Chapter Text
Wade fancies himself a bird-watcher of sorts. It's just that birds in this city don't really hold his attention, considering 98% are pigeons and the remaining 2% are government spy drones. Even under threat of grievous bodily injury he will maintain that he'd watch birds if there were just a little more variety, the fact remains that his attention is focused on a different sort of wildlife. The sort that’s a little more plentiful and easily observed in New York.
He’s got all the equipment for bird watching thanks to his other extracurriculars; notebooks, scrapbooks, cameras and binoculars, some climbing equipment and a few flashbangs. Sure, half that shit might not be needed when it comes to typical birdwatching, but the subjects Wade is interested in tend to pack a harder punch than your average Central Park cardinal.
When he’s not killing people or otherwise fucking up someone’s criminal enterprise, he likes to make his way through the city, keeping an eye out for one of the many self-proclaimed heroes that protect it. The most recent one on his radar is that primary colored baby swinging around Queens, but in birdwatching terms seeing him is like spotting a pigeon by a park bench. Spider Baby is brightly colored, easy to find, and quite frankly, fucking everywhere. Seriously, Wade has caught a glimpse of him just as many times when he’s been looking for the kid as he has when he’s minding his own damn business.
He keeps journals, like any good birdwatcher. Times and dates and locations of where his subject was spotted, notes on their appearance and behavior. Really, he’s just keeping an eye on the ecosystem, making sure everything stays in balance. There’s a method to the madness of the city, different species of birds that make up all the different types of relationships studied by sixth graders in their first biology class.
For mutualism, you’ve got whatever the hell is going on between Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. They work together, and their skills complement each other rather than one half carrying dead weight through fights. For commensalism, you can look to the two Hawkeyes over in Bed Stuy. Big Hawkeye is clearly showing new-Hawkeye the ropes, teaching the kid how not to get killed now that she’s decided to dive head first into crime fighting as a career path, and sometimes she actually manages to save his dumb ass. Probably doesn’t hurt that she’ll end up being the reason Big Hawkeye will be able to retire for real someday. Parasitism runs rampant amongst the heroes, one half gaining and the other half draining. The best example has to be Iron Man and Spider Baby. It’s obvious that Stark is leeching the kid of any sort of moral standing and individuality, using the kid’s desperation for a mentor figure to suck the soul out of his crime fighting and groom him into the worst thing a hero of the little people can become: an Avenger.
His birdwatching is rather well-rounded if he does say so himself; he keeps an eye out for all the birds, makes sure they seem happy and healthy and are contained to their native environments. He does, like most birdwatchers, have a favorite bird though. At least he assumes other birdwatchers have favorite birds; why the hell wouldn’t they?
The first time Wade laid eyes on him, he knew he was done for anyone else. He was still a fledgling (in terms of skill, not age– don’t get it twisted) cloaked in all black and basking in the blood he spilled. There’s an image that’ll stick in Wade’s mind forever, the moment he decided ‘that one’s mine’-- the Devil, standing over a man and smiling, blood all over his perfect white teeth as he brought his boot down on the man’s head.
He didn’t kill the guy, as hot as that would’ve been, but he did knock a whole handful of teeth out of the guy’s skull, some whole and some in shards. Wade gathered them up regardless of their condition after the Devil had left, brought them home and taped them into the first page of what has become his most prized possession over the years of observation. From black scarf tied around his head to the full red leather get up, Wade has been watching and waiting and gathering little mementos of each moment they’ve spent together, whether or not the Devil was aware of his presence. They’ve built a bond over the past few years, Wade knows it in his heart. He knows the Devil better than anyone; he’s seen his lowest, weakest moments– the times when he’s been a hair’s breadth from killing men who have deserved it and so much more. He’s been there, soaking up spilled blood onto old napkins and picking up shards of broken glass as keepsakes of these shared seconds together.
The Devil is as brutal as he is gorgeous, and those two things stole Wade’s heart the second he saw him in action. Trekking out to Hell’s Kitchen has become less of a task and more of a reward for when he’s actually gotten shit done or he’s feeling too low to do anything else.
The masses decided to go with a name undeserving of the creature they put it to, but to Wade he’ll always be The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. He’s watched the Devil, from fresh out of the nest to full grown, like one of those nature documentaries where the camera men follow a baby seal around from birth until its untimely death at the hands of an orca or global warming or some other shit that leaves you staring at the TV in bald-faced horror as the animal you’ve come to know and love is either ripped to shreds or slowly starves to death.
The point is, Wade cares about his birdwatching, and he cares about the birds that he watches. He notices when their behavior is out of character. The Devil has always had a strange migration cycle– random periods of time where he disappears off the face of the earth and gets the other birdwatchers on the forums all in a tizzy over his supposed death only to pop up again two months later like nothing ever happened.
Thing is, the longest the Devil’s migration has ever lasted previously was one hundred and ninety-seven days. Just over six and a half months where neither Wade nor any of the other enthusiasts nor any of his illegally obtained police reports spotted the Devil. Sure, the first go around was scary, and the second wasn’t much better, but over time it became something they all got used to. The Devil being gone again became a running joke. Hell, maybe the guy is some sort of uber-rich Batman wannabe and he’s off summering in the Hamptons or partying on his yacht when he’s not ripping out teeth and taking down names. Anytime there’s a catalyst he comes back. The problem is there was a catalyst a couple weeks back, a change in the seasons if you will, but the Devil didn’t migrate back.
The Punisher got all psycho in the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, gunned down a bunch of men like animals, and there still hasn’t been so much as a peep from the Devil. This time, the Devil’s been gone for two hundred and fifty-three days. Wade is trying not to worry, maybe the Devil is on his way back to Hell’s Kitchen from wherever he migrates to, but he’s been telling himself that for two weeks and still nothing.
“You see what the forums are saying?” Blind Al asks him one evening, screen reader and ancient laptop on the coffee table in front of her.
“I haven’t,” Wade replies as he begins stripping out of his gear right there in the living room. “Tell me Legolas, what have your elf-ears heard?”
Al flips him off, or tries to. She’s pointed about three feet to his right, but it’s a valiant effort.
“They’re sayin’ Daredevil finally kicked it. Some cop on the forums even admitted the last time anyone saw Daredevil was when he went into that building that collapsed ages ago. Said the rest of the heroes that went in with him made it out fine, but they seemed all sorts of fucked up. Sounds like the Devil died eight months ago at Midland Circle.”
“The Devil ain’t dead,” Wade says with a frown. “He can’t be dead– our anniversary is coming up!”
“Your anniversary?” Al asks with an eyebrow arched so high it’s visible above her glasses.
“You know,” Wade says, dropping his katanas to rifle through one of the shelves and pull out a scrapbook. “Our anniversary!” he says, dropping the book right onto Al’s laptop, open to the page with a grainy picture of Daredevil and various other mementos. “The first day we met!”
“You know I can’t see that shit,” Al replies. “What’re you tryin’ to show me?”
“Can’t you just feel the page or something?” Wade whines.
Al scoffs puts her hands on the page, recoiling instantly when she feels something that isn’t a picture. “What the fuck is that?!”
“Those are the teeth he knocked out! And some of the glass he broke and bled on! And a scrap of the tails off the cute little black mask he used to wear!” Wade explains eagerly, tapping each item as he lists them off. “I haven’t gotten close enough to get a lock of his hair yet, but on one of the other pages I used a napkin to soak up some blood he spat out after he got clocked in the face.”
Al looks physically pained. “Sweetheart, I know you care about the guy, but I think it’s time you took off the rose colored glasses and realized the psycho you’ve been stalking for three years might’ve finally gotten himself killed under a couple thousand tons of rubble.”
The Devil is not dead, and Wade is going to prove it. The Devil has a long history of getting feisty when any other mask enters his territory, so really all Wade has to do is be a bit disrespectful and go bird watching in his own mask. He’s never done that before, always remained an unseen observer in civilian clothes. It wouldn’t be very David Attenborough approved of him to go stomping into the savannah and antagonizing the wildlife, now would it? But the time for passive observation has come and gone; it’s time to get an answer as to whether or not the Devil is dead (he isn’t, he can’t be).
Hell's Kitchen is a fucking shithole, and that's putting in kindly. Credit where credit is due, things had been on the up and up before the Devil went and abandoned his post with no warning. That's gotta be the reason his neighborhood is such a nightmare; he does a great job of cleaning out gangs for a few months at a time before migrating off to who the fuck knows and leaving a massive power vacuum in his wake for all the remaining baddies to scramble over. Seriously, this guy needs some backup or a trainee if he plans to keep taking these goddamn sabbaticals.
Wade ain't no hero, that's for damn sure, but apparently the Devil gets extra pissy about people enacting their own vigilante justice in his territory. So if he's out here cracking skulls and taking names of petty criminals, that's not because he's had a change of heart or career. He's just trying to be enough of an annoyance to provoke the Devil out of hiding.
After the third mugging and second carjacking Wade can't help it; he lets his frustration get the best of him and he stabs this would-be mugger. Non-lethally, of course.
“Oh come the fuck on!” Wade snaps. “Do I need to start killing people like Castle does to get your attention?! Where the fuck are you?!”
“Fuck!” the mugger snaps, his hand clamped over his newly perforated shoulder. “Are you tryin’ to get Daredevil to notice you?! Man, he's fucking dead!”
“Don't say that!” Wade snaps.
“You friends with the guy or something?” douchebag asks. “Shit, sorry to break the news but he's been dead.”
“What makes you so sure of that?” Wade asks, wrapping his hand around the guy’s bloody arm and squeezing.
“Fuck!” Douchebag shouts, trying uselessly to free himself from the hold. Sorry buddy, not happening. “The traffickers came back man! They’ve been back for months! He always comes back when they do, but not this time!”
Maybe it’s not logical, but Wade’s pretty sure he’d know if the Devil was dead by some sort of cosmic notion, a disturbance in the force. He’s felt no such thing, so there ain’t no way the Devil is dead. He’s just… hibernating. That doesn’t really fit with his long, drawn out bird metaphor though. Roosting, maybe? That’s better.
The Devil is off roosting somewhere and it’s Wade’s job to wake him the fuck up. The kid’s only been doing what he does for what, three years? Maybe four? No fucking way has he earned his retirement yet. Not when Wade hasn’t even worked up the nerve to fucking talk to him.
The problem is that he's done his rounds of Hell’s Kitchen without seeing hide nor hair nor feather of the Devil. There's nothing but the gross patina of desperation and graffiti to be found in these alleys. In fact, he's about to call it quits for the night when he spots a silhouette on a rooftop not far from where he's currently perched.
For half a second his heart sings, until he realizes that's not the silhouette he's been looking for. There's no horns or mask or scary ass Muay Thai rope gauntlets– it's just a man. A man standing precariously close to the edge of a church’s roof.
The man is wearing a black suit that's definitely seen better days, and he's just… Standing there.
Yikes. Talking down jumpers has never been his forte, even if he does have a pretty stellar track record when it comes to just that. Still, he’s trying to do the Devil’s whole ‘helping the little people’ bit, and certainly this falls under that jurisdiction. With a loud sigh, Wade clambers over an air conditioning unit and makes his way towards the church. The man continues just standing there, unmoving and almost statuesque. He makes for a great, if a bit morbid, view.
“Y'know,” Wade starts cautiously as he approaches. “I've heard you Wallstreet types are all about swan diving. Never seen it for myself though.”
The man tilts his head slightly but doesn't seem too surprised that someone has joined him. He also doesn't say anything.
“Maybe Wallstreet ain't right, the suit seems a little cheap for that crowd,” Wade continues, chancing another step closer. “So what are you? Accountant who's been cooking the books? Crooked cop?”
Still nothing.
“C’mon sweetheart, you gotta give me something. I’m dyin’ to know what to put in the obituary of the guy who went headfirst off a church in Hell’s Kitchen," Wade tries yet again.
The man remains silent for another beat before speaking up in a voice that's scratchy from disuse. “Lawyer,” he says. “I was a lawyer.”
“But not anymore?” Wade asks. “You get fired? Disbarred? Why's lawyer in the past tense, gorgeous?”
“I died,” comes the quiet response, and Wade is suddenly very aware he's in the presence of someone potentially crazier than himself for once.
“Sweetheart, I really hate to break this to you, but if you already died there's no point in jumping. So why don't we just head back down to the sidewalk? Maybe get you inside the church to talk to someone? They've got nuns here, right? A Priest?”
The man shakes his head. “I can't go in there.”
“Aw, don't be shy, honey. You haven't killed yourself yet so all your sins are still forgivable. Maybe they'll make you do a few Hail Marys, but that's not so bad,” Wade tries again.
“I can't go inside. I've got the devil in me. It's what killed me.”
Wade thinks it's important to note that he doesn't believe in ghosts. He's done way too much murdering and never been haunted even once.
This being said, nothing prepares Wade for the reality of what he sees after he's done looking over to the audience following that admission from the man.
There's no blinding white light or floating spectre when he turns back to where the man was just standing. He’s just… gone.
Wade’s first instinct is obviously to look over the ledge, but there’s no broken and bleeding body on the pavement beneath. There’s no sign of the man anywhere.
“What the fuck,” he mutters, turning back to the audience.