Like anyone else in life, Matthew had good days and bad days.
The good ones happened when a long and exhaustive mental checklist could be crossed off. Did he have coffee and Tylenol in the house? Were there less than three injuries on his person? Was their latest client able to pay in cash, or were they going to have to choose between electricity and water again?
Today was not a good day.
The first thing he'd done when he'd stepped out of bed was to stub his toe on the door because he'd been distracted by a particularly foul stench coming from the sewer three blocks away. Then the last four pills he had in his apartment failed to do anything to the raging headache that was developing due to the screaming match in the room above a tiny hole-in-the-wall café down the street.
And to top it off, Foggy was currently ranting about their newest potential client; a woman convicted of murdering her co-worker, and Matt knew she was innocent because her heartbeat never faltered, but he couldn't tell anyone because how would he explain his enhanced senses, and could Foggy please keep it down-
Matt pinched the bridge of his nose and carefully rubbed circles into his temple in an attempt to somehow stave off the worst of his headache. From what Matt understood, Foggy had always assumed that Matt's migraines were from a hangover that he had acquired when he spent the night with a lady.
Apparently, he was a 'stunningly handsome man with looks that are wasted on someone blind.'
Foggy's words, not Matt's.
"Hey, uh, you okay, buddy?"
Matt picked his head up from his hands and looked into Foggy's concerned face, aware that his rumpled hair and the bruise under his eye from when he 'tripped' probably played a large part into his friend's worry.
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine," he dismissed. "And about this case-we're taking it."
Foggy blinked, confused. "Wait, what? I thought we weren't going to bother. You know, because it's an obvious case?"
"Exactly, it's too obvious. Foggy, don't you see there's something off about this? The courts don't normally waste time like this; in other cases with an easily deduced killer the suspect is sentenced within hours." He shook his head and drummed his fingers on the table, his sightless eyes flicking all over the room. "Something's wrong."
The other lawyer shook his head, then shrugged. "I admit, it's unusual, but-look, Matt, let's just observe this hypothetically. Say we take the case, say-say we accept Miss Page as a client. There's no evidence in her favor, no witnesses or other suspects, nothing at all but what she herself testifies. She's not going to be ruled innocent."
Matt stared in his general direction for a moment in silence. "Foggy, how long have we known each other?"
He blinked, blind-sided by the non sequitur. "Beginning of law school, so like 15 years or so, right?"
"And in that time, to your knowledge, have my decisions ever led us into any problems?"
"I mean, there was that one time you were so sure you knew the way back to our dorm and ended with us being stuck inside the basement of a deli for two hours."
He rolled his non-working eyes. "Lawyer problems, Foggy. You know, ones with real, actual consequences-"
"Alright, alright, yeah I get your point. Fine, we'll take the case-but I'll hold it over your head forever if this backfires."
Harry-turned-Matt quirked his lips, reminded once more of Ron. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
A moment passed.
"For the record, you should have known better than to follow a blind man into a restaurant basement."
"It was a deli, and you seemed so self-assured that you even convinced me. For all I knew you had been faking blindness to get that scholarship you're so fond of."
"I hate you."
\\\
Matt knew he was right when he heard the next day that an officer had nearly managed to assassinate Miss Page in her prison cell. Thankfully the man, Clyde Farnum, hadn't gotten far before other, uncorrupt policemen heard her screams and came to her aid.
In a way, a small part of him couldn't help but be relieved. Though it was traumatizing for her, it made Foggy see the case in a new light.
{Foggy reminded Harry of Hermione, in that they both took him at his word simply for being their friend, but also needed cold, hard proof in order to wholeheartedly believe it}
Nevertheless, they managed to approve her for bail and took her back with them for protection. It was there that she told the two of them that the reason they wanted her dead was because of the dirt she had managed to stumble upon in her place of work; Union Allied Construction. In fact, it was more than simply dirt-it was a huge illegal money laundering scheme complete with several incriminating files she had lost.
(A heart stuttering was a sign of dishonesty. She hadn't lost them.)
That night Matt wrapped the mask over the top half of his face and followed Karen as she snuck out of his apartment. He listened to her heartbeat as she arrived back at her place and withdrew a hard-drive, unaware of the man behind her who, by the taste of metal in the air, had a well-oiled knife in hand.
Thankfully, he managed to get there a split second before he plunged the blade into her neck, but the man was a difficult fight, and one in which Matt nearly lost.
Matt picked up the hard-drive from where it had slipped between her fingers and promised to show it to the police.
"You can't," she told him, "you can't take it to the police. You can't trust anyone!"
She's not wrong, he thought, and then remembered another effective way of revealing information.
"Then we tell everyone."
\\\
Karen Page wasn't sure what she thought of Matthew Murdock.
Oh, she was endlessly grateful towards him and Foggy Nelson. They, along with the Masked Man, had saved her from almost certain death, wiped her record clean, and had given her a job that felt far better than the work she had done at Union Allied.
It was just...he was so strange.
Everyday he gathered bruises and cuts along his face and arms which made no sense. Sure, he was blind-but he wasn't clumsy. In fact, at times in the office he seemed almost unnaturally graceful, especially when he was focusing on something else. When walking down the street he may have had his white cane tapping away in front of him, but he was always so sure of himself and confident in his steps.
There was also just the general oddness. It was hard to put a name to it, and even harder to describe, but Matt didn't seem to quite...click with the rest of society. Oh sure, he could schmooze with the best of them and had a charisma that put the clients and the rich alike at ease-
-and yet, he just seemed set apart from it all.
They would grab a beer at Josie's and she would pause in arguing with Foggy about something to find Matt with a semi-melancholy smile twisting his lips. Halfway through a conversation he would get a distant look on his face as if recalling something, only to blink and return to reality seconds later.
She asked Foggy about it all once, and he had laughed it off, saying that Matt had always been sort of absent-minded and tended to attract trouble. The bruises and cuts were a little concerning, he confessed, but Matt was both a grown man and a boxer. He could very well take care of himself.
Karen wasn't so sure herself, but she supposed that Foggy had known Matt for much longer than she did, and if he said there was nothing to worry about then there was probably nothing to worry about.
Knowing that didn't stop her from being confused.
How could she? Matt was an enigma; his very existence full of conflicting extremities. He was blind and had been since he was nine years old, yet he was also a boxer and confident in his stride. His movements were smooth, but he'd come to the office in the morning claiming he had fallen down a flight of stairs, or collided with a post, or tripped on a loose stone and fallen face-first onto the cement.
Even so, Karen tried to put it out of her mind. She owed Matt and Foggy an unpayable debt, and at this point they were more than colleagues; they were friends-in fact, her two best friends since childhood.
Besides, Matt was not only competent, he was extremely intelligent. He would come to them in the future if there was any trouble he had gotten himself into, right?
Right?
\\\
Pain.
He was in so much pain. His gut, chest, and left bicep had been stabbed several times, and the wounds were still sluggishly bleeding. He failed to recall how exactly he had gotten from stumbling across the roof to the inside of a half-full, smelly dumpster, but the sharp pain in his shoulder told him he had fallen.
That was sure to leave a bruise.
On the bright side, he was pretty sure he didn't have a concussion, which was frankly a miracle at this point.
The pain and blood loss began to get to his head, and before he knew it the darkness had swallowed him up.
