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.