Foggy’s sitting on the floor of his apartment, back against the couch, when the Kingpin of Crime picks his lock. He’s nursing his third beer, and he doesn’t stand up. He just stares at the door, tired, so tired, and waits for it to open. The Kingpin wants Foggy to hear him, because Foggy knows he can pick the lock silently. He can break in at any time, without Foggy ever knowing.
Perhaps that thought should concern Foggy more than it does.
The door opens and in stumbles Matt Murdock, one arm cradled around a squirming bulge in his blazer. He’s covered head to toe in snow. Foggy stares at him as he calmly hangs his cane on the hook by the door.
“Don’t freak out,” says Matt, which means Foggy’s probably going to freak out.
“What do you have, Matt?”
Matt says nothing.
“Matthew. What’s in the coat.”
“You know, maybe I shouldn’t show you.”
Foggy closes his eyes and tries to remember his breathing exercises.
Matt, because he’s an asshole, asks: “Are you Lamaze breathing?”
Foggy chooses to ignore this comment. “Please don’t tell me you’ve got something alive in there.”
Matt points to the left of Foggy’s head. Clumps of snow fall from his arm to the floor. “You’ve got bad energy,” he says. “You’ll scare him.”
Him?
“Is it a pet?”
“A friend.”
“Did you bring me some sort of--street vermin?”
Matt frowns. “That’s mean.”
The thing in his coat has stopped moving.
“Is it dead?” whispers Foggy. He still doesn’t know what it is but it better not be dead.
“I thought you didn’t want it to be alive?”
“I wanted it to be an inanimate object.”
Matt pats the lump. “Not dead. Just sleeping.”
Matt’s been doing this a lot lately, coming to his apartment unannounced. Sometimes he wants to talk about things Foggy doesn’t like to think about. Things that should make Foggy feel worse than he does.
Foggy remembers being good. Believing he was good. He doesn’t know what he believes, now. It’s difficult to remember.
Sometimes Matt just wants to talk, though, like a normal person. Like they’re two normal people, like they’re back in law school, like there’s not this thing between them, this ugly arrangement that turns every word into currency. Foggy, despite himself, has almost started to like these visits.
Almost. Matt is just so fucking weird.
“Okay,” Foggy says. “Can you show me...him...now?”
“Only if you’ll appreciate him.”
“I will,” Foggy promises, and Matt opens his blazer and holds out his hands and
“I do not appreciate that,” says Foggy, “I do not appreciate that at all.”
It’s a snake. It’s a giant, slimy snake, and it’s looking right at him. Foggy takes a swig of his beer.
“I don’t think he’s sleeping,” Foggy says. “He’s got his eyes open.”
“Well, of course he does,” says Matt, like it’s obvious. “He doesn’t have any eyelids.”
Oh.
Cool.
Awesome.
“Foggy,” Matt says, and woah, the snake is way too close now. “Foggy, hold him. I have to find something to put him in.”
Suddenly the snake, who is definitely not sleeping, is curling around Foggy’s arm while Matt rummages through the cabinets.
“You can’t just put him in a tupperware, Matt. He needs substrate and a heat lamp and--”
Matt grins. “I knew it! I knew you were a reptile person!”
He was, actually, and then he read that article about that guy whose pet python strangled him in his sleep, and decided that snakes should probably be left alone and not domesticated.
Besides, wasn’t there a reason that satan appeared as a snake in the garden? Isn't that a bible thing? Matt was Catholic once. He should really know better.
“Where did you get this thing? What if it’s diseased?”
“First of all, he’s not a thing. His name is Frank. And I rescued him from a very bad man.”
Foggy decides not to mention the fact that people generally regard Matt as a very bad man.
Matt stops suddenly, dropping an clattering armful of tupperware to the floor, and leaps over to the door. He takes his cane off the hook, unsheathes it, and walks over to the window on the wall opposite Foggy.
The window slowly inches open. Foggy watches as a red glove emerges, followed by an arm and eventually a person.
“Matthew Matthew Murdock,” the person, who is dressed in some sort of red bodysuit and also covered in snow, two katanas strapped to his back, says. “Give me back my fucking snake.”
Matt waits until the man is fully inside the apartment, boots on the ground, to move. Foggy blinks and Matt is behind the man, gripping his mask. The man’s face is severely scarred. Matt holds his sword against the man’s neck, pressing lightly. A thin trickle of blood runs down his throat.
And the man giggles.
“A sword? Matthew, you shouldn’t have!”
“You have five seconds to tell me who you are,” Matt says, voice low. “And why you are here. Five.”
“C’mon, Matt, it’s Wade! Deadpool? Merc with a mouth?”
“Four.”
“Wade Wilson,” the man says. “Nelson, you know me.”
Foggy absolutely does not know him.
“Three.”
“You’re not the Matt I thought you were.”
“Two.”
Wade’s hand twitches toward his back. In one fluid, graceful movement, Matt slits his throat and drops him to the floor. “Time’s up.”
“I just mopped, Matt,” Foggy says, frowning, as he watches blood gurgle out of the man’s throat and spread slowly across his nice hardwood floors.
Matt just shrugs and tosses the mask next to the body.
“I can’t,” Foggy says, standing up. Every bone in his body seems to creak; god, he’s getting old. Too old for this. “I’m going—back to bed. Take your snake with you, please.”
“Hmm,” Matt says, head tilted toward the body.
Foggy looks at it. Slowly, in a series of lurching motions, the body sits up.
“Oh, what the fuck,” Foggy says.
“Hmm,” Matt says again.
The body lifts a hand and slaps it against its neck, which has somehow fused back together. The body opens its eyes.
Foggy tries not to scream.
“Ouch,” Wade says, wringing out his mask. He drops it back on the floor. “Yeah, I’m definitely in the wrong universe.”
He stands up and faces Matt.
“Aww, DD, you killed me! That’s so cute.” He laces his fingers under his chin and cocks his head.
Matt grins. “Oh, you’re interesting.”
“That was kind of unfair, though,” Wade says. “I told you why I’m here. That’s my snake.” He points at the snake, which Foggy is unfortunately still holding.
“Evidently you didn’t take very good care of him,” Matt says, taking the snake from Foggy, thank god, “Considering I took him from someone else.”
“Oh, that guy stole him from me,” Wade says, “and he’s somehow an even bigger asshole in this universe than in my own, can you believe it? Shot me in the head eleven times.”
“Your universe?” Foggy asks, and immediately regrets it. He doesn’t want to know.
Wade nods enthusiastically. “Not from here. Canadian. And also different universe-ian.”
“Hmm,” Matt says, for the third time.
“You can’t possibly believe him,” Foggy says.
“He smells weird,” stage-whispers Matt.
“Yeah, maybe because you killed him!”
“Hey, let’s all calm down,” Wade says. “I’d really like to get back to my universe, so I need my snake back. This is me asking nicely. Next I’ll ask not-nicely, which means I’ll kill you.”
Foggy laughs. He’d like to see him try.
“See, he’s really not from here,” Matt says smugly, before hugging the snake to his chest. The snake...snuggles him? What the fuck?
“Finders keepers,” says Wade, taking out his katanas. “I saw him first. You saw him never.”
“Well, that’s not really fair,” Foggy says, before remembering that he doesn’t actually want this snake in his house.
“Are you even allowed to have one?” Wade asks. “Embodiment of satan, and all that?”
“That’s kind of the point,” Matt says.
Wade shakes his head. “Fascinating. And you don’t wear shoes! I love it.”
Matt sniffs and holds out the snake. “Take it back.”
“That was quick,” Wade says, putting his katanas away. “I really thought I’d have to kill you for it.”
“Take it,” Matt repeats. The snake squirms in his hand.
Wade takes it. As soon as it’s in his hands, it starts to shift and change color.
“Started smelling weirder than you,” says Matt. He moves closer to Foggy.
Wade is no longer holding a snake. Wade is holding a person. A teenager, lanky, with long black hair. “Oh, shit,” the teenager says, and there's a flash of green light, and then they’re gone.
“Well, that explains a lot,” Wade says, inexplicably.
Matt hops onto the arm of the couch and waves his sword in the air. “Are you going to do…whatever that was, as well?”
“Nah, I’ll use the door like a normal person.”
Matt nods once and lifts himself off the couch. “You’ll be seeing me, Foggy,” he says darkly, and launches himself out the still-open window.
Great.
“Guess every Matt’s a drama queen,” Wade says.
“So you know him?” Foggy asks. “In your…universe?” He can’t believe he’s entertaining this.
“We’re, like, best friends,” Wade says, grinning.
Foggy squints.
Wade sighs. “Okay, you’re his best friend, obviously.”
“Oh,” Foggy says.
Wade studies him. “So maybe not obviously. You’re different, too, Nelson. It’s kind of depressing.”
Foggy tries to ignore this. He doesn’t want to know who he could’ve been, in a different life. It won’t change the fact that he’s stuck in this one.
He does, however, want to know about someone else. “Could you tell me about your Matt?”
Wade sits down, right in a puddle of his own blood. “Sure.”
Foggy sits down, too, reclaiming his spot against the couch.
“Well, he’s super annoying,” Wade says, gesticulating wildly. “Total goodie-two-shoes. Won’t kill anyone, which is fine, I guess, but then he goes and stops me from doing it! Like, dude, mind your own business.”
Foggy stares at him. His mouth feels dry. “So…so, he’s good?”
“I mean, he’s an asshole,” Wade says. “Really mean. But he’s a superhero, so—”
“A superhero?”
Wade looks at him weirdly. “I knew your universe was different,” he says, “since he killed me and everything. But he’s not a hero here?”
Foggy shakes his head. He’s starting to feel a little sick.
“A bad guy?”
Foggy nods slowly.
“But he was in your apartment,” says Wade.
“Uh-huh.”
“Nelson,” Wade gasps. He holds a gloved hand over his mouth. “Are you a bad guy?”
Foggy sighs. “Is his middle name actually Matthew there, or was that a joke?”
Wade shrugs, puts on his mask, and stands up. “Fuck if I know.”
Foggy closes his eyes and lets his head sink back against the couch cushions. He hears the dull sound of heavy boots against his hardwood floor, and he hears the door open and shut, and he hears a series of concerning noises outside his apartment.
When he finally opens his eyes, there’s a trail of bloody footprints leading to his door. He shakes his head, slowly removes himself from the floor, and walks over to the window.
Foggy stands there for a long time, watching the swirling snow, feeling the cold sting his cheeks, listening to honking cars and echoing sirens. The music of New York, he thinks. Matt could be helping people, he thinks.
I could be helping people, he thinks.
Foggy closes the window.
…
The next morning, his floors are clean. They’re more than clean, really—they’re gleaming, freshly waxed and glossy. Almost spotless.
Almost. There’s a streak of blood, right under the windowsill. It isn’t hard to miss, and the area surrounding it looks perfect. It’s like it was left there on purpose.
Foggy stares at it for a moment as he sips his coffee before work. The coffee tastes sweet, sickening. He pours it down the sink and leaves, letting the door slam shut behind him.
He’s stuck in this life, and he’s tired.