"Is this all you have?" Matt Murdock asked Foggy Nelson as he pulled the waist of his too-large cargo pants left and right. "I could fit another person in here."
"Hey!" Foggy yelped. "I'll have you know I've been eating really well lately."
"You had mozzarella sticks and beer last night," Matt told him.
"Don't do that, man. It's really messed up."
Matt laughed.
"And dairy and wheat are both on that chart they teach you in school. It's like the number one and two things I should be eating, so…" Foggy let his voice drift, not knowing how else to defend his terrible habits and the state of his old wardrobe.
"Maybe if you had wanted a suit."
"I know, but fighting in a three piece is always a bit weird," Matt joked.
The two had spent the day together, walking the streets of Hell's Kitchen, or rather the alleyways, searching for information on Wilson Fisk's prison escape. Frustrated that he couldn't shake down the criminal element around them, his suit abandoned the night Fisk's men stormed the loft, Matt let Foggy do most of the talking. He was, after all, supposed to be dead. And in the bright sun of New York City, Matt couldn't risk being spotted by a former client, college classmate, or one night stand.
After hours of investigation, including a stop at Trish Walker's luxury apartment left smashed and torn, Foggy had called a few contacts he had at the DA's office, but no one would confirm Fisk's prison escape or even speculate on his current whereabouts.
Dejected, they'd retreated to Foggy's apartment, warm and safe, if only for a moment.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Foggy asked, watching Matt try on a long sleeved black Henley.
Matt was sure his friend knew the answer was yes, of course yes. But Foggy had to ask it, had to do anything he could to keep Matt from venturing into unknown dangers ill prepared.
"Fisk's out there somewhere."
"Yeah, but we don't know where," Foggy reminded him.
"I have a good idea," Matt told him, layering borrowed socks, one over the other, to create a snug fit inside Foggy's heaviest, deadliest boots.
"You have a good idea?" Foggy asked, stunned. "Um, hello. We were out all day and now you tell me."
"I just thought of it."
"Bullshit."
"Alright, I thought of it when we were at Trish's place."
"Trish Walker?" Foggy questioned. "The one you think was kidnapped. The one Jessica Jones went after."
"Why do you say her name like that?" Matt asked as he slammed his cotton clad foot into the boot.
"Like what?"
"Jessica Jones," Matt replied. "I don't know. You make her sound like a client or something."
"Technically, she is."
"You know what I mean, Foggy," Matt stated, his sly smile returning. It hurt less in the evening, maybe because he'd been smiling with Foggy all day - despite the dire circumstances, Foggy just had that ability, the ability to put people at ease. Or maybe it was because the bruise Jessica had left was healing. Matt cursed that thought. Strangely, he wanted it to last.
"You say her name like you're removed from her. I mean, this morning you wanted me to propose marriage and now-"
"No, no. This morning I wanted to make sure my good friend Matt was happy… and maybe getting laid," Foggy quipped.
Matt laughed.
"But that was before you told me about Fisk and Kilgrave and mind control and whatever else Jessica Jones has gotten you into."
"You know she isn't the cause of any of this," Matt replied. "I know you know that."
Foggy sighed. "I don't know what I know. I just don't want you to die again."
XXXXXXXXXX
Fuck it. He's not coming.
"Let's get out of here," Jessica stated, standing from her spot on the cold, hard concrete floor.
"Finally," Trish exclaimed. "We've been waiting for over an hour."
Jessica peered down at her friend, a look of stern resolve on her face. She reached out her hand and pulled Trish up off the ground. She was done waiting to be saved.
"So what happened to needing to be here for when Matt storms the building so we can fight alongside him?" Trish asked mockingly.
"Do you want to leave or not? Because I can just as easily-"
"No, no," Trish interjected, saving herself from hearing a cruel quip, the kind Jessica rattled off when she was angry or annoyed, the kind Trish wasn't in the mood for. "Let's just figure out a way out of here."
Even without Matt's super hearing, Jessica was privy to the flutters of activity on the other side of the room's only door. Earlier she could hear the boom of Fisk's voice, but now it was just periodic shrieks and squeals from the Scientist and snickers from the guards who were easily entertained. She assumed Fisk had left - for the night? For an hour? Jessica wasn't sure she wanted to find out.
"I think everyone's distracted," she told Trish as she backed away from her listening post at the door.
Feeling the walls, just as Trish had earlier done, Jessica looked for weakness in the structure, wondering if she could punch her way through the brick and concrete to the street outside.
"Not so distracted that they won't notice a Jessica shaped hole in the wall" Trish said, close on her heels, her hands trailing behind Jessica's.
"Well, all we need is a few seconds. Once I break through, you run, okay?" Trish nodded in agreement. "I'm serious, Trish. Don't wait for me, don't look back. Just run."
"Just run. Got it," Trish told her with a smile.
"Okay," Jessica replied, a smile creeping onto her own face. "Now back up."
Trish obediently moved back to the door just as it opened, revealing three thugs with guns. She yelped as one grabbed her around the waist, pulling her into the dingy hallway.
"Trish!" Jessica screamed.
As the men attempted to drag Trish away, Jessica picked up a broken splinter of the wooden chair at her feet and lunged toward the one on the right. In a flurry of rage, she stabbed the wood into his shoulder and he screamed as his gun clanked to the floor. Swiftly moving to the next man, Jessica brought wild array of fists to his face before she tossed him against the wall. But within those few seconds, Trish had been pulled away at gunpoint, further into the warehouse. Jessica gave chase, her focus squared on the man holding Trish.
"Jess!" Trish yelped, as she tried to wriggle free from her attacker.
As they moved into the main area of the warehouse, the faux lab of the mad scientist, Matt Murdock made his presence known as the guttural scream of an unseen thug echoed through the shadows.
With everyone's interest captured, Matt finally came into view. Jessica could see he wasn't wearing his red rubber getup. Instead he was clad in black cargo pants and a black Henley, his eyes covered by someone else's scarf. For a second she was jealous… but only a second.
"Where the fuck have you been?" she growled.
"You're welcome," he replied, and Jessica imagined him winking at her underneath his makeshift mask.
She scoffed and pushed him back, not to punish him, but to save him from the onslaught of a crowbar wielded by one of Fisk's men. Jessica caught the bar and yanked it from his hands, forcing the man the ground with a grunt.
Distracted, the man holding Trish let go. She turned on her heel and kicked him in the groin. As he fell, Jessica rushed him, kicking his gun across the concrete floor and out of reach, before bringing her heavy boot down on his face.
Various cliques of thugs, waiting near the van outside or in the back room, and those holding guard on the roof began converging on the centre on the warehouse. Their hurried footsteps alerted Matt to the heightened danger and he instinctively reached out for Jessica, but she was already ushering Trish to the nearest exit.
"Not that way," Matt hissed, sensing the hoard approaching from the other side of the door.
Begrudgingly, Jessica listened and pulled Trish back.
"Which way?" Trish asked.
"Where's Fisk?" Matt countered.
"Gone," Jessica told him as she scanned the room, watching men pour onto the upper balcony of the warehouse, their fists ready, some with guns already drawn.
"We're about to be surrounded," Trish said, but Matt ignored her.
"Gone where?" he asked, still referring to Wilson Fisk.
"I don't know," Jessica told him.
Without warning, Matt rushed one of the gunman approaching from the right, disarming him with a swift kick the the knee. He fell and Matt kicked the machine gun away before beginning an assault of punches on the man's face. Between each bone crushing hit he screamed, "Where's Fisk?"
Trish rolled her eyes. Jessica knew it was involuntary, perhaps meant to be unseen, but she caught it and immediately felt regret. Regret that she had made Trish wait for a man that clearly had an agenda of his own.
Jessica swiftly walked to Matt's side and gripped his shoulder hard, seizing up his right hand and halting his onslaught of punches. Matt groaned under the weight of her strength.
"This is not why you're here," she told him.
"I need to find him."
"No, you needed to find me. I'm the key to whatever bullshit is going on," Jessica began.
"And now you've found her!" Trish shouted from behind them. "So, can we please get the fuck out of here?"
The tone of Trish's voice, the panic, cut through Matt's exterior and briefly broke him free of his quest to find Fisk.
He nodded in agreement, and Jessica's grip on him became a helping hand, forcing him to stand by her side. She motioned to the men rushing towards them from the stairs, and somehow under his borrowed scarf, Matt understood and took up position to fight them one by one.
Trish grabbed the fallen crowbar and began swinging it at anyone who came her way, connecting with several shoulders and hands, the slap of metal on skin saturating the air.
Suddenly, gunfire pierced the din around them, metal clinking on the walls and floor. Errant bullets hit bad guys as Matt began strategically moving his body behind them, regretfully using them as unwitting shields, before he dove behind a stack of steel crates. Trish and Jessica hid themselves behind the only car parked inside the warehouse, flinching each time a bullet pierced it's outer shell.
"We have to get out of here!" Jessica cried to Matt, as he too cowered away from the gunfire. She scanned the room, looking for a clear way to the door. She knew she could take a few gunshots and survive. Her healing abilities were unmatched. But she didn't want to test the theory with a shot to her head or heart. She didn't want to barrel forward just yet.
"I think we can make it," Trish said, her comment directly conflicting with Jessica's own thoughts. Jessica loved how brave, how bold, Trish was - but even she couldn't outrun a bullet.
"I don't know," Jessica replied as the bangs of gunfire increased around them. "I think we should-"
"Shit!" Trish suddenly cried out, as a bullet fragment or stray piece of debris ripped through the car and cut open her arm. A flesh wound, Matt knew, hearing the minor tear and smelling the trickle of blood, but the act inflamed Jessica.
In a moment of rage she flung Trish the 15 feet toward the safety of the steel crates and into Matt's arms.
"Jess, no," Trish pleaded, reading the room, knowing what was coming next.
Jessica stood in defiance and picked up the car and in one swift motion, throwing it against the various gunmen who had lined themselves against the opposite wall. The makeshift firing squad was crushed and Matt was certain a few had perished. He had never experienced the anger that radiated off of Jessica before and hoped he never would again. But he knew he was holding her only family in his arms, her only real connection to the world outside her powers. He understood how the need to protect that could make someone do unthinkable things.
Before he could contemplate on her actions any longer, Jessica had hurled herself against the closest wall, thrusting her body into brick and mortar, forcing it to crack and crumble around her form. In less than a minute, she'd made a hole big enough for them to fit through with ease.
Taking his cue, Matt used his own body to protect Trish against anyone foolish enough to continue firing on them and he ran with her in his arms outside of the warehouse.
Trish groaned, holding her bleeding arm. Jessica was already pulling off the bottom edge of her plaid shift to use as a bandage.
"We gotta go," she said, tying the fabric tightly around Trish's wound before placing her arm around Trish's shoulders.
"You go," Matt told them both. "I'll find out where Fisk went."
He turned away, running back to the warehouse, his feet crashing on the pavement so hard the sound felt like the boom of a jackhammer in his head.
Jessica called after him, "Matt! No!" He ignored her.
Inside, several men were picking themselves up off the ground, but they were in no condition to fight. Blood oozed from cuts on their faces and hands and Matt could hear the rhythmic cracking of broken bones echoing throughout the space. The remainder of Fisk's charge must have fled. Where there once stood dozens now only five or 10 remained.
Marching to the first crippled lackey, Matt felt something crunch under his boot. It was a vile. And it wasn't alone. Scanning the concrete floor, Matt noticed tiny glass shards nearly everywhere. An overturned table in the corner surrounded by more smashed scientific equipment peeked his interest.
What was going on here?
Reaching out, he grabbed a bloodied man lying on the ground and asked aloud, "What are doing here? What's all this for?"
The man only groaned, his body limp. Matt knew he had been hit when Jessica threw the car. He could feel his life draining away. "Where's Fisk?" he growled, hoping to find out before it was too late.
But as the man coughed blood onto Matt's gloved hand, he was overcome with a sense of deja vu. He had been there once before… not in the literal sense, not when he had been there only two nights before saving Jessica. He had once ignored the pleas of his friends. He had once let his emotions get the better of him and abandoned those who needed him. Those failings had allowed The Hand to flourish and, in the end, brought a building down on him. He knew he couldn't make the same mistake again. He couldn't let his past with Fisk run his future.
Gently releasing the man, Matt stood and turned around.
"I've called the cops," Jessica told him. He wondered how long she had been there. "And an ambulance."
Matt could smell salt in the air. Perhaps she had been crying. He didn't want her to see anymore carnage and so he quickly followed her as she turned away.
Within a minute they were down the block in an alleyway. Trish was leaning against the wall playing with tattered edges of her faux bandage.
"Don't do that again," Jessica told Matt, once she knew they were relatively safe.
"Rescue you?" he asked as he removed the scarf, his eyes adjusting to the space around him, Jessica's angry, reddened face coming into partial view.
Jessica scoffed and walked away, slowing moving further down the alley, searching for a hideout on the other side.
"Leave her," Trish finally said, when she thought Jessica couldn't hear.
"What?" Matt asked.
"Don't leave her again," Trish told him. "Don't sacrifice yourself like you did the last time."
"That's not what I was-"
"Hey, you don't have to explain anything to me," Trish interjected. "But I know Jessica and she hates a martyr."
Matt softly chuckled. "Really? Because she sure seems to love sacrificing herself."
"Yeah. Exactly."
Trish eased herself off the wall and silently followed Jessica into the darkness.