what they wouldn't do | DAREDEVIL

twenty one

Sarah loitered near the corner of the platform and watched Matt carefully as he walked along the perimeter of the ring, trailing his fingers along the rope. She felt a pale flutter of nervousness in her stomach as she realized that she really had no idea what kind of situation she was stepping into.

"Have you ever taught anyone how to fight before?"

"Nope," he said, coming to a stop at the opposite corner of the ring, where he leaned back against the ropes with his arms spread wide. "Why?"

Her mind flashed to standing on the roof, watching Daredevil brutally wrench a man's arm out of its socket, and she couldn't help but speculate as to how much of that side of him he was about to bring into the ring. She hadn't really thought to ask about how this whole thing would work, and now she found that she didn't know what to expect.

Matt tilted his head as she fidgeted with the stretchy boxing wrap that was wound around her hand. She had tried to mimic the complicated wrapping pattern that she'd watched Matt do, and she'd done a good enough job that it held out throughout her hitting the punching bag, but was now starting to come partially undone.

After a few moments, he pushed himself away from the ropes and crossed the ring, stopping in front of her and reaching out to fix the boxing wrap. He took her left hand and began slowly unraveling the wrap. Once it was undone, he started to redo it, working quicker and much more deftly than Sarah had. He didn't say anything to her at first, so she waited, positive that he wasn't standing in front of her simply to help her with her boxing tape.

"Having second thoughts?" he asked quietly. She knew that he'd been picking up on her slight tick of nervousness.

"No. I just..." she shrugged, glancing around the ring before exhaling and figuring she might as well get right to the point. "Okay, scale of one to ten, with one being...Lawyer Matt who has pretty waitresses read menus for him. And ten being, like, straight-up Daredevil. Who am I looking at here?"

"Was that waitress pretty?" Matt asked innocently, and Sarah groaned.

"That's so not the point of the question."

Matt just nodded, apparently thinking about his answer as he continued wrapping her hand.

"Three?" He pressed his lips together and tilted his head as he reconsidered. "Three point five."

Sarah cast her eyes towards the ceiling and huffed slightly at how unsatisfactory her arbitrarily-chosen scale had been at helping her evaluate the situation, and Matt chuckled lightly at her reaction.

"I don't plan to take it easy on you, if that's what you're asking," he told her bluntly. "It would defeat the point. If you have to use anything I teach you against someone who isn't me, you know they aren't going to go easy on you."

"Yeah...I noticed," Sarah muttered, thinking of the force with which Ronan had hit her across the face. It had taken weeks for those bruises to fade completely.

Matt kept his focus on re-wrapping her hand as they talked, allowing her to process what he was saying without that x-ray feeling he sometimes gave her.

"There's no way to show you how to defend yourself without putting you on the defensive, but...you know that I'm not going to hurt you, right?"

Something about the way he asked made Sarah question if he was reassuring her or if he was looking for her to reassure him.

She watched him wind the boxing wrap around her hand: bringing it around her wrist, then her knuckles, back down over her thumb. She couldn't help but be reminded of the last time she had watched him wrap her hands up, the night of her struggle with Ronan. The first real glimpse she'd had that Matt Murdock could be anything other than a threat.