Work Text:
Karen sat at her desk, feeling drained but pleased. Ellison had said, “I want 2000 words in my inbox before Santa shows up,” and 2000 words she had given him. She shut down her laptop and turned her attention to the cold box of takeout sitting on the desk, her head aching from staring too long at the screen.
She had been unsure at first what it was she wanted to say, and the words had come slowly, dragged reluctantly out of her. But she kept at it, writing, deleting, changing words and sentences around as she found her focus; and by the time she was finished she found she was enjoying herself. It was satisfying to string her thoughts together and spread them across the page, building them into a finished newspaper article.
Not that it was finished yet, of course. No doubt Ellison would have changes to make, that was his job. But for now, she could take at least a little pride in her accomplishment. Karen Page, journalist. Even if she was sitting alone on Christmas Eve, eating cold Chinese food in a deserted newspaper office. She made a face and sighed. There were worse ways to spend Christmas.
When her phone rang, she glanced at the screen and swore. Matt? There was nothing she wanted to say to Matt Murdock that she hadn’t said already. And what could he possibly have to say to her, after everything that had happened? Did she even care, at this point? She stared at the phone balefully as it continued to ring, but after a moment curiosity won out over irritation. She answered the call right before it went to voicemail.
“What do you want, Matt?” she asked.
There was a moment of silence. Then he said, “Karen. Thanks for picking up.” He sounded tired, distant, as if he was thinking about something else. Or someone else? But then why was he calling?
“I’d like to talk to you. Please. Can we meet?”
“We’re talking right now, Matt.”
“In person, I mean. I know it’s asking a lot, I know you don’t want to see me. But it’s important. Please, Karen.” His voice was strangely flat, empty of emotion. She frowned.
She had no idea what he’d been doing with himself since she had last seen him. So much had happened to her since then, it felt like a hundred years ago that Matt had tried to come with her into protective custody and she had refused to let him. Much good he’d have done her if he had come along, for all his talk of keeping her safe. She had experienced enough violence in the last few days to give her nightmares for a year, and how could Matt have protected her from any of it? He was unreliable, he drank too much, he couldn’t even see—
No, that wasn’t fair. No matter what he had done, no matter how angry she was, she had never, never thought less of him because of his blindness. She felt a prickle of shame creep over her, and became aware of the lengthening silence, of Matt waiting patiently at the other end of the phone line. She took a deep breath to calm her emotions.
“All right,” she said quietly. “We can meet. I’m free now, if you want.”
“Now is fine. Thank you. Someplace private. Will you come to our…to the office?”
Someplace private? Well, at least the office was slightly more neutral ground than either of their apartments. The thought flashed through her mind that maybe that woman was at his place, and she tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter any more. “Sure. I’m on my way.” She hung up, and gathered up her things.
* * * * *
The office was empty when she arrived. She took off her coat and stood in the dark, looking out the window. God, she was tired. She wasn’t sleeping well, jumping awake at every unexpected sound, and what rest she did manage to get was punctuated by bad dreams. It was hardly surprising.
She wondered why Matt wanted to meet. Right now, at this moment, standing by the desk that used to be hers, she felt no anger; just a profound sadness. This office represented everything she had lost, one of the happiest periods of her whole life gone forever.
She heard the door open behind her, and turned. Matt stepped in, holding a paper bag in one hand. His face was battered and bruised, and despite herself she felt a wave of concern. She had told herself, and him, that she didn’t care anymore what secrets he was hiding from her. But he looked like someone had beat the crap out of him.
“Thanks for meeting me,” he said, dropping his folded-up cane on the chair just inside the door.
“What am I doing here, Matt?” she asked, drifting forward a step. He walked slowly toward her, holding up the bag in his hand and opening it.
“I have something…” he began.
Oh, no. It was Christmas. Surely he hadn’t gotten her a present?
“No, I don’t want it,” she said, shaking her head, but he wasn’t finished.
“I have something that I need you to see,” he said, reaching inside the bag. He brought out a dark, rounded object, the light from the windows picking out red eyeholes, a nose guard, and on either side…horns?
Shock coursed through her like ice water as she stared at Daredevil’s helmet. She looked up at Matt, an impossible thought darting through her brain. He couldn’t be….
“I’m Daredevil,” he said, and she felt all the blood drain from her face. A part of her mind insisted that it couldn’t be true, but the rest was already fitting the facts into place. The injuries. The times he didn’t answer his phone. Her own certainty that he was hiding something, no matter what excuses he came up with.
She had seen Daredevil just the other night, in the warehouse where that weird cult had brought their hostages. She remembered how he had taken the extra time to cut her wrists free and make sure she wasn’t hurt, the way he had touched her face…his voice. Oh, god.
She made her frozen body move, and walked toward him. She stared at him, scrutinizing the lower half of his face, holding up one hand to block off her view of the upper half, trying to picture how the helmet would look on him.
He couldn’t know what she was doing, he couldn’t see, but he seemed to know anyway. He took off his glasses and tucked them into a pocket, and placed the helmet on his head.
Daredevil. It was true. Somehow, despite his blindness, Matt was Daredevil. She could hear the rushing sound of her own blood pounding in her ears. She took the helmet from his head and held it in both hands, turning it over and examining it, staring at it as if it could make all of this make sense.
“I need to sit down,” she said faintly. Not any of the mismatched chairs in the main room; she wanted comfort, wanted a seat she could curl herself up into. She walked numbly into Foggy’s office, turned on a lamp, and sank down on the battered leather sofa in front of the desk, still holding the helmet. She tucked her legs up underneath her, curling into the corner by the windows.
Matt followed her in, and hesitantly sat down at the opposite end of the sofa, just inside the door.
“How?” she asked him. Her brain was a whirl of questions, but that one seemed the most important. “The things I’ve seen you do, Matt…you can’t see. How?”
Ever so slightly, he relaxed. She suddenly realized he must have been dreading worse, waiting for her to respond, unable to see her face through her lengthy silence. He answered quietly. “I use my other senses. Something happened to me, when I lost my sight. I don’t know how, but all my other senses got stronger, much stronger than normal.”
He told her everything. About his enhanced senses, and what they could do. About his training, and the abrupt disappearance of his teacher. About how he had first decided to put on the mask and help people who had no other help. His voice had taken on that flat, distant quality she had heard on the phone, as if he were describing things that had happened to someone else.
Karen listened intently. Here were the answers she had wanted. Here was the explanation for everything she’d ever wondered about him. As incredible as it sounded, it was no more incredible than the things she’d seen with her own eyes.
And then, he explained his recent behavior. What he’d been doing during Frank’s trial. Who the people were that Karen had seen in his apartment, and why they were there. Her anger re-kindled as she listened, but faded as he told her everything he knew about the people who had kidnapped her and the other hostages, everything he’d done to try and stop them. By the time he was describing the fight on the roof of the warehouse, the death of that woman, she was such a mix of different emotions that all she could do was hear him out in silence.
He told his story without flinching and without excuses. When he was finished, he looked deeply unhappy, but calm, as if telling her the truth at last had lifted a burden from him.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally, his voice a little hoarse from all the talking he’d just done. “You might not believe that, but I am, truly. You deserve so much better than what I gave you.”
He cleared his throat, trying to ease it, and Karen said, “I think there’s some bottled water in the kitchen.”
She watched him as he walked across the main room to the far corner. His cane still lay where he had left it, just inside the door, but he crossed the floor with assurance, never hesitating. He disappeared into the dark kitchen, and emerged a minute later with two bottles of water. He returned to Foggy’s office and handed her one.
“Thanks,” she said automatically, her mind busy with everything he had told her. He sipped his water in silence, and now that he was finished speaking she saw that he looked exhausted. She wondered if he was sleeping any better than she was.
“How much of this does Foggy know?” she asked.
“Most of it,” he answered tiredly. “I haven’t had a chance to tell him what I’ve been doing in the last few days. But he found out about me being Daredevil last year. He came over late, and found me on the floor half dead. That was what that fight we had was about.”
“Ah,” she said, thinking back. “Your so-called car accident.” She tried not to feel bitter that Foggy had lied to her, too, and failed.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Matt said, “He wanted to tell you. I begged him not to. I’m the one to blame.” She said nothing, and after a moment he continued, “He knows a little of what I was doing during the trial, but not all of it. The day we fought at the courthouse, after the medical examiner folded, I told him that Elektra was here and that we were fighting the Yakuza. He remembers her from college.” He sighed. “He said I should tell you about her. He was right.”
“He thinks you were sleeping with her,” Karen told him. Matt looked stricken. “When I told him I’d seen a woman in your bed, he looked…upset, but not surprised. And he said he should have warned me.”
“Is that what you think, too?”
She answered carefully, “I understand that she was injured the day I saw her. But before that…” her voice trailed off, the question hanging in the air unspoken.
“No,” he said. “We weren’t, we didn’t. I swear, Karen, for all I’ve done to you, I didn’t do that.”
She stared at him, trying to read his face, wishing she had his ability to tell if someone was lying. But somehow, she didn't think he was. “I’m glad,” she admitted. “Although given everything else, I don’t know why I should be. You were sharing a part of yourself with her that you refused to share with me, even if you weren’t sleeping with her.” She was gripping the helmet in her lap too tightly, the horns were digging into her hands. She made herself let go, and set it down between them. “You left me at my door with a lot of sweet words about a perfect night, and then you went off to her penthouse instead of staying with me.” He winced, but didn’t deny it.
“I understand wanting to keep a secret entirely to yourself,” she said. “I get that. I could understand it if you didn’t tell anyone. But that’s not what happened. You didn’t hide it from everyone, you didn’t hide it from her. Just me.” And that hurt, even now that Elektra was dead and Matt was finally telling her the truth.
He shook his head. “I didn’t tell her I’m Daredevil,” he said. “She knew already. Stick must have told her.” He paused. “But that’s beside the point. I did come to enjoy the fact that she knew, that she understood that side of me and accepted it. That with her, I didn’t have to hide. You’re right. I was sharing something with her that I wasn’t willing to share with you. I’m sorry.”
“So why tell me now?” she asked. “If you were so determined to hide the truth from me when we were…” she took a hard breath. “…when we were close, then why tell me now, when…when we aren’t anymore?”
“I still care for you,” he said quietly. “I know that’s not something you want to hear right now, and maybe you won’t believe me. But it’s true. And I don’t want to hide from you any more. I know I ruined things between us, and I don’t expect this to fix things. But it’s the one thing I can do to try to make amends for all the pain I’ve caused you. You deserve to know the truth.” He rubbed a hand wearily over his eyes. “Whatever that truth means, after everything I’ve done.”
“What do you mean?”
He turned toward her, his face somber. “You asked me once if I believed in what Daredevil was doing.”
“I remember.”
“I don’t know if I do believe in it any more. I’m not sure that I’m not doing more harm than good.”
“Doing harm? Matt, you’ve hurt me, you’ve hurt Foggy, but Daredevil…you help people.”
“But that’s not all I do. Brett Mahoney said something to me, back when I was trying to find out what he knew about the Punisher. He said that because of me, people don’t trust the police anymore. Don’t think that they can do their jobs effectively. I never meant that to happen. I help where the police can’t, I don’t want to replace them. People need to believe the system works, that’s why when I finally found Frank I told Brett to take the credit for his capture.”
Karen looked at him sharply. “You caught Frank?”
He sighed again. “The Irish caught Frank. They’re the ones who hurt him, not me. I helped him get away from them, and then he…didn’t try to get away from me. He was injured too badly, he knew he couldn’t run any more. When Brett found us he wanted to arrest us both. I convinced him to take the credit for Frank, to restore the public’s faith in the police, and he let me go. But that doesn’t undo the damage I’ve done. You said it yourself, Karen, maybe I helped create the Punisher. One successful vigilante encourages others. Others who will do what I won’t. Who will kill.”
Karen frowned. When she’d said that, she hadn’t yet known Frank Castle, only been shot at by him at the hospital. She’d been scared, uncertain of her own feelings, and completely unaware that she was talking to Daredevil himself.
“I want to protect the city,” he went on, “to keep people safe. But everything I do has consequences I never intended. People get hurt. People die. And I can’t, I can’t save them.” His voice broke, and he turned away from her. “I couldn’t save her,” he whispered.
Oh. Was that where this unexpected self-doubt was coming from? “You don’t feel responsible for her death," she asked, "…do you?” From the look of him, yes, he did. “Matt, it was just the two of you, fighting a small army. It’s amazing that either one of you survived.” She felt a sudden chill as she said it. Watching from the street below, she had known that Daredevil might be about to die, but now she knew that it had been Matt who might be about to die. And no matter how hurt and angry she was, she didn’t want him dead. She shivered as the realization sank into her heart.
He raised his head again. “But, Karen, the only reason I did survive is because she died. Nobu was going to kill me, and she threw herself between us.” Pain was etched across his features. “Everyone else was telling her it was her nature to be a killer, that it was her destiny. I tried to convince her that she could still choose, that she could be better than that. And then she died saving me. The last thing she said to me was, ‘Now I know how it feels to be good.’” His voice broke again. “Of course I feel responsible. I tried so hard to save her, and I failed.”
Karen could have pointed out that Elektra had chosen her own actions. That Matt was only one man, not superhuman despite his enhanced senses, and he couldn’t do the impossible. But she knew it wouldn’t help.
She thought suddenly of her brother, dead at 16, and felt a wave of sympathy. She hadn’t caused Kevin’s death any more than Matt had caused Elektra’s, but a part of her had never stopped wondering if she could have prevented it, if she had done things differently. He was her little brother, she was his big sister, and all the logic in the world couldn’t change the guilt in her heart that she hadn’t kept him safe.
“I understand,” she said quietly. She reached out and took his hand, and he lifted his head, startled. “I know what it’s like to lose someone, someone you care about, and to feel like you should have protected them.”
He frowned. “You do?”
“Yes.” She paused, then softly added, “You’re not the only one with secrets.”
She had once thought that Matt might be someone she could tell her secrets to, some day. But not now. Telling her his own secrets didn’t simply erase the pain he had caused her, or close the distance that had grown up between them. Her memories of Kevin were precious, and personal, and Matt was no longer someone she wanted to share them with. But she could still empathize with what he was suffering now. She squeezed his hand.
“The circumstances were completely different, of course. I can only imagine what this must be like for you, most of it. But that part, feeling guilty for her death, that I do understand.”
Given his abilities, he must know she was telling the truth. She hoped he wasn’t going to ask questions that she wasn’t willing to answer. But when he finally spoke, it was only to ask, “What did you do, after? How did you cope, how…how do you live with it?”
“I ran away,” she told him. “There were some other things that happened around the same time, it wasn’t just his death, but my solution was to leave. I moved here to New York, I left it all behind me and never looked back. I’m not saying that’s what you should do, though.”
“I’ve thought about it,” he admitted, but didn’t elaborate.
She stared at him, a completely unexpected pain jolting through her. He had thought about leaving? Leaving the city he loved, leaving Foggy, leaving her? It was shocking how much it hurt, when a short time ago she had thought she never wanted to see him again.
She didn’t say, Don’t go. “I made a fresh start,” she said instead. “I needed to find a job and a place to live. I had to work my ass off, I couldn’t dwell on the past if I wanted to survive. And I did want to.” She paused. “Do you?”
His face was unreadable.
“I did it one day at a time. I just kept going, kept on putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes that’s all you can do. If you want advice…you’re still a lawyer, and a good one. Focus on that, rebuild your practice. You can still do a lot of good that way, you can still help people.”
“I’m a lawyer with no clients,” he objected. “No one’s going to hire me, after I blew an incredibly high-profile trial and my partner left me.”
“Yes they will. Beggars can’t be choosers, Matt. There are always going to be people who need legal help and can’t afford anyone else. You can re-establish yourself. Reach out to the new DA, once we have one. Let them know you’re available for pro bono work. It won’t make you any money, but you’ve got a financial cushion thanks to Elektra.”
He pulled his hand from hers as if he’d been burned, and turned away.
She sighed. “I know. Matt, I get it. She’s dead, and you blame yourself, of course you don’t want to take her money. But she gave it to you, it’s yours. Refusing to spend it isn’t going to bring her back, and frankly, it’s the only money you have. You’ve got to live off something until you can start earning an income again.”
Every line of him expressed resistance, but she knew he was listening nevertheless. “Use it to get yourself out of debt,” she suggested. “Pay off all the outstanding bills, pay off the company credit card. That money can give you the fresh start you need. Or if you’re determined not to, then come up with another plan. You don’t have to take my advice, that’s entirely up to you. But you need to decide how you’re going to support yourself. Not right this minute, but soon.”
“I know,” he said, his voice gone dead and emotionless once more. “And I appreciate the advice. I just…” he trailed off, and hung his head in silence.
“Yeah, I know,” she said softly. “Think it over. I’m willing to go over the accounts with you, sometime soon, so you know where you stand.” As Nelson & Murdock’s de facto office manager, Karen had been the one who dealt with their creditors and handled the bills. However she might feel about Matt personally, it was only fair to make sure he understood the firm’s finances and could manage them himself going forward.
She glanced out the window at the night outside. It was late, and now that the shock of Matt’s revelations was wearing off, she felt her remaining energy rapidly ebbing. Her emotions were a complicated tangle that she was far too tired to sort through right now.
And then, she heard a series of sharp cracks from outside, and adrenaline spiked through her. She was on her feet and moving before she had time to think, fleeing through the door into the conference room, ducking down behind the table and crouching on the floor, shivering, her heart pounding.
Matt appeared in the doorway, consternation on his face. “Karen?” He came slowly around the table, and dropped down to sit beside her on the floor, not touching her. She stared at him, her senses hyper alert, and saw that he looked less listless, more awake, as if her sudden fear had shocked him out of his own preoccupations.
“Karen, you’re safe,” he said gently. “It wasn’t gunfire.” There was another bang, and she flinched. Matt turned his head, an intent expression on his face. “Someone’s pounding on a dumpster with something hard, maybe a hammer,” he told her. “There’s someone else talking to him…I think he’s drunk.” He paused for a moment, then added, “They’re going away.”
He reached out tentatively and put a hand on her shoulder, repeating softly, “You’re safe. It’s all right, no one’s going to hurt you. You’re safe.” She struggled to control her shallow breathing, covering his hand with her own and gripping tightly, and gradually her heartbeat slowed and she stopped shaking.
“I don’t do so well lately with sudden loud noises,” she told him unsteadily, leaning her head back against the wall.
“It’s no wonder,” he answered. “You got shot at in the hospital, then in Reyes’ office and then again in your own apartment, and then you got kidnapped. That’s enough to make anyone jumpy.”
“Oh, that’s not even all of it,” she said. “I was with Frank when he shot a couple of the Blacksmith’s men.” Seeing Matt’s expression, she quickly added, “Frank warned me before they came in, I was hiding. But it still scared the shit out of me. And then I saw…” bile rose in her throat at the memory of the bloody mess on the diner floor. “I saw what was left of them, after. That's some nightmare fuel, all on its own.” She swallowed convulsively.
“And I went to see Colonel Schoonover, he was Frank’s commanding officer in Afghanistan, for the story I was working on for the Bulletin. But then he turned out to be the Blacksmith—" Matt started. “—and he pulled a gun on me and made me drive him out into the woods, and then Frank crashed a truck into my car…” she put a hand to her head, touching the cut made when the impact had slammed her against the driver’s side door.
“Frank dragged him away and shot him.” The words were pouring out of her now. “He didn’t have to, I begged him not to, we could have turned him over to the police, but he wouldn’t listen. He wanted to kill him. And then, after all that, I went home to my shot up apartment and got kidnapped.” She shuddered. “They shot one of the other hostages, on the bus. They threatened to shoot me, put the barrel of a gun right against my head, just because I was talking to the guy next to me.”
Matt was looking horrified. “My god, Karen, I had no idea. You said you had police protection, I thought…I thought you were safe, until the Hand kidnapped you.”
She took a shaky breath, and shook her head. “There was no reason for you to know. There was no reason for me to tell you, until now.”
She watched that sink in, watched his face as the implication hit him—that he was no longer someone she would turn to for support or comfort, as she had after Frank shot up the hospital trying to get to Grotto. It seemed like something out of another life entirely, that Matt had held her, and told her how glad he was that she was all right, and she had rested her head on his shoulder and felt safe.
Now, he felt almost like a stranger. In the last hour, everything she had thought she knew about him had been turned upside down. His hand on her shoulder was comforting, but she didn’t feel any need for him to come closer.
“Karen, I’m so sorry,” he said. His head was bowed, and all she could see of his face was his bruised profile. “You never should have had to face all that alone.”
“You tried to come with me,” she reminded him. “I wouldn’t let you.”
“But you didn’t know the truth about me. If I had told you then, would it have made a difference? Would you have let me protect you?”
She didn’t have an answer. Would she have gone with Frank so readily, if she had Daredevil by her side? Frank, who had used her as bait to lure the Blacksmith’s men? Who had saved her from the Blacksmith, but betrayed her faith in him by refusing to stop killing? Knowing what she knew now about both men, she would take Matt’s protection over Frank’s, in a heartbeat. But then, she had trusted Frank, more than she trusted Matt. If Matt had told her the truth, would it have changed anything?
“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “Maybe. But it’s not as if you were just sitting at home while I got into trouble. If you were with me, you wouldn’t have been able to do all the things you were busy doing.”
“All the things I was busy failing at, you mean?” He laughed bitterly. “I rescued a bunch of people in cages and got them to the hospital, and the Hand came and took them right back, and killed innocent people in the process. I couldn’t stop them. Better for those people if I’d left it alone. And I tried to track down the Blacksmith, and failed. How many people died in that boat explosion, that I couldn't prevent?"
“You were there?” How had she missed that?
“I was on the boat, until Frank pushed me into the water. That’s how I survived the explosion.”
Another brush with death. She shivered. Maybe they both would have been safer if he had come with her.
“After I climbed out onto the pier I heard you arrive,” he continued. “But you were with Brett, so I assumed you were all right.” He shook his head, sighing out a resigned breath. "After that, I tried to protect Stick and Elektra, from the Hand and from each other. And failed again. Elektra’s dead, and the Hand’s still out there. Stick’s still alive,” he admitted. “I guess I did that much right. But that’s all. I saved one old man, while I got other people killed and left you in danger.”
He lifted his head, his expression bitter. “I should have told you the truth,” he said. “I thought hiding it from you was the right thing to do, I thought you’d be safer if you didn’t know. But I still put you in danger, even without telling you. The Hand took you because I’d saved you, you were in danger because of me.”
His hand tightened on her shoulder. “For as long as I’ve known you, I’ve wanted to keep you safe. What I do, it’s dangerous, and violent, and I never wanted to drag you, or anyone I care about, into that world. That’s why I hid the truth. But it hasn’t kept you safe at all.”
She laughed humorlessly. “I don’t seem to be able to stay away from that world, Matt. You didn’t drag me anywhere.”
“Maybe not. But I couldn’t help you, either, once I drove you away and lost your trust. I wish to God I’d told you sooner.”
Well, it was too late for that. She watched him in silence for a few minutes, thinking about everything she knew about Daredevil—the stories that flew around Hell’s Kitchen, the occasional news item, the times she had seen him herself—seeing it all in a new light. He was Matt, he had always been Matt.
She thought suddenly of all the things she had said about Daredevil, good and bad, to Matt, and felt a fresh dart of anger that he had listened and had said nothing. She couldn’t help feeling like he’d made a fool of her, even though she knew that hadn’t been his intention.
But she also remembered her overwhelming relief, when he had come crashing through the window of the warehouse the other night. Remembered his gloved hand gentle on her cheek. It wasn’t true that he couldn’t help her, he had saved her, had saved all of them. She remembered Matt shoving her to the floor and covering her body with his own, as bullets tore up Samantha Reyes’ office. Remembered another night, over a year ago now, when she had watched a man in black beat the shit out of the man who had tried to kill her. Who would have killed her, if Matt hadn’t arrived in time to stop him. He had both hurt her and helped her, there was no separating the two.
“Matt,” she said softly. “You saved my life. More than once. And I’ve never had the chance to thank you until now.”
He turned away. “Don’t thank me. I’ve hurt you, and lied to you, and put you in danger.”
“Yes,” she answered firmly. “All of that. It doesn’t change the fact that I would be dead and in the ground if it wasn’t for you. And I’m not the only one. I will thank you, because I really don’t want to die, not for a long, long time yet.” Her voice shook, and she could feel tears prick her eyes.
He turned back toward her, his expression unspeakably sad. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and continued. “I can’t judge whether you’ve done more harm than good. I don’t know if the lives you’ve saved can ever be enough to stop you feeling guilty for the ones you couldn’t save. But they still matter. Whatever else you’ve done, there are people in this city going about their lives, alive and well, because you were there when they—when we—needed you. Thank you.”
He buried his face in his hands, and sat silent and still. Compassion, his voice said in her memory. It’s a good quality. The stuff of saints. Well, she was still no saint, she never had been. But she did feel compassion for this unhappy, defeated man beside her. She reached out and rested her hand on his shoulder, and sat beside him quietly.
After a few minutes, he raised his head and rubbed his eyes. “Of course those lives matter,” he said. “You’re right.” But she could see he was still distraught, guilt plainly written on his face. He was going to have to find a way to come to terms with it, somehow. But she knew well enough that it took time. For tonight, this might be as good as it was going to get.
Karen’s tailbone was starting to ache, and she shifted her hips on the hard floor. She looked toward the spill of warm light from the doorway, and said gently, “Shall we go back in the office?”
He nodded wordlessly, and they both stood up. She noticed that he moved stiffly, and wondered how badly injured he was, remembering the blood she had seen on his suit. Without thinking, she reached out to touch his chest, as she had in the warehouse.
“It’s nothing,” he said dully. “I’m fine.”
He turned away and walked ahead of her back into Foggy’s office, deliberately seating himself at the far end of the sofa, where she had sat before. Placing himself between her and the windows, between her and any possible danger from outside.
She could hardly say he was being over-protective, not when she had run for cover like a terrified rabbit. She sat at the other end, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. The brief spurt of adrenaline had drained away, leaving her even more tired than before.
“Are you all right?” Matt asked quietly.
“Tired,” she answered. “Exhausted, actually. I haven’t been sleeping well. Bad dreams.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t deserve any of this.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. She couldn’t help wondering sometimes if she did deserve the bad things that happened to her. But she didn’t argue. She shivered, remembering Matt’s insistence that killing was completely wrong, that only God had the right to decide who lives or dies. Well, if God even existed, then no doubt he would judge her one day. But Matt…how might he judge her, this new, more complicated Matt, if he knew what she had done?
How might Daredevil judge? She knew he wouldn’t condone killing, but was it possible he might understand what had driven her, and not condemn?
She looked at him, huddled miserably into his corner of the sofa, and kept her silence. She felt a sudden, overpowering wish that they could both actually be the people they had presented themselves as—an idealistic lawyer, a secretary from a small town, who met, grew close, and were happy together. But that had never been their story, whatever either of them might have thought.
She uncurled her legs and slid a little nearer to him, so she could take his hand once more. “I’m glad you’ve told me all this, Matt,” she said. “I know it can’t have been easy. But you should go home now, and get some rest.”
“I’m sorry for keeping you out so late,” he answered. “Thanks for hearing me out.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’m going to go, if there’s nothing else you need to tell me?” He shook his head. “Okay then. Let me know what you decide to do about the money, and we’ll go over the books.” He frowned, but nodded.
She stood up and went back into the main room, and put on her coat. She took it as a measure of just how futile Matt was feeling that he didn’t offer to walk her home.
When she went back into Foggy’s office to turn off the lamp, Matt hadn’t moved from where she’d left him. Well, he could spend the night here if he wanted, the sofa was comfortable enough to sleep on.
“Good night, Matt,” she said. “I’m really glad you didn’t die.”
His mouth quirked up slightly, in an expression too pained to be called a smile. “I’m really glad you didn’t die, too. Good night, Karen.”
She left the office, and walked slowly down the stairs and outside. Life went on. Karen had a new job, another fresh start, and Matt would find a way to face the decisions that needed to be made to carry on with his own life. She had thought she had cut ties with him for good, but tonight she had felt the slender thread that still connected them. What that connection might mean in the future, only time would tell, but she wasn’t sorry it was there.
He’s got issues, she had told Frank. It’s complicated, like most people. It was more true than she ever could have guessed. Now, they would both just have to keep living one day at at time, putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, that’s all you could do.