mistakes | matt.murdock

prologue

SHE STARED at the looming gray building above her, home to Kingston Corps. Lizzy couldn't believe, that she was back here at eleven o'clock at night, a full 5 hours after she had already been free for the day. She had forgotten the dull paperwork that was needed to be filled out, and as what she had learned over the past 10 months working here, mistakes were not tolerated, specifically by her overbearing director, Roman. He took every opportunity to intimidate her, his ever wandering hands, and wandering eyes, and constantly threatening her to the higher-ups that she wasn't working hard enough to keep up the agreement she had signed up for.

Sighing, she entered employee card into the security system, she contemplated on using the stairs, but decided against it. Going up 6 levels of flightless stairs in the middle of the night might not be a good idea, she thought, so she opted for the elevators instead. As the elevators rose, she thought she had heard muffled noises above her. The noise got louder and louder as she got closer to the sixth floor, and as the elevators stopped, she could hear shouting and crashing from the other side of the door.

The elevator doors slid open, and the first thing Lizzy saw was a six-foot-three Irish man flying towards her. She immediately stepped to the side just in time as the man crashed into the open elevator, crumpling into a heap beside the threshold. Behind him, chaos raged.

Roman and five mens that Lizzy loosely recognized as other employees, were in various stages of fighting— and clearly losing to a man dressed in all black, with a black mask draped on half of his face, concealing his identity. The moment she recognized who he was, Lizzy's eyes widen and realization struck her like lightning, it's the goddamn devil of Hell's Kitchen, Daredevil.

As she ducked inside the elevator, she took a glimpse and realized that Roman was clutching his right hand, which seemed to be broken, while he was firing madly at the vigilante with his left hand. Taking this as her opportunity, she crawled away from the elevator to her office, but midway there, one of his shots ricocheted near her, and she immediately let out a startled scream, but no one seemed to hear her over the loud commotion around them. Stupid, stupid, asshole Roman, Lizzy scanned her surroundings for a way out. The elevator is definitely a no-go, and the stairs are too far away for her to run without getting hit by Roman's bullet.

Scrambling over to the nearest wall, she saw an open office, and immediately she ducked her way inside, but something smashed into the wall above her, and Lizzy screamed. This time, it seemed to catch the vigilante's attention, as his head snapped towards her attention, and at the moment of distraction, one of the men he was fighting used it as an opportunity to slash his face with what looked like a shard of glass. The vigilante hissed in pain, and slammed his fist to the men's jaw, knocking him unconscious.

Lizzy dipped into the small office she saw before, and scanned her eyes to find any hiding spot, unfortunately, the only possible hiding spot for her was under a desk. Cursing at her luck, she crawled into the small space, and fumbled inside her purse to grab her stun gun. Lizzy wasn't sure who she was more scared of, the vigilante who's now taking on four fully grown men, or the idiot with a gun and no aim. A stun gun wouldn't do much good on either of them, but its better than nothing, she supposed.

She listened as the fight continued. The gunshots ceased, as Roman's screams echoed through the floor. And suddenly, it was silent. She heard Daredevil speaking to him quietly, and Lizzy strained her ears to hear what he was saying.

"who took over for Fisk ?", Daredevil asked in a deadly calm tone

"screw you"

There was a crunching sound, and he screeched in pain. It sounded like the vigilante was breaking his fingers, and Lizzy immediately winced.

"choose your answer correctly, who's taking over for Fisk ?"

"i-i don't k-know m-man, they-they don't tell us a-anyt-thing"

The vigilante growled in frustration.

"the list of the employees that works here, where is it ?" he demanded

"i-its i-in a f-flashd-disk"

Satisfied by Roman's answer, Lizzy heard a thump, which she guessed that the vigilante had knocked him unconscious. Lizzy peered around the table, just in time to see that the vigilante was limping slowly towards her. As he stood in the middle of the room, shoulders heaving as he breathed heavily, the moonlight through the window illuminated the lower part of his face that wasn't covered by the mask, showing a nasty gash just below his cheekbone and running up over his jaw. The vigilante was still standing there, unmoving, "what in heavens name is he doing ?" Lizzy thought to herself. He suddenly tilted his head towards her direction, and her stomach dropped, she immediately retreated back to her hiding spot, and held her breath. Lizzy could feel her heartbeat skyrocketing, her heart thudding against her ribcage, so loud, she thought he might've heard her. She gripped her stun gun tightly, ready to use it if he were to attack her. "Please don't come looking for me, don't come looking for me" She silently prayed to herself.

She had no way of knowing of course, that Matt definitely knew she was there, her heartbeat which thudded loudly against her ribcage, was echoing throughout the office, as clear as daylight; her lavender scented shampoo and her perfume were like a beacon, telling him exactly where she was hiding.

After what felt a century of him standing there, head in her direction, he seemed to have snapped out of it, he limped over the window, lifted it up, and heaved himself out, just as she heard sirens wailing. Lizzy let out a breath of relief, so much for that goddamn paperwork. She crawled out of the desk, and briefly wondered, how Daredevil could survive casually jumping out of a sixth story window.