Title: Masked Men and Where to Find Them
Author: tinyrose65
Summary: Harry Potter moved to Hell's Kitchen because she wanted a fresh start: time away from the spotlight, where she could focus on being the best Healer she could be. Trust the unconscious man in her dumpster to go and complicate things. (fem!Harry, AU!)
Notes: Spoilers for Daredevil 1.02, 1.03, 1.04.
Chapter 2: A Kidnapping Attempt
Matt should've known that getting Harry involved with his schemes would only lead to trouble for her, but it just too tempting a situation to pass up: a mysterious woman with a lovely voice who could make new injuries seem days old? He had thought of all the people he could help if not bogged down by his body's own healing ability.
And there was a part of him— a very small part— that was too excited about the prospect of somebody like him, somebody gifted, even if her gifts were of a completely different variety. Maybe he wouldn't have to feel quite so isolated anymore. Maybe there was somebody out there who could understand him.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
He'd been going to her apartment after his patrols for a few weeks now, and he had to admit that it was spoiling him. Major injuries faded into nothing, and she even took the time to fix up his minor cuts and bruises, no matter how much he insisted that they weren't bothering him. It was nice, being taken care of like that. Never mind that Stick would have a fit if he knew. It wasn't enough reason for him to stop seeing her, though. In fact, knowing of his old mentor's disapproval might've spurred him on even more. It was hard to say.
Still, despite his increasing dependence on her, he was surprised when she called. He was with Foggy. They were walking down the street, trying to hail a cab, when Matt heard his burner phone ringing.
"You've got a phone just for chicks?" Foggy whined, as Matt pulled out the cell. It was the same thing he had said when Matt had come to him, handing him the crumpled up piece of paper with Harry's number on it and asking for help programming it onto the burner. Foggy had teased him then and Matt had a feeling he'd be enduring a lot of teasing in the future, too.
"Go ahead without me," he instructed Foggy, gesturing to the cab that was waiting for them both. Foggy shrugged, still grumbling to himself, and got in the car. Meanwhile, Matt answered the phone.
"Harry?"
"Draco. Hi." Harry said breathlessly. No matter how much he had asked, she hadn't stopped calling him that ridiculous name.
"Are you alright?" He asked with a frown. He had already turned and was walking quickly towards her place. "You sound— off."
She hummed in acknowledgement. "Yes, well. I might have a bit of a problem."
"I'll be there in five minutes," he promised, not giving her a chance to respond as he hung up. He ducked into an alley, searching for a fire-escape. He decided that he didn't have time to go change, and that instead he would just have to be more careful about being seen. It was late and already dark, so he doubted it'd be much of a problem. He rolled and ducked and jumped over rooftops, mentally plotting the shortest distance to her place. As he got closer, he strained his senses, listening for her, trying to gather whatever information he could.
He heard her first. She was shuffling her feet oddly and muttering to herself. There were other heartbeats in the room, but they were steady and unbelievably slow. Unconscious, probably. That made little sense to Matt, but he'd never doubted his senses before, and he wasn't about to start now.
Making it to the window and perching on the fire-escape, he could now hear what Harry was repeatedly saying under her breath:
"Obliviate. Obliviate. Obliviate."
The men (and they were men, from what Matt could guess from their size) were definitely all unconscious, although there were no obvious wounds on them as far as Matt could sense. Harry was moving around, leaning over each of them in turn, and muttering her strange word (was it Latin? It sounded vaguely like some of the Latin he head learnt at Columbia). From outside, he couldn't tell if she was injured. The most he could say is that she seemed to have twisted an ankle, judging by the sound of her feet moving across the floor.
He knocked on the window to get Harry's attention. When she heard him, she didn't jump like the first night they had met, probably because this time she was expecting him. Instead, she stopped whatever it was she was doing and looked up.
"Oh, good," she said, talking as though she wasn't surrounded by half a dozen unconscious men. She walked over, side stepping the bodies, and opened the window so he could enter. He did so, then tried to take everything in, unsure of where to even begin.
"What are you doing?" Matt sputtered. "What— I mean, how?"
"Russians," Harry said by way of explanation. He felt her arm stir the air around them and guessed that she was gesturing at all of the bodies. "I think they were trying to kidnap me. I didn't let them."
"Obviously," Matt said drily, still in shock. "But how?"
"Let's chalk that up to things we don't talk about," Harry said hesitantly. Her voice sounded a bit strange. Matt guessed she was also nursing a split lip.
Matt had wondered how exactly her abilities worked, but had always assumed that they were just healing powers, nothing more. Judging by the scene around him, he was clearly wrong. He had a fleeting moment where he wondered why somebody like her wasn't working with the Avengers, but then shoved that away. It was none of his business as to why Harry chose to do what she did. Maybe she was like him in that sense— preferred to help on a smaller scale, as opposed to the grand battles of superheroes.
"What are you doing now?" He asked. She had gone back to moving around, uttering strange words.
"I'm erasing their memories. They won't remember any of this. Or any of you, for that matter. At least not until you muck about with them again."
"That's... good." Matt responded while thinking, "She can do that?"
"I'm just not sure what to do with the bodies," Harry admitted, shoulders slumping. Matt frowned and went closer to her, then reached out and rubbed her upper arms soothingly.
"I'll take care of it," he assured. He was already planning on how to get the bodies out of the fire escape and into an alley several buildings away. It wouldn't be easy, but it'd be doable. And if, like Harry said, they didn't remember anything about this, then he wouldn't have to worry about them finding out where Harry lived again.
He was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of Harry sniffling just a tad pathetically. Intently, because the answer really was important to him, he asked, "Are you alright?"
"Fine," she responded. Her voice was fraught with tension. The fluttering of her heart picked up as she spoke.
"Liar."
Harry made a strangled noise in the back of her throat. It was something between a laugh and a sob, and Matt couldn't say that he liked hearing that sound come from her.
"Give me a second," she said, breaking free of his grip, since his hands were still on her shoulders. She moved towards one of the bodies and stood over it for a moment. Matt heard the tensing of some muscles and then—
THUD.
—she kicked the unconscious man hard in the face. He didn't move, didn't even groan. He was completely out of it. Matt had his eyebrows raised and a small smirk on his face as she came back to him.
"Alright," Harry said, letting out a breath. "Now I'm fine." Her heartbeat remained steady.
In the end, after he had taken care of the bodies, Matt chose to take her back to his apartment. She agreed once she was done with their memories. It was funny, but they had known each other for a few weeks now, and she had never seen his apartment, for all the times that he had seen hers. Their relationship was unbalanced that way, he supposed.
He fixed her up the best he could, applying the poultices she had grabbed from her place as she instructed him. She took care of her own ankle, and hearing the bone and muscle mend itself was a very strange experience indeed.
("What does it sound like?"
"Like a house settling.")
In the end, she thanked him. He gave her one of his old shirts to wear, which she gratefully took, and put her in his bed for the night.
He took the couch.
The next morning, he was up before she was. He had showered, changed, and had his breakfast before he heard her up and moving around. He supposed this made sense. Her body needed to save energy and heal. It also needed nutrients, so he had food ready for her by the time she exited his bathroom, hair wet and wearing another one of his shirts (she must've raided his closet for it, but he found that he didn't mind).
"How do you feel?" he asked, setting a plate of eggs and toast and bacon on the table as she sat down. He wasn't the best cook, so perhaps it wasn't the nicest breakfast, but it was edible, and she seemed pleased with it.
"Like the Russian mob tried to kidnap me," she quipped, taking a bite of her toast. She sounded better. The swelling on her lip had gone down and her ankle seemed to have healed completely.
"I'm sorry about that," he said quietly, seriously, as he sat down next to her. Having already eaten his breakfast, all he had in hand was a cup of coffee.
He heard her shake her head. "No, no, no. None of that. If I remember correctly, I offered to help you, not the other way around. This was my choice, Draco."
He hesitated. "Matthew."
"Hm?"
"My name," he told her earnestly, smiling slightly at her confusion. She deserved to know it after everything she had done and been through for him. "It's Matthew. My friends call me Matt."
"Matthew," she repeated, as though testing the feel of it on her lips. She laughed slightly. "Suits you better than Draco, that's for certain."
"I think so, too," he said, laughing with her. They were quite for a moment. He could hear the sound of her heartbeat speeding up. She was fiddling with her food, shuffling the eggs around until they were nothing but a runny mess. Clearly, she was hesitating about something, but he didn't know what. All he could do was wait for her to come to a decision, so he sipped his coffee quietly.
"I'm a witch," she said finally.
Matt's choked on his coffee. His first thought was to demand who had told her that, because they were very, very wrong. Harry was great. Lovely even. Anybody who thought she was a witch deserved a switch punch in the face, and he'd be more than happy to supply it.
His second thought was to realize that this was probably not what she had meant. So she meant it literally. Which— What?
He repeated this last thought aloud. Matt assumed he must've looked pretty confused, because she took pity on him and patted him gently on the shoulder as she explained, "A witch. A wizard, if you'd like. I have magical abilities."
"Oh," was all Matt could think to say.
"I could prove it to you," she offered nervously.
Matt should've pointed out that finding her surrounded by unconscious men twice her size, having her heal knife wounds and twisted ankles in the blink of an eye— all of that was proof enough, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Despite all that he had witnessed her do, he couldn't quite believe in magic, not in the way she seemed to mean it.
Instead, he nodded permission.
She was thoughtful for a moment. Then said, "Hold out your hands."
The fact that he did so with no hesitation said volumes about just how much he had come to trust her.
She placed something in his hands, and Matt was left wondering just how she planned on proving the existence of wizards with a fork, when she mumbled some more strange words under her breath. Then the fork was bending, twisting, moulding, and suddenly he was left holding a very real, old-fashioned goblet.
He dropped it in surprise, narrowly avoiding his foot, and let out a startled, "Agh!"
Harry wasn't fazed. She reached down and picked it up, setting it back on the table.
"It won't last forever," she assured him. "You'll have your fork back in a day or so."
"That's not what worries me," Matt scowled. Harry didn't seem bothered by his frown. In fact, judging by her quiet snickering, she was more amused by his reaction than anything else.
"I don't understand," Matt said finally. "Were you— I mean, were you born with these powers?"
"I was," Harry confirmed. "But I didn't find out about them until I was older. No thanks to my bloody relatives."
Harry had never mentioned her family in the short time they had known each other. To be fair, neither had Matt. At any other time, he'd take advantage of this slip of information and press her further, but now there were more important things on his mind. Harry took another bite of her toast while Matt processed things. It was a lot to take in, really. Wizards and witches? It was the sort of thing you read about in stories, not experienced in real life. Then again, he lived in a city where aliens dropped out of the sky on a regular basis. He could handle witches.
(Right?)
"You can't tell anybody," Harry cautioned. Matt snorted, wondering who in the world he'd tell. It's not as though he could blurt out to Foggy that he'd met a magical doctor while he was out fighting crime. "They'd erase your memories and fine me. Or possibly throw me in prison. I don't know."
"Who's 'they?'"
"The wizarding government," Harry said matter-of-factly. "There're plenty of us, you know. An entire secret society that muggles— people without magic— don't know about."
"Oh," he said again.
And what else was he supposed to say?
Matt remained lost in his thoughts for another few minutes, occasionally sipping at his coffee. Next to him, Harry munched away happily at her food, the events from the night before clearly having left her hungry enough to stomach Matt's cooking (which Foggy had complained about often enough).
Then, out of nowhere, Harriet let out a small cry and the taste of copper split the air.
"You've reopened the cut on your lip," Matt stated. He heard the rustle of a napkin as Harry applied it to the open wound.
"Must've not of put enough Essence of Dittany on it last night," Harry grumbled through the napkin. This was probably Matt's fault. Stitching up his father's face after a boxing match he could handle, but apparently not magicking away wounds.
He was already up and walking over to his coffee table, where Harry's healing supplies were still strewn about from the night before. He was familiar with the sharp and distinctive smell of Dittany after all the times Harry had used it on him, so he had no trouble locating the bottle. With it in hand, he went back to Harry's side and sat down in his chair, angling it so he was facing her. She did the same with her chair to him, putting her napkin down on the table and giving him unobstructed access to her face. He placed a few drops of the essence on his fingertips. It was warm and slightly oily to the touch.
"May I?" he asked, holding his hand up. Touching Harry in this way felt too intimate to do without permission. He felt Harry nod.
With as much care as he could manage, Matt touched his potion-covered fingers to her lip, rubbing it gently into the cut despite her slight hiss of pain. The cut slowly fused together, disappearing into the surrounding skin. If Matt had needed more proof of her magic (he hadn't), then this was it. There was no denying it now.
Finished, he pulled his hand away and wiped the remaining Dittany off on the napkin Harry had been using earlier. That's when he realized that in the process of healing her, his and Harry's faces had gotten quite close. In fact, it would be nothing at all to lean in and kiss her.
So he did.
Matt was not the sort to believe in fairytale, love-at-first-sight sort of romances. Maybe had a bit in his younger days, but he'd grown cynical as he had grown older, and now he believed that although attraction could be instant, love and relationships took a lot of hard work.
Kissing Harry didn't change that.
But, still.
The kiss was nice. It had been a while since he'd kissed somebody he'd genuinely cared for, and he'd forgotten how good a feeling that was. It was like coming home after a long day or the feeling of the springtime sun on your face after a long winter.
Warm, and soft, and comforting.
Matt pulled away, letting himself smile just a bit. The heat radiating from Harry's face told him that she was blushing. Wanting to feel it for himself, he reached up and placed his hands on her warm cheeks. His fingers traced over the slight upturn of her lips, the hollow of her dimples, the proud jut of her chin.
"I've wanted to do that for a while," he admitted. Then, realizing what he was doing, he made to pull his hands back. Her hands on his wrists stopped him. She was smiling more broadly now, and he got the distinct impression that she was laughing at him just a bit. She did that a lot, he noticed.
"I'm glad you did," she told him. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever work up the nerve."
Matt made a slightly indignant sound in the back of his throat as Harry removed her hands. He let his fall to his lap. He could hear her worrying the skin of her lip with her teeth, and he momentarily feared that she'd end up undoing all of their hard work. Then she began to talk.
"Since we're baring our souls to each other—"
"I would hardly call it baring our souls..."
"—do you mind if I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"I know you're blind," she began, "Obviously. But you can do so much. How?"
"I guess you have to think of it as more than five senses," Matt said finally. After considering the question for a moment, Matt launched into a brief explanation about his enhanced senses, from temperature to vibrations in the air, combined with sounds and smells and tastes, explaining that it call worked together to create a mental picture of the world. Harry considered the point, but ultimately seemed unsatisfied.
"But what does that picture look like?"
Matt considered this, before finally settling on an answer. "A world on fire."
The silence after that particular statement made Matt think that, for once, he'd stolen words out of Harry's mouth, which he personally considered a pretty great achievement. In the short time he had known her, she'd proven herself with a remarkably sharp tongue. Just as he was feeling proud of himself for silencing her, she let out an amused snort.
"Figures. If everything I saw was on fire, I'd want to hit things, too."
This startled a laugh out of Matt, and he was still smiling from it as he headed into work that day.
A few nights later, Matt came home and handed Harry an old burner phone so she could look it over for him. He was hoping to find some information regarding the Russians or Fisk or anybody that could help put an end to all of this.
"No contacts listed," Harry noted as she flipped through it. He could hear the tapping of her fingers on the keys and the telltale beeps of the phone.
"It's a burner," Matt clarified from the kitchen where he was getting himself a drink of water. His head was in the fridge, but he knew she'd still hear him. "Like the one I use to contact you."
He grabbed the water he was looking for and closed the refrigerator door, walking back to where Harry was in the living room. Opening the water bottle and taking a swig from it, he asked her, "The phone was buzzing earlier. Did somebody leave a message?"
"A text," Harry clarified. "A list of locations. Four of them: 47th and 12th; 48th and 9th; 42nd and 10th; 44th and 11th."
"That's it," he said stopping her. Harry's head snapped up from where she had been looking down at the cell-phone. "44th and 11th. Troika Restaurant."
"Where they were holding that boy?" Harry asked. Matt nodded, putting the water down on the coffee table and picking up his mask. Harry must've noticed he was getting ready to leave because her heart rate picked up slightly in— worry? For him? She continued, "Where did you even get this, anyway?"
"Cop."
"Matt," she sighed, exasperated. "When I told you to go to the police, this is hardly what I meant."
"Nah," Matt denied, fiddling with his mask. "He was dirty. Working for Fisk. Killed a Russian right inside the precinct, then got this list of addresses. I'm betting I'll find Vladimir at one of them."
Harry considered the point for a second. "Is Vladimir the one who ordered the kidnapping at my apartment?"
Probably."
"Then hit him extra hard for me, would you?"
"Yes, ma'am" Matt said with a smirk. Her heart rate picked up again, but he had a feeling it was from something else this time. He slipped the mask on and got ready to leave through the fire escape, but a hand at his arm stopped him.
"Wait," she said. He had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts of Russians and Fisk and what now that he hadn't even noticed Harry getting up off of the couch and coming towards him. "What are you really going to do if you find him?"
"...whatever it takes."
"Matt," she said again, but this time her voice was slightly scolding. He felt himself bristle at her tone.
"I'm doing what I think is right, Harry," he snapped.
"I didn't say you weren't," she said, sounding a tad insulted.
Harry was quiet after that, and Matt wondered if he had been too harsh with her. He was about to apologize when she started talking.
"Not that long ago, I was in a place a bit like you: backed into a corner, and the only way out I could see was to fight." She spoke softly, so soft that it was almost a whisper. It made her sound very, very old. "I made some decisions then, some of which I regret, but a lot of which I don't. I hurt people, people who hurt my friends, and I don't feel an ounce of remorse for it. What kind of person does that make me?"
Her heartbeat was steady. Not a lie, then, not that Matt had expected it to be. Harry was many things, but a liar wasn't one of them. Even as the silence held, he still didn't answer her. He supposed Harry hadn't expected him to. She continued:
"That's why I became a Healer— so I could help people. I never wanted to see that side of me again."
There was another pause. Matt took the moment to let the words sink in. Then he said, "I guess you're just stronger than I am."
"Funny," Harry told him. "I was thinking just the opposite."
"What do you want me to do, Harry? Let them tear Hell's Kitchen apart? Let them win?"
"I'm just warning you." Harry was still speaking just above a whisper. "Don't get in so deep that before you realize it, you've become what you hate."
Matt didn't know what to say to that, so he put his mask on and left, the sound of her her words echoing in his head all night. The next time they spoke, he was in a warehouse and Harry was in the hospital; she instructed him over the phone on how to heal a badly wounded Vladimir.
Outside, Hell's Kitchen burned.
AN: So the response to this story has been overwhelming. Thank you! I'll be continuing this- probably for something around 4-5 chapters total? If you haven't noticed by now, this story will follow the arc of the series, with variations where I think magic and Harry's character would make things a bit different. Hope you enjoy!