He could feel their terror, the fear in their voices and breaths.
"Help!" The girls scream, "Help! Help me!"
They keep screaming, and the sound of a door opening – metal, large, a shipping crate – can be heard.
"Hey, hey!" A different voice speaks, this one male, and threatening. "Man, shut up. I'm getting 1,000 dollars a head for ya'll."
He sounds happy about the prospect of getting money by victimising these women, and Matt's fists tighten even more at the familiar feeling of anger that begins to consume him.
"So, you be quiet…" The man continues, and Matt hears the sound of him lifting an object up with his hand. "I let you have a bucket. You don't…"
He raises something in the other hand, and a second later the sound of a Taser follows his words. The women start to scream louder.
The man drops the bucket, and moves in to help the other thug move the girls into the crate. They keep screaming, and it only gets louder when he activates the Taser once more as a threat.
Another man could be heard nearby Matt notes to himself. But he's… Eating fast food.
A different man growls out some threats in Russian, and Matt pulls the mask over his face, and stands up fully from where he had been kneeling down, listening to what was happening.
For a moment, he remembers the last time he did this, years ago. Foggy had accepted his story of getting hurt, but Jessica… Jess had been suspicious, to say the least. She knew – and still knows – Matt so damn well. Fortunately, she had been a bit too drunk to piece it all together.
But then Matt hears the sounds of the girls begging once more, and he quickly forgets about the past.
He moves in closer as the man who has the Taser was talking. "Scream all you want." The guy says, and Matt grits his teeth. "Come on, let me hear you scream! Scream loud. Nobody gives a shit down here."
The man laughs, and Matt makes his move.
The girls notice him first, and back away in fear. The man looks up to see Matt leaping from his vantage point.
He arrives on the ground quickly, making sure to leave a brutal sucker-punch on the guy's face as he does so. The Taser stick rolls around on the ground, which Matt notices briefly. He stands still, listening closer to the people around him.
A man yells in Russian, and rushes at Matt.
He goes for a punch, but instead Matt dodges the fist and gives the goon a punch of his own, forcing the man to the ground. Another man goes for him, and he jumps to the side, twisting his arm and going to break it, before the man successfully pulls away, going for another punch.
But Matt simply ducks under the blow, and delivers several hits to the guy's stomach. The man goes for more punches, and Matt dodges them all, before the man goes to pull him into some kind of headlock.
Matt just punches at his chest, hard, and slams the man into the metal crate door.
But he doesn't let up there.
Matt pulls him back in for another few punches, then slams him onto the ground. One of the previous thugs is up again, and runs towards him with his fist ready, but Matt dodges the first, pulling the guy into a lock as the goon delivers several kicks and punches into Matt. It hurts like hell, but Matt survives it, and then the goon manages to tackle them both to the floor.
Matt flips out of the way of another attack, and releases a spinning kick that throws the man back onto the ground. Finally, he delivers a series of attacks that breaks the man's leg.
But Matt has no time to relax, as he hears the sound of a gun being readied.
The man who had the Taser fires once, and Matt – along with the man with the broken leg – rolls out of the way, and almost directly into the crate door.
The man fires again, and again Matt rolls back to the other side. He picks up the Taser stick, and quickly climbs back up the crates.
Matt knows the man can hear his footsteps, as he is close by, so he uses that to his advantage. He jumps from one crate to another, moving quickly. From above, he moves behind the man, and the guy reacts by firing another bullet which hit a nearby crate.
By now, Matt knows how to hurt this guy. He lets a few more steps be audible from above, and silently descends back to ground level. He steps quietly behind the man, and readies an attack he had thought of before, but had never used on anyone.
Matt pulls out the Taser stick, and throws it onto the crate door. It rebounds, and hits the man in the head.
Inwardly a little pleased at the result, Matt walks forward purposefully. But one whimper from a woman reminds him of why he's there, and Matt leans down and picks up the Taser stick once more, and throws it at the man who was still eating fast food.
The sound of water splashing confirms where the man went, and Matt walks closer to the crate full of terrified girls.
"Head towards 48th." He instructs quickly. "Stay in the lights. Flag down the first officer you see."
The women only whimper in response, and Matt is forced to slam at the crate door.
"Now!" He yells, and the scared girls quickly stand up, and run away as a group.
Matt is still for a moment, but then he hears the sound of a gun being pulled back once more, and he is forced to quickly flip as a bullet barely misses him.
He grabs the man's hand as another shot goes god-knows-where, and he punches the man, hard.
Matt almost throws away the weapon and leaves, but frankly he is far too pissed off.
He throws another punch to the man's face, and another, and another, and another. He throws the gun into the water, and uses both his hand, punching and punching and punching-
Again and again he makes contact with the man's face, until he is (presumably) a bleeding mess.
Matt stands up, sighs, and walks away.
*Daredevil*
The sound of his phone wakes him up the next morning.
"Foggy." The robotic-sounding female voice says. "Foggy. Foggy."
Matt sits up, throwing his blanket to the side, and mutters to himself as he gropes around for his phone, and he taps and swipes on the touchscreen until he has answered the call.
"Hello?"
"Good morning, sunshine!" The voice of Foggy says through the phone.
"What time is it?" Matt asks.
"Half past get-the-hell-up." Comes the witty response from his fellow lawyer. "Let's go. We gotta meet the real estate agent in 45."
Matt groans.
"What was that? Was that a moan? Do you have somebody in bed with you?" Foggy demands to know, and Matt just groans to himself once more.
"The paralegal!" Foggy exclaims. "Is it the para over at- Nevermind, I don't want to hear about it."
A small pause follows.
"No, I do want to hear about it!" Foggy re-decides. "What was she like?"
Matt exhales slightly. "Violent."
"I gotta get the blind thing going. It so unfair." Foggy mutters. "Oh, hey! Real estate agent, not your type. Very homely, might be genetic, no need to be charming. And she kinda told me she thinks blind people are god's mistake…"
Matt smiles at that for a moment. He appreciates that his two friends never treat him like glass just because he's blind. It… It meant a lot.
"That's a horrible thing to say, Foggy." Matt deadpans, a smile threating to re-emerge.
"I know! In this day and age?" His friend replies smoothly. "Alright, shake it. I gotta go bribe a cop."
"Foggy!"
"Kidding, NSA, if you're listening. But seriously, yeah, I gotta go bribe a cop."
With that, Foggy ends the call, and Matt lets a smile appear on his face for a moment before he quickly rises from his bed and does his usual early-morning stuff. This time, he even bothered to have breakfast, which was rarer than it had any right to be, honestly.
His phone buzzed again, this time intoning "Jessica. Jessica. Jessica."
Matt answers it on his way out, throwing a jacket over his shoulder and closing the door behind him.
"Yeah, Jess?" He says in greeting.
"I'm just calling so your more annoying brother doesn't bother me, or you, about it." The dry and sardonic voice of Jessica Jones mutters, and Matt smiled slightly at her description of Foggy. "Yes, I am coming to the… Legal apartment bullshit. Mostly so you don't get ripped off."
"Thanks, Jessica." Matt replies.
"Oh, and I guess it would be bad if Foggy got ripped off too." Jessica says dryly.
"See you there." Matt replies, and hangs up.
*Daredevil*
Sure, she was a little late, but she was here, wasn't she?
Jessica Jones takes one last swig from a bottle of whiskey as she walks into the perspective apartment/working area that Foggy had suggested as the base for their 'helping the poor and needy through the law' shit, Nelson and Murdock.
She enters the same time Matt does, and in fact almost runs directly into him.
"Matt." She says, and she sees him smile as he recognises her voice.
"Jess." He replies somewhat happily, and they both enter the room together.
"Corner suite has a view of the Hudson." The woman was saying as they entered, Matt relying on his cane. "You can flip a coin with your partner for it."
"Uh, he can have the view." Matts mutters half-awkwardly and half-dryly.
The woman turns around, goes to say something, but falters when she sees Matt. Jessica watches it all unfold as she moves to stand in one of the corners.
"I'm so sorry." The woman says in awkward politeness. "I didn't mean to-"
"Of course not." Matt interrupts as she chuckles nervously.
"Susan Harris, Midtown Property Solutions." She walks forward, introducing herself with her hand out to shake, although – obviously – Matt didn't notice.
"Matt Murdock." He replies, placing down his bag of things on the floor.
The woman – Susan – kept her hand out for a moment before moving it back to where she held a folder, and Jessica threw her a bit of a death glare. She admitted it, people that were awkward or people that treated Matt badly or differently because he was blind? She hated those people.
Then, Susan did something a bit weird.
"She just curtsied." Foggy informs Matt almost cheerily. "It was adorable."
Jessica just increased the intensity of her death glare.
"Well, it's nice to know chivalry isn't dead." Matt replies dryly. Susan turns her head to see Jessica glaring at her.
"Uh, who are you?" She asks, this time with even more obvious forced politeness.
"None of your damn business." Jessica replies with her usual amount of exasperated 'tired-of-bullshit' tone, and Susan lost her fake smile for a moment, before bringing it back again, which was worse than the frown, in Jessica's opinion. "And before you ask, Matt, I'll walk you around the space."
"Okay." Matt mutters, and Jessica sends one last look of intense dislike at Susan as Jessica walks towards Matt, and lets his hand grip hers so he can walk more easily.
The rest of the meeting went like that. Jessica was suspicious, Matt said some somewhat funny stuff, Foggy watched in amusement, and Susan kept her forced-cheerful act up the entire time.
By the end of the meeting, Matt said he wanted to take it, Jessica kept an eye out for anything that Susan wasn't telling them about, and Foggy and Matt had a funny little banter about the law, innocence, and fancy terminology.
*Daredevil*
She wakes up, confused. Her memories were blurry…
She notices the apartment that is not her own. Did that offer of a drink… End in something else?
But then she looks down, and sees the blood.
She sees the body next. His body. Covered in blood, in knife wounds. He was long dead.
Then she looks down, and sees her blood-covered clothes, and in her hand, a bloody knife.
The door is kicked open, and in walks the police.
"Drop the knife!" One yells.
She's confused, she's scared, she doesn't know what's happening… "No!" She yells. "No-no, I didn't, I didn't-"
"DROP IT!" The cop with the shotgun yells, and her hand lets the weapon fall onto the carpeted floor.
"I didn't do this, I didn't do this." She continues to insist, even as she drops onto the ground as the police demanded, as she stared at the dead face of her co-worker, as they pull her hands behind her back and cuffed her.
A/N: So, I hope everyone enjoyed this first chapter of my (eventual) Jessica Jones x Matt Murdock story. Please leave some reviews, and the next chapter will be up soon.