Matt Murdock + Daisy Johnson
No Warnings | Complete
When there wasn’t training, thinking about training or planning training, Matt Murdock stayed busy. Between working on his own skills and keeping Claire company (besides what little he showed himself on the network), Matt hadn’t been particularly social. Those places in which people congregated had been places he steered clear of. But instead of going home, showing up at Claire’s window or staying at the Base until late, he found himself walking slowly down the road, his cane sweeping the ground in front of him.
After a moment, he started to follow the sound of liquid being poured into glass. Eventually, he found that he was in Cava. He sat at the bar, folded his cane and smiled at the bartender.
“Surprise me.”
Daisy generally preferred Lightning Brew, but sometimes you had to change it up. Tonight, she was in the mood for a good glass of wine. Approaching the bar, she paused when she realized the guy sitting there looked kind of familiar.
“Hey,” she said as she slid onto the seat next to him before signaling the bartender and ordering a flight.
Matt tipped a chin her way, listening to the approach. He turned, red-tinged lenses shielding his eyes, and nodded. “Hey.” He by no means had the market cornered on recognizing who he’d met before, but prided himself on knowing the familiarity of someone. And though he could hardly place it, he felt like she’d been in his life before.
“I’m Matt.”
The name was enough to make something click in her mind and Daisy’s eyes widened slightly as she realized where she’d known him from. “Matt Murdock?” she asked. It had been years, but she still remembered him.
“It’s Daisy now, but you might remember me better as Skye.”
“ … you mean the skinny little girl who came in as Mary Sue Poots but insisted her name was Skye?” Matt was deep -- too deep -- in his own own drama, caught in a web of disabling anger and loneliness. But he remembered any one of his fellow orphans who could hold her own. There were, regrettably, too few of them.
“Yeah, I remember you. Changing names like you change your socks.”
“You’d change your name, too, if the orphanage had tried to call you Mary Sue Poots,” Daisy argued with a soft laugh. “I [...] found my parents,” she admitted. “Daisy is the name they gave me. Daisy Johnson.”
It felt like another lifetime that she’d been at that orphanage with him and not just because she was using a different name now. So much had changed in the intervening years.
“Crazy, us both ending up in Atlantis now. How the hell have you been?”
Matt smiled crookedly. “Oh yeah?” He was glad that Ma -- that Daisy -- had met her parents. Glad that she seemed solid, sure in herself. He thought about the memories from his home. The foundation beneath his feet that was his mother’s name, his mother’s support. He nodded.
“Busy. But I don’t stray too far from the orphanage, still.”
Finding her parents hadn’t exactly ended well, but it had left her with an identity and a stronger sense of purpose. Her mom had been messed up - kind of evil, even - but what she’d been doing with Afterlife hadn’t been all bad and she’d started trying to do the same for other inhumans, at least where she could. To say things had gotten complicated since would be an understatement.
“The orphanage feels like a lifetime ago for me,” she admitted. She’d been through so much since, been through so many changes.
“How’s that?” He remembered the little girl who was always after the truth. And, to be fair, he imagined that she continued to get up to the right kinds of trouble. Especially if Atlantis brought her here.
“If you’re willing to share,” he added after a beat.
“It’s kind of a long story, but I joined S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she admitted after a beat. “They helped me find out the truth about my past. Turns out my parents had some, uh, issues, but my team kind of became my family, too. The last several years have been weird-” at that, she laughed a little, because weird seemed like an understatement. “I’ve got these powers - I’m an inhuman. I’ve been through so much weird stuff, you probably wouldn’t even believe half of it.”
Matt sat back, his face loose in a smile, listening. Daisy had no reason to lie to him, of course. But he heard her contentment -- found family, sometimes, meant more than blood family. And she had found hers. But his brow arched in a mild challenge.
“You’d be surprised what I could believe, Daisy.”
“Yeah?” she answered with a small smirk on her lips. “Do you believe in time travel? Cause I’ve been to the future.” A future, at least, one she’d seemingly stopped from coming into being, but it was still pretty trippy and something not a lot of people would believe, even those from a world where New York had been attacked by aliens. She might not have believed it if we hadn’t been there. Sometimes it still felt like it had tone some kind of freaky ass dream.
“I haven’t experienced it but I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility.” The prophecies, the destinies and the mythos that surrounded his last days with Elektra and the earnest surety of the Iron Fist weighed briefly on his mind.
“I’m sure the future is as bad as I’m imagining.” He smirked.
“It’s worse. Or it was. Like earth cracked apart, what’s left of the human race living in space as slaves to the freaky blue aliens bad. My team stopped that future from happening, I think. I sure as hell hope so.” The cost had probably been Coulson’s life and it had been an impossible decision to make. She was grateful that Atlantis had been able to save him here. If there was one thing still keeping her here, it was knowing she had more time with Coulson.
“What about you?” she asked. If felt like she’d just been talking about her life. “What have you been up to since I last saw you?”
Matt’s head tilted as he imagined the landscape of her story. There was enough space left between her words for him to imagine a future in which this outcome could still take place. But he trusted here. And he trusted that here in Atlantis, it was something he wouldn’t have to face. Alone, anyway.
He righted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “I have a law practice in Hell’s Kitchen.” It felt a bit odd going straight into the vigilantism. Even here, mentioning Daredevil by name felt wrong somehow. Like it should still be secret.
“A lawyer, huh? Impressive.” It was cool that he’d made something of himself. Growing up at the orphanage, you were kind of at a disadvantage. It sounded like they’d both ended up somewhere special and she was glad for that. She was happy for him. “I guess I know who to call if I get busted for hacking now,” she teased.
He sat back and grinned. “ … as long as it’s for a good reason, Daisy Johnson. I expect some social justice hacking.” Pausing, his brows arched and he took a breath. He might as well. It wasn’t unknown who he was or what he did.
“If you’ve heard of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen … that’s also me.”
Daisy grinned. “Always for the greater good, I swear,” she assured him, letting out a low whistle when he admitted his secret identity. “Sounds like you get around pretty damn well for a blind man,” she commented. It was probably clear from her tone that she was looking for the story there.
Matt sat back, letting his bottom lip slide over his teeth. It was fair to assume that Daisy didn’t have a full picture of his abilities. And though he was known as Daredevil here in Atlantis, it still felt very odd to describe how he ‘saw’ to her.
“It isn’t my vision, so much. All my senses are heightened and it gives me this picture.” He told Claire it was a picture of a world on fire. “And I can move based on that picture,” he said after a beat. “ … creeps a lot of people out. But with what you do? You could put me down for the count.”
“Hell, I can move mountains, cause earthquakes, do a lot that creeps a lot of people out. Definitely not judging here.” Matt wasn’t an inhuman, as far as she knew, but she knew there were other ways people could acquire special abilities. “How did it happen?” she wondered aloud.
He shook his head. “I don’t know if it was the acid or the training,” he said, before realizing that sounded a little more flip than he meant it to. “ … what I mean is that when I was blinded, I couldn’t cut out the noise. I was trained by a blind man named Stick. Mostly.” A pause.
“So to say what came first? Or how? I’m not sure. I just came to accept it. What about you?”
It was a little more cut and dry for Daisy and she’d long ago reached a point where she was comfortable talking about it. “I’m an inhuman,” she admitted. “Mostly human, but I have enough kree DNA that when I came into contact with some terrigens, it changed me. Every inhuman’s powers are different, but we all exist for a reason. Our powers serve a purpose in the world, even if we don’t always know what that it. I think I’m still figuring that part out.”
The rest of it, though? Being part alien, having these powers that had terrified her at first? That was something she was fully at peace with, largely thanks to Lincoln. She was trying to pay it forward the only way she knew how to - by helping others in a similar position.
The corner of his mouth quirked. “Being born with purpose. That’s a tall order, Daisy. But a comforting one.” He sat back and considered his own struggle with what it meant to have purpose or, he supposed, a calling.
“I’m glad for you.”
“Thanks.”
It was a mixed bag sometimes, but most of the time Daisy was good with it. She felt like she was making a real difference. “Guess we’ve both come a long way since the orphanage.”
Matt could relate to what she was saying and he supposed she was right. They had come a long way from being the angry, rebellious children they had been. But the truth was he didn’t feel that far removed from the orphanage. On the contrary, it seemed closer to the core of him than ever. It was his refuge. But here, in Atlantis, it could be a touchstone for the both of them too. And he was satisfied by the journey.