Hi, everyone! I think you will really enjoy this chapter (I hope) because I really enjoyed writing it. You get some solid Matt/Sarah scenes along with one scene from the POV of our beloved Foggy. This was originally going to be two chapters, but there were a few little things at the end I really wanted to share with you, so enjoy the extra long chapter!
I was very awful about replying to reviews last chapter, so I'm really sorry if you didn't get a reply to yours. I promise I read (and re-read) them all, and I so appreciate anyone who takes the time to leave their comments and thoughts! But I procrastinated on replying each night until I had a hundred unanswered reviews in my inbox and then I just got overwhelmed and gave up. I'll try to do better this chapter!
Also, just to reiterate, I will not be pursuing the ninja/Hand storyline, despite Stick showing up. It was my least favorite part of Season Two. Stick might mention some mystical stuff because that's what he does, but I don't want you guys to think that's the direction this story is heading. I definitely still want to keep it grounded in Matt and Sarah and their own battles, not in the bigger picture Netflix MCU fight.
Alright, moving on. Who wants some angst! Who wants some miscommunication! Who wants some internal guilty Catholic monologuing!
Hopefully you, because this chapter has lots of it.
Happy Defenders Eve!
PS: If you want to talk about The Defenders I am totally down because I binge watched the whole thing immediately, but please do it in a PM! Lots of readers check out the reviews and I wouldn't want anyone to have it spoiled for them. Thanks!
Chapter 31: Revelations
Stick's sudden appearance acted as a vacuum, and any trace of the teasing tension that had hung in the air was immediately sucked away. Just a few seconds earlier, Sarah's skin had been buzzing and her nerves had been enjoyably on edge—now as she stood there with Matt, both of them still dripping with water, she inexplicably felt like a schoolchild who'd been caught doing something wrong.
The man tilted his head in her direction in a manner that was eerily similar to what Matt often did.
"This isn't the same one who was lingering on your sheets last time I came to visit," he noted.
Sarah blinked in surprise; partially at the mention of what she assumed was one of Matt's old flames and partially because—while she had gotten used to Matt being able to sense things like that—she didn't remember him mentioning that his former mentor could do it as well. It felt significantly creepier coming from this old man, and she folded her arms in front of herself uncomfortably, very aware of how her wet tank top was clinging to her skin.
"It's none of your business who I spend my time with, Stick," Matt said tightly, shifting slightly so that he was placed more firmly in between the two of them. "What are you doing here? I was pretty clear last time we spoke that I wanted you the hell out of my city."
"And I went. You didn't say anything about not coming back."
"It was implied."
"Flew right over my head," Stick said with an innocent shrug. "Not all of us got the fine education you did, Matty. What are you still pissed about anyway?"
Sarah saw Matt's fist clench at the nickname. Matty. She didn't think she'd heard anyone call him that before, and made a mental note never to do so if this was who he associated it with.
"How about showing up out of nowhere after twenty years so you could mock everything about the life I've made? Then insulting my dad, lying to me about a mission, killing a child —"
"I told you already—that wasn't a child in that container," Stick explained calmly. "It wasn't even a human; it was a monster. One that needed to be taken out before it could destroy your entire precious city."
"The only monster that night was the guy who executed a kid in the name of some mystical, centuries-old war that he can never quite seem to explain," Matt said harshly.
Sarah's mouth had literally fallen open a little bit as she looked between the two men. This was not where she had expected this argument to go.
"I did what I had to do. Don't know what else you want me to say on the subject."
"And the rest of it?"
"Well…" Stick shrugged. "Don't have much to say about that either."
Sarah remembered how Matt had made some offhand joke when he was teaching her how to mediate, saying that the person who trained him was much more intimidating than he was. At the time, she had struggled to imagine someone more intimidating than the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, but now she was starting to see what he meant. Matt's was intimidating because he let his emotions get the better of him—always short-tempered and quick to throw punches. But Stick was intimidating for the opposite reason: he didn't appear to show much emotion beyond scorn as he dredged up what seemed to be a very painful history with Matt. Suddenly the blank, impassive mask that Sarah knew Matt could put on so easily made much more sense.
Stick tipped his head around, surveying the room they were in.
"I don't know what's less surprising," he said. "That you haven't found a less shitty place to do your training, or that you're so easily distracted by a girl that you didn't even hear me coming."
"No, you've been doing something…cloaking your heartbeat," Matt argued.
"And? I still take up space in the room; still displace molecules when I move. Still have a scent, and footsteps, and a temperature," Stick listed off. "If you're that reliant on heartbeats alone, then you're even farther behind than I'd thought. Maybe your focus has been elsewhere."
Sarah didn't miss the way he aimed the last part of his statement in her direction, but she only rolled her eyes. Since starting at Orion, she spent a good chunk of her day being either blatantly talked about or talked down to by various men, and at this point she barely registered it anymore; it was just background noise. Instead, her attention was on Matt, whose shoulders were rising and falling in that telltale sign that he was trying to keep his temper in check. She moved a little closer to him, so that her shoulder was brushing against his, and lightly ran her fingers down his forearm, hoping that the closeness would calm him down as it sometimes seemed to do.
He turned towards her, his brow knitted in confusion.
"Maybe we should go," she said softly.
"Good idea," Stick said, drawing Matt's attention back to him. "Matty, why don't you send your girlfriend safely home so we can talk properly?"
"I wasn't talking to you," Sarah replied, not looking away from Matt. He still had tension coiled tightly between his shoulder blades, practically buzzing under his skin, but his eyes—still aimed somewhere near her face although he was obviously listening to Stick—were dark and pained, and she didn't like the combination of those two things that Stick was bringing out. "Matt?"
After a beat, Matt tilted his head down towards her.
"Sarah, you…you should go home," he said quietly. "I'll meet you there."
Sarah stared at Matt for a long moment, not liking the idea of leaving him alone with someone who so clearly put him on edge, but also not wanting to stick around where she obviously wasn't wanted. She looked over at Stick, whose satisfied look just made things worse, then pressed her lips together, turned on her heel, and left the gym.
Matt could tell Sarah was hurt by the dismissal, but there was no universe in which he wanted her and Stick in the same room. He had been able to hear her pulse steadily increasing behind him as he and Stick argued, and it occurred to him that hearing his mentor's doom-and-gloom warnings about impending war for the first time could be alarming. Why couldn't Stick ever pop up when Matt was alone, and preferably expecting him? Some part of him was convinced that this was his punishment for straying too close to a line he'd already determined he wouldn't cross.
"You just had to make your dramatic entrance, didn't you?" Matt said.
"I'm sorry, did I interrupt playtime for the children?" Stick asked sarcastically.
"I don't want you near her ever again," he said in a low, hard voice. "Do you understand?"
"Oh, what's the big deal? I thought it went well."
"I'm serious, Stick. This is the last time the two of you will ever be in the same room."
Unfortunately, that wasn't true.
"Sure thing, Matty," Stick agreed easily. "You have my word I won't interrupt any more of your dates."
"In case you've forgotten, your word doesn't mean much to me anymore," Matt said with a bitter, mirthless grin.
"You're really still upset about what happened last time? The Black Sky is nearly unstoppable once it's started. If I hadn't put an arrow through that thing's heart—"
Matt's fist clenched instinctively, and it didn't go unnoticed by Stick.
"He wasn't a thing," Matt snarled. "He was a child."
"What, you gonna hit me?" Stick asked, sounding deeply uninterested in the answer. "Go on, then. Kicking your ass has always been the fastest way to get you to listen."
Matt wet his lips, weighing the idea for a beat before shaking his head. "No. No, that trick isn't going to work every time. You can't just come goad me into a fight whenever you want."
"Of course I can," he said dismissively. "How else am I supposed to make sure that you're still on your toes?"
"You aren't. That's not your job anymore."
"Pathetic," Stick muttered.
He sounded more resigned than angry, and maybe that's why Matt wasn't expecting the punch that followed not a half second later. Stick's fist connected with his mouth, not hard enough to break his jaw, but with enough force to break the skin and snap Matt's head to the side. The intent was clearly to bait more than to injure, and it worked.
Matt's body seemed to move before his brain could catch up, and in a second he had seized Stick by the front of his jacket with both fists. Stick let out a short breath, and it took Matt a second to place what it was: a satisfied scoff at the younger man's reaction.
"Yeah, that was real difficult," Stick observed.
Matt tightened his grip momentarily before letting go, shoving Stick away with enough force that he stumbled. He wiped the blood away from the corner of his mouth, trying to keep his breathing regulated even as a rushing sound filled his ears. The devil inside was still screaming at him to hit the other man back, to get into another full-on brawl with him. But he wasn't going to give Stick that satisfaction.
"I'm not going to fight you, Stick," he said, drawing in a ragged breath. "Not this time. Sorry to disappoint you."
"I've gotten used to it by now," Stick said caustically.
The words cut as sharply as they had been intended too, making Matt's chest tighten, though he didn't let on beyond a twitch of his jaw.
"If you just came here to rehash the past, I'm not interested," Matt said.
"Fine. Let's talk about the present. How about your new friend?"
"No. We're not talking about Sarah."
"Yes, we are," Stick insisted calmly. "That girl is an albatross around your neck."
He stated it plainly, as though it were simply a fact.
"You have no idea what you're talking about, Stick."
"I don't? I've had my ear to the ground since before you existed, kid. And I'd heard of Orion long before it ever came to your attention."
Matt started in surprise, and Stick gave a low, derisive laugh.
"You thought I wouldn't pick up on the fact that your sweetheart is employed by a group of criminals? If she works there and she's running around with you on the side…" Stick shook his head ruefully. "Seems like a good way for her to get a bullet to the head, and quick."
Matt would have responded angrily had his brain not gotten snagged on the ugly picture that hypothetical painted. The fact that it was such a real possibility didn't help.
"I'm just trying to help her get her life back," he said.
"Ah, right. And tell me, when you set her up with this shiny new life, how long do you think it'll take before you're out of the picture?"
It was a good question, and one that Matt had asked himself before. But it felt different coming from him, worded as an inevitability rather than a depressing possibility. After all, if there was anyone who knew what it was about Matt that made people want to leave him, it was Stick.
"I don't know," he answered honestly.
"I'm not trying to sound harsh, I'm trying to make you see that you're making a mistake getting so attached to this girl," Stick said slowly and evenly, as though spelling out a school lesson for a child. "Men like you and I have to be alone to be the best at what we do."
"What we do?" Matt repeated incredulously, followed by a mirthless laugh. "No—no, don't put us in the same category. You and I don't do anything close to the same thing."
"You're right. I actually accomplish what I set out to do. You just go around aimlessly trying to push back against an endless flow of scum without killing anyone."
"I'm doing enough."
"No, you think you are. Because you're young, and you have a pretty girl to tend your wounds," Stick cooed sarcastically. "And that's blinding you to the reality of the situation. This will end in one of two ways: she will get you killed, or you'll get her killed. Hell, maybe the stars will align and it'll be both."
One of the worst things about Stick, in Matt's opinion, was his nasty habit of being right.
"That's not going to happen," he said, but he didn't sound convincing even to his own ears. "I won't let it."
"Of course not. Because you've kept total control of the situation since the beginning, right? Never slipped up?"
Unwanted, the memory of Sarah's scream coming from the other side of that windshield sprang to mind. She had brushed it off as a close call, but it had stuck with him. How could he not have sensed that she was in that car? What if he had thrown that man just a little harder? What if Sarah had been in the passenger seat instead of Jason, and taken the brunt of the man's heavy boots coming through the windshield? As it was, she had walked away with just a few scratches, but it had been so close—too close—and if she'd gotten hurt worse it would have been entirely his fault.
"You can't protect her, Matty. But you'll keep trying even when you shouldn't, and that makes her a liability to you. I know it's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth."
"So, what, you've been following me around because I've dared to spend time with someone? You came all the way back to New York just to lecture me about Sarah?"
"Of course not. I came to New York on my own business."
"Which is what?"
Stick snorted. "Nothing you're ready for. Not if you're still hanging on to things that are holding you back."
"Which clearly I am. So why are you here talking to me?"
"Because I've been here in the city dealing with it for weeks now, and it seems like every time I turn around I hear about you all over the news."
"I've been in the news since I started doing this," Matt said. "It kind of comes with the territory."
"Not like this. Opinion articles, viral videos. That one reporter in particular…she's turned figuring out who you are into a game for people," Stick said. Matt worked his jaw in annoyance; of course Stick would have come across the articles Cecilia had been writing about him; they were everywhere these days. "And you've allowed it. So I came to see how you'd allowed yourself to get so sloppy. Now I know."
"In what world is Sarah responsible for other people writing articles about me?" Matt asked.
"She's not. But once one part of your life starts making you go soft, you begin letting other things slip, too. Before you know it, your mug'll be plastered all over CNN."
"Well, that's my business."
"For now it is. But fame makes for a useless soldier. I'm concerned that when the time comes for you have to face a real threat—"
"A real threat? In what world is your vague war with no one in particular more of a 'real threat' than what I deal with every night?" Matt demanded. "You've never shown me one shred of proof that your threat is real, but all I have to do is step outside to see that mine is."
"You want proof? Help me with what I'm in town working on."
"I'm not interested."
"I thought you might feel that way. Well, suit yourself. There's big stuff going down in New York soon; I'll be here a while."
"I don't want to hear your heartbeat following me around anymore."
"No point in it now that I know how poorly you pick up on it. Besides, I don't have any interest in listening in on your love life."
"Good."
"But when you change your mind, which you will…you give me a call." Stick tossed him something small, and Matt caught it. It was a burner phone that felt similar to his own, only larger and less scratched up. "I'll be around."
Matt stood and listened to the click of Stick's cane leaving the boxing gym before grabbing his bag and following suit.
The air outside was nearly as humid and heavy as the stale air inside the boxing gym, giving Matt no reprieve from the stifled feeling in his lungs. He felt keyed up, itching to knock someone's teeth out, and there was an edgy, reckless thrum to his blood. His apartment was blocks away, and he could hardly wait to change clothes and head out into the night to work off the instant, prickling anger that Stick had managed to instill in him so quickly.
The sounds of Hell's Kitchen rushed in to meet his ears, louder than usual. Normally he could block most of it out, but tonight he had been so knocked off balance that he couldn't seem to get a good grasp on what noises he was letting in.
As he turned the corner, Matt became aware of the person sitting on a nearby bench very suddenly: first by the scent of citrus mixed with sweat and water, and then by the heartbeat, quickening just a little in anticipation of what would probably be a tense conversation.
"For a second I wasn't sure if you'd notice me here," Sarah said quietly as he stopped in his tracks in front of her. His expression must have given away his mood, because her voice sounded wary, and he could feel her gaze move from his face down to his body language.
Her sudden and unexpected presence caught him off guard—he'd thought she was safe at home, far away from Stick and anything connected to him—and he reacted without thinking.
"I told you to go home," he said, the words coming out harsher than he'd intended. Sure enough, she let out a short, incredulous huff in response.
"I'm sorry, did we step into a time machine?" she asked. "I didn't think you got to order me around anymore."
"That's not—" Matt clamped his lips together, tipping his head back as he collected his thoughts. The last thing he wanted right now was a fight. Actually, that wasn't true; a fight was exactly what he was looking for. Just not with her. "That's not what I meant. I just…thought that's where you were going."
"I figured I'd wait to see if—" Sarah's breathing hitched in surprise as she came closer to him. "Jesus, Matt. What happened to your face? Did you guys get into a fight?"
"Not exactly," he said, bringing his hand up to touch the split skin near his bottom lip. He'd almost forgotten it was there.
"That's really the guy who trained you as a kid? I mean I kind of figured he was a dick, but Jesus…no wonder you're so—"
"—so what?" he cut her off, morbidly curious as to what aspects of his past and personality she thought she could analyze based off one short conversation. "Violent? Unstable?"
"…I was going to say guarded," she said slowly. "Growing up with someone like that."
"I didn't grow up with Stick," Matt countered. "Stick was there for a little while, and then he was gone. Don't act like he had some big hand in shaping who I am, I had a lot more years without him than I did with him."
Matt knew he was lashing out at her, saying things to her that he really wanted to say to Stick, and she didn't deserve it. He expected her to snap back at him angrily, so he was surprised when instead she stayed calm.
"Okay…okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that," she said. He could hear the concern in her voice and immediately felt guilty.
"No, don't…don't be sorry. You didn't do anything," he said, closing his eyes running both hands through his hair as he paced around. "Stick just doesn't bring out my most levelheaded side."
"Yeah, that's not super surprising," she muttered. "What happened in there?"
"You saw what happened. Snarky comments and…non-specific warnings of an oncoming war."
"Right, but I meant what happened after you dismissed me from the room like a secretary in a Mad Men episode."
"I've never seen it."
"Matt."
"I'm not going to apologize for not wanting the two of you anywhere near each other," Matt said flatly. "He's a dangerous person, Sarah. And I don't know if he's a threat to you, but I'm not going to risk it."
"Why would he be a threat to me?" she asked slowly. "I don't even know him."
"No, but he knows enough about you that he thinks you're a liability to me, and I wouldn't put it past him to try to do something about it." Even as he said it, he knew that he shouldn't have.
"He thinks I'm a what?" she said with a startled laugh. "Did you tell him that's crazy?"
Matt hesitated. "Not exactly."
"Why not?" she asked apprehensively. "It's not like you think that, right?"
"No, of course I don't. But he's—he's not entirely wrong," Matt said haltingly. Because maybe Stick wasn't wrong; maybe Matt was falling for someone he shouldn't, and it would end up with both of them getting hurt.
"…what?"
As soon as he heard the hurt in her voice he wished he hadn't said anything.
"I didn't mean that to sound the way it did," he tried. "Stick just has this thing about not keeping people in your life—"
"So then, is everyone in your life considered a liability, or just me?" Sarah asked.
Matt didn't say anything, which was answer enough.
"What a shocker," she whispered, turning to look away from him.
"It's not what you think."
"Of course it is, Matt. This is the same problem we've always had, it just gets recycled," she said tiredly, turning to walk away.
"No, Sarah, wait," he said, reaching for her arm to stop her, but she pointedly took a step back and out of his reach.
This was going badly. There was no way he could have this conversation with her right now, not when everything that was tumbling around his head right now was all tied up in her. And he didn't want her to see him like this, angry and on edge and lashing out at anyone near him. He needed to clear his head before he could even try to explain his complicated history with Stick to her.
The sounds of the city were getting louder and louder around him; he could barely focus past all the sirens and voices and music playing and cars screeching.
"Listen, I…I can't talk about this right now. I have to go. I'm sorry. I'll come by your place later tonight. Okay?" He reached up and hooked a few stray pieces of hair behind her ear, and she let him, which he thought was a good sign. "Please."
She didn't answer right away, and he thought she might understandably tell him not to bother.
"Okay," she said finally.
"Thank you," he said, flashing her a quick, relieved grin that she didn't return. "I'll talk to you soon."
Then he was gone, off to change into his mask so he could clear his head and free his veins of the shaky anger coursing through them.
Sarah tossed her gym bag in the corner of her living room when she got inside, then reached up and yanked at her hairtie, letting her hair fall from its ponytail. A current of agitation was buzzing under her skin, and she figured a shower might help calm her thoughts.
As she stood in the shower, letting the steam loosen her muscles, she tried to figure out what had just happened. Obviously this was why Matt had been acting so strangely lately, avoiding seeing her in person and running off to chase down something he couldn't explain to her. It made sense from what little she knew about Stick; Matt shut down completely when it came to the topic, but the few things he had told her made it very clear that their relationship was complicated at best and antagonistic at worst. If Matt had some weird parental issues with Stick, she wished he would talk to her about it. If her alcoholic father and total flake of a mother had given her anything, it was a deep understanding of having a complicated relationship with parents.
Then of course, there was the very strange encounter she and Matt had had after the gym.
"A liability," she muttered, scowling at her shampoo bottle. Some old man who she'd never met had decided she was a burden that was putting Matt at a disadvantage, and for whatever reason Matt seemed to maybe be listening to him. She took a deep breath, reminding herself of how frazzled and undone Matt had seemed after his conversation with Stick. Maybe he really had picked his words poorly. Maybe there was more to it. She could wait a few hours to find out.
She slowly turned the temperature down on the shower, letting it run colder and colder until it was almost freezing before she finally got out. The cold water on her skin helped keep out some of the heat that filled her apartment, though she knew it wouldn't help for long. After changing, she rummaged through her closet for a few minutes before finding the cheap tabletop fan she'd bought last summer when her window-mounted A/C unit had stopped working. It wasn't very strong, but it would do the trick for now.
A few minutes later, Sarah settled cross-legged on the couch and opened her laptop, curious to find out just what 'cloaking your heartbeat' entailed. Googling it would probably just come up with weird fringe sites, but it was worth a look. She clicked on her browser and frowned when it wouldn't connect to the internet. She turned her wifi off, then back on, and tried again. With a groan, she realized what day of the month it was; the payment date for her internet bill had already come and passed, and she'd been so busy she hadn't noticed. And she definitely didn't have enough money in her account to cover it at the moment.
"Fine," she grumbled, snapping her laptop closed and giving it a resentful look, as though the machine itself had been the one to budget poorly.
The lack of internet seemed fitting, however, given the large stack of paperwork she still had left to fill out for enrolling her father in his new care home soon. She put her tea kettle on the stove before grabbing the paperwork off her coffee table to start filling out the forms. It was boring, but it gave her something to focus on. After a while, she opened her laptop back up and put some music on to fill up the silence as she worked.
About halfway through the stack of papers she glanced up at the time, and was surprised to see that it had gotten late. She'd have thought Matt would have shown up by now. A small flutter of nervousness went through her, and she tried not to wonder if Matt's erratic behavior earlier had gotten him into trouble on his patrol. With a sigh, she pulled her hair up into a clip to get it off her neck and out of her face, then returned to what she was doing.
An hour of paperwork later, and she had fallen into a restless sleep against the arm rest of her couch.
Matt told himself not to take out all of his anger on the first target he came across, which ended up being a group of four lowlifes who had cornered an elderly Vietnamese man and were circling him like vultures, taunting him before robbing him. When Daredevil was done, he left seven shattered ribs, two bruised windpipes, and one broken collarbone in his wake, along with any notion of holding back that particular night.
Hours later, after he had busted his knuckles open and his lungs were burning with exhaustion, he made his way towards Sarah's apartment like he had promised. He wasn't sure what he would say to her, exactly. It didn't seem likely that she'd let him brush off what had happened at the gym, especially given that she obviously knew he and Stick had been talking about her after she left. But trying to explain what he'd said about her being a liability might lead to conversations that he definitely didn't want to have.
For a brief second, Matt honestly considered telling her the truth about everything. About Stick finding him as a child, and how Matt had been so desperate for a connection to someone that he'd driven him away. How he had come back and set Matt's life off kilter last year, and how everything the man said had the effect of confusing Matt to his core, and he was sorry that he let it affect him so much. He wondered what she would say, if she would wrap her arms around his neck and stay there until he let her go.
The rickety fire escape shook slightly as he landed on it. Sarah had her window propped open about a foot to cool her apartment down, held up by what he thought might have been a thick wooden kitchen spoon. He raised his hand to knock on the windowpane—then he hesitated, listening for a moment.
Sarah was inside her apartment, still awake. She was on her couch, and he could hear the scratch of a pen as she sifted through a stack of papers next to her. The citrus scent of her shampoo was stronger than usual, accompanied by the smell of tap water and lotion. She'd set up a small, oscillating fan on the side table next to her, and it whirred steadily as it tried to beat back some of the heat. The breeze it caused was making her hair blow into her face, and she exhaled in annoyance before sweeping her damp hair back and securing it with a plastic clip. He could hear quiet piano music coming from her laptop speakers, and the smell of green tea and honey drifted towards the window, propelled along by the fan.
He only stood there for a minute, but it was very easy to imagine that what he observed in that minute was what her normal nights were like before she met him. Calm, and safe, and wonderfully free of violence and danger. And this was what they should be like once they'd succeeded at bringing down Jason and the rest of Orion: Sarah living the life she wanted, and him not intruding on it. He had no right to ruin nights like this, to break up the scene on the other side of the glass by bringing in all of the dirt and grime and blood of his own life, weighing her down with his past and secrets.
After another moment, he quietly left the fire escape before she ever noticed he was there.
The next morning Sarah woke with a jolt, her stomach dropping as she realized she had fallen asleep on the sofa waiting for Matt and hadn't set her alarm. She scrambled around for her laptop to check the time, cursing loudly when she saw that she had overslept by a good hour and a half. She got to her feet, wincing as her neck twinged painfully in protest of the angle at which she'd fallen asleep. She hastily shoved her feet into a pair of flats and yanked a brush through the matted mess her hair had turned into after sleeping with it up in a clip, assuring herself that her boss was still on an extended break while recovering from his injuries, so maybe no one would notice she was so late.
She was already on the subway heading towards Orion when she remembered that she was supposed to have gone to Vanessa's first to pick up some documents and bring them to the bank. Swearing loudly enough that a couple of kids nearby started giggling and whispering, she got off at the first stop to switch over to the correct line. She was in such a hurry that she didn't have time to spare a thought to getting stood up the night before, save for a brief streak of irritation.
When she finally got to Vanessa's apartment building, she had to go through two different security checkpoints: the guard at the front desk who simply checked her ID and hit the button for the penthouse, and the two uniformed security details Vanessa always had posted at her door—at Wilson Fisk's specific request, if the rumors Sarah heard were correct. One looked through Sarah's bag while the other gave her a cursory pat down. She had to go through this process every time she came here, and although it only took a few seconds—neither guard seemed terribly concerned that she was a threat—she always tensed up at the thought of being touched by either of them.
Once inside, she knocked on the door to Vanessa's home office, where she could hear Vanessa quietly conversing with someone.
"Come in," Vanessa called out.
Sarah was already apologizing as she reached for the doorknob.
"I'm so sorry I'm late, I—I—I overslept and then I got on the wrong subway, but I can stay…" Sarah's words abandoned her as she entered the room and caught sight of who Vanessa had been talking to: Jason. His presence by itself wasn't that shocking—although Sarah hadn't been given any heads up that he would be returning to work that day—so much as his appearance. The windshield had cut him worse than she had realized. The number of cuts on his face had been obscured by the sheer amount of blood, but now they stood out clean and shiny against his skin, streaking across the bridge of his nose, criss-crossing in all directions over his face. The effect of the scarring combined with his signature wide smile was jarring in the most disturbing fashion. She stood there wide-eyed for a second before finishing her sentence. "…um…l-late if you…need me to."
If Jason was offended by her horrified reaction, he didn't show it.
"Sarah, hello. I stopped by on a whim to talk to Vanessa about a few things before I return to work next week," he said, before giving a quick look at his expensive watch. "I'm surprised you're just now getting here."
"It's alright," Vanessa interjected smoothly. "I've set out flex hours with Sarah. She's here within the window of time that I generally expect her. No harm done."
This wasn't true at all. Sarah had been given a specific time to be there, and she had missed it by a significant amount. She had no idea why Vanessa was covering for her, but she wasn't complaining about Jason shifting his piercing gaze from her over to the other woman.
"I see. Well, that's very convenient," he said, then looked back at Sarah. "We were just finishing up, so I'll leave you two be. Sarah, I expect that you'll be on time on Monday when I return."
"Yes, of course," she said quickly.
When Jason and his face full of horrifying scars were gone, Sarah turned back to Vanessa awkwardly.
"Um…thanks," she said. "For the flex hours thing."
"I've had more than my share of mornings where I couldn't get out of bed," Vanessa told her. "And nothing has been ruined simply because you're late."
"Oh. Well, that—that's good," she said uncertainly.
Vanessa looked at her intently. "Tell me, how do you like working for Jason?"
"Uh, it's great," she lied. He never makes me watch while he murders someone with a hammer and then tells me to dispose of their body. "It's—it's really…challenging. And I'm learning a lot of new…workplace skills."
Vanessa nodded, but didn't look as though she particularly believed her.
"Of course. And what did you do for a living before you started working at my husband's company?"
There was nothing particularly alarming about Vanessa's line of questioning, but it made Sarah uncomfortable anyway. She didn't want to talk about her past with Vanessa or anyone else associated with Orion.
"I played the piano."
"The piano?" Vanessa repeated interestedly. "You played professionally?"
"Yes."
"I tried playing the violin for the longest time, but eventually I had to admit that I had zero knack for it," she admitted with a laugh. "But I do love music. All the arts, really. I used to own an art gallery, you know."
"Really?" Sarah tried to recall if she had known that.
"Yes. Of course, I had to sell it once Wilson was sent away. People would come by just to ogle. The art become secondary to the sensationalism. But I bought a few of the pieces before I left," she said, nodding towards a large painting hanging on the wall. The bottom half of the painting was a dark, dark gray, nearly black, with a gradient of dark tendrils reaching up towards the blank white space at the top, like smoke rising into the sky.
"It's lovely," Sarah said absently. She hoped Vanessa would give her the document soon so that she could leave.
Vanessa's lips curled into a knowing smile as she gave Sarah a look. "No, it isn't. And it's not meant to be. What do you really think of it?"
Sarah looked back over at the painting, the way it stretched nearly all the way up to the ceiling, with the dark half coming well above their heads.
"It's…a little ominous."
"Yes," Vanessa agreed. "But I think there's something about it that seems...promising. A promise of change, whether good or bad."
For the life of her, Sarah could not figure out Vanessa sometimes. With Jason, she just figured he was a little insane. But Vanessa seemed grounded enough, save for when she started speaking in riddles like this.
From another room there came the sound of a baby crying.
"I should go check on him," Vanessa said, reaching into her desk and handing Sarah a manila folder. "Here you go. You can give the receipt to Jason when he returns to work."
Sarah took the folder and quickly exited, leaving Vanessa and her confusing paintings behind.
Four more days passed, and then it was Friday. Sarah was at her father's place to make dinner and help him begin packing, but he'd been napping when she arrived and she hadn't wanted to wake him. So she started cleaning the apartment, and her mind wandered to a certain vigilante who had gone totally radio silent for the last four days. The only way she knew he wasn't dead or mortally injured was by checking Twitter, where people sporadically tweeted about having witnessed Daredevil flipping across rooftops. She felt a confusing mix of annoyance and concern, and the struggle between the two—along with a good dose of useless pride—was what kept her from reaching out and calling him. But it had been nearly a week, and she wanted to know if he was okay.
Eventually, she settled on a middle ground: she would call Foggy, just to quickly check if Matt was still coming to work and acting like a normal human with everyone else, at least. But her bad luck from Monday seemed to be carrying over into the end of the week, and when she reached for her cell phone she saw that it had only 2% battery left. The stupid thing was a couple of years old, and the battery always drained quicker than she expected, so of course she had forgotten to bring her charger. She hit the Contacts button, but the effort of opening it seemed to exhaust her phone, which promptly shut off.
"I really need to start memorizing people's numbers again," she grumbled as she rummaged around in her bag for the business card she knew was floating around in there somewhere before finally procuring it: Nelson & Murdock: Attorneys At Law. She dialed the number printed below their names; it was still early enough that Foggy would probably be at the office for another hour or two, and if Matt was the one who answered then at least she could tell him to stop being such a dick.
Instead of either of them, a bright female voice came on the other end of the line. "Nelson and Murdock, this is Karen."
Sarah swore silently; she'd forgotten about Karen, again.
"Uh, is—is Foggy available? Foggy Nelson?" she clarified uselessly, as though there might be several people named Foggy working in their three-person office.
"No, I'm sorry, he's out right now; he should be back shortly," Karen said. "But I can give him a message if you like, and he can call you back. Are you a client? What's your name?"
"No, I'm—I'm not a client," Sarah said, hesitating as she weighed whether to tell the truth, or lie, or just hang up. "Um…this is Sarah Corrigan. We, uh…we met. That time."
That time you got your arm broken because of me and then I pretended like I'd never met your two best friends.
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
"I remember." Karen sounded uncomfortable as Sarah felt. "…how are you?"
"I'm—I'm fine. I, uh….how's your arm?"
"It's healing."
"Right." There was another long, heavy pause. "Listen, I'm really sorry. For everything that happened that night. With your arm, and with Matt and Foggy."
"It's…it's okay, actually. Foggy explained that you and Matt have kind of a complicated thing going on, and I understand—or, I mean, I think I understand…why you didn't tell me you knew them."
Sarah had no idea what scenario Foggy had come up with to tell Karen, or if he had just left it at 'complicated,' but if it meant Karen wasn't angry at her then she supposed she should just go with it. She slowly sat down in her dad's overstuffed armchair.
"Yeah, complicated is…a good way of putting it," she agreed. "Is he there? Matt?"
"No, he's out, too. They had a lot of appointments today so they split up to cover them all."
"Oh, right," she said.
"Hey, listen, I'm sorry, too. I know our conversation over dinner was kind of strange, and I might have said some things that could be, um, misinterpreted, and…" Karen laughed, but it sounded anxious. "…it was a weird night. I was just really tired and not making a lot of sense."
Sarah felt a pang of guilt as she recalled her conversation with Karen about Wesley, and how Karen had asked her not to talk to Matt or Foggy about it. How in Sarah's desperate attempts to explain to Matt what had happened she had immediately told him what Karen had asked her not to.
"Karen—" she began, but she was cut off when she heard someone else talking to Karen in the background.
"Wait, hang on," Karen said, then her voice became muffled as she presumably covered up the mouthpiece of the phone to talk to someone. A few seconds later, her voice came back clear again. "Foggy just came in. I'll put you through to his office."
There was a staticy clicking noise as Karen put her on hold; apparently they weren't at the point in their business where they had things like hold music. A few seconds later, a familiar voice came over the line. Sarah smiled when she heard the other line pick up. She enjoyed talking to Foggy, who—unlike his sad, confusing basset hound of a law partner—was always upbeat and nice to her.
"Sarah?"
"Hi, Foggy."
"How's it going?"
"Sorry to call your office," she said instead of answering him, mostly because things were going shitty, and she didn't really feel like she should throw all that onto Foggy. "I'm at my dad's and my phone is dead. And apparently I don't memorize numbers anymore, so all I had was your business card."
"It's alright, who memorizes phone numbers anymore? I actually don't think I even know our office number by heart, now that I think about it."
"Wait, really? That's bad, Foggy," she said with a laugh.
"I know, I know. I'm working on it. So what are you calling for on this fine day? Legal advice? You're not in a jail cell somewhere, are you?"
"No, I just, um…wanted to check in and—and see how…everyone in your office is doing," she said nonchalantly. "Just…in general."
"Uh huh," he said skeptically. "The office in general? Well, I'm doing great. Been taking my multivitamins, drinking lots of water. I finally figured out how to put a password on our office wifi so that the notary public down the hall stops using it."
Sarah leaned back in the armchair and cast her eyes up towards the ceiling, realizing he was going to give her a hard time about this.
"That's great."
"And Karen's doing well," he continued. "Getting more blonde and more beautiful by the day, as hard as it is to believe."
"Right, right."
"Who else?" Foggy said, as though he were wracking his brain. Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose, wondering how much longer he would draw this out. "Uhh, we have a courier who stops by once a day, his name is Davis and I think he's having a bit of a time lately with his baby starting to teeth—"
"Foggy," Sarah complained.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Was there some other employee of Nelson and Murdock you were hoping to get updated on? You were so subtle that I might have missed it," Foggy said seriously.
"Fine. I haven't heard from Matt in a few days," she admitted. "Almost a week, actually. I just wanted to know if he's doing okay."
There was a rush of static on the other end that she assume was Foggy sighing. "Yeah, I figured you guys might be on the outs."
"Why?"
"It's not usually hard to draw a line from his mood to how things are going with you."
Sarah sighed, curling her feet up underneath her. "That seems about right. But we aren't really fighting, I don't think. He…" she hesitated, not knowing if Foggy was filled in on Stick and their history. "…he has a lot on his mind. Some of which definitely has to do with me. And he doesn't want my help with any of it, if him avoiding me is any indicator."
"Welcome to the world of knowing Matt Murdock," Foggy joked, before growing serious again. "He's always fallen into funks like this. Like he's stuck inside his own head. I've still never quite figured out how to shake him out of it. Maybe you can."
"Yeah," she said quietly. "Maybe."
"You want me to tell him you called?"
"Uh…no," she decided. "No, don't tell him. It was good talking to you, Foggy."
When she hung up, she didn't feel much better than she had before the phone call. She was glad Matt was showing up at work relatively uninjured, but it didn't help explain why he'd been avoiding her since they'd encountered Stick in the gym. And for as much as she sympathized with whatever was going on with him, she also couldn't help feeling angry, and hurt.
Maybe she had jinxed everything when she'd hoped that things were done going wrong, that they were done taking steps backwards. Whatever Powers-That-Be that enjoyed torturing her had heard that idea and immediately smacked it down in the form of a very unlikeable old man.
A few minutes later, she heard her dad's bedroom door open and he came out into the living room. He looked a little disheveled, but mostly alert.
"Sarah. I'm so sorry, honey. Did we have a dinner date tonight?"
Sarah tried to fix her expression into something happier. "No, no, it's okay. I just got here a minute ago."
"Oh, good," he said, sounding relieved.
"Come on," she said, nodding towards the kitchen and putting both the phone call and Matt out of her mind. "I brought stuff to make stir fry."
Matt entered the office just in time to hear Foggy hanging up the phone. Karen was on the other line, making an appointment with a client for next week, so Matt quietly slipped into his office as he'd been doing all week, deftly avoiding making conversation. The two of them would both probably be heading home soon, and Matt was secretly glad. Stick's surprise appearance and his subsequent fight—would he even call it a fight?—with Sarah had left him in a less than stellar mood, and he was looking forward to getting work done without having to force a cheerful demeanor.
He was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of someone lightly knocking on the open door to his office.
"What are you in here brooding about?"
Matt lifted his head towards Foggy's voice. "I'm not brooding. I'm just…sitting here."
"Yeah—alone. In the dark."
"Is it dark in here?" Matt asked, then chuckled. "Sorry."
There was a click followed by a low buzzing from above as Foggy hit the light switch on the wall. He could hear the brush of a jacket draped over Foggy's arm, the bump of his briefcase against the door frame.
"You heading out?" Matt asked.
"In a minute. I'm just waiting for Karen to get ready before we go out for dinner. Then probably some drinks. You wanna join?"
The offer was nice, but not very tempting. As wonderful as Foggy and Karen were at trying to make sure Matt didn't feel uncomfortable third wheeling with them, they were still early enough in their relationship that it was mostly impossible for them to not act cutesy around each other. And Matt didn't mind that most of the time, but he knew he wouldn't be good company to them tonight, his tense and withdrawn mood looming over their dinner like a dark cloud.
"No, I'm good, thanks. I'm just going stick around a while longer and finish this up," he answered, giving a vague wave at whatever documents were on his desk in front of him.
There was a sigh, then the sound of wood scraping against the floor as Foggy pulled out the chair on the other side of Matt's desk and dropped into it.
"Dude. Tell me what's up."
Keeping his face carefully passive, Matt asked, "What do you mean?"
"You've been seriously locked in your head this week, buddy. Not that I would categorize your usual disposition as sunny and bright, but this is beyond even normal Matt Murdock levels of gloom."
He waved his hand dismissively. "I've just been stressed out with all of these cases—"
"Bullshit. You're enjoying the case load as much as you enjoy beating people up at night. Just like you used to enjoy finals week in law school. You like that exhaustion because it makes you feel like you're getting something done." Foggy's statement was accompanied by an accusatory finger pointing in Matt's direction.
Matt raised his eyebrows at that.
"Did you get a degree in psychology that I don't know about?" he asked dryly.
"Just being friends with you is like getting a degree in psychology," Foggy shot back. "Besides, I barely managed to get a law degree as it is, there's no way I could have gotten an extra one."
"Graduating cum laude from Columbia is 'barely managing'?"
"Well, it ain't summa, that's all I'm saying. And anyway, you're deflecting. What's going on with you?"
What could he possibly say to that? He knew better than to bring up Stick. For as much as Foggy was trying to be accepting of Daredevil—and he really was trying—any mention of the past Matt had kept from him tended to immediately throw a wrench into the conversation.
"I've just got a lot on my mind," he said, settling for a vague not-quite-a-lie and hoping Foggy would take it.
"Huh. That's exactly what Sarah said, too."
Matt paused. "When did you see Sarah?"
"She called the office earlier. And it's possible that she asked me not to tell you that, but...well, here we are."
"Is she okay?" he asked, a little alarmed that she'd called the office and not one of his cell phones.
"She's fine. Don't you think I would have started the conversation by saying she was gravely injured if that were the case?" Foggy questioned.
"Sorry. What did she say?"
"Not much. We hardly talked, really. She spoke to Karen for a little while, and then—"
That caught Matt's attention. Sarah had made it clear that she was uncomfortable talking to Karen after what happened with all of them that night, and he couldn't blame her. She never brought up her theory about Karen and Wesley again after the fight they'd had, but Matt hadn't forgotten it. It sat in the back of his mind whenever he was around Karen, becoming increasingly harder to ignore as a possibility. It was also a theory he had very purposefully chosen not to share with Foggy.
"—she was talking to Karen?" Matt interrupted. "About what?"
"I can only assume about how handsome I am, and how they feel badly that you have to spend all your time being compared to me," Foggy said lightly, to which Matt rolled his eyes. "Anyway, then she talked to me about whether or not you were dead in a ditch somewhere, since apparently you've been avoiding her for a while."
"Did she sound upset?" he asked quietly.
"Mostly just tired, and worried about you. And a little confused about what she did to deserve the silent treatment," Foggy added.
Matt shifted guiltily as he fidgeted with the cord of his headphones. He knew he owed Sarah an explanation for why he hadn't come by in so long, but he had no idea what to tell her. His feelings for her had been confusing enough before Stick's appearance, and now he had no idea what to do. Stick had a nasty habit of being right about a lot of things Matt wanted him to wrong about, and he had a horrible suspicion this was one of them. Both he and Sarah were well aware of what the worst case scenario was, ending with one or both of them dead. It was the best case scenario that neither of them had really addressed: that they would succeed in getting her out from under Orion's thumb, and she would go back to her normal life. And the more they got twisted up in each other now, the more that would hurt later.
"She didn't do anything. I just haven't had the chance to stop by," he lied. "You know how slammed we've been lately. And besides, I…shouldn't be spending so much time at her place anyway. This is probably a good thing."
"You know what else would be a good thing? Going to see her and telling her you've been thinking about her all week and that you'd like to get married."
Matt's eyebrows shot up and he let out a loud, surprised laugh.
"That doesn't sound extreme or anything," he said.
"Alright, fine," Foggy said. "The proposal can wait a while. You should have ample opportunity during all the time you spend together, 'working out' and whatnot. And I know you can't see my eyebrows, but just know that they are currently waggling."
Matt sighed. Clearly this wasn't a topic that Foggy was planning on dropping.
"There's nothing going on, Foggy." A week ago that wouldn't have been strictly true if the way their last training session had almost gone was any indication. But considering he hadn't seen or spoken to Sarah in days, it wasn't technically lying to say there was nothing going on right then. "Besides, weren't you the one who pointed out how messed up that would be? I think you said something about me being better off dating Wilson Fisk," Matt reminded him. It seemed like ages ago now, but he hadn't forgotten.
"First of all, to be clear: I was not encouraging you to romantically pursue Wilson Fisk, so if you decide to go that route, I want no credit for it," Foggy warned.
"Duly noted."
"And secondly, I reserve the right to change my mind when presented with new information."
Matt sighed. "Such as?"
"Well, back when I said that I kind of figured you just wanted to sleep with her."
"You think I'm going to sleep with every woman I come into contact with."
"To be fair, there is some precedent. Although—although!" Foggy clarified with another accusatory finger. "Not as much as I was once led to believe."
"Where are you going with this?" Matt asked weakly.
"Right. Okay, yes. Hooking up with a girl you used to...you know...kind of semi-terrorize is a messed up scenario," Foggy allowed.
Matt kept his face carefully neutral, but under his desk he flexed the hand he'd busted open earlier that week, focusing on the pain that seared across his knuckles every time he opened his palm. "Exactly. And I'm not going to. So, we're on the same page."
"The hell we are. Because that's not the scenario we're talking about anymore. If you'd gone ahead and slept with her back then, well…then that would have been pretty bad. But at this point? With the insane amount of crazy shit the two of you have gone through together? I don't think anyone could blame either of you for wanting to make some kind of connection."
Matt replied with a noncommittal hum.
"I'm not saying you should jump head first into something, but whatever you're doing now clearly isn't working if she's calling the office to see why you're avoiding her. I just think doing something would be better than hanging out in purgatory like this. I haven't seen you so wrapped up in something this complicated with someone since…well…you know," Foggy trailed off, clearly not wanting to stray into painful territory.
Matt did know. There was only one other person who had ever affected him so overwhelmingly before. She'd been the exact opposite of Sarah—sharp everywhere that Sarah was soft, constantly coaxing him towards darkness while Sarah tugged him away—but their effect on him was undeniably similar. And the disaster that Elektra had left in her wake had been devastating and very nearly irreparable. Matt had just barely been able to slowly piece his life back together after she left him standing alone in the foyer of Roscoe Sweeney's mansion. But wasn't that how it always went? He'd have thought that after so many people leaving—his father, Stick, Elektra, even Foggy for a brief time—that he wouldn't be so blindsided by it every single time. Maybe this time he could at least try to pull back before it happened.
"That was different."
"Of course it was. It always is," Foggy said simply. "But you care about her, Matt. It's so painfully obvious. So go talk to her, and do what you have to do to make things right."
"I'll…think about it," Matt said.
"What, you haven't thought about it enou—" Foggy stopped talking abruptly as the door to the office opened and Matt heard the click of Karen's heels on the hardwood floor. Unable to continue his interrogation, Foggy settled for heaving a dramatic sigh. "God, you're a stubborn asshole."
Matt gave a tired grin. "Admittedly."
"What are we arguing about?" Karen asked as she finished putting in one of her earrings. She was surrounded by a fresh layer of perfume and toothpaste in preparation for going out.
"Baseball," Matt quickly supplied.
"Italian food," Foggy said simultaneously.
There was an uncomfortable pause during which the obvious lie hung heavy between the three of them, waiting to be addressed or ignored.
"Right," Karen said, the cheerfulness in her voice becoming forced in the way it always did when she could tell they were keeping something from her. Matt lowered his head, a familiar sense of guilt tugging in his chest. "…controversial subjects, both of those."
The awkwardness still lingered in the air as the two of them left a few minutes later. Matt could feel Foggy giving him one last, long look before he shut the door behind him and the sound of his and Karen's voices descended the stairs.
Late that night, after Sarah's father had gone to bed, she was still awake. Her mind was preoccupied by about a dozen different things and she didn't see any point in trying to sleep. So she found herself cleaning more of the apartment as quietly as she could, trying not to wake her dad. This attempt was ruined somewhere around the middle of her doing the dishes, when a tap-tap-tap came from the glass doors leading to the balcony. The unexpected knock startled her so badly that she fumbled the soapy pan she was washing, dropping it against the counter with a loud clang. She sent a wary look down the hall, but there was no sound of movement from her dad's room; he had always been a heavy sleeper.
She made her way over to the glass doors that led out to the small balcony and hesitantly peered through the blinds. Considering this wasn't her apartment, there was a small chance that it was someone other than Matt out there.
But sure enough, she saw that familiar black silhouette on the other side of the glass. After days of complete radio silence, he'd decided to finally show up.
"You're an asshole," she informed him through the glass.
Matt didn't seem surprised by the greeting. He pressed his lips together and held his hands open in an, "I know" type gesture. When she just frowned at him instead of opening the door, he let his hands drop and tilted his head.
"Are you going to come out here?" he asked, his voice slightly muffled by the windowpane.
She leaned against the doorframe and shrugged. "I'll come out later. How does five days from now sound?"
Even with his mask on she could see him wince at the comment.
"Do you want me to go?" he asked.
Sarah chewed her lip as she studied him for a moment, taking in the tired slump of his broad shoulders and the downturned corners of his mouth.
"No," she said finally. "But I don't want to wake up my dad. I'll meet you up on the roof."
Matt nodded, taking a step backward and out of the semi-circle of light that spilled out of the apartment onto the balcony.
Sarah slipped on a pair of flip-flops and glanced down at her pajamas—which consisted of a thin, worn t-shirt and cotton shorts covered in tiny cartoon martini glasses—and was suddenly relieved that Matt couldn't see them.
Up on the roof, the summer air was heavy and humid. She gathered her hair over her shoulder as she looked around the dark rooftop for the vigilante; she spotted him a few yards away, leaning back against the low wall that ran along the perimeter. As she got closer she saw that he had taken his mask off while he was waiting, and he was now fidgeting with it in his hands. She was glad; she didn't think she could have this conversation with him with half of his face covered.
Neither of them said anything for a moment as she came to a stop in front of him.
"I know that I said I'd come over to explain things the other night," he began quietly. "I'm sorry that I didn't, and that I disappeared for so long. I…had a lot of things to think about."
"Feel like clueing me in on what kinds of things?" she asked, already knowing he probably wouldn't. As expected, he didn't say anything. Sarah bit her lip and looked down at her feet. "Of course not. Mysterious Matt Murdock."
"I'm not trying to be mysterious. It's just that I've had all this time to get my thoughts together and I..." he gave a faint, humorless laugh, shaking his head. "...I still haven't figured out what to say to you."
"You could say that you realized your old mentor is full of shit, and you've decided to stop listening to him," she suggested.
Matt snorted.
"He is full of shit," he acknowledged. "But…that doesn't mean that he's completely wrong about us. Just not in the way you think."
But Sarah shook her head. She'd also had a week to think about things, and the more she thought about it the more she was upset.
"There aren't that many ways to interpret it, are there? I'm not a lawyer, Matt, but I know what a liability is," she pointed out. "And it makes sense. That's what I've been right from the start, isn't it? The girl who you had to worry about ruining your life because I couldn't be trusted. The girl who you always have to show up and save, and—"
"—that's not what—"
"—and it's really shitty of you to wait this long to let me know that that's what I am to you. Y-you could have done it before…" Before I realized I had feelings for you. "…I don't know, just before. Instead of waiting for some two hundred year old guy to show up and say what you were apparently already thinking."
"—Sarah, that's not it at all," he interrupted her forcefully. "You're thinking of your definition of a liability. The normal definition. Not Stick's. He…he has his own definitions of just about everything."
Sarah resisted the urge to roll her eyes and tell him to stop making vague statements about Stick and start actually explaining. Instead, she just took a deep breath.
"So, what's his definition, then? What makes me such a horrible person to have in your life compared to everyone else?"
A conflicted look flashed across Matt's face, and he took a long time to consider his answer.
"When Stick trained me as a kid…he wanted to make me the perfect fighter," Matt said quietly, so calmly that there was no chance he wasn't working hard at it. "A soldier with—with no attachments, with no one that could be used against me. No one I'd risk myself or a mission for. And yeah, my friends fall into that category in a lot of ways, but…not like you do. Not even close. That's why you're the one singled out. The problem was never that you don't matter enough."
"….Oh." Sarah suddenly found it difficult to breathe, much less come up with a response. She carefully avoided trying to read into what he'd just said, instead focusing on finding a more substantive response than 'Oh.' But as it turned out, she didn't need to, because Matt wasn't done.
"And maybe if that was the whole problem, I could ignore it, but it's not," he continued.
"What do you mean?" she asked, her voice sounding much tighter than she'd expected.
"I mean that since I met you, I've been knocking on your apartment window almost every night. At first it was to make sure you weren't turning me in, and then it was to make sure you were safe. And now I just do it because...my night feels off otherwise," he said. His voice was low and halting, but he didn't stop himself. Sarah thought she might have gone crazy if he did. "Going out every night and dealing with—with murderers and rapists and traffickers, seeing what they do to the people of this city…it gets exhausting to think about, sometimes. But most nights, just—just for a small window of time, I get to not think about those things. Coming to see you at night, when I'm patrolling…being able to focus on something besides what's happening outside, it—it helps. It keeps me from getting lost too far in the dark. Even when you're sticking a needle through my skin, it's usually the best part of my night."
Sarah's heart was pounding loudly in her ears, and she wished there was something other than the faint beep of car horns and the rasp of summer crickets to help cover it. She tried to remember why she had been so angry with him when she came up here, but it was difficult when his sightless gaze was so intense and directed so accurately at her eyes that she could have sworn he could see her.
"You're not making a great case for that being a problem," she noted, taking a slow step closer.
"Right now it's not. But it will be."
"Why?"
"Because all of this that we're doing…it has an end goal. And that kind of got lost somewhere along the way, but the goal was always for you to get out of Orion and get your life back. This all has an end date. We have an end date."
Did he really think that she was just going to ditch him as soon as she was out from under Orion's thumb? After everything they'd been through, and all that he had done for her?
"That's not true," she said, but Matt just gave a wry laugh.
"Yes, it is. You can get a safe, stable life back, Sarah. A good life," he said. He gave her a crooked grin, one that she'd normally enjoy witnessing, but there was a resigned look in his eyes. "Why the hell would you want someone like me in it?"
Sarah knew exactly why, but it wasn't an explanation she could spell out in words for him. Her mind kept going to the image of Matt sitting next to her at that piano with the sunlight all around them, and that indescribable peace she'd felt. She couldn't think of any explanation she could give him that could describe that feeling, that reason why she knew she wanted him around.
Without stopping to consider it, Sarah surged up on the tips of her toes and pressed a kiss to Matt's lips. It was a quick, hesitant kiss, barely more than a brush of her lips against his, and she could tell that for all of Matt's supersenses, it had still taken him by surprise. She broke away after only a second as her own surprise at her actions caught up with her. She remained lingering a few inches away, one hand still on his chest to balance herself, waiting uncertainly as she gauged his reaction.
His dark, sightless eyes darted around her face, giving her that familiar feeling of being x-rayed. It was difficult to read much in his expression, and Sarah's face flushed as the reckless certainty she had just been feeling now wavered. What had she been thinking? She'd never really been the type to initiate a first kiss, and the best scenario to try it out in probably wasn't with the Devil of Hell's Kitchen while on her dad's rooftop—
Then Matt's hand was on the back of her neck and his mouth was pressing against her own, effectively cutting short that train of thought along with any other coherent thoughts in her head. He kissed her hard, with an intensity that made her feel dizzy, flooding her with a warmth and lightheadedness she usually associated with downing the first shot of strong alcohol. But this was better—so much better—and she was certain that even through the barrier of her thin t-shirt and his thick gloves he must have been able to feel the way her entire body lit up. She slowly sank back down onto her heels, holding onto either side of Matt's neck. One of his hands slid down to her waist, wrapping easily around her side.
For her own part, she was barely able to process whether she had limbs at all, much less where they were, but she was vaguely aware of the stubble of his jaw scratching against her palms as one of her hand trailed up from his neck to cup his face. Her other hand was still pressed flush against his neck, and she could feel the pulse in his throat jumping against her fingers as fast as her own heartbeat raced loudly in her ears. He smelled like soap and sweat, and beneath that a faint trace of something metallic.
Somewhere in the very distant part of her brain that was still fully functioning there were alarm bells going off, warning that maybe this was a dangerous line for both of them to cross. She ignored them, pressing herself closer to Matt, and his grip on her waist tightened, his fingertips digging into her lower back as he tugged her hips towards him.
The sudden sharp peal of a police siren cut through the air directly below them, and Sarah broke away abruptly, startled by the noise. She peered down at the street below them as the cops slowed near the building, but they were only slowing down to proceed through the intersection. Blue and red lights illuminated the walls of the building across from them before speeding away down the street, the sounds of the sirens fading out as quickly as they had welled up.
She turned back to Matt, half expecting him to be gone. But he was still there, breathing unevenly as he took a step back from her.
"I have to leave," he said raggedly, jerking his head in the direction the cop cars had just gone and yanking his mask back on. "I'm…I'm sorry."
Sarah wasn't sure if he was apologizing for what they had just done, or for the fact that he was about to disappear on her. Either way, he was gone in a blink, off to chase whatever the cops were heading towards. She couldn't stop herself from wondering if he was following the sirens because they were headed towards something they'd need help with, or if it was just convenient for him that they were headed away from her.
On the other side of town, a very intoxicated Foggy and Karen had just stumbled into Foggy's apartment.
"I think we've gotten too old to stay out all night again," Foggy decided as he collapsed on the couch. "So much for making that a yearly tradition."
Karen laughed. "Meaning we're only a year older than we were last time, Foggy."
"A year means more at my age than it does at yours," he argued.
"We're the same age!" Karen protested, falling onto the couch next to him, where she fit neatly against his side. "Besides, we made it to the important part of the night."
"Drinking the eel?"
"Exactly. We can't give up now."
"Alright, alright. Just give me…thirty seconds to close my eyes, and I'll be fully re-energized."
"Mmm, sure," she teased him.
Foggy leaned his head back against the back of the couch, presumably to stop the room from spinning. When he opened his eyes a minute later, he saw Karen staring at nothing in particular with a look of concentration on her face. She'd been acting distracted the whole night; for the past few days, actually. Ever since she'd walked in on the tail end of Foggy and Matt's conversation about Sarah.
"You know, I thought Matt was supposed to be the taciturn one of the group," Foggy pointed out.
Karen blinked, breaking out of her daze. "Hmm?"
"You've been concentrating pretty hard on that windowpane."
"Sorry, I've just been thinking…" she trailed off.
"About anything in particular, or just general philosophizing?" Foggy prompted.
Sitting up a bit straighter, Karen fixed Foggy with a look he recognized well; it was the look she got when she wanted information, and wasn't planning on giving up until she got it. It was a look he found both very attractive and slightly frightening, and his current state of total drunkenness only heightened both of those.
"I've worked with you and Matt for a while now. We've been through a lot together. But you guys still keep secrets between the two of you. Like the other day, in Matt's office."
"Oh, that. That—that was just—" Foggy's usual ability to come up with a cover story on the spot was muddled by the alcohol he'd consumed. "It was nothing."
"Nothing involving…Sarah Corrigan?" Karen asked. Foggy wasn't sure if the drinks they'd had were making her even more laser-focused on her questions than normal or if she wasn't really as drunk as he'd thought she was.
"Well…yeah, sort of," he admitted. They'd mostly avoided the topic of Sarah, neatly stepping over the landmines of how Foggy really knew her and why Karen had thought she was being targeted that night.
"Foggy, I think…I think I know what you guys were talking about. I figured it out," she told him seriously.
"You…did?" Foggy said, surprise and dread mixing in his voice. But he tried to keep cool; maybe she was talking about something else. Even Karen had to be wrong about things sometimes. Then something occurred to him. "Wait…Sarah didn't say something to you, did she? When she called?"
He didn't think she'd purposefully say anything about Matt being Daredevil, but she'd been upset on the phone, and Karen was so good at getting things out of people—
"No—I mean, she said some things that made me kind of suspect," Karen allowed. "But I figured it out on my own. There were a lot of signs."
"There were?" he asked faintly.
"Well, yeah. I mean, the way you guys were all acting so strangely the night I met her. And the way Matt's been so weird lately—weirder than usual. It wasn't too hard to figure out the secret she's been keeping. The secret Matt's been keeping. It makes sense that he's…you know. I mean, it…it is him, right?"
Foggy wasn't sure if he was more surprised by how quickly she'd figured it out or by how calmly she was taking it. He really, really wished they were more sober for this conversation.
"Are you…angry?" he asked her uncertainly.
"Yes!" Karen exclaimed, punching Foggy not-so-lightly on the arm. "How could you guys not tell me about this? This is a huge deal."
"Ow. You're strong when you're drunk," he told her, rubbing his arm. She didn't look amused. "And I know, it is a big thing to keep from you. I'm sorry."
"I don't even know where to start asking questions. Does—does he have a plan of some kind for all this?"
Foggy shook his head solemnly. "Not that I can tell. I think he's just kind of working it out as he goes."
"Oh, great. That'll turn out well. He goes on all these rants about how we need to be more careful with our cases and everything and then he goes out and—?" Karen shook her head, pushing her long blonde hair back in frustration. "I know it's not the same thing, but…Jesus. Also, he's an adult, has it not occurred to him to use some kind of…protection?" she asked, emphasizing the last word meaningfully.
"Well, he kind of does, but it's this flimsy stuff he gets off eBay. I keep telling him to upgrade, but he's all, 'No, it'll slow me down,' blah, blah."
"Men," Karen muttered under her breath with a roll of her eyes. "And Sarah? Is he helping her out?"
"Sarah?" Foggy repeated, caught off guard by the rapidly changing direction of her questions. "Oh. Yeah, I mean, he's trying to help her as much as he can with her whole situation. That's how their whole thing got started, actually—"
"That's how it began? They didn't know each other at all first?"
"No, and it was awful. He thought she was going to use it against him, and she thought he was basically the biggest jerk in the world. Which, to be fair, he was acting like it," he said, then quickly added, "But they're good now."
"Well, I hope so," Karen said. "So, what's he going to do? I mean, is he going to stick this out?"
"It seems like it," Foggy said resignedly. "You know how Matt is. He has to do what he thinks is the right thing."
"Well, of course it's the right thing! What other option is there?"
Foggy gave her a mildly offended look; had she forgotten he and Matt were both lawyers? "I mean, there's always going through the courts—"
"No, Matt wouldn't go to court if he can handle something himself."
She let out a long exhale, staring at the window again as she processed the information. He was always impressed by how levelheaded she could be.
"You're reacting to this way more calmly than I would have called," Foggy pointed out. "Way better than I reacted."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Maybe it's just because I've known him longer but…God, the moment I realized it was him under that mask, I—"
"Mask?" Karen interrupted sharply. "What are you talking about?"
Foggy froze.
"I…" The pause that followed was painfully long. "…what are you talking about?"
"I was talking about Sarah being pregnant," Karen said slowly. "And Matt being the father."
"Pregnant?" Foggy exclaimed. "Sarah's not pregnant. Is she? No. She isn't. Right?"
"What mask, Foggy?"
"It's—oh—it's not a mask—uh, just—"
"Holy shit," Karen whispered. Her piercing blue eyes widening as the pieces of their conversation clicked into place.
"You know, now that I think about it, Sarah is pregnant, and that is what I was talking about. I got confused," Foggy backpedaled desperately, trying to reverse his mistake.
But it was too late. The slow dawning of realization spread across Karen's face as she put two and two together, always too quick on the uptake for her own good. Her piercing blue eyes widened as she got an expression that was all too familiar to anyone who knew her: the one she made when she finally solved a puzzle.
"Holy shit," she said again, louder this time. "It's Matt. Matt is the man in the mask. It's him."
"Okay, see how that's the same phrase you used earlier?" he asked hopefully. "See how I could maybe get confused by that?"
"This isn't possible."
"Karen," Foggy tried. "We've both been drinking a lot. Like—a lot. Let's—let's just have some water and go to sleep, yeah?"
"God, I'm such an idiot. How did I not figure this out before now?" she asked herself angrily.
"You're not an idiot, you're widely acknowledged to be the smartest person in our law office."
She didn't appear to hear him. "All the bruises and mysterious injuries. All those times he was late for work or didn't come with us for drinks. But he's blind, I—I don't…"
"Can we please talk about this when we're sober?" Foggy pleaded.
"No," Karen said forcefully, clambering to her feet and whirling around to face him. "We can't. You've both been lying to me this whole time. Were you ever going to tell me?"
"Matt didn't think the time was right—"
"Oh, bullshit," Karen bit out shakily. "You guys could have told me at any time, and instead you chose to keep this from me. You know, I thought you two were the only honest lawyers in New York. Obviously I was wrong." She looked around for her purse, spotting it on the floor by Foggy's desk and snatching it up. "I—I have to go home. I can't talk to you right now."
"Wait, just—hang on—"
But with the slam of the front door, Karen was already gone, and Foggy was left to register how quickly his night—and very possibly his relationship—had just gone to pieces so quickly.
OKAY. Let me know what you thought!