Spider!Gwen & Matt Murdock Who: Spider!Gwen & Matt Murdock What: A meeting Where: New York's fire escapes & rooftops When: Recentish Warnings/Rating: Nope!
This world rattled with sound. In the bustling, winding towns he had left behind, Matthew knew the grind of the wheels on stone, the shouts of vendors and the joyful shouts of running children, all a familiar chorus. Here, all of the sounds were much higher, approaching screams: the squeal of vehicle brakes, the growl of engines, the harsh, skull-echoing interruption of the horrific horns in the cars crammed close on the wide roads. The rubber wheels bumped on the metal covers of the sewer holes, one after another, tak tak, tak tak. There were constant footsteps, loud, almost clicking footsteps, as the shoes here were different and the walkways were poured into shape. The mutter of conversation was very similar, at least, human voices raised together, but Matthew didn’t have the luxury of allowing the many voices to disappear into one hum; all was distinct, and he could not listen to one thing without hearing many others. It stretched his nerves.
It had taken him months to adjust to the squealing roar of New York, even muffled as it was by icy rain and bone-chilling temperatures. The weather, well, he was accustomed to a cold spring--but Matthew absolutely preferred old York, that crumbling den of abandoned Catholics on old Roman ruins. He had no idea what possessed the colonies to establish a new York. Misplaced nostalgia, probably.
All the same, Matthew was a flexible fellow, and he settled into his new home well enough. It was interesting, and while he did get horribly homesick now and then, he knew there wasn’t anything for him back home. He could be successful here just as well as England (safer, too), and there certainly wasn’t any coin to be made in Ireland.
He had been in this world long enough to acquire a wardrobe to suit it. Instead of a cloak he wore layers of loose flannel shirts and a flexible wool jacket under a windbreaker. He had a knit hat down over his ears and unfolded low over the entirety of his eyes. The only unfortunate thing was that nothing was of one color: it was all a mix of confused blacks (some even approaching blue) and deep crimsons. He asked for dark clothing, and was provided, but his definition of “dark” was clearly not the “black” he expected--and he wasn’t equipped to correct it, or even be aware of the problem.
The only thing from his former life he had not successfully given up were his shoes, made for him in London, worth more than anything else he owned. They might look a little odd under the layers of new pants (how many of these confounded buttons and fastenings were really necessary?), but they were solid leather, so he hoped not overmuch.
Matthew always moved around at night, high and fast. He didn’t realize that the ambient light in this world was so much stronger than his own, and naturally assumed that if he avoided windows and doors, the shadows were thicker than they actually were. Light pollution was not a concept that had been discussed with Matthew. He enjoyed moving from building to building, because they were so much taller and offered a certain amount of safety beyond the notice of those twenty floors below.
On his way across the city, he stopped a drunken thief in his business and interrupted a beating behind a gambling hell, not because he was especially charitable, but because he was passing and it didn’t trouble him to lend a hand. Traveling over balconies and up helpful sets of fire stairs (ingenious!) he was looking for lodgings in this area, and grateful neighbors were helpful neighbors.
Since Silent Hill, Gwen had been going out almost nightly, listening for Carnage and his familiar whisper. Nighttime had benefits, namely her inability to gauge distances as well as she could in daylight. Falls seemed less daunting, even with the muscle memory of darkness as gravity pulled her. Too, she wasn't about going around during the day yet. She had to find a way to tell Peter about the spider thing, as she unscientifically called it in her mind, and it seemed like she would need to face that reality sooner if she was slinging her way around his turf during the day. Not that he wasn't around at night, but New York at night was a busy place; there was less of a chance of them ending up on the same block at the same time. People behaved during the day, because most criminals didn't realize it was better to do foul deeds during a time when people had their guards lowered; it was a good thing they didn't realize that.
It all meant that Gwen was out nights, because the adrenaline of the suit was the only thing that cleared her head and let her sleep lately. Before, it had been the lab, with the peaceful quiet of microscopes and slides. But science had failed her a lot lately, and she didn't have the level of confidence in her scientific ability that she had before. She knew, logically, that she was young and that she was currently lacking any kind of scientific mentor. This version of Doctor Banner wasn't very interested in her, and she had no one she trusted at Oscorp. Mr. Rogers never sat on a couch and listened to her theories anymore, and Harry just wasn't interested in his current state. The program at NYU was great, but it wasn't the same as having someone she could work through ideas with. Ever since the sedative had negatively affected Harry, she'd been floundering, and the anti-hallucinogenic in Silent Hill had only compounded that floundering and turned into full-on flail.
Ergo, she was sitting on the cornice of a tall building, garbed in white and red-pink, spider webs inside the hood that was pulled up over a white facemask. Black accents, and her teal shoes hanging in the New York cold. It was a nice night. Not too cold, and she didn't get frozen through as she had before the spider mutation. The city was sirens and street noise, and her spidey senses weren't tingling.
Even when she saw the guy on the fire escape a building over, her spidey senses continued to nap. Okay, so not a bad dude. Cool. Sweet. Etc. Etc. Etc. She'd already stopped three muggings and two assaults, and she wasn't really in the mood for some acrobatic tussle on fire escape. She'd just leave him where he was. Sure. Uh huh. Yep.
The web snikt to grab the edge of the escape above him, quiet and barely a hiss in the NYC night. Okay, she could've gone for quieter, but why waste the theatrics? She swung over (hiss), and she landed on the corner of the escape above. Her balance was perfect as she peered down at him, head cocked to the side in a universal question, even with the facemask. "Elevator broken, buddy?"
He knew she was coming long before she spoke. It wasn’t just the sound of the little cord she was using to support her weight, or the steady thrum of her heartbeat as it spread out in the air around her. It was her scent, actually, because he was upwind. By the time she landed, he was aware of her sex, age, and also hints of the places she had been, alleys and streets. He could tell that she was a denizen of the rooftops as much as he, because the scent of the wet air as it clung to her was fresher than it was on the street below. Because her heartbeat was slow and deep, he suspected that she was stronger than her size suggested--the depth and expanse of the space around her suggested a girl or small woman. He would bet the fine silver she was not over 9 stone soaking wet.
He turned his face up toward her, the seal of the knit cap so low over the bridge of his nose making a fully efficient mask. The devilish grin was decently white (shocking, really, since dental hygiene was not exactly all the rage where he was from) in the heavy shadow. “I elevate myself, as you see.” With a primate’s agility, he swung up and around an iron spread of rusting stair, and set a toe in a window frame no wider than a handsbreadth, his weight mostly on a hand that held a failing rail. “Though I’ve not your advantages.” His covered eyes seemed to swing from side to side to take her in, and his nose didn’t offer anything of the cord that brought her hence.
He dropped without warning, danced at a heart-stopping vertical for a moment, and caught himself again on a new broad ledge to send out questing fingers toward the web, brushing it delicately with his bare fingers.
She watched him without her heart catching in her throat. The days when acrobatics made her heart stop were gone with high school, but she still remembered Peter jumping over the balcony of their penthouse apartment that first night he'd come to dinner. She hadn't quite grasped the severity of the situation until that drop, her heart in her throat and the immediate realization that she was in so much trouble. She'd been a little distracted by kisses, and the reality of the situation set in later, once the butterflies had vacated her ribcage, expulsed by the beating of her heart. She didn't have that reaction now, as she watched him go from miniscule ledge, to railing, to near vertical nothing. The drop was impressive, even without her heart in her throat, and she retained her respect of heights in a way that made her grip her own corner of the Fire Escape World more surely.
It was the vibration of the web that made her lessen her grip on her perch, and she retracted the silky line. "Hey, buddy! Hands off the webs!" she said, and she was small and youth; he was certainly right about that.
She made her own observations now. The knit cap was low enough that she didn't think he could see beyond it; it didn't have eye holes, and it wasn't a proper mask. His grin was devilish and sure and not young; this wasn't any bug boy or a boy of any similar ilk. He wasn't a boy at all. His accent was definitely not New York, though she wasn't an expert in linguistics, and she could only attribute it to somewhere overseas, even though there was something weirdly out of time about it. His clothes were all slightly mismatched, and his shoes weren't anything she'd seen before.
She cocked her head to the side again, more of that youthful curiosity in the web-lined hoodie's tilt and tip. She considered, and she settled upon an experiment, because it was impossible to take the scientist out of the spider.
The web snickt again. Up this time. Three fire escape lengths, and she swung herself up in a graceful arc. She landed, again, on the corner of the creaking metal. Perched, as she waited to see if he pursued. She was patient, as all scientists were, and she called down to him in a teasing sing-song. "Your advantages seem just fine to me, stranger! Almost good enough. Nearly. Awww. Don't feel bad!" There was a smile to her voice that kept the playful teasing from sounding cruel, even as it carried on the night wind.
The cord pulled away, which surprised him a great deal, as if you were to depend your weight on something, you expected it to stay stuck to where it had meant to stick. He could tell from the vibrations moving down the line that the attachment to her was equally strong. His head turned in the direction of the retracting line, but he didn’t attempt to pursue it in her direction. He hung from one arm and seemed to think for a moment, even as she moved away again. The gentle waves of sound from the traffic far below colored a picture as bright as daylight to him, and he followed her path with ease, smiling at her childish taunts.
He chose a path parallel to her own, moving away, and yet not far. His curiosity was a passing fancy, and nothing as intense as her experimentation. He had visited this world long enough to know that there were witchbloods here, ‘mutants’ they called them, and while they were hardly generally accepted, it appeared many of them were worshipped as war heroes. He could stay in that shadow. He went around the edge of the building, moving easily over apparently flat surfaces, ignoring the chill sting of the air as they both moved higher. He wanted height to drop to another building crouched close by.
She was no special threat to him. Her heartbeat was still strong, and he could hear all the smiles in her voice. “What are you called, child? A spider, I would guess. Are your silk webs for sale?” He was quite serious about buying the mechanism. He had been fooling with the possibilities of cord on sticks, something to strike and also create sound if he needed it, but nothing had materialized.
There was something familiar about her scent. He was still trying to place it.
Whoa, buddy. Who you calling a mutant? Not that she knew he was thinking it, but she'd argue she wasn't one. She'd had that philosophical debate with Peter before ending up here, back when she was as normal as any blonde and blue-eyed girl in affluent Manhattan. Since then, she'd been a pulse mutant, and she'd been de-pulsed and bitten, and the two were definitely different on a biological level. But maybe that wasn't a good thing to focus on, because she knew the mutant thing got a little touchy in some bubble universes, and the last thing she needed was to beg more trouble; she borrowed plenty as it was.
She sensed where he was moving without needing to look much, and she realized this nighttime game of Follow The Leader Kind Of was good practice for skills she still needed to master. So she forced herself not to look at all, and she let her senses tell her about his parallel ascent. Even with those spidey senses on turbo, she still wasn't worried, and she wished she could just ask Peter how this stuff worked. He had a serious headstart on her, but that made the whole Full Disclosure thing come full circle, and she was totally not looking for that particular 360°.
Anyway, she could totally spider better than a spider could. Okay. Back on track, or, er, on rail.
By the time she stopped moving fully, she was up at the building cornice, crouched, and willing to stay and chat a bit. After all, it never hurt to be social! "Who are you calling a child, mister?" she asked, that smile still in her voice, the one that said nearly everything that passed her lips was teasing; it was nice not to be as awkward like this, high up above the city and under the safety of a white mask. "I don't have a name," she admitted after a bit of considering that was accompanied by a shrug of shoulders and lift of her hands upward to the night sky, palms up and oh well in the gesture. "If you touch my spinnerets, we'll have to claw wrestle" she added with faux severity, emulating spider claws with the open-close of her gloved hands. Then, curiously, "who are you?"
Matthew, too, defied definition. There’d been nothing unusual about the boy who grew up in the cottage on the coast, and perhaps there never would have been, if not for the strange green glow that was the last thing he saw. He certainly would argue that there was nothing unusual about his blood… not that James or his fool cronies would pause to have a philosophical discussion about the difference between poisoned and witchbreed. Matthew didn’t trouble himself about it. He would be a devil that bled as a man, and so be it. His skills helped him make his way in the world that starved the weak in the gutter.
He noticed that she wasn’t watching him all that intently, but he incorrectly assumed that was because he was in darkness. He had nothing in his senses that would inform him of hers, and he was getting traces of the chemical explosive of firearms about her, but not enough to suggest she was wearing anything that could kill him. The familiarity of her scent kept escaping him, and it was distracting.
“You need a name,” he declared, extravagantly, the way a bard should. “For your enemies to fear, and your lovers to sigh.” The covered eyes turned confusingly in her direction, wavering. “Claw wrestle?” He couldn’t quite make out her spider claws through a scream of a rattling subway that passed through and echoed up all around them. He knew she was moving her hands around her face. He thought perhaps it was some particular speech of the young.
He hoisted himself down on a ledge, up over a railing, and then launched himself through cold space to fall several stories, coat flapping, before tumbling to a stop on a much more broad, comfortable roof. Someone in the apartments below was playing music--bad music. He then bowed in her direction, a great sweeping bow from the waist. “I am Matthew Murdock.” He left off his usual titles.
"Whoa. Wait a second. Why are my lovers sighing about my webs? Secret identities, buddy!" But he was right that she needed to find something to call herself. She'd thought about it a few times, but she always hit the same non-literal wall: she was kind of stealing someone's thunder, no matter what she chose. There was a Spider-Man, and there was a Spider-Woman. There was probably a Spider-Girl, and she was pretty sure no one over eighteen could legitimately be called a girl in the superhero world anyway. She could lose the spider thing entirely, but she had no idea what she'd use then. Web-Woman just didn't have a good ring to it. And Silk? Also taken. But he'd moved onto the much easier topic of claws, and she smiled behind the mask. "Arachnids have claws. Most people don't know that. No harm. No foul."
She watched his freefall with only a little of the anxiety that always accompanied bodies nearing the earth at increasing velocity, but then he was beside her. He bowed to the music (which sounded just fine to her!), and she was considering a responding curtsey when he said his name.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait- whoa- hold up. I know you." She tipped her head again, more of that curious white and webbing. "Your mouth looks older. I can't tell anything else with that cap pulled so low. You can't see me. Not with normal vision," she clarified, so he knew she wasn't pulling his leg. It explained the mismatched clothing, if not the shoes, and the strange accent and language that didn't make any sense. But now it was a puzzle, and the scientist in the spider was wide awake.
"You're not from here," she finally suggested. Probably unnecessary, but hey! She was just warming up.
As if to illustrate that point, his mouth relaxed into confusion. “What is an arachnid?” he asked, not concerned about displaying his ignorance and generally of good cheer about it. Most of the things he knew about this world came from asking, and a surprising number of people were willing to read or explain things to him. It assisted his work as a spy for people to assume he was stupid as well as blind (as if the two traits were part-and-parcel) even if it grated on his nerves. Not that he was spying here. Yet.
A smile. “About all things do good lovers sigh.”
The knit cap made the tiniest of furrows on his brow as his expression contorted with some surprise. “Thou knowst me?” he asked, forgetting himself a moment. “How?” When she commented on how old his mouth looked, it split once more into a genial smile, and he lifted his hand to peel the knit cap off with a thumb. He had fire-red hair pressed flat by the hat, and eerie silk-gray eyes that stared off into nowhere. His lids were slightly relaxed in a permanent look of uncharacteristic fatigue that came with the lack of focus in the eyes.
"A spider," she clarified of the meaning of arachnid. There wasn't any impatience in her voice; she didn't mind having to clarify. Too many years spent tutoring and showing new interns around Oscorp, and she liked teaching. If her passion for the lab and the silent stories told on lab slides wasn't so great, she would've considered teaching. As it was, she was just coasting, because she lived with that prevalent certainty that she wasn't going to make it long enough to have a career. She was working on shaking that self-limiting phobia, but she hadn't succeeded nearly as well as she'd succeeded in conquering her fear of heights.
"I've had one lover, and he never sighed," she admitted easily, because things were easier behind the mask. "Maybe only 9 out of 10 lovers sigh," she suggested, finger raised in the air, like she'd had an ah-hah! moment. But he lifted the cap back, after his moment of surprise, and she looked at a face that was more lined than when she knew it, but which still had all the same characteristics of the Matt Murdock she'd encountered during her brief stay in that colorful world where she'd gotten her spidey powers. In return, and without any thought, she tugged up her own white facemask, super-secret fabric rolled up at her forehead. "Hey. It is you! I'm Gwen. I know this sounds nuts, but you help me out in a bubble universe- er- another place?"
His mouth formed a great “ah” of understanding when she said ‘spider,’ though he still didn’t understand the origin of the word. Matthew learned quickly, though, and he found he learned much from listening (or whatever you could call the understanding-without-words through his book) to the many people occupying the hotel. Of course, it had taken him a few days to understand what a “hotel” was. It sounded French to him.
“He,” Matthew declared, sounding more Irish than he had before, “was not a very good lover, then. You’re a fine-looking lass, I’m sure.” He grinned at her, because he hadn’t any idea what she looked like, and she knew it. “I am enchanted, I am, Miss Gwen.”
As might be expected, he blinked at her in curiosity. “Bubbles? Another world, you are meaning.” He was rather proud of his facility with this new layout of worlds. “What aid do you require?” Hopeful smile. “Is it paying work?”
It was silly, but she actually considered whether or not Harry was a good lover. Tick tock went her mind, and she realized she didn't have a definitive answer that she could back up with any comparison data, and she shrugged her shoulders, knowing he couldn't see, but too accustomed to the quirk of shoulders to stop herself mid-realization. "He's a boy. I think boys are questionable in all things until they're men, and even then the scientific community has its doubts," she said, more the blonde academic than the girl who punned and swung around on webs, even with the teasing in her voice.
She almost told him about Mary Jane, and about how the redhead was a fine-looking lass, but she managed to hold her tongue at the very last minute. She'd had a few long talks with the Matt from the bubble universe she'd ended up in, and it was easy to almost blurt things out to this one, but whoa! Not the same guy! And she managed to zip her lips. "Enchanted," she echoed, and then he asked about other worlds with that curious blink, and way to be confusing, Stacy! "Other worlds. You came from yours, before you ended up here. I got zapped to one, and that's where I met you. Another you. He was hip." She smiled, and the grin was audible in the word hip, which she assumed might confuse him in the same way arachnid had. "I don't need anything, unless you give good boy advice," she joked, but his question about work made her do that head-cock again, even without the mask pulled way down. "You need a job?"
He waited through the ensuing pause, though he grew a little nervous as it went on. She didn’t make any particular sound of movement, and he could hear her breathing, so to him there was simply a long empty space in which she deposited no words. He pulled down the hat’s knit brim over his eyes once more, eliminating a gaze that he had been told was distasteful in his youth. “You excuse him too easily. Alas with your virtue gone, I cannot blame you.” He sounded sympathetic.
A slow shake of his head, then suspicion at her intentional use of colloquial he wasn’t familiar with. “If he was hip’d, then I am that, also,” he said, frowning at her with a dare to say he was wrong, humor lingering just out of sight. “I,” he added, “was a traveling bard, a collector of tales, and such men always give the best of advice. Unfortunately I am not a musician with great skill. I have some small amount squirreled away, however.” Cheerful smile.
"Virtue doesn't work that way, buddy. Not over here in the Eew-Es-Ay!" But she did sound a little bit bothered by his tone. It reminded her of Peter Parker number... three? The one who'd thought so much less of her because she'd slept with Harry Osborn once. She shook her head, and that was movement on the night air, a whip of her blonde hair slipping free from the rolled-away white. "Women are allowed to do the same things as men," she explained, in case his accent indicated a time disparity, as well as a location disparity, as was seeming more and more likely.
His use of the word bard confirmed her suspicions, but he didn't seem as confused about skylines as he should be if he was from Merry Olde England, and she thought it seemed as if it had to do with something more than his lack of sight. "How long have you been here? My Mr. Murdock was a lawyer," she explained. "He worked with the law," she added, in case he needed it to be simpler, in order to associate it with something from his own time.
She rolled her mask down when he did, and she was white that he couldn't see once more. "I don't know if there's work for advice givers, but I can ask Ms. Hardy if there's something at Oscorp. She wants me to come back, and I think she'd find something for you, if you wanted it. It's a science company," she said, simplifying it as much as possible.
Being of the “lower orders,” Matthew didn’t have a great deal of concern for a lady’s virtue, but he did come from a world in which it was assumed to be their most important possession. He thoughtlessly assumed she felt the same, automatically. Intellectually he was aware that a great many things had changed in the world, he just didn’t think about it all the time. He was amenable when it was pointed out to him. “Women cannot do everything men can,” he said, smiling. “The best parts of living, I think.” His voice went teasing, faintly singsong.
“Some few months,” he replied, to her inquiry. He tipped his head, right, left, right. “Loud indeed. I am surprised James did not name it after himself,” he added, with a little twist of his mouth in disdain. Progressing toward her in a slow rambling walk, moving in the direction of the ledge without looking in any direction at all, he continued, “I have never been a doctor, or a man of letters. I’m no man of wisdom.” It was true enough. He had realized quickly that everyone in this world could read, even the beggars on the street. He was not quick to admit this failing, even if he assumed it was obvious. “Tis a generous offer, it is.” He touched her arm, reaching out unerringly and folding her hand over his, as if she were escorting him off the ledge. “And a kind thing, Gwen.”
"Women can do everything men can," she said firmly, and it was the girl behind the mask again. Determined and young and brought up in an environment where her future was limitless and untethered by gender or anything else. Whatever she wanted, her dad had taught her that she could achieve, and she believed it totally; her belief was there, in every syllable. "All parts of living," she added, deliberately imitating the singsong quality of his voice.
"James?" she inquired curiously, when he said he was surprised James didn't name something after himself - here? New York? Confused little spider, and another quirk of her head that was lost on him during that slow and rambling walk. She glanced down at the ledge, and she calculated how long it would take her to web and grab him if he fell. She hadn't practiced much with weights yet, and she didn't know how much she could shoulder, but she did know that a man shouldn't be a problem at all. She kept her gaze there, on the ledge as he said he'd never been a doctor or man of letter; she didn't think that mattered, not when it came to getting a job at Oscorp. She let him for her hand over his, and she smiled at him when he said it was generous and kind. "Don't count your chickens before they cluck," she cautioned. "But I can try, and I'll let you know. You're in the book?" The journals. She wondered if his journal talked to him, because she couldn't imagine how that would work without some dictation program.
“I am too polite,” he replied, smiling, “to correct thee of the activities of men.” She smelled fine, and younger in the strong beat of her heart. He still thought of her as a child, even if she denied it. In her world she could make herself queen, he didn’t doubt.
“The king I left, if you could call him so fine a thing,” Matthew replied, turning his head and spitting his disgust off the top of the building without much care for those below. “Elizabeth’s successor, and more a fool you’ve not met.” He began to stroll with her along the edge of the building, the edge of his boots brushing cold air, his elbow still under her arm. “I have a book. It speaks to me in words.” He led her around a frosted spotlight, glowing in their shadows, black and trailing his many coats.
She laughed when he said he was too polite to correct her about men, and it was a disbelieving, if unoffended little laugh. Not much merriment behind it, because life hadn't been merry lately, and no amount of swinging off cornices could change that. But she'd lost pretty much every adult she'd known, and it was nice to regain one, even if he was a different version that didn't know her. She had experience with those, but they didn't seem to like her much, and he didn't seem (yet) to be as disinclined.
"King James," she said unnecessarily, his words confirming her suspicions about time and place. She watched as he led her, and she wondered how he knew when to make the turns. Science filtered in, and she wondered if he had a mutation or ability that let him do things others couldn't do. "How do you do it? Climb escapes and maneuver without your sight. Do you have an ability?" she asked, a near perfect echo of her thoughts. She was going to offer to talk to Ms. Hardy and contact him on his book, but curiosity won out.
He heard the doubt in her voice, the laugh with no humor, and he stopped walking his tightrope walk to look down at her. The gesture was intense and steady, because it was clear that it offered him no actual information about her, but instead accompanied a train of thought all his own. “You do not believe me,” he said, with his lilting tone moving up on the second to last word and dropping on the last. He seemed to pursue it no more, at least not then. He turned toward her entirely, and he was not a big man but she was not a tall woman. His covered face turned entirely to her, a black emptiness of formed shadow. It moved with his smile.
“I am a man of ability, yes. A goodly number.” He put his hands up in front of her face, quick, unerring. “Be not afraid.” He smiled still, sure that she would not be, even as he said it. He put his palms on the top of her head, pressing the hood flat against her head as he found the shape of her skull. His touch was not gentle; he wanted to fully understand the space she occupied, because there was always more to complete his understanding of the world. He made no attempt to remove her hood or mask, he just pressed through it, tracing the shape of her face.
“Wherefore dost thou hide thy face?” He spoke in his pleasant lilt over the echo of the traffic, so the sound would give him more of what was in front of him, the fabric giving him softer echoes, more of a whisper than a song. His fingers went down over the bridge of her nose and over her chin and shoulders. “Not for fear of it growing uglier.” He chuckled, and let his hands drop. “Thou hast a kindly nature, Gwen. Do not laugh so shallow, for it pains me.”
She hadn't meant to make it so obvious that she didn't believe him, and she gave him a sheepish smile that wasn't anything visible behind her white mask, even if he could see it. A little shrug of her shoulders, hands up toward the sky in a gesture of apology, and she'd already gotten used to the exaggerated movements required in the suit. When people couldn't see your face, they had trouble understanding the meaning behind words sometimes. Body language was important, and facial movement was too; she'd learned that with Peter a long time ago.
"I'm not afraid," she assured him, and she watched his quick hands without any trepidation. It wasn't that she was overly trusting, but she had yet to learn of a good-guy from one bubble universe becoming a bad-guy in another bubble universe; as a result, she trusted him. He was a good-guy in the world where she got her powers; he helped fund her superheroics, and that meant he was on the right side. Ergo, she could trust him here, and she didn't flinch away when his hands touched her head. "Hey!" she squeaked when he pressed the hood flat, but it was playful protest and not any true call for him to stop what he was doing. She understood what he was doing; seeing by touch was something the visually challenged did all the time.
His question about hiding her face came as a surprise, especially given his cap pulled down the way it was. "Why do you hide yours?" True curiosity, and not cheeky youth. "No one knows I do this. Well, one person knows, but it's a secret identity," she explained, nose crinkling beneath the white as his fingers passed over the bridge. Then his hands fell away, and she laughed a little more genuinely. "I don't want to pain you. I'll try to laugh less shallowly, sir."
The body was important to Matthew too, but for him there were different cues that had nothing to do with the placement of limbs or the muscles of the face. He had little to pain him, so gifted he was with his additional abilities, and he was thankful that he could hide them as much as he was grateful he possessed them. So many of the witchbreed burnt and imprisoned could not hide what they were from the world. He had no need to see her face to know her.
He chortled to himself when she protested at his less-than-gentle touch, but he didn’t pause, and as her nose crinkled he opened his mouth and laughed. She sounded much like his younger sisters, little though he knew them, but on his last visit there had been one married and one grown, and the rest in varying heights after. They were a merry lot, despite what might be called a poor existence. He missed them. “Do that, lambkin.”
“I hide my face only because it is cold on my sore cheek, downy soft it is.” He patted his own strong chin gently, as if it was too sensitive for the wind. He smiled once more, an easy thing, it seemed. It was not an entirely honest answer.
She waited for some pronouncement about her features that never came. But she didn't need the words once he called her by the diminutive pet name that led her to believe she'd reminded of someone he knew; someone small. She wasn't concerned with him thinking her youthful or inferior. Maybe she should be more concerned about being treated like a contributing adult, but she'd given up that battle a long time ago. The Avengers all saw her entire set as kids, and that hadn't changed in three years. Like anything experienced for long, the mind became accustomed to it.
She knew he was joking, or at least mostly joking about why he hid his face, and she laughed and balanced, arms out and careful as she moved at his side again. "Why is your cheek sore?" she asked, though she doubted his cheek was anything of the sort. "It's gotten warmer," she added, though it was a cold night. "Your cheek would've frozen off last month," she pointed out, though she already knew he'd been in NYC at the time.
"You had an alias where I came from. You should think about having one here, and maybe getting a real mask and a suit," she suggested helpfully.
“‘Tis a chill place,” he agreed, cheerfully. “Not unlike Londontown in the snows. From where do you hail, lambkin? I can tell by your speech you are better suited to this place than I.” While fair of tongue, as many bards were, Matthew had to put some effort into learning the local language. How much he bothered tended to be dictated by the company.
“A false name,” Matthew said, without rancor. “I do not know why I should trouble for it. None know me here, but for your fair self. What matter it be if I should be called devilspawn, or what foul name they see fit here.” Matthew came from a place where people were not easily tracked; birth and marriage registries, for the most part, and Matthew had troubled himself for neither. Indeed, few could be bothered to learn a consistent spelling of their own name, even the queen herself (God rest her). “And should they look, I think they would not think to look in the gutter for a blind man.” He smiled at her.
Without looking down, he brought his hands down the front of his lapels, feeling through the layers. “Is it not right, for your streets?” he asked, obviously taking reference to the advice about the suit.
"Lambkin was born here," she said, a hiss of web as it shot forward and wrapped itself around the top of a lamppost just ahead and down. She followed it down, a flip that she'd been working on for days accompanying the movement, nearly soundless on the night wind. "Well, in Manhattan," she clarified once she landed on the smaller, lower roof that the lamppost abutted, and her accent wasn't like Peter or Mary Jane or Flash; it was quieter upscale, from the better part of the city. "Here, all the superheroes have names," she explained, balance-beam and hands out as she walked on the roof edge. "We have a disproportionate number of them in the city." Her steps were quiet, stealth something born of nights playing with the webs and trying to save people and make herself feel better as a result. "Most of them are jerks," she added, another snickt, and up this time, another fire escape when the roof-ledge in front of her ended.
She'd been considering the question he posed with his hands on his lapels, and she landed on the subsequent roof with the same quiet. She was headed toward home, but she was listening, so she stopped a moment. Quiet. "It depends if you want to be known, or if you want to jump from roof to roof without anyone knowing you," she explained.
Then, curious. "Do you do this a lot?"
He thought he detected a hint of resentment in the way she used the name he had so casually used a moment before, but before he could ask, she had casually moved off downwind. He followed without thinking, as he had moved this way since he was very small, and thought no more of it than most men did walking down the street. He thought perhaps lambs were thought of differently in this century, and made a mental note to keep an ear out for any phrasing that might hint one way or another.
Much was new to him--such as the phrase “superhero” which, to him, sounded ridiculous and song-worthy, both. He chuckled, audibly, as he was keeping up with her along his own path. Matthew’s tactics seemed to be a spry movement as far upward as possible, and from there he had a tendency to simply drop and swing to the place he needed to go, using whatever was closest to hand.
“Wherefore should I be known to the people of your world?” he asked, obviously confused. “There are not many as we are, I vow. Do they watch for us, on their rooftops?” He obviously couldn’t fathom why someone would a) recognize him and b) care to pursue. After all, in his world, everyone spent dawn to dusk trying to stay alive. There was no one who had the luxury of hiding at home, and certainly no one was pursued by anything but the law.
"Because New York has a thing for its heroes," she said, steady balance as she listened for whispers in the night. That was what she did now; listen for Carnage. She still stopped bad things when she ran into them happening, but her focus had shifted. "Heroes are big here. They saved the city from an invasion last year, and the population kind of looks for them everywhere now. They haven't been very active lately, so people look harder. They've gotten used to knowing there are people looking out for them, and they get a little antsy when they don't see them around much. Ergo, anyone moving around on a roof is going to draw attention as a potential hero."
She turned toward Manhattan, the upper end, and she snickt easily from one roof to the next, and the landscape below changed as she went. The sounds did too. Less arguments, less fights from open windows, fewer drug deals on corners and fewer girls ducking into stopped cars to quote prices. Even without being able to see, the neighborhood gave itself away as it changed; it even smelled cleaner.
She stopped a block from her building. "I don't think it's about whether you should be known or not. I think it's about the fact that you might be known, even if you're not looking to be." Her smile was youth, audible as it was muffled through the white of her facemask. "Better to be prepared, lambkin."
Matthew hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. What “thing” did the city have? He knew how a city might have a life and opinion of its own, and he knew also the rage of fear and tide of adulation that could move so quickly through the populace, faster than pestilence. He wasn’t sure why that might be directed at him. He was just moving from one place to another, in his mind, and he also had no real idea of how many people could see him in a world ten times brighter than the one in which he had grown. He naturally assumed that by “invasion” she meant by marauding peoples, perhaps natives from the north or south. Matthew’s world was still comparatively small.
“I am not a ‘potential hero,’” he said, rather pointlessly. “I am for hire, certainly. But one man could hardly make some change in your streets.” He didn’t mean it negatively, nor did he refer to any of his activities lately, thinking them to be private enough. “I cannot be known. None know me.” He really was confused.
She knew he'd misunderstand the 'invasion' in question, and she'd left it deliberately vague so as not to confuse him with aliens; she figured aliens had to be pretty confusing, lizard people on Doctor Who aside. He'd already managed to make a transition that most people newly arrived to the hotel had a lot of trouble with, and she didn't see the point in making him acclimate himself to the idea of aliens from other galaxies. But even with that, he didn't seem to understand. Or maybe he did, and he was making a larger statement about the futility of heroics. Either way, she still felt her point a valid one, and she stopped on the cornice of her own very tall, very expensive building, and she waited for him to join her.
"Even if you're doing it for money, and not because you think you can make a difference in a city like New York," she explained, "you still need a name for people to use when they hire you. It can't be Matt Murdock. That's too everyday, and the police will try to arrest you. Did they have stage names in your times? I bet they didn't. I haven't researched your time period," she said, sounding truly apologetic (she hated admitting to not knowing things). "It's like a character on the stage, when you're out here doing things. It's safer that way. Safer for you, and safer for anyone who might happen to know you." She smiled behind white. "Mister Can't Be Known," she teased.
He moved leisurely, in no great hurry as he paced her; in the end he was only two or three seconds behind, mounting a separate side of the building in a mirror image of her, the lines of his coat a blur in the longer shadow of the neighboring building. It was fairly impressive as he had no support or lines to ease his path. “Tis true I cannot name a sponsor of my service,” he admitted, with some slight discomfort.
Thinking over the merits of this suggestion of disguise, he turned his head with a deep frown, his face a long blank behind the knitted length of the extended cap. It stopped above his mouth, and it did nothing to conceal his concern. “An actor, you say. A Richard Burbage, perhaps.” He struck a pose, hand extended and chin up. “‘I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.’”
Gwen was impressed by his skills, scientifically curious. She wondered if it was adaptation of some sort, because there was ample precedence for other senses being stronger in the absence of one, but never to this extent. She didn't think he was a mutant, pulse or otherwise, and she was pretty sure there was a limited amount of superpowers in the year he came from. But that was hard to ascertain, when he existed in her modern timeline too. "Do you know any of the people here from your timeline?" she asked, voicing the thought that had just occurred to her. "The Avengers, or any other heroes?" Maybe they all had counterparts in his time.
She opened a bag she kept on the room, and hood and mask were replaced by an unremarkable black hoodie. She dropped down onto the escape that led into her bedroom, and she tugged open the window, the bag on her shoulder now. "Like that. Devil Drive. Drive Devil. I like Devil. It's strong."
“All, if you will. Faith, they speak of naught else in New York.” He rolled his head back on the top of his spine in obvious exasperation, the makeshift knit mask hiding anything else his face might offer. “Yet I have been close, ventured where I was not wanted. I think it odd… well, perhaps I ought tell you my mind. I knew Nicholas Fury, an agent of the queen, a man more head than heart, before he was banished away over the sea.” His voice became musing, faintly sing-song, the tune of a bard at the bottom of his cup. He traversed the edge of the roof again, his boots half out in the air. “Your man in the tower, Stark, another sorcerer, I am told he is dark of hair, as Strange had. Might he lose his head too, I wonder, lopped off for too much speech too quickly? And you… you have a flavor of Eve’s flesh, faith, pretty enough, and flowers… yet ‘tis familiar to me.” He wasn’t even turning his head toward her now, because he was downwind. A quick shake of his head, a flicker of irritation in a quick dash of his hand in the air. “It will come to me. I am well hanged with memories.”
He glanced down across the interlocking bars as she ducked into her room; he knew it to be hers, it smelled of her. “God save you this evening, madam. We meet again, another night, so please you. And you may call me Devil. A fair number have dared.” He laughed, bowed to her from the railing, and dropped back to the next escape, out of sight.