in technicolor

Never, in his whole career, had Brett expected to be trying to write a thank you note to the fucking Punisher.

The universe, he was pleased to say, concurred with his assumption and so had prepared him for this moment by making reminding him that all language was constructed and useless at conveying human emotion.

The alphabet was fuzzy. He was pretty sure that there was an ‘a’ at the beginning of it and ‘z’ at the end of it, but that wasn’t helpful given that the letters he was looking for were all spinning off and bumping into each other in the psychedelic dreamscape the right side of his brain was featuring for him.

He decided that maybe a word document wasn’t the right place to start.

Mom’s letter was entirely hand written.

‘Dear Frank Castle,’ it read.

I sincerely believed that you are a terrorist until this very moment. I realize now that I judged you before I knew you and the actions that you took in saving my son’s life have changed my opinion of you. I see now that you are a soldier who has been betrayed by the institution which recruited you and promised you stability. That very institution, and specifically its head members, not only put you repeatedly in danger, but also ultimately resulted in the tragic loss of your own wife and children.

I am sorry that the armed forces have refused to take responsibility for the trauma they have inflicted on you and your family, and while I don’t always agree with your tactics for bringing their misdeeds to light, I have a new respect for what you are trying to do.

Thank you sincerely for saving my son’s life. My debt to you is greater than words can convey.

Elizabeth Mahoney.

Mom had always been eloquent. Graceful. There wasn’t a body in the neighborhood that could argue against her command over the English language.

Brett felt like he was holding a red crayon and piece of brown paper now, though.

What the fuck could he say to compare to that?

Hi, Frank.

Thanks for tearing that fuckhead from the 1^st precinct off me and taking two bullets in the chest when he didn’t get the memo.

My favorite part was when you screamed at him ‘he’s one of yours, you colossal piece of shit.’ My next favorite part was when you said ‘that’s it, I warned you. It’s time for Time Out.’

The way you choked him out for a good twenty seconds in your giant elbow will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Anywho, I owe you one, buddy.

Your fave detective,

Brett

Yeah, no.

It would be better not to say anything at all.

Amos announced that he ‘stanned’ the Punisher that weekend and the whole house furrowed its brows in confusion until Sasha explained for everyone over twenty-five what ‘stanning’ was.

No, she said with endless, aggravated patience, Amos didn’t think Castle’s name was Stanning the Punisher. Amos was saying that he was a fan of the Punisher. God, y’all. Get with it.

Kelly laughed hysterically before strong-arming both Brett and Alicia, Sasha’s mom, into the kitchen with Mom so she could freak out and demand suggestions for how to handle this new development democratically.

Mom said that Amos was allowed to ‘stan’ the Punisher.

“He just saved your brother’s life” she said. “Why shouldn’t he stan?”

“Because the man’s Frank Castle, Mother,” Kelly snapped. “I can’t let him go to school stanning the Punisher.”

“He goes to preschool, relax. Kids stan all sorts of things,” Mom said.

“Can we please stop saying ‘stan?’” Brett asked, horrified somehow that this was more offensive to him than the idea of his nephew metaphysically latching onto the Punisher’s hip.

Frank wouldn’t hurt him.

Right?

Right.

God, how far they had come.

Kelly went out into the living room and took Amos into her lap and explained very firmly that he was allowed to stan Spiderman and the Falcon and Captain America, but he was not allowed to stan the Punisher for grown-up reasons.

Amos didn’t like that. He pointed out that Sasha got to stan whoever she wanted and Sasha told him that only shitty white boys stanned the Punisher.

That led to the words ‘well, then I’m shitty white boy’ being uttered under Bess Mahoney’s roof and that led to a supremely awkward conversation where Amos learned that he was, in fact, never going to be a shitty white boy and that was a-okay.

Saying the word ‘shitty’ however, was not a-okay. That was a grown-up, naughty word and it would never emerge from his mouth in Nana’s home ever again.

Brett needed to escape all this education. He had a letter to write.

Dear Frank,

Thanks for not being overtly racist on top of your terrorism.

Best of luck on your warpath. Please keep it out of HK.

Best,

Brett

Nope, that wasn’t it either.

Matt informed Brett that Frank had the IQ of a drunk guinea pig, so he needed to use small, small words to convey large, large ideas.

The one Matt thought that Brett ought to convey somehow was, ‘I see your stance on the intersection between race and the overuse of force by police and how that negatively impacts even members of the police themselves, and I appreciate that. But you’re still a raging fuckhead and I will end your tyranny in the coming months.’

Brett told him that he should write his own letter.

Matt countered that with telling him that it was bold of him to assume that Matt could write.

Foggy confirmed for Brett after Matt had strode off in triumph that Matt could, in fact, write and that Brett was not being ableist for calling him on that particular line of bullshit.

“But for real,” Foggy said with eyebrows bent so deeply that they made parentheses between them. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Mmmm.

“I’m thinking about quitting my job,” Brett told him, 100% honest.

Foggy’s eyebrows decided that he’d just seen a sojourning alligator tear off the grate on a storm drain and rear its head in the middle of daytime foot traffic.

“I’m—sorry—what?” he stuttered.

Brett shrugged.

“Only takes one bad apple to remind you that it doesn’t even matter if you’re wearing a badge in America if you’re black. You’re still a target to the police,” he said.

Foggy opened and closed his mouth of few times and then creaked out a raspy, “Okay?” like he’d thought that Brett was the kind of brick wall that never thought about these things.

Like, come on, man.

So he went to vocational school instead of college. That didn’t make him thick.

“Have you considered talking to your Captain?” Foggy asked.

“That’s on the list after this letter,” Brett told him matter-of-factly.

“Great,” Foggy wheezed. “You let—you let me know how that goes.”

Oh, he would.

Dear Frank,

Isn’t it kind of fucked up how as an officer, I’m supposed to arrest you for being a fucking terrorist and murdering military leaders when, as a black man in the United States of America, my life is threatened daily by both the police force, who I work for, and the military, who you used to?

Isn’t it kind of fucked up how, as a police officer, I don’t and can’t approve of your methods. But as a black person, it’s really, really satisfying to see someone use their privilege to systematically take down the heads of an institution which lures young people of color in with promises of empowerment without telling them that the reason they feel disempowered to begin with is exactly because of that institution?

Isn’t that fucked up, Frank?

Thanks for saving my life by the way. That was pretty cool of you. You’re still an enigma to me and I’m not sure I’d trust you with someone like Murdock’s life, but I think I’d trust you with my nephew’s. Even more now than I ever thought I would.

The world’s a disaster, Frank. Thanks for the reminder.

Brett.

No, that wasn’t quite it either. But it was way closer.

The Captain said that the 1^st precinct was to issue a formal apology to Brett, specifically, and to officers of color in the city in general and it was almost enough to make Brett laugh.

An apology.

Huh.

Yeah, sure. How kind of them. How benevolent.

“Sir,” he said. “With all due respect: tell them to eat shit and die.”

The Captain winced hard.

“Mahoney,” he said. “They’re trying.”

Haha. No. Fuck that.

“Trying isn’t good enough,” Brett said. “That man nearly killed me. My momma had to listen to that on the 11 o’ clock news, sir. And the only person who stepped up to stop it is a known terrorist. What does that say about this station, huh? This force? This field? You think I trust any of you, now? You think I feel comfortable going out into the world with a single officer here besides Maynard?”

The Captain’s lips were so thin, they were nearly a flat line.

“Brett,” he said. “I hear what you’re saying. And I understand. But—”

No. Fucking. Buts.

None.

Brett didn’t have time for this.

“I have a lot of thinking I need to do right now,” he said. “About my future career in this field. Sir. So if all you’ve got for me are apologies, that’s fine. That makes things clearer on my part.”

There was a long silence that unrolled itself like a heavy shag carpet across the Captain’s desk.

“I see,” the Captain said. “I—I’m—I see.”

Good.

Brett was glad that he did.

“I’m—why don’t you take some time off?” the Captain asked.

Oh, Brett intended to.

“Why don’t we start with a week?” the Captain offered.

Sure. Why not?

Mom told him that he was being dramatic and she was proud of him for it.

She brought out three different albums for him. He knew them well, but he still listened as she paged through them and pointed out aunties and cousins and friends and neighbors who Mom and Dad had protested with over the years.

Mom had never approved of the police job. But she’d seen what Brett had been trying to do. She’d thought that he’d been naïve to think that he could change things from the inside of the system, and in some ways, Brett thought she was right.

In other ways, he thought that working from within the system was just as important and working outside of it.

Mom told him that that sure explained why he got on with the night crew so well and—when she put it like that—it did make a hell of a lot of sense.

Dear Frank,

What brought you to the marines? Was it the money? Did you want power? Did you feel like you didn’t have it in your life? Was it the comfort of having a purpose and a routine? When did everything change for you?

Is it weird to walk into army surplus stores and be besieged by emblems of the power that made you, unmade you, and remade you into the man you are today?

I tell myself I joined the force to change things. To help make the police in Hell’s Kitchen look, talk, and listen more like the community around us. But I think, deep down, I joined for the power.

That’s fucked up, don’t you think, Frank?

It’s like with all those army brats. I joined for the power and, even with my mama standing there next to me with twenty-odd years of activism under her belt, I spent all my time trying not to think about why I wanted that power.

The shit people say in the police academy, Frank. The hazing. The screaming. The slurs. The videos.

They make everything and everyone out to be some hostile force trying to kill you. They make out like your safety is the only thing that matters. And then they have the audacity to suggest that you’re a hero for mowing down a threat, when really, all it feels like is being rewarded for being scared.

I bet you got some of that, Frank. A lot of that, actually.

I tell myself I’m part of the problem, but I tell myself at the same time that if I wasn’t out in the damn coat with the damn badge, that we wouldn’t be finding bodies to bring home to parents and kids and sisters and brothers and all those other people who get caught up in our lives.

I don’t know how to reconcile that kind of work with the racism, man. The incarceration. The fact that more than half the people I grew up with have done jail time for dumbass, petty, little shit crimes that don’t even matter in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t know where the line is, or if there even is a line.

It’s all probably just one mangled-ass piece of fishing line, all wrapped up around itself so that it’s five, six, seven, eight times its original size.

I knew things would be awful. I watched them be awful. I’ve stood by as things were awful.

And it’s gotten to the point where I think I’m feeling a bit like you.

Tired.

Angry.

So fucking angry I could laugh. Do you ever just laugh, Frank?

At the chaos of it all?

Anyways, thanks for saving my life, man. Apparently the only people I can count on out in the field are terrorists.

I mean, that’s what people call the Black Panthers, you know. So I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

Brett

Foggy and Matt were the kind of white dudes that Brett thought the world could use more of.

Were they perfect?

Hell no. One of them was a vigilante with rage issues and the other one spent his time lamenting a healed tongue piercing and engaged in the futile pursuit of an inoffensive grape soda.

They weren’t perfect.

But Matt had learned Spanish to expand the population to whom he could offer his services and Foggy woke up routinely in the middle of the night to go sit in interrogation rooms with young black and Latino men who’s alternative prospects were years upon years in prison for bullshit offenses.

Foggy knew his privilege. Mom liked him because, when they were kids, he’d flipped through her albums and asked loads of questions which might have been offensive if they weren’t coming from the gap-toothed mouth of a seven-year old.

Mom liked Foggy because he was open to learning and one of his favorite things to do was listen to other people talking. It always had been, and it always would be.

Mom liked Matt, on the other hand, because Matt was the son of Jack Murdock who, Brett swore, hand to God, she’d had something of a crush on when he’d been alive and grinding his face into the mats of every boxing ring in New York City.

Kelly told him to get real and look at a picture of Jack Murdock, then to look her in the eye and tell her that people in the Kitchen weren’t at least allowed to dream.

And seeing as Brett couldn’t do that, he had to give some credence to Mom’s claim that she liked Matt because he’d been through so much shit in his life and he came from such a cesspool before that, that he actually, seriously understood what his clients were talking about when they laid out their troubles before him.

Mom told Brett that if shit blew up between him and the station, he was to call one of those two knobheads immediately.

There weren’t many lawyers she trusted—the whole of them charged too much and were self-centered sharks—but she’d half-raised Foggy herself and he feared her wrath just as thoroughly as he feared his own mother’s, so she could be sure that he’d do everything in his power to keep Brett safe.

It was wild to think about how, if Mom could have gone back in the past to her young, pregnant self, she would have whispered to her to make sure that her son was friends with the neighbor’s boy.

That kid would be an important ally for her own in the future.

Wild. Absolutely wild.

But smart.

So fucking smart.

Dear Frank,

I know you hate Matt, but sometimes I wonder if maybe he’s got the right idea about all this justice shit. I mean, it ain’t the same, racism and ableism, but I do wonder if maybe he gets that feeling of always being out of place, even when you’re in the place you made for yourself.

The only other black detective at my station is Maynard.

She asked me yesterday if I’m gonna quit.

She said she’d quit with me in solidarity.

She told me if we’re both out, we can set up a private investigating agency. We could join Jessica Jones in that crusade against bullshit.

The problem is, Frank, that you don’t have the same kind of power as a P.I. And we talked about this before.

The power is why I joined the force to begin with. And I bet that’s why you went into the marines.

But you know who’s figured out power?

Matt fucking Murdock.

The guy’s a two-faced bastard who isn’t good enough for Foggy, don’t you think for a second that I don’t believe that, but you know what?

He’s really figured it out.

He’s gotten himself into power in the daytime and power in the nighttime and any time he starts feeling like he’s lagging in one or the other, he’s got himself covered. He can just lean on the shit he does on the other side of things to give him what he needs to keep going.

I dunno, Frank. You’re only on the one side these days, and I’m only on the other.

You think I should become a vigilante, Frank?

Please say no.

I don’t have the abs for any of y’all’s suits.

Brett

Getting closer each time.

The Captain procured what he called a ‘bullshit apology’ on Brett’s behalf and told him that even he could see that it was not good enough.

The self-awareness was a good new look on him.

He told Brett to take a few more days off.

Amos asked Brett if he had the Punisher’s phone number in his cellphone like he did Spiderman’s.

Brett did not. That was why he was writing a letter.

Amos asked him if Spiderman had the Punisher’s phone number by chance. He wanted to send him a cool picture.

Brett wondered if that might trigger a breakdown for dear, old Mr. Punisher and decided that no, Spiderman did not have the Punisher’s number in his phone, but if Amos left a snack out for Daredevil and maybe a note explaining why he was doing it, then Daredevil might be able to dig up that number for him.

Kelly waited until Amos bumbled off to go tell Mom this before locking Brett in the hall closet. She leaned hard against the door while he did the same on the other side and, through gritted teeth, told him that the last thing they needed was a devil hanging around the damn doorstep.

Brett disagreed.

Recent events had informed him that the last thing they needed hanging around the doorstep was a police officer.

Kelly pulled back from the door and let him fall out and onto his face.

“You’re still an officer, Brett,” she said. “Square the fuck up already. You went in to change things, didn’t you? Now’s the time. You’ve got the leverage.”

Not on this floor, he didn’t.

Amos decided that Daredevil liked goldfish crackers best and nothing would dissuade him from this, so Brett and Kelly hid around the corner of the foyer, watching him rearrange them determinedly around his carefully crafted letter out on the front stoop.

Kelly had big plans to let all that sit out there for two hours until Amos was good and asleep.

Her big plans did not include giving the devil the opportunity to come in close enough to touch any of it Brett felt a particularly petulant urge to text Matt personally and tell him that there was some snacks waiting for him on the porch, but he quashed it.

Matt wouldn’t be happy when the ‘snacks’ were only that and were not coffee-related, and honestly? Brett wasn’t too sure about how he felt about Amos contacting Frank Castle.

It was oddly cathartic to write letters to the man, but it was something else to invite Frank Castle’s voice into his nephew’s head.

That was pushing it.

Not least because Frank sounded like he shoved his head in a trashcan heaving with cigarette smoke for an hour before he left his carefully-selected safe house of the night.

No one in the house was prepared to put Amos to bed and come downstairs to scratching going on outside the front door.

There was a moment of silent jumping heartrates which accompanied the fear that some neo-nazi fuckhead had seen Brett’s name on the news and tracked down his mom’s house to try to commit arson, but another deep breath’s worth of time revealed the noise to be accompanied by quizzical ones.

“There’s no way,” Kelly swore.

Mom was very impressed.

“He must really like goldfish,” she said.

Brett volunteered himself to open the door and doing so revealed Matt flattening Amos’s note against the handrailing, trying to make sense of the crayon letters on it and having a hell of a time.

Brett felt for him in that moment.

Those letters were barely recognizable to the human eye. To the human finger?

Good luck.

Matt didn’t seem too bothered about being caught in the act. In fact, he seemed pleased at Brett’s presence.

“Gift,” he said, holding out the paper expectantly.

Brett purposefully did not look over his shoulder at Mom and Kelly.

“Nephew,” Brett said, taking the paper.

Matt took it back from him, offended.

“Gift,” he said. “For devils, no?”

That was indeed the clearest word on the sheet. He wasn’t wrong there.

“We’re indulging him,” Brett said.

“What does it say?” Matt asked.

“Nothing of import for devils,” Brett said. “Go find a goat somewhere else. The folks two doors down have chickens. You can start there.”

“Why, I never.”

Matt went ramrod straight.

Brett slowly looked over his shoulder this time.

“I’m handling it, Mom,” he said.

“Matthew,” Mom gasped. “What in god’s name’s gotten into you?”

Matt, to his credit, kept his face completely flat. Mom waited and, upon receiving no response, started to enter the Agitated Zone.

“I know you can hear me, son,” she said.

Matt cocked his head like a bird.

“Someone’s calling,” he said. “Consider this conversation on pause.”

He shoved the paper against Brett’s chest until he took it awkwardly and then leapt up onto the railing and from there up to the roof. And then he was gone. The sound of his boots barely followed him for ten seconds.

Brett looked down from the roof into his mother’s eyes.

“Come inside,” she said.

“I cannot believe you didn’t tell me.”

“Can’t believe you didn’t tell her, Brett,” Kelly said.

“Matthew can’t be out there, doing all of these tricks. He’s a nice boy.”

“Such a nice boy,” Kelly said, stabbing accusatory eyes directly into Brett’s gut.

He mugged at her. She mugged back.

“Mom,” he sighed. “It’s not Matt, I told you—”

“I know that boy’s jaw,” Mom snapped. “Don’t you lie to me. There will be no gas-lighting in this house, do you hear me?”

Welp.

Sorry, Matt.

“Matty, you’re such a nice boy,” Mom nearly sobbed. “And this? All these lies? To the whole neighborhood? Jack would never.”

“He’s enhanced, Mom,” Brett said. “He’s not lying to anyone. He really is blind. I thought the same thing, but like—this?” he held up Amos’s now-crumpled paper. “He can’t read this. That’s why he was trying to give it to me.”

He got two frowning stares.

“Matt’s ability to ask for help as DD is a negative four out of a hundred,” he explained. “He just kind of paws at people and looks sad until he gets his way.”

The stares didn’t stop staring.

“He’s not not blind, guys,” he emphasized. “He’s enhanced.”

Mom straightened up a bit and sniffed.

“What kind of enhanced?” she asked.

Oof.

Well.

“Fogs explains it better, but—”

“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?”

Oh shit oh shit oh shit

Sorry, Foggy.

“Franklin knows about this?” Mom demanded. Kelly pressed the tips of her fingers over her mouth in shock.

Uuuuuuh.

Maybe?

Just a—you know--like a lot?

“Where is that phone? Give me my phone.”

“Mom, no,” Brett said. “They can’t know that I told you.”

The fires of hell burned on Mom’s shoulders. Kelly edged away from her and all the heat that she was putting off.

“Why not?” Mom demanded.

“Because we have an understanding,” Brett said, treading carefully. “I don’t out him and he doesn’t make my life more difficult than it already is.”

Mom considered this with what appeared to be a sour taste in her mouth.

“Matthew’s a good man,” she eventually said. “And I don’t understand. But I appreciate what he’s doing for this community. So when he comes back, you bring him inside and we’re gonna talk.”

Ahahahaha.

Sucks to be you, Matt.

Sucks to be you.

“How could you?”

Matt flattened himself against the door and wrinkled his nose like he wanted to hiss. He did not hiss, though. He knew better.

“All this time, Matty. All this time. You could be killed out there,” Mom lectured, shaking Amos’s note as she did.

“I am more than aware,” Matt eventually said.

“Then why?” Mom snapped.

Matt flinched away from the words.

“Because,” he snapped back. “No one else is doing jack and we all deserve better.”

Mom’s sour squint remained, even as she straightened up and lifted her chin.

“Go on,” she said.

Matt twisted his head slightly. His suit was strange to see in yellow, indoor lighting. It lost a lot of its skin-like, threatening gleam. He looked completely out of place.

Matt licked at a crack in the center of his lip.

“I have no reason to defend myself to you,” he said.

“No,” Mom said. “But I am trying to understand. So help me understand.”

Matt was suspicious of that.

Mom held Amos’s note up to him.

“My grandson admires you,” she said. “He thinks you protect this neighborhood and he’s right. But I’ve watched you grow, Matt. From these windows. I know where you come from. You daddy did everything he had to to keep you from doing this. So give me a reason to understand why you’re standing against everything he taught you and all the sacrifices he made. He gave his life for you, Matty. His life.”

Matt’s hackles could not possibly go up any further.

“Mom,” Brett said gently. “This isn’t how to do this.”

Kelly stood up.

“He’s right,” she said. “Matt doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. He—you’ve been doing this for years, haven’t you?”

Those hackles started to settle ever so slightly until, to Brett’s surprise, they just dropped. Matt tipped his face forward and lifted his hands.

He took off the mask.

“You’re right,” he told Mom with his eyes settling over her head. He chuffed.

“You’re right,” he repeated. “He’d have hated it. All of it—Dad, that is. But do you know what me and him could have used the night Roscoe Sweeney took that gun to his head?”

Mom’s chin came down.

“Daredevil,” she said.

“I heard the shot,” Matt said. “When it happened. I heard it and I heard him fall.”

“He was blocks away from your apartment,” Mom said.

Matt huffed another little unhappy laugh.

“Bess, who comes running when folks scream on the other side of Hell’s Kitchen? You think a few blocks is a challenge for me?”

The room was tense.

“So you do it for Jack,” Mom said.

“No,” Matt said. “Well, maybe. At one point. But not anymore. Now, I do it for you. And Amos. And Foggy. And Karen and Kelly and Becky and Brett and everyone and anyone who screams at night and thinks for even half a second that no one cares and no one’s coming. I do it because I was tired, Bess, of feeling that way, all the time. Every day.”

“And you could,” Mom said.

“And I can,” Matt told her.

“How?”

“I’m sure Brett’s told you,” Matt said.

“He hasn’t,” Kelly intervened. “He just said that you’re—”

“Enhanced,” Brett said.

Matt swiveled his face his way and tilted it slightly. Trying to figure out if Brett was lying.

“Enhanced,” he repeated. “That what we call Jessica. That’s not what we call me.”

Brett was actually surprised to hear that.

“Are there other descriptions?” he asked.

“You on duty, detective?” Matt volleyed back.

The pause this time was ugly. Brett let himself relax first.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m sure you heard me talking to Foggy.”

“I did,” Matt said. “If you quit, I’m not talking to a damn soul at the station and no one else will either.”

“You’ll be sure of that?” Brett asked.

Matt let his lower lip hang a little loose. He didn’t answer; instead, he turned back to Mom.

“I lost my sight,” he said abruptly. “Got heightened senses as a consolation prize. You see through light, I take in information—heat, sound, taste, whatever—and from that, I can figure out where things are. I don’t see. I feel. And through feeling, I can know a lot about the world around me and I can figure out how to move through it. While you and everyone else was watching, a ‘behavioral specialist’ hired by St. Agnes’s trained me to be a warrior for his cult and when he left, I kept up the training. When he came back, I told him that he and his cult could go fuck themselves. I fight for me, and I fight for this community. And I respect you, Bess, for what you did for me. I remember the clothes drives and the food drives and the books you found for me. I used to read them to go to sleep—the world was too loud; I needed a distraction.”

“So you do this now? To pay us back?” Mom asked.

“Not back,” Matt said. “Forward. The more people I handle, the fewer end up in police custody. I’m not Spidey. The only people I call the cops on are bastards like Fisk. Rapists. Murderers. It’s not perfect. But these are the options at my disposal. This and standing in court.”

“This is violence, Matthew. This is how your father died,” Mom said.

Matt sucked in a deep breath and sighed.

“I never said it was right,” he said. “I said it’s what I do. And I’ve tried not doing it. But Bess, you know why I can’t stop. People used to know better, but I’m the only one left and I’m just poor, puppy-faced, blind, Matthew.”

Mom closed her eyes and her forehead filled with lines.

“There is no devil in you, Matty,” she said. “That was domestic violence, baby.”

Matt smiled with sharp teeth.

“We all got different words,” he said. “But I’m not here to talk about me.” He leaned forward just enough to wrap his stiff, roped fingers around the top of Amos’s letter. “This is about granting a wish, no? Devil-fairy, at your service. Here to bring ya teeth. How many you want?”

Kelly and Mom failed to appreciate Matt’s humor and a scolding later followed by an actual hissing Matt being yanked back in from bad attempt to escape out the window saw Kelly relenting and reading Amos’s letter out to him.

He went from hostile to curious in an instant.

“This says nothing about teeth,” he told Brett.

“Why would it talk about teeth?” Brett asked.

Matt blinked.

“Tooth? Fairy?” he asked. “Don’t kids lose teeth?”

Oh no, friend. Wrong ballpark entirely.

“I was so ready, I went an’ got a coin and everything.” Matt said sadly to Kelly’s squawk of rapidly concealed laughter.

Mom asked to see the coin and Matt handed her an arcade token. It seemed to do the work in convincing her that he was, in fact, not playing games with the whole blind thing. She asked him what it was and he told her he had a strong feeling it was two quarters stuck together, which made it extra appealing for tooth-fairy purposes.

She looked directly at Brett.

“I never, not once, said any of them were smart,” he clarified.

“I’m very smart,” Matt said. “Summa cum Laude. Is it not a quarter?”

No, Matthew. It was not a quarter.

“Oh. Okay gimme, I’ll go put it back.”

No, no. That was unnecessary.

“Amos just wants to talk to Castle,” Brett said. “But he doesn’t have to. He will live if he doesn’t talk to Castle.”

“A sticky quarter’s better than Frank any day of the week,” Matt pouted. “Take it.”

“Do you have his number or not?” Brett asked. “Just saying: it’s more than okay if you don’t.”

Matt’s lips turned down in a pout.

“I have no numbers,” he said.

Amazing. That was perfect.

“Phone has them.”

Uh?

Okay?

“Lost the phone,” Matt said, sadder than ever.

“You lost your burner?” Brett translated. “Does Foggy know?”

Matt shook his head.

“And you’ve been going out anyways?” Brett asked.

Matt perked up and nodded.

“That’s bad,” Brett told him.

Matt edged away from him.

“I’m finding the phone,” he said. “Once I find the phone, I will have a number for Francis Condemned by Jesus Castle. I will give it to you once I have recovered it.”

…Brett wasn’t holding his breath.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Don’t find the phone for us, though. Find it for you.”

“Ehn.”

“Matt.”

“Ehn.”

“You need it. To call the ambulance, remember?”

Matt weighed this with his head.

“Nope,” he said. “Here, I’ll find Frank for you. That’s easier. Gimme ten—actually, thirty. Give me thirty.”

No, wait—

It was too late.

He was gone.

“I need to sit,” Kelly said.

“I need to pray,” Mom said.

Brett warned the other two that Matt, as Matt Murdock, was extremely focused and punctual, but Matt, as Daredevil, was less than reliable.

“Cross your fingers he finds a cat and gets caught up with that for a minute,” Brett told Mom.

“He’s allergic,” Mom said. “That’s a bad thing.”

Ah.

Right.

“Well, then cross your fingers he runs into Iron Fist and they have to run cult circles around each other again,” Brett said.

The gaze upon him did not lighten up.

“That boy’s gonna die,” Mom said. “Jack, honey. I’m sorry, I tried. Your boy’s more suicidal than my own.”

Oh. Wow.

Thanks, Mom. Just go ahead and say how you really feel why don’t you?

It took 45 minutes for Matt to remember his mission and it was nearly 2 in the morning when he came careening in through the window with a brilliant smile and a re-bloodied lip.

“Found him,” he said. “He says to fuck off and die.”

Mom had been tired, but now she was horrified.

“But!” Matt said brightly. “I brought him the letter and he wrote one back. Here.”

Kelly took the folded piece of binder paper in shock.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Unfriendly neighborhood Devilguy,” Matt said. “But you can call me Red.”

He seemed to sense that he wasn’t doing himself any favors.

“So I have approximately 80 assault charges hanging over me,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you all kept the whole name, sex, location thing under wraps—especially from anyone who looks Fisk-related. Foggy says they ‘hulk,’ but not the green kind. I have no idea what he means, honestly. But that’s what I’ve got, so uh, please and thank you?”

Mom and Kelly just stared.

“I’m going now,” Matt said into the silence. “I told Foggy about this on the way over and he is now threatening to throw me off the office baseball team.”

“Matt,” Brett said.

“Yes, accomplice?” Matt asked him, beaming.

“You’re digging a hole,” Brett told him.

“Ah. Good to know. Good night civilians.”

And once again, he was off.

Mom put a hand to her cheek.

“Jack was a good man,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

“Mom, I think we need to focus on the living,” Kelly said. “Foggy doesn’t deserve this.”

Mom froze.

“Foggy,” she said, devastated.

Dear Amos,

I got your letter. Daredevil gave it to me. I don’t like him and I don’t usually open anything he gives me, but for you, I thought I would make an exception.

You don’t have to thank me for helping out your uncle, Amos. He’s a good guy. I think at one point we were similar people.

I’m sorry that you have to grow up in a world where people hurt folks like your uncle because his skin’s a different color from mine.

I’m sorry that you have to grow up in a place where people don’t look like you and your uncle wherever you go.

I’m just sorry, kid.

I’m part of the people who made the world like that. And I don’t think you should trust me. I’m not a good person.

There are good people out there, though. And I hope that you find some of them and I hope you become best friends and stand up for each other and what’s right.

The world is changing, Amos. And I can tell that its changing, inch by inch, for the better. People are working together inside and outside of all kinds of places to help it along.

I wish the best for you, little guy.

Frank

Kelly put her hand on the back of one of the table’s chairs for support.

“If Frank Castle can be a decent person, then what’s so hard for the rest of the goddamn country?” she asked the ceiling with glossy eyes.

Mom abandoned the letter to wrap her up in a hug. Brett held his breath for a moment, then gave in. He joined the two of them and laid an arm over each of their shoulders.

“So,” Foggy drawled the next morning, refusing for the first time in his and Brett’s adult lives to cross the threshold. “I heard you talked to Matt.”

Mom stared at him with dead eyes.

“In my defense,” Foggy said. “I found out about everything after it had been going on for like, a while, which I realize does not make this situation better, but I just thought you should know about that before bringing down the axe, so to speak.”

“Foggy,” Kelly said. “Why’s he like that?”

“You want the poverty spiel or?” Foggy asked.

Kelly’s dead eyes could rival Mom’s.

“Not like that,” Kelly said. “Like that.”

Foggy’s smiled slipped off his face.

“I honestly have no idea,” he said. “I think it’s like being drunk for him. He just kinda lets his freak flag fly and trust me when I say that containing it is a fulltime job.”

The silence was oppressive.

“So I’ll just be going,” Foggy said. “Byeeeeee.”

“Wait,” Brett said. “Let me get some shoes.”

Matt had collected very little information from Brett the night before but had decided, somehow, to start a rumor that Brett was quitting the force.

Every fucking vigilante in the city was alarmed and up in arms over it.

Foggy had heard about it from Danny who’d heard from Jess who’d heard from the Black Widow who’d heard from Barnes who’d heard from Castle who’d heard from some red-headed idiot that Brett was writing his resignation letter.

Foggy was concerned. He’d come to verify with source himself because Matt was an unreliable narrator of events at the best of times and Foggy knew better than to trust him even as far as he could throw him.

“I’m not quitting,” Brett said. “Not yet, anyways.”

“Not yet?” Foggy asked him. “Yet?”

“Yet,” Brett said. “My Captain is trying. I’m going to wait and see how things change—if they change.”

“And if they don’t?” Foggy asked.

“Then I’ve got a friend who’s willing to dip out with me,” Brett said. “And I guess if or when that happens, we’ll join your side of things.”

Foggy stopped walking.

“Brett. Brett, do you even know how much I have longed for this day?”

“I said not yet,” Brett snapped.

Foggy hurried over and threw an arm around his shoulder.

“Think of it,” he said dramatically. “Nelson, Murdock & Page collaborates with Mahoney, Maynard & Jones to fight for justice in that great-grand little city within a city, Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Foggy,” Brett said.

“Yes, dear?”

“Your theatre kid is showing.”

“Oh shit. Oh fuck. I take it back. Join me in thankless hell. We await your arrival with open, highly desperate, arms. You know—when you’re ready.”

That was much better.