A full belly does not make for a chaste spirit.
Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue.
It's an old game he and Stick used to play. Maybe not a game: a test.
"Tell me what you taste."
Stick'd bought him an ice cream, first. But the game quickly expanded, from plain white rice (so much hiding in something so simple) to jerk chicken from Restaurant Row (Stick would make him pick out every last spice, in order of volume, then list their origins). Every wrong answer meant a swift smack on the shoulder or a jab behind the knee.
If he omitted an ingredient he'd have to keep eating until he got them all - even if he'd already identified after a tiny bite, say, the soiled band-aid the short-order cook had dropped in the chili and left to stew all day.
"Accuracy is important," Stick would proclaim, tapping his fingers on the table.
Even now, decades later, Matt can almost hear it when he eats: a repetitive staccato through every mouthful of chicken cacciatore or fish and chips or street-vendor shawarma.
Taptaptaptap.
The girl's cries resonate through the alley behind the office, bouncing off the brick walls and slipping through the slats of the metal fire escapes before they reach his ears. Matt freezes, one hand wrapped around a half-drunk beer, and listens, his neck craned ever-so-slightly. He tries to pinpoint the source, maybe three blocks away?, and the girl's whimpers have faded to the point where he can't quite…
SLAP. The heavy sound of knuckles connecting with jawbone and the girl cries out again, louder, before cupping a hand over her mouth to try and muffle her own sobs. She sounds young, her voice too thin and high to be any older than thirteen or fourteen.
"Matt?" Karen asks expectantly, touching his knee.
"Huh?" He whips his head towards her, realizing she's probably just asked him something. "What's up?" He tries to split his attention, one ear still focused half-a-mile away.
Stop crying. A man's voice, deep and harsh - pack-a-day smoker's rasp to it. Between the weight of that slap and his voice, he sounds big. The girl responds with silence. Did you take his wallet? The man asks. Answer me. You know that's not how we do business around here. She doesn't say anything, and another slap rings out.
"I said, I missed this," she repeats. "The three of us." She's flushed, the whiskey making her cheeks and the tips of her ears bright and hot. It always happens when she drinks and she gets so embarrassed - and of course Foggy can never help but point it out, which always makes her go even redder.
Pleasemisterdidntdoitiswearplease, she's begging the man, didntakenothingiswearplease. Matt can't tell if her words are slurred because she's talking so fast or because she's just caught two blows to the mouth or because somebody's drugged her up to make her more compliant.
"Cheers to that," Foggy agrees, raising his glass. "To Nelson and Murdock and Page, reunited and it feels so good - we need a better trio moniker than that, don't you think? The Crime Busting Trio. The World Changing Champions. Two avocados and their spicy friend-slash-secretary... we're Guacamole!"
"You're drunk," Karen laughs, smacking him on the arm. "But thanks for trying to include me."
Quiet, the man tells her. Then, speaking to someone else - maybe over the phone?: We'll get you another girl. We've got lots of young ones - better than this one. We'll make this right, I deeply apologize for the inconvenience tonight's events have caused.
"I need to do something real fast," Matt says quickly, shooting Foggy a look. "Half an hour, tops."
"Do something," Foggy echoes, confused for a second, before he huffs. "Oh. Come on, Matt, seriously? Tonight?"
"I'm missing something," Karen says, looking between them. "Am I missing something? Are you two still doing the whole keep-Karen-out-of-the-loop thing again, cause-"
The man's phone rings and he answers it: Hello? Yeah, it's been dealt with. Yeah. Yeah, trust me, won't happen again after I'm done with her. Make sure the other girls hear about it, too.
"You're almost out of whiskey, I'm gonna pick up more booze - tequila, you like tequila, right Karen? Tequila's for celebrating," he babbles, setting his beer down with a practiced I-don't-quite-know-where-the-table-is-oh-there-it-is. It feels weird to put on the show in front of Foggy - whenever he does it, he can sense the look Foggy shoots him. The 'you know very well where the table is, Matt Murdock' look.
"We still have some beer," Karen says brightly.
His excuse, he knows, is incredibly thin but he's not sure he can think of anything better with the girl's cries ringing in his head. Pleadingly, Matt furrows his brow - come on, Foggy. Give me an out, here.
"Alright," Foggy sighs, playing along. "Okay. Bring us some damn tequila, but be careful, alright?"
"Going to the liquor store isn't that dangerous, Foggy," Karen laughs. "Just don't leave us drinking by ourselves for too long!"
"You'd be surprised," Foggy grumbles.
"I won't," Matt promises.
There isn't time to grab the devil-suit from his apartment - he's barely maintaining his grasp on their voices, their breathing, and he doesn't want to risk losing their location entirely. So he takes off at a full sprint, suit jacket and dress pants, weaving through alleys and across traffic until he's standing under the right building.
He has his blindfold in his breast pocket for emergencies, at least - more of a security blanket, than anything - and he pulls it on while he forms a game plan.
"You gonna do that again?" The man growls, clear as day. Third window up, second from the left. No fire escape access, but enough window ledges and exposed pipe that it shouldn't matter. "Didn't think so," the man continues, and Matt can just about hear his smirk.
Matt could swear he can almost hear the surprise on the man's face, too, when he kicks the window in.
"Who the fuck are -"
A well-timed dress shoe to the teeth knocks out three of his molars and he doesn't get to finish, just hits the ground flat on his ass, meaty and heavy. Quickly, Matt takes a second to listen hard: no incoming footsteps, no quickening heartbeats heading his way. All clear.
The guy's trying to push himself up - he's as big as Matt had guessed, easily two-eighty and well over six feet. Matt kicks him in the ribs before he can get any leverage, four times, hard, and then launches himself onto the man's face, one two three punches to the throat, nose, jaw. The guy stops moving, and Matt takes a second to catch his breath leaned on top of the gigantic goon. He can hear the guy's heart beating and is sort of relieved, but he also knows that deep down he wasn't that worried about it.
The other heartbeat in the room is stuck at a rabbitlike pace and he pulls himself off the thug, looks towards her.
"Hey, hey," he says softly. "Sorry about - that."
She just stares at him, hyperventilating, and he realizes he was right. Thirteen or fourteen. Gangly and skinny and he can smell the cheap lipgloss on her, just over the reek of liquor and latex hovering in the room. He tries to force the smell from his nose, shaking his head and exhaling hard like a spooked horse.
"It sounded like," he begins carefully, frozen in place halfway across the room. He stays crouched down, hands held out towards her non-threateningly. "It sounded like you needed help."
"I was just trying to get home," she says after a moment, shaky and slurred and frantic. "Just trying to get on a bus and go home. I can't call my mom, she'd be so… So I took his wallet - I didn't think he'd notice til after, and then maybe I could've, I could've -"
She cups a hand over her mouth and sobs quietly - a learned sort of quiet. "Is he dead?" she asks, muffled and barely audible.
"No." He tries not to say it too regretfully. "What's your name?"
He gives her a while to answer, just stays crouched in place, one ear focused on the man in case he tries to shake himself off for round two. He doesn't want to move towards her, doesn't want to risk scaring her any worse (though he's certainly already done his share, between his dramatic entrance and the mask covering half his face).
"Pixie," she chokes out, barely more than a whisper.
It's an obvious street name - she probably wouldn't have told him otherwise. Doesn't matter. Matt takes a deep breath.
"Runaway?" he asks quietly.
He can sense her nodding.
"And who's he?" Matt prods the big guy with his foot.
"I don't know his name," the girl says quietly. Carefully, kicking away a couple of pieces of glass, she sits down on the floor and covers her face with her hands. The shock is wearing off and Matt can sense she's exhausted. She explains: "He's just in charge of driving us around and waiting outside til the guys are done."
Matt feels his fists clench and unclench, blood pounding in his ears. It's all he can do to ask without raising his voice: "And who's in charge of him?"
She touches a hand to her busted lip and winces, hissing softly. Her tears have stopped almost entirely now. "Mikey," she says firmly. "All of us - no, most of us - we ran away from home and we ended up with Mikey."
He exhales and shuts everything down - shuts out the noises on the street, the vibrations of the subway, the smell (god, the smell) in the room. He forces them out of his head and focuses on her alone.
"Mikey who, Pixie?"