Work Text:
There had been cookies appearing on rooftops all over Hell’s Kitchen. Matt smelled them when he was out on patrol, damn near tripped over them a couple of times. Sometimes there was a glass of milk left out there, still cold, like it’d been set out on the roof late in the evening.
This time, there was a note.
It was written with marker, of all things, which meant that Matt couldn’t read it, but his burner could take pictures, and send them as texts, and read out the texts it received, so this was potentially a problem he could outsource. The question was who to bother with an idle curiosity at two am on a week night. Marci would be awake, he knew, but she would also count it as a favor, and potentially mock him mercilessly depending on what the mystery cookies and note actually were. Karen was definitely asleep, or at least she should be, because she had a job with actual bosses that required her to be at work early in the morning. Foggy was back ( Foggy was back! ) but he was probably asleep too, and Matt didn’t want to bother him with night work, even something as seemingly innocent as mystery cookies.
Claire was back too, Matt realized, and she was working the night shift. He wondered if she was the sort of person who texted at work. He figured that if she was actively saving someone’s life she just wouldn’t answer a text, and she wouldn’t mind being bothered with Matt’s curiosity. It would probably just be a welcome change of pace from him bothering her by bleeding out on her couch.
Actually, Matt hadn’t come anywhere close to bleeding out in almost a year, but from Claire’s perspective it’d only been, what? A couple of months? Matt really had done a disturbingly bad job of taking care of himself back then, it was honestly warranted everyone who’d been been blipped expressed baffled disbelief at the idea that he’d managed to survive for five whole years in their absence.
Matt took a picture of the paper and texted it to Claire, and got an answer back almost immediately. He made sure no one was in normal hearing range and played it.
“Did you mean to send me a black rectangle?” It said.
Oh, right, light. That was important for the whole seeing thing. Matt took the note to the nearest working street lamp, sniffed it to make sure it was right side up, and tried again. There was a longer pause, and then the phone rang.
“Aren’t you at work?” Matt asked
“I’m hiding in a broom closet,” Claire said, “Because you need to hear this, Matt. A little kid wrote you a letter.”
“It’s to me?” Matt asked.
“Yes, it’s written in red marker and it says, “Dear Daredevil,” (The D has these cute little devil horns and the Is are dotted with hearts all the way through) “Thank you for watching over the city. My little sister, who is my big sister now, says that you never stopped being a superhero during the blip, no matter how scary it got, so I wanted to say thank you for taking care of her and Mommy and Daddy and everyone while I was gone. I made you oatmeal raisin cookies, because they’re my favorite. I hope you like them. Tracy from school says that you’re supposed to leave sugar cookies, but those taste boring, and anyway, we don’t have any cookie cutters shaped like devils, just Christmas ones.
If you don’t like oatmeal raisin cookies, please leave a note and I can make you something else.
Love, Sally, Age eight-slash-thirteen.” And there’s a little stick figure of a girl in a pink dress with curly yellow hair and a speech bubble that says “Thank you Daredevil!”. Matt, where did you find this, and were there cookies?”
“There were cookies,” Matt said, a smile curving his lips, “And milk. There’s been cookies popping up all over the place, I wondered what it was about.”
“The city appreciates you, Matt,” Claire said, “No go back and try those cookies, I want to know if they're any good.”
The cookies, as it turned out, were delicious, and he told Claire as much. After patrol, he swung back around to pick up the rest of the cookies, and shared them with Karen and Foggy and Marci, though he made sure to save a couple to give to Claire later. The next night Matt printed out a letter and left it on the building. It read,
“Dear Sally,
Thank you for the cookies. I do like oatmeal raisin cookies, and yours were delicious. I shared them with all my friends and they liked them too. I know it can be scary, coming back from the blip, but all of us who stayed are so happy to have you back.
Love,
Daredevil”