"When I asked for a favour, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind," Jessica said in her wry voice as the two of them crouched behind a pickup truck.

"I know," Calina replied, as she finished typing out her message to Matt. "But I told you - I need to do this."

Jessica leaned over to read the text on her phone and shook her head. "'Fighting bad guys, be home later.' Seriously? You couldn't have gone with 'Out for cocktails' or 'Getting my nails done'?"

"He knows I'm with you, so he'd never have bought that. Besides, I don't lie to Matt anymore."

"You could have just not said anything. He's going to kill me - this was supposed to be a quick and easy interpreter gig."

That's how it had started. After leaving Matt's firm, Jessica had led Calina to her office, where a woman huddled in the corner of a battered couch. She looked to be in her late 60s or early 70s, and was swallowed up in a thick woollen coat that looked two sizes too big. Fingerless gloves covered her hands, which clutched a bent and twisted photograph.

"Who is she?" Calina had whispered to Jessica, shrugging out of her jacket.

"No clue. She arrived an hour ago, holding this." Jessica showed her a scrap of newspaper which contained an advert for her PI business. Scrawled next to it, in thick black ink, were the words:

Pleese help her.

"Someone sent her my way, but I can't get anything out of her except her name: Ema. I dialled up an interpreter service but she freaked out and tried to bolt. I figure she's undocumented and scared shitless of the authorities. She sounds like she's speaking Russian, so I thought you could help instead."

It wasn't Russian the woman spoke, but Rusyn, a dialect specific to certain parts of eastern and central Europe, including Slovakia, where the woman was from. It wasn't a language Calina was fluent in, but it was close enough to Ukranian and Russian that she was managing.

The woman also wasn't called Ema - that was the name of her missing granddaughter.

"When did you last see Ema?" Calina asked, enunciating each word slowly in the foreign language.

The woman broke down into quiet sobs as she answered. Calina listened carefully to the woman's pained response, and tried to control her own emotions in the face of such obvious fear and worry.

"What did she say?" Jessica asked when the woman eventually finished talking. She was leaning against her desk, arms folded, a scowl on her face.

"Ema has been missing a week. Its completely out of character, and Nela here,"-Calina patted the older woman's back as she continued to cry-" is worried sick. But she can't go to the police. You were right, they're here illegally."

Jessica grabbed a notebook off her desk and started scribbling. "Okay. I need info - where this Ema works, friends, boyfriends, hobbies. Get me everything you can."

Calina nodded and got to work. She coaxed Nela into telling her as much as she knew, interspersing her barrage of questions with platitudes that she wasn't sure she believed in:

It would be okay.

They'd find her granddaughter

They'd bring her home safely.

She knew it was wrong to make false promises, but she couldn't help it. She felt like she needed to say something. She wasn't used to dealing with a distraught relative. Someone so at the end of their rope they would risk turning to a stranger for help. Someone who looked up at her with watery, beseeching eyes and begged her to find her beloved vnúčka.

So she told the older woman what she wanted to hear, then led her down the stairs to a waiting taxi. Handing the driver the cab fare, she guided Nela into the back and sent her home to wait for news.

"You can't get emotionally involved," Jessica chided when Calina returned to the dark and dingy office. "This is a case. We need to be detached and just deal in the facts."

But that sentiment changed when the facts of the case became clear. After making some calls and checking the 'net, Jessica discovered that Ema - a pretty 23-year old who made ends meet by sewing and repairing clothes with her grandmother, and who enjoyed watching black and white films while drinking hot chocolate - had met a guy.

A bad guy. A manipulative and abusive guy.

It was a story as old as time. But this particular story had a nasty modern edge. The bad guy in question - Bohdan Chumak - had a site on the dark web. One he and his friends used to stream their abuse of captive women in exchange for money and 'likes'.

Jessica had found a clip of Ema from yesterday, and the footage had triggered something in Calina. It had pressed all of her buttons, in all the wrong way...and it seemed to affect Jessica just as strongly. At the end of the short, but violent 30-second clip, Jessica had launched out of her seat and hammered her fist into the wall behind her.

"You okay?" Calina asked, eyeing the massive dent in the wall with equal parts worry and admiration. Matt had told her all about Jessica's super-strength, but seeing it in person was something else.

"Yeah," Jessica gritted out as she paced the small office.

"What happened to staying detached?"

The other woman paused, and looked at Calina for a long moment, as if weighing something up in her mind. Then she collapsed onto the sofa and sighed. "Murdock told me some stuff about you. About your past. And I'm sorry if that was a breach of trust, or whatever, but the dude was going through some stuff, and needed to off-load."

"Okay," Calina said slowly. Part of her was desperate to know when this conversation took place, and what stuff Matt had been 'going through'...but she sensed that was a conversation for a different time. "And?"

"And...I have some experience of that too. Of being under someone's control. Of being abused, and made to do things..." She swallowed harshly and stared off into space for a moment. Then she snapped her head back to glare at Calina. "Let's just say, for cases like this one,"- she pointed to the laptop screen-"I tend to break my golden rule. I'm going to take down this fucking scumbag, and the rest of his fucking scumbag gang, and I'm going to hurt them in the process. Badly. You can run on home to your boyfriend and tell him, but if he tries to stop me-"

"I'm coming with you."

"What?"

"I'm just as angry as you are, Jessica - I'm just more liable to break a bone if I take that frustration out on the brickwork. But I'm more than happy to take it out on Chumak and his friends. I want to. I need to."

Jessica eyed her again, more favourably this time, an admiring glint in her dark eyes. "Okay, then, Comrade. Let's do this."

And that's how they'd ended up hiding behind a truck, scoping out the crumbling apartment building opposite. Night had fallen hours ago, but only a couple of street lamps were on, illuminating blotches of the pavement with a sickly yellow glow.

Calina silenced her phone and stowed it away, hoping Matt wouldn't worry too much about her text message. It would be hypocritical of him to do so, considering what he did night after night as Daredevil. Nodding at that justification, she grabbed the Widow's bites out of her pockets and fitted the devices over her hands and wrists.

"Is that what you needed to grab from your apartment? Some spy shit?" Jessica asked as she peered into apartment 14b with a set of binoculars.

"Yeah, but they're just a precaution - I'm not planning on killing anyone tonight."

The other woman scoffed. "Don't worry. I don't have the same hangups that your boyfriend has, but the no-killing thing is probably for the best. I don't wanna catch heat with those Sokovia bastards."

Calina glanced over at the other woman, concerned. "Did you sign the Accords?"

"No. I'm small fry. They're after the superheroes who do all that international, saving-the-world crap. I'm just a PI."

"A PI who literally saved the world last year by taking down The Hand."

"Murdock told you about that, did he?"

"Some. He said he worked with you and a few other people to stop this organisation who were hell-bent on world domination from the shadows-"

"You ever think he may have been overselling things to get into your pants?"

"No. He wouldn't do that. If anything, he's too humble about what he does."

"Of course he is," Jessica muttered. "Fucking boy scout."

"He's no boy scout." Calina's mind went straight to the previous night, and the very un-boy scout things Matt had done with his fingers and tongue...

Jessica slapped her shoulder with the back of her hand. "You're thinking of sex things right now, aren't you? Cut it out."

Calina frowned, surprised at how easily she'd given her thoughts away, knowing her trainers in the Red Room would have been appalled. But she guessed it was a side-effect of living - or practically living - with a blind man with Matt's gifts. He couldn't make out the detail of her face, and could determine what she was feeling just from her heartbeat and body chemistry...which meant there was no need to hide her expressions the way she was always taught to. It was freeing, in a way. But a little too dangerous - she obviously needed to re-learn to regulate her emotions when she was around people other than Matt.

Just then, a light came on in the window they were watching, proving that at least one of Chumak's gang was home.

It was time to move.

"Ready?" Jessica whispered, coming to the same conclusion.

Calina took a second to look at the other woman. It would be strange to go into a fight with someone who wasn't a Widow - a sister that she'd trained with all her life. But she trusted the PI, despite only knowing her a matter of hours. Maybe it was their shared trauma. Maybe it was the fact that Matt trusted her. Or maybe she was just learning to trust her own instincts about people.

Whatever the reason, she was more than happy for Jessica to have her back. "Ready."

———

Matt watched from the shadows as the two women finally made their move. He'd been silently observing them for the last ten minutes, after tailing Calina here from her apartment.

He hadn't planned to get involved in...whatever this was. In fact, he'd been proud of his self control in not hounding the PI with questions when she'd shown up at his office earlier today. Instead, he'd let Calina make her own decision, and when she'd agreed to help, he hadn't checked up on her or intruded.

But everything changed when Calina had grabbed her Widows' bites.

He'd been on the rooftop of their building, about to leave for his nightly patrol, when he'd caught Calina's scent in the air. He'd lingered on the roof, taking a moment to breathe her in, wanting to carry her fragrance into the night with him. And then he'd lingered a few moments longer, just in case she came up to the roof and he could see her and kiss her before leaving...

But she hadn't come up to the roof. She'd gone straight to her apartment, and straight into her bedroom where he heard the scrape of metal against wood as she moved her bed frame. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a floor board being prised up...

And he knew there was only one thing stored under Calina's floor boards:

Her Black Widow gear.

Intrigued - and more than a little concerned - he'd traced Calina's route back through her apartment, out of the building and onto the sidewalk, where she'd quickly hailed a cab. He'd raised an eyebrow at the address she given the driver - a particularly seedy part of Hell's Kitchen - and set about following her from the rooftops.

When she arrived at her destination and met up with Jessica, Matt had hunkered down in the shadows high above the street to observe.

It wasn't a matter of trust. He trusted Calina. Maybe not quite as implicitly as he'd once done, but the gap between then and now was narrowing by the day. Time was healing the wounds of her lies, just as he'd always known it would. His faith in her - in them - was getting stronger with every moment they spent together...

So this was not about trust. He wasn't concerned that she was up to something nefarious, or deliberately keeping something from him.

This was about her safety.

Since he'd met Calina, she'd been stabbed, shot, beaten up, comatosed, and dosed with fear pheromones. Worry about what might happen to her next was an almost constant companion of his.

A worry that was bordering on an obsession.

He just couldn't stand the thought of her being hurt again. So even though he knew she was more than capable of taking care of herself, Matt had decided to stand here and keep watch...just in case. Her invisible back up for...whatever this was.

Calina's text, when it came through moments after her arrival, had done little to shine a light on the situation:

Fighting bad guys, be home later.

Matt had started carrying the burner phone when he was out as Daredevil as a concession to Calina. She never begged him not to leave at night. She never wished that he led a different - less dangerous - life. The only thing she'd ever asked was for him to carry the phone so that she could reach him in an emergency.

Apparently he wasn't the only one in their relationship who worried about safety.

He'd huffed out a laugh at Calina's vague message, then tuned his senses to the building the two women were obviously scoping out, hoping for more clues.

And when he found them...his fists had clenched in anger. He could hear the soft, broken sobs of a woman on the fourth floor, and the gentle soothing voice of another trying to comfort her. Then a door opening. The sounds of mocking laughter. Shrieks of fear, then the meaty smack of fists meeting flesh...

He pieced together enough to understand why Jessica and Calina were here. And when they ran across the street and into the building, he didn't even consider stopping them, or joining them.

This was their fight.

He was just backup.

He listened intently as they made their way to the apartment in question. As Jessica kicked in the reinforced door with ease, and as the shouts of three men greeted them. Then the two women engaged their enemies - Jessica with her brute strength and Calina with her graceful skill and the electric crackle of her Widow's Bites.

The men were no match for them.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Jessica and Calina emerged onto the street with two young woman huddled between them. They flagged down another cab, bundled their rescued victims into the car, followed them inside...and then they were gone.

Matt waited a few more minutes, to make sure no one from the apartment followed them, but the coast appeared clear. Just as he was turning to leave, the piercing wail of several cop cars rang out. They turned onto the street and screeched to a halt outside the building. As the cops spilled out and started racing inside, Matt ran across the roof in the opposite direction.

It was time to get back to his own mission.

There were, unfortunately, a lot of other people in fear and pain in this city.

And Jessica and Calina couldn't help them all.

———

Several hours later...

Matt rested his head on the back of the couch, and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath in through his nose...held it...then released it through his mouth.

In through the nose...and out through the mouth.

In...and out.

In...and out.

But it didn't help.

He gave up on the meditation technique and stalked in to the kitchen to grab a beer instead. He took a swig of the cool liquid then rested back against the countertop, rubbing a hand over his weary face. It was 3 o'clock in the morning. He'd gotten home from his patrol an hour ago, showered and changed, and was trying to wind down enough to go to sleep, but his brain was wide awake.

Because Calina wasn't there.

Some nights, the thought of returning home to her was the only thing that kept him going. When the corruption and brutality of the city felt so thick it was a miasma that clung to him, suffocating him, drawing him down into despair...all he had to do was think of Calina. Of her scent. The satin of her skin. The thick weight of her hair, and the cadence of her laugh...

And the knowledge that he would see her soon, and talk to her, and hold her and kiss her.

She steadied him. Gave him strength.

And when he finally did stumble through the door to her, she would welcome him in with a smile. Or with a soothing hand over wrenched muscles. Or a gentle kiss against bruised skin, or with soft thighs parting around his hips as he sought oblivion in her embrace...

It was addictive, that feeling of being accepted so completely. Of being cared for, and tended to, and loved, despite the darkness staining his soul.

And like a junkie in need of his fix, he felt jittery and unsettled tonight without it.

He'd received another vague text about an hour after he'd watched Calina speed off in the taxi with the two women she'd saved:

Out drinking with JJ. Be home later. Love you.

He'd smiled at the time - at the thought of light-weight Calina trying to keep up with Jessica's drinking habits. And he'd smiled at the thought that she'd made another friend; he was worried that her life in New York was too small, too insular, without her sisters around her. He never wanted her to feel trapped or constrained, or to regret choosing him over every other option in the world that was now open to her.

So he was glad she'd found Jessica. He was glad she was out, having fun, celebrating her victory.

He could feel all that, and still miss her.

He collapsed back onto the couch, not even bothering to try the bed - he knew he wouldn't sleep without her beside him. He took another sip of beer and tried a different meditation technique, one that had worked for him in the past. He chose a random sound in the apartment - the hum of the refrigerator, this time - and focused on it. He brought the innocuous background noise to the fore, and amplified it. He analysed every nuance of the pitch until he could pick apart each individual wavelength. He let the sound fill his head until it became an almost deafening white noise, one that blotted out every other sense and every thought in his brain.

And finally...he felt some relief.

He forgot where he was. He forgot what he'd been worried about just twenty minutes before. His heart rate dropped to its lowest base rate. The taut muscles in his body relaxed, and the faint knot in his stomach loosened and disappeared, until he felt calm and centred.

Then another sound intruded the thunderous hum - one he must have been subconsciously listening for all along: the click of his door unlocking.

Calina was home.

Matt opened his eyes and smiled. The hum disappeared in an instant, and the normal soundscape of his apartment returned - joined by the slightly stumbling footsteps of Calina as she walked towards him.

He held out his hand to her. "Hi, sweetheart."

"Hi," she whispered, taking his hand.

"Why are you whispering?"

"You might be asleep."

He laughed and pulled her down onto his lap. "Nope. I've been waiting for you."

"Oh good." She repositioned herself until she was straddling him, her long legs bracketing his, and her arms draped over his shoulders. "'Cos I missed you."

He ran his hands over her thighs and around to her ass. "I missed you too."

She giggled. "Tha's silly. We saw each other earlier today."

Matt laughed again. It was impossible not to - drunk Calina was just too entertaining. "I missed you earlier today, and you were just one room away."

"Awww, that's sweet." She wriggled closer on his lap and stroked her fingers through his hair. "And silly."

He hummed in pleasure as she leaned down and kissed his neck, his head dropping back against the couch to give her more access. He slipped his hands under her sweater and brushed his fingers over the bare skin of her back. A small knot of pain, throbbing with blood, was present over her left flank, courtesy of her fight earlier tonight. He circled the bruise carefully. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yep," she replied. "I took down some bad guys."

"Good for you."

"And helped some people."

"I'm glad."

"Then Jessica got me drunk."

"I noticed."

"She's funny."

"Really?" 'Funny' was not the most obvious adjective to apply to Jessica Jones.

"Uh-huh," Calina replied, tugging his earlobe into her mouth. She'd started circling her hips, pushing against his groin in a subtle, maddening rhythm and he was quickly losing track of the conversation. "And she's angry."

"That I get."

"And sad. We talked a lot."

"Really?" he asked again. Calina must have seen a very different side to Jessica tonight - because she wasn't the most forthcoming person he'd ever met. But he supposed it made sense. They'd both been through similar experiences with mind control and abusive men.

Calina suddenly pulled away and sat up straight, her hands dropping into her lap. "Am I weird?" she asked.

"What?"

"Is there something wrong with me?"

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I like having sex with you."

He cocked his head, confused. "Um, I'm actually pretty glad you like having sex with me."

"No, I mean, I shouldn't want to have sex at all, should I? After everything I did - I mean after everything they made me do - before. With my 'targets'. Jessica said after she got free of Kilgrave it messed her up. Sex-wise. For a long time. But I'm fine having sex with you."

Matt didn't know whether to laugh or take offence. "Just fine?"

She huffed and lightly slapped his shoulder. "Shut up. I just mean-"

He pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. "I know what you mean, sweetheart." Her phrasing may have been off, and her words jumbled and slightly slurred from the alcohol, but her admission felt like a deep truth: she was worried that she wasn't dealing with her past trauma in the 'right' way.

"It never bothered me when it happened," she said, resting her head on his shoulder, her breath tickling his neck as she spoke. "I didn't have the emotions to care. And after...I guess I compat-, I compatmenalised, I mean I compantal-"

"Compartmentalised."

"Yeah, that. All that bad stuff happened to a different Calina, you know? It wasn't really me. The me that I am now didn't really exist then."

Matt swallowed, unsure what to say. Their lighthearted conversation had taken a much deeper turn that he'd expected, and he didn't know how to help Calina with what she was feeling. He ran his hands up and down her back - over her clothes this time - wanting to comfort her now instead of arouse. She settled against him as he tried to put his thoughts together. For the first time in his life, he wished he'd gone into therapy, just to know the right thing to say to her.

"There's no right and wrong, Calina," he eventually said. "You're allowed to feel whatever you feel. You're allowed to like sex - no one will judge you for that, least of all me."

He felt her breath against his neck again as she laughed softly. "I didn't mean it like that," he chided. "I just mean, that you've never judged me for the way I deal with my demons. I chose a life of violence, when most people would have opted for counselling and medication. But I've come to accept that this is who I am, and this is the way my life was supposed to go. And I'm happy. I'm finally happy with where I've ended up, and a big part of that is the fact that you accept me they way I am. And I accept you, just as you are. If you're content to compartmentalise that time in your life, and let it be in the past, that's fine. If you feel like you want to seek help to understand what you've been through and how to deal with it, that would be fine too. Whatever you want to do, sweetheart, I'm here for you, and I love you."

Calina was quiet after his rambling speech, and Matt just continued to stroke her back as she digested his words. But after a few more minutes of silence, he started to suspect something else was going on.

"Callie?" he whispered.

No answer. Her body was a warm, boneless weight against him, and her breathing was deep and slow.

She was asleep.

Matt laughed softly, not knowing how much she'd heard before nodding off. It didn't matter - he'd find a way to broach the conversation with her again. He didn't want her to struggle with this alone.

For now, he pushed off the couch and carried her into the bedroom. She didn't stir as he laid her down on his bed and tugged off her shoes, the alcohol sending her into a deep sleep. He tucked her under the covers then padded back into the living room to check the front door and turn off the lights. When he returned, he noticed she'd rolled over on to his side of the mattress - the side closest to the door, which he always felt more comfortable 'guarding'.

He crouched by the bed and nudged her awake gently. "Calina? You're on my side."

"Hmm, always."

"What? No, I meant you're,"- he chuckled, and shook his head- "Nevermind. Goodnight, sweetheart." He kissed her forehead, and climbed into the bed behind her. He gathered her into his arms and quickly sank into sleep.