It was late Monday evening and Sarah was flat on her back, breathing heavily as Matt pinned her hands above her head from his position straddling her waist.

The scene wasn't exactly as enjoyable as it could have been, considering they were in a run-down boxing gym and Sarah was currently getting frustrated over a move she couldn't get right, but overall Matt couldn't complain.

"Okay, let's try with your hands free," Matt suggested, letting go of her wrists. "The good news in this scenario is you can use your hands to fight back. The bad news..."

"...if they're not pinning my hands it's probably because they're busy, like, trying to strangle me," she finished.

"Essentially. It's why you need to try not to get knocked off your feet, but if you do it doesn't have to be game over."

Sarah nodded, then shifted slightly underneath him.

"It doesn't seem too bad so far," she noted innocently.

Matt bit back a smirk as he cast an exasperated glance at the ceiling. Then he schooled his expression into something more stern.

"Focus," he reminded her. "I'll still floor your ass even if you're being cute."

Sarah bit her lip to keep from laughing.

"Yes, sir," she said with mock seriousness.

As difficult as it was, Matt ignored that and continued with his lesson.

"If your hands are free, and you can try to get ahold of them here—" Matt placed her right hand on his forearm, "—and here—" he placed her other hand just above his elbow on the other arm, "—you can throw off their center of balance and try to roll them off with your legs and your hips."

"That sounds like using a lot of things all at the same time. Is someone hitting me during all this?"

"It's simpler than it sounds. Give it a try."

Sarah placed her hands in the correct position on his arms, but seemed lost as to how to dislodge his lower body. Maybe she needed to see it herself first.

"Okay, sit up," he decided. "We'll switch. I'll do it to you first."

"Alright," she said warily as she sat up. Matt laid on his back and she straddled his waist. He could feel her still watching him uncertainly. "Are you going to warn m—"

Matt's two-handed grip on her arm tightened as he brought his foot up to trap her own. He bucked up and easily knocked her off balance, rolling her over so she was pinned to the ground beneath him again.

"Oh," she said breathlessly. "I see."

"Your turn."

So they kept on, and it was close to nine when they finished up. Exhaustion was radiating off of Sarah as she stretched out on the bench next to the sand bags.

"Glad to be back in the ring?" Matt asked dryly

Sarah laughed as she worked her neck. "Weirdly, yes. I didn't think I'd ever like fighting as a stress outlet, but I kind of missed it. It's been a while."

It had been a while. Matt had been putting off resuming their lessons, setting the somewhat arbitrary timeline of waiting until the bruise on her face had healed. Not that it had any real impact on her ability to train, but the entire premise of their lessons relied on her trust that he wouldn't hurt her. The bruise—even given to her as an accident, even if she hadn't been upset—still felt like a violation of that trust every time his fingertips brushed against it, and as irrational as it was, he needed it to fade before he could bring her into the ring again.

"You ready to go?" Matt said. He gave her a grin. "I know a shortcut."

Sarah tilted her head back and groaned. "I know what kind of shortcut you're thinking, Matt Murdock."

Despite her protests, she let him grab her hand and tug her towards the back door of the gym, and for the sake of time they took her least favorite shortcut back to her apartment.

"Rooftops," Sarah grumbled as they crossed the gravel roof of an apartment building next to the gym.

"It's a straight shot across, we'll save a good fifteen minutes," Matt insisted. "And all the buildings are connected, so you don't even have to jump anywhere."

"Sure. You're lucky I like your company so much."

"If it helps, I brought you that replacement phone, so..." Matt shrugged. "You can call a cab if you really want."

"One of your infamous burner phones?" Sarah asked teasingly. "Now I can call all my friends who live in 2003."

"Very funny," he said as he reached into his gym bag for the phone. "You want the phone or not?"

"I do, I do," she insisted. She bumped against his shoulder as he handed her the phone. "It's very nice of you. Thanks."

Sarah glanced down at the phone in her hand, then came to a halt, stopping Matt along with her.

"Uh, Matt," she said. "This isn't a burner phone. This is like a—phone phone."

Matt bit back a sigh. He'd figured she might put up some resistance to letting him give her a real phone and not a cheap throwaway, but he was well prepared to talk her into it.

"I know."

"I can't take this," she said incredulously. "These are expensive."

"It really wasn't. I get all my accessibility tech from the same guy, which I'm pretty sure must keep his entire business afloat with how expensive it is, so he sold me the phone at a discount. It's refurbished."

"Okay, but I thought you were giving me one of your, like, ten dollar flip phones," Sarah pointed out.

"Look, there's no passcodes on those things," Matt said. "I want you to have something that's harder to get into if Jason or anyone else takes it from you."

"Well—you run around with a phone with no passcode all the time!" she accused him.

"I'm harder to take a phone away from than you are," he countered. Before she could reply, he pressed on. "It's not just the passcode. The camera, the GPS, the flashlight. You're putting yourself at risk gathering information on a major criminal organization, and I'd rather you do it with something better than a lump of plastic that can only make phone calls."

Sarah was quiet for a moment, and he could tell by the agitated way she was biting her lip that she didn't have much of an argument against that.

"I'll pay you back for it," she said finally.

Matt scoffed as they started walking again.

"The hell you will. If I didn't get a say in you shelling out five grand for me to get a new suit, you can shut up and take the phone."

"You're such a dick," she mumbled as she slipped the phone into her pocket, but he could hear her tone veering away from irritated and closer to affectionate.

"You're welcome," he said with a smirk.

They quickly reached the roof of Sarah's building. After taking a moment to listen and check that the stairwell was clear, they started down towards her apartment. As they got closer to her floor, Matt could hear someone anxiously pacing up and down the hall. It took him a moment, but he recognized the heavy sound of the short heels Mrs. Benedict wore.

"Mrs. Benedict is in the hallway outside your place," Matt murmured to Sarah as they reached her floor. "I think something's wrong."

She looked over her shoulder at him in what he assumed was a questioning glance, then swung open the door to the hallway.

"Sarah, honey, there you are," Mrs. Benedict said as soon as she caught sight of them. "I've been trying to call you."

"Mrs. B? What's wrong?" she asked.

"Oh, honey, it's your apartment. I just saw your door open and looked in and—"

At the mention of her door being open, Sarah darted down the hallway, coming to an abrupt stop in front of her apartment.

"Holy shit," she breathed out.

As Matt followed her closer, he realized why.

An overpowering smell of gasoline was coming from her apartment; even without his extended senses Matt figured he could have smelled it from the hallway. He stepped inside after Sarah, with Mrs. Benedict not too far behind them.

"I thought I heard something breaking earlier, but I didn't think anything of it because—well—it's not all that unusual for there to be noises like that coming from your apartment. I just assumed it was you," Mrs. B explained, sounding distraught that her own powers of nosiness had let her down.

Sarah didn't say anything. Matt didn't think she was listening. Her entire living room was drenched in gasoline, pooling on the floor and soaking into her couch and armchairs. The contents of her apartment were in disarray, with trinkets and papers scattered everywhere.

In the back of his mind, Matt noted how lucky it was that they'd gotten the tranquilizer gun and other incriminating evidence out of Sarah's apartment. He didn't know who had done this or what kind of message they were trying to send, but at the very least there was nothing for them to find if they were looking.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Benedict was still talking, focusing her chatter on him now more than Sarah, who seemed to almost be in a daze over the state of her apartment. As he listened to Mrs. Benedict, Matt kept part of his attention on Sarah, listening for any signs of a panic attack.

"—it seems ruined, but I know a great cleaning service. One of my old neighbors from down the hall—a long time ago, way before Sarah moved in—he owns a great business. They can clean anything. Here's his card, I'll tell him you're going to call and he'll give you a good deal," Mrs. B said. "A few days and they'll have it back to normal. Ninety-five percent normal. Maybe eighty."

She held the card out to Sarah, who took it distractedly.

"Thanks," she said quietly as she gazed at the mess around her.

"I think we've got it from here, Mrs. Benedict," Matt said quietly. "But thanks for your help."

"Of course," she said. "You two tell me if you need anything. Sarah, honey, don't you dare think about staying in this apartment until all this is cleaned up. The fumes are bad for your health, you'll develop all sorts of problems. I'll send you an article."

"Uh, thanks, Mrs. B," Sarah said.

After Mrs. Benedict had left, Sarah finally turned towards Matt.

"What the hell?" she said, sounding so hopeless compared to her earlier lightheartedness that it made Matt's chest twist. "This is all my stuff. Everything I own."

"I know. But Mrs. Benedict was right," he said. "You'll be surprised at how much of it can be salvaged."

"And so much for all these freaking deadbolts, right?" she said as she strode over to the front door. The locks and knob all sounded intact, indicating that someone had picked the lower two locks rather than broken them. The much stronger deadbolts at the top were untouched; they only locked from the inside, and therefore offered no real protection if no one was home to lock them. "Why did I even bother having them installed?"

Before he could say anything, Sarah moved on to the kitchen, where she climbed up onto her counter and reached for something on top of her refrigerator.

"That's something at least," Sarah muttered as she hopped down from the counter with her computer in hand. "No one thinks to look for a laptop on top of the fridge."

Down in the bedroom, the scene was even worse, although something about it felt off. Like the living room, the gasoline had been tossed around in a seemingly careless fashion; flammable items like Sarah's books had barely been touched, and while most of her dresser drawers had been tipped out onto the floor, her closet hadn't even been opened. It struck him as the work of someone who was either in a big hurry or didn't particularly know what they were doing.

The smell of the gasoline was starting to get to him, and it couldn't be helping the frazzled state Sarah was in. Whatever questions he had about what had happened here, they could wait until they were at his place. Of course, convincing her to actually stay at place wasn't a given, as he had discovered multiple times before.

"I know you have a rule about not letting assholes drive you out of your home, but...I think you might need to make an exception this time," Matt said softly.

Sarah was quiet for a moment as she looked around her bedroom. Then she nodded.

"Yeah, I think you're right."

Matt was surprised she didn't stubbornly try to argue; he wasn't sure if that was a good sign she was more comfortable staying at his place now, or a bad sign that having her apartment broken into had crossed some kind of line in her mind. But they could figure that out later; for now they needed to get out of there.

Sarah was quiet on the way to Matt's apartment. Her mind was bouncing from one thought to the next without processing much. She hated the thought that someone had been in her home, pawing through her things, and it immediately reminded her of the last time it had happened.

Logically Sarah knew there could be no connection between the two incidents. She'd seen Ronan's body. She'd been the one to kill him. But tonight it had still felt like his presence was hanging over her every moment she was in her destroyed apartment, right up until they'd stepped back out into the open air of the sidewalk and she'd finally been able to breathe in again.

She was still thinking about it when they arrived at the well-worn and familiar door to apartment 6A.

Matt—always so in tune with whether or not she wanted to talk—didn't ask her any questions as he unlocked the door. He just gently slipped her duffel bag off her shoulder and nodded his head for her to go in.

"Thanks," she murmured as Matt disappeared into his room with the bag.

Sarah wandered over to the tall paned window, watching the giant billboard outside as she forced herself to try to think about something other than her apartment. And as luck had it, a different complicated scenario was now presenting itself for her to overanalyze: she was about to spend nearly a week in Matt's apartment with neither of them concussed, bleeding out, poisoned, or tased, and she had no idea how it would go.

On the one hand, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to take the next step in her relationship with Matt, and it was a step she very badly wanted to take. The constant tension between them was driving her crazy, and she was fairly certain Matt felt the same.

On the other hand, Sarah wasn't sure exactly how to do that. Everything between her and Matt was so wildly different than her experiences in other relationships that she had no landmarks to orient herself. Straight from the beginning, every moment with him had been loaded with a mixture of intimacy and intensity and vulnerability she'd never experienced in her life, and if that was before having sex—what would things be like after?

These were the kind of thoughts that she'd normally quash with a few strong shots and just get on with things, but that wasn't an option anymore. Without that haze of alcohol, there was nothing to quiet her own anxieties. The only thing that seemed to have a similar affect was Matt himself. So maybe this was what she needed; a week straight of Matt Murdock to help her get to that place she so badly wanted to be.

Then she was broken out of her thoughts by the subject of her thoughts himself.

"You know I'm not holding you prisoner here, right?" Matt asked wryly from behind her. Sarah looked over her shoulder at him as he came out of the bedroom.

"Um—what?" she asked distractedly.

"You've been staring out that window for a while, so...either the billboard outside has a novel written on it, or you're plotting some kind of escape," he said with a lopsided grin as he came to stand next to her at the window.

Sarah laughed and shook her head.

"Sorry. I was just, um..." Thinking about having sex with you. "...stuck in my head, I guess."

Matt furrowed his brow, but just nodded.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, mostly just to change the subject.

"Yeah. What are you in the mood for?"

-

So about forty-five minutes later, they were sitting at the table with a pizza between them, trying to figure out exactly what had happened at her apartment.

"I just don't feel like this is Jason's M.O.," Sarah said. "Like, he wouldn't pour gasoline all over my apartment and then not set it on fire. If he was pissed at me, he'd send the whole place up in flames, and he'd make sure I was inside first."

Her comment earned an unhappy grimace from Matt.

"I agree," he said darkly. "What about your coworker who got arrested after the nightclub? Maybe he wasn't happy that you didn't end up in jail, too."

"His name is Tracksuit, Matt," Sarah said as she leaned forward to grab another slice of pizza out of the box. "You have to learn my coworkers' names or the company Christmas party will be really awkward."

Matt chuckled, but it faded as he shook his head.

"You need to start learning their real names in case you need to testify against them someday," he reminded her.

Right. That.

Sarah was vaguely aware that bringing down Orion might involve her having to show up in court at some point, but considering how many crimes she had under her own belt, the idea made her nervous. But she supposed it probably was past time to stop using nicknames for everyone in her head. Refusing to learn their actual names had made everything feel less real for a while, but it wasn't something she could do forever.

"Fine. His name is Kevin," Sarah said. His first name was a start; she could work on last names another time. "But all he really seemed to care about was getting his money back, and he has it now. Well, most of it."

"Could this be a reminder of the IOU part of that agreement?" Matt asked.

It didn't feel like the right answer to Sarah, but she didn't really have any reason to dismiss it.

"I can try to find out," she said. "Donovan?"

"I can't see him having the powers of an NYPD officer behind him and instead choosing to just vandalize your apartment," Matt said. "But I can look into it."

Sarah had thought talking through the various options of who it could have been would be helpful, but it mostly just served as a depressing reminder of how many people she had in her life who would want to come after her. And she hated that despite knowing Ronan was dead, the memory of him had still been enough to make her feel afraid in her own home.

"We'll figure it out," Matt said. She wondered if he was picking up on her dropping mood.

"I know. I'm just...I'm creeped out by the idea of someone being in my apartment. And I'm so out of it lately that honestly my first thought was—" Sarah cut herself off, glancing up at Matt. He was listening to her with that head-tilted intensity that always caught her out.

"Was what?" he prompted.

How do you explain that your brain is so screwed up that your first thought was your dead stalker had come back to life just to mess with you?

Answer: you don't.

"—just...something crazy," she said, tearing her gaze away from him. "But my apartment is like my one little sanctuary in the middle of all this, you know? No one gets to be in there but me. Now I let them run me out."

"Temporarily."

"A few nights, at least," Sarah said. She offered him a weak grin. "You sure you won't get tired of having me here?"

"Somehow I don't think so."

After a short while, it was late enough that Matt had to go out to patrol. He said he had a few clients he'd been checking up on since they'd agreed to testify in a court case, just to make sure nothing happened to them, but that he wouldn't be gone long.