So, listen.

This is not the full chapter. I would call it more of a chapter-ette. I've had some personal things going on that I won't get into, but it's why I haven't replied to any reviews from last chapter (but I did read them all and loved them and love all of you!) and why I haven't been able to finish the chapter the way I'd planned yet. I didn't want to just let it sit there while the first half was already done, so I'm posting what I have! It still takes place very much inside Matt Murdock's apartment and is mostly more slow-ish character work, because I just haven't finished the scenes beyond that yet. So hopefully you guys are okay with a second low-key chapter in a row, and when I do get done with the rest of it the plot will actually move forward! And there's a good bit of Matt POV here to make up for the short chapter!

Anyway, I present to you a Very Matt Murdock Mini-Chapter for you to read while you wait to see Endgame, if you haven't already. I hope you enjoy reading, and thanks for being patient with me!

The first thing Matt heard when he woke up the next morning was the steady sound of a familiar heartbeat next to him. He opened his eyes, trying not to let his hopes get too high that his senses might be back. He could be imagining it, he reminded himself, could be still in a state of half-dreaming.

He set his focus on his immediate surroundings: the couch they were crowded onto, the thin blanket over them, the girl sleeping on his chest. Sarah's heartbeat sounded more distant than usual, like he was listening to it from floors above her, but he could definitely hear it. And if he strained his hearing, he could hear her breathing, slow and easy in her sleep. Her usual citrus shampoo was muted by the scent of his own supposedly 'scentless' kind—which absolutely still had a scent to Matt, but it was about as close as he could hope for—mixing together to create a pleasant combination to wake up to.

Something tight and painful in his chest began to unwind as relief rushed through him. His abilities were coming back, slowly but surely. Thank God.

He gently swept Sarah's hair away from her face, and as he did his fingers passed over the swollen skin, the burst capillaries underneath. Immediately, the memory of last night crashed into him painfully. She shouldn't be here, sleeping next to him. Didn't she get that he could have easily killed her? How close he had come to snapping her wrist?

But that train of thought wasn't helping anything now any more than it had last night, and Matt tried to push it aside.

He couldn't be sure, but it felt early. He knew he should probably get up, try to move around and see how far he could stretch his newly returned senses. But he closed his eyes, deciding to wait just a few more minutes before untangling himself from Sarah and getting up.

Lying there with her, he had the strangest sense of déjà vu. It wasn't as thought he'd ever woken up on this couch with her before, with her hair smelling like his shampoo and his clothes around her small frame, but it felt like he'd done it a million times. He thought about how odd that was as he inadvertently drifted back to sleep.

When he opened his eyes again, both the heartbeat and the weight of Sarah against him were gone. His slowly sat up, thinking for a second that his hearing had gone out again. Then he heard footsteps, and the sound of Sarah's heartbeat faded into his hearing again as she leaned over the back of the couch to talk to him.

"Hey," she said softly. "I didn't think you'd be awake yet."

Now that she was closer, Matt could pick up on more details: she smelled like mint toothpaste and the tap water from his bathroom sink, and she'd pulled her hair back into a loose bun.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Better," he said, slowly getting to his feet. Thankfully, the world didn't spin when he stood up. But it also didn't light up with sound and vibrations like it usually did; not beyond a radius of about five feet, at least. Beyond that, it was like the world was still muted; he could hear it, but not like he was used to. "My hearing is starting to come back."

"Really? How much?"

"I can hear things that are close to me. But beyond a few feet it's still…off," he said. He trailed a hand along the couch to orient himself as he moved around it. He could tell Sarah was watching him, but after a few moments she seemed satisfied that he wasn't going to collapse at any second, and she went back to whatever she was doing in the kitchen.

"I'm making coffee," she said. "Can you have coffee after you've been poisoned?"

"No idea," he said, leaning against he counter next to her as she messed with the coffee maker. "Never been poisoned before. But I'll risk it."

Sarah set the timer on the coffee maker and turned to him.

"You look awful," she told him matter-of-factly, trailing her fingertips down is temple with a gentleness he absolutely didn't deserve right now. His guilt from the night before was still sitting heavy in his chest, making him feel intensely unworthy of the affection she was showing up, and he had to bite back the urge to lean away.

"That's weird, because I feel great," he said with a weak grin. She replied with a low, skeptical hum.

When Sarah let her hand fall away, his attention was caught by the way she was extending her arm more gingerly than usual.

With a frown, Matt reached for her arm. As soon as his fingertips pressed against her elbow he could feel the inflammation in the tendons there even through the fabric of the button down shirt she had on. There was a bad bruise there, and the muscles underneath were strained. He skimmed his fingers down to the delicate skin of her wrist, exposed underneath the rolled sleeves of the shirt, where broken blood vessels bloomed just under the surface, forming more bruises shaped distinctly like fingermarks. He clenched his jaw, his stomach twisting as he discovered these additional marks he'd left on her.

Sarah let him examine her arm without protest, but he heard her inhale carefully, readying herself for another argument. She seemed tired already. Matt knew he'd reacted wrong last night, so adamantly blaming himself that he'd put her in the position of having to justify what he'd done. In the end, he'd let the argument die not because he felt any less guilty about what he'd done, but because hearing her make excuses for him had made him feel sick. He wasn't going to do that to her again today.

So he refrained from saying anything at all, choosing instead to press his mouth against the top of her head for just a brief moment.

"I'm gonna jump in the shower while the coffee's brewing," he said tightly. He needed to be away from her and the evidence of what he'd done for a few minutes, just to get his thoughts together.

"Okay," she said. He had a feeling she was watching him intently. "Don't, like, pass out or anything."

"I'll do my best."

Once in the shower, Matt braced himself against the tile wall with both hands, letting his head hang down as the hot water streamed over his back. It stung the wound at the base of his neck, but soothed his aching muscles.

Their run in with Stick the night before had made it clear that Matt had a choice to make. He'd been walking a thin line of halfway letting Sarah into his life, and the longer it went on, the more it became apparent that it wasn't sustainable. He had to pick one side of the line or the other and not look back.

It wasn't a hard decision. On one side was Sarah, who had proven time and time again that he could trust her, who had stuck with him for the past few days; sleeping on an uncomfortable floor and then a barely more comfortable couch just to stay next to him. In return she wasn't asking him for much. Just to know more about his past—a reasonable request from someone who had to deal with the fallout of it.

On the other side was Stick, arguing that Matt had to close himself off to keep himself and those around him safe. Stick, who had given him so much of what he needed to survive as a child, but who Matt was starting to realize had little to offer him as an adult. He couldn't keep following Stick's rules, or he would end up with Stick's kind of life, and he didn't want that.

That thought was the one that decided things. It was a simple decision to make, but Matt had a feeling that following through with it was going to be more difficult.

Sarah was just pulling down two mugs from Matts' cupboard when she heard the bathroom door open behind her. She turned around to see Matt had emerged from the bathroom in sweatpants, his expression tense with thought and his bare chest still damp from the shower as he rubbed a towel against the back of his neck.

She bit her lip as she watched him cross the room, moving a little slower than normal, but avoiding the obstacles in his path with his usual ease despite his diminished senses. It seemed a little unfair of him to walk around shirtless when there was so little chance of him being willing to touch her while in full-on guilt mode. But considering she usually only got to see him shirtless when she was also wrist deep in some bleeding wound, she would take what she could get right now.

After a moment, she noticed Matt was sending an odd look in her direction, his eyebrows raised expectantly. She blinked, realizing he seemed to have asked her a question.

"Uh—yes," Sarah said hastily, caught off guard. She squinted at him. "I…agree."

Matt's lips twitched.

"Really? That's surprising," he said lightly.

"…it is?" Sarah asked, pouring coffee into one of the mugs.

"But that's great. I really didn't think you'd be open to the idea of tripling your training sessions, but since you are..."

Sarah frowned, looking up from the coffee. "Wait—"

She saw that Matt's grin had widened, and her skin flushed.

"Oh, good. You're being a jerk," she said. She pushed a mug of coffee across the counter towards him, trying not to think about how she'd sat on that very counter not too long ago when she and Matt had finally given into their teasing tension for the first time—frustrated rooftop kisses notwithstanding. "Seems like a good sign that you're recovering."

To be honest, it was a good sign—of his mental state if not his physical one. If he was teasing her, it meant he'd climbed out at least a little from the hole he'd been in last night.

Matt laughed and reached for the hoodie that was slung over one of the kitchen chairs. He shrugged it on but didn't zip it up, which Sarah decided was a good compromise between her need to concentrate and her enjoyment of seeing Matt shirtless.

"I was asking when Jason wants you back at work," he said.

The mention of work made Sarah press her lips together. It seemed like forever ago that Jason had told her to take a few days off to sort out her legal issues before returning to work, presumably so that something as silly as her attempted murder charges wouldn't interfere with her ability to run any of the weird, illicit errands he liked to send her on.

"Well, today's Monday, so…today," she said.

"Today? Aren't you going to be late?"

"No. It's like…five-thirty in the morning right now," she told him.

She couldn't blame Matt for looking surprised. Both of their internal clocks were pretty messed up after days of alternating consciousness and restless sleep at random intervals.

"Huh. I was way off," he said. His brow furrowed as he pieced together a timeline. "How long have you been here, again?"

Sarah was pretty sure they'd already talked about this, and she quietly took note that Matt still seemed just a little fuzzy mentally.

"Uh…two nights now?" she said, doing the math in her head. "I got here Saturday night after you didn't show up at the boxing gym, and now it's Monday. Specifically, Monday at very early breakfast-ish time, and you haven't eaten anything yet, so you have to eat what I cooked even if you don't want to." She said the last part in a rush, hoping to maybe trick him into doing the actual healthy thing and eating a few bites of food.

Matt cocked his head, his expression doubtful. "You cooked?"

"Yes," Sarah answered, a little offended by his skepticism.

He inhaled.

"Kind of smells like you just made toast," he pointed out.

"Exactly. It was bread…now it's toast." She pushed the plate towards him. "Cooking."

Matt gave a tired laugh and shook his head. "I'll take it. I'm starving."

She had to resist the urge to throw her hands up in exasperation. Out of all the times that Matt refused even the slightest bit of care, the one time that she actually tried to meet him down at his level and he was suddenly cooperative.

"Seriously? I thought I'd have to talk you into even eating toast. I had a whole argument planned."

"Yeah? What was it?" Matt asked interestedly, taking a bite of his toast.

"Well, obviously I'm saving it for next time now," she said. She turned and opened the fridge, surveying the limited contents inside. "What else do you have to make in here?"

She heard Matt set his plate down, and then his hand on her waist gently propelled her away from the fridge.

"Or, how about I make it?" Matt suggested, depositing her in the corner of the kitchen. "You've already done a lot."

Sarah squinted at him suspiciously.

"Is that really why, or do you just not trust my cooking?"

"Does it have to be one or the other?" he asked. He was already pulling eggs and a few vegetables out of the fridge, possibly to make some kind of omelettes.

"I can cook," she said indignantly.

"I'm sure you can," Matt agreed. "But you have burned almost every meal I've ever witnessed you cook."

"Yes, because you show up at my apartment and distract me while I'm trying to focus on not burning things," she argued.

"And this morning would be different…how?"

Sarah took a long look at him, but she had no real argument to offer.

"Can you even cook with your…" she waved her hands around vaguely. "…you know?"

"If I can tell you're making weird hand motions, I can handle cooking," he said. "I'm nearly back to normal now. At least within a certain radius."

"Fine," she said, leaning back against the counter and resigning herself to let him take over breakfast preparation.

They didn't talk for a while, but Sarah watched him as he worked. Despite their somewhat light banter earlier, there was obviously something on his mind. He seemed to be lost in thought, and she kept seeing a sort of hesitance dancing across his face, as though he were debating saying something. Sarah waited, preparing herself for yet another argument.

After a bit, Matt broke the silence between them.

"What…exactly do you want to know?" Matt asked haltingly. "About Stick?"

The mug Sarah had been about to bring to her lips stilled midway there as she blinked in surprise, her hands still carefully circled around the warm ceramic.

"Uh—I…" she said, caught off guard. She had roughly ten thousand questions about Matt's past with Stick, and she didn't want to waste this rare window of openness on the wrong one. "…how many questions do I get?" she asked tentatively.

A grin flickered across Matt's face.

"It's not one of your drinking games," he said. "Just…tell me what you want to know."

He kept his attention focused on the food he was preparing, and Sarah began to understand that he might have insisted so strongly on cooking because he needed something to do while they had this conversation. Usually if they were talking about anything serious, it was tempered by one or the other needing some injury fixed up, but neither of them were actively bleeding enough for that distraction right now.

"Right. Okay, um…" she took a moment to think, then decided to start with a relatively easy one. "How did you meet him?"

She expected Matt would take a while to answer, and he did. Despite him being the one who had initiated the question-asking, Sarah wouldn't have been surprised if he still didn't answer at all. Matt Murdock did not talk about Stick, nor did he really talk about his childhood at all. That was a rule she'd quickly picked up on, and until know he'd seemed uncompromising in it.

"It, uh…it wasn't too long after my dad died. I was living at the orphanage, and I think the nuns were worried that I had lost it," he said. The words came out slowly, like his refusal to talk about his past had rusted out his ability to do so. "I hadn't had my abilities for very long, and they'd just kicked into overdrive, and I…couldn't block anything out. I couldn't function right, and they couldn't figure out why. Some of them thought I was schizophrenic. A few of them thought maybe I was possessed. I don't know how they'd heard of Stick, but they brought him in as a last resort. And he helped me."

"How?"

"He gave me something to focus on. Goals to reach for instead of just trying to survive," he said. As reluctant as she was to admit it, Sarah could understand that much, at least. "He showed me how to actually use what I had. How to pick out the individual ingredients in food, how to…read someone's body temperature or posture. How to tell if they're lying."

"Mmm. So I have Stick to thank for that trick," Sarah muttered with some resentment.

Matt chuckled.

"You have Stick to thank for a lot of the things I can do," Matt informed her. "I know he's an asshole, but…I would never have been able to be Daredevil without him teaching me how to reign in my senses. I'm not sure I would have even been a functioning person."

So far what he was saying didn't sound too bad, but when she'd heard Matt speak bitterly about his childhood with Stick, it hadn't been about his senses so much as his physical training.

"So how learning to control your senses turn into learning to beat people up?" she asked. "I don't get the connection."

"Good question. Stick always said I needed to know how to fight for the war."

Sarah nodded slowly. "What war?"

"No idea. I…wasn't encouraged to ask," he said, choosing his words carefully, but his meaning was clear anyway. "For a long time I thought he'd made it up. That maybe he just recognized something dark inside me that was going to claw its way out no matter what, and he invented some mythical war to give all that violence inside me some kind of purpose. Now I think maybe he's just insane."

Sarah hesitated before her next question, wondering if it would be pushing too far. "Um…didn't any of the nuns or anyone…care that you were—you know, like, bruised up all the time?"

"I overheard a few conversations they had about it," he said with a shrug. "But I always had excuses, and to be honest most of the nuns didn't really know how to handle me. So when someone came along who did…they were willing to overlook some things if it meant not having to deal with fixing me anymore."

Matt laughed wryly, but Sarah couldn't think of anything less funny. No wonder he seemed to perpetually view himself as a burden, after spending a good chunk of his life being treated like a problem to get rid of.

She knew that despite his attempts to appear focused on cooking, he was listening intently to her reaction—most likely waiting for any hint of pity so that he could shut the conversation down. But what she was feeling wasn't pity; it was anger, coursing through her veins, elevating her heartbeat and forcing her to keep her breathing purposefully even and measured, and she was fine with letting him hear it. Someone needed to be angry about what he was saying, even if he didn't seem to be.

And under that anger, a painful sadness. On some level, Sarah thought of Matt as being unbreakable. Even when he came stumbling into her apartment barely holding himself together, he always got right back up. So it wrenched her heart to think of him as a younger version of himself, smaller with lighter bones that Stick twisted nearly to breaking while everyone else just looked the other way. Maybe Matt saw it as a gift, but Sarah couldn't shake the awful feeling it gave her.

"Why are you telling me this now?" she asked, her voice tight.

"It's…not fair to make you deal with the ramifications of my past without letting you in on what made me this way," Matt said quietly. "You deserve to know what caused all the screwed up shit you always have to put up with."

Sarah frowned. She'd been hoping for something a little less guilt-driven and a little more along the lines of, 'Because I trust you and would like to be more open with you.' But she had to admit that his answer did seem much more characteristic of the man she knew.

"I don't 'put up' with you, weirdo. I like you. I like being around you. You're not some dark cloud hanging over my life, despite your best attempts to imitate one sometimes," she told him.

She couldn't tell if the fleeting clench in Matt's jaw was from her words or just the conversation in general, but then it was gone. At some point during their conversation the food had finished cooking, and Matt switched the stovetop burner off before turning to her and blowing out a long exhale.

"What else?" he asked.

Sarah studied him closely. He seemed less agitated than he had when he first started speaking, but his entire posture was still broadcasting that he wasn't enjoying talking about this.

"That's it," she said simply.

"That's all you wanted to know?" he asked with a doubtful look.

"Oh my god, no," she said quickly. "I still have so many more questions. But…it's early, you know?"

He relaxed almost imperceptibly as he nodded.

"Alright."

"I definitely do have more questions for another time, though. There's got to be a few more steps between starting out like that and then growing up to be…well, you."

"Someone who puts on a mask and hits people?" Matt asked wryly. "Seems like pretty straight line from one to the other."

"Well, I didn't say you turned out normal," she allowed. "But…I think you beat the odds by ended up as one of the good guys and not…something else."

"That's up for debate," Matt said

"No, it's not," she said forcefully. She wondered if he really understood just how many people would have gone in a very different direction if given the enhanced abilities and training that he chose to use to help people. God, he was so stupid sometimes. She flattened her palm on his chest, just over his heart. "You have some sharp edges, but you are good straight down to your core, Matt Murdock."

Before he could argue, she kissed him, soft but insistent, hoping to cut off any denial he had coming her way. To her delight and relief, he returned the kiss instead of pulling away like she had half-expected. He was being perhaps more cautious than he'd been on past occasions, careful of the still-healing cut at the corner of her mouth, but he wasn't breaking away.

He'd only just cupped the un-bruised side of her face and brushed his lips against hers with a little more pressure when there was a knock at the front door. Sarah bit back a groan as they broke apart.

"We don't have to answer that, right?" she asked, leaning her forehead against his.

"I…don't know," Matt said. His brow creased in dismay. "I can't tell who's on the other side."

Sarah couldn't help but laugh at that.

"Yeah. Welcome to how doors work for most people."

From outside, she heard a familiar voice calling Matt's name through the door. Right. She did recall telling Foggy to come by, and it would be her luck that he showed up at this very moment. Just when she'd gotten Matt to touch her with anything other than guilt fueling it.

"It's Foggy," Sarah said reluctantly.

"Shit," Matt said, blowing out a long exhale. "Foggy. I missed an appointment with a client. He's probably here to see why."

"No, no, it's okay. We talked while you were out, he knows you got hurt. He's probably just here, to, um…talk about…other stuff," Sarah said casually. She didn't really want to come out and say that she'd been badgering Foggy to initiate some kind of reunion.

Matt cast an odd look in her direction before walking towards the entrance. Sarah heard the front door open, and then voices as he and Foggy talked lowly, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. After a minute the front door closed, and their voices grew clearer as they drew closer.

"…thought maybe we could talk if you were up for visitors," Foggy was saying as they came around the wall dividing the hallway from the living room.

Sarah had nearly forgotten about the fresh bruise taking up half her face until she saw Foggy's expression upon catching sight of her. It was at that moment she realized she probably should have warned him about it ahead of time and maybe asked him not to make a big deal about it, but it was too late now.

"Holy shit, what happened to you? Your face looks—uh—" Foggy faltered as Sarah shook her head, frantically making a chopping motion across her neck. He cleared his throat. "…just…looks normal. Pretty."

The guilt that crossed Matt's face was just as fresh as it had been the night before, though he hid it quickly.

"Good save, Foggy," she said, deciding to exit as quickly as possible so that Foggy and Matt's reconciliation didn't get derailed into a conversation about her. "I, um, I was actually just on my way out."

Matt frowned. "You were?"

"Mhm," she confirmed, hoping she sounded casual and not like she was painstakingly trying to leave the two alone to talk. Was this how Mrs. Benedict felt every time she tried to set Sarah up with someone by abruptly leaving them alone in a room? "I have to be at work in, what, two hours? And I…walk really slow, I'll just leave now and you guys can, you know, just talk about…whatever you want. Uh, Matt made breakfast, Foggy, you should have some."

She had already grabbed her bag off the floor and was making her way towards the front door as she talked. Foggy gave her an exasperated look that she ignored with a cheerful wave in his direction before turning her attention towards Matt.

"I'll call you later to see how you're doing," she said. It felt odd to leave things with them so abruptly after such an intense few days, but she knew this was a talk that Matt and Foggy needed to have, and they couldn't do it with her standing there.

"Hey, Fog—give me a minute?" she heard Matt say from the living room as she reached the front door.

"Yeah, of course."

She lingered outside doorway until he caught up, slipping out behind her and closing the door. They stood facing each other for a few moments, neither of them entirely sure what to say.

"I, uh…I don't know if I remembered to thank you in between apologizing so…thank you," Matt said, running his hand through his hair. "For staying. There were a lot of reasons not to, but it…would have been a lot harder without you there."

Sarah smiled at him.

"You've done it for me more than enough times," she said softly. "You're going to rest today, right?"

"Yeah. I mean, my senses are about back to normal, so I figure if I get some rest today then by tonight I should be good."

It took a moment for Sarah to piece together what he was saying.

"You don't mean, like…going out patrolling tonight?" she asked.

"I don't know about a full night of being out, but I want to check in on things, yeah," he said, as though that were a normal thing to do and not completely insane.

"What? You just got your hearing back. And it's not even fully back," she said. She felt a familiar tug of panic in her chest. "Can't you—can't you wait until you're a hundred percent?"

Matt shook his head. "I don't know when that will be."

"Then—okay, what about two nights?" she tried. Visions of Matt trying to fight with only some of his sensory awareness flashed across her mind, and none of them ended well for him. "Just take tonight and tomorrow night off."

"That's a lot of downtime," he said with a frown.

"It's only two nights."

"Plus the two nights I was out of it," he added.

"That's still not that long," she pressed. "It's how long Claire said you should take to recover."

"I heal faster than most of Claire's patients," he assured her. "I'll be fine. My hearing is already almost back to how it was—"

"—yeah, within like a two foot radius—"

"—well, luckily when I'm hitting someone I'm generally pretty close to them," he said.

Sarah bit the inside of her cheek hard, taking a deep breath. She could definitely see Matt going into full-on stubborn lawyer mode if they kept on like this. Arguing with him about his safety clearly wasn't going to work, but he couldn't argue the effect it would have on her, which seemed to be her only route.

"Matt, please," she said softly. "I know you can handle yourself but I will be losing my mind tonight thinking that there are people out there shooting at you when you can barely hear them coming."

He worked his jaw unhappily, but didn't immediately have a response, and she quickly kept talking.

"If you do this then the next time you tell me to stay out of danger, I swear I will listen."

Matt let out a sharp laugh. "Right."

"I will, I promise. I mean, just the one time," she clarified quickly. "But still. I won't even argue."

"Sarah…"

"Please just stay in for two more nights," she pleaded, stepping closer and twisting her fingers into the hem of his sweatshirt. "Just to be sure. Please. Please."

Matt opened his mouth, then hesitated as his eyes flicked around her face. Sarah watched an odd expression cross face, and she noted with interest that this seemed to be a surprisingly effective tactic.

"Alright," he said, finally and grudgingly relenting. "Yeah, I can—"

As soon as she heard an affirmative, Sarah surged up on her tip toes and kissed him, as hard as she dared without splitting her lip open again.

"Thank you," she murmured. The panic that had started to coil in her chest began to unwind. "Thank you, thank you."

"I'll hold you to that promise," he called after her as she started down the stairs.

Sarah glanced back at him and nodded, but didn't say anything. She was aware that she might not be able to keep that promise, but she was also aware that Matt would go to great lengths to make sure that she did.

But for now, it was too early to worry about that. Sarah had to get back to work at Orion, and Matt had a friendship to repair.

When Matt returned to the living room, Foggy was sitting at the kitchen table. From across the room his heartbeat was barely detectable to Matt's weakened hearing, like it was much farther away. But it got clearer as Matt crossed the room, the nervous beat of it sharpening in Matt's ears along with the sound of Foggy's fingers tapping restlessly on the tabletop.

"I hope I didn't let a really awkward cat out of the bag just now," Foggy said.

"No," Matt said, slowly lowering himself into the chair across from Foggy. "I knew about the bruise."

"Oh. Good," Foggy said, sounding relieved. "I'm guessing once you're back on your feet you'll be giving the full Daredevil treatment to someone for that."

Matt paused.

"The bruise is from me, so probably not," he said carefully. "It happened when I was…out of it. I didn't know it was her."

Foggy let out a long, low exhale.

"Jesus. That sucks, man. I mean, mostly for Sarah, clearly, but…for both of you, too."

Oddly enough, Matt's felt a twinge of disappointment at his friend's reaction. The part of him that always searched for punishment had been almost hoping Foggy would go off on him for what he'd done.

"But I'm sure you didn't come here to talk about me and Sarah," Matt said.

"Right. No, I didn't. I actually came because I, uh…well, I owe you an apology, I think," Foggy began.

Matt's eyebrows went up in surprise. He'd thought Foggy was here to bring up the possibility of forgiving him; not that he was here to take some of the blame.

"No, Foggy…everything you said was right. I chose to keep secrets, and I asked you to keep them for me. That wasn't fair. That's on me."

"You're right, you did to both of those things," Foggy acknowledged slowly, like he was still working his way through his own thoughts. "But…we already had that argument. I told you I would try to understand some of the choices you make, but…I haven't really been trying. Mostly I've just been ignoring it and hoping things go back to normal. Like back when we were in school. But…they're not going to, are they?"

There wasn't much answer Matt could offer beyond a ghost of a smile and shake of his head.

"No," he said. "They're not."

"And then when Karen found out, all of the sudden I couldn't pretend like it wasn't real anymore. It was real, and it was affecting other parts of my life," Foggy continued. "Which is an outcome that Karen very kindly informed me I could have predicted if I had, and I quote, 'taken my own head out of my ass long enough to think things through,' so..."

"How are things with you two?" Matt asked carefully. He didn't want to veer too far into that potentially painful topic right now, when they were so precariously balanced on the edge of reconciliation. Especially not if Foggy and Karen were still broken up.

"Better. A lot better, actually," Foggy said. "We've had a couple discussions which mostly consisted of me getting my ass handed to me. Karen is very intimidating in an argument, by the way. I don't know why we haven't made her go to law school yet."

Matt laughed. This was going okay. Foggy was calm and making jokes; he wasn't cold and distant and or treating Matt like a bomb that might go off.

"She'd put us both to shame," he agreed.

"Anyway…if I hadn't been trying to ignore everything about your other life, we probably could have talked about me lying for you before everything blew up," Foggy said. "And…it wasn't fair of me to say I forgave you and then take it back as soon as things got hard. Something which also had to be pointed out to me, because as an adult with a law degree I apparently can't come to simple conclusions without angry women yelling them at me."

"Karen said that?" Matt asked. He was a little confused that she would have been arguing his side like that, considering how her own reaction had gone.

"Oh, no, that part was all Sarah," Foggy informed.

Matt's confusion didn't lessen any at that.

"Sarah yelled at you?"
Foggy whistled. "For the better part of the walk from the police station to our office. Although, to be fair, she had just gotten out of jail and she also yelled at an old man, so…maybe that wasn't all me."

"Right," Matt said. He made a mental note to remind her to stop trying to stick up for him to other people, but he couldn't help a small grin at the thought. "That would explain why she was so unsurprised by you showing up this morning."

"Yeah. I wouldn't say she was impatient for me to apologize, but I will say that I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd poisoned you just to get us in a room together sooner," Foggy joked. "But…now I am here. And I am sorry."

"So am I," Matt said. "You know I am. I'm sorry for all of it. I—I never meant for you to have to deal with any consequences of my choices."

"I know we already tried moving past this once, but maybe we could try again," Foggy offered. "Only this time…if you can try to keep fewer secrets, I can try to actually understand more of that side of your life."

"Of course," Matt agreed immediately. "And I won't ask you to keep any more secrets from Karen, I promise."

"Good. Karen will be happy to hear that. She's still pretty pissed, from what I can tell. She's weirdly okay with the Daredevil stuff, but she's having a harder time with the whole lying to her part."

"Yeah, that's the impression I got, too," Matt said, recalling the morning he'd stood in his living room and had to hear the hurt and betrayal in her voice.

"But she does care about the law firm, and our clients. And she understands that it runs better when we're working together, so…if you're down to come back to the office, I'd be happy to see you back. It just might be…"

"…incredibly awkward?" Matt finished.

"For a little while. Karen will come around at her own pace. You know no one can make anything she doesn't want to."

"That I have noticed."

"But we're all adults, supposedly. If she says she can work with you in a professional environment, I have to believe her. Mostly because I'm agreeing with everything she says for the foreseeable future. It seems to be an okay tactic."

Matt grinned at that, relieved to hear that Foggy and Karen were managing to work through the bomb he had dropped on their relationship.

"Okay," he said with a resolute nod, feeling lighter than he had in ages. "So…tomorrow, then. I'll be at the office."

"You don't want to take a few days to recover first?" Foggy asked. "Weren't you horribly poisoned pretty recently?"

"I'm fine," Matt said, waving Foggy's concern away. "Being back at work will be good for me."

"Alright. Well, it'll be good to have you back," Foggy said, and even without his full senses Matt could hear the relief in his voice. "But in the meantime, I do have one more question that I really need you to answer honestly."

His tone was serious, and Matt's grin faded.

"Okay. Shoot."

"…about this new policy where we kiss our clients in the middle of the office after we get their charges dismissed…do we have to do that for all of them? Because we're representing Mr. Murray soon and while he's a sweet guy, I think seventy-three is pushing it for my age limit."

Matt let out a startled laugh. He hadn't been expecting that, of all things, but it felt good. It felt really good to have Foggy talking to him again, teasing him. And weirdly, it felt good to hear that Foggy already knew about him and Sarah. It felt like getting one step closer to not having secrets, even if Matt himself hadn't been the one to tell him.

"You, uh…you saw that?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah. It's a tiny office, dude. You guys were not subtle," Foggy informed him.

"No, I guess we weren't," he said, shaking his head.

"So that's—that's really happening, huh? You guys are…what, exactly? Dating? Boyfriend-girlfriend?" Foggy guessed.

"I don't think we've figured out what we're calling it," Matt said, cutting Foggy off before he could continue his suggestions.

"Right. Okay. I get it. So, just casual then?"

Matt tried to think of any time since the moment he met Sarah that their relationship to one another could accurately be described as 'casual'.

"…not especially, no."

"I see. That's not confusing at all."

"Just…'together' seems like the best description," Matt said. "We're…giving it a shot. Being together."

"Well, I'm happy for you. You two are good for each other," Foggy said sincerely.

"Thanks, Fog."

"And I look forward to letting everyone know that I was an early supporter in my wedding speech."

Matt groaned even as he couldn't help but laugh at his friend.

"Don't start making jokes like that to her," he warned. "I don't need you scaring her away."

"Okay, okay," Foggy said, holding his hands up. Matt could feel him looking at him for a long moment, and when he spoke his voice was thoughtful. "But I'm not sure she's as easily scared off from you as you think."

Maybe it was the lack of sleep and the poison still lingering in his system, or maybe it was the afterglow of fixing things with Foggy and managing to not completely shatter things with Sarah, but for just a few moments Matt decided to let himself believe it.

Well, that was an almost pleasant chapter? Maybe I'm just trying to balance out the pain that I know Endgame will bring. I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up, but I have lots of fun things planned for it that aren't just conversations in Matt's apartment!