Nelson & Murdock
Foggy woke up to the sound of the coffee machine coming from his kitchen. The combination of sleepiness and the strangeness of the situation (what kind of robber makes coffee?) meant that he didn’t quite register it as a threat at first. He flashed a look at his clock radio. 3.33am. Tensing, Foggy tiptoed across the room, grabbed his baseball bat from behind his bedroom door and slowly crept up the hallway, the bat raised above his shoulder. As he peeked around the corner, he saw a figure with long straggly hair sitting at the kitchen table. The person was silhouetted against the window, the gibbous moon glowing behind him.
“Foggy, I’ve made you a coffee,” the intruder said, his tone upbeat.
Foggy squinted into the darkness, confused. “M-Matt?”
“I couldn’t remember if you took milk or not, sorry.”
“You’re–you’re sorry about milk?”
Matt took a sip of his own cup and sat back, crossing his legs.
Foggy slowly lowered the bat. “Uh, can I turn on the light?”
Matt gave a shrug. “Your apartment.”
“Oh you noticed, did you?” Foggy flicked on the kitchen light and gave a small, slightly hysterical laugh as he saw Matt for the first time in almost two years. He was tanned and his hair - far from being straggly - was shiny and almost blond from sun exposure. He had a gold ring on one finger, and was wearing an expensive looking suit. He flashed one of his special Matthew Murdock smiles, and most of Foggy’s residual hostility melted away.
“Exciting news, Foggy. I found us a corner office with roof access.”
“For what?”
“For Nelson & Murdock of course.”
Foggy reached for the coffee in an attempt to anchor himself. He breathed on the top a few times, cooling the surface before taking a tentative sip. The entire time, Matt sat there grinning like the Cheshire Cat, seemingly unaware of Foggy’s reaction.
Finally, Foggy put down his coffee and said slowly, “Matt, where have you been?”
“All around the place, Foggy,” Matt chirped. “We spent most of our time on the South Coast of France, but we lived in Northern Spain for a bit – Basque region – absolutely delicious…then there was Athens – also delicious. Then we headed up to Helsinki, then Lausanne – it was getting a bit cold so we headed south to Dunedin - the New Zealand Dunedin, not the Scottish Dunedin. That proved colder than expected so we went to Hobart, Sydney, Ho Chi Minh City, Kunming, Lijiang, uh, then… what was it called…” Matt snapped his fingers a few times, trying to remember the Korean city where he’d eaten the delicious crab.
Foggy cut him off. “That’s not what I meant, Matt, and you know it… I think.” Foggy shook his head. “That kinda explains the spread of copycat Daredevils around the world – I guess you didn’t give that up in your new life… whatever it is.” Foggy looked down at his coffee and said softly, “but really, you disappeared. No communication. Nothing.”
Matt nodded his head. “Yes, Elektra warned me you might be stuck on that.”
Foggy jerked his head up. “Elektra? Is she here too?”
“Mmm, no. She’s in Japan.” He looked wistful for a moment, then changed back to excited Matt. “So, should we have a look at the office?”
“Matt, it’s three in the morning,” Foggy snapped before realizing his error. He rubbed his forehead, “sorry, I guess you can’t tell.”
“There’s almost no traffic on the street. Either it’s midnight or there’s been a plague of some kind.”
“Alright, smarty pants,” Foggy said, adding a muttered, “at least some things haven't changed.” He turned to the cupboard and rustled through the packages until he found a box of cookies. It was something to do while he gathered his thoughts. He offered the packet to Matt, who screwed up his nose and shook his head. Foggy slowly munched his way through a cookie, taking the odd sip of coffee in between bites. After he brushed the remaining crumbs from his pajamas top, he told the silent, waiting, Matt, "you still haven’t explained what happened. Twenty months ago, I saw you in the street and you ran away as if you didn’t even recognize me.”
“I didn’t – I didn’t recognize you.” Matt pulled at his chin in an almost comical manner. “Your name threw me off for a bit. Foggy. I thought you were talking about the weather.”
“So you didn’t remember me?” Foggy’s voice grew smaller, weaker.
“Not at the time. Spot of amnesia. I think I’m mostly caught up now.”
“Caught up?”
“You might have to remind me about the New York penal codes.”
“That’s right. Murdock & Nelson,” Foggy said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Do you remember running off in the middle of Frank Castle’s trial to fight ninjas? Do you remember telling me to close our business?”
“I didn’t say that, Foggy. I never-”
“You might as well have.”
Matt slouched a little and then sat up straight and gave him a toothy smile. “Oh well, water under the bridge. What do you say? Do you want to see this place?”
Come morning, Foggy lay in bed, scared to venture into the living room. If it was a dream… well, that wouldn’t be anything new. On the other hand, if Matt was actually sleeping on his couch, things were about to get even more complex.
In the end, Matt took the decision out of Foggy’s hands. There was a light knocking on the bedroom door and Matt called out, “Foggy? Um, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I told the real estate agent 10am.”
You’ve got some nerve, Murdock, Foggy thought to himself, but instead, he cleared his throat and croaked out a “I’ll be out in a tick. Make some more coffee.” He muttered under his breath a mocking, “make yourself at home.”
Matt replied, “will do.”
Matt chatted excitedly about the office while Foggy silently sipped at his coffee. “It’s ADA compliant, Foggy. There’s a lift, a meeting room, a waiting room, three offices – for future expansion - and a separate kitchen so that the whole office doesn’t smell of burnt coffee.”
Foggy rolled his eyes and silently offered his arm to Matt as a kind of peace symbol. “Okay, let’s go see this place.” Matt looked thrilled, but Foggy quickly added, “this is not me agreeing to the business though, you understand? You can’t just come back after everything that happened and demand things.” Matt just raised his eyebrows and gave Foggy a knowing smile.
At 10am, Matt was tapping impatiently at the lift button on the ground floor of the office building. Foggy looked nervously around the foyer before hissing, “you know the lift’s not going to go faster if you tap the button.”
“I know. I’m just testing the wiring. If we’re going to rent an office on the top floor, I want to know that the lifts are regularly serviced.”
“Right,” Foggy said, unconvinced.
It was only later over pancakes in the diner opposite the proposed office that Foggy tried to continue their 3am conversation. “So, you’ve been travelling with Elektra for what, almost two years. What have you been doing all that time?”
“Oh this and that. We drank a lot of wine, ate a lot of cheese, had a lot of sex and-”
“No! No, I don’t want to know.”
“I was going to say-”
“No!”
“-we took in the sights.”
Foggy rolled his eyes at Matt’s phrasing. “The sights…”
“Yes. The colosseum, the Venus di Milo, Michelangelo’s David, the snowy peaks of Switzerland and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain...” Matt sucked in his breath and reached across the table to Foggy’s wrist. He grinned and said, “we should go on a trip! Just the two of us. I could take you to Lyon. Oh the food! You’d love it.”
“Do you want to go on a trip or start a law firm, Matt?” Foggy said grimly.
Matt looked taken aback at Foggy’s negativity. “They’re not mutually exclusive, Foggy.” He tapped absently on the table. “So, what have you been up to?”
“Mmm… not much. Corporate law. Lots of money-”
“Like you always wanted,” Matt said with a hesitant smile.
“Yeah, like I always wanted,” Foggy said, but his lack of enthusiasm showed. He looked carefully at Matt, still confused by his friend’s surprise reappearance, not to mention his bizarre behavior. “Where-where did you get all the money to travel?”
“Elektra’s trust of course.”
“Of course,” Foggy echoed with a roll of his eyes.
“We also earned it along the way. We were sought after for our skills at rescuing kidnap victims. Not a single fatality,” Matt said proudly. “Not one.” He tapped on the table a few more times and said, “we earned a lot of money doing that - more than I ever earned as a lawyer. Oh, and I also did a bit of pro bono work on the side.”
“Let me guess - as Daredevil, not Matt Murdock attorney-at-law.”
“Mmm, yes.”
“Which means you had to remember Daredevil, which mean that you had to remember me.” Foggy took a sip of his diner coffee that tasted like ashtray and had the texture to match. He grimaced and said, “why didn’t you contact me?”
“I-I thought it was neater this way. Fresh start and so on. Plus, Elektra and I were having fun.”
“You didn’t consider that your friends might have benefited from just a phone call? We didn’t know if you were alive or dead, and after you attacked Danny and Jess and Luke, well, we thought-”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”
“You need to apologize to them.”
Matt’s chipper façade was quickly fading. He sat back and took a sip of coffee before running his finger in circles around the cup’s base, evidently stalling.
Foggy leaned forward and whispered, “so you’re not part of the Hand then?”
“No.”
“Just no? No explanation?”
“Not right now, no.” Matt licked his lips and said, “all you need to know is that as my memories started to come back, it became clearer and clearer that New York was the place I needed to be. I needed to be here… with you.” Head down, Matt thought for a moment, a slight frown on his face. Then he raised his head and pulled his mouth back into a grin. “Can I show you something?” Before Foggy could respond, Matt tossed a wad of cash on the table and pulled Foggy outside. “Come on,” he said impatiently.
“Where are we going?”
Matt pulled him towards a fruit and vegetable stall. “I can smell the ripeness of every single piece of fruit here. I can tell which pesticides were used and which region of the world they were grown. I can also tell you which piece will taste best.” His fingers wiggling, he carefully chose a single pear. “Here, this one. Taste it.”
Foggy stuttered something uninterpretable, and Matt said, “it’s called fruit, Foggy. Your current diet of…” Matt paused theatrically, “pork burrito with extra cheese last night, cheeseburger for lunch, chocolate and pecan muffin for breakfast, and then the previous day it was fried-”
“Yeah, I know, I know,” Foggy said, poking Matt to get him to stop. “Show off,” Foggy muttered, sniffing the pear before hesitantly biting off a chunk. It was perfectly ripe, juicy and sweet, with none of that nasty grain that came with fruit past its prime.
Matt pulled at Foggy’s arm once again, and took off down the street, stopping at a busker. “May I?” Matt asked, throwing a wad of bills into the violin case.
The busker glanced at Matt’s generous donation with wide eyes before handing him the violin. “Go for it,” the busker said with a laugh.
Matt gripped the bow and drew it across the strings, producing an ungodly screech.
Foggy put his hands over his ears and the busker said, “oh man, you deaf as well?”
Matt kept going and within a minute, he was belting out a lyrical tune. Foggy rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help smiling all the same. Matt’s enthusiasm was catching. Matt handed the violin back to the bemused busker and said to Foggy, low and quiet, “I can hear pitches far above and below the normal hearing range of a human. If you ever want to incapacitate me, hit one of those high notes.”
“I wouldn’t-” Foggy started, but Matt shot across the road before he could finish. Alarmed, he called, “Matt, wait!” but Matt wasn’t stopping for anything or anyone. He dashed through the moving traffic like it was a game of Frogger.
Matt was balancing on a narrow railing by the time Foggy crossed the street, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “Matt, get down,” Foggy hissed. “You’re crazy.”
“Nope. Not crazy, Foggy.”
He flipped backwards into a somersault and landed lightly on his feet. He gave a brief twirl of his cane then stood there, leaning against the handle, a broad grin on his face. Foggy looked around frantically, trying to gauge the reaction of potential witnesses, but the no one was paying attention to the one-man show.
Matt said earnestly, “I wasn’t happy, Foggy –I-I know that now. I had to cover up who I was. I had to be someone who I wasn’t just so I didn’t offend people. I’m sick of it - I’m sick of pretending, I’m sick of the guilt, I’m sick of pretending to be conservative. So this is who I am now.” He took a deep breath. “Take it or leave it.” He gave a small nod of his head and waited expectantly for Foggy’s response, suddenly looking quite vulnerable.
“Can I suggest that you never wear a purple suit again?” Foggy said, looking at Matt’s lurid outfit, “er, particularly with a green shirt.”
Matt stood up straight and theatrically tilted his chin up. “Nope.”
Foggy gave a huff of amusement. “There’s no doubting you’re blind then,” Foggy muttered. “I'm probably going to regret this, but-” Foggy stuck out his hand “- to Nelson & Murdock.”