The world fell apart. Didn't you notice?

She hasn't spoken a full sentence since then that hasn't felt like a lie; hasn't felt like the bitter taste of if only you knew. Her hands still shake, when she isn't paying attention. Her voice, too, if Matt's comment meant anything. Your voice sounds different. God, if only he knew why. She's tried to force it past her lips so many times - I killed someone. I didn't have to. I'm a murderer I'm a murderer I'm

She can't. The only thing some days that's keeping her sane is the way Matt's voice is a little softer when he's talking to only her, and if she ever saw the expression on his face that she sees every time she looks in the mirror -

She'd probably throw herself in with the gun.

So, she pretends.

Karen, did something happen?

That was her out. That was her chance, to drag the truth out of her throat, to get this crushing weight off her chest. To maybe, finally, be able to breathe.

Instead, she just tries to get through one day at a time.

She wakes up one night from a particularly vivid nightmare and a wicked hangover - both likely caused by the empty bottle of scotch sitting on her bedside table. She's given up trying not to drink - her only other option is never going to sleep, because every time she closes her eyes she's back in that room with a loaded gun and a body and the sensation that she's just done something she might not be able to live with.

By the time she gets to the office, she has concealer to cover the dark circles and half a dozen mints to get rid of the smell of scotch, but no amount of calming music is stopping the shaking in her hands or the way her breath keeps coming shorter and shorter and -

"Karen?"

She looks up from the desk with a forced smile, until she remembers that she doesn't need to force a smile because it's Matt.

"Um, yeah?"

"You're here early again." He says, with a slight frown. "How much sleep have you actually been getting?"

"Oh, you know, I'm an early-to-bed kind of person." She says as chipperly as she can manage, trying to steady her breathing.

"Foggy told me you've been here until 3 am the past two weeks." He reiterates calmly. Karen takes a shaky breath.

"Okay, fine. I've been here a few extra hours. But we have clients now - like, real, actual clients, and I just don't want to get behind." He doesn't look convinced. "I'll start easing up, I promise." She stares at her laptop screen and begins typing furiously, hoping that he'll get the message.

"Karen." Matt says softly, forcing her hands to a stop. "If something happened -"

"Nothing happened." She slams her hands down on the table, and it comes out more harshly than she'd intended. There's a long silence. "Nothing happened." She repeats, more quietly. "I'm fine."

"Okay." He replies, but she knows he doesn't believe her.

The world fell apart. It's still true. It's been more true every day since, except this time it isn't the world outside that's falling - it's only a world made up of some skin and bones, and a heart that's always beating too fast for its own good.

She doesn't think about it. The world needs saving, and - well, if no one else will, she supposes she has a lot to make up for.

He doesn't mention it again - not until two months later, when she's curled up on the floor with an all-too-familiar bottle clutched between desperate fingers.

"Karen?" He calls, and she's too drunk to stand up so she stays where she is, cursing the day she gave him a spare key to her apartment. For emergencies, she'd said, and as far as she can tell nothing about this is a goddamn emergency.

(You can't call it an emergency if it's been happening for three months, two weeks, six days. You can't call it an emergency if it never seems to stop.)

"What're you doin' here?" She slurs, making a half-hearted attempt to hide the bottle behind her back, and then giving it up almost immediately because, right, he can't see it in the first place. She hears the sound of footsteps and a cane, and then Matt rounds the corner.

"What's wrong?" He asks immediately, and she laughs bitterly.

"What isn't?" She takes another swig from the bottle.

"Are you drunk?" His voice sounds surprised, and maybe a bit worried.

"Nope, I'm just - I'm just r'laxed. Yep, yep. I'm just -" She tries to stand up, but a quick rush of gravity sends her stumbling forward. Matt's quickly extended hand on her elbow is the only thing that prevents her from capsizing.

"Any reason why?"

"Yeah, there's a reason." She laughs and it turns into a cough. "But I - I can't tell you."

"Why not?" His voice is too soft, and he's standing so close to her that she could just lean into him if she wanted to. The thought normally would be terrifying, but now - now it's just a necessary comfort. She lets herself fall the extra few inches it takes until she's nestled into his shoulder.

"Because you'd hate me." The words are muffled through the fabric of his shirt. "You, n' Foggy - you'd . . . you'd . . ."

"I would never hate you, Karen." And there he is, with those goddamn words that keep throwing her off balance.

"Yes, you would." She can feel hot tears streaming down her face, but maybe he won't notice. She doesn't really know why she's crying in the first place. "It's why you almost didn't take my case in the first place, right?" She giggles through the tears, lifting her head a little. "Case, place; I'm a poet and I didn't see it. Saw it?"

Matt chuckles. "Maybe you should get to bed."

She shakes her head viciously. "I don't need to go to bed I'm a - I'm a sleep machine. I don't need any sleep! Sleep has too many nightmares, too many - I don't want to see him anymore, okay Matt? I don't want to see him."

"Shhh, it's okay, Karen, it's okay -"

"No! He's always there, he's - he's always there. He's haunting me."

"Why would he be haunting you?" He's humoring her, but she's too drunk to care. She'll probably care in the morning, but that's only if she remembers any of this.

"Because I killed him."

It slips out, and then her eyes are widening. Everything is blurry and off-balance but she knows that she was most definitely not supposed to say that. Not even to this blur of a person. "You can't tell Matt, okay? Or Foggy. Don't tell Matt or Foggy, they'll hate me -"

"Shhh, Karen, it'll be alright."

He lowers her onto the couch, where she curls up onto his chest, dropping the bottle on the floor. The world is spinning, and she can feel herself drifting off. "I don't want them to hate me." She whispers, and it's the last thing she knows before everything goes dark.

She wakes up the next morning with a headache and a growing pit in her stomach. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe it was a -

Matt is sitting on her couch.

"Did you sleep here?" It's accusatory, but she's strictly on offense here. It's the only way she'll ever make it out of this with her heart intact.

"I didn't want you to run off before I got a chance to talk to you."

"There's nothing to talk about." She grabs two aspirin tablets from the medicine drawer, and throws them down with a glass of water.

"Karen, how much do you remember about last night?" He asks quietly, calmly, and god, this would be so much easier if her hands would just stop shaking.

"Nothing." The lie comes out harsh, fake. "Absolutely nothing."

He sits there, waiting, for a long moment. "You could've told me."

"Why?" Her voice cuts through the air. "So you could tell me to go to hell? So I could watch the person I - so I could watch you hate me? You and Foggy both, you're - you're all I have."

Matt shakes his head. She tries not to look at him - maybe it'll make what he'll say next easier.

"Karen, I could never hate you."

It doesn't fit in with what she was expecting; doesn't fit in with bitch and psycho and get the hell away from me.

"Why not?" She spits out bitterly. "I do."

It takes thirty minutes - the worst thirty minutes of her life - to tell him. Through stuttering words and half-broken sentences scrambled in with I'm sorry's, she tells Matt the story of how she became a murderer.

"So there you go." She says thickly, once she's finished. "If you're going to call the cops, can you - can you at least not tell Foggy, until after?"

"I'm not going to call the cops."

She lifts her head from where it's been resting in her hands for the past five minutes. "I killed someone, Matt."

"Someone who was going to kill you. It was self defense."

A half-sob escapes her lips. "You can't believe that."

"I do."

It's maybe the only thing that keeps her from exploding. So, for the first time that day, she puts her head in her hands and she cries.

"Sleep." He tells her, after she's too exhausted to cry anymore. It isn't a request; and when she shakes her head, he curls his arms around her gently, until she reluctantly leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes.

She sleeps dreamlessly for the first time in months, tucked into the warmth of his arms and surrounded by the irreplaceable feeling of home.