Chapter Text
"You look like shit," Foggy said, not unkindly, when Matt walked into the office several hours late.
"Yeah, well."
"Everything okay?" There was a certain tone Foggy used, one he'd developed after learning about Daredevil. One that meant he was treading carefully but that he was, without question, scared.
"You remember Jason?" Matt asked, because he'd resolved to protect the people he loved, even if that meant protecting them from worrying about him.
"Art's Jason?"
"Yeah."
I never wanted kids.
"It's a long story but he and Jessica were involved in that thing at the city archives last night and then he climbed out Claire's window this morning."
Foggy inhaled sharply in that way that meant he was worried but, mostly, curious. It meant he had a million questions. Matt continued before he could start asking them. "Yes he's fine, mostly. No I don't know why he fled out the window."
Foggy frowned audibly. "You're worried, though."
Matt shrugged, gripping his cane tightly. "Art's worried. And I'm pretty sure he's got a concussion so I'm a bit invested in finding him."
"Well, I've barely met the guy but I'm pretty sure fleeing out a window sends a clear message." The chair scraped against the floor as Foggy sat down. "I just think, maybe, you shouldn't hunt down the kid that acts like a stray dog."
Matt laughed, but it was more of an automatic response. A sound he made when Foggy said things in that particular tone when he wasn't fully listening. It was kind of funny, though. The comparison.
He had a feeling that, if he did find Jason, he might actually try to bite him. The humor of it resolved into something bitter and sad and Matt was saved from thinking about it any further because Karen was about to walk in.
"Incoming," he said, when the clip of her heels against the sidewalk was only a few feet away from their front door.
"You two look grave," she said.
"You remember that boxer I was telling you about?" Foggy asked and Matt looked up sharply. "What! He fascinates me!"
"The only with the—" he could hear Karen's nail against her skin and imagined she was dragging a finger across her throat. Matt felt ill.
"Yep."
"What about him?" Karen tossed her bag onto the table and sat down next to Foggy.
"Matt is...concerned."
"Don't you have work to do?" Matt asked. They both ignored him. Karen didn't even work with them anymore, not officially, but the New York Bulletin's office was right around the corner. Sometimes it felt like she'd never left.
Usually that was a good thing.
"Seems like he's a troublemaker," Karen said, and it was objectively true. Besides, Karen laughed a little when she said it, like she found it endearing.
It was just that Matt could still hear the old kind of sadness in his voice, when he'd said his parents were dead. He could still hear the clench of his jaw, after. He could still hear Art cry.
"What's that make Frank, then?" Matt asked, and his voice was too sharp.
Karen stared at him a moment, lips parted but not speaking, like she was trying to restrain herself. Matt wished, a little bit, that she'd throw something at him just to release the tension.
"Well," she said eventually, "I have to go."
She stood mechanically, in disjointed movements and Matt pressed his knuckles to his lips. He shouldn’t have said it, had regretted it immediately.
“I’ll see you both later,” Karen said.
“Bye,” Foggy sighed.
And there was a moment where Matt knew they were both looking at him, waiting for him to say something — and he wanted to, desperately. He just couldn’t get the words out, couldn't think of anything that could make it better and then the moment had passed.
The door banged shut behind Karen and Foggy said, "Nice one."
They sat in silence for several long minutes before Matt stood up, shoving his chair back. “I have to go.”
“We have shit to do!” Foggy called after him halfheartedly, making no move to stop him.
Jason wasn’t in his apartment. Matt was fairly certain he hadn’t been at all, not since he’d left Claire’s. The whole place smelled like him, of course. It smelled like vanilla protein powder and cheap, stale coffee and sweat. It didn’t smell like blood and gun powder and Claire Temple’s couch.
Which meant he’d climbed out a window around seven in the morning and, five hours later, still hadn’t come home. He was just out there, somewhere. Alone.
I just think, maybe, you shouldn't hunt down the kid that acts like a stray dog.
“Fuck that,” Matt murmured, climbing back out Jason’s window and heading for the rooftop.
Jason was, admittedly, following Jessica around. Which was fine and normal. It was just that he wanted so badly to find those kids and he knew she wouldn’t let him help, if she saw him. No other reason.
It wasn’t like he was afraid of the questions she and the others might ask. He wasn’t afraid of what he might tell them, if they asked.
So Jason followed Jessica Jones around the city for hours, watching from the rooftops. It was a game he was intimately familiar with. Sometimes, Jason figured he’d spent more time on rooftops than the ground. It was second nature to follow her all the way to a building across the street from a fancy hotel.
Where Jason preferred rooftops, he was discovering that Jessica Jones was partial to a fire escape. He could see her, through the fire escape landing between them, if he looked over the edge of the building.
He could see, when she took a swig from her flask and pulled her phone out of her pocket. It was hard to hear her, but he could make it out if he really strained.
“Hi!” she chirped, “I’m Stacy, I was in Mr. Vasiliev’s room last night, if you know what I mean, and I left my earring in there.”
The voice she put on for the phone call was so startlingly out of character, something between Valley Girl and the Jersey shore, that Jason had to duck down behind the edge wall with a hand over his mouth to stifle a surprised laugh.
“I know,” she went on, which he supposed meant she hadn’t heard him and so wouldn’t be making her way to the roof to throw him off of it. “I know, it’s just that I can’t remember the room number. We were a little busy—"
A box truck drove past and the rest of Jessica’s conversation was lost to the noises of New York City.
He didn’t know who Vasiliev was, but he imagined it had to be related to the case. It had to be about McKenzie Demolition and the kids. Eric.
It felt impossible that Jason had talked to Eric’s mom only two days before. It felt impossible that so little time had passed. Jason missed the gym so violently, for a moment, that he almost missed the fact that Jessica Jones was on the move.
“What?” she said sharply, cutting through Jason’s longing. “Malcolm what the hell are you talking about?”
Jason peeked over the edge of the roof in time to watch Jessica trudge down the fire escape. Which really fucked up the half-baked not-really plan he’d had in the back of his head. He was going to follow Jessica into the hotel and reveal himself at a point where it was too inconvenient to ditch him.
Now she was hopping down onto the sidewalk and walking away from the hotel entirely.
Jason flopped onto his back and stared at the early afternoon sky. His head hurt. The sky was too blue and the clouds were too white and he’d forgotten about the probable concussion. His head hurt, looking at the sky.
He was often stuck by how much different the weather was, compared to Gotham. If he was home, Jason was positive it would be raining. Almost two-hundred miles away but he still felt the pull of Gotham. He missed her. Missed the ever-grey skies and persistent rain and orange street lamps. He missed the bat signal, a little bit. If he let himself think about it — which he didn't.
Gotham wasn't his, anymore. He'd lost. It's him or me, you have to decide. Besides, Jason was quite familiar with longing for things he couldn't have.
Jason made one quick google search about Vasiliev while he smoked a cigarette, and then he jogged across the street. He walked right up to the front desk of the hotel with a quarter of a plan, knowledge of at least a couple exits, and a semi-decent Russian accent.
He hoped the bruises helped with the ruse.
“Hello, how can I help you?” a middle aged woman, whose name tag said Pam, asked without looking up from her computer.
“Hello,” Jason said, dropping his voice down into a slightly lower register and hoping to god he remembered how to sound Russian. “I need room card for Mr. Vasiliev.”
Pam looked up, narrowing her drawn-on eyebrows at him. “Mr. Vasiliev is out to lunch.”
“Yes,” Jason said impatiently. “He forget medicine and send me but I don’t have room card.” Jason looked around before leaning in. “Please, Miss Pam, he will be very angry if I take long.”
He tried to look desperate enough to elicit concern and sympathy and it must have worked, because the woman’s eyebrows had taken on a much less incredulous look.
“Lemme make one for you quick, honey,” she said. She even wrote the room number on the back for him, which helped immensely but left Jason with the feeling that she had judged him to be a bit of an idiot.
A win was a win.
Jason pressed his ear to room 602 before swiping the key card, just in case Vasiliev had left someone behind. If he had, Jason couldn't hear them. It was a risk he was willing to take. Or, at least, a risk he was willing to ignore.
He crept through the massive hotel room, sweeping from one end to the other checking for people or cameras. Empty. He dropped into a leather armchair by a window — he could see his rooftop from where he sat.
The steady thrum of a headache pulsed behind his eyes. Probably, he should’ve gone home. Probably, he should be asleep right now.
Probably, he should have stayed on that lady’s couch and drank the water Art brought him.
Jason shoved to his feet and began to methodically pick apart the hotel room in a way that, he hoped, wouldn’t leave any sign of his presence.
Luke and Claire had history, sure, but sometimes he forgot about it. They hadn’t made sense together, in the long run. Not as a couple, at least. Not the way he and Reva had made sense.
Luke and Claire hadn’t made sense and, sometimes, he forgot it was something they’d ever tried because she came back through her apartment door and laughed in his face and it was the ease of friendship that had him feigning hurt.
“Fuck I forgot you were here,” she said.
“Apparently so did everyone else.”
She smacked his arm gently on her way by. “You’ll live. Oh, the kid bolted.”
Luke stopped pretending to pout and followed her into the kitchen in three long strides. “What do you mean he bolted?”
“You see him on the couch?” she asked, head in the pantry.
“Claire—”
“Matt’s looking for him.” She made a sound that implied success, emerging with a can of instant coffee. “So, you and Jessica?”
Luke blinked at her for a moment, but she just turned and pulled two mugs from a cabinet.
“What about Jessica?”
“You just seem close.” She shrugged when she said it, but that sly, knowing smile was on her face.
“Not really,” Luke said, but it felt like a lie, when he thought about it.
He was saved by his phone buzzing in his pocket, until he looked at the name lighting up the screen.
Claire snorted. “Sure, not close, got it.”
Luke waved her off, hurrying into the living room. “Hello?”
“I need you to meet me at my place,” Jessica said, and it sounded like she was running.
“What’s wrong?” Luke’s heart was suddenly in his throat. He was already moving, already out Claire’s front door and down the hallway before Jessica responded.
“Malcolm called and he used this stupid code he made up in case someone ever came in threatening him.”
Luke could hear the roll of her eyes in her voice. He could hear the fear, too.
It took Luke a second to place the name — Malcolm. It took him a moment to remember him as the neighbor down the hall, the one Killgrave had been controlling, had made a drug addict against his will.
Malcolm, who appointed himself Jessica’s assistant and managed her clients.
“So I’m calling for backup, but I’m not waiting around for you,” she said, instead of please or will you come? Because she knew he would come, of course he would. He was halfway there already.
Luke took a moment to wonder when he’d decided he would run for Jessica Jones. Jessica Jones, who hung up on him.
He couldn't remember when he'd decided to run, but he did. He ran through the streets of Hell's Kitchen, thankful for the slight breeze that helped ward off the sticky evening heat.
Jessica’s building was humid and stuffy but Luke tried to dial his focus back in. When he stepped out of the elevator, he was surprised by the lack of chaos. There was no screaming or crashing or signs of a fight.
There was the hallway and Jessica’s apartment at the other end.
Her door was, somehow, always broken. Where there should have been glass there was cardboard and duct tape, but Luke was pretty sure it’d been like that when she was interrogating the kid, so he wasn’t too worried.
It was ajar, though. So Luke jogged down the hallway and shoved the door open, ready to for a fight. Instead, he found Malcolm and Jessica standing in her living room.
Malcolm leapt behind the desk at his intrusion. Jessica just looked over her shoulder and said, “Took you long enough.”
“What’s going on?” Luke asked, desperate, now, to understand.
Jessica rolled her eyes. “They’re gone. Apparently they didn’t want a fight.”
“Okay, so what did they want?”
“Two guys came in and said to tell Jessica to stop looking into McKenzie Demo,” Malcolm said, pulling a bullet from his pocket and placing it on the desk like it still might have the power to kill him, like this. “Or they would kill her.”
Jessica rolled her eyes again and Luke sat down heavily on the couch.
“Kind of cliché,” she said.
“You don’t think they know about anyone else involved, do you?”
Jessica’s eyes snapped to his, the irritation gone. “Art.”
With barely anything worth having on the little camera in his pocket, Jason tried to will himself to go home. His bed was there. He liked his bed. He would love nothing more than to lay down — he was becoming more and more certain that passing out for a few sedative-induced hours of sleep didn’t really count.
It was just that he didn’t want to be alone. You managed to find a way to win… and everybody still loses! Jason’s head pounded and he was kind of dizzy and yet, his feet didn’t take him home. They took him to the gym.
He’d run from Art, though.
He’d fled out a window and into the early morning for a good reason. Jason wasn’t sure he knew how to look the old man in the eye, right now, but he was even more sure that he couldn’t go home.
Besides, it was past six in the evening and there were no kid’s classes on Fridays. Maybe Art wouldn’t be there. Maybe Jason could fall asleep in the familiar embrace of the armchair in Art’s office.
The gym itself was dark when Jason walked in, but the front door wasn’t locked, which meant he was in there. Or, he’d forgotten to lock up again. Jason had lost track of the number of times he’d scolded Art about locking up.
“You’re gonna come in one day and all your shit’s gonna be gone,” he’d said a million times.
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Art would grouch, waving a hand dismissively.
He’d been too busy thinking about what he’d say to Art, if he was in the office — too busy trying to decide if he even wanted the old man to be there and trying to ignore the pounding behind his eyes. Jason’s hand was on the doorknob, before he registered the sound of arguing.
And then it was too late.
One moment he was rehearsing a semi-apology in his head, the next he was staring down the barrel of a gun. But Jason knew how to do this.
Immediately, he was moving, the headache and the shame and the apology forgotten. He smacked the gun out of his face, not quite managing to get a grip on it and make it his own so he had to retreat a few steps.
There was someone in the office with Art, Jason caught a glimpse of them for just a moment. There was someone in the office with Art and Jason was being led away.
He and the gunman grappled for several minutes. It should have been over quickly. Jason was better than this. But right now he was slow and stupid and got an elbow to the face that had him laying on the ground for a moment, dazed and spitting out blood.
He rolled away before the bullet could find him, though. It embedded in the concrete floor instead.
Jason tackled the gunman and stopped thinking. He moved on instinct with one singular goal: get back to Art’s office. It took a few minutes of scrambling on the floor and then, very suddenly, he was standing over the gunman, except Jason had the gun, now.
“Please,” the man said, eyes wet with the sharp fear of it.
Jason didn’t have time for it, for any of it. He kicked the man in the temple and didn’t stay to watch him crumple.
There was, objectively, no time to think. There was Art, eyes wide, and the man pointing a gun at his head. There was Jason, barely in the doorway, too far away to do anything else. Two guns, two fingers on triggers. Jason could tell even from where he was standing, could tell as he shoved the door back open.
As Jason pulled the trigger, an argument had already formed in his head. The words sat in the back of his throat as the bullet hit its target.