AN Somehow, we've basically reached the four year anniversary of this story? Thank you everyone who has waited and stuck by me, and also thank you to all the newcomers! This is definitely the most egregious of my passion projects, and I'm pleased people care enough to follow along.

Claire awoke with the smell of Matt in her nose. She stayed there a few groggy moments, trying to make sense of last night. She had kissed Matt and he had kissed back and they might just make it work. They were finally trying, at least.

Claire reached over to Matt, but found his side of the bed empty. Still warm, though. He must have gotten up just before she awoke. She could get used to that. Then she squirmed at how permanent it all sounded.

A soft clatter came from the kitchen. Claire sat up slowly, considering what came next. They would talk, he had promised her that. And as much as Claire wanted to run out and see Matt, her stomach twisted at the thought of them yelling again.

She got up and pulled on Matt's bathrobe, feeling strangely modest. Her face burned when she remembered the frenzy of the night before. He had touched her thighs and back and face and she had wanted more, had been fine if he took all her clothes off and worshipped her body with his so-called sinner's hands. Her mother would have a fit if she found out. Soledad had little time for the scandalous, free-roaming youths that were so common these days. But Claire was tired of doing things just because they were expected of her.

Matt was making breakfast. He looked different than usual, more like a real person that had woken up late than someone that was dressed and pressed before she had even rolled out of bed. Matt had pulled on a shirt and cared enough to tuck it in and roll up the sleeves, but he was barefoot and his hair was barely this side of presentable. He looked human and approachable enough that Claire could have cried.

He glanced around at the creak in the floor and smiled at her.

"Good morning," he murmured. Claire stopped in the mouth of the kitchen and he stepped forward to meet her halfway. His hands hovered awkwardly for a moment, and she could see him thinking—was he allowed to touch her, could he put his hand on her hip, her shoulder, maybe, was it alright if he went so far as to kiss her, no, he'd best keep it simple—before he brushed a strand of hair from her face. Claire's smile was small and uncertain.

"Did you sleep alright?" she asked.

"Yeah," he murmured. "Did you?"

She smiled and glanced at the stove. "What're you making?"

"Eggs. There's also rolls from the other day."

Claire nodded and stepped around him to the ice box. She pulled out a jar of preserves and the milk, then settled at the table as he set down the plates.

They both kept their eyes down for a long moment, the only sounds in the room the rumble of the street outside and the quiet clink of their forks.

"Are we going to talk about last night?" he asked.

Claire looked up, surprised at how straightforward the question was. Then she saw the nervous edge of shame in his face and remembered. It wasn't just that they had kissed last night. Matt had also had a nightmare, one so terrible that he had been shouting in English and Spanish and even a little of what she thought was French. The Great War gave as much as it took, it seemed.

"I would really like that," she told him.

Matt played with his fork, moving bits of bread crumb around on his plate.

"Where…do we begin?"

"From the beginning."

Matt sighed and put his fork down. "I—do you really? It's…there's a lot, and I—"

"Tell me what matters."

He watched her a long moment, then looked back down. "I joined the army when I was still in college," he murmured. "Foggy and I, we were going to be lawyers. He stayed in school, took care of his family, opened his own practice. Promised that he'd give me a job, as soon as the war was over, because he's Foggy and he'd never consider anything else. But then…everything started happening and I couldn't stay here, so I joined. I left school and joined."

"And your parents didn't mind?"

"My mom wasn't around," he said quietly. "And my father died of the consumption two years before."

"Oh."

Claire's gaze dropped to her lap. Everything started happening, indeed. It was a little strange to for her to think—after all, Claire's life had only started shifting after the war started, when her father left and then died and suddenly Claire was in the middle of a world that was raging with possibility that everyone said she wasn't allowed. Little wonder she started playing nurse for the boxers, little wonder she had fallen in love with an Irishman.

They were quiet again until she asked, "Do you often get nightmares?"

"Uhm…sometimes. I don't really…I can't tell if they're bad, because…"

Nobody was there to wake him up.

"What was it about? You were talking a lot, but it didn't really make sense."

Matt's eyes skated across the room, flicking from the tiny counter, the faded photograph above the sink, the pan still on the stove. Claire opened her mouth to ask another question, but Matt cast her a nervous glance.

"I can't—Claire, I can't talk about all of this right now."

"But you—"
"Claire, I can't," he told her, and she saw the same blind panic in his eyes as last night. "Later, I promise later, but right now—the war is too fresh in my head."

Claire leaned back in her chair. What had happened in Europe that still haunted men nearly ten years later?
"So how do we make it better?" she asked.

He shrugged and sighed. "If I knew that, I wouldn't be boxing."

Claire blinked again, not sure why that hit her in the chest the way it had. It was becoming more and more apparent that there were whole swathes of Matt's life that she didn't know at all.

She played with her hands, then finally asked the question she had been wondering for quite some time.

"Don't you think…it might be better…if you stopped fighting?"

He sucked in an almost laugh. "Then what do I do when I feel like I'm gonna have a fit, when something's gonna break?"

Claire shook her head, voice as kind as she could make it. "You let it go."

Matt looked away, mouth drawing tight over his teeth in that way that said he would never stop fighting. He fought with the law and his hands and his words and his heart. He must find it absurd for Claire to ask him to give up such a large part of his being.

She leaned forward, hand out to take his. "You've been back for years, Matt, but you haven't come home. You haven't left the war."

He looked at her, a quick flicker of his dark, dark eyes, but he didn't say anything.

"I'm scared I've forgotten how to do anything else," he whispered after a long moment.

Claire smiled and waggled her fingers, encouraging him to take her hand. "I'm sure we can figure something out."

Matt took her hand and closed his eyes. It was a few, long, quiet moment before he opened them again.

"We need to talk about the newspapers."

Claire swallowed her wariness and nodded. "Okay."

"I…" Matt worked his jaw. "I still don't like the idea."

"Why not? No pretense. Just tell me like I'm a stranger."

"It puts a target on your back," he said flatly. "We've fought so hard to keep you hidden, and it seems insane to advertise that you're alive and in Manhattan and willing to talk. There's no guarantee that you can yell loud enough and fast enough for Fisk to be unable to get you."

Claire sighed. That was completely true. Last night, after she had finished swimming in her anger at Matt, she had nearly drowned in her fear of being caught. Claire distinctly remembered the terror of being chased by Fisk's goons, the horror of seeing Mr. Solano drag in his last conscious breaths. Publishing her story in the paper only increased the chances that Fisk would double down his efforts to silence her.

But Claire would rather die fighting with her voice than alone in petrified silence, so there wasn't really much of a choice to make.

"And," Matt said, eyes dropping, "publishing only makes it more likely that other people will attack you. You're just…people aren't kind."

Claire gave another, even thinner smile. She had lived with bias and bigotry her whole life, but she appreciated how delicately Matt shaped the subject.

"Yeah, well, they can deal with their own consciences for defending a murderer," she muttered, leaning on her elbow

Matt's eyes stayed on their still clasped hands as he asked, "And when it's not about you blowing the whistle on a millionaire? When it's instead about you kissing an Irishman? What then?"

"Who's gonna see?" she asked. "What happened behind closed doors is none of their business."

Matt's eyes were dark when he glanced up, squeezing her fingers a little tighter. "People will always see."

"I know," she said, unable to maintain her smile for the briefest second. Claire sighed and slumped back in her chair, hand slipping from his. "Sometimes I just wish I could run out of the city. Visit California or something, where people don't care." She tapped her fork against her plate. "New York has everything, but sometimes I feel like it has no place for me in it. I dunno, maybe I'll just go to Canada, trade everything in for the cold."

Matt smiled at her. "Maybe," he murmured, though she couldn't quite tell what he was thinking.

They sat quietly for a long moment before Claire looked at him again.

"You know...this isn't something we can plan for. Not really. Not right now. I mean, maybe we get lucky. Maybe we don't. But that's not something we can know for sure until we're in it."

"I hate not knowing," he groaned. "I hate not being in control of everything."

"I know," she said with a tiny smile. "But first things first. We deal with Fisk, then everything else."

Matt watched her with those sad, tormented eyes. 'I don't want to let you go' was written so clearly across his face, begging her to give him a better way out. Claire reached over and once more took his still-bruised hands.

"This is my choice, Matt. I know you just want to protect me, but it's always coming down to what I choose."

"I know," he said, words barely there.

"Okay. Thank you."

She gave his hands a squeeze, and he ran his thumb over her fingers.

"I also think…you were right," Claire said.

"What?"

"About me leaving. I would like to stay, but that's not really the best option right now. And don't you dare start thinking this is because of you," she said, holding up her hands when she saw the early flickers of angst in his eyes. "Listen to me now, Matthew, because I don't want to have to say it again. I'm not scared of you. I'm not scared of what you'll do. And I'm not scared enough of what other people will do to stop this. Okay?"

"O…kay." He didn't look like he believed it, but that was an argument for another day.

"But, I think that I really should go live somewhere else, just until things are resolved. I think it's best for the both of us if we can do what we both need to on our own. I don't want to distract you when things are about to get so scary."

His mouth twisted, a thousand protests fighting behind his lips. Claire watched him, ready to remind him that this was not his life, he was not allowed to change his mind about things when they were inconvenient for him. But to her relief, Matt just nodded and looked away.

"Okay. Okay, that's…yeah, that's probably for the best. I'll talk to Karen today, see what she can come up with."

"Alright. Thank you, Matt."

He nodded, still clearly unhappy, but putting it aside for her.

Claire stood and walked around the table. He looked up at her, expression uncertain before she pulled him against her. He hid his face into her stomach, hands tentatively pressing against her hip and the back of her thigh.

"I'm terrified to lose you," he whispered. "I'd hate to lose everything before we've even begun."

"Oh, we began a long time ago," Claire said, brushing her hand over his hair.

Matt didn't say anything, just held her a little tighter.

If telling Claire everything over breakfast was bad, walking into the office to apologize to Foggy and Karen was infinitely worse. Dread twisted Matt's stomach with every step he took deeper into the building, strong enough that it climbed up his throat so he could taste it. He lingered in the mouth of the hallway, stalling as long as he could. It was almost a physical ache to walk closer.

He opened the door and stepped inside. Karen's desk was empty. He sighed and took off his hat.

"Karen, that you?" Foggy called from his office.

"Uhm…no."

There was a thick moment of silence in which Matt found it hard to breathe, and then Foggy stepped through the doorway. His expression was stony as he took Matt in from head to toe.

"You're late," he said finally.

"It was a long night," Matt muttered. He glanced down, then back. "I…talked to Claire."

"Yeah?"

"She agreed with you, so…whenever we're able, she'd like to speak to that reporter."

"'We?' Are you a part of this, now?"

Matt swallowed hard. He couldn't remember the last time Foggy had been angry, honestly angry, right down to the bones.

He stepped a little closer, not sure what to say. He couldn't explain everything that had happened, didn't have the energy or the words to describe how weary he was of being miserable, the argument with Claire, the tired realization as he had ridden the ferry to nowhere and felt all his defenses crumble away.

So Matt settled for something clearer, neater, more readily packaged but still very true.

"I'm tired, Foggy. I just—I'm tired of not knowing who I am, anymore. I'm tired of—"

He'd almost said 'fighting,' echoing the words Claire had said in the kitchen, but Matt wasn't sure if that was true and it felt especially wrong to lie.

Foggy considered him, head turning ever so slightly like he wanted a different angle but doubted Matt would remain if he looked away.

"You know, some people just say 'sorry' and have done with it."

Matt swallowed and looked down. The words were an actual hurt in his throat, each one with sharp edges and tasting of acidic pride.

"I–I was wrong. About Claire, about myself, and you…" He shook his head, looking back up at Foggy and hoping he could see the sincerity in Matt's face. "I can't make up for the past seven years. It's not enough, but I'm sorry. I'm—I'm sorry."

Foggy watched him for another long moment, then gave a slow nod.

"Okay. Okay, Matt. That's all I wanted to hear."

Matt managed a shaky smile, then glanced around for a new topic.

"Is…Karen not in yet, then?"

"No," Foggy sighed, smoothing his hair back with a hand. "I was actually hoping you were her. Not—not because of you or anything, just that I didn't think you were coming in, and she…with all the stuff that's going on…" Foggy trailed off. "It's just been real quiet this morning."

Matt nodded, knowing that same dread in Foggy's face, feeling it every time he opened the door to his apartment, the tiny what if, what if, what if they found us, what if I did something wrong, what if Claire is not there. He didn't have any more to say, though, so he quietly went to work.

Karen sailed through the door twenty minutes later, flushed and slightly out of breath, but pleased.

"Where've you been?" Foggy asked, quick to appear in the doorway of his office to stare at her. The relief was obvious in the slump of his shoulders.

"Oh, just checking up on some last second things, don't worry about it. Everything okay, everything quiet? I noticed another hat and coat, is Matt in?"

"I'm here," he said, walking out to join them.

Karen nodded. Matt didn't miss the way her gaze flicked to Foggy, checking the waters before she threw herself in.

"Have you talked to Claire?" she asked carefully.

"Uh, yeah. She…she thinks this is all a good idea," he told her. It didn't get easier with the retelling. "As soon as we can get the reporter in…" He waved his hand vaguely, but Karen was already beaming at him.

"Great! Then we just have to call Ben, I'm sure he can get in here soon, considering the story we've got—"

"Wait, wait, who exactly is this reporter?" Matt asked. "You never said."

"Ben Urich, from The Harlem Echo."

"Ben Urich—wait, wasn't he that one reporter asking about Dugan?"

"Yes. But I've looked into him, he's a man that writes his conscience."

"How can you possibly know that?" Foggy demanded, shaking his head. "From what I've heard, you only started thinking about this whole newspaper idea two days ago."

"I've been looking at him since he first showed up. And I know this will all work, Foggy!" Karen made a pounding motion with her fist, eyes blazing with that righteous conviction that meant she wasn't going to let this go.

Foggy raised his hands to show he wasn't planning on a fight. "Okay, I believe you. It's just…I thought we'd be going to more…verified outlets. Bigger ones, more shiny plaques and fancy names. No, that was a joke, don't look at me like that. This is just moving really fast. You haven't even taken off your coat."

Karen made an impatient noise and shrugged out of her coat, dropping it and her cloche onto the coat rack.

"Things are going to be fast. At least, they are if we want to catch Fisk by surprise. We've been running this whole time. We have to move now if we want any chance to take a bite out of him."

"And you're sure Mr. Urich wants to get involved?" Matt asked doubtfully. "He'd be in just as much danger as Claire. More, since everyone would know how to find him."

"Like I said," Karen told them, meeting his eyes. "He writes his conscience. There's no way he'd ignore an industrialist blatantly trying to murder and scheme and bootleg his way to success. Not when he can help stop it."

Matt looked at Karen for a long moment, then at Foggy. Foggy gave him a shrug.

"What can it hurt?" he asked. "An interview doesn't mean we have to follow through."

Matt sighed and shook his head. "Make the appointment. Claire will come any time he's free."

AN do you hear that sound it's the sound of catharsis