When Matilda Murdock is just a few months old, her mother leaves. She doesn’t have any memory of the slammed doors, the screaming, the tears and the eventual snapping of tensions. She doesn’t remember the quiet relief or being held by her father. She doesn’t remember when Jack, Grace, and Matilda became just Jack and Matilda. Still, the love her father had for her never wavered, her mother’s probably didn’t either. Some love is meant to be held close and some is meant to be kept far away for the safety of everyone involved.
When Matilda is three her father finds a small dance studio offering free lessons, and he signs her up if only to help her get out of the house more. The studio isn’t far from Fogwell’s, so Jack can drop her off just after they have lunch, and pick her up just before dinner at the gym. It’s practical, and Matilda takes to it like a duckling to water, childlike but showing promise for a future of grace and poise. When the studio starts asking for Jack to let her move up into more advanced classes, he picks up a few more fights to cover the cost.
When Matty is nine, her ballet teacher gives her the go-ahead to go en pointe. She’s strong enough, she’s got the posture right, every sign says she is ready. When she goes up, it’s like a fire ignites in her, a passion that she’s never felt before. It threatens to consume her, so she dances. She dances as long as they’ll let her. She dances in the studio, she dances in the apartment, she dances in the gym while Fogwell’s fighters cheer her on. They’re loud in their support, far louder than the usual audience at a recital. She feels like she has purpose burning through her.
Again at nine, Matty feels a burning. Sharp, unreal, she’s laying on the ground. All she can hear are sirens, voices shouting, the chaos around her. A few times she feels someone approach her and she fights them off. It isn’t until she hears her father’s voice that she opens her eyes, looks at his face, and realizes that her sight is fading. She screams, there’s nothing else to do.
Some people say Matt bounces back surprisingly quickly, she disagrees. She hasn’t bounced back at all from her perspective, it’s just that the world doesn’t stop turning because one nine-now-ten-year-old gets hit with radioactive waste and goes blind. Her social worker says she needs to work on her optimism and look at the bright side of things. Her social worker is not that good with words. No, she’ll just keep moving and doing what she can. She’ll just keep dancing. Even when Madame Stick takes over the studio, even when she can hear her dad taking punches to keep food on the table, even when she gets told to stop going en pointe until her eyes heal. She’ll just keep dancing, keep pushing until she hits a breakthrough. Madame Stick says this is how she’ll get stronger.
Madame Stick says a lot of things if Matt’s being honest. Still, what stays with her the most is a promise Stick made, that when she wants something more than she wants air in her lungs. When she wants something so badly it threatens to overtake her entirely. When she wants one thing more than anything else? She can make just one wish, and it will come true. There’s a price, but it will come true. No tricks, no monkey’s paw, just a wish, and a consequence.
She wants something a lot sooner than she thought she would. She’s waiting by the doors to the dance studio when a gunshot rings out in the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. Something in her screams to follow the sound, that this is important. Madame Stick seems to agree, taking her hand roughly to go investigate, like she knows what they’re about to confront. Matt goes where she is taken, and feels like she can taste the blood in the air. Her dad. Her dad on the ground, bleeding. She’s on her knees, begging the universe that this isn’t real. Roughly she turns her head towards Stick, bracing herself on the pavement.
“Please.” she says, “please this is it. The one wish, I’ll take it. Any consequences, I’ll take them.” Is there blood on her hands? Everything is burning. She can’t see it but the world is getting brighter somehow, louder than anything. The pavement is cutting into her skin violently and a scream is ripped from her throat, “Please, more than anything. I want this more than anything, I want my dad to live. I-I wish for my dad to live!” The world reaches a crescendo, she’s screaming just like she was the day she went blind. Through everything around her she hears three things, Stick scoffs and walks away, sirens tear through the streets, and Jack Murdock’s heart beats again.