Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Wake up, Matty.

He’s fine, really. A patch of ice on the subway stairs and a long tumble, but he’s fine now.

“I’ll feel it in the morning, though,” he grumbles, rubbing his neck.

“You blacked out for a minute, there, buddy,” Foggy says, worry fraying the edges of his voice. He touches the back of Matt’s head and winces at the goose egg already forming at the base of his skull. Matt winces too—it hurts like hell. “Feels like you’re about to sprout a second head back there.”

Matt laughs, loses his balance a little. Foggy grabs his arm.

“Let me take you to Claire’s to get checked out,” Foggy says.

“God, no,” Matt says. “After that trial, I just need to sleep for a week.”

Matt and Foggy are 58 years old. Foggy is four months, two weeks, and five days older. Just last week they celebrated his fifth year of remission, his official recovery from colon cancer (“Can confirm: exactly as disgusting as advertised!”) and though it means shitting into a bag attached to his stomach for the rest of his life, he’ll tell anyone who will listen that every day since his diagnosis has been a gift. He’s married to Marci and has a 15-year-old daughter who’s smarter than both of them combined, and has embraced middle age with more gusto than anyone Matt’s ever met. He’s gone full dad and loves every second of it: Soccer and band practice and summer camp and cheesy annual family photos on a Long Island beach where everyone wears white shirts and rolled-up khaki pants and they stand in the surf while the sun sets behind them. Fuck cancer: Foggy Nelson is in it for the long haul.

For Matt’s part, middle age never ceases to feel like a miracle, either—he never expected to live this long. It’s been more than 15 years since he lost his powers and the rest of the Defenders to a bioweapon in Brooklyn and buried Daredevil; since then he has married Peter and become a father to Jesse, the child they share with MJ and Gwen. Jesse is 10 now and is skinny like Peter and tall like MJ and even though he’s entered his pre-teen knucklehead years right on schedule, Matt can’t help but smile every time he hears their son’s voice. That any of this has been possible is luck beyond reason.

And just today, they got an innocent man’s death penalty conviction overturned.

In New York, even impossible things are possible.

He’s not fine.

Somewhere between the turnstile and the platform, all of Chambers Street Station has set sail, the floor rising and falling unpredictably beneath his feet as they walk.

He argues only a little when Foggy forces someone to give up their seat for him on the subway but when the train starts to move, his vertigo intensifies with every sway, and even though he’s sitting he clutches a nearby pole for balance. Foggy’s talking but he can’t seem to follow his words—each one makes sense but they don’t make sense together, a jumble of crossword clues that he can’t decode.

By the time they reach Times Square his head’s become a slow-motion explosion of pain and he thinks maybe they should stay on the train two more stops and go to Claire’s clinic after all. But he can’t summon the words to tell Foggy to stay on the train, so instead he dumbly takes his arm—actually leans on his arm because his legs really aren’t cooperating now—and follows him aboveground. His other hand is so clumsy he can barely keep his grip on his cane, so he just holds it uselessly in front of him and lets Foggy do all the work. He’s not sure how he even makes it up the stairs without Foggy noticing how weak he is.

They are back aboveground and ten steps out from the station when Matt vomits and then collapses on the sidewalk. By the time Foggy hits the deck to help him, he’s begun to seize.

“Matt!” Foggy shouts. “Matthew! Matt!”

It’s the last thing he hears.

Foggy argues with the ambulance driver to take him to Claire’s clinic, but the paramedic is adamant: Metro General is closer, and closer matters.

“He needs every second we can give him,” she says firmly. “You do not want to fuck around with the brain.”

“Okay,” Foggy whispers. He allows himself one sob, and one sob only, and then hops in the ambulance after Matt.

Daddy? What’s wrong with me?

It’s okay, Matty. There was an accident. But I’m here now.

Something’s wrong.

I know. It’s going to be okay, I promise. I’m right here.

The last time Foggy and Matt were in this emergency room it was six and a half years ago—only it was Foggy on the gurney, not Matt. Foggy had insisted on working through chemo and radiation, only taking time off on Thursdays for treatment. He had to work, he’d explained to Matt: He was stage 3 and work was the only thing that could distract him from how close he was to stage 4 and death.

And Matt, more than anyone, had understood that. Marci had tried to veto this, of course, but once she saw how miserable Foggy was working from home, rattling around all alone in their apartment, she relented. So he’d come into the office every day, a jaunty porkpie hat perched atop his shaved head because Foggy Nelson was not going down without a fight. Of course, only Karen could see how ill he was; he thought he was able to hide the worst of it from Matt with a bright voice and a quick joke. But he knew the gig was up when Matt mentioned how thin Foggy was growing whenever he took Foggy’s arm. When he and Karen moved the conference room sofa into Foggy’s office so he could lie down when he needed to, he didn’t object. It was time to stop pretending everything was okay.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Foggy fainted in Matt’s office during a conference call on a beautiful late-spring day, but it was. Karen was out; an ambulance was called over Foggy’s objections, and away they went.

He was dehydrated and exhausted and maybe had a slight cold, but probably just allergies. Foggy had cried then, that such a stupid little thing could knock him out like that, and Matt had said nothing, just sat next to him and held his hand and let him cry, because he didn’t want to do it in front of Marci, didn’t even want Marci to know, although of course Matt had already called her office and they were already sending a car up to Poughkeepsie to pull her out of her deposition.

This is different. There are two doctors and five nurses working on Matt right now. They’re covering his face with an oxygen mask and shouting his name and shocking his heart back into rhythm and piercing him with IVs and catheters and God knows what else.

He calls Peter, who’s on a photo shoot on Long Island, and then, because that’s nearly an hour away, he calls Karen, and then he calls Claire.

Karen gets there first, coatless and flushed from the cold—as soon as Foggy called, she’d stopped only to lock the office door before sprinting the three blocks to the hospital in her suit and heels. At 55 her blonde hair is shot through with gray and she’s grudgingly started to wear glasses, but she still runs three miles a day and doesn’t look a day older than Peter, who’s a decade younger. She jokes that it’s because she never had children, but Foggy knows it’s something else. She never thought she’d make it to middle age, either—or that she’d ever deserve to. Karen lives with more gratitude than anyone else he’s ever met.

“He hit his head and had a seizure,” Foggy says, his voice stumbling over the words, and she hugs him. “His heart stopped for three minutes and he’s not waking up.”

She goes to Matt’s side and takes his hand and kisses it. His eyes are still open, lids fluttering just barely. She reaches up with incredible tenderness to close them. “Hold on, Matt,” she murmurs in his ear. “Peter’s coming. Just hold on.”

Claire arrives just as they’re taking Matt to get a brain scan, a hurricane in a parka shouting to see Matt’s chart. She doesn’t even have time to say hello, doesn’t even take off her coat: She just grabs the clipboard and reads while she walks.

Foggy is holding Matt’s coat—it was the only thing besides his shoes that they hadn’t cut off. Karen is shivering beside him and he puts the coat over her shoulders. She crosses her arms across her chest to pull the lapels of Matt’s coat closed and leans against Foggy’s shoulder.

They wait.

Dad? What’s happening?

You know what’s happening.

Peter arrives just as they’re bringing Matt back from his MRI.

He gasps when he sees him; Matt’s heart had stopped again but this time his breathing didn’t recover so they’d intubated him right there in the radiology suite. Matt’s still strong and trim for his age—the arthritis in his shoulder made him give up judo years ago but he swims or does yoga every morning before work—but now he looks shrunken and slack and gray.

Peter’s face goes pale with horror as the nurses quickly and urgently transfer him from the handheld bag ventilator onto the more powerful respirator in his room, and Matt’s chest begins to pump forcefully with an unnaturally regular cadence. Eventually the influx of oxygen restores some of his color, but when Peter takes his hand, he’s not warm enough. Not cold, not cool, but not warm enough. Something is wrong.

Claire arrives with the neurologist. Neither one of them look happy. Claire’s eyes are red.

Something is wrong.

The neurologist pins the film to the light board and they all stare at Matt’s brain. The extra nerves that grew when his mutation was triggered as a child nearly 50 years before, that were later eaten away by Hominus’ bioweapon 15 years ago, have atrophied so much that they are barely visible. Later Claire would say that the neurologist didn’t appear to notice them at all.

Of course, that’s because he, and now they, are all staring instead at the huge white blob parked between the base of his skull and his brain, as if someone had crammed an oversized grapefruit up under the bone.

The neurologist begins to speak, explaining how the brain stem controls his breathing and his heartbeat, that his second heart attack left him without oxygen for almost five minutes, that on top of the three minutes it had stopped before—

“He’s not coming back from this,” Peter says, so bluntly that Foggy wants to punch him.

Claire shakes her head once.

Karen bursts into tears.

“No!” Foggy cries. He stands up, spoiling for a fight, but just holds his hands out uselessly, imploringly, to Claire. She shakes her head again and hugs him.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I am so, so sorry, Fog.”

And then there is Peter. His eyes are on Matt, now, holding Matt’s too-cool hand, tears streaming silently down his face. He kisses Matt’s palm once, twice, then presses it against his cheek and smiles so Matt can feel it. If he still can.

“You asshole,” Peter murmurs, with so much love in his voice that everyone’s breath stops. “We discussed this. I was supposed to be the one to go first.”

Ohh, this feels so strange.

That’s normal. You’re starting to leave your body behind.

But I don’t want to go, Dad. I don’t want—

It’s okay, Matty. I’m right here. See?

But I can’t—

Yes you can, son. Open your eyes. Look at my face.

It’s no longer an emergency. The ventilator and saline will do their work as long as they need to—long enough for MJ, Gwen, and Jesse to come to the hospital to say goodbye, long enough to keep his organs alive until it’s time to donate them.

May arrives with the Stacys. Marci collects Alice from school and arrives a few minutes later. Within the hour, Colleen is there, and Misty, and Frank. When Peter steps out to call Tony, he sees him already there, standing at the end of the hall. Their eyes meet and Tony raises his hand in greeting. His phone buzzes in his hand and there’s a text from Wade, in Singapore: <3

The nurses don’t let anyone back into Matt’s room at first; instead, they’re all shunted into a private waiting room while the nurses do all the things they need to do to make Matt look presentable. It looks like a dorm living room, with durable, institutionally upholstered sofas and sturdy oak laminate tables, but there’s a vending machine and a coffee maker and a window overlooking Hell’s Kitchen. It’s not yet 6 but the January sun is already nearly down. It’s Matt’s last sunset. There will not be another sunrise.

It seems cruel that he will die at night, Peter thinks. Matt was always most alive at night.

When Peter sits next to Jesse, he allows Peter to put his arms around him and pull him close to his shoulder. Peter breathes into his son’s ridiculous haircut and kisses him and then presses his forehead against the top of his head.

“I’m so sorry, kiddo,” Peter murmurs. “This sucks.”

“Is he alone?” Jesse whispers. His chin is quivering and he wipes his eyes, but he’s a big man now and he’s not going to let his dad see him cry.

“No,” Peter said. “Tia Claire’s with him right now. Making him comfortable. We can go back in a few minutes.”

Jesse sniffles and nods and buries his head into Peter’s shirt. Suddenly he’s three again, feverish and clingy and panting against Peter’s chest while Matt presses a cool washcloth against his forehead. Peter kisses the top of his head again and squeezes him tight.

“It’s okay to cry, kiddo,” Peter says. “I’ve been doing it all afternoon.” MJ is sitting on the other side of Jesse and Peter meets her eyes with a wan smile. He holds out his arm to her and she leans in too, kissing the back of Jesse’s head and resting her head against his shoulder.

Jesse shudders a little but holds it together somehow. He learned this from Matt, Peter thinks, and he’d start crying again himself but he’s already dry, and the dying hasn’t even started yet.

Around them, the others speak in low voices, or simply sit and stare at their hands, their feet, the floor, the ceiling. Peter doesn’t care about any of them. His son is leaning against his chest and he’s scared and sad and there’s nothing Peter can do to save him from what’s coming next.

A minute or an hour later, a nurse enters and nods at Peter.

“You ready, kiddo?” he asks softly.

Jesse shakes his head against Peter’s chest.

“That’s okay,” Peter says, kissing him again as he disentangles himself from his son and guides him into MJ’s arms. “I’ll take the others back first.”

But Jesse grabs his arm as Peter starts to stand and his heart breaks anew—he knows his son needs him now but he only has a few hours left on Earth with Matt and he doesn’t want to lose another second.

“Let him go, Jess,” MJ murmurs. “Mama and I will stay with you.”

Gwen slips easily into Peter’s seat and Jesse seems to relax a little with another parent to surround him, enough for Peter to gently peel his fingers from his arm. He kisses Jesse one more time on the head before leading Colleen and Misty back into Matt’s room.

 Colors, Dad!

Claire is sitting next to Matt and holding his hand when they arrive. She’s murmuring in Spanish—Peter doesn’t speak it very well but he recognizes a prayer when he hears it. When she stands he notices that she’s wrapped a rosary around Matt’s hand. A second after Peter wonders where it came from, he no longer cares. He’s just glad it’s there.

Claire tries to take him out of the room—“You don’t have to do this to yourself,” she says—but he refuses to leave. He’ll endure a thousand goodbyes tonight as long as he can still hold Matt’s hand.

They come and go in handfuls; they kiss his forehead and hold his hand and murmur words of love and farewell; Colleen and Misty, Marci and Alice.

That’s Peter holding my hand.

Yes.

Oh my God, Dad. He’s so beautiful.

You were cute together. I liked him. He’s a good man.

How is it I can recognize him if I’ve never seen him before?

You see the face but what you recognize is his soul.

Frank arrives alone. He goes to Matt’s side, but doesn’t sit. Instead he reaches over to smooth his hair and gently cuff his chin. “Semper Fi, Red,” he says hoarsely. “You always gave ‘em hell.”

He touches Peter’s shoulder on his way out, and Peter grabs his hand without looking, holds it there tight.

“It’s okay, Pete,” Frank says, not moving. “I got you as long you need.”

I look so old.

Nah, I can still see the kid in you. Always could.

Have you been watching me all this time?

Sure. Your mother too, once she got here. It’s been kind of nice, you know. Getting to be parents together finally.

You forgave her?

Reconciliation comes easy here, Matty. You’ll see.

May’s next. She hugs Peter first, kisses him on both cheeks and squeezes him tight.

“Jesse’s still on the fence,” she says softly.

“I know.”

“You were, too,” she says. “With Ben.”

“I remember. I’m not going to push him.” Peter shakes his head. “I just don’t want him to regret not doing it.”

It doesn’t really matter, of course, Peter knows. Matt’s been dead for hours already. They’re just keeping the body warm so everyone can get closure. Jesse can say goodbye to him anywhere he wants.

At least, that’s what he told himself when he refused to enter Ben’s room until it was too late. He hopes it’s true.

May takes her seat next to Matt and gathers his hand in hers. She has too much practice with this, with Ben and both of Peter’s parents. Peter’s parents had died from their injuries in due time on their own but she’d had to make the same decision with Ben that Peter was having to make with Matt: Not if, but when.

Seeing the look on her face now, he is, for the first time, glad that Maggie is dead, that she cannot see him like this, too.

“Oh, Matty,” she says. “I know you don’t want to leave yet, I’m going to tell you something I wish I’d been able to tell Ben when it was his turn: Peter’s going to be okay. Jesse’s going to be okay. They will miss you so much, and they will never stop loving you, but they are going to have good lives. Happy lives, surrounded by people who love them so, so very much.” She kisses his hand and rests it back onto the bed, smoothing his too-cool skin as she does. “We’re all going to take such good care of them for you, Matty. I promise.”

She stands and kisses his forehead. “Goodbye, son,” she says. “Thank you for loving my boy.”

She’s right, you know.

About what, Mom?

They’ll be okay. You were okay.

Was I?

‘Okay’ doesn’t mean the absence of pain, Matthew. You know that. You had joy and love in your life. You did good work and helped a lot of people. That sounds pretty okay to me.

But I’m not done yet.

Yes, you are.

Karen and Foggy decide to go in together. They don’t ask Peter to leave; Matt has no secrets anymore.

They sit silently beside him, Karen holding Matt’s hand, Foggy resting his hand on Matt’s leg.

“He was fine a few hours ago, you know?” Foggy says. “He was joking about something—I don’t even remember what it was anymore—and we were laughing and the next thing I knew, his feet had gone out from under him and I tried to grab his arm but it was icy and then I slipped too—”

“Foggy,” Karen says softly, and digs her free hand into Foggy’s palm. Not now, she begs him silently. Not in front of Peter.

And Foggy, bless him, he hears her, gets his shit together and shakes his head and stuffs his tears back into whatever box he keeps them in.

But Peter doesn’t seem to have noticed any of it. He just looks up at Foggy with concern. “You fell, too? Are you okay?”

Foggy stares openmouthed at Peter. “I’m not important.”

“Yes, you are,” Peter says. “You’re his family. He loved you.”

Foggy’s face crumples at that and he clutches a fistful of Matt’s blanket. “I don’t want to lose you, buddy,” he says softly, and Karen wonders how many times she’s heard Foggy say that over the years. Never in front of her, no, but how many furtive phone calls, how many whispered arguments on the other side of too-thin walls has she overheard between them?

“I don’t want to lose him either,” Karen says, clasping Foggy’s free hand in hers. This was the fear that had burned away her engagement to Matt nearly 25 years before: That he would end up like this, that he would leave her too soon. She had already lost the family she’d grown up with. She couldn’t bear to lose her husband, too.

At least she gets to say goodbye. She had been too little to understand what was happening at her mother’s funeral and her father hadn’t allowed her to attend Kevin’s after she’d killed him. She’d packed up her truck and left home before his father came home from the burial. She’d left no note telling him where she was going. She’d never called to tell him where she was. She has no idea if he’s still alive.

She has no idea if Matt’s still alive, either. She understands that this injury is unsurvivable (will any of them survive this?), understands that his tether to the world’s been irreparably severed (will any of them be whole again?)—but his heart is still beating. There is still some flicker of him still here, even if it’s just a reflex, a leftover spark from a downed electric line.

It occurs to her that it might be true what they say, that you never really stop loving your first—you just love them differently afterward. It was certainly true for her and Matt. They had loved each other, truly and completely. She loves Frank, she loves that Matt found Peter, she loves their son and loves their friendship—but she knows in her bones that tonight some part of her heart will be widowed all the same.

Sometimes it still feels like she knows everything about him—every inch of his body, the little noises he makes when he sleeps, the way he likes his toast in the morning, his favorite shampoo, even his lucky socks. She knows that he likes to wear navy suits in court because blue is the only color he really remembers and he likes to know what he looks like when he has to impress people. She knows that he’s ticklish behind his knees and loves ridiculous spy novels and hates mustard. She knows that he only pretended to like the folksy singer-songwriters that she loves to listen to but that he loves it when she sings along to them. He’d always loved her voice.

She sings to him now. It’s one of her favorites, one he actually did kind of like. It’s the one he taught himself to play on the piano as a surprise for her birthday during the year they lived together. She doesn’t know if he can hear her, but she sings anyway. Sings him home.

She knows he was always in more pain than he let on, that he was always more afraid than he let on. She knows he regrets breaking her heart, even after all these years. She hopes he knows that in some way she loves him still.

It’s cruel, you know? The first time I get to actually see any of them, and it’s like this. They’re so sad right now.

You know how it goes. We are born from suffering, et cetera, et cetera. Turns out it works the other way around, too.

That’s not the line, Mom.

You’re going to lawyer a nun over a translation now, son?

After Foggy and Karen leave, the nurses make him leave too so they can change Matt’s diaper, because of course God’s enough of a bitch to somehow leave that part of him working just fine. Without having to be asked, Claire goes in with them, as she has every other time the nurses have needed the room, to make sure Matt always has a friend by his side no matter what. Her years as a nurse have informed her career as a doctor more than Peter thinks she realizes; she’s always treated her patients like whole people with families and friends, not just a symptom or diagnosis, and that’s never been more evident than it is tonight.

MJ is right outside the door. He leans against her and she wraps her arm around him.

“How’s Jesse?” he asks.

“Oh, you know,” MJ says. “Scared.”

“Lotta that going around.”

MJ squeezes him tight and then nods down the hall. He follows her gaze to see Jesse and Tony sitting on a bench at the end of the hall. Jesse doesn’t see Peter; he’s fiddling with his phone in the way he does when he’s only pretending not to pay attention. Peter realizes that Tony’s talking to him. They’re too far away for Peter to hear, so instead Peter watches Jesse’s face. He’s trying to keep it still—he’s learned Matt’s poker face, too—but it’s not working. He’s beginning to chew his lip and turn a little bit toward Tony, even briefly glances up to meet his eyes and nods before returning his gaze to his phone.

Tony squeezes the back of Jesse’s neck and scrubs the back of his head. Then he looks up the hall at Peter, meets his eyes, and nods once.

Jesse’s ready.

He’s so beautiful, Mom. I didn’t know it was possible for anyone to be so beautiful.

He looks more and more like Peter every day.

How am I supposed to take care of him now?

That’s Peter’s job now. And his mothers’.

You’re asking me to trade seeing him for being with him. Why would I ever do that?

Nobody’s asking, Matthew. It’s just how it is.

Is this Hell, then? Being condemned to watch my son grow up without me?

You don’t have to watch, Matthew. Many choose not to. They choose to be reborn, make a fresh start. Or they choose to just disappear. There’s no wrong answer here.

Why can’t I choose to stay, Mom? I just want to stay.

May and Gwen join them in the hall, but at the last minute, Jesse decides he doesn’t want anyone to come in with him except Peter.

“I know it looks uncomfortable, but it doesn’t hurt,” Peter says. “This tube is helping him breathe, and this one here is giving him medicine. To be honest, kiddo, he’s probably high as a kite right now.”

Jesse smiles a little at that, but he’s still frozen three steps inside the door. Peter moves to Matt’s side and kisses his forehead. “Hey, Matty,” he says, stroking his hair. “Jesse’s here. He’s hanging out on the other side of the room right now, but he’s here and he loves you very, very much.”

Jesse takes one uncertain step forward, then another, then freezes again when Matt’s blood pressure cuff buzzes to life and then hisses as it releases.

Peter holds out his hand to him. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s supposed to do that.”

Jesse nods a little, then tentatively moves to Peter’s side.

“Do you want to touch him?” he asks.

Jesse shakes his head.

“OK. How about talking?” Peter says.

“What do I say?”

“You could start with hello?”

Jesse nods. He lifts up a little bit on his knees and leans against the bed. “Hi, Pop. I’m sorry you got hurt.” He looks up at Peter. “Can he really hear me?”

“Maybe,” Peter says, taking Matt’s hand. Whether he can still understand what he hears is not something Peter wants to think about. But maybe he’ll recognize Jesse’s voice, at least. Maybe. “Why don’t you tell him some things you love about him?”

Jesse looks uncertainly at Peter, then turns back to Matt. “Um, I like it when we do Lego together,” he said. “And it’s fun scoring baseball games together. And playing Dragon Quest even though I have to tell you what buttons to push. And going out for pancakes after church.”

They haven’t been raising Jesse in any particular religion—Peter’s Jewish, Matt’s Catholic, Gwen’s nominally Methodist, and MJ’s done with religion altogether—but once Jesse was old enough to sit still, Matt had started taking him to Mass with him so Peter could get in his weekly 15-mile run in the mornings when it was still cool. Jesse had accepted this arrangement grudgingly, but he minded less than he let on. With four parents, it was sometimes hard to get one-on-one time with all of them. Jesse didn’t need to tell Peter how important those Sunday mornings were to him.

“He likes those things very much, too, Jesse,” Peter said, fighting to keep his voice steady, trying not to use the past tense yet. “He loves everything about you, you know? He thinks you’re the smartest, funniest, kindest kid in the world and he’s so, so proud of you.”

Jesse cautiously reaches out and touches Matt’s arm with his fingertips, then quickly pulls his hand back. “He’s cold.”

“A little,” Peter said.

“Why can’t he get better, dad?” Jesse asks, his voice wavering.

“Because his brain’s hurt so bad it can’t tell his heart and lungs to work anymore.”

“They’re working now.”

“The machines are helping.”

“Can he wake up? As long as he stays on the machines?”

“No, kiddo, I’m sorry.”

“But why not?”

“Because—” Peter cannot seem to find words that aren’t because everything that made him Papa died five hours ago on a sidewalk in Times Square. “I don’t know, kiddo. Sometimes things are just too broken to fix.”

“It’s not fair.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want him to die,” Jesse whispers hopelessly, and finally the tears he’s been fighting all night begin to flow.

“Me neither, kiddo,” Peter says. Jesse leans against him and Peter holds him tight. “How about we bring your moms in so we can be a family for a little while?”

He sniffles and nods.

MJ and Gwen come in and station themselves across the bed, on Matt’s right. MJ stands red-eyed and stoic by the window while Gwen bustles almost matter-of-factly about him, smoothing his hair and his hospital gown, adjusting his respirator hose so it’s not dragging against his mouth as much, humming a little song as she works. She kisses his forehead and then goes to the closet, where there’s another blanket. She spreads it over him and tucks it around his arms.

“There,” she says. “That’s better. We’ll keep you nice and warm.”

Thank you, Peter mouths across the bed, over Jesse’s head. She only smiles and takes Matt’s hand.

“Remember how small Jesse was when he was born, Matty?” MJ asks him. “He was so tiny you were terrified to hold him, but when Peter put him in your arms, everything changed. You touched his face and this incredible look of awe came over you, like you’d discovered a new planet. The first thing you ever said to him was ‘hello, little man,’ and the second thing you said was ‘I love you.’ And then the third thing—do you remember? The third thing you said to him was ‘Thank you for being my son.’”

Jesse bites his lip and then, with new bravery, leans forward on the bed and touches Matt’s arm again. “Thank you for being my Papa,” he says.

Peter’s heart gutters in his chest. “That was a really nice thing to say, Jess,” he says hoarsely.

I can’t believe you named your kid after me. I was the worst fucking role model on the face of the earth.

Fuck you. I did it because I missed you.

Fuck you. I missed you too.

That why you didn’t decide to be reborn as an alley cat or a rock star or something?

Maybe. Or maybe I just didn’t want to stop looking into people’s windows at night. We always saw the worst in people, but this way I get to see the best, too.

Who are you and what have you done with my Jessica?

Apparently this is who I am minus the depression, trauma, and alcoholism. Still think we can be friends?

Oh, I’m sure we can work something out. 

Father Robinson joins them to give Matt his final sacrament. Lantom has been dead for almost a decade, but Elias Robinson is Harlem-born and knew Luke Cage when he was a boy. He knows Matt’s secret, and Peter is grateful that he could come.

Peter holds Matt’s hand while the priest anoints him with oil and says his blessing. He has accompanied Matt to mass more times than he can count, and though Peter himself is Jewish, he finds himself comforted by Father Robinson’s words. He imagines Matt making the sign of the cross as he’s seen him do so many times before, a gesture that had seemed unbearably intimate the first few times Peter witnessed it, but now which is as indistinguishable from Matt’s being as the sound of his sneeze.

He will never see it again.

The sacrament concluded, Father Robinson turns his attention to Peter. “Psalm 23,” he says. “Let’s say it for him.”

He knows it by heart but the words are just noises his mouth is making while he tries and tries and tries to remember if he’d said “I love you” before Matt left that morning. They’d overslept and he had court and Peter had to get to a photo shoot out on Long Island before ten and wouldn’t have time to drop Matt off at the courthouse so Matt had to take a cab and one of them needed to remember to get ingredients for brownies so Jesse would have something to make for the library bake sale on Thursday and they were forgetting something else and neither one of them could remember what it was. When his assistant, LeeAnne, interrupted his shoot and handed them the phone he knew from her face that it was bad, that something was wrong, and his first fear was for Jesse and when Foggy told him, voice quavering that it was Matt who was hurt, he exhaled heavily and said, without thinking, “Thank God.”

It doesn’t matter that he knows Matt would have done the same, that any parent would have done the same. It doesn’t matter.

Jesse’s right: It’s so goddamn unfair.

You want to see something cool?

Right now everything I see is cool, Jess.

How about you take a gander out a window for the first time in 50 years and tell me what you see.

That’s—New York. It’s the whole city.

It sure as hell ain’t Dubuque.

How do I know that? I mean, I know where we are, but it just—seems so familiar.

New York’s got a soul of its own, Murdock. But you’ve always known that. Nine million people, all mixed up into one big—presence. There’s nowhere in the world like it.

Are we still there, Jess? In the world?

For now.

Matt’s heart is beginning to skip more and more beats.

Peter clears the room and pulls the blinds, then he carefully climbs into bed next to Matt, curling up on his side and nestling his head into Matt’s shoulder. He tries to ignore the unnaturally strong, rhythmic mechanical breath that inflates and deflates Matt’s chest like clockwork every five seconds, but at least the beep on the heart monitor has been turned off. There is no need for it now.

He wants to hear Matt’s voice one more time, wants to hear him laugh one more time. Until Jesse was born, Matt’s laugh was the happiest sound in the world to him; now it’s the second happiest—but just barely.

“We don’t have much time left, baby,” Peter murmurs into Matt’s unhearing ear. “But I want you to know that I’m going to tell Jesse all about you. I know you don’t want to leave him, but he’s always going to know how much you loved him. I promise you that.”

Peter kisses Matt’s temple and swallows a sob. “I don’t even know what to say to you now,” he says. “There are so many things I wish we could have done together. I wish you could have seen Jesse grow up. I wish we could have grown old together. I wish we could have retired to a beach somewhere and met our grandchildren together and gone to Paris. I wish you could have written that Thurgood Marshall biography you always wanted to write. I wish you could have seen the Sokovia Accords dissolved and the death penalty abolished and the Rockefeller laws overturned. I wish you could have gotten your powers back.” He buries his head into the curve of Matt’s shoulder. “I wish we could have had more time. I love you so much.”

Me too.

Matt saves seven last lives before he goes. By noon the next day his kidneys, intestine, pancreas, lungs, and heart will be delivered safely into the desperately ill bodies of a firefighter in Queens, a preschool teacher in Hartford, a high school student in Trenton, a roofer in Stony Brook, a lawyer in Staten Island, a new mom in West Orange, and an auto mechanic in Yonkers. They will never know it was Daredevil who saved them.

Hello, Matthew.

Father Lantom. What is this place?

It’s what’s next, Matthew.

It’s not what I expected.

If it’s any consolation, it’s not what I expected either.

So we’ve been all wrong about the whole Heaven and Hell thing all along, huh?

Well, we were only human.

You seem to be handling this very well for a man of God without a God.

Oh, God’s still here, Matthew. She’s the one who sent me to come get you.

Chapter Text

It feels wrong to come home without Matt.

The apartment is exactly how they left it that morning: Mugs and breakfast dishes in the sink, a pile of laundry by the washing machine, Matt’s boxing wraps hanging to dry in the shower.

“Go put your pajamas on, kiddo,” Peter says, disoriented by the normality of his request. “How about I make some mac and cheese?”

Jesse nods, dumps his backpack on the table, and goes to his room to change. Peter pours himself a drink and goes to the pantry, idly running his thumb along the Braille label on the shelf before grabbing a box of Kraft. Matt would never eat the powdered stuff—it was always Peter and Jesse’s shared indulgence.

He’s still cooking when Jesse comes back and doesn’t notice at first that he’s swimming in Matt’s ancient Fogwell’s sweatshirt over his flannel pants. When he does, their eyes meet for a moment, but he doesn’t say anything. He knows.

Neither one of them can eat, really. They both manage to force down a few bites, but eventually they give up and Peter scrapes their bowls into the trash.

“You tired, kiddo?” he asks, though that’s not really the question. It’s late—of course he’s tired. What he’s really asking is whether Jesse is ready to be alone yet.

“Can we watch a movie?” Jesse asks instead, and Peter is relieved. He doesn’t want to be alone yet either.

“Sure.”

While Jesse picks a movie, Peter goes back into the bedroom that Matt will never sleep in again and tries to keep his shit together long enough to change out of his hospital-scented clothes. When he comes out and Jesse sees that Peter’s wearing one of Matt’s Columbia Law sweatshirts, he doesn’t say anything either.

They curl up on the sofa underneath the soft throw that Maggie knitted them for Christmas a few years ago and start the movie. They’ve both forgotten that the TV’s set to turn on the audio descriptions by default and so when a computerized voice begins to describe the action, Peter sits up quickly and fumbles with the remote to turn them off, but he doesn’t remember how so he’s just punching buttons until Jesse grabs it from him and punches in the correct combination and then throws the remote across the room, breaking off the back panel and sending the batteries skittering in all directions.

The rule of the house is to pick things up right away so Papa doesn’t step on them and Peter automatically opens his mouth to remind him, but Jesse just stares at him with a strange silent challenge in his face and then begins to cry.

 Peter just holds him and lets him, because there’s nothing else he can do, really, except cry too.

Eventually Jesse’s sobs subside into whimpers, which soon fade out to a kind of numb daze. His eyes are open, but he’s not watching the movie anymore; he’s just lying there with his head on Peter’s lap, clutching Peter’s hand to his chest. His breathing is heavy and congested and Peter aches for it to clear. It reminds him a little of Matt's, toward the end, and when Jesse finally stills he cannot fight the fear that seizes his heart and tries to convince him that Jesse is next.

Jesse is not next. It’s two in the morning on the worst day of his life, and he’s slipped into a sleep so deep he doesn’t even stir when Peter lifts him and carries him to his and Matt's bed. He doesn’t bother to get under the covers, just crawls into bed next to him and holds him close.

Across from the bed hangs a huge print of Peter’s favorite photograph of Matt, taken about four months after Jesse was born. Matt was stretched out on the sofa with Jesse curled up into a soft bundle on his chest, both of them so exhausted that neither woke when Peter moved in close with his camera and clicked the shutter. How peaceful they were then, and beautiful.

For his part, he can’t sleep. He doesn’t think he’ll ever sleep again. He just lies next to his son and watches him breathe and listens to his quiet little sleepy grunts and holds him tight until the sky begins to lighten and the first day of his life without Matt begins.

He blinks and the sun is now laser-bright. He must have slept at least an hour, maybe two. Jesse is still asleep, but he can smell coffee. There is movement in the kitchen—someone trying to be quiet, but also useful. Two someones. A scrap of conversation. MJ and Gwen.

He carefully makes his way out of bed so as not to wake his son, and shuffles into the main room of the loft. Gwen is standing at the kitchen bench, chopping something, while MJ leans against the fridge with a large mug of coffee cupped in both her hands. She almost drops it in her haste to set it down and close the distance to envelop Peter in a hug.

“We let ourselves in,” she says needlessly. They let themselves in all the time. “Where’s Jesse?”

“Our bed.”

Our bed.

Our.

Peter swallows back the sob and rubs his chest. “Coffee would be good,” he says, clearing his throat.

As he sits at the table he pushes Jesse’s backpack to the side, accidentally tipping it over. His little Captain America wallet slips out of the front pocket and falls open, and when he picks it up to put it back, he notices that it feels strangely lumpy.

He thumbs open the cash pocket to figure out why and fresh grief bubbles up into his throat.

“What’s the matter?” MJ asks from behind the kitchen counter.

Peter spreads the bills out on the table to show them. “When did Jesse start folding his money like Matt?”

Gwen drops the knife and bursts into tears.

It’s a bright, not-too-cold day, so Peter and MJ walk to Stark Tower. It feels good to walk, to force himself to put one foot in front of the other, to force himself to breathe and keep his eyes open and feel the chill of the wind against his face. But it’s also terrible because it is a Wednesday morning, and the world does not appear to be aware that it has just ended. People bustle around them as if their jobs, their coffee, their commutes, their conversations, their shopping, their families, their lives still make sense, still matter in a world without Matt Murdock. He wants to shout their folly at them, tell them all to go to hell and get out of his way. Everything Matt sacrificed to protect them and they couldn’t even properly de-ice a subway stairwell in thanks. Fuck them all.

By the time they get to Claire’s he’s in a blind rage and MJ is breathless from the jog she’d needed to maintain to keep up with him. Fortunately, Claire had cancelled all her appointments and so the clinic is empty. He can rage all he wants. He satisfies himself with punching a wall and only modestly damages the concrete.

Claire says nothing, just cautiously reaches out to touch his arm.

“Peter."

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispers.

“I know,” Claire says. She takes his hand and nods toward a pair of swinging double doors to their left. “He’s through here.”

His rage suddenly spent, he follows her like a child into the morgue. Despite her promise to let him go alone, MJ goes too. Peter hardly notices.

There is a body beneath a plastic sheet on a steel table mounted on the front of the crematory. It seems too small to be Matt, and for a moment an insane hope flares bright inside him until her remembers that Matt was literally gutted for parts last night. There’s not much left of him to burn.

“Can I see him?”

“If you want to,” she says.

Claire walks him to the head of the table and gathers the end of the sheet in her hand.

“Are you sure?”

Peter nods.

Matt is paler than Peter has ever seen him, grayish blue and paper-dry. His prosthetic eyes have been removed; his lids have collapsed a little into the empty sockets. His lips have parted slightly as his jaw has settled a little into his neck. Peter reaches forward to smooth his mussed hair, and though he knows to expect, it he is nevertheless so shocked by how cold he is that he almost asks Claire for a warmer blanket.

Instead, he traces his finger one last time along Matt’s ear and jaw and holds his hand against Matt’s cheek. Then he leans over to kiss his forehead.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” he says softly. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

He presses his forehead against Matt’s for a moment, then kisses it again before kissing his mouth.

“I love you.”

Finally he stands up straight again, and touches his fingertips to his mouth. Tears are running freely down his face but he doesn’t wipe them away. He just looks at Claire and nods. He touches Matt’s face one more time as the crematory door opens and the conveyor belt carries him toward the fire.

MJ takes Peter’s hand. Suddenly he is a grieving ten-year-old boy on a fire escape in Queens and MJ is reaching her hand through the barred divider separating his landing from hers. 25 years later, they made a baby together, carried by Gwen and named by Matt. MJ kept him going then and Jesse will keep him going now. He squeezes her hand tighter and watches the flames until the furnace claims Matt completely and the doors close between them forever.

So that’s it, then. Sic transit gloria, etc etc. He’s a widower now.

The vice that’s been tightening around Peter’s ribs all morning finally steals all the breath from his lungs. His knees buckle and he sits down hard on the floor, gasping desperately for air. MJ and Claire both drop with him—MJ gathers him into her arms and Claire rubs his back but it’s not enough, it doesn’t help, he can’t breathe and Matt is dead and he pushes them away so hard they both cry out.

He doesn’t care. He scrabbles to his feet, chest still heaving, and lurches toward the crematory door and begins to pound on it, hard enough to dent the reinforced steel.

“Peter!” Claire cries. MJ gingerly gets to her feet and grabs his arm. She can’t physically stop him—she knows this—but her touch seems to break the spell enough that he staggers away and looks dumbly at his outstretched hands.

“I’m sorry,” he says weakly. “I just—I can’t—”

“I know, Petey,” MJ says gently, still holding his arm. “But we’re here. We love you and we’re here.”

“I wish he could have seen Jesse’s face,” he says suddenly.

MJ’s breath catches and she hugs him. “He did,” she says. “In his own way. He did.”

“I wish he could have—” Peter shakes his head and buries his head into MJ’s neck. “I wish—”

“I know,” MJ said. “I know.”  

Matt’s ashes will not be ready for a couple of hours, so Peter persuades MJ to go home—“Jesse needs you, too”—and takes the executive elevator up to Tony and Pepper's penthouse to wait.

It’s a relief to finally be alone for a few minutes, even as he hates it.

Tony’s standing at the window when he arrives. He looks like he’s been standing there since last night.

“Everything go okay downstairs?” he asks. When he turns, Peter is shocked by how old he looks. Tony is pushing 75—of course he looks old—but it’s been a long, bad night, and it shows.

“As far as burning your suddenly-deceased husband’s remains go, yeah, it was a real treat,” Peter said. “Do you have anything to drink?"

Tony waves toward the bar. “Go to town, kid.”

Peter pours himself entirely too much of whatever bottle is closest and downs half of it in a single swallow before refilling his glass.

“Pepper’s arranged everything with Father Robinson,” Tony says. “The funeral mass is at 2 p.m. Thursday. Interment afterwards.”

“Okay,” Peter says. He doesn’t look at Tony as he talks—he can’t yet. If he does, he’ll cry again, and if he cries, Tony will want to hug him and he is so goddamned sick of being comforted already. Instead he sits heavily on the sofa and pulls out the plastic bag that Claire gave him before he left. It contains the last things Matt ever wore: his wedding ring, his mother’s cross necklace, and his ocular prosthetics.

“They gave you his eyes?” Tony asks, startled.

Peter nods.

“Macabre,” Tony says.

Peter doesn’t respond. Over the years, he’d seen Matt without his eyes, of course, but it’s never not strange to see them sitting out, apart from him. They’re extremely skillfully made, down to the tiny iridescent depths of color in the irises and barely-visible blood veins webbing through the white. Matt had always been self-conscious of them because they neither moved nor focused, but that steady beauty was what Peter loved about them. They were his anchor.

Now they are just artifacts from a body become ash. He has no idea what the fuck he’s going to do with them.

Peter opens the bag and takes out the wedding ring. It’s much too large to wear on his hand, but he has no intention of doing that. He reaches up to his own neck and unclasps the dogtag chain from which his own wedding ring hangs. He threads Matt’s onto it as well and then tucks the necklace back beneath his shirt, feeling the heavy clink of the two rings together. He gathers the fabric of his shirt and the rings together in his hand and squeezes them tight.

He decides he’ll give the cross to Jesse. Maggie would have liked that.

“It’s time to call Miles up,” Peter says. “For good.”

“You’re sure about this?” Tony asks.

“Jesse’s already lost one dad.”

“Good thing he has a spare.”

“And I intend to keep it that way,” Peter says. “We always knew the day would come. And Miles is ready. More than ready.”

“Young, though.”

“So was I, once.”

“You’re still young, kiddo.”

“Only to you, old man,” Peter says.

He brings Matt home in a sealed vibranium casket the size of a child’s shoebox. He marvels at its lightness. How 185 pounds of man could be reduced to just a few pounds of metal and ash is beyond him.

He needs to talk to Matt about this, explain to him how fucked up it is that he’s just died in a freak accident and now his ashes only weigh three pounds and he’ll never hear him laugh again. Matt used to always hate it when people said they “lost” someone, like they’d just misplaced them, and Peter wants nothing more than to tell him he was wrong, that it’s exactly what it feels like. That Matt was a coin that slipped through a hole in his pocket before Peter even knew he was gone and no matter where he looks he can’t figure out where he fell.

Foggy and Karen are waiting in the apartment when he comes home.

“Jesus, how many people have a key to this place?” Peter mutters.

“I wanted to bring his briefcase back,” Foggy says, waving weakly toward the kitchen table, where Matt’s battered leather messenger bag now sits, his cane neatly folded up and tucked into a side pocket. “And we thought maybe you wouldn’t want to be alone.”

Karen stands quickly. “But we can leave if you want.”

Peter shrugs and shakes his head. It doesn’t matter anymore because this apartment will never be home again. He carries the casket to the kitchen counter and sets it down. It sounds heavier than it feels when it hits the granite.

“Is that—him?” Foggy asks.

Peter nods.

Karen covers her heart with her hand. “It’s so small,” she whispers.

“Yeah.”

They look at the box for a moment longer, then Peter shakes his head and walks toward the liquor cabinet. “I’m starting to sober up. Anyone want to fix that with me?”

It’s barely noon, but they begin to work their way through a bottle of Macallan like it’s the last day of their lives. Karen orders a pizza, but they don’t eat. Foggy wanders the apartment restlessly as he drinks, flipping through Matt’s books and touching the Braille, pushing the heavy bag mounted under the roof stairs to feel it sway, pressing a few notes on Matt’s piano, sifting through the contents of Matt’s briefcase to separate out casework from his personal things.

He reaches into the front pocket and takes out Matt’s sunglasses and silently holds them out to Peter. Peter takes them and turns them over in his hands a few times before putting them on for a moment, as though somehow they would allow him to see the world as Matt did. They don’t. He takes them over to the hall table where Matt has always kept them and places them next to the dish where they leave their keys, as if he’s hedging that this has all just been some monstrous mistake, and that he might still need them again.

Karen sits on the roof stairs while she drinks. Sometimes Peter forgets that she once lived here too, that this had been as much home for her as it was now for him. He climbs the stairs and sits next to her, and she leans against him. Across the street, the LED billboard continues its relentless electric quest to sell New York designer vodka and Broadway show tickets.

Nobody talks for a while. When they do, it’s about practical things: Matt’s funeral, Matt’s share of the law practice, Matt’s will. Peter asks Foggy to give the eulogy since he’s known Matt the longest, and Foggy cries and says no and then he says yes. Then he asks Karen to write Matt’s obituary and she cries too, but she goes over to her purse and gets out the notebook and pen she always carries and even though it’s been decades since she was a reporter, she falls into the role as if no time has passed at all. It’s easy to get Peter and Foggy talking, just a few questions here, a prompt or two there. Their love for Matt fills the room and all she has to do is write it down.

Later that afternoon, May, MJ, Gwen, and Jesse bring over food and more booze and by seven it’s become a proper wake, as Frank, Marci, Misty, Claire, Colleen, and Malcom all show up, along with Tony and Pepper.

Peter’s so exhausted by now he can barely engage with any of them, but he’s glad they’re here, remembering and laughing. Well, it’s mostly Foggy doing the talking, holding forth with stories from college and law school, but everyone gets at least one story in, one laugh, one happy memory. Peter curls up into a corner of the sofa and nurses a glass of bourbon and lets their love for Matt wash over him like a warm bath.  

After a while, though, he notices a cold draft brush over him. For a minute he’s stupid and thinks it’s Matt’s ghost, but then he realizes that the roof door is propped open a few inches. He glances quickly around the room and realizes that Jesse isn’t there.

He bundles the sofa blanket up under his arm and slips up the stairs. Nobody seems to notice him leave.

“Jess?” he calls softly as he steps outside. It’s chilly but not bitter; Jesse’s sitting on the picnic table wearing one of Matt’s hoodies and has the gas heaters turned up high. “What are you doing up here?”

“Papa liked it up here,” he says.

“Yeah, he did,” Peter says, putting the blanket over his son’s shoulders. “I don’t think these heaters were built for January, though, bub.”

“I’m not cold,” he says. His slight shiver says otherwise, but Peter doesn’t argue.

“Okay, tough guy,” Peter says, hopping up onto the table next to him. “What’s up?”

“Why did Papa like it up here so much? He couldn’t see anything.”

“No, but he could hear it,” Peter says. He forgets sometimes that, as accustomed as Jesse is to Matt’s blindness, there was still so much about it he didn’t actually understand. “You know Papa only perceived the world in bits and pieces at a time—whatever he could touch with his hands or his cane, what he could hear or smell. He said coming up here was the closest he could get to taking in the entire city at once.”

Jesse seems to take this in, chewing it over. There’s something else he wants to ask, Peter can tell, something he can’t quite put words to. “Dad?”  he asks eventually. “Can I ask you a really weird question?”

“Anything, Jess.”

“I was wondering if you and Papa were ever Spider-Man and Daredevil?”

Peter chokes in surprise. “Where did you get that idea?”

“I don’t know. I was just wondering.”

“Jess,” Peter says firmly, struggling to keep his panic tamped down. Surely there’s a good explanation for this. Maybe Matt told him. Maybe MJ or Gwen told him. Maybe Tony had told him. They’d all agreed not to, but maybe something had slipped out. Maybe a mistake had been made. “You’re not just wondering. Tell me what happened.”

“Last summer, when we went to the beach? It was too hot to sleep and I had the window open and I overheard you talking on the deck outside. And Papa was talking about you being Spider-Man and him being Daredevil. ”

Peter freezes, because he knows exactly which conversation he’s talking about.

They had always told Jesse that Matt’s scars came from his traffic accident, but out of the blue that morning at the beach, Jesse had wondered aloud why one of them looked so much like a bullet hole. Matt had simply shrugged and said he got stuck through with a piece of metal. The piece of metal had been a Hand arrow and he had acquired that injury 20 years after his accident, but that was no matter.

Still, the question had shaken them both. Long after they thought Jesse had gone to sleep, they’d gone outside where they thought they’d have less of a chance of being overheard (silly them) to figure out what to do.

“I know it’s sooner than we planned, but I’m starting to think we should go ahead and tell him who we are,” Peter had said. “He’s going to start asking questions we can’t answer. Or God forbid he starts to figure it out on his own and tells someone else before he tells one of us.”

“No. If he accidentally lets the wrong person find out, we’re not the only ones who will be in danger,” Matt had said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “It’s MJ and Gwen and May and Foggy and Karen—and we cannot ask a 10-year-old boy to be responsible for the lives of everyone he loves. I won’t do that to him.”

“How much of that conversation did you overhear?” Peter asks Jesse cautiously.

“All of it, I think?” Jesse says faintly. He’s flushing red and looking down at his feet. “I never told anyone. I swear.”

“Why didn’t you tell us, at least?”

“Papa was afraid I’d slip up. I wanted to prove that I could do it.”

“Oh, kiddo,” Peter says, enveloping him in a hug. “I’m so sorry you thought you had to carry that alone. We just wanted to give you a few more years before we had to ask you to keep any secrets.”

“Dad?” Jesse asks. “Does it still have to be a secret if he’s dead?”

The morning of the funeral, May, Foggy, Karen, MJ, and Gwen come over to finalize Matt’s obituary for the Sunday paper. Grief has largely given away to hungover exhaustion, and they slump in chairs and sofas around the apartment listlessly working on their third or fourth cups of coffee in an effort to remain functional.

The room goes quiet as Karen passes around copies.

Karen returns to Peter’s side and takes his hand. He’s the only one who’s seen the whole thing—even Foggy has only seen the paragraph he’s quoted in.

After a few minutes, and a few tears, everyone is looking up at Peter again.

“Is everyone else okay with this?” Peter asks softly.

“Only if Foggy is,” MJ says. “He knew Matt the longest.” Everyone else in the room nods in agreement. She takes his hand and Foggy’s face crumbles for the billionth time that week.

Finally, he nods, too. “It’s perfect.”

She’d stayed up late to finish it, sitting up in bed with her laptop as Frank snored softly beside her. Even now, it’s hard to believe that this will have her byline after so long, hard to believe that she began it almost 30 years ago, when she was new to the Bulletin and still paying her dues on the obit desk and saw the names on her first advance list. There, between Mayor Sharice Daniels and Broadway actress Milly Detweiler, was the name Daredevil.

How do I prep an obituary about someone with a secret identity?

You want to be an investigative reporter someday, Page? Go investigate.

Had Ellison known even then? He’d never said, and suddenly she wishes she’d been able to show him this version before Alzheimer’s had claimed his ability to understand it anymore.

There is so much she wishes had been different.

She wouldn’t change a thing.

They bury Matt’s ashes in St. Michael’s private churchyard, next to Maggie’s. Peter knows it means they can never be buried together, but he’s made his peace with that. Matt was born and died in Hell’s Kitchen—he should rest here, too. Besides, that’ll make it easy for him and Jesse to visit, and at the end of the day, that’s what’s most important.

Foggy had given the eulogy, and he understands it was very funny and moving and beautiful, but he didn’t hear a word of it because when he’d gone to tuck his gloves into his coat pocket he’d discovered a note that Matt had tucked inside months ago because this was his dress coat and he hadn’t worn it in over a month. The last time, he’d been asked to introduce a lifetime achievement award for his first photography mentor, and for all his gregariousness, Peter has never enjoyed speaking to a crowd, especially in front of so many people he looked up to. It wasn’t until he’d arrived at the auditorium that he’d discovered the folded scrap of Jesse’s graph paper, on which Matt had written in his careful, blocky hand a single word: BREATHE.

He knows better than to think it’s a sign but he knows it’s a sign.

Late that night, after all his guests have left and Jesse is safely home with his mothers, Peter bundles up and goes back to the church. He might not be Spider-Man anymore, but he can still hop a 12-foot iron fence with no trouble.

He pushes aside a bouquet of orchids that hadn’t been cleared away with the rest of the flowers to kneel in front of the stone and trace Matt’s name with his fingertips. The marble’s freezing but he doesn’t mind, doesn’t even really feel it.

“Hey babe,” he says softly. “I miss you.”

50 Years Later

He wakes up around 4:30 in the morning most days now. He’d become too accustomed to a short night’s sleep as Spider-Man; now pushing 95, he still rarely gets more than five hours. But he doesn’t mind. Aside from a bad hip that forces him to walk with cane, he’s in good health, but at his age he knows every morning is a gift. He’s happy for a few extra hours to enjoy them.

Matt has been gone for almost 50 years, and Peter still misses him every day. He’s buried almost everyone by now: Tony, May, Foggy, Frank, Karen, MJ, and Gwen. Steve and Thor are the only original Avengers left. Wade’s still alive, though he’s retired and owns a weed ranch in California now. Jesse is already 60 somehow—it's still hard to believe his son has outlived his father. Jesse’s been married to his college sweetheart, Rashida, for almost 30 years, and they have four daughters. The eldest, Molly, is due to give birth to Peter and Matt’s first great-grandchild in September.

As he rises to start his day, Alex shifts beside him but doesn’t wake. Alex is a painter. He’s wry and funny and smart and most importantly, Jesse likes him. He didn’t think he’d find love again after Matt, and certainly not at the ripe old age of 68, but a quarter of a century later, here they are. They’d met at a gallery opening when they both still lived in New York, and now they lived out on Long Island together, on a small promontory surrounded on three sides by the sea.

It helps that they’re both widowers, that they both have children by their first spouses, that neither one of them is remotely jealous of the other’s past. Their walls are full of photos of their first families—Matt, MJ, and Gwen and Alex’s late wife Louise are as present in their home as their children and grandchildren. The large picture of Matt and Jesse that used to hang in his bedroom now hangs in his office. A few years ago, for Jesse's birthday, Alex had sent him a painting inspired by it.

They’ve never married and they’ve never wanted to—there has never been any illusion between them that they are anything other than each other’s second loves. But it’s love all the same.

He likes to think Matt would approve.

He’s been dreaming about Matt a lot lately—big, vivid, joyful dreams that wake him smiling. They’re strange mixes of memories and daily residue: Sometimes they’re back in Manhattan, in their old apartment, sometimes they’re in uniform working the city. Last week he dreamed they had a long, detailed phone conversation about needing to buy ingredients for brownies on his way home from work, and two days ago he woke from the hottest, wettest, filthiest dream he’d had in decades.

The one that woke him today was much more his speed these days: He and Matt were down by the beach in front of his house with Jesse and Rashida and the girls—still young children in his dream—while Alex stood a little off to the side painting sand dunes. Go figure.

It’s a beautiful early summer morning, so he takes his coffee out onto the deck with his phone. The sun is starting to rise pinkly over the horizon and the salt breeze is beginning to pick up a little in the warming air. He’s been trying to photograph the sunrise here for years, but he can never quite seem to capture it—there’s something about the colors that don’t translate to film, no matter what he tries. But it seems different than usual this morning, more radiant than he can ever remember, and he’s tempted to fetch his camera for another go. But then suddenly the urge vanishes.

Instead he sets his coffee down beside his chair and decides to simply watch, to let the new day wash over him like the morning tide. The light is soft and rich and warm, more like a sunset than a sunrise, he thinks, and he finds himself closing his eyes against the brightness of it. When he does he can feel his dream coming back with a curious clarity, only this time it’s just him and Matt on the shore, the water curling and crashing around their ankles. Matt turns to him and Peter realizes that his eyes are different—his scars are gone, and instead of his still, steady gaze, they’re alive with motion, looking at him with such intensity, drinking it all in. Drinking him in.

Then Matt smiles, slowly at first, the way he always does, and holds out his hand.

And Peter takes it.

Chapter Text

Matthew Murdock, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, is dead at 58

by Karen Page

Matthew Murdock, the New York City attorney who for 15 years served Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil and then went on to successfully petition the Supreme Court to strike down a key provision of the Sokovia Accords that empowered the federal government to surveil enhanced U.S. citizens without just cause, died late Tuesday night from injuries sustained in an accident. He was 58.

Murdock's death was announced by his husband, photographer Peter Parker. His identity as Daredevil was confirmed by SHIELD. He is survived by Parker, their son, Jesse Murdock, Jesse’s mothers, Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy, and his beloved longtime friends Franklin Nelson and Karen Page, among many others.

Murdock, whose legal practice largely served poor and working-class clients in Hell’s Kitchen, first became a household name to many New Yorkers during the televised trial of notorious crime boss Wilson Fisk, during which Murdock testified for more than seven riveting hours about the evidence of countless crimes against his clients that he had documented over the years.

But it was his secret career as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, or Daredevil, that captured the city’s imagination—and headlines.

Matthew Michael Murdock was born in Hell’s Kitchen on Oct. 22, 1975, to high school sweethearts Margaret and Jonathan Murdock. Margaret, suffering from a severe case of what is now understood to be postpartum depression, left the family when Murdock was three months old to join the Sisters of Mercy religious order, though mother and son would eventually reunite seven years before her death from cancer in 2026.

Jonathan, a middleweight semi-professional boxer who fought under the nom-de-guerre “Battlin’ Jack," never remarried.

Jack’s boxing success was modest at best, and he often struggled to make ends meet, but he worked hard to ensure that his son would have a better life. Murdock credited his father for emphasizing the importance of getting an education and taking him to the library every week to make sure he always had books in the house for his son to read. “He always harped on me to earn a living with my mind, not with my hands," Murdock said in a 2027 interview with Columbia Law School’s alumni magazine. “Of course, that became all the more important after my accident.”

At age nine, Murdock was badly injured when an out-of-control chemical tanker overturned in his neighborhood, spilling a corrosive substance into the street. Witnesses say he had run into the street to push an elderly man out of the way. He sustained serious burns to his face that left him completely blind. But the toxic substance had an unexpected side effect: It triggered a mutation that quadrupled the number of neurons he had in the rest of his sensory nervous system. Even without sight, he would come to perceive the world far more clearly than a typical human, though it would be years before he fully learned how to utilize those perceptions.

A year later, Jack Murdock was murdered, allegedly by the Irish mob for refusing to throw a fight. But the connection was never proven and his killers were never brought to justice. “That was when I knew I was going to dedicate my life to making sure no one else in Hell’s Kitchen would go through what I did,” Murdock said when he was named to the “25 New Yorkers Making a Difference” list by New York magazine in 2014. “Rich or poor, justice has to serve everyone, or else it’s worthless.”

Following the death of his father, Murdock was sent to St. Agnes’ Children’s Home, where he would remain until he graduated from high school.

By the time he arrived at St. Agnes’, he was not just struggling with the loss of his only parent, but also with the effects of his mutation, which were overwhelming. Medical interventions failed to help him, but eventually he flourished after being paired with a mentor who specialized in helping special-needs children gain confidence and independence through martial arts. It was then that he discovered the true extent to which his enhanced senses could serve him.

However, his condition also gave him an at times unwelcome window into the countless injustices, great and small, that New Yorkers faced every day. That unique perspective inspired Murdock to make good on his promis to his father to get an education, and he forced himself to shut out the pain he was privately party to every day in order to focus on his studies, ultimately graduating from Columbia Law School at the top of his class.

Finally, during his last year of law school, he became aware of an abused child living on his block that the authorities had repeatedly failed to help, and he took matters into his own hands. That decision began a career of vigilantism in the service of Hell’s Kitchen that would last for 15 years. While many of his deeds have been documented in this newspaper, there are others that will never be known.

Daredevil’s career ended abruptly in 2018, when the anti-mutant terrorist Hominus bombed a neon factory in Brooklyn, causing an explosion that exposed Murdock, Jessica Jones, Hellcat, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage to a mutation-reversing bioweapon, killing all but Murdock. Murdock, who was the only one not to receive a direct hit from the blast, was nevertheless exposed to enough of the toxin to lose his powers. With SHIELD’s cooperation, Daredevil was declared dead and Murdock returned to private life as an attorney.

His post-vigilante life was a full one. He went on to marry his longtime partner, Parker, whom he’d first met when Parker was assigned to photograph him for his New York magazine honor five years earlier. “We met again at the gala a month later, and that night I knew we were meant to be,” Parker told the Bulletin. “I already admired him for his courage and his passion for protecting the most vulnerable residents of our city, but that night I was struck by his warmth and intelligence, and this incredibly dry sense of humor that I couldn’t get enough of. We ended up talking for hours, like we’d known each other all our lives. There was an immediate connection."

Already highly regarded among New York’s legal community—and not infrequently feared by those he faced in court—he quickly achieved national recognition when he presented a stirring oral argument before the Supreme Court in a civil liberties case that ultimately altered an international treaty.

Araceli Machado was a 22-year-old Hunter College student and blind Paralympian who in 2019 was exposed to a mutagenic substance against her will in an attack by Elektra Natchios, the leader of an international terrorist organization known as the Hand. The provisions of the Sokovia Accords required Machado to register her superhuman status with the government within three days of acquiring her powers, an act that would almost certainly have triggered her summary arrest as an unauthorized super-soldier facing a charge of treason.

Arguing that the mandatory registration requirement violated the due process clause of the Constitution, Murdock sued on Machado’s behalf and doggedly shepherded her case through the federal courts for years, ultimately presenting it before the nation’s highest court in early 2021. He spoke passionately and eloquently without notes, fielding the justices' questions without hesitation or doubt. It was a performance that would later be hailed as a master class in oratory, and the transcript is routinely included in elite law school curricula across the country. The case was decided in Machado’s favor, and the Superhuman Registration Act was overturned.

“Matt was probably the only person in the world who could have won that case,” said his longtime friend and law partner, Franklin Nelson. “To be honest, he was probably the only person in the world who would have taken that case in the first place. But he had an unshakable faith that all of us could do better and be better, given the right chance. And that went for our government, too.”

Though Murdock had a number of opportunities to take other high-profile cases following his Supreme Court success, the birth of his son that year inspired him to rededicate himself to his calling as a pro-bono lawyer. “I’m a Catholic. I believe in salvation with all my heart. I wanted Jesse to grow up knowing that everyone in this city matters, that everyone, no matter their mistakes, deserves the chance to redeem themselves,” he said in the Columbia Law magazine interview. "It was time to return to my legal roots, as it were.”

Murdock took a more active role in the legal community, mentoring disabled law students and teaching criminal procedure as an adjunct professor at CUNY Law School. Representing accused felons and petty criminals alike, he would occasionally startle a new judge or young assistant DA who recognized his name on an arraignment sheet. Some would even ask for his autograph. He always obliged.

“He knew from his Daredevil days that symbols have meaning,” said Parker. “It was important to him that people understand that justice deserved to be taken as seriously in night court as it is in the Supreme Court. He was always proud that he was able to meet an unmet need as Daredevil, but his dedication to equal protection under the law will be his real legacy.”

Murdock was interred in a private ceremony on Thursday. A public memorial will take place next Saturday at the Defenders monument in Central Park. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to St. Agnes Children’s Home and the Big Apple Indigent Legal Defense Fund.