Chapter Text
A full belly does not make for a chaste spirit.
Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue.
It's an old game he and Stick used to play. Maybe not a game; something more like a test.
"Tell me what you taste."
Stick bought him an ice cream, the first time, but the game quickly expanded. From plain white rice (so much hiding in something so simple), to jerk chicken from Restaurant Row (Stick would make him pick out every last spice, in order of volume, then list their origins). Every wrong answer meant the swift crack of Stick’s cane across his shoulders or a jab behind the knee.
If he omitted an ingredient, he'd have to keep eating until he got them all—even if he'd already identified after the tiniest bite, say, the soiled band-aid the short-order cook had dropped in the chili and left to stew all day.
"Accuracy is important," Stick would proclaim, tapping his fingers on the table.
Even now, decades later, Matt can hear the sound while he eats: a repetitive staccato vibrating in his skill through every mouthful of chicken cacciatore, vinegar-soaked fish and chips, garlicky street-vendor shawarma.
The girl's cries resonate through the alley behind the office, bouncing off the brick walls and slipping through the slats of the metal fire escapes before reaching his ears. Matt freezes, one hand wrapped around his half-drunk beer, and listens. He tries to crane his neck ever-so-slightly to pinpoint the source; subtly, so Foggy and Karen don’t notice.
Three blocks away? he thinks, but before he can get a better triangulation on the source the girl's whimpers fade, and he can't quite... CRACK.
The heavy sound of knuckles connecting with jawbone and the girl cries out again, louder, before cupping a hand over her mouth to try and muffle her own sobs. She sounds young, her voice too thin and high to be any older than thirteen or fourteen.
"Matt?" Karen touches his knee.
"Huh?" He whips his head towards her, realizing she's probably just asked him something. "What's up?" He’s still trying to split his attention, between the lively conversation around his coffee table—Karen, sitting on the floor, her cheeks and the tips of her ears glowing hot with happiness and whiskey, Foggy laughing from the kitchen as he clinks ice into a glass—and whatever the fuck is happening half a mile away.
Stop crying. A man's voice, deep and harsh—pack-a-day smoker's rasp to it. Between the weight of that slap and the bass in his voice, the guy sounds big. Did you take his wallet? Answer me. You know that's not how we do business around here. She doesn't say anything, and another slap rings out.
"I said, I missed this," Karen repeats. "The three of us."
Please mister, I didn’t, I swear, please, mister. She’s begging him now. She’s talking fast, but her mouth sounds slow and thick; Matt can’t tell if it’s because she’s talking around the fat lip he’s just given her, or because she’s panicked, or because somebody’s drugged her up to make her more compliant. Maybe it’s a tie between all three.
"Cheers to that," Foggy agrees, settling down onto the couch and raising his glass. "To Nelson & Murdock & Page, reunited and it feels so good. God, we need a better trio moniker than that. The Crime Busting Trio. The World-Changing Champions. Two avocados and their spicy friend-slash-secretary... we're guacamole?"
"You're drunk," Karen laughs, smacking him on the arm. "But thanks for trying to include me."
Quiet, the man barks. Then, speaking to someone else—maybe over the phone? We’ll get you another girl, no charge. Or boy. Anything you want. We’ve got lots of young ones—better than this one. We’ll make this right. We sincerely apologize for the the inconvenience tonight’s events have caused. The prostrating formality sounds stiff but genuine; he doesn’t sound like a muscle, he sounds like a man with equity in the situation.
"I need to do something real fast," Matt says quickly, hoping that Foggy can read the please don’t ask look buried under the nothing’s wrong, I am definitely paying attention to this conversation smile on his face. "Half an hour, tops."
"Do something?" Foggy echoes, confused for a second, before he huffs: "Oh. Tonight? Come on."
"I'm missing something," Karen says, glancing between them. "Am I missing something? Are you two still doing the whole keep-Karen-out-of-the-loop thing again, cause”–
The man's phone rings. Hello? Yeah, it's been dealt with. Yeah. Yeah, trust me, won't happen again after I'm done with her. Make sure the other girls hear about it, too.
“You’re both drinking me out of house and home, and I need a walk, so I’m going to pick up booze and tacos. Tequila—you like tequila, right Karen? It’s celebratory.” He sets his still-half-full beer down on the table with a practiced I-don’t-know-quite-there-the-table-is-oh-there-it-is. It feels weird to put on the blind theatrics for Foggy—whenever he does, he can sense the look Foggy shoots him: you know very well where the table is, Matt Murdock.
“We still have beer,” Karen says brightly. “Or we could come with?”
Pleadingly, Matt furrows his brow—come on, Foggy, give me an out.
“Alright,” Foggy sighs, playing along. “But you better bring back at least a half dozen each of chorizo and birria—and the good salsa—or else it’s friends off. And be careful, you hear me?”
Please—another scream needles its way into his brain, high and sharp, quickly followed by the sound of a handgun being cocked by strong, experienced hands—please, I’ll be good, please.
“The taco place is like four blocks away.” Karen laughs, waving a drunken hand in the general direction of Paco’s Tacos. “I think he’ll manage. Just don’t leave us drinking alone for too long!”
"You'd be surprised," Foggy grumbles.
"I won't," Matt promises. “I’ll be back soon.”
He has to do without the devil suit. Not that there’s time for that, anyway. He’s barely maintaining his focus on their voices, their breathing, and he can’t risk losing them.
Matt takes off at a full sprint, still in his dress pants and button-down, sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He weaves through alleys and across traffic, nearly catching a face full of taxi bumper, until he’s pretty fucking sure he’s standing in front of the right building. They’ve gone silent, for the moment, and he tries to scan the floors for movement while pulling on the blindfold he’d managed to snatch on the way out without Foggy or Karen noticing.
Then: “You ever going do that again?”
The man’s growl is clear as day. This is the right building. Third window up, second from the left—no fire escape access, but enough window ledges and exposed pipe that it doesn’t really matter. Matt begins to climb.
More rustling; heavy footsteps; a sound like palms and heels on carpet. Like someone is injured and trying to get away.
“Didn’t think so,” the man continues, and Matt could swear he could just about hear his wet-mouthed smirk.
Just like he could just about swear he can hear the surprise on the man’s face when he kicks the window in.
“Who the fuck are”—
Matt’s dress shoe connects with the guy’s jaw, hard enough to knock three of his molars loose. He hits the ground hard, like a sack of wet meat. Quickly, Matt takes a second to listen hard: no incoming footsteps, no quickening heartbeats in the hallway. All clear, no second-rung heavies to worry about.
The guy’s trying to push himself back up, gun still in his hand—he’s as big as Matt guessed, easily two-eighty and well over six feet. A real brick shithouse; all muscle and fat. Matt kicks him in the ribs before he can get any leverage, four times, hard, and launches himself onto the man’s face, one two three punches to the throat, nose, jaw.
He feels his skin split on the last punch, when the fucker’s front tooth chips itself on the knuckle of his ring finger—he was hoping that he wouldn’t come home with something to explain, and he gets the hamster ball in his brain rolling on how he’ll explain his bloody hand when he gets back.
The guy’s stopped moving, now, and Matt takes a second to catch his breath, half-collapsed on the goon’s gigantic (still-shallowly-breathing) chest. He tells himself to be glad the guy’s heart is still beating; he also knows, deep down, he wasn’t that worried about it.
The other heartbeat in the room is skipping along at a rabbit-like pace and Matt pulls himself off the thug. Turns his face toward her. She’s crouched in the corner, half-obscured by the bedside table. “Hey,” he says, voice low, holding one open hand out toward her reassuringly, “Are you okay? You’re safe now.”
She just stares at him, hyperventilating, and he realizes he was right. She’s just thirteen, maybe fourteen. Gangly and skinny. She reeks of cheap lip gloss; he can barely smell it over the reek of liquor and latex hanging in the air. Matt tries to force the smell from his nose, shaking his head and exhaling hard like a spooked horse.
“It sounded like you needed some help.” He stays crouched low. He doesn’t want to move and risk scaring her.
“I was just trying to get home.” Her voice is shaky and slurred, like before. Underneath the lip gloss, Matt can smell the blood weeping from the split in her lip.
“This is an apartment building, right?” Matt asks. “Do you live here? Do you need to get out of here?”
“Nobody lives here. It’s just for entertaining.” Entertaining. The word, painted in her tiny, shaky voice, makes him want to throw up. “I was just trying to get home,” she says again. She’s starting to cry, now that the panic has worn off and she’s realized she’s safe, “Just trying to get on a bus and go home, I can’t call my mom, she’d be so… I took his wallet, I didn’t think he’d notice ‘til after, and then maybe I could’ve”– she cups a hand over her mouth and sobs quietly. A learned sort of quiet.
“This guy’s wallet?” Matt points to the big guy on the floor. He’s started making a rasping noise, a crushed-windpipe sort of sound that gives Matt a sick sense of satisfaction.
“No,” she says, like it’s a stupid question. Her tense muscles start to relax; she’s still crying, but she settles down, cross-legged on the grimy carpet and presses the back of her hand to her mouth, dabbing at the cut. “The client’s. He’s nice to me and he brings me presents; I thought he wouldn’t be mad. He always tells me he loves me.” She freezes, pointing toward the thug: “Is he going to die?”
“Probably not.” Matt tries not to say it too regretfully. “What’s your name?”
"Pixie.” It's an obvious street name—she probably wouldn't have told him otherwise. It doesn't matter, anyway.
"Runaway?" He senses her nod. "And who's he?" Matt prods the big guy with his foot.
"Don’t know.” the girl says quietly. "He drives us around and waits outside ‘til the clients are done. I think his name might be Carl?"
Matt feels his fists clench and unclench, blood pounding in his ears. It's all he can do to ask without raising his voice: "And who's in charge of him?"
She touches a hand to her busted lip again and winces. The adrenaline is wearing off; Matt can tell she’s starting to really feel the hurt of the beating that piece of shit Carlos-or-whatever gave her. Even so, her tears have stopped almost entirely, now. "Mikey.”
He exhales and shuts everything down—shuts out the noises on the street, the vibrations of the subway, the smell (god, the smell) in the room. He forces them out of his head and focuses on her alone. "Mikey who, Pixie?"