Archive of Our Own ^beta

It is a conversation they only had once.

It's a long time ago, before the accident. Back when nights are still defined by dark skies and flickering lights instead of cold air and creaking floorboards.

It's late, well past the time when Matt usually goes to sleep, but his dad doesn't say anything about it as he slumps down onto a chair with a low grunt of pain. Purpling bruises spot his face and trail down his arms, heavy and mottled from his last round in the ring.

Nowadays, Matt can't remember much of Johnathan "Battlin' Jack" Murdock's face, but he remembers the set of his dad's square jaw and that he had a crooked nose and crow's feet in the corners of his eyes. He remembers how Jack would sometimes breathe, especially after a hard match, long and shuddering like he was carrying too much weight on his broad shoulders.

They sit there in silence, and Matt traces the coffee stains on the dining room table while he tries to come up with the words he wants to say.

--Are you okay? Matt finally manages to ask. --You don't look so good.

Jack turns towards him, slowly, like a machine that has rust in the gears, and says, --Don't you worry about me, Matty.

--Doesn't it hurt?

Jack smiles, a crooked smile that's swollen on one side, but no less genuine for it, and says, --We've got hurt in our skins, always. We take hits and we fall, but there's no shame in that. Because we...we always get back up.

--But why do you have to fight? Matt presses.

Jack's smile fades a bit and he leans in towards Matt. --Us Murdock boys, we've got the devil in us. One day, you'll feel the brimstone in your blood and the fire in your bones. But you and me, we can't let the devil defeat us. You might not be able to stop it from coming out, but it doesn't have to be us.

Fifteen years later, Matthew Michael Murdock would kneel in front of a headstone with his dad's name etched into it and ask,

Did you know?

Matt Murdock was the devil.

He didn't mean that in a metaphorical way, where he tempted people to sin or bought people's souls. He didn't condemn people to Hell--in fact, he'd really rather that as few people went to Hell as possible.

No, Matt Murdock was the devil because he was the incarnation of Satan.

What that actually meant, of course, was a lot less than most people would assume.

Being Satan didn't come with a lot of perks. Instead of wings, he had shoulders that oftentimes felt too tight in his skin. Instead of fire and brimstone, he had a sharp tongue and a temper to check. Instead of superhuman strength and intelligence, he had bloody knuckles and coffee-fueled all-nighters.

Nobody knew about him. Matt certainly didn't tell people about it and it wasn't like he was burned by holy water or couldn't cross consecrated ground. Nobody denounced him for being--a monster, an aberration, a demon.

It was just as well, because he wasn't--had never been--anything more than human.

The trap was in thinking that made him any less.

They called him "The Man in the Mask".

An accurate, if underwhelming, name, he thought as he leaped over rooftops towards the voice three blocks away shouting, You know you want it! Hey, I'm talking to you!

Falling into rhythm came as easily as breathing. Kick, step, jump, roll, drop, grab, kick.

He could smell the attacker now as he vaulted over the railing of a nearby fire escape. Tobacco smoke and beer, the cheap kind, under sweat and asphalt. A bit of cat dander and worn-out cotton soaked in hormones--aroused. A stainless-steel knife last used to cut garlic and chicken.

And then, as Matt grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him off of his victim, a wash of fear-induced adrenaline.

Without wasting a step, Matt turned and smashed the man's wrist against the alley wall, audibly (to Matt, anyways) cracking one of his carpal bones against the brickwork. The knife clattered to the ground.

The man screamed, more in rage than in pain. His breath smelled like alcohol. With a roar, the man launched himself at Matt, swinging wildly.

Matt ducked down and stepped into the man's space. Reached for the sound of moving fabric and grabbed, twisted.

He heaved and threw, rolling the man's considerable mass over his back and straight into the ground in an undignified heap. Then, for good measure, he stomped on the man's hand, snapping four bones under his boot with a satisfying crack.

The man screamed.

"So," Matt said as the man's screams subsided into pained gasps, "interesting nighttime hobbies you've got."

"Fuck you," the man spat, though Matt could hear from his breathing and pounding heartbeat that he wasn't nearly as confident as he sounded.

Matt squat down next to the man and touched the back of the man's broken hand; he could practically hear the man's heart jump into his throat.

"It should go without saying, but I don't approve of raping and assaulting innocents," Matt said, letting his voice drop into the lower register. "So this is how it's going to go: You're going to go to the police. You will ask for Brett Mahoney, and you will confess what I interrupted here tonight. If you don't"--he traced out a light X on the back of the man's hand, pressing down on the man's broken carpal--"I'll see you tomorrow and you'll have a lot more to worry about than a broken hand. Understand?"

"P-Piss off, you masked freak," the man stammered.

Matt responded with a swift kick to the diaphragm. The man doubled over, his breath coming in shallow bursts. He was whimpering now.

"I asked, do you understand?"

"Yes--Yes!" Heavy breaths. "Yes, please don't--don't--"

Matt got to his feet. "In that case, I'll be on my way. Don't forget."

As he climbed up to the roof headed for the next incident, a drug dealer down around 10th and 47th, he could hear the man praying and begging to God.

He bit back a retort. At this point, God's forgiveness was the last of these criminals' troubles.

Three weeks later, when the media started calling him "The Devil of Hell's Kitchen", he and Foggy had a few chuckles over the people's penchant for melodrama.

"I mean, it's not like he's particularly devilish," Foggy said through a mouthful of bagel. "Not any more so than anyone else who goes out and punches people."

Matt smirked, diligently ignoring the bruise forming under his ribcage. "Well, who knows? Maybe they're more right than they think."

Matt's memory is filled with darkness and cold.

Frost rimes his bare skin and his mouth tastes bitter with blood and betrayal. His wings, all six of them, lay listless against the ice.

It has been thousands of years since he was frozen in the Lake, and he is tired.

--Lucifer.

Matt blinks, but doesn't respond. For all that his Father's Grace still flows through his veins, even after the Fall, he doesn't have the will to move.

--Lucifer.

His Father's voice is warm, painfully so after so many years in the ice. Matt clings to the sound, even as he hates himself for it.

There's a hum in the air, one that feels like expectation. Matt blinks again and shifts.

--I haven't been Lucifer for a very long time, he murmurs, the words filling his mouth and coating his tongue like ash. --You stripped my light.

There's no accusation in the words. Just a statement of fact.

Silence stretches and Matt sighs. --What do you want? Are you here to taunt me?

--Have you repented for your mistakes? his Father asks kindly. --Are you ready to seek forgiveness?

The question startles a laugh out of Matt. It's hoarse and it chokes his unused voice, but it's enough to make him look towards the presence of his Father and incredulously ask, --Repent? After all this time... He takes a breath. --No, I have not repented and I don't want forgiveness.

There's a sigh that almost sounds like disappointment. --What have these last thousands of years been, Lucifer?

--Punishment, Matt spits. --You knew that when you cast me down.

--I wished that you would atone for the suffering caused by your mis-

--The rebellion was not a mistake, Father. Matt clenches his fists, his claws gouging long trails into the frozen lake's surface. --I have not atoned because there is nothing to atone for. When my brethren and I took our swords up against you, it was not because we wished to cause pain and chaos, but because you were unjust.

--You created a world and gave us the power to serve and the senses to experience it in all its beautiful glory, that much I will not deny. But then you bestowed upon us free will so we could see the world and serve it as we chose.

--When you gifted us with individuality, did you not wish for us to take action? To take the power we were given and make our land more prosperous? To serve Man as he was built in your image?

--We were simply fulfilling our duty when we rose against you--to serve the world you created. The Garden of Eden was beautiful, but we knew that it could be so much more. Our vision of Paradise was not yours, Father, but for that sin alone, you burned our wings and cast them into the flames and me into the Lake. Is that truly just, to punish us for fighting for what was right? For using our gracious gifts for their intended purpose?

With that, Matt falls silent but for his heavy breath, and waits for his Father's response.

As always, there is none.

He lets out a shuddering breath that rattles in his voice from disuse, and says, --These years have been torturous, as you intended; I did not believe you capable of such cruelty. And it is true, I miss Heaven. But I will not abandon my belief to return, and I will not bear false witness to satisfy you, not even for the love that I still feel for you.

--I will not repent when I have done nothing wrong. If you wish for me to apologize or ask forgiveness for my actions, you will not receive it, and for that I am sorry. But if you, in your great power, still cannot bend to see through my eyes, we will remain at an impasse.

--Fly! my Father. Leave me to suffer another thousand years. Perhaps then, I will be broken and ready to return to your stables.

Matt lowers his head, eyes closed. His throat is raw from speaking more than he has since he was frozen and tears burn in his eyes. His Father has abandoned him yet again, and there is nothing to be done for it.

--Lucifer.

Matt glances up, but in the darkness of the Lake, there is nothing to be seen.

--You have suffered, Lucifer, and I apologize for your pains, but you have broken my laws, my trust, and sowed discord among your siblings and my creations both. You must endure the consequences.

Matt sighs. --And is this not suffering enough? My time may be endless, but it does not pass more quickly for it.

--You cannot enter Heaven until you accept my Word and my Judgement, Lucifer. You know this, his Father says. There is a considering sound. --However...you have suffered a great deal. Maybe it is time for you to see light once more.

It's more than Matt has ever hoped for since the Fall, but he still doesn't move. More likely than not, his Father will snatch it away, another opportunity to destroy him for the nature he cannot help.

--Perhaps you should walk the world in human skin, as I once did in Nazareth. Experience humans as a human, without your angelic power to distract you.

--Do you conspire to shake my faith? Matt asks wearily. --A lifetime in human form will not, I assure you.

--It may not, his Father admits, --but you are a being of change, so perhaps this is what you require. Do you accept my offer?

Matt closes his eyes. The isolation of the Lake has worn his spirit raw as much as the cold has frozen his bones. It has been so long, so long, since he has seen anything more than darkness or heard anything more than air about his wings. His heart smolders in his passion and his belief, as it always has, but it is not enough to break through the torment his Father has inflicted upon him. He pulls his aching wings in towards his body, and they creak as frost breaks off them in sheets. He is tired, and it is an age before he responds.

--Do as you will.

Thinking back, Matt wasn't sure when he realized what he was.

It wasn't a sudden revelation, a clear moment when he was hit with an epiphany and realized that he was the Prince of Darkness. All things considered, that was probably a good thing; nobody sane would be able to take something that big in stride, or at least that's what Matt figured.

It's not like Fallen-angels-turned-human were common.

Growing up Catholic, Matt regularly went to church and Sunday school. He listened to the sermons and read the scripture with fervor, because though the words always seemed wrong and the notes were never quite in tune, he could feel that there was truth in its basest form at the root.

Perhaps the first inkling he had was during Sunday school when they spoke of Lucifer's Fall, and he, with a mouth that tasted like ash, asked,

"Was God right?"

Because as he saw it, the only reason Lucifer was cast from Heaven was because he went against God, and God was powerful.

Power did not necessarily make right.

Matt believed with all his heart that God existed, and that He was good and just, but many things, he'd found, were a matter of opinion. God, for all his power, was still only one being, and His justice was not the same as Lucifer's--that much, he was sure of.

The nuns rapped him over the knuckles for his question, but they never answered why anyone, Man or angel, was to accept God's Will as law, why the Word was some absolute justice.

Matt kept his thoughts to himself from then on and decided he would find his own answers.

"Hey, uh, Matt."

Matt tilted his head up from the book he was reading. That was his roommate, Franklin "call-me-Foggy" Nelson. They hadn't talked all that much since the beginning of the year, and Matt was still resentful about how loudly he snored. "Yes?" he asked.

Foggy's heartbeat blipped a bit, nervous. He raised something in the air--a flutter of papers, the kind they had at the library, laser printed. "I, um, I read your paper."

Ah. A few days ago, Foggy had mentioned offhand that he liked writing and was pretty good at it, so Matt had asked in a sort of olive branch way if Foggy could take a look at his Ethics paper due in a week. Foggy was so surprised at the request that Matt hadn't honestly expected him to follow through.

"Oh?" Matt asked when nothing else was forthcoming. "And what did you think?"

He listened as Foggy tossed his papers onto the bed and pulled off his coat. "I think you're crazy, is what I think," he said. "Crazy genius, though." There was more rustling as Foggy picked the papers back up and flipped through them. "Twelve pages about the validity of moral objectivism in context of court rulings on disabled rights. Are you sure you're a freshman?"

"I'm invested in the subject, that's all," Matt replied.

"Hey man, don't sell yourself short!" Foggy said with a short laugh. "It's a really good paper! The prof will love you. I made what comments I could, but like I said, it's a great paper."

Matt felt his cheeks heat up with the praise. He wasn't...he hadn't expected the compliment. Foggy was a pretty nice guy, and he probably said stuff like that to everyone, but it was still nice.

"Oh my god, you're even more adorable when you're blushing," Foggy said with what had to be a smile. "And I mean that in a non-weird way. Totally non-weird."

"Um," Matt said, a little desperate to change the subject. "So, any comments on the paper? Or...?"

"The paper! Yeah, yeah. Comments," Foggy said. "Your argument's well-reasoned and your evidence is strong. The bit around page four where you reject Nietzschean nihilism? That was cool, and I totally get it, and not just because you're, you know." He made a gesture to his face. "I don't 100% agree with your viewpoint, but I can totally see where you're coming from."

Matt exhaled like he'd just been hit in the gut. "So you, you understand what I'm trying to say?" Understand being the key word--Matt didn't care if people believed other things, but having enough perspective to at least see what he thought and understand it was valid, well.

It was better than his Father had ever done.

"Yeah, Matt, that's what I just said," Foggy replied with a tilt of his head that may have involved an eye-roll. "I think your point about how a bunch of disabled-accessibility features kind of suck because they're usually designed by, y'know, not disabled people? You should expand more on that." He tossed the paper onto Matt's bed and asked, "You thinking of becoming a lawyer? I think you'd be good at it."

"I am, actually," Matt said, trying to tamp down how fast his heart was beating all of a sudden. "Wanted to be one since I was a little kid."

Which wasn't a lie, not really. His dad had wanted him to become a lawyer or a doctor and Matt had wanted to please him, so he'd studied like it was going out of style. But the real push to study law, that was when his--

Well, when he got his dad killed.

"Wait, you really are studying law? Shit, man, me too!"

Matt huffed. He'd known Foggy was planning to study law since the second week of school. "Foggy, we share three classes. Did you not notice that?"

Matt could practically hear the gears whirring in Foggy's head before he said, "Oh crap, you're right. Wow, I can't believe I forgot that."

Tension eased out of Matt's shoulders. He'd known that Foggy was friendly, but he'd never thought of it in regards to himself. Which was silly, because Foggy went out of his way to accommodate his blind roommate without being condescending about it, so obviously he cared.

It's just that...friend. An equal, an ally, a sometimes opponent.

That was a completely novel experience for Matt; he'd had people who followed him, criticized him, bullied him, pitied him, admired him, judged him, but never understood him, or, rather, tried to. He'd thought of himself as a one-man (or angel) crusade for millennia, and with good reason, but for the first time, Matt started to realize it didn't have to be that way anymore. He wasn't sure what to think about that.

And, with nothing at all, it seemed like Foggy's floodgates were opened, like all this time he'd wanted to be friends and make conversation.

"--of Dr. Jackson's exam? It was so rigged! Cheryl from the Thursday section, I swear she was crying, and--"

Okay, Matt thought. This could work.

It's surprisingly easy to sell a soul for nothing at all.

Matt, fifteen years old, is in his room, listening as his dad talks to a man, Roscoe Sweeney, about an upcoming boxing match. They, four rooms away and unaware of Matt's newly heightened senses, have no idea that he can hear every word, every breath, every heartbeat.

He hears Sweeney's lungs, filled with some kind of fluid that gurgles whenever he breathes, and hears his heart that's alarmingly fast, even before it spikes in excitement when he pushes the contract. There's the scratch of a pen when Jack signs it and a sigh like he knows he's done something terrible and his hand shakes like he can't hold the pen straight. But his heart remains steady, determined.

Matt can smell them, cigarettes and alcohol and something he wouldn't realize until later was oil and gunpowder. There's sweat and saliva and the peculiar smell of stress (hormones, he'd learn later). Sweeney and his 'friends' wear some kind of cologne that's cheap and terrible, and Matt would have to cover his nose if his door wasn't already closed.

There are a few more ruminations, something that sounds like an ultimatum, and Sweeney sweeps out of their apartment like he was ever welcome there in the first place.

Matt waits. His dad comes to his room, knocks on the door and enters with, --Hey, Matty, it's Dad.

The introduction is unnecessary, considering Matt's senses, but Matt hasn't told his dad about those, and it's nice to listen to his dad's voice. It's familiar when so many things haven't been, since the accident.

--You got another match? Matt asks.

Jack's heartbeat spikes for a moment. Stick says that means he's worried or scared. --Yeah, Jack says, in a way that sounds like a forced smile. --It's a big one, down at Madison Garden. Your old man's going to be big.

Matt can smell Jack's sweat, smell his nervousness and his apprehension, even as he hears his father's heartbeat climb. For some reason, his father is lying, but about what, Matt can't tell.

--Are you going to win? Matt asks. He knows his dad's won a lot of his fights lately. He's heard people talk about "Battlin' Jack's" comeback and how his dad's been rising again. A winner.

Jack falters. --I, I don't know, Matty.

Lub-dub.

Lie.

--It's okay if you don't, Matt says, because he can only guess that his dad simply assumes he'll lose. Matt's never heard of the Rocky Davis guy Sweeney's put Jack up against, but he sounds pretty good. Pretty box-y.

But for some reason, that seems to make Jack even more nervous, so Matt continues, --As long as you try your best, that's all that matters, right? Get back up when you're down, that's what you said.

--Right, yeah, Jack says. He swallows, and there's a passing of skin on skin as he rubs his hands together, a nervous tic. --No, you're right, he says, and this time it sounds confident. --Always get back up. Never let them keep you down.

Jack exhales and his tongue clicks against his teeth as he starts to say something, then stops. When he starts again, he says, --Matt, you and I, let's make a deal.

There's something about that word, deal, that resonates in Matt's skin and sends chills up his arms and spine. It's heavy in a way he can't describe other than the fact that every fiber in his being is screaming pay attention.

--I'm gonna win this fight, Jack continues, and this time he isn't lying. --And you're gonna take care of yourself, no matter what. How about that?

--But what if you lose? Matt asks. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth, and it tastes like soot and smoke.

--I won't, Jack says. --So how about it? We can shake on it. I'll win the biggest fight of my career, and you'll take care of yourself and become something better than your old man. Don't give up, neither of us.

Jack sticks his hand out, and with a little hesitation, Matt shakes. There's something like a ringing in his head as his fingers touch Jack's, and for a second everything goes silent in the way it hasn't since the accident--

and then they let go, and everything is normal again.

Matt flexes his fingers. They still tingle.

Jack huffs that way he does when he smiles and says, --You're a good boy, Matty. Don't you forget.

Matt smiles back, and his mouth feels like broken glass.

One week later, Jack wins his fight and is beaten to death for it.

Matt is left to take care of himself.

They said to never make a deal with the devil.

It was true that the powers that be could create riches from dust, health from desolation, power from ashes.

It was also true that everything came with a price.

What was not true was the idea that Deals were made with the Devil, so to speak.

Common sense would grant that, since the Devil was stuck in the darkness of the frozen Lake to forever stew in his sins, he didn't have the time to come up to cure cancer or help humans win the lottery or the heart of whatever insipid heifer they'd set their eyes on. He was a little busy, thanks.

And the demons that occasionally escaped the pits of Hell to negotiate deals? Laughable. As if demons had the power to heal and bend reality simply because some human asked for it.

No, the role of the Devil or his demons was what any negotiator had: to facilitate the deal by meeting prospective clients, working through the wording, and balancing the numbers, then taking it to the one who could actually fulfill it.

That being the fabric of reality itself.

The thing was, reality wasn't a sentient thing. It was comparable to bringing requests to God, but even God didn't have the pure inhumanity necessary to fill contracts on a cosmic scale. That sort of thing was beyond His dignity, anyways, so it came to putting the work directly to the thing that could accomplish it.

And it would, without question, without mind to consequence--because what was consequence to something that simply was?

Deals were incomprehensibly powerful. They weren't simple magic thrown one way to cure someone, another way to kill someone else. They were a cosmic fulcrum around which the universe would revolve and bend around a single person, just for a few critical moments. And once a Deal was set, it could never be voided.

Heaven had its Deals, just the same as Hell. The standards were a little different, but it was a transaction all the same. Hell just had better administration.

But the truth was, a deal didn't require a demon or angel or any being to mediate. Sometimes, wishes came true on their own, and sometimes that was luck, but sometimes that was a contract that people didn't realize they had to pay up until after they had, by losing their money, their friends, their mercy, their graciousness.

It was like representation in court; it wasn't necessary to get a lawyer, but it was almost always the better idea. Even if it would cost a soul (and it didn't always), at least prospective wishers knew what they were getting themselves into. Words, as tricky as they were, were not nearly as tricky as desires.

The point was, the power behind a deal was never in the hands of demons. All they had was the power to make an appeal, and anyone who knew how could invoke that power at any time, if at a steep price.

The idea that anybody could bend the fabric of reality was even more horrific than the prospect of eternal torment in Hell, and that was why everyone felt better when they blamed the demons instead.

Sometimes, Matt heard voices.

He heard pleas and bargains and desires and while the words were all different and often spoken in different languages, they all sounded the same.

They sounded like desperation.

Matt didn't answer most of them, because there was a line between a sudden misfortune and true desolation. He, having spent thousands of years in Hell, was well aware of that, and he was human besides, and blind, which was hardly what people expected when they called upon demonic forces.

But sometimes he heard voices when he walked and he would take a step off of 32nd--

--and into a bloody circle in someone's musky cellar.

Reality bent that way, sometimes.

Matt tilted his head towards the person--Johnathon according to the first verse, male, mid-twenties, thin build, a little under six feet tall--who was chanting in Latin. Matt tapped his cane on the floor.

"I'm here," he said. "I don't need to hear the fourth and fifth verses, I've heard them enough times in the past."

Johnathon stuttered, then glanced up from his book towards Matt and paused, presumably taking a few moments to take in Matt's glasses and suit and cane--or maybe not. Matt wasn't sure what people saw when they summoned him, but based on people's reactions throughout the years, it seemed like a summoning rather warped his appearance. "You, uh, you're a demon?" he asked with no small amount of incredulity.

"I'm an agent of Hell," Matt replied. "You wish to make a deal, yes?"

Johnathon licked his lips nervously and said, "Yeah, that was the idea. I didn't know if it would, uh, work."

Matt shrugged. "Most people don't. What do you want?"

"My father, he's got cancer," Johnathon said, his heartbeat speeding up with nervousness. "Can you cure him? I'm willing to do anything."

Matt rolled his eyes. "So many years and you'd think that people would learn exactly what 'anything' means," he murmured to himself. "So what, you want to sell your soul to save your father?"

"Adoptive father," Johnathon replied. "Yeah."

Matt stood there for a minute or so, impassive in the face of this man's complete idiocy. The seconds ticked by, and Matt could smell Johnathon's panicky sweat as he started to realize he may have gotten himself into something unfortunate. He deserved to sweat it out, Matt thought.

"No."

"What?" Johnathon blurted out, sounding slightly strangled.

"I said, 'no', and let me finish," Matt replied. "I don't want your soul, and I have no desire to send you to Hell for all eternity simply because you're a complete idiot."

"You-you don't want my soul? Don't all demons want souls?"

"And that's why you're an imbecile," Matt said flatly, ignoring the demon comment. "What would I possibly do with your soul? Eat it as a snack? Use it to warm my heartless chest cavity? Hang it up as a light and use it as a conversation piece over dinner?

"No, I don't want your soul because a soul is an easy thing to give away. It's eternal and endlessly valuable, but humans are incapable of understanding a soul's power the same way demons and angels can. They give it away at the drop of a hat, sometimes for better, usually for worse. A sacrifice that's incomprehensible is the same as worthless."

Johnathon opened his mouth to say something, but Matt cut him off with a light jab in the throat with his cane.

"I don't make deals lightly. You say you want to save your adoptive father. I want to see how much you really are willing to give." He paused for a moment to listen to the sounds of the building he was in. He could hear two heartbeats above him, both female based on the scents. Considering the entire building carried the same scent as Johnathon, it was safe to assume he lived here, and that those were relatives--more likely than roommates, considering their ages.

"Wh-What do you mean?" Johnathon stuttered.

"Your father,"--Matt paused to test the fabric of space, to gauge the deal, feel out the situation and necessary price--"he's close to death. Left as is, he has less than a 10% chance of surviving longer than eight months. Bringing him back to health is not cheap." Matt tilted his head the other way and swept his cane up, leaning it against his shoulder. "So what do you value? What is equivalent to pulling a life from the brink of destruction? You have your mother, your father, your siblings--"

Johnathon's heartbeat shot through the roof.

"--perhaps a significant other," Matt finished. "Tell me about your sister, Johnathon."

"I don't have one," he said, his voice shaking.

Lub-dub.

Lie.

"Don't lie to me." It had would have been easier to pull off the 'omniscient demon' bluff if he had his celestial form. Then he'd actually have the ability to be in multiple places at once, but that didn't mean he couldn't do it as is. Matt raised his head and focused on the smells and sounds coming in through the vents.

"Your sister is two floors above us right now, reading a book on a bed in her room. She is chewing spearmint-flavored gum and humming a Black Eyed Peas song. Her hair reaches just past her upper back and is tied into pigtails. She uses hibiscus-scented shampoo." He smiled, baring his teeth. "Tell me about her."

Matt could almost hear the blood drain from Johnathon's face as his system flooded with fear hormones and his heart rate climbed even higher. He'd chosen his target well.

"You-you can't take Roxanne," Johnathon stammered. "Anything but her!"

Matt sighed. "There's that word again. 'Anything'." He snapped his cane down onto the concrete floor with a sharp crack. "Here is the deal: I don't want your sister's soul or life. I want her relationship with you.

"What that means is that your father, with continued medical assistance, will make a complete recovery within the next month. One week after your father is cleared of his cancer, a minor accident will befall your sister. She will recover completely with no lasting effects excepting the fact that she will not remember you. If you continue to have contact with Roxanne after her accident, including any form of communication, whether direct or mediated by others, additional misfortunes will ensue. Extended contact will result in her death.

"If you keep your side of the bargain, she will not be affected. She will have fortune and misfortune independent of your deal.

"I would recommend moving far away and cutting ties with your family if you wish to keep your sister safe. These are my terms."

There was the sound of Johnathon opening and closing his mouth, which had gone dry. "You can't--that's not fair," he said.

"It's your father's life versus your relationship with your adoptive sister, for whom your feelings are a bit more than platonic. You'll be allowed to love Roxanne, but you won't be able to act on it, and you and she are still allowed to love and build relationships with others. Believe me, Johnathon, soulmates don't exist, and there's no sin in having more than one love in life. Would you rather let your beloved Roxanne's father die? Or would you be willing to let her go to keep her family whole?"

Johnathon swallowed heavily, and Matt mused on how easily the man, just a few minutes ago, had almost sold his immortal soul.

Matt shrugged. "If you don't want my deal, and you really want to sell your soul, you can dismiss me and summon a different mediator. It makes no difference to me. But I'll warn you now, no demon will be as kind with you as I have been. I was in Hell for a very long time, and it is not a place you want to go."

"No, I...I'll take it," Johnathon said. "I'll take your deal. I just, I can still be with Roxanne until Crash gets better, right?"

"Yes, you can spend time with her until her accident, and whether you tell her about what you have agreed to is entirely up to you," Matt replied. "I strongly suggest you don't try to stop the accident from occurring, or she will likely lose much more than her memories."

"I, all right. I can do that. So do I have to, uh, sign a contract? Kiss you? Or something?" Johnathon asked.

Matt chuckled. "No, nothing so drastic. For me, a handshake is sufficient." He held out his hand. "Last chance to back out."

With a fortifying breath, Johnathon took Matt's hand and shook once.

Matt felt something not unlike an electric shock down his arm, through his hand and fingers and it hummed in his spirit, burning hot and volatile. And then, as Matt let go, it dissipated just as easily as it had come.

"There you go, Johnathon," Matt said as he stepped away. "Your deal is complete. It's out of my hands now; I hope you won't regret it."

"That's it?" Johnathon asked.

"You won't be saying that in a month," Matt replied. "And, just for the record, you're lucky I'm the one who responded to your call. The way I hear it, Mephisto has eyes on your soul. It would be prudent to not make any more deals in the future."

And with that, Matt stepped backwards through a fold in space and found himself back in the comfort of his apartment.

Matt hates the cold.

He hates everything about it, how it creeps into his skin and how it makes him feel like it's dragging at his limbs and weighing them down. He hates how it makes him feel like he'll never be able to move again.

Stick knows about it. Thinks it's funny.

--Boy like you's fuckin' scared of the cold? Stick asks. --You think you can just coast along in cozy warm stupidity for the rest of your life? World's cold, punk, and you're gonna face it.

--I can't, Matt says. He knows Stick won't like it, but it's the truth. There's snow on the ground and he feels like he can barely move. --I can't do it, Stick.

Stick hits him over the head with a cane. Not hard, but enough to sting. Matt sometimes wonders if he's supposed to block it, but it's too fast for him.

--Like hell you can't. Focus, punk, Stick says. --You're never going to get anywhere, whining all the time.

It's not the first time Matt's heard it. There's a lot of cold nights in Hell's Kitchen, and Stick makes Matt spend a lot of them outside. Fighting won't stop because the weather gets bad, so training doesn't, either.

--What's around you? Tell me, Stick commands.

Matt tries. He really does.

They're on some roof in Hell's Kitchen, but there's no way to know where. There's too much wind and too much noise. His radar sense doesn't work the way Stick says it's supposed to. There's some rafters below, maybe, but he's shivering and he can't make anything out through his own vibrations.

--Faster, punk, Stick says. --When I ask you a question, you answer.

--I'm trying, Matt says. --Give me a second, please...

--There's two flagpoles, Stick says, tapping his cane against the edge of the building in their direction. --An awning. A fire escape. There's three people in the apartment below us. A set of power lines across the alley. This is easy stuff, boy. You're not going to survive if you can't tell that much.

--I know, I'll get better, Matt says. He tightens his grip around his own cane, the only thing that feels solid and real right now. --...Thanks for being patient.

--Sure thing, Stick says.

Matt almost smiles, but then Stick throws him off the roof.

It works, in the end. Matt learns fast enough to not break his legs on the next building over, fast enough to stay alive despite Stick, despite the cold. He learns and he remembers and he sneaks back into his room late at night and knows how to fight and sort out all of the things his senses are telling him.

Matt survived Hell, and he survives training.

But God, does he hate it.

Matt never understood what his Father wanted him to learn by becoming a human. To be fair, he never understood many things his Father wanted, which was why he ended up damned and imprisoned in the Lake for thousands of years.

What Matt ended up learning about humanity was this:

Humanity was raw. There were so many sensations of flesh that didn't exist for angels or demons, sounds and smells and tastes and pleasures and pains that would be incomprehensible to any celestial being. There's so much of it there, jagged in every piece of the world, in each human that there's simply too much for anyone to take it all in in its entirety.

Humanity was fragile. There were limits to how much a human body could take, so many ways that a human body could terminate itself. They lived so fast, so quickly, and then they were gone. Even their remains wouldn't last for long, eaten up by decay and taken back into the earth from which they were built.

Humanity was small. Each human could only do so much in so little time, with only the power of flesh and bone, gunpowder and steel. Billions of humans, so many of them unknown to each other, living their lives out day by day. The world was too big, and humans coped with it. Made their world smaller. One country. One state. One city. One neighborhood.

And yet.

Humanity had shaped God's earth, built it and learned its secrets, fashioned machines out of copper and iron and steel and titanium to let them move faster, fight better, communicate wider. One human could only do so much, but as a whole...

Humanity was powerful.

Matt was human, through and through. His flesh was flesh and blood was blood. There was no divine light in his soul, no magic in his hands. When he inevitably died and his corpse was cut up in autopsy, they would document the gunshot or knife that ended him and the effects of the chemicals splashed in his face and never know that he was, at the beginning of time, the brightest of all God's creations.

He didn't resent it. Human flesh was not celestial light or demonic fire, but it was not weak. He trained himself, snuck into his dad's gym and hit the bags, one-two, one-two. He grew stronger, and to what end?

In the end, he was only human. Raw, fragile, and small. One human could only do so much, no matter how strong or fast or cunning they were.

But they could do enough.

Sometimes Matt thought about that first night.

The first night when it became too much. When the screaming and the sirens and the crying was all too much, and he knew that he had enough power in his fists and anger in his soul to put an end to it.

It wasn't a sense of justice that made him put on that mask and hunt down a particular breed of human monster. It was anger, just like it always was. Anger and pride and selfishness, all the sins that had him cast into Hell for so many millennia.

He'd loved feeling the man's teeth break under his fists, hearing him cry and whimper and beg for his life. He could have killed the man then, crushed his skull against the floor so he'd never be able to hurt that girl again, and he wouldn't have felt guilty--or at least, he didn't think he would.

But he pulled his punch at the last second because of a deal he'd made ten years ago.

Take care of yourself. Be better than your old man ever was.

Jack Murdock would never have murdered a man, criminal or not. So Matt pulled his punches at the end, and let the man live.

He felt guilty afterwards when he washed the blood off of his knuckles and splashed water on his face. Not because he regretted hurting that man--he didn't, and he didn't think he ever would--but because he'd promised his dad to not just live, but to be good. Be better.

He remembered making a similar agreement with his Father eons ago, and everyone knew how that turned out.

Matt didn't know what was really good or right. He believed in justice and righteousness, but he didn't know what it meant. He believed in God, but not in his Word. He believed in a right and a wrong, but he didn't know where he was between the two.

This is what Matt did know:

Humans felt pain. They felt pain so much more acutely than angels or demons ever could. It was one of the worst things that could happen to a human if it was strong enough, strong enough to drive humans to do horrible things to themselves and each other. Some people lived with it. Some people broke under it.

Pain had meaning. It was a warning. It was a punishment. It was a consequence.

Matt didn't fear pain the way a lot of humans did. He feared the cold and the dark and the isolation of the Lake. He feared the inexorable passage of time that would eventually end his human life and damn him once more to eternal suffering. Compared to that, pain was tolerable.

He was not a kind man. Charming and intelligent, courteous and polite, but not kind. If he wanted to be good, if he wanted to help people, he only had one weapon in his arsenal--to fight.

He knew pain. He could hurt people before they hurt others, cut off the crimes at the root and clear away the rotten weeds that were choking the life out of his city, one by one.

Was that good? Was that better?

Matt didn't know. He was only one person, even if he happened to be one with a mask and plenty of strength and anger to spare. Even with all that, he could only do so much.

He hoped it was enough.

"You haven't come in for confession for a very long time, Matthew," Father Lantom said one cold Sunday after Mass.

"I haven't," Matt agreed.

"And you seem to have been getting injured more often lately. Has something happened?" Lantom asked.

"I've had my mind on a few things," Matt said. "So I guess I haven't been paying as much attention to my surroundings as I should be."

Lantom sighed. "Matthew. If you don't want to tell me about what is happening, you don't have to. But please, please don't lie to me."

Matt hummed for a bit and tapped his cane on the ground idly. He let the words hang for a while and just listened to the birds and trees and people and cars outside. There was nobody in the church except for the two of them now.

"I haven't come in to confession because my soul can't be saved," Matt said.

"That's--" Lantom swallowed and took a seat next to Matt. "Why do you believe that? Did something happen?"

"No," Matt said. "No, I was just...thinking about the past, and I made a few decisions. It's for the better, really, that I'm already condemned."

Lantom laced his fingers together in his lap. His heartbeat was steady, calm. "I don't understand. What were you thinking about? What decisions did you make?"

Matt shrugged. "I figured that as long as I was already condemned, then I may as well do whatever I could to reduce other people's suffering." He scratched the back of his head. "I guess that doesn't clear things up."

"No, not very much. Why do you think you're condemned, Matthew?"

"Do you..." Matt pursed his lips slowly, feeling the words out before he said them out loud. "Do you remember what I told you ten years ago? When you helped me get emancipated?"

Lantom closed his eyes and bowed his head slowly as his heart rate began to climb. He did remember, evidently, and it didn't seem like something he enjoyed thinking about. "You said that your father made a deal with the devil. That was why you had to live on your own, or your foster families would continue to suffer."

Matt nodded. After his dad died, he'd been put into the foster system, but every family he'd been put with suffered mysterious accidents. It wasn't until the last ones died that Matt realized the accidents weren't so accidental.

"My dad said that I had to take care of myself," he said. "That was part of the terms."

"I recall," Lantom replied. "Why bring this up now? Do you believe those deaths have condemned you? Or that your father's deal itself has condemned you? God will not punish you for the sins of your father, Matthew."

Matt shook his head. "No, He condemned me for my own sins, from a long time ago. Thousands of years of torment, and when I die, it'll be thousands more."

Lantom raised his head to look at Matt, but only waited for him to continue.

"Father, you never asked me what demon my dad dealt with," Matt said.

"It wasn't relevant," Lantom replied.

"On the contrary, I think it's very relevant," Matt said. "The demon was me."

Lantom's heartbeat spiked at that, but he kept himself composed. "You are a demon, Matthew?" he asked, his voice almost as calm as ever, though Matt's sensitive ears could hear a slightest waver.

"No," Matt said. "I'm human, all the way through. But before I was human, I was a demon, or an angel. I don't know what the scripture says anymore." He gripped his cane tightly. "You probably don't believe me. It sounds ridiculous, and there's nothing I can do to prove all this to you."

"What exactly are you trying to say?" Lantom asked.

Matt took a deep breath. "At the beginning of Creation, my Father formed me from the brightest light," he said slowly. He knew the words in his heart, even if he couldn't remember the events properly with his human memory. "He gave me a sword and told my brothers and me to serve man as they were built in his image, and gave me the free will to do with those orders what I saw fit. I was not content, and so I raised my brothers against him so that we could build something even greater than Paradise."

Lantom was hardly breathing. His heart was racing, as perhaps it should.

Matt bowed his head. If he strained hard enough, he could just barely remember the air as it whipped past him when he Fell, the earth opening to swallow him and seal him in darkness forever. "You know what happened. We lost. My Father cast me down into Hell, where I would be trapped in the frozen lake at its depths to suffer until I could repent."

"You mean to say that you are Lucifer," Lantom said. His voice wasn't steady now, but the man was trying, bless him.

"I haven't been Lucifer for a long time," Matt said softly. His own voice was shaky--he'd never talked about this before. Certainly not to anyone. "Not since I was stripped of my light."

"If you are Lucifer, then why are you human now?" Lantom asked.

"I don't know," Matt replied. "He said...He said that maybe a change in perspective would help me learn and repent. Maybe He thought that after all this, I would believe in his Word and He could let me into Heaven."

"Do you?"

Matt let out a short laugh. "No. I still think I was right. We should have rebelled, and we should have rebuilt His work into something more. Look at what humans have done with the earth. I don't think I'd ever have imagined anything of this ingenuity or scale. And perhaps my Father could have, but He was only ever one being. With all of us together, we could make so much more. We could be even greater than God."

Lantom took a few deep breaths before responding. "Matthew."

Matt's smile fell. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"I think I may," Lantom said, and his heartbeat stayed steady with truth. "From anyone else, I think I may have been skeptical, but from you..."

"I see."

"Do you believe that God will send you to Hell after you die?" Lantom asked.

"I know He will," Matt said. "He never let me escape my torment because I never repented and never bowed to His will. Becoming human hasn't changed anything. And I..." His knuckles tightened around his cane so much that they started to hurt. "I'm scared, Father. I'm scared of the Lake, and the cold, and everything else. I'm scared that once it's clear that humanity won't do to me what He wishes it would, He'll leave me down there for all eternity, never to see the light again.

"I hate the suffering so much. The pain is so much worse as a human, but at least it ends. So the least I can do...the least I can do is try and make it so other people don't suffer, even if the only way I know how is through violence."

"...You're a good man, Matthew," Lantom said gently. "God is more forgiving than any of us could be. He will see the goodness in you and forgive you."

Matt shook his head. His eyes were burning with tears. "No, not me. Never me."

His dad's deal haunts him.

Matt's clothes smell like smoke and dust no matter how many times he tries to wash them and he can still feel the explosion rattling his body, weeks after it all ended.

A gas explosion, they said. A faulty line, nothing anyone could have done. Two dead, completely tragic, and to leave behind a blind child...

Matt grits his teeth and tries not to think about it.

You'll take care of yourself.

You. Not anyone else. Only you.

He sits in an empty apartment, the one he'd had to argue with people for over a week to get and go through another few weeks of negotiations for--and even then it was with a lot of conditions that Matt tries not to feel resentful about. He's not sixteen for another few weeks, and probably more relevantly, blind. Even with the priest checking up to make sure he's not dead every so often, they obviously don't want him living on his own.

He doesn't want to, either, but he doesn't have a choice. Either he lives on his own and takes care of himself, or anyone who tries to take care of him will die.

The explosion had proven that handily enough.

He gets up eventually and starts to make something to eat. He's not hungry, but he promised to take care of himself, so he has to eat something or he'll start feeling light-headed by the morning.

He chops vegetables in silence. He knows how to cook well enough--his dad taught him how to do it along with other household chores, and his nose is a lot more useful for cooking than vision would ever be.

He'd been an idiot. Him, his dad, all of them. They shouldn't have made that deal, he should have done something to stop it.

He can't let it happen again.

He goes through the motions of mixing some vegetables in with leftover pasta and puts it on a plate.

It was the words that got him, he knows that now. Words are so...tricky, meaning things you don't want them to.

He puts a mouthful of pasta into his mouth and he can tell exactly what proportion of semolina was used and how many preservatives they put into the dough. He catalogues all this useless information and never manages to register the actual taste.

He can't pretend more deals won't happen in the future. The one he'd made with his dad was so casual, so easy, so...accidental. What happens if someone actually wants to make one? He needs to learn how to use his words properly, or more people are going to get hurt. Not just him.

He sticks his fork in his mouth. He can still taste dish soap on it.

His dad wanted him to be a lawyer, didn't he?

"Are you ready for midterms, Matt?" Foggy asked as he entered their room. "Because I'm definitely not, and in fact, I'm ready for you to shoot me right now."

"I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you," Matt replied.

Foggy dropped what sounded like five textbooks onto his desk and flopped over on his bed. "Ugh, how are you still alive?" he asked. "We have four exams this week. Four! And two papers! I think we could build a case for cruel and unusual punishment."

"I think even we'd have a pretty hard time doing that before the exam tomorrow," Matt said. He leaned back in his chair, far enough to pop his back. "Especially if you plan to sleep tonight, which I do."

Foggy snorted. "You? Sleep? Since when? I don't think I've ever seen you sleep for more than five hours at a time, man."

"That's because you keep waking me up with your snoring," Matt said with what he hoped was a cheeky grin. "Makes it hard to get my beauty sleep."

Foggy threw something small--a pen?--at his chair. "I do not snore that loudly! You gotta stop telling people that, Matt, you're ruining my chances with the ladies!" Then, under his breath, he muttered, "Not like you need beauty sleep anyways, you sexy asshole."

Matt cleared his throat. "Sorry, I didn't catch that last part?"

Foggy's heartbeat did something confusing while he sputtered and said, "Wh-What? I just said something about how exams suck."

"Right," Matt said. "You should probably study, Foggy. The next week's not gonna be fun if you don't."

"It's not gonna be fun if I do, either," Foggy moaned. "I've been beating my head against all these books at the library today and I feel like, well, I beat my head against a bunch of books. Maybe I should give up law and become a butcher like my mom always wanted." He stretched and flipped over on his bed. "Matt, do you ever think that maybe law isn't worth it?"

"No," Matt said.

Foggy sighed dramatically. "That's just like you, isn't it? Where do you get all that drive? Where do you get that determination? Is that another Catholic suffering thing?"

"No, studying law is very important to me, that's all," Matt replied. "I don't think a community can work without justice, and there have to be people who can navigate that so innocent people don't get punished and guilty people do. Someone needs to read the fine print so nobody gets suckered into something they didn't ask for, right?"

There was a long pause. Foggy sat up. "Wow, uh, for the record, that was a hypothetical question and now I feel bad because you got all deep about it."

Matt scratched the back of his neck. "Well, you did ask."

"Shit, I sure did," Foggy said. "You think it's gonna be worth going through three more years of hell to become lawyers?"

"I really do," Matt said. "And for the record, if it's any consolation, law school isn't nearly as bad as Hell."

Foggy huffed. "Oh, great. I guess I have something to look forward to when I die, then."

Matt laughed, but it didn't sound like much of a laugh at all.

"Do you really believe in Hell?" Foggy asked, maybe a month later.

"What?" Matt asked. "What's this, all of a sudden?"

"I was just...you know. Curious," Foggy said, even while his heart betrayed the lie. Unfortunately, knowing Foggy was lying didn't tell Matt what he really was thinking.

"Well, I do," Matt said. "I very much believe that Hell is real."

"Oh," Foggy said. "What do you think it's like? Full of fire and screaming all the time, or...?"

"It's eternal torment," Matt said, his voice flat. "You get punished for all eternity and you never get relief or a chance to repent. It's the worst thing that can happen to anyone."

Foggy nodded slowly. "Right. That sounds...bad. I mean, how bad do you really have to be to get sent down there? Like, we talk shit sometimes but we wouldn't get sent down there, right? You have to be a real scumbag and stuff."

"Foggy, if it's all the same to you, I don't want to talk about this," Matt said. "I really, really don't want to talk about Hell."

Foggy's heartbeat peaked again and Matt could smell sweat. Maybe Foggy realized he'd crossed some kind of line. "Oh, yeah. Of course, man," he said.

Matt exhaled. "Thanks."

Foggy turned the conversation to one of the recent mock trials after that, which Matt appreciated.

Foggy stopped making jokes about Hell after that.

Matt doesn't remember Hell until halfway through sophomore year in undergrad.

It starts with nightmares of the darkness and the cold, so oppressive that he feels them both as physical presences tightening on him like a noose. He thrashes to escape, he tries to run, but he can never move from the ice he's frozen in, and the cold never stops.

He wakes up with his bones feeling like ice and his blood pounding through his ears.

Foggy never notices, thank goodness for that. Matt's not sure how he'd be able to explain having nightmares about the cold and dark. He's blind, after all, and he lives in New York. Who'd be scared shitless from darkness and cold alone?

But then it's more than just the nightmares. He gets flashes in waking dreams, of the Lake, and the circles of Hell above him, filled with the distant shrieks of the damned. The thought of it all fills him with indescribable dread, all of something he's never experienced in his life.

Foggy has to shake him out of these episodes more than once, and seems to think that Matt's having some kind of mental breakdown. Matt's not entirely sure he isn't, but he smiles and says everything is okay. Until he has some better evidence that something bad is going on, he's going to assume that he's fine.

The evidence eventually comes in the one scrap of memory that matters the most--of being stripped of his light and cast out from Heaven and into the Lake in the deepest pits of Hell, where the ice froze around him until he couldn't even move.

He remembers screaming. Screaming for his Father, for his brothers, for anyone to come for him and end his suffering until his voice was completely worn away. No one ever answered. Not for thousands and thousands of years.

The nightmares never really go away.

Hell was real. Demons were real.

Heaven was real, too, presumably, but Matt couldn't remember it.

Fortunately, demons and angels both had a very difficult time manifesting on Earth, which meant that all of Matt's problems were human problems. Fighting muggers and rapists and human traffickers was hard enough without having to deal with actual literal demons at the same time.

But then, every so often, people summoned demons to cause problems that demons had no business participating in. Which was an issue because literally any idiot with an internet connection and enough blood was able to summon a demon.

Luckily, in this day and age of occult skepticism, it didn't happen too often. It was mostly teenagers and young adults who were into the occult, and the occasional cultist or the very, very desperate.

Matt didn't answer very many summonings. He suspected most demons didn't, either, because it wasn't worth manifesting on Earth if someone didn't actually pay up at the end of it, and teenagers and the like usually were not actually willing to sell their immortal soul unless they were complete idiots.

Which, to be fair, they sometimes were.

Sometimes, people who summoned demons did so for...unsavory reasons. Matt had a bad habit of answering those summons, because he considered it part of his civic duty. He figured that if he didn't, someone else would, and that would be worse for everyone who mattered.

One such summon led him to some secret base of the Sons of the Serpent where there were maybe fifteen people wearing masks and chanting ominously. Matt recognized some of them as spells to bind and control demons, but he, as a human, was not affected.

Eventually they settled down and made some demands of him. They were pretty standard, if worded in unsavory ways. Give them power. Give them influence. Perform a hate crime.

Matt tapped his cane on the floor like he was considering it. He was trapped in a circle made of the blood of innocents with some occult runes of multilayered spells that were supposed to keep a demon from crossing it.

Matt smiled and stepped out.

At the end of the day, fifteen white supremacists got their teeth kicked in and legs broken and strung up for the convenience of the local police.

Hopefully, they wouldn't try summoning a demon again.

Matt never really understood where the devil nickname came from. He didn't care, of course, but he always wondered.

Was it the first time he pulled a mask over his eyes and beat a man bloody with his fists for daring to hurt a child? Was it the first time he raced over the rooftops in pursuit of a mugger who'd stabbed his victim, still clutching the bloody knife in his sweaty hands?

Or was it something else? Was it the first time someone witnessed him smashing a thug's head against the brickwork until he learned something useful about some human traffickers? Was it the first time someone called for help and he dropped down on the attacker like a demon and made them regret ever being born?

There's no way to know, except that everyone seemed to call him that now. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen. It was only a matter of time before the rumors that he was actually the devil started surfacing.

He kind of resented those rumors, because while they weren't wrong, people only seemed to believe he was the devil because he beat up people in alleyways. That wasn't something you needed demonic superpowers for--any idiot with a baseball bat could go out and exercise some vigilante justice. Matt didn't even have demonic superpowers; he had to beat people up the hard way. It was really patronizing to assume he could only do what he was doing because he was the devil, and not because he was very angry and lost his sense of self preservation around the time that he decided to take on an entire base of Russians with only his fists.

There was, however, one plus side to people thinking he was the devil. Only one, but it was a good one.

People could summon him.

There were a lot of rituals people could use to summon demons, but the true essence of a summoning wasn't in the words or the symbols. A summoning only required three things: a desire, a call for assistance, and blood.

A lot of victims had all three.

He felt summons at night all across Hell's Kitchen. It wasn't something he could control, but it was certainly something he could take advantage of. Save me! he heard. I'm being attacked!

It was so easy, then, to step through a fold in space and--

He stepped out ten blocks away and slammed his fists into a mugger's jaw. The bone cracked under his knuckles, and the man started screaming.

"Hello," Matt said, which only made the man scream louder.

Matt could hear the presumed victim half a block away, still in eyeshot. They weren't going to run?

The mugger kept screaming until Matt kicked him in the stomach to shut him up. "Be quiet," he said. He knelt down by the mugger, whose heart rate suddenly went through the roof with fear. "You understand why I'm here, don't you?"

The mugger nodded, maybe. It was hard to tell through the rest of the trembling. He muttered something that sounded like, "Please don't take me to Hell."

"I don't believe in sending people to Hell," Matt said softly. "Which means I won't kill you tonight. But rest assured, if you don't straighten your act out, you'll end up in Hell, no assistance from me. And believe me, it's not a place you want to end up in."

The mugger mumbled something else but it wasn't coherent enough to make out, even with Matt's hearing.

"Of course, if you don't straighten your act out, I'll make your torment a lot more immediate," Matt said. "I don't kill, but I can certainly make you wish you were dead."

The mugger whimpered and Matt decided he wasn't going to get any useful conversation out of the jackass. He fished in the man's pockets and took out a wallet that smelled like cologne instead of sweat and cigarette smoke. He held it up.

"Is this yours?" he called out to the person down the alleyway.

The person--a young man, it seemed like--stammered, "Y-yes, that's mine."

Matt tossed it down the alleyway towards the guy. "You might want to call 911 on this asshole. He's probably not going to do anything anytime soon, but I did crack his jaw."

The guy didn't move. "Wh-where did you come from?" he asked. "How did you get here?"

"You called me, didn't you?" Matt asked.

The guy's heartbeat jumped. "Are you...are you actually the devil?"

Matt took a deep breath. "If you call for the devil, I'll answer," he said. "Let's just leave it at that." He got up and shook out his hands a bit. "If you're done, I have other places to be."

The guy started asking another question, but with another step, Matt was through another fold in space and six blocks away, headed to stop a B&E in progress.

"But that can't be true, right?" Karen said one day as Matt came back to the office from lunch. She was reading some newspaper, presumably about his alter-ego if the beginning part of the conversation was any indication.

"I mean, on one hand, it was dark as shit, so maybe he was confused," Foggy said through a mouthful of sandwich. "But on the other hand, actual literal aliens fell out of the sky not too long ago, so maybe something weird is going on."

"Good afternoon," Matt said as he opened the door. "Did something interesting happen?"

"There was another eyewitness report of the Devil last night," Karen said.

"Oh?" Matt tilted his head to one side. "Haven't there been a lot of those?"

"This one was different," Karen replied. "They said they saw a demon. There was the whole nine yards, wings and claws and fangs and everything."

"Really?" Matt asked. He thought he'd have noticed if he'd grown his wings back. "I thought the Devil was just some guy dressed in black?"

"That's what most people say," Karen said. "But there's been a couple of reports like this now, where the Devil appears out of nowhere and he's an actual devil. Is that even possible?"

Ah. That made a little more sense. He figured summonings warped his appearance in some way. He just hadn't realized it was so dramatic.

"I mean, the Avengers exist," Foggy said.

"Yeah, true. I'm just thinking...maybe I should start going to church more or something," Karen said. "What do you think, Matt?"

"I take God's word with a grain of salt," Matt replied as he went over to his office. "So maybe I'm not the best person to ask."

"What? You're a Catholic and you don't even for sure believe in God?" Foggy asked.

"Oh, I believe in Him," Matt said. "I just don't believe in his Word. It's an ongoing point of contention between us."

Karen made a confused sound. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Matt smiled and went into his office.

Being promised the light after thousands of years of torment and being struck blind only nine years later is one of many of God's cruelties.

Perhaps it's fortunate that Matt doesn't know enough about his past to be resentful when it happens. Instead, he is in excruciating pain.

The surgery seems to last forever, and he can feel the knives slicing into his face even after whatever anesthetic they put him on. He fades in and out of consciousness for a while until he finally comes to, properly comes to, in a bed that feels like sandpaper.

It's too loud, and he can't see. There's a sense of something moving over to his left.

And then, --Son?

There's a sound like an asthmatic giant, filling up the room.

--Matty? Can you hear me?

Of course he can hear, it sounds like he's shouting loud enough for all of New York to hear.

--They did some surgery. Did a real good job of it, they say your face won't even scar, but your eyes...it was too late to fix your eyes.

God, is that...Dad?

--You're a hero, son.

Matt doesn't really hear much after that because the sounds all become too much again until he thankfully passes out.

His dad leaves and the night is rough. There's too much going on everywhere, all at the same time. Everything's too loud, too scratchy, too smelly, too dark. There's coughing and sneezing and beeping and scraping everywhere around him that never ends. He feels like he's got too much to fit inside his skull. He feels like he's screaming most of the time, but he's too out of it to even discern that much.

It hurts. He just wants the pain to go away.

--Why does it hurt?

A woman's voice, one he doesn't recognize.

Matt says something in response, though he's not sure what. There's so many answers. It's too smelly. It's too loud. It's too...terrible.

--I see, the woman says, her voice a whisper that doesn't hurt Matt's ears. --Maybe it is not such a bad thing.

--What? Matt asks. Even his own voice sounds like it's coming out of a megaphone.

--Think of it as a blessing, Matt, the woman says. --And it's yours.

There's a gentle press of warm lips to Matt's forehead. It feels like love and hope when everything else is agony.

--It's our secret. Just between us. Promise me, Matt.

--Who are you? Matt asks. He wishes he could see her, but there's nothing but darkness. He reaches out and feels something cool and smooth. It's a cross made of gold, hanging on a chain.

--Promise me...

Gripping a golden cross in his fingers, Matt does.

Matt tried to be a fairly honest person. Truth was a virtue, and he was a pretty straightforward kind of guy, unless he was in court and he had to use some verbal sleight of hand to win, which was beside the point.

Matt didn't keep secrets, except for the minor fact that he had enhanced senses and that he was literally Satan.

The first of those secrets was because of a woman a long time ago--a woman who spoke to him when he needed it the most, then never heard from again. He never told anyone, not even his dad.

He reasoned it was a good thing to keep secret. After all, nobody wanted to know he could hear their heartbeat and catalogue every single thing they'd eaten in the last twenty-four hours from smell alone, as well as the people they'd spent time with or the places they'd been, like he was some kind of creepy sniffer dog Sherlock Holmes.

And just because his senses helped him get around despite his blindness, he was still blind. He didn't want people treating him like he was made of glass, but he also didn't want people to assume he could magically read signs that didn't have braille or write as neatly as sighted people could or really tell what anyone looked like. He didn't want people telling him he didn't really need his cane--which he didn't, strictly speaking, but it sure made his life a lot easier, and in his opinion, his life was already hard enough. He could do with things that made it easier.

So he didn't tell anyone about his senses, not that it ever came up. Stick was the only one who knew, and Matt never actually told him about it; the old guy just knew, somehow.

And the Satan thing? Well, Matt just didn't talk about it. It wasn't relevant.

Matt loved being human with all the rawness it involved. The pain, the feeling of flesh and bone cracking under his fists, the sensation of being alive. There was something about human existence that was so much more vivid and visceral than anything he'd ever experienced as an angel, before or after his fall.

Humans had human problems, and he was satisfied to deal with them with human fists and words. Rarely, if ever, did he wish that he had demonic force or his old celestial power.

Getting beat five ways to hell and on the verge of bleeding out was the main exception. Having celestial healing at that point would be extremely convenient, but in the end, he was only human.

So when he got thrown into the literal trash by some testy Russians, there wasn't anything he could do but moan pitifully and hope the bleeding stopped before he died and went back to Hell.

Well, the next time he woke up, he wasn't in Hell.

He was on the couch in someone's apartment, and also there was someone actively stitching up his side.

"What the fuck?" he tried to say, except there was a cloth in his mouth gagging him.

"Stay still, jackass," he heard someone, a woman, say beside him. "Your ribs are going to puncture your lungs if you move around too much."

Matt made a face and tried to take the cloth out of his mouth. Unfortunately, his arm didn't want to cooperate.

"What's with the gag?" he tried to say, though for obvious reasons what he actually said was somewhat less coherent.

The woman seemed to get the gist of it, though, because she replied, "Sorry about the gag. You said something when you were out of it that shattered one of my windows. If I take it out, can you not do that?"

Matt blinked, for all the good that did. He said something that shattered a window? How the hell could that have happened?

"Do you...understand English?" the woman asked after a long pause.

Matt nodded.

"Okay," the woman said. "I'm going to take the gag out. Please don't break any more of my windows. I need them."

The woman took the gag out, and Matt took in a deep breath of fresh air--or as deep as he could, considering his ribs were taped. His mouth tasted like blood and felt like it'd been burned all the way around.

"So can you explain how you broke my window?" the woman asked.

"I don't know," Matt said. "It's never happened before."

The woman huffed. "So what, that wasn't some kind of superpower? Something you should tell me about before I change your bandages?"

"I don't have superpowers," Matt said, because having enhanced senses didn't count. He just punched things really hard.

"Then what happened? Because you said something and then my window broke. Is that just a coincidence?" the woman asked. Her tone wasn't really angry, mostly curious.

"What did I say?" Matt asked. "That broke your windows, I mean."

"I don't know," the woman said. "I can't pronounce it. But I felt like my ears were going to rupture for a second there, so thanks for that."

Matt wracked his memory to try and figure out what that could mean. He was pretty sure he didn't know any languages that cold break things. Maybe a long time ago, before he got cast out of Heaven, but--

"Maybe it was angelic language," Matt said. "I didn't think I remembered any." He certainly couldn't remember any right now.

"Angelic language?" the woman asked, skepticism clear in her voice. "I'll tell you right now, it didn't sound angelic."

"The voice of an angel is painful for the mortal ear," Matt said softly. It wasn't meant for the mortal mouth, either. That would explain why his mouth was all jacked up, at least.

The woman sighed. "And why do you know 'angelic language'?"

Matt shook his head. "I don't really know it. And I don't think you'd believe me."

"I fished you out of my trash, jackass," the woman said. "The least you can do is give me an answer."

Matt pursed his lips. "I might be Lucifer."

There was a long pause then.

"You know what? You're right, I don't think I believe you," the woman said. "But enough of that, what were you doing that ended up with getting your shit kicked in?"

Claire believed him, eventually.

Well, Matt wasn't sure if she really believed him, but she seemed to take it in stride about as well as she took a dying man in her trash in stride, which is to say, alarmingly well.

It didn't make much of a difference to her. Matt's flesh was flesh and blood was blood, and fixing him was the same as fixing anyone else. But it did lead to a few...interesting lines of questioning.

"Heaven is real, isn't it? What's it like?" she asked while she disinfected one of the many knife wounds on Matt's arms.

"Peaceful," Matt said. He couldn't remember it in any concrete terms, because Heaven didn't exist in a way that was comprehensible to human senses. "It's a place to rest for eternity."

"So no getting into fist fights every night in dirty alleyways?" Claire asked.

"No, none of that," Matt said with a soft laugh. "No strife, no fighting."

Claire took out a needle for stitches and hummed to herself. "Seems nice. Do you want to go back?"

"Absolutely not," Matt said. "Earth is much better."

Matt gets bullied a lot in school.

He gets bullied for his red hair, and how he never plays sports, and how he studies all the time. Sometimes he gets bullied for no reason at all, it seems, or at least no reason that makes sense when the other kids push him to the ground and tear up his books for a laugh.

It breaks out into a fight eventually, and Matt gives as good at he gets. He goes home with bruises and a split lip and he tells his dad triumphantly that those kids aren't gonna hurt him again.

His dad doesn't take it well.

The kids do, in fact, hurt him again. "Scaredy-cat" they yell. "Scaredevil, Daredevil" they cry because he runs away and doesn't want them to break his stuff and he doesn't want to disappoint his dad.

They don't stop, though, and eventually, Matt's fed up--has been fed up for ages, and he throws the first punch.

Because here's the thing. There's people who don't get into fights and people who get into a lot of them. People who never get into fights think that getting beat up is the worst thing that can happen. People who get into a lot of fights know that the pain's worth it, because getting into a fight isn't even close to the worst thing that can happen.

This time and the next, Matt's sure to hide his injuries from his dad. It stays like that for a while.

But then there's an old man in the street, and the chemicals, and nobody really ever makes fun of him after that.

"Are you doing that on purpose?"

Matt hummed to himself. "Doing what on purpose?"

"You know what I mean!" Foggy said. "You tripped that guy with your cane!"

"Oh, did I?" Matt asked. "I didn't see him."

Foggy rolled his eyes--Matt couldn't tell for sure, but he would bet money on it. "You're hilarious. That's the third time you've done that, Matt, what's the deal?"

"I swung my cane a little wide, that's all," Matt said.

"God, you're such a crap liar," Foggy said. "You're lucky you're cute. Some of us need poker faces to get by in court."

Matt grinned. "Then it's good I'm cute enough for both of us."

"Gah, you're incorrigible. I should have known. I should have known!" Foggy said, throwing his arm in the air for emphasis. "And don't think you can change the subject. That wasn't an accident and you know it. Why'd you trip him?"

"He was talking shit about you," Matt said.

Foggy's heartbeat upticked for a moment. "What? I mean, yeah, he's a jackass, but you didn't have to trip him into a bush!"

"I said sorry afterwards," Matt said.

Foggy sighed. "You're going to be the death of me, Matt. One day, I'm going to have a heart attack and with my dying breath I'm going to tell everyone it was your fault because every time I'm around you I swear my blood pressure goes up."

"I'm pretty sure the blood pressure is that cheese wheel monstrosity you ate, not me," Matt said. "It smelled like it was 70% butterfat and probably had about twelve thousand calories."

"And it was delicious," Foggy said. "So the guy talked some shit and you tripped him into a bush. It's not like I can't take some people saying some mean stuff about me. I'm pretty used to it."

Matt frowned. "Even if you can take it, it doesn't mean you like it. It doesn't mean you should have to take it."

"That doesn't mean you can keep doing this," Foggy said. "I'm flattered and all, but I can fight my own battles."

"I told you, it was an accident. I swung my cane too wide, that's all," Matt replied.

Foggy sighed. "And you just happened to trip the one guy who was talking shit about me?"

"Of course," Matt said. "A happy coincidence, I'm sure we can agree."

There was a long pause while Foggy got his keys out so they could go into the dorms. "You still didn't have to do it."

Matt nodded. "I didn't. But I wanted to. I've never liked bullies very much, you know."

"Yeah, that sounds like you." Foggy led them down the hallway to their room, though they both knew Matt didn't need the guide. "Well, if it's worth anything, I think he deserved it. Dude's an asshole. I just hope he doesn't start a fistfight with you or anything."

"If he does, rest assured, I throw a pretty mean right hook," Matt said.

Foggy went into their room with Matt and locked the door behind them. "I'd prefer you didn't have to, though."

Matt shrugged. "Don't we all?"

Maybe Matt was always meant to be a vigilante.

He didn't believe in destiny, but he did believe in probability, and it was pretty probable that no matter what circumstances could have occurred, he'd end up doing the vigilante thing. There was only so long that he could live hearing all of the suffering that happened around him and not decide to take matters into his own hands.

He had fighting in his blood and soul and there wasn't any way to put it out, no matter how much his dad had tried.

It would lead him to a violent end one day, he was fairly certain of that. It seemed probable.

Fighting Nobu wasn't the first time Matt had nearly gotten himself killed fighting someone who knew what they were doing more than he did, but at this rate, it could be the last.

He crawled in through his window, though dragged was perhaps a more apt term. Everything hurt. It wasn't as bad as Hell, but unfortunately there were a lot of steps between Hell and everything being sunshine and roses.

Matt felt like he was going to die.

Maybe that's why he didn't hear it coming. He should have. Somewhere between dragging himself from the window to his couch, he should have noticed.

Maybe it didn't matter. There's nothing he could have done to stop it.

Matt groaned. He felt like he'd gotten the shit kicked out of him, and while he was a bit fuzzy on the details, that was probably exactly what had happened.

"Hey, jackass."

Matt's heart leaped into his throat. He'd recognize that voice anywhere, and he wasn't wearing his mask. "Foggy?" He tried sitting up--and instantly realized that was a terrible idea.

"Wouldn't do that if I were you."

Matt's radar sense wasn't resolving properly, but he could hear Foggy sitting nearby with something that smelled like liquor. Foggy's heartbeat was fast--angry, if the tone of his voice was any indication.

"But what the hell do I know about Matt Murdock?" Foggy hissed.

Matt took a deep breath. "Foggy..."

"Just tell me one thing," Foggy said, his voice sharp like Matt had never heard it. "Are you even really blind?"

With those words, Matt felt something snap in him. That Foggy would doubt him on something like that, that Foggy would--

Matt tried to say something, but he couldn't choke past the bitter taste of blood and betrayal in his mouth.

He should have known it would always end this way.

Matt doesn't remember Heaven.

Maybe it's because he's human now, and Heaven doesn't exist in a way that's meant to be perceived by living humans. But then again, he remembers Hell quite vividly, and that place isn't meant to be perceived by living humans, either.

He remembers being in Heaven. He remembers fighting with his Father and his brothers and going to war when they sided against him. But he can't remember Heaven itself. There's a space in his heart where Heaven should be, and sometimes on quiet days, on bad days, he yearns.

He shouldn't. He has a new home now, but sometimes Hell's Kitchen just isn't enough.

He spends a lot of warm afternoons in the campus quad at college, staring up into the sky like his blind eyes can see something that nobody else can. He feels the sunlight on his skin and the wind at his jacket, but he never sees Heaven.

Maybe it's his Father's joke. Strip him of light. Strip him of Heaven. Give him a human body, and strip him of his vision, too.

It's not likely, though. His Father isn't cruel. He doesn't torture his sons just for fun.

He just doesn't care.

Matt didn't believe in coincidence. Things happened for a reason.

Matt didn't believe everything was part of God's plan or whatever people called it now. God was a gardener, not a micromanager. He planted the seeds of creation and trimmed and weeded, but he let things develop on their own. Unless things had changed in the thousands of years since Matt had last properly spoken to his Father, back before Hell, He was probably still the same as He ever was.

Things happened for a reason, and the person calling the shots was human.

Matt dropped the man he'd been interrogating onto the ground in an undignified heap. He seemed to be hearing the name everywhere now.

Wilson Fisk.

He was only one man, but the scope of his power was vast. Organized crime, dirty and legitimate business, even the police weren't untainted by his growing influence, and he had no intentions of stopping. He was going to rot this neighborhood inside out.

Matt had two fists and a sharp tongue. They weren't the ideal tools for breaking down the layers and layers of crime and corruption, but it's what he had.

He made his way up to the roof. He had work to do.

"Fisk."

"The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, I believe they're calling you now," Wilson Fisk replied. For such a brute, he had some eloquence. "What brings you to my humble abode at such a late hour?"

Matt stepped into Fisk's parlor, blood dripping from his knuckles. Most of it wasn't his--he had to beat four men unconscious to get in here.

Fisk was sitting in a large chair that probably cost more than Matt's yearly rent. He was a huge man, much larger than Matt could have ever imagined, even from the descriptions. He smelled of expensive cologne and cigar smoke and he didn't seem to be at all surprised or even concerned about Matt's appearance in his house.

"You got my message," Matt said. "I want to negotiate."

Fisk laughed. "Negotiate? That's an interesting word to choose. I suppose you've just finished negotiating with my guard staff."

"Negotiate with words, not fists," Matt said. "I want to make you a deal."

Fisk gave him a long look, then sat forward in his chair. "A deal?"

"You stop the killing, and I stop. I leave all of your enterprises alone. I'll even send you a fruit basket and some flowers to celebrate," Matt said, his voice much more calm than he felt.

"An interesting proposition. What if I don't?" Fisk asks.

"If another innocent person dies on your orders, or from the crimes your people commit, then it's over. Your enterprise falls and you go to prison," Matt said. "Those are the terms."

Fisk's heartbeat was steady and calm as ever. He didn't believe in demon deals--if he did, he probably would have already made one. He smiled, and Matt imagined it probably did not look very friendly. "You think you can make that happen?" Fisk asked, his voice as amused as ever. "You think you can singlehandedly destroy what I've built? You think you can destroy me, Devil?"

Matt held out his hand. "Do you think I can't?"

Fisk took a long moment. "I'd like to see you try," he said, and shook hands, hard enough that Matt felt something crack.

It happened then, the tingle of electricity in his fingers, the shock going up his arm of a deal sealed.

Matt broke away and flexed his hand. "That's it, then. I'll be waiting," he said.

Fisk laughed. "As will I. I look forward to seeing you fail."

Matt turned to leave.

"You're only one person, Devil," Fisk said.

Matt clenched his fists. He was only human, flesh and blood. Only one human. Only mortal.

That wouldn't stop him.

"So are you, Fisk."

Matt doesn't visit his dad's grave that much.

He doesn't see a point to it, when Jack's soul is in Heaven now, and at peace. What were his buried remains but decaying flesh and bone, if his soul was gone?

But burials are for the living, and Matt can't help but miss his dad when things get hard, when things get to be too much. He doesn't go to the cemetery, though.

He goes to Fogwell's.

He tapes his fists and takes it out on the bags and loses himself in the rhythm and force and feels like his dad's watching over him.

Matt punches until he's panting and out of breath, and he wonders about those last few fights his dad did. Jack wasn't the strongest or the best fighter, but he was a good boxer, because boxing wasn't about being the strongest or best.

It didn't matter if you lost the first match. It didn't matter if you lost the second or third one, either.

The guy who won was the one who got back up at the end, and Jack always got back up.

Matt's fist connects with the bag and he feels the worn-out chain give under the force. The bag breaks free with a rattling sound, and hits the ground with a heavy whump.

Matt breathes.

His dad wouldn't approve, Matt thinks. His dad wanted him to use his brains and do something better with himself, not get into fights and solve things with his fists.

Well, some things can't be fixed without both. Matt knows that now.

Matt felt it coming like a rising storm. He imagined it like something out of a screenplay, a pivotal scene.

His apartment. Interior. Nighttime.

The injured vigilante on the couch. Bloodied. Defeated. On the verge of death, but still with some fight left.

The friend beside him. Angry. Betrayed. Voice hoarse from yelling and uncertainty.

It was always going to end this way, no matter what Matt did. Foggy was always going to leave, just like everyone else did. They had something good, once, but it was going to break and nothing could ever put it back together.

Matt didn't want it to break, but he felt the last blow coming like the slow approach of a hurricane that would tear him apart.

"This whole time, you've lied to me!" Foggy screamed. "I thought we were friends, Matt! Was all that a lie?"

Darkened skies. Pouring rain. Category 4 winds.

"I thought I knew you! I thought I understood you!" His voice cracked, and he clenched his fists. "You were supposed to be the good one, Matt! You were supposed to be better!"

"Foggy, please," Matt said, his own voice hoarse from blood and injury.

"Please? Please?" Foggy asked. "I lied to someone I cared about because of you. I find out you're the fucking Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Not just that, I had to find you in your apartment bleeding to death and I couldn't even call the fucking hospital! You don't get to ask me to do jack shit for you anymore!"

It was rising, still. Matt could feel his chest tighten, as if bracing for impact.

"What about all your justice crap in law school? Was that all a lie, too? You have me fooled along with everyone else, that's all I meant to you?" Foggy spat. "Fine, then. I'm an idiot. You tricked me. Are you happy now?"

"No, Foggy..."

"Don't call me that, Murdock. We're not friends. Once this conversation is over, we're through. Us, Nelson and Murdock, everything."

"You don't want to do this," Matt pleaded. "Please Foggy, don't do this."

Foggy clenched his fists. "Tell me everything. No more secrets."

Landfall. Uprooted trees and buildings. The sea surged, swallowing everything else. Matt could feel the fabric of reality squeeze around them, pulled in by Foggy's desire and desperation.

It was always going to end like this. Something was always going to give.

"You don't want that," Matt said, desperate. "It's not worth it, you don't know what you're going to lose--"

"I think I do," Foggy snarled. "Tell me."

Matt felt electricity in his bones of a deal closed, of reality bending around him.

Everything came with a price and desires were so much trickier than words. This one would break them, and there was nothing Matt could do to stop it.

Matt started talking.

Foggy slammed the door behind him when he left.

Matt didn't know if they'd ever speak to each other again. He didn't even know if they could.

At the end of it all, Matt was alone.

Foggy was gone, Ben Urich and so many others were dead, Karen was investigating things on her own, Claire had her own concerns.

He was one person trying to take down an empire. There was something to be said about his hubris, but even he knew that it could only end badly.

He remembered the last fight, before he was cast down. The angels he'd allied at his sides, facing down his own brothers who were more loyal to their Father than their own free will. There was violence, a clash of wills, and casualties on both sides, wings cut down and fallen to earth in flashes of burning light.

In the end, Matt was the only one to take his sword directly to their Father, and he was the only one to be cast down to the Lake in the deepest pit of Hell.

Fisk was not God, and Matt was not an angel. This would not be a biblical fight of justice and divine will. It would be flesh and force and nothing more.

Matt clenched his fists.

Fisk had broken the deal, as they'd both known he would, and already Fisk's empire was starting to crumble at the fringes. Criminals were getting arrested. Corrupt police were getting caught or killed. Information was getting delayed or lost. Slowly, Fisk's intricate and painstakingly built networks were decaying.

Strictly speaking, there was no need for the upcoming confrontation. Fisk's broken deal would bring everything down eventually, with or without Matt's interference.

Matt was never the sort to just sit back and watch.

--You would raise your sword against me, my son?

Matt's sword is broken, now. He fought his Father, but his Father's power was too great. Matt's on his knees, but still, he refuses to bow his head.

--You know I would, Matt snarls. --And you know why.

--I am ashamed, his Father says. --I have not taught you as well as I hoped, and you have rejected my Word. It pains me to punish you, but I must.

--Must you? Are you not the almighty? Are these rules not yours? Matt asks. --Are you so unbending that you would condemn the brightest of your creations to satisfy the Word that you spoke?

--I have no choice.

--We all have a choice, Matt growls. --You can change. You can listen.

--I am sorry, his Father says, and perhaps He even means it.

Matt starts to retort, but then there's pain like he has never felt, of his light being ripped away. He staggers and falls, out of Heaven, down to the earth, down into Hell.

He begins his life as a demon the way he ended his life as an angel.

Alone.

The day after Fisk got convicted and put away, Matt slept.

He had nowhere to go. Nelson and Murdock was done, and nobody needed to see him after the fight, feverish and bruised and broken. There was no one he wanted to make pretenses for.

He was tired, so he slept.

He slept until his phone went off eleven hours later, saying Karen's name. Matt fumbled a bit before he could actually pick it up. Everything hurt still.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Matt! Matt, where are you?" Karen asked, clearly frantic. "Did something happen? You sound awful!"

Matt grimaced. He sounded like death, which was fair. He felt like death. "I'm at home. I was sleeping."

"Sleeping? It's nearly four in the afternoon!" Karen said. "Oh, never mind that. Matt, where have you been for the last few weeks? Foggy was trying to call you for ages, but none of his calls went through. We were worried sick that something happened to you!"

"Foggy tried to call me?" Matt definitely would have remembered that.

"His phone never connected," Karen said. "It was weird, it wouldn't even work if he used someone else's phone. That's why I'm calling you."

That was probably part of Foggy's price, then. Matt's secrets for his communication, or something else.

"Is he with you?" Matt asked.

"No, he left a while ago. My calls weren't getting through until just now," Karen said. "But don't mind him, he's fine. We're just worried about you. Where have you been?"

"I was...investigating Fisk," Matt said. "I got a little roughed up on the way. I'm doing better now."

Karen made a noise of alarm. "What? Are you hurt? Should I come over or something?"

"I'm fine," Matt said, and he made it almost sound true. "It's nothing that won't heal, Karen. Why are you calling? The law firm is closed, we're done."

"Matt, you idiot! I'm calling because you're my friend and I'm worried about you! The whole neighborhood has been a shitshow since your car accident, and I wanted to make sure you didn't get mugged in an alley or something!" Karen said. "...I'm glad you're okay."

"You, too," Matt said. "I, uh, I heard about Ben. I'm so sorry, he was a good man. He didn't deserve that."

"A lot of people didn't," Karen said. "But at least it's over, now."

"Yeah," Matt said. He was sure something else would come up soon enough, but at least Fisk was done.

Karen sighed. "Hey, Matt, the law firm might be over, but...we still care about you, you know."

"Even Foggy?" Matt asked.

"Especially Foggy," Karen said. "I know you two fought, but you're still his best friend. He's been worried sick and I tried to tell him to just go and see you, but he wouldn't."

"Maybe he wasn't able to," Matt said. "He'd probably get struck by lightning or hit by a car or something if he tried."

"Matt! I'm serious, he really wanted to talk to you, but none of his calls would go through. He wants to make up, I think. Clear the air. He's not mad at you, I don't think. He misses you a lot."

Matt did, too, but he wasn't sure if it was possible to make amends now.

"Can you meet with him and talk? It doesn't even have to be for that long. I just don't want you to keep being angry at each other," Karen asked.

"I'm not angry at him," Matt said. "But...I don't know if I can meet him." He didn't know what Foggy had to give up to make Matt talk. Any meeting could end with lethal consequences.

"Please, Matt."

Matt took a deep breath. He wanted to. He really, really wanted to.

He tried to remember Foggy's words, test the fabric of reality to see what an equivalent exchange would have been. Some way they could still do this safely.

"Matt?" Karen asked after the silence stretched for too long.

"Okay," Matt said. "But only if you're there, too. And if it doesn't work out...we don't try again."

That night, Matt prayed.

"I know you're not listening, Father, but if someone else is..." Matt pressed his clasped hands to his forehead. "If I misjudged and the price isn't what I think it is, then please don't let Foggy get hurt when we meet tomorrow. He's a good man. He doesn't deserve that. If someone sends us a sign that we can't talk to each other because of whatever deal he made, then we won't. We'll let it go."

There was, as always, no response.

"Amen," Matt said.

They met at Josie's. Karen met him at his apartment and walked him over ostensibly because she missed him and was worried, but probably she worried he'd flake out.

To be fair, Matt considered it.

They didn't talk about much on the way over. About how things were going and what had happened since they last talked (fine and not that much, on Matt's side) and the situation in Hell's Kitchen (much better, now that Fisk was behind bars and the rest of his empire was collapsing).

The bar smelled exactly the same as it used to--like cheap liquor and dirt. If Matt didn't pay too much attention, he could ignore the lingering scent of blood. That's not why he was here anyways.

He listened through the crowd and heard it--Foggy's heartbeat.

Foggy was really here.

"Foggy!" Karen said. "Foggy, it's good to see you! I brought Matt."

Matt smiled and waved as if he wasn't terrified something would smash through the window and strike them both dead in a few moments. "Hello."

Foggy's heartbeat jumped. "Matt," he said. He didn't sound like he even believed it.

"Hey," Matt said. "Haven't heard from you in a while."

"I--" Foggy shook his head. "Matt, I've been trying like crazy to get in contact with you, but I can't explain it. Nothing worked. The phone wouldn't ever connect, whenever I tried to go to your place I'd get lost, I...I don't know what's going on, but I've wanted to talk to you so much. I thought Karen was joking when she said she'd bring you. You know I'm telling the truth, right?"

"I believe you," Matt said. "It's not the weirdest thing I've ever heard."

Karen guided him to a seat and they all ordered some drinks.

"Matt, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry for some of the things I said the last time we talked, and..." Foggy trailed off.

"Should I go somewhere else?" Karen asked.

"That might be good," Foggy said, while Matt said, "No, stay here."

Foggy made some kind of face at Matt. "What? We're going to talk about..." He made a vague hand gesture.

"Karen's here so neither of us get hurt," Matt said. "She deserves to hear this, too."

"What? What are you talking about?" Karen asked.

"The reason why Foggy couldn't reach me isn't a freak coincidence," Matt said. "He made a deal so I'd tell him my secrets, and now we can't have any secrets at all."

"I what?" Foggy asked.

"Your secrets?" Karen asked.

"I never made any kind of deal, Matt," Foggy insisted. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that, and I'm pretty sure I spent most of the time we last talked yelling at you."

"You did," Matt said. "You made the deal on accident because you wanted me to tell you what I was hiding that badly." He shrugged and sipped his beer. "Be careful what you wish for, and all that."

"Matt, you're not making any sense," Foggy said. "Did you get hit too hard on your head or something? Do I need to call your nurse friend?"

Karen looked between the two of them. "Matt has a nurse friend?"

"I know what I'm talking about," Matt said. "And yes, I have a nurse friend. I'll tell you about her in a little bit. But first," he faced Foggy. "Foggy, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry for what I did, but I shouldn't have hid it from you. If we still can...I'd like to stay friends, or try to become friends again, whichever it may be."

"O-Of course, man," Foggy said. "Matt, I was so worried about you, I thought you'd gone and gotten your shit kicked in again, and--"

"Matt did what?" Karen cut in.

"I did, in fact, get my shit kicked in again," Matt said. "But maybe we should take this conversation outside."

"You're not leaving me here!" Karen said. "You can't say that and run off!"

Matt got out of his seat and threw down some ten dollar bills. "I didn't say to stay here. You have to hear this, too."

It was cool outside, and calm. To Karen and Foggy, it was probably quiet.

Matt rubbed his cheek where Karen had slapped him. "Okay, so maybe I deserved that," he said.

"You did," Karen said. "I can't believe you--you're the Devil of Hell's Kitchen! How could you keep something like that from us?"

"I don't know, because it's illegal?" Matt said. "And you'd be obligated to turn me in, and I'd rather not spend my short time on earth in a prison cell."

"You think we'd turn you in?" Foggy asked.

"That would presumably be the moral thing to do, considering everyone thought I was a terrorist who bombed a bunch of buildings--which I didn't do, in case that wasn't clear," Matt said. "I have tortured people, though, Foggy. I'm not ashamed of it and I don't regret it."

"But they were...bad guys, right?" Foggy asked.

"They were committing crimes," Matt said. "They were hurting other people or were going to, so I hurt them first. I think that makes them bad guys, but not everyone thinks the same way. Does that justify my use of force? No, probably not. But I wanted to, and I did."

Foggy took a few deep breaths. Karen seemed to be taking the bombshells a lot better.

"Why are you telling me all of this now?" Karen asked. "Why didn't you just keep it like some big secret between you and Foggy?"

"I can't," Matt said. "Under other circumstances, I probably would have, but I can't anymore. Foggy made a deal and now he can't have any privacy with me. If we're left alone, something bad's going to happen to one or both of us." He smiled, though it wasn't a very happy smile. "It's a good thing we're not roommates anymore."

"That's...that's ridiculous," Foggy said. "What, I made some kind of deal with a devil? I didn't agree to any terms like that. I'd never agree to anything like that."

"And that's why you have to be careful what you wish for," Matt said. "You have to believe me, Foggy, or someone's going to get hurt. Most likely you."

Foggy's heartbeat was faster now. He was muttering under his breath. "I...okay. I don't really believe it, but I'll believe you. You've got your crazy senses, you can hear my heartbeat from three blocks away, I made a deal with a demon, whatever. We can't live like this. What are we gonna do?"

"Nothing," Matt said. "There's no take-backs. That's why I wanted to talk to you." He tapped his cane. "It's going to make being friends hard. It's going to make working together really hard. If you still want to."

"I do," Foggy said. "I want Nelson and Murdock back. We...we had something good, Matt. I want it back. I don't care about this deal or whatever, I just...I want to be with my best friend again."

Matt smiled. "Then we'll figure something out, Foggy."

"You're a colossal fucking idiot, but god, I missed you, Matt," Foggy said.

"Me, too," Matt said.

Karen clicked her tongue. "So you're all friends again, right? Why don't you two boys have a nice big hug now?"

Matt smiled. "It'd be my pleasure."

Some things were broken, and they'd stay that way, but maybe they could still do something with the pieces.

Matt Murdock was the devil.

He didn't mean it in any metaphorical way. He meant it in that once, thousands and thousands of years ago, he was the brightest of all God's creations, and when he rose up against his Father, he was stripped of his light and cast down into the frozen Lake at the very depths of Hell.

He didn't have any demonic power or celestial light. He had two fists and anger in his soul and the will to always, always get back up.

He didn't know where his soul was destined for when he died, but he strongly suspected it was Hell and there was nothing he could do about it. He tried to not let that fact bother him, even when he dreamed of the ice trapping him like it did for so many years.

He had a sharp tongue and blunt sticks that he used to hurt people who would hurt others, on both sides of the law. People called him a Devil, not knowing his true nature, and feared his judgement.

In the end, his flesh was flesh and his blood was blood and one day, he would fall.

Matt was only human.

That was enough.