Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A warehouse, dark and silent.

Karen tried to look around as she exited the bus with the other prisoners, tried to get some sense of where they were, but she was hustled inside before she managed to see much.

They were herded into a freight elevator, their captors squeezing in after them, the arrogant red-haired woman at the front.

The elevator shuddered upward. Every sense alert, suppressing her fear as well as she could, Karen counted how many floors they ascended as her heart pounded in her ears. Too many for any possibility of escape through a window.

Out of the elevator, into an empty room. Anonymous, black-clad figures guarded them, keeping them huddled together on the floor, away from the doors she could see off to one side.

And then, the sound of police sirens! Karen exchanged a glance with the man beside her, hope rising. He hadn’t wanted to turn on his ankle monitor, which would reveal that he had left house arrest—but she had persuaded him that the police were preferable to…whoever these people were.

The red-haired woman swore, snapped out something in Japanese, and she and some of the guards left the room.

How well-armed were they? Would the police be able to get inside? She barely had time to wonder before there was a more immediate problem—one of the guards had noticed the ankle monitor!

The man was seized, his captors shouting in Japanese, while he protested, “It’s nothing, it’s nothing! It’s a family heirloom! It’s nothing!” Karen stayed by his side, shouting back, hardly knowing what she was saying, desperate to avert another killing.

One of them drew a knife, but rather than stabbing, he reached toward the man’s ankle, and Karen realized with horror just how they intended to remove the monitor—

CRASH!

A window shattered, and two figures burst in. The kidnappers dropped the man at once, turning to face the newcomers as they attacked, and Karen’s hope revived as she saw that one of them was Daredevil!

The other was a dark-haired woman, her face below the eyes covered by a mask. Who was she? Karen wondered. Since when did Daredevil have a partner?

Whoever she was, she fought like a fury, taking down her opponents with violent efficiency. The fight was swift and brutal, men dropping one by one as the pair hurtled through the room.

As they fought, Daredevil shouted to the hostages: “Out the door, take a right! Go!”

The others fled through the door, but Karen hung back, watching breathlessly. She hadn’t seen Daredevil this close since the night he had saved her life, all those months ago. Not that he would remember her—why should he? But she felt compelled to stay, torn between fascination and anxiety for his safety against so many opponents.

But she needn’t have worried. More quickly than she had thought possible, it was over, and the armor-clad figure was still on his feet. And he had noticed her standing there, he came toward her with a knife in his hand while the woman rapidly dealt with the last guard and darted out the door.

He seized Karen’s wrists, and cut the zip tie that bound her. She stared into the red eyes of his mask, questions whirling through her mind, unable to articulate a single one, and then she caught her breath in surprise as he reached up to gently touch her cheek.

“You’re okay?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, warmed and confused by his unexpected concern. Maybe he did remember her, after all? “Better, now,” she answered, feeling a little shiver as his hand brushed down her shoulder.

Before she could say any more, the woman returned and strode over to them, barely breathing hard, her dark eyes bright.

She tugged down her face covering, and Karen froze where she stood, her eyes riveted on the face revealed.

“No guards on the stairs,” she told Daredevil. “The others are all on their way down. Happy?”

Her tone was light and mocking, but Karen barely heard her. Her last sight of this woman had been brief, but it was seared into her memory. This was the woman she had seen in Matt’s apartment—in Matt’s bed!

“You!” she gasped.

Daredevil started, taking a swift step back, away from her.

“Me,” the woman agreed, giving Karen a sharp-edged smile.

Karen’s head spun. How could she be here? What was Matt’s—whatever she was—doing fighting alongside Dare—

Her eyes widened.

No.

No, that was impossible—

She whipped around to stare at Daredevil, who stood silent and unmoving, his head down, his face turned away from her.

Suspicions fully aroused by his evasion, she closed the distance he had put between them and grabbed his chin, turning his face so she could see it clearly.

He still said nothing, his lips pressed together in a stubborn line. But she had seen that expression, that particular determined set of his jaw, too many times to mistake it now. Her eyes raked over the dark stubble, the red lips, her ears ringing slightly as she tried to process this new shock.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

He sighed, short and sharp, and reached up to remove her hand from his chin.

“You need to get out of here,” he said urgently. (It really was true, that was Matt’s voice—) “You’re not safe here.”

“But—”

“Just go, Karen. Please!” He cocked his head, listening, the gesture at once utterly familiar, and completely disorienting in this new context.

“There’s more of them?” she questioned, her heart hammering. “Will they let us—me and the others—leave?”

“You’ve served your purpose,” the woman answered coolly. “They have no more use for the bait, now that we have walked into the trap.” She slanted a look at Da—at Matt that Karen couldn’t interpret, and then Matt was taking Karen by the arm, turning her toward the door.

“You’ll be safe outside,” he said. “Now go!”

She turned back in the doorway—she couldn’t just leave—but she saw more silent figures slipping into the room, and fled.

Her thoughts were in turmoil as she clattered down the stairs. How could Matt Murdock possibly be Daredevil? All this time—for as long as she had known him—how?

And then she felt her anger rise. How many lies had he told her in the last year, to keep it hidden from her?

But she couldn’t help worrying, despite the anger. She had seen blood on his suit. Was he hurt? Was he going to be all right? How many more of the kidnappers were there? Could he and that woman defeat them all?

There was a crash above her, and she moved faster, catching up with the last of the hostages as they reached the exit.

As they spilled out into the night, she saw a cluster of police cars in the street ahead, and heard a voice calling, “Get EMS on scene, now! These people are in shock, get them out of here and get them help! Move!” Squinting against the bright lights ahead of her, she saw the welcome sight of Brett Mahoney.

“Brett?” she called.

“Page?” he replied, coming to meet her. He took her arm and led her to the bank of squad cars. “Any shitstorm you’re not a part of?” he asked rhetorically. “What’s going on up there?”

“These people are being used as bait,” she told him. “There’s some kind of weird cult up there, and they want Daredevil!”

Should she tell Brett the truth? No, she decided swiftly. Brett was a cop. If he knew Daredevil’s identity, he would have to act on the knowledge. Whatever Matt had done, whatever mistakes he had made, turning him in to the police was out of the question.

Brett had already turned away, and was calling for lights to be trained on the roof. Karen watched anxiously, until she heard a familiar voice calling her name from beyond the knot of police cars.

“Foggy?” she called back, as he made his way to her side. “What are you doing here?”

“Jesus.” He looked around, taking in the scene. “Brett said there was shit going down, but he didn’t say this.”

Karen gulped. She hadn’t told Brett, but surely Foggy had a right to know. “Foggy—”

“I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Foggy,” she repeated urgently, gripping his arm and leading him away, out of earshot of the police.

“Karen? What is it? What’s going on up there?”

“Matt is up there!” she hissed, barely above a whisper.

Foggy stared at her. “…What?” he said quietly.

“I know, it sounds crazy, but just listen. Foggy, Matt is…is Daredevil.”

Foggy’s eyes widened. “He told you?”

Now it was Karen’s turn to stare. “You knew?” she demanded, louder than she had intended. She glanced around and lowered her voice. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?”

“I wanted to,” he said earnestly. “I promise you, I wanted to. I told him you have a right to know. But he begged me not to, and…” He sighed. “It’s not my secret to tell, Karen. I’m sorry.”

It was almost more than she could bear, after everything else she had suffered tonight. Matt lying to her was one thing—as much as it hurt, she had long suspected that he was hiding something, so at least she had the cold comfort of knowing she had been right.

But Foggy? She closed her eyes against a sudden swell of tears, and took refuge in anger as she had so often lately.

“So all this time, for the last year, you’ve both been lying to me?” she demanded, blinking back the tears and glaring at him.

“No!” he protested. “I mean…shit. Yes, ever since I found out the truth. But I didn’t know at first, any more than you did. He lied to both of us.”

Her feeling of betrayal eased a little.

“He’d probably still be lying to me,” Foggy went on, “If I hadn’t gone to his place one night and found him unconscious on the floor in his black pajamas.”

“His black pajam—oh.” She frowned. That meant it was before Daredevil had started wearing body armor—months ago. How long had Foggy been lying to her?

“When?” she asked, still frowning.

“It was back when we were going after Wilson Fisk,” he answered. “You remember that day neither of us came in to work, and I told you Matt was in a car accident?”

“Oh, I knew that was bullshit!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, well, it was the best thing I could come up with. I was freaking out, I was actually in the middle of yelling at him when you called.”

“So that’s what you were fighting about,” she said. “When neither of you would tell me what was going on!”

He nodded. “I hated lying to you, I really did. For what it’s worth, I told him he should tell you the truth. I’m glad he finally listened.”

“He didn’t,” she corrected him shortly. “I figured it out for myself. There’s a woman up there with him, the same one I saw in his apartment.” She glanced up at the roof as she spoke, her earlier concern returning. What was happening up there?

“Elektra?” asked Foggy incredulously, looking up too. “She’s up there? What, like, fighting?”

“You know her?” Karen asked sharply. God, what else had he been hiding from her? “You knew Matt was with her?”

“No,” he said again, shaking his head. “Not until he told me….Okay, listen. You remember that day in court, when the medical examiner testified?”

“How could I forget? His testimony got struck from the record because someone threatened him!”

“Right, and we blamed Reyes. But Matt told me it was Elektra. His old girlfriend, from back when we were in college.”

Karen’s heart sank, to her own surprise. Why should it matter if she was an old girlfriend?

“It didn’t make any sense,” Foggy continued. “But then he told me she was that mysterious private client of his that he was acting so shifty about.”

Of course she was.

“So then I yelled at him, because what the hell? He’d been ditching us, missing court, abandoning his client, to do who knows what with his ex? He tried to tell me she was involved in something dangerous, yakuza or something, but I was too pissed off to listen.”

“That’s what you two were yelling about in the restroom?”

“Yeah. So then when you told me you’d seen a woman in his bed, I knew who it had to be. Elektra fucking Natchios. I thought we’d seen the last of her ten years ago, after they broke up, and good riddance.”

He looked back up at the roof. “She’s up there with him now?” he asked again.

Karen nodded. “She was fighting, helping Matt,” she told him, and made herself give credit where credit was due. “She was amazing, she fights as well as he does. They took down all our guards in about half a minute.”

“Elektra Natchios,” he repeated, in disbelief. “It still doesn’t make any sense. When we knew her in college, I thought she was just a bored rich girl, not some kind of secret ninja. Her parents were diplomats, for god’s sake!”

A rich diplomat’s daughter, on top of everything else? Her heart sank still further, and she tried again to tell herself it didn’t matter. If she didn’t want Matt herself, then she shouldn’t care who he chose to be with.

Focus, Karen.

“Well, it looks like she’s been doing, you know…Daredevil stuff with him,” she said, but couldn’t help adding, “Whatever else they might be doing.”

She cleared her throat, and went on quickly, “She seemed to know all about it. She said that this, kidnapping all of us, was a trap to lure them in. So they must have been fighting them, the, the yakuza or whoever they are, long enough to piss them off.”

How long?

She remembered perfectly when Matt had first mentioned his private client—it was the morning after she had walked him home from Josie’s in the rain….

FOCUS.

“Foggy, this must be what he was doing during the trial! All those meetings with his private client—they were fighting these guys the whole time!”

“Maybe,” Foggy agreed doubtfully.

Karen frowned. “You don’t think so? He wouldn't abandon all his responsibilities just to…” She pressed her lips together, unwilling to say it out loud. “…Would he?”

“No, of course not—if it were anyone else but Elektra.” Foggy sighed. “She’s…not good for him, Karen. The semester he dated her, he nearly failed his classes. He was…reckless. Careless. He almost got expelled.”

Seeing her face, he quickly added, “But you might be right. If they’ve been doing Daredevil stuff, that would fit with what he tried to tell me at the courthouse.”

Suddenly, the sharp crack of a gunshot echoed from the rooftops. There were scattered screams, and cries of “Get down, get down!”

Foggy dropped, but Karen, after an initial instinctive duck, straightened back up. More shots rang out, and she stared up at the roof, straining her eyes to see something, anything.

“Get down, Karen!” Foggy pulled her down to crouch beside him.

“Who’s shooting?” she wondered. “Matt and Elektra don’t have guns, and if the others do, why didn’t they use them sooner?”

She remembered the red-haired woman on the bus, the gun she’d pressed to Karen’s head…but the woman had disappeared, and these shots sounded like something much bigger than a handgun.

“Whoever it is, I’m not taking any chances,” Foggy replied. “I’ve already been shot once this week.”

Karen shivered. She had been shot at, too, not only in the office of Samantha Reyes, but in her own apartment. And she had been far too close to the firefight in the diner between Frank Castle and the Blacksmith’s men. She wanted no more shooting. But she couldn’t bear not knowing what was going on up there.

From above, there was a muffled yell, abruptly cut off, and her heart missed a beat.

She stood up carefully, ignoring Foggy’s hiss of “Karen!”

Behind the warehouse, on the adjacent rooftop, a dark figure stood silhouetted against the night sky, a rifle in one hand.

“Frank,” she breathed.

“What?” Foggy scrambled up beside her, peering upward. “Shit! I hope he’s shooting at the right people.”

Karen stared at him. “Oh, no. You don’t think….” she trailed off, unwilling to voice the terrible thought.

Foggy looked somber, and said nothing

“No,” she said, shaking her head in denial, “No. He told me he only kills people who deserve it. Daredevil helps people, he goes after criminals, Frank must know that. He wouldn’t….”

But her own words suggested an ominous possibility.

“Foggy,” she said, fear clutching at her throat. “Did Matt—did Daredevil go after Frank?”

“Yeah, he did,” Foggy replied reluctantly. “He’s shot him once already.”

“What?”

She felt the blood drain from her face as the fear choked her, robbing her of further speech.

Foggy quickly reassured her. “Oh, hey, no, it’s okay Karen, he was fine, he was fine.” He paused. “Well. Not fine. He got his bell rung pretty good, but his helmet saved him.”

Shot in the head. Frank shot Matt in the head.

She shuddered, and Foggy slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“He has armor, he’ll be all right,” he said. But he sounded worried. “And maybe Frank was shooting at the other guys?”

They both looked back up at the roof, but Frank had disappeared, and everything was quiet.

“Maybe,” she whispered, her hands pressed over her mouth as she stared upward. She had no idea how she felt about either one of them by this point, but she knew the thought of Frank Castle killing Matt was unendurable.

In the huddle of policemen, Brett Mahoney glanced around and caught sight of them.

“You still here?” he called, walking over. “You should clear out, now. Whatever happened up there, it looks like it’s over. There’s no reason for you to hang around.”

Foggy glanced at Karen, but she didn’t move, watching as policemen circled the warehouse and began to move inside.

“Go on now, Page,” Brett repeated, firmly but not unkindly. “You’ve had a rough night, you should go home and get some rest.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t bear to leave, not yet, not with this terrible uncertainty hanging over her.

“Brett,” she said. “I need to know—is Daredevil…is he okay?”

Brett’s eyebrows rose. “Friend of yours?” he asked pointedly.

Karen met his gaze unflinchingly. “I saw Frank Castle up there, with a shotgun!” she replied, the tension singing through her making her voice come out more loudly than she had intended.

Brett glanced around and muttered, “Keep that quiet, will you?”

She lowered her voice, but pressed on. “I need to know if he was shooting the people who kidnapped me, or the one who saved me!”

Before Brett could reply, there was a burst of static from his police radio, and he stepped away to listen.

Karen strained her ears, but she could make out nothing but an indistinct voice, distorted by the radio, and a low murmur from Brett. She glanced at Foggy, but he shook his head.

Brett seemed to be getting reports from several different people, but they couldn’t distinguish any words until Brett suddenly exclaimed, “Decapitated?”

They stared at each other, eyes wide.

After a few more endless minutes, Brett glanced around, and seeing Karen and Foggy still standing there, he sighed and walked back to them.

“Decapitated?” Foggy asked incredulously.

Brett scowled. “You did not hear that,” he said firmly. But then he leaned in closer, and quietly added “It’s not him. And there’s no sign of him inside, either, or on the roof. Looks like he got away clean.”

Karen closed her eyes, her breath sighing out of her in relief. She heard Foggy exhale beside her. “Thanks, Brett,” she said gratefully.

“Go on home, now,” he answered, and she nodded.

“Hold on,” said Foggy. “Karen, I need to talk to Brett. But if you want to wait for me, I’ll walk you home.”

“Oh, thanks, Foggy. But I just want to get out of here.” She was as tense as a strung wire, even now that it was all over, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to relax until she was home. But she managed to summon up a tired smile for him. “I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” he said, and reached out to pull her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around him, and let herself sag against him for a moment, leaning her head against his.

When she straightened up and stepped back, he looked seriously into her face.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Call me if you need anything,” he said.

“I will. Thanks.”

He nodded, and stood watching as she turned and walked away. She looked back over her shoulder as she reached the corner, and saw him silhouetted against the light from the police cars, the warehouse looming behind them, dark and silent once more. She shivered, and resolutely turned her back. It was over. It was time to go home.

Chapter Text

Karen hurried down the dark street. She was nervous and jumpy, her body refusing to believe the danger was past, and now that there was nothing distracting her she couldn’t stop thinking about Matt, and everything she had learned tonight.

Matt was Daredevil.

Matt was Daredevil!

Even though she knew it was true, it seemed impossible.

Of course, it did explain a lot. All his mysterious injuries, the nights he didn’t answer his phone, the times he evaded her questions or simply refused to answer—it all made perfect sense now.

But the truth raised far more questions than it answered.

How could a blind man do the things she had seen him do? Fighting, running and jumping and flipping through the air like an acrobat—moving with an assurance that implied complete awareness of his surroundings?

And tonight, when he came over to cut her wrists free…how had he known right where she was, how had he recognized her, without her saying a word?

She knew he couldn’t be lying about being blind. He had been blind since childhood, long before he had put on the mask of a vigilante—

How could Matt be a vigilante?

He was a lawyer, for goodness sake! Didn’t he disapprove of vigilantes? He’d as good as said so, the night they talked about—

She stopped still.

oh god.

The night they talked about Frank Castle, and Karen had basically said that there was no difference between Daredevil and the Punisher!

A hot flush of mortification prickled across her skin.

But it was followed a moment later by a flash of renewed anger, propelling her back into motion. She had nothing to blush over—it wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t known she was talking to Daredevil!

She remembered how she had asked him if he believed in what Daredevil was doing…and he had deflected with a joke about being a Catholic lawyer, and had never actually answered the question.

Why hadn’t she suspected?

Because it was unbelievable—which brought her right back to where she had started.

How did he do it?

Something moved in the shadows of an alley, and she swung around to stare, her heart pounding.

A cat slunk around the corner into the light, and she blew out her breath in relief.

She needed to calm down, before she gave herself a heart attack.

She continued warily on her way, walking faster.

What had she been thinking about—?

Matt, of course.

Who was Daredevil.

Somehow.

…And who was now working with his very attractive ex-girlfriend.

She tried to tell herself again that it shouldn’t matter to her, but she couldn’t help wondering what, exactly, Matt had been doing during the trial.

She thought about the people who had kidnapped her tonight, and shivered. They were obviously dangerous, and Matt was obviously trying to stop them.

But he had fought dangerous people before, even dangerous organizations like Wilson Fisk’s, and it had never interfered with his…his civilian life the way this one had.

Were these people even worse than Fisk—or was Foggy right?

Was it Elektra that was distracting him, and not the enemy they were pursuing?

If she was helping him fight them, how could Karen distinguish between the two?

And how on earth had Matt’s girlfriend from ten years ago gotten involved in this business in the first place?

There was so much she still didn’t know!

She’s not good for him, Foggy had said. When Matt was with her, he became careless. Reckless. Abandoned his responsibilities.

Which sounded all too familiar.

His choices were his own, of course. Elektra couldn’t make him do anything. And yet…when they were together before, he had not only nearly failed his classes, but almost got expelled. Which was extraordinary, for someone as conscientious as Matt.

As extraordinary as utterly fucking up the most high-profile trial of his career.

He was unable (or just unwilling?) to say no to her, that much seemed evident. When she had sent a car for him, at the hospital, he clearly hadn’t been expecting it—but he went anyway, leaving Foggy to advise their client without him, when Foggy hadn’t wanted Frank as a client in the first place.

And before that, the first time he had left the office to meet her, the day she had made that big deposit into the firm’s account, he had run off without even taking the time to make up a decent excuse for his haste.

At best, Elektra appeared to have an extraordinary amount of influence on Matt. Even after an absence of ten years.

At worst?

She didn’t want to think about it. At worst implied an utter disregard for her own feelings that she didn’t want to believe him capable of.

It wasn’t much different from what she had been assuming about him, up until an hour ago, but somehow it felt worse.

Had she gotten her hopes up so quickly that he could be exonerated, all his sins explained away? Had she wanted to believe that the fact that he was Daredevil excused all the things he had done?

Or was she upset that her heroic image of Daredevil had been tarnished, now that she knew his faults and flaws?

She had always admired Daredevil. Ever since the man in the mask had saved her life from Union Allied’s hitman, she had felt a little safer knowing that he was out there somewhere, protecting the city.

She had always admired Matt, too, up until recently.

And now?

He had lied to her, disappointed her, destroyed her trust in him.

…But he had also fought for her, twice now, at risk of his own life.

What was she supposed to think? How was she supposed to feel?

It was impossible to know, without more information. Circling uselessly around questions that she couldn’t answer accomplished nothing but giving her a headache to go with the pain in her heart.

She remembered the blood she had seen on his suit, and shivered again. He had been injured, even before the battle had moved up to the warehouse roof. Fighting that many opponents, even with help, it seemed inevitable that he would have received additional injuries. Was he all right?

However she felt about him, she couldn’t bear to think of him being badly hurt. Even at the height of her anger, she wouldn’t have wanted that.

But for now, that was going to have to remain one more unanswered question. Either he was still out here in the night, pursuing his enemies, or he had gone home…with Elektra. Whatever they might be doing together, she wasn’t about to interrupt them to check up on him.

All she could do was try to convince herself that he was safe, because there was no acceptable alternative.

She heard a crash in the distance, and picked up her pace.

She had been strung taut on adrenaline for so long that she felt dazed, and a bit sick. She wanted to be home, behind a locked door, wrapped up in a blanket in her pajamas while she waited for her nerves to unwind enough so she could sleep.

God, she wanted a drink. And then she wanted to sleep for a week.

By the time she got home her headache was worse, tension squeezing her skull in an iron band. As she unlocked her apartment door, she noticed her hands were trembling. It would be good to finally relax, if she could, and rest.

But as soon as she turned on the light, all thoughts of relaxation fled. Her eyes flew to the shattered window behind the couch, and instantly her mind flashed back to black-clad figures leaping through that gaping hole, surrounding her and dragging her away.

Her heart kicked into overdrive, and her stomach churned, even as she tried to tell herself she had nothing to fear.

“It’s over,” she said out loud, her voice shaking as badly as her hands. “There’s no one here. I’m safe.”

But then, she had thought she was safe just a few hours ago. With the Blacksmith dead, she had thought no one else had any reason to target her.

She had been wrong.

After being attacked in her own home, twice, in just a matter of days, how could she possibly feel safe?

Desolation swept over her as she stared around at the broken glass littering the rug, the overturned chairs, her belongings scattered everywhere. She shivered convulsively as winter air poured in through the window, chilling the room despite the hissing and clanking of the radiator.

Suddenly, it was all too much to bear. Too much had happened to her, in too short a time. She had had too much fear and shock and upheaval, and now that she was finally home, her home was a freezing wreck.

A sob rose in her throat, but she pressed her lips together and forced it back down. If she let herself start to cry, she might not be able to stop.

She couldn’t stay here. She had to get out.

And she knew exactly where she could go.

She took a deep breath, and summoned up a last reserve of determination. She picked her way over to the dresser, shivering, and quickly changed into more comfortable clothes. She hunted through the mess until she found her phone, luckily unbroken, and grabbed her shoulder bag.

Then she went back to the kitchen, and took a bottle of whiskey from a cupboard. She needed that drink even more badly now.

But not yet, not when she was about to go back out onto the streets. Not until she got to the offices of Nelson & Murdock.

She put the bottle in her bag, turned out the lights, and locked the door behind her.

* * *

Matt stood in the shower, hot water beating down onto his skin. He felt dazed, unable to come to terms with the enormity of what had happened tonight.

Elektra was dead.

He had heard her heart stop, felt the moment she stopped breathing.

She was dead.

Her scent lingered in the air of his apartment, a devastating reminder. He had smelled it as soon as he stepped into the living room, clearly perceptible underneath the stink of his own blood and sweat, and the latex smell of the suit he wore.

It had floated around him as he stripped off the suit, like a knife in his heart, mocking him with the ghost of her presence.

It was mercifully fainter here in the shower, with water pouring down all around him. He lingered under the spray long after he was clean, grief and guilt rooting him to the spot until the water turned cool, then cold.

Elektra was dead, and it was his fault.

He and Stick had brought her away from the warehouse, carrying her off before the police swarmed into the building.

Stick had said very little, which was, from him, a kindness. He seemed to know everything that had happened while he was confined here in Matt’s apartment, and Matt had no doubt that his opinion of tonight’s rescue was the same as Elektra’s had been. Stick would have left the hostages to their fate without a second thought, rather than walk into a trap as Matt had done.

A trap that had gotten Elektra killed.

But Stick had said no word of blame, whether because he had so recently tried to kill her himself, or because what was done was done, Matt didn’t know.

He had agreed to Matt’s insistence that she be given a decent burial, and had taken her away with him to make the necessary arrangements. Matt’s offer to help had been brusquely refused, which was perhaps another kindness. Stick had long experience of death, and could do what needed to be done without the horror that clutched at Matt’s heart.

Even in the brief time it had taken them to get away from the warehouse, death had already begun its inexorable work on her body, corrupting her scent, cooling her skin, congealing her flesh into a cold and empty shell, a mute accusation of his failure to protect her. As reluctant as he was to let her go, such close contact with her mortal remains was nearly unbearable.

And so Stick had taken her away, leaving Matt alone.

He was beginning to shiver from the cold, and finally stirred out of his fixed stillness, turning off the shower and reaching for a towel.

His newest injuries stung as he dried himself, but he barely noticed the pain. He bandaged the cuts that were still bleeding, but more out of habit than because he actually cared about healing. What difference did it make if he healed or not?

He was a failure.

No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, everything he touched turned to ashes.

The last few weeks seemed like a frenzied dream. From the moment Elektra had reappeared in his life, his carefully balanced existence had slipped off-kilter, and the harder he tried to maintain control, the faster events had spun from his grasp.

He had been so convinced that he could handle both the Castle trial and the investigation into the Hand.

He was wrong. He had failed at both, and done far more harm than good.

He still had no idea what the Hand’s ultimate goal was here in New York. Their attempt to secure their so-called Black Sky had failed with Elektra’s death, but the enormous hole they had dug into the bowels of Manhattan remained a mystery.

And the trial had been a farce, only saved from being an complete and utter travesty by the efforts of Foggy and Karen.

He himself had accomplished nothing but the destruction of everything in his life that mattered.

Elektra was dead.

Nelson & Murdock, the firm that had once meant everything to him—gone.

Foggy, his best friend—gone.

Karen?

Best to consider her gone, too. She was alive—he had done that much right, at least—but if she hadn’t already washed her hands of him, surely she would now that she knew the truth.

He stepped into the bedroom, only to be met by a smell so strong, he nearly reeled back from the impact.

The bed. The bed where Elektra had lain, injured, for two days.

Her scent was all over the apartment, but this close to the bed it was much stronger—and he could also smell lingering traces of blood, tainted by the poison that had nearly killed her, and the acrid bite of the antidote that had saved her.

He fell to his knees, shaking.

That injury had been his fault, too. He had distracted her mid-fight, trying to stop her from killing. She had only survived his interference thanks to Stick—and for what? She was dead now, and Stick’s efforts and his own desperate prayers had all been for nothing.

Bile rose in his throat as guilt overwhelmed him. His stomach turned over, and he felt that he had to get away from the smell or he would either vomit or burst into tears. Maybe both.

He lurched to his feet, grabbed some clean clothes out of the dresser, and fled back to the living room, sliding the door shut behind him.

He dressed himself with shaking hands, his chest tight, a lump in his throat. He tried to hold off the tears, taking slow, deep breaths to calm himself, but breathing deeply only brought the smells from the bedroom to him more clearly.

He couldn’t stay here. He had to get out, or he was going to break down completely.

Shoes—coat—keys—cane—and he was out the door, down the stairs, and out into the night. The stinking air of the city was a welcome relief, and he filled his lungs gratefully, leaning against the wall until he stopped shaking.

He realized he’d forgotten his glasses in his rush to leave, but he wasn’t about to go back for them. This once, he could do without.

But now what? If he couldn’t bear his apartment, where was he going to spend the night? He was too exhausted to walk the streets for long. He needed someplace he could rest, even if he doubted he would be getting any sleep tonight.

Well, there was one place he could go. it would be another reminder of all his failures, but at least Elektra had never been there.

He unfolded his cane, and headed for the offices of Nelson & Murdock.

Chapter Text

Karen unlocked the door of the office with a sigh, and stepped inside.

She might not have consciously though of it that way, but this had always been a place of safety for her. After her previous employer had tried to murder her, this was where she had found a new sense of purpose, and hope, and happiness.

This office had become home.

But now, with the breakup of Nelson & Murdock, all of that was gone.

The feeling of desolation swept over her again, even stronger than before, as the tears she had successfully fought off in her apartment rose up again inexorably.

This time, she let them come. She had no strength left to fight them.

For too long she had been running headlong from one crisis to the next, sustained by anger and determination, never pausing long enough for the pain to catch up to her. But now, there was no place left to run.

She crossed the floor, sat down at her desk, pillowed her aching head on her arms, and wept.

The first trickle of tears quickly became a torrent, as all the emotions she had been bottling up came pouring out in a rush. The fear she had been determined not to show her kidnappers tonight, the shock and betrayal of discovering Matt and Foggy had both been lying to her, all the hurt and anxiety of the last few disastrous weeks surged up and overflowed.

Her entire life had been turned upside down. Even if nobody else tried to shoot her, or kidnap her, or threaten her some other way, she had lost the foundation that she had built everything on for the last year. Nelson & Murdock had been the center of her life, both professionally and personally.

How could it just be gone?

How had everything fallen apart so quickly?

She had tried to hold things together, tried to come up with a strategy to salvage their reputation, but Foggy didn’t want to hear it. He had already moved on, with a job offer from one of the biggest law firms in the city. His partnership with Matt was over, and her job here along with it.

And what did she have in its place? A tentative foothold at a newspaper, a job at which she had no experience, thanks to the goodwill of an editor who barely knew her, and her own promise to give him an article on Frank Castle that she had yet to even begin writing.

Foggy was still her friend, she knew that. But it was all too likely that he would have no time for her now that he would be working to establish himself at his high-powered new job.

And Matt?

Even if she could repair their relationship, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to.

The more she learned about him, the less she felt like she knew him.

If idealistic, do-things-within-the-law Matt was secretly a vigilante, then he wasn’t the man she had thought he was. He might be admirable, even heroic—but he had also become a stranger.

Maybe she should have felt relieved that he wasn’t as bad as she had thought. But instead, she couldn’t stop crying.

For as long as she had known him, he had been hiding a part of himself behind a charming exterior as effective as any mask. There was another whole side to his life, to his character, to who he was as a person, that she knew nothing about. That he had deliberately hidden from her.

And not just when he first met her—he had kept his secret even after all the months they had spent getting to know each other, and growing closer, when surely he must know by now that he could trust her.

And that must mean…he simply didn’t want her to know. He had intended to keep a part of himself from her, maybe forever.

And what if they had continued dating? Given what he did at night, how would he have evaded spending the night with her? How many more lies would he have had to tell, to keep his secret?

But that’s what he would have done. He had asked her out, knowing what that would mean. He had intended to keep lying to her, not just once in a while at the office, but again and again, more and more frequently as they spent more time together and became more intimate.

While Elektra, it seemed, had been admitted to the secret at once. He had told a woman he hadn’t even spoken to in ten years, while he continued to lie to Karen.

She had put off thinking about this for as long as she could, but now she had no choice.

She might not know how she felt about Matt, but god, it hurt to know that he had confided in another woman, while excluding her.

Elektra Natchios. Beautiful, rich, incredibly skilled.

Maybe he hadn't been concerned about what would happen if they continued dating because he’d had no intention of continuing.

Given when Matt had first mentioned his mysterious private client, Elektra must have come back into his life right when he had first asked Karen out. Did he regret taking that step, once he knew his former love had returned? It was a bitter thought.

But then, if he had reconciled with Elektra so quickly, why continue to string Karen along? One date, a few kisses and sweet words—he could have extricated himself from that, if he had wanted to. He might not have told her the real reason for his change of heart, of course, but he could have made something up. He was lying to her anyway, so what was one more?

But if he didn’t regret it—if he truly cared for Karen—then why had he allowed such a gulf to grow between them? How could he have thought that she would just accept his increasingly suspicious behavior? Why had he seemed to not even notice that he was losing her, until it was too late?

Every time he ran off to meet up with Elektra, his apologies afterward had been less and less convincing. He had been placating Karen, as if she was an inconvenience to be put aside so he could go and do more important things.

Was it simply saving the city that was more important, or was it Elektra?

She told herself once more that Matt was responsible for his own actions, no matter what his motivation. But she couldn’t help wishing that Elektra was a thousand miles away.

Why hadn’t she stayed away, and left him alone?

Well, if that’s who Matt wanted, there was nothing standing in their way now. Karen had saved him the effort of breaking up with her, and he was free to do whatever he chose. He probably didn’t even need to worry about making a living, now that he had a rich partner.

Would he even continue practicing law, given the damage he’d done to his professional reputation?

Impossible to guess. She had always thought that the law, and making the law serve the cause of justice, meant everything to him. But then, she had thought a lot of things about him, and how many had now proven to be untrue?

Not long ago, she would have said that Matt was her best friend—but now, she had no idea what he was likely to do. And it surprised her how much that hurt.

She couldn’t mask this hurt with anger, the way she had over his behavior. This was something deeper. The thought that maybe she had never really known him at all, when she had cared for him so much, sat like a stone in her heart.

Everything she had learned tonight only made her achingly aware of all the things she still didn’t know—and worse, might never know. He had saved her tonight, but she had no reason to think that he would be willing to answer her questions.

Why should he? The last time they spoke, she had lashed out at him and basically told him they were through.

And now, she knew what he had never wanted her to know.

No matter how badly she wanted answers, he had no reason at all to want to give them to her. They no longer worked together, and their personal relationship was in tatters. There was nothing tying him to her, and she had given him every reason to think she wanted nothing more to do with him.

If he wanted to cut his losses and walk away, he could. And she couldn’t bear the thought of reaching out to him, and being turned away.

All she could do was mourn what she had lost. Home, and friendship, and the possibility of love—all that was left of them was this abandoned office.

Her tears did nothing to ease the pain in her heart, but they continued unabated. All she could do was cry, and try to take what comfort she could in the fact that at least she was finally out of danger—

There was a step in the hall outside, and the doorknob rattled.

* * *

Matt paused in the hallway, listening.

There was someone in the office. It had taken longer than it should have for him to notice, distracted as he was. But now, the muffled sound of crying was unmistakable.

He listened more closely…and nearly turned around and retreated back down the stairs. He had no idea why Karen was here, instead of safe at home, but he knew all too well why she was crying.

It was all his fault.

He should leave.

But…she sounded so broken. As if the whole world was ending.

Karen should never sound like that.

He couldn’t bring himself to walk away and leave her all alone with such pain.

Or maybe he couldn’t bear to be all alone any longer with his own pain. Hearing her, knowing that she was so close, longing swept over him.

Karen.

More than anything, he wanted her company—to simply be in the same room with her. Slowly, he approached the door.

He didn’t deserve her.

She probably hated him.

But he could at least give her the satisfaction of yelling at him, if he could do nothing else to help her.

Before he could think better of it, he took the last few steps to the door and reached for the doorknob.

* * *

In an instant, Karen was on her feet, her heart racing.

Only two people besides herself had any business here, and surely neither of them would be coming here tonight. Was she still not safe, even now?

The door opened—

“Matt?” she gasped.

She sank back down into her chair, the sudden relief turning her knees to water.

He came slowly into the room, dropping his cane in the chair by the door.

Karen stared at him, momentarily speechless. Shouldn’t he be at home, or else still out hunting bad guys? With—

She looked past him to the dark hallway, but saw no one else as he closed the door. He was alone.

“Matt?” she repeated, finding her voice with an effort. “What are you doing here? Where—where’s Elektra?”

He froze, his eyes widening (where were his glasses?), his expression so devastated that her fear returned, settling into a formless dread in the pit of her stomach.

He looked awful, she realized. His steps as he entered the office had been heavy, his movements stiff and painful. His face was battered and bruised, and he looked on the verge of tears.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

He opened his mouth, but his breath caught before he could speak.

He tried again.

“Elektra,” he managed. “She—“ he swallowed. “They killed her,” he got out in a rush, and pressed his lips together to stop them trembling.

Killed? Elektra was dead?

A complicated mix of emotions swept over her. Surprise, dismay, sympathy—and a brief flare of guilt that she instantly tried to deny. She might have wished Elektra gone from Matt’s life, but she hadn’t wanted her dead!

Maybe it was the shock, maybe it was that spark of guilt, but her grievances against Matt seemed suddenly less important.

Or maybe, despite everything, she simply couldn’t help caring when he was in such obvious pain.

He was still standing just inside the door, and she stood up again and went to him. He was clearly struggling not to cry. She had no idea what to say to him, but she laid a hand on his arm, and at her touch he stirred, reaching out to grasp her coat.

“It’s my fault,” he said, his voice thick and broken. “She was protecting me.”

With another shuddering breath, the tears finally won. He bowed his head, and Karen’s heart went out to him despite herself. She knew how it felt to feel responsible for the death of a loved one, and no matter what Matt had done, he didn’t deserve that. Without hesitation she stepped closer, and took him in her arms.

He froze for an instant, but then his arms wrapped around her in such a desperate hold that she gasped for breath. Instantly his arms loosened, but he still clung to her like a drowning man, his face pressed into her hair as he wept.

She still didn’t know what to say, so she held him in silence, thinking.

She had never considered the possibility that Elektra might be killed. Once she knew Matt had gotten away, she had taken it for granted that Elektra had, too.

But she had died, and it could just as easily have been Matt. It nearly had been Matt, if she had died protecting him.

Karen shivered, her arms tightening around him reflexively.

Elektra’s death was shocking, but Matt’s would be unthinkable.

Despite what she had been thinking a moment ago, she couldn’t think of him as a stranger now that he was here, weeping in her arms. There might be things about him she didn’t know, but he was still Matt. The part of him she did know wasn’t a lie, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

Acknowledging that didn’t fix everything, of course, or change the things he had done. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about him, and she still had questions that only he could answer.

But not tonight. That was going to be a difficult conversation, and it would be cruel to force the issue when he was suffering like this.

Tonight, she could put aside her hurt and her anger. From the look of things, he had no intention of turning his back on her and walking away—so it could wait.

She tried not to wonder if he would have walked away, if Elektra was still alive. That would have to wait, too.

His hair was damp, she noticed, and standing on end. He must have showered, but not bothered to comb his hair. Or to put on a hat—he was shivering, and no wonder, walking around a December night with wet hair. Not to mention fresh injuries.

She reached up and smoothed his hair down, stroking his bent head, inevitably reminded of the last time she had held him like this. This wasn’t the first time they had both fled here for sanctuary.

So much had changed since that night—and yet, here they were, both of them drawn once again to the same refuge. Circumstance, not intention, had brought them back together…but for now, maybe that was enough.

Matt felt his breath coming in ragged gasps, his chest aching as the sobs he had tried so hard to hold back forced their way out of him. The terrible finality of Elektra’s death pressed down on him like a physical weight, and would have forced him to his knees if it weren’t for Karen.

She held him up, lending him her strength despite her own distress—she wasn’t crying any longer, but he could smell the stress-markers on her skin, and the rusty tang of dried blood from a cut on her forehead, could feel the tiny muscle tremors that betrayed her exhaustion even as she gave him support.

Why was she doing this?

She should be angry after everything he’d done to hurt her, she should be telling him off right now, not comforting him.

He shouldn’t let her. He didn’t deserve comfort.

But he couldn’t bring himself to step away.

His senses were full of her, the scent of her hair, the sound of her quiet breathing, the feel of her arms around him that he had been certain he would never feel again.

God, he missed her! There hadn’t been time to realize it before, while he was rushing headlong from one disaster to the next. But now, he drank her in, sensation surrounding him and somehow making it possible to bear the pain.

He felt it when she shivered, felt her arms tighten, holding him so close to her that he could feel her heart beating against his own chest.

Warmth radiated from her, even through the heavy layers of the winter coats they both wore, and a knot of tension deep inside him slowly began to relax. Her fingers in his hair seemed to tug at that knot, loosening it still further, releasing all his pent-up emotions.

He didn’t deserve this—but he needed it, he needed it like he needed air to breathe.

He held on to her, and let it all out—guilt and grief and helplessness rising up and overflowing as he sobbed into her hair.

Eventually, his tears subsided. His breathing steadied and slowed, leaving him wrung out and drained. His heart still ached with the pain of loss, but it was a quieter, less desperate ache than before.

He straightened, reluctantly easing his hold on Karen, prepared to release her completely if she pulled away—

But she didn’t. Her own hold loosened, but she stayed close, and he knew from the angle of her head that she must be examining his face. Her hand moved from his hair to his cheek, her touch on his skin unbearably gentle, then settled on his shoulder.

Why was she being so kind?

“I thought you’d hate me,” he said.

She shook her head, and sighed. “No,” she said. “I don’t hate you, Matt. I am…upset,” she admitted, “about a lot of things. I have so many questions…”

He nodded. “Yeah, of course you do—”

“But I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it right now,” she finished quickly.

He frowned. That wasn’t right, for her to spare his feelings when it was his fault that she was upset.

“I can talk about it,” he assured her quietly. He hesitated, because there were some things he probably couldn’t talk about without breaking down all over again. But given how much he had been hiding from her, there were still plenty of things he could, and should, tell her. He owed her that much.

“Some of it, anyway,” he amended.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

He heard the eagerness she was clearly trying to suppress, and realized that what she had learned about him tonight must have left her with even more questions than before. He should tell her about his senses, at the very least.

“You deserve to know the truth,” he answered her. “I should have told you a long time ago.”

“Okay,” she said, and now he heard a note of relief. How would she feel, once she knew how easily he could read her emotions?

Not that it mattered—even if she took it as badly as Foggy had, she had a right to know.

“Let’s sit down,” Karen suggested. She stepped back, breaking their loose embrace, and immediately felt colder without Matt's arms around her—but he looked done in, he needed to sit down before he fell down. She walked over to the row of mismatched client chairs along the wall, and he followed and sat beside her.

Unsure what questions he would be willing to answer, she left it up to him. “Anything you want to tell me, Matt, I’ll listen.”

He nodded, and seemed to be gathering his thoughts, or maybe deciding where to start. She was struck afresh, now that she could see him better, by how exhausted he looked. His voice, too, when he finally spoke, sounded weary.

He began: “When I went blind, my other senses got stronger.”

That wasn’t what she was expecting, but it was certainly something he’d never told her before.

“I’ve heard that blind people develop sharper hearing,” she said, wondering. Was that enough to explain how he could be Daredevil?

But he was shaking his head. “It’s more than that. The chemicals that blinded me…altered my other senses.”

Altered? The hairs rose on the back of her neck.

“You mean you have…” She couldn’t bring herself to say superpowers, and settled for “…abilities?”

He understood what she meant. “No, no, it’s nothing like that…It’s just the same senses everyone else has, but…more. Stronger. It’s not the same as seeing, but…I think it’s better, in some ways.”

“Better how? How strong do you mean?”

“Well, I can sense things about you.”

“Like what?”

He tipped his head, in the listening gesture she knew so well.

“I know that you saw Foggy recently,” he said slowly. “Probably tonight, and most likely you hugged him. I can smell him, on your coat and your hair.”

What?

“You can smell him?” she asked, incredulous.

Matt nodded. “Every person has their own unique scent. You smell like yourself right now, but also…like Foggy.”

She grappled with her automatic feeling that body odor was a bad thing, trying to consider it as he seemed to, as just a fact about people. Trying to get past that to the more significant fact, that his sense of smell was strong enough to pick up Foggy’s scent on her just because she had hugged him at the warehouse earlier.

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay. What else?”

“You brought a bottle of whiskey with you,” he continued. “I can smell it in your bag. But you haven’t drunk any. If you had, I’d be able to taste it in the air, off your lips.”

Her cheeks warmed in a sudden blush.

“You’re blushing,” he said, still in that tired, matter-of-fact voice. “I can feel the heat from your skin. And I know that hearing this makes you uncomfortable…because I can hear your heartbeat.”

He could hear her heartbeat? He could taste whether she’d been drinking or not?

She felt exposed, and that made her defensive.

“Yes, of course I’m uncomfortable. Those things should be private, Matt!”

Matt sighed to himself, resigned. There it was—the anger he had been expecting all along.

“I should have told you,” he said quietly. “You have every right to be angry. And…”

He was tempted to stop there, and not make things worse. But she deserved to know the whole truth, even if it drove her away.

“I can tell when people are lying,” he finished. “Their heartbeats tell me.”

Karen froze, instantly thinking of every shameful secret she had ever hidden from him. Or thought she had hidden.

Her heart rate rose so alarmingly that he asked, “Karen? Are you all right?”

Karen fought to control the jolt of unreasoning panic that had shot through her. He wasn’t a mind-reader, she told herself firmly. He didn’t have any special abilities, he had said so himself. Knowing when she told a lie didn’t mean he somehow knew what the truth was.

She breathed deeply, trying to calm her racing heart, knowing that he could hear it.

“That’s not fair, Matt,” she said, a little breathlessly. “It’s not fair for you to know that much about me. You’re listening to things my body can’t help doing. It’s humiliating.”

“You have a right to be angry,” he said again, hoping he hadn’t just lost her for good. “If it helps any…My senses are so strong, I’m constantly picking up so much…I block out a lot of it. I’m not constantly paying attention to every detail, I’d be overwhelmed if I did.”

Don’t minimize it, he scolded himself. But it was true, and it might help her to feel less…humiliated. He never wanted her to feel like that.

Her panic had ebbed, her heart slowing back to a calm, steady rhythm. Had her anger passed already? He had been expecting a fight, like he had had with Foggy. Was it possible Karen would be more accepting?

Karen took one more deep breath, and sighed it out. It did help, knowing that he wasn’t reading her like a non-stop lie-detector test…and being angry about the way his senses functioned wasn’t going to help the situation.

She could be angry that he hadn’t told her sooner, of course. But at least he was telling her now.

Abruptly, she changed the subject to something less personal.

“Okay,” she said again. “So that’s how you can be Daredevil? That’s how you can fight people you can’t see?”

Matt was listening closely, but she truly didn’t sound angry anymore. Or maybe it was just that her curiosity was stronger than her anger.

“I can sense them,” he said, nodding. “It’s partly hearing, partly smell, partly…a feeling, the way the air moves when someone throws a punch…it’s hard to explain.”

It was something he did so automatically that he didn’t have to think about it, and the few times he had ever tried to describe it, the words seemed inadequate.

“I don’t really experience each sense separately, they way I’ve been describing them. It’s all those things, all at once, all together. It gives me a…an overall impression, I guess. I just know where they are, and how they move.”

It was a poor, halting explanation, but she seemed willing to accept it.

“That’s pretty incredible,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s a lot to take in, though. I think I’m going to need some time, before I really know what I think of it all.”

“You’re taking it much better than I expected,” he said. “I thought you’d hate me.”

That was the second time he had said that.

“Did you?” she asked curiously. “Did you really think that telling me you’re Daredevil and explaining your senses would be worse than letting me think…what I was thinking before?”

“You mean, telling you that I’m a violent vigilante who goes out at night and beats the shit out of people? Of course it’s worse!”

Karen frowned. He was talking as if being Daredevil was a bad thing…and seemed to take it for granted that she would think so, too.

But then, he was also feeling guilty about Elektra’s death. She understood the self-loathing that came with that kind of guilt. Right now, if she tried to argue, to point out all the good he did as Daredevil, it would probably only make him feel worse.

But she didn’t have to agree with him, either.

“I’m just glad I finally know the truth,” she said. “It was hard, you were suddenly acting so sketchy, and being so…irresponsible…and I had no idea why. When you keep apologizing, but it keeps happening, and you never explain what’s going on, the apologies stop meaning much, you know? At least now I know.”

It shouldn’t have surprised him, really—it was utterly like Karen to want the truth, no matter what.

Matt had been so convinced that she would be just as horrified as Foggy was, that anything had seemed preferable to telling her. But he had been wrong, so wrapped up in his own concerns that he had failed to realize the effect his constant evasions were having on her.

“And if what you were really doing was fighting those assholes who kidnapped me,” she went on, “Believe me, I am much happier about that than I was thinking you had just abandoned us…for no good reason.”

He heard that small hesitation, and knew she was still sparing his feelings. Given what she had suspected him of before tonight, surely she had been going to say abandoned us for Elektra.

And he realized, belatedly, that there was something else he needed to tell her.

“Karen,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Elektra and I—we weren’t sleeping together.”

There was a moment of startled silence.

Then her breath sighed out of her, and her fingers curled around his.

“You weren’t?” she asked, and if her surprise was tinged with skepticism, he couldn’t blame her.

“I know it looked bad, when you saw her at my place,” he said. “But she was hurt, she got hurt in a fight, and she was staying with me while she recovered.”

“Oh.” Karen digested this in silence. Given what she knew now, it was certainly plausible…and she wanted to believe that this was one thing Matt wouldn’t lie to her about.

“Okay,” she said cautiously. “But she is an old girlfriend of yours, right? That’s what Foggy said.”

Matt frowned. Foggy had told her about Elektra? God, no wonder she had assumed the worst. Foggy certainly had. If he had told her their whole past history together—

…Then he had told her no more than Matt should have told her himself.

“Yes,” he admitted.

He could have stopped there, but Karen deserved better from him than more evasions and half-truths.

“I won’t pretend that there was nothing between us,” he said slowly. “Being around her again brought back…feelings. Too many feelings, not all of them good. But some of them….”

This was verging on dangerous ground. Trying to explain his complicated feelings for Elektra would have him in tears again in no time.

But he could talk about his feelings for Karen.

“I never stopped caring about you, or wanting to be with you,” he told her. “I know I’ve given you plenty of reason not to believe that, but it’s the truth. I wasn’t trying to, to get back together with her. We argued so much—”

But there he had to stop again. He took a deep, careful breath.“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I tried to hide it all from you. I was wrong.”

Karen watched his face closely as he spoke. His eyes were wide and earnest without the habitual shield of his glasses—if he was lying to her now, then he was the best liar she’d ever seen.

“I want to believe you,” she said. She had heard enough to suggest, at the least, that things between Matt and Elektra were more complicated than she had assumed.

However….

“You trusted her, though, when you wouldn’t trust me,” she said, trying not to sound too accusatory. She didn’t want to hurt him any further, but this was important. “You told her that you’re Daredevil…”

But he was frowning, shaking his head.

“I didn’t tell her. She already knew.”

“What?”

“That’s why she came to me in the first place, because I’m Daredevil. She wanted my help.”

“Matt, how could she know?”

“She said she recognized me from the news, but I think Stick must have told her. And he knows because he trained me.”

Stick? What kind of a name was Stick?

“You met him, at my apartment,” Matt said.

Right, there had been an old man there that day. Karen had nearly forgotten him once she had seen a woman in Matt’s bed.

He went on, “I didn’t trust her more than you, truly. I didn’t trust her at all, at first. I didn’t believe she needed my help, until The Hand—that’s what they call themselves, the ones who kidnapped you—they broke into her place and attacked, while we were talking. Then I couldn’t help believing her.”

She felt a jolt of anxiety at the thought that he’d been attacked—but of course, he was Daredevil. He was in danger on a fairly regular basis. Now that she knew, she supposed she would have to get used to the idea.

What he had just told her raised a whole new set of questions. But at least she was finally getting some answers. And it was a relief to know that Matt hadn’t told Elektra, after all. It still hurt that he had been so determined to hide it from her, but at least it wasn’t compounded by him confiding in someone else.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s good to know, Matt, thank you.”

“I should have told you sooner,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you?” she couldn’t help asking. “I mean, I get that you couldn’t explain about Elektra without telling me the Daredevil stuff. But…why couldn’t you tell me that? You keep saying you thought I’d hate you, but I thought maybe…that might just be because of how bad you’re feeling right now. All this time…did you really think I’d hate you?”

“Foggy did, when he found out,” he said, his voice low.

That was definitely overstating the case. Still, she knew Foggy hadn’t taken it well.

“He told me tonight that he yelled at you,” she acknowledged. “And I remember, myself, when you two weren’t talking to each other. It was bad. But Matt, I’m not Foggy.”

“He was my best friend,” said Matt, still low. “For ten years, my best friend. If he couldn’t accept it….”

“How could anyone else?” she finished for him.

He nodded.

“Foggy’s pretty anti-vigilante, though, in general,” she pointed out. “You know I’m not. If I didn’t judge Frank Castle, why would I judge you?”

She paused, remembering her last conversation—if you could call it that—with Frank.

“Well,” she admitted, “Maybe I do judge him a little. He’s not exactly…what I wanted to believe he was.”

Matt lifted his head. “What do you mean?” he asked, frowning in concern. As troubled as he had been by her defense of a killer like Castle, it was even more troubling to consider what might have made her change her mind. “Karen, has something else happened?”

She exhaled sharply, nearly a laugh although there was no humor in it.

“God, Matt, what hasn’t happened?” She rubbed her forehead wearily, as if it ached, and he smelled blood once again from the cut there. “I’ve actually had an incredibly shitty week, getting kidnapped was just the icing on the cake.”

He realized he had no idea what had been happening to her since the last time he had spoken to her, when she had gone into protective custody. He had recognized her on the pier the night the Blacksmith’s boat had exploded, but she had been with Brett Mahoney, and he had assumed she was safe.

“Weren’t the police supposed to be protecting you?” he asked.

Karen swiftly decided that now was not the time to tell him she had left her safe hotel room, with Frank. In retrospect, even she could see how foolish that had been, and she had no doubt Matt would be appalled. And it wasn’t needed to explain her disillusionment with the man she had previously defended.

“So, I’m supposed to be writing an article on Frank for the Bulletin,” she said instead, skipping ahead to the next disaster. “I wanted to interview someone who knew him before he became the Punisher, so I got in touch with Colonel Schoonover.”

Matt cocked his head inquiringly, and she remembered he hadn’t been in court that day. “He was Frank’s commanding officer in Afghanistan, we called him as a witness during the trial. Frank saved his life. Anyway, he agreed to let me interview him at his house.”

She shivered involuntarily, remembering what had happened next.

“Unfortunately for me, he turned out to be the Blacksmith.”

Matt discovered he wasn’t too exhausted for a spike of adrenaline to shoot through him. “What?” he exclaimed. “Didn’t the police come with you?”

“To interview a decorated, highly respected military officer? No.”

Even knowing that she had obviously survived, he couldn’t help feeling horrified at the thought of her facing the Blacksmith all alone, when he had already tried to kill her once—twice, if the attack on the DA’s office had been aimed at Karen as well as Reyes. And he had thought she was safe!

“What happened?” he demanded. “How did you get away?”

“Frank,” she said simply. “The colonel didn’t want to kill me on his own property, so he pulled a gun on me and made me drive us out into a little wooded area.”

He heard her heartbeat start to speed up as she remembered.

“But then, this pickup truck came out of nowhere, and drove right into us. From the passenger side,” she clarified hastily, seeing Matt’s stricken face. “I got knocked sideways and hit my head, but I was basically fine.” She touched her forehead again.

“It stunned me for a second, though. The next thing I knew, there was Frank, dragging the colonel out of the car. I tried to convince him that he didn’t need to kill him, we could hand him over to the police…but he wouldn’t listen. He dragged him off into the trees, and then…I heard gunshots.” She shuddered.

Relief, and shame at his relief, warred within Matt. Killing was wrong. He couldn’t possibly condone what Castle had done.

And yet, even he had briefly considered breaking his own code to stop the Blacksmith.

The Blacksmith would never have stopped trying to kill Karen, because Karen would never have stopped digging for the truth. Now, she was safe from him forever. And Frank Castle had been there to protect her when he, himself, had not. What right did he have to judge?

“I begged him not to do it,” she said quietly. “He didn’t care.”

So she was finally convinced that Castle’s methods weren’t justified—by the one killing that Matt was tempted to excuse. What irony.

“So I went home,” she concluded. “I thought it was all over, and I was finally safe. And then I got kidnapped.”

She sighed, and leaned her head back against the wall.

“I’m sorry, Karen,” he said. “You never should have had to go through all that. No wonder you were crying earlier.”

Her head turned toward him, and he clarified, “When I first got here, I could hear you from the hallway.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said hastily. She hadn’t meant to imply that she was in worse shape than he was, or that he needed to try and help her. He was the one who needed help right now, not her.

“Everything just…caught up with me, I guess, once I was here. I pretty much fell apart as soon as I was in the door. But I’m fine, really.”

He could have disputed the truth of that, but he doubted it would help.

“Do you want a drink?” she asked suddenly, and he remembered the bottle of whiskey in her bag.

Was she trying to change the subject? Or did she want a drink, and was offering to be polite?

“Sure,” he answered. Why not? They could probably both use one.

She went to the kitchenette for a couple of coffee mugs, and retrieved her bag from the desk. She sat back down, poured a few fingers of liquor into each mug, and handed one to him.

“Thanks,” he said quietly, and they both drank.

The whiskey burned its way down his throat, quickly spreading warmth through his veins. The stiffness in his muscles softened, just a little, and he sighed.

Then it occurred to him that he had never asked the question he’d been wondering about ever since he had first realized she was in the office.

“Why did you come here, Karen? I’d have thought you’d be home in bed, after a night like this.”

“That was my plan,” she told him. “I did go home. But my apartment is pretty wrecked. There’s a broken window, and it’s freezing, and…it doesn’t feel safe.”

Of course. He had been in her apartment earlier tonight, he should have remembered what she would be coming home to.

“Were you planning to sleep here?” he asked.

“Yeah, on the couch in Foggy’s office.”

This could get awkward, Karen thought, if he had had the same idea. But why would he?

“What about you?” she countered. “Why did you come here?”

He hesitated, but really, there was no reason not to tell her.

“My apartment smells like Elektra. She spent two days in my bed, her scent is all over it.”

Karen blushed. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew now the real reason Elektra had been in his bed. Matt must have noticed, but thankfully he didn’t react.

“It smells like she’s still there,” he said softly, “And she’s gone. She’s dead. And I couldn’t stand it.”

Karen tried to imagine what that would be like. Smells were closely linked to emotions anyway, but how heartbreaking must it be to smell the scent of someone you cared about, after they were dead? To have senses so powerful that there was no escaping it, except by leaving the apartment altogether?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounds awful. Do you—do you want the couch?”

“Oh, no, that’s all right,” he replied quickly. “I doubt I’m going to be able to sleep tonight, anyway.”

She should take the couch, and be comfortable—as comfortable as the office would allow, anyway.

And then he thought of something he could do for her, if she would let him.

“You could sleep at my place,” he offered. “If you want.”

“Really?” asked Karen, taken aback. “Did you mean both of us go back there, or…or were you going to stay here? I’m not going to just leave you all alone like this, Matt!”

He opened his mouth, and closed it. He had meant to stay here, but he had forgotten to take into account the kindness she persisted in showing him. If she refused to leave him….

Could he bear to go back to his apartment?

He remembered the horror that had gripped him earlier, and shuddered. It wouldn’t be easy. But if Karen was with him, maybe he could stand it.

“I mean it, Matt. I’m not leaving you here on your own. I understand if you don’t want to go back there, but then I’m staying here with you.”

Despite her insistence that she was fine, he knew she needed a good night’s sleep, badly. And she deserved to have it in a comfortable bed. If that’s what it took to convince her….

For her, he would try.

His lips bent upward in what was almost a smile.

“It’s all right, Karen. I’ll go, too.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’ll be hard,” he admitted. “But I have to go back sometime. And I’d rather not do it alone. I think I can bear it, if you’re with me.”

She didn’t want to accept such a generous offer from him, while her feelings were still so uncertain. But he made it sound like she would be doing him a favor, as well, and that made it easier. If they were helping each other….

“Okay,” she agreed. “Let’s do that. Thank you.”

Chapter Text

Matt picked up his cane on the way out the door, but didn’t bother unfolding it.

“You don’t need that at all, do you?” Karen asked as they walked down the hall to the stairs.

“No. But there would be questions, if I didn’t act the way people expect a blind man to act.”

She supposed that was true enough. It stung to think just how much of his behavior with her had been an act, but it was understandable. Or at least, mostly understandable. She would probably never stop wishing that he had been willing to tell her the truth, even if he needed to practice this deception on the world in general.

She was quickly distracted from this train of thought, however. As they stepped outside, a completely unexpected wave of anxiety swept over her, all her fears from earlier returning in a sickening rush.

She stopped dead, breath caught, her eyes darting to every shadow, straining her ears for any threatening sound.

“Karen?”

She realized her heart was pounding—and that Matt could hear it, and must know she was panicking for no reason.

A flash of anger shook her, as sudden as the fear, at the unfairness of their situation—he could hide from her whatever he chose, while she was an open book to his powerful senses!

“I’m fine,” she said shortly, silently daring him to call her out for lying. “Let’s go.”

There’s nothing to be afraid of, she told herself determinedly, and marched off.

After a moment she heard his footsteps behind her, and he quickly caught up, the cane he didn’t need extended before him.

She glanced sideways, saw that his head was bowed, his expression dejected, and immediately regretted her sharpness. He couldn’t help the way his senses worked, after all, and he’d only been expressing concern for her.

“I shouldn’t be so jumpy,” she said, deliberately softening her voice in unspoken apology. “It’s stupid—”

His head lifted.

“You are never stupid,” he said firmly. “It’s no wonder you’re jumpy, after the night you’ve had. But you’re safe now.”

She sighed gustily. “That’s what I keep telling myself. But…I thought I was safe before, after I got home from Colonel Schoonover’s house. I thought it was all over, and I could finally relax. That almost makes it worse, you know? If I’d known I was still in danger, I could have, I don’t know, prepared for it. But to think I was safe, and then….”

She shuddered, thinking of what had happened next.

“Karen?” he said again, his voice sharpening with worry. “What did they—did they hurt you?”

“No—well,” she amended, “I’m sure I’ve got some bruises, I tried to fight back when they grabbed me.”

Matt’s heart seized at the thought of Karen trying to fight against the people who had so nearly killed him, who had killed Elektra….

But they had needed her alive, he reminded himself. A dead hostage was no use to them.

Still. She should never have been in such a situation. She should never have had to defend herself against his enemies, all alone and helpless.

“They terrified me, more than anything else,” she said quietly. “They just came out of nowhere, and I tried to fight…”

He heard her heart rate increase as she went on. “But there were too many of them—and they were so fast! They didn’t say anything, I didn’t know who they were, or where they were taking me, or what was going to happen to me….”

Being held hostage certainly wasn’t the only thing that might happen to a kidnapped woman, and was far from the worst possibility. No wonder she had been terrified.

He clenched his jaw, fighting the urge to put his arm around her. He had no right.

“They put me on a bus, with all the others. They wouldn’t let us talk to each other, they didn’t tell us anything, and they talked to each other in some other language, it sounded like Japanese, so none of us knew what was going on. There was a woman with them who spoke English, but she wouldn’t tell us anything, either, she just ordered us to keep quiet.”

Karen hadn’t meant to tell him all this, but now she had started, she couldn’t seem to stop, the words pouring out of her in a rush of remembered fear.

“One of the other hostages, this old guy, he started yelling at them, cussing them out and saying he wasn’t afraid of them…so they shot him.”

Matt felt cold. One more person he had failed to protect—and proof that they only needed some of the hostages to remain alive. They might have killed Karen just as easily—

“And the woman stuck a gun in my face, put the barrel right against my head, because I was whispering to the guy next to me. He was wearing an ankle monitor that he’d disabled, and I convinced him to turn it back on so the police could find us.”

Matt’s heart by now was beating just as hard as Karen’s. He was horrified at the danger she’d been in—but how brave she was, and how determined! Even in fear for her life, she could make a plan, and convince a criminal like Turk Barrett—Matt had recognized him among the hostages, and knew he was supposed to be under house arrest—to do her bidding.

“You’re safe now, Karen,” he told her again, a promise to himself as much as to her. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Karen turned to look at him, suddenly hearing Daredevil in that low, intense voice. His face was set, determined, giving him a look of Daredevil, too, even without the mask.

She took a deep breath, and sighed it out shakily, letting go of the fear.

He would keep her safe.

She moved closer to him, and nudged his arm with her elbow.

He stopped, a complicated expression flashing across his face too quickly for her to interpret. But when she held out her arm, he took it, tucking his hand into the crook of her elbow.

They walked on, not entirely at ease, but more comfortable than either of them could have hoped for just a few hours ago.

Neither of them spoke for a minute or two. But Karen still had questions, and it wasn’t long before she asked, “Matt, who were those people? I still don’t know. You said they’re called the Hand? What do they want?”

He sighed. “I’m still not entirely sure,” he admitted. “Stick told me what he knew, but he was short on specifics…and long on mystical bullshit. He said they were an ancient secret society, trying to take over the world…”

His tone was faintly derisive, which she found reassuring—he didn’t seem too worried about the world being taken over any time soon. Still, they were obviously dangerous….

“Elektra and I were tracking actual evidence, not fairy tales, so I know there was something going on. I just don’t know what. They infiltrated Roxxon, and were using the company’s resources….We traced their activity to a construction site in Hell’s Kitchen, and found a massive hole in the ground under the building. Hundreds of feet deep.”

“Hundreds of feet?” she repeated incredulously.

He nodded. “I dropped something in, and listened until I heard it hit bottom. It’s not tunnels, or anything like that…just a hole, straight down, too deep to have any normal purpose that I can think of.”

Karen’s interest was caught. How could they dig a hole that big without anyone noticing? It must have taken time—how long had they been here?

And Roxxon…they were involved in just about everything. Which made them an ideal company to have influence with…but also made it impossible to guess what the Hand might be after. There were simply too many possibilities.

Matt went on, “Our investigation pretty much fell apart after that—the night we found the hole, they found us there, and attacked. That was the night Elektra was injured.”

He had continued investigating on his own, of course—but he didn’t want to think about, or talk about, what he had found. He had learned nothing definite, in the end, so why horrify Karen to no purpose?

Karen knew how long ago Elektra had been injured, all too well. But she didn’t ask what Matt had been doing in the days since then, if that’s when his investigation had ended. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, and she was fairly sure Matt wouldn’t want to talk about it.

She was finding herself relieved, on the whole, to be back on mostly good terms with him, and she didn’t want to jeopardize their fragile reconciliation.

Not tonight, anyway.

Instead, she asked, “Is it over now? Did you stop them, or are they still out there? I didn’t see the police arresting anyone tonight…”

“We stopped them, I think,” he said. “Frank Castle showed up—”

“I know,” she said, nodding. “I saw him.”

“Well, he shot a lot of them. Between him and Elektra, I think all of them who were there tonight are dead…”

Karen frowned. Was he saying Elektra had killed people? Had he willingly partnered with someone who would do that, after everything he had said against it?

“…and Stick killed their leader—cut off his head.”

The man who had trained him was also a killer?

Why had he condemned Frank so harshly the night they had worked on his defense together, when his own allies were no better? Was it possible his unyielding Catholic morals were more flexible than they seemed?

That was likely to be a whole conversation in itself, but she wasn’t going to try to have it right now. She filed it away with all the other things she wanted to discuss with him…some other time.

At least now she had one more answer about tonight’s chaotic events.

“I wondered about that,” she said. “I heard Brett say someone got decapitated!”

“He was the one giving the orders,” Matt said, “So hopefully with him gone, if there are any more of them, they’ll have to stop…whatever it was they were doing.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said.

She saw that they had nearly reached Matt’s apartment building, and sighed silently with relief. This night seemed to have gone on forever, and she couldn’t wait to finally get off the street for good.

Suddenly, Matt paused, raising his head and frowning.

Instantly alert, Karen listened, but heard nothing unusual.

“What is it?” she asked softly.

He sighed, and resumed walking. “Sirens,” he answered.

She thought about that as they crossed the street. How far away could he hear things? Sirens were designed to carry, and in a city like New York….

“You must hear a lot of sirens,” she said.

He nodded. “Every night,” he said wearily. “Somewhere in the city, there’s always sirens.”

Sirens meant trouble, and people who needed help.

Of course, they also meant that there were emergency vehicles already on the way to provide that help. But still. What must it be like for him, to hear so much?

“Is that why you do it?” she asked hesitantly. “Go out and…and help? Because you know, you can hear, when people are in trouble?”

Matt thought about the devil inside, about Foggy saying he was just making excuses for what he wanted to do anyway.

“That’s not the only reason,” he said. “But that’s how it started, yeah.”

Karen knew, in a general way, what the crime statistics were like across the city. But she realized now that to Matt, they weren’t just statistics. To be able to hear, individually, every emergency within range of his senses—whatever that range was…

It sounded overwhelming.

There might be advantages to such powerful senses, but she was beginning to see that there could be drawbacks, as well.

Matt’s steps slowed once they reached his building, and his expression clouded. But he went steadily on, up the stairs and down the hall, and unlocked his door without hesitation.

They went inside and hung their coats in the entryway, and then Matt turned resolutely and walked toward the living room, Karen right behind him. She noted a change in the way he moved, and realized that he wasn’t “acting blind” now that they were inside. He no longer felt the need to pretend for her, and she was glad.

He stopped dead at the end of the short hallway.

Looking past him into the purple glow of the living room, she saw that the door to the bedroom was closed. But she guessed that whatever smell he could detect from there was perceptible anyway, even here across the room.

He turned his head for a moment, his face in shadow. Then he slowly continued on into the living room.

Karen followed, but stopped short, arrested by the sight of an open trunk in the middle of the floor. Spilling out the top was an untidy jumble of material that she recognized with a sharp intake of breath.

Matt, who had crossed the room to turn on a lamp, came back to her side immediately.

“Let me get that out of the way,” he said, and pushed the trunk toward the side wall, where the doors to a storage closet stood open.

“That’s where you keep it? The suit?” she asked, thinking of all the times she had been here, with no idea what lay on the other side of those doors.

“Yes. I should have put it away properly, but…I left in a hurry, earlier. I went into the bedroom for clean clothes, and…” he fell silent.

“It was too much,” she finished for him.

She walked toward the bedroom, and paused with her hand on the door. She could smell nothing remarkable, but she didn’t doubt that he could. They had been here only minutes, but she could see the effect it was having on him, his posture gone stiff, his movements reluctant, as if a heavy weight had descended onto his shoulders.

“Would it help to change the sheets?” she asked.

“Of course, you should have clean sheets to sleep on,” he replied, but made no move to come any closer to the bedroom.

Well. She had been wondering if there was any chance of convincing him to take the bed—he was injured, after all, and must be exhausted. But maybe the bed would be too painful for him, if it was the source of the smell that had driven him out onto the streets to escape it. If he preferred the couch, he had the right to make that choice.

“Why don’t I strip the bed now,” she suggested, “and we can leave it to air out for a bit before I put clean ones on. All right?”

He hesitated, then nodded silently, and she slid the door open.

Once she went closer to the bed and set to work, she could smell something, but it was so faint she couldn't quite tell what. She quickly pulled off the sheets and folded them, hoping for Matt’s sake that disrupting them wasn’t spreading the smell into the air too much.

Of course, the smell was in the sheets themselves, whether they were on the bed or off it.

“Where can we put them where they won’t bother you?” she asked. “Do you have a box, or anything we can put them in?”

“I’ll get some bags,” he said quietly, and went to the kitchen.

Once the sheets were muffled in two layers of plastic trash bags, Matt took the bundle from her, and packed it into the trunk with his Daredevil suit. He pushed the trunk into the closet, and closed the doors.

Karen went into the bathroom and washed her hands, in case handling the sheets had transferred the scent to her.

When she came back into the living room, Matt had taken a seat on the couch. She walked over to join him.

“Thank you for doing that, Karen,” he said, still stiff and quiet. “I should have done it myself…”

“It’s all right, Matt. I don’t mind.”

She sat down beside him, took off her boots, and curled her legs up onto the couch.

“How are you holding up?” she asked.

His remote expression softened a little. “Better, with you here,” he said. “How about you?”

“Tired,” she admitted. “But I’m better, now that we’re off the street. I feel…safe. No-one has ever attacked me here, which is more than I can say for my own apartment.”

She hesitated, but as much as she hated to feel like she needed protecting, he deserved to hear the rest.

“And I’m with you,” she finished. “And that feels much safer than when I was all alone.”

Matt couldn’t speak for a moment, a complicated lump of emotion rising in his throat. Hearing her admit to fear made him feel even more protective toward her—but hearing her say she felt safe with him…he felt a renewed flare of guilt that he had failed to protect Elektra, but it was nearly overpowered by a mix of surprise, tenderness, and determination.

“You are safe,” he said, a little hoarsely. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I’ll keep you safe.”

“I know,” she said, nodding.

He could sense how much calmer she was now, reinforcing her words. Her heart beat quiet and steady, her breathing was deep and relaxed, the tiny muscle tremors he could feel were only weariness, not tension.

It amazed him, that she could trust him to protect her after everything he’d done.

It didn’t make any sense.

“Why—” he began abruptly, and stopped just as abruptly, not knowing quite what he was asking.

“Why what?” she asked curiously.

He frowned, and settled on the thing he’d been wondering ever since he’d arrived at the office and broken down.

“Why are you being so nice to me? I know I don’t deserve it.”

Her shoulders rose and fell in a small shrug. “Sometimes deserving doesn’t have much to do with it,” she said. “You’ve just lost someone you…you care about, and you don’t deserve that, either.”

“You’re going easy on me because of Elektra?”

She reached for his hand. “I’m going easy on you because I know how it feels to lose someone and to blame yourself.”

“You do?” he asked, his surprise quickly followed by concern. “Karen, who did you lose?”

Oh.

Karen realized what she had just said.

Shit.

She hadn’t intended to tell him about Kevin. She never told anyone about Kevin, especially not anyone she wanted to think well of her.

But maybe it was time she gave up one of her own secrets. It might help Matt to know that she understood what he was going through…and at this point, was she really still worried about what he would think of her if he knew?

She sighed, and squeezed his hand.

Just do it.

“I lost Kevin,” she told him. “My brother.”

For a moment, Matt thought he must have misheard.

“Your brother?” he repeated blankly. “The one you told me about?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “I’ve only got one.”

But she had always spoken of him in the present tense, the few times she had mentioned him…

He shook his head, as if that could clear his confusion.

“And he’s dead?”

She nodded. “He died years ago, when I was 19,” she said somberly. “He was 16. If you want to know why I don’t talk about my family, this is why. Kevin died, and it was my fault.”

Karen’s heart rate had increased, in a way that said stress to his senses, but it was steady and truthful. There was no doubt she meant what she was saying.

“Your fault?” he asked. He couldn’t seem to think of anything to say but repeating her words.

“We were in a car crash,” she said softly, “and I was driving.”

Pity swept over him, shaking him out of his preoccupation with his own guilt.

“It was an accident,” he said haltingly. “Whatever caused it—”

“I caused it,” she interrupted. “There were no other cars involved, thank god, at least I didn’t hurt anyone else. I never should have been driving, I was drunk…and high.”

She paused, and he knew his face must be showing the shock he felt.

“I was going too fast, and I just…lost control. We went off the road, flipped over…”

Her voice was shaking, and he felt a sudden hint of moisture in the air. She blinked back the tears and took a deep breath.

“Kevin was killed,” she finished, “and I walked away with just a few cuts and bruises. That made it worse, that I was barely even hurt. It was so unfair. If anyone died in that crash, it should have been me.”

NO. Matt’s rejection of the very idea of Karen dying was immediate, and instinctive. It didn’t even bear thinking about.

And yet, he couldn’t help but understand why she felt that way. After all, it should have been him who died tonight, instead of Elektra.

“The sheriff let me off easy,” she continued. “He was a friend of my dad’s, and he said our family had suffered enough. I never even got arrested. And I felt like the worst person in the world. It actually made it worse, that I wasn’t being punished for what I’d done, you know?”

He knew.

“So, I get it. I understand what you’re going through. I truly hope that you don’t hate yourself right now as much as I hated myself after Kevin died, because it’s hell.”

Hell wasn’t a word Matt used lightly—but Karen wasn’t using it lightly, either. He knew she meant what she said. She had once felt every bit of the grief and guilt that he was feeling right now.

“Karen, I’m so sorry,” he said softly.

She sighed. “It’s a long time ago now. But it still hurts. And you know, it’s not really true to say I wasn’t punished. My dad….” she trailed off.

Matt felt cold. “What did he do?” he asked.

“Oh, he didn’t do anything. He just hasn’t ever forgiven me. He told me to leave…he said he didn’t want me there, at home, anymore.”

What kind of father would send away his child, when she was in such pain?

“And your mother?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Her hand tightened on his. “She died before Kevin did,” she answered. “Cancer.”

No wonder she never talked about her family. He had previously had a vague impression that she and her parents disagreed about some things—hadn’t she said something once about religion?—but he had no idea that it was this bad.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, feeling how inadequate the words were.

“I was so angry back then,” she said pensively. “After Mom died….I deferred starting college to help Dad run the diner, even though I was desperate to get out of Fagan Corners. I was angry at the whole world, and I made a lot of bad choices.”

Matt understood that kind of anger, all too well. He had had no idea that he and Karen had that in common.

He’d had no idea that her parents ran a diner, either. It was true that she almost never mentioned her family…but it was also true that he had never asked.

“Lots of people make bad choices when they’re nineteen,” he said, wanting to comfort her somehow.

“Sure,” she replied. “But most people’s bad choices don’t have a body count.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

“God, listen to me,” she said abruptly. “I’m sorry Matt, I didn’t mean to make this all about me.”

“Karen, it’s all right. You can tell me anything you want—”

“I just wanted you to know that I understand—”

“I know. You don’t have to apologize. I’m glad you were willing to tell me.”

Something so personal, so painful…but she had told him anyway, to give him the comfort of knowing that she understood what he had assumed no one else could possibly understand.

“And surprised,” he added honestly. “After everything I’ve done….”

He had always admired her compassion…but to be the object of it, when he felt so undeserving….

She sighed. “I don’t like the way you treated me, Matt. Obviously. You know how upset I was. I still don’t agree with some of the choices you made. But I’m not going to let you suffer alone like I did.”

“You went through it alone?” he asked in consternation. Even if her father had rejected her, hadn’t she had any friends to help her?

“Everyone knew,” she said simply. “Bernie might not have arrested me, but the whole town knew what happened. It’s a small place, word gets around. My dad got lots of sympathy, but me…not so much. Once the funeral was over, I left for Georgetown as soon as I could, and started college. With a bunch of nice, normal freshman, who hadn’t killed their own brothers…”

Her voice shook a little. “And the last thing I wanted to do was tell anyone there. So. Yeah.”

So she had kept it a secret, and carried the burden alone.

“Karen, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

“I doubt anyone in Fagan Corners would agree with you. But thank you.”

She had lived with the pain for so long, it was a part of her now, so she felt some surprise that his sympathy was a comfort. It made her wonder what it would have been like, if she had had anyone like him to help her at the time.

She remembered the unshakable sense of isolation she had felt, surrounded by other students whose life experiences were so very different from her own. What friendships she had managed to find had been superficial, transitory, rarely lasting beyond the end of whatever shared class had brought them together.

If she had known Matt then, would she have been able to form a deeper connection with him? Or would he have been just one more fleeting acquaintance?

Most likely she would have kept him at a distance, believing she didn’t deserve friends, or sympathy.

And now?

She still felt guilty whenever she thought about that night. But telling Matt had been easier than she expected. She had given him just the bare bones, but he wasn’t judging her.

She had told him so that he would know he wasn’t alone, but maybe that went both ways. If she understood his pain, didn’t he also understand hers?

“Maybe I’ll tell you the whole story one day,” she said, surprising herself. Did she really want to do that?

Not tonight, certainly. They’d both had enough emotional upheaval tonight to last them the rest of the decade.

But…some day. Maybe.

Matt brushed his thumb over her knuckles.

“Anything you want to tell me,” he said, “I’ll listen.”

“Okay,” she replied, and smiled.

He didn’t smile, but his expression was easier than it had been since they entered the apartment.

And then she surprised herself again, by yawning.

“It’s late,” Matt said. “We should put clean sheets on the bed, so you can get some sleep.”

It seemed almost a shame to end their talk now, when they were finally fairly at peace with each other. But she couldn’t deny she needed sleep, and surely he did, too.

He stood up and started for the bedroom.

“I can do it,” she said, following. “Just tell me where the sheets are. You don’t have to….”

“It’ll be faster if we do it together,” he pointed out. “And anyway, I need to get some blankets for the couch.”

A shadow crossed his face as he entered the room, and he hesitated for a brief moment. But then he walked steadily over the closet, coming back with an armful of sheets.

So, she thought. Not as bad as before…but still bad.

They quickly made the bed, then he gathered what he needed and returned to the living room.

She stood in the doorway watching him spread out his blankets, hoping he would be able to sleep and forget his grief for a while.

“Thanks for letting me sleep here, Matt,” she said.

“Of course,” he replied. “I should be thanking you, I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” she said. “Well…good night.”

“Good night, Karen.”

She returned to the bed, slipped gratefully between the sheets, and was asleep in moments.

Matt turned out the lamp and curled up on the couch, certain he would be lying awake for the rest of the night.

But Karen’s presence in the next room was like the warm glow of a banked fire to his sore heart. The sounds of her peaceful, steady breathing and the slow beat of her heart soothed him, until before he knew it he drifted off into a deep sleep.

Chapter Text

Karen startled awake from an uneasy dream—not a full nightmare, but still unsettling enough that it was a relief to wake.

She stared around her in surprise, recognizing Matt’s bedroom, but for a long moment unsure what she was doing there…and then, as she caught sight of him in the other room, fast asleep on the couch, her memory came flooding back.

She closed her eyes again, stunned, and let the events of the night wash over her, trying to come to terms with everything that had happened.

When she eventually opened her eyes again, she saw that the nighttime glow outside the windows was starting to give way to the first pale gleam of daylight. She checked the time—still early, but not early enough to go back to sleep.

She sighed. She could have used a bit more sleep, but really, she’d had a better night than she expected. Last night’s dangers were certainly enough to give her nightmares, but she had managed to sleep undisturbed until the final dream that had woken her.

She stretched, taking a moment to enjoy the luxurious softness of Matt’s sheets, then slipped from the bed.

She headed for the bathroom, but paused for a moment to study that still figure on the couch. A small frown creased his brow, even in sleep, and she wondered what he might be dreaming about. He lay curled on his side, his hands tucked under his chin, looking more vulnerable than he ever did awake….

And he was Daredevil!

It was less shocking than it had been last night, but she still found it difficult to reconcile with the man she knew.

Matt was no Frank Castle, his whole life consumed by the need for vengeance. He had (up until recently, at least) had a normal life, a normal job. He had gone to work every day, had helped clients, whether they could afford to pay him or not. He had joked around with Foggy, and made Karen’s heart flutter every time he smiled…

And then he went out at night, and beat the shit out of criminals.

She shook her head, wondering.

How did he balance the different sides of himself?

How did he keep himself from going too far?

Not that she had any right to judge him if he did go too far.

An image of James Wesley flashed across her mind’s eye, his shirt soaked in blood, and she shuddered.

Suddenly, the sight of Matt, unguarded and unaware, was too much for her, and she turned away and hurried into the bathroom.

She closed the door as quietly as she could so as not to wake him, and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her haunted face stared back, dark circles under her eyes, her hair a tangled mess.

She had gone farther than Matt ever had, or ever would.

He thought she was a good person, even after what she had told him last night. He could accept the death of her brother as a tragic accident, without it shaking his belief that she was…innocent.

He had no idea that she had deliberately killed a man—because she had hidden it from him, just as he had hidden his secret identity from her. And like him, she had done it because she was afraid of what he would think of her if he knew.

She had been convinced he was wrong to hide the truth from her. But didn’t that make her wrong, too?

Last night she had asked herself if she really still cared what he thought of her, but she knew that yes, she did still care. The thought of telling him made her stomach drop and her heart race with anxiety.

She had told him one shameful secret already—did she need to tell him this one? What good would it do?

Deliberately, she brought to mind all her grievances against him, all the hurt he had caused her, trying to convince herself that she owed him nothing. She didn’t have to tell him everything. He hadn’t told her everything, had he? She still didn’t know how deep his attachment to Elektra was, or what he would have done if she had lived.

Would he have been so glad of Karen’s company last night, if he could have had Elektra’s?

It was easy enough to say he’d never stopped caring about Karen, he might even believe it, but the way he had acted said otherwise. And as long as he was still keeping some things from her, she didn’t need to feel guilty about doing the same.

She tried not to think about how she might feel about it if he decided to tell her the things she had held back from asking. That was a problem for another day.

Resolutely turning her back on the past, she bent to the sink and splashed water on her face, then ran her fingers through her hair to work out the tangles. Today, she had a new job to get to, after she stopped at home for a change of clothes. She had a busy day ahead of her, and she’d better focus on that.

The sound of running water woke Matt.

He knew at once he wasn’t in his bed, and took a moment to scan his surroundings.

He was on the couch.

His entire body ached.

And…he smiled as a familiar scent drifted to him on the air. Karen was here.

For a moment, he was content.

And then he remembered why Karen was here, and he gasped as if he had been punched in the gut, his heart kicking into overdrive.

For a long minute he couldn’t move, flattened under the weight of his emotions. But he fought the paralysis, determined to get ahold of himself. He was not going to take advantage of Karen’s kindness by falling to pieces all over again.

Not while she was here, anyway.

He forced himself to breathe deeply, focusing on his breath, only his breath, trying to dismiss the clamoring thoughts filling his head.

He’d had no time for meditation lately, he’d been too distracted by—

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Don’t hold onto the thoughts, let them float away.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

His hammering heart began to slow.

His emotions calmed—not entirely, but enough.

He sat up, his aching muscles protesting every movement. If Karen was up, it must be morning.

Not that he could have slept any more, anyway. He was surprised he had slept at all.

He let the sounds from his neighbors’ apartments filter into his awareness, hearing distant voices, showers running, a radio playing, the liquid trickle of a drip coffee maker….

Coffee. He needed coffee.

He heard the toilet flush in his own bathroom, reminding him that he had a guest.

Coffee, and breakfast. He wasn’t hungry, but Karen must be.

He stood up, suppressing a groan, and walked stiffly to the kitchen.

When Karen emerged from the bathroom, she was chagrined to see Matt in the kitchen, obviously awake, getting a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator.

“I’m sorry,” she said, crossing the room to join him. “I was trying not to wake you.”

“It’s fine,” he said quietly.

He didn’t look fine, but she instantly understood why, and felt a fresh pang of sympathy. Were her feelings ever going to stop ping-ponging between being upset with him, and caring for him?

“You woke up, and then you remembered everything,” she said softly. “It’s awful, I know—”

“Did you sleep well?” Matt broke in. God, he was never going to be able to keep it together right now if he talked about it.

And Karen must have realized that, because thankfully she allowed the change of subject.

“I did, actually,” she answered. “Better than I expected. No nightmares.”

“Nightmares?” he repeated, concerned.

She nodded. “Yeah, usually I have nightmares after I’ve…been through something violent.”

He noticed the barely perceptible hesitation, but didn’t pursue it, too distracted by his own consternation.

But why should he be so surprised? Nightmares were a perfectly normal response to trauma, and Karen had been through plenty of that in the time he had known her—and before, too, as he now knew. But somehow, he hadn’t considered how everything she had gone through would keep affecting her after it was over.

Even once she was safe, her own subconscious mind could turn against her.

She had never let on, always bringing a positive attitude into the office with her. Even when she admitted to not sleeping well, she had never mentioned nightmares. And he had taken her positivity at face value, never questioning whether she might be suffering more than she admitted.

“I didn’t know,” he said, ashamed.

“Because I didn’t tell you,” she replied. “I didn’t want to talk about it, I just wanted to try to forget about it and move on, you know?”

Karen actually felt a little relieved that he hadn’t known. It was hard not to feel self-conscious around him now that she knew about his senses, but he had just demonstrated that, despite his abilities, she was not an open book to him.

“Don’t feel bad about it,” she told him. “You’re not a mind-reader.” Thank goodness.

He still looked downcast, but there were plenty of reasons for that.

She wasn’t sure what she could say to comfort him, since he clearly—understandably—didn’t want to talk about it. Her own experience of Kevin’s death wasn’t much help to her now, for she’d had no one she could talk to, even if she had wanted to, when she woke up each day to horrifying memories.

Matt had turned away to pour two cups of coffee, and handed one to her. She murmured her thanks and sipped gratefully, curling her hands around the warmth of the mug.

Well, she might not know what to say, but she could at least help him with breakfast. While he busied himself cracking eggs into a pan on the stove, she put slices of bread into the toaster and got plates out of the cupboard.

Matt thought about objecting—she didn’t need to help, she was his guest—but having her there beside him, sharing the task between them, felt…comforting. He had learned last night that the pain was easier to bear when she was with him, but it seemed they didn’t even need to talk.

In fact, their conversation so far this morning had been more awkward than not, but her presence nearby was still soothing. The silence that had fallen wasn’t uncomfortable, they worked together easily, and he felt himself relax just a little.

He realized she’d taken out two plates, but as the eggs cooked and the toast browned, he found that he was hungry after all. Last night, the mere thought of food would have sent his stomach into revolt. But now, it smelled good—and he knew his body needed fuel, after all the energy he’d expended at the warehouse.

If only emotional needs were as easy to satisfy as physical ones. The distress he’d felt on waking had settled into a quieter grief, but he could feel how close he still was to that chasm of pain. He suspected he would have fallen into it headlong, if Karen weren’t here.

As they carried their plates over to the small table and sat down together, he wondered how long she would want to stay. He realized afresh that he had no idea how she had been spending her time since the trial ended (when she wasn’t being shot at, anyway), and berated himself for how completely he had let her slip from his mind in the press of other concerns.

Well, he could at least try to make up for that now.

“Do you have…plans for the day?” he asked hesitantly.

She nodded. “That’s right, I didn’t tell you,” she said. “I have a new job. At the Bulletin.”

He blinked. He knew she was working on an article, but a new job sounded like a more permanent arrangement.

“Really?” he asked blankly. “I mean, how did you…how did that happen?” He felt foolish, but that seemed like a big change to have happened in such a short time.

“Well,” she replied, “At first it was just going to be one article. Like I told you, I was going to write them an article about Frank in exchange for Ellison letting me dig around in the archives for information.”

He nodded in acknowledgement. It had been her digging that had uncovered the fact that Castle’s family had been killed in a gang shootout, which had been the first step to uncovering the involvement of the district attorney in a conspiracy to hide the truth.

“After the trial was over,” she continued, “he encouraged me to keep working on the story, and he helped, he came with me to talk to the medical examiner…and, well, he offered me a job. As a staff writer, not just freelance, and I took it. I didn’t exactly have anything else lined up.”

Yet another thing he had failed to consider—that his and Foggy’s split had left Karen unemployed. But of course it had. Foggy could find a job with a big firm easily enough, but he could hardly bring Karen with him. And as for himself….

He hadn’t given a thought to his professional future until this moment. It wasn’t a hopeful prospect. But even if he managed to make a living practicing law on his own, Karen had no reason to want to keep working for him, and plenty of reasons not to.

“I’m sorry we left you with no job,” he said regretfully. “But Nelson & Murdock…Foggy and I both agreed we shouldn’t try to keep working together. I let him down, and you, too, I know that. But Foggy and I were fighting pretty much every time we talked, and it seemed like it just wasn’t worth trying to salvage it.”

He sighed. “But I’m sorry you got hurt by the fallout, I never wanted that.”

Karen sighed, too. “I get it,” she said. “I mean, I could see how bad things had gotten between you, I just didn’t understand what was causing it. I couldn’t expect you to stay together just to keep me in a job.”

She paused, then added, “But I am damn lucky to be offered something else so quickly. Ellison’s putting a lot of faith in me, for all he knows I might be a terrible writer.”

“He offered you the job, he must think you can do it.”

“He thinks I’m a pain in the ass,” she corrected him. “He said that’s what Ben was, so it shouldn’t surprise him that his friends are, too.”

She wondered suddenly what Ben Urich would think of the fact that she was going to be working in his office, trying her best to do his job. She hoped he would approve.

“Well,” Matt said, “I don’t know about your writing, but I do know what a good investigator you are. You’re smart, you make connections other people overlook, and you’re incredibly…tenacious.”

He’d almost said stubborn.

Karen found this praise more encouraging than she would have guessed, given how much she’d been questioning Matt’s judgement lately.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she told him. “I can use all the confidence I can get.”

“You can do this,” he assured her.

But even as he said it, he remembered that not all the information she’d dug up on Frank Castle had come from the Bulletin’s archives.

She’d found some of it by breaking into his house.

When she was on the trail of a story, she wasn’t just stubborn—she was reckless.

“Be careful, though, Karen,” he said anxiously. “You’ve done some pretty dangerous things when you’re chasing a story—”

“I’ve found out the truth,” she retorted.

“And that’s important, I agree. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. Just…” he pressed his lips together, frowning. “Just don’t be reckless,” he finished. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

To his surprise, she laughed.

“You’re telling me not to be reckless, Daredevil?” she asked. “You take way more risks than I do. All in a good cause, I know. But just…try to be careful, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt either.”

Now he was even more surprised. Not that she didn’t want him getting hurt, but…

“You…you don’t think I shouldn’t do it?” He asked hesitantly. “You don’t want me to stop?”

“Being Daredevil?” she said. “No, I don’t. At least…”

She sighed. “Okay, now that I know it’s you, I’m going to worry. I do want you to be careful. But you’ve helped a lot of people. You’ve saved my life. Why would I want you to stop?”

She studied his troubled expression, thinking back over everything she had learned last night.

“Do you think you should stop?” she asked. “Or is this about Foggy again?”

“Oh, Foggy definitely thinks I should stop,” he said. “He’s been telling me so pretty much ever since he found out.”

“And you thought I’d do the same?”

He nodded.

“But it’s not just Foggy,” he went on. “You say I saved you, but I’ve also hurt you, you know I have. And you’re not the only one. This time, this fight against the Hand…I really think I may have done more harm than good.”

The chasm yawned at his feet, and he forced himself to take deep, slow breaths, struggling to maintain control of his emotions.

“You stopped them,” Karen pointed out.

“Not really.” He shook his head, willing himself to be calm. “I won’t kill, and killing them is what finally stopped them. My methods didn’t work. Every time I fought them, they just came back for more—and they covered their tracks too well to go after them with the law. Elektra stopped them, and Stick, and even Frank Castle. I may have helped, here and there, but I spent most of my time getting in their way.”

That was the guilt and the self-hatred talking, Karen knew. But he did have a point. An enemy that could only be stopped by killing them was bound to make him feel like a failure, if he truly believed that killing was never the answer.

And of course, there was no denying the damage he’d done to his personal and professional life. Add in Elektra’s death, and it was no wonder he was doubting himself.

“If you want to stop, I won’t argue with you,” she said. “That’s a choice only you can make.”

He definitely needed time to recover, and put his life back together. But she couldn’t judge whether continuing to be Daredevil would help, or harm him.

Years ago, she had tried to bury the pain of Kevin’s death by keeping busy, throwing herself into college and trying not to think about the past. But she knew that would have been much harder if she had stayed in Fagan Corners, stuck in a dead-end life and surrounded by reminders.

If being Daredevil reminded Matt of everything he’d lost….

“Keeping busy will help,” she said gently. “But busy doing what, that’s up to you. Just…I know right now you’re focused on everything bad that’s happened.” She reached out to touch his arm. “But, Matt, you have done good. Don’t let yourself believe that that doesn’t count.”

She slid her hand down his forearm, and gripped his hand.

“The only reason I’m still alive is because you followed me—that first night I stayed here, you, you must have pretended to be asleep, and then you followed me back to my place and you stopped the man who was going to kill me. Even if you never put on the suit again, you have helped people, saved people. I’m the living proof, any time you need a reminder.”

Matt sat silent, taken aback by how well Karen seemed to understand his feelings. It shouldn’t have surprised him after what she had told him last night, but he was used to assuming that no one else would understand him. Karen seemed determined to prove him wrong.

When she touched his arm, he felt a strange tightness under his ribs, as if his heart was trying to expand in his chest. Her touch was like the warmth of sunlight on his skin, and he suddenly realized how cold he had been without it.

When she took his hand, he hung on tightly.

And then….

Any time you need a reminder….

She was talking as if…as if she was going to stay a part of his life.

He hadn’t thought about the future, but he realized now that in the back of his mind he had been expecting her to leave. Not just to go to her new job, but to leave, like Foggy had. To walk away and leave him all alone.

Suddenly, he had to know what she intended. Anything was better than uncertainty.

“Karen,” he said, a breathless feeling constricting his throat.

He gripped her hand like a lifeline.

“Are we—what—what happens now? With us?”

He was floundering, but once again Karen understood.

“Where do we stand, you mean?” she asked, and he nodded anxiously.

Karen thought quickly. Leave it to Matt to ask the one question she wasn’t sure how to answer—but of course he would want to know. He’d lost everyone else, he must still be afraid he would lose her, too.

Well, she might not know exactly how she felt, but she could reassure him on that point, at least.

“I’m not going to abandon you, Matt,” she said, and saw a little of the tension leave his face. “I don’t know quite what we are, but I do want to keep spending time with you, and…get to know you better. Now that you’re not hiding half of yourself from me.”

She paused, wondering if he meant….

“But if you’re talking about dating…” she went on tentatively.

She waited a moment, in case he wanted to confirm or deny, but he said nothing. Which probably meant he was just as uncertain as she was.

She continued, “…We’re definitely not there, not right now. I need some time to get used to all this,” she waved her free hand around, encompassing Matt himself, and the closet where the Daredevil suit lay hidden.

“And you’re mourning the death of another woman, so you’re not in a good place for starting a relationship with anyone else.”

He acknowledged that with a sigh and a nod.

“Also, I still have questions,” she went on, “There’s things I haven’t asked, because you’re in pain and I don’t want to upset you even more. But for me to feel comfortable dating….”

He frowned. “Karen, you can ask me anything. You don’t have to go easy on me.”

“I know,” she said. “But it’s okay, really. I don’t need all my questions answered to be your friend, and it’s definitely too soon for anything else. So it can wait. And, uh…”

She hesitated, thinking about the secret she was still hiding.

Did she need to tell him?

A minute ago, he had just admitted again that his own allies had killed, even if he refused to do so himself. Was it possible he could accept what she had done?

Not today, she told herself. As long as their relationship was so tentative, so fragile, there was no need to put it under any additional strain.

She finished carefully, “There’s things I might want to tell you, too, about myself.”

“All right,” he said, cocking his head curiously. “You can tell me anything you want. Whenever you want.”

“There’s no hurry,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “For now…we’re good, I think. A lot better than we were, that’s for sure. But you know that.”

He did know it, as incredible as it still seemed.

He nodded earnestly. “I wish there was something more I could do, to earn back your trust,” he said.

“Some things take time,” she replied gently. “But I’m willing to stick around, and see how it goes.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly. His hand had loosened its desperate grip on hers, and his thumb brushed gently across her knuckles. “I’ll tell you one thing right now, Karen, and that’s that I will never lie to you again. I promise.”

When she didn’t answer immediately, he added, “I know you don’t have much reason now to believe that. But I mean it.”

“I want to believe it,” she said cautiously.

“But it’s going to take time,” he finished for her, sounding resigned.

There didn’t seem to be much to say to that. They both knew it was true.

But speaking of time…

Karen suddenly remembered she had a job to get to.

“Matt,” she said, “I’m really sorry to cut this short—”

“Time to leave?” he asked.

“Uh, maybe. Let me go get my phone…”

She really couldn’t afford to be late when she was so new, and she hurried to retrieve her phone from the bedroom and check the time.

“It’s all right,” she said with relief, coming back to the table. “I mean, yes, I have to go, but I’m not late.”

She picked up her plate and cup and carried them to the kitchen.

“I’ve still got time to stop at home and change clothes. Oh, and I’d better talk to the super about my broken window.” She grimaced, knowing that was going to be an uncomfortable conversation, but it had to be done. “I wonder how long it takes to get a window replaced in December?”

Matt had been dreading Karen’s departure, but now her words brought an unexpected glimmer of hope.

“You’re welcome to stay here until it’s fixed,” he offered.

“Oh, could I?’ she asked, brightening.

“Of course. I’d love to have you.”

She supposed that wasn’t really surprising, if the alternative was being alone with his grief.

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll call you later and let you know what my super says.”

She had slept in her clothes, so there was no need to change. She collected her shoulder bag and put on her boots, then Matt walked her to the entryway where she put on her coat.

“Good luck today,” he told her.

“Thanks,” she replied.

She took a step closer to him, and added, “Remember what I told you. Find things to do, try not to dwell on everything, okay?”

“I’ll try,” he said, but already he looked sadder, and tired, and suddenly she wished she didn’t have to go.

But she would be back.

She reached out and hugged him, and felt his chest heave in a deep breath as his arms went around her.

Matt held on for a long moment, knowing he shouldn’t delay her, but wanting to wrap himself in the comfort of her presence for as long as he could.

As soon as he felt the first subtle shift in her muscles, he released her. He didn’t want to let go, but he wasn’t about to make things awkward by making her pull away from him.

Karen didn’t really want to let go, either, but didn’t let herself examine that fact too closely.

“I’ll see you later,” she said, and he nodded, trying to smile without much success.

She didn’t like to leave him, but dragging things out wasn’t going to make it any easier for either of them. Just go. You’ll be back later.

She took a deep breath. “Okay, bye,” she said, and stepped out into the hallway.

Once the door was closed and she couldn’t see him any more, it was easier to turn and walk away.

There was nothing more she could do for him now—he would get through the day, somehow, on his own. She had better think about her own concerns, like how she was going to get the superintendent of her apartment building to believe that someone had broken in, when her apartment was several stories above the ground.

And she really should call Foggy. She could reassure him she was all right, and let him know that Matt had told her about his senses. And he knew Elektra, didn’t he? Whether he liked her or hated her, it seemed right to tell him she was dead.

Maybe they could meet for a drink, and catch each other up on their news. Last night she had thought Foggy might not have time for her anymore, but now she was more optimistic.

It was probably going to feel weird, having drinks with Foggy without Matt there. But Foggy and Matt’s relationship was something they would have to figure out for themselves. She hoped they would find a way to patch things up, but she wasn’t going to interfere. She could be friends with both of them, whether they were speaking to each other or not.

It wouldn’t be the same as when all three of them were together, of course. She was going to miss their easy banter, the way they bounced ideas off each other, all the weird inside jokes and shared memories that came from over a decade of friendship. But if anything could be salvaged, it was up to them.

Whatever happened, all she could do was take things one day at a time. Today, she needed to concentrate on her new job, and try to get through the day without spending too much time worrying about Matt.

She would call him later, and she would see him tonight. That was going to have to be enough, for both of them.

Chapter Text

Karen stepped into Josie’s bar and looked around. She spotted a few of the regulars, but there was no sign of Foggy.

Then she heard his cheerful voice behind her.

“Hey, Karen.”

“Foggy!” she exclaimed, smiling. “I was worried I was late, but it looks like we both are.”

“And if we’re both late, then neither of us are. Come on, let’s grab a table.”

He looked different, she thought as they made their way to a small table in a dark corner. Now that she wasn’t preoccupied as she had been the last time she saw him, the changes in him were impossible to miss. He looked…successful.

She studied him as he went to the bar to order drinks, trying to analyze the difference. It was partly the new clothes and the shorter haircut, but there was more than that.

He had a new confidence about him. And why not? He had survived the disaster of Frank’s trial with his professional reputation intact, and had quickly been hired by Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz, recruited by Jeri Hogarth herself. His days of being paid in baked goods were now firmly behind him.

She was happy for his success, of course. But she couldn’t help feeling a little sad for what he was leaving behind.

Get used to it, she told herself. That chapter of their lives was over now, both the good and the bad.

Foggy returned with their drinks and sat down.

“So,” he said. “You said you had a lot to tell me.”

When she had called him and asked to meet, he had been too busy to talk for long, so she had decided all her news could wait until now.

“Yeah, I do,” she replied. “I talked to Matt.”

A guarded expression came over his face, and she quickly added, “Your relationship with him is your business, I’m staying out of it. But I wanted you to know, he told me…”

She glanced around to be sure they couldn’t be overheard.

“He told me the other stuff he’s been hiding from me. About his senses.”

“Oh.” Foggy puffed out a breath. “Good. It’s about time. Did he tell you about Elektra?”

She nodded. “Yes—but it’s not what you’re thinking. That night at the warehouse…she was killed in the fight.”

Foggy stared at her, wondering if he had misheard—but looking at her face, he knew he hadn’t.

“She’s dead?” he exclaimed, appalled. “Holy shit, I’ve spent the last year afraid he was going to get himself killed, and now he’s gotten her killed? Dammit, Matt—”

“It’s not his fault, Foggy,” Karen broke in sharply.

“Not his fault?” he repeated incredulously.

She glanced around and frowned at him, and right, this was definitely not a conversation they wanted anyone else to hear.

He lowered his voice, but persisted, “If she got dragged into his vigilante bullshit, how is that not his fault?”

Karen was shaking her head. “She didn’t get dragged in. Those people they were fighting…”

She paused a moment, and he waited impatiently while she gathered her thoughts.

“Okay, I don’t know the whole story,” she admitted. “There were some things Matt was too upset to talk about. But she came to him, to ask for his help. Daredevil help, not lawyer help.”

“That’s impossible,” he countered. “He only started being Daredevil a couple years ago, how could she know?”

“Apparently she knows the guy who taught Matt how to fight. He must have told her.”

Foggy frowned. It was a pretty unlikely coincidence that Matt’s former girlfriend and his former mentor should know each other…but maybe not any more unbelievable than the rest of it. “Okay, that’s…improbable. But go on.”

“Okay, so from what Matt said, Elektra and Stick—don’t give me that look, that’s his name—they were already fighting these people before Matt got involved. Matt didn’t know anything about it until Elektra showed up and asked for his help, and he didn’t believe her at first.”

“Good,” Foggy muttered.

“But then the two of them got attacked and had to fight them off, and that convinced him. So then they started working together. He didn’t drag her into anything.”

Foggy digested that in silence. The whole thing still sounded wildly unlikely.

“So it’s not his fault she died,” Karen said. “Mind you, he still thinks it is, because she died protecting him. He said they were trying to kill him, and she saved him.”

Speaking of improbable.

Foggy had spent the last ten years thinking badly of Elektra Natchios, when he thought of her at all. It was hard enough trying to wrap his head around the idea that she was dead, but even harder to believe that she had died saving Matt.

He didn’t know how he felt about it. He had never liked Elektra, and obviously he was glad Matt hadn’t died. But that felt uncomfortably close to being glad that she had, and he hoped he was a better person than that.

That uneasy thought was followed by another—Matt must be devastated.

He tried not to think about it, but it was no use. He might have walked away from his former best friend, but apparently it wasn’t so easy to stop caring about him.

“He must be pretty upset,” he said, half-unwillingly.

“Yeah,” Karen said quietly.

Foggy stared into his drink, thinking.

“You know, I never thought she really cared about Matt,” he said slowly. “Like I told you, I thought she was just a bored rich girl, slumming with a broke law student. She thought things like rules and responsibilities were for other people. As far as I could see, she did whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted—and Matt did whatever she wanted, too.”

Karen turned that over in her mind. Foggy had told her before that Elektra wasn’t good for Matt, but that could mean a lot of things. The person he was describing now seemed like an unlikely choice for someone as conscientious as Matt.

But maybe that was part of her appeal?

She knew what a relief it could be to throw off responsibility, even when some part of her knew that what she was doing was wrong. Maybe even because it was wrong.

Responsibility could crush a person under its weight, like it had for her after her mother died. The only thing that had lifted that weight, that had made her feel like she could breathe again, was indulging in irresponsible, even reckless behavior. Including dating a man that everyone else thought was trouble.

Was that how it had been for Matt?

She frowned. Her attachment to Todd Neiman had ended abruptly, and violently, the night her brother died. What had ended Matt’s first attachment to Elektra?

“Why did they break up?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Foggy answered. “He’s never told me. All I know is, they were inseparable, and then one day she was gone, and Matt was a complete wreck.”

So, she thought. Whatever happened, it was sudden, and traumatic.

“And he refused to talk about it,” Foggy finished glumly.

“Some things are too painful to talk about,” she said, “even to the people we care about most.”

He looked at her.

“Are you defending him hiding things right now?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I wouldn’t call that hiding things. Sometimes, talking about something makes you relive it, it makes it hurt worse than just dealing with it alone. If he was that upset, it must have been something pretty bad.”

“Not bad enough to stop him running right back to her as soon as she came back,” he pointed out.

“Well, not exactly,” she said. “That’s another thing he told me—they weren’t sleeping together. When I saw her at his place, she was in bed because she was recovering from an injury.”

“Do you believe him?” Foggy asked skeptically.

“Do you think he would lie to me about it?”

Foggy was tempted to say yes—Matt had lied to both of them about so many things. But he was forced to acknowledge that he simply withheld information far more than he told actual lies. And surely his overdeveloped conscience wouldn’t allow him to lie to Karen about something like this.

“No,” he admitted, “I guess he wouldn’t.”

“Their whole…situation was more complicated than I thought,” she told him. “He said that when she first showed up, he didn’t trust her at all. And they argued all the time they were working together.”

“Do you believe him?” Foggy asked again.

“Yeah, I do, because he admitted he still cares about her. He didn’t have to tell me that. Like I said, there’s a lot of details I still don’t know, but….”

She sighed, and finished, “It’s complicated.”

“When isn’t it, with Matt?” Foggy replied. He still had doubts—however Matt felt about Elektra, he had still been willing to drop everything and abandon his responsibilities, not to mention…whatever he and Karen had going on…for her.

“He could barely talk about her without breaking down,” Karen said. “He did break down when he told me she was killed. So I didn’t feel like I could ask him too many questions, it would be too cruel.”

Foggy had a sudden, vivid memory of Matt from ten years ago, miserable and silent. Foggy had asked plenty of questions…until he saw that they were only making Matt feel worse. And despite everything, despite his own dismay at Matt’s behavior, he hadn’t wanted to hurt him by insisting on answers.

“You still care about him,” he said, searching her face.

“Yes. I do.” She met his gaze steadily. “And so do you.”

Foggy opened his mouth, and closed it. He sighed.

“Okay, fine, so do I. But I can’t have him in my life right now.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

“What about you? You don’t sound nearly as mad as I was when I found out about everything. Did you make up with him?”

“Oh, I was definitely mad at first. But…just the fact that he was finally telling me helped. Everything makes so much more sense, now that I know.”

She sighed. “I mean, I guess the stuff he hasn’t told me yet might change how I feel. But I hope not. For now, yeah, he’s told me enough that I’m sticking around.”

“You’re really okay with it?” he asked.

She stared into her drink, giving the question serious consideration.

“I’m not okay with the way all our lives got upended,” she said slowly. “That upset me, a lot. But now that the dust has settled, I think it’s ended up hurting him more than you or me.”

“It could have hurt us, though,” Foggy pointed out. “It’s no thanks to him that it didn’t.”

“I know,” she told her drink. “I wish he’d made some different choices. I especially wish he had trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”

She looked up at him. “But I am okay with the fact that he’s Daredevil. I know you aren’t—he told me you think he should stop. But you think vigilantes are a bad thing, in general. And I think differently.”

“People who take the law into their own hands are dangerous,” he said.

“Sure they are,” she said. “That’s kind of the point. I know you believe in the law, Foggy, but don’t forget how we first met. I know first-hand that the police can be corrupted, that the legal system doesn’t always protect people. I’m not mad that there’s someone else out there looking out for the people the law isn’t helping. Of course Daredevil’s dangerous—that’s how he stops the people who need to be stopped. I’d be dead if he wasn’t dangerous enough to stop a professional hitman.”

Foggy blew out a breath. “I can’t argue with that, obviously. But…what kind of person decides to do that? Are you really okay with Matt, our friend, being capable of that? Of being so…violent?”

Karen hid a smile at Foggy calling him “our friend”.

“We’re all capable of violence,” she said, shrugging. “It’s just a question of what it would take to drive us to it.”

“Well that’s…unsettling,” he said uncomfortably. “But Karen, someone being driven to violence, by desperation or whatever, that’s not the same thing as someone choosing it. I just can’t get away from the idea that he enjoys it.”

“Did he say that?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. But when I said it, and told him helping people was just an excuse, he didn’t deny it.”

“But that doesn’t mean—”

She broke off, suddenly remembering.

“The night we talked,” she admitted reluctantly, “he said something…he heard a siren, far enough away that I couldn’t hear it, and I asked him is that why he does it? Because he can hear when people need help? And he said, ‘That’s not the only reason.’ I never asked about the other reasons, I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Well there you go,” said Foggy.

But Karen still wasn’t satisfied. She didn’t want to think of Matt the way Foggy seemed to.

“His dad was a boxer, right?” she asked.

“Sure. Are you thinking that’s where he gets it from? He’s never talked much about his dad, but what he did say sounds like he was a really good guy, and a really good dad.”

“Who made a living by beating people up,” Karen said pointedly. “Choosing violence isn’t automatically a bad thing.”

“That’s still not the same as what Matt does,” Foggy argued. “Boxing is a sport, with rules and regulations. It’s not like brawling in the street.”

“But it’s a pretty brutal sport, and the people who do it have to be more comfortable with violence than the rest of us. So yeah, maybe that is where he gets it. And maybe he can still be a good person, like his dad was.”

“I never said he’s not a good person,” Foggy protested.

“But you do think there’s something wrong with him.”

“Yes,” said Foggy, meeting her eyes firmly. “I do. A well-balanced person wouldn’t do what he does. And I can’t believe you aren’t at least a little bit bothered by it.”

She sighed, and dropped her gaze to her drink once more.

“I was shocked,” she admitted. “It did make me wonder about what kind of person he really is, and if I ever really knew him. It takes some getting used to. But he’s still Matt. I can’t just write him off without at least trying to understand that side of him. And I’m not willing to dismiss it as just something wrong with him, either.”

Foggy shook his head, dissatisfied. “All I know is, the day he and I agreed to shut down Nelson & Murdock, he said he’s tired of apologizing for who he is. Like that side of him is the real Matt.”

“Or, it’s one part of him, and he’s tired of that part being so unacceptable to you,” she countered. “I think your disapproval actually affected him pretty deeply.”

“Do you?” Foggy asked skeptically. “Because he sure hasn’t been acting like my opinion matters to him.”

“It does,” she assured him. “That’s why he was so determined not to tell me the truth. He assumed I wouldn’t accept it, because you didn’t. He said he thought I’d hate him if I knew.”

Foggy shifted uneasily. He still felt fully justified in the things he’d said to Matt…but did Matt think he hated him?

Seeing his expression, she quickly clarified, “I’m not saying it’s your fault. It was his choice not to tell me. I’m just saying, you’re the person he was closest to for all these years, so your disapproval hit him harder than anyone else’s would have. If even you couldn’t accept it…then he thinks no one will.”

Maybe no one should.

But he still felt uncomfortable.

“I know your situation isn’t quite the same as mine,” she went on. “You’ve known him a lot longer than I have, so he’s been hiding things from you for longer. I can’t say you’re wrong, if you’ve had enough. But I want to understand. I want a chance to get used to it, all the things I know about him now, and then see how I feel. And the best way to do that is to keep seeing him.”

“Seeing him?” Foggy asked, eyebrows raised.

Karen blushed. “Not in the dating sense. It’s way too soon for that—we need to have a serious talk about Elektra before there’s any chance. I just mean spending time with him.”

“Good,” said Foggy, so forcefully that it was Karen’s turn to raise her eyebrows.

He raised a hand defensively. “I just mean, I’m glad you’re not rushing into anything. It’s your business, I’m not gonna tell you what to do. But I forgave him once…and he just hurt me again.”

“I know,” said Karen. “I’ll be careful. I don’t even know yet if I still want to date him, I’m definitely not going to rush into it.”

There was a slightly awkward pause. Karen felt she had told Foggy everything about Matt he would want to know, and if their opinions were so divided, maybe it was best to leave it there. It saddened her that Foggy’s opinion of Matt still seemed so low, but nothing else she could say was likely to change that.

And anyway, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t try to reconcile them. Their relationship was their business, however she felt about it.

So she said, with determined cheerfulness, “Well, we didn’t come here just to talk about Matt.”

“No we did not,” Foggy agreed, glad of the change in subject. It was Matt he was mad at, not Karen, and he didn’t want to argue with her any more.

And he definitely didn’t want to think about how much more sympathy he was feeling toward Matt, now that he’d heard Karen’s story. He needed to move forward, not look back. Or so he kept telling himself.

“How’s the new job?” he asked. "You ready to take the journalism world by storm, exposing corruption in high places?”

She smiled. “That’s the dream. If I’m good enough. But the first thing I have to do is finish my article on Frank Castle.”

“And how’s that going?”

“Slowly,” she admitted. “I’ve gathered lots of information, but….During the trial, I was hoping to convince people that he’s more than just the Punisher, but now…given how the trial ended, and then with him breaking out of prison, people are probably more scared of him than ever.”

“To be fair,” said Foggy, “He’s a scary guy.” Frank Castle had been screwed over, there was no doubt about that. But being his defense attorney didn’t mean Foggy was okay with the things he had done in response.

“Yeah,” Karen agreed reluctantly. “But my problem now is, I haven’t found my angle. I don’t know what story I’m trying to tell with all that information.” She still felt sympathy for Frank, but he had definitely shaken her ideas about what kind of person he was.

“Better you than me,” Foggy said, shaking his head. “I tried to tell a story about him in the courtroom, and look how that turned out.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” she said firmly.

“Well, if anyone understands Frank Castle, you do. You’ll find your angle,” he told her. “You’re going to write an amazing article, and be an amazing reporter. You’re going to come out on top, I know it.”

“Thanks,” she said, cheered by his optimism. She couldn’t help feeling gratified that both he and Matt thought she could do this.

“What about you, hot shot corner-office lawyer man?” she asked. “How’s life in the big leagues?”

He made a face. “So far, it’s been meetings, paperwork, meetings, new employee orientation, and then for a change, more meetings. But once I’m done with the onboarding, I think it’s going to be really good.”

“That’s great,” she said. “Or at least, it will be.”

“It’s different to what I’m used to, though,” he admitted. “HC&B is…what’s the opposite of laid back?”

“Driven?” she suggested.

He nodded. “Yeah. Everyone there is driven. Ambitious. Competitive.”

“Wasn’t Landman & Zack like that?”

“Sure. But there I was just an intern, smallest fish in the pond. Matt and I used to hide out in our tiny little closet-sized office and bitch about all the bullshit. It’s different, being in that environment as a full-fledged lawyer.”

It was different not having Matt there, too, but there was no point in dwelling on that.

“And there are definitely some sharks in this pond. But I expected that, and it’s probably good for me. It’s sharpening me up just being around them.”

“You were always sharp,” she told him. “I happen to know that you’re a great lawyer, you don’t need to be a shark. You’re going to come out on top, too.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he said. They clinked glassed, and drank.

“It could be exciting,” said Foggy.

“You could be rich,” Karen pointed out.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Rich enough to stop drinking the rotgut that’s served here. Next time we meet up for drinks, I’ll spring for someplace nicer.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, looking around the familiar dingy bar. “Josie’s kind of feels like home.”

Foggy grinned. “A home with very sticky floors, and belligerent drunks nightly.”

“Right,” she said, grinning back.

But she couldn’t help remembering sitting with Matt in a little Indian restaurant, both of them agreeing that they preferred the cheap stuff.

For a moment, it felt as if Foggy was leaving them both behind.

Foggy saw her smile dim a little, and thought he could guess why.

“I’m sorry you got stuck in the middle, Karen,” he said. “This must be tough for you, if you’re going to stay friends with both of us. But I am still your friend, no matter how either of us feels about Matt. If you’ll let me be.”

“Foggy, of course I’ll let you,” she said, and tried to shake off her moment of melancholy.

She smiled, and added lightly, “You’re not getting out that easily, you are stuck with me.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he assured her, smiling back. “I’m gonna miss working with you, seeing you at the office every day. But you’re too good a friend to lose.”

“Likewise, Mister Nelson,” she said.

They clinked glasses and drank once more, sealing their agreement.

Turning her thoughts resolutely toward the future, she began telling Foggy about her new colleagues at the Bulletin, and as they talked and laughed together she took comfort in the thought that no matter how busy they both were with their new jobs, they could still make time for each other.

Her friendship with Foggy didn’t have to change, even if everything else in her life had. Or at least, if it wasn’t quite the same as it had been before, that didn’t mean it couldn’t still be good.

Hope was better than regret, and despite everything, it seemed there was still plenty to feel hopeful about.

Chapter Text

Karen hung up the phone and sighed raggedly, blinking back tears. She should have known how that was going to go.

She went to her tiny kitchen and opened the bottle of scotch that Ellison had given her, poured herself a drink, and settled with it in a corner of her couch. She took a long sip, and closed her eyes.

It was Christmas Eve, and she was feeling nostalgic. Maybe it was everything that had happened to her recently, maybe it was Ellison’s joke that Christmas was about spending time with relatives you hate, but she had found herself thinking about her family, and the Christmases of her childhood.

The holiday had felt special back then. The weeks leading up to the day itself were filled with so many rituals that she looked forward to each year—picking out a tree and decorating it, baking cookies with her mother, singing in the school Christmas concert, the excitement of staying up late on Christmas Eve and going to church at night instead of in the morning. And presents, of course, although they had never been a wealthy family and the gifts had been modest.

But she wasn’t a child anymore. She was an adult now, she lived alone and had few friends, and Christmas felt like just another day. New York had its own holiday rituals, of course, but like so much else about the city, it all felt rushed and busy, with none of the peace and comfort she was craving tonight.

And so, despite over a decade of bitter experience, she had called her father. Hoping that maybe this time would be different.

She should have known better.

She stood abruptly and crossed the room to sit in a chair instead. Talking to her father had upset her enough that sitting on the couch, with her back to the recently-repaired window, suddenly felt…exposed. Unsafe.

She shivered and drank more scotch, feeling it burn a welcome trail of warmth down her throat.

The people who had hurt her were all dead. How long was it going to take until she stopped having these useless bursts of fear?

She wished she had somewhere to go tonight, something to do, to get her out of this apartment and out of her own head. She needed a distraction.

Should she call Matt?

Their relationship was much improved over the last few days, but it still felt tentative, each of them still a little unsure of the other.

But she knew the only cure for that was time. Time spent together, not each of them sitting at home alone.

Assuming he was at home. So far, he had said nothing more about whether he would continue being Daredevil or not. She thought he would probably tell her if he decided to start doing it again, but she wasn’t sure if it would be before, or only after the fact.

She should call him.

She had gotten home late from work, but it wasn’t that late, and being alone at Christmas was probably just as depressing for him as it was for her.

And then she had an idea—an unexpected idea, but the more she thought about it the more she liked it.

She smiled, and picked up her phone.

* * *

Matt’s phone was ringing.

Karen. Karen. Karen.

He had been sitting on his couch, thinking gloomy thoughts, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

But it was Karen.

“Karen, hi,” he answered, trying to sound like someone who had had a perfectly normal day, and not someone who had spent far too long just sitting, doing nothing, brooding.

“Hi,” she said, and at the sound of her voice he felt the gloom lift a little.

“How are you?” he went on quickly, before she could ask him the same thing. He was better than he had been, but he still fell into unpleasant thought spirals all too easily, and he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she replied, and he frowned. It was harder to tell over the phone than in person, but she didn’t sound fine.

“I finished my article on Frank Castle tonight,” she told him. “I stayed late working on it, but it’s finally done!”

That sounded better, he could hear her relief and her pride, but there was still something else there underneath.

“That’s great, congratulations,” he said. “When will it be in the paper?”

“Well, Ellison will have to go over it first,” she answered. “But I’m sure he’ll be much faster editing it than I was writing it.”

She was definitely upset about something, and trying to sound like she wasn’t.

“Karen, is something wrong?” he asked. “There’s something in your voice….”

She was silent for a moment, and he hoped he hadn’t overstepped. Whatever it was, she was trying just as hard as he was to sound like everything was all right. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything.

But she just sighed, and said ruefully, “I can’t fool you, can I?”

“If you don’t want to talk about it—”

“No, it’s fine. I just—”

She hesitated. “I just called my dad, that’s all. It’s Christmas Eve, and I was thinking about how much I used to love Christmas when I was a kid, before…before my mom died…”

Her voice thickened, the grief unmistakeable, and he remembered what she had told him about her father, that he had never forgiven her for her brother’s death.

“Did he say something to upset you?” he demanded, his own voice coming out grimmer than the intended.

“No, nothing like that,” she assured him. “Whenever I call him…he doesn’t say anything harsh, he doesn’t bring up the past. He just, he’ll only talk to me for about five minutes before he makes up some excuse to get off the phone. ‘Now’s not a good time, Karen, I’m real busy.’”

She sighed again, unhappily. “It’s always the same, I don’t know why I keep trying.”

“Because he’s you father, and you love him,” said Matt, his heart aching with sympathy.

“Yeah,” she agreed softly.

He wanted to comfort her somehow, but he didn’t know what to say.

“Do you want to come over?” he asked. He could offer his company, at least, for whatever it was worth. “Or I could come to you, if you want….”

“Oh, I’d love to see you,” she said, her voice warming. “But I was thinking, actually…I think I want to go to church tonight.”

He was silent for a moment in surprise, and she hurried on, “I think I need a little peace on earth and goodwill towards men, you know? Not just because of Dad, but after everything that’s happened…all the upheaval…and I was hoping, maybe, you might want to come with me.”

A powerful rush of anger—but not toward Karen—swept through him, taking him by surprise. He did not want to go to church. He had made sure Elektra got a decent burial, but now that was done he had nothing to say to God, who had let her die. He had no interest in celebrating the birth of the Savior, who hadn’t saved her.

Through his burning resentment he heard Karen saying, “I can go by myself if you don’t want to, but I’d really like to have company. Your company. I can come and see you either way, before I go….”

She trailed off uncertainly in the face of his continued silence, and suddenly he felt ashamed, his anger dissipating as quickly as it had risen.

She had just been rejected by her own father. If she wanted his company, it would be cruel to deny her. And anyway, refusing to go to church wouldn’t change anything. He couldn’t hide from God forever.

“Sure, I’ll go with you,” he said, managing to keep his voice calm and steady.

“Oh, good,” she said, sounding so pleased that he regretted hesitating even for an instant. “I can come over now, if you like.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” he said. He needed a shower—he hadn’t been paying much attention to his personal grooming for the last few days—but he had time enough before she got here.

“Okay,” she said warmly. “I’ll see you soon.”

* * *

The church was nearly full when they arrived, and they found seats in a pew near the back.

Karen had changed her clothes before going over to Matt’s place, and wore a dressy sweater over black jeans. Matt had struck a similar balance between casual and formal, wearing a suit but no necktie.

He had also shaved, making tonight the first time Karen had seen him clean-shaven since Elektra had died. She had gotten used to seeing him unshaved, uncombed, dressed in t-shirts and sweatpants, and the contrast was striking.

There was no denying he was attractive either way, scruffy or clean-cut. But when she had arrived at his apartment and had been greeted by the clean-cut version, her heart had turned over unexpectedly.

He looked the way he used to look in the office, first thing in the morning before his beard stubble had a chance to grow in. He looked, in fact, like the man she had developed a crush on all those months ago.

And that was something she really didn’t need to be thinking about right now.

They took off their coats and sat down, and to distract herself she looked around the church, seeing how different it looked at night, the stained-glass windows dark and mysterious without daylight pouring through them.

It was nice to be here for a happy occasion for once, and not a funeral.

She was glad Matt had decided to come with her. What she had told him was true—she did hope that coming here would bring her some much-needed peace. But she was also hoping it would do the same for him.

She was aware that she had been drawn here by childhood memories, and the longing to recapture a happier time in her life, rather than by any present-day religious conviction. But Matt had the faith that she lacked. And after the losses he had suffered, coming to mass might do him some real good.

It couldn’t hurt to try, anyway.

The organ launched into the opening hymn, and all around them the congregation rustled, standing up and opening their hymnals as the service began.

As the sound of voices filled the church, Matt realized he had never heard Karen sing before. It was a lovely sound—although given how much he liked her speaking voice, that was hardly a surprise.

He was an indifferent singer himself, but the church was so full no one would notice if he hit a sour note. The Christmas hymns would all be familiar carols that everyone could sing with confidence.

Matt’s attention was focused on Karen, but it was impossible not to hear the massed voices all around them. And as the hymn went on, he found it was also impossible not to be affected, at least a little, by being in the midst of all these people, united in a common purpose.

He had been so preoccupied with the disasters that had overtaken his life, it was good to be reminded that there was still good in the world, that the city was full of decent, ordinary people living their lives the best that they could.

And that feeling only grew stronger after the hymn ended. Father Lantom’s opening blessing, the unfolding of the liturgy Matt had known all his life, even the mingled smells of incense, furniture polish, and dozens of people in close proximity, soothed him despite himself.

He hadn’t let go of his anger, but in the back of his mind he knew that he was being unreasonable. People died every day, young and old, whether they deserved to or not, and God didn’t reach down from heaven to spare them.

But he couldn’t simply accept Elektra’s death, either.

As he listened to the scripture readings, his grief struggled against the comfort of the familiar ritual. He wasn’t ready to let go of his pain. And yet, almost against his will, a small spark of peace was slowly kindling in his heart.

He might be angry at God, but he couldn’t deny him. His faith was a part of him, bred in the bone, before either the law office or the vigilante’s mask.

When the congregation stood for the next hymn, he felt again a sense of shared purpose, of being part of a greater whole. Karen was a vibrant presence beside him, a blend of warmth and scent and sound that fed that spark of peace, giving the mass an added potency because she was here sharing it with him.

And then—

Elektra would never have come to church with me.

The thought came unbidden, and in an instant his fragile contentment was shattered.

Elektra had been in the back of his mind all along, but now she leapt to the fore, demanding his attention as surely as she had done in life, and bringing all his grief and pain with her.

He struggled against it, wanting to repudiate the thought—but he knew it was true. Even at the height of their college romance, when they had shared so much, it had never even occurred to him to invite her to church.

He hadn’t gone with any regularity himself once he had left the orphanage, but it was more than that. He knew, instinctively, what her response would be if he had ever suggested such a thing.

Her mocking laughter echoed in his head, and he caught his breath, hearing the stressful rise in his own heartbeat.

NO. It was wrong to think of her like this—to criticize—now that she was dead. Lots of people didn’t go to church, and it didn’t make them bad people.

Elektra was the only one who had understood him, accepted him for who he truly was…but even as he reached for that familiar reassurance, it slipped from his grasp.

Don’t be boring, Matthew, she snapped in his memory. Ten years ago or ten days ago, that had been her response whenever he failed to do what she wanted. He couldn’t deny it, no matter how much the truth hurt.

His classes back then, his career now—both had been, to her, nothing more than obstacles standing in the way of her plans. No matter how important they were to him.

She had told him she fell in love with him, against Stick’s orders—but what did that mean? She loved his violence, his abilities that he concealed so carefully from the world—all the things that he thought no one could ever accept—

But what about the rest of him?

Matt had stopped singing, and Karen glanced at him—and then looked more closely, concerned. His jaw was clenched, and a frown of distress was visible behind his glasses.

What was wrong?

Well. She knew what was wrong, she could make a whole list.

But what could have happened now, here in the church, to make him look like that?

Whatever it was, she knew he wouldn’t want to draw the attention of the people around them. So she kept singing, but moved closer to him and unobtrusively took his hand. His fingers trembled, then tightened around hers.

Matt heard Karen’s voice falter beside him for a moment, then smoothly continue singing. Warm fingers clasped his, and he realized he was standing as silent and rigid as a statue. He squeezed her hand, trying to get ahold of himself, but he couldn’t stop his anguished thoughts.

He searched his memory for evidence that Elektra had valued all of him, the idealist as well as the vigilante, but in vain.

She had repeatedly disparaged his job, his life that he had worked so hard to build, anything and everything that prevented him from doing, from being, what she wanted.

I warned you not to interrupt my life—

This is not your life, Matthew.

You take what you want, by force…This is who you are, Matthew. And don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s anything else.

She accepted the part of him that no one else did—but it was still only a part. The rest, she neither accepted nor understood, nor wished to understand.

At best, she tolerated his non-violent side.

At worst…she had tried to destroy it.

No—he wouldn’t think about that—it was so long ago—

But even now—

She might have accepted at last that she couldn’t change him, but she hadn’t stopped wanting to, any more than he had stopped wanting to change her. In the end, they were simply too far apart in their motives, their desires, their whole philosophies of life.

The hymn ended, and they sat for the Gospel. Matt moved automatically, following Karen’s lead.

His moral code was one of the bedrocks of his life, but Elektra had scorned the very idea of morality. To her, right meant simply whatever she wanted to do. That had been exciting to him, once upon a time, but he had been young then, and drunk on love and freedom.

Now….He felt a cold shadow across his heart, as another unwelcome thought rose up, try as me might to stop it.

Now she was dead, and he feared for her soul.

It wasn’t a new thought—he had been worried over the fate of her soul ever since she died, but he had tried not to think about it. But here, now, in the house of God, it was impossible to dismiss his fears.

Elektra had lived a violent, amoral life, without regret.

She had died saving him, but was that enough to atone for all the rest?

In the front of the church Father Lantom was reading from the Gospel of Luke, telling the old familiar story of the birth of Jesus, and Matt tried to listen, tried to dismiss his desperate uncertainty.

Would God condemn a soul that had never been taught any better?

Karen sat close beside him, her leg pressed against his, and she held his hand now in both of hers, rubbing the back gently from fingertips to wrist.

He knew she was worried about him and he focused on her touch, trying once more to calm himself. There was no need for her to be upset, just because he was.

The gospel reading finished, Father Lantom began his sermon.

Appropriately for Christmas, his theme was God’s love for humanity. Matt ached to believe, and tried as hard as he could to convince himself that Elektra was not beyond the reach of that love.

He reached over with his free hand to hold Karen’s, and with both of their hands clasped together, he bowed his head and prayed. It was all he could do for her now.

Have mercy on the soul of Elektra Natchios, Lord.

Please, have mercy.

There was no response, of course. But the act of praying still helped to calm him. Doing something felt better than simply enduring the pain, even if the effort was purely spiritual rather than practical.

The old priest’s voice in his ears was a comfort, despite everything, and Karen’s hands warmed his cold ones. He breathed deeply, and willed his heart to slow, and by the end of the sermon, he had managed to compose himself.

A kernel of doubt and anxiety remained in his heart, but that had been there ever since Elektra died. He could live with it.

He was going to have to.

He squeezed Karen’s hands, feeling a rush of gratitude for her silent support. When he sensed her face turn toward him, he managed a small smile. She smiled back, and leaned her shoulder against his.

Karen took a quiet, careful breath of relief. Whatever had so upset Matt, it seemed to have passed. She wondered if he would tell her about it if she asked, or if he would say he was fine like he always did.

Well, that was a question for later. For now, the service continued, and any private conversation would have to wait.

Throughout the prayers and recitations that followed, she stayed close to him, close enough to touch, aware that it was for her own benefit as well as his.

She wasn’t Catholic, and if she had come here alone in her earlier troubled state of mind, she might have felt isolated and lonely. But with Matt beside her, she felt included and welcome.

It didn’t feel like the Christmas services of her childhood, but she hadn’t really expected it to. She had the distraction she had wished for, in the company she wished for, and that was enough to set her heart at ease—other than her lingering concern for Matt.

When the time came for Holy Communion, the organ began to play, and row by row the congregation stood and made their way down the aisle to the front.

Under cover of the music and the shuffling of feet, Karen leaned close to him and asked quietly, “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Matt murmured in reply—but he knew that wasn’t good enough, not when he had promised he wouldn’t lie to her anymore.

“There are things I’ve been trying not to think about,” he amended. “They came into my head suddenly, and then…I was thinking about them. Whether I wanted to or not.”

“Oh,” she said, a soft, drawn-out breath of understanding. “That’s the worst, isn’t it? I’m sorry.”

“I’m better now,” he said, and allowed his fingers to touch hers for a moment.

“Good,” she said, and even barely above a whisper he could hear the warmth in her voice.

“Uh, are you going to…?” she asked, gesturing toward the aisle.

He shook his head. He was less angry than he had been, but he still felt deeply conflicted where God was concerned, and reluctant to receive the sacrament. “I’d rather stay here,” he murmured.

Karen nodded silently and sat back, her shoulder just brushing his. She wasn’t sure what it said about his state of mind that he didn’t want to receive communion. He didn’t seem upset any more, but she knew that if he was, he would likely try to hide it. Was this a bad sign?

She didn’t know…but she knew who would.

Once communion was finished, the service was nearly over. It wasn’t long before Father Lantom gave the final blessing and dismissal, and the organ began the postlude. All around them people began to stand, put their coats on, and make their way to the doors, but Karen was in no hurry.

She leaned closer to Matt once more, and said, “You should go talk to Father Lantom.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “It’s late,” he objected. “I’m sure he wants to go home and go to bed.”

“So you should go now and say hello,” she returned, “and ask him when would be a good time to talk.”

He said nothing.

She hesitated, wondering, then asked, “How much does he know about you? Does he know…what I know?”

Another moment of silence, and then, “I’ve never come right out and said it,” he answered carefully. “But I’ve told him enough for him to figure it out.”

“Okay, good,” she said. “That means you can talk to him about all of it, everything that’s happened.”

Matt frowned. “Why do you want me to?” he asked.

“Because you’ve been through a lot,” she said, taking his hand. “You’re having a rough time right now, and you should have more support than just me to help you deal with it. Especially if…”

She paused, searching for the right words. “Whatever upset you tonight, if it was related to your faith…if that’s why it happened here, in church…you can talk to me about it if you want to, absolutely, but he’s going to be able to help you more than I can.”

Matt was tempted to say he didn’t need help, but under the circumstances he knew it wouldn’t be particularly convincing.

He hadn’t sought out Father Lantom before now because he had been too angry at God to want counsel from a priest, even one who had always helped him before. But now he was here, it seemed pointlessly stubborn not to do as Karen suggested.

He had been through a lot, and he was having a rough time, and while he hadn’t presumed that Karen would offer him support, if she meant to do it anyway then he shouldn’t allow her to shoulder the whole burden herself.

Especially when she had also been through a lot. She had her own pain to deal with, and maybe he could help her by letting Father Lantom help him.

“Okay,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I’ll go talk to him. I’ll be right back.”

Karen watched him walk away down the aisle, then looked around. Nearly everyone had left by now, and a nun was making her way up the side aisle checking the empty pews, picking up stray prayer books and hymnals and returning them to their racks.

She glanced up, and when she saw Karen watching her she walked over.

“You’re a friend of Matthew’s?” she asked.

“Yes,” Karen answered, surprised. “You know him?”

The nun smiled. “I helped raise him. I work at St. Agnes orphanage.”

“Oh, of course. Uh, I’m Karen. Karen Page.”

“Sister Maggie. Pleased to meet you.”

“You, too.” Karen looked at her with interest, and the nun returned the scrutiny. She looked rather stern when she wasn’t smiling, and Karen had the sudden urge to sit up straight and make sure her hair was tidy.

“Matt’s gone to talk to Father Lantom, he should be back in a minute,” she said.

“He looked upset, earlier,” Sister Maggie observed.

“Oh, you saw that? I was hoping no one noticed, I know he wouldn’t want to draw attention.”

“I’ve got sharp eyes. You have to, taking care of so many children.”

Karen smiled, then sighed. “Well, you’re right. He’s had some…troubles in his life recently.”

“Yes, indeed,” the nun replied. “The trial didn’t turn out well for him at all, did it?”

She smiled again at Karen’s startled look.

“We still hear the news in the orphanage, you know,” she said. “And the Punisher is certainly news. We could hardly help hearing about it. And many of the staff took a special interest, with one of our children involved.”

“Oh, of course,” Karen said again. “Yeah, that really didn’t go well.”

She found herself torn between wanting to respect Matt’s privacy, and wanting to defend his abilities—to make it clear to this woman who had raised him that he was normally a much better lawyer than Frank’s trial had made him seem.

“I hope you won’t judge his skills based on that one case,” she said. “He wasn’t doing his best work, to be honest. He’s had some…personal troubles, lately, and he was…distracted.”

“I see. It’s unfortunate for him that it happened on a case with so much publicity. I would say, unfortunate for his client as well, but…well. The way things ended…it sounded like Mr. Castle got himself convicted with no help from Matthew.”

“Ugh, yes,” Karen agreed. “It was all such a waste. I don’t know why he bothered pleading Not Guilty if he was just going to throw away all our work in the end.”

Sister Maggie cocked her head curiously. “You work with Matthew? Are you a lawyer, too?”

“Oh, no. They hired me as a secretary, but I ended up being a sort of office manager slash paralegal, I guess. Matt and Foggy handled the lawyer stuff, and I kept the office running and did research for their cases.”

“Did?” she asked.

Karen nodded. “Yes. The firm broke up, unfortunately. Foggy and Matt are…not on good terms right now.”

“I see,” Sister Maggie said again, frowning. “That must have hit Matthew hard. I’m glad he still has you, at any rate.”

“Oh, I was angry at him,“ Karen admitted. “He made some choices…” She pressed her lips together and frowned. “…that I still don’t fully understand,” she finished. “But we talked about it, and we made up.”

“That’s good,” Sister Maggie said. “He feels things so strongly, and he keeps his feelings bottled up more than he should. And it’s often when he’s at his most difficult that he most needs support, whether he asks for it or not.”

“Was he always like this, then?”

“Well, I did hope it would get better once he was grown. He was so full of anger when he came to us, and pain. Losing his sight, and then his father….”

She sighed. “Of course, all our children have lost parents. But Jack Murdock’s death was terribly hard for a child to accept. Shot down in an alley…such a terrible waste.”

Something in her voice made Karen ask, “Did you know him?”

“Oh, I knew of him, like everyone around here. He was something of a local celebrity. But to answer your question, yes, Matthew has been like that ever since he was a child. He doesn’t ask for help easily.”

She smiled. “I’m very glad he was willing to talk to you about his troubles…and that you were willing to forgive him.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly…it was more an accident of timing,” Karen answered. “Not something either of us planned to do. We happened to run into each other unexpectedly, when he was…at a particularly low point. I doubt he would have tried to talk to me otherwise, I’d made it pretty clear I was fed up. And by then I certainly wouldn’t have gone to him.”

It unsettled her a little to think how much their reconciliation depended on a simple coincidence, and how very easily it might never have happened.

Sister Maggie seemed to know what she was thinking. “Chance may have brought you together,” she said, “But it was still up to the two of you what to do with that chance. It’s perfectly natural to wonder what might have happened, had circumstances been different. But in the end, what did happen is more important.”

“I suppose so,” said Karen pensively. Then she brightened, as she saw Matt returning up the aisle.

“Hello, Matthew,” Sister Maggie said as he drew near.

“Sister Maggie, hello,” he replied.

“I’m sorry to hear you’ve had some setbacks,” she said. “All of us at the orphanage were following the news of the Castle trial.”

When Matt frowned and ducked his head, she went on more briskly, “But I’m certain you’ll find your way forward again. You’re too bright, and too stubborn, to let it keep you down.”

Matt sighed, short and sharp, and lifted his head, his mouth twisted in a half-smile.

“Murdocks get knocked down, but we always get back up again,” he said, and Karen thought she saw the nun’s eyes widen a fraction. “That’s what my dad used to say,” he added.

“Smart man,” Sister Maggie said approvingly. “Being a boxer, I suppose it was more literal in his case…although I must say, Matthew, you look like you’ve been knocked down.”

She raised a hand to his chin and turned his head so the light caught the bruising still visible on his face.

“It’s nothing,” said Matt, stepping back out of reach. “How are things at St. Agnes?” he asked.

She gave him a sharp look, but allowed the change of subject.

“Well enough. Not much has changed since you were with us. We’ve a few new children who are having difficulty adjusting…this time of year can be particularly hard, their first Christmas without their parents.”

“I remember,” said Matt quietly.

Karen was suddenly very glad she hadn’t left him to spend Christmas Eve all alone.

“One of them has taken to hiding,” Sister Maggie went on. “Out of unhappiness, not mischief. I’d better check when I go back, and make sure she’s in her bed.”

“Well, don’t let us keep you,” Matt said. “It’s late, we should get going.”

“Yes, of course,” Sister Maggie replied. “It’s good to see you, Matthew.”

“You, too,” he said, with a small smile. “Say hello to the others for for me.”

“I will,” she promised.

“Make sure to be extra surly, so they know it’s me,” he added, and the nun laughed.

“Good night, both of you. Karen, it was nice meeting you.”

“You, too,” Karen answered, smiling. “Good night.”

The smile stayed with her as they headed up the aisle and stepped outside—she couldn’t remember the last time she had heard Matt make a joke.

Once they were outside, though, his demeanor changed. It was subtle, but enough to make Karen study him closely as she pulled on her hat against the light snow that had begun to fall.

He hunched his shoulders, drawing his coat collar up closer to his face, but she didn’t think it was entirely due to the cold.

He was still upset.

She realized the joke had been a deflection, to convince the sharp-eyed Sister Maggie that he was fine.

Did he realize the facade had slipped…or did he no longer feel that he had to pretend to Karen?

She offered him her arm, and they started off down the street.

“I’m sorry this was upsetting for you,” she said. “I hoped that it would do both of us some good, but…”

“It’s fine,” he answered.

She frowned, but then he went on: “I mean, yes, I did get upset, obviously. But that’s nothing you need to apologize for. I’m glad we did this.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Really. Don’t think it didn’t do me any good. It did. Do you know what I was doing tonight, when you called?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just sitting and brooding, doing nothing. And I’d probably still be sitting there, if you hadn’t given me a reason to get up and do something.”

“Oh.”

It shouldn’t have surprised her—she knew he had plenty to brood about. But she had hoped he was keeping busy, working to get his life back on track…and then she remembered what she herself had been doing before she called him, and shook her head inwardly. She was in no position to judge.

“Well, that makes two of us,” she told him.

He frowned in concern, so she clarified, “That’s what usually happens after I talk to my dad. Some combination of brooding and drinking.”

“Oh,” he said, much as she had done.

“So, yeah, after I got off the phone with him tonight, my first impulse was to break out the scotch and be miserable. But my second impulse was better.” She smiled at him, and his expression eased.

“It helped, then? Going to mass?”

“It did. I feel much better.”

“Good,” he said quietly.

“I’ve still got my life to live, you know?” she said. “I don’t know if things with my dad are ever going to get better. And that hurts. But I get it, I know why he doesn’t want me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t undo what I did, god knows I wish I could.” Her voice shook a little, and she steadied it with an effort.

“I’ve just had to learn to live with it,” she went on firmly. “Sometimes I’m miserable, and that’s just the way it is. But I still have things I want to do, and people I care about—there’s a whole great big world out there, and I’m still a part of it. Going to church tonight let me be a part of something, and I needed that. I needed to not feel so…alone.”

Matt nodded in understanding. “Being part of a community,” he said, “Having a shared purpose.”

“Yes! Exactly.”

“I felt the same thing,” he admitted.

He felt himself unexpectedly moved by her words, by her admission of her own struggles. She knew what it meant to feel alone, to deeply regret things that she couldn’t change. And yet—

I’ve still got my life to live.

I still have things I want to do, and people I care about.

She wasn’t suggesting that it was easy—only that it was possible.

Was he ready to get back up one more time, and try to put his life back together? Not to forget his grief, but to learn to live with it?

Would he be ready to even ask himself that question, without Karen here beside him? How much worse would his life be right now if they hadn’t made up?

“Your father’s wrong,” he told her. “If he doesn’t want you, he’s missing out. No matter what you did when you were nineteen, the person you are now—today—I can’t imagine not wanting you in my life.”

Her face was turned toward him, but her expression was difficult to interpret.

Well, if she still had trouble believing that, he had no one to blame but himself.

“I mean it, Karen. I know I let you down during the trial, it must have looked like I’d abandoned you, but I always meant to make it up to you once we’d stopped the Hand.”

She said nothing, and he sighed. “I’m sorry that I took you for granted,” he said. “I should have known you wouldn’t just accept what I was doing without question, and I had no right to assume I could just go back to you afterward like nothing had happened.”

“Is that what you wanted?” she asked. She didn’t sound angry, only curious. “Someone who wouldn’t question the way you were acting, who would just…wait around patiently until you had time for her?”

She deserved an honest answer, and Matt thought carefully before speaking. At the time, yes, he had wanted her to accept his evasions, to not question his increasingly questionable behavior. Certainly, he had wanted to continue his relationship with her once the fight against the Hand was over.

But this was Karen.

He stopped walking.

“I’m an idiot,” he said.

She made a noncommittal humming sound, but her lips were pressed together as if she was suppressing a smile.

“Someone like that would have made my life easier,” he admitted. “But that isn’t you. Of course you were going to question, of course you weren’t going to put up with the way I was treating you, because you’re smart, and observant, and determined to get to the bottom of anything suspicious…and I love that about you. I always have.”

The truth that had somehow eluded him back then seemed glaringly obvious now.

“I am an idiot,” he repeated. “If you were someone who would let me get away with it—someone easy to lie to—if you weren’t so sharp, and tenacious, and always dead set on the truth, I wouldn’t have felt so…so drawn to you in the first place.”

Her lips were parted slightly now, the hint of a smile gone. Her cheeks heated, and he could hear her heart beating faster.

“It’s you I wanted, Karen, just as you are. I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

His own heart beat faster as he spoke, and he was suddenly aware of how close she was, of the warmth that radiated from her, her scent washing over him. His hand was still curled around her arm, and he realized he wanted to draw her closer still….

And that was wrong.

She had made herself clear the other morning. There were still things they needed to talk about before there was any chance of a romantic relationship between them.

And he knew she was right. He had tried once before without thinking it through, and he was determined not to make the same mistake again. The fact that right now she was physically responding to him the way she used to didn’t change that.

Better return things to a safer footing.

He kept his hand tucked into her elbow, but stepped back, putting a little distance between them.

“Your father is wrong,” he said again. “If he can’t see what an amazing daughter he has, it’s his loss.”

Karen had forgotten they had been talking about her father, so startled was she by Matt’s sudden declaration.

She cleared her throat self-consciously.

“Uh, thank you,” she said. “I’m glad you think so, even if he doesn’t.”

She took a quiet, careful breath to settle herself as they began walking again.

Matt had told her before that he had never stopped wanting to be with her. But he had been distraught at the time, his feelings a complicated mess, and she had been hesitant to take it at face value.

Hearing him now, his face so open and earnest, his voice so heartfelt, her breath had caught and her heart leapt.

He surely must have heard, but he was acting now like nothing had happened, and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.

Probably best not to think about it too much.

Still, she couldn’t help studying his profile surreptitiously, out of the corner of her eye. The snow falling on his bare head briefly spangled his hair with white before melting away, and the streetlights cast circles of red from his glasses onto his face. His expression, what she could see of it, seemed pensive.

Well, whatever his feelings for her, he did seem more at ease than he had been earlier, when she first arrived at his apartment. She’d count that as a win—after all, her goal tonight had been for both of them to feel better, not to determine the exact status of their relationship.

It was enough to be walking down the street together like this, arm in arm, both of them…calm, at least, if not entirely free from pain. It felt peaceful, and they both needed a bit of peace. There was plenty of time to figure out the rest.

As they reached Karen’s apartment building, a sudden gust of wind made her shiver.

“I think it’s getting colder,” she said, hunching up her shoulders inside her coat.

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed.

“You’re going to freeze by the time you get home.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, as she might have known he would.

Impulsively, she pulled off her hat and plopped it onto his head, pulling it down to cover his ears.

“There,” she said with satisfaction. “You can give it back the next time I see you.”

“Karen, I can’t take your hat,” he protested. “You need it more than I do, you walk to work, how are you going to keep warm without it?”

“Hmmmm, good point—I guess we better make sure I see you again soon,” she returned lightly.

That surprised a sound out of him that was nearly a laugh, his lips curving in what was definitely a smile.

Matt wanted to argue, but he felt warmer already, and the hat smelled like Karen…and she cared that he was cold, and wanted him to be comfortable—and she wanted to see him again, soon. His heart swelled, and before he could think better of it he reached out and wrapped his arms around her.

Karen returned the embrace willingly, but her heart turned over as she did and she felt suddenly breathless. There was something about his body language, his smile, the tilt of his head….

For just a moment, she had thought he was going to kiss her.

Which was ridiculous, of course—but she felt a keen dart of disappointment, and realized with a shock that she wanted him to kiss her.

She had been telling herself for days that she wasn’t sure how she felt about him. She had hugged him several times before now, with nothing but platonic intentions.

But this time, it felt different. She was intensely aware of Matt’s body pressed against hers, his arms holding her close. Her heart pounded, warmth swept over her, and she remembered vividly how his lips had felt on hers, stubble grazing her cheek….

She wanted to kiss him—it was useless to try to lie to herself.

But what did he want?

What had he said earlier? That he wanted her in his life? That he felt drawn to her?

That wasn’t enough to risk disrupting the delicate bond they had been rebuilding so carefully between them. No matter how she felt, they still needed to talk before she could feel certain of his feelings.

And even if he felt the same as she did…she had a sinking feeling that she was going to have to tell him about killing James Wesley, whether she wanted to or not. If she didn’t, she would never be free of doubt, of the voice in the back of her head that asked: Would he still want her if he knew what she had done?

Disturbed by her own thoughts, she breathed deeply, trying to slow the racing of her heart. Once again she felt sure that Matt must have noticed, but once again he gave no sign. He pulled away after a moment, as if this was simply a normal, friendly hug to say goodnight.

Because he wanted to allow her some semblance of privacy…or because that’s all it was to him?

“I’ll talk to you soon, then,” he said, and gave her a small smile.

“Okay, good,” she answered, trying to match her light tone of a minute ago. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

She climbed the steps to the door, and then looked back as she dug her keys out of her pocket. He stood quietly on the sidewalk, his face turned up toward her, his cane unfolded in his hand, waiting until she was safely inside before he left.

She firmly pushed her worries away, and smiled at him. Whatever happened in the future, tonight had been good for both of them. That was what mattered.

There was no point in borrowing trouble—enough of it seemed to find her on its own.

She unlocked the door and slipped inside, still smiling.