Chapter Text
Is Dex good?
He doesn’t know. There’s blood on the walls of his mind, running down the air vents and seeping up from the floor. It’s a featureless room, save the support beam in its center, and Dex paces its perimeter like a caged, beaten dog, rattling the rose-scented beads of a rosary between his fingers.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
“Please don’t kill me.”
Clack. Clack. Clack.
“I have—I have a wife. A family. Please.”
Clack. Clack. Clack.
“I’ll pay you. I’ll—”
Bang! Clack. Clack.
The man slumps, falling loose over himself as Dex tracks the slow slide of brain and bone across pooling blood. The man had been an informant. Mr. Charles had wanted him dead. Dex killed him. This has been Dex’s life for 10 months. Dex hates Mr. Charles: he hates his flippant and self-assured demeanor, hates the way he talks with his mouth full, hates how he treats Dex like some sort of mindless beast he can unleash as he pleases. Still he works for the man, and still he kills for him.
The body spasms. Dex wipes the barrel of his gun on his suit and slots it neatly into its designated holster. Even that motion—the twisting of his body—sends an electric spike of pain down his spine. It’s getting worse. He flexes his fingers, breathing heavily, and the beads of the rosary snag at his gloves. A little silver crucifix hangs at its apex, glimmering like a minnow in the dingy lighting of the warehouse, and it fits familiarly in the hollow of Dex’s palm as he takes a long drag off his cigarette.
He’s in Serbia. It’s October, and it’s fucking cold, and he sends a knife through someone’s Achilles’ tendon as she tries to flee. Mr. Charles wants her alive. The rosary hangs heavy in his hand, and Dex drags the target out into the snow, back twinging, and into the back of a black SUV.
Is this good?
November. New Zealand. A man sees Dex’s face as he rips the teeth from a body he’s disposing of. Dex’s body reacts before his mind does. He buries two people that night. The crucifix burns hot in his hands. He is lost. He is angry.
December. Taiwan. Dex is shot through the bicep and abdomen during a job. Sloppy. Careless. The blood loss is catastrophic, and Dex only blearily remembers being shuttled into an ambulance and spoken over harshly as the EMTs fit a mask over his face. Dex had reached for one, a man with large, concerned brown eyes, before slipping into darkness. (He wakes up alone.)
January. Portugal. Mr. Charles had wanted a small terrorist organization wiped off the face of the planet. Dex obliged. They were terrible people. They lie in puddles of gore and spilled wine when Dex radios in to the faceless operatives that speak for Mr. Charles. Good work. Be ready to move out tomorrow. The room is filling up with blood and seawater. The rosary is like a cord around his spine, dragging him down, dragging him back to the city to where things are real. Out here, he is nothing more than a ghost in his own body.
February. Dex reads the news. NYC is healing, slowly, slowly. He finds nothing about Daredevil. He knows why, and he hates the lawyer for it. His fingertips smell like roses and gun oil. Dex has never dreamed before, but he does, now—he dreams of a man outlined in stained glass and holy fire. A single, immaculately folded black t-shirt is tucked into his suitcase every time he is shuttled between countries. Dex had wrapped it in plastic in a bid to memorialize it, to freeze it in time, to serve as a tangible reminder of the tenuous and brittle trust Matt had placed in him. It didn’t work. It only smells of old cotton and polyester, now, agonizingly inert.
“I want to go back to New York.”
“Why?” Mr. Charles is speaking through a mouthful of cannoli. It’s a balmy evening on the southern Italian coast, and Dex haunts the doorway of the balcony Mr. Charles lounges on. A breeze meanders up the coast, bringing with it the sharp sting of fish and salt. The town of Positano is alive beneath them, glowing yellow and orange in the springtime sunset, bubbling with music and boisterous conversation. “There’s nothing for you back there.”
Dex scowls. “I’m done, here. You said yourself there are no jobs right now.”
“Uh, yeah, right now,” Mr. Charles laughs. He sucks a glob of cream from his fingers with an exaggerated grin. “Tomorrow is a different question. Great work with those guys last night, by the way. I don’t think they could have been dead-er if you tried.”
His hands twitch involuntarily, popping as the bones and tendons twist against each other in simmering anger. Mr. Charles puts his hands up in mock surrender.
“Is this about the meds? ‘Cause we’ll get you more. You don’t have to go gallivanting off to the Big Apple to get oxy, I’ll tell you that. The Italians get just as fucked up as we do.”
“It’s not—no. I’m fine,” Dex grits out. In truth, he isn’t, and the pills Mr. Charles gives him go straight into the toilet. He won’t sacrifice his mind for something as banal as pain, though that pain is enough to blind him momentarily these days. It’s frustrating. Admittedly, he’d taken it out on the men last night, and Mr. Charles knows that, because Mr. Charles seems to know everything.
“Then why, hm? It’s not because of the lawyer, is it? Or, Daredevil, I guess.” Mr. Charles smiles up at him casually, like he’s commenting on the weather. “I mean, I’m not, like, stupid. What, you want to break him out? Kill him? To be honest, your relationship with the guy seems a little hot and cold.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Yeah, actually, it is. Can you fucking imagine what would happen if I let a CIA operative into a federal prison, and someone as high profile as Matthew Murdock just happened to die because of it?”
“I don’t want to kill him.” Dex fixes his gaze on the horizon, at the hazy communion of the Mediterranean and evening sky. “Just talk.”
Dex is lying through his teeth—he wants (needs) more than talk. He’s never been the best liar. Over the past weeks he’s been methodically working through the legal tangle of the New York prison system, leveraging names and passwords and anything he can from halfway around the world.
Mr. Charles crunches down on another cannoli. The cream spills out the end, plopping down onto the plate and scattering tiny chocolate flakes in its wake.
“You want him out, huh.” Of course he fucking knows.
“I’d consider it a… Personal favor,” Dex grits out.
Mr. Charles fixes Dex with an unreadable stare. There’s cream caught in the corner of his mouth. He makes a show out of thinking, smirking with one index finger on his chin, pushing the silence to its absolute maximum as he bites, chews, swallows, and repeats. Dex itches to send the unused fork on the table into the space between his laughing, judging eyes. The rosary is unbearably heavy in his pocket.
“What’re you gonna do for me to make this worth it, huh?” Mr. Charles asks. He smears the cream on his plate with his finger in lazy circles. “Gotta pull a lotta strings for something like that.”
“I’ve asked for nothing else.”
“True. This is a little beyond my scope, though. I don’t like dealing with issues this… public.” He reclines on his cushioned, wicker chair, wiping his fingers on the arm. A smear of chocolate mars the bright white fabric.
Dex’s vertebrae scream and grind against each other. A violin sings its sugary song somewhere in the street beneath him, joyful and immensely detestable.
“Again,” Dex grits out, “I’d consider it a personal favor.”
“Personal, indeed,” hums Mr. Charles.
Dex jerks forward and snatches the fork, then flings it in one practiced, swift movement. It ricochets off the side of a building and streetlamp on its short journey downward, and the sound of music is abruptly replaced by shattering wood and screaming.
Mr. Charles smiles, totally at ease. “New York, then.”