So.
The second installment of "Matt Murdock Saves The World" is a Spiderman crossover.
Yay?
Sorry if that's not what you wanted, but that's what you got so DEAL. I have several more stories planned, though, so don't get too worried.
If you've read the Supernatural Case, great. If not, it's not strictly necessary as the two aren't all that connected. For those of you who have, be aware that this story is actually set BEFORE the latter story even happened. Yeah, I know, I know, it just sort of happened that way.
Ok, about Spider-man. I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is: "Which Spider-man?" The answer is "Yes". Or, alternatively, "All of the above". This Spider-man is my own creation, a hodgepodge of everything I know about him from the one or two comics I've sort-of-read and what I've figured out from the Ultimate Spider-man cartoon. (Yes, I'm 15. Yes, I watch silly superhero cartoons. Shut up, they're entertaining.) My Spider-man is also TASM inspired, though I'm not sure how much of that particular plotline will feed into this story.
By the way; yes, I've seen season two. I love canon, I love this show, I loved season two impossibly more than season one, but Claire and Matt not having contact since "Nelson v. Murdock" hurts me in my heart so I've thrown that away for these stories. Claire is amazing and badass and if you say anything to the contrary, I will set Frank Castle on you and laugh as he burns your corpse.
Ahem. Anyway.
(I swear I'm not actually a psychopath. It's called sarcasm, people.)
Without any further ado, "The Vigilante Case".
Matt stands on a seven-story apartment building, feet planted squarely on the brick wall that surrounds the rooftop. Behind him is flat, uncared-for cement, before him empty space all the way down to the gum-stained pavement below.
He stretches, shoulders crackling with the stretch of his muscles as he inhales, bombarded by the sights and smells of sweat from the passerby's, gasoline from car exhaust, oil and fat from the nearby fast food joint.
This is his city, and for all its grit and all its faults, Matt Murdock loves it. It birthed him, it raised him, it took his sight and his father and turned him into a criminal, into a vigilante, into a hero.
Someone screams in an alleyway two blocks down. Matt turns his head, tensing, and listens to the click of a gun and the scraping of flesh against a brick wall.
"Empty that pretty purse a' yers," slurs the mugger, and even from this distance Matt can smell the alcohol and stale cigarettes on his breath. The blind vigilante whirls around, leaping from the ledge and racing across the rooftop before hurtling to the next one, and then the next.
The victim's muffled sobs fill his ears as he swings lithely down a handy fire escape. He pauses for barely a second before dropping from the metal platform and easily knocking unconscious the unbalanced, amateur would-be mugger. The victim drops her face into her hands and sobs out a thank you, and Matt smiles slightly.
"Call 911," he says gruffly, trying to disguise the thrill that comes with helping innocent people. "And next time you have to be out this late, don't come alone."
Then he's gone, disappearing into the darkness and the cacophonous noise of this city, his home.
Matt slides into his apartment that night with contentment still fixed on his lips. He showers in minutes and collapses into bed with a warm feeling in his heart.
This is a good night.
Peter is having a terrible night.
"Ow," he moans from the top of a car, the aluminum crushed and bent around him from where he fell.
"Oh my god, it's Spiderman!" yells the driver, who has climbed out and is now staring at him. "Hey, you okay, Spidey?"
"Ow," Peter reiterates, nevertheless clambering from the car and landing shakily on his feet. He glances between the driver and the wreck of a taxi and grimaces beneath his mask. "Uh…sorry?"
"It's cool, man. My brother runs a shop at the corner, you know the one?" Peter barely has time to shrug noncommittally before the driver is continuing. "Well, he got knocked over last week by some punk, right? And you saved him! Remember? Anyway, it's all he talks about and I don't care what that Jameson guy says, you're a hero. So you can use my cab as a landing pad anytime, right?"
Peter blinks once, then twice, shaking his head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs. (Cobwebs, heh. 'Cuz he's Spiderman, get it? Oh, man, that was lame. Maybe he's concussed. How does one deal with a concussion? How does one deal with a concussion if one is part-spider, part-teenager-with-too-much-homework-that-needs-to-be-done?) "Um…thanks, I guess."
"Yeah, it's totally cool. Hey, can I get your autograph?"
"What?"
"Your autograph, you know? For my nephew. Here, wait a sec, lemme find a pen."
Dumbly Peter takes the offered pen and scrawls out his alias onto the back of a Starbuck's receipt, sloppily turning the beginnings of a 'P' (he's tired okay? He's not thinking clearly) into a rough impersonation of a spider.
He squints at it and adds another leg to the monstrosity of smudged ink. Then he pushes it back towards the driver. "Here," he says needlessly.
"Thanks! Aw, man, this is so cool."
When the driver looks back up, Peter is gone, swinging away above the busy streets of New York.
And as bad as his day is already going, that is when it gets worse.
Apparently Jolly Jonah Jerkface decided it would be a good idea to put a price on his head.
A ten-thousand-dollar price.
And now literally every bad guy he's ever faced (plus a few he hasn't) is after him.
Oh, and to add to it, the lovely citizens of New York have decided to turn on him. Not all of them, but enough.
Thanks, J.J.J. He's really feeling the love tonight.
So apparently that random attack that had ended up with him making taxi pancakes with his back hadn't been so random. And it wasn't solitary, either.
"Screw you, Jameson!" Peter shouts as he dodges a blast from the newest baddie's laser gun.
Laser gun? Really?
"Yo, Spidey, you're goin' down tonight!" calls the laser-wielding maniac. "Light Beam's gonna get the prize!"
"Light Beam," mutters Peter dryly, performing an aerial backflip while simultaneously shooting a glob of web fluid at the idiot's face. "That's just insulting. Seriously, if you're gonna appear out of nowhere looking for my head on a stick, at least come up with a better name to do it under."
'Light Beam' throws back his head and releases the cheesiest villain laugh that Peter's ever heard. "Only one of us is wearin' his undies!" he jeers and Peter has to stifle a groan at the insult he's heard so repetitively that it's starting to get stuck in his head like the Nationwide jingle.
"Okay, Lightie, I've had enough," Peter calls. "It's been nice playing with you, but I've got things to do." Things like finish that five-page essay (or rather, extend it past the lonely one-and-a-half sentences that sit before the ominously blinking cursor on the otherwise blank Word document) and make sure there are eggs in the fridge and get rid of the giant pile of dirty laundry in the center of his room before Aunt May finds it and murders him.
Peter shivers at the thought. When the day comes that he meets a villain he can't match, he'll have to bring out Aunt May as his secret weapon and watch her tell off the bad guy.
He grins under his mask. Then he executes a tight double flip, increasing his forward momentum and using a light pole to propel himself towards Light Beam, shooting a web to knock the laser gun from the amateur's hands and extending his feet before him. Moments later, the criminal is unconscious on the ground.
"Light's out," Peter cracks, landing lightly on the pavement. Smiling at his own joke, he webs Light Beam's hands and feet to the ground beneath. "You're not getting out of that anytime soon, even at light speed," he continues, mentally patting himself on the back and waiting for the grateful applause of the pedestrians around him.
It doesn't come. Instead, Peter is met with a dull pain at the back of his skull, the familiar ringing of his affectionately titled 'spidey-sense'. The alarm isn't violent, the danger minor, but Peter's brow creases nevertheless. He nudges Light Beam with his foot, but the criminal is definitely out for the count. So what—
"Hey, look at all the mess you've made!" yells someone in a thick Brooklyn accent. Peter turns to see a civilian stomping towards him menacingly.
"Sorry?" Peter asks, baffled.
"Look at this!" replies the man, gesturing to the wrecked cars and toppled streetlights around them. "This is your fault!"
"Yeah, who d'ya think's gonna have to pay for this, huh?" joins another civilian, a pink-skinned women holding an expensive-looking purse.
His spidey-sense pings and he barely dodges a projectile launched at his head. Confused, he turns to see a tomato splatter against the wall of the building behind him and fall to the concrete.
Where the hell did someone get a tomato in the middle of Manhattan?
Peter looks around and amends his statement. Where the hell did someone get a tomato in the Hell's Kitchen portion of Manhattan?
He soon finds it doesn't matter, because the first attack rallied the crowd. A few bystanders stand uncertainly behind the camera lenses of their smart phones, but the majority of the people around him are now hurling whatever they can find in his direction. Produce, shoes, cigarette butts, Starbucks cups of varying degrees of fullness, and was that a potted cactus?
Afterwards, if someone had asked him how what happened next had happened, Peter would blame the lovely citizens of New York. Along with the steady stream of projectiles comes a steady pinging of his spidey-sense, the low buzzing jumping and fading and gyrating unpredictably.
So he doesn't notice the warning rumble until without any warning, it erupts in his head like the clear ringing of a bell. He jumps, head snapping up to look around him, not knowing where the danger is and how to avoid it and then—
A shot rings through the night, splitting the air like a bolt of lightning and accompanied by the roaring crack of thunder. In a heartbeat Peter is turning towards the danger, muscles tensing in preparation to leap out of harm's way.
He's too slow. For all his practice, for all his power, there's just not enough time.
The pain is instantaneous and horrible. Peter can feel his flesh tear and cringe away from the cold metal that invades his body. He stumbles backwards, the force of the shot literally pushing him with its momentum.
There's a knife inside of him, a knife made from white-hot flame that is twisting and pushing and tugging. Something hot and liquid rolls down the side of his leg, and when Peter puts one shaking hand to his gut (or side, or stomach, he's not sure, but it's lower than his ribs and sort of to the left and somehow the pain is everywhere all at once and oh, god…) it comes away sticky with blood, the scarlet substance glinting in the artificial light of his city.
Through clouded eyes, Peter searches for his attacker. There is a figure on the rooftop above him, clad in black and perched behind an army-issue sniper rifle. Peter doesn't know a lot about guns, but he knows enough to recognize that this one is very powerful and very lethal.
As if the raging wildfire in his abdomen isn't enough to tell him that.
Another dark figure appears on the rooftop and the gun is knocked off of its aim, a bullet shattering the shop window beside him. Dimly Peter realizes that that bullet was meant, again, for him.
But he's still standing. Breathing is difficult and his mind is clouded and he can't really see, but he manages to stumble away, launching a web into the air and barely remembering to check and see if it latched onto anything. It did, and he uses it as a line to drag him away from the scene of his failure.
Something tugs inside of him, something gives, and somehow the pain gets impossibly worse. Peter gasps, spasms, and then he is falling.
He lands on a pile of trash bags. Blood spilling onto the plastic beneath him, tiny rivulets of crimson winding towards the pavement like miniscule rivers, Peter finally gives in to the darkness.
I'm sorry, Aunt May.
Rubber soles land lightly on the asphalt of an alleyway, barely making a sound. Light from the convenience store across the street creates a silhouette of the figure.
Nostrils twitch. Mouth tightens.
Without looking down at the phone display, the figure dials a number.
"Hey, it's me," he says softly. "I know it's late, but I need your help."
Feet pad gently towards the reeking pile of trashbags spilling their contents onto the ground, banana peels and soda cans mixing with a steady flow of blood.
A hand brushes the forehead of the limp figure that lies there, the touch soft as silk and gentle as a breeze.
"Hang on," he murmurs. "It'll be alright."
He whispers a prayer in case it's not.
"Claire, I think he's dying. What do I do? Claire?"
Claire curses and shifts the phone away from her ear. "Can't you drive any faster?" she hisses at the cab driver, who glares at her and gestures to the ridiculous traffic that's hedging them in.
"Claire!"
"Jesus," mutters Claire. Matt Murdock is panicking. This is not good on so many levels, and to make it worse she doesn't even really know what's going on.
"Ok, Matt, I need you to listen to me. Can you do that?"
"Uh, yes. Yes."
"Good." Claire bites her lip and tries to imagine that this is just another day at the hospital and Matt is just another scared intern in need of instructions. Except that usually interns don't have to deal with someone who's dying of a gunshot wound and usually Claire is at least in the same room as them. "Is the bullet still in his side?"
A pause. Then, "Yes."
"Leave it there. You said he's in an alleyway?"
"Uh, yeah. 50th and—"
"I know, Matt, I'm on my way right now. Is there a drug store nearby or anything similar?"
"Yeah, a Five-And-Dime across the street. But why—"
Claire sends a silent thank you up towards whoever's listening. "Matt, I need you to go into the store and buy whatever bandaging you can find. It doesn't matter what it is, you just need something to bind the wound. Can you do that?"
"What? No, Claire, I can't just leave him here—"
"Well, you're going to have to if you want him to survive."
"Even if I leave him, what am I supposed to do? I'm in costume! And I don't know how to find the right supplies. I can't exactly read the labels." He stops for a moment and then deems it necessary to remind her that, "I'm blind."
"Yeah, Matt, I've noticed," Claire sighs. "But I've also noticed that you have at least four other senses that function way better than normal. I think you're capable of telling the difference between baby wipes and an ace bandage. It doesn't matter what you get, just go!"
"I'm still in my costume—"
"Go!"
The line goes dead, presumably so that Matt can follow her instructions. Claire bites her lip and looks out the window, noting that they've barely moved at all.
She'll get there faster on foot. Rifling in her pocket, Claire pulls out a crumpled 20 and slides out of the car. The driver opens his mouth to protest and she shoves the money in his face.
"Keep the change," she says and takes off, ignoring the cars that are honking their horns at her. They can go screw themselves; she has a life to save.
Her phone starts to vibrate and she answers on the second ring. "I've got the bandages," says Matt, sounding breathless.
"Good. Where's the wound?"
"Uh, lower abdomen. Left side."
"Stomach area?"
"Not sure. Maybe."
Claire nods to herself and sets off at a run. "Wrap the bandages around his waist. Try to jostle him as little as possible; we don't want the bullet moving. Make sure they're tight, but not so tight as to obstruct circulation. We want to stop the bleeding, not cut off blood flow to his legs. If we do this wrong, he could be permanently paralyzed."
"Paralyzed?"
Claire immediately regrets saying that. "Don't think about it. Just get that wound wrapped. I'm almost there. Matt, do you have a car?"
"N-no."
She sighed, pinching her nose. "Do you know where we can find one?"
"Why?"
"We need to get him to a safe place and what did I just say about the jostling?
"Oh. Right. Um, I think Karen has a car. She sort of inherited it from Ben."
Claire has no idea who these people are. When Matt's panicking, he has a tendency to forget that she really doesn't know much about his day life. But Matt's not up for explaining now, so she plays along. "Does Karen know about Daredevil?"
"Oh. Um, no."
"So how are we going to get the car?"
"You could…uh, you could call Foggy."
Foggy. Right. Matt's best friend, the one she's met only once under extremely strained circumstances. They'd barely said a word to each other; Claire had been focused on keeping Matt alive and Foggy had been in a state of prolonged shock. To be fair, he had just found out that his blind lawyer buddy spent his nights beating up criminals.
"Matt, I don't have Foggy's number."
"Oh, right. Um, 516—"
Claire types the number into her phone and hangs up on Matt with a promise to call him back as soon as she's done. Then she dials Foggy's number.
"Hello?"
"Is this Foggy Nelson?"
There's a pause. "Uh, yeah. Who is this?"
"It's Claire."
"Oh, god, is he alright?"
Claire shakes her head, even though she knows that he can't see her over the phone line. "Matt's fine. It's something else."
"What is it, then?" asks Foggy, the note of panic in his voice fading.
"I need a car."
She can almost hear him blink uncomprehendingly. "What?"
"A car. I need a car. Someone was shot and we need to get him to Matt's apartment."
"Who was shot? Shouldn't you call an ambulance?"
Claire sighs and picks up the pace. "Matt was very insistent that no hospitals be involved."
"Why?"
"I dunno. Couldn't get a straight answer out of him. But apparently someone named Karen has access to a car?"
"Uh, yeah, I think so. Where do you want it?"
Claire smiles and gives him the address. She's glad that Matt has a friend as dependable as Foggy Nelson.
When she arrives in the alleyway and sees Matt kneeling over a limp body and a puddle of blood, something stops inside of her for a moment.
It's worse than she thought.
Matt turns his head towards her, and she can see in the line of his jaw that he's terrified. "Car?"
"Yeah, Foggy's coming."
Matt stands, shoulders tense. "He can't see this."
"Then have him drop off the car and then catch a tax—" she stops, staring at the figure on the ground. He's small and wiry, and even with the obvious bulge of muscles he looks almost fragile. But what really catches her eye is what he's wearing. Red and blue spandex covers every inch of him, glinting faintly in the dim light of the alleyway, a dark stain covering his entire stomach and turning the bandage wrapped around his abdomen from white to crimson.
Suddenly, Claire understands why Matt insisted on no hospitals. This isn't just some civilian.
This is Spider-man.
"Uh," Claire stutters. "Matt, I think you may have left out a few things."
Matt shifts uncomfortably. "I didn't want you to panic."
"You didn't want me to panic?!" she cries incredulously, throwing her hands up in the air. "You're unbelievable!"
"Um. Sorry?"
Claire sighs. "Oh, go wait for you friend. I'll take care of—"
A hoarse cry splits the night air and the blood flows faster. Spider-man has woken up, and now he's writhing in pain and the bullet is shifting deeper into his flesh. "Shit," Claire curses, dropping to her knees and opening her First Aid kit, pulling on medical gloves at almost superhuman speed. "Matt, hold him."
Matt does as he's told, placing his hands on the vigilante's slim shoulders and gently yet firmly keeping him still. "Shh," murmurs the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. "Hey, hey, it's gonna be alright. Hold on. Just hold on."
For a millisecond, Claire is surprised by his tenderness. Then she gets to work, carefully uncapping a syringe full of anesthesia and cupping the fingers of her left hand around a small spot on his arm. "Hold him," she insists, and Matt presses harder.
Slowly, cautiously, efficiently, Claire uses her left hand to brace the tube of the syringe as she plunges the needle through the thin spandex of Spider-man's suit and into his flesh. It takes a moment for the anesthetic to take effect, but when it does, the tortured cries become softer and the violent spasms become smaller, until both are gone completely.
"There," Claire breathes, lifting her arm to wipe her brow on her forearm. "You can let go now."
"Is he going to be okay?" asks Matt quietly as he releases his hold on the shockingly small hero.
"You're the one with the built-in stethoscope."
"Claire."
She shakes her head as she carefully removes the blood-soaked medical gauze around Spider-man's midsection and pulls out a roll of proper bandages. "I don't know."
They're silent for a moment as she carefully rewraps the vigilante's abdomen. Then she speaks, sensing the tenseness in every muscle of Matt's body.
"What?"
"Aren't you going to remove the bullet?"
She scoffs. "Yeah, but not here. I need a bed, I need towels, I need clean water and blankets and light. I need to not be operating in a dirty alleyway. And I need privacy so I can remove his mask."
Matt gets impossibly tenser. "You're taking off his mask?"
"Yes. I need to check for concussion, and he'll breathe better without spandex over his face. And before you say anything about respecting secrecy, just remember who's kept your secret all this time."
Matt closes his mouth and they are silent again. This time, no one speaks until a car rumbles up to the alleyway.
Matt intercepts his friend, sends him off for a taxi with a promise to call him later with an update. Foggy's not happy about it, but he leaves, and vigilante and nurse carefully lift Spider-man into the backseat of the car.
Claire would prefer to be in back with her patient, but as capable as Matt is, she's sure as hell not letting him drive. So she climbs behind the steering wheel and is silent the rest of the ride.
Pain and the smell of blood.
Consciousness comes slowly to Peter, and when it does he wishes it hadn't. The pain is still there, a constant burning ache in his side that makes him long for the peace of oblivion.
He's on a couch, he thinks, feeling the shape and form of the cushions beneath him and to the side, a pillow propped up underneath his neck. His fingers twitch, running gingerly along the cracks in the leather.
Why isn't he in bed? Did he not make it upstairs? Oh, god, what if Aunt May sees him in his suit?
Wait.
They don't have a leather couch.
Is he at Gwen's?
She has a leather couch but it's in her living room and it's not cracked.
Then where—
"He's awake."
Peter startles and flies upwards to a sitting position, eyes opening and then squeezing shut again in pain as the sudden movement causes his already throbbing side to tear painfully. Something hot and sticky rolls down his side.
Oh, god. The fact that he's on a couch with others nearby, the fact that he was unconscious, means that it's been a while since the injury was first sustained. And if it's been a while and it still hasn't healed—even with his rapid healing factor—then it must be serious.
"Hey, hey, sit still!" a voice calls in alarm. This is not the low, velvety voice that had first spoken; this voice is female, and it sounds tired, as if the speaker has spent a long time stressing about a lot of different things, like being in the same room as a severely injured, arachnid-themed, teenage vigilante.
Oh.
As if the speaker has spent the night trying to keep said teenage vigilante from bleeding out on this clearly ancient couch.
Where is he?
"Hey, it's okay," says the second voice (the female possibly-savior one) and a hand materializes on his shoulder. Peter flinches and this time when he peels back his eyelids, he leaves them open.
A woman kneels beside him, chocolate-colored eyes watching him with concern and wariness. Black hair with a reddish tint frames Hispanic features the color of a latte with too much milk in it, a worried expression creasing her brow and drawing her dark eyebrows together. She looks, inexplicably, like someone he can trust.
"Hi," she soothes, smiling slightly at him as though he's a wounded animal. "How are you feeling?"
Peter swallows. "Um…" The single utterance shatters on his dry vocal chords and he coughs violently (which, of course, hurts like all hell in his side and his throat and his ribs and his lungs and—well, it hurts everywhere. Except maybe not so much his pinky toe. That seems fine. Oh, god, now he's rambling again).
"I'll get you some water," says the first voice, and Peter lifts his gaze to see a dark-haired man clad in a black t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. His hand trails along the top of the couch as he passes to get to the small kitchen behind them, his eyes oddly unfocused and seeming to stare ahead at nothing in particular.
It's unnerving.
The man fills a glass of water from the sink and brings it back around, pressing it firmly into Peter's trembling hand. Peter accepts it warily and takes a small sip, which quickly transforms into multiple hungry gulps until the woman seizes his wrist and forces the glass away from his mouth.
"Take it slow," she warns, ignoring his puppy-eyed glare. "Or you'll make yourself sick."
He frowns reproachfully, knowing full well that the expression is wasted, hidden as it is beneath his ma—
Panic floods his system and Peter drops the glass; the woman's hands are already there and she catches it, but water still splashes everywhere and his exposed, blood-stained skin cringes away from the shock of the cool liquid. His thoughts are elsewhere, though, as his now-free hands fly to his face to double-check, triple-check, quadruple-check, oh, god, maybe if he checks again it'll be there this time—
"Calm down," orders the man, joining the woman by the edge of the couch. He waves a hand at her and she stands, moving away and towards an open First Aid kit with a slightly irritated look on her face.
"My mask," Peter stutters, chest heaving. "You took off my mask."
The man's eyes look towards Peter's lips, still oddly unfocused yet somehow trapping the boy in the intentness of their apparently unseeing gaze.
(Somewhere in the back of his mind, the part that isn't in full-blown panic mode, Peter realizes that this man is blind. This explains the unfocused eyes, the trailing fingers on the back of the couch, the red-tinted sunglasses on the coffee table, but doesn't explain the ease with which the man moves, each step graceful and silent like the motions of a dancer or the poise of a cat.)
"Yes," says the man simply. "But I also removed my own."
Peter freezes, his panic stilled for a moment. "What?"
The man smiles slightly, taking Peter's hand gently in his own. "Spider-man," he says formally. "You have made the acquaintance of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen."
Peter blinks a few times, waiting for his sluggish brain to start moving again. It takes a long, long moment, but eventually it all clicks together.
"Oh."
Eh, not particularly fond of the way this turned out, but whatever. So how'd I do with the medical stuff?
For those of you who are wondering, here's the current plan for this series based off of what's in my brain and what I've people have reviewed. Keep in mind, this isn't set in stone, so if there are any changes you'd like to suggest please suggest them in a comment. I read every single one of them and they all make me smile, so don't be frightened. I don't bite.
[** = completed work or WIP]
The Supernatural Case** (Supernatural Xover)
The Vigilante Case ** (Spider-man Xover)
The Flash Xover
Agent Carter Xover starring time travel and Natasha Romanoff
And then maybe Arrow? Sherlock? Something with Bucky Barnes? Revisit the whole demon thingy with a short Good Omens Xover? I dunno, but the Flash will introduce dimensional travel, I think, and Agent Carter will definitely introduce time travel, so this series can go in all sorts of directions at that point. Thoughts? Ideas? Shoot 'em my way! Seriously! I LOVE comments.
Seeya next chapter!