Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Chapter 50: What They Wouldn't Do

It felt odd to be crossing the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen in the daylight instead of the helpful cover of night. Sarah wasn't sure where they were going as she followed Matt with her hood pulled up around her face, but she was too shell-shocked from the news to bother asking.

Every once in a while, Matt's head tilted slightly in her direction. Beneath his mask she could see barely-concealed concern tightening the corners of his mouth. She didn't know if it was because he could hear her heartbeat racing; because she hadn't spoken a word since they'd left the apartment; or if it was residual worry from how she'd jumped out of bed after sleeping with him. Probably all three.

For her part, she felt oddly detached. She understood the facts of the situation, but it was like they hadn't fully sunk in yet: The police had the video. Jason had really sent it to them. It wasn't surprising, exactly, but he hadn't brought it up in so long that she'd almost hoped he'd forgotten about it. Of course that had been wishful thinking, and now there was no erasing what the police had seen. For once, this was something she couldn't lie or bluff her way out of.

They ended up at a nice brownstone on a quiet street. It wasn't until the front door opened and she saw Brett Mahoney's disapproving face that she realized they were at Mrs. Mahoney's house, where Lauren and Greg were staying.

Despite his apparent reluctance, Brett let them in and led them to the kitchen, where Lauren and Greg were sitting at the table. Both of them immediately turned their attention to her as she entered. Lauren beckoned Sarah over to sit with them and she did, her exhausted body dropping into the chair like a stone. Brett and Matt lingered in the kitchen doorway, having an argument that she could only half-focus on.

"—is one thing, but her staying here with what I just saw on that video is another thing," Brett was saying heatedly.

"That's only half of the video. Sarah didn't kill McDermott and you know it, Brett," Matt argued. "He was a dirty cop and Jason killed him for it."

"She's an accessory at the very least! She hid the body. It's on video. And now this is concealing a wanted criminal."

"Are you okay?" Lauren whispered across the table. "Brett said the police are looking for you."

Sarah nodded wordlessly.

"What are you going to do?"

She could only offer a hopeless shake of her head. What even was there to do?

She pressed her palms to her eyes, aware of Lauren's concerned gaze on her as she tried to shut out the argument Brett and Matt were having. It was only causing the panic in her stomach to grow. Besides, if there was anything she could tune out and let Matt take over for her, it was winning an argument.

As she dropped her hands from her eyes, Lauren was watching her with a contemplative look before she reached for her phone and started typing. A few seconds later Sarah's own phone lit up with an incoming text.

'Did you two get back together?'

If she didn't feel so numb she would have laughed. It was very classic Lauren to ask about the state of Sarah's love life while a mere five feet away her potential arrest was being discussed. Knowing her, she could see on Sarah's face how much she wanted to think about anything but what was happening.

Sarah sent her reply:'I don't know'

Lauren's brow furrowed in confusion.

'Then what did you talk about the whole time you were at your place?'

Sarah glanced over at Matt.

'We didn't talk about anything,'she typed out. She hit send, paused, then sent another:'We just had sex and then had to run from the cops.'

Lauren's eyes widened, then she sent an exasperated look at Sarah. Catching the silent exchange between the two of them, Greg leaned over Lauren's shoulder to read the text. His eyebrows shot up, and he looked up at Sarah like she was crazy.

'Blood?'he mouthed, gesturing up and down at her.

Sarah just offered them a tired shrug.

She turned her attention back to the argument Brett and Matt were having just in time to see Brett cast her a resigned look.

"Tonight," he allowed. "That's it."

"That's all we need. Just a night to figure things out. Thank you, Brett," Matt said.

"Thanks," Sarah echoed tiredly.

Brett frowned at her. "You better shower before you sit on anything else. My mom won't be happy if you ruin her upholstery."

After Brett left, Matt crossed the kitchen and leaned against the counter next to the table. He held his mask in his hand, and his sightless gaze was aimed at the table, but his head was tilted just enough that she could tell he was focusing on her.

"So I'm staying here?" she asked, her voice sounding flat to her own ears.

"Just for a while. Your place isn't safe, and I don't want to leave you alone at mine in case the police come looking."

"Where are you going?"

"To do some recon. I want to see if I can figure out what the cops know and what they're planning, first. See what's happening at Orion. And I need to talk to Foggy and Karen. I'll tell her to hold off on releasing the video from the fundraiser."

"Why would you hold off on the fundraiser video?" Lauren asked. "It doesn't have anything to do with this one."

When Matt answered, it was with some reluctance. "We'll…need it to bargain with."

Sarah saw confusion cross Lauren and Greg's faces, but she understood. Her stomach dropped.

"Bargain for what?" Greg asked.

"For when I have to turn myself in to the police," Sarah said quietly. She turned her gaze to Matt. "Right?"

"What? No, that's crazy," Lauren said. "You said yourself that half of that police department is probably working for the bad guys. And the other half still think you killed a cop."

"There's nothing else I can do. That video of me…there's no undoing that," Sarah said.

Lauren incredulous gaze moved from her friend to Matt as though seeking backup for her argument. But Matt's mouth was pressed into a grim line.

"The police are going to charge you for helping cover up McDermott's murder," he said. He kept his tone carefully even, like he was talking to a spooked animal, but the words crashed hard against her all the same. "We'll have to wait to see what the exact charges will end up being. But…short of going on the run, there's no getting around it."

It made sense. After all, it wasn't like she hadn't committed the crime she was being accused of, no matter how much she hadn't wanted to. She knew that logically that meant there would be legal consequences. But it didn't stop her from feeling like she was being dunked in ice water when she actually heard the words.

"So, what, you're just going to waltz into the police station and hand yourself over? And hope that giving them that video from the fundraiser will make them feel less murdery?" Lauren asked. "That's it?"

"No," Matt answered firmly. "No one's going to the police right now. There are other thing we can do first. Like finding and delivering the person who actually killed McDermott to the police. And getting him to hand over the full video of what happened that day."

"You really think Jason will just…confess to killing McDermott? Or give up the rest of that security footage?" Sarah asked.

"I can be convincing," Matt said quietly.

Lauren and Greg exchanged a wary look at that, and Sarah felt a pang of guilt at the idea of Matt having to torture yet another person over her. She stared at the table, trying to keep herself calm even as her head spun.

"I'm confused," Lauren said after a long stretch of silence. "Every time I've brought up you going to the cops and telling them what you know, you said it basically wouldn't work. That you didn't have proof of anything."

"I don't have proof," Sarah said with a shaky, humorless laugh. "I don't have anything. But now that they have this warrant out, I don't have a choice."

"You have more to bargain with than you think," Matt said. "Things you've witnessed. Dates, locations, names. Didn't you say you wrote a lot of that down in your work planner?"

"Yeah, but I…I don't have it. It's still in my desk at Orion, if they haven't cleaned it out. I didn't think to grab it, I left in such a hurry after…"

After unsuccessfully stabbing my boss with a letter opener.

Matt nodded.

"It's okay. I'll try to find it. Until then, just write down whatever you can remember. But…get some rest first," he said, his tone softer.

Sarah didn't say anything. Matt shifted his weight like he was going to reach out to touch her, but after a faltering beat he stayed where he was.

"I need to go start getting some of this sorted out," he said. "You'll be safe here, alright? I'll come back later. And I have the burner on me if you need me."

Sarah looked up at him as she wrapped her arms around her stomach. She knew there were a million moving parts in this whole situation and that he needed to go deal with quite a few of them, but it didn't stop her from wishing he could stay. Mostly she wanted to press her face into his chest and inhale him until it calmed her down.

But instead, she abruptly stood up from her chair. The movement made her exhausted head swim.

"I'm going to take a shower," she mumbled. She grabbed her duffel bag and moved toward a hallway that she hoped led to a bathroom.

"Um—I'll—I'll show her where the towels and stuff are," Lauren said, hurrying after her.

She could feel Matt's focus on her as they both disappeared down the hallway, but she didn't turn around.

Matt could tell Sarah was panicking. Maybe not one of her actual panic attacks, but he could hear the thinly concealed anxiety in her voice, could practically feel it buzzing underneath her skin as she left the room.

And he couldn't blame her; the situation was bad. Everything with Fisk and Orion had been bad enough, but now this? There was no going back from the fact that the police had that footage of her. Even if he and Foggy were able to prove that she didn't actually murder McDermott—and right now Matt wasn't sure how they would do that—there was still undeniable proof that she'd participated in hiding his body.

On top of that, she obviously had conflicted feelings about what had happened between them at her apartment. He'd known it as soon as she'd been so quick to put distance between them, a distance that she was carefully keeping even now. And he knew that was his fault.

Matt tilted his head, zeroing in on Sarah and Lauren's hushed voices down the hallway. It was a little more difficult than usual. The explosion down in the basement had left him with an irritating ringing in his right ear, and while he assumed (or hoped) it was probably temporary, it was putting a damper on his hearing.

But in the small home he could make out their voices anyway. Lauren was rummaging around in a linen closet as she and Sarah argued about sleeping arrangements.

"You need, like, seventeen straight hours of sleep," Lauren was insisting."In a bed. Not the couch."

"Believe me, the couch is way better than where I've been sleeping the last few days," Sarah replied tiredly as she dug around in her duffel bag and fished out the few toiletries they had hurriedly grabbed. "There's two of you and you've both been up all night, too. Keep the guest bed. I'm going to shower and then I'll be fine on the couch."

"So what if there's two of us? You and I could take the bed and Greg could sleep on the couch," Lauren suggested. "Or you can take the bed and I can take the couch, and Greg can…stand. That's what men are supposed to be doing anyway. Standing guard."

"Can you hear them talking?" Greg's curious voice broke through the distant conversation. "From all the way in here?"

Matt focused his attention back on the room around him as he tilted his head towards Greg. Greg, who he'd barely interacted with over the last few days of desperately trying to find Sarah, and who was uncomfortably familiar with Matt's abilities for someone he'd only ever spoken to a handful of times.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I…try not to listen in on her too much. She doesn't like it. I'm just worried about her."

"I think we all have been."

"Make sure she eats something while I'm gone," Matt requested. "And gets some sleep."

"I'll try," Greg agreed. "But Sarah's not the best at listening to what people tell her to do."

The corner of Matt's mouth tilted up in a tired ghost of a smile. "I've noticed. Are you and Lauren going back upstate soon?"

Greg nodded, then did the familiar halting motion that people always did when they realized what they were doing.

"Sorry, I was nodding—actually, can you tell if someone's nodding?"

"Yes."

"Truly crazy. But, uh, yes. We're heading back up sometime tomorrow, I think."

"Good," Matt said with a nod. His tone turned more business-like as he started thinking through what the next few days might entail. "Look…if the police are starting to look into Sarah, then they're probably going to want to talk to you and Lauren. You don't have to talk to them if they don't have a subpoena. I need to know that you won't say anything about what she's been involved in. Not until we figure out what our strategy is."

"And by 'what she's been involved in,' you mean…running around with you?"

"That, yeah," Matt acknowledged. "But the rest of it, too. Anything she's mentioned about Jason, Ronan, Vanessa…if they're building a case around McDermott's death then any of it could end up being used against her."

"Right. That make sense."

"I'm going to talk to Foggy, and we'll work on a plan. But until then I need both of you to trust me. Can you do that?"

Greg blew out an exhale. "Uh…I mean, you've saved all of our lives at least once, I suppose. Sarah's several times over, from what I understand."

It was a positive answer in theory, but there was a hesitancy in Greg's voice that caught Matt's attention. He leaned back, his hands resting against the edge of the kitchen counter as he tilted his head.

"That wasn't exactly a yes," he noted.

There was a short beat.

"Trusting you is a difficult one to figure out," Greg said finally.

"I thought it might be."

"On the one hand, you're a pretty scary bloke. And I'm really not keen on you breaking into my house and threatening my wife."

Matt tried not to wince. That was how it had gone at the end, he supposed. He hadn't gone there intending to threaten her; his whole plan had been to not do that. To not repeat the mistake he'd made with Sarah. But he'd lost it a little when he'd found out Lauren had already told someone what she knew within the first twelve hours.

"Well, she did threaten me first."

"Not surprising, but the point does still stand," Greg said. "On the other hand…I spoke to Sarah the night that she ran out of your apartment. Did she tell you that?"

"Yeah," Matt said with a slow nod. "She said she gave you a bloody nose."

"That she did," Greg said, and Matt could hear the frown in his tone as he gingerly touched his nose. "I guess I have you to thank for teaching her that trick."

Again, the corner of Matt's mouth twitched up.

"You should've seen some of the tricks she already knew," he said with a touch more fondness in his tone than the subject might have called for.

His mind flashed to sitting in Sarah's living room early on, bandaging up her bleeding hands and listening to this five-foot-nothing, stammering girl admit that she'd felt a hint of satisfaction when she'd embedded a stapler into Ronan's face. Between that and her managing to bust Matt's lip open, the night had revealed such an unexpected flicker of violence and fight from her that he couldn't help but be curious to know more. That fight had been in her long before he'd taught her how to throw a punch.

"Well, at that point I didn't know you were…you," Greg said. "But whoever you were, she talked about you like she trusted you. For whatever reason she seems very confident that you're not, in fact, going to beat the daylights out of any of us. And since she's made it this far without getting killed, Lauren and I are listening to what she says."

"Which is what?" Matt asked.

"Mostly…she just says to trust you. So we will. But just know it's not you that's earned it. It's her."

Matt nodded slowly. He'd assumed that with Lauren's deep distrust of him, Greg might have a similar outlook. He wasn't sure if that was something that would ever change. But it sounded like at least for now, both of them were agreeing to lie low. And that was about all he could ask of them.

"Understood."

When Matt left Mahoney's, he landed on the rooftop across from Orion first, searching for any hint of where Jason might be. But of course, he was in the wind. From eavesdropping on various Orion employees, Matt gathered that no one had seen or heard from him since Saturday—the day Sarah had been taken, and Matt had heard him talking about his disagreements with Fisk.

After leaving Orion, he headed straight to his apartment, where Foggy had agreed to meet him after filing the paperwork to block Fisk's new trial request. He needed to change out of the soaking wet Daredevil clothing he'd yanked back on as he and Sarah had rushed out of her apartment, and he and Foggy needed to talk about how to handle both Sarah's warrant and Fisk's trial.

Foggy knocked on the front door just as Matt was entering through the roof access.

"Hey," he greeted Foggy as he let him in. "Did it go alright?"

"I think so. No one popped out and tried to kill us, which was good," Foggy said as he trailed Matt into the living room. "The new trial is officially contested. We'll have to wait and see if it makes a difference."

"How did you hear that they have a warrant out for Sarah?" Matt asked over his shoulder as he strode towards his bedroom, wincing as he pulled his shirt up and over his head.

There was a beat of silence instead of an answer, and Matt paused in the doorway to his room.

"Jesus, Matt," Foggy said quietly.

Matt tilted his head questioningly before realizing that Foggy was staring at the fresh cuts and bruises that littered his torso. A new assortment to add to his collection, courtesy of fighting through a nightclub full of scumbags. The worst of it was on his back, where the small explosion in the basement had sent a barrage of debris his way.

"It's fine," he said, shrugging one shoulder dismissively. "I heal quick."

"That's something, at least," Foggy said. He sounded more resigned and dismayed than outright horrified, which was progress from some of their past conversations. "If you look that bad then I'm guessing you must have really done a number on the guys who had Sarah."

Matt's mind flashed to the man whose cologne had been on Sarah's skin, and to his screams of pain as his palms had been pressed to the burning metal door until his skin had blistered and split.

"Nothing too crazy," he said shortly. He rested his hand on the sliding bedroom door, suddenly wanting to block Foggy from having to see any more of his injuries than he already had. "I'm going to change. I'll be out in a minute."

After he'd changed, he and Foggy went over the plan for working out a plea deal for Sarah. Matt had just explained that Sarah was going to write down everything she thought could be useful when he heard someone coming up the stairs. Two pairs of footsteps wearing heavy boots, accompanied by gun holsters and tasers hanging from utility belts.

"What's up?" Foggy asked curiously as Matt stopped speaking midsentence and cocked his head.

"There's someone coming up here."

"Someone like...a neighbor?" he asked hopefully.

"Like two police officers," Matt answered, getting up from his chair.

The two officers were speaking lowly as they reached Matt's floor, and just before they knocked on his door he recognized one of the voices: Donovan.

Matt slid his dark glasses onto his face, obscuring his eyes and the fresh bruise he knew was beginning to form under the left one. Then he slowly made his way over to the front door as the officers impatiently knocked again.

"Took you long enough," Donovan said by way of greeting as Matt opened the door.

"Moving too fast can become a tripping hazard," Matt said, fixing a pleasant and entirely fake smile onto his face. "Can I ask who I'm speaking with?"

The other officer spoke up before Donovan could, and his tone was clipped and neutral in comparison.

"NYPD, Mr. Murdock. Officers Donovan and Smith. We're here conducting an investigation into Sarah Corrigan. Your firm of Nelson and Murdock represents her, is that correct?"

"We do."

"So you might be aware that there's a warrant out for her arrest."

"And that brings you to my home instead of my law office because…?"

"Because if anyone knows where she is, it'd be you. The rumor we heard is that she's your girlfriend," Donovan interjected. "Isn't that some kind of conflict of interest?"

Matt's grip on the doorway tightened, but he kept his face carefully neutral. He didn't think either of them had any kind of real proof that he was involved with Sarah. But he was willing to bet that however Fisk had found out about it, these two had found out the same way.

"A rumor," he echoed. "Do you do a lot of your investigating based on gossip?"

"When someone is involved in the death of an NYPD officer, we look into every lead we have," Smith advised. "And if you're dating Ms. Corrigan in addition to representing her, we figure there's a good chance you know where she is."

"Seems like there's also a good chance that would be protected by attorney-client privilege," Matt said.

"You know attorney-client privilege doesn't cover pillow talk, right?" Donovan asked mockingly. "You could get hit with an obstruction charge. Maybe even harboring a fugitive."

"I can assure you I'm not harboring any fugitives in this apartment, officer," Matt said evenly.

"Yeah, you better not be."

Matt bristled at Donovan's tone.

"Donovan, was it?" he clarified. "You know, we've actually met before. When you and Officer McDermott brought Ms. Corrigan into the station to ask some questions about a girl who'd been attacked at Orion. It's funny, I've tried to find any record of that interrogation happening and I can't. It's almost like it never happened."

Donovan's heartbeat kicked into high gear at the mention of the under-the-table interrogation he and McDermott had conducted. The one that had been entirely on behalf of Jason and Orion, and not for the NYPD.

Officer Smith turned his head towards McDermott, and for a second it seemed like he was seeing him in a different light. His weight shifted just a fraction, his breathing paused for a beat.

If Donovan noticed the other officer looking at him with more scrutiny than normal, he didn't mention it.

"I don't know what you're rambling on about," he sneered. "Must have my voice mixed up with someone else's. I'm sure it happens to you a lot."

Matt's forced himself to keep the pleasant expression plastered on his face. "Not as much as you'd think."

Smith cleared his throat loudly, breaking some of the tension between the two of them.

"You're familiar with the limits of attorney-client privilege, Mr. Murdock. You know the risks if you're harboring Ms. Corrigan. If you learn where she is, I recommend you bring that information to the police," Smith said.

"Will do," Matt said shortly.

Smith shook his head, then turned and started towards the stairs.

"Right. See you soon, counselor," Donovan drawled. He rapped his knuckles against the door frame, then turned and followed his partner.

Matt swung the door closed behind them. As the two officers descended back down the stairwell, he heard Donovan complaining to Smith.

"These asshole defense attorneys always want to claim attorney-client privilege for every little thing," he said. "If he's actually screwing her then we'll be able to get privilege thrown out. Easily."

"We'll post someone in front of his building to keep an eye out. Unmarked car. If she tries to come here, we'll spot her," Smith said, his voice growing fainter as they got farther away.

Matt strode back towards the living room and Foggy, who had been lingering within earshot for the entire conversation.

"So they're definitely not wasting any time pursuing that warrant," Foggy said.

"Apparently not."

"I'll contact the ADA and let them know that Sarah's planning to surrender herself. That should hopefully make them ease up on the citywide search, at least," Foggy said.

Then he hesitated, his breathing changing in the way it did when he wanted to say something. Matt had a feeling he knew what it was, but he waited.

"They were a little bit right, though. I mean, Donovan said it in an asshole way, but…it is going to be a problem if you try to represent Sarah when the time comes, Matt. It's a conflict of interest no matter how you look at it."

Matt let out a long exhale. "I know."

"I mean, it was kind of already a conflict back when we helped her get out of the whole mess with McDermott's mother. But at least at that point you guys were still keeping it a secret. I didn't even know until after she was out of jail, or I would have told you to keep your ass at home," Foggy said. "Now it seems like the secret is out. There's no way you can represent her in court; it will tank her whole case. Not to mention the bar association would be less than happy with you."

"So what am I supposed to do? Just sit back and not help keep her out of prison?"

"More like you sit back and let your very capable law partner represent her. You'll still be helping with all the research and prep work. But if you try to step into that courtroom as her lawyer, the whole thing will become an ethics nightmare and we'll all suffer for it. I know you tend to walk a morally grey line these days, but…you can't be Sarah's lawyer and her boyfriend," Foggy said. "Or whatever label you guys are using these days. Temporarily separated soulmates or something, I don't know."

"We haven't figured that part out yet," Matt said resignedly. "But…you're right. It had already crossed my mind. I just hate adding one more thing to the list of things I can't do to help her."

"I know it doesn't seem like it, but this is how you help her."

Matt wasn't so sure. He understood logically that Foggy was right. As soon as the judge or prosecutor asked about his relationship with Sarah, he'd be obligated to tell the truth. And that would be a disaster for everyone involved.

He and Foggy spent most of the morning working on the plan. When they'd gone over everything they possibly could, Matt wasn't left feeling very confident about their chances at a deal.

"I'm going to try to listen in on some of the cops who are working Sarah's case," he said, standing and stretching. "See if they have anything helpful. Maybe listen in on Orion again, too."

"You're not suiting up?" Foggy asked, eying Matt's sweatshirt and lack of mask.

"No. I'm just keeping an ear out. Not going after anyone yet," he said. "And then I'll head to Mahoney's."

Sarah felt a twinge of relief as the bathroom door closed, leaving her alone. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to her friends, but she hadn't been alone in days, and she needed to get her thoughts straight.

As she stepped into the shower, it was as though the aches and pains of the last few days all came off mute and hit her at once. Her back and limbs were screaming from spending days on a concrete basement floor, and her neck was knotted with stress from…well, her entire life. And she was sore in a different way from earlier, from the rushed and desperate way she and Matt had connected. She knew he'd have taken it more slowly if she'd asked, but she hadn't wanted to. She'd just wanted him as close as possible, as quickly as possible. And she found that even now it didn't bother her; at least that soreness was from something she'd wanted, something she'd sought out herself.

When Sarah got out of the shower she found that Lauren and Greg had retreated to the guest bedroom upstairs, giving Sarah her own space in the living room. They'd left a small plate on the coffee table with some snacks and a sticky note letting her know there was real food in the fridge. She eyed the snacks, but didn't touch them. She knew she should probably eat, but her stomach was in knots and she wasn't sure she could even hold food down.

Instead she settled onto the couch with a pen and a small, yellow legal pad she'd borrowed from Mrs. Mahoney's kitchen counter. She needed to try to pull together everything she'd witnessed during her time at Orion, which was a long list of things she had basically no real evidence for.

As her pen hovered over the notepad, Sarah's gaze fell on Vanessa's phone, sitting at the top of the bag of things from her apartment. There was something that had been on her mind in the time she'd been locked up. Despite the unlikelihood of it working, she leaned forward and grabbed the phone. The screen lit up with the password prompt, and Sarah bit her lip as she typed in the date of this upcoming Saturday: the day that Tracksuit had complained would be Vanessa's son's first birthday. Greg had sworn that every new parent used that date for their passwords, but Vanessa wasn't exactly a normal new parent…

…except for when she was.

Sarah blinked in surprise, then sat up straighter as the phone unlocked.

Greg, you are a genius, she thought.

But unfortunately, getting into the phone wasn't the gold mine she'd been hoping it would be.

In the time that had passed since the fundraiser, Vanessa had obviously already purchased and activated a new phone. There was no more cell service connected to this one, but it didn't matter. Every app that required her login—her emails, her bank accounts, anything secure—had been automatically logged out. Vanessa didn't seem to use the phone's built-in texting app, which was empty of any messages. Instead Sarah found a third party messaging app that—of course—was also logged out.

Vanessa's photos were still on the phone, but to Sarah's disappointment it was mostly just photos of her son. She wasn't sure what she expected—photo evidence of every crime Orion employees had ever committed? She scrolled through a sea of smiling baby photos and wondered how many of them were taken to send to Fisk. Photos of the very son that, in Fisk's eyes, Sarah posed a threat to. She agreed with Matt that Fisk had probably already pivoted away from trying to use her as a pawn in his scheme to get a new trial, but that didn't mean he wouldn't still have his sights on her for betraying his family. A wonderful storm cloud to hang over everything else.

She closed the photos and moved on to any other apps that still had information on them. Nothing in the notes app, but the maps app caught her attention. Of the various addresses in her history, Elliot Bradshaw's nightclub was listed. Presumably from when Vanessa had bought the darts that killed Mrs. McDermott. It wasn't enough on its own to prove anything, but Sarah filed the information away for later.

The only other thing left was contacts. Vanessa had a separate folder in her contacts for official Orion employees. Sarah herself was in there, but notably absent were the grey area employees who acted more as 'associates', like Tracksuit and the tall one—No, Sarah corrected herself mentally. Kevin and Richard. Real names. She supposed the employee contact info could be somewhat helpful if someone needed to be tracked down, but considering most of the ones who actually committed the crimes weren't official employees…it was a dead end.

Sarah spent a long time searching for any scrap of helpful information, until finally she gave up. She resisted the urge to fling the useless phone at the wall, and instead set it back on the coffee table. Her head was pounding, and the disappointment of Vanessa's empty phone didn't help the anxiety in her chest.

She reached out and grabbed the legal pad again. For the most part she just stared at yellow paper, lost in her own thoughts as she struggled to piece them together. She leaned her elbow on the arm rest, propped her head against her hand and closed her eyes again. This felt like the least possible productive way to spend her day, alternating between not quite sleeping and struggling to write down anything even vaguely helpful to the impending charges coming her way. But there wasn't much else she could be doing at this point, as frustrating as that was.

With a sigh, she stretched out on the couch and closed her eyes.

Maybe I do need some sleep.

But sleep didn't seem destined to come.

She drifted off several times, but it was like some part of her brain couldn't register the fact that she was no longer trapped in a cell surrounded by strange, dangerous men. Every time she'd start to approach something resembling sleep, it would only be a few minutes before she violently jerked awake again, her heart racing as she struggled to place where she was.

For hours, she alternated between fruitlessly trying to sleep and staring at a useless list of names and scribble notes on her notepad. She'd just laid back down to try sleeping once more when she heard the front door open and her head shot up in alarm.

But it was just Brett Mahoney, looking as exhausted and stressed as she'd ever seen him. She supposed harboring a fugitive in his home probably wasn't helping that.

"Hi," she said hesitantly as she sat up, still not entirely certain that he wouldn't change his mind about letting her stay here and slap a pair of handcuffs on her.

"I half expected you to have already skipped town," he greeted her. "Gone on the run."

Sarah shook her head. The thought had selfishly crossed her mind, if only briefly. But she couldn't screw over everyone she loved like that. She'd already overheard Lauren and Greg quietly discussing the fact that their doorbell camera had caught several different cops knocking at their door. She was willing to bet they'd showed up at the office of Nelson and Murdock, too. And if they ever managed to figure out where her father was, they'd go harass him, as well. Turning herself in and dealing with the consequences was the only way to make any of that stop.

"I can't do that," Sarah said. "It…it would only solve the problem for me. But everyone that I care about would have to deal with the police and Orion breathing down their necks for the rest of our lives trying to find me. I can't put them through that."

"You know it won't be a warm reception when you turn yourself in."

"I know. We're…we're trying to figure something out before I do that. A deal."

"So I heard."

"I know that you could have dragged me straight to the police station when Matt brought me here," she said. "So I appreciate that you didn't. The extra time will help, hopefully."

He gave her a doubtful look. "I don't think Murdock would have let me drag you anywhere. And anyway…Orion's at the center of a whole web of messed up shit. If giving you some space to slide for a while means taking down even part of that place…it's worth it."

Sarah's chest twisted. Would it mean taking down any of Orion? That had always been the plan, and now it felt as impossible as it had at the very start.

"Do you know how things are going with the negotiations?" she asked. "I haven't talked to Matt or Foggy yet."

From his face, she could tell the answer wasn't good.

"They aren't very interested in taking the risk of going after Orion or Jason without hard proof of crimes," Brett said. "And so far what you've been able to offer isn't cutting it, so unless you've come up with something else…"

Sarah shook her head and looked down.

"Nothing that will be enough."

"Then you better keep trying. Because right now the only thing that they showing any interest in is—" Brett cut himself off then, seeming to second-guess his words.

"Is what?" she asked. When he hesitated, she continued insistently. "Please just tell me."

"The guys who were arrested at the nightclub they kept you at…most of them are keeping tight-lipped about anything that went down. But a few of them did mention that Daredevil showed up specifically to save you."

"Okay," Sarah said slowly. "That's, like, famously what he does."

"Yeah, but…at least one or two of them seemed to be adamant that you two know each other. And as it turns out, that same tip was given to the police when that videotape was delivered."

By Jason, Sarah was sure. Great.

"And that's what's catching their attention?" Sarah asked weakly. "Not the—the criminal enterprise that Fisk is still using as a puppet from prison? But just me maybe working with a vigilante?"

"Daredevil's been at the top of their public most wanted list for ages. They'd rather check off an easy win that they can put on the front page of the paper than get mixed up in going after Orion based on not much more than your word."

"So, what, they want to charge me with aiding and abetting a vigilante or something?" she asked. "Fine. Add it to the list."

"No. They're going to wait until you come in—or they bring you in—and then they'll lay it out for you just how bad the situation is. What kind of prison time you'll be looking at," Brett explained. Sarah's stomach flipped. "And then…my understanding is that they'll make you an offer. Immunity on the McDermott charge in exchange for giving them Daredevil. They figure it'll be too good to resist."

This again. How many times would the universe try to bribe her into ratting Matt out? At least she didn't have to waste energy debating about it this time. She'd made her choice before, and she'd make it again and again if she had to.

Sarah shook her head and blew out a long sigh. "Well, sorry to their PR team, but…they're out of luck. That's not an option."

"You know the other option is most likely prison, right?"

"Yeah, and I'm not going to send Matt there in my place. You can't want me to do that. He's your friend, isn't he?"

"Cops and defense attorneys can't be friends," Brett corrected her. "But…no, I can't say that I love the idea."

"Foggy said you've been his friend for, like, twenty years."

"No, I've put up with his argumentative ass for twenty years. And him teaming up with Murdock just made them both twice as irritating."

A faint smile crossed Sarah's lips. "Okay. My mistake."

"Anyway. I figured you probably wouldn't have much interest in a deal like that. But at least now it won't be a nasty surprise for all three of you when they offer it."

Sarah nodded slowly.

"You, um...you don't need to tell Matt and Foggy. About whatever deal the DA is planning to offer me. I'm not taking it either way, so…I'd rather not waste whatever time we have going back and forth about it," she said, rubbing a hand over her tired eyes.

He gave her another appraising look, his expression hard to read. Disapproving? Suspicious? She wasn't sure. Finally, he gave her a tired shrug.

"Your call."

After Brett left, Sarah tried again to get some sleep. After a few unpleasant repeats of the violent waking cycle, she finally fell into a fitful semi-sleep.

A short while later, she woke from her sleep with a startled gasp yet again, her heart racing out of her chest.

She bolted upright as her eyes flew open, and a second later, a hand touched her arm. She jumped, whipping her head to the side before registering that it was Matt, sitting in a chair just to her left.

"Hey. You're alright," he said quietly, sitting up straighter in his chair. "We're at Bess's."

She struggled to calm her breathing. It was like her brain had caught up to the fact that she wasn't in danger, but her body couldn't quite get with the program.

"Yeah. I—sorry," she said automatically, pressing the palms of her hands to her eyes.

"Don't apologize."

She cast around for something to say as her heartbeat settled, and her eyes landed on the small paper cup on the table next to her with the familiar logo of her favorite café.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It was tea. For you. It's not hot anymore," he said with an apologetic half shrug.

She reached for the cup anyway, running her thumb over the scribbled order on the side. The corner of her mouth turned up despite her exhaustion.

"Thanks," she said softly, glancing over at Matt.

He offered her a half smile in return, but his expression was still clouded.

"Foggy got in touch with the ADA," he told her. "To have a preliminary talk about what kind of deal you might be looking at if you surrender yourself to the police."

From his tone, he didn't sound much more excited about it than she was. She wished she'd found more information in Vanessa's phone to bargain with.

"Oh. That's…good," she said tiredly.

There was a long beat where neither of them seemed to know what to say.

From upstairs, Sarah heard the quiet murmur of Lauren and Greg talking. She realized with a start that it still wasn't nighttime. Her internal clock was shot to hell from being in that basement with no sense of time, and her brain was determined to think it should have been nighttime for hours. Thankfully it was at least late in the day, and the sun outside was low in the sky.

Matt cast his eyes toward the ceiling as he also listened in on the activity upstairs. Footsteps on creaking floorboards, muffled voices. Nothing loud, but not ideal for the kind of conversation she knew they needed to have.

He brought his attention back down to Sarah and tilted his head. Then he held out his hand to her.

"Come for a walk with me?" he asked quietly.

Sarah looked from his outstretched hand to his face, where his shadow-ringed eyes were aimed directly at her. Grasping the lukewarm cup of tea, she reached up and took Matt's hand, letting his warm, calloused fingers close around her own.

A short walk later they found themselves on the fire escape where they'd once shared a bottle of whiskey together, what felt like ages ago.

But this time, they didn't sit side by side along the edge in easy companionship. Instead, Sarah sat with her back against the brick wall of the building, watching as Matt leaned against the metal railing. A heavy silence filled the careful space he'd left between them.

Sarah pushed her hoodie back from where she'd had it pulled low over her face and looked around.

"There's still no one living here?" she asked in an attempt to break the quiet that had fallen over them on the walk here. "Are you scaring people off so you can keep this as your secret meeting spot?"

Matt chuckled. "I think the rent they're charging is enough to scare people off without a vigilante roughing them up."

Sarah gave a tired laugh, but it was quickly swallowed up by that uneasy silence. She wasn't sure how to start the conversation she knew they needed to have, so she waited for Matt to speak first. And of course, his first words were predictable.

"Are you alright?"

She paused and pulled back on her usual impulse to say she was fine.

"I'm not sure," she said finally. She hesitated, then admitted, "I, um, I don't know if that was a smart decision. Earlier."

A flash of guilt crossed Matt's face.

"You regret it," he said, although the careful neutrality in his tone made it difficult to tell if it was a statement or a question.

"No," she said, so certain that she didn't need to even stop and think about it. "Not even a little."

His shoulders relaxed a fraction. "Neither do I."

Sarahs tried to pull her exhausted thoughts together, debating how to word what she had to say. If it had been up to her she probably wouldn't have chosen to have this conversation while sleep-deprived. But if she was likely going to end up back in a cell within the next few days, when else would they get the chance?

"But I think we probably should have talked about things before. And I know it's my own fault that we didn't," she said, her mind flashing to how she'd pressed herself to him even as he'd warned her away. "I guess it doesn't matter now, considering everything that's going on. But I started thinking that if you've finally decided we can't make this work…then I just made the end that much more painful. For me, at least."

Matt's brow knitted together and he slowly tilted his head, silent for a long beat. Then he pushed off of the railing he'd been leaning back on and crossed the small fire escape to her, lowering himself down to sit next to her. The warmth of him next to her was comforting as he turned his head to her.

"I wouldn't do that to you," he said finally, his voice quiet. "I know I've been angry. And I've been an asshole to you. But I wouldn't…I wouldn't make you think I wanted to fix things and then sleep with you and ditch you."

"Yeah, I…I know that. But it doesn't stop my brain from coming up with the scenario," she said. She was quiet for a moment, chewing her bottom lip anxiously. "You have been angry. You had a right to be."

"It wasn't all anger. I just needed—"

"—space," she finished for him, nodding. She blew out a sigh. "And time. I remember. I get that. I know I broke your trust. It…it wasn't a small thing to move past."

"It wasn't," he agreed. "But you deserved better than the way I handled it. If I could go back and do it differently, I would."

Sarah sent a skeptical look his way.

"Differently how? There's no universe where you wouldn't go ballistic over me exposing your biggest secret," she argued. "No matter how much meditation you do."

"Yeah, I would have been pissed no matter what," he acknowledged. "But…I should have listened when you apologized. And I should have called you when I stopped being angry, and I didn't."

Sarah watched him for a long moment, taking in the golden light that played across his face from the sun as it grew low across the city.

"What made you change your mind?" she asked after a few moments. "It doesn't seem like it was any of my apologies."

Matt blew out a sigh.

"Apparently I just needed about half a dozen people to tell me to get my head out of my ass," he said dryly.

The corner of her mouth turned up weakly. "Right. Foggy and your priest must get tired of hearing about us."

"Yeah, they were both on the list. So was Lauren. And you. Well, drunk you, mostly. And Anna."

Sarah blinked. "Anna…like my mother, Anna?"

Matt nodded.

"I ran into her outside your apartment the night that—" he hesitated.The night I got blackout drunk and screamed at you in an alleyway? Sarah finished for him mentally."—the night I walked you home."

Realization settled over her as she thought of the envelope that had been shoved under her door.

"Is that why she gave me that money?" Sarah asked. "It seemed like it came out of nowhere. What did you say to her?"

"She was already thinking about it. I just…let her know that was the right call."

"You didn't, like…Daredevil my mom, did you?" Sarah asked, squinting at him in suspicion. Then she tilted her head thoughtfully. "I mean, it's okay if you did a little bit."

Matt gave a low laugh. "No. We just talked for a few minutes. About how she left because she thought it was the least painful thing for everyone involved. And something about hearing my own bullshit coming from someone else was…illuminating."

Sarah stared at him.

"That's, like, a crazy conversation to have in the middle of the sidewalk with someone you just met," she pointed out.

"She seemed to pick up that we were involved. I think she was hoping if she justified her reasons to me, I'd try justifying her to you."

"Are you?"

"No," he said firmly. "If anything, she reminded me of what kind of life that outlook leads to. She left, and…now she doesn't know you. I could tell just by the way she talked about you that she doesn't know you. And I'm hoping that I'm not too late to fix all this with us, because I don't ever want to not know you, Sarah."

Something in her chest twisted, and Sarah had to remind herself that there were things they still needed to talk through. Important things to actually figure out, no matter how much she wanted to just stop the conversation right here and loop her arms around his neck, tell him none of it mattered anymore.

"You seemed to handle it okay the last couple weeks," she said.

"Yeah?" he asked with a sharp laugh. "I'd say they're some of the worst I've had."

"Were they?" Sarah asked him with maybe just a touch too much curiosity.

Matt hung his head for a second before looking over at her with a rueful half-smile. "Yeah. Are you looking for me to tell you how miserable I was?"

"Kind of," she admitted. "If only to even things out. You already know how miserable I was because you were stalking me."

"Checking on you," he argued. Sarah hummed skeptically at that. "And of course I was miserable. I missed you, Sarah. I missed you as soon as you were gone, even when I was still angry at you."

"So why not reach out? You were just…completely gone."

"I wasn't completely gone."

"Oh, don't act like standing sentry on the roof next door counts," Sarah groaned. "You always do that. Y-you take away everything except the protection. Like that's all you have to offer. Or all that I need. I know you think I deserve protection. But…what about forgiveness? Or trust? Do I deserve those?"

"Yes. You do, of course you do. I'm trying to be better at both of those things," he said, and underneath his tired voice she could hear frustration that seemed more aimed at himself than at her. "But I know I haven't given you much reason to believe that."

Sarah studied him. If there was anything she could say about Matt, it was that he did try. All the time, to the point of driving himself to exhaustion. She didn't think their relationship would be the exception to that.

She wondered briefly if they'd met in some other universe, one where they'd been set up on a regular date by Mrs. Benedict, if he would have eventually trusted her enough to tell her his secrets. How strange it would have been to know Matt Murdock before Daredevil, or vice versa. She'd never known one side of him without the other. And she knew he'd never let anyone know both sides like this either, knew that he struggled with how to handle it.

"I believe you," she said quietly.

There was a stretch of silence between them.

Sarah fidgeted with the edge of the cardboard sleeve around her cup, more to have something to focus her attention on than anything.

"I know there's no point in going round and round about if telling Lauren was the right decision," she said haltingly. "But…I do get how bad it could have been if she'd gone to the police. I hope you know that. If you'd gone to prison, or if something had happened to Foggy or Karen or Claire because of a secret I told…I would have never forgiven myself. Ever."

Matt gave a sharp, humorless laugh as he sent her a pointed look.

"You left yourself off that list. Again. Look at what just happened with Fisk just from you knowing Matt Murdock. Imagine if…" A spasm of guilt flashed across his face. He trailed off and shook his head. "Well, you don't have to imagine. I do it enough. That scenario plays out in my nightmares often enough that I know every awful thing that could happen to you if I got found out. If I couldn't…if I couldn't get to you in time."

"You can't think like that."

"It comes with the job."

Sarah sighed. She understood better than anyone how easy it was to get lost in the endless loop of ways things could go wrong. She thought about pointing out that the majority of the danger in her life came from her life, not from knowing him. But she'd made that point before, and it never seemed to help.

"Well, in my scenarios…you always get there in time," she told him softly.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a tired smile, and she was glad. The last thing she wanted was for this conversation to end with his signature mix of guilt and protectiveness driving him to put even more distance between them.

Matt tilted his head towards her, his sightless eyes flicking over her face. She didn't say anything, just watched him as she let him sift through whatever he was picking up from her.

"I meant it when I said I prayed to find you," he said. "I made promises. That if God would just me have you back, I'd stop being such a coward."

That statement seemed so ludicrous that she took a second to wonder if he was being sarcastic. Then she let out a faint laugh.

"You think you're a coward?" Sarah repeated. "How much smoke did you inhale back there?"

"I'm serious."

"Barely anything scares you, Matt," she said, looking at him like he was crazy. "You go out at night jumping off buildings and looking for people to fight. Why would anyone think you're a coward?"

Sarah liked to think she could read Matt a little better these days than she used to. But she wasn't sure how to identify the expression that crossed his face now, illuminated in brilliant oranges and reds as the sun set lower. All she knew was one moment he looked almost nervous and the next he looked like he'd made a decision.

"Because I'm in love with you," he said, his voice calm and certain. "And all I've done is use it as an excuse to push you away."

For a long beat—moments? Hours?—Sarah stared at him, feeling like she couldn't quite breathe as his words sunk in. And then, without her permission, a tired laugh spilled out of her before she slapped a hand over her mouth.

"That's the reaction you hope for," he said wryly.

"No, I'm sorry," she said immediately, bringing her hand up to touch his cheek. "I'm—I'm really not laughing at you, I swear. I just…there's a lot happening, and sometimes I laugh when—"

"—when you haven't slept," he finished for her. The corner of his mouth tilted up. "Yeah. I know."

Of course he knew. He knew everything about her, things that no one else would ever notice or remember. But she barely processed his words, too distracted by the buzzing, lightheaded feeling that was overtaking her.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "But I just…are you sure you're not, um…wrong?"

It didn't quite come out the way she'd intended. But Matt didn't seem offended—if anything, there was almost a glimmer of amusement beneath the confused furrow of his brow as he cocked his head at her.

"What's your counterargument?" he asked finally.

"That we almost just died, Matt. Together, down in that basement. And that can make you feel a lot of things that—that can maybe feel like love. But if there's a chance it's something else o-or that you're going to change your mind when the adrenaline has passed then…please don't tell me something you might not mean," she said, a pleading note slipping into her voice at the end.

"It's not because of what happened in the basement, or you getting taken," Matt said, sounding more assured than ever. "I was going to tell you before all that happened, the night when you were supposed to come over. I tried talking to you after Landman and Zack, but you ran away from me."

That was true. But in her defense, she would likely have thrown up on his shoes if she'd stuck around.

"I was too hungover to handle talking to you," she admitted. She barely felt like she could handle talking to him now. His words were still hanging in the air between them, blazing as bright as the setting sun beside them. "You might have noticed."

"You weren't that bad," he said with a shrug. "I was more concerned you might show up still half-drunk."

"No. Thankfully. I think if I'd still been drunk I would have slapped Todd again," she admitted.

"I wouldn't have stopped you."

Despite still feeling like her head was spinning, Sarah couldn't help another laugh, this one less delirious and more genuine. She'd missed this.

"You know that if you really mean it, you can't…you can't go back and forth," she said hesitantly. "You can't just decide one day to…step back and be halfway in love. It's—it's kind of one of those all or nothing situations."

"I'm not stepping back. The last few weeks were all stepping back and I hated it. I've gotten so used to getting through a shitty day by knowing you'd be there at the end of it...I kind of forgot how I used to get through it before. Everything was worse with you gone, because you're the brightest thing in my life. And maybe that sounds like a dumb line coming from a blind guy," Matt acknowledged with a crooked smile. "But I remember what a sunny day looks like, and that's you."

She had to look away from him at that, afraid that she might lose her ability to breathe completely. She drew in an unsteady breath.

"And…look, I don't know how you feel," he continued. "I don't know if I waited too long, or I finally used up the last of however many chances you had in you, but…I thought you deserved to know either way."

After a moment of mentally steadying herself she was able to look at him again, searching his face intently to see if he was messing with her.

"What do you mean, you don't know how I feel?" she asked in faint disbelief. "You read me like a book, Matt. Whether I want you to or not, sometimes. You…you have to know."

"It's not really the kind of thing you want to take a guess on," he said quietly. "Besides, there have been more than enough times when I thought I had a read on you and you took me by surprise. I've learned better by now."

Sarah shook her head. That wasn't true. Matt knew better than anyone what went on in her inner world. He knew where all of her limits were, knew when she wanted to stay within them and when she needed to push against them. Knew exactly how to pull her out of her thoughts and make her laugh, or that when she was freaking out she didn't want him to be sugary sweet with her. Knew what she needed sometimes just from the way she drew in a breath or shifted her weight. He knew so many of the things that she wasn't good at saying out loud, things that she'd just never learned to ask for.

But out of all the things he was able to so easily read, it made sense in a maddening way that this was the only thing he wouldn't be willing to assume. It wasn't built into his DNA to assume that someone might love him, might know all of him and want to be with him. This was one thing she had to say out loud.

"No, there's...no surprise with this one. I'm…I'm basically a walking billboard of how much I'm in love with you," she said, feeling self-conscious of how true that was. Everything about her—her heartbeat, the heat of her skin, the way she leaned into him even when she didn't mean to—it all screamed out how she felt. It had for a while now. She gave a shaky laugh. "It's kind of embarrassing how obvious I am."

The way Matt's eyes pinned to her face with such intensity and the uneven rise and fall of his shoulders didn't help make her feel any less exposed.

"It's not," he said. She wasn't sure if he meant it wasn't embarrassing or it wasn't obvious.

She swallowed hard, looking away from him as the thing they were carefully not addressing crossed her mind yet again.

"It would have been nice if we could have figured this out when I wasn't about to go to prison," she said.

"I promise you I'm not going to let that happen," Matt said calmly. And he sounded so completely certain that just for tonight she decided to believe him. At least for a moment, so they could have this.

"So we're…what? Going to try this again? Me and you?" she asked, biting her lip as she studied his face. "And hope it will be different?"

"We could do more than hope. I could…try to stop pushing you away every time," he said. Then he gave her a sidelong glance. "And maybe you can try to stop always keeping secrets."

Sarah chewed the inside of her cheek as her mind flashed to the deal she'd asked Brett not to tell him and Foggy about. The idea of diving into a deal she had zero intentions of taking sounded far more exhausting than she wanted to deal with right now. Not when they'd already dug this deep.

"I…do maybe have one more small secret," she admitted. Matt tilted his head, waiting. "And I'll tell you eventually. But not tonight. It…it doesn't matter anyway. Trust me."

Whether he was happy with that answer or not, Matt at least seemed to hear that she was being honest when she said it didn't matter.

"I do," he said simply.

Sarah gave him a small smile. She really did want to be better about being honest. But when dealing with someone who could hear every single lie or secret on her tongue, him letting her take time to tell him when she was ready made her feel like she had some space to breathe.

"So you think it's crazy? Giving it one more shot?" he asked her.

It probably was, in all honesty. Crazy, unhealthy, irrational—there were any number of things to call it. But Sarah didn't particularly care. After all, there was no real point in pretending to be well-adjusted people this late in the game.

"How do we know one more shot is all it will take?"

"We don't," Matt admitted. "I guess we just have to go on faith."

Faith. She supposed that had gotten them this far, hadn't it? Having faith in each other even when logically they shouldn't have?

But despite that, she shook her head.

"No," she said decisively. "I need something more concrete than that. Like a…contract."

Matt laughed, his eyebrows going up. "What, saying that we'll never break up?"

"Saying that…we won't keep running away from each other when things get hard. Or taking steps back. That we'll keep trying."

Matt nodded his head slowly. "Well, contracts usually require some pretty hard numbers. Exactly how many chances do you want us to be legally obligated to give each other?"

Sarah cast her eyes up at the darkening sky and thought about it for a moment.

"A thousand," she said finally.

Matt's mouth curved into a slow smile and he shook his head. "You want us to give it one thousand chances to stay together?"

"Yeah. So the next time we have a big fight and we want to call it quits…" she shrugged. "We'll know we can't. We'll just have to figure things out, because we'll still have nine hundred ninety-nine more attempts to get through before we can give up."

"Per the contract," he surmised.

She held out her pinky to him. "Per the contract."

He laughed and caught her pinky with his, using it to pull her toward him and catch her mouth with his own. That familiar warmth flooded through her body as he kissed her, making her feel like she was floating somewhere above her body.

"I missed you," he breathed out against her mouth as they broke apart just a fraction.

Sarah smiled and pressed two more soft, quick kisses to his lips. Then she leaned her forehead against his, closing her eyes.

"I missed you, too. I hate not talking to you," she murmured. She pulled back, studying his face. "I'm used to telling you about everything. I've just been telling the mouse everything, and he doesn't listen as well as you do."

"So…tell me now," he prompted. "Catch me up."

She laughed and shook her head. "I can't. So much has happened, it would probably take me two hours just to get through it all."

"Do you feel like you need to sleep soon?"

Sarah paused to think about it, then shook her head again. She was pretty sure she'd blown past being tired and come back around to awake. Not quite a second wind, but maybe a thirteenth or fourteenth wind.

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

The sun was almost fully down, the last remnants of pink and purple fading into dusk. It wouldn't be long now.

Matt leaned his head back against the brick wall, turning to give her a crooked smile. "Then I'd really like to listen to you talk for a couple hours."

They stayed out there for a long time, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Eventually, sitting on the metal fire escape became too uncomfortable for Sarah's exhausted bones, and they walked back to Mrs. Mahoney's. Sarah had hoped maybe they'd go to Matt's instead, but he had gently shot the idea down. The cops had already been to his place once looking for her, and now they had a police detail sitting outside watching the place. Even though he and Sarah could likely sneak in undetected through the roof access, Matt didn't want to risk having her spend the night there.

So they returned to Mrs. Mahoney's instead.

The couch was too small to comfortably fit both of them, but neither of them particularly cared. It wasn't the first or even second time they'd crowded together on a too-small couch, and Sarah welcomed the feel of Matt's weight against her, of his arm around her waist as she laid her head against his chest.

She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, breathing him in. It was like a drug, and she felt herself falling asleep almost immediately as her brain registered that she was safe, that she wasn't alone.

"I really missed you," she repeated against his chest in a low murmur.

She felt his hand card through her hair, his voice rumbling in his chest as he murmured something back, but his words were lost as she drifted into sleep.

For the first time in weeks, both of them slept through the night.

Despite Mrs. Mahoney's hospitality, no one particularly wanted to gather in her kitchen to discuss crime over breakfast the next morning. So they convened at Fogwell's gym again, with Foggy and Karen bringing breakfast for Sarah, Matt, Lauren and Greg.

It was over this breakfast that Foggy brought up the topic of Sarah remaining at the gym while Matt went into the office—an idea Matt was clearly not enthusiastic about.

"We do have a few non-Sarah clients who still need our help," Foggy pointed out carefully. "And Karen and I have been juggling it all since the whole…you know…kidnapping thing, but we kind of need the other half of the law firm back. We'll still be working on Sarah's case. But showing up to the office will make you look less suspicious, and not so much like you're…well, harboring a fugitive."

Said fugitive frowned at that, but couldn't really argue the point.

"It will be fine, Matt," Sarah said. "No one knows about this place."

"And Lauren and I will be here for the day. We don't have to head back until this evening," Greg said.

"Also, I have a gun," Lauren interjected helpfully.

Matt sighed deeply. "Yeah. I'm aware."

So, having lost the popular vote to the rest of the group, Matt agreed to go into the office, promising to come by midday with lunch and giving all three of them a stern and not particularly necessary reminder not to leave the boxing gym.

He lingered behind as Foggy and Karen left through the back door, and Sarah shook her head at him.

"Go. I'll be fine. I need to have girl talk with Lauren anyway, and I don't need you hanging out within earshot listening to what we say about you," she said. Matt tilted his head back and groaned, and Sarah laughed and leaned up to kiss him. "See you soon."

Once the office of Nelson and Murdock was gone, Greg retreated to the rickety folding table with his laptop, trying to get his phone's hotspot to function properly so he could get some work done.

Lauren and Sarah leaned against the boxing ring, side by side. Lauren looked around the slightly shabby gym, with its taped-up punching bags, rusted metal folding chairs, and peeling posters of fights from decades ago. The poster advertising 'Murdock vs. Creel' was directly across from them, and Sarah watched her friend study it.

"I feel like I'm in a Rocky movie," Lauren said finally. "This isn't where I imagined the two of you spending all of your time."

"That's because you thought we hung out in a bat cave," Sarah reminded her.

"I still haven't fully ruled it out," she said, her eyes still wandering the gym and landing anywhere but on Sarah. "It…seems like you two are officially back together. Did you, um…work out everything that happened? The whole thing with…me?"

Lauren's attention was on her thumbnail now, where she was chipping at her nail polish in a way that she normally didn't. Sarah knew she felt uncomfortable about the central role she'd played in their fallout.

"Yeah. Yeah, we decided we're just going to try to erase your memory," Sarah said, trying to lighten the mood a little.

Lauren finally looked over at her, and Sarah offered her a half-smile.

"Oh, no. After all the freaky stuff I've learned that guy can do, I don't want any jokes about erasing me and Greg's memories, or mind reading or anything like that. It's too believable," Lauren said.

"It would just be you," Sarah clarified. "Greg can keep his memories."

"That's not fair!" Lauren said indignantly. Sarah just shrugged. "He has been insanely chill about the whole thing, though. But he's been keeping a list on his phone of questions to ask Matt when everything's not so insane. Earlier I saw him add 'Can you hear fish underwater?' so…hopefully we don't get to that point."

"What a freak," Sarah said. Although now that he'd asked, she kind of wanted to know, too.

"Tell me about it."

Sarah laughed, and then her smile faded into something more thoughtful.

"But…seriously, it's—it's all fine. We figured it out, I think. I screwed up. He screwed up. We're both going to try to not screw up in those specific ways again. To make room for new and exciting screw-ups."

"And I guess you aren't pissed at him for letting all this happen?"

"What do you mean?'" Sarah asked.

"I mean…his whole job was supposed to be keeping you out of danger. And he was so busy avoiding you and being mad at you that he just…left you alone to get kidnapped," Lauren said, a faint trace of anger lingering in her voice.

"Is that what you think happened?" Sarah asked. "No, I…I was at work. On the other side of the city, running errands for Vanessa. Even if we weren't fighting at all, there wouldn't have been anything Matt could have done to help. I was miles away."

Lauren gave her a confused look.

"That's…not how he made it sound when I asked him."

Knowing Lauren, Sarah was willing to bet 'asked him' had been more along the lines of 'accused him'.

"Yeah, well…that's Matt," she said with a shrug. "He never met an ounce of blame that he didn't try to put on his shoulders."

"That would have been good to know. Because I…maybe wasn't very nice to him about it. He probably told you that."

"No. He just said you came to help with my dad."

"I did," Lauren said quickly. "But…I did also maybe threaten to send him to prison forever if you died."

"Lauren," Sarah groaned.

"Emphasis on only if you died," Lauren insisted. "And it seemed like that might happen, so I was kind of pissed. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize to me."

"I mean, to be honest, I'm probably not going to apologize to him. Because I did mean it when I said it. But I can…maybe not talk about sending him to prison anymore," she offered grudgingly.

"Thank you."

"And maybe in exchange he can, like…chill out a bit."

Sarah tilted her head thoughtfully. "I don't know if he comes with that setting. But I'll see what I can do."

"Good."

"But…you know I'd never want that, right? For you to turn him in? Regardless of whatever happens between me and Matt, I do actually believe in what he's doing. Maybe it's violent, and a little…ethically iffy," Sarah said carefully. "But he's helping people. Even if something awful happened to me, even if we ended up hating each other, I wouldn't want him to go to prison. And I wouldn't want Hell's Kitchen to go back to having no one protecting it."

"I get that. I just…you're so forgiving," Lauren said. "Not just with him, with everyone. But he especially seems to need it, like, all the time. And then my instinct is to be meaner to offset it. You've always had a really forgiving nature, and I just…don't want to see anyone take advantage of that."

She did have a point. When they'd been roommates in college, Sarah had dated her share of people who'd caught on to her tendency to easily forgive. And so they'd go through the motions, say the words they knew they should to make the problem go away. But they didn't always mean it. The one bright side was that now she could spot a fake apology a mile away, and she stopped wasting her time on anyone who gave her one. And for every time that Matt screwed up and apologized to her, it never felt like her was handing her empty words.

"Yeah. I know you're always waiting for me to grow up and start learning how to hold a grudge. But...I think it might be a permanent condition," Sarah admitted.

"I'm...getting that."

"But I get what you're saying. Sometimes I think people do get used to it. They expect that I'll forgive them for whatever they do, because…I usually do. But Matt kind of seems completely baffled by it every single time. I'm…not used to people really giving it any weight like that. It's different. I don't think he ever expects it."

Lauren raised her eyebrows knowingly. "Well he can't have been too shocked to hear that you forgave him, considering you slept with him about ten minutes after you got rescued. Which I guess I can't blame you for. With everything you two have going on, you probably have almost-died-sex all the time."

Sarah let out a surprised laugh at that, the loud sound bouncing around the empty gym.

She tilted her head to look at Lauren, at the uncertain look that still lingered on her face. And for some reason she thought of the first time she'd met Foggy, and the small glimpses he'd offered into a more human side of Matt that she'd assumed she'd never meet. How that had thrown off the understanding she thought she had of him.

"Actually…that was the first time," she admitted haltingly. "That we slept together."

"What, since you got rescued? Well, yeah. You weren't gone that long, how many times could you have done it?"

"First time ever," Sarah clarified. "For us."

Lauren's brow furrowed.

"What do you mean?"

"We hadn't slept together before yesterday."

There was a pause.

"What do you mean?" Lauren repeated.

"The fact that you aren't getting it is making me feel weirder about it," Sarah said.

Lauren shook her head quickly. "No, no. Just, from what you'd told me I thought you'd been together for like…a little while now."

"We have."

"Didn't you stay at his place for a week or two?" Lauren asked, and Sarah nodded. "What, did he make you sleep on the couch?"

Sarah laughed. "No. We slept in the bed, we just…didn't have sex."

Lauren's face was still fixed into an almost comically bewildered expression, before something seemed to occur to her.

"Okay. I get it, I grew up Catholic. He has some hang ups. Some of my cousins are like that, it's not a big deal," she said.

"No, it was me. I just…wasn't…" Sarah faltered. She knew she wanted to share this with Lauren, but it didn't make the vulnerability any less difficult. "After everything with Ronan, I was too…"

She trailed off as she again had to fight the instinct to play things down, to remind them both that he hadn't managed to do as much damage as he'd planned. But everything he had done had hooked itself into her brain in such an insidious way that there was no downplaying how it had changed her.

Lauren's face fell as understanding crossed her features.

"Oh, Sarah. I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay. It's better now. I don't feel like he's haunting me anymore, at least. But it made me so—so skittish that Matt and I waited a long time to sleep together. And then when we finally tried, I had a literal freakout. Like…ran out of his apartment mid-hookup type freakout," Sarah admitted.

"Jesus. I'm sure that was a fun talk afterwards."

"Maybe not the most fun, but…it made me get some things out in the open. And Matt never made me feel bad about it, ever. Not about having to wait so long, or about how I reacted. He didn't even let me make myself feel bad. And I tried."

"That part is impressive," Lauren acknowledged. "Even I don't know how to reverse the Sarah guilt train when it gets going for no reason."

They were quiet for a bit, but Lauren was now chipping at the polish on her nail with such aggression that she was clearly still bothered.

"God I hate that slimy little rat Ronan so much," Lauren said suddenly. "I'm glad he's dead."

"Me, too. You know how I have those weird dreams sometimes?"

"What, your insane acid trip dreams? Yeah," Lauren answered with a sidelong glance.

"Well, I had one after I got hit with that dart at the fundraiser. And Ronan was in it. Down in a—in a grave with me. He tried to keep me there, but he couldn't. And I…" Sarah hesitated, then continued. "Sometimes I'm not sure if it was just a dream or…if I was so close to dying that it was actually him."

Lauren's shoulders moved in something between a jump and a shiver. "Oh, my God. Don't say things like that. You're giving me the chills."

"Sorry. But it helped, in a weird way. After that, he just wasn't in my head the way he used to be. And then yesterday, with all the adrenaline and everything…it just happened. And it was easy," Sarah said with a shrug. "Like I'd wanted it to be to begin with. Like it probably would have been if Ronan had never happened."

"I'm glad. Really. You deserve good vigilante sex," Lauren said, and Sarah laughed. "I'm guessing it was good."

In truth it had been a frantic, rushed, completely the wrong time and place. And completely perfect, in their own way.

"Yeah. It was."

"I figured. The whole bad boy thing always means they're good at sex."

Sarah laughed in surprise at hearing Matt described as a bad boy.

"He's…not really one of those. Aside from the whole Daredevil thing he's kind of a nerd," she said with a shrug.

"Right. Aside from that one thing," Lauren said skeptically. She hesitated, then continued somewhat reluctantly. "I think I can…try to be on board with you two. Assuming neither of you goes to jail. He seems to make you feel…safe. And apparently happy, when you aren't fighting. And you seem to stress him out, which makes me happy."

Sarah laughed again, thinking about how despite everything, it was such a relief to be able to talk openly with Lauren about these things. She gazed around the gym, and her eyes lingered on one of the punching bags as she contemplated how to pass the time while hiding away.

"Hey—when's the last time you used a punching bag?" she asked Lauren.

"Not since I took kickboxing a million years ago."

"Right. The one with the hot instructor. Do you feel like dusting off your skills?"

"Aren't you, like, recovering from getting kidnapped?" Lauren asked. "You really want to go around punching things?"

The looming thoughts of what the next few days might hold hovered on the edge of Sarah's mind, threatening to take over.

"Yes," she said resolutely.

"You know, you handle stress differently than you used to."

"Well, I can't drink through it anymore, so…" Sarah shrugged.

Lauren sighed. "Alright, crazy person."

Sarah grinned.

"Come on. I know where Matt has his boxing tape stashed away."

"Okay," Lauren panted sometime later as they took a break from the punching bags. "Explain to me how you don't win more of your fights with bad guy when you can hit like that now."

Sarah laughed and shrugged as she caught her breath. It came back to her quicker now than it used to. "Well, it's easier when the thing you're hitting isn't moving. There's only so much you can do when the other person is a six foot wall who wants you to die."

"Please don't remind me how often people try to kill you," Lauren said. She looked over at Greg's makeshift office set up, where he was currently on the phone having what sounded like a frustrated conversation with his IT department. "Let's take a break. Gotta make sure Greg isn't working too hard."

Sarah reached for her water bottle, feeling a sudden rush of gratitude for her friends as she watched Lauren walk over to Greg and perch on the table next to his laptop. She didn't know how she'd managed to hang on to them through everything that had happened, but she hoped that it stayed that way.

Spending so much time in this gym with Matt really must have really rubbed off on her, because the boxing had successfully cleared some of the anxiety from her head, leaving space for her to come up with what might potentially be a very stupid idea. Greg's ongoing battle with his IT department had sparked the beginning of it, and now she couldn't stop thinking it over.

There was a knock at the gym's locked door and everyone froze. Lauren glanced over at her purse, which sat a few feet away with her handgun nestled neatly on top.

"It's me," came Matt's voice through the door.

Sarah's shoulders relaxed as Lauren moved towards the front door and unlocked it, letting Matt into the gym. She locked it back behind him before returning to sit with Greg.

"Hi," Sarah greeted him, pushing her hair out of her face as he crossed the gym towards her.

He caught her hand as he reached her, running his thumb over the rough material of the boxing wrap.

"You've been having fun," he noted.

"Just blowing off some steam."

"Good. Foggy and Karen will be here soon. They're picking up lunch."

"How are the talks with the DA's office going?" she asked.

She wasn't feeling particularly optimistic about his answer, and the way his mouth set into a grim line at her question only reinforced that.

"It's…not going great," he admitted. "They're pretty laser focused on wanting you to turn yourself in, and they're not very interested in the information we have to bargain with at this point."

Sarah chewed her lip, dismayed but not surprised. "Yeah. I figured a list of names and dates with nothing to back it up wouldn't be very valuable."

"It's not that it isn't valuable. Having names and dates and locations is good, and if I'm able to find that planner you were talking about tonight then that will help even more. But…it's not heavy enough to counterweight what you're being charged with. Even that video from the fundraiser is only the word of a man on a video. It might be enough to convince the public, but it's not enough for them to arrest Jason."

"It will be enough for people to stop thinking you're a mass murderer," she said. "And enough for Wilson Fisk to hunt Jason down."

"Neither of which keeps you out of jail."

"Well, I…had an idea of something that could help," Sarah said tentatively. She was very aware that the idea she'd come up with was tenuous at best, but it didn't look like there were many better options to choose from.

"What is it?"

"The footage that Jason gave to the police…the rest of it could still be on his computer. I want to come with you to Orion tonight and see if I can find it."

"His password-protected computer?" Matt clarified. "In his office full of cameras?"

"The cameras only mattered when I was trying to hide that I was working against them. Who cares if they see me now?" Sarah said. "And I have an idea about the computer, kind of. Last night I told you about that girl from IT. Brianna, the one who covered for me with the phones."

Matt's brow creased. "Yeah. I remember."

"She does all the security updates and everything for everyone's computers. IT has an admin account or something that they use to access them. If she can give me that login info, I can get into Jason's computer and try to find the full video," Sarah said. "Vanessa's phone has contact information for all of the Orion employees. I found her address already."

"And if she goes straight to Jason to tell him what you asked her to do?"

"I…I don't think she will," Sarah said lamely, aware even as she said it that it wasn't very convincing. She didn't really have an argument for why she thought this girl she'd met all of one time would help her. Just that the look that she'd seen in Brianna's eyes that day was one that she knew others had seen in her own.

Matt's eyebrows shot up. "You want to take a chance on a random Orion employee you don't know, and then try to break into Jason's computer knowing full well that walking into that building could be a death trap?"

"…yes."

He gave a sharp laugh. "No. It's too risky to bring you in there."

"What other plan have we come up with?" Sarah argued.

"We can plan to not bring you back to a place that's tried to kill you multiple times all for a chance there might be footage on the computer."

"Okay, but that's not a plan. It's an…an anti-plan, which is not helpful."

"It's not going to happen," Matt said shortly.

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him.

"It is. I'm going to go to Brianna's to ask for her help whether you come along or not," Sarah said steadily. "Tonight. And if she gives me the info, I'm going to Orion. Tonight. Because we don't have any more time to try to come up with something else."

Matt raked an agitated hand through his hair.

"This is insane," he said, frustration coloring his tone.

"Maybe. But short of you zip tying me to something, I'm doing it."

He cocked his head, his brows going up. "You know, since you mention it—"

He was interrupted by Lauren appearing next to the two of them, her uneasy eyes darting from Sarah to Matt and then back again.

"Hey," Lauren interjected, her voice purposefully casual. "You guys aren't already fighting again, are you? Because that is behavior for crazy people."

Sarah thought about explaining that dating a lawyer seemed to mean communication only ever happened through arguing, but she didn't think it would help the situation.

"No," Sarah answered, keeping her eyes on Matt even as she addressed her friend. "I think he's considering tying me up."

"Oh. Ew—wait until we leave," Lauren protested, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

"To keep me from going to Orion with him when he breaks in tonight," Sarah clarified.

"Oh. Well, yeah," Lauren said slowly. "Why would you be going with him to Orion? I thought you were done with the spy thing now."

"Because I think maybe I know how to get into Jason's computer and get the footage that shows him actually killing McDermott."

"Great, so stay home and tell him how to do it," Lauren said, gesturing to Matt.

"I can't exactly bring a Braille keyboard with me," Matt said dryly.

"Oh. Right."

"But it doesn't matter anyway," he said pointedly as he turned back to Sarah. "Because it's too risky. Every inch of that place is covered in cameras."

"Didn't you say you guys broke in before and no one noticed? When you were saving that kid?" Lauren asked.

"Breaking into the office building itself is kind of easy. It's only Jason's office that has a ton of security. Outside of that there's not much there for anyone to steal," Sarah said with a shrug. "I mean, sketchy things come in and out of there but they don't really keep anything incriminating around. They didn't even have security guards until Matt kept showing up and beating the hell out of people."

"Yeah, but in the past we cut the power so that the lights and cameras weren't an issue," Matt pointed out. "Which is easy enough for grabbing just the planner. But we can't access the computer with the power out, so it has to stay on. Meaning the cameras stay on."

"No offense, but…do you care about cameras?" Lauren asked him. "Aren't there already, like, a bunch of videos online of you doing crimes?"

"I'm more worried that one of those cameras will be a live feed instead of closed circuit, and we'll suddenly have a bunch of uninvited guests."

"Okay, yes, they might see us on the cameras," Sarah allowed. "But…we'll get in and out before they can do anything about it."

Matt scoffed. "How do you know we'll just get in and out? We have no idea how long it will take to find the file that you need. He could have the whole computer encrypted. We'll be sitting ducks."

"Again, can we circle back to the 'not having any other options' part of the issue?" Sarah exclaimed.

"Can you just…steal the actual computer?" Lauren suggested. "Like throw it in a burlap sack and run away?"

"I wish," Sarah said, shaking her head. "Orion computers only work on the company network."

"Why are you guys having to search his computer anyway?" Lauren asked curiously. "Shouldn't the cops be doing that? I mean, they can tell from the video that it's security footage from your office. They don't want to bother checking if the actual murder was caught on tape?"

"They tried, supposedly. Donovan and his partner requested an emergency warrant to search Orion's offices for the rest of the footage. It should have been an easy 'yes,' considering the situation, but the judge denied it," Matt explained.

"Why?"

"I'm looking into it. Especially because the judge who reviewed the request wasn't on-call for emergency warrants last night. They called him up specifically. Like maybe they were looking for a no."

Great, Sarah thought. So it sounded like Jason's creepy web of spies extended not only into the police force, but judges, too. If he could just get enough people to look the other way, it wouldn't matter what evidence he had lying around.

Foggy and Karen arrived then, hitting the pause button on any more arguments around what to do. The smell of whatever food they'd brought made Sarah's stomach growl loudly enough to make her reluctantly put the issue on the back burner for a few minutes.

Karen pulled Matt aside to get signatures on a few things that had come through the office just after he left, and Sarah wandered over to where Foggy was unpacking the bags of food.

When Foggy saw her coming, he held out a takeout box with one hand, and a folded up newspaper in the other.

"You just barely made the Bulletin's cutoff for the warrants section of their weekly police blotter," he informed her as she accepted the items. "I think they sent it to print before we let the police know you'd be surrendering."

Sarah frowned as she unfolded and opened the paper. She scanned the page of small photos and names until her mouth fell open indignantly.

"They used my mugshot from the last time I got arrested? I look awful," she said, holding up the paper.

"There's a manhunt out for you right now, and you're worried about how your wanted poster looks?" Greg asked as he grabbed one of the takeout boxes.

"There's no manhunt," Foggy clarified, catching Sarah's alarmed look. "Or wanted poster. You're not an old west outlaw. It's just a warrant in a crime blotter. No biggie."

"It feels like a biggie," Sarah protested.

"It's an outstanding warrant, and there's a million of those in New York. People not showing up to court for traffic tickets. Deadbeat dads not paying child support. Regular people don't even pay any attention to these wanted lists," Foggy said, gesturing at the newspaper. "Who's the last person of interest you even remember seeing in the news? I bet you can't name one."

"Matt," Sarah said immediately.

"Okay, aside from your boyfriend," Foggy said, waving that aside. "Who that you don't know?"

Sarah paused.

"I don't remember," she admitted.

"Exactly. No one looks at the random warrants"

"Because those warrants aren't for killing a cop."

"Neither is yours! It's for being an accessory to killing a cop. And anyway, they're pulling back on the search effort for you now that we're in negotiation for you to turn yourself in."

"But if they see me they'll still bring me in," Sarah said. "Right?"

"Yes. And considering the crime, it would probably be…" Foggy trailed off uncomfortably.

Lauren looked between them apprehensively. "What? Violent? Like, with weapons?"

"Well, I don't think they plan to use a giant butterfly net," Sarah said gloomily.

She gave one last glance at her own photo on the page and frowned before picking the newspaper up to toss it in the trash.

"Hey, don't throw that away!" Foggy protested. "You have to save it."

Sarah cast him a look of disbelief. "Why on earth would I want to save this?"

Foggy took the paper from her and unfolded it again to reveal the top half of the crime blotter, where the Devil of Hell's Kitchen had graced the top of the Most Wanted list every week since he first appeared on the scene. Foggy gestured between Sarah's mugshot and the blurry photo of the masked man.

"So you can show your kids when mom and dad were in the newspaper together," he said innocently.

He leaned back and laughed at the scowl on Sarah's face as she snatched the paper away from him. Behind her, she heard Greg chuckling.

"Very funny. When one of you guys is a wanted criminal, I'll be sure to make jokes about you," she grumbled.

"Whoa," Foggy held up his hands. "Not gonna happen. This half of Nelson and Murdock follows the letter of the law, thanks."

"Yeah, and Greg can't get arrested for crimes. He's British, he has immunity," Lauren informed her.

"No, love, I keep telling you that's just for diplomats. Not normal people," Greg explained.

"Hmm. We'll see," Lauren said.

Karen and Matt rejoined the group, and there was a general murmur of conversation as they all ate. No one touched on the subject of jail, or Orion, or ADA deals. Because what was there to say that wasn't more discouraging? In fact, Sarah barely spoke at all. She listened as the others talked, but her thoughts were on the plan she'd come up with.

Matt was seated across from her, and she caught him also abstaining from the conversation, his focus on her instead. She knew that he was also turning their argument over in his head, trying to search for a different way. She watched him silently, and after a beat he gave a short, reluctant nod of assent.

Sarah's heart flipped, a mixture of excitement and dread. They were going to try it.

After lunch, she disappeared into the locker rooms and changed out of the sweaty clothes she'd been wearing to beat up the punching bag. She'd just slipped her stun gun into her hoodie pocket and stepped out into the hallway when she heard footsteps and Lauren turned the corner to find her.

Lauren gave Sarah a dismayed once over, taking in her dark sunglasses and the hood pulled up over her head.

"Well…you're dressed like the Unabomber, so I'm guessing you convinced Matt to bring you along," she said, sounding resigned.

"Yeah."

Lauren pressed her lips together, giving Sarah a worried look.

"Be careful. Please. Is that stupid to ask at this point?"

Sarah shook her head. "No. Of course not."

Lauren pulled her into a tight hug, and Sarah almost wished she wouldn't. It felt too much like a goodbye. But she hugged her back just as tightly anyway, only letting go when Matt approached them and Lauren turned to face him.

Her expression was conflicted; Sarah had a feeling she wanted to threaten him again to keep Sarah safe on pain of death. But with a glance in Sarah's direction, Lauren reluctantly took the more diplomatic route.

"Just…please take care of each other," she said finally. "And call me when you can."

Sarah didn't make Greg hobble over to her on his crutches to say goodbye. She met him at the front door, where—to her relief—he gave her a quick hug without saying anything that felt like it would be the last words they ever spoke.

Matt waited at the back door until Sarah met him there.

"You ready?" he asked, and she nodded. "Good. We need to make a pit stop at my place first."

Matt's apartment was a little messier than Sarah had usually seen it.

Every time she'd been there before, he'd mostly kept things clean and put away. It wasn't like he had a ton of stuff to leave around, anyway. But now things that seemed off: his first aid kit was open on the counter, the contents of it littered haphazardly across various surfaces, and there was an open bottle of aspirin spilling out onto the table. It looked like he'd just been using the place as a triage site rather than a home.

"The police detail outside is gone," Matt noted. "That's good."

Sarah's gave a distracted nod, her eyes lingering curiously on the chipped surface of his previously smooth kitchen table, then on the trash can in the kitchen, where she could see what looked like broken shards of ceramic and wilted flowers.

"Come here," Matt called from across the room. "I want to show you something."

Sarah turned from where she stood near the kitchen counter, and her eyebrows shot up when she saw him unlocking the metal door to the closet he kept his suit in.

She pointed an accusatory finger at him.

"You think I'm dumb," she said indignantly.

Matt cocked his head. "Excuse me?"

"You're not tricking me, Murdock," she said. "You want to lock me in that closet and go off to Orion on your own."

"I'm not going to lock you in the closet," he said incredulously.

Sarah just gave him a skeptical look but didn't move closer. He let out a sharp laugh and leaned against the open door.

"Alright. First off, I wouldn't need to trick you. If I wanted to lock you in the closet, I would just do it. I don't think you could stop me," Matt pointed out. "And second, that's not the plan. Because eventually I'd have to let you out and deal with whatever heavy object you send flying at my head."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. She hated when he was simultaneously being annoying but also not wrong.

Matt smirked and raised his eyebrows, then nodded his head towards the trunk. "Come on."

As she finally relented and walked toward him, her curiosity was piqued.

"Wait, is it your new suit?" she asked. That would be at least one small good thing in the midst of all this. "Is it finally ready?"

"Not yet. That should be ready soon, but I had Melvin finish something else up first."

Matt held up a piece of dark fabric, but she couldn't tell what it was. He tossed it to her and she caught it, then held it up to inspect it. It looked like a tank top, but a little different. The straps were wider, the neckline and arm openings flat, like it was meant to lie underneath something. And the material was light, but tightly woven—and familiar: it was the same kind of material she'd seen in the jacket Jason wore.

She blinked and looked at Matt in surprise.

"When I went to ask Melvin for the suit, I asked him to make this first. It was supposed to be something you could wear to Orion under your regular work clothes, so you could have some protection without Jason catching on." His mouth twisted ruefully as he reached out to run the fabric between his fingers. "Of course, by the time it was ready it was too late for that. Took longer than I'd thought."

Sarah chewed her lip as she examined the shirt. She thought it was probably just the overload of cascading events that was making her react more emotionally than she might have otherwise.

"You put off getting your suit for this?" she said finally.

Matt shrugged. "I already have a suit."

"You have cargo pants. And compression shirts you get from eBay," she corrected him. Compression shirts that looked excellent on him, but they didn't seem to lend him much protection.

"It'll do for now," he said.

Of course he would say that, though it was clearly untrue. He would probably have a full protective suit by now if he hadn't had Melvin divert his time to this. It was just about the most frustrating thing he could have done, yet also deeply sweet. The Matt Murdock special, she thought wryly.

"Thanks, Matt," she said sincerely, then paused. "Now I feel bad I accused you of trying to lock me in a closet."

"Yeah, well…don't feel too bad. It's not like I've never considered it."

She shook her head and looked down at the shirt again. Of course she appreciated that he was looking out for her, but he always did that. This was different. A way of helping to keep her safe without relegating her to stay locked up at home—even if that was clearly what he would prefer if given the choice.

"Hey. This is not a suit. Okay?" Matt clarified. When she looked up at his expression had turned serious. "It's not full protection, or an invitation to get into danger. But…you need to have something, at least. If only because I'll probably lose my mind if you get another scratch on you."

Sarah nodded.

"Not a scratch," she agreed, so easily that Matt actually looked less convinced. "I'll put it on now. We'll see if all your senses any good at guessing measurements."

Somewhat annoyingly, it did fit perfectly. And once they'd both changed, they were on their way across Hell's Kitchen via the usual rooftop route. It didn't bother Sarah as much as it had in the past. After being locked in that basement for a few days, being up high didn't seem so bad compared to being underground.

They waited for Brianna near the opening to an alleyway near her house. Matt hung back in the shadows while Sarah, still wearing her hoodie and sunglasses, leaned inconspicuously near the entrance.

When Brianna walked by, Sarah called out her name. Despite the quiet level of her voice, Brianna jumped in alarm. But all the same, she only hesitated for a moment before she followed Sarah's beckoning and stepped off the sidewalk into the alleyway.

"Sorry," Sarah whispered. She slipped the sunglasses off now that they were farther down the alleyway, out of sight of the sidewalk. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

Brianna gave her a wide-eyed, wary look. "The police have been at the office looking for you."

Sarah chewed her lip and nodded. "Yeah. I figured they might be."

"They showed us that—that video. Of you and that cop."

"That's kind of why I'm here. That was only half of the video. And the first half will show that I didn't kill that cop. Jason did."

It was a mark of Jason's sterling reputation that Brianna didn't even look surprised by that.

"So, what does that have to do with me?"

"I'm hoping you can help me get that video."

She shook her head, taking a step back. "No, that's…I'm not the person for that."

"You have some kind of password to log in to the work computers to do maintenance stuff, right?" Sarah pressed.

"Right," Brianna said warily. "It's just an IT login. We all use the same one."

"Then you're the person. I want to use that login to get into Jason's computer and look for the rest of that video. The part that shows him killing a cop, which will put him in prison for a very, very long time."

"I'm sorry. I don't—I don't know why you think I would do that, but I can't."

Sarah saw her glance to the side, already looking for an exit. But she had followed Sarah into this alleyway to talk to her seemingly without a second thought; that had to mean something.

"Why do you work for Orion?" she asked.

Brianna furrowed her brow and shrugged evasively. "It…it pays fine. And it made sense with my major."

"Yeah, and it's also full of psychopaths. And everyone who's not one spends every day watching their back in fear," Sarah pointed out. When Brianna just looked away, she sighed and stepped closer. "I work there because of my dad. Because he got into deep gambling debt with someone who was connected to Wilson Fisk, and he couldn't pay it back. So I'm paying it off, one paycheck at a time. Or they'll kill him."

Behind her colorful teal glasses, Brianna's eyes widened again. She crossed her arms tightly in front of her, glancing away again before looking back to Sarah.

"I tried sending out resumes to other jobs…once I realized what kind of place it was," Brianna said quietly. "I applied to probably thirty different companies, and I know that I'm more than qualified for them."

Sarah nodded slowly. "But?"

"I live with my girlfriend. She's…on parole," Brianna said hesitantly. "She did time for some possession charges, but—but she's in recovery now. She got a job, and she's been doing great. But a few months ago, the police showed up at our door. They said they got a tip she was selling drugs out of our apartment. Which is crazy. Like I said, she's been clean. And even when she wasn't, she was never dealing. But since she's on parole, they were able to search the place anyway."

"Did they find drugs?"

"No. They destroyed our whole apartment. Cut open our couch, broke a bunch of our dishes, threw our stuff all over the place. They didn't find anything. And then when they were leaving…one of the cops handed me a folder. And when I opened it, it was all of the applications I'd sent out."

Sarah winced. "Jesus."

"I don't know how they knew that I was applying, or where I applied. But it was pretty clear they didn't want me leaving Orion. And the—the cop that handed me the folder…he's the same one that came around Orion showing us the video."

"Donovan," Sarah surmised. "Yeah, he works for Jason. So did his partner. McDermott, the cop in that video. And if I get my way I'll put Donovan in prison at some point, too, but…no promises."

There was a brief silence as Brianna digested this new information.

"What are you?" she asked Sarah suddenly.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you, like, an undercover agent or something? Like the FBI? SHIELD?"

"Me?" Sarah blinked. "No. I still don't really even know what SHIELD does. Just…alien stuff, mostly. And I do think Jason's a human, despite…everything about him."

"So what are your-your qualifications?" Brianna asked, waving her hand around vaguely. "To try to do all this?"

"Qualifications? I mean, no one asked me to fill out an application. I just…decided to do it."

"That's insane," she said. Sarah just offered her a shrug. "I was kind of hoping you were some kind of secret agent. Because I felt bad that I ran off and left you there that day. In Jason's office. It looked like he was going to kill you."

"Don't feel bad. There was a time where I probably would have done the same," Sarah said.

"Yeah, but you helped me out. You covered for me when I was late. I've always heard Jason can lose his mind about that kind of stuff sometimes. That he'll hurt people for little things," Brianna said.

"You helped me, too. When Jason asked you about that phone. It's why I'm hoping you'll help me again."

"No offense, but it kind of feels like helping you will get me killed. I wish you'd just said that you were secretly an Avenger."

"No Avengers," Sarah said with a shake of her head. "Sorry. But I do have a friend who can help keep you safe."

Brianna let out a weak laugh. "What kind of friend can do anything against someone like Jason?"

Sarah turned to look over shoulder. A moment later, Matt stepped out from the shadows that had been concealing him.

Brianna inhaled sharply, taking a step back at the sight of the masked man, and Sarah held up a placating hand.

"It's okay. He's on the same side as us."

Brianna's gaze shot from Matt to Sarah, then back to him.

"The news said that…that big party where people died…and that journalist…" she stammered, keeping her voice in a low whisper that she thought he wouldn't be able to hear.

"That wasn't him. Jason orchestrated all that. Just like killing that police officer," Sarah said. At Brianna's conflicted expression, she continued. "I can show you proof about the party, if you feel like you need it. But…if you give it some thought, I think you won't find it very hard to believe."

Brianna sent another nervous look Matt's way. Sarah couldn't blame her; she'd gotten used to his masked look, but she remembered how unnerving it had been at the start.

"He won't hurt you," Sarah said softly. "I swear. But he can help keep you safe. He's been doing it for me the whole time."

Matt stayed a good distance away and didn't say much, as Sarah had previously given him a gentle warning that his regular Daredevil demeanor might not be helpful in winning over this particular Orion employee. All the same, it took a bit more convincing to get Brianna to stay calm and listen; but eventually she did. And not too long after, she scribbled down the login information on a crumpled piece of paper from her bag and handed it over to Sarah.

"Thank you," Sarah said as she tucked the paper into her pocket. "Seriously."

Brianna nodded, but her attention was back on the black-clad vigilante leaning against the brick wall not too far down the alleyway.

"I thought it was just rumors around the office. But you really do work for Daredevil," she said in disbelief.

Sarah made a face at that description, then glanced over at Matt, who was doing an excellent job of acting like he couldn't hear them.

"He works for me," she corrected her.

A skeptical look crossed Brianna's face at that, but she didn't say anything.

"Look, we have to go. You can't tell anyone about what we're planning to do," Sarah said urgently. "Or that you know the two of us are working together. Not even your girlfriend. Okay?"

Brianna nodded shakily. "Okay."

Sarah waited for Matt's nod of confirmation that she was telling the truth before thanking Brianna again and making her way down the alleyway to him.

She couldn't hold back a smile as she arrived at the spot where he was still leaning against the wall, his head tilted as he observed her.

"I got the login."

"I heard."

"Are you ready?" she asked, almost bouncing on her feet in anxiety and anticipation. This had to work. It had to. "Come on."

She started to turn back towards the way they'd come, but Matt nodded his head in the other direction, further down the alley.

"Quicker to go that way."

She frowned at the pitch black tunnel he was nodding towards.

"The super dark way that's full of trash?"

"Yep."

She groaned. "Fine. But when we go back, we have to go a nice, open-air way."

Below the mask, Matt's lips tilted into a smirk as he pushed himself away from the wall.

"Whatever you say, boss," he said dryly as his gloved hand settled against her lower back, guiding her into the shadows.

On a dark rooftop across from Orion, Sarah watched as Matt slowly swiveled his head, focusing in on the building across from them. She closed her eyes, inhaling the cool air as she waited.

"The cameras are already off," he said suddenly.

She blinked. "What?"

"The power's on, but there's no electrical current going to any of the cameras. At least not the ones I can pick up."

"Why would the cameras be off?" she asked uneasily.

He shook his head. "Not for anything good."

Sarah groaned. The one thing they needed was in that building and suddenly the cameras were conveniently off? She hadn't played very many videogames since her old Nintendo years as a kid, but even she remembered that this was exactly what happened in those games when they were trying to lure you into a trap.

But…in those games, you also couldn't move to the next level if you didn't walk into the trap and deal with whatever was in there. And Sarah couldn't see any way out of the situation she was in without going into Orion, regardless of what might be waiting for them.

"Okay," she said. "So…if either of us can think of any other idea but going in…"

Matt cocked his head towards her wordlessly, his mouth pressed into an unhappy line. But he didn't come up with another solution.

So they went in.

Matt waited until the two security guards on shift were on the top floor, right near the roof access door. They were really supposed to be split up, with each guard taking a different floor rather than the two of them walking together and chatting. But they hadn't, and so it was easy for Matt to cleanly knock them both out before they could even register the emergency exit alarm buzz above the door.

Sarah leaned next to the door and watched as Matt ziptied the two guards to each other and removed their guns and radios from their belts, depositing them into the nearby trashcan.

They made their way down the stairs to the floor Jason's office was on, and stopped at Sarah's desk first. She opened the long, narrow drawer at the top of the desk and found everything was just as she'd left it. The small, unassuming planner was still there, apparently not interesting looking enough to have caught anyone's suspicions. She picked it up and slipped it into the front of her hoodie.

Stepping into Jason's office made Sarah feel uneasy. She and Matt had broken into Orion in the past, but never into Jason's office. She eyed the bookshelf in the corner that Jason had slammed her into, the very spot where she'd tried and failed to stab him with a letter opener. She shivered, feeling like she could feel his psychotic presence hanging over the room.

Matt paced the room restlessly as she typed in the login info Brianna had given her. It worked, and a minute later she had plugged in the flash drive they'd brought with them and started pulling up his files. There were what looked like hundreds of them, an endless scroll of video and photo files.

And of course, in typical Jason fashion, they were all labeled in a way that made no sense to her at all.

"Dammit," she muttered under her breath.

"What is it?" Matt asked.

"All these video files are just… jumbled together, as far as I can tell. They're not in order, and there are no titles other than a bunch of letters and numbers." She right clicked on one of the files, hoping to find any kind of helpful information. "And none of them have any kind of created date or…anything, really."

This was sort of what Matt had predicted might happen, so she was glad when he didn't send an "I told you so" her way.

"Can we take them all? Check them later."

"There's got to be a zillion of them here. They'll never all fit on the flash drive."

Matt's mouth thinned under his mask, but he gave a quick nod. "Alright. See what you can find by clicking through them. But we can't stay here for long."

She nodded, already pulling up another video file. There was no time to sit there and watch through each video fully, but a lot of them had hints as to when they took place. The office had been in the middle of a renovation when Jason had killed McDermott, and she was able to quickly skip by any videos that showed it not at the right stage of construction. The way that office had looked that day—the white sheets covered in blood on the floor, the gleaming new window frames leaning against the wall, the tool box on the desk with the hammer sitting on top—was something she'd never forget, so it was easy for her to instantly notice when it didn't look right.

As she looked through the videos, she moved a few that seemed like they might be useful over to the flash drive. Clips of various people showing up to talk to Jason, and despite there being no sound she was hopeful it could help with matching up timelines. But still…there was only one clip that would really help.

"Anything?" Matt asked after several minutes of silence.

"No," she murmured as she scanned through another video. This one looked like the right time period, but as she skipped through the frames she didn't see anything to do with McDermott. "Dammit. Please don't let this have been a dead end."

Matt rested his hand on her shoulder. He parted his lips to say something, then suddenly stopped and cocked his head.

She knew what he was going to say before he said it:

"There's someone here. Down in the lobby."

"Jason?"

He listened for a few moments.

"Yeah," he said, and her heart dropped. "And Donovan. A handful of other men."

Sarah swore her breath, trying to keep her hand steady as she clicked on another video. They couldn't leave without it. It was the only chance she had. "I guess he figured it out even without the cameras."

Matt was still listening closely.

"They're…not here for us," he said slowly. She knew his brow was furrowed in confusion underneath his mask. "They have Vanessa with them, but they…they have a child, too."

Sarah blinked up at him in surprise. "What?"

"They're getting on the elevator now. You need to go. They're armed, and I'm not putting you in the middle of whatever goes down."

Sarah looked back to the computer, where she'd clicked on one last random video in desperation.

And to her surprise, she saw herself on the video. Jason was standing in front of her, and on the desk behind him gleamed a metal hammer sticking out of an open tool box.

"That's the video," she exclaimed. "Oh, my God."

Matt's only response was a clipped, "Hurry," as he kept his attention on the approaching group.

He didn't have to tell her twice, and she quickly dragged the video over to the flash drive folder. Then an error popped up on the window: "Storage Full."

"Shit," she swore. That's what she got for trying to save the other videos. She should have known that the cheap flash drive she had would barely hold anything on it. "Just—one second."

"They're almost to this floor."

The adrenaline pumping through her was making her hands shake as she highlighted a few of the videos on the drive to delete. The small loading bar that popped up seemed to take forever.

"Sarah."

She dragged the video over to the drive. This time, to her relief, the loading bar popped up instead of an error.

On the other side of the floor, the elevator dinged as it arrived. The elevator was midway across the floor from Jason's office, but it was around a corner. They couldn't spot her and Matt quite yet, but she could hear them, loud and rowdy sounding.

Matt's gloved hand was on her upper arm, urging her up out of the chair. The loading bar disappeared, and Sarah closed the window and snatched the flash drive out of the computer just as Matt hauled her to her feet and out of the room.

She knew he wasn't leading her to an exit because there was no way out that wasn't on the other side of Jason and his men. She just barely saw the first flash of a foot rounding around the corner as Matt pulled her out of sight into the darkened office next to Jason's. There was no time to close the door, but Matt positioned them behind it, and Sarah was just able to see through the small gap at the hinges.

Jason was at the head of the group, of course, walking briskly towards his office with a cold expression on his face. Behind him was a handful of other men she recognized from around Orion, and some she didn't know. One of them was holding a bulky object that she couldn't quite make out through her limited view. Bringing up the rear of the group was Donovan, scowling as usual. Beside him, with her arm trapped firmly in Donovan's tight grip, was Vanessa.

But unlike the others, Vanessa wasn't walking toward the office of her own accord. There was a cloth gag tied around her mouth, and her hands were cuffed in front of her. Squinting, Sarah finally realized that the item the other man was carrying was a baby carrier, with Vanessa's son strapped inside.

In that moment she realized the cameras weren't off because of her and Matt. It was because of Vanessa. So there'd be no video evidence of what Jason planned to do.

Jason and the rest of the group were out of sight now, having disappeared into his office. Even with his office being as large as it was, she had to assume it was crowded in there with the entourage he'd brought along.

Sarah wondered briefly why Jason had brought so much backup to deal with one woman and her child. If he planned to hurt Fisk's family, wouldn't he want fewer witnesses than this?

Jason's voice floated out of his office as he began to speak to Vanessa. Luckily, with both doors open his words were easy to pick up.

"I'm not a stupid man, Vanessa. I know that you never planned to let me ascend to the role I truly deserve. And since the entire fiasco with Sarah, your husband is wary of my intentions, too. He thinks I can't make rational decisions," Jason said, followed by a decidedly less-than-rational laugh. "But I am, in fact, a rational and reasonable person. Which is why I didn't bring you here to kill you and your son." Sarah's shoulders relaxed just as fraction. "I brought you here to kill you. But what happens to your son is entirely up to you."

Sarah glanced back at Matt, but his expression was indiscernible as he listened closely.

"One of my strongest skills is the ability to know when it's time to leave town. I've known it in every town before this one, and I'll know it in the next one, too. New York is no different. And I would so appreciate it if you would invest in this new chapter in my life. You don't have to do much. All I need is for you to help me log in to your bank accounts, and then just sit tight for a bit while I wire the money I need to where I need it to go. Painless. Well, except for the part where I kill you," he allowed. "But there's no getting around that."

There was the sound of muffled protest from the room, and Sarah assumed Vanessa was trying to speak around the gag in her mouth. Jason ignored her.

"But you do get to decide if your son dies with you. Cooperate and give me all the information I need, and I'll kill you quick and easy. Try to lie or refuse…and I'll have you watch as he dies first."

A sick feeling settled into Sarah's stomach. It wasn't like violent threats were something novel for Jason, but hearing him so casually threaten an innocent child was hard to hear. She looked back at Matt again, and in the thin sliver of light she could see a tick in his tightly clenched jaw.

"Uh—Jason, you mean like…shoot the kid?" one of the men asked. Sarah didn't recognize his voice, but it wasn't Donovan. She was surprised any of them even spoke up.

"Of course not. Relax, I'm not going to shoot a baby," Jason reassured the others in the room. He chuckled. "Not with bullets, anyway."

Sarah's eyes widened in alarm.

"What does he mean?" she asked Matt, keeping her voice low.

His mouth pressed into a thin, angry line.

"He has a tranquilizer gun," Matt murmured back.

"What the hell?" she exclaimed in a whisper, her eyes widening.

She focused back on the room, where Jason was still in the midst of monologuing.

"These darts that Elliott sold…there's no quality control. Some would kill you in seconds, some would just make you drowsy," Jason said, sounding disappointed by the questionable quality of his chosen murder weapon. "But I suppose you know that, since you were buying them from him behind my back."

Jason paused at that, and since there was no way for Vanessa to respond with the gag in her mouth, Sarah had to assume it was dramatic effect for the others in the room. After a beat, Jason carried on in a conversational tone.

"It took me a while to realize that you were the one who arranged to have McDermott's mother killed. Or—tried to have her killed. She was just too loud about her son's disappearance. Drawing too much potential attention to the company's business, is that right? So you figured you'd just take care of it yourself. Darts were an interesting choice. Not very efficient, but not very violent either, which is likely why you chose it. There's a reason women tend to kill themselves with pills instead of guns. But you should have let me handle it. It was my job. A job you clearly thought you could do better. So since you prefer the tranquilizer darts…that's what we'll use for you two."

Inside the office, the sound of Vanessa furiously trying to speak around her gag grew louder.

"Shh, shh. I'm speaking, Vanessa. In fact, since we're chatting…would you like to know some interesting trivia?" Jason asked.

Sarah closed her eyes as she heard the word 'trivia' and realized he was really going to make Vanessa listen to him talk about whatever obscure topic he felt like after he'd just threatened to kill her child.

"The last few places I left, I made a fun little tradition of re-naming myself after whoever I had to kill to make it happen. I don't think I particularly look like a Vanessa. Then again, I didn't think I looked like a Jason, either," he said with a chuckle. "So this time I'm thinking I'll go with Wilson. Either in honor of little Wilson Junior, here…or because killing you will be like killing a part of your husband. So I suppose the name is apt either way."

Sarah heard footsteps as Jason crossed his office, then returned back to Vanessa.

"Now, let's get started, shall we?" he said. "To begin, if you'll kindly unlock your cell phone for me."

Having gotten the gist of what Jason planned to do, Sarah tuned him out and turned back to Matt.

"What do we do?" she whispered.

"I'll get you up to the roof. You stay up there, and I'll take them out."

Of course. Sarah wasn't going to pretend like she was a prize fighter, but she could do more to help than just hide on the roof while Matt fought for his life down here.

"Take them out how?" Sarah argued. "If all those guys start shooting in that office they'll hit you and the baby."

"I'll make some noise in the stairwell. Lure them into a bottleneck," Matt said. "It's worked well before."

Sarah shook her head.

"Anytime something goes bump in the night in this place, it's you," she pointed out. "Jason knows that; it's probably why he has so many of his lackeys with him. If he hears a sound and knows it's you drawing them out, he's going to keep them all around Vanessa and the baby."

"Do you have a better idea?" he asked.

She hesitated. "I have…a different idea. I don't know if it's better."

Matt tilted his head toward the room next to them, then back to her.

"I'm listening."

She explained her idea for a distraction, and Matt seemed to be relatively on board until she got to the part where she would stay back and get Vanessa and her son out.

"No," he said immediately. "You can help with the distraction and then you need to get to safety."

"You can't fight all of them and keep track of me on the roof and make sure nothing happens to the two of them," she pointed out. "I can get Vanessa and the baby out of here while you're dealing with the rest of it."

Matt's jaw ticked again, which oddly was a good sign. It meant he was pissed that he didn't have a good enough argument for sending her away, which meant her plan was winning out.

"I'll be fine. I have pepper spray, and my stun gun, and…" she glanced around the room for anything else she could use, but to her disappointment it was surprisingly barren of useful objects. "…and that'll just have to be enough."

Matt tilted his head back and blew out a long exhale. She could tell he wanted to argue more, but there was no time.

With a scowl, he reached down and withdrew the two batons he kept holstered to his leg, and for a moment Sarah thought he was about to duck out of the room and start the fight right here. Then to her surprise, he held the batons out to her.

She gave him a questioning look.

"I'm not leaving you here without something to hit someone with," he said. "It's the most successful move you have. Take them."

"What? You know all of the crazy in the building is about to be following you down the stairs, right? Keep them."

A sharp smile spread across his face below his mask. "Nah. It'll be more fun for me this way."

Sarah stared at him, remembering yet again that the man she loved was actually insane.

She carefully picked up just one of the heavy batons, leaving the other in his hand. "Okay…well, I'm not coordinated enough to use two clubs at once, so…you keep the other one."

He gave a short nod and slipped the other baton back into its holster.

In the other room, Jason had stopped talking, which meant he was probably working on transferring the money. Meaning they needed to act now, before he was finished and had no more reason to keep Vanessa or her son alive.

She brought her hand to Matt's jaw, taking just a fleeting second to ground herself with the feel of his skin. In response, he tugged her a step closer and pressed his lips to her forehead.

"Be careful," he said quietly.

"You, too."

And then he was gone, slipping unnoticed by the men into the shadows of the hallway and leaving her alone in the dark office.

She gave him a minute, then slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and opened her text messages. Bringing up Vanessa's name, she began typing out a message:

'Just got to Orion, coming up the stairs now. I have the footage of the fundraiser you wanted. Are you here yet?'

She hit Send, and seconds later she heard a ding from the other room.

As expected, Jason was still holding Vanessa's phone, and he noticed the text immediately.

"You have a text message…from Sarah Corrigan of all people," Jason said, his voice dripping with faux surprise. "Let's see what she wants."

She waited, listening closely as Jason read the text message.

"Well…how about that. It looks like you and Sarah were planning a fun little meetup here tonight. So sorry to have derailed your plans," Jason said, and underneath his sneering tone there was an air of triumph at having foiled their scheme. His voice rose as he switched from mocking Vanessa to addressing the small group of men with him. "Our dear friend Sarah Corrigan is in the building. And I'd very much like to find her."

On cue, a faint clatter came from the other side of the building, in the direction of the stairwell.

"Spread out and look for her," Jason ordered. "She's coming up the stairs but she'll run when she hears us coming. And watch your backs. She's not as dumb as she seems."

The words seemed to energize the group, like a group of hounds preparing for a fox hunt. It sent a chill down Sarah's spine, and she gripped the baton in her hand tightly.

She listened to the sounds of their footsteps as they emptied out of the office and headed straight towards the stairwell, where Matt was waiting for them somewhere a floor or two below.

She waited another beat, then took a hesitant step towards the open door, and halted when she heard a voice float out of Jason's office.

"Don't look at me like that. You're the one who decided to have a kid with a crime kingpin. These kinds of things happen," she heard the voice said in an indifferent tone.

Sarah swore internally as she recognized Donovan's voice. She'd figured there would be a risk that Jason would leave someone behind to watch Vanessa, but she'd really been hoping it wouldn't be him. In the distance, she could hear the sounds of a fight starting down the stairwell.

She crept into the hallway, keeping her back against the wall between the two offices and glancing around to make sure there were no other stragglers. Seeing no one, she quietly reached out for her old desk and picked up the only thing within reach: a wireless computer mouse. Taking a steadying breath, she positioned herself directly beside Jason's door and whipped the mouse across the room as hard as she could. It hit the wall with a loud thud.

"The hell?" she heard Donovan mutter. His footsteps grew closer to the doorway, and she tightened her grip on the baton.

His gun came into view before the rest of him did, as he had it drawn and pointed in front of him. Sarah had been planning to hit him over the head, but switched in a split second and brought the baton down on his wrist as hard as she could. Donovan let out a surprised hiss of pain as Sarah grabbed his wrist and yanked it down as hard as she could, keeping the gun aimed down and away.

She wasn't sure whether it was fate on her side or—more likely—just the element of surprise that allowed her to twist the gun out of his hand. It clattered to the ground and she quickly kicked it away, sending it skating across the tile floor where it landed underneath her desk.

However, whatever luck had helped her get rid of the gun didn't help her suddenly match the strength of a fully grown man, and a second later he slammed her against the wall so hard it knocked all the breath out of her, and his hand closed around her wrist, keeping her from striking out with the baton again.

"You," he snarled. "I am so goddamn sick of you."

His grip on her tightened, but before he could do anything else there was a loud, strange sound: several loud, simultaneous clanging sounds that seemed to come from every direction in the building, echoing around them. It didn't sound like the noises of a fight; more like deadbolts locking into place. Sarah couldn't afford to waste time trying to figure out what it was right now, but luckily the sound also seemed to distract Donovan.

She took advantage of the split second distraction to knee him in the groin as hard as she could manage. With another hiss of pain, his grip on her loosened just slightly, and she shoved her left hand into her pocket and pulled out her stun gun. She jammed it against his throat and hit the button, sending the electric volts spasming through his muscles.

Donovan dropped to his knees, but to her disappointment he didn't fall all the way to the ground. As the crackling of the stun gun died away, she knew he'd be back on his feet in a matter of seconds. Gripping the baton in her right hand, she swung it at his head as hard as she could, and it connected with a heavy crack. A flicker of surprise crossed Donovan's face, and then a second later his eyelids flickered closed and his head lolled back, unconscious.

Struggling to catch her breath, Sarah quickly grabbed Donovan's handcuffs from his utility belt. Unfortunately, there were limited options to cuff him to. With shaking hands, she locked one cuff around his left wrist and the other around one of the metal handles on the nearby filling cabinet. It wouldn't necessarily keep him trapped if he woke up, but it would at least make him drag around a filing cabinet if he wanted to move.

Having secured Donovan for now, Sarah stumbled to her feet and entered Jason's office. Vanessa was ziptied by her wrists and ankles to a chair in the corner of the room, watching Sarah with wide, alarmed eyes above her gag. A small trickle of blood was coming from her temple, but she looked otherwise unharmed. Several feet away, her baby carrier was perched on top of Jason's desk, and inside it, Wilson Fisk's only son was watching her with equally wide eyes.

She went to Vanessa first and pulled the gag out of her mouth. But as her eyes fell to the zipties, she realized she had no way to cut them. She had no knife, or even a pair of sharp enough scissors.

Vanessa seemed to have come to the same conclusion.

"Take him," she pleaded, her voice raspy from yelling through her gag. Her eyes were pinned to her sleeping son a few feet way. "Take him, forget me. Just get him out, please."

Possibly reacting to his mother's distressed tone, the baby began to cry.

Sarah hesitated for a split second; she didn't exactly have any lost love for Vanessa, but leaving her tied up in a dangerous situation didn't feel right, either. But what other choice did she have? There was no immediate way to free her, and who knew if more Orion backup would be arriving soon?

With a jerky nod, Sarah hastily moved over to the baby carrier, where baby Wilson's cry was quickly building into a scream.

She gingerly picked him up out of his carrier, making low shushing noises to try to quiet him. The last thing she needed was a screaming baby acting as a tracking device for every violent criminal in the building to locate her.

"It's okay," she whispered to him. "I know it's scary. It's okay."

She'd only had him in her arms for a few moments when she heard Vanessa gasp in distress. She whipped around and was met with the sight of Jason standing in the doorway with a too-wide smile affixed to his face, a familiar tranquilizer gun held loosely at his side.

"Hello, Sarah," he greeted her pleasantly. "I realized just as we hit the stairwell that it wasn't you waiting in there."

With the hand that wasn't holding the tranquilizer gun, Jason reached into his inner jacket pocket, and Sarah took a wary step back. He spotted her expression and gave her a broad smile as he withdrew his hand. She expected him to have a weapon of some kind, another gun or a knife. Instead, he held up what looked like a small remote, like for a car.

"You know, a few weeks ago I spent some time at a business security conference," he told her conversationally. "I don't go every year. Usually there's nothing of note, just a bunch of hacks selling new versions of the same security cameras and retina scanners. But every once in a while they'll come with something interesting, like this little gadget."

He twirled the small remote in his fingers, and Sarah stayed silent. Even the baby was quiet now, only letting out the occasional sniffle.

"I met a man who was selling a security system that can lock down an entire building in the event of an active shooter. They install these magnetic locking devices throughout the office and you can lock every stairwell and hallway door with the click of a button. Isn't that just neat? He came up with the idea after a disgruntled coworker shot up a handful of his colleagues," Jason said. He shook his head with a wry chuckle, like he was talking about a naughty child. "You really never know when a psycho with a gun will walk into your office, do you? The state of the world today. On the bright side, it means your friend in the mask is free to have his fun on his side of the doors, and you and I can talk in private on this side."

"Talk about what?" Sarah asked, her mind racing.

"Loyalty. And your lack thereof."

Great.

"Okay," she said slowly. "Sure. Let's…let's talk."

She started to turn to put the baby safely back in his carrier, but Jason's voice stopped her.

"Don't," he said. "Let's keep him in play, shall we?"

Sarah bristled at the words, as though an innocent child was just a pawn to use for his next move. But she kept still all the same, very aware of the tranquilizer gun hanging at his side.

"Jason—" Vanessa bit out, her wild eyes darting from him to her son. "Stop it. If you do this, you have no idea what will happen to you—"

But Jason cut her off with a loud groan of irritation.

"If I wanted to listen to you, I wouldn't have gagged you in the first place," he snapped. He raised the tranquilizer gun and pointed it directly at Sarah. "Put the gag back in her mouth."

Sarah didn't particularly want to do that, but with the barrel of the gun trained on her, she didn't have much choice. Keeping a wary eye on him, she balanced the baby on her left hip and reached out to with her right hand, yanking the fabric back up and into her mouth.

"There," Jason breathed out in relief. "That's better. I can only deal with one whining woman at a time."

If Sarah didn't have a squirming child in her arms, she might have said something to that. But given the situation, silence seemed safer.

"I'm going to guess that you didn't really come here to give Vanessa footage of anything. That was a cute trick, though. Why are you actually here?"

Sarah hesitated, trying pick something that would keep him talking long enough for her to figure out a plan, but wouldn't enrage him to the point of shooting everyone.

"Looking for you."

"Why? To ask for your old job back?" he asked sarcastically.

"To…to convince you to turn yourself into the police. For what you did to McDermott."

It was such a weak lie that it seemed to take Jason by surprise. He let out a bark of a laugh.

"Oh, that's excellent. And why would I do that?"

"Because…it's the right thing to do," she said, letting the empty words fall from her mouth almost automatically as her mind whirled, trying to come up with a plan. They both knew there was no world where Jason would do the right thing. "And always starting over with a new life has to be exhausting."

"No…no, don't give me that saccharine bullshit. I know even a wilting flower like you doesn't believe that childlike idea of how the world works." His eyes narrowed, his piercing gaze pinning her to the spot. "Tell me the real reason you're here."

"That was it," she lied. "Really."

His lip curled in disgust.

"So this is how you want it to end? You won't even admit to everything you've done?" Jason asked. "I could have set you up for a good life if you'd just done things right. Been a mentor to you. But you insist on being a liar. A coward. You're lying to me even now. Tell me the truth, Sarah."

She tightened her hold on Vanessa's son. She would love to tell him the truth, to tell him everything she really thought about him. But she couldn't risk innocent people getting caught in the crossfire if he flew into a rage.

"I am."

He sighed, tutting in disappointment. And Sarah remembered in a split second that keeping him calm didn't help make him less dangerous at all.

"Fine. I hope you enjoyed wasting your last words on a lie no one believes."

Then in a flash, he raised the tranquilizer gun again and pulled the trigger.

Sarah's eyes flew wide, and she spun around, holding the child tight to her chest.

The first dart hit her in the small of her back. Then a second one landed just between her shoulder blades. Then another, and another, before she heard the click of an empty chamber. Jason had emptied every dart he had into her back.

The force of the darts hitting her made her pitch forward over the baby carrier, and her right hand flew out to brace herself against the desk. She shakily lowered the baby down the last few inches until he was nestled back inside the carrier, fairly certain that the adrenaline would make her arms give out if she didn't.

And in that second she registered that she felt no sharp, piercing pain in her back. In fact…her head still felt clear. The shirt hidden underneath her hoodie had done its job. She let out a shuddering breath as relief rushed through her, her right hand holding tight to the desk to keep herself steady. With her left, she slowly slipped her pepper spray out of the pocket of her hoodie.

Behind her, she heard swift footsteps as Jason came up behind her, interpreting her slumped posture as the effects of the dart. He grabbed her by her hair and yanked her roughly backwards.

"Now let's see if we—"

She jammed her elbow behind her, hard, catching him square in the sternum. Jason let go of her with an exhaled grunt of pain, and she spun around to face him, bringing the pepper spray up and squeezing the button—

But Jason was fast, faster than she'd anticipated. Before she could fully press the button he'd caught her wrist and twisted it hard, and the pepper spray fell to the floor, leaving only a slight sharp sting in the air.

Her other hand was free, and she curled it in to a fist, aiming squarely at Jason's jaw. He ducked to the side, avoiding the blow, but it cost him his balance. She pushed forward as hard as she could, taking him by surprise by moving into his space, and as he took a stumbling step back he let go of her wrist.

She took the opportunity to dart past him, sprinting towards the hallway and praying that he would follow her.

Just as she passed through the doorway, she heard his voice.

"There's nowhere for you to go, Sarah," he called after her, sounding unconcerned. "Every way out of this floor is locked up tight."

She knew that. Wherever Matt was, somewhere on the other side of all these steel-bolted doors, she knew he was figuring out how to get to her. And maybe she could even get that remote away from Jason. But in the meantime, she needed to keep his attention on her, and not on Vanessa or her son.

Hearing his slow, almost lazy footsteps following her out into the hallway, she swallowed and turned to face him.

Jason's gaze fell to the neckline of the smooth black tank top under her hoodie, and his eyes narrowed as he recognized the fabric.

"Now, how did you manage to get your hands on that?" he asked. He laughed, not waiting for her to answer. "You know…that was an overreaction just now, Sarah. I'm sorry. I don't want to kill you. You're too much of a mystery; I want to keep you alive until you've answered every question I have. Starting with why you turned on me."

"You want to know why I turned on the people who destroyed my entire life?" she asked. "I don't know. It is a mystery."

"I didn't destroy your life, Sarah. Your father did, when he chose to borrow money from dangerous people that he knew he couldn't pay back. And you did, when you made the foolish decision to suffer in his place rather than just let an old man die. To be honest, I'm blameless here."

"We'll see if a jury agrees with that."

Jason laughed. "A jury? You still think I'm going to turn myself over to the police?"

"No. I'm turning you in," she said simply.

Somewhere on the floor below them, she heard the sound of shattering glass.

"Oh, really? Are you going to pretend like you had a grand scheme now? Like you didn't just stumble from one thing to the next, pathetically searching for whatever lie would keep you unharmed?"

"I don't know if I'd say grand scheme," Sarah said. She took a few slow steps backward towards her old desk, and Jason matched her steps almost automatically. "But I've been against you from the day I met you. I made sure that Daredevil was able to wreck every plan you made. I made sure that Vanessa never trusted you. And I'm going to make sure that you and every other person in this place who hurt people gets what's coming to you. Just like McDermott. And just like Ronan."

Jason's face was twisted into a mask of fury, and when he spoke even his carefully calm tone was unable to cover the rage in his voice.

"A lofty goal, to be certain. But if you seriously think you're going to walk out of here alive, then maybe you really are the braindead secretary Ronan always swore you were," he snarled.

Sarah felt her lower back bump against her desk as she ran out of space to back up.

She looked Jason in the eye and gave a short shrug. "Then I guess you're the guy who let a braindead secretary trick him into ruining his whole life."

Jason lunged toward her and she flung herself to the side, dropping to her knees and scrambling underneath her desk for where she knew Donovan's gun had landed. It had skittered into the low space beneath the drawers, and she had to squeeze her arm in the small opening to reach for it.

Jason's laugh rang out throughout the hall.

"Are you going to hide underneath your desk like a frightened child?" he asked in a mocking tone. Sarah could hear his footsteps as he circled around the desk toward her, the leisurely pace of someone who knew the person they were after was no threat.

Her fingers closed around the handle of the gun, and she stumbled to her feet, pointing it directly at Jason.

He froze.

"Give me that remote," she bit out.

Jason slowly reached into his pocket and withdrew the tiny remote. Then with a feral grin, he flung it past her, into the shadows of the rest of the office floor, where it landed somewhere out of sight.

"Go fetch," he said.

Sarah scowled, then aimed the gun past Jason, toward the window at the end of the hall, and pulled the trigger. The sound and the recoil both took her by surprise, but she steadied herself and fired again. The window spidered and cracked, but didn't quite break. She pulled the trigger one more time, and the glass shattered and fell away, landing on the roof of the parking garage just below.

"Are you that bad at aiming or are you planning to jump?"

"You should have just left town, Jason," Sarah said, pointing the gun back at him again. "You didn't have to try to do more damage on your way out."

"But where's the fun in that?" Jason asked. "Damaging people is fun. You should know. Didn't you like snuffing Ronan's life out after everything he did to you?"

Her grip on the gun tightened. "No."

"No? Aren't you itching to try it again, right now?" he asked, his eyes gleaming. His desire to push her buttons seemed to be far outweighing his concern about beings shot. "What's wrong? Out of bullets?"

"No," she repeated, keeping the gun steadily trained on him. But in all honestly, it was possible. She had no clue how many bullets had been in the gun.

"No…you just can't do it, can you? You don't have it in you. You're weak."

Her eyes moved to the shadows behind him, where one shadow was rapidly growing closer than the others.

"I just don't want to hit the wrong guy," she said.

Jason's smug smile faltered, a faint crease of confusion forming between his brows. She could almost see the moment when he realized who she'd shot out the window pane for. He turned his head to look behind him, but it was too late.

Matt was on him, catching Jason's arm in his gloved hand and twisting it violently. Something crunched loudly, and Jason let out a scream of pain. He swung out wildly at the masked man in front of him, but there was no use. Matt jerked him around like a ragdoll, throwing Jason off balance before bringing his heavy boot down hard against his ankle. Another sickening crack shot through the air, mixing with another pained sound from Jason.

As entertaining as it would have been to let the Devil of Hell's Kitchen beat the shit of Jason for a while, Sarah knew they needed to leave. They'd come here for a reason, and this wasn't it.

All the same, she caught the way that Matt's lips curved into a hard, satisfied smile as he gripped Jason by the hair and slammed his head down against the desk. Jason slumped to the ground, unconscious, and Sarah couldn't help the similar rush of satisfaction that rushed through her. Just because this wasn't what they were here to do didn't mean it didn't feel good.

They didn't stay in the building long after that. Matt located the remote Jason had thrown while Sarah returned to Jason's office. She used a box cutter that Matt had handed her to release Vanessa's wrists from their zipties, but she left her ankles confined. No need to risk her running off before she could tell the police exactly who had just tried to kill her. Vanessa ripped the gag from her mouth and held her arms out for her son as Sarah picked him up and handed him over to her.

The two women locked eyes, but neither of them spoke. What was there to say? Threats? Apologies? Maybe Vanessa wanted to thank her for saving her life?

But there was nothing Sarah particularly wanted to hear from her right now; everything Vanessa said was always so carefully calculated that she couldn't buy any of it anyway. So she just left the room without a word.

Jason, surprisingly, was starting to stir as Matt ziptied him securely to Sarah's desk. She wondered if something about being evil gave him extra energy to keep coming back.

His gaze met hers, and despite the pain that must have been radiating through his broken bones, he managed to summon a look of furious disgust.

"You stupid bitch," he snarled. "You'll pay for this."

Matt and Sarah stood side by side, watching Jason struggle uselessly against his bindings.

"You just tried to kill Wilson Fisk's wife and son…and I'm the stupid one?" she said. She gave a faint, humorless laugh. "Good luck, Jason."

The two of them waited on the rooftop across from Orion to make sure the police showed up and found Vanessa. As soon as they reached the rooftop, Matt worked his gloves off and stepped closer to her. Her traced his fingertips over her face, down her neck, checking for injuries. Then he unzipped her hoodie and slid his hands up and under the back of her shirt, where the darts had left no mark.

She watched the relief on his face and wished she could feel the same. He had two large slashes in his shirt through which she could already see blood skin peaking through.

"Matt," she said in concern, reaching out to press her hand against his injured torso.

"It's fine."

"Is this the 'more fun' that you were talking about?" she asked as she inspected his wounds as best she could in the dark.

"It'll just need some stitches," he assured her. "You haven't forgotten how to do those, have you?"

She breathed out a laugh and shook her head. "Definitely not. We'll go to your place?"

"Yeah. And then we call Foggy and Karen. We have a lot to get done before tomorrow."

When Foggy got a call from Sarah late that night, he'd assumed (based on what he felt was valid precedent) that it was bad news. But Sarah had assured him that she and Matt were both safe, and that something big had gone down that was going to change their plans for her surrender tomorrow. Which was how he and Karen ended up meeting them at Matt's apartment in the middle of the night.

Matt always heard Foggy coming from a few flights away, and half the time he was at the door before Foggy knocked. At least these days, now that Foggy knew what he could do. So sure enough, the door swung open only seconds after he knocked—but it was Sarah who answered.

"The wanted criminal should not be answering the door," Foggy scolded.

"Sorry," Sarah said, stepping back to let them in. "Matt said 'Foggy and Karen are here,' not 'Foggy and the FBI.'"

In the living room, medical supplies littered the coffee table and a bloodstained hoodie was slung over one of the chairs. Matt was shirtless, slumped back against the couch, and Foggy's attention was snagged first by what appeared to be a freshly stitched up wound just below his collarbone, then by the hand towel Matt was clutching to his side, where Foggy assumed another fresh wound was the source of the blood he could see trickling out.

"I thought you said he was fine," Foggy said to Sarah.

"Well…I meant by Matt standards," she said as she returned to her spot next to Matt and picked up the nearby bottle of disinfectant and some cotton pads.

"So…alive?"

"Jesus, Matt," Karen breathed out as she trailed Foggy into the living room. Her eyes were glued to the injuries on Matt's torso, and Foggy couldn't blame her. It still disturbed him to see how battered his best friend got, but it was nothing compared to the first time he'd seen it. He knew from experience how hard it was to reconcile something like this with the suit-and-tie lawyer they'd both known. "What happened?"

"Uh…knives," Matt said, wincing slightly as Sarah gently peeled the towel away from his bleeding side. "It's not bad. Just a quick stitch up."

"Right. And…I guess you know how to do that,"" Karen surmised, her gaze moving to Sarah.

"I've gotten the hang of it," Sarah answered. Then she nodded to a small notebook and flash drive that sat on the other side of the coffee table, away from the mess of gauze and bandage wrappers. "Do you guys mind loading that flash drive onto your laptops while I finish this up?"

Foggy picked up the drive. "I'm guessing this is the big piece of breaking evidence you said we got. What's on it?"

"A bunch of clips from the security cameras in Jason's office," Sarah answered. "The first one should show that he's the one who murdered Officer McDermott."

"Seriously?" he said. He slipped his laptop out of its bag and opened it up. "That's a game changer."

"It's, um…it's pretty violent, from what I remember," she warned him quietly with a quick glance his way. "It might be upsetting to watch."

"Got it. Graphic content warning."

And graphic it was. Foggy wasn't sure what was more disturbing to see in the aftermath of Jason embedding the hammer into McDermott's throat: just how much blood could pour out of a human throat in a few mere seconds, or the way that McDermott managed to still muster up enough energy in his dying moments to swing that hammer at Sarah's head. On the video, Sarah reeled back just in time to only get clipped; one second later and she would probably have gotten a fractured skull.

Of course, Matt had told Foggy about all of this back when he'd asked him to help watch over Sarah in her concussed state. But actually seeing the murder and the subsequent attack on film was different. He had to imagine actually experiencing it had been far from pleasant.

There was a long stretch of video that was just Sarah slumped against the wall near the dead body, looking all but dead herself. Foggy looked up from the Sarah on the video to the Sarah in front of him now, and suddenly he realized maybe he should have turned the laptop screen away from her.

Sarah's hands had halted in place, hovering above the wound she'd been stitching, and she looked a little pale as she watched the screen. Then Foggy saw a familiar expression cross her face: it was the same look he saw Matt get when he was carefully tamping down some kind of traumatic memory. A hint of frustration seeped into Foggy's sympathy as he wondered if either of them would ever actually get some therapy or if they'd just balance each other's specific dysfunction indefinitely.

Sarah abruptly turned her attention back to stitching up Matt, whose focus was pinned on her, his brow knitted in concern. Foggy wasn't sure what physical cues he was picking up on, but they must have mirrored what had played across her face.

"Coming up is the bit that got sent to the police," she said.

Foggy turned his attention back to the laptop in time to see Sarah struggle to her feet, swaying heavily. She proceeded to pat the front of McDermott's blood-soaked jacket before pulling out his cell phone and smashing it with the hammer. And then, using the wheeled chair that McDermott's body was already slumped in, she slowly pulled him out of the room and out of frame.

"You can see why the NYPD isn't very happy with me," Sarah said quietly, keeping her focus on her stitching.

"Yeah, that is…certainly damning," Foggy said.

"But I think they'll be more unhappy with Jason once they see this," Karen said.

"Yeah. Putting aside how awful this footage is…the fact that we have it is going to be a huge help," Foggy said. "Well, that and the fact that Jason's already been arrested for what he did tonight."

"Yeah? It helps us?" Sarah asked with cautiously constrained hope, as though she didn't want to jinx it.

"Yes. Can you imagine the publicity for the DA's office? The same man who murdered an NYPD police officer also attempted to murder Wilson Fisk's wife and son? And your evidence is exactly what they need to get those charges to stick. That's so much better for you than trying to convince them to go out and arrest someone based on your word."

"Good," she said, sounding relieved. "That's good."

"Plus, now it puts the DA in the uncomfortable position of having to choose who they want to be the face of a very public prosecution. You: our media-friendly, somewhat innocent-looking friend," Foggy said, waving his hand at Sarah. "Or your certifiably psychotic boss who—let's be honest—is visibly scary as hell. All those scars on his face? What is he, a werewolf?"

"That was him," Sarah answered, nodding her head towards Matt as she inserted the needle through his skin. "He threw a guy through a windshield."

"Of course he did," Foggy acknowledged, unfazed. "Anyway, the DA will also be much more interested in the video you have from the fundraiser now if it means they can add a few more murder and attempted murder charges onto this pile of Christmas presents we're handing them. If needed, we can probably play dirty and bring up some of the shadier moves they've pulled, too—like Donovan being in charge of his own partner's murder investigation."

"Donovan was there tonight. He got arrested, too," Sarah said.

Foggy's face lit up. "A crooked cop getting busted on top of Jason's arrest? Everything's coming up Foggy. Honestly, if we play our cards right I think we can get you down to probation."

"Let's not jinx it."

Sarah was nearly finished with the stitches on Matt's side, which were surprisingly neat for how quickly she'd done them.

"You've gotten a lot better at this," Foggy noted as he peered over at her handiwork.

"I've had a lot of practice."

Foggy glanced over at Karen, who was watching them curiously.

"The first time Sarah and I ever had to help fix Matt up, he'd just gotten smushed beneath some scaffolding and was bleeding all over the place and she kind of looked like she'd get sick," he explained.

Foggy himself had also felt like he'd probably throw up at the sight of the open wounds littering Matt's skin, but who needed to bring that up?

"That wasn't because Matt was bleeding, it was because he was an asshole," Sarah said distractedly as she carefully tied off another stitch. Some of her hair was coming loose from her ponytail, and she impatiently tried to shake it away from her eyes.

"Hey, at least it's 'was' as in a past-tense asshole," Foggy offered his friend.

Matt raised his eyebrows with a half-smile as he moved Sarah's hair out of her face and hooked it over her ear.

"Better than the reviews I get from some other people," he said dryly.

Sarah gave a faint laugh as she carefully cleaned away the last of the dried blood from around the cut. "Okay. You're all set."

"Thanks."

The night stretched on. Matt changed into his sweats and Sarah changed out of the odd-looking tank top she'd been wearing. Multiple pots of coffee were made, and after a while Sarah ordered them food from a noodle house that she and Karen both liked.

Foggy and Matt busied themselves with poring over case precedents, statutes, sentencing guidelines—anything they could find that might help bolster a plea deal. The actual deal wouldn't happen tomorrow, but showing they had a strong case could help ensure Sarah would get bail.

While they did that, Karen and Sarah looked through the videos Sarah had been able to save to the drive. Most of it was innocuous, but there was one short clip that caught Foggy's attention: Judge Tucker, the one who had denied the Orion warrant, meeting with Jason. There was no sound to incriminate him, but the fact that he was meeting with Jason in an empty, under construction office was questionable enough that they could almost certainly use it as ammunition.

Sometime in the very early hours of the morning, after she and Karen had carefully cross-referenced every date, name, and location with the notes in the planner, Sarah leaned her head on Matt's shoulder to close her eyes, just for a minute.

Half an hour later, her eyes were still closed and her breathing had evened out into the slow, shallow pattern of sleep. Karen excused herself to the restroom, and the living room was quiet.

Sarah jerked lightly in her sleep, and Matt tilted his head, plucking his earbud from his ear as he observed her. But she didn't wake up.

"She must be tired," Foggy noted.

"Yeah. Sleeping on the floor of a cage for a few days will do that," Matt said, his focus still on Sarah. His jaw ticked.

The dark expression that flickered across his face was one that Foggy had seen hints of even before he'd known about Matt's Daredevil side; he'd never really known what to make of it back then. Now that he knew what that dark look was actually rooted in, seeing the occasional flash served as a sharp reminder of what his best friend was capable of, the violence that lingered deep inside him. It still jarred Foggy sometimes, even though he'd never really seen the violence up close. Grainy footage here or there, tales from cops and nurses.

Foggy's eyes fell to Sarah, who was more familiar with Matt's darker side than anyone, curled up against Matt's side with her head on his shoulder, fast asleep. The hand Matt wasn't using on his laptop was resting on her leg, his thumb idly moving back and forth as he focused back on his screen reader. It helped, in a strange way, to see them like this. There were still parts of Matt's life and choices that Foggy wasn't sure he'd ever be able to fully accept, but seeing the two of them gave him hope that some sort of balance was possible to sustain.

"Foggy," Matt's quiet voice broke through his thoughts.

"Yeah?"

"Tomorrow…don't forget your promise."

Foggy fixed Matt with a long look, then nodded. "I won't."

(The day before, Foggy had been surprised when Matt had turned up at the office not even half an hour after saying he was going to check on Sarah at Mahoney's place. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting Matt to say, but telling him that he'd overheard Brett telling Sarah about a deal wasn't it.

"He seems pretty certain the ADA is going to bring the offer up when she turns herself in," Matt finished.

Foggy leaned back in his chair, pushing away the brief he'd been notating and running a tired hand over his face. Why did the universe insist on throwing curveballs like these?

"Listen, Foggy…I need to ask you a favor, and you're not going to like it."

He dropped his hands from his face and gave Matt a warning look. "Please tell me you aren't going to ask me to try to keep them from offering the deal. I really can't. You know she's not going to take it, but ethically she has to know it's on the table."

"I know."

"Good," Foggy breathed out, his shoulders sagging in relief. That was a fight he really didn't want to have. "What, then?"

The pause that followed was long enough to make Foggy's wariness return.

"If Sarah decides to take the deal, promise me you'll help her," Matt said quietly.

Foggy raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Sorry, what?"

"If she takes it, I won't be in any position to be able to help her. You're her lawyer. You'll need to do it."

"Help her…send you to prison?"

"Help make sure no one else gets sent with me."

"Matt, what are you talking about? You know there's no chance Sarah would consider taking that deal."

"She wouldn't choose to, but she might have to," Matt argued. The restless energy he'd brought into the office was radiating from him as he started pacing the tiny room, hands on his hips. "You know full well how badly the negotiations are looking. What we have to bargain with right now isn't anywhere close to enough to keep her out of prison, and unless we can get a confession out of Jason then I don't see that changing. This might be her only shot. It's immunity, Foggy. That's never going to be on the table otherwise."

"Yeah, except it would end up with you locked up in a prison cell. And probably me, and Karen, and Claire. Aren't you usually the one giving me this speech? Don't you know how it goes by now?"

"That's what I'm saying. If she ends up having to take the deal, you can negotiate for all three of you to be included in that immunity. If they want the information badly enough, they'll take the deal. And I think they do want it badly."

"You can't be serious right now. Do you want her to turn you in?" Foggy asked incredulously.

"Of course I don't. I can't tell her to take that deal. Not with the target it would put on everyone's backs—including hers. Even with prison time off the table, having all of New York read about your connection to me in the newspaper would screw with everyone's lives," Matt said. He stopped pacing and turned back to Foggy. "But...I can't ask her not to take it, either. To give up what might be her only shot of getting out of this without a prison sentence that she doesn't deserve."

Foggy fidgeted with the pen in his hand as he took in the conflicted look on his friend's face. Of course he didn't want to see Sarah go to prison; but he didn't want to see Matt go, either. Whichever way it went, it could very likely end up with the one who went in getting killed.

"Is there a third option?" Foggy asked. "Where maybe…she runs?"

Matt shook his head with a rueful half-smile. "Somehow I don't see her taking that option."

To be honest, Foggy didn't either. Leaving her father behind, and leaving her friends knowing that they'd continue to be harassed and surveilled by the police for possibly harboring her…it wasn't likely.

"Okay," Foggy said finally. "If by some crazy chance she takes it…I'll help her. We can make sure a proposal is already drafted for if we need it. But she's not going to take it."

"Thank you. Because I need a second favor."

"Sorry, an immediate post-favor favor?" Foggy clarified.

"Sarah being Sarah, she's going to keep all this to herself. She figures if she has no plans to take it, there's no need to bring it up."

"Right. Normal, healthy behavior," Foggy said. "You want me to try to get her to talk to you about it?"

"No. I want her to not know that we know about this."

"So…let me get this straight. You know she'll keep it a secret from you, so you want to keep it a secret from her that you know she's keeping it a secret from you?"

"Exactly."

"You guys have such an interesting relationship, have I told you that?" Foggy asked, pointing his pen at Matt. "A couples therapist would drool at the thought of examining you two. They'd probably name some kind of new attachment disorder after you."

"Look, if I get involved it will only make things harder. She and I, we…don't have the best track record when it comes to this subject. Mostly me," Matt admitted with a humorless twist of his mouth. "Sarah only has a short window of time to decide what to do, and she doesn't need to waste it trying to justify her choice to me. So we'll leave it. And when the time comes that they make the offer, it'll be her decision. Just hers."

In the beat of silence that followed, Foggy watched his friend closely.

"Have you told her that you're in love with her yet?" he asked finally. Matt cocked his head in surprise at the question, but didn't answer. "It's just that if she finds out about this she's going to figure that out pretty quickly. So it might be kind of awkward if you never told her."

Matt blew out a long sigh. "It's what I'm on my way back to Mahoney's to do. If she still wants anything to do with me."

Foggy was very certain she would, and he couldn't understand how Matt didn't see that. It seemed the guy really was blind.

"Nice. Surrounded by all of Bess's porcelain cats watching you."

"No," he said with a tired laugh. "I have a place in mind."

Foggy leaned back in his chair, grinning despite the gloom of the situation they were all in. Even in a shitty situation, love was a pretty good way to get through it.

"I'm glad. Good luck, Murdock."

"Thanks, Foggy. For all of it," Matt added.)

That promise had felt so heavy at the time, and Foggy was unbelievably relieved that it seemed so much less likely to happen now. Now that they had a strong case, had things to actually bargain with. It wasn't a done deal, of course. Foggy was a good lawyer, but he wasn't magic, and whatever deal he and Matt managed to get for Sarah might still make immunity look pretty tempting. So a promise was a promise, and Foggy would go through with it if he had to. But somehow, looking at the two of them on the couch, he didn't think it would come to that.

Eventually, the night was finally starting to wrap up. Karen settled back into her chair, yawning as she picked her papers up. A short while later, Sarah woke from her sleep with a startled gasp.

"Hey. You're okay," Matt murmured, resting his hand on her arm.

She sat up and rubbed her hand over her eyes, looking frazzled. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"For what?" Foggy asked.

"How long was I asleep? You guys are here staying up all night to keep me out of prison and I'm just sleeping."

"You need sleep! We've had enough sleep. My schedule is overflowing with sleep. Too much, I'd say," Foggy said.

"Same," Karen agreed.

"And anyway, this is our job. It's why you pay us the big bucks," Foggy pointed out. "You…are paying us the big bucks, right?"

Sarah squinted at him sleepily.

"I bought you takeout?" she offered.

Foggy tilted his head in consideration. "We'll count it."

"You should go to bed," Matt said, nodding his head towards his room. "We're almost done with all this."

"No. No, I'm fine. What, um…what did I miss?" she asked. She blinked a few times and groggily reached for the now cold cup of coffee next to her.

"Not much. We were just about to talk about the plan for tomorrow," Foggy told her.

They walked her through that plan and what the process of her surrender would look like. Brett would pick Sarah and Foggy up at Matt's in the morning and make sure they got to the precinct safely. Since Matt wasn't going to be representing her in court, he would be close by in his Daredevil gear in case he was needed. Then it would be fairly standard: fingerprinting, mugshot, holding.

"Okay. So…kind of similar to the last time I got arrested," she surmised. "Except, like, not a surprise."

"That and hopefully you won't have to spend the night. We're bringing you in early so we can try to get your bail hearing done that day."

"Do you think they'll even give me bail?" she asked. "For something like this?"

"We're going to try. We'll hand over this video first thing so they stop thinking you killed a cop. And now that Jason's been arrested, we'll tell them you're willing to testify, so you should get some extra consideration as a cooperating witness. I think the fact that Officer Donovan was involved in the events of tonight shows that being in an NYPD building could pose a threat to your safety," Matt said.

"And there might be some extra restrictions. A curfew, or an ankle monitor," Foggy added.

Sarah's eyes widened, but she took a breath and nodded. "Okay. That's fine. If Lindsay Lohan can do it, I can do it."

"That's the spirit!" Foggy said. "And Karen's going to bring you something to wear tomorrow."

"We figured you didn't pack a court-friendly outfit when you guys were fleeing your apartment," Karen said.

Sarah gave a tired smile and shook her head. "No, I didn't. That'd be nice, thanks. Just something, you know…long sleeve, preferably."

She held up her arms, where various fingermark bruises littered her skin, mirroring the color of the vivid bruise on her face. The welts that the handcuffs had left on her wrists stood out like unsettling red bracelets.

Foggy exchanged an uncomfortable look with Karen. Sarah caught the look, and her brow furrowed.

"What?" she asked, looking from the two of them to Matt.

"Well, the thing is that when we present you to the judge at your bail hearing, we're going for a certain image. Think, uh…" Foggy shrugged uncomfortably, struggling to come up with a description that wouldn't offend her. "…ingenue?"

Sarah gave him a confused look. "Ingenue? I'm about to be twenty-seven. And…not starring in a Audrey Hepburn movie."

"Right, fair. I just mean that…you know, in a court of law you kind of want to project 'innocence'. That's pretty much across the board. And if we want the judge to get that impression of you, then…seeing the cuts and bruises will be helpful," Foggy said carefully.

Sarah's face fell as she realized what he was saying.

"Oh," she said quietly. "You don't mean ingenue. You mean victim."

"Our job is to tell your story in a way that will benefit you," Matt said.

"And my story is mostly just me getting the shit beat out of me by different people," Sarah said glumly.

"No, your story is that you're a good person who was forced into a bad situation. If we can emphasize the violence and the coercion, that will help convince the judge that you're innocent in this," Matt countered calmly.

"But I'm not innocent," she pointed out hesitantly. "Not like most of your clients. I did what they're accusing me of. I mean, it's right there on the video: I hid the body, and destroyed the evidence."

"We know," Foggy said "It's a complicated situation. But you're either going to come across to the judge as an innocent victim or as a hardened criminal. Those are kind of the only options right now. Vigilante-adjacent spy with a heart of gold is a harder sell."

"We can try presenting the real you to the judge if you want," Matt said casually, leaning back against the couch. "Tell them about you smashing a bathroom mirror into a guy's face. Stabbing someone with a letter opener. Punching a guy in an elevator so hard that he claims to have lost some vision in one eye."

Karen gave an approving nod as she stifled another yawn, stretching her arms out above her head. "My kind of woman."

"Uh—we won't be presenting any of that to the judge, for the record," Foggy interjected.

"Won a couple hand-to-hand fights with grown men. Hit someone with a fire extinguisher," Matt continued. "We could make a whole list."

Sarah rolled her eyes, but there was a small smile playing across her lips. An interesting thing to be cheered up by in Foggy's opinion, but Matt knew her better than he did.

"Maybe all that will help convince a judge to let you roam free on bail," Matt said. "What do you think, Fog?"

"I think that you were lucky to just get whacked across the face with a bottle opener, my friend," Foggy informed him, stifling his own yawn now as he struggled to his feet and rolled his stiff neck. "And we're sticking with my strategy, thanks."

"Agreed on both counts," Matt said.

Sarah seemed reassured, albeit not enthusiastically on board, but Foggy would take it. He gathered up some of the leftover takeout containers from the coffee and brought them into the kitchen to throw away.

When he returned, Sarah was helping to gather up some of his papers from the table. A second too late, he saw her pick up a stapled set of papers that he thought he'd kept in his briefcase.

"What is this?" she asked, her brow furrowed.

"That? That was just some prep work," Foggy said, reaching for the paper in her hand. The one the clearly spelled out the stipulations they would want on their end if Sarah agreed to take the deal and turn Matt in.

She stepped out of his reach, still studying the document. "Prep work for what?"

Foggy looked from Sarah to his best friend and back. "Uh…Matt?"

Matt paused putting away his laptop and Braille reader. He pressed his mouth into a resigned line, then sighed.

"For if you need to take that deal the DA is going to offer you," he explained calmly. "The one Brett told you about."

Sarah stared at him with a mix of surprise and confusion. Then her gaze moved to Foggy, then Karen, and she seemed to realize that everyone in the room other than her had already been aware of what was going on.

"Which now it seems like you won't have to," Foggy jumped in. "I think we can get you a pretty good deal without it. Not immunity, that's for sure, but I think we can avoid prison time. This was all before Jason got arrested and you got that footage. For a while it was looking like that might be your only bargaining chip."

"I wouldn't use Matt as a bargaining chip," Sarah said quietly, looking back down at the draft she was holding.

"Hey, I know that," Foggy said, holding his hands up. He plucked the papers from her hand, slipping them into his briefcase along with the rest before snapping it closed. "Matt's the one who wanted to have the deal drafted up. Take it up with him; Karen and I are going to head out."

As he spoke, he was already backing towards the front door. Karen, apparently picking up on the awkwardness of the situation, was right behind him.

"Are they going to get into another fight? Right now?" Karen whispered to him as they shut the front door. "That's crazy. This could potentially be their last night together if that plea deal doesn't go well."

"This is what they do. I wouldn't put it past them to get into a fight the night before their wedding someday," Foggy told her. "And guess whose job it will be to coerce both of their stubborn asses down the aisle?"

Karen's bright laugh echoed in the stairwell as they descended the stairs, leaving Matt and Sarah to deal with all of the secrets they both insisted on keeping.

In the living room, Matt's muscles ached as he perched on the arm of the couch. He was so exhausted that he could either have an argument or stand, but not both. Sarah, who was currently pacing around the space as she spoke, seemed to have no such issue. Maybe it had been the nap.

"I'm very confused," she said.

"I know."

"You knew about the deal this whole time? Since Brett told me about it?" she asked. He nodded. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Why didn't you?" he countered.

"I did," she insisted.

Matt's eyebrows went up. "I've had a few concussions here and there, but my memory still works. I'd know if we'd talked about that."

"On the fire escape, I said I had one more secret."

He gave an incredulous laugh. "Yeah, and that's all you said. In what world is saying you have a secret the same as telling me the actual secret?"

She spread her arms wide in exasperation. "In mine!"

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but Matt couldn't help laughing again at the ridiculousness of that, and the indignation in her tone only made it worse.

"Yeah, alright," he said, scrubbing his hands across his face. "Makes sense."

"I didn't bring it up because I didn't want to start a fight when we'd only just figured things out. There was no point when I was never going to take the deal. It was never a question. But…you and Foggy wrote that whole deal out. So did you assume I would take it?" she asked. "That I'd throw you under the bus to save myself?"

The faint smile that had lingered on his face fell at the hurt in her voice.

"Hey, stop," he said softly, reaching out to catch her by the waist as the path of her pacing brought her within his reach. He gently spun her around to face him and she let him pull her in closer to him. "No. No, it was nothing like that. It was just a…contingency plan. For if you didn't have any other options. Because it was looking like you wouldn't."

"I didn't say I wouldn't take it unless I had no other option. I said I wouldn't take it, period. And that's what I meant," she said, with no waver of uncertainty in her voice or her heartbeat. "But if you were going to go to all that work of figuring out a plan, why keep it to yourself? I mean, historically, you've…kind of had a lot to say about this subject."

That was a diplomatic way of putting it, he supposed.

"The decision needed to be yours," he said quietly. "It still is. I trust you."

Sarah watched him for a long moment, then she shook her head before she leaned in and kissed him, hard. He welcomed this sudden turn in what had seemed like a brewing fight, and was disappointed when she broke the kiss a few moments later.

"I appreciate you giving me some space to choose, Matt. I really do," she said softly. "But I'm not choosing anything over you."

Her words elicited a mixed response: on the one hand, he'd rather she put her own safety at the top of things she'd choose. On the other hand, he knew he'd do the same for her, so he couldn't really justify being frustrated with her.

He swallowed and nodded.

"Then let's hope everything goes the way we want it to tomorrow," he said. "Because I'll break you out and bring you on the run before I let you go to prison."

She gave a skeptical laugh at that.

"Go on the run? Where would we even go?"

He tilted his head thoughtfully. "That cabin you talked about sounded nice. On the lake."

A slow smile spread across her lips, and she shook her head. "If we end up at that lake, I'd rather it be because we won. And all of this is behind us."

The corner of Matt's mouth tilted up. He liked that idea.

"Deal."

He pushed her hair out of her face, then lightly ran the back of his hand down her cheek. Sarah wove her fingers through his and turned her head into his touch, sweeping her lips across the bruises that littered his knuckles.

It still threw him sometimes; the easy tenderness she was willing to extend to the worst, darkest parts of him. It felt like being with her was the only time the two sides of his life could coexist without painfully crashing up against each other. Somehow she managed to pull all the jagged fragments of his personality together and make him into something resembling a cohesive person.

He lifted his other hand to frame both sides of her face and kissed her deeply, feeling the tension leave her body as she leaned into him, sliding her hands over his shoulders to the back of his neck. He loved her like this, how she was when she was just with him. No flinching, no hiding. No floating away to somewhere else. Just her racing heartbeat and her skin heating up beneath his touch as he slowly towed her from the living room to his bedroom.

They had only hours before they would need to be at the police station; the responsible thing to do would be to let their sleep-deprived minds and bodies get some rest. But responsible thoughts were far from Matt's mind as he pressed her down into his sheets, intent on replacing the scent of her that he'd tried so hard to wash away when she was gone. And from the way she twisted her body underneath him, her fingers curling against his waistband and her mouth pressing to the hollow at the base of his neck, sleep was the last thing on her mind, too.

Everything had been so rushed the first time. But tonight, Matt enjoyed taking his time, taking careful note of everything he planned to explore more when this was all over: the spots that earned him that stuttering intake of breath he loved getting from her, like the shell of her ear, or—as he was delighted to be currently discovering—the space just an inch below her belly button. That the skin on the inside of her thighs was as soft as the inside of her wrist, and that the brush of his unshaved facial hair there made her cover her face with both hands until he gently pulled them away.

He'd always liked winding her up, and now he was very much enjoying unwinding her again, and he wouldn't have traded one second of it for sleep.

Later, in the few short hours of quiet before the inevitable chaos of the days ahead of them, Matt still laid awake.

He listened to the slow pattern of Sarah's breathing as she slept against his chest, her arm stretched across his stomach and her tousled hair tickling against the bottom of his chin. He traced lazy circles against the bare skin at the small of her back, and thought again about how she'd laughed earlier when he'd talked about going on the run with her. She'd thought he was joking, and maybe he had been at the time, but he knew in this moment that it had been true. If it had come down to that, he'd have done it. Gone on the run with her, gone to prison for her—whatever it took. There really wasn't much he wouldn't do to keep this. And he'd make damn sure that they made it to that lake someday.

The last long hour leading up to Sarah turning herself in was more difficult than the surrender itself, in a way.

Her nerves were the worst they'd been in ages, and even though Matt was so skilled at hiding what he was feeling, she could tell he was nervous too from the way he wouldn't stand still. She stared distantly at the flashing billboard outside his window as she listened to the sound of his heavy combat boots pacing the living room.

Neither of them seemed to know what to say to each other that didn't feel like a goodbye, so they didn't say much until Foggy arrived to accompany Sarah to the courthouse, where Karen was already waiting and keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

"Brett's on his way. He's making sure only officers he trusts will be handling the booking and the holding," Foggy reassured her for the tenth time. "No loose cannons."

"And I'll be right nearby," Matt said. He was dressed in his Daredevil clothes, mask in hand. Even though Sarah wished he could be representing her alongside Foggy, she couldn't helping thinking that for this part she was glad to have this side of him looking out for her instead. "I know these buildings, alright? If something happens, I can be inside in seconds."

Sarah let out a shaky breath.

"Okay," she said, nodding. "I'm ready."

There was a long beat of silence as the three of them stood in Matt's living room. Sarah's gaze was on Matt, and Foggy looked between them before letting out an awkward cough.

"Well…I'm going to use the little boy's room before we head out," he said, backing out of the living room.

Even after he'd left them alone, Sarah wasn't sure what to say.

"You're scared," Matt said quietly, breaking the silence.

Sarah almost laughed at that. Scared was pretty much her baseline these days, it seemed.

"Why would I be?" she forced out. "This will be fun."

"Foggy and I are going to make sure you get through this safely," Matt said. He brought a hand to her face, brushing the pad of his thumb across her cheek. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you in there. Trust me."

Trust me.

In the restless hours leading up to this, Sarah hadn't been able to stop thinking back to the night they'd first met. Sitting in her living room across from a masked vigilante who she knew almost nothing about, save for the fact that he was violent, and that by stumbling upon his identity she'd just secured herself a spot near the top of his enemies list. Making a deal with a man like that had been reckless and irrational, a dangerous attempt by two deeply distrusting people to tackle something that required immeasurable trust.

And now here they were, at the finish line. And that same dangerous man she'd forced herself to make a deal with had saved her in every way possible. Her life, her heart, her hope. And he'd given her the chance to save him a few times, too, which was something she'd never really known she was capable of doing.

She leaned up on her toes and kissed him before circling her arms around his neck in a tight hug.

"Trusting you is the only smart thing I've ever done in my life," she whispered in his ear.

In response, she felt Matt's arm wrap around her waist, holding her tight to him as his other hand held the nape of her neck, his fingers weaving into her hair.

Sarah unwound her arms from around him when she heard the bathroom door open, and Foggy returned to the room.

"Alright," Foggy said, shouldering his laptop bag and giving her an encouraging smile. "Should we go give the people what they want?"

Sarah nodded. "Let's go."

Matt squeezed her hand before letting go and pulling down his mask. "I'll talk to you soon, sweetheart."

"Talk to you soon," she echoed.

She looked at Foggy, who appeared delighted by this exchange.

"I'll catch up with you later too, muffin," he said, clapping a hand on Matt's shoulder. "Let's go."

The surrender went smoothly, to her eternal relief. Brett escorted her and Foggy to the precinct, while Matt followed them from somewhere high above. She wished she could spot him, but knew it was probably better that she couldn't.

The initial process was the same as the last time she'd been arrested: fingerprints, unflattering mugshot, and then put into a jail cell to await arraignment. As a cooperating witness, she was put in a cell by herself this time, which was a nice change from the crowded communal cell last time. No one with Tweety Bird tattoos asking about her neck scar, at least.

Everything after the booking went very differently from last time, however. It was early in the morning and they'd been expecting her, so there was no overnight wait to hear her charges. The arraignment came after only a few hours of sitting in her cell, counting cracks in the wall and trying to keep herself calm. Matt and Foggy had seemed optimistic, she reminded herself. And she trusted them.

It was something she continued to remind of herself of as she stood with her heart pounding next to Foggy in the courtroom, the judge in front of them and the ADA at the table across the aisle. Because of the high profile nature of the situation—with both Vanessa Fisk and the murdered NYPD officer being major points of interest to the citizens of Hell's Kitchen—they had at least scheduled her arraignment separate from the rest of the docket, so that she didn't have a crowd of people sitting behind her.

But that hadn't stopped what seemed like half of the NYPD from being in the courthouse building that morning, and she'd been able to feel each one of their stares pressing down on her as she'd been escorted into the courtroom. Once inside, she was so focused on keeping herself from having a panic attack that she honestly zoned in and out of the conversation a bit.

"Your Honor, due to the serious nature of the charges, the prosecution would like to request Ms. Corrigan be remanded without bail," she heard the ADA—whose name she thought was Nash—say.

Her heart raced at that, despite having been warned by both Matt and Foggy that it the prosecution would likely request just that.

"My client isn't a flight risk, Your Honor. She willingly surrendered herself to police custody. She has a network of friends and family keeping her here in New York, where she's lived her entire life," Foggy said, speaking in light, almost agreeable manner, like his argument was so sensible that no one could possibly disagree. It was different from Matt's more cutthroat manner of deconstructing his opponent, but Sarah guessed that was why the two of them worked well together. "And if that's not enough, I would like to remind the court that my client has no money to spend on skipping town. I even had to pay for the cab ride to the precinct."

Sarah wasn't sure if that last part was entirely necessary to mention, but it seemed to do the trick. The judge was watching her thoughtfully, and as Sarah saw her eyes follow the path of cuts and bruises on her skin, she realized that Matt and Foggy had maybe been right to go with the victim story, as much as she hated it.

"The defendant is being charged with offenses related to the murder of an NYPD officer, Your Honor." Mr. Nash protested.

"A murder which would have gone unsolved had my client not agreed to hand over evidence of the actual perpetrator," Foggy countered. "And furthermore, I'd like to point out that the late Officer McDermott's partner, Officer Donovan, was just arrested for a whole slew of charges last night, including conspiracy to commit murder. The police department is actively conducting an investigation into whether other officers were involved in his activities, and until that gets resolved I think it's clearly not safe for Ms. Corrigan to be in police custody."

"I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Nelson," the judge said after a few moments thought. Her gaze was stern over the rim of her glasses as she surveyed Sarah and Foggy. "But the fact is that the bail must reflect the severity of the crime, and as such the bail conditions are as follows…"

When the judge read out the bail amount, it was more money than Sarah had ever had in her possession in her life, and she suddenly felt even more panicked. So much so that she nearly missed the second half of the bail conditions.

"…furthermore, the defendant is not to associate with anyone involved in the ongoing investigation into Officer McDermott's murder, including any of her former colleagues at Orion. In order to ensure that, Ms. Corrigan, you will be required to wear an ankle monitor and abide by a strict curfew until your lawyers have finalized the terms of your plea deal with the prosecution."

The judge dismissed them and got up from her seat to leave the chamber, and Sarah turned to Foggy.

"I can't afford that bail. Even if I found a bail bondsman, they still need ten percent of the bail, don't they? I don't have anything close to that," she whispered to him.

"Yeah, I've noticed," Foggy whispered back. "Matt said it's taken care of."

Sarah looked at him like he'd lost his mind.

"What? I've seen Matt's suits. He doesn't have that kind of money, either!" she hissed.

"No, but your friends do. They made some agreement with Matt to basically pay for it behind your back since they knew you wouldn't say yes. So all you have to do is sit back and wait for them to get everything figured out with the bail bondsman, " Foggy said.

Sarah blinked. Yes, Lauren and Greg had more money than her—significantly more, in fact. But there was no way she could let them pay that kind of amount. She opened her mouth to argue but Foggy caught sight of her expression and put his hands up.

"It's out of my hands! If you're looking for someone to yell at, I just gave you a list of three people. Matt, Lauren, Greg," Foggy said, ticking each name off on his fingers. "But Foggy Nelson ain't on that list."

Sarah sighed. "Fine. I'll yell at them instead."

But to be honest, she knew she wouldn't. She'd been fighting enough people, physically or otherwise. Between that and whatever battles the future undoubtedly had in store for her, she didn't really have any energy left in her to fight the people who loved her anymore.

A few weeks later

Eventually, the plea bargain was ready to be finalized. If Sarah had asked her younger self if she'd be happy to only have one felony on her record and sentence of three years' probation, she would have thought she was crazy.

In the end, all of the NYPD's underhanded tactics and corrupt officials did end up working out in Sarah's favor. Unable to represent Sarah in the actual courtroom, Matt had found ways for his other half to help: by tracking down anyone involved with the case who was on the take with Orion, starting with Judge Tucker. The resulting exposure of the last few judges, cops, and prosecutors with ties to Orion was an embarrassment to the DA'S office, and they were suddenly much more open to the deal terms negotiated by Foggy, who delighted in pointing out how they would come across to the public if Sarah ever took her full story to the news.

Sarah had just signed the official paperwork for her deal, meaning she was officially no longer on bail. She had her passport back and was free of her ankle monitor and curfew—although her probation still came with some fairly strict rules. Just lowering the sentence from prison time to probation had been considered extreme leniency, and they made it clear that it was contingent on her testimony resulting in a conviction for Jason.

With the severity of the crimes Jason was being charged with—namely the murder of Officer McDermott, the attempted murder of Vanessa Fisk, and orchestrating the attack on the fundraiser that had resulted in the deaths of multiple people—his trials were likely going to be almost a year out.

Until then, Sarah had a long list of restrictions to comply with: she had to find and hold a new job, pay a truly unfathomable amount of fines that luckily she could use a repayment plan for, and pay further restitution in the form of many hours of community service. In between all of these things, she would have regular check-ins twice a month with the probation officer she would soon be getting assigned. There would be no leaving the state without permission; no committing crimes of any scale, down to the tiniest littering offense; and especially no fraternizing with any known criminals…including, she assumed, vigilantes.

Said vigilante was currently sitting in front of her, smiling at her from across the small café table they were eating at.

For the first time, they didn't have to hide away in a booth in the back of a diner, didn't have to be on alert for anyone watching them. They could eat dinner a table right next to the sidewalk if they wanted to, with all the people of New York passing them by.

So they did.

"…no prison time, and no more curfew," Matt listed off as they recapped the terms of her plea deal. "Not bad."

"And no ankle monitor," she added, tilting her head back in relief. Foggy had really had to fight for that one. "That would have put a major damper on my social life."

"They certainly would have been curious to know why you spend so much time running around rooftops and alleyways in the middle of the night."

Sarah laughed and shook her head, picking a fry off his plate.

"I mean, I know it's not a fix-all," she admitted. "I still have to find a job that will hire someone on probation. And a good chunk of the NYPD still isn't crazy about me."

"They don't love me either," Matt said dryly.

"And I have a bazillion dollars in fines to pay, and about half my life is going to be community service. And Jason's trials are probably going to be the most stressful thing ever," she continued listing. "But…I don't know. I feel good anyway."

"Me too," he said softly.

"And I like this. Being able to go out in public with you. We could even go out on real dates, instead of just making out in your kitchen."

"I was a big fan of that date," Matt argued. "But if you didn't like it we can always make this our official first date, instead."

"Here?" she said, glancing up at the cheap café they'd picked mostly for being close to the courthouse.

"Yeah. What, is this…is this place not fancy?" he asked in mock confusion.

Sarah laughed and shook her head.

"Fancy enough for me," she said. She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand, watching him. "But if this is a first date, I think we're supposed to spend it getting to know each other."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm. You know, all the things we would have covered if we'd met like normal people. Jobs, families, hobbies."

"I don't know if my main hobby is great first date talk."

"Fair enough," she allowed with a laugh. "What do you do for a living, Mr. Murdock?"

The corner of his mouth tilted up as he dutifully played along. "I'm a lawyer. Defense attorney."

"A lawyer," she echoed interestedly. "You must be very rich."

"Filthy rich," he said seriously, and Sarah laughed. "And what do you do?"

"Uh...I'm a New York cliché. Unemployed musician."

"Sounds low stress, at least," he said. "You have any pets?"

"I have a mouse. You?"

"No. But my friends keep trying to convince me to get a dog."

After a little while of this back and forth, Matt leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.

"One more question...do you ever go home with someone on the first date?"

She tilted her head in thought. "Depends on how charming you are."

"I've gotten mixed reviews. Sometimes from the same person."

Sarah laughed again, then leaned across the small table and kissed him, feeling his lips curve into a mirrored smile against her own. She thought she heard a passerby groan at the public display of affection, and normally she'd honestly be on their side. But today she didn't care. She just wanted to kiss him, out in the open. No hiding, no one watching them.

Although, as it turns out, there was still one person watching them.

As they broke apart, Sarah became aware of a man walking towards them. Unassuming, clean cut, wearing a nice business suit. She figured he'd continue walking by, but instead he stopped next to their table, and she looked up at him warily.

"Ms. Corrigan?" he asked. Without waiting for her to answer, he set an open flip phone down on the table. "You have a phone call."

She blinked down at the phone, then looked back up, but the man had already briskly walked away and disappeared into the crowd. She looked at Matt, whose furrowed brow suggested he was no less suspicious of the phone than she was.

Hesitantly, she picked up the flip phone and brought it to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Ms. Corrigan."

The sound of Wilson Fisk's voice on the other end of the line made her heart drop, and her eyes shot to Matt's face, which had instantly clouded over. He quietly moved his chair around the small table, closer to hers.

"You've had quite the busy few weeks. I've been kept apprised of your situation. The information that you've been offering up about various employees of Jason's."

"Of Jason's?" she repeated warily. Her gaze flicked over Matt's face, studying the apprehensive expression that she was sure must be mirrored on her own.

"Yes. Jason's. It seems the picture is coming together clearly that he was controlling the company's less-savory operations without input from myself or Vanessa. So I'd call them his employees. Wouldn't you agree?"

Sarah was silent. It was true that every employee swore they had no connection to either of the Fisk's, only to Jason, leaving nothing to implicate them. She'd figured Fisk had orchestrated that on purpose, but she wasn't sure why he was talking to her about it now.

"My understanding is that you will be the star witness at our friend Jason's trial when the time comes," Fisk continued when she didn't respond.

The crease between Matt's brow deepened. He shook his head, and she had to agree. What, was Fisk calling to try to give her instruction on what he wanted her testimony to be? Or was he just hoping she'd blab about what her testimony would be so that it might become inadmissible?

"I'm not really supposed to talk about that."

"Of course. Of course. Rules are rules. I respect that," Fisk said. Sarah couldn't help raising her eyebrows at that. "But I wanted to express to you how pleased I will be to see Jason go to prison. The man who destroyed one of my companies. The man who tried to kill my wife and child. In my mind…the buck stops with him," Fisk said, speaking slowly and emphasizing his last few works.

"…I see."

"I have, of course, been made fully aware of the events that took place at Orion that night. I know that you were there. With the man in black," Fisk said. Sarah's heart pounded, and underneath the table the man in question rested his hand on her leg. "Only a few days after he helped you burn down one of my business hubs, at that." It was strange in her opinion to call an old nightclub full of drugs, guns and hostages a business hub, but Sarah kept her mouth shut. "I will admit that I thought Jason was paranoid to say you'd been working with the devil the entire time. I suppose that hubris will be a lesson for me moving forward."

She wished he would get to his point; the dancing around it he was doing was making her nervous, like he was trying to trap her.

"I think I have to go soon, so if there's a threat or something coming…"

"You're much braver over the phone than you were in the jail, Ms. Corrigan."

Sarah bit the inside of her cheek to keep from replying. He wasn't wrong, exactly; it was much easier to act brave when she wasn't trapped in a tiny cell with someone who seemed to be made out of a mountain and liked to beat people to death. But did he call just to make fun of her or what?

After a beat, he continued.

"Vanessa also told me that you kept her and my son alive."

"…yes."

"Then it seems I owe you a debt. And I don't like to owe debts. It's poor business practice. So…consider both your father's debts to Orion and your own settled. I have no intention of retaliating against either of you."

Sarah's eyes widened, and she looked at Matt to see his reaction. He looked as caught off guard as she was. As she looked at him, she became suspicious of Fisk's wording.

"My dad and myself…what about everyone else I care about?" she asked. She thought of Lauren, and Greg, and especially the man beside her.

Fisk laughed, and Sarah decided she very much didn't like the sound.

"If you're referring to your dinner date, I can't make any promises about Mr. Murdock. But if he and I do clash again, it will be because he insists on crossing my path at every opportunity. Not because of you."

After Sarah hung up the phone, there was a long beat of silence. She couldn't quite figure out what had just happened.

"Do you think he meant that?" she asked Matt. "Or is he just trying to get us to let our guard down?"

He tilted his head. "Fisk…does love Vanessa. I think she's the only thing in this world he cares about other than power. And now his son. If I had to guess…I think he meant it."

Sarah nodded. "And what he said at the end? About the two of you crossing paths?"

"It seems likely," Matt admitted. "But hopefully not for a while. It'd be nice to have a little bit of normal, even just for a little while."

As nice as dinner had been, the knowledge that one of Fisk's cronies had been watching them had put a damper on both of their appetites, and they left the restaurant soon after.

The streetlights were just flickering on, marking that the sun was almost down as they walked back to Sarah's place, her fingers intertwined with Matt's, his folded-up cane hanging loosely at his side. As they approached her building, Matt slowed down and tilted his head.

"Mrs. Benedict is in your lobby," he warned her. Her paused and listened. "I think she's had one of your neighbors trapped in conversation for a while now."

"Oh no," Sarah groaned, tugging at this hand to redirect them away from the lobby door. "Well, rest in peace to that poor soul but I can't deal with Mrs. B today. We'll sneak in the back."

"What, you don't want to hear about her granddaughter's wedding plans?"

"Definitely not," she said laughingly as he let her pull him back down the sidewalk and toward the sneakier route through the alleyway that snaked down the side of her building and around the back.

In the alley, Matt used their linked hands to spin her around to face him. His hands fell to her waist, lazily backing her up through the alley, and she looped her arms around his neck, letting him steer her with no worry of stumbling over anything.

"You know, we should probably thank Mrs. B at some point," Sarah suggested. "Have her over to my place for dinner or something. She did introduce us, after all."

"She did," Matt agreed. He tilted his head in thought. "Maybe it'd be best if I cooked the dinner, though."

"Shut up," she groaned.

"I'm just saying—"

"—you're saying that I'm a bad cook, which is slander and a lawyer should know better—"

"—I'm saying that Mrs. Benedict introduced me to the best thing that's ever happened to me," Matt continued, but his sweet smile had an edge of smirk to it. "So I'd like to not serve her a pile of your best homemade ashes for dinner."

Sarah laughed and started to shove him away, but his hands tightened on her waist as he pulled her back against him and kissed her.

"You're such a dick," she murmured against his mouth.

She felt her back bump against the brick wall next to the back door, and Matt's mouth on hers cut off any more complaints on her end.

"We'll invite her over," he agreed. "But not tonight."

"No. Not tonight."

The sun was fully down now. The night shadows crept in, surrounding the two of them like a familiar blanket as everything around them grew muted, leaving them with no world to focus on but each other.

The End.