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farfromstrange · 2 years

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Foreigner's God: Chapter 1

Main Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x OFC

Chapter Summary: Thanks to Matt Murdock, Eliza Bennett isn’t going to jail – but who exactly is daredevil and why did this infuriating person in a kid's costume have to get involved in her business in the first place? To her, learning that daredevil is truly a pain in the ass isn't all that surprising, yet the self-acclaimed vigilante always knows how to add one on top and she's really not having it. Teaming up with an Avenger, why would he ever do such a thing?

Warnings: ANGST, mentions of mental illness, therapy, canon typical violence, Tony Stark being an asshole

Word Count: 20k

Read Chapter 1: I Did Something Bad here on AO3.

We make our decisions based on personal judgment. Sometimes we hit the nail right on the end, sometimes we involuntarily drive off the road and make the worst decisions there could be. The whole process of making bad decisions is what makes us human. We wouldn’t be functioning members of society if our judgment wasn’t off every once in a while. No human is ever without flaws.

The whole point of life is to learn from your mistakes and never make the same ones again.

Though there are times you come face to face with yourself, perhaps in the slightly runny reflection of the one-way mirror in a police station, and find yourself asking ‘Where the fuck did I go wrong?’

Eliza Bennett was many things. She was smart, sophisticated, and at times incredibly reckless, but she drew the line at admitting mistakes where she saw none. She believed she did the right thing and if someone had asked her if she regretted what she’d done to lead her into this compromising position, she would’ve said no; she knew, for a fact, that she would’ve made the same decision all over again.

“I’ve been struggling with questions of identity as of late.”

Her voice sounded like a needle on the ground of an empty and silent room with high walls and linoleum floors. Drop, ping, echo. Her leg bounced in the same rhythm, chasing at least some form of control over the way the world spun around her. Nails dug into the fabric of her jeans, pulling at the scratches and the holes. Her fingers found anything and everything she could touch or hold onto, keep her mind occupied beyond compare. With enough to do, there was hardly any time to think about anything else.

“I used to like who I was,” Eliza said. “It’s not every day you’re given a second chance. You gotta honor it, right?”

The echo grew so loud, that she felt it vibrating in the darkest depths of her chest. It ran a marathon against the beating of her heart, a steady thudding against the bones of her ribs.

The world was so loud. It screamed at her for no apparent reason. Her own body conspired against her. Cold sweat down her spine, itching in her bones, her skin on fire although she was seemingly freezing – it was the middle of summer. Not only did the world collapse but so did her sanity, slowly but steadily, and she sensed a pattern that kept her on edge.

“I thought I had it all figured. I lost myself, but I put myself together again. I had the choice to make my life the way I wanted it to be, and I thought I made the right choice in getting where I am now. I thought…”

She thought - that was the problem.

It was always just a thought. Her mind could carry loads of information at once, like a supercomputer at high speed, but she never truly knew anything. Strains of words in her mind built into made-up stories to make her keep going. She wasn’t sure if the world lied to her or if she was constantly lying to the world to hide the truth from herself. The lines blurred into the void of missing knowledge.

“There’s this emptiness inside me, Mrs. Darcy,” her breath circled and retreated into her lungs. “It’s like there’s a hole in my soul and no matter how hard I try, I can’t fill it,” she said. “Whatever connection to reality I had is just… it’s gone. You know, I like knowledge. I like knowing a lot of things, it keeps me on top of my game, but this- I know nothing about myself and it’s scaring me shitless.”

The woman before her tapped her pen steadily against the notebook. Tap, tap, tap. It was almost as loud as the sound of her voice. Her head tilted a curious way.

Most people listen without listening. It’s a natural phenomenon. They hear the words thrown at them and they pretend to understand, but they don’t. They only listen to make themselves feel less bad. Oh, this person has it worse than me, maybe I’m not such a failure after all. It's the mentality most people go through life with and it’s harmful, but like bad decision-making, it’s just human nature.

Mrs. Darcy shifted in the armchair. “If I may say something,” she said. “I can’t tell you who you are or who you’re supposed to be. I can only show you who you are to everyone else. Your name is Eliza Bennett. You’re the girl who has devoted her life to saving and protecting people to seek penance for what she’s done in the past.”

“What, so that makes me the hero?” She scoffed pathetically, thumbnail between her front teeth. She detested the taste of the wasted bone, but once again the sensation offered a welcomed distraction.

Eliza sat with her legs crossed on the leather sofa. Her heart kept beating. Thud, thud, thud, and the sound kept getting louder, thud, thud, thud. Infuriating. Enough to throw an already agitated person into the pit of insanity.

“You are who you want to be,” Mrs. Darcy corrected her. “But there’s a lot more to you than you let yourself believe. I think you have to differentiate between the facts that you’re missing and the real person you are inside. It’s important to know what you’re truly looking for. Facts can be found if you give it some more time and thought,” she said. “You, however, that is something you can’t find solely with knowledge. You don’t need the facts at all. The person you’re looking for is merely words on paper. I know it matters to you, but that’s not what’s going to fill the hole inside of you. Not at all.”

She hated to admit it, but the woman had a point. She had been in the business of receiving therapy for quite some time now; Eliza never once considered it a pleasure to talk to Mrs. Darcy about her deepest darkest secrets, though the woman was always onto something. After all this time, she knew what words she could trust.

“You have to find your inner self by working with yourself. Do you understand what I mean?”

”I-“ she huffed. Her chest closed around the oxygen, holding it hostage. Even her throat swelled up, dry and burning like wildfire. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe, but I don’t know.”

She knew. Somehow, she always knew. The realization was the hardest part. Applying the words to reality – that’s where things got tricky. So perhaps, Eliza didn’t understand the weight of her words after all.

She picked at her chapped nails. Eye contact is hard, especially when your throat feels like it’s blocked by tons of cement and you can see your emotion reflect in the other person’s eyes.

If only she could manipulate her state of mind, the whirlwind of feelings inside, the ones that made breathing so much harder than it should be, she was sure she would’ve been somewhere in the Bahamas by then, sipping juice straight from the coconut while the world around her laid in shambles, but she wouldn’t care because she’d know everything. She’d be aware of herself and learn not to care so much. For once in her miserable life, she wanted to deserve happiness. She wanted to go to the Bahamas and drink coconut water even though she hated coconuts. She wanted to be one of those happy people in the commercials. Just for once, she wanted to win.

“It feels like there’s this little girl inside of me and that girl – she’s never heard of Eliza Bennett,” she said then, head in the clouds, voice so far away. “Total stranger. That little girl looks so much like me; I even dream about her sometimes.”

All the time.

”It’s humiliating, haunting even. She’s like those children in the horror movies Thor always wanted to watch. I feel unsettled. My inner child is terrifying as shit. Is that- do you think that’s normal?"

“I see,” - Mrs. Darcy adjusted her glasses - “Since your friends left, the hole where the girl lives has had the chance to grow. She’s had enough people to nurture and care for her,” of course, she gave the scientific answer. “They protected her, protected you. The girl didn’t have to grow up or understand much because you weren’t alone,” she said. “Now everyone’s gone and the girl is faced with what it means to lead an independent life. It scares her. Why wouldn’t it? She’s never had the chance to grow up - she doesn’t know who she is. In your case, it’s even more severe because you’ve been ripped out of the life you knew, tossed into a new one and now you’ve also been evicted from that life. The girl inside of you is a stranger to consistency.”

”Well, the last part’s true,” Eliza murmured under her very relieved breath when her lungs opened up again, finally.

“The girl inside of you feels lonely, that’s why you can’t stop thinking about her. She wants to find something that makes her life worthy again. She seeks a purpose. It’s what’s been bothering you.”

She pressed her palms into her red, swollen eye sockets. “There’s so much I don’t know,” she almost cried. Only almost. “I’ve tried to ignore that something is missing, but I can’t do that anymore. I don’t know who this little girl is and part of me doesn’t even want to explore the options, but I know I’m more than the name I was given at SHIELD. I have to be more than that, you know? Because… if I’m not more than the person I’ve grown to be up to this point, I don’t know what to do. If I’m not more then chances are that I am nothing at all.”

And if she was nothing, she had to be something in between, dark grey matter floating around the universe.

The only way to prevent losing herself completely was to figure out who she was. She had to be someone. She had to be a person.

Who was Eliza Bennett, really?

✧

“Question of the day!”

She turned with a frown on her face, “What?”

“Crossword puzzle.” Happy Hogan lifted the newspaper in his hands. “You alright?” he asked, more serious this time. “What’d you think I was gonna ask?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s nothing. I’m fine,” she said. Lies, blatant lies. She sat on top of a tower of lies. Only a question of time until everyone would come crashing down and take her with them.

“Hit me with it.” She tried her best to smile.

Happy eyed her suspiciously, but he chose to believe it. Crisis averted.

“What is an eight-letter word meaning ‘one who works with or controls some machine or scientific apparatus’?” he asked.

Eliza answered without missing a beat, “Tony Stark.”

He counted in his head. “That’s nine letters.”

She kept cutting the fruit in front of her. “Iron Man.”

“Seriously, you forget how to count?”

”I was never good at math.”

“Well, you write systems.”

”That statement is wrong on so many levels,” she said. “It’s called programming. I write code. Not like Tony, I admit, but I write code and that code isn’t all too bad. Sure, it’s math but c’mon! You think I stand here and count letters while my fruit is melting?”

He exhaled loudly. “You’re right,” he hummed. “It’s just eight letters. I’ll get it.”

Eliza smiled. She dropped the last pieces into the blender. “That’s my man!”

“But just to clarify, you don’t have any constructive suggestions to spare, or-“

A grin crept to her lips. He opened his mouth to speak, but the loud whirring of the blender cut him off.

Eliza poured the smoothie into two separate glasses, whistling to the tune of a song stuck in her head. Happy’s head hung low like that of a kicked puppy.

She chose to have mercy on him. “Operator,” she stated.

“What?” he asked.

“Eight letter word. Operator.”

Happy counted the boxes in the newspaper. He bumped his fist. “Yes!”

“You’re welcome.” She slid one of the glasses over at him.

“Thanks.”

“Operator,” she repeated with a smoothie in hand. “Operator. How did you not know Operator?”

“Sometimes the easiest answers are the hardest to find.”

She snorted at his desperate attempt to redeem himself. “Yeah, right.”

The compound was lifeless. She wasn’t used to the silence, the emptiness of the huge space. The rooms were all unoccupied - no more pictures in the living room or labeled groceries in the fridge. It all landed in the trash, shipped away to be composted because no one was going to eat it. Life as she knew it had passed away, a boat on a stormy sea; life was never going to be the same as it was.

After work, Eliza walked home. She insisted on transporting herself from one end of the city to the other. She took whatever subway halted closest to her apartment in Hell’s Kitchen - she insisted on moving to the less privileged part of the city, even though Tony wasn’t happy about it - and the rest she simply traveled by foot. She cherished the small moments of silence, the wind in her hair, a reminder that she was still alive and breathing the fresh (polluted) air.

No souls on the streets that night. Something was lurking in the atmosphere. She smelled the danger from miles away. She was about to round a particularly dark corner of town when she caught some voices in the dark.

“Are you sure she’s the right person?” the man spoke clear Russian.

“Boss wants her father,” the other said. He knows we have her, he’s gonna come around.”

“What’s with that guy anyway?”

“I don’t know, I don’t care. As long as I’m getting paid. That guy wants something, he gets it. He gets what he wants, I get paid. Simple. No questions asked.”

Eliza dared to peek around the corner. Two men parked in front of an abandoned store.

“Don’t do it,” she told herself. “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”

The door to the store opened. The men carried a large wooden crate. One of them opened the back of the white van. Small whimpers sounded from the vehicle, no longer muffled by the doors.

She clenched her teeth. “I’m gonna do it.”

Eliza saw every person enclosed in different colors. She called it the emotional color wheel, although the colors mixed most of the time and it barely made sense to describe them. Colors only provided symbols - what mattered was the way it felt. Reality existed of mixed shades toppling over each other in a fiery battle to dominate – shades of whatever emotional category a human being fell in on the wheel; it was excruciating, let alone painful to the eyes. Whenever she closed her eyes, she stood in the same red wasteland with sand at her feet, hot and merciless burning the way in the right direction. With enough concentration, she could track the hues like she tracked emotions. Every person felt different. Their realities looked different. She didn’t want to look into the realities of other people, the truth behind the color wheel, and she tried to swallow it most of the time, but her powers were always there, itching in her fingers.

The van dragged green wind through the desert. Eliza had to follow the string to the point where it stopped moving. Her heart rutted against her ribcage with uneasiness. The fear lingering in the air caused sweat to run from her forehead in cold drizzles. The woman was burning green, so green, and with the red from her anger she appeared almost yellow.

A Series of pictures danced in the scarlet smoke like snow in a snow globe. The van on its way through Hell’s Kitchen determined to head in one direction and one direction only. She saw it clearly before her eyes. Her body followed where her mind led her to.

Somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen, the van slowed down. The smoke evaporated as Eliza watched it pull up in the back alley of an old butcher shop. She knelt at the ledge, just watching, assessing the situation. Subconsciously, she reached for her ear. Her attempt to activate the earpiece failed miserably since she wasn’t wearing one. There was no one there but herself. She didn’t have a team to back her up. She had to do this alone.

“Get her inside,” one of the men ordered. "If anyone shows up, kill without hesitation.”

The woman was sobbing by the time they retrieved her from the confinement, out into the cold night air only to pull her back inside the building.

Eliza inhaled the polluted summer air breeze. She closed her eyes, easing herself into the weight of the situation. She tried to see clearly, and focus on what was important instead of what wasn’t. Her lids blew open way too soon, pupils wide, almost swallowing the entirety of her iris in its blackness. The hairs on the back of her neck flew up to full attention. A shiver went down her spine.

She slipped the knife from her mom-jeans. Before she could turn though, an experienced arm went around her shoulders, the other quickly under her armpit, and he twisted her arm to the side. She was trapped.

“Don’t move,” the low voice said into her ear. “Put the knife down.”

Something told her he expected her to be scared of him. A strange man in the dark of the night, seizing her like an evil spawn.

Eliza relaxed. Her fingers eased around the handle.

He breathed hotly against her cold skin. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Eliza relaxed her muscles as if giving in. His gloved hands on her body slacked, sure she wouldn't make another attempt. Her breath was dangerously calm. He fell right into the trap.

She brought her head back with full force. Something plastic dug into the back of her skull. She was smaller than him, yet her head carried more force than a normal human was capable of possessing, and after feeling the sting of the plastic, she was sure she broke whatever he was wearing on his head.

The man took a moment to stabilize. Eliza turned around, another knife in hand, but he had it slip out of her fingers before she could act on her silent threat to impale him. She threw a balled fist at him, though he managed to dodge the attempt once again.

With a dissatisfied grunt, she searched for the third knife in her boot. When he tried to knock it off her hands, she flipped it up into the air. One hand extended to grab her, but he wasn’t prepared for the next move. She caught the knife with the other hand and launched it at him.

The blade slid dangerously close to his stubbled throat. She only missed by millimeters, at best. The cold metal grazed his skin, not enough to draw blood but enough for him to feel it.

Her wrists burned before she felt the impact. Hard, red metal hit the bone of the wrist that was holding the knife. She cried out. Her hand contracted and she had to drop the knife to shake it off.

If she’d worn a mask, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. The metal rod hit her across the cheek. She slowed down, lucky to have ditched most of the impact - it wouldn’t have left a black eye, although the skin almost tore.

“Motherf-” she kicked him in the chest.

He hit the wall behind them.

Eliza pressed her elbow to his throat. She almost managed to look him up and down if he hadn't figured out how to use their height difference. With one easy move, he had her arm twisted around and pushed her into the hard brick wall instead.

“Listen to me!” he said. She fought hard against his grip. “Listen!" he shook her. "I’m not trying to hurt you, but if you keep throwing knives at me so help me God! I'm gonna make you regret ever crawling out of bed this morning. Understood?"

She huffed.

“Are we clear?”

Eliza shot her leg up, “Fuck you!” She kicked him so hard, that she finally drew a pained sound from him.

“What is wrong with you?” he tried desperately. “Whoever you think I am, you’re wrong. I’m not one of them! Those guys kidnapped an innocent woman. They’re most likely going to kill her. I’m not with them.”

“Go to hell!” she kicked him further into the moonlight.

“Stop!” his voice roared.

Eliza balled her fists. The moonlight fell on his face. It reflected off the pair of red eyes, the plastic of the mask that covered only half his face. Two horns – they looked like ears – stood at full attention. The rest of his body was tightly wrapped in a leather suit.

“We’re on the same side. C’mon.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

He was still crouched from the hard blow she’d given him. Upon her pulling back, he rose back into an upright position. His lip twitched in a hiss of pain. “Thank you,” he said.

Eliza stood across from the vigilante in her mom jeans, Dr. Martens, and a hoodie, looking all like she didn’t have any business being there. Judging by looks, she did not fit the picture.

“Daredevil,” she stated. “Huge fan.”

He scoffed, hand pressed to his bruised ribs. “Yeah, you definitely showed your gratitude.”

“Oh, I’m sorry for being a little wary of strange men attacking me in the middle of the night.”

“Alright.” He straightened up. “It's not my fault you decided to come here the same time I did. I don't care. I have better things to do than pick fights with curious girls on rooftops."

“So it’s my fault? At least I don’t look like I raided the Halloween section at Walmart.”

“What?”

Daredevil sighed. “If you’re done,” he said, “there’s a woman in danger down there. She needs help. I’m not gonna let some kid stop me from doing what I came here to do.”

“Kid?” Eliza screeched. “That’s the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard. Honestly, you’re an asshole!”

“You act pretty immature.”

“Fuck you!”

“Case in point.”

Her hand tensed around the knife hidden in the back of her pants, knuckles white.

Daredevil sighed wearily. “Don’t,” he said.

“What?” she challenged.

“Drop the knife before I tie your hands together. And believe me, I will. I’m not letting you kill that woman.”

“I’m not the one trying to kill her!”

“By wasting my time you might as well be. Look, this is dangerous. You could get yourself hurt or worse, you could get killed. Go home.”

She pulled the knife anyway. Her face reflected off the clean metal, sharp and glistening in the moonlight. “No,” she answered plainly.

“Put the knife down,” he said.

“No. Like you, I’ve got a job to do. Except I actually know what I’m doing. I don’t give some stupid hero speech, I usually just do it. You’re not special, Daredevil. You’re an amateur. You make mistakes.”

He laughed. It was dark, not genuine. Burning red. “You don’t take this seriously, do you? Wannabe hero, looking for a story, huh? Is that it?” The sour tone in his voice poisoned her eardrums. “Telling me to fuck myself while you’ve done nothing but try to kill me in the five minutes we’ve been up here. That’s not what heroes do. You’re too young to understand any of this. You shouldn’t be here, I’m not going to argue with you on this.”

“I’m old enough to cut out your heart and serve it on a silver platter,” she said.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he cooed, his words dripped with sweet, bittersweet venom. “I’d like to see you try.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Eliza pointed the knife at him.

“Do you ever just shut up?”

“I do when the other person deserves my attention.”

“It’s dangerous out here. You should be at home, lock your doors and make sure you’re not getting yourself in danger. If it hadn’t been me up here in the middle of the night, some other man might’ve been and he wouldn’t have been so kind. There’s a lot of bad guys out there who would lick their fingers if they ever saw a girl like you walking the streets alone at night.”

Eliza snorted. “You act like you have some kind of control over me,” she said.

“I just want to protect you, that’s all. Although you seem to have enough knives up your sleeve to protect yourself, I doubt that would prevent a rapist from getting what he wants.”

“I know about the monsters lurking in the dark. I’ve seen them, I’ve fought them. I’ve seen the worst of the worst and I am still standing here. So no, I’m not going home. I’m not scared of you, Daredevil. To get rid of me, you’d have to throw me off this roof until my fucking neck snaps.”

Unlike the criminals he beat up in the darkest corners of the Kitchen, his fists had nothing on her. She wasn’t scared of the red eyes staring at her through the mask. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was just an ordinary man in a mask. He wore the name and the horns of the devil; he embodied the fallen angel from the bible. He strove to serve the justice the police failed to enforce. Daredevil thirsted for blood.

“Don’t tempt me,” - he shifted his stance so his shoulders seemed broader in the soft moonlight shining down on him, looming above her as if it changed anything - “Wouldn’t be the first time I put a man in a coma.”

“Fortunately, I’m not a man,” she said matter-of-factly. “I don’t break as easily as the supposed superior sex.”

He lowered his head, chuckling. “You think you’re that good, huh?” he said.

“You wouldn’t treat me like that if I were a man,” Eliza stated plainly, voice flat. “It might come as a surprise to you but not everyone in Hell’s Kitchen is afraid of you.”

Daredevil was only human. Blood ran through his veins. Even as the moonlight reflected off his dead, red eyes, the pink flush of his squished cheeks gave him away. Colors danced around him like wildfire. His soul was caged. Perhaps this was the reason why all she could see was black, and upon further inspection, she felt nothing but angry emptiness tearing apart his chest.

“The devil is a strange symbol for the service of justice.”

He tilted his head.

“Lucifer, the fallen angel banished by god because of his pride. He wanted the world, instead, he drove to hell in a Cadillac,” she said.

He scoffed eventually, the heat of his breath condensing the cold air. “Didn’t your parents teach you not to pick fights with strangers?” he asked.

Eliza stared blankly. “My parents are dead.”

The words died on his tongue.

“Now, are you gonna continue to stand in my way? Because I’ve got a job to do.”

“It’s not your job,” he found his voice again. “It’s mine.”

“I found her first,” she retorted.

“This isn’t a competition! I don’t want to hurt you, but if throwing you off this roof will solve my problem, I’ll do it.”

“I’m not a child who needs condescending. I’m a grown woman with a purpose and you’re screwing it up! You don’t know shit about me, okay? You’re just another guy in spandex wanting to save the world. You go home, we already have Spider-Man.”

She figured he raised his eyebrows. “Where is he then?” Daredevil asked. “Where is Spider-Man?”

Eliza didn’t expect him to ask. “He’s out saving Brooklyn or whatever. It’s- it's complicated. Doesn’t matter. My point is,” she said, “we don’t need hundreds of vigilantes running around claiming parts of New York City only to lash out because someone can’t control his anger issues.”

“Are you even listening to yourself?”

“Oh, I am. I’m pretty fond of the sound of my voice, actually.”

“God,” his voice roared, drenched in the pure essence of frustration. “I’m the only one who cares about what’s happening in this city! People are getting hurt every night and no one cares. No one, not even the police. The people who’ve sworn to protect us fail the people of Hell’s Kitchen every damn night and no one seems to care about it. No one cares that people die, people disappear and children get taken away. No one cares but me! I’m the only one in this god-forsaken city who doesn’t sit back and lets rich people and criminals ruin everything and everyone in their wake. I took an oath,” he said. “I took an oath to do whatever it takes to keep this city safe. And I will stand by it, no matter what happens.”

She scoffed. “Touching. You rehearse that speech, or does it just come naturally?”

It wasn’t the fact that he was a vigilante dressed in spandex that angered her, not even the fact that he was trying to ruin her plan, but rather that he was right. The reasoning didn’t make sense, not even to her, why she seemed so agitated and rude at something she genuinely believed in too, but there was just something about him that rubbed her the wrong way.

His heart was set right. He was genuine and he threw fists with a purpose. Some time ago, she had joked with Natasha about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. She had taken him for a man seeking attention, waiting for the public to build a statue for him. She had found him ridiculous. The truth behind Daredevil suddenly appeared so much bigger than the jokes Eliza had built her opinion around.

You shouldn’t judge people on a whim. If you don’t know them, don’t blame them. Being an Avenger had given her some sort of god complex - anyone else trying to be a hero had instantly gone to her naughty list when in fact, she was the one who should’ve been put on there. Who was she to judge if someone was a hero or not? She failed, as did everyone else in her close vicinity. At least vigilantes got the job done without killing hundreds of people in the process.

Her shoulders slacked. She shouldn’t have yelled at him. She really shouldn’t have been rude. He was just a person. An annoying person, that she stood by, but a person nonetheless, and he was trying to do the right thing.

Though looking at him again reignited the fire inside her chest and whatever she had just made her mind up about landed back in the trash.

“Screw him,” she thought. “Screw Daredevil.”

She would rather scratch her eyes out than work with him.

“Has anyone ever told you that your anger is disproportional to your size?” he asked.

Eliza licked her lips. Dangerous territory. “No one’s been stupid enough to say it to my face,” she said. “Until now.”

What had she said about him being genuine? The anger suffocated every last bit of gratitude underneath a pile of rocks.

“Of course. Look, it’s my job to protect this city. I’m not leaving. If you know what’s good for you, you stop pushing your luck.”

The lower part of his face was infuriating. He smirked like the cocky bastard he was; she wanted to scratch the skin off his face and feed it to the dogs.

“You think so highly of yourself, it’s ridiculous.” It was her turn to smirk and she did it broad enough for him to see. She hoped it burned into his brain like hot iron. “I’m not letting you ruin this for me.“

“What?”

Eliza raised her hands. The smoke came back to dance choreography around her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” - she let the smoke rise - “but this one’s mine!”

The sensation was different than a punch. Energy surged through him, pushing him back in one fast wave, almost like he was floating. The ball hit him in the chest, hard, and it carried him into the door set in the middle of the rooftop, leading into a stairway down the building. Heavy as he was, his figure disappeared down the stairs. Thuds followed until he was too far down to care.

Eliza stretched her fingers. The red in her eyes persisted.

“Nothing personal.”

She jumped over the ledge of the rooftop to the neighboring building. The door to the butcher shop was locked with a deadbolt - without thinking twice about it, she kicked it in.

Two guards stood in the hallway below. Their loud breathing gave them away. With a big leap, she jumped down the stairway. The floor made a loud thud as she landed, one knee bent, the other stretched to the side, weight carried by the hand.

“Does anyone know where the exit is?” she asked.

They exchanged looks.

“What, you don’t know? Bummer.”

The guns were easily loaded with the flick of a finger. Eliza buried her knife in one of the men’s shoulders. She proceeded to kick the other with the hard top of her boots. His arms flew forward and she caught the gun. The second kick landed in his chest, flying further into the dark hallway.

The man on the ground screamed when she removed the knife. Blood between the skin flaps made the metal slip out easier, the sound reminding her of slurping an almost empty milkshake in the booth at a 24/7 diner.

Neon light broke from the ceiling. Blue mixed with red to make purple inside her irises. She followed the hallway down to a set of metal doors set into the wall to her right. The second set of doors lay behind her, the supply closet. She considered stealing a few of the slaughter supplies, but then again she wasn’t here to kill anyone.

The space before her turned a lot colder. She flinched back at the sudden change of temperature. The door led to the cooler room. Low voices murmured on the other side. Two men guarding the door, colors distorted from the artificial light. The whimpers of the tied woman echoed off the cold tiles. Now and then, metal creaked. It was a heavy sound.

As Clint Barton once said, vents are the greatest invention known to men. Perhaps he had an unhealthy relationship with the empty spots in the ceiling, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. Vents proved to be useful on many occasions.

Eliza climbed onto the stairway's handrail. The metal was narrow and she already saw herself breaking her neck if she dared to step one inch too far to the side. She wobbled, but the soles of her shoes kept her stable, holding tight onto the rounded metal beneath her feet. The thick stench of death arose from the vents.

She removed the metal lid quietly. It creaked. The sound was so loud, that it jumped off the walls in a loud echo. She halted, stiff as a board, refusing to breathe in fear someone might come out and check where the excruciatingly high sound came from. Nothing happened. Even after supposedly five minutes of just standing on the handrail, holding the lid incredibly still in her steady hands, nothing happened.

Eliza exhaled. She searched for something to hold onto, but other than the small metal edge leading inside there was nothing for her fingers to dig in.

She had a death wish, sure, and dying while fighting was an excellent way to go, but there were a million other ways she’d rather die than in a butcher shop in the middle of the night, right for the police to realize she’d broken in and then her death would’ve been far from heroic.

As she pushed herself up, Eliza prayed to the vent god Clint Barton that her hands would stick to the metal just long enough to make it into the vent. She flexed her biceps, attached to the metal with all the force she could muster. She stopped breathing. Her knee pressed upwards until her foot replaced her hand, which gave her an advantage. She used her free hand to hoist herself up into the straight tunnel.

She was about fifteen steps from the door. Quietly, she peaked through the holes in the metal lid underneath her thighs. She came face to face with a dead pig hanging ass down from the ceiling. Her eyes widened. At least six of the dead animals could cover her jump. They’d blame it on the air, on the metal moving in a natural rhythm.

She removed the lid quietly, trying not to make it squeak this time. Breaking her fall by once again sliding one foot to the right and putting all the weight on one knee, she landed almost silently. The pig she came face to face with shook a little more, but other than a small creak from the hook the room stayed quiet.

“Ugh,” she muttered. “That was disgusting.”

The guards were talking distinctively. Only psychopaths talk about their dinner plans while there was a woman trapped almost right next to them, surrounded by dead animals and heavily armed up to the chin.

Eliza grabbed one hook and a piece of metal chain.

“What was that?” someone asked.

She swung it around.

A gun cocked. “Who’s there?”

Once the chain was fast enough, she swung it over the ground. It wrapped around the American guy’s ankles, pulling him down.

Eliza tossed the hook next. It penetrated the Russian’s eyeball. He screamed. Blood squirted from his flesh against the skinned pig across from him. He dropped his gun.

She slid through. He tried to reach for his gun, but she sat down on his leg, tossing the weapon from his hands. She fisted a handful of his hair and pulled him between her thighs where she locked them around his throat, choking him.

The man kept scratching at her thigh. Eventually, he slouched. His breaths came strangled. Only then did she let go of him.

His partner (she didn't want to call him a friend) recovered quickly from the shock. He tried to get out of the chain around his feet. Eliza met his eyes. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Don’t do that.”

His scream echoed off the walls. The red - still purple-looking - smoke carried him up, chains attached to the ceiling. They wrapped around one of the empty hooks. His bloodshot to his head as he hung there, upside down.

“Mikhail!” a voice shouted from the other side of the room. His steps came closer. “Mikhail, what’s going on? ”

“Mikhail just lost an eye,” Eliza answered casually.

Another set of steps seemed to follow. She used the hanging body as a carousel. She grabbed him by the legs and spun around. The pig she hit landed right into someone’s chest.

She was on her knees then, turning on them, using the slippery floor as leverage. He looked around, searching for her. She punched him in the balls. He crumbled. She took his gun. It was easy.

Moving into a handstand, she flicked around. The move was risky, but she managed to get her thighs around his lowered head and claw herself onto him. His face was against her stomach now. She knocked her elbows against his scalp. Once, twice, three times. The bone cracked.

The man she knocked over with the pig was suddenly on his knees again. She saw him when it was already too late. He had a knife pulled from his pants and slid it across her thigh.

The back of her head smashed into the cold tiles. She tried to keep her thighs around his head, but he punched her stomach - reflexes made her pull back, and curl in on herself. The skin on her forehead ripped, she felt it in every nerve of her body. Hot blood shot through the cut. Head wounds always bleed more than they should. It made her dizzy, and unfocused. Even with excessive blinking, it was almost too late when she regained self-control.

The knife hovered above her again. Whoever was wielding it worked with precision, determined to land the blade where he wanted it. He brought it down. Eliza rolled over in the last second, dodging the knife only by mere inches, and jumped back on her feet. She punched the man straight across the face. Another one to the side, foot to the stomach, and then his knife landed in his collarbone. The bone parted loud, cracking. She swore the blade bend right through.

Her victim’s partner screamed. Surprised, he stood with his head to the side for a second too long. She placed both hands on either side of his head. The veins in his body glowed red. He couldn’t scream, the pain paralyzed him. His mouth stayed open. She squeezed harder and harder – the power surged through her veins like sweet candy. She needed more, wanted more.

Angry red vanished into fearful green, his aura blinking like an alarm, red electricity guiding his emotions into the areas of his brain where she needed him. His amygdala reacted instantly. The fear paralyzed him. Stop, a voice inside her called. This is not you.

The sound of echo inside the cooler room was immaculate. Still, it didn’t save her from missing one crucial detail. These guys had Soviet-issued rifles and she had only taken out a handful. The fight made too much sound to go unnoticed. She should’ve focused, but she didn’t.

The shot rang out. She visualized the bullet. In slow motion, it flew its course towards her. Invisible sound waves and smoke surrounded the long projectile as it passed through the hanging meat.

Her eyelids fluttered close.

Almost dying does a lot of things to a person. For some, a near-death experience is eye-opening. For others, almost dying spurs them on to make risky decisions with the explanation that you only live once. And you do, you only have one life to live. When you almost lose that life, it makes you think - it makes you reevaluate your priorities.

The blow of the pistol knocked some sense back into her.

It seemed a bit cliché, the pair of strong arms finding their way around her body. He jumped into her and for a second, they became one. Two planets collided, exploding into galaxies of stars, anger and pain, despair and desperation, the need for redemption, and broken faith.

Her lungs burst open. She exhaled loudly, pathetically.

“Jesus Christ!” Her eyes squeezed in pain, the metaphorical knife cutting through her ribs. She felt his elbow right in her side and it made the pain only worse.

Eliza frowned. “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.

“Saving your life,” he stated.

“I thought I knocked you out.”

“Oh sweetheart,” he smirked, “can’t get rid of me that easy.”

“APPARENTLY!”

She rolled them over until she was on top of him. Without a second thought, she reached for the baton in his thigh holster and threw it at the armed man’s head.

Daredevil grunted. “That was mine!”

“You’re welcome.”

Eliza scrambled to her feet. She offered her hand, and he cocked his head. He contemplated. Then, he took her up on her offer.

"Those things hurt, by the way," she said. "I want one."

“Watch out!” he said. He took the second baton on the other side of his suit and hit their next attacker over the head. He landed a punch in his ribs. With the barrel of the gun, he knocked him out for good.

Daredevil casually danced the baton through his gloved fingers.

Eliza rolled her eyes. “Show off.”

Against her expectations, he handed her his second baton. “Try not to kill anyone,” he added then.

She smirked. “No promises.”

”I’m getting that back after.”

”Probably not.”

He bit his cheek. “Great. She’s a thief now, too.”

”What did you expect?” she asked and twisted the baton.

Through the light hint of a smirk, she heard him say, “Go. We’ve got work to do.”

She couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Maybe not so bad after all,” she told herself.

The fight happened almost like a choreographed dance routine. Batons were flying around. Shots rang out, but both of them cartwheeled their way through it. They danced to the same rhythm.

“Get her alive!” one man shouted. “And kill him! ”

Eliza allowed the energy to sizzle between her fingers. It shaped into a tight, hot ball, vibrating with the air in the room.

The man didn’t see it coming. In this case, literally speaking. She opened her hands gently, the smoke traveling the distance towards the armed guard. She stood in the middle of the room, carrying the power of worlds in her hands. The energy flames reached through his eye sockets into his brain - he didn’t feel it. She grabbed a hold of his perception, twisting it with the reality she wanted him to see.

He walked straight ahead, right through her as the smoke engulfed her and turned her into nothing but a whisk of air.

“Dude!” the man the voice belonged to stared at the scene before him. He lifted his gun, pointing it at her. “She’s right there,” he said.

She winked. What was left of the ball shot towards him at twice the speed she used to hit his partner. Gravity tied his limbs to the ground. His veins turned bright red, the blood burning through his skin. The pain ate him whole. His soul started to waste away inside of him, memory after memory taking apart his brain.

The man had noticed the warning given his way, but she was still nothing but thin air to him. He only saw his partner on his knees, tied together by an invisible string that kept his soul in a chokehold. Pictures flashed in his pupils, a series of moments of the past.

“What’s wrong?” he caught up to him. “Where is she?”

Eliza brought her wrist up. The hold broke. Her presence became visible behind him. He felt her breathing down his neck and the goosebumps that followed went deeper than the chill of the cooler room. She stood behind him, chain in hand, and she tied it like a noose around his neck.

He gurgled. “Witch!” was all he managed to push out.

“Sure,” she said.

He fell to the ground, the chain still tied neatly around his neck. Her eyes switched between him and the other, both helpless and alone on the metal ground.

Was that pity she felt? A seriously misplaced emotion in the sight of events. She used all the anger left inside of her, channeled it, transformed it into energy, and sent it hurling at them. The pair flew against the wall, tearing a hole through it.

Daredevil was fist fighting to her right when it happened. “What happened?” he asked.

Even if she wanted to, there was no way to explain what she’d done.

“Nothing,” her voice sounded eerily calm.

He nodded. “I’ve got it under control here. Find the woman!”

“Yeah, right. The woman.”

These men didn’t deserve her pity.

Rounding the last row of slaughtered pigs, she stared right down the barrels of several guns. The woman was guarded by a circle of heavily armed men. One of them stood right next to her, hand on her battered head. He grinned, not even an ounce of fear in his soul.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “What do we have here?”

“I could ask the same question,” Eliza said. “Then again, I’m not the one with the big guns. They didn’t work, by the way. Nice try though.”

“You have quite the mouth on you.”

“So people keep telling me.”

She was supposed to be afraid, but the adrenaline pumped through her veins like breathing air. Her chest heaved and she tasted copper on her tongue.

“You know, I didn’t think you’d show up after we found out you gave up,” he said.

She tilted her head. “What?”

“The Avengers. Gone.“

“Yeah, shit happens,” Eliza shrugged. “I can’t exactly look away while you’re kidnapping a woman. For what? To get to her father?”

The woman cried out. She’d hit a nerve.

“What does he do? Sell weapons? Drugs? Who are you?”

He laughed. The men still kept their guns on her.

“Why don’t you kill me instead? I’m sure there’s a bounty on my head somewhere.”

“You’re worth much more to us alive,” he said. “I could get paid so much for your surrender, you know that?”

“Thanks?”

He flicked his fingers. “Seize her.”

“Please,” she snorted, “ We were having such a nice conversation. What happened?”

“We don’t have time for a good chat .”

“Oh, so you're on the clock? Interesting. Is your boss gonna join us anytime soon? I’d like to meet him. Maybe he’ll talk to me. I like to talk, you know. You just don’t seem competent enough to keep up with me. No offense. You know how to kidnap and shoot people. That takes a lot of practice. I wouldn’t lose my head over what I said; not everyone can live up to my potential.”

At this point, Eliza was reaching. She didn’t mean a word coming out of her mouth, and neither did she believe them, but the confidence she gave off put a shield around her. She was stalling for time.

The man laughed. “You’re special,” he said. “Impressive. I’m impressed. But like I said, I don’t have time to chat with you.”

Shots rang out. For a moment, she couldn’t hear anything behind her. What if Daredevil got hit? It would’ve been her fault.

“Your boss wants her father,” she said, trying hard not to let the worry show. “So you’re waiting for him to get her, is that it? And then you’re gonna blackmail him?”

He only chuckled.

“One question. Did you have to choose a butcher shop?”

The yellow of his teeth broke through his smile. “It’s the best way to hang corpses.”

Daredevil jumped through behind her. He tossed both of his batons at the surprised guards. They dropped to the ground like wet sacks of flour.

Both the man and Eliza followed the movements. “Damn,” he said. “Did you have to knock them out?”

“Give up,” Daredevil said. His voice was low, dangerous. She almost laughed at the way his voice changed.

The man sighed. He pressed a gun to the woman’s head.

“To be fair, I did not see that coming.”

Eliza glared at him. “Seriously?” she said. “I thought you needed her as leverage.”

“Did you really think she would survive this?” he scoffed. “You are stupid and soft.”

“Excuse me?”

Daredevil sighed. He wasn’t used to conversational exchanges. “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “Let the woman go. Hand yourself over to the police. I can make sure you get good legal counseling. It doesn’t have to end like this. No one has died yet. There’s still hope, you just have to trust me.”

Eliza pursed her lips. The laugh of the man was predictable. It was a full belly laugh. He couldn’t believe the words passing his ears and to be honest, neither could she. “Your friend is funny,” he said to her.

“Don’t encourage him,” she warned. “This isn’t gonna end well.”

He sighed. “I want her.” He pointed his gun at Daredevil. “It’s truly nothing personal, she’s just worth so much more to us alive. Can’t even get a piece of chicken for your head.”

“You can’t put a price on life, any life. Not mine, not his, not even hers,” she pointed to the restrained, crying woman. “This isn’t about ethics anymore, this is about you being greedy scum – there’s plenty of things you could be doing that would make you crazy rich, but instead, you come here to kidnap a woman. That’s pathetic. And I’m not gonna let you get away with hurting her, let alone allow you to take me for whatever perverted purpose you want me for.”

Eliza’s hands began to glow. She cocked her head to the side, challenging him. He stared at the smoke around her fingers and the crimson in her eyes.

Until then she believed he wanted her because an Avenger could be easily sold for a lot of money on the right market, but the widening of his eyes wasn’t an act of fear – it was like he saw Jesus for the first time, a legend come true.

“Dear lord!” he whispered. “He didn’t lie.”

“What’d you say?” Daredevil asked.

“He didn’t lie,” she translated for him. “Who didn’t lie?” she directed the question back at the man.

He lowered his gun. “This changes things.”

“Changes them how?”

“Changes a lot of things. God! It’s true.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following.” She played with the electricity. “I’ve got the upper hand here, better tell me what I want to hear before I make you regret ever getting out of bed this morning.”

Daredevil opened his mouth. “Nice,” he said sourly.

“What?” Eliza smiled innocently. “It’s a good line.”

The man lifted his gun again. “On the edge, you mustn’t lie,” he sang. He actually sang.

She went completely stiff.

“Or the little red demon will come.”

“Stop,” she warned.

“And will nip you and will nip you on the tum, Tug you off into the wood, underneath the willow root.”

Pictures flashed in front of her mental eye. Pain shot through her chest and manifested in her head. The wheels began to turn, to burn, to tear her apart.

Daredevil carried a confused pout as he cocked his head to listen closely. The words made no sense to him.

“What is he doing?” he asked.

Eliza stared blankly at the man in front of her. She didn’t know what else to do.

“Where did you learn that song?” she asked him.

He grinned again. The gun in his hand moved. He set it to the soft tissue beneath his jaw.

He whispered, “Hail Hydra!”

“No!” She brought her hands up, but it was too late to stop the bullet. It shot out of the gun and into his head.

The projectile traveled through his skull, entering at the top, brain matter coloring the walls behind him dark red. Some of the blood ended on the face of the crying woman. She closed her eyes, sobbing harder than ever.

“Fuck!”

“He’s dead,” Daredevil stated and his voice was fragile as if he was devastated and scared. His heart was beating heavily up to his throat. He could feel himself pulsating, the scent of blood, flesh, and death mixed with the nonexistent heartbeat sent him into overdrive, and she didn’t even know it.

“You have to go,” Eliza told him. Her voice was steady, empty.

She didn’t know what to be - was she supposed to be angry, sad, scared? She knew she was supposed to show some kind of reaction other than a series of curses and swear words.

No one was prepared for the truth to come to light. She looked around and she saw nothing but a dead man in the corner, his last words being “Hail Hydra.” She was alone, entirely and frustratingly alone with the probably biggest discovery since Ultron destroyed Sokovia.

The woman flinched back at the masked vigilante undoing her ties, but she relaxed soon enough. He freed her wrists and ankles and removed the cloth from her mouth. She cried into his arms, mascara running down her cheeks. He patted her back.

“You’re safe now,” he said. “I’m gonna get you out of here.”

“My father-“ she cried. She couldn’t even form a coherent sentence without shaking.

Eliza licked her lips. The pain of her teeth gnawing at it was just about everything she felt. “I’m gonna make sure he’s taken care of,” she swore. “What’s his name?”

“Rob- Robert Pfeiffer.”

“German?”

“My father is, but we migrated here over a decade ago. My mom’s American.”

“What’s your name?” Daredevil asked.

“Laura.”

“Okay, Laura. Can you stand?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Her knees wobbled. She saw the blood on the floor again, on her clothes, and once again sobs broke through her.

He nudged her aside. “Don’t look at him, look at me! You’re alright. I’ve got you. It’s over, you’re safe. You’re gonna go out of here and you’ll be safe. I promise you. I will look after you.”

Eliza’s nails still dug into her palms. She needed to feel something. Her mind was slipping and that was dangerous because she had something she had yet to understand the full extent of right there, yet unable to grasp it. But the song… the goddamn song stuck in her mind and it played on repeat.

He tilted his head. “The cops are here,” he stated.

“Let them,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“What? No, I’m not leaving.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“No. They’re gonna arrest you if you don’t come with me. They need someone to take the fall - you’d just be handing yourself in. For what? For getting to play the hero one last time? I can’t let you do that. You can’t take the fall for this. I’m not leaving you to suffer the consequences for the both of us.”

“I was just trying to help,” she shrugged it off.

“You- whatever your name is, we both saved each other’s lives tonight. I owe you. I can find us a way out and we can bury this. No one has to find out.”

“Oh, but they do.” She smiled sourly. “And they will. They will trace this back to me, one way or another.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe whatever you want. Right now, you have the choice to save yourself. I suggest you take it. I will come back to you to pay off your debt some other time. Today’s not your night. Save yourself, let me fend for myself. I’m gonna be fine.”

Daredevil sighed. She was distant. Her voice sounded like the recording at the train station, automatic. In his mind, he desperately searched for a plan, but he came up with none. She’d made up her mind.

“Hey,” she called out for Laura. “Don’t tell them about him,” she said. “Whatever you do, it was me. Just me.”

She turned around, but Daredevil was gone. Laura’s steps retreated fast, silent agreement. Doors busted open. She heard the police scramble, guns in hand. Her eyes fluttered closed. She evened her heartbeat.

“NYPD, put your hands where we can see ‘em!”

Eliza raised her arms.

“Behind your head. Now,” the cop tore at her.

She did.

A pair of hands pulled her arms onto her back. The cuffs slapped against her wrists, cold and tight.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” she said.

“Eliza?” the officer poked his head over her shoulder.

She smiled. “Surprise?”

“Jesus Christ! What did you do?” Brett Mahoney stared in shock at the scene in front of him. He hadn’t seen so much death and destruction in quite a while, and he’d been on the force for quite some time.

She felt like a criminal as he led her outside, hands cuffed behind her back, through the crowd of law officials that came hauling in. She hung her head low. They knew who she was, yet she tried to hide her face.

“Are you gonna report this?” she asked him once they were outside, right next to the blinking cop car.

Brett turned her around. “You’re bleeding,” he observed.

“Are you gonna report this or not? Be honest.”

“Was there anyone else in there with you?” he ignored her question.

“Are you gonna report this, Brett?”

“Maybe a certain devil-horned vigilante in a red suit?” he asked. “Was he tearing the place apart with you?”

She scoffed.

“Come on, I’m just tryna help you.”

She turned, eyes cold when she looked into his. “No,” she stated. “I was on my own. I did this.”

“Eliza-”

“You want to coerce me into giving you the answer you want? That’s illegal.”

He opened the door of the police car, guiding her inside with his hand on her head. “I like you, Eliza, but if you haven’t learned from your mistakes by now,” he said and his eyes bore into her, “I can’t help you anymore.”

Eliza leaned back in the uncomfortable yet familiar leather seats. “Then I’m exercising my right to remain silent.”

“You’re a lost cause.”

“I know.”

Brett hesitated. Her eyes stayed laser-focused forward. She stared out of the windshield, boring holes into the glass. Her expression was blank, void of any emotions, any sign of remorse. She was as cold as ice and that terrified him a little, but also he was worried, concerned even, that the girl who he remembered to be the smartest Avenger on the team had relapsed, and returned to bad habits.

But she was lucid when she made the decisions that lead her there and the law states the punishment. Without a miracle, there was nothing other to be done than sitting it out and suffering the consequences.

Brett tapped the roof. The motor howled.

She caught glimpse of his grim expression through the side-view mirror.

I’m sorry, her throat swelled close.

For lack of a better word, Eliza was beyond screwed.

✧

3:42.

3:43.

3:45.

Every tick of the minute hand felt less like sixty seconds and more like sixty minutes.

Three hours. Three fucking hours.

They left Eliza hanging for three hours, alone in a cold and poorly lit interrogation room. Her hand was cuffed to the table and while she could’ve easily freed herself with one flick of the wrist, she knew that the action would only end her up in more trouble. She couldn’t afford any more mistakes.

The cold shiver of sudden awareness hit her around an hour after they hurled her in there. The words kept repeating in her mind. She tried to make sense of what the strange man in the shop had said, of what he’d meant. Hail Hydra had become a word she feared to hear. It bordered on surreal like she was in a bad horror movie coming to an end, right through the climax, where the main character wakes up from the nightmare.

They’d destroyed the tumor and the world went into remission only for the cancer to come back stronger, deadlier than ever.

The cut on her leg pulsated heavily. Brett gave her a bandage to wrap around after she insisted she was fine. The blood was already seeping through it and she was pretty sure she needed stitches, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t in pain.

Half an hour later, she finally heard footsteps outside of the interrogation room. The voices sounded male, young, early thirties at best.

“Thanks, Brett.” They were on a first-name basis, suggesting they knew each other. Not in the cops working together kind of way though.

Eliza didn’t have much more time to speculate. The door opened. Brett stepped aside to let the two men inside, almost glad he no longer had to deal with her himself. She couldn’t blame him - she pushed him away as if they’d never met. After everything he pulled her out of, it wasn’t fair on him, but she also couldn’t tell him the truth. She wasn’t a snitch and she certainly didn’t want to admit that maybe, just maybe, she’d fucked up.

She lowered the ice pack on her smashed-in forehead to get a closer look at the visitors.

The blonde stranger had this boyish smile about him. His hair was wide, cheeks flushed. His style consisted of colors, which she appreciated. The interrogation room was dark enough to set her up with enough depression for weeks to come. He was the touch of life the police station was lacking. His heart weighed heavy like gold and it shone just the same. She hardly saw good-hearted people anymore. This man was an angel through and through. Instantly likable, caring, pure.

The man next to him humbled the brightness in the room. Something about him felt oddly familiar. His soul was darkened from chronic pain and disappointment. The color wheel around him had all the colors she refused to see. They hurt. She didn’t have to touch him and feel to know he was broken. Broken with a heart of gold.

While his friend was the morning sun, he was the night sky littered with clouds. But there was more than met the eye.

“Miss Bennett,” Mister Tall-and-Broody said. “My name’s Matthew Murdock, this is my associate Foggy Nelson. We’re your attorneys.”

Eliza blinked. She looked at him, blinked, then at the Nelson half and blinked again. She tried to make sense of his words.

“Attorneys?” she asked.

“Forgive us for barging in like that. Officer Mahoney only just informed us about your case. We were around the precinct so we decided to take a look at it.” He pointed to the file before him. “I suppose you’ve been advised of your rights?”

“Yeah, I know how it goes.”

“Great. So you do know that you have the right to legal counsel. Yet you haven’t requested to see a lawyer. Why?”

Matthew played with his glasses a lot, she noted. He was nervous, another reason for his constant smirking. With his smile, he could easily charm anyone. He did it not to ease the people around him but to calm his conscience.

Eliza took a deep breath. Her chest heaved with the long-awaited oxygen. “I don’t see why I’d need a lawyer,” she said.

The Nelson half cocked an eyebrow, searching for his friend’s reaction. He only kept staring forward, eyes hidden, lip still quirked upwards. “It’s funny considering I do and I’m blind,” he countered.

She cocked her head. Interesting.

“Seems like we skipped a few chapters here. Who are you again?”

He chuckled. His chuckle was dark. His voice carried an attractive rasp, but it wasn’t necessarily dark. His chuckle on the other hand held certain pressure behind it.

“Point is, I don’t know you,” she said then. “I haven’t requested a lawyer because I was just planning to sit it out before you guys so rudely interrupted my sulking session.” She crossed her hands in her lap, satisfied.

Nelson was the first to sacrifice himself. He shuffled with the file. His better half had the same edition printed in Braille, probably because it took them so long to get there. While Matthew’s fingers played with the dots, the other skimmed his eyes over Times New Roman version.

He cleared his throat awkwardly, still the speck of color she saw when he first entered. “You were arrested on the suspicion of breaking and entering, vandalism, and physical assault,” he read aloud. “That’s, uh, quite the list. Also, we have your file right there. We usually just learn as we go.”

“Right,” she scoffed.

“I’m serious. We just want to get you out of here.”

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with!”

“Eliza Bennett, twenty-three years old, currently residing in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City,” Matthew blurted right out. He went straight in for the kill, determined to hit her down as hard as he could, to humble and destroy her defenses. “Your current place of employment is listed as Stark Industries. You used to be an Avenger, which is why you signed the Sokovia Accords. Before that, you worked for SHIELD. That was about seven years ago, everything else before that is blacked out, and most of the information around that time frame is also redacted. Now I suspect it has something to do with the court proceeding you went to right after you appeared at SHIELD,” he said, “who seemed to have given you your identity in the first place. Before that, you didn’t exist. I suppose you’re older than seven, your name just isn’t. Why? I don’t know. No one has the answers to that but you. To protect you, I suppose. Else the truth would already be out there. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

He dared to look innocent. He was picking her life apart and she just sat there, taking it. She wanted to scream, but there was no reason to. It would’ve been entirely emotional, not based on facts. He didn’t deserve that, and she didn’t want to waste her breath on him either.

“What I do know is that you’ve got a list of priors,” Matthew said.

Eliza laughed sourly. Now, this was something she could argue with. “Did Tony send you?” she asked.

“No.” He fixed his glasses again, still indulged in the breathless chuckle leaving his lips. “We, uh, we’re an independent law firm.”

“Right, so you have no right to pick me apart like that.”

“Possession and use of drug-related objects,” he said. No, he read it out and made it hang in there like a fact. “Every time you got arrested, Tony Stark bailed you out. You never faced serious jail time.”

“No,” Eliza shook her head wildly. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He didn’t stop. “You’re an Avenger. Sorry, you were, past tense. That’s over now, or so I’ve been told. I don’t watch television, I don’t even read the newspaper. But I’ve been told there was a falling out,” he said. “It’s, uh, kinda hard to miss when the rumor mill is turning and every news station in the country is reporting on an incident at the Berlin airport after Captain America turned himself into an international fugitive.”

She muttered, “You don’t say.”

“I’m sorry if I missed the point. I just wanted to tell you that while there’s enough reason to, I won’t let the news influence my thinking about you. We- we won’t. Right, Foggy?”

“Oh, yeah,” Foggy said. “Definitely not. Whatever thought we might’ve had about the situation beforehand doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is you and getting you out of here.” He smiled. She found solace in his smile. It was bright, although tired, but the sincerity made up for it.

Eliza’s mouth twitched. “Thank you.”

She still wasn’t entirely convinced.

“People look up to you,” Matt continued. There was seemingly nothing that could throw him off. “You’re a hero in most people’s books. I’m not surprised you’re here right now. You wanted to help, so you took the calculated risk to put someone else’s needs before your own. You did it because you thought it was the right thing to do. I’m not blaming you. The only ones blaming you are the police and maybe yourself, but that’s it. What you did today was selfless.”

“Shut up!” she pushed her palms into her eye sockets. “Just, shut up. Please. I can’t do this tonight. I really can’t…” the whine was a painful sound echoing through the room. “I don’t need you,” she said.

“You kinda do,” Foggy cut in.

“I can’t even pay you!” her eyes were red when she finally looked up.

“You don’t have to. We work pro bono.”

“But Tony-”

“Oh, he won’t find out,” he said. “Attorney-client privilege and all that. It’s great. We can’t snitch on you, no matter what you tell us. And we do hope you tell us something so we can help you.”

She scoffed. “Convenient.”

“You need a lawyer. We’re your best shot to get out of here right now. You either take it or my partner and I have an early breakfast.”

Eliza ran a tired hand over her face. She kept it there, just holding it. Her heart was beating heavy in her chest. The dry air contracted her lungs. She didn’t realize she was bouncing her leg until it hit the table and she hissed at the pressure on the wound.

She fell back in her chair. “What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry?” she said. “I went in because I thought that woman was in danger and I was right. I can’t… I won’t go to jail for doing the right thing.“

“You won’t go to jail,” Matthew said. His voice remained calm, steady.

“Why, because you’ll help me?”

“Yes.”

“We can get you out of here in no time, Miss Bennett,” Nelson told her then.

She dragged her nails over the bloodied bandage.

“It’s essentially not that hard. You were trying to help. The guys you took out won’t press charges. They, uh, refuse to talk. The only thing they can charge you with is breaking and entering.”

Eliza exhaled. “I can’t do this,” she said quietly. “Not again. I’m tired. I’m tired of being seen as the bad guy. It’s fucking exhausting. God!” She dropped her hands on the table. The cuffs clanked loudly.

“You’re angry,” Matthew observed.

“Yeah, no shit!”

“I know this must all be very hard for you.”

“You don’t understand! A year ago what I did today would’ve made me the hero. As you said, people looked up to me. But now… Now I’m the villain. Doesn’t seem fair.”

“Listen,” - he ran his fingers over the file - “Can I speak freely, Miss Bennett?”

“Eliza,” she corrected him, “And yeah, it’s not like you haven’t been doing it since you came in here. Knock yourself out!”

“Alright, Eliza. You were just a kid seven years ago. You got yourself into trouble like every other teenager. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“You sound like a fucking youth pastor trying to convert me to believe that God will guide me through the dark valley of my past.”

His lip twitched. “You’re cocky, Miss Bennett. That could get you into a lot of trouble.”

“Oh, please! I’m not violating any of the agreements that were made seven years ago or those from three years ago. I did what I had to do. End of story. If you want to blame me for that, go ahead!”

The air sizzled statically. A thick cloud of tension rose between them. Eliza bore her eyes into the man across from her, but he didn’t budge. He kept his head cocked, completely turned towards her. She hoped she glared just hard enough for him to feel it burn into every crevice of his face.

“The world already knows and blames me for everything that happened.” Eliza pursed her lips. “Can’t tell me you don’t know that.”

“I don’t believe in public judgment,” Matthew told her.

She scoffed. “You’d be the first person ever. I’m an Avenger. Lately, that’s a fucking death sentence,” she said. “Public court of opinion is the only thing defining me. I’m what they say I am, or maybe I’m not. Who cares. Everyone thinks what they want to think. Nothing of that’s gonna get me out of here.”

Matthew fixed his glasses - he did that an awful lot. The plump outline of his lips moved methodically. “I’m gonna keep being straight with you,” he said, calm as ever. “Tony Stark paid you out of a lot of trouble you should’ve gotten sentenced for. Does that make you a good person? The public doesn’t get to judge that, but if you let yourself get defined by their standards or what they think, then yeah, congratulations Eliza! You’re the villain.”

She prayed for the floor to open up and swallow her whole. His words penetrated parts of her she didn’t even know existed. Her heart bled. Knife through flesh. He was painfully right and she hated that he could read her like a five-page short story. She was anything but. She was an entire Novel, not quite finished. It wasn’t supposed to be that easy. She was the one with the gift, not him.

“But you’re not the villain,” he told her. “You may be an annoying and terrible pain in the ass, but you’re not the villain. I don’t care what everyone says, I see the person before me. Do I think you’re spoiled? Yes. Do I think what the Avenger did was right? No. But I’m a strict believer in the good, and that’s what you do. You do good, not evil. These petty crimes,” - he shoved the file like a wet towel - “They mean nothing. What matters is what’s in your heart. No one can tell you who you are but yourself, and I usually don’t judge, but just from listening to you talk, I know your heart is set right. No evil person would’ve done what you did tonight. It was heroic and selfless. You are selfless. No one should hold the power to convince you of anything else.”

Eliza desperately tried to collect the spit in her mouth to wet her dried throat. Everything was so tight, that the air became hard to swallow. She wanted to scream, cry, both. A heavy weight fell off her heart. The cork in her chest popped.

“Okay,” she sucked her bottom lip in. “Thank you.”

“But-”

The cork plopped back in place. She scoffed, sadly. “There’s always a but.”

“But, back then, you had the cover of SHIELD and the Avengers to back you up. What you did today was selfless but it was also stupid. Very stupid.”

“Very refreshing,” she said. “Thank you, Mister Murdock. I feel much better now.”

“I’m not saying you’re going to jail, I’m just saying you didn’t think, which was stupid. You were careless, it could’ve gotten you killed.”

“You basically just said I’m a lost cause.”

“Well, I am Catholic, so,” he chuckled again, “I have a thing for lost causes.”

Eliza stared blankly ahead. “Oh yeah, that explains a lot.”

Matthew grinned at her statement. “At least you kept your jokes about you,” he said.

“No, seriously, you have this whole Jesus attitude about you.” She formed her lips in a thin line. “I listen to you and instantly think Jesus,” she said. “Minus the looks, of course. Your hair is magnificent.”

She blinked at her own choice of words. The blood rushed to her cheeks. Maybe next time she would think before she talked.

“Uh, that’s not what I was planning to say. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” Quieter, she added, “Definitely going to hell now.”

Matt’s lips curled again. He laughed quietly. It was soft, gentle even. “Okay, I think that was enough blasphemy for today,” though she knew he was joking. “Maybe we should go back to your case.”

“Is it still blasphemy when I talk about Jesus? I don’t think so.”

Only Eliza could take an awkward situation and make it a hundred times worse.

“You want to start this debate now?” he asked.

“You were the one who put Catholicism on the table,” she said.

Foggy cleared his throat. “Point is,” he said, finally the hint of a need to interject into the tensed conversation, “we’re here to help you. Now, so far no one has pressed charges yet, but it’s only been three hours and they can legally hold you for twenty-four, so there’s plenty of time for them to find something against you. You defended yourself against these men,” Foggy said. “That’s self-defense. There’s still the issue of breaking and entering though. Considering your history, we have to be careful with allegations like that.”

Eliza tore her eyes away from the man before her. “I tried to save Laura Pfeiffer’s life,” she stated. “I knew she was in danger, so I followed them inside. There has to be a law for that, right?”

“For cops, yeah.”

“I was an Avenger.”

“You were.”

She slowly realized. “Oh.” She might’ve pushed her luck a little too far this time.

If there was no grey zone to escape through, she was truly and thoroughly fucked.

“So you’re saying that this is serious?” she asked.

Matthew lowered his head as did his voice. “I’m afraid so, yes,” he said.

“I could go to jail?”

“It’s a possibility, but not one we’re gonna concern ourselves with. As long as we can help it, you’re not going to jail. Worst case scenario you have to go to a parole hearing or they charge you with a fine.”

Eliza whined. “That’s even worse! God, what did I do?”

In retrospect, she should’ve thought about her actions. She singlehandedly defeated herself. She trapped herself between two heavy cement blocks - to get out, she had to break all of her limbs and bend inhuman ways and she’d still end up with cement on her back.

“Eliza,” he called her name softly. The tone of his voice could reignite even the deadest flame of hope. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, not if I can help it. As I said, the world doesn’t get to judge you, and from where I’m standing, you’re more than just a decent human being. You’re good.”

You’re good. Hearing the adjective concerning herself had never felt better. She’d never cared much about good or evil. She grew up thinking of the world as black and white. You could either be one thing or the other, but then she came into the real world and her views adapted. She realized that the world was full of color and every corner had a grey zone. Nothing was ever fully anything and most things in life aren’t as they seem.

Being an Avenger made her a hero. Heroes are perceived as good, but Eliza grew sick of the word not so long after learning it. ‘You’re good’ had meant nothing to her up until this point where that one adjective suddenly became the source of hope. She was good, not evil. Her picture had been twisted by bad photoshop and she chose to believe the black-and-white ideology the world thrust upon her because she stopped believing in herself. The world was back to being either or, the colors fading into darkness, and the grey zones magically vanished.

‘You’re good’ has never felt so good to hear.

“Thank you,” she told him.

Matthew smiled. “You don’t have to thank me. That’s my job.”

“No, no it’s not. Any other lawyer would’ve run by now, worried about how this might look on their record. Not you.”

“We don’t exactly got a reputation to uphold,” Foggy said.

“And we strongly believe that you’re a good person,” he jabbed his partner.

“Yeah, that too.”

Eliza chuckled. The skin above her brow pinched. Her ears opened up without warning and in came the pain that had hidden behind the buckets of adrenaline her brain secreted. Grade two concussion, no doubt. The only thing separating her from a grade three was the fact she hadn't passed out. Though if the pain continued to persist, chances were high that that would happen too.

The two men leaned into each other.

“What do you think?” Foggy asked his partner.

“I think they’re not gonna press charges,” Matthew said.

“Why?”

“They have a list of offenses right there and still they haven’t even contacted a judge. I think they’re too scared to press charges because of Stark or maybe because she’s an Avenger and for some people, that might end up as bad publicity. You heard her," - he cocked his head in her direction - "Public court of opinion. There are enough supporters of the Avengers that would lick their fingers at the NYPD arresting one of them just because she tried to help someone," he said. "Either way, I think we can get her out of here without making any more noise.”

“What about the shop owner?” he asked.

“If he decides to press charges, it’s not against her. The guys she took out have a record longer than the Sunday paper. She saved a woman, Foggy. No one’s going to convict her.”

“Then why exactly are we here again?”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Eliza said.

Matthew, who was about to answer his friend, closed his mouth and turned back in her direction. “Right, sorry,” he said. “We were just talking about what to do next.”

“And you don’t think they’re going to charge me?” she questioned. “Like, at all?”

“No, in my opinion, I don’t think so.”

Foggy raised his hand. “We can’t be sure,” he clarified. “But- but my partner seems to believe that, so I don’t have a choice in the matter anymore.”

Eliza sensed the tension between them. The unsaid arguments, the knowing glances. “Are you guys alright?”

“Oh, we’re fine!”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Really. We couldn’t be better.” Whoever he was trying to fool, Foggy failed to convince her. “Let’s just go over your statement again and then we’ll see what Matthew and I can hash out for you.”

Judging by his reaction, Matt wasn’t used to being called his full name, at least not by his friend. Things weren’t alright between them.

“So, you entered the building because you thought you heard those guys kidnap a woman,” Foggy stated. “What then?”

“I entered the building because I heard them pulling Laura into the butcher shop,” she said. “The door to the roof was open. Technically, I didn’t break in.”

“T-technically, that’d still be trespassing.”

“And technically, I made a bad judgment call.“

“Technically,” Matthew interjected, “you just lost all your friends, the only family you’ve ever known, not including SHIELD. I mean, you lost your first place of employment too. That’s a lot of loss in such a short amount of time.”

That catholic smirk was going to be the death of her and send her straight to hell.

She blinked at him. “What kind of a lawyer are you again?”

“I’m a really good lawyer.” The confidence he exceeded was inhuman.

“Matt-“ Foggy urged.

“I’ve got it under control, Foggy,” he shot him down. “Miss Pfeiffer said the man that was holding her had the intent to hurt you. Did he say anything to you about why he wanted to hurt you?” he directed his question back to Eliza.

“Nope,” she replied. “He just pointed a gun at himself and then bang, bye-bye brain.”

“Any reason?”

“Mental issues.” She nodded, satisfied with her answer. “Whole collection of ‘em.”

The pair exchanged another look.

She watched Matt’s rather handsome face move, his fingers tracing the Braille on the documents. His glasses were a bit tilted and she caught glimpse of his eyes. Sensing it, he corrected them again. She bit her cheek. He was oddly interesting.

He unfolded his cane. “Give us a second.”

Eliza threw her head back. She counted the seconds as she did the stains on the ceiling. Her whole body was on fire. The adrenaline had long worn off, instead, pain filled her senses. Her leg was throbbing and the blow to the skull stung. Overall though, she felt the familiar pull of tiredness, asking her to finally give herself the benefit of sleep. Once again, she disappointed herself. Mostly because she wouldn’t sleep in an interrogation room, but also because she simply couldn’t.

Her eyes flew open in unison with the door. Matthew stood inside the frame, proud hand on his cane. “You’re free to go,” he said. But there was something in his voice she couldn’t quite place.

“Really?” she asked.

Foggy peaked his head through. “I think there’s something you should know before you-“ he prompted.

“Oh, god.”

The nightmare came true.

“You’re definitely going to hell,” the statement was clear as day, the voice a painful sound in her ear.

“Fuck me!” she dropped her head on the table.

“You,” Tony Stark stood behind the two lawyers. “out. Now !”

She searched for Matt’s eyes desperately. “Is it too late to plead guilty?”

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

“There’s no reason for you to be sorry,” Tony told him. “She needs to be sorry. Honestly, part of me thinks you shouldn’t even have tried to get her out of this. Let her spend a night in jail. But I can’t say I’m not impressed she pulled this off.”

“Tony, I know what you’re gonna say,” Eliza began.

“No. You don’t know.”

She stepped out of the interrogation room hesitantly. As soon as she was in arm’s reach, Tony grabbed her. He pulled her aside.

“Apologize,” he demanded.

“What?” she asked.

“To these men. Apologize, now!”

“Apologize for what ?”

“For wasting their time.”

Matt tensed visibly while Foggy stood around looking awkward.

“They’re lawyers,” Eliza stated. “I might not have state-of-the-art education but I know for a fact that taking cases is kinda their job.”

“You’re wrong. You knew I’d come and bail you out. I always do.”

“I didn’t even want you to know!”

“That’s even worse.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “God, what did I do to deserve this?”

“Tony-”

“Don’t. Give me a second. If I'd known what you did, I would've meditated before I got here.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I’m such an inconvenience to you. Maybe we should just go.” She turned for the escape hatch - the elevator.

“No,” he said. “You’re gonna suffer the consequences for what you did. I don’t care if I have to stand here all night, you’re gonna apologize.”

“I was the one who suggested taking her case,” Matt spoke suddenly. All eyes turned on him. “She needed help and we gave that to her. The case is clear, she did the right thing. We can give you that in writing, if that’s what you want, Mister Stark.”

Eliza bit down on her bottom lip, hard. The laugh bubbled up in her throat. She was in enough trouble already, but seeing Tony so flabbergasted was the most victorious feeling she’d had in years.

Tony laughed out. “You’re not bad,” he said, almost as if he was in disbelief over the fact.

She glared at him. “What?”

“Don’t say it often, but I’m impressed. What’s your pay grade, Mister-”

“Murdock,” Matt introduced himself. “Matthew Murdock. This is my associate, Franklin Nelson.”

“Please,” Foggy said, “just Foggy.”

His eyes glowed like a child’s on Christmas Day.

“Tony Stark,” he offered them his hand.

Matt was hesitant at first, but after one particular swift kick from his friend, he shook the man’s hand with the fakest smile she’d ever seen anyone deliver so flawlessly. It didn’t take a genius to tell he detested the man from the second he met him. Matt was smiling like any other day, which made her heart beat out of her chest and fly to the moon where it suffocated due to the lack of oxygen. It seemed as if he recoiled from the man simply because he treated her like a misbehaving child, and because she looked like she was about to faint, but he knew how to play it off. She figured playing pretend came easy in his line of work. She knew it did in hers.

Foggy laughed awkwardly. “We know,” he said. “Big fan, Mister Stark. Big fan of your work. I appreciate all you’ve done for this country. For- for the world, I mean. The whole big earth thing. Um.” He was sweating. “Iron Man’s my favorite Avenger, if- if it’s even okay to pick favorites. I mean, you all did amazing work. Everyone’s a hero, I just- I appreciate your genius, sir.”

Tony slapped his hand on his shoulder. “Thank you,” he smiled the way he always did when meeting fans in front of whatever venue he pulled up to. The crowd of screaming fangirls and fanboys and the press in midst of it.

He had this charming smile that turned heads left and right and it usually got him what he wanted. He looked at Foggy the same way as if smiling at him would put him on the front page of the Bulletin as the hero of the story.

“Well, I can’t exactly see you off without rewarding you,” he stated.

Eliza watched in absolute shock as he pulled out his checkbook - his fucking checkbook. All his problems seemed to be solvable with money.

It made her blood boil, knowing he didn’t do any of this for her. Brett probably called him - an act to protect her from getting busted by Secretary Ross, no doubt - and knowing Tony, he probably saw a scandal in Eliza’s arrest and headed straight for the station to make the issue simply disappear.

“How much?” he asked them.

“What?” Foggy asked back.

“One, two? Maybe three?”

“Money?” he blinked. “You wanna give us money?” The disbelief stood like an obvious sign on his forehead.

“Yeah, I thought that was implied. You’re lawyers, right? You gotta have a pay grade. How about four? A cut for either of you. Can get a new suit and new glasses for the Murdock half there. Does that sound good?”

“Hundred?” Foggy questioned.

“No, thousand,” Tony said.

“Th-oh, god!” He almost passed out, holding onto Matt’s jacket for dear life. “Four thousand, Matt!” he squealed. “Four thousand Dollars!”

“Yeah, I know. I’m blind, not deaf,” he retorted.

Eliza snorted, for which she earned a harsh glare from Tony’s side.

“I take it you guys are happy with four. Here.” He handed them the check. “In exchange, I’d like to get your contact info. You know, in case Stark Industries ever needs legal counseling. I’d like to put you on our list.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she cursed to herself. She swore she saw Matthew’s lip twitch in an attempt not to laugh.

Foggy searched for their company card in the depths of his suit jacket. He almost dropped it two times before shakily handing it to Tony.

“You're the man,” he gushed on and on.

Tony raised his eyebrows. The familiar look of disgust soaked into his features.

“Okay,” he said. “That's it. No more touching the artwork.”

Eliza wanted to kick him, but the entire police station was already watching them like a bad pastime soap and she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself by assaulting the legendary Tony Stark.

That changed behind closed doors. Their dynamic changed the second they were out of the limelight. Neither of them was a legendary hero then, only two human beings with too many issues to count down on both hands (even a third couldn’t have possibly sufficed).

Instead, she retorted to the power of words. “Please don’t make a scene,” she begged him.

“Oh, you bet!” Tony glared at her through his sunglasses - it was the middle of the night. His signature look. As if the press was going to appear anytime soon, ready to take a million pictures.

Knowing the world, word had already gotten out. This wasn’t so much Tony’s fault than it was the press and their nosiness.

“This is gonna have consequences,” he said.

“I hate you,” she spat back at him, arms crossed to shield herself from the penetrating looks of the New York Police Department.

She felt like the messed-up teenager being dragged into the building, pale and shaking, all over again.

“You can hate me all you want, I’m still not gonna let you off easy. You brought this on yourself.”

He spoke her full name instead of using the many nicknames he made for her. She was in for a lot of trouble.

Eliza swallowed. She lifted her gaze to meet Matt’s glasses. The lower part of his face was motionless, features wiped clean. “Thank you,” she said. She lowered her head. Quieter, she added, “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Tony cut in.

“I am!”

“She’s not,” he turned to the two men, standing helplessly in the middle of the room. “I doubt she even knows what that word means.”

“Shut up!” Her ears burned hot with the blood moving its way from her heart into her head, collecting it like rainwater. “God, what is wrong with you?”

He forced her into the elevator, finally out of earshot, hidden away from the curious stares. He pushed the button repeatedly for the doors to slide close.

She opened her mouth, but he shot her down the second her lips made that smacking sound.

“No,” he said.

She closed it again.

✧

The paycheck felt like a goldmine in Foggy’s hands. The first payment made to Nelson & Murdock after almost a year of working strictly pro-bono. Under any other circumstances, he would’ve taken the check and celebrated right then and there, but the money stood under a darker light. Receiving it seemed like less of an achievement than bribery.

Matt licked his lips. “Foggy,” he prompted.

The disappointment on his friend’s face was audible.

“Listen, Fog, I’m sorry,” he said.

He had his arm wrapped tightly around his friend’s arm - if he hadn’t, he would’ve lost him by the speed he was strutting the streets. He recognized the angry pep in his step all too well.

“For which part?” Foggy retorted. “The one where you woke me up in the middle of the night for a case or the part in which our case turned out to be a mistake you – the other you – made?”

“It’s complicated.”

“It’s always complicated. You only wanted us to take this case to make sure you didn’t screw this up. I would’ve been fine with that, really, but you just had to go ahead and put the cherry on top. She’s an Avenger, dude! You only wanted me to be there to make it less obvious who you are. Well, let me tell you, she doesn’t have a clue, but you probably knew that already too.”

“I was worried,” Matt said. “I was worried and I wanted to make sure she doesn’t go to jail for protecting me.”

Foggy scoffed. “How noble of you.”

“Can you blame me? You read what happened. I didn’t have a choice. Foggy,”- he pulled at his arm - “Please, slow down.”

He stopped suddenly. “That’s the problem! I don’t want to think about you ever having set foot in that place. You could’ve gotten killed, Matt! Killed. Dead. They could’ve killed you dead and her, too, probably.”

“Yeah, I know what ‘killed’ means.”

“This isn’t a game!” Foggy snapped. “You put me in a stupid position where everything I say could mean us stepping on a landmine,” he said. “I thought we were friends. Friends don’t do stuff like that to each other.”

Matt cocked his head slightly. The words in his mouth turned into breath. He put up with a lot, too much even, and still it wasn‘t often he saw Foggy completely upset. He was right though, he had put the cherry on top with this one. He still couldn’t believe it himself. The night felt surreal.

“Honestly, why does it always have to be women with questionable morals?” his friend said then. “Can’t you just be normal for once and find someone at Starbucks or the library?”

“I don’t go to the library, Foggy,” he said.

“That’s not my point! My point is, that woman is so infatuated with you, it’s insane! And she doesn’t even know who you are. Once again you’ve found a woman with questionable morals who’s hot as fuck and you made it my problem!”

“I’m not disagreeing with anything you’re saying,” Matt said, “but you’re my friend. All I ask of you is to back me up.”

“I did. It sucked, but at least we got paid. No thanks to you. If it weren’t for this money, I would hit you. I mean that.”

“Okay, I can live with that.”

Satisfied with his answer, Foggy began to move on, stepping slower and steadier.

“You think she’s hot?” the question slipped him before Matt could think.

“God, you’re blind and stupid!” Foggy said. “You already know she’s hot.”

“I wouldn’t know, I can’t see her.”

“Yeah, but you know. You always know. It’s like you have a radar. It’s annoying.”

“I don’t have a radar.”

“Yeah, you do. You always attract danger, you get off on it. In the end, it’s me who has to deal with the consequences because you just don’t know when to stop. Think about Elek-”

Matt threw his head back. “We’re not doing this,” he cut him off. “Eliza is not Elektra.”

“Exactly. Elektra was a psychopath,” Foggy said. “So don’t screw it up.”

“I won’t. In fact, after tonight, I promise to never see her again.”

If only he had believed it, too.

✧

The black limousine outside the station still had its motor running when Tony and Eliza walked up to it. Tinted windows protected the insides from being seen by any passerby.

“Hey, kid,” Happy greeted her from the driver’s seat.

Eliza smiled weakly. “Hi, Happy.”

Tony slid into the seat next to her. She knew she was in for it.

Not even five minutes after Happy started the car and pulled onto the road again, the blaming began, as predicted.

“Are you high?”

She just didn’t think he would pull that card out of his repertoire.

“What?” she asked, dumbfounded.

“Are you on drugs?” Tony asked. His face was blank, not even hiding how serious he truly was.

Her heart was like badly glued glass. His words brought on the first crack.

She blinked, taking in his words. She tried to comprehend them, but all that came back was anger. “I’m not high!” she snapped.

“Thing is, I don’t believe you. No one in their right mind makes that decision.”

“I’ve been clean for almost three years now, Tony.” The familiar burn behind her eyes put pressure on her skull. “Do you think I’d start using again?” she asked. “I thought you said you trusted me.”

Happy turned his head around. “That’s not fair, Tony,” he told him.

God bless him for trying.

“ Can I trust you?” Tony cocked his eyebrow.

He patted his jacket down. The device was flat and made out of metal. it fits perfectly into the size of a pocket. The screen was holographic, on the other side was a trigger button.

Eliza stared at it - no, she glared. Without her permission, he grabbed her wrist and pushed her finger into the button. A small needle shot out, penetrating her skin. It stung. The blood formed a small bubble on the tip of her finger.

“OW! What the fuck?”

He viewed the screen. The bar grew in percentage. “Friday?” he asked.

The device sounded in agreement. “Blood work’s clean, sir,” the automatic voice said back to him.

“Thanks so much for that, Friday,” she said. “Seriously, do you have that little faith in me?”

Tony scoffed at her blank stare. “The way you’ve been acting since Rogers left, no I don’t. You’re self-destructive and seek out trouble every chance you get. Forgive me for assuming you’re taking whatever it is you used to take.”

“That’s rich! A lot has happened in the past months, things I’m not quite over yet. To accuse me of using drugs just because I’m going through a rough patch is beneath you, Tony! You used to have more faith in me.”

“Oh yeah? Who took you in after Loki’s attack? Who made you an Avenger? Who didn’t give up on you? Hm? Does that sound like someone who knows nothing about your stupid little life? Does that sound like someone who doesn’t care? Are you seriously blaming me for caring?”

Eliza crossed her arms. “You’re trying to make me feel guilty like I owe you. I paid my debt. I owe you nothing,” she said.

She realized they’d never actually fought. They never argued before, or at least not one that ended in both of them throwing accusations at each other. But times changed - they were both different people.

He shook his head. “What were you thinking, kid? You know better than that,” he said. “I taught you better than that. Especially after Berlin, you should’ve learned. God! Fucking lawyers- you know who needs lawyers? Criminals. Is that what you want to be? Do you want to flush the Accords down the drain?”

“These guys were kidnapping an innocent woman,” Eliza stated her case. “I followed them and then I just acted. They wanted to kill her, sooner or later. I don’t want to be a criminal, I just want to help people like we used to. I did what I had to do. Don’t turn this around to blame me, Tony. It’s not fair.”

For a second, he simply stared ahead. The many lights of the city passed them by. “And you just thought you could play the hero.” He turned to her. “Without back-up, without a plan. You didn’t even ask me first. The Accords exist for a reason, Eliza. If Brett hadn’t called me, you would’ve been in a hell lotta trouble. I hope for your sake Ross doesn’t find out. Look,” he said. “I’m trying here, but you overreact a lot sometimes. It’s what you do. You saw a mission in something that could’ve been easily solved with a 911 call. I taught you to be careful, not to get yourself into more trouble than you can handle. What did you do? You disobeyed my orders.”

“Like I just said, I acted. But I’m glad I did because of this… I found out something. This is so much bigger than I thought at first. It wasn’t just a kidnapping-”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“Listen to me!” she cried.

“Now I have to hear it.”

“These guys are working for someone and that someone wants something.”

“Yeah, that’s how this works. Honestly, are you even listening to yourself?”

“Yeah, I am. Why can’t you just listen?” Eliza desperately grabbed his forearm. “They knew me, Tony. One of them said I was worth a lot of I don’t know, money maybe.” In the end, she did what he told her not to do - yell. She was angry, off the rails.

“You’re not making any sense!” Tony matched her tone. “You are an Avenger. Romanoff released your SHIELD files in 2014. After what happened, everyone knows your name. Everyone! And they know your story. When they said they knew you, it’s because you’re a public face. They realized you’re an Avenger, so boom, they saw an opportunity.”

Her eyes were wider than the fucking moon. “This makes even less sense!”

“Maybe in your book. In mine, nothing’s ever made more sense. You know why?” he asked. “Yeah, because I’m right.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why do you always have to be right?”

“Because I usually am.”

“You’re not always right!”

“Maybe not, but I have a point here. Have you ever tried to sell an Avenger on the black market? I haven’t, but let’s face it; You’re young, you’re powerful and you’re a woman. These guys saw their chance and took it, nothing more! It’s just that. A coincidence, an attempt to make you go crazy.”

The world around her spun. The words dug forward in her mind, but she pushed them away. She tried not to let him plant ideas in her head. She didn’t want him to control her. He had the power to change her mind every time - she refused to let it happen again.

“See? This is what I’m talking about,” he said. “You’re pouting like a fucking child.”

“I’m not a child anymore!” Eliza retorted. “I’m an adult now. I make my own decisions. I know what I want, what I saw. I’m not crazy.”

“You sure? Ever since the whole Hydra debacle, you’ve been paranoid. At first, I didn’t blame you, but now it’s getting ridiculous.”

“Can’t you just listen to what I’m saying?”

“I am listening,” he stated.

“No,” she said. “He knew me! He knew who I was. He knew the lullaby they used to sing to me.” she choked on a dry sob. “He said ‘Hail Hydra’ to my face. You don’t imagine stuff like that.”

“Did he say it like that, word for word, in an English sentence that the victim can testify on?”

She gnawed on her bottom lip. “He said it in Russian. Since she’s German, I doubt she understood, but I heard it. He said those exact words, I know it!”

“No, you didn’t! When was the last time you spoke Russian, actively?”

“It’s been a while, but I grew up there. I know-”

“You could’ve misheard. Language gets confusing, especially when you speak more than one.”

“Don’t turn this around on me,” she warned. “I speak Russian, I’m fluent, I know what I heard.”

“You were there when we destroyed Hydra,” Tony said. He brushed her off, just like that. “They’re gone. We did what he could.”

“No, but-”

“Coincidence.”

Eliza hit her fist against the car window. “Can’t you understand?” she asked. Her voice went quiet. “If there’s a possibility that they’re back, we have to do something. I have to do something.”

“If Hydra magically managed to come back, the police will figure it out. If they need help, we’ll know,” Tony said. “But until that happens, there is nothing you should do. No, scratch that! There is nothing you can do. Nobody knows what’s behind what happened today and thanks to your heroics, the only person who knows something shot himself, so you brought this upon yourself.”

“I can’t just sit back and watch while shit goes down. Since when is that something we do?”

“Since the last time we did, people died!” he wasn’t actively yelling, but the tone of his voice was sharp and it cut right through the already jagged scars on her heart.

“This is different,” Eliza said. “If you’d just look into it-”

She should’ve known that trying to reason with him was a waste of time.

“No,” he replied sternly.

“You won’t even-”

“That’s right, I won’t even.” He took off his glasses. Brown eyes bore into hers, backing her into a corner. “I won’t waste resources on a hunch,” he said. “I won’t risk breaking the Accords or getting on Ross’s bad side just because you believe you’re onto something.”

“It’s not just a hunch. I know that something is going on.”

“Do you really? Or do you just have a bad feeling?”

“I-” anything other than admitting it was indeed just a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach would’ve been a lie. Though the bad feeling went deeper than any other; she felt it deep in her bones. She didn’t need evidence to prove her theory because she knew it was true. She simply knew.

Eliza never went out of her way to do anything she believed in if she wasn’t one hundred percent certain that what she believed in was real and not just misplaced suspicion.

Tony nodded, smugly satisfied. “I knew it,” he said.

“But Tony,” she tried again. She needed him to listen so she could explain it to him. She hoped that somehow he’d come around if she just tried to put those feelings into words.

The sharp look on his face shattered her hopes into tiny little pieces on the floor, on purpose and with inhuman force, she forgot how to breathe. He refused to listen. Like so many people before him, he turned his back. She was expected to follow him, to be undermined because that was all she was worth, to follow. Forced to listen, forced to submit, forced to be the person she was expected to be.

He cleaned his glasses with the sleeves of the sweater poking out underneath the leather jacket. He must have become aware of the life draining from her eyes for he let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re a kid,” he said. “Maybe I spoiled you too much. Maybe I should’ve prepared you for the real world. God knows I should’ve known that this thing with Rogers would happen eventually. I don’t want to fight, I don’t, but you just won’t listen .”

Eliza exhaled through her nose. She pushed the tears and the pain down. He wasn’t supposed to see the disappointment. His mission was to make her feel bad and she did, but he didn’t deserve the gratification of seeing her suffer.

Eliza fell back into the seat. “No,” she said. There wasn’t much fight left in her. “Hydra ruined my life.”

I just need you to see, to listen, to take me seriously. Her tone suggested not many things, only the raw through of what she was thinking, her last attempt to change his mind, to continue seeing him as her hero.

“They made me into a monster. If it hadn’t been for Natasha, I wouldn’t even be here. I can’t just drop it when there’s evidence. The guy killed himself because I was there. I can’t wash the blood off my hands. If I hadn’t gone in, this would’ve never happened. If I hadn’t gone in, we would’ve never known.”

Just like that though, her fight hit the brick wall in front of his heart. He wouldn’t even let them go through, only cherry-picked what he wanted to hear.

“Exactly, if you hadn’t gone it. That’s it,” he stated. “That’s it, period.”

“Tony…” her lips formed the word ‘please’ like a reflex, but she bit the desperate plea away.

Happy peaked through the rearview mirror again. “Tony, maybe you should listen to her,” he dared to interject.

Tony turned instantly. How dare he? his eyes screamed. “Unbelievable! Am I the only one with functioning brain cells here?”

“All I’m saying is, maybe the kid has a point. You gotta at least check it out, if not for you, do it for her sake. I mean, when has she ever been wrong about something?”

“Oh, don’t even get me started,” he retorted. “There’s a whole list.”

“Tony, please,” Happy uttered the words for her. “You have to. ”

“I don’t have to do shit!”

“Tony-”

“No. Happy, stay out of it! I’m not falling for this. If you want to play the rebel,” he turned to Eliza, “and see danger everywhere you go, maybe you should’ve gone with Rogers.”

Her jaw slacked.

“Shit like this doesn’t fly with me. Not anymore. We’re done, okay? Done. Finished. Nada. You are not an Avenger anymore, you’re simply just a kid, and you gotta figure your life out like a responsible adult. I am sick and tired of having to cover for you. You’re old enough to make your own decisions, too old to have someone control them for you. I’m not going to argue with you anymore.”

“This is not over,” she fired back, the stubborn crease between her eyebrows deepening to the point it became painful.

Happy pulled the car up to the curb.

“Yes, it is!” Tony said. He pushed her door open with his free hand. “This is done. You are done.”

“No!” she held onto his arm. “Don’t do this, Tony.”

“You’re done!” his shout echoed in the car, and even Happy flinched. “You’re done, alright? Now get out. I don’t want to see you again tonight.”

Eliza furiously wiped her cheeks. She spent the last couple of years looking up to him. He was the great Tony Stark, Iron Man. She wouldn’t go as far as to say she loved him like a father - she didn’t know what that was like - but he’d always been there. He was the closes thing to a father figure she had.

The door shut loudly behind her.

‘You’re done,’ the words repeated in her mind over and over again. With each dreaded step up the stairs to her small apartment, the words rang out louder.

She unlocked the door. The quiet of the apartment pushed against her. She wanted to stumble back, turn around and run. She stared into the darkness, getting adjusted to the soft moonlight.

4:35 am.

Eliza scoffed. She dropped the key on the hanger, flicking the light switch up. Soft yellow light filled the living room.

“Yeah.” She checked the clock again. 4:36 am.

The German beer in the fridge appeared lonely between the leftovers of her pasta from the day before and an Avocado that desperately needed to be eaten. The least she could do was relieve it of its misery.

4:37 am. Her fingers itched. The cold glass wet her hands in the wave of condensation. Disgusting, she thought, sipping the cheap alcohol. She drank it like water from the tap.

Eliza was born to chase every high she could find, even if just for a second, she could finally breathe again.

She stared at her reflection in the metal of the fridge. The watermelon magnet kept the picture of her, Natasha, and Steve stuck tightly to the material. She saw herself not only once but twice.

“Cheers,” she tipped her glass. “I did something bad today, but it felt good. It was worth it,” she said. “All of this was worth it.”

The necklace with the small hematite pendant weighed dozens of pounds in her delicate hands. Hands that have been through hell and back. A necklace that meant so much more than jewelry.

If not, she told herself, the end was nearer than she first expected it to be.

And then ‘fucked’ would be the understatement of the fucking year.

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