drag path 11 the red
AO3 Story Link drag path master chapter list 🎯 drag path 🎯 a Bullseye playlist
Pairing: Benjamin Poindexter x fem!reader Word Count: 12.5k Summary: Soulmate marks were an alien invention, literally. But they stuck around and so you carried those words on your body, and you yearned, and you wished for that person to come along. Of course, he arrived after you'd given up, and only after there was blood on your hands.
The thought of being marked with words from Foggy Nelson's killer sent spirals of shame and guilt to your core, but a fragile, thin line stretched between the two of you, and it wouldn't be broken. Chapter Summary: Dex to the rescue (?), hopital time as they say on the internet, Karen + Matt, and Dex is desperately waiting. Warnings/Tags: MDNI, fem!reader, no use of y/n, canonical character death, canon-typical violence, hurt/comfort, wound care, soulmate identifying marks, slow burn, explicit language, explicit sexual content Taglist: @benspoindexter @kkkkisworld @starlitflora @mewmew222 @noble-17 @nbhrhn @bubbletae7 @sarahskywalker-amidala@mariayjws5 @kplatzman @trulovekay @douazz @loverslantern @star-yawnznn
Notes: More action that I hope is coherent and that you enjoy. Dex being absolutely the most merciless version of himself and I don't want to think about what it says about me that I feel this is stupid hot. Also just so you know, the subtitle of this fic is, "Give Dex a Christmas Present 2k26."
A fencer's response means you have a bad concussion, and honestly reader probably struck it too but just doesn't realize this from her point of view. Also yeah, this much head trauma, you're likely not going home twenty-four hours later but it's, you know, fanfiction, so I think we'll all live with the inaccuracy.
Karen's the rational one here, Matt's still trying to find the fucking plot again. It really struck me as I was writing their pillow talk -- how reader absolutely does not see Dex as the shit thing in her life while everyone else (who knows) totally does. Maybe that's obvious to you all and I'm just head empty over here, but writing it out makes me feel like this schism in perception is better delineated.
Umm, also so… well… i'mtravellingforworkagainnextweekandwillbeworkinginSeattlethewholetimesoitsanothertwoweekeri'msosorry.
As always, I ravenously await your thoughts while I go see Spider-Man: Brand New Day (and hopefully our man Matt)!
so lay down the threat is real when his sight goes red again seeing red again seeing red again - The Chevelle. “The Red” Wonder What’s Next (Expanded Edition), 2002.
July 22, 2027 -- still
Daredevil stood in the doorway, an avenging angel of fury and burning flame. Those blazing red letters on his chest and the chips of black paint flaking visibly from his silhouette like he shed ash and destruction from his very being. Steam rose from him even in the heat because his anger was so inflamed, sulphurous and hell-like. Breathing like he’d run the Triple Crown all in an afternoon, holding a baton in one hand while the other splayed open against the door that had hit the wall with all the subtlety of a MAC-10.
At his arrival, everyone in the room – everyone – froze. No noise, no confusion, no more angry shouting in Albanian or frantic weeping from Jim or Lea, just perfect, crystalline silence in that dark back room while the outside world roared. A bullhorn cast orders against the front of the store, ultimately useless and disregarded because no one was willing to walk out that front door and go to prison on the spot. The bleach Brandon had defended himself with dripped its last dregs slowly onto the linoleum, each drop loud somehow; the split open mannequin teetered on its pedestal, rocking rhythmically from side to side until it fell with a crash to the floor by the back wall. And you stood with fingers clenched white on the countertop, trying to stay up, battered by this unbelievable wave of disgust.
Disgust from Daredevil.
He stared at you – you – of all people in that room. His heavy breath grew louder and louder the longer the silence carried on, his devil horns sharp and tilted in your direction. Those ruby red lenses, even though your thoughts seemed oddly disjointed, lit a flare in your stomach – of fear, of recognition somehow. His eyes though you could not see them beat you with malice, hands in the darkness that punched you with his disfavor and darted away where you could not strike back, like a boxer defending a heavy weight title. Why? There was an equation there that you couldn’t quite come up with the answer to, it seemed.
You swayed, dizzy. The eye contact shattered, and so did the scene.
As glass that sparkled and splintered it was desperation that drove each person then, motivation that was shaped just a little differently each time but drove them all to the same end. Because the jig was up, and the Albanians could choose Daredevil or the police – that was it. And they turned and chose you instead.
One darted at you, safety being clicked off of his gun, and aiming for your stomach – but that same baton slipped as if out of a pocket of time and space to clock him in the head. His shot went wild, breaking a smiling photo of Jerry Orbach on the wall as he fell at your feet, out cold. He wasn’t alone though, another tracksuit tried his luck and got so close that you fell back in fear against the counter, a thud that cracked through your low back and the bruise left there hours before. You’d dropped the rifle, bringing your arms up to shield your head, when Daredevil came down upon him with unflinching violence – took him by the head and slammed it into the metal tracking of the motorized clothing rack until he struck the fencing response and twitched into nothingness.
Mirek tried then, he really did. Yelling something with his fists up and his eyes wild and murky, face so red it verged on purple. But his version of charging was more limping fast because of you, and he was easily evaded. The vigilante seemed to enjoy himself, taking his time, bounced back and forth on the balls of his feet with hands loose, a fighter in a boxing ring, waiting. Mirek’s momentum took him into your sewing table, knocked your machine over, but he came up with scissors lifted high above his head, stupidly triumphant.
Those were your fabric scissors, you realized with a brain that moved like sludge, watching him snap them open and closed viciously. If he cut any paper with them, you’d be pissed. Another lunge from the Slav, another neat sidestep, and Daredevil slammed a fist into the other man’s gut. Executed the neatest sucker punch you’d ever seen and let him drop to the floor, huffing in satisfaction over him.
The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen took a step towards you then, hands balled like you too, might feel his wrath – but was distracted by Mr. Jusufi trying to drag both Jim and Lea out the back door. “Stay.” He said to you, finger pointed like you were a toddler disobeying a parent, and leapt to stop them from leaving.
Jusufi made it out the door, pushing the Zhangs at the final second into Daredevil’s arms as a last resort, and they took the opportunity to get the fuck out of there. Lea dragged Jim behind her with the single-minded determination of a woman who did not want to be a widow. As they passed, she tried to grab onto you too and – what, why?
You shook her off, confused and also yes, still dizzy. You were standing at the counter and you were at work, weren’t you? It’s not like you were late to another shift, so what could she have to complain about? Lea swore, impressively, as you frowned and shook her off, and kept dragging Jim out, unwilling to wait for your brain to catch up. And it wouldn’t catch up, at least any time soon. Instead, it was doing its best impression of a tap-dancing monkey on a fucking acid trip – swirling heat and colors past your eyes while the floor tilted and suddenly someone was vomiting right there and—
Oh, that was actually you vomiting, wrinkling your nose after and taking several steps away. Jesus, gross.
A blink, and Daredevil had another man in a chokehold. A blink, and he had taken a baton and smashed another’s knee. Blinked and the whole scene changed. Men who’d held you hostage lay limp on the floor with a cavalcade of non-lethal injuries – only a few still put up a fight. How long had you been standing there, dazed, like a child who’d ridden a swirling carnival ride too long? Maybe you should sit down.
He only glanced at you as you stepped away from the counter and into the backroom space, holding onto to the clothing rack at one point, and wobbling dangerously. You made it around tipped wash bins and spilled liquid soaps bubbling aimlessly on the floor, and sat down heavily on your ass. Pulled the phone cord not from around your neck but so that it was gathered in a neat pile next to you because it didn’t make any sense to make things even messier, did it?
The floor felt nice and cold against your hands, so you slid all the way down and pressed your aching forehead to it. The icy chill dissipated with the heat of your body but the smooth, manufactured texture of it was comforting somehow, sturdy. “This feels good.” You told the room, even though no one was paying attention.
Where was your soulmate bond thing? You felt empty, hollow, like a thought or a feeling might ricochet forever in your chest cavity – a space you only knew you possessed because it was usually not weightless. In that moment though, it held no rope, no chain, no beating bird, no arrow. Hadn’t it been dropped earlier? It had.
Fuck, you wanted it back.
Your hands grasped, nails scraping against the floor, trying to grab whatever that thing was as shouting pierced your eardrum from behind. Spasmed on the floor against that noise and then – oh, oh, OH. There it was. So close because you chose to look for it instead of leave it behind forever. Your eyes closed, you could see the cord there in your imagination, beaten and torn and worse for wear; let the fingers of your body and mind both stretch and reach and curl until fingertip by fingertip you pulled it close. Wound it into neat loops around your hands and then tucked it back inside of yourself where it belonged, behind your ribs. Dex might come back for it someday, after all.
In another reality and to the side, Daredevil faced a contingent of four final Albanians who had somehow made the decision to—to lift an industrial washing machine onto their shoulders?
To fucking what? The logic of that decision was that there was no goddamn logic to it, but it seemed that they intended to squash him like a bug with it. If only he’d stay still, of course, which he wouldn’t. If only their steps would coordinate so the machine wouldn’t tilt dangerously towards the front left man who was a little too short really to be included. If only they’d, you know, thought this through. The vigilante stood there, hands on hips, shaking his head, which, fair.
After a moment he left them to figure themselves out and walked over to your side, where you obediently rolled onto your back to make eye contact with those damned red glasses again. The man without fear, looming like an alligator out of dark water and you reached up a hand to him, fingers soft and fluttering. Watched him pick up a foot and place it on the phone cord still tied about your neck.
Just enough pressure to pull against the bruising forming on your throat, already livid and fresh with burst blood vessels; flushed pink and red there on your skin still because it hadn’t had the space to mottle itself into purple with time. It hurt, he was hurting you, as you tried to pull it away but couldn’t seem to manage the fine motor skills to do so, and Daredevil watched you struggle. Closely.
He looked at you not like Mirek had from above, but like you’d committed an unspeakable crime and he was there to cast judgement on you. For his jaw clenched under his mask, and his nose wrinkled, and then you could see his teeth as he bared them, control fracturing. That heavy, armored foot lifted up again, came down harder and closer to you, increased the pressure as the plasticky, spiralized cord pulled taut and this time you did have to work to breathe, throat burning. “What was the last thing you said to Foggy Nelson?”
Foggy? Instead of questioning why, your brain just tried to come up with the answer and could – did have that answer because of course you’d never forget that night – but you couldn’t breathe. From the cord, or panic, mouth opening and no sound coming out. Daredevil wasn’t heaving for breath anymore, but as he waited for you, you could see that each inhale cost him dearly. Gripped him by the lungs and shook him about violently.
Foggy seemed to appear above you, standing next to Daredevil though you could see through him to the ceiling tile. Mouthed the words to you, definitely a hallucination, though small favors because at least you fucking knew that. Finally, voice raw, “Foggy, I’ll trade places with you, please.”
The words, they seeped as poison into the man’s face, did nothing to quell his anger but did give him pause as Foggy’s ghost melted like condensation down a windowpane. “You offered to trade places with him?” Daredevil said, rough sandpaper in his throat even as he turned his face away like he couldn’t stand to look at you any longer. “You would have died for him?”
No answer, his foot still on the cord and lungs starting to burn uncomfortably again, bellows that were hard to pump. Your hands, they fluttered up again – set upon his knee, his foot, his calf light as butterflies, seeking air, seeking aid. Patted the leather as if to say, ‘That’s enough now.’
If you hadn’t just been hit on the head, you would have fought back, would have scrabbled at his feet, would have thrashed like a beached whale. Would have questioned his intent and why he wanted to know such a thing or cared so goddamn much. This hero to the city looking a hair’s breadth away from killing you, and all you could do was wait for him to come back to himself; stare at the little chips in the black paint of his armor, watching it bleed red. All you could feel was the way the bond, rehomed and resettling, pulsed empty and wanting around deep, deep confusion.
Daredevil sighed. No longer an alligator but a man who was surfacing in that lake and trying not to drown, not just breathe for the sake of it. Glanced back at the Albanians who were apparently figuring out their shit, and reached down, offered you his hand – moved his foot so you could suck in air.
The horns on his helmet pierced your sightline as he looked at them, the way they had become a more cohesive unit with the machine on their shoulders. Settled you rearward against the counter, one hand on the small of your back and the other holding your wrist, when—snikt.
Snikt-thump.
Not letting you go, Daredevil turned to face the noise and at the same time prepared to take you both over the counter for shelter if need be. The man who’d held your life in his hands moments ago actively defending you.
One of the last of the tracksuits was shuddering, you saw, under the machine. His arms trembled, and the shoulder and neck of his crushed velvet shifted from gray to deep brown, a cascade of blood dying him. The machine sagged without his active support, sagged more as he fell, gagging and lips bubbling red. And then another went down, blood trickling out of his left eye, then his right, body crumpling to the floor, looking very much like a ceremonial sacrifice. Spasmed on the floor from the piercing of two sharp blades into soft brain tissue.
The washer crashed to the ground, the noise curiously making Daredevil flinch, and brought the final two down with it, unable to bear the whole weight. They cried out, twitching, pinned – one by the back and the other by a foot bent the wrong way, as Bullseye stalked into the back room.
Not Bullseye, Dex.
And that was more frightening. Dex, raw and angry as a nerve laid bare. Dex, beautiful and vengeful like the seas of old with their translucent Prussian blue waves that drowned ships and sailors alike. Dex, as treacherous and sharp as a shard of moldavite that fell from the sky and reshaped your world. Absolutely furious as he stripped off his balaclava and stared at you, at Daredevil, at the vigilante’s hands on the small of your back and on your wrist.
He paused in the doorway for a moment, sweating and ominous and so angry the storm of him could have broken the building to splinters, and everyone inside with it. There was a moment where he looked at another man’s hand on your skin so intently you felt sure Daredevil’s joints might spontaneously combust before it passed into the storm. Body quiet against the background of sirens and police activity and pain, he stooped to pick up a loose handgun from the floor and shot the two screaming Albanians pinned on under the washer, not even bothering to look at them because he looked you in the eye instead.
As if two players on a stage, or perhaps Daredevil was a rival warship who had waited to engage on the open seas, the man in black and red tugged you like a rag doll to shelter at his back. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him grin, teeth white, at how it inflamed your soulmate further. At how it set Dex off until he charged like a freight train barreling down a track. His big body came down on Daredevil’s shorter one with a fury that should have sent cold fear dripping down your spine except, quite honestly, for the concussion of it all. You definitely had a concussion, you decided absently, as your fingers curled into the waistline of Daredevil’s uniform.
Shooting you an irritated glance, Daredevil spared a hand to push you back a few feet, then twisted in one fluid motion, so that he came up along Dex’s far side. His fists to Dex’s gut and then chest sent him skidding away, even when he then tried to grab at Dex and use his own momentum to swing him around to the opposite side, into the sewing machines.
But it was a miscalculation on Daredevil’s part, for Dex was just as quick, and he’d clamped his elbows down to protect his side as he lunged back, then struck, knuckle splitting open on the other man’s teeth. Letting the conflict breathe, your man in black and blue stepped backward and backward until his questing fingers could find you, touch you, jaw flexing at the first contact. His hand curled into you at your waist, his arm tugged you into his side as he moved to more directly stand in front of you so you could only see his shoulders and smell him – sweat, gun oil, vanilla and woodsmoke – your own perfume. Protected you from Daredevil, savior of the city, as he made his own body a terrible shield.
You couldn’t help it, you breathed hard enough to strain his grip and felt him flex against your ribs, those fingers there. The bond wasn’t empty anymore, aimless, rather it was eating and grabbing – tying you both back together. Taking the individual strands that made the two of you up and knotting them viciously in the hope that they’d never come apart again. Swelled the raised print of your words until you thought they might intend to break free and make for that space inside of him instead. Set your heart beating against the press of his back, so hard you knew that he could feel it too; and just there – on the other side of that chain, you could feel him again.
You weren’t alone anymore.
This valor seemed to shock the other vigilante, like he’d expected Dex to set you aside as a broken doll and try to break him instead. The idea that he could be the threat when Bullseye stood right there was almost comically outlandish to him. And then Daredevil angered – you could see it plainly when you peered around your soulmate’s shoulder disobediently – a slow sparking that struck against tinder and flint. He started laughing then, no joy in it, just dark and patronizing as the tinder caught flame. “Aw, sweetheart, what are you afraid I’m going to do, huh? Kill someone who means something to you? Your little soulmate?”
How did he—?
But before you could even process the thought, Dex was acting. A knife from his holster sailed through the air and sunk all the way into the far wall as Daredevil slid to the side at the last possible second. Rather than step away from you, he began reaching for whatever was within his arm’s span – pens hit the wall and clattered to the floor; a stapler clocked his opponent in the forehead; knives from his belt sunk into the other man’s armor with terrible power; the Pyrex receipt dish shattered on the floor; the fucking cash register hit the other man in the hip with a thud, driving space between you all.
Dex glanced back at you then, over his shoulder, for a split second so you saw how dark his eyes were, how they sheltered something you hadn’t seen in him before. His palm slid around your body as he pivoted away instead of just letting go, watchful even as Daredevil had stumbled towards the back of the store. Lightning fast, he found a rubber band ball that must have rolled out of the back office, and his fingers curled around the grip of a baseball bat.
It had a smear of drying blood on the end. Yours.
So fast you couldn’t fully track the movement, Dex flipped the bat with casual confidence while he set his teeth to mimic a smile, swung it with muscles flexing – BOOM.
Daredevil dodged the ball that was hit at him with devastating speed, but he failed to account for the baseball bat. And when it hit him in the shoulder like a missile, he fell to one knee with a yell. Tried to grab for the bat, but his fingers wouldn’t grasp it right, so that it only rolled around noisily on the linoleum and he was undefended when Dex’s heel caught him the ribs – those thighs, for once, not just looking strong but being strong. A fist to the jaw and he was stunned; a crack of his head into the nearest wall and suddenly his body went limp for a moment; a seemingly miraculous roll so that another punch hit the floor instead.
Red not just in his costume anymore but blooming on his face as well, Daredevil still stood up; he staggered with one fist held up in a relentless determination to fight his way out of any situation – even when he faced a hand of death in black and bruise colors. Even when he faced a hand of death with so much rage it threatened to swallow him and sink him to the depths. Even when he faced a hand of death so fucking cracked apart if should have shattered him.
The two men stood with eyes locked – one steady and strong, the other barely upright – a pause for evaluation and strategy. But all around them, Albanians were beginning to rouse, low groans and soft clatter as they clumsily tried to stand. Dex’s head cocked as he listened to them, Daredevil did too in an odd mirror image; they counted the little sounds that meant these men were alive and dangerous as they ignored the sounds of police and crowds gathering outside. Yet that was the real danger, wasn’t it? The police would soon enter whether beckoned in or not; and what you had once wished for seemed more like a threat – a promise of capture and arrest.
Fuck, that could not happen. You could not watch the man with your words go back to prison. You didn’t have another headbutt in you.
Dex’s jaw was tightening again, you could feel it in your own teeth, and it was the only warning anyone had before he moved. Slamming an open palm into Daredevil’s chest to push him back into a wall and then catching a knife that had flipped in the air without you even seeing his hand toss it. He went to first one Albanian, then another, and then other, and another, methodically, killing them.
Right in front of you. Dex opened their throats one at time, close and intimate so that they knew who took their lives, a relentless god home from the battlefield. Blood drenched his hands and forearms, the belly of his shirt, the sapphire ring gone black. Grimaced into their dying screams – the man with the gold tooth, the younger one, the one with the smile too friendly for this shit – they all died. Each time, he let their necks gape open, muscle meat ripping further with the motion, and he looked back at you with his naked face – naked in more than just one sense, naked in that you saw too deep below the surface. Assured himself that you were still there or still alive or fuck – you didn’t fully know while looking back at him. Butchered every single one of them, like pigs, until the floor ran red and slippery.
Your face curdled into something akin to horror, mouth dropping open to suck in great gulps of air as you hopelessly wished that this wasn’t happening – that the room wasn’t spinning, that you couldn’t see inside of their bodies like that. You knew, obviously, what Dex was; had seen Foggy die right in front of you. But you hadn’t yet seen this, the intimacy of a blade opening each neck; the way each one of them was more purposeful than the last; the pleasure he took in it.
He saved Mirek the Slav for last. Mirek who reached out to you as it happened, weakly with one hand while his throat parted like peach silk bisected for a pattern and his blood waterfalled to the floor. It lapped at the toes of your shoes, began to soak in, and you found that you couldn’t move. Everything hurt too much, everything felt—felt—
Dex was looking at you again. Why was he looking at you in this terrible moment?
Cataloguing your white knuckles, the loll of your head to the side, the blood on your shoulder, the dried tear tracks that were suddenly wet again, the way your mouth wasn’t a mouth anymore but an open maw of terror. You’d never seen anyone look more nightmarish, right then, with Mirek’s body dropped between his feet. Never seen a monster like that in anyone else’s eyes, never been so close to true death because there in Dex something looked back at you. A part of him too terrible to be anything but a last resort. And he couldn’t stop you from seeing it, couldn’t hold it in or control it with an iron will if that iron will had already been broken by panic.
God, you watched him try to shutter his face as he’d done before but it didn’t work, couldn’t work, failed him. All he could do was turn away.
Daredevil had picked up that baseball bat in his good hand, but it did him little good, did it? Useless when Dex spun on a heel and picked him up by the armpits and held him aloft like he was actually the broken doll, not you. A display of brute strength after brute anger. “You didn’t even goddamn kill them.” Came out snarling and vicious, a voice that grated like it dragged a body behind a pickup going 75 down the freeway.
A wave of dizziness grabbed hold of you, fist clenching your gut because your toes were gummy with Mirek’s blood through your shoes. And you had to turn and press your forehead to the laminate of the counter or you’d vomit again. Oh god, fuck, fuck you could see from there the police gearing up across the street, could feel the lights flashing across your face in whiplashes of color, and in your ear was that ticking sound– no, two ticking sounds – discordant with each other. One that fucking word bond in your chest cavity ratcheting itself click by click as it levered you closer to Dex on the other side and the second was the clock, relentlessly taking each second away.
“They were hurting her.” Someone was raging – Dex was raging, that was Dex’s voice. You turned your head against the countertop and could just see him lifting Daredevil up higher, shaking him, biceps bulging. “They’re killing her and you didn’t even fucking kill them.” And then he slammed the horned vigilante to the floor, against his bad shoulder with a sickening crack so painful it echoed. Stood over him with his chest heaving and these tiny, fragile tremors shaking up his arms.
As if with a diopter lens, you could see him lifting a foot, driven beyond control; and you could see the police, several of them, clad in black and bulletproof vests, weapons up. “Dex—”
And that true death killer, he froze in place, head cocking in your direction, held at bay by one syllable. This did not go unnoticed by the only other living person in the room. “Get out. The police – you’ll be arrested. Get the fuck out. Both of you.”
Daredevil was rolling to his feet, somehow, standing even though he staggered, looked like twenty miles of bad road, like he could barely walk. With this movement Dex flinched reflexively, in his hand a knife appearing out of thin air, at the ready. “Get out!” You managed one yell then, shredded because Dex’s eyes looked like rocks hidden in the tide. The two of them were mostly hidden by the motionless motorized clothing rack – if they didn’t hesitate, if they didn’t fuck around, they’d be able to get out. The front door was being opened then, you heard the chiming bell. “Get the fuck out.”
When police officers flooded in, you were alone with nothing but dead Albanians. Hands caught you by the shoulders while voices shouted for a stretcher. Someone probed your scalp until you winced, and suddenly you were on your back, being wheeled out, a flashlight shining in your eyes. Night air cooler by several degrees chilled the tears on your cheeks before an oxygen mask was fitted over your nose and mouth, air tasting stale.
“Head trauma. Metro-General has a generator going.” An unfamiliar voice from very far away was saying, and really from there it didn’t really seem like there was anything worth remembering after that.
***
July 23, 2027
“And Daredevil just… left. Is that what I’m hearing?” Detective Mahoney sat in an uncomfortable hospital chair, a notepad in one hand and a tiny stub of a pencil in the other. He had been nodding his head along to the cadence of your words until this last bit, and narrowed his eyes at you.
Your first twelve hours under medical supervision were a blur – unfamiliar voices, the scent of sterile cleaners, the sting of an IV needle being inserted into your arm. They cut your shirt off to dress the puncture wound on your shoulder, and sent you through an MRI machine as quickly as possible – turned out having a head injury got you pushed nearly to the front of the line, unlike a measly broken arm. Nurses in the emergency room spoke over you in hushed whispers, about the blood and the dead and the violence, like you weren’t awake or a person to hear them. Patients spilled into every hallway and every hospital room, all casualties of the blackout, and the noise of their crying and talking and wailing made a gentle lullaby as you drifted in and out of wakefulness.
A bed was produced hours later, a room that you’d shared with two others until Mahoney had insisted on privacy for the interview and stared sternly at a hapless assisting until he wheeled the other two out himself. He’d dragged a chair to your bedside then, sweating, and informed you you’d be talking to him, whether you wanted to or not.
Metro-General did have its generators going, but power had been routed to essential services until the grid was repaired. Meant only the barest of air conditioning to keep everyone from swimming in a toxic cocktail of sweat, anger, and anxiety, and you caught Marci fanning herself to the side. She had arrived several hours ago, fussing nervously, eyes red from crying. Her words were printed along the side of her hand, pinky to wrist in tiny script, flashed as she wiped her forehead. ‘It’s no inconvenience. I know I’m running early.’ They seemed brighter somehow, darker, inherently noticeable.
She reached out to squeeze your calf, comforting, as you nodded. “Yes, I told him to get out and well, he did. I—I think he was hurt.” You knew damn well he was hurt and how, but it was hard enough explaining one vigilante, let alone two. Dex and the ropey bond lashing you together could stay tucked away inside, secretive, safe.
“And you’ve met him before, have you not?” Mahoney frowned when you yawned again, the fourth time in as many moments. “Should we resume this later?”
It wasn’t true, that old saying about not letting someone with a concussion sleep. The doctor had warned you of drowsiness to hound you for several days, and even after sleeping for some hours your body craved it more. You felt like you were in that soft, unsteady dream state of drowsiness – not fully sunk in the Lethe’s waters but sitting on the shore, feet submerged. But as your body craved it, your mind wanted none of it – the dreams. The dreams.
Eyes that peered out at you from the dark, flashing and dangerous. A mushroom cloud of smoke that bloomed from the Triskelion. A hand reaching for you, trembling, flecks of blood on the fingers and palm, falling to the floor because you refused to reach back. The clumsy push of a body you didn’t desire against yours in the night. Foggy’s awareness slipping away while blood pooled at the knees of your jeans and soaked Karen’s coat. Guns held in your face as you knelt on the scratchy rug of your DC apartment, crying. Dex’s face, still, bloody, dead. That one came back the most.
The doctors, the nurses, they didn’t wake you when you slept. They said that was good, the sleeping, the dreams. They said you were lucky.
It took you a moment to answer, neurons trying to fire in your brain and failing. You’d met Daredevil before? Kind of. If watching him throw your soulmate off a roof counted as meeting. Again, Foggy’s face imprinted point blank over reality, the taste of cheap carnival smoke machines in your mouth, and you shrugged. “Oh, yeah, you’re right. At Josie’s, the night—” At this, you glanced at Marci, who was staring at the floor. “At Josie’s Bar.”
You didn’t feel lucky. You felt, really, the opposite of lucky. Sure, you’d escaped death by intercranial swelling but you, lucky? No.
“Have you had any contact with him since October 2025? Is that why he came?” Mahoney was writing in his notebook, and you were intensely cognizant of the fact that even though he seemed to be a good guy, Fisk was the major. Police bowed to the mayor and his Safer Streets Initiative. Vigilantes were wanted criminals, and just for yelling at Daredevil to leave, you could be called one too. That little notebook could be used against you if your careful words crossed even the smallest of lines.
“No, no.” A nurse had pushed the curtains back from the track around your hospital bed, and busied herself with typing in notes into the computer. “Just coincidence, I’m sure. Maybe he’s a customer by day and we didn’t know it.” Mahoney looked up sharply, and you bit down hard on your tongue, wincing.
Marci took the opportunity to stand up and start fussing over blankets, smoothing them down your lap and putting herself in between you and the detective. She glanced up at you, little half-moons of white underneath each iris, and finished by tucking away the tie strings of your hospital gown, motherly. “I think that’s enough questioning for now, detective. You’ve got the whole story.”
“There are just a few more—”
“If there’s anything else, please make sure all communication is passed through me at Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz. We’d be happy to assist the police in any way.” And the message to you, there in plain sight, was to shut the fuck up.
The detective stood then, tucking his notebook away and pushing that little excuse for a pencil behind his ear. His suit looked three days old at this point, rumpled and worn, and so did his face, but he eyed the two of you as sharply as ever. “Are you representing a client right now, Ms. Stahl?”
“If she needs me to.” You left the two of them to stare each other down, as Marci was no hapless attending, and turned your head to the window at the far side of the room. Sunlight filtered in through the pane of glass, dust motes slowly drifting through its stream, and as you sat in the lukewarm bath of pain from your head and back and shoulder, you thought not of home but of Dex. The gold that shot through his hair in the sun, the utter darkness inside him that he’d shown you, and how you didn’t know where he was.
Everything was unfinished and ugly between the two of you, ripped in half, but it was there. If it was there, it could be mended, and you were good at mending. You could take a needle and a thread, and sew it back together yourself if need be. All those wounds he sheltered in his mind and his body and his past and his future, maybe you could mend those too. The thought, the impulse to do that, meant there was want to do that, that you wanted him, even after seeing what he’d done.
Detective Mahoney was halfway out the door at this point, when you finally resigned yourself to paying attention again, settling a pair of sunglasses on his face. But he stopped right in the threshold, snapping his fingers. “Before I forget,” and he bent down to pick up something that must have been sitting on a chair in the hallway. “I thought you’d want your purse. And your phone.”
A gallon-sized clear plastic bag was deposited on your thighs, and Mahoney watched you open it expectantly. Inside was indeed your purse, zipped tight and worn, with Bic pen marks at the corner, as if nothing had happened. Inside your cards, hair ties, straw wrappers, Dex’s blade, the like. Beneath it your phone, case scratched but otherwise none the worse for wear, powered off. You pressed the on button, everyone watching as the screen lit up and then there was your background – but no notifications, no texts.
“Thanks.” Marci was moving your purse to the side table for you, but she was listening carefully as you added, “I thought these would be evidence.”
Mahoney was stopping to pump hand sanitizer onto his palms, rubbed them together with some force. “They weren’t used in the commission of a crime, so no. I didn’t figure you for a knife person though.” He said casually, fishing a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopping his forehead.
The nurse had come over to take your blood pressure, and she was wrapping the cuff around your upper arm as you answered him, felt the skin on your neck prickle, “I’m—I’m really not. It’s just something I picked up for protection.” Her fingers were cold against your skin, soothing, and you wondered how she had managed that.
His gaze assessing, not fully trusting. “Nice.” Mahoney put his hand on the door, preparing to close it, and gave you a friendly smile that you caught at the last second. Something about the way he looked you over, the way Marci straightened in her chair to pay attention, made you meet his eye. “By the way, who’s DE in your phone?”
“Detective—”
But Mahoney brushed aside Marci’s warning tone like it was nothing, shrugged. “Just wondering.”
It wasn’t – nothing – though. Warning bells clanged distantly in your ears, as tension began to filter through your body, like tensile wire was pushing through all your extremities to pose them appropriately. He’d looked through your phone. The police had looked through your phone. Had you used Dex’s name in any texts? Had Karen ever said anything in her messages that could clue them into who, exactly, had written those words on your ribs? Not for the first time, you wished foolishly that that same man was there with you, holding your hand, a real boyfriend.
Partner. Boyfriend was juvenile.
Silence, it perched expectantly in the doorway, accompanying the detective with his watchful, careful face. If you didn’t answer – suspicion. If you answered poorly – more suspicion. “Uh, Dwayne or something. And old boyfriend.” The lie came together in a burst of salty licorice anxiety on your tongue. “Edwards.”
“Ah,” He nodded absently, reaching up to grab that pencil from his ear because the arms of his sunglasses threatened to push it to the floor. “Well, the guy’s got a real hard on for you, texting you like that. That’s for sure.”
He left, and you faced a frowning Marci, a nurse that kept jostling you, a crushing sense that the walls might be closing in on you just a little bit more. He’d looked through your phone, your purse; any number of hospital personnel had likely seen your words. Sometime soon, someone was going to start asking questions that you simply couldn’t respond to because Dex was the answer to all of them.
“Your blood pressure’s high. Let’s do this again in twenty minutes, just to check. If it’s down, we’ll let you go home later today, okay?” The nurse trying to be helpful, and there was the sound of Velcro ripping apart, and those cold fingers again pulling the device off of you. You said nothing, just thinking of your soulmate, while the bond slowly, slowly, slowly wound itself round your chest, your heart, and phantom fingers whispered along the back of your neck.
_ _ _
They did, in fact, intend to release you later that day. There were strict instructions on careful mental and physical rest, and to come back to emergency if there were sudden symptoms of dizziness, pain, nausea, and the like. “A lot of concussion recovery is simply you taking it slow and listening to your body.” The discharge nurse said, typing into the little computer monitor she had wheeled up to your bed. “If you just hang out for a little while longer, I’ll bring you some at home care paperwork, and then you can go.”
“Thank you.”
She kept typing. “It says here that you’re not pregnant and have no history of pregnancy, is that correct?” There were mandatory tests when medication was involved, of course she could see the results on the screen for herself.
“Yeah, definitely not.” You tried a laugh for the first time in what felt like forever, but it was stilted and awkward.
Marci had no such trouble, chuckling a little while fond memories lit themselves on the screen of her face. “My little cousin here is the only one in the family who’s never had a baby scare. Not even in college like the rest of us! Can you believe it?”
The nurse was looking over and attempting an amused expression as natural as your laugh. Her scrubs boasted a small cross on the shoulder, you noticed suddenly. “Yup.” More salty licorice at your agreement.
“Remember that time you went to that frat party and called me at like 3 am to ask—”
“Marci.” She cut off suddenly at your sharp voice, and you sagged back against the pillows, drained. “Could you go to the cafeteria and get some coffee for us?” Indicated your purse with a finger. “My treat.”
That left you alone in the semi-darkness of your little draped off area, the room still empty otherwise, and Marci shaking her head at the idea of taking your money. Probably for the best. Did you even have a job to go back to after this? At any rate, you might have to find a fucking Hot Dog on a Stick to hire you. Was any food still good in the fridge? The lights on yet? The shower okay? The prospect of fixing all of those problems seemed daunting when you’d just been told that even reading was too taxing for the first night. “Just sleep for a few days.” You muttered, a little bitter. Like it was that easy.
Marci seemed to think so. She’d departed for coffee with an optimism you’d never achieved in your life, kept rubbing the side of her hand, nails scraping her words. She insisted that she’d stay with you as long as necessary, and it was kind but… cloying. Like you’d eaten too much good food and needed space to figure out if you were going to vomit.
The prospect of her being around after the days you’d had was a lot. Too much. Not to say it wasn’t nice, you trying to reason with yourself and not feel like an asshole about it – just you wanted to be alone. Exist in silence and just wallow in a puddle of melancholy over the way your life had come to a rolling stop like a broken-down car.
In your hands you held Dex’s knife, it’s dark steel sharp and bright in the hospital lights. Had dug it out of your purse to spin it round and round your fingers; to prick at your thumb pad with the razor thin point; to trace the bullseye with your nail, over and over again. As the knife warmed in your hands, his face flashed in your memory. That moment of terrible anger where it wasn’t a man looking back at you over the body of a dead Albanian, but a devil who would do what he needed to do, no matter what it cost. What had you once thought?
That he was a being of power.
That was wrong – you feared he was actually a being of terrible power. Killing someone from afar was horrible enough, destroying them personally was something else and he had destroyed them face to face. You might wish for him to be there with you, to be a real partner, to be like everyone else, but you couldn’t afford to be naïve. There needed to be some acknowledgement, even if just right then in the depths of your mind and your goddamn soul, of what he was capable of. Of whether you could live with it or not. Regular men could be monsters enough, after all, so what might an actual monster turn into?
No.
No, fuck that was cruel even to think, vile. That moment back at the store had reached deep into your gut and taken hold of that prey animal part of you, and shook it, hard. The incredibly intimacy of his violence, his rage, was a hand at your throat – you couldn’t tell if it was a soft caress or a hard grip. There was always the possibility that someday he could turn that rage on you, wasn’t there? But that too, felt cruel to think when you remembered him watching you kiss him with both eyes open. Felt wrong both against your own sense of Dex and against the powerful protestation of that sad, frail bird in your chest. No hand of Dex’s would raise against you.
And so the question was really: could you be with a monster that shielded you – put his body in front of yours – kept you from walking next to traffic on the sidewalk – texted you to be careful – asked you to stitch him up – looked at you with a reverence so sharp it was painful – but would always be a monster?
This alone was perhaps days of parsing, of thinking, of wallowing on the couch with ice cream and overpriced Doordash orders you couldn’t afford and sad girl music on your phone. Maybe a lot of weepy historical romance novels where no one ended up happy, too. So would it be that terrible to tell Marci you needed space? Judging by how earnestly she pitched a girl’s night, you rather thought so.
“Knock knock.”
Daniel, with his big-cheeked grin, yanked you out of the doom and gloom cycle that was threatening to encompass at least a week of your life. He had part of the curtain pulled back and with his features shadowed he looked almost threatening there. But then the grin grew into a wide smile to banish that impression, and he pulled the curtain back further to reveal a small bundle of wildflowers. He didn’t notice how you dropped the knife like it burned and flung some beige hospital blanket over it, like a child caught playing with something they shouldn’t have had.
“Oh, my God, Daniel, thank you. What—what are you doing here?” And you were happy to see him, in that moment. Eager for a new person unconnected to the tangled skein of prickly, sensitive rope housed in the bond, and the man who was tied up tight to the other end. To this whole mess. “How did you know I was here?”
“Well actually,” He was setting the flowers on the side table and wearing a shirt that you’d helped him repair and clean some time ago. A thoughtful touch. “I’m here for work. I saw your name on the list the police gave us of people we could visit after the blackout, you know, for publicity. So we had to come by.”
“We?”
“I’m afraid I’ll be interrupting your visit, just for a little while.”
There, in the doorway, was the mayor. Wilson Fisk, in the flesh. Tall, imposing, built to resemble a bull made for fighting, too big to take down with something as mortal as a lance. He tried to smile at you, tried to wear a politician’s grin but it just appeared like horns he was lowering in an attempt to gore you, incisors sharp. “I hope you don’t mind. We heard of your heroics against those… convicts. You should congratulate yourself.”
Kind words. Praise. An attempt at friendliness. A dutifully elected city official but all you could see was the criminal still living in his skin, underneath that façade. After all, you hadn’t voted for the man.
Even aside from the Dex Issue, Union Allied was not some long ago, Depression-era robber baron taking from the poor and riding off into the sunset. That was a real case, affecting real people, in your neighborhood – people you’d grown up with. Fuck anyone who messed with Hell’s Kitchen, and Fisk had done just that, even when he claimed to love it the most. Yet the man who had done all that damage was standing before you – restrained, yes – but still a threat. “I—I wouldn’t say heroics.”
“Still.” The threat in question walked forward and extended his arm. “Its everyday people like you, fighting against corruption, that I am most excited to represent. My task force is on the streets every day to make sure things like that don’t happen again.”
Again, your vote counted against the creep. You wanted none of his representation.
But there was no option but to take his hand in yours, shake it and feel like he was trying to crush the bones in your hand with the firmness of it. Hope he didn’t see the edge of Dex’s knife beneath your blanket. “Well, I appreciate that.” And hoped he couldn’t see that the platitude tasted of sour lemon, or the way a phantom hand settled between your shoulder blades with the worst fucking timing ever.
Fisk released your hand but he didn’t step away, and you thought for a moment that he glanced down at your lap. “I understand that the terrorist Daredevil was there as well. That must have been… terrifying. But you’ve had experience facing down dangerous men before, haven’t you?” A deep well of indrawn breath. “At the Poindexter trial. I remember reading about it.”
That this man remembered you at the trial was no gift, but rather a pipe bomb that might explode at any minute. You swallowed heavily, shrugged, but it was Daniel who gave you a few moments to tear your eyes away from his, the glue trap he’d laid out for you. “Boss, I’m telling you, you hadta be there. Two black eyes and she still went on the stand.”
“Admirable.” Fisk was stepping forward, and from the inner pocket of his coat he produced a business card in thick, glossy cardstock. Heavily embossed on a perfect milky satin finish to match the sheen of his suit. “I could always use someone with such bravery in the mayor’s office. And Daniel speaks so highly of you.”
You’d rather eat rusty nails from the bottom of the East River than work for the Kingpin, but pinched it gingerly between two fingers and managed to tip it into the open zip of your purse. The knife was prodding your thigh painfully and you had to hope it hadn’t come uncovered in the movement. “I guess. It really wasn’t that frightening.” Both men adopted expressions of surprise, and you blundered forward. “I had a concussion by that point after all. Truly, I don’t really remember that much.”
Your weak laugh didn’t mitigate things as well as you might have hoped. The fingers crawling down your shoulder mitigated nothing at all.
The shrewdness with which you were examined then made you feel small and uncomfortable. Even more so to realize that Fisk had been examining you so this whole time, and only now had you realized it. What an idiot. How dumb to think this man wasn’t seeing everything you hoped he wouldn’t. Maybe even looking right through your hospital gown to your words, to the bloody beating heart of the bond sitting beneath your breast. You had to get him the fuck out of here. “I – I’m sorry. I’m kind of tired. If you wouldn’t mind…”
And Mayor Fisk held your gaze, eyes like grasping fingers before finally societal niceties clicked into place, and he nodded his head with as much grace as he could manage. “Of course. Daniel?”
Just like Detective Mahoney, they stopped at the hand sanitizer dispenser, and as the clear goo dripped into his palm, Daniel brightened up again unexpectedly, his accent strengthening. “Oh! I’ve been meaning to ask you – Mrs. Fisk is gonna needa nice dress for this thing in November. We’ll give you a call about it, okay?”
“Oh, well, I—” I don’t make custom gowns, you wanted to say. Just fix rips and buttons and seams and make things fit people right the way when you couldn’t make your own life fit right. Those fingers spurred you to say that, sitting under your chin, but you didn’t have time to respond.
The mayor halted any protestation with one upraised hand, his version of a kind expression painting across his face. “I’m glad to know that my beloved wife will be in good hands.” And then they left, passing Marci in the hall so that she found you sitting back against pillows, the knife moving back and forth between your hands, feeling a new thread of dread that you wished you could just – just – snip off.
***
July 23, 2027 – and still
Matt endured a visit from the long-suffering Claire with gritted teeth and a sense that fate had given up on him.
After the… encounter with Poindexter, he’d returned to Josie’s panting and bleeding, shoulder held at an unnatural angle, face distorted with fury and self-loathing. Karen dutifully tied his arm down to his chest as tightly as she could, brows drawn together, and didn’t ask what had happened. Let him tell her when the time was right. And the time was right that night, when through clenched teeth Matt confessed the entirety of his actions while his collarbone creaked angrily.
Even the moment in which he had contemplated putting his foot on the throat of Bullseye’s soulmate, a person who probably still called Matthew Murdock a friend. Spread his sin like playing cards on the table in front of the love of his life when she might damn well draw 21 and leave him behind. Mostly she just listened, lips pursed, knowing he needed to bleed the poison before he’d listen to her.
He distracted her then, when she might have argued or prodded or asked questions that made him sick to his stomach – accepted her anger and attempted to assuage it before she burned him with it. “Matt, you’re being ridiculous.” Karen told him when he whispered in her ear about having one good hand left and how he might use it to please her in the dark. Worshipped her, sustained himself on her pleasure against his mouth and on his fingers, eased his guilt.
Claire’s visit ended that goodwill he earned for himself when she diagnosed him with a fracture to his collarbone. Bruising had swelled there under his neck and pain pulsed below the surface, Matt agreeing with her assessment handily.
“Oh, gee, thank you for concurring with me, a woman with actual medical training.” Claire snapped at him, only a little irritated at this point because she knew Matt well enough by then. Karen, for her part, stood back and let the nurse berate him – alternately worried her lip and glared at him.
“Ah, well,” Grunted with pain after a tender adjustment. “Don’t sweat it.” Matt reached up and plucked the glasses from his face, set them down on the bedside table because he didn’t want them in the way when he kissed Karen goodnight.
Adjusting the straps of the arm brace so that he couldn’t move his shoulder much at all, Claire ignored how uncomfortable it made him and scoffed. She wiped her hands on her scrubs, and he smelled on her stress, the lingering scent of blood, industrial strength cleaner, and lo mein from the place near Metro-General. “This,” and her finger poked his shoulder pointedly under the work lights of a construction crew outside who tried frantically to fix the power outage. “Needs to stay in place for eight to twelve weeks. No exceptions. No movement. No… daredeviling.”
“A week or two.” Matt tried to shift away from the pain there but only made it worse.
Karen had turned to walk out of the room, incredulous and hiding a put upon smile because she knew how this would turn out. Claire watched the other woman leave and narrowed her eyes at the whole Matt of it all. “For you, no, I’m going to guess more like twelve to fifteen.”
“Eight weeks.” Matt said, feeling like he was relenting and being fairly cooperative, really.
After a moment Claire shook her head, and reached into her bag for two things: one, a bottle of painkillers from the hospital; two, a bottle of hand sanitizer. She set the painkillers on the table and squired the sanitizer into her palms. It must have been one of the ones produced during the pandemic because it smelled heavily of tequila. “If you don’t want surgery on that shoulder, you should listen to me for a minimum of eight weeks but,” and here she raised her voice at him because his eyebrows were lifting and his mouth was opening to say something stupid. “Ideally, ideally, for twelve.”
A glass of water was placed next to the pills, courtesy of Karen, who nudged it in his direction with soft fingers and a face he knew was so transparent it was glass-like, only a shiny, thin layer over her emotions. Could tell she was scared by the rhythm of her breath, and he imagined Claire read that nervousness easily. “Generally, you’re supposed to listen to the good doctor.”
Out on the street, a car backfired and Matt flinched; a few sirens passed in the distance while Claire ticked a finger at Karen in agreement; and the power came back on. There was slight warmth from the overhead light above, a steady hum that rose up in near harmonious unison from everything electric in the building, a good-natured cheer from the people next door. For once, Hell’s Kitchen was ahead of the game, and it felt… nice.
Not for Claire though, who checked her watch and bemoaned having to go back to Metro-General, which had been thrown into a tailspin by the blackout. She departed with stern admonishments not to move the arm as much as possible, and left the two of them to get ready for bed.
Another nice thing, because Karen getting ready for bed smelled like rose and strawberry and juicy, sweet things that made the world a little brighter. That scent enveloped him as they slipped under the sheets, the lights flicked off so that there was one less little hum, and Matt sought to give her his arms when she asked for him. Felt the silk of her hair, the in out press of her breath, and the warmth of her skin he’d never give up even though it was really too hot for that. And tried – tried – to relax.
“You still feel guilty.”
Karen’s voice. Her fingernails scratched at his chest while she traced little squares on his pectoral muscle and cut right to the heart of him. Of course, he still felt guilty. That was a woman who had laughed with him in bars, met the avocadoes at law for dinner as a Marci-attachment, sat next to him in that courtroom for weeks. Foggy had cared for her, Kristen still did. She’d held Karen’s hand when he had failed to be there for her. And he had come within a razor-sharp millimeter of suffocating her.
She’d held Foggy as he died.
That was the crux of it, for Matt, the ultimate betrayal. She held his best friend, his brother, as he died and then she attached herself to the man who had killed him. Spoke those words to Bullseye while blood still dried on her hands; maybe if she hadn’t been there, Foggy would still be alive.
“He protected her from me. From me. I—” From him, Poindexter shielding her as if she was precious and sacred.
“She did need protection from you, Matt.” Bluntly put just when he needed it, that was his soulmate, his freedom. Ready always to confront him about his guilt and help him incise it.
Matt shifted, tense, against his girl and really fucking wanted to ignore her point even if he knew that was impossible. Her feet had curled against his calves, and he pushed in closer to her. “If she wasn’t there, that night.” And Karen knew which night, of course she did. “Maybe Vanessa wouldn’t have ordered Foggy’s death. Maybe the case wouldn’t have ever come up. Benny might never have stolen that champagne.”
A sigh.
“The universe did not set up this whole chain of events just to give Benjamin Poindexter a soulmate, Matt.” She took the time to speak right out of his mouth but replaced it with her own conviction. “Even if their… words never happened, people have free will. Foggy might still be dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Fuck, then maybe Daniel Fisher is dead because I was supposed to meet you.”
Karen broke the stillness between them by shifting, an elbow to his ribs as silence tried and failed to overwhelm this… discussion between them. But there was creaking from the old building settling, music from the Mexican place down the street, the swish of laundry drying on a clothesline out back, and her nail tapping the little gold cross on her necklace – silence he rarely knew. Matt’s internal sense of flight was becoming more akin to falling, out of control, wild, the earth racing up to meet him but never actually arriving.
“It’s not the same thing.”
Karen was moving in his arms again, and he knew from the gentle sensation of her on the other end of the bond, that her run had turned more to stumbling. That she felt bone tired and angry. “Bullshit. Do not make me defend that man, Matt. He tried to kill me, for fuck’s sake, and I hate him. But his words? That’s just a rotten fucking coincidence.”
Matt hated how her vehemence was working on him, a little bit. A precisely tailored closing argument to bring the jury right on over to her side. How she reminded him of Foggy in that moment. “Someone has to take the blame.”
There was a rough noise in her throat, another tap from her nail. “Yeah, and he is to blame. So is Vanessa. I’m just saying… people live through shit they don’t deserve every day. He—he---” And she had to stop, because she was building to some point about responsibility and fate and being deserving of a life that she didn’t want to make. Not for Poindexter. “Life is just a long line of shit things happening to all of us. For that asshole too. What his father did… And her. He’s the shit thing for her, Matt, can’t you see that? This isn’t some reward. Maybe they’re both just grabbing at any chance for a different life.”
A deep shuddering breath, a sense that she’d lost her way on the path to her point. “Fuck, I hate that man, Matt. But you’re being ridiculous. I don’t know.”
“Foggy should have had a chance at a different life.” Matt spoke too harshly for the blanket of night but he couldn’t help it – the words just burst out of him and if Karen kept slowly backing away to the other side of the bed, he didn’t blame her.
‘He had a hard life, Matt… He never had a chance.’ Foggy’s words, Foggy’s face, Foggy’s mercy. It didn’t feel good to have to return to lessons he should have learned a long time ago.
***
July 23, 2027 – and yet
She had to come home soon, surely.
Dex sat, fuming, furious, frightened, in her apartment on her couch. His fingers, cleaned and scrubbed though his clothing was stiff with blood still, wore a pattern into the fabric there until it threatened to rip. His eyes bounced restlessly between the windows, the bed, the door. The windows, the bed, the door, waiting. Chest felt tight, full of concrete that would sink him down into the water, beyond the reach of sunlight – too far for her to reach down to him from the surface. Made his jaw hurt from how hard he snapped it shut.
There were three, exactly, problems torturing him, gnawing at him and the rope of the bond like they intended to chew through and sever it wholesale.
The windows.
First, the fight, which sat dormant in the sapphire ring he’d laid on the coffee table, inside shiny from being twisted round his finger so much. The fight that still lingered there in the air like the ghost of the vanilla and smoke she drifted behind her each day. The anger that had transmuted mostly to tiredness had shifted again, alchemical, to fear and terror, had become desperation to see her still living and well. At its core, it was still anger, but the need to check over every inch of her skin and see that she still breathed was more important. He just… he needed to know still.
About Hydra. The threat of Fisk somehow engineering the entirety of a soulmate just to destroy him fully truly was the problem; here there was no question that that man would sink to creating false hope, a path through the forest just for the pleasure of burning it to ash. After Ray’s family with their financial woes – Fisk. After the Julie’s death – Fisk. After his back – Fisk. This bond could not, too, be Fisk – not the tether that had dug into every part of him, not a woman who tasted like honeyed wine and a future. And if she was somehow connected to that man, Dex would lead his Eurydice out of the underworld to the land of the living, and he would not fail.
Not again. The bed.
That was the second problem. He had failed, Dex was loathe to admit but it was right there in front of him. She had needed him, was hurt, badly, could have died. Could have left him to drag her body someplace dark and shed tears over it. And was he there to protect her? He wasn’t. Fuck. He wasn’t there and he should have been. He should have known, somehow, something was going to happen.
The way she’d looked in the dry cleaners – barely able to stand, face drained of any color and shirt bloody – would never leave him if he lived to be 300 years old. The likelihood that he’d live to 80 even – slim – but each day that image would pit him slowly from the inside out until he was hollow if not redeemed; a hand scooping him out from the inside when he was used to that overfull sensation of her now. A stomach crying for food.
The door.
The third was a simpler issue – and that was her absence. That he could not risk entering the hospital with its security cameras and police officers and observant medical personnel without being recognized. The threat of prison hung ever present over him, and was something they would have to deal with, eventually, if they ever wanted a life. Dex took care of what was his, or tried to, and that woman in the hospital? She damn fucking well should know she was his now, no escape. How could he watch for her if she went where he could not follow?
The ring lay before him on the table, an accusation, a promise, desire.
Restless because he’d been waiting there for hours, Dex stood up and paced to first one window, then the other, for once opening them rather than berating her to keep them closed. The apartment was hot and stuffy, suffering with the combination of New York summer and blackout disarray, and he needed fresh air for a moment. Needed to hear that others outside lived in normality; maybe all he could do was look in on them enjoying mundane existences, but at least he could look in. The window by her bed gave him some trouble, so that he had to shove it hard for a couple inches give, and after a moment he let himself drop down onto her sheets.
Lowered his head so that it rested there upon her pillow. His back, his body, lay where she slept, where she dreamt, where she pleasured herself. The shape of her that night, on her birthday, with a hand above her head, came to him and Dex moved as if he pressed against her that night. Found that spot left for him even then and pretended he fit against her in that moment, where her leg might drape over him and he might put his face to her breast.
Shit, get up, get up. He wanted those thoughts too much, and bolted from the bed abruptly. The risk of doing something stupid too great if he stayed in place with the smell of her skin engulfing him. Breathing slow and deep, he stood there for a moment, looking at those blankets now rumpled, and slowly bent to straighten them into perfect symmetry. Hospital corners, everything evenly smoothed, pillow placed dead center of the headboard, just as it should be. No sign that he’d been tempted to touch himself there at the thought of her.
He migrated then, like great caribou did the plains, grazing through her things as he grazed information from them. What he really wanted truly was to cut her open on the operating table and dissect her under the brightest lights until no part of her belonged to someone else, but that was… an extreme impulse. One she wouldn’t tolerate. That one was best tucked away where it couldn’t be discovered except with a lock and key he gave to no one, not even her. Instead he sustained himself with small things –
The mugs in the kitchen with designs cracked from heavy use, Dex inspected them. The pile of incomplete alteration orders on a foldable card table, pricking his fingers on needles to hold them up for inspection. Opened the drawers and found her underwear, her pajamas, her pillowcases. Smelled the shampoo in her shower and didn’t suppress the shiver that lived between his shoulder blades.
Shifting through her closet, Dex savored the cotton of soft t-shirts and the loud rustle of her rain jacket. The shelf above housed a jumble of loose papers, shopping bags used to store the random shit people could never seem to throw away, and a box, wrapped in Christmas paper. His name was printed on the hanging tag in her slanted print, and Dex forgot to breathe for a moment. Shoved the shoes piled on the floor aside so he could get in closer and didn’t wince when his shoulder pulled some to lift it out. Turns out lifting that bastard in black might not have been a great decision.
D-E-X.
His own name – there was dust on the tag, so it had been there for awhile, and his hands shook bringing it down for a closer look. Something… something for him. A weight, in the box and in the bond, that she intended to give to him and he wanted suddenly to receive, more than he wanted almost anything else. His words felt mobile. Pliant, so they could take this feeling and sink deep into his flesh and never let go of it. Even when that feeling was unfamiliar, foreign like he was lost in a strange city and couldn’t find his way home.
Fuck, he wanted it so bad. Wanted to rip the paper off and tear it open. For maybe the first time in his life, he saw a gift with his own name on it and became excited. Is that what that felt like? When people talked about feeling like a kid on Christmas morning – was this that? He thought it was.
Dex’s face drew into a frown, stared at the package. He could use a knife, peel the tape away in perfect, translucent squares and unfold the wrapping gently. Peek into what she had purchased for him and then re-fold the paper, replace the tape so that it would never look different. He really could. But the idea that he could look at her hands, holding the box out to him, was too tempting. Too great a pleasure. And it would be a betrayal, again, on his part. Like her secrets and past, he was beginning to understand that the pleasure would be greater if he could get her to give them to him freely instead of taking them. Manipulation but a kind one, with no ill will.
She’d thought of him, even when he wasn’t in her life. Cared for him. Even when he was alone in a prison cell, anticipating death, she kept him safe with her. Sheltered a tender spot for him when he’d deserved none of it. As he stared at the tag, at the red and green paper she’d chosen, he heard it then – the click of the lock, a key there turning the tumblers. The noise soon to break open the quiet waiting pattern he found himself in.
She was home.
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