Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Two months after his father dies, Matt goes to Sister Bernadette in tears. He climbs into her lap because he’s too weak to stand, and he presses his head to her chest and feels the steady thump of her heart against his skin, and he begs her to help him. His head is pounding; his legs are shaky; he wants to tear his own skin from his bones where the scratchy collar of his shirt has rubbed it raw.

“Of course, Matthew,” says Sister Bernadette, brushing his hair from his forehead. Her fingertips feel like a sledgehammer against his skull. “Of course I’ll help. What’s wrong?”

And that is everything Matt wants to hear, so he climbs in her lap and sobs it all out, all the voices he can hear and how they’re splitting his head open, the smells and the burning heat and the everything in his mind, all the awful, terrible things that have made him their home and are crowding for space. 

Her heart rate picks up. “What do the voices tell you?”

“It’s not”--Matt sniffles, drags a hand across his face, smears his mess of tears and snot across his cheek--“I just hear people talking, is all. Lots of people.”

“Why don’t you tell me something you hear now?”

“Sister Andrea. She’s at the farmer’s market around the corner. She’s asking for apricots but they don’t have any.”

When Sister Andrea comes home, Sister Bernadette pulls her aside and asks, “What about the apricots, Sister?”

And Sister Andrea says, “Oh, they were out today.”

And Sister Bernadette does what any good Catholic nun would do, and she calls for an exorcist. 

…

There is a child sitting on Matt’s couch. A living, breathing, human child, who represents all the pieces of Matt’s life that he’d rather forget. A child who won’t stop staring at Matt like he knows what the Hell he’s supposed to do about this. 

“Do you want some water?” asks Matt. “Anything to eat?”

“No.”

Fantastic. 

“Well, it’s not much,” says Matt, setting his helmet on the coffee table and sitting in the chair across. “Bathroom is through the bedroom. You take the bed; I’ll take the couch.”

“I don’t need the bed,” says Lisa, as if it were obvious. “It’s an unnecessary luxury.”

Oh right, Stick’s weird thing about not having anything tangentially related to comfort or pleasure. It took Matt six months before he stopped sleeping on the floor. Silk sheets were the product of eight fucking years of untangeling Stick’s mind games. 

“You can sleep where you’d like,” says Matt, even as he can manage. “But I’ll be sleeping on the couch, and the bed is yours if you’d like it.” 

“I don’t need it.” 

“I didn’t say need. I said like.”

Lisa makes a small, confused sound before she cuts herself off. 

“We can figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow. For now, you need to sleep and so do I.” He stands, walking into the bedroom and heading to the dresser. Lisa follows cautiously, hovering in the doorway and watching him with care. He tosses her a loose shirt and a pair of sweats. “We’ll get you some clothes of your own tomorrow. For right now, this will have to do.”

Lisa chews on her lip. Matt can smell cortisol in the air. 

“Stick isn’t coming back.”

“No. No, he isn’t.” 

“Are you going to train me instead?” 

“I’m not a part of the Chaste’s war.” And Lisa shouldn’t be either, but Matt knows better than to open that discussion now. “And I’m not looking for a soldier or a student.”

“I can do it,” says Lisa, not quite pleading, but… that tinge of desperation. Matt remembers being so desperate to prove himself useful, to be good enough to not be alone. Damn it. “I’ll be the best student you can imagine. I’ll follow all of your orders.” 

“I’m certain you’d be an excellent student, Lisa.” He tries to sound reassuring. How the fuck is he supposed to be reassuring about all of this? This is not a reassuring subject. “It’s not about that.”

Lisa shoves herself more firmly in his path. “What is it about then?”

He sighs. “This is a conversation better left for morning, trust me.”

“I’ll be good,” insists Lisa. “You won’t have any regrets about taking me on.”

As if Matt’s ever made a single decision he hasn’t regretted. 

“We will talk in the morning,” Matt tells her, firmly. Maybe then he’ll have a single fucking clue as to what to say. “Right now, you need to sleep.”

For a moment, Lisa’s mouth opens, her temperature spiked, cortisol sharp in the air, until her teeth click sharply back together. She nods, once, then walks to the bathroom without a word. 

Right. Soldier. Perfect soldier. Following orders. Because she’s a soldier. And--thirteen? Fourteen? Somewhere in that range. 

He desperately needs to punch someone right now. 

For the better part of, oh, two decades or so, Matt had been unraveling the sheer mindfuckery required for the statements hurting kids is bad and Stick’s methods were okay to coexist. He is a somewhat mentally competent adult now, and he can admit that Stick should not be training kids, or anyone, really, even if it turned out to be something that was good for him in the long run. 

That being said, when he was eleven and freshly free of Stick’s influence, he was utterly convinced that everything Stick had said was God’s truth and it was Matt’s own fault that he failed to meet the challenge. Which was followed by, oh, four or so years of devastation as he tried to destroy himself to be rebuilt in Stick’s image, another three or so years of spiraling depression when he realized that Stick was full of shit and Matt had fucked himself by ever giving him the time of day, and a solid decade of crafting himself into an emotional Fort Knox that suceeded in fucking over every subsequent personal connection he ever made while still somehow failing at protecting himself from the emotional vulnerability he was trying to avoid in the first place. He is now in a fun new phase of his life where his every interpersonal relationship has the stability of a fucking Jenga tower, and Matt’s trying to figure out why the fuck he ripped out all of the blocks at the foundation at the very start. But the magical thing is, he already screwed the Jenga tower. Can’t not be Daredevil; can’t live without his friends; can’t be Daredevil and keep them. It’s gonna all collapse, and Matt just has to keep playing until someone shouts the end. 

And now there’s this--traumatized little mini soldier running around who seems to be booted right to the bottom of the barrel that Matt’s spent the better part of two decades trying to claw his way out of. And she--she doesn’t have to be like him, is the thing. She can be better. Heal better. Not turn out like him. 

He just. Has to get her there. Somehow.

…

They put Matt in a room with a Good Priest and tell him he can be saved, they’re going to save him, and Matt thinks this is an awfully confident statement for people whose hearts haven’t stopped beating a mile a minute since he first came to them for help. But he believes them, believes that they want to help him, believes that they can, even believes that there’s a devil trapped in his ribcage and tormenting him with knowledge. 

The Good Priest says a few prayers in Latin and punctuates them with a bell, and it clatters through Matt’s ears like a gunshot. He asks him not to make loud noises. He tells him it hurts. 

“Matthew,” says the Good Priest, his tone heavy. “Do you know the stages of an exorcism?”

Matt does not. 

“A demon will never admit its presence. It will play the victim, the innocent, and pretend to only be the person whose body it has taken. You must force the demon to show its true self.”

Matt does not know what this has to do with how damn loud bells are. 

“You are not harmed by the loudness of the bell. You are harmed by the holy rite it is a part of, as all of your nature is.”

Matt is fairly certain that’s not what this is. 

The Good Priest is certain of the opposite. The Good Priest tries to convince the devil within Matt to give up his name and leave the soul of his victim. In turn, Matt tries to convince him that he has no earthly clue as to what the name of his devil is and he, quite frankly, thought the devil thing did not include nearly so much active participation on the demon’s part. Matt thought the devil thing was a metaphor for really, really wanting to punch someone, and this somehow extended to the voices thing, somehow. Matt would like him to stop ringing that dumb bell. 

The Good Priest pulls out some candles and incense and informs him, heavily, that the power of Christ will prevail. Matt thinks this is all well and good for the power of Christ, but he’s pretty damn certain he has no idea what name his devil is supposed to have. 

Even from the opposite end of the room, the heat of the candles burns against his skin, and the incense is as suffocating as a burning building. Matt tells the Good Priest it hurts. He asks the Good Priest to stop. 

And the Good Priest keeps going. 

… 

“I need to work from home tomorrow.”

“I’m coming over.”

“Foggy, no.” Matt pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m not hurt. I promise.”

“You and I have very different ideas about what it means to not be hurt,” hisses Foggy. “How much blood is there? Do we need Claire?”

“Foggy, I’m not even bruised . It’s something else.”

Foggy’s voice turns suspicious. “What else?”

He illegally has a child in his home and she’s a brainwashed cult soldier who wants him to continue her training. 

“I’ll tell you later.”

“No more secrets, Matt. You promised.”

“This isn’t a secret.” God, he’s such a liar. This is a heaping, tangled mess of secrets. He would rather Foggy not know about any of this. “This is a… Look, I’m figuring it out, okay? But I’d rather explain in person.”

“You can explain in person tomorrow then. I’ll come over and drop off your files first thing.”

“I have copies here.”

“Coffee then. I’m coming, Matt.” 

“Fine.” Matt rubs his forehead. “Sure. Just. Give me a chance to explain when you get here, okay?”

“That is the least reassuring thing you could have said.” 

“Yeah, well.” He can hear Lisa finishing up in the bathroom. He still has to convince her to sleep. “It’s the best I can do.” 

“Just promise me you’re safe, buddy.” Foggy’s voice breaks. Another fucking thing Matt’s broken. “You’re not in danger? You’re healthy?”

“I promise.” The bathroom door opens. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Foggy doesn’t sound happy. “Okay.”

… 

No one actually wants to admit exorcisms have the possibility of failure, is the thing. That’s the trouble with having an omnipotent God--He always triumphs. And if He always triumphs, then that means a good old fashioned exorcism should be just the cure for the demons plaguing little Matty Murdock.

This fact becomes immensely problematic when you’re not fucking possessed.

But it can’t be anything else, because there is no other way for Matt to know what he knows. Superpowers are, of course, not real. It must be Satanic, which means God must triumph, which means the exorcism must continue until God has triumphed.

Father Lanthom is not an exorcist. He has been at Clinton Church for exactly a week and three days when he takes the Good Priest by the shirt collar and throws him out on his ass. 

Matt doesn’t remember it happening. The Good Priest had been visiting every day to free Matthew of his demons, and he had been doing so for three weeks. The Good Priest called it necessary. Father Lanthom called it sadistic torture by a power-happy charlatan against a child who obviously wasn’t possessed. 

Matt doesn’t remember that part either. He was told it, later, by a nun who had seen it happen. After, he decides that Father Lanthom is the best damn priest he’s ever heard of. 

But that’s after. He doesn’t remember the then. During the then, everything is too loud and hot and painful and sensitive. Everything dialed up to eleven, at some point in the Good Priest’s ministries. He couldn’t find the dial to bring it back down again. 

And it stays like that. For a long time.

… 

Matt wakes up to Lisa standing over him like an omen. 

He swears. Lisa does not move. 

“What time is it?” he asks, when it becomes apparent that she’s going to keep standing there. 

“Dawn.”

Oh. So. Two hours after they went to bed. Lovely. 

“Did you need something?” Matt drags a hand through his hair. “Food? Water?” 

“Training starts at dawn. Stick taught us to wake at dawn.”

“We only went to bed a few hours ago. I don’t have to go to work. You should go back to sleep.”

“I can function.”

Another one of Stick’s souvenirs. He was extremely insistent that Matt learn how to operate on next to no sleep for extended periods. There was a time of Matt’s life where he wasn’t permitted more than an hour of uninterrupted sleep at a time. 

Later, he discovered that was legally classified as a form of torture. Lisa wouldn’t care, though. Matt certainly hadn’t.

“Be that as it may, you’ll function better with more sleep. That’s not a critique on your abilities; that’s how the human body works.”

“I can function.”

“What do you really want?” Matt sits up. “Don’t worry about proving yourself for a moment. Do you want to be awake? Or do you want to be asleep?”

Lisa doesn’t hesitate. “I want you to train me.”

“And I already told you that I wouldn’t.” 

Pushing off the couch, he walks to the kitchen and pours two glasses of water. He shoves one in Lisa’s direction, but she makes no move to take it. Instead, she takes another step towards him, her heart rate ratcheting higher by the second. 

“Last night was a slip,” she insists, half-pleading. “I can do better. I can control my emotions. I’ll be a good soldier--”

Matt’s glass hits the countertop with a hard click. “That’s exactly why I won’t train you. I’m not a soldier, Lisa, and I have no interest in being one. Neither should you.”

“Stick said you’d come back.”

“Stick is full of shit.”

“You’re fighting your own war here. Train me for that one, I’ll be useful--”

“Absolutely not.”

Lisa flinches.

Matt tries to soften his voice. “You’re not going to understand this now. I didn’t when I was your age. But you’re not meant to be a soldier. And that’s not a bad thing.”

“I don’t care what I am,” says Lisa, and her heart betrays the lie. Matt doesn’t comment on it. “I can handle whatever happens. Make me strong, Devil. Please.”

“I’m not the Devil,” says Matt, and fucksake, his own heart betrays that lie. “That’s just--it’s just what the newspapers made up. I’m just Matt. I’ve got a normal life outside of Daredevil, and that isn’t a bad thing.”

“The best disguise is the truth,” says Lisa, knowingly, and it’s Stick behind her voice, damn it, damn it, Matt can’t do this. It’s everything he used to believe. 

What did he tell her? That being a little girl was a disguise? Matt wore his own blindness, his own youth like a costume for years. It wasn’t until he was in law school that he realized he had done it wrong, that it was too late, that he had been a child in reality but had killed him in spirit. Old mistakes. 

“No, the truth is the truth. I’m a lawyer. You’re a kid. That’s not a bad thing.”

“You’re Daredevil.”

“I can be both.” Lie. Goddamn it. He sighs. “Lisa, I’m not telling you to forget what happened. I’m not telling you to give up who you are. But Stick is gone and he’s taken his war with him. You’re not a soldier anymore. You live in the normal world now and that isn’t bad. But it is something you have to learn to do. I’ll help you do it, I swear, but I won’t recruit you for a fight you have no place in.”

Lisa pinches her lips. She doesn’t reply. 

“I’ll make breakfast. Is there anything you’d like?”

She sounds deeply unhappy. “No.”

“You can get some more sleep, if you’d like.”

“I’ll practice my forms,” she says, like a challenge. 

Matt doesn’t take the bait. “If that’s what you want to do.”

He’s in over his head.

… 

Stick offers him control. He offers him clarity. He offers him a chance to not be so weak anymore. 

Matt hears the echo of the bullet that buried itself in his father’s spine every second of every day. He gets up, he leaves the convent, he walks down the street and gets on the subway and then--

bang. 

After a week of training, Stick offers him a chance to push harder. Train more. He says it, and Matt smells his father’s blood, and he the ring of a bell, and then--

bang. 

The offer’s barely out of Stick’s mouth before he’s already accepted. 

After that, Stick goes back to Clinton Church. He tells them that Matt’s improved but he’s a special case, a sensitive case, and Stick needs more time with him in order to progress. The sisters don’t even make a show of waffling over the decision. They order Matt to pack his things, that it’s best for a special case like him to stay with a medical professional, and no one comments on the fact that no one’s seen a single damn certification from Stick. He’s out the door and entrusted to Stick’s care before the afternoon’s up, with only the promise of weekly check-ins.

Matt doesn’t care. He’s never been more pleased. 

When he’s three blocks over, he hears Sister Bernadette say, “I know we’re not meant to wish the departure of any of our children, but oh, I am so grateful that Matthew has been passed on to better hands.”

… 

Foggy uses his own key to open Matt’s door. He had demanded the key after the discovery of Daredevil, and he had taken to using it whenever he wanted to make sure Matt didn’t have time to hide his injuries. 

He takes one look at the child practicing her forms in the middle of Matt’s living room, drops his jaw, and then manhandles Matt onto the roof by the elbow. 

“Matt, if you’ve kidnapped a kid, I’ll kill you myself,” fumes Foggy. 

Matt rolls his eyes. “Foggy, you know I wouldn’t kidnap anyone.”

“Do I? Because I used to know you’d never dress up in fetish gear and beat people into comas, but I was wrong about that.” He drags a hand through his hair. “Explain, Matt. Now.”

“She’s Stick’s student. Like I was.”

“Being a--a--martial arts student doesn’t explain why she’s in your apartment at seven in the morning.” 

“I couldn’t leave her with Stick, could I?” 

“Where are her parents?” 

“Dead, probably.” Matt shrugs. “We haven’t talked about it, but I doubt Stick grabs kids from happy families. It’s really hard to train a soldier when you’ve got someone to ask about all the injuries--”

Foggy’s heart stutters in his chest. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. What?”

“I already told you about this,” says Matt, feeling oddly defensive. “I told you about Stick months ago.” 

“You told me he was a weird old blind guy who your orphanage hired to help you handle your senses.” Foggy’s heart is still beating oddly. He sounds afraid. “Just--I don’t think I understood what you were telling me back then, okay? Tell me again.”

“It--look, it was a long time ago, okay? It wouldn’t matter if Stick hadn’t done it again--I thought he wouldn’t, he only wanted me for my senses and I didn’t think it would be common enough for a repeat attempt. Point is, I was wrong and I need to fix it. I’m going to get Lisa help.”

“Matt, bud--” God, Matt hates that tone. Foggy uses it whenever Matt shares something fucked up about his past, and he’s always left feeling off-step, wrong, like he messed up a rule he hadn’t been told about in advance. “I’m trying to understand, I swear, but I need you to explain who exactly Stick is. Please.”

“I don’t know who he is. He didn’t exactly share a lot.” 

“What did he teach you? Or--Lisa, what did he teach Lisa and why does that mean she’s here now?”

“We haven’t talked about it yet. I’m… guessing. Nothing good.” 

“Matt.”

“Foggy, please drop it. It’s--I don’t--” He doesn’t want him to know about it. Because he’s gonna pity Matt and Matt has never wanted that. “Look, if Lisa wants to tell you about it, it’s her choice. But I can’t go over her head with speculation.”

Foggy’s heart rate doesn’t settle. “But it’s bad?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s bad.” He drags a hand through his hair. “And it’s on me.  I need to fix it.”

“It’s on Stick,” says Foggy, immediately. “Whoever the fuck he is. What do we have to do?”

“I,” says Matt, as delicately as he can, “am still figuring that out.”

… 

The sound of his father’s death lives in his head. It’s burrowed between his ears, found root in his brain, and Matt would dig it out with his fingers if he could cram them far enough to reach. 

bang, goes the gun, and his father is dead. 

bang, it says, and Matt’s alone. 

… 

Matt makes a list of what he knows. He keeps the tally in his head where Lisa can’t find it. 

1. Lisa is like him, like he was, like he used to be. 
2. She cannot end up like he is now. 
3. She needs help.

It’s a short list, but it’s all Matt knows.  She’s--he wasn’t right in the head back then. He had issues, problems, he was angry and he didn’t know what to do with his anger because he was so caught up in trying to be Stick’s perfect soldier that didn’t feel any such things. He’s… got problems now. He can admit that. Acknowledge that. It’s too fucked to undo them. He’s got his baggage and he’ll carry it like a cross, and it’s past time to change that. 

But Lisa is young. She can be… not that. She can get help. 

All he knows is that he needs to get her help. 

… 

“Mind controls the body,” Stick tells him, poking him solidly on the forehead. “Body controls our enemies. Our enemies control jack shit by the time we’re done with them. Repeat.”

“Mind controls the body,” says Matt, ever the perfect student. Perfect goddamn student. “Body controls our enemies. Our enemies control”--his tongue trips over the words--“jack by the time we’re done with them.”

“You wanna be a warrior when you’re scared off by a little swear word?” sneers Stick. 

“Sister Jeanne says its a sin to swear.”

“Oh please,” says Stick, rolling his eyes. “People pussy-foot around swear words because it makes them feel bad. First thing you gotta learn is that shit like swearing being bad? It’s made up by people who can’t even handle a few bad words.” He grabs Matt by the shoulder, grasps him tight, gives him a shake. “You can handle more words. C’mon, kid.”

“Jack shit,” says Matt, because Stick wants him to say it and he wants Stick to like him so desperately. 

“There ya go.” Stick grins. Matt can hear it in his voice. “Again.”

“Jack shit,” repeats Matt, louder, and he adds some of Stick’s vicious glee to the bite of the words, mimics Stick, all he wants to be is like Stick.

“Atta boy,” says Stick, shaking him by the shoulder again. He sounds proud. Happy. 

It’s the best Matt’s felt since Dad died. 

… 

A problem: She’ll never fucking ask for help. 

She needs help just to admit that she needs help. It’s the antithesis to everything Stick ever preached, asking for help. Especially for emotional problems. It’ll make her weak in her own eyes which means she’ll never, ever dare to do it. Not to mention the complications of actually reporting Stick to the police. 

The narrative, if there ever is one, needs to be carefully managed. And there will have to be one. Matt can’t just keep a child--for so many reasons. One, he’ll be arrested. Two, he’s a goddamn mess and shouldn’t be let near a child. 

So. He needs to get Lisa to the police. He needs to figure out what the story is. He needs to deliver that story in a way that gets Lisa professional help, which guarantees that Lisa won’t cooperate. But if they don’t have a reason to believe she needs professional help, they’ll never give it to her. 

It’s a puzzle. A logic game. And Matt’s good at those. He went to law school, for God’s sake. Get from point A to point C, find the connection, find the path. He needs to control the narrative, to communicate Lisa’s help in a way the police will listen to, but he doesn’t have a witness to tell the story if Lisa doesn’t cooperate. He needs some kind of witness that understands the importance of doing this exactly right--

Oh. 

Right. 

He has one of those.

… 

Stick is brutal, and Stick is strong, and Stick never pulls a single punch. Matt learns how to be quick and clever and brutal, and he learns it from Stick being quick and clever and brutal against him. It’s painful and exhausting and terrible, and Matt revels in every moment. 

Matt is not a thing made of glass. He is made of bone and steel and horrible, sharp things, things that can draw blood, things that can wound, things that can be hit and hit and will never shatter. Matt is strong and the proof is in the pain, in the terrible things he can withstand, and the proof becomes the thing that makes it so. 

He needs it. He needs Stick. He needs a terrible thing to make him strong, because if he’s strong, he cannot be hurt again. He fights and breaks and heals and pushes harder, further, worse, because if he can withstand the greater pain then that is creation in miniature. He can make himself an untouchable thing only if he proves that nothing can touch him. 

Stick leaves. 

Something inside Matt breaks. 

… 

“Matthew?” Father Lantom sounds worried. Matt wonders if he’s got a lingering face wound or if he’s just projecting existential panic that strongly. “Is everything alright?”

“Could we talk?” asks Matt, without preamble. He doesn’t have a lot of time. He left Lisa with Foggy and Foggy with Lisa, and neither had been happy about that fact. 

“Of course. We could go to the back--”

“The confessional.”

The only betrayal of Father’s worry is his slight increase in heart rate. He takes his place in the confessional and Matt collapses into the other end, and damn him, damn him, he feels afraid. 

“I’m going to do something,” he says, and there’s no prayer to preface his words, no ritual, no ceremony to this. There is nothing ritualistic or organized about Matt’s problem. He’s collapsing in on himself and won’t pretend otherwise.  

“Is this a confession?” asks Father, levelly. “Because I’m afraid I can’t accept a confession for things not yet done. I can, however, offer a recommendation to abstain.

Matt laughs. It’s an ugly thing. “What I’m going to do isn’t bad, Father. It’s amending old mistakes.”

“That’s a good thing. What brings you here, then?”

“Something bad’s happened. And maybe I could have stopped it, had I taken action earlier. And now, now I can make it better, maybe, I can try and fix it, but I can’t undo it.”

“Could you have? It’s a simple thing to take responsibility onto ourselves, but it’s rarely that simple.”

Stick--the police could never have done anything about Stick. They won’t do anything about Stick now. But Matt, Matt could have done something. Kept a better eye on Stick. Made sure he hadn’t taken on any more students. 

It’s lived in his head for years, the fear of Stick taking on another student. Matt had pushed it to the back of his mind, mounted the existence of his powers like a talisman, told him that Stick would never be able to find another like Matt so he wouldn’t try, damn it. When Stick had returned, Matt had even thought about it. Ask him if he had taken any new students. Stop him if he had. Keep him from taking any more. 

He hadn’t asked. He told himself there were no others with powers like him, so there were no other students Stick would take. He hid from the truth. Like a little kid hiding under a blanket.

“Yes,” says Matt. 

On the other end of the screen, there’s a pause. “What are you going to do, Matthew?”

There’s a weight to it. Understanding. Father knows him too well.

“I’m going to go to the police.” 

“What?” 

Matt laughs again. Still ugly. “Surprised, Father?”

“You haven’t exactly expressed a grand faith in the police force.”

“I need them for this. I need the system. I can make it work.”

“Perhaps this would be more simple if you explained to me the details. What exactly do you need the police for?”

“My old teacher. I’m going to report him.” He clutches the wood of the confessional hard enough to hurt. 

On the other end of the screen, there is a sudden, damning silence. 

Matt lets his words trip forward. “He’s--there’s this girl, this little girl, he’s been training her like he trained me and she believes everything I believed and. She’s not going to ask for help for herself. I mean, I owe it to her, don’t I? I knew there was a risk he would take on someone else, even if I didn’t want to believe it. She’s like this because of me and I can’t---ignore that, can I?”

Father Lantom remains silent for a long, painful moment. “Are you referring to the trauma specialist you had during your initial stay with the orphanage?”

“He wasn’t a specialist in trauma, Father.”

“Matthew--”

“I’m fine now. It was good for me, in a way. It taught me how to be what I am today. But--she doesn’t need that, does she? We don’t--Christ, we don’t need one person like me, let alone two. She doesn’t have any family, she’ll go in the system and they’ll dismiss it as behavioral problems but she doesn’t understand, Father, I swear she doesn’t, Stick is good at making you think the way he wants and and it’s hard to shake yourself free--”

“Dismiss it as behavioral problems.” There’s something heavy in Father Lanthom’s voice. “Like we did with you. The fighting, the anger…”

“That’s not what this is about,” says Matt, immediately. It’s not, fuck, he’s fine now. “I’m different now. I--got better. But she’s where I was all those years ago and I can’t leave her like that.”

“You’re going to report this man to the police.”

“Child abuse. Easy case. I don’t even have to say anything about the--the fighting, his war. Even if she doesn’t testify herself, there’s enough physical evidence to manage it, and with me corroborating… It’s… honestly, Father, it’s an easy case. I can get her into a real trauma program.”

“And how will this affect you? You’ve--I’ve never heard you utter a single word about this man. Will reporting him hurt you?”

“I’ll be fine. It’s nothing.”

His heart trips over the lie.  

… 

Matt sits in Stick’s basement for three days before he admits to himself that Stick isn’t coming back. He adheres to Stick’s regime religiously, pours himself into training, tries to build himself into a thing sharp enough for Stick to want. 

Stick doesn’t come back. And Matt realizes, on the third day, that he’d find it so unbearably pathetic that Matt had stayed down there like a child waiting for him. A soldier doesn’t linger in the wreck of their old plan. They pick themselves up, keep going, keep moving, make a new plan. If you’ve let something phase you then you’ve already failed. 

So he packs his meager belongings and walks back to St. Agnes, because the house where he lived with his father is already occupied by a new family and there isn’t any other home to be had. Matt doesn’t have a home. Soldiers don’t need a home. They dig themselves into whatever trench they find and stay until it’s time to go to the next. 

He’s fine. It doesn’t hurt. It can’t hurt him, because he’s not a thing made of flesh. He’s sharp and strong and slices like a knife, and it does not hurt to be alone. He tells himself as much when he makes the lonely, terrible trudge back to the orphanage on the third night. At three a.m., he makes it back to the stoop of Clinton Church and sits solidly on the step. There’s nowhere else for him to go. 

“Matthew?” It’s Father Lanthom. “What on Earth are you doing out here?”

Matt doesn’t reply. 

“It’s freezing,” he says, moving closer. He sounds afraid. He doesn’t understand yet that a thing like Matt is not a thing to be afraid for. “It’s--it’s six in the morning. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” says Matt, simply. 

And his heart trips over the lie. 

Chapter Text

When Matt first starts training with Stick, Stick cracks him across the face and tells him the secret to making it not hurt is to stop giving so much of a shit. People hurting you, that shit heals. The stuff that lingers is all a product of your head. We get all caught up in the things that happen to our body, even after their marks are gone. It leaves you wounded and vulnerable long after you healed, and that’s a weakness people like them can’t afford.

Control your mind, and you control your body. 

Control your body, and you control everyone else. 

So, from that perspective, reporting Stick to the police shouldn’t be any trouble at all. Everything Stick did to him happened to his body, and Matt can choose to stop caring, and that means it doesn’t matter. He might as well be telling the cops the weather, or what he ate for lunch last week. 

He can do this. He can reclaim that little bit of him that hoards Stick’s lessons and releases them with the Devil. He can remove the part of himself that cares if anyone knew he used to get the shit beaten out of him, repurpose it, make it so unremarkable it comes utilitarian. 

It won’t matter, because Matt will make it so, because it might give Lisa a chance to have a mind that’s more than a drawer of weapons at the ready, organized and labeled for use. 

… 

“I’m not reporting Stick,” says Lisa. “Are you insane?”

Yes, without a single solitary doubt. “Not everything,” says Matt, firmly. “We’re going to edit the details.”

“I’m not telling them anything,” huffs Lisa. 

“We have to tell them something. The story that has the least loose ends is going to be the one closest to the truth.”

“Why do we have to go to the police?”

With Stick, Matt learned to speak in statements to the left. Shift your dialogue. Make it what they want to hear. 

“Lisa, people are going to notice if I just… get a child. They’re going to ask questions. If we go to the police first, we control the narrative.”

“And then what?”

“And then...” says Matt, considering his words carefully. “You’ll go to a home until you’re old enough to be without guardianship.”

Lisa doesn’t say anything. But her cortisol spikes. 

“I’m not going away,” promises Matt. “But I’m not related to you. They won’t let me keep you. Look, you’re entitled to an advocate. Foggy can be your attorney of record, and I’ll be able to keep an eye on you that way.”

Her head snaps up. “Why can’t you be my attorney?”

“Because I have a conflict of interest. Way this story goes, we both were kids under Stick’s… influence. I can use that, keep close to the case that way, but if I try to go into the courtroom as your attorney, whatever judge we end up with is going to take me off your case and appoint someone else. I won’t be able to help you anymore.”

“So we don’t tell them anything about Stick knowing you.”

“Yeah? Why are you here then?” Lisa is silent. “You--what, walked into the first law office you saw? Ran from Stick and sought out a lawyer instead of the cops?” 

“Sure,” she says, biting. “Why not?”

“Because then I can’t take some of the pressure off you.” He sighs. “Lisa, Foggy is the best attorney you’ll ever meet. He’ll take good care of you, and I won’t be uninvolved. I just won’t be the lead. And if I’m also pressing charges against Stick… the cops are going to ask a lot of questions. Uncomfortable questions. And if you walk in there as the only person who’s ever so much as heard of this guy, then the weight of it is going to fall on you. If I come in with my own case, I can fill in the blanks. Make it a pattern, give other witnesses… It will be easier on you. I promise.”

“I don’t know him.”

“We’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do,” he promises. “Something important that you need to know is that I am your advocate. My job is to advise you on your options to the best of my ability, but you have the final say on the one we go with. But keep it in mind, okay?”

“Why do we even have to tell them anything about Stick?”

Because she’ll fall through every goddamn crack of that colander of a system. “Well, let’s break this down,” he says, turning fully to face her. “I go in, say that I’m your lawyer and you’re a kid from the streets. We’d like to set you up in a place to stay until you’re old enough to be alone. What’s the first thing they’re going to do?”

“Call child protective services?” says Lisa, drawing the words out slowly. “Tell them I need a home?”

“That’s right,” admits Matt. “But that’s not all they’re going to do. They’re police, remember. They’re not going to take it at face value.”

“They’ll investigate.”

“Exactly.” He nods encouragingly. “And then what happens?”

“The police are going to see if our story lines up.”

“”They’re going to look into who you are,” lists Matt. “Where you were before I had you. What you were doing when you were on the streets. Do you have any scar tissue?”

Lisa’s voice goes clipped. “Some.”

“Is it noticeable? Don’t bother with if you can hide it with your clothes--they’ll put you through a medical examination. They’ll find it. Is it a scar a normal teenager would have?”

“No,” she admits. 

“They’re going to ask questions about that. Where you got it, how you got it, who treated you after. Now, we could lie. We’re going to have to lie about some things. But we’ve got to be careful about which lies we tell, or they’re going to figure out that we’re hiding things, and they won’t be so eager to help us once that happens.”

“We can’t tell them about the war.”

Matt doesn’t give two shits about the war. “We can’t.” Because the last thing they need to deal with is Stick’s lunatic cult showing up and killing them to keep their mouth shut, or, worse, the Hand trying to do the same. “So we edit the details.”

He moves to the couch, beckoning Lisa over to sit across. After a moment, she complies, settling in unhappily in his armchair. “Did Stick ever tell you about where he found me?”

“No.”

“Well, I was in a local orphanage. I was having some trouble, so they brought him on as a trauma specialist. That was the official story he told the people who ran the place, and I never contradicted it.” She won’t like the next part. He licks his lips. “Lisa… where did Stick find you?”

Her heart rate skyrockets. “That doesn’t matter.”

“The police are going to ask.”

“I won’t tell them,” she snaps. 

“They may be able to find out. If you’re in the system already, if you were fingerprinted before, if there’s a photo of you online that they can find, if you’re in a missing child database.”

“I’m not talking to them about it.” 

Her tone makes it clear that she won’t be talking to him about it either.

He raises a hand. “Alright. Okay. We don’t have to discuss it, and I’ll try to keep the police from asking too many questions about it. But it’s our lie. Right there. And it’s the best one we can tell, because someone else can corroborate it.”

… 

It matches up almost too well, if you think about it. Stick’s methods, once you strip down the physical conditioning and the fucking ninjas, boils down to some really, really intense mind tricks. Psychological manipulation, all focusing around overcoming hardship and trauma. 

Want to get over your past? Stop caring about it. Stop caring about anything. People are weaknesses to be shed. Want to overcome past trauma? Be too hardened to be touched. Experience more to raise your tolerance. It’s crazy, it makes even less sense once you omit the training to fight, but it’s the sort of crazy that lines up. Stick is a man masquerading as a trauma specialist. He uses it as a cover to gain access to and then abuse children.

Not a warrior. A man. Nothing but a man. 

They go over the story a dozen times. They flesh it out, find out which parts Matt should deliver, which parts should come from Lisa. They scrap versions, alter details, make certain it’s a story Lisa feels comfortable having attached to her name.

“I’ll have Foggy set it up,” promises Matt. “We’ll give it until tomorrow, okay? He knows a good cop. You’ll like him.”

Lisa is silent for a long moment. “Do we have to?”

She asks it softly. Like she hadn’t wanted to let it escape. 

“Yeah,” he says, after a beat. “We have to.”

She folds her arm tight across her chest. “I liked being a soldier.”

Another admission. 

“Yeah,” admits Matt. “I did too.”

… 

It occurs to Matt, sometime after Stick brings him to train, that he’s never hated anyone so goddamn much as he hates himself. 

He’s stupid. Weak. He knows that now. He listened to Roscoe Sweeney and his men threaten his dad, and what did he think? That they were bullies, and that it was as easy as saying no. That his dad could just say no to them, and that it wouldn’t land him with a bullet in his head. 

Matt pulls this interaction out between trainings, waits until he’s gasping and breathless and his muscles feel like water. He holds the memory between his hands and runs his fingers over it, and he hates, he hates, he hates himself for it.

Stupid little boy. Left his dad with a hole in his head in a filthy alleyway, and had the audacity to be surprised about it. What did he think was going to happen? Did he think it was all going to be alright? 

Idiot. 

The more Matt thinks about him, this Matt-from-the-past, this Matt-of-mistakes, the more he despises him. He’d open his chest with a knife if only he could find where this Matt lives, slice him from his roots, pull him out with bloodied palms, cauterize the wound so another failure couldn’t grow. He hates him, this stupid, sobbing thing, this weak thing, this thing that looked at a painful world and cried over it. He can’t believe how much he used to cry. 

When he tries, he imagines this Matt beneath his skin, and he imagines him running out of him like blood from an open wound. 

A slice, and Matt doesn’t cry. A slap, and Matt doesn’t cry. Hits, hunger, exhaustion, and he doesn’t cry. In this he cleanses himself, frees himself, burns through this old Matt like useless fat clinging to muscle. 

He’d kill his old self if even given half a chance. 

… 

Lisa picks one of his dress shirts to wear the next morning, and she says it with a tone of challenge, of daring, like she expects him to raise a protest. He doesn’t. Instead, he just tosses the shirt her way, and she pulls it over her shoulders and rolls up its sleeves, and it hangs about her bony limbs like a curtain. 

She tucks her hair behind her ears and tells him she’s ready to lie to some fucking cops. 

Matt laughs despite himself. 

By the time they’re climbing his office stairs, his mood is dying fast. He can hear Karen already in the lobby, milling about the coffee pot, and Foggy puttering around his office. He’ll have to brief them on the case. Let Foggy take its lead. He’s too compromised to do it himself. 

Which means they’ll need to have a meeting about Lisa’s statement. And his. 

“Morning, Karen,” says Matt, holding open the door for Lisa. “We have a client.”

“Oh--hello.” Her hair swishes softly as she glances between them. “I--Matt, is that your shirt?”

Matt nods. “We’ll have to get her some clothes of her own. I’ll--would you be able to get some? I’ll give you my card. I’d go myself, but I don’t think any colors I picked would match.”

He can hear her heart quicken with interest, but she doesn’t push the matter. “I’m Karen,” she says instead, giving a little wave. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Lisa doesn’t say anything. She crams her hands in her pockets and leans against the wall. 

A beat passes, a pregnant pause, and then Foggy’s door opens. “Karen have you--oh.”

“Foggy,” says Matt. “You remember Lisa.”

“Uh, yeah. Hi, Lisa. How are you doing?”

Lisa says nothing. 

“Matt, buddy. Can we sidebar?”

That sounds like the thing he wants to do least. “Lisa is our new client,” says Matt, in lieu of a reply.

“Okay,” says Foggy, immediately. “But we need to talk about this.”

At the same time, Lisa says, “Matty said you’d be my lawyer.”

Foggy’s heart trips at that, but when he speaks, his voice isn’t affected in the least. “Well, in that case, I need to set a meeting with you, Miss Lisa. I think I’ve got an opening in--oh, five minutes. That work for you?”

“Fine.” 

“Perfect. Karen, you wanna put that on the books? Get down some information?”

“Of course.” Her tone is warm, but Matt can hear her rapidly accelerating heart rate. Karen always was a smart one. She knows how to read a room. “Lisa? If you’ll follow me to the conference room?”

Lisa doesn’t budge. “Matty.”

“I’ll be there in a second,” promises Matt. “You don’t have to start until I get there if you don’t want to.”

“I can handle myself,” she snaps, immediately. She hesitates, opens her mouth, then snaps it shut again with a sharp click. 

Without another word, he turns on her heel and disappears inside the conference room. Karen follows after her with one last lingering, heavy pause. 

Right. Now for his part. He follows Foggy into his office. 

… 

The door has barely closed before Foggy’s pacing the back wall in agitation, digging one hand through his hair. “Matt, buddy, this is--it’s more than keeping your nighttime activities secret. You get that, right?”

“I do,” he says, clenching one hand around his cane. He needs Foggy to take Lisa’s case. No judge will let him take the lead if he’s also involved, and if he doesn’t have Foggy, then he doesn’t have a way to keep track of Lisa. “I do, Foggy.”

“This is--this is a kid, Matt. A really, really messed up kid.”

She doesn’t need his pity, but Matt doesn’t say as much. He nearly does. It’s on the tip of his tongue, ready to be set loose, but he swallows it back.

Foggy doesn’t get it. Won’t get it. It’s not pity to him--it’s common sense. Common fucking sense. A kid like Lisa, a kid in Lisa’s position… it’s messed up. A fact of the world. 

He doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know the way Stick teaches. It tears down the world around you and builds it up from a new perspective, in a new image, makes it sharp and stiff and inward facing, always posed to cut. You’re meant to launch yourself at the spikes with a grin like hell and make them snap under the force, to laugh with a mouth full of blood and you’re supposed to feel so goddamn strong doing it. 

There’s a Devil in the Kitchen, he sometimes hears. He’s got teeth painted red, all those pearly whites dyed like blood, and they don’t know how he hides it in the day but he must have a way. It ain’t real blood, it can’t be real blood, ain’t nobody out there who could have a mouth full of so much blood and laugh about it--

A part of him had felt so goddamn pleased to hear it. He spat out the blood in his mouth in the sink, and he didn’t tell Foggy. 

“I’m not a family lawyer, Matt. I--I don’t know the system, I’m not qualified to work with traumatized kids--I have a duty to advocate for her to the best of my ability. You know that.”

Foggy is the only person on God’s green Earth that Matt would trust Lisa with. 

“I need to be in the loop. The entire loop, Matt. I--you can’t be leaving me without all the cards. If I’m going to be her lawyer, then I need to be able to advocate for her. She’s going to be my priority. Her needs. Her interests. I can’t do that if I’m playing with half a deck.”

“You’re right.”

“I need an open and honest line of--I’m right?”

“You’re right.” He sits at the chair in front of Foggy’s desk. “You’re right. You’re going to do whatever it takes to advocate for her. It’s why I wouldn’t have anyone else on her case.”

“I’m right,” repeats Foggy, slowly. He sits at his desk like he’s expecting it to be rigged with a bomb. “And. I’m going to get all the information I need?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. That’s--okay.” He nods. “What’s her case?”

“That’s…”

That’s the hard part. The part where Matt explains they’re going to be lying under oath. That super illegal thing that people in their profession, specifically, are supposed to be deeply averse to doing. 

“We’re going to be lying under oath, aren’t we?” says Foggy, flatly. 

“She’ll be killed if we don’t, Foggy,” sighs Matt. “They wouldn’t have left her alive in the first place if they thought she was going to blow the whistle. And--and once I testify, if I include that they’ll come after me too, and you, and Karen--”

“Whoa, whoa, back up. I have like, nine questions from that sentence alone. Who’s killing us?”

“Stick,” says Matt, slightly impatient. “His cult. Or the cult they’re fighting.”

Foggy takes several deep breaths. 

“Matt, buddy,” says Foggy. Oh, it’s that tone again. Matt fucking hates that tone. When Matt heard that tone in college, he took to moving Foggy’s nightstand half an inch to the left. He broke four screens because of how many times he accidentally dumped his phone on the ground. “You’ve mentioned Stick several times, but I really, really don’t think I understood who he was.” 

“Right. I’ll just… Explain.” 

He says the words like he’s biting them off. 

“That is the typical thing to do when sharing information.”

Matt’s mouth pinches shut. He does not explain anything. 

“Matt. Please. Whatever it is--it’s fine. I promise.”

It’s not, though. That’s the thing. Foggy is going to listen and be kind and present and attentive, and he’s going to say all the right comforting words, and he’s going to say it’s fucked up and terrible and that it should have never happened to Matt, ever. And Matt’s going to sit there through it and nod and agree, and it’s going to be another goddamn lie that’s festered through the course of their friendship. 

Because the thing is, Foggy’s right. Stick was the worst thing to ever happen to Matt, bar his dad's death.

And he wouldn’t change it for the goddamn world. 

… 

“You did good today,” Stick tells him, scuffing him along the back of the head. “Not a total fucking disaster.”

And Matt grins with a mouth full of blood, beaming like the goddamn sun, and there is not an inch of his body that does not ache. He’s exhausted and trembling and his ankle hasn’t stopped hurting in three days, and he thinks, sometimes, that he’d really like to cry about all of this. 

Stick never pulls his punches, and he never lets them rest, and he never lets Matt take an inch when he’s taking miles. He never treats Matt like less for being blind and he gives him shit if Matt ever tries to beg off a damn thing on the same grounds. He tears Matt to shreds and leaves him to pick up the pieces on his own, and the other night, Stick kicked the shit out of him just to teach him how to get up again when you feel like your guts trying to melt out your asshole. He treats Matt like he’s strong because he’s expected to be so, and it’s more dignity than Matt’s gotten since the hospital discharged him.

Matt knows he hates himself. But Stick?

Matt loves Stick like he's air.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, Matt imagines his father in the corner of Stick’s basement, leaned back, arms folded, watching as Matt excels at all the things he never wanted for him.  He watches in silence, until Stick leaves, and it’s just Dad and Matt. 

Dad says, “The hell are you doing, Matty?”

He never has an answer.

… 

They don’t talk about it yet. 

It’s unspoken. Promised. Matt’s got to give him everything he needs for Lisa’s case, which means that they’re going to have to have a hard conversation. It’s not something Matt can wriggle out of, and not something he’s going to try to. 

But Foggy promised Lisa five minutes. And Foggy doesn’t break his promises. 

When he first enters the conference room, he shakes Lisa’s hand firmly and explains to her that he’s her advocate, that she’s the client and that whatever she wants to happen, that’s what Foggy’s going to be trying to get for her. He’s going to advise her as to what he thinks is best, but she shouldn’t hesitate to request what she really wants, no matter what anyone else says. 

It’s unspoken that Matt’s included in that. 

A part of Matt unknots at the sound. He picked right, relying on Foggy. He’ll do a better job than anyone else. He’ll fight anyone for Lisa, including Matt. 

Then, he asks Lisa is she’d like Matt in the room. 

“I don’t care what Matty does,” replies Lisa, as blank as can be. 

Her heart trips. Lie. 

Foggy spots it as well. “Well, Matt is my partner, and he’s a great attorney. Would you mind if  he sits in? We like to take meetings together.”

Matt can hear Lisa relax. “I don’t care.”

“Great.”

At that, Karen gets up from her spot at the table, gathering paperwork in one hand. “I’ll get him.”

 “Nah, I’ve got him,” says Foggy, dismissively. Then, “Matt! Buddy! We don’t pay you to be pretty. We have a client, you clown!”

Karen immediately whacks him with the paperwork. “Foggy,” she scolds. 

“Matt! Buddy! We need a new office manager! We’re suing this one for assault and battery!”

Karen whacks him again. 

“I am so underappreciated in this office space,” says Foggy, sounding profoundly wounded. “You beat me, Karen.”

“I work with children,” says Karen, with great persecution. She wields her paperwork threateningly. “Both of you are children.”

“I’m innocent,” Matt protests, shoving open the conference room door. “This is slander.”

Karen brandishes her paperwork. “Matt, I’m waving paperwork at you.”

“Oh?” He takes his seat in the chair next to Lisa, cocking his head. “Is it threatening?”

“Incredibly so.”

“Terrifying,” deadpans Matt. He nudges Lisa with his elbow. “We are the best legal counsel in the city.”

“The greatest,” says Foggy. 

“Eh, they’re alright,” says Karen. 

“We got you off a murder charge, liar,” says Foggy. 

“And then let you bully us into a job,” adds Matt. 

“It’s true,” Karen tells Lisa. “They didn’t hire me. I hired me.”

“Karen is horrifyingly good at asserting herself,” says Foggy. “Honestly, model your life after hers.”

“Minus the murder charge,” says Matt. “Though we can probably get you off.” 

“As your legal counsel, I have to advise you against murdering anyone.”

“You are a buzzkill,” accuses Karen.

Lisa’s hands curl into her pant leg. Her heart rate increases.

She doesn’t stop staring at Matt. 

…

It’s like this:

Stick’s training breaks you down, slices you into little pieces, disposes of the parts that are weak and then waits for strength to grow in its place. If weak replaces weak, then Stick disposes of that part too. If weak replaces weak replaces weak, Stick disposes of you. 

And Matt is weak, is so fucking weak, is weakness enveloping weakness and he wants it out. He’d carve it out with his fingers until he was hollow, if that means he just wouldn’t be him anymore. 

Dad says, “What the hell are you doing, Matty?”

And Matt thinks about replying: I killed you. You don’t get to ask. 

…

When Karen takes Lisa clothes shopping, Matt explains who Stick is. He says it in clear, short sentences, as clear and succinct and emotionless as possible. How Matt met him. Where Stick took him. The things he taught him while he was there. 

When he’s done, Foggy sucks in a firm, hard breath, and he tells Matt he’ll set up a time with Brett, and he tells Matt they’re going to nail this goddamn case. 

He also tells Matt he loves him. That they’re a family. He doesn’t hug Matt, but he does grip him firmly by the shoulder, as if he’s trying to push the same effect through one hand. 

Matt smiles and thanks him. 

He wants to put a fist through the wall. 

… 

Foggy wait until he gets home that night to cry. 

Matt still hears. 

… 

“It’s Sunday,” says Matt. “Can I go to mass?”

“You’re fucking kidding,” says Stick. “You think we got time to give you Sunday off?” He thumps him in the chest, not hard, not painful, but not delicately either. Roughhousing. Everyone stopped roughhousing with Matt after the accident. “You’re learning to be the best of the best, kid. When you’re getting shit done? Everything else has got to wait.”

Matt shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. “Okay.” 

There’s Dad. 

… 

“You aren’t who I thought you’d be,” Lisa tells him, as if it were a secret. 

Matt cocks his head at her. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Yes.”

Matt can’t tell if it’s a lie. 

… 

It’s like this: 

From the day that Matt leaves the hospital, people expect him to be weak. 

He’s a prop. A goddamn background character, meant to add some color to the setting. The diversity hire, the people stare at in the street, the one they look at and say oh, what must that be like and that poor man. 

It’s that scene, right? In the Christmas Carol. Tiny Tim, God-Bless-Us-Everyone Tim, he says, I don’t mind when people stare at me because I am a cripple, because it might remind them of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who made lame men walk and blind men see, and that might be pleasant for them, God Bless Us Everyone, A-Fucking-Men. 

Except, he didn’t. Bob Cratchit says it. It’s his own damn philosophy and he can’t be the one to say it, no. He only wobbles onto the scene to be small and inspiring and eternally glowing with the charity of all mankind, never faltering under his disability, never wavering in his kindness or happiness or graciousness, but never doing anything past that. God bless us, everyone, especially those assholes who can’t stop gawking at the cripple daring to exist.

And that’s what you have to be, right? Tiny Tim screwed the damn pooch for all Christian cripples. Now, it’s just another cross you have to bear, the stares of others. All their pity and the weight of it. 

You don’t--you don’t get to be a person, anymore. You’re a life lesson. A thing for people to stare at in Mass and remember the Good Lord Jesus, who fixed all the poor fucks like you when he was roaming the Earth. Only, he’s not here anymore, so now you’re just fucked. A defective thing that can’t be fixed. And you need to be fixed, for people to ever accept you as anything more than being less. If you can’t be fixed, you can be right, and who wants to ever think of that?  

They even fixed Tiny Tim in the end. 

… 

“Hey, Matt, there’s something I can’t figure out,” Karen tells him, voce sotto, as Foggy introduces Lisa to Brett. “Why is Foggy taking the lead on this? You seem to have--well, a relationship with Lisa.” Then, “How do you know her, anyway?”

“Um--” He gives her a bracing smile. “The answers to both of those questions are the same, I’m afraid. Lisa and I had the same”--his voice doesn’t waiver, he’s lied about worse things than this--“abuser. He… sometimes tracks me down again. He brought her with him and… I didn’t let him leave with her again.” He pats her elbow slightly. “It’s fine. I’d like to represent her, it’s just not really possible to do when I’m a witness in the same case. Foggy’s going to do great.”

Karen grabs his hand. “Matt,” she says, her voice choked with emotion. 

“Mr. Murdock?” calls Brett. His voice is curt. All business. “We’ll start with you, if that’s alright.”

“It’s fine, Karen, really,” he tells her, extricating himself from her grip. He taps his way to the room Brett reserved. 

Karen’s heartbeat thunders behind him.

… 

Sometimes, Stick leaves Matt in the basement. For days and days and days. He doesn’t leave Matt with food. Figure it the fuck out, Matty. And Matt’s thrilled to do so, genuinely goddamn delighted, because the the orphanage didn’t even trust him with a knife and fork when he was there. Had a nun hand-feeding him like a child. When Matt complained, he was told to accept these trials with the humility God seeks to inspire in us all, as if it were God who were insisting that the fucking butter knife was too dangerous for Matt’s poor, blind hands. 

Matt stays in the basement. He practices his forms and he does so with glee, and when Stick comes back, he scuffs Matt up the head and tells him, “Look at that, you ain’t a goddamn embarrassment after all,” which is unspeakably high praise in Stick’s book. And Matt, Matt puffs himself up and says, “Can’t look at shit, old man.”

And Stick snorts a laugh. 

When Stick leaves, sometimes, Matt talks to Dad. Only when Stick is gone. 

“Leave,” he tells him. “You can’t be here. I don’t want you here.”

Dad says, “What the hell are you doing, Matty?”

“You don’t get to ask me that. You left.”

“I didn’t want this for you.” He shakes his head. Disappointed. Matt always seems to do that. “You know that.”

“You don’t get to say that!” Matt screams back. “I killed you. I killed you, I killed you, I killed you, I killed you and that means you don’t get a goddamn say.”

“You takin’ the Lord’s name, Matty?” demands Jack, as if Matt doesn’t swear with every other word now. “I taught you better than that.” As if it wasn’t the first thing Stick taught him to do. 

“I don’t want you to teach me.” Lie. Lie. Goddamn, goddamn lie. “I want you to go.” Lie. Lie. Lie.  “I have Stick now. That means you need to leave.” 

Dad, of course, stays right where he is, which is nowhere, which is propped up against the wall, watching all of Matt’s mistakes. He isn’t real. He’s in Matt’s head. 

Maybe that’s where Matt needs to kill him to make it stick.

… 

Stick is the only person alive who treats Matt like a human being anymore, and Matt loves him for it. 

… 

“So, Murdock,” says Brett. “What was the nature of the abuse?”

Ain’t that the goddamn question. 

… 

That’s an important qualifier--alive. Because Dad never had a problem with Matt after he was blinded. He had the exact same confidence in Matt before as he did in Matt after: Matty was as tough as any Murdock and twice as smart, and he would go farther than any of them ever would. 

It was weird, in hindsight, the faith his father had in him. Nigh religious. Not reverent, just… steady. Unwavering. Solid as a rock, his dad, and could take a hit as well as one. Matt never realized how much he appreciated it until after, when he was gone, when it suddenly became easier for everyone to shuffle him off in the corner rather than take two seconds to make something accessible. 

Dad didn’t care about the blindness. He loved Matt all the same. Matty was going to relearn to read and he was going to do it twice as fast as Battlin’ Jack learned the first time. He was going to be an attorney, be a judge, be a justice on the goddamn Supreme Court, and Jack, Jack would say there’s my boy until he was gray in the face. Matty was going to swell, be bigger than all of them, and it’d take a lot more than a direct hit of chemicals to the face to stop him. 

Maybe that’s why it means so much, Stick. Maybe that’s why Matt loves him. Because Dad would say My boy’s got this and mean it. 

Stick says, “Matty, figure it the fuck out,” and he means that, too. 

… 

“I met Stick through my orphanage. He--I was introduced to him as a trauma specialist. I developed a sensory processing disorder after I was blinded, and on top of my dad… they thought I could use some special attention.” Matt doesn’t change the cantor of his voice. He doesn’t flinch. Calm, clear, concise. Surgical precision. Figure it the fuck out, Matty. “Emotional and mental abuse, primarily. He would control every aspect of your life. When you slept, what you ate… restrict them. Wake you up every few hours, keep you disoriented. Physical abuse. Hitting, kicking, got whipped with a cane a few times. Strangled. Once. He would tell you that it was to help you. That, that if he taught you how to shake off trauma, it would never be able to hurt you again. And…”

Matt’s brain catches up with his mouth. 

Brett notices. “And?”

He snaps his mouth closed again. “That’s it, mostly.”

…

And then there was the time where Stick tells him he’s tough, that they’re gonna make him tougher, that he’s going to teach Matt how to get  knocked down and ground into the dirt and get up swinging. 

He tells Matt that he needs to learn how to get hurt in his body, not in his mind. Doesn’t matter what they do to his body, as long as he keeps his mind separate, whole, untouched. He tells Matt that for what comes next, he doesn’t get to fight. Just let himself get hurt, take in the pain, pull it out again, discard it. 

Matt sits in the basement while he finds his men. He gets them off the street. 

“What do you want us to do to him?” he hears one ask. 

“As long as it doesn’t kill him and doesn’t do permanent damage, I don’t fuckin’ care.”

What follows is everything you can imagine.

…

Brett leans forward. Matt can hear the creak of his chair. “Murdock, when, when did you last see this guy?”

He never saw Stick. It’s sitting right there. Come on, Brett, you handed him that one. 

“He left when I was ten,” says Matt. 

“And that’s the last you heard of him?”

“No,” Matt admits. “He came back.”

… 

“They can’t hurt you,” murmurs Stick, after. There’s so much blood in the air. Matt can smell the blood. “You ain’t hurt.”

The cough that rattles free of Matt’s chest is wet and tastes of iron. 

“I’m fine,” he says, but it comes out as more of a croak. “They can’t hurt me.”

Both of them can hear the lie. 

… 

“Off the record,” says Brett. “Man, you know Foggy and I, we’re--well, we’re not friends, but our moms… we grew up together. We got each other’s back.”

Matt has no godly clue why he feels the need to bring this up. “I--yes. I know.”

“Which means the next time you need someone to be at your apartment and handle someone, you call me, you understand?”

Stick would break him in half without it even being a large part of his day. 

“I… thank you, Officer Mahoney,” says Matt, more graciously than he wants to. 

He wants to  punch in the wall. He wants to break something. Brett tries his best, he’s a good cop, but Matt’s got a good fifteen pounds of solid muscle on Brett. Brett has no combat experience, just a gun, which anyone with half as much training as Matt could take down. 

Matt’s built like a boxer. He moves like one, in his steps. No one ever seems to notice. Can’t look past the cane. 

“As a cop or as a friend. If you need ‘em brought in, scared off… I’ll do it.”

That’s what fucking Daredevil does. 

… 

“Wanna kill ‘em, kid?”

Stick tosses the offer out casually. Like it isn’t a particularly large part of his day. 

Matt stutters to a stop. “What?”

“I’ll help you do it. Call it one of those bonding experiences folks always get so antsy about.” He shrugs. “Gotta learn sometimes. Not like they were making any grand contributions to society anyway.”

Dad’s in the corner. He doesn’t say a goddamn word. But Matt can feel his eyes all the same. 

Matt wonders if the man who pulled the trigger on his father felt this way, the moment before. If he looked Dad in the eyes or if it didn’t matter that much to him. Some things aren’t a particularly large part of your day, Matt supposes. 

The long and short of the matter is this: 

Matt wants to kill them. 

But he does not want to kill his daddy.

“So?” prompts Stick. “Wanna do it, kid? Up to you.”

“Nah,” says Matt, like it doesn’t matter. “‘S not like they hurt me.” Lie, lie, lie, but Stick doesn’t mention it and neither does Matt. “They can’t do that.” Lie. He shrugs. “I don’t really see a point in it.”

Lie. 

Goddamn it. 

… 

Dad won’t leave the fucking corner. 

… 

“So this guy, he, he just tracks you down after decades, smacks you around, and leaves?”

Matt won that fight.

He gives Brett a bland smile. “I guess he didn’t forget me after all.”

… 

In the breakroom outside, someone says, “Man, where’s Brett been all day?”

And someone else says, “Taking a statement. Some asswipe slapped around a blind guy.” They shake their head in disgust, Matt can hear it, the tch in their breath, the swish of their hair. “Can you imagine that? How fucking pathetic do you have to be to go after someone  who can’t even fight back?” 

…

“And the kid? How does she fit in?” Brett shuffles the papers in front of him. “Foggy said she ran into the same guy.”

“He… tracked me down again. Like before. He had her with him. I don’t know where he got her or how, but I know she’s not his. I. I didn’t let him leave with her.”

And Matt can feel it, the way Brett’s eyes track over him, the little scuffs and scrapes from nights of fighting. It’s good for him. Fucking brillaint. Doesn’t even need to come up with an excuse because people will draw their own conclusions. Matt should be thrilled. This is great for him, for his secret. Matt Murdock, Daredevil? Nah. Daredevil wouldn’t let himself get beat like that. 

Brett’s voice is the picture of sympathy. “You did great, Matt. Really.”

For a blind man, that is. 

… 

Matt loses his edge. 

There’s something lost in it, in the decision to let the men live, in the decision to let Dad stay alive in his head. That willingness to do whatever it took, that certainty… Matt’s lost it. And he needs to get it back before Stick realizes. 

Stick is everything. Stick is, is the only thing that makes sense, the only one that makes Matt make sense. He’s boiling with it, his unrealized potential, all the things no one wants him to be. He is something inconvenient, something to be bundled off to the background and kept safe, and Matt wants to crash into the foreground and hit and hit and hit and hit until there’s no choice but to recognize him. 

He wants to live. He wants someone to let him do it. 

He wants to be good enough, for this, for Stick to keep. He wants Stick to recognize the potential in him, the ability, to have the same faith in him that claimed him to be a future attorney-judge-supreme-court-justice. He wants people to recognize he is living and breathing and screaming and he wants, he wants--

He wants his Dad back. 

… 

“He was a blind man?” asks Brett, his voice full of doubt. 

Matt smiles, brittle-thin. “I guess I don’t know for sure.” And, “He didn’t act like one.”

… 

It goes off without a hitch. 

Matt plays his part and Lisa plays hers, and there's nothing but sympathy for the poor blind man and the poor little girl, beat senseless by an awful, awful man. Terrible thing. Heard he impersonates blind men as well. 

There is not a single strip of doubt deeming their story to be true. There isn’t anything to make anyone think that there is anything different about Lisa or Matt. What was that, that thing Stick always said?

Soldiers in a secret war. Perfect fucking disguises. Matt should be thrilled. Stick would have been. 

“Social workers are here,” says Brett. 

“Right, I--Foggy, he’s taking the lead on Lisa’s case. I’ll let him know.”

Brett’s heart trips in his chest. “Murdock, there’s… social workers here. One’s for you too.”

Matt’s voice goes flat as a board. “I beg your pardon.”

“Hang on now,” says Brett. “They’re not just for children.”

“I know that. I’m an attorney. And someone who had a social worker for most of my life.”

“We just think it’d be a good idea for you to see one, have a talk, hear about some options.”

Matt wonders if they still have the file from his old social worker. Must not, if they think he’d ever want to talk to another. Damn thing was six inches thick and purportedly had flight risk emblazoned on it in bright red ink. 

“Well. I’m sorry they came all this way out, then, because I disagree.”

“You know you can’t refuse a needs assessment, Murdock,” sighs Brett. “Look, man, I’m sorry. I know this has been a rough time for you. It can’t have been easy to dredge up old memories like this. But you’ve been flagged as, well…”

“A high-risk abuse victim?” finishes Matt, lightly. “Is that it, Officer?”

“Yeah,” he says, eventually. “That’s it.”

Makes sense. Matt’s got a history of it, and he didn’t need Stick to establish that. Foster system was fun for him. Former abuse victims had a higher risk of being repeat cases. Moreover, he apparently had his old abuser hunting him down and kicking the shit out of him, and he never so much as filed a report. 

Disabled. Blind. That always puts you at higher risk. 

Matt works at this precinct. He comes in, he shoves his way in through the door, he finds his client and he makes it all go away. He’s good at what he does. Fantastic, actually. People have started drawing straws to decide who has to deal with him when he arrives.

Gossip spreads like wildfire. And Matt has to hear all of it.  

He stands, all at once. “I’ll have to decline. Thank you for your time.” 

“You know--”

“Get a court order.”

… 

Matt makes a bracelet. He folds it out of an ice cream wrapper and places it in Stick’s hands. 

It’s funny. Matt’s spent this entire goddamn time trying to make Dad leave the basement, and he didn’t shift an inch. 

Stick left without any trouble at all. 

… 

“Matt, buddy.” Foggy stands with a startle. “We good?”

By no definition of the word.

“Social worker is here for Lisa,” he says instead. “You should go talk to them.”

“Right, yeah, but…” He trails off. “Matt, I do know when you’re upset.”

He scoffs. “Why would I be upset?”

“Because of the everything?” 

Matt doesn’t answer.

“I’m gonna go talk to her social worker. There’s some absolutely atrocious coffee in the breakroom that I bet you can steal. You’re stealthier than I am. I got caught and summarily ejected for being the enemy.”

“I… thanks, Foggy.”

“Of course.” And, “It’s what family’s for, right?”

Something in Matt’s chest hurts. 

Before Foggy can leave, Matt catches him by the elbow. “Foggy, will you… you don’t, you don’t have to, if Lisa doesn’t want to, but… Could you see if I could get visitation?”

“I can try,” says Foggy, sounding uncertain. “It’ll be hard since you’re not blood, but if Lisa wants it, I can bring that to a judge. But, Matt… they’re gonna check your history to see if you’re a healthy influence in her life.”

From the age of nineteen onward, Matt Murdock is a shining star of society. Top performing student. Ivy Leagues. The sort of thing that got shoved on every inspirational poster. A good boy from the neighborhood that made the folks on his old street proud. Pillar of the community. 

From the age of ten to sixteen, Matt Murdock was an infamous source of problems in the foster care system. He’d run away. Get into fights. His file had it all--hospitals and psych wards and twenty-four hour monitoring. His file had so many red flags, it could have brought a charging bull their way. 

Matt doubts there’s any record of him from seventeen to nineteen. His final disappearance from the system was his most complete one. He overheard his social worker making noises about a conservatorship, and Matt… Matt was good at not being found. 

What would they see? Which parts would they look at? The worst part of his life or the best? Would they let him see Lisa again?

Would it even be good for Lisa if they did?

He should let her go. She needs a clean break from it, from Stick, from Daredevil. A chance to start again. A chance to be something more than Matt ever could. He can’t drag her down. Not when she has a chance at real life.

He barely knows her anyway. It’s only been a few days. Matt has never left anyone, but he’s been left plenty. People manage it all the time, after months and months, and their heartbeat never so much as stutters as they turn and walk out the door. 

He’s only known Lisa for a couple of days. It should be a cake walk. 

Matt gives Foggy a smile. He excuses himself. Takes his cane and taps his way to where he knows Brett is trying to explain the situation to the social worker. 

To his social worker.

“Officer Mahoney?” says Matt. He gives a smooth smile. “I… apologize, for earlier. I reacted strongly.”

There’s a long pause. “It’s okay.”

“I heard another voice? Is this…?”

“Your social worker,” confirms Brett. “Mr. Murdock, meeting Alicia Harkness from Social Services.”

He pastes on his most professional smile. “Ms. Harkness. I admit, I don’t think this is necessary, but I’m happy to cooperate in any way I can.”

Foggy’s going to need to have fucking something on file to show the judge if Lisa agrees to pursue visitation.

…

This is a secret, one Matt has never told:

Sometimes, he thinks he hears the men. From the basement. The men Stick hired. The men Matt didn’t kill. 

Years down the line. Years without hearing them. He’ll be walking down the street and then…

A snippet. A heartbeat, or a, a voice. A laugh. Matt remembers their laugh. They laughed when it happened. 

And he’ll tell himself that it doesn’t matter. That it was goddamn years ago and that they only were about to do that to him because he wasn’t allowed to fight back. That he’d have wiped the floor with them then, that he’d do it now, that they can’t hurt him because he won’t goddamn let them. 

He’ll think all this while frozen solid. Stopped dead where he stands. He always freezes when he hears them. The sound crashes over him like ice water and everything else pauses, for a moment, as adrenaline and panic flood his system. Doesn’t matter how many years pass. It always happens the same way. 

Foggy’s the only one who’s ever caught him at it. It was 1L, and Matt doubts that he even remembers it now. Matt barely remembers it, but that’s for an entirely different reason. 

He remembers shambling down the street with Foggy, arm in arm, the sun was warm and shining and they were giggling about something stupid and… 

A laugh. Happy. Like something was really goddamn funny. 

They laughed when it happened like it was so goddamn funny. 

The next thing Matt remembers, he’s on a bench, and Foggy, Foggy is there, and his arms are around Matt, and he’s trying to coax Matt into a response. He’s--he’s incorrectly citing the Model Penal Code and making up saints. It’d almost be funny if he weren’t so obviously on the verge of panic. 

Matt brushes him off. He tells him he’s fine. 

Foggy says, “Matt, buddy, you’re shaking.”

Matt supposes he’s right about that. 

… 

And then comes the part where Lisa leaves. The part where the social worker has a van and Lisa needs to go in it. There’s a group home that has space for her. Time to go. 

Lisa turns to Foggy and says, “Can’t I stay with Matty?”

She says it softly, but Matt still hears it from four rooms over.

Her new social worker answers. “I’m afraid that Mr. Murdock isn’t a licensed foster parent, Lisa. We can’t let you stay with him. You’ll like the home, I promise.”

That’s true. Technically, it was wildly illegal for Matt to keep her for as long as he did, but he doubts anyone will bring charges against him for it.

Lisa stays turned towards Foggy. “You said I was your client. That you’d fight for what I said.”

“That’s right, and--”

“I want to stay with Matty.”

“He isn’t licensed,” cuts in the social worker.

“There's not much I can do,” Foggy tells her, apologetic. “Not with this. But Matt’s asked if you’d like him to fight for visitation rights. You’ll still get to see him, Lisa.”

Matt can hear the exact moment her tone shifts, where she remembers what she’s supposed to be, where she remembers she’s not supposed to feel. He used to do the same thing, after all. 

“He can do what he wants,” she says, sucking in a hard breath. “It doesn’t matter.”

He hears the lie. 

… 

Matt also hears this:

“Last name?” asks the desk sergeant.

And in the bitterest, most fuck-off tone she can muster, Lisa replies, “Murdock.”

… 

The true tripping point is, of course, in the fact that Lisa absolutely, staunchly, viciously refuses to give a single bit of identifying information. She will not give a last name. She will not give a middle name. She will not give any parents or siblings or dates of birth. She shuts down entirely when pushed about where she comes from. 

“We’ll check the missing kids’ database,” Brett tells Foggy, softly. “Run her prints. But it’ll become a lot easier if you can get something out of her. Maybe Murdock? She seems to like him.”

Honestly? Matt’s had enough play acting for today. He’s not going to sit idly in a chair and wait for another character to enter, scene right, and say the lines that Matt already knows. He just shoves his way over to the room Lisa’s ensconced herself in while the social workers debate how to handle a child with no legal proof of existence. 

He drops himself into the chair across with little ceremony. “They’re poking around for your name.”

Lisa’s voice is brittle enough to break. “So?” 

Matt shrugs. “If you have relatives, I can keep you out of the system.”

“There isn’t goddamn anyone.” And there’s the breaking point. “I don’t have anyone. Not fucking anyone. They’re all in the ground and I can’t get them out and I don’t want anyone else and I, I--”

Her breath catches.

“I know,” Matt tells her, soft and tight. “I swear I do, Lisa.”

“They think I died with them,” confesses Lisa. “It was in the papers. You won’t tell them, Matty. You won’t.”

Matt doesn’t reply as he digests that, which Lisa reads as disagreement. 

“I don’t want to be her anymore,” she says, nearly spitting it. “I won’t. You can’t make me. I want her to be in the fucking ground with the rest of her family. I’ll put her in the fucking ground--”

“Okay.” His knuckles are strained tight against the handle of his cane. When did his heart rate get this fast? “I won’t tell them. Give them any goddamn name you want, kid. Tell ‘em your name is Clown for all I care.”

“Close. I went with Murdock.”

Matt left that one wide open for her. It scores him a chuckle, which makes it worth it. 

… 

Lisa leaves, and Matt lets her, and neither parties have a goddamn say in the matter, which means it isn’t anywhere close to an abandonment. Matt knows the term abandoned. He’s got the legal definition at his beck and call. 

This went perfectly. The best possible way of pulling off what needed to be done. He should be relieved. He should be thrilled. 

He feels like shit.

…

Sometimes, Matt wonders if Dad’s still in that basement. Propped in the corner, waiting for Matt to come back and pick up with all the wrong things. He doesn’t know. 

All he knows is that Dad didn’t leave it with him. 

…

When Matt gets to the office, the light is buzzing and there’s a heartbeat at the front desk.

“Karen?”

She startles. Hard. Jerks straight for her purse, where he started smelling gunpowder not long after Fisk went behind bars. “Matt--” She sucks in a deep breath. “Don’t scare me like that.”

Wouldn’t be the first time Matt got shot. 

“What are you doing here so late?”

“Oh, just… thought I’d wrap up a few things. You?”

His apartment still smells like Lisa and he promised Foggy he wouldn’t go out and pick a fight tonight. “Same.”

“Great minds,” says Karen, without any enthusiasm. 

He frowns, sniffs the air, as if he didn’t smell the bitter tinge of vodka from four blocks over. “Are you drinking?”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I know it’s not professional. And I swear, I don’t just come here to drink--”

“It’s fine, Karen. We can save professionalism for when it’s not one in the morning.”

She huffs a breath. 

“Do you… want to talk about it? I’m told I’m a great listener.”

For some reason, that makes her bury her face in her hands. “That so?”

“I mean, it’s not like I have a lot of alternatives. What’s up?”

Another huffed breath. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that, Matt?”

“Only if you arrived second. Then you would have gotten to catch me drinking in the office. Winner’s prerogative.”

“Matt, I… am fine. And I really, really think you’re the last goddamn person I should be dumping this one.”

A stone settles in his stomach. “So it’s about today.”

“Sort of?” She sighs. “I… feel dumb. Really, really dumb. I, I would find you in the office or in your apartment just… hurt and I. I told myself it was Fisk or another person we pissed off or, or, I… don’t even know. I didn’t… Jesus, you both helped me when I needed it and I couldn’t do the same for you.”

Of course she’s upset. Her poor, blind, helpless boss has had his childhood abuser slapping him around, and he’s been dragging in his injuries everyday and brushing them off as accidents. Karen has a gun and determination and a perceived debt to pay. Everyone’s so goddamn devastated, the blind man needed a rescue and they couldn’t be the one to deliver it. 

And what Matt means to say is: “Karen, I didn’t ask for help. You couldn’t have known.”

What Matt says is: “Karen, I’m Daredevil.”

Karen freezes. 

Matt freezes. 

“I--” starts Matt, and then shuts his mouth. Opens it again. Shuts it. Walks into his office and slams the door behind him. 

There’s a knock at the door. Fuck. 

He sets his cane against the wall. Drags a hand through his hair. Picks up the stapler. Wonders why he picked up the fucking stapler. Sets it back down. 

“Matt?” calls Karen, sounding a bit like she walked in on him in flagrante. “You, uh, want to talk about, uh? That?”

Fuck. No, no he doesn’t. No. Fuck. Why did he do that?

Matt can do this. He can--fuck, he can do something. He has so many skills. One of them has to help here. 

He opens the door. 

“Matt--” says Karen. 

He shuts the door again. 

Another knock. Fuck. Why did he do that? 

“Matt? Can I come in?”

A beat passes, while Matt’s trying to figure out where the fuck all his goddamn sense went. 

“I’m coming in,” says Karen, and then she does.

“So,” she says, through the hand clamped over her mouth like a vice, “I want to go on record that that was on my fucking theory list.”

What?

“What?”

“You have such a memorable ass, Matt,” hisses Karen, smacking his chest with her palm. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t even disguise your voice. Are you stupid?”

That feels slightly hurtful and more than a little unwarranted. 

“I came back to your fucking apartment after being saved by Daredevil and you weren’t there.”

Well--

“You were sopping wet and had a bunch of shiny new bruises and your only excuse was that you fell down while looking for me.”

Matt thought that was believable. 

“That wasn’t fucking believable, Matt,” giggles Karen. “But I told myself I was just imagining things, until you kept acting weird. I just couldn’t get conclusive evidence. Until you told me.” 

“I--okay?” Matt drags a hand through his hair. “You knew?”

“Like I said, theory list. That was up there, but it wasn’t my only one.” She sobers. “You saved my life.”

“We don’t have to… anything, Karen. You don’t owe me anything for that.”

“Don’t be stupid.” 

Stepping forward, she wraps her arms around Matt’s neck, hugging him fiercely. Her shoulders shake as she clutches at him. “Thank you, Matt.”

After a beat, he wraps his arms around her waist. “It’s fine, Karen. Really.”

Then, she presses her lips to Matt’s ear and says, “I’m putting a tracker in that dumb fucking suit of yours.”

Matt jerks back with a laugh. 

“I’m serious,” insists Karen. “Is this why Foggy looks like he’s the single mother of seven now? I need to know where to come get you when your dumb ass ends up unconscious somewhere.”

“What happened to ‘he kicks ass’?” muses Matt. “What happened to, ‘You should have seen him flipping around in the rain…’?”

Karen whacks him again. “You’re not getting out of a full explanation, Matt. You’re telling me everything.”

Groaning, he shambles back into the main room. “I’m gonna need vodka first.”

“Fuck, make that two. I cannot believe you and Foggy hid this from me.”

“In Foggy’s defense, he’s been trying to convince me to tell you since he found out.”

“Defense accepted. Yours?”

“None.” He moves to pour himself a glass, then, after a moment’s consideration, takes a swig directly from the bottle. “I throw myself upon the mercy of the court.”

“You’re sentenced to this conversation. Spill.”

Matt has the oddest sense of being at a sleepover, which is especially strange in light of the fact that he never had one. He and Karen sit on the floor of the office, propped against one wall, trading off the bottle to gulp directly from its mouth. They prop themselves against a wall and Karen leans her head against Matt’s shoulder, and she doesn’t say a word as Matt explains to her the accident, his father, Stick. 

It feels like a confession. It feels like an absolution. 

When he’s done, Karen says, “So Lisa… she got taught to fight by the same group you did.”

After a beat, Matt nods. He feels heavy, like this, warm and clumsy with the alcohol weighing down his limbs. It doesn’t hurt as much, thinking of Lisa now. 

“Shit, that’s… shit.”

“She needs help. She’ll get it now. It’s… it’s for the best.”

“You’re a hero, Matt,” Karen tells him, firmly. “I’m not talking about Daredevil. I hope you know that.”

It’s hard to swallow, all of a sudden. “Thanks, Karen.”

She tucks in closer to him, bottle still held loosely in one hand. There’s an odd comfort to it. A tension disappeared. It’s odd. Matt’s tried so hard to keep this from her, and now that she knows, all he feels is relief. 

Foggy shambles into the office not twenty minutes later. 

“Oh, come on!” demands Karen. “Can none of our office sleep?”

Foggy’s voice is the picture of betrayal. “Were you guys having a floor party without me?”

Matt pats the place next to him. “C’mon, buddy. Join the team.”

“I cannot believe you were having a floor party without me.” His bag hits the ground, closely followed by Foggy’s warmth tucked in close to Matt’s side. “Floor parties are sacred office experiences, you two.”

Solemnly, Karen passes him the bottle, which Foggy happily accepts. 

She waits until he’s started to drink before she says, conversationally, “So, Matt’s Daredevil, huh?”

Foggy spit-sprays the vodka clear across both of them. 

Karen bursts out cackling. 

“Okay,” says Matt, choking back a laugh of his own. He mops the vodka from his face with his tie. “Thanks, Foggy.”

“I hate you,” wheezes Foggy, sounding a bit like he’s on the verge of hacking up his own lung. “I hate both of you.”

“Aw, he loves us,” says Karen. 

“That sounded like love,” confirms Matt. 

“When I can breathe,” says Foggy, between coughs and gasps, “it’s over for both of you.”

“Foggy bear,” croons Karen, sweetly. “You wouldn’t hurt us.”

“I’m gonna drown you both in a sack. Like kittens. Except not like kittens, because I am not an evil man and would not do it to kittens. But I would do it to you.”

“It probably would have been a more effective threat if you left it at ‘I’m gonna drown you both in a sack,” says Matt.

“Yeah, the second bit was too wordy. Kind of zoned out by the end.”

“I’m leaving this family,” announces Foggy. “I can no longer thrive.”

When he tries to get up, Karen dives forward and takes him out at the knees. He rocks back on his backside, nearly upending the vodka as he goes down. 

Karen shrieks with laughter. “That wasn’t planned--”

“Do you see this Matt? Do you see it? Assault and battery, repeated offenses, I’m telling you, we need a new office manager.”

“I didn’t see shit.”

“You’re both terrible people, oh my God--”

For a moment, it feels like a homecoming. It feels right. For that moment, it feels like nothing is wrong in the world.

But only for a moment. 

Chapter Text

Matt’s boots land at the mouth of the shipping container with a sharp clang. 

Nothing moves on the docks. It’s nearly four in the morning, and not even the more unsavory of activities are taking place anywhere in Matt’s hearing. There is, however, a minor smuggling operation that’s run out of this port. They haven’t warranted a visit from Daredevil yet--they aren’t hurting anyone save the taxing agencies, and Matt has bigger fish to fry. It’s not worth the potential injuries to net someone that’s not doing any real harm to Hell’s Kitchen. He’s not a cop; if he goes after someone, it’s because they’re hurting the rest of the city. Not because they simply broke a law. 

He’s not here for the smugglers tonight. 

“You can come out now.”

Nothing twitches. 

Matt makes his voice harder. “Come out, Lisa. I mean it.”

There’s a shift. 

Matt can hear the grinding of Lisa’s jaw as she slinks out from her hiding place in the shipping container. She comes to attention in front of Matt, stiff and prim like a soldier, and for a moment, Matt wonders where she learned it from. Sure as hell wasn’t Stick. He wore a ball cap and a ratty shirt every single day of his life, and he didn’t stand at attention for anyone. He didn’t believe in hierarchies--just good old fashion merit. He didn’t need a commander and wouldn’t have respected one if he had one. 

He can practically feel the frustration rolling off her. 

“You would have been caught,” Matt says, conversationally. “With this operation? Port authorities are missing ball bearings, kid. Automobile parts dodging an export tax. They would have noticed you.”

It doesn’t cut the tension. “Guess I better get a better ride, next time.”

The last thing Matt needs is Lisa trying to stow away with the kind of shipping operation that could sneak a little girl past port authorities. That’s the sort of smuggling job that does get busted by Daredevil.  

“Come on.” He sighs, jerking his head. He needs to get her home before anyone notices Daredevil dragging along an angry little girl. “Let’s go.”

She sets her jaw harder. “You takin’ me back?”

“I’m taking you to my apartment,” corrects Matt. “Twenty-four hours. Eat, sleep, take a shower, whatever the hell you want. Then I call your social worker.” 

“Whatever,” says Lisa. She shoulder checks him as hard as she can as she brushes past. 

She’s wearing his fucking dress shirt still. 

… 

If Matt could have given St. Agnes one recommendation after Stick, it would be to go ahead and install that revolving door. There wasn’t a single placement for Matt that didn’t send up back within a few weeks, and the few that didn’t send him back ended up being the ones to get shut down for child abuse. 

And then there Matt would be, inevitably, scabby-knees and foul-mouthed, shunted on the end of a bare twin bed with a wire metal frame, curled up and wondering if there was a single goddamn thing he could do to convince Stick to come and take him back. 

It had been assumed, almost, that Matt would be leaving the basement with Stick. He’d join Stick’s army and Stick’s war and he’d never waste his time in another orphanage or foster home. No more court appearances or social workers or goddamn anything. 

There was nowhere else Matt wanted to be than with Stick. 

In the end, there was nowhere else anyone wanted him either. 

… 

“Do you want something to eat? I could order in.”

“No.” 

She plops herself right on his couch and curls her knees to her chest. 

Fucking come on, kid. Cut him a break. 

“When did you last eat?” he tries.

“You care?” Lisa shoots right back. 

Yes. 

“We talked about this, Lisa.” He moves himself to stand directly in front of her. She shifts her knees so she’s turned away. “Lisa. You promised to call me or Foggy instead of running.”

“House wouldn’t let me,” she bites out. 

Of course they fucking wouldn’t.

“Well, I’ll handle it when they do that.” He sits on the end of the couch, not touching her, but in reach. “Foggy’s your attorney, Lisa. They can’t keep you from calling him. And I have visitation rights.” 

Provisional, and Matt goddamn knows that they want to take them away. 

Her foster parents don’t want Matt anywhere near Lisa. They still had his file from when he was in the system, and Lisa’s social worker told the foster parents, despite that being a huge breach of confidentiality. 

Not that Matt can prove it. He heard it from a block down the street when Matt was taking Lisa for ice cream, and the foster parents were bitching about him from the car. 

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong? Or do I have to guess?”

“They want to move me outside of the city,” says Lisa. 

Fuck. 

They think he’s a bad influence. That’s what this is. Matt knows exactly what Lisa’s social worker thinks of him, what the foster parents think of him, all the petitions they want to file to get rid of his influence in his life. 

Lisa has tried to run three times in less than a month. Each time, she inevitably turned up in Matt’s house, curled up on the edge of his couch and swearing up a storm when her social worker tried to take her back. 

She gets into fights. She cusses people out. She runs away and never once apologizes. She’s collecting her own thick case file, and it has a lot of startling similarities to Matt’s own. 

There are a lot of things in Matt’s case file that he never wants to see in Lisa’s. 

Matt takes in a deep breath. He shuts his eyes. “There’s a lot of steps before that happens. They’re gonna have to get a hearing before they move you. They’re gonna have to prove it’s in your best interest, and they’re going to ask you your own opinion. Foggy can fight it for you.”

“I’m not leaving,” spits Lisa. “Not on their terms. I’m not sticking around just so they can boot me.”

“Lisa, no one’s booting you.”

“You did.” Oh, shoot him, it’ll hurt less. Then, “Matty, I don’t want to leave New York.”

“Foggy can--”

“They’re buried here.”

Lisa draws her knees to her chest, buries her face in her knees, wraps her arms around them and squeezes hard enough that Matt can hear her blood constrict. 

Matt sits on the couch next to her. 

“Your family?” he says, into the silence. 

“We lived here,” she says, her voice thick. “I grew up here. I’ve never lived anywhere else.”

“I get that,” says Matt. Jesus, does he get it. He had placements that didn’t even want to take him to his father’s grave. “I fought like hell whenever anyone tried to move me out of Hell’s Kitchen, Lisa. I won’t let it happen to you.”

“They’re still here,” explains Lisa, painfully. “I’m--I never--Stick didn’t let me go to the funerals and I--I’m letting go of them, Matty, I’m--I promise, I just--Matty, don’t let them put me somewhere else. Everything else of them is gone. I don’t want to lose the city.”

This is never going to work. 

Matt--he was stupid. Uncharacteristically optimistic. The system can’t help Lisa. The system doesn’t even know what’s wrong with her, and Matt can’t tell them without Stick’s goddamn cult coming down on them both. 

They can’t help her. Not with this. 

This was a huge, impossible problem before Stick ever got her claws in her. That’s the only kind of kid Stick ever wanted. He knows that now. All this time, Matt thought that Stick wanted him for his senses, his powers, his natural fighting ability. As it turned out, he wanted Matt because Matt had to run his fingers over his father’s slack face and feel the rim of the hole where the bullet entered his skull. 

The only kids who will go to the extent that Stick wants are the kids that would do anything to rid themselves of the memories sloshing around their skull. Stick is a charlatan, a liar, someone who claims to transform you into a monster that doesn’t care about the burdens being lugged around by the thing you once were. Therianthropy in creation, in formation, a do-it-yourself home kit. He tells you you can kill yourself in your mind, in minature, and he only steals the kids desparate enough to believe him. 

Matt does not know what put Lisa into Stick’s path. But he knows whatever it is, it’s bad enough that Lisa would willingly go through torture rather than face a future where it stays in her head. 

She doesn’t know that Stick’s methods don’t work. They don’t change you into someone new. They don’t get rid of the bits of you that hurt. They just make you better at lying to yourself about the pain. 

One day, Lisa is going to realize that the pieces of her she tried to rip out are still grown into the meat of her chest. She is going to realize that she can’t get rid of it, the version of her that hurts, and that all she did is just… tear a bigger wound that she hasn't the first clue how to heal from. And when she realizes that ,  when she understands the extent of how badly she’s hurt, when she realizes that she can’t get rid of the version of her that made the deal with Stick…

Matt was all alone when he realized that. He didn’t have a goddamn person alive in his corner. He… 

He can’t let that be Lisa. He can’t. 

“I want to show you something,” says Matt, standing. “Come here.”

He leads her to the back closet and pulls out the trunk. As he kneels and undoes the lock, she settles down on the floor of his bedroom, pulling her legs up beneath her. 

“This is where I keep my suit,” he explains, guiding it to where she can see. “That’s why it’s locked.”

Her heart kicks up a notch. Always does, when Daredevil comes up. “The Daredevil suit?”

“Yep. False bottom, too. I try to keep it as hidden as I can.”

“That’s smart.” 

Her voice is marveling. God, he doesn’t want her to turn out like him.

“I keep the most important thing I own in this trunk, Lisa,” Matt tells her. “And it isn’t the Daredevil suit.”

She doesn’t respond, but Matt can almost feel the curiosity coming off her. He opens the lid. 

“My dad was a boxer.” He reaches in, feels the silk of his father’s robe beneath his fingertips, and hands it to Lisa. “Battlin’ Jack Murdock.”

Her fingertips graze across the raised, uneven edges of the lettering on the back. Matt can hear them slide against the fabric. 

“This is what he was wearing in his last fight. He died that night. Someone killed him when he was walking home to me. I heard it happen.”

Lisa doesn’t say anything. But Matt can hear her heartbeat ratchet higher, higher. 

“I keep a lot of his things in here. His jump rope. The, the first books he ever bought me in Braille. His gloves. There should be a picture of us in here but I can’t… I can’t look at it anymore.” 

“There is,” says Lisa. The fabric rustles as she sets it aside. Clatters as she pulls something out of the trunk. “You look happy.”

Matt laughs, just barely. He’s smiling. He hasn’t smiled about his dad in years. “We were happy. We were so happy.”

“You kept all of this?”

The doubt is evident in her voice. Of course it is. Stick would have never wanted Matt to keep this. Would have burned it himself, if he knew Matt still had it. Would have handled Matt the match and made him drop it inside himself. He left it at the orphanage before going with Stick. It was still there when he returned. That’s why he still has it.  

“I did. And I hid my biggest secret beneath it.” Lisa takes that in silence. “My dad wouldn’t have approved of what I do, Lisa. He never wanted this life for me. He never wanted me to fight. And I have to live with that. But there’s no one I would rather keep this secret with than my father.” 

She doesn’t say anything. 

“I never told Stick. About, about my dad, about how he didn’t want this life for me. I always felt like he knew. He always wanted me to leave my dad behind.”

Her heart rate spikes higher. 

“Lisa, don’t let go of your family. You don’t… have to tell me anything. You don’t have to tell anyone anything. Not if you don’t want to. But you don’t have to stop loving them to keep living.”

She sets the picture down on the floor next to her. 

She scooches closer to the trunk, pulls out the bottom, and sets that aside. 

The Daredevil mask settles into her lap much more comfortably than Matt’s dad’s robe ever did. Than the picture ever did. Her fingers circle the horns with a loose ease. 

“You aren’t how you were supposed to be,” she says, as if it were a puzzle. 

“That doesn’t have to be bad.”

“Doesn’t it?”

When Matt was in her shoes? It’d be the worst goddamn thing in the world. 

That’s the thing. The problem. She still believes in it, in Stick’s creed, in his code, in his fucking fatal belief system. She’s going to believe it and believe it until she can’t anymore, and when she can’t, when she unravels the truth of what Stick did to her…

Matt didn’t handle it well. 

He can’t let it happen to Lisa. He can’t let Lisa walk the same path he did. He just--he feels it. Right down to the marrow of his bones. He can’t walk away from this. 

Murdocks go the distance. They never go down in a fight. They always make it to the end. 

Matt doesn’t think before he says the next bit.

“Give me forty-eight hours. Please.”

Instantly, her voice goes suspicious. “For what?”

His heart is racing like he just took a nosedive off a skyscraper. “I have a solution for you. I need to talk to Foggy. I need… I need the solution to go through Foggy, for this. He’ll call you and explain your options, okay? Forty-eight hours, Lisa.”

“And if they move me?” 

“That’s gonna take a hell of a lot longer than forty-eight hours, and we’ll stop them if they try.”

“... Forty-eight hours. Fine.”

“And I need you to be on your best behavior from now on.”

Crickets. 

“It won’t work if you’re getting into fights, Lisa. Just…” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Remember what Stick used to say? About hiding in plain sight?”

This line of questioning, she has no problem participating in. “You hide because you’re blind. I hide because I’m a girl. People underestimate us, and that helps us win.”

“Good. That’s exactly right. If this is going to work, we need to convince them of certain things. It’s not going to work if they think you’re…” He flaps his hand “...having issues. So, just… until I fix things, I need you to do your best to act how they want. Just for a little while. No, no fights. No running away. Go to therapy at the scheduled time.”

Lisa considers this. “It’ll cost you.”

This is fucking extortion. 

“Lisa,” sighs Matt.

“I want you to teach me to fight.”

Absolutely not. 

“I am not turning you into a tiny Daredevil,” he says, taking the mask from her. “And I’m sure as hell not picking up where Stick left off.”

“Then no deal.”

Give him a break. 

Her heartbeat is as steady as a brass drum. Matt’s been reading people long enough to know what battles he can’t win. 

“Boxing,” he decides. 

Lisa perks with interest. “Boxing?”

“Stick never taught you, right? He doesn’t know how to box. Only eastern fighting styles.”

“Daredevil boxes.”

Oh, she is devastatingly still obsessed with being like Daredevil. Matt really hoped that would have worn off once she saw Karen whack him with paperwork for the seventh time. 

“He does,” confirms Matt. “My dad taught me how to box. When I was kid. I combined it with every other fighting style I knew. It’s what makes Daredevil’s style unique.”

“You’ll teach me?”

“Traditional boxing forms,” says Matt, firmly. “Not Daredevil’s style. We… we can go to my dad’s gym.”

“Forty-eight hours and I get a call?”

“You have my word.”

“Deal. Can we go to the gym on your next visit?”

Matt mops a hand across his jaw. “If your social worker clears it.”

Which she may not, once she finds out what Matt’s about to do.

He’s so fucked. 

…

“Please tell me she’s with you.”

Matt goes into the bathroom and closes the door. “She is.”

“Thank God,” sighs Foggy. “What happened this time?”

“She tried to call us before she ran, but her foster parents wouldn’t let her.”

“Shit. I’ll file for a hearing with the judge on her case. See if I can get an order to make sure they can’t do it again.”

“I want to talk to you about her case, Foggy. Tomorrow.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t working.”

Foggy sounds doubtful. “She hasn’t been in this placement for long. They’re certified to take care of kids that need her level of care. You want to move her?”

They want to move her. Matt… Matt wants her to be okay. He’ll do what it takes to make that happen. “Tomorrow, Foggy.” 

“Fine, keep your secrets.” He sighs. “Want me to come over? I can bring food for you and Lisa. We could do dinner, maybe bring Karen.”

Not tonight. Lisa will poke about Matt’s solution, and this is one conversation that Foggy and Matt can’t have in front of her. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Foggy.”

…

For some reason, people were hugely considered about the blind kid fucking off into the New York City night. 

It was a Concern, capital C-and-fucking-all, and no one ever shut up about it. Not his social worker, not the judge on his case, not the orphanage, not his foster parents, when he had foster parents. No, Matt couldn’t run away. Matt couldn’t be without supervision at any fucking moment, actually. Matt needed to sit in this tiny locked room and stay still, and they’d be back in nine to twelve hours to unlock it again. Matt needed to have his door off the hinges, and what did he care about privacy? He was blind. 

The number of goddamn times Matt had to pretend to not know someone was watching him while he was getting changed was enough to make him want to kill someone. 

They were concerned about him shutting up and sitting still. Never mind the fact that the other kids started fights, because they thought the blind kid was slim pickings. Never mind the fact that they wouldn’t let him go see his dad or go to Fogwell’s or go to the neighborhood he grew up in. 

It was too dangerous for him, the places that were in his blood. Too dangerous for the poor little blind fuck. Keep him in a room and on a leash and where people can watch him, because he needs it. 

Matt runs when it becomes too much. When there are ants crawling under his skin and the devil scratching at his ribs, and all he wants to do is punch someone. 

He runs.

He doesn’t want to be where he is. 

… 

Lisa’s social worker collects her with a sour, pinched face. She doesn’t so much as acknowledge Matt. Lisa, for her part, lifts her chin and grits her teeth. Matt can hear the determined grind of enamel against enamel. 

She hugs him. Hard. Twists her boney arms around his ribs and holds. Like she’s trying to squeeze hard enough to hurt. 

Her social worker’s jaw starts to grind at the sight. 

Matt waits until the car has turned the corner before he grabs his cane and dashes down the stairs so fast he nearly trips. He heads straight for Clinton Church. 

Father Lanthom takes one look at him and sighs. “Care for a latte?”

 “A walk, Father?” asks Matt. He twists the handle of his cane between his hands. “If you had a minute?”

“Oh, I have more than a few minutes these days.” He claps his hands on his knees before standing. “Care for an elbow?”

Matt reaches out and takes Father’s with an unerring exactness. “Thank you, Father.”

He waits until they’re outside before he speaks. 

“I was wrong,” says Matt. “About Lisa. I was wrong.”

There’s a beat. “She’s struggling, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve found myself thinking. About how you were, back then. I… have some regrets.”

That’s not what this is about. 

“It was a long time ago, Father.”

“And yet, I feel that it has much to do with our other conversations.”

They cannot give Stick credit for Daredevil. That’s the product of Matt’s own bad decisions. It’s his. 

“Father, I want to take Lisa in.” 

More fucking crickets. 

“I wouldn’t… continue what Stick did,” he hastens to add, in the silence. “That’s not why I’m doing this.”

“I didn’t say that, Matthew.” 

“She needs someone.” 

“Like you needed someone.”

“That’s not what this is,” snaps Matt, fiddling with the rim of his glasses. “I’m not… trying to go back and rescue tiny me, or whatever anyone thinks this is. This is about Lisa. She’s not getting the care she needs. They don’t understand what she’s going through. They don’t have all the information. I can help her.”

“And you want what from me, exactly? Permission?”

“To tell me if I’m being selfish.”

Father’s silence is more stunned this time. “Selfish? For taking in an orphaned child? Matthew, if more people were selfish in that way, then we would have never needed to build an orphanage.” 

“For not letting her go.” He fiddles with her cane. “I could have given her a clean break. From Stick. All of it. I… I made the decision to ask for visitation. I could have let her go. If she moves in with me, she’ll never get fully away from Stick and his mess.”

The air swishes by Father’s ear as he turns to face him. “Did a clean break help you?”

Matt doesn’t say anything. 

Father sighs. “Why do you want to take her in, Matthew?”

Matt doesn’t know, is the thing. 

Because it’s a mess. It’s completely fucked and Matt knows it, Matt did it, Matt had that. Because there’s no one on the fucking planet that gets what Lisa’s going through, but maybe Matt can get close. 

Because he got visitation rights two weeks ago, and he gets three hours on Tuesday and eight hours on Saturday now. Because Lisa scrambled out the front door like she was relieved when he showed up and caught a finger in his belt loops when they were walking, and didn’t seem to notice when she did. 

She asked him to teach her to fight nine times in the span of his visits so far. She broke down in panic three times, and beat him with her fist until he got her to follow his breaths.

He took her for ice cream. And Thai. Made her dinner and sat at the dinner table with her, the way he used to do with her dad. She likes dinosaurs and clamps up when she realizes she’s talking about them, and Matt gets that, Matt did that after Stick, Matt also thought that the things he loved were a weakness. Matt also tried to kill his own passions. 

She has a great laugh. Matt’s heard it once. She snorted ice cream up her nose and nearly choked. 

He sat on a bench three blocks away from her foster home for an hour after he dropped her off. She spiraled not ten minutes after he left. One of her foster siblings tried to get her to play toy soldiers with him. She locked herself in the closet and wrapped her arms around her legs and sucked in deep, hard breaths through her nose. Foster parents never noticed a thing. 

“She’s important to me, Father,” admits Matt, uncomfortably. “She just is.”

For a long moment, Father is silent. “You remind me of your father. He was a born parent, your dad.”

Matt chokes. “I’m not.. I wouldn’t be…”

He was thinking more older adult that Lisa happens to live with than parent. Makes sure she eats and sleeps and doesn’t fight fucking ninjas. Not… Dad. 

Father Lantom raises a hand. “It doesn’t have to be that. Forget I said anything.”

How the fuck is Matt supposed to do that? 

Turning to face him fully, Father Lanthom sighs. “I have regrets, Matthew. I don’t want you to have the same. Bring Lisa around, if she’s comfortable with it. The children that pass through these walls… they’re our family. She’d be welcome here.”

Something trips in his chest. “Thank you, Father.” 

But Father Lanthom’s words trigger something in him. He notices something he should have earlier. 

Matt’s steps slow to a stop. “Father? Where are the children?”

“Ah,” says Father Lanthom. His voice is wounded. 

“The orphanage is empty.”

“It is,” agrees Father Lanthom. “Our license has been suspended. We’ve been put under investigation.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have--Father, you know I would have represented you.”

“Matthew,” says Father, heavily. “I think you would have been conflicted.”

Fuck. 

He would have been. 

This is because of him. 

“This is my fault.”

“No, it’s ours. We sowed the seeds of this, Matthew. It’s our burden to bear. Don’t mistake it for your own.”

He digs his fingers into the handle of his cane. “It’s my fault that they think they need an investigation--”

“What? By telling them the truth?” Father sighs. “We were your caretakers, Matthew. We were responsible for your wellbeing. We handed off one of our children to a man who hurt him, and we don’t have a single file on record as to who that man was. No background checks. No hiring information. Not a single thing on file. The diocese’s lawyer wants to cite the age of the case, claim that they were lost during reorganization, but I know it isn’t true. We made a vow to take care of our children, Matthew. We didn’t keep it. That’s something we have to pay for.”

“You couldn’t have known--”

“That it was a bad idea to give an orphaned child to a strange man named Stick with no documentation to prove his expertise or existence? If that’s the standard we’re claiming, then it’s a wonder that any child is safe.”

“I had problems you didn’t know how to handle.”

“And it was our job to figure out how. It isn’t your responsibility to fix the consequences of the people who wronged you.”

“I could help.” And, “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Everything comes to roost. Let us bear the cost of our past. You bore it for us for long enough.”

That’s not what Stick was. 

… 

Stick’s the only good thing to happen to Matt since his dad died, and he went and fucked it up. He had a place doing something important, something that mattered, and he couldn’t even manage to keep it. 

Stick’s the first time since Dad went in the ground that Matt doesn’t feel out of place. Stick wanted Matt. Stick didn’t treat Matt like six problems in slacks and a polo. Stick treated Matt like he could do things. 

He tries to get it back, what he had with Stick. Stick is well and gone and Matt can’t find him, he knows, he tried, but that doesn’t mean Matt can’t craft himself into the thing Stick promised to make him. 

He separates himself. Keeps himself above. Keeps up his training and doesn’t allow a scrap of weakness inside. 

He stops visiting his dad’s grave. 

 His dad’s in the basement anyway. 

… 

“You’re fucking insane,” says Foggy, as flat as a board. 

“Okay,” says Matt, reasonably, “we can evaluate this.”

“You’re certifiably fucking insane. And this is a joke. This is a cruel, cruel joke, and you’re going to stop joking before I’m ethically obligated to do something. That’s what you’re going to do.”

Karen’s head darts between the two of them like a ping pong match. 

“Foggy,” tries Matt. 

“You’re not a certified foster parent,” lists Foggy. “You don’t have another room in your apartment. The process would take months and--and I say this with all the love in my heart--absolutely fucking no one would ever certify you as a foster parent. You have no money and you look like you got the shit beat out of you. You look like instability personified.”

Hurtful yet true.  

Foggy keeps going. “Even then, Lisa’s a high-needs case, which would be even harder to get certified for. And you wouldn’t get to keep her until she aged out, so it’d be a moot point anyway.”

“They wouldn’t need to certify me if I adopted her.”

The silence is damning. 

“Matt,” says Foggy, with great severity, “please tell me you understand me when I say that’s a terrible idea.”

“What Foggy’s trying to say is that we’re a little confused,” cuts in Karen. “Lisa just got put in this placement. You tried very hard to get her in the placement. And it’s… a bit of a change to go from single, unattached man to dedicated father of one in the span of a few weeks.”

People keep saying that word. 

“No, what I’m saying is that’s it’s absolutely fucking insane to think any one of us should have a child. We are young and sexy bachelors with no fucking money committing active fucking crimes. We’ve had clients be murdered. Our lives are messes and I’m not unreasonable when I say a child needs more than that.”

“Karen, can you give us a second?” sighs Matt. “This is--we’ll fill you in after, this is just--”

This is a Matt and Foggy discussion. Born of years of history and a lot of betrayal and hurt feelings mixed in. 

It’s Foggy he’s fucking over with this, admittedly. 

When she’s gone, he says, “It’s… I’ve thought about this, Foggy, I swear. It’s what’s best for Lisa.”

“What’s best for Lisa is the loving family of certified therapists we just put her in.” 

“She’s not doing well there.”

“Which makes sense because she’s a traumatized kid who’s only been there for a few weeks.”

“They don’t even know what she’s struggling with.”

“Because of the fucking cult that will murder them if we tell them.”

“Foggy,” pleads Matt. “It’s more than Stick. She’s hurt. She does well with me. I can’t walk away.”

“Matt, buddy, we got you visitation.”

“They’re moving her outside of the city.”

Foggy falls into silence. “I’ll get an injunction.”

“They’ll take away visitation. You know they want to, Foggy.”

“Matt, there are steps we can take before you legally take on this very traumatized girl’s wellbeing.”

“None of them will be enough.”

“We only just started working together again, Matt,” pleads Foggy. “You, me, and Karen. Dream team. We’re a family. It’s all new. It’s a lot to add a kid to that.”

“Maybe adding Lisa will help with that. Bring us together. As a. Relationship. Thing.”

Wow, that was the wrong thing to say. 

Foggy rears back. 

“Matt,” says Foggy, severely. “We are not a white suburban couple with marital issues. We cannot fix our problems by adding a child.”

“That’s not--I didn’t mean…” Matt sighs. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Let’s back up. Bud, Lisa’s having a hard time right now. I get that. I care about her too. Which means she needs to be with professionals who can help her.”

“She’s not going to respond to that.”

“They have literal degrees in finding what she will respond to. Matt, you know I love you.”

He nods, reluctantly. “I do.”

“Then I need you to know that when I say that Lisa needs to be with someone who can help her, I mean it when I say… bud, it’s not you.” Quickly, he adds, “Not that that’s bad. Just that… You’ve had a hard life. You’ve been through a lot. None of us are financially stable and mentally, we’re all on the rocks. Not to mention the issue of your special hobby.” 

“We could take on more paying clients,” says Matt. “We’ve started to build up the reputation for it. We’d just… we could refer more of the non-paying clients to make time. I’d--I’ll cut back on Daredevil--”

“You want to keep up Daredevil with Lisa in the apartment?” hisses Foggy. “Matt, I thought we were trying to get her mentally stable! That’s why I helped you lie under fucking oath! You think she’s going to be stable if she’s sitting home waiting to see if you’re going to come back alive? Because I’m doing it and I’m telling you, she fucking won’t be!”

Wow, that must be what being shot in the head feels like. That hurts like a bitch. 

“Foggy, I’m doing this. I have to. I’m putting in a formal request to start adoption processes for Lisa.”

The atmosphere goes dead. 

Foggy’s voice is tight with anger. “Take it back.”

“I can’t.”

“Matt. You understand, ethically, what you’re doing right now.”

“I do.”

“I can’t withdraw from representing Lisa.”

Not without leaving her with an attorney who cannot understand the true realities of her case. Which Foggy would never do. 

“She’s old enough and mentally competent enough to decide in her own interests. I can’t withhold your offer from her.”

“I know.”

“I have to advocate for what she says she wants. And we all know that’s going to be you.”

“Foggy, I’m sorry.”

“Matt, withdraw the offer. Right now.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re forcing me to advocate in a court of law for you as her guardian,” says Foggy. “Knowing how I feel about it.”

“Foggy, I swear to God, I won’t hurt Lisa. I won’t. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Get out.” Foggy’s chair scrapes against the floor with unbridled force. “I can’t look at you right now.”

Matt scrambles to stand. “Foggy--”

“I have work to do, and I’m too damn angry to be near you. Go fill in Karen. Don’t talk to me for at least twenty-four hours.”

“You’ll talk to Lisa? Set up a meeting?”

Foggy’s jaw clicks. “You know I have to.”

“Foggy, I am sorry.”

“Yeah? Why do you keep doing this, then?” He sighs. “Just… get out.”

Matt can’t argue with that. 

… 

The thing is, he never once doubted with his father that he was loved. Wanted. Adored with all the love in the world. It has all the certainty of the sun being hot: Jack Murdock loved his boy, and he wanted him with all of him.

After Stick, he has the same certainty. Just the opposite. There isn’t a damn person on the planet that wants Matt, and Matt? Matt’s inclined to agree. He doesn’t want them to want him either. 

Stick wouldn’t have wanted them to. 

… 

“That’s… Jesus, Matt. Are you really sure? Really? ”

Matt folds his hands around his coffee cup. “Yes.”

Around them, the sounds of the diner are muted. Dim. Not a lot of people here between the lunch rush and dinner. There’s a rat chewing a wire in the back wall of the building. The line cook didn’t wash his hands. 

“Matt… raising a kid’s a lot. You know this.”

“I do.”

“Even if you get custody, Foggy’s not going to stand by if Lisa’s not getting what she needs,” she tells him, gently. “He’ll report you. I’ll… I’ll report you, Matt. It’s different when there’s a kid.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he tells her. “Really, Karen. I’m not so blind that I can’t see the position I’m putting you in. I’m glad I have you both to keep me in check.”

She snorts. “That’s a full time job.” Humming, she swirls her coffee cup in one hand. Matt hears the gentle swish of the liquid against the cup walls. “Matt, why are you doing this?”

“She needs someone.”

“She does,” agrees Karen. “Why you?”

“I know what she’s going through. I know what Stick told her, I know how to help her--”

“You can do that with visitation. Why do you want to adopt her?”

Thing about Karen is that she’s like a bloodhound. Never gets off the scent. Cuts straight to the heart of things. 

“She’s not going to want ties,” says Matt, eventually. “Family. Friends. Stick… he picks the kids who’ve lost everything. And when you lose everything, sometimes you just… don’t want anything ever again. You’d rather have nothing than lose what you have.”

“She seems to want you.”

“She thinks I’m like her. Like Stick. Safe. And… we get along. Look, it’s a foothold, not a guarantee. No one else will get one. Not unless she shakes Stick’s code.”

“And you don’t think she will.”

Matt’s fucking terrified she will, actually. 

“There are other problems with it if she does,” sighs Matt. “It’s… it’s a lot. You build up Stick’s lifestyle as a way to sort of… erase what happened to you. When you realize that it doesn’t work, it just… It’s bad, Karen. I won’t be able to help her through it if I’m not there.”

Karen swirls her coffee cup again. 

“Matt, what’s really going on?” she says, eventually. “I can’t understand what you want to do for Lisa if you don’t tell me what you’re scared of happening.”

Matt grips his cup tighter. 

It’s been better, for once. Karen, Foggy, and him. All together. If Matt didn’t ruin it by forcing Foggy’s hand.

He doesn’t want it, he realizes, all at once. He doesn’t want Stick’s life. He rejected it a long time ago. He realized it wasn’t real. 

Still, a piece of him clung to it. Wished it was real. Wished he didn’t need anyone, anything, because then…

Then it wouldn’t goddamn hurt so much. 

He wants this. Karen and Foggy. Lisa. He wants them even if it hurts. 

“Don’t tell Foggy,” he says.

…

Because:

One day, Matt cracks his head on the corner of the bed while reaching for his cane, and when he sits up again, he realizes that he is a goddamn certifiable idiot. 

It wasn’t real. Any of it. Any of Stick’s training, his mantra, his code. He goes to sleep and dreams of the feeling of his father’s dead face beneath his fingertips. It’s never going to go away. Matt can’t make it go away. 

Which means it was for nothing. 

Matt is fifteen, and he’s got scabby knees and a sour set to his face, and he can remember the last time someone hugged him. It was his dad. He hugged him on the way to the match that killed him, and he never made it home to scuff Matt up the head for not finishing his homework. 

He remembers the last time someone said they loved him too. It was his dad. There hasn’t been anyone since. And a big part of that has been because Matt hasn’t let there be anyone since. 

Maybe there could have been. Would have been. Maybe he missed his goddamn chance at a family, and love. He didn’t want any of that, because it meant he’d fail at the rest of Stick’s training. The bit where Stick promised it’d stop hurting. The bit where Stick promised it wouldn’t hurt again. 

For the first time since Stick left, he doesn’t want Stick. He wants his daddy. He wants Dad to hug him, to tell him he loves him, tell Matt he’s someone who can be loved. He wants it to stop hurting. 

It never stopped hurting. 

“Huh,” says Matt, after a beat, and he nods to himself, just a little. He chuckles. Only a bit. Like it’s funny. “Figures.”

And then he snaps his cane open, walks out the door, goes to the medicine cabinet, and swallows the entire bottle of Sister Lucille’s sleeping pills. 

It was easy.

Didn’t even feel like the most important thing he did that day. 

…

Karen’s hand is on Matt’s like she’s afraid he’ll disappear. 

“It was a long time ago, Karen.”

“I don’t care,” says Karen. “Jesus, Matt, you have no idea how glad I am to have you. I need you to know that.”

“I do.” Matt’s heart needs to get on board with the fucking situation. Stop ratting him out like this. “That isn’t the point, Karen.”

“You think we need Lisa on sucide watch?”

“I don’t know if she’s going to… react the same way I did. I just know it’s going to be hard on her.” With a sigh, he pulls off his glasses. “I… Lisa’s talked. Some. About her family. I know she lost them. I know she’s hurting. I wanted to be with my dad when I figured it out. I didn’t care how I got there.”

“You’re scared she’s going to want to be with her family.”

“She already wants to be. Not… in the same sense. But Stick’s effective because he tells you it can stop hurting. She wouldn’t be still trying if there wasn’t something she needed to forget.”

“And being with you will… help?” 

“It’s more than just wanting to ease her into it, Karen. She’s not… even when she figures it out, the sort of trauma Stick leaves you with… she’s not going to just find a happy family and sing kumbaya with them. It took me until law school to have anyone.” 

“Foggy,” says Karen, sobering. “You have to talk to him, Matt. He’s your family.”

Matt knows. He was the one who couldn’t work Stick’s training, after all.

“Don’t tell him,” he says again.

Chapter Text

As much as Matt’s hated everywhere else he’s been since Dad died, he hates the hospital the most. 

It smells like death and sickness and it makes him hurl, and the nurses always think Matt’s making himself do it to hurt himself, but it’s not. It’s the smell of decay that never fucking leaves his nostrils that makes him sick. 

They don’t believe him when he tells him he’s not doing it on purpose. Matt supposes that’s fair. There’s a lot of reasons not to believe him when he says he doesn’t want to hurt himself. 

He is, after all, on a twenty-four hour watch for a reason. 

All that stays with him is how much he doesn’t want to be here anymore. 

… 

“Matthew,” says his social worker, pleasantly, seven and a half minutes after he files the notice that he’s requesting to adopt Lisa. “How are you?”

Oh, Lisa’s social worker called and bitched her out. Lovely. Matt loves these little plays they put on for each other. 

Matt shifts the phone to the other ear. “I’m doing very well, Miss Harkness. How are you today?”

She’s having a terrible day and Matt caused it. 

“I’m doing wonderful, thank you for asking.”

See? She wants to throttle him. 

“Matthew, I was wondering if you might want to come into my office and have a chat someday soon.”

She wants him to undergo another goddamn psych eval. They all know he’s self-destructive, Alicia. She’ll just never be able to prove it. Matt’s been undergoing those evals for more than a decade. He can game the fucking system. 

“You know I love our chats,” says Matt, agreeably. He’d rather light himself on fire. “We could get something on the books, but I’m afraid I’m due in court for the next few weeks.”

“I don’t mind coming in after hours for you.”

Oh, so they want to have him committed. 

“I’m touched,” says Matt, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “But I’m afraid the hours I keep are late ones. Is there a particular reason you’d like to meet?”

Get to the point, Alicia. 

“There have been some concerns raised,” she says, eventually. “We know things have been hard for you lately. I just want to make sure you’re settling okay.”

“What concerns?” Matt’s voice shifts, slightly, takes the tone he reserves for cross examination. “Who raised them?”

“Oh, this and that.”

He smiles, blandly. “You want to drag in a grown adult for an evaluation without being able to point to a single reason?”

Silence. 

“Miss Harkness, I have been nothing but cooperative with your office. I’ve taken your evaluations and I’ve complied with your workers. And in that time, you haven’t been able to produce a single actionable diagnosis or concern that would warrant this level of monitoring.” His voice goes flat. “Do you treat all your cases like this, or am I just special? I’m starting to think I need to file a lawsuit.”

“Mr. Murdock, your blindness has nothing to do with any of the determinations we’ve made.”

It has. Matt overheard the conversation between Alicia and her supervisor. 

“The fact that you immediately jumped to my disability says otherwise.”

More silence. 

“Miss Harkness, I am thrilled to cooperate with you in any way necessary, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain to me why this is necessary. I am still a legally independent adult. I can make my own determinations about what is necessary for my own health and wellbeing.”

Take the bait, Alicia. Tell him that Lisa’s social worker disclosed information about a confidential file without going through the proper channels. Admit it. 

“I’m getting another call,” says Alicia, eventually. “I’ll have to call you back.”

“You do that,” says Matt, as smarmy as he can manage. 

… 

Forty-eight hours pass, and Foggy pauses outside of Matt’s office. He doesn’t raise his voice, but it is distinctly clipped. Matt hears the huff of his breath through the door. 

“She wants you.”

Right. 

Jesus. 

He’s doing this.

…

There’s--fuck, there’s a lot to manage if Matt’s going to have a snowball’s chance in Hell of keeping Lisa. Daredevil’s paused, effectively immediately. He needs to not show up in a court of law with a busted up face. 

He needs a new apartment. Can’t be helped. He’ll lose out on a good deal, but he needs a place for Lisa more. He’ll have to hunt for a place with two bedrooms. 

He needs clients. He needs to show he’s stable. 

As of the moment, he and Foggy have nine clients paying in installments, two clients set to pay in full, and twenty that are paying in various forms of fruit or pies. 

It’s not enough. 

The thing about them is that it’s not that they’re without potential clients. It’s more that their case preference always leans towards the clients who can’t pay. They set up shop to help people, and the people who have cash generally don’t need help. 

They’re only two people. If they take on the clients with cash, then that’s one less person who needs it they can manage. 

Lisa needs it. 

He needs to show stability. 

Come lunch time, he gathers up his cane and heads for the door. 

Law school was half learning the law, half schmoozing. Matt was born to schmooze. He was fantastic at schmoozing. He hated it with every bone in his being. 

Matt has a particular list of folks that he thinks might want to take on Nelson & Murdock. 

One in particular he thinks may place them on retainer on the spot. He spent a semester as a TA for a professor who handled white collar defense work. Still got called up to consult, even after retiring to teaching. In the course of it, he met a good number of people. 

Margaret Stodden got her empire from her parents. Heiress through and through, and a goddamn shark of a woman. She was obsessed with getting Matt to join her organization as in-house counsel. Made him an offer with a lot of zeros on the end. Matt hadn’t wanted the work. He turned her down. She had gripped his hand with sharp nails and told him to call at any time he thought he might be looking to sign up. 

She also tended to spend their meetings blatantly staring at his arms or his chest or his crotch or his ass because she thought that he couldn’t notice. 

He’s got her phone number in his phone still, but he doesn’t call her. Instead, he heads to the overpriced coffee shop he knows she goes to everyday at one, buys a coffee, and settles ontintoo a table right by the door. He sets papers in front of him and acts like he’s working, and he focuses on the tell-tale smell of Stodden’s perfume. 

She rounds the street corner at 1:07 and clocks him at 1:13.

“Matthew Murdock?” Sharp, lavender perfume. Makes him want to gag. “My, it’s been so long!”

He blinks, feigning surprise. “Miss Stodden?” He stands, brushing himself down as he pushes his chair back. “It has been.”

She laughs. “I told you to call me Marge.”

Her heart rate increases. Based on the angle of her breath, he’s looking at his crotch. Jesus. 

“Would you like to join me?”

She would. 

Conversation is simple enough. How have you been? Good, good. It’s been so long, hasn’t it? Handsome guy like you, have you found a girlfriend yet? Hahaha, no answer. How has business been? Hahaha, you know. Matt doesn’t. Where did you end up? Surely not at Landman & Zach? He must be on the job hunt if he did. Is he? You know, they’re hiring…

No, no, he started his own firm. Yes, really. Small, local. A boutique. 

Yes, they would be willing to put her on retainer. Here’s his business card. 

Karen gets the phone call before he even makes it back to the office. She informs him that there’s a woman asking for him, specifically, on retainer as outside counsel. She’s promised a fee that’s more than what they pull in a month. 

“She blatantly wants to fuck you, Matt,” says Karen, flat as a board. 

“It would be grossly unethical for me to have any intimate relationship with a client,” Matt tells her, smoothly. And he’ll use that fact like a massive shield. And then, “Her check will clear.”

…

Father Lanthom sits heavily at his bedside when Matt’s still strapped to the fucking mattress, and Matt bares his teeth and sneers when he smells the incense. He tells him to get fucked. There’s no God he wants to hear about and no holy man he wants to help him. 

“Sister Margaret found you,” says Father Lanthom, with a slight hum. “She was very distressed.”

Matt slams his head back into the mattress, because he stopped trying to convince them to let him up during hour nine of his confinement and just started being angry. “Yeah? Tell her to mind her own goddamn business next time.” 

“Language,” says Father Lanthom, without any heat. “I’m sorry, Matthew.”

That throws him for a loop. “What?”

“If you reached such a point, it’s because we failed you. I am truly sorry.”

That’s--

Jesus, that’s--

Matt starts to tremble. He hears the heart rate monitor increase. “Get out.”

“Matthew--”

He slams his head harder into the mattress. “Get out.”

“Matthew, you’re going to hurt yourself--”

That’s the fucking point. That’s the entire goddamn point. Everyone, everyone in Matt’s shitstain of a life has hurt him since his dad died. All the nuns, the priest and his fucking exorcism, every foster family that turned down the blind kid and Stick, Stick, Stick. The men in that stupid fucking basement, the ones that laughed at Matt while they hurt him, laugh at the poor, defenseless blind kid that they can do whatever they goddamn please to and he can’t raise a hand in defense. 

The foster parents and the judges and the disappointed sigh whenever Matt strolled back in the orphanage doors. Every placement that hit the blind kid and Matt let them, because he couldn’t let them know he could hit back. Every fucking placement that locked him in a room rather than dealt with him for a second longer. 

Every foster parent who took the door off his bedroom and watched him get changed because he was a fucking blind kid and how would he know, why would he care, and Matt had to act like nothing was wrong and nothing was happening and he had to let them fucking do it to him. 

He let them do it. He let them. 

He let the men in the basement do it and he let Stick do it and he let everyone do it, and that’s the real pain of it. Matt could do something about it. Matt could stop it. Matt could be better and stronger than all of them, but he can’t, because he has to let everyone think he’s just as weak as they assume him to be. They’d never let a kid with superpowers be. They’d never let him live in peace if they knew about his senses. He’d disappear. They’d take him from Hell’s Kitchen, put him in a lab, and Matt isn’t trading out this hell for a worse one. He has to let them think he’s weak.

He could stop them. He’s stronger than all of them.

And he just. Let them hurt him. 

He’s weak. He’s weak in their eyes and he’s weak functionally, because in the end, he can’t stop them. He’s weak, so they hurt him. If there’s anything that Matt’s learned, it is that no one has ever had the option to hurt someone and failed to use it. 

Why shouldn’t he get his own turn at it? At least it’s happening on his terms for once. 

Father Lanthom doesn’t get to take it from him. This, this, this thing Matt did, this thing that’s his. Everyone else got to tear chunks from Matt, and he had to let them do it. If he takes a pound of flesh of his own, he expects to keep it. 

He just wants his daddy. He doesn’t care how he gets there. There’s no one left alive that doesn’t want to hurt Matt, now that Matt’s caved and joined the masses. He wants to be with the one person who gave a fuck about him. 

They don’t get to take that from him. It’s the first thing in a long time that’s been his. 

…

It becomes worth it when he goes to pick Lisa up that afternoon. 

 She rams into him hard enough to leave him winded, wrapping her arms around his center and squeezing tight. “Matty.” 

“Your foster folks watching?” asks Matt, as dry as he can. 

“Glaring through the window,” Lisa chirrups. “My foster mom thinks that you’re unstable and a bad influence and a compulsive liar and that you have ‘manic depression’ or something. I heard her talking about it with my foster dad.”

“Lovely.” He pastes on a smile and waves cheerily in the direction of the house. “Putting on a show for them, eh?”

“She also says that if she had one wish in this world, it’s that you were on heavy medication.”

Matt was nothing but charming when he met with them. That’s completely unfair. 

“Let’s go, kid,” he says, turning from the house. “Not a lot of time.”

She skips to catch up with him. “You’re teaching me how to box, right?”

“Not enough time for that,” says Matt. “I’m going to show you around the gym. We’ll do boxing when I have you for a whole day.”

Lisa’s heart rate climbs higher. “You’ll have me everyday soon, right?” And, “You’re adopting me.”

Fuck. He is. “If it gets approved, yes.”

“And you’ll make it happen.”

Blind confidence. Jesus. What did he do to deserve that?

“I’ll do my best, Lisa.”

She doesn’t make it another minute before she asks again. “Does this mean you’re going to train me?”

He doesn’t so much as pause. “Under no circumstances.”

It isn’t the answer she wants. She huffs at him. “Why would you adopt me if you’re not going to train me? What’s the point?”

Don’t ask Matt that. He’s allergic to evaluating his own emotions. 

“I thought you might be happier with me,” he says, eventually. “Was I wrong about that?”

“I could do more than be happy,” says Lisa, as if it were obvious. “I could help. With your crusade.”

Matt stops and faces her. 

“I’m not Batman,” he says, incredulous. “This isn’t a comic book. I didn’t decide to adopt you so you could be my sidekick.”

“I’m surprised you know what Batman and Robin are.” She looks at him in open skepticism. “You’re kind of old.”

Batman has been around since the fucking 30s. How old does she think Batman and Robin are? How old does she think Matt is? 

“Ancient. Decrepit. Think of a mummy.”

“Brat,” says Matt, resuming his march. “I’m full of youth and will live forever.”

“You only think that because you can’t see that you’ve already gone gray.”

Matt gropes for her. “I can hear you lying, you awful child.”

She darts out of reach with a laugh. “I’ll convince you to train me,” she says, with great certainty. “You’ll see.”

“I have no right to stop a Murdock from climbing in a boxing ring,” says Matt, “but that’s the best you’re getting out of me. Anyone looking to ruin their own life can figure it out on their own.”

Lisa is silent for a long moment. “A Murdock, huh?”

She’s got her fingers in his belt loops again. They tug at Matt as they walk in step. She doesn't seem to notice. 

“You lost your chance to be Clown instead. You went and put it on an official document. Now you’re stuck. Welcome to the Murdock clan. We have experienced a disproportionate number of exorcisms.”

“Stuck,” echoes Lisa. Her voice sounds odd. Not entirely happy. “Guess so.”

Yeah. Matt guesses so too. 

Fuck. 

…

Sister Margaret visits one time, which is one more time than Matt’s ever been around her. She tends to not be where he is in the orphanage. 

She is, apparently, beside herself with worry over his condition, which is a fucking lie if Matt’s ever heard one. He wakes up and she’s sitting at his side like a monument, rosary beads twisting between her fingers rhythmically. Her heartbeat is steady and so is her hands.

Matt doesn’t say anything. No one likes it when he can tell when he’s not alone. They like it when they get to keep the advantage his blindness offers them. 

When she speaks, she says, “It’s a sin to hurt any of God’s creatures. Including yourself.”

Matt nearly busts a gut laughing. It scares the nurses. He has to be sedated. It’s so goddamn funny.

The only time anyone gave a shit about if Matt was getting hurt was when he did it to himself. 

… 

Lisa’s heart kicks up when they enter the gym. 

Fogwell’s is as comfortable as a bedtime story. Always has been. It smells more like home than Matt’s own apartment.  He navigates the bags with ease, ignoring the newbies whose heads swivel to stare at the blind guy and the little girl. 

Lisa could probably hand half these folks their asses. Give the other half a run for their money. Not a single one of them could hold a candle to Matt. Not that they know that. 

Fogwell’s is an old time gym. Tough as nails. Old school boxing, and Fogs will put you through the paces if you’re there. It ain’t a place for casual exercise. Most folk probably think that it ain’t a place to bring your kids. 

There hasn’t been another since Matt used to do his homework in the corner. No one brought their kids after Battlin’ Jack. Didn’t feel right to anyone. 

“I grew up here,” says Matt, into the squeaking, sweaty air. “See the fold up table? Left corner.”

“Yeah.”

“I used to do my homework there. My dad would come by between matches to make sure I wasn’t goofing off.”

“Were you?”

Matt shrugs. “Sometimes, yeah. More after I went blind. I had a harder time focusing, and Dad couldn’t tell as well when everything was in Braille.”

“Huh. You still come here?”

“Fogs lets me train after dark.”

She nods, as if that made sense. 

Stick would have hated to know that Matt still came here. 

“Brace yourself,” he mutters to her, then leads herself towards the back. “It’s best to pay the ferryman now than let him find out on his own.”

“Huh?”

He knocks on the office door.

“Whaddya want?” hollers Fogs.

Matt shoves open the door. “I’m coming here in daylight now, old man.”

Fogs just grunts at him. “You finally out of your emo phase? Can exist in the daylight like sane folk?”

Matt stops dead in bewilderment. “How do you even know what that is?”

“Don’t sass me, brat.” His gaze shifts to Lisa. Matt can hear the huff of his breath. “Who’s this?”

“This is Lisa,” says Matt, with a slight wave towards her. “I’m teaching her to box.”

“Why?”

And Matt, Matt’s about to roll his eyes and tell him he’s participating in an at-risk youth program, the fuck do you think, Fogs? But before he can say anything, Lisa interrupts with, “Matty’s adopting me.”

Fogs freezes like a statue. 

Lisa, no. No, this is news you don’t tell people until the adoption goes through. Or ever. 

“I’m a great-granddaddy,” says Fogs, choked with emotion. 

No. 

He lumbers up from his desk like an ancient horror awakening from an eternal slumber. 

“Wait,” says Matt.

“Never thought I’d see the day that Matty brought his own baby through my doors.”

“Wait,”  says Matt. 

He crosses the room in two enormous strides. Matt bares his teeth and tries to will Fogs to remember the days that Matt was more feral raccoon than boy. 

Fogs crushes him into one side and Lisa into the other. “You can call me Grandpappy Fogs, Lisa.”

“She will not,” chokes out Matt. 

Fogs whacks him upside the head. “Don’t sass me boy. It ain’t often that you find out your family line is continuin’ in the twilight of your life.”

What the fuck is he talking about?

“None of us are related by blood. None of us.”

He waves him off. “I’m talking about boxing, boy. That’s what matters.”

Ah, yes. Matt’s mistake. 

Lisa perks with interest. “I’m an excellent fighter.”

“‘Course you are,” praises Fogs. “You’re gonna be a Murdock. All Murdocks are good fighters.”

“Matty doesn’t want to teach me.”

“That is a blatant lie,” grouses Matt, but it’s too late. Fogs is already smacking him upside the head for it. 

“All Murdocks learn in my gym. We’ll get you set up, baby girl, don’t you worry. Follow me.”

Matt follows because he doesn’t trust the two of them together. He leads them both into the storage room.

The dust that rains down when Fogs retrieves his box of choice off the topmost shelf is enough to send Matt into a coughing fit. 

“Matty was tinier than you when he started,” Fogs tells Lisa, with great pride. “Squishy thing. All red faced all the time. Barely could tap a bag.”

“Don’t tell her that.”

“Shaddup, I’m talking to my new great-grandbaby.” 

Lisa immediately senses that being in Fogs’ favor means previously unheard-of leverage over Matt. She radiates glee and malice. 

“When he was big enough for gloves, we got him these. Reckon they’re about your size.”

Matt frowns. “You kept those?”

“And why wouldn’t I?” demands Fogs. “Do you think I have many grandbabies comin’ through these doors?”

Literally every single child of every single boxer Fogwell has ever taken a serious interest in. 

Matt raises his hands in surrender. 

“Matty’s daddy taught him in these walls,” Fogs tells her. “He can teach you the same.”

Lisa’s breath hitches. She leans back. “Matty’s not gonna be my dad. I already have a dad.”

“I’m not,” starts Matt. 

Her heart rate is spiking. She’s close to a panic attack. 

“I don’t need another dad.” 

“I’m not trying to be.”

“‘Course you don’t,” says Fogs, with a gruff certainty. “But family don’t gotta have names.”

She doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m Matty’s grandaddy,” says Fogs. “‘Cause he didn’t have another, and ‘cause his daddy said so, and ‘cause I changed his diapers enough to have that right.” 

They need to stop bringing up the diapers thing. 

Fogs shrugs. “There’s half a dozen people in these walls who can lay claim to the Murdocks. They don’t all have special names to them. It’s a different sort of bond you find here. Sort you only get in the ring together.”

Oh God.

He’s going to talk about the ancient and sacred bond between boxers. Matt’s going to be arrested for kidnapping because Fogs didn’t shut up in time for him to get Lisa back to her placement. Foggy insists Matt is too pretty for prison. Matt guesses he’ll find out. 

“You disrespectful brat,” snarls Fogs, wielding the empty box dangerously. 

Matt immediately stumbles backwards. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were huffin’ at me.”

“I said nothing.”

“I can tell it when you’re thinkin’ it, you ungrateful child.” Whack. Whack. Whack. “I never shoulda let you past my front step.”

Matt tries valiantly to block the box. It leaves his ribs open for Fogs to jab at. 

Lisa laughs hard enough to choke on the dust. 

… 

Matt makes his final act of fucking off into the night when he’s seventeen years old, and he swears to God above that no one will ever trap him again. 

It became a countdown. A promise to himself. No one would support his emancipation attempts. He got struck down by his judge every time.

No one supported his requests to say at St. Agnes either. He got shuffled to every other place but that. They decided it wasn’t a suitable facility for him, after one suicide attempt in its walls. 

They didn’t support his request to switch medications, either, because the anti-depressants they had him on fucked with his senses and made his head pound with the sound of traffic and sirens and the back alley rape that Matt had to fucking listen to and couldn’t stop. He couldn’t even tell where it was so he could report it. 

Everything is distorted under the meds. He has trouble gauging the distance of things. He thinks sounds right next to him are miles away, and thinks things miles away are by his elbow. 

He couldn’t point to any of that to the doctors, though, so they refused to switch medications. 

He ends up in another psych hold, because after four nights kept up by sounds he couldn’t filter, he ended up banging his skull in the wall to try to get the voices to stop. When asked why he did it, he told them to get fucked. He knows how telling them he hears voices will go over. He gets another stay under twenty four hour watch where he isn’t allowed shoelaces or anything pointy, and more meds that they watch him swallow. 

They boot him straight from there to a foster home where no one so much as looks at him wrong, but when the foster parents think all the kids are asleep, they sometimes talk about it. Fantasies. Intimate, gross, couple shit that everyone says when they think no one can hear. Private shit Matt doesn’t want to fucking hear, ever, and always does anyway. 

Matt’s in them. It. The fantasies. He’s present. He participates. That. 

He’s the oldest kid in the placement, seventeen, old enough to consent in New York, and Matt knows this because his foster parents say it to each other like a reminder. Old enough that they don’t feel bad talking about it, him, about what they’d do to him if they had the chance and no consequences to stop them. What they want him to do to them back. He’s young enough and fucked up enough that they never actually act on what they talk about, but Jesus, do they talk about it. 

No actual harm. Nothing physical he can point to. Nothing he can show his case worker, not that she’d believe him. Nothing that was even done to him, because how the fuck can he explain what he’s heard? 

He can’t do anything. He just has to listen to it. 

Matt spends a lot of time throwing up while he’s there. When he can’t explain why, they add it to his file that he’s developed another problem. His caseworker heaves a sigh when she sees him next. 

Eighteen. Bullshit-age-of-majority eighteen. He can make it. He’s almost there. Matt’s lived through worse. Get across the finish line, and no one can ever make him feel helpless again.  

He hears it when he’s on the way out the door of the CPS office after another meeting with his case worker. 

They want to call their lawyers. Call an emergency hearing before Matt ages out of the system. They don’t think he can make it on his own. 

For a conservatorship. A guardianship. Declare him legally incompetent to be in control of his own affairs. And he’d be under it for God knows how long. Guardianships are pains in the asses to get out from under. He wouldn’t be able to do anything without permission. He couldn’t live his own life without someone else’s say. It’d be a prison sentence without a release date. 

He makes it back to his placement long enough to get what he had left of his dad, put it in a sack, and climb out the back window. 

He isn’t going back. 

…

Matt knots the gloves for Lisa. Dad did the same for him a long time ago. He ties his own with his teeth. 

“Only a few basics,” he warns her. “I only have you for the afternoon.”

“I’m not a beginner,” huffs Lisa. 

“You are at this.”

He holds out his gloves. She does nothing. 

“Tap ‘em.” He gives his gloves a shake. “Let’s go, kid.”

She doesn’t move. “Why?”

Matt shrugs. “You’re a boxer now. It’s what boxers do.”

“I’m not just a boxer.”

“You’re a Murdock. You’re a boxer. Tap the damn gloves.”

Confusedly, she bops Matt’s gloves with her own. 

“Good. Now get to your bag.”

When he hears her give an exploratory jab at her bag, he says, “You’re smaller than most boxers.”

Lisa hisses at him through her teeth. 

“Brat,” says Matt, “that isn’t a bad thing. I’m smaller than most boxers. I’m sure as shit not a heavy-weight. Boxing ain’t a sport about who’s biggest or strongest.”

“What’s it about then?”

“Speed.” Matt smiles, then taps the back of her heel with his foot. “Footwork. Reaction times. How hard they hit doesn’t matter if they can’t hit you.”

“I can do that,” says Lisa, half to herself. “I can.”

“Course you can,” says Matt, and he rolls his eyes. And, “You’re a Murdock.”

Jesus, he guesses she is. 

…

On the walk back, Lisa has her fingers back in his belt loop as they walk, and she asks him, “What else do I have to know about being a Murdock?”

Matt doesn’t consider before he answers. “We always get back up. We don’t ever tap out. If we lose, it’s on our feet.”

Lisa’s pause is longer this time. 

“I can do that,” she says, to herself.

… 

Matt doesn’t even make it home from dropping Lisa off at her placement before he’s stopped for service of process. 

“Mr. Murdock?”

“Yes?”

A short, awkward pause. “I’m holding out papers to you.”

Matt makes no move to accept them. “Okay.”

The papers are shoved awkwardly to his chest. Matt makes no move to accept them. Some problems he can make for fun. 

“Bro,” says the service of process provider. 

Matt takes mercy on him. “These better be in braille.” 

“They are. You’ve been served.”

Matt waves him off, fumbling with the papers so he can read the notice with one hand. 

A hearing’s been called. 

To evaluate him for the necessity of a legal guardianship. 

Matt laughs right there in the street.

Chapter Text

“So, that’s bad,” says Karen.

“It’s scare tactics,” corrects Matt. “They won’t be able to pull it off.”

She sounds doubtful. “Are you sure?”

“I graduated summa cum laude from Columbia Law. I’m a barred attorney. I live alone and have done so successfully for years. They haven’t been able to catch me on a single actual evaluation for mental incompetency. Only thing they have on me is Stick, and they can only prove that from when I reported him and sought police help, which makes their case weak. They have no actual grounds to prove the necessity of it. Yes, I’m sure.”

Sort of. 

“Then why are they doing this?”

“So I’ll back off on Lisa.” Matt shrugs. “It’s embarrassing. Personally. Professionally. I’m going to have to go up in front of a judge I may see in court and explain why I’m a legally competent adult who doesn’t need a guardian calling the shots. They’re going to dredge up my entire old file, probably. But if I retract my application to withdraw Lisa and their lawyers drop the case. Doesn’t help that this looks bad for the adoption application.”

“That’s criminal.”

“It is,” agrees Matt. “But I can’t prove it’s what they’re doing. So we’re going to put on a play for a bit.” 

“Have you talked to Foggy?”

“He knows about the court hearing,” says Matt, and then doesn’t say anything else.

“Both of you are very stupid,” decides Karen, sipping her coffee. “I thought we were a dream team. I was all pumped to be in on the ground floor of bad decisions. It was more productive when I was fucking off on my own to investigate the company that tried to murder me at their own shady underground auctions.”

“You did what,” says Matt. 

Karen hums smartly. “What are we going to do about your conservatorship?”

Karen, no. 

“Show up at the hearing and rip them to pieces.” He snorts. “Real trouble is going to be the adoption. They… don’t like me.”

“Why? I mean, we know all the ways you’re unstable but they don’t know all the ways you’re unstable.”

“Thanks, Karen.” He feels so loved. Truly. Wow. “Did you miss the blindness?”

Karen chews on that fact for a second. “It’s stupid to say that they can’t legally disqualify you for that as if that matters, isn’t it?”

“It is,” agrees Matt. “They don’t want a high-needs kid going with a blind man. They didn’t want a high-needs kid to get visitation from a blind man. They really don’t want her to be with me permanently.” He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. “So they need another ground. My old file doesn’t do me any favors.”

She chews on her lip. “You think they’re going to drag up old business?”

He snorts. “They already have. I ran away when I was seventeen because I found out they were going to put me under a conservatorship. They can’t prove that, because I ran before they ever told me. But they can try to make me sweat because of it.”

Karen’s voice hedges on interest. “You ran away as a kid?”

Matt gets it. He doesn’t talk about this stuff. Foggy didn’t even know. And he was really fucking hurt when he found out so far down the line. 

“I ran away nine or ten times. Always popped up at St. Agnes or my dad’s grave in the end. Always ended up back in the system. I only stayed away the last time.”

“Because of the conservatorship?”

The conservatorship and all the other fucking reasons. 

Matt snorts, fiddling with the edge of his cup. “Yeah. That.”

Karen doesn’t say anything.

It’s this, is the thing. This is what killed his relationship with Foggy. Matt keeps his cards held close to his chest and doesn’t let a single living soul know what they say. 

There’s all the moments. Opportunities. Points in a day where he can choose to let people in, and he never does. It’s always been safer that way. Better. 

Until Foggy got years into a friendship and started a partnership and a life together, and found out that he had spent the entire time trusting Matt, and Matt had never trusted him the same. 

“They wanted to keep me on meds,” admits Matt, a bit more sedately. “They messed with my senses. But I couldn’t tell them that, and they wouldn’t let me change them without physical evidence of bad symptoms because they thought I was a troublemaker. They would have kept me on them if I stayed. I wasn’t willing to risk not being able to fight the conservatorship and getting stuck on them, so I decided to run.”

Karen’s heart rate spikes, but she just takes a calm sip of coffee. “That’s shitty.”

“Yeah.” Matt laughs. It isn’t funny. “It was.”

He feels a bit like he just dove off a building’s edge when he adds, “CPS was floating the idea of making my current placement my guardians. My foster parents wanted to have sex with me. I’d hear them talking about it at night. But they never tried anything, so I couldn’t do anything. I decided I’d rather be homeless than spend one more night listening to them keep talking about it.”

She drops her coffee straight in her lap. “Jesus.”

“Fuck,” says Matt, scrambling for something to mop it up with. “Karen, I’m sorry--”

“Don’t apologize. Don’t fucking apologize. Not for that.” Her heart rate slows, barely. “I know I'm late to the party, but I want this. Us. All of us, as a family. That means that you can always tell me this stuff.”

“Right.” Fuck, his heart is racing. “Karen, that was hot coffee.”

She waves him off. “I’m fine. It’s fine. On an unrelated note, I grew up in Bumfuck, Nowhere, and folks would fuck around with each out of sheer boredom. I am disproportionately good at egging houses and keying cars and lighting sacks of shit on fire to leave on doorsteps.”

Matt can’t help the laugh that rattles through his chest. “It was a long time ago, Karen.”

“You think I give a shit?” She still sounds uneasy. “Jesus, Matt.”

They don’t have kids anymore, at least. Matt checked. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, because he doesn’t know what to do with this. “I’m not good at this.”

Her heart sounds like a jackhammer. “It’s not something you have to be good at. We… I didn’t. Have. People. Before you and Foggy. We can figure it out together.” Tentatively, she takes his wrist in her hand. “Sharing this stuff… we can figure it out, okay? To be better friends. And a better family for Lisa.”

It sounds impossible. 

“In that case… you want to tell me what the fuck that was about the auction?”

Karen’s laughter sounds like firecrackers. 

… 

And the thing about that, about Karen, about telling her things, is that he doesn’t tell Foggy after. 

And that’s. 

Shit. 

Because if anyone should know, it’s Foggy. If Matt wants anyone to know, it’s Foggy. All the messy, ugly, horrible bits rattling around inside of him… if there’s anyone he trusts with them, it’s Foggy. 

If there’s anyone he should have told ages ago, it’s Foggy. 

He doesn’t know how to repair it, is the thing. All the broken pieces of them. It isn’t as easy as with Karen. 

He lied to Karen. A lot. A tremendous amount. But he didn’t know her as long. He doesn’t have the same history with her as he does with Foggy. 

She didn’t tell him the things Foggy did. 

There were times. In law school. Internship. After. Foggy and Matt would go out, would be together, would talk and talk until Matt’s lips were numb from smiling. 

Foggy would tell him things. Private things. Embarrassing things. Things that hurt him. Things he didn’t tell anyone else. And Matt knows that, because Foggy would look at him after, and he would smile, and Matt would hear the shift in breathing that means all those things, and he would say, “I’ve never told anyone that before. Feels weird. But, but good.” And, “I’m glad I met you, buddy.” 

And Matt’s own smile would falter, and he would say, “Me too.”

Because Matt has those things. The private-embarrassing-hurtful things. The things he never told anyone. And he’d want to tell Foggy them, to pry them from his chest and hold them aloft for Foggy to see, and ask him if he still loves Matt anyway. If he’s still glad he met him, in all his awful, bloody truth. 

Except, no one’s ever been glad to meet Matt before. 

Except, no one’s ever wanted to keep him once they even got a glimpse of the ugly bits. 

Not even Stick stayed. 

Matt’s good at ruining things. He isn’t so good at putting them back together again. 

…

The night Matt runs, he goes back to the basement Stick trained him in. He picks the lock with a paperclip and a bit of twisted tweezers, and it takes him three tries from how badly his fingers are shaking. 

When the lock clicks, he freezes with his hand on the knob. 

He doesn’t hear Dad inside. 

And he never did, not from outside. He only ever found him when he stepped inside the cool, damp air of the basement, when he pushed in the center of the room and suddenly heard a dead heartbeat through criss-crossed arms. 

Dad could be inside. 

Dad could have left. 

A certainty seizes him, then. If Dad isn’t in the basement when Matt enters, then Matt won’t be in the basement come morning. He’ll have joined his dad in Heaven or Purgatory or in the fucking ground, he doesn’t care anymore, because if Dad didn’t wait for him, then he’s going to catch up to him. 

Ain’t no point in being a Murdock if there isn’t any other Murdocks around to care. Matt’s so fucking tired of getting up again. 

He sits down hard on the step. 

He can’t decide. Open the door or not, live or not, stay around for fuck knows what or not. Stick isn’t coming back, and even if he did, he’d just carve out more pieces of Matt without taking away the pain, the memories, the feeling of the giant fucking hole blasted through his daddy’s skull. Matt remembers the feeling of the skull beneath his fingertips. It had fractured and flaked despite the blood and brain and spinal fluid clotting around it. 

He wants to live and he wants to die and he wants to forget and he wants, he really wants his daddy. He’d give anything to see his daddy. 

And he could. See him. Go into the basement and find him, one way or another. Same conclusion in the end. 

Dad would be disappointed in him. He was always disappointed in Matt for what he did in the basement. 

In that moment, Matt wishes he could take it back. All the ways he killed himself for Stick. The Matty he used to be was the Matty his dad loved, and in that moment, there doesn’t seem to be much point in being any other version of him. But that Matty is dead and Matt killed him, and all Matt's left is with the pieces he wanted to kill and couldn’t. 

Maybe that Matty’s with his daddy. He hopes so. He thinks this version of him would go straight to Hell. He hopes his dad gets a version to keep.

…

This is the bad news: 

The CPS attorney assigned to Lisa’s case calls an emergency hearing and requests that Matt’s visitation be suspended immediately, on the grounds that he is unstable enough to be considered for a conservatorship. 

And the CPS attorney states that Mr. Murdock isn’t a blood relative, visitation was improper from the start, and Foggy says that Lisa specifically requested that he have visitation, and the CPS attorney says that Mr. Murdock has been an unstable influence in Lisa’s life from the beginning, and Foggy says what amounts to wow, counselor, he’d sure love it if he showed any actual proof of that, and that it was the highest level of review before any termination of rights to the child was allowed, and that the CPS was nowhere close to meeting that standard here, and the judge says, “Let’s evaluate this, now.” And, “Miss Murdock is a case with extremely special needs. I allowed visitation because she seemed particularly attached to Mr. Murdock, but this has to be done with the aim of bolstering her long-term mental wellbeing.” And, “I’d like to take a period to review his influence in her life. I am not convinced that he has had a good short term effect, let alone a long-term one.”

Visitation suspended pending the next hearing. 

And he bangs his gavel. 

Fuck. 

…

This is the news that’s just a kick in the gut:

Lisa tears up to him after the hearing, before her social worker can force her away, and she snags him by the elbow, and she squeezes, hard. 

“I know you’re going to come out on top,” she whispers. “You’re you.”

Matt has trouble swallowing. “I’ll do my best, Lisa.”

“Lisa, your foster parents are waiting,” snaps her social worker, and she grabs her by the shoulder, roughly. “Say goodbye to Mr. Murdock, now.”

Lisa shakes her off. “Bye, Matty. I can’t wait until you adopt me.”

Then, she turns on her heel and marches straight out of the courtroom, leaving him standing there holding his cane and his anger and jack fucking shit, because he’s somehow got to convince a room full of people who hate him that he’s stable enough to have a child, when he absolutely isn’t stable enough to have a child. 

Fuck. 

…

He doesn’t go in the basement.

…

“I need your file,” Foggy says, tightly, because he hasn’t been happy to speak to Matt since Matt fucked him over. “Your social work file. From when you were a kid. They’re going to ask about it, Matt, and I need to be able to be ready for it. I have to do a good job for Lisa.” And, “Don’t screw me on that too.” 

Matt winces. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

He doesn’t have to sound so surprised. 

“Okay.” Matt shifts his cane in his hand. “I’ll get it on your desk. You have my word.”

“Fine.”

… 

The one time Matt asks Stick to let him visit his dad’s grave, Stick barks a laugh and scuffs him up the side of the head, in the sort of way he always did back then. A touch too rough to be joking. A step past gentle, but not the sort of hit that was a hit. 

Matt always feels stupid when Stick laughs at him. 

“Matty,” says Stick, with a wry sort of smile on his face, the sort that isn’t a smile at all, “blind men don’t got any reason to look back. Only way to go is forward.”

…

The night before his first hearing to evaluate his conservatorship, Matt hears some asshole whaling on a tourist in an alley not two blocks from his apartment. He has a knife. The tourist is begging for his life. 

Daredevil manages it handily. Getting dressed took more time than the actual fight. But he hadn’t had time for the full suit with all of its protections, and ended up getting a welt across his left cheek that the black mask hadn’t stopped. 

Karen tries to fix it with her foundation and assures him it’s barely noticeable. 

“But it’s noticeable.”

“Barely,” insists Karen. “No one will care.”

Of course they fucking will. 

…

Foggy enters the courtroom right before the case starts and sits with Karen in the benches. 

Matt can’t quite help but feel relieved. 

…

This is the good news:

The judge takes one look at the petition for conservatorship, stares at Matt for twelve seconds, stares at opposing counsel for thirty seven seconds, and says, “Counselor, are you serious right now?”

Which is fair, because Matt was in this same courtroom yesterday, and his opposing counsel cried in the bathroom after having to try the case against him. Fond memories. 

And the state’s attorney--get this--says, “Yes.”

Matt moves for summary judgment. 

The case is frivolous. There’s no basis for the claim, nothing on record to show that there’s cause to bring one, and the only “evidence” the State is raising is weak at best and completely inadmissible in most respects. It’s a waste of the court’s time and resources, and it shouldn’t be allowed to continue unless the State can raise a modicum of actual proof bolstering their case.

And the court says, “Opposing counsel?”

And the opposing counsel stammers a bit and says, “The State has become aware of some very fundamental concerns about Mr. Murdock’s ability to safely care for himself. We feel this case should be heard.”

Which is not a fucking response to his motion at all, actually. 

It was a good motion. Matt would be willing to bet money that he could have gotten any other case dismissed but his own. 

There’s a long moment. Matt knows the judge is looking at him. What is it that she’s looking at? His face? The welt? His cane?

She denies his motion. Bangs the gavel. Case will be heard. 

Fuck. 

… 

The streets isn’t the worst place he’s ever lived, which says more to how fucking terrible the places that Matt has lived before are. 

He’ll beat the shit out of someone for coming near him, is the thing. 

For the most part, he keeps his cane hidden. He tucks it in his jacket and doesn’t use it, even when he really, really should, because a blind man can’t do what Matt needs to do to survive. A blind man is weak, is vulnerable, is fresh-fucking-meat. 

Matt’s done being a victim. 

His knuckles are split and so is his lip, and he’s near dizzy from hunger most days. But he’s in Hell’s Kitchen, he’s home, and he feels like he can breathe for the first time since he went into the system.

He does not visit his dad’s grave. 

… 

The first day is borderline humiliating. 

He puts in a motion in limine to have his entire past file excluded for lack of relevance, because it’s all a fucking decade or two old. 

And the opposing counsel is pretty visibly trying the first case of his life, because he stammers and says, “We find the file to have highly probative, your honor.”

Which is still not a fucking answer to his motion.

And the judge hums, and she withholds her ruling until later. For now, it’s all admissible. 

Mother fucker. 

And she continues to admit it. Matt’s first psych hold was when he was eleven and out of his fucking mind from Stick, and it’s been two decades and change since then, with a mountain of police records showing that he had been horrendously abused up to the day that he went into his first spiral. That doesn’t stop it from being admitted as evidence that he, as an adult and a licensed attorney, is too unstable to be able to make decisions as to his own wellbeing. They bring in a nurse who apparently treated him, who has no fucking memory of who he is, and put her on the stand and have her testify as evidence that he’s too unstable to be an adult man in charge of his own well-being.  

So Matt grits his teeth and brings in evidence of his own that he had just suffered long-term abuse at the hands of someone his orphanage handed him over to, and that his foster parents later got arrested for putting their kids in zip-ties and attaching them to the radiators. And then had to move to admit the fucking hospital records attached to his psych hold report that showed all the hallmarks of abuse that they waved off as self-harm. And then he impeaches her for good measure. 

Then, they run out of time, sparing him further humiliation.

Adjourned until the next scheduled hearing.

… 

The next day, Matt is feeling particularly self-destructive and, you know, generally in a downward spiral, as he tends to be, and it is worsened by approximately nine thousand percent because 1) he would have gotten visitation with Lisa today otherwise, so the day particularly stinks of failure, and 2) Karen got him a muffin at a coffee shop and he knows for a fucking fact that it’s a cheer-up muffin. The idea that he needs a cheer-up muffin is ridiculous. Insulting. 

The muffin is delicious. 

Anyway, all of this feels hauntingly like he’s having emotional difficulties and it’s impeding his ability to be objective and achieve things. Which, wow. What a fucking way to set off the version of Stick that still squats in his head. He cannot, ever, be affected from a single thing due to the crippling details of his childhood. He has to disprove that immediately. 

So he goes home. Gets the copy of his social work file he got when they served him with the papers for the conservatorship and promptly buried under a stack of underwear and also two decades of haunting trauma. Puts it in his briefcase. Walks to the office. Knocks on Foggy’s door, who is eating a sandwich. 

He doesn’t look up from his file. “What’s up, buddy?”

“I’ve got a file for you.”

Foggy gestures vaguely towards a stack. “Put it there.”

“Okay,” says Matt, and then he does. And then he walks away. 

He may have a problem. Come to. Come to think of it. 

… 

It’s four? Five months on the street? When someone stops in front of where he’s sitting on a stoop with a heartbeat that’s thundering. It’s cold as hell, Matt hasn’t eaten in oh, three days, and he’s spitting mad as a default. 

Guy says, “Matty?”

Which is enough for Matt to snarl at him and throw his first punch, to be honest. 

Guy dodges it, which is more than most people could ever say. Good for him. Maybe he’ll fuck off before Matt kicks the shit out of him. 

Guy says, “Matty, it’s Joe.”

Matt feels distinctly unimpressed. “Okay?”

“I’ve seen you in diapers.”

“Wow,” says Matt, and then he immediately turns to fuck off. 

Joe-who-has-a-thing-for-diapers trips into his path, which is a terrible decision, really, “Matty, what happened to you?”

Matt tries to think back and figure out if he ever lost enough time to end up in diapers somehow and not remember it. Honestly, he’s not super sure. He’s been in those foster homes whose idea of parenting is to put six Benadryls in the food to knock all the kids out so they can have an afternoon without dealing with, you know, parenting. He never felt any thing that suggested something happened while he was out, but who fucking knows. 

“Look,” says Matt, shouldering past him roughly, “I don’t give a fuck what you’ve seen or what pictures you bought or what. Five fucking seconds before you’re swallowing your own teeth.”

Joe-with-the-diaper-thing sounds weirdly devastated. “Matty, kid, did someone hurt you?”

He grabs him by his elbow. Less than two seconds later, Matt’s got his arm twisted behind his back. 

“What did I fucking say?” spits Matt. He twists harder. “Huh? You wanna lose the hand?” 

“Matthew Murdock,” says Joe. “It’s Uncle Joe. Your daddy used to fight in the same gym as me.”

Matt releases him like he’s on fire. 

He takes a stumbling step backwards.

He’s--shit, this is the time where he walks away and fucks off into the night. That’s what he does. That’s exactly what Stick would want him to do. 

“Oh,” says Matt. 

Tentatively, Joe takes him by the elbow. “C’mon, okay?”

No. No, Matt needs to get the fuck out of here. Matt needs to leave right, right now, because here is the place he absolutely cannot be right now. 

“Okay,” says Matt, and he stumbles after him. He’s dizzy and his heart is beating too fast and he thinks he might faint, and if there were anything that Stick wanted, it would be for him to do anything but what he’s doing right now. 

Joe leads him to Fogwell’s Gym. 

“It’s warm,” he promises.

Matt doesn’t step over the threshold. 

Chalk. Sweat. Unwashed bodies and rubber mats and mouthguards. 

It smells like home.

“Matty,” says Joe.

“Don’t call me that,” snaps Matt, but his voice shakes. “Don’t ever fucking call me that.”

“Matt,” says Joe. “Come in, okay?”

“Yeah,” says Matt, and he smooths his hands against his pant legs. “Okay.”

He steps over. 

Joe leads him to his table. The fold out he did his homework at. It’s still goddamn there. It’s--Jesus, it’s still there. 

He’s shaking. He can’t stop shaking. He bends over, clutching at his elbows, and he tries to stop shaking. 

In the backroom, he hears Joe. 

“Fogs,” he says, and his voice is shaking to. “It’s Jack’s baby. I found him.”

Fogwell is in the backroom. Matt recognizes his heart. It’s huge and thundering and steady as a promise. 

He lumbers up from his desk with a scrape of his chair. Matt feels, for a split second, like he should have run while he could.

Joe trips after him. “He ain’t in good shape, Fogs--”

The door bursts open. 

“Matty?” roars Fogwell. “Is that my boy?”

Matt’s out of his chair and digging his cane from his jacket before Fogs can say anything else. He snaps it open with fumbling, shaking hands, and takes off for the door. 

Stupid. Stupid. 

Fogs crosses the room in a few enormous steps and meets him there. When Matt’s still fumbling for the doorhandle, he’s seized him by the elbow and tugged him back. 

Matt throws the punch on instinct. 

He isn’t expecting it, trying to hit Fogs. He doubts Fogs was expecting it either, because it lands. Cracks hard across his cheekbone, and Matt can hear the burst blood vessels at the same time he feels his hand sting. 

“Shit.” He flinches backwards. He hasn’t flinched in fucking years, but he flinches now. “I… shit.”

Fogs doesn’t let go of his elbow. 

The boxing gym is dead silent. And why wouldn’t it be? A blind homeless kid just landed one on the best boxer in Manhattan. 

Fogs doesn’t raise his voice, per se. He projects it. It’s calm and steady and commanding as a general. But he doesn’t shout. 

“Everyone out. Right now.” 

He applies the lightest pressure on Matt’s elbow as the sound of hesitant shoes squeak against the gym mats. “Matty, I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

“I know that,” snaps Matt. 

He can feel Fogwell’s eyes scrutinizing him. “C’mon, kid. Let’s go in the backroom. I’ve been waiting for years to bring you home.” 

Matt laughs right there in the doorway. 

It isn’t a pleasant sound. 

…

He picks another fight that night. 

He shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. Because he needs to be better, for Lisa. He needs to dial it back, for Lisa. Lisa deserves more and Matt’s promised to be more. Which means no Daredevil. Which means focusing only on getting her home. Which means keeping his promise. Which means not fucking it up for once in his life.  

But the thing is? That thing?

Matt’s never been goddamn good at doing the right thing. 

…

The awful old couch in Fogwell’s office nearly sends him into a sobbing fit. 

It smells like it did all those years ago. Hasn’t changed a bit, even though it probably should have. Maybe Matt’s memory is just shit or maybe he just wants it to be the same really, really badly, but for a moment, Matt would swear to God above that nothing’s changed, that he’s dangling his legs off Grandpappy’s couch while his daddy’s hosing off in the gym showers. 

He feels the oddest urge to kick his feet. 

He tampers it down with a vicious certainty, and digs his cane out of his pocket so he can fuck off into the night, like he was supposed to do way, way sooner than this. He shouldn’t be here. He doesn’t belong here anymore. 

The door opens just as Matt’s reaching for the handle. 

Fogs knows what he was doing. His heart kicks up a notch when he puts the pieces together.

“I got rid of them,” he says, and he steps in and shuts the door behind him. “Sit down, Matty.”

Matt doesn’t sit. “I need to go.”

“You got somewhere to be?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s that, then?”

Motherfucker. 

Fogs says, “You’re homeless, Matty.”

Matt just snarls at him and buries his hands in his pockets. 

Waving him down to the couch, Fogs pulls the chair out from his desk and sits across.  “Humor an old man, okay?”

Matt should leave. He should fuck off. Stick would never sit just because someone asked. 

Stick was also full of shit, though, and he’s got a shiny line on his hospital records reading suicide hold to prove it.

He sets his jaw. He sits. 

Fog stares at him for a long moment. Matt can feel his gaze. 

“Joe said you said some pretty concerning things.”

Matt tches. 

“You shouldn’t be on the streets.”

“I’m eighteen,” says Matt. “I can be wherever I goddamn please.”

“Your daddy would never forgive me if he knew I let his baby sleep on the streets.”

It would have hurt less if Fog’s clocked him in the nose. 

If there’s one lesson Stick taught him that stuck, it’s how to be mean. He leans in close and says, “Fogs? Dad ain’t fucking here anymore.”

It lands. Fogwell’s temperature rises, and so does his heart. 

“You’re staying here,” says Fogs, decisively. “No ifs, ands, or buts.”

“How about nos?” says Matt, tilting his head. “Or fuck off. Either works for me.”

He stands. Fogs stands with him. When Matt moves to the door, Fogs tries to block him.

“Matty, you sit your ass down on that couch now.”

“I’m not a goddamn pet,” hisses Matt, wheeling on him. “You can’t just decide you’re keeping me because there isn’t another fucking owner in sight.”

Fogs isn’t deterred. “You’re my grandbaby. Your daddy said so, and I changed enough of your diapers in my day to get the title to keep.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Matty, baby, what happened?”

“Stop fucking calling me that.”

“Matt,” says Fogs, firmly. “Someone hurt you. I may be old but I’m not--” 

His voice dies. 

“What, blind?” Matt has to laugh at that. “You care? Because newsflash, you haven’t been fucking around since Dad went in the ground.”

“No one was gonna give me an ounce of rights without blood, and I asked enough of them to know that.”

The implications of it nearly send Matt into a panic attack. He elects to ignore it. 

“Well, you should have listened to one of them.” He digs his hands into his pocket. “Fogs, look, I haven’t been the poor fuck of a kid sitting at the fold out table in a long time. Just give it up. Dad wasn’t your blood and neither was I. You don’t owe me shit.”

“Blood?” Fogs demands. “Blood. You think this is about blood? Matt Murdock, I knotted your daddy’s first boxing glove. I knotted your first boxing glove.”

What?

“There’s a bond,” says Fogs, charging himself up. “One only boxers who share a ring have. It’s ancient and sacred, and it doesn’t need blood to matter.”

“Um,” says Matt. 

“You sit your ass on that couch and listen,” says Fogs. “You sorely need it.”

Bewildered, Matt sits. 

“There’s a different sort of bond that’s forged when you first step past those ropes,” says Fogs. “It’s a pact. Of honor. Of trust. Of two folks who have made a solemn oath to beat the everlovin’ fuck out of each other within the bounds of the rules. You don’t get this sort of connection from something as stupid as having a last name.”

“Wha--”

“Shut up and listen, Matthew Michael Murdock. I trained two generations of Murdocks in these walls and that means I’ve earned the right to you shutting your big yap and listening.” And then, fucking Fogwell, old school boxer and the toughest son of a bitch in Hell’s Kitchen, says, “It all started in ancient Sumeria when the first boxers decided to beat the shite out of each other, and--”

Matt is so confused that he forgets he was trying to leave.

…

The next morning, Foggy’s waiting for him in his office. Matt can hear the creak of floorboards while he paces from down the street. 

His knuckles are split. They sting when he turns the doorknob. 

Foggy stops dead when he sees him. “Hey.”

His voice is thick. Matt can taste salt, smell it. His temperature is too hot and his heart rate is too fast. 

He’s been crying all night. 

“Hey,” says Matt.

“I saw you in the morning paper,” says Foggy, his voice tight. “Are you hurt?”

Matt shuts the door behind him and crosses the room to his desk. “No.”

Foggy turns to keep facing him. “I thought you weren’t going to do this.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I thought you were going to stop while trying to get custody, at least.” 

“I was.”

“I thought--”

“I know, Foggy,” snaps Matt. “I know.”

Foggy goes quiet all at once. “Yeah. I guess you do.”

With a sigh, Matt tosses his cane on the desk. “It won’t come up in court. I didn’t get hurt. The judge will never know--”

Foggy’s hand slams down hard on his desk. “I’ll know, Matt.”

Silence falls between them, tense and quivering. 

“I’ll know,” repeats Foggy. “I’ll go into court and have to argue for a very abused little girl who needs some very serious help to go to man who couldn’t even stay home and be safe for her, and the judge won’t be able to fucking consider that fact when deciding what’s best because I can’t say a goddamn word about it.”

Matt swallows. “I know.”

“I can’t, ethically, withdraw from representing Lisa, because there’s no one else in the entire goddamn world who can know the full details of her case. I can’t, ethically, not advocate for her desires, because she’s my client. But I can’t, ethically, give you, the most unstable man alive, a child. So I’m stuck in a fucking corner, here, and you know, because you were the one who boxed me in it.”

“I know.”

“You know, if you asked me a year ago, I would have told anyone in the fucking world that you were the best goddamn person I’ve ever met,” says Foggy, his voice shaking. “Wouldn’t have had a second of hesitation. And I would have been convinced I was right, because I knew you better than anyone.” 

Matt grits his jaw and tries not to cry. 

“I read your file.”

He sighs. “Yeah, I figured.”

“It’s so funny, I didn’t know anything about a single page in it,” says Foggy, mopping a hand down his face. He’s trembling. “I guess I never knew you, did I?”

“You know me better than anyone, Foggy,” says Matt, softly. 

“Do I? I didn’t know your dad was murdered. I knew he was dead, I knew he was a boxer, I knew you missed him, but it wasn’t until page fucking one of that gigantic file that I found out that he was murdered in a back alley and his nine year old was the one who found him.” 

“You knew every important thing about him,” insists Matt. “That--that was just the shit the social workers or, or the police thought was important. They never cared about anything else. You’re the only one who knows about, about how he used to hound me to do my homework or how he was a great fucking boxer or how he, he fucking hated carrots. Jesus, he hated carrots. But he would always eat them so I’d eat them, because he said thought I’d ruin my eyesight, because I’d always read by flashlight, because we could never afford to keep the lights on. He, he ate a carrot for every carrot I ate, and grouse about how I’d better have the best fucking eyes on the planet after this. And then the first time he made them after I went blind, he--we couldn’t stop laughing, Foggy. He laughed himself sick. You knew about that. You are the only one who ever knew about that.”

“I know.”

“That’s what matters about him. Not--not the fucking hole in his head. No one gave a shit about the guy who ate carrots so his kid would. They just wanted to talk about the, the fucking rigged match he got forced into. You’re the only one who knows who he was. The rest doesn’t matter.”

“It matters because it hurt you, Matt. You know about everything that hurt me. You know about every bully, every insecurity, every single fucking thing that kept me up at night. And I felt so fucking relieved, because I had someone I wanted to share my entire fucking life with. And I thought”--Foggy’s voice catches, and he starts crying again, right there in Matt’s office--“I thought you wanted the same.”

Matt takes a step towards him. “I do.” 

“I didn’t know about your dad,” lists Foggy, swallowing back his tears. “I didn’t know that you got hospitalized from abuse when you were thirteen. I didn’t know you ran away. I didn’t know you got put in a psych hold and I didn’t know they wanted a conservatorship and I didn’t know that you swallowed a bottle of pills and I almost lost you before we ever even met.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Foggy stops dead. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” says Matt, breathless. “I’m sorry. I am sorry, Foggy. I know I messed us up. I lied to you the entire time you knew me, and I’m sorry. I don’t know how to fix us and I am sorry.”

“It’s not--that’s not--Matt, it’s not… It’s just not about the lying, it’s…” Foggy sounds like he wants to start crying all over again. “Did you think I’d be like them?”

Matt blinks. “What?”

“The social workers. The fucking judge. The--all these fucking people who act like all this shit and the, the blindness and everything means you’re not able to take care of yourself or Lisa.”

“No.” Matt shakes his head, firmly, like he’s trying to shake the thought out. 

“Because I don’t,” says Foggy. “I don’t think you can take care of Lisa because you dress up like a fucking asshole and fight crime in the night. I think that you’re too unstable and that she needs stability. I would advocate for you in a fucking second otherwise. I need to know that you don’t think I think the way everyone else does.”

“No. No, I never, I never used to…”

“Used to?”

“You said you felt sorry for me,” says Matt, helplessly. 

“I shouldn’t have--Jesus, I didn’t mean that.” He drags a hand through his hair. “You’re the smartest guy I know, Matt. You know that, right?”

Matt snorts weakly. “Thanks.”

“You are. You’re smart and you’re fucking terrifying, and I’m not talking about Daredevil. You’re sort of a beast.”

“Foggy, I don’t think you’re like them,” sighs Matt. “I never did. It wasn’t that.”

“Then what was it?” says Foggy, begging. “I shared everything with you, buddy. All of it. And--and you never owed me shit. But I always thought you’d done the same, and, and it wasn’t true and I just feel like shit all the time now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that. I just… We used to do everything together. And now I never know what you’re doing until you’ve already done it, and, and it sucks. I just want to go back to when we would work together, and I don’t know how because I--I don’t know you.” His voice cracks. “I really don’t know you.”

Stick taught him that. A masterclass in making sure no one ever saw past the mask. He was a secret soldier, the blind man that no one would ever see coming in a war no one knew about. Didn’t need anyone, because they were the best of the best and the strongest of the strong, and people like them don’t need anyone. 

Matt was such a good student. 

Matt swallows. “Okay. I--I want to show you something.”

Foggy sounds thrown. “What?”

In a rush, Matt gathers up his cane and digs in the desk drawer for some paper clips and a file. “I… Right now. I want to show you something right now.”

“Okay?”

“Karen too. I--” In a rush, he pushes to the door and shoulders it open. “Karen? I need to show you both something.”

Startled, Karen drops her file. “Okay?” 

Foggy follows him. “Matt, buddy, are you okay? You’re kind of…”

Manic? Yeah. It happens.

“No,” says Matt, honestly. “I’m really, really not. But I want to be better.”

…

Matt wakes up on the couch. 

With Stick, it was important to wake up quietly. Stick taught him how to keep his breath steady, his muscles lax, to not give anyone the slightest sign that you’re awake. Take in your surroundings, catalog who’s there. Be ready to fight. You never know when someone’s got a knife poised over a sleeping man’s throat.

When he wakes on Fogwell’s couch, he wakes the way Stick taught him to. Catalog surroundings. Be ready to fight. Everyone’s a hostile, even if proven otherwise. Trust can’t be broken if you never trust. 

A heartbeat. Fogwell, asleep at his desk. His head is pressed into a page. Matt can smell ink combining with his sweat. 

Matt’s laid down on the couch. 

Someone put a blanket over him.

He--fuck, he fell asleep while Fogs was talking endlessly about the sacred bond between boxers. He meant to leave. Fogwell, he must have laid Matt out somehow without waking him. Put a blanket over him and stayed at his desk even though he has a home to go to. 

He should leave. 

This is a bad idea. The worst fucking idea. He’s got fucking no one and happy that way. He hasn’t had anyone since Stick, since his dad, and people always fucking leave, and he always fucking drives them away. He burned every single bridge he could after Stick, and he does not want any of them back. His regret for what he could have had is so much safer than hope for what he might have still. He needs to go before he’s, he’s stuck standing there wondering how his life went to shit all over again. Fogwell can’t leave him if Matt does it first.

The only thing that got close to hurting like his dad dying was when Stick left him in that basement. 

The couch smells like home. 

Matt barely clamps his hand over his mouth by the time the first sob escapes his throat. He digs his fingernails into the corners of his cheeks and tries to force the tears back, tells himself that he controls his mind and his mind controls his body which means he controls fucking this. He doesn’t cry. Soldiers don’t cry. 

The next sob shakes through his entire body. 

Once he starts, he can’t stop. He buries his face in the couch cushions and nearly shoves his fist in his mouth trying to muffle the sound, but the sobs keep climbing up his throat and out his mouth. 

No one’s cared enough to tuck him in since they buried his dad. 

…

“Are we breaking into somewhere?” asks Foggy, sounding hesitant. 

“I love crime,” says Karen. 

“Yes,” says Matt, shoving the file into the lock. “I’ve been here before. I’ve done this before.”

“I love crime,” says Karen.

Foggy sounds skeptical. “This building looks condemned.”

Picking the lock is like riding a bike. He did this so many times. Stick didn’t really believe in keys. 

The lock turns with a solid click. “There’s a basement beneath.”

“Not more reassuring, buddy.” 

Matt shoves the door open and walks down the steps without hesitating. “Come on.”

After setting his jaw, Foggy follows. Karen’s a step behind. 

“Okay?” says Foggy, glancing around. Matt steps into the center of the basement. “What did you want to show us?”

The first thing that strikes him is how small it is. 

It’s so much smaller than when he was a kid. Musty. Full of dust and mold. Matt can hear rats scuttling through the walls. It’s--Jesus, it’s exactly how it was when he was a kid. 

It just… seemed more special back then. Important. A gritty homebase for a couple of soldiers. Now, it just seems cramped and pathetic. 

“This is where Stick trained me,” says Matt. 

Foggy sobers instantly. “Oh.”

“I--this is where I slept,” he continues, walking to the corner and gesturing with his cane. “It was--just like this. Sometimes I got a blanket, but not, not often. Stick didn’t want me getting weak. There’s six rats in the walls right now. When I was a kid, there  were eleven. I used to count their heartbeats when I was trying to sleep.” 

“Jesus,” breathes Karen. 

“He would train me here.” Matt jabs his cane back at the center. “I--he’d beat the shit out of me. I’d always thank him after. He’d scuff me up the head and tell me I wasn’t a total fucking failure, and I’d feel like it was the highest praise anyone could get.”

“Okay,” says Foggy, swallowing hard. 

Now that the words are finally free, Matt can’t stop them. He lets them all out in a rush like a flood. “I heard someone get raped two streets from here. I asked Stick if we could go help her, and he told me I needed to learn to pick my battles. I told him I picked that one, and he said that was because I was still learning. He made me sit and listen while it happened. The guy laughed when he was done. He laughed at her.”

Foggy and Karen don’t say anything. But Matt hears their heartbeats keeping time. 

“I heard my dad die. The gunshot. I was asleep at the kitchen table waiting for him to come home. There were two guys who had come to his boxing gym before the match. Organized crime. They wanted him to throw the fight. He told them no, but they threatened me, so he agreed.” Matt swallows, hard. “I--I thought they were just bullies. That all you had to do was stand up to them. I knew they wanted him to throw the fight when I pushed my dad to win it. Dad didn’t know, because I never told him about my senses. I never told anyone. Dad didn’t throw the match because I asked him not to, and I was fucking lying to him the entire time. 

“I killed him.”

Immediately, Foggy takes a step forward. “Matt--”

“I did,” insists Matt. “They shot him in the side of the head, Foggy. Right, right”--he reaches his hand up, taps his finger to the side of his skull--“right here. I know, because I felt it. There--did you know that shards of your skull start to flake off when a bullet bangs through? I do.”

Karen starts to cry. “Matt.”

“No one arrested the people who did it. They said he was dirty. He, he--they blamed him for dying. He was a better man than any of them and they blamed him.”

“And they were wrong,” says Foggy, taking another step towards him. “Your dad was good. They got it wrong.”

Matt stops, all at once. “Do you know how often they get it wrong?” And, “I do.”

They don’t say anything. 

“I had a foster parent who took my door away. They would watch me get changed, and I would pretend not to know. I had one that would shove Bendrayl in our food when they didn’t want to pay for a babysitter, and I would eat it and pretend not to taste it. And I had more than one who kicked the shit out of me, and I would let them do it.”

“Matt--”

“I let them do it, Foggy.” He gestures to the basement. “I let Stick do it, too.”

“You were a kid--”

“I could have stopped them, but I didn’t, because I knew that if it came down to it, everyone would be more okay accepting a hurt blind kid than they would be accepting a blind kid who could defend himself. They’d never let me live if they knew what I could do, so I decided to let them think they could hurt me.” 

“You were a kid. You were vulnerable, you were taken advantage of, you didn’t have an advocate and the shit they did to you is not something you have to put any, any consent in.”

“I could have stopped them,” he insists. “I chose not to. Do you understand that? I had to choose to let them do it.” His hand tightens around his cane until he can hear the handle start to groan. “I had to let them do it.”

“Yeah,” says Karen, her voice breaking. She swipes hurriedly at her face. “Yeah, I understand, Matt. It’s humiliating.”

“Do you know how many people decided not to help me?” He doesn’t wait for them to answer. “It was a lot.” 

Foggy starts crying again. “Matt, you don’t have to--”

“I decided not to help other people,” he says. “I wish I could give you a number how many. I couldn’t keep counting. But I remember all of them.” His voice goes thick. “Do you have any idea how many people I can hear?”

“No,” says Foggy.

“They’re all hurting, Foggy. Everyone’s--everyone’s fucking hurting.” 

“I know,” says Foggy.

“No, you don’t. You don’t, you don’t, and no one does, because I’m the only one who has to fucking listen to them do it.”

Foggy doesn’t reply. 

“There’s this thing I keep hearing people say, you know,” he continues. “It--Jesus, you’d be surprised as to how many lines get reused. You know, the classics. No originality. ‘Give me your wallet.’ Or, ‘Get on the fucking ground.’ Or, ‘You were asking for it, dressed like that.’ But the one, the one that always gets me, it… ‘Go ahead, scream. There’s no one who can hear you that cares enough to help.’” His voice cracks. “But I could hear them.”

“Jesus, Matt,” breathes Karen. 

“Stick was so right. He was so, so fucking right. He--about picking your battles. Because there were so goddamn many of them. If I picked one, I had to pick all, and I, I couldn’t do that, because I thought I’d destroy everything. And so I didn’t do anything. I let them do it to people. I let so many people get hurt, and I could have helped them.”

“It is not on you to save all of New York,” says Foggy, fiercely. “You don’t have to kill yourself. I don’t know what the answer is but it’s not, it’s not--Jesus, Matt, it can’t be that.”

Matt gestures helplessly. “Then who was it on to save me?”

 “You saved my life,” says Karen. “You did. You heard me, and you saved me, and I’ve never been so grateful for anyone. You’re good, Matt. You saved me.”

“There are a lot of people who can’t say the same. And I… I would have kept going like that. Until I found something I couldn’t walk away from, and that would keep happening.” He lifts his arms. “So now I pick all of them.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” says Foggy. “I know. I know. But I can’t lose you.”

“I was going to try to kill myself again.”

Dead air.

“I was,” repeats Matt, nodding shortly. “I, uh… I don’t think I knew for sure, until, until now. But uh, guys, I… I used to stand on rooftops, and, and listen. To the city, to it bleeding, to all the people screaming for help, and I, I would know every time when it didn’t come and I’d know every time how it ended , and I… I would think about jumping off. But I was never certain if it was to go help or to just… stop. And I could hear her crying. The little girl, she--she cried every single time, and no one, no one would help her. And I realized that I”--he swallows back a breath--“I would rather be a mark on the pavement than be another person who let it happen.”

Foggy’s voice breaks. “Matt, you don’t have to force yo--”

“I do, because you still don’t get how angry I am.”

There’s a beat. 

“The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” says Karen.

“I’m so angry,” he confesses, and it’s more honest than anything he’s ever told his priest. “I would have to sit there after another person hit the blind kid who couldn’t hit back. Or got off watching the kid who couldn’t see them. Or raped or murdered or just fucking hurt someone, and I would have to just sit there and listen. And they’d always be so fucking, fucking smug afterwards. So goddamn powerful, so strong, hurting someone who couldn’t protect themselves. As if it was something to be proud of. They’d laugh at the people they hurt.” Matt smiles. It’s all teeth. “But they do not laugh at me.

“I am a better fighter than anyone out on those streets. It’s true. When I am there, I am the strong one. And they get to know how it feels to be at someone’s mercy. And I don’t have a lot of it anymore.

“I can be something other than this,” Matt tells them. “But I don’t think I want to be.”

Neither of them say anything.

“And I didn’t tell you,” says Matt, into the silence. “Either of you. Because I didn’t think you’d still want me if you knew. And I’ve never wanted anything more than to be your family.”

Foggy surges forward. “Matt, of course I want you.”

Karen is a step behind. They meet in the middle, and Foggy nearly body slams Matt when he crashes into him, and Karen nearly takes them both out at the knees. They end up in a heap, limbs twisted together on the floor of the room where Matt was first deconstructed, and Matt couldn’t find his breath if you handed him a map and instructions. 

“I don’t have any other family,” says Karen, crying into Matt’s shoulder. “Only you two. And I know, I know we haven’t known each other for long, but I love you guys more than anything.”

Foggy buries his face against Matt’s neck, a mess of tears and snot. “We’re a family. Fucking--all three of us. Forever. Jesus, forever, do you hear me, Matt? I’m never letting you two go.”

“You sure about that?” says Matt, shakily. “I’m sort of wildly unstable.”

“Me too,” says Karen, still crushed into his shoulder. “I sort of got overshadowed by Matt’s whole schtick, but holy fuck, I am not a stable woman.”

“God help us,” laments Foggy. “We’re really gonna need it.”

Karen starts laughing first. They dissolve into a mess of giggles, half-sobbing, half-laughing. 

“I want to do this,” says Foggy, when he catches his breath. “But we have to be on the same page from now on. All of us. No more running off half-cocked. We have to be a team.”

“Okay,” says Matt. He can feel his own heartbeat in his throat. It’s steady as a bell. “Really. I promise.”

“No more secrets either.”

“Okay,” he says again. “Deal.”

“I killed Wesley,” blurts Karen. 

There is a pregnant pause. 

“Jesus fuck, we’re doing this now,” says Foggy, pulling back. “Karen? Light of my life?”

Karen hums nervously. “Yes, beloved family?”

“We would like a little elaboration,” inserts Matt, before Foggy can say another fucking word. “If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” says Karen, and then elaborates.

There is another pregnant pause. 

“Personally, I vote we never tell a single living soul that happened,” says Matt. Holy fucking hell, Fisk will kill her if he finds out. “Just. Personally. But we can vote. Because, you know. Team. Decisions.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus Christ.”

“I also vote that, for what it’s worth,” says Karen. “But that's just me.”

“Yeah, no, agreed,” says Foggy, faintly. “Karen, we love you.”

“Yay,” says Karen, letting her forehead drop against Matt’s shoulder. “I’m thrilled.”

“We do,” says Matt, and he brings his hand up to comb a hand through her hair. “And we’ll--Jesus, next time we take on another crime boss, we’ll do it together. And not… get you stuck alone in a warehouse. Fuck.”

“God, we’re doing this again?” says Foggy, exhausted. “Okay. Fine. Does anyone else have any more murders to confess? Just, you know, while we’re on subject.”

Matt pauses. “I have an attempted one.”

Foggy sounds deeply pained. “Okay? This is a safe space. I guess. Just--Jesus Christ, we’re all going to end up in prison. Go ahead.”

“Do you remember Elektra? And, uh, our slightly messy breakup?”

“Who?” says Karen. 

“College girlfriend,” says Foggy. “Crazy as fuck. Took an ‘I can make him worse’ approach to Matt’s everything. Buddy, I am begging you to explain.”

“We broke up because she tried to get me to murder someone,” confesses Matt. “But I only attempted to murder him. I stopped. This is a success story, if you think about it.”

“God, this is such a weird fucking day,” mutters Karen.

…

He doesn’t leave. 

He cries himself to sleep and wakes up to the sound of shoes squeaking and gloves hitting bags, and he lets Fogs bully him into taking a shower and changing his clothes. When he comes out, Fogwell has greasy hash browns and a stack of bacon sweating in a styrofoam takeout container, and he doesn’t say a word as Fogwell bullies him into sitting and eating with him. 

“I need someone to help me run the office,” says Fogwell, when Matt has a mouth full of food. “And someone to run a mop over the floor.” 

“Okay,” says Matt. 

“I got a spare cot in my house.”

“No.”

There’s a pause. “We can move it into the back storage,” he says, after a beat. “Consider it part of your pay.”

“Part?”

“I’ll also be paying you.”

Matt doesn’t say anything. 

“This place is all the home I got,” says Fogs, firmly. “I don’t got family. Just my boys. I need someone I can trust to help me take care of the place.”

“Okay,” says Matt, after a beat. “Okay. Backroom.”

“Okay,” says Fogs, and Matt can hear the muscles in his cheeks twitch as his mouth upturns. “Good to have you on board.”

It becomes a thing. 

Matt sleeps in the backroom. Turns down Fogs offers to move him into his home. Sits with him everyday to go over receipts and memberships and policies, and cries like a child when Fog invests in a braille printer. Mops the floors and beats the hell out of a few dozen punching bags, and every day, he goes to bed and tells himself that he’s going to in the morning. 

It’s that thing, right? Princess Bride, or whatever. It was playing in the psych ward when he was strapped to a bed for trying to pour pills down his gullet. Dread Pirate Roberts to Wesley. Good night, sleep well, I’ll most likely kill you in the morning. 

Good night, sleep well, he’ll have to give it all up the moment light dawns. Whatever this is, he can never keep it. 

Except, of course, Dread Pirate Roberts never kills Wesley. The entire thing atrophies until Wesley grows into the ship and makes it his own. If it’s a promise, it’s an empty one, and both of them know it. 

Matt tells himself in the morning, he’ll have the strength to break this, whatever it is. Kill it dead before he’s left holding its corpse and wondering how it happened. He’ll leave before Fogwell comes and bullies Matt into letting him take him to a diner or eating something from the cupboard. He’ll leave before he gets attached again, because he can’t fucking do that. He’ll leave in the morning. He promises himself. 

It’s an empty one. 

…

“Can we get out of here?” says Karen, after they’re done confessing and crying. “This place sort of sucks.”

“Seconded,” says Foggy, rolling to his feet with a groan. He offers Matt a hand up.

Matt takes it, then offers the same to Karen. “Yeah. Let’s go, guys.”

Karen cracks her back as she stands. “We are too old to cradle each other crying on the floor. Can we pick a couch next time?”

“You don’t want floor parties?” says Foggy, sounding wounded. ‘They’re an office staple.”

“That was not a party.”

“I think it meets the definition of a floor party,” says Matt. “Who wants bagels?”

“Fuck yes,” says Foggy. He heads to the door. 

Matt pauses halfway there. 

Turning, he backtracks to the corner. The far one, against the wall. 

It’s empty. 

There’s no one there.

“Matt?” says Foggy. 

“Sorry,” says Matt. “I… was looking for something I forgot.”

Foggy sounds doubtful. “From twenty years ago?”

Yeah. Longer. Matt doesn’t know anymore.

“Never mind,” says Matt, and he walks back to them. “I remember where I left it.”

Karen takes his arm. “Come on, guys. Let’s get out of here.”

They climb the stairs, push the door open, and reemerge into the Hell’s Kitchen sunlight. The door shuts gently behind them. 

The basement is empty. 

There’s no one there.

… 

Later, Foggy comes into his office and sits across from him and asks him to explain, as clearly and best he can, why exactly he needs to be the one to take care of Lisa. 

“I wanted to forget how I felt when my dad died,” Matt settles on. “Stick told me I could.”

“Okay,” says Foggy. 

“He told Lisa the same.”

Foggy doesn’t say anything. 

“I don’t know the details. I know she had a family. I know they died. I know it wasn’t good. And I know that Stick told her it would stop hurting if she did what he told her. He wasn’t telling the truth. She needs to realize that, sooner or later. I did.”

“Matt, buddy, I swear to God I’m trying to understand, but I still don’t. Why can’t she realize that with a licensed therapist?”

“Oh, because she won’t want them. I… Stick teaches you that you’re separate from everyone else. Apart. That the only way she’ll ever stop hurting is to stop caring about everyone and everything. Stick only picks the kids who hurt so badly that they’d rather feel nothing than keep feeling the way they do.”

“She very obviously cares about you.”

“And I cared about Stick,” shoots back Matt. “I’m Daredevil. In her mind, I’m what she wants to be. And I’m good enough at what I do that she doesn’t really believe I can get taken down. I’m safe.”

“And you want to…show her it’s okay to love people?”

“When she realizes that Stick was lying to her, she’s going to figure out all at once that she’s alone. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to take a long time, if ever, to let someone in again. She already let me in, Foggy. I can help her. And…” He shifts, taking off his glasses. “I do care about her. A lot. I want her to be somewhere where she gets people who actually give her what she needs. That’s not where she is right now.”

“Is it you, though?” sighs Foggy, half to himself. 

Matt doesn’t say anything. 

“Matt, I swear to God, if you aren’t taking care of her, or if your shit gets her in danger, I’m reporting you myself,” says Foggy, firmly. “I’d do anything for you. But I won’t stand by while a kid gets hurt.”

Matt’s heart leaps in his chest. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

“I may have a resource that could help,” says Foggy, reluctantly. “With the conservatorship and with Lisa.”

“What?”

“You’re the best lawyer I know, buddy. But you’re walking into a room full of people who already have dismissed you. I… think you need an attorney.” He sighs heavily. “And I think I know one that can help.”

…

Fogwell finds him beating the hell out of a punching bag. His bag is already packed and by the door. 

He just leans against the doorframe and watches him. “We gonna talk about this?”

Matt slams his hand into the bag more viciously. “I’m leaving.”

“No, you ain’t.” He sounds certain. “You’re just pissed at me.”

“Where the hell do you get off telling me what to do with my life?”

“I didn’t tell you shit, Matty. I bought you a book. Do what you want with it.”

“I’ll burn it,” warns Matt. 

Fogs shrugs like it doesn’t matter. “If you want to.”

“You shouldn’t have wasted your money on it.”

“It’s my business what I do with my money.”

He didn’t have to go and buy a goddamn GED practice book with it. 

“It must have been expensive,” says Matt, turning back to the bag. He doesn’t throw another punch. “Braille books already are. And practice books. I… you shouldn’t have bought it.”

“You’re too smart to waste away in this old gym.”

“I dropped out,” says Matt, cracking his neck. “I ran away. I don’t have the money for college anyway.”

“There’s the money your daddy left you.”

Matt scoffs. “I don’t want that.”

Fogs watches him with a cool silence. “He wanted you to have it.”

“I don’t care.”

“All he ever wanted for you was to get an education.”

Matt’s hand slams into the bag. “All I ever wanted was for him to be here.” 

The gym falls into silence. 

“I wanted him to be here,” says Matt, almost gasping out the words. “I would have lived in that stupid rotting apartment with him until we both went in the ground and I wouldn’t have fucking cared. No fucking college fund is worth that. How could he just--why would he pick that? Why would he pick to die? Why--why did he pick to leave me--I don’t--I--”

“Your daddy loved you, Matt. He wanted better for you than this.”

“There is nothing that would ever be good enough to make up for what happened to me when he wasn’t there,” says Matt. 

A weight enters the air. 

“You know something happened, Fogs,” says Matt, his mouth stretching unnaturally. “You know it wasn’t good. Dad would have been better. Anything-- anything would have been better. A hole in the ground would have been better.”

Slowly, Fogwell walks over. He lifts his hand, then stops. “I’m gonna touch your neck.”

Matt knows. 

And he almost tells him as much. 

Fogs braces him by the neck and pulls him against his side. 

“Your dad was a good man,” says Fogs. “And he had too much faith in other people also being good men. He’d have never thought you’d get hurt without him.”

He scoffs. “That really helps. Thanks.”

“I never met anyone who loved someone as much as your daddy loved you. And it’s a goddamn crime that you didn’t get to grow up with that. But Jesus, Matty, don’t let that stop you from taking the love he had for you. All he ever wanted was to give you a future. Don’t let your hurt stop you from taking it.”

A lump forms in Matt’s throat. “I miss him.”

“Me too, kid. Me too.”

Stick would have never wanted this for him. 

School was never supposed to be a thing he graduated from. The GED was never supposed to be something he took. Matt was a soldier, and he didn’t need a degree to fight a war. 

He never imagined a life where he’d get to go to school. If he wasn’t Stick’s soldier, he’d be dead in the ground. He never wanted a future enough to have one. 

“I’ll take the GED,” he says, reluctantly. “But I’m not making any promises.”

“You’re gonna get a perfect score and swan around like a goddamn know-it-all brat,” says Fogs, matter-of-factly. “And I’m gonna be proud of you for it.”

Dad would have been.

…

“This place is too fancy for us,” says Karen, with a damning certainty. “We won’t be allowed inside.”

“They can smell fear,” warns Matt. 

“Shut the fuck up,” hisses Foggy. “Do not embarrass me.”

“Thank you,” says Matt, for the thousandth time. “Thank you.”

“Whatever,” says Foggy. “I get to be favorite uncle.”

“There was so much competition for that role too.”

With a snort, Foggy pushes inside the lobby of the law office of Rosalind Sharpe. 

Matt follows behind meekly. 

Foggy hasn’t spoken to his bio mom in years. She didn’t even show up to his law school graduation. She had her secretary send him an email after he turned down the offer from Landman & Zach calling him a fool, and then had a different secretary send him an email after Fisk telling him he should capitalize on the publicity to leverage his way into a major firm. She hasn’t sent a birthday gift since he was four, where he got a dictionary, sent by a secretary. 

She also apparently never paid child support. 

She, Foggy decided, owed him approximately thirty years worth of gifts. And he was going to capitalize on that by making her represent his best friend in a court of law. 

“She’ll totally do it,” he had rationalized. “She loves proving she’s better than everyone else.”

Which he had been right about. Foggy got an email back that said: “Fine,” signed Rosalind Sharpe, in all capital letters, which is how Rosalind Sharpe signs everything. 

“I have an appointment,” says Foggy, to yet another secretary. 

The secretary doesn’t even look up. “Name?”

“Foggy Nelson.”

“No,” says the secretary. “Goodbye.”

Foggy sighs, pained. “Franklin Sharpe.”

Without looking up, the secretary points at a hall. “Third door on the right.”

“Thank you.” Foggy jerks his head. “Come on, guys.”

Karen leads Matt after him. 

“I’ve never been Franklin Sharpe,” mutters Foggy, mutinous. “Never. I hate Franklin and I’ve always had dad’s name. She does it to piss me off.” 

“Thank you,” says Matt, again. “Jesus, thank you.”

“Anything, buddy.” He groans when they reach the door. “Time to face the demon.”

They step inside. 

Rosalind Sharpe sits at a gargantuan desk in a room full of paper and ink. She does not look up when they enter. 

“Hey, Mom--” starts Foggy. 

“Sit.”

They sit. 

“Thanks for doing th--”

Rosalind doesn’t even look at Foggy. She turns to Matt. “You’re Matthew Murdock.”

Jesus, he can feel her stare. “Yes.”

“You convinced my son to start a firm with you.”

“It was a joint decision.”

“Some lawyers get their start with their own firm,” she says. “I did. It depends if you have what it takes.”

Matt lifts his head. “Foggy’s the best lawyer I’ve ever met.”

She hums, not sounding convinced. “I’ve looked at your case.”

“And?”

“And I’m suing everyone,” she says, smoothly. “Discrimination case. Open and shut. Gross abuse of power. Sign the papers my paralegal gives you and let me do the rest.”

Matt leans forward. “And Lisa?”

“Let me embarrass them a little first. Then, let’s see if they still want to play.” She tosses a file at Karen. “Give this to the secretary at the desk and get out of my office. 

… 

There’s a lot of bits after that. 

A newspaper article that Matt never could bring himself to read, that Karen told him, very generously, was extremely favorable to him. Something about a local hero who was blinded saving an old man as a child, orphaned at a young age, went to law school, graduated top of his class and set up shop in his old neighborhood, then set about promptly cleaning up crime and helping the impoverished, only to be discriminated against repeatedly by local government. There’s calls from a few news stations that he never returns. 

There’s a very rapid dropping of the case against him, after Rosalind files a discrimination lawsuit against social services, then spends approximately half an hour in court ripping into the poor fuck who was stuck on Matt’s case. There’s a formal apology letter he receives, that ends up in the trash, after someone’s funding or reelection or something gets threatened.

There’s apartment shopping. Breaking his lease. Getting more clients. Evaluations and talks with different social workers who take a decidedly different tone with him. 

Foggy and Karen help him find a two bedroom he can afford with enough room for both of them. When he picks the one with the roof access?

Foggy stares at it for a long moment. But he doesn’t say anything. 

There’s also this:

“Well,” says the judge on Lisa’s case. “In light of the results of the previous allegations against Mr. Murdock, as well as the current pending cases and the express wish of Miss Murdock, I see no further reason to delay his petition. It seems that it is in Lisa’s best interest to let her join the home Mr. Murdock has offered her. Should he pass all final evaluations, then I will allow his adoption petition to proceed.”

Bangs the gavel. 

… 

Years down the line, long after he’s moved out, Matt meets Fogs for dinner. 

“There he is,” says Fogs, when he taps his way into the diner. “Big law student now. Your daddy would be proud.”

Matt gives him a thin smile and sits. “Thanks, Fogs.”

“So? How is it? Columbia Law is a hell of a place.”

It’s more of a life than he’d ever wanted to have.

“It’s good. It’s… great, actually.”

“Yeah? You make friends, or you just scare ‘em off being too emo?”

“How do you know what that is?” demands Matt. And, “I have a roommate.”

“Oh? What’s he like?”

“His name is Foggy.”

Fogs waits a beat. “Good name.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m partial to it.”

“Shut up.” 

“He a good guy? Foggy?”

“I don’t know. We just met.” Then, he adds, “I think so.”

“Fogs could be a family name, you know.”

“He’s not my family,” says Matt, rolling his eyes. 

“You never know,” says Fogs, shrugging. “Now shut up and tell me about how you’re the smartest one there.”

… 

Lisa’s fingers are in his belt loop, and she does not let go. 

“I knew it,” she crows. “I knew you’d take care of it.” 

“Foggy and Karen did a lot,” Matt corrects. 

She nearly bounces on her toes. “When can I move in with you?”

“I have another evaluation on Wednesday. Then, we’ll see.” He sets off walking. “Come on. Let’s get you hopped up on ice cream before I have to give you back to your foster mom.”

“She hates you,” says Lisa, smugly, and she trips along after him. “You should’ve seen your face when the judge decided I would get to go with you. She had this weird camp for troubled kids picked out in Bumfuck, Montana. She was gonna petition for it as soon as this failed.”

Matt crinkles his nose. “You’re a New Yorker.”

“That’s what I said!” Her hand drags at his belt loop, but neither of them say anything about it. “Are you gonna train me now?”

“In boxing,” says Matt, firmly. “Fogwell won’t shut up about great grandbabies. You are not to humor him under any circumstances.”

“I’ll convince you to teach me more.” She sounds certain. “You’ll see.”

“Whatever you want, kid.” He stops when he reaches the ice cream shop he had in mind and drags open the door. The door jingles as it opens. “But first pick your ice cream.”

Lisa lets go of his belt loop, then marches right inside and up to the counter. 

Matt pauses at the door. 

Stick would have never wanted this for him. 

But Dad? Dad would have wanted nothing more. 

He steps inside. 

The door jingles as it shuts.