NOTES:
1. I'm sorry I have been MIA for so long. I got a promotion, which led to more work. Now that things have calmed down I am back and ready to complete this thing!
2. Thank you for everyone still reading/following. But if you abandoned this story, I don't blame you.
3. As always, reviews are amazing! Thanks again!
RECAP: I have gone back in time a bit here to show Matt's POV on things that happened after Jessica was pushed from the window of the scientist's apartment. Basically, this happens before the fight between Matt, Danny and Jessica and before Jessica and Matt shared a few moments in the abandoned building. I wanted to show Matt's first few days with Wilson Fisk and lead his POV to the present state of the story.
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That first night pretending to be under Wilson Fisk's control, Matt had wanted to sneak out of the luxury condo Fisk and Vanessa called home. He wanted to chase across the city to Jessica Jones. He wanted - needed - to know that she was alright. But he knew it was too risky.
Her fall from the scientist's apartment window had been sudden and hard. The sound of her soft flesh colliding with the concrete, the echoing slap followed by the crunch of bone, replayed in his head. He tried to shake it away, but his body was rigid and still as he sat next to one of Fisk's bodyguards on their way back to his new home.
The SUV finally parked in an underground lot. Matt instinctively followed a group of controlled thugs as they each poured out of their vehicles and into the elevator. Then up they went until they hit the top floor.
Wilson Fisk stepped out first, the incredible view from his opulent condo coming into range. Matt followed his new master as he walked further into the space, but no one else did. Matt suddenly realized they were waiting for orders. He froze in place, hoping his indiscretion would not be noticed.
"Everyone but the lawyer leaves," Fisk said, without turning back. Matt could hear the elevator doors slide closed behind him.
"Follow me."
Matt had no choice but to walk behind, trailing the footsteps of the man he hated, up to the second story of the condo. They stopped halfway down the narrow hall and Fisk opened a large door to reveal an even larger room. It was nearly empty, save for a bed covered in clinical looking white sheets and a single down pillow.
Matt stepped inside.
"You sleep now," Fisk told him from the doorway. "Tomorrow we get started."
Matt wanted to ask, started on what? - but he held his tongue.
Instead that night he laid in bed, his body stiff above the covers. He listened to every movement within the condo and let the whistle of the wind against the wall of windows to his right keep him awake.
He thought of Jessica, of their strange team. He wondered if they were together. He hoped they were nursing Jessica back to fighting form - even though he knew she probably didn't need help, that she would protest their aid at every turn. But he hated thinking she was alone somewhere, hurt and worried about him.
Just a few nights before he would have questioned those feelings, but now he understood that their relationship was finally there. Lying in Fisk's guest bed, the rhythmic sounds of Vanessa's breathing creating a lullaby in his perked ear, Matt knew somewhere Jessica was thinking of him just as he was thinking of her. There was no longer any confusion. No longer any guilt. They were partners.
The sun burst over the city far too soon for his liking. When Fisk returned to the room Matt failed to pretend he had been sleeping, and for a moment he wondered if his cover had been blown. But Fisk didn't seem to notice. It was another clue that whatever ability he possessed was a recent acquisition.
When he told Matt to get up and shower, Matt readily complied and any doubt that might have existed slowly faded away.
His first day would be one of second guesses and staggered starts. Matt needed to find his rhythm in a new world of make believe. To do so, he decided to follow whatever order was given without question, but his curiosity was difficult to tamp down. His defiance even harder still. Matt's jaw repeatedly clenched, his skin crawling as Fisk's voice boomed about him. But, again, Fisk seemed oblivious. In fact, Fisk seemed to have something much bigger on his mind.
Yet, he kept his new toy close. When Matt emerged from the bathroom after that shower, Fisk was waiting in his bedroom, sitting rigidly in a chair that seemed too small for his for formidable frame.
"I have a job for you," Fisk told him, as beads of water dripped from Matt's hair onto the hardwood floor. Suddenly, Matt was thankful he'd changed into a suit before exiting the bathroom.
The suit had been provided for him, already hanging in the closet when he arrived. It fit perfectly. It unnerved him.
"Can you handle that?" Fisk continued.
Matt realized he was expected to answer, but no task had been given. This part of the duplicity scared him - how much to question his new master.
But instead of asking what the job was, Matt simply replied. "Yes, I can handle it."
By 11AM, they had buckled themselves into the back of yet another hulking SUV for a drive across Manhattan. A bodyguard sat in the front seat next to the driver, and another beside Matt. They were facing Fisk as he stared out the window looking over New York during their excruciatingly slow journey through the neighbourhood. Matt had never hated city traffic more and was silently thankful that his "blindness" kept him from getting a driver's licence. He couldn't imagine routinely contending with it when there were buildings to be leapt from or alleys to sneak through.
When they arrived outside the offices of Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz Matt's heart sank. He instantly understood the job. He instantly knew Foggy Nelson was the intended target.
"Go inside, find Mr. Nelson, and bring him to me," Fisk said. His voice was flat, and Matt couldn't tell if the levels were to benefit his mind control abilities or because the orders given meant nothing to him. He didn't need Foggy. He didn't care about Foggy. He just wanted to see if Matt would do it. And after step one was complete, Matt knew those orders would only get worse.
Thankfully, Matt also knew Foggy was still out of town and had been for several days. He and Trish had fled the chaos and danger of New York City at Jessica's behest.
But it seemed Fisk didn't know that. It was a gap in his intelligence gathering. Yet another thing Matt was keeping a mental tab of in the hopes that he could tell Jessica - sooner rather than later. Matt knew a private investigator was only as good as the clues she gained.
All Matt had to do was slip inside the building and hide. He couldn't let people see him. Matt Murdock was supposed to be dead. While he had never worked for Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz, he had routinely come across their stable of high-priced lawyers. They were the ones breezing into the courthouse halls in $500 suits, their clients driving away after acquittal in their BMWs.
Matt wondered, if no one saw him, could he simply tell Fisk that Foggy was gone? That he couldn't find him. That the job couldn't be completed as planned. Technically, it wouldn't even be a lie.
So, without further prompting, Matt quickly slid from the backseat and ran into the alley next to the building. He hadn't asked how Fisk wanted him to enter, but the cloak and dagger dramatics didn't seem to bother him.
Perhaps it was because he too knew Matt Murdock was supposed to be a dead man. If anyone saw him, that would bring undue attention to whatever plan he was cooking inside that giant skull.
Or perhaps it was because Fisk suspected Matt was in fact the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.
Matt couldn't be sure, but Fisk wasn't a stupid man. Stupid men might be taken down by lawyers who still used fax machines and held important negotiations over fold out poker tables. Stupid men might be seduced by the innocence of a blind man, thinking he couldn't be a threat. Matt knew Fisk had been incensed that the shabby firm of Nelson & Murdock played a hand in his downfall, so it stood to reason that Fisk would suspect Matt was more than what he appeared. Only a vigilante could take down the mighty Wilson Fisk. Only a man with dark secrets of his own could understand the weaknesses of another.
But it didn't matter. Fisk hadn't revealed to him a desire to see the Devil of Hell's Kitchen back out on the streets - or even Matt Murdock - so sneaking about like a criminal suited them both just fine.
I am a criminal, Matt thought. Or I'm about to be.
Within seconds he had found his way to the rear security wall. Matt went up and over, and then ran into the underground parking lot entrance, using a tuck and roll maneuver to stay out of sight of a departing van.
He jogged up the ramp and into the warm orange glow of the overhead lights. Then he thrust down beside a parked car and waited, his ears perking as the large metal door, held open by the last vehicle, whined closed.
"Are you sure?" a female voice asked from the other side of the underground lot. She was moving closer to his hiding spot.
"You won't get paid until the information is in my hands."
Her heels clacked against the concrete as she took long strides across the garage.
"I think you know what this firm is capable of, what I'm capable of, and if I don't have a location for Jessica Jones by the end of the day the consequences will be on you. Am I making myself clear?"
Jeri Hogarth. Matt had only briefly encountered her once before, a random bump in the courthouse hallway. But he knew she was the lawyer who had once retained Jessica as an investigator. He knew she was Foggy's new boss. And he knew from the steady beat of her heart that when she said, the consequences will be on you, she meant it. She meant something ominous, an act she would have no hesitation putting in motion.
"It's not that difficult. Did you check the bars?"
Matt could hear the man on the other end of the line ask, "Which one?"
"All of them," Jeri replied. "For Christ's sake, one of them has a glowing hand. These people cannot be that hard to track down. You have 12 hours to get it done."
Frustrated, she sighed, cupping the phone in her hand. Turning on her heels she returned to the elevator, the repeated press of the button echoing off the concrete.
Matt listened as she entered, the elevator doors closing with a light thud. When the click of the hands on her watch could no longer be heard, he strode out from his hiding spot.
His head was swimming. Since he'd been back the city was a question he had no answer for. Where once he had known it's every darkened alley, every whispered secret, he was now hovering just above the noise completely blind. The irony wasn't lost on him, and in the lonely parking garage he smiled to himself. The mystery never felt over. Nothing seemed solved.
As he wondered why Jeri Hogarth would be searching for Jessica and the rest of their ramshackle team, the metallic creak of the elevator coming back down forced him back behind yet another car.
Two men exited. They were carrying themselves differently than Jeri had, or any business professional. Their steps were hard, their bodies thick, yet Matt could tell they were trying to be stealthy. They were searching for him.
He must have tripped an alarm or been picked up on camera. Rookie mistake, of course, but he didn't feel himself and maybe that was for the best.
Fisk had said nothing about how he would enter the law offices or bring Foggy out. Maybe he was expecting a scene. Maybe a scene would help solidify the illusion.
Matt knew he would have to fight these men, he would have to hurt them in order to sell the story. He winced knowing they were probably just hired security personnel with wives and kids. Wives and kids who would visit them in the hospital later that night.
The men parted, each taking a side of the garage, moving up between the cars with their guns drawn.
When the first came into reach, Matt leapt forward, his foot connecting with the man's knee. As the man growled in pain, Matt quickly disarmed him, grabbing the black metal weapon and flipping backward over the man. It twisted his hands over his own head. Instinctively, the man continued holding his weapon until both he and Matt heard his shoulder pop loose. The strain was too much. Matt landed hard just behind him, and now fully in control of the gun he tossed it underneath a nearby car.
"Hey!"
Matt turned in time as the second man raised his own gun and fired. The sound bounced off every flat surface and reverberated in Matt's head. He darted behind another vehicle and quickly covered his face, shielding it from the raining glass of a now broken passenger window. As the man continued to fire, Matt counted the shots.
He'd never been particular good at knowing how many bullets each type of gun carried, nor was he good at keeping track of their discharge. But he was trying to teach himself in order to have one more tool in his arsenal.
Thankfully, he could easily detect the click of an empty gun as the trigger was pulled again and again. Matt took that time to grab a handful of thick glass and toss it over the rear end of the car. The second man moved to protect his face, and Matt ran full force into him. The crunch of a broken rib straining under his elbow made Matt's stomach turn.
Yes, they had shot at him. But hadn't he provoked the confrontation by sneaking through their garage, by ducking down behind luxury cars like a thief?
As the second man stumbled back, Matt jumped up and brought his fist down against his face. The man fell unconscious to the concrete.
Without warning, Matt turned and grabbed the neck of the first man, the one moaning in pain over his throbbing shoulder and knee. Matt brought the man's face against the metal of the nearest car door once, twice, three times until he slumped down to the ground next to his colleague.
Quickly scanning the garage, Matt saw no camera, nor did he hear the mechanics of one whirring from side to side. He figured the area was free of recording equipment if people like Jeri Hogarth felt comfortable enough to conduct off the books business there.
He must have set off an alarm when he passed through the garage door. Perhaps a weight sensor. For a second he felt safe - if there were no cameras there would be no footage of an alive Matt Murdock.
He waited, listening to the methodical pace of each man's heartbeat. He knew they would live, of course. But he needed something to distract him. Five minutes more and he could exit the way he'd come in and tell Fisk he'd found nothing. Five minutes more seemed like a reasonable amount of time
When he'd returned to the SUV, Matt played up the encounter, panting harder than such a fight would have really warranted.
"Where's Mr. Nelson?" Fisk asked.
"Not there," Matt told him, staring straight ahead as Fisk ordered the SUV into mid-day traffic. He began rubbing his fist, mimicking an injury.
"What happened?"
"I was attacked by two men." Matt kept his tone flat.
"Did you kill them?"
"No."
Matt worried he had failed the test, but Fisk gave no hint that he cared.
"Home," Fisk said to the driver, and the man behind the wheel obeyed.
Matt slumped down. He was exhausted, not physically, but mentally. His journey to retrieve Foggy for their mutual enemy had been a futile exercise. Perhaps it had proven something to Wilson Fisk, but from Matt's perspective it only hurt two innocent men. And it exposed Matt Murdock to a city who thought he was gone.
Yes, recorded footage was unlikely, but if Jeri Hogarth was looking for the remainder of his team, if she had hired Foggy, hell, if she had ever read a damn newspaper she would know about Matt Murdock and his untimely demise.
There was no doubt those men would tell her what they'd seen: a man in a business suit and dark red sunglasses, a man who could fight, a man who never said a word. If she had been looking for Jessica, Luke and Danny before, he knew he'd only inflamed her desire.
Matt wanted to curse, shake his head, exhale loudly, anything to purge his frustration. Instead, he stayed rigid at the side of his captor, a blank slab of clay ready to be molded.