Foggy
Marci keeps telling him off for being so darned cheerful, but really, Foggy Nelson can't help himself. He has new, cheap business cards with the names of his two best friends on them and he almost skips into the back room of the deli that they're using as an office each morning.
Sure, his salary has gone from having plenty of zeros on the end to, some weeks, having no zeros at all, but it feels good. Nelson, Murdock & Page: doing the right thing.
They're busy too. Not all the clients can pay, and they don't win every case, but everyone knows that this is the firm to come to if you want a decent shot at justice being done. It helps that they've got back in touch with Jessica Jones, and she's sending people their way (in return for the odd bit of business and the odd heavy drinking session at Josie's). Detective Mahoney's useful too, and somehow Foggy's managed to maintain cordial enough links with Hogarth that she's sending a client or two to their door.
So he's happy.
And yet … and yet, he knows that he's the happiest of the three of them. Karen puts a brave face on it, but sometimes he sees her twiddling a pen and staring into space. Foggy can usually distract her with a joke, or a suggestion for coffee or lunch, but there's always a touch of something else in her eyes now.
He knows she's still carrying a pistol in her purse, and he thinks she's meeting up with Colleen most weeks for self-defence lessons. Which ought to be a good thing, except that he hates the fact she even needs self-defence lessons. He hates that he failed to notice what she was carrying, because he was so swept up in his great new job and his beautiful girlfriend that he didn't realise his friend was hurting.
His friends were hurting. Are hurting.
Matt's doing okay, Foggy thinks most days. He comes to the office, and there are fewer occasions now where there's a fresh cut on his face or when he grimaces as he moves. He's back to his former self in the courtroom – because really, when Matthew Murdock the lawyer gets going, few can touch him – and Foggy can see that he cares, about most cases.
But there are still days when Matt doesn't show, or days when his stubble masks a bruise or a graze or some new stitches and his knuckles are scabbed. There are still days when, instead of coming with them to Josie's, he heads to church and then, Foggy knows, puts on the mask and goes out again.
However Foggy Nelson is an optimist. He is sure that if they keep on going, the times when he has to jolt Karen out of her past or Matt out of his anger will get less. He's watching out for them now. He knows what the signs are, and he's damned if he'll let this firm fall apart too.
Karen
Of all the jobs she's done in her short life, Karen knows this one's the one she cares about the most. She hated the diner, found a certain guilty thrill in hustling with Todd, was bored at Union Allied, and loved the Bulletin. But working with Matt and Foggy, that's where her heart really lies.
She feels guilty, still, about so much. About Kevin, mostly, and about Wesley. About Mrs Cardenas, and all the other clients they couldn't help. About her friends who died at the Bulletin, and Jasper Evans. Sometimes the guilt seems to well up and threatens to overwhelm her.
Hitting things with Colleen helps. She likes Colleen; they have stuff in common. She'll go to the dojo for a sparring session and work out until they're both sweaty and exhausted, and then they'll order in and drink and talk.
For Foggy's sake, she feels bad she's not more consistently cheerful. She knows he hates it when she's not, but she can't match his endless optimism and joy at the firm's reformation. Sure, she's happy they're back together, and happy her name's on the letterhead. At some point they really need a proper office, but for now the deli will do – and it means there's always decent coffee and something to eat.
So she keeps on making an effort, and every day making the effort is a little easier and her smiles less forced.
She sees that Matt's making an effort too. He's not the same man who, once long ago when she believed he was merely a clever, hot, blind lawyer, kissed her and went out for curry with her. She knows that. They've both changed, but now she knows how to see it, he's still half the Daredevil, all the time.
In front of a client, or the court, he is the calm, controlled man she first met, but when they're alone he lets the mask slip more often now than he ever did before. Gone are the days of any pretence that his blindness is a disability or a hindrance; they all know Matt sees as much or more than either Karen or Foggy, at least when it comes to people.
If Karen is being honest with herself – and, when she goes home and curls up before the TV with a glass in her hand, she sometimes is – she'll admit that she is as attracted as she is repelled by the new Matt. She dreams of the figure in black saving her, in an alley or a church or a cellar, and will wake with the sheets twisted around herself. When she goes back to sleep, the dream shifts to the lawyer in the suit, red glasses masking eyes that see nothing and yet everything.
Yet she is wary still of moving beyond this new, cautious friendship they've all rebuilt. Cautious of breaking Matt's brittle shell that he's still wearing about himself, and cautious of destroying Foggy and his simple joy. For the moment, Nelson, Murdock & Page will do, and mostly, Karen thinks, that's enough.
Matt
Matt's thought of finding a new suit. Melvin can't be the only person able to source protective material or build it into a costume. And he's getting through black pullovers like there's no tomorrow. But the suit has been tainted by Poindexter, its image forever marred, and he's again grown used to the ease of slipping through a crowd with the mask in his pocket, alert for danger.
He is trying to stitch up the parts of his life into a meaningful whole. He's enjoying the mental challenge of lawyering again, of winning a case by words alone. And he's enjoying being around Foggy again, Foggy and Karen. The sound of their voices, bantering over something or other, is soothing; their scents of vanilla and lemon and paper and ink and Josie's cheap spirits and Marci's perfume and sweat from Colleen's dojo and the meaty odour of the deli all mingle into a comforting blanket of sensation which helps get him through each day.
It's easier now they both know all of him, and now none of them have secrets from each other. It's much less exhausting to come into the office and use all his senses to their full extent, to not have to pretend to be half the man he is. It's much less exhausting to call Foggy or Karen on a morning when he's aching so much he can't roll out of bed, and just tell them he won't be there. It's only occasionally now, in any case.
And there are more outlets. After first almost punching him when she found out he was alive, and then getting wildly drunk with him, Jessica has become a friend. They bump into each other now and then, when she's out investigating and he's out listening on the rooftops for crime.
Once or twice they've hit up Danny and Luke too, although Matt dislikes the feeling he gets when it's the four of them that everyone is looking at them. Danny Rand, for his billions, and Luke Cage, for his strength, are just too notorious.
The church is still there as well. He stayed away, for a while, but when he went back to sit at the back of a Mass and listen to the new priest speak of forgiveness and humility, she came to find him. Matt still can't think of Sister Maggie as a mother, and he knows he's hardly the son any mother would have wanted, but they've started speaking of Jack now. When he visits, the hitch in her heartbeat is one of anticipation, not fear or nervousness. She's not Father Lantom, but she too is helping to bring together the pieces.
And so he puts on a tie in the morning, and the mask at night; carries a cane and lets people lead him during the daylight, and once it's dark gives into all the sensation the city can offer. Slowly, Matt is realising, Murdock and the Devil can live side-by-side. The world's still on fire, but the fire is under control.