Matt Murdock (saint_matthew) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2016-04-06 11:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !thread, jessica jones (616), matt murdock / daredevil (mcu) |
Who: Jessica Jones (616), Matt Murdock (MCU)
When: Monday, April 4th, evening
Where: Matt’s apartment, Hell’s Kitchen
What: Jessica tells Matt about his counterpart in another universe
Warnings: A little bad language, but nothing more
The rain was torrential, coming down in dark sheets, beating against the window pane. It muffled every outside sound, creating a kind of static to Matt’s enhanced hearing. If he could concentrate, he could penetrate the static to hear the faint sound of traffic in the street below his penthouse apartment, but right now, Matt had other things weighing upon his mind. He’d been recently told by the alternative universe Jessica Jones that where she was from his identity as Daredevil was not a secret. Which meant there were a number of refugees here who also knew, and could reveal it at any time.. His current anger stemmed from feelings of vulnerability, that he would no longer be able to practice law, and that his friends were at risk from law breakers who wanted to get back at him. Jessica said she’d come over to talk, and so he waited, and brooded.
Sitting upon his chair in the dark, glasses off and resting upon the table, he’d already had two beers and was starting his third when he heard Jessica walking up the stairs while she was still two floors down. He’d been listening for her arrival. An unfamiliar step, boots, but too light to be a man’s, Matt guessed that it must be her. He stood up and walked to the door to open it before Jessica could even knock. Blank eyes stared sightlessly forward, just above Jessica’s head, but he didn’t need them to see - his remaining senses was able to paint for him a picture of the woman in the hallway.
“Come in,” he grumbled, stepping aside to allow her passage into his apartment.
Jessica was friends with Matt back home. Loosely, one would say. He helped her once and she helped him once. She thought maybe she could help him again by giving him a heads up. But there was an unwritten rule in the tower that no one gets outed. She wanted to assure him of that.
Her broken umbrella flapping in the wind, she entered the building. Up the stairs, to the door-- and there was Matt.
“Don’t be fucking mad at me, I was just trying to help.” She shook her umbrella off in the threshold of the door and squeezed past Matt like a guilty dog. The apartment was dark and kind of shitty. Everything looked shitty after Potts’ Tower. “So where do we start?”
The tone of her voice denoted guilt, and her heartbeat told Matt she wasn’t being insincere, but that didn’t make Matt feel less irritable. He closed the door and locked it behind them, then followed Jessica into his apartment, walking past her to get to the kitchen. “Have a seat. Do you want a beer?” he muttered, but he automatically assumed the answer - he went into the fridge to pull out two more bottles.
There wasn’t much in his apartment to look at, anyway. No pictures hanging on the walls, no knickknacks cluttering the place - what use were those to a blind man? The only light came from the enormous, electronic billboard positioned directly opposite the large plate glass windows of his living room area. The light intermittently changed colors every time the advertisement switched, giving Matt’s apartment the same feel as a seedy bar or strip club. Again, it didn’t matter to him, it made his rent cheap. .
He went over to Jessica and handed her a bottle without even facing her, then returned to where he was sitting before. “Who the hell knows about me?”
“Yeah, I’ll--” Then he grabbed the bottles. Jessica was suddenly very nervous and wished someone else broke the news to him. Oh god, this was such a bad idea. She couldn’t take Daredevil in a fight! She would have to squish his head.
“The group of superheroes you can’t Google here. The ones that have duplicates.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. “There’s some connection between this universe and ours. It’s like ours, some of our heroes are here, but it’s not like with Batman where you can Wikipedia him.”
She sniffled. The umbrella didn’t help keeping the rain off her face. “But no one is going to say anything. I know they won’t.”
Matt twisted off the cap of his beer, frowning. “I’m aware of the duplicate set of superheroes in New York City. Two Tony Starks, two Bruce Banners… for a while there were even multiple Steve Rogers. It never occurred to me there might be two Matt Murdocks.” He resented his own shortsightedness in this area. “How can you be so sure they won’t tell?” he asked, before taking a swig from the bottle.
Jessica forgot she even had a beer. She quickly uncapped it and took a long drink. “We don’t out each other. This place is obviously special. We filter other people out on the network. I even get filtered out sometimes, I’m technically not a superhero.” A drink. “Well, I was, for a minute. Anyway-- I can promise you I won’t say anything, and the the rest of the people that know won’t either.”
“If you’re not a superhero, what are you then? Retried?” he asked, being a bit sarcastic with that particular word. “A private investigator, like this universe’s version of you?” He was being difficult, he knew, but Matt felt justified in this situation. “I’ll have to take your word on this. There’s only two other people that are close to me who know I’m Daredevil, and that’s enough.” While they were speaking, Matt hadn’t realized that his free hand had clenched itself into a tight fist, which rested upon the arm of his chair. “What about this whole bodyguard thing?” He turned his face in Jessica’s direction. “What the fuck did I… I mean… the other Matt Murdock do to those women?” The question was blurted out to get the damn thing over with, because he was dreading to hear the answer.
“Oh-- oh shit, no, he didn’t do anything to women. Jesus. No.” She put her hands up in defense, slightly spilling her beer. She felt horrible, and he probably could smell it on her. “Criminals were after Matt… and he was still trying not to let people know he was Daredevil. So me and Luke Cage, we’d stand outside Nelson & Murdock and look like we’d punch anyone who tried anything at all.”
Matt tilted his head slightly at this revelation, and he found himself somewhat relieved. “Oh. The way you wrote, I assumed those two things, the other Matt being a bad boyfriend and you being my bodyguard, were related.” The tension he’d been holding in his shoulders was released, as was his fist. “But that makes sense, hiring bodyguards to keep my cover.” He even managed to smile a little, picturing the scene, filling in the blanks with how he imagined Jessica and Luke would look like. “That’s something I would do. I don’t know anybody named Luke Cage, though. Is he at the Tower, too?” He paused at the scent of the sloshed beer, and told her, “There’s paper towels in the kitchen, if you need some.”
He then asked, serious again, “But you did say you were serious about me being a bad boyfriend? Or is that another misunderstanding.” Matt hoped it was, or perhaps a joke he hadn’t caught.
Jessica was just covering the spill with her boot when he said that. She got up and walked the few feet to the kitchen to clean up her mess. “You get around, Matt-o. Good boyfriends don’t. Vigilantes don’t. --Also, no, Luke Cage isn’t in the Tower. I heard he owns a bar here.”
“You just gotta be careful, okay? If you get put in jail, they’ll put you in general pop. Can you imagine that? Even if you do flips and shit like a ninja, you can’t fight 45 dudes at once.”
What Jessica said about vigilantes made sense; Matt knew from his own personal experience with Claire that the boyfriend thing wasn't going to be easy while also being Daredevil. “Fair enough,” he conceded, then suddenly thought of something and asked, “You and Matt… you weren’t…?” Matt left his sentence dangling for Jessica to fill in the rest… were you two boyfriend and girlfriend?
“I’m a lawyer,” Matt reminded Jessica. “I’m well aware of the trouble I can get into if the police arrest me. A few times, I nearly was. I’d hope that Foggy work his ass off on the outside for my case and reduce my sentence.” .
“Oh god no. No. I mean you-- he has a nice ass but we were just friends. I just follow the super hero community closely. There’s probably girls I haven’t even heard about.”
She took another drink and finally relaxed, her heart and breath slowing. She leaned back against the chair. “I know you’re a lawyer. Like I said, I stood outside Nelson & Murdock.”
“I know you knew, I’m just saying.” Now that his fears were somewhat placated, Matt was relaxing and being more comfortable around Jessica. It wasn’t the first time somebody suggested he had a nice ass, and he accepted the compliment with a knowing smirk. “You say you follow the superhero community… do you know a woman who goes by the name of ‘Echo’?”
Jessica took a second to answer. Scratching her nose and licking her molars. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Yeah. Why?” She didn’t like the idea of the home team looking for the refugees and not the other way around.
“Because I ran into her not long ago, while on patrol in Hell’s Kitchen. She saved my life.”
“Then be thankful.” Jessica stood up and downed the rest of her beer, slamming down onto the table. Not with enough strength to break it, but enough to be punctuation for her statement.
Jessica’s sudden display of anger was disturbing. “What’s the problem with knowing her identity? You’re alright with knowing mine. A little hypocritical, isn’t it?”
“No. I’m not comfortable knowing yours. Why do you want to know her? To thank her? Just say it next time you two cross. You know it’ll happen.”
“Something tells me there’s more to this than what you’re letting on, but I’ll drop the subject for the sake of keeping the peace.”