daredevilkink | Daredevil Prompt Post #11

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Daredevil Prompt Post #11

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Foggy went back into the room, fixing a small and awkward smile on his face. "Hey kiddo," he said cheerily, "finished my talk with our disembodied friend. How're you doing?"

JARVIS paused the audiobook and Matthew shrugged. "Okay."

"Okay, that's good. So, I've decided I'm uncomfortable with you telling me things that you wouldn't as a grownup. It feels like I'm violating adult-you's trust. Do you get that?"

"Okay."

"What am I talking about, of course you get it. You're a little nerd, I'm sure you'd thought a lot about complex moral dilemma's at age ten. So, what I'm thinking is, instead I'm going to tell you stories. Stories about two really great friends. Us. While we're at it, we can see what you remember. Sound good?"

"Sure." Matthew nodded. "How did we meet? Did we meet in high school?"

"Naw, we were roommates in college. And law school, but that comes later. I don't know much about you in high school, though you were apparently valedictorian. No, I'm getting side tracked. Let's start with the first day of college, this one's a good story."

Foggy was a good storyteller. He'd probably been a babysitter when he was younger, or maybe he had a lot of relatives. It would be intrusive to check without a good reason. But he was a good storyteller. By the story of the time the power went out for twelve hours and they'd ordered pizza at midnight and had to walk through freezing rain to fetch it, Matthew had crawled back out of his shell.

"What kind of pizza do you like?" Matthew asked.

"I like all sorts of pizzas. Veggies. Sausage. Hawaiian. Pretty much, besides anchovies, if you put it on pizza, I like it. But that doesn't really matter, because we got cheese pizza, light on the sauce. Somehow you always ended up with pizza veto powers."

"I don't like pizza toppings?" Matthew asked. He frowned. "I don't think I remember having pizza since," he pointed at his left eye in explanation. "I used to like pepperoni a lot. But a lot of things don't taste as good now."

"I can confirm that you never ordered pizza with any toppings to my recollection. But maybe you just didn't want to look all hedonistic in front of me, ordering all the toppings. It'd go with your cheapskate aesthetic."

Matthew's stomach made a loud rumbling sound. His hands pressed to his abdomen, hunching a bit around his guilty midsection. "I'm not hungry," he said, heading Foggy off at the pass.

"Sure you aren't." Foggy leaned over and poked his hand into the water. "Damn, that's cold. Jarvis, how long has it been since Matty here had something to eat?"

Seven hours since the transformation. But it was impossible to confirm that he'd eaten before heading out for the night and getting caught up with the Avengers. Foggy frowned to hear that.

"Okay, kiddo. I understand that getting out of the water sounds really unpleasant. But I can confirm that older you? He wanders around in the air just like plain folks. And I'm not going to sit here and let you freeze or starve. Not under my watch."

"I'm not that hungry," Matthew said. "With Stick, I..." he trailed off. "That's probably something I wouldn't tell you. Never mind."

"Yep, I can confirm you've never told me anything about Stick."

"You never met him?" Matthew asked.

"Nope."

"He didn't come to my graduation?"

Foggy frowned. "I don't think you guys had that kind of relationship. I think he was pretty exclusively interested in the ninja parts of your life."

"Oh." Matthew said. "I don't remember-remember him yet. Just bits and pieces, so he must be when I'm older. But I have a lot of, of..." he trailed off, clearly grasping for a word. He grabbed at his chest, just where his heart was. "Feelings? How can I care so much if he wasn't even around long enough to see me graduate?"

"Sometimes people aren't in our lives a very long time but they still mean a lot to us. I don't think time is the main factor."

"I thought for sure he was around," Matthew said. "I remember being old and him breaking my coffee table."

"Really? I was wondering what happened to that poor thing. I spend all Saturday with you, picking out rubbish second-hand furniture and you manage to break the one piece I'd liked enough to want in my own apartment."

"Umm," Matthew closed his eyes, eyebrows furrowed, a picture of concentration. A lot of his expressions were very exaggerated, like he wasn't sure if his message was getting across so he played every detail up. "I think he threw me into the table and the legs collapsed. We were fighting about something."

"Sparring?" Foggy suggested.

"No. I was angry and...feelings? Disappointed, maybe? I don't remember what he did, but I know I started the fight."

"Did you win?"

"I think so. He left, anyway. I don't know if that was winning."

"Well this has been enlightening, but I would like to point out that you are still in a bathtub and we're no closer to eating food. Jarvis, could you check the kitchenette for butter, cinnamon, sugar and white bread? I have something particular in mind." He opened the little cabinet under the sink and pulled out an enormous white towel. He rubbed it on his his cheek with a expression of intense concentration, then nodded. "This towel should be soft enough to do. I'm going to the bedroom to find you some pajamas, I expect you to be out of the tub when I get back."

"Foggy," Matthew whined.

"We can make up a new tub when you're done eating if we must. But I draw the line at eating in the bathtub. I'll be right there, you're going to be fine."

"The air is loud," Matthew said, curling up in the tub.

"That doesn't make any sense. What are you actually feeling? Pressure changes? Temperature changes? Air currents?"

"I don't know. It's not labeled! It just hurts."

"Okay, calm down." Foggy slipped out of the chair to kneel by the tub. "Jarvis, can you temporarily shut down any heat or air circulation in this apartment? That's probably most of what he's feeling."

That was easily done. A quick check on infrared showed that there were patches of hot and cold throughout the apartment, but they were fairly consistent in the kitchenette and away from the windows.

Slowly and grudgingly, Matthew climbed out of the tub and wrapped himself in the towel, swim shorts dripping onto the bath mat. Foggy came back with a set of microfiber pajamas, then retreated out of the room to let Matthew dress in privacy. JARVIS switched off the visual sensors, leaving audio on in case Matthew required assistance.

It took nearly ten minutes, but Matthew eventually called for Foggy to come back, having successfully changed into the pajamas. Foggy came with a blue and incredibly plush blanket draped over his shoulder. He took one look at Matthew shivering on the soaking bathmat and swept the blanked over his shoulder's like a cape. "I'm going to pick you up now," he said, and then lifted the boy and the blanket in one movement, shifting a bit awkwardly to carry him bridal style.

"Foggy, I'm ten, not three," Matthew grumbled.

"You don't think I carry my ten year old cousins? I don't, actually, but only because they're made out of lead. You, however, are made of bird bones and spiderwebs. I could carry you all day. Headphones comfortable? They're not going to fall off like this, right?"

"They're okay," Matthew said.

"Good. Then we're going on an adventure. To the kitchen!"

They made a swift journey to the kitchen, Foggy filling the still air with a steady stream of chatter on those cousins Matthew had at one point known. Aiden was a real monster, it sounded like. Dropping a perfectly functioning cell phone into a fish tank so that 'the fish could talk back', the horror. All the while, Matthew gathered up more and more of the fabric in his hands, kneading at the soft fleece. By the time Foggy lowered him back onto his feet in the kitchen he had it grappled into a death grip that pulled it tight across his shoulders. Foggy ignored that, rapping his knuckles on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. "If you want to sit. Now, do you have anything you want to eat?"

Matthew shook his head.

"That's okay, because I already know you. Isn't that convenient? So we're making your favorite late-night drunken snack. Volcanoes."

Matthew sat down and transferred his hold on the fabric in his left hand into his right, freeing up one hand to spider-crawl over the blanket draped over his leg and pluck at the burs and inconsistencies in the knit. "Are we alcoholics as grown ups?"

"That's your question? Not the wonder of volcanoes?"

"Almost all of your stories are about drinking. And being drunk."

"You were a drinker before you met me, that's what you always said. First drink at nine, right?"

"It wasn't like, I wasn't, I don't want...I don't want you to think Dad was a drunk okay? It was a sip. It was a, a," he seemed to get caught on the word and worked his jaw for a moment before continuing, "he wanted me to know he trusted him and that we were on the same team."

Foggy smiled. "Hey, I never said your dad was a bad influence. I strongly approved of your dad's style."

"He wasn't doing it for style," Matthew said.

"I know, Matty." Foggy sat down in the other chair. "I'm sorry if I made you feel like I thought bad things about your dad. I know his memory is incredibly important to you. And everything you've ever said lets me know that he did his absolute best by you, the best he knew how. I know that, okay?"

"Okay." Matthew waited a beat and then continued. "So we're not alcoholics?"

"Umm, well no promises about Karen. She's another friend from when you're older. And I've dabbled. Maybe indulged a bit too much in college. But you're definitely the best of us as far as inebriants of the boozy sort. I don't think you like feeling really drunk. You said it makes you sick," Foggy said.

"Okay."

"Okay then. Volcanoes," Foggy stood up with a flourish. "Are you even going to ask me what volcanoes are, or am I going to have to direct this monologue all by myself like the finest Shakespearean castmember?"

"I can hear you know. I can't see-"

"-for shit, but your hearing is spectacular. Good point. So we know volcanoes are white bread, butter, sugar and cinnamon. But what happens next?" Foggy opened the fridge and got out the butter, then opened each cabinet in turn in search of something. On the last drawer he found a knife, which appeared to be the object of his search.

"We get out a knife?" Matthew guessed. "I dunno, this isn't my snack."

"Sure it is. You invented it. Or maybe you found a recipe on the internet. I never bothered to ask. Anyway, you taught me the fine art of volcanoes in junior year of undergrad, when there was a toaster oven in our dorms communal kitchen. Okay, Jarvis, are there any bowls or measuring cups or anything safe to go in the microwave?" He asked.

"Upper cabinet, all of the glass bowls are microwave safe."

"Thanks, Jarvis. Okay, so this is actually really easy. First we melt some butter. How much butter? I quote the great guru Matthew Michael Murdock, circa that one night when we were not drunk but quite a bit tipsy - 'I dunno, Foggy, not a whole stick or anything'. I have taken this to mean a great deal. Like maybe half a stick."

He cut the butter as such and put it into the microwave, tapping in a time to melt it, then pausing. "Will the microwave bother you?"

Matthew shrugged. "Everything bothers me."

"Okay, well it's only set to twenty seconds. If it really bothers you, stop me and we'll warm this up on the stove top somehow."

The low hum of the microwave seemed fairly innocuous, but Matthew set his jaw and didn't move for the whole of it. Foggy floundered a bit, finger hovering by the stop button but waiting on his word to stop. He popped the door open at one second, averting the standard microwave alert that JARVIS had been fighting for the previous nineteen seconds. Who programmed the alarm sounds into the base code of the microwave such that the volume was immutable?

"Okay, now we add some sugar and cinnamon. I'm going to need your super tasting here, actually. You do this part to taste, usually with a frankly excessive number of taste-tests. The flavor we're looking for is 'intensely cinnamon, but not painful'. I'll do the sugar and you can add the cinnamon."

Foggy added enough sugar to the liquid butter that the mixture became a thick paste, then got out the cinnamon and a separate spoon for scooping.

Matthew considered the setup dubiously. "I haven't cooked since the accident," he said.

"I have great faith," Foggy said. "And you absolutely have. Just in a weird timey-wimey kind of way that you can't remember because of magic."

"The future is really complicated," Matthew said, scooping the barest sprinkling of cinnamon into the bowl and stirring it in. He sniffed and added a bit more.

"You're telling me, buddy. And I haven't even told you about the aliens yet."

"Aliens?" Matthew froze with his pinkie finger halfway to his mouth. "There are aliens?"

"Aw yes, there are aliens. And Captain America is found, alive in the Arctic. You were really excited about that one."

"I had his comics," Matthew said, adding a bit more cinnamon. "Is he one of the people who own this fancy future building?"

"Something like that. It's probably all a bit complicated to explain to you know, especially since you're going to go back to being adult you soon and then I'd be explaining it to somebody who already knows all this stuff."

Matthew pushed the bowl of cinnamon sugar back. "I think that's good."

"Then it's time to get out the bread. This is boring white bread. That is because, as my cooking guru once explained, it's only purpose is to be a boring background palate on which to paint cinnamon. And we were broke and there was white bread in the communal kitchen. So we get out two slices of bread and divide this sugar up evenly between two friends. Since I am larger and also an adult, I get two thirds and you get one third and that is even," Foggy said as he divided the mixture up meticulously evenly, then spread it in a thick layer of sugar. "Then in an ideal world, we'd have a toaster oven, but we do not. Instead we're going to use this tiny stove's broiler."

He bustled about for a bit, setting that to preheat ("always forget to preheat the oven, that is an essential step"), finding a tray and getting the slices of sugary toast under the broiler. Then he sat down back in the other chair.

"And now we wait. Luckily there's a glass window so I can watch till they're ready. You can smell toast burning, right?"

"Yeah."

"Good, that saves us setting a timer. Feeling tired yet, Matty? You've been up all night at this point. That've slowed me down when I was your age. I didn't stay up till midnight on New Years till I was eleven, I think. I kept meaning to, but then we'd fall asleep and my traitorous parents wouldn't wake us back up."

"Maybe a little," Matthew allowed. "But I don't need to go to bed."

"No?"

"No," Matthew said.

They sat in silence for a minute, or proximal silence. There was the bubbling of the sugar as it caramelized and formed large magma-like bubbles, the near silence hiss of steam as the water vapor left the slices of bread, the quiet tick of a clock out in the living room. It was likely silence to Foggy. He looked of a mind to interrupt with a new line of conversation, but just as he opened his mouth, Matthew shook his head.

"I'm sorry. I overheard something and that's bad too, but I want to apologize for hurting you as an adult. I'm sorry I was a bad friend."

"Matty, you can't apologize for that. You don't even remember what you did."

"I got scared you were going to leave me so I made you leave me by being awful," Matthew said, voice clipped. "It's a trend, my trauma recovery therapist said so. If I got drunk and hit someone, could I apologize, even if I didn't remember? It's the same thing. I don't remember, but I did it. I'm sorry I made you sad and guilty and lonely."

"Hey, Matty, I-"

"You don't have to do anything about it. I know you want to talk to the real Matt, not me. I just want you to know. Also, the toast is going to burn if you don't take it out."

Foggy bolted up and in a flurry located the one dish towel that could be used as a potholder, since there were no actual potholders to be found anywhere in the kitchen. He located plates for both of them and distributed the slices of toast, the bubbles now freezing into semi-solid sugar as they cooled.

"If I go to bed will you still be here?" Matthew asked. "When I wake up? I know you have important places to be."

"If you need me here, I'll be here," Foggy said. "What do you think?"

Matthew tried a tiny nibble. "Hot. Sweet. Tastes like cinnamon."

"You, my boy, could replace the entire food review section of the newspaper. Cold. Wet. Might be seafood."

"No, I like it," Matthew insisted. "I don't want to throw up or anything. It's sharp, but good." He tried another bit. "Maybe needed more cinnamon."

---

It took most of an hour to get Matthew settled in bed, but after that he dropped off quickly. Foggy stayed for awhile, sitting on the floor next to the bed, scrolling through his phone sending off messages. Then, at half past six, Captain Rogers and the rest of the stateside team returned. JARVIS sent Foggy a quiet notification on his phone alerting him to that fact and they negotiated a meeting three floors up in the communal break room.

The break room was empty of Avengers when Foggy first arrived. He looked around a little and found himself the coffee machine, started making himself up a pot. Captain Rogers arrived a few minutes later, showered and changed into slacks and a t-shirt. He came in at a jog and Nelson nearly dropped the coffee pot in surprise.

"Sorry about that," Rogers said, slowing to a walk as he hit the kitchen, "didn't mean to surprise you. You go by Foggy, right?"

"Yeah." Foggy stood, staring, for a minute.

"You can call me Captain if you must, but I really prefer Steve. Jarvis is always going all formal on me, but you don't have to. Mind if I have some of that coffee? It was a long night for everybody," Steve said, grabbing two coffee mugs from the top shelf.

"That would be great, Ca-Steve. Sorry. It's been a long night and I really never expected this."

"That's fair," Steve said. Foggy poured the coffee and they drifted over to the kitchen island. "The bad news is we didn't make any headway on solving Matthew's problem. Strange is convinced that he will revert back on his own 'when the time is right.' I don't really know what that means. All of this magic business is over my head."

"So what happens to him in the meantime?" Foggy asked. "If he's stuck like this for a long time? Could he stay here?"

Steve shrugged. "We certainly have the space, he wouldn't be a burden. But I don't think Matthew would be very happy staying here without you. Jarvis was telling me he calmed down quite a bit after you got here. Before that he was a bit...disconsolate. I mean, obviously, we can't force him on you."

"No, you can't," Foggy said grimly.

"Well he's not a real child, so we're not going to ship him off into the foster system, even if by some horrible chance this turns out to be permanent. If you couldn't take him, we'd keep him here. Hopefully that won't be an issue, though, and this will all fix itself in the next few days."

Foggy nodded. "Hopefully." He took a sip of his coffee. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Within reason"

"How did you forgive everyone? I mean, Barnes, Stark, that must have been a massive hurdle coming back together. How did you go back to being friends after being betrayed?"

Steve put down his coffee and looked at Foggy, catching his eye and holding it. "I didn't have to forgive them nearly as much as they needed to forgive me. And, at the end of the day, everything we'd done to hurt one another seemed real small compared to the amount of hurt that was stopping everything and never seeing each other again. So we made it work. I don't know how much of that applies for your situation," he said, "but even if you can't forgive him, let Matthew get a chance to apologize. That would have mattered a lot to me."

"Mr. Nelson," JARVIS interrupted, "Matthew has just woken up."

"Aw, shoot. I promised I'd be there," Foggy said. He drank the rest of the coffee in one gulp, gave a quick salute to Captain Rogers and then walked out the wrong door, realized his mistake and took off at a jog towards the correct door. The hallway on this floor was mostly empty, since it was a private floor, which made for a quick jog to the elevators. "Is he okay?" he asked, once he was safely within the elevator.

"Matthew is physically fine," JARVIS replied.

"Well, shit," Foggy said. He walked briskly from the elevator to the apartment door, waved through by Ahmed. Who was looking a bit peaky, really, time to send in a staff rotation. Foggy sped up after passing the threshold, jogging again to the bedroom where he came to an abrupt halt.

"Hey, Foggy," Matthew said, curling under the blanket that had recently dwarfed him. "You came back."

"Jarvis, you cryptic bastard, you could have mentioned he switched back to being an adult," Foggy said over his shoulder. Turning back to Matthew, he said flatly, "Hello, Matt. You look well. And adult. I think I'm going to-"

"-wait. Please wait," Matthew said, sitting up. He'd lost his shirt in the shift between sizes and kept one hand holding the blanket safely around his waist. He reached out a hand to where Foggy was standing. "I know I don't, I just want a couple more minutes."

"You know where I live," Foggy said, shifting backwards, hands in his pockets.

"You blocked my phone number. I know you hate it when I push on your boundaries, I didn't want to force myself on you uninvited. Please, just one minute. I've already wasted the rest of your morning."

"Well that's certainly true. Though I did get to meet Captain America, so it wasn't a total loss," Foggy said.

Matt stood up, still holding the blanket around him as a skirt, and drifted over to Foggy. "I need to apologize for hurting you. I let my fears define what we could be. I didn't trust you, I pushed you away and I let you down time after time after time. I built myself in the shadows of people I'd lost and I never managed to grow into something better, even when you gave me so many chances. So, just, I'm always waiting, okay? You can leave, you can come back. If you ever want to start again, no matter the terms, I'll be waiting. And if you ever need me, for anything, I'll hear you. Okay? Just call if you need me."

"Matt." Foggy said. "You know we can't just fix this on good intentions."

Matt smiled, bright and bitter. "I know. I'm not going to push. Do whatever you need to keep yourself happy."

He walked past, then out into the hallway before Foggy unfroze himself enough to turn around. He fished his phone out of his pocket and opened it to the address book, then scrolled down to 'm'. He looked at the screen for a minute, then turned it off and put it away, smiling a little.

"He just walked out of here without any pants on, didn't he, Jarvis?" He asked.

"Most indubitably."

"What a dork. Which way did he go?"

"Towards the roof. Would you like me to stop the elevator?"

"Nah," Foggy said. "I'll catch up with him soon."

This is based on many conversations with many people of many different incomes. I've talked with people who chose abortion and some that chose adoption and some that ended up with a surprise baby to add to their life. A friend of mine is a lawyer who actually did bring her infant in to work with her for several days when other childcare wasn’t available. Most details of the pregnancy are based specifically on stories I have been told or have told myself.

Thanks for the prompt, OP. I have so many feels to throw around on all of these subjects. I worked a full schedule while pregnant and my wonderful coworkers always made it quite clear I was not allowed to be in any position where I might be harmed. People routinely put themselves in position to be headbutted or kicked to keep me safe while we all tried to work together.

Positive

Frank had been gone from her life and Manhattan in general for four weeks when she realized.

Usually Mattie paid very close attention to dates. She didn’t have lunch dates with Foggy or drinks with Karen to dictate into her calendar app. For a while she didn’t have any court dates. She didn’t bother taking Sundays off from her new job as a public defender. The courts weren’t open and the clients tended to stay home but she liked the cramped stinking office better when there was no one else’s heartbeat to clutter up the place. Mattie’s coworkers thought that she was a workaholic going through a divorce. She hadn’t bothered to correct their gossip.

She and Frank had never even talked about their relationship. The mere fact that the two of them were having sex with no sort of commitment at all left her feeling that Father Lantom didn’t need yet another vice that she wasn’t going to give up. As he had told her again, ever so kindly, there wasn’t any help in confessing a sin unless she had truly repented. If she was sorry she had hurt someone, he was glad to hear it, but the confession rang false if she planned to go out again and hurt someone else even in defense of an innocent.

She heard too many innocents to ever let herself rest.

A week before she realized, she had started the awful process of moving apartments. A few of Frank’s crowd had started scoping out her apartment. Her perfect apartment with the pleasant acoustics and open space was far more visible than his usual safehouses. A few local low-grade criminals had seen the Punisher going into her building a few times. She didn’t think anyone would connect Frank to Mattie, but with everything that had happened in her apartment, she liked the idea of a fresh start.

Moving was stressful enough that she blamed that for a delayed period. The foreman treated her as if she was an idiot and then tried to claim that the cash she handed over for moving supplies wasn’t enough. (Moving supplies had been listed quite clearly in the original contract as something that the company would provide. The foreman should have brought tape and dropcloths and whatever else it was that they wrapped her things in. Apparently her original company’s subcontract clause was used for far more than the moving agent claimed.)

(She was a damn lawyer and all she did was use her money-scanning app to prove that all of the damn bills were 20s. She was too tired to fight. She was going to give $200 as a tip but instead she carefully counted out the $160 he demanded for his crew’s use of tape.)

She realized that her period was two weeks late the same day she felt an odd flutter in her own abdomen. Mattie’s period tended to come every 30 days heralded by an ache in her breasts and then the smell of old blood and shed lining. Occasionally she would end up a week late and always ended up wondering if it was worth it to sneak into a Planned Parenthood or some similar clinic for the free pregnancy test. She could afford the test easily. Reading the thing, though… not one of her abilities would let her know if it was one stripe or two. An online search just found many other blind women frustrated by the lack of accessible options. Someone had made a USB pregnancy test but it didn’t have an audio option.

It was a Monday. She excused herself early and ignored the chatter from her coworkers. The pushy man who wanted to ask her out kept pestering the others to ask if she’d told anyone else about a date. She pretended that she was too far away to hear and found herself walking into one of the tiny crisis centers. She walked past Planned Parenthood when the smell of old blood and hospital disinfectant left her shivering. If she needed more than a pregnancy test, she knew where to find their front door.

She refused to give her name. For once, Mattie let the cane do all of the talking. The woman at the desk read Mattie’s mood well enough to offer a pregnancy test and no further commiseration.

Peeing in a cup probably wasn’t much easier for a sighted woman. Mattie was generous enough to imagine it might be just as disgusting with the way that the tiny cups they used were in no way useful to protect hands from splashes. She set the cup on the paper towel-topped stand that the woman had narrated and washed her hands very thoroughly.

The test was positive. The volunteer was stammering that they could write down a few websites, or perhaps just tell Mattie what to look up later, as they didn’t have any pamphlets in Braille. If she read Braille, that is, the volunteer had rocketed on in a kind voice climbing in pitch.

Mattie was quite sure the test was positive. The woman’s heartbeat had been true as a metronome before she became nervous. Mattie also was starting to be quite sure that the strange flutter somewhere between her hips was a heartbeat. The little heart was going double-time compared to Mattie’s own constant thrum. If the rhythms synced up just a little more, she could have the precise beat for Cohan’s You’re A Grand Old Flag.

Mattie walked home with the flutter of a heartbeat ringing through her ears. She had always been so careful. She hadn’t liked the way that her sense of taste changed with the progesterone-only pill and estrogen had been even worse. After that experience, she hadn’t been willing to try the depot shot when the symptoms would likely last for months. She had settled for being mostly celibate with a strong insistence on textbook use of condoms. Considering she’d only had two partners total before Frank, it hadn’t been an issue. Frank had been just as particular as she had. It had been such a relief at the time. She hadn’t had to explain that he couldn’t just “put the tip in a little” before getting a condom on. He hadn’t tried to negotiate for different rules. He had grunted agreement and that had been one of the only topics never up for debate.

If she wasn’t trying to imagine a lifetime of staying far away from Father Lantom and Saint Agnes, she would try to find someone who could contact him.

Mattie ended up at home with the kettle on before she realized that she wasn’t sure what she could do. If she took ibuprofen, would that end things? If she did end up as one of the many people who had a miscarriage, but one of the few who had taken a body-blow to the abdomen…

Her new apartment was smaller and cozier. She still felt cold. Wrapping herself in her softest blanket didn’t leave her feeling any more secure. She had chosen this apartment for the alleyway. She had a unit with a terrible view. Her windows on both walls of the corner unit looked out over alleys and other apartments. The landlord had been remarkably tactful in mentioning that if she was sensitive to low amounts of sunlight, a full-spectrum light was the recommendation from other people in the back corner.

She had moved here to let Daredevil be even harder to predict. She had easy access to several buildings she liked best. She would be a bit farther away from the precinct to give herself more time to lose any surveillance from the police. She had intended to be a one-woman operation against injustice and here she was in her apartment wondering if an accident would be so bad. She wasn’t meant to be a mother. Her father had done his best, and she would always adore him, but she’d never been able to consider him as an adult. He was gone and it didn’t seem fair to judge how much he had sacrificed to keep her in books and papers. She could just picture her mother, though, spending years mailing an envelope with a check and no note to Saint Agnes.

Mattie’s mom was a sister now. Mattie was still too angry to know just which stage her mother might have reached, but Maggie hadn’t been able to take her vows until her unwanted daughter was eighteen.

Maggie had postpartum psychosis. Mattie would be at risk for the same. Her father had always protected him from the rumors while he could but not even his protectiveness could cover her hearing after the accident.

Mattie couldn’t raise a baby alone as a laywer. She knew the better option was to end it and then to take her lumps. She would willingly swear off ever having sex again if it meant that she wouldn’t be trying to argue with a heartbeat that Mattie was not in any way going to be a mother. She would swear off having sex with anyone that wasn’t Frank anyway, really, because she was the biggest idiot on the planet and she had ended up attached. She was in love. She knew he killed and she knew that he never would replace Maria or their children. She still was in love and she’d been enough of an idiot to offer that a gun safe would fit in her closet. She’d made space and reorganized her court clothes so that her apartment could be a partial safehouse. He had shouted, she’d yelled back, and it ended with him screaming that he wouldn’t balance her checkbook and her yelling that if she could manage her own billing hours she could count something more than bullets in a clip.

Her screenreader read out articles in a drone. The few resources she could find specifically meant for blind would-be parents had awful caveats. She was financially stable for once, which checked one box, but that was because she had lost the one friend she had left. Elektra was dead and Mattie had her college roommate’s money and clothes and jewelry instead of a friend.

Foggy had been quite clear. So had Karen. Neither of them would count as ‘close network of friends’ that all of the articles mentioned. Frank was gone and she wasn’t sure how on earth anyone tracked down the Punisher when he went to ground. Claire… well, if Claire ever was going to be a friend, Mattie couldn’t only call her when she needed help.

Too many of the sites meant for the blind assumed that she was a married, stable person with no other medical issues and no laundry list of enemies. Their advice was meant for someone else.

Mattie was still floundering days later when there was yet another fluttering heartbeat in the office. One of her coworkers had managed to fit something in the corner between her desk and the wall.

“Sorry, Mattie,” Rachel called out before Mattie’s cane could touch the new addition. “I brought Miles in to work with me today. My parents were going to watch him but my mom fell and broke her hip. He’ll be old enough to go to daycare next week.”

Mattie remembered the chatter. “How old does he need to be for daycare?”

“Eight weeks,” Rachel replied. Her voice sounded distorted in a way not explained by the way that she had a baby cradled against her chest. “Isn’t that right?” she cooed at Miles.

Right. Mattie remembered now, everyone seemed to make faces at babies. Even the most reserved teenagers at Saint Agnes had made the same ‘baby faces,’ and Sister Mary Anne had said that Mattie did just as well. That would explain why Rachel’s voice shifted in an out of more adult inflection.

“Was there something in my way?”

Rachel paused a moment. “I’m trying to figure out the least rude way to let you know how much room I’ve taken up. It’s a rocker. It folds out into a tiny cradle, basically, and after Miles nurses and gets a fresh diaper he’ll be out like a light.”

Mattie reached down carefully. She could feel the fabric over plastic pipes and a gentle push sent the full device rocking.

“My mother-in-law swore by this and she was right. I’m going to try to get some work done and I can rock him with my foot,” Rachel said before shifting her weight. “I am sorry about the inconvenience. I brought in a diaper pail, too, so that it won’t smell quite so bad with the old diapers.”

Mattie’s lips twitched into a smile before she realized that she had missed the smell. “I grew up in an orphanage. I missed babies, I think.” The smell of formula going in and out of several babies had been overwhelming but it had been one of her favorite chores. A few sisters had made sure to look up tricks for successfully changing a diaper while blind but mostly they let her stay away from diaper duty. Mattie had been one of the best at soothing the colicky little ones back to sleep. Most of the younger babies had been adopted out quickly but she’d always liked sitting in a room where all non-infants were meant to be quiet.

“Want to hold him?” Rachel offered. “As long as you don’t have a cold. My pediatrician said that once he’s two months old then I can worry less about him having a fever.”

Mattie reached out and had a baby gathered against her chest before she’d quite decided. He was too young to burble much at her but he did smell good even past the soiled diaper. When she handed him back to Rachel, though, she could feel the blip in his heartbeat.

“Anytime you need a cooldown after a rude client, Mr. Cuddles in on the case,” Rachel promised. There was a smile in her voice. “Aside from the times where he just yells while I try to figure out what he wants, but well, hopefully he’ll be a good guest here.”

“He’s less likely to use profanity than most of our clients,” Mattie said drily. “They yell and sometimes we never know what they want.”

Rachel giggled and carefully stepped her way back to her chair. “Exactly. By the way, if anyone tries to give me heck for nursing at my desk, I’m planning to loudly quote the full text of relevant laws at them. Then point out that everybody else has coffee and snacks at their desk after wowing them with legal recitations.”

“Just point them at me,” Mattie said. She had only met Rachel the week before. Their desks were close together but Mattie hadn’t wanted to talk to most anybody, even her new work neighbor. Mattie had been lost in her isolation and Rachel had been frazzled at reading through the notes that had piled up during her maternity leave. “If anybody gets offended, I can do my best confused face and tell them I don’t see anything objectionable.”

Rachel laughed. She didn’t even make the reflexive pause some did, wondering if it was okay to laugh at the blind woman’s blind joke. “I will try to work that in if you’re not busy,” she promised. “Hey, so. I know you like your privacy, but you looked a little upset yesterday. Are you okay?”

Mattie might have made another decision if she hadn’t noticed the way that even a seven week old baby knew his mother. If Mattie completely failed at being a parent… well, maybe there would be a family tradition in appealing to Saint Agnes. There were more options later. Her mailed Braille copy of the parish bulletin frequently listed information for couples looking to adopt a child.

“I think so,” Mattie said. “At least I think I’ll get there.”

Delightful! Thank you for this.

Prompt Anon here...

Thank you for filling this! I like the outside observer thing you had with Jarvis. And personally, I think you did great with Foggy--he's not a big fluffy marshmallow that's gonna break just because Matt gives him the sad puppy face. After the shit Matt put him through (granted, Matt did what he thought would protect Foggy in the long run), Foggy has a right to be a bit put-off by being around Matt. He had the perfect opportunity to get no-filter kid!Matt to spill his guts, but he still has too much respect for Matt to do something that would leave him humiliated.

Wouldn't mind seeing a follow up to this ^_^

"built myself in the shadows of people I'd lost and I never managed to grow into something better," - what a great line.

I loved how great Foggy was with kid matt, contrasted with how little time he had for adult matt. They're both still in a lot of pain.

Steve gave some great advice about making time to really hear Matt's apology. That last line, "I'll catch up with him soon," seems really hopeful in that context.

I enjoyed this a lot. Thanks for writing it.

Oh my god you're amazing. I was not expecting this to be picked up so quickly, but I'm very touched that you found inspiration. A nice surprise indeed!

Just as your fill is based on the experiences you and your friend had, the idea canr in part because of a friend's circumstances last year (she has a lovely daughter now), so this was something I hesitated on for a while. You're doing an excellent job and I'm eager to see where this will go as it continues.

Somewhat based on this fill from prompt post #4: ( http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/2760.html?thread=4686536#cmt4686536 )

In which Daredevil is a vigilante who is equally notorious for being an unclaimed omega male as he is for being a brutal and dangerous fighter. Matt Murdock is a blind omega lawyer in daylight hours while in the night he utilizes his pheromones and his rigid control over his bodily reactions as much as his skills in hand-to-hand combat.

Pairings are up to you, as are the assignations of other characters. Have fun!

In the thread here (http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/2760.html?thread=4811464#cmt4811464) there was a mention of Daredevil and Punisger getting trapped in close quarters (such as an elevator shaft or collapsed building) and Matt getting accidentally and *very* reluctantly aroused due to his hypersensitivity, with a lot of situational humiliation. Can someone please write that?

Someone curses Matt with the ability to turn into a dragon. Most people go mad when their senses get dialed to eleven. Matt is not most people

Cue random wizard (maybe even Strange) running from a pissed off dragon who then changes back to Daredevil and thanks them for the new gift.

We all know that, with his training, Matt is probably extremely flexible, though we do not see much of it in the show. Give me Matt being flexible as fuck during sex - I'm talking almost ridiculous amounts of flexibility here -, anyone fucking him and tying him into a fucking pretzel, just because they can and because holy shit, does the guy even have a spine? Has he ever heard about joints?

Anyone but Matt's POV, preferably. Can be Matt/Foggy, Matt/Wesley, Matt/Fisk, Matt/Frank Castle, Matt/Steve, I dunno, seriously any male character or combination of. Can be fluffy or angsty or funny, can be dub-con if you wish.

Bonus:
+1000 if it's Matt/Frank Castle and involves size kinks
+10000 if Matt appears to be really into being twisted and bent into strange angles
+100000 if it involves hair-pulling and biting or any other form of rough sex

(Originally from http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/2760.html?thread=5252040#cmt5252040 )

Matt and Jessica go out drinking together and have the closest these two can do to a heart-to-heart. Gen or any ship, so long as the superbabes get totally smashed together and get their chance to grieve, groan, giggle, and grumble together.

*whispers* hell to the yes

A!A:

I do have a LOT of feels about surprise pregnancies making life difficult. I was in a secure enough situation that my employers were very kind about all of my needs and I had hella BAMF health insurance. I was remote from friends/family though for a training program, though, so that made it harder. I had a few friends in similar circumstances. I tried to bring in talks from friends who did choose to terminate pregnancies but based on your prompt and canon Murdock stubbornness I feel like she would find a way. I'm actually still figuring out some of the end-game but the rest of it was just going its own way.

(My surprise baby is adorable and mostly behaves herself, but toddlers are a force of nature.)

Clint touched the jet down at a tiny airport typically used by New Jersey law enforcement. Traffic control had known that they had an incoming craft but Maria had decided to let them assume it would be a helicopter and not a jet making a vertical landing. Clint was pretty sure it was because she and JARVIS saved video files of the most interesting reactions to lighten up the inevitable Avengers debrief. Maria had also let the wide group of law enforcement officers believe they were attending a voluntary briefing about Avengers response times in the updated quinjet and how to prioritize landing space. She still had drawn a crowd of over twenty people including a few police officers and EMTs.

Tony deplaned first with a loud sigh of relief. Just as they had imagined, the clusters of people milling around on the tarmac went from cautiously interested to unashamed staring. Clint was just glad that Maria was directly behind him. Tony was dressed in one of his many over-priced cloth suits with Bruce looking after the briefcase Iron Man suit. Maria quickly started to shake hands with a few supervisors and organize distribution of her printouts. Tony was already signing autographs and posing in several selfies. Clint was pretty sure Tony was posing for four selfies simultaneously and that three of those would actually look pretty good.

Bruce glanced down the ramp before settling more comfortably into his seat. “Call me if you need a little extra muscle,” he said as he drew a Sudoku book and a pen out of his messenger bag.

Clint might never understand why a man who devoted time to keeping himself otherwise under control would do both Sudoku and crossword puzzles in ink. “We appreciate it, doc,” he said. He set the flight headset aside and double-checked his communicator.

“Communicator check,” Natasha said quietly. Clint, Steve, and Sam flashed a thumbs-up. Bruce waved his pen in acknowledgment. Tony sent two clicks through the comm. Matt nodded. “Bugout signal is the usual handsign or ‘bug out’ for Matt. He’ll hear us.” Matt flashed the signal for ‘acknowledged.’ After a brief talk, Matt had only bothered to learn the signals for ‘acknowledged’ and ‘repeat.’ Anything else he would ferry through his communicator.

Steve nodded. “Weapons check.”

Clint opened his weapons case and checked over his rifle and handguns. He’d elected to shoot with the SHEILD standard M4A1 and Glock 19. He pretended to ignore Cap’s surprised look, but he was only human, and Steve in full Captain America face was something else. Hunting Hydra jerks really seemed to bring Steve back to the old days. Clint was also pretending he wasn’t thinking all about Cap’s World War II days since Bucky actual Barnes would be the second sniper on their mission.

“I live to be unpredictable,” Clint said after Cap’s polite refusal to ask grew too much. “If I did all my missions without relying on guns, the guys start to pretend I forgot how to use them.”

Cap looked like he wanted to be suspicious, but if he was suspicious it might be rude to question a fellow Avenger’s choices, so he was refraining. It was a very complicated look but Cap was a very complicated person. Clint could appreciate that.

“Ready to move?” Cap asked.

The group started shrugging into their flight jackets. Nat tucked her hair up into a grey knit beanie. The entire look wouldn’t pass muster if the crowd was paying full attention, but Tony was over by the crowd. He was very good at drawing attention.

“On your mark, Tony,” Cap said.

“Right,” Tony said. He had been talking with the group the full time, but there were several advantages to letting JARVIS loop your communication system. JARVIS had brilliant timing. “So, if you’d like to see something pretty new, Stark Industries is nearly ready to start going public with this.”

Cap led their group down the ramp. They all started walking toward their chosen alleyway. Clint wasn’t shocked that Matt was a master at the ‘nothing to see here’ walk. There was an art to it, really, sometime about walking with just the right amount of a casual amble that no one would break their attention to see what was going on. It worked even when in the group of five people they had three Avengers and two possible recruits.

Tony’s two clicks sounded again just as they made it through the alley between two hangars. “Clear,” Natasha said. “Drop site is right here.”

They dumped their flight jackets in a dumpster. Clint felt it was hardly fair to his poor jacket but wasn’t about to wear it into a fight. He consoled himself with checking the pockets only to freeze. He had been sure that he’d put Katie-Kate’s glasses in his pocket to better destroy them while raiding a Hydra base, and both pockets were empty. Maybe losing them in a dumpster would be worth a smile.

“Per several internal Hydra channels, they continue to think that Mr. Murdock’s only ally is an unknown lawyer who ‘knows kung fu,’” JARVIS reported wryly. “Video footage is not fully available but they continue to speak of Jack Murdock in the present tense.”

Clint hated rescue missions a little. They were so much tense preparation and nerve-wracking recon that could all turn tragic in an instant. Still, he had a job to do.

Bucky Barnes had passed on his second choice for a sniper nest. After Barnes had laid claim to the bell tower with the best view, Clint was left to scramble up on a rooftop. Several roof-mounted air conditioning units would give him decent cover and let him make sure there were no sentries posted outside to alert the base of his team’s approach.

He ignored Steve’s sensible offer of a boost. The lowest rung of the ladder set into the side of the building was six feet up. Clint had to show off occasionally, though, or the rest of his team would think they were cooler because they were Russian or Captain America or could fly. He leapt up, grabbed the lower rung, and pulled himself up with a little help from a fast run up the wall. He dangled off the ladder for a minute to appreciate Natasha’s eye roll and Cap’s nod before taking a more careful approach the rest of the way. The ladder looked sturdy but he had no interest in taking a thirty-foot fall off the last couple rungs.

The view from the top was better. As always, Clint felt a little more in control of the mission and himself when he had a view of the full field. He even could see a patch of darker shadow in the bell tower. Just as Barnes had said, Clint had an unimpeded view of the large one-story warehouse hiding several underground levels. “Hawkeye in position.”

“Matt, are you in range?” Natasha asked.

“There might be more, but… yes. Two on the ground. They’re separate and walking around slowly,” Matt said. “I can’t make out how many more people are down below from here.”

“Neither of the ground level sentries is visible from here,” Clint reported.

“Maria’s doing her briefing, I’m on the jet,” Tony said. “Bruce? I don’t like your job.”

“My job is being the backup plan and not disrupting those in an active mission,” Bruce replied in a tone so kind it wasn’t a rebuke. “Hack their servers, destroy their Farmville… you have JARVIS and a suit. Close the ramp and no one will get ideas.”

“You are my favorite, jelly-bean,” Tony said gleefully. “Okay, if I find anything useful for mission-goers, I’ll let you know.”

“Save the playlist,” Cap warned. “Matt needs to be able to hear.”

“Fine, fine,” Tony grumbled. “Hydra doesn’t deserve the good music anyway. I’m just going to just sit here and—ooh, hello there, somebody has a publicly accessible file with shortcuts to a few numbered accounts… yeah okay. I’ll save the playlist for the afterparty.”

Clint held back a laugh. That at least should keep Tony busy. “Sentry just passed through the ground level doorway,” he reported quietly. “Looks like the ground level is actually a giant clichéd warehouse like the blueprints said.”

Clint waited. It was the most boring part of a job but typically meant that things were going well. Natasha and Matt’s check-ins were quiet and soon joined by Cap and Falcon. When all four of them had cleared the main level and were working their way down a stairwell, Clint turned his scope only toward the belltower. Barnes’ metal arm was just as shiny as it had been in the Washington D.C. footage, and he was making a signal for ‘moving position.’ Clint returned with the sign for ‘affirmative’ before making his way back toward the ladder.

“Two on the ground. Seven heartbeats in the lower levels but none of those is Jack’s. I can’t hear him,” Matt said.

“White room?” Natasha suggested. A moment later, she spoke again. “Avengers, we suspect Jack is in the white room. Third sublevel on the east side.”

Clint and Barnes had decided on the same side entrance. The rest of their team had taken a more direct route and was nearing the third sublevel. Unlike most raids on a Hydra base, they couldn’t ambush with a show of superior force or move room-to-room. Even taking out the ground floor sentries was a large risk when Hydra had a hostage in reserve.

“They’re fighting,” Matt reported when Clint and Barnes had passed the ground floor sentries. “One of the men says that keeping Jack hostage is foolish and could expose Hydra. Zimbardo is telling him that if they recapture me their place in Hydra will be secure.”

Clint had caught up with the team in the stairwell. Natasha jerked her hands irritably toward the door they hadn’t passed yet. There was glass in the window and two of the guards near a large bay of computer monitors were looking their direction. There were four more guards in the room in the ubiquitous Hydra black uniform and one man in a dingy lab coat.

“Patching you through,” Tony interjected quietly.

“Bring him here, then,” a man demanded stridently. “Both of you. Get Murdock and bring him here. There is no chance of 19-64 waiting for the deadline. He knows I don’t like waiting.”

“And out,” Tony said. “I could give you video from the webcam I hacked, but it’s boring. That was Felix Zimbardo speaking. The guards are using the elevator because they are lazy slobs.”

“Time to change up the plan,” Sam agreed. He had a hand resting on Matt’s shoulder, Clint noticed, and it seemed to be helping.

“Cap?” Clint suggested. He had no idea where Barnes had gone. They had been descending the staircase together before Barnes stepped back and found some detour. “Any move from here is risky but Cap and Hydra monologues go together.”

“Might be the best shot we have,” Cap agreed. “Matt, stay out of eyeline if you can. If that fails, you look like a SHIELD guard, stay with Sam. If they recognize you, they will know that threatening Jack is their first move. We’ll make this look Avengers and unrelated. If they think he’s a random civilian they might be a little more inclined to brag about who he is. If you have a chance to take out Zimbardo and get Murdock to safety, do it.”

Matt nodded. “Agreed.”

They waited. Unfortunately for hopes of an easy entry, the two guards tasked with fetching Murdock brought him straight to Zimbardo. Jack Murdock was bruised but walking without help. He also had his hands cuffed behind his back. Clint could hear Natasha’s whisper-quiet narration for Matt but pretended he couldn’t. Tony patched through audio again as Zimbardo pretended to be a solicitous host and insisted that his men unbind Jack’s hands. Before they had finished, Zimbardo drew a Glock 17 from a holster at the small of his back and leveled it right at Jack’s torso.

“Good evening, Mr. Murdock. I know we talked about a schedule but I’m ever so impatient. I’m sure that our guest of honor will arrive any moment now,” Zimbardo said.

“I won’t get a better opening,” Cap said. “Ready?”

“Of course,” Clint replied with a sweep of his arm.

“Always gotta show off, I know,” Sam agreed.

“Ready,” Matt said quietly.

Natasha nodded and stood back away from the doors. Clint and Sam quickly followed her example. Cap left the shield on his back as he pushed the door open. He made a visible double-take with a half-step back when he had his first unobstructed view of the grouping. Zimbardo had stepped forward and moved his gun to Jack’s head. Flanking the pair, six Hydra guards stood with their guns drawn and pointed down toward the floor.

“Guys? This base is not abandoned and no sign of Bucky,” Cap said slowly. “Looks like they were having a party.”

Natasha frowned as she stepped forward. “Last time that I accept second-hand information. Felix Zimbardo, right? He tried to make a super-serum but never had a success on record.”

Clint was pleased to notice Sam staying back. Even better, Sam had kept to a position near a large bank of servers, and Matt was nowhere in sight. Natasha and Cap were both well-suited to toy with Hydra for a minute while they searched for the best way out. Clint was disappointed to note that Zimbardo had a firm grip on the Glock he had pressed in the hollow behind Murdock’s ear. Zimbardo’s finger curled around the trigger as Clint watched for his opening.

“You have not done your research this time, Black Widow.” Zimbardo stood his ground and made no instinctive move to start gesturing with his hands. “I did have a partial success. This man’s little boy was so promising to start but then he ended up a failure.”

“The only failure here is you,” Jack Murdock said coldly. From the sheer lack of surprise on Murdock’s face, Clint guessed that Hydra had told him about Matt earlier. Possibly before throwing him in a white room. Hydra’s asshattery tended to get predictable after a while.

When Zimbardo scowled, his left eye was shrouded in drooping lid. Clint should have done more background research. Just as the briefing had showed, Zimbardo’s left pupil was far smaller than the right, and the skin around the left eye was saggier. He wasn’t sure if that would change visual acuity or even if that would help them.

“The only mistake I made was giving the serum before I broke his little mind,” Felix hissed. “You think that he’s so special? That he’s so unique?”

Jack Murdock struggled to keep his expression neutral. “You picked him. You wanted my kid.”

“One of your competitors was a coworker of mine, Murdock, it wasn’t some sort of comprehensive search,” the scientist said with a slow shake of his head. “I wanted a subject capable of passing his classes who also was not a couch potato. Your boy was the easiest to get.”

Jack’s face twisted as he staggered back a step. “No,” he whispered.

Felix smirked. “It couldn’t have been easier. I simply pretended that you had sent me, Jack. I said that you wanted little Matt to see his dad’s big fight. He came willingly.”

Jack’s face was buried in his hands as Felix laughed. He flinched back another half-step when Felix spoke again. “Pity that—”

Jack’s right fist lashed out so quickly that Felix was still forming his next word when Jack’s fist rebounded off the flat space just behind the temple. Two more blows to the head landed before Felix started his trajectory backwards. Clint had one of the remaining Hydra guards in a headlock before Felix’s head hit the poured concrete floors with a loud thud. Matt had laid two more out before they could decide where to aim their weapons. The last three fell to a combination of Cap’s shield and Natasha’s widow bites.

Jack shook out his hands while Natasha and Clint started tying the hands of the downed Hydra agents.

Steve grinned. “That first step fooled me, sir,” he said cheerfully. “The rest, though? Beautiful.”

“Cap’s a boxer when he and Nat aren’t defying gravity together,” Sam added. “Anybody can appreciate a good clean punch, though. Are you alright, Mr. Murdock? I’m a bit out of certification but I was pararescue.”

“Jack, please,” he said. “I’m fine. Worst I’ll get is some bruising but damn if the skull-shot wasn’t worth it.” Jack nudged Felix with his foot before looking up to see his son hesitating near the edge of the room. “You know, Matt? I’m starting to think MMA is pretty alright after all. Kicking him a few times woulda been pretty satisfying.”

“It was good footwork,” Matt said as he edged closer. “I could tell that you weren’t nervous, though. Your heartbeat slowed down.”

“Look at you with all the words together!” Jack closed the distance. “C’mere. I just got kidnapped, I am hugging you and just this once you’ll—”

Before Jack could finish his disclaimer, Matt had wrapped both arms around him. Sam nodded to Clint before tactfully shooing the father-son pair away from the unconscious and/or zip-tied Hydra goons. Clint went to work making sure there were plenty of bindings on everybody and several extra sets on the scientist jerk because he didn’t like people that experimented on children.

Clint tapped into his communicator a moment later. “All clear down here, team,” he said. “Science-jerk decided to monologue and let his famous boxer hostage get enough room to knock him right out. Pulse is strong and he’s breathing. Six guards were present, all are restrained.”

“There are two more guards on the main floor,” Matt said. “No one else is here.”

“You are the best at recon,” Clint replied cheerfully. “That fits with what I saw moving through the base. I think they lost a lot of personnel to some other sect. Maybe we can try to track down the receiving base and have a proper Hydra base attack where Tony gets to play too. Plus next time I would like to actually do something more than recon.”

Natasha glared down at Zimbardo as if his strong pulse was personally disappointing. “A few of the grunts will need medical attention. Mostly head injury with loss of consciousness. Maria, is your team ready?”

“They’re about four minutes out,” she replied. “They’re rather pleased to have a hands-on opportunity instead of just a lecture. Do me a favor and incapacitate the two ground crew on your way up, would you? Everyone likes a full package deal. Good work, team. Sam, you’re with the Murdocks? Please get them back on the jet. Everyone else, I’d like wheels up as soon as possible.”

Clint saluted to Natasha. “Hate to leave you with the cleanup but pre-flight checks call me. Cap and I can knock the guards out on our way by.”

Later, Clint would realize that Natasha should have scowled at him. She should have traded favors or made a crack that the entire team had left the lady with the cleanup. If his attention hadn’t been already focused on safely exiting the base and running through the ritual of pre-flight checks with Bruce as his second, he would have wondered just why Natasha wasn’t saying more on the communicators. Usually she’d have a steady commentary as she worked.

Sam chivvied Matt and Jack into seats on the quinjet. He also pestered them into drinking a full bottle of water each and only took a seat for himself when Jack started munching through protein bars. Steve accepted his own bottle of water without complaint before grabbing a post-fight snack of his own. Clint munched through the chocolate-and-chalk flavored protein bar while Bruce helped him with the checklist.

Maria was still listening to Foggy, JARVIS, and Tony when her cleanup team of local police, FBI, and a World Security Council representative arrived at the base. She was distracted with JARVIS’s analysis of how many EMTs they might require when her team of law enforcement officers yelled about shots fired.

“It appears that we had an intruder,” Natasha reported calmly. “Two shots fired. He’s already heading out the back.”

Clint glanced up from his bulletin board.

“Get the EMTs down here stat, we have an unresponsive man with a head wound,” one of the officers said.

“That’s two bullets through the head and there’s no pulse. My partner started CPR.”

“Shooter had a metal arm,” a third reported. “Male, twenties, dark hair. Possibly Caucasian.”

Steve undid the seatbelt in a moment and was on his feet before Sam could blink.

Two voices murmured in Russian before Natasha spoke again. “Quinjet, do you have room for one more? Our ghost forgot how to ghost.”

“You stepped up the timeline,” a new voice grumbled. Unlike the police officers, his voice came through clear without the crackle of a relay. “I am not—”

“Seriously dude, get on the jet,” Clint said curtly. “Steve, sit your happy ass down, I am trying to fly us out of here before somebody gets the bright idea of putting faces all over the local news. If we’re lucky this might be the only splinter of Hydra that knows the full story on Matt.”

“Steve,” Sam said quietly. “We talked about this.”

Steve’s jaw worked. “Fine,” he growled. “Winter Soldier, you might as well get a ride back to Manhattan.”

Bruce leaned back in his seat. He tapped his pen quietly for emphasis while he looked from Steve to the jet’s open door. “If you are going to have any kind of discussions mid-flight, I’d rather not be on the jet,” Bruce said politely. “Talking about experiments right now would not help anyone’s mood.”

“We won’t make you walk back to Manhattan, doc,” Natasha said from the ramp. “Hi Steve. I’m not apologizing but we can talk about this back at the Tower.”

Natasha took the seat next to Steve without another word. Stone-faced, the Winter Soldier took the open seat between Jack Murdock and Bruce Banner. He set a large black plastic case at his feet and rested his right hand on top of the small black leather bag clipped to his belt.

Jack turned to look the Winter Soldier over. “You had a target in there? They only talked about one person getting shot.”

“Destroyed the data bank. Eliminated the scientist,” the Soldier replied curtly. The plates in his bared left arm whirred as he curled the metal hand into a fist.

Jack pursed his lips before shrugging. “I should maybe disapprove of somebody ending up dead but I kinda don’t. I’d just as soon not think that he’s going to take somebody else’s kid.”

“Last time a scientist was sent off alive to prison he got his hands on me a second time.” The Soldier’s words sounded just as clipped but he looked at Jack instead of a thousand feet ahead. “No one gets another Zola. I was planning to knock the place down but my approach doesn’t work well when they find themselves a hostage.”

“We appreciate the team-up,” Sam said. “We met briefly in DC, maybe you remember us not getting along right away. I’m Sam Wilson. There are no hard feelings here. You dragged Rogers out of the Potomac.” Sam kicked Steve’s ankle and continued without missing a beat. “Rogers, I would like you to agree that the man helped us out here with a very difficult rescue mission. We can all eat leftovers at the Tower and take a break.”

“I promised the Winter Soldier forty-eight hours without you chasing him,” Natasha added without looking up from her phone. “So let’s agree that starts after dinner and maybe the Soldier will join us.”

“Barnes,” the Winter Soldier corrected irritably. “I might as well go by Barnes, no interest in being ‘that guy.’”

“Thanks, Barnes,” Matt said quietly. “He was planning on starting over again. Zimbardo was already looking through candidates when I ran.”

“Already grabbed those files.” Barnes tapped the steel toe of his boot against the large black case. “Figured there wasn’t any use leaving temptation around.”

“Definitely not,” Clint agreed. “Everybody’s buckled in, good. Maria, Tony? You guys good?”

“We’ll catch up later,” Tony said over the communicator. “Maria is busy bossing around vast groups of people and proving that she’s clearly bored in her day job.”

“Clearly I’m wasted there,” Maria agreed. “I’ll have to talk it over when not coordinating several different agencies. Some disappointed data scavengers here are trying to pretend that they’re my priority. Pity that the computer system seems to be out of commission. Being shot to ribbons by the Winter Soldier and then accidentally wiped by Iron Man in the recovery effort really mess with system integrity.”

“I’ll take my poor jet on a proper flight later.” Clint patted a relatively innocuous part of the dashboard. “We’re out of here, Maria, happy managing.”

Matt grimaced with takeoff. He hadn’t spared any attention toward the movement of the jet on the way over but even a skilled pilot couldn’t change sudden acceleration and pressure changes. He and the rest of the passengers looked much more pleased when Clint touched down on the roof of Tony’s skyscraper.

“We’re clear, Fog,” Clint said once he had powered down the engines. Foggy had been waiting in the elevator, it turned out, because just a moment later the door opened and there he was.

Clint frowned as he watched the reunions. He was forgetting something. Barnes was standing on the roof with his big case of guns and papers slung over his back. He seemed happy enough to pretend he wasn’t within ten yards of Rogers and shook hands with Foggy. Natasha was standing over with Steve and Sam while the three of them pretended that they weren’t about to go have a very loud conversation somewhere. Bruce looked over the two groups before choosing to head over toward Natasha’s cluster. Clint hadn’t expected Bruce to go anywhere except his lab. It also was really great watching Steve visibly deflate after about two more sentences from Bruce. Clint wasn’t sure just which part of personal history Bruce would draw on but he imagined most of it would do.

Clint was texting JARVIS about timing a large order of shawarma to arrive just about when Tony got back when he remembered. His sunglasses had been perched up on his head because the way that Tony twitched was funny every time, but when they got in the way of the headset he used for the quinjet, he must have dropped them. When he pictured where he had been standing, it only took a moment to find them.

Kate Bishop’s dad had a bad habit of attempting to make up for poor behavior with expensive presents. Clint was pretty sure Kate would like the picture of the sunglasses crushed beneath the landing gear of the jet a lot better than she’d ever liked the gift.

She texted him back seconds later. ok old hawkeye that has some style

Clint frowned at his phone and thought about the terms of their deal. ‘Old Hawkeye’ probably qualified as admitting that he was the original Hawkeye. “Aww, Kate,” he grumbled before sending a copy of the picture back to Laura. There was no use hoping that Katie-Kate hadn’t been passing along a completely wrong version of events. Clint would just have to compare stories when Laura had time to set up an encrypted phone call.

lol Kate should be happy with that, Laura replied. Any PG bedtime stories out of today’s rat infestation?

Happy ending for the good guys and everything. Clint switched conversations to make sure that JARVIS didn’t have any further questions about dinner. JARVIS, of course, had already made sure that the leftovers from before the raid had been packed up for the security team before anything had time to get cold. He sent the AI a smiling emoticon because Stark’s fits about people corrupting his BFF were legendary.

JARVIS texted back a winking smiley face while Laura set up a time for the bedtime call.

“Alright, people, dinner is on its way,” Clint called out. He was very pleased to notice that Matt, Jack, and Foggy all had the sense to start heading toward the elevators and therefore food without further prompting. Sam was still in the group with Natasha, Bruce, and Steve so hopefully he would be as sensible as previously advertised.

“I don’t know if you feel this way lately, but it was nice to not need sniper work on the way in,” Clint said to the only other loner on the roof. “Nice work on cleanup.”

Barnes’ lip twitched into a faint smile. “Could’ve made it out without anyone seeing but the scientist had more information out than I thought. Hydra’s secret caches get predictable. I wasn’t going to let someone else think that children should be soldiers.”

Clint nodded. “Problem with being the superhero squad,” he said. “If one of us dealt with a subdued captive… well, then there’s already talk about extrajudicial killing and extreme measures. People eventually forget that we didn’t invite the aliens and just remember we broke a few buildings.”

“I don’t remember much yet.” Barnes looked him over for several moments as if hunting for signs of a lie. “Aliens? Really aliens?”

“Really aliens,” Clint promised. “I’ll show you video if you want. I missed most of the leadup because a jerk alien mind-whammied me with a magic spear.” His therapist would also probably be downright pleased that Clint had managed to mention the incident to a stranger.

“How’d you get back in control?”

Clint shrugged. “Jerk alien sent me to kill Natasha. She hit me in the head really hard. I was okay enough to fly a jet after.”

Barnes flinched when AC/DC started blaring out from all of the artfully concealed speakers. Clint rolled his eyes.

“Tony’s on his way in,” Clint explained. “Come eat with the team? Nobody’s going to mind if you don’t say much. Matt actually didn’t say anything the first few weeks we knew him.”

“Romanova won’t mind?”

“If she minded, she wouldn’t have invited you on the jet.” Clint watched the small glimmer of red in the distance grow rapidly into a more recognizable form. “If Nat didn’t trust you to choose the right targets, she never would have accepted your help on the mission today. You know that Natasha used to be an assassin for the bad guys. It’s not easy to turn it all around but it’s better when you have people to help you.”

“Besides,” Clint said quietly under the wail of guitars and pounding bass, “Cap can’t chase you around the entire world if you don’t leave and it’s not often that you’re the third reformed Hydra-affiliate assassin in the same room.”

“Forty-eight hours to decide?”

“Forty-eight hours,” Clint agreed. He’d only needed six for Natasha. With the right angle, maybe someone could coax Barnes after twelve.

this sounds awesome. Would love to see!

Someone catches Matt and, after beating him up for information/revenge/what-have-you, they realize that violence doesn't work on him, so they trap him in a dark, soundproof room that deprives him of his senses. He can only hear his own thoughts and heartbeat, he can't do anything else. He has no idea where he is or what's going on outside this hell.

You can imagine that this doesn't go so well... It wrecks him - he feels useless, terrified, alone, and is forced to confront everything (and everyone) he's been running from.

Matt gets out after what feels like forever. He reacts to all the sudden stimuli that's everywhere, and maybe now it's too much, he's so lost. Foggy finds him/he finds Foggy. Foggy realizes, oh shit, something bad happened. There's a lot of life-affirming, desperate (and probably guilty, yeah, because come on, it's Matt) touching so Matt can feel that Foggy is real, that he himself is real. Insert comfort, confessions, and cuddles.

+ (if you want) sex!! (I'm pretty enthusiastic about this, in case you couldn't tell by the exclamation points, but I'd be just as happy without it.) Matt's senses are really sensitive right now... *nudge nudge*

Well, ouch. Why don't you just rip my heart out?

Wow. I'm glad things worked out for you and your daughter as well, and it definitely reassures me that you're going into this with real-life knowledge and experience to draw from, as that means your fill will be as realistic as possible for MCU-based Mattie without going full-out Miller-level grimdark ridiculousness in the process. I'm very happy that the endgame is undefined for now and entirely at your discretion, part of the reason I prompted instead if writing is that I wasn't sure how it would end in my own vision. That and rl problems are keeping me busy. Good luck, take your time and enjoy!

Seems very angsty and painful. +1

Seriously, why haven't I ever seen this? Karen helping Frank through a heat since it's kind of hard for him to get suppressants, Frank getting driven into Karen's company because his instincts have latched onto her as his new Alpha, Karen knotting Frank simply when things get to be too much, Frank simply being confused because no Alpha besides Maria has respected him right off the bat and talked to him the way Karen does...really, the world must have Alpha!Karen/Omega!Frank

I don't care what 'type' of intersex so long as Matt is intersex. Matt's gender can be masculine as per canon or if you want demimale, bigender, genderfluid, nonbinary, or agender work too. Gen, canon pairings, or whatever pairings you see fit.

Matt was no stranger to thinking about death. He had struggled his entire life with a deep depression that usually lurked in the back of his mind, but now and again it came to the forefront with a vengeance. He was used to the feelings and usually had good coping mechanisms, a real way to deal with them.

This time, however, he had nothing.

Matt couldn't help the despair that was creeping in. There was no way out and Fisk was trying his best to teach Matt a lesson. The lesson, in fact, had been taught. He was helpless. He was in over his head. There was nothing more that he could do.

He could only sit and try his best to survive -- but how could he survive? The despair was getting closer and closer to his heart and he was honestly afraid of giving in this time.

How would his friends feel if he died? How would they feel to find out that Matt Murdock had killed himself in prison? THey would never knew the full truth. All they would know was that the pain had the best of him. Could he do that to them?

Prisoners came for Matt in waves, at least one every single day. They blurred together in their violent, desperate attacks. Fish had each and every one of them in his hands, and there was nothing that the victim could do about it.

Then, Karen came to the prison.

Sitting across from her, Matt couldn't even meet her eyes. He hoped she'd excuse it. He was blind after all - he couldn't be expected to maintain eye contact.

"There was an attack at my work," she said, and he could tell that she was looking straight at him. "I know you've probably heard. Several people were killed, and many were hurt, but I...I don't know why I made it out in one piece."

"I heard," Matt said in a whisper. His voice sounded foreign, and even he winced at the sound. "I'm glad you're okay, Karen. Hang in there, okay?"

The words sounded so strained, so unreal, and Karen Page, the smartest woman he had ever met wasn't buying them for a second.

The guard came up behind him.

"You have ten minutes," he said.

Matt shuddered.

He then left, but that was enough for Karen to understand and acknowledge his fear.

"Oh my god," she whispered. "Matt, someone hurt you in there, didn't they? They...oh god..."

"Karen, don't," he said.

"Matt, you need to tell me," she demanded, and her voice was so strong. Karen had so much conviction that it broke his heart. "You can't lie to me. Why are you lying to me?"

"Karen, please..." he said softly. He knew that he was hurting her, but she needed to let it go. He had no doubt in his mind that Fisk would kill her, and he couldn't have that blood on his hands. He couldn't let someone he loved die because of him. "Just let it go. Let go."

"Matt."

"No."

They sat in silence for what felt like hours, but was maybe five minutes.

The guard returned and sneered at Matt. Matt could hear the hate, without even seeing a thing. It was terrifying, but Matt felt too much numbness in his heart. How could he care about the fear, even if it came from inside of him?

"Time's up," said the guard.

"Be safe," Matt told Karen, getting up and walking away. That was all he could do, just walk away.

--

"Foggy."

Foggy looked up from the paperwork on his desk, eyes blurry. Karen was standing in front of him and there was fire in her eyes. He had been working relentlessly, for days, and he was just so damned tired.

"Karen?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Matt's being hurt in there," she said softly, looking down at the floor. It was like she couldn't handle the idea of meeting his eyes. "I don't know for sure, but I think it's...sexual assault of some kind, Foggy."

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Page 158 of 165

Daredevil Prompt Post #11

Re: (FILL) Kid!Matt and post season 2 fix-it [2/3]

Re: (FILL) Kid!Matt and post season 2 fix-it [3/3]

Fill: Positive 1/?

Re: (FILL) Kid!Matt and post season 2 fix-it [1/?]

Re: (FILL) Kid!Matt and post season 2 fix-it [3/3]

Re: (FILL) Kid!Matt and post season 2 fix-it [3/3]

Re: Fill: Positive 1/?

A/B/O Omega! Matt

Matt/Frank accidental stimulation

Matt can turn into a dragon

Matt/any - Flexibility

Matt and Jessica go drinking - gen or any/any

Re: Matt can turn into a dragon

Re: Fill: Positive 1/?

Fill: Situation Excellent 10a/12

Fill: Situation Excellent 10b/12

Fill: Situation Excellent 10c/12

Re: Police!Matt

Matt/Foggy - sensory deprivation

Re: Foggy/Other; Matt/Foggy Foggy finds himself in an abusive relationship post S2 (TW:abuse)

Re: Fill: Positive 1/?

Re: Foggy/Other; Matt/Foggy Foggy finds himself in an abusive relationship post S2 (TW:abuse)

Alpha!Karen/Omega!Frank

Intersex Matt, gen or any/any

Fill - Upside Down - 6/? - Matt, noncon tw: rape