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Summary: Matt Murdock’s world ended on an ordinary afternoon, losing his daughter in a breath he couldn’t catch, to a silence he couldn’t fight.
Masterlist
me speaking: so while writing a Matt x daughter fic, this idea came to me and I just had to write it down. It won't be directly related to the other fic but can also be considered part of it (this will make more sense when I post the other fic). Would love to hear what you think. Thank you for reading.
Warnings: hurt/comfort. Grief. Guilt. Depressed Matt Murdock. Reader is described to have hair long enough that it would brush against her shoulder. Can't write banter that well. Not edited.
wc♡4.5k
It started as a good day.
Not just good, rarely good in the Murdock household, and that alone made it a miracle.
The kind of day where the air felt forgiving and the city’s chaos softened around the edges. Matt could hear the hum of the city without it clawing at him; people laughing, coffee machines hissing, children running. Every sound carrying a strange kind of ease.
And her heartbeat, steady, bright, full of life, threaded through it all.
“Dad, you’re not listening to me.”
Y/N’s voice broke through his thoughts, teasing. She was pacing the kitchen, rummaging through cabinets like a storm wrapped in flannel pajamas. He could hear the way her hair brushed her shoulders, the slight scuff of her socks on the floor, the click of the fridge door that always stuck halfway.
“I am listening,” Matt said, closing the case files in front of him. “You were talking about your group project?”
She gasped. “Wow. Vague but correct. I’m almost proud.”
He smiled faintly, leaning back in his chair. “Almost?”
“Hey, you didn’t even know I had a project until like- two days ago.”
“That’s because you tend to tell me after the deadline passes.”
Her laugh filled the small apartment like sunlight.
Life wasn’t perfect, they'd both been through too much, seen too much for that. The city, the expectations, the constant balancing act of being a lawyer's daughter by day and the nurse of a vigilante by night. She learned how to make him laugh as she works a needle through his back, how to throw color into the world of fire life he lived in.
Today, that color was the smell of burnt toast.
“Dad!”
He tilted his head. “It’s not my fault you can’t cook.”
“You could’ve warned me the toaster was on fire!”
“I did.”
“No, you- oh my God, you did.” She groaned, swatting at the air until he heard the whoosh of a towel smothering the smoke. “You and your radar ears.”
Matt chuckled under his breath, listening to her heartbeat quicken with the effort, then settle again.
“Better?”
“Barely. We’re having cereal.”
“That’s my girl.”
“Don’t start with that tone.”
She rolled her eyes and even though he couldn’t see it he could hear it; the way her irises rolled upwards towards her eyelids. Her breath hitched with affection before she poured two bowls.
The sound of milk splashing, spoon clinking- all of it was ordinary, domestic and achingly human.
He didn’t realize how much he would cling to that sound later.
They ate at the table, sunlight slanting across the counter. He listened to her talk about everything and nothing; the new teacher, the way her boyfriend tripped over his own feet when she met his aunt for the first time, how Foggy’s birthday gift had been a single cupcake.
Matt smiled, tracing the rim of his coffee cup. “You probably ate the rest before he got a chance to give it to you.”
“Karen accused me of the same thing!”
“Karen’s always right.”
“Not when she told me you had rhythm.”
He barked out a surprised laugh. “Excuse me?”
“Dad, you cannot dance. I have evidence.”
“You were five!”
“And traumatized!”
He reached across the table, mock-reaching for her side. She shrieked and dodged, laughing so hard her heartbeat tripped over itself- that bright, skittering rhythm that had been his anchor since the day she was born.
For a few seconds, the world was just that sound.
Her laughter.
Her pulse.
His home.
They left the apartment an hour later, heading toward the law office together. Y/N insisted on walking, said she liked the noise of the city. Said it reminded her of him.
He didn’t say it aloud, but that was the greatest compliment she could’ve given him.
He listened as she narrated everything around them- even if she knew that he could hear everything better than her, that he could hear more than whatever she could- the pretzel stand guy yelling at pigeons, the distant saxophone on 49th, the way sunlight caught on passing windows.
He didn’t need to use his senses when she was with him. Everything she saw and heard, she painted for him in color and motion.
“Dad, do you ever think about what you’d do if you could see?”
He hesitated. “Sometimes.”
“Would you want to?”
He thought about it, the question heavier than it seemed. “I used to think so. But then I realized sight doesn’t guarantee understanding. I think I’d rather keep hearing things as I do. I can trust what I hear.”
Y/N hummed, soft and thoughtful. “Then you can trust that I’m wearing matching socks today.”
He tilted his head, grinning. “You’re lying.”
She snorted. “I still can't wrap my head around how you actually know that.”
“I can hear you lie.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You’re wearing one striped sock and one plain.”
“Okay, stop showing off.”
It happened as they turned onto 45th Street.
One second, she was beside him, elbows warm beneath his fingertips, unrestrained rich laughter filling his heart with fondness. Then her breath hitched.
“Dad?”
He stopped immediately, hand finding her shoulder. “What is it?”
“I- I don’t know.” Her voice wavered. “I feel weird. Like… dizzy.”
His hand tightened around her shoulder as the other reached for her wrist, feeling the pulse under her skin, erratic and skipping. “Maybe you need to sit down.”
She tried to breathe, but it came out sharp and shallow. “No, it’s not that, it’s-”
Her fingers clutched his sleeve. “Dad, I don’t feel right.”
Panic crawled through him like ice water. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“I can’t-”
Her words fractured.
Her pulse spiked, then nothing.
Silence.
No slowing down. No final beat. Just gone.
His world detonated into nothing.
“Y/N?” His voice cracked. “Y/N!”
He reached for her but there was no hand to catch.
Only air.
Only the echo of her name bouncing off the crying street.
He dropped to his knees, hands sweeping wildly on the ground, searching for anything- her shoes, her jacket, a trace of her heartbeat. The streets around him exploded with sound, car crashes, screaming, hundreds of voices vanishing mid-breath.
But none of them were hers.
None.
He pressed his palms flat against the pavement, trembling. “No, no, no, no, please-”
He turned his head in every direction, calling out until his throat tore. “Y/N! Sweetheart! Answer me!”
Nothing.
He slammed his fist into the ground, a raw, animal sound tearing from his chest. He’d fought in court, in the streets, in the church but this? This was something no law, no skill, no faith could fight.
She was gone.
When Foggy found him hours later, Matt was still in the street, kneeling in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Matt, Jesus Christ.”
He didn’t move.
“Matt, come on, we have to go, there’s chaos everywhere-”
“She was right here.” His voice was quiet, almost childlike. “She was right here.”
Foggy froze. “What?”
“I heard her heartbeat. I heard it. And then it just stopped.”
The glasses masked his tears, but not his voice breaking apart.
“Foggy, I can’t- I can’t hear her anymore.”
Foggy’s hand gripped his shoulder, steady, shaking all the same.
“We’ll find her, okay? We’ll-”
“She’s gone.” Matt’s fingers dug into the pavement, his whole body trembling. “She’s gone, and I- I couldn’t even hold onto her.”
The words shattered into the storm, swallowed by thunder.
That night, the apartment was too quiet.
Every sound felt wrong; the clock ticking, the hum of the fridge, it was all wrong. Off. Empty.
He walked through each room slowly, touching the things she’d left behind- her books, her coffee mug, the sketch he'd stuck to the fridge.
He could still smell her shampoo, hear her laugh, feel his fingers tickling her sides. But her heartbeat wasn’t there to fill the emptiness.
He sat on her bed and pressed a hand to the sheets, fingers curling as if he could still feel the warmth she left behind.
His breath hitched. “You were just here.”
He said it again, quieter. “You were just here.”
His throat burned. “Please, God, I’d give anything-” He prayed, words crumbling, voice wailing, soul longing.
The first year was the hardest, though he didn’t know it then. He thought they would all be that hard.
Matt had learned to navigate the noise long before the world had turned into half of one. He had built his life around the world's sound- its rhythm, its chaos, its music- and for years, there had been one steady note anchoring it all.
Her heartbeat.
That quick, bright rhythm that always fluttered faster when she laughed, that softened when she was tired, that grounded him when everything else was too loud.
One second it was there, and the next, it wasn’t.
That was the moment his world fell apart.
He spent the first few days not sleeping. Not talking. Just listening. Every breath, every vibration of the city, waiting for the smallest sign of her. He thought maybe if he stayed still enough, she’d appear right back into his arms. That somehow she’d just step back into the soundscape of his world, and everything would realign.
But the emptiness stayed.
Foggy and Karen tried to get through to him, to be with him, but what could you do to comfort a man who heard the sound of his daughter's heartbeat just vanish. He heard their words but didn’t process them. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. All he knew was that she was gone, and that meant the universe had taken the wrong person.
He stopped eating. Stopped praying. Sat in the living room with her sweater in his lap and her voice echoing faintly in his memory like a song he couldn’t finish.
The guilt came later, slow and venomous. He had been right beside her when it happened. One second, she was warm and laughing, scoffing at something he said- he doesn't even remember what they were joking about anyway, her heartbeat flickering bright and alive, her warmth seeping through to his fingertips as she guided him- the next, the space she had been standing in had gone quiet and cold. He had reached out instantly, panic slicing through him, and found only empty air. The shockwave of her absence had felt like being struck blind all over again.
He replayed that second every night. The small hitch in her breath. The way she called out to him. The pause before nothing.
If he’d just held her hand. If he’d just pulled her closer. If he’d-
No.
He told himself there was nothing he could have done. But guilt was a living thing, whispering otherwise.
By the second year, grief had hollowed into something darker. He went back to work because he didn’t know what else to do. Nelson & Murdock limped forward, their office half-packed with dust and loss. Clients were fewer, the city quieter, its rhythm distorted.
Matt didn’t care.
He buried himself in cases by day, then put the mask back on at night. At first, it was supposed to help him cope, to make him feel useful. But the fights turned cruel. His anger turned desperate. Every punch he threw felt like it was against the thing that had taken her from him. Every bone he broke whispered her name.
Foggy noticed. “You can’t keep doing this,” he’d said one night when Matt came back bleeding. “You think she’d want this?”
Matt didn’t answer. Because what would he say? She wouldn’t have wanted any of this. She wouldn’t have wanted him to become the man he was turning into- sharp edges, quiet voice, hollow heart.
But stopping meant feeling, and feeling meant breaking, so he didn’t stop.
By the third year, the apartment stopped smelling like her.
That was the cruelest loss.
He’d kept her door closed for months, hoping to trap the air inside, the faint traces of her shampoo, her perfume, the gentle smell that is just hers. But scent fades, no matter how hard you cling to it. He woke one morning and realized it was gone. The space smelled only of dust and stale coffee.
He went into her room for the first time since that day. Sat on her bed and listened. He could still map her heartbeat in his memory, could still smell her favourite shower gel, could still feel where she used to sit when she studied, could still hear how her pulse quickened when she laughed and how it slowed when she fell asleep on the couch waiting for him. He could still feel her in his head, but not in the world.
He pressed his hand flat against the mattress, as if maybe he would be able to feel her beneath the fabric, tuck her in and kiss her forehead.
But there was nothing.
That night, he broke down. A gut-wrenching collapse. Knees to the floor, breath caught somewhere between a prayer and a scream.
He didn’t remember how long he stayed there. Hours, a day, maybe. But when he finally stood, he told himself it would be the last time he cried. It wasn’t. But he needed to believe that it could be.
The fourth year was quieter. The world had learned how to function again, half full, half empty. People started moving forward. But Matt never did. He existed, mechanical, deliberate. Wake, work, fight, wait.
Sometimes he caught the faint heartbeat of a girl running across the street and froze. Sometimes he almost called her name when the wind brushed against him just right.
And then he’d remember. And the ache would start again.
He stopped sleeping in his bed. Slept on the couch instead, like maybe if he kept his ear tuned toward her room, he’d hear her. The city became a sound he could no longer separate from his grief. Every heartbeat reminded him of hers. Every silence echoed with her absence.
The fifth year began like every other, dull, gray, and endless. The city had long stopped talking about miracles. People no longer waited for answers, because there were none. The ones who vanished had done so without reason, without pattern, without goodbye.
Matt was walking his usual route home, cane tapping against the wet pavement, wind whispering against his coat. The same street where she’d disappeared beside him in five years ago.
And then he heard it.
A heartbeat.
Soft, steady, familiar.
The world fell away. His cane slipped from his hand, clattering against the floor.
No. No, it couldn’t be-
But it was. He knew it like he knew his own name. His lungs forgot how to work. For one impossible second, he stood there, drenched in hope and disbelief, listening. It wasn't a memory. It wasn’t wishful thinking. It was her. The same rhythm that had vanished into nothing right there on that pavement five years ago- back again, steady and alive.
His knees almost gave out. His throat went dry.
He took a trembling step forward, reaching out a hand like he had back then, afraid that if he didn't move fast enough she’d vanish again.
“Sweetheart?” His voice cracked, rough and raw from years of silence. “Sweetheart!”
The heartbeat faltered, then quickened. “Dad? What- how is- when did it get so dark?”
The world tilted. His knees hit the pavement. His breath hitched, caught between a sob and a prayer, tears he hadn’t known he could still cry spilling freely down his face.
Y/N rushed to him, confused “Dad? Dad! What's wrong?” She wrapped her arms around his shoulder, sinking onto her knees “Why are you crying? What happened?”
Matt swallowed hard, unable to answer. His hands framed her face as if afraid she’d vanish again if he let go. “You- you were gone,” he said, the words shaking. “You were gone for so long.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, trying to pull back to look at him. “We were walking to your office. You said-”
But her voice faltered when she felt how his hands trembled on her cheeks. His breath came uneven. She reached for his wrist, fingers wrapping around the black leather band of his watch- the same one he’d worn that morning. “Dad?”
He couldn’t stop shaking. “You were gone,” he said again, softer this time, voice cracking like old glass. “Five years, sweetheart.”
She blinked, her words small and uncertain. “That’s not- that’s not possible.”
He pulled her into his chest before she could say more. Her heartbeat thudded hard and real against his own, an anchor dragging him out of the years he’d spent drowning in silence. He buried his face in her hair and fully broke- years of restrained grief spilling out in a single, shuddering breath.
The apartment looked the same yet completely different.
To her, everything felt misplaced. The walls still breathed faintly of coffee but the air was heavier, muted. Her favorite posters were gone, replaced by faint outlines where the tape had peeled paint. The couch was the same, though the cushions sagged deeper, and her bedroom door creaked differently when she pushed it open.
Her voice broke the silence. “You changed my room.”
He stood in the doorway, his hand on the frame. “Not on purpose. Things were meant to be used.”
“What does that mean?”
He hesitated, then said quietly, “They didn’t survive the dust.”
Her throat closed. She turned toward him, searching his face, but all she could see was the grief he carried in the slope of his shoulders, the tremor in his breath.
Her father had aged. Not much, but enough that she could hear it in his voice, feel it in the way his hand shook when he traced her face every few hours. The lines around his eyes were deeper, his hair and beard streaked with more gray. Five years had passed for him. But for her, it had been a blink.
She wanted to say something, anything, to make it feel like before, to fill the air with laughter again. But the words wouldn’t come.
That night, he didn’t sleep. He sat in the living room with his hands resting on his knees, listening to the familiar sound that had returned to his life after years of silence.
Her heartbeat.
Steady.
Real.
Home.
He didn’t move until sunrise.
It started slowly, the differences. Matt couldn’t stop listening. He’d wake in the middle of the night, pulse racing, until he heard the familiar rhythm of her breathing down the hall. He told himself he was only making sure she was there, but the truth was simpler and more desperate: he needed to remind himself she was real.
He became protective, suffocatingly so. If she stood too close to the window, he’d ask her to move. If she wanted to go out for a walk, he’d insist on coming with her, even if it meant trailing half a step behind, tense and alert.
“Dad, you can’t keep me inside forever,” she said one morning when he blocked the door.
He tilted his head, tone calm but too measured. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“You go out,” she argued. “and you went out when I was gone.”
His voice stayed calm but too controlled. “That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because I had already lost you then,” he said. “I didn’t have anything more I could lose.”
Her expression faltered. “I didn’t mean to-”
“I know.” He breathed out slowly, forcing himself to steady his tone. “I know you didn’t. I just-” He took a deep breath, running his hands through his hair. “You disappeared while I was holding your hand, Y/N. I can still feel the moment your pulse stopped under my thumb.”
She didn’t say anything. Just crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him, her head fitting under his chin like it used to. He held her there, silent, one hand on the back of her head. His grip didn’t loosen for a long time.
Everywhere she went, people had changed. Her friends were older- some in college, some with jobs, some with lives she didn’t recognize. The kids she’d grown up with looked like adults now, their laughter deeper, their eyes more tired.
She was still seventeen. Still in the same clothes. The world had moved on without her.
Everyone told her how she should feel. Lucky. Blessed. Relieved.
No one told her how to feel when everything she knew had aged five years without her.
Matt watched her try to find her footing, and it broke something inside him. He could hear her struggling even when she said nothing, the hitch in her breath when she saw old photos, the way her heartbeat skipped when someone mentioned “the Blip.”
One evening, he found her sitting on the fire escape, knees drawn up, chin resting on them.
“You shouldn’t be out there,” he said quietly.
She didn’t move. “It’s just the fire escape, Dad.”
“I know.”
He stepped closer. The city hummed below them, sirens, traffic, laughter, but all he focused on was her pulse, soft and uneven.
“You’re different,” she said finally.
He smiled faintly. “So are you.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not. That’s the problem.”
He leaned against the window frame, fingers brushing the cold metal. “You were seventeen. You still are. The world just isn’t.”
“Everyone keeps saying that like it helps, like it’s supposed to make me feel better. But all it does is make me feel wrong.” Her voice cracked. “I came back, but it feels like I shouldn’t have.”
He didn’t answer. He wanted to tell her she wasn’t wrong, that she was still his daughter, still her, that he prayed for her to come back but the words tangled somewhere in his chest.
Instead, he said softly, “You don’t have to feel anything you don’t.”
She turned, eyes red. “I don’t even know what I feel.”
“Then let's start there.” he murmured.
Foggy was the one who broke the cycle.
“You’ve gotta let her breathe,” he told Matt one evening at the office, voice low. “You’re hovering like a hawk.”
“She’s just a kid.”
“She was a kid,” Foggy corrected gently. “She still is, but she’s also been through something none of us understand. She needs you to trust her.”
Matt sighed, fingers tracing the edge of his desk. “it's not her that I don't trust Foggy-”
Foggy interrupted quietly, “The universe took her. That’s not on you. Not on her. It was messed up that happened to you both, but she came back.” His voice was softer now. “Don’t make her pay for being gone.”
Matt didn’t answer. That one hit deeper than Matt admitted. He carried it home with him, the words echoing in his head as he listened to her hum softly in the kitchen that night, trying to relearn where everything was.
Her laughter had returned, hesitant and thinner around the edges, but it was there. He’d take it. He’d take anything.
Weeks passed. Then months.
They began to fall into a rhythm again, though different this time. She helped him at the office, mostly organizing files, teasing Foggy and lining up meetings with Karen. They started cooking together again. She started volunteering at a nearby community center, something she said helped her “remember what mattered.”
But it wasn’t easy.
Some nights he'd wake up gasping, eyes wide and red, calling her name.
She'd be in his room before he could even blink, sitting beside his bed, one hand finding his.
“It’s okay,” she'd whisper, over and over, the same way he did to her when she was little. “I'm home.”
She’d wrap herself into his arms. “You know, to me it wasn’t like dying. It was more like blinking. I closed my eyes and opened them, and you were crying.”
He couldn’t answer. He just held her tighter.
Sometimes she’d apologize, whispering, “I’m sorry you were alone.”
Every time, he’d shake his head, throat too tight to speak.
The first time she convinced him to take her walking again, it felt like holding his breath.
They followed their old route to the office, the same one that had ended in silence five years ago. She talked softly, describing everything; the new graffiti, the closed shops, the unfamiliar skyline. He listened, heart tight but steady.
When they reached the spot, she slowed. “This is where it happened.”
He didn’t speak, he just held onto her elbow tighter
She looked at him, resting her palm above his hand giving it a reassuring squeeze. I'm still here.
“It doesn’t feel different.”
“It shouldn’t,” he murmured.
She looked up, eyes glinting. “You waited for me, didn’t you?”
He hesitated. “Every night.”
Her voice trembled. “You’re not gonna lose me again.”
He reached for her hand, squeezing gently. “You can’t promise that.”
“I can try.”
He smiled faintly. “Yeah. Try.”
For a long moment, they stood there in silence, the city humming around them, their hands clasped.
It didn’t heal overnight. It didn’t really heal at all, not in the way people meant when they said it. It just changed shape.
Grief became a scar, not a wound.
Some nights, he still woke and reached for her room, just to hear her breathing. Her heartbeat was slower, softer when she slept. He would stand there, listening, until his chest stopped hurting.
She caught him once.
“Dad?”
He froze. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.” She smiled faintly, sleepy. “You okay?”
He hesitated. “Just making sure you are.”
“I’m here,” she murmured, already drifting again. “Go to bed.”
He did. For the first time in years, he actually slept.
One evening, they sat together on the rooftop, the city spread beneath them. The air was cool, the hum of New York alive and constant.
She leaned against his shoulder. “You used to come up here alone,” she said.
“I did.”
“Why?”
“It was quiet,” he said. “And I could still pretend you were somewhere out there.”
Her voice wavered. “And now?”
He turned his head toward her, a soft smile playing on his lips. “Now I don’t have to pretend.”
She squeezed his hand. “You missed me.”
He laughed, a breath caught between relief and disbelief. “You have no idea.”
“I think I do.”
“Yeah?”
“I missed you too.”
The city murmured around them, alive and pulsing. Beneath it all, her heartbeat- steady, calm and familiar, wove through the noise.
“You think it’ll ever feel normal again?” she asked after a long moment.
“Maybe not the same kind of normal,” he said. “But we’ll find a new one.”
She rested her head against his shoulder. “I can live with that.”
He smiled faintly, listening to her breathe.
For the first time in years, the ache in his chest eased. It wasn’t gone, he doubted it ever would be, but it was quieter. Bearable.
He still flinched when he reached out and she wasn’t where he expected her to be, still hated how quiet the apartment could get. But slowly, he began to trust the quiet again. The world had taken everything from him once, and for reasons he’d never understand, it had given it all back.
He turned his head slightly, his voice soft as the night itself.
