what they wouldn't do | DAREDEVIL

twenty five

A short while after Matt had left her standing alone in the empty hospital room, Sarah found herself in front of a liquor store, debating whether or not to go in. Of all the times to give up drinking, why she picked now, again?

After a few minutes of lingering, she shook her head and made herself walk away, hoping the fresh air (or, as fresh as the air ever got in Hell's Kitchen) would do more to clear her mind that alcohol would have.

She wished that she had held out and not told Matt her suspicions about Karen. He probably would have gotten past the injuries Karen had sustained once a little time had passed and he'd had time to think about it. But accusing Karen had been a mistake. Sarah knew how protective he was of his friends, knew that Karen had been in Matt's life as someone he cared about long before Sarah ever showed up—what did she think he was going to do when she told him? Instantly believe her that one of his best friends might have killed a man? She wasn't even sure she believed it herself.

But when he'd started to leave the hospital room she had just panicked, thinking she might have ruined everything with him, and it had hurt more than she'd expected. And before she knew it the words had just spilled out, making everything a million times worse.

Because after that argument, it was painfully obvious that Sarah was not—and probably never would be—in the same category as Foggy and Karen. They were the good people in Matt's eyes, the light parts of his life who needed to be protected. And Sarah, no matter how many times Matt helped to keep her safe, was still something else, something not quite as light and good as the two of them. She was still just a few steps away from being seen as an enemy, no matter how many times he called her a friend. Maybe she had earned Daredevil's trust, but the moment she crossed the line into affecting Matt Murdock's life, things were different.

She half expected Matt to show up that night, either to reconcile or to yell at her some more—she wasn't sure which seemed more likely at this point, but probably the latter. But the window to her fire escape remained silent.

He didn't show up the next night either, and she wasn't sure if she was glad or not.

--

"This seems dramatic."

"It's not dramatic. This is just what we have to do for a little while."

Sarah was sitting cross legged on her couch with her laptop open in front of her, a bag of popcorn on her lap and a her second-largest kitchen knife—the largest having never been returned to her after that night on the roof—on the coffee table next to her.

Lauren's skeptical face squinted at her through the computer screen. After the fiasco with Karen and Donovan two days ago, Sarah had restricted her visits with Lauren to Skype dates and phone calls.

"I can't believe you decided to ground yourself two days before my due date."

"I know," Sarah said guiltily. "I'm sorry. But...I have no way of telling when I'm being followed and when I'm not. I can't lead the crazy people in my life straight to your place—or anywhere else. I'm just going back and forth from work to home, and that's it. At least until..."

"Until what? These guys die of old age?" Lauren asked.

"Until I figure something out," Sarah said resolutely, sounding more confident than she felt. In reality, she had no plan for shaking off Ronan and his new lackey, Officer Donovan. If it was just Ronan tormenting her, she could maybe try to get him arrested, but she was certain Donovan would somehow find a way around that. And the one person she'd been hanging her hopes on to help her appeared to no longer be an option.