If he had had time to think, he would have thought of her. The woman who had saved his life.

But she had done far more than that. She had woven a safe harbour for his mind out of nothing but words and embraces and affectionate insults. She had given him a reason, a concrete purpose and desire, to keep his heart beating. She had taken hold of his soul in her own scarred hands and dragged it from a darkness so profound he knew, without her, it would have consumed him.

Jessica Jones.

His hero.

If he had had time to think, he also would have known she would never forgive him for this. She would be furious – she would rage at him, call him selfish, an idiot, a jackass, a martyr. A coward. And she would be right. But that couldn't change anything. It was too late.

This was who he was. The person she loved, and accepted. She knew him better than anyone else and, much as she may hate him for it, she would understand that he could not stand aside and let others suffer. Not when he could prevent it. Not when they were people he loved. She would understand and she would never forgive him.

He barely had time to think of Foggy. Or Karen. The mere hint of a life without them was all the convincing he needed to make this last, final penance. But to him, it was no sacrifice. To him, it was the only choice conceivable. They were his anchor. His tether. They kept him grounded, kept him human. He knew himself well enough to know that without them, all trace of Matthew Murdock, would die and fade away, consumed by the pain of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, incinerated in the inferno of pain and fury and the burning, all-consuming importance of the mission. Without them, everything that made him a person, that made him more than the weapon Stick had always wanted him to be, would perish. IGH had all but proved that.

He would miss them. All his friends, all his loves.

If he had had time to think about it, he would have felt a stab of icy fear at the thought of what lay beyond this final step, if his virtues had outweighed his sins. If the eternal flames would gorge on his crime-heavy soul, fueling the inferno he had arrogantly, vainly, tried to escape.

He did have time – just the barest, most fleeting of moments – for his doomed heart to give a hopeful flutter. He might see his dad again, if he passed the test. He might even see again.

Matthew Murdock's final thought though, before the blackness came, before Jessica's screams faded unnaturally in his too-keen ears, before the tang of her tears and the rust of his blood left his tongue, was so pure and simple, so deeply true, that had he had the time, he wouldn't have known quite how to say it. Just as the warmth of Jessica's hands on his skin evaporated to the ruthless, relentless cold that eroded his every heightened sense, Matt forced his lips into one final, farewell smile. His last, feeble breath ghosted from his suffocating chest, carrying with it a final hope that this time, he had done enough. That this time, he had been enough. That maybe his loves could forgive him one last time.

But the words never formed.

He was out of time.

A/N: Something sequely this way comes ...

There will be angst! There will be hurt/comfort! There will be bonding and fighting and revelations! But most importantly, there will be Jess/Matt! Darejones! Love blooming in bloody corners and in the shadows of haunting nightmares!

Chapter One of Devil's Inferno will be published (as a separate fic) next week, so keep an eye out, my friends. It's time the Devil returned to Hell's Kitchen.