Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Matthew Michael Murdock is born in a small town bordering Mexico named Cocina Del Infierno to Jack Murdock, a hand on Fogwell's ranch. Matthew doesn't know his mother's name. His father never talked much about her, and he never asked. Matthew is nine years old when he gets kicked in the head by a horse in an attempt to push an elderly man out of the way. It takes him a long time to wake up, and when he does it is to total darkness. Matthew is eleven when Jack gets into a fight on the ranch. When he doesn't come back home, he goes to find his father's body cold and stiff, shot twice and left in the dirt. Fogwell, the Sheriff, the other ranch hands all try in vain to console him. When they realize they're not cut out for caring for a mourning disabled kid, they leave him to the church. 

"Matthew, no digas cosas tan blasfemas. Toma tu rosario ahora y reza." 

"¿Por qué? ¿qué hice mal?" He would cry, writhing against the sister's grip. 

"No puedes dudar de la plan divino del Señor. Tu padre murió porque Dios así lo dijo. Todo es parte de Su plan." She scolded harshly, grip nearly bruising as she threw him down before the statue of the Virgin Mary. 

After a moment, he began to pray in a shaky voice. "Dios te salve, María, Llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo. Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte." He paused, thinking. "Por favor Madre Perdóname. Amen."

"¡Esas no son las palabras! Hazlo otra vez." She snapped, then left. The quiet of the church was deafening. He couldn't stop hearing voices, distant and sinful. Voices yelling and cursing and loving and caring and he knew these were the voices of sinners, heathens, atheists, those who doubted. God was showing him his fate if he did not repent for his mistakes. He prayed for salvation, he prayed his father was in heaven, and he prayed that he could know silence again. He didn't, and never understood what he did wrong. 

He was bad, he was evil, and his grandmother had been right. He didn't just have the Devil in him, he was it. He only wished he could just be good. There was something so very, deeply wrong with him, and he would fix it. He would beat it out of himself. 

When Matthew was twelve, a man, Stick, came to work with him. He had come all the way from Japan, and taught him how to control his senses, to fight.

When he was thirteen, the man left. He needed a friend, and Stick needed a soldier. 

When he was nineteen, he left Cocina Del Infierno for the first time to go to law school in Columbia. He'd never been this far from home before. Things were different there. It was colder, louder, cleaner but in the way that smelt artificial and gross. He was seriously considering dropping out before he met his roommate, one Foggy Nelson. Suddenly, everything was alright again. It felt like home again. Even so, it was the best feeling in the world to be going back once it was all over. Originally, they planned on working for a big company in New York, but it felt soulless and hollow and awful, and when they finally stood up to leave it was truly liberating. 

The train ride to Cocina Del Infierno was long but perfect. All the time that Matt spent with Foggy was perfect. He wasn't shy to say that he loved the man, though Foggy never understood that when he said that he meant in love with him. But, it was alright. Just being by his side was enough. 

The first night back, Matt couldn't sleep. Partly because of the giddy lovestruck feeling he had whenever in his friend’s company, but as the night dragged on he started hearing other things. Cocina Del Infierno had really gone to shit in the four years he'd been gone. He tried to ignore it, but every night he could hear a father enter his youngest daughter's room, and leave with her crying. It was horrible, and it couldn't go on any longer. He reported it to the Sheriff, but nobody believed him. After a week, it was enough. He took a cloth and wrapped it around his head, hiding his eyes and dressing in the cheapest clothes he owned. When that scumbag of a man left to go to Josie's, he struck. He dragged him into an alley and beat him into the dust, the blood flowing freely and the scent of iron deliciously suffocating. It felt amazing. Finally, he dragged him back to his feet and before throwing him into the wall. 

"If you ever touch your daughter again I will know, you disgusting pedazo de mierda." He half hoped the man would die, but that was a sin he couldn't come back from. When he met Father Lantom, he finally understood the lies that had been fed to him since he was young. No one was a sinner for existing, for thinking, there was nothing wrong with loving or grieving or doubting. Nothing could undo the years of religious trauma, but knowing they were wrong was more than reassuring. Murder was not a sin that could be forgiven, but at least he wasn't damned for things he couldn't control. 

After that night, the little girl didn't cry anymore.

Chapter Text

"Matt. Hey, Matt, buddy. It's time to wake up. We're here." Matt blinked the sleep from his eyes and sat up, turning to face Foggy who sat beside him, gently shaking his shoulder. It was cool and quiet outside of the train station, and the crickets were singing loudly. Nighttime. Stepping off the train, luggage in hand, Matt reminisced about these times.
Night in Cocina Del Infierno was always so peaceful, and he was just happy to be home. He walked through town, trying to pick out what all had changed. Walking by the church, he noticed the empty lot where the orphanage used to be. Good riddance. Life in the orphanage had been miserable, and he was glad no more kids were being condemned to that fate. They would be in other children's homes out of the city or even the state, where things would be better. Hopefully. No more nuns hitting children, priests abusing their young charges.
He thought maybe then things here could be a little better, but one evil must always be replaced by another.
The night Matt attacked that man who hurt his daughter, he had talked to Foggy, asking what it meant to do the right thing. If violence could be justified. Then, he went to the church and asked for forgiveness for what he was about to do.
He had planned to stop after that, he really did, but this Cocina Del Infierno was not the one he left. It was changing rapidly, and he knew it was not all for the better. Matt remembered the times on Fogwell's ranch, when his father had explained to him how a man was trying to buy up the land. If Fogwell sold, he would be out of a job.
Here we meet a man, Wilson Fisk. Filthy rich and endlessly ambitious. He had left Cocina Del Infierno to live the high life in Manhattan, had seen those gleaming city skylines and the ritzy glamour of it all and wanted that for his hometown, and he was ready to tear this place down to get it. Normally, the train tracks ended here. When Matt had gotten off, he noticed the way the earth was torn up. They were making more tracks, likely to lead over the border to Mexico and have the passenger train be replaced by imports and exports. For their first night back, they tried to book a room at the inn. The prices were downright ridiculous. Thankfully, Foggy knew the Mahoney family well and Bess Mahoney offered for them to stay at her house for the night in exchange for a cigar and stories of New York. The following day they managed to take up a tiny office space to set up shop. Cocina Del Infierno was a small town, sure, but that didn't mean that there wasn't crime.
Karen Page was new to Cocina Del Infierno, hadn't moved there too long before Foggy and Matt returned. She had pale skin and blonde hair and clearly wasn't from the south, if her accent was anything to go by. She had a job at the bank, a normal social life, enough money to live comfortably and all in all a perfectly average person.
She was accused of murder. The evidence was entirely circumstantial. She was last seen with the victim and found at the scene of the crime with the weapon. There was no motive, no witnesses of what happened that night, and nothing but a knife and a bloody rug to go off of. When Karen was attacked in her jail cell, they managed to get her released but it was clear this wasn't a random attack. She was being targeted, and it wasn't going to stop. They needed to know why. After careful probing, she confessed that she had found evidence of money laundering in the bank files and when they realized she knew, they needed her gone. Then, when she told her coworker, he was next on the hit list. When Karen went out that night, Matt knew she wasn't going to be safe. She explained that she was going back to her home to grab the files and that she had a pistol and wasn't afraid to use it, but Matt couldn't be convinced. So he put on the mask and the costume and followed her in the darkness, hoping the black clothes would do their job in hiding him in the shadows. When she arrived and was ambushed by a man with a knife, Matt jumped in. When the man was down, Matt told her to go to the Sheriff with what she knew.
By the next day, the bank was boarded up and all the newspapers covered the scandal. In the articles, Wilson Fisk, a man who was vital in the running of the bank, was nowhere to be seen, his name voided from the columns of text. Matt didn't think anything of it, not until later. Not until it was too late.