Cats and Mice

“He’s not going to die,” Dex slowly repeated, hoping that this time it would be enough to keep Eva quiet. 

She’d been screaming non stop ever since he’d brought the man back, and nothing seemed to be shutting her up. He’d even given her a suture kit. She hadn’t used it yet, instead begging him to bring the man to a hospital. 

He let go of his work around the cell and turned to look at her. “It’s not my plan for him to die now, so I suggest you start closing the wound before he bleeds out.”

“But you said-”

“I didn’t touch any artery,” he interrupted her. “Now if he dies, it’ll be because you still haven’t patched him up.” He squatted in front of her and slowly shook his head. “How will you tell your daughter that you let her father die ?”

“You’re a monster,” Eva managed to spit out between sobs. 

“I’m not cutting you into pieces to send them to her,” he argued. “I’m only returning the favor to people who hurt me.”

“What has she ever done to you ?”

“I don’t know, since you don’t want to tell me who she’s working with,” he sighed. “She’s also dating someone I want to hurt back. Collateral damage, remember ?"

Exhausted beyond words, Eva crawled back to get the suture kit and the clean cloths Dex gave her. She moved closer to Edward and tried her best to clean the wound in his shoulder, her hands shaking and tears falling down on his skin. 

She’d never done that before. The worst she ever had to deal with was when Fleur was seven, climbed a tree and decided to jump from it. She hurt her knee, and Eva had to sanitize it for a few days. That was it. She’d never been faced with a gunshot wound. She’d watched movies, but it all seemed to have disappeared from her mind. It was also not her ex-husband in those movies, and none of it was ever real. 

“Is the bullet still… is it inside ?” she asked.

“No. You just have to clean it up, stitch him, and then hope that it didn’t take you too long to help him,” Dex replied, already back to his DIY project in the back of the small cell. 

Eva had tried to figure out what it was, but now wasn’t the time to ask anything. Edward needed to survive, and he’d find a way to get them both out. He had to. Surely he’d been trained for this. 

Once the wound seemed to be clean, she took the needle from the suture kit. She’d sewed a few things before. She could do it. She took a deep breath, still trying to get her hands to shop shaking, and tried to pierce through Edward’s skin. It wasn’t anything like sewing the hem of a pair of pants. The skin was thick, and moved around, and she could almost hear it pop each time the needle was peeking through it. 

Eva had to swallow the bile that threatened to burst out of her throat multiple times. It made her painfully aware of the unsanitary conditions she was in. Edward was still clothed, lying on a floor she’d had to use for sleeping and eating for days, and herself hadn’t had the right to take a shower since she’d entered that cell. If he didn’t die from the loss of blood, chances were it would be from an infection. 

She closed the wound as well as she could, poured more water over her own hands and wrapped the last of her clean cloths around Edward’s arm as tight as she could. Blood was still coming out, but it was nothing like before. She let herself rest next to him, sitting on the ground, and let out a long sigh. 

“He needs a doctor,” she whispered. “If I tell you everything I know, will you drop him to the hospital ?”

A screwdriver between his teeth, Dex glanced at her and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now,” he replied, spitting the tool. “I gave you the painkillers, give him when he wakes up.”

Eva stared at him. He was still young, she couldn’t understand how someone could’ve ever turned the way he did. In another life, she would’ve tried to help him. Talk him out of it. But he was the man planning on going after her child. “I hope they kill you.”

Dex scoffed and ignored her, just like he’d been doing for days whenever she was bothering him. 

***

Rose got out of Marianne’s office, wearing a suit for the first time in months. The last time she’d worn one was also the last time she’d met with Wilson Fisk. She wasn’t the same person now. She was ready to get him to talk, by whatever means necessary. She knew that with him still being a regular person, her ‘means’ were rather restricted, but she could still make a deal with him. She’d thought about it all the way to the print shop. He’d talk. And if he didn’t, Vanessa would. 

She stopped by the empty room William and Marianne were getting ready for her to work. “You can have your office back,” she said with a smile. “Any word from my father ?”

“He texted,” William replied, waiting by the printer. “He’s driving your mother back.”

“Where ?”

“Didn’t ask.”

She sighed and walked away but Marianne followed her through the hallways. “You look better than yesterday,” she calmly said. “You’re sure you don’t want to reconsider ?”

“Yeah,” Rose replied. “I need to get to the bottom of it.”

“And it has nothing to do with that shop or the guy dating Rose Parsons, of course.”

She stopped and crossed her arms. “I know my job, Marianne. I don’t want an extraction to spoil my record.”

She left, hoping that it had been enough. Nothing had seemed to be enough lately whenever it had come to getting people off her back, she thought. She knew that she’d been too involved in that case. She’d known it the day she’d opened Bees’ Paradise. In all of her years working, she’d never questioned her lifestyle. But then, working at the shop, surrounded by the things she loved most, it made her realize that she could’ve had another choice. Maybe, if her mother had taken her along when she left, Rose would’ve had a flower shop, without having to lie about everything. 

Then she started thinking that along with a flower shop, she could actually have a normal relationship with a man. That didn’t help with her over-involvement. Rose knew that not everything had been out of her control there. She’d made mistakes. She’d tried to get her friends away from her real life only because she wanted to keep seeing them. She wanted that life. She messed up. Karma visited her, and she lost the shop. Now, she had to at least do right by her real job. The one paying her real bills, the one she chose because she believed in these people. 

She'd allowed herself a day to be sad and to mourn the life she wasn’t allowed to have, and now was the time to get her focus back. In a week, she’d be gone forever, and it had to be with another successful assignment. 

When Rose stopped in front of the prison, she felt the usual rush of adrenaline through her veins. Talking with Fisk was never a pleasure, but it was always an adventure. She waited by the visitors’ doors, where a guard went to meet her as usual. 

“Miss Penquist,” he said through his helmet, “it’s been a while.”

“I was hoping never to see you again,” she replied, having no idea of who was underneath that suit. 

She refused the vest he offered her, just like she always did, and walked straight to the main office. She hadn’t been here in months, but her feet remembered the way. It was like she’d never left. Instead of going alone to the conference room where she’d meet with the prisoner, she asked for a guard to be with her. They were quite surprised, but they knew better than to question her demands. She might’ve offered them a few plants and been nothing but nice, she was still the person with the highest clearance they’d ever met. 

Fisk was already sitting in the room when she entered, along with the guard. She briefly checked that he was correctly chained and walked back to the other side of the table. He looked at her and politely nodded. “It has been a long time, Agent Penquist,” he said. 

“Just a second,” she replied, holding a finger up. She turned to the guard by the door. “While we’re here, would you mind emptying his cell and looking through everything, please ? I want a complete inventory of what he owns. Check the mattress, too. We’ll get him a new one.”

Fisk angrily pulled on his restraints. “You can’t-”

“I can,” she replied with a smile. “And I will know what Mister Poindexter gave you when he visited you. Now, before you tell me that he never came here, let me remind you of the rules, Mr Fisk. You lie to me, and it’s another visit I’ll refuse to your wife.”

“I don’t know who Daredevil is,” he said. 

“I don’t believe you.”

He put his hands back on the table. Rose had made the mistake of asking the guards to let go of the cuffs around his neck once. She’d had to shoot him in the knee. He’d noticed that day that she was able to be scared. “I see you’ve met him,” he calmly said. 

“He didn’t do that.”

“Are you sure ?”

“Pretty sure, since he was the one to save me from my aggressor.”

Fisk arched a brow at her, a smile forming on the corner of his mouth. “Save you. I don’t think you need any saving, Agent Penquist.”

“I told you I’m not FBI, CIA or any other letters you might think of.”

“You’re on the side of the law,” he confidently stated. 

She scoffed. “As long as we have shared interests, and we both know that they’re not always on the side of the law themselves.” She opened a file, looked through a few pieces of paperwork, and turned back to him. “I’ve recently met with your wife. She’s getting big.” His jaw clenched, only leading her on the right path. “You haven’t met with your lawyer since your arrival here. I’m guessing that’s what Poindexter came to talk to you about.”

“I haven’t seen that man. He’s dead.”

“26 months now,” she said with a smile, crossing a line on a document. “Do you think you’ll see your wife before she dies of old age ?”

“Seeing her is not important,” he replied. “I want her safe.”

“If you say so,” she sighed. “Is she working with Mr Poindexter ?” He stared at her without a word. “Did you send him back to New York when he came here to talk to you ?” Again, she got no other response than a smirk. “Do you want to ever meet your son, Mr Fisk ?”

“I want him safe.”

“And I can make sure that he never meets either of his parents,” she coldly replied. “I can have Vanessa arrested and locked up for the rest of her life. He’ll be adopted, grow up with people with the ability to love him, and if you ever see the light of day again, he’ll have nothing but hatred for you after everything you’ve done.” She pushed the file away and leaned forward. “Do you want your wife to never see her son ? Do you have any idea of the anguish it’ll cause her ?”

Fisk slammed his fist onto the table. Rose jolted back when she noticed it trembling, but tried to keep her composure in front of a man who would have crushed her skull. “Are you threatening my wife, Agent Penquist ?”

“Even if I was, there’s nothing you can do against it. You’re here, and she’s gonna be my next visit,” she warned him. “What happens when I see her depends solely on you. Did you send Mr Poindexter after me ?”

He took a deep breath, calming himself slowly, and kept staring at her in silence. She'd never get another word from him.

One more time, her visit had been a failure. Rose had managed to get him scared, but to no end. He still wouldn’t talk. She left him in the room, chained to the floor, and walked back to the guards. Two of them escorted her to Fisk’s cell, where someone was already taking everything out. 

A few prisoners tried to talk to her. She ignored their calls, their whistles, and the way they were talking to her. Most of them hadn’t seen a regular person in years, even less a woman. There was nothing interesting in the cell. Fisk hadn’t been allowed books or letters, there was nothing to be found anywhere. 

“The mattress ?” she asked. The guard shook his head. It had to be somewhere. If Vanessa wanted him to know about the child, she could’ve done it through the lawyer. Instead, she had Poindexter kill a guard and meet with Fisk. It had to be for a delivery of some sort. “Have you checked him ?”

“The prisoner ?”

“Yeah. His clothes, his shoes, his fucking colon.”

“His… colon ?” the guard asked, his voice getting dangerously high. Rose nodded. “We’ll have to sedate him, then.”

“I can wait.”

In all honesty, Rose had to admit that she went a little far with a rectal exam. She was obviously still pretty angry about her shop. While a nurse and three guards went back to the conference room to sedate Fisk and search him, she waited with the rest of that day’s team. She checked on the flowers she’d offered them. Still alive, and they’d pinned her instructions on the wall. They were a nice group of men, she thought. And they had living plants, which wasn’t her case anymore. 

As soon as they left the infirmary, sooner than Rose had expected, she rushed back to meet them in the hallway. Fisk was already being sent back to his cell, sleeping on a stretcher. The guard handed her a small envelope, thankfully not covered in fecal matter. 

“The shoes,” the guard said. “We decided not to check his-”

“Good call,” Rose scoffed. He led her back to the entrance, where she stopped to shake his hand. “I’m very sorry about Mr Hansen,” she said. “My superiors are aware of the ongoing investigation about the respect of the security guidelines and are making sure none of it falls back on any of you.”

He took his helmet off and nodded at her. “Do you know who killed Yuri ?”

“We do, and we’re doing our best to catch him,” she replied. “But you did nothing wrong. He’s a trained individual who’s worked with the FBI in the past. He’d already been assigned to the transfer of a prisoner here, he knew the protocol.” She patted him on the back of his uniform and smiled. “You’re doing a great job with the plant, by the way."

***

Hours. It had been hours, and it would take them days to be done with all the CCTV footage from Rose’s shop. Foggy even had to beg Marci for help watching all of it. The one thing he’d needed everyone to work on was the same one Matt was completely useless for. 

They’d split the footage in three, desperately hoping to find something useful. The person who came to destroy the shop had to have been there before. Someone that focused on hurting someone else surely went to check on Rose. So far, they had nothing. They’d never find any footage of Dex either. He’d stayed away from the cameras every single night. 

Karen walked back from the kitchen and placed two cups of coffee in front of Foggy and Marci before going back to her desk. They all kept watching Rose selling flowers, rearranging her shelves, cleaning and working on all of her other projects. Hour after hour, always the same things, and she was always smiling. 

“You were right,” Marci said, looking at Foggy over her screen. “She’s good. Why did she choose Hell’s Kitchen ? She could’ve opened on the East side and made more money.”

“She said it was the only place she could afford.”

Marci nodded and kept looking at her screen. 

After an hour and two more coffees for each of them, Foggy was drawn out of his focus by Marci letting out a small ‘Oh’. He immediately looked up. “What ? You got something ?”

“Well, yes. Look at-” She closed her eyes, waiting for Foggy to be done shouting at Karen to join them. Marci didn’t exactly understand how this could interest her too, but she still showed them the screen. “She was looking at the pictures I sent her, and look. That’s exactly what I wanted,” she said with a smile, watching the small composition Rose was trying out.”

Karen frowned. “It’s very pretty, but that’s not what we’re looking for here.”

“Outside of her mother, or aunt, or whatever, that’s the only thing I have,” Marci sighed, turning the screen back towards her. 

“Her… mother ?” Foggy asked. “Where does that come from ?”

“Here,” she replied, looking for the right stamp on the footage. “She was with Matt, he didn’t tell you ?”

“He said there was a woman, not that it was her mother for sure,” Karen said, sitting behind her. 

They all looked at the image Marci stopped on for a few seconds. When she realized that neither Karen or Foggy were getting it, she zoomed in. Still, there was no reaction from them. “It’s the bone structure,” she said, going back a few seconds. “See ? The hair, the eyes, the… nose, I guess. I can’t say for sure because I’ve only seen her beaten up, but they’re family.”

“He did talk about an accent, coherent with what Rose told him about her mother,” Karen mumbled, sending the woman’s clearest picture to the printer. “We need to find her.”

She noted the time of the picture and rushed out of Foggy’s office, leaving him to stare at his fiancée. “Have I ever told you that you’re a genius ?” he asked. 

“You don’t need to, Foggybear, I already know.” She leaned forward and kissed him before closing her laptop. “We deserve a break.”

“You deserve everything you want,” he agreed. 

***

Pregnancy wasn’t something that Vanessa was enjoying very much. She’d always been a very independent woman. Now, she was the slave of her bladder and stomach, and could barely walk without feeling a contraction coming. She wanted nothing more than to comply with her midwife’s orders and stay in bed all day, but she was too hungry to sleep. 

She poured herself another glass of apple juice, checked on her current stock of the beverage she couldn’t live without, and decided to have another toast. It was probably time for another snack. 

She left the kitchen, hoping to get back to her room in peace, but dropped everything to the floor when she saw Daredevil waiting for her by the window.

She made a move to call for security, but he was fast enough to run and grab her wrist. “Don’t. I came to talk to you,” he said. 

“What about ?” she asked, her whole body shaking next to him. She instinctively protected her belly with her free hand and moved away from the man who’d already taken her son’s father. “Your deal with Wilson still stands. I haven’t told anyone about you.”

Vanessa knew better than to start an argument with a man who could’ve sent her to jail. She only wanted him to leave, and she’d done nothing against him, no matter how much she wanted it.

“Rose Parsons,” he calmly said. “You went after her.”

“I didn’t,” she replied, holding onto the kitchen counter as another contraction was tearing her abdomen apart. “None of what happened to her was my fault,” she managed to add, her voice breaking between each word. She didn’t want him to think she was weak. She had to hold on, at least until he left. “It wasn’t me.”

Matt took a few steps to stand in front of her, only separated by the counter. He patiently waited for her to breathe through the pain before speaking again. “You asked her to work for you. Why ?”

“She opened a shop right under your office. I thought she’d give me information.”

Vanessa noticed the way he tilted his head slightly to the left, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear. “You’re lying,” Matt calmly said. “If you ever come near her again, flowers or not, I’ll make sure that you spend the rest of your life in jail.”

“You can’t-” 

She let go of the counter and took a step back. When her back met the refrigerator, she slowly let herself slide down, moaning, until she was sitting on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor. She held both of her hands on her stomach, silently begging the pain to go away. Matt rushed to help her, but she pushed his hand away. 

“Let me-”

“I want you to leave,” she stopped him, tears falling down her cheeks despite her best efforts at keeping them inside. “Leave us alone.”

Vanessa considered telling him that the flower girl wasn’t who she said she was, but he deserved to lose her. He went to the one place where she’d considered herself to be safe, dressed as the Devil, and threatened her. Jail. She’d never get to raise her child if he ever decided to make right by his promise. But he cared about that woman, enough to have come here and confirm her suspicions. 

Matt walked away from her, only stopping when he reached the large bay on the other side of the room. “Call a doctor, Vanessa.”

With that, he jumped outside and disappeared from her sight, leaving her alone on the floor, waiting for another contraction to come and pass, surrounded by the remains of what was supposed to be her second afternoon snack. 

Vanessa was furious. She was tired of that man being in every single one of her nightmares. She was scared. He had the power to send her far away from her child, and she knew that she’d always be the first person he’d blame for his or his friends’ problems. One day, he’d be able to come inside at night and take her son from her. Just because he could. Just because he’d blame her for a minor inconvenience. 

The only relief for Vanessa at that moment resided in the fact that she had the means of exacting her revenge without having to do anything. One of these days, he’d learn the truth about that girl he cared about. Vanessa decided that that day would be the one she’d choose to move as far away from New York as possible. He would never be able to hurt her family again. 

Right when she decided to get off the floor and clean up the mess around her, the front door of her apartment slammed open. The flower girl entered, closely followed by Vanessa’s entire security team. 

As her bodyguard was helping her back on her feet, Vanessa noticed the clothes the other woman was wearing. She was apparently done pretending to be a florist. Whoever she was working for, she was a professional and wanted her to know that she was here on an official visit. She still looked concerned, but Vanessa knew better than to trust any of these people. 

Rose waited for her host to sit at the table before throwing her the envelope they’d found in Fisk’s shoes. Vanessa slowly opened it, recognizing the ultrasound picture instantly. The flower girl had met with her husband. “Who are you ?” she asked, hoping that her hands would stop shaking. “I want to see my lawyer.”

“No need,” Rose replied, sitting in front of her. “I’m not here for you, that’s why they let me through.” She threw a quick glance at the security waiting by the door and rolled her eyes. “I know you’re working with Benjamin Poindexter.”

“I’m-”

“No,” she interrupted her. “Let me tell you the rules, here. Each lie will cost you a year with your son.”

The midwife had begged Vanessa to rest and avoid stress. Vanessa wanted nothing more, but how could she have ever been able to rest when people were showing up to threaten her and her unborn child ? “You’ve seen Wilson,” she calmly said, letting go of a breath against the midwife’s rules. There was no time for deep breaths anymore. 

Rose nodded. “Many times. I suggest you learn from his mistakes and don’t lie to me. You won’t be able to see him for at least another 26 months.”

Her, Vanessa thought. It had been the florist’s fault the whole time. She’d made it impossible for her to tell her husband about their child in person. She didn’t care about the rules, she didn’t care about the neverending tension in her abdomen. That woman sitting in front of her had to pay. 

And all she had to do was to tell the truth. Comply. “I didn’t ask him to destroy your shop,” she admitted. “I’m not mad that he did.”

“Did you send him to make the delivery to my shop ?”

“I did.”

“He’s killed people,” Rose said. “We can prove it already. What you just told me is enough to send you to jail for life.”

“I didn’t-”

“Look,” Rose stopped her, “I’m willing to forget about your association with a known criminal and his criminal hobbies. I can do that because I truly believe that you didn’t mean for any of this to happen. You thought that you could handle that psycho the way you handled your husband.”

“I only have love for my husband.”

“And him for you,” Rose admitted. “He’s willing to never see you again because he thinks he can protect you. But Benjamin Poindexter is unable to love. Either you’re of use to him, or you’re not.”

Vanessa leaned forward, in a last desperate attempt to get something from this meeting. “I’ll tell you everything I know if you let me see Wilson.”

Rose slowly shook her head. “I’m very sorry, but that’s not how it works,” she calmly said. “I’m not a social worker. There were rules, and Mr Fisk refused to comply with them. I’m only here because of your new acquaintance.”

“And yet, it’s my son that you’re threatening.”

“Is it working ?” Vanessa nodded, earning herself a smile from the florist. “I knew you were smart.” Rose looked through her purse and pushed a card towards Vanessa. “Next time he comes to talk to you, call me. If you try to help him escape, I’ll make sure you never get the chance to hold your son.” 

She left her seat and sighed, looking at the pregnant woman. “You don’t get to threaten me and then pity me,” Vanessa said. 

Instead of leaving, Rose walked closer to her and kneeled by her side. “None of it is fair, I know it,” she said in a quiet voice. “But you chose Wilson Fisk, you chose to let Poindexter into your life. You want what’s best for your son, and I don’t want to tear him away from his mother.” Her hands landed on Vanessa’s hands, gripping at the sides of her chair. “I’m really sorry for the stress I’ve caused you. You should call your midwife.”

Rose took all of her stuff back and walked away. She stopped by the bodyguard to get her gun back. Vanessa watched her, calmly putting it back inside her purse, after having threatened everything she held dear. 

She stayed behind the table long after Rose was gone. Vanessa couldn’t believe that she’d never once mentioned the real motive of her arrival to New York. Vanessa would call the flower girl, because that was the deal she’d made. She wouldn’t come after her, because that was the deal she’d made. She didn’t need anything other than playing by their rules. 

In the end, Vanessa thought, these two deserved each other and everything coming their way. 

***

“Hold the door,” Karen shouted as she was trying to catch up with a man entering the building the woman on the camera footage had been seen before. She smiled at him, still panting, and pulled a picture from her pocket. “Thank you. Maybe you could help me again ?” she asked, handing it to him. “I’ve heard this woman was living here.”

He briefly looked at the printed picture and nodded. “Yeah, that’s Eva. She’s been talking to my wife. 3rd floor, but we haven’t seen her much lately.”

“Did she tell you why she was in town ?”

“Meet her daughter,” he replied with a smile. “I think her divorce went wrong, because they haven’t seen each other in a while. What kind of father keeps a child away from her mother, uh ?”

He then showed her the way to the elevator, and Karen left it on the 3rd floor. The apartment was the only one on that floor, the only other door there leading to a utility room for the cleaning lady, also used whenever someone shot another individual and had to cover his tracks. Karen knocked, but no one replied. She tried again, trying to press her ear against the door, but nothing was coming from the inside. She tried another time, calling for ‘Eva’. In a last attempt, she tried opening the door. 

Much to her surprise, it wasn’t locked. The lights were still on, but there was apparently no one inside. Karen searched for the gun in her purse and entered the place, ready to scream if needed be. She immediately noticed the box pulled over on top of the bed and decided to take a look at what seemed to be a lot of pictures. 

There was no mistaking the place anymore. All of the pictures were showing Rose at various stages of her life. Graduation, college, on a garden cutting the stems of a rose bush, learning how to drive with-

“Holy shit,” Karen breathed out, staring at the man standing next to the car while Rose was probably trying to park it. 

That man was in many of the pictures on that bed. Year after year, he was always there with her. He had to be Rose’s father. Coincidentally, he was also the man who showed up in Karen’s office while she was still working at the Bulletin, demanding that she stopped writing about Frank Castle to let him get some peace. She’d tried to fight it, to keep writing about the truth, but Ellison somehow sided with the man and refused to print another article about this. 

That man and Rose were related. That man who came to her about Frank had a daughter who appeared right next to Hell’s Kitchen’s very own superhero. In Karen’ mind, it was all but a coincidence. It couldn’t be. 

Not wanting to repeat her past mistakes and give her friend the benefit of the doubt, Karen didn’t immediately go back to her friends. Instead, she decided that she had some calls to make. 

***

There wasn’t much in life that could turn Rose’s conscience upside down. Ordering a rectal exam on a man to get information was something she could deal with rather easily. Threatening a pregnant woman and her unborn child was already a little harder for her to bear. Using a man’s blindness to read his own file right next to him, that was a whole new level of messed up, even for her. 

When she’d finally come back from her visits to the Fisks, William had shoved Matt’s file into her hands, called him boring and perfect for Rose Parsons, and left. Rose wasn’t sure that his insulted intent had been achieved, however. She could’ve gotten used to ‘boring’. 

After changing back to her current clothes, she drove back to Hell’s Kitchen, got something to eat on the way, picked up Matt from the office and drove them back to his place. He asked about her day while they were eating, she lied, and they both ended up sitting on his couch, each of them reading their own thing, barely talking at all. What William had called boring, Rose was finding it comforting. She’d had enough excitement at work and didn’t need to bring it back after hours. 

But if Rose was feeling bad about using Matt’s blindness against him, he wasn’t feeling any better now that he was desperately trying to link everything that had happened to either of them to both Vanessa Fisk and Rose herself. He’d also lied about his day, about the content of his current read, and Rose wasn’t suspecting a single thing. 

When everyone at the office had been busy with the camera footage, Matt went to the precinct to beg Brett for everything he had that could be related to Rose in any way. One thing led to another, and he left with a double disappearance, a murder homicide that was, according to Brett, ‘a monumental joke’, all of the depositions regarding the shop’s destruction and Rose’s aggression, and a file about a guard from Fisk’s prison that had been found dead. It had nothing to do with Rose, but Brett had found it particularly interesting that all of these happened in a matter of days and were all either geographically or in substance, related to Matt himself. Just like Foggy, Karen and Matt, Brett was convinced that someone was working with Fisk and using Rose. 

So far, Matt had nothing. Not the slightest hint at who could’ve been behind all this. Of course Vanessa was the first person who came to his mind, but he had been unable to tell if the woman was lying or not when they met. She was in too much pain for him to form a coherent opinion on her honesty. At least Karen had a lead, he thought, running his fingers over the files. She’d called to tell them that she’d share everything with them the next morning, and he was only hoping that her lead got them somewhere useful. 

Rose’s heart skipped a beat. He’d been keeping it as a background noise ever since he’d begun reading, not only to make sure that she was fine, but also to help him concentrate better. “You’re okay ?” he asked as her heartbeat was slowly going back to normal. 

She nodded. “Yeah. I just saw how much of the damages my insurance won’t be covering. Many zeros.”

She’d instead just learned that Sister Maggie, the nun who seemed to have taken a real interest in her and had caught them making out like teenagers, was in fact Matt’s mother. That wasn’t exactly what ‘boring’ meant, even by William’s standards. She wondered if Matt knew about it, but there was no way he didn’t. That explained why he always found it so embarrassing that the nun was talking to her. He knew, and didn’t think it would be relevant to tell her. 

She put her files down and looked at his hands over the paper. “How can you read with both hands ?”

“It’s faster this way,” he replied with a smile. “I get the letters from both ends and my brain forms the sentence by itself.”

“Wow.”

“It’s easy when you get used to it,” he scoffed. “You want to try ?” he asked, praying that she would either say no or be really bad at reading braille. 

“I would’ve said yes, but you’ve turned down every single one of my attempts to get you to buy yourself a plant,” she laughed. “So… no. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t want to look like an idiot by not reading a single letter correctly.”

Matt turned as she was walking back to his kitchen to get herself another glass of wine. “I can’t get a plant, because I can’t read your instructions.”

She froze, eyes and mouth wide open. “I… Shit, I didn’t think of it.”

“I could get a fake one.”

Rose sat back next to him and briefly leaned in to kiss him. “Let me pretend that you never said that. Fake plants are an insult to everything that is holy.”

“That wasn’t anywhere in the Bible,” he laughed, pushing his own files away. “I’ve read it.”

“It must be somewhere. Subtext or something.”

She rested her head on his shoulder and they both went back to their work. She noticed how much slower Matt was going, and expected him to complain, but he kept his left arm around her without saying anything. For another hour, they kept working in silence. Rose’s heart never skipped another beat. Outside of a few months without practicing law, there was nothing to be said about Matt. William might’ve been right, and Matt Murdock was simply a little boring. And that was fine. 

Matt however felt a change in her heartbeat when she decided to put her files down for good. He offered to help if her insurance sent him a copy in braille, which she wasn’t sure the print shop was able to do even if she’d been working on insurance papers, but that didn’t help. 

All Rose could think of was that in less than a week, she’d be gone. Rose Parsons wouldn’t stop to drive him back to his place. Maybe he’d wait for a while, or maybe he’d walk home to find that she’d taken all of her stuff away from his place. She’d leave a note, like she had always done whenever some people were at risk of trying to find her again. She’d tell him that she went back to her father after filing for bankruptcy and wanted to spare them both a very uncomfortable goodbye. Maybe he’d be disappointed, or maybe not. Rose already knew that she would be. She had liked Rose Parsons more than she should have, enough to have become jealous of a woman that didn’t exist. 

She drifted off to sleep, his arm around her, and thought of a day when her life would become boring.