excelled at, it was avoidance.

Currently she was on her way to her dad's to fill out paperwork for his admittance into a care home, and the subject she was trying to avoid thinking about was the same one that had she'd been avoiding thinking about all week: Matt Murdock. Specifically, the uncomfortable realization that at some point she had stopped thinking of him as just her friendly neighborhood vigilante.

Her plan for dealing with this newfound knowledge was to distract herself by throwing all of her effort into taking more steps towards a normal life. And one of those steps was to contact Allison about her party. She'd been thinking about it since the socialite had made the offer, and she'd finally decided that it was something she should try, at least. Fishing her phone out of her purse, she brought up Allison's email, which she had gotten from the mysteriously reappearing business card.

'Hi, Allison. If you still need someone to play piano for your fundraiser, I'd be happy to do it. Just let me know the details. -Sarah'

As soon as she hit the send button on the email, her phone dinged. Sarah frowned; even Allison wasn't that quick to reply. Looking down at her screen, she saw that it wasn't an email alert at all; it was a text message from Todd.

She hadn't talked to Todd since their lackluster date a few days ago, which she had awkwardly ditched out on to go help a bleeding masked man. So she was fairly certain his text was going to be along the lines of letting her know she owed him the cost of an overpriced dinner and gourmet coffee. Biting her lip, she opened the message.

'Had a great time the other night—sorry that you had to leave so soon. I'd love to take you out again if you're free.'

Sarah narrowed her eyes at the text suspiciously. Why on earth would Todd want to see her again after how badly last time had gone? Something must be wrong with him. Maybe he was a serial killer—was he a serial killer? Sarah paused, considering it for a minute, then shook her head. No, probably not. Maybe he just had very low standards for good dates?

Then again, just because she hadn't had the best time didn't mean he hadn't had fun. He had seemed to enjoy talking about himself and hadn't seemed to bothered by spending way too much money for a restaurant that served drinks in mason jars. And if she thought about it, the date itself hadn't really gone that badly, save for her awkward exit. It was mostly just the constant train of anxious thoughts traveling through her own head the whole time that had ruined it.

She hesitated, her thumbs hovering over the screen. The idea of a second date didn't really excite her, but it didn't fill her with dread, either. Maybe whatever fog she'd been living in wasn't going to lift on its own; maybe this discomfort was just because she hadn't been dating for a while, and it was just something she needed to push through. Could she really complain about not being able to live a normal life if she wasn't even willing to put in the effort of going on a second date?

Before she could talk herself out of it, she quickly drafted a reply text that she thought sounded like something a normal person would send.

As she slipped her phone back into her purse, she was caught off guard when someone holding flyers stepped into her path. Sarah automatically began to shake her head, thinking this was another person trying to cajole her into coming to their soul cycle class or buying their mix CD. But when she looked up, it was a middle-aged woman with glasses and dark hair peppered with grey.

"I'm looking for my son; he's missing," the woman said, pressing the paper into her hands. "Please—take a flyer."

Sarah glanced down at the handout, expecting to see a photo of a child, and froze when she saw Aaron McDermott's face looking back up at her instead. She stopped in her tracks so quickly that an elderly man walking behind her knocked into her, swearing at her as he continued on his way.

"Have you seen him?" the woman—McDermott's mother—asked eagerly, encouraged by Sarah's strong reaction to the photo.

Sarah finally managed to tear her eyes away from the familiar face on the flyer. "No, I'm sorry. I—I just wasn't expecting to see..."

"A police officer?" she finished for her. "I know. He's missing. He's been missing for weeks and weeks now. His work says they're doing everything they can, but if that's true why haven't they found him yet?" Mrs. McDermott asked, a pleading note in her tone that people got when they knew no one had answers for them, but were desperate for one anyway.

"I'm—I'm sorry," Sarah said, not knowing what else to say. "I'm so sorry."

"He's my only child," she confided. It was information Sarah immediately wished she didn't know. "I spoiled him growing up."

Sarah averted her gaze, looking away from Mrs. McDermott and back down at the photo, but it didn't help. It didn't matter if she looked at the woman in front of her or the man on the flyer; either way she was met with the same pair of eyes.

Of course McDermott hadn't existed in a vacuum; he'd had family, friends. For all she knew, Ronan had probably had family somewhere as well. They had both occupied a space on this planet that didn't just consist of making her life miserable—although they had both certainly had done that.

"If you see or hear anything about him—please contact me," she implored Sarah.

Sarah's throat was tight, and she only managed to nod before quickly continuing down the sidewalk. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that McDermott's mother had already latched onto another pair of passersby, fervently explaining her situation to them as they awkwardly tried to keep walking.

She tore her eyes away from them and turned forwards again, but the encounter lingered with her for a long time.

-

Later that night, Matt also had an incident that shook him—for different reasons.

He had been trying to track down a group that had been targeting medical supply shipments at the docks to sell the drugs themselves for much higher. The guy he'd caught up with that night was low-level in the group, he could tell. But he definitely knew who the others involved group, and Matt was willing to bet that it wouldn't take too much effort to get it out of him. He was small and shifty, the type to say whatever he had to to get out of the situation in one piece. Getting people like him to talk was never a problem—parsing out what was the truth and what was bullshit was a little harder.

However, his current situation of being pinned to a wall with Daredevil's forearm across his windpipe also seemed to encourage him to cooperate.

Intending to intercept the next robbery, Matt mainly wanted to find out the when and where so that he could crash the party.

"Tell me what your bosses have pl—"

Matt froze in the middle of his sentence as he heard a familiar sound. Past the sound of the man's heartbeat and labored breathing, he recognized a heartbeat he knew, one that he hadn't heard since its last surprise appearance the year before.

Stick.

Matt faltered, caught off guard. He turned his head, frantically trying to place where he'd just heard the sound coming from.

His sudden silence confused the man he was interrogating.

"Was...was that the whole question—?" the man asked nervously.

Matt shoved him harder against the wall.

"Shut up," he growled, still listening for another snatch of heartbeat, the click of a cane against pavement. He strained his ears, but didn't pick up on anything.

He shook his head, cursing internally. He didn't need to be losing his focus over a trick of his imagination.

Turning his attention back to the man in front of him, Matt resumed his interrogation, obtaining the information he needed without too much trouble. He called it a night after that, returning to his apartment with the strange incident still on his mind.

His off mood stuck with him through to his training session with Sarah the next evening.

Matt was still recovering from the wound across his stomach, so they stuck to the punching bag and skipped the sparring. That was probably a good thing in Matt's opinion, as he was still having some difficulty keeping his mind off of the events of the other night, including the unmistakable uptick in Sarah's heartbeat when she'd touched him. It wasn't the first time he'd noticed her reactions to him lately, but this one couldn't be dismissed as easily as the moments during their training sessions could, where the exercise already had her heartbeat elevated and her skin flushed. This had been different, and part of him was itching to pull at that thread.

Of course, he was painfully aware that wasn't an option, but it was harder to remember that when they were sparring and his hands were on her waist or her back was pressed against his chest, with sweat on her skin and blood racing loudly in his ears. So it was lucky for him that he had the excuse of new stitches to avoid that scenario.

It was probably also lucky for Sarah, because she was off that evening, quiet and distracted. Matt didn't ask her about it, figuring she'd come out with it on her own if she felt like it.

Sure enough, midway through their lesson she stepped back from the punching bag to take a few breaths.

"I met McDermott's mother today," she said suddenly.

Whatever Matt had been expecting, that wasn't it. "What?"

"She's—she's been passing out these missing flyers around town," Sarah explained. "She thinks that the police department isn't doing enough to find out what happened to him. Which is fair, I guess, since Jason hasn't been arrested, and neither have I."

Matt's brow furrowed at the inclusion of Jason and Sarah in the same group, as though their crimes had been weighted equally.

"Police in Hell's Kitchen aren't generally known for lending a sympathetic ear to the families of victims. If they haven't made a connection to Orion yet, I doubt they're going to any time soon," he said. It wasn't much of a comfort, but it was something.

"No, that's not the—the issue," Sarah said, running her hands through her hair tiredly before sighing. "I don't know. Nevermind."

She stepped towards the bag and resumed practicing. She still didn't have much power behind her punches—which wasn't surprising given her build—but she was quick, and her form was noticeably better than it had been when they started training.

When they were done, Sarah stretched out on one of the benches tiredly while Matt re-wrapped his hands.

"Hey, are you going to teach me how to use those baton things you're always throwing at people?" she asked curiously.

Matt hesitated. When practicing hand-to-hand in the ring was easy for him to be mindful of how hard he was landing his punches, always pulling them before they could do any actual harm. But it would be harder with the batons to judge how much force he was putting into each hit.

"Maybe," he said noncommittally. "You do like hitting people with things."

"Why you'd pick batons? I mean, out of all the cool stuff you could throw at bad guys."

"It's just what I was trained with. I stopped using them for a long time, but Stick reintroduced me to them last year and they ended up being pretty useful."

He heard her sit up, and could tell she was looking at him more intently.

"Last year? I didn't realize he was still around."

Matt bit back a grimace; he hadn't meant to wander into this conversational territory, and particularly not after his odd encounter the night before.

"He's not," Matt said shortly. "It was a one-time thing. Otherwise he's stayed away the last twenty years."

"...why?" she asked hesitantly, clearly aware she might be treading on dangerous ground.

Matt answered reluctantly. "I made a mistake, and...he left."

"You were just a kid, what kind of mistake could you possibly have made?" she asked slowly.

"Nothing you need to worry about." He hadn't intended to snap the words, but that was how it came out, his frustration with Stick creeping into his tone.

Sarah faltered, seeming surprised by his harsh reaction.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Sorry."

Matt made himself take a deep breath as he unwound the tape from his hands. It wasn't Sarah's fault that the mention of Stick made his stomach clench—and she had no way of knowing the topic had already been stressing him out lately.

He turned to apologize, then frowned when he picked up on movement. She was rubbing her shoulder, her head craned to the other side. Without the sparring portion of their lesson, they'd spent more time than usual on the punching bag; the repetition had probably put a strain on her socket.

"You okay?" he asked, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

She stepped to the side, avoiding his hand as she went to grab her gym bag. "Yeah. I'm fine."

He paused. She didn't sound angry, but she was definitely closed off—probably, he through ruefully, because of how things with Stick looked from her perspective: yet another person in his life that he was adamant about keeping her away from. He knew he should explain that she wasn't the part of the equation that made him nervous. Sarah was exactly what Stick had always told him he couldn't afford to have in his life, and he could only imagine how disastrous it would be if those two worlds collided. But explaining that would mean getting much deeper into the subject of Stick than he wanted to. It wasn't something he liked thinking about, much less talking about. It had been difficult enough to get out the very brief explanation he'd been forced to give Foggy the night he'd discovered his identity.

"You should take a couple of days if you're sore," Matt said, hoping to move past the awkward bump in the conversation. "We could go again on Friday."

"Uh, I...can't. I have a date," she said uncomfortably, tucking her hair behind her ear.

Matt kept his face carefully neutral, hoping his expression didn't betray the way his stomach dropped.

"Oh," he said, the nonchalance in his voice sounding painfully contrived even to him. "With the, uh...with the same guy?"

"Yeah," Sarah said. "I didn't really think there'd be a second date after I ran out on the first one, but..."

She trailed off with a shrug. To be honest, Matt hadn't really thought there'd be a second date either, and a selfish part of him had been relieved.

"That's...great," Matt lied, flashing her what he hoped was a convincing smile. "I'm glad it worked out."

"Yeah, me too," she agreed, though her enthusiasm sounded lacking. He heard her shoulder her gym bag in preparation to leave. "Are you coming?"

"Uh...no," he said, gesturing towards his newly re-wrapped hands. "I'm going to stick around a while longer."

"Okay," she said. Her breathing changed, as though there were something else she wanted to say, but she didn't.

Matt nodded, and she left.

He waited until she was to the end of the block before he began, and if he was hitting the bag a little harder than normal, it was just due to a bad week.

-

Sarah's second date with Todd immediately started off on the wrong foot—for Sarah, at least. She'd gone into it with high hopes, doing her hair and makeup early and selecting a dark blue dress that was backless save for a thin t-strap running down her spine.

Todd was as genial as he had been on their first date, but Sarah couldn't keep her mind from wandering to more stressful subjects. It bounced from work to her dad to the email she'd sent Allison—to which Allison had excitedly replied with a list of songs she'd like Sarah to play, inadvertently reminding Sarah that she had little free time to practice, no place to do it, and a years worth of not having touched a piano—while occasionally focusing on the man sitting across the table from her.

The first obstacle of the evening came when the restaurant Todd brought her to ended up being an upscale seafood restaurant, and she didn't have the heart—or was it the spine?—to tell him that she hated seafood. Todd didn't seem bothered when she only ordered a salad, though he did repeatedly insist that she try the dish he'd ordered.

The second problem presented itself when Todd ordered a bottle of expensive wine for them at the beginning of the meal. The server was already about to step away to fetch it when she spoke up quickly.

"Oh, um...I actually don't think I'm going to be drinking tonight," Sarah said carefully. She didn't want to say anything that screamed, I maybe have a drinking problem.

"Are you sure?" Todd pressed. "This wine is really great, I get it every time."

"I'm sure."

"Trust me, whatever you're used to drinking, this will blow it out of the water. It has these great fruit-flavored undertones and this clean finish that blends amazingly," he said.

Sarah glanced at the waiter, trying to discern if any of that description was supposed to mean something to her. Her requirements for wine—for most alcohol, really—fell mostly along the lines of cheap and strong. The waiter just nodded politely in agreement with whatever nonsense Todd had just spouted off.

"It sounds great, but I'm good," Sarah said with a smile. "Thank you, though."

Looking to change the subject, she asked Todd about his family. He went off and they had ended up on the subject of his mother always insisting on being sent copies of every photo shoot he did. Sarah thought it was sweet of his mom, but it wasn't really something she could relate to. She nodded and smiled all the same, hoping at some point there would be some topic they could actually connect on.

"...but you know how mothers are," Todd finished. "Their kids are the center of their world, right?"

Sarah nodded, but she couldn't stop the image of Mrs. McDermott's distraught face from coming to mind.

"He's my only child. I spoiled him growing up."

"Right," she said softly.

"What about your mom? Does she live in the city?"

"Uh...no. She lives in Arizona, I think," Sarah said, still thinking about McDermott. She bit her lip, then made a split second decision. "You know, I think...maybe I would like to try that wine you were talking about."

As soon as she said it, she almost took it back.

"Fantastic," he said, brightening immediately. "I'll let the waiter know."

Todd did most of the talking, which was mostly fine with her, as there weren't many parts of her life that she could really share with him. Drinking had always been a way for her to calm her nerves and talk to people more easily, so she had high hopes when she sipped from her first glass and felt that familiar rush of warmth spread through her. She could do this—it was just a date, like she'd gone on in her old life. No big deal.

The wine worked its magic on her nerves, allowing her thoughts to slow down and stay with the conversation instead of wandering off, and she found herself allowing the server to pour a second glass when she was one with her first one. She was finished with her salad much quicker than Todd was done with his food—a Chilean sea bass with champagne truffle sauce, he'd informed her excitedly—leaving her with little to do to do besides listen and sip at her drink.

When the check came, Todd brushed aside her offers to pay her half, insisting on picking up the bill again.