Foggy woke up to a much more gentle light...and a *massive* headache.
Man,
he thought,
I gotta quit drinking...
He blinked and shook his head, trying to get the sleep out of his eyes before just giving in and using his finger to roll the debris out of the corner of his eye. The covers surrounding him on the bed didn't feel familiar. Foggy panicked, instantly wondering if he had hooked up with a girl and had just been too drunk to remember...
...until he saw Matt curled up in a nearby armchair, fast asleep himself.
Foggy's memories came back to him in a rush...but none of them made sense. Matt suspected that their client was being framed for murdering her husband by the Chinese triads...and possibly her husband. Jennifer was supposed to be getting treated at the sleep clinic at St. Vincent's, wasn't she? thought Foggy. So where are we? Are we *there*, for some reason...wait, why would I be in a sleep clinic...He checked under the sheets, confirming his suspicions about his lack of clothing. In my boxers and not hooked up to anything?
Matt shifted in the chair, slowly waking up himself. Probably heard the change in my heartbeat, or something...thought Foggy. A few more vague memories returned, something about the Guardians and being Matt's guide dog..."Hey," Foggy called over to his friend when he suspected that Matt was a little closer to fully awake, "guess I flunked out of sidekick training, huh?"
"What makes you say that, Foggy?" asked Matt.
Foggy tried to connect his disjointed memories into a coherent story. "I just figured the Guardians kicked us out and we went drinking or something..."
Matt frowned at his friend, clearly confused by his friend's comments. "We're still at the Guardians' headquarters, Foggy."
"We are?"
Matt nodded. "This is their version of a private hospital room."
Foggy's eyes went wide. Hospital room?! What kind of trouble did I get into that I could possibly need a hospital room...wait..."Why didn't Lanie heal me?" He swallowed down the nervous lump that was starting to form in his throat. "Or did she?"
"She said she couldn't," Matt replied, shaking his head. "something about not wanting to mess with the cocoon..."
"Cocoon?" asked Foggy, now confused himself.
Matt tapped the side of his head. "It'll be easier to explain if you see what I'm seeing."
Okay...thought Foggy, casually jumping into his Sentinel's mind like he was changing the channel on a television. Is that...is that *me*? asked Foggy, his voice showing his amazement with the image. Is that how you see me?
It is now, Matt replied.
Foggy's thoughts hung on Matt's last word. Now?
That glow you're seeing? thought Matt. It's an aura. It's really rare. I don't see it from everybody.
Foggy realized that that nervous lump in his throat was starting to take root in his stomach. You don't?
No, Matt replied. Foggy...every time I've seen this aura, the person who had it had...powers.
And those powers aren't connected to...all this? asked Foggy.
No, thought Matt, although it might be making this easier.
Foggy chuckled nervously. Yeah, I feel it too.
Matt seemed to be in no mood to laugh. Foggy, most of the people who have this aura are Guardians.
Foggy's eyes went wide. He severed the connection, desperately needing to be alone with his own thoughts. "You...you mean...are you trying to tell me I have superpowers?!" he demanded, his harsh whisper showing how little Foggy wanted to hear what he was saying.
Matt shrugged. "I don't know, Foggy. How are you feeling?"
Foggy was starting to feel like the walls of the small room were closing in on him. "I...I need some air," he gasped. Foggy flung the covers off of the bed, stood up to get ready to run out of the room...
...and the door opened by itself, stopping Foggy in his tracks. "Is...it that door supposed to do that?"
Matt was staring at the door, his own level of amazement growing by the second. "I don't know..." He ran his hands over the rough plywood door, surprised to feel no current running through it. A thought struck Matt. Barely able to believe even what he was thinking, Matt had to force himself to get the words out. "Foggy...picture the door closing. In your head."
Foggy and Matt both jumped as the door almost closed on Matt's hand. Foggy was in a full-on panic attack. "I think...I think I need to sit down," he gasped out, stunned to near-speechlessness by what he had seen.
Matt, for his part, seemed unable to take his eyes off the door. "I think we just found your superpower, Foggy..."
#
Matt had never been more grateful to find a punching bag.
The one thing that Stick had drilled into him as a child...and tried to beat into him as an adult...was that anyone close to him was going to get hurt. So it was better for them, and for him, if he kept the world at arm's length. And people did get hurt. He had lost friends. Family. People he loved. Because of who he was and what he could do. What he felt he had to do to protect the people he loved...
"How are you enjoying my boyfriend's punching bag?"
Matt jumped at the voice of the person he didn't recognize. "I'm sorry," he apologized, catching his breath as he stepped away from the bag. "I just...I needed a place to think, and when I found this room...
The girl waved off the apology. "It's all right," she said.
"Your boyfriend won't mind?"
"He's in...Nigeria, at the moment, I think," the girl replied. "I don't think he's going to be using it today."
"Thank you," Matt replied gratefully. He turned back to the bag and resumed his routine, assuming the girl would leave him to his workout.
She didn't. The girl wandered into the room, sitting down at a distance that would allow Matt to freely move around the bag if he chose to. "You really know what you're doing," she complimented him.
"My dad was a boxer," Matt explained between punches. "I paid attention."
"Yeah, you move like a boxer," the girl agreed.
"You sound like you know from experience," said Matt.
The girl smiled, her mind obviously elsewhere. "My boyfriend is a big fan of the sport," she replied. "It's his workout of choice when he wants to blow off some steam."
Recognizing that the girl didn't seem to have any interest in going away, Matt stepped away from the bag a second time. It was only then that he noticed the girl's aura. "I thought I had met all the Guardians," he said.
"I'm not a Guardian...technically," the girl replied. "My dad is."
It didn't take long for Matt to do the math and figure out which of the Guardians would be old enough to have a grown daughter. "Castle's your dad?"
The girl nodded. "I'm what we call a 'flip'. Like your Guide."
"So you know who I am," said Matt.
"Blair and I are old friends," The girl admitted with a smile. "He couldn't wait to tell me about the one and only 'blind Sentinel'."
Matt chuckled. "And here I thought 'Devil of Hell's Kitchen' was the worst nickname I could have gotten stuck with." He offered his hand to the girl. "Matt Murdock," he introduced himself.
"Alexis Castle," Alexis returned in greeting.
Matt turned back to the punching bag and sat down next to Alexis...who conjured up an ice cold bottle of water and handed it to the Sentinel. "Th-thanks," Matt replied, a little dumbstruck by the casual display.
"You're welcome," said Alexis.
"So you're a wizard, too?" asked Matt. "Like your dad?"
Alexis took a sip out of her own water bottle before shaking her head. "Yes, I'm a wizard, but no, not like my dad. A flip has powers, but they're never at the level that a Guardian has. Lanie thinks I have a little more power because of my genetic background, but I'm definitely not the wizard that my dad is."
"Coulda fooled me," Matt countered, amazed that he was having a casual conversation about having differing degrees of superpowers. His mind went back to the label that Alexis had been throwing around. "What's a flip?"
"Our abilities are based in a one-in-a-billion dormant genetic mutation," Alexis explained. "If and when that gene is exposed to massive amounts of energy, it turns on. And whatever powers you were destined to get, you get. We call it a 'flip' because it's kinda like the genetic equivalent of flipping a light switch. One minute you're perfectly normal and the next..."
Matt took a sip of water as he tried to process the explanation. "So that's what happened to Foggy? When he..."
Alexis nodded. It wasn't hard to notice the cloud that fell over Matt's expression. "Wanna talk about it?"
Matt leaned back, resting his body on his hands as he looked up to the ceiling and closed his eyes. "Not really," he sighed.
"Would it help if I told you I almost died before I flipped?" asked Alexis.
That got Matt's attention in a hurry. "You did?"
Alexis nodded again. "We were fighting these giant beasts in Central Park. Long story short I was being protected by a spell that would heal me every time I got injured. When I got mauled, the spell had to heal enough injuries that it created an overabundance of magic energy. That flipped me. And here we are."
"Wow," Matt mouthed before taking another sip of his water. "So is it like that for everyone?"
"There aren't a whole lot of people who've ever flipped," Alexis replied, "but yeah, so far it seems like a near-death experience is usually what kick-starts the process."
Matt turned away from Alexis' gaze. He gave careful thought to Alexis' explanation before he spoke. "When I was a kid, I was trained by this old man called Stick. Blind, like me. Had the whole hypersenses thing, too."
"Was he a Sentinel?" asked Alexis.
Matt chuckling bitterly. "He hates people. With a passion. He even left me when he thought I was getting too close to him-and I was eleven at the time. According to Stick, anyone in my life is only destined to get hurt, so that's why he keeps people as far out of his life as humanly possible."
"So he doesn't have a Guide, then?"
Matt shook his head. "The whole concept would probably piss him off to no end..." his voice trailed off as his thoughts went back to the reason he needed to find a punching bag in the first place. "Maybe he's got a point."
Alexis seemed to take a moment to consider the idea. "Would it help if I told you that unguided Sentinels are usually bat-shit crazy?"
Matt sprayed water out of his mouth in a violent spit-take, inhaling some of the liquid up his nose. "What?!"
Alexis nodded. "That's what Blair's told me, anyway. He met a Sentinel like your friend Stick once. She was a thief. A loner. Fiercely independent." She leaned in in a 'conspiratorial' whisper. "She also tried to kill Blair in an attempt to push Jim off the deep end."
Matt paused as he thought about how closely the description of an unguided Sentinel matched what he had seen from Stick. Then his mind settled on the last part of Alexis' comments. "I don't know..."
Alexis turned to face Matt, then turned him so she could look at the man face-to-face. "Look, being a loner is no way to live. If there's one thing I've learned from this place it's that we need relationships in our lives to become the person we're destined to become. Sentinels and Guides are the greatest examples of this. Sentinels are pretty extraordinary people all on their own. But they're nowhere near as incredible as they can be unless they have a Guide in their life helping them out and watching their backs. In my mind, it's one of the most amazing relationships there is."
"But the risks..." Matt argued weakly.
"Are worth it," Alexis declared. "Blair would tell you the same."
Matt opened his mouth to protest, then closed it when he found out he had no argument left. Save one. "Is Foggy going to be in danger? Because of...all of this?"
"Honestly?" Alexis replied. "He probably is, yeah. But I have a theory of my own about that."
"You do?" asked Matt.
Alexis nodded. "I think that the universe usually balances out a Guide's 'trouble magnet' tendencies by giving them powers of their own. So they can defend themselves."
Matt glared warily at Alexis. "And you're basing this on...?"
"Well, Foggy's the second flipped Guide I've ever met, so..."
Matt nearly choked on the last of his water. "Second?!"
Alexis smiled. "I'm surprised Blair didn't tell you himself. He's a wizard, too."
#
A/N: It feels like I talk about flipping a ton, so for those who might be wondering how rare a flip really is...So far, over the course of the series, I've counted eight flips outside of the Guardian tradition (and North Star, where all the flips were temporary): Henry Morgan, Blair Sandburg (although that might be debatable), Bruce Banner, Stephanie, Alexis, Skye (who's more of a Guardian kid (like Ryan's youngest) than an actual flip), Raina, and now Foggy.
Eight flips in the entire world sounds pretty rare to me :-) But if I'm forgetting anyone, feel free to remind me in the comments.