A short while after Matt had left her standing alone in the empty hospital room, Sarah found herself in front of a liquor store, debating whether or not to go in. Of all the times to give up drinking, why she picked now, again?

After a few minutes of lingering, she shook her head and made herself walk away, hoping the fresh air (or, as fresh as the air ever got in Hell's Kitchen) would do more to clear her mind that alcohol would have.

She wished that she had held out and not told Matt her suspicions about Karen. He probably would have gotten past the injuries Karen had sustained once a little time had passed and he'd had time to think about it. But accusing Karen had been a mistake. Sarah knew how protective he was of his friends, knew that Karen had been in Matt's life as someone he cared about long before Sarah ever showed up—what did she think he was going to do when she told him? Instantly believe her that one of his best friends might have killed a man? She wasn't even sure she believed it herself.

But when he'd started to leave the hospital room she had just panicked, thinking she might have ruined everything with him, and it had hurt more than she'd expected. And before she knew it the words had just spilled out, making everything a million times worse.

Because after that argument, it was painfully obvious that Sarah was not—and probably never would be—in the same category as Foggy and Karen. They were the good people in Matt's eyes, the light parts of his life who needed to be protected. And Sarah, no matter how many times Matt helped to keep her safe, was still something else, something not quite as light and good as the two of them. She was still just a few steps away from being seen as an enemy, no matter how many times he called her a friend. Maybe she had earned Daredevil's trust, but the moment she crossed the line into affecting Matt Murdock's life, things were different.

She half expected Matt to show up that night, either to reconcile or to yell at her some more—she wasn't sure which seemed more likely at this point, but probably the latter. But the window to her fire escape remained silent.

He didn't show up the next night either, and she wasn't sure if she was glad or not.

--

"This seems dramatic."

"It's not dramatic. This is just what we have to do for a little while."

Sarah was sitting cross legged on her couch with her laptop open in front of her, a bag of popcorn on her lap and a her second-largest kitchen knife—the largest having never been returned to her after that night on the roof—on the coffee table next to her.

Lauren's skeptical face squinted at her through the computer screen. After the fiasco with Karen and Donovan two days ago, Sarah had restricted her visits with Lauren to Skype dates and phone calls.

"I can't believe you decided to ground yourself two days before my due date."

"I know," Sarah said guiltily. "I'm sorry. But...I have no way of telling when I'm being followed and when I'm not. I can't lead the crazy people in my life straight to your place—or anywhere else. I'm just going back and forth from work to home, and that's it. At least until..."

"Until what? These guys die of old age?" Lauren asked.

"Until I figure something out," Sarah said resolutely, sounding more confident than she felt. In reality, she had no plan for shaking off Ronan and his new lackey, Officer Donovan. If it was just Ronan tormenting her, she could maybe try to get him arrested, but she was certain Donovan would somehow find a way around that. And the one person she'd been hanging her hopes on to help her appeared to no longer be an option.

"Are sure you should be staying in your own apartment if you're so worried about stalkers that you can't even come visit me?"

"Yes. I'm fine," Sarah reassured her, waving the kitchen knife around so that Lauren could see it through the webcam. Her friend looked skeptical at the sight, as though Sarah were playing a joke on her.

"Really? What, you're going to Norman Bates someone with a chef knife?"

Sarah shrugged. "Not if they don't try to come into my apartment."

For a minute, Sarah thought her slow internet connection had caused the video connection to freeze again, before she realized that it was just Lauren who wasn't moving. Instead she regarded Sarah closely through the screen, a contemplative frown on her face.

"You're really serious," Lauren said. "I mean, you'd actually use that thing on someone."

Sarah was slightly caught off guard by the question before she thought about it from Lauren's point of view. She had been careful to skim over most of the more violent aspects of her new life when she'd explained everything to her friend. Obviously Lauren knew that the things Sarah was doing were dangerous and involved violent people, but it occurred to her that she hadn't really told Lauren much about any of the violence she herself had had to inflict on people. She wasn't sure that she ever did want to tell her.

"If I had to, yeah," she said.

Lauren shook her head. "Sometimes it still feels like maybe you're playing a big joke on me. Like, maybe it's a thing in some culture somewhere to play weird, elaborate tricks on pregnant women and make them think their best friends have turned into super spies."

"If I was a super spy, I wouldn't need to hide in my apartment with a knife and pepper spray," Sarah said.

"Well, why aren't you still staying with Dread Pirate Roberts? He seemed pretty convinced that his bat cave or whatever was the safest place for you to be."

Sarah fidgeted with the corner of her popcorn bag. "I don't know. We aren't really...getting along super great right now, I guess."

"What happened?"

"I...accidentally got someone hurt," Sarah said, choosing her words carefully. "Someone who isn't involved in all of this. Or, I mean...I don't think she is. I didn't mean for her to get hurt, but she did, and it was careless of me. But then it turned into this big argument, and...I don't know. I think maybe I've been misinterpreting...where we stand with each other."

"I'm sorry," Lauren said, sympathetic despite the vagueness of Sarah's explanation and the fact that Lauren didn't particularly care for Matt. "I mean, are you...? I don't really if you guys have the kind of thing where fighting is no big deal, or if you're..."

Sarah shook her head. "We do fight a lot, but this feels...different. Like more personal. I don't know. Let's...let's talk about something else. How's everything going with getting ready to go to the hospital?"

"It's fine, I guess. Greg has a backpack with stuff by the door, ready to go. He texts me like three hundred times a day while he's at work. I think he thinks giving birth involves the baby just suddenly shooting out and he's somehow going to miss it, or something," Lauren said with a roll of her eyes. "Hey, do you think you'll be able to come see me in the hospital when the baby is born? We'd always kind of planned that Greg would be with me for the painful, bloody part and then you'd be there right after when the baby is all clean and not covered in gross mucus."

"Yes," Sarah said immediately. "I will be there."

"How? I mean, I want you there, but I also want you safe. And I want her safe," Lauren said, resting her hand on her stomach.

"No, Lauren, I'll—I'll figure out a way to be there without anyone knowing. Okay? No one involved with this knows who you are—"

"—well, except for the literal Devil of Hell's Kitchen—"

"—no one who would hurt you," Sarah corrected herself. "And I'll come up with a way to be there. I'll dig out one of my old Halloween costumes and wear it as a disguise if I have to."

Lauren laughed at that, and Sarah was relieved to see the worry leave her face. "Sarah, I've seen your Halloween costumes. They're all super slutty. I don't think any of them would successfully work as a disguise. Except for maybe the slutty nurse costume, since I will be in a hospital."

"I'll dig out my thigh highs and stethoscope pronto."

"I'm sure my mom and Cecilia will love that."

Sarah wrinkled her nose. Lauren's mother was one of the least likable people she'd ever met, until she met Cecilia. "They'll be there?"

"Unfortunately," Lauren said with a groan. "My mom is insisting on driving down from upstate for the birth, for god knows what reason. Maybe to criticize me on my labor breathing or something. And Cecilia is living in the city now that she's got that position at the Bulletin, so my mom says she's going to be 'checking in' on me after the birth. AKA, 'spying on me for my mother'."

"Gross."

"Right?" Lauren agreed, then glanced down at the corner of the screen where her computer's clock was. "Speaking of gross, I need to go brush my teeth and maybe, like...put some deodorant on or something. Greg will be home in a minute, and do you know what's constantly recommended to me as a way to speed up the whole labor induction thing?" She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, leaning into the camera so Sarah could see them more clearly.

"Oh, ew," Sarah said, laughing and shaking her head. "I don't want to hear about you and Greg's sex life right now."

"You're a prude, Sarah Corrigan," Lauren told her. "I'll talk to you later, okay? Be safe."

"You, too," Sarah said.

Lauren ended the call and Sarah closed her laptop, trying to figure out how she was possibly going to keep the promise she'd just made to her friend.

While Sarah was talking with Lauren, Matt was blocks away, keeping his mind busy by letting his Daredevil side take over for the was no better distraction than a good fight, and he found a good number of them that night. But eventually it was time to return to his own place, where he was confronted with the doubts that had been sitting in the back of his mind all night.

Sarah had been the one who led Karen into danger with her carelessness. She was the one who brought up horrible accusations, and she was the one to say that they would never be able to truly trust each other. So why did he feel so guilty?

And most importantly, why couldn't he get the possibility of a connection between Karen and Wesley out of his mind?

Matt shook his head. This was insane. This was Karen, after all. Karen who wore sundresses and floral perfume and cooked her grandmother's virtue-filled recipes. Karen who brought him balloons with monkeys on them.

Karen who also consistently lied to him—from the Union Allied pension file when they first met all the way up to how she had broken her arm the night before.

As much as he wanted to believe that he knew Karen too well to believe anything like what Sarah had said, a small voice in the back of his mind kept reminding him that the timeline of when Wesley was killed lined up exactly with when Karen started acting strange—drinking more, talking less, jumping at the slightest noise. But the idea that the two events were related was so absurd that he had never even considered making any sort of connection between them.

...but where had Karen been when Wesley got shot?

And if he was asking himself these questions, could he really blame Sarah for doing the same about someone she hardly knew?

--

The next night, Matt did show up on Sarah's fire escape.

Sarah was washing the dishes when she heard the knock at the window and briefly considered just not letting him in. But that would be childish—and besides, it wasn't like their fight changed the fact that they were working together.

She wordlessly slid the window open to let him in before returning to her task. She scrubbed a pan that was already fairly clean as she waited for Matt to say something.

"I dropped by the police station yesterday," he said finally. "It didn't sound like Donovan told anyone what happened in the parking garage."

"Good. I'm glad." Sarah hadn't really expected that the police officer would try to come after her through any official means for what had happened that night. It would put him too close to a lot of scrutiny he couldn't possibly want. Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't still following her around.

There was a long silence during which she couldn't tell if Matt was trying to figure out what to say, or just didn't have anything to say at all.

"Sarah..."

"Nothing important happened at work today," she interrupted him quietly before he could go into whatever argument or apology he was about to make. "I probably should have called and told you so you knew you didn't need to come over."

But Matt wasn't letting her change the subject.

"Sarah, I know you're pissed," Matt said, leaning against the sink as she kept her eyes on the dishes she was furiously doing. "No one washes dishes that violently."

"They don't get clean otherwise," she said stubbornly.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you. It—it just caught me off guard. Both sides of my life that I thought were completely separate just colliding out of nowhere."

"Yeah, but both sides of your life didn't get yanked into an empty hospital room and accused of being a liar. Just me." As soon as she said it she knew that she wouldn't be able to keep herself from saying more even if she tried to, as though one side of her wanted to fight more and one side didn't.

"I didn't say you were lying. I said you were wrong."

Sarah put down the dish she was scrubbing and turned to face him fully. It annoyed her that he seemed to think she was angry at him for yelling at her; she could handle being yelled at, she wasn't a child.

"If it had been me with the broken arm and Karen was the one you didn't expect to see...would you have gone off on her like that? Would she have gotten yanked into an empty exam room and yelled at?"

There was a long, tense pause.

"No."

Sarah nodded, pushing her hair out of the way with her wrist before turning back to the sinks and dipping her hands back into the water. "Why not?"

"You know why not," he said. "Karen...doesn't know that side of me. You do."

"Well, lucky me."

"I never said you were lucky to know me," he said wryly. "Listen, I wasn't trying to..." he paused, tilting his head back and exhaling as he tried to figure out what he wanted to say. "I don't always make the most rational calls when my friends are in danger."

Sarah didn't reply.

"Alright," Matt continued after a silence. "If we're doing hypotheticals, what would you have done if the situation were reversed, Sarah? If it were Lauren instead?"

Sarah bit her lip. She knew exactly what she would have done if she had thought Matt and Lauren had never met, only for Lauren to show up in the hospital with broken bones and vague lies about how she got them. She'd probably have freaked out worse than Matt had.

"I...it's different."

"How?"

"You really need me to explain why the idea of you being around my friends is more alarming than me being around yours?" she shot back, wishing even as she said the words that she hadn't.

There was a long silence during which Sarah didn't look up, because she didn't know which expression she least wanted to see on his face; the impassive mask she knew he could put on so well, or the same hurt look he'd worn just before leaving the hospital room.

"No I don't," he said softly, and immediately she wished that he had gone with impassive instead.

It seemed like he was waiting for her to say something else, but she just kept focusing on the hot water in front of her. She didn't want to get into another argument about their history and who posed the bigger threat to the other's life. They'd had that fight too many times. Mostly she just wanted the conversation to be over, because she couldn't figure out how she felt about all of this while he was standing so close to her, listening to her heartbeat and making her feel like she was being x-rayed.

After a few moments, she felt him move away from his place beside her, then the window slide open and closed again as he left.

Sarah tried her best to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach. This was why she always forgave people, why she didn't fight with her friends. She wasn't good at fighting with people. She always wanted to apologize after just a few minutes of being angry; it was something Lauren gently teased her about often. But this would be easier, in the end. Acting like just business partners was easier, after all; neither of them would have to worry about who was getting more attached to the other.

--

The next day, after she got home from work, Sarah sat her dining room table, tracing the edge of her phone and wondering if she was making the right choice. She remembered Matt telling her a little while back about having a court date today. She knew she was taking the easy way out by calling his burner phone when she knew he was in the court room and wouldn't have it on. This wasn't the kind of thing that deserved to be said over voicemail, but she couldn't handle another emotionally draining encounter with him right now, especially given what she was about to say.

She waited until the line stopped ringing and the generic voicemail greeting came on.

"Hey. Um...listen, I've been thinking and, um..." Sarah swallowed and rolled her eyes at herself, at how hesitant she sounded. She cleared her throat and forced herself to sound more firm as she continued. "I think with both of our schedules and—and how busy we are, maybe we should just...stick to what we originally decided on. At the beginning of all this. I'll call you if I have any information to pass along from work, but otherwise...you don't really need to come by." Sarah fidgeted with her hair as she tried to think of something to say, a better way to sum up why she was doing this. Instead she just lamely ended with, "Sorry...for doing this over voicemail."

She bit her lip and hung up before she could ramble more. Why was this bothering her so much? It wasn't like this was a years-long friendship she was dealing with—she wasn't even sure it was a friendship at all, after the hospital. Her head knew this was the smart thing to do: she had gotten too attached to someone who didn't hold her at the same level. Not completely, at least. He seemed to trust her with Daredevil, but not with Matt. And since she didn't have half of herself that she could hide away from him, it made sense to put distance between them. But for some reason she couldn't—or wouldn't—quite think about, it made her heart twist in her chest to do so.

Matt called her back a few hours later, and she didn't answer. He didn't leave a voicemail, but he didn't come by the apartment that night either, so it seemed as though he'd gotten the point.

Sarah had hoped that simplifying their relationship would help make her feel better, but as she sat alone in her apartment that night she just felt worse.

--

"...you don't really need to come by," Sarah's voice, quieter and layered with a different kind of tiredness than usual, played back through the speaker on Matt's burner phone. "Sorry...for doing this over voicemail."

And then she hung up.

Matt closed his eyes and swore softly under his breath. This wasn't where he had thought this entire situation with Karen and Sarah would end up. Had he really hurt her that badly? It wasn't like they'd never had an argument before. He'd wanted to protect Karen, but he'd never wanted to distance Sarah in the process.

Sarah didn't answer when he called her back.