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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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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."

Her heart rate kicks up at the thought of her mother being involved in a potentially-murderous situation, but she doesn't show it in her voice. "Great! Thanks! Ominous warnings are the new 'take care'. You should watch out men in dark alleys that aren't you."

She’s held overnight at the hospital because her doctor isn’t satisfied she’s stable yet, although honestly, she kind of suspects that her care team is starting to make up excuses to keep her longer than strictly necessary because she’s been on the receiving end of several awkward probes for admission of being a victim of abuse and another equally awkward chat about how eating disorders aren’t solely a teenage illness. Her mother eventually comes to the rescue, insisting that they can’t keep her daughter forever and easily batting away hints that Francine should try therapy. And if any attempt is made to place a psychiatric hold, the hospital will face the wrath of Rosalind Sharpe.

Francine’s genuinely surprised by how much time Rosalind spends with her that day—mostly having her work from the hospital bed on the Fisk case, but still. Given that there’s any number of other employees at the firm whose capabilities are equal or better than Francine’s for the kind of work she’s doing, she can’t help but feel—touched? comforted?—by the implication of care in her mother’s presence. It’s… less comforting when Rosalind insists on being present while Francine eats some soup, especially when she snaps that, honestly, it’s just soup, Francine, you can’t keep agonizing over it like some snotty picky child. Francine finds herself digging her fingernails into her palms more than once during that conversation to stop herself from saying something she’ll regret, but mostly the day is—it could be considered nice.

Rosalind forces her way into a couple extra visiting hours past the cut-off but is finally run out by a no-nonsense nurse who insists that Francine needs to rest if she’s going to be released tomorrow. She makes a few, final comments, mostly about how Francine had better cooperate now because the firm shouldn’t have to deal with one of its attorneys in the hospital while gearing up to such a massive case as Fisk’s. The closest she comes to telling Francine to get better is when she brushes a thumb over the bandage on Francine’s cheek and comments that she hopes Francine’s bone structure isn’t too visibly damaged by this incident.

Francine does manage a little bit of sleep after that, but she once again wakes up to a quiet room and the devil waiting for her. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

He should be working on nailing down Fisk, but before he starts up for the night, Matt finds himself once again at the hospital outside of the window to Francine's room.

He's earlier than the night before, but still surprised to find she has a visitor already.

The woman's voice isn't hard to recognize, and his attention immediately sharpens.

The interaction is hard to listen to and Matt finds himself frowning through most of it. By the end he gets nothing useful on Rosalind and Fisk and is left feeling guilty for eavesdropping over the conversation.

When Rosalind leaves he should follow her, his plan tonight had been to tail her and possibly confront her, but instead he lingers outside of the window.

Back in the room in the same spot across from her bed he took up before, Matt stands; this time with a bit of uneasy almost awkwardness being here tonight.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, trying to meet her with civility this time instead of threat or blunt questioning.

It's hard to pull off civility when you're cosplaying as the devil, but after two other meetings of decreasing levels of hostility, Francine's not feeling all that threatened by his presence anymore. So that's a nice change.

"If you keep showing up like this, I'm going to start thinking you have a crush on me," she says in lieu of answering his actual question.

Matt resists the urge to bow his head.

Not that that's it, but, well... maybe it is kind of nice to just have somebody to talk to. Even if their conversations are all brief and made up of ired retorts from her.

"I was in the neighborhood," he replies smartly, a blatantly bad line to disprove this is any kind of weird attempt at a pick up.

"You spend a lot of time at the hospital?"

Beat.

"I mean, I believe you spend a lot of time putting people in the hospital, but I didn't expect you'd follow them here, too."

"Probably not as much time as some people would like." Claire, for one, would appreciate it if he got actual medical help on his worse nights instead of bleeding out all over her couch.

Others might prescribe a different type of hospital for him.

"I hear you get to go home tomorrow."

Francine would likely be one of the latter group, if given the choice, but alas, no one's asked her yet.

The second comment gets her attention more, anyway. "And where did you hear that from?"

Matt frowns a little, realizing that may have sounded unintentionally threatening.

He offers a small shrug and tries to make his reply sound casual.

"Orderlies meeting for the night shift. I listened in to learn their rounds." So he would know no one would likely be by to interrupt them.

Which also sounds threatening. Damn it.

"I'm not here to hurt you." Although that probably isn't a comforting statement at all.

"Our relationship's come so far since you showed up with the intention of hurting me." Although she'd guessed that since he hasn't hurt her yet and told her he believes she's not personally involved in Fisk's criminal dealings.

"What are you here for?"

Matt turns his head for a moment.

That question is difficult to answer, especially since he doesn't fully know why he's here himself.

"I was in the neighborhood," he says, turning back again.

Rather than a flip reply, this time the words are truth. He had planned to be here, at least, but he won't say it was to track her mother.

"I also just wanted to make sure you were alright."

After the conversation he overheard earlier, and already knowing how unfit she was before landing here, he definitely means more than just following up on her injury.

"I'm fine," she says - lying through her teeth a bit because the situation she is in is not fine, at all, but he doesn't need to know that. "I don't know if you've heard, but I'm supposed to be released tomorrow."

"I think maybe you're not fine," he replies, back to being blunt, but how else is he supposed to broach the topic?

"Well, I am in a hospital," she concedes, "which isn't known for its high population of people who are fine. But it's not that bad."

The thing is - for his fancy lie-detecting hearing - that part she kind of does believe, even as her heart beats weakly and too slow for a healthy woman.

Edited 2018-11-13 00:57 (UTC)

He's not going off her words so much as the fact that he still doesn't know how she ended up in the hospital, and the lingering poor state of health her body is in.

That, and the overheard conversation from earlier.

"You had a visitor earlier," he notes, no inflection in his voice to give away feelings or opinion there.

Her tone and her attention sharpens. "Did you hear that from the orderlies, too?"

God, she hopes the answer's yes, because she doesn't want to add 'and also Daredevil is definitely stalking me' to the list of crap she has to deal with now.

For his part Matt's expression does turn slightly apologetic for a moment. Although there's a question on how much of that gets conveyed with the mask.

"She was here after visiting hours."

So not so much stalking as just bad timing.

Unfortunately for him, the mask does make it difficult to read apology into his face.

"I'm aware," she says in an even tone of voice that is meant to say and that is none of your business.

He hears that tone, and again feels guilty for being there. But, he can't quite just leave it alone.

Clearing his throat, he ventures carefully. "Is it always that way between you two?"

"Is it always like what between us?" she asks, her tone honed to a blade that suggests he might want to think very carefully before pursuing the rest of this conversation with her.

Matt's mouth opens, and then shuts, and it takes effort not to take an actual step back at her reaction.

Matt is obviously out of practice conversationally. Of course, the argument could be made that he was never great at it to begin with.

He knows two ways to communicate with people, as a lawyer and as a vigilante.

One tends to stay away from getting too personal, and the other involves his fists.

Neither of those styles are serving him here.

"She's... very intense," he tries, searching for the mildest adjective he can latch onto and it still doesn't sound great.

Her eyes narrow. "And you know she's intense because you were - what, hiding somewhere and listening to us?"

He's definitely cornered himself here.

Wetting his lips, he searches for a reply that's not going to come off badly and realizes there isn't one.

"I caught the end of your conversation," he admits at last. "I was just going to stop by, and I didn't realize there would be anyone still here so late."

Francine does not have Daredevil's unique abilities as a human lie detector, but she's going to guess that's, at best, some serious minimizing.

"Given that your opinion on my mother was neither requested nor wanted and you've asked how I am already, maybe you should consider saving us both some time and leaving now."

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man_without_fear - 2018-11-13 05:10 (UTC) - Expand

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