2. a pawn

              
          ANGEL HAD CHIPPED AWAY AT her own soul. She'd taken a chisel to it every time she pulled a trigger or wielded a knife, and this time was no different. She didn't plan on cutting into the skin at Matt Murdock's throat, but she had to make sure.

She had to make sure she couldn't do it.

When she straddled the man, who happened to be quite the heavy sleeper, she slowly pressed the knife to his neck. She'd known he would wake up then. She wanted it. She wanted him to know her as she truly was because she didn't have the strength to just say it plainly.

Angel was a weak woman encased in the sturdy shell of a strong one who no longer knew her limits.

So because of this, she held the knife to his throat. All it would take was one quick swipe, and he would bleed. His blood would darken his white sheets and spill over onto his floor, permanently staining it. She wouldn't care who found him nor would she care that they would trace it back to her because, who was she? Who was she? The mysterious 'Angel' who Matt was last seen with didn't really exist. So who was she?

A murderer. An enigma. A coward.

A coward who knew more than a thousand ways to kill the man beneath her and who couldn't bring herself to exercise those skills anymore.

Not on him.

"You'd kill a blind man in his sleep?" Matt's voice came, deep with sleep and something else she didn't know him well enough to identify. Shock, maybe.

Angel slowly removed the weapon—which was merely a kitchen knife— from his pale but reddening skin. She'd left an ugly mark on him, and she was beginning to fear it would be the first of many. She was a ruinous in that way.

She watched his unseeing eyes and took in his confused expression and raised her hands in surrender, the knife still hanging loosely in her hand. 

For a moment neither of them moved. She sat with her knees on either side of his hips, her chest bare—not the smartest of moves— and her hair wild around her head.

She swallowed, and in a second, he disarmed her, pushing her down onto the bed and putting a forearm to her throat. He applied the slightest pressure, a warning. "I'm not going to hurt you," she forced out.

"Yeah? The knife on my floor says differently." His words passed through gritted teeth, stabbing her with their sharpness and burrowing into her chest with finality. "Who are you? What do you want?"

She deflected purely out of habit. "So I'm guessing you're not into knife play."

He scoffed, his eyes focused on some area near her cheek. His brown hair stood straight up in some places and flopped onto his forehead in others. She could see his face more clearly than she ever had like this. He had pale scars near his browbones and near his mouth and on the top of his cheek. They made him look all the more intriguing but Angel wondered how people reacted to them in his line of work. "I'm not into the women I've slept with trying to kill me in my sleep."

"I wouldn't judge you if you were," she said with a hum. She swallowed, her throat pressing into his arm. Angel should have probably been taking this more seriously. "Someone hired me to kill you—to kill Daredevil. I was told you were one in the same."

A million things passed across the lines of his face, but it tightened too quickly for her to decipher any of it. "Did they hire you to sleep with me too?"

It was her turn to scoff. "I'm gonna choose to take that as a compliment."

He ignored that. "Who hired you?"

"I don't know."

"You're lying," he let out with a growl, pressing her further into the bed.

"I don't know well enough," she tried again, and then he pressed too hard on her neck, sending a shot of anger into her spine, as if she had a right to feel anything but shame and guilt. She was the killer. Not him. "Look, if you aren't gonna strangle me to death, get the fuck off of me, Matt."

For a moment, they were frozen, their bodies distractingly pressed together. She could feel the race of his pulse in her bones, and she further welcomed the utter truth of her failure—she relished in it. She relished in the control. The choice.

A pawn no more, but a fallen piece all the same.

In one swift motion, he was kneeling up, revealing the scarred skin of his bare chest—a plane of ridges and raised tissue that she'd thoroughly familiarized herself with the night before. He quickly grabbed her left wrist, forcing her up with him. He held her so tightly it was painful, but she didn't struggle. He reached somewhere between his bed and his nightstand, producing a pair of handcuffs. He locked her wrist in one cuff and clamped the other one to his headboard. He slid away from her going to stand next to the bed.

"Bondage then?" She asked, staring at the cuffs. She wasn't sure if he could tell that she was doing it, but he shook his head in agitation anyway. "I said I won't hurt you. These aren't necessary." She rattled the cuffs.

"Then why the knife, Angel?" He questioned through clenched teeth. He said her name as if the mere word was a lie, which wasn't far from true.  "You could've disappeared, but you—you wanted me to know."

She hugged her free arm across her chest, suddenly feeling exposed in front of the unseeing man who'd probably already memorized her curves like one would memorize a poem—a song. "Of course I did. The moment I decided to spare you, I signed my own death contract. I don't have anything to lose, and I don't have anyone to lose. Someone else may come in my place, and then we would both be lost, and I would've been better off killing you while you slept."

"What—" he began, sliding a pair of dark sweatpants over his boxer briefs and an old college t-shirt over his head. Columbia. "What? Would you like a 'thank you' for not killing me?"

He threw a shirt directly into her lap, but she didn't acknowledge it. "You were a job. It wasn't personal. They told me you were a bad man, but they played me for a fool." If she had the means, she would go back to her employers and show them how easily she could fail to live up to the meaning of her name. She let out an agitated breath, balling the t-shirt in her hand. "How the hell am I supposed to put this on?"

He paused his movements, breathed deeply, his shoulders rising and falling heavily. Then he turned to his nightstand and dug through the top drawer, producing a small key. He leaned over and unlocked the metal cuffs. He brought her arms up and slipped the shirt onto her torso himself. Then he snapped her bindings back in place.

Angel didn't put up a fight.

"What's your real name?" He asked, backing away once more, his hands resting on his hips.

"'Angel' is as real as I can give you," she murmured.

His face was unreadable. "How many people know what you know?"

About his double life? "The person who wants you dead knows. I don't know who else they've told. I think if you had a bigger problem on your hands the whole world would know by now."

His hands tightened into fists. "Is it Fisk? Wilson Fisk?"

Angel laughed. It was a sharp sound that stabbed its way through the quiet room. "I don't work for white men who think they can own the world."

"Then you do know who wants me dead." It wasn't a question.

Angel twisted herself into a more comfortable position. "Just because I know one thing doesn't mean that I know another."

"Do you enjoy talking in circles?"

"Almost as much as I enjoyed last night," she teased him because she couldn't help herself. "If you wanted to try—"

"Oh, sweetheart," he murmured, his hand tightening around the key. "That's not happening again."

She narrowed her eyes but not because he'd blatantly rejected her. "How long are you gonna keep me like this?"

"Until I can be sure you won't put another knife to my throat." He looked uncomfortable. She could see it now.

She gritted her teeth. "I'm not the one who wants you dead."

"But I have to find out who does."

"And you want my help."

"I don't think I have a choice," he said with a deep sigh. He seemed to age as he expelled the breath.

Angel felt herself tire. "We'll talk like civilized people, and I'll tell you everything I know, but first you need to get your ass over here and let me out of these cuffs."

He thought for a second, a war clear in his expression. Then suddenly, he made his way across the room.

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