Archive of Our Own

Oddly enough, one of Matt’s last memories of sight is of Captain America’s face. 

There wasn’t money for a lot of stuff growing up. Rent, for one thing. Food, for another. By means of entertainment, it was the library or bust. Comic books should have been a non-starter. No way of working them into the budget when they didn’t even know if they’d have bread come next week. 

But then there was Vic. Old school boxer, twice Dad’s age and a heavy-weight through and through. Built like an ox and would puff like one when the fan broke and the summer threatened to swelter them all. Always on Matt about watching his feet, even after he went blind and couldn’t watch shit.

Vic, he thought all little boys should have a spin at a Captain America comic. Had a collection of every single comic he ever bought, and he had bought quite a few. No little boys of his own to pass them down to, and sometimes, it felt like the whole gym was dead set against Matt Murdock following in Daddy’s footsteps. He wanted Matt to have them for so long as Matt stayed on a path leading out of the gym.

It was a barter. A trade. Every A+ Matt brought home, he’d bring straight to Vic. And Vic would puff out his chest and ruffle Matt’s hair and say, “You’re gonna have my whole damn collection at this rate,” and the next day he’d bring Matt his prize. Another twisted tale of Captain America fighting dastardly Nazi henchment. Captain America would always win, and the Nazis would always lose, and Matt would climb on his dad’s arms and try and tell him the whole story in one breath. And Dad would say, “Matty, ain’t no one alive that can untangle the spaghetti bowl full of words you just handed me. Take a breath.”

When the accident happened, he was reading a Captain America comic. Just got it. A+ on a math test. Dad needed to run around the corner, and Matt had dragged his feet and whined enough that Dad said, “Matty, I swear to God, I better find you still on that step when I come back or so help me,” and Matt had scuttled straight off before Dad could change his mind. 

The Captain had just liberated the captives when Matt heard a screech of tires and--

The sky burned away like melting film.

He doesn’t remember the actual hit. He doesn’t remember pushing the old man out of the way, despite the fact that no one ever shut up about it for the rest of his life. He remembers the comic, Captain America bracketed by a star-spangled banner, a squeal of tires, and his daddy. Matty, Matty, close your eyes, but it was already too late. Matt’s so goddamn good at doing the right thing too late. 

There weren't any more Captain America comics after that. Matt couldn’t read any, and no one made comics in braille. Dad tried to read it, but he had never been the most imaginative of people. Describing pictures, backgrounds, even pronouncing some of the words--it didn’t work. 

After half an issue, Dad excused himself to the bathroom, and Matt heard him stifle his own tears and beat his own chest with his fists and curse himself beneath his breath for being too damn stupid to help his boy. 

It was the first time he ever heard his father cry.  

Next time he got a good grade, he announced that he was too old for comic books. 

If there was anything that shaped the decisions that followed, it was this:

One. One of the last things Matt remembers is a superhero’s face. 

Two. When he was eight-and-three-quarters years old, he read the United States Supreme Court decision Buck v Bell.

Three. He was an arrogant little shit stain who thought he knew everything. 

Some things never change. 

… 

“Some auditory sensitivity can be expected,” says the doctor, completely disinterested. “Perceiving noises as louder is completely par for the course.”

And Matt, who just heard him chatting with his mistress from six rooms and three floors over, says, “Okay.” 

… 

Of course it’s superpowers. Matt isn’t dumb. A bunch of toxic chemicals sloshed in his face and now he can hear heartbeats from a building over. Either it’s superpowers, or Matt’s gone off his nut. He elects to dismiss the second possibility out of hand. 

He doesn’t say a goddamn word about it in the hospital. He hates that place. It smells like death and sickness and disease, and he’d burn it down just to smell ash instead. He doesn’t trust the doctors either. Partially because he heard the things they said about his dad when they thought no one could hear them. Partially because he heard the things they said about Matt when they thought no one could hear them. 

And partially for another reason. The reason that’s been brewing in the back of his head since he realized what happened to him. 

Dad takes him from the hospital, from the smell of vomit and blood and pus, and brings him home and guides him inside. Matt can hear rats scurrying in the walls. 

“Matty, is something wrong?”

And in that split second, Matt makes a decision that he’s never certain if he regrets. 

“No.”

… 

There is a book on the local library shelf. An abridged collection of landmark Supreme Court decisions. It’s thick and tall and bound with red, and its words are embossed in gold. 

Matt, eight-and-three-quarters and too small by half, nearly puffs with pride when he manages to make  it onto the checkout desk. 

The librarian shoots him a skeptical look. “That ain’t a book for you, kiddo.”

… 

It’s Captain America, right? Super soldier. Superhero. Made by science and good old fashioned American values. Sweet apple pie and fireworks and a half a billion dollars of military funding funneled directly into punching Hitler square in the face. 

Apparently, he wasn’t real, he was a propaganda strategy, but the sentiment is the same. The desire. Had it been possible, America would have poured every last penny into making it happen. 

And that’s the part that sticks with Matt. That’s the part he takes away. 

It’s like this:

It’s Captain America. Truth and Justice and the Good Ol’ American Way. And the industrial war complex. The bit where they took a soldier and pumped him full of experimental drugs, doused him with radiation, opened the box and snuck a peek to see if he’d croaked yet. But the Captain, he was in fighting shape. God Bless and Amen, go fight Nazis with the will of the people behind you. 

And the Captain, he fights the Nazis. He fights the bad guys, evil scientists who pump other soldiers full of experimental drugs, douse them with radiation, open the box and sneak a peek to see if they’d croaked yet. And the bad guys, they did it in the bad way. The evil way. Not the American way. Not the Captain America way. America would never be like those bad guys. 

Matt took away a different lesson, however, and that lesson was this:

People want supersoldiers. The people with supersoldiers win wars. 

And they will put a hell of a lot towards getting them. 

…

It’s the anti-canon. Dred Scott and Koresmatsu and Buck v fucking Bell. The collection of Supreme Court decisions pulled out, touted around, held between open palms and turned over in law students’ hands. Can’t find a Con Law class without them, and not because they’re valuable law. 

The anti-canon are the cases that are the opposite of valuable law. They are the darkest cases in American history, the failed cases, the cases where justice before law and God and the Supreme Court of the United States failed. They’re kept as a reminder, and a lesson, and so everyone can feel better about the next time they fuck up. 

Look at them. Those guys were the real fuck up. At least we’re not them. Learn and live and learn again. 

Matt reads Buck v Bell before the blindness. Before the disability. The undesirability. Sometimes, he wonders how he would have taken it had he read the book after the accident. 

But it was before, Buck v Bell, and it goes a little something like this:

It’s the twenties, right? Skinny little Steve Rogers is kicking around somewhere in Brooklyn, only Matt guesses not, because apparently he was never skinny at all. The skinny bit, the super soldier bit, that was all just wartime propaganda. He was a hulking Greek god of a man since birth, even. Came out and an eagle cawed to signify the occasion. 

Whatever the case, there’s a scabby-kneed future of Old Fashioned American Justice tripping through the back alley streets of Brooklyn, and in the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is writing the majority opinion for a case involving eighteen-year-old Carrie Buck. 

Carrie Buck was a threat to society. A bomb ticking, ticking, ticking. A genuine goddamn disaster in the making, Carrie Buck, and it was the business of the entire goddamn United States to stop her. 

Carrie Buck, you see, had been raped at seventeen years old. She had gotten pregnant by her rapist, who was the nephew of her foster parents. Her foster parents had her committed. The reason?

Feeblemindedness, incorrigible behavior, and promiscuity. 

They were no longer capable of caring for her, the foster parents of Carrie Buck. It was all her fault. She was just too much. 

Pay no attention to the rapist behind the curtain. 

She didn’t get to keep the child, mind you. That went to her rapist’s family. Poor Carrie was far too feebleminded to be trusted with a child. 

In fact, she was far too disabled to ever be trusted with a child again, said Albert Sidney Priddy, the superintendent of the mental facility holding feebleminded Carrie Buck. Her biology represented a threat to the entire goddamn world. An imbecile in a line of imbeciles. A daughter, a mother, and a grandmother. Three imbeciles deep. 

And so he petitioned the courts to have her sterilized against her will. 

And what did the courts of American justice say? What did the sparkling tower of integrity, academia, intelligence, and equity say? The highest court in the fucking land?

It said:

“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”

And,

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Which was a fancy way of saying that some people are goddamn drains on the common good. They’re awful little fuck ups, and an unforgivable burden on the public welfare to have them kicking around our system. Their very existence was an inconvenience, actually, and so, if you think about it, it’s hardly a sacrifice at all to rip out their insides to make sure they can’t make anymore inconveniences like them. 

They’re different, you see. They’ll hardly feel what they lost. 

And there’s a moral to the story. A lesson from above. Something something fallibility, something something compassion, something something human rights and freedom and liberties, God Bless America, Amen. Never forget that lesson, whatever the fuck it is. America is better and does better and we’re not like those other cruel fucks pumping their bad soldiers full of bad experiemental chemicals and cracking open their packaging to see if they still have a heartbeat. We learn. We change. We won’t forget. 

Pay no attention to the hypocritical exceptionalism behind the curtain. 

Matt took away a different lesson, however, and that lesson was this:

It doesn’t matter what’s right. 

Your existence is something people can litigate. 

… 

“Poor kid,” simpers one of the nurses, from five rooms away. “Such a young age to lose his sight.”

“Kid’s fucking life is over,” agrees the other nurse. “You see his dad? You know where they live? That kid already didn’t have a future. He sure ain’t got one now.”

… 

“Matty, baby, what’s wrong?” says Dad, propping his fists on his hips. “I can tell something’s off.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” snaps Matt.

… 

After, after it happens, after everything, a part of Matt starts to believe that Captain America did have superpowers after all. It isn’t in a conspiracy theory board kind of way. It isn’t in the sort of way where he has a list of reasons, all connected by a tenuous line of red string. 

It’s just… statistics. Billions of people in the world. The chances of being the first super-whatever was miniscule. Matt couldn’t be the only one. Everyone else must just be keeping it a secret, like Matt. 

It makes him feel less alone, imagining Captain America, imagining him the same. Captain America really was all they said he was. He was a ratty little Depression boy from the bad part of Brooklyn, he was scrawny and tiny and had a million and one problems. He had scabby-knees and didn’t know how to quit and he was an honest-to-God superhero, compliments of the Good Ol’ U S of A. 

And Captain Rogers, the one in Matt’s head, he’s tall and broad and sympathetic, and he drives up on a motorcycle right along Matt’s street. He’s blonde and square-jawed and smells like sweet apple pie, and he crouches down to Matt’s height and says, “I’m looking for someone else like me. It’s awfully lonely, being the only thing of something. No one seems to understand. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone else who also has powers, would you?”

And Matt, with sirens in his ears and the taste of car exhaust in his mouth and all the goddamn pain of the city rooting in his chest and carving a home, he opens his mouth and says, “On this street? Please. Go look on the street with the kids with futures.”

…

That’s the problem, isn’t it? Matty’s so goddamn clever. Such a smart little kid. A+ grades and thick law books and a smart mouth that takes him too far by half. Of course he’s not going to tell Captain America. Captain America is fucking super cop. 

Because it’s that other bit of him that knows he can’t tell anyone. The bit of him that grew up never knowing if they’d make rent, if they’d have bread, if he’d ever get off that fucking dead end street. 

Kids with nothing don’t get shit. Easy pickings for men with something, men with more, men with a lot. Candy from babies. 

If you have something valuable, people are just going to take it.

Matt doesn’t know what’s valuable about it, this awful, roaring thing in him. It never shuts up. He doesn’t know what value is in a wave, in a scream, in a horrible, searing pain. He has no doubt that someone will find a way to monetize it, though. 

That’s the thing about oil. It’s found in dead bodies in the pressure of the ground. One man’s life-ending misery is another man’s treasure. 

Matt Murdock has never been a convenient thing to exist. Another kid with no future on a fucking street of them. He’ll never be anything, and he’ll be worth even less. Generations of nothing, all in a line. No one ever truly escaped the reality of their birth. 

So he can handle it. The loneliness. The pain. The uncertainty. No one can take from him what they don’t know he has. There is no one he trusts to not exploit this, so he tells no one. 

Dad says, “Matty, what the hell is up with you?”

And Matt says, “I told you it was nothing, Dad.”

… 

That’s the other thing. The third thing. The thing where Matt made a decision and stuck to his guns. 

He never tells Dad. 

…

It’s that old saying, right? Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. And Matt has one hell of a secret. 

Dad is a good man, is a kind men, is the sun and the moon and all the fucking stars in the sky. He’s Matt’s everything. The best man he knows. 

He’s just not a particularly clever man.

The fundamental flaw in Dad, Matt believed, was that he was a good man who thought other men were good men. If Matt told Dad, he’d be worried. He’d think it was serious, it was cancer, it was another side effect and he’d need a doctor to see to him at once. Never mind that they couldn’t afford a doctor. Never mind that it’s the worst idea known to mankind. He’d insist, and Matt would cave, and down to the doctor they would go. 

If they paid Matt enough mind to realize that he existed, they’d figure out something was deeply wrong fairly quickly. 

Matt’s not certain how the next part goes, but he imagines it involves something with a windowless van and government agents with reflective sunglasses worn at night. It’s what the bad scientists in the comics always do, and Matt doesn’t have enough confidence in the existence of good ones.

… 

The true crux of the Buck v Bell decision is simply that, sometimes, the blood of a white lamb needs to dress a door frame so all those inside may pass the night without harm. Sometimes, sacrifices need to be made. 

It’s only a few people. A percentage of a percentage. The drains on society, the freaks, the ones that are so goddamn different that it’s unfair to ask the rest of society to accommodate them. This will only be used with discretion. It won’t be used against you. This is an extreme measure for extreme cases, and it will only be used when absolutely necessary, against those who are hurting everyone else simply by existing. 

Pay no attention to the raped girl behind the curtain. 

…

He plans arguments. Looks up case law, precedents, tangles with complicated concepts that he doesn’t figure out until law school that he got all wrong. He explores his own existence like it’s something that he’ll have to litigate one day. 

He imagines it, sometimes. Standing before the Supreme Court and arguing for his own goddamn existence. The bad scientists found him, the doctors and the government and all those people he’s awfully inconvenient for, and they say, “It’s a small sacrifice to make,” and “It’s for the public welfare,” and “He was a drain on society anyway.” They say, “Look at what he can do, at what he’s capable of, isn’t it strange if we can’t call upon his strength? He’s already sapping the strength of the rest of society, God Bless and Amen. It’s a lesser sacrifice, his freedom.”

And Matt, Matt pulls precedent out like a superhero. He cites case law and precedents and Buck v fucking Bell, and he tells the Court that they’ve learned. That they’re better. That every man has rights and dignity inherent, including Matt, and no perceived burden can take that away. 

He wins, of course. He’s the next Thurgood Marshall. The decision is 9-0 and Matt walks away, freedom in hand. 

The daydream ends and Matt is sitting in an apartment with mold in the ceiling and rats in the walls. 

It wouldn’t go that way, of course. The court way, the part where his existence is litigated and he wins, the part where he shakes the hand of every justice on the Supreme Court. He would never make it to the courtroom steps. 

A windowless van would pull up. Government agents in reflective sunglasses would step out, and isn’t it odd they’re wearing those? It’s night. 

Bang. The door slams and Matt is inside.  

No more Matt. 

… 

Matt can hear the private moments of every single person within a thousand feet, even when he does not particularly want to. His very existence warrants an intrusion on the existence of others. There are so many things he knows that no one would ever want him to. 

And that, he thinks, is something that the rest of society would find hard to accommodate. 

… 

The thing the saying doesn’t tell you is that one can keep a secret and the other can still be dead. 

Funny how that works. 

…

Matt’s clever, right? So goddamn clever. He has it all planned out. He’ll never tell a single living soul about his powers, because that’s dangerous, and because he can’t trust anyone with it, and because the only person he should have ever told is in the pressure of the ground making oil so another rich fuck can dig it up in a million years. The industrial complex is ever-churning, after all. 

What is a poor man’s body except oil to grease the works?

He’ll never tell a single soul, and that will be that. Can’t steal candy from a baby if the baby’s hidden it. No one can take advantage, because no one knows there’s anything to take advantage of. 

There’s Stick. 

…

He imagined it differently. Someone finding out. Someone wanting to use him. He imagined the windowless van and government agents and grasping and screaming and pulling him away from his dad, and then a big man in a crisp suit would tell him that Matt was needed. Matt had powers and powers won wars and Matt would do that for them. Sometimes, you need a white lamb, and when the door frame safeguards the United States, what’s a little innocent blood?

And Matt, he would puff himself up, nine-and-two-fifths and so fucking smart. He’d spit in the man’s face, because that’s what a comic book hero would do. He doesn’t have a plan past that, but it certainly isn’t cooperate. 

Stick says, “I’m going to make you into something great, kid.”

And Matt says, “Okay.”

So fucking smart, right?

…

In the Bible, in mass, when they talk about white lambs and angels of death, the door is closed. The inhabitants are sealed inside, safe and warm and tight, and all the blood is on the door’s exterior. They needn’t worry about the blood. They cannot see it, and it’s doing its job, so that means it isn’t something to pay any mind to. 

They do not watch the Angel of Death pass. The door is sealed, and a holy thing goes to pursue its bloody task. They never see it. They find the proof in the evidence of what it does, in the screaming and wailing that arises in the next morning. They know that they were spared from the Angel of Death because there are others that weren’t. They know that the blood of the lamb was a worthy sacrifice because they can see the loss of those who didn’t sacrifice their lambs. It was a good deal, in the end. For everyone who made it. The best possible ending. 

Unless you were the family lamb. 

… 

It’s the struggle to it, you see. Matt is so fucking smart and he never once believed that anyone could take advantage of him easily. They’d have to beat it out of him, torture it out of him, they’d need a dozen government agents with reflective glasses to hold him down, and he’d spit in the face of every last one. There is always a big man in a crisp suit. He always gives orders, and Matt always spits in his face. 

Even if he loses, he doesn’t lose easily. 

He never thinks much about what would be done to him, is the thing. Of what they’d want him to do. His education is based on comic books, and he lives by their logic. The men who take him, who use him, they’re always bad, and you can always see it, and the things that they want him to do can never be mistaken as anything but evil. They always try to beat Matt down, force him into submission, strap him into a magic chair that brainwashes his every act. 

Stick tells him that there’s a war that needs a soldier. A super soldier. Super fucking soldier. That the worst of the worst is out there and Matt needs to fight them, needs to use his abilities to do it, that Matt can be strong and Stick will make him so. 

Matt can, of course, leave at any time. Stick hasn’t stolen him from anywhere. Stick isn’t forcing him to do anything. This is all Matt’s choice. 

He wants to be there. And that means Stick isn’t taking advantage. 

… 

Passover was a great sparing of God’s people. A miracle, a conquering, a liberation of the innocent from Egypt. 

Must have been a pretty shitty night for the lambs. 

… 

The first time Matt realizes what Stick did, what he had turned Matt into, the things he had taken from Matt and the things Matt gave to him with open hands, he sits down on the front stoop of the church and laughs. He laughs with his back, with his lungs, deep and rumbling and rattling in his throat. 

Matt had been so afraid of it for so long. Of someone finding him, finding what he could do, taking it for themselves and forcing Matt to give himself over, and the second, the second someone did--

Matt didn’t so much as protest. 

He laughs harder. It’s so goddamn funny. 

That’s the first time he thinks about throwing himself off someplace high.

… 

It takes him nine years to go back to Fogwell’s. 

He’s nineteen. Skinny with bruised knuckles and a bad attitude. Borderline homeless. Out of the system though, and that’s all that matters to Matt. He tells himself that every time he wants to cry from it all. He never cries, in the end. Stick taught him that. 

There isn’t a goddamn person alive who cares if he lives or dies, and maybe that’s why he stays away for so long. Maybe that’s why he didn’t go back sooner. Because the men at the gym, they loved him. Little Matty Murdock was the apple in their collective eye. He was Battlin’ Jack’s boy and that meant he was the boy of all of them, their hopes and dreams, the village’s baby, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if he walked into his daddy’s gym and heard them ask who the hell he was. 

It’s easy, loneliness. Comfortable. Safe. It settles around him like a sheepskin coat and he wears it everywhere, and that means that no one can fucking use him. 

It’s Schrodinger’s fucking cat, dead in a box but no one’s opened it and snuck a peek to see if he’s croaked yet, so everyone can pretend its alive. If Matt stays away, he never gets that final confirmation if he’s forgotten or not. If Matt stays away, he never has to face the men who once loved him and let them see him in all his pathetic, lonely misery. 

If Matt stays away, he can be lonely and beloved all at once. No one to hurt him but maybe someone will attend his funeral. Crack open the box and look at that, he’s croaked. Schrodinger’s fucking orphan. 

Maybe that’s why he goes. His funeral has lost its sense of abstraction. Its distance. It’s an event that may need to be planned, and Matt isn’t certain if he wants someone to stop its necessity or just… make sure he goes in the ground next to his daddy. 

Fogwell’s smells like sweat and chalk and unwashed bodies, and he stands on the sidewalk across the street for three hours before he works up the courage to cross. 

It sounds like squeaking mats. Jump ropes, skipping lightning-fast against the ground. Gloved hands hitting, hitting, hitting. 

For the first time since Child Services picked him up in an alley with Dad’s blood on his hands, he feels like he’s come home. 

When he walks in, the first thing he hears is someone say, “Who the hell are you?”

Well, that was a failure. Fantastic job, Matt. He turns on his heel and opens the door. 

From across the room, Fogwell bellows, “Matty? Is that my boy?”

He doesn’t burst into tears. But it’s close.

… 

The daydream changes after Stick. 

Captain America rolls down the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, and he’s tall and blonde and square-jawed, and he smells like sweet apple pie and Good Old Fashioned American Justice. There’s a flag waving dramatically, Matt’s certain. 

He gets off on Matt’s street. Dead fucking end street. He sits on the stoop next to Matt, and his shoulders aren’t quite as broad as Matt remembers. He isn’t quite as certain. 

Captain America says, “I’m looking for someone else like me. It’s awfully lonely, being the only thing of something. No one seems to understand.”

And Matt says nothing. He knows this trick. 

But then--then--Captain America says, “There were people who I thought I could trust with myself, and I’m not so certain. I think they just wanted to use me for them. I don’t want the same to happen to someone else like me.”

Matt takes his hand, there, on the stoop, on the dead-fucking-end street. Captain America, Trust and Justice and the American Way, he grips Matt’s hand like it’s a lifeline and says, “I thought so,” and “We won’t let it happen again, understand?” and Matt just shivers and nods and says nothing at all. 

…

Matt’s Dad lives and dies and never once knows the truth about his son, because his son was the sort of person who looked at a man who would slit his own wrists and bleed himself dry for his boy and decided he wasn’t quite clever enough to deserve that truth. 

There are some things people shouldn’t ever forgive themselves for.

… 

And then there’s Foggy.

He--

That--

Yeah. 

… 

The Buck v Bell decision was eight to one.

…

He thinks about it, sometimes. Telling Foggy. He thinks about Dad in the ground and all the things he went there without knowing. He thinks about his mistakes, and how good he is at repeating them. 

Sometimes, he opens his mouth, lines up the words on his tongue, settles them primed to depart and…

Stick. And how fucking stupid he was. All the many ways he can be that stupid again. 

“Matt?” asks Foggy. “Is something wrong?”

He shuts his mouth again. “It’s nothing.”

…

“Dude,” says Foggy. “Dude. You will never believe this.”

Matt hasn’t stopped smelling blood in days. “Aliens fell from the sky a week ago. I think I will.”

“Captain America,” he tells him, urgently. “It’s like, the actual dude from the forties. The actual dude from the forties actually had fucking superpowers.”

Later, he can’t really explain how he reacts. 

Matt hammers his hand on the table and roars, “I knew it!”

…

The Buck v Bell decision was eight to one. Nine people were asked, nine people were consulted, nine people looked at the lines “Three generations of imbeciles is enough” and eight decided that it earned their stamp of approval.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the land. Every single person sitting on that bench was nominated by the President of the United States. Every single person was confirmed by a Senate majority. They all went to law school, passed the bar, practiced law, presided over district courts and federal courts and the Supreme fucking Court, studied the Constitution and compassion and rights and freedoms all that shit that’s supposed to make a single goddamn difference, and decided that it all boiled down to the line, “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

There was one dissenting judge. Justice Pierce Butler. He was a practicing Catholic. He logged his name in favor of feebleminded Carrie Buck, promiscuous Carrie Buck, who was raped by her guardian’s nephew and, in an entirely unrelated series of events, was suddenly considered to be too much for her foster parents to handle. He authored no opinion. He provided no reason for his dissent.

Filling in the blanks, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said, “Butler knows this is good law, I wonder whether he will have the courage to vote with us in spite of his religion.”

Because compulsion towards a higher power is the only reason a man as smart as Butler would turn up his nose at forcibly ripping out the insides of an eighteen-year-old disabled girl. 

…

He gets another chance, down the line. Foggy drags him through the streets by his arm, and guides him to sit on the step, and narrates the whole goddamn thing as if it were something anyone would do. Matt is heavy with alcohol and the world is spinning gently beneath him, and he’s so full of love he could fly. 

He wants--this, he supposes. Foggy and him and this stupid stumbling giggling love. It was easy, cauterizing off the rest of the world. No one can hurt you if no one can get close to you. No one can take advantage if no one knows you. There is a safety in it, the anonymity, the isolation. It was a lesson Matt should have never forgotten. 

He goes to Fogwell’s every other Saturday, and once a month, he lets Fogs or one of the other boys bully him into dinner. Fogs asked if he could go to Matt’s law school graduation. Matt still hasn’t decided on his answer.

But Foggy, he sees him every day. He sees him every single day and it still isn’t enough, it’s not something that tires him, not something that makes him afraid. He would have stepped back by now, had it been any other person. He would have put up more walls. 

Why hasn’t he?

Matt says, “It’s even worse for me because my senses are so, uh--”

His mouth catches up to his brain. 

It’s--he’s drunk, not even remotely close to sober, but it’s not the most drunk he’d ever been. He’d kept his secret through worse. 

He almost let it slip out from between his teeth. 

“So what?” asks Foggy, curiously. “Delicate?”

For a moment, a very serious moment, Matt considers telling him. 

Superpowers are real, and Matt has them. He couldn’t tell anyone, has never told anyone, but he wants to tell Foggy because he wants to give Foggy all of him. He’ll hand Foggy his insides and let Foggy crush them and he’ll do it because he doesn’t think Foggy is particularly inclined to do so. 

Matt has been lonely since he felt the weeping hole in his father’s head beneath his palms, and he has wanted to have someone sit next to him on a stoop and understand since the day those fucking chemicals splashed in his eyes. Foggy isn’t Captain America, but he’d take him over the good Captain any day. He trusts Foggy with all of him, with everything, and he hasn’t trusted someone with that since…

Since, well. Stick. 

Matt hums, low in his throat. “Something like that.”

… 

The other thing about the Buck v Bell decision is that Carrie Buck was not, in fact, disabled. She was an average student. There was absolutely no sign of disability of any kind, nor was there any sign that her mother had been disabled. Her mother had also been committed, of course, which led to feebleminded Carrie Buck being sent to live with foster parents, whose nephew would one day rape her. 

Her mother’s mental illness? Immorality, prostitution, and having syphilis. 

One of his classmates gets up in arms about it when they cover the case in 1L Con Law. He doesn’t remember the classmate’s name. Andrew something? Brandon, maybe? 

Andrew-something-Brandon-maybe rallies against it, the arrogance of it, the lack of due diligence. Feebleminded Carrie Buck had something precious taken from her, and they couldn’t even check for actual feeblemindness before doing so. 

He isn’t arguing for eugenics against the disabled. Matt knows that. It’s the system he’s enraged at, the abuse of power, the lack of effort displayed by all involved. If the case were argued today, Matt himself may be tempted to take a similar ground for the sake of his client. Do not use this law against her. She is not disabled. 

Still, he can’t help but cut in and say, “The decision would still be wrong had she actually been disabled.”

He doesn’t know why he did that. He didn’t even raise his hand first. 

The goddamn crickets that follow is enough for him to surmise that everyone is looking at his cane. 

…

He fucks it up, because Matt is good at that. Sometimes, he suspects it’s his only skill. 

Foggy says, “I wouldn’t have kept this from you, Matt. Not from you.”

He doesn’t know that. 

He can’t know that. 

You can’t know that until you have it. The thing people will kill you for, but not really kill you. Take out all the inconvenient pieces, the pieces that make you you , mutilate them until their hands are red with your blood and stick the mangled pieces back inside. Stitch you up and pretend there’s a beat still in your veins. If you don’t crack open the box, is the super soldier really dead? 

There are some things that people will kill for. Being the thing is--it’s--he can’t know that. 

“Yeah. I do.”

Then again, Foggy was always the better of the two of them. 

… 

Carrie Buck had a sister, who was also sterilized. Her name was Doris Buck. She went into the hospital with appendicitis and the doctors decided to save time while they had her sliced open and unconscious before them. It’s a smaller sacrifice to make. She’d be a burden. They ripped out the parts of her that they didn’t like and stitched her back up, and then didn’t tell her after it happened. She found out years later. She was trying to have kids. 

Funny, how we can lose things and not even realize it.  

… 

The thing is, Captain America is alive. He is, apparently, kicking around the streets of Washington D.C. now, and he has broad shoulders and a square jaw and smells like sweet apple pie and Truth and Good Old Fashioned American Justice. 

Matt is grown now, and he isn’t quite as lonely. Still, he thinks about it. Finding Captain America on a street, on a stoop, wherever the fuck Captain America is. He probably doesn’t live on a dead end, Captain America. Land of opportunity and all that. 

He doesn’t know what he’d say, if he found Captain America. He’s a real man and not a daydream, and he’s still fucking super cop. It wouldn’t be smart. It wouldn’t be a good idea.

Captain America probably isn’t lonely. 

He plans it out in his head, sometimes. He walks up to Captain America, finds him on his street that stretches long and far in either direction. He sits next to him on the stoop and says, “Are you ever haunted by the implications of controversial Supreme Court decision Buck v Bell?”

Hell of a conversation starter.

…

Some things we get back, and Matt has no fucking clue how, but he managed it. Karen is pressed into one side and Foggy the other, and Matt is heavy with alcohol and the world is spinning gently beneath him. He is so full of love that he could fly. 

They’re giggling about something. All piled on Matt’s bed, curled in together, and Matt can’t even remember what they’re giggling about. Things swim in and out of his mind, his head, and he doesn’t care. 

The law office of Nelson, Murdock, and Page is open for business. 

He can’t remember how they got on it. Something about Frank, something about Matt and the military’s screening process. How they’re really missing out on a batshit insane fighter demographic by not screening blind people. It’s lighthearted. No one means anything they’re saying. 

“Matt, you’d have to admit, you’d make one hell of a soldier,” giggles Karen. 

Matt can feel the warmth of alcohol pooling in her cheeks. He can feel the warmth of alcohol pooling in his own. He doesn't think about what he’s about to say. 

“I did make one hell of a solider,” says Matt.

He’s laughing when he says it. They’re all laughing. Only, after he says it, they’re not anymore. He’s the only one left laughing. 

“What do you mean?” asks Foggy, slightly more sober now. 

“You know,” says Matt. He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. “Stick. His war thing.”

There’s a beat. 

Karen sits up fully. “I thought you met Stick when you were ten.”

It makes his side feel cold, all of a sudden. Matt tries to tug her back down “I did.”

There’s something in her voice. Matt has trouble putting it to name. “But you only joined his war whatever later, right?”

“I never joined his war,” replies Matt, slightly confused. “He and Daredevil worked together a few times, I fought the same enemies, but Daredevil was never part of his army.”

At that, Foggy sits up as well, and Matt groans as the sudden shift. “Guys, forget about it. Whatever it is.”

“Matt,” says Foggy, his voice oddly tight. “When were you Stick’s soldier?”

Matt waves him off. “You know already.”

“I really don’t, buddy. Just, tell us, okay?”

“You know. When I was ten. That’s why he trained me in the first place.” He shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Matt, that’s a huge deal,” says Karen. “You--you said Stick was some crazy brutal ninja killer.”

He snorts. “He was.”

“Matt, if you were, were a soldier for him, and you were ten, then--then that’s messed up.” Foggy sounds frightened. Why does he sound frightened? “Tell me you know that, buddy.”

The implication, though, offends Matt too much to worry about it.

“I’m not going to start recruiting ten year olds, Foggy.”

“Not at all what I meant. I know you wouldn’t. But you know that he shouldn’t have, right?”

Well, duh. Stick was a huge dick. He did what was expected for someone who found a kid with no family and superpowers, and he took advantage. Doesn’t mean Matt’s going to do the same thing. Not that he knows any kids with no family and superpowers, but the principle stands. 

“We’re drunk,” says Matt, rolling his eyes. “Both of you think this is a bigger deal than it is. Just--c’mon. We were having fun.”

“Matt, I need to know that you know how messed up the things you’re saying are.”

It’s starting to irritate him, and he needs to not fuck this up again. He just got this back. He doesn’t want to fight. Still, he doesn’t need to have all of his old mistakes dredged up. 

“I was a kid,” he settles on, finally. “I was dumb. I fucked it up, okay? I knew it might happen and I let it happen anyway. I learned my lesson. Can we please move on now?”

Foggy and Karen’s heartbeat sounds odd and thunderous to his ears. 

“What do you mean,” says Karen, slowly, “that you knew it might happen?”

This conversation is endless. 

“You know, the comic book stuff. I was a nine year old kid with superpowers before anyone knew people could have superpowers. We didn’t have any money or resources. I figured if anyone found out, they’d, they’d recruit me or experiment on me or whatever. So I didn’t tell anyone.” There are words on his lips, lined up on his tongue like bullets in a chamber. He has never wanted to tell people any of this, but he wants to tell Karen and Foggy more than he’s told anyone else. “Didn’t even tell Dad. I--I was a brat. Didn’t think he’d get it. I--Jesus, I wish I told him. I wish he knew.”

“But you told Stick?” says Karen. 

“Nah. He found out. Never could figure out how, because I never told a soul.” He chuckles. “It’s funny I was, I was right in the end. Found a kid with powers and wanted a super soldier. Captain America and shit. Said it to my face and everything. Still. Let him do it to me. Thought--I don’t know, that it was okay, because he was teaching me to control my powers instead of strapping me down to a table or something. It was stupid.”

Karen and Foggy are silent. 

“I’m not going to go fight wars for anyone, guys,” Matt adds, and he cranes his head up so they can see his face. “I was dumb then. I fucked up. I learned. Just let it go.”

Slowly, Karen lays back down. She nestles her face into the side of Matt’s neck and wraps herself around his side like she’s trying to envelop him. “We’re going to talk about this in the morning. When we’re sober. We’re all going to sit down and talk then, okay?”

Matt plucks at her arm. “Karen, it’s not a big deal--”

“Tomorrow. Just--just, let’s lay here, okay? Please.”

Foggy’s heart is still beating so oddly. There’s a swish of his hair, a jerk, a gentle nod. He lays down on Matt’s other side, then twists around them so he’s got Matt in his arms and Karen clutched with one hand. He hugs Matt fiercely. 

“Yeah. Tomorrow. I--we’ll do this tomorrow.” His arms tremble. Matt doesn’t know why Foggy’s trembling. “I love you, buddy.”

“I love you too, but you’re both being ridiculous.”

Karen shushes him. She burrows down into his side deeper. “I love you guys and that’s never fucking changing.” 

Privately, Matt thinks Karen should be careful before she makes such broad statements. 

… 

Captain America’s skinny little sickly nature was absolutely vital wartime propaganda, you see. There had been an unfortunate trend towards eugenics in America prior to the war, which inspired an unfortunate trend towards eugenics in Germany prior to the war, which inspired, well. The war. Captain America was a refutation of all that. A walk back of the widespread campaigning for the eradication of the genetically undesirable which led to actual attempts at eradication of the genetically undesirable. 

Captain America. Sickly little Steve Rogers. Homegrown in Brooklyn and made strong by the best scientists in the country, and America would never turn up its nose at their best, no siree. America values all of its citizens and grows them strong, no matter their physical state. Those Nazi fucks won’t know what hit them. 

In the course of the war, Nazi Germany committed over four hundred thousand forced sterilizations.

It was inspired by the 1924 Eugenical Sterilization Act, whose first enforcement was against a feebleminded girl named Carrie Buck.  

… 

They talk. In the morning. Foggy cries and so does Karen and Matt doesn’t cry but thinks he’s supposed to. 

The sticking point is this:

Karen and Foggy insist that it wasn’t Matt’s fault. Stick, and his war, and all the pieces of himself he gave up to him willingly. He forged Daredevil in those days with Stick and carried him inside, and Matt does not know who he’d be had he not permitted Stick to hammer his rage into something dangerous. He beat down Matt’s inhibitions and sliced away at his compassion. The part of him that can beat someone into a coma, that can break bones and not want to stop--Matt made that part. Willingly. He let Stick help him craft it. Willingly. It stayed lodged in his chest ever since and Matt could never dislodge it again, and then he realized he didn’t particularly want to. 

“Matt,” says Foggy, sounding like he’s about to cry again. He tangles his hands in his fingers. “You were ten. This--this shit he did? It’s fucking cult brainwashing tactics. It’s--he abused you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Matt’s hungover. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. “I wasn’t some wide-eyed kid he was taking advantage of, Foggy. I had been planning for someone to come after me for years and I still fucking let him do it.” 

“We are going to set aside for a second how incredibly traumatic it is to have to live in fear of a shady government agency shoving you in the back of a van and exploiting you. Okay? We’re setting it aside. Putting a pin in it for another day. You were ten, Matt. You were an orphan. You had no family to advocate for you and--and I cannot emphasize this enough--you were not physically or mentally capable of advocating for yourself. You were a wide-eyed kid he was taking advantage of.”

“I already knew--”

“It is so easy for someone to manipulate a ten year old kid’s mind,” cuts in Karen. “And that’s not the kid’s fault, Matt. It’s the fault of the fucker who is abusing ten year olds.”

“Okay,” says Matt, words clipped. “Sure. Fine. I’m not ten now. So can we stop fighting about this?”

“Matt, buddy,” says Foggy, like his heart is breaking, “this isn’t a fight.”

… 

And that’s--

That’s fucking--

Yeah. 

That. 

…

Sometimes, in the daydreams, he doesn’t say anything to Captain America. He sits next to him on the stoop and rolls his cane between his hands, and Captain grips him by the arm and nods his head and they both understand in a moment. 

Soldiers recognize soldiers. 

…

The thing about Frank Castle is that he wouldn’t piss on Matt if he were on fire, and the feeling is mutual. They tolerate one another because they have to, because Karen will rip off their manhoods and make them eat it, because they’ve both fucking died and come back like Jesus Christ on Easter morning and sometimes, bigger fish need frying. 

They don’t like each other. But there is a respect. An understanding. 

Soldiers recognize soldiers. 

Frank Castle says, “Red ever tell you anything about his senses?”

Matt’s in the line of the overpriced Rand Enterprises coffee shop, and he will not be able to pay for anything there. Not from lack of funds, but rather because someone goddamn told Danny to propose to him and his fucker of an adoptive psuedo-brother decided that it was his shining moment to squeeze in every moment of sibling ribbing he missed while Danny was dicking around in an isolated mountain monastery. 

Ward Meachum took one look at the receipt for swan rental and made a company wide decree that Matthew Murdock would be welcome to complementary provisions from any Rand Enterprises food kiosk for as long as he was staying with Rand Enterprises. 

He wanted, of course, to impress upon Matthew his brother’s prowess as a provider. 

To which Foggy howled with laughter while Matt whacked him with his cane, and now Matt was stuck permanently on fucking coffee duty. Because all three of them grew up poor as shit and would never turn their nose up at free food. Well, Matt would, because it cost him his pride.

Foggy and Karen wouldn’t, because all it cost them was Matt’s pride. 

At first, Matt thinks that Frank is looking for a way around him. Which, sucks, because Karen would never betray him. 

“If you’re looking for a fight with Matt, I won’t help you.”

See? Godspeed, Karen. 

But then, Frank says, “I need to know how he manages them. If they get--dialed up, or whatever he calls it, and how he gets them back down.” He sighs. “Look, it ain’t for me, Karen, okay? It’s important. Someone’s hurting. Please.”

He feels like he was just doused in cold water with an electric zap to chase. 

He steps out of line and walks straight towards an isolated corner. He wrenches his phone from his pocket, and his hand does not shake, because Stick taught him to keep it steady. 

He texts Karen, Who’s it for?

It’s--shit, he must have found someone else. Like him. And that’s--Jesus, he doesn’t know what that is. If the powers are new--and they must be, they’d go insane if they went that long without knowing how to handle it--then… fuck. Matt doesn’t know. 

Does he--what, talk to them? That’s not exactly the smartest course of action. He doesn’t know who they are, what they want, or why they’re involved with Frank. He doesn’t know if they’re trustworthy, powers or no. With the climate how it is, it’s definitely not the best idea to reveal himself to a random stranger. People have their own agendas. He could help from a distance, and he doubts Frank would protest at Matt being far away. 

But then, it gets weird.

Because Frank digs in his heels. 

Which isn’t unusual. Frank’s the most stubborn asshole alive. He’d argue with a raincloud about the damp without batting an eye. But this? 

Frank’s a firm believer in adults ruining their own life. He would never be Matt’s intermediary, because he hates Matt and having to spend a prolonged period of time exposed to Matt. For any sane, rational adult, he’d hand them a burner with Matt’s number and tell them he was a dumbass before walking out the door. Granted, he doesn’t like him in his shit, and inviting Matt into these things always risks him getting involved, but if a grown adult decides to throw their lot in with the Devil instead of the Punisher, Frank wouldn’t give two shits--

It isn’t an adult. 

Fuck. It’s--there’s no way it’s an adult. Frank only gives this much of a shit if it involves a dog, a kid, or Karen. If whoever had powers was grown, he’d give them the warning that Matt was full of shit and let them find their own conclusions. 

But if it were a kid? Frank would see it through. He’d manage every last aspect of it, up to and including the involvement of Daredevil. He doesn’t cut corners with kids. 

And Frank only gets involved in things if he has to. If someone is in danger. If someone is after them. 

A kid with powers would have a lot of people after them. 

He has to get over there. 

“Red, I see your ugly mug and I’m putting a bullet in it.”

Frank doesn’t fucking get it, is the thing. The problem. The grand goddamn wrench thrown into the works. 

Oh, he probably gets the logistical problems. This kid is the unlucky possessor of something that very powerful men will kill for. Powers are valuable, and borderline impossible to create or replicate. It takes accidents, or methodical and extensive experimentation that rarely works twice. 

People like Matt are more valuable than vibranium, nowadays. 

If Matt had to guess, he’s running a tight ship. Keep it quiet. Keep it under control. Handle whoever’s fucking after him, get the kid stable, and cut him loose. Matt doesn’t know why he’s with Frank, but he doubts he has a family if he does. On the off chance there is family, Frank would handle the problems and ship him home. If there isn’t, Frank’s creative. 

The superpowers are a checkmark. A problem to manage, to control, to cross off the list. Keep them quiet, handle the side effects, and it isn’t a problem for Frank past that. 

He doesn’t fucking get it. 

It’ll be a problem for the rest of the kid’s goddamn life. 

If he has super senses, it will affect every single bit of him. It will wake him up when he sleeps. It will distract him when he’s awake. He’ll taste shit and crushed bugs when he eats and have to smile politely through it. He’ll smell rotting sewage from beneath the city streets and hear some awful goddamn things, and he won’t be able to tell a single living soul without risking the wrong end of a short leash. 

It’ll be lonely. 

It’ll be painful. 

It’ll hurt. 

And if Matt could talk to the kid, he could explain that. He could fucking help him. He could warn him about what people would do to him, how to not let them, tell him that it’s not his fault if they do it anyway. He--

Jesus, Matt would have given anything for Captain America on a motorcycle on his dead-end street. He would have given anything. 

This isn’t as simple as managing side effects. This is the rest of his goddamn life. Frank can’t understand that. 

Frank’s after human traffickers in Queens. A few familiar names popped up in the newspaper not too long ago, and a decent number of them were in the obituary. He must have gotten the kid from them. It’s too recent to be a coincidence. 

That’s--shit. That’s even worse. That’s a pre-existing market where demand vastly outweighs supply. If the traffickers knew he’s enhanced, then they knew he’s a top-dollar item. If they knew he’s enhanced, they would have advertised. 

That, in and of itself, is dangerous. Because buyers don’t necessarily accept the fact that they were outbid, or the fact that the sellers ended up on the wrong end of the Punisher’s pistol, or the fact that it’s a fucking child who needed to be safe and healthy and not on a godforsaken auctioneer’s block. 

They’d go after him. They’d use him. And they wouldn’t be nice about it either. 

He’s a valuable purchase, after all. They’d get their money’s worth. 

Frank needs to get back on fucking topic before Matt makes an exception to his no-kill code. 

“Would you get off it, Red? I’m handling it.”

Matt’s going to kill him. 

I want to talk to them. 

He hits send before he realizes he means it. 

It’s a… thrumming. Deep in his chest. A nervousness. The last time he was this panicked, Dex climbed in his suit and went to his childhood church to bury a knife in Karen’s chest. 

He just--wants to handle it. Whatever it fucking is. Personally. To do whatever and as much as it takes to make it go away, forever, and the kid never has to face it again. To make sure that the kid doesn’t grow up thinking about seeing how high he can climb just for the sake of the fall that follows. 

There is a kid in Frank Castle’s safehouse somewhere, and he doesn’t have to grow up imagining Captain America on a stoop. 

“Absolutely not.”

Frank is, as usual, no help whatsoever. 

It’s not exactly an easy situation either, because Matt isn’t without his own problems at the moment. He actually has enormous problems that are uniquely inconvenient for this problem. 

And it’s more than that. If Matt walks into Frank’s safehouse and picks a fight, he’ll spook the kid. And the kid has enough reasons to be spooked. 

“Found him in a shithole while cleaning up the traffickers. Enhanced. Makes taking care of the rest of his problems difficult. I picked him up because he was a kid in trouble and have him because he’s still a kid in trouble, and that’s all you need to know. And he doesn’t need an attorney, so don’t go pushing it. What he needs is to stop looking like his brain’s trying to escape out his ears. Tell me what I need to get him functional.”

There is an ache in Matt’s chest. A part of him believes he could reach inside and feel it grown into his meat, like a thorn swallowed by swollen flesh. 

It’s already started, then. The arms race, where the kid isn’t so much the competitor as the baton passed along the length of the relay. 

He’ll be afraid after this. If he wasn’t already. He’ll hide, because that’s what you do once these lessons are learned. 

It’s not as easy as being functional. Functional is a relative term. Matt could be considered functional, that's how goddamn far it can stretch. 

He can’t do anything. Not yet. Not with the government breathing down their neck. For now, it may be best to let Frank handle the situation in his own… particular way. Matt won’t let this go. 

He… fuck. He already can’t let this go. He knows he can’t.

In the meantime, there is one thing he can do for the kid. He’s effectively the only known living expert on handling super senses, because Stick is in the ground and that leaves Matt. At the very least, maybe he can help it hurt less.

He can’t help but add, If they don’t work for the kid, you send him my way. I’ll handle it.

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

He isn’t asking. 

… 

When Matt was nine years old, he would listen to his father’s heartbeat in one ear and the sound of sirens in the other, and he would feel so alone that he might as well be the man on the goddamn moon. 

Maybe that’s why it was so easy for Stick. 

… 

The kid sticks with him. Stays in his head. He’s talking to Foggy, to Karen, to Luke or to Danny or to Thaddeus fucking Ross, and he thinks, I wonder if the kid’s been sold off like a black market bazooka yet. 

Which is ridiculous, because the kid has Frank, and while Frank has many flaws, ineffectiveness is not one of them. Kid couldn’t be safer if he had the whole goddamn Marine Corps guarding him. 

Karen corners him after the third time he zones out in the middle of a meeting with the Secretary of State himself. 

“Matt, the kid’s going to be fine,” she tells him, voce sotto. “You know that he’s not going to let anything happen to him.”

“I know that.” He smiles. It feels fake on his face. “Really, Karen, I do.”

For a long moment, she’s silent. “This is really important to you, isn’t it?”

Yes. 

“It’s nothing. I just want to make sure a kid isn’t getting hurt. That’s all.”

“Is it?” asks Karen, lightly.

She hugs him before she leaves, which tells Matt how convincing he lies. 

… 

That night, his phone buzzes. It reads off Frank Castle’s number. 

The second Matt picks up, Frank says, “If you push your fucking luck, I hang up.”

Charming man, Frank. Always makes Matt feel special. 

“How is he?” Matt says instead. 

“Fine.”

Don’t hurt yourself, Castle. 

“Can I… Is he…?” 

Matt has no goddamn clue what he wants to ask. 

“You ain’t talking to him, Red. I don’t care how many times you ask.” Then, “He says thanks for the list.”

Matt swallows. Hard. With a slightly unsteady hand, he takes off his glasses and drags his fingers through his hair. 

“Did it help?”

“Dunno. He spent all day reading through it. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“It would be easier for him if I--”

“No.”

God help him, Frank makes him question his resolve to not kill more than any other man alive. Even Fisk lags behind. 

It sounds like he’s getting close to the second where Frank ends the call. Still, he can’t help but add, “He needs someone, Frank.”

“He stole my damn dog if you’re worried about his company.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It ain’t a good idea, Red,” sighs Frank. “Trust me on that.”

Frank has never been the kid who grows up as the thing that people would kill to possess.

“Frank, for once in your goddamn life, listen to me--”

Click.