Chapter Text
There had been a time when Claire Temple answered the phone. When Matt Murdock could show up bleeding on her couch and she would patch him up, no matter the hour. In those days, there were no questions he couldn’t dodge and no lines he couldn’t blur.
That time didn’t last. It never did.
Claire had seen where it was heading long before he did: the dark direction, the impossible weight he kept choosing to carry entirely alone. She hadn’t yelled, and she hadn’t tried to stop him. She had just… stepped away.
And Matt had let her. Because some buried, honest part of him knew she was right.
Which meant now he was lying flat in a damp alley, his own blood soaking steadily into the cold concrete, breath coming in shallow, agonizing hitches. He had no one left to call.
The city pressed in around him, too loud and too sharp. Every distant siren, every heavy footstep on the avenue, every dripping pipe overhead echoed like a gunshot through his skull.
He tried to shift his weight, but his body refused.
“…not like this,” he muttered, trying to pull himself upright against the brick wall without crying out. The last thing he needed was to draw attention to himself in this state.
Then, he heard it.
Footsteps approached the mouth of the alley: light, measured, and rhythmic. It wasn’t the hurried, aggressive stride of a predator, nor the erratic stumble of a drunk. Not the sound you usually hear from someone who is about to pose a threat, but he stilled himself and stayed locked into the sound anyway. Hell’s Kitchen could swallow the naive up whole if you let your guard down for even a moment.
As the footsteps drew closer, his brow furrowed. The harsh stench of garbage and copper blood was suddenly cut by something sweet wafting through the air: the distinct scent of a woman’s perfume. Then, a voice rang out. Distinctly feminine, hesitant, but remarkably devoid of fear.
“Hey.”
Matt forced his fractured focus onto her. Her heartbeat was steady. Far too steady for an ordinary civilian stumbling onto a dying man in the dark.
“You’re losing a lot of blood,” the voice said matter of factly, as if she’d seen worse hundreds of times before.
Matt let out a weak, ragged breath. “…you should go,” he managed to get out.
She paused, the rustle of her jacket settling. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”
Matt felt her shift, kneeling right at his side. She was close. Too close. Driven by pure survival instinct, Matt’s hand shot out, his fingers locking tightly around her wrist.
“Don’t–” he started. But the words died in his throat.
The air shifted. The atmospheric pressure around them altered, and moisture began to gather rapidly. He felt it through his heightened senses: subtle at first, then unmistakable. Water was pulling inward, condensing and holding shape in mid air where it absolutely shouldn’t have been.
“What–” he breathed, his mind racing to map out the impossibility of it.
“Relax,” she said, her tone sharpening slightly. “Or don’t, but I need you to stop moving.”
A cool, soothing pressure hit his lacerated side. There was no cloth, no gauze, and no sting of alcohol. All he felt was a localized, flowing stream of pure, cold water binding his wound.
The white hot pain dulled almost immediately. It didn’t disappear entirely, but the screaming agony quieted to a distant hum.
Matt’s grip tightened slightly around her wrist – not to stop her anymore, but to confirm she was actually real, that this wasn't a blood loss induced hallucination.
“I’d recommend letting go of me,” she said calmly, though her voice carried a firm edge. “I can’t heal you very effectively if I only have one hand.”
His fingers uncoiled, his hand dropping to his lap as he gave in to her request. His guard remained high, but he couldn’t deny the physical reality: whatever she was doing was working.
Now using both hands, she beckoned the water to move again. Her movements were precise, perfectly controlled. Matt tilted his head, involuntarily focusing on the rhythm of her breathing – a slow, deliberate inhale through the nose, followed by a measured exhale through the mouth. It was grounded. Almost hypnotic.
He tried to focus on something more practical like her stance, the structural rhythm of her heartbeat, anything to identify her, but the steady, fluid manipulation of the water kept pulling his attention back.
“…what are you?” he asked.
She let out a soft huff of genuine amusement. “Bold question for a guy dressed like that.”
A ghost of a smile touched Matt's lips, but it vanished instantly as a new sound cut through the quiet. More footsteps were turning into the alley, heavy, scraping, and explicitly hostile.
“Hey!” a rough voice called from the entrance. “What the hell’s going on back there?”
The woman’s hands stilled. Matt tensed, his ears tracking the stranger as he stepped closer, the man's heartbeat loud, fast, and predatory.
“Well, well,” the man chuckled. “Looks like I found something interesting.”
Matt gritted his teeth and tried to push himself up against the wall, but his legs wouldn't cooperate.
“Stay down,” she whispered quickly.
“…you should go,” Matt repeated, the urgency bleeding into his tone.
“Yeah,” she muttered under her breath, her posture shifting. “Still not happening.”
“Well, aren’t you a pretty one,” the man laughed, the sharp metallic click of a pocket knife echoing in the narrow space. “This is going to be fun.”
He lunged.
She reacted entirely on instinct. With a sharp snap of her wrists, water whipped upward from the ground. It was thin, pressurized, and fast enough to slice through the air. It wasn't a lethal blow, but it struck the man squarely across the face with the force of a solid crack.
The man yelled out in pure shock, grabbing his eyes as the unexpected impact threw him entirely off kilter, sending him crashing to the pavement.
Matt felt the displaced air as the water traveled. Unused to tracking an element behaving so unnaturally, his senses struggled to map it at first. But as he focused harder, he caught the displacement. It wasn't so different from tracking the trajectory of a thrown knife.
Seeing a fleeting window of opportunity, the woman knelt back down quickly, focusing her energy on finishing the last of Matt's major injuries: a severely sprained ankle that was keeping him grounded.
But the attacker recovered quicker than she anticipated. Once the initial shock of the water wore off, rage took over. He scrambled to his feet, closing the few feet of distance between them in seconds.
Standing up to meet him, she barely dodged a wild swing. She stumbled back against the opposite wall, recovering quickly enough to bring her hands up into a defensive guard.
“Okay,” she muttered to herself. “We’re improvising.”
The man came at her again, tighter this time, his swings fueled by anger.
Healed just enough to intervene, Matt forced himself to his feet. He lunged forward, intercepting the man's next strike before it could land on her, driving his elbow into the attacker's ribs with practiced, devastating precision.
The fight didn’t last long after that. A few swift, coordinated strikes, and the man was unconscious on the concrete.
Silence settled over the alley once more.
Matt exhaled slowly, turning his head slightly toward her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she replied instantly, the words leaving her mouth before he could even finish the question.
Matt tilted his head, listening intently. He could hear the rapid, fluttering rhythm of her elevated heart rate and the shallow catch in her chest. “…no, you’re not.”
“Compared to you?” she shot back, a defensive armor slipping into her voice. “I’m thriving.”
That elicited a faint, tired huff of laughter from him. He paused, the reality of what she had done settling in. “…thank you,” he said quietly.
There was another, smaller pause from her end, her heartbeat slowing just a fraction. “Yeah,” she said. “Try not to make it a habit.”
He shifted his weight, testing his balance. His ankle held perfectly. The way his body felt shouldn’t have been biologically possible after the trauma he’d taken, not this quickly.
“This was you,” he said, gesturing generally to his side and his leg. “The water. You healed me with it.”
His deliberate probe for information was met with a wall of silence.
“…you hit pretty hard for someone half dead,” she deflected cleanly.
“And you didn’t answer the question.”
She took a beat, her breathing pausing as if she were carefully weighing exactly what she should and shouldn't reveal to a masked vigilante.
“Neither did you.”
For the second time that night, Matt found himself on the verge of a smile. “…fair.”
They stood there in the quiet of the 3:00 AM chill, the space between them vibrating with unasked questions.
“I can help you get home,” Matt offered finally, breaking the stalemate. “In case this guy has friends nearby.”
Her refusal was immediate. “No.”
Matt frowned. “It’s not safe–”
“I know,” she interrupted. Her tone wasn't dismissive; it carried the weight of someone who understood exactly how dangerous Hell’s Kitchen could be. “I’ve been doing this longer than you think.”
That caught him off guard. “…this?” he asked.
“Helping people who don’t end up on the right side of a headline,” she said, her voice turning wry. “I’m guessing The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen wasn’t your first choice in names?”
Matt let out a soft noise through his nose. “Not exactly.”
“Anyway, you still look a hell of a lot worse than I do,” she continued, stepping backward toward the main street.
“…if you don’t want to end up looking like I do, maybe you should let me escort you back,” he countered, his protective instincts kicking in.
She shrugged, the fabric of her coat shifting. “Maybe.” She glanced down at her wrist, the ticking of her watch echoing in the quiet. “Look, I’ll be fine. I’m just going to head home. I’m not usually out this late anyway.”
“Then why were you?”
“Some weird guy in a mask was bleeding out in an alleyway, so I had to step in and save him.”
The third time was the charm; Matt finally broke into a full smile, shaking his head. “…what’s your name?” he asked.
She froze, her heart skipping a singular beat as she calculated. Then: “…Shelby.”
He nodded slowly, committing the cadence of her voice to memory.
“And you?” She tilted her head, feigning innocence.
“Nice try,” he said.
She laughed softly, a warm sound that seemed entirely out of place in the grim alleyway. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
With two fingers raised to her temple, she gave him a short, parting salute. “Don’t follow me,” she warned, her tone light but carrying a serious undercurrent.
She turned on her heel and walked away. Matt stood perfectly still, listening to the distinct, fading rhythm of her footsteps until they merged with the ambient noise of the city. Only then did he turn in the opposite direction, breaking into a light, effortless jog around the corner and disappearing into the night.