Chapter Text
It always began the same way… fog in his lungs, dread in his bones, and Foggy’s voice cracking like something already breaking.
“Foggy, he wanted to know where you were,” Benny said. “I’m sorry.”
The words echoed, warped by distance, by fear, by inevitability. Even inside the dream, Matt felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
The metallic clicking of the sniper’s bullet in its barrel filled his ears—cold, razor-precise. Not a sound meant for human hearing. A warning from a world that hated mercy. Benny’s heartbeat stuttered on the other end of Foggy’s phone—guilt, resignation, surrender.
“What? Who?”
The sniper’s lens clicked—a tiny, lethal adjustment—and in Matt’s mind it was a tectonic shift, a planet tilting. He heard the bullet lock into its final resting place. He heard fate inhale. And as the line disconnected, he ran.
“Come on, Benny. Come on, Benny!” Foggy mumbled, voice rising with worry as he tried calling again. “Come on, Benny.”
Karen paced beside him, her hair blowing in the late-night breeze, her heartbeat thudding with unease she couldn’t name yet.
“Benny? Benny?” Foggy asked, waiting. “I don’t know what he’s talkin’ about,” he said, looking down at his phone and then back up at Karen. “He said someone’s looking for—”
Karen gasped, her breath catching mid-sentence as blood burst across her face—hot, bright, violent. Spattering her jacket. Clinging to her hair. Foggy’s phone clattered to the pavement as he hit the ground with a terrifying, heavy thud that vibrated through Matt’s bones.
“Foggy!” she screamed.
Matt heard it all before it and as it happened. He always did. He always would.
The bullet ripped through Foggy’s skin—the sickening bloom of tissue breaking apart was like nails on a chalkboard in Matt’s head— Poindexter’s harrowing call to Karen, his voice venomous even through the chaos—and inside Josie’s, every patron’s heartbeat spiking in terror as Matt slammed Poindexter into glass, wood, bodies, anything he could reach.
“Help, Cherry!” Matt called, breath heaving, muscles screaming under the suit. “Let’s get these people out of here,” he ordered, even as fear clawed up his ribs.
Karen was on the ground with Foggy, her voice shaking but steady enough to lie. “Help is coming. Foggy, stay with me. Hey—stay with me.”
Matt could feel the blood—thick, metallic, sticky—seeping under the reinforced leather of his suit. There must have been ten—no, twelve—of those knives stuck in him. Poindexter had become something monstrous, something endless. And so the Devil did too.
“There! There! On the roof!”
The shout cut through the chaos, but it couldn’t cut through Foggy’s breathing—ragged, shallow, slipping away. Nor through Karen’s desperate pleas:
“Foggy, no, come on. Fogg. Come on. Please.”
Matt couldn’t silence any of it; couldn’t drown out the sound of life leaving the person who had always tethered him to the world, couldn’t stop hearing Karen’s heartbeat spiraling, frantic, breaking.
And still, he punched.
Still, he struck.
Still, he fought Poindexter with everything left in him—but to what end?
“Foggy!” Karen screamed again.
Matt’s own voice tore out of him, raw and animal.
He yelled—anguished, enraged, horrified.
“Why? Why?” he cried, fists shaking, body shaking, the world shaking.
Poindexter chuckled, a cold, delighted sound.
Sirens wailed in the distance but they were still too far, too slow.
Matt pushed him—Poindexter—off the side of the roof. He felt the moment gravity claimed him. Matt heard the body hit the pavement below with a sickening crash, thud, crack—like bones, like concrete, like consequence come too late. Gasps ricocheted off lampposts and curbs, echoing up the side of the building.
Karen, frozen in shock, was unable to look away from Foggy’s body, her hands hovering helplessly over his chest.
The roof’s door swung open with a breeze in the air.
And—
Matt jerked awake at 4:03 a.m., lungs clawing for air, sheets twisted around his torso like restraints. Cold sweat slicked his chest, soaking the thin cotton of the t-shirt he forgot to take off before collapsing into bed a few hours earlier. His apartment was dark, silent, still, but his heart hadn’t caught on yet; it hammered like something trying to escape his ribcage.
He held himself perfectly still, except for his chest, which rose and fell in harsh, uneven pulls he couldn’t quiet yet. His breath dragged through him like he’d been drowning in that dream and only now broken the surface. Sweat clung to his skin in a thin sheen, cooling too quickly, leaving a shiver crawling down his spine.
His hair fell forward over his forehead, brushing his eyebrows. The motion made him twitch, like the sensation might force the nightmare back out of him. He ran a shaky hand through it, but the strands only fell forward again, stubborn.
He blinked hard.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
It was a useless, desperate reflex. His world stayed black, impenetrable, unchanged. But some part of him still expected the darkness to clear, just for a second—expected to see Foggy’s outline against the sky, Karen’s hand reaching toward him, Dex’s shadow on the street.
His eyes burned.
He blinked again.
And again.
It didn’t help. It never did. But the blinking was something, a tether between the terror in his chest and the stillness around him. He could feel his pulse pounding in his neck, echoing in his jaw, rattling in his ribs like it was trying to punch its way out.
His hands trembled as he braced them on his thighs. He forced air in. Held it. Let it out. Matt’s vision had been gone for decades, but the darkness in his apartment felt deeper somehow.
He exhaled through his nose, forcing his breath steady. The air conditioner—a last effort fighting against the false fall of September—clicked on, humming softly, pushing cool air across the room. He could sense the faint buzz of electricity in the walls and the muted hum of city traffic twelve floors down.
Life everywhere except here.
Foggy should’ve been breathing. Foggy should’ve been alive.
Foggy should’ve—
“Fuck.”
Matt pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, like he could stop the memory from replaying in the center of his skull. He couldn’t. So he sat there—half upright, half collapsed—until the dream bled out of his veins and left only the ache behind. The clock beside his bed clicked softly as the minutes dragged past.
4:07.
4:15.
4:22.
He pushed himself to his feet. His body moved on instinct, not intention. For a moment he found himself at the closet.
The wrong closet. The one in the back of his real closet. His hands pulled the door open, his body moved toward the dresser. His fingers deftly glided across the front of the drawer: the drawer where the mask lived—folded, buried, exiled, missing a horn. The place he’d shoved it after Foggy’s funeral as if distance could smother what was left of him. His fingers hovered inches above the handle.
He could feel the faint warmth of the leather inside and the memory of blood in its seams.
He didn’t open it.
Instead, he turned away, shoved the second closet closed, pushed his suit jackets and shirts back in front of the door, hanging to hide, and shut the closet. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. The darkness blanketed him as he stepped into the wide quiet of his living room. The air tasted different here—cooler, untouched. The city murmured outside the glass, restless. Always restless.
He breathed with it.
At 4:28 a.m. he rolled his shoulders.
At 4:29 he stretched the scar tissue across his ribs.
At 4:31 he traced the familiar stance—feet apart, weight balanced—like he was preparing for a fight that no longer existed.
For fifteen long minutes, he moved through the ghost of his old routine: dodging blows that weren’t there, throwing punches into empty space, twisting his body in arcs his muscles remembered better than he did.
No mask. No suit. Just the man who used to wear them.
By the time he stopped, his breath had finally evened out.
He walked to the kitchen and made coffee. The scent hit him like a punch—Foggy laughing beside him at the old office, claiming Matt always made it too strong.
He poured it out into the sink and listened as the silence swallowed the splash.
At 5:12 he sat on the floor by the couch, back against the frame, head tilted toward the window as the city slowly brightened.
He let the sounds come in waves. First, the distant rattle of trash trucks, then a woman whispering to her sleeping child. In the mix of it all, a dog was whining for a morning walk, a siren several blocks away—not urgent, just impatient wailed in the air, and three different couples were arguing in three different apartments in the early morning.
He listened until it hurt. He listened because it hurt.
At 6:04 he stood.
At 6:37 he was still standing.
At 7:01 he tried to pray.
At 7:03 he gave up.
At 7:08, the exact time his body decided the day had officially begun, he finally walked toward the bathroom. His feet hit the floor—polished hardwood, too new to creak—and he stood, letting his senses rebalance. The apartment around him was everything his old one hadn’t been: spacious, modern, quiet, expensive. He hated it for the same reasons he chose it.
He moved through the space like a ghost.
Shower. Shave. Suit up. Tie the tie with muscle memory that had never left him.
He touched nothing he didn’t need to, left no trace, and carried the silence with him.
At 7:48, the city greeted him like an old enemy.
He stepped outside, cane tapping lightly against the pavement—not because he needed it, but because it kept the questions away. Manhattan was already awake, buzzing with early traffic and bitter coffee and the heartbeat of a city that didn’t know how to stop.
Matt walked like a man who wasn’t blind at all.
He sidestepped a jogger before she even saw him and avoided a group of construction workers by hearing the scrape of steel-toed boots on concrete. He dodged a cab door swinging open before the driver even pulled the handle all while listening to a mother whisper harshly to her toddler. A man three stories above cried into his pillow, someone burned toast, and through the bustling streets, he heard the rustling of a jacket, quick feet, and someone else about to steal a tourist’s wallet.
Matt kept moving.
Sirens screamed in the distance—ambulances, not police. Two of them. Fast. He turned his head slightly, listening.
Not my problem, he told himself.
But the city pulsed with danger.
Always danger.
Always calling.
He ignored it.
He had a law office to get to.
***
Murdock & McDuffie, LLC
Manhattan
Matt pushed through the glass doors of the midtown building and let the calm of an office space settle over him like a thin blanket.
“Good morning, Mr. Murdock,” Maggie Lawson chirped from behind the reception desk. Her heartbeat was light, quick—a morning person, annoyingly awake.
“Morning, Maggie,” he said, offering a faint smile.
Arnie Arnot, their associate attorney, lifted a folder in greeting. “Murdock! I left that affidavit on your desk. The one you wanted early.”
“Thank you, Arnie.”
He moved through the office with a grace that made new interns do double takes.
His own office smelled faintly of fresh paint and the citrus cleanser Maggie used on Fridays. It was clean, organized, the braille labels perfectly aligned along the edge of his desk. He slid into his chair, pulled the stack of files toward him, and let his senses switch from citywide chaos to controlled precision.
Braille under his fingertips, audio reader quietly murmuring legal text, and digital documents syncing across devices.
He was good at this. He was really, painfully good at this.
And some days, it felt like the only thing keeping him from falling apart.
He heard her before the elevator even opened. The sharp click of heels, the swish of a tailored jacket, the bright, caffeinated rhythm of someone who functioned on stubbornness and espresso.
Kirsten McDuffie breezed into his office with two coffees and a smirk.
“You look like warmed-over death,” she announced.
Matt didn’t look up. “Good morning to you too.”
She sat on the edge of his desk, nudging a coffee toward him. “Pro bono case giving you trouble?”
“No. Just… thinking.”
“Ah yes. Your favorite unhealthy hobby.”
He exhaled a faint laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
They talked through the case—one Matt insisted on taking because the defendant couldn’t afford representation. A mother of two. Unfair landlord. No family support. Matt refused to let her drown in the system.
“You take on too many of these,” Kirsten said, but her voice softened. “But damn if you’re not good at it.”
“That’s the job.”
“It’s not the job,” she corrected. “It’s you.”
They bickered lightly.
Teased.
Argued about scheduling and filings and whether Kirsten should handle a different pro bono to balance the load.
He needed this.
He needed her.
Professionally.
Emotionally.
She was the last intact piece of a former life.
Then she pivoted.
“So,” she said casually, flipping through one of his files, “I noticed… over the course of our time together that you definitely don’t have much of a personal life anymore.”
Matt froze.
“That’s not—”
“And before you lie,” she cut in, “please remember I’ve prosecuted liars for a living. You have zero personal life. Zero. None.”
He tightened his jaw. “I’m fine, Kirsten.”
“You’re still grieving. That’s not the same thing.”
It hit him harder than he wanted it to.
Foggy.
Foggy laughing.
Foggy yelling.
Foggy alive.
Kirsten softened, just slightly. “Look… it’s been a year. A little more. You deserve something good, Matt. Peace. Company. Hell, even just someone to go to dinner with who isn’t me or Arnie ranting about motions to dismiss.”
He inhaled slowly. “Kirsten—”
“I want to set you up with someone.”
He groaned. “Absolutely not.”
“She’s a friend of mine.”
“No.”
“Since college.”
“No.”
“Brunette.”
“Not happening.”
“Trauma surgeon.”
His fingers paused over the braille page.
Kirsten grinned like she’d caught him. “Oh look. He hesitates.”
“I don’t—”
“You have a type, Murdock. And it’s not blondes who leave when shit gets real tough. It’s smart brunettes who can absolutely stab you if they feel like it.”
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Kirsten…”
“She’s wonderful. Ambitious. Kind. A little intense. You two would either fall in love or drive each other insane. Maybe both.”
He buried his face in his hands. “I’m not dating.”
“Yes, you are,” she said, patting his shoulder. “Because I already gave her your number.”
He lifted his head in disbelief. “You what—?”
Her heels clicked toward the door. “She’s on a shift at Lenox Hill. She’ll call you when she has a second.” She paused, looking over her shoulder with a wicked little grin. “And for the record? When I told her about you, the conversation went about the same.”
Matt frowned. “Meaning?”
“I said, ‘He’s a lawyer.’ She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘He’s tall, charming, and fights for the city when no one else does.’ She said, ‘Absolutely not.’ Then I said, ‘He’s a good man who works himself to the bone because he doesn’t know how to stop caring.’”
Matt exhaled sharply. “Kirsten—”
“She said, ‘Still no.’”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Great.”
Kirsten smirked. “So you two are already on the same page. Soulmates, really.”
“Kirsten—”
“Consider it a professional favor. I’m preventing your total emotional collapse.”
The door shut behind her.
Silence settled.
Matt leaned back in his chair, hands steepled over his mouth.
He wasn’t doing this. He didn’t have time. He didn’t have space for—
His phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
He stared at it.
Heartbeat steady.
Breath held.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
He should decline.
He didn’t.
He answered.
A voice, warm and composed, filled the line.
“Mr. Murdock? This is Dr. Stella Arnold. I think we have a mutual friend.”
For a moment, Matt said nothing.
Then—
His fingers curled into a fist on the desk.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Guess we do.”