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s2e14 The Icarus Factor
“You know, it's funny. I can talk to a whole roomful of admirals about anything in the galaxy, but I can't talk to you about how I feel.”
“They’re fighting now,” Mike narrates, watching Commander Riker battling his father onscreen. “With these visors pulled down over their heads so’s they can’t see. Hey, you should learn to do this, Matty.”
It’s become a ritual of theirs. On Saturday nights when Star Trek: The Next Generation comes on, Matt and Mike are planted in front of the TV. Mike usually crouches on top of the couch like a gargoyle while Matt sits on the edge of his seat, leaning forward so he won’t miss a word Picard or Data says.
(If their dad’s home, he sometimes stands in the doorway and comments about how Kirk is better than Picard, or else reminds the boys to go back to studying once the episode is over. But he’s usually not home.)
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s3e08 The Price
“But you're reading their emotional states, their inner selves, and then using that to manipulate them.” “Well, people have been doing that for thousands of years, just by listening carefully, by watching body language. I just happen to be better at it.”
“Riker just sat down like that again.”
“Like what?”
“He’s got this weird way of sitting in a chair,” Mike explains. “Like, he swings his leg over the back and settles in.”
“... Show me.”
Mike scoffs. “You can’t see the TV, Matt, you’re not gonna be able to see me either.”
“Just do it.”
So Mike obliges, dragging a chair over from the kitchen table and demonstrating the way Commander Riker sits— one leg swinging high over the chair back to bracket the seat.
Matt laughs. “That’s so weird. Why’s he sit like that?”
“You can’t even see what I’m doing.” Matt just shrugs.
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s2e05 Loud As a Whisper
“And you don't resent it?” “The visor or being blind?” “Either.” “No, since they're both part of me, and I really like who I am, there's no reason for me to resent either one.”
“I don’t get it,” Mike says. His history textbook sits open and unread in front of him, and his eyes are glued to the screen. “It’s like hundreds of years in the future. How come they haven’t cured being blind?”
“It’s not a matter of curing it.” Matt’s sprawled on the floor with one earbud in, half his attention on Star Trek and half on the school audiobook playing through his Walkman. “It’s about adapting, using technology so Geordi can ‘see’ the world in his own unique way.”
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Disability is always going to be a part of human culture,” Matt reasons. “Geordi’s not helpless, though. He’s awesome. And he’s not left out of stuff, personally or professionally, just because he’s blind. He didn’t have to change; the technology did.” Matt holds up his Walkman. “Kinda like how this technology makes it possible for me to get better grades than you.”
“I’m studying! I’m studying!” Mike insists, tapping his textbook without making any attempt to actually read it. He’s quiet for a moment, and Matt wonders if he’s still thinking about curing blindness. Then he says, “So would you hook up with a hologram chick or no?”
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s6e12 Ship in a Bottle
“Captain, I have determined how Moriarty was able to leave the holodeck. He never did. Neither did we. None of this is real. It is a simulation. We are still on the holodeck.”
The holodeck is a big black void covered in yellow gridlines. Matt knows this because it’s what Mike told him. He also knows that Riker sprouted a beard in season two, and that Data’s eyes are a pale inhuman yellow.
The show didn’t start up until a few months after the accident, and Matt suspects that’s part of why he likes it so much. Sure, he still likes Night Court and Moonlighting , but sometimes it feels like he’s missing half the story now, even with Mike’s attempts at narration. He knows what the characters looked like, remembers the layout of the sets.
Trying to recreate them in his mind while he’s watching the shows now… it gets frustrating. The newness of Star Trek is appealing. He hears Captain Picard and Counselor Troi speaking, listens to what Mike has to say about their appearances, and forms his own version of them in his head. And it doesn’t matter if it’s inaccurate, because it’s his.
Sometimes he fleshes out those characterizations, using the ways he identifies people in real life. Just like his dad smells of old pennies and shaving cream, Matt imagines that Captain Picard smells of earl grey tea (hot) and old books. He imagines that Counselor Troi smells of rich chocolate, and that Data smells like an overheated printer.
(And even though Star Trek is very much “their” show, Matt doesn’t tell his brother about the “scent profiles” he’s come up with. He’s sure he’d either get teased or questioned about exactly how much he can smell, and he doesn’t want to deal with either of those possibilities. Not now.)
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s4e03 Brothers
“Often Wrong's got a broken heart. Can't even tell his boys apart.”
Mike and Matt never tried to swap places before the accident— though Mike had plenty of ideas. He’d pestered Matt about sitting in for him in detention, or taking a math test in his place. Matt was always too much of a stick in the mud for Mike’s games, though.
And then after he lost his sight, it became a kind of challenge for him. If he was clever enough to convince other people that he was actually his sighted brother— well, it meant something to Matt. And Mike was more than happy to give him the opportunity.
He’d made dinner-and-a-movie plans with a girl from their grade, but then gotten roped into some or another scheme with his best friend Butch. “I can’t be in two places at once,” Mike had complained, and Matt had just grinned.
“Sure you can.”
(Years later, when Matt has his own reasons for pretending to be Mike, he’s grateful to have had the practice.)
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s4e02 Family
“So, my brother is a human being after all. This is going to be with you a long time, Jean-Luc. A long time. You have to learn to live with it.”
Mike’s got a place in Jersey, some crap apartment that smells of mildew and marijuana. After Shadowland falls, after his confession at the church, that’s where Matt goes. He needs a launchpad, needs to stop moving just for a moment before he hops on a bus.
“You’re not going back to New York?” Mike keeps shoving bowls of chicken soup in front of his brother, treating the traumatic aftermath of demonic possession like a head cold.
Matt doesn’t touch the soup. “How can I?”
“You’re gonna be fine,” Mike says. “I mean, we can go mud-wrestle in a vineyard if you want. Or you can just skip to ‘you’re gonna be fine.’ You’re Matt Murdock . The Band—”
“The Hand.”
“The Hand can’t take that away from you.” Mike watches him carefully, and Matt almost flinches from it. He needs to get out of here. Needs to not be scrutinized, or known. “Look, I know I… I know there’s a lot I don’t know about the, uh, Daredevil part of your life. Even though you did try tell everyone Daredevil was me at one point—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Forgiven. My point is, I don’t get involved in that part of your life. Hell, I’m barely involved in any part of your life these days.” It’s a blunt and awkward statement, and they sit there in it for a moment. It’s hard, knowing that it’s both of their faults. That they’ve pulled away from each other, propelled in opposite directions. “If you need me for anything. If you need my help, if Daredevil needs my help… If you need your brother…” Mike rests a hand on his shoulder. “I’m here. I hope you know that. I’m here.”
Slowly, Matt reaches up to put his own hand on top of Mike’s.
There is, sometimes, a comfort in being known.
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s4e14 Clues
“The plan failed because clues were left behind that suggested a mystery. And to many humans, a mystery is irresistible. It must be solved.”
“... Do you remember who I am?”
Mike stares. “I know it’s been awhile, but it hasn’t been that long ,” he scoffs. “You’re Matt. Pain-in-the-ass, stick-up-the-ass brother.”
“No, I mean,” Matt says, impatient, “do you know what I do at night?”
“I don’t wanna know what you do at night, pervert. What’s with you?”
Matt nods to himself. Foggy, Kirsten, Spidey. Of course Mike would forget, too. Everybody forgot. Clean slate, minds wiped. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Learned a long time ago not to worry about you,” Mike says, devil-may-care, happy-go-lucky. “Anyway, uh. Since you’re here, you wanna share a frozen pizza and watch Star Trek ?”
And he does.
It’s nice to be able to be just Matt Murdock again.
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s3e15 Yesterday’s Enterprise
“We weren't meant to know each other at all. At least, that's what I sense when I look at you. Tasha, you're not supposed to be here.”
Opening up Netflix on Matt’s TV, Mike flicks past the first two profiles— Foggy and Freeloader 1— to select the one labeled “Freeloader 2.” He turns on the episode of TNG he left off on. It’s soothing, a comforting background noise while the world falls apart outside his window. ( Matt’s window.)
Crashing here isn’t so bad. The sensitivities and quirks Mike remembers from Matt’s youth have grown into a preference for all things gourmet and luxury. There are 18 different expensive kinds of tea in the cupboard, plus a ton of fancy soaps and lotions and shower gels in the bathroom. The sheets are a higher thread-count than Mike’s felt in his life, and the blanket on Matt’s couch feels like being enveloped in a cushy little cloud.
The hardest part of this gig is definitely having to bluff his way through Kirsten McDuffie’s questions. His go-to method of evasion is stepping away to get takeout, but there’s only so much moo shu pork one man can believably consume.
It gets… overwhelming sometimes, the web of secrets he’s tangled himself in. He and Foggy are in cahoots now, with Foggy having brought him into the law firm to pretend to be Matt. So he’s lying to Kirsten (and a handful of other people whose names Mike can never keep straight).
But he’s also lying to Foggy, sort of, by omission. Foggy thinks he’s known Mike for years. Foggy doesn’t remember that they only met a few months ago, after Mike sprang to life outside The Bar With No Name. So it’s complicated, keeping track of which histories are “real” and which cover story he’s supposed to tell.
Especially when mostly everything feels like it was real. To Mike it does, anyway. After all, he has vivid memories of watching this show with Matt, when they were teenagers. Even though he knows the truth, even though he remembers what he went through to make himself real, memories of his youth stick with him.
He holds onto them tight. Like the couch, and like the blanket wrapped around him, they’re comfortable.
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s2e09 The Measure of a Man
“Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits. Waiting. You wanted a chance to make law. Well, here it is. Make a good one.”
Things are spiraling out of control. Butch has gone off the deep end, and Mike’s floundering for a way to pull him back. And Matt… where the hell is Matt? According to Foggy, he’s still in rehab, but he won’t say where or when he’ll be back. And now Foggy’s in the hospital courtesy of Fisk’s goons. And Mike can’t even go talk to him without Daredevil getting all holier-than-thou on him and refusing to help with Butch.
Mike’s no lawyer; he’s just impersonating one. But he knows, legally, it would be a bad idea to tell Kirsten or Foggy that Butch has blood on his hands. So he’s on his own, desperate for a way to save a guy who doesn’t want to be saved.
He just wishes Daredevil had let him talk to Foggy. Something tells him Foggy would get it .
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s1e14 Datalore
“How sad, dear brother. You make me wish I were an only child.”
Wilson Fisk maims the wrong Murdock.
Mike is, somehow, still breathing when he gets to the hospital, but Matt’s been brutalized enough times to know what’s survivable and what’s not. His brother is as good as dead. Through eyes that are nearly swollen shut, he peers up at Matt.
No more masks, no more lies. Mike is dying because of Daredevil. He at least deserves to know the truth. “You’re him, huh?” Mike says, voice hoarse and quiet amid the soundscape of his rattling breaths, his weak pulse, the hum of machines he’s attached to. “Damn.”
“I’m sorry.”
“S’okay,” Mike assures him. “But. If we’re sharing secrets… something I should tell you, Matty.” He tries to take a deep breath, but his lungs aren’t up for the challenge. “I’m not real,” Mike says. “We never left the holodeck.”
“What are you talking about?” Matt’s own hand feels clammy against his brother’s. He’s a live wire right now, thrumming with rage and guilt and determined to track Fisk down right fucking now .
But Mike is here. Mike is here, and he probably won’t be here for very long. So Matt’s here, too.
“Truth is,” Mike says, in between rasping breaths, “Mike Murdock? He’s a story you made up.” And he tells Matt everything— how Reader manifested him, his own struggle for identity, the Norn Stone. “Basically just wrote myself into your life,” Mike confesses.
Matt shakes his head like there’s water in his ears. It’s too much, too much all at once. He’s losing a brother he never even had in the first place. His mind can’t make sense of it. “That’s— no, you know what?” he says finally. “I don’t care. I don’t care. You’re my brother.”
Mike smiles, and he squeezes Matt’s hand. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s how I’m gonna remember it, too.”
"I wanted you to stay. It's been so long. I just want somebody real. I thought that you'd be happy. I'm sorry." - "Jean-Luc," s4e08 Future Imperfect