Chapter Text
The first time Matt heard what a mutant was, he was watching television with his dad. They had the TV positioned where they could see the news while they ate, his dinner growing cold as he stared at the people on the screen, enraptured. He didn't know humans could come in that many shapes or sizes.
"They're not humans, Matty."
He blinked, turning to look at where his father was staring into his pasta with his jaw set. "What do you mean?"
"Mutants are something else. They can do things that humans can't, once they get stressed enough for their bodies to break down." Dad chuckled lowly, pointing at the main guy on the screen, bald and always seated. "He can read minds."
"No way."
"Yeah. So he knows you haven't finished your homework and need to hit the books once your plate's up."
"Dad…"
"No buts." He held up a splinted finger, pointing with a frown. "The Murdock boys have never been more than brawlers and bodies, Matt. You need to be better than that. You're already better than that. You put the time in, and you're making a difference."
Matt knew the Murdocks didn't get far before him. His dad drilled that into his head. He was going to be better. He was going to finish school. He wasn't going to die young like all the rest. He never really considered why they always got drafted into that sort of work, why his dad could take the punches so easily in the ring until he exploded with power he didn't have. His grandmother said that was the Devil, the wretched thing the Murdock boys always had deep inside. Who would consider that it was a real genetic anomoly?
And who would believe it to grow out of control with a splash of radioactive chemicals and a desperate need to survive?
"Stop acting like it's not a part of you, kid."
Matt ducked the staff ready to swipe him on the ears, a frown engraved on his face. He was getting better at knowing where something was without seeing it, hearing the notches in the wood whistle through the air and smelling the lacquer before it could knock into his face. Stick wasn't impressed. He was never impressed.
Like hiding a demon tail from his caretakers wasn't incredibly impressive. Stick made the records of his mutation disappear to show his confidence in his future, but Matt was the one selling the idea that the blind kid needed a leg brace on top of that. His best bet was to shove the rope of muscle and sinew in his pants, curled around his calf where no one would check on it. If he pouted enough at the idea of swimming or changing to shorts in the summer, adults assumed he had scarring he was ashamed of and didn't push it. He mentioned once that he hit the ground wrong during his accident, testing if that was a good enough excuse, and the nuns took that as gospel without checking the facts. Stick coming in to "help him learn to live blind" gave him plenty of supposedly medical treatment without them checking in.
Well, he is learning to live while blind. He simply has a wrench thrown in of an entirely new appendage that he can't keep out of his way once he allowed it to move. Stick easily targeted it with another whack, making Matt groan and drop his bo staff. "That hurt."
"Your enemies don't care if it hurt, boy. You have a weak spot plain as day and you're not protecting it." Stick's breath sizzled through crooked teeth, the telltale sign he was going to give the same lecture he always did while beating Matt into the ground. "I was born blind. Blind and human. I don't have radioactive sonar." A slap to the shoulder, reminding Matt to pick up his stupid staff. "Or mutant mouth organs that let me sense heat." Matt got a rap to the base of his skull when he bent to retrieve his weapon, too slow to bring it up in time to defend himself. "Or whiskers on my tail to tell me when the air moves." Matt bristled, sidestepping the next attack only for Stick to feint and sweep his legs out from under him. "And yet I'm still laying your ass out."
Matt flicked his tail, swallowing as he focused his senses. He could feel the hairs raising, picking up on the vibrations in the air as he rattled his tailtip. He knew what Stick looked like, since every movement made his pants stretch or staff creak. But if he waited and honed in, he could pick up more. The way his heart stays steady in the heat of a scuffle. His bones grinding, like he broke them decades ago and they still hold the telltale cracks. A sharp inhale, and Matt didn't just know that Stick was drinking bad sake that morning. He could detect the warmth of the breath leaving his mouth, preparing for another swing. Matt pushed back on his hands, sending both feet flying to meet him. The power behind the kick snapped the staff in half, and with a twist of his tail to maintain balance, he landed a foot away without breaking his ankles along with it.
Stick's lip twitched in a smile before he forced the movement to halt. Matt barely caught it, turning his head to commit the sound of his skin stretching to memory. Stick was never proud of him. Not like his father was. Somehow, that made the crushing expectation of greatness worse.
"So you didn't lie down and take it. I'd consider it an improvement if you were smart enough to not get knocked down in the first place." Stick soured his sense of pride with a laugh, light and low. "Would've thought your daddy taught you that."
That was it, the breaking point, the place where their little dance always went off beat and left the music behind. Matt snarled in frustration, animalistic, and twisted the staff in a vice grip for his tail before it transferred to his hand and went flying like a javelin. It wasn't even close to hitting Stick, soaring so far to his left that he didn't have to move. Stick, ever the disappointed mentor, tsked.
"And you're still too angry. You're never completing your training like that."
"I don't care about training!" Matt snapped, lips curled. "What big threat do you need a blind mutant for? Who's going to come at us with sticks and not-not guns?"
"I'm not training you to deal with mobsters, I'm putting you to work against—"
"A cult of ninjas who don't exist." Matt smacked the spade head of his tail on the mat, feeling every inch of disappointment emanating from the man across from him. "They aren't the ones who killed my dad. Why should I care about them?"
Stick's heartbeat increased, drumming to a thought process Matt wasn't privvy to. "Is that really why you do this?"
Matt snorted. "The legal system didn't catch him. I can hear Roscoe Sweeney getting drunk at the bar two blocks away every weekend. Meanwhile, I can't find any proof of the Hand outside of your stories."
"I will know if you go after him, Matt. The moment you lay a hand on him, your training's over. We're done."
Matt rolled his eyes. Yeah, right. Stick's been training him for years for a day that would never come. He wouldn't fuck off the one time Matt puts his skill to use.
Matt was a high schooler, who medical teams were forced to say wasn't able to do much after losing his eyesight. Plenty of kids lost their parents to Roscoe Sweeney. There's a dozen more likely suspects. No one would catch him. He just had to tie a scarf over his head to hide his face, and the pants he pulled a hole through for his tail were handmedowns, soon to be ditched. He simply hung around corners, listening to that sickening voice plot out the next person he'd shoot for not throwing a fight.
One dark night, he heard the bullet line up in the chamber. He wrapped his tail around Sweeney's ankle, hitting his head on the pavement with a crack. He could feel the buzz of lights around him, taste the warmth pooling over his covered face. The poor soul who Sweeney tried to kill sounded like he was going to have a heart attack and keel over anyway. Matt didn't want to give himself away by speaking, instead pulling zip ties he pilfered out of his pocket and lashing Sweeney to the nearby fire escape. The cops had a witness, a gun with his fingerprints, and someone with more bruises than a simple takedown warranted. Hey, Matt was angry.
And the only description the witness could give of their savior was a devil's tail, red as vengeance, as justice, as the blood on the ground. Fine bristles along the spine, raised to feel someone coming before they could strike. Too thin to hold substantial weight, certainly, but long enough to crack like a whip and snake by unseen. The pointed tip made the softest sounds, little vibrations as the segments to the spade knocked together like a rattlesnake's tail. They heard it when the victim tried to grab the stranger, only to be warned off with the dark hiss and a stern look. No one could find the devil who did it, disappearing into the dark again with wickedness duly punished.
True to his word, Stick never returned. Matt didn't know if he should be sorry for that. He hid his powers because Stick told him to, a weakness that he shouldn't show off. Now, police are looking for a point-tailed mutant, and Matt was in the clear of suspicion as long as they don't catch him with his pants down. He listened to the news on it while he worked on his college essay, twitching his tail around his ankle so the feedback of the rattle gave him a clear picture of everyone's reactions. The nuns seemed horrified. The kids whispered excitedly.
He didn't know his tail was red. The next time a kid loudly asked why he wore glasses everywhere, Matt took them off and asked what his eye color was, since he couldn't tell. Red. Enough to make the kid cry, declaring Matt's eyes were bleeding.
Huh. At least he can pass that off as permanent damage. He shrugged, turning back to a letter he couldn't read. He could feel the embossed logo on it, Columbia University's crown stamped proudly at the top of the page. He'll have to ask someone else if this is an acceptance letter or not.
Matt promised his dad he would be better than the other Murdocks. He needs to save people who are hurt, who can't go backflipping into alleyways to dispense justice. It felt great, but he didn't want to be another brawler or body. He wasn't interested in ninja wars when his home town needs help.
And he can give it, with his full ride to a law degree.
"Matt Murdock?"
His freedom was short lived. Matt got his own room (a very, very, small one, practically a closet) in the orphanage out of pity when he was a kid. It meant he could have time looking like himself, without anyone judging it. It also meant he could feel how isolating it was for everyone to treat him like he's made of glass. Due to that, and despite the college's protests, he insisted that he didn't want a dorm alone. He wanted a roommate.
So, he made sure he had everything tucked away and his glasses hiding demonic eyes before he turned his head away from his desk. He knew his roommate's name, read off of a paper sent to him months ago. "Are you Franklin?" He asked, standing and waiting for the man to speak again so he could get a better read on him.
"Foggy. My friends call me Foggy." His jacket made swsh swsh noises, made of polyester and dripping plp plp plp of water onto the carpet. Matt could feel the rain on his hand as he gripped it, shaking it with a smile. "Are you from Hell's Kitchen?"
"Born and raised."
"Dude, I knew it! I saw you on the news. Totally crushed your leg saving that old guy."
"I didn't crush it, just got a permanent addition to it." Matt tapped his leg, keeping his tail from moving under his loose pants. "It's just some balance issues, nothing I can't handle."
"That's gotta suck, with the…" The air warped as Foggy gestured to his face, long hair scrunching. He slapped his own forehead, sucking in his teeth. "Just realized how that sounded."
"…I assume bad enough to hit yourself?"
"Sorry."
"No offense taken." He cleared his throat, tapping his fingers in a rhythmic drumming to keep his attention fully on this room. Roommates won't work unless he knows Foggy can be trusted. "People love to treat me like I'm different. Like I'm some…exception to the rule. I hate that."
"Yeah, you're just a guy, right?" Foggy's steady, calm, not suspecting anything, taking everything in stride. Matt relaxed a bit, leaning his weight on the back of his chair. Maybe this was someone he could let close. Someone he could trust. Be himself around.
They're still looking for the man with the devil tail. The cops are slow acting, and don't believe everything they hear, but he can't risk it until they fully announce it to be nonsense. Foggy's from Hell's Kitchen, so he may know the case. He doesn't want to be put in handcuffs and dragged away from the one place where he can say he wants to be normal, and someone else believes him. He can't give up on his father's dream for the Murdock boys to be better than brawlers.
He has to wait. Matt went back to his desk, still organizing his random devices that he's accrued over the years for navigating the world. He could hear Foggy shuffling around behind him, zippers pulling as he took out some long length of cloth. Probably his bedsheets.
"So, do you have all your classes set?" Foggy asked, waiting until he wasn't fluffing his pillow to speak. It was kind of him to make sure he's audible, although Matt could hear him anyway. He could hear him if he was outside the building and down the block, if he concentrated.
"Wanted to get my pre-reqs out of the way before digging into the actual law stuff. Literature, art, science—"
"—which science? Maybe we're in the same one."
"Uh." Matt fiddled with his cords, keeping his voice steady. "Intro to Humans and Mutants."
"You going for the lawmaking angle?"
"What?"
"You know. Learn how superpowers work, get in Congress, make a bunch of rules about it."
"No. I'm taking it because it won't require me drawing out a bunch of diagrams of…you know, chemical compounds. And stuff." The excuse burned his tongue, thrown off by how Foggy stayed so calm. He thought he'd have to fight harder on this. He really didn't care, did he? Matt had the truth sliding out before he knew it. "I don't think it's right to force people to report their mutation. Or to legislate the use of powers. Some people probably use them to live normal lives, you know? It's not fair to take that away from them." He tilted his head, listening to Foggy stop. His heart didn't change, but his breathing did, exhaling entirely through his nose.
"Huh. Never thought about it like that." Foggy's jacket rustled as he shrugged his shoulders, then went right back to folding his covers. "I heard the teacher's a mutant."
"Really?"
"Yeah. My mom got a bit freaked out over it, but nothing bad's happened in her classes, as far as I could find." Foggy leaned over to give him a friendly knock on the shoulder. "Maybe I should try to transfer in, yeah? Sharing some classes wouldn't be so bad."
"You'll have some problems cheating off my notes," Matt informed him, holding up his transportable braille reader with an impish grin. Foggy snickered, shaking his head.
"Screw you, man."