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“Matty, it’s four in the morning, there had better be a good reason for this. And ‘help, I’ve fallen in a dumpster and I can’t get up’ is not a good reason. It’s a very, very bad reason, because you should not be doing things that land your bleeding ass in trash receptacles.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“Matt. Tell me you’re not bleeding in a dumpster. Because if you are I’m calling 911 right now.”
“I’m not bleeding in a dumpster.”
“Great, that’s the first step to a healthy lifestyle. Wait. No. I heard the unnecessary stress you put on that pronoun. Who’s bleeding in a dumpster, Matty? Who am I calling 911 for?”
More silence.
“Matt.”
“I don’t know. But she’s young and she’s hurt and I don’t know how to help her, Foggy.”
“Oh Matt. Fine, I’ll be there soon, just let me track your phone coordinates…we really should send whoever came up with Find My iPhone a fruit basket or something.”
“Just hurry.”
“Okay, buddy. Don’t worry; I’ll be there soon.”
…
“I’m still in favor of calling 911.”
“She’ll be fine, we just need to get her home and get her patched up.”
“I need to get you and your superhero pals LifeAlert.”
“I’m not 90 years old, Foggy. And I’m not a superhero.”
“Ah, yes, the skintight costume, the literally aggressive do-gooding, and the mask were confusing me. You’re obviously just taking your Dread Pirate Roberts cosplay too seriously.”
“Foggy.”
“Seriously, your parents are SHIELD, can’t they get you a better costume than cargo pants and a tight black shirt? You look like the love child of Kim Possible and Dread Pi-“
“-rate Roberts, I know. Can’t you just help move the girl without loudly spilling my family secrets and making fun of my clothes using pop culture references I won’t appreciate?”
“Nope.”
“I’m regretting calling you.”
“No you’re not, because if you didn’t call me for help, you’d have to call your mom and explain to her why your vigilante justice has expanded beyond stopping the occasional daylight mugging to wearing a mask and hunting down criminals like an idiot with a death-wish.”
“Fair point, counselor.”
“I know.”
A groan from the girl and they both irrationally freeze.
“Okay, let’s just get her in the car before someone hears us and thinks we’re kidnappers or some other assholes.”
“Good plan.”
…
What happened was this: the night started almost completely normally. For a given value of ‘normal’ that included Foggy’s best friend and roommate donning combat boots, a mask, and all-black ninja gear before climbing out the living room window to stalk the night like Batman, if Batman shopped at Urban Outfitters and forgot to shave for several days in a row. (“Foggy I hate shaving” “Well, Matty, option A is continuing to look like a hobo which, okay, is kind of a valid life choice if you’re going for the homeless and hipster look, or option B, shaving, or option C, growing a Tony Stark gotee just to make your Mom narrow her eyes in that scary way and mutter in Russian. The choice is yours, my friend.” “…fine, I’ll shave.”).
And okay, there were a lot of things about Matt’s stalking of the night that Foggy wasn’t 100% comfortable with. For example: the fact that they were in law school now, probably expected to act like responsible grownups who kind-of-sort-of got the law and definitely expected to know better than going around dispensing, or helping with the dispensing of, vigilante justice. But that paled in comparison to the horrifying truth that Natasha didn’t know about this and Matt wasn’t planning on telling her maybe ever. And if Natasha didn’t know, then Clint didn’t know because he couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret from her for more than 24 hours.
Matt justified (ha, see that, justified? That was some gold-star punning right there.) his shoddy life-choices by saying that if his mom was okay with the occasional spot of daytime vigilante-ing when he was in street clothes she would probably be totally fine with costumed crusading. Of course, this logic had more holes in it than a colander and was not really up to Matt’s perfect-GPA standards, but Foggy wasn’t going to rat out his bestie and Matt wasn’t going to fess up so here they were.
The point was; the night began fairly normally. Homework, mindless reality TV stunningly narrated by Foggy, (Matt had a horrible weakness for singing competitions because they were nearly all vocal and he liked to argue with the judges), and then Matt would go off to jump from rooftop to rooftop like the Mary Poppins chimney sweeps and Foggy would read or watch more TV and eventually go sleep before Matt skulked home, hopefully not needing medical attention.
Yeah. This was normal.
Whatever, Matt was his best friend and a mostly awesome roommate, so. Also, after 4 years of undergrad and a semester of law school together they kind of didn’t know how to live with anyone else outside The Family. (Foggy liked pronouncing it like that, emphasizing the capital letters because it made Matt roll his eyes and it kind of made it sound like the combined forces of the Nelsons and the Romanov-Barton-Murdocks were some kind of mafia powerhouse and that was hilarious.)
But sometimes there were nights like this one, where Matt called needing a ride because he was too tired or battered to safely parkour home or because he needed Foggy’s help with something and because Foggy was a sucker, he’d go and he’d help.
Admittedly, ‘finding a person in a dumpster’ was not the norm for these outings.
…
The girl was young, wearing top of the line Under Armor work out gear that had definitely seen better days (dirty, torn, and ripe even to Foggy’s un-enhanced nose. Poor Matt was probably on the edge of a headache from the garbage-stench), and carrying a…bow. A bow and a quiver with a handful of arrows in it. A nice bow. A nice quiver too. Just nice Paleolithic-style gear altogether.
Foggy blamed overexposure to Matt’s insane family for the fact that he immediately recognized the sweet little recurve bow for what it was. Also the brand. God, that was an expensive bow. Who the hell was this girl?
“Who the hell is this girl?” he hissed at Matt as he spread a tarp over the couch (hey, it was a nice couch, Matt’s innate snobbery and damned super-senses prevented them from buying some piece of $50 crap from Goodwill like normal broke law students), Foggy wasn’t letting anyone get dumpster juice or bodily fluids on this couch. Tarps could be hosed off and come out good as new. Couches? Not so much.
“I have no idea,” Matt muttered back, “but I heard the tail end of whatever fight she was in and showed up to take down the assholes who threw her in a dumpster but not before they – ”
Foggy sighed, “- Commenced with the dumpster-throwing,” he finished Matt’s sentence for him. “God, who the hell would do that? I don’t know if you can tell or not, but she’s got to be around 15, she’s way too young to be picking fights with baddies.”
“I picked a fight with Clint when I was 12.”
“Yes, Matty, we know, but Clint wasn’t going to beat you to death and throw you in a public trash receptacle.”
“I didn’t know that,” Matt muttered mutinously, but Foggy let it go. Matt wasn’t serious, he was worried. Foggy didn’t need heartbeat-hearing superpowers to tell that. Mask-less and glasses-less, hair still all mussed from the bandanna, Matt looked young, tired and fretful, a sharp crease folding the skin between his eyebrows into a deep furrow. His vacant hazel eyes looked flat and darker than normal in the buttery lamplight.
“Hey,” he shook the girl’s shoulder, “Hey, wake up.”
Her face twisted, pale skin painted a sickly color by the lamp’s yellow light, dark eyebrows scrunching and twitching as her eyelids fluttered and she groaned. Suddenly, eyes snapping open, pupils flaring wide, irises jumping as she scanned the unfamiliar room, she sat bolt upright and tried to leap to her feet, hand scrabbling for her bow and quiver. Uncertain on her legs, the motion making her face spasm in pain, she groaned and folded back down onto the couch. “Where,” she panted through her teeth, still tense and struggling against her own weakness, “Where the hell am I and who the fuck are you two?”
“Not kidnappers?” Foggy offered, realizing how incredibly sketchy this whole situation seemed.
“Great, yeah, super helpful, creepy man I’ve never fucking met before,” the girl snarled.
“I’m Matt and that’s Foggy,” Matt offered, “And you’re injured.”
“Not my name, but good shot at stating the obvious,” the girl quipped, hunched over with pain, one arm wrapping around her abdomen. Foggy shot a look at Matt, his friend must have picked up on it with his radar-whatever because he mouthed ‘cracked ribs’.
“We found you in a dumpster,” Matt explained.
“Well, Matt did. I’m just his driver. And y’know, hindsight, this whole sequence of events and decisions was incredibly dumb and we’re gonna be lucky if she doesn’t call the cops on us.”
Matt was giving him his patented Matt Murdock But Foggy I was Doing the Right Thing look. Foggy sighed theatrically in his direction.
“I heard your fight with those men, I knew you were injured, that you needed help and by the fact that you engaged those men first, I assume you wouldn’t want a hospital’s questions. So I called Foggy and we brought you back here.” It sounded so reasonable when Matt said it. He’d have juries eating out of his hand if and when they managed to make it to the Bar Association.
The girl narrowed her eyes at them. “How can I trust you?”
Matt shrugged, “You can’t. But we do have first aid supplies, a shower and a washing machine. I can even replenish your stock of arrows.”
Further suspicious facial expressions from the girl, “You haven’t been stalking me, have you? Because this just got ten billion times creepier.”
“No,” Matt looked perplexed by the very suggestion, “My stepfather’s an…archery enthusiast. He tends to leave stuff here on accident and forget this is where he left it. He won’t miss some arrows.”
Foggy poked him in the side, “Matty, not everyone’s stepfathers are crazy archers,” he turned his attention back to their guest, “But he’s right, Clint won’t care if you take some. He won’t even notice.” Probably not, at least.
She pressed her lips together, “I’d like some of that first aid stuff now if you don’t mind. I’ve got some cuts that are still bleeding.”
“I know,” Matt said bluntly.
That got him an equal parts curious and suspicious look.
Matt shrugged, “Blood has a strong smell.”
“Weird,” she said, “But I can roll with it. Just bring on the BandAids.”
Matt got that expression that tended to pop up right before he went into full-on lecture mode. The Look tended to pop up most often when Matt was going to complain about The State of the Justice System, quote someone old, smart and dead, bitch about the public perception of ballet (yeah, that one threw Foggy through a loop too, but the one time he got a chance to watch Matt and Natasha dance together was kind of sort of life-changingly beautiful so he let his buddy pontificate on how it was ‘dancers’ not ‘ballerinas’ all he wanted), and of course, the Proper Administration of First Aid.
Foggy figured retreat was the better part of valor, and fled to the kitchen to make them all hot beverages while Matt fussed over their new stray.
…
The girl’s name was Kate and she was 16 and she didn’t want to go home or tell them any other personal information.
Foggy figured that was fair enough. Matt looked sort of miffed, like it somehow offended him that in a world where he typically knew everything about everyone whether he wanted to or not that there was some fragment of information that escaped him. Foggy privately thought it was pretty damn funny but kept that to himself.
Kate, ribs taped and wounds sanitized to death (seriously, if germs were heretics, Matt was the Spanish Inquisition and there were no survivors), the worst of them stitched and bandaged, was sent off to shower with strict instructions not to get any of her bandages or stitches wet on pain of pain. They gave her one of Natasha’s old t-shirts Matt had packed by accident the last time he stayed at his parents’ place and some of Matt’s sweats that had fallen victim to Matt’s terrible laundry skills sometime during undergrad and were now pale pink and too short (Matt still refused to part with them, though, saying they were too soft to give away and that he didn’t care what color they were, even if it was blotchy and terrible like all laundry stains).
While the shower ran in the next room Foggy swirled the dregs of his blueberry tea in his mug and wondered what the hell they were going to do next. Matt was brooding and occasionally sipping at his ginger ginseng tea and clearly resisting the urge to pace.
“You want to pace, don’t you? I should get you a frilly handkerchief, buddy.”
Matt’s face did that thing where his nose crinkled and took the rest of his features with it. “Lace itches.”
“Not to use, you heathen. To wring in your hands and wave about dramatically while you pace back and forth and mutter about children these days because you are someone’s maiden aunt in some period drama minus the hoop skirt.”
“I dunno,” Kate limped back in, freshly showered, dark hair damp and dripping, sweats rolled up at the hips and ankles, shirt too loose in the chest but otherwise a decent fit, “I think he could rock a hoop skirt.”
Matt gave them both a pained look. Well, a pained face. There was no actual looking.
Foggy held up his hand for a hi-five.
Kate gave him a look. An actual looking look.
“You made him do the face, now you get a hi-five. Come on, you know you want to.”
She rolled her eyes but slapped his palm anyway; “You do realize that creep-o frat bros have officially made the phrase ‘you know you want to’ extremely awful, right?”
“What? Really?” Foggy was actually kind of surprised they’d sink that low, “Lame. Creep-o frat bros ruin everything.”
“I know, right?”
“How exactly do you know anything about any kind of ‘frat bro’, Kate?” Matt had on his Natasha-voice, which Foggy was 99.9% sure was going to evolve into his Lawyer-voice, and was furrowing his brows magnificently. Maiden aunt, seriously.
Kate raised her eyebrows at him; “Seriously?” she turned to Foggy, “Is he for real?”
Foggy shrugged, “Studies would indicate.”
She sighed, “I’m a moderately hot girl at a private high school for the rich and the talented, I get invited to a lot of college parties. And dear old dad and wife number whatever don’t care, so,” she made a vague hand gesture.
Matt looked vaguely horrified. Make that a puritan maiden aunt. “I’m honestly not sure which is more dangerous, a sixteen year old girl at one of those parties or a sixteen year old girl fighting criminals in back alleys.”
“Hey, don’t be a chauvinist asshole,” she poked him in the chest and he glared. Not a strong glare, sort of a mellow, grumpy-cat face with a side of Bagheera from The Jungle Book.
“Hey, don’t go places where you can get roofied or beaten up and thrown in a dumpster.”
“Men can get roofied too, and I’m pretty sure you’ve been dumpster-diving at least once, buddy.”
“A girl is statistically more likely - ”
“Guys! As exciting as this conversation is getting, can we please not stage an episode of Ultimate Beatdown in my living room?” Foggy interceded mainly because no matter how good Matt’s intentions were, he was doing nothing but pissing Kate off and even after only knowing the girl a few hours, Foggy was pretty sure she was tiny ball of fists and fury who would not hesitate to tackle Matt if he kept antagonizing her.
God, it was like he had two Matts in his living room. Not cool, universe. Keeping one Matt out of trouble was hard enough!
They both glared at him.
“I bet you’re the kind of chauvinist jerk who thinks he’s a decent, chivalrous guy because his girlfriend lets him get away with crap like that,” Kate challenged Matt, indicating the t-shirt she was wearing as she spoke.
“What does the shirt have to do with anything?” He demanded, apparently having picked up some of the gesture.
“Clearly you’re having regular enough sleepovers with a person of the female persuasion that she’s got a shirt here!”
“What? That’s my mom’s shirt!”
“Oookay, wow, taking your assigned reading a bit far, aren’t you, Oedipus?”
Matt legitimately spluttered. It was great. Foggy wondered if the State of New York would let two first year law students adopt a stray teenager the way Matt had adopted the stray cat that kept showing up on their roof. (Matt said the cat’s name was Chekhov, Foggy had assumed this was a Star Trek reference until Matt dragged him to an art house production of The Cherry Orchard then wouldn’t shut up about translation theory and the nuances that were lost when it was translated out of its original Russian.)
“I’m blind, I accidentally packed it the last time I stayed at my parents’ place!”
“Yeah…sure…” Kate was totally fucking with him. And it was awesome. Just the traumatized, horrified look on Matt’s face was worth it. Foggy was choking on laughter and this was the best thing to have happened in like, months. They should rescue teenage vigilantes more often. He decided to say as much. Kate looked smug. Matt just looked exhausted and resigned.
“I just don’t want a dead teenager on my conscience,” he sighed.
Kate rolled her eyes, but something in her shoulders softened. “Listen, it’s all good. 90% of what I just said was me screwing with you, okay? I still think it’s kind of jerky of you to imply that I’m automatically a sub-par superhero just because I’m a girl…”
“That was not what I was saying at all!” Matt protested and she stopped, one supercilious eyebrow raised.
“Well. Go on.”
“I was being a jerk about your age, not your gender!”
“So you admit you were being a jerk?”
“So you’ll admit you were wrong?”
“Oh god, Matty, she’s the little sister you’ve always needed,” Foggy interjected.
They both threw their hands up in exasperation at the same time.
This was awesome.
…
Kate ended up crashing on their couch, but was gone by the time Foggy staggered out of his room the next morning. Matt was half-asleep at the kitchen counter, the cabinets taking most of his weight as he slumped against them and half-heartedly slurped his coffee.
Foggy’s morning greeting of ‘hey, where’s Kate?’ was met with tired grumbles (Matt could be a functional human in the mornings, just 97% of the time he chose not to because he was a brat) and a hand pointing in the general direction of the counter, where a note waited for him. Foggy picked it up and scanned its contents.
“Seriously? She thinks she’s getting off that easily?” he said indignantly, “She doesn’t get to leave a note saying ‘thanks, don’t try to contact me’ then James-Bond off into the night! That’s not playing fair! She’s going to get herself killed or maimed or killed and maimed! Matt! Wake up more and be affronted with me!”
“S’okay, I’m gonna follow her around tonight, make sure she’s okay.”
“I’d say good idea, but then it sounds like I condone stalking underage people and that’s wrong, so, yeah. You get the picture.”
Matt grumbled some more and went back to half-dozing over his coffee.
…
“Where are you living?”
“Gah! Holy shit, shadow-man, you can’t just sneak up on a person like that. One: totally rude. Two: creepy as fuck. Three: I almost shot you, you idiot.”
Matt sighed, “Hello Kate, please don’t shoot me.”
“Better, not best. What’s up, weirdo?”
“I wanted to make sure you weren’t homeless or dead.”
“Aw, you really know how to make a girl feel special. Don’t worry, amigo. I’m taken care of. I filched Dear Old Dad’s credit card before running off to stalk the night, so I’m crashing at all the ritziest hotels in the meantime.”
“And you couldn’t use said credit care to buy some decent body armor?”
“Hey, you are not one to talk, Mr. Cargo Pants. You look like Kim Possible.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
A moment of awkward non-conversation and then, “So you’re fine?”
“Yep. Not homeless, not dead. We’re all good here.”
“Hmm. Get some body armor.”
“Hypocrite!”
…
“One of the credit cards I… borrowed got cut off. They’ll be wary the next few days, can I lay low here?”
“Fine.”
“Thanks, Matt.”
“This doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
“Nope. Vigilante allies, maybe.”
“Coworkers.”
“Definitely.”
…
“You brought me a sandwich on patrol?”
“What? Foggy made me start carrying food around with me after that one time I passed out. I figured you should be well-fed too.”
“That is…weirdly considerate.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
…
“Your hand-to-hand sucks.”
“Your aim is terrible.”
“My aim is excellent.”
“Yeah, with sticks.”
“And tell me, Kate, what exactly are arrows?”
“More than sticks and you know it, you smug jerk!”
…
“Okay, so this looks bad…”
“Kate!”
“Really bad…but it’s mostly not human blood? I chased a guy. He ran through one of those hipster butcher shops. There was a vat of pig’s blood and now I look like an extra from a Shakespearean tragedy.”
“ ‘Out dammed spot’ ”
“Of course you know Shakespeare, Matty,” Foggy sighed, approaching the window and fire escape.
“Yeah, can I just come in an shower? I don’t want to explain pig’s blood to housekeeping.”
“You know, my mom wanted me to be a butcher…”
“Foggy, we know,” Matt and Kate managed in unison.
…
So somehow Matt and Foggy’s crappy apartment had turned into a vigilante rest stop. Kate would never stay for long, and never elaborated on her past and family beyond her dad being filthy rich and an asshole. Matt hadn’t really supplied her with much, if any, information on his family, so he supposed fair was fair.
Although he had never really factored in the chance that the newspaper might pick up on the similarities between his new ally and his archery-prone stepparent.
“Matt, Matty, this is too great.”
“What?” Matt unplugged his headphones and turned his face towards a positively gleeful Foggy.
“Little Kate’s a celebrity now. She’s on the front page. Your stepdad, too.”
Oh god. Dread pooled, cold and solid in Matt’s stomach. “Read it to me?” he asked numbly.
“Okay, here goes. Bear in mind, it’s the Bugle.” He cleared his throat dramatically: “Okay, here we go: ‘A NESTLING FOR HAWKEYE? Our favorite arrow-themed hero seems to have picked up a chick, and this one’s just as dangerous with a bow as he is. Who is Hawkeye 2.0? Is she the original’s apprentice? Or is she his daughter come to police New York too?’ Well, it goes on, but most of that is just speculation and some mildly gross objectification of Kate and her, admittedly questionable from a body-armor perspective, life choice to wear a sports bra and workout pants to bring the hurt.”
‘Hawkeye’ was an unfortunate phenomenon that came about only because SHIELD did not have the foresight to send Clint somewhere interesting and deadly when Natasha was busy, instead of leaving him to his own destructive impulses. During Matt’s sophomore year of undergrad a bored and lonely Clint threw on some tactical gear (with a lovely purple motif), grabbed his bow and arrow and took on a gang leader or two. When a bystander to his minor heroics asked for his name, Clint blanked, panicked, and went with his code name. Hawkeye.
So now Hawkeye was some kind of urban hero.
Matt wasn’t jealous. He was not.
Of course the day the article came out he found himself fielding a call from Clint.
“What the hell? Why do I have a nestling?”
“I don’t know, Clint. I would tell you, but apparently I’m not your favorite child anymore.”
“Matt. Come on, I need to know what’s up with this new kid before she hurts herself trying to be me. I’d do it, but I’m technically supposed to be undercover right now.”
“Nope, I’m no longer your favorite so you have no hold over me.” Matt was grinning into the receiver and he could hear Foggy muttering, too quiet for the phone to pick up but plenty loud enough for Matt, ‘Matty, you are terrible’, which just made him grin harder.
…
Matt glared at Kate, “You have broken ribs.”
“No I don’t,” she claimed, but he could hear the bones shift and grind as she breathed.
“Liar.” He snapped, stalking forward. God, was he pissed. Matt could hear his pulse rushing and roaring through his ears, feel his heart rattle in his chest, smell the blood drying on his knuckles. His gloves were torn, the left thumb pulling away at the seam. He’d have to buy a new pair this weekend. His right knee popped and cracked and he did not wince. He’d have to ice it when he got home and go easy on it for the next few days. Behind him the assorted scum he’d beaten off of Kate groaned and he didn’t even try to resist it when something dark and vicious inside him told him to whip around and slam his boot into the man’s shoulder, listening to the joint crack and the tendons tear.
“I was fine,” Kate reiterated and Matt wanted to scream. He could feel a hot, harsh knot of emotion clawing up his insides, beating beneath his sternum like a second heart made out of barbed wire and rage.
“No, you weren’t,” he growled, “Don’t lie to me Kate, those men wanted to kill you. You let them drive you into a corner. You didn’t have any room to maneuver and you didn’t have any way to get away unless you fucking learned to fly since the last time we talked. And you fucking knew I would be out here and you didn’t think that maybe you needed to call me for some fucking backup.” Matt’s voice was level, even and controlled. He didn’t shout, he never shouted if he could help it. His own voice was loud enough, screaming never got a point across the same way a few well-phrased words spoken at a reasonable level could.
‘Always make them stop and listen to you, Polygraph. Power is making everyone shut up so they can hear you better, not screaming over their noise.’
Natasha knew what she was talking about.
“I would have been fine,” Kate insisted, but she sounded less certain now, more scared. Her heart fluttered like a bird. The part of Matt that wasn’t howling in useless rage, the part that wasn’t repeating ‘gotta get to Kate, gotta save Kate’ over and over again, a fear-filled mantra he couldn’t turn off yet, hoped she wasn’t afraid of him now. Even though she should be.
“You could have died,” he repeated.
“And no one would have known what happened to me, what a tragedy. The next great New York mystery. Dear old Dad would get so much airtime being grief-stricken. What a boost for business.”
“No,” Matt snapped, “Wrong. I would have known exactly what happened to you, and I would have known that I didn’t make it in time to save you.” Another gunshot, another night, another death in a back alley. Another Matt Murdock. Another shard of his fractured family gone.
That brought her up short. She was shaking. He could hear her skin buzzing against her filth-stained workout gear. Her hands flexed on her bow, sticky with sweat and shivering with leftover adrenaline and fear. “Matt.” She sounded so young. He wanted to protect her. Take her home and feed her and water her and teach her how to fight the dark things that moved behind her eyes. He wondered if this was how Natasha felt about him when he first staggered into her life.
‘Look, Mom, I brought home a stray too. Can we keep her?’
“Come on,” he jerked his head, moving out of the alley, stepping over the scum he’d beaten senseless. She followed behind him, grabbing his hand in hers, dragging him back or pulling herself forward; either way they collided. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his shoulder. Just for a moment. Just long enough for her to take a ragged breath and put her armor back in place. He patted her head, suddenly awkward with proximity.
“Let’s go home, kid.”
She let go and stepped away and forward, standing beside him.
“Okay.”
…
“Dude, you know I’m cool with your little sister crashing on our couch indefinitely, but aren’t people going to come looking for her? I mean, she says her dad’s rich, right? I really don’t want to get accused of kidnapping. Somehow I don’t think that would be much of a career boost.”
“I’m right here, you know,” Kate protested, “And no one’s going to come looking for me. Dad’s been globetrotting with wife number whatever for like, the past year. He probably thinks I’m still at boarding school where he left me.”
“Speaking of which,” Foggy was on a roll. And braiding Kate’s hair. Because Foggy’s extensive experience with his own younger sisters had apparently turned him into some sort of braiding savant. Which was, according to Kate, freaking awesome. Matt, having short hair and no real wish to change that state of affairs, had no real opinion on the matter. “What are you doing about school, young lady?” Foggy’s absurd accent on the ‘young lady’ had Kate laughing like the teenager she actually was.
“Worried the boarding school’s going to come looking for me?” she asked.
“Um, yeah, this is serious business. Stop moving your head. I really don’t want to go down for kidnapping.”
“Well don’t worry, I made sure the paperwork didn’t go through. I’m not techinically enrolled. If my father actually does try to check in the ensuing confusion should give me enough time to figure something else out. I’m a junior this year so I took the high school qualifying exam last year. Technically I’m cleared to graduate, I just need a few credits. Or I could just take the GED when I turn seventeen.”
“Why don’t you get emancipated?” Matt asked from the kitchen where he was putting together a dinner that was not Kraft mac n’ cheese, because he was not a troglodyte, Foggy, really. Also Kraft anything kind of tasted like really greasy rubber.
Kate shrugged, “That’d be really public and messy and I kind of want to just sort of…vanish into the night.”
“That makes zero sense,” Matt said flatly, chopping vegetables into perfect wafer-thin slices while staring straight ahead. Kind of like a robot. Watching Matt cook was sort of like watching an iron chef android at work. Totally awesome and more than a little intimidating.
Kate sighed, “Me getting emancipated would be all over the press within a day, because, well, Dad. And I’d have to get his signature or forge it in a state and town with really lax authorities, and either way it’d turn into a circus. Or, he’d say ‘no’ because he’s a control freak and I’d be stuck. So, fingers crossed I can vanish into the night and ride out the next year and a half until I turn eighteen.”
Matt shrugged, “Makes sense.”
“What part of that made sense?” Foggy asked.
Matt shrugged and ate a carrot slice, “You’ve always had a good family, Foggy,” he said, voice relaxed, non-judgmental, “After my dad died, before my mom adopted me I would have seriously considered getting emancipated or even running away before I turned eighteen.”
“Aw, Matty.” Kate snuck a glance behind her. Foggy’s face was set in lines of sympathy that might have looked fake on someone else, but not with Foggy. Everything about Foggy was sincere.
“I was not a happy child the months after my dad’s death,” Matt ate another carrot slice and moved on to chopping celery, “The world was constantly exploding around me, I was miserable in every way and I didn’t have anything tying me to the orphanage. I actually ran away the day I met Mom,” he chuckled wryly, “I ran away only to crash into her. And she brought me home, eventually.” It was easy to see what he meant by ‘home’, and it wasn’t the orphanage.
“How old were you when you ran away?” Kate asked, tentative but direct. Foggy wrapped a rubber band around the end of her braid and tucked it into the braid-crown-thingy he’d constructed on her head.
“Ten.”
“Oh Matt.”
Foggy shared a look with Kate and they both got off the floor and mob-hugged Matt.
“I’m a blind man holding a knife, guys, this group hug thing could have taken a dark turn.”
“Shut up and feel the love, moron,” Kate groused.
“Worst little sister ever,” he set down the knife and flicked her in the forehead, “And you are a terrible influence,” he directed at Foggy, “I’m firing you and hiring a new best friend.”
“Good luck with that, Matty.”
“Get out of this family while you still can,” Matt advised Kate grimly.
“Too late. You’ve already given me little sister designation. I take that shit seriously.”
“Language.”
“Fuck you,” she said cheerfully and squeezed him tighter. Damn, archers were strong. Matt gave up and hugged them both back.
…
“So why the vigilante stuff?” Matt asked one night while Kate was providing him with sniper cover as he parkoured around being broke Batman.
“Um, would it be weird to say I kind of wanted to do what Hawkeye does?”
“A little, yes. That is my stepfather you’re talking about.” He’d given her a vague outline of who his parents were and what they did; a conversation that culminated with Kate bullying him into fessing up that yes, his ‘archery enthusiast’ stepfather was the Hawkeye, and yes that was pretty cool.
“I’m so excited to meet the rest of the family.” Matt could hear Kate’s crooked grin curling around the words.
“I’m so glad they’re both deep undercover.” He said dryly, just to antagonize her.
She ignored his efforts, “You’ve got to tell me who your mom’s pretending to be! Is she famous? Famous-adjacent?”
“What does that even mean?”
“You know, hangs out with famous people but isn’t actually famous. Like personal assistants and the scientists who share lab space with Nobel-prize winners and stuff.”
“You’re so weird.”
“I’m comfortable with that. So. Yeah. Hawkeye. I guess this has to do with him being undercover now? Which, we are talking about that later, by the way, I want to know what they actually do that requires being so deep undercover they can’t take phone calls. Anyway, right after I ran away I noticed that the Hawkeye spottings had slowed down and all the reported ones weren’t actually legit and I realized that he’d stopped doing his thing. And, I dunno, I figured if he’d had to stop for some reason I should help out, pick up the slack and fight the good fight while he was out of action. Seemed better than binging on reality tv and room service. At least this way I’m contributing something instead of being another useless person.”
“That’s very admirable, Kate,” Matt said after a moment of silence. Then, “I’m teaching you hand-to-hand combat and ballet.”
“Awesome! Wait, what?”
“I’m teaching you ballet and hand-to-hand. Dance helps with hand-eye coordination, flexibility and strength.”
“I already know some ballet. Spoiled rich girl, remember?”
“Not like I know it.”
“Um. What.”
“In Soviet Russia, you don’t learn ballet, ballet learns you.”
“That raises so many more questions than it answers, thank you.”
…
Clint’s mission ended early. Matt was not aware of this until he got a call from his stepfather (in the middle of class, which earned him quite a few glares from peeved classmates and the kind of look from his professor that told him just what this disruption was doing to his participation grade). Matt, knowing that Clint (probably) wouldn’t call unless it was urgent, went out to the hall to answer.
“Matthew Barton-Romanov-Murdock, why is there a teenage girl menacing me with a bow and arrow?”
Shit, Kate. “Um, why would I know the answer to that question?” He asked faux-casually, “And that’s not my real last name and you know it.”
“Because she’s in your apartment and I will make that a thing, kid; see if I don’t.”
“That last thing might be a little difficult…”
“Ha-ha, quit dodging the question. Teenage girl. Menacing. With a subpar bow. And my arrows. I am offended. Like, I don’t know what’s going on, or what specifically offends me about this whole thing, but I’m pretty sure I’m offended.”
In the background Matt could hear a staticky Kate yell “Fuck you, weirdo, my gear is excellent.”
Matt pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered how badly it would murder his grade for the semester if he just left class right now to parkour across the city and diffuse the tension between his two favorite strays.
“That’s Kate. Kate, meet Clint, Clint meet Kate.”
“Not helpful, kid.”
Matt sighed, “Put me on speakerphone.”
“You got it.” A staticky rustle and he could hear both Clint and Kate even clearer than before, “So. Explanation.”
“Yo, Matt, this guy’s not the victim here, he’s got a pretty mean handheld crossbow.”
“Kate, that’s Clint. You’re not allowed to shoot him; he’s my stepfather. Clint, that’s Kate. You’re not allowed to shoot her; she’s my fake little sister.”
“That introduces more questions than it answers, kid.”
Matt sighed. Fuck it, he’d do an extra credit something later and save his grade. “Guys, just, minimum violence. I’m heading home; I’ll be there soon. Remember, minimum violence.”
He hung up on mixed grumbling.
…
Of course by the time he got home, the archers had ordered pizza and were fighting over the remote like children, so he probably didn’t need to run out of Dr. Aberdeen’s class but whatever. At least Clint ordered from that good place that made their own everything and put garlic in all of it.
It would have been pretty awesome until Clint interrupted a rerun of American Idol (which he and Matt binge-watched whenever Natasha wasn’t around to make fun of them) to say, “Oh, and your mother’s going to kill you when I tell her what you’ve been up to so be ready for that.”
“What?” Matt blinked. It was not a happy blink.
“Yeah, Hawkeye junior told me everything. It’s one thing to break up the occasional mugging or holdup, but running around the city antagonizing gangsters with no body armor and no plan? Yeah, you’re going to end up dead. The only reason I’m not yelling at you is because I’m the chill parent and I know Nat’s gonna make you suffer.”
Matt handed Kate a pillow and said, “Smother me, please.”
“Um, no, bro. You’ve got to be alive to protect me from your scary mom. Also, your stepdad is Hawkeye. And I’m hanging out on the couch, eating pizza and watching shit tv with Hawkeye. I kind of owe you, I need to keep you alive to pay you back.”
“You’re horrible and I hate you,” Matt groaned and flopped his head back onto the back of the couch.
“That’s the spirit, son,” Clint was grinning. Matt could hear it.
…
It was actually really terrible that Clint couldn’t rat Matt out to Natasha until she was out of deep cover, although at the time it felt pretty excellent. Because if Clint had been able to tattle on him like he wanted, what happened a few days after Clint’s return might have been avoided.
“I don’t think going out there is a good idea, buddy,” Foggy said, “Clint already told you to put the stupid stunts on hold until your mom and Phil could get you some body armor and maybe a new brain because turns out, people other than me think this vigilante thing is a potentially life-ending hobby.”
“Foggy, I’ll be fine,” Matt said tersely, tying on his mask.
“Matt, even Kate is putting your Batman-and-Robin shtick on hold for now. Do you really want to be making dumber decisions than a teenager?”
“Foggy, I’ll be fine,” Matt reiterated, tying on his combat boots with swift, jerky movements.
“I’m just saying, this is probably – ”
“Foggy, I can hear the traffickers and I need to go now.”
He could hear Foggy shift. He wasn’t happy, but he was letting Matt go. “Fine. Don’t die.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Promise.”
“What?” Matt paused at the window, halfway onto the fire escape.
“Promise you won’t die.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now go save those girls.”
And Matt does. He saves those girls but he wasn’t paying enough attention, his brain was too full, too busy chewing over the conversation he was going to have with his mom about this, pondering the implications of, well, every decision he’d made the past few years, and he missed it. He let someone get in too close and then the knife was in his side, caught in the muscle over and around his left hip, pulling and oozing a thin stream of blood every time he moved, but he couldn’t take the damn thing out or he’d bleed out. So he left it in and he beat them down and yelled at the girls to run. He listened the painful stagger-slap of their feet on the pavement, making sure they got to the busier streets, where they’d be safer.
And that might have been fine. He’d have crawled home or maybe to the ER, he wasn’t the fun kind of hero, not like Hawkeye. People really weren’t talking about the man in black’s heroics, he could have stashed the mask somewhere and just said he was mugged. They’d have believed that.
But he was slow. The blood was roaring in his head, drowning everything else out, heartbeat shatteringly loud in his eardrums, thrumming through him like the bass line at a bad party. He didn’t sense the ambush until he was already up to his neck in it. The first few strikes he blocked, swerving and ducking, translating their momentum into punishment, letting them hit the ground hard.
Normally it would have been so easy.
But the knife in his hip (it was short and stubby, a box-cutter maybe, not long enough to get really twisted up in the muscles, nowhere near enough length to hit bone, but enough to stick in him and slow him down) limited him, and the hot-cold starburst of pain was slowly fading to white noise and the tingles shooting all the way down to the sole of his foot were a sure sign that more numbness was coming and coming quickly.
Someone got in a lucky hit, slamming a foot or a fist right into the knife itself and he went down. They were all around him, kicking at his chest and shoulders. He tried to curl into a ball and roll away like a child being harassed on the playground, but that made his entire left side scream in pain. He lashed out, risking exposing his stomach to grab ankles and knees and yank the thugs off balance, sending them crashing to the ground, down here in the dirt with him.
But he wasn’t Natasha. He wasn’t even Clint. He was just a little blind boy and the world was trying to crush him all over again.
He wondered what it’d be like to get knocked out. It’d never happened to him before. Sighted people talked about the world dimming, going dark. He wondered if he’d get anything like that, any warning at all, or if everything would just…stop. Because his world was already dark. In more ways than one.
The world seemed to be fading around him, but he thought he heard a shout and the hum of bowstrings.
That would be nice. To go out listening to something like that.
…
“YOU FUCKING MORON!”
Matt regretted waking up pretty much instantaneously. He was in SHIELD medical (he could smell their specific blend of cleaning chemicals), or some off-brand version of it set up in some place that smelled suspiciously of fast food and sweat. So probably one of their off-site clinics set up for agents that couldn’t return to base for whatever reason.
That meant Phil was involved.
There was no way this could end well for Matt.
But at least on the plus side, Kate was here and Kate was yelling at him, so she was fine.
“Hello to you too, Kate.”
“All those times you were sooo high and mighty; ‘Kate don’t go out without backup’, ‘Kate, you could have died’, ‘Kate, remember to be home before curfew’! God, you were like my mother, except not, because I’m pretty sure you were acting like a good mother and not, like, you know, a blood-relative of mine. And now, Captain Hypocrite, look what you did. Look where you are. Look at your choices.”
“Well, that would be a little difficult for me.”
“NO BLIND JOKES OUTTA YOU! I’m not done being mad yet!”
“Kate, I’m fine,” he moved to sit up and then didn’t because his entire left side from mid-chest to knee was completely numb. A chill chased itself across his skin at the sensation. He hated numbness, hated it with a burning passion. Losing a sense does that to you when you’re blind.
“You nearly died,” she parroted his words from all those weeks ago back to him.
“How did you find me?”
“Foggy told on you. Clint sewed a tracker into one of the pockets of you cargo pants days ago. We tracked you down in time to save your stupid ass.”
Matt wondered if he should be mad at Foggy and Clint. But he must be on some really good painkillers because he couldn’t really summon up the energy to be mad or even a little annoyed. Kate was probably right; he decided magnanimously, Foggy’s meddling probably saved his life.
Kate sniffled.
Well, shit.
The drugs were messing with his senses (there were no words for how much he hated that), and he couldn’t tell where she was exactly, but he held out a hand in her general direction. The drugs were really doing a number on him; it felt like he was moving through molasses.
But Kate took his hand almost immediately and clung to it with both of hers. He could feel the ridges of her callouses on her fingers.
“You know why those guys went after you?” she asked, voice a little watery but still clear.
Matt nodded but let her keep going.
“Not the traffickers, they were just scum, the other guys, the ones that jumped you. Yeah, they were some of the ones that went after me the night you yelled at me for not having backup. They wanted to get even. They were yelling about it kind of a lot while they kicked your ribs in.”
“I know,” he said for lack of anything else to contribute, “I heard them.”
Her grip tightened on his hand, “You could have died, and it would have been – ”
“Not your fault.”
She tensed.
“Not your fault,” he said again, “Because I didn’t die and you and Clint came to get me. Like I came to get you. We’re a family. We protect each other.”
“I don’t think normal families have to worry about protecting each other from homicidal lowlifes.”
“Well we’re special.”
“Stop doing that stupid smirky thing.” She pinched the back of his wrist and he swatted at her weakly.
“What smirky thing?”
“Foggy’s right, you do it all the time. When you think you’re winning a conversation because you’re a competitive weirdo and you do that little head-tilt smirk thing. It’s like you’re saying ‘look how cute I am, I’m so right about everything’. It’s annoying.”
Matt was pretty sure he just smirked more. He couldn’t be sure; the painkillers had done a number on how well he could feel his face. How well could he feel his face? Not well. Not at all. Wow. The more aware he was of the drugs the more he could feel their effect.
“You’d have missed me. If I died.”
“Well no shit, loser,” she smacked him on the shoulder, but she still sounded a little choked up, “Of course I’d have missed you. You’re my fake big brother. You teach me dumb shit like Russian ballet, which I’m terrible at, and hand-to-hand combat, which I’m freaking awesome at, thank you.”
“Love you too, Kit-Kat.”
“What?” that startled a teary laugh out of her.
“Kit-Kat. It’s like Kate but with different letters.”
“Wow, you were coherent and now it’s like all the drugs just sort of sucker-punched you in the face.”
“Yep. Where’s Clint?”
“Went to get coffee and talk to some guy in a suit named Phil. I think they’re doing rock-paper-scissors over who gets to tell your mom about this.”
Of course Phil was involved.
“Okay. Want to keep me company until they come back?”
“Sure.” He heard rustling and felt the hospital cot dip as she sat down beside him. After a few moments where she got settled, Kate finally said, “You know Clint, he was really torn up about you almost dying.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, he was a wreck. He kept it together until we got you to triage, then Phil took over and he just sort of…drooped. He kind of fell into a chair while Phil’s henchpeople were working on you. I think…I think he cried. And then he got up and there was pacing and muttering and he punched walls a couple of times until Phil freaking, just, apparated or something into the weird waiting-area-war-room place they’d stashed us, and told him to calm down, he wasn’t helping, and that kind of worked. And then I just, stopped being able to pretend to be a grownup and just started bawling and Clint was just there and we kind of had a bonding moment crying over how monumentally dumb you are. Sorry-not-sorry.”
“That’s cool. Where’s Foggy?”
“He doesn’t know about this yet.”
“Great. Another person to yell at me before my mom kills me.”
“Your mom sounds awesome, I’m totally terrified to meet her.”
“As you should be.”
A lull in the conversation where they just listened to each other breath and Matt tried to fight through the haze of drugs enough to hear what Clint and Phil were talking about but gave up when it just made him dizzier. He didn’t like the world being this muffled. He’d have to remind Phil’s underlings about the no-painkillers policy for him in the future.
His hip hurt. It was fuzzy and distant, but getting sharper. Painkillers may fog up his brain, but they didn’t do much in terms of actual pain control. And enhanced sense of touch that turned regular sheets to sandpaper amplified every injury accordingly, painkillers or no. He was going to be out of commission for a few weeks. He wondered if, once she got over how he got the injury, Natasha would be willing to make him soup like she had when he was young and sick. God, he missed his mom.
“Hey, Matt.” Kate poked him in the shoulder as he began to drift off in a morphine haze.
“What?” he mumbled, half-asleep already and kind of okay with that.
“You’re the best fake big brother. And I love you too.”
“I know.”
“Shut up.”