𝕣ꪖᦔⅈꪖꪀᥴꫀ ✧˖°

“I really needed this pick me up,” she confessed, her voice dipping into something more vulnerable as the cacophony of the carnival seemed to recede into a muffled hum around them, creating a small, private bubble where honesty didn’t feel so expensive.

“Don’t worry about it, really,” Dex replied, his tone carrying that effortless, dry warmth that always managed to chip away at her defenses without her noticing. He adjusted the precarious tower of neon plushies threatening to spill from his arms, bouncing his hip upward to recapture a slipping, cross-eyed panda bear that had been trying to make a break for the pavement. “In all honesty, I needed it too. It was starting to get downright sad without any sunshine bleeding through the walls from the apartment next to me.” The joke was light, but the implication underneath it was heavier, a quiet admission that he’d felt the void her self-isolation had carved in. 

As they ambled towards the parking lot, Y/N found herself glancing at the spoils of his strange, unerring accuracy. He had insisted—stubbornly, almost boyishly—on trying his hand at every single rigged game the moment he caught her gaze lingering on a prize for a beat too long. The softball toss, the water gun race against a plastic clown, the impossible ring-on-bottle scam—Dex approached them with a placid, almost detached focus. And somehow, infuriatingly, he hadn’t missed. Not once. The darts landed with a satisfying thwack, the baseballs dropped perfectly into the slanted milk cans and the carny running the balloon board had just stared, slack-jawed, handing over stuffed creatures with the resigned air of a man watching a natural disaster. 

Y/N didn’t know the specifics of his job—he was cagey about the details, only ever letting slip how brutal the hours were or how the paperwork seemed designed to suffocate a man’s soul—but she had been inside his apartment enough times to notice the signs. The edge of a badge peeking from a drawer, the particular way his shoes were lined up with military precision by the door, the heavy-duty flashlight on the kitchen counter. It pointed to law enforcement, to a discipline and a dangerous edge that most people didn’t have. And perversely, that was part of why she felt so safe standing next to him right now, even as the rest of her world felt like it was held together with fraying twine.

Y/N let her gaze drop to the plush nestled in the crook of her own arm, the one he’d handed to her personally rather than piling it onto the heap he was carrying. It was a fluffy, somewhat lopsided bunny with ears that were absurdly long and soft as dandelion fluff. He had pointed at it wordlessly, a faint smirk tugging at his lip and muttered, “Looks like you.” She didn’t have the heart to argue that she felt nothing like soft cotton and innocence these days. 

“Yes, I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, her fingers tightening around the bunny’s plush middle as if anchoring herself to the single good thing in the immediate vicinity. “It’s just this past month hasn’t really been easy on me.” The understatement of the year. With Wilson Fisk out—the name alone felt like a shard of ice sliding down her spine—everything her brother had sacrificed, every sleepless night and bloody knuckle he’d invested in trying to shine a light into the city’s darkest corners, was unspooling with terrifying speed. The fragile architecture of justice he’d helped build was being kicked over like a sandcastle by a tyrant’s boot.

And then, separate from the city-wide nightmare of Fisk’s resurgence, there was him. The other shadow. The one who had left a mark so deep she sometimes felt like she was still bleeding internally from the wound. A tremor threatened to travel up her spine, a cold, familiar dread that belonged to the quiet of 3 a.m. Y/N shook her head sharply, a physical, violent motion meant to rattle the unwanted thoughts loose and send them scattering back into the dark recesses of her mind where they belonged. She fixed her eyes on the steady, broad line of Dex’s back ahead of her and forced herself to breathe in the smell of gunpowder and cotton candy, clinging to the present moment like it was the last life raft on a very dark sea.

“Hey, hey—it’s okay. I get it. I truly do.” Dex’s voice dropped into something softer, more deliberate, as if he were carefully choosing each word to build a small bridge across the chasm of her unspoken grief. He turned toward his car, fishing the keys from his pocket with one hand while balancing the chaotic menagerie of stuffed animals against his chest with the other. The electronic chirp of the locks disengaging cut through the quiet of the parking lot and he swung the rear door open, depositing the plushies into the backseat with a gentleness that seemed almost comical given his size and the sheer volume of synthetic fur he was handling. 

They tumbled onto the upholstery in a soft avalanche of bright colours—a neon green frog with bulging plastic eyes, a tie-dyed unicorn missing half its glitter, a penguin wearing a tiny sombrero that he’d won purely because she’d laughed at its absurdity. “Things aren’t always easy,” he continued, straightening up and leaning one forearm against the roof of the car, his gaze meeting hers across the span of metal and glass. There was no pity in his eyes, just a kind of steady, unflinching recognition, “And if being with family makes you feel better—even just a little bit—then what’s better than that? Nothing. That’s the stuff that actually matters. The rest of it is just noise.”

“Yeah,” Y/N breathed out, her voice small but steadier now, anchored by the warmth in his words. “Foggy’s like my brother. He really is. Him and my brother Matt—they were friends since college, you know? And when things got hard, when I was just a kid trying to figure out which way was up, Foggy just... stepped in. He basically helped raise me after everything fell apart.” She paused. She hadn’t meant to say so much, but the words kept spilling out as if Dex’s quiet patience had loosened some valve she usually kept screwed tight. 

“Him and a couple of Matt’s other closest friends—Karen, mostly—they’re the only ones I really had left after my brother passed. The only ones who knew him the way I did. The only ones who understood that the world lost something irreplaceable when he... when he was gone.” She pulled the bunny up higher, pressing its plush face against her collarbone as if it could absorb some of the ache radiating from her chest.

Dex was quiet for a long moment, processing the shape of her loss with the same careful attention he gave to everything else that was hers. Then, slowly, a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—not the broad, performative grin he sometimes deployed as armour, but something smaller, more honest, a sliver of light through a crack in his own carefully maintained walls. “Well, I’m glad at least you have someone to help you through it,” he said, his voice carrying an undercurrent of something that might have been envy if it weren’t so tinged with genuine relief. “Everyone needs a harbour. Someone to remind them that the storm doesn’t last forever, even when it feels like it’s going to swallow you whole.”

A wave of guilt crested unexpectedly in Y/N’s chest, cutting through the warmth of the moment. Dex had mentioned it once—just once, late at night when they’d both been sitting on the floor of his apartment, backs against the wall, sharing a bottle of cheap whiskey and the kind of silences that felt more like conversations. He’d lost his parents young. The details had been sparse, offered up like pebbles dropped into still water before he quickly changed the subject and she had never pried. She understood the sanctity of closed doors better than most. But standing here now, watching him extend such effortless grace toward her own grief while carrying his own invisible burdens, the imbalance felt suddenly, achingly unfair.

“But Dex,” she said, her voice firming with a sudden resolve, “you know you have me too, right? I mean it. You’re not just some guy who lives next door and wins me an obscene amount of carnival prizes. You’re part of this now. Part of my harbour.” She smiled then, a genuine, unguarded thing that softened the sharp edges of her face and raised the bunny’s limp, floppy arm to wave at him in a ridiculous greeting. “And Lord Snuggleton of Hugsville too, obviously. He’s very loyal. Once you’re in his inner circle, you’re in for life.”

Dex cracked a smile at that—a real one, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look younger, less like the guarded, capable man she knew and more like the boy he must have been before the world had asked so much of him. “I’m honoured,” he said, dipping his head in a mock-serious bow. “Truly. I don’t take titles like that lightly. Lord Snuggleton’s esteem is not easily earned.” Y/N laughed, a short, bright sound that surprised even her, rising up from some place she’d thought had been buried under weeks of exhaustion and fear. But before either of them could say anything more, the sharp, insistent trill of his phone sliced through the moment like a blade.

Dex’s expression flickered—a brief, almost imperceptible apology flashed across his features as his gaze darted to her face—before he pulled the device from his pocket and brought it to his ear. “Hello?” His voice shifted instantly, shedding its warmth for something clipped, professional, the tone of a man accustomed to receiving orders he couldn’t refuse. “Poindexter.” The name came out flat, almost clinical, a designation rather than an identity. Y/N watched the transformation with a quiet, sinking feeling in her stomach. Whatever was being said on the other end of the line, it was dismantling the evening they’d just shared, brick by careful brick. 

His jaw tightened. His free hand came up to rake through his hair in a gesture she recognized now as a tell—a nervous habit that surfaced only when he was bracing himself against something he didn’t want to face. His eyes, which had been warm and present just seconds ago, grew distant, clouded over with something she couldn’t name. “Yes, I—I’ll be there,” he said, the stammer a rare crack in his otherwise composed facade. “I know. I know.” The repetition was almost a whisper, as if he were trying to convince himself as much as the person on the phone. He ended the call and stood there for a long, suspended moment, the phone still pressed to his ear, his gaze fixed on some point far beyond the dimly lit parking lot, far beyond her.

“Is everything okay, Dex?” Y/N asked, her voice carefully measured, deliberately light. She could read the shift in his posture—the way his shoulders had drawn up just slightly toward his ears, the rigid line of his jaw, the way his thumb was still hovering over the screen of his phone as if expecting it to ring again with even worse news. The easy, warm presence that had been walking beside her just moments ago had retreated somewhere deep behind his eyes, replaced by something taut and coiled, a wire pulled just shy of snapping.

Dex turned back to face her and she watched him visibly assemble a mask of calm the way someone might hastily straighten a painting knocked askew. It was a valiant effort, but she could see the cracks where the urgency underneath was bleeding through—a slight tremor in his hand as he pocketed the phone, the way his gaze kept darting toward the driver’s side door as if already calculating how many minutes it would take him to reach wherever he needed to be.

“Yes, yes, it’s, uh—” He stumbled over the words, uncharacteristically clumsy, his usual measured cadence fracturing under the weight of whatever he’d just been told. “It’s a work emergency. Something that can’t wait, apparently. They need me there now. Like, now.” He exhaled sharply through his nose, a frustrated sound that seemed directed more at himself than at the situation. “I know I said I would drive you back. I promised. And I am so, so sorry, Y/N, but I—”

Y/N cut him off, raising a hand in a gentle but firm stop signal. She’d spent enough time around people who carried the weight of urgent responsibilities—Matt had been the same way, always torn between the life he wanted to live and the life that demanded him at the most inconvenient moments. She recognized the guilt flickering behind Dex’s eyes, the specific agony of someone who prided themselves on reliability being forced to break a promise. 

“Dex, it’s okay,” she said and she meant it, pouring as much reassurance into the words as she could muster. “I get it. Duty calls. That’s just how it works sometimes and I’m not going to hold it against you.” She gestured broadly at the carnival still glittering and churning in the near distance, the Ferris wheel turning in its slow, luminous circle against the darkening sky. “I’m a big girl, remember? I’ll probably wander around a bit more, maybe watch the carousel lights for a while and then I’ll call myself a cab. You don’t have to worry about it. Seriously.”

“Are you sure?” The question came out tight, strained and he was trying so hard to mask his guilt that it was almost painful to witness. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, a rare display of restlessness from a man who usually moved with such deliberate, controlled economy. “I could wait. Just until a cab shows up. It wouldn’t take long, I could—I could make the time. They can wait five more minutes. Ten, even. It’s not—” He was bargaining now, with himself more than with her, trying to find some arrangement that wouldn’t leave him feeling like he was abandoning her in a parking lot after dark.

“No, no, Dex.” Y/N shook her head firmly, her voice softening but leaving no room for argument. “I swear I’m fine. I’ll get myself some more of that ridiculous cotton candy we saw earlier and I’ll be perfectly content.” She waved her hand dismissively, a small, deliberate gesture meant to physically brush away his concerns. And the strangest part was, she realized with a small jolt of surprise, she actually believed her own words. In recent months, after the incident—she couldn’t bring herself to name it directly, even in the privacy of her own thoughts—she had felt fundamentally unsafe stepping outside her apartment alone. Every shadow had seemed to hold a threat, every stranger’s glance a potential prelude to danger. The world had shrunk to the size of her living room and leaving it had required Herculean effort and often a companion to anchor her. 

But tonight, after hours spent walking beside Dex’s steady presence, she could feel something shifting inside her. The confidence he exuded had seeped into her bones like warmth from a fire, pushing back the cold tendrils of anxiety that had taken up residence there. She wasn’t cured—she knew better than to think it worked that way—but she was better. Stronger. More herself.

Before she could overthink it, she stepped forward into his space and wrapped her arms around him in a small, brief hug. It wasn’t much—just a quick press of warmth, the soft squash of Lord Snuggleton caught between them—but it was an offering. A thank you. A promise that she would be okay. She stepped back just as quickly, her cheeks warming slightly and fixed him with a look that was part stern older sister and part something else she wasn’t ready to examine. “Drive safely and stay safe, hmm? Whatever it is, I want you coming back in one piece. Lord Snuggleton would be devastated otherwise.”

Dex smiled at her then and despite the urgency still thrumming visibly beneath his skin, the expression reached his eyes. “Always, sunshine,” he said, the nickname falling from his lips like it belonged there, like it had always been hers. And then he was sliding into the driver’s seat, the engine growling to life and pulling out of the parking lot with a controlled, efficient speed that spoke of someone accustomed to navigating emergencies. Y/N watched the red glow of his taillights shrink until they were swallowed by the darkness beyond the carnival’s halo of light and for a long moment, she simply stood there, alone in the half-empty lot, clutching her rabbit and feeling the unfamiliar but not unwelcome sensation of being okay.

Back at the carnival, Y/N made a beeline for the chocolate fountain with the singular determination of a missile locking onto its target. The smell hit her before she even reached the counter: rich, warm and decadent, laced with the subtle bitterness of good cocoa and the sweet promise of immediate gratification. She had already indulged plenty tonight—more than plenty, if she was being completely honest with herself, which she was decidedly not in the mood to do—so what was a little bit more? 

She stepped up to the counter and ordered the large cup without hesitation, watching as the vendor skewered plump, ruby-red strawberries and dense squares of fudge brownie onto wooden sticks before plunging them beneath the chocolate’s glossy surface. The coating hardened almost instantly into a thin, crisp shell that crackled satisfyingly when she bit into the first strawberry, the tartness of the fruit cutting through the sweetness in perfect, harmonious balance.

She had only ordered the medium cup earlier when Dex had been standing beside her, hyperaware of his presence and the quiet, observant way he seemed to take note of everything without passing judgment. She hadn’t wanted him to think she was completely unhinged, that her relationship with sugar had crossed some invisible line from “treat yourself” into “concerning coping mechanism.” Especially considering the culinary carnage that had preceded this final indulgence: she had methodically worked her way through every single flavour of gourmet popcorn at the stall near the entrance—caramel sea salt, white cheddar, buffalo ranch, dill pickle, birthday cake and a truly unhinged sriracha honey variety that had made her eyes water but she’d finished anyway. 

That had been followed by a triple-decker ice cream cone the size of her forearm, a precarious tower of belgian chocolate, strawberry cheesecake and cookie dough that had required strategic licking and rapid consumption to prevent a catastrophic structural failure. And then, of course, there had been the cotton candy—not one but two entire clouds of spun sugar, both of which had dissolved on her tongue like sweet, fleeting dreams and left her fingers sticky and her conscience only mildly bruised. Dex had watched her consume all of this with an expression somewhere between amusement and genuine scientific curiosity but he hadn’t said a word. That was one of the things she appreciated most about him—he let her be, without commentary, without the gentle, well-meaning lectures she’d grown so accustomed to deflecting.

“Miss, please—feel free to pick a prize from here.” The vendor’s voice pulled her from her chocolate-induced reverie and she looked up to find him gesturing toward a board mounted on the side of the stall. It was covered in styrofoam cups arranged in neat rows, each one with a tissue stuffed into its mouth. The whole display had a distinctly homemade, slightly melancholic charm, the kind of prize system that existed more for the vendor’s entertainment than any real value to the customer.

Y/N blinked, a smear of chocolate still clinging to the corner of her lip. “What for?” she asked, genuinely bewildered. She glanced down at the large cup in her hand, then back up at the board, trying to piece together the logic. “I didn’t think a large cup warranted a prize. Is this a new promotion or something?”

The vendor chuckled softly and shook his head. “Yes, miss, but two medium cups of strawberries back then—” He paused for effect, his eyebrows lifting meaningfully, “—and now two large cups of strawberries and brownies?” He spread his hands as if presenting irrefutable evidence to a jury. “That’s four cups total. In one evening. From my stall alone.” He said it without judgment, more like a man acknowledging a worthy adversary, but the implication landed with all the subtlety of a brick through a window.

A deep, mortifying blush crept up Y/N’s neck and flooded her cheeks, spreading like wildfire across her face until even the tips of her ears felt hot. She suddenly became intensely aware of the chocolate cup in her hand, which now felt less like a treat and more like Exhibit A in the case against her self-control. Perhaps she shouldn’t have indulged quite so much after all. Perhaps there had been a reasonable limit somewhere back around the first cup of strawberries, a line she had gleefully vaulted over without a backward glance. 

Matt would have known. Matt always knew. Her brother had possessed an almost supernatural ability to detect her dietary transgressions—he could quite literally smell the sugar on her breath, the artificial fruit flavouring of Skittles clinging to her fingers, the scent of processed chocolate that no amount of hand-washing could fully erase. He would fix her with that look, the one that was equal parts exasperation and affection and launch into his familiar litany: “Y/N, you know that stuff is poison, right? Your body is a temple, not a candy disposal unit. Come on, let’s go for a run. Just a few miles. You’ll feel better, I promise.” 

And she would groan and protest and drag her feet, but ultimately, she would go, because it was Matt asking and because he was right and because watching him—blind, yet moving through the world with the grace and precision of a predator, fighting criminals on rooftops while she wheezed on a treadmill—was both deeply inspiring and profoundly humbling. He had been Daredevil, a vigilante with seemingly infinite stamina and an unbreakable moral code, while she struggled to maintain a light jog for more than fifteen minutes without questioning every life choice that had led her to that moment. It had been embarrassing, yes, but it had also been love. His nagging, his gentle scolding, his relentless insistence that she take care of herself—it had all been love, wrapped in the rough packaging of older-brother concern.

But after his death, the silence had been deafening. There was no one to nag her anymore. No one to wrinkle their nose at the scent of contraband candy and demand she put on her running shoes. No one to care, in that specific, irritating, irreplaceable way, whether she ate a vegetable or went for a walk or took care of the body she inhabited. The absence of that nagging felt infinitely worse than the nagging itself ever had. It was a void, a negative space where his voice used to live and, in its emptiness, she had fallen back into old, comfortable patterns. 

She knew—intellectually, rationally—that consuming these many sweets wasn’t good for her. She knew about blood sugar spikes and empty calories and the long, slow creep of habits that became harder to break with each passing day. But knowing and doing were two different countries and she hadn’t yet found the bridge between them. Having dinners and cook nights with Dex had helped. His quiet, unassuming presence in her life had motivated her to eat healthier, to plan meals that contained actual nutrients, to slowly pull herself back onto some semblance of a track. 

He never lectured, never judged—he just showed up with vegetables and a recipe and an expectation that she would participate and somehow that gentle, wordless accountability was more effective than any of Matt’s well-intentioned scolding had ever been. But standing here now, clutching her fourth cup of chocolate-drenched indulgence, she felt the familiar ache of missing her brother’s voice. She missed the exasperated sigh. She missed the way he would shake his head and call her a menace to her own pancreas. She missed being known that completely, being seen that clearly, even when—especially when—she was doing something she shouldn’t.

She looked up at the vendor, still blushing and gave him a small, sheepish smile. “I’ll take whatever prize is behind cup number seven,” she said softly, pointing at a random styrofoam cup on the board. It seemed appropriate—lucky number seven, the number of completion, of rest. Maybe it was a sign. Or maybe it was just a cup with a tissue stuffed in it. Either way, she would take it.

The vendor’s face broke into a wide, practiced smile as he reached beneath the counter and produced a slim, silver ticket that caught the carnival lights and shimmered like a promise. “A ticket to the mirror maze! Congratulations, miss.” He slid it across the counter toward her with a small flourish, clearly pleased to be delivering something more substantial than the usual plastic trinkets and temporary tattoos that most prizes consisted of.

Y/N accepted the ticket, turning it over in her fingers to examine it. Mirror maze, huh? The thought settled into her mind and unfurled slowly, like a flower opening to the sun. That actually sounded... fun. Genuinely, unexpectedly fun. She had spotted the attraction earlier in the evening, toward the far end of the carnival grounds. The exterior had been impossible to miss—a massive, warehouse-sized structure wrapped in panels of reflective material that caught the surrounding neon glow. A sign above the entrance had proclaimed it “The Labyrinth of a Thousand Faces—Find Yourself, If You Can,” in curling, carnivalesque script. She had paused when she’d seen it, her footsteps slowing unconsciously, her gaze lingering on the entrance with a familiar pang of childhood nostalgia. She’d wanted to go in. Badly. 

But she hadn’t said anything. She had swallowed the desire and kept walking, because making Dex navigate an endless maze of mirrors while balancing that absurd, precarious mountain of stuffed animals in his arms just didn’t seem appropriate. It would have been selfish, she’d told herself. Unfair. The man had already gone out of his way—truly, genuinely out of his way—to invite her out tonight. He had shown up at her door with that quiet, determined look on his face, the one that brooked no argument and had essentially dragged her out of what he affectionately referred to as her “depression hole.” Dex had pulled her out of that. 

He had driven to Foggy’s building where Y/N was staying temporarily, waited in the hallway while she threw on something other than sweatpants for the first time in days and then spent his entire evening winning her stuffed animals and pretending not to notice when she stress-ate her body weight in carnival concessions. Asking him to also stumble through a mirror maze with an armful of plushies would have been too much. It would have tipped the scales of his generosity into territory she wasn’t comfortable occupying. And besides, moving past it had been easy enough. The mirror maze was one of the carnival’s biggest attractions in terms of sheer physical size—it dominated that entire corner of the grounds, a sprawling labyrinth that promised to consume time and attention in equal measure and she had convinced herself it wasn’t worth the hassle.

But now, holding this unexpected silver ticket in her chocolate-sticky fingers, the universe seemed to be offering her a second chance. A small, glittering do-over.

“But miss, you should hurry.”  He gestured toward the maze with a tilt of his chin, his expression shifting into something more urgent. “The carnival closes in fifteen minutes and that ticket’s only good for today. After that—” He made a small, apologetic gesture, the universal sign for “it becomes worthless paper.”

Y/N nodded quickly, the motion jerky and determined, even as she stuffed another chocolate-coated strawberry into her mouth with the single-minded focus of someone preparing for battle. Lord Snuggleton remained tucked securely in the crook of her arm, his floppy ears bouncing with each hurried step she took away from the chocolate fountain and toward the distant, glimmering silhouette of the mirror maze. Pushing through the remaining crowd was tough—the carnival had thinned out considerably as closing time approached, but those who remained were concentrated in the main thoroughfares. She muttered apologies as she slipped past, her shoulders twisting to avoid collisions, Lord Snuggleton pressed protectively against her chest.

Thankfully, when she finally reached the entrance to the mirror maze, the wait line was almost non-existent—just a handful of stragglers like herself, drawn by the same last-minute impulse to squeeze one more experience out of the dying night. She took her place and used the brief pause to scarf down the remaining contents of her cup with an efficiency that would have impressed even her judgmental brother. The strawberries disappeared in quick succession, their tart sweetness cutting through the rich chocolate coating. The brownies followed, dense and fudgy and almost obscenely decadent, leaving a pleasant warmth in her stomach that bordered on uncomfortable. 

She checked beneath the crumpled paper cups, searching for napkins and realized with a small pang of regret that she had completely forgotten to ask for tissues. The chocolate residue on her fingers was one thing, she could wipe that surreptitiously on the inside of her jacket and deal with the consequences later, but the sticky, sweet film she could feel clinging to the corners of her mouth and probably smeared across her chin was another matter entirely. With no better options presenting themselves and the line inching forward, she resorted to the undignified but effective method of running her tongue around her lips in a broad, sweeping circle, hoping the impromptu self-cleaning would suffice. It probably didn’t. She probably looked like a toddler who had been left unsupervised with a jar of Nutella. But the carnival was closing, the maze was waiting and dignity was a luxury she couldn’t afford at this particular moment.

The mirror maze swallowed her whole. It was vast and well-lit in a strange, disorienting way—not bright, exactly, but saturated with light that bounced and refracted and multiplied, creating an atmosphere that felt simultaneously infinite and claustrophobic. Every surface gleamed. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors lined every wall, their edges so seamlessly joined that it was impossible to tell where one reflection ended and another began. Soft, coloured LED strips ran along the baseboards, casting everything in a dreamlike glow that shifted subtly between cool blues, warm pinks and ethereal purples. 

Y/N found herself surrounded on all sides by versions of herself—dozens of them, hundreds maybe, stretching away into what looked like impossible, endless corridors. Some reflections stood close, their details sharp and intimate; others receded into the distance, growing smaller and smaller until they were just specks of colour and movement. She turned slowly in place, mesmerized, watching as every version of Y/N Murdock turned with her, a synchronized army of herself moving in perfect unison. It had been a long, long time since she had been in a mirror maze. The last time must have been years ago, back when Matt was still alive and dragging her to every strange corner of New York City he could find, insisting that she needed to “experience” things rather than just read about them or watch them on a screen. He had always been like that—relentlessly experiential, convinced that life was meant to be lived in three dimensions, with all the mess and discomfort that entailed.

But Matt had also possessed a singular, almost supernatural talent for ruining mazes. It wasn’t intentional, which somehow made it worse. His senses—those impossible, heightened senses that allowed him to navigate the world in ways she could barely comprehend—meant that he could perceive the maze not as a disorienting puzzle but as a clear, three-dimensional map. He could feel the subtle differences in air currents that indicated a dead end versus an open passage. He could hear the faint echo of sound bouncing off glass versus empty space. He could smell the difference between a corridor that led somewhere and one that circled back on itself.

While she blundered around like a confused, sighted mole, walking face-first into mirrors with a resounding thwack that echoed through the entire structure, Matt would stand there with his head tilted slightly, that infuriating half-smile playing at the corner of his mouth and simply know which way to go. He would listen to her collide with yet another reflective surface, sigh with the long-suffering patience of an older brother who had seen it all before and then calmly guide her toward the exit while she nursed her bruised forehead and bruised pride in equal measure. 

And then, for the next week—minimum—he would bring it up at every opportunity. “Remember when you walked into that mirror so hard I thought you’d cracked it?” he’d say, his voice warm with barely suppressed laughter. “The carnival people probably still have your face print on file.” She would whine and protest and throw things at him, but secretly, secretly, she had loved it. The teasing. The attention. The way he noticed and remembered and cared enough to make fun of her.

Now, standing alone in this cathedral of reflections, she found herself almost wishing for the thwack of forehead against glass, if only because it would mean he was there to hear it.

Y/N shook off the creeping melancholy and focused on the task at hand: navigating. She extended one hand in front of her, palm flat, fingers spread—the universal posture of someone trying very hard not to walk into something solid. Her other arm remained curled protectively around Lord Snuggleton, the bunny’s soft body pressed against her ribs like a fuzzy, inanimate anchor. The maze was quiet, unnervingly so. The carnival’s ambient noise seemed to be absorbed by all the glass. She took a tentative step forward, then another, her outstretched fingers brushing against cool, smooth glass. She adjusted her angle, stepped again, found open space and allowed herself a small, private smile of victory.

The smile faded approximately two minutes later when she realized, with a slow, dawning horror, that she had absolutely no idea where she was.

The corridors of mirrors stretched in every direction, identical and infinite. She turned left, encountered her own startled reflection blocking the path, turned right, found another version of herself looking equally confused, turned back the way she came and couldn’t tell if she was retracing her steps or venturing deeper into the labyrinth. The glowing arrows on the floor that the attendant had mentioned were there, yes—faint, luminescent strips that pulsed softly in the dim light—but they seemed to point in contradictory directions, or maybe she was just reading them wrong or maybe she was walking over the same patch of floor again and again, trapped in a loop of her own making. 

Lord Snuggleton’s reflection stared back at her from every angle, his big, black, beady plastic eyes catching the coloured lights and gleaming with what she could only interpret as silent, fluffy accusation. You did this to us, those eyes seemed to say. You and your impulsive, last-minute decisions. We could have been in a warm cab by now. We could have been home, watching Netflix, eating something that wasn’t our fourth chocolate cup of the evening. But no. You had to be adventurous. She pulled the bunny closer, tucking his soft head under her chin in a gesture that was half comfort, half apology.

It was safe to say, Y/N reflected grimly as she stared down a corridor that looked exactly like the three corridors, she had just tried and failed to navigate, that Y/N Murdock did not always make the best decisions. In fact, if there was a Hall of Fame for Questionable Life Choices, she would probably have her own wing. Coming to a mirror maze alone, fifteen minutes before the carnival closed, with a sugar crash looming on the horizon and no clear exit strategy—this was going on the highlight reel, right alongside “ignoring Matt’s advice about literally everything” and “thinking four cups of chocolate-covered fruit was a reasonable dinner.” She pressed her palm against another mirror, felt the cool glass resist her touch and sighed deeply, her breath fogging the surface in a small, temporary cloud. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard the faint, mechanical groan of a ride powering down. The carnival was closing. And she was lost in a hall of mirrors with a stuffed rabbit and a rapidly fading sense of direction.

Perfect. Just perfect.

Five more minutes bled into an eternity of glass and confusion, each passing second stretching like taffy as Y/N stumbled through the endless corridors of her own fractured image. She had lost count of how many times she’d pressed her palm against what she thought was an opening, only to feel the unyielding smoothness of a mirror meeting her skin. Her forehead was tender from at least three separate collisions and Lord Snuggleton’s fur was damp where she’d been clutching him too tightly, her anxiety seeping out through her palms like an invisible sweat. But finally—finally—she rounded a corner and found herself stepping into what was unmistakably the final section of the maze.

The red section.

The transition was immediate and jarring. Where the previous corridors had been bathed in soft, shifting pastels and cool blues, this part of the maze was saturated in crimson. The effect was disorienting in a way that went beyond simple navigation—it felt primal, almost visceral, as if she had stepped into the chambers of some great beast’s still-beating heart. And more than that, the red made her see things. Or think she saw things. Fleeting movements in her peripheral vision—a dark shape slipping behind a mirror, a figure standing where no figure should be, gone the moment she whipped her head around to confront it. Her exhausted, sugar-crashing brain was playing tricks on her, populating the crimson gloom with phantoms born of fatigue and old, unhealed fears.

A familiar anxiety began to rise in her chest, unbidden and unwelcome, like floodwater seeping through cracks she’d thought she’d patched. It started as a tightness in her throat, a constriction that made each breath feel shallow and insufficient. The walls—those endless, gleaming walls—suddenly seemed closer than they had a moment ago. It wasn’t real, she knew it wasn’t real, she knew that—but knowing and feeling were two separate countries and right now she was stranded in the wrong one without a passport. 

And then she saw it. A flash. Over her shoulder, reflected in the mirror just behind her left side. A shape. A figure. There and gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure it had ever existed at all, just a dark silhouette against the red glow. A sudden, bone-deep chill climbed her spine like a spider ascending a web, one vertebra at a time, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Her breath caught, hitching in her throat and she stood frozen for a long, terrible moment, every instinct screaming at her to turn around and look while every other instinct screamed equally loudly to not turn around, to pretend she hadn’t seen anything, to keep moving forward and never look back.

Panic—true, undiluted panic—began to rise in her bloodstream like a tide of ice water. She started walking again, faster now, her outstretched hand forgotten as she moved without checking, without the careful, probing caution that had saved her from countless collisions earlier. The consequence was immediate and painful: her forehead connected with a mirror with a loud, resonant THWAK that echoed through the red-drenched corridor like a gunshot. The impact sent a sharp spike of pain radiating through her skull and she stumbled backward. “Ow,” she rubbed at the tender spot, feeling the beginning of what would undoubtedly be an impressive bruise and tried to blink the stars from her vision.

Then she heard it. A chuckle. Low, warm and horrifyingly, hauntingly familiar. It floated through the red-tinted air like smoke, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, bouncing off the countless mirrors until its source was impossible to pinpoint. Her blood ran cold. Every hair on her arms stood at attention. That chuckle—she knew that chuckle. She had heard it before, in a context so terrible that her mind had tried to wall it off, to bury it deep in the unmarked graves of her subconscious where she wouldn’t have to look at it. 

Maybe it was her brain imagining it. Maybe the stress and the sugar and the exhaustion and the claustrophobic red maze had finally conspired to break something loose in her psyche, conjuring auditory hallucinations from the raw material of her trauma. Maybe. Possibly. But she couldn’t take that risk. She couldn’t. Not here, not now, not trapped in this labyrinth of glass with no clear exit and no one to hear her if she screamed.

Her pace hastened from hurried to desperate. She tried to weave through the maze faster, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, but speed in a mirror maze was its own punishment. She collided with mirror after mirror—her shoulder glancing off one, her hip smacking painfully into another, her outstretched hand slapping against glass where she’d been certain there was an opening. Each impact sent a fresh jolt of pain through her body and a fresh spike of terror through her heart. The red light seemed to pulse now, throbbing in time with her racing heartbeat, transforming the maze into something organic and alive and hungry.

“Running from me, doll?” The voice floated through the air, silky and mocking, curling around her like poisonous vapor. It seemed to come from everywhere, from the walls themselves, from the red light, from inside her own skull. And then she saw him. In the mirror near her right shoulder, his reflection materialized like a ghost taking form. The helmet. The red horns curving up from the brow like devilish crowns. The black and red kevlar, sculpted to a body she knew was powerful and cruel in equal measure. It was him. Daredevil. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. 

But it wasn’t the Daredevil she had known and loved, the one who had once piggybacked her up a rusted fire escape in the dead of night because they were fleeing from armed thugs and she had twisted her ankle on a loose piece of concrete. That Daredevil had been gruff and exasperated and endlessly patient, grumbling under his breath about her “terrible survival instincts” even as he carried her to safety, his grip secure and his warmth seeping through the kevlar into her chilled skin. That Daredevil had been her brother, her protector, her annoying, overbearing, fiercely loving Matt. And Matt Murdock was dead. Daredevil—the real Daredevil—had died with him.

This person—this thing stalking her through the crimson labyrinth—was nothing but a vile impersonator. A parasite wearing her brother’s skin or at least a suit identical to his. He had stolen the symbol, corrupted it, twisted it into something unrecognizable and profane. He had taken everything Matt had stood for—justice, protection, the defense of the innocent—and perverted it into a tool for terror and cruelty and his own sick gratification.

And if that wasn’t bad enough—if the desecration of her brother’s memory wasn’t already an unforgivable sin—this man was the cause of the incident. The one that had stolen the light from her eyes for weeks and left her in complete, utter desolation. The one she couldn’t name, couldn’t speak aloud, could barely allow herself to remember in the safety of daylight. How he had cornered her in that narrow, garbage-strewn alleyway on a night that should have been ordinary. How he had pressed her against the wet brick wall, the smell of rot and rain filling her nostrils as he leaned in close, the horns of his helmet catching the distant streetlight. How he had done horrible, unspeakable things to her for his own perverse pleasure, things that still visited her in dreams that left her waking up gasping and drenched in cold sweat. How he had laughed—that same chuckle—as she cried and begged and tried to fight back with hands that felt like they belonged to someone else. How he had left her there afterward, crumpled among the garbage bags like something discarded, her body a map of violations and her mind a shattered mirror she was still trying to piece back together.

Y/N tried to run. What else could she do? Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, hot and traitorous, blurring the already disorienting reflections into smears of red and black and her own terrified face multiplied into infinity. But a mirror maze—she realized with a sick, sinking certainty—was quite possibly the worst place in the entire world to be trapped with someone like him. Every surface was a weapon he could use against her. Every reflection showed him where she was, where she was going, where she was trying to hide. And every reflection showed her exactly how close he was getting, a countdown to capture displayed on every gleaming wall.

He stalked closer, his movements unhurried and predatory, a wolf who knew his prey had nowhere to run. His reflections grew larger in the mirrors surrounding her, multiplying as he approached, until it seemed like there were a dozen of him closing in from every angle. His helmeted head tilted slightly, a mockery of curiosity, as if he were savouring her fear, drinking it in like fine wine. The glowing arrows on the floor pointed insistently in one direction, their soft luminescence cutting through the red gloom like a lifeline. She had to follow them. She had to get out. She had to move.

His reflection grew closer still, swelling until it filled the mirror directly in front of her, life-sized and terrifyingly present. She could see the texture of the kevlar, the slight scuffs on the horns, the way his chest rose and fell with calm, measured breaths. Panic seized her—total, overwhelming, animal panic that bypassed thought and went straight to instinct. She turned and ran, her feet pounding against the floor, following the arrows with blind, desperate faith. The corridor opened before her, a clear path, an escape, she was going to make it, she was going to get out—

And then she collided with something solid. Not glass this time. Something warm and unyielding and very much alive. A chest. His chest. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs and sent Lord Snuggleton tumbling from her grasp, the stuffed rabbit hitting the floor with a soft, pathetic fwump that seemed to echo in the sudden, terrible silence. She looked up, her vision swimming with tears and terror and found herself staring at the blank, expressionless face of the Daredevil helmet. The horns curved upward like a devil’s crown. The red light painted him in shades of blood and shadow. And beneath the helmet, she knew—she knew—there was a smile. That horrible, familiar, haunting smile.

He had her.

Before Y/N could even process the collision, before the impact of her body against his chest had fully registered in her overwhelmed nervous system, he was already moving. His hands found her shoulders—strong, gloved, implacable—and he pivoted, using his weight and momentum to spin her around and slam her backward against the mirror she had just been fleeing from. The impact drove the air from her lungs in a sharp, involuntary gasp. The glass behind her was unforgiving, cold even through the fabric of her jacket and it vibrated with the force of her body hitting it, sending a low, resonant hum through the crimson-drenched corridor. His body pressed against hers immediately, eliminating any space between them, his hips pinning her lower half to the mirror while his chest crowded her upper body, leaving her no room to twist, to squirm, to do anything but exist in the narrow prison of his proximity. The pressure of his legs against hers was immovable, a cage of muscle and kevlar and malevolent intent.

The tears came then, hot and humiliating, spilling over her lower lashes and carving glistening tracks down her cheeks. They caught the red light and shimmered like tiny rivers of blood, a detail she was sure he noticed and enjoyed. She couldn’t stop them. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry but her body had betrayed her completely, surrendering to the terror that had seized control of her autonomic nervous system. She cranked her neck away from him, twisting her head to the side with such desperate force that the tendons in her throat stood out like cables. She couldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t look at him. Not at the reflection of herself—pinned, terrified, small—that she could see multiplied in the mirrors surrounding them, an infinite gallery of her own violation playing out in every direction. If she looked at him, if she met those empty eye-slits in the mask, she would shatter completely. She would break into pieces too small to ever be reassembled.

“Did you miss me, doll?” His voice was a low, rumbling purr, intimate and mocking, the kind of tone a lover might use in a dark bedroom. The pet name—doll—landed on her skin like a brand, a proprietary claim that made her stomach turn over with nausea. He raised one gloved hand and traced a slow, deliberate line along the curve of her jaw, the leather of his fingertips dragging across her skin with horrible, clinical precision. The touch made her flinch violently, her whole body jerking as if she’d been shocked and she squirmed against his immovable weight, trying to press herself further into the mirror as if she could phase through the glass and escape into her own reflection. “Because I sure missed you.” The words were followed by that chuckle—that terrible, familiar, haunted chuckle that had been echoing in her nightmares for weeks now, the sound that meant pain and violation and a darkness so complete she still hadn’t found her way back to the light.

He leaned in closer, his helmeted face filling her peripheral vision despite her efforts to look away. She could smell him now—leather and sweat and something metallic, something that might have been old blood or might have been her imagination filling in the gaps with the worst possible details. And then she felt it: the wet, warm drag of his tongue against the corner of her mouth. He licked her slowly, deliberately, as if savoring a delicacy and followed it with a low, satisfied hum that vibrated against her skin. The sound was almost pornographic in its pleasure, a noise of genuine enjoyment that made her skin crawl and her stomach heave.

“You taste so fucking sweet every time,” he murmured, his voice thick with a satisfaction that bordered on reverent. He smiled against her skin—she could feel the curve of it through the opening in the helmet, the stretch of his lips pressing against the sensitive flesh near her mouth—and lapped at the skin around her lips again, collecting the residual chocolate and sugar and the salt of her terror. Y/N squirmed helplessly, her body bucking against his in a futile attempt to dislodge him and a small, pathetic whimper of pure disgust escaped her throat. 

“When I kiss you,” he continued, his tone almost conversational, as if they were lovers sharing an intimate secret rather than predator and prey in a hall of mirrors, “I wonder if I’m kissing the woman of my dreams...” He paused, pulling back just enough to look at her face, to drink in the tears and the fear and the revulsion. “...or a fucking candy bar.” The profanity was delivered with a kind of affectionate amusement, as if her terror were a charming quirk rather than a genuine trauma response.

Y/N clamped her mouth shut with every ounce of strength she possessed, pressing her lips together so tightly they went bloodless and white. She knew this game. She remembered it from the alleyway, from the last time he had cornered her and taken what he wanted. If she opened her mouth—to scream, to beg, to say anything at all—he would use it as an opening. He would force his tongue inside, would taste her from the inside out, would violate yet another boundary she had no power to defend. The sweetness of the chocolate still lingering in her mouth mingled with the salt of her tears on her lips and she knew—with sick, horrifying certainty—that for him, it was a truly delectable combination

“Now open up for me,” he crooned, his voice dropping into something almost gentle, almost coaxing. “Say aah.” He pressed two gloved fingers against her sealed lips, the leather cool and slightly rough and began to push, trying to pry her mouth open by force. The pressure was insistent, invasive, a precursor to everything else he intended to take from her. Y/N didn’t budge. She didn’t open her mouth, didn’t give him the satisfaction of entry. And when his fingers continued to press, continued to demand entry, she opened her jaw just enough to catch the leather-clad digits between her teeth and bit down on those with every ounce of desperate, terrified strength she could summon.

The man—she refused to acknowledge him as Daredevil, refused to let that name, her brother’s name, be contaminated by this monster, even in thought—withdrew his hand with a sharp, almost surprised laugh. It wasn’t a laugh of pain; she hadn’t hurt him, not really, not through the reinforced gloves he wore. It was a laugh of genuine amusement, of delighted surprise, as if she were a pet who had performed an unexpected and entertaining trick. “Feisty,” he said and the word was dripping with approval. “I like that. I really do.”

Y/N looked at him then—she couldn’t help it, the laugh had startled her into breaking her own rule—and in that moment of eye contact, of her tear-blurred gaze meeting the empty black slits of his helmet, he moved. Without thought, without warning, without giving her a single second to prepare. He smashed his lips onto hers with brutal, consuming force. The kiss was not tender; it was not romantic; it was an act of violence committed with mouths instead of fists. And at the same moment, his hand—the one she had bitten, the one still wet with her saliva—curled around her throat. His fingers found the delicate column of her neck and squeezed. Not hard enough to crush her windpipe, not yet, but with enough steady, inexorable pressure to restrict blood flow, to make the edges of her vision begin to darken and sparkle with warning lights.

The pressure around her neck grew and grew and the world began to swim. The red light of the maze seemed to pulse in time with her faltering heartbeat. Dizziness washed over her in waves, her thoughts scattering like startled birds. Her mouth, which she had fought so hard to keep sealed, fell open involuntarily—a biological imperative, a body’s desperate attempt to pull in oxygen by any available channel. And he was waiting. The moment her lips parted, his tongue pushed inside, filling her mouth with the taste of him—coffee, something metallic and a wrongness that had no name. He explored her mouth with slow, savoring thoroughness, mapping the territory he had claimed, tasting the chocolate and the salt of her tears all mingled together.

“Please,” she gasped, the word muffled and deformed by his tongue still occupying her mouth. Her voice was barely audible over the roaring in her ears. “Please, don’t—” The plea dissolved into a choked whimper as his grip on her throat tightened fractionally, a silent warning that her begging was not welcome, that her words were not part of this particular script. She struggled to breathe, her chest heaving against his, her fingers scrabbling uselessly at the kevlar covering his shoulders. The mirrors around them reflected the scene from every angle—her pinned body, his dominating form, the intimate horror of his mouth on hers—creating an infinite gallery of her own violation. And somewhere in the crimson gloom, Lord Snuggleton lay on the cold floor, his beady black eyes staring at nothing, a silent witness to the nightmare unfolding above him.

“I-I’ll do anything,” she hiccuped, the words tumbling out between ragged, oxygen-starved gasps, her voice cracking and splintering like thin ice under too much weight. “Please, just don’t—please just don’t—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t give voice to the specific horror she was pleading to avoid, because naming it would make it real, would solidify it from a lurking possibility into an impending certainty. Instead, she poured everything she had into her eyes—wide, tear-glazed, desperate—looking up at that blank, demonic helmet with a silent entreaty that she hoped, prayed, begged would reach whatever remained of the human being beneath the mask. Please. Please remember that I’m a person. Please don’t do this again.

The man broke the kiss, pulling back just far enough to regard her with those empty, unreadable eye-slits. The sudden absence of his mouth on hers was almost disorienting, like a pressure she’d grown accustomed to had been abruptly removed. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking—the helmet revealed nothing, gave away no flicker of emotion, no telltale shift in expression. It was like staring into a void, a blank canvas onto which she could project nothing but her own terror. But he paused. He actually paused. For one suspended moment, he simply looked at her, his head tilted slightly to the side in a posture that might have been curiosity or contemplation or simple cruel amusement. 

“Don’t what?” he asked finally, his voice deceptively casual, almost conversational. And then, with deliberate, brutal clarity: “Fuck you?” The word landed like a slap, crude and vulgar and stripped of any pretense. It was the ugliest word for the ugliest act and hearing it spoken aloud in his familiar, almost affectionate tone made Y/N cringe so hard her shoulders hunched inward, as if she could physically retreat into herself and disappear. Her stomach lurched, bile rising in the back of her throat. But she forced herself to nod—a small, jerky, humiliating movement—her gaze falling from his helmet to the floor, unable to maintain eye contact through the shame of what she was agreeing to. She was bargaining with a monster, negotiating the terms of her own violation and the degradation of it burned like acid in her chest.

The man hummed, a low, considering sound that vibrated in the narrow space between their bodies. He seemed to be contemplating her request, weighing it with the same casual deliberation one might give to choosing between two equally appealing desserts. “I’m in a good mood today,” he said and the words were almost playful, as if he were granting her a generous favor rather than withholding an unspeakable cruelty. “So I’ll let you off easy. Plus—” He leaned in closer, his helmet brushing against her hair, his breath warm against the shell of her ear. “—I want to take my time with you, sweetheart. I won’t fuck you just yet.”

The qualifier—just yet—hung in the air like a guillotine blade suspended by the thinnest of threads. It wasn’t mercy. It was a postponement. A promise that the reprieve was temporary, that the clock was still ticking, that eventually—whenever he decided the time was right—he would collect on the debt she was accruing simply by existing in his presence. But even knowing that, even understanding that this was merely a stay of execution rather than a pardon, Y/N felt a shuddering sigh of relief escape her lungs. Her body sagged slightly against the mirror, the tension in her muscles releasing a fraction of its death grip. She would take what she could get. She would cling to whatever scraps of dignity and safety he deigned to leave her, because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

But her relief was premature. She should have known better. She did know better. Men like him didn’t give without taking. Every apparent kindness was merely the setup for a crueler demand, a way to make her complicit in her own degradation.

“But you gotta make up for it somehow, yes?” He cooed the words, his voice dripping with false sweetness. His gloved hand came up to stroke her cheek, the pad of his thumb dragging slowly across her tear-dampened skin in a grotesque parody of tenderness. The leather was smooth and cool and utterly dehumanizing—it erased the warmth of human touch, reduced contact to something clinical and threatening. Y/N’s blood froze in her veins. Of course. Of course. Someone as vile as him, someone who had already proven capable of such monstrous cruelty, wouldn’t simply let her go. That wasn’t how this worked. That wasn’t how he worked. Every interaction was a transaction and he always, always extracted his price.

“Wh-what do you want?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, reedy and trembling. The question felt like walking off a cliff, like voluntarily stepping into a trap she could see but couldn’t avoid. She was scared—terrified, really, down to the marrow of her bones—and every syllable was laced with that fear. Whatever it was, she told herself, clinging to the thought like a lifeline, it would be better than the alternative. Retaining even scraps of her dignity, even shreds of her autonomy, still felt infinitely preferable to having none at all. At least this way, she could pretend she had some agency, some small measure of control over her own destruction.

“Take your clothes off.”

The command was delivered with casual, almost bored simplicity, as if he were asking her to pass the salt at a dinner table. Three words. Just three small, ordinary words arranged in a sequence that stripped away everything she was and reduced her to nothing but a body to be displayed and consumed. Y/N’s eyes widened, the whites showing all around her irises and she squirmed instinctively in his grip, her body revolting against the demand before her mind had even fully processed it. She pushed against his chest, tried to twist away, tried to find some angle of escape—but he was immovable, a wall of muscle and kevlar and implacable intent. Her struggles accomplished nothing except to amuse him, a faint chuckle rumbling through his chest where it pressed against hers.

“But you said—” she started, her voice cracking, the protest rising automatically to her lips.

“I said I wouldn’t fuck you.” He cut her off, his tone shifting subtly—still controlled, but with an edge of frustration creeping in around the seams, like a temper being held in check by a fraying leash. “I never said I couldn’t do other things.” The words were precise and clinical. He had promised her one specific mercy and he was honouring that promise to the letter while violating its spirit completely. It was a game to him. It had always been a game. And she was losing, had been losing from the moment she stepped into this maze.

Then, without warning, he moved. His fist lashed out and connected with the mirror directly behind her head. The impact was explosive—a sharp, crystalline CRACK that shattered the silence and the glass in equal measure. Y/N squealed in fear, the sound high and animalistic, torn from her throat by pure reflex. The mirror fractured into a spiderweb of silver lines and then pieces began to fall, tinkling to the floor like deadly rain. A small shard, no bigger than her thumbnail, spun through the air and caught her cheek, opening a thin, stinging line across her skin. She felt the warm trickle of blood begin to well up and slide down toward her jaw, a single crimson tear tracking the path of its saltier predecessors.

He plucked a larger shard from the ruined mirror—long and wicked and glittering with sharp edges—and brought it to her neck with deliberate, terrifying slowness. The point of the glass pressed against the delicate skin just below her jaw, not quite hard enough to break the surface, but with enough pressure to make the threat unmistakable. The cold of it was shocking, a sharp contrast to the warmth of her terror-flushed skin. Y/N stilled completely. Every muscle in her body locked into perfect, rigid immobility. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t blink. The only motion in her entire being was the wild, frantic thumping of her heart, pounding against her ribs like a caged animal throwing itself against the bars. It was so loud she was certain he could hear it, certain he could feel it through the point of contact where the glass met her pulse.

The shard began to move. Slowly, so slowly, he trailed it down the column of her neck, following the path of her carotid artery, tracing the vulnerable architecture of her throat. Then lower, over her collarbone, dipping into the hollow at the base of her neck. Lower still, down her sternum, until the glittering point came to rest in the valley of her cleavage, pressing just firmly enough against the fabric of her shirt to dimple the skin beneath. Not enough to cut—not yet—but enough to be a constant, undeniable threat. A promise written in glass and malice.

He leaned down, his helmeted face descending toward her bleeding cheek and she felt the wet, warm drag of his tongue as he licked the blood from the fresh cut. The sensation was obscene—intimate and violating and utterly dehumanizing. He savoured it, drawing out the contact and when he spoke again, his voice was a whisper against her skin, intimate and terrifying. “Are you going to take it off,” he asked, the words soft as a lover’s endearment, “or should I cut it off?”

The question hung in the red-drenched air between them. The glass shard pressed a fraction harder against her chest. And Y/N, trembling and bleeding and utterly trapped, understood that she had only two choices and both of them led to her degradation. The only question was how much pain would accompany it.

“I-I’ll do it.” The words scraped past her teeth like shards of the same glass he’d been holding to her throat, each syllable a surrender, each consonant a small death of pride.The admission of compliance tasted like ash and bile on her tongue, but what choice did she have? 

He took a step back. Not far—never far enough to give her any real sense of space or safety—but enough to change the dynamic from predator pinning prey to spectator observing a performance. That was what this was to him, she realized with sickening clarity. A performance. A show. She was the entertainment and he was the audience and the mirrors around them were reflecting her degradation from every possible angle, creating an infinite gallery of her humiliation for his viewing pleasure. The single step backward wasn’t a gesture of mercy, it was an adjustment for optimal viewing.

Y/N’s hands moved to the zipper of her jacket, her fingers clumsy and numb, as if they belonged to someone else. The sound of the zipper descending was obscenely loud in the quiet of the maze, a long, drawn-out zip that seemed to announce her surrender to every corner of the crimson labyrinth. She shrugged the jacket off her shoulders, feeling the fabric slide down her arms like a second skin being shed and let it fall to the floor with a soft, defeated thump. 

The chill of the maze immediately assaulted her newly exposed skin, raising goosebumps along her arms and across her shoulders. The temperature seemed to drop by several degrees the moment the jacket was gone, or maybe that was just the cold radiating from inside her own chest, the frost of despair crystallizing around her heart. There were no more tears in her eyes now. The well had run dry, leaving behind only a hollow, aching emptiness. 

Next was her top. She clutched the hem of the fabric in both hands, her knuckles whitening with the force of her grip, as if holding onto this thin barrier of cotton could somehow change his mind, could somehow rewind the last few minutes and return her to the safety she’d felt walking beside Dex with an armful of stuffed animals and a stomach full of chocolate. But she knew it wouldn’t. She knew nothing would. He was still standing there, still watching, still twirling that wicked shard of glass between his gloved fingers with casual, almost hypnotic dexterity. The glass caught the red light and scattered it in bloody sparkles across the walls, a deadly kaleidoscope in his hand. His gaze—those empty black eye-slits—was fixed on her with unwavering attention, drinking in every tremble, every hesitation, every small surrender.

She pulled the top over her head in one swift, desperate motion, as if speed could somehow lessen the violation. She aimed deliberately, letting it fall over Lord Snuggleton where he lay abandoned near her feet. The soft cotton draped over the stuffed rabbit like a shroud, covering his beady black eyes, hiding him from the scene unfolding above him. It was a small, pathetic act of mercy—for herself more than for the inanimate toy—but it was all she had. At least this way, she’d be spared the misery of an audience. 

Her jeans came next. Her fingers found the button, worked it free and then she was sliding the zipper down, the sound somehow even more obscene than the jacket had been. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband and pushed the denim down over her hips, down her thighs, past her knees. She stepped out of them awkwardly, one foot at a time, nearly losing her balance in the process. The jeans joined the growing pile of discarded clothing on the floor and suddenly she was standing before him in nothing but her underwear—a simple, practical set in pale lavender, chosen that morning with no thought beyond comfort and now transformed into the last fragile barrier between her body and his gaze. The chill of the maze raised fresh goosebumps across her stomach, her thighs, the exposed curve of her hips. She wrapped her arms around herself instinctively, crossing them over her chest, trying to cover what little she could.

He took a step closer. The glass shard fell from his fingers, landing on the floor with a delicate, musical tink that seemed impossibly loud in the silence. The sound made her flinch and she instinctively backed away—one step, then another—until her bare shoulders and the knobs of her spine pressed against the cold, unyielding surface of the mirror behind her. The glass was freezing against her exposed skin, sending a violent shiver racing down her entire body. She was trapped again, cornered again, the cold at her back and the monster at her front and nowhere left to run.

His gloved fingers rose and traced along the edge of her bra strap, following the line of pale lavender fabric where it curved over her shoulder. His touch was almost featherlight, a whisper of leather against skin and somehow that gentleness was worse than brutality would have been. Brutality she could hate purely, could resist with every fiber of her being. But this—this horrible parody of tenderness, this mockery of a lover’s caress—it confused her instincts, left her without a clear enemy to fight. “Cute,” he said and the word was a dismissal, a judgment, an appraisal. He fingered the strap, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger as if testing its quality. “But this has gotta go.” His voice dropped into something softer, something almost coaxing, the tone of a man training a reluctant pet. “Now be a good girl for me and take it off, yes?”

Her hands moved on their own accord, as if they had made a separate peace with the enemy while her mind was still screaming in protest. She reached behind her back, her fingers finding the clasp of her bra with practiced ease—a motion she’d performed thousands of times before, always in the privacy of her own bedroom, always with the door locked and the curtains drawn. Never like this. Never as a performance for a monster’s entertainment. The clasp released with a soft click and the straps went slack on her shoulders. For one suspended moment, she held the cups in place with her crossed arms, clinging to this final shred of modesty. Then, slowly, she let her arms fall to her sides and the bra went with them, sliding down her arms and joining the rest of her clothes on the cold floor.

He didn’t wait. He didn’t give her a single second to adjust to her own exposure, to process the vulnerability of standing half-naked before her tormentor. His hands—those gloved, leather-clad hands—rose immediately and cupped her breasts, filling his palms with her flesh. The rough texture of the leather against her sensitive skin was jarring, alien, wrong in a way that went beyond physical sensation. And the cold—the cold of the maze, the cold of his gloves, the cold of her own terror—made her nipples tighten and harden against his palms, a physiological response that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with temperature and fear. She hated her body in that moment. Hated it for responding, for betraying her, for giving him any reaction at all.

“God, you’re so pretty for me,” he breathed and there was a strange, unsettling glee in his voice—a genuine, almost boyish enthusiasm that made her skin crawl more than outright cruelty would have. He was enjoying this. Not just the power, not just the control, but her. Her body. Her fear. Her humiliation. “Look at you.” He squeezed gently, kneading her breasts with a familiarity, as if they belonged to him. As if she belonged to him. And in this moment, trapped against a mirror in a maze of red light, stripped and shivering and utterly powerless, she wasn’t sure she could argue otherwise.

He shifted his weight and suddenly his knee was wedging between her legs, pushing her thighs apart with insistent pressure. The hard shell of his knee pad—kevlar, probably, or some reinforced composite—brushed against her core through the thin cotton of her underwear. The contact sent an involuntary jolt through her body, a spark of sensation that traveled up her spine and lodged somewhere behind her eyes. He continued to knead her breasts, his thumbs circling her nipples with deliberate, practiced attention, while his lips ghosted over her cheek—not quite kissing, not quite touching, just the warm suggestion of his mouth hovering a millimeter from her tear-stained, blood-streaked skin. His breath was hot and damp, carrying the faint metallic scent she’d noticed before.

Y/N tried her hardest to be silent. She clamped her jaw shut, ground her teeth together until her molars ached, focused every ounce of her willpower on containing any sound that might try to escape. She would not give him that satisfaction. She would not let him hear how his touch affected her, how her body was betraying her mind’s desperate resistance. But then he pushed his knee further up, intentionally grinding the hard surface of his knee pad against the apex of her thighs, applying pressure exactly where she least wanted it. And despite everything—despite the terror and the violation and the soul-deep revulsion—a small, strangled whimper escaped her lips. It was barely audible, a thin sound of unwanted sensation, but in the silence of the maze it might as well have been a scream. Heat bloomed in her core, unwanted and undeniable, her body’s autonomic response to stimulation that had nothing to do with consent.

“You like that, huh?” His voice was thick with satisfaction, with triumph. He had heard her. Of course he had heard her. He was attuned to every reaction, cataloging each flinch and whimper and tremor like a collector admiring his acquisitions. He pushed his knee up higher, grinding it deliberately against the damp cotton of her underwear, letting her feel the hard ridge of the knee pad pressing against her most intimate flesh. The pressure was insistent, rhythmic, a grotesque pantomime of intimacy that made her stomach turn even as her hips twitched involuntarily against him.

Y/N closed her eyes. She threw her head back against the cold mirror, the glass pressing against her skull like a second, harder reality and she focused every fiber of her being on swallowing the sounds that were building in her throat. She would not moan. She would not whimper. She would not give him the satisfaction of hearing her come apart. The red light played against her closed eyelids, painting the inside of her vision in shades of blood and fire. 

“On your knees, doll.” The command came with pressure—his hands on her shoulders, firm and insistent, pushing downward with an authority that brooked no argument. Her body folded beneath the weight of his demand, her knees buckling as she sank toward the cold floor. They landed on the discarded pile of her jeans and in the midst of her degradation, she found one small, pathetic mercy: the thick denim provided a meager cushion against the hard ground, sparing her kneecaps from the worst of the chill and the bruising pressure. She knelt there, half-naked and trembling, her bare skin pebbled with goosebumps in the red-tinged cold of the maze. Above her, he loomed like a monument to her powerlessness, his silhouette framed by the fractured mirrors that reflected this moment from every conceivable angle—an infinite gallery of her submission.

She heard it before she understood it: the metallic clink of a belt buckle being worked loose, the whisper of leather sliding through loops, the unmistakable sound of a zipper descending tooth by tooth. The realization hit her like a wave of ice water, crashing over her head and flooding her lungs until she couldn’t breathe. Oh God. Oh God, no. Her eyes, which had been fixed on the floor in an attempt to dissociate from her surroundings, flickered upward involuntarily—and immediately wished they hadn’t. He was freeing himself from the confines of his pants, his movements unhurried and almost casual, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. As if her kneeling before him was simply the correct order of things.

The tears that had dried up earlier returned with a vengeance, but they were different now. Before, they had been tears of fear and desperation, a silent plea for mercy. These were tears of utter, soul-deep brokenness—hot and heavy and accompanied by small, shattered sobs that escaped her throat before she could swallow them down. And what made it so utterly, cosmically perverse was the context. Daredevil. The name she used to whisper in public just to watch her brother’s shoulders stiffen beneath his suit jacket, to see the barely concealed panic flicker across his face. ”Y/N, I swear to God, if you call me that in front of the barista one more time—” And she would laugh and loop her arm through his and tell him he was being dramatic, that no one would ever connect the blind lawyer Matt Murdock to the vigilante who haunted Hell’s Kitchen’s rooftops. The name had been a joke between them, a shared secret, a term of endearment wrapped in sibling mockery. Daredevil. How goofy it sounded when you said it out loud. How ridiculous that a grown man in devil horns was the hero of this city.

And the suit. God, the suit. She had spent countless late nights stitching it back together, the red and black kevlar spread across her lap as she worked by the dim light of her apartment, waiting for him to return from patrol. He would stumble through the window—her window, because he knew she’d be awake, knew she wouldn’t sleep until she heard him come home—and collapse onto her couch, too exhausted to even remove the armor himself. She would unclip the cowl for him, revealing his sweat-matted hair and the dark circles under his sightless eyes. She would help him peel off the gloves, the boots, the heavy chest piece. And then she would carry the damaged pieces to her sewing corner and begin the work of mending what the night had torn apart. Stitch by stitch, she had poured her love and her worry and her fierce, protective hope into that suit. Every repaired seam was a prayer that he would come home again tomorrow. Every reinforced panel was a wish that he would be safe.

And now she was being forced to look at that same suit—or its identical, corrupted twin—while being made to commit acts so vile, so degrading, that she couldn’t reconcile them with the memory of her brother’s tired, grateful smile when she handed him his repaired armor. The dissonance was a knife twisting in her chest, cutting deeper than any physical blade could reach.

“Aw, are you scared?” His voice dripped with false sympathy, the mockery of comfort from a mouth that knew only how to wound. He cupped her cheek with one gloved hand, his thumb brushing away a tear even as new ones replaced it. The gesture was almost tender and that was a reminder that he could choose to be gentle and was choosing not to be. “It’s okay, doll. I’ll guide you, hmm?” As he spoke, he finished freeing himself from his pants, his length emerging into the cold red light. Her stomach lurched. She tried to look away, but his hand on her cheek held her face steady, forcing her to confront what was coming.

His other hand joined the first, one gripping her jaw while the other squeezed her cheeks, applying pressure until her lips puckered involuntarily, parting just slightly. She felt something wet and warm smear across her lower lip—precum, her mind supplied with clinical horror—before he pushed forward, forcing himself past the barrier of her lips and into the warm, unwilling cavern of her mouth. The invasion was immediate and complete. He let out a sharp hiss of satisfaction, the sound vibrating through his body and into hers, a serpent’s exhalation of pleasure. His free hand moved to tilt her chin upward, angling her face so that she was forced to look up at him through the blur of her tears, her mouth stretched obscenely around his length. The red light of the maze painted his helmet in shades of blood and shadow, the devil horns curving upward like a crown of thorns made monstrous.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he breathed, his voice gone thick and rough with pleasure. His grip on her chin tightened fractionally, a warning disguised as guidance. “And don’t even think about trying anything funny with your teeth, got it?” The threat was implicit, unnecessary—she knew exactly what he was capable of, knew the violence that lurked beneath his controlled exterior. The only response she could manage was more broken sobs, muffled and deformed by the obstruction in her mouth. He patted her cheek lightly, condescendingly, the gesture of a master acknowledging a pet. Get to work.

Y/N closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at him anymore—not at the helmet, not at the suit, not at the reflection of what was happening playing out in the mirrors surrounding them. The darkness behind her eyelids was the only escape available to her, the only privacy she could claim. The salty, bitter taste of him coated her tongue, flooded her senses, made her gag reflex spasm uselessly around his intrusion. He was too big—his length and girth stretched her jaw uncomfortably, filling her mouth to capacity and then some, leaving no room for her to breathe, to swallow, to do anything but exist as a vessel for his pleasure. She tried to slack her jaw, to create more space, but it wasn’t easy between the sobs that still wracked her chest and the relentless onslaught her mouth was enduring. Each thrust pushed deeper, hitting the back of her throat and triggering another involuntary gag, which only seemed to please him more.

His hand gathered her hair into a makeshift ponytail, twisting the strands around his gloved fist with ease. And then he began to move her—not letting her find her own rhythm, not allowing her even the illusion of participation, but simply using her. Pushing her head forward, pulling it back, setting a pace that suited him, that pleasured him, that reduced her to nothing more than a warm, wet opening to be fucked. She was a toy in his hands, an object to be manipulated and he made no pretense otherwise. There was really no point in resisting. Her hands hung limp at her sides, her body swayed with each thrust and she tried—desperately, furiously—to shake away how disgusting it made her feel. She tried to retreat to some deep, interior space where this wasn’t happening, where her mouth wasn’t being violated, where her brother’s stolen identity wasn’t being weaponized against her.

Daredevil was her brother. The thought kept circling back, a wounded bird trapped in the cage of her skull. Daredevil was Matt and Matt was good and Matt would never—Matt would die before he—Matt was dead. Matt was dead and this thing wearing his face was using her and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t fight it, couldn’t do anything but kneel here and take it.

She tried to think of anyone, anything, that could pull her mind away from the horror of the present. Away from Matt. Away from the suit. Away from the taste of salt and skin and degradation on her tongue. She cast about desperately in the darkness of her closed eyes, searching for a lifeline, a memory, a face that wasn’t contaminated by this nightmare.

And the only face that came to her was Dex.

Her sweet, kind neighbor. The man who lived in the apartment next door, separated from her by nothing more than a thin wall and a world of unspoken possibilities. Dex, who wordlessly helped her carry groceries up the three flights of stairs when he saw her struggling with too many bags. Dex, who showed up at her door with a casserole dish and a quiet smile, claiming he’d “made too much” and would she mind helping him finish it? Dex, who sat through terrible movies on her lumpy couch without complaint, his shoulder warm and solid beside hers, his laughter genuine when she made snarky comments about the plot holes. Dex, who had appeared with a wrench and a determined expression when her kitchen sink started leaking, spending an hour on his back under the pipes and emerging dusty but triumphant, refusing any payment beyond a glass of lemonade and her company.

He was good to her. Too good. So much so that she sometimes felt a twist of guilt in her chest, a nagging sense that she was taking advantage of his kindness. That she was a burden, a charity case, a wounded bird he felt obligated to nurse back to health. But whenever she tried to voice these insecurities, to apologize for being “too much” or “not enough,” he would just shake his head with that quiet, steady patience of his and tell her she was being ridiculous. He never seemed to mind. He never seemed to want anything from her except her presence.

Dex was a little older than Matt had been—thirty-one to her twenty-two, a gap that sometimes felt insignificant and sometimes felt like a chasm. He was handsome in an understated, rugged way that snuck up on you: strong jaw, kind eyes, a smile that transformed his whole face when he let it out fully. And his arms—God, his arms—she had caught herself staring more times than she cared to admit. The way his biceps strained against the sleeves of his plain cotton shirts when he reached for something on a high shelf. The corded muscles of his forearms when he rolled up his sleeves to wash dishes after one of their shared dinners. The solid, reassuring weight of him when they sat close on her couch, watching the television flicker in the dark. It was a hopeless crush, really. She knew that. He was older, more established, probably saw her as a kid sister at best, a neighborly obligation at worst. She was a mess of grief and trauma and bad coping mechanisms and he was... steady. Stable. Safe.

But right now, kneeling on the cold floor of a mirror maze with a monster’s length shoved down her throat and tears streaming down her cheeks, Dex was the only lifeline she had. She clung to the memory of his quiet smile, his warm laugh, the way he called her “sunshine” like it was her name. She imagined his hands—not the gloved, violating hands currently fisted in her hair, but Dex’s hands, bare and warm and calloused from whatever work he did. She imagined those hands cupping her face gently, tilting her chin up not to force her but to see her, to ask if she was okay. She imagined his voice saying her name—not “doll” or “sweetheart” in that mocking tone, but Y/N, said with warmth and respect and something that might have been the beginning of more.

She held onto that image like a drowning woman clutching a piece of driftwood. She let Dex’s face fill her mind, pushing out the horror of the helmet, the devil horns, the suit that should have meant safety and instead meant violation. She remembered the way he’d looked at her when he called her “sunshine”—not like she was broken, not like she was prey, but like she was something precious. Something worth protecting.

The monster’s pace quickened, his grip on her hair tightening, his thrusts becoming more erratic. She could tell he was close. And through it all, she kept her eyes squeezed shut and her mind fixed on Dex—on the impossible, beautiful, hopeless fantasy of a man who was kind without condition, who was strong without cruelty, who might someday, somehow, see her as more than just the broken girl next door. It was the only thing keeping her sane. The only thing keeping her from shattering completely. In the red-drenched darkness behind her eyelids, she held onto Dex like a prayer and she waited for this nightmare to end.

But just then, as she was finally beginning to achieve the fragile, desperate escape of dissociation—as the edges of her consciousness started to blur and soften, as she managed to tune him out, to retreat into that small, dark, quiet room at the very back of her mind where his touch couldn’t quite reach—he stopped. Everything stopped. The rhythm of his hips, the pressure of his hands, the relentless, violating presence of him inside her mouth. He withdrew his length from between her lips with a wet, obscene sound that echoed off the countless mirrors surrounding them and the sudden absence of him was almost as disorienting as his presence had been. Y/N’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused and glassy and she looked up at him from where she was kneeling on the cold, hard floor. 

“Hmm.” The sound he made was contemplative, almost playful, as if a thought had just occurred to him—a delightful little notion that he wanted to share. He looked down at her, that blank, horned helmet tilting to one side in a gesture that might have been curiosity or mockery or something else entirely. “It’s not fair that I have all the fun, right?” The question hung in the red-tinged air between them, rhetorical and cruel. Y/N stared up at him from her knees, her expression slack and dazed, her mind struggling to process the words through the thick fog of dissociation. He was cruel enough—vicious enough, monstrous enough—that he wouldn’t even allow her the small mercy of retreating into her own head to avoid him. He wanted her present. He wanted her aware. He wanted her to experience every moment of her own degradation with full, terrible clarity, because her suffering was the point, her awareness was the prize and he would not be cheated of a single second of it.

He adjusted his stance, shifting his weight with deliberate precision and suddenly his foot was positioned directly beneath her core. The hard, reinforced toe of his boot pressed up against the damp cotton of her underwear, creating a ridge of unyielding pressure right where she was most sensitive. The friction was immediate and electric—a bolt of sensation that lit her nerves on fire despite every desperate attempt her mind made to reject it. Y/N’s fingers dug into her own thighs, her nails barely leaving crescent-shaped indentations in the material of his tactical pants, as her body lurched forward involuntarily, her hips grinding down against his boot before she could stop them. The movement was instinctive, animal, completely beyond her conscious control and she hated herself for it even as a small, traitorous part of her welcomed the distraction of physical sensation.

“Move those pretty hips for me, will you?” The command was delivered with casual authority, the tone of a man who knew he would be obeyed. And he was right. Y/N obliged without so much as a thought, without even a flicker of resistance. What was the point anymore? What was the point of fighting, of clinging to scraps of dignity, of pretending she had any agency left to protect? She had already surrendered her clothes, her body, her mouth. What was one more degradation? What was one more act of compliance in an endless litany of them? The fight had drained out of her completely, leaving behind only a hollow, mechanical obedience. Her hips began to move, rocking against the hard surface of his boot with a slow, grinding rhythm that sent sparks of unwanted pleasure shooting up her spine.

He guided himself back between her lips, the weight and heat of him filling her mouth once more and she accepted it with the same numb compliance. But something was shifting inside her, some desperate survival mechanism kicking in to protect what remained of her fractured psyche. As her hips continued to buck against the leather of his boot, as the friction built and built and sent waves of sensation crashing through her nervous system, her mind began to grow blessedly, mercifully numb. The pleasure—unwanted, undeniable, shameful—acted like a drug, smoothing the jagged edges of her terror, blurring the sharp lines of her violation. Shivers ran up her spine, one after another, as her clit dragged against the textured surface of his boot through the increasingly damp cotton of her underwear. The sensation was good. She hated that it was good. She hated herself for feeling it, for responding to it, for allowing her body to find any pleasure at all in this nightmare. But the alternative—remaining fully present, fully aware of what was happening to her—was worse. So much worse.

He used her mouth as he had before, setting a rhythm that she followed without thought, her head bobbing along his length while her hips ground down against his boot. But it didn’t feel as difficult anymore. The soul-deep wrongness of it—it all seemed to recede, muffled and distant, like sounds heard through a thick wall. In the red-drenched darkness behind her closed eyelids, she forced herself to imagine something else. Someone else. She conjured an image of Dex—his warm, steady presence, his quiet smile, the way he’d looked at her with such gentle fondness when he’d handed her Lord Snuggleton. She imagined it was Dex’s hands touching her, Dex’s body pressed against hers, Dex’s voice murmuring encouragement. It was a lie, a desperate, pathetic fiction constructed from equal parts longing and self-preservation, but it was the only lifeline she had. She clung to it with everything she had left.

Soft whimpers began to fall from her lips, muffled and distorted by his cock filling her mouth. The sounds were small, almost animal—the helpless noises of a creature caught in a trap. They vibrated against him, sending ripples of sensation up his shaft and she felt his grip tighten in her hair, his fingers twisting and pulling with renewed urgency. A string of curses fell from his lips, harsh and breathless and there was something almost reverent in the way he said them, as if she had surprised him, as if she had exceeded whatever twisted expectations he’d held.

“You sound like a fucking puppy,” he chuckled, the words laced with genuine amusement. His free hand came down and patted her head—a condescending, almost affectionate gesture, the way one might pet a well-behaved dog. The touch was degrading, dehumanizing, reducing her to nothing more than a trained animal performing for her master’s entertainment. And yet, in her dissociated state, it barely registered. She looked up at him from beneath her lashes, her lips still stretched and wrapped around him, her jaw aching, her throat raw and there was nothing in her eyes but a distant, unfocused daze. She was present in body, but her mind was somewhere else entirely—somewhere with Dex, somewhere safe, somewhere this nightmare couldn’t quite reach.

But then something strange began to happen. The red light—that pervasive, bloody glow that saturated every corner of the maze—seemed to flicker and shift, playing tricks on her exhausted, traumatized perception. As she looked up at the monster using her mouth, the sharp lines of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the shape of his chin visible beneath the edge of the helmet... they started to look more and more like Dex. It was impossible, of course. A hallucination born of wishful thinking and psychological desperation. Dex was kind and gentle and safe. Dex had driven away to handle a work emergency, had promised to come back in one piece, had called her sunshine like it was the most natural thing in the world. Dex would never do this to her. Dex would never hurt her. And yet, the resemblance was there, hovering at the edges of her vision, a mirage conjured by her starving, traumatized mind.

His hand left her hair and came to rest against her cheek, the leather of his glove cool and smooth against her flushed skin. And before she could stop herself, before her conscious mind could intervene, she found herself leaning into the touch. She almost nuzzled into his palm, her cheek pressing against the leather as if it were Dex’s hand, as if this were a gesture of affection rather than ownership. The movement was instinctive, automatic, the response of a creature so starved for gentleness that she would accept even its cruelest imitation. He seemed surprised by her sudden change in temperament—she could feel it in the brief hesitation of his hand, the subtle shift in his posture. The dazed, terrified victim who had been mechanically complying with his demands had been replaced by something else, something softer, something almost willing. And he liked it. She could tell he liked it.

“Fuck, you’re so pretty for me, baby,” he breathed, his voice dropping into something almost tender, almost genuine. The praise washed over her like warm water, seeping into the cracks of her shattered self-worth. “You’re taking me so well. Just a little more.” Her body seemed to react to the encouragement independent of her will, responding to the positive reinforcement like a flower turning toward the sun. She increased her pace, her head bobbing along his length with strange renewed enthusiasm while maintaining eye contact—looking up at him through her lashes. Her tongue swirled around his tip, tracing circles and patterns and she was rewarded with a deep, guttural groan that seemed to vibrate through his entire body.

He threw his head back, the horns of his helmet catching the red light and casting demonic shadows on the mirrored walls. “Baby, you’re gonna be the death of me,” he groaned, the words thick with pleasure and something that almost sounded like genuine affection. His hands found the sides of her head, fingers threading through her hair and he took control—pushing his length all the way down, past her gag reflex, until she could feel him in her throat, a thick, intrusive presence that made her eyes water and her vision swim. 

A visible bulge formed in the column of her throat, the outline of him pressing against her skin from the inside and he stared at it with something approaching awe. He could swear it was the most erotic thing he had ever seen—her lips stretched around him, her throat distended by him, her eyes watering and dazed and looking up at him with that strange, surrendered softness. And being able to look at her from all angles, thanks to the infinite mirrors surrounding them, was just beautiful. Everywhere he looked, there she was—on her knees, servicing him, her body reflected into eternity. A study of her and he was the sole, appreciative audience.

Y/N closed her eyes, surrendering to the darkness behind her lids because the alternative—watching her own reflection in the endless mirrors, seeing herself reduced to this—was more than she could bear. She could feel her climax building, coiling low and tight in her belly like a spring being wound past its breaking point. It was a terrible, unwanted thing, this pleasure that her body was manufacturing against her will. She hated it. She hated herself for feeling it. And yet she couldn’t stop chasing it, couldn’t stop the frantic, desperate bucking of her hips against his boot, grinding herself against the hard leather with an urgency that bordered on madness. 

Her body had betrayed her completely, had signed a separate peace treaty with the enemy while her mind was still at war. The friction of her soaked cotton underwear against the textured surface of his boot was maddening—not quite enough, never quite enough, but all she had. She rutted against him like an animal in heat, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, driven by a need that was purely physiological and utterly divorced from desire.

His thrusts into her mouth had changed. Where before they had been rapid and punishing, a brutal rhythm designed to overwhelm and dominate, now they had slowed into something longer, deeper, more deliberate. Each thrust pushed the full length of him past her lips and into the tight, constricted channel of her throat, forcing her jaw wide, filling her mouth completely until there was no room for anything but him—no air, no protest, no thought. He held himself there at the deepest point, buried to the hilt and she choked around him, her throat spasming and contracting in involuntary resistance. Her eyes watered, tears spilling over her lashes not from emotion now but from pure physical reflex, her body’s desperate attempt to clear an obstruction that wouldn’t move. Her skin reddened with the effort of not breathing, flushed from her cheeks down her neck to the tops of her breasts, a visible map of her struggle. When he finally pulled back, allowing her a gasping, desperate inhale through her nose, the relief was almost as overwhelming as the violation.

Moans fell relentlessly from her lips—or rather, from the small spaces around him where sound could still escape. They were muffled, distorted, transformed into something barely human by the obstruction filling her mouth. But they were unmistakably sounds of pleasure and she couldn’t stop them any more than she could stop her hips from rolling against his boot. The two rhythms—his deep, measured thrusts into her throat and her frantic grinding against his foot—had synchronized somehow, creating a terrible harmony of violation and unwanted arousal. She matched his grunts with her own muffled vocalizations, a call and response of degradation. The cotton of her underwear was utterly drenched now, saturated beyond any pretense of dryness. Her wetness had soaked through the thin fabric completely and was drooling onto the leather of his boot, leaving a glistening, obscene trail that caught the red light and shimmered like evidence of her betrayal. She could feel it—the slick, warm slide of her own arousal against his boot, the way it eased her movements even as it marked her shame. And still she chased her climax, hips rolling and bucking with single-minded desperation. Just a little more. Just a little more. The words became a mantra in her head, drowning out everything else—the wrongness, the violation, the hatred, the fear. All that existed was the approaching edge and her body’s primal need to tumble over it.

“You wanna cum for me, baby?” His voice was rough, strained with his own approaching release, but still laced with that horrible, proprietary tenderness. The question was rhetorical—he could feel her racing toward the edge, could read it in every desperate undulation of her hips, every muffled moan vibrating around his length. He didn’t need her answer. But he wanted it. He wanted her complicity, her verbal surrender, one more small piece of her autonomy to add to his collection.

“Uh huh.” The affirmation came out garbled and barely intelligible but unmistakable in its desperate agreement. It was the only answer she could give—not because she wanted to give it, but because her body had taken over completely and her body wanted to come. Her mind had been relegated to a distant observer, watching from very far away as this stranger wearing her skin debased herself for a monster’s entertainment.

“Then cum for me, sweetheart.” His words acted as a trigger, a key turning in a lock she hadn’t known existed. The permission—or the command, they were the same thing from him—unleashed something inside her that had been straining at its leash. A wave of senseless, devastating pleasure crashed over her, drowning her in sensation so intense it bordered on pain. Her vision, already darkened by her closed eyelids, exploded with spots of color—red and gold and white, a private fireworks display behind her eyes. 

Her body convulsed, her inner muscles clenching and releasing in rhythmic spasms around nothing, the empty ache of it somehow making the orgasm sharper, more acute. She reached out blindly and grabbed onto the material of his tactical pants, her fingers twisting in the heavy fabric, anchoring herself to the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved into pure sensation. The rough texture of the pants against her palms was the only tether keeping her from spinning away into the red-tinged void.

He, too, was reaching his end. She felt it in the way his rhythm faltered, the deep, measured thrusts becoming erratic, more urgent. His grip on her hair tightened, holding her in place as he doled out his final few thrusts with a roughness that bordered on violence. And then he was there, buried to the hilt in her throat and she felt the hot, pulsing flood of his release. It spewed down her throat in thick, salty ropes—almost bitter, carrying the sharp, alkaline taste of him. There was so much of it, more than she could comfortably swallow and she gagged around him, her throat working desperately to accommodate the volume. He groaned, a low, guttural sound of pure male satisfaction and held her face in both hands, keeping her impaled on his entire length while the last pulses of his orgasm emptied into her. The pressure was overwhelming, her throat stretched and filled, her nose pressed against the coarse fabric of his suit, her entire world reduced to the taste and smell and feel of him.

“Swallow,” he commanded, his voice rough but still controlled, still the voice of a man accustomed to being obeyed. He patted her cheek—a gesture that might have been affectionate if it weren’t so patronizing. A pat for a good pet. Then, slowly, he pulled out. The withdrawal was almost as overwhelming as the intrusion had been. She felt every inch of him sliding free of her throat, leaving behind a raw, aching emptiness. A thick, glistening string of saliva connected her swollen lips to the tip of him for one suspended moment before breaking, drool and the remnants of his release dribbling down her chin in warm, viscous trails. The fluid dripped onto her bare breasts, landing on her flushed skin in small, obscene droplets that caught the red light and gleamed.

He had told her to swallow and she had. She stuck out her tongue—pink and swollen and utterly empty—to show him her compliance, to prove that she had done as she was told. The gesture was automatic, born of some deep, survival-oriented part of her brain that understood the rules of this particular game: obey, perform, survive. He grinned at the sight and there was a strange, unsettling pride on what she could see of his face beneath the helmet. Not lust, not cruelty, but pride. As if she were a prized possession that had performed beautifully, a well-trained animal that had executed its tricks flawlessly. The expression made her stomach turn more than the taste of him still coating her tongue.

He grabbed her hand—his grip firm, commanding, leaving no room for resistance—and pulled her up from her kneeling position. Her legs screamed in protest, aching deeply from being folded beneath her for so long. The muscles in her thighs and calves had gone stiff and cramped and she stumbled as she rose, her jelly-like legs barely supporting her weight. The recent orgasm had left her boneless, wrung out, her body a collection of pleasant aches and deep, soul-sick bruises. He didn’t let her fall. He pinned her lower body against his, using his hips and thighs to force her upright, to keep her standing when all she wanted to do was collapse onto the cold floor and disappear. The pressure of his body against hers was immovable, a wall of muscle and intent that held her in place like a butterfly pinned to a board.

He cupped her face in both hands—those gloved hands that had touched her everywhere, that had violated every inch of her—and kissed her. It was not a gentle kiss. It was thorough, invasive, his tongue pushing past her swollen lips to explore the mouth he had just used. She didn’t kiss him back. She couldn’t. Her lips were numb, her jaw ached and her mind had retreated to some distant, foggy place where sensations arrived muffled and distant, as if happening to someone else. Her head was too cloudy from everything that had happened—the fear, the violation, the unwanted orgasm, the degradation of swallowing him down. It all swirled together into a gray, formless fog that obscured everything but the most immediate physical sensations: the cold glass at her back, the warm body at her front, the taste of him still lingering on her tongue.

“God, you’re such a good girl for me,” he murmured against her lips, the words vibrating through the kiss. It was praise. It was ownership. It was the final stamp on her degradation, the verbal acknowledgment that she had performed exactly as he wanted, that she had been everything he demanded her to be. She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. She stood there, held upright by his body and his grip, her bare skin pressed against his kevlar-clad chest and stared at nothing through the red-tinged fog of her own dissociation.

“Now let’s get you dressed up.” His voice had shifted into something almost gentle, almost caring. He bent down and gathered her discarded clothes from the cold floor, collecting each piece with the same casual efficiency he might use to pick up after himself. The jacket, the top, the bra—he shook them out briefly, smoothing wrinkles with his gloved hands, treating her garments with a care that seemed utterly incongruous with everything that had just transpired. And then he began to dress her, guiding her arms into sleeves and settling fabric over her shoulders as if she were a doll, an inanimate object to be posed and arranged according to his whims. She cooperated because her mind was too muddled to do anything else. It was easier to simply comply, to let him move her limbs and adjust her clothing, to surrender to the strange, dissociative calm that had settled over her in the aftermath. Resistance required energy, required presence, required a self that felt worth defending. She had none of those things right now.

She stepped back into her jeans when he held them open for her, balancing unsteadily on legs that still felt like they belonged to someone else. The denim slid up her calves, over her knees and he pulled them the rest of the way, settling the waistband at her hips. But he paused before fastening them, his hands stilling on the open fly. “Hmm,” he hummed, a considering sound that made her stomach clench with fresh dread. “I think I wanna keep this.” Before she could process what he meant, his fingers hooked into the side of her underwear—the pale lavender cotton, still soaked through with the evidence of her unwanted orgasm and he pulled. The fabric tore with a sharp, ripping sound, the thin cotton giving way easily under his strength. 

He pulled the ruined panties free from between her legs, the damp fabric dragging against her sensitive flesh one final time and her breath hitched audibly as the cold air of the maze rushed in to fill the absence. Her bare, swollen cunt was exposed to the chill, still tender and oversensitive from everything that had been done to it and she shivered involuntarily at the sensation. He stuffed the drenched fabric into his back pocket with casual satisfaction—a trophy, a souvenir, a claim staked and collected. Then he pulled her jeans up fully, settling the rough denim directly against her bare, sensitive flesh and buttoned them closed. The seam of the jeans pressed against her in ways that would remind her, with every step she took, of what she no longer wore beneath them.

Once she was fully dressed—or as fully dressed as she could be without the underwear he had stolen—he turned his attention to her appearance. He patted her hair with surprising gentleness, smoothing down the tangles and flyaways. His gloved fingers combed through the strands, working out the worst of the dishevelment, arranging her hair so that she looked less like a woman who had just been violated in a hall of mirrors and more like someone who had simply had a long, exhausting night at the carnival.  

His fingers found her chin, tilting her face up and he swiped his thumb across her skin, collecting the remaining saliva and the residue of his release that still clung to her chin. The pad of his glove came away glistening. He brought it to her lips, pressing gently against the swollen, tender flesh. “Clean it up,” he said, though the words were less a command and more an expectation, a continuation of the ritual they had established. Y/N parted her lips without thought, without resistance and took his gloved finger into her mouth. She licked it clean, her tongue dragging across the leather, collecting the bitter, salty taste of him mixed with her own saliva. The act was intimate and degrading and utterly automatic. When she had finished, he withdrew his finger and gave her a satisfied smile—that same strange pride she had seen before, the expression of an owner admiring a well-trained possession.

His gaze dropped to the floor and he spotted Lord Snuggleton where the stuffed rabbit still lay abandoned and forgotten in the chaos of what had transpired. He bent down and picked up the bunny with surprising care, holding it by its floppy ears for a moment before dusting it off with a few brisk pats. His gloved hands smoothed the rabbit’s fur, straightened its lopsided expression, restored it to some semblance of its former cheerfulness. Then he stepped closer and tucked the stuffed animal securely into the crook of Y/N’s arm, pressing it against her side with a gentle, almost tender insistence. “Wouldn’t wanna leave Snuggleton behind, now would we?” His voice was light, almost teasing, as if they were sharing a private joke.

The name hit her like a physical blow. Snuggleton. Lord Snuggleton of Hugsville. The silly, affectionate nickname she had invented just hours ago, standing in a parking lot with Dex, feeling safe and seen and almost happy. She had waved the bunny’s little arm at him, had made him laugh with the ridiculous title, had created a small, private world of warmth and humor in the middle of her otherwise bleak existence. And now this monster—this vile impersonator, this predator who had violated her in every possible way—was using that name. He knew the bunny’s name. The only people who knew that name were her and Dex. She had invented it on the spot, had spoken it aloud exactly once, in a moment of genuine connection with the man who lived next door. There was no other way he could have known. No other explanation.

Her mind reeled, spinning through the implications with dizzying speed. Had he been watching her since before the parking lot? Had he been lurking somewhere in the shadows of the carnival, observing her and Dex together, listening to their conversation with some kind of surveillance equipment? Had he been waiting—patiently, predatorily—for Dex to leave so he could make his move? The thought sent ice water through her veins. It meant this wasn’t random. It wasn’t a chance encounter, a terrible coincidence of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This had been planned. Orchestrated. He had watched her laugh and eat cotton candy and accept stuffed animals from Dex, had watched her feel safe and happy and almost normal and he had waited. He had let her have those moments of peace specifically so he could destroy them, so he could prove that nowhere and no one was safe, that he could reach her whenever he wanted, that her happiness was merely a loan he could call due at any moment.

His arm hooked around her waist, solid and unyielding and he began to walk her through the maze. But not back the way she had come, not toward the main entrance where she had presented her silver ticket with such foolish, hopeful excitement. He guided her instead toward a back exit she hadn’t known existed—a plain, unmarked door set into a mirrored wall, virtually invisible unless you knew exactly where to look. He pushed it open and the cool night air rushed in, carrying the distant sounds of the city beyond the carnival grounds. The carnival itself had powered down completely now. The rides were silent, their lights extinguished. The game booths were shuttered and dark. The crowds had dispersed, leaving behind only scattered trash and the ghostly echoes of the evening’s revelry. 

She wondered, as he steered her through the door and into the empty service area behind the maze, if there had been anyone else in the maze when he had caught her. Had there been other visitors, laughing and bumping into mirrors and enjoying the simple fun of getting lost? Or had he, just like with Dex, carefully orchestrated her isolation? Had he waited until the maze was empty, until the carnival was closing, until every possible witness or protector had been systematically removed from the equation? The precision of it—the patience, the planning, the intimate knowledge of her movements and her company—suggested a predator who had been hunting her for a long, long time. And the worst part, the part that made her blood run cold and her stomach drop into some bottomless void, was the realization that he would do it again. That this was not an ending but merely another chapter in an ongoing nightmare. That he knew her routines, her relationships, her small moments of joy. And he would use all of it against her, whenever he chose.

He at least had the decency—if such a word could even be applied to a monster—to call her a cab. He had pulled out a phone, not his personal device she suspected but something disposable, a burner purchased with cash and destined for the bottom of a trash can within the hour. He had spoken to the dispatcher in a clipped, efficient tone, rattling off the carnival’s address and requesting a pickup at the service entrance where they stood. And then, before the cab’s headlights could sweep around the corner and illuminate them both, he had melted back into the shadows. One moment he was there, a solid, oppressive presence at her side, his arm still hooked possessively around her waist. The next moment he was simply… gone. Swallowed by the darkness behind the mirror maze as if he had never existed at all, as if he were nothing more than another phantom conjured by her exhausted, traumatized mind.

The cab arrived. A beat-up sedan with a flickering interior light and an air freshener shaped like a pine tree dangling from the rearview mirror, its artificial evergreen scent doing little to mask the underlying odors of stale cigarette smoke and too many strangers’ lives. She climbed into the backseat, clutching Lord Snuggleton to her chest like a lifeline and gave the driver her address in a voice so small and hollow she barely recognized it as her own. The cabbie—a middle-aged man with tired eyes and the weathered patience of someone who had spent decades driving through the city’s darkest hours—glanced at her in the rearview mirror. 

She saw his gaze linger on her dishevelled hair, her swollen lips, the vacant, thousand-yard stare she couldn’t seem to shake. He noticed. Of course he noticed. A woman getting into a cab alone, late at night, from a closed carnival, looking like she had been through something unspeakable—it was a story as old as the city itself. But he didn’t comment. He didn’t ask if she was okay, didn’t offer to call anyone, didn’t press for details she couldn’t have given even if she’d wanted to. Maybe he had learned, over years of driving these streets, that some silences were kinder than questions. Maybe he simply didn’t want to get involved. Either way, she was grateful. 

The drive passed in a blur of streetlights and darkened storefronts, the city sliding past her window like a movie she was watching from very far away. She couldn’t possibly return to Foggy’s place like this. The thought crystallized with sudden, painful clarity. Foggy, who was like a brother to her in every way that mattered, who had stepped in after Matt’s death and tried so desperately to fill a void that could never truly be filled. Foggy, who already worried about her constantly, who called to check in with a frequency that should have been annoying but was instead deeply, achingly touching. If he saw her like this—bruised, hollow-eyed, wearing clothes that had been put back on her body by the man who had just violated her, walking with the careful, pained gait of someone hiding fresh injuries—he would crumble. 

He would demand answers. He would want to call the police, to hunt down whoever had done this, to wrap her in protective layers of concern and investigation and well-meaning interference. And she couldn’t deal with that. She didn’t have the strength. Every ounce of energy she possessed had been drained from her, siphoned away by the horror of what had happened in that mirror maze. She had nothing left—no words, no explanations, no ability to manage someone else’s emotional response to her trauma. She could barely manage her own.

Besides, she didn’t want him to see her like this. The thought was simpler, rawer, more honest. What brother—even a brother by choice rather than blood—would want to see his sister in this condition? What good could possibly come from forcing Foggy to witness this, to see the evidence of what had been done to her written across her face and body? He had enough problems to deal with already. The weight of Matt’s death, the ongoing chaos of Wilson Fisk’s return, the endless, grinding work of trying to hold together some semblance of justice in a city that seemed determined to tear itself apart— Foggy carried all of that on his shoulders every single day. 

Adding her brokenness to that burden felt cruel, felt selfish, felt like asking a drowning man to save someone else. So, she gave the cabbie the address of her old apartment building instead. The cab pulled up to the curb outside her building and she paid the fare with trembling fingers, fumbling bills from her jacket pocket. She didn’t wait for change. She just wanted out. The building loomed before her, tired and familiar, its brick facade stained with decades of city grime. 

The lobby was dimly lit, the single fluorescent bulb flickering with the erratic pulse of something on the verge of dying completely. And of course—of course—the elevator was out of order. A handwritten sign taped to the metal doors announced this fact with cheery, passive-aggressive regret: ”Out of Service. Sorry for the inconvenience.” It had been out of service for three weeks now. She was starting to suspect it would never be fixed, that she would be climbing these stairs until she died or moved away, whichever came first.

She trudged up the steps, each one a small mountain. Her legs were tired—not just tired, but exhausted, the muscles in her thighs and calves screaming with every upward step. The bruises on her knees, earned from kneeling on the hard floor of the mirror maze while she serviced him with her mouth, throbbed with a deep, persistent ache that seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat. Climbing three floors was hard on a normal day, when she was well-rested and whole and carrying nothing heavier than groceries. Now it felt Herculean. Impossible. A task designed by cruel gods to break her completely. 

She gripped the banister with white-knuckled desperation, pulling herself upward one painful step at a time. Halfway up the second flight, her legs gave out briefly and she had to catch herself on her knees—bad idea, terrible idea, the pain that shot through her was blinding—before forcing herself upright again. By the time she reached the final flight, she was almost crawling, using her hands on the steps above her to drag her body forward. Just a bit more, she told herself, the words a mantra in the fog of her exhaustion. Just a bit more. You can make it. You have to make it. There’s nowhere else to go.

She finally reached her floor—the third floor, the floor where her tiny studio waited like a cold, unwelcoming refuge—and let out a shuddering sigh of relief that was almost a sob. Her door was at the end of the hall. Just a few more steps. Just a few more—

Dex returned home earlier than he had expected. The work emergency had been urgent, yes, but ultimately straightforward—a situation that required his presence and his particular skills but not the hours of painstaking effort he had anticipated. He had handled it with the cold, efficient precision that had made him both valuable and feared within the organization and now he was back, earlier than planned, the adrenaline of the night’s work still humming beneath his skin like a low-grade electrical current. The exhaustion would hit later, he knew. It always did. For now, he was still running on the residual energy of crisis management, his senses sharp and his mind alert.

He walked down the hallway of his apartment building, his footsteps nearly silent on the worn carpet—a habit born of years of training, of learning to move without being heard, without leaving traces. His door was ahead, the familiar scuffed paint and brass numbers a small comfort after the chaos of the night. But as he drew closer, something tugged at the edge of his awareness. A detail out of place. His door was already unlocked. The slight gap between the door and the frame, the way it sat just a fraction of an inch ajar when it should have been flush and sealed—it was wrong. He had locked it when he left. He always locked it. It was a reflex, as automatic as breathing.

He slipped inside with light, careful steps, his body moving into a combat-ready stance without conscious thought. His hand found the gun he kept stashed under the kitchen counter and he drew it smoothly, the weight familiar and reassuring in his palm. The apartment was dim, lit only by the ambient glow of the city filtering through the windows, but his eyes adjusted quickly. There were soft sounds of movement coming from his bedroom. Faint, barely audible, but unmistakable. The rustle of fabric. The creak of a floorboard. Someone was in there.

He moved cautiously, every sense on high alert, his training taking over completely. Who could it be? His mind raced through possibilities even as his body flowed through the familiar space of his apartment. With his time at the bureau, he had made enemies—that was inevitable, a natural consequence of the work he did and the way he did it. There were people who would love to see him dead, who had the resources and the motivation to send someone after him. Or could it be someone Wilson Fisk sent? Finally deciding that he didn’t want him. 

The door of his bathroom was open, the light still spilling out into the bedroom beyond. That was wrong too. He hadn’t left the bathroom light on. He was certain of it. He stood at the edge of his bedroom door, his back pressed against the wall beside the frame, his gun held in a two-handed grip, pointed toward the ceiling but ready to snap down and fire at a moment’s notice. He took a slow, controlled breath, centering himself, preparing for whatever threat waited on the other side of that threshold. Then, in one fluid motion, he whipped around the corner and into the bedroom, his gun coming down with deadly precision, aimed directly at—

He froze.

“Dex?” The voice that called his name was so small, so fractured, that for a moment he didn’t recognize it. It was barely more than a whisper, a broken thread of sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep and wounded, the kind of voice that belonged to small animals caught in traps or children waking from nightmares they couldn’t articulate. It was the smallest, most shattered sound he had ever heard and it stopped him cold.

“Y/N?” His gun lowered immediately, the tension in his arms releasing as recognition flooded through him. The bedroom was dark—the only illumination came from the bathroom light spilling through the open door, casting a pale golden rectangle across the floor and catching the edges of her silhouette. But even in the dimness, he could see that it was her. The shape of her, the way she stood, the familiar curve of her shoulders now hunched inward as if she were trying to make herself smaller, less visible, less there. The room was humid, the air thick and warm with residual steam that clung to his skin and fogged the edges of the bathroom mirror.

She had just showered, he realized. Her hair was wet, dark with water and plastered against her skull and neck in dripping tendrils. And she was wearing his clothes—one of his old t-shirts, soft and faded from years of washing, hanging loose on her smaller frame and a pair of his sweatpants rolled multiple times at the waistband and cuffs to keep them from swallowing her whole. On any other night, in any other context, the sight of Y/N wrapped in his clothing would have made his heart stutter and swell, would have filled him with a warm, possessive tenderness he barely knew how to name. But this wasn’t any other night. Something was terribly, fundamentally wrong.

“Dex—I—I’m so sorry for breaking in.” The words tumbled out of her in a frantic, rambling rush, as if she could outrun whatever accusation she imagined was coming by filling the silence with explanation. “I mean—I didn’t break in. I didn’t. I just used the spare key. The one you keep by the radiator. You know the one? I remembered you showed me where it was, in case of emergencies and I couldn’t find my apartment keys, I looked everywhere, in my jacket and my jeans and they just weren’t there and you told me—you told me I could let myself in if I ever needed to. You said that. Remember? You said, ‘If you ever need a place, my door’s always open. Spare key’s by the radiator.’ So I just—I just—” She rambled on, her words tripping over each other in their desperate haste, trying to explain away the situation, to make it seem normal, to prevent him from seeing what was actually written across her face and body and posture. She was building a wall of words, hoping he wouldn’t look too closely at what lay behind it.

He crossed the room in three long strides, closing the distance between them with the same focused intensity he brought to everything that mattered. His hands came up to cup her face, his palms warm against her chilled, damp skin. The contrast was stark—she was cold despite the humid warmth of the room, cold in a way that came from inside, from shock and trauma and something he didn’t yet understand but could feel radiating off her like a physical force. “Hey, hey,” he said, his voice dropping into something soft and steady, the tone he used when talking someone down from a ledge or calming a frightened witness. “It’s okay. What happened?”

Her hair was wet, plastered to her forehead and cheeks in dark, dripping strands. Droplets of water slid down her temples like tears she wasn’t shedding. And if this were any other day, any other circumstance, his heart would have burst out of his chest at the sight of her—his sweet, brave, wounded Y/N standing in his bedroom wearing his clothes, looking soft and vulnerable and impossibly dear. He would have allowed himself to feel the warmth of that image, the quiet domesticity of it, the unspoken promise it seemed to hold. But right now wasn’t the time for those feelings. Right now, something was broken in her and every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to fix it, to protect her, to love her.

Y/N shook her head, a small, jerky motion and looked away from him. She couldn’t meet his eyes. Couldn’t bear to see the concern there, the questions, the inevitable demand for an explanation she wasn’t ready to give. “I—I just spiraled after you left,” she said, her voice thin and distant, as if she were reporting events that had happened to someone else. “And I didn’t want to return to Foggy’s. I couldn’t. He would’ve—he would’ve asked too many questions and I didn’t have answers and I didn’t know where else to go.” Her voice cracked on the last words, splintering into something raw and wounded. “I’m so sorry, Dex. I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have just let myself in like this. I should’ve called. I should’ve—”

He pulled her into his arms before she could finish the apology, wrapping himself around her with a fierce, protective urgency. One hand pressed flat against her back, the other cradled the back of her wet head and he held her against his chest as if he could shield her from whatever had happened simply by being a barrier between her and the rest of the world. She melted right there in his embrace. The tension that had been holding her upright, that had carried her up three flights of stairs and through a shower and into his apartment, dissolved all at once. Her body sagged against his and then the sobs came. Small at first, barely more than hitches in her breathing. Then larger, deeper, racking through her frame in waves that shook them both. She gripped the front of his jacket with both hands, her fingers twisting in the fabric, anchoring herself to him as if he were the only solid thing in a world that had turned to water.

“It’s okay, sunshine,” he murmured against her hair, the nickname falling from his lips automatically, a talisman against the darkness. “I got you. I’m here. I’ve got you.” He repeated the words like a mantra, like a promise, like a spell that could somehow undo whatever had been done to her. She pressed her face into his chest, breathing him in, letting his warmth and his scent and his steady, unwavering presence wash over her. “Just missed you s’much,” she whispered, the words muffled against his jacket but unmistakable in their raw, simple honesty.

Ten minutes later, she was sitting on his couch, wrapped in the thickest blanket he owned—a soft, worn flannel thing that had seen him through countless cold nights and now served a more important purpose. She had burrowed into it, pulling it up to her chin, cocooning herself in its warmth. And it smelled like him. Like that woodsy, musky scent that clung to everything he owned—his clothes, his furniture, his very presence. It was the smell of safety, of comfort, of the one person in the world who made her feel like she might still be whole somewhere deep inside. She breathed it in like medicine, letting it settle into her lungs and her bloodstream, letting it push back against the cold, creeping tendrils of the mirror maze that still lingered at the edges of her consciousness.

He was in the kitchen, moving with quiet efficiency, making her something to eat. She seemed pretty shaken—more than shaken, shattered—and he didn’t want to overwhelm her with anything complicated. So he made French toast. Simple, warm, comforting. Her favourite. He had learned that about her during one of their cook nights, had filed the information away like he filed away everything important about her. The way her eyes lit up at the smell of cinnamon and vanilla. The way she liked hers with just a dusting of powdered sugar, no syrup. The way she would close her eyes and make a small, satisfied sound at the first bite, as if the simple pleasure of good food was something precious and rare.

He brought the plate out and set it on the table in front of the couch, the golden-brown slices of bread steaming gently in the dim light. Then he sat down next to her, close enough that she could feel his warmth through the blanket, close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she needed to. 

Y/N began digging into the French toast immediately, her movements mechanical but driven by a sudden, ravenous hunger she hadn’t realized she was carrying. The first bite was a revelation—the warm, eggy sweetness of the bread, the subtle kiss of cinnamon and vanilla, the way the powdered sugar melted on her tongue like the ghost of something good and pure. It flooded her senses, pushing back against the bitter, salty, alkaline taste that had consolidated itself on her tongue and refused to leave. That taste—his taste—had been clinging to her since the mirror maze, a phantom residue that no amount of showering or tooth-brushing or desperate tongue-scraping could fully erase. But the French toast helped. Dex’s French toast, made with careful hands in his small kitchen, served on a plain white plate with no expectation or demand attached. It tasted like safety. Like normalcy. Like the world she had inhabited before everything went wrong, when her biggest concern was whether she’d eaten too much cotton candy and not whether she’d survive the night with her sanity intact.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Dex’s voice was tentative, careful, the tone of someone approaching a wounded animal with open palms and slow movements. He wasn’t pushing—Dex never pushed, that was one of the things she appreciated most about him—but the question was there, hanging in the warm air between them, an offering she could accept or decline as she chose.

Y/N froze mid-chew, the bite of French toast suddenly thick and difficult to swallow. Her mind raced, spinning through possibilities, constructing and discarding explanations with frantic speed. What could she even tell him? The truth was impossible. It was a labyrinth of horrors with no clear entrance and no safe exit. Oh, you know, Dex, I just got assaulted by a vigilante who wears my dead brother’s costume. You know, the Daredevil suit? The one Matt used to wear when he was alive and fighting for justice? Well, there’s this imposter now, this monster who’s stolen his identity and his symbol and he cornered me in the mirror maze after you left and he— No. Absolutely not. She couldn’t say those words.

Couldn’t give voice to the specifics of what had been done to her. And even if she could somehow find the courage to speak the truth, there was another layer, a deeper, more shameful confession lurking beneath the surface. The way she had coped. The way she had survived. How, when he was touching her and violating her and forcing sounds from her throat she didn’t want to make, she had closed her eyes and imagined it was someone else. Imagined it was Dex. His hands instead of those leather gloves. His mouth instead of that terrible, grinning maw beneath the helmet. His voice calling her sweetheart, sunshine, good girl.

She had superimposed his image onto her tormentor like a protective filter, using her feelings for him as a shield against the full horror of what was happening. It was preposterous. It was pathetic. It was deeply, profoundly shameful in ways she couldn’t begin to articulate. And even though Dex wasn’t the kind of person who would ever victim-blame—she knew this about him with bone-deep certainty—she was still drowning in shame. She didn’t want him to look at her differently. Didn’t want him to see her as broken, as damaged, as someone who had been reduced to nothing and then rebuilt herself around a fantasy of him.

“I told you,” She muttered, her voice barely above a whisper, her eyes fixed on the remaining French toast rather than his face. “I just spiralled.”

“Spiralled hard enough that you had to break into my house, take a shower in my bathroom and wear my clothes?” His voice was light, teasing, an obvious attempt to cut through the heavy atmosphere with humour. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he bumped his shoulder gently against hers.

Y/N smacked his arm with the back of her hand, a reflexive gesture of mock outrage that felt almost normal, almost like them. “I didn’t have my house keys on me, okay?” The protest came out stronger than she intended, a flicker of her usual fire showing through the ash. “And I was going to text you about it, but my phone died. So technically, this is your fault for not having a charger readily available for your guests.”

“My fault?” He raised an eyebrow, clearly delighted that she was engaging, that some colour had returned to her voice.

“Yes, your fault. Completely and entirely.” She set her plate down on the table with a deliberate clink and rose to her feet, wrapping the blanket more securely around her shoulders like a cape of righteous indignation. “And if you have such a big problem with me being here, I’ll just leave then.” She wasn’t going to leave—not really, not actually—but she wanted to see how he would react. Needed to see it. Needed confirmation that she was wanted here, that her presence in his space wasn’t a burden he was too polite to name.

Dex’s hand shot out and caught her wrist before she could take her first step. His grip was warm and firm and he pulled her back with a surprising strength that sent her off balance. She stumbled, her feet tangling in the trailing edge of the blanket and fell directly into his lap with a soft, startled gasp. His arms came around her immediately, steadying her, holding her in place against his chest. “You aren’t going anywhere, sunshine,” he said and there was a grin spreading across his face—wide and warm and possessive in a way that made her heart flutter despite everything.

For a single, suspended moment, her blood ran cold. That grin. That smile. It reminded her—with a jolt of visceral, gut-wrenching recognition—of his smile. The monster’s smile. The way he had looked at her in the mirror maze, like she was a possession he had successfully claimed. But then reason reasserted itself. It was her own fault, wasn’t it? She had been the one to superimpose Dex’s image onto her attacker, to use his face as a shield against the horror. Of course there would be echoes. Of course her traumatized brain would make connections that weren’t really there.

She couldn’t blame Dex for her own coping mechanisms, for the way her desperate mind had twisted and blurred the lines between protector and predator just to survive. She shook her head slightly, physically dismissing the thought and forced a smile onto her face. “I don’t plan to,” she said softly and slipped off his lap—though she didn’t go far. She settled back onto the couch beside him, close enough that their thighs pressed together through the blanket, close enough to feel his warmth and his solidity and his steady, reassuring presence.

It didn’t take long for Y/N to fall asleep. The exhaustion of the evening—the terror, the violation, the long climb up three flights of stairs, the hot shower that had scrubbed her skin raw but couldn’t reach the places where the real dirt lived—finally caught up with her. Her head grew heavy, drooping forward and then found a natural resting place against Dex’s shoulder. Her breathing slowed, deepened, softened into the gentle rhythm of unconsciousness. Her face, which had been tight with unspoken pain and hidden fear, relaxed into something peaceful, almost childlike. It had been a long and very tiring evening, after all. The longest of her life, perhaps. And here, in the warmth of Dex’s apartment, wrapped in his blanket and his scent and his quiet, undemanding presence, she finally felt safe enough to let go.

Dex looked down at her sleeping face, and his expression shifted—melted, really—into something that no one had ever truly seen. Not Y/N, not his colleagues at the bureau, not anyone who thought they knew him. His eyes traced the delicate curve of her cheek with a slow, possessive reverence, following the flutter of her lashes where they rested against her skin, lingering on the soft, unconscious parting of her lips as she breathed. “You really are a dumb little puppy, aren’t you?” His voice was a whisper, barely a disturbance in the quiet air, meant for no one but himself and the unconscious woman draped against his shoulder. “Running right back to me after the maze.” A sinister glint sparked in his eyes—a cold, predatory light that transformed his handsome features into something else entirely. Something hungry. Something patient. Something that had been waiting a very, very long time.

Carefully, with the practiced ease of a man accustomed to moving without waking, he pulled her fully into his lap. She needed to stay asleep. After all, she hadn't yet drunk the tea he always made her before he did anything. It was a ritual now, one she never suspected—every single time, she would accept the warm cup from his hands, drink it down without question and drift off into a deep, pliable slumber, leaving her completely unaware of the hours that followed in her bed. Dex did prefer her awake and responsive— he liked the fire in her, the way she squirmed and whimpered and reacted to every touch. But for now, he would take what he could get. At least for tonight.

His fingers rose and traced the line of her cheek, featherlight, barely grazing the surface of her skin. Then they drifted lower, following the elegant column of her neck and pausing at the hollow of her throat, where her pulse beat slow and steady beneath his fingertips. Lower still, until his hand found the soft swell of her breast through the thin fabric of his borrowed shirt. “So sweet,” he murmured, his fingers circling her nipple with a lazy, knowing touch. It pebbled instantly under his attention, the sensitive flesh tightening just as he had expected, just as it always did, “So trusting.” There was wonder in his voice and satisfaction and something darker—something that had no name in any language she would recognize.

His hand slipped a little lower, toying with the loose waistband of the sweatpants she wore. They hung large on her frame, the fabric gaping enough that he could have easily slipped his hand inside without resistance. But he abstained. She’d had enough for one day and he was a patient man. Instead, his palm glided over the fabric, hovering just above the warmth of her sweet cunt, separated by nothing more than a thin layer of cotton. His mind wandered, as it often did, to what awaited him there. If her mouth had felt so exquisite—so hot and tight and willing—how much better would her plush walls feel when he finally buried himself inside her? How sweet would she sound when he filled her completely? Y/N shifted in her sleep, a small, involuntary whine escaping her lips as if she could sense the weight of his thoughts. Dex smiled to himself. One of the things he loved most about her was just how responsive she was, even now. Nothing compared to feeling her squirm beneath him when she was fully conscious, but even under the heavy veil of the tea, her body remained warm and innately attuned to his touch.

He brought his hand back up to her face, his thumb coming to rest against her bottom lip. It was still swollen, still slightly reddened, bearing the marks of everything that had been done to her in the mirror maze. He caressed the tender flesh with a gentleness that was almost reverent, feeling its warmth, its softness, the slight roughness where she had bitten down to keep from crying out.  A fleeting thought crossed his mind—he still needed to retrieve the pair of panties he had torn from her body in the maze, the ones currently sitting in the pocket of his suit in the back of his car. A trophy for the collection.

His gaze lifted, moving across the room to where Lord Snuggleton sat on the armchair opposite the couch. The stuffed rabbit’s beady black eyes seemed to stare back at him, empty and unblinking, its floppy ears and stitched smile frozen in perpetual, helpless cheerfulness. Dex smirked at it—a slow, knowing curl of his lips—as if the rabbit recognized the horror of the truth but could do nothing to save its master. As if they shared a secret, him and this inanimate witness, a joke that only one of them could appreciate. 

He leaned in, closing the small distance between them and pressed the softest, most tender kiss to her sleeping lips. It was barely a brush of contact, a whisper of warmth, the kind of kiss a lover might give in the quiet hours of the night when they thought no one was watching. “You don’t need to worry your pretty little head anymore, doll,” he breathed against her mouth, the words a promise and a threat wrapped in the same silken tone. “I’ll take such good care of you.” His lips curved into a smile against hers and then he pulled back, settling more comfortably into the couch, letting her sleeping weight rest on him. His arm came up to wrap around her shoulders, holding her close, keeping her warm, keeping her his. The sinister glint in his eyes softened into something that might have been mistaken for affection by anyone who didn’t know better. And there, in the quiet of his apartment, with the city humming distantly beyond the windows and the woman he had been hunting sleeping peacefully against his chest, Dex allowed himself a moment of pure, uncomplicated satisfaction. Everything was going exactly according to plan.

╰ ┈➤ A/n: Part of a larger AU and maybe one day I’ll write the somno fic for this. Lemme know if you’d wanna read it.

╰ ┈➤ Masterlist

╰ ┈➤ Tags: @joekitsu

© cheriecelestial - arabelle | 2026

“I really needed this pick me up,” she confessed, her voice dipping into something more vulnerable as the cacophony of the carnival seemed to recede into a muffled hum around them, creating a small, private bubble where honesty didn’t feel so expensive.

“Don’t worry about it, really,” Dex replied, his tone carrying that effortless, dry warmth that always managed to chip away at her defenses without her noticing. He adjusted the precarious tower of neon plushies threatening to spill from his arms, bouncing his hip upward to recapture a slipping, cross-eyed panda bear that had been trying to make a break for the pavement. “In all honesty, I needed it too. It was starting to get downright sad without any sunshine bleeding through the walls from the apartment next to me.” The joke was light, but the implication underneath it was heavier, a quiet admission that he’d felt the void her self-isolation had carved in. 

As they ambled towards the parking lot, Y/N found herself glancing at the spoils of his strange, unerring accuracy. He had insisted—stubbornly, almost boyishly—on trying his hand at every single rigged game the moment he caught her gaze lingering on a prize for a beat too long. The softball toss, the water gun race against a plastic clown, the impossible ring-on-bottle scam—Dex approached them with a placid, almost detached focus. And somehow, infuriatingly, he hadn’t missed. Not once. The darts landed with a satisfying thwack, the baseballs dropped perfectly into the slanted milk cans and the carny running the balloon board had just stared, slack-jawed, handing over stuffed creatures with the resigned air of a man watching a natural disaster. 

Y/N didn’t know the specifics of his job—he was cagey about the details, only ever letting slip how brutal the hours were or how the paperwork seemed designed to suffocate a man’s soul—but she had been inside his apartment enough times to notice the signs. The edge of a badge peeking from a drawer, the particular way his shoes were lined up with military precision by the door, the heavy-duty flashlight on the kitchen counter. It pointed to law enforcement, to a discipline and a dangerous edge that most people didn’t have. And perversely, that was part of why she felt so safe standing next to him right now, even as the rest of her world felt like it was held together with fraying twine.

Y/N let her gaze drop to the plush nestled in the crook of her own arm, the one he’d handed to her personally rather than piling it onto the heap he was carrying. It was a fluffy, somewhat lopsided bunny with ears that were absurdly long and soft as dandelion fluff. He had pointed at it wordlessly, a faint smirk tugging at his lip and muttered, “Looks like you.” She didn’t have the heart to argue that she felt nothing like soft cotton and innocence these days. 

“Yes, I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, her fingers tightening around the bunny’s plush middle as if anchoring herself to the single good thing in the immediate vicinity. “It’s just this past month hasn’t really been easy on me.” The understatement of the year. With Wilson Fisk out—the name alone felt like a shard of ice sliding down her spine—everything her brother had sacrificed, every sleepless night and bloody knuckle he’d invested in trying to shine a light into the city’s darkest corners, was unspooling with terrifying speed. The fragile architecture of justice he’d helped build was being kicked over like a sandcastle by a tyrant’s boot.

And then, separate from the city-wide nightmare of Fisk’s resurgence, there was him. The other shadow. The one who had left a mark so deep she sometimes felt like she was still bleeding internally from the wound. A tremor threatened to travel up her spine, a cold, familiar dread that belonged to the quiet of 3 a.m. Y/N shook her head sharply, a physical, violent motion meant to rattle the unwanted thoughts loose and send them scattering back into the dark recesses of her mind where they belonged. She fixed her eyes on the steady, broad line of Dex’s back ahead of her and forced herself to breathe in the smell of gunpowder and cotton candy, clinging to the present moment like it was the last life raft on a very dark sea.

“Hey, hey—it’s okay. I get it. I truly do.” Dex’s voice dropped into something softer, more deliberate, as if he were carefully choosing each word to build a small bridge across the chasm of her unspoken grief. He turned toward his car, fishing the keys from his pocket with one hand while balancing the chaotic menagerie of stuffed animals against his chest with the other. The electronic chirp of the locks disengaging cut through the quiet of the parking lot and he swung the rear door open, depositing the plushies into the backseat with a gentleness that seemed almost comical given his size and the sheer volume of synthetic fur he was handling. 

They tumbled onto the upholstery in a soft avalanche of bright colours—a neon green frog with bulging plastic eyes, a tie-dyed unicorn missing half its glitter, a penguin wearing a tiny sombrero that he’d won purely because she’d laughed at its absurdity. “Things aren’t always easy,” he continued, straightening up and leaning one forearm against the roof of the car, his gaze meeting hers across the span of metal and glass. There was no pity in his eyes, just a kind of steady, unflinching recognition, “And if being with family makes you feel better—even just a little bit—then what’s better than that? Nothing. That’s the stuff that actually matters. The rest of it is just noise.”

“Yeah,” Y/N breathed out, her voice small but steadier now, anchored by the warmth in his words. “Foggy’s like my brother. He really is. Him and my brother Matt—they were friends since college, you know? And when things got hard, when I was just a kid trying to figure out which way was up, Foggy just... stepped in. He basically helped raise me after everything fell apart.” She paused. She hadn’t meant to say so much, but the words kept spilling out as if Dex’s quiet patience had loosened some valve she usually kept screwed tight. 

“Him and a couple of Matt’s other closest friends—Karen, mostly—they’re the only ones I really had left after my brother passed. The only ones who knew him the way I did. The only ones who understood that the world lost something irreplaceable when he... when he was gone.” She pulled the bunny up higher, pressing its plush face against her collarbone as if it could absorb some of the ache radiating from her chest.

Dex was quiet for a long moment, processing the shape of her loss with the same careful attention he gave to everything else that was hers. Then, slowly, a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—not the broad, performative grin he sometimes deployed as armour, but something smaller, more honest, a sliver of light through a crack in his own carefully maintained walls. “Well, I’m glad at least you have someone to help you through it,” he said, his voice carrying an undercurrent of something that might have been envy if it weren’t so tinged with genuine relief. “Everyone needs a harbour. Someone to remind them that the storm doesn’t last forever, even when it feels like it’s going to swallow you whole.”

A wave of guilt crested unexpectedly in Y/N’s chest, cutting through the warmth of the moment. Dex had mentioned it once—just once, late at night when they’d both been sitting on the floor of his apartment, backs against the wall, sharing a bottle of cheap whiskey and the kind of silences that felt more like conversations. He’d lost his parents young. The details had been sparse, offered up like pebbles dropped into still water before he quickly changed the subject and she had never pried. She understood the sanctity of closed doors better than most. But standing here now, watching him extend such effortless grace toward her own grief while carrying his own invisible burdens, the imbalance felt suddenly, achingly unfair.

“But Dex,” she said, her voice firming with a sudden resolve, “you know you have me too, right? I mean it. You’re not just some guy who lives next door and wins me an obscene amount of carnival prizes. You’re part of this now. Part of my harbour.” She smiled then, a genuine, unguarded thing that softened the sharp edges of her face and raised the bunny’s limp, floppy arm to wave at him in a ridiculous greeting. “And Lord Snuggleton of Hugsville too, obviously. He’s very loyal. Once you’re in his inner circle, you’re in for life.”

Dex cracked a smile at that—a real one, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look younger, less like the guarded, capable man she knew and more like the boy he must have been before the world had asked so much of him. “I’m honoured,” he said, dipping his head in a mock-serious bow. “Truly. I don’t take titles like that lightly. Lord Snuggleton’s esteem is not easily earned.” Y/N laughed, a short, bright sound that surprised even her, rising up from some place she’d thought had been buried under weeks of exhaustion and fear. But before either of them could say anything more, the sharp, insistent trill of his phone sliced through the moment like a blade.

Dex’s expression flickered—a brief, almost imperceptible apology flashed across his features as his gaze darted to her face—before he pulled the device from his pocket and brought it to his ear. “Hello?” His voice shifted instantly, shedding its warmth for something clipped, professional, the tone of a man accustomed to receiving orders he couldn’t refuse. “Poindexter.” The name came out flat, almost clinical, a designation rather than an identity. Y/N watched the transformation with a quiet, sinking feeling in her stomach. Whatever was being said on the other end of the line, it was dismantling the evening they’d just shared, brick by careful brick. 

His jaw tightened. His free hand came up to rake through his hair in a gesture she recognized now as a tell—a nervous habit that surfaced only when he was bracing himself against something he didn’t want to face. His eyes, which had been warm and present just seconds ago, grew distant, clouded over with something she couldn’t name. “Yes, I—I’ll be there,” he said, the stammer a rare crack in his otherwise composed facade. “I know. I know.” The repetition was almost a whisper, as if he were trying to convince himself as much as the person on the phone. He ended the call and stood there for a long, suspended moment, the phone still pressed to his ear, his gaze fixed on some point far beyond the dimly lit parking lot, far beyond her.

“Is everything okay, Dex?” Y/N asked, her voice carefully measured, deliberately light. She could read the shift in his posture—the way his shoulders had drawn up just slightly toward his ears, the rigid line of his jaw, the way his thumb was still hovering over the screen of his phone as if expecting it to ring again with even worse news. The easy, warm presence that had been walking beside her just moments ago had retreated somewhere deep behind his eyes, replaced by something taut and coiled, a wire pulled just shy of snapping.

Dex turned back to face her and she watched him visibly assemble a mask of calm the way someone might hastily straighten a painting knocked askew. It was a valiant effort, but she could see the cracks where the urgency underneath was bleeding through—a slight tremor in his hand as he pocketed the phone, the way his gaze kept darting toward the driver’s side door as if already calculating how many minutes it would take him to reach wherever he needed to be.

“Yes, yes, it’s, uh—” He stumbled over the words, uncharacteristically clumsy, his usual measured cadence fracturing under the weight of whatever he’d just been told. “It’s a work emergency. Something that can’t wait, apparently. They need me there now. Like, now.” He exhaled sharply through his nose, a frustrated sound that seemed directed more at himself than at the situation. “I know I said I would drive you back. I promised. And I am so, so sorry, Y/N, but I—”

Y/N cut him off, raising a hand in a gentle but firm stop signal. She’d spent enough time around people who carried the weight of urgent responsibilities—Matt had been the same way, always torn between the life he wanted to live and the life that demanded him at the most inconvenient moments. She recognized the guilt flickering behind Dex’s eyes, the specific agony of someone who prided themselves on reliability being forced to break a promise. 

“Dex, it’s okay,” she said and she meant it, pouring as much reassurance into the words as she could muster. “I get it. Duty calls. That’s just how it works sometimes and I’m not going to hold it against you.” She gestured broadly at the carnival still glittering and churning in the near distance, the Ferris wheel turning in its slow, luminous circle against the darkening sky. “I’m a big girl, remember? I’ll probably wander around a bit more, maybe watch the carousel lights for a while and then I’ll call myself a cab. You don’t have to worry about it. Seriously.”

“Are you sure?” The question came out tight, strained and he was trying so hard to mask his guilt that it was almost painful to witness. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, a rare display of restlessness from a man who usually moved with such deliberate, controlled economy. “I could wait. Just until a cab shows up. It wouldn’t take long, I could—I could make the time. They can wait five more minutes. Ten, even. It’s not—” He was bargaining now, with himself more than with her, trying to find some arrangement that wouldn’t leave him feeling like he was abandoning her in a parking lot after dark.

“No, no, Dex.” Y/N shook her head firmly, her voice softening but leaving no room for argument. “I swear I’m fine. I’ll get myself some more of that ridiculous cotton candy we saw earlier and I’ll be perfectly content.” She waved her hand dismissively, a small, deliberate gesture meant to physically brush away his concerns. And the strangest part was, she realized with a small jolt of surprise, she actually believed her own words. In recent months, after the incident—she couldn’t bring herself to name it directly, even in the privacy of her own thoughts—she had felt fundamentally unsafe stepping outside her apartment alone. Every shadow had seemed to hold a threat, every stranger’s glance a potential prelude to danger. The world had shrunk to the size of her living room and leaving it had required Herculean effort and often a companion to anchor her. 

But tonight, after hours spent walking beside Dex’s steady presence, she could feel something shifting inside her. The confidence he exuded had seeped into her bones like warmth from a fire, pushing back the cold tendrils of anxiety that had taken up residence there. She wasn’t cured—she knew better than to think it worked that way—but she was better. Stronger. More herself.

Before she could overthink it, she stepped forward into his space and wrapped her arms around him in a small, brief hug. It wasn’t much—just a quick press of warmth, the soft squash of Lord Snuggleton caught between them—but it was an offering. A thank you. A promise that she would be okay. She stepped back just as quickly, her cheeks warming slightly and fixed him with a look that was part stern older sister and part something else she wasn’t ready to examine. “Drive safely and stay safe, hmm? Whatever it is, I want you coming back in one piece. Lord Snuggleton would be devastated otherwise.”

Dex smiled at her then and despite the urgency still thrumming visibly beneath his skin, the expression reached his eyes. “Always, sunshine,” he said, the nickname falling from his lips like it belonged there, like it had always been hers. And then he was sliding into the driver’s seat, the engine growling to life and pulling out of the parking lot with a controlled, efficient speed that spoke of someone accustomed to navigating emergencies. Y/N watched the red glow of his taillights shrink until they were swallowed by the darkness beyond the carnival’s halo of light and for a long moment, she simply stood there, alone in the half-empty lot, clutching her rabbit and feeling the unfamiliar but not unwelcome sensation of being okay.

Back at the carnival, Y/N made a beeline for the chocolate fountain with the singular determination of a missile locking onto its target. The smell hit her before she even reached the counter: rich, warm and decadent, laced with the subtle bitterness of good cocoa and the sweet promise of immediate gratification. She had already indulged plenty tonight—more than plenty, if she was being completely honest with herself, which she was decidedly not in the mood to do—so what was a little bit more? 

She stepped up to the counter and ordered the large cup without hesitation, watching as the vendor skewered plump, ruby-red strawberries and dense squares of fudge brownie onto wooden sticks before plunging them beneath the chocolate’s glossy surface. The coating hardened almost instantly into a thin, crisp shell that crackled satisfyingly when she bit into the first strawberry, the tartness of the fruit cutting through the sweetness in perfect, harmonious balance.

She had only ordered the medium cup earlier when Dex had been standing beside her, hyperaware of his presence and the quiet, observant way he seemed to take note of everything without passing judgment. She hadn’t wanted him to think she was completely unhinged, that her relationship with sugar had crossed some invisible line from “treat yourself” into “concerning coping mechanism.” Especially considering the culinary carnage that had preceded this final indulgence: she had methodically worked her way through every single flavour of gourmet popcorn at the stall near the entrance—caramel sea salt, white cheddar, buffalo ranch, dill pickle, birthday cake and a truly unhinged sriracha honey variety that had made her eyes water but she’d finished anyway. 

That had been followed by a triple-decker ice cream cone the size of her forearm, a precarious tower of belgian chocolate, strawberry cheesecake and cookie dough that had required strategic licking and rapid consumption to prevent a catastrophic structural failure. And then, of course, there had been the cotton candy—not one but two entire clouds of spun sugar, both of which had dissolved on her tongue like sweet, fleeting dreams and left her fingers sticky and her conscience only mildly bruised. Dex had watched her consume all of this with an expression somewhere between amusement and genuine scientific curiosity but he hadn’t said a word. That was one of the things she appreciated most about him—he let her be, without commentary, without the gentle, well-meaning lectures she’d grown so accustomed to deflecting.

“Miss, please—feel free to pick a prize from here.” The vendor’s voice pulled her from her chocolate-induced reverie and she looked up to find him gesturing toward a board mounted on the side of the stall. It was covered in styrofoam cups arranged in neat rows, each one with a tissue stuffed into its mouth. The whole display had a distinctly homemade, slightly melancholic charm, the kind of prize system that existed more for the vendor’s entertainment than any real value to the customer.

Y/N blinked, a smear of chocolate still clinging to the corner of her lip. “What for?” she asked, genuinely bewildered. She glanced down at the large cup in her hand, then back up at the board, trying to piece together the logic. “I didn’t think a large cup warranted a prize. Is this a new promotion or something?”

The vendor chuckled softly and shook his head. “Yes, miss, but two medium cups of strawberries back then—” He paused for effect, his eyebrows lifting meaningfully, “—and now two large cups of strawberries and brownies?” He spread his hands as if presenting irrefutable evidence to a jury. “That’s four cups total. In one evening. From my stall alone.” He said it without judgment, more like a man acknowledging a worthy adversary, but the implication landed with all the subtlety of a brick through a window.

A deep, mortifying blush crept up Y/N’s neck and flooded her cheeks, spreading like wildfire across her face until even the tips of her ears felt hot. She suddenly became intensely aware of the chocolate cup in her hand, which now felt less like a treat and more like Exhibit A in the case against her self-control. Perhaps she shouldn’t have indulged quite so much after all. Perhaps there had been a reasonable limit somewhere back around the first cup of strawberries, a line she had gleefully vaulted over without a backward glance. 

Matt would have known. Matt always knew. Her brother had possessed an almost supernatural ability to detect her dietary transgressions—he could quite literally smell the sugar on her breath, the artificial fruit flavouring of Skittles clinging to her fingers, the scent of processed chocolate that no amount of hand-washing could fully erase. He would fix her with that look, the one that was equal parts exasperation and affection and launch into his familiar litany: “Y/N, you know that stuff is poison, right? Your body is a temple, not a candy disposal unit. Come on, let’s go for a run. Just a few miles. You’ll feel better, I promise.” 

And she would groan and protest and drag her feet, but ultimately, she would go, because it was Matt asking and because he was right and because watching him—blind, yet moving through the world with the grace and precision of a predator, fighting criminals on rooftops while she wheezed on a treadmill—was both deeply inspiring and profoundly humbling. He had been Daredevil, a vigilante with seemingly infinite stamina and an unbreakable moral code, while she struggled to maintain a light jog for more than fifteen minutes without questioning every life choice that had led her to that moment. It had been embarrassing, yes, but it had also been love. His nagging, his gentle scolding, his relentless insistence that she take care of herself—it had all been love, wrapped in the rough packaging of older-brother concern.

But after his death, the silence had been deafening. There was no one to nag her anymore. No one to wrinkle their nose at the scent of contraband candy and demand she put on her running shoes. No one to care, in that specific, irritating, irreplaceable way, whether she ate a vegetable or went for a walk or took care of the body she inhabited. The absence of that nagging felt infinitely worse than the nagging itself ever had. It was a void, a negative space where his voice used to live and, in its emptiness, she had fallen back into old, comfortable patterns. 

She knew—intellectually, rationally—that consuming these many sweets wasn’t good for her. She knew about blood sugar spikes and empty calories and the long, slow creep of habits that became harder to break with each passing day. But knowing and doing were two different countries and she hadn’t yet found the bridge between them. Having dinners and cook nights with Dex had helped. His quiet, unassuming presence in her life had motivated her to eat healthier, to plan meals that contained actual nutrients, to slowly pull herself back onto some semblance of a track. 

He never lectured, never judged—he just showed up with vegetables and a recipe and an expectation that she would participate and somehow that gentle, wordless accountability was more effective than any of Matt’s well-intentioned scolding had ever been. But standing here now, clutching her fourth cup of chocolate-drenched indulgence, she felt the familiar ache of missing her brother’s voice. She missed the exasperated sigh. She missed the way he would shake his head and call her a menace to her own pancreas. She missed being known that completely, being seen that clearly, even when—especially when—she was doing something she shouldn’t.

She looked up at the vendor, still blushing and gave him a small, sheepish smile. “I’ll take whatever prize is behind cup number seven,” she said softly, pointing at a random styrofoam cup on the board. It seemed appropriate—lucky number seven, the number of completion, of rest. Maybe it was a sign. Or maybe it was just a cup with a tissue stuffed in it. Either way, she would take it.

The vendor’s face broke into a wide, practiced smile as he reached beneath the counter and produced a slim, silver ticket that caught the carnival lights and shimmered like a promise. “A ticket to the mirror maze! Congratulations, miss.” He slid it across the counter toward her with a small flourish, clearly pleased to be delivering something more substantial than the usual plastic trinkets and temporary tattoos that most prizes consisted of.

Y/N accepted the ticket, turning it over in her fingers to examine it. Mirror maze, huh? The thought settled into her mind and unfurled slowly, like a flower opening to the sun. That actually sounded... fun. Genuinely, unexpectedly fun. She had spotted the attraction earlier in the evening, toward the far end of the carnival grounds. The exterior had been impossible to miss—a massive, warehouse-sized structure wrapped in panels of reflective material that caught the surrounding neon glow. A sign above the entrance had proclaimed it “The Labyrinth of a Thousand Faces—Find Yourself, If You Can,” in curling, carnivalesque script. She had paused when she’d seen it, her footsteps slowing unconsciously, her gaze lingering on the entrance with a familiar pang of childhood nostalgia. She’d wanted to go in. Badly. 

But she hadn’t said anything. She had swallowed the desire and kept walking, because making Dex navigate an endless maze of mirrors while balancing that absurd, precarious mountain of stuffed animals in his arms just didn’t seem appropriate. It would have been selfish, she’d told herself. Unfair. The man had already gone out of his way—truly, genuinely out of his way—to invite her out tonight. He had shown up at her door with that quiet, determined look on his face, the one that brooked no argument and had essentially dragged her out of what he affectionately referred to as her “depression hole.” Dex had pulled her out of that. 

He had driven to Foggy’s building where Y/N was staying temporarily, waited in the hallway while she threw on something other than sweatpants for the first time in days and then spent his entire evening winning her stuffed animals and pretending not to notice when she stress-ate her body weight in carnival concessions. Asking him to also stumble through a mirror maze with an armful of plushies would have been too much. It would have tipped the scales of his generosity into territory she wasn’t comfortable occupying. And besides, moving past it had been easy enough. The mirror maze was one of the carnival’s biggest attractions in terms of sheer physical size—it dominated that entire corner of the grounds, a sprawling labyrinth that promised to consume time and attention in equal measure and she had convinced herself it wasn’t worth the hassle.

But now, holding this unexpected silver ticket in her chocolate-sticky fingers, the universe seemed to be offering her a second chance. A small, glittering do-over.

“But miss, you should hurry.”  He gestured toward the maze with a tilt of his chin, his expression shifting into something more urgent. “The carnival closes in fifteen minutes and that ticket’s only good for today. After that—” He made a small, apologetic gesture, the universal sign for “it becomes worthless paper.”

Y/N nodded quickly, the motion jerky and determined, even as she stuffed another chocolate-coated strawberry into her mouth with the single-minded focus of someone preparing for battle. Lord Snuggleton remained tucked securely in the crook of her arm, his floppy ears bouncing with each hurried step she took away from the chocolate fountain and toward the distant, glimmering silhouette of the mirror maze. Pushing through the remaining crowd was tough—the carnival had thinned out considerably as closing time approached, but those who remained were concentrated in the main thoroughfares. She muttered apologies as she slipped past, her shoulders twisting to avoid collisions, Lord Snuggleton pressed protectively against her chest.

Thankfully, when she finally reached the entrance to the mirror maze, the wait line was almost non-existent—just a handful of stragglers like herself, drawn by the same last-minute impulse to squeeze one more experience out of the dying night. She took her place and used the brief pause to scarf down the remaining contents of her cup with an efficiency that would have impressed even her judgmental brother. The strawberries disappeared in quick succession, their tart sweetness cutting through the rich chocolate coating. The brownies followed, dense and fudgy and almost obscenely decadent, leaving a pleasant warmth in her stomach that bordered on uncomfortable. 

She checked beneath the crumpled paper cups, searching for napkins and realized with a small pang of regret that she had completely forgotten to ask for tissues. The chocolate residue on her fingers was one thing, she could wipe that surreptitiously on the inside of her jacket and deal with the consequences later, but the sticky, sweet film she could feel clinging to the corners of her mouth and probably smeared across her chin was another matter entirely. With no better options presenting themselves and the line inching forward, she resorted to the undignified but effective method of running her tongue around her lips in a broad, sweeping circle, hoping the impromptu self-cleaning would suffice. It probably didn’t. She probably looked like a toddler who had been left unsupervised with a jar of Nutella. But the carnival was closing, the maze was waiting and dignity was a luxury she couldn’t afford at this particular moment.

The mirror maze swallowed her whole. It was vast and well-lit in a strange, disorienting way—not bright, exactly, but saturated with light that bounced and refracted and multiplied, creating an atmosphere that felt simultaneously infinite and claustrophobic. Every surface gleamed. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors lined every wall, their edges so seamlessly joined that it was impossible to tell where one reflection ended and another began. Soft, coloured LED strips ran along the baseboards, casting everything in a dreamlike glow that shifted subtly between cool blues, warm pinks and ethereal purples. 

Y/N found herself surrounded on all sides by versions of herself—dozens of them, hundreds maybe, stretching away into what looked like impossible, endless corridors. Some reflections stood close, their details sharp and intimate; others receded into the distance, growing smaller and smaller until they were just specks of colour and movement. She turned slowly in place, mesmerized, watching as every version of Y/N Murdock turned with her, a synchronized army of herself moving in perfect unison. It had been a long, long time since she had been in a mirror maze. The last time must have been years ago, back when Matt was still alive and dragging her to every strange corner of New York City he could find, insisting that she needed to “experience” things rather than just read about them or watch them on a screen. He had always been like that—relentlessly experiential, convinced that life was meant to be lived in three dimensions, with all the mess and discomfort that entailed.

But Matt had also possessed a singular, almost supernatural talent for ruining mazes. It wasn’t intentional, which somehow made it worse. His senses—those impossible, heightened senses that allowed him to navigate the world in ways she could barely comprehend—meant that he could perceive the maze not as a disorienting puzzle but as a clear, three-dimensional map. He could feel the subtle differences in air currents that indicated a dead end versus an open passage. He could hear the faint echo of sound bouncing off glass versus empty space. He could smell the difference between a corridor that led somewhere and one that circled back on itself.

While she blundered around like a confused, sighted mole, walking face-first into mirrors with a resounding thwack that echoed through the entire structure, Matt would stand there with his head tilted slightly, that infuriating half-smile playing at the corner of his mouth and simply know which way to go. He would listen to her collide with yet another reflective surface, sigh with the long-suffering patience of an older brother who had seen it all before and then calmly guide her toward the exit while she nursed her bruised forehead and bruised pride in equal measure. 

And then, for the next week—minimum—he would bring it up at every opportunity. “Remember when you walked into that mirror so hard I thought you’d cracked it?” he’d say, his voice warm with barely suppressed laughter. “The carnival people probably still have your face print on file.” She would whine and protest and throw things at him, but secretly, secretly, she had loved it. The teasing. The attention. The way he noticed and remembered and cared enough to make fun of her.

Now, standing alone in this cathedral of reflections, she found herself almost wishing for the thwack of forehead against glass, if only because it would mean he was there to hear it.

Y/N shook off the creeping melancholy and focused on the task at hand: navigating. She extended one hand in front of her, palm flat, fingers spread—the universal posture of someone trying very hard not to walk into something solid. Her other arm remained curled protectively around Lord Snuggleton, the bunny’s soft body pressed against her ribs like a fuzzy, inanimate anchor. The maze was quiet, unnervingly so. The carnival’s ambient noise seemed to be absorbed by all the glass. She took a tentative step forward, then another, her outstretched fingers brushing against cool, smooth glass. She adjusted her angle, stepped again, found open space and allowed herself a small, private smile of victory.

The smile faded approximately two minutes later when she realized, with a slow, dawning horror, that she had absolutely no idea where she was.

The corridors of mirrors stretched in every direction, identical and infinite. She turned left, encountered her own startled reflection blocking the path, turned right, found another version of herself looking equally confused, turned back the way she came and couldn’t tell if she was retracing her steps or venturing deeper into the labyrinth. The glowing arrows on the floor that the attendant had mentioned were there, yes—faint, luminescent strips that pulsed softly in the dim light—but they seemed to point in contradictory directions, or maybe she was just reading them wrong or maybe she was walking over the same patch of floor again and again, trapped in a loop of her own making. 

Lord Snuggleton’s reflection stared back at her from every angle, his big, black, beady plastic eyes catching the coloured lights and gleaming with what she could only interpret as silent, fluffy accusation. You did this to us, those eyes seemed to say. You and your impulsive, last-minute decisions. We could have been in a warm cab by now. We could have been home, watching Netflix, eating something that wasn’t our fourth chocolate cup of the evening. But no. You had to be adventurous. She pulled the bunny closer, tucking his soft head under her chin in a gesture that was half comfort, half apology.

It was safe to say, Y/N reflected grimly as she stared down a corridor that looked exactly like the three corridors, she had just tried and failed to navigate, that Y/N Murdock did not always make the best decisions. In fact, if there was a Hall of Fame for Questionable Life Choices, she would probably have her own wing. Coming to a mirror maze alone, fifteen minutes before the carnival closed, with a sugar crash looming on the horizon and no clear exit strategy—this was going on the highlight reel, right alongside “ignoring Matt’s advice about literally everything” and “thinking four cups of chocolate-covered fruit was a reasonable dinner.” She pressed her palm against another mirror, felt the cool glass resist her touch and sighed deeply, her breath fogging the surface in a small, temporary cloud. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard the faint, mechanical groan of a ride powering down. The carnival was closing. And she was lost in a hall of mirrors with a stuffed rabbit and a rapidly fading sense of direction.

Perfect. Just perfect.

Five more minutes bled into an eternity of glass and confusion, each passing second stretching like taffy as Y/N stumbled through the endless corridors of her own fractured image. She had lost count of how many times she’d pressed her palm against what she thought was an opening, only to feel the unyielding smoothness of a mirror meeting her skin. Her forehead was tender from at least three separate collisions and Lord Snuggleton’s fur was damp where she’d been clutching him too tightly, her anxiety seeping out through her palms like an invisible sweat. But finally—finally—she rounded a corner and found herself stepping into what was unmistakably the final section of the maze.

The red section.

The transition was immediate and jarring. Where the previous corridors had been bathed in soft, shifting pastels and cool blues, this part of the maze was saturated in crimson. The effect was disorienting in a way that went beyond simple navigation—it felt primal, almost visceral, as if she had stepped into the chambers of some great beast’s still-beating heart. And more than that, the red made her see things. Or think she saw things. Fleeting movements in her peripheral vision—a dark shape slipping behind a mirror, a figure standing where no figure should be, gone the moment she whipped her head around to confront it. Her exhausted, sugar-crashing brain was playing tricks on her, populating the crimson gloom with phantoms born of fatigue and old, unhealed fears.

A familiar anxiety began to rise in her chest, unbidden and unwelcome, like floodwater seeping through cracks she’d thought she’d patched. It started as a tightness in her throat, a constriction that made each breath feel shallow and insufficient. The walls—those endless, gleaming walls—suddenly seemed closer than they had a moment ago. It wasn’t real, she knew it wasn’t real, she knew that—but knowing and feeling were two separate countries and right now she was stranded in the wrong one without a passport. 

And then she saw it. A flash. Over her shoulder, reflected in the mirror just behind her left side. A shape. A figure. There and gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure it had ever existed at all, just a dark silhouette against the red glow. A sudden, bone-deep chill climbed her spine like a spider ascending a web, one vertebra at a time, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Her breath caught, hitching in her throat and she stood frozen for a long, terrible moment, every instinct screaming at her to turn around and look while every other instinct screamed equally loudly to not turn around, to pretend she hadn’t seen anything, to keep moving forward and never look back.

Panic—true, undiluted panic—began to rise in her bloodstream like a tide of ice water. She started walking again, faster now, her outstretched hand forgotten as she moved without checking, without the careful, probing caution that had saved her from countless collisions earlier. The consequence was immediate and painful: her forehead connected with a mirror with a loud, resonant THWAK that echoed through the red-drenched corridor like a gunshot. The impact sent a sharp spike of pain radiating through her skull and she stumbled backward. “Ow,” she rubbed at the tender spot, feeling the beginning of what would undoubtedly be an impressive bruise and tried to blink the stars from her vision.

Then she heard it. A chuckle. Low, warm and horrifyingly, hauntingly familiar. It floated through the red-tinted air like smoke, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, bouncing off the countless mirrors until its source was impossible to pinpoint. Her blood ran cold. Every hair on her arms stood at attention. That chuckle—she knew that chuckle. She had heard it before, in a context so terrible that her mind had tried to wall it off, to bury it deep in the unmarked graves of her subconscious where she wouldn’t have to look at it. 

Maybe it was her brain imagining it. Maybe the stress and the sugar and the exhaustion and the claustrophobic red maze had finally conspired to break something loose in her psyche, conjuring auditory hallucinations from the raw material of her trauma. Maybe. Possibly. But she couldn’t take that risk. She couldn’t. Not here, not now, not trapped in this labyrinth of glass with no clear exit and no one to hear her if she screamed.

Her pace hastened from hurried to desperate. She tried to weave through the maze faster, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, but speed in a mirror maze was its own punishment. She collided with mirror after mirror—her shoulder glancing off one, her hip smacking painfully into another, her outstretched hand slapping against glass where she’d been certain there was an opening. Each impact sent a fresh jolt of pain through her body and a fresh spike of terror through her heart. The red light seemed to pulse now, throbbing in time with her racing heartbeat, transforming the maze into something organic and alive and hungry.

“Running from me, doll?” The voice floated through the air, silky and mocking, curling around her like poisonous vapor. It seemed to come from everywhere, from the walls themselves, from the red light, from inside her own skull. And then she saw him. In the mirror near her right shoulder, his reflection materialized like a ghost taking form. The helmet. The red horns curving up from the brow like devilish crowns. The black and red kevlar, sculpted to a body she knew was powerful and cruel in equal measure. It was him. Daredevil. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. 

But it wasn’t the Daredevil she had known and loved, the one who had once piggybacked her up a rusted fire escape in the dead of night because they were fleeing from armed thugs and she had twisted her ankle on a loose piece of concrete. That Daredevil had been gruff and exasperated and endlessly patient, grumbling under his breath about her “terrible survival instincts” even as he carried her to safety, his grip secure and his warmth seeping through the kevlar into her chilled skin. That Daredevil had been her brother, her protector, her annoying, overbearing, fiercely loving Matt. And Matt Murdock was dead. Daredevil—the real Daredevil—had died with him.

This person—this thing stalking her through the crimson labyrinth—was nothing but a vile impersonator. A parasite wearing her brother’s skin or at least a suit identical to his. He had stolen the symbol, corrupted it, twisted it into something unrecognizable and profane. He had taken everything Matt had stood for—justice, protection, the defense of the innocent—and perverted it into a tool for terror and cruelty and his own sick gratification.

And if that wasn’t bad enough—if the desecration of her brother’s memory wasn’t already an unforgivable sin—this man was the cause of the incident. The one that had stolen the light from her eyes for weeks and left her in complete, utter desolation. The one she couldn’t name, couldn’t speak aloud, could barely allow herself to remember in the safety of daylight. How he had cornered her in that narrow, garbage-strewn alleyway on a night that should have been ordinary. How he had pressed her against the wet brick wall, the smell of rot and rain filling her nostrils as he leaned in close, the horns of his helmet catching the distant streetlight. How he had done horrible, unspeakable things to her for his own perverse pleasure, things that still visited her in dreams that left her waking up gasping and drenched in cold sweat. How he had laughed—that same chuckle—as she cried and begged and tried to fight back with hands that felt like they belonged to someone else. How he had left her there afterward, crumpled among the garbage bags like something discarded, her body a map of violations and her mind a shattered mirror she was still trying to piece back together.

Y/N tried to run. What else could she do? Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, hot and traitorous, blurring the already disorienting reflections into smears of red and black and her own terrified face multiplied into infinity. But a mirror maze—she realized with a sick, sinking certainty—was quite possibly the worst place in the entire world to be trapped with someone like him. Every surface was a weapon he could use against her. Every reflection showed him where she was, where she was going, where she was trying to hide. And every reflection showed her exactly how close he was getting, a countdown to capture displayed on every gleaming wall.

He stalked closer, his movements unhurried and predatory, a wolf who knew his prey had nowhere to run. His reflections grew larger in the mirrors surrounding her, multiplying as he approached, until it seemed like there were a dozen of him closing in from every angle. His helmeted head tilted slightly, a mockery of curiosity, as if he were savouring her fear, drinking it in like fine wine. The glowing arrows on the floor pointed insistently in one direction, their soft luminescence cutting through the red gloom like a lifeline. She had to follow them. She had to get out. She had to move.

His reflection grew closer still, swelling until it filled the mirror directly in front of her, life-sized and terrifyingly present. She could see the texture of the kevlar, the slight scuffs on the horns, the way his chest rose and fell with calm, measured breaths. Panic seized her—total, overwhelming, animal panic that bypassed thought and went straight to instinct. She turned and ran, her feet pounding against the floor, following the arrows with blind, desperate faith. The corridor opened before her, a clear path, an escape, she was going to make it, she was going to get out—

And then she collided with something solid. Not glass this time. Something warm and unyielding and very much alive. A chest. His chest. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs and sent Lord Snuggleton tumbling from her grasp, the stuffed rabbit hitting the floor with a soft, pathetic fwump that seemed to echo in the sudden, terrible silence. She looked up, her vision swimming with tears and terror and found herself staring at the blank, expressionless face of the Daredevil helmet. The horns curved upward like a devil’s crown. The red light painted him in shades of blood and shadow. And beneath the helmet, she knew—she knew—there was a smile. That horrible, familiar, haunting smile.

He had her.

Before Y/N could even process the collision, before the impact of her body against his chest had fully registered in her overwhelmed nervous system, he was already moving. His hands found her shoulders—strong, gloved, implacable—and he pivoted, using his weight and momentum to spin her around and slam her backward against the mirror she had just been fleeing from. The impact drove the air from her lungs in a sharp, involuntary gasp. The glass behind her was unforgiving, cold even through the fabric of her jacket and it vibrated with the force of her body hitting it, sending a low, resonant hum through the crimson-drenched corridor. His body pressed against hers immediately, eliminating any space between them, his hips pinning her lower half to the mirror while his chest crowded her upper body, leaving her no room to twist, to squirm, to do anything but exist in the narrow prison of his proximity. The pressure of his legs against hers was immovable, a cage of muscle and kevlar and malevolent intent.

The tears came then, hot and humiliating, spilling over her lower lashes and carving glistening tracks down her cheeks. They caught the red light and shimmered like tiny rivers of blood, a detail she was sure he noticed and enjoyed. She couldn’t stop them. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry but her body had betrayed her completely, surrendering to the terror that had seized control of her autonomic nervous system. She cranked her neck away from him, twisting her head to the side with such desperate force that the tendons in her throat stood out like cables. She couldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t look at him. Not at the reflection of herself—pinned, terrified, small—that she could see multiplied in the mirrors surrounding them, an infinite gallery of her own violation playing out in every direction. If she looked at him, if she met those empty eye-slits in the mask, she would shatter completely. She would break into pieces too small to ever be reassembled.

“Did you miss me, doll?” His voice was a low, rumbling purr, intimate and mocking, the kind of tone a lover might use in a dark bedroom. The pet name—doll—landed on her skin like a brand, a proprietary claim that made her stomach turn over with nausea. He raised one gloved hand and traced a slow, deliberate line along the curve of her jaw, the leather of his fingertips dragging across her skin with horrible, clinical precision. The touch made her flinch violently, her whole body jerking as if she’d been shocked and she squirmed against his immovable weight, trying to press herself further into the mirror as if she could phase through the glass and escape into her own reflection. “Because I sure missed you.” The words were followed by that chuckle—that terrible, familiar, haunted chuckle that had been echoing in her nightmares for weeks now, the sound that meant pain and violation and a darkness so complete she still hadn’t found her way back to the light.

He leaned in closer, his helmeted face filling her peripheral vision despite her efforts to look away. She could smell him now—leather and sweat and something metallic, something that might have been old blood or might have been her imagination filling in the gaps with the worst possible details. And then she felt it: the wet, warm drag of his tongue against the corner of her mouth. He licked her slowly, deliberately, as if savoring a delicacy and followed it with a low, satisfied hum that vibrated against her skin. The sound was almost pornographic in its pleasure, a noise of genuine enjoyment that made her skin crawl and her stomach heave.

“You taste so fucking sweet every time,” he murmured, his voice thick with a satisfaction that bordered on reverent. He smiled against her skin—she could feel the curve of it through the opening in the helmet, the stretch of his lips pressing against the sensitive flesh near her mouth—and lapped at the skin around her lips again, collecting the residual chocolate and sugar and the salt of her terror. Y/N squirmed helplessly, her body bucking against his in a futile attempt to dislodge him and a small, pathetic whimper of pure disgust escaped her throat. 

“When I kiss you,” he continued, his tone almost conversational, as if they were lovers sharing an intimate secret rather than predator and prey in a hall of mirrors, “I wonder if I’m kissing the woman of my dreams...” He paused, pulling back just enough to look at her face, to drink in the tears and the fear and the revulsion. “...or a fucking candy bar.” The profanity was delivered with a kind of affectionate amusement, as if her terror were a charming quirk rather than a genuine trauma response.

Y/N clamped her mouth shut with every ounce of strength she possessed, pressing her lips together so tightly they went bloodless and white. She knew this game. She remembered it from the alleyway, from the last time he had cornered her and taken what he wanted. If she opened her mouth—to scream, to beg, to say anything at all—he would use it as an opening. He would force his tongue inside, would taste her from the inside out, would violate yet another boundary she had no power to defend. The sweetness of the chocolate still lingering in her mouth mingled with the salt of her tears on her lips and she knew—with sick, horrifying certainty—that for him, it was a truly delectable combination

“Now open up for me,” he crooned, his voice dropping into something almost gentle, almost coaxing. “Say aah.” He pressed two gloved fingers against her sealed lips, the leather cool and slightly rough and began to push, trying to pry her mouth open by force. The pressure was insistent, invasive, a precursor to everything else he intended to take from her. Y/N didn’t budge. She didn’t open her mouth, didn’t give him the satisfaction of entry. And when his fingers continued to press, continued to demand entry, she opened her jaw just enough to catch the leather-clad digits between her teeth and bit down on those with every ounce of desperate, terrified strength she could summon.

The man—she refused to acknowledge him as Daredevil, refused to let that name, her brother’s name, be contaminated by this monster, even in thought—withdrew his hand with a sharp, almost surprised laugh. It wasn’t a laugh of pain; she hadn’t hurt him, not really, not through the reinforced gloves he wore. It was a laugh of genuine amusement, of delighted surprise, as if she were a pet who had performed an unexpected and entertaining trick. “Feisty,” he said and the word was dripping with approval. “I like that. I really do.”

Y/N looked at him then—she couldn’t help it, the laugh had startled her into breaking her own rule—and in that moment of eye contact, of her tear-blurred gaze meeting the empty black slits of his helmet, he moved. Without thought, without warning, without giving her a single second to prepare. He smashed his lips onto hers with brutal, consuming force. The kiss was not tender; it was not romantic; it was an act of violence committed with mouths instead of fists. And at the same moment, his hand—the one she had bitten, the one still wet with her saliva—curled around her throat. His fingers found the delicate column of her neck and squeezed. Not hard enough to crush her windpipe, not yet, but with enough steady, inexorable pressure to restrict blood flow, to make the edges of her vision begin to darken and sparkle with warning lights.

The pressure around her neck grew and grew and the world began to swim. The red light of the maze seemed to pulse in time with her faltering heartbeat. Dizziness washed over her in waves, her thoughts scattering like startled birds. Her mouth, which she had fought so hard to keep sealed, fell open involuntarily—a biological imperative, a body’s desperate attempt to pull in oxygen by any available channel. And he was waiting. The moment her lips parted, his tongue pushed inside, filling her mouth with the taste of him—coffee, something metallic and a wrongness that had no name. He explored her mouth with slow, savoring thoroughness, mapping the territory he had claimed, tasting the chocolate and the salt of her tears all mingled together.

“Please,” she gasped, the word muffled and deformed by his tongue still occupying her mouth. Her voice was barely audible over the roaring in her ears. “Please, don’t—” The plea dissolved into a choked whimper as his grip on her throat tightened fractionally, a silent warning that her begging was not welcome, that her words were not part of this particular script. She struggled to breathe, her chest heaving against his, her fingers scrabbling uselessly at the kevlar covering his shoulders. The mirrors around them reflected the scene from every angle—her pinned body, his dominating form, the intimate horror of his mouth on hers—creating an infinite gallery of her own violation. And somewhere in the crimson gloom, Lord Snuggleton lay on the cold floor, his beady black eyes staring at nothing, a silent witness to the nightmare unfolding above him.

“I-I’ll do anything,” she hiccuped, the words tumbling out between ragged, oxygen-starved gasps, her voice cracking and splintering like thin ice under too much weight. “Please, just don’t—please just don’t—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t give voice to the specific horror she was pleading to avoid, because naming it would make it real, would solidify it from a lurking possibility into an impending certainty. Instead, she poured everything she had into her eyes—wide, tear-glazed, desperate—looking up at that blank, demonic helmet with a silent entreaty that she hoped, prayed, begged would reach whatever remained of the human being beneath the mask. Please. Please remember that I’m a person. Please don’t do this again.

The man broke the kiss, pulling back just far enough to regard her with those empty, unreadable eye-slits. The sudden absence of his mouth on hers was almost disorienting, like a pressure she’d grown accustomed to had been abruptly removed. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking—the helmet revealed nothing, gave away no flicker of emotion, no telltale shift in expression. It was like staring into a void, a blank canvas onto which she could project nothing but her own terror. But he paused. He actually paused. For one suspended moment, he simply looked at her, his head tilted slightly to the side in a posture that might have been curiosity or contemplation or simple cruel amusement. 

“Don’t what?” he asked finally, his voice deceptively casual, almost conversational. And then, with deliberate, brutal clarity: “Fuck you?” The word landed like a slap, crude and vulgar and stripped of any pretense. It was the ugliest word for the ugliest act and hearing it spoken aloud in his familiar, almost affectionate tone made Y/N cringe so hard her shoulders hunched inward, as if she could physically retreat into herself and disappear. Her stomach lurched, bile rising in the back of her throat. But she forced herself to nod—a small, jerky, humiliating movement—her gaze falling from his helmet to the floor, unable to maintain eye contact through the shame of what she was agreeing to. She was bargaining with a monster, negotiating the terms of her own violation and the degradation of it burned like acid in her chest.

The man hummed, a low, considering sound that vibrated in the narrow space between their bodies. He seemed to be contemplating her request, weighing it with the same casual deliberation one might give to choosing between two equally appealing desserts. “I’m in a good mood today,” he said and the words were almost playful, as if he were granting her a generous favor rather than withholding an unspeakable cruelty. “So I’ll let you off easy. Plus—” He leaned in closer, his helmet brushing against her hair, his breath warm against the shell of her ear. “—I want to take my time with you, sweetheart. I won’t fuck you just yet.”

The qualifier—just yet—hung in the air like a guillotine blade suspended by the thinnest of threads. It wasn’t mercy. It was a postponement. A promise that the reprieve was temporary, that the clock was still ticking, that eventually—whenever he decided the time was right—he would collect on the debt she was accruing simply by existing in his presence. But even knowing that, even understanding that this was merely a stay of execution rather than a pardon, Y/N felt a shuddering sigh of relief escape her lungs. Her body sagged slightly against the mirror, the tension in her muscles releasing a fraction of its death grip. She would take what she could get. She would cling to whatever scraps of dignity and safety he deigned to leave her, because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

But her relief was premature. She should have known better. She did know better. Men like him didn’t give without taking. Every apparent kindness was merely the setup for a crueler demand, a way to make her complicit in her own degradation.

“But you gotta make up for it somehow, yes?” He cooed the words, his voice dripping with false sweetness. His gloved hand came up to stroke her cheek, the pad of his thumb dragging slowly across her tear-dampened skin in a grotesque parody of tenderness. The leather was smooth and cool and utterly dehumanizing—it erased the warmth of human touch, reduced contact to something clinical and threatening. Y/N’s blood froze in her veins. Of course. Of course. Someone as vile as him, someone who had already proven capable of such monstrous cruelty, wouldn’t simply let her go. That wasn’t how this worked. That wasn’t how he worked. Every interaction was a transaction and he always, always extracted his price.

“Wh-what do you want?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, reedy and trembling. The question felt like walking off a cliff, like voluntarily stepping into a trap she could see but couldn’t avoid. She was scared—terrified, really, down to the marrow of her bones—and every syllable was laced with that fear. Whatever it was, she told herself, clinging to the thought like a lifeline, it would be better than the alternative. Retaining even scraps of her dignity, even shreds of her autonomy, still felt infinitely preferable to having none at all. At least this way, she could pretend she had some agency, some small measure of control over her own destruction.

“Take your clothes off.”

The command was delivered with casual, almost bored simplicity, as if he were asking her to pass the salt at a dinner table. Three words. Just three small, ordinary words arranged in a sequence that stripped away everything she was and reduced her to nothing but a body to be displayed and consumed. Y/N’s eyes widened, the whites showing all around her irises and she squirmed instinctively in his grip, her body revolting against the demand before her mind had even fully processed it. She pushed against his chest, tried to twist away, tried to find some angle of escape—but he was immovable, a wall of muscle and kevlar and implacable intent. Her struggles accomplished nothing except to amuse him, a faint chuckle rumbling through his chest where it pressed against hers.

“But you said—” she started, her voice cracking, the protest rising automatically to her lips.

“I said I wouldn’t fuck you.” He cut her off, his tone shifting subtly—still controlled, but with an edge of frustration creeping in around the seams, like a temper being held in check by a fraying leash. “I never said I couldn’t do other things.” The words were precise and clinical. He had promised her one specific mercy and he was honouring that promise to the letter while violating its spirit completely. It was a game to him. It had always been a game. And she was losing, had been losing from the moment she stepped into this maze.

Then, without warning, he moved. His fist lashed out and connected with the mirror directly behind her head. The impact was explosive—a sharp, crystalline CRACK that shattered the silence and the glass in equal measure. Y/N squealed in fear, the sound high and animalistic, torn from her throat by pure reflex. The mirror fractured into a spiderweb of silver lines and then pieces began to fall, tinkling to the floor like deadly rain. A small shard, no bigger than her thumbnail, spun through the air and caught her cheek, opening a thin, stinging line across her skin. She felt the warm trickle of blood begin to well up and slide down toward her jaw, a single crimson tear tracking the path of its saltier predecessors.

He plucked a larger shard from the ruined mirror—long and wicked and glittering with sharp edges—and brought it to her neck with deliberate, terrifying slowness. The point of the glass pressed against the delicate skin just below her jaw, not quite hard enough to break the surface, but with enough pressure to make the threat unmistakable. The cold of it was shocking, a sharp contrast to the warmth of her terror-flushed skin. Y/N stilled completely. Every muscle in her body locked into perfect, rigid immobility. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t blink. The only motion in her entire being was the wild, frantic thumping of her heart, pounding against her ribs like a caged animal throwing itself against the bars. It was so loud she was certain he could hear it, certain he could feel it through the point of contact where the glass met her pulse.

The shard began to move. Slowly, so slowly, he trailed it down the column of her neck, following the path of her carotid artery, tracing the vulnerable architecture of her throat. Then lower, over her collarbone, dipping into the hollow at the base of her neck. Lower still, down her sternum, until the glittering point came to rest in the valley of her cleavage, pressing just firmly enough against the fabric of her shirt to dimple the skin beneath. Not enough to cut—not yet—but enough to be a constant, undeniable threat. A promise written in glass and malice.

He leaned down, his helmeted face descending toward her bleeding cheek and she felt the wet, warm drag of his tongue as he licked the blood from the fresh cut. The sensation was obscene—intimate and violating and utterly dehumanizing. He savoured it, drawing out the contact and when he spoke again, his voice was a whisper against her skin, intimate and terrifying. “Are you going to take it off,” he asked, the words soft as a lover’s endearment, “or should I cut it off?”

The question hung in the red-drenched air between them. The glass shard pressed a fraction harder against her chest. And Y/N, trembling and bleeding and utterly trapped, understood that she had only two choices and both of them led to her degradation. The only question was how much pain would accompany it.

“I-I’ll do it.” The words scraped past her teeth like shards of the same glass he’d been holding to her throat, each syllable a surrender, each consonant a small death of pride.The admission of compliance tasted like ash and bile on her tongue, but what choice did she have? 

He took a step back. Not far—never far enough to give her any real sense of space or safety—but enough to change the dynamic from predator pinning prey to spectator observing a performance. That was what this was to him, she realized with sickening clarity. A performance. A show. She was the entertainment and he was the audience and the mirrors around them were reflecting her degradation from every possible angle, creating an infinite gallery of her humiliation for his viewing pleasure. The single step backward wasn’t a gesture of mercy, it was an adjustment for optimal viewing.

Y/N’s hands moved to the zipper of her jacket, her fingers clumsy and numb, as if they belonged to someone else. The sound of the zipper descending was obscenely loud in the quiet of the maze, a long, drawn-out zip that seemed to announce her surrender to every corner of the crimson labyrinth. She shrugged the jacket off her shoulders, feeling the fabric slide down her arms like a second skin being shed and let it fall to the floor with a soft, defeated thump. 

The chill of the maze immediately assaulted her newly exposed skin, raising goosebumps along her arms and across her shoulders. The temperature seemed to drop by several degrees the moment the jacket was gone, or maybe that was just the cold radiating from inside her own chest, the frost of despair crystallizing around her heart. There were no more tears in her eyes now. The well had run dry, leaving behind only a hollow, aching emptiness. 

Next was her top. She clutched the hem of the fabric in both hands, her knuckles whitening with the force of her grip, as if holding onto this thin barrier of cotton could somehow change his mind, could somehow rewind the last few minutes and return her to the safety she’d felt walking beside Dex with an armful of stuffed animals and a stomach full of chocolate. But she knew it wouldn’t. She knew nothing would. He was still standing there, still watching, still twirling that wicked shard of glass between his gloved fingers with casual, almost hypnotic dexterity. The glass caught the red light and scattered it in bloody sparkles across the walls, a deadly kaleidoscope in his hand. His gaze—those empty black eye-slits—was fixed on her with unwavering attention, drinking in every tremble, every hesitation, every small surrender.

She pulled the top over her head in one swift, desperate motion, as if speed could somehow lessen the violation. She aimed deliberately, letting it fall over Lord Snuggleton where he lay abandoned near her feet. The soft cotton draped over the stuffed rabbit like a shroud, covering his beady black eyes, hiding him from the scene unfolding above him. It was a small, pathetic act of mercy—for herself more than for the inanimate toy—but it was all she had. At least this way, she’d be spared the misery of an audience. 

Her jeans came next. Her fingers found the button, worked it free and then she was sliding the zipper down, the sound somehow even more obscene than the jacket had been. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband and pushed the denim down over her hips, down her thighs, past her knees. She stepped out of them awkwardly, one foot at a time, nearly losing her balance in the process. The jeans joined the growing pile of discarded clothing on the floor and suddenly she was standing before him in nothing but her underwear—a simple, practical set in pale lavender, chosen that morning with no thought beyond comfort and now transformed into the last fragile barrier between her body and his gaze. The chill of the maze raised fresh goosebumps across her stomach, her thighs, the exposed curve of her hips. She wrapped her arms around herself instinctively, crossing them over her chest, trying to cover what little she could.

He took a step closer. The glass shard fell from his fingers, landing on the floor with a delicate, musical tink that seemed impossibly loud in the silence. The sound made her flinch and she instinctively backed away—one step, then another—until her bare shoulders and the knobs of her spine pressed against the cold, unyielding surface of the mirror behind her. The glass was freezing against her exposed skin, sending a violent shiver racing down her entire body. She was trapped again, cornered again, the cold at her back and the monster at her front and nowhere left to run.

His gloved fingers rose and traced along the edge of her bra strap, following the line of pale lavender fabric where it curved over her shoulder. His touch was almost featherlight, a whisper of leather against skin and somehow that gentleness was worse than brutality would have been. Brutality she could hate purely, could resist with every fiber of her being. But this—this horrible parody of tenderness, this mockery of a lover’s caress—it confused her instincts, left her without a clear enemy to fight. “Cute,” he said and the word was a dismissal, a judgment, an appraisal. He fingered the strap, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger as if testing its quality. “But this has gotta go.” His voice dropped into something softer, something almost coaxing, the tone of a man training a reluctant pet. “Now be a good girl for me and take it off, yes?”

Her hands moved on their own accord, as if they had made a separate peace with the enemy while her mind was still screaming in protest. She reached behind her back, her fingers finding the clasp of her bra with practiced ease—a motion she’d performed thousands of times before, always in the privacy of her own bedroom, always with the door locked and the curtains drawn. Never like this. Never as a performance for a monster’s entertainment. The clasp released with a soft click and the straps went slack on her shoulders. For one suspended moment, she held the cups in place with her crossed arms, clinging to this final shred of modesty. Then, slowly, she let her arms fall to her sides and the bra went with them, sliding down her arms and joining the rest of her clothes on the cold floor.

He didn’t wait. He didn’t give her a single second to adjust to her own exposure, to process the vulnerability of standing half-naked before her tormentor. His hands—those gloved, leather-clad hands—rose immediately and cupped her breasts, filling his palms with her flesh. The rough texture of the leather against her sensitive skin was jarring, alien, wrong in a way that went beyond physical sensation. And the cold—the cold of the maze, the cold of his gloves, the cold of her own terror—made her nipples tighten and harden against his palms, a physiological response that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with temperature and fear. She hated her body in that moment. Hated it for responding, for betraying her, for giving him any reaction at all.

“God, you’re so pretty for me,” he breathed and there was a strange, unsettling glee in his voice—a genuine, almost boyish enthusiasm that made her skin crawl more than outright cruelty would have. He was enjoying this. Not just the power, not just the control, but her. Her body. Her fear. Her humiliation. “Look at you.” He squeezed gently, kneading her breasts with a familiarity, as if they belonged to him. As if she belonged to him. And in this moment, trapped against a mirror in a maze of red light, stripped and shivering and utterly powerless, she wasn’t sure she could argue otherwise.

He shifted his weight and suddenly his knee was wedging between her legs, pushing her thighs apart with insistent pressure. The hard shell of his knee pad—kevlar, probably, or some reinforced composite—brushed against her core through the thin cotton of her underwear. The contact sent an involuntary jolt through her body, a spark of sensation that traveled up her spine and lodged somewhere behind her eyes. He continued to knead her breasts, his thumbs circling her nipples with deliberate, practiced attention, while his lips ghosted over her cheek—not quite kissing, not quite touching, just the warm suggestion of his mouth hovering a millimeter from her tear-stained, blood-streaked skin. His breath was hot and damp, carrying the faint metallic scent she’d noticed before.

Y/N tried her hardest to be silent. She clamped her jaw shut, ground her teeth together until her molars ached, focused every ounce of her willpower on containing any sound that might try to escape. She would not give him that satisfaction. She would not let him hear how his touch affected her, how her body was betraying her mind’s desperate resistance. But then he pushed his knee further up, intentionally grinding the hard surface of his knee pad against the apex of her thighs, applying pressure exactly where she least wanted it. And despite everything—despite the terror and the violation and the soul-deep revulsion—a small, strangled whimper escaped her lips. It was barely audible, a thin sound of unwanted sensation, but in the silence of the maze it might as well have been a scream. Heat bloomed in her core, unwanted and undeniable, her body’s autonomic response to stimulation that had nothing to do with consent.

“You like that, huh?” His voice was thick with satisfaction, with triumph. He had heard her. Of course he had heard her. He was attuned to every reaction, cataloging each flinch and whimper and tremor like a collector admiring his acquisitions. He pushed his knee up higher, grinding it deliberately against the damp cotton of her underwear, letting her feel the hard ridge of the knee pad pressing against her most intimate flesh. The pressure was insistent, rhythmic, a grotesque pantomime of intimacy that made her stomach turn even as her hips twitched involuntarily against him.

Y/N closed her eyes. She threw her head back against the cold mirror, the glass pressing against her skull like a second, harder reality and she focused every fiber of her being on swallowing the sounds that were building in her throat. She would not moan. She would not whimper. She would not give him the satisfaction of hearing her come apart. The red light played against her closed eyelids, painting the inside of her vision in shades of blood and fire. 

“On your knees, doll.” The command came with pressure—his hands on her shoulders, firm and insistent, pushing downward with an authority that brooked no argument. Her body folded beneath the weight of his demand, her knees buckling as she sank toward the cold floor. They landed on the discarded pile of her jeans and in the midst of her degradation, she found one small, pathetic mercy: the thick denim provided a meager cushion against the hard ground, sparing her kneecaps from the worst of the chill and the bruising pressure. She knelt there, half-naked and trembling, her bare skin pebbled with goosebumps in the red-tinged cold of the maze. Above her, he loomed like a monument to her powerlessness, his silhouette framed by the fractured mirrors that reflected this moment from every conceivable angle—an infinite gallery of her submission.

She heard it before she understood it: the metallic clink of a belt buckle being worked loose, the whisper of leather sliding through loops, the unmistakable sound of a zipper descending tooth by tooth. The realization hit her like a wave of ice water, crashing over her head and flooding her lungs until she couldn’t breathe. Oh God. Oh God, no. Her eyes, which had been fixed on the floor in an attempt to dissociate from her surroundings, flickered upward involuntarily—and immediately wished they hadn’t. He was freeing himself from the confines of his pants, his movements unhurried and almost casual, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. As if her kneeling before him was simply the correct order of things.

The tears that had dried up earlier returned with a vengeance, but they were different now. Before, they had been tears of fear and desperation, a silent plea for mercy. These were tears of utter, soul-deep brokenness—hot and heavy and accompanied by small, shattered sobs that escaped her throat before she could swallow them down. And what made it so utterly, cosmically perverse was the context. Daredevil. The name she used to whisper in public just to watch her brother’s shoulders stiffen beneath his suit jacket, to see the barely concealed panic flicker across his face. ”Y/N, I swear to God, if you call me that in front of the barista one more time—” And she would laugh and loop her arm through his and tell him he was being dramatic, that no one would ever connect the blind lawyer Matt Murdock to the vigilante who haunted Hell’s Kitchen’s rooftops. The name had been a joke between them, a shared secret, a term of endearment wrapped in sibling mockery. Daredevil. How goofy it sounded when you said it out loud. How ridiculous that a grown man in devil horns was the hero of this city.

And the suit. God, the suit. She had spent countless late nights stitching it back together, the red and black kevlar spread across her lap as she worked by the dim light of her apartment, waiting for him to return from patrol. He would stumble through the window—her window, because he knew she’d be awake, knew she wouldn’t sleep until she heard him come home—and collapse onto her couch, too exhausted to even remove the armor himself. She would unclip the cowl for him, revealing his sweat-matted hair and the dark circles under his sightless eyes. She would help him peel off the gloves, the boots, the heavy chest piece. And then she would carry the damaged pieces to her sewing corner and begin the work of mending what the night had torn apart. Stitch by stitch, she had poured her love and her worry and her fierce, protective hope into that suit. Every repaired seam was a prayer that he would come home again tomorrow. Every reinforced panel was a wish that he would be safe.

And now she was being forced to look at that same suit—or its identical, corrupted twin—while being made to commit acts so vile, so degrading, that she couldn’t reconcile them with the memory of her brother’s tired, grateful smile when she handed him his repaired armor. The dissonance was a knife twisting in her chest, cutting deeper than any physical blade could reach.

“Aw, are you scared?” His voice dripped with false sympathy, the mockery of comfort from a mouth that knew only how to wound. He cupped her cheek with one gloved hand, his thumb brushing away a tear even as new ones replaced it. The gesture was almost tender and that was a reminder that he could choose to be gentle and was choosing not to be. “It’s okay, doll. I’ll guide you, hmm?” As he spoke, he finished freeing himself from his pants, his length emerging into the cold red light. Her stomach lurched. She tried to look away, but his hand on her cheek held her face steady, forcing her to confront what was coming.

His other hand joined the first, one gripping her jaw while the other squeezed her cheeks, applying pressure until her lips puckered involuntarily, parting just slightly. She felt something wet and warm smear across her lower lip—precum, her mind supplied with clinical horror—before he pushed forward, forcing himself past the barrier of her lips and into the warm, unwilling cavern of her mouth. The invasion was immediate and complete. He let out a sharp hiss of satisfaction, the sound vibrating through his body and into hers, a serpent’s exhalation of pleasure. His free hand moved to tilt her chin upward, angling her face so that she was forced to look up at him through the blur of her tears, her mouth stretched obscenely around his length. The red light of the maze painted his helmet in shades of blood and shadow, the devil horns curving upward like a crown of thorns made monstrous.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he breathed, his voice gone thick and rough with pleasure. His grip on her chin tightened fractionally, a warning disguised as guidance. “And don’t even think about trying anything funny with your teeth, got it?” The threat was implicit, unnecessary—she knew exactly what he was capable of, knew the violence that lurked beneath his controlled exterior. The only response she could manage was more broken sobs, muffled and deformed by the obstruction in her mouth. He patted her cheek lightly, condescendingly, the gesture of a master acknowledging a pet. Get to work.

Y/N closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at him anymore—not at the helmet, not at the suit, not at the reflection of what was happening playing out in the mirrors surrounding them. The darkness behind her eyelids was the only escape available to her, the only privacy she could claim. The salty, bitter taste of him coated her tongue, flooded her senses, made her gag reflex spasm uselessly around his intrusion. He was too big—his length and girth stretched her jaw uncomfortably, filling her mouth to capacity and then some, leaving no room for her to breathe, to swallow, to do anything but exist as a vessel for his pleasure. She tried to slack her jaw, to create more space, but it wasn’t easy between the sobs that still wracked her chest and the relentless onslaught her mouth was enduring. Each thrust pushed deeper, hitting the back of her throat and triggering another involuntary gag, which only seemed to please him more.

His hand gathered her hair into a makeshift ponytail, twisting the strands around his gloved fist with ease. And then he began to move her—not letting her find her own rhythm, not allowing her even the illusion of participation, but simply using her. Pushing her head forward, pulling it back, setting a pace that suited him, that pleasured him, that reduced her to nothing more than a warm, wet opening to be fucked. She was a toy in his hands, an object to be manipulated and he made no pretense otherwise. There was really no point in resisting. Her hands hung limp at her sides, her body swayed with each thrust and she tried—desperately, furiously—to shake away how disgusting it made her feel. She tried to retreat to some deep, interior space where this wasn’t happening, where her mouth wasn’t being violated, where her brother’s stolen identity wasn’t being weaponized against her.

Daredevil was her brother. The thought kept circling back, a wounded bird trapped in the cage of her skull. Daredevil was Matt and Matt was good and Matt would never—Matt would die before he—Matt was dead. Matt was dead and this thing wearing his face was using her and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t fight it, couldn’t do anything but kneel here and take it.

She tried to think of anyone, anything, that could pull her mind away from the horror of the present. Away from Matt. Away from the suit. Away from the taste of salt and skin and degradation on her tongue. She cast about desperately in the darkness of her closed eyes, searching for a lifeline, a memory, a face that wasn’t contaminated by this nightmare.

And the only face that came to her was Dex.

Her sweet, kind neighbor. The man who lived in the apartment next door, separated from her by nothing more than a thin wall and a world of unspoken possibilities. Dex, who wordlessly helped her carry groceries up the three flights of stairs when he saw her struggling with too many bags. Dex, who showed up at her door with a casserole dish and a quiet smile, claiming he’d “made too much” and would she mind helping him finish it? Dex, who sat through terrible movies on her lumpy couch without complaint, his shoulder warm and solid beside hers, his laughter genuine when she made snarky comments about the plot holes. Dex, who had appeared with a wrench and a determined expression when her kitchen sink started leaking, spending an hour on his back under the pipes and emerging dusty but triumphant, refusing any payment beyond a glass of lemonade and her company.

He was good to her. Too good. So much so that she sometimes felt a twist of guilt in her chest, a nagging sense that she was taking advantage of his kindness. That she was a burden, a charity case, a wounded bird he felt obligated to nurse back to health. But whenever she tried to voice these insecurities, to apologize for being “too much” or “not enough,” he would just shake his head with that quiet, steady patience of his and tell her she was being ridiculous. He never seemed to mind. He never seemed to want anything from her except her presence.

Dex was a little older than Matt had been—thirty-one to her twenty-two, a gap that sometimes felt insignificant and sometimes felt like a chasm. He was handsome in an understated, rugged way that snuck up on you: strong jaw, kind eyes, a smile that transformed his whole face when he let it out fully. And his arms—God, his arms—she had caught herself staring more times than she cared to admit. The way his biceps strained against the sleeves of his plain cotton shirts when he reached for something on a high shelf. The corded muscles of his forearms when he rolled up his sleeves to wash dishes after one of their shared dinners. The solid, reassuring weight of him when they sat close on her couch, watching the television flicker in the dark. It was a hopeless crush, really. She knew that. He was older, more established, probably saw her as a kid sister at best, a neighborly obligation at worst. She was a mess of grief and trauma and bad coping mechanisms and he was... steady. Stable. Safe.

But right now, kneeling on the cold floor of a mirror maze with a monster’s length shoved down her throat and tears streaming down her cheeks, Dex was the only lifeline she had. She clung to the memory of his quiet smile, his warm laugh, the way he called her “sunshine” like it was her name. She imagined his hands—not the gloved, violating hands currently fisted in her hair, but Dex’s hands, bare and warm and calloused from whatever work he did. She imagined those hands cupping her face gently, tilting her chin up not to force her but to see her, to ask if she was okay. She imagined his voice saying her name—not “doll” or “sweetheart” in that mocking tone, but Y/N, said with warmth and respect and something that might have been the beginning of more.

She held onto that image like a drowning woman clutching a piece of driftwood. She let Dex’s face fill her mind, pushing out the horror of the helmet, the devil horns, the suit that should have meant safety and instead meant violation. She remembered the way he’d looked at her when he called her “sunshine”—not like she was broken, not like she was prey, but like she was something precious. Something worth protecting.

The monster’s pace quickened, his grip on her hair tightening, his thrusts becoming more erratic. She could tell he was close. And through it all, she kept her eyes squeezed shut and her mind fixed on Dex—on the impossible, beautiful, hopeless fantasy of a man who was kind without condition, who was strong without cruelty, who might someday, somehow, see her as more than just the broken girl next door. It was the only thing keeping her sane. The only thing keeping her from shattering completely. In the red-drenched darkness behind her eyelids, she held onto Dex like a prayer and she waited for this nightmare to end.

But just then, as she was finally beginning to achieve the fragile, desperate escape of dissociation—as the edges of her consciousness started to blur and soften, as she managed to tune him out, to retreat into that small, dark, quiet room at the very back of her mind where his touch couldn’t quite reach—he stopped. Everything stopped. The rhythm of his hips, the pressure of his hands, the relentless, violating presence of him inside her mouth. He withdrew his length from between her lips with a wet, obscene sound that echoed off the countless mirrors surrounding them and the sudden absence of him was almost as disorienting as his presence had been. Y/N’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused and glassy and she looked up at him from where she was kneeling on the cold, hard floor. 

“Hmm.” The sound he made was contemplative, almost playful, as if a thought had just occurred to him—a delightful little notion that he wanted to share. He looked down at her, that blank, horned helmet tilting to one side in a gesture that might have been curiosity or mockery or something else entirely. “It’s not fair that I have all the fun, right?” The question hung in the red-tinged air between them, rhetorical and cruel. Y/N stared up at him from her knees, her expression slack and dazed, her mind struggling to process the words through the thick fog of dissociation. He was cruel enough—vicious enough, monstrous enough—that he wouldn’t even allow her the small mercy of retreating into her own head to avoid him. He wanted her present. He wanted her aware. He wanted her to experience every moment of her own degradation with full, terrible clarity, because her suffering was the point, her awareness was the prize and he would not be cheated of a single second of it.

He adjusted his stance, shifting his weight with deliberate precision and suddenly his foot was positioned directly beneath her core. The hard, reinforced toe of his boot pressed up against the damp cotton of her underwear, creating a ridge of unyielding pressure right where she was most sensitive. The friction was immediate and electric—a bolt of sensation that lit her nerves on fire despite every desperate attempt her mind made to reject it. Y/N’s fingers dug into her own thighs, her nails barely leaving crescent-shaped indentations in the material of his tactical pants, as her body lurched forward involuntarily, her hips grinding down against his boot before she could stop them. The movement was instinctive, animal, completely beyond her conscious control and she hated herself for it even as a small, traitorous part of her welcomed the distraction of physical sensation.

“Move those pretty hips for me, will you?” The command was delivered with casual authority, the tone of a man who knew he would be obeyed. And he was right. Y/N obliged without so much as a thought, without even a flicker of resistance. What was the point anymore? What was the point of fighting, of clinging to scraps of dignity, of pretending she had any agency left to protect? She had already surrendered her clothes, her body, her mouth. What was one more degradation? What was one more act of compliance in an endless litany of them? The fight had drained out of her completely, leaving behind only a hollow, mechanical obedience. Her hips began to move, rocking against the hard surface of his boot with a slow, grinding rhythm that sent sparks of unwanted pleasure shooting up her spine.

He guided himself back between her lips, the weight and heat of him filling her mouth once more and she accepted it with the same numb compliance. But something was shifting inside her, some desperate survival mechanism kicking in to protect what remained of her fractured psyche. As her hips continued to buck against the leather of his boot, as the friction built and built and sent waves of sensation crashing through her nervous system, her mind began to grow blessedly, mercifully numb. The pleasure—unwanted, undeniable, shameful—acted like a drug, smoothing the jagged edges of her terror, blurring the sharp lines of her violation. Shivers ran up her spine, one after another, as her clit dragged against the textured surface of his boot through the increasingly damp cotton of her underwear. The sensation was good. She hated that it was good. She hated herself for feeling it, for responding to it, for allowing her body to find any pleasure at all in this nightmare. But the alternative—remaining fully present, fully aware of what was happening to her—was worse. So much worse.

He used her mouth as he had before, setting a rhythm that she followed without thought, her head bobbing along his length while her hips ground down against his boot. But it didn’t feel as difficult anymore. The soul-deep wrongness of it—it all seemed to recede, muffled and distant, like sounds heard through a thick wall. In the red-drenched darkness behind her closed eyelids, she forced herself to imagine something else. Someone else. She conjured an image of Dex—his warm, steady presence, his quiet smile, the way he’d looked at her with such gentle fondness when he’d handed her Lord Snuggleton. She imagined it was Dex’s hands touching her, Dex’s body pressed against hers, Dex’s voice murmuring encouragement. It was a lie, a desperate, pathetic fiction constructed from equal parts longing and self-preservation, but it was the only lifeline she had. She clung to it with everything she had left.

Soft whimpers began to fall from her lips, muffled and distorted by his cock filling her mouth. The sounds were small, almost animal—the helpless noises of a creature caught in a trap. They vibrated against him, sending ripples of sensation up his shaft and she felt his grip tighten in her hair, his fingers twisting and pulling with renewed urgency. A string of curses fell from his lips, harsh and breathless and there was something almost reverent in the way he said them, as if she had surprised him, as if she had exceeded whatever twisted expectations he’d held.

“You sound like a fucking puppy,” he chuckled, the words laced with genuine amusement. His free hand came down and patted her head—a condescending, almost affectionate gesture, the way one might pet a well-behaved dog. The touch was degrading, dehumanizing, reducing her to nothing more than a trained animal performing for her master’s entertainment. And yet, in her dissociated state, it barely registered. She looked up at him from beneath her lashes, her lips still stretched and wrapped around him, her jaw aching, her throat raw and there was nothing in her eyes but a distant, unfocused daze. She was present in body, but her mind was somewhere else entirely—somewhere with Dex, somewhere safe, somewhere this nightmare couldn’t quite reach.

But then something strange began to happen. The red light—that pervasive, bloody glow that saturated every corner of the maze—seemed to flicker and shift, playing tricks on her exhausted, traumatized perception. As she looked up at the monster using her mouth, the sharp lines of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the shape of his chin visible beneath the edge of the helmet... they started to look more and more like Dex. It was impossible, of course. A hallucination born of wishful thinking and psychological desperation. Dex was kind and gentle and safe. Dex had driven away to handle a work emergency, had promised to come back in one piece, had called her sunshine like it was the most natural thing in the world. Dex would never do this to her. Dex would never hurt her. And yet, the resemblance was there, hovering at the edges of her vision, a mirage conjured by her starving, traumatized mind.

His hand left her hair and came to rest against her cheek, the leather of his glove cool and smooth against her flushed skin. And before she could stop herself, before her conscious mind could intervene, she found herself leaning into the touch. She almost nuzzled into his palm, her cheek pressing against the leather as if it were Dex’s hand, as if this were a gesture of affection rather than ownership. The movement was instinctive, automatic, the response of a creature so starved for gentleness that she would accept even its cruelest imitation. He seemed surprised by her sudden change in temperament—she could feel it in the brief hesitation of his hand, the subtle shift in his posture. The dazed, terrified victim who had been mechanically complying with his demands had been replaced by something else, something softer, something almost willing. And he liked it. She could tell he liked it.

“Fuck, you’re so pretty for me, baby,” he breathed, his voice dropping into something almost tender, almost genuine. The praise washed over her like warm water, seeping into the cracks of her shattered self-worth. “You’re taking me so well. Just a little more.” Her body seemed to react to the encouragement independent of her will, responding to the positive reinforcement like a flower turning toward the sun. She increased her pace, her head bobbing along his length with strange renewed enthusiasm while maintaining eye contact—looking up at him through her lashes. Her tongue swirled around his tip, tracing circles and patterns and she was rewarded with a deep, guttural groan that seemed to vibrate through his entire body.

He threw his head back, the horns of his helmet catching the red light and casting demonic shadows on the mirrored walls. “Baby, you’re gonna be the death of me,” he groaned, the words thick with pleasure and something that almost sounded like genuine affection. His hands found the sides of her head, fingers threading through her hair and he took control—pushing his length all the way down, past her gag reflex, until she could feel him in her throat, a thick, intrusive presence that made her eyes water and her vision swim. 

A visible bulge formed in the column of her throat, the outline of him pressing against her skin from the inside and he stared at it with something approaching awe. He could swear it was the most erotic thing he had ever seen—her lips stretched around him, her throat distended by him, her eyes watering and dazed and looking up at him with that strange, surrendered softness. And being able to look at her from all angles, thanks to the infinite mirrors surrounding them, was just beautiful. Everywhere he looked, there she was—on her knees, servicing him, her body reflected into eternity. A study of her and he was the sole, appreciative audience.

Y/N closed her eyes, surrendering to the darkness behind her lids because the alternative—watching her own reflection in the endless mirrors, seeing herself reduced to this—was more than she could bear. She could feel her climax building, coiling low and tight in her belly like a spring being wound past its breaking point. It was a terrible, unwanted thing, this pleasure that her body was manufacturing against her will. She hated it. She hated herself for feeling it. And yet she couldn’t stop chasing it, couldn’t stop the frantic, desperate bucking of her hips against his boot, grinding herself against the hard leather with an urgency that bordered on madness. 

Her body had betrayed her completely, had signed a separate peace treaty with the enemy while her mind was still at war. The friction of her soaked cotton underwear against the textured surface of his boot was maddening—not quite enough, never quite enough, but all she had. She rutted against him like an animal in heat, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, driven by a need that was purely physiological and utterly divorced from desire.

His thrusts into her mouth had changed. Where before they had been rapid and punishing, a brutal rhythm designed to overwhelm and dominate, now they had slowed into something longer, deeper, more deliberate. Each thrust pushed the full length of him past her lips and into the tight, constricted channel of her throat, forcing her jaw wide, filling her mouth completely until there was no room for anything but him—no air, no protest, no thought. He held himself there at the deepest point, buried to the hilt and she choked around him, her throat spasming and contracting in involuntary resistance. Her eyes watered, tears spilling over her lashes not from emotion now but from pure physical reflex, her body’s desperate attempt to clear an obstruction that wouldn’t move. Her skin reddened with the effort of not breathing, flushed from her cheeks down her neck to the tops of her breasts, a visible map of her struggle. When he finally pulled back, allowing her a gasping, desperate inhale through her nose, the relief was almost as overwhelming as the violation.

Moans fell relentlessly from her lips—or rather, from the small spaces around him where sound could still escape. They were muffled, distorted, transformed into something barely human by the obstruction filling her mouth. But they were unmistakably sounds of pleasure and she couldn’t stop them any more than she could stop her hips from rolling against his boot. The two rhythms—his deep, measured thrusts into her throat and her frantic grinding against his foot—had synchronized somehow, creating a terrible harmony of violation and unwanted arousal. She matched his grunts with her own muffled vocalizations, a call and response of degradation. The cotton of her underwear was utterly drenched now, saturated beyond any pretense of dryness. Her wetness had soaked through the thin fabric completely and was drooling onto the leather of his boot, leaving a glistening, obscene trail that caught the red light and shimmered like evidence of her betrayal. She could feel it—the slick, warm slide of her own arousal against his boot, the way it eased her movements even as it marked her shame. And still she chased her climax, hips rolling and bucking with single-minded desperation. Just a little more. Just a little more. The words became a mantra in her head, drowning out everything else—the wrongness, the violation, the hatred, the fear. All that existed was the approaching edge and her body’s primal need to tumble over it.

“You wanna cum for me, baby?” His voice was rough, strained with his own approaching release, but still laced with that horrible, proprietary tenderness. The question was rhetorical—he could feel her racing toward the edge, could read it in every desperate undulation of her hips, every muffled moan vibrating around his length. He didn’t need her answer. But he wanted it. He wanted her complicity, her verbal surrender, one more small piece of her autonomy to add to his collection.

“Uh huh.” The affirmation came out garbled and barely intelligible but unmistakable in its desperate agreement. It was the only answer she could give—not because she wanted to give it, but because her body had taken over completely and her body wanted to come. Her mind had been relegated to a distant observer, watching from very far away as this stranger wearing her skin debased herself for a monster’s entertainment.

“Then cum for me, sweetheart.” His words acted as a trigger, a key turning in a lock she hadn’t known existed. The permission—or the command, they were the same thing from him—unleashed something inside her that had been straining at its leash. A wave of senseless, devastating pleasure crashed over her, drowning her in sensation so intense it bordered on pain. Her vision, already darkened by her closed eyelids, exploded with spots of color—red and gold and white, a private fireworks display behind her eyes. 

Her body convulsed, her inner muscles clenching and releasing in rhythmic spasms around nothing, the empty ache of it somehow making the orgasm sharper, more acute. She reached out blindly and grabbed onto the material of his tactical pants, her fingers twisting in the heavy fabric, anchoring herself to the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved into pure sensation. The rough texture of the pants against her palms was the only tether keeping her from spinning away into the red-tinged void.

He, too, was reaching his end. She felt it in the way his rhythm faltered, the deep, measured thrusts becoming erratic, more urgent. His grip on her hair tightened, holding her in place as he doled out his final few thrusts with a roughness that bordered on violence. And then he was there, buried to the hilt in her throat and she felt the hot, pulsing flood of his release. It spewed down her throat in thick, salty ropes—almost bitter, carrying the sharp, alkaline taste of him. There was so much of it, more than she could comfortably swallow and she gagged around him, her throat working desperately to accommodate the volume. He groaned, a low, guttural sound of pure male satisfaction and held her face in both hands, keeping her impaled on his entire length while the last pulses of his orgasm emptied into her. The pressure was overwhelming, her throat stretched and filled, her nose pressed against the coarse fabric of his suit, her entire world reduced to the taste and smell and feel of him.

“Swallow,” he commanded, his voice rough but still controlled, still the voice of a man accustomed to being obeyed. He patted her cheek—a gesture that might have been affectionate if it weren’t so patronizing. A pat for a good pet. Then, slowly, he pulled out. The withdrawal was almost as overwhelming as the intrusion had been. She felt every inch of him sliding free of her throat, leaving behind a raw, aching emptiness. A thick, glistening string of saliva connected her swollen lips to the tip of him for one suspended moment before breaking, drool and the remnants of his release dribbling down her chin in warm, viscous trails. The fluid dripped onto her bare breasts, landing on her flushed skin in small, obscene droplets that caught the red light and gleamed.

He had told her to swallow and she had. She stuck out her tongue—pink and swollen and utterly empty—to show him her compliance, to prove that she had done as she was told. The gesture was automatic, born of some deep, survival-oriented part of her brain that understood the rules of this particular game: obey, perform, survive. He grinned at the sight and there was a strange, unsettling pride on what she could see of his face beneath the helmet. Not lust, not cruelty, but pride. As if she were a prized possession that had performed beautifully, a well-trained animal that had executed its tricks flawlessly. The expression made her stomach turn more than the taste of him still coating her tongue.

He grabbed her hand—his grip firm, commanding, leaving no room for resistance—and pulled her up from her kneeling position. Her legs screamed in protest, aching deeply from being folded beneath her for so long. The muscles in her thighs and calves had gone stiff and cramped and she stumbled as she rose, her jelly-like legs barely supporting her weight. The recent orgasm had left her boneless, wrung out, her body a collection of pleasant aches and deep, soul-sick bruises. He didn’t let her fall. He pinned her lower body against his, using his hips and thighs to force her upright, to keep her standing when all she wanted to do was collapse onto the cold floor and disappear. The pressure of his body against hers was immovable, a wall of muscle and intent that held her in place like a butterfly pinned to a board.

He cupped her face in both hands—those gloved hands that had touched her everywhere, that had violated every inch of her—and kissed her. It was not a gentle kiss. It was thorough, invasive, his tongue pushing past her swollen lips to explore the mouth he had just used. She didn’t kiss him back. She couldn’t. Her lips were numb, her jaw ached and her mind had retreated to some distant, foggy place where sensations arrived muffled and distant, as if happening to someone else. Her head was too cloudy from everything that had happened—the fear, the violation, the unwanted orgasm, the degradation of swallowing him down. It all swirled together into a gray, formless fog that obscured everything but the most immediate physical sensations: the cold glass at her back, the warm body at her front, the taste of him still lingering on her tongue.

“God, you’re such a good girl for me,” he murmured against her lips, the words vibrating through the kiss. It was praise. It was ownership. It was the final stamp on her degradation, the verbal acknowledgment that she had performed exactly as he wanted, that she had been everything he demanded her to be. She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. She stood there, held upright by his body and his grip, her bare skin pressed against his kevlar-clad chest and stared at nothing through the red-tinged fog of her own dissociation.

“Now let’s get you dressed up.” His voice had shifted into something almost gentle, almost caring. He bent down and gathered her discarded clothes from the cold floor, collecting each piece with the same casual efficiency he might use to pick up after himself. The jacket, the top, the bra—he shook them out briefly, smoothing wrinkles with his gloved hands, treating her garments with a care that seemed utterly incongruous with everything that had just transpired. And then he began to dress her, guiding her arms into sleeves and settling fabric over her shoulders as if she were a doll, an inanimate object to be posed and arranged according to his whims. She cooperated because her mind was too muddled to do anything else. It was easier to simply comply, to let him move her limbs and adjust her clothing, to surrender to the strange, dissociative calm that had settled over her in the aftermath. Resistance required energy, required presence, required a self that felt worth defending. She had none of those things right now.

She stepped back into her jeans when he held them open for her, balancing unsteadily on legs that still felt like they belonged to someone else. The denim slid up her calves, over her knees and he pulled them the rest of the way, settling the waistband at her hips. But he paused before fastening them, his hands stilling on the open fly. “Hmm,” he hummed, a considering sound that made her stomach clench with fresh dread. “I think I wanna keep this.” Before she could process what he meant, his fingers hooked into the side of her underwear—the pale lavender cotton, still soaked through with the evidence of her unwanted orgasm and he pulled. The fabric tore with a sharp, ripping sound, the thin cotton giving way easily under his strength. 

He pulled the ruined panties free from between her legs, the damp fabric dragging against her sensitive flesh one final time and her breath hitched audibly as the cold air of the maze rushed in to fill the absence. Her bare, swollen cunt was exposed to the chill, still tender and oversensitive from everything that had been done to it and she shivered involuntarily at the sensation. He stuffed the drenched fabric into his back pocket with casual satisfaction—a trophy, a souvenir, a claim staked and collected. Then he pulled her jeans up fully, settling the rough denim directly against her bare, sensitive flesh and buttoned them closed. The seam of the jeans pressed against her in ways that would remind her, with every step she took, of what she no longer wore beneath them.

Once she was fully dressed—or as fully dressed as she could be without the underwear he had stolen—he turned his attention to her appearance. He patted her hair with surprising gentleness, smoothing down the tangles and flyaways. His gloved fingers combed through the strands, working out the worst of the dishevelment, arranging her hair so that she looked less like a woman who had just been violated in a hall of mirrors and more like someone who had simply had a long, exhausting night at the carnival.  

His fingers found her chin, tilting her face up and he swiped his thumb across her skin, collecting the remaining saliva and the residue of his release that still clung to her chin. The pad of his glove came away glistening. He brought it to her lips, pressing gently against the swollen, tender flesh. “Clean it up,” he said, though the words were less a command and more an expectation, a continuation of the ritual they had established. Y/N parted her lips without thought, without resistance and took his gloved finger into her mouth. She licked it clean, her tongue dragging across the leather, collecting the bitter, salty taste of him mixed with her own saliva. The act was intimate and degrading and utterly automatic. When she had finished, he withdrew his finger and gave her a satisfied smile—that same strange pride she had seen before, the expression of an owner admiring a well-trained possession.

His gaze dropped to the floor and he spotted Lord Snuggleton where the stuffed rabbit still lay abandoned and forgotten in the chaos of what had transpired. He bent down and picked up the bunny with surprising care, holding it by its floppy ears for a moment before dusting it off with a few brisk pats. His gloved hands smoothed the rabbit’s fur, straightened its lopsided expression, restored it to some semblance of its former cheerfulness. Then he stepped closer and tucked the stuffed animal securely into the crook of Y/N’s arm, pressing it against her side with a gentle, almost tender insistence. “Wouldn’t wanna leave Snuggleton behind, now would we?” His voice was light, almost teasing, as if they were sharing a private joke.

The name hit her like a physical blow. Snuggleton. Lord Snuggleton of Hugsville. The silly, affectionate nickname she had invented just hours ago, standing in a parking lot with Dex, feeling safe and seen and almost happy. She had waved the bunny’s little arm at him, had made him laugh with the ridiculous title, had created a small, private world of warmth and humor in the middle of her otherwise bleak existence. And now this monster—this vile impersonator, this predator who had violated her in every possible way—was using that name. He knew the bunny’s name. The only people who knew that name were her and Dex. She had invented it on the spot, had spoken it aloud exactly once, in a moment of genuine connection with the man who lived next door. There was no other way he could have known. No other explanation.

Her mind reeled, spinning through the implications with dizzying speed. Had he been watching her since before the parking lot? Had he been lurking somewhere in the shadows of the carnival, observing her and Dex together, listening to their conversation with some kind of surveillance equipment? Had he been waiting—patiently, predatorily—for Dex to leave so he could make his move? The thought sent ice water through her veins. It meant this wasn’t random. It wasn’t a chance encounter, a terrible coincidence of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This had been planned. Orchestrated. He had watched her laugh and eat cotton candy and accept stuffed animals from Dex, had watched her feel safe and happy and almost normal and he had waited. He had let her have those moments of peace specifically so he could destroy them, so he could prove that nowhere and no one was safe, that he could reach her whenever he wanted, that her happiness was merely a loan he could call due at any moment.

His arm hooked around her waist, solid and unyielding and he began to walk her through the maze. But not back the way she had come, not toward the main entrance where she had presented her silver ticket with such foolish, hopeful excitement. He guided her instead toward a back exit she hadn’t known existed—a plain, unmarked door set into a mirrored wall, virtually invisible unless you knew exactly where to look. He pushed it open and the cool night air rushed in, carrying the distant sounds of the city beyond the carnival grounds. The carnival itself had powered down completely now. The rides were silent, their lights extinguished. The game booths were shuttered and dark. The crowds had dispersed, leaving behind only scattered trash and the ghostly echoes of the evening’s revelry. 

She wondered, as he steered her through the door and into the empty service area behind the maze, if there had been anyone else in the maze when he had caught her. Had there been other visitors, laughing and bumping into mirrors and enjoying the simple fun of getting lost? Or had he, just like with Dex, carefully orchestrated her isolation? Had he waited until the maze was empty, until the carnival was closing, until every possible witness or protector had been systematically removed from the equation? The precision of it—the patience, the planning, the intimate knowledge of her movements and her company—suggested a predator who had been hunting her for a long, long time. And the worst part, the part that made her blood run cold and her stomach drop into some bottomless void, was the realization that he would do it again. That this was not an ending but merely another chapter in an ongoing nightmare. That he knew her routines, her relationships, her small moments of joy. And he would use all of it against her, whenever he chose.

He at least had the decency—if such a word could even be applied to a monster—to call her a cab. He had pulled out a phone, not his personal device she suspected but something disposable, a burner purchased with cash and destined for the bottom of a trash can within the hour. He had spoken to the dispatcher in a clipped, efficient tone, rattling off the carnival’s address and requesting a pickup at the service entrance where they stood. And then, before the cab’s headlights could sweep around the corner and illuminate them both, he had melted back into the shadows. One moment he was there, a solid, oppressive presence at her side, his arm still hooked possessively around her waist. The next moment he was simply… gone. Swallowed by the darkness behind the mirror maze as if he had never existed at all, as if he were nothing more than another phantom conjured by her exhausted, traumatized mind.

The cab arrived. A beat-up sedan with a flickering interior light and an air freshener shaped like a pine tree dangling from the rearview mirror, its artificial evergreen scent doing little to mask the underlying odors of stale cigarette smoke and too many strangers’ lives. She climbed into the backseat, clutching Lord Snuggleton to her chest like a lifeline and gave the driver her address in a voice so small and hollow she barely recognized it as her own. The cabbie—a middle-aged man with tired eyes and the weathered patience of someone who had spent decades driving through the city’s darkest hours—glanced at her in the rearview mirror. 

She saw his gaze linger on her dishevelled hair, her swollen lips, the vacant, thousand-yard stare she couldn’t seem to shake. He noticed. Of course he noticed. A woman getting into a cab alone, late at night, from a closed carnival, looking like she had been through something unspeakable—it was a story as old as the city itself. But he didn’t comment. He didn’t ask if she was okay, didn’t offer to call anyone, didn’t press for details she couldn’t have given even if she’d wanted to. Maybe he had learned, over years of driving these streets, that some silences were kinder than questions. Maybe he simply didn’t want to get involved. Either way, she was grateful. 

The drive passed in a blur of streetlights and darkened storefronts, the city sliding past her window like a movie she was watching from very far away. She couldn’t possibly return to Foggy’s place like this. The thought crystallized with sudden, painful clarity. Foggy, who was like a brother to her in every way that mattered, who had stepped in after Matt’s death and tried so desperately to fill a void that could never truly be filled. Foggy, who already worried about her constantly, who called to check in with a frequency that should have been annoying but was instead deeply, achingly touching. If he saw her like this—bruised, hollow-eyed, wearing clothes that had been put back on her body by the man who had just violated her, walking with the careful, pained gait of someone hiding fresh injuries—he would crumble. 

He would demand answers. He would want to call the police, to hunt down whoever had done this, to wrap her in protective layers of concern and investigation and well-meaning interference. And she couldn’t deal with that. She didn’t have the strength. Every ounce of energy she possessed had been drained from her, siphoned away by the horror of what had happened in that mirror maze. She had nothing left—no words, no explanations, no ability to manage someone else’s emotional response to her trauma. She could barely manage her own.

Besides, she didn’t want him to see her like this. The thought was simpler, rawer, more honest. What brother—even a brother by choice rather than blood—would want to see his sister in this condition? What good could possibly come from forcing Foggy to witness this, to see the evidence of what had been done to her written across her face and body? He had enough problems to deal with already. The weight of Matt’s death, the ongoing chaos of Wilson Fisk’s return, the endless, grinding work of trying to hold together some semblance of justice in a city that seemed determined to tear itself apart— Foggy carried all of that on his shoulders every single day. 

Adding her brokenness to that burden felt cruel, felt selfish, felt like asking a drowning man to save someone else. So, she gave the cabbie the address of her old apartment building instead. The cab pulled up to the curb outside her building and she paid the fare with trembling fingers, fumbling bills from her jacket pocket. She didn’t wait for change. She just wanted out. The building loomed before her, tired and familiar, its brick facade stained with decades of city grime. 

The lobby was dimly lit, the single fluorescent bulb flickering with the erratic pulse of something on the verge of dying completely. And of course—of course—the elevator was out of order. A handwritten sign taped to the metal doors announced this fact with cheery, passive-aggressive regret: ”Out of Service. Sorry for the inconvenience.” It had been out of service for three weeks now. She was starting to suspect it would never be fixed, that she would be climbing these stairs until she died or moved away, whichever came first.

She trudged up the steps, each one a small mountain. Her legs were tired—not just tired, but exhausted, the muscles in her thighs and calves screaming with every upward step. The bruises on her knees, earned from kneeling on the hard floor of the mirror maze while she serviced him with her mouth, throbbed with a deep, persistent ache that seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat. Climbing three floors was hard on a normal day, when she was well-rested and whole and carrying nothing heavier than groceries. Now it felt Herculean. Impossible. A task designed by cruel gods to break her completely. 

She gripped the banister with white-knuckled desperation, pulling herself upward one painful step at a time. Halfway up the second flight, her legs gave out briefly and she had to catch herself on her knees—bad idea, terrible idea, the pain that shot through her was blinding—before forcing herself upright again. By the time she reached the final flight, she was almost crawling, using her hands on the steps above her to drag her body forward. Just a bit more, she told herself, the words a mantra in the fog of her exhaustion. Just a bit more. You can make it. You have to make it. There’s nowhere else to go.

She finally reached her floor—the third floor, the floor where her tiny studio waited like a cold, unwelcoming refuge—and let out a shuddering sigh of relief that was almost a sob. Her door was at the end of the hall. Just a few more steps. Just a few more—

Dex returned home earlier than he had expected. The work emergency had been urgent, yes, but ultimately straightforward—a situation that required his presence and his particular skills but not the hours of painstaking effort he had anticipated. He had handled it with the cold, efficient precision that had made him both valuable and feared within the organization and now he was back, earlier than planned, the adrenaline of the night’s work still humming beneath his skin like a low-grade electrical current. The exhaustion would hit later, he knew. It always did. For now, he was still running on the residual energy of crisis management, his senses sharp and his mind alert.

He walked down the hallway of his apartment building, his footsteps nearly silent on the worn carpet—a habit born of years of training, of learning to move without being heard, without leaving traces. His door was ahead, the familiar scuffed paint and brass numbers a small comfort after the chaos of the night. But as he drew closer, something tugged at the edge of his awareness. A detail out of place. His door was already unlocked. The slight gap between the door and the frame, the way it sat just a fraction of an inch ajar when it should have been flush and sealed—it was wrong. He had locked it when he left. He always locked it. It was a reflex, as automatic as breathing.

He slipped inside with light, careful steps, his body moving into a combat-ready stance without conscious thought. His hand found the gun he kept stashed under the kitchen counter and he drew it smoothly, the weight familiar and reassuring in his palm. The apartment was dim, lit only by the ambient glow of the city filtering through the windows, but his eyes adjusted quickly. There were soft sounds of movement coming from his bedroom. Faint, barely audible, but unmistakable. The rustle of fabric. The creak of a floorboard. Someone was in there.

He moved cautiously, every sense on high alert, his training taking over completely. Who could it be? His mind raced through possibilities even as his body flowed through the familiar space of his apartment. With his time at the bureau, he had made enemies—that was inevitable, a natural consequence of the work he did and the way he did it. There were people who would love to see him dead, who had the resources and the motivation to send someone after him. Or could it be someone Wilson Fisk sent? Finally deciding that he didn’t want him. 

The door of his bathroom was open, the light still spilling out into the bedroom beyond. That was wrong too. He hadn’t left the bathroom light on. He was certain of it. He stood at the edge of his bedroom door, his back pressed against the wall beside the frame, his gun held in a two-handed grip, pointed toward the ceiling but ready to snap down and fire at a moment’s notice. He took a slow, controlled breath, centering himself, preparing for whatever threat waited on the other side of that threshold. Then, in one fluid motion, he whipped around the corner and into the bedroom, his gun coming down with deadly precision, aimed directly at—

He froze.

“Dex?” The voice that called his name was so small, so fractured, that for a moment he didn’t recognize it. It was barely more than a whisper, a broken thread of sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep and wounded, the kind of voice that belonged to small animals caught in traps or children waking from nightmares they couldn’t articulate. It was the smallest, most shattered sound he had ever heard and it stopped him cold.

“Y/N?” His gun lowered immediately, the tension in his arms releasing as recognition flooded through him. The bedroom was dark—the only illumination came from the bathroom light spilling through the open door, casting a pale golden rectangle across the floor and catching the edges of her silhouette. But even in the dimness, he could see that it was her. The shape of her, the way she stood, the familiar curve of her shoulders now hunched inward as if she were trying to make herself smaller, less visible, less there. The room was humid, the air thick and warm with residual steam that clung to his skin and fogged the edges of the bathroom mirror.

She had just showered, he realized. Her hair was wet, dark with water and plastered against her skull and neck in dripping tendrils. And she was wearing his clothes—one of his old t-shirts, soft and faded from years of washing, hanging loose on her smaller frame and a pair of his sweatpants rolled multiple times at the waistband and cuffs to keep them from swallowing her whole. On any other night, in any other context, the sight of Y/N wrapped in his clothing would have made his heart stutter and swell, would have filled him with a warm, possessive tenderness he barely knew how to name. But this wasn’t any other night. Something was terribly, fundamentally wrong.

“Dex—I—I’m so sorry for breaking in.” The words tumbled out of her in a frantic, rambling rush, as if she could outrun whatever accusation she imagined was coming by filling the silence with explanation. “I mean—I didn’t break in. I didn’t. I just used the spare key. The one you keep by the radiator. You know the one? I remembered you showed me where it was, in case of emergencies and I couldn’t find my apartment keys, I looked everywhere, in my jacket and my jeans and they just weren’t there and you told me—you told me I could let myself in if I ever needed to. You said that. Remember? You said, ‘If you ever need a place, my door’s always open. Spare key’s by the radiator.’ So I just—I just—” She rambled on, her words tripping over each other in their desperate haste, trying to explain away the situation, to make it seem normal, to prevent him from seeing what was actually written across her face and body and posture. She was building a wall of words, hoping he wouldn’t look too closely at what lay behind it.

He crossed the room in three long strides, closing the distance between them with the same focused intensity he brought to everything that mattered. His hands came up to cup her face, his palms warm against her chilled, damp skin. The contrast was stark—she was cold despite the humid warmth of the room, cold in a way that came from inside, from shock and trauma and something he didn’t yet understand but could feel radiating off her like a physical force. “Hey, hey,” he said, his voice dropping into something soft and steady, the tone he used when talking someone down from a ledge or calming a frightened witness. “It’s okay. What happened?”

Her hair was wet, plastered to her forehead and cheeks in dark, dripping strands. Droplets of water slid down her temples like tears she wasn’t shedding. And if this were any other day, any other circumstance, his heart would have burst out of his chest at the sight of her—his sweet, brave, wounded Y/N standing in his bedroom wearing his clothes, looking soft and vulnerable and impossibly dear. He would have allowed himself to feel the warmth of that image, the quiet domesticity of it, the unspoken promise it seemed to hold. But right now wasn’t the time for those feelings. Right now, something was broken in her and every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to fix it, to protect her, to love her.

Y/N shook her head, a small, jerky motion and looked away from him. She couldn’t meet his eyes. Couldn’t bear to see the concern there, the questions, the inevitable demand for an explanation she wasn’t ready to give. “I—I just spiraled after you left,” she said, her voice thin and distant, as if she were reporting events that had happened to someone else. “And I didn’t want to return to Foggy’s. I couldn’t. He would’ve—he would’ve asked too many questions and I didn’t have answers and I didn’t know where else to go.” Her voice cracked on the last words, splintering into something raw and wounded. “I’m so sorry, Dex. I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have just let myself in like this. I should’ve called. I should’ve—”

He pulled her into his arms before she could finish the apology, wrapping himself around her with a fierce, protective urgency. One hand pressed flat against her back, the other cradled the back of her wet head and he held her against his chest as if he could shield her from whatever had happened simply by being a barrier between her and the rest of the world. She melted right there in his embrace. The tension that had been holding her upright, that had carried her up three flights of stairs and through a shower and into his apartment, dissolved all at once. Her body sagged against his and then the sobs came. Small at first, barely more than hitches in her breathing. Then larger, deeper, racking through her frame in waves that shook them both. She gripped the front of his jacket with both hands, her fingers twisting in the fabric, anchoring herself to him as if he were the only solid thing in a world that had turned to water.

“It’s okay, sunshine,” he murmured against her hair, the nickname falling from his lips automatically, a talisman against the darkness. “I got you. I’m here. I’ve got you.” He repeated the words like a mantra, like a promise, like a spell that could somehow undo whatever had been done to her. She pressed her face into his chest, breathing him in, letting his warmth and his scent and his steady, unwavering presence wash over her. “Just missed you s’much,” she whispered, the words muffled against his jacket but unmistakable in their raw, simple honesty.

Ten minutes later, she was sitting on his couch, wrapped in the thickest blanket he owned—a soft, worn flannel thing that had seen him through countless cold nights and now served a more important purpose. She had burrowed into it, pulling it up to her chin, cocooning herself in its warmth. And it smelled like him. Like that woodsy, musky scent that clung to everything he owned—his clothes, his furniture, his very presence. It was the smell of safety, of comfort, of the one person in the world who made her feel like she might still be whole somewhere deep inside. She breathed it in like medicine, letting it settle into her lungs and her bloodstream, letting it push back against the cold, creeping tendrils of the mirror maze that still lingered at the edges of her consciousness.

He was in the kitchen, moving with quiet efficiency, making her something to eat. She seemed pretty shaken—more than shaken, shattered—and he didn’t want to overwhelm her with anything complicated. So he made French toast. Simple, warm, comforting. Her favourite. He had learned that about her during one of their cook nights, had filed the information away like he filed away everything important about her. The way her eyes lit up at the smell of cinnamon and vanilla. The way she liked hers with just a dusting of powdered sugar, no syrup. The way she would close her eyes and make a small, satisfied sound at the first bite, as if the simple pleasure of good food was something precious and rare.

He brought the plate out and set it on the table in front of the couch, the golden-brown slices of bread steaming gently in the dim light. Then he sat down next to her, close enough that she could feel his warmth through the blanket, close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she needed to. 

Y/N began digging into the French toast immediately, her movements mechanical but driven by a sudden, ravenous hunger she hadn’t realized she was carrying. The first bite was a revelation—the warm, eggy sweetness of the bread, the subtle kiss of cinnamon and vanilla, the way the powdered sugar melted on her tongue like the ghost of something good and pure. It flooded her senses, pushing back against the bitter, salty, alkaline taste that had consolidated itself on her tongue and refused to leave. That taste—his taste—had been clinging to her since the mirror maze, a phantom residue that no amount of showering or tooth-brushing or desperate tongue-scraping could fully erase. But the French toast helped. Dex’s French toast, made with careful hands in his small kitchen, served on a plain white plate with no expectation or demand attached. It tasted like safety. Like normalcy. Like the world she had inhabited before everything went wrong, when her biggest concern was whether she’d eaten too much cotton candy and not whether she’d survive the night with her sanity intact.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Dex’s voice was tentative, careful, the tone of someone approaching a wounded animal with open palms and slow movements. He wasn’t pushing—Dex never pushed, that was one of the things she appreciated most about him—but the question was there, hanging in the warm air between them, an offering she could accept or decline as she chose.

Y/N froze mid-chew, the bite of French toast suddenly thick and difficult to swallow. Her mind raced, spinning through possibilities, constructing and discarding explanations with frantic speed. What could she even tell him? The truth was impossible. It was a labyrinth of horrors with no clear entrance and no safe exit. Oh, you know, Dex, I just got assaulted by a vigilante who wears my dead brother’s costume. You know, the Daredevil suit? The one Matt used to wear when he was alive and fighting for justice? Well, there’s this imposter now, this monster who’s stolen his identity and his symbol and he cornered me in the mirror maze after you left and he— No. Absolutely not. She couldn’t say those words.

Couldn’t give voice to the specifics of what had been done to her. And even if she could somehow find the courage to speak the truth, there was another layer, a deeper, more shameful confession lurking beneath the surface. The way she had coped. The way she had survived. How, when he was touching her and violating her and forcing sounds from her throat she didn’t want to make, she had closed her eyes and imagined it was someone else. Imagined it was Dex. His hands instead of those leather gloves. His mouth instead of that terrible, grinning maw beneath the helmet. His voice calling her sweetheart, sunshine, good girl.

She had superimposed his image onto her tormentor like a protective filter, using her feelings for him as a shield against the full horror of what was happening. It was preposterous. It was pathetic. It was deeply, profoundly shameful in ways she couldn’t begin to articulate. And even though Dex wasn’t the kind of person who would ever victim-blame—she knew this about him with bone-deep certainty—she was still drowning in shame. She didn’t want him to look at her differently. Didn’t want him to see her as broken, as damaged, as someone who had been reduced to nothing and then rebuilt herself around a fantasy of him.

“I told you,” She muttered, her voice barely above a whisper, her eyes fixed on the remaining French toast rather than his face. “I just spiralled.”

“Spiralled hard enough that you had to break into my house, take a shower in my bathroom and wear my clothes?” His voice was light, teasing, an obvious attempt to cut through the heavy atmosphere with humour. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he bumped his shoulder gently against hers.

Y/N smacked his arm with the back of her hand, a reflexive gesture of mock outrage that felt almost normal, almost like them. “I didn’t have my house keys on me, okay?” The protest came out stronger than she intended, a flicker of her usual fire showing through the ash. “And I was going to text you about it, but my phone died. So technically, this is your fault for not having a charger readily available for your guests.”

“My fault?” He raised an eyebrow, clearly delighted that she was engaging, that some colour had returned to her voice.

“Yes, your fault. Completely and entirely.” She set her plate down on the table with a deliberate clink and rose to her feet, wrapping the blanket more securely around her shoulders like a cape of righteous indignation. “And if you have such a big problem with me being here, I’ll just leave then.” She wasn’t going to leave—not really, not actually—but she wanted to see how he would react. Needed to see it. Needed confirmation that she was wanted here, that her presence in his space wasn’t a burden he was too polite to name.

Dex’s hand shot out and caught her wrist before she could take her first step. His grip was warm and firm and he pulled her back with a surprising strength that sent her off balance. She stumbled, her feet tangling in the trailing edge of the blanket and fell directly into his lap with a soft, startled gasp. His arms came around her immediately, steadying her, holding her in place against his chest. “You aren’t going anywhere, sunshine,” he said and there was a grin spreading across his face—wide and warm and possessive in a way that made her heart flutter despite everything.

For a single, suspended moment, her blood ran cold. That grin. That smile. It reminded her—with a jolt of visceral, gut-wrenching recognition—of his smile. The monster’s smile. The way he had looked at her in the mirror maze, like she was a possession he had successfully claimed. But then reason reasserted itself. It was her own fault, wasn’t it? She had been the one to superimpose Dex’s image onto her attacker, to use his face as a shield against the horror. Of course there would be echoes. Of course her traumatized brain would make connections that weren’t really there.

She couldn’t blame Dex for her own coping mechanisms, for the way her desperate mind had twisted and blurred the lines between protector and predator just to survive. She shook her head slightly, physically dismissing the thought and forced a smile onto her face. “I don’t plan to,” she said softly and slipped off his lap—though she didn’t go far. She settled back onto the couch beside him, close enough that their thighs pressed together through the blanket, close enough to feel his warmth and his solidity and his steady, reassuring presence.

It didn’t take long for Y/N to fall asleep. The exhaustion of the evening—the terror, the violation, the long climb up three flights of stairs, the hot shower that had scrubbed her skin raw but couldn’t reach the places where the real dirt lived—finally caught up with her. Her head grew heavy, drooping forward and then found a natural resting place against Dex’s shoulder. Her breathing slowed, deepened, softened into the gentle rhythm of unconsciousness. Her face, which had been tight with unspoken pain and hidden fear, relaxed into something peaceful, almost childlike. It had been a long and very tiring evening, after all. The longest of her life, perhaps. And here, in the warmth of Dex’s apartment, wrapped in his blanket and his scent and his quiet, undemanding presence, she finally felt safe enough to let go.

Dex looked down at her sleeping face, and his expression shifted—melted, really—into something that no one had ever truly seen. Not Y/N, not his colleagues at the bureau, not anyone who thought they knew him. His eyes traced the delicate curve of her cheek with a slow, possessive reverence, following the flutter of her lashes where they rested against her skin, lingering on the soft, unconscious parting of her lips as she breathed. “You really are a dumb little puppy, aren’t you?” His voice was a whisper, barely a disturbance in the quiet air, meant for no one but himself and the unconscious woman draped against his shoulder. “Running right back to me after the maze.” A sinister glint sparked in his eyes—a cold, predatory light that transformed his handsome features into something else entirely. Something hungry. Something patient. Something that had been waiting a very, very long time.

Carefully, with the practiced ease of a man accustomed to moving without waking, he pulled her fully into his lap. She needed to stay asleep. After all, she hadn't yet drunk the tea he always made her before he did anything. It was a ritual now, one she never suspected—every single time, she would accept the warm cup from his hands, drink it down without question and drift off into a deep, pliable slumber, leaving her completely unaware of the hours that followed in her bed. Dex did prefer her awake and responsive— he liked the fire in her, the way she squirmed and whimpered and reacted to every touch. But for now, he would take what he could get. At least for tonight.

His fingers rose and traced the line of her cheek, featherlight, barely grazing the surface of her skin. Then they drifted lower, following the elegant column of her neck and pausing at the hollow of her throat, where her pulse beat slow and steady beneath his fingertips. Lower still, until his hand found the soft swell of her breast through the thin fabric of his borrowed shirt. “So sweet,” he murmured, his fingers circling her nipple with a lazy, knowing touch. It pebbled instantly under his attention, the sensitive flesh tightening just as he had expected, just as it always did, “So trusting.” There was wonder in his voice and satisfaction and something darker—something that had no name in any language she would recognize.

His hand slipped a little lower, toying with the loose waistband of the sweatpants she wore. They hung large on her frame, the fabric gaping enough that he could have easily slipped his hand inside without resistance. But he abstained. She’d had enough for one day and he was a patient man. Instead, his palm glided over the fabric, hovering just above the warmth of her sweet cunt, separated by nothing more than a thin layer of cotton. His mind wandered, as it often did, to what awaited him there. If her mouth had felt so exquisite—so hot and tight and willing—how much better would her plush walls feel when he finally buried himself inside her? How sweet would she sound when he filled her completely? Y/N shifted in her sleep, a small, involuntary whine escaping her lips as if she could sense the weight of his thoughts. Dex smiled to himself. One of the things he loved most about her was just how responsive she was, even now. Nothing compared to feeling her squirm beneath him when she was fully conscious, but even under the heavy veil of the tea, her body remained warm and innately attuned to his touch.

He brought his hand back up to her face, his thumb coming to rest against her bottom lip. It was still swollen, still slightly reddened, bearing the marks of everything that had been done to her in the mirror maze. He caressed the tender flesh with a gentleness that was almost reverent, feeling its warmth, its softness, the slight roughness where she had bitten down to keep from crying out.  A fleeting thought crossed his mind—he still needed to retrieve the pair of panties he had torn from her body in the maze, the ones currently sitting in the pocket of his suit in the back of his car. A trophy for the collection.

His gaze lifted, moving across the room to where Lord Snuggleton sat on the armchair opposite the couch. The stuffed rabbit’s beady black eyes seemed to stare back at him, empty and unblinking, its floppy ears and stitched smile frozen in perpetual, helpless cheerfulness. Dex smirked at it—a slow, knowing curl of his lips—as if the rabbit recognized the horror of the truth but could do nothing to save its master. As if they shared a secret, him and this inanimate witness, a joke that only one of them could appreciate. 

He leaned in, closing the small distance between them and pressed the softest, most tender kiss to her sleeping lips. It was barely a brush of contact, a whisper of warmth, the kind of kiss a lover might give in the quiet hours of the night when they thought no one was watching. “You don’t need to worry your pretty little head anymore, doll,” he breathed against her mouth, the words a promise and a threat wrapped in the same silken tone. “I’ll take such good care of you.” His lips curved into a smile against hers and then he pulled back, settling more comfortably into the couch, letting her sleeping weight rest on him. His arm came up to wrap around her shoulders, holding her close, keeping her warm, keeping her his. The sinister glint in his eyes softened into something that might have been mistaken for affection by anyone who didn’t know better. And there, in the quiet of his apartment, with the city humming distantly beyond the windows and the woman he had been hunting sleeping peacefully against his chest, Dex allowed himself a moment of pure, uncomplicated satisfaction. Everything was going exactly according to plan.

╰ ┈➤ A/n: Part of a larger AU and maybe one day I’ll write the somno fic for this. Lemme know if you’d wanna read it.

╰ ┈➤ Masterlist

╰ ┈➤ Tags: @joekitsu

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