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In the aftermath of the madness, Heather finds that her time in the hospital becomes a solace. She's aware that it's a distraction at best, that it cannot even begin to fix the manner in which her hands tremble unbidden when she's alone, or that every time she shuts her eyes she sees streaks of blood against the insides of her eyelids, but in the hospital she has something to focus on, and for the meantime, that's enough.
God, she needs something to focus on.
That man's reveal as Daredevil couldn't have felt more painful if someone had taken a knife and dragged it right through her gut. Him, the riot, the shootings, Fisk being taken away without even a glance towards the people who had been loyal to him in the past...
Heather clenched her jaw. Clench, unclench, clench, unclench...
"Have you eaten? Please tell me you've finally eaten."
She glanced up to look at the hospital bed in front of her. Everything was fine. She was fine. This was her primary raison d'être now. At least, for the time being.
"I'm not hungry," she replied. "I had some orange juice a little while ago while you were asleep. I'm fine, really."
In the silence, one that rang heavy with disbelief, Heather attempted a smile: one borne purely from the wish to reassure and naught else.
"Heather, you need more than -"
"Are we at the hospital for you or for me, hm?" Heather quickly riposted, properly surveying the man in front of her for the first time since he'd awoken.
She tried to remember precisely when she had transformed from 'Dr Glenn' to 'Heather' in the mouth of Buck Cashman. Whenever that metamorphosis had occured didn't matter now, given that she had been by his bedside for the past forty-eight hours, had been watching vigilantly as he'd been in and out of the operating theatre, made sure he'd been taken care of as though her life depended on it.
Heather knew she didn't need to be here. She also knew why she couldn't bring herself to leave the hospital.
"That's the fantastic thing about hospitals," Buck said, wincing a little as he attempted to sit up in bed. "They're there for anyone who needs medical attention."
But Heather was already on her feet in a means to brush his suggestion far out of her mind, her hands fluffing and reangling his pillows so that he was able to sit up in the hospital bed more comfortably.
The man glanced up at her, their gazes meeting. Heather swallowed nervously. Even when recovering from a gunshot wound his eyes were sharp. She turned away, focusing with unnecessary intensity on the pillows although there was nothing more to be done there in the slightest.
"You really don't need to be doing this," Buck said quietly, this sharpness in his eyes nowhere to be heard in his voice.
"You were shot," she replied.
"I'm deeply aware of the fact. My words still stand. That doesn't mean you don't need care yourself. Care that isn't imposing a job upon yourself for someone else."
Heather swallowed again. He wasn't wrong. She knew he wasn't wrong, and she hated that he knew he wasn't as well. But the hospital was quiet, his room was quiet, and if she just focused on making sure her colleague - or friend? could she even call him a friend? - got better, perhaps the world outside the building would magically get better at the same time.
For a moment she shut her eyes, and allowed herself the grace of a single deep breath. She turned back to face him.
"Would you rather I weren't here?" she asked, unable to keep out the hint of defiance in her voice. Perhaps he was right, but she wouldn't simply roll over. "Leave you alone with no one to check on your well-being? Fisk is gone. Vanessa, gone. Everyone else rounded up. There is no one else."
The words 'for either of us' hung cold in the air, but Heather knew they didn't need to be said. She watched Buck's face as he thought for a moment. Always so inscrutable, and always so careful to be so...
"That's normal for me," he finally said, his face blank as the words left his mouth. "You don't do what I do and expect flowers and chocolates at your hospital bedside."
Heather clenched her jaw once more. God, she was tired, so tired. Part of her brain was sure he didn't mean offence, but she was exhausted and confused and - by God! - the more she thought about it the more she felt like she'd been exhausted and confused for an entire lifetime.
As she'd shaken her head at Matt's ridiculous Daredevil unveiling mere hours before she'd sworn to herself to never get close to another if they were determined to play games with her and over the past few weeks she'd started to believe that Buck might be someone she could meet on the same page.
She'd have no time for him if there was even the hint of anything otherwise.
"If that's your way of asking me to leave -," Heather said shortly, turning sharply on her heel and making to walk away.
Fingertips wrapped around her left wrist. They were warm, if a little gentler in grip than she was expecting.
"I apologise," said Buck, before Heather had even turned back around. "I meant to say... I do not expect this kind of exertion on my behalf. I certainly haven't... haven't had anything of the sort for a long time."
Heather looked back round to face him. The man's usually stoic visage had fallen but a little, and for the first time she saw the exhaustion she felt coursing through her body mirrored in his own eyes, perhaps a hint of the man he might have been before violence became no more than background noise in his world.
Without thinking, she placed her hand over his.
"I'll stay as long as you'd like me to," she replied. His hand really was so warm, as warm as they'd been back on the day of Vanessa's funeral, when he'd reminded her that she didn't need to be ashamed of what had happened to her at Muse's hands.
"I'm most grateful," he replied. "But it's never an obligation, truly."
For the first time in days Heather cracked a smile; a smile she actually dared to feel.
"That's why I'm happy to do it."
Buck was in his apartment several days later, when a realisation struck him hard on the head during dinner.
Tonight's dinner was a solitary affair, as it had been for the vast majority of his life. He'd never known his mother, spent most of his time alone whilst his father was out doing god knows what, and when god knows what had finally caught up with the old man, a young Buck did not find much solace in any of the many foster homes he'd been assigned to.
And the less said about his time in the Army, the better.
Yet for what might be the first time in his life, Buck realised why he was feeling - dare he say it - lonely. Since his discharge from the hospital, for a whole week Heather had been at his apartment every evening for dinner, either cooking for him in the earliest days of his recuperation or, when he felt healthy enough to insist he could do it himself, became stubborn enough to continue cooking alongside him despite his protestations.
At the back of his mind he understood why even this was a foolish endeavour. Fisk was gone, and with it went the entire bedrock of Buck's existence for the past few years: the very tie that bound himself and Heather, all dissolving into nothing within moments. Buck knew that it was always prudent to step back from personal connections when a job had come to an end.
Or had it? Fisk was out of the picture, not dead... and where did that leave him? The morality of Buck's past employers nor their geographical situation had ever concerned him in the past, and Fisk still seemed to care in his own way about his existence, and Heather's too...
Despite all that mess, if one thing made sense to Buck, it was that keeping his head down was safest for now. Fisk or no Fisk, he was no use to anyone if his head was above the parapets, an all too easy target for whichever political snipers might be on the loose.
He took another bite of his burger.
Out of nowhere, Daniel's bloodied face came into view. Buck swallowed his mouthful stiffly. It was a lawless world out there on the streets, with anyone capable of the most heinous crimes imaginable, if you were only prepared to pay them the right price. Goddamit, he could still hear the sound of his shot into Daniel's skull as though it were yesterday. Buck dropped his burger as the sound echoed around his own head, and he cricked his neck uncomfortably. He'd shot thousands of people throughout his life, and yet that singular shot repeated in his mind like a clarion call, over and over.
His hand slammed on the desk in frustration, as he finally felt able to acknowledge just how much Heather's presence these past few days had kept his thoughts at bay.
She'd told him the night before she'd not be around this evening, and that had been that. It hadn't even crossed Buck's mind to ask why, so used was he to functioning alone. Besides, who was he to her for him to keep tabs on what she was up to? They were merely colleagues, perhaps friends at a stretch...
His mind wandered back to that moment after the funeral, her hands around his throat as he saw in her eyes what he hoped to see: relief. Relief to finally express, without so much as words, the pain that had coursed unchecked through her veins for so long.
He'd read her file, seen the terrible trauma she'd been through, and that afternoon her grip had been stronger than he had expected, her anger and disgust at the world around her explosive enough to scorch the air, but none of that hadn't concerned him in the slightest.
He could take her pain.
Nevertheless, there was nothing between them that should make him wonder about her whereabouts quite as much as he was doing in this precise moment.
He left his unfinished burger on the kitchen counter and, in a vain attempt to clear his mind of any thoughts at all, took some sleeping pills before heading to bed.
The sleeping pills might have well have been chocolate drops. Buck had known they were fairly ineffectual for years now, that at best they made him a little drowsy and no more than such, but he had kept a bottle of them amongst his things for several years now in the ludicrous hope that one day when he truly needed the sedative, they might just come through for him.
Alas, not tonight.
Thus, he had lain for several hours in bed, eyes wide open. Memories flashed through his head at intermittent intervals, many of which Buck had learned to numb himself to over the years. Childhood - adulthood - youth... doors slamming, children laughing, people dying. A man could go mad if you dwelled too much on the underbelly of the world. He drummed his fingers on his stomach, his fingertips lightly brushing the gauze covering his midriff.
Would it have been so bad, if the bullet had been more fatal? After all, Buck had long since resigned himself to the fact that this was going to be his life until he died, the white picket fence and geriatric rocking chair never something he was destined for. He'd lost count of how many colleagues had been claimed by more careless bullets.
That gunshot - Daniel -
His phone rang just as he clenched his fist. Almost gasping out loud at the reprieve from his own mind, he grabbed the device, catching sight of the name on the screen:
Dr Heather Glenn
"Hello?" he said, hastily pressing the phone to his ear. "Heather?"
Her breaths came fast and heavy down the receiver, tremors feathering through her voice as she spoke.
"Can you come over?" she managed to choke out. "I know it's late but -"
Buck was already out of bed, crossing the room amidst the semi-darkness to grab a pair of pants.
"It's fine," he replied, grateful for the distraction. "Are you alright? Are you safe?"
"I - I think so," she said. "Maybe I was just seeing things, I don't know. I was in bed and then I thought I heard a sound and - "
"Don't worry," said Buck, already shrugging on his jacket. "I'm on my way."
It took him fifteen minutes to make the journey to Heather's apartment, situated in a slightly nicer area of the city than his own. He was fairly sure that back when Fisk employed them both he still made far more than she did, but he kept the lion's share of his salary for... emergencies while she spent hers on small luxuries for everyday living.
A stark reminder that despite their association with Fisk, Heather was far closer to being an ordinary civilian than he had been in years. Another reason to cut ties and step away, Buck...
He was but a moment away from rapping on her front door when it swung open at once, revealing an exhausted and distressed-looking Heather Glenn. Relief passed over her face at the sight of him.
"I know it sounds ridiculous," she said, standing aside for him to enter as she babbled on. "I was asleep and I thought I heard some glass smashing in the living room, as though someone was breaking in. After earlier today, and what - what - before -"
Buck remembered the feeling of her hands around his neck. Some traumas stayed with you for a lifetime. He knew that better than most.
"It's alright," he said, scanning the room for the usual suspects: disturbed entry points by her windows, scuffed flooring, any footprints sloppily left behind. He knelt down to look at the cream-coloured rug in the middle of the room.
"There's no sign of any -"
"I know, I know!" she exclaimed, clearly irritated with herself as much as she was on-edge about a possible break-in. "It's why I called. Well, not the only reason why. After everything that's happened I can't help be - I - I just need to know there was really no one here, especially after today. I know it's late, I'm... I'm sorry."
"It really is no trouble," said Buck, getting back to his feet and walking back over to her. "But if you don't mind me asking, what happened today?"
She turned away from him, running her fingers through her hair as she turned towards her kitchen counter.
"I went to pick up my remaining effects from Fisk's offices," she explained. "I knew I didn't have much left before there but you know, so much has been seized and shuffled about since he was exiled from the country that I didn't want anything falling into the wrong hands. They had your things too. In an envelope. I didn't look, I simply wanted to pick it up so I could give it to you tomorrow. I had it in my head that it'd be a nice gesture."
She waved her hand over to the coffee table in the middle of the room whereupon lay, just as she had described, a single A4 manila envelope.
"They let you take my things?" Buck asked, his eyes narrowing.
"I ensured they let me," she said simply.
"I would have thought they'd be more stringent with security, all things considered," he mused.
Heather cleared her throat and slipped her hands into her pyjama pockets.
"I ensured they let me," she repeated. Her voice clipped every syllable, her chin raised just a little.
Her eyes met his, and for the first time since he'd walked into her apartment, her gaze was resolute. For a split second time seemed suspended, the lost hitman and the damaged therapist understanding one another with a single glance.
Then time sped on once more.
"Alright," nodded Buck. "Thank you, Heather."
"Of course."
"There's not much in there. Some loose stationery, some spare cash. You're welcome to look."
"Those aren't personal effects," said Heather, the hardness in her eyes disappearing as an amused grin threatened to creep up her face. "That's the contents of every New York taxi driver's glovebox. What, you don't even have some sentimental childhood photos to put up? One of a young Buck at the playground perhaps?"
"I don't have much to be sentimental about," he replied, before gesturing around the room. "I can assure you no one's been here, you needn't worry. Perhaps it was merely a bad dream."
"Nothing to be sentimental about at all?" she pressed, deftly swerving his attempt at a detour.
Buck sighed.
"Do you think I'd be in this line of work if I did?" he said.
"Hey, there are plenty of movies where the hitman has a heart of gold and a secret family who has no idea what he does for a living. Isn't that what Liam Neeson specialises in?"
"That's why they're all movies," Buck quipped back, smirking despite himself. "And, to be honest, any person in my line of work acting like that is not a good one."
"Oh?" asked Heather, walking over to settle on her couch. "How so?"
"Well," said Buck, taking a seat opposite her. "You're going into work every day where anything, even your worst possible nightmares, could happen, and as you do so you're leaving behind loved ones who are now right in the line of fire if you're targeted. So unless you've trained them or they already know about your life and how to handle themselves, you're essentially dangling a lamb at the gate of a meat market whilst a dozen potential butchers look on. That's not love, that's being selfish. That's why those movies are ridiculous. That's not heroism at all."
A dark look crossed Heather's face for a moment, one that Buck saw clearly despite the dim lights of her living room.
"You think he was selfish then, keeping who he was from me?" she asked.
He. Daredevil. Murdock. Buck sighed heavily.
"Yes," he replied frankly. "Yes I do. I understand his rationale, but I don't agree."
Much to his surprise, a wry smile emerged upon Heather's face as she leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she scanned every inch of his face.
"So staunchly principled in so many ways, despite what you do," she said.
"We all live by different codes," Buck shrugged. "Do you judge me for mine?"
"No."
"And is that Heather talking, or Dr Glenn the therapist?"
Heather placed her hand on the manila envelope in the middle of the table and pushed it towards him. Across the table from her, Buck shook his head.
"You open it," he said. "Go ahead."
Ever so slowly, her eyes flickering back over to him, Heather reached out for the envelope. Gently placing her index finger under the tab, she lifted it as the weak adhesive gave way.
Heather peered inside.
Several receipts for food, an envelope with some money, a packet of paperclips and a few pens. Exactly as he had said.
Heather closed the envelope and placed in back on the table.
"Have you always been so matter-of-fact?" she asked. Buck smiled back at her.
"Yes," he said. "Ever since I can remember."
"I can see that either endearing the other kids at school or making them run far, far away," Heather pondered. "If I had to guess... the latter, am I right?"
"Oh no," laughed Buck, shaking his head. "No, no, no. I'm not here for a therapy session."
Heather held up her hands at once.
"No therapy, I swear. How about you tell me if I'm right, and then you ask me a question in return. Anything you like. Fair exchange?"
Heather noted the way her apartment felt ever so tragically empty when Buck finally left it at nine in the morning several hours later, after he'd insisted on fetching them both breakfast before he took his leave.
There was something terribly comforting in the manner with which he was really rather direct with her, and she briefly wondered if that was due to the shock of Murdock's confession regarding Daredevil just over a week prior.
After months and months of confusion, of shadows haunting her dreams and bloody faces over every shoulder, that she had found Buck's presence was calming was an understatement.
She glanced around at her apartment, at the pieces of her life she'd need to put back together now that Fisk was far gone. It wouldn't be hard to build her life back up again, even given her association with him and the way his name was now being dragged through the mud all over town. This was New York, after all, and for every person who claimed to walk the straight and narrow, there were five willing to sell themselves or a friend for a good deal.
Her eyes glanced back over to her coffee table. The manila envelope was still there, and Heather realised that he hadn't touched it even once since entering her apartment.
He'd claimed none of what was within had been 'personal' at all, that the nondescript nature of its contents was no more than an indicator of just how much he kept business strictly business. But after all the hours they'd now talked Heather knew otherwise.
The takeout receipts were the gastronomic markers of a man who knew how to cook well but rarely wished to, for cooking felt too domestic, too personal, a reminder of how his father rarely bothered to do so for him as a child. The paperclips were a security measure, dozens of little pieces of wire that he knew how to use in a multitude of ways should the emergency rise. The cash, 200 hundred dollars, was a small window into how much Buck felt he needed close by if he had to get out, and fast.
Oh, he kept so much of himself under lock and key, yet if all those hours they had talked had taught her anything, it was that there was far more to Buck Cashman than even he believed she understood.
And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, none of it scared her in the slightest.
Buck stared up at the ceiling above him, his eyes tracing the faint trails of light coming through the half open blinds in Heather's apartment. To his far left he could hear the faint drip of her kitchen tap. He made a note to tell her in the morning that he'd get it fixed for her sometime this week. That and the heated towel rail in her bathroom that always seemed to work only every two to three business days.
Or perhaps he'd just fix them both himself. Technically, he was still on leave for the sake of his recovery and with the mayorial office in chaos he did have the time, after all.
"Buck?"
He looked up from where he lay on the couch to where Heather stood in the doorway to her bedroom, her hair dishevelled and in her pyjamas.
"There were no sounds out here," he said at once. "If you heard anything it was all in your dreams. Nothing to be afraid of."
"Right," she nodded, before wincing at him apologetically and padding over to the edge of the couch.
"You don't have to stay over as often as you do," she sighed, rubbing her eyes.
"You clearly sleep better knowing you have a guard outside," he said gently. "Not that I don't love your three am phone calls."
"Thank you," she said, before moving to lay down beside him on the couch. Buck swallowed.
It was the fourth night this week he'd slept on her couch and whilst he did not mind sleeping on such an expensive bit of furniture - in fact, he'd insisted that it would be sufficient for him - she'd never been quite this close to him in either of their apartments before.
"I saw him again last night," Heather added, joining him in his endeavour to stare as intently at the ceiling as possible.
"Which one this time?" he asked. Some nights Daredevil, some nights Muse... it was never good to assume.
"Daredevil," she replied sharply, the three syllables spat out despite her drowsiness. "His shadow tears through every moment of silence I'm able to salvage, and he has no right! No... no right..."
From under his blanket he reached over to take her hand lightly with his own, and with his other hand spread some of the material over her.
"You're okay," he said quietly. "He's not here now, he's behind bars, remember? He won't hurt you anytime soon."
Beside him Heather pushed herself up onto her elbows and stared at him defiantly, and Buck almost swore that for a split second it looked as though her eyes flashed red.
"I'll make sure he doesn't," she growled. "If he ever gets out I'll be ready. I'll never let anyone treat me like that again. I dare him. I dare any of them."
The memory again... her hands around his neck, the firmness of her grip, more than ready and willing to crush flesh... he had been unafraid and knew he could take whatever she needed to do to feel free, but to the unsuspecting it could be a completely different matter...
"I don't doubt it," Buck replied gently. "And if it's any assurance, I'll make sure they won't as well,"
It was a strange thing, really, how he couldn't help but feel a dash of pride as he saw her shoulders relax upon his words, felt her lay back down on the couch beside him with a sigh.
"What else do you need?" he asked, after a few quiet moments passed between them.
"Just stay here," she whispered back, and he could tell by the way her breathing slowed that she was close to dozing off once more.
When, a few moments later, he felt her shift over to rest her head on his chest, her fingers resting lightly on his abdomen, Buck finally felt himself drift off to sleep.