All Roads Lead to Hell *Matt Murdock* (book three of Damned-3a)

4) The new case

...aka dealing with the consequences. And switch to Matt's POV towards the end of the chapter.

...

The apartment was a mess. Their apartment was a mess. Even with two blown light bulbs, she could still see that. Concrete dust on everything, documents all around the boxes that were on top – luckily the Braille printer survived; when Vera walked into the kitchen space, she could see that Matt's kettle (and she could call it Matt's, okay, she wasn't using it) for the coffeemaker wasn't so lucky. Laptops were intact, so there was an upside. Otherwise it was all glass and ceramic shreds, spices and culinary herbs all over the floor. She was sure it must have been quite pleasant for Matt's sensitive nose... not.

And hey, the candy seemed to survive too. She had to look at it from the bright side, right? She had just lived through an earthquake; if she was ever reliving, it might not be so scary. Except Vera was frankly sure she would be scared shitless just the same.

She put on some music, because otherwise she would go crazy from hearing the sirens (and from the imaginations of what Matt was doing out there, the intrusive noise only reminding her) and got to work.

It took her about a half an hour to realize she should have called her friends if they were okay.

Terri was. She had been with alone at her apartment, because Vic had been at work already, but apparently she had spoken to him and he was alright as well and on his way to her. Nina had been home with her husband, both okay. Trish was apparently alright too. Vera didn't know who else to call. She tried Claire, but she wasn't picking up – Vera tried to comfort herself with the idea of the nurse being in the hospital on duty and busy. Vera knew Danny was out of country, so she didn't even try. She didn't bother with Brett Mahoney either – firstly, he was a cop so he was probably out there, and secondly, he was a big boy and probably had bunch of better friends to check up on him.

Foggy called Vera before she could call him – they were both okay, Karen and him, though Karen was already out there, a reporter working on a story. Vera just hummed in sympathy at that, noting that Matt was obviously out too; Foggy apparently figured as much, but he didn't seem to appreciate the reminder, now worrying about two people instead of one.

The cleaning had no end. It was mostly small works, but there were so many. Vera already started a list of things she would need to replace, starting with the light bulbs – to her shock, Matt did have two spare ones, but it was probably a good idea to stock them again. When she finally quit vacuum cleaning as well, it was almost midnight; she sent a quiet apology to their neighbours for being so loud at the hour, but no one had come to complain about it, so she guessed it was fine.

When showering, she missed a text from Matt. She found it later and it took her a while to translate the 'Im nkax. Lotr oe worj.', mainly because she forgot how an actual phone keyboard looked like, but she really appreciated the effort, especially since he obviously texted her in hurry.

She nestled on the couch around half past one, hoping she would either wake up at his arrival or he would do it for her.

---

Matt did it for her.

She woke up startled by a touch on her shoulder, immediately snapping her eyes open, jerking up to a sitting position.

"Matt?"

His face was blurry in the light of the billboard, but she was pretty sure it wasn't soaking with blood. He had had the decency to take of his mask; if she had been woken up by the Devil, she might as well get a heart attack. He stopped her when she reached for her glasses on the coffee table.