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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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Things aren't going the way they're supposed to.

After months of waging war against Wilson Fisk Matt had thought he'd finally brought the man down. Fisk had been exposed, arrested, accomplices were being rounded up by the authorities and the district attorney's office was ramping up to prosecute.

But then, suddenly, momentum started to ebb. The push forward started to slow. Fisk hired an expensive and formative law firm to represent him, which was to be expected, but as soon as he did things with the case started grinding to a halt.

Nothing was happening, and the more Matt pushed as an attorney the more he was told to hold position and be patient. That the case was still coming together. Angles were still being analyzed. Deals were being considered.

Deals.

Matt hadn't put everything on the line for a deal. He wanted justice. He wanted Fisk out of his city and paying for his crimes.

No sooner had 'deal' been mentioned than rumblings on the street began. Fisk was gone, but not for long. When those began Matt decided to hell with patience. He wanted answers, and action.

Standing in front of one of the ones who make up part of Fisk's legal team, Matt is the imposing vigilante; devil horns, grim expression, clenched fists and grating voice.

"You represent Wilson Fisk." Not a question, a statement to let her know exactly what and who has brought him here.

The thing is, she's read about the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Scary guy, loose with his fists, involved in some of Fisk's case here and there. But this isn't Hell's Kitchen, and she never expected to actually meet him face-to-face.

Jesus Christ, she hates this case.

"What do you want?" Her voice is stronger and less afraid than she actually feels, and her fingers are inching slowly towards her purse, where she has a can of pepper spray.

He's not exactly happy to be out of his neighborhood, either.

Her words come out pretty even, but her heart rate gives her away, not just that she's afraid, but that there's more under the surface that her composure is trying to hide.

Matt's glove creeks as his fist tightens then opens, dropping like a gunslingers hand to the sticks holstered against his thigh.

"Don't," he warns her as her hand reaches towards her purse; aware of what she's thinking about trying and confident he can move fast enough to knock anything out of her hands before she has the chance to use it.

"I want to know what you're working on for Fisk. What he's up to and the deal you're trying to make for him."

Her hand freezes and then slowly backs away from her purse. Better to comply now and see if she gets a chance later - if she can't talk her way out of this.

She might be able to talk her way out of this. Or at least talk.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss his case, and I'm definitely not breaking attorney-client privilege to someone dressed as the devil." A breath. "So just to be clear, what are you threatening to do to me if I don't tell you what you want to know?"

"That doesn't cover either of you when you're working as part of his criminal organization against this city," Matt grates.

Canting his head, he regards her.

"I'm sure you've seen and read the news, what they've reported I've done. It'll be just the same as it was for all the others who tried to stand in the way of my bringing down Fisk."

"I think you've gotten the definitions of 'legal representation' and 'lackeys' mixed up. And I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but he is entitled to the former even if you beat up his current attorneys. The optics aren't too great for you, either."

Surprising even herself, she tosses her purse and the pepper spray inside to the ground. "But if beating up attorneys for doing their jobs is your thing, I guess I can't stop you."

Matt's head drops to follow the purse to the ground, then lifts to focus on her.

For a moment he's stumped for what to do. Her reaction isn't expected, or even sane, given the circumstances, and it gives him pause.

"Representation is one thing, facilitating criminal enterprises is another," Matt counters. "Your firm is in Fisk's pocket, just like the accountant Leland Owlsley's, and the construction firm Union Allied, and the police and other officials who are being weeded out for their corruption."

Shaking his head, he says, "I don't want you. I want to stop Fisk, for good. Even in jail now he's putting things together and you, and your mother, knows what those are."

"If by 'in Fisk's pocket', you mean he is paying us to represent him in a court of law, as is his right and the right of any American who is accused of a crime, then sure." Given that he hasn't moved to hurt her, even though she's dropped the item with her one weapon in it, she guesses she might as well keep plodding down this road she's started on. "If you really want him in jail for any alleged crimes, you're better off chatting with the DA about their case."

Matt focuses and listens to her reply closely, not just the words, but the drum of her heartbeat. It's off, in fact all of her vitals seem weakened or jumpy, unhealthy, but even so there's no stutter to give away a lie.

It's steadfast enough that he can tell she believes what she's saying about Fisk's right to representation. Matt admires that, and maybe even her standing her ground against him.

Still, it's mostly frustration felt as he realizes she's not the mark he needs.

"You don't know, then," he declares, disappointed in himself as much as he is in her.

His whole bearing shifts, from standing in threat over her to shifting to take his leave.

"I'll get to the DA," Matt promises. "If I were you, I'd verify that I am the man's lawyer, and not his pawn."

'Lackey', she called it; the term would be fitting, especially if it was unknowingly.

There's some - shifting of tension in the air, like the danger she was in has downshifted from red alert to yellow. She doesn't relax, but it's an improvement. "Fine. If I were you, I'd rethink my whole image."

Beat.

"And when I said chat with the DA, I didn't mean under threat of bodily harm. Just so we're clear."

"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.

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