While Sarah was safely recovering in Matt's apartment, her absence at the hospital hadn't gone unnoticed—and neither had Aaron McDermott's disappearance.

On the top level of a parking garage several blocks away, Ronan stood waiting, smoking a cigarette as McDermott's partner, Officer Connor Donovan, pulled up in an unmarked car.

"You find out where she is?" he asked the police officer without preamble as he got out of the car.

"No," Donovan answered. "Don't know where she went after the hospital, but she hasn't been back to her apartment."

"Well, that's just great detective work, officer. Isn't it your fault she managed to get out of the hospital in the first place?"

"My job was to tell you she was there, not to keep her there until you arrived," Donovan snapped. "Besides, I don't know how she got out of there. She looked half dead when I saw her."

"There's something going on there," Ronan said. "Those two idiots I hired to bring her to me never came back. Now McDermott's gone, and she managed to slip out of that hospital unseen. Sarah isn't smart enough to be doing all this on her own. She's got someone helping her."

"Who do you think it is?"

"Dunno yet."

"Well until you figure it out, we need to be focusing our attention on finding McDermott."

"Aw," Ronan cooed. "Does he mean something special to you? Are the two of you some kind of buddy cop rom-com?"

Donovan didn't take the bait.

"He knows about this arrangement," he said slowly, pointing from himself to Ronan. "And him being missing means the department is going to start looking closer at all of the arrests he and I have been bringing in lately. What if they connect the dots and realize we haven't been finding these guys on our own?"

"Why should I care if that happens?" Ronan asked in a bored tone. "So you'll get outed for being bad at your job."

"Alright, try this instead. What if McDermott skipped town because he decided to tell some of your criminal friends that you're the reason all of their hideouts keep getting busted? That you're ratting them out just so you can keep a tail on some girl?"

Ronan's face twitched into a sneer, but he had no retort.

"It's best for both of us if we find McDermott, and quick," Donovan continued. "So if you think your little girlfriend knows something then let's go to her apartment and make her tell us."

"No."

"Why not?" he demanded. "I know you like playing around with her but I'm not about to risk my job because you want to drag this out—"

"She doesn't react to being attacked. You threaten her and she just stares at you like an idiot," he said bitterly. "If we want her to tell us who she's working with and what she knows about McDermott, we have to get under her skin. And the only thing that ever seems to get a rise out of her is the people she cares about. Mess with them and I'd be willing to be she'll come ot us."

"Fine," Donovan said impatiently. "Her dad, then. We already know where he lives. Who else?"

"There aren't a lot of options. She's not Miss Popular," Ronan said. "But she has a best friend. I don't have a name, but she's in a lot of Sarah's photographs. Tall, blonde. Seems to mean a lot to her."

At the mention of Ronan's collection of Sarah's photographs, Donovan gave him a vaguely disgusted look before rolling his eyes.

"Anyone else?" the officer asked.

Ronan nodded, inhaling from his cigarette before answering.

"I think she's got a new boy toy," he said, his lip curling up in anger. "Another one. She moves on quick. One of the lawyers that showed up when you and McDermott were interrogating her."

"The blind asshole or the asshole who needs a haircut?"

"The blind one."

Donovan scowled. "That guy creeps me out. I think it's the glasses. Can't tell what the hell he's thinking."

"Who cares? Just keep an eye out for either one of them to show up around her, and let me know. We'll figure something out from there."

"I can't follow her twenty-four seven, you know. I do have an actual job."

Ronan tossed the cigarette butt on the ground and stomped it out. "Yeah, well, you won't for much longer if you don't find your partner, right?"

The slamming of Donovan's car door was his only response.

--

It didn't take as long this time for Sarah's brain to catch up to where she was. She lay still and took in the high ceilings and the tall, multi-paned window that clouded the weak early morning light. Then her gaze fell to the bed next to her, where she blinked at the sight of Matt still stretched out where he had been when she had fallen asleep, his head leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed and his lips parted slightly. From the uncomfortable way he was still leaning up against the pillows and the sea of Braille papers that had slid off his lap and into the space between them, it looked like he had fallen asleep while doing his paperwork.

Blurrily, Sarah fumbled her hand on the nightstand for her phone to check the time and was immediately greeted with an email from Jason, letting her know that he expected to see her at work today—though for whatever reason he was allowing her to come in at noon and work a half day. His emails and texts were always very short and terse, as though he didn't know how to convey his fake cheerfulness in writing. The summons wasn't a surprise—she was shocked she'd been allowed this much time off at all—but the idea of going back to that building after what had happened there made her stomach turn anyway.

Setting her phone aside, she slowly sat up, biting back a groan as the pain in her skull immediately increased. She ran a hand through her tangled hair and looked over at Matt again. The kind thing to do was probably to wake him up from his uncomfortable sleeping position, but she didn't. Partially because he looked so unbelievably tired that she couldn't bring herself to bother him, but partially because she rarely got the chance to see him unguarded like this, and it was fascinating.

People always looked younger when they were asleep, and Matt was no exception. She remembered how thrown she'd been to find out that he was only two years older than her. It was easy to forget that when she spent so much time with him as Daredevil, but right now she could easily see it. The tightly coiled tension that always lingered just under the surface wasn't there now, and without it he looked very much like the normal lawyer he pretended to be. The only indication that he wasn't was the scattering of injuries he always sported: this time it was a nasty bruise on the inside of his forearm; a small cut that began above his ear and disappeared into his hair; the faint outline of a thick bandage under his t-shirt, wrapping around his side. And, of course, the ever present bruising along his knuckles. It occurred to her as she watched him that for as often as he came to her to get basic first aid, there must be dozens of times that he didn't. She frowned as she thought about him coming home every night and being alone with nothing but a bunch of bruised ribs and old scars. The image bothered her more than she expected.

Alright, weirdo, she reprimanded herself. Enough creepily watching people sleep.

Sarah quietly gathered the Braille papers that had spilled out onto the bed and set them on the nightstand next to her. It was cool in the room, and she reached down towards the foot of the bed for the heavy, knitted blanket that Foggy had been adamant about her using (despite her insistence that she had a concussion and not pneumonia). Carefully, she draped it over the sleeping vigilante, hoping it wouldn't wake him up. He didn't stir; apparently he needed the sleep. Sarah watched his chest rise and fall evenly for a moment longer before slipping out of the bed, warily testing her balance as she stood. Her head still ached, but the room stayed in one place as she made her way to the bedroom door, which seemed like a good sign to her.

The image that greeted her in the bathroom mirror was almost comical. The coverup she had so carefully applied for the baby shower had worn away, leaving the vivid bruise on her temple clearly visible again. Her eye makeup had run, resulting in a raccoon-eyed look, and her hair was tangled from sleep. She let out a rueful laugh as she realized that if you left out the important details of whose apartment this was and why she was there, this entire scenario wouldn't look entirely unlike several mornings she'd had in college after a night out.

She turned the faucet on and began trying to get the makeup off of her face before moving on to untangling her hair. Sometime during her stay—she wasn't sure when, since it all blurred together—Matt had procured a toothbrush for her from somewhere in his apartment, still in the package. As she brushed her teeth, she wondered briefly if he kept spare toothbrushes around for the parade of one-night stands that Foggy made it seem like he had. How did that work, anyway? Did no one notice that he was covered in cuts and bruises? When did he have time to meet women when he spent all of his nights beating people up? She shook her head and spit the toothpaste into the sink; this was not an appropriate time to be wondering about Matt Murdock's sex life. Actually, scratch that—there was never an appropriate time to be wondering about Matt Murdock's sex life.

Satisfied that she no longer resembled a celebrity mug shot, Sarah made her way into the kitchen in hopes of locating something caffeinated to drink. The coffee maker took a few minutes to figure out—Matt had opaque Braille labels overlaying the buttons, obscuring the original print—but she finally set it to brew and took a seat at the kitchen table to wait, a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of Aspirin in the other. A little taken aback at how tired she still was, she closed her eyes for a moment and rested her head on her hand.

Now that her mind was a little less clouded, it was also increasingly more apt to dwelling on things she didn't want to think about. As soon as she closed her eyes she was greeted with the image of McDermott slumped in that office chair, and how heavy his body had been as she'd maneuvered it through the building. The logical part of her knew that there was nothing she could have done to prevent Jason from killing him—he had acted so quickly and irrationally, there was no time to react. But it didn't help dispel the echo of the police officer's wet, gasping last breaths from her memory.

She felt a light touch on her shoulder and jerked up with a startled gasp to see Matt crouched next to her chair, his eyebrows knitted together in concern.

"Just me," Matt said, holding his hands up. "I was talking to you for a minute and you weren't responding. You alright?"

"Yeah, I..." Sarah shakily ran a hand through her hair, pushing the thoughts of McDermott out of her mind as her heart rate settled down again. "I...didn't hear you get up."

Matt lowered himself into the chair across from her, rubbing the back of his neck; it looked like she had been right about the uncomfortable position in which he'd fallen asleep. Her gaze lingered on the dark scratches she'd left across his neck, and she winced guiltily—another small injury to add to his collection.

"Did you decide the table seemed like a more comfortable place to sleep?" he asked.

"No. I was waiting for the coffee to brew, and I just...got lost in my thoughts."

"I didn't think you'd be out of bed this early. Or at all, really."

"Well, getting out of bed is a key step towards going to work, I've heard."

She was unsurprised when Matt's mouth twitched downward in displeasure. "I was wondering when they were going to make you come back in."

"I don't have to be there until noon, so...it's not a full work day, at least," she pointed out helpfully.

His frown only deepened, and he shook his head. "I don't like it. You shouldn't be there alone. Not in this condition. Not with him."

"Well, you can't come with me," Sarah said tiredly, resting her head on her hand as she observed him over the table. "It's not 'Bring Your Vigilante To Work Day'."

"I'm glad you think this is funny."

"I don't."

The coffee machine beeped to signal that it was ready. She moved to stand up but Matt shot her a stern look.

"Sit down."

"I can do things like get my own coffee, you know," she told him, but she remained in her chair. "I'm not made of glass."

"Yeah, I've caught on to that," he said as he set the hot mug of coffee in front of her. "How are you feeling?"

She watched the steam rise from the surface of the liquid for a few moments.

"My head feels better," she said finally. "I feel worse."

"Your speech is a definitely better," he noted.

She squinted at him. "Was it that bad before?"

"Pretty slurred. You weren't always making a lot of sense."

"Oh. Good thing I wasn't trying to explain anything important, then," she joked weakly.

Matt's mouth twitched into a grin before he grew serious again, taking a seat across the table from her once more.

"Mind if I ask you some follow up questions about what happened? I think you left out a few major points. Like how you ended up on the business end of a hammer meant for McDermott, for one thing. How you managed to get a full grown man from Orion all the way down to the warehouse on your own, for another."

Slowly, Sarah filled Matt in on everything she could remember from what had happened: Jason's speech about loyalty, and calling McDermott to meet them. Several times she had to backtrack, remembering earlier things she had left out, like Jason and Vanessa talking about the bribe at lunch. She went through Jason's whole speech about names, and Rob's implication that Orion employees had brought him dead bodies before. Trying to remember and explain everything in order was surprisingly exhausting, and it started to show.

"Alright," Matt said as she stumbled over a few words again. "That's...that's good for now."

"Okay," Sarah agreed, relieved to not have to talk about it for a while.

"You need to eat. Do you want me to make you something or do you want to order in?"

Sarah shook her head. The thought of food was still very much unappealing. "Oh, no, I'm...not really hungry."

Matt nodded, taking a drink from his coffee, and for a second she thought that was the end of it.

"Your options include me cooking you something, or getting food delivered," he repeated, setting his mug back down on the table and leaning back in his chair. "But 'not eating' isn't on the list."

"Matt—"

"You've been here since Tuesday night. Now it's Thursday morning, and you haven't eaten anything. I really don't think you want to fight me on this."

She looked at him for a moment, debating whether it was worth the effort. Finally she let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Fine."

"Good. What do you want?" Matt asked as he stood up from the table and started towards the kitchen.

"I thought Foggy said you didn't have any food."

Matt chuckled as he opened the fridge. "Foggy's idea of food doesn't include anything that requires preparing. Frozen dinners, boxed macaroni and cheese...that's what Foggy tends towards. But I have more than enough to make breakfast. Or lunch. Whichever you want."

She followed him into the kitchen, gathering her hair over one shoulder. "I'm not picky."

"Alright. I'll figure something out."

Sarah rested her hands on the counter and used them to carefully lift herself up so she was sitting on the surface, next to the sink where she could lean back against the kitchen wall. "I didn't know you could cook."

"Learning to cook at home becomes a necessity when you can taste the brand of dish soap that a restaurant uses on their plates," he told her wryly. "I've gotten pretty good at it."

The idea of Matt being good at something as ordinary and non-violent as cooking struck her as amusing for some reason, and she watched with interest as he set an assortment of vegetables on the counter, along with a box of pasta and a few spices. Suddenly she remembered something she had meant to ask about the night before, but hadn't gotten the chance.

"So...how did meeting Lauren go?" she asked, watching him closely.

Matt's hesitance before answering didn't seem like a good sign.

"It went...fine," he said evasively, and Sarah narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.

"You're definitely lying," she pointed out. "It didn't go well?"

"I...don't think she likes me very much."

Sarah couldn't help but laugh. "That's crazy. Daredevil is so friendly."

Matt grinned as he filled up a pot of water to boil the pasta, turning to her once he had set it on the burner.

"Speaking of Lauren," he said, his sightless eyes aimed somewhere over her shoulder. "Think you can tell me why she seems to be under the impression that my name is Leonard?"

There was a long pause.

"Um."

Sarah could her face heat up. Matt quirked an eyebrow and leaned against the wall next to her, effectively blocking her in as he waited for her to answer.

"I don't know," she said with an innocent shrug. "That's weird."

"Mhm," Matt said, nodding his head and looking thoroughly unconvinced. "Yeah, that is weird."

"Maybe you just give off that kind of vibe," she suggested.

"That's really not helping your case."

Sarah's phone buzzed on the kitchen table, and she glanced at it over her shoulder.

"Speaking of Lauren, that's probably her," she said, carefully slipping down from her seat on the counter and skirting around Matt, who just shook his head resentfully.

At least she didn't tell him about the Devil Emoji.

"Hi Lauren," Sarah answered.

"You picked up! How's your head?" Lauren asked immediately. "Also, how's the rest of you? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm—I'm fine," Sarah said. "Listen, I'm so sorry about the baby shower—"

"What? Who cares about the baby shower?"

"...I do. Because I ruined it."

"Actually, it kind of worked out really well," Lauren said dismissively. "I got all of the gifts I wanted, but I didn't have time to open them in front of other people and pretend to like everything. And then I only had to socialize with people for a little while before everyone left because you freaked them out. It was perfect. I mean, except for you almost dying."

Sarah groaned. "Does everyone think I'm crazy?"

"Oh, yeah," her friend said bluntly. "Also, they think you're on, like...a lot of drugs. I think Cecilia helped get that rumor circulated when you passed out."

"Great. That's great. At least your mom wasn't there." Sarah shifted the phone from one ear to the other as she came back into the kitchen.

"Oh, she'll find out somehow. But I didn't call to talk about the baby shower, I called to talk about you. What the hell happened?"

"That's...a long story. One I'll tell you in person," she promised, partially to make sure she was clear headed enough to discern which details to include and which ones to leave out.

"Fair enough. Are you home yet?"

"No, not yet. I'm going home today," Sarah said. She chose not to mention that she had to go to work first; Lauren would only get upset while having no way of helping, which was never a good combination.

"You're still with tall, dark, and scary, then?"