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Chapter Text

Captain America stopped by Nelson and Murdock about two months after the mess in Germany. He turned up at the office wearing a baseball cap (Mets, Matt would be delighted to hear) and sunglasses, but he was still very definitely Captain America.

Karen let out a squeak, when she realised who it was. She used to think if she ever met any of her heroes, she'd be cool and nonchalant.

Hah. So much for that.

“I’ll get one of the lawyers for you right away, sir," she said, reigning in the sudden urge to ask for an interview for the Bulletin.

This was Captain America.

He had been in her history textbook. He was a real life superhero. Not like Daredevil, who she'd met briefly a couple of times before he'd melted away into the shadows. This wasn't someone who hung around a single neighborhood beating up muggers and crime bosses.

This was an Avenger.

He probably had all sorts of insider information.

The journalist in her was finding it difficult to be a secretary, right now.

“Don’t worry, I’m happy to wait.” He sat down on a stool and started flicking through the books. He seemed fascinated by the mixture of Punjabi and Spanish literature and Braille kids stories.

Act cool, Karen. Act cool.

You are a serious journalist.

You went head to head with Frank Castle and came out alive. You can be cool.

You are cool.

Super cool.

“Would you- would you like a cup of tea? Or coffee?” she asked, hovering.

“Cof-”

“Don’t let her make you coffee!” came a shout. Foggy.

Karen made a face in his direction, then remembered Captain America was there.

How dare he! How dare he! Her coffee was not that bad.

Well, Matt appreciated it, at least, and she trusted Matt's judgement about how things tasted far more than Foggy's.

Foggy put ketchup in his mac 'n' cheese.

He couldn't say anything.

Steve looked up to see a soft man with hair that reminded him of Bucky’s, but blond and better kept.

He was wearing a suit with the air of someone who wears suits because it is part of their job, not because they particularly want to.

His tie had dinosaurs on it.

He held out a hand for Steve to shake: “Foggy Nelson.”

“Steve Rogers.”

“What can I do you for, Mr. Rogers? Before Karen accidentally poisons you with her atrocious coffee.”

The woman in question threw a little rubber duck at him. It bounced off his shoulder. Nelson ignored it, so Steve decided it was probably a common occurrence. In all honesty, Steve thought he probably deserved it, but he hadn't tried the coffee yet.

“I’m not actually here for myself," he said. "My friend, James Barnes. Spider-Man said you guys could help.”

From what he'd seen so far, he wasn't convinced.

Nelson looked pensive for a moment, and Steve started to worry. Was that not the right thing to say?

“Matt, get out here!” Nelson called.

A neatly dressed man emerged from the other office, and this guy had been made for suits. Steve imagined he probably wore one on his days off. He had a shock of red hair and wore sunglasses indoors.

Steve couldn’t help but be reminded of Tony.

“I see we have a potential client! Matt Murdock,” said the man, sticking his own hand out in slightly the wrong direction and smiling.

“Matt, it’s Captain America,” Nelson hissed. “Also, it’s an ixnay on the blind jokes. They just make the clients uncomfortable. It isn’t nice.”

Oh.

Ooh. Right. Not like Tony. Sunglasses actually have purpose other than looking like an asshole.

Noted.

“Fair enough,” Murdock said, dropping his hand. Steve realised he hadn't actually shaken it. Oops. “Let’s all go sit down, shall we. Karen, could you make the good Captain a cup of coffee please? Thanks.” 

Karen bustled off into the kitchenette. So he would get to try this coffee after all. He had to admit he was curious now, although it was possible Murdock had just done that to get back at him for the handshake.

Nelson elbowed Murdock in the ribs. Steve winced in sympathy. Probably the handshake.

Murdock looked at his partner, affronted. Or- sort of looked.

Faced.

“What was that for? Karen’s coffee is fine.”

“No it isn’t. You’re just a caffeine addict. Now, be professional,” Nelson looked up at Steve and flashed him a bright smile just this side of sanity. “Apologies for my partner, he was working on a tenement case all night."

They moved into the conference room, which had slightly less paperwork and a bigger table with actual chairs, and crayon drawings framed on the walls. Steve wondered if they had been drawn by clients or family members. He suspected clients, if the reading material in the reception had been any indication.

"So, Spider-Man recommended us?”

“He did, yeah,” Steve wasn’t really sure why he’d trusted the kid at this point. These people didn’t feel like proper lawyers. Their offices felt too personal, to comfortable.

They felt too human.

“Good kid,” Nelson said.

“You know him?”

“He’s a client. Matt here got him out of the Raft.”

The Raft?

Wow, okay.

Maybe first impressions were wrong and these guys were actually something.

He was sure he recognised their names, come to think of it. There had been a story about a mob boss in the papers, a couple of years back. And... Castle?

Through SHIELD, Steve had made it his job to keep up to date on the masked and unmasked psychos running around dispensing justice as they saw fit, though he had to admit he hadn't paid much attention to Frank Castle's file. Presumed dead didn't put him especially high up the priority list, but he was pretty sure he remembered seeing these lawyers there. If they'd defended Castle, that might be a reason they'd feel comfortable doing the same for Bucky. However much it pained him to think of those two in the same sentence.

Why hadn’t he done his research?

“James Barnes. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, yes?” Nelson continued.

“Yes,” Steve confirmed, snapping out of his thoughts.

“Spidey said you’d be around.”

“The Accords,” Murdock interrupted. “I want to let you know up front, we’d be planning on using the Barnes case as a stepping off point to fight the Accords. Or at least get them amended. Show enhanced people that they're human too, deserve the same rights as everyone else.”

Wow.

Oh, wow.

That was not what Steve was expecting, although potentially it should have been.

What with the circumstances in which he’d been given their names, and all.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea," he told them. He also remembered something about the Castle trial having gone badly. "Bucky’s case is… well, the Accords were supposed to make people feel safer. Bucky’s not exactly a poster boy for repealing them.”

He really wasn’t. Oh, how Steve wished he was. But looking back on it, even before Hydra, he’d been violent.

Protective, but violent.

Steve remembered a few too many incidents in the schoolyard.

He'd been the cause of a couple of them, when the bigger boys from round the block had decided the tiny asthmatic kid was getting too aggressive. Bucky had been very good at bailing him out.

Not that Steve had appreciated it at the time.

“He’s high profile,” Murdock explained. “We get him acquitted, we can use that credibility to speak out. He's also possibly the best example of the fact that governments can and will use enhanced registration and the stripping of their rights as an avenue to turn people into weapons. I know he’s your friend, I wanted to be clear about our agenda before you choose to work with us.”

Curious. They’d already thought this through. He kicked himself a little for the lack of research he'd done coming into this meeting. Natasha would be having words with him, if she ever found out.

Anyway, they seemed to have their hearts in the right place, and that was good enough for Steve. He didn't exactly think he had many options. He also found he actually liked these lawyers, which was a nice change from the ones he'd met surrounding either of the Starks he'd worked with.

“Thanks for your transparency," he said. "If you think it'll work, that’s a good thing. I’m pretty sure the whole world knows my stance on the Accords. Can I ask why you’re so against them?”

“Someone needs to be,” Murdock said. “They aren’t right. Spider-Man was sent to the Raft illegally, having done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that through blackmail. I’m all for regulating the Avengers, but you aren’t the only enhanced people out there, and most of them just want to live their lives in peace. The Accords a violation of the constitution and, more importantly, basic human rights.”

Was this all for the Spider-kid? Or were there other enhanced people in the mix?

But then again, the kid was probably worth it. "I'm guessing you were the one on the phone with Spidey in Germany?”

“That information is protected by attorney client privilege.”

Yes, then.

Good to know. These people had been there, in Germany, in spirit if not in person.

On his side.

“So, Bucky Barnes. The Winter Soldier,” Murdock brought them back to the case at hand. “Do you mind if I record this for note taking purposes?”

Steve waved a hand vaguely. There was no response.

“He’s waving his hand vaguely,” said Nelson.

Oh, right. Oops. “Go ahead,” he said, “but I’d appreciate it if all this remains confidential.”

“Attorney client privilege,” Murdock said, again. “Our lips are sealed.”

The secretary, Karen, pushed open the door to the conference room with a glittery unicorn mug of the dubiously advertised coffee about two minutes later, and Murdock asked if they could catch her up to speed.

“Karen’s trustworthy, and she deserves to know what we’re getting ourselves into. She’s amazing at research. Also, if the Winter Soldier comes in that door and she doesn’t know he’s a client, I’m pretty sure she’d hold him at gunpoint.”

Karen gave a small smile.

“Fair enough,” Steve said. Who was he to argue with that introduction? He might have said something similar about Peggy, once. If she hadn't been his CO, of course. And if he hadn't been scared stiff of her about half the time.

The coffee was, well, Steve had been in the army in 1943 and he could confidently say he’d had much worse.

Chapter Text

“So, we've got the Winter Soldier as a client now. Can add him to the list of Frank Castle. Any more murderous action heroes up your sleeve?”

The three Nelson and Murdock employees were in Josie’s, playing pool, because it was a Thursday and Foggy was a creature of routine. If he said that’s what they would do on Thursdays, that's what they did on Thursdays.

“I still can’t believe Spider-Man recommended us to Captain America!” Karen said, lining up a shot. They were several games and more drinks in, and had reached the stage of intoxication which meant Matt was more comfortable playing in earnest. He’d won the last round, and Karen had demanded a rematch. “How does he even know who we are?”

Foggy glanced at Matt, who had the decency to look embarrassed.

“He’s a client,” Matt said.

Karen stared at him, dumbstruck.

“I’m sorry, what? I’m too drunk for this.”

“No, seriously, he’s a client. I was the one who got him out of the Raft. He didn’t want anyone to know in case someone came after us about it. I couldn’t tell you.”

That’s right Matty, blame it on the kid.

“But you’re telling me now.”

“Maybe I’m too drunk for this.”

“You know who Spider-Man is?”

“I… uh, you know what? I plead the fifth. Can we talk about something else right now?”

“I hear the Mets are doing well this season,” Foggy said.

He hated that he’d become so comfortable bailing Matt out, lying to Karen. Even if it was mostly lying by omission.

God knows Matt was terrible at it. Foggy was amazed it he managed to keep any of it a secret as long as he had. Now he knew, he was picking up on all the signs he’d missed.

“Fucking finally!” Matt said, and he was off.

Baseball was a safe topic, like the weather, or… actually, yeah, pretty much just baseball and the weather. Even baseball was loaded sometimes. Hell, after Thor, so was the weather.

Karen would not be deterred. She was like a dog with a bone sometimes, if something caught her interest. No wonder Ben Urich had taken her on, may his soul rest in peace. He knew she would leave the office soon, go off and do her own thing, but he liked things the way they were. See above, creature of routine.

She would definitely be staying for this case, of course. She wouldn't miss being in the middle of this for anything, but Foggy had a sinking but proud feeling they wouldn't be able to hold onto her for much longer.

She'd made some waves in the journalism world, lately. Castle had started it off, but Karen had moved onto exploring the work of several local vigilantes.

“Matt. Matt. You know Spideeey,” she whined at him. “What’s he like?”

Foggy wanted to tell her that she knew him too; that she’d been teasing him about his crush on a girl in his year last week. Fuck, why couldn’t the kid have called himself Spider-Boy instead? He didn’t exactly have the body of a sixteen year old, except that he did. He looked so much bigger in the photos on the news.

Come to think of it, most of the better photos had been credited to Peter Parker.

Matt was still droning about baseball, so he most likely wasn’t paying any attention. He got like that sometimes when he was drunk, found it hard to stay in the room. Especially when he started rambling. He was probably listening to a game on someone’s TV half way across the Kitchen.

“Maybe you should ask Pete,” Foggy said, mean streak kicking in. He’d had it with vigilantes and their stupid masks. “Kid’s Spidey’s best photographer.”

“He is, isn’t he! Wait. He is? I kinda assumed it was some other Peter Parker. Why’s Spider-Man’s photographer a teenager, and why’s he hanging round our law firm?”

“Ask him, Kay. Ask him.”

Karen got her chance three days later, when Peter had made room to visit them in between school, Spider-Manning, and his fancy new Stark internship. Foggy was taking a coffee break, snacking on some of the cookies Mrs. McCreedy had given them for defending her son last week, which just so happened to give him front row seats to the interrogation.

Or potentially ease of damage control.

“So. Spider-Man,” Karen said, straight to business. This should be good.

Peter let out a squeak.

Amendment to that thought Foggy kept having about Matt: how did any of these vigilante types keep their secrets? They were about as bad as each other.

“How do you know him?” Karen asked.

“I- I just take pictures of him.”

“Yeah, but your pictures are better than anyone else’s. Which means you know him.”

Damn, girl, no quarter given here. Maybe give Matt some tips on interrogation without violence.

Foggy ignored the side-eyes that Peter kept shooting him, focusing on his coffee.

“He doesn’t mind me taking the photos so much, cause I’m young, I guess. Sometimes he’ll even pose for me. But I’m not stupid. I don’t actually try and talk to him.”

“So you believe that garbage they write about him then?”

“No. He’s not that bad. I just don’t want to get involved, you know?”

That was actually pretty good deflection, Foggy allowed. Smooth.

Karen knew.

Or, well, she didn’t know, and that was the problem. She kept getting caught up in vigilante messes, grabbed onto them with both hands, and no one would tell her why. No one would tell her, because she was surrounded by them just trying to live their lives. She didn’t know that were two in this office right now, and Foggy thought that was unfair. She’d been Daredevil’s staunchest supporter since the beginning, threw herself at these problems and problem people. And they still didn’t seem to trust her.

Well, that had better change. She shouldn’t have to work in an office taking on dangerous clients without possession of all the facts.

“Can you set me up a meeting with him?”

Well, to revise that statement: not like that, Karen. No. Please, no. Putting aside the fact that Foggy knew she was trying to get Peter to set her up a meeting with himself, she didn’t.

Why would you want to set up a meeting with a violent, secretive vigilante?

Even if he was more of the saving cats from trees and helping little old ladies with their shopping than go in and punch the nearest mobster variety, Foggy had it on good authority that he'd been training with Daredevil, and (Matt aside) that particular figure was not one anyone sane (calling yourself out there, Fogs) should want to be associated with.

“Why?”

Reasonable question from Peter there. He was probably shitting himself. Doing a reasonable job of not showing it though. Better than Matt would have done- had done, Foggy corrected himself.

“Pete, come on! It’s Spidey. I’m getting more and more into the journalism. You of all people should understand.”

Peter thought about his answer for a good minute, which wasn't suspicious at all.

Also, Foggy’s cover of a coffee break was starting to wear a little thin. Yes, he had bought his own pot. No, Karen was not allowed to contaminate it with her swill. No, Matt, until you see reason and announce Foggy was right all along, you will not be allowed to use it either. No matter how many rubber ducks get thrown at him. Actually, where were all these rubber ducks coming from?

Foggy smelled a rat.

Duck.

Whatever.

“I could probably do it,” Peter said finally, as if he hadn’t just been contemplating the absurdity of his existence. “He’s usually in Queens, obviously. Seems to also like Midtown though, if you want somewhere a little closer to home. Must be all the tall buildings. Pretty sure he keeps going back to the taco truck on 47^th, I think they give him handouts. You might catch him there. I’ll let him know to watch out for you, maybe he’ll set up a meeting. But then again, he doesn’t really like reporters.”

“He doesn’t seem to mind you.”

“Yeah, well. I’m not a reporter. Anyway, he thinks I’m just a kid.” Aww, Peter, bit of insecurity showing there?

Foggy wasn’t sorry about the teasing. Kid deserved it.

Karen would absolutely catch on if she ever met Spidey though.

“I know he probably wouldn’t have mentioned it to you, but any word on him teaming up with Daredevil more recently?”

Bit close there, hey, Kare?

Oh, speak of the Devil.

“Fogs,” Matt poked his head out of his office. The way the tension left Peter’s frame when he appeared was magical. “You seen the files on the Spencer case anywhere?”

“Don’t think so, why?”

“Just wanted to review them. Pete, could you come be my eyes?”

The relief in that kid’s face.

“I’ll let you know if I get the chance to talk to Spidey,” Peter told Karen before following Matt into a discussion involving who knows what, blood, guts, and almost definitely not work. Foggy shrugged at Karen and headed back into his own office.

“Maybe it’s for the best if you don’t get to talk to him, Kare. Those vigilantes can be pieces of work, I’ve heard. Especially Daredevil.”

He hoped Matt had laughed at that. He needed to lighten up around the kid. The mentoring business seemed to be treating him well, though. He hadn’t been injured enough to see Claire in oh, nearly a month at this point.

Bucky Barnes. They couldn’t work on this case entirely through Steve Rogers (and Matt’s heart stuttered in childhood hero-worship at the fact that he was working with Captain America, however much he’d deny it), and it was important to meet their actual client sooner rather than later.

Bucky Barnes was, unfortunately, a fugitive from the law and half a dozen criminal organisations. He couldn’t just use the front door.

As Steve was not exactly subtle and tended to bring out some... emotions in his friend, they decided to bring in Spider-Man to help facilitate the meeting. Or, well, Matt and Karen decided this. Foggy was not convinced about it as a plan. Matt seemed to think he was ready, though, and who as Foggy to argue with the kid's big brother/mentor/pseudo-parental unit? Karen was delighted that it would give her an excuse to meet with the vigilante.

Matt suggested it to Cap, who told them that, if they could find Spider-Man, and get him to agree to the plan, they were welcome to get him on board. Matt took this as permission to ask Peter, who then told Karen that Spider-Man had agreed to meet with her, and provided a time and place.

Matt then suggested to Karen that this would be a perfect opportunity to get the vigilante on board with the Barnes case. Karen would- uh- persuade Spidey to have a chat with them, as he owed Matt a favour.

Foggy even reluctantly gave Peter lessons in changing his voice, giving Spider-Man a whole other persona. Being friends with a former theatre kid had some perks in this business. He might not want to help them hide it from Karen, but Matt knew he understood Peter’s need to keep his identity from the wider world.

Peter asked Matt where Daredevil would fit into all this.

“He’ll be there if he’s needed,” Matt said, ominously. He never meant to be ominous, it just seemed to come with the general package. 

Peter seemed dissatisfied with this answer, but he didn’t bring it up again.

Daredevil was, in fact, there when Karen met Spider-Man. Matt had followed her out of the Kitchen; the meeting was just on the outskirts, Spidey was considerate like that. Matt might not want his vigilante alter-ego involved in this business (he couldn't be in two places at once, and it was so much easier to keep out of it), but he absolutely wanted to be there for this.

For all the training he had given Peter on honing his senses, Matt was pretty confident in his ability to stay hidden from the kid. He would be so proud if he was detected, of course, but that wasn’t happening any time soon. He perched on a rooftop two blocks away and tuned into the meeting.

“So, uh, Miss Page, the kid said you wanted to talk to me.” Peter’s voice was deeper, courtesy of Foggy’s exercises, and he no longer sounded quite so much like a teenager. Matt would recognise him anywhere though. There was something quintessentially Peter that threaded through every fibre of his being.

“Spider-Man?” Karen asked. “I wasn’t sure if you’d show.”

“I might not like reporters, but the kid insisted you were trustworthy.”

“He’s a good one,” Karen said.

Matt had sat in on the acting training and remembered the part where Foggy had told Peter that, in the case he had to talk about himself in the third person, he should pretend the person they were talking about was a passing acquaintance. Peter Parker was someone else. Matthew Murdock was somebody else, someone Daredevil barely knew. That would never not feel weird as hell, but it came in handy way too often, especially when talking to Brett.

“Yeah,” Spider-Man agreed. “Uh- what did you want?”

“You know Captain America?”

There was a silence, and Matt could imagine the look Peter was giving Karen under the mask.

“Yeah, uh, right. Stupid not-question. So, I mean, you obviously know Bucky Barnes too.”

“I only met him briefly,” Peter said.

“In Germany?”

“Yeah. Grumpy guy.”

“Peter told you I work with Nelson and Murdock, right? Well, we’re taking Barnes’s case and Matt suggested you might help.”

“That’s why I agreed to come. I owe Mr. Murdock my freedom.” And Daredevil owed Spider-Man his life. Matt was pretty sure they were about even on that score.

“He said you were a client. I’m actually really curious now, he wouldn’t tell be anything. How did you two meet?”

“I… uh. Daredevil hooked us up.”

True enough, Matt thought.

“Daredevil?” Karen asked. Shit. Of course she would fixate on that. “How does Peter fit into all this? He just turns up one day, gets basically adopted by Matt, and now it turns out he’s Spider-Man’s favoured photographer while Spider-Man himself is a client. And now Daredevil’s involved too? How does one kid get mixed up in all this?”

“Maybe he just has really, really bad luck,” said Peter.

“Pete?” she asked.

Shit.

Apparently there really was something about the kid that screamed Peter Parker. He’d been doing such a good job too. Hey, probably for the best.

“Wait, what? No!” They really needed to work on his rebuttal. “Pete? My name’s not Pete. Who’s Pete? Certainly not me.”

Matt began making his way over the rooftops towards them. While May's reaction to Spidey had eased some of the worry that Karen would hate him forever if she found out, it was still there, festering at the back of his mind. He liked feeling normal around her. He liked the way things were.

This would change all that anyway. The kid came first.

“Peter,” Karen said.

Peter crumpled. Karen knew. He didn’t mind that, he trusted Karen. But he’d been so sure she wouldn’t figure it out. If she could after one short conversation, who else might?

“Matt and Foggy know,” Peter said.

“Of course they do,” Karen’s eyes flashed. “And they’re just peachy with the idea of getting a teenager to help out on a case with a mass murderer.”

“I’m pretty sure I could take him,” Peter said. “I caught his punch.”

“That is not helping.”

Peter could sense Matt now, running near silent across the rooftops. He felt a pang of irritation, he didn’t need a babysitter. Karen might know him now, but she didn’t know Daredevil yet.

“Karen,” Matt said from where Peter knew he was crouched on the fire escape.

Karen jumped.

“Matt?” she asked. “Where? What?”

He landed behind her. Peter thought that was particularly brave.

“Peter’s proven he’s capable time and time again,” aww, thanks, “I trust him with my life.”

Karen spun around. “What the hell, Matt?”

“Blasphemy?” he offered.

“Like you don’t say worse on the daily. You’re Daredevil?”

“Wait, what? Matt? Who’s Matt?” Matt said, tilting his head around as if searching for someone. Peter grimaced. That was pointed. He shrugged. “I’m Daredevil,” he confirmed.

“And you have been all this time?”

“And I have been all this time.”

“But you’re…”

“Blind? Ableist, much?”

“I knew it!”

“I’m sorry?”

“You and Foggy aren’t exactly subtle. He throws stuff at you when he thinks I’m not around, and you catch it. He hated Daredevil at the beginning though!”

“He still kind of does. But he didn’t know, back then. He found me bleeding out on the floor of my apartment.”

“Car crash?”

“Car crash.”

“That was a stupid cover.”

“It really was.”

“You’re actually blind. I mean, no one would deal with that printer on purpose. And I’ve seen your eyes.”

“I’m actually blind. You’re dealing with this very well.”

“I’ve suspected for a while. And I’m sure I’ll get mad later. Is it like echolocation?”

“Kind of. Chemicals that blinded me also turned my other senses up crazy high. I can figure stuff out from there.”

“Huh. Figures. We will talk about this more later, mark my words, but there’s one thing you’re not getting out of tonight.”

The spidey sense absolutely hated that sentence. Peter tried to shrink into the wall. It didn’t work.

“Peter, honey, I’m not mad at you. You’re actually amazing. I mean, wow! But you’re sixteen. I mean, you referred to yourself as a kid. You’re not one, I get that, but this is not your fault. It can’t be. Matt, on the other hand, has some explaining to do.”

“Karen?” Foggy asked. “You doing okay? Did Spidey show?”

She was uncharacteristically subdued in the office that morning, and Foggy was curious, sue him.

“Yeah, he showed. Hey, how come you never told me we work with a vigilante?”

So that was what happened.

“I wanted to. Not my secret.”

“Come on, Fogs. You know that’s not a reason. You could have persuaded him, or something.”

“Why do you think I set up that meeting?”

“You set up that meeting?”

“I told you to talk to Pete, didn’t I?”

“You were drunk!”

“You were drunk. I was merely tipsy.”

Chapter Text

Sergeant Bucky Barnes would never, ever, tell anyone how scared he really was. Scared to go outside, scared to go to the bodega. Scared to go to the pizza place on the corner. Scared that if he saw something that triggered him, he wouldn’t be able to find himself again. Scared that his hands might do something new and unspeakable.

He hated his arm. It was a constant reminder of who they had made him. What they had made him. He had tried to tear it off, once, before Steve had come and talked him down. Even this new one, the vibranium one that a princess had made for him (something out of a fairytale from his childhood. No, not the arm), was not right on his body. Even after, what, seventy odd years, he felt the coldness in his shoulder and hated it.

At least this new arm wasn’t the one they’d given him. That one, he had taken great joy in driving a steamroller over. That had been a good day. Steve had organised it, and Shuri had informed her brother the king that they would need this piece of outdated tech with the sort of disgust normally reserved for formal outings. It had been perfect.

This was not perfect.

Steve wanted him to go and talk to Spider-Man.

Spider-Man had been at that airport in Germany. Bucky remembered. He had been there with Stark, but seemed to have switched sides. He’d gone to the Raft, for helping Bucky escape that place.

Bucky wasn’t sure how to repay him for that. Steve had told him he’d only been in there for three days, but three days is still a lot in a maximum security prison.

He’d also seemed to be the only one there talking sense.

All that was well and good, but he was still Spider-Man. A hero. And Bucky was, well, Bucky.

Steve had tried to reassure him that Spidey went by vigilante rather than hero. That didn’t help much. A name is just a name, and Bucky knew what he was. He may have sounded young and squeaky, but so had Steve at the beginning, before the serum had changed everything.

They had moved him, discretely, to New York. It was hard being so close to the streets he’d grown up on, yet so far away. He’d tried to avoid the big apple as much as possible. Too many happy memories.

This was not his home any longer.

For one, it smelled better.

The safe house was nice enough. Nicer than most places he’d slept over the past seventy years, not that that was hard. It had a kitchen, and a bathroom, and a bed, and a TV.

He’d spent a long time watching that TV.

He’d worked his way through most of the list that Steve had given him. He liked the old ones best, the ones that reminded him a little of the time before. They’d been difficult to watch, subtle wrongnesses in the ways they had shown his world, but he appreciated them all the same.

He knew, at some point, he’d have to go outside, leave this safe haven from the world. Spider-Man wanted to help him, Steve had said. There were these lawyers, Steve had said.

Lawyers.

Bucky did not trust lawyers. Steve had told him these ones seemed like good people, who genuinely wanted to help him. Bucky didn’t understand why. He was beyond help. Why would anyone want to help him?

It wasn’t Spider-Man who turned up at his window one night, but a man dressed head to toe in blood red, with stumpy little horns on his helmet. They should have been cute, but they weren’t.

“Hi,” the man said, knocking on the window and waving.

This was a fifth floor apartment.

Bucky had had it up to here with the world, but he found himself opening the window anyway.

The man in red slipped into the room, wrinkling his nose a little. Rude. Who did he think he was?

“They call me Daredevil,” he said. Huh. Figures. The little horns.

“What do you call you?” Bucky asked, just to be obtuse.

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it.” The man smiled awkwardly under the mask. He didn’t sound like Bucky had expected. His voice was a little hoarse, with a Hell’s Kitchen accent that had been around when Bucky was a kid, but it was in no way the gargled gravel from the eyewitness accounts.

Bucky had heard of the Daredevil, in a peripheral sort of way. It was hard not to. For such a secretive figure, he sure made the news a lot. But he’d never expected to actually meet the vigilante, and definitely not in his apartment.

“How did you find this place?” Bucky asked.

“Smell,” he said, with a quirk of a smile.

Bucky was beginning to regret letting him in.

“Your buddy Steve asked me to drop by,” he continued, seemingly oblivious to the glare Bucky was shooting him.

“You know Steve?”

“Who doesn’t know Captain America?”

Touché. But not helpful. “I’m gonna need a little more than that.”

The man sighed. “The Captain doesn’t know me, strictly speaking. But he did send me. I’m here to persuade you to speak to the lawyers. They want to help, truly.”

Who were these lawyers, that a notorious vigilante would trust them enough to work with them?

“I understand that this is… unconventional. But I think you’ll agree that you’re an unconventional case.”

Whatever Bucky may or may not have expected from the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, it was not this. Maybe a gruff street-fighter, or a brooding silent type, the hero in his own story; not an obviously well educated contradiction.

“What do you care?” he asked.

The vigilante thought for a second, head tilted.

“You might say I have skin in this game. How much do you really know about the Sokovia Accords?”

Quite a lot, actually. He’d had time to do the reading.

“What do they have to do with me?”

“I’m going to be honest with you here, we want to help you, but it’s not just about you. Nelson and Murdock are trying to bring awareness to how the Accords are hurting all enhanced people, not just the Avengers or adjacent. Enhanced registration is a melting pot for cases like yours; governments turning people into weapons. They- we- hope that you will help us try and make sure nothing like what happened to you ever happens again. We want to use your trial as a platform to show other enhanced people out there that they are people too, that they deserve to live free from fear.” The man reached up to start to take his helmet off.

The man reached up to start to take his helmet off!

Bucky didn’t need this. He wasn’t trustworthy. He didn’t trust the sanctity of his own mind, how could this man he’d never met trust him with something like this?

He put his hands up over his eyes. He couldn’t see this, couldn’t take this trust. He knew Daredevil had one of the most closely guarded secret identities on the planet. No one knew who he was. Very few people had ever even seen him. Why would he be letting Bucky of all people in? Was he trying to manipulate him? Was this a ploy to gain his trust, so they could get in his head again?

But no. That didn’t fit with those words.

Gloved hands reached down to touch his arms, gently as anything. As if trying to soothe a skittish dog, or comfort a child.

They guided his hands from his face, but he had his eyes still squeezed tight shut.

“It’s okay,” the man said, simply. “You’re okay. I want to do this. I want there to be no secrets here, if we’re going to do this, and I thought I should start. You asked me what I call myself-” Bucky let his eyes crack open, meeting red hair and milky, unseeing eyes- “I’m Matt. Murdock. The lawyer. Hi. Uh, I haven’t done it like this before,” he said, getting a little flustered. “Please don’t tell anyone. Steve doesn’t know. It’s hard- uh- hard to trust a man that straightforward with any secrets. I don’t not trust him, but I don’t really trust anyone. Not with this.”

“You’ve trusted me,” Bucky said. “You shouldn’t trust me. I can’t be trusted. I don’t even-” to his embarrassment, he started to cry. “I don’t even trust myself.”

He felt arms around him, hesitant, then rocking him gently. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. I’ve got you. I trust you,” the man – Murdock – said, soothing. “It’s okay.”

Matt didn’t know what life choices he had made to lead him here, cradling an ex-brainwashed ex-assassin client as he cried.

Actually, he did. It was him or Spidey, and they had all decided, after Karen had stormed in asking why they were letting a sixteen year old do this, that it they couldn’t let it be Peter. Matt agreed with her, as he did on most things. He hadn't told anyone he was going to do this, but they would try and talk him out of it and it needed to be done. After the second attempt to coax Barnes from his hiding place, they had just about given up hope. He definitely hadn't planned on revealing himself, just wanted to let the man know that Nelson and Murdock were trustworthy, from a source he might be more inclined to empathise with.

It seemed everyone was learning his secret nowadays. How many was that now? Seven? Eight? He went through the list in his head, as he made soothing noises. He added Karen, Peter's aunt. Now the Winter Soldier.

Not the Winter Solder.

Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes. A man who had taken everything the world had to throw at him and managed to stay remarkably human in the face of it. Underneath the layers of trauma, there was a man who just wanted to be able to trust himself again.

Matt was no psychologist, but he could work with this. He understood this; to an extent, he’d been through it. There had been times when he’d thought he’d lost himself to the devil; been dirtied by it, unable to face the thought of going out amongst civilised people and pretending he didn’t have blood on his hands. He’d never killed anyone, but his hands had dripped red all the same.

Matt had cried, often, during those first few years as Daredevil; before they’d even given him the name. He still did, sometimes, when the world got too much, or he hated himself for putting someone new in a coma. They deserved it, he knew that, but it was still him taking that decision – that blood – onto his own hands. He was as bad as the people he put in hospital, he knew that, but he had to be, to protect the people they hurt.

Sometimes he cried because he didn’t think he could trust himself, and those times were the worst. Those times, he didn’t go to confession. Those times, he locked himself in his room (even though he knew that wouldn’t stop him) and curled up under the covers, trying to block out the world, not because it was too much, but because he didn’t think he should be part of it and to do anything else was a sin.

So he rocked this man, and murmured soothing words, and felt like a hypocrite, and was glad Pete wasn’t there. He hoped the spider-kid would never feel like this, but he knew in his heart it was inevitable, and that was another thing he hated himself a little for.

Chapter Text

When Bucky had finally said he’d speak with the lawyers, Steve could barely believe his ears. Perhaps his friend was finally coming to his senses. He certainly seemed happier. What had changed?

When asked, Buck had smiled. “I realised I got a purpose,” he’d said.

Steve wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but he was glad he had figured out whatever it was.

He hadn’t even spoken with Spidey.

No one thought it was a good idea for him to be seen at the office, so Murdock offered his apartment for a meeting, as it had a hidden roof access. Bucky had said he didn’t want Steve there, which hurt more than he wanted to admit, but he would respect it as long as he seemed this present. If there was even a hint of trouble…

He felt a little like his mother as he fussed, forcing Bucky to shower and put on a smart jacket.

“But rooftops! At night!” came the protests.

“These people are gonna help you, ya can’t turn up lookin an smellin like a raccoon!”

After that, he submitted to most of Steve’s ministrations, though he drew a line at the attempted smudging of a speck of dirt off his cheek as he climbed out the window.

“Ya know what? You've gone and outdone yer mam. Remember Mrs. Jennings down the block? With the nose? Her. Ya turned into Mrs. Jennings in yer old age, Stevie,” he grumbled.

Steve beamed. Bucky remembered Mrs. Jennings!

Foggy was so tired. Why did Matt still not tell him anything? He hadn’t even been informed that his best friend and partner had been to see their client. Not only that, but after years of friendship Foggy had to find out about Daredevil by accident, whereas Matt had told a client on their first meeting. Without telling Foggy he was going to.

“Fogs?” the bastard asked, with the nerve to sound concerned. “Are you still sure you're up for this?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “Of course I’m still up for this. I wouldn’t bail out now, unlike some.”

“You know there were extenuating circumstances with the Castle case. And I’m sorry. I’ve told you I’m sorry.”

“And then you go and pull this! I thought you promised no more secrets!”

The bastard sighed. Actually sighed. “It just sort of happened, Fogs. I didn’t go planning to reveal my deepest darkest secret to a guy who can’t trust what’s going on in his own head!”

“So why did you? This affects all of us. Do you want me to lose my licence? Go to jail? What about Karen. Even before she found out, do you really think they would believe she didn’t know? And Pete, now, too! He spends enough time hanging around the office, how long do you think it would take people to put two and two together and connect him to Spider-Man? It’s not just you who goes down if your secret gets out and you just, what, happened to tell him?”

“I was losing him, Foggy. I needed him to know I understood!”

They were hissing at each other now, standing nose to nose; it was too easy to be overheard through the walls, and Matt’s neighbours were suspicious enough already. Even mad, they both stood by that. However much Foggy might want to, shouted arguments were not an option.

“Understood what?”

“What it’s like to not trust yourself.”

Foggy deflated a little, as he always did when Matt brought out his ace. It was the problem with them both being lawyers, he thought. They were too good at using words – something which either made arguments last forever, or made them impossible. Matt was very good at getting the last word in. Too good. It was infuriating; made Foggy seem like the unreasonable one.

A knock at the roof access door interrupted whatever comeback he could now pretend he had. He let Matt get it. This was his apartment, after all. And his problem. Occasionally Foggy wondered where he would be if he hadn’t met Matt Murdock. Bored, probably.

He was surprised at how put together the man at the door looked. He had great hair. Foggy could appreciate hair like that. Other people might call it stringy or lank, but, while the split ends definitely needed a trim, Foggy saw the potential.

There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek, but, other than that, he looked nothing like the man Matt had described as “Sad. Depressed. In desperate need of a shower. Wallowing in self pity. Or maybe self hatred. Probably both.” He was wearing an actual suit jacket over the black t-shirt. Foggy wondered how that had been, coming over the rooftops. Matt kept offering to take him exploring up there, but Foggy knew where his place was. Two feet firmly on the ground. He was evolved past a monkey. There was a reason he didn’t have a tail. He knew Matt didn’t really understand that.

“So, you’re Sergeant James Barnes, right?” Foggy said. Matt groaned beside him, and elbowed him slightly. Rude. At least he hadn't called him the Winter Soldier.

“Franklin Nelson,” Barnes said, and wasn't that an odd thing to hear from the mouth of someone in his history books.

“Please call me Foggy. Franklin isn’t... me.”

“Fair enough. I'm Bucky. I don’t think anyone but me mam ever called me James. Uh,” Barnes looked around a little. “What’s the plan?”

“Oh, come in! Make yourself at home, do you take coffee or tea? Matt has a great selection. His tastebuds are off the charts, apparently, so he likes things like bay leaves. Still can’t get over how he drinks Karen’s coffee, though!”

“Fogs, you’re rambling. Bucky, I’m sorry for the state of the place. I’m a blind man, living alone. I’ve been told the effect is… bleak.”

“I don’t know,” Barnes said, “It feels pretty nice to me.”

So, the ex soviet assassin feels at home in Matt’s apartment. Foggy thought that seemed to sum it up perfectly.

Bucky felt a little lost, here, in this world. Murdock’s apartment felt a little like some of the safe houses he’d stayed in, but the lawyers bickered like an old married couple as they bustled around, fetching him a coffee (cream and lots of sugar; black coffee was what the Winter Soldier drank) and rearranging paperwork on the floor. He remembered a time when he had been that way with Steve, but he didn’t think he would ever be able to recapture it. They were trying. Perhaps Steve was trying too hard. 

The paperwork lost him, a little, too. It wasn’t that he wasn’t paying attention, or that it was too complicated for him – he’d been in enough mission briefings and doctored or stolen enough documents to be able to follow, but that also wasn’t him. His mind began to wander, and at some point Foggy waved his hand in front of his face.

“Hey, Sergeant! You with us?”

Bucky snapped to attention.

“At ease,” Matt said, and Bucky realised what he’d done and kicked himself. “Fogs, do you want to go over this bit or should I?”

“I think maybe you should.”

“Fair enough. Anyway, this part is actually important for you, not just us sorting stuff out. At some point, you’re going to need to come out of hiding. We can direct this, but there will be a media storm. Like it or not, you were in our history books; the parts people actually read. There have been movies made about you. As much as we would like you to stay out of the media's eye for ever, that isn’t going to be possible.”

Bucky could feel himself start to panic. He’d know this was coming, of course he had. As soon as he’d agreed to any trial, let alone the public one that would have to happen for Nelson and Murdock’s plan to work, he’d also agreed to this. But if he’d thought about it at all, it had been in an abstract way. It hadn’t been about him, and it hadn’t been immanent. The fiasco in Germany had been a taste of something Bucky really, really didn’t want, with every shred of his scrappy assassin's soul.

“This is going to happen on your terms,” Murdock continued. “We will not do anything without asking you first, but there will be a point of no return. You need to be sure of this.”

Bucky wasn’t sure. Bucky had very rarely been less sure of anything. He wanted nothing more than to disappear, in a way that none of them would ever be able to find him again. He could, he knew. The only reason Steve had found him last time was because he’d wanted to be found. He’d wanted answers.

This time, he wanted to mean something. He didn’t have much to live for and, while this whole thing terrified him, it was hard to stay scared with nothing much to lose.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “What do we do next?”

“Next, we set you up with an interview, to be released when we announce your intention to go to court. You can choose a journalist, but we recommend Karen Page. She’s a friend, and she has your best interests at heart.”

Bucky nodded, then caught himself and spoke an affirmative.

When, a week later, they were ready to announce to the world that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes had agreed to come out of hiding and stand trial for the Winter Soldier’s crimes, he was less scared.

Page had been wonderful.

He’d read over her story before it had been released, and had felt himself staring back at him from her words. It didn’t show him as a hero, or as a murderer, or a terrorist or as any one of those other articles had done. It showed him as a human. Him. With the faults and brokenness and healing scars of a man trying to put himself back together, face up to his past as both a prisoner of war and brainwashed enemy agent, and make amends so he could rejoin society as a person.

The response to the article was instant and terrifying, for all of them. Steve and the lawyers were trying to protect Bucky as much as possible, he knew, but enough came through the gaps that he hadn’t wanted to leave his room, let alone the building. Let alone go and stand in a courtroom, or give a press conference, or any of the other things he knew he'd be asked to do in the coming weeks and months.

There were people out for his blood.

This was nothing new, and he was amazed at how many people were actually defending him, saying he deserved a fair trial; he’d been through too much. Saying the fact that he’d come forwards with this meant he was genuine.

They were drowned out by the ones who hated him, though, as voices of reason often are in a witch hunt.

Bucky only hoped they didn’t start to come for the people who were helping him as well.

He had enemies far worse than bad press.

Chapter Text

“No.”

It was a woman’s voice, that Peter had never heard before – vaguely European, he thought, though he wouldn’t be able to place it more specifically than that. He whipped round, but couldn’t see her in the dark alley. The spidey sense was killing him. He wanted to run. With that one word, she had him terrified.

“No?” Matt asked, and how was he sounding so cool? Did he know her? Peter bet he knew her. After Deadpool, nothing would surprise him.

“No,” the woman said again. “I can see what you’re doing, and you’re not doing it. Not after Castle.”

“Castle went fine,” Matt said.

Peter had heard of Castle, and didn’t think that word really described the man, or the case. It lacked the viceral reaction usually provoked by the name; images of blood-soaked screams and bodies hung on meathooks.

“I died,” she said, and wow, Matt knew how to pick ‘em. Peter wondered if she was immortal like Wade. “I wouldn’t call that fine.”

“You’re still here, aren’t you?”

“Hardly worth the effort it took to get back. And I seem to remember hearing you were distraught; cried over my body and everything.”

“I loved you, Elektra. You think I was going to just, what, get up and walk away? And anyway, I died with you the next time.”

“So romantic.”

Okay. Matt, mentor of mine, are you okay? Seriously?

“Why are you really here?” Matt asked.

“What? I couldn’t come by just to stop you making another really stupid mistake?”

Matt was silent. Peter was quaking in his boots. The woman dropped from a fire escape, a darker shadow in the night, and slunk, cat-like, towards Matt. Peter could make out a mass of hair, and a skintight bodysuit that reminded him of Natasha’s. She seemed to also be wearing a scarf, though it was a warm night. When the light caught it, it was red.

“Still wearing that silly costume?” she asked.

“At least I’m doing something useful with my life,” Matt said.

“And I’m not?”

“You’re an assassin, Ellie. You’ve been given a second chance at life and you’re choosing to murder people for money.”

“And? Anyway, it’s a third chance, my love. You said it, just now. I died twice.”

“So you did. You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“You haven’t introduced me to your friend.”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Awww. Spider-Man, I’ve heard so much about you. Imagine my surprise on finding out Matthew has adopted a stray, only to discover he’s the baby Avenger!”

“Stay away from him,” Matt growled, full Daredevil voice on display. She ignored it.

“I came to warn you. There’s a price on your head.”

“That’s nothing new,” Matt grumbled. “You wouldn’t come here just to tell me that.”

“You don’t understand me. The hit isn’t out for Daredevil. It’s for one Matthew Michael Murdock, Attorney at Law. Also Franklin Nelson. He’s worth more, so you can feel jealous about that later. There isn’t anything for your lady friend, the journalist secretary, I don’t think they know how much she means to your little operation yet, but you need to be careful. They’re coming for you, and they’re willing to pay for it. You have made some very powerful people very angry.”

Matt looked unconcerned, but then he never seemed to show much emotion around Peter. He wondered if he wasn’t maybe protecting him, with that, because surely this news deserved some reaction. Peter was scared, and he wasn’t even the one at risk.

“Thank you for letting me know,” he said.

That seemed to be that. They stood facing each other for a few moments, then he nodded and the shadows swallowed her again. Peter half wondered who was scarier; her or Natasha.

“Right,” Matt said, with an air of finality that worried Peter a little. “You’re not coming round the office until this has been dealt with.”

“But…”

“To tell you the truth, no one’s going to the office until this has been dealt with. Go home, Pete. And stay safe.”

He suddenly sounded very tired, and Peter was reminded that he was human too. It was easy to forget, sometimes, in the suit. He felt invincible; though he got injured more than was healthy, he knew things that no human could know. But then again, so did Peter.

Matt left him there, in that alley; Peter knew he’d gone to check in on Foggy. It’s what he would have done, had it been Ned or May at risk, or anyone else, for that matter, but it still hurt a little. Peter could help. He wanted to help. He’d come this far, been through this much, he couldn’t get sidelined now things had started to get tough. He just couldn’t.

He swung home, hoping everyone was still alive, wondering who the woman had been. He hugged May tightly when he got in, and she asked what was wrong.

“There’s a hit out on Matt and Foggy,” he told her. “For the Barnes case. Someone doesn’t want it going to trial. Matt told me to come home. He said I’m not allowed near the office until he deals with it.”

“Good,” May said. “I’d be having words with him if he hadn’t.”

Fuck. Matt had not expected Elektra. He’d honestly thought she’d died again, or left for good. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that she’d come to warn him about something like this. Hell, he wouldn’t have, all the things he’d put her through. She’d put him through. Both. Whatever.

He didn’t still love her in the way he used to. He’d come to terms with her death. Deaths. She was too broken, he was too broken, they were bad for each other. He’d moved on since then. He hadn’t exactly moved on to better, but he knew he had issues, that wasn’t what he was worried about.

Elektra Natchios had come to warn him that there were people out for his head. People out for Foggy’s head.

That meant things were bad.

Really bad.

Bad enough that she’d heard of the hit, let alone thought he needed the warning.

Foggy.

He strained his hearing, running over rooftops towards his partner’s building.

Foggy’s heart was still beating steadily.

Foggy was still alive.

Nothing had happened, yet.

The world exploded into chaos.

Foggy. Must get to Foggy. Navigating by scent and touch across the rooftops, now. The blast of whatever that had been had knocked out his hearing, and he could feel the blood trickling from his ears. Someone knew about that weakness, and knew he would be here, but that wasn’t a problem for now.

Foggy.

Foggy.

He couldn’t hear Foggy’s heartbeat, but then, he couldn’t hear anything. A blanket had fallen over his world on fire.

He couldn’t smell him, either.

He thought he screamed, when he reached the empty apartment.

It smelled like Foggy, but the man himself was not there.

He must have screamed.

Half his world was gone.

His hearing was bad, yes. Echolocation didn’t work without noise, but his nose was still working, and he knew the rooftops around here by smell. He’d prepared, for if his hearing was taken out again. He’d left different scents in strategic locations, and could build a map of where he was from them.

He had lost Foggy.

His compass.

The man who had been with him through law school, stuck with him through what came after. Went along with his hairbrained ideas, even though Matt knew he still half wanted to work for a big fancy firm and have a big fancy office with big glass windows and a view.

Accepted him for who he was.

All of who he was.

He tried to follow the scent.

Whoever had taken Foggy smelled faintly of roses, and Matt knew he would recognise it again.

Foggy’s scent, he could pick out anywhere.

He tracked them both to a side alley, where the trail disappeared in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

He curled up on the floor, in the centre of Foggy’s room, and hugged one of his old shirts, drinking in the smell. His voicebox was hoarse, but he hadn’t heard himself screaming. Frustration and anger at his inability to protect his friend and his hearing warred with fear that Foggy might be gone forever.

He wept freely.

Wade, of all people, was the first one to find him. Matt was occasionally lucky like that. If it had been anyone else, he didn’t know what he would have done. If it had been an enemy, even if it had been Elektra.

Oh, God, if it had been Peter. Matt never wanted Peter to have to see him like this.

He had lashed out, recognising there was someone else in the room with him, feeling the touch on his shoulder, but the scent solidified into the leather and blood and gunpowder and slightly decaying flesh of Deadpool and he found himself relaxing slightly.

He leaned into the hug, rubbing his fingers over the ridges and scars of Wade’s bare hands. They weren't the same scars he remembered, but they were the same hands.

“Foggy,” he said, over and over again, words not quite reaching his ears but the vibration in his larynx letting him know he was speaking out loud. “They’ve taken Foggy, We need to find Foggy,”

He couldn’t tell if Wade replied, but he found a piece of paper pressed into his hand. He felt it for the indents of writing, but it smelled like printer toner under the pervasive scent of roses, and the surface was smooth.

A ransom note, or something.

Surely.

They had taken Foggy, rather than murdering him outright.

Of course, they might have taken him to kill him somewhere else, but that didn’t really make sense.

Please say that didn’t make sense.

That hope was the only thing keeping Matt from going over the edge at this point, Deadpool or no Deadpool.

Wade stayed with him all night. He told him later that he’d been a danger to himself, and he couldn’t in good conscience leave him alone.

The fact that it was Wade Wilson who’d said that didn’t escape him.

He’d wanted to go out searching again as soon as his hearing recovered enough that he could understand Wade’s voice.

Wade told him not to. He hadn’t been able to track the vehicle earlier, what made him think anything had changed?

He did, however, ask for a full accounting of the trail that Matt had followed, and then they walked it, just to be sure. He said he’d get his people on it, discretely, and asked Matt if he knew any hackers, or anyone who could help track him.

There was one person he could think of. Someone who could track down anyone. She was even in the city right now.

The only problem was that she was another ex.

One of the things Matt liked about Wade was that he didn’t judge. How could he? Whatever he was told couldn’t be worse than something he’d done. The fact that Matt had a type, and that that type could and probably would kill him someday, didn’t phase him in the slightest.

He did, however, suggest that this time, Matt didn’t go to the source directly.

There was a much better plan. Someone who the woman in question was finding it increasingly difficult to say no to.

Peter Parker.

Chapter Text

Peter Parker was having a very bad, terrible, no good day. It had started, as such days often did, with Flash Thompson.

Flash was a bully. He knew it. Everyone around him knew it. The teachers even knew it; Peter had spoken to his chem teacher, and the man remembered hiding from kids like Flash when he was a teen. But despite all the school said about having no tolerance for bullying, Flash got away with it.

It helped that his daddy was pouring money into the science department.

This time was as uncreative as all the last times, as easy to brush past but far less easy to brush off.

There were some names Peter really didn’t like to be called.

Peter loved Midtown Science and Tech, he really did. It was thanks to Uncle Ben that he’d even applied for the scholarship in the first place, so he was going to make the most of it. He kept his head down, got good grades, sat with Ned and occasionally MJ at lunch, and tried as hard as he could to keep Spider-Man out of high school.

That was the second thing that went wrong that very bad terrible no good day.

Matt showed up.

Unannounced, just wandered in there like he wasn’t out of place at all.

Someone even helped him with the door.

“I need to speak with Peter Parker,” he’d told Mrs. Morris on reception, and she had told him which room to go to.

How that man slid through life so cleanly was a mystery to Peter, who felt like a mess on his best day and didn’t want to think about his worst. Despite the black eye, dark circles clearly visible behind his glasses, and hastily stitched cut across his cheek, he was put together. No one would ever think that the reason for that black eye was that this man went around beating up criminals at night, and then defended them the next day. How could they?

Peter hadn’t seen mild mannered Matt Murdock, bleeding heart lawyer from Hell’s Kitchen, sorry, sir, I didn’t see you there, in action in quite such a terrifying way as he did that morning at school.

“I need to speak with Peter Parker,” he’d told his homeroom teacher, and the man had just let him. Mr. Harrington never let anyone leave the classroom, for anything. They had to keep their phones in a bucket in his class, for gods sake. And now he was letting Peter go off with a man who, for all he knew, was a stranger?

“I need to speak with the Black Widow,” Matt had told him, and, what?

Why did he think Peter would know her well enough to set up a meeting?

Why did he think she would turn up at all?

“It’s Foggy,” he said.

Shit.

Shitshitshitshit.

“Foggy?” Please don’t let this be what he thought it was. Please don’t let him be dead!

But then, why would he want Natasha?

Revenge?

“They’ve taken him,” Matt said.

Peter breathed. Matt glanced sharply at him

“He’s alive,” Peter said, simply.

Matt’s expression softened. “They’re holding him hostage. There was a note. Unless we stop defending Barnes, denounce him publicly, and announce our support for the Accords, they’ll kill him. I can’t sense him, anywhere in the city.”

Peter knew, now, why he wanted Natasha.

The other spider themed hero had taken him under her wing, a little. She’d come back to Stark after Germany; said she wanted to try and heal the rift. The Avengers were her family, she’d come to realise, in a way she hadn’t had a family before, and she had sat by and watched them tear themselves apart. Peter had helped her realise that, apparently. So had Bucky, when they had spoken after Germany.

She was scary. She had ways of finding people that surpassed even Matt’s nose.

If Matt couldn’t find Foggy in the city, perhaps Natasha could. He’d put Ned on it, too. Ned was similarly scary, but in a different way. Ned could hack most things, and if there was a CCTV camera he couldn’t get into, Peter would eat his foot. Or someone’s foot, anyway. Probably an animal’s. Some of them were human food, right? People ate chicken feet and pig trotters?

Natasha would be at his internship that evening, he could ask her then. Ned, on the other hand, was here now.

“What was that about?” Ned hissed, when Peter slid back into his seat. “Was that the guy who got you out of the raft? Murdock?”

“Foggy’s been taken.”

“Foggy Nelson? The lawyer?”

“Yeah.”

He was too numb to say much more than that. Foggy was solid, immutable. Foggy did not get taken. Foggy was a fact of life, sharp, kind, ruffling his hair and asking him to fix the printer again.

He vaguely noticed Mr. Harrington shoot him a worried glance, and tell them to stop whispering.

“After class,” he hissed. “We’re skipping geography.”

Ned just nodded, and didn’t ask. Peter appreciated that about his best friend.

The rest of the class lasted an eternity. While Matt hadn’t told him he could tell Ned, he hadn’t told him he couldn’t, and, well, Peter thought given the circumstances he would want all the help he could get.

Ned was help. Ned was great help, actually. As his guy in the chair, he’d been the one to trawl through a lot of the info on the flash drive Matt had given him for his birthday. He hadn’t asked where it came from, but Peter knew he suspected Daredevil’s involvement. Peter also knew that he’d taken that to mean that Daredevil was a highly organised human being, with meticulous spreadsheet and note taking abilities.

Ned hadn’t suspected that, in all the time he had researched the vigilante. Peter knew this, too, because Ned had told him. Ned had told him that sorry Peter, Spider-Man was taking second place to Daredevil again, because anyone who could set out the organised crime of an area this neatly was as close to God as he, as an atheist, was ever likely to get.

Peter was not going to tell Ned that Daredevil was a devout Catholic, and would most likely take that complement as blasphemy.

Or maybe he’d be flattered by it.

Peter was always a little confused by Matt’s religious tendencies. He knew he’d mostly grown up in a Catholic orphanage, and that he went to confession more often than was strictly necessary, but he didn’t really understand why.

Uncle Ben had been Jewish, so Peter had some experience with faith growing up, but May was non-practicing and hadn’t believed in any god in a long time, or so she told Peter. She went through the motions for Ben, but after he had died and she’d put the stones on his grave, neither of them had had much to do with the community again. May had asked him if he'd wanted to, but he had been to consumed by guilt at the time to feel strongly either way. He did still miss it sometimes, the feeling of belonging to something bigger than himself. Perhaps that was what Matt saw in his faith, but perhaps it was something deeper, more tied to the conflict Peter knew he felt about what he called his devil.

May’s only living relatives were estranged over in California, and the Parkers had no one left, so they’d found themselves a little adrift, but May had her nurse friends and the people at the shelter she volunteered at, and Peter had Ned and now, occasionally, MJ and the Acadec team.

Ned did not believe in anything, religious, spiritual or otherwise, except maybe the Force. Peter didn’t know what he believed in, stuck as he was between people with such opposing, staunchly held views about that side of things.

He didn’t tend to talk about it.

He wasn’t going to start now.

It was probably going to be hard enough explaining that Daredevil was a lawyer, and yes he was actually blind. Although, with Ned’s in depth analysis of the man’s filing system, Peter wouldn’t be surprised if he’d figured out which year he had graduated Columbia and narrowed down the suspects to three people.

“Do you trust me?” Peter asked, when they were safely hidden away in the corner of the library that no one ever went into. They went to a STEM school, no, it wasn’t the sci-fi section, however much Ned vocally wished that were the case. Peter could take that or leave it, honestly, he was living sci-fi, but he liked making Ned happy, so he agreed that yes, that would be aesthetically perfect for their hideout.

Instead, it was the dusty section with the old encyclopedias that the school hadn’t got around to throwing out yet, and the poetry and artist books that no one wanted to read but one of the librarians years ago had ordered just in case someone turned up with a burning passion for palindromes, whatever those were.

Ned seemed offended by the question. “Well, now I’m worried.”

“You should be. I am. They’ve taken Foggy, and now the Devil’s going to tear the city apart trying to get him back. I’ve been asked to set up a meeting between him and the Black Widow, and that can only go badly.”

“Wait, so Mr. Murdock…”

“Yes. And they’ve taken Foggy.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I don’t understand why they would. Foggy’s… Foggy.”

“You’re being clear as mud here, Pete. Breathe. What do you want me to do?”

“I need your hacking skills.”

Ned cracked his knuckles.

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

It turned out, with typical Parker Luck, that was absolutely the day that someone had decided she had a burning passion for palindromes.

Or, as the case may be, something a bit less structured.

Because that person was Michelle Jones. MJ.

Unfortunately, she knew what else that nook was usually used for.

“Leeds, Parker, what are you doing here?” she asked, suspicious. Peter and Ned both jumped at her voice, and Ned closed his laptop. That wasn't suspicious at all.

“Uh, homework?”

“I know for a fact you have geography right now.”

“So do you!”

“Your point being?”

Uh.

Peter didn’t really know how to deal with this.

“What are you doing here?” he tried.

“Kathy Acker,” she said.

Peter knew they didn’t have anyone by that name in their year, and he felt like he’d know if MJ had other friends. There were the people she went to protest rallies with, but he doubted she'd be looking for any of them in the Midtown library.

“Who-” he started.

“Writer. Amongst other things. I’ve been searching for the childlike life of the black tarantula: some lives of murderesses. I’m pretty sure they don’t have it, school libraries censor everything interesting, but I thought I’d have a look, see if they have anything else back here.”

Peter backed off a little. He loved MJ, he really did. Usually, he would be happy to be lectured on the history of radical feminism, or punk zines, or racism in countercultural movements mirroring the brokenness inherent in the system, or anything else she felt would improve him as a person. He knew she would get on with May, if they ever met, and he was equally determined that would never happen. They were both very open about a lot of the yucky stuff that Peter knew was a fact of life for girls, but didn’t particularly feel like needed to be brought up at the dinner table, thank you very much.

Today, though, he had other things to worry about.

Foggy had been taken.

He was about to give her an excuse, when he had a brainwave.

Actually, that might be a plan.

MJ was scary, too. It wasn’t just that she looked intimidating, though Peter bet Deadpool would be jealous of some of the spiky jewellery, she was also crazy smart.

Maybe all his friends were scary in some way.

MJ was a detective, of sorts. She watched people. She always knew what was going on around the school, even though she didn't involve herself in any of it - the world had bigger problems than high school drama. She consumed a frankly ridiculous amount of true crime documentaries.

That, coupled with Ned’s hacking abilities, might just give them an extra edge.

Also, Peter wanted to let her in a bit. She always looked kinda lonely.

Not that he would ever admit that to her, he valued his life.

“A friend of mine’s been kidnapped,” Peter said, before he could back out of this. Ned was one thing, but he didn’t necessarily want to let MJ in on his secret, or anyone else’s for that matter.

She would probably figure it out, though, if she hadn’t already.

That was the reason he wanted her on this. She was good at spotting patterns.

Ned was shooting him a weird look. He was a little scared of her, which Peter thought was fair enough but unnecessary. She was perfectly capable of ruining someone’s life in an hour or so, but so was Ned. Possibly it was the willingness, rather than the ability.

MJ’s eyes narrowed, “And you want me to help find them?” she asked, suspicious.

“You’re amazing at stuff like this,” he said.

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Parker,” she said, but the effect was spoiled when curiosity got the better of her: “Who is it?”

“Franklin Nelson,” Peter said.

Her eyes flashed recognition at the name: “The Winter Soldier’s lawyer? Castle? Fisk? That Franklin Nelson?” she asked, and Peter knew he had her.

He nodded.

“That’s some friends you have there, Parker. I can see why you came to me.”

Ned glared at her back, and Peter was sorry, he really was, but more heads on the problem were better, and in this case Foggy’s life trumped Ned’s annoyance with him calling in the cavalry.

He’d be calling in a lot more cavalry later that day.

Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow. She had been hanging around the tower during one of his internship sessions, and had clocked him almost immediately.

As scary people went, Nat was one of the scariest ever.

She was currently training him to strangle someone with his thighs. He hadn’t tried it out yet, but he really really wanted to.

Last time he’d seen her, he’d asked why she was helping him.

“Spiders stick together, паучок,” she’d said. “Now let’s try that again.”

Neither she nor Matt had ever brought each other up before, and he wondered why she was the first person he’d thought of when Foggy was taken. He also wondered why he didn’t just go to her himself, but that might have been because he wanted to focus on finding Foggy.

Foggy.

“Where was he last seen?” MJ was asking.

“I’m not sure. At home, I think. Hell’s Kitchen."

“It was because of the Winter Soldier, right? I read the Page interview. Does he have any enemies? Anything else it could be?”

“Not… not really.” He didn't have enemies, surely. The people surrounding him, however, had more enemies than probably anyone else in the city. They had archnemeses.

“Specify.”

“He doesn’t have enemies himself, no. But-”

“But he’s a defence lawyer, right. His clients have enemies. Which brings us back to Barnes. The timing is too convenient for it to be anything else. Occam’s razor.”

The simplest solution is probably the correct one. And in this case - “Agreed, it was because of Barnes. I think… I think someone wanted to stop the trial from happening. I think there was a hit out for him,” Peter said.

“That’s specific,” she said. “Why do you say that?”

“Just a feeling.”

“We can’t rule out the possibility,” she said. “But how are you sure he’s been kidnapped, not just killed?”

Because he can’t be dead. Because that would kill Matt, would break everything. Because he was Foggy.

“No one’s found a body,” he said.

“When did he go missing?” MJ asked.

“Last night.”

“Could he have just left the city without telling anyone? Visiting family, or something? How do you know he’s really missing?”

“All his family’s in the Kitchen. Anyway, he loves routines. He wouldn’t just leave, not without telling anyone.”

“Who found out that he was gone?”

“Ma- Daredevil.” Oops.

MJ’s eyes flashed “You know who Daredevil is,” she accused.

“No, I don’t.”

“You do. Hmmm, I doubt you’ll tell me. But given this is Franklin Nelson we’re talking about, I could give it a pretty good guess.”

“Don’t,” Peter warned.

“It’s Murdock, isn’t it.”

“Matt Murdock is blind, MJ.”

“So what? Enhanced people exist. Take Spider-Man. He can walk on walls. It’s not that much of a stretch to a blind ninja. And he was involved in the same high-profile cases as Daredevil. Fisk. Castle. Everything adds up to it being him.”

“It’s not Matt.”

“Fine, don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out.”

“Can we focus on Foggy?”

She nodded absently.

They stayed in the cubby for the next two classes, Ned hacking the CCTV and traffic cameras around Foggy’s building, and Peter trawling through the data on Matt’s memory stick, looking for someone who might have it out for Barnes. That data was only for Queens, though, and he wasn’t convinced he’d find anything useful on there.

MJ was compiling her own list.

Peter was terrified to recognise too many of the names on it.

“Joseph Manfredi?” he asked, glancing over her shoulder, “The Maggia boss?”

“Hydra ties,” she said.

Made sense.

“How do you know that?”

“How do you even know who he is?” she rebutted.

Peter stuck by his belief that she could give the Black Widow herself a run for her money.

He slipped away from school a few hours early, asking MJ and Ned to cover for him. “I have to go and talk to someone,” he said.

“Daredevil?” MJ asked. She had let up on the probing, just about, but Peter knew he wouldn’t get much peace on that front until she found the answer.

“No,” he said, truthfully. Stark would be mad at him for skipping school, but time was of the essence. He couldn’t wait to talk to Natasha any longer.

image description: MJ portrait sketch

Chapter Text

Matt was going stir crazy. He’d sent Karen a text saying Foggy had been taken, and not to go into the office today, and hadn’t listened to her responses. Wade had read them, and told him enough about their contents that he was slightly afraid to ever go back into the office.

He’d been around to talk to all of Foggy’s neighbours, and they just told him about the screams they’d heard.

That wasn’t useful, Matt knew there had been screams.

They’d been his.

One old lady reported a young man in a suit, shortly before the screaming had started, and when pressed she’d said she wasn’t going to pry into young Mr. Nelson’s affairs, he seemed a nice young man and she didn’t mind what he wanted to do, romantically. She wasn't going to tell old Mr. Nelson, the butcher, if that was what he was worried about.

The man had apparently been holding a bouquet of roses.

That was his guy.

All the woman could tell him, through her thick glasses, was that he had dark hair and was very handsome, and wasn’t Mr. Nelson lucky.

Matt wanted to pull his hair out.

He followed the scent of roses out the front door and to the same alley Foggy had been taken from, where it also got lost in the traffic.

Visiting Peter at school had only staved off the anxiety for an hour.

Wade wouldn’t let him go out as Daredevil to smash heads together. “Tonight,” he said, “After dark. If your pattern changes now, they’ll figure it out. Nelson needs something to come back to, you can’t just throw everything away.”

When did Wade get so smart?

He tried to get some work done on the Barnes case, while Wade was off getting in touch with his people, trying to find out who’d placed the hit. It was hard to think, and he spent more time pacing than focusing, waiting for Peter to let him know about Nat, or Karen to storm in demanding to know what was going on, or something.

Anything.

Anything but waiting.

Karen stormed in, demanding to know what was going on.

“You can’t do that to me!” she screeched. She didn’t know about Matt and Foggy’s quiet rule of arguments. “You can’t just send that message and then not respond! For hours! Foggy’s been missing for hours, and you’re just sitting here doing, what, paperwork? You’re Daredevil aren’t you? Go… daredevil, or something! Go get him back!”

She began to sob.

Matt found himself on the floor beside her, comforting.

Honestly, he was glad of her company. He hated waiting.

“I’m not doing nothing,” he told her. “Deadpool’s on it, Spidey’s on it. I’m gonna go talk to the Black Widow later, get her on it. He isn’t anywhere in the Kitchen, my skillset is useless here. I hate this. I hate it. But Wade told me to stay here and not be stupid, so I’m staying here and not being stupid.”

“Wade?”

“Deadpool.”

“Wait, you call Deadpool Wade?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s hardcore.”

"I'm gonna tell Marci," Karen said, suddenly. "She should know."

"Please don't!" Matt told her. "I... I don't think I could take that right now. Can we at least wait until we know more? She... I don't want to worry her."

Karen shot him a look but agreed not to spread the news around for a few days. Hopefully, by then, they'd have him back. Or at least know what had happened.

She sat with him for the rest of the day, quizzing him hard on what had happened.

“Who’s Elektra?” she asked. “Is that the one who sent us a load of money during Castle?”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “She’s an assassin. I thought she was dead.”

Karen looked aghast. “So that was blood money? Can we- shouldn’t we give it back, or something?”

“All money in this city is blood money, Kay,” he said, tired. “But Elektra comes from money, too. She knows enough not to try and give me anything she earned from murder.”

“How? How do you know an assassin?”

“Can we not do this now? Foggy.” Matt really didn’t want to think of Stick right now. If Elektra had come back, who else might have? But no. Matt had seen Stick get beheaded. No one came back from something like that.

“Sure. But later, I will get the whole story out of you.”

“You know you can’t print it, right?”

She paused for slightly too long before answering.

“Of course.”

Peter phoned at about 2pm to say that he had his meeting with Natasha, and why did she sound like she didn’t want to talk to him?

Matt didn’t ask why he wasn’t still at school.

He booked it out the door to hail a cab.

The Avengers Tower had come back into use. It was still mostly Stark Industries, but a couple of floors did house Avengers.

Including Natasha.

Steve had told her she could go back, if she wanted, rather than stay in hiding with him and Bucky. He’d said the same to all of them. Nat had been the only one to take him up on it. She felt better knowing what was going on. She also wouldn’t admit it to anyone but herself, but she had liked the Avengers; being part of something bigger than herself. It had been comfortable. Like family, almost.

She wanted to get her family back.

Staying in hiding was not going to help with that at all.

She had already signed the damn Accords. They couldn’t send her to the Raft for that.

And if they did, at least she'd be with Clint. She'd been to see his family once since getting back; they missed him.

Tony had not been happy to have her turn up on his doorstep.

“You’re a spy!” he’d said. “You betrayed me, time and time again.”

“Yes. And?” she’d asked.

He was left there gaping, mouth working but no words coming out.

She had been let back in with little fanfare. It was nice, to be accepted. Tony wouldn’t admit it either, but she knew he missed the Avengers too. It was one of the reasons he’d moved back into the tower. He still held hope that things would go back to how they had been.

Things would not go back to how they had been.

Natasha knew that.

But she wasn’t the only one who’d fought on Steve’s side who regularly hung around the tower. Little паучок was a sweet kid, and she appreciated what he’d done in Germany – admired him, even. She didn’t admire many people. She knew too many secrets for that.

Spidey, or Peter, as she now knew he was called, had skipped school to come and find her.

She heard Stark yelling at him in the common room, and then he shouted something that she couldn’t ignore.

“MATT MURDOCK WANTS TO SPEAK WITH MISS NATASHA!”

She sighed and got up from her book.

“And what makes you think she wants to speak with him?” she asked.

“Foggy’s been taken,” he gasped out.

She felt the blood drain from her face. “When? What happened? Tell me everything.”

“I don’t know much,” he said. “Matt came into school to ask me to talk to you. He said Foggy was kidnapped last night. Apparently there’s been a hit out for him since Mr. Barnes’ trial was announced. Matt doesn’t think he’s dead.”

“He’s been taken out of the city, then?”

“We think so.”

“Tell Matthew I’ll speak with him. But only for Foggy,” she said.

She was going to regret this.

Matthew tapped into the common room looking pretty much like he had when she’d left him. He had the same furrow between his eyebrows, the same dark circles visible behind his glasses. The cut was new, and his nose was a slightly different shape, but he was still a very pretty man.

She reminded herself why she had left him.

“Foggy,” she said. “What happened? I will help you this once, for him, because he does not deserve to be caught up in any of this. Have you finally told him?”

“He knows,” he said.

“Told him what?” Tony asked, and she glanced at Peter, who took that as a sign to get Tony out of the room. Good kid.

“Does Barnes know all this yet?” she asked.

Matthew froze. “Shit.”

Shit was right. James was fragile enough at the moment, without finding out one of his lawyers had been kidnapped. This might just be the thing that threw him over the edge.

She didn’t want to be caught up in all this, between these two men, but she owed James a lot. He had been there, in the Red Room, surprisingly human through everything.

Natasha remembered.

He’d been harsh, yes, but everything in there had been harsh. He’d been giving them the skills to survive.

And later, he had become a lifeline.

“You need to talk to him,” she said. “Ask him to help.”

“I will,” he promised. “Meet us at Barnes’ place in two hours.”

Matt knew how badly Bucky was going to take the news, because he knew how he would in that position.

He was a coward. He was also already at the edge of his tether, and couldn’t deal with anyone else’s emotions right now.

He asked Steve to go with him.

Steve took the news stoically, but Matt could tell he was shaken. There was no hiding from someone who could smell the cortisol in your system.

Bucky could not. He just couldn’t.

This was his fault.

People who tried to help him got hurt.

“I need you to think,” Murdock was telling him. “Can you think of anyone who might have taken him rather than kill him? They left a note; whoever it is is more interested in discrediting you- all of us- than killing anyone. I was informed about the hit out on Foggy and myself the night he was taken. Apparently it was a lot of money for our heads, which makes it even more surprising that they would kidnap him.

“Think.”

Bucky was trying to think; racking his brain for anything that might help. There were just too many. He had not led a peaceful life.

“I don’t know,” he moaned, rocking slightly. “I don’t know!”

“We’re going to meet Natasha later, I’ve spoken to her and she’s agreed to help. With the two of you on this, we’ll find him.”

And you, Bucky thought. With your near legendary ability to know everything going on in your part of the city. But Steve doesn’t know that.

Steve shouldn’t get involved in this.

We need to stay under the radar, or they’ll just kill him.

Steve is a walking American flag. The radar takes one look at him and lights up like a Christmas tree.

Natalia solved that problem by turning up and ordering Steve out the room to get them coffee. Bucky saw her glare at Murdock, and he wondered what that was about.

How did they know each other, anyway?

“James,” she greeted him, as if it hadn’t been thirty years since they’d last seen each other.

“Natalia.”

She didn’t like to be touched, but he desperately wanted to throw his arms around her. Arm. Was he getting more affectionate now he was re-learning how to be himself?

She was here. Everything would be alright.

He remembered training her. He didn’t remember much from that time in the Red Room, but he remembered little Natalia Alianovna, who had been so good, and so angry, she’d faked failing her final exam and they had passed her anyway.

He remembered bumping into her, years later, on a job. They had barely recognised each other; they weren’t meant to remember each other.

They had clung to each other like children, that night.

They had left things for each other in safe houses; little gifts that no one else would be able to tell were gifts. A feather, a pretty pebble from Athens, a paperback. It had helped them both feel less alone, to know that there was someone else watching out; someone who would notice if the person died, rather than the weapon.

“Matthew, what street was the vehicle waiting on?” she asked. “And what time was he taken?”

Bucky wondered how she had met Murdock. He thought he probably knew.

She had always wanted connection. Family, though the Red Room had taken her ability to bear children. She’d talked about it, sometimes, when they had got drunk enough to really talk. It was pointless to want something you couldn’t have, and she knew her life was not suited to be a mother, but she still wondered what it would be like to create a life rather than take it; raise it to be a person, rather than a weapon.

He wondered if Matt Murdock had been an experiment at a normal life.

They didn’t know many people (anyone) who could both hold down a real-people job and understood what it was like to be a weapon. It fascinated Bucky; he hadn’t realised it was possible and now almost desperately wanted it for himself.

He imagined it had captivated Natalia.

He could also imagine, based on the way neither of them brought up anything but the case at hand, that it had not ended well.

A man in a red leather gimp suit turned up at around sunset, carrying enough guns to outfit a small gang. The part of him that was the Winter Soldier recognised him as a threat.

He thought that anyone in their right minds would recognise him as a threat.

This was Deadpool. Why was Deadpool here?

Deadpool, according to all the files he’d ever read, was certifiably insane.

“Wade,” Murdock said, and what?

“I’ve been asking around, seems there are more people than we’d thought out for your heads. I picked up the job, usually that gets you a little more info, but I doubt it will help much with this. Whoever took your boy is good, and we won’t be the only ones going after him. Red, don’t go back to your place. You can stay at mine until we get this sorted out. There are too many conflicting players in this, they might still go after you.”

Deadpool glanced around the room, as if noticing it had other people in it for the first time.

Natalia was glaring between Murdock and the mercenary.

Bucky had not expected this.

He didn’t think anyone ever expected Deadpool.

Apart from Murdock, apparently.

Steve had got back with the coffee, and they hadn’t been able to get rid of him again. He just looked a little confused by the whole thing, but he was the first of them to speak.

“Deadpool?” he asked. “May I ask what you’re doing here?”

“Red didn’t tell you?” He looked around the room again, suspicious, and then seemed to come to a conclusion. “You’re Captain America!”

“Can we focus, Wade?” Matt asked. He was beginning to regret whatever had possessed him to get all of these people in one room, but they all cared about Foggy in their own ways. They were all here for him. “What did you find out?”

Natasha asked for a laptop, and Bucky wordlessly produced a machine that sounded like it had been modified to within an inch of its life. The whirring it gave off was a little painful to listen to, but Nat seemed happy enough.

Matt should have known that the two of them would get on. He wondered if they'd known each other, before. They seemed to not need words while they worked together.

There were some things that Foggy Nelson was not. He was not intimidating, or physically dangerous, or especially fit. He was not that brave, when compared to the people he shared an office with. He was not a great singer, or actor (he’d enjoyed it more than he’d been good at it), or softball player.

There were some things that he was. He was a good lawyer, and on his best days people might even say he was a great one. He liked words; using them to help people. He liked things in their place. He was good at organising. He was Daredevil's best friend.

At this moment in time, though, he was one thing above all others.

Foggy Nelson was angry.

They had broken into his home, blindfolded him, carried him over the rooftops and bundled him into the back of a van, like so many potatoes.

He had been bumped and jostled and in the dark for hours, and then they had dragged him into a dark basement. He had heard the lock click.

Foggy had never been kidnapped before. He’d been mugged, and threatened, and had people throw bricks through the office window, sure, but never actually kidnapped.

He had expected to be scared by this.

He wasn’t. He was surrounded by people whose entire life purpose was being scary. Most of them owed him favours.

They would find him.

No, Foggy wasn’t scared.

He was furious.

Chapter Text

Ned had been trawling CCTV footage around Hell’s Kitchen for hours. He wished Mr. Murdock had given Peter more to work with. He’d tried the cameras around the building, and picked something up on one pointing at the roof; a dark, grainy figure slipping out of the window he was pretty sure was Mr. Nelson’s, carrying a bundled body.

Bingo.

Ned called MJ over. Peter hadn’t got back yet, and Net was Not Happy he had left him with MJ, but the Scary Girl was good, he had to admit.

“That looks like our guy,” she said, giving him an appraising look. He felt uncomfortably like every thought he’d ever had was being put through a microscope. “You’re good, Leeds. I’m gonna keep you.”

Uhhhhhh. Thanks? Please don’t? Scary Girl, do not engage. Beep beep beep wheeeeeee. Systems malfunctioning. Help. Please Help. SOS.

He hadn’t come in that way. Maybe he’d gone in the front door; just walked in like any other visitor. He would check the front door for the hour or so before this, see if he could track anyone suspicious from there. Hope there weren’t any blind spots.

“Where is Parker?” MJ asked, about an hour later, and no, Ned didn’t always track Peter’s phone. Honestly. Who did MJ think he was, a paranoid psycho with a vigilante for a best friend?

He sighed and got his phone out. The little red dot blinked on the map.

“Why’s he at Stark tower?”

And good question. Very good question.

He brought up the chat to ask.

squidward – WYD??

There was a couple of minutes before the reply.

plankton – babysitting im

plankton – ttyl? gtg.

“Does that mean what I think it means?” asked MJ.

“Probably,” Ned said, grimly. No loyalty to Peter would stand in the face of interrogation by MJ. Sorry. He would hold up against torture, he promised, but he couldn’t be held responsible for breaking under that gaze.

She hummed, and went back to her list.

Several people had entered the building in the hour leading up to the kidnapping. None of them looked like their guy, but the grainy footage made it hard to tell. MJ suggested that they might have disguised themselves, or something.

She insisted on going through the footage again, and took screenshots of the people.

There were five. All grainy; Ned doubted he would be able to recognise them in the street. The camera was ancient; most of the ones in that area of the city were.

They were lucky it still worked at all.

The first was a little old lady, weighed down by shopping bags. Not her, although MJ seemed to think it would make an excellent disguise.

The next couple were that – a couple. They seemed drunk; laughing. It could have been them, if the woman had left another way. Might have been easier as a two person job.

The next was a man in a suit, carrying flowers. Again, it could have been him.

The fifth was a girl with a dog, and they both decided to rule her out.

Backtracking; Ned wrote a program to follow each of the four suspects through the city’s cameras. There weren’t many of them, in that area. Again – they were lucky there was a working one by the door, and the one pointing at Mr. Nelson’s window was a fluke the kidnapper probably hadn’t anticipated.

The old woman was picked up at the bodega. It probably wasn’t her.

The couple had been at a bar.

The man with the flowers, however - he was suspicious.

Very suspicious.

To the point of entering an alley (there were no cameras in the alley, but a pawn shop across the road had CCTV).

Ned set that camera to play from the timestamp of the kidnapping. Sure enough, a few minutes later, they had a nondescript van on the screen.

MJ was vibrating beside him. “That’s got to be it!”

He couldn’t make out the plates from this camera, but the one that picked the van up a block away was perfect.

A little bit of only slightly more illegal hacking later, and he had a match.

MJ had abandoned her list to watch over his shoulder, and she was delighted by the whole thing.

She wouldn’t stop going on about the surveillance state, but she was still delighted.

She even gave him a high five!

Maybe Scary Girl could make a worthy ally. Peter might have been on the right track, with this one.

squidward – houston we have liftoff!!!

squidward – got a match for the plates!!

squidward – peter?

squidward – pete? come in, pete!

“This isn’t working,” MJ said. “You could try phoning.”

He tried phoning.

Peter picked up on the third try.

“Ned! Kinda busy right now! It’s gonna blow!!”

He hung up.

“Well, that solves that problem.”

“We need to keep going!” MJ said. “We’re close. We’re gonna figure this out, I can feel it!”

Ned agreed, but he wished Peter was here for this. It was his friend they were trying to find.

It would also be very nice to have Spider-Man on board with whatever came next.

Ned knew what was going to come next.

He tracked the plate to a rental garage on the outskirts of the city.

They had a phone number and an ancient website that probably hadn’t been updated since windows XP. MJ said she had an idea.

She got out her phone.

Ned did not want to do this. He hated even being in the same room as people prank calling.

This could go very badly wrong.

“Hello, this is Baccara van hire, how can I help?”

MJ grinned. Ned hid his face. She put on a slight midwestern accent, and he covered his ears as well.

“Hello, I’m Mary, from Shelley’s car insurance. I’m actually looking for info on one of the vans you had hired out yesterday. It bumped into a car last night, and we were hoping to find out who was driving.”

“Do you know the plate number?”

“I do, ma’am.”

She rattled it off, looking triumphantly at Ned.

“That is one of ours,” the woman on the other end of the line said, “but it was here all night. No one hired it. Are you sure you have the right van?”

“Someone might have made a mistake somewhere. We’ll look into it. Thank you for your time, ma’am.”

She hung up, and grinned again. “Two options.”

“One, the van was stolen and then brought back. Two, the van hire place is a front,” Ned counted off on his fingers.

“Precisely, my dear Watson.”

“If anything, you’re Watson, Jones!”

Ned realised he’d just said that out loud.

“Are you up for a little light investigating?” MJ asked, smiling wickedly.

Ned sighed. He was a man in the chair, through and through. He wasn’t built for this.

She wasn’t going to take no for an answer, was she?

Ned sent Peter a text letting him know where they were going, and what they had found out, and as soon as school ended they caught the subway out towards the Bronx.

It was dark by the time they arrived, an hour later, several subway changes, a cab that dropped them off a discreet distance away, and a walk that Ned did not appreciate and MJ strode as if she was stomping on the world. Eventually, though, were standing outside a sign which proclaimed Baccara Van Rental.

It was an old complex, worn down, with a dozen or so vans in the yard. There was a rusty, chain link fence around it, and Ned thought it resembled the website in building form.

MJ found a crack in the fence, and gestured to Ned.

“Tetanus?” he asked.

“Chicken,” she said, and wrapped her hands in her leather jacket to hold it open for him to step through.

“Insufficient facts always invite danger,” he quoted, but she was already running, crouched low in the shadows, towards the building. “What are we even looking for?” he grumbled.

“Evidence,” she said.

Very helpful.

There was a back door, by a couple of dumpsters and a stack of old exhaust pipes and tires. MJ grabbed something Ned connected to the word tire iron and neatly smashed the window, reaching her hand through to let them in.

Ned cringed, hands over his ears. She was going to get them both killed, or something.

“That’s one way to do it,” he whispered.

Still gripping the long strip of metal like a club, she crept into the building. Ned followed, attempting not to trip over his shoelaces, which had come undone at some point during the walk and he hadn’t retied them yet. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Inside was a dark hallway with a couple of doors, opening out into a dingy reception area. MJ pushed open the nearest door, grabbed a big ass flashlight out of her bag, and started rifling through a filing cabinet.

“You just carry that around with you?” Ned asked.

“You don’t? Now keep lookout.”

A couple of files in, Ned started to get a prickling feeling on the back of his neck. Perhaps hanging out with Peter had rubbed off on him; he wasn’t going to test that by trying to stick to a wall, though. Most likely it was the residual awareness that humans haven’t quite lost from the days of hiding in caves from wolves.

He pressed himself as close to the wall as he could and strained his hearing.

There was definitely someone else here. He could hear them moving around.

“MJ,” he hissed “Someone’s here.”

She dragged him into the room and eased the door shut, then opened a wardrobe full of overalls and folded herself inside, pulling Ned in after her. She left the door open a crack and turned the torch off, plunging them into darkness.

It smelled like engines and sweat.

Ned had dreamt about hiding in a closet with a girl once, and this was absolutely not how that dream had gone.

A torch swung across the gap in the door, and they both held their breaths, but it seemed they had got away.

They waited there for about fifteen minutes, in darkness, heartbeats almost audible, before MJ pushed open the door.

Ned really wanted to leave, but she didn’t seem to be having any of it. She kept going through the files.

She seemed to find what she was looking for, because she folded up a piece of paper and shoved it into an inside pocket.

They were nearly in the clear when a torch beam swung across into the hall they were creeping through.

They both froze.

The security guard wouldn’t notice them if they weren’t moving.

Surely.

The eye was drawn to movement. Ned had read that somewhere once, thought it seemed the sort of thing MJ would have too.

Some of Peter’s luck must have been rubbing off on them because this hallway they were standing in was exactly in that guard’s path.

There was nowhere to hide.

They ran.

Ned was not a runner. He promised himself if he got out of this he would be doing a couch to 5k, cause he had never run so fast in his life as he did then. He didn’t know he'd had it in him.

MJ’s legs were ridiculously long, and she outpaced him easily, but grabbed him in the arm and dragged him through the door.

He dimly heard the guy radio for backup, or something.

There were three other guys waiting for them outside.

Ned could almost feel MJ beside him, in a crouch with her tire iron, ready to fight her way out.

Those guys had guns. Tasers. A bit of metal was not going to do anything but antagonise them.

Under no circumstances antagonise the men with guns.

Ned did perhaps the bravest thing he ever had and put his hand on MJ’s shoulder.

“We’ll come quietly,” he said, “Just don’t shoot us.”

MJ glared at him, but seemed to concede to the sense of his statement. Peter could track Ned's phone. They’d told him what they’d found out. Spider-Man would come looking for them, they’d be fine.

If they could just avoid antagonising the guys with guns.

He heard the tire iron drop against concrete beside him.

Both put their hands up, like in the movies.

An hour or so later they were unceremoniously dumped in a room, and the lock clicked behind them.

Ned grabbed the sack from his head and looked curiously at the sole other occupant of the basement, a man with longish hair, a legally blonde t-shirt which really didn’t suit him, and pyjama pants, and took an educated guess.

“Mr. Nelson?” Ned asked.

“Who are you?” the man asked. Ned took that as confirmation. He had a puffy black eye, but otherwise seemed unharmed.

“I’m Ned, Peter’s friend. We were looking for you, and we ended up getting captured while staking out a van hire place, and, well, here we are.”

“You were what, sorry? Wait, back up there. Staking out a van hire place?”

“MJ’s idea.”

She scowled at him, but he revised his previous statement – there were scarier things in the world than her.

Scratch that.

She reached into her boot and brought out a roll of - “Are those lockpicks?” Ned asked.

MJ grunted in response and started towards the stairs.

“Because if they are, you are both the craziest and coolest person on the planet, and I know Spider-Man.”

“Hah!” MJ said. “I was right!”

“You were?”

“I was. Now let me concentrate!”

“I like your friend,” Mr. Nelson told Ned.

“Thanks,” MJ said. “Now hush.”

They waited for a couple of minutes before she let out a “Fuck.”

“What’s up?” Foggy asked.

“Deadbolted. This isn’t the only lock. Nothing I can do about the ones outside the door.”