A/N: Hi everyone! :D A few things before I pipe down and hope you guys like this new little story of mine: to readers of Life After Death, my giant Bucky/OC story in progress, I know that I have missed quite a few updates BUT I'm working on the next one right now and it should be up this week. Also, I'm sorry for dropping off the planet over the last month :/ I've just been ridiculously busy with family and school, but I'm back and, as you can see, I've not returned empty handed :)

Now, to both my followers and to new readers who have stumbled across this story: thank you all so much for checking this out! This story is fully finished already, and it'll be about four (quite large) chapters long, including this first one. This story starts after the events of the 4th episode of season one, and while some liberties are naturally taken with introducing an OC into things, it'll remain pretty much canon compliant. Midnightwings96 was so utterly instrumental and beyond helpful in helping me plot and write this that I literally could have done nothing without her, so my huge thanks and hugs to her, as always. I could sit here and brag on her all day, but in the interest of time lol, let me thank any and everyone who checks this story out in advance - thank you so much, and I hope you'll stick around to see what happens next :D and shout out to vickdrops, who is super lovely and incredibly sweet, and I hope you like this :D I'll shut up now, and look for an update soon!

It began as a day exactly like nearly every single one that she had awoken to for the last year: cringe-inducing alarm blaring at 5, pitiful excuse for a breakfast by 5:30, feed the cat, shower and wrangling of giant mane of hair which took the longest of it all, and finally, leaving for work and getting there no later than fifteen minutes before her 12-hour shift began at 7.

It wasn't a routine for the lazy or the weak of heart, but it was her routine, and she could say without hesitation that she absolutely loved it. In fact, she had never been happier to wake up at ungodly hours and be on her feet all day.

But, of course, there were exceptions to every rule, and that particular day turned out to be one hell of an exception.

She hadn't been changed into her light-green scrubs white lab coat and out of the locker room for more than ten minutes before she was in the ER, where her latest rotation was, standing at the nurse's station and being handed a chart by a man that she utterly despised.

"Hey Merida," grinned the the man, Dr. Shawn Haskell, a rather cocky fellow resident whom she had suffered through her internship alongside. He tossed her the clipboard and asked "Where's your bow? Leave it at home in DunBroch?"

"No, I lost it the last time I shoved it up your ass," she smiled brightly and with full sass, taking the chart and shoving an errant, fiery red curl behind her ear, away from the bun that it had escaped from. "You might want to see about getting it removed, unless you like that sort of thing."

He grinned and shrugged. "Well, you know, I like I what I like."

"I'm sure you do," she said, eyeing the chart. "Oh, awesome. I get another stoner."

"No, not a stoner," he replied. "This guy is tripping some kind of... I don't even know."

She looked up and raised her eyebrows. "You're a doctor. You probably should know."

He shrugged again, then grabbed his cup of coffee off of the counter between them and said, "Well, I would if he was my problem, but now he's your problem. Have fun getting him stable and then bouncing him back to his cardboard box on the corner, See-o-bawn."

She sighed heavily. "Siobhan. Sha-vonne. It's been two years, man. Come on. You should know how to pronounce my name by now."

"That's why I stick with Merida!" he called back cheerfully before disappearing around the corner.

Siobhan sighed one more time before turning and heading towards the patient's room. There were a lot of cases like these this deep into the city, and being the current token psychiatric resident working the ER, all the druggies and mentally compromised seemed to get tossed her way. But she didn't mind, and as she entered the patient's room and swept the privacy curtain aside, she put a smile on her face even though she knew this guy would likely have no idea she was even there.

"Hello," she said, tone light and friendly, the opposite of what it had been a moment before. "I'm Dr. O'Donoghue. I'm here to help you, okay? Can you tell me your name?"

The man, a homeless addict in his late 30s, stared up at the ceiling with wide and glassy eyes, shaking and breathing fast and mumbling under his breath, obviously nowhere near being able to give her an answer. Nonetheless, as she came closer and checked his vitals on the monitors next to his bed, she continued to ask him questions.

"If you tell me what you took, I'll be able to help you more," she said, turning back to him and watching him continue to twitch and mumble incoherently. She frowned and said, "We're still waiting on a few test results, but until then... you're in good hands, okay? I'm going to give you something to bring you down, and then you can get some sleep and we'll go from there."

Still unresponsive, she checked his IV which he had surprisingly not torn out yet, and then turned to leave. But before she made it more than two steps away, his hand shot out and suddenly seized her forearm. She gasped in surprise and immediately tensed defensively, her free hand going for the nurse's call button to yell for help just in case, but the way that the man was suddenly looking into her eyes and speaking somewhat clearly made her stop.

His eyes were still glassy and dazed, but he was looking right at her. "They... they're... they saw me. They're coming. They're coming." His eyes filled with tears and his next words were almost a sob. "They're coming."

She furrowed her brows and asked, "Who's coming?"

Still staring at her, he spoke again, words jumbled and barely understandable. "Car... car... door."

"Car door?" she repeated. "Sir, you really need to try to rest and -"

His grip on her arm became tighter, and she began to get genuinely nervous. "Car door... over and over... I saw it. Saw him." His voice became a sob again. "I saw him. I saw what he did. He's gonna kill me, too. He's gonna cut off my head, too."

The man broke down into hysterical sobs then, and she finally managed to get her arm free as she stared at him with slightly wide eyes. "Nobody's going to kill you, sir. You're safe here. You're hallucinating right now, but you're going to be okay."

He shook his head back and forth, trembling from head to toe and becoming more distressed by the minute. He began to claw at his own arms with his fingernails, and that was the point at which she reached into the pocket of her white coat and grabbed one of the several syringes of sedative that she always kept handy when dealing with patients like this.

Only a few moments later, she had pushed the medicine into his IV and stayed with him until he succumbed and fell into a much more peaceful state. She sighed and dropped the syringe into the biohazard bin near one of the walls, looking at the man and wondering what the hell has happened to him that night to inspire all that he had been babbling about. Granted, she'd heard stranger things before - one patient who had taken some bad acid once swore to her that he was Beyoncé and was rather miffed that she wouldn't let him leave the hospital to go home to Jay-Z - but car doors and heads getting cut off... that was new, and disturbing.

After leaving him in the room, she headed back towards the nurse's station and asked the nurse currently in charge, "What's the deal with the homeless guy? Did he bring himself in?"

"Sure did," the nurse replied, an older black lady named Louise who had been nursing longer than many of the other nurses had been alive. "Came stumbling in here saying someone was out to get him and that we needed to keep him safe. Something about car doors too. Why? What'd he tell you?"

"... Pretty much the same," she replied. "And something about seeing someone get their head cut off."

Louise raised her eyebrows and said, "Better not be no damn heads getting cut off around here. It's only eight in the morning. I haven't had nowhere near enough coffee yet to deal with this."

Siobhan laughed despite the current subject matter. "Yeah, same here. But I'm sure it's probably just the drugs talking. Maybe he saw a car accident."

"Or nothing," Louise pointed out.

"Or nothing," she agreed. "Well, he's gonna be out for awhile, but keep an eye out for me, would you? Page me if he wakes up."

"Will do, doc," Louise smiled, heading towards another patient room, and she smiled back before leaning against the counter and wondering if it really was nothing or if it was something. Paranoia was common on such bad trips, but there had been something about the way that he'd looked at her and said those strange words. His fear had seemed genuine, real, and truly terrifying.

But she had no way of knowing who he was or where he had come from or what he had truly seen, at least not until he woke up. So, she reached up into her hair and double checked that her long curls were behaving and staying in its bun, and then she headed off to check on her other patients.

Over the next hour, the man's words and eyes haunted her, staying ever-present in the back of her mind and getting on her nerves as she worked and went about her usual work. She stitched up a girl with a gash on her knee and admitted an older man with a case of appendicitis, all of it very routine and mundane for a doctor whose passion was for treating the mind rather than cuts and bruises. She attributed her wandering thoughts to that fact, mentally reminding herself that her rotation here in the ER only had a month left as she made her way back to check on the homeless patient.

She got delayed only two exam rooms away by an intern who asked her for help with a question rather than ask her own, much less friendly, boss. She helped the girl and then headed back on her way, this time making it to the room uninterrupted.

The curtain, she noticed as she walked inside, was drawn closed again, but it had been open when she had left. Also, the room was eerily quiet. Too quiet. There was no beeping like there was in literally every other room, and that wasn't right either, because he had been hooked up to no less than three monitors.

She lingered near the doorway, eyes trailing down the curtain until they fell on a pair of black shoes. Someone was in there, and they weren't anyone medical, because nobody with those kinds of shoes would have been seeing this particular patient. She opened her mouth and prepared to yank the curtain aside and find out who the heck was there, but the sound of a sudden, painful gurgle made her pause.

It lasted all of two seconds before it was over, but it didn't sound good. None of this sounded good, and her inner alarm bells were ringing loudly in her ears as she stepped closer and very cautiously reached towards the curtain. She then pulled it aside just far enough with one slender finger to peer at the bed, and that was when her eyes widened and heart dropped out of her chest.

She saw a cop, in full uniform, standing over the limp body of the homeless man, clutching a pillow that he'd apparently used to smother the man. The monitors showed a flatline but didn't make a sound, and it was as she gaped at the scene that the cop turned around and suddenly made a very brief and very scary moment of eye contact with her.

She dropped the curtain and ran. It was her immediate, knee-jerk reaction, and it was the right one. She ran until she was behind at least two doors that only personnel had access to, and then she hid in a supply closet for good measure, panting for air and heart racing and mind unable to believe what she had just seen.

Her paranoid drug addict homeless patient had been telling the truth. Someone really had been after him - a cop, of all people - and now he was dead. And the man who had killed him had seen her, and now knew that she knew that he had killed the poor man.

She closed her eyes, sunk down to sit on the floor with her back to a shelf full of various medical supplies, and dropped her head into her hands as she tried to steady her breathing. It was no use. She'd seen a lot of patients die in her nearly two years since graduating from med school, but she'd never seen anyone be murdered before and certainly not by someone who was supposed to enforce the law and protect the citizens of New York.

... What did this even mean? What had the homeless man seen that was so bad that a clearly corrupt cop had come to snuff him out at nine in the morning? A car door, over and over, a head being cut off, they're coming...

They came all right. They came, they killed the guy just like he'd predicted, and now she was possibly in some very serious trouble herself.

She freaked out in the supply closet for a good long while. But once that initial panicked, shocked reaction gave way to slightly more logical thinking and a little less shaking, she began to start trying to figure out what to do next. Obviously she couldn't hide in a closet forever, but she didn't want to go and find out if the cop was still there and lurking for a chance to kill her next.

Her first instinct was, naturally, to call the police and ask for help, but... clearly, that option was off the table.

In the end, she eventually regained enough of her wits to get up and head towards the nurses' lounge, which was behind restricted doors and hopefully safe. She was pale and still shaking when she walked in, and Louise, who happened to be there grabbing more coffee, looked up and saw her and immediately began asking questions.

"There you are, Doc! I've been paging you and paging you! Your homeless guy went into cardiac arrest. He's dead. We did what we could, but... you okay?"

She shook her head and sat down in the nearest chair, waving Louise off with a trembling hand. "No, I'm not, and I'm sorry, I just... I don't... feel well..."

"I can tell," Louise said, looking her over. "You're even paler than usual. And your usual is pretty damn pale."

"I know," she groaned. "Look, just... I'll be fine, I just need a minute, okay?"

Louise pursed her lips and replied, "What you need is Jesus, but that's a whole other story."

"I'm Catholic, I've got Him," Siobhan replied with a forced smile. "I'm good."

"Mmhmm," Louise said. "I sure hope so, otherwise all these patients checking out is gonna start getting to you real soon."

You have no idea. "Yeah... I know."

Louise paused and left her then, after giving her a pat on the shoulder and setting down a cup of her own coffee in front of her. She really loved Louise and had since the first day that she'd stepped into the hospital as a terrified but determined intern, but she couldn't know that a murderous cop was on the loose and possibly still even in the building. Nobody else needed to be put in danger.

... But where could she go if she couldn't go to the cops?

Confused, scared and despairing in a rather hardcore fashion, she reached forward and picked up the cup of coffee that Louise had left her. She drank it fast, the slight scalding on her tongue feeling almost good in a strange way after the shock that she'd just endured. But her hands were still shaking, and as she tried to set the cup back down, she ended up dropping it and spilling the rest of the contents on the table.

Cursing at herself, she got up and tried to clean up the mess on autopilot, picking up a newspaper that had been opened and folded on one of the local sections and was now half-soaked in coffee. On her way to drop it in the trash, a small little ad down on the corner of the mostly ruined newspaper caught her eye.

At first she ignored it, thinking of far more important things like her possible new status as a soon to be murder victim. But then, just before she threw away the paper, she looked at the ad again, and this time something poked through the haze of post-traumatic shock in her head.

It was a flashback from college, of all things. Two names that rang a clear bell, Nelson and Murdock, inviting potential clients to call their law firm for a free consult. She blinked a few times, wondering if it was actually the same two guys she had briefly known during her own brief stint as a law student.

Then her eyes widened a little and she dropped the paper into the bin, dragging her phone out of her coat pocket and deciding to let Google answer her question for her. A few shakily-typed words later, she confirmed thanks to a listing of their full names that it was indeed them, and suddenly, she had an idea.

She might not be able to go to the police and she was still terrified, but maybe - maybe - a couple of lawyers could help her. Whatever this was and whatever had caused it to happen, it was obviously much bigger than her and the patient whose murder she had witnessed.

It might have been a long shot, but at that point, it was her only shot, and her mind was already made up to take it.

After just narrowly making out of her shift two hours early with a half-feigned claim of being sick, Siobhan changed back into her street clothes and made her single most paranoid trip across town that she'd ever taken. She clutched her can of military-grade mace tightly in her hand the whole time, looking over her shoulder and keeping her head down when she wasn't jumping and tensing at every noise and brush of someone else passing her on the sidewalk.

In short, she was a mess, and reaching her destination came as a huge relief, even if it wasn't exactly what she'd expected.

She had to check the address on her phone twice after she walked into the building and got an eyeful of the inside. But she was definitely in the right place, and when she got to the right office number, she squinted briefly at the piece of paper taped to the door, bearing the names of its occupants. She would have laughed had she not still been slightly shaking with terror.

Unsure of what to expect, she grabbed the doorknob and opened the door and first peered in a bit. The first thing that she saw in the office was a desk and a blonde lady behind it, who looked up from

papers spread in front of her and seemed shocked to see someone actually walk in.

A little unsure, not knowing if this idea was completely stupid or not, Siobhan walked inside and closed the door behind her as the lady smiled in surprise and said, "Hello! Can I help you?"

"Um... yeah," Siobhan replied, forcing herself to smile back and clutching her purse to her shoulder in a nervous way. "I, uh... I'm kind of having a... really serious problem, and I'm not sure where to go, but I actually used to know the guys that work here, so I thought..."

As if on cue, the already slightly-open door to the left of the receptionist lady's desk burst open and Siobhan instantly recognized the face of the eagerly smiling man who was suddenly there and staring at her like all of his dreams had just come true.

"Hi!" he smiled, thrusting his hand out towards hers immediately. "I'm... wait."

She smiled, shaking his hand even though he hadn't introduced himself, and it was the least forced smile she'd managed all day, since the incident.

His eyes narrowed. "I know you, don't I?"

She nodded, letting go of his hand and gesturing towards his hair. "Yup. I like your hair shorter. Makes you look more like a lawyer and less like a hippie."

Foggy's grin returned at full force as he chuckled at her words and said, "Oh man! Look at you! I haven't seen you since... Jesus, what, five years ago?"

"I'm honestly surprised that you remember me at all," she shrugged, though she was being entirely honest.

"Oh no, I'm really good at remembering faces. Plus the hair. I mean, who could forget that?" he said, gesturing at her rather wild red hair, which was trying its best to escape its latest haphazard bun. Siobhan laughed at that, and then Foggy glanced at Karen before helpfully supplying, "This is Karen, she works for us as you can obviously tell, and Matt is... well, I thought he was right behind me, but... Matt!"

She smiled at Karen, trying to calm herself though she was no less anxious than she had been she had first walked in. She couldn't get the faces of both her dead patient and his killer out of her head, and both were flashing behind her eyes until she looked back up and was momentarily distracted by the other lawyer emerging from their office.

Foggy briefly patted his arm after he walked out, walking stick in hand and eyes hidden behind dark glasses. "Matt, you remember Siobhan from college, right? She was in one of our classes until she dropped out to go become a hotshot doctor instead."

"Siobhan," Matt said quietly, nodding in her direction with a small smile. "Yeah. Wow. It's been a long time."

"Yeah it has," she agreed with a small smile, looking him over subtly. Time had been good to him, it seemed. His hair was less floppy than she remembered and he might have been even more handsome now, older and maybe a little more broad and... well. Like she said, had been good to him.

"How have you been?" he asked, sincerely interested. "Last I heard, you got into a pretty good med school upstate."

"Oh yeah, I did," she nodded, looking between both men. "I graduated two years ago. I'm a resident now down at Mercy."

"That's awesome!" Foggy replied. "What's your specialty?"

"Psychiatry," she replied with a proud, if still forced, smile.

"Oh, that's right," Foggy nodded, grinning again. "Now I remember. You always were good at getting in people's heads."

She smiled back, about to reply when Karen spoke up unexpectedly, looking at Siobhan "Not to interrupt, but... you said you had a serious problem that you needed help with?"

"What's going on?" Matt asked, both men growing more serious looking as Siobhan drew a breath and tried to ignore the brand new burst of anxiety within.

"Um... well..."

"Let's sit down first," Foggy suggested, and only a few moments later, Siobhan found herself seated across from them in their office, Karen to her left as she sat ready to take notes. She was offered coffee along the way not once but twice, but she was fairly sure that she would simply expire if she partook of any further stimulant. What she needed was a drink, but she doubted they kept that handy.

"All right," Foggy said once they were all seated and ready to begin. "So what kind of problem are we talking about? We're pretty much open to... any kind of case here."

She held her breath and looked around, wondering if this really was the right thing to do. She didn't know this Karen girl, and she really barely knew the two men in front of her. They might have been old friends from college, but she had barely known them for a year before they parted ways and lost touch. They might as well have been strangers now, but somehow, what little history they did share was a comfort to her in those moments, and it was the first comfort she'd had all day.

"I had a patient," she began, clearing her throat when her words came out a little hoarse. "He was in the ER today, before my shift started. One of the other doctors gave me his case. He was homeless and very, very high on a lot of drugs. He was babbling about someone being out to get him and someone coming to kill him, but I thought he was just delusional. I didn't even... I just... I sedated him when he started to get violent, and then I... I left him for awhile and checked on my other patients."

She paused, looking from Foggy to Matt, who was listening very intently and carefully, if the look on his face and unmoving posture was any indication. She could see just a sliver of his eyes behind his glasses, just a fraction of occasionally blinking eyelashes, and she unknowingly made them her focal point as she forced out her next words.

"When I came back to check on him, a cop was in his room, smothering him with a pillow. I couldn't do anything, I got there too late. He was dead, and the cop turned around and saw me. I ran away as fast as I could, but I saw it and I saw the cop and now I don't know what to do because obviously I can't go to the police about this, but..."

Her voice was shaking and tears were threatening to spill down her cheeks, the fear that she'd been trying to cope with rushing out of her along with her words.

"Slow down," Matt said, his voice unexpectedly soothing to her battered nerves. "Just take a breath, okay?"

She nodded, taking a deep breath that felt as shaky as it sounded.

"You're sure it was a cop?" He asked.

"Yes," she nodded. "I'm positive."

"Do you know his name?" Foggy asked.

"No," she replied. "All I saw was his face, really."

"Then you could describe him," Matt surmised.

"Yeah, I could. "I don't think I could ever forget his face. And the way that he looked at me, I don't think he'll forget mine either."

"Damn," Foggy said, furrowing his brows. "What did this homeless guy know that made him a target of a dirty cop?"

She shrugged. "He said he saw someone get killed. Something about a car and a car door, and a head being cut off. But he was under a lot of influence, so I don't know if he was just saying things or if he really did see something, but..." She swallowed and then looked at all three people surrounding her, shaking her head before going on, "I didn't know where to go, and I was freaking out so bad, and I saw your ad in the newspaper and thought that maybe, since the cops can't help me, maybe you can. If you can't, I'm sorry for coming here and I'm sorry for wasting your time, but..."

"You're not," Matt assured her. "You're not wasting our time. We'll do everything in our power to help you."

As Siobhan let out a relieved breath, Foggy side-eyed Matt and asked, "You sure that we can? We're talking about the NYPD and dirty cops and..." He turned back to Siobhan and squinted, "Decapitations?"

"We'll do what we can," Matt replied evenly, still angled towards her. "Do you have somewhere safe to stay?"

"I have my apartment, but..." she trailed off, not really wanting to let it show how utterly terrified she was to go back there alone. She imagined the cop lurking in a corner inside waiting to off her, whether that was realistic or not.

"Do you have anywhere you can go, somewhere else you can stay for awhile?" Matt asked.

She shook her head, momentarily forgetting that he couldn't see the gesture. "No. My family doesn't live here and my friends aren't really... I don't have a lot of friends outside of work and I'm afraid I'd be putting them in danger if I asked."

"You can't go home," he replied. "It's the first place they'll look if they're trying to find you."

Just as she was ready to despair and resign herself to likely spending every last penny to her name on hotel rooms under some random alias, he added, "You can stay with me."

She blinked, glancing at Foggy who seemed not at all surprised by the offer before insisting, "Oh, no. No, I can figure something else out. If they are looking for me then -"

"It's okay," Foggy shrugged. "He does this kind of thing more often than you'd think."

"But -"

"It's true," Karen piped up. "I was in a bad situation too, not that long ago, and I didn't have anywhere to go. Matt let me stay with him while they worked on my case."

Siobhan stared at her for a moment, then turned back to the men as she couldn't help but remark, "You guys really... run a hell of a practice here."

"Yeah," Foggy laughed shortly. "Apparently we really go the extra mile for our clients."

Judging by the look of the place and how flabbergasted they'd all been by her arrival, their clientele was likely nonexistent at this point, but Siobhan didn't care about that. She was starting to think that she really had come to the right place, even if she was still unsure of how wise it was to stay at a defenseless blind man's house while some evil cop was out to get her.

"Okay," she said quietly, taking another breath. "Um... do you guys take credit card?"

Matt chuckled, and Foggy replied with slightly wide eyes, "We will literally take anything."

She smiled, and for a moment, she felt okay. She knew it wouldn't last and sleeping was probably going to be next to impossible later, but this sure beat hiding in a supply closet and crying alone.

"All right, well, give Karen here a full description of the cop that you saw, and everything that you can remember about him and what you saw," Foggy said, standing up from the table. "We'll be right back."

"Okay," she nodded, watching them make their way out of the room. "Thank you again. Both of you."

Matt nodded towards her voice. "You're welcome."

Once they left, she took a deep breath and prepared to relive her ordeal from earlier that day for the sake of giving a thorough description. She felt better now, a lot less alone and less terrified, but that didn't stop her hands from still shaking as she began to speak.

Meanwhile, in front of the coffeemaker on the other side of the office, Foggy wondered aloud, "Why can't any of my old crushes from college show up here out of the blue? Not that I'd wish any of this on them, but I'm just saying."

"I didn't have a crush," Matt replied, and Foggy gave him a knowing look as he grabbed a styrofoam cup.

"Really? Because I was there, and I'm calling bullshit now, just like I did then."

"It was five years ago," Matt shrugged. "More than five years ago."

"Yeah, and now suddenly she's here and staying with you," Foggy noted. "By the way, next time we need to protect a beautiful woman from the bad guys, can I get a turn being the one to heroically offer them a place to stay?"

"Sure, next time," Matt replied with a small smile, following Foggy out of the room.

"Watch, now that you said that, she'll be the last one we get," Foggy sighed. "Next one will be a dude, mark my words."

"Probably."

After night had fallen and Siobhan had given a full retelling of the day's events and every detail that she could remember, she found herself suddenly exhausted and ready to curl up into a ball and sleep for a week now that the leftover adrenaline had evaporated. But she hung on and tried to keep her head straight as she bade the others farewell and let Matt take her home to his apartment. It wasn't too far, but the whole way there, she kept her eyes wide open and checked every shadow they encountered to make sure it wasn't the cop, ready to burst out and put a bullet in both of their heads.

Paranoia was exhausting. She held a brand new sympathy for the schizophrenic patients she'd cared for in the past.

She hadn't known exactly what to expect in terms of what sort of apartment Matt was leading her to, and they stayed mostly silent until they arrived, largely because she was too busy anticipating her impending doom to say anything. But once they were in the building and walking to the right door, some of her wits returned to her.

"So you do this sort of thing... often?" she asked quietly as he unlocked the door.

"Not as often as it probably seems," he said, briefly turning towards her before opening the door and gesturing for her to walk in first.

She stared at him for a moment, partially because she knew he couldn't know that she was and could therefore get away with it, and partially because she was still trying to pinpoint all that had changed about him over the years. But then she snapped out of it and looked inside the apartment for a second before walking into it.

She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but whatever it had been, it wasn't this. Her eyes scanned over the space as he closed and locked the door behind them, the first words making their way out of her mouth being, "It's very... bright."

"Doesn't bother me," he said with a slightly ironic smile, walking out in front of her and shedding his jacket as she rolled her eyes at herself.

"Right. I'm sorry. I'm just tired and..."

"I know," he replied as she stood there, clutching her purse and feeling suddenly slightly nervous. "You've been through a lot today. Are you hungry? I don't have a lot but..."

"No," she shook her head. "I mean, I am, but the thought of eating..." Then she paused and admitted, "I wouldn't say no to a drink, though."

"I can help you there," he replied understandingly. "Go on and have a seat."

She nodded, almost offering for a moment to go and get the drink herself before her sluggish brain caught up with her and reminded her that this was his place and he was quite capable of such tasks himself. Instead, she headed towards the couch and sat down, placing her purse aside and looking at the two large windows to the right of the couch. The giant neon billboard on the other side of windows was quite jarring and horribly placed, but she only dwelled on it for a moment before she felt the couch depress next to her.

She turned her head and smiled, taking the offered glass gratefully from Matt's hand. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he replied quietly, sitting back with his own glass, though he didn't gulp it as immediately as she did.

The burn felt good, and she drank half of it in one mouthful, even if she didn't technically like scotch all that much. But she'd never liked it more than she did that night.

"Do you have plans tomorrow?" he asked, interrupting her thoughts.

"Just work," she replied. "I work seven to seven. And... I'm going to need to stop by my place and feed my cat in the morning." Poor little Oreo. Still a kitten and all alone in her dark apartment that night, but at least she'd been fed already that day.

"You might want to call a neighbor and ask them to take care of that," Matt suggested.

"I don't really know any of my neighbors," she admitted. "Just technically this one guy who lives below me and keeps asking me out, but I definitely don't want to ask him for help."

He smiled for a second, then replied, "Maybe we could ask Karen to take care of the cat. I don't think she'd mind."

As a woman who in general despised asking for help from anyone, for a number of long-existing reasons, she couldn't help but reply, "I can do it. I can't avoid my apartment forever."

"No, but you came to us for help," he pointed out. "That's what I'm trying to do."

"I know," she nodded quietly, looking down at the glass in her hand. "And I'm incredibly grateful for everything you've already done. I was so scared today and I had no idea what to do or where to go... and it was totally by chance that I saw the newspaper ad."

"I'm glad you did," he said. "But you're in the middle of something very serious. You need to be careful. Is there any way you can take some time off work?"

"No," she frowned. "I'm just a resident. A first year resident, actually. I had to really lay it on thick to leave the hospital just two hours early today."

"Okay," he replied. "Can you keep a weapon on you there?"

"Well, I'm not supposed to."

"Do it anyway, just in case he shows up again. And if you see him, call us."

"Okay," she agreed, though she wondered what help two lawyers were supposed to be in that kind of situation. But she didn't ask, because any help was better than no help.

"Once we find out who this guy is," Matt went on, "we can start building a case against him and find out what's going on. I have a contact at the police department. We're gonna figure this out."

She wished that he could know how comforting his words were, even if she was still skeptical of what they could actually do. "I feel kind of bad for showing up out of nowhere and dumping all of this on you. I feel like the worst old college friend ever in the history of old college friends."

That made him laugh, just a little. "I wish the circumstances were better too, for your sake. Other than all of this, though, it sounds like things have gone well for you."

She smiled, nodding. "Yeah, they have. Wasn't easy, but... I made it and I'm happy."

"How are things with your parents?" he asked. "If I remember correctly, they weren't happy with your change of plans."

Surprised that he remembered that whole story, she smiled again. "They were furious. And they meant it when they said they wouldn't support me if I dropped out of law school for med school. But I figured it out. They got over it once my little sister decided to become a lawyer. She's got two years left."

"So you're the family rebel," he noted.

"Yup. And she's their pride and joy, taking on the family legacy," she chuckled. "They had a heart attack when I told them I was moving here for good, after everything that happened a few years ago."

"Understandable," Matt replied. "Alien invasions can be a little off-putting."

"Little bit," she smiled, again looking him over. He hadn't touched his drink, and she wondered if she could steal it after she finished hers. "But I guess we're both still in the middle of our... humble beginnings."

"You're calling my luxurious office humble?" he joked, and she laughed. "I'm offended."

"Hey, it's no worse than my sticking band-aids on people in the ER all day," she smiled. "I mean, I love what I do, but I'm not there yet, you know?"

"Yeah, I do," he nodded.

They paused then, and Siobhan blinked down at the glass in her hand. "Wow. For a minute there I almost forgot about the whole... target on my back thing."

"Everything's gonna be okay," he assured her, sounding like he really believed it. "I'm gonna keep you safe."

She was still skeptical. But the way that he sounded so confident and assured that he really could keep her safe, she couldn't help but think maybe he really could.

She didn't know it, but her heartbeat reached the slowest and steadiest rhythm that it had since the incident had first occurred. Her breaths were easier and further apart, less tense and short, and they sat in comfortable silence until he said, "You should try to sleep. You need it after the day you've had."

"Yeah," she agreed, just before finishing off her drink and wincing again at the burn of the alcohol as it went down her throat.

"You can change if you want," he said, standing up. "I'll walk you to my room."

She stared at him blankly for a moment. "Oh, I... no, I can sleep here on the couch."

He smiled briefly in amusement. "You sure about that?"

She glanced at the windows, then shrugged. "I sleep with my TV on. It's no big deal."

"Maybe not, but still, I insist," he replied, leaving little room for argument.

She wanted to argue anyway, but really, she just didn't have the energy to. She could have laid down on the hard floor and passed out effortlessly, but he was too nice to accept no for an answer and she was too tired to try to resist. Giving in, she stood up and said quietly, "You didn't have to do any of this, you know. Give me a place to stay, help me like this."

"Yes I did," he replied as she set her glass down next to his on the small table.

"It's very Catholic of you," she grinned. "I don't think you've changed one bit."

He didn't answer that, instead just smiling faintly and then leading her to his room. She knew that she was wrong, that he had changed, but she still couldn't put her finger on exactly how and her brain was far too overworked to try to figure it. She left the thought for another day and instead quietly followed him, thanking him again when he left her alone in his bedroom holding one of his shirts to change into.

Being on the shorter side, the shirt was a bit dwarfing but all the more comfortable for it. After a brief few moments in the bathroom and a few more spent fighting with her hair to keep out of her face, she decided to peek out into the living room one last time before collapsing into a coma.

He was throwing a blanket on the couch, his glasses off of his face and sitting on the table next to their empty cups. He seemed to hear her coming, pausing and turning her way a little as she lingered in the doorway and felt suddenly out of sorts.

"I just wanted to thank you again," she said, seeing his eyes for the first time that day. She remembered thinking before, years ago, that they were nice on the rare few occasions that she'd seen them.

"It's no problem," he assured her.

"Last chance to let me take the couch instead," she said with a small chuckle.

He smiled and shook his head. "Not a chance. Go get some sleep."

"Fine," she smiled, fiddling with the overly long sleeves dangling from her wrists. "Goodnight."

He returned the sentiment quietly before she turned and walked back to his room, suddenly even more exhausted now and feeling like she'd been hit by a train and left for dead.

She climbed into his bed and nearly groaned with relief the minute her head hit the pillow. His bed was better than hers back home, his sheets absolutely luxurious compared to the cheap cotton ones she tolerated in order to remain frugal. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that they smelled pretty good too, but before she could figure out why, she was unconscious and lost to a deep, exhausted slumber.