A/N: We apologize for the long delay. If you're still with us, thank you. Anyway here is Chapter 11. As always, please leave feed back because I desperately need it.

Madame Hydra was not happy. And if she was not happy, neither was anyone else. She stared at Jessica Drew's body connected to the Framework as she took a mental assessment of the situation.

That Daredevil character was still a problem. She could practically feel him circling her various enterprises. He had even hit a couple of them, concentrating on those with large servers. Matthew Murdock had obviously failed to deliver her message. Or he delivered it, but the Devil ignored it. Either way, Murdock was problem number two.

Her original plan, the one she still hoped to complete, was to have her Spider kill the lawyer. What better way to prove her loyalty than to kill the man she not only slept with but whose child she thought she was having. Only Jessica was not cooperating on that front either. Whatever hold Murdock had on her Spider was even stronger than the triggers they had carefully instilled in her. That would not do. Madame Hydra was getting very close to getting rid of him herself.

What she really wanted was to split them up in the Framework. If she could do that, then perhaps Jessica Drew would come back to her.

She took a step toward the body whose consciousness lived in the Framework. "What betrayal would hurt you most?" She studied the beautiful face. "An affair is so… common." And yet it felt like the only option. Unless...

She turned to one of the scientists. "The fake people, can we make them do whatever we want?"

The scientist scratched his nose. "Only to a certain extent. We need to keep some randomness to make the world not be artificial and predictable, Madame."

"I suppose that will have to do. It shouldn't be too difficult to make Murdock dance to my tune."

"Tell me what you have in mind and I will see what can be done."

"I want him to cheat on his wife, preferably with a woman much younger." She smiled. "Perhaps even under age if you can manage it."

"We'll get to work. And if the program won't allow for that - we may be able to at least generate proof."

She gave him a nod, a small smile turning up the corner of her mouth. "Make me proud."

Jessica sat in her office, looking through a file with her eyebrows knitted in concentration. She absentmindedly rubbed her stomach as she studied it. Frank Castle was the head of the group resisting Hydra rule and a manhunt had been called. There had been several calls reporting sightings, however most of them proved false. This one however held promise. The unmistakable sounds of heels walking towards her office gave her warning and she straightened attentively for one of Madame Hydra's many visits.

And just like always Mayor Sarkissian strode into Jess' office as if she owned the place. She was wearing a black suit this time with a white dress shirt that was thin enough to hint at the black bra underneath. "Jessica Drew. How is my favorite attorney?" She sat on the edge of Jess' desk and leaned toward her. Her perfectly manicured nails in a dark shade of green stood out against the brown wood of the desk. It reminded Jess of a forest, the kind in faerie tales that are full of danger.

"As well as can be expected. How are you this morning, Mayor?" If Jess' cheeks turned a little pink at the Mayor's compliment well, she felt no one could blame her. But while she might have blushed, it was also clear the Mayor wanted something. She turned her green eyes upwards to look Ophelia directly in the eyes. "Is there anything you'd like me to do for you?"

"No. I just wanted to see how you were getting along." She smiled. One could not call it a sweet smile. There always seemed to be something devious behind it.

Jess shifted uncomfortably in her seat, suddenly feeling a bit cornered. "Well, it looks like we have an actual legitimate sighting of Frank Castle. If we play our cards right we could have him by the end of the week." She gestured to the file she had been studying before the Mayor had interrupted her.

"Really. That is good news." She pressed a finger to Jess' hand then quickly took it away. "I knew you were the right person for this job." She slid off the desk and walked slowly to the windows. "You know, I could have sworn I saw your husband yesterday. I was in a, well, a rather seedy part of town to meet with some constituents." She waved her hand as though shooing away the thought. "I'm sure it was innocent. They must have a client staying there." She stopped and turned to Jessica. "His current assistant is brunette, yes? Long hair? Pouty lips?" Her finger tapped against her own lips. "Strange how they weren't carrying any bags though."

"Uh - that would be his new assistant Kirstin McDuffie. She's in her second year of Law School." Jess liked Kirsten well enough, except for the way that Kirsten would look at Matt. If Jess wasn't so secure in knowing that Matt was completely devoted her (and she to him), she'd be jealous. As it was, she just laughed it off with Matt. "I like her."

"Oh good." The Mayor smiled again that smile that wasn't exactly sweet. "I suppose their clients often stay in those sorts of motels."

"Sometimes." Jessica lied and looked at her own fingernails, feeling as though this was something that needed to be discussed between her and Matthew. As far as she knew, he never had to visit any of his clients in a hotel before. It also occurred to her just then that Kirstin was the same age Jess herself had been when she had met Matt.

It was difficult for Madame Viper not to smile in triumph. She could tell by her Spider's body language that she had created some doubt. "I'm sure that's what it was then." She approached her again. "And how is the baby?" Her scientists were still trying to determine how Jess could be pregnant here and not in the real world.

"Just fine." Jess answered, her hand going to her stomach, which was a frequent gesture of hers these days. "Morning sickness hasn't passed, but that's probably too much information." She laughed a bit awkwardly and continued to look away.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I understand either peppermint or ginger is good for nausea," the Mayor offered as she made a mental note to inform the scientists. "Will you be finding out the gender?" She smoothed the fabric at her hips.

Jess caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and watched for a moment before looking away again. "We haven't discussed it yet – it's too early to tell anyway. Possibly when it gets closer. I think Matt would like it to be a surprise though." She smiled a bit at that. He was definitely excited about the baby to the point where he was overly fussy with her.

Madame Viper only realized then the question had been a mistake. She needed to make Jess doubt Murdock. Baby talk was only diminishing the doubt. "Well at least you won't have to worry about your looks with him. Not that you'll need to worry about that I'm sure."

"Oh, no certainly not." Jess gave a nervous, self-conscious laugh.

She turned her full attention to her Spider. "You are a beautiful woman, Jessica. Someone would have to be a complete fool to take you for granted… no matter how old the temptation."

"I don't believe Matthew is a fool." Jess was certain her cheeks were bright red her face felt so warm, but she managed to raise her eyes to meet the Mayor's. "He's not like that."

"I didn't mean to imply he was," she replied with a touch of dismissal. "However, it's clear he has other…priorities." She let her eyes linger over Jess then gave a smile.

Jess looked away again at the Mayor's gaze, both flustered and annoyed. "I assure you, I know exactly where my husband's priorities lie," she snapped quietly. Her eyes widened and she immediately looked back towards Ophelia. "I apologize. I didn't mean to show such disrespect."

"I'm sure you didn't," she sliced back with cold precision. "Don't forget I am your friend, Jessica. And as your friend, I would really like to know exactly where your husband's priorities lie." It was a challenge but whether a personal or professional one was hard to tell.

Jess looked away briefly at Ophelia's cold response. She was aware she was walking a very thin line with the Mayor. Jess took a deep breath, then raised her eyes to meet the Mayor's. "I can assure you his priorities lie with his job and with me."

"Just make sure whatever he was doing in that hotel room aligns with those. The last thing we need is a scandal involving our newly-named District Attorney. Understood?"

"Understood, Mayor Sarkissisian." Jess looked into the Mayor's eyes to make it clear she understood, then looked back down at the papers on her desk.

"Good. I'll leave you to it then. Good day, Jessica." Her heels click-click-clicked on the floor as she strode out of the room.

Hours later, Jess rubbed her eyes and looked up from the Castle file she had been working on all afternoon. With a mumbled swear, she began to gather the papers, surprised that she had so totally lost track of time. She told herself it was because she wanted to make sure the information was absolutely correct before going to the Mayor with it, but in reality, it was to stave off confronting Matthew about his intern. Despite her words to Ophelia, doubts swam in Jessica's mind all afternoon about what he could have been up to with her. Of course, delaying going home was only opening more opportunity for him to be unfaithful, despite his concerned text messages.

There was a knock on her door. She looked up and saw Matt standing at the doorway holding a plastic bag with food. "Excuse me, I'm looking for my wife. She's not answering her phone, and the hospitals assure me she hasn't been admitted." He paused. "Jess? Are you here?"

The corner of her mouth lifted despite herself as she pushed her chair back then stood to make her way to her husband. She kissed him on the cheek as she took the bag of food from him. "You didn't really call the hospitals looking for me did you?" She moved her papers and placed the bag on her desk. Her stomach growled loudly at the scent of tacos wafting from the bag.

"I was worried." He followed, his stick extended to make sure he didn't bump into anything. "Did you turn off your phone?"

Jess didn't look up as she started pulling food from the bag. "I silenced it. It was blowing up and I needed to concentrate on this case." Which was true, but the Mayor's words from earlier had haunted her the rest of the day, and she wasn't sure how to deal with them or Matt.

"Did you make any headway?" he asked as he sat down. He knew better than to ask about the particulars of the case. He assumed everything she worked on was confidential. But he could ask if it was going well.

"A lot actually." she responded a bit absentmindedly. She divided the tacos up and handed half to Matt, then settled in to eat her own. "What about you? Stay in the office all day or did you make a trip across the city?" Jess thought she had done a pretty decent job at not sounding accusatory, but it was clear she was on edge.

"That's… an odd question." He unwrapped his first taco. His first thought was to lie, but he knew she must have a reason for asking. One of the first rules of lawyering is to never ask a question you don't know the answer to, and she was sounding more like a lawyer. "But as a matter of fact, I did have to leave the office. Kirstin was kind enough to drive me."

"Oh? Where did you go?" Jess took a bite out of her first taco and had to keep herself from moaning. Damn him for going to that taco cart down the street.

"I, um, had a, uh, client interview."

His clear scrambling for an excuse was enough to confirm her suspicions. Matt never hesitated about anything. "Client interview? Come now, Matthew, you can lie better and less obviously than that." She bored her eyes into him, despite the fact he couldn't see it. Jess was fairly certain he could feel it though.

"It's confidential," he replied. A frown appeared on his face. "You have your secrets. I have mine."

His answer only confirmed her insecurities. "I see."

"It doesn't help that you're always working." His voice got softer. "Or that you called me Ophelia last time we had sex."

Jess startled at that, and she wracked her brains trying to remember. They had made love this morning, but she didn't recall moaning anyone's name at all. What she did recall is the rather vividly sexual dream she had about her boss before waking. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, well I figured you didn't do it on purpose." He bit into his taco.

Jessica's tacos remained mostly uneaten. She clasped her hands together and rested her chin upon them as she looked at her husband nonchalantly eating his tacos. He probably wished he was eating Kirsten McDuffy. "Please do enlighten me, Mr. Murdock."

He chewed deliberately and finally swallowed his bite. Then he used a napkin to clean his mouth. Only after that was done did he reply. "Well, you didn't stop or hesitate to see how I'd react. Nor did you apologize for the mistake. That led me to believe it was an unconscious slip-up."

He was going full lawyer on her and she hated that. He knew she hated that. Mostly because he was ten times the lawyer she could ever dream of being, despite the position she currently held (that he should be holding, if she were being honest with herself). "So, do you want an apology for something I don't remember doing?"

"Not unless you wanted an apology from me if I accidentally called you Kirsten."

"Well, see the funny thing about that is you have been spending a lot of time with Kirsten lately. Visiting "clients". You hardly ever go to your clients, Matthew. You make them come to you. Or have you been coming with Kirsten?" Jess shot back.

"I'm not going to justify that with an answer."

"That's all the answer I need." Jess sat back in her chair, arms wrapped protectively around her midsection. Her dinner was forgotten. In fact, she felt like she was going to be sick. "There's a difference, Mr. Murdock, between fantasizing about someone you look up to and actually acting upon it. I can tell you with a clear conscious, that I have never, nor would I ever, sleep with anyone else but you."

"And you think I would cheat on my pregnant wife?" He wiped his hands with short almost violent movements. "Well now I know what you think of me."

"That's not what I think of you, Matthew." Jessica whispered. "At least it wasn't until someone told me they saw you leaving a hotel with Kirsten McDuffy this afternoon. A hotel in an area where you don't have any clients."

"You don't know where my clients are, Jessica." He cocked his head with a furrowed brow. "Unless you've been going through my cases."

"You know I haven't been going through your cases, Matthew." The venom was back in her voice. "We tell each other when we're going to be someplace other than where we usually are during the day, or have you forgotten that?" It was how they kept tabs on each other, to know they were both safe, before Jessica got her current position. Except today, Matt hadn't told her he was going anywhere. He had given her the usual "How are you" texts.

There was a pause before he answered. "That was before you started working for Hydra. Some of my clients would rather not have Hydra know where they are simply by monitoring your phone calls and texts."

"Hydra has many heads. They already know where your clients are without my involvement Matthew." She began to pack up her tacos, all but tossing them back into the bag.

"I take it one of those heads told you that I was at a hotel today. Are you sure they were telling the truth?"

"I wasn't sure until you went full on Lawyer on me rather than just being you." Jess voice was barely above a whisper, but the heartbreak was clear in her voice. When had she lost him?

"Just me is a lawyer," he reminded her. "It's how we met. It's what I do. It's who I am."

"No, there's more to you under that Lawyer exterior you wear. And you haven't worn it around me for the longest time – until today." Now there was a hint of venom back in her voice. How dare he?

Matt took a slow breath and ran a hand through his hair. "It's been a long day. I'm tired. I just wanted to have dinner with my wife. And as much as I would have liked it in our home at our table, I knew that wasn't going to happen. So I brought you dinner to make sure that you actually ate." He shrugged and frowned and generally looked forlorn.

Jess looked away as she began packing up her work. She felt sick and angry, but she wasn't going to have any more words with him about it here. "Go home, Matthew. We'll talk about this later."

"How long am I going to have to wait tonight, Jess?" He held up a hand. "I'm not judging. I just want to know if I should stay up or not."

She sat in silence a few moments before reaching a decision. Better to get it over with. "You're not. We're going to continue this discussion at home." Satisfied that everything was in order, she locked the file in her desk and grabbed her things. She turned to face her husband. "Ready?"

A relieved smile appeared on his face. He stood and extended his walking stick. "Ready."

Jess didn't offer him her arm as they left the office. She turned to lock the door and paused as she heard voices coming from the Mayor's office down the hall. Usually Ophelia was gone by this time. "Stay here." she told Matt, before inching her way towards the Mayor's office. Eventually she was close enough to hear and see what was unfolding inside.

"We run everything in this freaking virtual world! How hard is it to kill these terrorists?!" Mayor Sarkissian demanded. "I can understand them being a pain in my ass in the real world. Law enforcement is beyond pathetic. But here we should be able to get rid of these two-bit defenders of the weak and downtrodden with a simple bullet to the head." It was hard to miss disgust in her voice when she said 'weak and downtrodden'.

The man with her stammered out an excuse. At least that's what the tone sounded like. It was hard to make out his words. But there were two words that came through clearly – Jessica Drew.

The Mayor gave a short grunt. "She is far too loyal to Murdock." Her fingers drummed on the desk. "As much as I want her to kill him, that will probably take too long." She took a slow breath. "I may have to visit him again."

Jess' heart thundered in her ears. Virtual world? What virtual world? This wasn't real? Jess pressed her back to the decidedly solid wall and took a few steadying breaths – only to have it knocked out of her at the mention of her name. Loyal to Murdock? Of course, she was. He was her husband, wasn't he? And then her blood turned to ice at the Mayor's next words. What was going on here? She would never - could never. Jess stole herself once more and willed her body to move a few inches closer to the door so she could peak into the office with one eye.

The Mayor was in her chair behind the substantial desk. She was pointing at the man in the room. "See that those terrorists are dealt with. And I don't care what it takes, keep driving that fucking wedge between Murdock and my Spider." She waited for him to agree or at least acknowledge. "Good. I'll be back tomorrow." She reached over to a white marble bunny statue on her desk and pushed in its nose. The Mayor flickered then disappeared completely.

Jess' eyes widened in disbelief. What the absolute fuck was going on here? She ducked behind the wall again as the man started to move about the office. It only took her another second to realize what could happen to her if he caught her where she stood. Without a second thought, Jess hurried as quietly as she could back to her office, grabbing Matt's wrist on the way. She pulled him inside and softly closed the door behind her.

"Je-" That's all he got out before her hand covered his mouth.

She stood with her body pressed to the door for what seemed like hours. Jess was certain everyone could her how loudly her heart pounded. But the sound of her heart was overridden by the sound of rapidly departing footsteps.

"They're gone," Matt whispered.

To be safe, Jess waited for what seemed like another eternity before she cautiously opened her office door again. She peaked down the deserted corridors and then quickly and quietly made her way back to the Mayor's office.

"Jess?" He followed the sound of her footsteps. "Jess, what's going on? Did I hear my name?"

The room was dark, but the light from the street illuminated the room enough that Jess didn't have much trouble seeing. She made her way toward the desk and stared at the little white rabbit there. Ophelia had touched its nose and then had disappeared. Would the same happen to her? Should she even do it? They were going after Matt – she had to keep him safe. The rabbit was staring back at her. She felt like this was a metaphor for some story, but she couldn't quite place it.

Cautiously Jessica reached out to touch the bunny's nose – and then her world went white.