It’s not that Matt isn’t busy — the weather’s getting warmer, no more April showers that set in for the night as the sun goes down, and that’s happening later too; Karen’s remarked on some glorious Hell’s Kitchen sunsets, even from their office’s window — because there’s always an uptick in crime rates with the changing seasons, when people stop being so guarded and tempers flare up and debts come due. Matt’s coming into the office later than usual, taking the extra hours to sleep through the early sunrise, as are Foggy and Karen, and he’s started patrolling later as well. The longer day seems to push crime’s schedule back, so Matt works later and doesn’t start shadowing the rooftops until nine or ten at night.
It’s been humid, too, and while Matt doesn’t precisely miss the severe lacerations he was sustaining on a weekly basis in his old, impromptu costume, the new one doesn’t exactly lend itself to breathability. He feels like a live wire, throwing sparks off in all directions; he picks up information on a possible trafficking organization operating out of Port Authority but based a few blocks over and intervenes in a mugging. It’s only when he’s contemplating picking a fight with the would-be assailants — a group of young men, reeking of entitlement and testosterone, though that last part might be body spray — that Matt catches the claws slipping out, so to speak, and cracks his neck to the side.
He could still pick a fight. It would probably be satisfying, and it certainly wouldn’t be undeserved. The men will probably go on to another bar, more posturing and peacocking, and find some other way to flex their muscles by the time they stumble back to their offices or dorms, whether it’s relatively innocuous property destruction or something far worse. Matt thinks that he could probably justify a bruised rib or two to himself if he tried, and that it wouldn’t keep him up at night even if he didn’t do the moral heavy lifting. They’re quiet now, the young men, but the longer he thinks — their victim is long gone, in a clatter of heels and a rabbit-racing heartbeat — the more likely it is that they’ll try to do something brave.
Claire, Matt thinks suddenly. He couldn’t justify himself to Claire, even if she had voiced qualms about saving Vladimir and taken some ruthless satisfaction in his agony. No harm done, which is the best sort of justice, which is when one of the men — boys, really — comes swinging at Matt, with a broken bottle that whistles as it comes at him, and Matt catches him by the wrist and finishes the arc of his hand against the wall. There’s a crunch; some of it is glass, resonant and chiming, and some of it is bone, muffled and almost soft, and the boy screams, which is what people tend to do when they have to cope simultaneously with broken fingers and embedded pieces of broken glass.
The rest of the boys stand frozen for a moment, and then they scramble to get away, another ten feet down the alley before they remember their friend, and Matt lets go of his wrist and shoves him to stumble in their direction. He almost wants to advise them — he shouldn’t have let the situation get that far, should have defused it before it became a serious confrontation — but they’re bluff and brash and probably won’t think twice about getting a six-pack and stumbling into the emergency room at Metro General with it, making a nuisance of themselves and taking up more room than they need. He can’t quite put the sour-sweat smell of the girl’s panic out of his head, either, and he shifts his weight a little in reflexive rage. It’s enough to send them running, back to the better-lit cross-streets, and Matt brushes the glass dust from his gloves and gets a running start, pushing off the wall to catch a fire escape ladder and make his way up to the roof.
The air is clearer up here, at least. There’s more of a breeze, and Matt wants to push his cowl back and savor it properly, but this is New York. Someone’s always awake, and odds are they’re bored and want to know what’s going on three rooftops over. He flexes his fingers, rolls his shoulders to stretch some of the tension away, and feels a little more settled into himself.
Claire should be back in town by now. It’s not a thought that he has regularly anymore; for a week or two it had been almost constantly present in the forefront of his mind, and he’d pushed through it to focus — at work, on patrol — but it had faded to a faint hum, and reminding himself of it now is, briefly, overwhelming. It’s like freerunning on rooftops he doesn’t know, too quickly to get a clear picture of his surroundings and relying on his instincts and reflexes to save him from sudden obstacles and even more sudden drops. Thinking of Claire carries the same vastness of potential, and that’s why Matt doesn’t do it: it isn’t fair to her, to what she’d said to him and to how she feels, and so he puts it away and doesn’t wonder.
Now, though, he turns it over in his mind. She had sounded sad, that last time, in the morning, but light on her feet. Matt thinks he knows that feeling of incisive wistfulness. He’s been there — known that he’s doing the right thing, and wished it hadn’t hurt as much as it had — and he knows that it isn’t straightforward, and it’s certainly never simple. This, though, is something that he thinks he could be afraid of: the uncertainty of it, the tense fragile hope, these are better and worse than anything he’s faced in the darkness; and so he does what he’s always done, fidgeting still with banked fury, and faces them head-on, faces the drop, and throws himself to the wind, trusting it to catch him.
[FILL] just to point the way, 1/3
It’s been humid, too, and while Matt doesn’t precisely miss the severe lacerations he was sustaining on a weekly basis in his old, impromptu costume, the new one doesn’t exactly lend itself to breathability. He feels like a live wire, throwing sparks off in all directions; he picks up information on a possible trafficking organization operating out of Port Authority but based a few blocks over and intervenes in a mugging. It’s only when he’s contemplating picking a fight with the would-be assailants — a group of young men, reeking of entitlement and testosterone, though that last part might be body spray — that Matt catches the claws slipping out, so to speak, and cracks his neck to the side.
He could still pick a fight. It would probably be satisfying, and it certainly wouldn’t be undeserved. The men will probably go on to another bar, more posturing and peacocking, and find some other way to flex their muscles by the time they stumble back to their offices or dorms, whether it’s relatively innocuous property destruction or something far worse. Matt thinks that he could probably justify a bruised rib or two to himself if he tried, and that it wouldn’t keep him up at night even if he didn’t do the moral heavy lifting. They’re quiet now, the young men, but the longer he thinks — their victim is long gone, in a clatter of heels and a rabbit-racing heartbeat — the more likely it is that they’ll try to do something brave.
Claire, Matt thinks suddenly. He couldn’t justify himself to Claire, even if she had voiced qualms about saving Vladimir and taken some ruthless satisfaction in his agony. No harm done, which is the best sort of justice, which is when one of the men — boys, really — comes swinging at Matt, with a broken bottle that whistles as it comes at him, and Matt catches him by the wrist and finishes the arc of his hand against the wall. There’s a crunch; some of it is glass, resonant and chiming, and some of it is bone, muffled and almost soft, and the boy screams, which is what people tend to do when they have to cope simultaneously with broken fingers and embedded pieces of broken glass.
The rest of the boys stand frozen for a moment, and then they scramble to get away, another ten feet down the alley before they remember their friend, and Matt lets go of his wrist and shoves him to stumble in their direction. He almost wants to advise them — he shouldn’t have let the situation get that far, should have defused it before it became a serious confrontation — but they’re bluff and brash and probably won’t think twice about getting a six-pack and stumbling into the emergency room at Metro General with it, making a nuisance of themselves and taking up more room than they need. He can’t quite put the sour-sweat smell of the girl’s panic out of his head, either, and he shifts his weight a little in reflexive rage. It’s enough to send them running, back to the better-lit cross-streets, and Matt brushes the glass dust from his gloves and gets a running start, pushing off the wall to catch a fire escape ladder and make his way up to the roof.
The air is clearer up here, at least. There’s more of a breeze, and Matt wants to push his cowl back and savor it properly, but this is New York. Someone’s always awake, and odds are they’re bored and want to know what’s going on three rooftops over. He flexes his fingers, rolls his shoulders to stretch some of the tension away, and feels a little more settled into himself.
Claire should be back in town by now. It’s not a thought that he has regularly anymore; for a week or two it had been almost constantly present in the forefront of his mind, and he’d pushed through it to focus — at work, on patrol — but it had faded to a faint hum, and reminding himself of it now is, briefly, overwhelming. It’s like freerunning on rooftops he doesn’t know, too quickly to get a clear picture of his surroundings and relying on his instincts and reflexes to save him from sudden obstacles and even more sudden drops. Thinking of Claire carries the same vastness of potential, and that’s why Matt doesn’t do it: it isn’t fair to her, to what she’d said to him and to how she feels, and so he puts it away and doesn’t wonder.
Now, though, he turns it over in his mind. She had sounded sad, that last time, in the morning, but light on her feet. Matt thinks he knows that feeling of incisive wistfulness. He’s been there — known that he’s doing the right thing, and wished it hadn’t hurt as much as it had — and he knows that it isn’t straightforward, and it’s certainly never simple. This, though, is something that he thinks he could be afraid of: the uncertainty of it, the tense fragile hope, these are better and worse than anything he’s faced in the darkness; and so he does what he’s always done, fidgeting still with banked fury, and faces them head-on, faces the drop, and throws himself to the wind, trusting it to catch him.