The memorial service was on a Tuesday. The snow and ice had finally melted, but the trees were stark and bare, stripped of leaves by the wind. Matt's parish priest told anecdotes. Foggy and his friend Karen did the readings. Claire was one of the only Catholics there, but the church had a lot more people in it than she'd expected.
Claire put a dollar in the box, and lit one of the candles in rows at the back of the nave. So many churches had those lights, now, instead of the real thing. She missed real candles. Matt would have liked the smell of brimstone as she lit a match, the scent of wax burning.
After the service, Claire told Luke to head home without her. She wanted to check in on Santino and his mother, see how a few other people she'd known were getting on. She needed the walk. She wanted to clear her head. All the excuses people give when they need to be alone. She hadn't worn the right kind of shoes for walking. She didn't really care.
Luke had understood. That was part of what Claire loved about him. She kissed him, and watched his broad back beneath his suit jacket as he started making his way back Uptown. She watched until he was swallowed up by the crowds, and then she turned back to the church.
People in black were milling around out front, talking and hugging. Foggy and Karen stood at the top of the steps, with the priest. Claire knew she should go up to them—show her respects. But instead, she sat on the bench nearby. The mass card and programme were already folded and jammed into the bottom of her purse.
Foggy had told her that after the service, people were meeting up at the dive bar around the corner from their now-vacant offices. His pretty blonde girlfriend would be there, along with Karen, Detective Mahoney, and a couple of other people Claire had never met. Maybe if Danny and Colleen had come, but they hadn't. Danny had sent flowers, though—huge, ostentatious arrangements of snowy white calla lilies and dark red roses, which made Claire smile despite herself.
She begged off, because she'd never been a part of Matt's life that way. His daylight life. Except for Foggy, everyone else was a stranger. She felt as if she was somehow intruding on their grief. That she hadn't earned a place at their table. She'd only really known Matt as the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. And that wasn't who they were mourning.
Claire had never really known Matt Murdock—and yet she had known him better than almost everyone in that church. And there was so much wrong with that, she didn't know where to begin.
There were a lot of bars in Hell's Kitchen. On a hunch, Claire went to the one closest to the church. The bar was nearly empty. It was barely four on a Tuesday, and this looked like the sort of place that probably didn't fill up 'til the regulars got off work. A neighbourhood bar.
Jessica was at a booth all the way in the back. She was wearing ripped jeans and her leather jacket, a half-empty bottle on the scarred table in front of her.
Claire ordered a beer at the bar, and left her card to open a tab. Beer bottle and damp napkin in hand, she walked over to the table. She didn't ask if she was welcome. Just sat down, smoothing the skirt of her simple black dress over her knees.
"Drinking alone?"
"Aren't I always?" Jessica spun her empty glass with one hand, until it tipped over on its side. Then she picked it up again, and refilled it.
"Missed you, at the service."
Jessica shrugged before downing the entire shot in one swallow. "I only knew the guy for, like, a week."
Claire started peeling the label off her beer bottle, to give her hands something to do.
"What would you say if I told you that once upon a time, I only knew Matt Murdock for a week, too?"
Jessica blinked. "Seriously?"
"Worst week of my life," she said, and then reconsidered. "Well, at the time, anyway."
"What are you, like, a vigilante groupie?" Jessica shook her head. "Me—Luke, Danny. Damn, Claire, you get around."
"Yeah, that's me. Like a bad penny. But Matt... Matt was my first."
Jessica raised an eyebrow.
"First person with abilities."
"Yeah, well, you know what they say. You never forget your first."
Claire laughed. It was easier to laugh, than to give in to crying. She'd really thought she'd run out of tears for Matt a long time ago.
Leave it to Matt to prove her wrong.
"How'd you meet?" Jessica asked, trying to seem disinterested. But Claire could tell when Jessica was fronting. After all, she'd seen her with her pants down.
"He got his ass handed to him, and needed patching up. You know how it goes: Boy meets Girl. Girl saves Boy's life. Boy saves Girl's life. Next thing you know, he's making me breakfast."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. I damn near fell in love with the sonofabitch." Claire smiled wryly. It was the closest she'd ever come to actually admitting it to another person. To herself.
"Luke know?"
Claire shook her head. "It was a long time ago. Before I met you. And anyway... It wasn't my secret to tell."
"Yeah—he was big on secrets." Jessica leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. "What happened with you two?"
"I used to think our timing just sucked. But the truth is..." Claire trailed off. "I knew how it would end. So I walked away."
"Fuck." Jessica raised her glass. "You are smarter than just about everybody I've ever met."
"Not so sure about that," Claire shrugged, and took a long pull of her beer.
"So, why'd you walk away from Luke?" Claire asked, and Jessica very nearly flinched. "I remember that night, you know. I remember how you were, with him."
"Yeah, well... In the end, all we seemed to do was hurt each other. And hey, my loss was your gain, right?"
"Believe me, I'm not complaining."
"I hope that means you're banging like a screen door in a hurricane, cos not gonna lie—if you haven't yet, you should. Take my word for it. He's a hell of a ride."
"Anyway, I'm not here to talk about Luke. And neither are you."
"Maybe." Jessica shrugged. "Well, you just said you loved the guy. So, maybe I should ask you how you're doing?"
"It hurts," Claire admitted. "But it would have hurt a lot more, if I'd stayed. Maybe it would have been worth the pain? I don't know. I guess I never will."
Jessica raised her glass again, but without the mocking. "To shitty timing."
Claire clinked the glass with her beer bottle, and they drank in silence for a while.
"You know, he tried to walk away. Jesus." Jessica said, wiping cheap whiskey from her bottom lip with the back of her hand. "I guilt-tripped him. I convinced him to stay, because I wanted answers. To crack a case. Then some old blind asshole showed up, and shit got weird. So I walked."
Jessica refilled her glass from the bottle, tipping it all the way and shaking the last few drops out.
"But hey—I was dumb enough to go back, so I guess that makes me a chump."
"You saved the city," Claire reminded her.
"Yeah. That's me—bona fide fucking super-hero. Can't wait to get my action figure."
Jessica rolled her eyes, and began spinning her now-full glass. Whiskey splashed the table. Which seemed like a waste of perfectly good whiskey, but Claire had no idea how full the bottle had been, before she'd sat down.
"It's just... God, it figures. I finally meet somebody even more fucked up than I am, and the asshole offs himself." She pressed the heel of her hand to her eye, like she had a headache.
Claire reached across the table, and laid her hand over Jessica's. She expected Jessica to shake her off, but she didn't. Just stared into the bottom of her glass like it contained the secrets of the universe.
"Do you think... I don't know." Jessica looked up, and her eyes were haunted. "Do you think that, if you'd stayed, maybe things would have been different?"
There was a long beat as Claire considered the question. As if she hasn't asked herself the same thing a hundred times over the past few weeks. Over the past two years.
"I think," she said finally, "the only person who could have saved Matt Murdock was Matt Murdock."
Jessica slid her hand from beneath Claire's, and waved over the waitress. She ordered another bottle. And Claire asked for empty glass.
No-one should have to drink alone.