What they wouldn't do

by Lazydaily

matt and OC that works for Fisk. For TTS

33. Chapter 33

At one point in her life, Sarah's definition of a good or bad day had been fairly tame. A good day would have been one in which she actually got to work on time, and maybe got to go out with friends for drinks afterwards. A bad one would have involved ending up on the subway car that smelled like old vomit, or getting yelled at by a street preacher.

But that had been a long time ago, and now her good days and bad days—especially the bad days—were much more pronounced. This was especially obvious in the week following her reconciliation with Matt.

The best day of that particular week was Wednesday, which ended with Sarah kissing her local vigilante in the middle of his kitchen.

The worst day was probably very next one, when she found herself looking down the barrel of a gun aimed directly at her face.

But before any of that happened, she started her week off on Monday with surprisingly high spirits.

Jason was in Chicago all week for meetings, so Sarah had a few days reprieve from his piercing stare and strange conversations. He was all the more unnerving now that his face was deeply scarred, and he'd been treating her with suspicion ever since the parking garage incident. So getting a break from his overbearing presence was enough to put Sarah in a good mood to begin her week.

The fact that she had plans to meet with Matt for lunch that day—not to exchange information about secret dealings or to stitch up open wounds, but just to eat food and talk like normal people—didn't hurt her mood, either.

Of course, that didn't last. She already had a long list of tasks that Jason wanted her to get done while he was gone, and he was continuously calling and texting as he remembered more. Just as she was about to leave for Matt's she got a text from Jason instructing her to pick up some package from the warehouse right away. He didn't specify to her what the item was, only that Rob would know what to give her when she got there. It seemed like Jason was keeping more and more information from her lately, and it was a troubling pattern she was starting to notice.

She called Matt as she was on her way to the warehouse.

"So…remember how I said sometimes I don't get a lunch break?" she asked him when he answered.

"I'm guessing this is one of those times?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought I'd be able to since Jason is out of town, but he keeps calling and piling stuff on me like crazy, then giving me all these random deadlines to check in with him. I don't think I can get away. Rain check?"

"Sure. Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," she agreed, hoping she wouldn't have to run around as much as she did today.

When Sarah got to the warehouse, she didn't see Rob anywhere in sight. But she did spot his son sitting at the same picnic table he'd been at the first time she'd ever come here. He was concentrating on the book he was reading, but she could tell from the way his shoulders stiffened that he knew she was there.

"Is your dad around?" she asked him.

He looked up at her warily.

"He'll be back in a few minutes. He just went to the gas station."

Sarah nodded wordlessly, tucking her hair behind her ear. She didn't like knowing how this kid viewed her—as another heartless representative of a monstrous company who just showed up to put his family in more danger. He probably thought of her the way she'd thought of James Wesley, who'd destroyed both her father's life and her own with zero remorse.

Of course, that was exactly the image she should probably be striving to project if she wanted to keep her cover, but doing so made her feel vaguely ill. She cleared her throat uncomfortably, figuring she could at least try to make some small talk. Even if he didn't respond, he could know that at least one of the contacts his dad had to deal with was a human and not some silent robot.

"What are you studying for?" she settled on asking. It was too late for school to still be in session, so she assumed he was taking some kind of summer course.

"AP Calculus," he answered without looking up from his textbook.

"Oh, I took that," Sarah said. "I mean, mine wasn't AP, it was just regular. And—I got a C-minus. But, um…I took it."

Surprisingly, that actually got him to look up.

"My dad would kill me if I ever got a C-minus," he said with a rueful shake of his head.

"I don't think mine ever noticed," Sarah said. Her high school years had overlapped with some of the heavier drinking years on Mitch Corrigan's track record. "I only took it because my guidance counselor thought girls were bad at math, and it made me mad."

It was mindless, nervous chatter on her part, but at least it was getting him to stop looking at her like she was going to pull a gun on him at any moment.

"It…kind of sounds like you are bad at math, though," he pointed out cautiously.

"Well, yeah. But not because I'm girl," she said defensively. "It was because I was lazy and just wanted to pass notes on those fancy calculators."

"Y'all had those back then?"

Sarah frowned. "…back when?"

"The nineties?" he hazarded with a shrug.

"You think I was in high school in the nineties?" Sarah repeated, her eyes widening. "I graduated high school in 2007."

"Oh, okay," he said uncertainly.

"I'm only in my twenties."

"…cool."

"And we had calculators," she mumbled, finally spotting Rob coming across the yard. She was mildly relieved to be done trying to talk to this teenager who clearly thought she was some sort of ancient crone—which, she supposed, wasn't the worst thing he could think of her. Readjusting her bag on her shoulder, Sarah glanced over at him as she stood up. "Good luck with your homework."

"Thanks," he said distractedly, already concentrating on his work again. That was a good thing, Sarah thought. That he was able to focus on his school work with all of this craziness going on around him and his father.

"Was Tyler bothering you?" Rob asked as she walked up to him.

"What? Oh, no. I was just asking him about school," she said.

Rob squinted at her suspiciously but didn't say anything.

"Um, I'm supposed to pick something up from you," she said. "Jason said you'd know what it was."

"Right. Yeah. It'll be back here."

Sarah followed him into the back of the warehouse, to a large, cold room she hadn't been in before. There were several tall metal storage cabinets, and in the corner sat several large freezers. She couldn't stop looking at them, wondering if they held what she thought they did. Rob followed her gaze, and she suspected by his disturbed expression that she was right.

He unlocked one of the metal cabinets and pulled out a wooden crate. Something glass clinked around inside as he handed it to her.

"Be careful with that. Don't let it tip."

"Why?" she asked, looking down at the crate in alarm. "What's in it?"

"Dunno. That's just how the guy who brought it here warned me," Rob said.

Sarah was listening, but she couldn't stop herself from glancing over at the freezers in the corner again. She knew she shouldn't ask about them, but in the end, her morbid curiosity won out.

"Are those where…I mean, do you keep…" she stammered. Is that where you keep all the dead bodies we bring you?

Rob looked away, and it was answer enough.

"That guy who you brought here," he said suddenly. "In your trunk. He's that missing cop that's been in the newspapers. Isn't he?"

She pressed her lips together and gave a short nod.

"Doesn't seem like anyone's trying very hard to find him," Rob said.

"His mother is," she whispered before she could stop herself.

"What?"

She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. Maybe it was just knowing that she was in the same room as the body, but she couldn't stop thinking about McDermott's mother handing her that photo of him. And Rob was one of the only people with whom she actually shared some of that particular burden.

"It's…it's driving her crazy," Sarah said. "Not knowing what happened to him. She's been outside the police station asking for help finding him every day. In the heat, getting sunburned. No one's listening to her."

"That's awful," Rob said after a long, somber silence.

"I don't think she's going to stop."

"Neither would I. If it was my kid that went missing," Rob said candidly. "Even if the smart thing for her to do would be to skip town. Leave it all behind."

"She can't even afford to do that. She can't get survivor's benefits because he's just missing, and not dead, and she—" Sarah finally caught herself. She had to stop thinking about this, and especially talking about it. "I don't know why I'm talking about this. There's nothing we can do about it."

"Right," Rob said. He looked over at the freezers once more. "What's done is done."

Sarah had to get out of that room before her chest burst.

"Um…thanks for the box," she said tightly. "I'll—I'll try not to let it explode or anything."

Then she left the warehouse as quickly as she could, trying not to think about Rob and his son or Mrs. McDermott and hers.

On Tuesday, Matt and Sarah's second attempt at making plans fell through just as quickly as the first. Matt called her just before they were supposed to meet up for to tell her that he had to cancel. One of his clients had gotten arrested again for some minor offense, and he needed to get to the police station to represent him.

Then Matt had client meetings that night, and Sarah had lunch plans with Lauren on Wednesday. It seemed like despite no longer avoiding each other, they still couldn't quite manage to meet up. How was it that Matt had been constantly around back when seeing him had been the very last thing she wanted, but now that they actually wanted to see each other they couldn't seem to make it work?

But on Wednesday night, their luck finally changed.

Sarah had had a long and stressful day of trying to keep up with the work Jason had left her, and when she got home she breathed a sigh of relief as her front door shut behind her. She had a bit of a headache, and she just wanted to change out of her work clothes, curl up on her couch, and drink some tea while pretending there was whiskey in it.

She was only partway through step one of that plan when her phone started buzzing from inside her purse on the kitchen counter. She let out a frustrated groan, hoping it wasn't Jason calling with even more tasks to add to her workload.

Her frustration disappeared when she saw that instead of her overbearing boss calling, it was Matt.

"Hi," she answered, cradling the phone with her shoulder as she reached down to slip off one of her heels.

"Hey. You busy?"

"No. I just got home."

"Have you eaten dinner yet?"

"No. I was just deciding between, uh…" Sarah opened her fridge, taking stock of her its measly contents. "…cold pizza or stale cereal. But if you think you could do better…"

Matt chuckled. "I can try. I know a place you might like. It's only a couple blocks from my apartment."

"Okay," she said. "You don't think you'll have to cancel on me in the time it'll take me to get there?"

"I promise," he assured her. "Do you want to meet at my place?"

"Yeah, okay. I'll be there soon," she said, grinning as she hung up the phone.

So instead of changing into the sweatpants and old t-shirt she had planned on, Sarah instead slipped on a pair of shorts and one of her nicer sleeveless blouses. Before leaving her apartment, she couldn't help but take a last glance in the mirror. She fully realized it was ridiculous; it wasn't as though Matt would know if her makeup was touched up or her hair was messy. She had been wearing pajama shorts a good eighty percent of the times she'd seen him since they met. But all the same, she found herself readjusting her blouse and running a brush through her hair before leaving.

On the way there, she tried to ignore the little voice in her head that reminded her how vague she'd left things the last time she'd seen Matt. She'd been so relieved that he had agreed to stick around and figure things out that she hadn't really stopped to think about what that actually meant. Figure what out/ Were they trying to work their way back to how they had been before they'd kissed, or to move forward from there? Was this just the two of them grabbing dinner, or was it something like a date?

The uncertainty about where they stood with each other wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the total imbalance in their respective abilities to read each other. As soon as she stepped foot in Matt's place all of her confusion and nervousness would be wildly apparent, while she could still barely guess what went on in his own mind, especially in regards to her.

Figuring it out. God, I'm dumb.

Just as she was turning onto Matt's block, she rounded the corner at the same time as someone else coming in the opposite direction. He was a tall, thin teenage boy who was walking fast while holding a very large iced coffee in one hand while scrolling through his phone with the other. The two of them collided, and the contents of the boy's drink quickly ended up all over the front of Sarah's shirt.

She yelped in surprise, her shoulders bunching up as she looked down at herself.

He took in the sight of his iced coffee soaking into her outfit and her mouth hanging open in disbelief, then sucked air in through his teeth, wincing apologetically.

"Ooh. Sorry, my bad," he said.

Then he tossed his empty cup in the nearby trashcan and continued walking, his attention back on his phone.

"Are you kidding me?" Sarah grumbled. Her shirt was now soaked, and she tried in vain to pluck it away from where it was plastered uncomfortably against her skin. "No one needs that much coffee!" she shouted after the teenager, who had not bothered to remove his headphones and most definitely didn't hear her.

Heaving a sigh, she kept walking to her destination.

She wasn't sure why she'd been expecting Matt to be wearing one of the suits she always saw him in; after all, there was no need to when working from home. But it was simply how she always pictured Daytime Matt, so she was surprised when he answered the door wearing a dark blue button-up shirt and jeans. His hair was slightly messy, and he had a small but new-looking bruise just along his hairline. He wasn't wearing his glasses, and she could see a more faded cut just above his eyelid as well. It looked like he had been busy since she'd last seen him.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey," he said, his warm smile making her nervous enough she almost forgot about her ruined outfit. "Come on in."

With a curious look, Matt swiveled his head to follow her path as she moved past him into the apartment.

"You smell like coffee."

"I look like coffee," she mumbled.

"What?"

Sarah sighed. "I had a very long day, topped off by some guy spilling his iced coffee all over me as I was coming here."

The corners of Matt's mouth twitched, but he very politely refrained from laughing.

"At least it was iced," he pointed out diplomatically.

"Funny," she said, glancing down at her ruined blouse. This was karma. This was the universe noticing that she'd been worried about what to wear on a maybe-date with a blind guy and reminding her that she was an idiot. "If you're going to make fun of me will you please let me borrow something else to wear?"

"Of course."

Matt went into his bedroom to grab her a shirt. As Sarah waited, she let her eyes wander around the room. Her gaze lingered on the splintered banister and she frowned, remembering Matt's mysteriously busted hand. She turned away from it, looking instead at the dining room table that Matt had turned into his home office. There were files and papers spread out across the surface, and in the middle of the table was a printer noisily churning out what at first appeared to be blank sheets of paper. Upon closer inspection, she saw tiny raised dots of Braille covering the pages.

"I've never seen one of these," she said, reaching out to run her fingers over the printed pages. She didn't bother raising her voice, knowing that Matt would hear her just fine in the other room. "Is it supposed to make that…grinding noise?"

"No, it's just broken," Matt called from his bedroom. "It's one of the cheapest models, but I still can't afford a new one."

"How much was it?" she asked curiously.

"About five thousand dollars," he said as he re-entered the room.

"Oh, shit." Sarah snatched her hand away. She sent Matt a guilty look. "I wasn't touching it."

He grinned at her sticker shock and handed her the light gray button-up shirt he was holding.

"Disabilities are expensive," he said with a shrug.

That was true, and it raised an interesting question. She assumed the screen reader she often saw him use was also expensive, and probably the Braille books on his bookshelf, too. And Matt's law firm wasn't exactly rolling in cash.

"Don't you usually get paid in, like…apple fritters, or something?" she asked him uncertainly.

"Foggy gets paid in apple fritters," he corrected her. "I prefer bagels."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "So, how do you afford all of the things you need plus your bulk eBay orders of scary black outfits?"

"We do have some clients who pay us money. Enough to keep the place from folding, at least."

"And you aren't worried that you'll become known as the law firm that takes donuts as payment?"

"Well, I can't speak for the other two, but that's…sort of the image I'm aiming for, to be honest."

Sarah squinted at him. "You're aiming for donut lawyer?"

"More for being accessible," Matt said with a laugh. "We obviously need some paying clients to keep us afloat, but…I hope that if someone really needs help, they'll have heard about Nelson and Murdock and know that they can come to us and not be denied help just because they can't afford it. There are so many people who just get completely railroaded by the legal system because they can't afford a lawyer. So either they just give up or they get stuck with a court-appointed public defender who has too many cases to care about any of them. I'd like people to know they have another option, even if they don't have any money."

Sarah studied him as he talked, taking in the way he started gesturing with his hands like he often did when he was passionate about something. She'd heard him talk this way about his activities as Daredevil many times, seen the way his face and posture changed when he was talking about doing what he believed was right. This was the first time she'd really heard him talk about his law career in the same way. She didn't think she'd ever met anyone else who was so driven to help people—to the point of obsession, if they were being honest—and as she watched him the corners of her lips curled upward.

"You aren't saying much," he noted with a grin. "You think it's a bad business model."

"No," she said quickly. "I mean—yes, definitely. It—it makes no financial sense at all. But…it's good. People knowing that you're out there. That's a good thing."

Matt's wry grin slid into something more genuine. It seemed like confirmation that his law firm was doing good things was one of the only kinds of compliments he knew how to accept. Sarah took mental note of that, and she was still watching him for a beat when he nodded at the shirt in her hands.

"Did you want something different?" he asked.

Sarah blinked and looked down at the shirt she was holding. She realized she still hadn't gone to change into it.

"Uh—no," she said abruptly, her face heating up. "This is good. I'll…go put it on."

Shaking her head, she ducked into the bathroom to change. The iced coffee had quickly soaked through her blouse to her bra, and she sent a wistful look at one of the only nice bras she owned, which was now stained a dingy brown. She balled both of them together and shoved them into her bag, then slipped Matt's shirt on instead. It smelled distinctly like him, but since he didn't wear anything scented—for obvious reasons—she couldn't quite place what that smell was. Something clean and calming and subtle.

The shirt was—unsurprisingly—much too large for her, leaving just a glimpse of her shorts visible underneath the hem. She stepped out of the bathroom as she finished rolled the sleeves up several times until they reached her elbow.

Matt was picking up some of the paperwork on his desk, and he lifted his head when she came back in the room. His fingers froze over the papers for a moment, then he swallowed.

"Better?" Matt said.

"Well, we don't really wear the same size, so it's a little bit 'Risky Business'. But it's dry, so...I appreciate it."

"It's no problem."

"Um, so, on a scale of one to ten…how set are you on going someplace where, um…people can see me?"

Matt cocked his head, considering it. "If I say ten, will you go out in public wearing that?"

Sarah looked down at her appearance in dismay.

"…yes," she said unconvincingly.

Matt laughed. "I figured you might prefer to order in now."

"I feel bad," she protested. "The whole point was for you to get out of your apartment for a while."

"That wasn't the point. That was a bonus. And anyway, I get out at night."

"Beating people up is not the same thing as going out to dinner."

"Good point," Matt said, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Let's go, then."

Sarah chewed her lip. To be honest, she really didn't want to go out in public right now—partially because of her appearance, but partially just because she'd had a long and stressful day, and being able to relax with just Matt was tempting.

"We could order in," she said.

"We could order in," he agreed. "Let me just clean some of this up."

Matt gathered the papers he had spread out and stacked them up. As he was doing that, Sarah looked closer at the flip phone on Matt's table; it was larger and more heavily scratched than the one she usually saw him use.

"Did you get a new burner phone?" she asked.

She caught an uncomfortable grimace cross Matt's face before he strode over to the table.

"Uh, no," he said, casually slipping the phone into his jacket pocket. "Just an extra."

Sarah raised her eyebrows at that. How was someone with a secret identity so bad at lying?

"Right."

"Sorry about the mess. It doesn't look like it, but there's a system to it," Matt said, changing the subject as smoothly as he'd tucked the burner phone out of sight. Sarah didn't call him on it right then, but she made a mental note of his weirdness.

"How's working from home going?" she asked, going along with the subject change.

Matt gave a noncommittal jerk of his head.

"I'm keeping busy. There's a lot of work to get done, even splitting it with Foggy. And not having Karen around to help with transcribing adds on a good amount of work, too, so I can't say I'm bored, at least." He grabbed something from a drawer in his kitchen, then walked back towards her with it. "This should be a menu for the place I'm thinking of. They shove one under my door every two or three days, so I figured I should hang on to one for company."

"Have you talked to them?" she asked, taking the menu. "Foggy and Karen, I mean, not the…restaurant flyer guys."

Matt shrugged one shoulder half-heartedly. "Kind of. Foggy and I have emailed about some files I'd asked him for, and a couple of questions he had on a client I was working with, but...that's it. Strictly work-related. I don't even know if Foggy and Karen are talking to each other yet."

"I'm sorry. It sucks you have to be stuck in here all day."

"It was my suggestion," he said, shaking his head. "I'm the source of the office tension, so…it makes sense to take me out of the equation and let the two of them figure things out."

Sarah made a skeptical hum.

Matt raised his eyebrows. "What?"

She had bitten her tongue in the church when the subject had come up, not wanting to get into a whole thing about his friends while simultaneously trying to stop him from cutting her off. But she hated seeing how resigned he was to being the only person who was in the wrong in this situation.

"Well...it sounds to me like Foggy can kind of…go screw himself?" She hadn't meant for that to come out sounding quite so uncertain, but she assumed it was her brain automatically protesting the idea of ever insulting Foggy Nelson in front of Matt Murdock. "I mean…just temporarily."

Whatever Matt had been expecting her to say, that apparently wasn't it.

"What? You adore Foggy. You've gotten along better with him than me for ninety percent of the time we've known each other," he reminded her.

"Well, yeah. He's usually been the friendlier one out of the two of you," she said. Not that that was a particularly high bar to beat. "But I wasn't expecting this reversal of which one of you is the bigger asshole. Right now it's Foggy, which is confusing. I don't like it."

Before she had even finished speaking, Matt was shaking his head, dismissing the very idea that Foggy was also being unreasonable.

"He has a right to be upset. I lied to him for—"

"Yeah, but—but didn't he already forgive you for that?" Sarah interrupted. "I mean, from what I understand, you guys had the big fight and then…moved past it. If he wasn't over it, he should have said something before Karen found out. You can't tell someone you forgive them and then take it back the second things get difficult. That's not how it works. Whether he forgives you can't depend on whether Karen forgives him. It's not, like, forgiveness…dominoes."

She winced as she said that, wishing she was better at metaphors.

"It's complicated," Matt hedged. "I can't pretend like my actions didn't have an effect on their relationship."

Sarah sighed, trying to spin the conversation away from argumentative and more towards supportive—which is what she had initially been aiming for, but it was hard not to get sidetracked by Matt's stubbornness.

"You didn't force Foggy to keep your secrets, Matt. And…you didn't make him keep you in his life. He made that choice, because he decided you were worth it. And he'll make that same choice again," Sarah said sincerely. Because she'd had too many conversations with Foggy in which he tried to convince her of the goodness of Matt Murdock for her to ever believe that he'd truly change his mind about that. "I mean, he's acting like an asshole right now, but I don't think he actually is one. He's a good friend, and…he'll come around."

Matt was quiet, and it—shockingly—seemed like maybe he was actually considering what she was saying.

"And Karen?" he asked.

"Her, too," Sarah said, but her uncertainty came through in her tone. She didn't know Karen well enough to gauge that kind of thing. And what she did know about her—or rather, what she suspected about her—didn't inspire much trust. But both Matt and Foggy seemed to have a fairly good sense of judgment—maybe Foggy more than Matt—and Karen had won them both over.

"Convincing," Matt said dryly.

"I don't know Karen very well," Sarah admitted. "But I know you. And you're an easy person to forgive. Like…annoyingly easy. And if she's the kind of person you and Foggy keep saying she is, she'll see that."

Matt's expression was difficult to interpret, and Sarah wondered if she'd ever be able to work out the complexities enough to read him whenever she wanted. Sometimes she couldn't tell if these reassurances she tried to give him sank in at all, or if they just bounced right off him.

"Well…until then, I'm stuck working here."

"Doesn't seem that bad," Sarah said, trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit. "You…don't have to wear a suit and tie. And you don't have to walk to work in the heat with the—the hot garbage smell everywhere. You could order takeout for every meal if you wanted to."

She was relieved to see Matt crack a grin. Sometimes it seemed like any kind of pressing into his personal life put him on edge, but it seemed like this time the subject had actually passed by smoothly enough.

"I do still have to deal with the smell of garbage when I go out at night," he pointed out.

"Well, that's your fault for not picking a cleaner city to save people in," she said, folding the menu back up and tapping it against his chest. "I'll take the number seven."

"What about your work?" Matt asked, taking her menu from her. "What's going on there?"

It occurred to Sarah that if they were any other two people, that might be a normal, mundane question. To other people it didn't always mean 'Did anyone shoot a gun near you today?' or 'Did you manage to steal any files without getting caught and murdered?'

But they weren't two normal people, and she didn't have a normal job. Her thoughts drifted to Jason and his extra weirdness lately, then to Mahoney's pointed questions, and to Mrs. McDermott's stricken face in the photos that still sat in her drawer. She felt her stomach tighten into knots.

"It's, uh…it's…" Sarah hesitated, not sure where to begin. There was nothing solidly bad going on so much as just a constant sense of building dread, to the point where she couldn't tell if she was just being paranoid or not. But she did know that as soon as they started talking about Orion that was all the night would be about, and she really didn't want that. "Hey, um…what if—what if we didn't talk about work tonight?"

Matt raised his eyebrows. "That doesn't sound like a good sign."

"No, it's not because anything extra bad is happening. I mean, just…regular levels of evil stuff, I guess," she said. "But that place is all I think about all day while I'm there, and most nights when I go home. I know I have a lot to catch you up on, but maybe tonight we could just…skip that part."

"I notice that you instituted this no shop-talk policy after drilling me about my job and coworkers," he noted.

"I don't make the rules," she said with a shrug, despite having just literally made up the rule.

"Alright," he agreed. "We'll skip it tonight."

Sarah smiled, and a bit of the tension that had been sitting in her shoulders lifted away.

Despite the somewhat rocky start of ruined clothing and near-arguments about the basics of friendship, the maybe-a-date—because Sarah still wasn't quite sure—slowly turned into something easier. She hadn't realized how stressed she'd been the last couple of weeks until just now, sitting on Matt's couch eating the food that had been delivered while talking about things of no real importance.

For his part, Matt also seemed more relaxed—if a bit confused, as Sarah was currently in the middle of trying to convince him to give her favorite soap opera a try. He had a half-amused, half-exasperated grin as she tried unsuccessfully to explain the plot to him.

"…so, then his brother is played by the same actor who plays his father and his father's twin brother in the flashback, which is confusing."

"Right."

"And the two families have had some sort of big falling out about, um…maybe an illegitimate child? Or possibly a mansion burning down. I'm not really sure on the translation."

"How? Those aren't even remotely similar in Spanish," Matt said while laughing.

"What, you speak Spanish?" she asked in surprise.

"A little. Enough to tell that you don't."

Sarah scoffed. "Anyway. The cliffhanger at the end of this last season was about which one of them sunk the main pirate ship—"

"Pirate ship?" Matt interrupted her, his brow furrowing in confusion. "I thought it was a medical drama."

"Oh, it's that, too. Some of them are surgeons."

"The pirates are surgeons?" he asked doubtfully.

"No, not all of them. That would be ridiculous," she said. "Only some of the pirates are surgeons. But, um, all of the surgeons…are pirates."

The look on Matt's face made it clear he was not going to come over to her side on this.

"And this is your favorite TV show?" Matt clarified.

"Yes! It's the best show on right now. Or at least on any of the seven channels that my apartment gets for free."

"That explains it."

"Okay, fine. You're missing out on excellent television," she said. She pushed her hair out of her face as she leaned back against the throw pillow she'd propped up against the arm of the couch. "When did you learn to speak Spanish, anyway?"

"College. And a little more in law school. I wanted to be able to connect with clients who don't speak much English," he said. "Meanwhile, Foggy took Punjabi, which so far has never come in handy."

Sarah laughed. Both of those choices sounded so very right based on what she knew about the two of them.

"Well, that sounds like you speak more than just a little Spanish. Say something," she prompted.

"Like what?"

"Just whatever you're thinking, I guess," she said with a shrug. "I won't know the difference."

"Alright, uh…" Matt was quiet for a beat, thinking. A faint smile lingered on his lips as his sightless eyes flicked over her face. "Te he extrañado. Es bueno escuchar tu risa de nuevo."

Oh.

She had no clue what he said, but it sounded very good coming from his mouth. Her fork stilled over her food for a moment as she stared at him before catching herself and clearing her throat.

"What, um…what does that mean?" she asked casually.

He smirked and leaned forward, grabbing the empty takeout boxes to throw away. "It means you have bad taste in television."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously as he strode into the kitchen. She barely spoke Spanish, but even she knew she hadn't heard the word for television anywhere in there.

"I don't think that—" Sarah faltered as she caught sight of a streak of bright red just under h the collar of Matt's shirt. It hadn't been visible in the somewhat dim lighting of his living room, but the brighter bulbs in his kitchen made the injury immediately apparent. "Hey. Are you bleeding?"

He frowned. "Am I?"

She got up from the couch and followed him into the kitchen. Matt brought a hand up to the base of his neck, just where it curved into his shoulder, and when he brought it back down there was a smear of blood across his fingers.

"You are," Sarah confirmed. She stood on her tip-toes to get a better look, then winced when she saw the jagged gash more clearly. "Oh, Matt. This looks painful."

"It's fine. A few of the stitches must have opened up again."

Sarah grabbed his box of first aid materials from the shelf where she knew he kept it, then glanced at the poorly lit living room.

"Your living room gets darker every time I come here," she informed him. "You might want to get some of your light bulbs replaced."

"Sorry," he said with a wry grin. "That chore tends to slip by my attention."

"Your kitchen lighting will do the trick, I think," she said, setting the kit on the counter before carefully lifted herself up to sit next to it. It put her at nearly the same height as Matt, which was perfect to fix up his ripped stitches without having to balance on her toes the entire time. Matt moved to stand in front of her, to the left of her legs so the outside of her knee was brushing against his waist. He rested one hand on the counter next to her. She was very aware of him in front of her, the warmth of his body just a few inches away from her own. She sent up a silent thank you that he hadn't been hurt anywhere that required him to remove his shirt, so she could hang on to at least some of her focus.

"Did you fix this up yourself?" she asked as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

"Why? Does it look like it was done by a blind guy?"

It kind of did, to be honest, but more telling was the fact that it looked like it was done by someone with little regard for if it healed or not. She wondered if he would ever look after his own injuries with the same care he took with hers.

"Well, I know I didn't do it. And it definitely doesn't look like Claire's work."

"I try not to go to Claire for anything less than twenty stitches."

Ignoring the fact that that was one of the more ridiculous things she'd heard him say, Sarah pushed the collar of his shirt aside and pressed a damp hand towel to the wound.

"And what about me?" she asked. "I don't have a minimum stitches requirement."

"It was almost three in the morning. You were sleeping, like most people."

"Matt! If you're hurt, wake me up," she said in exasperation. "If only so that our next date doesn't turn into a first aid session, too" she said without thinking.

Matt cocked his head, frowning. "Did you think this was a date?"

Sarah blinked.

"No—?" she faltered, caught off guard by the question, which seemed to clearly imply that he didn't. "Uh, no. I didn't. Did...you?"

"Definitely not," he said, and Sarah briefly wondered if you could literally die from embarrassment. "Because from what I've observed, your dates seem to involve you wearing...a particular kind of outfit."

She glanced up at him only to see that he was giving her that cocky grin, the one she usually only saw when they were in the ring and he was circling her, searching for new ways to knock her off balance. That smile always gave her a nervous tug in her stomach, and seeing it now was no different. She felt her cheeks flush, and from the way his grin widened it seemed that was the reaction he'd been looking for.

"I'd think those outfits would be a little wasted on a blind guy," she said, narrowing her eyes at the smug look on his face.

"Agree to disagree," he said without missing a beat.

Sarah laughed despite herself.

"Well, the fanciness of the outfit correlates to the fanciness of the date. Five-star restaurants get nice dresses, and everything else is…pajamas at best," she said, shrugging.

Matt snorted. "If your taste in food is anything like your taste in alcohol, I kind of doubt that."

"You know, you're being awfully smart with someone who's stitching your neck back together," she said, gesturing at his face with the needle in a vaguely threatening way.

"Watch where you're waving that," Matt said with a chuckle, catching her wrist to still her hand. "Anyway, maybe I was going to take you to a five-star restaurant if you hadn't dumped iced coffee all over yourself."

She opened her mouth indignantly.

"I did not dump it on myself—"

"If you were looking to steal more of my clothing, you could have just asked."

Sarah shook her head, trying to concentrate on her stitches and not on the blatantly flirting vigilante she was giving them to. The last thing she needed to do was accidentally stab some important vein with the needle because she got flustered.

"It's a good thing this isn't a date, because you're not being very charming," she said finally. "After all those stories I've heard about how good you are with girls."

Matt chuckled lowly. "Those are just stories."

"I don't know. I got to see a tiny glimpse of it when you were flirting with our waitress that one time."

"Our waitress?" he said, a crease appearing between his brows.

"Mhm. The pretty one who gave you her number because you kept smiling at her."

He finally seemed to recall who she was talking about.

"Right, that one," he said. Then he smirked. "I should call her."

Sarah laughed.

"You should. See if she'll come give you some stitches. She was very helpful."

"I…can't say I was paying her much attention," he admitted.

"No? No heartbeats or breathing patterns?" Sarah asked idly, focusing on tying off the last stitch.

"You're assuming that I listen to everyone as closely as I do to you."

Finally finished, she set down the needle and peeled off the latex gloves. "Don't you?"

"No. Most people are easy to tune out. Which is a good thing, or I'd go crazy. I have to concentrate to let them in. But some people are...difficult not to focus on," he said.

There was nothing left to do for the cut on Matt's neck, leaving them very close to each other with nothing to distract her from their proximity. She swallowed, knowing that for as much as she was aware of his closeness, he was aware of hers in all kinds of ways she wasn't.

She could feel her pulse quickening as it so easily did around him, and she wished she could turn it off and not be quite so transparent. But it was slowly becoming apparent to her that if she couldn't make herself any less noticeable, maybe she could at least lean into it.

"So…if you were focusing on me right now, what would you pick up?"

Matt raised his eyebrows. "I've always gotten the impression you didn't like me reading you."

"It's...disconcerting," she admitted. "But if you're always doing it anyway, I might as well find out what you're always picking up on that's so interesting. Just...this one time."

Matt thought about it for a moment.

"Well, right now I'm mostly just picking up…coffee."

Sarah rolled her eyes.

"Well, if that's all you're getting then maybe your senses aren't all they're cracked to be," she said lightly, although to be honest she was a little disappointed. She planted her hands on the counter so she could hop down, but Matt put a hand on her leg to still her.

"Be patient," he said with a grin. His blank eyes flicked over her face as he studied her, deciding where to start. "You really want to know?"

Sarah nodded. "Yes."

"Alright. Well...your hair is usually the easiest thing to pick up on. It smells like some kind of citrus shampoo, and it's always falling in your face," he said, gently pushing away the curtain of hair that was—sure enough—in the way. His hand lingered in her hair, making her struggle to focus as he continued talking. "You used a straightener this morning, but the humidity is making it wavy again."

Sarah laughed. "I think the word you're looking for is frizzy."

"I like it."

She bit her lip, shaking her head. "What else?"

"Uh…temperature. The temperature of your skin is rising alarmingly fast, but it is summertime," Matt acknowledged innocently, though they were both fully aware that wasn't the reason. He brushed the fabric of her borrowed shirt aside and traced his fingers across her collarbone. As if on cue, she felt her skin flush, and the corner of his mouth quirked up. He let his fingers drift to the dip at the base of her throat, pressing there lightly. "Your breathing is shallow and uneven. You can only breathe like that for so long before you start to get lightheaded," he told her, as though her head wasn't spinning already. "Your muscles are tense. More than just the normal tension from a stressful day at work." Matt hesitated for just a second before taking his hand from her hair and brushing the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, the rest of his fingers curling along her jaw. Sarah gripped the edge of the counter tightly, worried that the lightheadedness that hit her would make her lose her balance. "Your lip is swollen because you've been biting it, which you do when you're nervous, and you've been nervous since you walked through my door."

Matt didn't move his thumb from her lip, and she stayed very still as she watched him, transfixed. He was just a few inches from her, close enough that she could feel his body heat, and her heart was racing wildly, broadcasting how badly she wanted that short distance to be closed.

Sarah swallowed hard, struggling to form a reply even though he was barely touching her.

"Well, that was when I thought this was a date," she said raggedly. Her heartbeat was racing loudly in her own ears. "I'm…much calmer now."

His eyebrows went up and he grinned at her knowingly. It was cocky grin, but with a warmth underneath that made it clear he wasn't mocking her.

She honestly wasn't sure which one of them closed the last few centimeters between them; just that one second she was thinking about kissing him and the next second it was happening.

It was different this time than it had been that night on the roof. That first time she had partly been trying to prove a point to him about how she felt and he'd kissed her back like was never going to see her again—which she knew now was not too far from what his actual plan had been. The last time had been rushed and desperate and had made her blood race in her veins but it had also hurt in ways she still didn't really understand.

But this time was more cautious and careful than before—soft and slow with time between to breathe each other in—and so it surprised her that the head rush was just as strong and immediate as it had been the first time. Heat coursed through her, like coming into a warm house after being out in the rain. Matt's careful hold on her steadied her enough that she finally let go of the counter she'd been gripping for dear life, her hands finding a home at the nape of his neck.

The heat of Matt's hands disappeared from either side of her face as he explored other areas, first running down her waist, then skimming his fingertips along the outside of her thighs, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

The entire thing was terrifying in a way, but not in the obvious sense. What scared her wasn't knowing that the hands that on her waist were the same ones that brought so much violent destruction across Hell's Kitchen, or feeling the coiled strength of his muscles under her fingertips. What was so daunting was that this was actually happening, that she was really crossing this line with a man who was so impossible to unlock, and the thought of exploring whatever this was with him was terrifying and thrilling and any other assortment of things that made her heart race.

She leaned into him more, sliding one hand down the broad plane of his chest. When she brushed against the left side of his ribcage he inhaled sharply, tensing in pain.

Sarah broke away abruptly, her eyes widening in alarm. In the moment, she'd nearly forgotten that touching him after a night of patrolling was like stepping around landmines.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

"Nothing," he assured her, tipping her head back up towards him and bringing his mouth to hers again. "A few sore ribs."

But Sarah was very familiar by now with the Matt Murdock Principle of Bodily Damage: whatever level of severity he said an injury was, she could generally double that. Maybe triple it, depending on how actively he tried to keep her attention away from it. Even so, she allowed the kiss to continue for a brief moment before breaking away again.

"Sore as…broken?" she asked suspiciously. There were probably a few levels in between sore and broken, but assuming the worst seemed like a safe bet.

Matt slipped his hand into hers, entwining their fingers and leading her hand away from where it was hovering worriedly over his ribs.

"Sore as in...I'll live," he countered, seemingly wildly unconcerned about it.

Then he moved his lips to her neck, pressing a searing kiss just under her jaw that elicited a stuttering intake of breath from her. That's a good argument. Suddenly any further concern she'd had towards his medical well-being seemed very distant in her mind, which she was fairly certain had been his intent.

"Y-you are pretty resilient," she admitted, her fingers curling tightly around his as her eyes fluttered closed. She felt his lips form into a smirk against her throat. She tilted her head to give him better access and he dragged his lips along her exposed skin, pressing a series of kisses down her neck before his lips were back on hers again. She was torn between missing the feel of them on her neck and enjoying the taste of him as she slipped her tongue inside his mouth.

She was vaguely aware of her phone buzzing on the counter somewhere nearby, but it was so very easy to ignore it right now. Whatever it was, it had to do with life outside of this apartment, and she didn't want to deal with that at the moment. There was so much they could both be worrying about right now, but all she could think was that they deserved this—in between everything they had gone through and everything still to come, they deserved to have this small moment to themselves.

To her dismay, Matt pulled away from her as the sound of her phone continued.

"Should you answer that?" he asked, his amusement strangled by the thickness in his voice.

Sarah shook her head. "No."

To her relief, Sarah's phone went silent, no longer interrupting them. Then a few seconds later, she felt a buzzing underneath her fingers as Matt's burner phone began ringing in the inside pocket of his jacket. An uneasy feeling settled in Sarah's chest as he leaned back, reaching inside his jacket for his phone and flipping it open to answer.

Still sitting only a few inches from Matt, Sarah was close enough to clearly hear her best friend's voice coming through the other side of the line.

"Is she with you?" Lauren asked by way of greeting. Her voice sounded tight and worried. Sarah's eyes widened in alarm.

Matt frowned and handed Sarah his burner phone.

"Lauren? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Have you looked at the news?"

"The news? No. Why, what's happening?" Sarah asked. She sent a sharp glance out the window at the sky. "Is it aliens again?"

"It's not aliens. It's that cop…the one you knew, who—who died. He's on the news. They found his body."

Sarah's body went cold. She looked up at Matt, who was leaning against the counter with a hand on either side of her, listening intently. Sarah leaned over his arm to grab her own phone, quickly bringing up the local news on her browser.

Sure enough, McDermott's face was staring up at her under the 'Breaking News' headline.

'Body of Missing Police Officer Found In Construction Site Near Hudson'

Lauren was still talking, but her voice was drowned out by the high pitched noise in Sarah's ears.

"Shit," she whispered. "Shit, shit."

'The body of police officer Aaron McDermott was found in a construction site near the Hudson early on Thursday morning,' the article read. 'Officer McDermott was reported missing since missing work on the 18th and subsequently missing a family dinner the next day. Construction at the site where he was found had been paused since mid-May due to budgetary restrictions…"

"…and I thought you should know," Lauren's voice drifted back in.

"Thanks for the heads up," Sarah said faintly, still staring at her phone screen. "I—I have to go, Lauren."

"Okay. Let me know if you need anything."

Sarah knew that by 'anything' Lauren most likely meant a lawyer or bail money if someone figured out who had hidden that body.

"Thanks," she said, before hanging up.

"McDermott's body turned up," Matt surmised.

Sarah nodded wordlessly, pressing her palms to her eyes as she tried to stay calm.

"After this long? There's no way it was there that whole time without someone seeing it. Someone must have put it there," he said.

"Shit," Sarah swore. "Oh, god. I'm so stupid."

"What are you talking about?"

"Rob," she said. She dropped her hands away from her face. "The warehouse guy."

"Rob is the one you brought the body to in the first place, right? He knows you had something to do with his death?"

Sarah nodded.

"Is there anything connecting you to McDermott besides Rob and the security footage Jason has?"

She looked over at him. Matt was already in lawyer mode, making sure she wasn't legally connected to the crime, which must mean he was worried her getting arrested was a possibility.

"No. No, I—I don't think so. I got rid of the clothes with the blood on them a while ago, and I threw the hammer in the river. I have his burner phone. But it's off and the batteries are out."

"Okay. So no one has any reason to think you're involved."

"Actually…Sergeant Mahoney might."

Matt frowned. "Brett? What do you mean?"

"He was asking me about McDermott. About the time I came to see him—when I went to give the bribe back. And he asked about the night Ronan attacked me, and whether or not I knew that Donovan was McDermott's partner."

Matt tilted his head slowly.

"When did you have this conversation?"

"The other day, when I—um..." Sarah looked down uncomfortably. "...went down to the police station to try to find out more information about…about McDermott's mother."

"You what?" Matt said incredulously. "Sarah, Jason could have new sources planted in there already. Or the cops might want to know why an Orion employee is asking questions about one of their missing colleagues."

"I know that! It's not like I went in barging in there asking about it. I had an excuse," she insisted. "Mahoney gave me his card that night in the alleyway. In case I wanted any information on—I don't know—support groups or trauma therapy or something. And you said he was a friend of yours. So I went down there to ask him for some pamphlets, and…they were already talking about her. I didn't even have to bring it up."

"What'd they say?"

"One of them thought that she just wants the survivor's benefits. I guess she would get them since he didn't have a spouse or any children, and he provided most of her income. I don't think she's doing this for the money, but…if his body was found, she would get that money. Maybe she could use it to move somewhere else."

"What even made you go down there in the first place?"

"There were these photos that someone sent Jason. They were pictures of her protesting outside the police station, and there was a note implying that she was…drawing too much attention to the issue."

"I take it Jason didn't react well to the photos?"

"He never saw them. I kept them. I put them in a locked drawer in my desk at work until I could…figure out what to do."

She hadn't really thought Matt's eyebrows could go any higher, but there they went.

"Do?"

"Or not do. I don't know, I…I just wanted to find out more about her. See if there was any way to get her to stop being so public and putting herself in danger. But I couldn't just go talk to her. Telling her to stop asking questions would just make her even more convinced that something was being covered up. I don't know, I hadn't thought it through yet and I wasn't going to do anything about it right now, but…"

"…but now there's a body, so something else must have happened."

"I talked to Rob about it. I asked him about what he did with the body. I…wanted to know what happened to it. To him," she corrected herself. "He has freezers where Orion has him keep...anyone they bring him. We started talking, and…I said too much. I mentioned the survivor's benefits. Just offhand. How she should leave town but she can't afford to. I didn't think he would go ahead and just dump the body somewhere to be found."

Matt nodded shortly. He seemed too focused on what was happening now to be as preoccupied with her screw-ups as she was.

"Okay. Even with Brett asking questions, there's no reason to think the police have any connection to you right now. I'll get near the precinct and see I can find out what they know," Matt said, striding towards the closet where he kept his Daredevil outfit. "I want you to stay here."

That caught her attention. "You don't think my place is safe?"

"I didn't say that. But I want to check it out first before you go back there. Just in case."

She wasn't sure if he thought the cops or Orion were more likely to be lurking there. Neither sounded appealing.

"Wait," she said suddenly. "I need to go talk to Rob."

"What, at the warehouse?"

"Yes. I need to find out what he's doing. If—if he told anyone what happened, or about me. Does—does he have some cover story so that he won't get killed for this?"

"Alright, just…hold off on that. Let me listen in at the police station first, see what I can find out. For all we know, he decided to turn on Orion completely and gave them your name, too."

Sarah blanched, but tried to keep her calm. She didn't think that was the game Rob was playing.

"Okay. Alright. But hurry," she said.

"I will. Just stay here."

And she did. After Matt left, Sarah paced around his apartment for a few minutes as her heart pounded. She poured herself a glass of water and sat on the couch, trying in vain to steady herself by breathing in deeply. But within a minute or two she found herself looking at her phone again, checking the local news site for any updates. She wasn't sure what she was expecting to see when she refreshed the page again and again; her own face next to Jason's, with a Wanted sign underneath?

Jason. When he found out—if he didn't know already—he was sure to go after Rob. He knew who Sarah had delivered the body to, and he was smart enough to know Rob was the most likely person to have made its reappear. But Rob must know that—right? He had to be smart enough to know that. He had a son to look after; there was no way he would have done something like this without having a plan.

But she needed to know for sure, and she couldn't wait any longer to find out. Before she could change her mind, Sarah dug through her purse for her stun gun and pepper spray.

"Sorry, Matt," she murmured. She pocketed both small weapons and headed for the door.

When she got to the warehouse, it was dark and quiet. The electric gate was open, and appeared to be off. She wasn't sure if that was a bad sign or not, but she stuck to the shadows as she approached just in case.

Standing on her tip toes, she looked in one of the small windows. There was no sign of movement or people inside. She glanced up at the second floor of the building, where she knew Rob and his son lived in a small loft apartment. For the first time, she noticed there was a light on in one of the rooms.

If the light seemed like a good sign, it was immediately countered by the ominous sight of Rob's front door, which was about a foot ajar. Sarah hesitated, then ascended the metal staircase towards the apartment as quietly as she could. For once her small stature was an asset, her light footsteps making almost no noise on the steps. She paused outside the door, listening, but she didn't hear any voices or movement inside.

Quietly swinging the door open, she felt a rush of mixed emotions when she saw that the apartment was empty. Not only that, but clearly abandoned.

The doors to both bedrooms were open, and she could clearly see that the closets had been mostly emptied. What clothes did remain were hanging haphazardly off their hangers, as though their neighbors had been quickly yanked off. Walking around, she saw that the kitchen cabinets were empty as well, with only a small amount of perishable food left in the refrigerator. The bulkier items—the television, a desktop computer, kitchen appliances, decorative pieces—were all still there, but all the toiletries were gone from the bathroom, and an empty file box on the coffee table that she assumed had held personal documents.

Rob and his son had cleared out, and it looked like they'd done so in a hurry. She wondered how much time had passed between Rob deciding to dump the body and actually doing it. It seemed like there hadn't been time to prepare an exit plan. Maybe he'd done it fast, before he could second guess it and change his mind; it's how she would have done it.

She was so focused on the contents of Rob's apartment that she didn't notice the shadow in the doorway until it spoke.

"You shouldn't have come here alone."

Sarah jumped and stifled a scream, whipping around with her stun gun in her hand even as her brain registered who had spoken. Matt's expression beneath the mask was less than pleased.

"Holy shit," she breathed out, then slowly flicked the switch on her stun gun to Off. "You scared me."

"I'm the least scary thing you could have run into here. There could have been cops waiting for you, or some of Jason's men."

"No, you're definitely scarier than most cops," she muttered, then glanced around the room again. She let out a shaky breath. "Rob's gone. It looks like he and his son left town."

"That was smart of him," Matt said. "Except now if Jason is looking for someone to blame…"

"…it just leaves me," she finished, nearly whispering. "I know."

"When does he get back to New York?"

"Supposedly Monday. But he might come back earlier now." Sarah bit her lip, not wanting to ask about the police but knowing she had to. "Did you find anything out at the police station?"

"It sounds like they're nowhere close to knowing what happened," Matt said.

A small amount of buzzing tension left her frame, lifting from where it had sat heavily on her shoulders.

"Seriously?"

"McDermott was apparently…pretty well known in the department for being on the take. It's surprising he didn't get caught up in the Fisk sweep, to be honest," Matt said, sounding much like the police officer Sarah had heard talking to Mahoney. "He was mixed up in so many different things that the rest of the cops in his department don't know where to look first. I heard mention of the Yakuza, the Dogs of Hell, some Italian politician…but nothing about Orion."

"What about Donovan?"

"He could say something about McDermott's connection to Orion, in theory. But I wouldn't bet on it. His main concern is self-preservation, and he knows that ratting out Jason would do the opposite of that."

Sarah nodded tightly.

"Okay," she said. Relief snaked its way through her, but it felt like a trick. Somewhere, there was something connecting her to that body—beyond the incriminating surveillance footage that was currently in Jason's possession. Given Jason's own presence on the tape, it seemed a safe bet that it wouldn't surface anywhere. "Good to know that me being an idiot won't get me arrested yet, I guess."

They left Rob's loft, stepping out onto the staircase that snaked down the back of the warehouse. It faced the river, and the breeze off the water made Sarah's hair fly around her face. She pushed it out of the way and lingered at the railing for a moment, looking out over the river where she had thrown McDermott's badge and murder weapon into the depths. The memory made her stomach twist. When she turned to follow Matt down the stairs, she found him observing her intently.

"Why have you been so fixated on this?" he asked. "All of this with McDermott."

Sarah bit her lip; she didn't know how to explain it in any way that didn't make her sound completely irrational. She shook her head and turned away from Matt, resting both her hands on the rusty railing.

"I think it's normal to fixate on something you can go to prison for," she said.

"You know that's not what I mean. Why are you so intent on making things right with his family? You didn't kill him, Sarah."

She hesitated. "I don't know if it will make any sense."

"Try me."

Focusing on the peeling paint that coated the railing, Sarah chipped away at it with her thumbnail. She might as well try to put it into words, she supposed. At worst, Matt would echo what she'd already been thinking and tell her she was being crazy. At best, maybe he of all people would get what she was feeling.

"Okay. I didn't kill McDermott, but…I did kill Ronan."

There was a long pause.

"That wasn't your fault," Matt said softly. "It was an accident."

She turned her head to look at him. She knew it wasn't her fault, but that wasn't the problem. If she was feeling guilty about Ronan that would be easy, and Matt would be on her side. The problem wasn't that she felt guilty; it was that she didn't. And she wasn't sure how he would react to that.

"I know. And I keep waiting to feel guilty about it anyway, but…I don't. I know I probably should, because he—he was a person and he's dead because of me. But even if I had known that dart would kill him, I think…I think I would have done it anyway," she confessed. "He was a monster who was never going to leave me alone, and…I'm glad he's dead."

It was a heavy truth to tell someone who had a strict code of not killing despite being more than capable of doing so. This was reaffirmed by the long stretch of silence after her admission, during which she couldn't bring herself to look at Matt. Instead she nervously rushed to continue explaining.

"A-and I know that you have a whole thing about, like, God and murder and so I—I figured maybe it was something I would just keep to myself. But then I ran into McDermott's mother that day, and…there was the guilt I'd been waiting for," she said. "It was almost a relief. Like that was how I'm supposed to feel, and now I do. I feel guilty every time I think about her, and it just seemed like a sign that…that I should help her. Or at least try to."

She'd been hoping that her explanation would start to make more sense as it went along, but she was afraid it didn't. There was no real logical reason for her to have connected Ronan and McDermott's deaths in her brain, much less for her to have somehow assigned it any kind of value in her sense of self-worth. It was just a jumble of emotions that even she didn't really understand.

She finally worked up the courage to glance over at Matt, but of course it was difficult to tell his expression with half his face covered.

Matt wet his lips, appearing to be choosing his words carefully. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, and she might not have been able to hear him over the wind off the water if he hadn't been standing so close.

"Not killing is a choice that I make. But I don't expect everyone to do the same. I'm religious, not naïve," he said. Sarah breathed out a sad, soft laugh. "And I'm not sanctimonious enough to hold it against you for being glad that the man who tried to rape you is dead," he said flatly.

Hearing him say that was a bigger relief than she had expected.

"I never thought I'd become the kind of person who could kill someone and not feel bad about it," she said. "Not even by accident. And I can't help thinking that's it's a bad sign, you know? Like—what if this is the first step towards me becoming heartless like everyone else who works at Orion?"

Matt let out sharp laugh of disbelief, and Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. Here she was pouring her heart out, and he was laughing at her?

"It's not funny," she said.

"I'm sorry. But heartless is the last word I would use to describe you," Matt said. "If that were true, you wouldn't be standing at this warehouse right now. You'd still be safely in my apartment where I stupidly thought you might stay put," he said pointedly, though without much heat. "Instead, you came here to make sure Rob and his son were okay, even though it was dangerous."

"I was the one who put them in danger in the first place, by opening my big mouth." Sarah threw her hands up in frustration. "And now I might have brought the police down on me, and I pissed off my terrifying boss, and made Rob pick up his whole life and run."

"Rob needed to get his son away from Orion either way," Matt argued. "It seems like he figured that out."

Sarah was quiet for a moment. "She might not have known how awful her son was. McDermott's mother. She just knew he was hers, and now he's gone. I just wanted to give her some closure."

"Well…it looks like you did."

"This wasn't my ideal way that could have happened," she said. "Now it feels like everything's going to come crashing down."

Maybe Matt was going to tell her that wasn't true. Or maybe he was going to agree. Either way, the moment was interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up to the gate of the warehouse. Matt heard it just a few moments before she did, and his head whipped in the direction of the sound.

"Come on," he said, grabbing her hand and quickly heading down the stairs. Sarah heard the engine turn off and two car doors open.

Matt swiftly pulled her underneath the metal stairwell so they were both concealed by the shadows underneath. Her back hit the wall as he pressed her against it, his chest a few centimeters from hers as they waited for the men to pass by. His head was turned as he listened to their surroundings, one hand hovering over the batons he kept strapped to his leg while his other hand splayed flat against her stomach to keep her still. She hoped that he would attribute her erratic heartbeat to the danger of the situation—which, to be fair, it partially was—and not to anything else. Because she knew it was ridiculous to be so aware of him right now but it had only been just a few hours ago that his hands were on her in a very different context, and she couldn't really control where her brain went when it was panicking.

Sarah could hear two men conversing as their shoes crunched across the gravel towards the warehouse, but she couldn't make out what they were saying yet. They didn't bother going into the actual warehouse, instead heading directly for the staircase Matt and Sarah were hiding under. Their boots were loud on the metal steps above her head, and she could only catch snatches of what they said over the sound.

"—doesn't want to use his own people for this shit anymore—"

"—I'm tellin' you, the guy's paranoid—"

A minute later, she could hear one of them clearly for the first time as his voice came through the window of the loft.

"They skipped town," the man said. "Smart move."

"If I pissed off a guy like Jason, I'd run too."

"Tell me about it. Which one of us gets to call him and tell him this guy is gone?"

"Not me. I'm not trying to end up getting locked up in that place instead. I don't think he even has cameras there. Had all that high tech shit installed,, but he doesn't want any of it caught on camera."

"I don't think anyone at Orion even knows it exists."

"Paranoid as hell."

"Yeah, well. I'm sure a guy like that will find something else to use that place for."

The two men's voices faded as they crunched back across the gravel to their car. Matt waited another beat after they pulled away before letting go of her.

"Jason knows already."

"I'm not surprised," she said. Jason had eyes and ears all over the city, it seemed. "And he knows it was Rob."

"But as far as he knows, you delivered the body to the warehouse like he told you to, and then you never had anything to do with it again. Right?"

"Right."

But that wouldn't stop him from murdering her with whatever tools were handy if he was in the right mood.

"What place were they talking about?" Matt asked her.

"I don't know. He…hasn't mentioned any sites with no cameras," she said. Then she remembered something. "But…he did order a bunch of keypad locks that I never saw anyone install in the doors at Orion."

"Do you know where they would have been installed?"

"It might be on the invoice. I'd have to look."

"That means he used company money, but it didn't sound like he disclosed it to Vanessa."

Sarah raised her eyebrows. Using Wilson Fisk's company money to buy yourself property and then keeping it a secret from his wife wasn't a smart game. Then again, neither was the game she was playing, and she knew that Jason's paranoia over his job had definitely made him more reckless.

"I'll check into that, too."

"Be careful when you do."

"I will be," she assured him.

But despite her best attempts at being careful, the worst day of her week was quickly approaching, and it had other plans.

Work the next day was tense, but not in the way Sarah would have expected. There was no buzzing gossip around the office like there usually was after a major event, which Sarah thought was a good sign. It meant there still weren't many people at Orion that knew McDermott's death was related to Jason or her. Of course, that might be because from what she'd overheard the night before, Jason was slowly moving towards entrusting people outside the company with his dirty work.

More alarming was the fact that she didn't hear a single word from Jason himself. The incessant calls and texts that she'd been getting over the past few days had been replaced by total radio silence. When she had to call him to ask about scheduling an appointment she got no answer, which she honestly couldn't remember happening before.

Trying to keep her mind off the troubling implications of Jason's silence, Sarah took advantage of the uninterrupted time to finish all of the work that had been piling up all week. There was a lot of it, and it was already dark out by the time she walked out of the building. She called Matt on his burner once she was out of earshot of anyone inside.

"Hey," he answered. "Everything alright?"

"Um...I'm not sure, honestly. I mean, I'm fine," she assured him. "Nothing crazy happened, but something just—didn't feel right. I couldn't get a hold of Jason all day, which is…unusual. I don't like it," she said. "But I did find something that I think has to do with what those guys were talking about last night."

"I'm only a few blocks from your work right now. I can meet you and you can fill me in on your way home?"

Sarah glanced over her shoulder one more time as she turned a corner, making sure no one had followed her out the front doors of Orion.

"Okay. There's so much construction along my bus route anyway that walking home might actually be—" Sarah broke off with a startled gasp as she felt something cold and hard press against her back. She had never had a gun to her back, but the feeling was unmistakable.

"Sarah?" she heard Matt say on the other end of the line, but his voice sounded distant over the blood rushing in her ears.

"Give me the phone," the person behind her said. Sarah had been so busy keeping an eye on the Orion office that she hadn't noticed him come out of the shadows off to her right.

Shit. Was this a mugging? After everything that had happened, was she really getting mugged right now?

As she held the phone over her shoulder for him to take, she prayed he wouldn't have any interest in who she had talking to. But the man just ended the call and tossed the phone aside unceremoniously. She heard it skid across the pavement somewhere nearby.

"In here," he said, and she couldn't help thinking the voice sounded familiar. But she didn't have much time to think about it as he pushed her towards an opening in the middle of some papered construction paneling in front of a building down the block from Orion. The paneling had been up since 'The Incident' had destroyed a good part of the north side of the building, which the owners were still working on renovating. For the millionth time, Sarah cursed the stupid aliens that had caused these very conveniently placed construction sites to pop up all over Hell's Kitchen, open to anyone who had a weapon and was in search of some shadows to hide in.

She thought about trying to use her pepper spray. It was on her keychain, and she could probably reach it in time. The man was also close enough behind her that if she snapped her head back she could probably hit his windpipe right where Matt had showed her to. But one of the nasty parts about having a gun trained on you was that it was stupidly easy to get shot by accident while trying to fight someone off, and if this really was just a mugging she would rather let him take the four dollars in her wallet and go.

As soon as they were out of sight of the street, the man spun her around to face him, keeping the gun aimed directly at her. Sarah's eyes widened in shock when she recognized the face even in the dark.

"Rob?"

"Where is he?" Rob demanded. There was a slightly crazed look on his normally calm face.

Sarah kept her eyes trained on the gun in his hands, keeping her own hands up and open in front of her. "Where's who?"

Was he talking about Matt? Had he figured out her connection to Daredevil somehow?

"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about!" he exclaimed, hysteria seeping into his voice. "My son! Where did you people take him?"

His son? Sarah's heart sank as she put two and two together. Oh, God.

"I—I don't…" Sarah shook her head. "I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes. Yes you do, you work for Jason and he's the one who sent them—I know you know. So tell me where he is."

"I don't know. I swear. I…I thought both of you left town after—"

"We tried." His voice was hard and bitter, but underneath Sarah could mostly just hear fear.

"Rob, listen to me," she said slowly. "Please. Whatever happened with your son, I wasn't involved."

"You were the one who brought me that goddamn body in the first place!" he exclaimed. He punctuated his sentence by angrily waving the gun, and Sarah flinched. "I didn't ask for you to put that on me."

"I know. You didn't choose to get involved with any of this. Neither did I. We talked about that the night you drove me home. R-remember?"

She hoped that reminding him of a time when he decidedly didn't want to kill her might help him not want to shoot her in the face right now, and it did seem to be having some effect. He still looked distraught and angry, but there was uncertainty on his face now, too.

Somewhere in the shadows, Sarah heard the smallest sound of movement nearby. Nothing she would have even picked up on if she hadn't been listening for it.

"Rob, y-you're…really going to want to put that gun down now," Sarah warned him in a last ditch attempt to save him some pain.

Rob hesitated.

"I can't. I can't put it down, not until I know where my son is."

"I don't know where he is," Sarah said. "But I can help you find him. We'll find him and you'll both get far, far away from all this. Okay? Let me…let me help you."

He stared at her, and with shaking hands he started to lower the gun just a fraction—

Then there was a burst of noise as several other Orion employees passed by on their way out of work. Their loud voices jarred Rob out of whatever calmness Sarah had nearly gotten him to, and he snapped the gun back up to aim it directly at her face again.

That seemed to be enough for Matt, who appeared out of the shadows so suddenly it startled Sarah despite her already knowing he was there. In one swift movement he seized Rob by the forearm, quickly disarming him. He held Rob's arm in a painful-looking twist with one hand and tossing the gun aside with the other.

"Jesus!" Sarah exclaimed, flinching as the gun clattered onto the ground.

"It's not loaded," Matt said. "Are you okay?"

Sarah's mouth hung open.

"It's not loaded?" she repeated. "I nearly peed myself, and it's not even loaded?"

Matt roughly let go of Rob, who stumbled backwards into the wall. He looked scared shitless of the masked man standing in front of him, and Sarah didn't blame him. Rob was about even with Matt's height, and definitely heavier, but even Sarah could tell he wasn't a fighter. The man hadn't even brought a loaded gun with him. She hoped that Matt recognized that despite the scene he'd come upon when he got there.

"Go easy," she whispered under her breath, quiet enough so Rob couldn't hear. She saw Matt pause, then give a short, barely perceptible nod.

"You're…you're him. The Devil," Rob said.

"Yeah. And you're a guy holding someone at gunpoint," Matt said, his voice low and gravelly.

He might have been trying to make it seem like he had no personal connection to Sarah—saving people from getting shot was, after all, kind of what he did—but he needn't have bothered. Rob was only focused on one thing.

"Listen—you can help me," Rob implored desperately. "They took my son. They took Tyler."

"Who did?"

"Orion!" Rob exclaimed, jabbing a hand in Sarah's direction. "A couple hours ago. We were staying at a motel in Queens until I could get some more money together to leave town. Just for a night or two. I paid cash. I don't know how they found us there, but they did."

"Did they say anything when they took him?" Sarah asked. Rob's attention snapped towards her, and she half expected him to turn his anger on her again. But either he had temporarily exhausted his reserves or he was just too wary of yelling at her in front of the vigilante who was currently standing between them, because he answered her.

"They said that Jason was working on a way to fix what I did. I don't know, finding someone for the police to blame. They said if I went to the cops to tell them where the body really came from, they'll…" Rob's voice cracked, hopelessness seeping in. "They're going to kill him anyway. I know they are."

"No, they aren't," Sarah said. "We won't let that happen."

But despite the force in her voice, she knew they were no more convinced of that then she was.

"You have no idea where they would be keeping him?" Matt asked Rob.

"If I did, I'd be there."

Matt worked his jaw as he thought for a moment, then strode over to the front door of the semi-abandoned building. He threw his weight against it, using his shoulder to bust it open without much effort.

"Inside," he said to Rob, jerking his head towards the dark interior of the building.

Rob looked from Matt to Sarah, then back to Matt. He seemed reluctant to argue with the vigilante, who was clearly his best bet for getting his son back. He ducked through the doorway, and Matt followed.

Sarah lingered in the doorway, watching the two of them. Matt reached into one of the zippered pockets on his cargo pants and pulled out something long and thin that Sarah struggled to see in the dark.

"What will you—" Rob started to ask about the plan, but was cut off when Matt abruptly grabbed his wrist and pinned it to a nearby exposed metal pipe, securing them together with what Sarah now recognized was a zip tie. "What the hell? Let me out of this!"

"You're only going to put yourself and your son in danger if you try to get involved," Matt said evenly. "Let me care of it."

"And what, I just wait here to find out if my son is alive or not?"

"Yes."

Rob gave Matt and incredulous look before his eyes found Sarah lingering in the doorway.

"What about her?" he demanded.

Neither of them said anything for a beat. Sarah didn't want to make it obvious that she was working with Daredevil, but what did it really matter at this point? She'd already agreed to help Rob, so it was no secret she wasn't loyal to Orion.

"We'll bring your son back, Rob," she said softly. "Alive."

She felt bad about leaving Rob like that, tied to a pipe and unable to help save his own son. But she didn't know what other choice they had, so she followed Matt out of the building and back into the construction overhang.

Matt turned to her once they were alone again.

"Why do you keep saying 'we'?" he asked slowly.

"I have to come with you," she said. That much seemed obvious. All she'd ever been good for in this arrangement was getting information about Jason and passing it along to Matt to do the dirty work. But now Jason was making big moves and not letting her in on them. If she'd gotten herself tossed out of the inner circle, what help was she to anyone?

Matt let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh.

"No, you don't."

"I found the invoice for the building those guys were talking about. The one that just got the security upgrades. And I've been there, before they updated it. Most of the floors are below ground. You know that has to be where they're keeping Tyler."

"Then give me the address and that's where I'll go."

"What will you do when you get there?" she asked. "The whole place is locked up. Every room and every hallway."

"It's not hard to take keys from people."

"They're not keys, they're codes. For the keypads. And I think I know where to look for them at work."

Matt let out a frustrated sigh. "Even if I let you go back into Orion to get the codes, there's no reason for you to come to the building with me."

"Those keypads are all touch screens," she argued. "Even your senses can't work around those. But if I came—"

"It's not going to happen," he said flatly.

"It has to! You'd be risking that kid's life if you don't bring me. I know the layout, I can get the codes, and—well—I can actually use a touch screen. Why not use a resource if you have it?"

"You're not a resource to be used," he said through gritted teeth.

Sarah ignored him.

"What about when you actually get to Rob's son and have to convince him to come back here with you? I've met him, and talked to him. Just a little, but still. If you want him to run off into the night to some secret meeting spot, I think he's more likely to go with me than with…this," she said, gesturing to Matt's very unwelcoming costume.

"Sarah…" There was a warning edge to his voice; he wanted her to drop the idea, which meant it must have been making some sense.

"Please don't try to zip tie me to anything for saying this, but…I'm going to that building either way," she pointed out tentatively. Seeing the way his expression darkened, she quickly added, "And it seems a lot more likely that I'll get hurt if I have to go alone so you might as well let me come with you."

"Jesus Christ," he snarled under his breath.

"It's my fault that he's in there to begin with, Matt," she insisted softly. "I have to help."

Matt was silent a moment, and Sarah could see the telltale tick jumping in his jaw. Oddly, she took that as a good sign; if he was getting more pissed off, it was probably because he was running out of arguments for why she couldn't come with him.

"Fine."

Sarah let out a sigh of relief, but simultaneously a heavy weight of dread dropped into her stomach. Shit. She reminded herself that there was a teenage boy being held captive because of her, and a grief-stricken father waiting in an abandoned construction site, and she couldn't back out now.

"Good," she said, trying not to let the nervousness she was feeling slip into her tone. "I just need to grab my phone from wherever he threw it, and-"

She started to step around him, but Matt's hand shot out and closed around her arm, holding her in place with a surprisingly iron-like grip. Not painful, but just short of it, and more than enough to get her to look up at him in wide-eyed surprise.

"Listen. When we're in there, you have to do what I tell you," Matt said. "No questions."

She reminded herself that although this was technically the same person she'd just been making out with on a kitchen counter a few days prior, she effectively needed to treat him as someone else entirely. That had been Matt, all crooked grins and cocky flirtations. This was Daredevil, who was all business and had zero problems prioritizing her safety above her feelings at the moment. If she knew anything about Matt it was that he would take out anyone who posed a threat to the people he cared about, and right now Sarah was unfortunately both the one in danger and the one putting herself there, so she was receiving a strange mix of protectiveness and intimidation.

Matt was waiting for an answer, his mouth pressed into a tight line.

"Okay," she agreed.

"You stay out of sight. And if I tell you to run, you run."

"Okay."

"I'm not bringing you in there to get hurt. Okay?" he said.

"Okay," she repeated. "I get it. I trust you. We'll follow your plan."

She brought her hand up to his face, hoping to see just the smallest flash of Matt underneath the Devil. And a flash was all she got; the tension in his jaw relaxed almost imperceptibly when her fingers brushed against his temple. He turned his head and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist for just a second, then let go of her other arm and stepped back, his demeanor turning business-like once again.

"Go get changed. Dark colors, something with a hood," he said. "I'll see if Rob knows anything else that can help us, and be there soon."

Sarah nodded and started to leave the enclosure, then she hesitated.

"You are going to meet me, right? You're not going to go there without me?"

"Not if I know you're just going to show up and get into trouble anyway," he said, sounding deeply irritated.

So threatening to put herself in danger was a successful tactic of getting around Matt's stubborn protectiveness. Interesting.

At home, Sarah discarded her work clothes and changed into a pair of dark jeans, a black hooded sweatshirt, and a pair of black sneakers. She pulled her hair into a tight bun, then glanced in the mirror. She looked a little like a cat burglar from a cartoon, but she supposed that was the point. Her phone buzzed and she answered it immediately.

"Hey."

"I'm on your roof," Matt said without preamble.

Sarah frowned up at the ceiling; she'd assumed they would be meeting in the alley behind her apartment, or at least somewhere on the ground.

"Uh…okay. I'll be up there in a second."

She grabbed the essentials—her stun gun, phone, and pepper spray—and slipped into the zippered pockets of her sweatshirt before leaving to meet Matt on the roof.

Matt waited for her near the corner of her apartment building's roof. He heard her light footsteps approaching, the sound of them softened by the rubber soles of a pair of sneakers. Good.

"Why are we meeting up here?" she asked him.

"If you're insisting on coming with me, that includes getting there my way."

There was a silent pause, then Sarah's pulse quickened in trepidation.

"Your way being…rooftops," Sarah concluded, reluctance apparent in her tone.

"Yeah."

"Is this your way of trying to scare me out of coming with you?"

"It's the quickest route by far, and we don't have to worry about being seen," he explained calmly. "Plus, it'll give us an easier access point into the building."

Those were the main reasons for taking this route. If it also helped dissuade her from coming, that was a bonus.

"R-right," she said. "That…makes sense. And the buildings around here are all really close together, so it's not like we'd be jumping from building to building or anything...right?"

Matt heard the waver in her voice and stepped closer to her.

"You can still go back inside," he offered quietly.

For a brief, hopeful moment it seemed like maybe she would. He could feel the uncertainty radiating off her as she glanced over the edge of the roof, down at the ground far below them. But then she looked back at him, watching him for a long moment, and he wished not for the first time that he could see what expression was on her face. But instead, all he had to go on was the slight calming of her heartbeat as she looked at him, and a deep, steadying breath that he recognized well.

"No," she said. "I'm coming."

Matt was dismayed by her answer, but he couldn't say he was surprised. This stubborn tendency to not avoid danger was something that he'd learned about her immediately after the first time they'd met and he'd unsuccessfully tried to scare her into leaving town. In the time that had passed, he still hadn't decided if he thought it was her best quality or her worst one.

He pressed his lips together unhappily, but gave a short nod.

Sarah reached up and tugged his mask down over his eyes.

"Ready when you are," she said.

Matt sighed.

"Alright," he said. He reached around and flipped the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head, then held out a gloved hand for her to take. "Let's go."