Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The bell trills cheerily as he taps through the front door of the café three blocks from the office. The café is near empty; there’s a few suited men talking ostentatiously on phones, a pair of mothers chatting obliviously as their children doze in rickety prams, and at least one college student trying desperately to finish a paper.

The barista greets him by name and begins to make his usual order without asking. Matt begins to sort through his wallet to find a five dollar bill, searching for a triangular fold. The coffee here is dear, but worth the price. Back in law school, he and Foggy spent hours trawling through greasy spoons and diners and chains and independents searching for a cup of coffee that didn't taste like a mug of chemical runoff. When they first came in here, Foggy complained that he was the most expensive broke person he’d ever met.

“Silk sheets and organic coffee? Really? Who do you think you are, Tony Stark?” Matt just laughed, and paid for his friend’s double-shot macchiato as well as his own flat white.

Once he’s gotten his coffee he makes his way over to his favoured seat, a recess relatively close to the door with a convenient wall to shield his back; it pays to be paranoid. He sets the coffee down alongside the newspaper printed in braille, thoughtfully provided for him by the owner, who knows the value of a good customer. Leaning his cane against the wall, he settles down into the chair with half a wince, side protesting. It’s been several long weeks since Fisk was put away, and he honestly hasn't been exerting himself that much (because Foggy would actually murder him if he did) but the wound from the incident with Nobu only really began to close up recently. To make up for his laxness on the vigilante side of things, he’s been putting in extra hours at Nelson & Murdock; ostensibly to build their practice, but mostly to ground himself amidst the mess his life has become.

The door rings as he starts reading, heralding a patron's entry. He brushes his hands across the masthead - 'The Daily Bugle' - as a feminine voice sighs. “Steve, don't you have Sam for technical assistance? No, you just press it twice. Lightly. If you keep battering it like you do, it’s going to break again… I am not letting you use a flip phone, and neither will Tony. He’ll get offended that you’re not using it after he made it for you, and- You’re not an old man! Not technically, anyway. Are you seriously using a pay phone? Do you know how much it costs to call mobiles from those?” The call cuts off, and the woman laughs, a sound borne more of exasperation than amusement.

Matt chastises himself for listening, and goes back to his paper, an article about illegal dumping demanding his attention. He can’t really help it; the world is loud and angry and demands to be heard, but eavesdropping on innocent people is just plain rude.

He’s progressed into the latest senatorial scandal when light footsteps alert him to her presence. Her gait is almost regular, but she walks on her toes, ever so slightly. Coupled with the slow beat of her well-exercised heart… a ballerina. He doesn’t look around. “I was wondering who the paper was for,” she says, voice quieter than earlier. “May I?”

He gestures towards the seat opposite him and she settles into it with a small sigh. He smells raspberry and white chocolate mixed with coffee - her drink. She herself smells of lingering expensive perfume - vanilla, perhaps Dolce and Gabbana? - and metal, like the barrel of a gun. “I haven’t noticed you here before,” he says. “Either I’m very unobservant, or you’re very quiet.”

“The latter.” She sips her drink. “I really didn't think I’d find the best coffee in the city in Hell’s Kitchen, of all places.”

“We’re gentrifying - or at least, we were.” The inexorable spread of the prosperous and well-heeled middle-class was halted by the Battle of New York two years, when a Chitauri dreadnought ploughed through Tenth Avenue and left most of the neighbourhood in ruins. Despite Fisk’s efforts, Hell’s Kitchen is still a nicer place now than it was when he was a kid. He hasn't stepped on a spent needle in weeks; in contrast, back when his dad was still alive, some of the kids in his building used to collect them as a game, which the possessor of the most needles won. He never participated; his father taught him that, at the very least, even if he couldn't help him with long division.

The woman’s heartbeat spikes just the tiniest bit as she speaks. “Those aliens did a lot of damage, didn't they? I had to move out of my old place.” Matt listens intently as she speaks, and catches the barest nasal undercurrent of Russian, well concealed by a homogenised American accent. This woman is unrelated to the mafiya, of that he is sure, but… A ballerina born speaking Russian, who smells like guns and expensive perfume and who is scared by the Battle of New York... There’s something there, if he could just put his finger on it -

“Pardon me, but I doubt you had much trouble finding a new place. Park Avenue, maybe?”

She isn't offended. “What gave it away?”

He smiles affably. “A lucky guess. Maybe your perfume, too. I've gotten very good at identifying them. I generally take Chanel as a sign to duck and hide." That was what Marci wore - doused herself in No. 5. Karen’s perfume is easily identifiable too, seeping into his suit jackets, flowery bursts of scent emanating from sheaves of paper. She doesn't wear it on the bad days, replacing it with the astringent scent of cheap vodka.

The woman laughs huskily, the type of laugh calculated solely to lead a man's mind astray. “You’re sharp…”

“Matthew,” he supplies.

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Natasha,” she says. “Matt and Nat - like some awful comedy duo.”

“Or hair product.”

She snorts - attractively, which is a wonder in itself - and the conversation flows easily from there. She is a trained ballerina, apparently, but is currently “taking a break for herself,” and just got back from DC. "I visited the Smithsonian. It was... interesting." She is completely unashamed of her girly coffee, admits that the perfume was present - “from another Matt, actually,” - and, after she slides the sugar in his direction, tells him that one of her friends is deaf. “Not completely,” she admits. “I’ve tried to learn how to make things easier for him, and for others in a similar situation, but he knows how to live with it. Like you, I would assume.”

“You have to make the world work for you.” He tries to ignore the phantom rap of Stick’s stick against the back of his head, a memory of creaky laughter echoing through his skull.

She doesn't respond, and he thinks she might be smiling. He imagines she has the kind of smile that balances on a knife edge and can as easily tip into happiness as rage.

He picks up his cup, and finds, to his surprise, that it is empty. When he runs his fingers over his watch it tells him it is nine a.m., and he realises with a start that he's late for the client waiting in the office for him. Pushing his chair back, he feels around for his cane. “It was pleasant speaking to you, Natasha, but I do, unfortunately, have a job to go to.” In what is probably an unwise move, he extracts a business card from his pocket - pure Karen, she insisted on them, said they were more ‘professional’ - and slides it towards her. The card clicks as she picks it up, and he can hear her fingers as they slide over his name, embossed on the card in braille.

“If I do get into a spot of legal trouble, I promise to call upon Nelson & Murdock.” The card slides against denim into her pocket. She hands him his cane, and he nods at her as he leaves, rapping against chairs and wooden boards.

Red haired, he thinks later, as Foggy and Karen do battle with the photocopier, trying to replicate their client's birth cert. There were some business men in the booth next to him, and he caught some choice comments about redheads. Fitting, he thinks; after years and years of flames he's forgotten the other colours - cold blue and fresh green and pure white - but he would never forget red, the colour of his hair and his dad's robes and fire and blood. Red haired, and pretty, too - there was a sort of confidence about her than he's learned to associate with the consciously beautiful. Confident, and rich and strong, going by the way her heeled boots dug heavily into the parquet floor. She's like her home country, he thinks drily; a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Matt pushes his glasses back up his nose, clears that husky laugh from his mind, and goes to rescue his coworkers from the evil office equipment.

Chapter Text

Fogwell's is, as always, empty. The custodian remembers Jonathan Murdock's son, and after he and Foggy sorted out a negligent driving incident involving his wife, the man gave him a spare set of keys to the gym. Matt locks the door behind him and inhales the familiar, if musty, scent of the gym; stale sweat, old leather, crumbling canvas. It feels like home.

He tapes his hands like his father used to, looping the wrap securely around his knuckles, and stretches sedately, testing the limits of his weakened body. All that jumping from heights is doing no favours for his knees, and punching things without proper padded gloves to absorb the shock is killer on his wrists; he swears his skin is a map of Hell's Kitchen. The brickwork of her buildings has formed a boxy greenish pattern over his back from slamming into walls, the slowly-healing scars left over from Nobu mimic the subway lines, and the grit embedded in the heels of his palms and his knees is a gift from her roads, tarmac worn loose by thousands of wheels. The new suit is a godsend, of course, but it really can't cushion a twenty-foot drop onto concrete.

When he first lands a blow on the punching bag, he drops straight back into defensive stance, almost expecting it to hit back. Unlike his most recent targets, though, the punching bag doesn't attack him in response; its only response is to sway on its creaky chains. Matt steps back and sighs, trying to calm the ragged remains of his nerves. Foggy’s the only person who knows about Fogwell’s, and he took a slow, circuitous route to ensure he wasn't followed.

He shakes his hands out and starts to pummel the bag again, thinking wryly what a luxury it is to punch something that won't punch him back.

The rhythm of his fists against the bag, the creak of the chain, his own steadily accelerating breathing and heart-rate - it’s almost better than meditation, lulling him into a dream-like state of tranquility, so much so that he almost doesn't notice the person fiddling with the handle of the front door. Matt freezes, heart thumping discordantly in his ears, and concentrates on the person outside the door. Hammering heartbeat, the scratch of the lock, a muffled swear in a language he doesn't understand. Perfume - vanilla.

Natasha.

Matt makes himself still, and retreats quietly into a recess, an old poster crumpling behind his back. The door stops ratting with a click and swings open, her hurried footsteps echoing up to a high ceiling festooned with cobwebs. There’s a click, and he smells the smoky heat of the old light bulb flickering into life.

She's breathing heavily, pacing around, and he can smell sweat. Natasha steps backwards, settles on the edge of the ring, and her heart begins to slow - only to spike again when his phone starts ringing from beside her. "Foggy," it announces.

Before she can grab his phone and hurl it at a wall, Matt steps out into the shadows with one of his hands up and the other feeling along the wall. "Are you okay?"

She's probably staring at him in bemusement. "Matt?" she eventually manages, once the phone has shut up. "What are you doing here?"

"This was my dad's gym. I come here sometimes, to punch things out in private." His glasses sit beside her, and his cane lies uselessly on the floor; noticing, she stands up and takes his arm to guide him to sit down.

"Why did you hide?"

"I thought you were an intruder. Can you blame me?"

She huffs in laughter. "Yeah. Sorry about that. I needed..." He waits for her to spill; after a long moment where he can almost feel her eyes on his face, unguarded by his glasses, she does. "I was out for a run, and some guys spotted me. I don't know why they went for me. I don't exactly look like an easy target." One hand tightens on his arm, and her heartbeat remains even, albeit fast. "So I cut through a few alleys to throw them off, and I thought this place was as good a hide out as any other."

"You sound like you have experience with this."

"I'm a woman living in New York City. Of course I do." She sounds resigned, almost tired, and Matt feels a flare of anger on her behalf. He tamps it down and tucks it away, to be unleashed later.

He stays silent for a while, and finally offers; "Well, if you're looking for a safe place to exercise..."

He can sense her surprise as her head whips around, buffeting him with air. "Here?"

"There's a newer boxing club down the street - nobody uses this place anymore. I've been coming here for a year, and I haven't been disturbed. The custodian owes me a favour, and he leaves a spare key in the space between the left railing and the wall at the back door."

He waits a long time for her response, which only comes after her heart has returned to its regular rhythm. "Hey, I've been looking for a place to work out where nobody will stare at my butt." That shocks a laugh out of him, and she continues. "I think I'll accept. Thank you, Matt. Really."

"You're welcome. Besides, if you see me looking at your butt, you'll know it was an accident." This time, her laugh is nothing like the husky one that has been troubling his mind for days; it is light, breathless, and overwhelmingly young.

Natasha is very good at silence. She's not one of those people who feels the need to fill all empty spaces with chatter, and they remain there on the side of the ring in relatively companionable silence until he hears her pick up his glasses and trace the frames. "You know, I was wondering what your eyes looked like. Maybe you had cataracts, or goat pupils-” He can’t help laughing at her. “Hey, it was a valid concern! Or maybe you had no eyes at all..." She puts them down carefully. "But they're just your average brown eyes. Nice ones, even. When the light catches them, it’s like…” He can almost hear her struggling for words. “It’s like they're on the edge of a sunset."

The compliment is wholly, completely unexpected, and rather more poetic than he would expect. His eyes are nothing more than a to him, but when she says it like that… "They're my secret weapon. My friend tells me there's nothing more unnerving than having to make eye contact with a blind person. Works a charm on some witnesses."

She tuts, admonishes him that that's cheating, and stands up. "I didn't get to finish my run," she informs him. "Mind sparring with me?" Her voice is unsure, which he can’t blame her for. Not many people would offer to beat up the blind guy, but Matt is a Catholic through and through and can’t resist the offer.

"Thought you'd never ask." He accepts her proffered hand and feels calluses on her palm and her index finger that could have only come from repeated use of a gun. He grabs up his spare pair of gloves, throws them to her, misses by a metre ("I'm blind!" he protests as she tries to muffle her laughter), and then they get down to the business of trying to beat the ever-loving shit out of each other.

Natasha is hesitant to start with, which is probably warranted, since Matt is doing awful. His steps are heavy and most of his swings go wide.

"Matt - you don't have to do this." Her tone is worried. "God, I'm beating on a-"

"No," he tells her calmly. "Give me a couple minutes."

She does; Matt rises to the challenge, and as the seconds tick by his hits grow more accurate and his footwork tighter, which is good because Natasha is strong, far stronger than her body's wan heat signature indicates. She barely budges under the force of his blows, and her punches are calculated and clever, landing squarely in vulnerable spots only a skilled fighter would notice. "You're good at this," he tells her, clumsily dodging a haymaker that would have relieved him of a tooth.

"I've been taking self-defence classes almost as long as I've been doing ballet," she responds, rolling into a kick. "You're not that bad yourself, considering that you’re..."

He ducks under it with a stagger; he’s acting, really, keeping the pretense up. "My father was a boxer. He wouldn't teach me himself - wanted me to rely on brains rather than brawn - but I used to sneak in here and practice by myself. After I... Well, I just kept going. It helps. I pretend the bag is the prosecution." There is no way to make what Stick did for him sound even somewhat believable - ‘oh, hey, I got trained by this random old blind dude and now I can smell literally everything, isn’t that great?’ - so he neglects to mention him.

It feels like a few minutes, but it's an hour before they're both exhausted. They slump down together, sharing his water.

"Thank you, Matt," she tells him.

"What, for the water?"

"No, for letting me take my frustrations out on you. Sometimes I just need to punch men. Very few are willing to offer." She stretches out her arm with a hiss. "Sorry about your shoulder, I... miscalculated."

"It'll recover. Good punch, though. Must have hurt like hell." He'll have a nice, yellowing bruise there by tomorrow. He’s lucky it’s somewhere Foggy won’t be able to see it.

"God, yes. What are you made of? Steel?"

"I wish. It would help when I trip over kerbs." Which is still something that he does, regardless of his super senses or ninja training.

"If you don't mind me asking..." She lets the sentence trail off.

"Go ahead."

"How do you do it? Know where to punch?"

Matt sirs back and thinks, before saying; "You're in your house. All the lights are off. You can't see anything, but you can still find your way to the door."

"Spatial awareness." He can feel her tilting towards him.

"Exactly. You're familiar with your house. I'm familiar with the human body. All humans are shaped roughly the same, so it's just a matter of figuring out the finer points of their structure and where I am in relation to them. Since I rely on it more than an able-bodied person would, my sense of space is a lot better than yours." He waits, before adding; "Sound helps too. Most people make a lot of noise when they move. You don't, actually; you're very quiet. I'm assuming it's a ballerina thing?"

"Yep." Presumably she looks at him for a while, because she states firmly; "Next time we spar, I'm wearing a blindfold. Even the playing field."

"I'll hold you to that." He feels oddly reassured that there will be a next time; Natasha seems like the sort of person who could easily drop out of his life without so much as a fare-thee-well.

Suddenly, her phone shrills; it's some rap song that doesn't suit her at all. Presumably somebody else set it for her. The caller, maybe? "Clint? Yeah, yeah. Be there in ten." She hangs up. "My friend. He's kinda got a thing for DIY, wants me to help him."

"I know a good hard-waller, if it makes any difference."

"He likes the grunt work fine, but the moment anything electronic gets involved it all goes to hell. He almost blew his apartment up trying to programme his DVR." Natasha lays a light hand on his wrist, and pulls him up with ease. After helping him locate his things and promising to be careful, she leaves.

Matt goes home, but only to treat his Natasha-inflicted bruise and change into his new suit.

It is easy to locate Natasha's attackers from his rooftop; their chatter is loud and crass and a beacon to his rage-enhanced senses.

It is even easier to find them, slumped in a walk-up apartment near the docks complaining about the red haired bitch who kicked their buddy in the balls hard enough to land him in hospital.

It is easiest to break their legs and tell them in no uncertain terms that if they lay a finger on any woman ever again, he’ll break their arms as well.

Chapter Text

The man's nose breaks with a sickening squelch, and Matt yanks his hand backwards. "Tell me again," he threatens. "Where was your wife the night of the 24th?"

The man shakes his head frantically, trying to scramble away from his attacker; a futile effort, considering that Matt has him pinned against the wall by his throat. "I told you! She was at home with me!"

"Liar." Matt tightens his grip, and the man begins to wheeze. "Do you know how long it takes to die of hypoxia? Seven minutes… but it only takes three minutes for your brain to start dying. I can keep this up for a lot longer than that. You have seven minutes to tell me the truth; sooner, rather than later, unless you want to be brain damaged.”

The man finally breaks, tugging on his hands. "She was out!" he gasps.

"And where were you?"

"The Wildcat Club!"

Matt makes a face, because ew, and drops the man. "Get out of here," he tells him, planting a foot on his ribs. "Stay away from your wife." He kicks him away, and leaves before the man can even begin to get up.

If the man was at a strip club like he said, Matt's in luck. He'll have several eye-witnesses and maybe even a receipt, depending on the quality of the establishment. He'll swing by tomorrow and collect the evidence, and that should be enough to disprove the wife’s alibi, which, thus far, has been the only thing holding the prosecution's case together. Combined with the CCTV footage of a woman resembling her near the scene of the hand-over and the pair of heels found abandoned close by that most definitely did not belong to his cis male client, they'll have to conclude that she was the one involved, not his client. A good day's work, all things considered, even if he has to go to a strip club; the last time he went to one, he got thrown out a window, screaming sex worker in tow.

There's still a couple hours left until dawn, though, which is plenty time for some more "name-kicking and ass-taking", as Foggy calls it. Matt scales a nearby apartment block and listens. Loud rap music, a child wailing, tires screeching against concrete. The click of a gun. Northeast, about nine hundred yards.

Matt gets there in a matter of minutes. Ten heartbeats, nine arranged in a circle around one; the nine are elevated, the one is oddly slow, considering that they're surrounded.

"Hand it over." Eastern European accent, difficult to pin down. Russian's the obvious guess, but... Serbian? Slovenian? No, something else...

"No." The person in the centre. A woman, deep-voiced. Very vaguely familiar. Her hands are raised. "Unless you want to take it off my dead corpse..."

"Don't give me ideas. Unfortunately, you're much more useful alive." The man is nervous, and stinks of sweat and three different kinds of blood. "HYDRA has need of women like you."

"I'm afraid said need is not mutual. I'm quite happy with my current employers." She shifts, heels clicking against the pavement, a movement echoed by nine guns. "What a trigger happy bunch. What on earth would you do if I were actually armed?"

They never find out what she would do, because that's the exact moment Matt’s billy club crashes into the head of one of the men, who drops like a rock. The rest of the men erupt into chaos, shouting and waving their weapons around; Matt drops down onto two, grabbing their necks and smashing them both into the ground, the shock of the impact reverberating up through their skulls and up his arms. The gunpowder smell of newly fired bullets, coupled with the soft (but not soft enough) clicks of silencers; he dodges the bullets with ease, flipping out of their path into another man, driving into his solar plexus. One bullet thwacks into the back of his skull, which is luckily one of the reinforced areas of his suit; it still sends him staggering. Matt whips around and twists his assailant’s arms around until he screams, and throws him sprawling across the ground. Five down, but-

The other four are down as well. The woman presumably; the hum of electricity (which is coming from, as far as he can tell, her wrists?) ceases, punctuated by the thump of a body to the ground. "Well. That was pleasant, if unexpected." Her boots, which are wholly impractical, click nearer to him, and he shifts into a more defensive position. She must be rifling through the clothes of the first man he felled, because she tosses his club at him; he catches it deftly. "I didn't realise I was in Hell's Kitchen. I apologise for encroaching on your turf... Daredevil."

The horns are kinda a giveaway. “I’d appreciate it if you tried not to lead any more dangerous men into my territory.” When she doesn't respond, he tries again. "Who were they?" Speak of the devil; one of them stirs, and Matt has to kick him in the ribs before he stills again. "I thought I cleared out all the Russians."

"You did. Good work on that, by the way. These men were Sokovian. I promise they won't come back." She stands up again, presumably having found what she was looking for. "They stole a possession of my friend's... A very volatile possession. He'll lock it up better next time." She stalks towards him, with, going by her uneven gait, an exaggerated sway of her hips. Good; if she’s going the seduction route, that means that she's been taken in by the fake eyeholes of his mask and hasn't deduced that he’s blind, therefore immune to her charms. "I was getting curious about you, you know. We've been following your activities with interest. It’s rare that someone so principled takes the defense of the city into his own hands... and very admirable."

"We being...?"

"The Avengers. We could be-"

“No.” With a fluid movement, he catches her under the chin with the billy club; to her credit, she doesn’t gasp. “If it weren't for your Chitauri invasion, Wilson Fisk wouldn't have been able to gain a foothold here, and a lot more people would be alive. Good people. I knew some of them, went to their funerals.”

“We tried to stop it.” Her words are even, but her speeding heartbeat betrays her panic. She didn't expect him to react like this. “We did stop it!”

“So you weren't even tangentially involved? There was no way - absolutely no way - you could have prevented the Battle of New York?” Her silence is answer enough. He shakes his head. “I’m warning you for your own good; stay away from here. Hell’s Kitchen always gets her way, and you’ve done her a wrong.” Her protests are cut off by sirens; her head whips around, and Matt takes it as his chance to escape. He hears her call out, but Matt knows this place better than he knows himself; there's no way she'll catch up to him.

It is only when he wakes up the next morning, brain thudding from the bullet to his head, that he realises that that was Black Widow.

In his vaguely concussed state he does the most logical thing; goes to the kitchen, grabs a bottle of Jack, takes a few slugs, and goes back to sleep.

Chapter Text

"Three cheers for justice!" Karen pops the bottle of prosecco - they didn't actually have the money for champagne - and starts pouring it out into mugs.

"And a toast to that very angry stripper," Foggy adds, clinking his mug with Karen's. "God bless sex workers, they're the best business people I know."

“How’d you know he wasn’t at home, anyway?” Karen asks.

Matt shrugs. “Just a hunch. I hunted around a bit in his building, was told he had a bit of a reputation… Hey, it only took three strip clubs.”

Foggy ruffles his hair. “You get all the fun. A blind man in a strip club. Jesus.”

“Lawyering,” Matt says eloquently, and takes a slug. “Last one finished their glass - uh, mug - has to shred the non-essential paperwork.”

The last one finished is, surprisingly enough, Foggy; as he grumbles and occasionally kicks the shredder - “couldn't we just set it all on fire?” - Matt refills Karen’s mug.

“Do you mind helping me out, Karen?”

“What is it, Matt?”

He hesitates. “This is gonna sound weird, but… you know the S.H.I.E.L.D. files?”

“The ones they released a while back?” Karen opens her laptop and starts clicking around. “I downloaded them before they deleted them - I always kinda hero-worshipped Peggy Carter.”

He remembers her; the kids in his neighbourhood used to spend hours playing Howling Commandos, usually endeavouring to save Bucky Barnes from the clutches of some nefarious enemy. 

The role of Peggy Carter was a big honour, and was usually assigned to the boldest girl, or occasionally a boy, if he was brave enough, and at the end of the game the kid playing Cap had to plant a kiss on the kid playing Peggy, which a great source of distress to the pre-pubescent kids. Matt was invited to take part (usually as Bucky, since he was, at the time, a bit of a wimp), but he never did, claiming he preferred to stay in his room and study. Honestly, he didn't, but his dad did.

“You played Peggy a lot?" he enquires, imagining Karen sweeping some poor child - and the kid who played Bucky was always a poor child, the weediest of the bunch - from the grasp of the villain.

"Yep. First kiss and everything."

He smiles. "More on topic... Do you mind finding Black Widow’s profile?”

“Sure. Didn’t she trend on Twitter a couple times? Life goals.” By the time Black Widow has been located, Foggy’s done shredding and is drinking straight from the bottle, which Matt is used to, but Karen finds ‘gross and unhygienic’; they have to wrestle the bottle off him.

“Black Widow?” Foggy queries, once he’s been deprived of the prosecco. “What do you want with her?”

“I think I might have seen - well, noticed her the other day. Idle curiosity, mostly.” Foggy’s breathing changes, which means that he doesn't believe him. Matt’ll explain later, when Karen’s not right there.

"Here we go! Natalia Romanova, otherwise known as Natasha Romanoff." Karen pauses. "Wow, she's..."

"Pretty? Terrifying?" Foggy supplies.

"I was going to say young," Karen replies softly. "I guess when I thought Black Widow..."

“Do you mind reading it for me, Karen?” Matt couples this with a small smile, and Karen, after a little bit of stuttering, begins to narrate Black Widow’s dossier; it mentions the Red Room and ballet and Budapest and assassination after assassination. Nothing seems too out of the ordinary, given that she’s, you know, a super-spy, but suddenly-

"Wait. Natasha?"

"Or Natalia. Why?" Karen sounds confused. "Do you know her?"

"Please tell me you didn't sleep with her," Foggy adds. "I mean, she's called Black Widow for a reason."

"No, I..." Matt shakes his head. "Is she red haired?" Silence. "You just nodded, didn't you? Oh, no.”

“What?”

“You know that woman from the café?”

“And the gym, right?” Foggy stays silent for a second, until the implications hit him like an eighteen-wheeler because an Avenger sniffing around Matt Murdock and Daredevil means they might know, the way Claire and Foggy know. "Holy shit."

“Foggy, what am I gonna do?"

"What? What's going on? Jesus, Matt, you're shaking!" Karen grabs him and sits him down. "Here." She thrusts the half empty bottle of prosecco him, and he clutches it like a baby.

"I knew it couldn't be a coincidence! I kept seeing her around. I should have known, she hits like a tank, she mentioned Rogers and Stark, and she said she had a deaf friend..."

"Barton has 80% hearing loss," Karen confirms. "Why would she be interested in you?"

"Matt attracts crazy girls, hot girls, crazy hot girls, and especially crazy and hot girls." Foggy grabs the bottle from him. "Maybe you were in a case she was involved in?"

"Or maybe she was trying to protect you," Karen says slowly. "Some of Fisk's hanger-ons are still around, and with her intelligence network, she'd know everything going on in this city. Perhaps she was just performing her civic duty and trying to stop a defenseless civilian from getting hurt?"

Matt fervently hopes that's the truth, because the only other option is that she knows that he's Daredevil, and if she knows Matt Murdock’s weaknesses, she knows Daredevil’s. He really couldn't care less if they hurt him, but if they went near Karen or, God forbid, Foggy...

"You're probably right, Karen.” He sighs, and slumps back in his chair. “Look, we should probably all get home. All we’re doing here is wasting electricity.”

“Will you be alright?” He tries to shrug off Karen’s reassuring hand on his shoulder, but all she does is grip tighter. “Matt, you’ve got an Avenger on your ass, don’t give me that martyr crap.”

“I appreciate your concern, Karen. Really, I do,” he adds, after catching her snort of disbelief. “But I don't think I have anything to fear from this woman. After all, she’s had ample opportunity to murder me… yet here I am.”

“I’d be more worried that he’s going to end up in bed with her,” Foggy mutters sotto voce, shattering the tension cleanly as Karen giggles.

“Pretty and terrifying; I’m afraid, according to my dear Foggy here, that that’s my type.” Karen hits him, and Foggy starts listing all of Matt’s liaisons; Matt elbows him, Foggy elbows him back, and Karen wonders, as Foggy tries to get him in a headlock, how on earth they passed the bar.

“With beauty and grace!” Foggy answers. “Okay, and some undignified panicking-”

“In the laundromat,” Matt interrupts. “In front of six people.”

“Stop airing my dirty laundry out in public!”

“You’re both disasters,” Karen announces, and shoves them out the door.

Chapter Text

Matt spends six consecutive nights on the streets. He stops ten robberies, eight attempted rapes, fourteen drug deals, seven murders, two turf wars and four kidnappings.

There is no sign of Black Widow except on the news; on the morning of the seventh day the reporters have a field day with the events in Johannesburg, repeating footage of the Hulk getting smashed through an apartment block by an outsized Iron Man. They cite a strange robot, and acknowledge the attack on Avengers Tower.

There is a lull in reports for a while, leaving the media to speculate. They throw out theories; Iron Man has gone rogue, the Winter Soldier has come back, it's Loki's new form. Karen and Foggy debate it in the office, and Matt does his best not to get involved.

On the eleventh day, Black Widow finally appears in Seoul. She is, according to Karen, "on a badass motorbike helping Captain America transport a coffin and fight off robots," to which Foggy adds; "I was right about the machines!

On the twelfth night, he slips back in his window at five o'clock, half-asleep; the only thing keeping him awake are the last vestiges of adrenaline, which are slowly dissipating into his bloodstream. His hearing’s a little fuzzy, but he checks, one last time -

The woman two floors down, crying into a phone. Her words are Slavic, incomprehensible and distinctly terrified. He catches one word - Sokovia - and he remembers Black Widow, rifling through corpses. “Good job on that, by the way.”

He fumbles for his laptop, and -

“Reports coming from Sokovia place the Avengers at the site of the incident, coincidentally the location of a known HYDRA base which they raided a week ago. A portion of Sokovia appears to be floating above the rest of the principality; the organization formerly known as S.H.I.E.L.D. is currently coordinating efforts to evacuate the landmass, while the Avengers fend off the army of robots attacking the city. Rumours suggest that the robots are of Stark make, but representatives of the company have failed to make any statement. Experts say that if dropped from its current height, the impact of the landmass could lead to well over a billion casualties. Others have postulated that this is an attempt to cause an extinction-level event, corroborated by Pentagon reports of an unknown infiltrator attempting unsuccessfully to access nuclear launch codes earlier in the week.”

Matt sits mutely at his laptop for a while, and, eventually muses to himself, “I am never joining the Avengers.”

And then he goes to sleep, because, given that he’s roughly four thousand five hundred miles away, he can’t exactly do anything to help. He’ll make a donation to the Red Cross tomorrow, his straitened finances be damned, but for now his best option is to go sleep, preferably in his bed; he knows from prior experience that his laptop does not make a good pillow.

(Besides, they've got helicarriers and the Incredible Hulk. He has a billy club. They can handle themselves.)

Chapter Text

The bells of St. Patrick’s toll four o’clock, reverberating through the air. Matt's not here for confession - Communion season is in full swing, and Father Lantom is all over the city handing out cardboard bread to kids in black suits and white dresses - but the bench in front of the church is as good a place to kill an hour as any other.

(Besides, she’s been following him for at least ten minutes; he noticed her vanilla perfume back in front of that charity shop. He needs to confront her sooner rather than later. Where better to do it than in sight of God?)

Perhaps it is cliché, but something about churches calms him. There’s an innate tranquility to houses of worship; perhaps it’s their singular, united, ancient purpose of celebrating the Lord, perhaps it's the cool marble and polished wood that their architects always favour… or perhaps it’s just that very few people ever go into them. Whatever it is, he always seems to breathe easier when he’s near a church.

Which is exactly why Matt needs this to happen here.

Originally, he was going to confront her, tell her everything. You are Black Widow. I am Daredevil. Life is weird. Please don’t stab me/strangle me with your thighs/rat me out to S.H.I.E.L.D., delete as required.

But the more he thinks about it… It took the prospect of imminent death for him to tell Claire and Foggy, plus four solid years of friendship on the latter’s part. He trusts Natasha, true; something about her makes him think that she would never, ever crack under pressure in an interrogation, not even with her life on the line, but the fact remains that he's only known her a month or two, nowhere near long enough to form a solid bond of mutual trust,

Furthermore, if his alter ego was revealed to anybody outside of his closest friends he could, hypothetically, lose everything. His entire life, friends and job and all would be exposed, and as much as he trusts Natasha, he doesn't trust the Avengers - if Matt learned anything in law school, it's that state bodies are not to be trusted. If word got to the wrong ears...

There's simply no countenancing it. He has to keep this secret. Natasha can't suspect a thing, can't know that he knows that she knows and that is a tall order, considering that she's a super-spy who was trained to divine people's secrets since childhood. If he wants his night-time activities to stay secret and separate from his own life he needs to keep his composure, something which is far, far easier said than done.

Karen asked him once how he always stays so collected and calm and cool. The thing is that's he’s not. Matt’s always, always angry; there’s usually some flicker of injustice smouldering deep in his breast, and all it ever needs is for others to stoke it a little to bring it to a full-fledged roar... but he can't allow that.

All anger ever gets you, his father told him, is bruised pride, split knuckles, and your ass (and Matt had giggled, because he was, you know, six) in jail. “You gotta learn how to control it, Matty,” his father said solemnly, because his father always took things seriously; it was always something Matt liked about his father, that sincerity, and it’s a trait he tries to emulate. “But if you can't learn how to control it... well, you gotta at least learn how to hide it.”

Battlin’ Jack got the hang of control. Every time the teacher asked if she could speak to Matt’s mother, because I’d rather speak to her about this issue, every time the landlord increased the rent, every time somebody whispered that poor gentle boy, what will he do with such a brute for a father? - Jonathan Murdock controlled it, he pushed it down to nothing and then when he was in the ring…

That was the only time Matt saw his father angry. Heard it, felt it, smelt it - yes, later - but he never actually saw him get angry outside the ring.

Matt Murdock never learned that. He thinks it might be the devil in him, that he can never rein in his rage, only hide it as best he can; the white-knuckled grip on his cane, the grit of his teeth as the witness lies, the shake of his shoulders as he bows his head and looks down, looks away.

(Daredevil, though. He can get angry. He doesn't have to hide it. He never hides it. He’s the animal, the real devil - )

Which is why he can’t do this as Daredevil. If he wants to get out of this meeting with Natasha (and it is her following him, he’d know her rhythmic heartbeat anywhere) unscathed, he has to be as calm as he can be. There is no room here for Daredevil here, only mild-mannered Matt Murdock, who will be courteous and concerned and completely oblivious to the fact that the woman approaching him could probably kill him with just her pinky finger.

He sits back and looks the other direction as she settles down beside him and alerts him to her presence with a delicate tap on his shoulder. “Matt. Hey.” Her voice is soft, rough edges worn down.

“Good to see you back in town, Natasha.” There is silence, before he pushes his luck and inquires; “Are you alright?”

“No, thanks for asking.” Her nails drum on the wood of the bench. “I… Recently, I lost somebody close to me.”

The beat of her heart remains as steady as ever. She’s not lying. There were no major casualties in Sokovia, as far as the news is saying. Captain America is fine, as is Hawkeye; both were sighted leaving the city, Cap going upstate and Hawkeye departing for flyover country. Stark released an official statement to the press, informing them that he is taking a break from the Avengers, and astronomers report seeing a vertical rainbow in upstate New York; a harbinger of Thor's departure. That leaves...

Bruce Banner, mild-mannered scientist turned green rage monster. He can't really see the Hulk and Natasha getting on, but he didn't see her getting on with him either.

“I’m sorry,” he finally tells her. “For what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth a lot. Really. Thank you." She shifts. “I’ve lost people before, but never... I didn't expect it to hurt this much. It's constant, like a blade you can’t pull out." Matt doesn't say anything. He doesn't think she needs his words, until she adds; "Maybe you know loss. I think you do."

"My father," he says eventually. "I was nine." He decides not to elaborate, to not pry into the open wound that is his father's death; if what Natasha feels is a blade, Matt feels a bullet, nestled under his heart. "I come here to... well, not remember him - he wasn't very pious - but to pray for him. If any man ever did deserve His grace..."

"If I'm telling the truth, I never would have pegged you as religious." He can sense her peering over her shoulder. "It must be nice to have something to believe in." There's a wistfulness in her voice that he's never heard before.

"Not so much religion, I think, as faith; I simply place that faith in God. Who do you have faith in?"

"Myself."

"You trust yourself?"

"Absolutely." Her voice is iron-clad, firm with conviction. "If I cannot trust in myself, who else can I trust?"

Matt bows his head, and, for a long moment, envies her steadfast belief in herself. It's something he used to have, but with every drop of blood he spills he loses his grip on his resolution that what he is doing is right.

He hears her back collide with bench. "We have the strangest conversations, don't we? This is too nice a day for such frank philosophical debate."

"I don't think there's ever a right time for frank philosophical debate." If she's seeking a distraction from the loss of Banner, he'll gladly give her one, and so he queries; "What have you been up to?”

"I was out of the country with a few friends. Not exactly what I'd call enjoyable, but... You?"

“Lawyering.” That gets a small laugh out of her. “No, really. We actually had several legitimate cases. I would tell you about them, but, you know. Legal professional privilege. One case did involve a strip club, though.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you're actually a lawyer. I mean, the last time I passed your practice there was a piece of paper with a drawing of an avocado saying ‘Objection!’ stuck up next to your sign.” She accompanies the ‘Objection!’ with a wild gesture that sends a nearby pigeon flying.

"Dumb college joke. Foggy insists it adds 'rustic charm' to the practice." Matt shakes his head. "I told him it was unprofessional and to take it down, but I guess he thinks that since I can't actually see it..."

"You talk about Foggy a lot. It's... sweet.” He does, actually, now that he thinks about it. It's sort of embarrassing, but Foggy gushes about him just as much, so it's fair game. “Did you two go to law school together?"

"We were roommates in Columbia."

"Graduated summa cum laude, I assume?" Her tone is teasing, but not malicious.

"Guilty as charged." He shifts the conversation back to her. "Where did you go to college? Somewhere in Moscow, maybe?"

"I... never actually went. Unless you count the Bolshoi. My... Well, you would call it a high school? It was very intensive. After that, I really had no need to go on to third level." Intensive is not the word he would have chosen to describe the Red Room. Draconian, perhaps? Hellish? "I might go back someday. Computer technology, or something of the like. So I can get on their good side before the next machine invasion."

He really didn't expect such a blatant reference to the events in Sokovia, but when does Natasha ever meet his expectations? "Sounds like a pretty sound strategy to me. It's a strange world, isn't it? First aliens, now machines. You have to wonder what will come next."

"That's an easy one." There's an odd, bitter edge to her voice. "Humans." Then she sighs. "I apologise for being so... down, I suppose. I just don't like losing people, and I feel like I've been doing it a lot lately."

"That's life, isn't it? You lose some people, sure, but... you gain others." He pauses, and then rushes to apologise. "I'm sorry, that was insensitive-"

"No, it's fine," she reassures him. "You're right. Actually... You're rather good at this whole counsel thing, Matt. Ever considered working for the big guy in there?"

"In the priesthood? I did, when I was younger, but..." He lets the sentence trail off.

Natasha snorts. "The vow of celibacy. Of course."

"And the whole poverty thing. Contrary to conservative opinion, being disabled is pretty expensive." Matt's dropped the cost of living as a disabled person on many people before - mostly obtuse government officials - but he decides to keep it light this time. Natasha doesn't need to know the wars he went through trying to get all his college textbooks in Braille, since the school's Board of Director's wouldn't subsidise them. Accessible his ass. "Do you know how many canes I've bought in the last six months?"

"An ungodly amount?"

Silence, and then; "That was awful."

"I'm Russian. We breathe bad puns."

Matt shakes his head. "Foggy would be proud. Speaking of..." He checks his watch; it's a quarter past four. "He's waiting for me down at the eighteenth. Crime never stops, not even for frank philosophical discussion."

"Aren't you an upstanding member of the legal profession? Actually before you leave... give me your phone. Quick, before I can regret giving you my number."

He hands it over without protest, and listens. There is no sign of her bugging it, or putting a tracker on it, but he'll get Mahoney to check it out down at the precinct. He owes him a favour after he downgraded Foggy to buying Bess cigarillos

Natasha returns his phone to him a few seconds later. "There we go. Now we can actually meet on purpose, not by chance."

"I look forward to it." Matt stands up with a little help from his cane and does his best to stride away purposefully, which is a lot harder than it sounds, considering someone made a pretty good attempt at hamstringing him last night.

He listens for her heartbeat as the crowd bears him away; Natasha doesn't move, either to follow him or to leave. She simply remains in front of St. Patrick's, her heartbeat growing fainter as he nears the edge of his range of hearing until it vanishes like the anger in his chest had.

She doesn't know. It's the only conclusion Matt can come to. Honestly, if she'd been the one who pinned him to the wall during their last encounter, Matt wouldn't have been half as civil as Natasha was. Additionally, Black Widow still thinks Daredevil is sighted - the only benefits of the otherwise-useless eyeholes - and Natasha actually gave him her number. That has to be an indication of trust.

It's up to him now to continue this charade. Obviously it can only go on for so long - what are the wits of a lawyer against an assassin? - but he has no other choice. The Ten Commandments say 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour', but Matt will do anything to keep those he loves safe.

He failed before with Elena. He will not fail again.

Chapter Text

The blood drips from his knuckles, forming murky scarlet puddles on the ground. His nose is full of the smell, metallic and raw. Three months ago, it would have made him vomit - blood is bad enough when you don't have a nose like a gundog - but now he is able to suppress the gag reflex with ease.

He reaches an arm out to the little girl crumpled in front of him, tucked in between two dumpsters. “It’s okay,” he cautions, briefly dropping Daredevil’s gravelly tone in favour of something lighter, something more Matt Murdock. “I’m safe. Look.” There are no other heartbeats but hers and his - one a hummingbird, the other a war drum - so he feels safe tugging his mask off, revealing tousled hair and unfocused eyes. He gives her a quiet, nonthreatening smile, which seems to do the trick, despite the fact that he’s currently covered in blood. The little girl feels up his arm and grabs his shoulders; he hoists her up and dons the mask again. “Do you have somewhere safe?”

He feels her shake her head, face buried in the crook of his neck. Children are so light, he thinks, adjusting the little girl on his hip.

“That’s fine. I know somewhere.” A mission. Sometimes the Daredevil discusses things with the local homeless; they’re the only people more in tune with Hell’s Kitchen than he is. The Clinton Mission Shelter is supposed to be a safe zone, and he knows they’ll keep her safe until he tips off the cops.

The little girl was an innocent bystander. She followed her stepfather downstairs after he put her to bed and watched him get caught up in a drug deal gone wrong - the bullets tore through him to hit one of the other men. By the time he got there two of the three men were down, and it was up to him to subdue the other before the little girl got caught in the crossfire.

(Too slow. He was too slow. Maybe if he’d left a minute earlier, if he hadn’t lingered at the office checking up on Karen, shaky-handed and pale after their latest prospective client, an odious business man whom Matt could almost hear leering…)

But the fault is no-one’s. He couldn’t help the man cooling in the alley, but he can, however, help his daughter.

When he drops into the backyard of the shelter he finds a nun on watch. She doesn’t seem to notice his intimidating get-up, simply taking the little girl from his arms. “God bless you,” she says, and enters the little church, crooning comfortingly to the child in her arms.

The words settle in the air, and Matt bows his head, before-

His club rockets up to intercept the blade that flies at his face.

“Hmm.” She stalks towards him. He wonders how Natasha deepens her voice; it’d be a useful trick, given that his throat hurts from all the grunting Daredevil does. “Does the devil have a soft spot?”

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

“Scripture. I should have guessed. But…” She moves up beside him, lips pressed to his ear. “There are better uses of your resources than rescuing children from bogeymen.”

He tilts his head to the side, putting some space between them. “What’s more important than the life of an innocent?”

“The lives of innocents.” With that she trots off, easily leaping the fence; he only argues with himself for half a minute before he follows her.

She leads him down 47th, where they pause on the roof of a decrepit tenement, guarded on the inside. “You've heard of Eric Slaughter.” He nods. Slaughter’s one of the formerly small-time crime lords who emerged out of the woodwork after Fisk’s imprisonment, all of them jockeying for a foothold in Hell’s Kitchen. “Well, he’s got somebody I’m looking for. Involved in a local court case, actually, and Interpol are looking to extradite him.”

Raised voices emanate from the warehouse below. “Mister Wallenquist -”

“Herr Vallenquist! With a V! You bastards made me flee my country, you can’t take my name away from me. Americans.”

“Herr Wallenquist, give us the whiskey. You’ve had…”

“Pah! I spit on your whiskey!” It appears that he does. “Bourbon swill. Here, take it!” The crash of shattering glass heralds the pungent smell of alcohol.

Alarich Wallenquist - a critical witness in a murder case, for which an innocent man is currently being charged. Wallenquist disappeared three days ago, and the entire police department has been chasing its own tail trying to locate him. “What’s the plan of attack?” he asks.

“There’s eight in total, all armed - one at the rooftop door, one at the front door, and six with Wallenquist. You handle topside and I’ll go in the front. Wallenquist is too drunk to stand up, let alone shoot - I’ll extract him. We need to do this quickly. Slaughter will be here in five minutes.”

He stands up and listens. She’s right - one guard at the opposite side of the door. “We’ll be done in four.” He stalks forward as Black Widow climbs down off the roof. He feels around the door - there, a piece of scrap metal. He kicks it, causing a clang that is sure to attract the guard’s attention.

“Who was that?” The door rattles, and Matt swiftly conceals himself behind a wall. “I’m telling you, I’m - hrrgh!” As he emerges, gun clicking, Matt grabs him from behind, locking his arms around his neck and muffling his shout. He stops struggling after a minute, and Matt lays him down almost tenderly. The one at the front door - their heartbeat has slowed as well. Widow has done her job… not that he ever doubted her.

The stairs are void of any attackers - sloppy. They’re probably all poorly paid, bought with promises of riches to come when Slaughter’s carved out a niche for himself… something that he will personally ensure will never happen. Wallenquist is on the second floor, slurring drunkenly and, well, German-ly (“Ja, du! Du bist ein Dreckstück!”) as his guards pace agitatedly. He can hear Black Widow’s heartbeat on the other side of the room, behind the door from the first floor. It clicks open, and -

Smoke, stinking of burnt caramel, fills the room. Shots go off, and he charges in, hurling his billy club. One man slumps with a shout, and as it ricochets back to him Matt ducks under a sudden spray of gunfire - well, not sudden, he can smell the gunpowder igniting long before the gun fires. The man is six feet away from him and as he runs for cover to reload Matt leaps on him, wresting his gun from him and nailing him in the head with it. Another assailant tries to sneak up behind him, but not quietly enough - Matt lets him catch him and turns the force back on him, yanking him over his shoulder and slamming him into the ground so hard that he goes straight through the floor, rotten beams crumbling. As he plummets with a yell, Matt flips nimbly backwards, a bullet barely clipping his side. He stumbles on landing, but the suit has done its job and took the brunt of the damage. He goes to disable the source, only to find him limp and bleeding. He smells blood from - Black Widow’s feet?

The click of a gun - the last man.

“Put the gun down,” Black Widow says calmly, “and unhand Herr Wallenquist.”

“Lower your weapons and we can talk,” he replies testily. “Your friend too.”

Matt’s billy club clatters to the ground, joined by Widow’s gun.

He can hear her boots click as she nears the man. “Look,” she tells him. “I have nothing. I just want to talk.” Her voice takes on an uncharacteristic girlish lilt.

“Oh, yeah? Well-” There’s a snap and the man sighs and slumps over. The blood pools around her boots again and -

Ah. Stiletto heels.

Wallenquist slumps forward as he moves to stand beside her. “You stabbed him.”

“Yes, and now I’m calling an ambulance for him. I only have so many charges.” The tinny voice of the 911 dispatcher asks her where she is, and she adopts a frightened, breathy voice, words spilling rapid-fire out of her mouth. “I’m at 47th and 10th - I heard gunshots! I think somebody might have been injured… Can you please call the police?”

She clicks the burner phone shut and he hears her fry it; it thuds, useless, to the floor. Black Widow grinds it under her heel, plastic cracking. “I saved that one for emergencies. They’ll take care of Wallenquist. Come on, before Slaughter gets here.” She slips out the window with the swish of a cable; Matt sighs, and follows her onto the rooftops.

He stops her after about eight blocks. “They’re at the scene.”

She lets out a breath of relief, almost too quiet to be audible. “That went well. Thanks for your assistance.”

“You could have handled it yourself.” He honestly doesn't know why she dragged him into this; she’s well able to handle eight crooks and a drunk.

“Yeah, I could have,” she agrees. “But thanks anyways.”

The silence stretches out until he breaks it; “So what now?”

“More? You want more?” She laughs when he nods. “Quite a glutton for punishment, aren't you, Daredevil? I’m afraid there’s nothing left to do tonight but sleep.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“I’m… otherwise engaged. Look, I'll leave you a signal.”

Real cloak and dagger stuff. He won’t complain. “Where?”

“The mission. I’ll crown the statue of the Virgin.” He hears the sharp edge of amusement in her voice.

“You know what time of year it is? There’ll be flowers all over the the Queen of the May.” A childhood memory, fuzzy and dim in grayscale - a little girl in a pristine white dress flapping a handkerchief as he scrambled up a ladder to the head of Our Lady, wreathing her colossal head with grey-and-white blooms.

“You’ll know mine.” He hears her back away, the regular click of metal on concrete until, with a whoosh, she drops straight off.

Matt shakes his head and, extracting his clubs, goes the opposite way. He heard shots being fired three blocks away, complete with screeching wheels. A robbery.

Just for a second, he wishes she were beside him - but only for the convenience of it. It is oddly reassuring to have someone watching your back... even if said someone is just about the deadliest person he’s ever met.

But this… partnership, whatever it is… it can’t last. Crimefighting is not conducive to an equal relationship, and by association he’s endangering her and vice versa. Hell’s Kitchen is enough trouble as it is; if any HYDRA agents decides to get to her though him...

Matt shakes his head before resuming his pursuit of the getaway car. He has more important things to think about than HYDRA - Hell’s Kitchen, for example.

Hell’s Kitchen will always be more important than anything S.H.I.E.L.D. can offer him.

Chapter Text

“So el diablo...”

“Demonio.”

Karen scrunches her nose up. “What?”

“You can say both of them.” Matt shrugs. “Don’t ask me, I’m not a linguist.”

“So a daredevil is…”

“Temerario.” He fights to keep his face straight, which is made somewhat harder by the three glasses of whiskey he's drunk. “As in temerity. Reckless.”

"Temerario." Karen rolls the Rs comically, and starts giggling.

"You sound like a telenovela," Foggy complains.

"Leave telenovelas alone, they're the only thing that got me through Spanish." Karen is still giggling, and Matt pats her absently on the head, though he misses and ends up hitting her ear. She doesn't seem to mind.

It’s a Friday night, and Josie’s is crowded with workers fresh off their shifts, including them. Karen is quizzing Matt on his Spanish - ever since they managed to save Mrs. Cardenas' building, more and more Hispanic people have been asking for their services, and he and Foggy are happy to oblige. The latest case is over child custody; the judge insists on giving the boy to his mother, despite the bruises he always returns to his father with. It’s a messy, complex, emotional case, and after a day arguing with oblivious social workers the three of them had agreed that some cheap whiskey in glasses of questionable cleanliness would be quite nice, thank you very much.

Foggy leans on his shoulder. "Matt."

"What?"

"Gimme your phone." Foggy starts to grope for it, just as Matt extracts it from his pocket and holds it aloft. "C'mon, man! I wanna call Marci!"

"I don't have her number. If you're going to drunk dial people you can use your own - hey!" His phone is snatched from his hand. "Karen, that's larceny."

"What's a phone between friends? Seriously, you still have the default background? I'm changing it. Only sad people and old people have the default background."

"But I am a sad person," he protests as he hears the camera click; presumably the photo is of him, pouting, because he turns into a petulant three-year-old when he's even slightly drunk, petulance directly proportional to volume of alcohol consumed, with Foggy tangled around him.

"Look!" Presumably Karen is shoving the phone in his face, as Foggy grunts in assent.

"Very professional," he announces. "Shows our brilliant interpersonal dynamic. Did you get new shampoo?" This is accompanied by some sniffing in the vicinity of his neck.

"Should I be worried that you actually noticed that? Are you me? With the smelling and all?" Matt reaches over, fumbles around for Foggy's glass - he's mixed it with coke, why would you do that to innocent whiskey? - and takes a slug, wrinkling his nose.

"I don't think I'm you. Karen, your opinion?"

"You're you and you're you." Before Matt can complain that that was as clear as mud, she says "Group selfie!" and the camera goes off again.

"That's the most millennial thing I've ever done," Matt comments dryly as Foggy pushes him aside to grab his phone.

"You're looking the wrong way," Foggy informs him.

"Again. Blind." Foggy does not deign to reply. Karen asks for another drink as Foggy gasps dramatically. "Matt! I thought we had a full disclosure agreement?"

"What?" His mind scrambles through the haze of vague inebriation. Maybe's he's found out about the thing with Wallenquist? That would be... bad. "I've told you everything. Everything everything."

"Who is this Nat dancer emoji Russian flag emoji?"

"And that is the most millennial thing I've ever heard."

Foggy makes a 'pssh' noise as Karen lowers her glass. "Here, lemme see. Wait... Is this..." She lowers her voice - she does a pretty good job of it, she's better than Foggy at holding her drink - and whispers, "Black Widow?"

"Oh, yeah. She gave me her number." If he's being honest, he forgot; he got Mahoney to check his phone (clean) and then ignored it.

Foggy lets out a melodramatic groan. "Why do you have so much game? Why? You know what, screw Marci-"

"You already have," Matt mutters as Karen titters.

"Shut up. We are drunk dialling Natasha Romanoff."

So Matt loves Foggy. He will admit this quite happily, no ‘no homo’s needed, he just does. Love Foggy, that is. He doesn’t even need to be drunk to say it, though it helps.

But however much he loves Foggy, however much he thanks whatever metaphorical deity exists out there (mostly God, of course, Matt is a good Catholic, but just in case anything else exists out there) for the quirk of fate that got Franklin Nelson and Matthew Murdock assigned as roommates in Columbia…

“No. That is an awful, awful idea."

“C’mon, man!” Foggy slams an ineffectual palm on the bar counter, causing Karen to spill some of her drink with a hiss. “I know literally everybody you know. Just because she’s a, y’know, Avenger, does not make her the exception to said rule.” He whispers the word Avenger under his breath, like a curse, and Matt can only imagine the shifty eyes and forced casual lean forward that accompany it.

He gives him a Look, ruined by his glasses, which are slightly askew. They never sit straight when he drinks. “She's probably busy. At this hour of the night she's generally off strangling aliens with her thighs and stuff.”

Foggy makes a ‘psssh!’ noise; Matt can almost imagine the accompanying hand flap. “We are better than aliens. I prefer us to aliens."

“I don't,” Karen proclaims. “Foggy, you owe me a drink.”

Foggy and Karen descend into friendly bickering, and Matt takes the opportunity to duck into the bathroom. Josie, in consideration of her clientèle, keeps a first aid kit in the men’s, and there’s an ugly gash curving up the inside of his wrist, where the seam of his suit had torn open in a skirmish with a few yakuza. The bandages take more thought than usual to put on, given his state of light inebriation, and it keeps him occupied enough to ignore the feeling that he’s forgotten something.

Foggy is oddly silent when Matt returns; he assumes Karen managed to win their tête-à-tête and that his friend is sulking, and asks for more whiskey. Karen assures him the glass clean, and he’s made good progress into it when Foggy starts giggling.

“What? Karen, were you lying? I’m probably drinking rat droppings. Am I drinking rat droppings?”

The glass is plucked from his hands, and a cool, husky voice replies; “None that I can see.” The ice clinks against the side of the tumbler, and the smell of whiskey - like wheat soaked in disinfectant - disappears, to be replaced by the scent of vanilla.

“I paid for that,” he protests weakly. “You’re gonna steal alcohol from the poverty-stricken lawyer?”

“I’ve stolen from poorer,” Natasha says, settling down beside him. "I am Russian. Are you Foggy? Thanks for calling me, I don't think our mutual friend would ever have gotten around to it." Her voice drips with disapproval.

"Matt's rude like that. I am indeed the esteemed Foggy Nelson, lawyer extraordinaire, and this is Karen Page, our legal secretary." There's some friendly greeting - sans the overblown squealing drunk girls are accustomed to doing - and Karen immediately starts trying to buy Natasha's drink for her. It's quite sweet, actually.

"A White Russian for the white Russian!" Karen eventually calls, and Natasha lets out an undignified snort.

"Never heard that one before," she mutters.

"Karen, that was my joke. You stole it." Foggy and Karen start an argument over intellectual property and Matt sighs.

"Is this what lawyers get like when they're drunk?" Natasha enquires.

"Yep. Just don't bring up torts and you'll be fine." Matt almost asks her what superheroes do when they get drunk, but firstly, he's supposed to Not Know That, and according to the gossip rags Foggy reads aloud every morning, Tony Stark is a recovering alcoholic and, according to the S.H.I.E.L.D. files, Captain America can't get drunk, so he thinks he knows already. "Dancers don't drink, do they?"

"We go straight for the hard stuff." Her tone is too serious to be serious, but...

"I'm gonna say that falls under legal professional privilege." Foggy and Karen are just about done with their argument when Karen complains - "say it, don't spray it!" - and they devolve into mud-slinging again.

"Are they flirting or arguing?" Natasha eventually asks, after observing for a couple moments.

"Foggy's practising for the stand, and this is how Karen lets out her aggression. I've been trying to convince her to take up boxing, but no dice."

"Matt, I am not punching you for recreation. That would be bad. Who'd wail on you?" Karen pauses and, realising the implications of her statement, says, quietly, "Oh."

"He punches back. Pretty hard, actually." Natasha says this with humour, jabbing him lightly in the shoulder, and he winces. "Wait, is that still there?"

That particular bruise came from a weirdly positioned barber shop pole he slammed into the other night. "You don't punch that hard. This was just a small accident."

"Matt never looks where he's going," Foggy pipes up, and starts snickering.

"Wow," Natasha says dryly. "Really? You're already picking on the blind guy?"

"Joke's on him, he has to buy said blind guy a drink every time he makes an ableist comment." Matt kicks him in the shin.

Foggy grumbles, but he pays up, sliding his used glass over to Josie.

"She gonna wash that?" Natasha whispers into his ear.

"Hey, only you and I have used it, and I'm pretty sure you're clean. Washing it would be a needless procedure." He gives her a sharp smile, and she shakes her head, hair brushing against his jaw. This late in the day, the vanilla of her perfume has almost entirely worn off; all that's left is a sweet undertone, overlaid with sweat and city smoke and the faintest tang of blood. Eau de Widow, he thinks. That vanilla smell - it's the only thing that carries over into her Black Widow persona. Everything else changes - her voice darkens, deepens, and her heartbeat speeds up, beating an odd irregular rhythm. Natasha is lighter, more mellifluous, more even. He wonders if the changes are conscious, designed specifically to fool someone like him; probably, given the rigours of the Red Room.

"Are you sure you're a lawyer? I thought you guys lived for needless procedures.”

“They’re really bad lawyers,” Karen says conspiratorially. “We’re so unemployed.”

“That’s not true!” The vigourous clinking of ice in Foggy’s glass makes Matt think he’s waving it, possibly at Karen. “We had a case today!”

“It was our first all week.” Foggy audibly deflates, and Matt hides his smile behind the rim of his glass.

“But we’re building up our practice!” Karen’s voice is proud, and that is ridiculously cute, she’s proud of them.

“Yeah, give us a couple months and we’ll be bigger than Landman & Zack ever was!”

“Also more principled,” Matt adds.

“And with more bagels.” Foggy slams his glass down as if he were a judge with a gavel, and Josie squawks at him for damaging the counter.

The night gets oddly blurry from thereon out. Perhaps it’s because he was trying to keep up with Natasha, but he honestly can’t seem to keep anything in his head - his thoughts drip like water through his fingers. Some remain; he remembers Karen almost choking on an eel and Foggy going for a nap in an unoccupied booth and getting sat on by some bikers and Natasha beating every single crook in the bar at arm-wrestling…

Only when he and Natasha are waiting outside Josie’s for a taxi does his mind come back into focus, the clarity sharp and painful to his bedraggled senses. The June heat has leached away, and Matt shivers slightly, wrinkling his nose. How much did he drink? He’ll be smelling whiskey for the next two days.

“You sure I can’t walk you home?” Natasha’s voice is careful, concerned. “I know you’re wholly capable of it, but…”

He can’t risk her seeing his building. What if, one day, she tracks Daredevil back to his base and sees him slip into Matt Murdock’s home? “No, I’ll be fine. I’m only a few blocks away. I’ll call Foggy if I get into trouble. I mean, he’ll give me crap about it for days, but he’ll help me. He has to.”

She laughs. “Your friends are nice.”

“Liar.”

“I mean it. They love you… and you love them.”

Matt stills. “I’m lucky,” he says quietly, and by God he is.

“They’re lucky too. To have you.”

“I don’t know about that.” Matt spends most of his time feeling like an awful friend. He lied to Foggy, he’s still lying to Karen… Someday, he knows, they’ll have no other choice to abandon him, or go down with him, and he desperately hopes they won’t choose the latter. “I’m… I don’t know. Manipulative. Selfish.”

“So what?” Her voice is flippant. “Sure, you may be manipulative and selfish… but you're human. We’re all like that. You care about them. You can trust me on that… I’m good at figuring that sort of stuff out.” The ability to discern allegiances, weaknesses… things she can take advantage of, he supposes, applied in a more benign context.

“What do you mean, care?”

“You tried to give Karen the Heimlich maneuver.”

“Oh, God. Did I really?”

“You stood up to those bikers after they got pissy at Foggy, too. I mean, I don’t know if you weren’t intimidated by them because you couldn’t see them, or if you’re truly fearless…”

“You weren’t scared by them either. You did arm-wrestle them, after all.”

He hears her hair swish; presumably she’s smoothing it into place. “I beat their asses, too. Don’t forget that.”

“I don’t think I could.”

Natasha chuckles, and they slip into silence, for a few comfortable minutes.

“You’re a good friend, Matt. Really, stop laughing,” she adds.

“Sorry.” Matt sobers up, as much as he can.

“I haven't really had the luxury of friends,” she continues. He supposes not. Being moulded into an assassin by the Red Room is not conducive to forming friendships. Alliances, perhaps, but nothing lasting. “I’m glad I can count you as one.”

“As a friend?”

In response, she places her hand on his shoulder; the stench of whiskey is replaced by vanilla. Her lips are a soft, warm pressure against his cheek, and he finds himself wondering how long it’s been since he’s shaved.

“And that was a friend kiss?” he asks drily.

“Yep.” She sounds oddly smug. “You looked all confused. I thought it was sweet.”

“You’re so European, you know that?” He shakes his head. “Friend kisses. God.”

“Russia isn’t Europe,” she says, scandalised.

“What is it, then?”

“Russia is Russia.” The squeak of wheels as a cab pulls up. “That’s my cue.” He waves, as she climbs in; Natasha says nothing, only snorts as the door clicks and the car pulls away.

Matt makes it home without incident, except for a small run-in with an inconvenient street kerb, and the first thing he does when he gets home is wash his face - he wouldn't put it past her to wear lipstick with tracking gel in it, or something.

(And then he gets sick, because whiskey. Water of life his ass.)