New beginnings
New beginnings were second nature for Rose Parsons. More than that, she loved them. The promise of new adventures, new persons and new mysteries were what she liked the most about her life. She found all of this oh so exciting. She’d never trade that life for anything.
That being said, it had never before involved painting the outside walls of an empty shop deep in New York’s seemingly most dangerous part. She had no idea who came up with a name like Hell’s Kitchen, but she could understand. Between the sadness surrounding her and the suffocating heat, she really could see how fitting the name was.
She climbed another step on her stepladder, checked that everything was still in place, and dipped her paintbrush in the pot of the yellow color she’d spent hours selecting among other yellow shades. No one could ever say that they hadn’t noticed the new shop in the area, at least.
Rose couldn’t wait to be done with that. Painting was clearly the boring part of the job. She made sure to get herself a reward and bought stencils that she thought were the prettiest things ever. She couldn’t wait to use them and make the whole facade come together. She was sure of it, Bees’ Paradise would be the nicest flower shop in all of New York.
The name came to her in a dream a couple weeks back. She’d just bought the place, and she woke up knowing exactly how to name it. The lady she met when she went to get her permit and to register everything under her name seemed to think that she’d be selling honey. Which made sense, for everyone who hadn’t dreamt of that shop.
The door leading to the apartments and offices up Rose’s shop opened, got stuck on her stepladder, and pushed it to the side after a hard hit from the people getting out.
“Careful !” Rose shouted, holding onto the last unpainted part of the wall with one hand, onto the side of the brand new awning with the other, right as her foot was meeting the large pot of yellow paint.
A woman gasped, a man shouted, and Rose finally looked down. Two of her neighbors were now covered in yellow paint. The third one’s suit miraculously survived the incident. That was a nice way to get her neighbors to hate her, Rose thought as she was jumping from the ladder.
“I am so, so, sorry,” she said, putting the pot away. She folded the plastic she’d laid out on the pavement and threw it in the ‘to clean’ box she bought along with everything else. She’d probably made the hardware store’s month when she stopped by to shop. “I’ll pay for the dry cleaner, I swear.” She took a second look at the people in front of her and sighed. “You’re the lawyers from upstairs, right ? Please, don’t sue me. I don’t have any more money. Again, I’m so sorry it happened.”
“Don’t be,” the woman replied with a warm smile. “We shouldn’t have kicked the door when it got stuck,” she added, looking at her friend, the one with the very yellow tainted suit.
He scoffed and kept smiling at his friend. “Everything always gets stuck here, it would’ve been nice if someone warned us that there was a ladder on the other side of the door.”
“Oh, God,” Rose breathed out. “I’ll pay, don’t worry about it. I promise I-”
“Not you,” he laughed, looking at the third man with them. Which to Rose seemed pretty weird since that man, judging by the very obvious cane, was blind. She knew about blind people getting better with their other senses, but maybe not to the point of seeing behind walls. “So you’re the mysterious new buyer, what are you opening ?”
Rose laughed. There was close to nothing mysterious about her, but it was true that so far, she’d only come to work at night because she was busy with paperwork during the day. “Welcome to Bees’ Paradise.”
“Wow, honey,” he replied with a wide smile. “No one ever gifts us honey, that’ll be a-”
His friend cleared his throat and tried to hide a smile. “Flowers, Foggy,” he whispered. “It’s a flower shop.”
Said Foggy smiled at his friend before turning back to Rose. “Excuse him,” he said. “He can’t see the color.”
“What about it ?” Rose immediately asked, looking at his very yellow pants.
“Well it’s… it’s yellow. Like honey.”
“It’s yellow,” she replied. “Like sunflowers.”
“But the bees-”
“Are attracted to flowers,” Rose said, reconsidering the dream she had that other night. “Hopefully it’ll be more obvious when I’m done, but it’s definitely a flower shop,” she added, smiling at the blind man. “How did you know ?”
“Smells like flowers.”
“Oh, that…” Rose looked at her overalls and winced. “Might’ve been me, then. I wanted to cover the scent of the paint. I don’t have any flowers to sell inside, just my own.” And these plants had seen more of the world than most people ever would. One of the advantages of being one of Rose Parson’s plants, probably.
The woman smiled at Foggy. “Flowers are even better,” she said with a smirk. “For when you’ll forget Marci’s birthday, or when you have to apologize for a late night at the office.”
“Flowers it is,” he quickly replied. “I love that name. Bees are great, and I’ll ask for a discount. Do you take payments with pies and all kinds of baked goods ?”
“Anything if you forgive me for, uh… the paint incident ?” Rose replied, pointing at their clothes.
“Already forgotten. I’m Foggy, by the way.”
“Rose. Parsons.” She shook all of their hands, sure to be reminded of their names for as long as the shame would stay in her mind. They seemed pretty nice, as far as lawyers went.
They exchanged a few pleasantries until they really had to go back upstairs to get changed, because they apparently had to meet a client and being almost all yellow wasn’t a very professional look. Rose was immensely grateful that the paint spared their hair and most of their skin. Nothing that couldn’t be erased with some soap.
Rose reminded them to bring her the bill for the dry cleaner and pushed the ladder out of the way the second they were gone. Outside of the employees at the city council and the hardware store, who were forced to talk to her for obvious reasons, these people were the first ones Rose had had an entire conversation with. In a way, they had also been forced to talk to her too, but she didn’t mind as much. They were nice, and she apparently found a client already. With a little luck, she wouldn’t be starving after the big opening.
She went back inside to get another pot of paint and allowed herself a small break. Even with that happy accident, she was still ahead of her schedule and would probably be starting second coating the facade tomorrow, with some help from the heat.
As she was drinking her second glass of iced tea in front of the fan, Rose waved at her neighbors, now walking out with clean clothes.
***
“She’s nice,” Karen said as the cab she called was stopping for someone else. “How did you know it was a flower shop ?”
“She sounded too young to have that many flowers inside and not open a flower shop,” Matt said with a small laugh. “But there’s something about her,” he added, waving at the road. That cab stopped for them.
Foggy held the door for his friends and scoffed. “Something,” he repeated. “That something is called another beautiful woman on Matt Murdock’s radar.” He sat inside, closed the door and sighed. “Have you seen her teeth ? What kind of coverage is that ?” he asked, still missing the insurance he used to have.
Matt simply smiled and asked the driver to get them to the precinct. They’d just met the woman, but he knew for a fact that something wasn’t right about her. He decided to keep to himself that the seemingly panicked woman had a very steady heartbeat the whole time they were with her on that sidewalk. That it didn’t make sense that the ladder was too much on the left from the spot she was painting, and that the paint only fell from the ladder after she screamed at them to be careful. It was less than a second, but he noticed. Not to mention that he found it extremely weird that anyone would ever think of opening a flower shop in Hell’s Kitchen.
Back in the shop, Rose put away her glass and let out a long sigh. New beginnings could be very tiring, and this time also quite expensive. She tidied her overalls, made sure her hair was away from the sweat that would inevitably make an appearance on her forehead, and walked back outside.
***
New beginnings could take multiple forms. For some people, they were about correcting past mistakes.
It was the case for this middle aged woman, entering the high school her daughter went to years ago, when she saw her for the last time. The hallways hadn’t changed much in over 15 years, and the secretary’s office seemed to still be in the same corner.
She walked over to the secretary, who was not the same one from 16 years before, and gave her a nice smile. “Hello,” she said. “I’m very sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if you could help me with a former student of yours, Fleur Penquist. She was a student here 16 years ago, in 2008.”
The secretary politely smiled back at the woman but didn’t try to access anything on the school records. “Can I know why you’re asking ? We can’t deliver information on students to anyone like that.”
“Of course,” the woman replied, already looking into her purse. “She’s my daughter, I have a birth certificate here, and a copy of my ID.” She placed all of her documents on the wooden counter.
The secretary took a look at them. She wasn’t an expert, but it all seemed real to her. Real enough to be searching for Fleur Penquist’s file on the computer records.
With the year of attendance and a name, it wasn’t hard to find her. There was nothing unusual about that girl, other than she missed quite a lot of classes in her last year to go to therapy. That, and the fact that Eva Duchamp’s name was nowhere on the list of contacts related to the girl. “I’m sorry, Madam,” the secretary said. “You’re not on any of the family forms. I only have her father listed here. Edward Penquist, your husband ?”
Eva’s shoulders slumped. “Ex husband,” she corrected. “I didn’t think he’d write me off.” She leaned over the counter. “We had a bit of a situation and I had to leave,” she explained. “This school is the last place where I’ve seen my child, and I really want to find her. Could you at least tell me where she applied for college ?”
The secretary turned her screen off and briefly shook her head. “You should ask her father. Even if I broke the confidentiality of her record here, you’d be facing the same issue at her former college, Madam. You could also try to get a court order to give you access to her file ?”
“Court order,” Eva repeated with a monotonous voice. “Sure, I’ll do that.”
She thanked the secretary for her help, even if it didn’t end up the way she’d hoped, grabbed her documents, and walked away.
It took Eva years to finally build up the courage to go and find her daughter after abandoning her. Fleur was never the reason why she left, and instead of leaving on her own, she should’ve taken her along. She didn’t, and 16 years later she wanted to make things right. Only to be faced with a wall of paperwork. Getting the law involved wouldn’t help, on the contrary.
She sat in the driver’s seat of the car she’d rented. The secretary was right. Trying to find Fleur through school records or official ways was a dead end. Edward probably made sure she could never find her like that again, and chances were he already knew she was looking for their daughter.
Eva wanted to find her child, no matter what. She wanted to hold her daughter in her arms, even if it meant dealing with the man who broke her heart and forced her to leave everything behind. With a new bust of courage, she started the car and drove away from the parking lot that had been fully renovated since the last time she’d parked there.
***
A little over an hour later, the phone on Edward Penquist’s desk rang. He rolled his eyes and let out a long sigh. He hated when people called him while he was trying to sort out all of the problems some other people were causing. Bureaucracy wasn’t his favorite part of the job, that was a fact.
“Penquist,” he said, picking up the phone.
“Mr Penquist, hello,” the woman said on the other end of the line. “I’m calling from the Washington office ?” Was that a question, Edward thought. In his time, he knew how to call people, no matter where on the hierarchy they were. “A woman just came here, asking us to deliver a message to you.”
Was Fleur in trouble already ? She wasn’t anywhere near Washington, what happened ? Edward was already panicking but he was a trained individual. “I’m listening,” he calmly replied.
“Your ex-wife wants to talk to you as soon as possible,” the young woman said. “She left a contact number, she said it’s about your daughter.”
Edward’s heart skipped a beat. Maybe two. It had been years since he’d last heard of Eva. 16, to be exact. She didn’t even show up to the divorce hearing. She had agreed to every single one of his demands, relinquished her parental rights entirely, and only now she wanted to come back into Fleur’s life ? After breaking their family the way she did ?
He knew that it was now worse than a small family matter. Eva went to the Washington office. She was on the East coast, closer to their daughter than she’d ever been before. He had to make her go away. Not forever, but long enough for Fleur to be done where she was.
“Thank you for calling me,” he said, his heart pounding in his chest. “Send me the number she gave you.”
He quickly hung up and opened a confidential file on his computer, letting go of the one he’d been working on for hours. Some people had a whole lot of problems he needed to help with. He was right, thinking that this was all but family matter. He had to call his superiors now, and they wouldn’t be happy with what he was about to tell them.
***
New beginnings could also take the cruelest form when they were forced and no one really asked for them. This was probably the only thing Edward Penquist and Vanessa Fisk had in common. They both knew how hard it was to start over after the loss of the person they loved the most.
Vanessa, sitting in her office, was looking aimlessly at the blank screen of her computer. It had been months since her mob king husband Wilson Fisk had been arrested and bargained for her safety with Daredevil. What he had not thought about however, was that all of Vanessa’s friends would turn their backs on her. None of them believed the lies the press told. They knew her too well to ever believe that she had never done anything related to Wilson Fisk’s business. And if it never changed a thing in their relationships while he was still around and scaring people, now that he was long gone people dared to leave her without giving it a second thought.
Outside of some very loyal friends of Wilson’s, no one was checking up on her anymore. The press wasn’t asking for her either. Things had died down, and she was now left with a fortune, and no one to share it with. That wasn’t the life she’d ever wanted for herself, and she gave everything up for love. Love that was now locked up in one of the best guarded jail in the country, with no hope of ever seeing him again.
A ‘ding’ drew her from her thoughts. Vanessa grabbed her phone and read the text from Wilson’s former lawyer, who was now hers to deal with. He was the closest thing she had from a friend, and he was billing by the half hour.
‘Your friend made it to the East Coast, he’ll help. Wait for contact.’
At least she now knew that it was a ‘he’. The mysterious help Wilson promised her when they were allowed one last goodbye before he left forever. That was it. One of the two things she’d ever have from her husband. A friend, someone to help her make life more bearable even if it meant that others’ had to become less pleasant.
She had tried to reach out, to keep this away and go back to her former life. It had been a dead end, and she realized that her old life was gone. Her only possible move was forward, a new beginning as the wife of Wilson Fisk, while waiting for the very last thing he’d given her. The one good thing that came out of their love for each other.
Vanessa placed a hand on her belly, which was now impossible to conceal, and smiled softly. “We won’t be alone anymore,” she whispered softly. “Daddy’s friend will be here soon.”
***
On the other side of Hell’s Kitchen, Matt Murdock was finding it very hard to focus on that new case. It was easy money, just what they needed before going back to helping the helpless, but very uninteresting. That was the deal he’d made with his best friends and ever since they’d gotten back together, Matt had honored his end of the deal.
And maybe it was because that case was boring, and maybe it was because nothing had really happened ever since Fisk got arrested for good, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d been listening to the shop non stop since they stepped back in the office.
For hours now, he’d been able to tell when she was tired, annoyed, or even angry. She was acting like anyone would, swearing when she was dropping her paintbrush in the paint, sighing when she couldn’t use her phone because of the plastic gloves she was wearing. It all made the incident with the paint earlier in the afternoon all the more out of place.
Not a single heartbeat out of rhythm. The calmest anyone had ever been. Clearly an act, in Matt’s experience, but what a good one. Adapting a tone of voice was much easier than keeping a steady heartbeat. That was his whole thing to know when people were lying, what if he couldn’t use that with her ? And what was she hiding ?
Fisk had been away for months, but Matt was still considering the idea that he’d send someone to take care of some unfinished business. And that someone, as insane as it seemed, could’ve been the woman with the flower shop, who smelled like a flower field and had a calming heartbeat.
Matt sighed and pushed his work away from him, now considering the possibility that Foggy was right and she was simply another woman on his beautiful woman radar. Either way, he’d made up his mind already. Knowing more about Rose Parsons wouldn’t hurt anyone.
For once, he was the last one to leave the office. Marci had forced Foggy to help her with some wedding stuff, and Karen was already working a lead on their new client’s case. He locked the door behind him, but only unfolded his cane when he reached the front door downstairs.
Rose was still there, sitting on the sidewalk, painting the bottom of the facade, under the large window. No matter what, Matt had to admit that she was very committed. “Do you ever rest ?” he asked, standing next to the ladder.
She looked up and let her paintbrush rest on the side of the pot. It fell inside the paint. “Shit,” she mumbled, much to Matt’s amusement. She stood up and sat on the edge of the stepladder. “I’ll rest when I’m done with this,” she scoffed. “I spent all of my money on this place, and I have to start making some very fast if I don’t want to sleep in my car.”
That made a lot of sense, even to Matt. She sounded honest, even if he couldn’t really trust her on how she was sounding, which was quite annoying. “You know,” he said with a smile, “I never thought that Hell’s Kitchen needed flowers.”
“That’s because you can’t see them,” she snapped back before letting out a loud gasp. “I’m so sorry I said that. I didn’t mean to- Oh, God. That came out really wrong, didn’t it ?”
“Payback for walking away paintless earlier, I suppose,” he calmly replied. He was now very confused. Right now, when she realized what she’d said, her heart skipped a few beats, and it was still not back into its usual rhythm. Not that Matt knew anything about the usual rhythm of a heart he’d met on the same day, but this was the usual reaction he expected anyone to have. The paint incident was not. “People usually wait a few years before joking about it, but I’d rather have that than pity.”
“Right,” she mumbled, still very much ashamed of what she’d said. “Anyway, you’ll soon be able to smell them everywhere.”
“I take it you’re not from here,” he scoffed.
“God, no.” She moved away from the ladder and offered him the spot on the step since Matt was getting dangerously close to the fresh paint on the wall. “It was the only place I could afford, but if everything goes according to plan, I won’t grow old here. Not that anyone ever does, judging by what I’ve read about this place.”
“Where are you from ?”
“Pennsylvania. You ?”
“Hell’s Kitchen, born and raised.”
“Sounds awful. Are summers always that hot ?” Matt laughed. She indeed wouldn’t last long around here. “Do you want something to drink ?” Rose asked, already opening the shop’s door. “I haven’t unpacked the coffee machine, but I have loads of iced tea.”
Matt stopped smiling and turned to the shop. “You live here ?”
“Not here, here,” she replied. “There’s an apartment in the back. That’s where I live.”
Matt knew that apartment very well. It was the easiest and most discreet way to get back to the office when he needed to retreat after a long night of work. And now that apartment wasn’t empty anymore, which only made his suspicions about Rose stronger. “Well, it’s late,” he said, forcing himself to smile. “You should get some rest too.”
“Soon,” she said with an honest smile. “You’ll have to trust me on that, but it’s very pretty.”
“Enjoy your night, Ms Parsons,” Matt said, walking away from the shop.
She tried to correct him, to tell him that ‘Rose’ would be enough, but he was already getting into a cab.
***
She patiently waited for him to be safely inside the vehicle to get back to business. It had indeed been a long day, and she didn’t feel like going after the paintbrush that sunk in the depth of the yellow paint pot. Most of the facade was already done anyway, she could very well listen to Matt’s advice and get some rest. And if the heat remained on her side, she wouldn’t sleep well but at least she’d be able to open sooner than anticipated.
The shop was going well, she had everything under control and she’d made contact. Everything was going smoothly, even if she had to say that Matt Murdock was a rather weird man. Also very capable for someone in his condition, since she hadn’t seen him use his cane once to get to the cab. Rose also suspected that he might’ve been a little bit interested in her, but she didn’t really give it a second thought. Her plate was already full, and she had no intention of starting anything with a poor lawyer from the most bizarre place in New York.
She made sure to safely store her stuff in a corner of the shop, ready for her to use the next day, and prayed that no one had the idea of touching her hard work during the night. If anyone did, she swore that she’d find them and destroy their lives. There was no way she’d paint everything all over again.
Rose dropped herself onto the convertible couch she’d found on sale when she moved in. She was now too tired to even convert it into a bed, even though she knew that she’d regret it in the morning. She wasn’t tired enough to go to sleep without a little bit more work, though.
She drew her laptop from under the couch and turned it on. In the middle of multiple command receipts for the flowers she was expected to sell very soon, she found an automatic notification from the online supervisor. Only a formality, but it had to be dealt with. She wasn’t getting those very often, and none of them had ever required a security wall. This time wasn’t the exception.
Some employee from her former high school accessed her file for less than five minutes. The name was unknown to Rose, and that’s what she wrote in her response to the supervisor. That it wasn’t a threat. Actually, it was probably a mistake, just like this time she thought someone was looking for her and wasted everyone’s money on nothing because it was only a simple misclick. She’d never be taken making that mistake again and ever since that incident, she’d never judged any access to her life higher than a 3 on the threat level. There were 10 of them. That was a 2. High school was so long ago, no one would ever have the idea of looking for her there.