Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Locks, Lights, Out of Sight

Chapter 1

Testing.

State testing.

Dear lord.

With most of his class’s attention on their clipboards, Nathan let his head fall into his open hands. It was a slow, gradual release, much like his patience this past week. 

They still had almost two months to go for the state test, but Barbara had advised him to start early so he could get a clear picture on what the kids were struggling with. Their last unit in Math was Measurement anyway. They could finish it up and start reviewing a bit earlier without too many hiccups.

Nathan peeked through his fingers to scan his class.

Everybody was spread out in small clumps, chatter fluctuating in volume as they read— and solved— the math problems. Task cards, Barbara had introduced at the beginning of the year. (“When you want them to review without kids bothering you every five seconds.”) Simply tape thirty or so problems on pieces of furniture, give each kid a clipboard and an answer sheet, and set them free within the confines of a classroom.

George was being adventurous and was leaning his clipboard with his work against the wall while trying to read the problem that was at knee-level. It turned out he was pretty flexible. 

Ariel, Larin, and Isabel were one amalgamation of ponytails and colorful shirts as they worked together on problem thirteen near the cubbies. 

Justin was bouncing from one problem to another way too quickly for it to be productive. (With Willow calling him out on it.)

They knew, at some level, that they were studying for something significant and this wasn’t just another station game. None of them were particularly worried about taking such a big test; most were more concerned that they would be sitting there for four hours. Justin and Aaron in particular complained about the lack of Specials for that day.

So Nathan did all the worrying for them. He reviewed the released tests from the year before and cross checked them with all the material he had covered so far. Keywords were double checked and plastered on a new anchor chart. Tricky wording in word problems was highlighted and reviewed in small groups just in case it came up again this year.

All for a test he wouldn’t see the results off until his students were long gone from his class.

Not for the first time since reviewing began, Nathan cursed Bush and his No Child Left Behind Act. 

“Is this right?” 

Nathan started out of his thoughts and almost poked his eye out on the outstretched clipboard in front of him. On the other end, Drake waited expectantly, mouth twisted in what Nathan could describe was his usual do what you need to do so I can go about my day frown. 

Nathan picked up his professionalism from the floor and took the clipboard and the answer sheet from him. Drake’s eyebrows scrunched a tad. “Let me check.”

After a minute, he sent Drake off with only two corrections to make. Drake’s expression twisted some, but he didn’t complain or whine. He adjusted the hood of his sweater over his head and shuffled off to some corner of the classroom. Nathan couldn’t help the small smile that came across his face. Drake was really trying. Good for him. 

Then Willow nearly threw her own work at his face for him to check. Then Justin came up with his own, earnest eyes— and a hesitant glance Willow’s way. Nathan maneuvered himself out of his chair, rounded his desk, and decided that checking work as he walked around the class would save him from black eyes. 

All in all, it wasn’t complete chaos. It was medium chaos, chaos he could handle. 

When the Math block ended and he’d successfully dropped the kids off at Art, Nathan stepped over the abandoned clipboards to  lean against a desk and take it all in. 

He hated state testing, but…

His class was definitely making progress, even if he was just teaching to a test, and Nathan was pretty damned proud of them. They were using the hundreds charts like pros. Work was shown with minimal complaining. Hell, they actually enjoyed the task cards because they got to work with friends.

And honestly? He was pretty proud of himself, too. He was actually teaching the majority of the things he’d planned out each week. 

“Knock, knock,” came Barbara’s voice at the door. She poked her head in, blond hair spilling over her shoulder. “Do you have some time?”

“Sure, I got time,” he greeted in turn. At the obvious glow in her eyes, he asked, “What’s up?”

Like a passing breeze through branches, Barbara fluidly avoided stepping on any clipboards, pencils, and the occasional eraser. Nathan’s eyebrows rose at the sight of sensible flats and dress pants. The last time he’d seen her so dressed up was Picture Day.

She stopped before him and waved off his questioning look with a hand. “Okay, I didn’t want to say anything before because the whole thing had been up in the air until literally this morning, but,” she emphasized with a growing smile, “I got some guest speakers presenting to the class after Specials, and I wanted to ask you if you wanted to bring your class over. You don’t need to if you have something really important going on after this.”

Oh, that explained the fancy clothes. 

“I’m always up for a guest speaker.” Really, any break from teaching during the day was a gift from the heavens. 

Barbara grinned. “Spoken like a true teacher.”

That gave him the warm fuzzies. Barbara never failed to banish whatever remnants of Imposter Syndrome he had haunting the corners of his mind. 

Nathan waited, but when Barbara didn’t elaborate, he asked, “But what are the guest speakers for?”

Barbara gave him an amused look. It was criminal just how well she could pull it off without seeming condescending. “It’s March 1st, so it’s National Disability Awareness Month. You know, the first bullet point of our staff newsletter from last month.”

Nathan sighed, which just made her laugh out loud. He gave her a flat look he usually reserved for when the kids asked him, in the middle of a lesson, what time Recess was. “Okay, you know Kim never makes any info on those newsletters easy to find.”

“Yeah, yeah, but is your class coming?”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “Yes, they’re coming. You know they’ll riot anyway if they hear your class got a guest speaker and we didn’t.”

“Cool.” Barbara headed for the door, and he followed. There was the muted chatter of the second grade classes going about their business next door, plus some noise coming from Barbara’s own closed doors. Barbara turned on her heel in the direction of the hallway. “They’re actually in my class right now, if you want to meet them. I’m heading off to print off some reflection sheets for the kids to fill out afterwards. Do you want a class set?”

Nathan’s fuzzies turned to nerves. “Yeah, that’d be great, but umm,” he lowered his voice as heat rose in his face, “is there anything I should know about our guest speakers so I don’t make a fool of myself?”

Bless Barbara because she knew exactly what he was talking about. In the same volume, she elaborated with a hint of a smirk, “One of our guest speakers is visually impaired. You’ve probably heard of him. Matt Murdock, from Nelson & Murdock & Page?”

Nathan was pretty close to choking on air. There wasn’t anyone in Hell’s Kitchen who didn’t know about the lawyers who put away Wilson Fisk. Twice. 

“And they agreed to come to some random elementary school?” he had to ask.

Barbara shrugged but was obviously very pleased with herself. “They’re pretty normal guys once you get to know them. So go make friends while I get those worksheets.”

She didn’t physically push him to her door, but she did give him a significant look that left no room for argument. Nathan messed with his hair, glad he actually took some time to comb it before hauling ass out the door this morning. Then he faced the classroom door decorated with Chinese New Year decorations. 

Time to talk to some pretty prominent figures of the Hell’s Kitchen community and not make a fool of himself. At least Matt Murdock wouldn’t be the first visually impaired person he’d had a conversation with.

Nathan knocked on the door to give their guest speakers some warning before walking in. Immediately he heard the voice of a man making conversation. Maybe he hadn’t knocked hard enough?

“— and I mean, these kids probably know about the Punisher case, but I don’t think we should actually talk about it.”

Barbara’s classroom had always been a welcoming place. She had a modest succulent theme that basked the walls in warm greens and browns. Anchor charts full of math strategies, grammar points, and classroom norms were either displayed on her bulletin boards or hung off the rack in the corner in case students needed to reference them. 

Her carpet— blue with a green brontosaurus in the middle— had been dragged further back to make room for a small desk in front of the whiteboard. 

Nathan almost didn’t see the man by Barbara’s desk; his muted, olive-green suit blended almost perfectly with the curtains. It wasn’t until the man turned, a stack of what could have been pamphlets in his hands, that Nathan startled to a stop. The man took it in stride and asked, all smiles, “Oh, hi, are you the teacher from across the hall?”

Nathan raised his hand in an awkward wave. “Yeah, also third grade. Do you need any help setting up or anything?”

The man— Franklin Nelson, if Nathan remembered the news coverage correctly— shook his head. “Most of the set up is just a slide that Ms. Price already set up for us, and she was kind enough to print these off.” He gave the stack of pamphlets a firm shake. “Our office equipment is kinda ancient, so handling this much paper would have probably killed it.”

Nathan didn’t know what to say to that, mainly because he had  an image in his head that these two lawyers worked in a fancy building with fancy printers. 

Nelson hummed, like he was debating whether to keep said office equipment after this. “Yeah, I know. We print a lot of stuff at the public library when deadlines get tough. Isn’t that right, Matt?”

Nelson aimed his voice to the back of the room, and Nathan followed his gaze to a suited figure standing by the window. This man was tall, lean, and had the cane that labeled him as the visually impaired half of the duo. Nathan opened his mouth to introduce himself when his mind grinded to a halt. He closed his mouth with an audible click, and the man with the cane flinched at the sound.

Despite the red glasses— and really, red?— Nathan recognized the stubbled jaw, the dark hair, and the acute panic washing over his face. Nathan raised his finger, pointed, and worked his vocal chords enough to utter in a strangled voice, “ You.”

Matt Murdock— Daredevil - didn’t move, nor did he seem surprised to find the guy he met a handful of times standing before him. 

Nathan suddenly found it hard to breathe. 

Because holy shit, what the fuck? After spending almost three weeks beating back the curiosity of Daredevil’s identity, here the man was, complete with a visitor’s pass stuck to the front of his black suit. 

Nathan’s thoughts stalled on the fact that here was school, where his very astute third graders resided.

Shit shit shit.

The kids would find out. Kim would definitely find out and send his ass packing before his next paycheck hit. (He doubted his union would even give him the time of day.)

Panic drew him like a moth to a flame, making him commit the atrocity of stepping on the class carpet with his shoes. Daredevil shrunk back and almost tangled himself in the green curtains in his attempt to remove himself from Nathan’s warpath. His hands awkwardly moved his cane in front of him like a makeshift barricade.

Nathan was really out of it because he sidestepped the cane, coming close enough to see himself in those red lenses, and hissed, “Do you have a death wish or something? My class is going to recognize you!”

Daredevil straightened enough to meet his eye. (Or whatever it was called when he couldn’t see him but also could somehow.) “To be fair,” and oh my God, that was his voice, it was actually him, “I didn’t know I was coming here until I got in a taxi this morning.”

Neurons short circuited and tempered the rising panic. “What does that even mean?” Nathan shot back.

Nelson was doing whatever he was doing with those pamphlets, humming some obscure tune off-key. Daredevil turned his head towards the man, either to ask for help or to make sure their conversation remained secret, before facing Nathan again. “Look, I don’t think your class is going to notice a thing.”

“They noticed you didn’t read that book to them.”

Daredevil frowned, which was dangerously close to an offended pout. “Well they didn’t notice it the second time, so I think—”

“You guys okay over there?”

They turned as one, both immediately straightening. Months of switching from talking with staff members to his students at the drop of a hat allowed Nathan to wipe the shock from his face rather quickly. “We were just discussing which of my students are going to need some verbal reminders during the presentation.”

Nathan glanced at Daredevil to really sell his story, only to see him wearing the least convincing smile Nathan had seen in his year of teaching. 

“Yeah, Foggy we were just, you know…” he fumbled, tapping his cane against the tiled floor. “Talking.” 

‘Foggy’ raised his eyebrows and abandoned the pamphlets on the nearest student desk. His eyes flickered from Daredevil, to Nathan, and— oh no— suspicion turned to realization that lit up his whole face like a neon sign. “You’re Nathan, aren’t you?”

“Uhh, yeah?”

Foggy whirled around to Daredevil, whose face could not settle on a single expression. (For a man with a secret identity to protect, he had a terrible poker face.) “Matt, oh my God, what even is your luck? I told you to double check the details with me before saying yes to this.”

“I was a bit busy with that drug ring by the docks,” was the despondent mumble. Yep, there was a pout this time.

Foggy swept his blonde hair back, gazing at his law firm partner like it was the first time he was witnessing just how much of a human disaster he was. “ And he knew your secret identity?”

“Actually,” Nathan felt like adding with a raised finger, “he never told me his name. He just showed me his face.”

Foggy leaned back to contemplate the ceiling. “Oh my God, Matt, what is wrong with you?”

Nathan leaned against a bookshelf, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. Maybe it was just the fact that his mind couldn’t mesh together the image of Daredevil beating someone up in a suit and sensible dress shoes, but he was having a hard time referring to the man with the scarred knuckles as ‘Matt’.

You can’t refer to him as Daredevil forever, Nathan told himself.

Matt— there, that wasn’t so hard— leaned his hip against Barbara’s desk in much the same way he had done back in Nathan’s classroom when they were concocting their genius read aloud. “Since when do you want to hear everything that happens to me as Daredevil?”

Foggy finally let go of his hair to press his hands together, the picture of a desperate man ready to recite a desperate prayer. It was clear by the long, drawn out breath he took that he was physically reigning in his patience. “Not telling me someone saw you without your mask is very different from not telling me how you managed to get someone to talk.”

Matt shrugged. “I trusted Nathan. That was enough for me.”

“You did?” Nathan blurted out, feeling strangely pleased with the revelation.

Matt shrugged again, but it seemed a bit more sheepish this time around. “You were telling the truth about not telling anyone I came over to your classroom or that you had the number to my burner phone.”

“And you still trust me now?” Nathan couldn’t help but ask because knowing someone’s face and knowing someone’s name were two very different things. “I mean, I still wouldn’t say anything.”

“I know,” Matt told him, strangely confident about the whole thing.

Nathan’s eyes narrowed— something he knew was completely lost on Matt. He hoped the suspicion still came across in the way he carefully picked his words. “Is being a human lie detector another one of your powers?”

Matt fidgeted with the strap of his cane until Foggy stopped it with a curt, “The guy has a right to know, Matt. You did kinda just barge into his life.”

“Right.” Matt inclined his head Nathan’s way and said hesitantly, “I can hear heartbeats, so that’s how I knew you weren’t lying.”

Nathan nodded, distinctly aware of how his heart started beating a bit faster in his chest. He knew Dare—Matt’s hearing was pretty good since that Sunday afternoon in his classroom. He just didn’t realize how good was good. 

Apparently insanely good didn’t even begin to cover it. 

“You can’t exactly turn that off, huh?” he asked when Matt guiltily averted his attention to the floor. 

“I try not to listen unless I really need to know if someone is telling the truth,” Matt responded, rather guarded but picking his head up. Probably listening to how Nathan’s heart rate started to go from this guy can hear my heartbeat to he’s listening to it right now shit did I ever lie to him?

No, he hadn’t. He was pretty sure, at least. It wasn’t wise to lie to someone who could put you in the hospital.

Still Nathan tried to save face by light-heartedly saying, “I mean, I’m assuming you can’t see someone’s facial expression, so this is the next best thing, right?” Immediately hearing his own words played back, Nathan cringed. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like that.”

So much for not making a fool of himself.

Instead of tearing him a new one for being an ableist asshole, Matt chuckled and gave him an approving nod. “That’s actually the perfect way to think about it.”

Nathan smiled back and reminded himself that he and Matt (a.ka. Daredevil) weren’t meeting for the first time. Maybe they weren’t friends, per say, but they were something. 

“Okay, okay, I’m glad there are no hard feelings between anyone,” Foggy stepped in, “but what are we going to do if those kids actually recognize who you are?”

“And Barbara,” Nathan realized belatedly. Sure she only met Matt in costume for a couple of minutes before she had gone to pick up her class, but Barbara was downright scary when it came to sussing out things at the school. (After all, she had been the one to figure out who had tripped off the fire alarm by microwaving a french fry for seven minutes.)

It was Matt’s turn to give them a look over the rim of his glasses. It didn’t quite land. “They’re not going to recognize who I am. None of them have seen my face, and Barbara didn’t notice anything so far.”

Nathan closed his eyes for a moment and finally nodded in agreement. “You’re right. No one’s going to notice anything in the what, half hour you guys will present? Then you’ll be gone with no one the wiser.”

Silence.

Nathan narrowed his eyes again.

“Right?” he hedged when the lawyers stayed silent.

“We,” Foggy began with a glower at his partner, who had gone back to fiddling with his cane, “agreed to stick around to the end of the day to teach the kids how to properly guide someone who’s blind.”

“And to do an art project with them that’s visually impaired friendly,” Matt added with the tone of someone who knew he had royally fucked up.

Nathan breathed in, nice and slow, and backtracked. This was fine. Totally fine. It was just like when the Music teacher canceled his class for the day and Nathan had an extra forty-five minutes to fill in. Teaching really was all about coming up with plans on the fly. Hardly anything went according to plan on a given day.

Nathan mentally snapped back to attention and said, with more confidence than he felt, “We can do this. You guys will do your presentation like normal. Matt,” wow, did that sound weird coming from his mouth, “just try not to get too chummy with my class. And definitely don’t do your Daredevil voice in front of them.”

Matt raised his eyebrows, affronted. “I don’t have a Daredevil voice.”

“Yes, you do,” Nathan and Foggy chorused. 

Matt huffed. “Sure, okay, no Daredevil voice. Now let’s finish setting up because Barbara is on her way back.”

Nathan busied himself with helping Foggy set up the projector for their presentation while Matt finished moving some of the desks to the sides, cane abandoned by the wall. By the time Barbara came back with those reflection sheets, they were ready to go. Nathan snuck a glance at Matt to make sure his face wasn’t screaming I am the vigilante you met for a couple of minutes that one time . When he saw Matt was doing a good job of talking to Barbara without spilling his secret, cane back in his hand, he left to pick up his class from Art. 

He found them lined up outside the Art classroom, chatting but otherwise behaving in the hallway. Even Willow and Justin were keeping their hands to themselves. Nathan nodded to the art teacher and ushered the line leader— Aaron— to follow him. 

As he walked backwards— because it made keeping an eye on certain individuals easier— he smiled and told them, raising his voice slightly so that everybody could hear, “When we come back, we have two guest speakers in Ms. Price’s class that we’re going to listen to.”

“Who is it?” George immediately asked. He stepped out of line to make sure Nathan heard him. 

“Are we going to miss Recess?” Hayden wanted to know. He visibly slouched in relief when Nathan shook his head.

They were back in the second-third grade hallway. He strained to hear what was going in Barbara’s class, idly wondering how much Matt would have heard if he was in his place. His class’s chatter had grown into a low, excited hum. When Nathan stopped outside Barbara’s door, many were on their tiptoes to try and see through the door’s rectangular window.

From Nathan’s vantage point he saw Barbara’s class taking their spots on the carpet. 

The show was about to begin.

Nathan faced his class. “They are two lawyers from Hell’s Kitchen, and they have done some pretty important things for the city. I’m sure they’ll—”

“Are they the ones who put Wilson Fisk in jail?” Ariel blurted out. Most of the class glanced from her, to him, to the door with opened mouths.

Nathan blinked. Maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised that his class knew about the crime boss that had played the city into his hands. A year later, articles were still surfacing about things he’d done under everybody’s noses. 

“They are,” he told them, and Ariel’s eyes bugged out.

The door clicked open. Barbara poked her head out. There was no mention of suddenly finding out that their guest speaker had graced their school twice before. She smiled at his class. “Are you guys ready to take your seats on the carpet?”

At their enthusiastic nods, Barbara fully opened the door and ushered the class in. Nathan followed, leading Aaron to sit behind Barbara’s two rows of students while making sure no one who wasn’t supposed to sit next to each other sat next to each other. Friends turned to each other to say hi and trade theories about what was going to happen. Foggy was reviewing his slide show on Barbara’s laptop one last time.

And Matt, standing by the whiteboard, was smiling, small and warm, head canted to the kids on the carpet. 

Nathan mirrored him from where he sat on a chair. Who knew his class could make a devil smile so much?

Once all the kids were sitting crisscross applesauce, shoes neatly left by the perimeter of the carpet, Barbara stepped to the front to gather everyone’s attention. The side conversations stopped. Eyes were now on her. 

“Okay, everyone, we’re gonna get started. Today we have two very important guest speakers who have helped make our community a safer place to live. Let’s give a round of applause to Mr. Franklin Nelson and Mr. Matthew Murdock.”

There were claps, and there were snapping fingers. Foggy gave a little mock bow while Matt— much like the first time he’d entered a classroom— didn’t know what to do with the sudden attention and just waved. Now that he more or less announced himself, many students’ gazes gravitated to the long, white cane he held out in front of him. 

“Hello, boys and girls, dudes and dudettes,” Foggy started with a grandiose voice that wouldn’t be out of place in a pep rally, “I’m Foggy Nelson, this is my law partner Matt Murdock, and we’re from Nelson & Murdock & Page. We came here today to talk a little about what we do as lawyers.”

“It’s also National Disability Awareness Month,” Matt put in, walking forward to gather some of the spotlight, “and we also wanted to talk about how someone who is blind, like me, works as a lawyer.”

Larin’s hand went up in the air. When Foggy pointed at her, Larin announced, “Our class has books in braille for blind people to read.”

Nathan’s class nodded while the majority of Barbara’s students glanced at Larin for clarification. 

“Wow, that’s wonderful,” Matt said. He was clearly inflecting his voice to show even more enthusiasm than normal; a skill he had learned after who knows how many reading groups with the kids. 

“Maybe you could read to us,” Larin proposed. 

Nathan rubbed his face to hide his grin. 

Matt cleared his throat. “If there’s time, I don’t see why not.”

Foggy seemed to be smothering his own chuckle. “How about we get started?”

The slide show was pretty basic and surprisingly kid-friendly. It gave the kids and the teachers a brief overview of their time in Columbia University and how long it took them to graduate. Matt mentioned during his slides about the accommodations he had for his classes. (He even gave a brief demonstration of his braille reader with his own laptop that was already set up. There were a good amount of oohs and ahhs.)

Frankly Nathan was more impressed with the fact that Matt graduated summa cum laude.

(And his class tried to teach him to read. What the fuck.)

They eventually got talking about what kind of people they helped as defense lawyers, such as people who lost their jobs unfairly and tenants who lived in unfair conditions. With most of the kids that attended the school coming from working class families that qualified for free lunch, it really resonated with a lot of them.

“My dad had to call a lawyer when no one came to fix our walls,” Carson said with a raised chin when Foggy called on him. 

“My aunt said she had to call a lawyer when they wouldn’t pay her for working at night,” Angelina, one of Barbara’s most precocious girls, stated when it was her turn. She was halfway to her knees and no one seemed inclined to stop her.

“Those are the kinds of cases that we work with,” Matt told them with spread hands, facing the general direction of Carson and Angelina. 

“Did you help my mom when they kicked her out of her job?” Justin interrupted.

“Raise your hand,” Willow shot back from across the carpet before Nathan could remind him. 

Justin raised his hand just above shoulder-height. 

“I don’t think so,” Foggy said.

Justin twisted his mouth and faced Matt. He raised himself slightly to look over the heads of the students in front of him. “But you sound familiar.”

“Let’s give Mr. Nelson and Mr. Murdock time to continue,” Nathan put in before it all went downhill. 

Apparently it had been decided to not talk about the failed Punisher case. Matt began to explain some of the ways they helped put Fisk away both times, notably toning down the severity and complexity of it all. A lot of the kids physically leaned forward to catch every word. Barbara smiled from where she sat at her desk and mouthed to Nathan, Wow . 

‘Wow’ was right. A lot of them seemed to grasp the fact that they had bonafide heroes— the legal kind— right in front of them. Parents talked. Kids listened. Parent conferences back in November had some reference about how Fisk was responsible for the reduced funding the public schools in Hell’s Kitchen received. Whether that was true or not, Nathan didn’t know, but it did nothing to improve Fisk’s already tarnished reputation.

The Q&A started. Nathan relaxed back into his chair. They were pretty routine questions, a lot of them focused on Matt’s blindness or the people they helped out. 

“Did Daredevil help you with Fisk?”

Nathan turned his head hard enough to feel his neck protest. Drake put down his hand and waited expectantly for an answer in an unusual display of patience. He even pulled his hood down, freeing his disheveled locks of blonde hair.

Foggy laughed, though it sounded a bit strained. “I don’t think Daredevil would actually like to work with us. I think he has his own stuff to deal with.”

Drake was far from placated. He regarded Foggy with a thoughtful frown. “The newspapers said Daredevil helped stop Fisk when he escaped the police, then you helped send him back to jail.”

Matt went for a disarming smile. “Sometimes things just work out that way.”

Drake didn’t look very convinced. 

Willow raised her hand next. Foggy was quick to take her question, Drake’s lingering stare boring holes in his suit. 

She turned to Matt. “Your blindness is a disability, right?”

“Yes, it is.” Matt moved his cane from one hand to the other as he waited.

Nathan needed to know where this was going.

“But you can still do a lot of things?” she prodded, and Nathan definitely did not like the searching look she gave Matt.

Drake straightened a smidge in his spot, listening.

Matt planted his cane in front of him, looking in Willow’s general direction. “There are a lot of things I can do with support, like buying groceries and reading signs. Then there are some things I wouldn’t be able to do well, even if someone helps me. Like driving.”

“Just because someone has a disability doesn’t mean they can’t do something,” Michelle said to him.

Or rather, quoted.

Nathan bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from groaning aloud. 

Of all the things she paid attention to. 

“Class, I think we’re going to wrap this up,” Barbara said with that edge to her tone that meant there was no room for discussion. Michelle and Willow promptly closed their mouths, though neither stopped staring at Matt. (Michelle offered twin thumbs up of encouragement that he may, or may not, have been able to pick up on.)

“Uhh, we got activity pamphlets,” Foggy cut in and started to pass them out. Aaron opened his and ogled the crossword puzzle he could solve. Marianne preferred the color-by-number page of the courtroom. 

“And reflection sheets,” Barbara added, which earned her some groans. 

As one of Barbara’s classroom helpers passed everyone pencils, Nathan stood up and made his way to Matt and Foggy. (Maybe it was his imagination but he distinctly felt eyes at his back, watching his every move.) Nathan made a show of leading them out, hoping Barbara didn’t mind.

Once they were on the other side of the closed door, Foggy leaned in close to ask, “Is your class always this intense?”

Nathan made a so-so motion with his hand while Matt nodded in empathetic agreement. 

Foggy huffed a laugh, then said, “We’ll be hanging out at the teacher’s lounge, and we’ll be joining your classes for recess. That’s where Matt is going to be showing off his moves.”

“How to guide someone who’s blind,” Matt clarified when Nathan’s mind immediately jumped to parkour. He held up his cane as further proof. (Had he ever used it as a weapon before?)

“Right, okay.” Nathan glanced over his shoulder. No one was close to the door. Still he lowered his voice to add, “I’ll let you know if someone gets tipped off about who you are.”

“It’ll be fine,” Matt assured him.

Nathan found himself trading a glance with Foggy, who looked far too used to being on the receiving ends of Matt’s platitudes. 

He figured he would wait and see.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

Needless to say, even out of the mask, Matt was a popular topic. When Nathan re-entered Barbara’s classroom to pick them up, reflection sheets and all, some of his kids kept glancing around, muttering about where their guest speakers went, until George actually asked aloud.

“They’re in the teacher’s lounge,” Nathan told them as he held the classroom door propped open with his foot. 

Willow immediately turned her head in the direction of the lounge. Carson and Drake traded unreadable glances. Ariel raised her eyebrows. 

They settled into the routine of Writing— a subject they luckily didn’t need to test for in third grade. They were working on persuasive writing, and the topics ranged from why one should play soccer over every other sport to why superheroes shouldn’t have to pay for property damage . Even in the rough draft stage, things were getting heated; Michelle and Larin apparently had very different views on what constituted the best pet, and Justin took it personally that most of his classmates didn’t think ranch on pizza was the best topping.

Today, however, the class got out their writing folders without too much of a fuss. A large group settled on the classroom rug, sans shoes, and began to write. The talking was minimal, so Nathan let the large clump of kids stay. As long as they were working, it was good. 

Nathan sat at his desk, shuffled some papers into relatively-organized stacks, and took a moment to gather his thoughts. There was a lot to think about.

His mind couldn’t get over the fact that Daredevil was just Matt. It was a lot like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Matt— or rather,  just Daredevil at the time— had mentioned a degree when they first met, but actually knowing what it was and where he got it made everything a bit too real.

Matt was a normal guy. Nathan now knew him as a normal guy. Someone like Nathan definitely should not have this knowledge. He didn’t know exactly why he shouldn’t, only that these kinds of things didn’t happen to people who worked regular jobs and lived regular lives.

However, a very childish part of him was still riding the high that Matt considered him trustworthy enough to keep this monumental secret. He would, of course, but Nathan could make an educated guess about how freely vigilantes gave out their secrets to others. 

A lawyer and a vigilante. How did that work?

Nathan mentally shook away his thoughts and decided to actually earn his paycheck for the day. Figuring that now would be a good time to check on each student’s writing on a one-on-one basis, he scanned the classroom until he picked out his first victim. 

“Hayden, why don’t you come up and we’ll see how you’re doing?”

The boy jumped in surprise, and Hayden reluctantly turned away from the clump of students to face him. Nathan caught the hasty throw of a piece of paper onto the floor. Before Nathan could ask what that piece of paper was for, Marianne had already scooped it up, and Hayden was hovering at his desk with his writing folder and pencil in hand.

“Let’s see what you have so far,” Nathan said instead and motioned Hayden to come closer.

The gaggle of students was strangely silent; only the constant scritch scritch of dulling pencils told him they weren’t gluing the carpet to the floor or something equally as nefarious. 

“You need more detail in your reasoning,” Nathan told Hayden after the boy read to him his two-page rough draft. 

Hayden scrunched his nose. Earlier in the year, it would have signaled a meltdown and crumpled paper. It was a true testament to how much the kid had matured when the only thing that went off-kilter was his voice. “Why?”

“Because basketball sucks a lot can mean many different things. Give the reader more detail about why basketball isn’t as good as soccer.”

“Like what?”

Nathan gave Hayden a significant look. “You’re the author. You tell me.”

Hayden clearly wasn’t happy that all the responsibility had been thrust upon his shoulders. Still Nathan couldn’t hand-hold him to the finish line like he had in the beginning of the year. 

“You can brainstorm with Carson and George if you want,” Nathan offered.

“They’re busy,” he said but still walked back to the carpet. Hayden let himself fall with the energy of a sack of potatoes and continued to write, his back to Nathan. Like a living amoeba, the group shifted to bring him back into the fold. 

Nathan called on Michelle next, then Henry, then Ariel who definitely slid a piece of paper Isabel’s way before standing up. Nathan physically restrained himself from standing up and demanding to know what it was by gripping the armrest of his chair. Nothing was going on. He was just being paranoid with the literal Devil of Hell’s Kitchen walking maskless around the school. The kids were probably just trading gamer tags or something.

They transitioned to Reading, with most opting to read at the carpet than at their desks. Nathan got through two reading groups when he announced it was time to line up for recess; they were going out fifteen minutes earlier for Matt’s guiding demonstration. Books were abandoned. Water bottles were snatched up. Aaron picked up Carson’s beat-up soccer ball before any of the boys did.

“Mr. Greene, can I take my bouncy ball with me?” Michelle asked with it already in hand.

“I’m not responsible for it,” Nathan immediately reminded her. Michelle nodded and pocketed the toy in her shorts’ pocket. 

“Do you have recess duty?” Carson asked once they were in the hallway. 

“For one more week, yeah,” he answered.

Carson hmmed at that. Nathan bit the inside of his cheek to avoid asking exactly why that was so, what? Inconvenient? 

What he couldn’t control was the natural instinct to glance around the hallway for any sign of Matt and Foggy, or the distinct sound of a cane against the floor. Matt was too good of a person to just up and leave the kids hanging when he’d already made a promise, and Foggy didn’t seem like the type of friend to leave Matt to fend for himself. 

But no. Not a sign of them.

Nathan opened the double doors at the end of the hallway. Tile changed to the cement walkway that led to the fenced-in playscape. The class line shifted into more of a drunken serpent as students moved to be with friends. Hayden made it his mission to stomp on every weed that peeked from the cracks. Marianne, Isabel, Ariel, and Larin formed an impenetrable wall as they linked arms. 

Justin came to his elbow and excitedly yelled, “There they are!”

From where they stood on the basketball court a little ways off, Matt and Foggy waved at them. When the walkway ended, his class broke ranks and swarmed around them like gnats. Or, most noticeably, they swarmed around Matt, who seemed somewhat taken aback by the sudden attention. 

“Nice to see everybody again,” he told the bobbing heads. 

Hayden ceased jumping in place to tilt his head up questioningly at the man before him. “But you can’t see.”

“It’s just a saying,” Matt pointed out. 

Before things got too awkward, Foggy clapped his hands to get their attention. Some of his class ceased bouncing like pinballs. Most probably didn’t hear and began to kick around the fallen branches littered on the ground from a previous storm. A select few paused to pay closer attention, though they still bumped shoulders with friends. 

Nathan opened his mouth to use one of this class’s attention getters when a series of rhythmic claps broke the silence. Like a Pavlov reaction, his students stopped what they were doing and mimicked with their own claps. 

Nathan automatically turned around to search for Barbara, but no, she had just opened the doors to lead her class out. He caught her surprised expression even from here.

“That’s a neat trick,” Foggy commented. 

To Matt.

Matt lowered his hands. Everybody, including the kids, were staring at him, and he somehow knew it. “Just something Mr. Greene taught me.”

Yeah, on that Sunday, which Matt then used as Daredevil during the second read aloud. 

“We’re just waiting for Ms. Price’s class to catch up with us,” Nathan told them. 

When the rest of the third graders arrived, Nathan helped Barbara set the kids up in lines, mixing their classes so nobody was too busy talking with a friend to pay attention. Both classes seemed pretty pumped to miss some instructional time in favor of learning how to guide someone who was blind, but it was Nathan’s class that seemed to hang on to every word that came from Matt’s mouth. Even Drake, George, and Willow were holding themselves eerily still as Matt went over where the guide— Foggy, in this case— should stand and how close.

“Make sure that the person you are guiding is about a half-step behind you and slightly to the side,” Matt told them as Foggy took position. 

Justin and Dexter, one of Barbara’s students, copied the movements. Neither apparently knew who was guiding whom because they each began to pull one another. 

“Don’t stand too close or you’re just going to trip over each other,” Foggy pointed out. 

The boys corrected each other but still pushed and pulled too much for it to be effective. 

Nathan stood back. Watching someone who could scale a fire escape in five seconds flat use a cane to get around was pretty surreal and too much like he was trying to solve some obscure, 3D puzzle. Did Matt need his cane at all? Were there some things he still needed assistance with, like reading printed books? Or was it all just a show?

“Good idea teaching him an attention getter,” Barbara whispered to him as the kids now started to take turns guiding Matt across the length of the basketball court; Foggy had even set up some plastic cones to up the ante.

Nathan nodded, though he couldn’t shake away his small frown. He still thought it was pretty risky of Matt to use it with his class. 

Once again, Nathan’s mouth got ahead of him and whispered, his eyes laser-focused on Matt’s expression, “Maybe I should teach him the eyes on me, eyes on you one for next time.”

Matt chuckled, then hid it with a rather unconvincing cough. Nathan was smirking until he caught sight of Barbara’s aghast expression. Oh, right, this was supposedly the first time he met Matt Murdock. A very blind Matt Murdock who was here as their honored guest.

“You probably should keep that one to yourself,” she advised him in the same low tone.

Nathan cringed. “It doesn’t seem like he needs it anyway. The kids are doing pretty— Michelle!”

But it was too late. The rubber ball went flying in a high but accurate arc, directly at the back of Matt’s head. Nathan saw the man’s body tense and the moment he warred with himself on whether he should dodge or pretend he hadn’t noticed anything. Matt’s indecision resulted in a stumble that made him step on the heel of Aaron’s shoe. 

Nathan cursed under his breath.

The ball hit the crown of Matt’s head and harmlessly bounced to the pavement. 

While Barbara’s class gasped, almost in unison, his class was strangely silent. Almost contemplative. 

Nathan was striding over to Michelle before he could fully pinpoint what facial expression he had on him. He didn’t know quite what it was, but he was pretty sure it didn’t match Barbara’s horrified face. His heart was beating a mile a minute because finally, finally he had caught on to his class’s plans.

Why couldn’t they use their combined powers for good?

“Why did you do that?” he asked a frozen Michelle. Barbara was getting things back in order, and he could only imagine just how shocked she was that such a sweet student would do that to someone who was blind.

Michelle shrugged, though she looked positively guilty, eyes shining with unshed tears. It made sense, though. If she was thinking that Matt was Daredevil, the same hero she had given a bracelet to, then she probably didn’t want to hurt him, even if it was just with a rubber ball.

Nathan led them away from everybody else and towards the edge of the basketball court. She followed with sad, shuffling steps. “Did someone ask you to do it?” he asked.

Again she shrugged, but Michelle had never been the best liar. Her eyes traveled to where most of her class was watching. 

Nathan glanced from her face, to the rest of his students that were definitely not trying to eavesdrop, and to the only guy who actually could. Michelle had started to sniffle.

“You owe me five minutes of recess and an apology to Mr. Murdock,” he told her, voice firm.

“And my ball?” she dared to ask.

“It’s mine until tomorrow.”

Michelle nodded, and they both walked back. Eyes immediately found something else to study. One of Barbara’s students gave Nathan the rubber ball. As Foggy was picking up the cones and the last student guided Matt back to where they started , Nathan nodded to Michelle and said, “Go ahead.”

Her guilt grew, but she obediently went up to him. She was practically tearing a hole on the hem of her shirt from all the worrying and twisting. “Mr. Murdock?” she said.

Matt inclined his head in her direction. “Were you the one who threw the ball?”

Michelle nodded, then caught herself and replied, “Yeah, I’m sorry for throwing it.”

Matt’s smile was small but sincere. “It’s okay, just don’t throw anything at somebody who’s blind in the future. It can be pretty dangerous if they’re crossing the street or trying to get somewhere.”

Again Michelle nodded. “I won’t.”

They broke for recess after that. Students scattered every which way. Michelle went to the closest section of the fence to lean against it for her required five minutes. While recess was normally a time he could turn his brain off, Nathan was this close to pulling at his hair. He turned on his heel to warn Matt and Foggy about his scheming kids when he bumped into Barbara. There was an awkward moment where they both shuffled back, and Nathan tried to decide if talking to her in his current, harried state was too big of a risk. 

“What was that about?” Barbara asked him.

Nathan paused and decided it would be way too suspicious to just up and leave. 

“Someone probably made Michelle do it,” he answered and hoped Barbara left it at that.

Barbara was shaking her head, however. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight in a way that told him she wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. “To throw something at a blind man…” She huffed a breath out. “That’s a low one.”

Great, now she thought his class were a bunch of ableist miscreants. (When, if one stopped to think about it, it was quite the opposite.)

Deciding that he was stuck doing small talk, Nathan angled his body so that he was looking at the playscape and soccer field. Matt and Foggy were chatting to some of Barbara’s students. Nathan caught sight of Carson’s soccer ball skittering against the grass and hoped it hadn’t been brought out for something more sinister than a friendly match between two classes. 

Barbara was still staring at him from the corner of her eye. He shrugged in much the same way Michelle had done so. “I don’t think some of them understand how much something like throwing a ball at a blind person is different from throwing a ball at a sighted person.”

“You might need to talk to your class so they understand.”

Nathan’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I should.” 

He continued to scan the playground area and eventually sent Michelle off to play. She immediately joined the clump of girls under the tarp. Nathan not so subtly broke away to walk around the perimeter, with the end goal being to catch Matt and Foggy to tell them what his students were conspiring this time. 

No time seemed to be like a great time, though. Students were constantly coming up to Matt to gawk at his cane, to try to lead him, or just to incessantly talk to him about anything that came to mind. Matt was either animatedly describing something with wide, sweeping gestures or listening intently. 

Listening.

Duh.

Nathan rolled his eyes at himself. Stopping on the boundary of where playground gravel melted into dirt and grass, he lowered his head and said in a whisper, “Matt, my class has some pretty strong suspicions that you’re Daredevil. That’s why Michelle threw the ball at you.”

From this distance, Nathan saw Matt angle his head in his direction. Nathan was too far away to really make out his expression, but Foggy noticed something was up and glanced around. 

With a careful eye, Nathan did the same. Barbara hadn’t noticed his apparent talking to himself, and no one had brought out another toy to hurl. He paced so he didn’t look so out of place and continued, “I guess just don’t dodge anything that gets thrown your way? I’m not exactly sure what my kids are planning. They’ve been pretty sneaky and writing everything down. I guess they heard the rumors that Daredevil hears everything that goes on in Hell’s Kitchen.”

Matt nodded at him, the movement almost lost among the students still hovering around him. 

Mission completed, Nathan sighed, still not at ease but actually able to focus on something that wasn’t watching out for wayward projectiles. He made his rounds around the area. Most of the boys were either playing soccer on the field or running around in yet another game of tag. The girls were spread around in groups, some playing pretend and some going over gymnastic routines. 

Now Barbara was chatting with Matt and Foggy. (She was probably profusely apologizing for Michelle’s antics.) Nathan averted his gaze up to the nearly empty jungle gym under the tarp. It was only George up there now, lost in his own world.

He was pretending to parkour again. He had done it less since Matt had shown up to their class, but it occasionally cropped up. Like now.

At the top, the jungle gym was relatively flat, allowing for students to stand up. George was using it to fulfill his wildest dreams. He was making chopping motions with his hands with the occasional hiyah! for added effect. The soles of his shoes squeaked as he twisted around to fight imaginary enemies. (What these enemies were apparently changed on a weekly basis, according to Hayden. Last time it had been sea monsters.)

George glanced below him, seemed to steel himself for something, and made a sudden sweeping motion with his leg, probably to knock some bad guy off balance. George followed through with a hop forward.

Only for his tennis shoe to go directly through one of the holes between the bars, knocking him off-balance.

Nathan moved on autopilot as George fell backwards. He didn’t stop moving even as George caught himself with an arm. Nathan simply crashed clumsily into the jungle gym’s unyielding metal. There was a sore spot under his ribs that was surely going to bruise. 

“I’m okay, Mr. Greene!” George yelled down from his perch.

Nathan stumbled back to catch sight of George. After being the kid’s teacher for nearly eight months, he immediately flagged George’s expression as unhappy . Not horrified, but unhappy. Almost unsatisfied.  

He waved George off with a strangled, “Be careful!” before he finished crossing the length of the playscape where the other three adults were. His heart was going a mile a minute, and he was sure even those without super hearing could pick up on it. 

“Is he okay?” Barbara asked. She seemed to realize that Matt wasn’t as informed as the rest of them and clarified, “A student almost fell off the jungle gym.”

Nathan put both hands on his hips to try and stop the shaking in his fingers. “Yeah, he’s good.”

And suspicious. Had the fall been staged?

“I hope that doesn’t happen every recess,” Foggy commented with a strained chuckle. He couldn’t keep his eyes off George, even after the kid hopped down to collect interesting pieces of gravel to stuff into his pockets. 

Nathan shook his head with a small smile. “Nah, but once is enough.”

Matt relaxed the grip on his cane with an audible creak of rubber. His frown tightened the lines of his face. “I think you should talk to George about not doing that.”

“Yeah, another talk wouldn’t be too bad.” He was just happy that Matt hadn’t scaled up there to grab George himself. Nathan wouldn't even know how to begin to explain that to Barbara, let alone the kids. 

“How do you get your kids to not play around up there?” he asked her. Catching the serious expression on her face, Nathan softened his voice and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to George. I’ll probably shoot his mom an email about it since this isn’t the first time he’s been unsafe on the jungle gym.”

Barbara twisted her mouth, eyebrows shadowing her face. She asked, head slowly turning in Matt’s direction, “How did you know it was George?”

Oh shit.

Matt froze. “He has a very distinct voice,” he said with a jerky nod to drive home the fact. 

Barbara raised her eyebrows. “He asked enough questions earlier for you to recognize his voice?”

Matt began to tap his cane against the side of his shoe while trying, unsuccessfully, to smile his way to victory. He really was a handsome guy, and Nathan wondered how many girls had fallen for that smile. It was just the right amount of innocent and sincere. “Didn’t he ask that question about how to tell if a crosswalk sign was off?”

Barbara’s graze grew severe. “That was Dexter who’d asked.”

Nathan could have groaned. Leave it to Barbara to be immune.

Matt’s smile fell. “Oh, uhmm…” He tilted his head. “I guess I misremembered.”

Barbara encroached on Matt’s personal space. Matt went for another smile. That only succeeded in rocking her back on her heels. “Daredevil?”

“Who?” Matt tried, but if the odd tone in his voice didn’t give the ruse up the way his whole body scrunched up definitely did. The man had the self-preservation instincts of a pet rock.

Foggy groaned. “Okay, how did you figure it out?” He caught Nathan’s incredulous look. “Look, let’s just move this along before some of the kids get close enough to hear.”

Barbara’s mouth fell open. “Wait, so you are Daredevil?”

Matt’s fight left him, leaving him rather boneless and defeated. Even his cane seemed to slump to the ground. “How did you figure it out?”

Barbara pointed at a spot on her jaw. “You have a small scar, right here. Uhh, on your jaw,” she clarified. 

Matt rubbed that particular spot. “Of course I do.”

Nathan spotted kids at the periphery of his vision. He immediately tensed. “How about we table this discussion for lunch?”

“I think that would be best.” Matt lowered his head but it was clear he angled his ear to hear something those with normal senses couldn’t hear. 

Barbara pursed her lips but nodded. Her gaze was still on Matt. “Consider the discussion open yet tabled.”

Foggy rubbed his forehead. “Buddy, we really need to work on your excuses. I think all those hits to the head have done something.”

Matt harrumphed but didn’t argue. 

At their school, teachers spent lunch holed up in their classrooms, since most boasted their own microwaves and mini-fridges. The teachers’ lounge usually held substitutes and parent volunteers. (Nathan had definitely felt out of place when he decided to eat there during his first week.)

Today was a special occasion, however. They were in Barbara’s classroom, eating at her teacher's desk. At least, that was the plan. Barbara hadn’t touched her salad, the dressing pooling at the bottom of her tupperware, and Nathan was rolling around his burrito to the point half of the refried beans had spilled on his plate. 

Matt was doing a good job of pretending he wasn’t the cause of the heavy silence hanging around them like a fog. 

Barbara twirled her fork in the air. “So why did you volunteer at the only school students may recognize you at?”

“He didn’t,” Foggy put in with a pointed jab of his chopsticks. He was halfway through his orange chicken, and Matt’s less-than-stellar decision making was not going to deter him from eating the rest. 

“I was voluntold and was too busy to check the details,” Matt groused. He popped in a piece of his own chicken into his mouth, and Nathan suspected it was to avoid any further questioning. At Foggy’s chuckle, Matt shoveled in a glob of sticky rice for safe measure. 

Barbara watched the impressive display of chopsticks before snapping out of it. “Okay, fair enough, and I don’t think getting into the how you’re Daredevil is the real point here.”

Foggy swallowed his mouthful of food and added, “Freaky ninja senses.”

Matt glowered in the direction of his food but didn’t deny it. Huh.

Nathan put down his burrito. “The problem here is that my class has picked up on the fact that Matt’s probably Daredevil because, back when they first met him, Matt mentioned he had a disability. Now they’re throwing things at him to try and trip him up.”

Matt shrugged. “I can handle pencils and rubber balls.”

That adrenaline from before began to creep up along Nathan’s veins. He worked the words from his suddenly tight jaw. “George nearly fell from the jungle gym. You couldn’t see his expression, but he almost looked disappointed that he caught himself.”

“And we have that last block where you were going to do that art project with them,” Barbara mused.

“You think they’ll, what? Leap off the bookshelves next?” Foggy asked, but his face told them it was no laughing matter. 

“Or push someone off,” Nathan muttered. 

Matt put down his chopsticks and pulled out his cellphone. “Look, I know how we can solve this.” To his phone, he told it, “Call Danny.”

“Danny?” Nathan asked as the other line rang. 

Foggy glanced at Matt’s phone apprehensively. “Danny Rand.”

Nathan balked. “The billionaire?”

“Hello, Matt?” a young man on the other end answered. 

Matt planted his elbows on the table and said, sounding too much like an infomercial host, “How would you like to wear my new and improved suit today?”

“I have two meetings in the afternoon,” came the dejected answer. No question about why this offer was being made. Apparently the why wasn’t super important in the world of vigilantes.

Matt rolled his eyes behind his glasses. “You’re the CEO. Can’t you just reschedule?”

“I can.” Nathan had never met Danny Rand before, but he suddenly pictured a labrador longingly looking at a thrown ball across the street. He could just tell that Danny would rather suit up as Daredevil than do literally anything else. 

Matt rubbed the stubble along his jaw. “What if I told you it was to keep my identity safe?”

There was a choked gasp from the other end. “You’re not planning to die again, are you?”

Again? Nathan mouthed to Foggy.

Foggy shook his head, uncharacteristically serious. Nathan decided not to probe.

“I’m not,” Matt assured Danny, not-so-subtly tilting his head to read whatever vibes Foggy was throwing. Matt picked up his chopsticks to chisel at a clump of rice stuck to his takeout box, shoulders hunched as he tried to ignore the tense atmosphere Danny’s comment brought up. “Look, I’m at an elementary school as a guest speaker, and I need you to just pass on by as Daredevil so that some kids can see you.”

“These kids know you’re Daredevil?”

“They have strong suspicions I’m Daredevil,” Matt clarified.

“I smell a story.” Danny sounded absolutely giddy to hear it. 

Matt looked like he was regretting ever making the call in the first place. “I’ll explain later. But will you do it?”

“Tell me when and where.”

Matt rattled off the school’s address and the time that coincided with their last block of the day. At some point, Nathan had taken a bite out of his cold burrito, and Barbara had managed to pick off some leaves from her salad. 

“And no chi.”

Danny let out a long, suffering sigh. “No chi,” he promised before hanging up. 

Putting his phone away, Matt nodded to his audience. “There. Problem solved.”

Nathan was actually impressed. “So we just make sure the kids are looking out the window at that time, and bam, they’ll see Daredevil?”

“And me not suited up.” Matt leaned back in his chair with the cheekiest grin Nathan had seen on him yet. If it wasn’t for the fact that this man was the same one who regularly parkoured off buildings, Nathan would have been concerned with him losing his balance. 

It seemed Barbara was trying very hard not to warn Matt about just that. She elected to spear more lettuce and tomato. “Short of telling the kids Matt’s not Daredevil this is the best plan we have.”

“So let’s have Matt’s art activity in my classroom, then,” Nathan added. “My windows have a better view of the office buildings and the auto shop.”

They all nodded. Foggy finished off his orange chicken to poke Matt in the arm, though it did nothing to ruin Matt’s impeccable balance. “Okay, man, no need to look so smug. You’re allowed to have one smart idea once a year.”

Matt regarded him in faux-surprise. The glasses really sold the innocent look he was going for. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in a while.”

Foggy looked very tempted to push him off his chair. 

Nathan deliberately took large bites of his burrito to keep himself from smiling. Then he asked, figuring he should put Matt’s senses to good use, “Are the kids planning anything right now?”

Matt canted his head this way and that. It still wasn’t enough to make him fall head-over-heels to the floor but it did make him look like a guard dog. “No, but there’s a lot of talk about Hayden making a mess of his mashed potatoes with his chocolate milk. Michelle says, and I quote, it’s the most disgusting thing to happen in the cafeteria this week.”

“Freaky ninja senses,” Foggy clarified to Barbara, who nodded and took it in stride.

Nathan stood up, gathering up his trash and already mentally mapping out how he would arrange the desks in his classroom for Matt’s last hurrah. “Okay, well, no news is good news then. Let’s go get them before they end up planning something else.”

He and Barbara left the lawyer duo to brainstorm the last details of their activity with the kids. At the cafeteria, Nathan’s class immediately asked when Matt and Foggy were coming back and were understandably disappointed that they would have to suffer through Social Studies before testing Matt again. There were a couple of stares sent Drake’s way, and Nathan wondered if he was the mastermind behind it all. It honestly wouldn’t surprise him. Drake definitely had the brainpower to wreak some calculated havoc.

Their Social Studies activity over supply-and-demand was filled with unintelligible grumbling and sliding pieces of paper that Nathan turned a blind eye on. He even ignored the way the note passing stopped when Barbara’s class— and their guest speakers— walked through the door. 

Nathan checked the time on his phone. It was 2:10, and Danny Rand was scheduled to make his rounds in the neighborhood in ten more minutes or so. Making sure the blinds of his windows were open, he settled both classes on the carpet with Matt taking center stage. The sunlight streamed in, bringing out the red of his glasses and the brown in his hair. It also highlighted a fading bruise along Matt’s cheek.

Nathan was so focused on these little details that he was the first person who noticed Matt’s relaxed smile sliding off his face like oil. His whole body stiffened, and he tilted his head just enough to indicate that something had gotten his attention. 

With a shiver running down his spine, Nathan pushed off the desk he was leaning against. At this point, Barbara was in the middle of going over how they were going to take turns, and Foggy was busy setting up the art supplies the students would use. So with only him available, Matt turned his head just enough to face Nathan, opened his mouth—

“Locks, lights, out of sight,” the speaker in the classroom droned. That was Eliza, their secretary, and her voice came clipped and strained.  

Barbara stopped talking. Foggy froze. The kids faced the ceiling.

“Locks, lights, out of sight.”

Nathan found himself moving before his mind could form the words ‘school lockdown’.  He ran to the classroom door, knowing he locked it but needing to check. Barbara was already shushing the beginnings of questions with curt reminders for everyone to get somewhere that didn’t face any of the room’s windows. They had practiced this, after all. They knew what to do.

(But there hadn’t been a drill scheduled for today.)

Reaching the front of the classroom, Nathan jiggled the doorknob, and it took a second of ignoring the tremble in his hands to find that yes, the door was locked. In a flurry of movement his own mind could barely keep track of, he turned off the lights, pulled down the blinds to cover the door’s window, and ushered the handful of students that were still standing to his classroom library.

“Down, against the bookshelves,” he ordered. His own voice sounded far away and too much like that Friday night in the alleyway. Nathan swallowed, but there was a sudden lump in his throat he was struggling to breathe through.

(There wasn’t supposed to be a drill.)

Locks, lights, out of sight meant there was a possibility that someone was inside the school. Sure schools had gotten paranoid with the rise of vigilantes over the recent years and urged lockdowns whenever something outside threatened to go south, but still. 

Nathan had seen the news. He’d heard the grim statistics repeated over pictures of students and teachers alike. 

His kids were already huddled against each other on the floor, with Isabel and Larin dragging Foggy and Matt to their own spots. Barbara’s students were being corralled to any remaining spaces, her stern whispers shutting down any complaining.

“Is this a drill?” Marianne, in her smallest voice yet, asked from her little alcove of limbs and shadows. 

“Is there someone inside the school?” Carson asked in the same whisper. He was squeezed between George and Ariel and looked entirely too small.

Nathan put a finger to his lips even as his own heart rammed against his chest. Carson closed his mouth, Marianne curled up tighter, and nobody else said a word. Many opted to stare down at their shoes. Some tucked their faces into their drawn-up knees to try and shut out the world. 

Nathan sat down next to Matt, who was practically vibrating in place. Without his cane— abandoned somewhere near the carpet— he was curling and uncurling his fists in barely-restrained anger. Even sitting down, Matt looked ready to pounce on anything that so much as dared to breathe wrong. 

“Are they inside?” Nathan asked in the lowest whisper he could muster. 

Matt stiffly shook his head.

Nathan swallowed his sigh of relief. Okay, that was good. That was amazing, actually. 

“Outside, then?” he whispered back. 

Matt nodded. Then he got his feet under him and tried to stand up. Nathan immediately grabbed his sleeve and hauled him back down with a hissed, “What are you doing?”

Matt faced him. While his body was teeming with coiled energy his face was eerily cold, jaw set to harden his expression into something more akin to the devil that prowled the alleys of Hell’s Kitchen. Instead of answering, he merely inclined his head to the nearest window as an answer. 

Nathan wished Matt could see his expression because really? What was he thinking? Did he want the kids and whoever was outside to know he was Daredevil?

There was a muffled bang outside the classroom windows that had multiple kids startling. Just like that, the possibility that it was just another drill shattered. Hands went to mouths to muffle any and all sound. Foggy immediately tried to calm down Hayden and Michelle on either side of him while Barbara tried to keep two of her boys from bolting to a better hiding place. 

Nathan tightened his hold on Matt’s arm. It was like grabbing on to a live wire, and only adrenaline kept his fingers curled into the material of Matt’s sleeve. 

“Danny is coming,” Nathan told him. 

“Not fast enough,” Matt hissed. 

Nathan was this close to grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. He wasn’t getting it. Why didn’t he get how this was a horrible idea? Just because he could lay out whatever shooter was out there in his lawyer attire didn’t mean it was the smartest thing to do. The moment his face was spotted he could kiss any secret identity goodbye. 

Somewhere behind him, Larin whimpered, and Matt’s face broke. He twisted, probably to comfort her, only to realize that as Matt Murdock he didn’t really have that relationship with them. Still Larin scooted closer to him, and Ariel followed, both girls holding hands.

From across their hiding area, Barbara mouthed, Inside? When Nathan shook his head, she started to soothe the kids around her in a low voice.  

Nathan scooted closer to Matt until they were shoulder to shoulder. As low as Nathan’s voice was, it was as steady as he could make it. “You go out there, you get hurt, and these kids are going to see it. Do you want that?”

“Of course I don’t.” Matt grabbed a handful of the material of his dress pants in lieu of punching the face of whatever armed lowlife was roaming the streets. 

“None of them want to see you get hurt,” he insisted.

I don’t want to see you get hurt, Nathan wanted to add. Daredevil wasn’t just some random vigilante on the news anymore. He was a real guy that had saved him from being stabbed, that had brought him pastries as an apology, who’d decided that Nathan was trustworthy enough to know who he was under the mask. 

Matt sighed, low and frustrated. “And you think I want anybody here to get hurt?”

Nathan bit his lip. If he felt useless sitting here with his back against his classroom library then he couldn’t imagine how Matt was feeling. Nathan knew, with a scary amount of certainty, that they would have lost Matt to the overwhelming call to action if he hadn’t grabbed onto him. 

Another bang. More students muffled their cries. 

Even as his own pulse shot up at the sound, Nathan still held on to Matt by the arm. He was not going to let his students see their hero get shot. 

The metal bookshelf behind them shuddered as kids wedged themselves closer to each other, and a couple of books rained down on their heads. Each one hit the floor as loud as a gunshot. Drake kicked one away with his foot while Henry flinched away from the two that hit his arm. 

Matt jerked, seemingly stopping himself from jumping through the window through sheer will alone.

“It’s okay, Mr. Murdock,” Ariel whispered in a shaky voice. She tapped the back of his hand, just how Foggy had taught them during their guiding demonstration, and when he turned to her Ariel guided his hand to one of the fallen books between them. “The books just fell, but we’re okay.”

On hands and knees, Larin inched closer to them. Fresh tears stained her cheeks, but she still went for a comforting pat on Matt’s knee. “The door is still locked. We’re safe.”

Then Isabel came to tell him the windows were still closed.

And Carson joined them to assure him that they were all here and no one was missing.

Nathan’s heart squeezed as more and more students came closer to make sure that their guest speaker wasn’t scared and knew what was happening. 

George picked up one of the books to hand to him with a shy, “I like reading books when I’m scared.” Matt let hesitant fingers run over the cover. It was one of the books in braille, The Kissing Hand . Nathan saw the yellow moon against the blue backdrop and the little raccoon offering its hand to its mother. 

Matt swallowed. He reverently took the book with both hands. Some of the tension left his shoulders. “Would you guys like to hear a read aloud?”

He opened the book on his lap and placed the fingers of his right hand on the first page. The kids sat around him in a circle. More crawled over, silent but curious. Barbara and Foggy drew nearer.

With silence settling over the dim classroom, Matt took a steadying breath and began, voice low but still carrying over their group, “Chester Racoon stood at the edge of the forest and cried.”

The story unraveled in slow, measured sentences. Eyes abandoned the windows to focus on Matt’s trailing hand. Nathan ended up settling against the bookshelf, shoulder still brushing Matt’s. Barbara and Foggy sat a little way’s off with the students that were still too scared to move. 

Police sirens wailed at some point. Matt soldiered on. There was a melancholic undertone to his words that was echoed by the shadows lingering in the corners of their hideout. “Sometimes we all have to do things we don’t want to do. Even if they seem strange and scary at first. But you will love school once you start.”

That knot in the pit of Nathan’s stomach loosened when the world beyond the school walls grew silent. Matt’s voice played in his ears, a steady cadence that drowned out the horrible what ifs that always surfaced when admin talked about all the drills they had to subject their students to. 

“Chester felt his mother’s kiss rush from his hand, up his arm, and into his heart.” Matt paused, Adam’s apple bobbing, and Nathan suddenly remembered Matt’s soft expression as he recalled the book’s cover: the blue of the sky, the moon encompassing the characters in a muted glow.

Instead of dwelling on the significance, Nathan let himself relax, just for a while. One by one, their students did the same.

It was some time later when the speaker crackled to life. “All clear, all clear. Teachers, you may resume classroom activities.”

The kids turned to Matt. They shifted in place, but no one moved to stand up.

“We have two pages left. Do you guys want me to finish it?”

Nods, then a couple of meek yes’s. 

That afternoon, as Nathan’s class packed up to leave for home, the news came out that Daredevil had swooped in to apprehend the armed robber at the gas station. Nathan made a big show of reading from the news article on his phone. Even Foggy, in the process of taking pictures of everybody’s play-doh sculptures, drummed up his awe about ‘how lucky they’d been that Daredevil happened to be close by.’

His class, however, was too busy congratulating one Mr. Murdock on how brave he’d been during the lockdown to pay Nathan much attention.