Work Text:
It's dark and it's quiet and she just left work, she's almost home, she's always on guard but just for a second just for a second she relaxes as she walks past the alleyway,
Karen doesn't remember much between that moment and the fifth or sixth punch to the gut, and ribs, and face. She remembers the sounds, and how god damn dark it is how did they find the darkest corner of the city, how did she not know she lived so close to it, the darkest, darkest part of the whole town? She remembers the scuffle of boots but no voices, the whooshing of fists and legs and god knows what else before they hit her. She remembers kicking and clawing wildly with no particular target there's so many of them and it's so, so dark and she comes back into focus when the shock of red and billy clubs floats down from the fire escape above her.
He barely makes a sound as he lands, but he sure as shit takes one of those assholes down on his way. The other four - five? - not far behind. You should have seen the way he was flippin' around in the rain…it's dark and her left eye is stuck shut with blood.
______________________________________
"Karen?"
She's hurt. And exhausted. And mad as hell that she's hurt, where the fuck did they even come from, where --
"How'd you…know my name?"
Bodies are littered in front of her, she's with Daredevil at the end of the alley nearly against a wall and he's hovering above her, his head tilted up to one side and hands just barely touching hair, shoulders, ribs, hips.
"Karen, can you move?"
"Yeah, I'm, I can- I'm fi- I can move, I can…who are you, you know my name? Why do you know my - who are you? Who are you, who are you, who are they, what did I do, what did I do…"
His gloves are tacky with blood when he slides one behind her back, the other cupping her head. He lifts her incredibly gently for somebody who just took out multiple attackers, in the dark, with his fists. That doesn't slow her heart or her lungs down, though. At least not until he sits down and pulls her nearly into his lap, both of them wedged between a brick wall and a pile of wooden pallets, and he rests her head in the crook of his neck. The mask is cool on her skin, and the rest of his face feels familiar. Instantly, instinctually, like knowing the feel of your family's arms around you.
Her heart stops, then, for just a moment. She's not panicking anymore. She wonders if he can tell.
______________________________________
Karen gives herself the briefest second to curl up there and think okay, so that'd be why he fought so well in the dark. This is why he knows to look out for her, this is why he knows she's not helpless, too. Nothing else makes sense, but the fact that she feels safe, at least, does.
She pulls back just enough (lighting up fires in her everywhere a punch had landed) to reach with the hand that's not currently curled around his neck and pull at the mask, so slowly. He lets her, that's how she knows before she even sees his face. His eyes are pointed somewhere over her shoulder, darting madly, and she knows she probably shouldn't find it reassuring that he's blind, but, well…he didn't lie. About that.
Then the mask's in his hand and her hand's on his face and she's sobbing like the world is ending and she's kissing all over Matt's face, tiny little kisses to his cheeks and eyebrows and forehead and temples, it feels light and cool like rain but he's not sure if that's from her tears or his.
(He's shaking. This is not the reaction he was expecting. He thinks she's smiling just a little and he's so confused but he wouldn't trade it for anything, except maybe a trade for something, anything, where she's not bruised and bleeding.)
"Karen, honey…" He rocks them, she's not calming down, they're still outside, this isn't good… "I have to put it back on, okay? Someone could see…" but it's hard for him to do that with her face crushed into the side of his.
He pulls her back by the shoulders, slips the mask on and quietly instructs her to make her way to her friend Matt's place, and he'll be watching from the rooftops.
This is killing him but he doesn't know who these men are or who they might know and he can't care about that right now, he just needs to keep her safe.
She cries all the way to his apartment, but she never slows down. He's so goddamn proud of her.
______________________________________
The Daredevil suit is pooled on the floor in his bedroom, sweatpants and t-shirt just barely on him by the time Karen knocks. Just once, then she leans her face on the door and yells his name right into the wood, hoarse and desperate. He catches her as he opens it, brings her over to the couch and kneels between her legs, hugs her tight enough to feel bones creak.
He breathes deep to check for blood, listens close for fractures or sprains, feels the heat of the bruises covering her torso. When he's decided bruises are the worst of it, he buries his face in her hair. Selfishly. If she's going to leave, he wants to remember this part. The sweet, soft, astonishingly brave little thing who smells like sunshine and is leaving half-moons of nail marks on his back. If she's going to leave, she gets to decide when it's over. He's not going to be the one to give it up.
They sit there for an hour.
Karen pulls back from him with a deep breath. She puts her palms on Matt's cheeks, silently thumbs away tears and stares for a while until she starts to scare him a little.
"Karen?"
"Just…checking." Thumbs smoothing over his eyebrows, closing his eyelids. "You still…you can't…see the sky."
So he resigns himself to her anger and absence -- tries to, anyway -- and he explains everything. All of it, just like with Foggy, and he feels her get up just like he did and pace just like he did, the same long angry steps but without the shouted questions or accusations.
The quiet, it turns out, is so much worse.
He can't see anything if there's no noise. There's no smell of tears anymore, but her heart and breathing are still fast. Is she angry? Scared? He can backflip off a rooftop but he still can't see her face and he doesn't know without her words. It absolutely terrifies him.
"Please don't leave. Please, please don't, just…don't leave, please, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave…"
She's across the room and in his space before he realizes he's mumbling anything out loud. Her laugh sounds more like a sob when it jumps out of her.
"The Devil of Hell's Kitchen is scared shitless by Karen Page, huh? Never thought I'd see the day." She takes his hand, laces their fingers together. "Come here, Matt…"
______________________________________
She drags him to the kitchen. He hears the glasses clinking, the faucet running to fill them before she shoves one into his hand along with towels full of ice for both their bruises.
The space between the counter and the island is small, so she shoves a barstool out of the way to lean back against it. Matt can still feel her breath on his face, even more so when he leans over to set his empty glass down beside her. It rattles on the granite when he lets go. He's strung tighter than a bow right now, wondering why she's still here, why her heartbeat is so calm, how long he gets to keep this time with her.
Just like every time before it, she pulls him out of his swirling cloud of panic -- grabs his upper arms and hauls him close enough to feel like they're magnets with the same pole, just one or two inches apart from head to toe and there's nothing in the world he wants more than to bridge the gap, but he can't do that to himself, can't do that to either of them. This is not her weight to carry, she was attacked tonight, he should be the one saving her, and yet --
"God damn it, Matt…"
The sound of her hands slapping the countertop behind her as she says it makes him flinch, and he moves backwards like a magnet again when she pushes herself up to sit there above him. His hands had been resting behind her, and this moves them solidly into her. Which was her goal, he guesses, because she lays her own arms heavy around Matt's shoulders. Presses their foreheads together.
"…hold on to me. I'm not going anywhere."