what they wouldn't do | DAREDEVIL

chapter one: check mark

         SARAH CORRIGAN'S FATHER was never a truly bad man. He had his poor qualities—a heavy gambling habit and a blind spot for the consequences of his actions being the most obvious—but he was not cruel or unkind. Sarah had to remind herself of this every time she arrived at her job as a secretary for an extremely shady company that was formerly owned by Wilson Fisk himself. Her father had not meant to get her stuck in these circumstances, she repeated to herself. He had no control over the situation. All the same, as she looked up at the looming gray building that was home to Orion Incorporated she felt a familiar feeling of resentment rise up in her, and had to force herself to swallow it back down.

         Sarah couldn't believe she was back here at ten o'clock at night, a full five hours after she had already been free for the day. She had forgotten to take home some dull paperwork that she had needed to fill out, and as she'd learned over the past ten months of working there, mistakes were not tolerated well by management, specifically by her overbearing supervisor Ronan. Ronan had wandering eyes and occasionally wandering hands, and he took every opportunity to attempt to intimidate Sarah by threatening to tell the higher-ups she wasn't working hard enough to keep up her end of their agreement. She was keen to avoid drawing more criticism to herself, so she'd reluctantly gotten back on the subway and ridden across town to get the paperwork from the darkened building and bring it home.

         She keyed her employee code into the security panel beside the front door and entered the building. Since Fisk had been taken down by Daredevil, his mysterious replacement at the head of the company had installed several new security measures, including new codes and new cameras. Sarah carefully avoided looking as she walked by the front desk she usually manned during the day. As a general rule, she refused to think about her job—if you could call it that—when she wasn't at work, and right now she technically wasn't on the clock.

         She briefly considered taking the stairs—the paperwork she needed was in the conference room on the third floor—but the clientele that frequented the building had an unfortunate habit of smoking in the stairwells, leaving them smelling like cigarettes and body odor, so she opted for the elevator instead. As the elevator rose, Sarah thought she could hear muffled noises coming from above her. The sounds got louder as she got closer to the third floor, and as the lift came to a stop she could clearly hear shouting and crashing from the other side of the doors.

         The elevator doors slid open, and the first thing Sarah saw was a six-foot-four Russian flying towards her. She jumped to the side as the man crashed into the open elevator, crumpling into a heap on the threshold. Behind him, chaos raged.

         Ronan and four men that Sarah loosely recognized as other employees were in various stages of fighting—and apparently losing to—a masked man dressed in black. Sarah's eyes widened as she recognized the subject of every Hell's Kitchen news outlet for the past few months: Daredevil.

         The vigilante was struggling with three of the men, while a bleeding Ronan leaned against the wall, gasping for breath and clutching his right arm, which appeared to be broken. Another man appeared to already be unconscious, sprawled out on the floor near the conference table. In the middle of the room, Daredevil moved impressively fast, thrashing one of the men while effectively blocking the other two.

         Sarah slammed her hand onto the down button, intending to get out of the fray, but the man whom she assumed Daredevil had thrown her way was blocking the doors from closing. He didn't wake as the doors bumped persistently against his side.

         "Shit. Shit, shit, shit."

         She bent down to try to heave his giant form out of the way, but within a few seconds of trying she could tell he was far too heavy. Suddenly she heard a gunshot and the water cooler that sat a mere few feet from the elevator door exploded, flooding the floor with water and broken glass. Snapping her head up, she saw Ronan—stupid, asshole Ronan—firing a handgun. He was apparently aiming at the vigilante, but with his dominant arm clearly broken he was forced to fire with his left hand, and the bullets were going everywhere.