An hour later, I was showered and heading out. Before I left, I deadbolted the front door from the inside then spun a portal to just outside of it, heading down the stairs to street level. I walked out onto the sidewalk, a spring in my step as I made my way toward the café on the corner, Tony Stark’s credit card burning a hole in my pocket. A few minutes later, I was sitting down at a small table outside with a breakfast bagel and a coffee—it had taken a moment of awkwardly explaining what a ‘long black’ was to the barista, but it turned out decent enough.

I people-watched for a bit as I ate, not really thinking about anything in particular other than the evening I’d spent with Natasha. Should I text her? No, no; way too soon. Play it cool. She was already going to text me about this afternoon, I had to wait for that.

I sighed softly. That wasn’t going to be a fun conversation—I could have done it sooner, but ripping off the band-aid about Bucky and Tony’s parents was never going to be fun and I’d been avoiding it. He needed to know what had happened and he needed to be in a situation where he wasn’t going to have a complete and utter meltdown when he found out. What I’d done with Nat had worked out pretty well, so that seemed like a good model to stick with. Lay out the facts, provide some suggestions on approach, then let the Avengers decide how handle it.

My thoughts turned back to Natasha—her smile, her eyes, the way just being near her felt, the softness of her lips, the curves of her body… I realised I had a huge, stupid grin on my face and rubbed my cheeks, chuckling softly to myself. God, I really was pathetic. Utterly besotted.

The bagel was great and quickly disappeared, and I found myself greedily eyeing off a piece of orange cake sitting in the café’s glass counter display. It wasn’t like I was in a rush, right?

There was a prickling sensation at the base of my neck and I suddenly felt like I was being watched. A large black crow had just alighted on a tree just down the sidewalk. I stared at it for a moment and it let out a loud, clear caw. That… wasn’t the same crow I saw the other day, was it? I knew that was a bit unlikely. There were heaps of birds in New York. It didn’t look particularly distinctive, apart from being pretty damn big. Was it actually a crow, or a raven? I vaguely knew the difference, but it was difficult to pick out details at this distance. Could it be—

“Wanda.”

I snapped out of my musings with a start. While I’d been spacing out, Jessica Jones had approached the table, her forehead already creased by a frown. “Oh, Jessica, Hi! Want to join me?” I asked, gesturing to the seat opposite me. “What are you up to this morning?”

She hesitated a moment before sitting, staring at me intently. The PI was dressed simply, blue jeans and a black leather jacket over a simple grey top. “I came to talk to you, actually.”

“Huh. How did you find me?”

“It’s literally my job.” She shook her head. “Tell me what you know about IGH.”

I held up a hand. “Hang on, walk me through this. You knew I’d be at this café somehow? Or did you follow me from Natasha’s apartment?” She shot me an unimpressed look and I squinted at her, tilting my head curiously. “You remember I can make portals, right?”

“So?”

“What were you going to do if I’d just portalled out of the apartment and never came down?”

“…Are you going to tell me what you know, or not?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know anything I had to say?” I asked mildly, taking a sip of my coffee and finding that I’d sadly reached the bottom of the cup.

A look of annoyance flashed across her face and she leant back in the chair, arms folded tightly across her chest. “Yeah, well…”

“Look, I’m sorry again for dumping all that on you at the party. It wasn’t fair, but I didn’t know how else to tell you. You’re not exactly the most approachable person.”

There was a pause. After a few moments, Jessica sighed and loosened her posture. “That’s fair, I guess,” she said, a little grudgingly.

“I’ll make you a deal. You can pick my brain about whatever I remember about IGH and in return you come with me. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

“And who’s that?” she asked, voice laced with suspicion.

“Matt Murdock—he’s a lawyer. You two would end up working together eventually, anyway. I was going to go to see him and I figure I might as well introduce you two a little early.”

There was another slight hesitation, then Jessica nodded. “Fine.”

“Alright… I’m going to be honest, I don’t remember a lot.” It had been almost a full decade since I’d watched the Jessica Jones series, so the details mostly eluded me. “IGH did genetic editing for medical purposes, but ended up somehow making Enhanced. They’re the ones that picked up your hospital bill after the accident and I guess they added a little extra spice to your treatment as an experiment. You should try to get a hold of the hospital’s file on you. They also got into creating drugs that increase strength and reflexes—that’s the stuff that Trish took, the combat enhancers. They have nasty mental side-effects, psychosis and stuff. There’s a guy, a doctor. I can’t remember his name. Gave Simpson the drugs.”

“That’s not helpful.”

I snapped my fingers a couple of times as I thought back. “Trish should know his name, I think. Simpson told her. He’s your best lead. I think he’d been killed by the time you tried to find him in my visions, but this is early so you should still be able to find and talk to him. He’s an asshole. There’s another doctor as well, a woman. She siphoned patients from the hospital you were treated at to IGH.”

“Let me guess, you don’t remember her name, either.”

“Hey, how about you view the universe untethered by time and see how many details you forget.”

“You said…” Jessica exhaled in a loud sigh. “You said that my mom was alive.” There was a barely-concealed waver in her voice, hope warring with frustration and anxiety.

It was my turn to hesitate. “She’s not well. She was experimented on as well, but she progressed to full-blown psychosis. I think it was too risky for them to release her, so they didn’t. Well, except for when they wanted to use her as a weapon to murder someone. Simpson’s doctor sent her after Trish for asking too many questions. Will send. Won’t send now, I guess. Ugh, tenses are weird when I’m talking about this stuff.”

“This guy has my mom?”

“I don’t know if he has her,” I hedged. There was another guy that ran IGH, the doctor that Jessica’s mother ended up in a relationship with, but I really couldn’t remember anything about him at all and I didn’t think dropping that particular bomb on her without context was going to provide any benefit. “If he doesn’t, he almost certainly knows where she is.”

“Alright. Thanks.”

“Hey!” I protested as she stood and turned to walk away. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Jessica whipped her head back and shot me what might have actually been the most venomous look I’d ever seen. “What?”

I held up my hands nonthreateningly. “You said you’d come meet Murdock with me.”

Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes for a moment and took a long breath. “Will this take long?”

“It shouldn’t. We can just portal there. I already Street View’ed the address.”

“Fine.”

I stood up, glancing around at the few people that were nearby. “Maybe we should do this somewhere less public. Let’s walk back to Natasha’s building and we’ll go from there.” She acknowledged the suggestion with a shrug and we left the café. As we walked together, Jessica thrust her hands into her jacket pockets, glaring straight ahead. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to be a little nicer to me, considering,” I said mildly.

She shot me a huge, exaggeratedly fake smile. “You know, when the Avengers first told me about you, I thought you were going to be a real pain in the ass to deal with. And when we first met, I really didn't like you.”

I waited for a moment, then frowned when nothing else seemed to be forthcoming. “Is… is that the end of that sentence? There's no second part?”

“No. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“…Rude.” Despite her words, I swore I saw the ghost of a smirk curve the corner of her mouth.

Once we arrived back at Natasha’s building, we walked up to the front door and I spun a portal into existence almost flat against it. On the other side, we stepped through to a significantly less well-maintained street, gutters clogged with leaf litter and bags of trash piled on the sidewalk next to a graffitied fire hydrant.

On the other side of the street was a relatively nondescript building with a façade made of rough, irregularly-shaped bricks. Screwed to one of the dull, red-painted pillars that framed the entrance was a small plaque, black with raised bronze lettering in all capitals: NELSON AND MURDOCK, ATTORNEYS AT LAW. We crossed the street to the door, a wrought iron mesh affair covered in peeling beige paint. We let ourselves in and headed up a flight of stairs to the actual office. There were several other businesses operating out of the building, each with a business name stencilled on a frosted glass window set into the wood of their front door.

I opened the door to our destination and we walked in. The waiting room wasn’t much to look at; they didn’t even have a bench or proper matching seats, just a haphazard collection of folding chairs, with a flimsy card table tucked into a corner with some magazines and a lamp on it. Karen Page, their office manager, looked up from the newspaper she was reading as we entered—its pages deconstructed and spread chaotically across her desk—and shot us a brilliant smile. “Hi!” She stood up as she greeted us. “How can I help you?” God, she was pretty. Pale skin, with long, dead-straight blonde hair with strawberry highlights.

“Hi!” I said, matching her energy. Jessica folded her arms and fell back a bit, letting me take the lead. “We need to speak with Matt Murdock. Apologies for not making an appointment, but it’s a bit urgent.”

“Ah, sorry. He’s not in right now. Is there something I can help you with?”

I tried not to pull too much of a face. Karen didn’t know about Matt’s vigilantism at this point, I was pretty sure. “Uh, what about Foggy?” I glanced to the side, looking through a glass window into his office. He was seated at his desk, and looked up at me at basically the same time. I shot him a hopeful smile and started toward his door.

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“Sure, let me just check to see if he’s available.” Karen moved quickly, trying to intercept me before I just waltzed into Foggy’s office. “Miss…?”

“Wanda. Wanda Maximoff. And that’s Jessica Jones,” I said as she stepped in front of me.

She was quick, but Foggy had already perked up and was moving toward the door as well. He opened it and she turned to shoot him a slightly annoyed look. “Uh, I have a Wanda Maximoff and Jessica Jones here to see you. They don’t have an appointment, but they said it was urgent.”

“Franklin Nelson,” Foggy introduced himself with a smile, holding out a hand. “Uh, that’s fine, Karen. How can I help you ladies?”

I shook his offered hand, grinning at him. “Hi, Foggy. Actually, we need to talk to Matt. Is he working today? Do you know where he is?”

He shook his head, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Sorry,” he said apologetically. “Matt’s unavailable at the moment. What—”

I interrupted him. “We really need to talk to him. It’s about his… uh. Extracurricular activities.” I waggled my eyebrows.

“I’m… not sure what you mean?” To his credit, Foggy had an excellent poker face—not even a slight widening of the eyes, and he actually sounded convincingly puzzled when he spoke.

I tilted my head toward Karen, flicking my eyes in her direction. “Sure, right. Can we, uh, talk privately for a second?”

He huffed a small sigh, then shook his head in a semi-defeated shrug. “…Okay. Follow me.”

With one last glance at a concerned-looking Karen, Foggy led us through to his office. Closing the door firmly behind us, he stepped over toward his desk and hesitated. “Is Matt in trouble?” he asked quietly.

“He might be. I really need to reach him. It’s about… well, you know. Hero stuff.”

He paused, looking at me slightly uncertainly. “Matt hasn’t mentioned you.”

“He wouldn’t have, we haven’t met yet. It’s hard to explain.”

“Ah, I don’t know. Okay. Let me… let me see if I can call him.”

Foggy took out his smart phone, careful not to take his eyes off of us. It rang a few times before Matt answered. “Uh, hey. We’ve got a pretty intense woman who’s come by the office looking for you. Said her name’s Wanda Maximoff and that she has to talk to you urgently about your, uh, extracurricular activities.” I could hear Matt responding on the other end, but not well enough to make out his words. “Yeah, pretty sure. Uh, no. Not at all.”

“Tell him it’s about Elektra,” I said.

“Uh, she said it’s about Elektra? …Sure. Okay. Got it.” He hung up and looked at us. “Matt’s on his way, he won’t be long.”

“Thanks, Foggy. I appreciate it. Sorry for dumping all this on you so suddenly.”

He grinned and it only seemed very slightly forced. “That’s okay. I think my most pressing question is why is literally everyone Matt knows involved in this stuff a beautiful woman?”

Jessica blinked, caught slightly off guard by the comment. I grinned. “Elektra’s another, sorry to say. It’s his curse to bear: to be forever surrounded by beautiful women without being able to fully understand just how hot we all are.”

“Yeah, it’s a curse all right,” Foggy snorted.

“We’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing. Thanks again.” He gave me a worried look as Jess and I stepped back out into the waiting room. Karen didn’t quite glare at me and I smiled at her apologetically. “Matt’s on his way. We’ll just wait quietly. Sorry to be a pain.”

We settled into a pair of folding chairs to wait. Karen went back to what she was doing, glancing at us every so often when she thought we weren’t looking.

“You really are just that clueless, aren’t you?” Jessica asked me after a while.

“Huh?”

“These people have never met you before,” she said, shaking her head. “You have no idea how off-balance you put people when you sweep in like this and bulldoze over them like you know everything, do you?”

I turned to look at her, shaking my head. “Believe me, I do know. I’ve tried other things… at least I know I can get some results this way. Even if it doesn’t earn me any friends.”

“How do you know that this guy will even listen to you?”

“You did, didn’t you?” I grinned at her annoyed expression. “You wanted nothing to do with me, yet here you are. I’m growing on you, right? You’re starting to like me. I can tell.”

“Not even close.”

“You can’t lie to me, Jess. I’ve seen the future. We’re going to be BFFs.”

The corner of her mouth twitched as she tried not to react. I was definitely getting through to her a little bit.

Fifteen minutes later, Matt Murdock—Daredevil himself—stepped into the office, walking stick in hand, a set of dark red tinted sunglasses over his eyes. He ushered us into his office after a warm smile at Karen, and the door was closed behind us. Matt smiled warmly as he sat down, Jess and I settling into the chairs opposite him.

“I don’t believe we’ve met, Ms Maximoff, and… I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.” His head was tilted slightly off to the side, as if he were looking past us instead of at us.

“Jessica. Jessica Jones.”

“Ms Jones,” he acknowledged her with a smile. “So, what brings you to see me?”

“Okay,” I said, turning to Jessica. She raised an eyebrow. “How should I do this, then? You didn’t like how I approached you, so here: Show me what I did wrong.”

The PI set her jaw, shaking her head. “You—” After a moment, she let out an annoyed huff. “You weren’t wrong. I guess. I probably wouldn’t have listened if you’d been softer about things,” she admitted grudgingly.

“Okay.” I turned back to Matt. “Elektra is working for Stick.” He was generally pretty good at hiding his reactions, but he visibly flinched when I said that. “She’s a liar and she’s trying to manipulate you. Don’t follow her, don’t help her. She’s expecting you to do exactly that so she can manipulate you into position for Stick to use as a weapon again.”

He paused as he processed that, jaw working for a moment before he spoke again, letting out an anxious little laugh as he did so. “Alright, Ms Maximoff…”

“Wanda, please.”

“Wanda. How do you know any of that? How do you know about Elektra? About Stick?” He’d shifted his posture, sitting forward slightly to allow him to spring smoothly to his feet if the need arose, and his tone was slightly sharper.

“I have abilities, like you. Well, not exactly like you—kind of way cooler, if I’m being honest—but I just know things. Things I shouldn’t be able to know. It’s hard to explain. You know what that’s like, right?”

His grip tightened on the handle of his walking stick as he flexed his knuckles. “Why are you here? If you’re not working with Stick or the Yakuza…”

“I’m just here to help. The people you’re involved with are more dangerous that you know.”

Jess spoke up, her voice terse. “She’s a pain in the ass, but she seems to know what she’s talking about for the most part. You should listen to her.”

“It all comes back to Midland Circle,” I said. “Nobu wasn’t just some guy that Fisk sent after you, he represented a very particular interest that wanted to acquire that specific block. They own it now. Everyone thinks they’re Yakuza—they don’t do much to disabuse people of that notion—but that’s not what they are. Elektra is lying to you about that… or will lie to you about that, if she hasn’t shown up yet.”

Matt took a deep breath. “What do you mean, if she hasn’t?”

“It’s complicated, dude,” Jess interjected again and I tried not to smile—she was on my side, here! “Just focus on the details for now.”

“Okay… What are they, then? If they’re not Yakuza?”

“The Hand. It’s an ancient organisation. Basically evil ninjas, I guess. Your buddy, Stick, belongs to an opposing organisation called the Chaste.”

“…Stick’s War,” he said quietly.

“Yeah. Madame Gao’s actually one of them, too, a different faction of the same organisation,” I snapped my fingers, suddenly remembering something. “Nobu isn’t dead, by the way. I mean, he was, but he got better. He’ll be coming soon.”

Matt’s head turned toward me, brow creased in confusion. “What do you mean he isn’t dead? He—”

“Burned to death? You saw it? Yeah. Like I said, he got better. High ranking members of the Hand tend to do that, unfortunately. They can bring back the dead, if there’s enough left of them to bring back.”

Jess looked at me sharply. “They can bring back the dead?”

“I know it sounds like a lot, but yeah. I think there’s a limited window of time they have to do it in. It can mess with the person’s mind, though, and consumes a limited resource. They can’t just bring everyone back.”

“Fucking hell,” she scoffed in disbelief, shaking her head. “Ninjas that bring back the dead. Why am I even here?”

“You and Matt worked together to bring these guys down, along with a couple of others. Or you will work together. Or maybe you won’t have to—I’m thinking about trying to get the Avengers in on this. We have some time to decide how to handle it.”

“The Avengers?” Matt asked, a note of surprise in his voice.

“I’m actually staying in Avengers Tower at the moment,” I said, maybe a little bit smugly. “I’ve been helping them out with a few things.”

“You said this all comes back to Midland Circle. Why?”

“They’re excavating under it, looking for something buried underneath. An ancient treasure. It’s going to take a while… I think a year, at least. Maybe.” I shot a glance over at Jessica. “I’m not certain on timeframes.”

Matt was silent for a few moments. “…Elektra showed up in my apartment last night,” he admitted. His knuckles flexed again, walking stick creaking slightly under the pressure. “Let’s just assume I believe you for the moment…”

--

Agatha stepped out into the small rooftop garden, trimmed hedges and miniature trees flanking a perfectly manicured lawn. She stepped carefully across the grass, toward where the garden’s sole other occupant sat perched on a low stone bench, facing away from her. Beyond the bench was a square pool, a small stone fountain in the shape of a frog on the opposite side spitting a small stream of water into the air.

The elderly Chinese woman rose to her feet as the witch approached, leaning heavily on her wooden cane. Her hair was drawn back in a loose bun, and she wore small golden hoops through her ears. “Hěn gāoxìng jiàn dào nǐ, hēi pí shū de Agatha. Yǐjīng hěnjiǔle,” she said, a small smile creasing her wrinkled features.

Agatha inclined her head slightly awkwardly in a small bow. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me, Madame Gao. I’m afraid I’ve gotten a little rusty on my Mandarin over the last century.”

“No need to thank me.” She sat back down, a little shaky on her feet—an affectation, Agatha suspected—and gestured for the witch to do the same. “The Hand still honour the old agreements. What brings you to New York?”

Agatha sat as indicated, crossing her legs at the ankle. “I’m hunting.”

She was not overly friendly with the Hand, but dealing with them in the past had been the cost of staying alive. They were both part of the same loose, informal network of organisations that had been adversaries of the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven and their Earthly allies over the centuries. An agreement had been reached, centuries ago, to avoid getting in each other’s ways while fighting their ancient foes.

It was considered polite to offer a signal when moving into an unfamiliar territory for an extended period of time, to alert any of the current occupants that a new player had arrived and open a channel for negotiations. Though her prey seemed to have roosted in New York for a time, Agatha was unsure how long she would remain in the city. Accordingly, she thought it was safer to follow the custom out of courtesy, just in case she ended up having to cause a ruckus.

New York was such a significant location that she would have been shocked if she hadn’t gotten any reply, but she’d been vaguely surprised to find that one of the Fingers of the Hand—their circle of leaders—had personally set up shop in the area. She’d met Madame Gao a couple of times before over the last three centuries and, immortal to immortal, the woman seemed to be the most stable of the Fingers.

“Ah. Your quarry must be quite interesting. I believe it has been near enough to a hundred years since you were last seen straying from your home,” Gao note, an unspoken question in her statement. “Publicly, at least.”

The witch grinned. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to make a fuss. There’s a woman, seems to be hanging around the Avengers lately. Wanda something.” She held up a hand and a massive crow, black and sleek of feather, descended from the sky to alight on her wrist. Bringing the creature down into her lap, she muttered an incantation and the bird was replaced with a fuzzy, piebald rabbit in a flare of black-edged purple energy. “Señor Scratchy has been keeping an eye on her for me, haven’t you? Haven’t you?” she cooed over the demon.

The Scarlet Witch had been an absolute bitch and a half to keep track of—she seemed very happy to abuse the sorcerers’ translocation spellwork and had been bouncing back and forth across the globe like a pinball. Agatha had her own methods of travel through the Ways but they were not nearly as convenient or quick, so she had decided to wait and observe until that behaviour changed. When her target had finally settled in New York and seemed to content to stay put for a least a little while, Agatha had decided to move in and plan her approach.

“The Avengers?” Madame Gao’s face twisted in distaste. “It would be best if you finished your business quickly, then. I have had my fill of so-called heroes of late.”

“Already the plan. I’m not going to hang around for too long.”

Gao sighed, a note of disappointment in her voice. “I had thought I might seek your assistance with something, but I have no desire to risk drawing the sort of attention you may draw in your hunt. Our business here is delicate and the remaining Chaste are already intent on interfering.”

“Sure. Stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours. Just like old times.”

The elderly woman shrugged, both hands leaning on the curved head of her cane. “The wheel constantly turns. We must adapt to its position, or be crushed beneath it.”

Agatha smiled and nodded. “…Uh, yeah. Sure. It’s been just lovely to see you again, Madame Gao, but I really must be off. No rest for the wicked, after all.”

She needed to observe Wanda for a little longer and get a better understanding of what she was facing before she’d feel comfortable closing in on her prey. The Scarlet Witch was a legendary figure, after all, and Agatha hadn’t lived as long as she had by not being careful.