Off With Their Heads | Daredevil & Spiderman
The vibrations of bullets shifted around him as he moved, and without his hearing it was harder to tell where they were aimed for before they hit. His heart thumped wildly, and Matt felt all too aware of the parts of his uniform that weren’t made out of kevlar. Somewhere, treacherously, from the complete silence that made up his world, Foggy’s voice materialised itself, dripping with worry, pleading the imaginary officer about Daredevil’s state. His bare hand found the edge of the table, a tremble running through his fingers, but by the time he reached the end of it his friend’s concerns evaporated. Along their path, his fingertips had run across an endless amount of porcelain, but he hadn’t felt anything shaking the table – nor the ground around him. Spider-Man had kept the shots aimed elsewhere. Matt could only hope that also meant he’d avoided them.
Tasting no blood in the air, Daredevil sucked in a deep breath before he allowed himself to limit his world to him and the woman before him. Though as he stood still, a sudden rush of vertigo tilted the carpet beneath him, and while he would later say it was for cover that he ducked behind the table, shortening the distance between himself and the ground was his main priority. Between throwing himself across the street to save a man, and being viciously knocked to the ground only a short time ago, Matt really didn’t need more bumps to the head.
Feeling his eyes close, he had to will himself not do lean against the table’s edge. Science would probably argue that pulling yourself from passing out was unreasonable, but then the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had always been a man of faith. He’d performed a few miracles tonight; another could surely follow. Clearing his head as best he could, he sensed for Alice. Despite having no idea what she’d looked like in the video, he wasn’t surprised when the radar informed him of a voluminous skirt reaching her shins. It didn’t take much to imagine the character he’d met once, before he lost his sight. The reunion wasn’t a happy one, however. Matt just hoped this Alice’s ending would be rewritten.
The first step was revealing the twist in which the woman hadn’t been the one she’d thought, all along. One light touch to her upper arm told him that there was no hope moving her before her mind was put to it, muscles rigid with enough tension to practically tie her to the chair. Something twisted in his gut at the mere concept of mind-control, knowing that this soul had no control over itself, no voice to raise or fist to shape. He hadn’t been as confident in a move all night as when he reached for the woman’s temple. With his other hand supportively on her shoulder, thumb and pointer finger framed the vile chip between them as he slipped it from her skin a moment later.
It took a moment, and then he realised what he was waiting for. Questions. Concern. Confusion. Distress. His stomach clenched, jaw aching, and he tried not to consider it, but there it was, louder in the silence than ever before – the possibility that he might never hear it again. The relief, the gratitude, the only acknowledgment the secretely blind hero understood. With a disgusted grimace, Matt pulled himself from his own selfish sorrow, concentrating on the woman who was absolutely not Alice. She never would be. He didn’t know if she knew she had been, but as he felt her pulse rise beneath his palm, he tried to form soothing words. We’re here to save you, he hoped he was saying, and almost forgot to tilt his head towards where her voice might be coming from.
Blocked by the table, Daredevil was unaware of where his partner was. Taste and touch allowed him to register presences in the space around him, but without the rest of his senses location was a challenge. Careful as he rose, in case the Mad Hatter-figure had gained the advantage, Matt exhaled as his radar washed over his surroundings. The slim form of Spider-Man merged with - what the scent of webbing on wool told him - the fallen villain. Hopefully he stayed down. A man who had brain-washed an entire city in minutes could easily have another trick up his hat.
How Daredevil would know, though, was beyond even himself, with his translator across the room. Any defense he could manage to strike up would be out of pure luck, and that didn’t seem to be with him tonight. A sense of helplessness came over him, and his lips pressed into a line as he considered his options. The kidnapee stood beside him, and realisation struck. He couldn’t tell what shape she was in, if she was saying anything, if she was screaming – but she stood beside him, and her rescuer felt close to fainting. His hand moved quickly, unsheethed the billy-club, slipped the control chip inside a compartment – and released a blade from another end. He almost never used it, morals safer with blunt weapons, but Spider-Man was there. That was more of a safe-guard than anyone could ask for. There was a slight smile to his lips when he handed the knife over to ‘Alice’. As nauseau rocked him, forcing him to find support against the table, he knew he was useless, but that didn’t mean she had to be. Not anymore.
MAD HATTER’s gleeful grin waned some when he heard who had finally come to confront him. It was always going to end this way, that wasn’t the problem; Jervis pulled off his plan beautifully and now the Bat would come and carry him off to Arkham, the end of their delightful chess match. Unless of course, he would be able to kill Batman this time and take that cowl as a prize. Both ways were equally attractive to him, but the problem was that he wasn’t confronted with a bat at all, but a spider.
He pouted and squeezed off a few shots rapidly just out of spite. Of course his main concern in coming to New York were all the New York do-gooders. Over in Gotham you only had to worry about Batman and his birds, and that was bad enough. Here you had all sorts of people, mutants, and aliens in tights, running around and saving the day. It was exhausting. But as much as Jervis loved tradition, he was attracted to the city the same way his peers had been. A new challenge could be nice, yes, a new change of scenery could make things very interesting indeed.
He laughed as Spiderman began to talk. Maybe this would be fun after all. “Mummy always allowed us to get rid of pests! Can’t have insects running all over the table!” He shot all over the place, completely unable to keep up with Spiderman’s darting here and there. “Stay still,” he snarled, sending bullets that exploded tea cups and chairs, ripped holes through lamp shades and bounced off the walls.
This new hero wasn’t Batman, but he ended it quickly as Batman always did. One moment Jervis had a witty retort on his lips, the next his gun was knocked away, then a fist collided with his temples. He saw stars, and cherry tarts, and white rabbits with pocketwatches in their waistcoats, and when he came too again he was stuck with some awful sticky stuff that resembled a spider’s web. He couldn’t move a muscle, and his beloved hat (the violet one with the black ribbon) had flown clear across the warehouse.
“And when you’ve reached the end of your story, stop!” he bellowed. “Goodbye Alice, my love. It’s off to another stay in Arkham. I pray you’ll wait for me until I can return and we shall be wed! Goodbye New York City, goodbye Batsy, my work here is finally done! Callooh Callay, tell the Joker I send my finest regards!”
ALICE was beginning to feel herself slipping away. There were hours of fighting, of struggling to move her rigid arms or even tilt her head, trying to scream or even better, run right out of this nightmare and never return. But now she was just exhausted. She could barely hold a thought of her own before it melted back into that damn poem and she was thinking of the Jabberwocky again. Maybe this was real, and everything else she thought she was holding onto was just a dream...
The gunshots startled her from her daze and she felt herself panic. Please, she begged. Please please please come and get me, don’t let him win. She sensed movement around her, but it didn’t do anything to help her fear. What if they left her? What if they got hurt or died before they could get to her? What if Hatter died too, and she really was alone? She saw flashes of red in her peripheral and then felt a sensation like coming up from under water. Gasping, she slumped in her chair.
At first, she couldn’t tell if she had been helped or injured even worse. But then her thoughts slowly came back to her, and they were hers. Her name was Jenny and she worked at a grocery store in Hell’s Kitchen, and she was supposed to work late tonight to help pay to fix her mom’s messed up plumbing.
She looked up and there he was––Daredevil, of course, thank God––and she grasped the edge of the table, forcing herself on her feet. Her eyes darted to find Hatter, and when she saw Spiderman standing over him, she felt tears gather in her eyes. Because the heroes had shown up, and when that happened everything was going to be okay.
“I was starting to worry you guys weren’t gonna show up,” she joked weakly, and her eyes widened when Daredevil handed her a knife. She blinked at it then set it carefully down on the table with a huff of laughter. There was no way she would ever be able to use something like that, and with Spiderman here she saw no reason why she should even pretend.
“Oh my God...Daredevil’s hurt! Help!” she placed her hands lightly on his arm, unsure of the proper way to offer a superhero help. Her voice rose over the Hatter’s crazy ramblings. “Thank you,” she said, leaning into him.
“Thank you.”









