Work Text:
With Fisk behind bars once again and the image of a murderous Daredevil still fresh in everyone’s mind, Hell’s Kitchen becomes a calmer place. Quieter, though never completely quiet, not for Matt Murdock. He still goes out almost every night, but there’s not much for him to do. A few robbers who try their luck but are quickly stopped, sometimes people who can’t handle their liquor. He tries to establish himself as a good guy in everyone else’s eyes as much as he can to fight the damage done by Dex. It helps that he is still wearing the black clothes and masks rather than the iconic red and black suit.
Still, after all the chaos and never-ending danger of the last weeks, it feels... unsettling, with so little to do. Matt feels restless, and it shows not just in how eager he is to fight any petty criminal he comes across but also in his day-to-day life. Karen and Foggy both notice, but they don’t know how to help him. After everything the three have gone through, together and apart, they are hesitant to do anything that could break the still shaky bonds they are trying to rebuild. So when Matt’s repeated foot-tapping annoys Karen and keeps her from concentrating, she stays silent. When he declines yet another offer to get drinks together after work because tonight might be the night that the silence before yet another storm ends and he’s unaware or unable to go out because he’s too drunk, Foggy tries to stay patient.
They try to help in a more underhand way, but with limited success. The highlight is when Foggy actually offers to go running with Matt, to act as his guide and give him the opportunity to work out during the day without revealing his enhanced senses. They give up about fifteen minutes in, when it becomes apparent that Foggy’s reached his limit and Matt hasn’t even started feeling feeling winded by the exercise. At least it gives them something to laugh about at the office.
It’s Claire who finally comes up with a solution. She calls Matt, sometimes, when she’s back in town. First it was so she could yell at him for making her find out through the papers that Matt was still alive rather than hearing it from Matt himself. Now, they meet up for coffee and to catch up. It’s during one of those conversations that Matt mentions the lack of activity for his night-time persona.
“I just feel like there’s nothing for me to do,” he says. “I want to help, I need to help, but I don’t know how. I feel like I’m missing something. It’s too quiet. It’s not right.”
Claire laughs. “Only you could be complaining that there’s not enough crime in Hell’s Kitchen. Do you know how many assault cases we get every day in a city like New York? I talked to one of my friends at Metro Gen about this earlier today, actually. Four of them, last night. Just one night, one hospital. And you say there’s nothing to do.”
“I didn’t hear any screams last night. I was out there for hours, I didn’t hear anyone.”
“Yeah, because they didn’t scream.” There’s something new in Claire’s voice now, something cold and deadly serious.
Matt stays silent.
“You want to help people, really help them?” Claire continues. “Teach them how to protect themselves. You won’t always be there. Maybe you’re too far away or too slow, maybe they’re too quiet for you to notice anything’s wrong. But all it takes is one moment to change that person’s life. Life as a woman is terrifying when you feel like you can’t protect yourself.”
Her heartbeat has picked up as she’s talking, and the wooden bench creaks slightly as she presses her hands against it. Probably not enough to be noticeable to a sighted person, but Matt knows something is going on. He also knows that it’s not his place to pry.
“So what is it that you’re suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting you use the skills you have, all the fighting experience you have, and you teach it so that others can benefit in different ways than just you coming to save them like the knight in shining armour.”
“No.” There’s no way. It would be too risky to his secret identity, too –
“You haven’t even considered it.”
“It’s too dangerous. If I do it as Daredevil, that means I’m putting every single person in the room in danger. Everyone who associates with me becomes a target, Claire. And if I do it as Matt Murdock, I would be giving up a secret identity, which would not only get me arrested but Foggy and Karen, and you, if they find out that you knew as well, and –”
“I’m not suggesting you do it as Matt Murdock. But I do think that if you offered to teach self-defence classes in the mask, people would come.”
“It’s too –”
“Yes, it’s dangerous to meet with you in the mask. I’m not denying that. But you know what? So is going out at night, or during the day. So is being alone with someone who wants to hurt you or being surrounded by people who can’t be arsed to help when they see someone in danger. So is living in a big city or in a small town. I could tell you all kinds of horror stories just from what my friends and sometimes patients have told me, and all of that is just life for us. You have all this knowledge about how to kick and punch and deflect, and you have the kind of real-life experience that very few instructors have.”
Matt shakes his head. “No one would come. After everything with Dex, people still run from Daredevil.”
“People trust you, Matt. Have you ever even talked to anyone you saved after they had time to process what happened?”
Matt shakes his head again. “Only Karen. I don’t know who the others were.”
“I have. They’re not stupid, they can tell the difference between real-you and fake-you. If I find a few people who want to learn self-defence from you, would you teach them?”
“I’ll... think about it.”
To Matt’s surprise, people do come. Two women come to the first meeting, and they’re nervous at first. Matt tries to be cautious, tries not to be intimidating in how he stands and only approach them slowly. By the end of it, they seem to gain confidence, and they ask to meet again as soon as Matt can fit it in his schedule.
The next time, they are ready to get close to Matt and they give him permission to touch them unexpectantly in order to test their reflexes. It’s a process of learning to trust him for the women, but it’s also a process of learning for Matt. His teaching style is completely different to how he himself was taught, and he frequently doubts that he makes the correct choices. Maybe they would improve quicker if he was more like Stick and focused more on discipline and getting back up no matter what.
As he gets to know them, though, he sees that it would be the wrong way to go for these women. They need to build trust first before they can really unfold their potential in the training. And the willingness to keep going is there, just like it was with Matt. It’s for different reasons, but it’s there nonetheless. Over time, they improve. They learn to move as soon as they are being grabbed rather than freezing and overthinking the situation. The important thing isn’t how you react but that you react.
When they ask some very specific questions about how to get out of certain situations, Matt doesn’t ask them why they ask. He can guess from how they suddenly get quieter again, less confident in how they talk and stand and move. So he answers those questions as neutrally as he can, using his well-trained ability to hide his emotions from working as a lawyer to hide his anger at the trauma that must have occurred to get these women to come here in the first place. Instead, he asks them whether they would like to re-enact those situations to show them that they now have the abilities to get out of them on their own.
Pride is not something that shows up on his radar through any of his senses, but he can feel it when they escape these situations. And he does not use his full strength because he knows they need these little successes, but even he would be having difficulty holding onto these two with how determined they are to slip out of his grasp.
At some point, they ask whether they can invite friends of theirs that they think could benefit from this sort of training. Because self-defence classes are offered all over New York City, but none of the instructors can offer the kind of experience that Matt has. Of course he says yes, and more and more women start coming to the meetings, and he’s still the main instructor but he can also hear them give advice to each other while he’s busy with someone else.
He teaches them more efficient methods, teaches them not just to escape but to fight back. They learn the most painful places to kick and punch. It goes on for weeks and he doesn’t know their names and they don’t know his, but they’ve still become close in a way.
They are building a little community together, and Matt can’t believe that he ever refused this idea in the first place. He can feel good after winning a case, and there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing he stopped a criminal, but this... this has become the most important part of his week.
Because ultimately, he wants to help people, and here he can watch people he’s growing to care about grow stronger and more capable and more confident. There is always some uncertainty in a newcomer the first time they come to a meeting, but seeing everyone else trust Matt seems to help. And Matt starts to become more relaxed around them too. He starts discussing the legal aspect of self-defence and adds little titbits about his life, like his connection to boxing.
He's so relaxed and comfortable in his position as their instructor that it comes as a shock when someone holds a picture to his face asking him to teach them how to get out of the position that must be shown or described there. He hesitates, not sure how to deal with a situation that he hadn’t been worrying about when really, he should have expected this.
He rarely talks to people as Daredevil, so he doesn’t have much experienced reacting to these situations without admitting he is blind. But one of them women standing behind him whispers, “It’s a picture of a guy being flung over someone’s shoulder”, and Matt freezes. There is no explanation for that other than her knowing that he is blind.
He doesn’t know how she found out, what gave him away. He’s been more relaxed, yes, but not enough to... When did he... But the others carry on as if nothing happened. They all get in their usual circle, the person who whispered touching him on the shoulder as she walks past. He racks his brain for what he knows about her. She was one of the first to join and certainly one of the quieter ones. She’s a hard fighter, but then so are the rest of them. There’s nothing really that sets her apart, nothing in her behaviour so far that would suggest that she was trying to learn his identity.
Matt realises he still hasn’t replied, so he nods, and they start the lesson. He’s distracted and tuned into every data point he can get from the woman, hoping to learn just how she found him out. But he gets nothing, just the usual heavy breathing and working together with the others to make sure they all end the lesson satisfied with having learned another skill.
At the end of the lesson, they’re all exhausted and sore. Most of his students leave while Matt always stays behind to put everything back in its place and get some more boxing in. This time, the woman stays behind as well, and she tells him, “I know you didn’t want us to know about the blind thing, and I just wanted to let you know that you don’t need to worry. A few of us figured it out, but we won’t tell anyone. It might be a liability if others knew how you do what you do, and we wouldn’t do anything that could put you in danger. You can trust us.”
He thinks for a while, then surprises himself by saying, “I do,” but it’s true. They found out he was blind, not by researching his identity from what information he had given him but just as a natural deduction after spending so much time with him and learning his mannerisms, some of which are undoubtedly informed by living without sight for decades now.
“I’m Matt,” he says.
“I’m Julia,” she replies, and he can hear the smile in her voice.
After that, they start using their real names at meetings.
The first time Karen shows up to a meeting, Matt does not know how to react. He hasn’t told Foggy and Karen about this self-defence club he’s doing because he thinks they won’t approve of it. It’s a risk to make himself so vulnerable to being caught by the police or various people looking to get him or simply identified by one of the people he teaches. Matt knows that if his identity is ever revealed, it won’t just be him who’ll have to deal with the consequences but anyone who knew and didn’t stop him from being Daredevil.
Karen does not show whether she approves or not, however. She simply joins the others and gives no indication that she knows Daredevil’s real identity. Therefore, Matt acts like nothing is going on as well and starts the lesson.
Karen does well. She’s determined to learn and stubborn when she doesn’t get a move correct right away. She also gets frustrated easily, like Matt remembers he did when he learned these same moves under Stick. Matt tries to encourage her, to praise her when she does well, like he does with all his other students. He doesn’t want to be like Stick.
At the end of their first lesson, Karen stays behind, and Matt feels himself get tense in anticipation of that conversation they’re about to have. but it’s not the lecture on not being careful enough that he expected.
“Thank you for this,” she says. “I heard from a friend that you’re doing these lessons for women who really needed them. I’ve tried self-defence classes before but none of them were as good as this one. Even if we didn’t know who you are, it’s clear you know what you’re talking about. And these women trust you.”
“I... yeah, they do. I don’t really know why, but I appreciate it and I try to be respectful.”
Karen’s hair swishes over her shoulders as she lightly shakes her head. “Matt, you go out and risk your personal safety every night to protect people like us from being hurt. They trust you because you actually use your abilities and strength to help others rather than looking the other way.” Matt quirks his mouth at the unintentional blind joke, and he gets a small snort in return. Then she gets serious again. “Thank you Matt. Really. And I hope you don’t mind if I continue coming to these lessons.”
“No, of course not. That’s what they’re here for. I’m glad you liked it. And I’m glad you’re here.”
She hugs him, a rare but wonderful occurrence. He listens to her as she gets into the cab and goes home before he gets ready to go home as well.
Over the next few weeks, Karen comes religiously to every lesson. And Matt isn’t sure, but he thinks she’s getting better. She’s getting better at self-defence, he has no doubts there, but he thinks that she’s getting better mentally as well. She doesn’t smell like alcohol as often and the tight sound in her voice slowly lessens. Matt continues the lessons, and he cheers on his students as they get more confident and more capable at defending themselves. And he thinks that maybe, this is something he was meant to do all along. Being Daredevil and defending the streets of Hell’s Kitchen at night is something he needs to do, something that has become a part of him, ingrained in his identity. But maybe so is this.