Dex's apartments: a study of a character's space and mind
His space is so neat. But in my opinion, from what we see in Born Again, the space reflects Dex's overall state of mind. He has been used and abused by the system. The Fisk's have chewed him up and spat him out onto the streets of Hell's Kitchen. He is obviously still very organized, but the tiles of his kitchen are broken, his blankets are threadbare, and his bed frame rusted. A far cry from his original apartment we see in Daredevil S03. In that space, when his life has true direction, everything is pristine. The space looking untouched and barely used, if not for the stack of newspapers and dishes in the drying rack along with the photo. His put-together life in the FBI vs Dex in the wind after the hit in S01 of Born Again. But he has a north star now, his so-called "one good deed."
Marvel's Daredevil S03E05 "The Perfect Game" (2018) VS Daredevil: Born Again S02E04 "Gloves Off" (2026)
Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed!): @stellar-lune @ichor-on-my-hands @kamikothe1and0lny @nyxpixels @snowflakewolves @poppinspop @crystallinewalker @uni-seahorse-572 @tiergan-andrin-alenefar @books-over-boys @florida-llama-46 @when-wax-wings-melt @k00laidcrush @bowlcut-boyfriends @good-old-fashioned-lover-boy7 @dexter-dizznee @jamesdeangf
On Ao3 or below the cut!
“Why do you think I would know what to do?”
“I don’t know! I just thought you might have some idea of what he just did!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have knocked Alvar out!”
“You should be glad that he’s only unconscious!”
Another tremor shakes the ground as another building collapses.
“Wait a minute…” I mutter.
“I don’t think we have a minute!” Fitz argues, running toward the building.
“What are you doing?” I demand, chasing after him.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I don’t know! Trying to get yourself killed?”
Fitz stops abruptly, and I almost run into him.
“Care to explain?” I ask, and Fitz points to a silver vein running through the building ahead of us.
I brush my fingers against the silvery metal and, thankfully, it doesn’t spontaneously combust.
I see a small piece on the ground, and, so, to try to figure out what it is, I pick it up.
One of the best ways to identify an unknown material is using its density. I’ve done it a few times in the store when I happened to forget to label something.
This is much easier when I can measure the mass and volume using measurements other than ‘this feels kinda heavy’ and eyeballing the size.
Yes, I know the difference between mass and weight. But considering that gravity will pull on an object with more mass more than an object with less mass, I think it’s safe to assume that using weight as a measure of mass while staying on the same planet will not be too problematic.
I walk over to a building that has already collapsed nearby and break off a piece as similarly sized as I can manage.
The silver piece, which I know is not made of silver, because that is basically half as dense as gold, is heavier than the gold, but not significantly so. If an object is heavier than a similarly sized object, then the former object must be more dense.
Because that’s what the equation says.
“Fitz?”
“Yeah?”
Giving him the two pieces, I ask, “Which one is heavier?”
I know he isn’t going to be a perfect scale, but a second opinion is better before I start formulating.
“I don’t know. They almost feel the same,” he replies, with minimal time to even consider it.
“Which one is heavier?” I ask again.
“This one, I guess,” he responds, “why?”
“I’m thinking that, assuming it is a pure element, like the gold from which it must have come, it must be an element that is more dense, which I think there are I want to say six. Iridium and Osmium are both debated as to which one is the densest, and the elements in that row of the periodic table are the densest ones. That means that this could be hafnium, tungsten, rhenium, osmium, iridium, or platinum. Not all of them are more dense than gold, but they’re some of the closest, and I don’t have a periodic table to check their densities.”
I stop when I notice Fitz’s confusion and when I take a breath, he says, “Let’s pretend I know what that means.”
I mentally take a few steps back, possibly a little too far, but, just in case, I start at the beginning.
“In your alchemy class, there is a periodic table with about a hundred forty-seven elements, give or take a few depending on the version. It usually hangs on the wall and is in the textbook most of the time.”
“I’ve seen that. Don’t humans have one?”
“Yeah, just with a few less elements. We probably gave Mendeleev the idea. Anyway, the middle part, known as the Transition Metals, starts with Scandium, Titanium, Vanadium, and so on and so forth. The third period of it has the densest elements.”
“I think I know what you’re talking about.”
“The third period of the transition metals, not including the lanthanides because nobody cares about them, has the elements Hafnium, Tungsten, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Mercury.”
“How on Earth do you remember that?”
I look at him incredulously before saying, “My dad’s literally an alchemist. I could draw a periodic table in my sleep at six. Considering that this is both silvery and a solid, that means it can’t be gold or mercury.”
“That...actually makes sense.”
“Now, the question is what happened. There are a few ways to transmute one metal to another, but most of them require alchemical means. Think Ruckleberries purifying iron.”
A smile flicks across his expression before simply stating, “I’m not sure how helpful this is, but I thought it looked like Alvar used telekinesis.”
“That’s what I thought too…” I trail off for a second, the beginnings of a hypothesis swirling around in my brain before it clicks. “Wait—would that even be possible?” I whisper.
“Fitz. If my brain is correct—”
Fitz interrupts, “Which is more often than not…”
“That’s debatable.” I retort, “But we have to get out of here.”
“What?”
“You heard me” I snap, grabbing Fitz’s wrist and running.
I’m not the most athletic person, and Fitz manages to release his wrist from my death grip and pulls ahead of me.
I channel more energy into my legs, trying to keep up, but my foot catches on a loose paver and I narrowly avoid falling on my face by levitating myself half an inch above the ground.
Thanks, Exilium!
“You okay?” Fitz asks, apparently having been keeping an eye on me.
“I think so” I reply, climbing back up to my feet.
I shift a little bit of my weight onto the foot that got caught, and it groans in protest.
I hobble a few more steps forward before conceding that I’m not going to be able to keep up this pace.
“I’m not leaving you here,” Fitz says as I lower myself back down to the ground, leaning against the remains of an already collapsed structure, which, in hindsight, was probably not a great place to stop considering that there was a large silvery vein running through it.
Fitz pulls out his home crystal, and tries to create a beam of light, muttering “Why didn’t I think of this earlier?”
The key word there is ‘tries’ because the sky has become too ashy with particles of pretty much everything you would rather not breathe to allow enough light in for a reliable beam. A nexus would probably work, but light poisoning would still be a significant possibility, and I don’t have one nor any idea of how to make one.
Fitz, putting away his home crystal, asks, “So why did we just have to run?”
I’m still trying to catch my breath. What can you say? I don’t go outside much.
“There’s only one form of transmutation that fits the description.” I pause, taking a breath, which was apparently enough time for Fitz to ask another question.
“Which is...?”
“Radioactive decay. It isn’t covered much in class because it is the most dangerous and one of the most limited forms of transmutation”
“Never heard of it,” Fitz replies, to no one’s surprise.
“It was probably a passing reference somewhere in Second or Third Level alchemy. No matter, there are a few different ways it can work. First up, alpha radiation. Releases an alpha particle, basically a Helium atom without any electrons, and can be stopped by something as thin as a piece of paper. Then there’s beta radiation, which can either be a positron or electron launched from the nucleus, which I think occurs because a proton or neutron is changed into the other one because of one of the weak force carrying bosons. I don’t remember which one.”
“Wait, what?” Fitz asks.
“There are four fundamental forces of the universe. The weak force is carried by specific particles known as W plus or minus and Z. I really hope that that answers your question because it’s all I know. There’s also gamma radiation. This usually occurs after one of the other types, when a gamma ray is released when the daughter particle falls from a higher energy state to a lower energy state.” I pause, letting that sink in for a few seconds.
“That’s a lot of information,” Fitz remarks.
I smile evilly. “But wait, there’s more. Because I don’t know how gold usually decays we get to cover the other two I remember, which are less common. First, there is proton emission, which should explain itself. And finally, there is electron capture where an electron falls into the nucleus, changes a proton into a neutron and an x-ray is released as it goes back to where it should be.”
Fitz rubs his temples before muttering, “Why do you know all of this?”
Before realising that it was a rhetorical question I reply, “I had a lot of free time in Level One and I ate lunch with my alchemy mentor. I picked up a few things.”
“I have a dumb question. If gold can do this,” he waved his arms around, referring to the city, or rather, the lack of one, around us, “why is the entire city built out of it?”
“Because normal everyday gold isn’t radioactive. But, there are so many different rare isotopes most of which are radioactive—“
Fitz interrupts, “Another dumb question. What’s an isotope?”
I bury my head in my hands. How did Fitz ever pass alchemy? No, really. How in the world did he ever pass?
I take a deep breath and explain, “Isotopes are atoms that have the same number of protons, so they’re the same element, but differing numbers of neutrons. As I was saying, most isotopes of gold are radioactive, considering the fact that the average atomic weight is pretty close to 200, which is heavy for an atom, and heavy atoms tend to be less stable. The radioisotopes probably have really short half lives for the most part, but there must have been some small traces of some of them, and, well, apparently something made normally stable gold do this.”
I wave my hands around to refer to Gulidingham crumbling around us.
Fitz’s jaw clenches, and he growls, “That something was named Alvar.”
I whisper, “yeah,” not wanting to get Wonderboy angrier.
It”s more or less drowned out by the sound of another building coming down.
Fitz says, “Tell me if this is wrong. Alpha radiation loses two protons, and the other forms lose one, right? So isn’t the silver the element before or the one before that?”
“Take note that it is not actually the element silver. Except for one of the beta decays, which actually gain a proton, you got the idea. It would make sense, but there could be a chain of short-lived isotopes, so it may or may not work that way unfortunately.”
“That sounds worse,” Fitz remarks.
“That’s because, in general, it is. Not only is gamma radiation more likely in a chain like that, but, with each step in the chain, it releases more energy and, or, particles, and the more things flying around, the more damage is done to our DNA every second that we stay here.”
Fitz tries pulling out his Imparter, which has no signal, unsurprisingly.
“Can you Technopath around and fix this?” he asks after attempting to fix it himself.
Which is smacking it until it works. It isn’t a very successful method.
“Yes, let me clear the sky so that it can connect to the rest of the system.”
I hadn’t noticed how much darker it had gotten since Fitz tried to leap us out of here, and how much more often buildings are collapsing.
As I’m thinking, a building very near to us collapses, blocking our path out of here. I’m sure Fitz is cursing colourfully in his head right about now.
After halfheartedly kicking the debris from that building a couple of times, Fitz sits down next to me mostly because he has no better options.
Attempting to put his legs out in front of him, his left leg obviously protesting against that, Fitz pulls it in and starts massaging his knee.
I take my jacket off, partially because Fitz is mere inches from me and thus I am blushing from head to toe, but also because I’m trying to be helpful. Mostly that.
I take all of the different gadgets out, finding and eating a slightly melted hershey kiss, much to Fitz’s dismay, because now he probably thinks I eat my gadgets. Once I double check there’s no more candy, or gadgets, I guess, in there, I fold it up and offer it to Wonderboy.
“Here, cushioning will probably help, just don’t ask me to spell it.”
Fitz takes my jacket begrudgingly and places it under his knee. When he tries to straighten his knee again, I can see the tension in his face relax, although I’m also fairly sure he’s trying to hide it.
An idea has started coalescing in my head, and I usually talk to myself when that happens, so I ask, “Do you mind if I think out loud?”
Fitz replies, "Why not. You’re going to have to explain whatever it is you’re thinking to me eventually.”
salty spittoon / weenie hut jrs diagnosis feat @wantedformanysins
I think it depends on the verse for nathan, like in his god verse he is salty spittoon, but he gets beat up by the tougher members whereas in modern I think he's weenie hut jrs, not necessarily because he's a weenie he's just not rough and tough enough, and keeps trying to get into salty spittoon. he thinks he deserves to be there (he doesn't)
