There's a crowd at the entrance, when Matt, Karen and Foggy get there. Matt can tell, because he can hear a hundred, a thousand, too many distinctive heartbeats to count, all of them beating fast with panic and worry and shock, as the police officer--at least he assumes whoever's talking is a police officer, they've got the authority in their voice--is trying to direct them towards a church, trying to maintain order over a crowd full of newly-resurrected people, most of them no doubt experiencing some degree of disorientation and shock.
"Do you see anyone we know?" Karen asks, worriedly.
"Don't know, it's hard to make them out," says Foggy. "Matt, you have that--weird heartbeat-sensing thing you do. Is there anyone we know in that crowd?"
"It's a crowd," says Matt, long-suffering. There are limits to his abilities like everything else, as he keeps telling Foggy, but he doesn't always get that. "It's easy to pick out heartbeats if, say, they're calm and few in number. These people are not calm, and there were, at the very least, seven hundred people or so buried here."
"But if you knew that heartbeat really, really well--" Karen starts.
"It still wouldn't help," says Matt. "The best thing we can do is head to the church, see if anyone we know is there--"
"Señor Foggy!" someone calls--a familiar voice, one Matt didn't think he'd hear again.
"Oh my god," says Foggy, grabbing on to Matt's arm, shock and relief intermingling in his tone. "Matt, Mrs. Cardenas is waving at us, she's--she's okay!" He raises his voice, shouting, "Mrs. C! Over here!"
"Elena!" Karen shouts. "Estamos aquí!"
"And you didn't even need to use me for that," Matt remarks, amused. “Señora Cárdenas, hola, se encuentra bien?”
“Estoy bien, Señor Murdock,” says Mrs. Cardenas, peeling away from the crowd, funeral shoes tapping frantically against the pavement. Her heartbeat comes quick and fast, but when she’s just in front of them it starts to relax, and she sucks in a lungful of breath like she can’t believe she can. Between the shock of dying violently and suddenly waking up in a narrow area underground, it’s understandable. “Lo ultimo que recuerdo es el dolor y la muerte viniendo por mi, ¿como es que estoy viva?” she asks.
“Blame the Avengers,” Foggy mutters. “I mean--uh, es one historia muy, um, largo?” He coughs, then whispers to Matt, “That’s the Spanish for long, right?”
“Larga,” Matt corrects. “Also, your accent’s horrible.”
“Is not!” Foggy protests, and Matt nudges his side with his elbow. “Ow--Punjabi’s easier--”
“Says the man who nearly failed his Punjabi class,” Matt mutters.
“Le explicaremos todo cuando lleguemos a la oficina,” Karen says, taking Mrs. Cardenas’ elbow. “Pero por el momento le tengo excelentes noticias, Elena.”
“Oh, por fin el Señor Foggy y tu son novios?” Mrs. Cardenas asks, and Matt claps a hand over his mouth and turns the laugh that bubbles involuntarily out of him into a cough.
“Lo siento, pesque un resfriado la semana pasada,” he says.
"Right," says Karen, her tone utterly skeptical. "A cold." You are such a terrible liar, she doesn't say, but he can hear the tone of her voice and infer from there.
“You are such a liar,” Foggy hisses, giving voice to Karen's silent accusation as they fall in step behind her and Mrs. Cardenas. “Such a liar, Murdock, last week you broke a rib.”
“Bruised a rib,” Matt says, lying. It still hurts like a bitch, but it’s not like he has to let Foggy know about that. And his dad--oh, god. “You guys go on,” he says, quickly. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Where are you going?” Foggy asks. “I mean, we gotta tell Mrs. C about what happened while she was--” He cuts himself off, then says, “Away.”
“While she was dead, you mean,” Matt says. “I’m just going to the church. See if anyone else we know has turned up. It should be calmer than the graveyard, at any rate.”
“Don’t fall down a manhole,” says Foggy, absently, and Matt can’t stop himself from smiling, doesn’t want to.
"Please," he says, "I'm more careful than that."
"Yeah, right," Foggy snorts, then walks away, quickening his pace to catch up with Karen and Mrs. Cardenas. Matt stays there for a moment, then turns back to the graveyard. So far so good, and he starts tapping his way down the sidewalk and towards the church.
--
Nelson & Murdock, as it turns out, is a very tiny law firm, small enough to fit into a very cramped office space. It also has the most easily-jimmied lock in history, or so Ben claims once he jimmies it open with a paperclip from downstairs and lets them both in.
"You know," says Gwen, "I expected something more--sleek. Soulless. You know, like lawyers."
Jack coughs. "Watch it," he says, and Gwen holds up her hands. The blood's dried, he notices, but it's covered in dirt and grime.
"Sorry," she says. "It's just, my dad was in the police." Which explains a lot, really.
"No harm done," Ben says, dryly, heading into the kitchenette.
"Wash your hands," Jack tells her, looking at one of the open offices. Matt's, he thinks--there are papers in Braille stacked neatly on the desk, a laptop (a very thin, very sleek one), and a notepad with absurdly messy handwriting.
He steps closer, stopping at the doorway. This is his son's office. This is his son's life, and he's been out of it for nearly twenty years and--is there any making up for that? Probably not, he's missed twenty years when he should've been there--
"Either of you drink coffee?" Ben calls from the kitchenette, and Jack steps away from the office. Gwen's quicker than him, and she's in the kitchenette in no time flat, washing up her hands and badgering Ben about putting sugar in hers.
"Black," says Jack.
"Your funeral," says Ben. Jack snorts out a laugh, just as Gwen chuckles softly to herself as she shakes her hands, sending droplets everywhere. “So--Battlin’ Jack Murdock, wasn’t it?”
Jack nods, moving over to replace Gwen once she’s done washing her hands. The water stings against his fingers, but soon enough his hands are mostly clean. The sink, however, is a different story, the white porcelain now stained a dirty, muddy red. “Yeah,” he says.
“Heard a lot about you,” says Ben. “Mostly from the papers. Your boy didn’t say much about you to me, but then again, we weren’t really close.”
“Wasn’t he the kid who got his eyes knocked out saving that old guy?” Gwen asks, and holds up her free hand. The other one’s got a tight hold on the handle of a mug that reads Lawyers Never Lose Their Appeal, with a faded scribble of an avocado underneath.
Jack does not roll his eyes, but he does bite back a heated reply. “His eyes didn’t get knocked out,” he says instead.
Gwen sucks in a breath, glances down at her mug. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “Can I blame the shock of coming back from the dead?”
“Only for today,” says Ben, dryly. “Here. Coffee’s terrible, but what can you do.”
The coffee is bitter--excessively so, and Jack has to force it down his throat. Strange, he should be used to bitter coffee by now, except--except he’s been dead near twenty years, hasn’t he, there’s a lot of things that have changed over the years. Either coffee or Matt's tastes are among them. “So how’d you meet him? Matt, I mean,” he says.
Ben shrugs. “I met Karen Page first,” he says, nodding to the empty desk that greeted them when they came in. “She’s the secretary here. Good kid, too.” There’s a note of pride in his tone, a pride Jack recognizes--it’s the same pride he felt when he saw the sign out front, Nelson & Murdock. “Got caught up in something bad, but instead of hiding, she took it to me. She’s not the sort to let go of something once she’s got it in her teeth, no matter what it takes to hold on.”
“Reminds me of somebody,” Gwen says, sipping at her cup and making a face. “Aw, this is terrible.”
“Told you,” says Ben, just as the door opens and a voice drifts in, saying something in Spanish, then, “Did I get that right, Karen?”
“You got it so, so wrong,” says another voice. “Christ--sorry, Elena--I know I locked the door--”
“You did,” says Ben, stepping out of the kitchenette. Jack steps out behind him, heart beating fast against his chest--
--and doesn’t see his son. There’s an old woman staring at them in shock, and a younger one--blonde, blue eyes, must be the Karen Page Ben was talking about--and a man just behind, with dirty blonde shoulder-length hair and a shocked look on his face, and Matt’s nowhere in sight.
“Dios mio,” the old woman whispers.
“Ben?” Karen asks. “I--oh my god, you’re--”
“Alive,” says Ben. “Yeah, I’m just getting used to it again. Your coffee’s still terrible, by the way.”
“See,” says the man--Nelson, probably--his voice coming out slightly strangled, “told you.” He coughs, glances at Jack, and says, “And who’re you? I mean, you kinda look familiar.”
“I’m Jack,” Jack says. “Jack Murdock.” He gives Nelson a tight smile, and is greeted with a dropped jaw and a slow, disbelieving huff of breath. “You’re Nelson, right?”
“Foggy,” says Nelson. “Foggy Nelson.” He runs a hand through his hair, and says, “I’m guessing you’re here for Matt, then?”
Jack nods, says, “Thought I’d find him here.”
“Yeah,” says Foggy Nelson, “uh. He kinda went looking for you in the church.” He digs into his pocket, takes out what looks like a shiny, plastic brick, and Jack’s about to ask why he’s carrying that around when he presses--something, and. Well. Now he gets what Gwen meant, if that’s what a phone looks like today.
Speaking of Gwen--
“Hey,” she says, emerging from the kitchenette with her mug, “there’s no sugar left, we used it all up. Sorry.” She pauses, blinks at the three of them, and gives a casual wave.
“Right,” says Nelson. “What’s the dead teenaged daughter of the late Captain Stacy doing here?”
“Mooching off your coffee,” Gwen says. “Which sucks, by the way.”
“See?” Karen says. “It’s not my--technique, whatever that is, it’s just the coffeemaker, which we really need to fix--”
“Can I borrow your phone?” Jack asks, setting his mug aside on the table and cutting in before Karen can start on whatever else might be the problem with their coffee. “I just--I’ve got a call to make.”
fill: still got a lot of fight left in me 3/?
"Do you see anyone we know?" Karen asks, worriedly.
"Don't know, it's hard to make them out," says Foggy. "Matt, you have that--weird heartbeat-sensing thing you do. Is there anyone we know in that crowd?"
"It's a crowd," says Matt, long-suffering. There are limits to his abilities like everything else, as he keeps telling Foggy, but he doesn't always get that. "It's easy to pick out heartbeats if, say, they're calm and few in number. These people are not calm, and there were, at the very least, seven hundred people or so buried here."
"But if you knew that heartbeat really, really well--" Karen starts.
"It still wouldn't help," says Matt. "The best thing we can do is head to the church, see if anyone we know is there--"
"Señor Foggy!" someone calls--a familiar voice, one Matt didn't think he'd hear again.
"Oh my god," says Foggy, grabbing on to Matt's arm, shock and relief intermingling in his tone. "Matt, Mrs. Cardenas is waving at us, she's--she's okay!" He raises his voice, shouting, "Mrs. C! Over here!"
"Elena!" Karen shouts. "Estamos aquí!"
"And you didn't even need to use me for that," Matt remarks, amused. “Señora Cárdenas, hola, se encuentra bien?”
“Estoy bien, Señor Murdock,” says Mrs. Cardenas, peeling away from the crowd, funeral shoes tapping frantically against the pavement. Her heartbeat comes quick and fast, but when she’s just in front of them it starts to relax, and she sucks in a lungful of breath like she can’t believe she can. Between the shock of dying violently and suddenly waking up in a narrow area underground, it’s understandable. “Lo ultimo que recuerdo es el dolor y la muerte viniendo por mi, ¿como es que estoy viva?” she asks.
“Blame the Avengers,” Foggy mutters. “I mean--uh, es one historia muy, um, largo?” He coughs, then whispers to Matt, “That’s the Spanish for long, right?”
“Larga,” Matt corrects. “Also, your accent’s horrible.”
“Is not!” Foggy protests, and Matt nudges his side with his elbow. “Ow--Punjabi’s easier--”
“Says the man who nearly failed his Punjabi class,” Matt mutters.
“Le explicaremos todo cuando lleguemos a la oficina,” Karen says, taking Mrs. Cardenas’ elbow. “Pero por el momento le tengo excelentes noticias, Elena.”
“Oh, por fin el Señor Foggy y tu son novios?” Mrs. Cardenas asks, and Matt claps a hand over his mouth and turns the laugh that bubbles involuntarily out of him into a cough.
“Lo siento, pesque un resfriado la semana pasada,” he says.
"Right," says Karen, her tone utterly skeptical. "A cold." You are such a terrible liar, she doesn't say, but he can hear the tone of her voice and infer from there.
“You are such a liar,” Foggy hisses, giving voice to Karen's silent accusation as they fall in step behind her and Mrs. Cardenas. “Such a liar, Murdock, last week you broke a rib.”
“Bruised a rib,” Matt says, lying. It still hurts like a bitch, but it’s not like he has to let Foggy know about that. And his dad--oh, god. “You guys go on,” he says, quickly. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Where are you going?” Foggy asks. “I mean, we gotta tell Mrs. C about what happened while she was--” He cuts himself off, then says, “Away.”
“While she was dead, you mean,” Matt says. “I’m just going to the church. See if anyone else we know has turned up. It should be calmer than the graveyard, at any rate.”
“Don’t fall down a manhole,” says Foggy, absently, and Matt can’t stop himself from smiling, doesn’t want to.
"Please," he says, "I'm more careful than that."
"Yeah, right," Foggy snorts, then walks away, quickening his pace to catch up with Karen and Mrs. Cardenas. Matt stays there for a moment, then turns back to the graveyard. So far so good, and he starts tapping his way down the sidewalk and towards the church.
--
Nelson & Murdock, as it turns out, is a very tiny law firm, small enough to fit into a very cramped office space. It also has the most easily-jimmied lock in history, or so Ben claims once he jimmies it open with a paperclip from downstairs and lets them both in.
"You know," says Gwen, "I expected something more--sleek. Soulless. You know, like lawyers."
Jack coughs. "Watch it," he says, and Gwen holds up her hands. The blood's dried, he notices, but it's covered in dirt and grime.
"Sorry," she says. "It's just, my dad was in the police." Which explains a lot, really.
"No harm done," Ben says, dryly, heading into the kitchenette.
"Wash your hands," Jack tells her, looking at one of the open offices. Matt's, he thinks--there are papers in Braille stacked neatly on the desk, a laptop (a very thin, very sleek one), and a notepad with absurdly messy handwriting.
He steps closer, stopping at the doorway. This is his son's office. This is his son's life, and he's been out of it for nearly twenty years and--is there any making up for that? Probably not, he's missed twenty years when he should've been there--
"Either of you drink coffee?" Ben calls from the kitchenette, and Jack steps away from the office. Gwen's quicker than him, and she's in the kitchenette in no time flat, washing up her hands and badgering Ben about putting sugar in hers.
"Black," says Jack.
"Your funeral," says Ben. Jack snorts out a laugh, just as Gwen chuckles softly to herself as she shakes her hands, sending droplets everywhere. “So--Battlin’ Jack Murdock, wasn’t it?”
Jack nods, moving over to replace Gwen once she’s done washing her hands. The water stings against his fingers, but soon enough his hands are mostly clean. The sink, however, is a different story, the white porcelain now stained a dirty, muddy red. “Yeah,” he says.
“Heard a lot about you,” says Ben. “Mostly from the papers. Your boy didn’t say much about you to me, but then again, we weren’t really close.”
“Wasn’t he the kid who got his eyes knocked out saving that old guy?” Gwen asks, and holds up her free hand. The other one’s got a tight hold on the handle of a mug that reads Lawyers Never Lose Their Appeal, with a faded scribble of an avocado underneath.
Jack does not roll his eyes, but he does bite back a heated reply. “His eyes didn’t get knocked out,” he says instead.
Gwen sucks in a breath, glances down at her mug. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “Can I blame the shock of coming back from the dead?”
“Only for today,” says Ben, dryly. “Here. Coffee’s terrible, but what can you do.”
The coffee is bitter--excessively so, and Jack has to force it down his throat. Strange, he should be used to bitter coffee by now, except--except he’s been dead near twenty years, hasn’t he, there’s a lot of things that have changed over the years. Either coffee or Matt's tastes are among them. “So how’d you meet him? Matt, I mean,” he says.
Ben shrugs. “I met Karen Page first,” he says, nodding to the empty desk that greeted them when they came in. “She’s the secretary here. Good kid, too.” There’s a note of pride in his tone, a pride Jack recognizes--it’s the same pride he felt when he saw the sign out front, Nelson & Murdock. “Got caught up in something bad, but instead of hiding, she took it to me. She’s not the sort to let go of something once she’s got it in her teeth, no matter what it takes to hold on.”
“Reminds me of somebody,” Gwen says, sipping at her cup and making a face. “Aw, this is terrible.”
“Told you,” says Ben, just as the door opens and a voice drifts in, saying something in Spanish, then, “Did I get that right, Karen?”
“You got it so, so wrong,” says another voice. “Christ--sorry, Elena--I know I locked the door--”
“You did,” says Ben, stepping out of the kitchenette. Jack steps out behind him, heart beating fast against his chest--
--and doesn’t see his son. There’s an old woman staring at them in shock, and a younger one--blonde, blue eyes, must be the Karen Page Ben was talking about--and a man just behind, with dirty blonde shoulder-length hair and a shocked look on his face, and Matt’s nowhere in sight.
“Dios mio,” the old woman whispers.
“Ben?” Karen asks. “I--oh my god, you’re--”
“Alive,” says Ben. “Yeah, I’m just getting used to it again. Your coffee’s still terrible, by the way.”
“See,” says the man--Nelson, probably--his voice coming out slightly strangled, “told you.” He coughs, glances at Jack, and says, “And who’re you? I mean, you kinda look familiar.”
“I’m Jack,” Jack says. “Jack Murdock.” He gives Nelson a tight smile, and is greeted with a dropped jaw and a slow, disbelieving huff of breath. “You’re Nelson, right?”
“Foggy,” says Nelson. “Foggy Nelson.” He runs a hand through his hair, and says, “I’m guessing you’re here for Matt, then?”
Jack nods, says, “Thought I’d find him here.”
“Yeah,” says Foggy Nelson, “uh. He kinda went looking for you in the church.” He digs into his pocket, takes out what looks like a shiny, plastic brick, and Jack’s about to ask why he’s carrying that around when he presses--something, and. Well. Now he gets what Gwen meant, if that’s what a phone looks like today.
Speaking of Gwen--
“Hey,” she says, emerging from the kitchenette with her mug, “there’s no sugar left, we used it all up. Sorry.” She pauses, blinks at the three of them, and gives a casual wave.
“Right,” says Nelson. “What’s the dead teenaged daughter of the late Captain Stacy doing here?”
“Mooching off your coffee,” Gwen says. “Which sucks, by the way.”
“See?” Karen says. “It’s not my--technique, whatever that is, it’s just the coffeemaker, which we really need to fix--”
“Can I borrow your phone?” Jack asks, setting his mug aside on the table and cutting in before Karen can start on whatever else might be the problem with their coffee. “I just--I’ve got a call to make.”
“I’m already on it,” says Nelson.