After Benjamin Poindexter escapes prison, he disappears. No dramatic new identity, just a cheap apartment, a fake name, and a quiet attempt to stay beneath the radar. To the people in the building, he is “Tony.” Y/N lives directly across the hall. She doesn’t know anything about him beyond what she’s observed in passing. He’s quiet, keeps mostly to himself, and sometimes she catches him coming home at strange hours. They occasionally exchange a few words in the hallway, usually something mundane. “Morning, Tony.” “Morning.” “You getting that package?” “Yeah.” “Your door’s open.” “I know.” Little things. Y/N works at a little retro diner down the street, the kind with red vinyl booths, chrome trim, milkshakes, and a jukebox that hasn’t worked properly since 1998. Tony has seen her in her waitress uniform more than once when she’s leaving for work. Eventually, he starts stopping by. At first, he tells himself it’s because the coffee is decent. Then it’s because she’s working. Then it’s because he likes hearing her talk. Eventually, he realizes he’s memorized her schedule. He knows when she leaves for work, when she comes home, which days she works late, which pie she likes, and how she takes her coffee. He knows far more about her than she knows about him, and that should probably bother him. It doesn’t. It makes him feel strangely calm. Until Fisk’s Task Force begins tightening its grip on the city. People are being stopped, questioned, detained, and arrested with increasingly little justification. The atmosphere becomes tense. Y/N starts coming home talking about customers who’ve been harassed or people who’ve disappeared after being taken in for questioning. Tony listens. He doesn’t tell her that he’s been watching the Task Force, too. Because Benjamin Poindexter has his own reasons for hating Wilson Fisk. And when he finally decides to eliminate Fisk’s Task Force, he’s methodical about it, taking out one target at a time. But Y/N has no idea until one afternoon at the diner. A confrontation breaks out. A couple of Task Force officers come in, already aggressive, demanding information about someone they believe has been inside the diner. Y/N tries to explain that she doesn’t know anything. They don’t care. One officer grabs her arm. She immediately protests, “Let go of me.” “You’re coming with us.” “I haven’t done anything.” “Save it.” Customers begin staring. Someone pulls out their phone. Y/N tries to pull away, but the officer tightens his grip. And then something hits him. Hard. His head snaps sideways. The entire diner goes silent. Another officer barely has time to reach for his weapon before something strikes his wrist, sending the gun skidding across the floor. Then another shot. Then another. The officers collapse. Y/N freezes. She doesn’t understand what just happened. And then she sees him. Bullseye. Standing outside the diner. Cold. Focused. Terrifyingly calm. His eyes meet hers through the window. For one brief moment, Benjamin sees the realization in her face. Not that he’s Bullseye, just that someone saved her. He disappears before she can process it. Later, Y/N is shaken enough that she barely notices the man waiting outside their apartment building. “Tony?” He turns. She rushes toward him. “You’re not going to believe what happened.” Benjamin already knows, but he lets her tell him. “They tried to arrest me. I didn’t even do anything. And then someone killed them.” He studies her face. “You okay?” “I think so.” “Did they hurt you?” She hesitates. “My arm.” His jaw tightens. “Let me see.” She holds out her wrist. There are red marks where the officer grabbed her. Something dark flashes across his expression. Y/N doesn’t notice. She just says quietly, “Whoever that guy was… he saved me.” Benjamin looks at the marks, then at her. “Yeah,” he says. “He did.” She doesn’t realize she’s talking to him, and Benjamin doesn’t correct her. From that night onward, something changes. Benjamin becomes deeply protective of her. Not in an obvious way at first. He starts walking behind her when she comes home late. He fixes the broken lock on her apartment door without telling her. When a suspicious man starts hanging around the diner, the man mysteriously stops appearing. And whenever she asks how he seems to know so much about what’s happening around her, he always has some mundane explanation. “Lucky guess.” “You mentioned it before.” “I saw him.” “Small building.” But his attachment becomes increasingly intense because Y/N doesn’t fear him. She doesn’t know who he is. She doesn’t look at him and see a weapon. She sees Tony. The strange, quiet neighbor who sometimes sits beside her in the hallway when she can’t sleep. The man who remembers her favorite pie. The man who barely talks but always listens. And Benjamin becomes addicted to that version of himself, the version she unknowingly brings out.