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After her meeting with Matt Murdock, which certain did not make her day any less stressful or complicated, Francine heads home to knock back a few shots of something alcoholic and then spend the most of the rest of her night hanging over a toilet bowl.

The next day, Rosalind isn't feeling any more inclined to listen to reason about accepting Fisk as a client, and since the 'Sharpe' in the name of their law firm most definitely does not refer to Francine, there's not a hell of a lot she can do about it - just suck it up and pretend that the thought of representing Wilson Fisk is the only reason she's feeling queasy today. Of course, she's assigned work on the case because her mother might as well get some use out of the very expensive education she paid for Francine to have. And if there's one thing that she is good at, it's doing the groundwork.

She spends most of the day familiarizing herself with the full details of the case and hiding in her office to avoid running into Rosalind again, which is only partially successful. Rosalind stops her on the way out to wrangle her into lunch tomorrow because they shouldn't let their little work disagreement come between them as mother and daughter - though, honestly, Francine suspects she's either about to be set up on a blind date with someone influential or other or get another reaming out. She's not looking forward to either of them, regardless.

So she's already stressed and a bit jumpy when she heads home, and when she sees the devil waiting for her in the shadows, she all but jumps out of her skin. "What the fuck?!"

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"It's worked pretty well for me so far," he notes, gravel crunching as he takes a step back.

"And don't worry, counselor, I won't tell him you sent me." That said, Matt recedes into shadows and then he's just gone.

After her… chat… with Daredevil, Francine can’t quite get his suggestion out of her head: If I were you, I'd verify that I am the man's lawyer, and not his pawn. She’d talked a big game about the justice system and Fisk’s right to legal representation, and she believes it, she does, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’d had—concerns—about accepting Wilson Fisk as a client from the start.

It wouldn’t hurt to do a little more digging, surely. As a member of his legal team, it is part of her actual job to know everything about the case and about Rosalind’s plans for how to argue his innocence as she possibly can. It’s more difficult to manage than it should be, honestly, particularly with her mother interrupting her all the time and the headache that’s taken up more-or-less permanent residence in her skull.

(She’s eating, sometimes. Not often. Mostly she’s not hungry. Her stomach is tied up in knots, and when Rosalind takes her out to lunch and insists she eat something, she picks at a salad that ends up in the toilet, but it’s fine, it’s just stress.)

The pieces of the big picture are scattered everywhere: Fisk’s old contacts, money being shuffled around, odd expenditures in her own firm, strange meetings with Fisk’s men. It’s not exactly proof, not yet, but it is reasonable doubt—enough to justify talking to her mother. Enough to justify a long panic attack in a bathroom that typically goes unused because of an unpleasant smell that no cleaner has been able to banish yet. Afterwards, she’s shaky and exhausted and just wants to go home, but she has to go talk to her mother now before she has time to think too much about the implications and chicken out.

She talks to Rosalind in her office, in privacy; she starts out non-confrontational, asking innocently about the anomalies she’s noticed. Then she pushes, points out that—obviously this not what’s really happening, but it looks like their firm is helping Wilson Fisk to rebuild a criminal network with ties in the justice system that could skew his fair trial. A part of her is hoping for an innocent explanation.

On anyone else, the slap Rosalind delivers would be inconsequential. A nasty bruise. But her bones are weak from a lifetime of malnutrition and the impact sends her head spinning and her body stumbling back to the floor. She’s not really aware of what happens after that, but she’s told later that her mother was the one who called an ambulance.

The next thing she knows, she’s waking up in the hospital with a fractured cheekbone and an IV dripping nutrients into her starved body. Once she’s checked over by a nurse, Rosalind visits her briefly to inform her that theatrics like her little fainting spell won’t do anyone any good, that she’s not an attention-seeking teenager anymore and shouldn’t act like it, that she’ll attribute Francine’s hysterics earlier to low blood sugar and doesn’t expect to hear anything more of their conversation ever again.

Francine lets her fingers drift gently over the bandage over her cheek (a casualty of her fall, the official story says, fractured against her mother’s desk when she fainted) and nods quietly, says yes when it’s expected and goes back to sleep after Rosalind leaves.

When she wakes up again, the windows are dark, and she’s not the only person in the room. “Do you really want to beat up someone in a hospital bed?”

Every waking moment of Matt's life becomes about Fisk.

During daylight hours he works on putting together the case against the man. Pouring over everything not only to build evidence and the presentation for the courtroom, but searching for clues to what Fisk is trying to put together so that Matt can tear it down.

Nights are spent following any leads he comes across, trying to beat answers out of anyone who may have them.

From one end of Hell's Kitchen to the other Matt has waged as Daredevil, but tonight he's out of the neighborhood and back where he started.

Everything he's gathered has led back to here, and it's his intention to confront the lead attorney on Fisk's team this time, but in his daylight life he finds out about the daughter and that alters his plans.

Setting aside Fisk for one night, Matt makes a visit to the hospital.

Standing across the room, he probably still makes an imposing figure, but for the moment he displays no signs of threat. Although, if Francine looks for her call button she'll find it no longer within easy reach.

"What happened?"

She should be scared - and she is, a bit, but honestly, she has too much to process already to spend all of her energy being afraid of the Daredevil in the room, who hasn't technically hurt her in the past and who was technically -

Her thoughts skitter over the word right.

"Why do you want to know?"

Matt tilts his head, regarding her patiently.

He listens to her, hearing the grate of bone in her cheek (fractured, not broken), the agitated grinding of her stomach, and still that not so steady weakened heartbeat.

Machines chirp, saline drips, the nurse making rounds is down on the next floor and won't be by this room for a long while.

There's the scent of blood in the air, and tears, and the lingering acrid tang of bile.

"I want to know if I was right," he replies.

"I'm still not at liberty to discuss the details of a client's case with anyone," she says - because she's not going to just announce to a lunatic in a devil suit that yes, she has reason to believe that her mother is aiding a criminal enterprise, even if - if the confrontation didn't go well - she's not going to paint a target on her mother, Christ.

"Then tell me what happened to you," he says evenly.

If she won't talk about one, they'll talk about the other, and if she won't venture anything on either it's easy to assume the two are related.

"I don't see how my medical information is any of your business, either," she snaps back. "Is that all you wanted to discuss? Because I think we can safely say neither of us is getting much out of this visit."

"That's one of the highlights of being a vigilante," he replies mildly, "I can make a lot of things my business. Including assault."

"I'd noticed," she says, voice practically dripping with sarcasm. "We discussed your proclivity for committing assault last time we met, as I recall."

"I also stop them," he returns. "And handle the people who commit them."

Usually by returning the favor, but most of them do end up with the police, eventually.

She sighs. So this is how it's going to be. "Have you ever tried stopping yourself from committing them? Or is that just too much of a logic paradox?"

That actually causes a quick laugh and a very brief smile; amused, but buried somewhere underneath is the shadow of something else.

"In my line of work it's the most effective method."

Still, he's not here to talk about his M.O.

Switching subjects, he comes back around to his being here tonight, and this time he's not pushing for information, but approaching it with empathy, and actual concern.

"Are you going to be alright?"

She can't help but feel a little bit smug that she forced a laugh out of his dark-and-gritty exterior, even if it was a joke based on assault.

Still.

"Convincing me you care would be easier if you hadn't set the tone for this relationship at 'threatening bodily harm'."

His head inclines just a touch, giving her that point.

"I've taken up this fight with Fisk for awhile now. I know the kind of monster he is. It's made me... less tolerant of the people who associate with him."

Especially given that all of the people who surround Fisk are one kind of monster or another themselves.

Well.

Doesn't that... absolutely not make her feel any more charitable towards him than she did before.

"You're not exactly doing any favors for my opinion of vigilantism, yourself."

Again there's that brief quirk of a smile from him on her response. She's honest, and bold, and he begins to wonder what it's going to be like facing her in the courtroom.

"I believe you," he says, giving a nod in her direction. "Before. When you said Fisk deserved representation. I believe you meant that, and that that's the reason you're on the case."

He doesn't, however, believe that everything is on the up-and-up with the pending trail, or her firm's involvement.

It's... odd to hear him say that. Not because she doesn't believe that Fisk deserves representation - he does, because that's how the justice system works, and she does believe in the system. But it's not why she's on the case, it's just the justification she gives herself so she can sleep at night knowing she's part of Wilson Fisk's overpaid legal team.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

For all the violence and aggression that make up a majority of Matt's interactions with others while in the mask, beneath that Matt still tries to believe the best in people. It's why he fights for a city that most others have given up on. There are good people here who deserve to be believed in.

Matt would hope that someone like her would take a case like this for the right reasons.

There's doubt in her response, though, and Matt cants his head the other way.

"Am I wrong?" he asks.

She's quiet for a moment while she tries to decide what she can, in fact, say. (The answer to which is - nothing, really, but apparently she's going to say something regardless.)

"I am one of Fisk's attorneys, to which he is legally entitled. I - wasn't consulted about accepting his case."

That's a familiar scenario, and one of the prime reasons Matt left Landman and Zack as soon as he was able.

Matt nods to her answer and notes, "Difficult profession you're in."

The words have all the offhand commentary of an outside perspective, but there are some measures of empathy there.

"I'm guessing the decision to take the case came from your boss?"

Answering that question in any detail feels uncomfortably like painting a target on her mother, which - no. That's not happening.

"Why? Are you looking for more people to menace?"

Edited 2018-11-12 18:23 (UTC)

She's smart, too.

Matt was just being conversational, but there's no denying the question did have another purpose to it that she avoids.

He shows no disappointment, instead giving short head shake.

"I cancelled that appointment tonight to drop by here. But, if I'm menacing I can leave."

If he thinks she's going to take that as a cue to convince him to stay, then he's been hit on the head a few too many times. (He probably has been hit on the head a few too many times.) "Well, don't let me stop you. Maybe you could make it an early night - have some tea or try meditating or something."

The dismissal is expected, and he wasn't going to get anything here anyways. Agitating a woman in the hospital isn't in his mission, so he nods to signal his departure.

"Before I go, you should know Fisk treats his allies the same as his enemies. He's murdered and destroyed plenty of those around him. Be careful."