In the following days, Sarah was quickly finding that working for both Jason and Vanessa was very time consuming. She hadn't quite managed to get the hang of juggling both sets of tasks yet, and it was taking its toll on her performance. This had not gone unnoticed by Jason, who had been in an increasingly bad mood the more Vanessa became involved in Orion business, especially given that many of the decisions she made were at odds with his own.

Sarah was at her desk around lunchtime, absently tapping her fingers on her desk and staring at her computer screen as she tried to finish up a spreadsheet when Jason emerged from his office. In one hand he was twirling an ornate silver letter opener, which he presumably had just used to open the thick envelope he was holding in his other hand. He was smiling, as usual.

"Sarah. Would you like to know what this letter says?" he asked, then continued before she could answer. "It's from Councilman Granger, saying he regrets that I couldn't make it to our meeting yesterday, and to kindly let him know next time if I'll be unable to make it." His smile grew more fixed. "The thing is, this was an important meeting, and I'm sure I wouldn't have missed it had I know it was happening."

Sarah's heart sank as she realized what had happened. She remembered talking to the councilman's assistant on the phone and writing down the date and time, intending to transfer it to Jason's digital calendar, but she'd gotten distracted by a courier who needed a signature for a stack of paperwork Vanessa had sent over.

"I'm so sorry, I—I must have forgotten to put it on your calendar."

"Yes, I realized that," he said, glancing at her still tapping fingers in annoyance. "Stop fidgeting."

Sarah nodded and stilled her hand.

"I wrote it down, and—and then I just forgot to transfer it over—"

"This was an important meeting."

"I know."

"When I encouraged you to take this promotion, it wasn't with the intention that you would begin neglecting your job here. I was under the impression that you could handle doing tasks for both myself and Vanessa."

Sarah didn't notice that she had started nervously tapping her fingers again, or the way that Jason's eyes locked onto her hand.

"I can," she insisted quickly. "I'll call right now and—"

With startling speed, Jason slammed the ornate letter opener down, embedding the sharp end into the wood of her desk in the small space between her middle and ring fingers. She jumped, letting out a startled scream before clapping her other hand over her mouth.

"I said to stop fidgeting," he told her calmly, his hand still on the letter opener.

Sarah stared in shock at the sharp metal instrument that had come only a fraction of a centimeter away from stabbing her through the hand. Then she looked up at Jason, who for once looked very serious.

"S-sorry," she stammered.

He held her gaze for another moment before the wide smile returned to his face.

"Kindly reschedule the meeting, and actually inform me of when it will be taking place this time. And send a nice note to the Councilman from me, apologizing for the carelessness of my staff."

Sarah nodded wordlessly, her throat tightening and making it difficult to speak. Jason threw the letter in the trash next to her desk and returned to his office.

Her gaze returned to the letter opener that was embedded ominously in her desktop. It wasn't exactly a hammer through the throat, but the violent implications were still there, and his sudden outburst stuck with her for the rest of the day.

Luckily, Sarah now had a new outlet for the increased stress that her job was putting on her: self-defense training with Matt. They'd agreed to meet at the boxing gym several times a week, with Matt insisting that she take a rest day in between meetings to recover. They'd had three sessions so far—including the one from weeks ago, though she'd already forgotten so much of what he'd taught her then. The sessions were intense, despite Matt's patience and his frequent reminders that she got to set the limits of what they did and how fast.

She believed him, but she hadn't yet reached the point of needing to tell him to stop, and their nights usually ended with her lungs burning and her entire body heavy with exhaustion. Yet despite the dull ache in her muscles and the certainty that it would only hurt worse the next morning, she felt good, like all of the anxiety that was always wound so tightly in her chest had been worn straight out of her. Getting a move right after many, many attempts gave her a feeling of accomplishment that she hadn't experienced in a long time. It was one she had usually associated with finally pulling off a particularly difficult piano piece.

By the fourth training session, they were both starting to find their footing—both figuratively, and in Sarah's case, literally. She still ended up getting knocked off balance fairly often, but not as much as before, and luckily for her Matt only took advantage of about half the opportunities he got to knock her on her ass.

They started off that night practicing with blocks and strikes, with her updating him on goings-on at Orion in between hits.

"—coming in sometime next week, but I don't know what dock," she said, aiming for his jaw.

"And you think they'll be bringing in people?" he clarified, dodging the hit.

"That's what Jason's emails—made—it—sound like—" Sarah said haltingly as she tried a few more times.

He blocked all three punches easily.

"You're swinging too wide. Stop telegraphing your moves," he told her for what felt like the millionth time that night.

Sarah bit back a groan. The incident with Jason earlier that day had left her with an itchy restlessness under her skin, and it was frustrating to have to repeat simple moves so many times.

"Yes, sir," she muttered under her breath with a roll of her eyes, despite the fact that she knew he was technically right.

Matt's lips curled into a smirk, letting her know he'd heard the remark. This was affirmed roughly three minutes later when she swung her arm too widely for his liking. His hand came up lightning quick to grab her forearm long before she had a chance to make contact. He swung her around on the spot, twisting her right arm around and against her back, where he held it just tight enough to be uncomfortable but not painful. His other hand locked around her left wrist, anticipating her plan to elbow him in the ribs before she could even try.

"Painful, but not the move you're supposed to be learning," he murmured lowly.

Sarah closed her eyes for a moment, trying to focus on the steps she was supposed to be taking. The way Matt's breath ghosted against her skin when he spoke in to her ear didn't help matters.

Instead of trying to pull away from his grip, she twisted into it like he'd showed her earlier, using her shoulder to help break the leverage he had on her arm. She probably didn't do it as fast as she should in real life, but Matt seemed satisfied that she'd gotten the form right, and he let her go.

She spun around to face him again and saw the smirk that seemed to be perpetually lingering on his face tonight had only grown more pronounced.

"Your face is going to get stuck that way, you know," she told him. Not that it would be the worst expression his face could get stuck in; the smirk suited him, matched the calm, cocky self-assuredness that seemed to automatically come over him when he stepped into the ring.

He shrugged, unconcerned. "Not like I'll ever have to look at it."

They continued this way for a while, alternating between her trying to hit him and attempting to block his own punches, which he threw her way much slower than she knew he usually did. Maybe it was that concerted effort to go easy on her, or maybe it was just dumb luck, but midway through their fight she took them both by surprise by managing to land her first hit on him.

She had been about to take a straight hit when she changed her mind at the last second and swung to the right instead. Before she realized what was happening her fist made contact with his mouth, and she felt the skin of his lip split open upon impact.

Sarah clapped both of her hands over her mouth in surprise. Matt seemed equally caught off guard for a moment, then spat a small amount of blood out onto the floor of the ring and grinned darkly at her.

"Good job."

"I'm sorry," Sarah said, her voice muffled by her hands. "Are you okay?"

Matt laughed, unfazed by the injury. In fact, he seemed to be genuinely pleased, which Sarah found to be a little alarming.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

She moved closer, going up on her tip toes to try to get a look at the bleeding area. "Let me see."

"Why? It's a split lip," he said, waving her away. "I do get hit worse than that pretty much every night, you know."

"Yeah, but not by me."

Matt looked oddly amused by her reaction.

"Sarah. This is a good thing," he reminded her, but she just made a doubtful noise. With a sigh he dropped his hands to his sides to allow her to get a better look. She tugged him forward a few steps to bring him more into the overhead lighting and pressed her fingertips to his jaw as she tilted it upwards slightly. The skin at the corner of his mouth was split and bleeding, and the skin around it was an angry red, but it was nothing that wouldn't fade to normal shortly.

"Are you satisfied?" he asked in exasperation as she came down off her tiptoes to rest on her heels again.

"Mhm."

"This is not what you're supposed to do when you land a blow on your opponent."

"Noted."

Matt shook his head and wiped the blood from his mouth onto the cloth boxing tape wound around his hands.

As Sarah watched him, the fact that she had actually managed to hit him—even by accident—set in, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing, but the hitch in her breath gave her away anyway.

"Something amusing you?"

"I just can't believe I actually got you. You must be slowing down, Murdock," she said, her mouth curving into a small, teasing smile. "Maybe you're getting old."

They were both fully aware that if Matt was moving slower than usual, it was because he was being overly careful not to actually hit her. But much to her amusement, the insinuation earned her an offended look from him anyway.

"Old? I'm two years older than you," he protested.

"Apparently it's enough," she said with an innocent shrug, leaning back against the corner post as her grin grew wider. "Do vigilantes have a retirement age? Maybe it's time to pass the torch to some other crazy guy with superpowers."

"Uh huh," Matt said, slowly nodding. He stepped forward, closing the space between them, and casually took hold of the ropes on either side of her, loosely bracketing her in the corner of the ring. "Hey, speaking of time...what time is it, again?"

Sarah glanced at the clock on the wall, the smiling faltering when she saw that they actually still had twenty minutes left in their sparring session. "Uh...time to go, actually."

Matt cocked an eyebrow skeptically. "Are you sure?"

"Well, if you round up—"

"Nope," he said, taking her hand and pulling her away from her safe position in the corner of the ring. "Come on."

She groaned, wishing she had thought to look at the clock before deciding to taunt the guy she was stuck in the ring with. He flashed her a sharp grin that would have looked very much at home beneath the black Daredevil mask, a quick trace of the devil showing through, but the hand in hers was solidly Matt, and she found that it didn't make her nervous like it once might have.

"If I land on that mat one more time my whole back is going to be one giant bruise," she complained, but didn't resist as he towed her back towards the center of the ring, where he let her hand go.

"You know we'll stop if you say so."

He waited a beat to see if she would indeed tell him to stop, but she just fixed her ponytail and waited silently.

"Alright," he said. "Let's try the going back to the move you were struggling with earlier."

The move in question involved kneeing your opponent just below the rib cage, which Sarah had initially thought sounded kind of fun, but it turned out to be more difficult to get right than she had anticipated. She had a habit of going up onto the sole of her left foot whenever her right knee came up, which Matt continuously reminded her would sacrifice all of her balance. And when she didn't do it, she had difficulty hitting him as high on his torso as she was supposed to for maximum efficiency.

Despite hoping that her complaint about her back would result in some sort of leniency as far as flooring her went, Matt only let her make the mistake of going up on her heel twice before kicking her legs out from under her.

The second Sarah felt her feet leave the ground she snapped her eyes closed, expecting to feel the painful impact of her back against the mat. Instead, she was stopped by two hands on her upper arms, catching her just short of hitting the ground. She opened her eyes in surprise as she tried to catch her breath.

That sharp smile was back on Matt's face as he tugged her back up into a standing position with a laugh.

"You did that on purpose," she breathed out. "You're such a dick."

"Maybe," he admitted, grabbing onto the ropes and holding them up for her to slip through. "You did call me old."

That was true. Ironically, between his slightly sweaty hair sticking up and the wicked grin on his face, he looked younger than she'd ever seen him.

Once out of the ring, Sarah grabbed her water bottle from her bag and sat down heavily on one of the benches. With a tired groan, she laid back on the bench, stretching out along the length of it as she waited for her heartbeat to settle back to normal. She was already sore in her arms and the tops of her thighs, not to mention her back and her knuckles. Is this what people who work out feel like all the time?

From her position on the bench she watched Matt lean against the outside of the ring and take a drink from his water bottle. It occurred to her that if she openly stared at a sighted person as often as she did Matt, they would probably think she was a serial killer. Somehow it didn't feel as creepy with him, despite the fact that she knew he could probably tell when she was watching. Maybe it was because he was so often analyzing everything about her from her walk down to her heartbeat, so by comparison staring didn't seem as invasive.

"You're actually pretty good at the teaching thing," she noted.

"Well, I just think about the way I was taught, and then do the opposite," he said with a wry laugh. "Saying I wanted to stop or slow down definitely wasn't an option. And I'm pretty sure if I'd ever paused to check on a split lip with Stick he would have knocked me out."

Sarah frowned and slowly sat up. She clearly remembered him stating that he'd been a kid when he started learning to fight, and what he was describing didn't sound like a child's lesson.

"How...how old did you say you were when you started training?" she asked hesitantly.

Matt seemed to realize that he'd said something he didn't intend to.

"Old enough to be a fast learner."

That sounded more like an avoidance of the question to her, but hey—she was the queen of that, so who was she to call him out on it? Her gaze fell on the yellowed Murdock vs. Creel poster on the wall.

"What about your dad? Did he ever teach you any of his boxing moves?"

"Ah...not on purpose," Matt said, his lopsided grin looking a little more melancholy than usual. "I picked up a few things, but he made it pretty clear that he didn't want me to do this kind of stuff."

"What did he want you to do?"

There was a pause as he frowned thoughtfully.

"Become a lawyer. Go to church. Not get into fights." Matt shrugged. "I got two out of three right, at least."

His tone was casual, but there was a stiffness to his posture that made her suspect this wasn't a subject he talked about very often. Her curiosity about his pre-Daredevil childhood days was killing her, but she didn't want to push him into a conversation that made him uncomfortable, so she dropped it.

"When do you want to come back here?" she asked.

"Thursday?"

Sarah almost said yes before remembering that she had plans Thursday night. Specifically, she had a date with Todd, the photographer Lauren had set her up with.

"I can't," she said. "I have to go do something Thursday night."

It wasn't a lie, exactly, which is possibly why it seemed to fly under Matt's radar. She wasn't sure why she didn't tell him, except that she didn't want to hear him voice the many reservations about going that she had already gone over in her head.

"Okay. We'll figure out a different day," he said.

Sarah nodded. She wondered briefly if it was a bad thing that she was looking forward to their next training session more than she was her date, but she quickly banished the thought from her mind.

Lauren came over on Thursday evening, presumably to help Sarah get ready for her date, but Sarah had a sneaking suspicion that it had more to do with wanting to get away from Cecilia for a few hours. Either way, she'd left Noah with Greg and shown up at Sarah's ready to try talking her into wearing various inappropriate outfits.

Of course, as it always did lately, the conversation eventually drifted away from lighthearted topics and towards Sarah's work life and corresponding life choices—specifically the self-defense lessons that had started back up. Lauren was struggling between being pleased that Sarah was learning to protect herself and alarmed by how she was doing it.

"Lauren, you already knew that he was teaching me this stuff," Sarah pointed out. She was sitting sideways on her dresser and using the mirror above it to apply her makeup.

"Yeah, but I thought maybe you changed your mind. You did one lesson and then never mentioned it again."

"Well, I got a concussion right after the first one, and then we were fighting, and then Ronan popped up, and now we can actually get back to it."

"Doesn't it make you nervous?" Lauren asked, her voice slightly muffled from where she was standing in Sarah's closet, rummaging through her clothing. "I got nervous just being in the same hospital room as the guy. I starting doing that anxious talking thing, which just made him more unfriendly, which made me more nervous. It was a vicious cycle, and I feel like it would be even worse in a boxing ring."

"No, I don't feel nervous. It actually...makes me feel less nervous," Sarah said thoughtfully as she screwed the top back on her mascara. "Like I'm actually doing something to keep myself safe instead of just hoping that he'll magically show up to help me next time someone tries to murder me. There are only so many times that can work, probably."

She wasn't quite sure how to explain it, the way she felt more in control in the ring with Matt than she did outside of it with anyone else.

Lauren emerged from the closet holding a silvery slinky dress that Sarah honestly didn't even remember buying. Sarah scrunched up her nose and shook her head.