preferred to fight hand-to-hand over using a weapon. The temptation to lose control was already great enough when Matt was fighting criminals with his hands; anything that made it easier to inflict damage only made the chance of slipping and going a step too far more likely. However, if his adversary was the one who chose to bring a weapon into the fight, Matt wasn't necessarily above using it against them. When it came right down to it, there were a lot of things he wasn't above.

In this particular scenario, the two men on the roof had brought knives to a fight they had already been certain they were going to win: two of them against someone much smaller, someone they had already injured. So the use of Sarah's kitchen knife—serrated and much sharper than the ones the two men had brought with them—seemed only appropriate, and as Matt knelt in front of the taller of the two men and pressed the blade against his skin, he found no sympathy for him.

"What does Ronan want with her?" Matt asked, his voice deadly calm. He had already asked him the same questions he had posed to the other man: who Ronan was working with, what he had hired them to do, where they were supposed to meet him. Unfortunately, he'd been unable to shed any more light on those topics than his partner had.

"No clue," the man said immediately, but his heart jumped a few ticks. Matt pressed the blade of the knife—which was already coated in a good amount of the man's blood—harder against his throat.

"Don't make me ask you a second time."

"What do you think, man?" he spat out, his pained tone turning frustrated. "He didn't say outright, but...shit. The way he talked about her, it—it's not hard to take a guess."

"And you have no problem delivering someone to a fate like that," Matt noted, clenching his jaw, moving on before he could dwell on that part too much. "Are you two the ones who have been following her?"

"No. No, I swear I'd never seen her before tonight," he said frantically. "We got an address and a key, that's it. Anything else going on with that chick is Ronan himself doing it."

"How do you know he hasn't hired other people?"

"Ronan? That guy doesn't have enough money for that."

"Enough to catch your interest, though."

The man would have been smart to not answer. Unfortunately for him, he made the mistake of continuing to speak—apparently with the hope of swaying the vigilante who was currently pinning him against the brick wall at a painful angle.

"It sounded like an easy job," he ground out. "We didn't—we didn't know you'd be here, we wouldn't have—"

His words turned into a strangled his of pain as Matt kept the pressure of the knife even, but tightened his hold on the man's arm and twisted it harder.

"So, you only came because you thought she would be alone and easy to get to," Matt said, his voice low and harsh. "You really think that's helping your case?"

Matt breathed in deep through his nose, trying to ignore the way everything in him was itching to beat this man to a bloody pulp. It had infuriated him to hear the two of them eagerly discuss their plans for Sarah as they had tracked her across the roof, so confident and gleeful in their mission: two grown, armed men against one injured woman they had assumed was alone. It had made him angrier that they had almost been right, that she almost had been caught alone. That if they had gotten into her apartment before she'd been able to call him, he never would have gotten to her in time.

And farther down, a small, irrational part of him just wanted to hurt the two men for bringing the devil in him out to fight in front of the one person whose trust he had been trying so hard to keep. And if Sarah's heart rate and speechless shock before she left the roof were any indication, he might have just lost that trust.

The man took advantage of the brief pause in Matt's interrogation to try to make a grab for the knife. But Matt caught his arm easily and wrenched it the other way, then flashed the knife down from his opponent's throat to the front of his shoulder, driving the blade in just below his collar bone: not a lethal target by any means, but an extremely painful one.

The man gritted his teeth and knocked his head back against the wall.

"Jesus! Listen, listen, how about you can t-take the money, okay?" he said, still foolishly trying to negotiate. "It's almost a thousand bucks."

Matt grew still, and when he spoke again he couldn't keep the deep disgust out of his voice.

"You're telling me less than a thousand dollars is all you needed to deliver a girl to a man that you knew was planning to hurt her?"

"I...I..." the man stuttered, before falling silent. He panted raggedly, obviously trying and failing to come up with another plan to get out of the situation. Matt cocked his head at the silence.

"You two were so talkative when you were stalking her across the roof," he observed darkly. "What happened?"

He received no answer. It was frustrating how little information he was able to get out of him; Ronan had been smart to not divulge anything to them about his whereabouts. But surely the man had to know something Matt could use, if he just kept pressing for more.

Matt gripped the handle of the blade harder, prepared to give it another twist—or perhaps find a more painful placement. But in the silence, beneath the man's thundering pulse, Matt could hear a softer, more familiar heartbeat floating up from a few floors down, accompanied by an equally familiar voice. Sarah was swearing softly to herself, and he could smell soap, disinfectant, and blood.

He paused reluctantly, grinding his teeth as the sound pulled him back from the temptation to beat the man bloody. He had to remind himself that the longer he stayed up here trying and failing to learn something new, the longer Sarah would be down in her apartment, alone. He inhaled deeply, focusing on getting himself back under control, before turning his attention back to the person on the other end of the knife.

Matt kept the end of the interrogation quick, but that didn't mean he didn't make it painful.

--

Several floors down, Sarah cursed under her breath as she pressed an alcohol-soaked cloth against the deep cut on her foot.

"...kind of asshole just cuts people's feet up," she muttered angrily.

The smart of the rubbing alcohol provided some distraction, at least, from the events of the night. She didn't want to think about how close the two assailants had come to hurting her, and she didn't want to think about what was happening to them on the roof right now, even if she knew they fully deserved whatever it was.

She reached for a bandage and glanced at the clock: about twenty minutes had passed since she'd left the roof. Mrs. Benedict had poked her head out of her apartment as soon as she had heard the sound of the stairwell door open and close, and Sarah had distantly heard her asking concerned questions, but she'd had no energy left to answer her before retreating to her apartment. The deadlocks felt useless now, but she had bolted them anyway. Automatically she had found herself heading into the kitchen, where she had grabbed a bottle of whiskey from on top of her fridge and taken a deep swig, wincing at the sting but welcoming the slight numbing sensation, before placing the bottle back in its spot. She had then limped into the bathroom, which was where she found herself now, perched on the bathroom counter as she wrapped her foot in a tight bandage.

True to his word, Matt wasn't long. Sarah had just finished wrapping her foot when she heard him tap on her window. She gingerly hopped down from her perch on the bathroom counter, testing her weight on her foot before unsteadily making her way over to the window to let him in. His black-clad outline on the fire escape was no different from usual, but somehow tonight he looked so much more like Daredevil than he had in a long time.

Sarah began to walk back towards the couch, but stopped when she glanced over her shoulder and saw that Matt wasn't moving from his spot in front of the window. His shoulders were tense, and his posture was still faintly reminiscent of a fighting stance, though he didn't seem to realize it.

"You're limping," he noted quietly. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." Sarah folded her arms and pulled her sweater tighter around her as she swept her gaze down to her bandaged foot. "I, um...I think it might need stitches at some point. Do you think that maybe your friend Claire would be able to help me out again?" she asked him hopefully.

"I can see if she'll answer. She's working the day shift lately, so she's probably sleeping," Matt said, reaching for a zippered pocket on the side of his black pants.

"No, no, don't wake her up," Sarah protested before he could withdraw his phone. "It's not that bad, I can go after work. It's not like massively bleeding or anything. Besides, I can't be late today. Jason has some big meeting he wants me to help him prepare for, or something."

Matt didn't look happy with her decision, but he didn't argue. "Alright. I'll let her know you might be stopping by the hospital later, then."

"Thanks."

"You're not hurt otherwise?" he said, taking a step closer and reaching a gloved hand out towards her previously-sprained wrist, which now ached dully once more from when she had landed on it earlier.

Still on edge from being chased earlier, Sarah instinctively tensed, shifting her weight onto her back foot as he stepped nearer to her. It wasn't a conscious reaction; her fight or flight instinct was still on hyper drive, and as Matt had not-so-tactfully pointed out the other night, flight was pretty much her default setting.

Matt stilled, immediately picking up on her reaction. Something flickered across the bottom half of his face and he slowly retracted his hand, stepping back to his original position in front of the window.

"Sorry," he said shortly, stepping back.

A pang of guilt hit her chest, and Sarah closed her eyes briefly and shook her head.

"Matt, no, it's not—" she started to explain, but he abruptly moved onto the next subject.

"I don't think you have to worry about Ronan sending more people after you," he said, the softness in his voice replaced by a business-like tone. "From what the guys on the roof had to say, he has pretty limited resources. With any hope, he'll think these two took the money and skipped town."

She was relieved to hear that Ronan was still as mildly incompetent as ever, and that he didn't have as far of a reach as it had seemed lately. Never knowing where he was made it feel like he was everywhere, but she knew that wasn't true.

"They didn't know where he's hiding out?"

Matt shook his head regretfully. "No."

Sarah bit her lip, trying to ignore the way her heart fell at the news.

"What about the cops?" she asked. "How does someone just make the police not come?"

"All he needs are a pair of cops who will respond to the alert saying they're nearby and will check it out. Then...they don't."

It wasn't difficult to guess which cops Ronan might have been able to talk into taking on that particular responsibility. Sarah sighed and ran her hand through her hair. "Good thing I don't happen to know two cops who really don't like me, then, right?"

"We don't know for sure if it's them, but...it seems like a safe guess. The plus side is that it's not a great plan. There's always the chance other cops will be nearby and decide to respond to the call as well. Obviously it worked this time, but it's shortsighted. He's getting cocky."

He's always been cocky, Sarah thought. Short-sighted and arrogant, which mixed well with his general disgusting demeanor and obsessive tendencies. But she didn't say any of that out loud, not wishing to talk about Ronan any more than she had to. Right now she was doing alright at keeping her mind from wandering to dark places, and she wanted that to continue.

"How'd they get through the front door?" Matt asked, interrupting her thoughts.

There was a short pause as Sarah hesitated.

"They didn't," she said reluctantly. Matt just cocked his head, his mouth a grim line as he waited for her to elaborate further. "I opened the door. They...they didn't get inside, I went outside."

Matt rubbed his mouth in agitation, and when he spoke his carefully controlled tone was betrayed by the twitch in his jaw. "Why?"

"Mrs. Benedict was out there talking to them. I couldn't just stay inside and let something happen to her," Sarah said, recognizing the frustrated tone that so often preceded a lecture from Bossy Bodyguard Matt lately. She quickly continued, hoping to avoid it. "And I know it was stupid it was to leave the apartment, so can be maybe just...skip the part where you yell at me for that, please? You can be extra grouchy about the next thing."

If the way he pressed his lips together tightly was any indication, he had been about to do just that, but he held back. Instead, he reached up and pulled his mask off tiredly, then used his forearm to wipe some of the sweat off his forehead. Sarah blinked as she caught sight of blood running down the side of his face; it hadn't been very visible near his ear and jaw line when he'd had his mask on, but now she could see it clearly, bright red against his skin. It was coming from a small gash near his left eye that cut across his temple. Another pang of guilt hit her; she hadn't even thought to ask if Matt was hurt, despite the fact that he'd been the one actually fighting tonight.

"Your face is bleeding," she said in surprise. "I didn't think...it didn't even look like you even got hit."

"Barely. The cut's from earlier," Matt said with a dismissive shrug. "I didn't bother putting a bandage on it when I got home, and it reopened during the fight."

Sarah winced as she looked closer at the cut on his temple.

"I didn't realize you went out tonight. Or, last night, I guess," she said, still disoriented by what time it was.

"Yeah. For a few hours. I stopped by here a little after midnight, but you were sleeping. I didn't want to bother you."

Sarah fidgeted with her hair as she studied the exhausted vigilante in front of her, and the way he barely seemed to register the blood running down his face.

With a sigh, she paced—with only a slight limp—into the kitchen and got a small bowl and a clean dish towel from the cupboard, filling the bowl with hot water from the tap. On her way back she grabbed the first aid kit off of the counter—it seemed as though it was always within easy reach these days.

When she came back into the living room, Matt was still leaning against the windowsill, frowning slightly as he listened to her rummaging around. He turned his head towards her when she stopped beside him, not saying anything, but she could tell from the way his head moved slightly to track her movements that he was closely focused on what she was doing. The coiled tension in his form almost made her want to step away again, but she reminded herself that it wasn't aimed at her.

She set the items in her hands down, then slowly lifted herself up onto the window sill, careful not to put too much pressure on her sore wrist. She perched on the wooden ledge, angling herself towards him and curling one leg underneath her, letting the other hang down so that her bandaged foot brushed against the wall of her living room.

"What are you doing?" he asked her quietly.

"I already cleaned a bunch of your blood off of this windowsill once," she said, keeping her voice purposefully casual as she dipped the cloth into the hot water. "I don't need you bleeding all over it again."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know," Sarah said. She lifted the damp cloth up to Matt's face, pausing for just a second before pressing it gently against the cut on his temple. She watched his reaction carefully: he was tense, but he didn't make any move stop her.

"I'm sorry," he said suddenly. "If I just took us back a few steps. Again."

"You didn't."

He looked doubtful. "I know that what happened up there didn't...sit right with you."

Sarah was quiet for a second, trying to formulate the right words for what she was thinking as she dipped the cloth back into the bowl. The blood immediately began to diffuse into the water. "I just...the whole torture thing is kind of a new concept in my life, you know? I have to cover my eyes when Lauren makes me watch Game of Thrones, and that's just on a screen. I'm not used to it up close and personal. I mean, I kind of hope that I never get used to it, if that makes sense? But...it doesn't mean that I don't get that it was necessary. And I'm not asking you to apologize for it, Matt."

Matt didn't reply right away, and when he did it was so quiet she could barely hear him.

"The first time I ever met Claire...I ended up in a similar situation with a guy up on her roof, too," Matt said. She could tell he was gauging her reaction to what he was saying. "He ended up in a coma."

Sarah's hand wavered slightly at Matt's confession as she brought the damp hand towel back up to his face. She took a steadying breath before she pressing the cloth to his skin again, gradually cleaning the blood away.

"How, um...how did Claire react to that?" Sarah asked carefully. She remembered how calm Claire had been the night she'd met her; it seemed like very little could ruffle the woman. Probably from being a nurse in a city like Hell's Kitchen.

"She seemed to understand, at first. She kind of helped me do it, actually. But...in the end, it drove her away," he said, then faltered for a second before correcting himself. "I drove her away. That side of me. I almost lost Foggy because of it, too."

Sarah thought it was interesting how he talked about his darker personality traits almost like they were a separate person within him, but she didn't point it out. She slipped a small disinfecting pad out of the packaging.

"This'll sting a little," she warned him softly before pressing the alcohol pad to the cut on his face. She focused on what she was doing for a minute, grateful for the excuse to get her thoughts together before speaking. "You being capable of violence isn't a new and shocking aspect of your personality for me, Matt. I've met that side of you more than a few times."

"I know."

At the look of guilt that passed over his face, Sarah realized that Matt was misinterpreting the point she was trying to make.

"Meaning that if I was going to bail, I would have done it already," she clarified gently.

Matt furrowed his brow as he considered what she was saying, leaving her to continue her ministrations in silence. Sarah looked down at his gloved hands and noticed for the first time that, despite the dark color of the fabric, the dried blood covering them was still clearly visible.

"Does it...does it ever get to you?" she asked him tentatively. "Hurting people like that?"

"Not so much while I'm doing it. It's a means to an end," Matt said, then after a moment's hesitation he continued. "But after it's done...yeah. It takes a toll."