The first thing Matt heard when he woke up the next morning was the steady sound of a familiar heartbeat next to him. He opened his eyes, trying not to let his hopes get too high that his senses might be back. He could be imagining it, he reminded himself, could be still in a state of half-dreaming.

He set his focus on his immediate surroundings: the couch they were crowded onto, the thin blanket over them, the girl sleeping on his chest. Sarah's heartbeat sounded more distant than usual, like he was listening to it from floors above her, but he could definitely hear it. And if he strained his hearing, he could hear her breathing, slow and easy in her sleep. Her usual citrus shampoo was muted by the scent of his own supposedly 'scentless' kind—which absolutely still had a scent to Matt, but it was about as close as he could hope for—mixing together to create a pleasant combination to wake up to.

Something tight and painful in his chest began to unwind as relief rushed through him. His abilities were coming back, slowly but surely. Thank God.

He gently swept Sarah's hair away from her face, and as he did his fingers passed over the swollen skin, the burst capillaries underneath. Immediately, the memory of last night crashed into him painfully. She shouldn't be here, sleeping next to him. Didn't she get that he could have easily killed her? How close he had come to snapping her wrist?

But that train of thought wasn't helping anything now any more than it had last night, and Matt tried to push it aside.

He couldn't be sure, but it felt early. He knew he should probably get up, try to move around and see how far he could stretch his newly returned senses. But he closed his eyes, deciding to wait just a few more minutes before untangling himself from Sarah and getting up.

Lying there with her, he had the strangest sense of déjà vu. It wasn't as thought he'd ever woken up on this couch with her before, with her hair smelling like his shampoo and his clothes around her small frame, but it felt like he'd done it a million times. He thought about how odd that was as he inadvertently drifted back to sleep.

When he opened his eyes again, both the heartbeat and the weight of Sarah against him were gone. His slowly sat up, thinking for a second that his hearing had gone out again. Then he heard footsteps, and the sound of Sarah's heartbeat faded into his hearing again as she leaned over the back of the couch to talk to him.

"Hey," she said softly. "I didn't think you'd be awake yet."

Now that she was closer, Matt could pick up on more details: she smelled like mint toothpaste and the tap water from his bathroom sink, and she'd pulled her hair back into a loose bun.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Better," he said, slowly getting to his feet. Thankfully, the world didn't spin when he stood up. But it also didn't light up with sound and vibrations like it usually did; not beyond a radius of about five feet, at least. Beyond that, it was like the world was still muted; he could hear it, but not like he was used to. "My hearing is starting to come back."

"Really? How much?"

"I can hear things that are close to me. But beyond a few feet it's still...off," he said. He trailed a hand along the couch to orient himself as he moved around it. He could tell Sarah was watching him, but after a few moments she seemed satisfied that he wasn't going to collapse at any second, and she went back to whatever she was doing in the kitchen.

"I'm making coffee," she said. "Can you have coffee after you've been poisoned?"

"No idea," he said, leaning against he counter next to her as she messed with the coffee maker. "Never been poisoned before. But I'll risk it."

Sarah set the timer on the coffee maker and turned to him.

"You look awful," she told him matter-of-factly, trailing her fingertips down is temple with a gentleness he absolutely didn't deserve right now. His guilt from the night before was still sitting heavy in his chest, making him feel intensely unworthy of the affection she was showing up, and he had to bite back the urge to lean away.

"That's weird, because I feel great," he said with a weak grin. She replied with a low, skeptical hum.

When Sarah let her hand fall away, his attention was caught by the way she was extending her arm more gingerly than usual.

With a frown, Matt reached for her arm. As soon as his fingertips pressed against her elbow he could feel the inflammation in the tendons there even through the fabric of the button down shirt she had on. There was a bad bruise there, and the muscles underneath were strained. He skimmed his fingers down to the delicate skin of her wrist, exposed underneath the rolled sleeves of the shirt, where broken blood vessels bloomed just under the surface, forming more bruises shaped distinctly like fingermarks. He clenched his jaw, his stomach twisting as he discovered these additional marks he'd left on her.

Sarah let him examine her arm without protest, but he heard her inhale carefully, readying herself for another argument. She seemed tired already. Matt knew he'd reacted wrong last night, so adamantly blaming himself that he'd put her in the position of having to justify what he'd done. In the end, he'd let the argument die not because he felt any less guilty about what he'd done, but because hearing her make excuses for him had made him feel sick. He wasn't going to do that to her again today.

So he refrained from saying anything at all, choosing instead to press his mouth against the top of her head for just a brief moment.

"I'm gonna jump in the shower while the coffee's brewing," he said tightly. He needed to be away from her and the evidence of what he'd done for a few minutes, just to get his thoughts together.

"Okay," she said. He had a feeling she was watching him intently. "Don't, like, pass out or anything."

"I'll do my best."

Once in the shower, Matt braced himself against the tile wall with both hands, letting his head hang down as the hot water streamed over his back. It stung the wound at the base of his neck, but soothed his aching muscles.

Their run in with Stick the night before had made it clear that Matt had a choice to make. He'd been walking a thin line of halfway letting Sarah into his life, and the longer it went on, the more it became apparent that it wasn't sustainable. He had to pick one side of the line or the other and not look back.

It wasn't a hard decision. On one side was Sarah, who had proven time and time again that he could trust her, who had stuck with him for the past few days; sleeping on an uncomfortable floor and then a barely more comfortable couch just to stay next to him. In return she wasn't asking him for much. Just to know more about his past—a reasonable request from someone who had to deal with the fallout of it.

On the other side was Stick, arguing that Matt had to close himself off to keep himself and those around him safe. Stick, who had given him so much of what he needed to survive as a child, but who Matt was starting to realize had little to offer him as an adult. He couldn't keep following Stick's rules, or he would end up with Stick's kind of life, and he didn't want that.

That thought was the one that decided things. It was a simple decision to make, but Matt had a feeling that following through with it was going to be more difficult.

Sarah was just pulling down two mugs from Matts' cupboard when she heard the bathroom door open behind her. She turned around to see Matt had emerged from the bathroom in sweatpants, his expression tense with thought and his bare chest still damp from the shower as he rubbed a towel against the back of his neck.

She bit her lip as she watched him cross the room, moving a little slower than normal, but avoiding the obstacles in his path with his usual ease despite his diminished senses. It seemed a little unfair of him to walk around shirtless when there was so little chance of him being willing to touch her while in full-on guilt mode. But considering she usually only got to see him shirtless when she was also wrist deep in some bleeding wound, she would take what she could get right now.

After a moment, she noticed Matt was sending an odd look in her direction, his eyebrows raised expectantly. She blinked, realizing he seemed to have asked her a question.

"Uh—yes," Sarah said hastily, caught off guard. She squinted at him. "I...agree."

Matt's lips twitched.

"Really? That's surprising," he said lightly.

"...it is?" Sarah asked, pouring coffee into one of the mugs.

"But that's great. I really didn't think you'd be open to the idea of tripling your training sessions, but since you are..."

Sarah frowned, looking up from the coffee. "Wait—"

She saw that Matt's grin had widened, and her skin flushed.

"Oh, good. You're being a jerk," she said. She pushed a mug of coffee across the counter towards him, trying not to think about how she'd sat on that very counter not too long ago when she and Matt had finally given into their teasing tension for the first time—frustrated rooftop kisses notwithstanding. "Seems like a good sign that you're recovering."

To be honest, it was a good sign—of his mental state if not his physical one. If he was teasing her, it meant he'd climbed out at least a little from the hole he'd been in last night.

Matt laughed and reached for the hoodie that was slung over one of the kitchen chairs. He shrugged it on but didn't zip it up, which Sarah decided was a good compromise between her need to concentrate and her enjoyment of seeing Matt shirtless.

"I was asking when Jason wants you back at work," he said.

The mention of work made Sarah press her lips together. It seemed like forever ago that Jason had told her to take a few days off to sort out her legal issues before returning to work, presumably so that something as silly as her attempted murder charges wouldn't interfere with her ability to run any of the weird, illicit errands he liked to send her on.

"Well, today's Monday, so...today," she said.

"Today? Aren't you going to be late?"

"No. It's like...five-thirty in the morning right now," she told him.

She couldn't blame Matt for looking surprised. Both of their internal clocks were pretty messed up after days of alternating consciousness and restless sleep at random intervals.

"Huh. I was way off," he said. His brow furrowed as he pieced together a timeline. "How long have you been here, again?"

Sarah was pretty sure they'd already talked about this, and she quietly took note that Matt still seemed just a little fuzzy mentally.

"Uh...two nights now?" she said, doing the math in her head. "I got here Saturday night after you didn't show up at the boxing gym, and now it's Monday. Specifically, Monday at very early breakfast-ish time, and you haven't eaten anything yet, so you have to eat what I cooked even if you don't want to." She said the last part in a rush, hoping to maybe trick him into doing the actual healthy thing and eating a few bites of food.

Matt cocked his head, his expression doubtful. "You cooked?"

"Yes," Sarah answered, a little offended by his skepticism.

He inhaled.

"Kind of smells like you just made toast," he pointed out.

"Exactly. It was bread...now it's toast." She pushed the plate towards him. "Cooking."

Matt gave a tired laugh and shook his head. "I'll take it. I'm starving."

She had to resist the urge to throw her hands up in exasperation. Out of all the times that Matt refused even the slightest bit of care, the one time that she actually tried to meet him down at his level and he was suddenly cooperative.

"Seriously? I thought I'd have to talk you into even eating toast. I had a whole argument planned."

"Yeah? What was it?" Matt asked interestedly, taking a bite of his toast.

"Well, obviously I'm saving it for next time now," she said. She turned and opened the fridge, surveying the limited contents inside. "What else do you have to make in here?"

She heard Matt set his plate down, and then his hand on her waist gently propelled her away from the fridge.

"Or, how about I make it?" Matt suggested, depositing her in the corner of the kitchen. "You've already done a lot."

Sarah squinted at him suspiciously.

"Is that really why, or do you just not trust my cooking?"

"Does it have to be one or the other?" he asked. He was already pulling eggs and a few vegetables out of the fridge, possibly to make some kind of omelettes.

"I can cook," she said indignantly.

"I'm sure you can," Matt agreed. "But you have burned almost every meal I've ever witnessed you cook."

"Yes, because you show up at my apartment and distract me while I'm trying to focus on not burning things," she argued.

"And this morning would be different...how?"

Sarah took a long look at him, but she had no real argument to offer.

"Can you even cook with your..." she waved her hands around vaguely. "...you know?"

"If I can tell you're making weird hand motions, I can handle cooking," he said. "I'm nearly back to normal now. At least within a certain radius."

"Fine," she said, leaning back against the counter and resigning herself to let him take over breakfast preparation.

They didn't talk for a while, but Sarah watched him as he worked. Despite their somewhat light banter earlier, there was obviously something on his mind. He seemed to be lost in thought, and she kept seeing a sort of hesitance dancing across his face, as though he were debating saying something. Sarah waited, preparing herself for yet another argument.

After a bit, Matt broke the silence between them.

"What...exactly do you want to know?" Matt asked haltingly. "About Stick?"

The mug Sarah had been about to bring to her lips stilled midway there as she blinked in surprise, her hands still carefully circled around the warm ceramic.

"Uh—I..." she said, caught off guard. She had roughly ten thousand questions about Matt's past with Stick, and she didn't want to waste this rare window of openness on the wrong one. "...how many questions do I get?" she asked tentatively.

A grin flickered across Matt's face.

"It's not one of your drinking games," he said. "Just...tell me what you want to know."

He kept his attention focused on the food he was preparing, and Sarah began to understand that he might have insisted so strongly on cooking because he needed something to do while they had this conversation. Usually if they were talking about anything serious, it was tempered by one or the other needing some injury fixed up, but neither of them were actively bleeding enough for that distraction right now.

"Right. Okay, um..." she took a moment to think, then decided to start with a relatively easy one. "How did you meet him?"

She expected Matt would take a while to answer, and he did. Despite him being the one who had initiated the question-asking, Sarah wouldn't have been surprised if he still didn't answer at all. Matt Murdock did not talk about Stick, nor did he really talk about his childhood at all. That was a rule she'd quickly picked up on, and until know he'd seemed uncompromising in it.

"It, uh...it wasn't too long after my dad died. I was living at the orphanage, and I think the nuns were worried that I had lost it," he said. The words came out slowly, like his refusal to talk about his past had rusted out his ability to do so. "I hadn't had my abilities for very long, and they'd just kicked into overdrive, and I...couldn't block anything out. I couldn't function right, and they couldn't figure out why. Some of them thought I was schizophrenic. A few of them thought maybe I was possessed. I don't know how they'd heard of Stick, but they brought him in as a last resort. And he helped me."

"How?"

"He gave me something to focus on. Goals to reach for instead of just trying to survive," he said. As reluctant as she was to admit it, Sarah could understand that much, at least. "He showed me how to actually use what I had. How to pick out the individual ingredients in food, how to...read someone's body temperature or posture. How to tell if they're lying."

"Mmm. So I have Stick to thank for that trick," Sarah muttered with some resentment.

Matt chuckled.

"You have Stick to thank for a lot of the things I can do," Matt informed her. "I know he's an asshole, but...I would never have been able to be Daredevil without him teaching me how to reign in my senses. I'm not sure I would have even been a functioning person."

So far what he was saying didn't sound too bad, but when she'd heard Matt speak bitterly about his childhood with Stick, it hadn't been about his senses so much as his physical training.

"So how did learning to control your senses turn into learning to beat people up?" she asked. "I don't get the connection."

"Good question. Stick always said I needed to know how to fight for the war."

Sarah nodded slowly. "What war?"

"No idea. I...wasn't encouraged to ask," he said, choosing his words carefully, but his meaning was clear anyway. "For a long time I thought he'd made it up. That maybe he just recognized something dark inside me that was going to claw its way out no matter what, and he invented some mythical war to give all that violence inside me some kind of purpose. Now I think maybe he's just insane."

Sarah hesitated before her next question, wondering if it would be pushing too far. "Um...didn't any of the nuns or anyone...care that you were—you know, like, bruised up all the time?"

"I overheard a few conversations they had about it," he said with a shrug. "But I always had excuses, and to be honest most of the nuns didn't really know how to handle me. So when someone came along who did...they were willing to overlook some things if it meant not having to deal with fixing me anymore."

Matt laughed wryly, but Sarah couldn't think of anything less funny. No wonder he seemed to perpetually view himself as a burden, after spending a good chunk of his life being treated like a problem to get rid of.

She knew that despite his attempts to appear focused on cooking, he was listening intently to her reaction—most likely waiting for any hint of pity so that he could shut the conversation down. But what she was feeling wasn't pity; it was anger, coursing through her veins, elevating her heartbeat and forcing her to keep her breathing purposefully even and measured, and she was fine with letting him hear it. Someone needed to be angry about what he was saying, even if he didn't seem to be.

And under that anger, a painful sadness. On some level, Sarah thought of Matt as being unbreakable. Even when he came stumbling into her apartment barely holding himself together, he always got right back up. So it wrenched her heart to think of him as a younger version of himself, smaller with lighter bones that Stick twisted nearly to breaking while everyone else just looked the other way. Maybe Matt saw it as a gift, but Sarah couldn't shake the awful feeling it gave her.

"Why are you telling me this now?" she asked, her voice tight.

"It's...not fair to make you deal with the ramifications of my past without letting you in on what made me this way," Matt said quietly. "You deserve to know what caused all the screwed up shit you always have to put up with."