"Lay it out for me, Anya." Calina whispered into the burner phone. It was meant to be used only for emergencies...but this felt pretty damn urgent.

"Wait, are you calling from your apartment?" Anya asked. "Because if so, he can probably hear you."

"No, I'm in a diner around the corner from our building, and I'm getting strange looks from the regulars, so please explain, and explain fast."

"I sent you all the evidence. It's all there."

"It's all there if you're you. But I'm not you, so explain it to me like I'm an idiot." Calina wasn't an idiot. She could understand complex mathematical theorems and speak a dozen languages, but her intelligence was different from Anya's. Anya thought outside the box. She could see patterns in things where others saw only chaos.

And she often forgot that most people weren't on her wave length.

"Okay. There's this magical thing called the internet. And some people like to write things on the internet."

"Don't be facetious," Calina replied.

"Fine." She dropped the condescending tone and continued. "When you told me about your lawyer, and how he seemed to perceive things he shouldn't be able to, I remembered a theory I'd come across in the depths of the internet from a Hell's Kitchen blogger. He had no following to speak of, so his speculation went nowhere."

"What speculation?"

"That Daredevil had superpowers. This blogger had seen him in action up close and said it was like he had 360 degree awareness. As if he was using senses in addition to sight to orientate himself and dodge attacks. The blogger thought it was some form of telepathy, but I had a different theory. See, when Daredevil was first on the scene he wore a black fabric mask over his eyes. So I started to think, maybe he was using senses other than sight, because he couldn't actually see. From there it was just a matter of plugging in some Daredevil footage into a program I designed that analysed his movements and spatial awareness, and it proved my theory - he's blind. Then I used facial recognition software to compare him against your lawyer and - even though it only ran on the bottom half of his face - it came back with a 92% probability of a match. Simple."

Calina shook her head, dumfounded. At both Anya's idea of 'simple'...and the fact that her neighbour - her kind, handsome, blind neighbour - was a super-powered vigilante.

"You're sure?" Calina whispered.

"I'm insulted you even have to ask," was the dry reply.

"Sorry. It's just a little...out there."

"More 'out there' than the existence of a secret cabal of mind-controlled female assassins?"

"Good point. And thank you, Anya. For figuring all this out."

"I didn't just do it for you," she replied in her typical blunt fashion. "This guy's senses must be off-the-charts powerful for him to be able to fight and leap across buildings without using his eyes. So he can probably detect things about you that you don't realise. Which means your secret - and ours - is at risk. I suggest you find another place to live before he figures it out."

"I-I'll take that under advisement," Calina replied before saying her goodbyes and hanging up.

She sat back in the booth and blew out a long breath, still stunned at the news.

Matthew was Daredevil.

Matthew was Daredevil.

She hadn't heard of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen prior to moving to New York; but she'd become very familiar with him since. He was like a folklore hero in these parts. Graffiti art of a red-suited man with devil horns graced the facades of several buildings. His antics made the local news, and were splashed across the tabloid papers.

He had his detractors - people who thought any form of vigilantism was wrong - but most thought he was making a positive impact on this little section of New York.

And he lived next door to her.

So should she move out?

She no longer had to worry about him reporting her to the Sokovia accords - not when he was operating outside of them himself. But it didn't mean that he would be accepting of having a former spy/assassin as a neighbour. And if he found out about her sisters - who were still engaging in covert, and sometimes deadly operations - would his moral code allow him to ignore that?

Because he did have a code.

All her research indicated that Daredevil had never killed a single one of his victims.

The Widow's hands were not so clean. Even now, freed from Dreyokov's control.

Should she move out?

Calina contemplated the prospect as she stared out of the window. The night sky was dark, but the street was a riot of colour; the puddles on the sidewalk reflected the bright blue of the diner's sign. The lights of the cars on the roads were red and white blurs as they sped passed. The traffic signals blinked in amber and green. And the revellers headed to the bars and clubs were dressed to the nines in metallics and pinks and, multi-hued garments.

This place was so...alive.

She didn't want to move.

Not anymore.

She liked her building, and the residents she was slowly getting to know. She liked her dance classes and her coffee place, and the subway, and the parks.

And though she'd come to accept that they'd never be more than neighbours, she still liked living next to Matthew. She liked hearing the clack of his cane as he walked to his door, and his deep voice, and the way he looked in his suits. Strange as it sounded, she even liked the feeling of longing that came when she caught a glimpse of him in the hallway. Her juvenile crush on him - the first she'd ever experienced in her life - felt like a piece of her lost adolescence that she'd regained. It felt so normal.

Was she being selfish, putting her sisters at risk for a bit of joy and a sliver of normality?

She thought back over the past 6 weeks, for anything that might have give her away to Matthew's heightened senses...but there was nothing.

No incriminating conversations that he might have overheard - her only visitor had been Yelena, and they hadn't discussed Widow's business in earshot. There was the incident in the mail room, but she wasn't regularly fighting people in the building.

She shook her head, grabbed her phone and scooted out of the booth. She left the diner and started the walk back to her apartment, resolved to keeping it her apartment.

She hadn't given anything away to Matthew that would point to her being a Widow. And as long as she was careful going forward, she never would.

———

Her harmless crush on Matthew Murdock evolved into a bit of an obsession over the next few days.

She was fascinated by his double life: crusading lawyer by day; masked vigilant by night.

She started following Daredevil's nightly adventures through social media - there was a hashtag that the locals used whenever they spotted his red-suited form flying along the rooftops, and she tracked it religiously.

She read all the articles about his exploits and watched the hours of videos that had been uploaded to YouTube over the years - shaky camera footage from bystanders that documented his athleticism, his strength and his skills.

It started as just another strategy to distract herself. The dance classes and the library visits and the coffee breaks worked to fill her daytime. But the nights were trickier, formed of seemingly endless hours in which her mind tormented her. Sleep was held at bay by memories of her past and the things she had done. When it eventually came, she was plagued by nightmares, her psyche not allowing her the peaceful respite of unconsciousness.

Shadowing Matthew online, studying his past, and following him in the present, helped fill the worst of those hours - the stretch between midnight and 3 am, when she was so tired she could barely move, but rest was an impossibility.

And the more she learned...the more impressed she was by her fearless neighbour.

She was particularly enamoured of his fighting style. It was an unusual mix of traditional boxing with martial arts, which somehow blended into a powerful but graceful technique that seemed uniquely his own. She couldn't help but imagine sparring with him. Her own method of combat was so different from his - he opted for aggressive offence, whereas she excelled at defence. Strength wasn't her greatest asset, so she'd been trained to escape rather than attack, which suited the nature of her missions - get in, get what was needed, and get out.

How would their two very different styles come together? Would it be an even match, their methods complimenting each other? Or would there be a clear victor?

It saddened her that she would never find out.

But while she gained respect for his skills...she started to worry about his safety.

The leaps he took across rooftops defied gravity. The punches that landed on him looked brutal and punishing. He went after armed, ruthless criminals with nothing but a bit of armour and some sticks.

It didn't feel...sustainable. He was only human, after all. An incredibly gifted human, but flesh and blood and mortal just the same. And he'd been at this for years already. Almost every night, for years. It felt like he was tempting fate every time he stepped out onto their roof.

The urge to leave her apartment and follow him in person became a constant temptation. Not because she thought he needed back up. But just to see for herself that he was being as safe as possible. The twitter posts and the blogs and the footage weren't enough. She needed to watch him in action. It was an urge that she couldn't full explain, and one that she couldn't ignore for long - it became an itch under her skin. A compulsion that had her pacing the small confines of her apartment at night as he risked his life somewhere out beyond her window.

Until one night...she gave in.

She pried up the floorboards in her bedroom and retrieved the bag containing her Widow suit. She'd stashed it there the day she'd moved in - buried it, more like, as if a body in a tomb. But just like Poe's Tell-tale heart, her buried secret was not a silent corpse to be forgotten. It tugged at her, a constant reminder.

Maybe it wasn't surprising that she suffered insomnia, with a skeleton like that beneath her bed.

She shook out the thin black fabric, a kevlar-reinforced neoprene that allowed for as much protection as possible while providing maximum flexibility. She zipped herself into the suit and adjusted the leather reinforced shoulders and knee pads. She contemplated the belt with the attached thigh holsters but left it behind in the bag - she wasn't going out looking for a fight, so her guns wouldn't be necessary. But she didn't want to be completely defenceless, so she strapped on her Widow's bites - bracelets that could deliver powerful electric shocks, both up close and from afar.

She slipped on her fingerless gloves, and braided her long hair to keep it off her face. As she grabbed her newly purchased balaclava - a black woollen mask that would keep her identity hidden from the people of New York - she caught a glimpse of herself in the full length mirror beside her wardrobe.

She froze. Then straightened up and stared at the image of her past self.

Widow 118.

The spy. The covert operative. The infiltrator.

The liar.

The thief.

The occasional assassin.

She felt an overwhelming sense of revulsion. The taste of bile rose in her throat, and she could feel her skin drain of colour.

Fighting back the sensation, she took a deep breath and turned her back on the reflection.

This was different, she told herself.

This was her choice. Not a mission she'd been compelled to undertake.

And she was different now.

She wasn't going out to do harm. Just to observe. Just to placate her fears over a man she had grown to admire and respect. The suit was just a practicality. She was comfortable in it, knew how to move in it, knew it would protect her.

It didn't have to mean anything more.

———

The first night, she watched him from a distance.

She found a spot on a fire escape a couple of blocks away, and lifted a small pair of binoculars to her eyes. She trained them on the access door that led from his apartment to the rooftop - their rooftop - and waited for him to emerge.

She didn't have to wait long.

After twenty minutes, when night had fully descended on the city and the moon was high overhead...the Devil appeared.

She held her breath at her first glimpse of him in person. He seemed...bigger somehow. More imposing than the lawyer in his suits. The blood-red armour fit him like a glove, showcasing his solid thighs and the breadth of his chest and the curve of his ass. The mask was suitably intimidating, the horns and the opaque red eyes hiding the kindness and humour that she knew lurked within.

He looked amazing.

Even more so, when he took a running start and somersaulted across to the next building. He sprinted over open spaces and vaulted over air vents and slid down gables, his movements fast and confident and...almost joyous. As if he was stretching his muscles and relishing his freedom.

What must it be like to have all that speed and agility and have to conceal it all day long?

Calina was struck by the feeling that she was only just now getting to see the real Matthew. That so much of what he presented to the world - to her - was a front.

A persona.

Just like her.

When she started to lose sight of him through the binoculars, she followed him across the skyline. Always several blocks behind, but always on his tail.

She felt the same exhilaration as she leapt and somersaulted across the concrete terrain, finally getting to utilise some of her own skills after so many weeks.

That night she watched as he stopped a would-be mugger in a dimly-lit gas station forecourt; as he saved a woman from sexual assault outside a nightclub; as he foiled a major drug deal at the docks, taking down a group of thugs in a chaotic melee. He was outnumbered by five, but he seemed completely in his element as he engaged the gang, incapacitating them one by one, and sometimes two at a time. It was a brutal, fast display of power and proficiency, and she once again admired his skill.

There was a beauty in his violence, that only a fellow fighter could understand. An efficiency, and a surprising amount of mercy.

There was no punishment in his attacks. No gratuitous pain.

He fought to put his assailants down, so they would stay down. That was it. He wasn't sadistic or cruel.

He was a hero.

A hero who didn't need her to worry about his safety. He dodged everything the gang threw at him - punches, kicks, knives...

And even a bullet.

One of the men who had been felled by a leg sweep fumbled at his ankle holster as he sat on the ground. Calina gasped as she watched him draw a gun and point it at Matthew's back. She had a moment of panic - too far away to warn him; too far away to do anything - as he fired.

But Matthew just...stepped to the side. As if he'd known that the weapon was trained on him. He sent one of his escrima sticks flying back at the gunman - knocking him out with a blow to the head - then continued fighting.

All without looking.

It was incredible.

Did he hear the movement of the finger on the trigger? Did he sense the the shooter hold his breath as he lined up his target?

How the hell did he do it?

It was yet one more mystery that she'd never get an answer to.

———

She followed him the next night.

And the one after that.

Always making sure that she arrived home before he did, not knowing the extent of his abilities and how careful she had to be.

So she erred on the side of very careful.

She snuck into her bedroom via the fire escape, in case he scented her on the rooftop. She showered off the sweat and adrenaline that clung to her, in case he could detect that. Then she lay in bed and worked to calm her heart rate and breathing to simulate deep sleep in case he checked.

She was probably being paranoid.

And overly hopeful.

Even if his senses were so powerful and finely tuned that he could pick up her heartbeat from across the hall...why would he bother?

He had made it clear that they were nothing more than two people who happened to share a corridor. They weren't friends, and they would never be more than that.

But still, she felt compelled to follow him out into the night.

To satisfy herself that he was okay...but also because it was helping her sleep. Whether it was the physical exertion tiring her out, or the fact that she was able to concentrate on something other than herself and her past for a while, the result was that she was getting a solid five hours of uninterrupted sleep after sneaking home in the early hours.

It was wonderful after so many restless nights.

So she continued the routine.

Until the fourth time she followed him.

She didn't sleep well that night.

Not at all.