise than usual, and he tried to get a better feel of his surroundings as he made his way out of his bedroom. It wasn't until he was almost to the door that he picked up on Karen's perfume on the other side.

"Karen?" he asked. His voice was still scratchy from sleep, and laced with alarm. Why was she here pounding so frantically on his front door at…whatever time of the morning it was? He assumed it was early; it felt like he'd barely gotten any sleep. "What're you doing here?"

He stepped aside to let her in. As she brushed past him he picked up on a heavy layer of alcohol on her breath, and he recalled that she and Foggy had made plans to go out the night before. Had something happened? Why wasn't Foggy with her?

Karen's heels clicked against the hardwood as she marched straight down the hall and into his living room. Then she stopped and turned slowly in a circle, surveying his apartment.

"Karen, what's wrong?" he asked. "Are you hurt?"

She let out a shaky breath, turning to face him. He got the distinct impression that she was bracing herself for something.

"Do you keep it here? Or do you store it somewhere else?" she asked.

"…what?" he asked groggily. He wished he'd thought to grab his glasses from his nightstand, feeling suddenly exposed without them.

"The mask. The suit, the—the whole costume," Karen said. On the surface her voice was calm and insistent, but there was a shakiness underneath that seemed to reverberate through her whole body. "Do you keep it here?"

Matt's mind went blank. So many times he had thought about telling her and wondered how she would react if she found out on her own, but now that it had actually happened he was frozen.

"I…Karen…" Matt stammered. "I don't—"

"I swear to God, Matt, if you're about to say you don't know what I'm talking about I will scream."

"…I don't know what to say to you," he finished. It was lame and unhelpful, but it was honest, at least. "How—how did you find out?"

"Foggy."

The name crashed into him, knocking the wind out of his chest. Matt knew Foggy wasn't crazy about Daredevil—or about having to keep it a secret—but he had never thought he'd actually turn around and tell Karen. At least not without giving him some warning.

"Were you two ever going to tell me? Or was this going to stay a boys club secret forever?" Karen asked. The hurt that was starting to seep into her tone made Matt feel sick. It would hurt less if she was just angry at him, or disgusted—but he'd hurt her by keeping it a secret, and this was his reminder.

"It wasn't like that," he tried to explain. "Foggy found out by accident, it wasn't something that I chose to tell him and not you."

"But you did both make the choice to keep me in the dark."

"...no. I made that choice," he said. It was important that she got that distinction, that he did this and not Foggy. "Foggy wanted to tell you from the moment he found out, and I…I asked him not to. I'm so sorry, Karen."

Karen stepped closer to him. Her posture was tense, and her arms were crossed tightly in front of her, guarded and on edge.

"Are you really blind? Or is that just a cover for what you do?"

Matt had assumed she would ask that, but it stung all the same. He hated she would jump to the same conclusion as Foggy—that Matt had been playing a victim for all the time he knew them. He was a liar, yes. That much he couldn't exactly deny. And he'd obviously concealed the extent of his other senses. But to pretend to be blind as a cover, or to get sympathy from people? That was a different level of sociopathy that he hadn't quite reached.

"I am blind," he said. "Completely. No light perception."

"So how do you do it?"

"It's…complicated," he hedged.

"Then dumb it down for me," she said icily.

He turned away from her, putting a few steps between them and raking a hand through his hair as he decided where to start.

"I wasn't lying to you, that night we first met. When you stayed at my apartment," he said. He remembered sitting on his couch with her, both of them drenched from the rain as he tried to figure her out. "I did lose my eyesight in an accident when I was nine. And all of my other senses got stronger when I lost my sight."

"How much stronger?"

Matt hesitated. He didn't want to bring up the heartbeat thing yet—it understandably seemed to alarm people that he could hear something so intimate, and Karen was obviously already feeling violated right about now.

"A lot stronger. I can…smell if someone had coffee with their breakfast two days ago. Or hear if a baby is crying a few buildings down. I can feel when the temperature changes by a degree, or the electricity in the air when the street lights come on a night."

He was careful not to use any examples that pertained to Karen specifically, recalling how strongly Foggy had recoiled from him when he'd confessed just how much of everyone's lives and bodies he could read.

"You saved me that night," Karen said. He couldn't read her tone, which fell somewhere between betrayed and overwhelmed. "You followed me right from this apartment to mine."

Part of him was hopeful at that—he'd saved her, that had to count for something, some small step towards being forgiven—but he knew better.

"I heard you leave in the middle of the night," he said. "I just didn't want you to get hurt."

Karen laughed bitterly.

"No, Matt. You didn't want me to get injured. You don't give a damn if I get hurt."

"That's not true," he countered. "All I care about is that the people I love don't get hurt."

"Well, you know what hurts? Finding out that the two people closest to me don't trust me." Karen's voice wavered near the end of her sentence.

"Of course I trust you—" he began.

"Then why didn't you tell me?" she exclaimed. "You had so many opportunities—so many conversations where I looked like a fool talking about what a hero I thought Daredevil was, when he was sitting right next to me, lying to me every day."

"I thought the less you knew, and the more distance I put between you and that side of my life, the safer you would be—"

"Oh, don't give me that bullshit. This wasn't about protecting me. You don't seem to have a problem with Foggy knowing, or Sarah," she said. Matt started at the mention of her name, and as usual, Karen caught it. "She does know. Right? That's why she was so weird and secretive about knowing you. And why she didn't freak out about that cop attacking me."

Matt would have thought by now he'd stop being so surprised by Karen's unnerving tendency to figure these things out.

"She does know," he acknowledged. "But…again, it wasn't on purpose. She just figured it out."

"Right. Your friend who works at Orion just coincidentally figured out your identity. I—I talked to her about personal things, Matt," Karen said. If it was possible, she sounded even more stressed than she had a minute ago. "Who is she really?"

"She's…just Sarah," he said slowly.

"But she's involved in…whatever you're doing, isn't she?"

"For right now."

"You can't do that, Matt. Y-you can't just bring innocent people into whatever dangerous things you're doing. It gets them killed."

"I'm not going to let anything happen to Sarah."

"It's easy to say you won't let anything happen, to think that you're being careful, and then the next thing you know you're standing at a funeral wondering how you let this happen—"

Karen's voice broke off as she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

Matt paused, giving her a moment to get her breath back.

"…are you sure we're still talking about me and Sarah?" he asked softly.

"Yes," Karen said, but her heartbeat skipped. He knew she was probably thinking of Ben right now; he and Foggy had never quite been able to convince her that Ben's death wasn't her fault. But he didn't bring it up, or mention any other secrets Karen might be keeping to herself. Whatever she'd been carrying with her for months now, there was no way he could call her out on it right now without being a hypocrite.

He spoke as calmly as he could despite his pounding pulse, hoping to diffuse the situation. "I know this is a lot to process, and that you might not approve of what I'm doing—"

"I have no problem with what Daredevil is doing. I think I've made that clear. Hell, maybe more people should be fighting that hard," Karen said. "It's not Daredevil I'm pissed at, it's Matt Murdock."

Matt paused. What could he even say to argue that?

"I…can't blame you for that."

Karen shouldered her purse, which she had angrily tossed on the chair upon entering. "I'm going to go. I need to wrap my mind around all this."

Matt stood with his head bowed and his hands on his hips, listening to her walk away.

When she reached the front door, he called after her, "Karen. I…I really am sorry."

Karen's silence was telling.

"I wish I knew if you meant that," she said finally. Then there was the sound of the door shutting, and Matt was left still half-stunned in his living room. On the other side of his bedroom door, he heard his phone ringing.

"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy," the automated voice announced. Matt strode over to the phone and fumbled with the screen to answer it, but his hands were shaking and he couldn't get the screen to recognize his gesture. It went to voicemail.

"You have five missed calls from: Foggy Nelson," the voice informed him in her stilted tone. He must have slept right through the first four calls.

Matt resisted the urge to fling his phone at the wall in frustration, instead tossing it on the bed where it landed on the soft sheets with an muffled, unsatisfying thump. It was probably best that he wait a few minutes to cool down before calling Foggy back, so he left the phone there and went to take a shower, dread and anger still coursing through him.

Across town, Sarah woke up much more peacefully than Matt had. Her eyes opened before her alarm went off, and she had a full fifteen seconds of sleepy contentment before she remembered what had happened the night before.

Oh, goddammit.

She had kissed Matt. Of all the ways she could have responded to that conversation, she had chosen to kiss him. And worse still, he had very much kissed her back. If he'd pulled away, told her that he wasn't interested? She could have handled that. She knew he wasn't the type to hold it over her head, and they could have both just pretended like it hadn't happened.

But instead he'd responded in kind, kissing her with a bruising intensity that had left her lips swollen afterwards.

And then run off. Probably to avoid her for another, like an asshole.

Grumbling, she felt for her phone on her nightstand so she could text Lauren.

'Call me if you get a minute? I need to vent,' she typed out. She hit send, then as an afterthought she added, 'It's Leonard-related, so don't be judgy.'

Her phone rang roughly ten seconds after she sent the second text.

"I'm never judgy," Lauren greeted her. "How dare you?"

Sarah ignored her. "I wasn't sure if you'd be up this early."

"Oh, I don't sleep anymore. Sleep is a precious memory from my distant past," Lauren informed her matter-of-factly. "But right now Greg is giving Noah a bath, and I'm dying to talk about something to do with grown-ups. Because lately all I get to talk about is which diaper delivery services are a scam and which nursing techniques are best and I think. I might. Explode."

"Oh. Um…well, I don't know if this counts as grown-up. Think more…middle school drama?"

"I'll take it," Lauren said immediately. "What happened?"

Sarah stared at her ceiling, figuring she'd jump right into it. "I kissed him. Up on my dad's roof."

"Why do you sound so miserable about it?" Lauren asked. Then she inhaled sharply. "Oh, my god, you pushed him off the roof."

"What? No," Sarah said, squeezing her eyes closed. The last thing she need right now was to be reminded of her horribly embarrassing date with Todd.

"Oh. Okay, good. Sorry. So, you kissed him, and then…"

"He ran away."

"What?"

"He just…backflipped off the roof and went running off. He acted like he was chasing down some sirens, but I think he just wanted to leave."

"What?" Lauren said again, even more incredulously this time. "Who runs away after a kiss? Unless it was really bad. And you're not a bad kisser. I've kissed you. You're a great kisser."

"I know," Sarah said indignantly. "I'm not worried about that. The kiss itself was…" Her mind flashed to Matt's hands on her waist and in her hair, insistently pulling her closer to him. She cleared her throat "…it—it was fine. I'm more worried that I crossed a line and now he's going to avoid me even more than he already was."

"He's been avoiding you?"

It occurred to Sarah that she hadn't actually filled Lauren in on what had been going on. She tried explaining it, leaving the part about Stick and where they had run into him deliberately vague and focusing instead on what he had said to her on the roof.

When she was done, there was ominous silence on the other end of the line.

"So…just to recap: Dude wouldn't talk to you for like a week, and then showed up just to tell you that you're a big problem because he cares about you too much?" Lauren said, sounding about as far from impressed as one could get. "And then you responded by…kissing him? Sarah."

Sarah winced. Lauren was only voicing the very same things Sarah had just been so irritated about, but it sounded worse coming from her. "Well, when you put it like that it sounds…"

"Like he's being confusing and manipulative?"

"You said you wouldn't be judgy," she reminded Lauren.

"Well, obviously I lied. I'm constantly judging. You know this."

"Alright, I'll give you confusing," Sarah conceded. She supposed 'confusing' was part of the package when you got involved with an affection-starved vigilante with anger problems. "But as for the other part…I think it's more that he's being manipulated by this old mentor of his, and it's just sort of…just getting passed along to me. I'm worried about him. I mean, I'm pissed at him for being an idiot, but I'm also worried. It's…it's a weird combination."

"You are so much more understanding than I would be in your shoes."

"You should have seen him when this guy showed up, Lauren," Sarah insisted. "It was like he was freaking out and shutting down simultaneously."

"Oh, good," Lauren said. "It's great to hear that the vigilante my best friend is kissing has become more unstable."

"Lauren."

"Okay, sorry. It sounds to me like he's freaking out because he already thinks you're going to do the sane thing and leave him in the dust at some point, and now someone else is there reinforcing that idea. The liability thing seems like as lame an excuse as any to push you away first."

"I'm not going to leave him in the dust, though."

"Well, I know that. And you know that. Does he know that?"

"Yeah," Sarah said uncertainly. "He knows."

"Because you've told him?"

"…no." She had at one point promised him she wouldn't bail, but then she'd immediately broken that promise. And she'd never specified that it extended to beyond their shared Orion goal. "But, I mean, he…knows."

"Because he's psychic?" Lauren asked sarcastically. Then she paused. "Wait, is he—"

"He's not psychic."

"Oh, thank God. Listen, I don't pretend to understand what your dynamic is with him. But I do know that you suck at communicating."

"Hey," Sarah said, mildly offended. "I…don't," she countered lamely.

"You do. You keep all of your feelings close to the chest and expect other people to just figure them out. And if I had to take a wild guess—like, really go out on a limb and assume something—I don't think the freaking Devil of Hell's Kitchen is excellent at talking about his feelings either. So if you're going to go around kissing the guy, maybe you should use your words to talk to him first."

Sarah was even more annoyed when she realized that Lauren was probably right.

"Yeah. I guess—" Sarah was suddenly interrupted by a loud, piercing beeping sound. It took her a moment to realize that it was the smoke alarm in the kitchen going off. "Shit. I gotta go."

She hung up before Lauren could reply, scrambling out of bed and whipping her door open. To her relief, the hallway was not full of smoke like she'd been expecting. But there was a definite haze in the air, and it got a little thicker as she got closer to the kitchen. She spotted the culprit as soon as she entered the room: an unidentifiable object smoldering in the toaster oven.

Sarah unplugged the toaster oven and opened the kitchen window, then grabbed a dish towel and waved it under the smoke alarm to clear the air. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to have any effect on the ear piercing sound coming from the device. With a frustrated groan, she climbed up onto the kitchen counter, kneeling there as she reached up and fiddled with the buttons on the alarm until it went silent.

She heard the shuffle of her dad's slippers on the linoleum as he came into the kitchen. It occurred to her how much she hated that sound; her dad had always been sure-footed, and she'd always been able to recognize the sound of his heavy footsteps growing up. Now it was like he could barely lift each foot to get through the day.

"What's going on?" he asked her. "Is something on fire?"

"Uh…I don't know," she said. "Did you put something in the toaster oven?"

"I…think put in a few leftover slices of pizza," he said, sounding uncertain. "But it was just a moment ago."

Sarah glanced at the smoldering mess in the toaster oven. The inside of the door and all of the walls were charred, and the lump in the center wasn't even identifiable as pizza. There was no way he'd put it in there just a few minutes ago.

"Okay," she said, alarmed that he had set a fire and it was only by chance that he hadn't been alone. She opened the door to the fridge and looked inside. "Okay, well maybe let's have cereal or something instead? I'll take the toaster oven and get rid of it for you—"

"I know how to use a damn toaster," he snapped. "I'm not a child."

Sarah stared at him, still taken aback by his occasional—but steadily more frequent—emotional outbursts, which were so unlike the real him.

"I know," she said softly. "But this one's all burnt out now."

"If you're taking that one, I'll buy a new one," he said resolutely. Something about the situation had set him off, and he had a determined air to him as he left the kitchen.

"What? I don't know if that's a good idea," Sarah began, before she heard the sound of the front door opening. With a sinking sensation, she realized he literally meant he was going to buy one right now. She slammed the refrigerator door shut and hurried after him. "Wait, Dad, you can't—"

"I'm going to the store and I'm buying a new toaster oven," Mitch repeated. He was already making his way down the front steps.

Biting back a sigh, Sarah grabbed Mitch's house keys and her wallet from the side table next to the door and followed him, quickly locking the door behind her. She was grateful that at least he no longer had his own car keys.

"Do you want me to drive you?" she asked.

"Nope. Fresh air is good for the soul."

"…okay," she said, resigned to going with him.

So they walked down the sidewalk together, Sarah in her stupid martini pajamas and cheap flip flops, with her hair still bedraggled; Mitch in his sweatpants and tattered Knicks sweatshirt with his slippers scuffing on the pavement. They drew the occasional funny look from people they passed by. Sarah glared at each one until they looked away. This was New York City, she knew this wasn't the weirdest thing these people had seen this week.

After about ten minutes, her dad's determined pace slowed to something more uncertain, and he paused at a small intersection for a long time. She watched him, fairly certain he had forgotten when they were out here. Finally she touched his arm, drawing his attention back to her.

"Do you want to go home now?" she asked him gently.

He gave her a guarded, speculative look. "You know where I live? Have you been there?"

Sarah's heart twisted, and for a moment she honestly didn't know if she had it in her to answer.

"Yeah," she said, offering him a tight smile. "I, um…I've been there."

After a moment's hesitation, Mitch nodded. "Alright, then."

As they slowly made there way home, Sarah couldn't shake the feeling that she was walking next to a stranger, and she wondered if her father felt the same way.

The second round of Matt's fights that weekend began a few hours later, with Foggy standing in the center of Matt's living room while Matt paced restlessly around the space.

"What the hell happened, Foggy?" Matt demanded. He kept his voice low, not wanting to let his anger get the best of him. And in truth, he was only about thirty percent angry at Foggy—the other seventy percent was reserved for being angry at himself—so shouting wouldn't make him feel any better.

"We were drunk. Really, really drunk. And there was some…miscommunication," Foggy said. It sounded like he was choosing his words carefully. "I thought she had already figured it out. I'm sorry, Matt."

"A miscomm—what kind of miscommunication could possibly lead to that?" Matt exclaimed.

"One of absurd sitcom proportions, believe me. One second she was just asking about you and Sarah—" Matt tilted his head sharply at that. Why did Sarah keep coming up in all this? She and Karen had barely even met. "—and the next thing I know I've just said one wrong thing and she's latched onto it and is firing questions at me and…it got out of control. She's smart. She figured it out pretty fast once the suspicion was there."

"Goddammit," Matt muttered, continuing to restlessly move around the room with his hands on his hips.

"I tried to call you and warn you."

Matt scoffed. "So that I could lock the door and not let her in? It wouldn't chance the fact that she knows."

Foggy's shoulders tensed defensively. "I get that you're pissed, Matt, but you can't pretend like this is all my fault. You're the one who made the choice to go fight crime in a ninja costume and keep it a secret from your friends."

A sharp jab of guilt went through him, accompanied by a healthy dose of frustration. How many times did they have to go through this same argument?

"I thought that we had moved past that," Matt said slowly, still struggling to stay calm. "You said you were okay with what I do."

"I am. I was. I…it's not that easy. It's not the kind of thing I can just make a one-time decision to be okay with and that's it. I have to keep deciding to be okay with it, over and over again," Foggy said, suddenly sounding very tired. "And some days that's easier than others. But today it's damn near impossible."

"Well, Karen doesn't seem to be crazy about it either, so you two can agree on that."

"Sure, if she starts speaking to me again at some point."

Matt stopped pacing, pausing next to the staircase and turning his head towards Foggy.

"…what do you mean?" Matt said, faltering.

"You can't really be surprised that she's not talking to me. In case you've forgotten, I had to keep your secret from her, too. And she's really not happy about it, so best case scenario is she'll break up with me. Or maybe she already has broken up with me. I can't quite tell by the deafening silence whenever I try to call her. And worst case scenario is she'll decide to have us both disbarred and tossed in prison. But hey, at least maybe we'll get to be roommates again," he said bitterly.

Matt hesitated. Now that Foggy had brought up the subject, he had to ask. "You don't really think she'd tell anyone?"

"You have to be kidding me. That's the first question on your mind?"

"If she told anyone she wouldn't just be putting us in danger, she'd be endangering herself as well," Matt insisted.

"And I'm sure she knows that. You think that your friends don't understand the consequences of your decisions, but we do," Foggy said. He tiredly rubbed his hand over his face. "Maybe better than you do."

Matt had been so carefully trying to keep a lid on his temper. He took a few deep breaths, but it wasn't helping. Of course he understood the consequences—did Foggy really think he didn't spend half his time trying to make sure none of what he did would ever blow back onto the people he loved? But despite all of that planning and worrying, they had all gotten hurt anyway.

"Goddammit," he swore again, pinching the bridge of his nose. How had he let this happen? How had he somehow ruined not just his friendship with Karen, but Foggy and Karen's relationship as well?

Rage and helplessness coursed through him, aimed at Stick and at himself and at this whole situation he'd put himself in, which was surely going to end with him losing the few people he had kept in his life. Impulsively, he lashed out, forgetting for just a split second where he was and who he was with as he sent his fist sailing into the railing of the stairs next to him. The banister was made of cheaper wood than he'd realized, and the force of the punch sent splinters of it flying off with a loud snap.

The pain of the wood cutting deep into his hand provided an instant, illogical rush of relief—if only for a second before what he'd just done caught up with him. He heard Foggy's heartbeat pick up in alarm across the room. With a sinking sensation he realized that he'd picked the very worst moment to slip up and let Foggy witness a tiny glimpse of the devil, that side of Matt that his friend wasn't ever supposed to have to deal with.

Matt exhaled jaggedly, shame flooding through him.

"I'm sorry," he said immediately. "Foggy, I didn't—"

"Save it. If you're going to start punching things then this conversation isn't going anywhere."

"No, I wasn't—" Matt tried, but Foggy was already walking away.

"I'm not trying to have this argument with your Mr. Hyde persona, Matt," Foggy cut him off. It was a small relief that he sounded angry rather than afraid. "I'll bring my work home and stay away from the office for a few days. We have a ton of cases to deal with, in case you haven't noticed. And I can't focus on helping our clients if I'm trying to deal with you, too."

"No, don't…don't do that," Matt said. He suddenly felt very exhausted. "I'll work from home for a week, or—or more, if you need. You stay at the office. Karen too, if she wants to be there. You two can…have some space to work things out without me in the way."

Foggy was quiet for a long moment.

"Yeah," he agreed finally, and Matt winced internally. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea."

Then he left even quicker than Karen had, slamming the door behind him before Matt could say anything else, leaving him standing there like an idiot with his now-throbbing hand dripping blood all over the floor.

Matt stood very still for several minutes, getting his breathing under control. Then very slowly, he walked over to the closet where his combat outfit was hidden and popped the trunk open. He used the hand that wasn't bleeding to dig under the black shirt and pants, feeling around until his fingers closed around a flip phone—a little larger than his own burner, with scratches from previous use. He knew there was only one number saved in it: Stick's.

He weighed it in his hand for a moment, debating. He was itching for a chance to distract himself from everything going on in his life right now, anything to focus on besides the messes he'd created with every person that mattered to him. Stick had given him the phone and told him to call once he was ready to put some distance between himself and the people in his life. Which he wasn't, but his friends had made it clear that Stick had been right: his presence in their lives was a detriment, ruining not just his relationships with them but their relationships with each other.

That still left one person. Sarah flashed through his mind for a moment, but what he'd said the other night still stood. She had a better life waiting for her, and he would only bring disaster to it.

He flipped the phone open and hit the call button.

The next day was Sunday, and Sarah needed a distraction from all the worries chasing each other around in her thoughts: her dad and his declining heath; Matt and his infuriating complications; Jason and Vanessa and McDermott's mother and a dozen other things all fighting for a place at the front of the line. She was just grumbling to herself about no longer being able to fall back on alcohol when it occurred to her that she had another option open to her now, which she hadn't had for a long time: the piano.

After such a long time of not playing, Sarah missed how quickly and wonderfully practicing the piano could pull all of the thoughts from her mind and store them away where they couldn't bother her, at least for a while. She was able to focus all of her attention on the repetition of the piece she was working on, playing small snippets again and again until she figured them out. There was one song in particular that Allison had requested on her list that Sarah suspected would prove particularly frustrating, and that worked perfectly for what she needed.

She opened her desk drawer and retrieved the folder full of sheet music she had stored there, then checked the time. Father Lantom had promised that it was fine for her to practice while there were services going on, and that the sound of the piano wouldn't travel from the music room to the chapel, but it still made Sarah nervous, having not quite gotten past the feeling of intruding somewhere she didn't belong. But it was late enough in the morning that early service should be about to end, and she'd be sneaking in through the back door anyway, so she hopefully wouldn't be disturbing anyone.

So she grabbed her purse and her keys, patting the outside pocket of her bag to make sure she had her pepper spray, and left for the church.

Matt had heard the piano music as soon as he got within a block of the church.

It was late on Sunday morning, a good bit after the early morning Mass had finished but well before the afternoon one began. Ideally, Father Lantom would have preferred that Matt come to one or the other. And Matt tried, but more often he ended up feeling most welcome in the church when it was empty of other parishioners. It seemed as though Sarah had had the same idea, and the sound of her practicing floated through the walls of the church. She was working through some song a section at a time, and the sound of it was repetitive but far from unpleasant.

He'd sat near the back, not wanting to disturb the two other people who were also there by themselves, murmuring prayers that Matt carefully blocked out. Father Lantom had found him soon after, and they'd had exactly the conversation Matt had expected: he told the priest about how he'd ruined things for his friends, how he was afraid of ruining things for Sarah the same way. And in return, Lantom had advised him yet again that cutting out the people around him would do everyone more harm than good. It was what Matt had figured he would say—and something he had told him in past conversations as well—but he still couldn't quite accept it. For all his wisdom, Father Lantom could only advise what he thought was morally right for Matt, not what was logically best for Sarah's safety or Foggy's career or Karen's trust.

They sat together in silence for a while. It wasn't unusual for them, and Matt liked that the Father didn't always feel the need to fill the silences. Eventually, Father Lantom excused himself to go work on writing his service for the next day.

"I'll stay here for a few more minutes," Matt said.

"Of course," Father Lantom said. "I hope to see you back here again soon, Matthew. Perhaps with a little less weight on your shoulders."

Once he was alone (it seemed the two other parishioners had left while he and Father Lantom were talking) Matt sat in the pew, trying to gather his thoughts. But it was difficult when he could still hear distant piano music through the walls, and—if he listened more closely—the occasional mumbling about some note or section.

Sarah must have been practicing for a while before he got there, because it was only a few minutes after Father Lantom left him that he heard her stop playing and begin gathering her things. Then he heard Father Lantom's voice as the two of them crossed paths in the hallway.

"Good morning," Father Lantom greeted Sarah. "Finishing up?"

He heard her hum affirmatively. "After a while it starts to get difficult to hear where you're improving and where your ear has just gotten used to the mistakes you're making, so…I think I'm done for the day."

"Is everything working out for you? Is there anything you need in there?"

"Oh, no, it's perfect. Thanks again for letting me use it. I'm really lucky Matt found me a place," she said. As soon as she said his name, Matt had a feeling Father Lantom was going to send her out here to run into him.

Sure enough, he heard the priest reply, "You know, I actually just finished talking with Matthew. He's probably still out there if you'd like to catch up to him."

He supposed he had time to get up and leave, but they had to have this conversation at some point. And besides, he couldn't pretend that he didn't want to see her, even if the encounter was probably going to be unpleasant.

"Oh," he heard Sarah say in surprise. Maybe she would be the one to avoid him, now that he thought about it. "Actually, I have been meaning to talk to him. Um, thanks,"

A few moments later the side door to the chapel opened. Matt tilted his head, listening to the tentative approach of Sarah's footsteps echoing around the empty church as she drew nearer, coming to a stop in the aisle at the end of his pew. Her heartbeat was light and nervous.

"Hey," he greeted her.

"Hi." He heard her hair being swept out of her face and over her shoulder, the shifting of her weight from one foot to the other. "Your priest told me you were out here. I was just practicing."

Matt cracked a small smile and nodded. "I could hear you."

He felt her attention catch on him a little more; even after countless instances of him hearing her from far away, she still always seemed surprised. She shook her head.

"If I had known I was providing a soundtrack for your confessional, I'd have played something more dramatic," she told him.

Her voice was light, but he could feel her studying him, and the tension in her muscles radiated concern. He was very aware that although he couldn't see it himself, he more than likely looked wrecked, with his glasses never seeming to quite fully obscure his dark undereye circles from others and his posture slumped exhaustedly in the pew, his hands looped around his cane, which sat between his knees.

"It wasn't officially confession," he said. He slid down on the pew to make space for her, and she slipped in, resting her bag on the floor next to her feet. "Just a conversation. I had a rough weekend. Coming here usually helps me figure things out."

She started to say something, then turned her head more sharply towards him as her attention was diverted.

"What did you do to your hand?" she asked. She reached out to touch it, faltered midway, and dropped it to her side again. "It…looks like it hurt," she said hesitantly.

Matt had forgotten about the open skin that split across his knuckles. He'd gotten used to the protection that his thick gloves offered, and punching the banister with his bare hand had left it ridiculously swollen and raw.

"It was supposed to," he said truthfully, then carefully shifted his hands on his cane so that his knuckles were less visible.

Sarah was less than amused by the dark humor.

"Right. Um…so, not to make everything about myself, but I really hope all this…Catholic sadness isn't because of, you know…me," she said falteringly.

Had he been in a better mood, Matt would have laughed at her awkward broaching of the subject.

"It's not," he said. Sarah's hum in response was heavy with skepticism, so he offered her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, although it faded after a second. He hadn't really been planning to tell her, at least not while they had their own troubles to worry about. But he didn't want her thinking he was this miserable because of her, and what could it hurt to let her know what was going on? "It's really not you, Sarah. I swear. It's just that…well, Karen found out. About what I do. That's all."

Sarah turned her head sharply to look at him.

"What? Holy shit," she said. Matt raised his eyebrows at her with a small smirk. "Sorry," she whispered guiltily, craning her neck to glance up at the ceiling of the church.

"This place has heard worse," he said with a shrug.

"How did she take it?"

"Well, she didn't have me arrested or disbarred, so…it could have gone worse. But she's understandably upset about being kept in the dark. And she's angry with Foggy for being a part of that. So Foggy's mad at me for asking him to lie for me."

When he said it out loud, it all sounded very childish. He'd lied to his friends and now everyone was mad and no one was talking to each other.

"I'm sorry," Sarah said quietly.

Matt shook his head. "It's no one's fault but my own."

He heard her breathing skip as she started to say something and then swallowed her own words, settling for an unhappy hum instead. He would have bet a good amount of money that she had been about to bring up her suspicions about Karen again, and he was glad she didn't. He didn't want to get into that subject with her again right now, not with so much else going on.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'll be working from home for a while," he said. "Steering clear of the office to give them space to…figure things out."

"That seems like a good idea. Give them some time, then see where you stand with them."

Matt was silent for a moment, letting her words sink in. She was being ridiculously kind to listen to his problems when they had so many of their own going on, caused almost exclusively by him. He knew she hadn't sat down next to him to talk about Foggy and Karen. He leaned back against the pew next to her, bracing himself mentally for the talk he knew they had to have. She'd left a careful amount of space between the two of them when she sat down, but he could still feel the warmth of her radiating towards him.

"And what about you?" he asked quietly. "Where do I stand with you?"

He didn't get an answer from her right away. She breathed in, and he could tell from the slight movement of her head that she was letting her eyes travel around the church. Her fingers were idly tracing the grain of the wood on the pew between them, and he focused on the sound of them while he waited for her to gather her thoughts.

Finally she let out a long exhale, the exhausted and exasperated sound serving as answer enough.

The corners of Matt's mouth curled into a wry, unsurprised grin.

"That's pretty much what I figured," he said.

"I don't know, I'm mad at you, I guess? You ignored me for a week and only showed up to tell me how much of a liability I am, so…I'm mostly just kind of mad at you," she said. Interestingly, she sounded more tired and uncertain than she did angry. "And I realize that maybe kissing you wasn't the most obvious way of expressing that, but to be clear, I'm definitely mad at you."

Matt breathed in, letting the familiar scent of pine and incense fill his lungs.

"I know. I don't blame you, I've been…" Selfish, reckless, a general asshole.

Sarah breathed out something just pale of a laugh. "Some word you can't say in a church?"

"Yeah."

"Can we do this somewhere else? Like…outside? Someplace where I can use profanity and not have a giant Jesus staring at me for our whole conversation," she said, gesturing towards the front of the church, where Matt assume a crucifix hung on the wall behind the pulpit.

As soon as she finished speaking, the large front doors of the church opened, and four sets of footsteps entered the church. Two heavier pairs and two lighter, faster pairs: probably a family. One of the children was rapidly telling a story to his sibling while the parents half-heartedly shushed them.

"Good idea," he agreed.

So they ended up outside in the small courtyard behind the church. Matt had been out here a few times before; he liked how there was usually no one around, and the walls that extended around the enclosure provided a barrier between the distractions of the city on the other side.

Sarah's body language mirrored Karen's from their conversation the day before: arms crossed, tension in her muscles as she restlessly paced around, her sandals kicking up small clouds of dust. She still seemed to be gathering her thoughts, so Matt figured he would start. He had a pretty good idea of where the conversation was headed, anyway, so there was no point in dancing around it.

"Look, I know I…didn't handle things with Stick the right way. I shouldn't have avoided you, and I could have done a much better job of explaining the liability thing. I wasn't trying to—"

"That's not why I'm mad," she interrupted him. "I mean, that doesn't help, but…that part I can get over. I've never heard you refer to yourself as a soldier, Matt. Or about completing your—your missions, or any of that. It didn't sound like you. It sounded like Stick. Or at least what I know about him. And I get that. People…people can get in your head."

Matt tilted his head uncertainly. "So, what are you mad about?"

"But the part after that, about how…we shouldn't bother getting close to each other because we have an end date? That was messed up. I know I'm not the best person in the world, but I thought you had a higher opinion of me than that."

"You lost me. What are you talking about?"

"You really think I'm going to drop you the second I'm out of Orion? Like you're a bodyguard I hired?"

It hadn't really occurred to him that she would be offended by that. It had been their original plan, after all.

"I didn't say that," he said.

"What, then?"

Matt opened and closed his mouth, trying to come up with a way to rephrase it that might make her less angry. It clearly wasn't working, if the thrum of her pulse was any indication. Whatever softness she'd had in her voice in the church was gone now, chased away by his inability to be honest with her. No wonder his friends were mad at him, when he constantly made it so easy to be.

"Is…is this whole thing because of Stick?" she asked. "Something he said to you?"

"No," Matt said tiredly. "Not…not really." That was half-true, at least. Stick might have pushed it over the edge when he showed up and was immediately able to tell that Sarah was in a category of her own, but the idea that their closeness might be a bad thing for her had been lingering in his mind for a while now. And ever since the parking garage he had been very aware of how badly he was failing to keep her safe, too distracted by pushing their boundaries. "It's been on my mind already. The number of times you've been in danger lately. How you keep having to interrupt other things in your life to come help me. It's…all the kind of stuff you should be able to leave behind. And continuing down the path we're on is going to make it a lot harder to do that when this comes to an end."

"So…what are you suggesting?"

"That maybe…we should take a step back," he said carefully. "From this."

"A step back," she repeated dully.

"Focusing on getting you out of that place, on keeping you out of the line of fire, and less on…everything else. The personal side," he said.

Sarah was quiet for a beat, and when she spoke her voice was tight.

"Didn't we already try that?" she asked. "It ended with me getting my throat cut."

Matt's jaw clenched at the reminder. As though he didn't think of that night constantly.

"This is different."

"How?"

"I'm not doing it over voicemail, for one," he snapped. Sarah flinched, and he immediately felt guilty. He knew that she felt bad about that; about bailing on him shortly after promising him that she wouldn't, and for not doing it in person. But she'd apologized, and it wasn't like he didn't understand why she had cut things off. Generally people didn't enjoy being yelled at in a hospital room. He softened his voice a little. "And it's…it's not like we're cutting things off. Not like that time. I'd still come by to see what information you have. And you know I'd be there if you were in danger."

He could hear the catch of Sarah's teeth across her lower lip, a nervous habit she had that always distracted him.

"No."

Matt took his attention away from her mouth and cocked his head in confusion.

"Uh…no?" he clarified. "You don't think I'd be there if you were in danger?"

"No, as in…I don't want to do this—this whole 'one step forward, ten steps back' thing anymore. Things start to go well, and then one of us screws up and we're weird and distant for a while, and then something bad happens and we…fall back together. Again. Like a cycle. It's confusing, and it hurts, and I don't want to be moving backwards with you. Not after everything we've gone through to get here. I can't do that push and pull anymore. So if you want to do things Stick's way, then do it properly. If you're going to take a step back, then you…you have to step all the way back. Completely. No coming by, no checking up on me."

It occurred to Matt—as a sharp, incredulous laugh left his lips—that maybe laughing at her wasn't the smartest move at the moment, but what she was suggesting was so absurd that he couldn't help it.

"What, you want me to just leave you to deal with escaping a criminal organization on your own?" he asked sarcastically.

"Obviously not! But if it's between that or having you be only halfway there, then…yeah."

It took him a second to realize she was serious.

"Are you crazy? I would never do that to you. Come on, Sarah, you know I wouldn't do that to you," he said, his frustration lacing his words. "I'm not doing this to try to put you in more danger. Can you give me some credit for—for half a second that I'm trying to do the right thing here?"

"I don't care! That's not—you don't get to do that!" she exclaimed. "Y—you don't get to do this half-assed thing where you won't talk to me but you're still lurking around in the shadows. What, you can stand on a random rooftop somewhere anytime you want and check in on me, maybe drop by my window to do shop talk every now and then, but otherwise I don't get to know if you're dead or alive unless I see it on Twitter? That seems really fair," she said. Matt opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him off. "And don't pretend like you're not going to be constantly eavesdropping on me, because we both know you will."

"Maybe it doesn't seem fair. But it's safer for you, and…easier. For both of us."

"Easier," Sarah echoed, barely above a whisper. "Okay."

"Sarah…"

"This is kind of embarrassing," she said, letting out a shaky laugh. Her skin was flushed now. "You're totally wrecked about your friends wanting some space from you, and here I am trying so hard to keep you around…and you're not interested." She brought her hands to her face for a moment, then dropped them. "This was a mistake. I'm going to go."

She turned to leave the courtyard. The smart thing would have been to let her leave, to make this the jumping off point of them stepping back from each other. But yet again, the rational part of his brain didn't seem to be communicating with the rest of him, and before he knew it he had caught her lightly by both of her upper arms, halting her in place and stepping closer to her. She could easily have broken away from the loose grip, and he'd have let her. But instead she stayed still, her head tilted up to look at him and her breathing uneven, although he didn't know if it was from anger or from the sudden proximity, or maybe a mixture of both.

"Listen to me. Please," he said very quietly, lightly squeezing her arms. "I've just had two people I care about tell me exactly how much I've screwed up their lives. Their relationships, their trust, nearly their careers and their freedom if things had gone just a little bit wrong. I bring…misery to the people around me. Just like…" Like Stick always told me would happen. "…just like I've always been warned it would go. And if I've ruined things for them so badly, I can only imagine how much worse it would be with you." He slid his hand up to hook her hair over her ear, knowing it was much too intimate of a touch considering the point he had just tried make, but doing it all the same. "The amount of pain I could bring to your life, after I've already hurt you more than enough. When you finally get your old life back, I don't want to poison it."

Her pulse was skyrocketing, but when she spoke she sounded surprisingly calm. Much more so than a minute before.

"Matt…you know I'm never going to get my old life back," she said softly.

Matt frowned. He knew they hadn't been making progress with Orion as fast as either of them hoped, but he didn't think she'd given up yet.

"Don't say that."

"No, it's true. It…it doesn't work that way. I'm not the same person I was before. You know?" she said. Matt swallowed, nodding tightly. He hadn't known her pre-Orion, but he'd gotten flashes of what she had been like, and he knew she was different now. She had a lot more locks on her door for one, and a lot more scars on her skin for another. "When I got stuck in that place I lost so many pieces of myself. Pieces I thought I would never get back, but I did. Mostly thanks to you," she pointed out, and Matt's chest twisted because even if he wasn't sure he could really believe that, he could tell that she did. "But I'm still different, and even if I wasn't, everything else didn't just freeze when got trapped at Orion. I can't just step back into my old life, because it's…it's not even there anymore. I have to make a new one. And there'll be space for you in it, if you'd stop being such a dick."

Her words—with perhaps the exception of the ending—hit Matt much harder than she seemed to realize. He'd thought they were essentially on the same page as far as his being in her life went. He was someone she allowed to stick around despite his near constant screw ups, but never as any kind of permanent presence in her life. He'd probably made more mistakes with her than with everyone else in his life combined, and for some reason she was telling him that she wanted him to stay. It suddenly made it much harder to remember why he was so convinced he should leave.

He gave a jerky nod, swallowing and taking a step back to put some more space between them. It was difficult to think straight with her clouding his senses. He could feel Sarah's eyes on him in the long silence that stretched between them.

"You're not exactly making this easy," he said finally.

"Neither are you. I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of miss Bossy Matt. Usually you're always just…around, getting in my business and—and listening to my heartbeat, and telling me what to do, and it's annoying because you're smart and most of the time you make sense," she said. Matt had no idea where she was going with this. "But right now you just got cut off from your friends, and a creepy old man has been telling you that you deserve to be alone, and I think it's messing with your judgment. It's making you be the…distant, passive avoid-y guy. So now I have to be the bossy one and make the dramatic speeches, and I don't like that and I'm not as good at it as you are, so can't we just..."

She trailed off uncertainly with a vague, exasperated gesture of her hands, and Matt raised his eyebrows at her.

"Go back to normal?" he finished for her. "Would that be the normal we had before the other night, or after?"

Sarah faltered, her skin flushing with warmth again as she gauged his meaning. Somewhere beneath all of the exhaustion and misery of the last few days, there was still a small part of him that enjoyed that she got flustered at the mention of their kiss.

"Right. I might have…crossed out of the 'normal' zone," she admitted.

"We both did."

"I don't know…where we stand with that," she said hesitantly. "But…we could figure it out. Take our time."

"You really think it's that simple?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Risk it. You risk jumping off buildings every night, you could risk…just sticking around. It's not like it could be more complicated than what we've already dealt with. And if you really, honestly think the best thing for both of us is to avoid each other, then I guess I can't stop you. But if you change your mind…my window's open."

Then for the third time that weekend, Matt was left standing alone, but this time feeling noticeably different from the first two.

At work on Monday, Sarah was preoccupied by another problem besides whatever was going on with her and Matt: the photographs of Mrs. McDermott that were still sitting in the bottom drawer of her desk. And more urgently, the woman herself and how to get her to stop her awareness campaign about her son before it got her killed. The thought stressed her out for her entire work day, and then well past when she clocked out. It felt like there was a ticking clock on figuring this out, and Sarah was singularly responsible for doing so.

The subway arrived at her usual stop, the one that would drop her off a short distance from her apartment. Normally she would hurry to get off before the doors closed, but her body seemed to make a decision before her mind did, and she remained in her seat as the subway pulled away.

It was three more stops and a transfer to another subway before she reached the stop for the fifteenth police precinct.

She slipped on her largest pair of sunglasses as she exited the subway, feeling very much like the caricature of a spy that Foggy had once described her as. Coming up the stairs to the street level, she spotted the police precinct down the block and kept her head down as she walked towards it. She was careful to skirt a wide distance around where McDermott's mother was out front passing out photos of her son, instead going one block down to the opposite entrance.

Once inside, Sarah took off her sunglasses and was relieved to see that the police officer she had been looking for was yet again at the front desk. She walked up to Officer Mahoney, who looked up from his computer screen as she approached.

"Um. Hi," she said. Now that she was here, her heart was hammering and she was desperately wishing she'd put some more thought into this first, instead of just acting on guilt and sympathy. "I—I don't know if you remember me."

"I do," Mahoney said. His eyes briefly flicked down to her throat, where the scar from Ronan's knife was still lightly visible, but not noticeable if you didn't know to look. Sarah stiffened a bit, resisting the urge to move her hair in front of it. "Hope you're doing better than the last time I saw you."

"I am," she said automatically, then she remembered her cover for coming here and backtracked. "I mean, I'm…a little better. But not great. And you, um…you told me that I could contact you, if I needed directing towards some…resources. For dealing with everything."

Sarah felt a little guilty about lying, but there was enough truth to it that she could look past it. She probably really did need a therapist or a support group or whatever pamphlets Mahoney was going to give her. She just had no actual intention of going to them.

Mahoney seemed unsurprised by her request, simply nodding and reaching over to open the small gate that separated the lobby from the bullpen.

"Of course. Just follow me, we have a list of some places we can direct you to," he said.

Sarah followed him over to a filing cabinet, where he started flipping through a drawer full of several folders. She was just trying to think of way to bring up Mrs. McDermott in a non-suspicious way when a godsend came by in the form of a mildly irritated-looking policeman arriving with two cups of coffee in his hands. A glance at his nametag revealed him to be Officer Alvarez.

"She's still out there," Alvarez said, setting one of the cups of coffee in front of Mahoney, who didn't need to ask who he was talking about. "What does she think we're doing in here, sitting on our asses playing Angry Birds?"

"I hear you," Mahoney agreed with far less conviction. If anything, he just sounded exhausted by the topic. "She just wants to make sure we're doing right by her son."

"Right. I'll tell you what she wants," Alvarez said, leaning forward a little and lowering his voice. "She wants those survivor benefits. You know McDermott was always bitching about having to support her because she can't hold a job. And with the amount of her annual income that he was providing, she's entitled to a good chunk of money each month if his body turns up."

"I might remind you that there's a civilian present," Mahoney said, but his reproving tone was half-hearted. "And we have no reason to think it'll end up that way."

Officer Alvarez gave Sarah a cursory glance, but didn't seem terribly worried. For her part, Sarah tried to look disinterested in the conversation, and not at all as though she was hanging onto every word. And definitely not as though she was feeling ill at the thought that this woman's financial livelihood seemed to hinge on the discovery of a body that Sarah had personally ensured wouldn't be found.

"When people go missing in this city, they never just show up on a beach in Cabo. Especially not people who really should have been caught up in that FBI sweep last year," Alvarez said with a shrug. "That's all I'm saying,"

Sarah was impressed by the man's complete lack of a filter in front of a total stranger.

"Alright. Thanks for the coffee," Mahoney said with a tight-lipped smile. His colleague nodded and swiftly left.

"Was he talking about the woman outside? With all the signs?" Sarah asked.

"Mhm," Mahoney confirmed. "Aaron McDermott's mother. The detective from our precinct that went missing. She doesn't think we're doing enough to find him."

"I'm sure you are," Sarah said. There was that automatic politeness again; she had no clue if they were or weren't working hard to find him. If anything, the fact that she hadn't yet been arrested would indicate that maybe they weren't.

"We set up a tip line, but not much has come of it. Just the usual calls."

"What do you mean?"

"You know. He got abducted by aliens, the Zodiac Killer got him, he was really D.B. Cooper," Mahoney listed off. "Got a lot of weirdos in this city, and somehow they always find the tip line."

"Oh. Well, um…I hope you have more luck soon," she said. It sounded lame to her own ears, but maybe that was just because she knew it wasn't entirely sincere.

"We will," Mahoney said. Something in his tone made her glance over at him, but he was still focused on the folders he was flipping through. He finally pulled out a printed sheet of local therapists and clinics, along with a couple of brightly colored pamphlets, which he held out to her. She saw a few fragments about trauma recovery and community violence statistics as she reached out to take the papers. "Here you go."

"Thank you."

"It's interesting you showed up today," Mahoney said. "I was trying for a while to figure out why you looked familiar when I took your information outside of your building. And it came to me that you're one of Nelson and Murdock's clients. You came in here to talk to McDermott once, right?"

It was only from constantly working under Jason's scrutinizing gaze that Sarah didn't visibly freeze at the mention. Instead she looked up from the pamphlets and met Mahoney's eyes. His expression was calm and non-accusatory, but was clearly paying close attention to her reaction.

"Uh…yeah. He asked me a c-couple of questions about a break-in at my work," Sarah said. She cursed the tiny stutter that slipped into her voice. "I don't think I was much help, so he didn't call me in again."

"You know, it was McDermott's partner Donovan who came to your rescue that night. Did you know that?" Mahoney said.

Actually, it was Matt who came to my rescue, and Donovan who was helping try to hurt me, Sarah thought.

"The night's kind of a blur. I wasn't really focused on him," she said, gesturing towards her throat. That part was true, at least.

"Of course," Mahoney said. He nodded towards the papers in her hands. "I hope you find what you were looking for in there."

Sarah swallowed, nodding. "Thanks."

Then she walked out of the precinct, careful not to look like she was rushing away. She shoved the papers inside her purse once she was outside, taking a deep breath of fresh air before walking down the block to take the subway back home.

Once back at her apartment, Sarah's mind was buzzing with what she'd learned at the police precinct. It sounded as though McDermott had been an extremely unpopular in his department, to the point of some officers not seeming terribly preoccupied with the idea of finding him. So she had some small vindication, at least, that he really had been as corrupt and dirty as she'd known him to be, despite his outwardly friendly demeanor. But it didn't really matter anymore what kind of a man McDermott had been; he was no longer here. His mother, on the other hand, still was. And that was what was truly bothering her.

Did Mrs. McDermott know what her son's colleagues had thought of him? Could she sense the general indifference in their department towards his disappearance? She knew she should be relieved that no one but maybe Mahoney was looking into things closely enough to find any sort of link to her, but instead she just felt guilty. Her thoughts kept floating back to what Alvarez had said about the survivor's benefits. Sarah hadn't gotten the impression during her short encounter with Mrs. McDermott that she was after money; she'd genuinely seemed like a distraught mother searching for the truth. But if getting that money would make her stop publicly asking questions about her son…

Sarah was pulled from her thoughts when she heard a knock. She looked over at the open window to see Matt outside, one hand resting on each side of the frame. It was remarkable that he was almost always able to land so silently on a fire escape that otherwise scraped and complained if too many leaves landed on it.

She cocked her head at him suspiciously, noting how uncanny it was that every time she stepped foot in that goddamn police precinct, Matt Murdock magically appeared soon after.

"You know, when you said your window would be open, I didn't realize you meant…literally open for anyone to come inside," he noted, tapping a gloved finger against the windowsill. He made no move to climb through, instead lingering outside. Sarah tried not to take that as a bad sign.

She leaned against the inside of the window frame, watching him. Of course he couldn't just properly come out with whatever he'd come here to say. Instead they had to dance around it for a while, as though she wasn't about to burst into a million pieces in anticipation.

"It's about ninety degrees in my apartment. And I don't think anyone else is crazy enough to climb up that thing," she said, throwing a skeptic glance at the rickety metal structure. As if on cue, it gave an ominous creak, but Matt seemed unconcerned. "It could literally fall to pieces any day now."

Matt tilted his head back for a few moments, possibly listening to the structure swaying above him, or maybe just thinking—it's not like it was ever easy to tell with him. Then he focused back on her, leaning forward into the window and wetting his lip.

"I'll take the risk," he said carefully. "If that's still an option."

Sarah blinked, realizing he was probably no longer talking about the fire escape.

"Oh," she said intelligently. "You're…you're sure about that?"

"Are you?"

"Yeah," she said without hesitation.

"Then so am I," he said simply.

"What about Stick?"

"He…won't be an issue," Matt said. It was a vague answer, but it at least meant he'd be trying not to let the man get in his head so much.

She smiled at him, fully for the first time in a while, and however Matt was able to pick up on these things he did, matching her smile with a crooked grin of his own.

"Okay. I, um—okay. Good," she said. Apparently she had used up the majority of her vocabulary while yelling at him in a church courtyard. She saw Matt's lips twitch under his mask. "Are you…coming in?"

Matt shook his head. "Not tonight. There's…something I have to go take care of first."

A mixture of disappointment and relief swept through her. It was probably a good thing he wasn't in coming in right now; things between them had been so intense and emotionally exhausting lately—or was it always?—that she wasn't sure her stress level could handle having him in her apartment right now. She had no clue where they were headed now that things were out in the open between them, and she really wasn't feeling up to figuring it out tonight. Tonight she just wanted to decompress. But she also couldn't ignore the feeling that he was going to disappear on her again.

"Right," she said, trying to sound casual. "Um, okay. I'll just see you…soon, then?"

"Actually…" Matt began. Her heart dropped a little. Actually, Sarah, emotions make my skin crawl so I'm going to take another month to decide how I feel if that's okay with you. "Now that my apartment is going to be functioning as my office for a while, I'll probably be looking for reasons to leave whenever I can. Maybe…we could have lunch tomorrow?"

Oh.

"Yeah," she said immediately, before realizing that wasn't necessarily a promise she could keep. "I mean, hopefully. I don't always get a lunch break. But if I do, then I'll be there."

"Alright. I'll see you then," Matt said. He started to push away from the window, then paused. "And Sarah?"

"Yeah?"

He tapped the glass of the window above their heads. "Don't go to sleep with this open."

Sarah laughed and rolled her eyes, but it was difficult to pretend to be annoyed with him when she couldn't keep her grin from widening.

"That's more like it," she said softly, and Matt grinned at her before heaving himself over the railing and onto a nearby ledge, then out of her sight and into the shadows of Hell's Kitchen.

When Matt got to his apartment, Stick was already waiting inside. He yanked his mask off his head as he descended the stairs from his roof, déjà vu settling over him. How many times would have to come down this staircase ready for a fight with this man?

"Now, this is really unbelievable," Stick said by way of greeting. He had already helped himself to one of the beers in Matt's fridge and was sipping it from the armchair closest to the window. "Do I smell a third woman in here? The first two weren't enough trouble?"

It was true that the scent of Karen's perfume combined with cheap alcohol was still lingering in the air, though no one but the two men present would be able to pick up on it. As much as it made Matt's blood boil to hear Stick mention one of his friends, he knew by now that telling him something was none of his business was useless, so he kept silent.

"Whoever she was, she might want to lay off the drinking," Stick said. "I saw you called. I take it you finally cut the cord with your friends and your pretty sparring partner?"

"No. Not quite."

At least, that was what he hoped. Things were bad with Foggy and Karen right now, but maybe he could still salvage it. He needed to try, at least, after he gave them some time. And Sarah…he had no idea what they were to each other right now, but she'd said she was with him, and if he owed her anything by this point it was trusting what she said.

Stick sighed. "I told you to contact me when you'd decided to get rid of the things that are holding you back."

"I know."

"Then why are you wasting my time?"

"Because you need my help with whatever shit you're involved in. And I'm willing to offer it, as long as you do something for me in exchange," Matt said.

"How magnanimous of you," Stick said dryly. "What are your terms?"

"I'll help you find the people you're looking for. And if you want to fight them, we'll fight them. But I won't kill anyone. And I'll do everything in my power to make sure you don't kill anyone, either," he added. He thought of the child in that shipping container and how hard he'd tried to save him, only to have Stick snuff his life out the moment Matt's back was turned.

"So you'll be just as much of a hindrance as a help," Stick said with a derisive snort. "Fine. And what do you get out of it?"

Matt paused. Every molecule in his body was screaming not to let this man back into his life, where he could mess with his head and manipulate him so easily. But for as dangerous as Stick was, he was also undeniably useful.

"You said that you'd heard of Orion. That you'd heard of them long before I ever did."

Stick nodded slowly. "That's true. I've heard of most things long before you have."

"If I help you, you give me all of the information you have on them. And if I need you to back me up going in there, you show up."

"Deal," Stick said with a shrug. It made sense; Matt had never known him to be reluctant when it came to joining in a fight.

"I'm not finished. You don't go anywhere near Sarah," Matt said. This was the important part, the part he wasn't sure Stick would agree to. He and Sarah were barely chipping away at the armor around Orion, and any help Stick could offer him would be valuable, but not at the risk that he'd be putting Sarah in even more danger. "Alright? You don't contact her, you don't show up unexpectedly when we're together. If you want to get in touch with me, you can do it when I'm alone. There's no reason for her to know you're even still around."

Stick heaved a deep, long-suffering sigh. "You know, at some point you're going to need to get your priorities in order, Matty."

"I have. I don't care about your mystic war, Stick. I really don't. But you can help me protect what I do care about. That's why I'm offering you this deal. You can take it or leave it."

There was a span of silence, then the clink of a beer bottle being set down and the scrape of Stick's cane against the floor as he stood up from his chair.

"Whatever you say, kid," Stick said, which Matt recognized as his own dismissive way of agreeing to the terms. "Keep your phone on you. I'll be in touch when I need you."

Stick's footsteps barely made a sound as he exited the apartment, leaving an exhausted Matt to sink down in his armchair and breathe a sigh of relief.