Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Matt is familiar with falling.

The rush of air, a weightless hush that drowns out a thousand echoes in the split second between rooftops and concrete sidewalks. Lack of control is a blessing and a curse, a break from the path he knows he’s on. Faith declares he must follow whatever path He set out, but the Lord is a distant voice on the best of days. On nights like these, it’s completely inaudible amongst the cacophony that is New York.

So he climbs up to the rooftops with tape wrapped around his hands and lets himself fall for a couple blissful seconds.

Seconds where he cannot make the wrong choice.

Suspension of a bad decision.

Until he catches himself on a fire escape and remembers there is right and wrong caught between knives and the dark certainty of what’s being smuggled on the docks. Right and wrong in a question that stretches itself out into a word called mentorship.

Two nights ago, Spiderman hurtled into Hell’s Kitchen, nearly got shot, and Daredevil heard the fear-fast flutter of a heartbeat between the curses. He was close enough to know the punch was clumsy and too telegraphed. When Daredevil hauled him out of a dumpster, Spiderman admitted he had zero training.

Which.

Yeah.

It was a little – okay, more like painfully – clear that the kid didn’t know how to fight.

But that’s no excuse for crashing a Hell's Kitchen Dumpster. Those are for Daredevil and Daredevil alone. One other person gets special permission to pass out there due to having miserable luck, but Hawkeye is on thin fucking ice. Spiderman wriggles away at the border of Hell’s Kitchen, thanks him politely for not stealing his soul, and disappears.

But not before asking for help with his stance.

For advice.

Spiderman wants to learn, and nobody is teaching him survival between insults spit between the teeth of two-bit villains and a community of heroes too caught up in their own self-made tragedies. Not that the Devil is one to point fingers regarding a fall from grace. He knows his faults all too well, knows that if anyone is seen with the Devil of Hell's kitchen there will be a dozen extra targets no kid needs on his back.

He growls at the Spider-child to stay out of Hell’s Kitchen and hides in the shadows.

Daredevil listens to him swing away with a sense of foreboding gloom. He cannot teach, not after what Stick did to him, not when he was recruited for an unwanted war as a child. But the vigilante in Queens is inexperienced despite whatever gives him the strength and courage to fall.

“Not my business,”  Daredevil whispers to himself not even two blocks away. “Don’t you dare take a student, Murdock.”

He’s not good at listening to anyone, including himself.

He can’t teach, but Spiderman’s form was so bad it physically pained him. There are rumors – Jessica mentioned Stark’s interest in the new face, and Luke says the kid knocked himself out in Harlem last month. Spiderman is out there taking crowbars to the shoulder and pulling shards of broken glass out of his skin. He is human; breakable in more ways than one. Hurtling down a path with few good endings.

Stark will use Spiderman, not teach him. The other Defenders will keep their distance, and Daredevil…

Daredevil- no, Matt won’t teach. He knows he never had good role models in that department, and Matt will be damned if he lets that mess hurt anyone else.

He can’t teach anyone.

Spiderman walks straight into an ambush at the docks and Daredevil is trailing a suspected Russian mafia informant close enough to hear it happen.

Goddamn.

He won’t teach, but this isn’t sustainable.

The warehouse's windows are boarded up tightly. Ambushers inside snarl curses while reloading their oddly-warm weapons, some sort of tech that’s giving Spiderman a hard time balancing after the first shot lands. It takes a moment for the stale, almost arsenic taste of alien-modified weaponry hits him. Whatever it is requires a reload every couple of shots. It's a miniscule advantace when the force of each shot is enough to tear rough holes in the metal crates around them. The odds are bad enough without it – roughly thirty heartbeats in an enclosed warehouse and only seven unconscious or restrained by web that smells strange and sounds even stranger when air whistles through. Daredevil drops three more before Spiderman notices him.

“Holy shit,” he hears quietly chanted as Spiderman swings up to the roof. Bad decision, that – they’ve lined the support beams with pigeon spikes and chicken wire in some sort of DIY vigilante repellant. “Holy shit, holy shit, that’s Daredevil fighting- ow!”

Ah, that’s the barbed wire stretched across the ceiling like a net. They really went all-out for this.

“Walls are clear,” he yells, blocking a punch and dislocating the guy’s shoulder for even trying. He takes the gun-like weapon, tossing it away rather than trying to work out how to use it. Blind man and guns do not mix. Tried that. Never again. Wade tried to argue the point right up until he got shot in the foot.

“Thanks, Mr. Devil!”

Aw, his heart. Daredevil steps to the side and Spiderman drops right down next to him, which is not good manners in the superpowered, crime fighting, whatever-they’re-calling-themselves community. It’s considered rude for a reason. Stepping right up to a probably-paranoid vigilante in low visibility warehouses teeming with opponents will get Spiderman friendly fire sooner or later. It’s not a problem when Daredevil can map all his opponents, but really? That’s basically asking for an accident.

Seriously.

Where are this kid’s self-preservation instincts?

Spiderman blocks a hit by stopping it cold and accidentally breaks the man’s knuckles in the process. He apologizes frantically while webbing him up until Daredevil has enough and yells about redirecting momentum. Human beings are actually really fragile when suddenly meeting an immovable object. Especially hands. All those little delicate bones and tendons in hands, just waiting to be crunched and bruised against a wall or face or a teenager with super strength he’s just barely learned to control.

Spiderman tries to apply the advice and ends up taking a hit when he overcorrects. The alien tech – whatever it is – lets out a low whine before blasting Spiderman back several feet. Metal shrieks as a body slams into it.

Too strong and too fragile all at once with no practice for technique in between. This kid needs to a punching bag to work out his limits.

Another whine echoes across the building and Daredevil dodges before the same weapon can take him out.

They barely dent their opponent’s numbers before one gets a lucky shot in and Spiderman goes down.

Fuck.

Ribs crunch under a boot before he gets there. This is a bad place to be – a warehouse designed specifically against Spiderman with the vigilante himself down for the count.

He needs to get the kid out.

He needs to explain how to case a situation before walking in the front door like he owns the place.

Is that teaching? Or is that just dropping a convenient piece of advice?

Maybe just one lesson, one conversation about moving with the punches and practicing his footwork when he lines up a kick and Jesus Christ what was he doing with his weight centered like that-

But one lesson marks him as someone who can help, and what if one day he’s needed but not there?

Daredevil grapples with the question and tries his best to keep their opponents away from Spiderman. He tracks escape routes and snaps his own bones out of alignment on a dozen others in a desperate quest for clarity. Decisions like teaching a kid how to fight can never be simply dictated. There is no line to follow, no choice laid out in the sand with a higher power whispering ‘this is good, this is bad, and this, my child, is the unforgivable.’

Sirens find a warehouse but no Devil, no Spider.

Daredevil knows better than to wait around. He takes Spiderman to Claire and weathers the scolding in restless silence.

Chapter Text

Peter is familiar with climbing.

Sometimes it’s all he ever does. The climb will never be enough, fueled as it is by his ever-present need to do better, be better that’s been burning under his skin since the moment a bullet found it’s way between Uncle Ben’s ribs.

He mixes up new batches of web formula and maps out city streets like a spider weaving his web. He steers clear of Avengers Tower – seriously, who would commit crimes right on Tony Stark’s doorstep – and keeps out of Hell’s Kitchen. The latter is due to a mix of caution and respect.

Daredevil wore a mask before Iron Man built a suit or Thor descended from the sky in lightning and thunder, before Black Widow stepped into the spotlight’s edge and Hawkeye became a household name. He was the first hero to look at the suffering around him and say no, this is not right, this is not the way my city is meant to be. This is not the future my city needs.

Okay, maybe Captain America was first, but that’s the exception that proves the rule.

Ned lectures him on all this often enough that Peter might be the tiniest bit starstruck when he looks up and finds himself already two blocks into Hell’s Kitchen, tailing a van full of weapons and their traffickers.

Sure, he took a few hits, but he gave as good as he got and no Chitauri tech hit him. Spiderman isn’t quite sure how the night ended besides being dumped in a dumpster. It’s not the comfiest place to be as the truck drives off and fighting noises… increase?

What?

Metal clangs, followed by the dull thud of a blunt object meeting flesh. The silence is oppressive following an adrenaline-filled fight, so Peter may have taken a good second to realize there’s now a figure leaning over the dumpster. Peter rubs a hand over his masked eyes before remembering that won’t clear them, and stares up at a very familiar shape outlined in the city’s ever-bright sky.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Two horns. No visible eyes. Red costume that Peter is suddenly beginning to suspect is red because of all the blood soaked into it. Peter claps both hands over his mouth because holy shit he’s about to meet Daredevil.

Is Daredevil actually a devil? If Peter says the wrong words, will he get his soul eaten or something? May doesn’t deserve that. He hasn’t even graduated high school. He’s too young to die-

Daredevil grabs the back of Peters suit and hauls him out of the dumpster like a baby kitten.

Peter yelps, scrambling to shake off the starstruck glee and anticipation of Ned’s reaction tomorrow.

Because this is the actual, real-life Daredevil.

Daredevil doesn’t pay attention to Peter as he surveys the three unconscious men in the alleyway. There were more before the dumpster – Peter doesn’t quite remember how many. He watches nervously as the Devil drags his fingers over a section of brick wall that’s maybe a little crumbled due to Peter panicking and miscalculating his strength.

“What?” Peter exclaims when the silence gets to be too much. “I did my best, okay?! It’s not like there’s an instruction manual on vigilante justice.”

“Then ask for help and tuck your thumb when you punch,” Daredevil rumbles and woah, his voice is really deep. Then what he says catches up and Peter squirms around until he can see something of the local devil’s face.

“Was that- did you just offer to teach me?”

Daredevil snarls like a rabid dog out of hell. It’s a jarring reminder that this man might possibly being a demon capable of signing Peter’s soul over to the underworld, which is really not how he wants to be spending his nightly patrol.

Not teaching, then.

Alright.

Good to know.

“Right,” Peter stutters. “I’ll just- stop talking, then. Hey, do you hate garlic? Or is it more of a ‘shall not cross barriers of salt’ kind of deal? Not that I’m asking for any reason or will add them to my suit. You know-”

Daredevil climbs up to the rooftops, scowls in annoyance when Peter follows without pausing for a breath. They wait around until red and blue lights flash across street and police radios chatter down below, which is right about when Daredevil shoves him in a vaguely northern direction.

Peter’s heart jumps right into his throat before he remembers even if Daredevil is rumored to be summoned from hell, he's also the first vigilante and is??

Probably???

Not going to steal his soul????

Ned would have something to say about this situation, but all Peter has to listen to is his Spidey-sense, which seems fairly calm around the guy. That’s two marks in his favor and webs on standby if this is a murder attempt.

Daredevil takes a few steps back as if he can sense Peter’s unease, but continues to herd him across the rooftops like a grumpy sheepdog. Whenever Peter thinks about making a break for it deeper into Hell’s Kitchen, Daredevil starts to get antsy.

Peter decides to wait and see what happens. Maybe this is the first part of mentorship.

Is the vigilante community like a cult?

Oh God, what if Peter is about to join a cult?

Aunt May will be so disappointed in him.

Wait, if he’s a hero does that mean he’s cult-adjacent already?

Hm.

Peter isn’t a fan of that thought.

Daredevil herds him right to the edge of Hell’s Kitchen, where he makes as if to throw Spiderman right off the building’s roof. This man clearly does not care about the traffic below them. Before he can be exorcized from the Devil’s territory, Peter squirms away and dances out of reach.

The Devil turns slowly, face still in shadow from flickering streetlights below. They paint the air sickly yellow like rotten egg yolks and sulfur. The border of Hell’s Kitchen is a clear enough message, but Daredevil is the first vigilante – first hero to offer help and advice. Peter knows he’s got a long way to go.

He’s climbing with no way to see the ladder.

A little light would go a long way. Last week he tried to talk with Jessica Jones and found out firsthand that the vigilante community is boxed off and away. Gatekeepers on every side, from unreachable Avengers to stern-faced vigilantes.

But not asking is as good as giving up.

“So,” Peter says cautiously, minding his words around a possible actual cryptid. Does Daredevil know Mothman? Are they related?

Well. Now he has no choice.

What, is he supposed to meet a local cryptid and walk away from that prime teacher real estate?

Spiderman watches Daredevil tilt his head and copies it in search of the sound. Nothing.

Huh.

“When you said I could ask – do you have advice? Is my stance wrong?”

Daredevil tilts his head in the opposite direction. “Feet are too wide. Hands higher in guard position, drop your shoulders and tuck in your elbows.” He trails off in a low growl that makes the hair on the back of Peter’s neck stands on end. “Now go.”

Right, time to not press his luck with what might be the actual fucking devil. Peter shifts towards the roof edge.

“Okay, thank you for that and also not stealing my soul, Mr. Devil, sir.”

“Stay out of Hell’s Kitchen,” Daredevil says. Maybe it’s just Peter’s imagination, but there’s no way someone should be able to make their voice that deep. The local Devil steps back into the shadows, and is gone a moment later.

Cool.

That’s terrifying.

Peter launches himself off the building. He gets a couple streets away before letting out a whoop.

He just met the closest thing New York has to an actual cryptid.

Fuck yeah.

A few days later after school, Ned looks up from his computer to whisper about how Oscorp was trying to buy those weapons. Peter goes cold and barely hears the words that follow.

Oscorp was the beginning, the fieldtrip that resulted in a spider bite and all power in the hands of a student yet to learn responsibility. Oscorp is the first domino in a chain that led right up to the now-quiet cemetery and a grave with grass just beginning to grow over churned up dirt. Oscorp is the cause of ashes and dust, broken expectations he never knew existed and so many lives saved every night.

Never enough.

He’s climbing endlessly because Uncle Ben was a good man and Peter isn’t sure he’ll ever live up to the legacy. He can’t fill those shoes.

But he’ll still try.

Power and responsibility weigh on his shoulders side-by-side, weighing him down on the climb up the monument of a legacy nobody knows he is protecting. Nobody asks what Spiderman is fighting for. They see a masked menace to scream at, a red and blue target.

All this, and Oscorp started it in spider silk and a broken glass habitat.

“Peter?” Ned asks. “You’re kind of freaking me out.”

Peter blinks down at his broken pen, ink soaking between his fingers and staining his homework black. “…Sorry.”

Ned gives him a look but doesn’t push. “I went digging after you met Daredevil – so cool, by the way. If you can get an autograph I might actually cry.”

“He tried to throw me off a building.”

“So cool,” Ned repeats. “I tracked that truck through security cameras and found it by the docks. It’s been sitting there all day.”

“Maybe they get all their stuff moved at night?” Peter pauses, considering his homework. He’s mostly done with this, and it’ll only take a few minutes to finish up the essay for English. Ned’s already done. They could put off their homework until Sunday like everybody else, but as MJ likes to remind them, Ned and Peter are nerds. Besides, one all-nighter after patrolling too late on a Sunday and realizing he still wasn’t done with the US History project was enough.

Ned shrugs like it’s easy to get the information he does. Maybe it is for him. Peter’s always been pretty average at computer science – chemistry is easier for him. “It’s been there all day. People are going in and out – maybe a couple every few hours or so.”

It’s still a bit light out to go poking around. Peter pulls out his laptop and works on the essay.

He grabs his mask a half-hour later, finds the new burner phone he bought last week, and ducks out of the window. Ned cheers him on quietly.

Right.

Weapon-trafficking leading to a warehouse by the docks. He can do this.

Peter swings across the city, circles the warehouse twice, and checks the windows. They’ve been boarded up, probably in case anyone comes looking. Peter moves across the building front, slipping inside the wide doors. He stays high on the walls, keeping an eye out.

Crates are lined up in neat rows, a couple people wandering around. They all have modified guns – Peter’s pretty confident that glowing blue energy is the same as the alien tech the Avengers fought against during the invasion. Besides the low murmur of a conversation below, it’s quiet. Too quiet, in a stuffy kind of way. He’s not fully adjusting to the mutation, hasn’t been in costume for more than a few months, but the Spidey-sense ripples up and down his spine in nervous anticipation.

White-blue electric fear shoots up his spine and cradles the base of his skull as the Spidey sense shrieks just in time.

Peter dodges a blast from what looks like a Chitauri gun, dropping to the ground to get close and knock the guy out. He realizes his mistake when shadows detach themselves from the crates.

An ambush.

Shit.

Chapter Text

“Spiderman,” Claire hisses at Daredevil once the initial lecture is over, waving at the collapsed teenager on her couch.

Daredevil nods, tucking his legs under him at her kitchen table and listening to the broken air conditioner next door. Somebody is burning incense upstairs, and there’s a TV on to soccer on the neighboring apartment that has rosemary on the windowsill. The announcer’s tinny voice is distracting, a nice separation from the relief in Claire’s voice that it’s not him bleeding on her couch for once, and the horror that a teenager is.

“Spiderman,” she repeats with the same slew of emotions, pulling out a wad of gauze. She won’t remove the mask while he's unconscious, and Daredevil won’t explain what’s going on past the injuries. Plausible deniability at its finest. “Did you know he’s a kid?”

Daredevil grumbles a bit in response and shifts further back into the shadows he feels at his back.

He knows.

He knows and it burns that anyone is taking the same hits he did at that age.

“Don’t hide from me,” Claire orders, short on patience and temper with tonight’s surprise visit. “I have an unconscious Spiderman on my couch and a startling lack of answers as to what the hell, Matt.”

“Ribs are broken,” Daredevil says instead of answering. “Third and fourth, right side.”

Claire swears again and turns back to the kid. For a while it’s relatively quiet, and Daredevil rubs fingers over scarred knuckles in the gloves. He took a few glancing hits tonight, but his right hand is in bad enough shape. Two of his fingers are out of alignment.

Claire steps closer, purposefully loud even though he doesn’t need it, and tugs his hand away for inspection.

“Do you think he knows how dangerous this is?” Claire asks finally, medical tape patching up all the broken pieces Matt would let fester, but Daredevil can’t afford to leave alone. It’s the way of things. He falls, breaks, and falls again in search of a few directionless seconds. “If Spiderman doesn’t have anyone looking out for him, he won’t last long. We’ve all seen the news. Colleen says he’s untrained.”

‘Untrained’ is an understatement. Spiderman only rolls with the punches when he’s thrown through a wall.

“His form is about as stable as a wet noodle,” Daredevil admits. “Tactics are even worse.”

“And? Does he have someone supporting him in spider-crimes or whatever it is he gets up to? Does he know he can ask for help?”

“Spider-crimes,” Daredevil repeats appreciatively. He’s got to use that sometime. Claire snaps off her gloves and leans close. It’s enough of a threat to force him even further back, practically leaning out the open window. Medical professionals are terrifying. They carry the smell of antiseptic, blood, and death under whatever else makes up their lives. It lingers.

Matt hates hospitals with a burning passion, but he trusts Claire, knows she’s capable of calling the shots when his own ability to function slips below acceptable levels. She knows his boundaries perfectly, has discussed scenarios and proper care with him dozens of times. He trusts her, perhaps more than anyone but Foggy, Karen, and Father Lantom.

But that doesn’t change the fact that those in her profession will always carry death and bleach on their skin. Claire is terrifying.

“Does he?” she repeats, caught between a threat and concern.

“Does anyone, when they start out?” Daredevil takes his hand back and tucks it away. There’s a small hitch in Spiderman’s breathing, a stirring of consciousness. “He’s waking up.”

Claire steps back out of his space.

“That will never not be creepy, Devil-man.”

“Devil-man,” a teenaged voice repeats, breaking with incredulous glee. It drops into a mumble so quiet Daredevil probably isn’t supposed to hear it. “Oh my God, nobody’s ever gonna believe me.”

Claire huffs and heads back to the couch. She introduces herself by first name only and as a reluctant nurse for local idiots before running through a summary of injuries that are healing far too quickly.

“That’s the mutation,” Spiderman tells her. “I got bit by a radioactive spider.”

Daredevil stays next to the window while Claire works out whether or not Spiderman has a concussion. It doesn’t seem like he does, but that’s a very tiny detail that’s difficult to discern from here, much less do so accurately.

Spiderman won’t remove the mask, so she can’t take a look at his eyes, and they dance around it until Claire gives up. She’s worked with enough vigilantes to know a boundary when it’s collapsed on her couch.

“Then we’ll assume you’re concussed,” she tells Spiderman. “So, no sleeping until symptoms are gone. You’re welcome to take the couch tonight.”

Spiderman shuffles around a bit before finally mumbling “…Thanks.”

“Let me know if you need anything. I’m knocking out,” Claire decides. “Can’t take days off work. You-” she points at Daredevil threateningly, prompting him to shift up closer to the window. “No- stop right there, Red. No running. You brought a kid to my doorstep, so take responsibility. I’m not your babysitter. I’m not Spidermans babysitter. Take alarm duty.”

Words cannot describe how little Daredevil wants to sit around and wake up a Spiderkid every twenty minutes. He’s not old but he feels it, and there’s a storm coming that echoes through the shrapnel buried deep in his hip. Ozone and the precursor to rain taints the air, rising up from the streets like smog. Daredevil wants to get home before that storm breaks.

“I have work,” he grumbles instead of listing the reasons out.

Claire sets a timer on the table. “So do I. And you-”

Spiderman literally meeps when Claire whirls on him. Same, kid. Medics are fucking terrifying.

“I don’t want to see my name connected to vigilantes in any way, but when you get hurt, come find me. Got it?”

Throw blankets crinkle against plastic covers and a spandex mask as Spiderman nods furiously. Claire makes a small noise of satisfaction before returning to her room and practically throwing herself onto the bed.

Spiderman fidgets with the blankets and cycles through a series of nervous tics with movements too small for Daredevil to track. There’s still a light on – he can hear it buzzing over the kitchen sink. One of the cheap bulbs that clips out, a broken connection nobody has the time or resources to fix.

Daredevil shifts onto the windowsill so he’s still close enough to chat but now almost out of the room.

“So,” Spiderman says when the fidgeting is no longer enough to hold back suffocating silence. “Are you really the devil?”

Wow.

What a way to break the ice.

Props for courage, kid. That had to take guts.

“Thought I was possessed a while back,” he offers rather than give a disappointing outright ‘no.’ “And you’re not the first person to ask.”

“You’re dodging the question,” Spiderman points out, oddly hopeful.

Daredevil heaves a sigh and leans forward into the chilled-honey air. “I’m not that kind of devil,” he promises.

Spiderman makes a hesitantly disappointed noise. “I just lost a bet.”

A bet?

The office has a running betting pool on when one of the Avengers besides Hawkeye will show up and ask that exact question, so it’s not like Daredevil can judge. It’s been going ever since Clint upended a plastic bottle of holy water on Matt when they first met. The man has shit luck, but he’s still a spy rubbing shoulders with gods and therefore fully entitled to paranoid tendencies. He kept shoving crosses in Matt’s face for a month.

“Tough luck,” Daredevil manages through suppressed laughter at the memory, and can’t completely keep the grin off his face. “Don’t go spreading it around, though.”

There’s a lull in the conversation where the silences feel a bit less static. It sinks into the room and saturates the floorboards in quiet mutual respect.

“So,” Spiderman says finally. “Do you have powers that let you fight like that?”

“Maybe. I box a bit,” Daredevil says in the understatement of the year. He’s not answering anything that could lead to the doomed words ‘can you teach me.’

“Wait, so you don’t have a ninja’s soul you’re pirating skills from? It’s not-“

“Just practice,” he says blandly, and lets the words drop stone-cold with enough weight to shatter the tentative comradery they had only just built. Spiderman flinches back into the couch with a crinkle of plastic, rabbit-fast heartbeat stuttering.

Fuck.

Matt and Daredevil get very different reactions from the same tone of voice. It’s probably the horns. Or the smell of blood he can’t quite wash out of the leather. Actually, maybe it’s just that there’s something slightly unhinged about a guy willing to dress up like the Devil day in, day out and beat justice into the world second by bloody, screaming, second.

Yeah, it’s probably that.

“Sorry,” Spiderman offers, which is a surprise. People don’t generally apologize and mean it around the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Especially not about things that aren’t their fault. “I was just wondering.”

“Don't worry about it.” Daredevil lets his head thunk back against the wooden window frame. He should find that light switch, let Spiderman get some sort of rest before morning. At least it’s a Friday. Matt will be required at the office and Claire works six days a week, but kids get two whole days off.

He remembers thinking that wasn’t enough.

That was before law school.

Back when-

Hm.

Not thinking about that.

“Did you do a perimeter check?” he asks to keep those memories firmly locked away, and only realizes what he said after the words are out. He can’t take them back, not after Spiderman’s heard them and startled badly enough his ribs creaked in protest.

“Yeah,” Spiderman says bitterly. “The windows were boarded up.”

“All the more reason to make your own exit,” Daredevil says. This isn’t teaching. Just… advice, from one vigilante to another. Information is survival. Spiderman should get as much as he can before entering a new location.

Spiderman shrugs, but doesn’t argue. He’s listening. That’s more than Matt did at that age.

Wait.

That’s something an old person would say. Shit, is he old? Maybe he’s getting old.

“That was an ambush,” Spiderman says into the thoughtful silence. Daredevil shrugs like he isn’t caught up in being terrified out of his mind at the prospect of a real mid-life crisis.

“They put barbed wire in the rafters,” Spiderman says. He sounds almost insulted.

“Yeah? If they can afford alien tech, they can put whatever they want in there. How do you plan to deal with it?”

Spiderman startles. “What?”

“You heard me.” Daredevil laces his fingers and leans out into where the light probably reflects. “There’s a problem, so what’re you gonna do about it?”

Spiderman taps gloved hands over the throw blanket in no particular pattern. “Don't know yet. Not like I can see it until too late. Maybe web it over? What would you do?”

Pain is a tool to be used and nothing else. “Get back up and fight.”

“Then I guess that’s Step One,” Spiderman says, back straightening with a bit more steel, more resolve than before. He’s clever enough to have made that suit and the mechanisms Daredevil can hear scraping against his wrists.

He’ll figure out something for the barbed wire.

Daredevil huffs and settles back in the windowsill. The curtains billow just enough to block his helmet from street view, and in the dark he doubts any passerby will notice their local Devil watching from above. Not at this hour, and not at this angle.

Inside, Spiderman’s breathing levels off into the space between sleep and awareness.

Not long after, Daredevil shakes him awake and returns back to the windowsill.

They don’t talk again, not until Claire’s alarm goes off.

"Later, Devil-man," Spiderman says as he straightens up.

"Be safe, Spider-kid." Daredevil slips off the windowsill into the streets below in the same breath. The morning air is cold and crisp, and he makes it back to his loft before the sun’s warmth fully touches the city rooftops. It’s the quiet kind of day that’s not so much 'lonely' as it is 'alone,' with a content kind of solidarity found only in the few seconds before alarms start blaring across the city.

Matt burrows under cold blankets, curses when his clock softly beeps the time as 5am, and drags himself back out of bed. He leaves a message in the office phone for whoever gets there first that he’ll be a bit late, and sets a new alarm. Three hours to sleep.

Ugh.

So.

Spiderman nearly dies due to inexperience and nobody is stepping up.

Nobody else seems to be losing their minds about a teenager getting shot at daily and rattling the lower levels of organized crime until they try to ambush him and nearly succeed.

A bright red and blue target, Clint diagnoses. He just took a trainee under his wing; can’t be assed to take another.

Jessica lies and tells him the secret is to not give any fucks. Matt has to physically restrain himself from saying “God, what a mood,” and taking the offered whisky.

Danny tells Matt that he seems like the perfect person to show Spiderman the ropes, which is singularly unhelpful and also wishful thinking. Colleen pokes her head out of the gym to ask Danny how in the hell he thinks Matt will be a good teacher. It’s both mortifying and validating in equal measures.

Luke says he’s staying out of it and advises the same – he’s busy enough with people to protect and a string of assaults in Harlem to track down. Matt promises to keep an ear to the ground for anything that may be related.

Foggy and Karen don’t say anything, because he didn’t ask.

They’re both too smart.

If Matt lets on that he felt even a sliver of protective instinct and wants to maybe-kind-of show Spiderman how to not die, he will never hear the end of it.

There will be mother-hen noises.

And Karen will call honorary godfather. Foggy might call godmother but honestly, he’s just as likely to call godparent and celebrate Matt’s newfound emotion excluding the already-existing amusement, rage, and guilt.

Oh, and the malice reserved for Fisk or the dirty cops that keep popping up like daisies. Can’t forget that.

But there will be no hen-noises or fake baby showers or any other chance of his coworkers rubbing it in Matt’s face that they’ve found a heart under all the leather, because he’s not teaching anyone.

He can’t.

Won’t.

Doesn’t want to relive that time, doesn’t want to open up those old wounds to fester in the sunlight and let down a student just like Stick abandoned him. Matt won’t train anyone for a war they have no part in, won’t teach a kid to fight and bleed and burn.

Spiderman comes down to Hell’s Kitchen after a couple days asking around for a Devil.

He’s found a teacher, unwilling or not, and Spiderman seems intent on being the most annoyingly tenacious prospective student possible. At the very outset this was a bad idea, but now Daredevil has a stubbornly loud Spiderman following him around Hell’s Kitchen.

Why?

Why can’t he go bother another adult, preferably one that actually knows what they’re doing??

Spiderman cheerfully informs him that it’s now on his bucket list to be taught by a cryptid. Ideally that teacher would be the Devil, but if any of the other Defenders want to step up, he wouldn’t be rude like some people.

This confirms that Spiderman is a brat. Daredevil dumps the kid outside of Hell’s Kitchen and continues tracking down a kidnapping.

That night he loses himself in sirens and plays tag with a metal bat while trying to distract himself from the problem at hand. How does he dodge this? Daredevil nearly finds the answers in the bottom of a dumpster but loses the thought before it can solidify into any real certainty. He drags himself home, prays that he’s not fucking everything up, and falls asleep for a couple hours.

He trips over the doorpost on his way into the office and repeats “fell down a staircase” to their clients like a mantra.

“It’s not Fisk, right?” Foggy asks in the first moment of quiet. “I mean. If it is don’t tell me, but at the same time I’d like to spend my last moments in peace with a very large tub of ice cream and terrible dramas.”

“He’s still gone,” Karen says smugly on the way to her desk. “Vanessa dumped him so he’s trying to win her back from, uh. Italy? They keep moving so it’s hard to keep track.”

Matt nods assent. He’s been dancing in the crossfire between Fisk and the Russians long enough to recognize the month-long ceasefire for what it really is: Fisk is searching for answers, same as the rest of them. Matt has no problem with that so long as it happens far away from his city, and stays that way.

“Oh, thank God,” Foggy breathes. “In that case, carry on. I do not want or need to know what happened to your face for the public record.”

“Unless it was Oscorp,” Karen chips in with far too much interest.

Matt wrinkles his nose and tries to place the name. “Oscorp? The medical company?”

“You shouldn’t worry about it,” Karen says. “But if the other guy does, tell me what he finds.”

Oscorp is outside of Hell’s Kitchen, making it exactly none of Daredevils business. But the roots of whatever they’re up to have spread to it, so he picks up the few threads Karen lets slip with calculated indifference and traces them through the streets.

There are rumors of a gas, though what it does is anyone’s guess.

Spiderman crashes into him midway through the night, apparently on a similar trail. He’s invested because several of the people who dumped him in that dumpster are smuggling weapons made with alien tech. These are the same people at the warehouse.

Spiderman rightfully found this suspicious and decided something bigger was going on. The guy they’re following collects the stuff auctioned off in these kinds of deals, but specializes in chemicals, and has modified them for weapons before. It sounds like part of a whole group. Too low-level for HYDRA.

The next hour is spent waffling between asking Spiderman if he’s sure about committing crimes on the nightly, and tracking their errant chemical engineer.

Spiderman eventually has enough and throws up his arms to informs him that he is very sure of his crime-fighting, Mr. Daredevil. And also explains that the local Devil of Hell’s Kitchen has no legs to stand on in this issue.

“You know what?” Daredevil says. “That’s fair. I’ll ask Castle if he knows anything.”

“Castle?” Spiderman asks, voice cracking over the name.

“The Punisher,” Daredevil explains. Spiderman’s heart does the equivalent of a whole gymnastics routine.

“Oh,” he says, a little strangled but with clear morbid curiosity. “Why would you do that to yourself?”

Daredevil tilts his head to the side. There’s a cat in the alley behind them and it is absolutely living for that Subway tuna melt it just found. Purring while it eats and everything.

Spiderman fidgets with his hands a bit before leaning in conspiratorially. “He’s gonna shoot at you,” he explains gravely.

“Nah, I’m just gonna fight him.”

This does not seem to fill Spiderman with confidence. “Why, though?”

Daredevil shrugs. It’s a very short list, starting with the fact that he wants to and ending with the fact that Castle won last time. Maybe he’s just being petty.

Actually….

Yeah, he’s absolutely being petty and can’t regret it in the slightest.

“Good luck?” Spiderman tries, edging off the roof. “I’m just- I’m just gonna go. It was nice knowing you.”

Daredevil shrugs, expanding his senses to make sure Spiderman gets out of Hell’s Kitchen safely. Not because he cares – he’s just being cautious with another enhanced vigilante in the area. It’s an important distinction.

Daredevil spends the rest of the night tracking down the Punisher, then regretting that decision. At least he got an address out of it.

Fuck Castle, though.

Wade gives him Hello Kitty Band-Aids after they fight. What does Castle give? A middle finger?

Asshole.

Karen finds out about the fight and tugs him back to her apartment to ask over a bottle if he is bound and determined to bleed out for Hell’s Kitchen. If he sees martyrdom as the last choice for a fallen soul. She wants to know if it will be her or Foggy who is called in to identify his body when the Hand, Fisk, or even a stray lucky bullet finds its mark.

When she pries the mentorship dilemma out of him, she sighs and asks him if this is to save himself, or Spiderman. If this is some sort of atonement for what Stick did. Penance. It burns worse than the drinks, even if that last point is said in the silences between words scraped off the inside of his glass.

She has opinions about the mask, same as Foggy.

“It’s killing you,” she tells him bluntly, heartrate slow and even in certainty. She doesn’t waver in the slightest, cold resignation drowning him alongside the alcohol and sleep deprivation.

“It’s killing everyone.”

Matt will bow to nobody. Pride and stubbornness will always be the death of him.

Karen shifts, static skin on cloth and the creaking table under her hip. It was assembled wrong. Two screws are misplaced, IKEA instructions taped to the underside in vain hope of someday discovering the missing pieces. Karen never will – she chases her curiosity to the end of the line, but only reaches for the questions she decides are worth it. Problems left alone find no solutions.

Maybe it’s a metaphor.

Maybe it’s a sign.

Matt reaches up under red glasses to rub the scar tissue beneath and pretend he does not know who that message is for.

“The mask is necessary for me. Not so sure about a kid who has no clue what he’s getting into,” he says wearily, stepping back from the clenched teeth and squared shoulders he’s addressed this problem with until now. “Spiderman needs someone to step in or pretty soon we’ll meet over his casket. Is there any other option?”

“Maybe. Maybe not if the other option is beating up random people in alleyways.” Karen crosses her arms. “Your past is your own and not something I’m going to act like I know about. I’m not the person to ask. Talk to Foggy.”

“Foggy wants me to get a dog so he can pamper it.”

“But he won’t tell you that,” Karen points out. “Foggy saves people. You only know how to sacrifice yourself for them.”

Matt wants to contest that, but he knows better to start arguments with Karen. She’s a reporter with evidence lined up in neat quotes and the large first aid kit tucked under her bathroom sink. Foggy seeks justice from the jury, but that’s a different sort of truth than the one Karen lays out in printed pages for the world to see.

Foggy saves people by drawing them into his orbit.

Karen lays dirty deeds bare to the public and lets people save themselves.

Matt bloodies his knuckles and desperately hopes he’s doing the right thing.

They fit together.

“I’ll talk to Foggy,” he says instead, and Karen toasts his ability to listen to anyone but a higher power for once in his goddamn life. Matt corrects the toast to including a higher power but drinks, nonetheless.

Chapter Text

“Karen just doesn’t want to waste the effort of telling you what you already know,” Foggy points out when Matt explains the Spiderman dilemma during a slow day. Karen herself has taken the day off like a bloodhound on the scent, and their office is oddly peaceful but for distant traffic and the rustling paperwork of an eviction case.

Matt leans up against the doorway. He can feel the sunlight warming the wood, and long practice has taught him that between here and the window, if he angles this right, he can catch the perfect amount of sunlight on his glasses and reflect it to Foggy’s desk. Foggy has informed him the glare makes him look like an evil villain plotting various crimes.

Matt can get behind that kind of theatrical aesthetic.

What is it the kids are saying? Be gay do crime?

As a lawyer he disagrees, but as a dramatic gay vigilante he thinks abso-fucking-lutely he will be gay and do many crimes in the pursuit of justice, thank you very much.

Matt grins crookedly at the thought. “And what do I know, Counselor?”

“That you are not capable of listening to any man, woman, or incredibly talented and good-looking person of neither gender such as myself, unless it is on pain of death and probably not even then.” Foggy sets down the papers. He sounds like he’s smiling. “So, you’re only asking if the answer isn’t one you want to hear.”

Fuck.

Fucking hell.

Matt will not be a teacher; he does not want to mess up anyone’s life but his own.

Foggy’s chair creaks obnoxiously as he leans back, fingers pressed together and tucked under his chin. “So. I’m going to assume you’d like nothing more than to run from this and brood on the top of St. Agnes like some kind of edgy fallen angel, which means the answer you need but don’t want is the opposite.”

“I do not brood,” Matt says, righteously scandalized. “That’s what chickens do. I’m a goose, at least.”

“No. You sir, are a hen. A mother hen. This Spider-child is the first of a whole family of vigilante chicks. We’ll make a team where you gather all your crime chicklets and teach them how to give me gray hairs. It’ll be a bi-annual thing.”

“I’m not taking multiple students, and if I were, they would be gooselets. Geeselets. Baby geese – whatever,” Matt snaps before he remembers he is a lawyer talking to his best friend who is an equally accomplished lawyer. He knows a verbal corner when he hears one, and Foggy just caught him with the oldest trick in the book.

He has a whole degree about not falling for that. Matt’s pretty sure it’s framed on the wall in this very office.

“Wait, no-”

“So you’ll take only one under your wing?” Foggy drums his fingers on the desk and smugly addresses the bobblehead devil on his desk. “No further questions, your honor.”

“This- this is leading the witness-”

“Objection, your honor. The witness is stubbornly avoiding the best course of action because he doesn’t want to deal with his own overactive moral compass. As the amazing and beautiful Best Friend, I reserve the right to call his bullshit like I see it.”

Matt tucks a fist up against his mouth and resists the urge to bury Judge Bobble in the paper shredder. At least not while Foggy is watching.

Foggy positively beams. “You’ll be a great mentor,” he says cheerfully, rubbing Matts nose in the whole mess that was his pride. “Just watch. This is only the start.”

“I don’t want to teach,” Matt says a bit helplessly. There’s nothing else left to really say.

Foggy softens slightly. “Yeah, I kind of figured. Wanna talk it out?”

“I’d really rather just stew in my regret,” Matt offers honestly. “But- maybe. Not really but also kind of. I just- what if I fail him, Foggy? I didn’t exactly have the best role models.”

There’s a hitch in Foggy’s breathing, a tightening of the muscles around his eyes and mouth that always appears whenever Matt’s old teacher is alluded to. Matt continues even as he matches it through strained knuckles and clenched jaw.

“What if I teach him how to avoid getting in over his head and – sure, okay, easy-ish part is over – and then when he needs help, I won’t be there? I can’t be like Stick-“

“You aren’t,” Foggy interrupts firmly, whisper-quiet enough to let Matt continue talking but still audible. The reminder slips through the cracks in his ribs and settles into his chest to strangle his heart in half-fear, half-hope.

He’s not Stick, thank God and all that is holy.

Matt will go down kicking and screaming to keep from being even remotely like Stick. But at the end of the day Stick was a teacher, a trainer of warriors who sent child soldiers off to fight a war of someone else’s making. Matt knows not all teachers are like that. Most aren’t.

It’s just hard to reconcile when the person who forced him to survive, to make sense of the chaos and to tune into the world, was.

“Don’t compare yourself to him,” Foggy says when Matt lets the silence stretch. There’s a firm note in his voice that wasn’t there before. “I won’t tell you how to live, but don’t you dare think you are anything like that old bastard.”

“But I’d be teaching a kid how to fight, and that-” Matt shakes his head, throat dry with the reminder of the fact he’d be helping someone sign up for this thankless lifestyle. He abandons the thought and moves on. “That responsibility is a package deal. If I’m teaching someone to fight, I’m also making sure they have medical help; they will have armor in their suit.”

“Armor,” Foggy repeats, surprise making his words carefully feather-light. “Really?”

“For bullets. Knives. Batons. Tazers, sometimes.”

“…Ah.” Foggy tilts his head, probably studying him. “You know, sometimes I forget what you get up to, and then you drop cute little details like that.”

Matt does jazz hands. “Surprise?”

“Hm.” Foggy laces his fingers. “This Spider-child. He is doing the same gravity-defying, ill-advised, borderline-idiotic stunt work you enjoy when all of us mortal folk are sleeping?”

“New York doesn’t sleep,” Matt says, just to be contrite. “…But yes.”

“No, it hurries along with the rest of us at all hours like an exhausted raccoon, save for your brand of local wildlife that dances in traffic.” Foggy sighs, ducking his head as he thinks. “Question.”

“Answer.”

“Besides Stick, what’s stopping you from making sure this Spider-child knows how not to get beat up quite so badly?”

Matt fidgets. “Stark is thinking about contacting him.”

Foggy makes a politely interested noise that roughly translates to ‘and you’re okay with this?’

Which.

Not really?

Stark, the billionaire known for making weapons technology and creating the Avengers. The Avengers. Who get into the kind of fights Matt could not care less about so long as they stay the fuck out of Hell’s Kitchen.

Stark, from the Avengers, is looking into Spiderman. There’s no way he isn’t being scouted, which is all kinds of suspicious.

“Oh my God,” Matt realizes in horror. “Foggy- Foggy, if Stark uses him like the others, he’s going to end up burning on a beach before the year is out.”

“Nah,” Foggy says in the voice of someone who’s been dealing with idiot crime-fighting law partners for so long he’s developed invulnerability to panic. “It’ll be space travel. Trust me. Maybe even some weird, horribly written, dead-and-then-returns crisis like in the comic books.”

Matt makes a doubtful noise in the back of his throat even as the answer he’s been looking for finally settles on his shoulders. It feels like an anchor pulling him down. Like drowning and pretending he can swim because he has to survive, has to find the shore. Dead certainty that there’s no other choice but to succeed against impossible odds.

He wonders if Atlas ever crumbled under the weight of the sky or if the lives he held were the real burden.

If he kept standing because there was no other option.

Maybe only one life is enough of a reason.

Spiderman finds him on a rooftop that night and yells, “MR. DEVIL, ARE YOU ALIVE” for everyone, the dried-up bird poop, and God himself to hear.

Charming.

Daredevil’s regretting this tentative association already.

Spiderman skids across the rooftop and plops down several feet away to kick at the gutters. “So. Were you looking into Oscorp? Because I was maybe following a guy and he said you were a dead man walking.”

“That’s nice of them,” Daredevil decides. He hasn’t gotten that one in a little while.

“They’re collecting alien weapons from the invasion.” Spiderman shuffles a bit, peering out into the city streets. “How can you see anything from up here?”

“Sight’s overrated.”

Spiderman makes a disgusted noise at the non-answer.

“Rumor is whatever they’re making is Osborn’s pet project,” Daredevil continues. “If it gets leaked and out to auction there’s no chance of stopping it completely.”

“Ha. Gas. Leaked. Pun.” Spiderman hesitates. “That was a pun, right? Because if it’s not and a gas, I might freak out just a tiny bit.”

“Selling it to the highest bidder isn’t any better.” Daredevil tilts his head while he thinks, categorizing the movement of the city around them. Car wheels slosh through puddles left by that afternoon’s rain and cigarette smoke filters up from the streets. Someone is screaming curses nearby as the television drones on with music. A subway passes far below them, vibrations rising through the building.

The city is alive, and he can feel it breathing.

“Oscorp is medical,” he says over the distant rumble of a jammed vending machine. “There’s no reason for them to release it street-level when all the money comes from higher up.”

“Maybe the CEO is a nice guy,” Spiderman offers.

Daredevil shakes his head. “Not everyone’s Stark. Actually, I take it back. Stark can get fucked. Not everyone is Rand.”

“Who’s that?”

“An idiot.” It’s not his business what Rand does. But he means well and does less damage than Stark despite all the… Danny-ness about him. Between the two, Rand is the better choice. Not that he’ll ever admit it to the guy’s face.

Spiderman fidgets, drumming his heels against the concrete ledge in a nervous tick. “He doesn’t hang out in sewers, does he? Because I have way too many villains in sewers and I don’t think the washing machine can take it.”

“Sewers?”

“Yeah, it’s like every week there’s somebody new down there. No rats yet, though. They would have found me by now.”

Daredevil screws up his face and tries not to think about that. God, this kid is such a disaster. On one hand he really doesn’t have much room to judge, but on the other hand holy shit. Sewer-villains. Up from the pits of hell-stench and everything.

Wait.

Rats.

“Sewers,” Daredevil realizes.

Spiderman’s voice goes suspicious. “Yeah?”

“Clint believes in the Rat King.”

There’s a long silence where Spiderman rustles around anxiously.

“Clint? Barton? I mean. I’ve never talked to him?”

“The Rat King?”

Spiderman’s rustling turns gleeful at the incoming chaos. “Him or Hawkeye. I guess within every colony of rats, there has to be one who believes themselves to be king, queen, or ruler, right?”

Daredevil taps the concrete ledge speculatively. “Your point?”

“Well- If a rat believes themselves to be a ruler, and none of the other rats object, does that make it a Rat King? What’s the criteria here? Because maybe it’s not a king. Actually, what makes a ruler?”

Ah.

Philosophy.

Daredevil straightens up, back on even ground. The best way to deal with problems like this are to beat them into submission.

Oscorp will take time to deal with, and whatever they’re making isn’t even halfway done. That’s at least two weeks to figure this out, probably more if they go official and do clinical trials or whatever tests medical places do. Two weeks to make sure if something happens to either of them Spiderman has at least one other vigilante he can get help from.

He can build up Spiderman’s support network and fight a Rat King all in one night. This is perfect. He’ll talk to Clint first about the Rat King and then maybe introduce Spiderman to…

…not Jess, she’s probably wasted right now. Luke’s still busy with his assault cases and getting stressed about the last one which hit a family friend. On the other hand, Danny’s probably half-dead if Colleen’s call to Karen counts for much. He made the questionable choice of challenging her to a no-powers match. Clint is either going to be busy helping him with the Rat King, or watching an old SHEILD executive Matt’s heard moving near the border of Hell’s Kitchen.

Wade and Castle are both very bad ideas.

Daredevil frowns out across the rooftops. So much stress to work off, so little time. Now he really wants to fight the Rat King.

“I’m gonna fight it,” he tells Spiderman.

“I’ve never heard of Rat Kings before today, but sure?” Spiderman drums his heels against the concrete faster in excitement. “And you can teach me how to fight a Rat King. Everybody wins.”

Well. Only one thing to do now. Daredevil stands up, filtering out the nearby sounds. They’re too high up to get a good read, and he only has the nearest blocks.

“Alright.” Daredevil steps off the building ledge, catching himself on a windowsill below. “Be off with ye, spider-child. I’m going hunting.”

“Like I’m going to miss this,” Spiderman whispers before starting up a chant of ‘Rat King.’ “I’m gonna make a list of all the cryptids in New York,” he says as Daredevil tries to figure out whether it’s worth going all the way to Bed-Stuey tonight. “And I’m gonna meet all of them.”

“Not fight?”

“I can’t fight Thor,” Spiderman reasons. “He’s like. Made for hugs. I’ll fight almost everyone else, but I want hugs from him. No fighting.”

“Not with that attitude, you won’t.” Daredevil kind of wants to fight Thor now, but also.

Priorities.

Rat King.

That’s one big rat, right? He’s pretty sure there are myths of it being lots of small rats all tangled up into one big evil rat. Either way, he kind of wants to fight it now. Anything that talks less than Fisk has to be good.

Daredevil shakes himself out of that thought pattern and proposes the novel idea of leaving him the fuck alone to Spiderman, who has gained half a backbone since meeting him.

“You’re looking for the Rat King,” he says hanging upside-down from a streetlight. “I’m not missing this.”

Which is fair, but still missing the point. It figures, though. Daredevil has never met a single teenager capable of taking instructions regarding anything beyond directions to food.

He complains about this until he catches wind of Clint right before they reach the East River. There’s gunpowder with him and the bitter taste of week-old coffee all drenched in wet dog. He’s got chocolate on him somewhere. It takes Spiderman a couple moments to realize he’s stopped, and come swinging right back.

“Double D?”

Daredevil absently signs for quiet and tilts his head, trying to get a lock on Clint’s location. He’s got an open packet of chips. Salt and vinegar. Must be high up for the smell to carry so far.

“Found him,” he says.

Spiderman’s been mimicking his head-tilting with increasing frustration, and perks up at this. “The guy behind Rite Aid?”

Daredevil has to actually stop and realize that non-enhanced individuals probably can’t hear the man swearing violently at the end of the block. It’s a bit too far.

“Huh,” is all he says to that. Spiderman makes a faintly outraged noise.

Eh. Too bad, Daredevil isn’t asking about whatever spiders can hear. If he asks, he will be tempted to teach, and that’s not happening. Now that Daredevil thinks about it, he really should have thrown Spiderman off the last roof.

Anyway, it’s time to widen the kid’s support network. Where’s Clint?

Chapter Text

Peter has no clue why they have to talk to Hawkeye first, but Daredevil seems to have taken him not knowing the archer as a problem to be fixed ASAP. Not that he’s complaining. The enhanced community keeps to themselves almost too much, and any opportunity to worm his way into their ranks is too good to pass up.

On the way to Bed-Stuey, Daredevil stops abruptly, flicks his head in several directions like an owl, and grins with all those white demon teeth. He’s listening to something, so Peter tries to filter out the noise and trace it. Filtering through the dull roar of noise around them feels like swimming through a bog.

Peter abruptly remembers all the rumors that Daredevil can see sins from across the city. When the vigilante cryptically announces he found someone, Peter has a second of panic that he’s after the guy behind Rite Aid for littering or something.

“Huh,” Daredevil says when he asks.

‘Huh?’

Fucking.

‘Huh???’

What does that even mean? Peter squints, then squawks in outrage when Daredevil disappears into the shadows. He reappears distantly just long enough to jump to the neighboring rooftop, and continues on his merry way.

Just.

You know.

Leaving Peter to stew in the confusion of what the absolute fuck that meant.

“Clint,” Daredevil calls back, somehow sensing his bewilderment without looking. It also clarifies absolutely nothing. Peter is quickly beginning to realize he picked the most stubborn, unwilling Mr. Miyagi out of the vigilantes, which really isn’t saying much when Daredevil is also the only one willing to give him the time of day.

But they’re going to meet Hawkeye. Peter can’t miss that.

Daredevil stops him near their destination to disappear into the shadows because, as Peter is quickly beginning to find out, he’s got a chronic need for drama. This point is solidified as fact in Peter’s mind when Daredevil returns with a handful of ice, practically giggling.

He gestures for silence.

Peter, in his infinite wisdom, follows the errant Devil up a building. There’s no way anyone can be that quiet on a fire escape, but the devil manages just fine. Peter forsakes it for the brickwork.

Daredevil somehow makes absolutely no noise when he moves across the rooftop.  There’s a pile of tarps and scattered coffee cups off to one side, practically spilling over the building edge. The spidey sense flickers on and off, a delicate, barely-there pressure under his skull. It doesn’t seem to think he’s in danger, or at least not much.

Peter stays low in the shadows.

Maybe it’s a villain. If they’re talking about strange enhancements there’s probably a reason for ice. Hawkeye’s probably after the guy-

Daredevil shoves the ice under a tarp.

Somebody squawks as a knife flicks through the air. It barely misses Daredevil, who jumps back with a bark of laughter, looking for all the world like Christmas came early in the form of a stressed Hawkeye lunging out of the tarps. Hawkeye only seems to realize who he’s punching after it lands.

“Shit,” Hawkeye, the local Avenger who stood with Thor and the Black Widow. “Fuck, man-”

Daredevil laughs so hard Peter starts to feel concerned. He’s clutching his bruised side and weathering Hawkeye’s complaints with the air of someone who feasts upon misery.

“Aw, c’mon,” Hawkeye is saying as he collects the wayward knife. “Why’d you have to go an’ be an asshole like that?”

“Have you met me?”

Peter glares are this strange comradery. Is there some sort of test he has to pass before being treated like an equal? Maybe it’s a jenga match. Peter kind of hopes so. He’s unbeatable at jenga. That would be easier than the more likely ‘beat this villain and you’re in’ kind of logic Ned’s theorized.

“Fair point,” Hawkeye decides after a half second of consideration. He notices Peter approaching and beams. “Oh hey, you’re the new kid, right? Spider-something. Spiderling.”

“Spider man.”

“Spiderman. Right. Nat says she doesn’t care about ripping off themes but I don’t believe her. Yet.” Hawkeye picks up one of the many energy cans surrounding his feet. He frowns at it before searching for a non-empty specimen. “We have so many bug-people. Ant-man, Wasp, Black Widow-“

“Spiders aren’t bugs, though,” Peter points out in the interest of fairness.

Hawkeye waves a hand. “Ehn.”

“Isn’t there a telepath named Mantis?” Daredevil asks. “She got in my head and started freaking out.”

“Duh,” Hawkeye huffs into the energy drink he’s located. “That’s bugs for you.”

“Bugs,” Peter repeats, and can't help but feel morally insulted. “Not spiders. I will not have my good name maligned like that.”

“Why bugs?” Daredevil asks, sitting on the edge of the roof and not looking at either of them. Hawkeye doesn’t seem too bothered, so Peter takes that as a sign that this is normal for the actual Devil. “Why not sharks?”

“I will not have Sharknado in this city,” Hawkeye points out with his can. “Do you know how weird my life is already? Christ, adding sharks is how people get themselves stuck in a time loop.”

Daredevil makes a noise of disgust. “Time travel isn’t real.”

“Have you time traveled,” Peter asks Hawkeye, because there is no fucking way he’s leaving this roof without getting that answer.

An answer Hawkeye refuses to give. He says, “psh. Time travel,” which is the opposite of an answer, and returns to the edge of the roof where a sniper rifle is set up under a pile of tarps. “Awe, hell. He moved.”

“I thought you were a bow and arrows guy,” Peter asks quietly, and Hawkeye squints at him.

“What?”

“You know, archery.”

Hawkeye shrugs, missing the point by a mile. “Not today.”

That’s about as clear as the tarps.

Daredevil crouches next to him. “Who are you tracking?”

“Uhhh, hold on. Tommy- Timmy? Some old-school name. Fifth window from the right, two floors from the top. Old guy who wouldn't know quality television if he ever bothered to change the channel. Only watches the news day in, day out. Man needs a hobby. Maybe not knitting. Too stabby. Nah, that’s a scrapbook man.”

Peter joins them, peering into the tiny apartment. Its paint is peeling and there’s about twice as many lamps as any reasonable person would need, but the big rad armchair is devoid of occupants. The carpet is ugly. It sets off Peter’s Spidey-sense from here.

It’s probably convinced that if he steps foot in that apartment, he will trip.

“Pacemaker?” Daredevil asks, like this is an actual way to identify people. Once again, Peter attempts to communicate doubt through the mask and once again, Daredevil misses it entirely.

Hawkeye snaps his fingers. “That’s the one. Probably smells like stale Cheetos.”

These are bold words from a man who smells like old coffee, wet dog, and gun powder.

Daredevil does his head-tilting thing, which Peter once again tries to copy. There’s so damn much in this city every second. Peter doesn’t get it – every other part of the mutation is useful. Mostly. But the enhanced senses do nothing but make a dull roar louder. He can’t get any information out of it.

“You have it too?” Hawkeye asks abruptly. Peter snaps back into focus to find a very blond archer leaning into his space.

“…What?”

“The hearing.” Hawkeye taps a finger to the side of his head as if making sure Peter knows what he’s talking about. What is with these old people and being cryptic all the time? “Red said he won’t teach, but if you’ve got the same-“

“Not a teacher,” Daredevil calls over. He’s migrated to the corner to better impersonate a triangulating owl. Hawkeye huffs at the devil and fiddles with his equipment.

“Yeah, yeah. So, you have super-hearing too?”

Wait.

“You have super-hearing?” Peter asks his horrible mentor-figure, too outraged to care that his voice just cracked. Daredevil tilts his head at the sound of someone nearing their max capacity of emotions.

“I mean,” the absolutely terrible teacher says. “Do you?”

UGH.

“Yes!” Peter whisper-screams.

“Huh,” Daredevil says again, and goes right back to his owl impersonation.

Oh.

My.

GOD, this man is exhausting. Peter makes a sound reminiscent of tea kettles and throws up both hands. Hawkeye wheezes out a laugh like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard all day.

“Same, kid,” he says, not looking up from the scope. “Just light some incense and call it a day.”

Peter stops tea kettling to consider this. He’s got absolutely no reason to carry that as Spiderman, but if it will clear up Daredevil’s devil-ness then anything’s worth a shot.

“Does that do anything?” he asks, morbidly curious. Hawkeye thinks about it for a moment, propping one hand under his chin before giving his head a definite shake.

“No, but the smell might ward him off. Worth a try, though.”

Daredevil makes a disgusted noise which is as good as confirmation.

“Super hearing,” Peter hisses at the Devil, who sneers right back with gleaming white teeth.

So many teeth.

Like a rabid wolf.

A living shadow dragged up from Hell’s gates to its Kitchen, reeking of terror not his own. No wicked souls are saved by the Devil. They beg and beg, but rest for the wicked is a pipe dream washed into rotting gutters long before it can come to fruition. Devils are made for those who seek them in all the worst ways.

Laughter and gleaming white teeth asking him just what deal he’d like to make with the Devil today.

“Rat King,” the Devil spits.

…What?

“What?” Peter hears himself squawk. The unholy terror leeches out of his lungs and is replaced with insulted confusion. He was terrified out of his mind, and now there’s no payoff.

Peter almost feels cheated. Actually, he definitely feels cheated. If his life is a horror film it has to be two stars at best, because nobody in their right mind would pay for that kind of disappointment.

Hawkeye makes a similar noise with the exact same emotions and even goes so far as to peel his eye off the rifle scope.

“Rat King,” Daredevil repeats.

“What are you doing with my neighbor?” Hawkeye asks, which is a mental image Peter never knew he didn’t want. Ugh. Neighbors with a Rat King? No thanks.

“We’re hunting the Rat King,” Daredevil explains eerily. “And you believe in him.”

Hawkeye glances between the Devil and Peter a couple times before evaluating the refuse around him. “I can’t,” he whines. “Tom’s under protection and he got a bomb threat yesterday.”

Peter’s Spidey-sense proceeds to freak the fuck out, several minutes late.

Useless.

“A bomb?” Peter asks politely, rubbing at this temples to ward off the panic and the headache.

Daredevil cocks his head. “You mean the buzzing thing under his floorboards?”

Hawkeye stares at him for a few seconds before bursting into motion.

“Help us find the Rat King,” Daredevil says once the bomb is dealt with and the apartment is swarmed by various uniforms. Peter never had to leave the rooftop, but Hawkeye went rattling down the stairs to flash his Avengers ID and step on a mouse trap. He returned with coffee from the old man’s kitchen that he specified was bitter, cold, and brewed yesterday. The cream was apparently expired but still tasted decent. This was consumed apathetically with the Devil and a Spider as witness.

Hawkeye shoots Daredevil a disgusted look over his nasty coffee. “No way in hell.”

“I’ll buy pizza,” the Devil offers.

“Oh, cool.” Hawkeye shoulders his bag of equipment. “When are we heading out?”

Peter needs a solid day to get over that kind of whiplash. Plus, it’s getting late. Early. Whatever. He has school.

“Tomorrow?” he suggests. “Too little night left today.”

“Thursday,” Daredevil corrects.

“Saturday,” Hawkeye says. 

Daredevil growls, but the archer holds his ground. 

“Because justice,” he points out, and apparently that’s the magic word to make the Devil compliant. He gets halfway across the roof before stiffening and marching back to snarl at Hawkeye that ‘justice’ is not a valid excuse.

It still works, which feels like a miracle.

Saturday.

Rat King.

Ned is going to lose his mind.

“I hate you both,” Daredevil promises them, and vanishes over the roof edge. Hawkeye tracks his progress over the rooftops long after Peter loses him.

“Red’s got a thing about justice,” Hawkeye says when Peter asks how he did that. “Never fails.”

Peter types it into his notes app, along with a reminder to ask about time travel and super hearing. He looks up at whispered curses as Hawkeye comes to a harrowing realization of just how much trash he’s scattered around the roof.

He’s going to hunt down a Rat King with Hawkeye and Daredevil. This is great.

“Ned,” Peter hisses, tapping the window glass frantically. He’s not too visible in the shadows, but at the right angle anyone passing by could see Spiderman hanging upside down over an apartment window. The sooner he’s inside, the better.

“Ned!”

Something falls over inside before Ned shoves the window open. “What? It’s so late-“

Peter drops inside the dark room, nearly trips over the Lego kit they were working on earlier, and springs for the desk chair. He almost falls off, but a sticky hand on the desk saves the day. A jar of pencils and desk kitsch clatters to the floor, taking a whole sheaf of papers with it.

“That never gets old,” Ned tells him, shutting the window with a grunt. “What’s up?”

Peter gathers the papers, places them on the desk, and stalls further by tucking his legs up on the chair. This is big news. He has no idea how to share it, and the nervous energy flexes and curls around fidgeting hands.

“Well?” Ned demands.

“Daredevil wants to fight the Rat King so he found a bomb for Hawkeye and we’re all going to the sewers to find it on Saturday,” Peter bursts out.

Ned stares. “Oh my God.”

“I know,” Peter whispers with barely contained glee. Ned has started to pace.

“Daredevil and Hawkeye.”

“I know.”

“Rat! King!”

“I know.”

“Isn’t Daredevil the actual Devil? There are theories that he can only fight people who have murdered or something first, and if Daredevil can’t fight it, you should be ready with a backup plan.” Ned sits and steeps his fingers, already deep in thought. “I’m just saying, it’d suck if you find it but a whole third of your party is useless.”

That’s a good point. Peter is not fighting it. No fighting, no rat hugs. Just asking it for it’s secrets and maybe a signature to ensure bragging rights. 

“We need intel,” Ned declares over his steeped fingers like an old-school villain. He pulls over his laptop as Peter unlocks his phone.

Rat Kings.

The image results are not encouraging. If Peter’s being honest, they take his motivation from a solid 78% down to roughly 18%, and that’s not counting the mental scarring via wikipedia.

“This is New York, and you’re sewer-monster bait,” Ned reasons after reading the scientific definition. “There will be royalty. I heard there’s a pizza guy who delivered to enhanced turtles in Brooklyn.”

“Turtles? Maybe they have kings”

“...Turtles don’t seem like the monarchy type.”

“Squirrel Kings have existed,” Peter reads off his phone. 

Ned purses his lips and considers their options. “So go ask Squirrel Girl if her squirrels have kings.“

“I'm not talking to Squirrel Girl,” Peter counters immediately. She terrifies him more than any villain or devil vigilante out there. There was a news story last week confirming Dr. Doom is scared shitless of her, and that’s all the confirmation Peter needs to steer clear. She walked right up and scolded him. Just. Right in his face.

And he packed up his evil plan and called it a day.

Peter refuses to talk to Squirrel Girl. That’s power no mortal should hold and Aunt May taught him better than to go around messing with that. Weirdness has standards. He has to draw a line in the sand. Ned sees this, acknowledges the mortal limits of spider-kind, and moves on to the question of if Rat Kings are technically enhanced.

They spend longer than intended researching.

This is a mistake, yes, but it’s one Peter is fully prepared to face alongside two famous vigilantes and his terrible Parker Luck. It’s gonna be great. He’s ready to step into the city’s underside with trust built spider-silk thin between two legends and shoulders that aren't strong enough to carry the world. Not yet. But he’s climbing higher every day.

“Bring a flashlight,” Ned says, typing away at his laptop. The blue screen light reflects off his face in an otherwise dim room. “Are you bringing rocks and stuff?”

Peter is now. There’s no harm in carrying a bit of obsidian. Just in case.

Chapter Text

Saturday evening finds Matt buying a jug of the cleaner Foggy swears by and the strongest detergent he can find in preparation. Maybe he’s being paranoid, but if the suit still smells like blood from a couple months ago, there’s no way the smell of the sewers will leave it easily. It's not exactly something he can dry-clean.

And they will end up in the sewers. Clint’s luck won’t allow for anything else. Matt’s starting to dread the cooling pavement and night-sounds of the city.

Karen is excited enough for both of them.

“Offer him this,” she tells Matt, practically shoving a half-block of cheese in his hands. It's the fancy stuff. Matt has no clue what kind. “But don’t get too close, because I need to hear what happens.”

Foggy watches this from his desk with resigned acceptance. “Isn’t the Rat King just a bunch of rats stuck together?”

“We’re going with Clint,” Matt clarifies. Normally he’d expect to find exactly that, but Clint has monumentally bad luck and also believes in a monarchy-style Rat King like something out of the Nutcracker ballet. Something big. Punchable. They might even find it. Plus, Spiderman seems intent to tag along, and informed them all that he’s got experience with sewer villains.

Matt knows this.

He’s heard the news, and the kid’s suit stinks.

Regardless, between Clint’s bad luck, Spiderman’s sewer villain luck, and Matt’s overall ability to find danger and make a home in it, they stand a chance of finding an actual Rat King.

Cheers.

“Going with Clint means someone will end the night with tetanus or the plague,” Foggy says dryly. “So help me, I will haul your ass to the hospital-“

“I will haul my own ass to the hospital,” Matt promises. It’s a big lie. He’ll go home and be miserable before calling in sick, then Foggy or Karen will attempt to put him in a cab to the ER. They will not succeed. Mostly because Matt has decided this and therefore, if he focuses hard enough, maybe he can will it into reality. Backup plans include screeching like a wet cat, clinging to the furniture, and escaping out the car window. In that order.

Then he will find Claire.

Foggy seems to anticipate a different ending, because he makes a noise of satisfaction and returns to sorting files. Karen takes Matt’s momentary distraction as an excuse to shove the wax-wrapped cheese into his briefcase as a fun little gift to find later. It’s fine. The bag is sealed, and crumbs are unlikely.

He doesn’t want to deal with the literal underground of New York. The black market is enough trouble already.

Still.

Rat King.

He may complain, but Matt’s committed now.

“I thought you were all conflicted about the Spider-child,” Foggy says as they lock up the office that evening.

And oh, he is. Matt’s still falling, still lost between an impossible task and a road with no happy endings. There’s a long history between him and the act of mentorship, built of regret and guilt and the vibrations of steps walking away when he needed someone to lean on. Matt’s not good at support.

He’s still learning.

Hell's Kitchen isn’t perfect.

Matt’s still breaking himself over the concrete and rebar over that decision, half-procrastination of a good thing and half-procrastination of a mistake he can’t take back. This is a distraction, nothing more.

“I’m taking a vacation from ethics,” Matt decides. “I’ll be conflicted again after meeting the Rat King.”

“If he has a crown, I want it,” Karen tells him. “The Rat King, not Spiderman. Don’t steal from children.”

“I hear that’s illegal,” Matt muses, and gets his arm punched for his troubles.

“Last-ditch option, seduce a rat king,” Foggy says with the air of someone who found the answer to a question he really didn’t want answered. “You won’t even have to try, just turn on the charm or whatever it is that you did to our entire graduating class.”

“No?” Matt tips his chin up and tries not to wonder how people got such a low opinion of him. “I? Have standards?”

Foggy makes a doubtful noise.

Rude.

Yeah, Foggy met Matt in college which was admittedly not a great showing for his track record, but still.

Rude.

“So do I but that doesn't stop crushes from forming,” Karen points out over the crinkle of her plastic bag. It smells like cheddar. Sharp. “I, personally, have a Pinterest board called ‘Strong Women’ to remind myself of those standards.”

Foggy and Matt take a second to consider this.

“Karen,” Foggy says with great feeling. “I want you to know that I love you, platonically, so much-”

“Thank you.” Karen kisses Foggy’s cheek and proceeds to jab a whole handful of cheese into Matt’s suit pocket. 

“This house is a nightmare,” Matt says as Karen forcibly bestows more cheese to bait his destined sewer love. It smells like brie.

Foggy gestures to Matt's entire self and takes the stairs first.

Matt escapes Karen’s quest to cram as much cheese as humanly possible into his pockets, and suits up to find Clint and Spiderman a couple blocks away from the rooftop. Something happened yesterday changing their meetup to Bed Stuy. Clint heavily implied it was a tip from the Black Widow.

They are all ignoring the implications there.

Matt – now Daredevil under the mask and bandaged knuckles – believes that luck like Clint’s indicates a Rat King in his sewer system is run-of-the-mill. Spiderman’s track record is similar enough, and the news is starting to think Spiderman practically lives under the city. If he hasn’t seen a Rat King by now, it’s not in Queens.

So.

Bed Stuy it is.

He arrives to find Spiderman showing off a collection of rocks to Clint. The kid puts a pointy one in Daredevil’s hand and curls his fingers over it with a little pat. It’s like a prism. A crystal? Or carved into the shape. Smooth. Conchoidal fracture patterns, like glass.

“Take this with you,” Spiderman tells him, dead serious. Clint snickers behind him, oddly excited about the rock.

“Bomb?” Daredevil asks. Some rocks explode, right? That sounds like a thing that happens.

“Opposite of that,” Spiderman promises. “Safety.”

Hmmm.

Doubt that.

“Is this witchcraft,” Daredevil asks suspiciously. Clint makes a soft noise like he’s dying, so either it is witchcraft, or he’s insulted the tiny child.

Suspicious.

“It’s amethyst,” Spiderman corrects, missing the entire point by a mile. “For your pockets.”

Clint shuffles forwards so he’s next to the Spider-child and increases annoyingness levels by three thousand percent. “Yeah, Red. Pretty rocks for your pockets.”

“Can’t,” Daredevil tells the vultures. “Pockets are already filled.”

“With secrets and justice,” Spiderman whispers, causing Daredevil to reel backwards as though struck. Spiderman watches this with open happiness at his suffering, clutching the assorted rocks to his chest with both hands.

“Cheese,” Daredevil corrects, shoving the rock back into Spiderman’s arms and ignoring the dejected noise that inevitably follows. “Do we have to do this?”

“You were the one excited earlier,” Spiderman points out as he curls Daredevil’s fingers over the rock again and pats them with increasingly pointed energy. “Don’t you want to fight the Rat King?”

… Not with witchcraft. Daredevil nods along to the fighting part and stuffs the rock in Clint’s belt pouch when Spiderman gets distracted by a distant siren. 

“Dude,” Clint whispers. He sounds almost insulted. “You can’t be this catholic.”

Spiderman twists around to stare down the third member of their sewer exploration team. Clint shuffles back a bit at the scrutiny.

“So Hawkeye-“

“Hell no. We’ve been over this, call me Barton for fuckssakes-“

“-Don’t you want Mr. Devil to buy you pizza?”

Clint goes completely still. That’s never a good thing. Daredevil takes this as his cue to tug at the drain cover desperately in an attempt to get away from whatever Clint’s discovered. It does not budge.

Fuck.

“Mr. Devil?” Clint repeats gleefully.

Daredevil increases his efforts in vain hope that the noise will drown Clint out. “Shut up-“

“Woah, strong language so early in the night? Must be my birthday.”

“Fuck you, Clint.”

“There are children present, Mr. Devil-“

“I’m not a child,” Spiderman adds, because he’s no help. “But please. Carry on roasting him. I’ll just sit here. With my camera. Quietly.”

Is that what he’s holding? It buzzes less than most phones.

“-and you, Mr. Devil, owe me a pizza for being here, so we are going to see that Rat King, Mr. Devil, sir.”

“Fuck both of you,” Daredevil spits, giving the drain cover one last tug. It remains unrelenting before the desperation of a man stuck with two annoying children. Spiderman pats his shoulder in a way that is probably meant to be condescending before tearing the cover open with one hand.

You know.

Like it’s tin foil.

Easy.

Daredevil needs to take a second because he knew about the superstrength, but not that it was that powerful.

Clint leans over. “He’s got sticky fingers, too, right? Kid’s got a powerset practically designed for opening spaghetti jars. Man, what must that be like? The hubris alone-”

Spiderman slips into the tunnel. “Uh. You guys coming?”

“Yeah,” Daredevil manages. Just give them a second to adjust, kiddo.

Clint whistles, inspecting the twisted metal. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“You already are,” Daredevil sniffs, clambering into the tunnel. Clint follows mostly to put him in a headlock but also to find the Rat King.

Spiderman keeps singing ‘secret tunnel’ under his breath and what’s worse is that Clint asks him to speak up after the second round. Worse still, he then seems to recognize it. It’s going to get stuck in Daredevil’s head. This song is so badly written. He didn’t know he was a music snob before now, but it’s like all his better-knowing brain cells packed up and took a trip to literally anywhere else for the past five minutes. Spiderman belts out that damn Secret Tunnel song from some sort of show ever-louder, and Clint joins in because the world is a cruel and unjust place.

It’s like they’re trying to lure out the rats with horrible acoustics.

“Hey, Red,” Clint calls, breaking off their war against blessed silence. “Are we there yet?”

Daredevil heaves a sigh before waving for quiet and striking the wall with his billy club. It takes a moment to locate the rushing water they decided to aim for – an atrium Spiderman mentioned fighting some sand-villain in – and the result has him sighing again.

“We’re still a ways out.”

“And then we’ll meet the Rat King,” Spiderman finishes. He’s been getting more and more excited with every step they take. It’s like a terrible road trip.

“I’m gonna fight him,” Daredevil reminds himself as he climbs past a narrow opening. This will be worth it. Probably.

“I’m gonna watch,” Clint promises as he climbs through next, waving something? In his hand? He’s probably doing this on Nat’s request, actually. 

Hm. Why does that make Daredevil nervous?

“And I’m going to ask him to teach me,” Spiderman finishes confidently, slipping past the opening so they can continue on. Clint seems to mentally stumble over both this and an uneven piece of the floor at the same time. Those precious seconds give Daredevil enough time to speed-walk ahead so he doesn’t have to be considered a part of whatever conversation follows.

“Why?” Clint asks when he’s recovered.

“Because he’s the Rat King.”

Daredevil can’t judge that one. He wants to fight it on the same basis. 

…Unless Foggy is right and it’s just a bunch of rats stuck together. It won’t be, though. Clint’s bad luck will come through for them. There’s no way they’re leaving this sewer without facing a Rat King that’s at least six feet tall. It’s probably ripped like the gym bros that keep trying to flex on Fogwell’s regulars.

Yeah, a gym bro Rat King.

Behind him, Clint’s playing with a couple pieces of metal that are sliding together. Maybe throwing knives. Shuriken? Does Clint carry those now?

“Thought you were following Red.”

Spiderman considers Clint’s words carefully before deciding, “I’m planning to con him into teaching me.”

“Yeah, but why? I mean, look at him. This man lives on justice and depression,” he hears Clint say as they wade through a sludge-filled passage. Daredevil hates it. He’s very purposefully breathing through his mouth but it’s still not enough to stop the overpowering stench all around them.

“Because he’s a cryptid,” Spiderman says like it’s obvious and not the kind of logic that divides urban legends and bad decisions. “I mean, if I’m doing the superhero thing, I want the coolest backstory I can get. Right now, it’s all angst and that’s not really a balanced plotline, you know?”

Daredevil feels his mind stall. The last brain cell he’s been holding onto cheerfully floats away alongside the dregs of broken dreams and sewer water soaking through his boots. He can’t let Spiderman ever meet Deadpool. Wade would-

Would-

Actually, Daredevil has no idea what Wade would think of Spiderman, and that’s not a very good sign. He’d be a horrible influence.

“Excuse me?” he manages.

“Cryptid,” Spiderman explains, gesturing to Daredevil’s entire being. He then holds up both hands in mimicry of either ears or the horns as if to clarify who they’re talking about. Probably the horns, then.

This makes no sense, but Daredevil nods as if he knows what’s happening. “…Yes?”

“Cryptid who knows what he’s doing,” Spiderman elaborates, still with the horns. He shifts to a classic Spiderman pose and makes a little thwip-thwip sound under his breath. “Spider. You still with me? Spider wants cryptid knowledge. Teach me your eldritch wisdom, Devil-man.”

Clint cackles. “Devil-man,” he says like a bratty kid let loose in a candy shop.

Daredevil takes a deep breath and searches his miserable, tortured heart for the patience he’s beginning to think Spiderman was sent to test. He needs sleep and a drink, not necessarily in that order.

Spiderman does not seem to realize that in the eyes of most New Yorkers, vigilantes are considered a cross between somewhat sanitary vermin and local celebrities, and he is counted in this number. They’re all equally cryptids, save for maybe Clint who’s both better and worse due to his status as an Avenger. In contrast, Castle exists on the opposite side of the spectrum as more of a sentient nightmare.

Spiderman will not be swayed by this logic.

“But I need to learn because of justice,” he explains, delightedly exploiting the weakness he’s discovered. The word exerts a near-pavlovian response. Daredevil has no clue how Spiderman figured it out, unless Clint shared.

Argh.

He’s not paid for this and therefore not going to dignify that with a response.

“Justice?” Clint clarifies, like an asshole. Daredevil can’t stop the full body flinch, and he knows they both noticed because Spiderman nods, puffing out his chest with a little woosh of air. The muffled laughter from Clint is adding insult to injury at this point. 

“Justice,” Spiderman says.

“Fine,” Daredevil snaps reflexively, and experiences deep regret.

Sewer water sloshes as Spiderman wriggles in victory. “So, you’ll teach me?”

“No.”

Clint cracks up again.

“So help me,” Daredevil seethes, “I will turn this car around-”

“-and get McDonalds?” Spiderman finishes. “Because the answer is yes, but only after I watch two cryptids fight each other in my own sewer.”

“I like to think of these as communally owned,” Clint argues, rapping a knuckle against the sewer wall. The sound bounces off the tunnel, tracking their route deeper into the heart of Bed Stuy’s underground. Water, brick, mud, metal, concrete, sludge, fur, dust-

Wait.

“Speak for yourself, if I’m going into these that often, I should at least get partial ownership of all New York sewers,” Spiderman counters. 

Arrows rattle. "All of New York? Psh. You can have Queens."

"Look, I'm not even claiming the tri-state area. That's downright generous."

Daredevil presses a hand against the wall. One more time. Carefully, he expands his senses, mapping out the space between him and where he thought he heard something.

“Everywhere but Bed Stuy,” Clint bargains.

“I want a Rat King, though-”

“Quiet,” Daredevil says tightly. Clint falls silent immediately and Spiderman trails off his sentence.

He finds their heartbeats and expands. Filth, concrete, water, steel, sludge, fur-

There.

Mammals. Small. Light-fast heartbeats, rustling fur, and the small pitter-patter of little feet. Roughly a foot or so in size, low enough to the ground their fur brushes concrete and plastic? Paper? Probably trash, whatever it is. Might be rats. Might be a bunch of possums or raccoons. Rats and ferrets sound pretty similar, despite the tails.

Hissing in frustration, Daredevil presses an ear to the wall so as to better track the sound carried through. It smells disgusting but works.

Where, where, where- pitter patter of small feet, low to the ground, squeaking. Tails drag against concrete and brick. He traces it to the busiest part and finds-

“Oh,” Daredevil says. “Huh.”

Spiderman claps both hands over his mask, but Daredevil still hears the inarticulate sound of rage. Clint gestures for continued quiet.

There’s a lot of small bodies up ahead, but what’s unnerving is the way they’re moving in tandem. Like a machine or a hivemind-

A hive.

“Found him,” Daredevil says, bringing his range back. “Or just a very big rat’s nest. Everyone up to date on shots?”

Spiderman’s heart stutters. Oh, fuck. Oh, no. He meant it as a joke but now that he thinks about it, nobody teaching the kid means nobody told him about vaccines. How important it is, especially for anyone spelunking in sewers to have them. Tetanus shots for everyone in a mask what with the number of ways rusty metal could find its way through cuts and bloody knuckles. Flu shots, chicken pox, everything. Get all the shots. Every single one there is an excuse to get.

“Verbal confirmation?” Daredevil requests, carefully suppressing the worry. He’s not caring or being a mentor of any sort, he’s just- slightly worried. A little bit.

“Yeah,” Spiderman says. His heartbeat holds steady.

Oh, thank goodness.

“I’m good,” Clint adds. Also truth. “Lead the way, Mr. Devil.”

Never mind.

“I’m tossing the both of you in a rat pit,” Daredevil decides, and spins around to leave them both behind. Clint cackles as he follows, and Spiderman falls in step a second later. His body heat is on the ceiling this time.

“Spider brain says danger is on the ground, so go up,” he explains when asked. “Besides, rats can’t climb ceilings. Right?”

Clint agrees before his heart skips a beat at nothing, which gets Daredevil nervous, and Spiderman picks up on it and freezes too.

“Don’t you have a danger sense,” Clint asks into the quiet.

Spiderman twists around on the ceiling to face him. “Yeah? It’s been going off since we entered the tunnels.”

“Danger sense says go up?”

Daredevil sees where Clint is going with this and does not like it. Do not leave him alone on the ground, do not-

“Yeah?”

“Okay, then.” Clint takes a deep breath, rustles around in his pockets, and pulls on a pair of gloves that hum like electronics. There’s metal in them, too. Sharp around the knuckles, like claws, but flat across the palms and fingertips where the buzzing is strongest. He attaches something that also hums at the same frequency to his knees, but the tech is fiddly and Daredevil can’t make it out.

“Well?” Clint says when he’s done. “What are we waiting for? Onward march. Let’s get ourselves a Rat King.”

 They move on.

The tunnels are disgusting. Spiderman makes occasional comments on the decor, and Daredevil notes the few sections with ladders or ledges that will let him get up high. He points them out and is informed it’s nearly dark to see anything.

At the corner of each tunnel, he checks where the rats are. They keep moving, never in any sort of pattern or path, and several times they’re nearly a mile away from where he expected.

So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the rats find them.

Daredevil hears it first.

Thousands of rat claws and feet pattering against the concrete. It’s like a river, flowing towards them with calm, single-minded purpose. There’s no squeaking, no sounds of rodent communication or even a single member of the colony falling into the water. Just a river of rats, headed their way.

Daredevil waves a hand to get Clint and Spiderman’s attention, holds up a finger for silence, and points down the tunnel. After a moment’s thought he draws the billy clubs.

Clint’s gloves activate with a buzz, and the archer scrambles up a wall with metallic clicks and a shower of dust, swearing, and whatever is on the sewer walls. He abandons Daredevil to the floor and an incoming tide of rats.

Lovely.

Daredevil is familiar with falling. He’s familiar with the drop into emptiness with nobody to catch him but skill and a prayer. There’s a comfort in that known unknown, a surrender of control he actively chooses.

This is different.

The rats approaching them are individual, each capable of splitting off of the main hoard approaching. Sound is easiest to map out first – a thousand claws tapping against stone, hundreds upon thousands upon what feels like millions of rats, all stone-cold silent but for their approach. The soft cacophony approaches like a dull roar, a wave that will sweep them away.

Clint adjusts his position on the ceiling, attaching the tech to the wall, then his knees one by one so he can hang upside down with his bow drawn. The arrow he’s chosen buzzes.

God, why are there so many rats? He came with the hope of fighting one giant rat. Preferably humanoid and the size of a dragon, but he’s willing to accept a horse-sized opponent.

Hell, even a large pig is better than this.

Many small hivemind rats is slightly out of his comfort range. He can land maybe a few hits before getting overwhelmed on the ground. Clint will last longer with his ceiling setup, but unless he manages to collapse the ceiling or set up a barrier, he’ll still be overrun. Spiderman’s webs give him the best shot of all of them. This might not be the worst-case scenario, but it’s also not ideal.

They're going to have to collapse the sewer, aren't they?

So much property damage.

He opens his mouth to comment on this, maybe sketch out a plan and prioritize the kids safety, but then-

Then the smell of rotting meat hits and it’s all Daredevil can do not to gag.

Spiderman flinches. They must have entered his hearing range.

“How far,” Clint asks, barely a murmur.

Daredevil holds up five fingers, then two zeroes. Spiderman makes a hissing noise that’s definitely not human.

The beginning of the heat mass rounds the corner, and Clint’s heartbeat – slow and steady aside from excitement – skips, stumbles, then doubles as panic sets in. The heavy smell of fear really isn’t reassuring.

The rats freeze in place, each one taking up a position on the sides and sloping walls of the tunnel. They’re keeping the center clear.

Still no noise but the ever-louder rustling of movement. It increases as all the rats blink at once.

“Oh my God,” Spiderman whimpers.

Daredevil stiffens. “What?”

“Fucking big. Ever heard of the ones in Tehran? And their eyes,” Clint murmurs, voice low and steady even as his heart rate spikes. “All glowy ‘n shit. Real fuckin’ weird.”

“It has so many eyes,” Spiderman agrees miserably.

Mnh. He hates it.

This is not the Rat King he had imagined. Daredevil's not entirely sure it's something he wants to fight. Turns out he does have a limit.

Chapter Text

Clint is familiar with fear.

He’s caused it. Felt it. SHIELD ordered enough of the stuff that Clint can recognize its smell. Like sweat, but sharper. Acidic. Visceral. It shouldn’t affect him anymore. Terror isn’t worth considering when he’s got rubble and ash-filled dust and a canary-yellow, bloody, child’s shoe seared into his memories. Nowadays, emotional background noise like that is memorable in the way of the burrito he had last week.

This? This is downright unnatural, but Clint lives an elevator ride away from a god and a man who stepped out of history books. 'Unnatural' isn't enough to scare him.

So why does it feel like his blood has frozen in his veins?

“I don’t suppose either of you can talk to rats,” Clint mutters, and his voice is steady only through long training and a tenuous grip on the promise of future pizza.

“Not really my vibe,” Spiderman says, just as quiet. “Mr. Devil?”

Daredevil grumbles something Clint can’t make out, and he sure as hell isn’t looking to read lips with those… things in his sightlines.

Clint checks his six and discovers they're surrounded. Didn't even see it happening.

At least he's not on the ground.

Ha.

Sucker.

Oh man, they're all gonna die.

"H-hi," Spiderman chances, which is a decent opening to diplomacy. Clint's sure as hell uncomfortable barging into a sentient being's home and kicking its ass. When they find out it's evil, they'll fight. Unless it's not evil.

But.

Well.

Look at it.

"Are you the Rat King?" Clint asks the rats below him.

Just to be sure.

A thousand little mouths of sharp teeth and rabies open up. Eyes in the dark glint with the ransomed glee of a successful thief. The voice that follows is high-pitched and twisted with laughter, like every word is a joke it's not inclined to share. 

"We are!" the rats say. A thousand mouths unsuited to human words shape syllables all at once. "Good for us, yes."

Clint is pretty sure Daredevil has stopped breathing.

Well.

They found their rat king.

Clint has earned his pizza.

They can go home now.

For some people, terror, panic, and horror seems to live in their jaws. 'The taste of fear' is something writers and poets seem to like, but for Clint it’s ice and static up his back, wrapping over his ribs to where they meet on either side of his heart to squeeze. It's a tightness in his chest so familiar that he thinks of it as one more layer to his gear.

Numbness isn’t quite what he feels now. Desensitization and isn't the word to describe it either, but that’s closer.

Clint wants to vomit.

"Cool," Spiderman says, a little strangled. "Is that like an appointed position, or-"

"You're very thin," the Rat King says disdainfully. Clint's bow creaks in his grip.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck-

"Very stringy," Daredevil agrees, and Clint desperately shifts his bow to hit the idiot’s shoulder in warning. They don't need to be underestimated here-

"I'd probably poison you," Spider-child adds mournfully, and Clint catches on.

"We have the anatomy of twigs," Clint lies, mostly because he can't think of anything else to add. "Fibrous. Red here would probably give you indigestion."

Daredevil hits him back, accidentally shorting out the gear Clint only just repaired, damnit. The wall-gripping pad falters, and Clint flips around mid-fall to join Daredevil on the ground. Sewer water sloshes over his boots.

Eughhghhhh.

"Probably constipation," Clint adds as his socks squelch against his boot soles. Daredevil huffs out a poorly disguised laugh.

"No," the rats say, aghast.

"For real," Spiderman says. He shuffles further down the ceiling and promises them, "we're probably not worth the time."

Their local sewer rat colony hivemind considers this gravely and says, "the child has a self-worth issue, yes."

Spiderman makes a choked gasping noise like someone sucker-punched him into the astral plane. 

It makes Clint feel strong comradery with the spider child.

“And they're all skinny! Like sticks. Have some garbage,” the Rat King says in much the way one would offer tea to a guest. Clint experiences Fear: Extreme Deluxe Special Edition as a rat steps forward. The rat shoves a nasty candy wrapper full of wadded up gum and mud into his hand, and Clint flinches back reflexively.

He accidentally closes his hand as he does, and the wrapper squishes its contents into his hand. The sheer force of ‘hell no’ rips Clint’s soul right out of his body until the cold feeling of garbage juice soaking into his gloves brings him crashing back down to reality in the worst way possible. 

“Thank you,” Clint creaks miserably, because he was not raised in a barn.

Spiderman, who is incapable of learning through example, hops down from the safety of the dripping ceiling. He does this to accept a mud clod that looks like cigarette butts half-chewed into a clump, and pasted together with what’s probably rabies. Touching it is a violation of every sanitation law known to mankind.

Accepting the garbage seems to endear the rats to Spiderman. They skitter closer to him and appear delighted when he only flinches a little.

The spider child sniffs it and appears to speedrun almost every single negative emotion at once. He wrenches his face as far away from his hand as possible and does a full-body shudder that would be comical if Clint weren’t having the exact same unfortunate experience. The only difference is that he's a professional assassin capable of controlling his reactions. Mostly. This is pushing limits he didn't know he had.

Meanwhile, Daredevil politely declines any garbage. He can’t see the horrible stares they’re giving him, and is therefore immune to the most cursed peer pressure Clint has felt in his life. The displeasure seeping through moist sewer walls either does not translate without visuals, or Daredevil simply does not care.

Clint has no clue which.

Red is just like that.

“Why aren’t you eating?” The Rat King asks once it's ascertained that Daredevil will not be accepting a little clump of sewage trash. Clint wants to cry. “That’s good, high-quality garbage. We made it ourselves.”

“I can tell,” Spidey says, and his voice cracks. “It’s very, uh.”

“Unique,” Clint hears himself say. Red shakes in a way that means he’s stopping himself from barking out a laugh.

“It’s free-range,” the Rat King informs them proudly, thus giving Clint even more questions and no answers.

No.

No, it's not free-range-

"Gucci garbage," the gremlin Spider diagnoses. "Farmers-Market-Fresh. I'm saving this as a gift for my friend. Thank you."

"A compliment!" Each rat collectively presses both cheeks up to their eyes with their tiny, nasty rat paws. Any resemblance to flattered body language is ruined by a reappearance of synchronized blinking. "A whole one, just for us! Oh, we have been most agreeable to earn it, yes."

"It's very nice garbage," Clint manages to say miserably. He wants to get hosed down like a muddy car.

"Such kindness! What could bring kindness to us?"

Spiderman shuffles in place and somehow makes himself smaller. "Um."

“We were going to, uh-” Clint stalls at this point, because he knows exactly how many arrows are in his quiver and there aren’t enough for this. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem - one-trick-ponies are doomed in vigilante circles - but he can’t think of any way they can fight a hivemind Rat King.

“Fight you,” Daredevil says. Clint bites his tongue so he doesn't curse out his local trouble-seeking bloodhound while a spider child and rat king are watching. Why does he have to be like this?

“We’re a pacifist,” the Rat King informs them, bobbing its heads in a sea of sudden movement. It ripples across the reflecting eyes. “No fighting for us. No, no. Bad rat.”

Clint does not want to know what that means. Pizza is not enough of a bribe to get him to ask how a Rat King discovered pacifism.

“Okay, I gotta know,” Spiderman bursts out, because apparently he has no mortal fear either. “Do you decide things through votes? Or is this like a hivemind kind of deal?”

“Consensus,” the rats inform him. “Different from voting.”

"...So," Daredevil says, looking completely lost like some kind of bedraggled puppy. "I'm not going to fight a Rat King?"

One of the rats pats his boot with its nasty paws. "Violence will only hollow you out faster."

“...No,” Daredevil says slowly.

The rats all cackle with their horrible rodent voices. It is the worst sound. Clint is pretty sure he's hallucinating from sewer fumes at this point.

Fear is commonplace. He’s been on either side of torture and walked into situations he’s never expected to make it out of. Clint followed orders into fear, and felt it leaving that life behind when Fury signed him over to the Avengers. He knows that feeling so well it doesn’t fully process anymore. It’s one more fact of life. What is happening now is absolutely not commonplace, or just another fact of life.

He wants his dog.

And the pizza.

Another rat steals cheese right out of Daredevil's pockets.

Karen has to physically muffle her laughter when Matt stumbles into the office Monday morning. She knew this would be good.

Possibly because Matt disappeared on Saturday to fight a Rat King, and he disappears off the earth every Sunday, which makes today the first available interrogation date.

Karen’s made a bet with Foggy. If Matt found the Rat King and fought it, she gets to keep vodka in her desk with minimal judgment. If Matt either did not meet the Rat King, or miraculously sustained injury purely from his own dumbassery without rodent assistance in their fight, she’ll buy Foggy a bag of that expensive coffee he likes. Those beans taste like bitter glory. The kind of coffee that tastes perfectuntil the price ruins it forever and suddenly even trash like Starbucks is enticing. Not that she would. Karen can’t ignore the ethical cost of buying there.

But the point stands.

Karen’s going to win this bet if she has to march into the sewers and throw Matt at the Rat King for a Round Two.

She and Foggy retreat to the hot water kettle as Matt batters his way about the office, swearing at the walls and furniture alike. He’s feeling verbose when she catches words amongst the disgruntled muttering. This is good. A verbose Matt is a dramatic Matt. They will get a story, though it may take time for him to first wring the theatricality out like a wet dishcloth made of New York summer heat.

"He is alive, and uninjured," Karen notes as Matt rediscovers the doorframe to his own office. They pause to consider the ambient sulking. There is a distinct lack of rage.

"He did a full court session with broken ribs," Foggy tells her. "The day isn't over yet."

Karen's mouth flattens into a grim line. "We'll see, counselor."

When she checks in on him after a few clients have stopped by, it’s to the sight of a Matt plastering himself over the top of his desk in a limp puddle of lawyer. Several papers have slipped off to scatter across the floor. A family in the waiting room Foggy is escorting out has craned their necks look past him upon their co-representation in the courtroom.

Karen is a good friend.

She joins the spectators mercilessly. Foggy gives her a disapproving look and promises the family’s matriarch that he will peel his associate off the hardwood by the time their case goes to court. The door clicks shut behind the family, their many camera apps, and their phones.

“You lost,” Karen guesses once the office is once again devoid of clients. She leans her shoulder and hip against Matt’s doorframe.

Several pens roll off the desk when Matt flattens himself further into the wood with a distraught noise.

At this, Foggy drifts behind her to help observe Matt making a spectacle of himself. “So you won?”

Matt sighs from the very bottom of his chest. What little strength remains billows out with it, and he slides down past his chair like an overcooked noodle to collapse, boneless, on the hardwood floor beside his wounded pride. He ends up taking shelter under his desk. It remains a mystery how he knows Karen is judging him with her eyebrows.

“No,” Matt whispers from under his desk.

“Oh?” Foggy asks, because he’s a saint.

Karen leaves him to it, and starts looking for the case files they were missing yesterday. She’ll also accept a crowbar or mop. Foggy can herd Matt with any of those three. It’s a useful talent of his, and Karen is content to revel from afar in the entertainment of it all.

She finds a broom.

It’ll do.

Their third expresses his displeasure at the broom with hissing, but Matt forfeited his rights to an opinion by forsaking furniture for drama. Foggy, bless him, ignores Matt’s distraught noises wield the broom against socked ankles where they poke out from under the desk. Karen retreats to wage war against the photo copier until a story gets coughed up with all the enthusiasm of a hairball.

It doesn’t take Foggy long to snare details on the communal broom bristles.

Neither he nor Karen won their bet.

Matt met the Rat King and did not fight it, which is a result none of them could have ever predicted. Karen chooses to interpret this as karma. That, or fate has a sense of humor.

Foggy insists he won.

This is a lie.

Karen once again leans her hip against Matt's office door to commiserate anyway. It's very cathartic to watch him hunch over his papers and hiss like the feral street cat he denies being.