Work Text:
Doing the right thing gets you hurt, hurts the people you care about.
The old man and the truck, that made sense. That’s expected. It was Matt’s life or the old man’s. Matt made the calculated decision. Not in the moment of course, in the moment he just did it without thinking, on instinct. He’d done the calculating in Sunday school, and during mass. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies. He’d do it again, he’d do it for anyone, or at least he should.
So, if you decide to die for someone and you die, that’s fair. Except that he didn’t die. And he doesn’t think what happened to him was a fate worse than death, exactly. The blindness was getting off easily. It was the rest of it that…
At first, those first days in the hospital, he genuinely thought he’d gone to hell. That isn’t fair, that isn’t reasonable. There is no universe where Matt could have been expected to account for that.
You’re supposed to do the right thing, that’s the thing, that’s what Matt always believed. The old man and the truck, that wasn’t what taught him his lesson, it was just the first ripple, fitting the larger pattern in hindsight.
Here’s the important part:
Matt Murdock was ten, and he believed in right and wrong, he believed in standing up to bullies, he believed in honesty and truth and doing what was right for the sake of it, no matter what.
Matt Murdock was ten, and he killed his dad.
Matt was ten years old, and his dad left him.
Doing the right thing gets you killed, it kills people, doing the right thing breaks things, hurts people, and the universe punishes you for it.
And then there was Stick.
Then there was fucking Stick.
Stick told him to disregard all that church mumbo jumbo. Stick told him he was a soldier. Stick told him he had only himself to look out for, he was the only one who’d look out for himself.
Matt told Stick that he loved him. It was the wrong answer.
Matt reached out to Stick in kindness. Stick told him he wasn’t good enough, and left.
Matt was supposed to be smart, but he was slow to learn his lesson.
Next there was Elektra. Elektra who told him to be free, Elektra who told him to be himself, Elektra who told him she loved him for all of it.
Elektra brought him the man who had his father killed. Matt nearly killed him, he nearly did, but in the end he didn’t, he couldn’t, he refused to, he did what was right.
That was the one part of him that Elektra could not accept. Elektra was disappointed in him. She left.
So here, finally, is the crux of it. Matt kept doing what was right, and over and over again, the people he cared most for told him he was wrong to. By the time he was an adult, Matt had internalized the idea that morality itself was inherently selfish.
He didn’t ever put it into so many words, of course, he never faced the thought head on, because if he ever had, he would of course have realized it was a deranged thing to think, but it was lodged there, all the same, burned into his soul.
Doing the right thing hurts you, it hurts everyone around you. You’re supposed to do the practical thing, the self interested thing, you’re supposed to be a cog in the machine, supposed to work and make money and not worry about the rest of it. That’s what people expect of you, to do otherwise is selfish. But Matt couldn’t help himself.
Every day he went to work and listened. There was a man who told the truth, and no one listened. There was a man who died slowly, painfully, while no one cared. Matt couldn’t anymore, so he made Nelson and Murdock, even though it was selfish. He left the promise of a job and good career, and he disgraced his father’s memory, because his father always wanted something better for him, wanted Matt to grow up and go to college and never have to worry about not having enough money for heat in the winter. Matt left, and worse, he dragged Foggy down with him. But he did it because he couldn’t not, because he could not turn off his compassion, because couldn’t help himself from being kind, even when he had been taught not to. He did what was right anyway, and the guilt ate him up inside.
Every night he listened to a little girl being abused. Every night he listened to a little girl crying. Every night he listened to a little girl beg for someone to save her. When Matt was ten he read about dissent. He read about choosing not to fall into indifference. When Matt was ten he murdered his father with words and conscience. But Matt couldn’t not stand up. He couldn’t not care. He went out at night and he saved a little girl, and he hated himself for it.
Then Foggy found him in a pool of his blood (because doing the right thing gets you hurt) and Foggy was furious (because doing the right thing hurts the people you care about). And Foggy said he dragged him into Nelson and Murdock. And Matt objected to that, because Foggy had agreed, hadn’t he? He’d wanted to do the right thing, too. But then, his dad had agreed to fight, and that had never made it not Matt’s fault. And Foggy said that Daredevil was something sick, something selfish. And he was right, wasn’t he. It had always been selfish, all of it.
And then Foggy left. The last in a long chain of pattern.
Doing what’s right gets you hurt, it hurts the people you care about. But that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Matt does what’s right anyway. He’s selfish that way.