Like a Handprint on My Heart

by poisonivory

Summary:

The day Foggy’s supposed to start working at Hogarth, Chao, and Benowitz, he wakes up, walks into the bathroom, starts to take a leak, glances down to check his aim, and freezes when he sees black letters on the inside of his right elbow.

His bladder forgotten, he brings his arm up, closer to his face and horizontal, as if he couldn't tell what the word was immediately. As if he'd somehow misread it, even though it's only four letters.

Matt.

Notes:

For the "heartbroken" prompt on my Daredevil Bingo card. Foggy's having a rough time, y'all.

Title is from "For Good" from Wicked. I'M SORRY FOR THE EARWORM AND THE FEELS.

The day Foggy’s supposed to start working at Hogarth, Chao, and Benowitz, he wakes up, walks into the bathroom, starts to take a leak, glances down to check his aim, and freezes when he sees black letters on the inside of his right elbow.

His bladder forgotten, he brings his arm up, closer to his face and horizontal, as if he couldn't tell what the word was immediately. As if he'd somehow misread it, even though it's only four letters.

Matt.

“Of fucking course,” he says, and turns around to sit down heavily on the toilet seat, head in his hands.

*

He’s never told anyone this, but the first morning he woke up in the dorms, the day after he met Matt, he took the longest and most thorough shower of his life. Not for the purpose of bodily hygiene, though - he was hunting, searching every inch of his skin for the name he was almost certain was on there somewhere.

Matt. Matthew. Hell, even the letter M would’ve been enough to make him happy. Anything that said that this feeling of connection, of rightness, wasn’t just in his head. That this was fate, him and Matt. Nelson and Murdock.

It wasn’t just that Matt was hot. Foggy had met hot people before. Foggy had dated hot people before. But there was something about Matt’s smile that made Foggy feel like he’d walk on burning coals just see it again, something that told him he’d be stupid about that smile for a long time. A lifetime, if Matt would let him.

He was already being stupid about it. Matt had given every indication that he didn’t even like boys, judging by how he’d reacted to Foggy’s boneheaded admiration the day before. But soulmates were platonic, sometimes. Foggy could deal with platonic.

But there were no words on his skin, just the usual stretch marks and freckles.

That was okay. They could just be friends. They could be the best friends ever, and Foggy would still be happy. He would be cool about this.

And if he couldn’t help thinking as he dried off that sometimes it took a little while for soulmarks to appear as the people in question got used to each other, well, no one ever had to know that but him.

*

Foggy scrubs the skin of his elbow raw in the shower, but the letters don’t disappear. Of course they don’t.

He’s not immune to the irony that they sit right where Matt’s hand would fall when Foggy guides him. When Foggy used to guide him.

Foggy covers Matt’s name with a sedate blue shirt and a tie with no pattern on it at all, and goes to work.

*

He doesn’t let himself check all day, despite how easy it would be to roll up his sleeve in the privacy of his corner office and peek. Even when he gets home, he waits until he’s halfway through a beer before he unbuttons his cuff and folds the starched cotton back.

Matt.

He’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed. He thinks he’s both. Relieved, because if the mark had been gone he would never have known whether it was really there in the first place or if he’d just imagined it, and the idea that he might be hallucinating Matt’s name on his skin is a troubling one, to say the least.

Disappointed, because now he has to figure out what to do about this.

“Why now?” he asks aloud. His voice echoes in his empty apartment. He holds his elbow up to talk directly to the letters. “Matt and I broke up. He told me to leave. No more Nelson and Murdock. You’re ten years too late.”

“Broke up” is a strong phrase, of course, considering they were never actually dating. But that’s what it feels like. Which is probably why Matt’s name has suddenly appeared on his skin - it’s like a stress breakout. His stupid skin is just reacting to his stupid heartbreak.

He knows that’s not how soul marks work.

“Don’t get your dumb hopes up,” he tells the letters. “It’s not like Matt’s suddenly got the word ‘Foggy’ on him.”

He doesn’t actually know that that’s true. He knows Matt hasn’t already had Foggy’s name on him - there’s very little of Matt’s skin Foggy hasn’t seen, thanks to Matt’s charming habit of getting himself nearly killed and leaving Foggy to put the broken, bloody, boxer-clad and ludicrously-toned pieces back together. It’s entirely possible that “Foggy” or “Franklin” or “the loser you walked out on, you dumbass” has suddenly appeared somewhere on Matt’s perfect body. It seems unlikely, though, considering the way Matt practically pushed him out the door the last time they spoke face to face; considering that Matt was too busy juggling two different women to bother coming to see Foggy in the hospital.

At least he knows Matt doesn’t have “Elektra” or “Karen” anywhere on him, either.

He feels petty and ashamed the minute he has the thought. Matt isn’t his. Matt’s never been his. Even the name on Foggy’s arm doesn’t mean Matt belongs to him - just that Foggy belongs to Matt, which is the least newsworthy fact in existence. If someone else can make Matt happy, Foggy shouldn’t begrudge them that.

And he’s been so good at not begrudging the hordes of swooning admirers Matt’s left in his wake over the past decade. He shouldn’t start now, when he’s lost whatever tenuous claim he already had to Matt.

Besides, it’s entirely possible that Matt has one of their names on him now. If Foggy can suddenly have Matt’s name after they’ve parted ways, who’s to say there’s not a brand over Matt’s heart telling him he belongs to Karen after all? Or that now that he and Elektra are back together doing whatever insane things they do together - breaking and entering in more Long Island McMansions? fighting ninjas? Foggy has no idea - she’s not stamped across his back like a beacon?

And honestly, how would Matt even know? The letters don’t feel any different than the rest of Foggy’s skin. Matt could have a hundred names and just be waiting for someone to tell him about them.

Maybe Foggy should call him.

Foggy bites back the thought as soon as he has it. He’s cut Matt out of his life. It was the healthy thing to do, both emotionally and not-getting-freaking-shot-wise. He knows it was the healthy thing to do. For all that people are fascinated by soul marks, the science on them isn’t really there. “Soulmate” is a poetic name, but considering that they can shift and change, that some people can have one or twenty or none, it doesn’t actually mean that you have to be with the person written across your body.

And the fact of the matter is, Matt doesn’t want Foggy back.

Foggy finishes his beer and gets up to get another one. Plenty of people have marks they never do anything about. Foggy will just be one more.

But he's going to need a lot more alcohol to cope with that knowledge right now.

*

The problem with trying to avoid your ex-partner/best friend(/soulmate) when you both live in the same tiny neighborhood is, well, you both live in the same tiny neighborhood. And Matt and Foggy are in agreement as to the best bagel place in Hell’s Kitchen, so Foggy really shouldn’t feel like his stomach has dropped to his knees when he walks into the tiny bakery on a Sunday morning in late January and sees the back of a familiar messy head.

He thinks about bolting, but he knows Matt already knows he’s there. Matt probably smelled him coming half a mile out. Foggy's not about to let Matt Murdock keep him from the pumpernickel with the works he's so richly entitled to.

Unbidden, his left hand curves around the mark hidden beneath the sleeve of his right arm.

Matt places his order - Foggy's not quite close enough to hear, but he knows it's a whole wheat bagel with plain cream cheese and a black coffee, because Matt is nothing if not a creature of habit and boring dietary choices - and steps to the side to wait. He doesn't betray a hint of recognition until Foggy places his order. Because heaven forbid the bagel guys suspect Matt's secret life, of course.

“Pumpernickel, extra toasty, everything on it, and a large coffee light and sweet,” Foggy says, and Matt makes a show of startled recognition that, now that Foggy's watching for it, makes him wonder how he ever believed a single one of Matt's lies.

“Foggy?” Matt asks, like he's unsure.

“Oh, Matt, hi. I didn't see you there,” Foggy says for the benefit of the bagel guys, because he knows Matt heard his heartbeat start to race when Foggy saw him. Hell, Matt could probably smell him sweating.

Foggy drops his change in the tip jar and steps over to the waiting area with Matt. Matt looks a little gaunt, extra stubbly, and very nervous. Foggy wishes all three of those things didn't have such an effect on him. “How've you been?” Matt asks.

So they're doing the small talk thing. “Fine,” Foggy says, because “great” will read as a lie but “fine” might squeak by under the wire. “You?”

“Yeah, fine. Good.” One of the store employees calls out Matt’s order and he collects it, but he doesn’t leave. “How’s HC&B?”

“Fine.” This is excruciating. Foggy decides to cut to the chase. “How’s Elektra?”

Matt goes pale. What, did he think Foggy wouldn’t have the guts to ask? That Foggy would hear about Karen finding another woman in Matt’s bed - because Foggy’s still talking to Karen, even if she read him the riot act about keeping Matt’s secret for so long once Matt finally came clean with her - and wouldn’t be able to put two and two together?

Matt swallows visibly, and the hand clutching the paper bag with his bag shakes so badly the rustle of paper is audible. “I,” he says, “I, I,” and Foggy starts to worry. “I just remembered. I. I have to go.”

Foggy opens his mouth to say - he’s not sure what. But Matt’s already booking it out of there, cane whipping back and forth so fast that the other customers leap out of the way to avoid being hit.

That’s...not what Foggy expected. Did Matt and Elektra break up again? There’s something about the shattered expression on Matt’s face that reminds him of all those years ago in college when Foggy came and found him at that mansion way out in the middle of nowhere, when he had to practically scrape Matt off his mattress every morning and carry him to class to keep him from failing. If he had to leave Matt’s emotional wellbeing in hands other than his own, they wouldn’t be Elektra’s.

But, he reminds himself firmly, he’s not responsible for Matt’s emotional wellbeing, no matter what the word on his arm says. After all, Matt doesn’t have Foggy’s name in return. If he did, he wouldn’t have fled like that, right?

The guy behind the counter calls out his order and Foggy collects it without much enthusiasm. Somehow, he’s lost his appetite.

*

He’d...checked.

Not every day. Even he wasn’t that pathetic.

But yeah, occasionally, when he was feeling particularly gooshy towards Matt, he’d do a quick perusal in the shower, just to be sure the name hadn’t appeared when he wasn’t paying attention. When he went home to his parents’ for the weekend, he’d lock himself in the bathroom and crane his neck to scan his own back in the mirror, secure in the knowledge that, say, Chad from down the hall wouldn’t walk in and towel whip him for being a romantic weirdo where everyone in the dorm could see. When he and Matt were squished onto Foggy’s bed together watching a movie and Matt would doze off with his face pillowed on Foggy’s chest, Foggy couldn’t help looking over his hands and arms, tugging up his own shirt to check his stomach and sides, because surely, surely…

How could he feel this much for someone without it being fate?

He checked Matt, too. Oh, he refused to let himself take discreet glances at Matt when he changed, which would've been well beyond the creepy pale, but Matt was functionally allergic to shirts in warm weather, and Foggy was the one charged with putting sunblock on him the two or three times they went to the beach. There wasn't much of Matt he hadn't seen even before he'd been reduced to cutting Matt's bloody clothes off of him. And there was never any writing on that perfect body, not one single letter.

He remembered thinking, as he screwed the Nelson and Murdock sign into the wall outside their office, that this was better. This was metal and brick and stone, and they'd chosen each other, even after everything. They were together because they wanted to be. That meant more than fate.

The sign is still there. At least, Foggy's pretty sure it is. He always takes the long way around that block.

Now that he's got fate and choice alike on his side, he's starting to realize neither one means shit to the drunken stumblings of a pointless universe.

*

“Holy shit,” Marci says over a working lunch in February, three weeks after Foggy runs into Matt.

“What?” Foggy asks around a mouthful of dry chicken Caesar salad wrap.

“I'm reading the society page,” she says. He gives her a look over their laptop screens. “Fuck you, Foggy Bear, I can take a break. Anyway you remember that ambassador’s daughter we went to college with? The Greek one? She dropped out halfway through sophomore year and there were all those crazy rumors?”

Foggy swallows his mouthful with difficulty and puts the rest of the wrap down. He doesn't think he'll want it. “Elektra.”

“Oh right, didn't Matt date her for a while? What a weird couple. Anyway.” Marci’s eyes go wide as she drops her bombshell. “She died.”

There's no air in the room all of a sudden. “What?”

“Yeah, all it says are ‘tragic circumstances’ and that the family requests their privacy...probably a drug overdose, right? Or a DUI. She was always kind of wild.” Marci drums her nails against her trackpad, thoughtful. “She wasn't even thirty. God. Do you think Matt knows?”

Matt's face is never far from Foggy's mind’s eye but he sees it now, pale and gaunt. Grief-stricken, even if Foggy didn't know it at the time. “I don't know,” he lies, and pushes the rest of his wrap into the garbage.

*

He doesn't let himself hesitate before knocking on Matt's door, because if Matt's home he already knows Foggy's there. He’s not sure what he expects, but Matt’s still wearing work clothes when Foggy opens the door, though his tie is loose and his sleeves are rolled up. Foggy wasn’t even sure Matt was still going to work.

“Hi,” Matt says.

“Hi,” Foggy says. “Can I come in?”

Matt steps back to let Foggy into the apartment. It’s hardly an effusive welcome, but Foggy probably doesn’t deserve anything more.

No - now he’s not being fair to himself. How could he have known about Elektra?

Still. In his worst moments he’d have given anything to be able to hurt Matt anywhere close to as deeply as Matt’s hurt him. Now that he has the bloody weapon in his hand, he wishes he could drop it.

In the living room, Foggy shoves his hands into his pockets so that he doesn’t have to figure out what to do with them. “I heard about Elektra,” he says.

Matt goes brittle. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s laughably pitiful, and at the same time far too all-encompassing. There are so many things Foggy isn’t sorry for.

“Yeah,” Matt says. He’s not wearing his glasses but he might as well be, for all his expression is giving Foggy. “So am I.”

“Matt, why didn’t you tell me?” Foggy says before he can stop himself, then winces.

And Matt doesn’t let how stupid that was slide. “When would it have come up?” he asks. “During our weekly chats? At the bagel place, while you pretend not to know me? At the office?”

“You told me to - ” Foggy starts, then clamps down on it. No. This is not how condolences work. “You could have told me about this,” he says. “I know you don’t have...that you don’t know many other people who knew her. Not that I knew her well, but I would have listened. About this.”

Matt’s jaw clenches. “Yeah, well, if I need to unburden myself, there’s always Father Lantom. At least I know he’s not there out of pity.”

“Feeling bad that something terrible happened isn’t pity, Matt, it’s…” Foggy cuts himself off with a sigh. “You don’t have to go through this alone, is all.”

“Really? Because from where I’m standing, it sure seems like I do.”

It’s only the fact that Foggy knows Matt’s hurting that keeps him from snapping in response. “Look, things are...not great between us. Acknowledged. But I said a shitty thing, and I just wanted to come and tell you that I’m sorry I was shitty, and I’m sorry Elektra’s gone, and I’m sorry you’re in pain. And even if we’re not...partners...anymore, well, I’ve still got ears if you wanna use ‘em. That’s all.”

Matt’s face works through the peculiar series of twitches it always does when he’s feeling a lot of emotions at once and thinks it doesn’t show. “Foggy, in all the time we’ve known each other, have I ever talked about Elektra with you?”

No. Matt had never been one to kiss and tell, but he’d gone total man of mystery when he and Elektra were dating, disappearing at her beck and call and returning at odd hours looking dazed and kiss-bruised. At the time Foggy had chalked it up to whatever low-level criminal shenanigans Elektra was dragging Matt into, and the subsequent tacit banning of her name as the logical result of Matt’s heartbreak. Now he’s pretty sure that whatever she was into, it was at least ninja-adjacent. It makes sense that Matt wouldn’t have shared any of that with Foggy - not before Foggy knew about Matt’s abilities, and not after, when Elektra was the reason Matt hung Foggy out to dry on the Castle case.

Either way, it doesn’t look like Matt’s about to break the old familiar patterns now. “No,” Foggy says, and knows he can’t hide the hurt in his voice from Matt.

Matt sets his jaw. “Then why would I start now?”

It takes a minute for Foggy to find his voice, even though he knew it was coming. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, all right. I get it. Sorry.”

He heads for the door. Matt follows behind him, and as Foggy reaches for the doorknob, Matt pulls in a breath. “Foggy...I appreciate you coming by.”

Foggy shakes his head and opens the door. It’s too little, too late. “Yeah. I’ll see you around, Matt.”

“You gonna act like you know me when you do?” Matt asks.

Foggy doesn’t look back over his shoulder. He knows if he looks at Matt’s face he’ll crumble. “Why would I start now?” he asks, and walks out.

*

He has dinner with his parents at their new place out in Jersey. He brings a wildly overpriced bottle of pinot noir, just because he can. But his dad's tired and red wine gives his mom a headache, so he's the only one to drink any. He doesn't admit out loud that he can't tell the difference between it and the eight dollar stuff.

“How's that fancy firm of yours?” his dad asks as he adds salt to his roast beef. Foggy's mom makes a disapproving noise - Foggy's dad is supposed to be watching his sodium - and Foggy's dad wrinkles his nose at her, teasing. It's an old argument, long past the words they no longer need. The name “Anna” is clear and black on the inside of Foggy's dad’s wrist as he reaches to put the salt back. Foggy swallows down unbearable loneliness.

“It's fine,” he says, and sips the wine. “Keeps me busy. I wish there was more time in the courtroom, I guess, but it's not a bad thing to settle as much as we do. Better for our clients.”

“You always did like an audience, Harold Hill,” his mom says, and Foggy rolls his eyes, because sixteen years is a long time to be referencing a play he starred in in middle school. “Have you heard from Matt?”

Foggy's knife slips and screeches against his plate. “That's kind of a non sequitur.”

“I'm just wondering,” she says. “You boys were inseparable for so long, I just...don't really understand what happened there.”

Well, Mom, Matt was more interested in being a self-righteous criminal with a death wish than in being my partner or friend, so I decided I had enough bullet holes in me and left. Good news, though, apparently he's my soulmate, even if I'm not his.

“I told you what happened,” Foggy says evenly. “Matt and I had different visions for how we should run our practice. In that I thought we should actually show up, and he didn't.”

“Mm,” his mom says, like she's acknowledging that that's Foggy's reason but not that it might be a good one. “It just seems too bad to me to throw away so many years of friendship just because you two aren't working together anymore.”

“Jesus, Mom!” Foggy says, dropping his silverware with a clatter. “I’m not throwing anything away. Matt's the one who left me to defend a mass murderer by myself and walked away from me when I had a bullet hole in my shoulder. I know he's your favorite, but I'm your fucking son. You could at least pretend you're on my side.”

“Don't swear at your mother,” his dad snaps.

“Oh, sweetheart, I am on your side,” his mom says, ignoring Foggy's F bomb. “It's just that you seem so...you seem like you miss him. I just don't want you to have any regrets. That's all.”

Foggy stares very hard at his plate. “Everyone has regrets,” he says quietly. “But I'd rather be unhappy without Matt than unhappy with him. At least this way I've got a little dignity left.”

It's the closest he's come to talking about how he feels about Matt with his parents since he was eighteen, when he brought Matt home for a visit and afterwards his mother had gently said that if there was ever anything Foggy needed to tell her about himself, well… Foggy had turned bright red and changed the subject, which he supposed was answer enough.

He supposed he's always been transparent.

His mother reaches out and squeezes his wrist, and his father clears his throat and says, “So, what's it like working for that Jeri Hogarth, huh? She seems like a firecracker.”

Foggy nods, and doesn't touch his elbow. “Yeah,” he says. “So I was in her office last week…”

They let the conversation move on, and Foggy pours himself a third glass of wine that he knows he shouldn’t have. Otherwise it’ll just end up going down the sink.

*

Freshman year, Matt and Foggy lived down the hall from a guy named Jason who’d had the name “Marisol” on his ankle since birth - incredibly rare for a soul mark.

Senior year, Jason sat next to a girl named Marisol in a philosophy seminar who’d had the name “Jason” behind her knee for just as long.

A week later, they were married at City Hall. One of the frats threw a kegger in their honor - from-birth soulmates finding each other was a big deal - and Matt and Foggy dutifully got wasted before staggering back to their dorm. Matt’s bed was closer to the door, which was a good enough reason for Foggy to flop across the end of it with a sigh. Matt made a pretending-to-be-annoyed noise before sitting up against the headboard and letting his legs drape over Foggy’s back.

“Do you ever wish you had one?” Foggy asked after a long moment of picking at the fringe of the extra-soft fleece blanket he’d gotten Matt last Christmas.

Matt was silent for so long that his eventual “One what?” made Foggy snort.

“You know what,” Foggy said. “Do you ever wish you just...knew?”

“You don’t just know,” Matt said, because the boy was born contrary. “They could get divorced next week.”

“Bite your tongue, Murdock!”

“Well, they could,” Matt insisted. “And some people never find their mates. Some people find theirs after they've already fallen in love with someone else, or their marks don't appear until after they're married. Some marks are platonic, and some, some people have more than one. Having someone's name written on you doesn't mean you're meant to be together forever. It doesn't stop you from getting hurt.”

“Okay, thank you, I took Sociology of Soul Marks last semester too.” Foggy rolled over with a groan; Matt lifted his legs to let him, then resettled them across Foggy's stomach. “It gives you a starting point, though. It gives you some proof that it could be permanent.”

“Nothing's permanent, Foggy,” Matt pointed out. “People die.”

“Wow, you are a maudlin drunk tonight. Don't you believe in romance?” Foggy reached down and wrapped his hand around Matt's sock-clad ankle. Jason had Marisol’s name on his ankle. If Matt had something, would it say “Foggy” or “Franklin?”

Or something else entirely, Foggy reminded himself.

“It's not maudlin, and it's not unromantic, either,” Matt said. “If someone's going to be with me forever, I want it to be because they want to be, and not because some quirk of fate or biology that we don't even understand wrote my name on their skin.”

Foggy closed his mouth before he could assure Matt that he didn't have to worry in that department. Foggy didn't have a mark, but he planned on sticking with Matt for life.

“I guess that makes sense,” he said eventually, and yawned.

“Mmrph,” Matt mumbled in response, sliding down until he was horizontal. “If you're gonna fall asleep here, at least turn yourself the right way so I can use the blankets.”

Foggy let out a long-suffering sigh and squirmed until he was next to Matt, pulling the blanket with him as he went. “You don't just love me for my body heat, do you, Matty?”

“Of course not,” Matt said, rolling over to press his back against Foggy's side. “I also love you for the care packages your mom sends.”

He wiggled his butt against Foggy's hip to show he was kidding, and Foggy smiled into the darkness. It wasn't a soul mark, but Foggy would take it.

*

Daredevil’s on the news in March: a hostage situation that he somehow got involved in, and suddenly there’s twelve innocent civilians in there with some crazy rednecks with guns, and only Matt between them and death, and the cops can’t send anyone in after them because they’re afraid of escalating the situation even further.

Foggy doesn’t really believe in God, not the way Matt does, but he sits and he watches as the live news coverage goes on long into the night, and he prays. Hand curved around the name on his elbow, he whispers pleas to whoever might be listening until he’s forgotten he’s even speaking them out loud.

Just as dawn’s starting to break, the hostages come out slowly, hands in the air to keep the cops from shooting them by mistake. One lucky cameraman gets a distant shot of Daredevil making his escape over the rooftops - moving slower than usual, limping a little maybe, but very definitively alive.

Foggy’s so relieved he’s dizzy, and has to sit with his head between his knees for a minute before he can stand up and go to bed. He calls out sick and sleeps in. That afternoon he walks down Matt’s street on his way back from a late lunch, but all he does is stand outside Matt’s building for too long to be anything but pathetic before heading back home.

*

He sees Matt three days later at the post office - too far to speak, but close enough to see the impressive shiner beneath Matt’s glasses. Matt turns his head in Foggy’s direction, opens his mouth, but doesn’t move out of his place in line.

Foggy buys his stamps and tries to remember how to breathe normally until he’s out of Matt’s earshot again.

*

In mid-April there’s a heat wave, just in time for the AC in Foggy’s supposedly fancy new office to go on the fritz. He loosens his tie and rolls up his sleeves and keeps working.

Three hours later, Marci’s perched on his desk telling him about the misogynistic opposing counsel she eviscerated in court when she freezes. “Um. Foggy?”

He raises his eyebrows at her. “You okay?”

“That remains to be seen,” she says. “Did you...get a new tattoo?”

Foggy stares at her, baffled, before following her line of sight...to his elbow. Where the only part of his mark that’s visible, peeking out past his rolled-up sleeve, is an M and an A.

Oh.

He sighs, then pushes his sleeve up to reveal the rest of the name. Some of the color returns to Marci’s face.

“Okay,” she says. “Yeah. That...that makes a little more sense. Not that I don’t love you, Foggy Bear…”

“I know,” he says quickly. He’s not offended. “I love you too, but we’re not…”

“No, we’re not,” she agrees.

It’s easy, uncomplicated, the way things usually are with Marci. They’re nothing alike, but they understand each other just the same. He wonders if things would be this easy and uncomplicated if she was his soulmate. Isn’t the whole point of soulmates to make this whole “love” thing more straightforward?

Marci’s initial panic has clearly passed, because now she’s stuck on thoughtful. “That wasn’t there the last time I got you to shed a few layers,” she says. They haven’t slept together since he joined the firm - it seemed like a recipe for disaster now that they're coworkers - but it’s still been less than a year since she last saw him naked.

Foggy has a feeling his smile is bitter. “It showed up the day I started working here.”

Marci gives a low whistle. “Well fuck me sideways,” she says. “Someone up there really doesn’t like you.” Foggy gives a wry shrug. “Does he know?”

Foggy shakes his head. “What good would it do?”

“Well, if I know your goody two-shoes overly moralistic altar boy of an ex-BFF, I’d say it’d at least make him feel nauseatingly guilty about all the shit he put you through. Which is more than enough of a reason to spill the beans in my opinion,” Marci says, and beams her sharkiest smile at him.

“Yeah,” Foggy says, because she’s right about the first part, and maybe even the second. “But I don’t want him on those terms.”

Marci sighs, and stands up, leans over to kiss Foggy on the top of his head. “Too good for this world, Foggy Nelson,” she says. “You know I’m always available if you need to get super drunk over this, right? Or just in general.”

“I know,” he says, and this smile is more genuine. “Thanks, Marce.”

The funny thing is, it doesn’t even hurt to talk about it. Much.

*

Two weeks later, he’s woken from a sound sleep by a pounding on his window. He jolts upright, heart racing, and finally makes out a dark silhouette through the curtain.

“Matt?” he whispers, because any alternative is too terrifying to contemplate.

There’s another knock, a rat-tat double beat that Foggy takes as an affirmative - and besides, who else could have heard his whisper? He’s in motion before he realizes it, scrambling out of bed and pushing aside the curtain, because if Matt’s coming here in the middle of the night he must be in trouble, he must be in danger, he needs help -

Matt’s not alone.

Elektra’s with him. Thin and staring and filthy, eyes like bruises in a deathly pale face, but definitely Elektra.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says. He’s in the Daredevil suit, but it’s still clear from what little shows of his face how frantic he is. “I didn’t know where else to take her. They already know where I live.”

“I...I…” Foggy opens and closes his mouth a few times, like a fish. “Get inside.”

Matt has to practically carry Elektra through the window, which doesn’t actually seem all that difficult because she looks like she weighs almost nothing. She’s silent and very still, except for her eyes, which keep darting around the room, resting on Foggy’s face for a moment before flinching away at any sound. Foggy never knew her that well back in college, but neither “silent” nor “still” ever seemed like words that fit her well.

“I thought you were dead,” Foggy says to her, moronically, because he’s too confused and alarmed for tact at the moment.

“She was,” Matt says.

“Well,” Foggy says. “That’s a new one.”

Elektra falters, and Matt catches her. “She needs to rest,” Matt says. “Maybe the couch…?”

Foggy’s always been his mother’s son, and his nurturing instincts kick in now and save him from shock. It’s like Captain America, he tells himself. Captain America came back from the dead, and so can your ex-best friend’s ex-ninja ex-girlfriend. “Put her in the bed. I’ll take the couch,” he says. Matt pauses. “Sorry, Matt. You come back from the dead, you get the comfiest sleeping arrangements in the place. I don’t make the rules.”

“Thank you,” Matt says, and Foggy knows he doesn’t mean about the bed.

Matt steers Elektra to the bed and guides her under the rumpled sheets. She’s covered in dirt and blood but Foggy tries not to care. He can afford new sheets if it doesn’t wash out. At least she’s not wearing shoes, which is a relief right up until he wonders what she was doing parkouring over roofs and fire escapes with no shoes on.

“Rest,” Matt murmurs, low and tender with his gloved hand wrapped around one of hers. “I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise.”

It’s not something Foggy should be privy to, and he wanders awkwardly out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where he pulls a couple of beers out of the fridge before rummaging through the cabinets to see if he’ll have enough food for two fugitive vigilantes in the morning. A minute later Matt comes out to join him, pulling his mask off as he does.

“She’s sleeping now,” he says. “I think. I’m not totally sure if she can sleep anymore, or…” He spreads his hands, helpless.

Foggy hands him a beer.

“I am sorry,” Matt says, turning the bottle around and around in his hands without drinking from it. “I just...I panicked. I needed to take her somewhere they wouldn’t find her.”

Foggy nods. “I think I’m owed a very long explanation here.”

Matt tells him, sitting side by side on the couch but nowhere close enough to touch. He tells Foggy about a girl who saw through all of Matt’s pretenses and what really happened the night Foggy came to collect a tearstained Matt from police custody out on Long Island; he tells Foggy about unkillable ninjas and his jackass mentor being even more of a jackass than previously suspected and something called a Black Sky, which would be a better explanation if Matt himself seemed to have any idea what it was; he tells Foggy about a resurrection attempt gone wrong, or right, depending on how you looked at it.

“They wanted to bring her back as one of them,” Matt says. “But I...honestly, I don’t even know what I did, but I interrupted whatever they were pumping into her and...I think she’s herself. I don’t think they got their claws into her. But they’re going to want her back.” Foggy must have some involuntary reaction to that that Matt can perceive, because he hastily adds, “I’m not going to let them trace this back to you, Foggy. I promise.”

“Watch out, Matty,” Foggy says before he can catch himself. “You're making an awful lot of promises tonight.”

Something pained flickers over Matt's face and is gone. “I realize I don't have the right to ask this of you,” he says. “If you want us to leave…”

“Oh come on, Matt, what do you take me for?” Foggy snaps. “This is Elektra’s life. She might not be my bosom buddy but if hiding her here will keep her safe then let's go get her a toothbrush and her own pair of bunny slippers.”

Matt picks at the label on his beer bottle. “I’m,” he says. “I’m sorry for what I said before. About Elektra, when you came to see me. I was hurting and I took it out on you when you were trying to be kind.”

“I said some dickish things too,” Foggy says. It’s not really an apology, because he’s not ready to apologize, and he doesn’t want to say it’s okay when it’s really, really not. But that doesn’t mean he’s been on his best behavior.

“Yeah, well, I probably deserved them.”

For some reason, self-flagellating Matt pisses Foggy off more than prickly, defensive Matt, so he changes the subject. “What’s your plan?” he asks. “I mean, for tonight? I can lend you something to sleep in and I guess you can share the bed with Elektra…”

“No, I don’t want to disturb her,” Matt says. “I’ll keep watch for a while. I don’t think they were able to track us, but if they did…” His jaw clenches. “I’m not supposed to promise you anything, I know. But they’re not touching either of you.”

Foggy takes a minute to let the lump in his throat at Matt’s determination subside. He shouldn’t be touched. Matt would throw himself in front of a bullet for anyone in this city, he knows that. It doesn’t make Foggy special, except that Matt might be carrying around a little more guilt over Foggy than for the average New Yorker. Not to mention Matt’s not great at the post-bullet follow-through.

“Fine,” he says, and gets up to fetch a couple of spare blankets from his linen closet. He hands one to Matt. “In case you change your mind. Otherwise, you know where everything is. Help yourself to whatever. I’m gonna try and get some sleep.”

“Thanks,” Matt says, clutching the blanket like he’s not sure what to do with it. He opens his mouth again, then closes it without a word.

Foggy doesn’t have time to wait for Matt to figure out what he wants to say. It’s nearly dawn, and even though Foggy’s calling out ninjaed tomorrow, he’ll need sleep to deal with all of this by the light of day.

“Right,” he says, and sits back down on the couch. Matt hastily vacates it, and Foggy shakes out his blanket and lies down. “If ninjas attack, wake me up and I’ll, uh, try to bean one of them with a lamp or something.”

“Sure,” Matt says, and takes a seat in the armchair closest to the window. Foggy’s not sure how he feels about Matt essentially watching over him while he sleeps, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. “Good night, Foggy.”

“Good night,” Foggy says, and closes his eyes on Matt’s silhouette, on the conversation, on this whole stupid night.

He doesn’t sleep a wink.

*

When it’s too bright out to feign sleep anymore, Foggy gives up and pushes the blanket back. Matt could probably tell he was awake, anyway.

“Coffee?” he asks.

Matt lifts his head from where he’d rested it on his knees, looking for all the world like an old dog guarding the homestead from attack. Foggy supposes that’s not a totally off-base metaphor. “Please,” he says.

Foggy’s grateful both for something to do with his hands, and for the psychosomatic perking-up effect the smell of the coffee has on him as it percolates. He’s got an open floor plan in his apartment, so he can keep an eye on Matt as he takes mugs out of the cabinet and the milk out of the fridge. “How is she?” he asks.

Matt tilts his head, listening. “Still asleep,” he says.

The worry and fear on his face only hurt Foggy a little. “I think we should call Claire in on this one,” he says. “I don’t have a lot of experience caring for the undead.”

Matt’s eyebrows go up. “And you think Claire does?”

“I’m just saying she’ll have at least a marginally better idea of what to do than I do,” Foggy says. “I mean, if you want someone to vigorously defend Elektra’s rights as a person once declared legally dead, sure, yeah, you've come to the right place, but if you want someone to take a pulse and render a verdict…” He shrugs. “You probably want to keep the circle small and I get that, but I think Elektra’s wellbeing takes precedent here.”

Matt pauses for a moment, visibly agonizing, then nods. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. I'll call her. After Elektra wakes up.”

“Great,” Foggy says. “Meanwhile, I am going to put my coffee in a to-go mug and do a grocery run, because there is nothing to eat here besides FunYuns and some lo mein of uncertain vintage. If you want to slip out of your bondage gear, or if Elektra wakes up and would like to wear something besides a burial shroud, sweatpants and t-shirts are in the third drawer of my dresser.”

Matt nods, and takes the mug Foggy hands him with a quiet thanks. Foggy tears his eyes away from Matt's hollow cheeks and riotous bedhead and goes to put on real pants.

*

When he comes back with the meager groceries he could scrounge from the bodega - a loaf of bread, weird off-brand cereal, some dubious-looking bananas - Elektra is awake and sitting on his couch, wearing his sweatpants and favorite Mets t-shirt. She's clean and her hair is wet, and Matt comes out of the bathroom with an armful of damp towels as Foggy walks in, in another pair of sweats and a “Virginia Beach Is For Lovers” shirt Foggy's sister brought back from a trip as a joke.

“Claire’s on her way,” Matt says.

A ghost of a smile flits across Elektra's face. “Hello, Franklin,” she says.

Right. Foggy’d forgotten that she’d insisted on calling him that the few times they'd interacted. “Hi, Elektra. How are you feeling?”

“Splendid,” she says in a perfect debutante voice. “Wonderful weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

Matt looks pained, and Foggy tries not to roll his eyes. Okay, so maybe his question was inane. Still.

“Matt, you're on egg-making duty,” he says, trading the groceries for Matt's towels. He's not sure if Matt knows where his hamper is, and more importantly Matt is an exponentially better cook than Foggy. “Elektra, coffee?”

“Yes,” she says, just as Matt barks, “No stimulants until Claire says it’s okay,” and they scowl at each other. They've clearly already argued about this. Foggy looks at them, these gorgeous hard vigilantes so rumpled and domestic, and even though it's his apartment and his clothes making them look that way he suddenly feels like he's intruding. Intruding, and cavernously lonely.

He slips around Matt to dump the towels in the hamper in his closet. Matt's stiffly whisking eggs when Foggy returns to the kitchen to pour half a cup of coffee, thinned with lots of milk: a compromise. Matt frowns but doesn't say anything when Foggy hands it to Elektra, who looks surprised, and then rallies.

“I usually take it black,” she says.

“I usually don't give up my bed to people who tanked the biggest court case of my career,” he retorts, and this time she can't hide her surprise.

Claire arrives when they're halfway through eating, and gratefully accepts the coffee Foggy has waiting for her. “I've got a shift in an hour,” she tells them. “What's up? None of you appear to be bleeding or unconscious.”

Matt tells her. Foggy resists the urge to narrate for him that Claire’s staring - first at Matt, then at Elektra, who is pushing her eggs around her plate with less appetite than Foggy would've expected from someone who crawled her way out of the grave less than twelve hours prior. Foggy can't blame Claire. Aside from the general implausibility of the tale, Elektra looks tired and fragile and pale, swimming in Foggy's clothes - hardly convincing as either a vigilante or an undead demonic weapon.

“I just...want to make sure she's okay,” Matt says, and Elektra rolls her eyes so flamboyantly that for a moment Foggy actually likes her.

Claire shakes her head. “Every time I think I've seen everything…all right, Elektra, is it? Bedroom.”

“Fresh,” Elektra says, but follows an unimpressed Claire into Foggy’s bedroom. Matt tries to follow but Claire doesn't let him.

“After all she's been through, don't you think she deserves a little privacy?” Claire asks, and shuts the door on him.

Matt paces the living room as Foggy clears the breakfast dishes. Foggy watches him out of the corner of his eye and realizes how stupid he was to ever think Matt might have Foggy's name on him. He doesn't have Elektra's, either, and the degree to which he's worrying about her puts anything he might have felt for Foggy to shame.

Foggy washes the dishes and makes sure his sleeves are firmly rolled back down before the sighted people emerge from the bedroom.

It’s not long before they do, Elektra flopping onto the couch and finger-combing her hair over her shoulder, a studied, bored look on her face. “She’s fine, at least as far as modern medicine can tell,” Claire says. “A little dehydrated, and I’d recommend taking it easy for a couple of weeks and getting a lot of sleep, but…” She shrugs. Foggy bites back his instinct to narrate again. “If I hadn’t seen crazier things I’d never buy that she was ever dead to begin with.”

“Which means I can have a proper cup of coffee, or at least what passes for one in the States,” Elektra says, and waves an imperious hand. “Franklin.”

Foggy’s eyebrows shoot up. “Claire says you’re fine. Get it yourself.”

Elektra lets out an annoyed noise and returns to examining her split ends. Matt, looking pained again, turns to Claire.

“Thank you so much for coming,” he says.

“It’s what I do. Apparently,” she says, picking up her bag, and looks at Foggy. “Can I speak with you in the hall, Franklin?”

He follows her out of the apartment, closing the door gently behind him. “I hate being called Franklin. And you know Matt can still hear us, right? Stop listening, Matt.”

“I didn’t know you two were back together,” she says.

He’s not sure what’s more humiliating: that he knows Matt heard that, or that he knows Claire can see the hot flush that blooms over his face. “We’re not. There’s no...there’s nothing,” he says. “He needed help. They both did. I’m not gonna let them get ninjaed to death - again - because Matt and I aren’t partners anymore. Isn’t there something about that in the Hippocratic Oath?”

“Something like that,” she says. “I just...think you should be careful. You didn’t choose this life. You shouldn’t have to be hurt by it.”

“The Hand doesn’t know where we are,” Foggy says.

“I wasn’t talking about that kind of hurt,” she says. “Thanks for the coffee, Foggy.”

“See you around, Claire,” he says, and leans against the doorframe to watch her go. Even after she’s disappeared down the stairs, he stays there, steeling himself before he goes back inside. She’s right, of course - she usually is.

She’s just also far too late.

*

Foggy calls out of work and changes the muddy sheets on his bed before bracing himself for the next conversation. “So what exactly is the plan here?” he asks. “Because if the three of us are going to shack up indefinitely in some kind of terminally awkward living arrangement, I think we should relocate to that penthouse Elektra used to have in college, if just for the whirlpool tub. I’m assuming there’s a whirlpool tub.”

“Please, what do you take me for?” Elektra asks, inspecting her nails, which are ragged and short. Foggy wonders if there’s still grave dirt beneath them. “Next you’ll say all the upholstery is leopard print and there’s a disco ball in the bathroom.”

“We don’t want to impose on you too long,” Matt interjects. “Just give me a few nights to deal with the Hand presence in the city, and then we can - ”

“You’re not going without me,” Elektra interrupts.

“You shouldn’t go at all!” Foggy says. “They nearly killed you last time, and the time before that - and they did kill Elektra - ”

“Which is why I’m not letting them get near her again!” Matt says.

“You don’t have a choice, Matthew!” Elektra retorts. “They don’t want you, they want me, and they’re not going to stop until they have me back. They’ll kill you to get to me. They’ll kill him.” She nods at Foggy.

“So what, I just hand you over to them again?”

“Have either of you ever considered calling the police about this?” Foggy asks. “Or the Avengers, somehow?”

They ignore him, and why shouldn’t they? It’s only his apartment they’re squatting in, after all. “You heard Claire, you need rest,” Matt says. “You’re in no condition to be fighting.”

“And you’re no match for Nobu!”

“How about no one fights any ninjas until you have more than three hours of sleep and half an egg to eat between the two of you, huh?” Foggy says.

Elektra waves a careless hand, dismissing that. “This doesn’t concern you, Franklin.”

“It does until you’re not in my fucking home wearing my fucking pajamas!” he snaps. “You get to set fire to my entire life exactly once, princess, and you’ve already done that, so until I’m no longer feeding and clothing both of your lunatic asses, my plans go. You know, the ones where no one breaks the law or dies?”

Elektra chuffs an annoyed sound and looks away. Matt makes another tragic Mom-and-Dad-are-fighting face at them. “I know this is a huge imposition, Foggy…”

“Save it, Matt.” Foggy doesn’t want to hear another empty apology when Matt will never change, or give Foggy the apologies he really wants to hear. “This may come as a shock to the Suicide Twins, but I do actually want to keep both of you alive. So you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to, both of you. But not if you’re going to act like idiots, and not if you’re going to be shitty. Those are the conditions. Take them or leave them.”

Elektra gives him an appraising look. “Well, someone’s found their balls after all,” she says. She glances at Matt. “Or maybe this isn’t new? That would make more sense. You always did get off on losing a fight, didn’t you, Matthew?” She stands up with a swish of hair. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I think I’ll retire to the bedroom until I can get my shittiness under control.”

She slams her way into the bedroom. “You know, I’m starting to see why you kept us away from each other back in college,” Foggy says.

Matt puts his face in his hands and groans.

*

In the end, Elektra stays with Foggy, and Matt leaves. Foggy’s apartment isn’t really big enough for three, and Matt has work and clients. He promises not to engage the Hand until Elektra’s well enough to join him, and that’s about as non-reckless as Foggy can talk either of them into being. Foggy doesn’t love the idea of sending Matt back to his apartment when the Hand knows where he lives, but hopefully they won’t attack while they’re still trying to get Matt to lead them back to Elektra, and anyway Foggy supposes it’s no different than all the times Matt’s been in danger that Foggy didn’t know about.

He also doesn’t love the idea of having Elektra as a houseguest indefinitely, but he’s not about to leave her to die either, so. That’s that.

Elektra catnaps the rest of the day after Matt leaves, and Foggy tries to get some work done despite the fact that he’s so tired the computer screen keeps swimming before his eyes, and that his imagination turns every noise outside his apartment into a horde of ninjas about to turn him and Elektra into katana pin cushions. He orders a pizza for dinner, expecting Elektra to complain about being fed peasant food or whatever, but she surprises him by emerging from the bedroom when it arrives and eating three slices.

They eat in near silence. Foggy’s not complaining. He has no idea what to say to her.

When night falls, Elektra relinquishes the bedroom back to Foggy, and he makes up the couch properly for her, with sheets and a couple real pillows. He retreats to the bedroom to change, but the minute he comes out in a t-shirt and boxers to brush his teeth, Elektra goes eerily still.

“How long has that been there?” she asks.

For a moment Foggy can't figure out what she's talking about; then he follows the line of her gaze to Matt's name on his arm. He fights the childish urge to cover it.

“Does it matter?” he asks instead of giving her a real answer, which is probably also childish, but he's putting up the ex-(and current?)-girlfriend of the man who broke his heart. He's earned a little childishness.

“Does Matthew know?” she asks, then answers herself. “Of course not. Which means you didn't have it in college, because he asked, and he’d know if you'd lied.”

“He didn't - how would you even know if he'd asked?” Foggy says, annoyed. They'd talked about soulmates, sure, and Matt had known Foggy didn't have a mark, but he'd never asked specifically about himself. Why would he? People only asked that of people they hoped were in love with them. And Elektra’s probing analysis is, quite frankly, very rude.

“You have no idea, do you?” she asks. She's still looking at his mark - glaring at it, really - and it takes a minute for Foggy to place the hot, angry look in her eyes as what it is: jealousy.

His first feeling, he's ashamed to say, is triumph.

“You don't have one, huh?” he asks. He’s gloating, a little. He can’t stop. “After all that. After he walked out on me for you, and it turns out I'm the one with the mark.”

Elektra's sharp and pale with anger, livid circles beneath her eyes. Foggy's not sure he's ever seen her have a real emotion before, let alone one this intense. “That is not how I would describe the sequence of events,” she manages through gritted teeth.

“We were happy,” Foggy says. He’s carried this long enough. “Maybe he didn't love me, maybe it was never like that between us, but the life we had, before you showed up? It made him happy.”

“You don't know him at all,” she says. “And you don't want to. You want to keep him small and dull and pointless like you are, so that you never have to think about how pathetic your sad little life is. You found a tiger and treated him like a house cat, and you blame me when you get bitten. And least I know what he is.”

“He's a person!” Foggy says, stung. “Going to work and trying to make ends meet and do a little human kindness along the way isn’t pathetic, it’s life. This glorious quest you have in your head where it’s the two of you against the world? It’s gonna get him killed. It already got you killed.”

“Yes, it did,” she snaps. “And I’d take a blade through my chest again right now over the kind of slow death you want to sentence Matthew to.”

“It’s not a - I don’t - God, would you listen to yourself? I’m not asking him to sell his soul!” Foggy says. “I just want an ordinary life!”

“Well, he’s not ordinary! He never has been.” She draws herself up, haughty and regal even swamped in Foggy’s pajamas. “You fell for a con, Franklin. The man you want? He doesn’t exist. I’m sorry for you,” and there’s the vindictive edge of pity in her voice, “but I won’t take the blame for it.”

“Yeah?” Foggy says, feeling small and mean. “If you know him so well, where’s your mark?”

The look on her face reminds Foggy abruptly that she’s deadly. Rather than answer, though - or stab him - she turns in a swish of hair and slams her way into the bathroom.

Alone, Foggy deflates. The door-slamming is appropriate, really; they’re arguing like teenagers, fighting over a boy that Foggy would swear to anyone else he doesn’t even want.

And it’s a fight Foggy’s already lost. There’s only two ways this can end, really: either the Hand will kill Elektra again, and Matt with her, or Matt and Elektra will somehow manage to shake the threat of them, and, well…

Matt’s already made his choice. Soul marks, present or absent or ten years too late, didn’t enter into it.

*

Foggy hadn’t seen Matt for three days when he got the call asking him to come out to Southampton and pick Matt up at the police station. The three day absence had become sort of par for the course - Matt had developed a habit of vanishing for long stretches at a time after meeting Elektra, and rarely told Foggy where he was going or when he’d be back. He seemed blissfully, almost drunkenly happy, though, so Foggy bit his tongue about the missed classes and occasional odd bruises and kept his pining to himself.

The police involvement, though...that was new.

It was a two hour bus trip out to the Hamptons, and ran Foggy nearly forty bucks just one way; then he had to wander around in a chilly drizzle for forty-five minutes until he found the police station. It was tiny and almost cozy, nothing like the busy precinct where Brett's dad worked. Matt was sitting on a bench just inside the front door, curved in on himself like someone had scooped him out.

“Matt, oh my God,” Foggy said, and Matt's head turned vaguely towards him. “What happened? Are you okay? Where's Elektra?”

“She left,” Matt said. His voice was hoarse. There was blood on his shirt.

“What do you mean she left, she just took off with the car and the - why are you at the police station, are you hurt, what happened?” Foggy could hear an edge of hysteria in his voice, all the anger and worry of the past months coming out at once.

“I...I don't…” Matt said, and then lapsed into silence.

“Matt!”

“Are you the roommate?”

Foggy turned to see a genial-looking, gray-haired cop approaching them. “Yes, sir, I'm Franklin Nelson,” he said. Authorities, he'd learned, didn't love his nickname. “Is Matt in trouble?”

“Oh, no no no,” the cop assured him. “Well, maybe just a little girl trouble, but we've all fallen for the wrong gal at least once, right, son?”

Matt’s face somehow grew even more tragic. The cop plucked at Foggy's sleeve and drew him a few feet away, as if Matt somehow couldn't hear them from there.

“Your friend’s fine, just a bit shaken up,” the cop says. “Seems his girlfriend gets a kick out of breaking and entering. These rich girls, you know,” he added conspiratorially, as if he and Foggy both got their hearts broken by heiresses on a regular basis.

“Uh, right,” Foggy said. “So they...broke into someone’s house?”

The cop nodded. “And a good thing they did, because it seems they scared off a real burglar who’d already roughed the owner up a bit. A whole messy scene. Owner’s saying your friend did it, but that’s ridiculous of course, seeing as how he’s, you know. Blind.” He finished his little speech in a stage whisper, glancing significantly at Matt like Foggy would think he meant someone else.

Foggy frowned. “Yeah, not deaf.”

“And thank God, right? Can you imagine?” the cop asked. “Anyway, the burglar took off but your friend insisted on calling us in and the girl rabbited. Like her daddy couldn’t have gotten any charges dropped before she so much as chipped a nail in a holding cell.”

“But...but you aren’t charging Matt with anything, right?” Foggy asked, just to be sure.

“Oh no, of course not!” the cop said. “Kids will be kids, and no harm done, right? In fact, if they hadn’t shown up, who knows what the real criminal would’ve done? You look at it the right way, your friend’s kind of a hero.”

Foggy looked over at Matt, taking in his hunched, furtive posture and reddened knuckles. “Yeah,” he said. “If you look at it the right way.”

Unfortunately, he was pretty sure “the right way” bore only a passing resemblance to the truth.

He waited until they were on the bus back to the city before starting to probe. “So, Matty...that police officer said you and Elektra walked in on some burglar beating the crap out of the owner of the house you br...uh, the house you were in.”

Matt’s chin dipped slightly. Foggy wasn’t sure if it was a nod or just exhaustion, but he went with it.

“That must’ve been kinda scary. Like, I probably would have pissed myself, no lie.”

Silence.

“Is that why Elektra left?” Foggy asked gently. “Because she was scared? Or...did you two have a fight?” More silence. “Matt, what happened to your hands?”

A muscle jumped in Matt’s jaw, but he didn’t say anything. Foggy pushed back the urge to yell, the one being worried always brought out in him.

“You don’t have to talk about it now,” he said. “I think it would help if you did talk about it, eventually, and I’m here if you want to do that. But we can just sit for now, if you want.”

He didn’t want to say that. He wanted to demand answers - how much criminal activity had Elektra been dragging Matt into, and why had he gone along with it, and why had she left, and were they broken up now, and oh God, had Matt beaten someone up somehow? And lied about it?

But he knew Matt. Maybe this was all a big misunderstanding, maybe the crazy behavior was the inevitable acting out of a super-repressed do-gooder raised by nuns, but he knew, he knew that Matt couldn’t have been involved in anything too terrible. Couldn’t have done anything too bad. This was Matt. He was the best person Foggy knew.

So until Matt was ready to tell him, he could wait.

He reached for Matt’s hand, brushing his fingertips gently against Matt’s wrist first to give him a chance to pull away, then wrapping Matt’s hand up in both of his, careful of his injured knuckles. Matt went stiff for a minute, then seemed to deflate, sinking into his seat and dropping his head against Foggy’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” he said hoarsely - the first word he’d spoken since the police station.

Yeah. Foggy could wait.

*

Foggy meets Karen for drinks after work the next day, because it’s that or go home to an apartment that’s always been too small, but seems especially so now that Elektra’s in it. Karen’s been hard to pin down lately, always off chasing this lead or that. Foggy never realized what workaholics everyone at Nelson and Murdock was until the firm collapsed; it was easy enough to see his friends when they often spent fourteen hours a day together.

Well, he and Karen did. Matt was...otherwise occupied.

Karen looks good - tired, and a little distracted by her phone, but less stressed than Foggy’s used to. She doesn’t have the slightly frayed edges he’s become accustomed to seeing. Apparently escaping Nelson and Murdock’s swirling vortex of debt and unrequited emotional complications has been good for her.

“So I read your piece on the comptroller,” Foggy says. “Getting city officials fired for corruption? Don’t fuck with Karen Page, sleazebags of New York!”

He raises his glass to her and she laughs, ducking her head. “I’m just glad all that digging paid off,” she says. “And that hopefully now a chunk of the city’s revenue won’t be disappearing into offshore accounts in the Bahamas. At least, not as large a chunk.” She pauses, chewing on her lip. “I had help on that story, actually.”

Something about the way she says it makes Foggy sit up a bit. She’s being cagey. That usually means a bombshell. “Yeah? You got a snitch in City Hall now?”

“No! Well, yes, actually,” she admits, “but that’s not who I meant. Uh. Some of the forged invoices I referred to were obtained by. Um. Daredevil.”

“...Oh.” The last bit of playfulness in the conversation evaporates. “You, uh. You work with him a lot?”

“Here and there,” she says. “We pass information on to each other, when it’s helpful. And he looks out for me. There’ve been a couple of times where...well, it’s nice to have backup, sometimes.”

“Karen, you gotta be careful,” Foggy says, though he knows it won’t do any good.

“I carry a gun.”

“Karen!”

“Foggy!” Karen’s got that stubborn set to her jaw that tells Foggy he’ll get nowhere fast with this. Not that he didn’t already know that. “I know what I’m doing. And it’s not like I’m running into dangerous situations for a cheap thrill. The work I’m doing - it’s important.”

God, she sounds like Matt. “I’m not trying to patronize you,” he says. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. I care about you, Karen.”

“I know,” she says, and reaches out to squeeze his hand. “I appreciate it. But doing this...it feels right. It feels like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Foggy swallows past the lump in his throat. He remembers that feeling: grateful clients pushing casserole dishes into his hands and kissing his cheek when he got cases settled in their favor; Matt’s fond smile; the feeling of rightness when he knew he’d made the world, or at least their little corner of it, just a little bit more fair. He can’t begrudge Karen that satisfaction, even if it’s out of his reach these days.

He clears his throat and takes a sip of his drink. “So you, uh...you and Matt are talking again?”

“No,” she says, a little too loud, then glances around and lowers her voice. “No. I’m working with Daredevil. Matt and I...I’m not ready to be his friend again. Not yet.”

“His friend?” Foggy repeats, eyebrows raised.

“Baby steps,” she says. “I don’t...look, I love Matt. At the end of the day, regardless of what he’s done, I love him. Like a friend, like...something else, it doesn’t matter. But it’s going to take a long time for me to trust him again with…” She looks at her nails, picks at one that’s chipping. “I think I wanted someone who didn’t exist, and I think he did too. We were both looking for something safe.”

Foggy tilts his nearly-empty glass, pretending he’s fascinated by the way the ice cubes fall against each other as he angles it. “So...not expecting a mark to appear any time soon, then?” he asks, trying for levity and falling way, way short.

Karen’s silent, and when he cuts his eyes across at her she’s staring at him, eyebrows raised. “Um...that’s kind of a weird question.”

“Sorry,” he says, putting his glass down to hold his hands up apologetically. “Sorry, sorry, it’s none of my business, it’s…”

“Invasive? Yeah, a little bit.”

“Right, sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything…”

“I mean it’s not like I’m asking you if you have Matt’s name on your ass or something.” His face must do something at that because her already naturally huge eyes go even wider. “Holy shit. You do.”

Foggy looks away. “It’s not...on my ass.”

“But you have one.”

Foggy sighs, then unbuttons his cuff and pushes up his sleeve. Karen’s silent for a moment, staring at it.

“But you aren’t...I mean, it’s one of those platonic ones, right? You guys aren’t…”

Foggy pulls his sleeve back down and concentrates very hard on the cuff as he buttons it again. “If Matt had one, which he doesn’t, it would probably be platonic, yes. But if Matt had one, he probably would have come to visit me in the hospital that time I got shot, so…”

“Foggy…”

There’s too much sympathy in Karen’s voice, and Foggy really didn’t come here to cry into his whiskey. “It’s fine. You’re right, it was inappropriate for me to bring it up.”

Karen puts her hand back on his. “Hey. I know Matt’s…Matt, but I also know how much he adores you. Believe me, it’s painfully obvious from...well, basically from the moment I met you guys. If he’s not showing it well these days, that’s because of something going on with him, not anything to do with you.”

“Karen, I can’t…”

“I’m not saying you should...go back to him, or start Nelson and Murdock back up again, or, or anything, really,” she says quickly. “I know he hurt you. I want you to take care of yourself first.” She tilts her head; soft, careful. “I just don’t want you to think that you aren’t loved. By Matt or by anyone else.”

Foggy chuckles, and if it’s suspiciously wet Karen doesn’t call him on it. “That’s right,” he says. “Foggy Nelson, universally beloved.”

“That’s right,” she says, and she’s so fierce about it that he really does cry, just a little. “And don’t you ever forget it.”

*

Matt stops by around midnight the evening after that, tapping on Foggy’s bedroom window. “No one followed me,” he assures Foggy as he climbs through and tugs the helmet off. “I made sure. Is Elektra awake?”

“Hello, Foggy, nice to see you,” Foggy drawls, although honestly, what did he expect.

At least Matt has the grace to look sheepish. “Sorry. I know none of this is...ideal. I really do appreciate everything you’re doing for us, Foggy.”

Foggy rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Come on, let’s go wake Sleeping Beauty.”

Elektra’s already up, it turns out. She tucks her knees up to her chin and Matt sits on the couch in the space vacated by her legs, while Foggy takes an awkward seat in one of his uncle’s hand-me-down armchairs, feeling oddly like a guest in his own home.

“I found it,” Matt says. “The Hand’s stronghold. I haven’t sensed Nobu, Stick said he finished him for good before he left town and I think that was true, but there’s still a lot of them. I’ll have to draw them off, see if I can lure them out for the cops a few at a time. I’ll explain to Brett about their abilities so that he can come up with some way of - ”

“Leave Brett out of this craziness,” Foggy says just as Elektra snaps, “You’re not facing the Hand by yourself, Matthew!”

“I’m not taking you anywhere near them,” Matt tells her. “That’s just what they want, they’ll just try to use you again and I refuse…”

“Isn’t this my fight?” she asks. “Don’t I have the right to it, after what they did to me?”

“What they did to you is exactly why I’m not going to let you - ”

“Let me?” and Matt’s a braver man than Foggy if he’s not cowed by that tone in her voice.

Well. Foggy supposes they all always knew Matt was braver than him.

“Look,” he says, even though he should probably just let them fight it out. What does he know about confronting ninjas anyway? “It doesn’t have to be just Matt, or even just both of you. I specialize in vigilante law, remember? Let me call Jones tomorrow, see if she’s willing to throw in on this.” Elektra snorts dismissively. “She can lift a car, Natchios, you want her on your side. And I’ve been hearing about this other guy up in Harlem - never met the man, but I might be able to get a number. And…” He runs a hand through his hair, sighs. “I don’t like Brett being mixed up in this, but if you must, at least bring him in at the planning stage and not the ‘hey detective, watch out for the undead ninjas I’m sending your way’ stage, okay? There’s a way to do this that doesn’t involve just running at the Hand with your little sticks and hoping for the best.”

“They’re called billy clubs,” Matt says sulkily, and Foggy rolls his eyes.

“I think we can manage this fight without help from your drinking buddies, Franklin,” Elektra says.

Matt hesitates. “Backup might not be the worst idea…” he starts, which is quite frankly a landmark of personal growth from Matt “Don’t Help Me, I Can Do It Myself” Murdock.

“I don’t know these people,” Elektra says.

“We could try to find Stick,” Matt suggests.

“No,” Elektra and Foggy snap at the same time, and glare at each other.

“Do you think I could meet with Jones?” Matt asks Foggy. “I’m not saying that I’ll bring her in, necessarily, but if I could talk with her…”

“You’re going to listen to him?” Elektra says, sweeping her hand in Foggy’s direction. “This terrified little rabbit of a man who’s done nothing more dangerous than cross Broadway at rush hour? You’re letting him strategize?”

“Watch it,” Matt says, sharp.

“I’m letting a murderer who’s being hunted by other murderers sleep on my couch, how’s that for dangerous?” Foggy asks.

“Oh yes, I’m sorry,” Elektra says. “You’ve suffered so much, filing your little papers and waiting by the window for Matthew to come back to you to play Happy Little Bureaucrat. I’d forgotten.”

“Elektra…” Matt warns.

“Okay, fine, you got me!” Foggy says, throwing his hands up in the air. “I haven’t died. I haven’t been gutted like a fish by a ninja. I have no interest in putting on a weird leather bondage suit and punching criminals in the face. And yet somehow I’m still the one who keeps ending up in the hospital - not that present company gives a shit.” That last is directed at Matt, who looks stricken. Too bad. “But fine, whatever, leave me out of it. I didn’t realize being reckless to the point of stupidity was the only way to get a say in this decision making process. Just try to keep the collateral damage to a minimum, would you? It is my city too, after all, and when you two finish your suicide run it’s us Happy Little Bureaucrats who are going to have to pick up the pieces.”

“It’s not a suicide run, Foggy,” Matt says. “I know what I’m doing.”

Foggy snorts. “You’re going to get yourself killed! She’s going to get you killed.”

“Oh, this again,” Elektra says.

“Yeah, forgive me if it’s kind of a pressing concern for me!”

“It’s not your concern!” Elektra snaps. “He’s not your partner anymore, and he makes his own choices. Blame me all you want, but just because you have a mark doesn’t mean you own him.”

Foggy feels abruptly nauseous. Matt gives them a blank-eyed stare.

“What?” he says. “He doesn’t...Foggy doesn’t have a mark. Foggy, you don’t…” He tilts his head, and Foggy knows, he knows Matt’s listening to how Foggy’s heart is suddenly hammering. “When did you get a mark?”

“Does it matter?” Foggy asks, suddenly exhausted.

“What? Foggy, of course it matters.” Matt’s face is soft, coaxing, and suddenly Foggy hates him, hates Elektra, hates himself, hates this whole stupid situation.

“Really?” he asks. “Because I had your name before, Matt. I had it on the lease for our office space. I had it on the loans we co-signed. I had it on our door, and anywhere I had to write down an emergency contact, and...and freaking joint birthday cards for my parents! It didn’t stop you from walking out on me, so why would it make any fucking difference if it’s on my skin?”

“Walking - I didn't walk out on you!” Matt says, looking genuinely stunned. “You took the job at HC&B. You left Nelson and Murdock.”

“Oh please, like there was anything left to leave,” Foggy snarls. “You weren't showing up for cases, you were lying to me and Karen about her - ” He makes the sweep of his arm wide as he indicates Elektra to be sure Matt picks it up. “You had one foot out the door long before Marci floated my name to Hogarth. You might not have quit, but you left me just the same.” His voice breaks at the end. He wishes he was a better liar.

Matt turns to Elektra, who's been watching Foggy's humiliation like it’s a tennis match. “Elektra, could you give us a minute, please?”

Elektra’s flippancy is less convincing than usual. “Oh, don't pause your little marital spat on my account - ”

“Elektra,” Matt snaps. “Give us a minute.”

Elektra glares daggers at him, then storms off to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Foggy's neighbors are going to start complaining if they keep up with all the late night door-slamming.

“I don't know why you bothered,” Foggy says. “I have nothing to say to you.” He doesn't care that Matt can tell it's a lie.

“Foggy.” Matt sounds broken. “How long?” Foggy hesitates. “Foggy, please.”

Foggy sighs, and pushes past Matt to get to the kitchen. If they're going to have this conversation, he needs a drink.

“Since the day I started at HC&B,” he says after taking a long pull of a beer. It’s too cold; it makes his teeth ache.

“What does that mean?” Matt asks. “Why would that, why wouldn’t it show up earlier, why would it take ten years to - I don’t understand.”

“What the fuck does it matter, Matt?” Foggy explodes. “I could’ve have it stamped across my forehead since birth! It doesn’t change the fact that we’re done. We already knew that.”

Matt actually has the nerve to look wounded. “So, what, you were just never going to tell me? You always wanted a mark, and now that it’s me, you just...you don’t care?”

Foggy laughs bitterly. “Oh, are we really going to start talking about what we were never going to tell each other? Because your list is a lot longer than mine, buddy.”

Only Matt can look so guilty it makes Foggy feel guilty. “I know I haven’t always been truthful with you,” Matt says, ignoring the incredulous huff Foggy lets out. “But you were always the better of the two of us. I didn’t think...was it just that it was me? You’re that angry at me that you’d ignore…” He waves a hand, vaguely indicating the two of them, or fate, or whatever.

“Are you actually shitting me right now?” Foggy asks disbelievingly. “All that’s happened and you want me to stand here and stroke your ego? Of course I wanted it to be you!” Matt’s jaw hangs open. Foggy doesn’t care. If Matt wants to pretend to be stunned that’s his business; Elektra’s already given Foggy’s secret away. “I looked for your name for years, Matt! Years and years of wishing that I had proof that you and me were...that I meant something to - ”

“Foggy - ” Matt starts, choked, and Foggy holds up his free hand, cutting him off.

“No,” he says. “No, I’m not doing this. Following you around for a decade like some pathetic lapdog, fine. Building my life around you, fine. I was even okay with this charade where we both pretend like you haven’t been listening to my heart this whole time and haven’t always known exactly how I feel.” He shakes his head. “But don’t make me stand here and tell you how much I wanted you to be my soulmate, not when you couldn’t give two shits about me. Leave me that much dignity.”

He pushes past Matt again, back to the living room, and Matt follows. “Foggy, what are you - of course I care about you!”

“Oh, really?” Foggy asks. “I guess you were trying to show me by lying to me the entire time we’ve known each other. Or making me an accessory to your criminal activities. Or pushing me to take a case I never wanted to take defending a mass murderer and then leaving me high and dry when we got to court. Or lying to me again. Or - ”

“Foggy - ”

“Or choosing everyone in the world over me!” Foggy shouts over Matt’s protests. “Elektra’s ninja…whatever instead of the case! Fucking Frank Castle’s safety over mine! Even when we were being shot at you went for Karen instead of me, and Jesus Christ, Matt, I’m glad she’s alive but you could have stayed!” His voice breaks again. He’s weeping. “I was so scared and you left me there on the street with a hole in my shoulder and you never, you never came to see me so don’t...don’t lie to me again, Matt. Don’t tell me you care. It’s not about fucking soul marks. If you cared, you’d have come to the hospital.” He grinds the heel of his hand into his eye socket as if it’ll dam the tears. “I don’t need my name on you. I just needed you to be my friend.”

Matt stands there, chin trembling, for a long moment.

Then he unzips his fly.

“What - what the fuck, Matt?” Foggy says, taking a couple stumbling steps back, which is not how he ever thought he’d react to Matt taking his pants off.

“You’re right. I haven’t been a very good friend to you.” Matt walks over to the couch, shoves his pants down past his knees, and sits. His legs fall open, and he yanks the legs of his boxers up, pushing the fabric out of the way until his thighs show all the way to the seam of his pelvis. “But I have your mark.”

Foggy stares. Curving around Matt’s thighs, so high up he feels scandalous just looking at them, are two names. On the left thigh: Elektra.

And on the right thigh: Foggy.

“What…” Foggy’s voice is a ghost of a sound. “How...what...when did...that’s my name.”

“So I’m told.” Matt’s smile is more of a grimace. “I’ve never actually seen it.”

“Why do you have two?” The only person Foggy knows with two is his grandmother on his mother’s side, who had his step-grandfather’s name appear on the back of her hand a year after Foggy’s grandfather died. And sure, Elektra did die that one time, but it’s not like Matt didn’t already know Foggy by then.

“I don’t know,” Matt says.

“I...that’s…” Foggy drifts closer to the couch. That’s his name, written indelibly on Matt’s skin, tying them together. He wants to touch it. “How long has it been there?”

Matt’s hands tighten into fists, and that - Foggy knows what it looks like when Matt’s bracing himself. “I’m not sure exactly,” he says, “but they both showed up sometime during freshman year.”

“What?” It's barely a question; it's the air punched out of him.

Matt spreads his hands. “There's about six months in there that...I don't know. But they weren't there when I had my last checkup before starting college, and then when Elektra and I...the first time we…” He shrugs. “She told me. I don't know if they showed up when I met you, or when I met her, or not even at the same time, but…”

“She told you. About both of them?” Foggy asks, trying to get this straight.

“Yes.”

“So you've always known.” Foggy's shock is coalescing into something cold and hard and angry, deep in the pit of his stomach. “You've both always known.”

“Foggy, I…”

“Get out.” Foggy's ice, unyielding and likely to shatter at any minute. “Get out of my house.”

“Foggy, please…”

“No.” Foggy backs away from him, finger pointed at the window. “I don’t want to hear what you have to say. I don’t want to hear your fucking excuses. Ten years and you never told me? You lied to my face, because I asked you and you, you just, you - ” He’s so angry he’s sputtering, like an overheated engine. “And you have the gall to ask why I didn’t tell you about mine? Fuck you, Matt!”

Matt stands and pulls his pants back up. Foggy thought he’d feel marginally more sane with Matt’s inner thighs and the names scrawled across them safely tucked away, but no such luck. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Foggy.”

Foggy wants Matt to stop saying his name. “What part of any of this did you think wouldn’t hurt me?” he demands.

“I - ”

“Get. OUT.” Foggy points again. His finger’s shaking. “Now, Matt, I swear to God, or I’ll, I’ll call the fucking police on you.”

Matt actually looks betrayed as well as hangdog. Foggy tells himself the sudden nausea he feels is anger, not guilt. “All right. I’m sorry. I’m going.” He pulls the mask on. It’s easier to look at him with most of his expression hidden. “I’ll get this Hand business resolved as quickly as I can, and then...you won’t have to deal with me anymore.”

Foggy closes his eyes. He’s got Matt’s mark on him. He’ll have to deal with him forever.

When he opens them, Matt’s gone.

Foggy shuts the window, wipes the last few angry tears from his cheeks, and yanks his bedroom door open. Elektra’s sitting on the edge of the bed, tense. She definitely heard all of that, but that’s the least of Foggy’s worries, now that Matt’s poured gasoline on the last shred of Foggy’s heart and set it on fire.

“I’m going to sleep,” Foggy tells her. “Give me back my bed.” He’s tempted to kick her out of his apartment entirely, but that might mean signing her death warrant, and he’ll never be angry enough for that. Besides, he may not like her, but it’s Matt he’s really angry at.

She stands up. “Franklin…”

“I would not recommend starting with me,” he snaps. Her jaw goes tight, but she nods, and pushes past him out of the room. He shuts the door behind her.

All this time. All this goddamn time he’d been longing for Matt and Matt had known, Matt had known that the universe was trying to tell them...God, whatever it was that the universe was trying to say with soul marks. That they fit, that they matched, that they belonged to each other.

But Matt had Elektra’s name, too.

Foggy collapses onto his tangled sheets and stares up at the ceiling. What does that mean, that Matt has two? That Matt has two, and Foggy only has Matt, and Elektra doesn’t have anyone? His little sister, the consummate romantic, would say it means that Matt loves them both, and a year ago Foggy might have hoped… But Matt’s a better liar than Foggy ever suspected, and nothing about the way he’s treated Foggy over the past year has been consistent with love. If he ever wanted Foggy, he knew Foggy was his for the asking.

Which means he doesn’t want Foggy.

Foggy rolls over and prays that unconsciousness will come quickly. This isn’t news. He’s always known, really, that Matt didn’t feel for Foggy what Foggy felt for Matt. But to know that Matt has had Foggy’s name scrawled on his skin for a decade really hammers it home - that Matt cares so little about Foggy that he’ll ignore a soul mark telling him they’re meant to be connected. That he’ll let Foggy walk out of their firm without asking him to stay.

He realizes belatedly that he’s got his left hand curved over his own mark again, and balls his hands up into fists. He thought he’d made his peace with Matt not loving him back - he’d thought it years ago, when he realized how he felt, and again when he and Matt split up. It seems like Matt still has the ability to crack him open at will, though.

Maybe that’s what having a mark means: that Foggy’s heart will always be exposed and bleeding, right there for Matt do with as he pleases. He’d think his name on Matt would mean it goes both ways, but maybe it’s different for superheroes.

Or maybe it’s just different for Foggy.

*

He sleepwalks through work the next morning. When his mom texts around eleven to say she’s in the city running errands and does he want to grab lunch, he thumbs back “k” and forgets about it until he’s running 20 minutes late to their agreed-upon time.

The minute he walks into the bistro across the street from his office, though, his mother takes one look at him, stands up, and cups his face in her hands. “Oh, my poor baby. What’s wrong?”

He’s proud to say he doesn’t cry. He does, however, take several shuddering breaths that his mother pretends not to notice as they sit down and hide behind their menus.

It’s not until they’re halfway through their meal and have firmly established that work, Foggy’s father, and his sister Candace are all fine that his mother says, “It’s Matt, isn’t it? That’s got you so upset?”

Foggy stabs his fork viciously into the side salad he’s been ignoring in favor of his steak sandwich. “What makes you say that?”

“Sweetheart. Give me a little credit. I’ve known how you felt about that boy since you brought him home for Christmas when you were eighteen.” She gives him a wry look. “I wanted to stick a bow on him and put him under the tree for you, since I knew nothing I’d gotten you was going to come close.”

“Mom…” How can he still be embarrassed by this?

“Foggy.” She puts her hand on his. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But it might help.”

Foggy sighs, put his fork down, and tells her.

Not everything, of course. He leaves out the part where Matt’s a vigilante, and exactly why Nelson and Murdock fell apart. But everything else - Foggy’s reluctance to take the Castle case, the way Matt left him high and dry on it, how utterly forgotten he felt when Matt and Karen started dating, Matt’s wild and frankly dangerous ex-girlfriend coming back into their lives, Matt’s lies - comes spilling out of him. He tells her about finding Matt’s name on him, and he tells her about Matt’s marks, both of them, and how long he’s had them.

Then he drains his water glass and wishes he’d ordered a beer.

His mom studies him for a minute, then says, “What do you think it means, you not getting a mark until you and Matt weren’t speaking anymore?”

Foggy raises his eyebrows and makes a bitter noise. “That the universe is an incomprehensible vortex of pointless bullshit? Or it just hates me in particular.”

“Mm,” his mom says. She breaks off a piece of the crust of her quiche and pops it into her mouth. “You know I don’t have a mark.”

Foggy swallows. “I know. Mom, you know I never meant…”

“It was fourteen, fifteen years ago, sweetheart. I know you didn’t.”

The thing is, Anna Nelson isn’t Foggy’s biological mother. His birth mother, Rosalind, walked out on Foggy and his father before Foggy’s first birthday - when Foggy was still Frankie - and has had very little contact with them since. Edward Nelson met Anna Everett when Foggy was three, and Foggy was raised to call her “Mom.” To think of her as his mom.

And he does. But as a teenager, insecure and angry at the world, he’d spent a lot of time fantasizing that a life with Rosalind would be somehow immeasurably better, and he had a habit of throwing that in Anna’s face. He can still remember standing at the top of the stairs that led from Nelson’s Hardware to their apartment, screaming, “You’re not my mother! You’re barely even part of this family! If you were, you’d have Dad’s name on you, but you don’t!”

He can still remember the look on her face when he said it.

He’d apologized that night, the two of them hugging and crying on the couch, but the guilt never went away completely. But that doesn’t seem to be what she’s referring to now.

“It never bothered me, not at first, because your father didn’t have one either,” she says. “Not me and not Rosalind. It wasn’t even there when we got married. Do you know when my mark showed up on him?”

“No.” When Foggy pictures his father the mark is always there in his memories, “Anna” on the inside of his wrist when he reached out to pick Foggy up or take the book Foggy wanted him to read or hand Foggy a tool and show him how to use it.

“Candace’s first birthday,” she says. “We were putting her to bed, and he reached out to take her from me to give her a good night kiss, and - there it was.”

Foggy frowns. “That late? That...I was eight, you’d been married five years by then…”

She nods. “I don’t know why it took that long. I mean, no one really does, and watch out for the ones who say they do, because they’re trying to sell you something. But do you want to know my theory?”

“Sure.” He’s not sure how this relates to him and Matt. His mark hardly appeared while tucking their child into bed - and yeah, that’s a thought he’s not going to linger on because it hurts with a sudden sharpness he didn’t expect. But he’ll hear her out.

“I don’t think the marks are meant for other people. I don’t think they’re there to tell you who to find. I think they’re there to tell you about yourself,” his mother says. “The mark wasn’t telling your father to love me - he was already doing that. But Rosalind left before your first birthday, and I think...I think even though Edward had intellectually decided to have faith, there was always some small part of him that didn’t believe I wouldn’t do the same thing. Until then.” She smiles, a little misty. “That was when he knew, deep down, that I wouldn’t leave him. The mark wasn’t proof that I’d stay. It was proof that he believed I would.”

Foggy raises an eyebrow and touches his mark through his sleeve. “So this is the universe telling me I know Matt won’t leave me? Because, uh, he did.”

“I think you know what I’m suggesting,” his mother says, fixing him with a knowing gaze that makes him feel all of fifteen again. “As long as you were with Matt, there was no need to tell you that you needed to be. Maybe this is the universe course-correcting.”

“Then why has he always had two?”

“I don’t know.” She gives a little shrug. “I don’t know him as well as I know you. He has his own things to figure out.”

Foggy looks down at his plate. “Why would the universe want me to go back to someone who made me feel…” Betrayed. Unwanted. Lonely standing right next to him. “...so unhappy? Why would you?”

“Oh, sweetheart, I don’t.” She reaches out and squeezes his hands in both of hers. “Believe me, the next time I see that boy I’m going to smack him right upside the head. I love Matt, but no one treats my son like that. I just want to make sure…” She shrugs again. “Things with you and Matt have always been easy. Right now they’re not. Does he have a lot to answer for? I’m sure he does. But I wonder if maybe you’re not…”

“Not what?”

“You’re so good with people, Foggy. My little social butterfly.” She smiles. “Even when you were tiny. If I was sad, you’d come sit in my lap and tell me you loved me. You could always make your father laugh, or get Candace to stop throwing a tantrum. You understand people so well, especially the people you love. But I think sometimes…” She reaches over to brush a lock of hair out of his eyes. “I think sometimes you’re so sure you know what someone’s thinking that you forget to listen to what they’re saying. When you ask Matt why he does these things, do you listen to his answers?”

Foggy glances away. His mother raises her eyebrows.

“Have you even asked Matt why he does these things?”

“What’s there to ask?” Foggy says, pulling away. “Fine, maybe I haven’t been the world’s greatest listener lately, but what kind of answer am I get to ‘why did you lie to me for a decade’ or ‘why didn’t you come see me in the hospital?’ What can Matt say that will possibly make me feel better? It’s just going to boil down to him not…” He cuts off with a frustrated noise.

“Not what?”

Foggy stares very hard at his plate. “Not loving me back.”

“Well, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” his mother says, and Foggy blinks, startled. “Have you seen the look on that boy’s face when you talk?”

“Sure?” Foggy kind of minored in Looking At Matt in undergrad. And life.

“It’s like he’s remembered that good things exist in the world. Every time,” she says. She reaches for his hands again. “I’m not saying you should be with someone who makes you unhappy. I would never want that for you. I’m saying...ask him what he wants, and why he lied, and really listen to the answers.” She gives him a crooked smile. “And if you don’t like what he has to say, let me know and I’ll give that little shit a piece of my mind myself.”

Foggy laughs, a little choked. “I love you, Mom.”

“I know, sweetie.” She leans in and kisses his forehead. “I love you too.”

*

He works late and orders takeout at his desk. He realizes it’s childish to avoid Elektra like this, but, well, so be it.

Not that it matters, because she’s not in the apartment when he gets back. He frowns and checks the whole place again, like she could somehow be hiding in a one bedroom apartment too tiny for more than three people to stand in the living room without bumping into each other. “Elektra?”

No answer, of course. He tries not to panic. There’s no sign of a disturbance, so she must have left of her own volition. She’s been stuck in his apartment for the past few days, and a literal coffin for months before that - she probably just wanted to stretch her legs.

That, or she and Matt have decided to go after the Hand after all. Foggy loosens his tie and pulls out his phone to call Matt’s burner. He doesn’t really want to talk to Matt right now, not until he figures out what he wants to say, but he feels responsible for Elektra, grown-ass ninja that she may be. He needs to make sure she’s okay.

He’s just about to dial when he hears a rustle behind him. “Elektra?” he says, turning around -

- and hands grab him, yanking him backwards and to his knees and covering his mouth so he can’t scream.

Foggy tries to gasp and chokes on the hand muffling him. He struggles and the hands holding his arms yank them back harder, twisting painfully tight. A figure steps in front of him: a ninja, masked, but large and male. Definitely not Elektra.

“Good evening, Mr. Nelson,” the ninja says. His voice is light and incongruously pleasant. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Foggy makes a strangled noise. The hands holding him tighten again.

“To that end, of course, we will need to uncover your mouth,” the head ninja or whatever his title is says. “I am going to have to ask you not to scream. If you do, we will be very unhappy, and you will pay the price. Is that understood?”

Foggy nods. Of course he’s not going to scream. That would just make his neighbors come running, and they’re completely unequipped to deal with ninjas. Foggy’s not going to have any more deaths on his conscience.

The hand over his mouth is removed. Foggy shakes his head and then looks around the room. There’s at least half a dozen men in there, shrouded in dark clothing, all looking extremely dangerous. How did he not hear them come in? Or have they been there all this time, waiting for Foggy?

“Very good, Mr. Nelson,” says the head ninja. “Now. This is very important. Where is the Black Sky?”

So they don't have Elektra already. Good. “The what?” Foggy asks.

The head ninja strikes him across the face.

“I am not a patient man, Mr. Nelson,” he says. “We know you are former partners with Daredevil. We know Elektra Natchios has been staying with you. Your suffering is unnecessary. Tell us where they are.”

Foggy works his lower jaw around in a circle. He feels dazed, and wow, yeah, those really are stars sparking in his vision. He's never been hit like that before. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he says.

The head ninja hits him again. Foggy cuts his bottom lip on his teeth and feels his mouth fill with blood. “I am not going to stop,” the head ninja says. His voice is still very pleasant. “I will hurt you until you tell me.”

“There's nothing to tell,” Foggy insists. “I don't know Daredevil, I have no idea who this other person is, and I can't tell you where to find them.”

The head ninja punches him so hard his ears ring. Foggy cries out, then sags in the grip of the man holding him. He's dizzy.

“Tell me.”

“I don't know anything!” Foggy’s head is swimming, but one thing’s clear: he’ll die before he gives up Matt and Elektra.

“I will be honest with you, Mr. Nelson,” the head ninja says. “Our surveillance showed that you are essentially a weak man, and so we did not expect resistance. I have not brought any of the implements I would normally use to make someone talk. Of course, I can be very creative, but I need you to understand that the pain you are feeling right now is nothing compared to what I am capable of doing to you if you do not give me the information I need.”

“No...no information to give you,” Foggy manages. “You want legal rep? That I can do. But no...I don’t know...anything.” It’s not his best stab at humor, but to be fair to him he’s under a lot of strain right now.

“You do, Mr. Nelson, and you will share it with us,” the head ninja says, and pulls out a small, elegant knife, its blade gleaming in the light from the street. “The only thing you have control of is how likely you are to survive the telling of it.”

He reaches forward - and drops facedown on the floor, the knife skittering away.

Foggy only has a split second to stare in confusion before Elektra’s there - and then he’s still staring, because it’s one thing to know that some snotty debutante he knew casually in college is a secret ninja, and another thing entirely to see it in action. She’s in constant motion, spinning as she kicks one guy in the face, steals his sword, and runs him through, then whirling to face the others, the sword making glittering arcs through the air.

The guy holding Foggy lets go to join the fight and Foggy scrambles for shelter behind the couch. Elektra slices one ninja across the stomach and another across the throat. Foggy winces, but Matt did say these guys are undead. Still, it’s going to be a while before he stops seeing this every time he closes his eyes.

The last two ninjas flee out the window, and Foggy peeks cautiously over the couch. Elektra’s standing facing the window, chest heaving, sword dripping with blood. “Are you okay?” he asks.

She gives him a startled look. “Am I okay?” Shaking her head, she huffs an incredulous laugh. “Oh, Franklin. I’m starting to understand what Matthew sees in you.”

*

Elektra still has resources, it turns out. She makes a phone call and four very efficient women show up and quietly remove the bodies she’s dropped, then scrub Foggy’s apartment of blood. Foggy doesn’t see most of it; Elektra takes him to the bathroom and bathes his face in vinegar and water. He wrinkles his nose against the smell, but his bruised face does feel better afterwards.

“You didn’t give me up,” she says, sweeping the washcloth over his blackening eye.

He’d stare bewilderedly at her if he was willing to risk opening his eye and getting vinegar in it. “Of course I didn’t.”

“Hm.” She finishes what she’s doing, tosses the wet washcloth in the sink, and hands him a towel. “I always hated you, you know,” she says conversationally. “I mean, I never really saw the point of you to begin with, but from the first time I got Matthew out of those dreadful clothes and saw your name on his thigh I absolutely loathed you.”

Foggy pats his face dry gingerly and looks up at her from his perch on the closed toilet seat. “Uh...sorry?” He doesn’t want another fight. He doesn’t even have the energy for the usual swoop of jealousy that accompanies thinking about Matt in bed with other people.

“You know he never talked about you?” she says. “I mean, aside from ‘Oh, I have to go, I’m meeting Foggy,’ or ‘I can’t go to St. Tropez with you for Easter break, I already told Foggy I’d stay with his family that week.’” She tosses out the impressions of Matt blowing her off breezily, but Foggy’s startled nonetheless. Considering how little he saw Matt during his relationship with Elektra, he would never have imagined that Matt ever ditched Elektra for Foggy.

“He never talked about you either,” he admits.

“It drove me wild,” Elektra says. “He told me about everything else. His senses, his father, Stick. Of course I already knew about Stick, but…” She puts cool fingers on Foggy’s chin and tilts his head up, surveying the damage. “What was so special about you that he had to keep it secret? He and I were in love, so what were you doing on his thigh? And I didn’t have a mark of my own, so I couldn’t even lay that claim to him.” She shakes her head. “I was so jealous of you. I still am.”

Foggy raises his eyebrows, then winces when it hurts his bruised eye socket. “You’re jealous of me? Has...has no one told you you’re a beautiful millionaire ninja?”

She lets him go and leans against the sink. “He made a life with you. He chose to make a life with you.” She tilts her head at him. “And it’s a life that he treasures, even if it would bore me to tears.”

Foggy huffs through his nose. He thinks he’s starting to get her sense of humor. “Not enough not to go running off with you the first chance he got.”

“Do you think he honestly could have stayed away from New York? From you?” she asks. She shakes her head again. “He doesn’t know what he wants.”

Foggy looks at her, this maddening, brilliant, foolhardy, fearless...terrified, lonely woman. “Maybe that’s not the problem,” he says slowly. “Maybe he just wants too much.”

Elektra looks at him, then arches an eyebrow. “I’m not very good at sharing.”

Foggy snorts, then winces again. All his best facial expressions seem to be out of commission until he heals. “Who says I even want him back?”

She takes the towel from him to hang it back on the rack, and touches his cheek to angle his face again. “Oh, Franklin. You may not be pointless, but you are an absolutely shitty liar.” She smiles. “Now, do you want to call Matthew and give him a heart attack when you tell him what happened, or shall I?”

*

Matt arrives breathless and frantic, yanking first his helmet, then his gloves off as soon as he’s through the window. “They must have tracked one of us, I thought I’d shaken them off but they must have managed to follow me anyway and find you, I should never have brought you into this,” he says, words tripping over each other as he reaches for Foggy. His fingers actually brush Foggy’s cheek before he seems to realize that he doesn’t have that right anymore, and snatches them back like a guilty child. “Are. Are you all right?”

“It’s okay, Matt,” Foggy says. “I’m a bit worse for wear, but I’ll heal. See for yourself.”

Matt hesitates, then puts his hands on Foggy’s face again, working over it to check the extent of the damage. His touch is so light it barely hurts, even on the worst injuries, and Foggy can’t even bring himself to be heartbroken over how intimate it feels. Somewhere between letting go of his resentment of Elektra and now, the rage in his heart gave way to resignation. It’s only a little bittersweet.

“You’re okay,” Matt concludes finally, and pulls back, curling his hands into fists like he’s trying to control them.

“Thanks to Elektra,” Foggy says, and looks over to where she’s watching them, face expressionless.

She blinks, then tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve never gone that long without fighting, I was simply indulging myself.”

Foggy bites back a smile. Yeah, he understands her a bit better now. “Well, glad I could help.”

Matt frowns, head tilting back and forth between them as he follows the conversation. “The question is, what do we do now that they know about Foggy, and this apartment? I can try to find a safehouse for the two of you…”

“Until when?” Foggy asks. “Until you defeat the Hand? We just sit in a basement somewhere while you try to figure out how to take down a centuries-old cult of undead master fighters?”

Matt gives him a fretful look. “Well, I don’t know how else to keep you two safe, and I can’t - ”

“I’m leaving the city,” Elektra announces.

Matt gives her his equivalent of a stare. “What?”

“I’m leaving New York,” she says. “I’m the Black Sky. The Hand will never stop trying to control me. The longer I stay in one place, the less safe it is for that place.” She nods towards Foggy. “And for the people in it.”

“Elektra, you don’t have to…” Foggy starts, not sure how he’s going to end that sentence, but she shakes her head, cutting him off.

“I wasn’t made for this,” she says. “Hiding? Waiting? Putting down roots? I’m losing my mind here. You know I am.” She turns towards Matt on that last bit. “I can’t just lie low. That is not who I am. That is not how I was taught. ‘If you would win the battle, choose the field yourself.’” She’s quoting someone - Stick, probably. “This is your battlefield, Matthew. It’s not mine.”

“London?” Matt asks. There’s a quirk to his lips like a smile, but he doesn’t look happy. “Madrid, Tunisia?”

“No,” she says. “You’re not listening to me. This is your battlefield.”

“You’re leaving me again?” he asks, his voice small, and Foggy turns away, walks quickly to the kitchen so that he can at least pretend to be doing something. This isn’t a conversation for him - and besides, even if he and Elektra have arrived at some sort of truce, he doesn’t need her seeing how much it still hurts that Elektra’s potential absence wounds Matt in a way that Foggy’s never will.

“Matthew,” she says. Foggy hears her cross the floor to Matt, pictures her reaching for him. “You were right, last summer. There’s no place for me in your world.”

“I could come with you,” Matt says.

“Could you?” she asks.

There’s silence, and then footsteps again, and the bedroom door closing. Foggy still jumps when he hears Matt’s voice behind him. “Foggy.”

He turns around and forces a smile. Matt won’t be able to see it, but he could probably have heard the lack of it in Foggy’s voice. “You’ll love Madrid,” Foggy says. “I mean, I’ve never been there but it sounds like a place people would love. Plus you speak Spanish, so…”

“Foggy.”

“It’s okay if you go with her.” Foggy has to say this now, because if Matt does something stupid like ask for permission, Foggy might not be able to get it out. “Really, the city will be okay. There’s Jones now, and her friends, and Stark still lives here, doesn’t he? We don’t need you, Murdock.”

He tries to nudge Matt playfully with his arm, but Matt catches his wrist and holds Foggy’s hand loosely in his own. “Then why do you have my name on you?” he asks softly.

“Dirty pool, Matt,” Foggy says, and tries to pull away, but Matt won’t let him.

“Elektra was right when she said that I couldn’t leave New York,” he says. “But it’s not just because I love this city.” His brows are knit together, fretful, and Foggy fights the instinctive urge to try to soothe him. “I’m not making a joke here, Foggy, and I’m not trying to be cruel. I can’t figure it out - why I’ve always had both of your names, and why it’s only now that you’ve got mine.”

Foggy leans back against the counter and gives up on trying to take his hand back from Matt. Matt turns it over and traces the lines of his palm. “I don’t know, Matt. Okay? I don’t know any more about this than anyone else. I...my mom says it’s not for other people, but to tell us something about ourselves. That...that I didn’t need your name on me when I was with you, because I knew where I was supposed to be.”

Matt’s fingers tighten on his hand and then relax. “Do you think she’s right?”

“I don’t know,” Foggy says again, helplessly. “What would that mean for you, when you have two? You’ve barely ever even let me and Elektra be in the same room together, how could you be with both of us at once? It’d be like living two entirely separate lives.” He catches himself and has to laugh, a little bitter. “Which you were.”

Matt’s tracing his palm again. “Maybe...maybe that’s why,” he says slowly. “Elektra...she fell in love with Daredevil. Even if he didn’t have a name yet, that’s what she saw. That’s who she wanted. She doesn’t want Matt Murdock. And you...you don’t want Daredevil.”

Foggy stares at him. “You realize they’re both you, right? I would’ve felt pretty differently towards Daredevil if you’d let me know he was there from the beginning. I mean, jeez, Matt, maybe it just means you’re supposed to stop compartmentalizing.”

Matt lets him go. Foggy wants his hands back immediately, and hates himself for being so predictable. “Maybe I don’t know how.”

“It starts with telling the truth,” Foggy says, harsher than he means to. “Sorry. But, I mean...yeah.”

“Like you did?” Matt asks.

Foggy breathes through his nose, lets the anger go. “Okay, fine. I’ll give you that one. You want to know about the mark?” He rolls his sleeve up, high enough to expose the whole thing, and picks up Matt’s hand again, uses Matt’s forefinger to trace out the shape of it. “Right there. It’s black,” he adds, probably unnecessarily. Marks usually are.

Matt’s expression is wondering. “I can’t feel anything different,” he says, but when Foggy lets go of his hand, he traces the mark again without assistance, almost perfectly.

“Well, it’s there,” Foggy says.

“I believe you,” Matt says, his voice very soft. His finger is still on the last T of his name. “All those years of wondering why you didn’t have one…”

Foggy moves away. He can’t bear the wistfulness on Matt’s face right now; it makes him sharp. “You could have told me about yours.”

“How?” Matt asks. “When I found out about it, I was with Elektra. What was I supposed to do, tell you you were my soulmate when I was in a relationship with someone else?”

“We could have worked something out,” Foggy says, knowing he’s being unfair. “There are platonic soulmates.”

“Well, you weren’t one!” Matt snaps. “I wanted you and I was with her and I couldn’t have both!”

Foggy stares. “...What?”

Matt stalks away, but he doesn’t go far - just to the window, like he wants to slip out through it but knows he can’t get out of the conversation that easily. “I love you, Foggy,” he says. Foggy can’t hear his heart, but the truth of it echoes in its very simplicity. “I always have. But I loved Elektra, and she was my soulmate, and she left. If I told you the truth, it was no guarantee you’d stay. You didn’t even have my mark.”

Through Foggy’s stunned daze - Matt loves him, Matt loves him - a memory floats back to him. Matt, ten years ago, drunk and solemn: “Having someone's name written on you doesn't mean you're meant to be together forever.”

He takes a step towards Matt. Matt loves him. “I stayed anyway,” he points out. “Until you told me to go.”

Matt’s chin drops. He’s still facing away from Foggy. “You were better off without me. I still believe that.”

“Yeah? Well, I got a mark on my arm says otherwise,” Foggy says.

The sensible part of him thinks that he should just let Matt go; that he should smile and nod at all of Matt’s self-sacrificing bullshit and let him and Elektra walk out the door to Europe or Africa or wherever-the-fuck. He has a good job without Matt, and no one shooting at him, and no one making him cry.

He’s always been good at shutting up the sensible part of him when Matt’s around.

And Matt loves him.

Matt shakes like a leaf when Foggy lays the flat of his hand on Matt’s back. “I’m not going to stop being Daredevil,” he says. “I can’t.”

“I know,” Foggy says. Maybe his mom was right - maybe that’s what Matt’s marks meant all along. He’s not just the too-serious, soft-eyed boy Foggy fell in love with, but he’s not just the reckless, avenging thrillseeker Elektra loves either. Maybe all Matt needs is someone who can love both.

Maybe that’s who Foggy can be.

“I know the mark doesn’t mean I won’t leave you, Matt,” he says. Matt’s ribcage expands beneath his hand. “But do you think you could try to believe that I’ll stay anyway?”

Matt’s shoulders roll forward. “What if I tell you to leave again?” he asks.

“Then I’ll leave,” Foggy says. “I mean, not from here I’m not leaving, this is my apartment. But I’ll stay with you, Matt, until you don’t want me anymore.”

Matt turns around, then, and with his glasses somewhere back at his place it’s easy to see the tears in his eyes. “I’ll always want you,” he says. “No matter what else happens, Foggy, I know that for sure.”

And when he finally, finally kisses Foggy, Foggy believes him.

*

They make their way to the tiny airstrip at four a.m., when the sky is just beginning to lighten over the harbor.

“There’s nothing I can do to talk you into staying?” Matt asks.

Elektra shakes her head. She’s wearing a hat with a massive brim and a silk scarf that shrouds her face. She looks less like an undead vigilante fleeing ninja assassins and more like a movie star who doesn’t want to be recognized. Foggy supposes that’s sort of the point.

“New York’s not safe with me here,” she says. “Don’t worry, Matthew, I’ll lead them on a merry chase. This is a hunt the Hand will not enjoy, I promise you that.”

He sighs and pulls her into his arms. Foggy glances away when Matt kisses her, more to give them privacy than out of passive aggression. He’s not going to pretend to himself that he doesn’t feel a twinge of jealousy at the sight, but it’s faint. In time it’ll fade entirely.

“I love you,” Matt says.

“I love you too,” Elektra replies.

“Be careful.”

She grins. “Never.”

He lets her go, and she turns to Foggy, who holds out a hand. “Give ‘em hell, Natchios,” he says.

He’s surprised when Elektra bypasses his hand to hug him. “Take care of Matthew, Franklin,” she says. “But don’t be too nice to him. He likes it when you’re a little mean.”

Foggy glances at Matt, whose ears are red. “Yeah, that’s not an enormous surprise,” Foggy says, and Elektra laughs.

“Do you think you can manage it?” she asks.

Foggy grins. “I’ll be the meanest little rabbit you ever saw.”

She grins back. It’s ferocious and beautiful. “And I’ll be the most reckless idiot.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Foggy replies.

She steps back, squeezes Matt’s hand once more, and makes her way up the ramp stairs to the door of the tiny plane, where the pilot she’s paid an obscene amount of money to ask as few questions as possible is waiting. As she turns, the wind catches her hair and her scarf, and the faint pink light of morning renders her absolutely breathtaking.

Foggy’s hand slips into Matt’s. “She’s beautiful, Matty,” he murmurs.

“I know,” Matt says.

Elektra tosses her hair. She’s clearly posing. Last year it would have annoyed Foggy; now it just makes him smile. “This is not the end,” she says, and Matt’s hand tightens in Foggy’s.

“I know that too,” he says.

Elektra walks onto the plane, and the pilot waves Matt and Foggy off the runway. They back up towards the tiny hangar but don’t go in, despite the noise of the engines as the plane starts up and the chill of the early morning air.

“I’m sorry you had to say goodbye to her again,” Foggy says, and means it.

“Considering the other goodbyes we’ve had, I’m not sure I have the right to complain about this one,” Matt says. He presses closer to Foggy, and Foggy watches the plane move down the runway, gathering speed as it gets further away.

“She’ll be fine,” he says. “Death couldn’t stop her, what are a handful of measly old ninjas gonna do?”

“I know,” Matt says, and it doesn’t sound like he’s just humoring Foggy.

Elektra’s plane lifts into the sky. Matt lays his head on Foggy’s shoulder.

“Do you want to go home?” Foggy asks.

“Home” is Foggy’s place, for the moment. Matt has barely left his side in the three days it’s taken them to arrange Elektra’s falsified papers and travel plans, and Foggy, shaken from being attacked in his own home, hasn’t complained. Or maybe he just missed having Matt around.

They haven’t really talked about how permanent an arrangement that will be, or if Foggy’s going to come back to Nelson and Murdock, or even what to call what they are to each other now. Elektra was the priority, and besides, it seemed callous to talk about a life with Matt when Elektra didn’t have one, at least not for the foreseeable future.

Now the world seems open with possibility, and Foggy’s a little terrified, but mostly exhilarated. Matt could have gotten on that plane, and Foggy knows that part of him wanted to - but he’s here on the ground with Foggy instead, holding his hand. Because he chose to be.

Matt was right, it turns out, all those years ago. Who cares about soul marks? Fate’s got nothing on choice.

“In a little while,” Matt says, his breath warm against Foggy’s cheek. “Can we just stay here for a bit? It’s quieter.”

“Of course, Matty,” Foggy says, and turns to kiss the top of Matt’s head before glancing to the east. “Sun’s coming up,” he says. “You want me to tell you about the sunrise?”

“Please,” Matt says, voice soft and hand strong in Foggy’s.

So Foggy does.

Notes:

Come say hi on tumblr!