under fire

Miles had to go, but Mr. Murdock was cursing.

Swearing.

Damning to hell God and every saint and angel he could imagine in his present state, some of whom, Miles hadn’t even heard of. He’d be lying if he said a bit of his momentum wasn’t kind of lost in the commotion of Wade chasing the guy around the now-lit room, trying to get him to hold his arm still long enough for him to inspect the damage Miles had done to it. Each time Mr. Murdock managed to collect himself enough to allow this was followed swiftly by him tearing the arm away and doing another lap of the place to work through the pain.

Miles felt so bad.

Awful.

He hadn’t meant to do it, really he hadn’t.

“It’s okay,” Little Spidey told him like she actually meant it this time, “He’s sturdy, too.”

Sturdy enough to withstand super-strength?

“It just fucking healed—I just fucking—”

“I know, buddy, gimme. Two seconds, no more than that.”

“MY WEDDING, WADE. Thirty years for this and Imma have a fucking splint for my goddamn wedding.”

“No worries, we’ll tape some carnations to it and you’ll be good as gold. Gimme.”

“Carnations, Wade Wilson? Carnations??? At my wedding?”

“I mean, you want lilacs instead?”

“Yes?? Always? Is this a real fucking question you’re asking me?”

Tats Spidey sighed with his fingers pressed against his temple. If nothing else, he seemed mostly recovered from his ordeal over the last few hours. Some of his more minor scratches were fading right before their eyes.

“Is it broken?” he asked the squabbling two behind him.

“Yes,” Mr. Murdock snapped.

“No,” Wade said, now handling the arm in question gently. Miles felt like shit. Like the floor could open up at any moment and swallow him whole and he’d be grateful. The arm sure as hell didn’t look okay. Mr. Murdock was pretty beefy, but his forearm certainly hadn’t been that swollen before the lights had gone out.

Wade rolled his face in exasperation and wrapped a huge hand around the back of Mr. Murdock’s neck. He shook him firmly, such that even Peter B. and Gwen both cringed a little in sympathy.

“Listen, button,” he instructed. “Listen.”

And Mr. Murdock, surprisingly, shut up and did exactly that. He blinked at Wade for a beat, then down at his arm for another and slowly tilted his head to the side. None of the other team’s Spideys said anything; Tats Spidey had lowered his hands to watch intently.

“Broken?” Wade asked after a long five seconds had passed.

Mr. Murdock dropped his arm and cleared his throat. Everyone else started jeering immediately.

“You fuckin’ drama queen.”

“Matt, really?”

“All that for a bruise, man? Come on.”

While Wade taped an icepack to Mr. Murdock’s arm, Miles told the others that he had to go; he had a hunch that he needed to go investigate. The others were iffy on this. They, Tats Spidey and Peter B. especially, weren’t gung-ho about letting him go crashing into this shit alone.

“I’ll be fine,” he promised them. “I’m just going to go check in on where I last saw him, like in real life. Maybe when I’m there we can talk some more and I can get a better idea of what’s happening to him.”

Gwen decided she didn’t like this plan either.

“That’s dangerous,” she said, “What if it really is a trap, Miles? This could be playing right into whoever’s set it’s hands.”

Yes, but there was no way of knowing that unless they tried.

“I like this one,” Mr. Murdock announced from the bench in front of the gym’s upstairs lockers. Miles was kinda flattered.

“It’ll be fine,” he promised, “If anything happens, I’ll call one of you guys right away.”

“Call us,” Tats Spidey said, “We got more people, or we’ll just loan you Wade for half an hour.”

Wade remembered he was part of this discussion and stopped agitating Mr. Murdock to give Miles a cheerful thumbs-up.

“I gotchu, boo,” he said.

Aw. That was kind of sweet, too.

“Message me,” Gwen said.

“And me,” Peter B. agreed. “We’ll keep an eye out for it and the second we hear from you, we’ll head your way.”

Cool, that was doable. Game plan, set.

“WAIT.”

Peter and Gwen leapt in front of Miles before he could even turn the whole way around. They’d started back towards the little park they’d originally climbed into the verse from but hadn’t even gotten thirty yards back that way before the call rang out. Miles was surprised at the shout, but then even more surprised to see it was Mr. Murdock jogging out to catch up with them with his cane not even touching the ground.

“Don’t go; hold on,” Mr. Murdock barked. “Stay right there. Don’t move.”

Yeah, man. No problem. They weren’t going anywhere now, not with a crazy blind man shouting and flailing at them in public. Mr. Murdock, once satisfied that they weren’t going anywhere, lurched back the opposite direction and took off down the street, double time.

“It’s like a damn circus act in this place,” Peter B. mumbled.

“If he gives you a sword, do not take it,” Gwen told Miles over her shoulder.

“A sword?” he repeated.

Mr. Murdock came jogging back after about ten minutes or so, not with a sword, or a staff or any other ninja-like weapon Gwen had started describing in terrifying detail, but with a dog.

A dog.

He got up to them and groped out for Miles’s had for a second and Miles was too numb with surprise to remember he wasn’t supposed to be taking anything from him. Mr. Murdock dropped the loop of the leash into his palm.

The dog panted happily and leaned up against Mr. Murdock’s leg, even while Miles held this new gift in his hand.

“This is Tuesday,” Mr. Murdock introduced. “She’s my retired guide, but that’s not all she can do. You’re looking for a body; she can help you find it, she used to find me all the time. If you get something of your guy’s, let her smell it and she can help you track him if he’s been moved.”

That was extremely thoughtful, and Peter B. was visibly trying to restrain himself from cooing at this animal, which was a whole new kind of entertaining Miles couldn’t fully appreciate right now.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Tues looked from him to Mr. Murdock and slowly wagged her tail; it looked like the ostrich feathers old Victorian ladies used to wear in their hats.

“Positive. Trust me on this one. All her stuff is in here, I don’t need her for the next day or so, so that should give you plenty of time to go hunting,” Mr. Murdock said.

He held his hand out for Miles’s again and placed in it a pink bag with white polka dots and strawberries on it with the word ‘Tuesday’ written in loopy gold cursive across the front of it. Gwen made a choked off noise in her throat.

Peter B. gave in just an eensy bit to give Tuesday a little pet and she stepped delicately over to his side to lean against his legs and make sad eyes for more.

He  swore.

“He really doesn’t need a dog,” he said without stopping his petting, “We’ve got the Spidey Sense, he can just use that.”

Mr. Murdock squinted at his left ear, then returned his gaze back to Miles.

“Take the dog,” he said. “You got a hunch, right? Well, this is my hunch. I think you’ll need her.”

“I live in a dorm,” Miles told him.

Mr. Murdock huffed at him and remedied this by taking back the leash loop only to deposit squarely and securely in Gwen’s horrified hand. He closed her fingers and gave the top of them a firm pat. She was too shell-shocked to flinch away from his touch.

“Then Friend Gwen will watch her for the time being,” he informed her.

“I can’t—I—what?” Gwen stammered as she stared between him and the dog. Tuesday stopped gazing into Peter’s soul to start gazing into hers.

She wagged her tail.

“She’s very well trained. She’ll find your Peter,” Mr. Murdock promised while Gwen communed with the animal’s spirit. Tues made a soft, cut-off whine and got up to nibble at Gwen’s empty hand.

“Oh my god, I’ve got a dog,” Gwen whispered.

So now they had a dog. And now Gwen and Peter B. were scheming to try to keep the dog forever. And now Miles was wondering if this was maybe some kind of inter-dimensional Spidey kryptonite.

But more importantly, now that they had the dog, they had to figure out what to do with the dog and the dog was more than happy to lay on their feet in Miles’s dorm room while they had this discussion. Ganke walked in on them and only screamed a little bit, to his credit, but then told Miles that in no way, shape, or form were they keeping the dog in the dorm.

After briefly introducing (or maybe re-introducing?) Ganke to Peter B. and Gwen and promising him that Tues was going to be staying with Gwen for the night (although according to Gwen, Tuesday was going to be staying with Gwen for forever), they decided that Miles would send Gwen a message the following evening before he went out on the prowl to pick up Tuesday. Gwen had something to do that night and couldn’t watch Tuesday anyways, so this was fine with her. Peter B. said that he’d be at work when Miles was going out, but to keep him informed if anything happened.

Great.

Perfect.

Team, break. For real this time.

Miles had to practically pry Tuesday out of Gwen’s loving grip a few hours later. Evidently, they’d had a spa session. Tuesday now had a little burst of silk flowers wrapped around her pink collar and Gwen had no less than 200 selfies she needed Miles to look through with her.

Eventually, the dog was re-acquired and eventually, Miles found himself back out on the streets of his own Brooklyn, suited up, with an impeccably groomed, pale retriever at his side. People were taking pictures. There was nothing he could do to stop that.

He had to get up into the city proper but that was made difficult by his flowery kanine companion. Miles  had the feeling she would not like web-swinging. Miles also had the distinct feeling that any attempt to take that wild and friendly ride would result in an ass-beating from Alternate Universe Mr. Murdock, which meant one thing and one thing only.

People were taking so many pictures. Christ. Ain’t no one ever seen Spiderman with a dog before? Damn. It wasn’t even that big of a deal, okay? People took dogs on the train all the time.

“Okay, Tues,” Miles told her once they were back to street level and standing in an alley in Midtown. “We gotta find Peter. Uh. So, find Peter.”

Tuesday swung her plumed tail back and forth and stared soulfully into his mask.

Okay, so that hadn’t worked. How do you command a dog?

He googled it.

“Tuesday,” he tried again, brimming with confidence post-google search, “Seek.”

Nothing.

“Search.”

Wagging.

“Go on, girl. Go find him. Go get him!”

Tuesday did a precious little excited dance for him, but went exactly nowhere.

This wasn’t working.

“Tues—” he started. And then choked because she was off.

Tuesday led him, with his arm barely in the socket, right through Midtown, then took an abrupt turn northwest, which Miles was damn sure was the opposite direction of where he’d last seen Peter. But what the fuck did he know? Mr. Murdock seemed confident about the dog, maybe she was secretly psychic, maybe that was her superpower and Mr. Murdock just didn’t want to say it out loud.

Tuesday took another abrupt left, then dragged Miles down two dead end alleys and back before finally stopping outside an old condominium to stare up mournfully at the sky.

She made her little whining noise and Miles tried to see what she was looking at.

Nothing.

He looked back at her.

This dog was defective. How do you tell someone their dog’s broken?

Tues whined again and backed up a little and started wagging her plume harder than usual. She started making a weird, almost caterwauling sound.

“Hey, girl. What’s the matter? It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” Miles assured her.

She started struggling, pulling hard against the leash and Miles tried to shush her before she could draw attention from the folks milling about outside the mouth of the alley. But she refused. Flat out, hands down refused. She pulled and wriggled and jerked until Miles was worried he was going to choke her if he pulled on the leash any harder.

He didn’t have to worry though. Tues slipped right out of her collar and took off in a sprint down the alley and around the corner.

Holy.

Shit.

He could not lose this fucking dog. He would die.

He took off after her.

He lost sight of her only two more times before she came to a stop in front of a dumpster and started trying to dig at something underneath it. Miles managed to come up behind her and wrangle her still long enough to get the collar back on her, but then she went straight back to her scrabbling afterwards.

Google informed him that this was normal ‘finding’ behavior. He was surprised and looked between the dog and his phone a few times before getting down flat on his belly to see what she was trying to get at. It seemed like it was something for sure under the dumpster, because she kept twisting her head to stick her nose down there, but she couldn’t seem to figure out how to get the rest of the way under.

He scanned the space, but all that he could see was more trash—

Wait.

He had to kind of shove Tues aside to stick his arm under. There was something—he could feel it; seemed kind of hard and metal and—

He pulled it out.

It was a folded up cane.

Tues was so happy. She proudly pulled the cane out of his hand and then trotted off out of the alley, dragging her pretty pink leash after her, and leaving him sitting stupid and alone by the dumpster.

He then realized like a fucking idiot that he’d forgotten to complete Step 1, which was to give her something of Peter’s to smell.

Tues was on the hunt for Mr. Murdock, and Miles only had himself to blame for this turn of events. She was well determined, too. Girl would not be distracted. Not by treats, not by balls, not by pleading. No. She was going to find this man, so help her God.

Miles followed the dog in resignation, figuring that it would be cruel at this point to try to give her a new task without a sense of closure. They went a few blocks at a more or less even pace, with Tues proudly carrying her owner’s double’s discarded cane high, when, just like before, she took off like a shot.

Miles decided that what he really needed here was more legs. He deserved the option of more legs. They seemed directly related to velocity and he was a human spider, goddamnit.

This time, he located Tuesday via a crash and a bevy of sudden swearing in a whole new alley, one a little wider than the earlier ones, although twice as wet. She’d started barking and, would you look at that, she could be loud if she wanted to.

Miles had gotten halfway through the lie he was going to tell his poor, unfortunate Mr. Murdock, when he rounded the corner and found, half-clambered on top of a dumpster lid and alternating between swearing and shushing, Daredevil.

Daredevil, Daredevil. Red suit, red horns, billy clubs. Like, that Daredevil.

Right. So he should have expected that with everything else going on with his life these days.

“Is this your fucking dog?” Daredevil squawked at him, before remembering that oh, shit, right, he had to disguise his voice.

Doubly confirmed.

Lawyer Murdock was definitely freaked-out Daredevil Murdock.

“No,” Miles said flatly.

Tuesday jumped up with her paws against the dumpster and Daredevil scrambled up higher and hissed at her.

Huh.

Interesting.

“Bad dog,” Daredevil snapped at Tues. She barked. He flinched and covered his ears, then repeated himself even louder.

“Tues, down,” Miles ordered. She didn’t hear him through her business and he had to repeat the command a few times before she even paused long enough to look at him. Daredevil grumbled to himself and ducked out from the bottom of the fire-escape he was trying to become one with; he crouched down on the dumpster lid in the start of a jump, and as soon as he’d coiled himself down, Tuesday exploded with such single-minded dedication that he startled back and flattened himself against the wall behind the dumpster again.

“Man, do something about your fucking dog,” he half-pleaded at Miles.

“She’s not my dog,” Miles reiterated.

“Then who’s dog is she?” Daredevil demanded, falling out of his gravel again.

“Some guy’s,” Miles said.

“What guy’s?” Daredevil shot back. Miles watched him. He could have fucked off any moment, but instead he was over here, fumbling through small talk and hiding under a fire escape, as Tues scratched at the dumpster and whined.

“Are you scared of dogs?” he asked.

“No,” Daredevil snapped at him, automatically.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the man without fear?” Miles pointed out.

“I am,” Daredevil snipped again, just as tightly as before.

Miles raised an eyebrow. He said nothing.

“I’m not scared of her,” Daredevil reminded him.

Tuesday whined and jumped on the dumpster and Daredevil nearly fell of the opposite side to get away from her.

“Right,” Miles said.

“I’m not.”

“Dude, she’s just freaking out because she found your cane. Get off of there and let her smell you and she’ll probably chill out.”

You’d have thought he’d murdered a baby right there in the street.

“Cane? What do you mean cane?” Mr. Murdock, professional lawyer, stammered.

God, this was exhausting.

“Can we not do this?” Miles asked with his hands.

“Do what?”

“This. With the lying thing. Just get down here before she wakes up half the neighborhood.”

“I’m not lying,” Daredevil said defensively.

Oh. My. God.

Exhausting.

Was this how Peter B. felt, like, all the time?

“Dude. Seriously. You’re Mr. Murdock. Matt Murdock. Blind lawyer guy. I’ve got stuff to do, like, now, so can you just pet her or something?” Miles sighed.

Silence.

“Who the hell is Matt Murdock?” Daredevil asked.

Oh my god.

Tuesday came over to Miles and pulled at his wrist for human assistance. She tugged him forward a few steps towards Mr. Murdock, who scrambled over to the other side of the dumpster once he figured out what was going on.

“You are,” Miles groaned.

“No, I’m not. I’m Daredevil,” Mr. Murdock said like a fucking moron.

“No, you’re Matt Murdock. And I’m Miles—Morales, remember? We met a few months ago.”

“I’ve never heard either of those names in my life. Wow, good on alliteration though, aren’t they?”

He could not. He just could not.

“Come on, Tues. You did a good job, he’s just dumb,” Miles assured the dog. She’d picked up the cane again and had taken it over to the foot of the dumpster where she could stare mournfully up at the shittier, skinnier, and far less competent version of her owner. Miles gave in and walked over to give her Good Job Rubs before prying the cane out of her mouth with assurances that he would give it over. He stood on his toes and slid the cane as far as he could across the dumpster lid; it bumped up against Daredevil’s boot.

Tues, having now witnessed the goods properly delivered, wagged her plume in accomplishment. She came back over to nibble on Miles’s fingers.

“You’re a good girl,” Miles told her. “And you did a great job. But now, we gotta go find Peter.”

He picked up the end of the leash and started out of the alley. They needed to go up to Queens to get something of Peter’s from his aunt, then they needed to catch yet another train and go back down south to where the warehouse Miles had last seen Peter in was.

He checked for the next train.

“Wait, what do you mean, find Peter?” Daredevil asked, now perched on the very edge of the dumpster, cane in hand.

“I’m looking for Peter Parker,” Miles said, tsking at the time table. He didn’t want to wait 20 mins for a damn train. They had places to be.

He heard boots hit the ground and was vaguely surprised when he turned around to see Mr. Murdock and his weird helmet edging his way very, very carefully around Tuesday closer to Miles.

“Did you—you knew Peter?” he asked.

Wait. Hold up.

“You knew Peter?” Miles asked in response. Mr. Murdock recoiled and tucked his hands, oddly delicately, against his heart, as though the guy’s memory pained him.

That made Miles’s own heart hurt a little bit. His Mr. Murdock was a lot younger than Tats Spidey’s; he seemed like he was only a few years older than Tats Spidey himself, which meant that he and Miles’s Peter would have been around the same age.

Old enough and young enough to have been friends.

“I knew Peter,” Mr. Murdock said softly.

Definitely friends.

“He’s gone, though, what are you doing out here looking for him? You’re the new Spidey, aren’t you?”

Right, he couldn’t see. Peter B. said he used super-senses to get around, so he wouldn’t have been able to tell from the suit.

“Yeah, I am. And I’m not sure he’s as gone as we think he is. I’ve been hearing him in my head; screaming. I talked to him, he said he was being held somewhere as bait for a trap. I want to find him,” he said.

Mr. Murdock dropped his face a little, apparently trying to think this through.

“Peter died,” he repeated. Tuesday seemed to sense his upset, she pulled at her leash and made a little chuffing noise. Miles cautiously let her go and she bustled over to Mr. Murdock who jumped when she brushed against his side.

“She wants you to pet her,” Miles coached. Mr. Murdock tipped his head up at him and warily and slowly lowered hand down to the dog. She shoved her nose in it and he made a noise of disgust.

It was kind of hilarious.

A light flicked on in Miles’s head.

“Hey, you’ve got superpowers, right?” he asked.

Mr. Murdock went rigid.

“No,” he lied.

“Some kind of like, super senses—super smell, super balance, that kind of thing—yeah?”

“What? No, it’s not—I mean, no. I don’t have any of that.”

God, he was back. The exhausting guy. And here Miles had thought they were making progress.

“Can you track people with your nose? Like her—like Tues? You know, like a bloodhound?”

Mr. Murdock pulled his hand away from the dog again. “I’m just a normal person, kid, I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

They were going around in circles.

“Mr. Murdock,” he started.

“I’m not—”

“Mr. Murdock,” he started again. “Seriously. I know who you are. And you know who I am, I know you do. So let’s just get to the chase. I think Peter’s still alive and I think someone’s hurting him and making him suffer a lot. A lot, a lot. He’s your friend, right? If he’s your friend, then help me find him. I know you can, you know his scent, don’t you? You can track him, can’t you?”

Mr. Murdock moved very slowly, thinking. He dropped his hands to his side and Tuesday looked up at him and pressed the back of her head against the left one.

“He’s dead,” Mr. Murdock said quietly.

“He’s not,” Miles told him seriously.

“He’s got to be. I went to his funeral.”

“Do you know his scent?”

“He was in the c-coffin, I remember. He was in it.”

“Mr. Murdock—Matt, do you know his scent?”

Mr. Murdock lifted his head Miles’s direction again and nodded a little.

“I know his scent,” he agreed, “But I would have heard him. I would have—”

“Help me,” Miles said. “Help me find him tonight. If we don’t find him, there’s no harm done, but if we do, we might save his life.”

Mr. Murdock bit his lip and sighed.

“This is crazy,” he told Tuesday. She licked his palm.

He gagged.