8
It was shameful, really, how much Matt enjoyed jumping off buildings.
He knew no level-headed man should like that swooping feeling in their gut when it’s just them and open air.
Matt’s father took him to Coney Island once, a few months after the chemical spill that cost Matt his eyesight. At the time he had no idea how his dad could afford it — an excursion like that, when they couldn’t even really afford his doctor’s visits — but he forgot to be concerned about the finances after he rode The Cyclone. According to Foggy the coaster wasn’t anything particularly wild compared to other amusement parks, but at the time it was the most exciting thing Matt had ever experienced. His newfound lack of eyesight made it all the more thrilling.
That’s what jumping off buildings felt like for Matt. It was the stomach drop on a roller coaster when the track bobbed up and down, except there was no seatbelt, no track, no car. Just gravity and listening for that change in air movement where a window opened or a ledge jutted into existence.
Matt wasn’t in the business of lying to Jessica, and he told the truth every time he swore to hang up the horned helm. It was safest for Peter, Jessica, and Matt himself if Daredevil stayed buried beneath Midland Circle. But he knew nothing would ever make him feel how The Cyclone felt, how being Daredevil felt. Not exactly.
Staying off the streets had been safe, before an imposter decided to slaughter a dozen civilians on NYC public transit. People were dying, doing it at the hand of someone pretending to be the Devil, and if this was Fisk’s attempt to draw Matt into the light it was working exceptionally well. He couldn’t stand by and let parents lose their children, kids lose their parents, because of him.
The fake Daredevil didn’t expect Jessica to be able to put up such a fight back on the train and their surprise is likely what saved Jessica’s life. Matt had faith in Jessica’s abilities, but if the other guy assaulted his way through an entire subway car before reaching Jessica and Karen’s, he had no reason to leave the two of them alive unless he considered his plan monumentally derailed and chose to retreat and reevaluate.
But retreat to where? Matt only knew he’d been seen on the subway heading toward Hell’s Kitchen. Jessica didn’t see which way he ran and this was supposedly his first public sighting. Matt had very little to go off of.
Luckily he still had Ol’ faithful, his favorite place to loiter when he needed information. It only took a few minutes to swing and hop his way down the road a few blocks, hang a right around the corner, turn just barely onto the next street. The gravel of Matt’s local NYPD precinct crunched beneath his tactical boots as he landed on the roof. He knew from past experience he could camp out on the roof outcrop that faced the back alley and not be spotted, so he crossed his legs on the thin ledge and settled in for some superpowered eavesdropping.
One of Jessica’s stipulations for Matt’s return to duty was that he take it easy. No direct altercations tonight, if he could avoid it. Data gathering and reconnaissance only. Once they knew more about what they were dealing with they’d talk about actually getting out there and kicking ass.
For now, Matt could handle the lack of action. Though the thrill of being Daredevil thrummed steadily in his veins, his newfound responsibility to his family was nestled beside it. Before, Matt had little to lose. Almost no family to leave behind if he fucked up and finally took a punch he couldn’t recover from. Now he had everything to lose, and could acknowledge that jumping in head first would only send his friends into a mental spiral.
And as much as he hated to identify his own faults, Matt knew he was nowhere close to being in his physical prime. Being crushed by a building and taking a year off to recover and raise a son did that to a guy. If he wanted any chance of coming out on top in advanced hand-to-hand combat he needed to go back to the basics. Breath control. Blood pressure regulation. Heart rate checks. He could already tell a difference in the way his muscles stayed fatigued after acrobatic maneuvers when, back when he was going out as Daredevil every night, he hardly broke a sweat unless he was being beaten to a pulp.
Somewhere in the building below a door clicked shut more forcefully than the others. Multiple sets of footsteps, desk chair wheels squealing as people sat down, likely around a table based on the thumps of paper stacks on a hard surface.
“Alright,” an unfamiliar voice said. “I sure hope I don’t need to remind you of what I’m about to say. But we’re dealing with something delicate here. What’s said in this room is not to be repeated unless you’re in a private space and it’s to someone else at this table. This stays sealed. Is that understood?”
A spattering of yes, sir and got it, boss. Someone’s pen clicked. The main speaker cleared their throat. “As you all know, six days ago, Ben Ulrich and his wife and son were killed in their home. No signs of forced entry, but the fire escape window was left open. Neighbors are the ones who called it in after they heard, quote, a child screaming bloody murder. PD arrived on scene to the daughter standing in the middle of the carnage.”
Someone sniffled and muttered, “Jesus.”
“After that she went silent. She’s been in-patient at a pediatric psych facility since then. Before now, all she’s been able to tell us is that a bad man hit her daddy.”
It was scarily easy to imagine Peter in that position. Waking up from a dead sleep to find his parents sprawled out on the floor, glass of the Alias Investigations door busted out and more bullet holes in Jessica’s wall. Matt immediately decided one of the worst parts of being a father was realizing how many bad things could happen to your kid, even without parents who moonlighted as vigilantes. There was only so much preventative action that could be taken before fate hopped the fence and took control of the rest.
“Before now, Captain?”
Matt knew the voice, the swinging but careful cadence. Brett Mahoney, Foggy’s childhood friend and Nelson & Murdock’s previous inside scoop on potential clients. Matt hadn’t known Mahoney was one of the officers to respond to the 9-1-1 call.
“The docs had a breakthrough this morning. Mind-mapped her through the scene again.”
The visual specifics of the crime scene were lost on Matt, but from what he’d picked up on his eavesdropping visit to the station a couple days back, it was gruesome. Blunt force trauma followed by precise, weaponized killing blows, and a bloody mess left behind. It sounded like an ordered kill, but the hitman carrying it out had a bit too much fun with his work. He was an animal playing with his food.
“She said she saw a big man leave through the window.”
“Did she get a look at his face?” Brett asked.
“No. Because she said he was wearing a costume. A red one.”
“Good god,” a new person moaned.
“With horns,” the Captain added.
The table broke out in whispers. The detective clapped twice and everyone fell silent. “I’m sure you’re all caught up on the subway incident.”
“You mean the subway massacre,” an officer said. “All the witnesses say…They say Daredevil did it.”
The captain sighed. It was heavy, raspy. He must have been a smoker. Induced by the stress of the job, perhaps. “Now we’ve got a family slaughtered and a mass casualty event. We can’t call it serial because the attacks are so close together, but the sheer number in such a short amount of time is still a problem. It’s a rampage.”
Something clanged in the alley below Matt’s ledge. The sound jarred him out of the conference room and his focus broke just long enough to make him miss the beginning of an officer’s rebuttal.
“….a warrant for his arrest, right?”
“Sort of hard to put out a warrant on someone with a secret identity. But technically, yes, PD is keeping an eye out. Besides, if the guy can hide out for over a year, jump back onto the scene and murder a bunch of people without getting caught, I doubt the warrant is going to do much.”
“Do we have any definitive proof that it was Daredevil apart from the witness testimony?”
Brett was the first person to bring up Daredevil's potential innocence. Maybe foolishly, considering the crimes committed and the existence of matching witness accounts from different events. Despite that, Matt was thankful. It was nice knowing someone doubted that the Daredevil of before Midland Circle was the same one on that commuter train.
Someone across the room scoffed. “A dozen people saying he whooped their asses in real time isn’t enough for you?”
A hand slapped against the tabletop. “Alright, alright. Cut it out. Detective Jameson, not the time. People are dead. Officer Mahoney, I get it. Witness testimony isn’t always accurate. Most train cars don’t have cameras, and that poor little girl was probably already in shock when she saw what she saw. But there’s a correlation here, and this is too big of an incident to properly handle with our resources. So, with a definitive lack of better options and strict orders from above to step aside, the FBI is coming in and running point from here on out.”
The following uproar was instantaneous. Multiple voices bounced off the drywall and across the densely packed space, voices overlapping enough to muddle Matt’s comprehension of which tone was coming from where.
“Oh, come on!”
“Seriously? Now?”
“This is our neighborhood!”
“Hell’s Kitchen folks were killed on that train, and some no-name Feds want to just take the case?”
Another sound from the alley. Less of a crash and more of a reverberating thud, like someone had thrown something at the precinct’s brick wall.
Matt went intentionally still. Not a flinch, just a settling of his joints and muscles in order to stay as statuesque as possible.
“I get it, I get it! You’re all pissed. So am I. But this isn’t—“
For the first time in a long time, Matt didn’t sense something flying toward him. It thunked against his forehead, impact muffled by the fabric of his mask as it fell into his lap.
A crushed soda can. Someone was down in the alley, and they could see him.
Why hadn’t he noticed them first?
And how did they throw a soda can up three stories?
Jessica was right. Matt was reallyout of practice.
There was someone else down in the alley.
Something much more sense-stimulating came barreling toward him, rubber boot tread bouncing off the side of a dumpster before launching up and onto a fire escape, scaling it at full speed. Even out of shape Matt was faster than the average man — which meant whoever was coming at him was not an average man. They were on him before he’d fully gotten his footing, and it took a careful spin of his heel for Matt to direct their fall toward the roof and not off the ledge.
Matt and the assailant landed together in a heap, stray gravel digging into Matt’s back as he worked to get his knees between him and his attacker. Details flooded in as Matt struggled. His limbs pressed against something tough and scratchy, as if the other guy was wearing body armor. Every time he moved Matt got a whiff of antiseptic. It was the heavy duty stuff you’d find in a hospital, the kind that burned your nose and clung to your clothes.
Matt managed to wedge his legs between their torsos and gave a mighty push, throwing the other guy back and sending him skidding a few feet. He hit the roof with a grunt but was immediately back on his feet. This time Matt was prepared and rose just as fast.
“C’mon,” Matt said, trying his best to emulate the gravely tenor he used to use when he spoke as Daredevil. It came out as more of a low whisper. Habitually tiptoeing around a sleeping baby ruined his tough-guy voice. “I know I’m not a fan favorite right now, but not many people would risk scaling a building and tackling me to prove it.”
The guy lunged. Matt’s spine twinged as he repeatedly twisted, narrowly avoiding a set of rapid fire punches. Just as he dodged the last one the attacker hopped around and over, landing behind him facing the opposite direction and shoving a boot into the small of Matt’s back. Matt fell onto a single knee, using the feigned moment of weakness to lure the other guy closer. Once Matt felt the approach, knew he was an appropriate distance away, he tensed and pushed backward off the roof to flip and deliver a kick to the guy’s exposed nose.
The crunch of bone and cartilage was distinct, but the contact itself was purely shoe to skin. No bounce back, meaning no devil helmet. So whoever this was, he wasn’t in the Daredevil suit.
Matt heard spit hit the roof, smelled the blood mixed in. The attacker took a deep breath. “You used to talk less.”
Peter slept spectacularly well in Matt’s apartment.
Odd, when considering the baby’s sensitivity to his environment and the gargantuan LED billboard outside Matt’s window. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world, babbling nonsensically as he dozed in his Pack n’ Play in the bedroom.
It was Jessica’s first time crashing at Matt’s place, and she couldn’t seem to find a comfortable spot. The living room was too bright, the leather sofa nicely worn but too lumpy for sleeping. The armchair was too stiff for properly curling up.
There was always the bed, with its silk sheets and fluffy pillows. It was probably a very nice bed, considering Matt’s enhancements and sensitivity to certain environments. But Jessica couldn’t work up the nerve to crawl beneath the blankets. It felt too personal.
She almost laughed at herself. Personal. They had a kid together, were raising him together, and she was refusing to sleep in the guy’s bed even when he wasn’t in it.
She justified her own concerns with the fact that Matt didn’t know she was staying over at all. He jumped off that rooftop, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen back in his old stomping grounds, and Jessica couldn’t bring herself to leave. What it something happened? What if he came home injured? Traumatized? He’d need help. Support. Even just another warm body in the loft, someone to make sure he didn’t mentally spiral or pass out on his living room floor. Apparently that was a thing for him.
So she couldn’t stay in his bed, not when he’d probably come home bone tired and confused as to why Jessica wasn’t leaving him the hell alone.
How long had he been gone? Jessica checked the time on her burner phone — the mate to Matt’s, and the only number in his contacts. He’d been gone for more than an hour. How long did these patrols usually last? Tonight was supposed to be recon only. God, it felt like waiting for a bomb to drop. Jessica couldn’t handle any more bombs. She’d had enough explosions to last her a lifetime.
Peter’s whines echoed from somewhere in the apartment, and Jessica softly padded her way from the window she’d been staring out of to Matt’s room.
“Okay buddy, it’s— Peter?”
Jessica’s heart was jackrabbiting beneath her sternum. Peter wasn’t in his crib.
His passifier was out and discarded on the mattress. The mesh on the side of the Pack ‘n Play was ripped, a gaping hole in the side where he must have torn through with that unnatural baby strength and crawled out onto the floor.
Jessica darted around the room, looking behind and under Matt’s sparse furniture. Peter wasn’t in any of the corners, or between the wardrobe and the wall, or under the bed. But he was still crying, and the longer it went on without Jessica being able to see him, the more she felt like throwing up.
“Pete! Peter, where are you buddy?”
She lapped the whole apartment, finding nothing. Where could he have gone? All the windows were shut and locked, none broken. The front door was bolted. She was about to descend into full scale panic when, in one particular spot in the bedroom, the crying got louder. She turned her head each and every way to try and source the noise. There was no nearby furniture, he couldn’t be hiding—
Something wet dripped onto her cheek. She flinched, wiped it slowly away, and then looked up.
There Peter was, Jessica’s infant child, dangling from the ceiling.
“Peter, Jesus Christ!”
He wailed as he hung from only his tiny hands and bare feet, back toward Jessica. She could see tears slipping down his cheeks and dropping to the floor.
Jessica and Matt knew Peter was sticky. He’d been tearing out hair and ripping clothes for months now. But Jessica never would have thought he’d be scale-walls-with-sheer-force-of will-level sticky.
“How about we come down? Yeah, bud? How does that sound? Let’s start a nice slow crawl back to that wall over there.”
Maybe she could jump up and grab him? The height would be easy — most small buildings were jumpable for her — but she couldn’t risk tugging him too hard while he was still sticking and hurting him somehow.
Peter just kept crying. His hands and fingers twitched, like the muscles were growing tired.
“Oh shit. Fucking shit. Hold on, okay? Just…Just give me a second to think.”
Jessica gave him another look, made sure Peter wasn’t at an immediate risk of detaching from the ceiling, and ran back over to the Pack n’ Play. She pushed it across the floor and kicked it into place beneath Peter. A precaution, just in case that, heaven forbid, her aim was off.
She situated herself beside the baby bed, arms upward and outstretched. Curse Matt and his high ceilings.
One of Peter’s feet slipped off the ceiling with a sound like a suction cup popping off a shower wall. The other went soon after. For a split second he dangled just by his hands, and Jessica never, ever, ever wanted to see that look of terror on her son’s face again.
“C’mon buddy, I’m right here, it’s — shit!”
Both hands came loose at once, Peter squealed, and Jessica put a little bit of superpowered juice into her jump to meet him halfway.
The two of them hit the floor gracelessly. The hardwood pounded into her socked heels as she took the impact so Peter wouldn’t be jarred.
Jessica tucked Peter into her chest and wrapped her arms around him, just this side of too tightly. “You little bastard. I cannot handle you, kid. My heart can’t take it. Oh my god.”
Peter hiccupped. Jessica tugged him away slightly to look at him, afraid he was still crying. She was shocked to see a look of sheer glee on his face, smile wide despite tears still drying on his eyelashes. He was laughing. Apparently he liked the descent from the ceiling much more than the climb.
“Oh? Is this how it’s gonna be? You falling from great heights and enjoying it? You’re sick.”
Peter smacked his lips, like he didn’t particularly care about how his mother felt about him performing dangerous stunts before he could even say coherent words.
“Should we call your dad? I feel like we need to call your dad.”
Matt and the assailant circled the rooftop, boot treads crunching gravel as they moved.
Matt smirked. “You’re right. I’m not one for quips. But you’ve earned a special place on my shit list. I’d like a few words.”
The shing of a blade pulling from a sheathe had Matt tensing. He ducked, back arching as he swung his torso to avoid something thin and sharp whizzing through the air. Most flew past, but one caught on the fabric of his athletic shirt and nicked the skin of his shoulder before dropping at his feet. This guy was throwingknives now?
There was little time to contemplate the sting of the cut, the wetness seeping into the fabric over his arm, before more knives came flying with scary accuracy. Only Matt’s bone-deep self preservation instincts kept him from being skewered.
There was a split second between throws, a momentary pause. Just enough time for Matt to push off his toes and throw himself into his opponent. He decided he couldn’t win this with his usual precision and patience; this guy was just as exact as Matt, if not more so. Matt was facing off with an expert marksman wielding aerodynamic blades. Matt had effectively brought fists to a knife fight. Not ideal, considering he wasn’t wearing armor.
As Matt grabbed for his opponent’s lapels and the two of them dropped to the rooftop for a second time, Matt realized the other guy wasn’t wearing armor, either. Just a Kevlar vest. His extremities were exposed.
No devil armor, no straight hand-to-hand combat. Matt was putting up a good fight, but this guy wasn’t fleeing from unexpected pushback like he did with Jessica.
Matt and his friends decided the imposter’s plan was probably to flush him out of hiding. Force Daredevil back onto the streets so Fisk could tie up his loose ends. If this was the guy from the subway, he’d been out patrolling the Kitchen to see if his plan worked and was specifically looking to catch up with Daredevil.
If this wasn’t the guy from the train, if the lack of armor and new weapons were really just marks of a different bad guy, this whole scuffle was a waste of Matt’s time, not to mention an unnecessary breaking of Jessica’s no-combat rule.
That line of thinking brought up even more questions — if this wasn’t the train slaughterer, who was it? What obviously well trained, maybe even enhanced person was loitering around the police precinct looking for trouble? Could scale a three story building? Could go toe to toe with Matt, who’d been pushing himself to his absolute physical limits since he was a child?
Somewhere in his mind’s non-blind eye, Matt located his opponent’s dropped blade several feet behind him, lying discarded and forgotten. If he could just shuffle back a few feet—
A boot came flying toward his face. Matt rolled, holding back a flinch as tiny rocks dug into his injured arm.
“Is this what you do?” Matt asked. “Attack unarmed people? Push and shove and punch until they can’t get back up?”
The man growled and kept coming for him, one hand balled into a fist and the other gripping a new knife he’d pulled from somewhere, something tactical and heavy duty based upon the way air bent around its harsh edges.
The knife came forward and Matt caught the wrist of the guy’s empty hand, shoving him off and to the side and forcing the knife hand to overshoot toward the ground. There was a definitive shifting of bone beneath Matt’s fingers, and it was hard to miss the way the guy grunted as Matt twisted the appendage. He thought back to his and Jessica’s conversation after the train, when Jessica tried to explain away the bruise on her cheek. I walked away with a bruise. He ran away with a broken wrist.
Whoever Matt was fighting, he definitely had a broken wrist. “It’s a trend for you, then. First the train, now this.”
If this guy lied about his involvement with the subway murders, tried to say he was or wasn’t involved when the opposite was true, Matt would know. His heartbeat would betray him like everyone else’s did. So he went with a direct approach, because frankly Matt was tired and annoyed and his arm hurt. He wanted to wrap things up so he could go home. Maybe Jess and Peter were still there. He could try calling her with the burner; though, she might just be pissed because he woke her up for a non-emergency.
Speaking of the burner…Matt subtly felt for his pockets as he fended off another jab with the knife, kicking like a child to keep the man away. It was an oddly effective maneuver. It also gave him a breath’s width of time to note that his pockets felt dangerously empty. The burner, where was the burner?
“God,” Matt’s opponent said, “Do you ever stop moving? Just fucking hold still.”
Matt did not, in fact, hold still. “You know, I figured if Fisk wanted me dead he’d do it himself. I think I’ve interrupted his plans enough to warrant a personal kill.”
Did the burner fall out of his pocket? Could it be back where the other guy originally barreled into him? He’d have to get both him and Jessica new ones, seeing as now neither of their numbers were secure.
“The train was personal,” the guy responded gruffly, each word coming out in a staccato pant.
His unexpected response combined with Matt’s panic about the burner phone opened a window of vulnerability. A hand grasped Matt’s upper bicep, fingers forcing their way to the deep cut at the top still slowly weeping blood. Two digits pressed firmly into the injury and Matt clenched his teeth, barely holding back a shout as his opponent dug around the wound, maximizing pain and damage while he had the chance.
“What better way to kill a man than to force him into the public eye? To, in the eyes of his own people, turn him into the very thing he fought to destroy?”
Matt thrashed but couldn’t break his opponent’s grip. He was flat on his back, the opponent kneeling on each side of Matt’s legs, using body weight and sheer strength to keep Matt on the ground.
“S-senseless killing was never Daredevil’s MO. Anyone paying attention will know something's not right.” Like Brett Mahoney, who defended the Devil to a table of his colleagues.
Matt heard the slide of dry lips on wet teeth as the man holding him down smiled. It was similar to the noise Matt’s own father made as Matt patched him up after particularly brutal nights in the boxing ring. The sound of bloody gums and busted lips and hard won victory. “Oh, they’re paying attention. Most of them are calling for your head on a pike.”
This time Matt couldn’t hold back a groan as even more pressure was put on his wound. At first it wasn’t too bad, could probably have been taken care of with some butterfly bandages and antiseptic. But as he felt skin tear anew and tendons slide under the foreign invasion, he knew he needed to do something before there was any serious damage.
“Better yet, they’ve got a warrant out for your arrest. Who knows? Maybe you’ll end up in the same prison as Mr. Fisk, and he won’t have to recruit someone else to tear you apart piece by piece—“
BzzzzzZZZZZZ
BzzzzzZZZZZZ
Well, Matt thought. Found the burner phone.
Jessica held the burner phone to her ear, bouncing Peter slightly as she paced Matt’s living room. Now that the immediate danger has passed she was trying to work off the adrenaline of seeing her son fucking dangling from the ceiling.
Peter seemed just as riled up; she’d had no luck getting him back to sleep. She’d committed herself to not letting him out of her sight for the rest of the night and planned to sit vigil cross-legged at the end of Matt’s bed, safely atop the covers, where she could have an eye on Pete.
The issue was that every time she thought he might be dozing off and went to put him back in the Pack ‘n Play, he’d give her a pitiful whine and stick to her sweatshirt just enough that she knew it would be a pain to get him to let go.
Eventually she gave up, decided she’d just coax him into multiple naps tomorrow, and worked up the nerve to call Matt. He needed to know about the most recent super-powered-Pete incident, and she was quickly losing the patience to wait until he got home.
She’d called him tons of times. They talked most days, especially when one of them had Pete and the other wanted a wellness update. Why was she so afraid now?
When he didn’t pick up on the first ring, or the second, she thought she might have made a mistake. What if he was busy? Running from the cops? In the middle of a fight?
She shook her head. She was being ridiculous. Matt needed to know what happened. Besides, this was a recon-only night. He should be able to answer the phone.
Matt could not answer the phone.
He felt it ring, rhythmic vibrations weaving their way over the roof, through the rocks and to his hyper-sensitive nerve endings. It was Jessica, it could only be Jessica.
Why would she be calling? What if something was wrong with Peter? With her?
The pressure in Matt’s shoulder lightened slightly, and Matt used his attacker’s distraction to put most of his remaining energy into a forceful, disarming shove. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the phone, not when it was all the way across the roof. He’d have to consider it a lost cause.
There was a brief shuffle behind him, his opponent regaining his footing and trying to sort out what Matt thought may have been a newly cracked clavicle, but Matt didn’t bother checking as he took a few pounding steps and dove over the roof onto the fire escape below, then swung around and down to the dirty floor of the side alley. His pulse thundered through his injured arm as he ran, taking corners too fast and trying not to let an unfamiliar sense of vertigo slow his progress. He couldn’t take the rooftops home — too visible. He’d have to make a new route and double back a time or two to ensure he wasn’t being followed. The precinct was already close to the apartment, meaning he had even more of a chance of screwing up and accidentally allowing the imposter to trail him.
His gut had been right. The knife thrower on the roof was the imposter from the train.
And now he had access to Matt’s burner.
Damn, he really hoped Jessica gave up and stopped calling.
Matt wasn’t answering, so Jessica kept calling.
She’d moved from concern, to annoyance, to growing panic. They had the phones for a reason. For emergencies. Matt would have never intentionally left his behind or neglected to answer it. Which meant he’d either lost it or physically couldn’t get to it.
Peter looked up at Jessica with big eyes as she nervously tapped her foot. “Bah,” he told her as he smacked a hand repeatedly against her arm.
“Yeah, Pete. Bah.”
“Bah. Baaaaaaaah. Bah.”
“Since when do you talk this much, dude? I know you’re a babbler but you’re not usually so persistent.”
“Bah!”
“I get it, Pete—“
The phone against her ear stopped ringing. The line clicked, and someone breathed on the other end. She’d been listening to the ring tone for so long that she thought she might have been hallucinating its abrupt end.
She waited a minute. Listened. Matt didn’t say anything, so she took the initiative. “Hello?”
“Yeah.”
It was abrupt, gruff, mildly breathless. But it was the sort of short handed greeting Jessica expected from Matt, so she allowed the tight ball of tension in her chest to slowly start unravelling. “You asshole. Why didn’t you pick up?”
“Sorry. Busy.”
“Busy? Busy better mean getting the shit beat out of me. Otherwise you should have answered. I was worried.”
A beat of silence. Matt huffed on the other end of the line. “You were worried?” The tone of the question seemed more surprised than inquisitive. Almost as if Matt couldn’t believe he had someone at home thinking about his well-being.
“Of course I was. This baby is a lot of work. He’s half yours, if you up and disappeared on me again I don’t know who would change the weekend diapers.”
Peter flinched in Jessica’s arms when there was a reverberating thud somewhere on the roof above them. Jessica looked up, like if she stared hard enough she’d be able to see Matt stomping his way over to the access door.
“Bah!” Peter hollered.
“Is that you on the roof?” Jessica asked. “I thought you were better at being quiet.”
“Remind me, what roof are you talking about?“
“Seriously, dude? The roof of—“
“Hang up the phone!”
The shout startled Jessica so harshly she almost dropped the phone.
Standing on the landing just inside the rooftop access door, panting and hunched like he’d sprinted to get there, was Matt.
Matt, who was not holding a phone.
Jessica froze as Matt’s boots creaked on the stairwell platform. She must have been holding Peter; Matt heard his tiny breaths being expelled right next to hers. Her other hand, to Matt’s dismay, was holding a phone up to ear. The static from the speaker grated on Matt’s nerves.
Jess’s hair swished as she looked to him, then to the phone, then at him again. Mumbled something that sounded like shit. Threw the phone on the ground and, with no hesitation, stomped her heel into it so harshly that it broke into a dozen pieces of cheap plastic and crushed battery, all of which skittered across the hardwood floor.
Matt’s arm twinged with each step he took down the stairwell. He immediately went for Peter, arms outstretched. Peter met him halfway with a whine and grabby hands and Jessica promptly handed him over. Matt took the baby with his good arm. “Who were you calling?”
“Matt, what—“
“Who were you calling?”
“You, dumbass! Who else would I be calling?”
Worst fears confirmed, the fight drained out of Matt in an instant. He dropped onto the sofa, pulling Peter onto his chest. He winced at the impact of his bruised body on the worn leather. God, he was going to be sore tomorrow. “It wasn’t me.”
“Uh, yeah. I gathered that.” Jessica took a seat on the cushion next to Matt. “How’d you lose the burner?”
“Must have fallen out of my pocket while I was fighting.”
“I thought we agreed, no fighting on your first night out. I know this city is damned and in need of redemption or whatever, but it’s not your job to take down every bad guy you see.”
“I was camped out on top of the police precinct, Jessica. I wasn’t trying to fight anyone.”
The atmosphere shifted as Jessica threw her hands in the air. “Then what happened?”
“He showed up.”
“He? You mean—“
“The imposter from the train. It was him.”
Jessica wasn’t a nervous person by nature; she didn’t need to be, considering the things she’d been through. Plentiful childhood trauma, having super powers and surviving numerous murder attempts either made you paranoid or made you believe you were indestructible, and Matt got the feeling Jessica lived by the latter principle.
But having super strength and a high emotional pain tolerance didn’t make you a god. Matt knew the day her and Karen were attacked on the train shook her up more than she’d care to admit, and hearing that Matt had a run-in with him so soon after the event wouldn’t be good news.
Jessica reached over and brushed down some of the fine hairs on Peter’s head. Based upon the fact that he wasn’t asleep yet, Jessica must have had trouble getting him down. “He…He was in the suit?”
“No.”
“So how do you know it was him?”
“He admitted to it. Though, not in as many words. And he had an injured wrist, just like you said he would. We were right, Jess. This is all Fisk.”
“I still don’t understand why he got Hogarth and I involved. Or Miss Wesley.”
Matt shrugged. He had to bite back a groan. He really needed to stop moving. “A distraction? A backup plan, maybe, so there’d still be someone out looking for me if I didn’t take the train bait? Who knows.”
Hiring Jess and Hogarth through Miss Wesley involved legal counsel, a private investigator, and a distraught family member who thought her son was a victim of Daredevil’s rage. The train incident dragged in the police and forced an arrest warrant. The committing of such a crime against the very neighborhood Matt promised to defend made him a villain in the eyes of his own people. So if nothing else, Fisk’s convoluted plan kept one of his meaty hands in every cookie jar. There was an entire borough of people now ready to hang Daredevil out to dry. In Fisk’s mind, If Matt tried to salvage his legacy and went truly active as the Devil again, there was a good chance he’d either be found by Jessica or the cops.
Or, on a much more violent note, found by the imposter like he was tonight.
“I mentioned Peter,” Jessica said, so gently Matt wasn’t even sure she’d meant to say it aloud.
“Come again?” He asked, incredulous. “You said what?”
“When I was on the phone, I… I got pissed at you for not answering and you asked why I was so worried. I said it was because our son was half yours and I wanted to make sure you actually came home to take care of him.”
It was hard, so hard to push aside his thoughts on Jessica worrying about his well-being. As far as she knew Matt was out having a calm, easy night, but she still worried enough to call.
Not to mention that Matt didn’t expect her to still be at his apartment. Was she waiting up for him?
There were larger issues at hand. He’d revisit his confusion later. “And you didn’t realize you weren’t actually talking to me?”
“I don’t know, I guess not!”
“You guess not?”
“All I heard was heavy breathing and a grumpy tone and figured nothing was amiss. Sue me.”
“This is bad, Jessica.”
“God, I know. I know. I don’t need to be told that."
Matt hugged Peter a little tighter. Peter just banged a fist on Matt’s chest and said, “Bah.”
“The imposter knows Daredevil has a kid,” Matt said.
The imposter also knew the child’s mother was in the picture, and that Daredevil cared about her enough to have a burner phone strictly to talk to her. It wasn’t just Peter at risk. It was Jessica, too. Both facts made Matt equally nauseous.
Jessica sighed. “There’s not much we can do about it tonight. But tomorrow, we need a plan.” Matt felt her inch minutely closer to him over the couch cushion. “Are you hurt?”
Peter’s breathing had slowed. His tiny puffs of air heated the front of Matt’s shirt. His heart rate was steady. Matt didn’t want to move and risk waking him. “I’m fine.”
“That’s not a no.”
“I’ve had much worse, Jess.”
“So you are hurt.”
“I wouldn’t even call it hurt. It’s more of a scratch.” A complete lie. His arm was throbbing.
Matt didn’t need enhanced senses to know Jessica was rolling her eyes. He just felt like she was rolling her eyes at him. “Where is it?”
He nudged his chin toward the shoulder facing her. Jessica leaned in, and Matt tried not to bask in the warmth of her as she pulled the edges of his torn shirt apart.
“Jesus, Matt.”
“If you’re going to be that loud,” Matt whispered, “Grab Pete’s headphones. We can put him in the Pack ‘n Play.”
Jessica got up, rustled through Peter’s diaper bag and came back with his soundproofing earmuffs before retaking her place at Matt’s side. “Actually, we can’t.” Peter wiggled a bit as she gently slid them over his ears, but almost immediately settled once they were in place.
Matt frowned. “Why not?”
“I’ll tell you once you’re patched up. Where’s your first aid kit?”
“C’mon, Jess, seriously?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
Matt couldn’t keep the smirk off his face. “Well, you don’t look like anything—“
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“Fine, fine. Under the sink in the bathroom.”
The two of them spent a good chunk of time sitting in silence as Jessica meticulously cleaned his wound. “What did this?” She asked. “It’s a jagged mess. And it’s already bruising.”
“A throwing knife.”
“This guy throws knives now?”
“Apparently so.”
“Don’t throwing knives need to be super sharp? You know, so they can fly through the air and shit?”
“Yes.”
“So why’s the cut such a mess?”
Jessica tore the seal off a fresh, pre-threaded suture needle. This was always Matt’s least favorite part of the patch-up process. He felt each time the needle punctured his skin, felt the way the thread pulled between cells. “He may or may not have shoved his fingers into it and sort of, uh, wiggled them around.”
“You know what, Matt? I do not envy you. Not one bit. You’re insane, he’s insane, and when you put two insane people together, insane things happen.” Jessica pinched the sides of the wound closed with two gloved fingers. “You ready?”
“Always.”
The tip of the needle punched through. Matt clenched his teeth. “You never told me why we can’t use the Pack n’ Play.”
“Ah. Right.” Jessica finished the first suture loop and moved onto the next. Her concentration halted her words, but once she got into a decent rhythm she continued. “It’s the original reason I called you, actually. Pete busted through the side of the Pack n’ Play.”
Matt felt his face twist into a grimace, not just because of the stitches. “We should have expected that, I guess. The superpowered baby was bound to break the normal baby stuff at some point.”
“The issue is that after he broke the normal baby stuff, he fucked right off and scaled the walls.”
“He what?”
“I found him dangling from the ceiling, Matt. It was terrifying. One second he was asleep in bed and the next he was gone. I look up, and boom. Baby stuck to the ceiling.”
“How— ouch, that smarts— how are we supposed to baby proof the ceiling?”
Jessica sat back, dripping a bit more disinfectant over Matt’s newly sutured cut before drying the surrounding area with gauze and sticking a waterproof bandaid over the top. She snapped her gloves up and off and tossed them onto the coffee table. “We don’t. I think we need to babyproof the baby.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. That can also be a tomorrow problem. You got any duct tape?”
“In the kitchen drawer near the dishwasher. Why?”
“I’m gonna patch up the Pack n’ Play. I’m not going to leave here in the middle of the night so some psycho maniac can snatch Pete on the way home. Now pass me the kid and go shower. You smell.”
By the time Matt got out of the shower, Jessica had done a shoddy tape job on the baby bed and was sitting cross-legged on the end of Matt’s mattress watching Peter sleep. Partly because she was afraid he’d wake up and bust through again, partly because watching him sleep soothed something deep within her.
Even after almost seven months she sometimes looked at her son and couldn’t believe this was her life. She didn’t think she’d ever have kids, whether because of her shit luck with relationships, her own parental grief, or her seemingly endless efforts to destroy herself physically and emotionally, she wasn’t sure. The gap between those childless days and now, watching Peter’s onesie covered in giraffes rise and fall as he snoozed in his bed at his dad’s apartment, seemed so wide. Jessica was still herself, still held her trauma. But now she was Traumatized Jessica With A Baby, and she spent every day trying to make Peter’s world brighter than her own.
Matt walked into the bedroom in only a pair of sweatpants. It put an array of quickly forming bruises on display, littered across his torso and dotting his arms. He roughly scrubbed a towel over his wet hair, then shook out like a dog before tossing the towel in the nearby dirty laundry bin. Jessica would never understand how he did that with such accuracy.
“You gonna try and get some sleep?” Matt asked her.
“Don’t know. I’m afraid if I do we’ll have another baby jail break.”
Matt sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. “I’ll wake up if he does.”
“You’re sure?”
His head swiveled toward her and he offered a small smile. The scruff on his cheeks bent with the lines of it. In the light of the LED billboard outside his window, Matt looked almost other-worldly. Brown-green eyes glowing, shirtless torso divided by lines of muscle. The poorly stitched wound on his arm looked awful — her fault, really — and would likely heal over bumpy to match the rest of his scar collection. She’d never seen someone so pockmarked by pain.
Her gaze was drawn to the long, shiny scar on his stomach. It was the one she noticed the first time she saw him with his shirt off, that day on the couch in her office. It spanned from one side to the other, like someone had done their best to cut him open entirely. But there he was, alive, sitting with her in front of their son’s crib.
“I’m sure,” Matt said. “Unlike the kid, I actually know how to use my abilities.”
Jessica’s hand crept forward. Almost as if she were in a daze, she watched her fingertips connect with that horrible life-taking scar. They ran back and forth over the redness like maybe if she wanted it bad enough, she’d be able to open him up right there and see the man inside. Because there were layers to Matt, beliefs and guilt and hopes and grief all stacked over one blistering soul. Despite spending so much time together recently, Jessica wasn’t sure she’d ever dig her way to the center.
Matt shivered. Jessica was worried he was uncomfortable with her being so close, but he didn’t move away. “You…You can take the bed. I’ll hear him from the living room.”
“No, it’s your apartment. I’ll take the couch.”
Neither of them went for the couch. Matt’s skin stayed warm beneath her touch.
His good arm rose, and he drug careful fingers down from the crease of her elbow, over the soft skin of her forearm, across the top of her hand still resting on his abdomen. The fingers circled to the bottom of her wrist, stopped just above her pulse point and pressed down slightly. She knew he could feel her heartbeat flutter against her will, the push and shove of her blood stirring itself into a frenzy beneath her skin.
“Peter would definitely wake up to this,” Matt said, deathly quiet.
Jessica nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered, “He would.”
His hand fully clasped around her wrist. Not pressing, not tugging, just holding. “So let’s go to bed, hm? Just bed.”
“Just bed,” she repeated. “Right.”
Matt made his way to the head of the mattress. He pulled the covers back, crawled beneath those fucking silk sheets. He was propped up against the pillows. However Matt saw the world without his sight, with sound and space and whatever else, Jessica knew he was using it to look at her. “Let’s go to bed, Jess.”
So she did. Matt didn’t say a word as she took her pants off and dropped them on the floor, then dug her way under the duvet. He didn’t say a word as she turned away from him, back to his chest.
And she didn’t say a word when he shifted closer and dropped one tentative arm over the curve of her waist.
Not a damn word.