Anything recognizable is the property of the appropriate owners. I do not make any claim to ownership, nor do I make any money from this.

Note: I have not seen past Season 2, Episode 5: Kinbaku.


"So this is your apartment?" Matt tilted his head and listened to the open space.

"Yeah. Make yourself at home. Do you mind if I change really quick?" Foggy needed a minute to calm himself.

"Go ahead. I'm sure I can find the couch." Murdock happily waved the lawyer away. He wasn't helpless and it would be an opportunity to get a feel for Nelson's space.

The blind man followed the wall from the door and discovered a side table with not much more than a pair of glasses on it. Further down was the bathroom door and the bedroom door through which Foggy had gone. A TV was mounted to another wall, then he found the bank of windows and vaguely wondered what the city really looked like, not just through his senses. Lastly was the kitchen and he was back where he started at the door to the hallway.

Matt leaned his cane against the entry way table and took off his glasses. They were armor he didn't need with Nelson. A few moments later he had found the couch and had lowered himself down on it. But as minutes ticked by, the blind man grew fidgety and swept his fingers over the coffee table for anything to keep him busy until his lover returned and they could hash out the reason he had to come to New York on his own.

TV remote, a pile of tri-folded paper -probably bills, and an empty mug were all normal things for a living room, but then his fingers found what he initially took to be an incomplete orb covered in hard plastic panels, but further investigation revealed it was a mask. Matt traced over the glassy eyes and the ridge of nose before feeling two small protrusions -horns. The rest of his investigation was cut short by the bedroom door opening.

"Franklin, What's this?" Murdock held up the mask, at a loss for its purpose given it definitely wasn't a bicycle helmet.

"Oh shit." Foggy stood frozen half way from the bedroom, completely unprepared for Matt to be sitting there calm as you please, holding out his old DareDevil mask.

"What is this?" He asked again.

"It's nothing." The lawyer tried to lie and failed miserably.

Matt tilted his head towards his lover. "Then why has your heart rate practically doubled?"

Foggy did not want to be having this conversation, but unfortunately, the blind man knew when he was avoiding something or lying and years of experience told him to just get it over with. So Nelson sat on the couch next to Matt and gently caressed the brow of the mask. "Hell's Kitchen had a vigilante for a while. He saved our old secretary. Saved me more than once, and he took out some pretty bad folks."

Matt prompted gently, starting to see where this was going. "What happened to him?"

"Someone even bigger and badder came along and they took someone important to him. It didn't go well." Foggy swallowed hard. "He got hurt, and his friend died in his arms."

"I see." The blind man nodded.

"Not funny." Foggy muttered, realizing his fists were clenched on his knees and forcing them to relax.

"What was he called?" Murdock asked, feeling something almost familiar tickling at the back of his mind.

"DareDevil." The lawyer breathed the name, realizing it had been practically two years since he had last spoken it aloud.

Matt was quiet for a long moment, turning the mask in his hands. Nelson's heart was still racing, but it wasn't a lie, and he knew that Franklin hadn't kept him away from New York out of malicious purpose. The lawyer had wanted to keep his past and his present separated, but Matt had to go and ruin it by accidentally coming full circle.

"Is that why we didn't get together before? You had a thing with this vigilante?"

"No!" Foggy immediately denied. He hadn't even been interested, other than the generally harmless comments about how good looking Matt was. "I was just his friend. A totally shitty friend, but I wanted to try." He hung his head.

Murdock knew he was missing something. Nelson had reacted so strongly when they had met, and now his heart was racing talking about the vigilante, who also vanished at some point. "And what? He just gave you his mask?"

"I found it. After he disappeared. That's how I found you."

Matt knew it wasn't a lie, but he wasn't sure how he related to the mask. "What?"

"Didn't you wonder what I was doing in some random place like Sea Bright?" Foggy prompted.

"I hadn't really thought about it." Matt admitted.

"I was going to bury that mask. I had finally accepted that he was gone and wasn't coming back. Then I saw you." He still couldn't come right out and say that he had finally given up on Matt at the time.

"I need to think." Murdock just stared unseeing at the mask in his hands.

"Yeah, fine, I'd like a walk too." Foggy stood and wiped his hands on his pants. "How about I walk down to the takeaway place around the corner?"

"Fine."


Matt listened to his lover grab his keys and jacket before exiting the apartment. He ran his fingers over the mask as if it would suddenly tell him what he was missing, but he had no revelations. He had disappeared after some accident that left Franklin on death's door, but the vigilante also vanished, apparently after someone died. What if they were the same event? That would mean Nelson had died in DareDevil's arms, and that would imply that he was this masked man. But they couldn't be. Could it?

Murdock could feel the level of contouring inside the mask and knew it was designed to only fit its owner, but he still pulled it over his head anyways. Almost not surprised, Matt found the mask slip comfortably into place as if made for him, as if familiar. And then it was as if the floodgates had opened. Memories washed over him in random order, his life scrolled past in his mind's eye. He remembered everything. But there was also his second life too. All the little moments with Franklin -Foggy! It was always Foggy Nelson!

But Foggy died. He was shot by the last thug, his heart had stopped. Not Foggy! Matt couldn't remember how to function without his partner, and his ears rang from the sonic attack, making everything lean sideways and kind of wobble. Yet more memories cycled through, their first date on the beach, arguing over pudding and kissing for the first time, and some of Matt's other favorites, their mind blowing sex. Foggy was alive and well, not dead in some warehouse. He just had to convince himself that he hadn't gotten the full story.

Matt realized he had failed when a second fat tear rolled down his cheek. The memory of Foggy's heart slowing while he held him helplessly was just so real that he couldn't help crying. He pulled the mask off his head and clutched it between shaking hands as the door opened and someone shuffled around in the kitchen. It wasn't until he felt hands on his arms that he realized Nelson must have returned and asked something from the other room and he hadn't responded.

"Foggy?" Murdock dropped the mask and caught the lawyer's wrists in his hands.

"Matt? What's wrong?" Nelson asked earnestly, carefully moving one captured hand to the blind man's face to wipe away tears. "Hey, you called me Foggy." He slowly realized and withdrew his hands. The blind man must have remembered something, enough to know him by his nickname, but if he finally regained his memories, Murdock probably wouldn't want Foggy fawning all over him.

"I remember." Matt whispered to his knees.

"What?" Foggy leaned closer to hear better, still trying to give the blind man space to come to terms and decide how he wanted to handle things.

"I remember everything." Murdock nodded carefully as if he thought his head might fall off.

Nelson was at a loss for what to do, so he stayed where he was, sitting next to his best friend/lover with his strong hands carefully holding his wrists. Matt finally pried one of his hands open and ran his palm up Foggy's forearm to where his sleeves were rolled around his elbow, then followed it up to his shoulder. The lawyer let him lead the situation, remaining still when he wanted to lean into the hand that brushed through his long hair and cupped his jaw.

"I felt you die. You were gone." Matt whispered brokenly, still trying to fit the pieces together in his mind.

Foggy turned his still lightly restrained hand is he could grab the blind man's wrist as well, securing the link between them and feeling his thready pulse against his palm. "I'm fine now, I promise."

"I couldn't do it without you." The brunette gasped, getting lost in the memory of the attack, of feeling the one constant in his life stutter and cease.

"You don't have to. I'm right here." Foggy soothed, pulling Matt into his embrace, naturally fitting together so the blind man could hear his heart pounding along.

Matt melted into the hug, letting his ear rest somewhere over the lawyer's chest. The brunette calmed until he was seemingly floating on nothing, relaxed and untroubled. He slept.