Sarah loitered near the corner of the platform and watched Matt carefully as he walked along the perimeter of the ring, trailing his fingers along the rope. She felt a pale flutter of nervousness in her stomach as she realized that she really had no idea what kind of situation she was stepping into.

"Have you ever taught anyone how to fight before?"

"Nope," he said, coming to a stop at the opposite corner of the ring, where he leaned back against the ropes with his arms spread wide. "Why?"

Her mind flashed to standing on the roof, watching Daredevil brutally wrench a man's arm out of its socket, and she couldn't help but speculate as to how much of that side of him he was about to bring into the ring. She hadn't really thought to ask about how this whole thing would work, and now she found that she didn't know what to expect.

Matt tilted his head as she fidgeted with the stretchy boxing wrap that was wound around her hand. She had tried to mimic the complicated wrapping pattern that she'd watched Matt do, and she'd done a good enough job that it held out throughout her hitting the punching bag, but was now starting to come partially undone.

After a few moments, he pushed himself away from the ropes and crossed the ring, stopping in front of her and reaching out to fix the boxing wrap. He took her left hand and began slowly unraveling the wrap. Once it was undone, he started to redo it, working quicker and much more deftly than Sarah had. He didn't say anything to her at first, so she waited, positive that he wasn't standing in front of her simply to help her with her boxing tape.

"Having second thoughts?" he asked quietly. She knew that he'd been picking up on her slight tick of nervousness.

"No. I just..." she shrugged, glancing around the ring before exhaling and figuring she might as well get right to the point. "Okay, scale of one to ten, with one being...Lawyer Matt who has pretty waitresses read menus for him. And ten being, like, straight-up Daredevil. Who am I looking at here?"

"Was that waitress pretty?" Matt asked innocently, and Sarah groaned.

"That's so not the point of the question."

Matt just nodded, apparently thinking about his answer as he continued wrapping her hand.

"Three?" He pressed his lips together and tilted his head as he reconsidered. "Three point five."

Sarah cast her eyes towards the ceiling and huffed slightly at how unsatisfactory her arbitrarily-chosen scale had been at helping her evaluate the situation, and Matt chuckled lightly at her reaction.

"I don't plan to take it easy on you, if that's what you're asking," he told her bluntly. "It would defeat the point. If you have to use anything I teach you against someone who isn't me, you know they aren't going to go easy on you."

"Yeah...I noticed," Sarah muttered, thinking of the force with which Ronan had hit her across the face. It had taken weeks for those bruises to fade completely.

Matt kept his focus on re-wrapping her hand as they talked, allowing her to process what he was saying without that x-ray feeling he sometimes gave her.

"There's no way to show you how to defend yourself without putting you on the defensive, but...you know that I'm not going to hurt you, right?"

Something about the way he asked made Sarah question if he was reassuring her or if he was looking for her to reassure him.

She watched him wind the boxing wrap around her hand: bringing it around her wrist, then her knuckles, back down over her thumb. She couldn't help but be reminded of the last time she had watched him wrap her hands up, the night of her struggle with Ronan. The first real glimpse she'd had that Matt Murdock could be anything other than a threat.

"I know. It's just that this..." Sarah nodded to the boxing gym around them. "All of this is—is your world. I don't...really know what to expect."

"Well, luckily for you, I'm not the one in control of what happens in this ring," he informed her as he finished wrapping her left hand. "You are."

Sarah narrowed her eyes at him skeptically. "I think maybe you're confused. Probably the concussion you wouldn't let me ask about."

Matt laughed as he switched to the wrap on her right hand. "I'm serious. This is supposed to be an opportunity to help you, not an excuse to toss you around the ring. I mean it when I say I'll push your limits a bit, but in the end you're still the one who gets to set them. If you want to stop, we stop."

As she agreed, he finished up re-wrapping her right hand. The boxing tape was much tighter now than it had been, anchoring her wrist more.

"Plus...you'll get to hit me," Matt said with a wicked grin as he began slowly walking backwards, using his light hold on her wrist to tow her into the center of the ring. "Which I'm sure you've wanted to do since the day you met me."

Despite herself, Sarah laughed as Matt raised his eyebrows knowingly.

"I'm not answering that," she told him.

"I figured you might not," he stopped once they were both in the center of the ring, still hanging onto her wrist. "You ready?"

Sarah looked at him suspiciously, aware that he hadn't let go of her wrist yet. "I guess."

"Good," he said, and as she had suspected, he tightened his hold on her wrist. "We'll start here. If someone wants to keep you from running away or hitting them back, the easiest thing for them to do is grab your wrists, and it's hard to break a hold like that."

Sarah knew that already, of course—in part because Matt himself had used that particular hold against her more than once.

"If their hold isn't too tight, try to rotate your hand so that your thumb lines up here," he said, gesturing to where his thumb overlapped his index finger. "Then bend your elbow towards your body as hard as you can."

He loosened his grip slightly so that she could try it, which she did.

"And if their hold is too tight?"

"That's when you get to have some fun figuring out the best places to hit them to make them loosen their grip."

"You have an interesting definition of fun," Sarah pointed out, to which Matt just smirked, before taking her wrist again.

"If they're trying to pull you towards them," he said, tugging her so that she stepped forward, "Go with it. They're expecting you to be try to pull away; instead you can surprise them by stepping even more in their space. They're already bringing your hand closer to them, meaning you can probably reach something you can hit: their nose, temple, windpipe."

They spent a while practicing having her hit the places he listed, with him easily deflecting her hits but allowing them to come close enough that she could gauge her aim. When they moved on to lower targets—the solar plexus, the side of the rib—he occasionally allowed her to actually land a blow, though they didn't seem to affect him much. As they practiced, he continuously reminded her to watch the placement of her feet and not to telegraph her moves by stepping into them. She struggled to remember that while also trying to focus on hitting him and then immediately retracting her arm—he warned her that the longer she stayed within reach of her opponent, the more likely it was that they were going to be able to grab ahold of her again.

To prove his point, Matt waited until one hit where she completely failed to retract her hand in time—landing a push punch instead of the desired snap punch. Before she could blink, his hand closed around her right wrist again, this time spinning her around so that her back slammed into his chest. He locked his other arm around her waist, pinning her left arm to her side so that she was effectively trapped in place.

"The longer you stay in their territory, the more opportunities you give them to get the upper hand," he reminded her, his voice calm in her ear.

Slightly frustrated, Sarah didn't wait for Matt to release her. He was holding her right wrist at such an angle that she could still move her arm, and she brought her elbow back into his ribs as hard as she could. He made a noise that was somewhere between a pained exhale and a laugh, but it seemed to do the trick, and he loosened his grip enough that she was able to break away.

When she spun around again to face him, she was surprised to see that wicked grin back on his face.

"Good," he told her. "Keep going."

So she did.

Considering the generally short fuse she had known him to have, Matt was surprisingly patient when she messed up—which was unfortunately often. But it wasn't long before she learned that he hadn't been lying when he said he wasn't going to take it easy on her.

As she focused on her aim and her attempts to quickly retract her fist, Sarah's concentration on the placement of her feet wavered.

Sarah went to aim at his temple, but realized a split second too late that she'd automatically stepped into the move, sacrificing the balanced stance she had had. She saw him cock his head slightly and quickly went to move her foot back but Matt had already zeroed in on her mistake. Before she could back out of his reach, he kicked her legs clean out from under her, so that she landed flat on her back in the ring. She gasped as the air was knocked out of her.

She felt Matt crouch down next to her and then a hand on her arm as he slowly pulled her into the sitting position.

"That's how easily you get knocked down if you don't pay attention to your feet," he told her. "You alright?"

"Yeah," she gasped.

"Do you want to stop?"

Sarah rubbed her back, which smarted slightly from the impact. "No."

Matt raised an eyebrow at her. "You're sure?"

"Positive."

"Alright." He stood up and held a hand down for her to take, but she swatted it away and struggled to her feet alone. With a laugh, he backed up to his original position and waited. "Whenever you're ready, then."

The lessons were effective, if irritating, and she was careful to concentrate on snapping her arm back and keeping her feet where they were supposed to be. This left little concentration for her to focus on her aim, but Matt insisted that the rest was more important, and her aim would develop with practice.

"Good. Better," he said approvingly as she snapped her hand back before he could grab it, despite the fact that she had failed to hit him in the solar plexus like he'd instructed-instead landing an ineffective blow somewhere near his upper abs. She shook her head at his definition of 'better', but continued on without comment.

It wasn't until Sarah's back hit the boxing ring floor for the third time that she felt tired enough to call it quits for the evening.

"You okay?" came Matt's voice from where he was crouched down next to her yet again.

To her surprise, she was. Her body ached a bit, and she was exhausted, but in a different way than she had been the last few weeks. Having to concentrate on something physical had left no room in her brain for the stressful thoughts that had been chasing themselves in circles lately.

"...not awful, actually," she decided, then groaned lightly as she sat up. "But, uh...definitely okay with calling it a night."

"You got it." Matt extended his hand down to her, and this time she took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet.

A few minutes later, they were both out of the ring and Sarah had just refilled her water bottle at the water fountain. She was absently studying the posters lining the walls as she drank when a familiar name caught her eye. Idly stepping closer to the poster, she blinked as she read the match it was advertising: Carl Crusher Creel vs. Battlin' Jack Murdock.

She inhaled as she realized what boxing gym Matt had taken her to. She should have recognized the name of the place from the newspaper headlines she had read after the first time they met, about Jack Murdock's body being found in the alleyway out back.

"That was his last match."

Sarah jumped a little. She looked over her shoulder to see that Matt had come up behind her, his eyes cast in the general direction of the poster as he unwound the wrap from his hand. She instinctively felt almost guilty, as though she had intruded on something personal. But he didn't look upset, and he had been the one to bring her here, after all. She brought her gaze back to the yellowed paper on the wall.

"The Creel match?"

"Yeah," he said, coming to stand next to her. "Creel was a legend. Arrogant a son-of-a-bitch, but...he was a good boxer. It was a big deal to even get the chance to fight him."

"Did....did he win? Your dad?" she asked him hesitantly.

"He won the match, yeah. Only problem was, he wasn't supposed to," Matt said, a bitter smile twisting his lips. "I think everyone was surprised but me and him."

Sarah bit her lip as she watched Matt. The articles she'd scanned through had mentioned that Jack Murdock's death might have been connected to fixed fights, but none of them had gone into detail.

"I'm sorry," she said, aware that it wasn't helpful to hear, but not knowing what else to say.

"It was a long time ago," Matt said, before turning to her. "You ready to go?"

"Yeah." Sarah nodded, swallowing hard as she turned away from the poster. "Um, let me just...grab my bag. Do you have to go get ready to go out?"

Matt shook his head. "Not tonight. There's a pretty big storm coming in a few hours. Don't want to get caught in the middle of it."

"Can you not fight in the rain?" she asked him curiously. She had never considered the effect of the weather on what he did at night. What did he do when it was icy, or when it was pushing a hundred degrees and humid?

"No, no, rain is fine. It can be kind of helpful sometimes, actually. The way it hits things helps me place where they are. Thunder and lightning are what mess things up. The electricity from the lightning makes it hard to pick up on a lot of things I rely on...temperature, air density, electric currents, things like that. And thunder's just, well..." Matt shrugged. The concept was fairly self-explanatory.

"Kinda loud," Sarah finished for him.

"Pretty much," Matt said with a chuckle. "Makes it difficult to hear the things I need to hear. So I only go out in thunderstorms if it's absolutely necessary."

"Well...good. You could probably stand to take a night off from beating up bad guys, anyway."

"What about you?"

"What, will I be fighting crime tonight?" Sarah asked, slinging her small tote bag over her shoulder. "Hmm, no. Probably not tonight."

Matt rolled his eyes at her answer. "I meant, do you have plans to go out?"

"Definitely not. After this week I really need a couple of drinks. And as much as I'd love to not be trapped inside my apartment again, going to a bar right now is kind of a bad idea, so..." she leaned back against the doorway behind her and shrugged. "I'll be home with a bottle of wine and a book. Exciting stuff."

Normally, a book and a bottle of wine did sound like a perfectly fine night to her, but it just wasn't the kind of night she needed right now. But she would take what she could get these days.

"You know..." Matt began, hooking his finger around the small loop on the top of his cane, which he had pulled out of his gym bag as they prepared to leave. "If you're dead set on drinking tonight—"

"—oh, I am—"

"—then there are other options for places to drink in Hell's Kitchen besides in a bar or in an apartment."

Sarah reached up and undid her ponytail, shaking her hair loose as she pulled the hair tie out. "Yeah? Do you know someplace where no one's going to be sneaking up behind me?"

"As a matter of fact, I know a few," Matt said. "We'd have to stop at the liquor store first."

"My home away from home."

"Yeah, well. You don't get to pick the liquor this time," he informed her as they exited the gym. At the last second, Sarah remembered the turn the lights off—something Matt obviously wouldn't be in the habit of doing.

"I'm more worried about your choice of drinking locale than your liquor. This isn't going to be in some sketchy alleyway, is it?"

"It's not in an alleyway," Matt assured her, but didn't bother to elaborate beyond that.

Sarah sighed. But wherever Matt was taking her, it was sure to be more interesting and less lonely than her empty apartment, so she followed him out of the gym and into the dark streets of Hell's Kitchen.

And so, about thirty minutes and one liquor store visit later, Sarah found herself sitting on the edge of a metal fire escape that snaked up a currently abandoned apartment building, her legs dangling over the side through the wide horizontal rungs of the railing. Matt was sitting next to her, unscrewing the lid from a bottle of whiskey.

"A fire escape. I should have seen that one coming," she noted, looking around. "One of your regular haunts."

"You wanted some place where no one would be looking for you."

Sarah couldn't argue with that; this wasn't one of her usual drinking spots, to say the least. No one—Ronan or any other unfriendly characters from her life—would be making any surprise appearances up here.

"So, why doesn't anyone live here?" she asked quizzically, squinting through the dark window behind them. The fire escape window led into a kitchen, which appeared to have nice granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. It didn't look like a run-down place.

"Oh, the safety codes weren't up to snuff," Matt said casually, before taking a drink from the bottle. "Something about the fire escapes being unstable."

Sarah whipped her head back around to look at Matt in alarm, but then she saw a familiar smirk playing across his face. She shook her head at him. "Very funny. When did you decide to grow a sense of humor?"

Matt's grin just grew wider as he passed her the bottle.

"Sorry. They're being renovated. It's just some interior stuff left now, I think," he said, before his grin faded slightly as he grew more serious. "They had to evacuate all these apartments when they were damaged in the, uh...incident, I guess people call it. And now the owner wants to draw in shiny new residents to live in his shiny new apartments."

Sarah watched him for a moment, noting how the faint bitterness in his voice was reflected in his expression. It seemed like a sore subject, for some reason.

"Well...joke's on him, because the local riff-raff have found their way back here anyway," she pointed out, using the bottle to gesture to their seat on the fire escape before taking a drink. The whiskey Matt had picked was smooth and easy to drink straight, unlike the last bottle of liquor the two of them had shared. She nodded her approval, passing the bottle back to Matt. "You know, I could have bought the liquor. Drinking was my idea."

"Well, I figured I owed you for ruining your kitchen knife."

"And one of my mugs," she reminded him.

"If I recall correctly, you said you got that mug for subscribing to a magazine, so..." he shrugged apologetically. "Unfortunately, you forfeited your claim to that reimbursement."

Sarah laughed, shaking her head as she looked down at the dark pavement far below them. She muttered something about him being a dick under her breath, knowing he would hear her. He just raised his eyebrows as he took a swig from the bottle, and they were quiet for a few moments.

"Hey, where were you for the whole, um...alien thing?" she asked. "Were you Daredevil-ing at that point?"