Chapter Text
1988
At 10:58 pm on Halloween, Edward and Anna Nelson race into the emergency room of Mercy General Hospital, Anna clutching their not-quite-six-months-old son, Franklin, to her chest. Her face is pale and drawn. Franklin is normally a happy baby, but he’s red-faced and screaming now, rubbing at his ears. His temperature is 103 degrees.
The waiting room is crowded with the usual Halloween riffraff, and will only get more so as the night goes on. The atmosphere is not improved by the addition of two hysterical parents and a crying baby. It’s over an hour before a doctor can see them, and by then Anna is crying too.
The doctor isn’t their normal OB/GYN - Dr. Everett is in labor, they’re told. But the substitute doctor is calm and soothing as she takes Franklin’s temperature, checks his glands and his ears and his eyes.
An ear infection, she tells the relieved parents, and hands them a scrip for the pharmacy. His fever should be down in no time. He’ll be fine.
At 12:21 am on All Saints’ Day, as Franklin finally falls into a fitful sleep in the pediatric ward, Dr. Everett delivers a son to Jonathan and Margaret Murdock in the maternity ward. Matthew Michael is six pounds and four ounces, and nineteen inches long, and the picture of health.
His eyes, the doctor notes, are beautiful.
-
1990
“Hi!”
Two-year-old Franklin - now Foggy - started speaking four months earlier than average. “Hi” was his first word, and remains his favorite. He’s learned that when said with a smile and a wave of his round little hand, it tends to be greeted with cries of “Oh, you’re so adorable!” and possibly kisses.
Foggy is a shrewd operator, and he likes kisses. Foggy says “hi” a lot.
“Hi!” he says again to the little boy clutching his father’s leg.
Matthew stares at Foggy with wide eyes, then hides his face in the rough denim of his dad’s jeans. He started speaking right on schedule, just after the eighteen month mark a couple weeks ago, and his first word was “Dada.” He’s mastered “hi” since, but not the art of talking to strangers.
Jack chuckles. “Aren’t you gonna say hi back, Matty?”
Foggy seizes upon this clue. “Hi Matty!” he says, and offers a sandy plastic dinosaur, the head of which has clearly been chewed on at length. “Hi!”
Matty peeks at the dinosaur, then hides his face again. He’d been tearing around the Central Park Tarr-Coyne Tots Playground earlier - he might have started talking on schedule, but he was walking early, and running almost immediately after - but now he doesn’t seem to want to take a single step. “No,” he says, using another key piece of his small vocabulary. “Dada.”
Foggy’s smile dims. “No, you say hi now,” he says. Matty is younger and must not understand the rules. Foggy demonstrates with another jaunty wave. “Hi!”
“DADA.”
At the shriek, Anna hurries over from the bench where she was reading while keeping one eye on the toddler summit. “That’s enough, Foggy. He doesn’t have to play with you if he doesn’t want to.”
“But I say hi.”
“I know you did, honey. Sometimes people just don’t want to play.”
Jack has picked up a visibly stressed Matty. “He’s just a little shy,” he explains, looking incongruously sheepish about it himself. “You said hi real good,” he assures Foggy.
“DADA.”
“Okay, okay, you wanna go home?” Jack asks, and Matty pushes his face into Jack’s burly shoulder - a clear yes.
“I’m so sorry,” Anna says as Jack slings the diaper back over his free shoulder. Foggy watches the proceedings with dismay. “We’re working on boundaries.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it, it’s naptime,” Jack assures her. “Nothing your boy did. He’s real cute.” He taps the top of his son’s head with his chin. “Say bye-bye, Matty.”
“Dada,” Matty says, muffled, and pushes his face closer, getting snot on Jack’s neck.
Jack sighs. “All right. Have a nice afternoon,” he tells Anna, and heads for the playground exit, passing under a shady arch of American elms.
“Bye-bye,” Foggy calls without much hope.
Matty’s head lifts, and he contemplates Foggy’s receding figure for a minute before giving a small wave. “Bye-bye.”
Foggy lights up. “Bye-bye!” he shouts, waving frantically. “Bye-bye!”
Anna rolls her eyes affectionately. “Tell me you won’t always fall in love so easily, kiddo.”
Foggy gives her a breezy smile. “I real cute.”
She chuckles. “You sure are. Come on, you want to go on the swings?”
“Yes swing pease!” Foggy wobbles to the swings as fast as his little legs can carry him.
They swing until Foggy is hiccuping with giggles, and then he and his dinosaur return to the sandbox. By the time they leave the park, he’s befriended two little girls, another boy, and four dogs. But he still asks about Matty the next three times they go to the playground, before forgetting his existence entirely.
-
1995
“Brett! Pass the ball! Pass the ball, Brett, I’m open! Brett!”
Brett sighs and passes the ball to Foggy, even though he's nowhere near the net. Foggy immediately hurls it at the basket. It falls halfway short and several yards wide, but Foggy is delighted with his contribution anyway.
Brett catches it on the rebound and Foggy immediately starts calling for him to pass it again. A few yards away from the faded paint line that marks the edge of the court, Matt Murdock looks up from his book at the noise. Four kids from one of the other second grade classes playing basketball. He doesn't know any of them.
"Pass it, Brett! Over here!"
"No, Nelson!" Brett finally says, exasperated. "You stink! I'm trading you for Darla."
"No you're not!" Darla calls.
Foggy isn’t in the least perturbed by Brett's evaluation. "I'm gonna make it this time, I swear!"
From what Matt can tell they are all pretty awful. The net was built for big kids, not second-graders, and none of them have sunk a basket. The difference is that Foggy's not competitive. Brett scowls with every missed shot, but even when Foggy fumbles or throws wide he's laughing, bright red and sweating.
Matt goes back to his book.
A minute later the ball rolls over to him and bumps to a stop against his thigh. Foggy comes running after it.
"Hey, pass it?" Foggy holds his hands up.
Matt puts his book down and tosses the ball into Foggy’s outstretched hands, then picks his book back up.
“Thanks,” Foggy says. “What’re you reading?”
“It’s called The Trumpet of the Swan,” Matt says, and holds the book cover up to show Foggy. He doesn’t expect Foggy to recognize it. Matt’s reading harder chapter books than anyone in his class.
“That’s a good book. I read it over February break,” Foggy says. He scrubs a hand over his forehead, where blond hair is stuck in sweaty clumps. “You wanna play?”
“Hey, Nelson!” Brett calls. “Come on, move it!”
Matt glances at the court. They’d have uneven teams if he played, but it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference considering no one has scored.
Still, he doesn’t really like sports, and he already plays them in gym anyway. He likes the monkey bars best, but they’re always swarming with kids during recess - all the teachers are always talking about how overcrowded the school is, and Matt doesn’t totally understand it but it does mean he can’t practice swinging upside down without risking getting kicked in the face. He’s happy with his book.
“No thanks,” he says, and opens back up to his bookmark.
Foggy shrugs. “Kay,” he says, and runs off.
Ten minutes later the bell rings. Matt closes his book and walks back inside while Brett and Foggy argue over who has to return the ball. Recess is over.
-
1997
The bell above the door of Nelson’s Hardware jingles.
“Hi,” Jack says. “I got this leak in my kitchen sink and I can’t seem to figure out how to get it to stop.”
Matt, trailing behind him, gazes up at the crowded shelves. The store is high and narrow, with ladders that can roll down the two cluttered aisles like the big ones at the library, and each shelf is groaning with merchandise, jumbled into some mysterious organizational system. It reminds him of the way wizards’ shops are described in books, but with hammers and duct tape instead of cauldrons and newts’ livers.
Foggy’s sitting on the back counter, back against the wall. It’s Friday, so he’s putting doing his homework off as long as possible, and his dad won’t let him play with the price tagger anymore, so he’s rereading a comic and waiting for closing time. He peeks over the edge of the book, quietly studying the man and the boy.
“What kind of sink do you have?” Edward asks Jack, stepping out from behind the counter. He leads Jack down one of the aisles, listening to Jack explain what he’s tried to fix the leak. Matt stays towards the front, studying a display of screwdrivers that range from probably too big for his hands to so tiny they look like toys.
“You go to my school, don’t you?”
Matt jumps at the unexpected voice and turns around. The blond boy behind the counter looks familiar. “P.S. 111?” Foggy nods. “Yeah. How come you get to sit back there?” He points vaguely in the direction Edward and Jack have gone.
“‘Cause this is our store,” Foggy says with a certain proprietary pride. “My dad’s, I mean, but I help out. I can fix, like, anything.”
“Oh,” Matt says, and then, too-casually, “My dad’s a boxer.”
“Is not.” Foggy is pretty sure boxers are only a thing on TV.
“Is so!”
Foggy is not opposed to a good fight, but only when there’s a point to it. “Okay,” he says, and Matt blinks at the sudden concession. “Mets or Yankees?”
“Mets,” Matt says immediately, and Foggy beams.
“Me too! My dad and I are going to see them next week.” Foggy scowls. “Except we have to take my dumb old baby sister and she’s too little to even understand the rules.”
“My dad and I saw them play the Phillies last month,” Matt says. “They lost, but there was this great double play in the seventh…”
“Talking about that baseball game again, Matty?” Jack asks as he and Edward return. He reaches down and ruffles Matt’s hair with the hand that’s not pulling out his wallet. “What do I owe ya, Nelson?”
Edward gives Jack a few last sink-fixing tips as he rings him up. “And don’t forget to grease the washers before you put them back,” Foggy pipes up, and shoots Matt a triumphant glance out of the corner of his eye.
Jack chuckles. “I won’t. Thanks, kid. Come on, Matty.”
“See you on Monday,” Matt says to Foggy, and follows his dad out of the store.
-
Sunday morning, Anna is reading the paper over breakfast when she suddenly gasps. “Oh my God, that’s awful.”
“Mmm?” Edward asks, lips to his coffee cup.
“There was an accident yesterday, a truck carrying radioactive materials. It hit...that is…”
She glances at Foggy, and that’s enough to make him put his spoon back down in his Lucky Charms. “What?” he asks.
“Well...a boy your age was hurt,” she says reluctantly. “It says here that he pushed someone out of the way and he...he was blinded.”
“No way.” Foggy stands up and circles the table to read the article over her shoulder. But he doesn’t process the words; he’s distracted by the smaller photo on the page, a class picture directly under the large shot of the accident scene.
“What?” Anna asks. “What is it?”
Edward puts down his coffee. Even four-year-old Candace is quiet, sensing the tension in the room.
Foggy shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, and puts a finger on the caption under the photo, smudging the newsprint. “It’s just...he goes to my school.”
-
2002
Matt stands on the edge of the roof and lets the sounds of New York City at night wash over him. Cars honking, music blaring, babies crying. Cats fighting in alleys; humans fighting in homes. The things that the nuns won't talk about: drug dealers and mob shakedowns and prostitutes.
He's not supposed to sneak out after lights out, but sometimes he can't stand it, lying on sandpaper sheets, the sound of twenty other boys breathing added to the clamor. It's not any quieter out here, but at least with the air on his face he can breathe.
He's a few blocks from the orphanage. Judging by the number of fire escapes he climbed up, this roof is nine stories high, and he's right at the edge. If he fell, he wouldn't survive.
He stands on one foot and pushes himself up on his toes. Leans over to see how far he can go before he loses his precarious balance and plummets to the asphalt below.
Could he catch himself, somehow, he wonders? Would he feel free in that moment before gravity took him?
Would it finally be quiet?
The scream startles him and he wobbles before planting his right foot safely beside his left. The building next door, he thinks, and he's running before he has any idea what he's running to do.
She's still screaming. She sounds young. Matt hurtles across the gap between roofs, finds the fire escape, is making his way down when...
"Candace!"
Matt stops on the fire escape outside the window the screams were coming from. There's someone else in the room.
"Candace, wake up, it's me. Come on, Candy Cane, wake up. It's just a bad dream."
The screaming stops; there's a startled hiccup and then a sob. "I..."
"Shhh, it's okay, you were dreaming." He sounds about Matt’s age; there’s a creaky quality to his voice, as if it hasn’t quite decided to settle in its new lower register. Matt’s jealous. His voice cracks every third word. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
Candace’s breath hitches, and hitches again, like she’s trying to get control of it. The room smells like lemon Pledge and scented Crayola markers and Oreos. “Are Mom and Dad home yet?”
“No, they’re still at the hospital.”
There’s a long silence, broken only by Candace’s ragged breathing, and a soft, rhythmic shuff that Matt guesses is the brother stroking her hair. “Is Grandma gonna die?” she asks finally.
“I don’t know,” the brother says. “I hope not. Mom says her doctors are really good.”
“But she could,” Candace says.
“...Yeah,” the brother admits. “Yeah, she could.”
Candace is crying again. “What if Mom or Dad gets sick? What if they both do?”
“Hey. Hey, that’s not gonna happen. They’re a lot younger than Grandma, remember?”
“But Gwen in my class, her mom died last year and…”
“It’s not gonna happen, Candace!”
“But what if it does?”
The brother is silent again. Matt realizes belatedly that he should probably leave; there’s no one in trouble here, and what was he planning on doing if there was, anyway? Bursting through the window and beating someone up? That would be insane.
No, there’s no one here who needs him.
But he stays.
“Well, you’ll still have me,” the brother says finally.
“You’re not eighteen,” Candace points out witheringly. “They won’t let you keep me.”
“I’ll be eighteen in a few years,” the brother says. “If anything happens to Mom and Dad, which it won’t, I won’t let them split us up. And if they do, I’ll come get you the minute I turn eighteen, and we’ll go to Akron and live with Uncle Roger.”
“Ugh, Akron,” Candace says, and the brother laughs. It’s a nice laugh. Then: “...Promise?” she asks in a small voice.
“Promise,” he says, and though Matt can hear his heart if he tries, he doesn’t have to to know it’s true. “You’re stuck with me, Candy Cane.”
“I told you not to call me that!” she squeals, but her tone is lighter, and he’s laughing again. Matt uses the sound to cover his retreat from their fire escape and back up to the roof.
He makes his way back over the rooftops, heading for home. The city’s still its noisy self, but somehow the din is more manageable now; not uncontrolled chaos, just fragments of lives in bedrooms that smell like scented markers. He feels less like scratching his way out of his skin. He feels less of that longing for freefall.
A distant clock chimes the hour as Matt soars across the space between buildings, and he’s glad he’s on his way home. It’s past time he was in bed.
-
2006
Matt can hear his new roommate through the door. He’s talking to himself; tinny speakers are playing something Matt half-knows from the radio. He smells, faintly, of lemon Pledge and WD-40 and American elm.
Something pings in the back of his mind, a distant sense of familiarity. He can’t place it; he doesn’t even know if it’s the song or the voice or the smell. Maybe he passed the guy during Prospective Students’ Weekend or while arguing with the financial aid office.
It’s annoying, not being able to place it, but he lets it pass. It’s not important. Anyway, it’s probably for the best that his new roommate, whoever he is, already feels familiar. Like it or not, he’ll be home for the foreseeable future.
Matt knocks.
“Excuse me, is this room 312?” he asks.
And he steps inside.