Chapter 111: The Broke Batman Arrives
The system upgrade was ticking down and Ethan had decided to spend the waiting time doing something civilized.
Tea. The good kind, properly steeped, taken at the corner booth while the morning customers filtered in and out and the Lucky Dragon ran itself the way it had learned to run itself over the past several months. He had earned this particular quality of morning.
He was thinking about Wakanda.
Not urgently — it was a future problem, the kind that required planning rather than immediate action. But Fury's threat to Hell's Kitchen had clarified something: if you were going to hold territory, you needed to be able to defend it, and Ethan's current defensive posture was essentially he was there. That worked until it didn't.
A dome would work. The kind Wakanda used — vibranium lattice, energy projection, enough to give Loki's army something to think about when they arrived. Which they would. The timeline was accelerating in ways the original films hadn't prepared for, and Ethan had things he'd rather not lose to an alien invasion.
The vibranium was also, frankly, valuable. The dome was secondary to the trade implications.
I'll go see them eventually, he thought. Friendly conversation. Reasonable terms. He was not going to think too carefully about what "friendly conversation" looked like in practice given Wakanda's historically aggressive foreign policy toward outsiders who knew too much. It'll work out.
His tea was excellent. He returned to the tea.
The man who came in was wearing a well-fitted suit and silver-framed glasses that were not reading glasses or fashion glasses but the glasses of someone who navigated by sound and texture and had decided that the visual performance of normalcy was worth maintaining anyway.
He moved with the contained precision of someone who had mapped the room as he entered it — each step calibrated, the turns exact, the awareness of other people's positions coming from somewhere that wasn't sight.
He came directly to Ethan's booth.
"Excuse me," he said. "Does this place have rooms to rent?"
Ethan looked at him.
Matt Murdock, he thought. One star. Law degree from Columbia. Lives in Hell's Kitchen, was born in Hell's Kitchen, has been operating as Daredevil for — based on the timing — approximately two years. Currently, evidently, homeless.
"We do," Ethan said. "But I'm not going to rent to you."
Matt Murdock blinked. It was a subtle expression on someone whose face had learned to give very little away, but it was there. "Is there an application process? I'm—"
"A lawyer," Ethan said. "I know. Matthew Victor Murdock." He paused. "Or should I say — Daredevil?"
The stillness that followed was extremely still.
Matt stepped back. Not dramatically — just one step, the instinctive creation of distance that accompanied the specific quality of someone knows what I am.
"How did you—"
"How many blind men are operating in Hell's Kitchen at night doing what you do," Ethan said. "Two years ago, this would have been a harder problem. Now that you've been active for a while, the pattern is available to anyone who knows to look." He sipped his tea. "Fisk knew before I did."
Matt went quiet.
"He used you," Ethan continued. "He was retiring, and you were clearing out the people who didn't want to retire with him. He found it convenient." He let that settle. "Don't take it personally. He genuinely also thought you were doing good work."
Matt's jaw moved. He was processing several things at once — the exposure, the Fisk connection, the question of what Ethan was going to do with this information.
"Are you going to be a problem," Matt said. It came out level, which took effort.
"I was going to say the opposite," Ethan said. "Sit down."
Matt sat. He navigated the booth with the unhurried accuracy that always accompanied him — everything measured, nothing uncertain.
Ethan looked at him. Considered him.
He'd thought about this since the Aizen template came up in the gacha. The compatibility had been low — Daredevil wasn't Family yet, wasn't even a three-star, hadn't been in the right context for the relationship to develop naturally. But the man himself was a particular kind of thing that Ethan didn't encounter often.
He'd been raised in the same neighborhood. He'd gone in the same direction — law school, service, the question of what you owe to the place that made you. And then he'd added the night work, the red suit, the refusal to kill even when killing would be simpler. Ethan watched superheroes and found them mostly legible — they had origin stories, they had primary motivations, they fit a type. Matt Murdock fit a type and then kept going past it, into something more difficult.
Broke Batman, he thought, with genuine affection for the image. Zero resources, no backup, operating in a city that doesn't deserve what he gives it. And still at it.
He respected it. He'd never quite say that, but he respected it.
"I changed my mind about the room," Ethan said. "Free, as long as you work for me."
Matt looked in his direction — the close-attention look that wasn't quite a stare because the eyes weren't quite focusing the same way, but conveyed the same quality of assessment.
"Work for you," he said. "What does that mean."
"Hell's Kitchen has a lawyer," Ethan said. "The school, the community, the people here who've never had anyone in their corner when something official happens to them. That's you. On retainer." He paused. "The room is the retainer. You do the work, you live here. You stay Daredevil on your own time — that's your business, not mine. But during the day you're Matt Murdock, attorney, and the people in this neighborhood have access to you."
Matt was quiet for a long moment.
"You're not going to ask me to stop operating at night," he said.
"That would be hypocritical," Ethan said. "I have my own extracurricular activities."
"You want a lawyer."
"I want a good lawyer who actually lives here and actually cares about the outcome." He looked at Matt directly. "You're broke because you won't take cases that compromise what you think is right. That's expensive. This is me making it less expensive."
Another pause.
"Why," Matt said.
Ethan thought about the honest answer, which was several things at once — the Aizen template and what it required, the fact that Daredevil operating in Hell's Kitchen was an asset Ethan should be coordinating rather than working around, the specific thing he recognized in Matt Murdock that he didn't advertise recognizing in himself.
"Because you're the right person for the job," Ethan said. "And right now you're sleeping on someone's couch, which is not where the right person should be."
Matt's mouth did something at the edge of a smile.
"That's not an answer," he said.
"No," Ethan agreed. "But it's what I've got."
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you