Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Foggy could not represent his best-friend’s dead dad. Besides all the practical reasons he couldn’t do it (see Article: Dead, Section: Conflict of Interest, Subpoint: I may or may not be fucking your son), there was no way in fuck he could represent Matt’s dad without ruining his own life. Well, Matt’s life; ergo, his life.

And he wasn’t even being selfish here.

Okay, maybe he was being a teeny bit selfish, but Foggy had damn well earned his right to be occasionally selfish after the last year of first-aid classes and pro-bono work and generally being a saint to the city’s vigilantes. The Vigilante God, whoever the fuck that masked menace was, owed him one for keeping his wayward children out of jail for extended periods of time.

So, yes, maybe a bit selfish, but the most important thing here was that there was no way in fuck that Foggy could take (and more importantly, win) this case without smashing Matt’s trust. And he’d incriminate the fuck out of himself if he had to explain to a judge how he knew the reason Matt’s dad was of special interest to SHIELD or the feds.

Oh, the ethics.

Oh, the perjury.

Oh, the disastrous potential identity reveal and life-ruining consequences for his best friend/partner.

“I know I said I was up for anything--” he told Hogarth carefully, trying to surreptitiously slide the files back onto her desk.

She slapped a hand on them and pushed them back towards him.

“Mr. Nelson, you are one of the best lawyers on staff, and I am seriously considering the pros and cons of a potential partnership here,” she told him, staring up at him without moving her face or hand. Somehow, the files continued to dig into the meat of his palm.

“--but it turns out,” he valiantly carried on, “I am actually and suddenly extremely busy with the impending destruction Jessica will cause in approximately twenty minutes, which will have nothing to do with me or any favors or bribes or anything like that—”

“I trust you, Nelson.”

“And really, I don’t have much experience representing anyone to the Feds and I’d truly, honestly rather eat my own fist than get involved with anything SHIELD has so much as looked at—”

“I trust you, Nelson.”

“—Not to mention that it seems to me that there is a potential conflict of interest in one of these cases, given my, uh, current personal relationship with the client’s—”

“You would let your partner’s father rot in federal custody as a quaint science experiment, Nelson? You’d be complicit in allowing an innocent man—four innocent men and women--raised from the grave by some sadistic shithead’s terrible decisions, be exploited by not one, but two highly suspect agencies who would, no doubt, use their bodies for, if not military, then political gain?”

The files dug into his palm. If he hadn’t interrogated Jessica on the topic already, he’d be damn sure that Hogarth was some kind of telepath who could move things with her mind. He tried to meet her with the same level of determination, but it was like a mouse having a staring contest with a lion. It didn’t matter what he said, he was about to get eaten. He needed a new tactic.

“Jeri, I can’t. I’m mixed up enough in this shit, if they found out—”

“That you seem to know every vigilante in New York? That you spend your free time canoodling with Daredevil? Don’t give me that look, I’m not an idiot, Franklin. Murdock’s charm doesn’t work on me. There’s only so many times a blind man can show up to your cute little lunch dates looking like a train wreck before someone starts putting the pieces together. I know you two are up to something, and I have a pretty good idea of what that something is, but I am willing to overlook that because these people need representation. Good representation. From someone who knows who they are and why they’ve been targeted. You see anyone else in this firm, hell, in the city, who can do that?”

Foggy swallowed.

“I already botched Castle’s trial. And Matt—there is an obvious conflict of interest here. The others, I can try. I’m willing to try, but I don’t know where to even start to navigate this. What if they don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?” Hogarth pressed. Foggy reeled it in, kept his face blank and his voice steady.

“Don’t know about their loved ones’ tendencies to go out and smash faces at night?”

“And you do?”

He couldn’t answer that. Damn her. Wasn’t Foggy backed up into enough corners right now?

He didn’t say anything. She took her hand off the folders; the pressure on his palm let up.

“Your silence is telling; don’t do that in court. These people don’t know what you know, Franklin. Your job is simply to uphold their rights according to municipal and federal law. They may no longer be officially living, but they are still humans. They are not things for the city or the feds or even SHIELD to play with. They deserve to have their rights upheld and Martha is a dear friend; she wouldn’t ask me to get involved if she didn’t think that they had a good chance.” Hogarth stared at him over steepled fingers, “Focus on that. You’re not the client here, you don’t have to tell them anything impertinent to their case.”

Foggy could barely hear her over his heartbeat.

“You’re asking me to lie—”

“Omit,” she corrected.

“To my clients and my friends.”

“I’m not asking you to lie,” Hogarth told him, “I’m asking you to take these cases and to provide information to all involved parties on a need-to-know basis.”

He swallowed.

“You’re asking me to withhold information which could affect these people’s decisions.”

He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her, so she’d understand. He’d been there. He’d been on the other side of that shit; where you wake up one morning thinking you know who you can trust, only to have that cute little delusion smashed in front of you like an exploded lightbulb. All those decisions, all the choices you thought you could make, the ones you thought you were safe in making, gone in an instant of awareness.

“I won’t withhold information from my clients,” he said.

Hogarth was quiet, then she dropped her fingers and stood up.

“If it’s too much for you, I’ll give them to Richards,” she said.

Foggy’s back crawled. Richards won his last case purely because his client was in the legal profession. He wore backwards baseball caps on Fridays. He thought Axe smelled good. This was Matt’s dad they were talking about; Battlin’ Jack deserved a better lawyer than a fucking Yankees fan with an obsession with antique shoe-shining equipment. It might not be Foggy, but it had to be at least someone of his caliber.

“Richards is incompetent,” Foggy snapped.

“He hasn’t lost a case since he’s been here.”

“Pure luck. He legitimately likes the Yankees.”

“He doesn’t know any vigilantes.”

“He is physically incapable of compassion.”

“Alright, do you have any better suggestions?”

A long silence stretched between them. Foggy filed through every coworker on his floor. Functional alcoholic Lisa thought that a bottle of wine every weekday was normal and healthy. Mila from Queens was lovely, but up to her neck in corporate jobs. He’d found Tomas hiding under his desk the other day to have a moment, just one moment, of peace before a new file was added to his In-Progress basket. Richards. Fuck him. Dana, Ahmed, Siabhan, Louise. Ugh, fuck Louise.

Goddamn it.

He gritted his teeth. Hogarth arched an eyebrow.

“Last call for suggestions?” she said.

 “I’ll take ‘em,” Foggy growled. “But I won’t lie to them.”

He grabbed the files and stormed out, leaving Hogarth to her artful arching and preening or whatever the hell she did while the rest of them emptied their souls into their coffee mugs on the floor below.

The files sat on his desk next to the the In-Progress box until the last hour of the day, when he’d done literally everything he needed to that day but open them.

He didn’t want to. Petulantly. Like, eight-year-old refusing to go to the dentist levels of petulance. Because he knew, he just knew, the second he opened those files, his life was going to go to hell in a handbasket and the only one he’d have to blame would be himself. Hogarth had dangled an alternative right in front of his face (a good one? No, but an alternative nonetheless.) and his fatass ego had refused it because, when it came down to it, Foggy the self-preservation skills of a suicidal gnat. If he really knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t spend his evenings listening with his dick to Matthew fucking Murdock whimpering in his ear. Hell, he would have pushed Matt away and kept him away when he’d had the chance. He would have refused HC&B’s offer in the first place and avoided any and all things Jessica Jones and vigilantes. He would have marched his ass back to Landman & Zack and sold his soul for another two or three years until he had enough experience and sway in the legal community to take his business elsewhere, somewhere nice and quiet and ethical.

But no.

There was an important footnote somewhere in this whole mess which explicitly pointed out that knowing and caring about and doing what is good for you are drastically different things. The presence of one of those acts is not necessarily evidence of the presence of another.

Case in point, Foggy knew what was good for him and he even occasionally cared about it, but he rarely did what was good for him. Possibly because he was a little hedonistic. But also because Matthew fucking Murdock was a bad influence and ran around asking questions like “but what does that do for other people, Fogs?” “what purpose do I serve if not to help people who are not myself, Fogs?” “how is my body, my exhaustion somehow more meaningful or important than other peoples’, Fogs? They’ve suffered, they’re suffering, and I’m in a position to ease that; what kind of person would I be to ignore, or worse, refuse to get involved?”

And Foggy’s heart hurt because Matty had suffered tremendously and was suffering enormously, and yet he still kept on keeping on the best he could, taking people’s eviction cases and their police brutality cases and their unjustly charged cases.

It was the least Foggy could do to at least try to keep up with that kind of selflessness.

He took a deep breath and flipped open the file and started reading properly this time.

Carlysle, Vanessa

Castle, Maria

Murdock, Jonathan

And Parker, Benjamin were all on his list.

Imagining little Peter’s stricken face the first and last time Foggy had ever heard someone mention his uncle was enough to twist the anchor sinking steadily in his gut.

As a rule, Peter did not talk about his uncle. Not with Daredevil, not with Deadpool, not with Matt or Wade out of the suit, not with Stark, and not even with his friends as far as Foggy could tell. Matt told him that the only time he’d ever heard Peter bring up his uncle was for legal reasons, and after that, only when prompted to do so by his aunt. All Matt knew about the guy, and therefore all Foggy knew about the guy, was that he’d taken in his nephew as a toddler without batting an eye and that his death was somehow connected to the emergence of Spiderman as a serious vigilante.

Jessica, who Foggy loved dearly despite all the work she made for him, had unwittingly brought up the subject in introducing herself to the kid and had, as was her way, asked him why he’d chosen the vigilante route over the superhero one. This is to say, she’d asked “Who died for you, then? Mom? Dad? Cousin? Uncle? Twin?” and Peter’s eyes had gone wide and his slim shoulders rigid and he’d edged a little closer to Wade without answering the question. He was an open book, the poor thing. Thankfully, Wade’s dormant paternal instincts kicked in and he’d derailed the conversation by composing a song comprised entirely out of the titles of every possible relative you could have.

Matt liked to sing the song to Foggy to annoy the shit out of him and to Peter to make him laugh at his tone-deafness.

Everyone pretended like Wade had just pulled the song out of his ass the way he did with basically everything else he did because it was uncomfortable to imagine Deadpool as a sentient, sensitive human being trying to protect a kid from his own grief.

Foggy had the feeling, however, that Wade knew a lot more about Benjamin Parker than anyone else outside of Peter’s immediate friends and family.

If he wanted to know about Benjamin Parker without tipping off the Parkers that something untoward might be afoot, he needed to talk to Wade first.

But that was a problem because Carlysle, Vanessa was also on his list of problems.

Foggy knew exactly fuck-all about Vanessa Carlysle except that she had apparently been engaged to Wade Wilson before her murder.

And that was really a stellar start to any story.

What was interesting about Vanessa was that her death occurred well after the appearance of Deadpool; that meant that Wade had met Vanessa as Deadpool and they’d (presumably) fallen in love and gotten engaged despite his occupation.

Alternately, Vanessa hadn’t known about Wade’s job/hobby/craft in the first place.

That was kind of weird, though, since Wade was a very distinctive, highly vocal human being. He didn’t exactly hide the fact that he’d been subjected to some horrible experimental bullshit and had come out on the other side of it mutated. That wasn’t to say that Wilson wandered around sans suit often, but he was cavalier enough with his body and being that it was hard to imagine that his partner wouldn’t have known about his condition. And if they knew about the condition, Wade had probably told them about the following revenge quest; he’d told Matt and Matt hadn’t even asked.

So Vanessa was either completely ignorant of her fiancé’s activities or she was intimately aware of them.

But Foggy couldn’t be sure because the only person who knew exactly what happened to Vanessa and exactly how much Vanessa knew was Wade fucking Wilson and if Wade fucking Wilson found out someone had experimented on his girl, he’d probably level Wisconsin to find the bastard. Foggy had personally witnessed the same man take down a bar full of people to defend the honor of some drunk girl he’d just met.

He needed to know more about Vanessa through non-Wade Wilson means. He scrawled a few notes to look up some possible friends or coworkers to meet with. He also made some notes to check in at the bar she used to work at to speak with her former employer.

While he was asking around about Vanessa, he’d ask Wade about Parker, so that Wade thought that Parker was the main issue here. After he learned more about where Vanessa stood on the whole Deadpool situation, Foggy could decide whether it was safe enough for them to proceed; that is, to determine if they had a shot in hell convincing a judge that Wade was sane enough to be his fiancée’s right of attorney.

That was the easy cases started.

The hard ones were fucking granite.

Foggy honestly didn’t want anything to do with anything Castle-related in his life again. He didn’t even need to ever go to Wales to be reminded by the goddamned architecture of the career-shattering shitstorm which was that trial.

And yet, Hogarth knew his soft spots and he couldn’t help Parker and Vanessa and then turn around and deny the same support to the wife of the man who very nearly ruined his life (and ended his partner’s. Not over it. Not cool, man.)

Maria Castle was gorgeous, like, Vanity Fair model gorgeous. The kind of wholesome woman who smiled to you at church like she really wanted to be there and see you. The kind of woman who laughed in the rain out of joy.

Her records were impeccable. She worked hard, supported the troops, and raised her and Frank’s babies as a single mom while he was away on tour. She adored her husband and her children. Foggy bet he wouldn’t find a single person in the state, hell, the country, who would say anything bad about Maria Castle.

Well, except people who didn’t like girls having babies pretty young, but she and Frank had jumped that hurdle by getting married hella early. Foggy kind of wanted to go back in time and tell baby Frank and baby Maria that it wasn’t the 1950s, no one was gonna send her away upstate to live with a distant aunt to have her bastard child. But whatever, it seemed to have worked out for them. As much as anything could work out for Frank Castle.

The exciting part of Maria’s story was that she 100% did not know that her husband was a mass-murdering fuckhead (Still mad about it, Francis. Never not gonna be mad about it.). This meant that when he inevitably had to talk to Maria, he’d have to tell her that her husband had gone off the rails and become some kind of fucked-up angel of death. And even more excitingly, when she decided that she could look past this sin against God and humanity, Foggy would have to somehow argue to a judge that, since Maria was in fact alive, Frank Murder Death Castle technically had right of attorney and, if she couldn’t make her own decisions as a living person, then he could make them for her.

And if that wasn’t already shitty enough, this whole plan required Foggy to tell Frank Castle that his wife had been experimented on. See Situation: Deadpool above for additional commentary.

And none of that, none of it, even remotely topped the situation what was Jonathan “Battlin’ Jack” Murdock.

Foggy could not imagine a better way to destroy his relationship than taking Mr. Murdock’s (Battlin’ Jack? Jonathan? What the fuck was he supposed to call his boyfriend’s dad?) case.

Everyone go home.

This was it.

Matt talked about his father exactly three times a year. Once on his birthday, once on his death day, and then every time he decided that his dad would be disappointed him. Which was approximately every fifth day of Matt’s life.

Foggy had walked in on Matt sobbing over an exam once in their last year of law school because he hadn’t gotten a perfect score and his dad hadn’t died for him to be a failure, Foggy. Two weeks ago, Matt had decided to lock himself in his room to have a panic attack and then a depressive episode because his dead father might have been disappointed in the way he’d gotten the shit beat out of him trying and failing to save a guy hellbent on meeting his maker in a Walgreen’s parking lot. Explaining to Matt that some people get drunk and fight their drug dealers because they literally have a death wish did not yield the desired results.

On top of Matt’s unhealthy father complex was the fact that he was not exactly wrong about the whole disappointment thing.

If there was one thing Foggy had managed to eek out of Matt over the years, it was that his daddy desperately didn’t want him to be a boxer. Specifically, Jonathan Murdock had said that he didn’t want his kid to have to make his living the way he did. And of course Matt took that without any grain of salt whatsoever, even though Foggy was fairly certain that Murdock just wanted Matt to not have to degrade himself publicly to eat. Now, Matt had succeeded at not having to do that, but he’d kinda swerved and run head-on into the whole Do No Harm thing Foggy thought Jack might have also been shooting for.

Jack Murdock had been known in and around Hell’s Kitchen as a furious fighter, a real embodiment of masculinity for their community. But the people who knew Murdock personally, which was about a quarter of Hell’s Kitchen, also knew that he was a soft-spoken, gentle soul, who fought more for the money than the sport. He didn’t condone violence for violence’s sake. Matty. Well. Matty sort of, kind of reveled in violence for violence’s sake. Sure, he limited that reveling for people who deserved it, but Matt had a whole lot of anger in him and not a whole lot of outlets. Violence, to himself and to others, was pleasurable, and often even desirable, to him.

Without a fucking doubt, if Jack Murdock knew Matt was Daredevil, he would be so fucking disappointed. And if he was anything like his son, he would blame himself and only himself for his kid’s actions. However, in Matt’s mind, he would be disappointed in some configuration of the word and any amount of disappointment was unacceptable and intolerable.

And Foggy legitimately believed that Matt might not survive that.

Jack, therefore, could absolutely, positively, not know that his son was Daredevil.

Which was a problem, because, like Maria, Jack probably had no clue why the hell he’d been targeted by the sick bastard who did this to him. Naturally, he’d want to know why he’d been targeted. Naturally, he’d want to be with his son once he found out he was alive and well (relatively speaking).

And naturally, if Matt found out that he was the reason someone was trying to bring his dad back to life to torture his identity out of him, Matt would lose his goddamn mind in every direction.

So Foggy couldn’t tell Jack his son was Daredevil, and, at the same time, couldn’t tell Matt his dad was alive, but equally couldn’t not help Jack reunite with his son. Which meant that he had to lie to Matty for a little while to get shit in order. Which would absolutely crush Matt’s trust in him because they’d promised each other transparency.

And on top of all that shit was lying to a judge to say that Matt was a competent and reasonable person who would handle his father’s rights and affairs in an entirely responsibly way. No, your honor, I have absolutely no ulterior motives or interest in this case, I am absolutely capable of being objective when it comes to my life partner’s sanity and happiness.

God, just run him over already.

It would be quicker.

And less painful.

He gathered the files and dropped them in his In-Progress box.

Chapter Text

Vanessa was having a long day; one of many since she woken up in that one movie as the sidekick’s pretty ex-girlfriend who has to crawl out of the grave without smudging her eyeliner.

She hadn’t passed the eyeliner test, but she had apparently passed the breathing, bleeding, screaming one.

She was gonna kill that Fischer bastard.

After she killed that other bastard who’d ruined her favorite fucking sweater.

And after she murdered Wade for bringing his work home with him again. On their anniversary. Which he’d been late to.

She tried to put this into perspective for herself. Reminded herself that it wasn’t Wade’s fault that he couldn’t catch a bullet (twice); he’d done his best handling everything else that was going on, and really, he wasn’t the only one at fault here. She should have given a verbal confirmation first thing when Wade asked if she was okay and she should have stayed down until his signal. They’d talked about that when Wade’s paranoia didn’t let him sleep until he knew that she’d react properly in case of emergency. They’d talked about that shit multiple times.

Back then, it had hurt her heart; now, it just seemed kind of hilariously ironic that it still hurt her heart.

And also now, sitting in yet another cell without having been drunk and disorderly, wearing hospital scrubs with no shoes or even socks, she had time to process just how long the last couple days had been for herself and for her still-aching heart.

It hurt.

It hurt so fucking bad.

That Fischer guy and his contingent of shitheads with medical degrees and their teams of junior shitheads with science fiction degrees had cut her chest open to try to repair the damage there, but, even though the other wounds healed, even though she could feel pain again, could bend her body, could make herself warm again, she could still feel the stitches holding her broken heart together. It didn’t want to heal. It wouldn’t kill her a second time, those terrible people had confirmed, but it wouldn’t heal the way it would for a true, living person.

She thought that this was Death’s idea of a parking permit.

It made her smile to think of the grim reaper in a meter maid outfit, trailing huge lines of tickets behind him while juggling the machine and his scythe.

She giggled a little bit because she could and attracted Parker’s attention in the opposite cell.

He was a nice guy, Parker. Clean cut and respectably gray. He looked like the kind of guy who was such a regular at Starbucks that the entire morning shift knew his order.

He had a stab wound in between his ribs, tearing through one of his lungs, that had healed just like her heart had.

He said he didn’t know what Fischer wanted with him, but he was lying. She knew he was lying, just like she was.

“I don’t know anyone named Deadpool,” she’d begged the man prying her ribs back to get at her heart. “I don’t know who that is. Why are you hurting me?”

That man, Fischer, had called her a lying bitch. Vanessa hoped that the knee she’d planted in his groin when she’d been asked to identify him made him terrified of women. Or of knees. Actually knees would be better. There was nearly twice as many knees in the world as women.

But anyways, yes. Parker was a very kind liar.

Fischer had asked him the same question he asked her, but for Spiderman, a tiny beanpole of a guy in red and blue who was supposedly able to spin webs and walk up walls. Fischer wanted to know what was so special about Parker that Spiderman had tracked and located the man believed to be his murderer mere days after he’d been done in. Apparently, Fischer and his junior shitheads had gotten ahold of the police incident report through a buddy of theirs and the suspect admitted to Parker’s murder without police prompting. One officer suggested that Spiderman had threatened him. When asked, the man refused to say.

Apparently, threatening was outside the norm for Spiderman’s behavior, which made this moment of particular interest to Fischer.

It was certainly an interesting coincidence, Vanessa had to admit, even though all she knew about little Parker was that he was Parker’s nephew, not his son.

What cinched it for her was when Fischer asked Parker why his nephew was interning with Tony Stark when he was clearly underage and allegedly absolutely, positively normal.

Stark didn’t just take an interest in his interns, he argued, and it was well known throughout the city that Ironman was mentoring the new baby super on the scene. Therefore, Stark had to be using the internship as a cover story for little Parker; it allowed him to train the kid to be an Avenger under the pretense of training him to be a scientist.

Parker hadn’t known that his kid was interning with Stark, he didn’t have to lie for that to be clear. It was clear enough that Fischer even stopped beating the shit out of the old man in his cell for five whole minutes to taunt him about it instead.

Vanessa personally blamed Stark for Parker’s current situation, if she was honest, which she was. She’d told Parker this, and he’d just sighed and said it was no one’s fault. He was glad someone was there for his nephew, even though it was a billionaire playboy with more bad habits than good.

Parker admitted to her later, in a whisper through the holes in the plexiglass walls of their room, that he’d suspected his kid was Spiderman before his death because of some unusual behaviors he’d started exhibiting in the months leading up to it. But until his death, he hadn’t understood, or didn’t want to believe, that his kid was off fighting crime. There was no reason for it, as far as he was concerned. Yeah, little Parker was bullied and yeah, little Parker had a bit of situation, what with his parents kind of, sort of abandoning him, but none of that was related to petty crime.

Vanessa didn’t say that parents rarely know their kids as well as they think they do. She thought it, though. Thought it hard.

Despite his naivety on the whole raising a teenager issue, Vanessa decided she liked Parker because he had some serious brains. The man could think on his feet.

He proved this the second time Fischer came to fuck with his head.

Fischer rallied his medicine men to stab at Parker’s body while he asked questions about little Parker. What was Spiderman’s weakness? How long did his web last? Where did he make it? How fast did he heal? What were his other abilities? What kinds of things was he scared of? What was his relationship with his aunt like?

Parker answered no questions and started making some observations of his own mid-operation.

First, he’d pointed out that his kid was super smart and went to a special highschool for science and tech nerds, so it wasn’t entirely out of the question that little Parker really was Stark’s intern. Then he pretended to give in and asked Fischer if he had a recording of Spiderman’s voice, so he could confirm whether or not the guy was his nephew. Fischer thought he was getting somewhere and set out to find a recording. The voice in the recordings was so young, it could have belonged to a kid of any gender.

It made Vanessa’s broken heart ache to hear someone so young scream out in unexpected pain like that, even if it was just a video. She covered her ears in her cell.

Parker hummed and hawed and said it didn’t sound like little Parker, but it did sound kind of familiar. Fischer was furious and demanded a recording of little Parker to compare it to. Parker guided him to a video of his nephew answering questions at an Academic Decathlon competition. The kid in that video kept his voice down and sounded dead serious. It didn’t provide the exact match Fischer was looking for.

Parker took the opportunity to postulate that maybe Spiderman was young and trans (and therefore not his nephew, who was young and cis). It wouldn’t be surprising if a young transman suddenly started putting on muscle in similar areas as Spiderman as a result of their hormones. It also took some time for a young transperson’s voice to change.

Parker knew these things because he and his wife had donated to and occasionally volunteered at a local youth shelter for abused and neglected kids. They’d thought their kid was trans for a minute, but he’d decided he wasn’t and they’d sort of just fallen in love with the kids there and had kept on volunteering. Given the amount of harassment young transpeople experience, Parker could definitely see why someone in that situation might take up defending people from petty crime.

Fischer was legitimately stumped for a minute.

He’d pointed aggressively and wandered away to go explore the option and process the fact that he may have just pulled a guy out of the ground for having interacted with a young trans Spiderman a few times at a youth shelter. Which was A.) a huge waste of time and resources and B.) meant that he now had a whole shelter he had to investigate.

Parker was so fucking smart.

Vanessa could have used some of those smarts because, fuck the paddle, she was upstream without even a damn boat to sit in.

Wade didn’t run around keeping his identity a secret. Wade Wilson was Deadpool and Deadpool was Wade Wilson. This was important to him for two reasons. 1.) The bank wouldn’t let him cash his checks under a pen name. And 2.) He needed to maintain a reputation around both Wade Wilson and Deadpool in order to draw in customers and terrify potential marks.

So he was pretty open about who he was, which was something Vanessa had always admired about him. He was honest in a way which almost everyone struggled to be. Unfortunately, that meant that she knew a whole lot about Wade Wilson and Deadpool and that, in turn, meant that anyone who wanted to know anything about either of them quickly learned that the fastest way to get it was through Vanessa Carlysle. Which must have been great for Wade when she was properly dead.

What these dumbasses didn’t know or just couldn’t get was that Wade responded poorly to blackmail. The whole ‘threaten your ex’ thing was more likely to attract his undivided attention than it was to get him to do what you wanted. And unless you were Vanessa, you did not want Wade’s undivided attention.

This was a man who had no fear of death and no end of creativity. He’d rewire every one of your Christmas lights to be an explosive if he felt it served his purpose. He’d murder and mutilate a warehouse full of people with a spoon if that was what he happened to have on hand.

Honestly, people needed to just fucking learn already that all they had to do to get Wade to do their bidding was to pay him.

It was as easy as that.

No threatening or blackmailing necessary.

Parker didn’t know what to make of this. He said he couldn’t conceive of a person whose moral flexibility was such that it allowed them to sell their services to the highest bidder, whoever that person may be, and for whatever services they requested, almost no holds barred.  

Vanessa shrugged.

“Wade’s a special guy,” she said.

“Wade sound like he needs a lot of support and therapy,” Parker said.

She thought about it.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” she said.

Vanessa met John after the operation on her heart. He’d had an operation on his head, the poor soul. There’d been a bullet lodged in it.

John lived in the cell immediately to her left; they shared a wall. He looked like what old guys like Parker wished they looked like in their youth and in their present. He was ripped and just a touch scrappy. He had healing cuts and scrapes on and around his heavy eyebrows and his fine laugh lines, and his nose was a bit crooked at the bridge. Most importantly, however, the guy grew stubble like that shit was an artform. Wade could learn how to grow stubble like this man. She would allow that.

The guys jabbing around John’s skull asked him way different questions from the ones they’d asked her. They were weirdly personal questions about his kid. Has your son ever been known to lie? What kinds of things distract him? What kinds of things overwhelm him? How does he problem solve? Would he be willing to take a bribe?

John was confused as fuck and answered the questions in such an equally bizarre way that even the sick fucks poking around his head were confused.

“Well, he doesn’t really like sheets,” John told them uncertainly, “Or mustard. Melon’s okay, though. And I mean, I tricked him into going to the doctor a few times by saying we were going to the park, and he cried for like an hour on the way home. Is that what you want?”

“What the fuck,” one of the junior torturers muttered.

Vanessa swallowed her giggle. She had to swallow harder the longer the interview continued. It turned out that they were looking for a different answer to “but would he take bribes?” and similar questions than, “Oh yeah, totally. You would not believe how well toddlers understand bargaining.”

 “Maybe we can use him as leverage instead?” one of the other juniors suggested. There was a chorus of agreement.

“Hey, by any chance do you or your kid have any kind of association with the Devil?” the lead junior tried as a last-ditch shot in the dark. “Maybe an altar? Perhaps a casual interest in Satanism? Anything that might drive him to uh, be interested in serving the Devil?”

“An altar?” John clarified, “Sorry, gonna have to give that one a hard pass. We’re Catholic, me and my boy. We do our best to actively avoid the Devil, if you get my drift,” he frowned, then lit up with an epiphany, “Oh, actually, my ex-mother-in-law thought me and my kid were possessed for a while there. Not sure if that’s what you’re after, but she went to the church on 11^th  and 51^st if it is.”

Silence.

“Does suspected possession count?” one of the young guys wearing goggles asked. “Maybe some kind of shared experience thing?”

Silence again. That was a negative.

“Jesus Christ, I don’t wanna be the one to tell him; nose goes for telling Fischer,” the lead junior declared and slapped his hand onto his face. There was an applause of nose-slaps. A girl in the back was the last one up and received several sympathetic pats on the back.

Vanessa seethed, clenching and unclenching her cold toes in her cell, pissed that they were just as scared of the king shithead and yet carried on carrying out his orders.

The sick juniors left them to rot in their cells for the night not long after that. Vanessa waited a few minutes, then leaned over and tapped on the glass between her and John’s cells until John turned his head her way.

“Are you a mobster?” she whispered, over-enunciating the words.

He started laughing.

“No,” he whispered back, sitting up and moving closer to the plexiglass between them. “Not a mobster.”

“What are the muscles for then?” she asked.

“Boxing,” he told her.

He was refreshingly straightforward. Vanessa decided she liked him.

“So?” she asked, “Did you know?”

John cocked his bandaged head.

“Know what?”

“About the guy, the one they were asking you about. It’s gotta be Daredevil, right? Your kid is Daredevil?”

Vanessa knew about Daredevil only vaguely. The name had just picked up when she’d kicked it. She knew him better, as much as you can know anyone from reading about them in the tabloids, as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. He was pretty badass as far as she could tell. Did all the flippy, acrobatic stuff and broke people’s bones effectively. Even Wade had been intrigued by him, although he had mentioned that he didn’t like guys who took themselves as seriously as he did.

“Isn’t that guy’s name Evel Knievel?” John asked quizzically.

“The other one,” she clarified.

“Wait, there’s two?”

Vanessa pulled slightly back away from the glass. She wasn’t disappointed, per se, more like pitying.

“You really don’t have anything to do with any of this, do you?”

John’s smile faded, and he dropped his eyes. He pulled back from the glass and settled back on his heels. It made Vanessa feel bad for having asked to begin with. She racked her brains for something a sporty, urban lumberjack might be into.

“Tell me about your kid?” she asked. He lit right the fuck back up.

“He’s amazing,” he said.

Oh god, what had she gotten herself into?

So John’s kid actually did sound kind of amazing. He’d been blinded pushing a guy out of the way of a truck when he was nine. John thought he was a hero. He was apparently super smart (for a fourth-grader) and super adaptable (no choice there, buddy) and so kind and gentle, his daddy couldn’t believe they were related sometimes (pal, you really need to look in a mirror). John didn’t know anything about his kid after ten because the poor sap had put his life on the books and taken a metal one to the head, so his baby wouldn’t have to starve with him in the future.

He was pleased to know that his son was still alive and kicking twenty years later, even if it meant someone was trying hard to get dirt on the guy.

It was hard to look at the pride in his eyes and not think of the baby she and Wade never had.

As if called by the lord himself to distract her from her misery, Parker emerged from his deep meditation and blurted out:

“Good god. You’re Battlin’ Jack.”

And John suddenly decided that he was very tired and needed to go to sleep right now because he was actually painfully shy. He mumbled something into his arm that Vanessa couldn’t hear. Parker got even more certain.

“I knew I recognized that face,” he said, “It’s an honor, Mr. Murdock.”  

Murdock.

Huh.

That name sounded familiar. Where had she seen that name?

While she chewed on that, John-cum-Jack tried to become a human turtle by burrowing his head into his shoulders.

 “He had—has—a kid,” Vanessa clarified for Parker.

“Oh,” Parker said. His tone dropped; he was quick on the uptake. “Wait, the lawyer?”

Jack snapped out of his misery and gave Parker his full attention.

“Sorry, what?” he said.

“The lawyer. Matthew Murdock, the blind lawyer,” Parker repeated, “The one who took down Wilson Fisk about a while back?”

Oh, right, that’s where she’d seen that name. Wow, Fischer was really barking up the wrong tree here; that guy was tough as nails. He’d sunk his teeth into Fisk and hadn’t let the fuck go, even knowing that other people trying to do the same thing had been killed for it. Having seen the bullet be pulled out of his daddy’s skull, she could suddenly see why Murdock was hellbent on taking down people associated with the mob. He wasn’t about to take a bribe, there was no question around that. Good luck, motherfucker.

“Oh my god,” Jack creaked. He covered his mouth and sounded T-10 from crying. “My baby’s a lawyer?”

“He made the front page of the paper a while back,” Vanessa assured him. “He’s got a great jawline.”

Jack laughed until he cried.

Jack was the first to greet Maria when she arrived (read: was thrown in with them) and they immediately bonded over being Catholic and full of guilt. She lived in the cell to Parker’s right, directly across from Jack.

Maria was the type of woman Vanessa thought she could never be and didn’t know if she ever relate to, but what she did know was that, like Jack, Maria had no business being dragged out of the grave. She said that she’d been murdered, shot in the neck, but she didn’t know why.

Vanessa and Parker smashed their brains together to try to work out the pattern. They weren’t happy about their situations, but they at least understood them. They were both fairly well associated (or allegedly associated) with known vigilantes. Powerful vigilantes who they determined Fischer wanted to manipulate to work for him and his people. Jack was apparently being used as leverage to get his son, the lawyer, to cough up information on Daredevil, who’d been involved with him in the Fisk case. Maria, though. Maria was a mystery to them. She seemed to just be a normal, suburban mom.

And yet, out of all four of them, the questions the shitheads asked Maria were probably the most horrifying.

Does your husband have trigger words? What kinds of things might pull your husband out of a rage? How does your husband cope with his PTSD? Have you ever known your husband to be suicidal? What kinds of things might drive him to that?

Like, woah. They’d asked Vanessa about Wade’s schizophrenia, but no one was interrogating her about possible trigger words. What the fuck. That was some Winter Soldier shit.

Maria was a civilian who was not used to pain or being around pain, so she had a hard time answering anything while there was metal instruments in the back of her neck, digging out other bits of metal. She maintained that her husband—Frank was his name—was a good man. A good father. He was depressed after his last tour, sure, but he was getting better.

Her horrifying interview took a weird turn when Fischer showed up and re-asked all the same questions and, having received all the same answers, grabbed a handful of her hair and started asking new ones about some guy named Billy Russo. Maria was visibly shocked. She didn’t know much about Billy, she claimed. He was her children’s uncle, she said, he was a strikingly handsome guy. Very concerned about his appearance, a little distant, but extremely affectionate with her children and her husband. She was asked almost as many questions about this Billy guy as she was her husband. Then Fischer doubled back.

“What would it take for Frank Castle to come here, right now?” he asked after half an hour of this, holding her close by the fist in her hair.

Maria’s face hardened, although she was facing downward, she tilted her chin up defiantly. She pursed her lips and refused to answer. Vanessa gave her mad props for that. Fischer got aggravated and repeated the question. She didn’t answer. He twisted the thin metal tongs in her neck. She screamed. He asked again. She stayed steady. He started to get even more aggravated.

“My husband was tortured in Afghanistan,” Maria finally spat, “And I’ll be damned if I let anyone touch him again.”

“You husband tortured in Afghanistan,” Fischer snarled in her face.

Maria held her jaw hard and glared right into his eyes. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t deny it.

Fucking, yikes, girl.

Fischer laughed. He dropped her and then left her to the juniors to sort out.

After everyone had left their room, Maria started crying and couldn’t stop. Parker used his soothing voice to try to console her through the glass on their side of the room, but it was to no avail.

Vanessa wanted to know what the ever-loving fuck Frank Castle had done for his wife to receive that kind of treatment. She was furious, white-knuckled, heart-pounding, jaw-shaking furious. Her heart bloomed with pain on every throb, but she couldn’t bring herself to fucking care because it was just so fucking unfair.

She found hot tears in her eyes and a huge lump in her throat. She wanted Wade. She always wanted Wade, but she wanted him more than ever. He would tell her she was going to be okay and he would mean it and he wouldn’t let her down—hadn’t let her down, even when he had.

“Hey,” Jack’s voice interrupted, “You’re alright; it’s going to be alright.”

“You have no idea,” she choked out. The tears were hot on her eyes and cold on her chin. They dropped off and stained the blue of her scrubs gray. Jack pressed a hand against the glass and stared at her with his weird, dark and light eyes. Vanessa was too upset to read them.

“No, not an idea,” he said, “But I do have a feeling.”

Two days later, Jack beat the ever-loving shit out of three guards while he was being hauled up from an “operation.” It was like a switch flipped in him. He went from gentle giant to rabid dog in the space of a second. He dropped the last guy in his cell and rounded on the final guard in the room. His fists dripped red. There was blood on the plexiglass. The guy scrambled for the exit.

He nearly got there, too, before Jack got ahold of him.

Vanessa threw herself into the opposite corner of her cell and was suddenly, painfully aware of why Jack had been dragged in.

Fischer didn’t think that Matthew Murdock was associated with Daredevil. He thought he was Daredevil. And if he was anything like his daddy, Matthew Murdock was a two-faced sonuvabitch with blood on his knuckles. Did it explain the acrobatics? No. Did it work with the whole blind thing? Not even a little. Did it line up with everything else, though: the shocking violence and impeccable technique he was known for? The sole focus on petty crime only in Hell’s Kitchen? His involvement with Wilson Fisk? Yes. Yes, it all aligned pretty damn well.

And if Murdock was enhanced or mutated like Wade or Spidey, then fuck, there was no saying that he really was as blind as he let on to be.

She watched Jack drop the last guard with the others and then, with a blank face, slam one of those red fists into the little keypad by the exit which controlled the room’s security. The florescent lights in the room flickered and went out. They all breathed for a few silent seconds in the lull in the chaos.

There was a weird noise coming from outside the door, footsteps—fast ones, and the guards’ radios started going haywire. It sounded like people were in panic outside.

And then there was suddenly shouting directly outside the door. The people there were demanding to know if anyone was inside. None of their four answered quickly enough. People in dark uniforms burst in, nearly tripping over the guards’ bodies. They shouted for everyone to put their hands on their heads. Everyone did. They screamed at Jack to kneel on the floor.

He did. His bloody fists shining in their flashlights.

The officer in the front of the group had a symbol on her chest which reminded Vanessa of something. When she stepped into the flashlight’s beam to get a better look at Jack, Vanessa saw the eagle.

SHIELD took them to a new facility.

SHIELD gave them new scrubs.

SHIELD gave them new cells.

Three representatives of the FBI came in and argued with SHIELD about the fact that the four of them, along with a handful of other people who had been found in the same condition in the same facility, were being held in SHIELD custody. Those reps were flanked by another group of representatives from municipal authorities.

SHIELD compromised to save face in the eyes of the feds.

Everyone who had been dragged up from the dirt was allowed new clothes, no longer scrubs. They were allowed to wander around the SHIELD facility. They were given their own rooms for the time being.

They were not, however, allowed to have any devices hooked up to the internet. They were not allowed to watch the news. They were not allowed to make any phone calls. They were each interviewed extensively by each agency.

It did not escape Vanessa’s notice that every agency asked a lot of the same questions that Fischer and his people had.

Vigilantism seemed to a hot topic and a big problem for the authorities in New York at the present time.

They were there for a week in these conditions before a woman walked in and said her name was Martha Higgs. She said that a lawyer had been appointed for them.

His name was Franklin Nelson and, she said, he was very good.

Chapter Text

Vanessa wanted to speak to her goddamned lawyer before she answered any more of anyone’s questions.

And her wish was granted, more or less. Her lawyer sent a very strict, very formal letter asserting that none of their quad had to talk to anyone without him present and then stated that he would be present as soon as possible. And, lo and behold, people didn’t ask her anymore questions.

It looked like it was going to be a minute before the lawyer got in the room with any of them, however. Mr. Nelson, it turned out, was working their little quad of cases pro-bono. On top of their shit, he was still working his normal hours and cases for his firm. Vanessa had word from one of the other undead, a woman called Reva, that there were three lawyers between the whole group; each hand-picked by Martha Higgs or her close friends.

Vanessa wondered if Agent Higgs was secretly trying to stage a coup in her agency by getting them all legal counsel. She also wondered if her goddamned legal counsel had wandered off and drowned in a gutter or something because what the fuck was the hold up? Reva and her people had already seen their lawyer, and the cute Airforce pilot who flirted with her relentlessly had personally introduced her to his.

Because she was a sharp customer, and at one point a professional online shopper, she decided she needed to do some research to make sure their guy was legit. She didn’t have a phone or a tablet or a computer, but she did have her fellow zombies and she also had her fellow zombies’ not-late, not-dead, mostly-functional lawyers. She decided she’d corner them to get the low-down on Nelson.

“Don’t you think you’re taking this a little too far?” Parker asked from the stove in their common room. He was cooking something Vanessa couldn’t identify to pass the time. It looked very…healthy. Jack had found the gym and had since been MIA. Maria was playing a game on one of the tablets with no internet at the breakfast bar.

“No,” Vanessa said, “Why would you think that?”

“Nelson’s already made a statement for us and he’s already committed to the case. He’ll get here eventually, just give him a little more time.”

Vanessa stared at Parker until he shied away and went to hide in the fridge.

So anyways, she needed to corner some lawyers.

Foggy got a call from Lale Gilani, the gal from Cassell & Dominguez who was working a different set of undead peoples’ cases, to inform him that his client had trapped her in an elevator and asked her to rate his intellectual, professional, and personal qualities on a scale of one to ten.

It had to be Vanessa. It could only be Vanessa because that was the kind of shit Wade Wilson would look at and think was so endearing that he had to marry it.

He really couldn’t put off meeting them any longer and anyways, trying to find Wade to talk to about Parker was damn near impossible. He’d asked Matt if he’d seen Wade around lately and, after making his requisite terrible blind joke, Matt had apologized. He said he’d told Wilson to take a hike and he thought maybe Wade had taken that literally. He reached out to the guy for Foggy, but it had been a few days and Wade still hadn’t answered. According to Matt, Wilson always answered his messages unless he was working a job. So he had to be working a job. It must have been a big one; he hadn’t responded in three days so far. That was very un-Deadpool-like of him.

Since those plans were falling through, he tried to do some research on Vanessa, but had hit a brick wall. It turned out that anyone who knew what was good for them kept their lips zipped about Vanessa in case Wilson caught wind of them running their mouth. Foggy had managed to get in contact with her old boss and she’d just said that Vanessa had been a hard worker; a bit flirtatious, a bit sarcastic, and just a touch rough around the edges, but that had been good in their line of work. She needed her girls to be like that so that customers understood their boundaries.

“Oh, honey, no. I don’t know if that girl told the truth a day in her life,” the woman told him when he asked whether or not Vanessa had been reliable and/or trustworthy, “But she wouldn’t do you wrong if you treated her right. Never stole nothing out of here, nor anywhere unless someone deserved it as I understand it.”

Foggy wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound great.

“She’d stolen before?” he prodded.

“Don’t ask me, darlin’,” the woman said, blowing smoke past her lip ring, “Ask the police.”

He did ask the police and what he got was watery coffee, a painfully lit station office, and an impressive rap sheet of low-level incidents which had mostly occurred when Vanessa was drunk off her tits. Vanessa disliked the cops but seemed to have resigned herself to the fact that her interests meandered past and against their interests, and that meant that the two parties were inevitably bound to meet up at least a few times a year. She was noted as being cooperative, although rarely repentant, in nearly every instance.

He tried to find some past friends of hers, but the three he found told him to get fucked. One told him to get fucked and “not to desecrate her memory, you bastard” which was exciting.

Matt laid with him on the floor of his apartment like a confused but supportive dog when he finally got home from his amazing day of harassment. After a few moments of peace, Matt wanted to know why Foggy smelt like smoke and booze. Then he wanted to know why Foggy wanted to talk to Wade. Then he wanted to know if Foggy would let him go creep on the guy Karen had gone on a date with that weekend to see if he was worthy enough to be in her presence. Once shot down for the last request, he decided to drape his entire body over Foggy’s on the floor to demonstrate how aggrieved this made him feel.  

Foggy distracted him with food. He told to get his shoes, they were going for shitty Chinese.

He was off like a shot.

A+ diversion techniques, Nelson. At least you have these, if nothing else from law school. Additionally, mental note: call Matt at midday tomorrow to make sure he isn’t skipping meals again.

Mr. Nelson had a friendly face and absurdly clear blue eyes. Based off of the other lawyers’ descriptions of him (responsible, funny, charming, intelligent) Vanessa had imagined two versions of him and had pitched these to the other three for a vote. The first was a tall, dark, handsome guy in an impeccable suit with a devilish smile. The other was a dumpy older gentlemen in a waistcoat. Maria said she loved the idea of a kind, old, dumpy lawyer. Parker said he wouldn’t mind a dumpy old man but would prefer someone who looked like they were up to speed with the times. Jack asked what real-life lawyers were supposed to look like.

“Dude, have you ever seen a lawyer?” Vanessa asked him.

“Sure, but mostly on tv,” he said.

“Wasn’t there a lawyer present when you divorced your wife?” She agitated.

He leaned forward on the counter with his glass of water, which he refused to get from the dispenser in the fridge. Vanessa couldn’t tell if it was an old habit or if he did it purely because it annoyed the shit out of her and Parker.

“I never divorced my wife,” he said simply.

“Bitch, you definitely said you had an ex-mother-in-law back there,” Vanessa accused.

“My wife left me and my kid to become a nun. I don’t really consider her mom my mother-in-law anymore,” he said and took a sip of the water to the now silent room. Maria turned her wide eyes back to her tablet while Parker became extremely invested in picking a movie out on the tv screen.

“Dude, let’s just kill you again, that’ll be kinder to you,” Vanessa told him. He shrugged like he didn’t think that was the worst idea in the world.

All of this was to say that the man who Vanessa was presented with in the conference room was either a hipster or former pot-head in a well-selected blue suit who matched neither of her fantasy lawyers. A tall woman with short dark hair and a cat-like face had come with him. She introduced herself as Jeri Hogarth, the owner of the firm which was representing them. Mr. Nelson, Ms. Hogarth explained, was taking their cases by her request as she had other matters to attend to. She had wanted to accompany him on the first meeting to provide moral support and, since the issues at hand were so sensitive, to personally answer any questions the four of them had about the services Mr. Nelson was able to provide them.

“Is that not correct, Mr. Nelson?” Ms. Hogarth prompted.

Nelson startled like he hadn’t realized he’d been asked a question, which was odd. Vanessa raised an eyebrow to see just how nervous he’d get.

“Yeah, no. No, I mean yeah, yes, that is correct,” he stammered.

Ms. Hogarth looked at him as if they’d just had a pep-talk outside the door and he was really blowing it, man. He smiled at her nervously, apologetically. Then he turned towards the four of them.

“Sorry, it’s been one of those days,” he said, “My name is Franklin Nelson and I’m going to defend you to the best of my ability. It is a p-pleasure t-to—” he cleared his throat. He was sweating. “Jeri, can I talk to you outside?” he suddenly asked in the overly pleasant tone of man about to be assaulted by his least favorite aunt. Ms. Hogarth was monumentally displeased; the twitch in her laugh lines said as much, but she managed to transform the same twitch into something that resembled a smile.

“Yes, of course. We will be back shortly,” she told the rest of them.

The door to the conference room closed and Vanessa leapt over to the other side of the room to stand as close to it as possible. She dragged Jack with her as an unwilling, but solid second witness to whatever they were about to hear.

Law-school must have mandated a whole class on speaking in hushed tones because Hogarth and Nelson were great at it. Vanessa could just barely hear them over the AC.

“I can’t do this,” Nelson was whispering, “Listen, I know I said I would, and I know I started to, and I know—”

“We’ve already talked about this, Franklin—”

“But I can’t, I just can’t. I’ll do whatever else the fuck—”

“You’re not doing anything else, you’re taking this case.”

“That’s Matt’s—have you ever tried lying to Matt? He’s got—he fucking knows. He knows before I know. He knows before I know I know.”

“Nelson, I am going to give you approximately two minutes to collect yourself and failure to do so will result in consequences.”

“Oh, don’t you even worry, I’ve got a resignation letter up on my laptop right now—”

“Resig--? Franklin, I’m not going to fire you for refusing to take a case last minute.”

“You aren’t? Because I would.”

“No, but I am going to reassign you all Mila’s cases if you really do refuse.”

Nelson must have made a face in horror.

“All of them?”

“All of them. I know just how much you love corporate law.”

There was a pause.

“Jeri, can I just tell you one more thing before I go back in there?”

“Yes, go on.” She was smug as hell.

“I fucking hate you.”

Hogarth laughed.

“Atta boy,” she said. “Now back in you go. I have a meeting to get to, say my goodbyes for me.”

Nelson opened the door before Vanessa could make it back to her previous spot on the other side of the table. She was caught mid-scramble.

He did not look impressed. He didn’t even try to look impressed. She smiled beatifically at him. She would have blown him a kiss if they were better acquainted.

“I take it you heard that,” he said flatly.

Fuck it. Vanessa blew him the kiss.

Nelson squinted his super clear blue eyes at her, dancing on the edge of a grimace.

“We understand that this is difficult for you,” Parker negotiated, “And we’re thankful that you’re taking our cases despite your misgivings.”

Someone send this man to the UN. He was a fucking diplomat if Vanessa ever saw one.

Nelson took a deep breath and then deflated.

“These cases are literally going to ruin my life,” he told them, almost painfully honest, “But I have a guilt complex because my partner has a guilt complex and is super annoying about it. So I am going to do my best.”

He gave them a smile. It was a real one. A little lopsided and everything.

“So yes, Franklin Nelson at your service. Is there anything I can help you with today, as in, right now? I’ve been working through your files, all of you, over the last couple of days. You’re all going to have a very similar line of defense, which is that you were not returned to life consensually—obviously—and your ability to give consent has been compromised by the conditions under which you found yourselves, that being uh, no longer listed as living human beings in any municipal or federal capacity and all those really awful things that were done to you over the last few weeks.”

Nelson graced them with a breath and extraordinarily sympathetic eyes.

“In regards to that stuff, I can arrange for counseling or medical support if you would like it.”

No one really wanted that. Nelson assessed them all in turn to make sure. And then they were right back on track.

“Alright, well, essentially, what we need to get across to a judge here is that you cannot give consent and therefore did not give consent to be treated as you have been by any party, and so someone needs to step in to handle your affairs, which, in your case, means making sure you receive your basic rights, human rights, etc. Now, normally, we would go ahead and let the state handle this, but as the state is co-signing with SHIELD to be enormous dicks—And I mean huge cocks if I am really being honest here--to you at the moment, that’s going to be something we want to avoid. There is no legal reason for SHIELD or anyone else to hold you in the way that they are at present unless it is a matter of national or municipal security to do so. Which this is not. I’m just putting that out there; it isn’t. Although if any of you are terrorists, please speak now or forever hold your peace.”

He waited. Vanessa wondered if he’d practiced this speech or if he legitimately just thought that fast. Maybe she needed to revise her opinion of Nelson. She felt herself grinning a little at the prospect.

“Anyways,” Nelson rambled on casually, “The facts are that SHIELD and the Feds and the State are trying to get information out of you which you are not presently able to legally provide since you’re still technically dead. And they are going to keep doing that as long as you are in this space. As such, we need to remove you from this space, and we are going to do that by locating the last person who had your power of attorney or was the executor of your estate or whatever—and if we can’t find them, we are going to find the most sympathetic judge in the city to appoint someone for you--and then that person is going to agree to take on that role for you again and then do some evaluations to prove their fitness.”

He seemed to remember off-hand that maybe he was still human and probably needed to breathe, but then continued merrily along: “And then after that is all sorted, we are going to work really hard to get you placed in that person’s custody for the time being. At least until we sort through whatever the next steps are or might be. Does that make sense? Any questions there?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to say I might love you,” Vanessa interjected.

Nelson’s face dropped into a flat look.

“Your fiancé is one of many banes of my existence, so please don’t be offended that I am going to choose to ignore that comment.”

He knew Wade! He knew Wade! Wade was okay! Her cheeks hurt with her smile. But then a thought struck her.

“Wait, how do you know my fiancé?” she asked. Nelson looked uncomfortable; he put a hand in his pocket to hide his fidgeting, but all that did was make him rock a little on his feet.

“Yes, actually, if you don’t mind my asking: why did Ms. Hogarth assign you our cases?” Parker agreed.

Nelson looked to God for help and, receiving nothing, sighed so hard his shoulders drooped.

“I have a certain reputation in the legal community,” he said miserably.

“Which is?” Parker prompted.

Nelson looked like he’d rather be hit by a bus than answer.

“I’m going to plead the fifth on that one,” he said. “But I’m sure it’ll become more, uh, obvious, as we go along. In the meantime, if there isn’t anything I can do for you right now, I’m afraid I’ve got to go meet another client.”

There was a lull while he let them think about it. Jack shrugged first, content with the gym and a place to sleep. It probably wasn’t too much different from anything before for him.

“Can we have a real phone and a computer?” Vanessa asked. “One with internet and all that? I mean, we aren’t going to go around posting on social media or anything to like, tell everyone we’re back from the dead. It would just be nice to catch up on what’s going on in the world, you know?”

Nelson flinched a little at a thought in his head but managed to work through it.

“Maybe. Possibly. Probably on the condition that you don’t contact anyone related to your case until I get the paperwork in the works. Knowing SHIELD and Robinson from the city, they’ll probably argue something about security leaks or whatever if you start talking to your people now. So the phone is most likely a no-go; but if we let them disable the microphone and webcam on a laptop, they might agree to that. Although, they’d still not be down with email or texting. And honestly, I’m not down with that until we alert your people of the situation at hand.”

Vanessa was sure they all didn’t mean to look at him expectantly, but it was sort of unavoidable.

“I’m working on that,” Nelson said, “And I’ll look into the laptop. Give me 24 hours and I’ll get back to you.”

She wanted to believe him.

“Thank you,” Maria said for all of them.

Nelson looked even paler than he had when he’d walked into the room to begin with.

“Literally don’t mention it,” he groaned.

Chapter Text

It was holy hell getting those folks a laptop, but through determination and some good old-fashioned charm, Foggy managed to do it. He now owed Basker in SHIELD’s IT department his next set of Mets tickets, but whatever. Problem solved for now. Basker even modified all the computer’s settings so that it would escape SHIELD’s and the Fed’s eyebrow raising unscathed.

Foggy was ruminating on what the next steps were while Matt was nuzzling into his armpit at 11 ‘o clock at night when the full impact of the cases hit him. These weren’t like his other cases. He could research his way out of the other cases. For this one, there was no research. Or if there was, it wasn’t the kind he could dredge up from the web with a few hours of bullheaded determination. No. He had to contact a fuckload of family members to get shit moving. And soon.

But how do you tell someone the tragedy which defines a significant portion of their sense of self has been temporarily (as far as Foggy knew, anyways; he didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up) assuaged? How do you conceptualize that? How do you keep the peace? And more importantly, who did he even start with?

He watched as Matt’s breathing evened out for his two-hour, pre-Daredevil nap and smoothed a hand over his hair.

Not the Murdocks, that was for sure.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” he murmured to him. “Just a little longer.” Matt made a questioning noise in his sleep and squished in closer.

Ben was taken off-guard when Nelson bustled through the door of their sterile temporary apartment the very next evening at 5 o’clock on the nose. Nelson didn’t look like the type of person who, when he said 24 hours, damn well meant 24 hours. He looked more like an ex-hippie who, when his fancy new boss told him to cut his hair, hunted down the employee regulation handbook and found the longest acceptable length possible. And yet there they were.

Nelson dumped a heavy laptop on top of Vanessa’s hands like they weren’t already holding a sandwich without missing a beat. He did a fly-by welfare check on everyone and then isolated Ben in the kitchen with a predatory gaze.

It took Ben an embarrassing amount of time to process the fact that Nelson was shaking his hand, congratulating him for being first on the list.

“Tell me everything you think I need to know,” Nelson demanded, having grabbed him and plonked him down on the uncomfortable couch. As an afterthought, he grabbed Ben’s cup of coffee and set it in his hand. Ben was shell-shocked. He felt like he was taking a test he’d slept through the announcement of. Where to even start?

“Okay, so my name is—”

“Ah. No. Tell me, right now, what I need to know before anything else.” Wow, he was tougher than he looked, too. The man was full of surprises.

“My nephew is Spiderman,” Ben told him, figuring that, well, he asked for it.

Nelson didn’t even bat an eye. Vanessa, however, stared at Ben in horror from the small kitchen table. Nelson glanced back at her and made a shooing gesture. She numbly collected her giant duvet (which she’d taken to wandering around the apartment wrapped in like the most well-prepared babushka in the entire USSR) and the new laptop and retreated back towards her room.

“Okay, Spiderman, yeah. Next.”

Ben thought maybe Nelson was in some kind of lawyer zone where the impact of thoughts and ideas came later, long after the act of saying them. But this, he felt strongly, was something which Nelson needed to appreciate. It would complicate things. Another lawyer was, for sure, going to ask either him or Nelson why Ben had been targeted by Fischer. If that was a SHIELD or federal attorney, they already knew why, but they would want him to admit to his connection in court to justify their continued holding of, and experimentation on, Ben. Hell, they might even then turn around and use that to take Peter into custody himself. And that was last thing he wanted. He’d rather not take the case to court at all if it meant Peter’s might get mixed up in the proceedings.

“I need you to understand, Mr. Nelson,” Ben told him slowly and carefully.

“That your kid is Spiderman,” Nelson finished for him.

“Dude, what the fuck,” Vanessa barked from the hallway.

“This is a private conversation?” Nelson barked back towards her over his shoulder, “If you’re going to eavesdrop, do it silently, please? Anyways, yes. I know about Spiderman. I’m working on it. Tell me about your wife, Mr. Parker. Benjamin? Ben? Should I call you Ben?”

Ben nodded because he didn’t know what else to do.

“Your wife?” Nelson prompted, “Has she had any history of mental illness?”

“What? Oh. Um, anxiety. She has some anxiety, it’s been under control for a while, although I don’t know how this whole mess is going to affect that.”

Nelson had somehow acquired a notebook from thin air and was writing furiously.

“Financially, is she responsible?”

“Yes.”

“Does she have any kind of police record?”

“Uh.”

“Has she ever been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony?”

“No?”

“Is that a question or an answer, Ben?”

And so it went. For nearly an hour. Once they’d hit some arbitrary stopping point Nelson must have marked out in his head, he flew out the door as quickly as he’d flown in, thanking Ben for his cooperation and telling Vanessa to use the internet only for good as he went.

Vanessa was using the laptop for evil the following morning when Nelson returned, specifically she was using it to make Jack watch fitness video after fitness video and challenging him to do what the guys in them were doing.

Jack wasn’t even remotely interested in doing that. He was amazed at how light and compact the laptop was. He kept chicken pecking random keys on the keyboard when he thought Vanessa wasn’t looking. She slapped his hand every time.

Nelson bustled in and paused to observe this song and dance for a few moments. Once he figured out what was going on, he huffed over, flicked Vanessa’s ear, and mugged at her to make her stop harassing Jack. She didn’t go quietly, but she did go. She shoved Jack like he was the one who’d gotten her in trouble and re-babushka-ed herself to read the news. Jack realized aloud that the news site she was scrolling through was the reason why he hadn’t seen any newspapers in the building. Ben wondered how, when, and where Nelson had acquired such power over them. They hadn’t even known him for three days yet.

“So I have an idea of something I think will work,” Nelson told him after he’d parked Ben and his coffee cup on the couch again. “But before that, I want to be clear that I’m not going to do any of this without your go ahead, so if you feel uncomfortable with anything, please let me know. I have many talents, but mindreading is not one of them.”

He waited for Ben to confirm before continuing.

“Excellent. So. Spidey’s identity doesn’t matter here, doesn’t mean anything to me or you and especially not to the judge. And that is because you gave your wife power of attorney before you died, not Spidey. These other guys are going to be complicated because their walking human disasters are the ones who held their power of attorney.”

Nelson paused, thoughtful.

“Well, not Jack,” he clarified, “But that’s gonna be a different kind of nightmare. Whatever, it’s still a very good thing for you because May is a lovely woman who does not stalk the night and is the one who will hopefully re-accept the responsibilities that power of attorney comes with for you. There is very little in her history that even someone obnoxious can argue against in this. And I am damn near positive that, once she knows what is going on, she would be willing to stand in for you. Are you with me?”

Ben nodded mutely.

“Excellent. So here’s the thing with Spidey. He is young and impressionable and he respects me, which is honestly more than I can say about the others—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ben cut in, waving his hands a bit, “You know my nephew? Did you go talk to him or something? I didn’t give consent for that.”

Nelson groaned and pressed a hand to his forehead, pinching the space between his eyes.

“Okay,” he finally said, sitting back up and holding his hands, palms open, in front of him, “I am starting this conversation by telling you that I am not a creep. I am not a creep. Did you hear me say that?”

Ben wasn’t sure he liked where this was going.

“Yes,” he said skeptically.

“Right, good. This is going to sound highly improbable, but I guarantee you that the only time I can lie is to my mother and even then, I’m not great at it. Much better at omission.”

“Okay,” Ben said, trying to keep his mind open and his blood pressure down. Vanessa and Jack were being very quiet over by the laptop, definitely listening, but trying to be polite about it. It wouldn’t be that much different if they were in their rooms, though, the walls of the place were annoyingly thin for such a new building. Nelson let out a slow breath.

“My, uh, former firm partner is also a defense attorney and your wife and nephew happen to be his clients,” he said. Ben’s blood pressure settled. That wasn’t so bad. That was understandable.

“But how did you find out about Spiderman?” he asked. Nelson bounced his knee anxiously.

“Peter was referred to my partner by another vigilante,” he said.

“For what?” Ben asked. Nelson winced.

“An eviction case,” he said. Ben’s heart stopped. His blood felt cold and heavy in his chest.

“Are they okay?” he asked, trying to keep himself steady.

“They’re fine,” Nelson told him quickly, “My partner is a great attorney, I mean, as good as, if not better than me. It was the whole floor, uh, Ma—my partner rounded up a bunch of us, Columbia grads, people we know from work, internship, etc. and we got it sorted out for everyone, so no worries there, everyone’s fine.”

Oh. That was. That was actually very kind of them.

“Thank you,” he said, trying to convey it from the bottom of his heart.

“What? No, no need for that,” Nelson mumbled, “No, the point here is that—”

“Your partner is connected to vigilantes, and my nephew is a vigilante, so you guys know each other,” Ben finished for him. Nelson actually barked a laugh.

“Uh, basically, yeah. And uh, we might have gone ghost-hunting together?”

Vanessa broke the awkward silence by cackling so hard she slipped out of her chair.

“You believe in that shit?” she accused. Nelson was offended.

“Girl, you are literally a zombie sitting in my midst. You think you got room to argue here?”

Ben cracked a smile. Peter was good. Peter was fine.  Peter was making responsible friends with people like Nelson, who liked Peter enough to indulge him on weird adventures.

“Thank you,” he said again. Nelson stopped glaring at Vanessa’s smug, holier-than-thou wriggle to shrug.

“Me and Kare were going anyways, it just made sense to go as a group,” he grumbled. “But anyways, the fact is that Spidey—Peter, sorry, we all call him Spidey—will listen to me when I tell him not to go off chasing the guys who hurt you. If he does, that’s going to be it for him. No more secret identity; it’ll be way obvious, and then it’ll be in court record. The assault charges alone, they could bring against him, Jesus Christ. You don’t want to go there. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the impact that might have on your case. If May is found to be knowingly harboring a vigilante, that’s her credibility done.”

“Is that what you do all day?” Vanessa interrupted over Jack trying to shush her. “Sit in an office and help vigilantes get out of assault charges?”

“Maybe,” Nelson snipped petulantly back at her. “Or maybe I’m just the best defense attorney in the firm. Maybe I’m just great at my job, huh? Who’s to say?”

Vanessa grinned at him, then scooped up the computer and posed regally in the hallway.

“I’m onto you, Nelson,” she said, then haughtily flounced off to her room.

“And I’ll be waiting, peaches,” Nelson called after her. Ben heard her laugh before shutting her door.

He was learning how to play Vanessa, Ben realized. He was getting to know her, trying to figure out what kind of tones she was most open to. Man, talk about building rapport. Nelson didn’t give him the opportunity to voice those thoughts, however; he looked down at his watch, then popped up apologizing. He grabbed his bag and said a hasty goodbye, promising to get in touch with Ben as soon as he spoke to May. Then he was out the door and gone.  

Parker had gone over smoothly so far. And that was good; that was great actually. The easier the better.

Foggy did kind of want to bash his head into the wall, though, because that was easier to cope with than the dread weighing down his stomach at the thought have having to talk to May and Peter next.

“Fogs, you aren’t listening,” Matt pouted, standing over him and the couch. He was holding a piece of mail out to him, asking him to read it. Foggy shook himself and took the mail; then he reached out and pulled Matt in close by his waist in apology. Matt carefully pulled away; he settled his weight on the arm of the couch instead. He traced a thumb under Foggy’s eye, following the curve of the bags there.

“Is something wrong?” he asked quietly. “Did I do something again?”

Trust Matt to think he’d fucked up subconsciously.

“No, Matty, it’s nothing. Just work. You know how it is; I’m tired is all.”

Matt had been making an enormous effort not to read into Foggy’s heartbeat over the last few weeks, but it was hard for him since it was nearly second nature by that point. He’d started to be more transparent about it as a first step. So, as with the last couple times, he let Foggy watch him weigh the words against the rhythm in his chest.

“You’re lying,” Matt said, disappointed. “Fogs—”

“It’s confidential, Matty.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know.”

“Is it bad?” Matt slipped off the couch’s arm and settled himself in Foggy’s lap. He leaned his head into the nape of Foggy’s neck. Foggy turned his head to reciprocate the gesture. Matt smelled warm. He wore a light cologne when he went to court. It smelled like leather and sandalwood. He put a kiss there.

“It’s bad,” he confirmed.

“I can help,” Matt pressed, the words muffled against Foggy’s own neck.

“I know you can.”

Matt’s eyelashes brushed against the baby hairs behind his ear.

“Is it about me?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“What did I do?”

FUCK FUCK FUCK

“Fogs?” Matt pulled back, alarmed. Foggy pushed him back into place and tried to breathe through the panic.

“Give me some time, Matty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m so sorry, what is it? I won’t do it again. I’m sorry.”

“Matty, it’s not your fault.”

Matt was getting more distressed. If Foggy told him what was up then and there, however, he’d go into one of his silent panic attacks, without a doubt. And Foggy didn’t have the wherewithal to help him through that at the moment.

“Matty, do you trust me?”

He nodded, face warm with upset. Foggy felt more than saw it. The air hanging around the sparse room felt colder.

“Then trust me. It’s not your fault. I’ll tell you soon.”

“I’m sorry,” Matt murmured into his skin. It felt like a knife in his diaphragm.

Foggy managed to call May on her day off, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because he could just get this shit over with. A curse because he had 30 minutes to put ideas into words and one chance to get it right.

He felt like he should go to church or burn some sage or something.

Matt was still upset, but through that, he could still read Foggy like a book. When Foggy went to pull out his notes to review them, Matt’s rosary rattled out with them, trapped in the spiral of the book. The wooden beads were smooth to the touch, polished by Matt’s fingers over the years.

God, he loved that fucker.

He knocked on May’s door.

When she answered, he said, “Peter needs to come home early today.”

Vanessa answered the knock because she was closest to the door and would therefore beat Jack to it. Hand on the knob, she gave him a shark’s smile and he bitterly added another point to her side of the tally.

They didn’t exactly have a lot to do, okay?

She opened it. It was Nelson; he looked more put together than usual.

“Hey,” she greeted.

Nelson opened his mouth to greet her in return, but something small and fast wriggled out between the two of them and leapt over the couch before he could get any sound out. Vanessa realized that it was a human just in time for another, slightly larger human to bustle past her in the same direction.

By the time she’d turned around completely, the entire Parker family was kneeling on the floor of the living room.

Little Parker was even smaller in person. Even though she couldn’t see much of his front, she couldn’t believe that he was Spiderman. There was no way he could be Spiderman. He might have just cleared 120lbs, but his coat bulked him out a bit too much to verify that. He and Mrs. Parker both fit in Big Parker’s arms perfectly and he held them like letting go would kill him again.

In the whole time she’d been with him, through all the chaos and torture, she’d never seen Ben Parker cry. But family breaks the man, she observed.

Jack looked seconds away from weeping himself, one hand clutched over his heart. Maria and Nelson shared a soft, sad gaze at the three of them.

“I’m so sorry,” hiccupped little Parker. Peter. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He kept repeating it like a mantra. Like it was the only thing keeping his uncle there with them. Ben soothed him, shushing him gently and crushing him to his chest.

“It’s okay,” he whispered through his tears, “It’s okay. I love you. I’m so proud of you.”

Peter pulled back and tried to scrub the tears out of his eyelashes, so he could see. His forehead wrinkled just like his uncle’s had when Fischer twisted the metal tongs latched onto Ben’s lung.

“I couldn’t save you,” Peter whimpered.

“That’s not your job,” Ben told him.

Peter set his face as firm as his shaking chin would allow it.

“Yes, it is,” he hiccupped, voice cracking, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

Something snapped in Ben and he started sobbing, full-body sobbing; he pulled Peter into the crook of his neck with both arms and held him there as tight as he could without hurting him.

“It’s not your fault,” became his mantra to Peter’s “I’m sorry”s.

Mrs. Parker didn’t say anything, just pressed her head into her husband’s back and shook.

“Let’s give them a minute,” Nelson said solemnly. The others agreed. They all congregated in Vanessa’s room to let the storm pass.

“How did they take it?” Vanessa asked quietly as they sat on the floor with the door closed. Nelson looked exhausted. His eyes were dark like he hadn’t slept well. He was wearing a bracelet on the opposite hand from his watch.

“About as well as you’d expect,” he said.

They were quiet for another long moment.

“I’ve been trying to contact Wade,” Nelson finally said. Her heart leapt. She locked her eyes on him. “But he’s not answering his phone. When, uh. When Peter’s in a better place, I’m going to ask him to try.”

“Why?” she asked. Those things were non-sequiturs. Unless.

“Deadpool and Spiderman work together fairly often,” Nelson said quietly. “They’re actually pretty close. Wade is very protective of Peter.” He chuckled.  “He made this stupid song once. It. Uh. It’s—fuck. Okay, so someone mentioned Ben once and Pete got a bit squirrely, so Wade made this dumbass song to make him feel better. I can sing it for you, if you want? Ma—my partner sings it all the fucking time.”

Vanessa wanted to cry. Of course she wanted to hear it.

It was just as shitty as promised. Nelson wasn’t even that bad of a singer. It was just a shitty song.

“Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to make you upset,” he suddenly said. She wiped her face.

“We were gonna have a baby,” she whimpered.

Nelson didn’t respond. Just sunk his head into his hands between his knees. Jack got up from behind the bed and dropped himself down next to her. He tucked an arm over her shoulders.

“You’d be an amazing mom,” he said. Maria perked up next to Foggy.

“Yeah, you would,” she confirmed with conviction.

It made everything happening with Vanessa’s face worse. Jack tugged her closer.

The Parkers collected their wits in about half an hour, which in Foggy’s mind, wasn’t nearly enough time. But they were a family of stupidly intelligent, disgustingly functional humans, and he needed some intelligence and functionality, so he wasn’t exactly in a place to argue.

Ben sat on the couch with May pressed up against one side and Peter tucked under the other arm. Peter was doing okay, as far as Foggy could tell. Puffy-eyed and stuffy and emotionally drained, but okay.

“Pete,” he said, sitting gingerly on the edge of the couch with them. Peter looked at him without saying anything. “It’s really important that you don’t tell anyone else what’s going on here, you get me? No one. Not even Mr. Stark, okay?”

Peter nodded and pressed the side of his head into Ben’s chest. Foggy swallowed; he wasn’t done.

“Peter, look at me, bud. How are you doing, are you mad?”

A head shake.

“Sad?”

A nod.

“Okay, that’s fine. But listen. If you get mad later, you cannot go after these guys. Not Fischer. Not SHIELD. Not the Feds or the State. If you do that, I can’t help you or your uncle. Do you understand?”

Peter nodded.

“Can you give me a verbal confirmation, pal?”

Peter cleared his throat.

“Yeah. Yes. Yes, I won’t do anything stupid.”

“You promise?”

“I’m not Double D, Foggy,” he grumbled. It made Foggy’s lips twitch.

“I dunno about that, kid. Every day you get more and more like him.”

“I do not,” Peter snapped, sitting up straighter. It made May and Ben laugh. He pouted at being laughed at, then settled back into the couch and his uncle’s heat.

Foggy looked over at Vanessa and held out a hand as an invitation to join them. When she came over, he stood up and gave her his perch. Peter had already latched onto something important happening. He wriggled back out and watched Vanessa with interest. She waved a bit. He frowned at her.

Foggy went to introduce him, but didn’t even manage to get a whole word out before Peter said,

“Aren’t you Vanessa?”

She was visibly shocked. The whole room was visibly shocked. Foggy knew that Wade knew about Ben, but he hadn’t been able to find anything suggesting that Peter knew anything about Vanessa.

“You know me?” she asked.

“Of course. You’re the lady on Wade’s fridge,” Peter said. “He thought you were haunting him one time, but he just had cats.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“Rats,” she repeated gently, “Did you mean rats, honey?”

“No,” Peter said, resolute, “They were cats.” He looked at Foggy, “He was there. They were cats.”

Everyone looked at Foggy. He hitched his shoulders up a teeny bit.

“They were cats,” he confirmed. “And they now have a nice home—”

“They’re church cats, now,” Peter assured her. Vanessa giggled a little. Foggy needed to get them back on track.

“Pete, have you heard from Wade lately?” he asked, “I need to talk to him and then Vanessa needs to talk to him.”

Peter hummed, frowning, trying to remember, then he dug his phone out of a pocket. He flicked through several apps with the speed and recklessness only teenagers could achieve. He found one he was looking for and cocked his head while he scanned it.

“He said he’s in the Mojave Desert,” he announced and gave no further information. Ben looked over his head and then back to the others with an expression confirming that that was indeed all the text said.

“Do you think you could—”

Peter had already dialed.

“Hi,” Peter said into the phone, “No, it’s important. Yeah, like pumpkin-sized important. Maybe bigger.” He paused, listening. “The ones at the fair. Okay, but don’t forget okay? No, I don’t think I can, Foggy wants to talk to you. Yeah, I will. Bye.”

He tucked his phone back into his pocket and curled back up against Ben.

“He said he’s fighting an army of cactus gunmen. He’ll call back in ten.” He looked over at May. “He says thanks for the bread.” 

“Oh good, he got it,” she said.

They were stuck waiting ten minutes for Wade to finish mutilating cacti across the country.

“Foggy?” Vanessa asked. Foggy made sure he gave her the sourest look he could muster.

“You have to earn it,” he said simply.

“So why Spiderman?” Vanessa asked.

“What’s it to you?” Peter immediately responded. May reached over across Ben to slap his leg and give him a stern look. He recoiled. “Got bit by a spider,” he went with.

“What kind of spider?” Maria asked.

“I don’t really know. A little one, though,” Peter told her. He was being modest. Matt had asked him the same question once and he’d explained how he’d isolated three possible species in the lab he’d been bitten at on field trip. He kept up with the research being done on the spiders to compare with his abilities. Matt had spent a fruitless hour trying to convince him to go to law school following this amazing display of research skills.

“So what, you just woke up one day walking on walls?” Vanessa proposed. Peter blinked at her.

“Yeah, basically.”

“Dude, that sounds so fake.”

“Wade wakes up from the dead all the time,” Peter shot back scathingly.

“You look like Double D,” Peter said to Jack. Jack made a light confused noise. The same one Matt made in his sleep.

“Who’s Double D?” he asked.

Foggy damn near had a heart attack when Peter’s phone rang.

Peter answered it; Foggy stared at the rosary wrapped around his wrist in awe.

Peter held the phone out.

“For you,” he said.

Chapter Text

Wade hung up the phone and sat on his heels in the dust and the desert heat for a full minute, trying to process what just happened.

Eventually, he stood up and staggered through the dirt over to the nearest cactus. He yanked off his glove with his teeth and crammed his hand down between the sharp heads, making sure to get it good and tangled in the needles.

It bled.

Profusely.

It hurt.

Like a bitch.

Okay, good. Not dreaming. Not hallucinating.

He checked his phone to make sure he really had received that call, that it really had lasted twenty minutes and 43 seconds.

Then he stood up and started walking back to helocopter he’d “borrowed” to get out there in the first place.

Vanessa felt a little like she was walking on air and a little like she was frozen in space in time after the called ended. Wade, her Wade, was on his way home. Wade whose voice was numb with shock because he always went numb first. Wade who promised her over and over that he’d be back soon, that he was on his way back now. Told her he’d be in touch with Nelson and someone he called Red. Said that he trusted Nelson to get whatever needed to happen done. Swore to her he’d do “what the fuck it takes, baby, anything” to get her home with him, even if it was just for a little while.  

Nelson told Wade they’d discuss the process and procedures when he got back. Wade agreed to meet, but before hanging up, asked Nelson to put the phone on speaker.

“Spidey?” he called.

“I’ve got her,” Peter answered without even the slightest waver.

“I’m counting on you, baby boy.”

“I won’t let you down,” Peter promised. He met her eyes solemnly. She couldn’t remember if her own eyes had been able to be as serious when she was his age. What the fuck had happened to this kid?

It was a bit weird to be on the Defend list of a fifteen-year-old, but if it was important to Wade, she was glad that it had been negotiated so quickly. Nelson told her afterwards that he was also on Peter’s Defend list and it mostly entailed the kid tapping on his window and giving him heart attacks in the middle of the night when shit was going down somewhere nearby his apartment. This, he explained, was how vigilantes conducted welfare checks.

Peter didn’t argue against the defamation of his people, he was worn out and had taken up dozing on the floor next to Ben and May, Ben’s bird-like wife, while they filled out paperwork with Nelson. He didn’t want to leave his uncle’s knee when Nelson collected the documents, tucked them away in his bag, and declared it time to go.

Ben got down on the floor with Peter and hugged and talked to him for a little while before he allowed the separation.

“Okay,” Nelson addressed him and his aunt while he shook himself awake, “We don’t really want SHIELD to know our strategy, so we need to be discreet leaving.”

Peter nodded, then opened the window and told his aunt to go home.

“They’ll notice if Spiderman stops patrolling,” he explained. May didn’t look happy about it, but she sighed.

“Just an hour,” she said. “Then home. It’s been a long day and there’s school tomorrow.”

Peter nodded again and scanned the edges of the window. For what? Vanessa wasn’t entirely sure. He fished his earbuds out of his shirt, put one in, and shoved up his sleeve. He tapped at something on his watch.

“Karen,” he said into his wrist, “What’s the range of SHIELD’s air surveillance?” He listened to the earbud. “Initiate the signal blocker. Give me 30 seconds. Countdown on my mark.”

He hugged his uncle one last time, gave his aunt a kiss, hopped up on the window sill, and told his watch “now.”

And then he fell.

 Parker damn near had a panic attack (actually everyone by Nelson and May damn near had a heart attack), but May grabbed the back of his jacket and pointed. A mini Peter in the distance arced up into the space between building, hung for just barely a second over traffic, then dropped into another pendulum swing downward. Somehow, between the fall and the first swing, his whole body had turned red and blue. The jacket was gone.

“He probably threw his clothes in a dumpster, again,” May groaned long-sufferingly, “He’ll pick ‘em up before he comes home.”

She and Nelson left the apartment.

Vanessa developed a new appreciation and concern for Nelson over the following few days. The guy was putting a whole lot more time and energy into their cases than she had anticipated, and it showed. He was trying to find a place for Wade and Vanessa to meet in person. It was hard because Vanessa couldn’t leave, and Wade was super recognizable and apparently had beef with SHIELD. Nelson was working on getting her a phone which could actually make calls in the meantime.

She appreciated it, she really did. He was dog tired the few times he popped in in-person, nearly a raccoon with those dark circles. He said it was just overwork, but Vanessa was positive that there was something else going on.

“It’s probably his partner,” Maria told her over dinner. Homegirl made an amazing pot pie.

“What do you mean?” Vanessa asked.

“Well, his boyfriend is Daredevil,” Maria said, spearing a green bean, “And that guy works the graveyard shift. If Nelson is staying up to make sure he comes home in one piece, that’s gotta be a hard gig.”

Vanessa’s brain had short-circuited after the first part of that explanation.

“Sorry, just a sec. You think Nelson.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Is fucking.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Daredevil.”

Maria pulled the fork out of her mouth and leaned her chin on the heel of her palm.

“Well, yeah. He’s not being very secretive about it, either. Nelson got put on our cases because he’s some kind of legal specialist in vigilantes. He’s represented a bunch of the big-name vigilantes in the city. Jessica Jones. Luke Cage. He even sat on a panel of lawyers for Bucky Barnes. It only makes sense that his partner would be a vigilante,” she said.

It was fucking jarring.

It made sense, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t jarring.

Vanessa had wondered what the hell Maria had been doing when she’d borrowed the laptop over the last few days. And now she felt bad for assuming that all the lady did was play matching games online. Bitch had been doing work while the rest of them were just moseying around. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Vanessa, too, had been trawling the news. She’d been looking for Wade’s activity, though. She’d only skimmed the other vigilante stuff that had come up.

“Okay, but like, none of that proves that Nelson’s fucking Daredevil,” she pointed out, “He could be knocking boots with any vigilante if that’s your argument.”

Maria hummed into her palm.

“Well, there was a forum of people online talking about how Spiderman and Deadpool and Daredevil seem to have been teaming up a lot over the past couple months.”

Vanessa tried to school her knowing, growing grin. Maria continued.

“Funny how Nelson knows Deadpool and Spiderman as well as he does for someone who’s never taken their cases until now.”

“Alright, that’s fair. But that’s like, one piece of evidence,” Vanessa said, glancing over her shoulder to see if the other two were within hearing distance.

 “You got something better?”

Vanessa checked over her shoulder again. Then waved Maria closer. She checked over her shoulder too, and leaned in.

“I think Jack’s kid is Daredevil,” Vanessa whispered. Maria moved her hand so it was covering her mouth while she leaned on the heel.

“That’s crazy; say more,” she murmured from behind it.

“You remember the last night in the Fischer facility?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember when Jack went apeshit?”

“Talk about scary.”

“I know but think about it. Those guys were asking him questions about the devil. Why the hell would they do that?”

“Could have been trying to figure out Jack’s kid’s motivation to be involved with Daredevil.”

“Yeah, that’s why I thought at first, but like. No one knows who Daredevil is. He’s gotta have two personalities, you know? A day one and a night one. And like, the way Jack just flipped like that. He’s just like that. Day and night. He’s some anger in him, that guy. It’s just there,” she indicated with her hand, “Just right there under the skin.”

“Plenty of people have anger issues,” Maria pointed out. She wasn’t arguing to disagree though, her tone stayed even. “And Jack’s kid is blind.”

“Yeah, Jack’s kid was blinded in a freak accident involving a fuckload of chemicals. Freak accidents is how you get mutants, girl.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah I do. Case in point: Wade. Spidey. The fucking X-men. And not only that but, how many people’s daddies are professional boxers with anger issues who got done in by the mob, huh? Isn’t it something that Daredevil is obsessed with low-level crime? You so much as whisper the word ‘mob’ near Hell’s Kitchen and he’s there. And that’s another thing. He only works in Hell’s Kitchen. You know where Jack’s from? Hell’s Kitchen. You know where I would bet good money Jack raised his kid? Hell’s Kitchen.”

Maria chewed on her lip.

“He never kills the people he fights,” she said.

“Because he’s Catholic,” Vanessa whispered, “And he has a guilt complex.”

They fell quiet.

“We need physical proof to settle this,” Maria said.

“Agreed.”

No one was using the laptop so they appropriated it for some covert, late night research. Vanessa opened up an incognito tab and started searching for pictures of Daredevil. It took about 200 images to find one of the guy in decent quality and light. Whoever had taken that photo had managed to catch the Devil without his signature snarl. He had a very pronounced jawline and distinctive lips.

They found an old picture of Jack online, too. It took a bit more searching because the quality was lower. They ended up having to piece together a few promotional advertisements.

Then they googled Jack’s kid.

A broken link to a page for Nelson & Murdock: Attorneys at Law was the first result for “Matthew Murdock.” This was followed by a yelp review page for Matthew Murdock: Attorney at Law, on which people raved about the amazing service Mr. Murdock was doing in his community. Which community? Hell’s Kitchen. Almost exclusively. Vanessa giggled in triumph.

Unfortunately, there was next to no pictures of Murdock Jr. which weren’t linked to the Wilson Fisk case. The only picture they could find of him with his mouth relaxed was one where he was walking out of the courthouse after the trial. He had a long white stick in one hand and dark sunglasses. He had one hand tucked into the crook of a longer-haired Franklin Nelson’s elbow.

The lower half of Daredevil’s face, when he wasn’t snarling or covered in blood, was an identical match to Matthew Murdock’s in that picture. Both of them grew stubble like it was a fucking artform. Just like Jack.

“Oh my god, Nelson is fucking Jack’s kid,” Vanessa whispered.

“Holy shit, Jack’s kid is Daredevil,” Maria swore.

“Holy fuck, Nelson didn’t want to take this case because he doesn’t want anything to do with Jack.”

“Oh my god.”

“But it’s literally his boo’s dad. He can’t say no.”

“And Jack doesn’t know anything about any of it,” Maria murmured into her hands.

They let that sink in over the laptop and the cold remains of pot pie.

“This shit is fucked up,” Vanessa declared.

Now that they knew, it was painfully obvious and the guilt of not telling Jack was insurmountable. Jack was patient with Nelson, happy to wait until Vanessa and Ben’s cases got on their way before his own started up.

He soon worked out that Vanessa and Maria and Ben had looked up their people on the laptop to get an idea of what they’d been up to over the past few years, and so he asked Maria to help him do the same. He was shy about it and apologized, saying that he wasn’t overly savvy with the whole internet situation. He couldn’t afford one during his life time, although he was aware of them.

Maria pasted on her cheerful suburban mom face and told him she’d be happy to help him learn more about his son.

She gave Vanessa a mortified expression when he wasn’t looking, though.

Looking up ‘Matthew Michael Murdock’ yielded more results than Vanessa and Maria’s search had. That search portrayed Matthew Michael Murdock as an insultingly good human. He’d done a lot of charity work with the National Federation for the Blind. He’d graduated top of his class from undergrad, and had then wandered over to Columbia University for an encore performance.

He’d gotten an internship at a huge fucking company before he’d started his own firm right back home in Hell’s Kitchen with good ole Franklin Nelson, just a few years ago. And even though that had apparently fallen apart, his current Yelp page was full of grateful locals singing the man’s praises, and occasionally saying things like “it’s a shame Mr. Nelson left the firm, but he was kind enough to drop in to consult with Mr. Murdock on my case.”

Vanessa personally thought it was brilliant, but also a little fucked up that Murdock Jr. had taken the two-faced-ness of his daddy and turned it into his life’s (or maybe Daredevil’s life’s) fucking philosophy.

Jack had a weird expression on his face too, while he read through the Yelp page. It made Vanessa want to rattle his cage a bit. He clicked the back button, the folded his arms and bit his lip, studying the Nelson & Murdock link in silence for a little while. Then he turned to her and Maria with a deep crease in his brow.

“You okay there, pal?” Vanessa prodded.

“Do you think they’re together?” he asked them, point blank.

Maria tried to play off her grimace as surprise.

“What do you mean?” she laughed, “Sounds like they’re really good friends. It’s so kind of Mr. Nelson to help your Matthew when he can.”

Jack stared at her like he didn’t want to believe she was as stupid as that statement; the crease in his brow didn’t go away.

“I’m asking if you think my kid’s gay, Maria,” he clarified.

Vanessa choked on her coffee and had to put the mug down and crouch over the sink before she died a horrible second death. Maria’s smile twitched with her effort to keep it in place.

“Well, maybe they do seem a bit closer than best friends,” she admitted.

Jack was unmoved by her agreement. Parker poked his head of his room to see what Vanessa was choking on.

“Everyone okay?” he asked.

“Think my kid might be gay,” Jack told him evenly.

Ben gave him a once-over. Then leaned over to see what he was looking at. His eyebrows shot up upon reading the link, but he pulled them back down and leaned against the wall between the table and the hallway.

“You bothered by that?” he asked, matching Jack’s tone.

“What?” Jack asked.

“Your kid being gay,” Ben clarified. “Are you bothered by that?”

Vanessa clenched her teeth, crossed her fingers, and prayed for the best on Matthew Murdock’s behalf. Jack caught her in the act and gave her the most disappointed expression his face could produce.

“I’m not bothered about my kid being gay,” he told them, irritably “I’m bothered about the fact that he and Nelson didn’t just tell me.” He froze. “Do you think that’s why Matty hasn’t come yet? He thinks that I’ll freak out or something? Oh fuck, we’re Catholic. What if the church rejected him or something?”

Oh, good, it was Jack-panic time. That was always exciting. Vanessa didn’t need a doctorate to see that the man needed some medication. Xanax, perhaps. Valium, maybe.

“Does he think I’ll reject him, too?” Jack asked the room, but most probably God, grabbing at the sides of his face. 

“Jack, I think maybe you’re working yourself up about this,” Maria told him kindly.

“I am not—this is my son we’re talking about. There’s nothing in the world he could do to make me not love him, like. That kid could commit homicide and I’d still love him.”

Vanessa and Maria shared another mortified look. That was sure convenient and specific, Jackie boy. Jack seemed to realize this and backtracked.

“I mean, I’d want him to get help because there would have to be something seriously wrong with him but—oh my god, is it because I made him come to the gym with me? Did someone say something to him while I was—”

“It has nothing to do with the gym,” Nelson’s reasonable voice suddenly interrupted.

He was standing by the door. It was 5:00 on the nose. He must have left work a little early to check-in and opened the door after nobody answered his knock.

He seemed to have reached the point in his exhaustion where he was done caring about professionalism. His hair looked much longer when it wasn’t slicked back. He had his jacket thrown over his arm. The bracelet wrapped around his non-watch wrist was a rosary.

He stared at Jack with uncharacteristically blank eyes.

“It has nothing to do with the gym. It has nothing to do with us,” Nelson stated, getting more serious with each word. He looked up and stared at Vanessa as if he knew what she knew. “It has everything to do with Daredevil.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s Daredevil?” Jack pressed.

“Let me show you,” Nelson offered. Vanessa thought he’d go for the laptop, but instead he pulled out his phone.

And for some reason, that made her think that shit was about to get really fucking real.

Nelson scrolled through a few screens and then selected something. He held out the screen to Jack and tapped on the ‘play’ icon. It was a video of Daredevil doing his thing. This quickly turned into several videos of Daredevil doing his thing because the guy moved too fast to get a video of him longer than 30 seconds. His thing was leaping off buildings, over chain-link fences, smashing through perps like they were made of paper. In one of them, he dropped the unconscious body of a man to the ground, then turned around and helped a girl, maybe fourteen years old, out of the trash behind him. In another one, a man slammed a fist into his helmet and stomach again and again; the microphone picked up his pained groaning at the impacts, even from a distance.

Nelson’s face stayed stoic. Jack covered the lower half of his face with his hand. Nelson took the phone back and selected a different video. It was a personal one, from his picture gallery. He held it out and pressed play.

Matthew Murdock was lying flat on his back on a hardwood floor without glasses; blood was pouring down his face from a wound on his temple and he had the beginnings of black eye among the fair collection of scrapes and cuts on his cheeks and lips. His chest was coated with red armor with black Kevlar fitted into it. A red helmet with a slick line of wetness had been discarded behind his head. A woman with warm dark skin stood over him in a strange stance, she held one of his wrists and its accompanying elbow firmly.

“I’m going to pop it back into place now,” she told him.

Matthew grunted in affirmation and breathed loudly through the pain.

“For the record, I’m making your boo record this so you can listen to your own goddamned whining later. Maybe then you’ll realize how embarrassing this shit is for all of us.”

Matthew Murdock lolled his head over and grinned at the camera through a mouth full of teeth stained with blood.

“You getting my good side, Fogs?” he asked in a rumbly baritone. The woman jerked and Matthew screamed out in pain.

Nelson took his phone away, turned it off and put it in his pocket.

“If he finds out about you,” he said without looking up at Jack, “He’ll track down Fischer and his men and he’ll break every bone in their bodies. Then he’ll move onto the Feds. Then he’ll move onto SHIELD. And he won’t stop until every person involved has had a taste of what he has to offer.”

Jack said nothing. His eyes were shining, though.

“This is my fault,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s about how I thought you’d react,” Nelson said with a sad chuckle. “See, he’s gonna think what happened, everything that happened, to you is his fault.”

There was a silence.

“None of this is his fault,” Jack whispered. “He’s just trying to—"

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Nelson interrupted bitterly, “He can stop doing this shit. Has stopped doing it. Could have made the decision to never do it in the first place. But that’s never worked for him, with his fucking guilt complex, and I don’t know if I have you or the Catholic church to thank for that, but regardless. These,” he held up the phone, “Are his decisions.”

“Matty wouldn’t—”

“He lied to me for years about this shit, Mr. Murdock. I didn’t believe it either. But here we are. And that’s okay, we’re moving past it. People like Matt, vigilantes, they’re almost all addicted to it. They can’t stop. It becomes them. And through monumental effort, if I may say, I have mostly accepted this about your son. And I love him.”

It was Nelson’s turn to have shiny eyes, unlike Jack, he let them flow.

“And I would do anything to keep him from being hurt, but I can’t protect him from himself, Mr. Murdock. And I can’t protect him from me. And right now I am in a situation where I am damned if I do tell him about what’s going on here and damned if I don’t tell him, and either way I’m hurting him. So. It’s up to you, now. If you want to see your kid, you’re gonna need to understand that he is not the little boy you left all those years back. And you have to understand that we only have one shot at this and if we fuck it up, Matty is going to fuck himself and a whole lot of other people up, too. And if I were any decent kind of person, I’d have him arrested for all the shit he’s done before he can do anymore of it, but I can’t. I can’t. And I won’t.”

Vanessa’s heart throbbed.

It hurt.

The stitches in it were stretching. It was like Nelson had dug into her own fucking head and laid out all the things she’d felt about Wade over the years all over the floor in front of them. No wonder she liked him; in a fucked up kind of way, they both willingly aided and abetted the people they loved. They were both enablers. And they’d accepted that and they’d accepted their boys and the only thing left to do was to try to move forward while keeping the pieces together and the parts in as best condition as they could be.

“So,” Nelson said, breaking the silence and her train of thought, “Do you want me to tell him? Or do you want to?”

They all looked at Jack. He stared hard and long directly back at Nelson.

“You love him. Even after all this,” he observed.

Nelson laughed.

“I couldn’t stop even if I tried. And I’ve tried.”

Jack’s face did something complicated, then he composed himself and nodded. He took a deep breath and then looked back up.

“I’ll tell him,” he said.

“Okay,” Nelson said breezily, “I’ll bring him tomorrow.”

His keys scraped against the coffee table when he gathered his things up. He turned around and headed back for the door.

“Nelson,” Jack suddenly called after him. Nelson’s shoulders hitched, then dropped. He turned around, possibly more exhausted than he had been when he walked in. Vanessa hadn’t thought it was possible.

“Thank you,” Jack said, “For everything. I’m so glad Matty found you.”

Nelson squinted at him.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he cautioned.

The door closed shut behind him shortly after.

Chapter Text

Matthew Murdock was just about six feet tall with striking dark and light eyes like his daddy. Pretty as they were, they felt empty. Moved around frenetically, trying and failing to find something to focus on. His nose was just a tiny bit crooked where it had been broken once or twice. He wore blood red, round glasses to hide his lovely, empty eyes.

The glasses did nothing to hide the pooled blood sitting just below baby Murdock’s skin. It seeped down the right side of his face, blooming like colonies of mold down to his neck. He wore a brace over one wrist. His knuckles were scabbed.

He held a long white stick in the hand without the brace. He tucked its injured twin into the crook of Nelson’s arm.

There was a fuss outside the door before the two entered. Someone from SHIELD had seen Murdock and was rightfully concerned about his condition.

Murdock had a silver tongue and a sweet smile, though. He charmed them into thinking he’d been mugged on his way home the night before and “you shoulda seen the other guy.” The person laughed and left them alone. Water rolling off a duck’s back.

Never before had Vanessa seen a man so fiercely fragile and dangerous. But then, maybe that’s how Wade had looked after she’d bled out on their apartment floor.

“Where are we?” Vanessa had heard Murdock ask outside the door.

“You’ll see,” Nelson told him.

Murdock had laughed like it was a really funny joke.

Standing in the entrance, with Jack standing directly in front of him, however, he looked like he’d never laughed in his life. He took a step back. Nelson dropped his arm, dislodging the hand at his elbow. He put the arm around Murdock’s waist to keep him in place. Matthew’s chest started heaving.

“No,” he said, “No, this isn’t happening. Foggy, what’s happening? Where are we? What’s going on?”

Nelson dropped into a tone Vanessa hadn’t heard him use yet.

“It’s okay,” he hushed his partner, his friend, his lover, “It’s okay.”

“This isn’t funny,” Matthew said, his voice shaking. Jack hadn’t even done anything. Matthew was blind. Really blind, Vanessa could see that now. It was kind of ironic how that meant that there was no hiding anything anymore.

Jack stepped forward and his son jerked back into Nelson’s arm.

“Matty, it’s okay,” Nelson crooned to him.

“This isn’t real,” Matthew whimpered, “It’s not real, tell me it’s not real.”

“Pal, you need to breathe. Calm down. Take it easy. Listen to me, focus on my heart.”

There was more than a foot between them. She glanced over and met Maria’s eyes. It was one thing to read about it, to fantasize about what heightened abilities looked like, it was another thing to see them at work. They were surreal. Murdock was steadying, just slightly. Listening to the beat of Nelson’s heart with nearly an arm’s length between them; it was unbelievable. He could have been faking it. But the stuttering of his chest, the grip he’d gotten on Nelson’s jacket, they offered tiny clues of the truth.

Matthew calmed down enough that Nelson moved to give him a little more space, but he didn’t want it. He pressed closer to him, looking for all intents and purposes, horrified of what he couldn’t see in front of him.

“It’s not real,” he murmured.

“It’s real, baby,” Jack told him.

The second he spoke, Matthew’s body went dead still, then it was as though his strings had been cut. His limbs relaxed and fell into a comfortable posture. A weird posture. Loosely curled hands. A bit of a hunch. Knees bent. He tilted his head minutely, sway lightly. Tracking, Vanessa realized. He was tracking them.

“Matty, it’s not a joke,” Nelson said in an uneasy tone.

“Who are you?” Matthew rumbled in Jack’s direction, low and gravelly. It suddenly clicked in Vanessa’s head. That was a fighting stance. Matthew was edging backwards and the Devil was gearing up to step up to the plate.

“Matt, listen to me. It’s real. I’m not lying to you,” Nelson pleaded.

“It’s me, honey,” Jack said, nice and calm. Nelson looked between them. Matthew examined Jack in his dangerous way, head moving slowly, slipping in and out of what might have been eye contact.

“It can’t be,” Matthew growled. He crunched his face into a bit of a snarl. Then, out of nowhere, whipped his head away to face Parker by the entrance to the hallway. He seemed entranced by Parker for a moment.

“Peter was here a few days ago,” Nelson suddenly explained. “That’s his uncle. He probably smells a little like him still.”

Matthew accepted this explanation; he redirected his attention back to Jack and started to move around him, cautiously. He didn’t bother with the stick on the ground. It was. Eerie. To say the least. Jack took it in stride, though. When Matthew had completed a circle around him, Jack held out a hand to him. Matthew hesitated, assessing it.

“I always knew something wasn’t quite right after the accident,” Jack told him gently. Matthew raised his face to his father’s. “You used to get overwhelmed all the time. Didn’t sleep for weeks. I was so scared your teacher would file a report on us.” Matthew didn’t meet his gaze, but he didn’t drop his face either. Jack huffed a sad laugh. “Used to crawl in bed with me and cry yourself to sleep sometimes, do you remember that?”

Christ, what a fucking nightmare.

“Yes,” Matthew suddenly said, “Couldn’t block them out. The sirens.”

Jack stayed still with his hand out.

“You’ve had a rough time of it, haven’t you, Matty?” He swallowed and blinked a few times but kept his voice steady. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that that happened to you. I’m sorry I left you alone to deal with that.”

“I had to identify your body,” Matthew hissed, “In that fucking alley. I had to touch your dead body, your dead face, and tell them you were my dad. That’s all I can remember. That’s all I remember of you sometimes.”

Jack couldn’t keep the tears in at that.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I lived in five foster homes, six if you count the orphanage.”

“Matty, I’m so sorry.”

“And even before all that, they let him come in and they let him beat me and they let him make me perfect for their fucking war.”

“Who did, son? Who did that to you?”

“Stick. Chaste.”

“Who are they?”

Matthew didn’t answer. He kept his chin down. Jack seemed to realize he wasn’t going to get an answer to that question.

“Why?” he tried instead.

Matthew laughed a horrible, ugly laugh. It matched his bruises.

“Because they needed a warrior,” he said simply, “And they saw my potential.”

Jack breathed out as steady as a parent could while being read a laundry list of the abuse their kid suffered in their absence. Matthew had a lot of rage, Vanessa saw, having lived a long life of helplessness in not that many years. It wasn’t as complicated as his mask made it out to be.

“So you fight for them?” Jack asked him.

“I fight for myself,” Matthew snapped. “And for anyone in our home who needs someone to give a shit about them for ten fucking seconds longer than usual.”

Jack finally dropped his hand.

“I can’t go back and fix it, baby.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“You never ask, but honey, I’m dumb. You’ve gotta tell me. What do you need? What can I do to make this easier for you?”

And just like that, the fight went out of Matthew. The Devil retreated. He stopped swaying his head. He stood up out of the battle stance.

He ducked his head and peeled off his glasses with both hands. The one with the brace shook a little bit. He looked so much like his father. He even had matching tears.

“Just be real,” he pleaded to Jack’s clavicle.

“I’m real,” Jack promised. “Can I touch you?”

Matthew swallowed hard. His chest and shoulders started shaking. He jerked his face up and tried to find his daddy’s eyes with his matching set. He couldn’t seem to find them. But he nodded. Jack wasted no time; he took two huge steps forward and wrapped his kid in his arms. Matthew reciprocated. He latched his arms over the top of Jack’s neck and buried his face into the bottom of it.

“I’m sorry,” Vanessa realized he was sobbing, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so fucked up. I’m so sorry.”

Over and over again. Just like little Peter.

Nelson looked relieved, exhausted, but relieved. He gave Vanessa a watery smile.

“Well, that’s two down and two to go,” he told her.

Matt took a nonconsensual nap after his trauma for the day, which surprised the fuck out of Jack, and left Foggy trying to explain that he just did that sometimes.

“That can’t be normal,” Jack said, checking Matty’s breathing and trying to listen to his pulse.

Sir, if there is one thing about your son which is normal, I’ll eat my hat.  

“He processes more information in seconds than we do in an hour,” Foggy tried to explain, “He just gets overwhelmed by it sometimes. Personally? This is my third favorite of his Off buttons.”

Because it made him stop screaming and crying during an anxiety attack. But Jack didn’t need to know that. Jack was still uneasy, though. As were the others. Which, okay, fair. The first time he saw Matt change into the Devil, Foggy had been a little scared too.

“He’ll wake up in five,” he assured them, “And then he’ll reveal himself to be a hopeless, dopey nerd and everything will be fine.”

Jack hefted his kid up in his arms (damn, man. Maybe a little less gym?) and got him situated on the terrible couch while the others chewed their lips and looked at Foggy for further instruction. He shrugged.

“This was my goal for today,” he admitted, gesturing at the happy family by the couch, “I’m honestly kind of stumped right now with Wade’s situation.” Vanessa poorly tried to hide the fact that she was crestfallen. He didn’t know what to tell her. He’d asked Wade for any suggestions and he’d told him to give him some time to think.

“I think he might be figuring something out on his end?” he tried to offer her. She nodded hopefully. Either Wade was figuring it out or he’d enlisted Spidey or one of his other allies/weird friends to help him figure it out. Foggy hoped he’d enlisted Spidey. Peter was a problem-solving machine.

And so was Matt when he was conscious. Now that he knew what was going on, Foggy had the option to throw Ben’s case at him to see what he’d come up with. And once they’d gotten Ben’s case cleared, they would have a precedent to push through Jack’s, so long as Matt kept his head on straight and didn’t let Daredevil fuck it up for them. Really, they needed to work on Maria’s case sooner rather than later, and that was going to be a bitch.

Where in the world is Frank Castle?

He needed to ask around. Wade and Peter wouldn’t be able to help him with that. Matt might though.

“You’re thinkin’ so fuckin’ loud, Fogs,” Matt suddenly slurred from the couch.

Perfect timing, babe.

“Hey, you,” Foggy said, trying not to get too sappy in front of the clients.

“Did I do the thing?” Matt asked, feeling around for the cane on the other side of the room. Foggy snorted.

“You did the thing.”

“The fuck is my cane?”

“You know where Castle might be, Matty?”

Matt found his dad’s leg instead of his cane and stopped feeling around to re-process his trauma. Jack ruffled his hair, but that only served to confuse him even more. Foggy called his name to get his attention and he snapped back to him. He repeated the question.

“Do I know where—Of course, I know where he is,” Matt grumbled irritably, “He’s over building a hovel of guns on 23^rd. Antagonizing the shit out of that guy Washington.”

 “Washington with the drugs or Washington with the horses?”

Matt paused to remember. Vanessa was trying not to look as intrigued as she was.

“Drugs. When I bumped into him the other night, I told him he was making good progress in getting puked on by a meth-head. He said he was waiting for a safehouse to become available. Said he’d be out of Hell’s Kitchen by tomorrow night.”

“He say who he’s hunting?”

Matt frowned.

“Some guy named Fischer?”

“I can heeeeelp,” Matt was whining all over Foggy’s side of the bed.

“No, you’ve done your part, now you get to sit still and be pretty, and that’s all you get to do,” Foggy argued. He had bigger problems than Matt’s ego at the minute and not even close to enough energy to deal with them. How the fuck had Castle found out about Fischer? What did he know?

“Uuuuuuugh,” Matt moaned at the ceiling.

Matt hadn’t wanted to leave his dad once he’d decided for the second time that he was real and he wasn’t going anywhere for the time being. And Foggy got that, there was a whole lot of feelings there that they probably needed to work through, but Matty needed to sleep first, whether he liked it or not. Jack seemed to understand this better than his son, thankfully. He said some kind of magical combination of words, which Foggy was kicking himself for not being present enough to remember, that convinced Matt that Jack was still going to be there after some R&R.

That didn’t mean Matt had to leave gracefully, though.

He’d buried himself in Jack’s collarbone and cycled through the entire series of unhappy Matt-noises twice before he was ready to relinquish his hold on his dad for Foggy’s arm.

Jack thought this was hilarious. As did Ben, Vanessa, and Maria.

Yeah, laugh it up assholes. You don’t have to live with him.

Now, back in his own bed, Matt was once again insufferable.

Foggy had explained to him why he needed to not break his pattern of behavior and not go find or beat the shit out of Fischer and co. and he’d listened. Or at least he’d made his listening face. But doing nothing was not something which Matthew Murdock excelled at.

He’d shuffled under the duvet during Foggy’s silence to wallow in his misery more effectively. Foggy laid down on top of him and let him wallow harder. The noises didn’t abate.

“Hey,” he said the lump.

The noises abated temporarily.

“I love you and I’m glad you got to talk with your dad.” He petted the top of the lump. Matt wriggled out and laid his head in his lap.

“I love you, too,” he said once he’d gotten comfortable. He pulled Foggy’s face down for a kiss.

“And thank you for taking care of my dad. I know that must have been really hard for you.”

“I don’t like to see you upset.”

Matt kissed him and tugged at his t-shirt insistently. Foggy laughed into the kiss. He joined Matt under the covers and let him nuzzle into his chest.

“I don’t like to see you stressed,” Matt murmured. “Let me help.” Foggy snorted.

“Are you trying to seduce me, Matthew?” Matt grinned and pushed his scratchy cheek all up against Foggy’s.

“Might be. I could be your co-counsel.”

“Not for your dad.”

“Psh. You don’t need a co-counsel for that.”

Foggy pressed his forehead into Matt’s cheekbone. He was warm. He wasn’t in a mood; he wouldn’t go out that night.

“I’ll think about it,” he told him.

Chapter Text

Vanessa woke up on Wednesday to a surprise medical exam.

The happy cluster of agents (SHIELD, Federal, and municipal) at her door explained that they had just learned from Fischer more details of the “operations” their quad had undergone and were concerned about the potential effects of these. They wanted to give everyone a medical exam in order to build a case of torture.

That’s what they said, anyways.

The quad all pasted on their friendly white people smiles and Maria elected herself spokesperson to report that they just needed a moment to discuss how this made them feel before they agreed to such a potentially traumatizing exam. She had such strong counselor vibes that the agents left them to it rather quickly, bobbing their heads in understanding.

As soon as the door shut, she herded them all to the farthest corner from the door and they ducked into a group huddle.

“They want information on Fischer and they want to know how he did what he did for their own science-y business,” Maria concluded immediately. Vanessa wondered if she hadn’t learned a thing or two from her hovel-building husband over on 23^rd. Maybe some paranoia. That was cool, she learned that shit from Wade, too.

“They’ve probably noticed the family visits,” Parker added, “And are trying to get what they can out of us before Nelson takes us to court.”

Wow, such smart people. Putting her weird feelings into words. She shared a look with Jack which she hoped conveyed her appreciation for the other two.

“So we refuse?” Jack offered. They agreed. “They’re gonna try to make us do it anyways,” he pointed out. “And we aren’t exactly in a position to do anything about that if they decide to use force.”

There was a pause while everyone thought this over. Vanessa thought that Jack was probably in a position to do something about it if they decided to use force, but he was being kind to the rest of them. He did have a point, though. If they played their cards wrong with SHIELD or the others, they might get classified as security threats or something and end up right back in the cells they started in. She wasn’t too excited to repeat that fun journey.

“I get the feeling this is a legal issue,” Parker said.

The only person they were allowed to email or call was Nelson or his secretary at Hogarth’s firm as his representative. That’s how the laptop had been set up. When they called, crowded around the tiny table in the kitchen, however, his secretary apologetically informed them that Mr. Nelson was in court for the entire day. And the next one, too, unfortunately.

Parker explained to her that time was somewhat of the essence.

The secretary took this statement for what it was and said she’d get back to them in five minutes.

The agents returned and knocked on the door, asking if they needed more time to discuss. Maria called back that they were processing and needed maybe another half an hour.

The secretary called back in six minutes and said that Mr. Nelson had instructed her to provide them with a number for a temporary stand-in. She said that she had the utmost confidence that the other person could help them out that day.

Vanessa dialed the number on skype. They waited as skype bloop-ed its way through its dial tone.

“You’ve reached the office of Matthew Murdock, Attorney at Law,” A pleasant woman’s voice answered, “How can I help you today?”

Jack was tickled pink that his kid was taking over their cases for the day. He was so excited to see his baby in action, he kept picking things up and putting them down in different places around the apartment. Parker gently pried the toaster out of his hands and kindly reminded him to keep it together and under wraps for the time being.

Baby Murdock didn’t speak to them directly. They’d explained the issue to the secretary and, through her, he instructed them to tell the agents that they would only make a decision with their lawyer present. He said he’d be there in an hour.

The agents did not like that they wanted legal representation present. They tried to bargain with them. “It’s just a medical exam,” they promised, “It’s up to you what happens with the results. We won’t do anything without your consent and signature on the paperwork.”

Parker pointed out that they weren’t legally able to provide consent, and the agents paused and left the room.

It was the wrong thing to say, apparently.

The agents decided that they’d remove Parker’s brains from the equation and took each of them into a room to individually discuss whether they’d like to have a medical exam.

Vanessa hoped the others kept up the line. She certainly tried.

“It must be painful, Ms. Carlysle,” the empathetic SHIELD agent in her room noted, “And since you are in our custody, it is our responsibility to ensure that you are being fairly treated. If you are in pain, SHIELD feels that it has a responsibility to support you in seeking treatment or diagnosis for your condition.”

Yeah, right.

“Mmmm, I think I would want to discuss that with my lawyer first,” she said. She gave them a beatific smile, “You know. Third party reports, objectivity, and all that. But thanks for the offer.”

“If there is a medical emergency, Ms. Carlysle, we need to be aware of all existing conditions to provide adequate treatment,” the Fed tried. The SHIELD agent nodded along hopefully in agreement.

“If there is a medical emergency,” Vanessa mused lightly, “And I die again, then my problems and your problems both go away.”

This was not the answer the agents were hoping for.

They let her sit in the room for fifteen minutes and came in to try again with different phrasing.

“Ms. Carlysle, as you know SHIELD is in a delicate situation and we would rather not have a medical tragedy as you have described on our hands so—”

There was a crash outside the door. Everyone’s eyes widened in surprise. Something heavy followed by a series of much less heavy things fell to the floor outside and there was a flurry of shuffling and voices.

“I am so sorry,” Matthew Murdock was suddenly saying, “I’m just—oh no, here, let me help you with that—”

More clattering followed by more apologies.

“Shit,” the municipal agent whispered.

“Oh, God, here. I’m so--My most sincere apologies,” Matthew Murdock’s most earnest voice babbled outside the door. Vanessa couldn’t hide her grin. This guy was fucking great. The door flew open; an exasperated SHIELD woman in a suit stared meaningfully at her colleague and said,

“Mr. Murdock is here to see his client, Agent Milnes.” Get him the fuck out of my office was left unsaid.

The municipal agent put his head on the desk.

“Colin, it has been so long,” Matthew said, once situated happily next to Vanessa at the table.

“You’re not on this case, Murdock,” Colin from the city snapped.

Matthew folded his hands on his cane. He cleaned up damn fine. Someone had covered his bruises for him and he wore a crisp white dress shirt with a jacket and slacks tailored in all the right places. He’d trimmed the stubble, coifed his dark auburn hair, and topped it all off with a brilliant, perfectly straight, not even a little bloodstained smile.

“I am,” he stated easily.

“You’re not,” Colin argued.

The SHIELD and Fed agent looked nervously between them.

“I am,” Matthew asserted again, he reached down and produced from the leather bag he’d brought with him a binder. He dragged his fingers across the top of the stacks of paper in there, feeling for a mark he’d left in the corner of one. He pushed the papers he selected across the table to the agents.

“Co-counsel,” he said.

Colin went purple with fury.

“Are you aware of the details of this case, Mr. Murdock.”

“I am.”

“Mr. Nelson was not to—”

“Mr. Nelson is allowed to disclose and consult with whatever professionals he chooses and Ms. Hogarth approves of on his cases, Mr. Lindman,” Matthew interrupted. He flashed a brilliant smile. “This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you.”

“You’re not—” the SHIELD agent began, but caught herself. “Mr. Murdock,” she started over more calmly, “It is SHIELD’s responsibility to—”

“Ms. Carlysle is not interested in a medical examination by your agency or any other at the present time, although she may be open to one in the future, provided the appropriate negotiations take place. She appreciates your concern and offer.” Matthew told her smoothly. “Shall I repeat that for the record?”

Vanessa smiled alongside him.

Mr. Nelson showed up just in time to get Jack out of his interview and meet them back in the apartment looking like he’d climbed twelve flights of stairs. The second the door closed, he jabbed a finger at Matthew and said,

“This is not permission.”

Matthew wriggled in delight.

“Co-counsel,” he cooed.

Nelson pointed at him menacingly. Vanessa wondered if Matthew could somehow sense the gesture.

“No more,” Nelson said.

“I helped,” Matthew reminded him, gesturing to the other people in the room.

“You’ve done enough. And now you are taking you and your smug-ass, bad attitude back to Becky and you are helping no more,” Nelson informed him. Matthew pouted and bounced his knee irritably. Then he lit up.

“Back to Becky,” he breathed. Then announced, “I have an idea.”

“No, you don’t,” Nelson retorted.

“No, Fogs, I have an idea.”

“I don’t care. Back to work. Go.”

“It’s 4, by the time I get back it’ll be the end of the day. No, listen—”

“And Becky will probably have six thousand things for you to do in the last ten minutes you have together. Don’t you have the Santos case? And the Wrights’ and the Nguyens’? If you don’t have enough to do I will refer all of my pro-bonos to you. Like, now. I will call them right now.”

“Fogs, it’s for Wade.”

Vanessa nearly broke her neck getting her eyes on the man. Matthew’s grin was just a hint manic. Nelson squinted at him for a second and then his eyebrows dropped.

“No, Matty.”

“Yes, Matty.”

“No, Matthew.”

“Just a little, Fogs, I promise. That’s all it’ll take.”

“I said no.”

“Alright, what’s your plan then?”

Silence.

Oho. They were an equal match, these two.

Vanessa bounced her eyes between them. Nelson glared, then suddenly deflated and gazed heavenward, defeated.

“I hate you so much,” he whined.

Matthew leapt out of his seat and grabbed Nelson’s shoulders in triumph.

“This is going to be so much fun,” he bubbled. Nelson groaned and sunk his head into his shoulder.

Matthew went into a follow-up interview with Vanessa the next day to consider the possibility of a third party medical examination and got punched in the fucking face by Lindman. Which was horrifying at the time, but in hindsight, hilarious.

Vanessa wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but one second Matthew was requesting a braille copy of the documents SHIELD had compiled as an agreement for a medical exam, and the next Lindman had shattered his glasses and was holding him up against the door. The other agents were dumbstruck, but snapped into action just in time to prevent Matthew from acquiring an entire new nose shape.

Lindman was escorted out of the office and Matthew received immediate apologies. The SHIELD agent knelt with him on the floor, trying to mop up the blood pouring out of his nose while the Fed called for Lindman’s supervisor.

“I’m pressing fucking charges,” Matthew spat out with the blood.

And the motherfucker did. Vanessa was gob-smacked.

“He totally could have dodged that, right?” she asked Nelson who was patiently brainstorming with Maria possible alternatives from her husband for a power of attorney on the terrible couch. Nelson hiked his shoulders up defensively, then, with enormous effort, allowed them to fall again.

“Yes,” he replied.

“He did that on purpose, then?” she pressed.

“Matt has the advantage of society frowning upon people punching people with disabilities.”

“So he did it on purpose,” she repeated.

Nelson sighed.

“You’ll see.”

Vanessa was informed that she was going on a field trip to finish the second meeting with the agents in a different location on account of Mr. Murdock point blank refusing to speak to them in a space where he was evidently in danger of having his face rearranged. A judge agreed with him. Vanessa wondered how the fuck he managed to swing that. The agents with her were wondering the same thing from the quiet, withdrawn faces they made next to her on the car ride over.

Matthew’s office was trapped somewhere in the maze that was Hell’s Kitchen. It took the driver three times to find it. Once inside, Vanessa found that it was a surprisingly small space, although neat to the point of obsession. Matthew’s secretary didn’t even look at them when they entered the room.

“Appointment or drop-in?” she asked, staring at the computer screen before her.

“Appointment,” said the Fed, “Mr. Murdock is expecting—”

“Name?”

Oh. That was good. They were playing on home turf now. The agents were getting increasingly more awkward and uncomfortable being forced to do this Matthew’s way.

“Carlysle; we’re here to—”

“I see. Ms. Carlysle, Mr. Murdock will be with you momentarily,” The secretary said, regarding Vanessa and Vanessa only in the group, “He’s stepped out for just a moment. If you could all have a seat, he’ll be with you shortly.”

There wasn’t anything else to do. Agent Milnes gave a helpless little shrug. They all sat. There was just enough chairs in the main room to hold them. Matthew’s secretary tapped away at her keyboard. There was a bookshelf in the room lined with an odd, but tidy collection of well-loved, second hand novels in Spanish and English. Next to this was a magazine rack and a small basket full of soft kid’s toys resting atop a Scrabble box and a Connect Four box.

It was actually kind of heartwarming to see a waiting room designed to accommodate families.

The front door opened, and Matthew walked in, impeccably dressed as usual, with gauze taped all over his face. The agents stood up to greet him, but over them the secretary announced,

“Mr. Murdock, Ms. Carlysle is here to meet you with her guests.”

“Thank you, Becky,” Matthew said pleasantly. “Shall we move to the conference room? There’s more space in there.”

Matthew brought them all the way to Hell’s Kitchen to negotiate a medical examination Vanessa was 80% sure he was ultimately going to refuse on her behalf. It was a bit weird, but Nelson trusted Murdock and she trusted Nelson, so she decided to let things play out as they would.

It was a bit later in the evening than Vanessa had expected Murdock to want to meet, given that most attorneys’ offices closed at 5. Matthew didn’t seem bothered, though. He patiently worked through the document before him with his fingers and argued specifics over who would have access to the resulting information with the agents.

Then someone outside screamed and a gunshot rang through the air. It was followed by a volley of them, a handful of which shattered the conference room window and scared the shit out of Vanessa.

She had a thing about bullets now.

Matthew put himself in front of her and pulled her down under the table with him, tucked in close against his chest to keep his body between hers and the window. He smelled good and his breathing didn’t waver, he just winced a few times as the shots died off and people stopped screaming. A baby wailed. The two of them stayed down as all the agents leapt up and started assessing the damage and shouting at someone on the other side of the window. Vanessa heard the sound of one of their safeties click off. She looked up at Matthew; he was smirking.

The fucker had planned it.

“Did you hire a hitman?” she breathed more than whispered. He tipped his head slightly towards at the two other safeties going off.

“Something like that.”

“GET DOWN,” the Federal agent suddenly ordered to the others, “GET DOWN, IT’S CASTLE, GET THE FUCK DOWN.”

No.

Way.

Vanessa looked up at Murdock in awe. He was listening for something through the shouting. Another rain of bullets crashed through the air, through the window. But it didn’t seem like Castle was aiming to hit anyone, if he was as good as Maria claimed he was, he definitely would have already struck the target by then.

The agents dropped down under the table with Matt and Vanessa and started speaking frantically into their radios. The SHIELD agent looked directly at the civilians and swore.

“Murdock,” she ordered, “Get somewhere safe, now. Take her with you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Murdock said.

Vanessa realized belatedly that the woman had forgotten Murdock was blind.

The agent covered them as they left. Becky had already left the office. Her purse and keys were missing, and her desk light was off. Matthew made sure to bump into a few things around the office, then, once he’d closed the door behind them, he grabbed her wrist and took off in a sprint.

Vanessa could barely keep up with him as they tore through Hell’s Kitchen. They screeched into an alley and he went still and swayed his head, listening, tracking. Then he turned to a fire-escape.

“You ever do gymnastics at school?” he asked her.

Oh, dear god.

“No?” she said.

He smirked.

“It’s easier than it looks,” he promised.

All those videos of Daredevil had nothing on the real thing. He could scale buildings in the blink of a fucking eye, and he could do it dragging along a terrified, unwilling participant with in only slightly more time. She hadn’t realized that she was capable of jumping from one roof to another until they landed on one which he didn’t make her sprint across.

No. Instead he made her climb.

There was an old, grimy-ass ladder attached to the side of the ancient building. She got about halfway up and made the terrible-ass decision to look down. It had to be at least fifteen stories high.

“Oh my god,” she whimpered.

“Keep going,” Matthew told her cheerfully from where he was practically bouldering up the side of the building via window sills.

“Who are you?” she demanded. He just laughed.

She got to the edge of the ladder and screamed because someone’s hands latched onto hers. She swayed backwards away from the ladder, but the hands held tight and pulled her back. They were small. And red?

Spiderman pulled her up and over the side.

“You could have just told me,” little Peter grated irately at Matthew. “I could have just picked you both up.”

He had super-strength. Oh, god, he had super-strength.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Matthew teased, hopping up onto the flat of the roof with them. The bastard didn’t even look out of breath.

She wanted to slap him. Peter caught her before she did, damn him. He was strong, the brat.

“Uh? Ms. Vanessa?” he stuttered, “Let’s not hit Double D? He did it so—”

She rounded on him instead. He shrank back.

“He did it so what,” she demanded.

“So we could talk, Ness.”

Chapter Text

Foggy got a call from Matt saying something about being concerned for Wade’s continued worldly presence with a lot of wind in the background.

“I mean, she’s really laying into him,” he said.

‘She’ being Vanessa.

“I told you,” he said.

“Oh, now everyone’s crying,” Matt reported.

“Don’t talk to anyone, you’ll fuck up their moment,” Foggy mandated.

“Your suggestion has been received and acknowledged,” Matt informed him.

Wade was as fucked up and amazing and reckless and sweet and fucking stupid as he had ever been. And, just like before, even though most of his skin was thick and rough with scar tissue, his lips were soft. So was the space under his eyes.

The callouses on his hand against her neck felt like home.

He was a little shocked by the initial rough treatment, but he seemed to understand that it was justified. And also that she wasn’t entirely wrong.

“You’re a fucking idiot.” Correct.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Perfectly understandable.

“What the fuck took you so long?” Also understandable.

“Why aren’t we fucking right now?” She was surrounded by men and none of them were her beautiful man; of course she was justified in this.

Wade shook himself out of it and laughed and kissed her temple and then her cheeks and then her mouth. He pressed their foreheads together and they held still for a minute. He still smelled like hot iron and leather. A hint of clove in there somewhere which she had never understood. Wade hadn’t owned cloves until she’d bought them for their first two-man Thanksgiving. Like an idiot, he’d put a handful of them in his mouth and had spent the rest of the evening numb and drooling.

She cried against his chest at the memory. Then punched him for it because, goddamnit Wade, you couldn’t even taste the food we’d spent all day making.

“Is that for the anus spice?”

And of course he’d remember.

“You’re so stupid,” she sob-laughed. He was so warm. “Anise, it’s anise.”

“No, it was clove,” he told her. His lips were warm against hers and a little wet and salty from the tears.

“I love you,” she sniffed, swallowing hard and patting both hands against his chest for emphasis, “I love you so much. I’ve missed you so much.”

Wade cupped her face.

“I tried to bomb the apartment to start over after you,” he said and sniffed, “Didn’t fucking work. Got fucking cats instead.”

She laughed. Pressed her face into the leather of his armor. Listened to his heart beat and let her own stretch its stitches in return.

“I’ll do whatever it takes, Ness,” Wade promised her, “Whatever it takes to bring you home.”

“What if I die again? I’ll probably die again. Whatever this is, it can’t last forever,” she murmured. Wade huffed.

“Then I’ll go with you, baby. It’s not so bad the second time.”

Her stomach lurched and her throat ached. She couldn’t swallow properly.

“I don’t want you to die,” she hiccupped. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

“Without you, I’ll always be a little sad.” He tucked a hand under her chin to coax her eyes up to his. “But that’s okay. I’d rather be sad than forget when we were happy. So let’s be happy, even if it’s just for a little longer.”

Foggy arrived to the apartment the next day around the same time Matt brought Vanessa home (SHIELD apparently excused her lateness since there had an actual emergency the day before). She had a huge fucking hickey on her neck and was the happiest he’d ever seen her. She was practically glowing. Basking in everyone else’s awkwardness. He was? Happy? For her?

“I owe you one, Red,” she told Matt. Matt flinched at the nickname and retreated behind Foggy. He could probably still smell the sex on her. Foggy did not envy the man. He petted his arm comfortingly when he shuffled in close to tuck it into his elbow.

It was good that Vanessa was happy, it was bad that they still had no plan for to get her into Wade’s custody. It was bad that there was still no plan to get Maria into Castle’s either.

Wait. Actually, speaking of Castle.

“Matty?” he asked.

Matt, who had a grand total of two tasks yesterday, suddenly abandoned Foggy for Jack. Jack was surprised but pleased to find his kid suddenly desiring of his affection on the couch. Matt hid his face between Jack’s shoulder and the cushion he was leaning on.

It would have been cute, except Foggy knew that slink. It was the guilt slink. Karen was weak for it. Foggy was too but less so when there was work to do.

“Matt,” he repeated. “Did you ask Castle what I told you to?”

Matt managed to get his face, both hands and a knee in there between Jack and the back of the couch.

That was a no.

“Answer him, son,” Jack admonished. Foggy was taken aback. He’d never had double authority on his side before. Karen wasn’t so much a second gun as she was ammunition. Her magic ability to make Matt do things didn’t quite extend to shit like self-care and social etiquette (Matt was actually more inclined to misbehave in public to make her laugh, but that was neither here nor there).

“No,” Matt answered in the tiniest voice he could make. It was his ‘please don’t yell at me, I am very small and scared and fragile’ voice.

“Why not?” Foggy pressed.

Jack looked at his shoulder expectantly. Maria and Parker were doing their damnedest not to laugh at this exchange. Foggy admired their self-restraint. It was getting harder for him to play straight man too.

“Not telling the truth is the same as telling a lie,” Jack said patiently. “They’re both sins, Matty.”

“Fuck you,” Matt suddenly snapped. Then remembered that he was talking to his dad, not his friend. “Sorry. Didn’t mean it. Uh. Knee-jerk, uh, reaction.”

“That how you talk to your priest, boy?” Jack rumbled dangerously. Matt looked like he might combust under the guilt.

“No, sir,” he mumbled.

“That’s what I thought,” Jack said, satisfied. He let Matt squirm back in behind him and carry on hiding.

Maria, the fellow Catholic in the room, left it to go cackle in her bedroom. Foggy tried to hide his grin by pinching the space between his eyebrows.

They still needed Castle.

Maria knew her husband’s soft spots better than anyone in the history of the planet and when allowed a greater say in her case, proved to be surprisingly devious about it.

She turned to Parker and said, “Can I borrow your nephew?” and really, that was the end of the discussion.

Peter was stoked to get to see Ben again and even more delighted to learn that Jack was Matt’s dad. He must have been dreaming of all the things he wanted to say to him.

“He is so mean to me,” he told Jack, pointing at Matt. “He pushed me into a dumpster. He tied me up in web. He makes fun of my Spanish.”

“That thing you do with your mouth isn’t Spanish,” Matt cut in, “It’s an insult to language.”

“Sorry, I missed the part where I was talking to you,” Peter ground out with a set jaw.

Foggy could feel the headache rolling in like a thunderstorm. Jack took it in stride.

“He’s a child, Matt,” he said simply. Peter mugged at Matt as if to say “See?”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Matt retorted, “He’s just as moronic as Wade.”

“Matthew.”

“I’ll show you, old man.”

“Peter,” Ben scolded, equally scandalized.

“Son, you’re teaching this kid bad habits.” Matt wasn’t even a little remorseful.

“He came with them.”

Vanessa and her hickey took in the show sipping coffee. Maria eventually came through to keep the peace. She reminded Matt that he had multiple degrees and a moral responsibility to shepherd the young and then reminded Peter that Matt went out of his way to support him on a semi-regular basis at night. When both tempers were mostly quelled, she took Peter aside with her on the sofa.

“Honey, do you think you can do something for me?” she asked him kindly. Peter responded well to friendliness, even though you wouldn’t know it from his nightly choice of company.

“Of course,” he bubbled.

“Do you think you could deliver a message to my husband?” Peter cocked his head and opened his mouth.

“It’s Castle,” Matt answered before he could ask the question. Peter froze. Maria’s forehead creased in concern.

“The-the Punisher?” Peter repeated. “You want me to—you’re the Punisher’s wife?”

Yikes, damage control, Nelson.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t feel comfortable doing, Peter,” he specified. Peter cringed a bit and sought out Ben for support. It hurt Foggy’s heart a bit how easily the kid slipped back into the habit. Ben set down his mug on the kitchen counter and moved to sit down across from him on the coffee table. His presence seemed to give Peter the courage to inch forward. He twisted back to address Matt.

“W-would you come with, Double D?”

Matt raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t want that, kid.”

“Are you scared of Frank?” Maria asked, redirecting the conversation gently. Peter untwisted his body to look her in the face, then down at his lap.

“He kills a lot of people,” he said softly.

“Wade kills a lot of people,” Vanessa pointed out matter-of-factly. Peter hunched in on himself.

It was different with Wade, Foggy knew. Matt was more tolerant of Wade, too. Wade had proved himself to the two of them; he didn’t kill anyone on their team-ups unless it was unavoidable. He didn’t take jobs which might cross paths with either of them. He didn’t revel in his victims’ death in front of either of them (well, at least that Foggy knew of, anyways).

“I know Wade,” Peter said, “He wouldn’t shoot me, he promised. He tells me all the time.”

Vanessa winced. She set her mug down and tucked her hands under her belly as she leaned on the counter.

“Frank won’t hurt you,” Maria promised, “If he knows how old you are, he won’t lay a finger on you, honey.”

Peter wasn’t convinced. Ben sensed his apprehension and moved from the coffee table to sit next to him on the couch. Peter pressed into his side.

“I don’t want him to know,” he said.

And that was entirely understandable. Spidey spent a hell of a lot of time trying to get other supers and vigilantes to take him seriously. If Castle started giving him special treatment, people would start raising eyebrows all over. Maria’s face fell, but she nodded in understanding.

“I’m sorry he’s scared you; he can be pretty scary,” she told him with a watery smile.

Peter tucked himself further against Ben and didn’t answer. Ben smoothed a hand over his hair.

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” he suggested. Peter hummed into his arm. Then reluctantly nodded.

Matt texted Foggy at lunch the next day.

“He said he’ll do it.”

Maria had locked herself in her room with a notepad and hadn’t come out for hours. Vanessa was getting worried.

She took the laptop and her duvet and went out to the kitchen table to sit with Jack and read up on what exactly Maria’s husband did to make Spiderman so afraid of him. Hell, to send SHIELD and the Feds into the tizzy they were in the other day.

She made herself comfortable. Jack was cooking something which consisted largely of cabbage. She watched him.

“You’re handling this whole undead thing really well,” she noted. He glanced back at her, then returned to his vegetables.

“What’s the alternative?” he asked. She didn’t have an answer for that.

“You know anything about Maria’s husband?” she asked instead.

“My kid hates him,” Jack said without missing a beat. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but that’s kind of an accomplishment. Matty’s a bit of an optimist when it comes to people.”

Sure thing, Jack. Whatever helps you sleep at night, pal. She hummed then turned on the laptop.

“Jack, this man is a psychopath,” she announced five minutes later, “And I should know, I’ve been trying to marry one for years.”

Jack joined her at the table with a bowl of something which neither looked nor smelled like cabbage. She didn’t want to know. He turned the laptop to see what she was talking about and, after a few moments of scanning, turned it away back towards her.

“Yeah,” he said, “That sounds about right.”

She stared. He noticed and offered her the bowl of not-cabbage. She waved a hand in refusal.

“Do expand, oh wise one,” she entreated him. Jack hummed and held his bowl without touching the fork in it for a few seconds.

“My dad went to ‘Nam,” he said. “And he never came back.”

He then took a bite to avoid further discussion.

Well, fuck. Okay, point taken.

Maria re-emerged back into the world in the morning. She was pretty fucked up.

“I want to go to church,” she declared.

She asked Foggy if she could go to church. He said he’d put in a request.

Peter took the notebook the next evening like it was a cyanide pill. He shoved it to the bottom of his backpack to remove it from sight as quickly as possible. He then vanished into Ben’s room and didn’t come out.

Matthew stopped by later saying that he was there to take Maria to Wednesday night mass. He apologized to his dad for not being able to take him as well. Jack ruffled his hair just to fuck it up.

Matthew called out for Peter, somehow knowing he was there, and told him they were leaving together. Peter popped out of Ben’s room and went right over to push his elbow into Matthew’s hand. Vanessa could tell they’d played this song and dance many a time.

She watched them get ready to leave and smiled into her palm. If she and Wade had had their baby, she hoped it would have grown up to be like Peter. He was a sweet kid, a smart kid. Gentle, with a whole lot of sass just under the surface. Ben was obviously proud of him. He came out of the room to say goodnight and put a kiss on the very top of Peter’s head before they left. It must have been a nightly ritual because Peter was maybe only a hand shorter than his uncle, but he was sure to duck his head to make sure Ben got the top, not the side.

Maria came home and said she felt better. She still had tear tracks on her face, though. Jack told Vanessa later that she wasn’t just upset about her husband. She was mourning her two babies as well.

Vanessa found herself suddenly desperately hoping that Frank Castle would get his shit together and come hold his fucking wife. She still believed in him, despite every warning sign and word of advice.

When she got to her room, Vanessa found a cellphone on her window sill.

It turned out that Wade had left it for her. He’d gone and found some kind of tech to keep it hidden from SHIELD’s surveillance system. She could text and call him from it. She called him that night. They couldn’t talk for long, but he said he had a solution. It wasn’t a good one, but it was the best he had at hand. He needed to talk to some people. He loved her. He wished her good night.

Nelson popped in for ten minutes on his lunch break the next day to tell Ben that they had achieved approval from a judge that he deserved the right to re-appoint his power of attorney. All he had to do was a fuckload of tests to verify his identity and then a mountain of paperwork. And then, once that was done, they’d sign another Power of Attorney agreement, take it to a notary, and then Ben was free to go home with Peter and May.

Nelson had organized a battery of tests in order to get the ball rolling, he said. He was exhausted, but cheered with the rest of them at the good news. He then dug through his bag and pulled out a manila envelope which had truly seen better days.

There was a name written on it in blocky all caps.

Maria gasped in shock and held out her hands for it unsteadily.

“Peter is a little skittish right now,” Nelson told her kindly as he handed it over. “But he wanted you to know that he doesn’t think ‘Mr. Castle’ can be all that bad of a person because his dog is super nice.”

Maria coughed and laughed and sobbed at the same time.

Chapter Text

Wade said that he wouldn’t be seeking to re-accept Vanessa’s Power of Attorney.

That was a fucking curveball.

The following impossible home run occurred when he told her he’d asked Nelson to do it instead and the bastard had agreed.

“There’s no way we can get around Wade’s reputation,” Nelson told her anxiously, “And I swear, it won’t mean anything, you wouldn’t have to live with me or anything like that. I would just make your legal decisions with you, for you if it comes to that, that’s it. After the rights move over, then whatever you want, I’ll sign off on.”

“But,” Vanessa said, “Who would be my lawyer?”

Nelson grimaced.

“I’ve already spoken with Hogarth about that.”

The next day he introduced her to a good friend of his.

“And former fuck-buddy,” the real-life embodiment of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde explained, “Before Murdock pulled his head out of his ass and ruined everything for me.”

She called the latter half of this statement over her shoulder where Matthew was perched on the couch, reading through paperwork for Ben’s case. He raised her the bird with a college-esque aura of ‘Suck it.’

“Bitch,” she hissed at him, popping the ‘B’ with her perfectly pink lips.

“Bitch,” he hissed right with the exact same inflection. Jack whacked him over the head with a legal pad for speaking that way to a woman.

Vanessa wondered if there was anyone Murdock hadn’t made an enemy of.

Marci was a terrifying woman with terrifying habits and an amazing way of terrifying SHIELD agents. They hadn’t spoken to Vanessa for days.

Marci was neither surprised nor intimidated by the identities of her client or her client’s friends or her client’s friend’s vigilantes. Or if she was, she didn’t show it. Instead, the first thing she did upon finding out was grab Murdock and pin him to a wall by his tie and tell him that if he ever listened to her having sex with anyone ever again, mistakenly or otherwise, she’d strangle him with the Columbia sweater she stole from him in grad school. Then she punched Nelson for lying to her.

Then she went away and made friends with the two attorneys representing the other undead in other parts of the facility.

When the door clicked closed, Vanessa rounded on Nelson.

“You,” she accused, “Have a type.”

Maria emerged from her cocoon for a second time since receiving her shitty manila envelope; she was drenched in tears, clutching a composition book that had definitely been dropped in a pool of someone’s blood to her chest. Matthew evacuated the room before the feelings got too close. He told Foggy he’d meet him at home and fucked off down the stairs. He forgot his cane, the moron.

 “He still loves me,” Maria sobbed at their tiny kitchen counter. “He doesn’t blame me for Frankie and Lisa. He thinks it’s his fault.”

Vanessa rubbed her shoulder and brushed her hair out of her face.

“I miss him so much,” Maria sobbed, “I just want to go back to when we were a family. To when we were just normal people.”

Vanessa tried to remember when she’d started caring about this suburban mom and her two kids. Nelson somehow managed to convince Maria to take her distress to the couch. She cried there until she fell asleep. It was almost worse than the night Fischer had twisted his tongs in her neck. Vanessa sat with her for two hours before leaving her to her rest.

“Okay, so Foggy-Bear is the second most responsible person I know and trust me, I know people,” Marci told her while systematically covering the table in paperwork, “He’s so responsible he hasn’t missed a credit card payment in years.”

Vanessa picked her jaw up from the table and repeated, just to be sure, “Years?”

“Yeah. Years. Anyways, all this is to say that no one is going to refuse to be a witness to you making him power of attorney on the basis of him being irresponsible. They’re more likely going to be confused as hell as to how you are living when everything everywhere says you’re dead. Once they’ve worked through that, they’ll be confused as to why you’re picking him over anyone else. That might look like he’s trying to defraud you if you’re not really articulate about it.”

She made Vanessa start filling out forms and she didn’t let up until she had to take a call out in the main hallway for something work-related. Once the witch had temporarily vanished, Vanessa sprawled herself all over the table and its paper.

Someone chuckled at her from the apartment’s hallway.

“Get fucked, Parker,” she moaned.

“Just wait ‘til you have to go to the DMV,” he said unsympathetically.

So. Foggy had not intended for this to happen, but it had and now he had to deal with it.

Frank Castle was a man of few means and much fire power and when he decided he was going to do something, he was damn well going to do it.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” Maria was telling a SHIELD agent and a Fed who both looked like they’d been recently tased and couldn’t quite shake the memory.

“He shot up the main lobby?” The SHIELD agent reminded her.

“Yes, well I’m sure he didn’t mean to,” Maria told her.

The agents looked at each other, dumbstruck. They decided they were going to have a conversation outside the room for just a moment. They left Foggy and Maria in the interview room and closed the door. Maria didn’t seem half as concerned about this as Foggy was. She kept her good posture and calm in the stiff chair, even after they’d left.

“Uh,” Foggy started, because he didn’t know where to even begin.

“He’s doing it to visit me,” Maria pointed out lightly. She sounded a little…fond? In the same way that cat-owners were endeared by their cats bringing dead birds into bed for them.

“There are other ways we could make that happen,” he entreated her. She shrugged.

“It’s not the worst he could have done,” she said. Foggy gaped at her and her smooth skin and glossy hair.

How.

What.

When.

She was almost just as bad as him.

The door reopened to reveal only the SHIELD agent. She looked mighty nervous, eyes bouncing all around the room, unwilling to settle on Maria.

“Mr. Castle is, uh, holding Agent Fowler, um.” Hostage. He was holding a federal agent hostage in a fucking SHIELD facility.

“I see,” Foggy said slowly.

“He’s requesting to see his wife,” the agent said. “He passed a reality check, so uh. We think it would be safe?”

Maria stood up and smoothed her shirt and the thighs of her jeans.

“Can we speak in my room?” she asked easily. The agent desperately wanted to say no, but also desperately didn’t want a federal agent’s blood on her hands.

“I’ll ask my superior?” she offered.

Vanessa broke a glass when Maria entered the kitchen followed by her enormous, murderous pitbull. Foggy didn’t blame her. He also wanted to leave. Immediately. Five minutes ago. Yesterday.

The SHIELD agents with them clicked a thick collar with a strong sedative in it around Castle’s neck and, with the cautiousness of one defusing a bomb, unlocked the block of metal keeping his wrists locked together.

“Fifteen minutes,” one of them stated forcefully. Castle stared at him coldly. The poor guy shuddered and edged away from him. The two agents made their way to the door, but paused anxiously in the doorway. There was a team of federal agents right outside, standing in full uniform at parade rest in the main hallway behind them.

The door closed.

“Did you hurt that man?” Maria asked, standing in the kitchen with the tiniest tremble in her voice. Foggy congratulated her mentally for having held up a solid front for so long.

“No,” Castle answered immediately, “He ain’t hurt.” He stayed an arm’s length away from her.

“He was scared,” Maria acknowledged. Castle bent his head in a nod.

“You scared him to talk with me,” she stated.

Castle sniffed derisively.

“Scared him ‘cause he’s been tryin’ hire some sick fuck to put his hands on my wife,” he corrected.

A silence hung in the room.

“How did you know about that, Frank?” Maria asked, “I didn’t tell you about that.”

“I got my ways,” Castle answered.

Foggy hadn’t felt his heart throbbing in his neck like it was for nearly a month now and that had been great, so great. It had been just enough time to forget the nausea and light-headedness that came with adrenaline and severe regret. Maria turned her body so that she was facing Castle face on, just as he was facing her.

“Tell me,” she said, “How did you know.”

She wasn’t asking. Foggy wondered if she knew that, in that moment, she was the bravest person in the entire fucking state. And Castle bent to her will. Stiffly, like settling into an old habit.

He gave her a long, guilty, side-long stared and then looked down at the floor.

“Red told me,” he admitted.

“Red,” Maria repeated. She turned toward Foggy, “Your Red?”

This was news to him. He didn’t know how to respond. Castle did it for him.

“Yeah,” he drawled, “Your Red. Sorry.”

Ah.

“You’re the busted elbow,” Foggy realized.

Matt had gotten in late (or perhaps early is more accurate) the other night with a recently re-located elbow. He’d accepted painkillers on the second offer. He’d then taken a day off work because he couldn’t type or read without jostling it. He hadn’t wanted Jack to see it (Foggy wrestled this out of him while he was weak and sleepy), and so hadn’t tagged along with Foggy on his nightly visit to the undead for the last two days.

Castle hitched his shoulders a little bit defensively.

“An eye for an eye,” he said, “I covered for his ass the other day.”

“You hurt my kid?” Daredevil interrupted.

Wait.

Matt was at home.

It then occurred to Foggy that Jack was in the room, leaning casually against the doorframe to the kitchen. His face was blank, his arms crossed over his chest. Foggy’s stomach dropped. There was not a single person the room capable of playing referee if Battlin’ Jack decided to take a chunk out of Frank Castle. Fuck, Matthew. Of all days to be an endearing idiot.

“That why he ain’t been here?” Jack rumbled at Foggy in that voice just a hint lower than Matty’s Daredevil gravel.

Foggy couldn’t think of something to say which would defuse the situation. ‘Yes,’ would result in hair-pulling, possibly teeth-rattling. ‘No’ would result in more questions which would reveal the ‘yes’ underneath. And ‘I don’t know’ would be a flat-out fucking lie and this was Matt’s dad he was talking to.

“The fuck are you?” Castle snapped back at him instead, helpfully allowing Foggy to avoid an answer.

“’Bout to be your worst fucking nightmare, pal.”

“You wanna bet on it?”

“Frank, stop,” Maria interrupted. Thank god and Jesus for her. “This is Jonathan. He’s like me. He’s Matthew’s father.”

There was an awkward lull. Evidently, even Castle’s ‘oh shit’ detector had gone off. He cleared his throat.

“Apologies, sir,” he said gruffly. “But your boy is a pain in my ass.”  

“You lay a hand on him again, you’re gonna be one short,” Jack said.

Vanessa had told Foggy what had gone down in the hours before they’d been taken in by SHIELD; she’d wanted everything that had happened to them, from start to finish, to be on record. She’d stopped herself short, however, in explaining why there had been so much fuss around Jack for the first few days at the new facility and why SHIELD agents tended to take a wide berth around him even still. Foggy had written it off as Jack being a big-ass guy with big-ass arms and a mean mug when he wanted it to be. Now, however, it was clear that that was only half the reason.

No one ever said there was only one Devil, after all.

The men dragged out of that first room with his quad must have been Jack’s doing. Given the way he’d caught Castle’s gaze and wasn’t letting him look away, Foggy could believe it.

“Understood,” Castle finally acquiesced.

“So you fucked up my kid; he doesn’t know much about Fischer,” Jack continued, in just as flat and dangerous a tone as before.

“No, he don’t; doesn’t matter, though. Already had the name, just needed some specifics. I’ve got people in high places,” Castle said. “We have an understanding. I requested some intel, they provided it.”

“I’m fine, Frank,” Maria broke in. “Matthew and Nelson didn’t allow the exams.”

“You ain’t fine,” Castle argued, “It just feels like it.”

“Don’t go after him,” Maria ordered; it seemed like the two of them were having an entirely different conversation. “Stay with me. I need you with me. I don’t need whatever it is you’re looking for.”

Castle physically recoiled.

“You ain’t need me,” he snorted humorlessly.

“Who do I need then?” Maria shoved back.

“I can’t be here with you,” Castle argued.

“Well, how are we gonna fix that?”

Castle’s Punisher mask started to give way.

“Maria,” he said, “This ain’t a thing we can fix. Not now, anyways.”

“Yes, it is. And you can start with not shooting up a building just to talk to me. Now we’re both in custody, Frank.”

“It’s not, I’m sorry,” Castle knew better than to deal with the part of that statement, but not quite enough to realize that the first part was worse, man. Jesus, lie or something.

“Are you?”

A silence.

“You don’t need me.”

“Really? I’m just supposed to stay here until I die again, Frank?”

Castle was obviously conflicted.

“No, that’s not what I—”

“You sure? Because that’s what I’m getting from this. It’s like you don’t even want to--Oh.” Maria stopped dead. She reached back and caught the edge of the counter to brace herself as she leaned against it.

“There’s someone else,” she said softly.

Oh, Lord. Jesus. Fuck. Karen. Castle went immediately into damage control mode, though, so it was good that he at least had some sense rattling around that fucking head of his.

“No, no, no, sweetheart, it ain’t like that,” he said, rapidly losing the Punisher accent for the one he used around children, dogs, and, apparently, Maria and Karen. Vanessa was becoming steadily more murderous in her corner, eyes wide and brows hiked down nearly into a ‘V’ on her forehead. She put herself between the two of them when Castle took a step forward, an almost subconscious reaction to Maria’s choked-off sob.

“Maria, sweetheart, no,” Castle pleaded, “There’s no one. No one could ever—”

“It’s fine,” Maria tried to muffle her sobs behind her hands, “It’s fine. I understand. I mean, I’ve been dead for years now. I can’t expect you to—”

“No,” Castle insisted, “Sweetheart. Listen, it’s not like that. No one could ever replace you. No one. You or the babies. Ever. I’d never let that happen.”

“What’s her name, Frank? I get it, I understand, I’ll figure everything else out on my own, just tell me her name.” Maria mopped her eyes with the collar of her shirt and gave him what was probably meant to be an understanding, reassuring smile but was really just a spot-on impression of shattered glass.

“Maria,” Castle’s voice was dangerously close to cracking. “Fuck,” he swore, pressing his wide palms against his forehead. “Fuck. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

A SHIELD agent called a two-minute warning outside the door. The added time constraint seemed to give Castle’s fucked up head the kick it needed to enter hyper-efficiency-mode.

“I love you, Maria,” he blurted out, “And I never have and never will stop loving you, you can take that one to the fuckin’ bank. And I’m sorry that I’ve become this goddamned twisted piece of shit, and I want to help you, but I can’t. I’m a fuckin’ monster, baby, at best some kinda rogue hobo. Only things I’ve got are guns. If I could help you, honey, you know I’d do it in a second. But I don’t have anywhere or anything stable right now and I’ve got more feds on my ass than fingers and toes at this point. You gotta understand, I’m not tryin’ to make you upset; I’m not tryin’ to keep us apart, I’m just stuck between a rock and the hardest fucking hard place in the world right now.”

Maria was too upset to respond. Castle was becoming an equally upset, dangerous mix of desperate and frustrated. His brow furrowed, and his mouth twitched, and he clenched his hands open and closed in front of his body. Then everything just stopped for him. He dropped his hands, relaxed his face, and let out a breath.

“Give me some time?” he requested, at first it seemed like to the room, but when Maria choked on another sob, he repeated it more clearly to her, “Please, girl. Gimme two hours before you decide to give up on my ass. After that you can do whatever you want, start over, go back under, buy a fucking store or a house or a dog, whatever you want. Just. Please. Just a couple hours.”

Maria managed to nod through her anguish and Vanessa’s protective shoulders.

Castle nodded, resigned but thankful.

And just in time. The door opened and the cuffs went back on and down he went, with his riot team of agents, to the secure cells in the basement of the building.

“Your dad tried to pick a fight with Frank Castle, today,” Foggy told Matt once he’d gotten home. Matt made a quizzical noise under the duvet. He was only half awake; it was Daredevil nap time. When Foggy didn’t follow that up with anything, Matt shoved back the covers and stretched over his lap. He was heavy. He’d worn the elbow brace to bed. Foggy pushed a hand through his hair. They both needed a trim.

“Don’t go out tonight,” he said.

Matt opened his eyes at that. Foggy’s heart must have done something because he didn’t immediately start whining. He rolled over in Foggy’s lap and stared up at him as best he could. Waiting.

“You didn’t say Frank was the one who did that to you,” Foggy said. He pet his hair some more to keep from getting too upset.

Matt rolled out of his lap and sat up, taking his weight and his heat with him.

“He’s upset,” he said, “And trying to help in the only way he knows how.”

“Tracking Fischer,” Foggy said. Matt didn’t move in for a nuzzle or anything to keep them balanced. “Are you letting him do that, Matty?”

“There’s nothing to track, Fischer is at SHIELD,” Matt pointed out.

“Are you helping him, Matt?” Foggy pressed. He just needed to know. He was trying not to be mad before he knew. Matt touched a few fingers to his cheek and then laid back down.

“I won’t go out,” he said.

“Matt, please.”

He needed to know.

“I’m not,” he said quietly, “But someone else is.”

Chapter Text

Foggy woke up and had two epiphanies in the time it took him to brush his teeth. The first one was that he hadn’t been put on these fucking cases to solve some grand conspiracy; he’d been put on them to move people from point A to point B. The second was that this seemed like the kind of thing which was just above the level of the supers he normally dealt with.

Matt and Wade and Spidey. Cage and Pym and Hawkeye. Castle. Jones. Wilson.

They were, at best, low-profile supers and at worst, begrudging vigilantes.

That was really fucking weird.

Why would someone go after the herd when you could go after the leaders?

“Matty, is there some kind of referral system in y’all’s community?” he asked from the bathroom. Matt paused in inhaling coffee with his feet tucked under him on the couch to make his confused hum.

“We have a community?” he asked. He was wearing mismatched socks again.

Foggy dismissed him from further questioning.

Frank’s plea for ‘two-hours’ had thankfully turned into a period of 24 and counting because Maria was soft and fragile. As well as the current target of everyone’s affection and sympathy. Foggy arrived that evening to a Vanessa declaring all men useless pigs and was given exception status upon graciously agreeing.

“Your man is a useless pig,” Vanessa stipulated as Foggy went to go fetch Jack to schedule his exciting DMV adventure.

He’d seen people rage-bake before, but none who were half as bad at it as she was.

Jack was still a little (monumentally) miffed about the show the day before. He was irritated that Foggy hadn’t told him why Matt didn’t want to come along.

“Mr. Murdock, I don’t ask about Matt’s injuries anymore because all it does is give me anxiety and heartburn, but he stayed in last night and has stolen yet another pair of my socks if that brings you any comfort.”

It did, apparently.

Jack was going to go with Foggy to the DMV in two days. Foggy saw Parker tucking some clothes into a small bag before he left the apartment and it gave him an idea.

Peter was easily bribed into meeting because he didn’t want to do homework and didn’t want to go do science work for Stark either. Foggy took him to a pet store, ostensibly to survey the puppies there for one whose temperament might be suited for a future guide dog for Matt, but really because the boy was deprived of animal affection and would do damn near anything to get his hands on a ball of fluff.

“Peter, is there some kind of referral system in the super community?” Foggy asked during an allegedly imperative detour to hold bunnies. Peter was good and off his guard.

“Kind of,” he said, “Like if something bad happens that I can’t handle by myself, I’m supposed to tell Mr. Stark and then he does something called a threat assessment? And that number and some other things he won’t tell me determines which people on our team go out to handle the issue.”

Huh. So there was a system. Also, he probably needed to buy a lint roller before returning Peter to his aunt. The kid had become a walking allergen.

“What happens when no Avengers personnel are involved? How do you guys know what’s going on?” 

Peter stopped cuddling the rabbit in his arms for just a millisecond too long. Foggy knew he was found out.

“You think what’s going on with us needs to go up a level?” he asked.

Foggy took the rabbit and returned it to its box. It hopped grumpily into its igloo.

“I’m not entirely sure yet,” he admitted, “But it does seem like we’re missing an important piece of the puzzle here. Like, why target you? Or Matt or Wade? You guys aren’t moving and shaking the world or anything, not like Iron Man or Cap or Black Widow.”

Peter cocked his head.

“Some of them are already involved,” he pointed out. “Mr. Hawkeye. Mr. Wilson. They haven’t said anything to me yet.”

Foggy felt bad for having to be the one to ask.

“Would they?”

Peter huffed and leaned on the see-through rabbit display.

“Yeah, probably not.” He thought about it for a second.  “You told me not to tell Mr. Stark.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that order still in effect?”

“If you don’t think he’ll lose his mind, then no.”

Peter grinned at him.

“Oh, he’ll lose it, but I’ll ask him to do it quietly.”

Castle had definitely gotten himself thrown into a SHIELD cell jut so he could intimidate the fuck out of Fischer. The asshole was demanding a lawyer and asking to be transferred to a more secure facility. He was also blaming Maria for this, as if she was the one who put Frank up to it. Frank, in the meantime, had been transferred into Fed custody because he’d killed a guy in Virginia before tearing his way over to assault SHIELD, which meant he’d crossed state lines. Foggy held his head in his hands while Matt pet his shoulders trying to soothe him.

“I’m not even surprised, just disappointed,” he sighed. Matt hummed in understanding. He’d been so good lately, Foggy was getting suspicious. He’d slept through two whole nights in a row. “Are you sure you have nothing to do with this?” he accused.

“I can go get arrested too if it’ll make you feel better?” Matt offered.

Foggy groaned.

“I need to go to the fucking DMV tomorrow.”

Matthew had come along with Nelson to witness the hand-off of Parker from the SHIELD facility to his wife. Parker was so fucking happy. Apologetic that he was getting the hell out of dodge first, but mostly happy. Little Peter latched onto him the second he could and didn’t let go. May wasn’t too much better. It was a whole production to get them all down to ground level.

Before he’d left, Parker had trapped Vanessa in a hug which she pretended to resent. He gave one to Maria, too, who’d improved enough that she didn’t completely break down in his arms. He and Jack did some weird manly hug and slap ritual and then he was off.

And then there was three.

The agents weren’t happy to have lost one of their subjects and, after Nelson and baby Murdock were off, became awkward and stiff and unusually sharp that night. When they said lights out at 11, they meant it.

Vanessa texted Wade telling him what had happened, about Castle and about Parker.

WW: Yeah, Red told me.

“It feels weird,” she typed out.

WW: Right?

VC: Is something weird happening out in the world?

WW: Not on the surface. Red and I are going to go under tonight to do a little digging.

VC: You’re taking a blind man on a covert operation?

WW: He has a great nose.

VC: Not if it’s broken. Don’t let him get hurt, his dad’s worried.

WW: AWWWWW. No promises.

WW: Hey, by chance have you seen any of the other dead people?

VC: A couple. Why?

WW: Just wondering.

VC: You’re a lying shithead. What’s going on?

WW: Kid smells a rat too. Says he’s taking it up a level. He’s going up. We’re going down. It’ll be like a really shitty race :D

VC: Up a level? What does that even mean?

Read 13:56

VC: Wade?

Read 14:02

Foggy had been standing in DMV hell forever. For. Ever. And he’d be there for the rest of his days. He’d never leave this line. This was it. He’d gotten through seven years of higher education to stand in line for eternity with a dead man to have his fingerprints taken and an ID printed. Seven years. His student loans could fund a small hospital in a developing country.

Jack was having a grand time, entertained as he was by the deterioration of Foggy’s composure.

“Is this side of you the ‘Foggy’ one?” he asked while Foggy was clawing his hands at the runner-up in the Oldest Human in New York competition, who was merrily chatting up the agent at the middle counter. Her fucking cousin (or aunt or worst enemy or whatever) was at the one on her immediate right and the incompetent, entitled prick at the final counter was probably her best friend’s great fucking grandson.

“What?” he snapped, not having heard anything through his rage. Jack tried not to laugh but did a shitty job of it.

“I said, is this the side of you people call ‘Foggy?’”

That gave him pause. Apparently, all Murdocks assumed that because they were all aggressive two-faced shitheads, everyone else in the world was too.

“No, it’s not like that. It’s just that only friends and family get to call me Foggy.”

Jack kept a hand covering his increasingly sappy smile as the DMV agent dismissed the aged banshee before her and called for the next person with an appointment.

“You guys are a good match,” he noted.

“Sorry?” Foggy asked. Oh good lord, no. He knew where this was going. He could not. Not today. He could already feel himself start blushing.

“You and Matty. You’re a good match. You’re so even most of the time, I was starting to get worried. It’s not always great for opposites to be in relationships, you know.”

Oh god, he could not discuss his and Matt’s relationship with his boyfriend’s dad at the fucking DMV. He just. Could not.

“Uh,” he said, making sure to throw all seven years of higher education directly into the shitter and flush repeatedly, “Yeah. I’ve been told.”

“Have you thought about getting married?” Jack asked, then pulled back, “No, so sorry. That was rude of me. I don’t—can people even—sorry, is there an alternative or something?”

God. Smite him. Matt wanted to get married more than he wanted food, shelter, and possibly salvation. But he would never, not in a million years, admit that to Foggy with words. Instead, he’d just mournfully listen in on the proceedings of the weddings taking place in the parks around them. Or he’d just sigh dreamily at the ones they were invited to by their law school pals. Or he’d note that so-and-so was wearing a new ring; it made a different sound against their clothes when they put their hands in their pockets.

And then he’d pretend like they weren’t sitting together in awful, awkward silence.

“There’s ways,” Foggy managed to eke out. He had Jack’s undivided attention.

“Oh, that’s great then. So what’s stopping you?”

Nothing.

Except the crippling terror of eternal commitment.

Yes, he was aware that divorce was a thing, but he was equally aware that he’d rather stab himself in the heart than subject either himself or Matt to the emotional catastrophe that would be the dissolution of their hypothetical union. It would probably be less painful.

Not to mention that Matt could literally die tomorrow with his dumbass vigilantism and Foggy wasn’t sure he could cope with his death as it was. If they were married, then he’d definitely go full-Queen Victoria. He was dramatic enough; he could wear black for the rest of his life.

“It’s just a bit of a leap right now,” he squeaked, desperately willing the six people in front of them in line to suddenly throw in the towel and decide that, fuck it, we don’t need a license or registration today.

No luck. The gal at the right-most counter was trying to light a cigarette indoors to cope with the fury that was incited by DMV red tape. It was starting to draw the attention of the resident security guard.

“How long have you two known each other?” Jack asked like the friendly awkward dad he was. Foggy could just about die. At least Jack was nicer about it than his mom had been. When he’d brought Matt home for the first time, she’d done the same song and dance, twice as obnoxiously and in full awareness that they’d only been roommates for three months.

“About six or seven years now,” he gritted out, “We were roommates in law school.”

Jack beamed at him.

“Well, you’re certainly smart enough to keep each other on your toes.”

Someone save him from this man’s kindness and heartfelt approval.

He collapsed on Vanessa of all people, once he’d escorted Jack back to the apartment. He’d sent the man himself off to put all his documents in order so that he could take them to a judge in the morning. Vanessa had been surfing the web despondently for hours, unknowingly mourning the loss of Parker, who she was adamant she hadn’t cared about that much anyways.

Denial, thy name is Carlysle.

He mashed his face against the table’s fake wood and groaned. Vanessa tried to find a new place to put the laptop.

“Dude, what’s your problem?” she snapped once the attempt proved to be unsuccessful.

“He is conflicted about marrying my son,” Jack told her breezily. Out of his peripheral vision, Foggy could see that he was holding out his neatly organized envelope of paperwork. He moaned in despair. Vanessa perked right the fuck up.

“Do it,” she egged, “I can make you a Pinterest board. I have one for me and Wade’s wedding, but you two have a totally different vibe.”

He tried to sink further into the table. Or hell. He wasn’t picky.

Matt crawled into bed at 4 in the morning with a wet, puffy face and whispered, “Fogs, I think we need a hero.”

And that was the beginning of the end, in a way.

“I understand that you are holding him in your custody, I just don’t give a fuck,” Steven fucking Rogers told the SHIELD agent standing in front of the main elevators in the lobby at 4:30 in the afternoon. He and his perfect pecs loomed over more than half the agents immediately behind her.

Foggy could have cried. Captain America said ‘fuck.’ He was pretty sure Matt and his new concussion were having a coronary next to him too.

“Sir, you don’t have any jurisdiction—”

“Wow, still with the jurisdiction thing. What part of shove it up your—”

“Captain Rogers, it’s unlike you to show up unannounced.”

The voice came from a man in a dark suit absolutely surrounded by SHIELD agents. They moved to absorb Cap into their bubble. The man speaking was of medium build with blond hair and a somewhat soft, sad face.

“Coulson, I’m taking this from here,” Cap said firmly.

Coulson didn’t stand down like any other person in their right mind would.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to do that.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to disclose SHIELD secrets to the Russian government then.”

Talk about a fucking standoff.

“You wouldn’t do that, Cap.”

“You’re fucking with my boy’s boy. Try me.”

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

“I can assure you that Mr. Wilson’s friend has been—”

“Unjustly held here against his will, against the recommendation of his attorney, and against the wishes of the family who trusted their son to the goddamned United States Airforce. Sorry, did you think you had the moral high ground here? I don’t know, and frankly I don’t want to know, what you’re hoping to gain from interrogating some two-bit, lazy-ass, coward-necromancer, but I know for damn sure that it ain’t for the greater good.”

A long silence stretched through the huge lobby. People swallowed their coughs, terrified to break it.

“Captain, why don’t we speak in my office.”

Cap put his glorious hands on his glorious hips and planted himself like a tree.

“You bring me Fischer. Then we speak in your office.”

“Oh my god,” Foggy gasped to Matt as soon as they’d tumbled through the door of the apartment.

“Oh my god,” he breathed back.

“Spidey doesn’t do things by halves, does he?” Foggy asked. Vanessa popped out of her room immediately to come investigate the fuss. Maria joined her. Jack was the last to make it out of his room.

“What’s going on?” Vanessa pressed, leaning over the counter and tucking her hands up into her chest. She could sense the gossip was juicy.

“Captain America just came in and demanded Fischer,” Matt told her.

“No way,” She gasped. Maria was more subdued.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, he’s here because one of your ghostly cohort belongs to the Falcon. Sam Wilson. Cap’s air support and other best friend, possible lover.”

“Definite lover,” Matt chimed in.

“Matthew, you can’t creep on Captain America,” Foggy admonished him. “Anyways, he’s threatening to dump SHIELD secrets if they don’t give up Fischer.”

“He can do that?” Maria asked.

“Pretty sure Cap can do whatever he wants,” Foggy noted, “But more likely he’s working with Stark.”

“How do you know that?” Jack asked, finally getting a word in over the ladies.

“I asked Peter to disclose the situation to Iron Man,” Foggy told them.

There was a thoughtful pause.

Matt cleared his throat.

Oh, no.

Foggy turned slowly to stare at him. He could feel the wrinkles in his own forehead.

“Matthew,” he said. Matt avoided his face.

“I—we—me and Wade--maybe, might have, kind of appropriated some documents. And left them. On Cap’s doorstep,” Matt admitted, then re-qualified, “With Wade. Not by myself.”

Foggy stared at him.

“You did what?”

His hands went up like he was expecting a blow. And if Foggy had had one iota less of self-control, he probably would have taken a swing.

“Castle suggested it first.”

“Castle did what?”

Matt edged away from him, fearful of both his and divine retribution for his sins.

“You said you weren’t helping him.”

Foggy was going to have a fucking stroke.

“I said I didn’t help him track Fischer.”

A. Fucking. Stroke.

“You—” He cut himself off. Breathe, Nelson. Matt only shuts down in the face of anger. You have to keep him on the guilt side of things. “We said no more lies. You promised no more lies. So, tell me. Everything. Now.”

Chapter Text

Matt very occasionally knew what was good for him. Foggy was included in that, so over the last few years the Matthew Murdock brain and the Daredevil brain had come together to say ‘if Foggy asks for it, and it will not endanger him more than he already has been, give it to him.’

The unspoken ‘or suffer the consequences’ had been added after The Incident.

“When we were trying to get Vanessa and Wade together, Castle said that shit was fishy because Fischer hadn’t been indicted or charged or anything yet and I said ‘you’re right, that is weird for a case like this,’” Matt started all in one breath, just about tripping over himself to get the words out.

“And then he said ‘who else knows about this?’ and I said ‘I don’t know’ so he asked me to ask Wade and Wade didn’t know, but it made him paranoid. So Wade snuck in some tech to the facility and uh, “asked” some of the other undead people and the undead people’s people and found out that they were all being blocked from release after undergoing medical exams. And I said ‘that’s weird, our guys didn’t undergo medical exams, and they aren’t being blocked’ and Wade said, ‘that’s super weird, maybe we should look into that.’”

Matt took another breath.

“And then Castle touched base and I told him what Wade told me after he damn near broke my arm. But he was all, you know, him about it, and he got it in his head that he needed to find out what kinds of things Fischer was telling people. So he contacted one of his spineless moles with the Feds and they said they could get him a copy of one of the exams, but they couldn’t get it outside the facility. So he had to get closer for a physical pass off, and Maria was here anyways, and he would. Not. Shut. Up. About her. So Wade and I just decided to stand back and see what he was gonna do and in true form it was horrific, unnecessary, and violent.”

Maria was somehow touched by this, with her hand pressed flat over her heart. When they got out of there, Foggy was getting her a psych eval. No questions asked.

“But then Castle was stuck in a cell,” Matt continued while he mused about this, “And he had to get out to hand off the file, so he had to uh, convince SHIELD and the feds to take him out of this place. Which he did in the usual fashion. And then he met with us last night, just when Spidey showed up saying he was taking it to Stark. But we didn’t want this to become a Stark Industries thing, so we agreed to take ours to Cap to balance the difference and to boost it on the Avengers radar.”

There was silence in the apartment.

“Anything else?” Foggy asked, as evenly as his blood pressure would allow.

Matt took a second to sort through the other guilt-deserving things in his head.

“That’s it,” he confirmed sheepishly.

“So you guys have been planning this shit the whole time?” Vanessa said, a bit numb, but surely anticipating fury. “You, Wade, Spidey—you’ve all been in on this shit the whole time.”

“Well, only about half the time, we didn’t know what was going on until a couple weeks ago, and Peter’s been more or less only casually involved since then, but after that. Um. Maybe? A little bit? Yes?” Matt cringed away from the aura Foggy must have been putting out, and turned to Maria, fidgeting, “Castle says he’s really sorry, by the way. Something about endless peonies and red wine. We couldn’t listen to him for too long, it was getting embarrassing. There are just some things you don’t want to know about your local terrorist.” 

He peeked over to Foggy with his head tucked between his shoulders.

“So, uh. You were right?”

Foggy took a few deep breaths and had a bit of a wander around the kitchen.

“I think,” he decided, hands braced against the counter, “That I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“I didn’t mean to be super covert about it,” little Peter was babbling while the others stood by, watching him crumble in the face of his aunt’s rage. “It just worked out that way, and there wasn’t really time between one thing and the next to have, like, a discussion about it.”

“Give the kid a break, May,” Tony fucking Stark interrupted on Peter’s behalf, “If we’re being honest here, it’s much better that we found out sooner rather than later.”

May pointed a furious finger at Stark to elicit silence. It worked. Vanessa made a mental note to revise her opinion of Parker’s wife. Parker kept up a bland, even expression, which Vanessa would bet good money was the precursor to a ‘Peter, we aren’t mad, just disappointed talk.’ Baby Parker refused to make eye contact with him.

They were sitting in a common room in a new facility. The facility all of them had been just been transferred over to. The zombies. The families of the zombies. The lawyers of the families of zombies. All of them were now sitting tight at Stark Industries.

Let no one ever say that Steve Rogers didn’t get shit done.

The Stark Industries facility, still Avengers Tower in Vanessa’s head, was weird. It was startlingly white on the inside, lined with disgustingly minimalist, ergonomic furniture. There was a plant placed lovingly in a crevice or window in every room. When Vanessa had imagined the place before, it had all been very stainless-steel meets mental health clinic in her head. She hadn’t realized that actual business took place there, besides in the atrium space on the bottom floor.

Up where they were, in the residential rooms in the top fourth of the tower, there were no meetings, but there was a communal kitchen and an obnoxiously comfortable common room. Mr. Stark seemed pretty at home there, as was to be expected, but less expected was the sheer amount of grease the man tromped around his home in. He looked less like a millionaire and more like he’d been scraped off the bottom of an engine.

While everyone else had been awed at the man’s presence, Nelson had made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the facility or Tony Stark; he absolutely did not want to be there and he didn’t want Matthew to be there, either. He’d grabbed Matthew’s hand and shoved it into his elbow and kept grabbing it and shoving it there when Matthew pulled it out. Matthew didn’t even seem to acknowledge this. It was hard to tell if it was some kind of blind guiding etiquette or if it was some kind of Nelson-Murdock communication method.

She’d been busy watching their exchange when it dawned on her that someone was talking.

“Sorry, what’s happening again?” she asked.

Stark gave her an intrigued look.

“A+ for paying attention,” he noted, “I was saying that what we—rather, what Barnes--have gotten out of Fischer is that all of you darling ducklings are a test run. Something about blackmailing local low level enhanced people and vigilantes into fighting the next rung up, then repeat with those guys, then again and again, all the way up until, presumably, he would have had an army of supers fighting for him and his people, with the happy addition of the decrepit, old killjoy that was my father making weapons for them. As if he’d make shit without a paycheck,” Stark added, “Anyways, the good news is he got caught before that; the bad news is, he isn’t entirely sure that your condition is permanent.”

Well, fuck. Talk about a sobering thought.

“So we’re gonna die again soon?” she asked.

Stark shrugged.

“Well, you’re gonna have to die eventually,” he said off-handedly. Christ, all that money and he couldn’t buy himself some tact. “But it seems like you’ve got a minute before that happens. I’m not 100% sure how long yet, need to yank Banner and Cho and that new guy I hired, what the hell was his name? Ehn. It’ll come to me. I need to yank all them out of the woodwork to poke and prod one of you a bit to find out for sure. That’s what SHIELD and the Feds have been trying to do, but they made the mistake of being idiots, and so haven’t found anything conclusive.”

Little Peter was holding his cheeks in his hands in what at first Vanessa’s brain interpreted to be fear, but on second thought amended to be horror and severe secondhand embarrassment.

“Mr. Stark,” he creaked, “You can’t just tell people they’re gonna die.”

“Sure, you can,” Stark pointed out magnanimously.

Peter mashed his face even more in frustration, then released it so he could gesture with his hands.

“What Mr. Stark is trying to say,” he clarified before the man himself could speak further, “Is that, as far as we know, your uh, living-ness isn’t permanent and we need to come up with some long and short term solutions which are going to help all of us deal with this as it goes on. And that means finalizing living situations and writing out, uh. Figuring out, um.”

“Your funeral arrangements. Second arrangements. Maybe your third, I don’t know your lives,” Stark finished for him.

Vanessa decided that, when Cap kicked it, Peter should be voted in as head of the Avengers. He’d already developed the ‘don’t panic, this is fine, everything’s fine’ voice and he was only fifteen.

“In the meantime,” Stark continued, “You are all welcome to carry on your legal proceedings and, as far as I’m concerned, can fuck off to be with your friends, families, suicidal pigeons, whatever. The only condition is, and if you don’t like hearing it from me, I can go grab Cap or something, that we’re gonna need to get you in regular contact with one of my docs and someone from my team to sort out your imminent-death arrangements. They’ll do the whole thing to give Lawyer A and Lawyer B here a break; it’s my understanding that you two don’t normally do this kind of thing, is that right?”

Nelson slapped a hand over Matthew’s mouth and said for both of them, “That’s correct. And we appreciate that, Mr. Stark. And we’d be happy to pass the cases on once we’ve gotten our parts over with.”

Stark raised an eyebrow at the deathgrip Nelson had wrapped over Matthew’s face when the single hand hadn’t quite been doing the job of getting him to shut the fuck up.

“Right,” Stark drawled, far too interested in the proceedings. He cocked his head. “You two seem familiar.”

“Not familiar,” Nelson said over him, “Normal people. Average lawyers. Just over here, verifying identities. Doing paperwork. That’s all.”

Stark lit up.

“You’re the two from the Fisk case!” he realized, then paused, “And the Castle case.” His eyes then moved in a slow circle from the two of them, to Peter, to Maria, then to Vanessa. He pursed his lips. He rounded on Peter. “Hey, Pete, you wouldn’t still be working with—“

“I HAVE HOMEWORK,” Peter suddenly announced. “D-Matt, can you help with my Spanish homework?—he totally knows Spanish, Mr. Stark, like so much better than you—yeah? Perfect, let’s go do it outside. Now. Okay, great, bye!”

The kid grabbed Matthew’s wrist in a grip that crumpled the fabric around it and bodily dragged the man out of Nelson’s arms and out of the room to the stairwell. The door slammed behind the two of them, leaving everyone else suspended in awkward silence.

Stark didn’t even look that surprised.

“Kid should really stick to lying by omission,” he pointed out.

May just sighed. Nelson dropped his head into his hands.

It became clear later why Nelson and Peter wanted Matthew nowhere near Stark Industries. And it wasn’t just because he had some strong feelings about Mr. Stark.

Stark had spent the few days since their arrival popping up randomly and throwing vigilante names out in the air at Jack to see which one stuck, which was hilarious, but also kind of fucked up. Apparently, there was a fuckload of vigilantes out in the world, concealing their identities, causing emotional chaos among supers like Stark who needed to know everything about everyone who ever existed ever.

Between the three of them, Maria was most obvious. Stark told her, impressed, that even his team couldn’t track down her hubbie. But, upon learning from Peter that the man liked pitbulls, they’d gotten creative and had taken to tying especially mournful-looking ones to posts around the city. He was positive that this was draw Castle in from the cold. Maria, because she and her husband were more similar than anyone gave them credit for, tricked him into bringing one of the pitties for her to examine.

They now had a temporary dog. Who loved Maria and Vanessa and hated Jack.

His name was Tybalt. He was a big blue boy with a wide doggy smile and he was perfect.

After Tybalt had been acquired (stolen, never to be returned), Stark had stared at Vanessa for two seconds before going, “Oh. Wilson.” And then he’d left her alone. End of story. She was a little proud.

All this made Jack the last and most interesting target, and Stark was onto him. He’d breeze in and go “Ironfist?” And Jack would go, “I dunno, what color were his shorts?” and they’d be locked in a stalemate because Stark knew fuck all about boxing and didn’t want to admit it. Stark had since gotten it in his head that Jack was somehow associated with someone on the X-men team and had set his many braincells to work figuring out who. Jack, for his part, avoided or abandoned any room Tony Stark set foot in.

Peter showed up a few times to apologize for his mentor. Then he apologized for not telling them what he’d known when he’d known it. The he reported that Parker was doing just fine and was driving his aunt up the wall by reorganizing her record collection and fixing the stove.

“Did she want it to stay broken?” Vanessa asked him uncertainly. Peter shrugged.

“She says that there’s always one thing in a house that doesn’t work, so she’d rather it be a stove burner than the water heater.”

Hi, yeah, Parker? Your wife makes no sense.

Jack got cleared as a person again and gave his power of attorney to Matthew. He went to go live with his kid for a while and crushed both ladies in a hug before he left. He smelled like laundry soap and aftershave. Vanessa made him promise that he’d persuade Matthew and Nelson to let them come hang at their place, so she could observe them in their natural environment. He promised.

He and Maria said a little prayer together, which was sweet.

When Matthew came to pick his dad up, they learned that he did not like dogs. Period. Not even a little. He had no intention of being persuaded. Tybalt, on the other hand, loved Matthew. He decided that Matthew was in desperate need of doggy kisses. On his face. On his hands. In his crotch.

Vanessa had never seen a grown man hiss before.

Matthew dragged his father away from the beast’s lair was fast as he could. And that was the end of that.

To everyone’s surprise, Castle showed up to collect Maria before Wade showed up to collect Vanessa. She was only a little bitter about it.

Stark came in after Castle (followed by a string of scientists), asking him a billion questions which Castle didn’t seem to hear. He held a bouquet of peonies in one hand and the neck of a guitar in the other.

The man then serenaded his wife in front of god and humanity and half the Stark Industries R&D team.

He pleaded for her forgiveness, and once the two of them had come down from their tears and hugs and kisses, he dug through his pocket and held out the ID Maria had gone to the DMV to have printed a few days before.

He knelt in front of her on one knee.

“Maria Elizabeth,” He rasped in a gentle, husky voice, “Would you like to do something absolutely suicidal with me? For however long we have left?”

Maria sobbed like she’d been waiting for him to ask for years.

“I do,” she hiccupped.

And then, before Vanessa knew it, one of her new best friends had become an accessory to a fugitive from the federal government. The clerk who notarized their paperwork had been too terrified of both of them to object.

Honestly, it was the most romantic thing Vanessa had ever seen. When Wade finally got his ass in gear, he brought her no flowers or ID (hers had come by mail like every other poor schmuck’s; although she had gotten to experience the exhilarating joy that was watching Marci Stahl vibrate in rage in a DMV line). He brought her no singing or chocolate or even tears, to her surprise.

No.

Wade brought her a bottle of Jack.

He brought her home to an apartment which had been cleaned just the way she liked it.

He brought her clean sheets and an enormous soft sweater. Cigarettes and good music and terrible jokes and greasy junk food.

He brought her sex and his bare chest pressed up against her shoulders; his hands wrapped under her breasts; his nose tucked into the crook of her neck.

He brought her a night of peace, the kind which she hadn’t realized she’d died missing.

Chapter Text

They had a year before the chemicals in their bodies wore off. A year to spend with their loved ones, to hold each other close and tell each other it would be okay.

A year before they got to pick the clothes they were buried in for themselves this time.

Vanessa had been the one to submit to the Stark Industries medical exam first, and everyone else followed her lead because they trusted her. It was a good feeling to be trusted. It was a weird feeling to be trusted. Vanessa hadn’t had half as many friends in her first life as she did in her second. The other undead were, on the whole, quite friendly and wanted to keep in touch. It made them all feel better, knowing that there was a number of others going through the same crazy shit beside them.

The Hulk was the one who analyzed her results while Dr. Cho was the one who conducted her exam. It was a painful exam, despite Dr. Cho and her team’s utmost care and attention. They took x-rays and scans of her body, specifically her pieced-together heart. They ended up pulling back her ribs, just as Fischer had, to see how he’d mutilated it, and she left with more stitches than she came with.

The wounds didn’t heal as fast as they had the first time. Dr. Cho held her hand and told her that it would probably be like that from then on, but that it was okay. They were going to make it as painless as possible for her and the others.

The Hulk turned out to be the dark horse of the situation. He tumbled in, a human disaster existing almost entirely on anxiety and caffeine, and somehow made the process more bearable. He turned out to be a normal-ish guy, a bit scruffy, who mumbled more than he spoke. He was plagued by a bird at the time, one which he explained was a raven. He claimed that Thor had asked him to look after it without telling him why and he’d agreed, too fucked up to realize what he was getting into at the time. The bird enjoyed twisting his hair in its beak. It also enjoyed trying to tear chunks out of the top of his ear. The Hulk confided in her that he thought it might be someone who Thor had either wronged or cursed, and Thor had saddled him with the bastard while he went on a quest to right some intergalactic wrong on the bird’s behalf.

Vanessa thought that maybe the Hulk could use a full night’s sleep.

Her discussion with him about what was going on with her body was more like a 30-minute apology than anything else. He winced any time she mentioned Wade. At the end of it, she asked him why.

“Mr. Wilson occasionally works for the Avengers,” he explained nervously. The raven screeched uproariously and tried to sever his earlobe from his head. It did not like to be ignored.

 “You guys hire mercs?” she asked.

The Hulk himself did not hire mercs, she could tell that much from the anxiety in his forehead.

“Sometimes there are circumstances which require more stealth than the Avengers can manage,” he explained diplomatically. Vanessa refrained (just barely) from pointing out that Wade was about as stealthy as a rodeo clown.

“You guys have, like, a thousand spies on your team.”

The Hulk weighed this thought with his hands (the bird remained outraged).

“Most of the time, we only have two and a half spies,” he said, “A depressed, deaf archer, a depressed, slightly sadistic super soldier, and Nat.”

Vanessa chewed on that for a minute. She couldn’t figure out who was the half.

“What about on bad days?” she asked.

“On bad days, we have Steve,” the Hulk said simply.

Vanessa had a whole year to bop around the city, to cross things off her bucket list, to enjoy herself as much as possible before she put her pretty black dress back on. She had a year to watch Wade tease Peter, to watch Wade try to fix the goddamned coffee table, and to fix a myriad of coffee tables for her useless fiancé.

She had a year to get married and what a fucking mistake.

“We don’t have to do this,” Wade pointed out like a fucking idiot for the eightieth time.

“Shut up, we’re doing it,” she snapped, then returned to trying to not burn the fucking wax for her wedding favor candles. Wade chewed his fingers and tried to be supportive.

She banished him from the apartment after half an hour for being judgmental. (“Concerned, baby. I’m concerned. Why don’t we just buy candles already in jars?”)

Fuck you, Wilson. She was more than capable of putting wax into fucking jars with her own two damn hands.

Twenty minutes later, she got a call from Maria.

“You started without me?” she gasped.

Maria was bored with hunting down military grade assholes. She wanted girl time and to give Frank a little space. She arrived all fugitive-chic with her tight black jeans and her husband’s jacket artfully rolled up to her elbows. Most importantly, Vanessa now had a woman could pour wax without a funnel taking over her operation.

“You’re an angel,” Vanessa told her a little tearfully over the pile of invites she was filling in.

“Don’t even mention it,” Maria told her, “We did honey for our wedding. Had to make little honey pots for the whole church.”

“Why honey?” Vanessa asked. Maria gave her a blinding smile.

“Because we were so sweet,” she said without missing a beat. Vanessa could cry with the cheesiness.

“What the fuck happened to you two?” she asked, because seriously. When Frank and Maria were together, it was as if all was right in the world. They reeked of stability and comfort under all that gun oil and cheap soap. That shit was impressive. Maria shrugged.

“Frank’s too good at his job. Scared all the wrong people. They tried to eliminate the threat by eliminating all of us. What are your colors?”

“Black and gold. That’s tough tits, girl. How’s living on the run?”

Maria hummed fondly.

“No babies, but two dogs,” she said, “It’s not amazing, but it’s only for a little while. It’s a little like we’re always camping. He won’t let me touch any of his shit, but that’s nothing new. Fragile masculinity and all that. Oh. I did get to track a guy through the woods the other day. And I man the radio, so. You know, we fill our time.”

Vanessa wiggled her eyebrows at her.

“Oh, I bet you do,” she grinned.

Maria flicked wax at her.

Foggy stood in the florescent lights of Hogarth’s office with his case files held at shoulder height. Hogarth looked up from her phone call; her eyes flicked to the folders and she held up a finger to him and started to wrap up her call. She ended the call and laid the phone on her desk. She, herself, had perched on the edge of it.

“Mr. Nelson,” she said.

“Ms. Hogarth,” he replied.

“Congratulations on a job well done,” she said. “And to Ms. Stahl and Mr. Murdock as well.”

You’re damn right, congratulations. They were getting smashed that night. All three of them. Black out drunk. Hogarth didn’t need to know that, though.

“Thank you,” he said, instead. “So! I am graciously going to take my leave and only slightly grovel as I tell you that I am never doing this shit ever again. You can’t pay me enough.”

Hogarth grinned.

“I heard that your meeting with Mr. Stark went somewhat…”

“Matt was ten seconds away from strangling the man in his own home.”

Hogarth chuffed a little laugh. She slid off her desk and sat down behind it. She wove her fingers together and kept smiling at him.

“Mr. Nelson, when you’re feeling better, I think we ought to continue our discussion about a potential partnership,” she said. Foggy’s heart dropped and his stomach dropped and his brain short circuited for a second.

It was what he’d been working towards his entire life. It was an opportunity to drag his family out of the two-bad-days-from-poverty status they’d had for generations. It was what he’d been hoping for when he and Matt had joined up; an opportunity to protect everything and everyone important to him. A shot at stability. At certainty.

He held out the files.

“I’m happy where I’m at right now, Jeri,” he said.

Because sure, it was all those things, but what the fuck. Was it happiness? Was it coming home to Matty and getting him all excited for dinner because he forgot to eat again? Was it petting his hair during the pre-Daredevil nap? Going out to Josie’s with Karen and Marci and Lisa and Siobhan and even fucking Richards? Walking into the store and helping his dad move boxes in 90-degree heat?

Maybe.

But probably not.

When he was a kid, he’d wanted to be someone extraordinary. An amazing partner in a high-class law firm fit the bill. But then he’d had Nelson & Murdock. He’d been poor as fuck and had worked insane hours and no one had appreciated him even an inch as much as they should have, but that, that firm, that place, those people, that work, had felt extraordinary.

Things had changed, though. He had changed. And he wasn’t sure he’d ever get that feeling back. And now, he wasn’t quite convinced that he wanted it back. He still had plenty of extraordinary in his life. He had Matty and Jessica and Luke and Claire and Castle and Wade and Peter—all these guys. They were extra-everything and they liked him regardless of his social capital. Matty had loved him poor and would love him rich and everywhere in between (although Foggy would never be rich because Matty would convince him to start a Food Bank or something if he ever happened upon that kind of money, and he’d kind of resigned himself to that being the best way of doing things anyways.)

The more he thought about it, the more he was happy just being ordinary. Mostly ordinary. Ordinary with a flair and a great sense of humor and fantastic hair.

Hogarth nodded understandingly.

“The offer stands, Franklin,” she told him. She took his case files.

He nodded and gave a little smile, then got the fuck out of there.

He came home to Matty knocked out on the couch with his head crammed under Jack’s elbow. Neither of them could figure out why the fuck a guy with enhanced smell was so damn determined to get his face in people’s armpits, but there it was. Jack waved at him with his fingers and then carried on typing out a message on his phone, probably to the ladies in Wade’s neck of the woods.

There was a wedding being planned, and Foggy had been suckered into enough prep-parties that he knew to stay well away from it.

He took a picture of the two of them. He was amassing quite a collection of them. He hoped to have a few printed and possibly embossed for Matty to hold and feel after Jack was gone. It would be hard for Matt to let him go a second time, but Foggy hoped that having something besides a robe and some gloves to hold close would give him a little more peace when things got hard. He could describe the pictures to Matt if he needed them; he thought that that might be a good way of bringing him back to earth later on.

Matt snuffled in his sleep; he must have caught onto Foggy’s scent. He squirmed out of Jack’s personal space and sat up blearily on the couch. His black eye was healing hideously.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“She offered me a partnership,” Foggy told him. Matt sniffed and scrubbed at his face.

“You take it?”

“No.”

“Knew you wouldn’t.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Sure, I did. I know you, Fogs. You’re still holding out for Nelson & Murdock 2.0,” Matt teased with a grin.

“There’s food on the stove,” Jack offered, standing up to take his leave of them, “Vanessa has decided she needs an arch and says Wilson is useless in this area. Is the hardware store a few blocks up still there?”

It was. He left them to go be a different kind of hero. Foggy flopped down on the couch and Matt flopped down on top of him, nuzzling his face into Foggy’s neck. His nose was cold. Foggy kissed the hair at his temple and then clicked on the tv.

“The offer stands, Fog,” Matt hummed into the muscle in his neck. Foggy tamped down a smile.

“No, Matty, I need plausible deniability the next time you do something stupid.”

He felt Matt grin.

“I love you, too,” he said.