Alright, y'all, listen up. I think I might have mentioned that there would be a reconciliation scene coming up, and there is…but you might have to wait another chapter. I decided to end this chapter at an earlier point than originally planned so that I could post it before Comic-Con (and I actually wrote the last part of it while on the train to San Diego). So instead you get some angst and some violence for now. But on the bright side, I got this chapter up in a little over two weeks as opposed to a month!

PS: Thanks to all of you for the kind reviews and PMs wishing me well with my Real Life stress. It's so wonderful to have a community of awesome people here to always make me feel better.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Choices, Again

A short while after Matt had left her standing alone in the empty hospital room, Sarah found herself in front of a liquor store, debating whether or not to go in. Of all the times to give up drinking, why she picked now, again?

After a few minutes of lingering, she shook her head and made herself walk away, hoping the fresh air (or, as fresh as the air ever got in Hell's Kitchen) would do more to clear her mind than alcohol would have.

She wished that she had held out and not told Matt her suspicions about Karen. He probably would have gotten past the injuries Karen had sustained once a little time had passed and he'd had time to think about it. But accusing Karen had been a mistake. Sarah knew how protective he was of his friends, knew that Karen had been in Matt's life as someone he cared about long before Sarah ever showed up—what did she think he was going to do when she told him? Instantly believe her that one of his best friends might have killed a man? She wasn't even sure she believed it herself.

But when he'd started to leave the hospital room she had just panicked, thinking she might have ruined everything with him, and it had hurt more than she'd expected. And before she knew it the words had just spilled out, making everything a million times worse.

Because after that argument, it was painfully obvious that Sarah was not—and probably never would be—in the same category as Foggy and Karen. They were the good people in Matt's eyes, the light parts of his life who needed to be protected. And Sarah, no matter how many times Matt helped to keep her safe, was still something else, something not quite as light and good as the two of them. She was still just a few steps away from being seen as an enemy, no matter how many times he called her a friend. Maybe she had earned Daredevil's trust, but the moment she crossed the line into affecting Matt Murdock's life, things were different.

She half expected Matt to show up that night, either to reconcile or to yell at her some more—she wasn't sure which seemed more likely at this point, but probably the latter. But the window to her fire escape remained silent.

He didn't show up the next night either, and she wasn't sure if she was glad or not.

"This seems dramatic."

"It's not dramatic. This is just what we have to do for a little while."

Sarah was sitting cross legged on her couch with her laptop open in front of her, a bag of popcorn on her lap and a her second-largest kitchen knife—the largest having never been returned to her after that night on the roof—on the coffee table next to her.

Lauren's skeptical face squinted at her through the computer screen. After the fiasco with Karen and Donovan two days ago, Sarah had restricted her visits with Lauren to Skype dates and phone calls.

"I can't believe you decided to ground yourself two days before my due date."

"I know," Sarah said guiltily. "I'm sorry. But…I have no way of telling when I'm being followed and when I'm not. I can't lead the crazy people in my life straight to your place—or anywhere else. I'm just going back and forth from work to home, and that's it. At least until…"

"Until what? These guys die of old age?" Lauren asked.

"Until I figure something out," Sarah said resolutely, sounding more confident than she felt. In reality, she had no plan for shaking off Ronan and his new lackey, Officer Donovan. If it was just Ronan tormenting her, she could maybe try to get him arrested, but she was certain Donovan would somehow find a way around that. And the one person she'd been hanging her hopes on to help her appeared to no longer be an option.

"Are sure you should be staying in your own apartment if you're so worried about stalkers that you can't even come visit me?"

"Yes. I'm fine," Sarah reassured her, waving the kitchen knife around so that Lauren could see it through the webcam. Her friend looked skeptical at the sight, as though Sarah were playing a joke on her.

"Really? What, you're going to Norman Bates someone with a chef knife?"

Sarah shrugged. "Not if they don't try to come into my apartment."

For a minute, Sarah thought her slow internet connection had caused the video connection to freeze again, before she realized that it was just Lauren who wasn't moving. Instead she regarded Sarah closely through the screen, a contemplative frown on her face.

"You're really serious," Lauren said. "I mean, you'd actually use that thing on someone."

Sarah was slightly caught off guard by the question before she thought about it from Lauren's point of view. She had been careful to skim over most of the more violent aspects of her new life when she'd explained everything to her friend. Obviously Lauren knew that the things Sarah was doing were dangerous and involved violent people, but it occurred to her that she hadn't really told Lauren much about any of the violence she herself had had to inflict on people. She wasn't sure that she ever did want to tell her.

"If I had to, yeah," she said.

Lauren shook her head. "Sometimes it still feels like maybe you're playing a big joke on me. Like, maybe it's a thing in some culture somewhere to play weird, elaborate tricks on pregnant women and make them think their best friends have turned into super spies."

"If I was a super spy, I wouldn't need to hide in my apartment with a knife and pepper spray," Sarah said.

"Well, why aren't you still staying with Dread Pirate Roberts? He seemed pretty convinced that his bat cave or whatever was the safest place for you to be."

Sarah fidgeted with the corner of her popcorn bag. "I don't know. We aren't really…getting along super great right now, I guess."

"What happened?"

"I…accidentally got someone hurt," Sarah said, choosing her words carefully. "Someone who isn't involved in all of this. Or, I mean…I don't think she is. I didn't mean for her to get hurt, but she did, and it was careless of me. But then it turned into this big argument, and…I don't know. I think maybe I've been misinterpreting…where we stand with each other."

"I'm sorry," Lauren said, sympathetic despite the vagueness of Sarah's explanation and the fact that Lauren didn't particularly care for Matt. "I mean, are you…? I don't really know if you guys have the kind of thing where fighting is no big deal, or if you're…"

Sarah shook her head. "We do fight a lot, but this feels…different. Like more personal. I don't know. Let's…let's talk about something else. How's everything going with getting ready to go to the hospital?"

"It's fine, I guess. Greg has a backpack with stuff by the door, ready to go. He texts me like three hundred times a day while he's at work. I think he thinks giving birth involves the baby just suddenly shooting out and he's somehow going to miss it, or something," Lauren said with a roll of her eyes. "Hey, do you think you'll be able to come see me in the hospital when the baby is born? We'd always kind of planned that Greg would be with me for the painful, bloody part and then you'd be there right after when the baby is all clean and not covered in gross mucus."

"Yes," Sarah said immediately. "I will be there."

"How? I mean, I want you there, but I also want you safe. And I want her safe," Lauren said, resting her hand on her stomach.

"No, Lauren, I'll—I'll figure out a way to be there without anyone knowing. Okay? No one involved with this knows who you are—"

"—well, except for the literal Devil of Hell's Kitchen—"

"—no one who would hurt you," Sarah corrected herself. "And I'll come up with a way to be there. I'll dig out one of my old Halloween costumes and wear it as a disguise if I have to."

Lauren laughed at that, and Sarah was relieved to see the worry leave her face. "Sarah, I've seen your Halloween costumes. They're all super slutty. I don't think any of them would successfully work as a disguise. Except for maybe the slutty nurse costume, since I will be in a hospital."

"I'll dig out my thigh highs and stethoscope pronto."

"I'm sure my mom and Cecilia will love that."

Sarah wrinkled her nose. Lauren's mother was one of the least likable people she'd ever met, until she met Cecilia. "They'll be there?"

"Unfortunately," Lauren said with a groan. "My mom is insisting on driving down from upstate for the birth, for god knows what reason. Maybe to criticize me on my labor breathing or something. And Cecilia is living in the city now that she's got that position at the Bulletin, so my mom says she's going to be 'checking in' on me after the birth. AKA, 'spying on me for my mother'."

"Gross."

"Right?" Lauren agreed, then glanced down at the corner of the screen where her computer's clock was. "Speaking of gross, I need to go brush my teeth and maybe, like…put some deodorant on or something. Greg will be home in a minute, and do you know what's constantly recommended to me as a way to speed up the whole labor induction thing?" She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, leaning into the camera so Sarah could see them more clearly.

"Oh, ew," Sarah said, laughing and shaking her head. "I don't want to hear about you and Greg's sex life right now."

"You're a prude, Sarah Corrigan," Lauren told her. "I'll talk to you later, okay? Be safe."

"You, too," Sarah said.

Lauren ended the call and Sarah closed her laptop, trying to figure out how she was possibly going to keep the promise she'd just made to her friend.

While Sarah was talking with Lauren, Matt was blocks away, keeping his mind busy by letting his Daredevil side take over for the night. He had always found there was no better distraction than a good fight, and he found a good number of them that night. But eventually it was time to return to his own place, where he was confronted with the doubts that had been sitting in the back of his mind all night.

Sarah had been the one who led Karen into danger with her carelessness. She was the one who brought up horrible accusations, and she was the one to say that they would never be able to truly trust each other. So why did he feel so guilty?

And most importantly, why couldn't he get the possibility of a connection between Karen and Wesley out of his mind?

Matt shook his head. This was insane. This was Karen, after all. Karen who wore sundresses and floral perfume and cooked her grandmother's virtue-filled recipes. Karen who brought him balloons with monkeys on them.

Karen who also consistently lied to him—from the Union Allied pension file when they first met right down to how she had broken her arm the night before.

As much as he wanted to believe that he knew Karen too well to believe anything like what Sarah had said, a small voice in the back of his mind kept reminding him that the timeline of when Wesley was killed lined up exactly with when Karen had started acting strange—drinking more, talking less, jumping at the slightest noise. But the idea that the two events were related was so absurd that he had never even considered making a connection between them.

…but where had Karen been when Wesley got shot?

And if he was asking himself these questions, could he really blame Sarah for doing the same about someone she hardly knew?

The next night, Matt did show up on Sarah's fire escape.

Sarah was washing the dishes when she heard the knock at the window. She briefly considered just not letting him in. But that would be childish—and besides, it wasn't like their fight changed the fact that they were working together.

She wordlessly slid the window open to let him in before returning to her task. She scrubbed a pan that was already fairly clean as she waited for Matt to say something.

"I dropped by the police station yesterday," he said finally. "It didn't sound like Donovan told anyone what happened in the parking garage."

"Good. I'm glad." Sarah hadn't really expected that the police officer would try to come after her through any official means for what had happened that night. It would put him too close to a lot of scrutiny he couldn't possibly want. Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't still following her around.

There was a long silence during which she couldn't tell if Matt was trying to figure out what to say, or just didn't have anything to say at all.

"Sarah…"

"Nothing important happened at work today," she interrupted him quietly before he could go into whatever argument or apology he was about to make. "I probably should have called and told you so you knew you didn't need to come over."

But Matt wasn't letting her change the subject.

"Sarah, I know you're pissed," Matt said, leaning against the sink as she kept her eyes on the dishes she was furiously doing. "No one washes dishes that violently."

"They don't get clean otherwise," she said stubbornly.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you. It—it just caught me off guard. Both sides of my life that I thought were completely separate just colliding out of nowhere."

"Yeah, but both sides of your life didn't get yanked into an empty hospital room and accused of being a liar. Just me." As soon as she said it she knew that she wouldn't be able to keep herself from saying more even if she tried to, as though one side of her wanted to fight more and one side didn't.

"I didn't say you were lying about Karen. I said you were wrong."

Sarah put down the dish she was scrubbing and turned to face him fully. It annoyed her that he seemed to think she was angry at him for yelling at her; she could handle being yelled at, she wasn't a child.

"If it had been me with the broken arm and Karen was the one you didn't expect to see…would you have gone off on her like that? Would she have gotten pulled into an empty exam room and yelled at?"

There was a long, tense pause.

"No."

Sarah nodded, pushing her hair out of the way with her wrist before turning back to the sink and dipping her hands back into the water. "Why not?"

"You know why not," he said. "Karen…doesn't know that side of me. You do."

"Well, lucky me."

"I never said you were lucky to know me," he said wryly. "Listen, I wasn't trying to…" he paused, tilting his head back and exhaling as he tried to figure out what he wanted to say. "I don't always make the most rational calls when my friends are in danger."

Sarah didn't reply.

"Alright," Matt continued after a silence. "If we're doing hypotheticals, what would you have done if the situation were reversed, Sarah? If it were Lauren instead?"

Sarah bit her lip. She knew exactly what she would have done if she had thought Matt and Lauren had never met, only for Lauren to show up in the hospital with broken bones and vague lies about how she got them. She'd probably have freaked out worse than Matt had.

"I…it's different."

"How?"

"You really need me to explain why the idea of you being around my friends is more alarming than me being around yours?" she shot back, wishing even as she said the words that she hadn't.

There was a long silence during which Sarah didn't look up, because she didn't know which expression she least wanted to see on his face; the impassive mask she knew he could put on so well, or the same hurt look he'd worn just before leaving the hospital room.

"No. I don't," he said softly, and immediately she wished that he had gone with impassive instead.

It seemed like he was waiting for her to say something else, but she just kept focusing on the hot water in front of her. She didn't want to get into another argument about their history and who posed the bigger threat to the other's life. They'd had that fight too many times. Mostly she just wanted the conversation to be over, because she couldn't figure out how she felt about all of this while he was standing so close to her, listening to her heartbeat and making her feel like she was being x-rayed.

After a few moments, she felt him move away from his place beside her, then the window slide open and closed again as he left.

Sarah tried her best to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach. This was why she always forgave people, why she didn't fight with her friends. She wasn't good at fighting with people. She always wanted to apologize after just a few minutes of being angry; it was something Lauren gently teased her about often. But this would be easier, in the end. Acting like just business partners was simpler, after all; neither of them would have to worry about who was getting more attached to the other.

The next day, after she got home from work, Sarah sat her dining room table, tracing the edge of her phone and wondering if she was making the right choice. She remembered Matt telling her a little while back about having a court date today. She was fully aware that she was taking the easy way out by calling his burner phone when she knew he was in the court room and wouldn't have it on. This wasn't the kind of thing that deserved to be said over voicemail, but she couldn't handle another emotionally draining encounter with him right now, especially given what she was about to say.

She waited until the line stopped ringing and the generic voicemail greeting came on.

"Hey. Um…listen, I've been thinking and, um…" Sarah swallowed and rolled her eyes at herself, at how hesitant she sounded. She cleared her throat and forced herself to sound more firm as she continued. "I think with both of our schedules and—and how busy we are, maybe we should just…stick to what we originally decided on. At the beginning of all this. I'll call you if I have any information to pass along from work, but otherwise…you don't really need to come by." Sarah fidgeted with her hair as she tried to think of something to say, a better way to sum up why she was doing this. Instead she just lamely ended with, "Sorry…for doing this over voicemail."

She bit her lip and hung up before she could ramble more. Why was this bothering her so much? It wasn't like this was a years-long friendship she was dealing with—she wasn't even sure it was a friendship at all, after the hospital. Her head knew this was the smart thing to do: she had gotten too attached to someone who didn't hold her at the same level. Not completely, at least. He seemed to trust her with Daredevil, but not with Matt. And since she didn't have half of herself that she could hide away from him, it made sense to put distance between them. But for some reason she couldn't—or wouldn't—quite think about, it made her heart twist in her chest to do so.

Matt called her back a few hours later, and she didn't answer. He didn't leave a voicemail, but he didn't come by the apartment that night either, so it seemed as though he'd gotten the point.

Sarah had hoped that simplifying their relationship would help make her feel better, but as she sat alone in her apartment that night she just felt worse.

"…you don't really need to come by," Sarah's voice, quieter and layered with a different kind of tiredness than usual, played back through the speaker on Matt's burner phone. "Sorry…for doing this over voicemail."

And then she hung up.

Matt closed his eyes and swore softly under his breath. This wasn't where he had thought this entire situation with Karen and Sarah would end up. Had he really hurt her that badly? It wasn't like they'd never had an argument before. He'd wanted to protect Karen, but he'd never wanted to distance Sarah in the process.

Sarah didn't answer when he called her back.

He listened to the voicemail once more, wincing slightly when he heard her voice waver somewhere in the middle of it. At the end of the message, an automated voice came on asking him if he wanted to replay the message, save it, or delete it.

"Delete message," he said.

"Message deleted. You have one saved message."

The saved message started playing automatically, and Matt blinked as Sarah's voice came out of the speaker once again, much louder and more carefree than in the message she'd just left.

"—I'll feel bad if I made you get completely sloshed and then you went out and got, like, scaffold-ed again. It's a Monday. People don't commit crimes on Mondays."

The corner of Matt's mouth turned up as he listened to a drunken Sarah swear as she spilled her water everywhere. He'd almost forgotten she'd left him this rambling voicemail the night of their strange drinking game.

"…I'm glad you came over tonight. I, um, I like it better…when we're on the same side. Okay. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye."

The message continued for another minute as this Sarah—a Sarah that Matt had just by some miracle managed to earn a second (third? fourth?) chance with that night—dropped her cell phone and muttered some more curses before the line cut off.

Once again the automated voice asked if he would like to replay, save, or delete.

Matt leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and running a hand over his face. If Foggy could see him, he would undoubtedly call Matt out for what he deemed to be unnecessary Catholic masochism.

He was probably right. Exhaling tiredly, Matt addressed the automated voice command, which was patiently waiting.

"…replay message."

The next workday provided Sarah with nothing interesting to pass along to Matt, so she didn't call him. The day after that proved to be the same. She hadn't realized until now how much she had gotten used to him showing up on her fire escape almost every night, regardless of whether or not she had Orion-related information for him.

When Sarah entered the lobby of her apartment building after a long day at work, she found an out-of-order sign taped to the front of the elevator. She hit the button a few times just in case, but the doors didn't open.

The perfect end to a perfect day, she thought, holding back a groan of frustration as she tiredly pushed the door to the stairwell open.

As soon as she stepped through the door, a pair of hands grabbed her by the arms from behind. For a split second, Sarah thought it was Matt, given his propensity for being conversations in just such a way. But she quickly realized the grip was far too tight, and as she was roughly yanked towards the alleyway door on the other side of the staircase the smell of stale cigarettes and cheap rum invaded her nostrils.

She only managed to let out a short scream before she was pulled through the door and shoved against the brick wall of the alley, knocking the air out of her so that she couldn't inhale enough to make a sound.

In front of her, Ronan was as large and greasy looking as he'd ever been as he leered down at her. He'd taken his hands off her, and she immediately tried to duck around him, but he quickly shoved her back against the wall. A second later, something sharp and cold was pressed lightly against her mouth, and she flicked her gaze down to see that it was a large, serrated knife. She froze at the sight of it.

"Learned my lesson the last time. This time I brought some reinforcement," Ronan said, nodding to the knife. "And made sure there were no stray staplers around for you to get your hands on."

Sarah was still focused on the knife that he was holding to her mouth, preventing her from responding to what he was saying without cutting her own lips open.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have something to say?" he asked mockingly. "Of course. You always do." He lifted the knife from her mouth.

"What do you want?" was what came tumbling out. It wasn't the most intelligent thing she could have asked; it was pretty obvious he didn't want anything good.

"Well, after the stupid stunt you and Lauren pulled on Donovan the other night, he had a temper tantrum and said that he didn't have time to play games torturing you through your friends," Ronan told her. Her mind briefly registered that he had called Karen 'Lauren' before her attention was brought back by his next words. "I was having a lot of fun playing games, but…he managed to convince me that torturing you the old-fashioned way in person would be almost as satisfying."

Her breathing hitched as the shock of seeing Ronan started to fade and the reality of the situation began to set in. This wasn't a threatening phone call or a surprise drop-in at a public café. Ronan was here, right in front of her, and there was no one else around.

"Ah…there's that wide-eyed look I like so much. Although if you like," Ronan said, moving the blade so he was lightly tracing her bottom eyelid, "I could always make them just a little wider."

Sarah tried not to look at the sharp knife that was now a fraction of a centimeter from her eye, focusing instead on the street at the end of the alleyway. She wasn't under the illusion that any passersby would see them all the way back here in the shadows, much less be able to do anything to help. But somehow it was strangely comforting to think that there were people not too far away, people happily continuing on with evenings free of anything like what was happening to her right now. It helped keep her from panicking.

Displeased with her attention being focused on something other than him, Ronan reached up and ran his fingers through her hair, leaning closer. She tried to repress a shudder as he grinned.

"So, did daddy like the arts and crafts I sent him?"

A rush of anger went through her at the reminder of the sadistic, explicit collection of photos he'd sent her father. She didn't want him to have the satisfaction of knowing how much the images had disturbed her, had made her check her locks even more than she had been doing before.

"What, that envelope you mailed him? I threw it out as soon as I saw it was your handwriting. Never even opened it," she lied harshly. "Sorry you wasted your time."

The smirk fell from Ronan's face and she felt a brief, spiteful flicker of satisfaction at his obvious disappointment. The satisfied feeling was short-lived before he rapped the flat side of the knife hard against the side of her face; it didn't break the skin, but the startled yelp it instinctively elicited from her made Ronan laugh lowly.

"Doesn't matter. I can take new photos," he said, leering as he traced the line of her collarbone with the tip of his knife. "Send him those instead. But who knows? Maybe he'll get lucky, and by that point he won't even recognize it's his own daughter in the photos."

As soon as he lifted the knife from her skin to move it elsewhere, she took a deep breath and shoved his hand back towards himself as hard as she could, sending the heavy handle of the knife directly into his windpipe. She'd been aiming for his face, but the hit to the throat did the trick—he wheezed as the hit temporarily blocked his breathing, loosening his grip on her. Sarah ducked around him and ran flat out towards the end of the alleyway.

She barely saw the figure in the shadows move until he had already caught her and sent her sprawling onto the pavement. When she looked up, she was met with the sight of an unamused-looking Officer Donovan standing over her.

"You were right that she'd try to make a run for it," he called back to Ronan, who had mostly recovered from the blow and was coughing as he made his way towards them. "Didn't think it would only take about two seconds for her to get away from you, though."

Sarah's chest felt heavy as a sense of hopelessness began to settle over her. Donovan reached down and grabbed her arm, attempting to roughly yank her to her feet, but she resisted.

"Why are you helping him?" she asked him in a desperate attempt to talk her way out of this. "Y-you're a cop, there's nothing he can offer you—"

"Well, that's not entirely true. You can't offer me anything, though. And to be honest, I really don't care what happens to you. Never did. I just wanted to find out what happened to my partner. But, you know, I really don't like being pepper sprayed," he said pointedly. "Do you? Have you ever been pepper sprayed? How about tased?"

Donovan considered her for a second, then with a smirk he let go of her arm and reached for the small pouch on his belt where his police-issued taser was held. Sarah's heart raced and she tried to scramble farther away as he undid the Velcro flap and started to withdraw the taser—

"You can do that later, Donovan. We were having a chat."

The cop paused and sent an annoyed look over his shoulder, where Ronan was leaning against the wall a few yards away, twirling the knife in his hands. Sarah swallowed as Donovan rolled his eyes and moved his hand away from the taser on his belt.

"Whatever," he said.

Then, before she could blink, Donovan was no longer standing over her. There was a loud bang as his body was violently slammed into the side of the metal dumpster nearby. Sarah could have cried she was so relieved to see the black-clad vigilante in front of him, already landing several blows on Donovan's face and torso.

She scrambled to her feet as the two men fought—if it could be called that, considering how clearly outmatched the police officer was. His face was already covered in so much blood that it was difficult to see his skin underneath, and she doubted he would be conscious for much longer. Sarah didn't think she'd ever seen Matt fight like this before, moving in a fast, brutal rage rather than the calculated, efficient method that he'd used in the past.

She was barely on her feet before she felt a hand knotted in her hair, and Ronan dragged her several feet backwards. She screamed and Matt's head snapped in her direction.

Ronan moved unexpectedly quickly, swinging Sarah around so that she was in front of him and bringing the knife up to her throat as he continued backing them both away. Even from a short distance—now about twenty feet away—she could see Matt immediately go still as he heard her sharp intake of breath and the way her heartbeat skyrocketed even higher.

"Oh, no, continue what you're doing," Ronan told him. "I'll just wait over here with Sarah until you're done."

Matt threw the now unconscious Donovan aside like a rag doll and started to move towards them. But he was moving slowly, clearly very aware of the knife that was pressed to Sarah's throat.

"Stay back," Ronan warned.

"You're going to want to put that knife down."

"Yeah? Let me guess, I put the knife down and I won't get hurt?" Ronan asked mockingly.

"No. You're going to get hurt no matter what," Matt said, taking a slow step towards them. His boots made a crunching noise against some broken glass on the ground. "But if you let her go now, I won't use your knife to do it."

On the surface, Matt's voice was unnervingly calm. Between that and the way he nearly blended into the shadows, Sarah could easily see how he'd earned the Devil of Hell's Kitchen moniker. But she knew him well enough to see the telltale hints that he wasn't as confident as he was putting on: The way his jaw was clenched, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand kept twitching almost to a fist but not quite. Ronan had the upper hand here, and unfortunately everyone was very aware of that.

"You make it sound like you're the one who'll be calling the shots," Ronan said. "But, uh…but I gotta disagree." Sarah felt his hand in her hair sharply yank her head back even further so that her neck was more exposed. Matt visibly tensed, stopping himself from stepping forward again. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah could see Ronan grin wickedly at the vigilante's response. "That's what I thought."

Matt was silent, his lips parted slightly as—Sarah assumed—he analyzed the situation, tring to figure out his next move.

"Now, this…this is too much of a coincidence," Ronan said, sounding oddly delighted. "You showing up out of the blue to save this particular damsel in distress. I mean, there's a lot of damsels in Hell's Kitchen, and this one wasn't distressing very loudly. But somehow you found us anyway."

"Saving people from sleazebags is kind of what I do," Matt replied, but Ronan wasn't accepting it.

"No, no, no, that's not it. Not with this one and her tricks," Ronan said. Sarah's stomach dropped as Ronan slowly started to laugh; it was a shaky, unhinged sound. When he spoke again his mouth was pressed against her ear, his hot breath against her skin making it clear he was addressing her now. "You really were trying to destroy me, weren't you? They said I was crazy, but look at this. The two of you are working together."

"No," Sarah said. She could feel her voice vibrate against the knife, reminding her of its uncomfortable proximity to her vocal cords. "I'm not working with anyone."

"Bullshit," Ronan said. "All you do is lie."

Matt took another step towards them, and Sarah let out a gasp of pain as Ronan pressed the blade harder against her skin. She could feel tiny rivulets of blood running down her neck.

"Hey, hey!" Ronan spat out. "What did I say? Take a few steps back. And put your hands up where I can see them."

Matt hesitated, but didn't move back, and Ronan let out a frustrated growl. He dug the tip of the blade into Sarah's neck, just slightly. The cut was too shallow to reach anything important, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt—and the way her pulse jumped against the edge of his blade made her doubt he'd have to go very deep to do some real damage.

Sarah bit down on her tongue to stop from making any noise as she felt more blood run down her neck, heavier now. She didn't want to give Ronan whatever reaction he was looking for from her. But as it turned out, he was more interested in Matt's reaction. He watched the vigilante closely and he dug the blade in a little harder.

"Alright," Matt bit out abruptly, bringing both hands up into plain view and holding them open as he took a large step back. She could see the broad line of shoulders rising and falling as his breathing quickened. "Just—stop. Don't hurt her."

"Why not? That's what I came here to do, after all. Getting to mess with you is just a bonus. Besides, she deserves it. See, Sarah is a liar. She can't be trusted. She's power hungry; she gravitates towards whoever she thinks has the power to protect her, move her up whatever ladder she's trying to climb that day. It's how she picks her friends, her coworkers…her lovers," he added, speaking with his mouth directly against her ear once again.

Of all the reactions to have to Ronan's diatribe, Sarah felt irrationally angry that he was talking about her in the third person, as though she wasn't even there.

"If you're going to bitch about me not sleeping with you, talk to me," she snapped. "He doesn't care."

It was both a last ditch attempt to put some distance between herself and Daredevil in Ronan's mind and an attempt at getting him to pay attention to her rather than Matt. If his attention was on her, maybe Matt could figure something out, something to get them out of this—because no ideas where coming to her own mind.

"Are you sure about that?" Ronan asked, before his eyes snapped back to Matt. He continued addressing Sarah as he watched the vigilante. "Do you see the mistake you made, Sarah? He can't protect you after all."

He was right. Matt was still too far away from them, and the sharp blade of the knife was pressed too tightly against her throat.

"What do you want, Ronan?" Matt asked evenly.

There was a pause during which Ronan seemed to think about it; he didn't have to think very long.

"I want to see the face of the man who ruined my career and my reputation. Who broke my arm and put half of my men in the hospital."

Matt still had his hands lifted in the air, but didn't move as he registered what Ronan was demanding.

"I mean it. Take off your mask and toss it over, or I'll open her throat up from ear to ear," Ronan threatened.

Sarah let out a short, shaky laugh even as she could feel hopeless pinpricks of tears behind her eyes. Of all the things Ronan could have wanted, he picked the one thing Matt always protected above all else. Would Ronan really cut her throat when he didn't get what he wanted? The only reason he would possibly restrain himself would be not wanting to give up the opportunity to draw the pain out longer; but the fury he was going to feel when he didn't get his way might just outweigh that.

"Last chance," Ronan said, sliding the knife over slightly so it hovered just above the pulse point on Sarah's throat.

Slowly, Matt brought his hands up to the back of his neck and curled his fingers under the edge of his mask. Sarah's eyes widened in disbelief.

And then she was looking directly into his sightless eyes, his face exposed as he tossed the black mask on the ground between them.