Matt hadn't planned on joining Stick's crusade that night. But Stick had been waiting for Matt in his apartment when he got home from a deposition hearing, and—as usual—had been surprisingly convincing as to why Matt should come help him, despite the lack of warning and the fact that it was only just past five in the evening.
("Not that either of us would know for sure, but I think it's still daylight out," Matt had tried to argue.
"Not underground, it isn't.")
It had been enough to catch his curiosity. Stick had been confident that it would be a short recon mission, just checking out the space to make plans. If he had been lying about that, Matt couldn't tell—but then, he could never tell with Stick.
He hadn't been expecting so many opponents, or for them to move so quickly and silently, and he especially hadn't been expecting them to have bows and arrows. He could only guess that Stick hadn't been expecting it either, or surely they would have brought more backup, enlisted some other poor souls that Stick had under his thumb.
But instead it was just the two of them, and somewhere in the ensuing scuffle Matt didn't move quick enough.
He heard the arrow flying toward him and curved away, but it grazed him. He lifted his hand to the back of his neck to check the damage, and there wasn't much blood. Nothing to worry about. So why did he feel so dazed? He'd gotten hurt much worse than this before, but this was different—something was wrong. His balance was going, and he stumbled, still trying to fight off the men around him. One of them delivered a sharp kick to his already cracked ribs, and he lost his footing completely, falling to the ground.
As he tried to get up, the sounds around him grew painfully loud. It was impossible to distinguish one noise from another among the roar. Shouts, bodies moving, weapons swinging—it all blurred into a cacophony of sounds he couldn't make sense of.
Then, very suddenly, the noise gone. All of it. He couldn't hear anything going on around him. He tried to push his senses further, figure out the placement of objects around him, but there was nothing. The pain spread through him, down his spine and through his limbs, to the point where he couldn't tell if it was coming from his attackers or from his own veins. He felt like he was screaming, but he couldn't be sure.
The line between being conscious and unconscious blurred—there was little to let him know when he was awake and when he wasn't. Time and location were impossible to gage; all Matt could really be sure of was that while this might not have been the traditional Catholic idea of hell, it was definitely his own personal version: being lost in nothingness. It pressed in around him, and no matter how hard he tried to reach out there was nothing there but pain shooting through his veins. He lashed out at anything that came near him, but it was difficult to tell if he was just imagining it.
Then somewhere along the way, the pain started to fade a little, but he couldn't remember how or why. There was someone there with him, touching him with gentle hands and guiding him to lie down. There was only one person he could imagine it being, but it didn't make any sense for her to be there. He was deep underground somewhere, far from her.
Maybe this wasn't real. He was just slowly losing his mind, and this was his brain's way of trying to make it easier on himself. But his body was already reacting, his muscles relaxing just a fraction at the familiar contact, and he found that he really didn't care if he was imagining her. Real or not, leaning into the feel of her touch helped some of the panic fade away, so he focused on the feel her fingers in his hair as he slipped from one kind of nothingness into another.
As predicted, Sarah didn't really fall asleep that night. Instead she drifted in and out of a semi-conscious state, vaguely aware of the heavy weight of Matt's head on her lap, the slow expanding of his ribcage underneath her hand. She was on the more unconscious side of said state when she was startled awake by Matt abruptly jolting into a sitting position with a shuddering gasp.
Sarah's eyes flew open.
"Shit," she gasped, bringing a hand to her chest. Her heart was skyrocketing from the sudden awakening. She kept perfectly still with her back to the exposed brick wall, watching Matt as he got his bearings. The cut on his forehead had started bleeding again at some point, leaving fresh blood on both his face and—as Sarah looked down to see—her clothes. His eyes were wide and his breathing harsh and ragged, but he was tilting his head like he always did when he was listening closely to something, which gave her hope.
"Matt," she tried quietly. "Can you hear me?"
No reaction.
She slowly reached for his hand, loosely linking her fingers through his. His head whipped in her direction, his fingers tightening around hers, and she instinctively threw a hand up between them. But after a moment some sort of recognition flashed across his face as—hopefully—the memory of who he was with returned to him. He held her hand no less tightly, but the line of his shoulders grew less tense, and Sarah let out a long, shaky breath.
"You're here," he said. His voice sounded painfully raw and tired.
Sarah frowned and tilted her head.
"Of course I am," she said. Replying to him out loud made the situation feel more normal, somehow.
"I thought, uh…" Matt shook his head, a sad half-smile flickering across his lips. "…thought maybe I imagined you."
Sarah chewed her lip, hating seeing him like this and knowing how helpless she was to do anything. She gently traced her fingertips from his temple down to his jaw, hoping the familiar gesture might at least comfort him a little. It seemed to work somewhat as he closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. She let her hand linger there for a few moments before slowly pulling away and getting to her feet to grab something to clean the blood from Matt's face.
When she returned with a towel and a bowl of water, she saw that Matt had shifted so that he was sitting against the wall, looking less panicked than he had earlier in the night but just as lost. Sarah gently turned his face towards her.
"I know you're probably spiraling right now," she said as she gingerly pressed the damp towel to the cut along his hairline. He flinched at the initial contact, but didn't try to move away. "Thinking that this is a permanent thing. But it's—it's not. Okay? It's…you'll be fine. Your hearing will come back soon."
She had no idea if that was true, but she had to believe it was. Matt didn't deserve to get trapped in whatever sensory deprivation pit he was in right now. There were too many things he had to do, too many people he had to save for him to lose all his senses now.
"Your hearing has to come back, because I need to let you know how pissed I am at you," she said. "You and your stupid secrets. This is what happens when you go running around with Stick and don't tell anyone." She dipped the towel back into the bowl, watching the reddish-brown tendrils swirl into the water, muddying the color. "Maybe if you had mentioned that you were going to fight ninjas who have poison arrows, I could have…I don't know, reminded you not to do that."
She moved the towel down the side of his face, following the dried rivulets of blood.
"And I'm pissed you didn't tell me that guy was dead. I could have handled it," she said. "I deserve to know when people get murdered because of me."
Ranting at Matt wasn't as satisfying as it probably would have been with him awake, but it was still helping a little bit.
"And—and I know that when you get your hearing back and we argue about this, you're going to say that I would do the same thing in your shoes. That I'd have kept it a secret. And you're right, I probably would have. But you would have been able to tell, you know? That's the difference. You can always tell when I'm lying, but I don't have that ability. So you have to be better. I know that's not fair, but…you just do."
Matt was silent, obviously. Sarah pressed her lips together and swept the towel over the bridge of his nose, cleaning away the last bit of dried blood.
"You know, this isn't so different from how things were at the beginning," she informed him. She set the towel and bowl aside. "Me talking about nothing. You being very stoic and bleeding everywhere."
After a long moment of silence, she sighed and rested her head on her knees, watching him. His eyes were closed, his head tipped back against the wall. Maybe he'd passed out again. Honestly, it didn't seem like such a bad idea.
Sarah checked the time on her phone, which was on its last three percent battery: it was just past 3:30 am. She let her own eyes close for a few moments, just to rest them.
"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy."
Sarah jumped, her eyes flying open at the unexpected voice coming from nearby. Morning light was shining into the living room; she must have actually fallen asleep for a few hours. Now Matt's audio assistant was going off as Sarah clambered to her feet, every muscle in her body protesting her sleeping arrangements.
"Foggy. Foggy. Foggy."
Matt's phone was on the table, and Sarah fumbled with the screen, trying to answer it, but she didn't particularly know how to work it. There was no big green Answer button like on her own touchscreen. Instead, Matt's accessibility settings were set up so that he could swipe certain sections of the screen in a specific way to do different tasks, and she had no idea which way answered the phone.
"Foggy. Foggy. Fog—"
The phone's announcement cut off as Foggy hung up. Hopefully it hadn't been anything too important.
Setting the phone back down, Sarah made her way into the kitchen to get some water. As she was coming back, she heard Matt's burner phone begin buzzing in the pocket of his black cargo pants. Foggy again, she was sure. Matt had almost no reaction to his phone vibrating against his leg, nor to Sarah unzipping his pocket and taking the phone out.
"Hello?" she answered.
There was a pause on the other end.
"Sarah?" Foggy said.
"Hi, Foggy."
"If you're answering Matt's phone, he either had a really good night or a really bad one."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "The second one."
"Shit, really? Is he alright?" Foggy asked, the humor quickly slipping out of his tone.
"He will be, I think," she said. She wasn't sure how much Foggy knew about Stick and whatever he had mixed Matt up in, so she kept it vague. "He had an…incident?"
"Are we talking 'fell into a manhole' incident or capital I, 'aliens are invading' Incident?"
"Uh…somewhere in between. I don't know what happened, exactly. I wasn't there. But his—his senses are all...out of whack. He can't hear anything and I don't think his—I don't know, his radar or whatever is working, either."
Foggy swore on the other end of the line, and Sarah was oddly reminded of the first time they'd ever spoken, with her half asleep and him frantically trying to get help. Speaking of which…
"Why were you calling? Is everything okay?" she asked.
"Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Matt just missed an appointment with a client this morning, is all. I figured he just overslept but then when he didn't answer his phone, I thought maybe something was wrong," Foggy said. "And I was right. Dammit. Has Claire checked him over yet?"
"Uh, no. I—I didn't think this was really something that was in her wheelhouse, I guess."
"Give her a call anyway. She's a nurse, she sees all kinds of weird shit."
"I will. So you weren't calling to like—make up, or—or anything like that?" she asked hopefully.
"The man's gone deaf, and you're worried about whether he and I are still fighting?"
"I can worry about a lot of things at the same time, Foggy. It's called anxiety."
Then Foggy sighed.
"Okay, yes, I had maybe been thinking about giving him a call—unrelated to your very overbearing encouragement, I might add. So, maybe when he's more stable I could still…you know, stop by and talk."
Sarah gave a tired smile.
"I think that's a good idea," she said. "Come by whenever you want. Even if his hearing isn't back yet, I could use the company. Matt's apartment is really boring."
"Tell me about it," Foggy said. "I've been trying to talk him into getting a TV for years. You want his Wi-Fi password?"
"My phone's dead. But thanks."
"I think we shoved an old People magazine shoved under one of the legs of his dining room table once to keep it even, if you want something to read."
Sarah glanced at the table doubtfully. A magazine that was probably a couple years old didn't sound like very appealing entertainment.
"Sure. Thanks."
"Okay, I gotta go. Does Matt need anything?"
Sarah took a good look at the man in question. He probably needed a hospital, to be honest, but that wasn't an option. For now, he seemed to be sleeping somewhat peacefully.
"No. No, I think I've got it under control."
"Okay, good. He's not bleeding or anything? He's all bandaged up and safely in bed?"
"He is safely...on the floor," Sarah said carefully. "But he's not bleeding."
"The floor? Sarah."
"He's heavy, Foggy," she protested. "I can't move him."
"Alright, alright. Don't let him stay on the floor any longer than he has to be."
"Okay," she said, feeling mildly chastised. "We'll see you soon, I hope."
The next person she tried calling was Stick. Matt's second burner phone—the one with only one number—was on the counter, and Sarah naively thought that Stick might like to know Matt wasn't dead. But he didn't answer, and he had no inbox to leave a voicemail.
"What an asshole," she muttered as she hung up.
Just as Sarah set the phone down, Matt woke with a start again. She was kneeling next to him within a few seconds, laying one hand against his chest and another along his cheek.
"It's okay," she whispered. "It's okay, you're fine. I'm here with you."
After giving him a few minutes to calm down, Sarah pressed her fingers to his neck to check his pulse. It seemed steady, as did his breathing. His skin was hot, but not as bad as it was earlier. She wasn't sure why he kept waking up so violently, but there was someone she could call to ask.
When Claire answered the phone, she already sounded exhausted. Sarah wasn't sure if that was from work or just from mentally preparing to deal with a call from Matt, but either way she quickly became more alert at the words 'poison arrow'. She listened as Sarah stumbled through an explanation of what she thought happened to Matt, and how his hearing and other senses seemed to have disappeared completely.
"So, do you, um, know anything about that?" Sarah finished. "Like how long something like that would usually last?"
"Hearing loss by poison isn't really my forte," Claire said, sounding a bit overwhelmed by this information. "Do you know what kind of poison it was?"
"No."
"Or how much he got hit with?"
"No."
"What was in the injection you gave him?"
"I have no idea," Sarah said apologetically.
Static filled the phone line as Claire let out a loud sigh of a frustration.
"Okay. How are his vitals?"
Finally, a question she could sort of answer.
"They seem okay. His breathing is steady, and his heart rate is normal, I think. He keeps waking up suddenly, though, like he's in pain."
"It might be his equilibrium. If he's lost his hearing, his balance is probably off, too. It can be disorienting when you're trying to sleep. You know that feeling when you're just getting to sleep and suddenly feel like you're falling? That's probably something along the lines of what's happening."
"Is there anything I should be doing to help him?"
"Just keep an eye on him. Make sure he gets a lot of liquids. Is he hurt otherwise?"
Sarah's eyes wandered from the cut on his temple to the bandage on his neck. "Just the usual amount."
"Okay. Keep me updated on his condition. Call me if it gets any worse, and I can come over myself."
"Thanks, Claire." Sarah said. Just as she was going to hang up, an idea occurred to her. "Oh, wait! Um, could I maybe also ask you for a different, non-Daredevil related favor?"
"You can ask," Claire said warily. "No guarantees beyond that."
"There's a patient who would have been brought in to your hospital sometime in the last few days. Her name is Cheryl McDermott."
"I know the one you're talking about. She was poisoned, too. Was Matt poisoned with that same stuff? Because if so—"
"No, no," Sarah said quickly. "They're not related. But I was wondering if you, um…could you maybe check on her? See—see if she's doing okay?"
"Yeah, I can check. Do you know her?"
"Sort of."
If her vague answer bothered Claire, she didn't let on.
"Alright. I'll check on her when I get the chance and call you back. Anything else?"
"No, that's it," Sarah said. Then she hastily added, "Oh, call me back at this number, though. My phone is dead, and I don't know how to use Matt's other one."
"Sure."
"Thanks again, Claire."
After checking on Matt again, Sarah could no longer avoid checking out her own injuries in the mirror. She ducked into Matt's bathroom and flipped on the light, wincing as the harsh overhead bulbs threw the bruise on her face into sharp contrast.
Matt's fist had a large radius, and he had caught her square on the cheek, managing to leave a vivid reddish-purple bruise over the entire area. The skin had split open just below her eye, and again near the corner of her mouth. Thankfully, the blow hadn't hit her eye directly, or she was sure it would be swollen shut.
Jesus. She didn't look quite as bad as she had after Ronan's attack, but it was still her most noticeable injury in a while. No amount of makeup was going to properly cover this up until it had healed somewhat.
She dabbed some alcohol on the cuts before returning to the living room, where she checked Matt's phone to find a missed call. Of course Claire had called back in the five minutes she'd been out of the room. She settled on the floor next to Matt as she listened to the voicemail the nurse had left her.
"Hey. The patient you were asking about? Her vitals aren't fantastic, but they're not the worst I've seen. And she has three or four uniformed officers on a rotation guarding her room, so she should be safe from anyone trying to hurt her, at least. If that's what you were actually worried about. Keep me updated on Matt."
Claire's message ended, and after a short beep the next new message began playing. It was the message Sarah had left Matt the night before, when she had been waiting for him at Fogwell's.
"Hey. I, uh, I'm at the gym. It's a little after 8:15, so I don't know if—"
She hit delete. Obviously she had since figured out why he was late.
"Saved messages," the phone announced.
Sarah went to hang up, but she paused when she heard her own voice coming out of the phone again.
"Hey, I'm on my way over. I'm bringing you coffee and I—oh, shit. I meant to call your other phone," Phone Sarah said with a laugh. Real Life Sarah shook her head and sent Matt an amused look. What a random message to save. "Hang on."
The message ended, and the next one started. It was her, again. Sarah knew listening to Matt's voicemails like this was an invasion of his privacy, but, well, they were her messages. She technically already knew what they said.
"Hi. I'm at your church, I just got done practicing," Phone Sarah said. "I'm spending the night at my dad's, so if you need to come by, just call me first. Don't creepily knock on the balcony door, it always scares me."
There were more. A short message from her making plans to go to the boxing gym later than usual. And another reminding him to come over so she could check on some injury he had—at this point she couldn't even remember which one she'd been referring to. The last one was her drunken call to him from the night of their reconciliatory drinking game.
Sarah looked over Matt, who was sleeping sitting up beside her, his head tipped back against the wall. Sometimes it felt like she'd barely scratched the surface of this version of him, the version that did little things like save her messages. And now the idea that he might not come out of whatever void he was stuck in made her chest constrict painfully.
She carefully set the phone down between them, then linked her fingers through Matt's in an attempt to keep her own panic at bay. His eyes fluttered open for a moment as his fingers tightened around her own, then they closed again.
"You have to come back now, okay?" she whispered. "I—I need you to come back."
There was no response. Sarah held his hand tighter, wishing there was more she could do. But there wasn't, so instead she just rested her head on his shoulder and waited.
It was a few hours later when Matt woke up to a different kind of silence from the crushing, all-encompassing sort that had been pressing in around him all night. The room around him was quiet, but could hear something, at least. It sounded like footsteps, someone moving around the room.
Matt tried to get more of a picture of the room around him, to figure out where he was, but it didn't come. He dragged himself into a sitting position, and as he did he heard the rustle of his clothes against the floor. A strong current of relief rushed through him at the innocuous sound. Then, very distantly, he thought he could hear the sound of running water, like a faucet. He concentrated, straining his ears, but he couldn't make the sound any clearer. Everything sounded so...muffled.
He had just flattened his palm against the wall, readying himself to try to get to his feet when he heard the footsteps coming towards him, and then movement directly to his left as someone knelt down beside him. A clinking sound as something glass was set down.
"I swear to God, Matt, if you try to stand up right now I will knock you back out," a tired and very familiar voice told him.
The corner of Matt's mouth turned up. Threats of violence or no, that voice was the very thing he'd been hoping to hear.
"Seems like an overreaction," he rasped, surprised at how hoarse his own voice was.
There was a pause.
"You—can you hear me?"
Matt nodded, and two seconds later Sarah's arms were around his neck, hugging him tightly. The sudden weight against him set off the spinning in his head again, but he ignored it as he closed his eyes and slowly brought his hand to the back of Sarah's neck, winding his fingers into her hair.
After a few moments she untangled herself from him, much to his disappointment.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"We're at your place," Sarah answered slowly. He could hear the concern in her voice. "You…can't tell?"
"No. I…I can hear, but…barely. Like I'm underwater."
"Are you in pain?"
Yes. Matt's head was pounding, and beyond the immediate sound of Sarah's voice he couldn't hear anything else in his apartment, couldn't smell anything but blood. He struggled to remember where he'd been or what he'd been doing before sinking into nothingness.
"Dizzy, mostly," he said. The words quickly dissolved into a cough.
"Here," Sarah said. He felt something cool and smooth being pressed into his hand; a glass of water.
"What…what happened to me?" he asked after taking a long drink.
"You got poisoned, Matt. You don't remember?"
A hazy memory came to him, of a sharp pain just before everything stopped. He'd been fighting. Fighting a lot of people, overwhelming numbers, with only Stick to help him—
Shit. He'd been with Stick. Where was Stick? Did he make it out?
"Where's Stick?" he asked as he tried again to get to his feet, ignoring Sarah's protests. But the effort was too much for his equilibrium, and he felt the floor tilt underneath him before he could take a step. The glass slipped from his hand and shattered against the floor. He caught the edge of the windowsill to keep from falling, and seconds later there was a hand splayed against his chest and another one at his waist, keeping him upright.
"Matt—stop it—Stick's gone, okay? He—he left," Sarah said. "You can't go after him."
Matt leaned back heavily against the window frame.
"Stick left," he repeated dully. Then he let out a short, humorless laugh. "Of course he did."
Of course. Matt screwed up Stick's last chance of tracking down what he was looking for in New York, so he was probably on another continent by now. That was generally how their interactions went; Stick demanded something from him, Matt screwed it up, Stick left.
"Okay, since you insisted on standing up, do you think you can make it to the couch?" Sarah asked.
He was sincerely doubtful of his ability to make it anywhere with his head spinning like it was, but the couch sounded much more comfortable than the floor, so he nodded.
Sarah kept a careful hold on him as they took slow steps towards the couch, which thankfully wasn't far from where he'd been passed out. He knew he was swaying heavily, and he tried not to put his weight on her too much, but it was difficult to tell. When they finally got there, he fell heavily onto the cushions, exhausted from just that small movement.
The couch dipped as Sarah sat down next to him. He reached for her automatically, resting his hand on her leg. It was a small way of making her feel more real, and less like a floating voice. He couldn't sense her like he normally could, but he could touch her, at least.
"Are you okay?" she asked worriedly.
Matt could barely hear her over the blood pounding through his head, and he was slightly suspicious that he might pass out. But he was distracted from that by the fact that, from the sounds of it, Sarah had been here alone with Stick. On more than one occasion, Stick had hinted that Matt's unwillingness to cut the people he cared about from his life meant Stick would have to do it for him, but until now he had avoided letting any of them be alone with him.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Um...I think you've got it backwards. You're the one who got poisoned, not me."
"If Stick left, that means…he was here with you," Matt said.
It was a few moments before Sarah answered, and for once he couldn't read anything into her silence.
"Yeah," she said finally. "For a little while."
Matt nodded, trying to ascertain how that meeting had gone. Sarah was still here, meaning Stick hadn't scared her off, at least.
"You…look worried," Sarah noted. "Is that because you thought he might hurt me, or because he might tell me what really happened to that guy from the other night?"
Matt's stomach dropped. Of course Stick had told her. Probably as an attempt to put yet another obstacle in their way.
"Sarah…"
"Were you going to tell me? At some point?"
He hesitated. He could say yes, that he was going to tell her some day when things were more stable. It would make things easier. But he knew it wasn't the truth.
"...no," he admitted. "Probably not."
"Jesus, Matt."
"I'm sorry. But when McDermott was killed…the way it affected you, I…I didn't want to see you go through that again," he said.
"So…it had nothing to do with the fact that telling me Stick killed him would mean telling me why Stick was even around that night?"
Matt sighed. He really didn't want to have this conversation right now, with his entire body aching, but there wasn't much getting around it. His secrets always seemed to come back to bite him at the worst times. And to be fair, he'd been the one to stupidly bring up the subject of Stick.
"He was there because we were supposed to go on a mission that night, and when I didn't show up...he came looking," he explained vaguely.
"A mission," Sarah repeated. She muttered something under her breath that he probably would have been able to hear on a normal day, but now he couldn't make out much beyond the derisive tone.
It was disorienting to talk to Sarah without his senses. Normally she was a bright flare of light, all warm skin and uneven breathing and responsive nerves. He was so used to being able to hear her heartbeat as it filled the gaps in their conversation, or the way her voice would change when she was leaving something unsaid. Now was different. Harder. She was still there, but it was like talking to her through a thick pane of glass.
"Why didn't you just tell me you were working with him?" she asked.
"I didn't want to get you mixed up in this. I still don't."
"Well, that's not working. You—you can't just compartmentalize every bit of your life because you don't trust people. It doesn't work. You tried it with me, remember?"
"That's not the same at all," Matt argued. "I didn't trust you because I didn't know you. I don't trust Stick because I do know him."
"If he's so untrustworthy, why are you running around fighting crazy poison arrow people with him?" she exclaimed. "It doesn't make any sense. What is it about him that makes you get like this?"
"Like what?"
"Closed off and—and weird. Every time he's around, you totally shut down. Why? If I'm going to hate someone this much, I'd at least like to know more about him."
Matt clenched his jaw. He didn't talk about his history with Stick; she knew that, and she still wouldn't drop it.
"You already know as much about him as you need to," he said.
"Look, Stick being around affects me whether you want it to or not. He murdered someone because of me," she said. "But, hey, at least he told me the truth about it. If I thought he'd answer, I'd call him up and ask him these questions instead."
Matt raised his eyebrows in doubt. "Call him up?"
"Yeah. On your top secret second burner phone you thought I never noticed," she said. Matt blinked in surprise. "I already tried calling earlier to tell him you were alive, but he didn't answer. He disappeared, just like you like to do. Not the most irritating quality you two have in common, but it's up there."
"Don't compare me to Stick," Matt said harshly, shifting so he was sitting up straighter. "We're nothing alike."
"Oh, really? Stubborn, violent, pops up at the worst times," Sarah started listing off. "Secretive, kind of a dick, no concept of privacy—"
"Those things don't matter," Matt cut her off. "Stick is a murderer. I'm not and I never will be."
Instead of answering, Sarah let out a long, exasperated sigh. He felt the cushion move as she stood up from the couch and walked away.
Matt stayed still, listening to her footsteps move in the opposite direction. Was she leaving? He no heartbeat to help him read her, no skin temperature, no breathing. Just her voice, and right now she didn't seem terribly concerned about using it. How pissed off was she, really? He should have just apologized and tried to cut the conversation off there.
From the direction her footsteps had gone, he heard what sounded like the zipper of a bag. His heart dropped.
"You're...leaving," he said, attempting to sound neutral.
There was a pause.
"No. I'm getting your first aid kit," she said. Her footsteps came back towards him again, and he felt the couch sink as she took a seat next to him. "You're bleeding again."
"Oh," he said. He felt something cold being pressed to the back of his neck—an alcohol pad, if he had to guess. After a few moments, Sarah spoke again.
"I'm just mad at you," she said, her voice quieter than before. "I'm not going anywhere."
"It's…a lot harder to tell how angry you are without being able to...you know," he said with a shrug. He regretting it as he was saying it. Sarah didn't particularly like being read, so admitting how heavily he relied on it to understand her probably wouldn't score him many points.
"Did you want a scale of one to ten or something?"
"...it couldn't hurt," he said.
"Fine. Ten," she said immediately.
Matt laughed at that, tired and low. Even in this condition, he could tell she was exaggerating.
"If you were at a ten you'd already be holding some household weapon," he said.
"What makes you think I'm not?" she asked, but most of the anger from before had left her voice. She pressed a fresh bandage to the wound on his neck and smoothed it out.
Matt reached for her hand as she set down the first aid supplies. He took it as a good sign that she didn't pull away.
"I want to be at a ten," she said. "I think you deserve a ten for not telling me what Stick did. But...mostly I'm just really, really glad you're okay. And I don't have space for both of those things in my head right now, so..." Sarah sighed. "I guess I'm at, like, a three for now. But a harsh three."
A grin flickered across his lips at that, but quickly faded.
"I'm sorry I lied," he said. "I was trying to keep you from getting hurt."
"Well, that didn't work out so great," she said lowly.
Matt frowned. "What?"
She paused.
"Nothing. I'm—I'm just tired, and not making sense," she said. She did sound tired, but he could have sworn there was something else in her voice, something odd. Or maybe he was reading into something that wasn't there.
"I guess you would be tired," Matt said. He winced guiltily as he tried to calculate how long she'd been stuck here taking care of him. "You've been here, what, all night and the better part of all day?"
"Just about," she said. "You were out a long time. I thought maybe you—"
Her voice caught in her throat, but he understood. She thought he might not wake up or get his hearing back. And he might still not get his full senses back, if his current condition was any indicator.
Sarah cleared her throat, and then Matt felt her hand on his forehead, pushing his hair back.
"I'm sure you're more tired than I am, so we should probably go to bed. In your actual bed, not on the floor," she added.
Matt didn't miss the 'we' part of her statement, and as much as he was relieved at the thought that she was staying, he felt another pang of guilt at knowing she was probably going to lose another night's sleep taking care of him, all because he'd been stupid enough to get himself knocked out of commission.
But Sarah was already on her feet, waiting to help him get the short distance to his room. And the idea of being able rest his aching muscles in his own bed was tempting, so he just nodded and let her steer him along.
The brief trip to Matt's room exhausted the last bit of his energy, and as soon as he sat on the edge of his bed he could feel his body screaming at him to go to sleep. He could hear Sarah over by his dresser, going through the drawers for some reason he wasn't sure of.
"Listen, you, uh…you don't have to stay here with me. You can go home, I'm...I'm good," he said.
"What? I just told you I wasn't leaving," she said. He heard another drawer open and close before her footsteps came back towards him.
"You need to get some actual rest. You don't have to spend another night watching over me," he assured her, flashing what he hoped was a convincing smile. "I'll be fine."
There was a short silence.
"Okay," she said, sounding surprisingly agreeable. Matt ignored the pang of disappointment in his chest. "If you can name even one time when I've told you to leave and you actually went, then I'll go."
The fake smile slipped from Matt's face as he sighed. "Sarah…"
But he didn't have any examples to give her, as they were both well aware.
"Great," she said brightly. "So, how about I go take a shower and borrow these clothes, and you stay here and don't do anything crazy like...standing up or...walking around. I'll be back in a few minutes."
Matt didn't argue any further. He wanted her to stay, and she seemed set on doing just that, so what was the point? She was offering far more kindness than he deserved, but the selfish side of him wanted to accept it.
After Sarah disappeared into the bathroom to shower, Matt laid back against the pillows. He'd intended on staying awake until Sarah got out of the shower, maybe to tell her he was sorry again or maybe just to say thank you, but his body had other ideas, and within seconds of lying down he was already out.
While Matt passed out on his bed, Sarah's own exhaustion was hitting her. She so tired she barely had enough energy to get in the shower, but once she did the hot water felt good on her aching muscles, which were still reminding her that she'd slept for hours on a hardwood floor. She was sure it had left Matt just as sore on top of his other injuries.
After changing into fresh clothes, Sarah caught another glimpse of her face in the mirror. It still looked just as bad—maybe worse now, actually. She blew out a long exhale as she tried to figure out how she would tell Matt about it.
"You're a hypocrite," she whispered to her reflection.
A small part of her just wanted to wait it out, and maybe the subject would magically never come up. But she knew she couldn't justify keeping this from Matt after she had just yelled at him for keeping secrets from her. She'd wait until he had recovered a little more, she decided—at least until he could stand on his own—and then she'd figure out a way to break it to him.
Sarah dried her hair with a towel as she stepped out of the bathroom, and immediately upon entering the living room she could tell something was off. She paused and looked around, trying to figure out what felt weird.
"What, have you moved in now?"
Sarah bit her tongue to keep from letting out a startled gasp as Stick's voice came from the kitchen. The light from the billboard barely reached the corner he was in, leaving him mostly in the shadows.
"Jesus," Sarah stammered, bringing her hand to her chest. "I thought you were a burglar or something. How did you get in here?"
"Not exactly Fort Knox," he said with a jerk of his chin towards the rooftop access door. "Who'd want to steal anything from this shithole, anyway?"
Sarah glanced around at Matt's large, spacious apartment, with its huge windows and exposed brick. If Stick thought this place was a shithole, she couldn't imagine what he'd think of hers. Did he not know how many Instagram influencers would kill to live in this loft? Actually, did he even know what Instagram was?
"Matt's asleep, so if you came to talk to him…" she trailed off, folding her arms in front of herself uncomfortably. She wasn't sure how extensive Stick's senses were in comparison to Matt's, but she suddenly wished she were wearing something other than one of Matt's button down shirts and a pair of overly large drawstring shorts.
Instead of answering her question, Stick opened the fridge and reached in, removing two bottles of beer.
"Beer?" Stick said, tilting one in her direction.
"No," Sarah said, watching him with narrowed eyes. He shrugged and put one of the beers back. "Why are you here?"
"Came to talk to you," Stick said, pulling out a chair from the kitchen table and dropping into it.
Sarah frowned.
"…oh," she said unenthusiastically. "Great."
"Seems like you managed to make it through the night without letting the kid die," he observed. "Or getting your bell rung again."
"I gave him the injection," she said, ignoring his jab. "He's fine."
Stick scoffed and took a long drink from the bottle.
"Yeah? Is that why he hasn't woken up since I got here? He should have been able to tell I was here the moment I stepped foot inside."
Sarah didn't say anything.
"So, his abilities haven't come back then," Stick said. He heaved a sigh and shook his head. "It's a pity. He'll be useless without them."
A rush of anger went through her.
"No, he won't. He'll be a good lawyer, and a good person who helps people," she said. Stick rolled his eyes, and her patience went out the window. "Why are you here, Stick? Just to make catty comments? You could have just listened from outside to see how Matt is."
"Well, then I couldn't have tried this shitty beer," Stick said, holding up the half-empty bottle. "Why are you here? You gave him the antidote, do you really need to stay and baby him?"
"I'm helping him," she said slowly. How did he not get that? "That's what you do for…" Boyfriends? Vigilantes with benefits? "…people you care about."
"If you really cared about him, you'd have left after giving him that shot, instead of letting him use you as a crutch. You still could leave, in fact. And it'd be for the best if you didn't come back," Stick said.
It took Sarah a few seconds to register what he was saying, and when she did a laugh escaped from her throat before she could stop it.
"Did-did you seriously come here just to try to convince me to leave?" she asked incredulously. "You hate the idea of me being around Matt that much?"
"I know you don't want to hear it," Stick said calmly. "You're both young and stupid. But I've seen a lot of good fighters lose their edge because they think they fell in love, when really they just found a warm bed and a whole host of new problems to distract them from what really matters."
"Like saving lives? That's what Matt's doing."
"He could save a whole lot more if he wasn't so busy saving you all the time."
She winced. She didn't like how often Matt had to come save her lately either, but Stick had no business talking about it.
"Matt's making a difference in this place," she said as steadily as she could. "And I'm trying to help him."
"Help him? You're trying to make him soft," Stick said, disgust dripping from his tone.
Sarah laughed faintly and shook her head, looking away from Stick and out towards the neon billboard.
"You know…yeah. Maybe I am," she admitted. "I don't think that's a bad thing. Maybe you don't think he deserves to have anything good or soft in his life, but I do."
"And that will get him killed," Stick said, sounding so absolutely sure that Sarah faltered a little.
"I can decide for myself what'll get me killed," came a tired, hoarse voice from behind her.
She spun around to see a very exhausted Matt leaning against the doorway. Oddly, her first thought was that she hoped he hadn't heard Stick's comment about him being useless without his senses.
It was immediately obvious how heavily Matt was using the doorway to keep his balance, and Sarah frowned in concern, quickly moving to stand closer to him.
Matt tilted his head in Stick's general direction, his gaze finding him less accurately than usual.
"We had a deal, Stick," he said, an unmistakable warning note in his voice.
Stick shrugged. "Well, your end of the deal didn't include getting your ass handed to you and needing to get rescued, so I figure I get some leeway on my end, too."
Sarah frowned, looking from one man to the other.
"What deal?" she asked.
"He didn't tell you why he was down there with me in the first place?" Stick asked.
Sarah tore her eyes away from Stick's smug expression to look at Matt, who looked as though he'd rather be anywhere else.
"I've...been helping him with some things," Matt admitted begrudgingly.
Sarah stared at him, trying to figure out what he wasn't saying. She already knew he'd been helping Stick. 'Helping with some things' wasn't a deal.
"In exchange for…what?" she asked.
"For staying away from his precious girlfriend," Stick said dryly. "That would be you."
For a moment, she didn't believe him. Matt wouldn't seriously agree to help Stick with his crazy schemes just so that he could keep him away from Sarah? But she was still watching Matt closely, so she saw his jaw tighten as a resigned sort of look crossed his face.
"You have to be kidding me," she said faintly.
"It's not—that's part of it, yes," Matt hedged. "But not all of it. Stick agreed to help with Orion when the time comes."
"What? No. No, it's not worth it. We—we don't need his help," Sarah said, the words spilling out of her mouth before she could think. She turned to Stick. "We don't need your help. Not if it means Matt getting mixed up in stuff like that."
"Oh, do you get to decide what he gets mixed up in now?" Stick asked with a derisive laugh. "You think you've already got him whipped that badly?"
Matt grip on the doorway tightened.
"Stick," he growled. "Watch it."
"Or what? You'll fight me? Is every conversation we have going to turn into a brawl?" Stick asked. "Not that I'm complaining."
Sarah's eyes widened in alarm. They weren't really going to fight right now, with Matt barely able to even keep himself upright? Then again, they were both idiots.
She quickly stepped in between them, warily resting her hand against Matt's chest.
"Uh—that seems not fun for anybody," she stammered. "Let's not."
"She has a good point, Matty," Stick said in mock concern. "She could get caught in the middle, and I'd sure hate to see her add any more bruises to what I'm sure must be a very pretty face."
Matt's brow furrowed, and Sarah bit her tongue. She should have figured he'd try to bring that up. It seemed like causing arguments between them was his main goal in life. But this was not how she was going to have Matt find out what happened.
"What is that, a threat?" Matt asked, his eyebrows going up.
"Of course not. I've never laid a hand on her," Stick said. "But you can't exactly say the same, can you? How many times have you let a bit of the devil out on your girl, anyway?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Matt demanded.
"Stop it," Sarah hissed at Stick. This game he was playing was frustrating her to no end. "Jesus, you are so old, can't you just—act like an adult?"
It wasn't her sharpest insult, and Stick just laughed.
"Kid, I'm the only one in this goddamn room who is acting like an adult. You two are too busy keeping secrets, dancing around each other. Is that how adults act? At least I'm telling the truth."
There was a silence after his words. Sarah didn't know what to say, and it seemed that Matt didn't either.
"Seems like you two have a lot of figure out. But hey, it was great to visit. You getting injured ruined the only lead I had in this city, so thank you for making this trip to New York a total waste of my time," Stick said. He grabbed his cane and headed towards the staircase. "When you get serious about Orion, you know how to reach me."
And then he was gone, leaving the apartment as silently as he'd entered it.
As soon as they were alone, Sarah tried to redirect the conversation away from the topic she'd been avoiding.
"Maybe you should lie back d—"
"What was he talking about?" Matt interrupted. "What bruises?"
"It's...it's not important. We can talk about it later—" she tried weakly, starting to step around him, but it was too late.
Matt put his hand to her waist to still her, lifting his other hand to the uninjured side of her face and slowly touching the unmarred skin there. Then his fingers passed over the bruised side and he stilled. Sarah supposed that answered the question of whether or not he'd be able to pick up on it, although in his current condition he had to brush over the uneven skin twice before he seemed sure.
"You're hurt. Why didn't you say anything?" he asked, the corners of his eyes tightening in concern. "What happened?"
"I'm not hurt, really," she insisted. "It's just a small bruise."
His eyebrows went up, his fingertips not leaving the damaged area. Instead, they followed the swollen bruise down to the corner of her mouth.
"Doesn't feel small. Your lip is busted," he said sharply. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"
"No. No, I'm fine."
Her answer was met with a skeptical look from Matt. In truth, she did have a few more bruises—the one on her wrist from Matt's insane grip on her, plus an especially tender one on her elbow from hitting the floor—but neither one was as bad as her face, so she figured they weren't worth mentioning right now.
"What happened?" he asked again. When she didn't answer right away, he cast his blank eyes at the ceiling in exasperation. "Did you need to give me another lecture on secrecy before you can let me in on this one?"
"That's different," she protested. "I wasn't keeping this a secret, I was just trying to give you some time to recover first. I didn't want you feeling all guilty while you're trying to get better."
There was a long pause.
"Guilty about what?" he asked slowly.
Sarah chewed her lip.
"It was just an accident. Mostly my fault, really. When I got here, I saw you on the floor and I was worried, and I…I didn't realize you couldn't recognize me," she said hesitantly, watching Matt closely for a reaction. "I think you just…didn't know where you were. That's all."
It took a moment, but when the realization hit him she could see the change broadcast all over his face. His expression of concern and confusion froze, before quickly being replaced with alarm and disbelief.
"You're—you're saying I did this to you?"
"…yes," she said. "But not on purpose."
He let go of her as abruptly as if her skin was burning him.
"No. What? No."
"It was an accident. It's not a big deal."
From Matt's horrified expression, 'not a big deal' was perhaps not the best way she could have described it.
"Not a big deal? Sarah, I hit you."
Sarah searched helplessly for something to say to that. "Well...yeah. I—I know."
Matt hesitantly brought his hand back to her face, pausing for a second before tracing the back of his index finger very gently against of her skin. The bruised area started just below her eye, and Sarah saw the guilt play across his face as he reached it.
"You can tell where it is?" she asked quietly, curious as to how much he could pick up on. "Without your senses?"
He swallowed.
"Yeah," he said in a low voice. He continued down across her cheek bone, over the cut near the corner of her mouth. "It's, uh…it's swollen. I can tell. And there's broken skin."
He let his hand drop away from her, and Sarah saw he was gripping the doorway again to stay upright. It occurred to her that he had been standing for way too long.
"Hey," she said softly. "Will you—can we sit down? Please?"
Matt paused, working his jaw, then to her surprise, he nodded. His willingness to rest made her wonder just how bad a shape he was in. Unsurprisingly, he didn't let her help him as he slowly made his way to the couch and dropped down onto it. She took a seat next to him, watching him closely.
"Goddammit." Matt closed his eyes and raked a hand through his hair in agitation. "I'm so sorry, Sarah. I'm so, so sorry, I—I never would have…"
"I know that. It's okay."
The corner of his mouth curled bitterly. "It's really not."
He was right; it wasn't really okay. But there wasn't much they could do about it now, so she didn't say anything at all.
"Stick," Matt said suddenly. "He was there when I—when I hurt you? That's how he knew?"
"Yes."
"And he just left you alone with me afterwards?"
Sarah almost could have laughed at that. Matt didn't want her alone with Stick, and he didn't want her alone with himself—where was she supposed to spend her time, locked up alone in the bathroom?
"What do you want to do about it, Matt?" she asked in exasperation. "Kick your own ass for hitting me? I'm fine. I'm not some fragile—"
"Yes, you are," he cut her off, his voice sharp enough that her words stumbled to a stop. "Alright? I'm sorry, but you are. And I know when I say 'fragile' you hear 'weak' but that's not what I'm saying. You're just…" Matt pressed his lips together and hooked her hair behind her ear. "What if I'd seriously hurt you? Broken something, or—or worse? You should have left me."
"You know I couldn't do that," she argued. The memory of how panicked and lost he'd looked made her heart hurt, and she pressed her palm to his chest, reminding herself that he was okay. "I...I couldn't stand seeing you like that. I wanted you to know that you were safe. That you weren't alone."
The guilt-stricken expression on Matt's face was enough to make her heart twist in her chest, and she searched for a way to move past this.
"And...anyway, I think your reputation is overblown," she added with a shrug. "You don't hit nearly as hard as people say."
Her poor attempt at a joke drew no reaction from him.
"...now's the part where you usually tell me I'm not funny," she prompted softly.
"I'm so sorry, Sarah," he said abruptly, as though he hadn't even been listening. "I wouldn't...I would never hurt you on purpose. Please tell me you know that."
Sarah's heart twisted at the desperate tone in his voice. After everything they'd been through, did he really think he still needed to prove that to her? That wasn't them. Not anymore.
"Of course I do," she said gently. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
Matt scrubbed his hands over his face and swore lowly. His shoulders sagged with what might have been relief that she understood, but might also possibly have just been more guilt. It was honestly hard for Sarah to tell. Either way, exhaustion was clearly starting to hit him, and that worried her. What if he passed out and the small amount of hearing he'd regained went away again?
"Matt. You're going to pass out if you don't go to sleep soon," she noted. "Come on. Let's—let's go to bed. We can talk about this in the morning. No one else should be breaking into your apartment tonight."
After a beat, Matt lifted his head, and Sarah was disturbed to see that he had schooled his expression into a neutral one. That was never a good sign as far as trying to connect with him went.
"Yeah. Yeah, you...you go on. I'll stay here," he said, gesturing towards the blanket that was draped over the back of the couch.
Sarah blinked. "What? No, you're injured. You can't sleep on the couch, it's barely long enough for you to lay down."
"I'll be fine," he assured her.
He didn't have to say why he was refusing to sleep near her; the guilt that still lingered around his eyes made it painfully obvious.
"You were fine with the idea earlier," she reminded him.
"There was an important bit of information missing earlier," he said.
She bit her lip, watching him with concern.
"You're not going to hurt me, Matt," she said softly.
"We can't know that."
"Yes, we can. You've already been sleeping next to me, and you haven't tried to kill me yet," she pointed out. She didn't mention the times he'd woken up so suddenly and violently that she'd stayed perfectly still beside him, scared to move and startle him.
He didn't say anything to that.
"Okay," she said with a sigh. "Fine. I get it. But I'll sleep out here, then. You take your bed. You're hurt."
To no one's surprise, Matt's only response to that suggestion was somewhere between a scoff and a laugh.
"Goodnight, Sarah."
It was oddly dismissive, and in different circumstances she'd probably have been offended. As it was, she just lingered for another beat, searching for something to say. But she recognized the look on Matt's face—it was a familiar look of stubbornness that generally seemed to accompany guilt for him. If she wasn't going to distance him for what he'd done, he'd just do it himself.
Shaking her head, she stood up from the couch and left him alone in the living room, leaving the sliding bedroom door slightly ajar behind her.
And she did stay there. For a while, at least. She spent nearly an hour trying to fall asleep in Matt's bed while he stayed out on the couch alone. But her mind wouldn't shut down; she couldn't stop recalling how every time he had woken up he'd reached for her to orient himself.
Finally accepting that sleep wasn't coming, Sarah sat up in the bed and looked over at the empty space next to her. The spot where Matt had fallen asleep doing his paperwork next to her so that she wouldn't have to be alone when she'd had her concussion. The memory solidified the decision that she'd been vacillating over since she laid down.
She quietly slid open the door of Matt's room and took a few steps towards the couch. She could just make out the outline of Matt sleeping on his side, and she hesitated as she got closer, not wanting to startle him out of sleep.
But she didn't have to worry about that; as the wood floor creaked under her foot, Matt leaned up on his elbow. In the light of the billboard she could see his brow creased in concern.
"Sarah?" Matt didn't sound like he'd been sleeping. "What's wrong?"
"Move over," she told him, pressing lightly against his shoulder. In his exhaustion-dazed confusion, Matt obeyed, and she slipped under the blanket next to him. There wasn't much space, even after she bumped him to get him to shift back. But if Matt was uncomfortable, then she supposed that was his fault. She had, after all, suggested he sleep in his own bed, and he'd declined.
"Nothing's wrong," she whispered against the crook of his neck. "We're fine."
Matt was still for a moment, caught off guard, and Sarah waited for him to protest and tell her to go back to the bed. But after a beat the tension in his muscles relaxed, and to her surprise the argument never came.
His arm snaked around her waist and pulled her closer, closing whatever fraction of a centimeter she'd left between them. He held her against him so tightly she nearly couldn't breathe, but she didn't care. She felt his lips against her hair and felt a rush of warmth, realizing with a sudden certainty that she never would have been able to fall asleep any other way that night.
The bed stood empty in the other room as the two of them slowly drifted to sleep on the small, cramped couch, the light of the billboard bathing their faces in an ever-changing carousel of colors.