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Clint winced as he attempted to suture the gash high on his bicep. The quinjet was on autopilot, but the turbulence and other injuries made it difficult. His ribs were taped, his head throbbed, but he’d gotten off easy. Every few stitches, he would glance back at the transport gurney locked down in the bay. On it lay Daredevil.
The mission had been an overlapping mess, a small HYDRA cell with tech that had attracted both SHIELD and Hell’s Kitchen’s resident Devil. They’d ended up back-to-back, two against a small army. It had been… impressive. And terrifying.
Now, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was a still, broken figure. His suit was a ruin of sliced kevlar and burnt fabric. One arm was clearly broken. A deep, angry burn seared across his shoulder and neck. But the worst was the shrapnel, jagged pieces of the HYDRA drone they’d brought down embedded in his side and leg.
The quinjet’s autopilot had set a course for the only place with the tech to handle this: Avengers Tower. The bay doors hissed open to reveal Bruce Banner, his face a mask of calm professionalism, and Tony Stark, brushing cookie crumbs off his AC/DC t-shirt.
“What’s the damage, Legolas?” Tony asked, his eyes snapping to Clint’s bandages the second the rear ramp was lowered. His gaze then landed on Daredevil and his usual quips died on his lips. “Yikes. Okay. That’s… a lot.”
“He took the brunt of the drone’s core breach.” Clint dragged a hand down his face, exhaustion setting in as the adrenaline began to abandon him. “Shrapnel, burns, the works. I’m fine. Patch him up.”
“We need medical,” Tony went to tap his comm to call for help—
Clint caught his hand. “No. I barely got him medical treatment last time. If we can handle this, I’d prefer we do it in-house, Team-only. Fewer people poking around the mask, the better.”
Tony hesitated, his hand still hovering near the comm. His furrowed brow said, ‘This is a terrible idea.’
“Please. I’m already crossing a huge boundary just bringing him here. Don’t make me cross more.”
Finally, Tony relented, and led the way. As they wheeled him to their private medbay, Bruce was at Daredevil’s side with a portable scanner humming in his hand. “Multiple foreign objects, internal bleeding, second and third-degree burns, compound fractures of the radius and ulna, two ribs with nondisplaced fractures, hairlines along the sternum and half his other ribs…” He listed the injuries with a clinical detachment. “His vitals are… remarkably stable given the trauma.”
“Must be his healing factor,” Tony said, moving to help Bruce transfer the vigilante from the transport gurney to a proper medical bed. He realized Daredevil was still at least partially conscious from his groan of pain at the jostling. “Gotta be. No normal human walks away from this, let alone stays conscious. I’ve seen the files. This guy gets up from hits that would paste a regular person.”
Clint nodded, leaning against a wall. Daredevil hadn’t mentioned anything about it in their few encounters, but it made sense. The stories from Hell’s Kitchen were legendary. The guy was a cockroach. You couldn’t kill him. So they chalked it up to him being another Healing Factor Hero and noted it in the dossier.
They worked with efficient, practiced speed. Tony used repulsor-tech to carefully extract the shrapnel. Bruce set the broken arm with a muttered, “This is going to hurt,” though their patient gave no indication he heard. Daredevil was breathing in sharp, ragged hitches, his body rigid with pain, but he was silent. Eerily so.
“Administering a broad-spectrum antibiotic and painkiller cocktail,” Bruce said, prepping a hypospray.
The moment the medicine hit his system, Daredevil’s head lolled to the side. The tension drained from his body as he finally, blessedly, lost consciousness.
They continued to work, only breaking the silence once they were finally done. “Okay, let’s get a full blood workup while he’s out,” Tony said, pulling over another reader. “I wanna see this healing factor in action. Bet it’s a doozy. Maybe some mutated cellular regeneration, accelerated platelet production…”
The reader whirred as it processed the blood sample, bathing Daredevil’s still form in a soft blue light. Data began streaming across multiple holographic screens. Tony leaned in, fascinated. Bruce peered over his shoulder, his brow furrowed.
A minute passed. Then another.
The playful curiosity on Tony’s face slowly melted away, replaced by confusion, then by dawning, horrified understanding. “That’s… that’s not right,” he murmured.
“What?” Clint pushed off the wall, coming closer. “What is it?”
Bruce was the one who spoke, his voice almost reverent with shock. “There’s no healing factor, Clint.”
“What do you mean? There has to be.” He pointed to the metrics indicated as higher than normal ranges.
“I mean,” Bruce said, turning to look at him, “that while we're seeing elevated dopamine and norepinephrine neurotransmitter levels, unusual protein expression linked to sensory receptors… that points to enhanced senses.” His eyes were wide behind his glasses. “But there is zero biological indication of accelerated healing. No abnormal cell regeneration, no unique mutagenic markers. His endocrine system is… it’s a mess of cortisol and adrenaline depletion. His body is processing that painkiller at a completely normal, human rate.”
Tony looked utterly lost. He pointed at the screen displaying Bruce’s preliminary scans. “But… the scar tissue. The old fractures. The density of microfractures on his bones… This guy is a walking history of catastrophic trauma. This scan reads like a… like a crash test dummy that’s been through every single test. Repeatedly.” He turned to look at the unconscious man on the table, his voice dropping to a whisper of pure, unadulterated shock. “He doesn’t have a healing factor. He just… heals. Normally. Like any other human being. He just… keeps doing it.”
The air went out of the room.
Clint stared at Daredevil. He thought of the fight, the way the man had moved, taking hits that would have dropped a super-soldier, and just getting back up. He’d assumed it was a power. A gift.
It wasn’t.
It was will. Sheer, brutal, unimaginable force of will.
“Oh my god,” Natasha Romanov’s voice came from the doorway. She’d arrived silently, her eyes fixed on the scans, her face pale. “He feels all of it. Every time.”
The Avengers, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, who had faced down aliens and gods and robots, stood in a silent circle around the broken body of a man from Hell’s Kitchen. No super healing, no enhanced musculature, no invulnerability. Enhanced senses or not, in their circle… he was just a man. A man who had decided, every single day, to walk into hell and get chewed up and spit out, and then do it all over again the next night, relying on nothing but his own grit to put himself back together.
Tony finally broke the silence, his voice hollow. “JARVIS? Run a probability scan. What are the odds of a human body surviving this cumulative level of damage without catastrophic system failure?”
“Approximately 0.000034%, sir,” the AI responded immediately. “It is statistically anomalous. Though, to be fair Sir, you, Ms. Romanov, and Mr. Barton all have an anomalous degree of injuries as well.”
“Not like this… ‘Anomalous’,” Tony repeated, running a hand over his face. He looked at Daredevil not as a curiosity, but with respect tinged with horror. “He’s not anomalous. He’s just… stubborn.”
Bruce gently pulled a blanket over the sleeping man’s shoulders, his touch suddenly unbearably gentle, as if afraid he might break.
The legend was far, far more frightening than they had ever imagined. Not because of what he could do, but because of what he was willing to endure.
~
A low, pained groan broke the sterile silence of the small medbay. It was a raw, human sound, utterly at odds with the legend lying on the table.
Daredevil’s head shifted on the pillow. A bandaged hand came up, fingers clumsily brushing against his mask to confirm it was there. A reflex if Tony had ever seen one. The hand moved down to the oxygen cannula under his nose before weakly pushing it aside. His breathing hitched, and his body tensed as full consciousness returned, bringing the awareness of his pain with it.
“Easy there, Hornhead,” Tony’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle, lacking its usual sharp-edged humor. “You’re in the Avengers Tower. Private team medbay. No one outside the Avengers is here. You’re safe.”
The masked head turned slowly towards the sound of Tony’s voice. Even through the mask, they could sense the disorientation, the rapid assessment of his surroundings. His body was still, but his mind was clearly racing. He tried to raise his other hand, but winced when he noticed the cast.
“Normally, we’d go with a lattice polymer cast,” Tony explained. “But based on our footage, you tend to jump back into action within days to weeks of a break, instead of weeks to months. You know, like a normal person...” When Daredevil didn’t respond, Tony continued, “So we went with a full wrap fiberglass, reinforced with carbon fiber mesh and polymer composites. Superior tensile strength and stiffness. Excellent fatigue resistance and impact tolerance. And your Muay Thai ropes should go over it just fine; we noticed you tend to wear those after a break.”
A low, considering hum escaped Daredevil. Clearly, they had more intel than he’d thought. But he didn’t bite. Instead, he rasped out, “Barton?”
“Right here,” Clint said, stepping into his line of sight. “In one piece, thanks to you. That drone would’ve taken my head off.”
A slight, almost imperceptible nod. “The… the shrapnel?”
“We got it all out,” Bruce said, moving forward slowly, hands raised in a non-threatening gesture. “We’ve treated the burns, set the arm, stopped the internal bleeding. You’ve got a cocktail of antibiotics and painkillers in your system. You need to rest.”
Daredevil let out a slow, shaky breath. “How long has it been?”
“You’ve been out for about six hours,” Tony said. He was hovering, uncharacteristically unsure of what to do with his hands. “Which, by the way, is a completely normal amount of time for a human to be unconscious after having their insides rearranged. Which brings me to my question.”
“Stark,” Natasha warned from her perch by the door, her arms crossed.
“No, I gotta ask.” Tony took a step closer to the bed, his expression one of bewildered fascination. “We ran your blood. We were looking for it… the thing that lets you do… this.” He gestured at Daredevil’s entire bandaged body. “The accelerated healing. The mutant gene. The super-soldier serum knock-off. Something.”
Daredevil was silent, his head tilted, listening.
“Outside of likely enhanced senses, we found nothing,” Tony said, his voice dropping. “Zip. Zilch. Nada. Your body heals at a perfectly normal, painfully slow, human rate. Which, according to every law of physics and biology, means you should be dead. About… oh, JARVIS?”
“Seventeen separate times, sir, based on the cumulative trauma evident in your scar tissue and skeletal stress,” JARVIS supplied helpfully.
The silence in the room was heavy enough to feel.
“So,” Tony finally said, the word hanging in the air. “What’s the deal? How are you… you?”
Daredevil shrugged with his good shoulder. “I meditate.”
“Meditate,” Tony repeated, his voice laced with utter skepticism.
The vigilante sighed and looked up at the ceiling, a rehearsed answer on his tongue. “Meditation helps me stay ahead of the damage. I can slow everything down. My breathing, my pulse, even how I feel pain. I give my body the space to do what it needs without me getting in the way. I can sense what’s wrong, isolate it, and keep the rest of me moving. It’s focus. Discipline.”
“You’re describing pain management. That’s the aftermath. I’m talking about when you’re down on the ground and every cell in your body is screaming for you to stop. What happens next?”
Daredevil thought for a moment, as the hum of the medical equipment filled the space. When he finally spoke, his voice was still weak, but laced with a grim, simple honesty.
“I get up,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Clint barked out a short, disbelieving laugh. “That’s it? You ‘get up’?”
“What else is there?” Daredevil’s masked face turned slightly towards him. “The pain… is a fact. The damage… is a fact. You acknowledge it. You… compartmentalize it. And then you get up because the alternative is… unacceptable.”
Bruce Banner, who knew a thing or two about compartmentalizing, stared at him with a kind of horrified understanding. “The human body has limits. It can only compartmentalize so much before it fails.”
“Then you find a new limit,” Daredevil replied, his tone devoid of boastfulness. It was a simple, brutal statement of reality. “You rest. You heal. As much as you can. And then you get up again.”
Tony Stark, a man who had built a suit of armor to protect a broken body, looked utterly floored. He had created the most advanced medical scanners on the planet, and it had revealed that this man’s greatest power was not a power at all. It was a choice. A repeated, agonizing, relentless choice.
There was no bravado, no secret to uncover. Just a will forged in a crucible of pain they could only begin to imagine.
“Well,” Tony said, clearing his throat and looking away. He had no quip for this. He was completely out of his depth. “If uh… if you need anything, just ask JARVIS. Food. More painkillers. A new spine. Whatever.” He started to back away, needing to put space between himself and the walking, talking, bleeding refutation of his entire understanding of human capability.
“Stark.” Daredevil’s voice stopped him.
Tony paused.
“Thank you. For the… patch job.”
Tony just waved a hand, a dismissive gesture that couldn’t hide his discomfort. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t mention it. Seriously. Don’t. The paperwork would be a nightmare.”
He left quickly, followed by a pensive Bruce.
Clint lingered for a moment. “Thanks, by the way,” he said. “You saved my bacon back there.”
Daredevil gave another slow, pained nod. “Anytime, Hawkeye.”
Clint shook his head, a wry grin on his face. “No offense, but I hope there isn’t a next time. Watching you work is… kind of horrifying when you know what’s under the hood.”
He left, leaving Natasha alone with him in the medbay.
She walked over to the bedside and picked up a cup of water, holding the straw to the edge of his mask. He drank gratefully.
“They don’t get it,” she said finally, setting the cup down. “They think it’s about being a hero. A symbol.”
“It’s not,” he whispered, exhaustion pulling at him again. He just needed her to leave so he could try to find his way out.
“I know,” she said. Her espionage career was a ledger written in pain and sacrifice, too. She understood the economy of endurance better than the others. “It’s just the job.”
“Yeah,” he breathed, his body finally succumbing to the drugs and his own monumental exhaustion. He wasn’t walking out of here just yet, it would seem. They had honored the mask so far. He just prayed they continued to do so. “It’s just the job.”
As he drifted back into a healing sleep, murmuring a request to stop the painkillers, Natasha pulled the blanket up over his shoulders once more. The request wasn’t smart, but it wasn’t unexpected either. If she were in his position, she’d also want to have her wits about her to escape an unfamiliar secondary location. She looked at the man who had no super-soldier serum, no gamma radiation, no high-tech suit. Just a will of iron and a city to protect.
She set the painkiller drip to taper off before leaving Daredevil to his slumber.
~
The world returned to Matt in layers. The pain made itself known immediately; deep and throbbing, it centered in his side and radiated outward. Each fracture pulsed with dull agony, and the burns and shrapnel wounds stung with a sharp, lingering ache. It was a familiar kind of suffering, if an unpleasant one. But he was grateful that they had stopped the painkillers. His mask was still on, pressing against a bruised cheek, but he knew better than to automatically trust that it hadn’t come off at some point while he was out.
The sterile, antiseptic scent of a high-tech medbay slammed into him next. It was undercut by the unique, unnatural smell of the tower’s filtered air and the faint, residual ozone of repulsor technology. Then he processed the sounds, much quieter than expected given the environment. This room didn’t have the towering, vibrating windows or echoing glass walls he sensed throughout the rest of the building. The walls were buffered and the city noise fell far below, leaving only the hum of the medical equipment.
"You're awake," a voice stated. It was the Black Widow’s. Neutral, observant.
Matt slowly pushed himself up on his good elbow. The movement sent a fresh wave of fire through his side, but he compartmentalized it, shoving it into a mental box and locking it away. He was shirtless, his torso a map of bandages and mottled bruises.
“I need to go,” he rasped, his voice dry.
“You need to not,” Black Widow replied, not moving from her perch on a stool. “Stark’s ego is still recovering from the revelation that your superpower is apparently just… stubbornness. He’s in his workshop trying to build a suit that runs on grit. It’s not going well.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips beneath the mask. “I can’t stay here.”
“No, you can’t,” she agreed. “But you’re not walking out of here under your own power. Not yet.” She paused. “Your phone has been ringing every thirty minutes, almost like clockwork. Calls from ‘F’ and ‘K’. We put it back in your pocket after we looked at it, but we didn’t answer or trace it."
Matt’s head dropped slightly. Foggy and Karen. They’d have heard about the HYDRA fight. They’d have put it together. “I need to…” he began.
“I know,” Natasha cut him off, sighing. “But I also know a masked man can’t just traipse out of Avengers Tower and back into a civilian neighborhood looking like this. Also you can barely walk. So. A deal.”
Matt went still, his senses focusing on her. “A deal?”
“Clint is prepping a quinjet. Discreet mode. He’ll take you wherever you need to go. No questions asked. No tracking. A one-time, no-strings-attached drop.” She leaned forward slightly. “In return, you take this.” She placed a small, sleek electronic device into his hand. “It’s a single-channel communicator, encrypted line. Direct to me. If you’re ever… in a situation like this again. Where the ‘getting up’ part might not be an option. You call. No SHIELD. Just extraction and medical. No questions.”
Matt listened to the steady rhythm of Black Widow’s heart. She was telling the truth. There was no deception in her pulse, no change in her breath. It was a genuine offer.
“Why?” he finally asked.
“Because Hell’s Kitchen needs its Devil,” she said simply, her voice soft but firm. “And even devils need a backup plan. Think of it as a professional courtesy.” She stood up to leave. “There’s civilian clothes in the cabinet, and a duffel for the suit… well, what’s left of it. This way, once we drop you, all you have to do is stash your mask. I’ll wait right outside and escort you to the hangar when you’re ready.” She paused at the door. "And Daredevil?"
He tilted his head toward her.
“The next time you ‘compartmentalize’,” she said, throwing his own word back at him, “save a little room for the idea that you don’t have to do it completely alone.” She knew she was a hypocrite, but she hoped to save the vigilante from at least some of what that had wrought for her.
The door hissed shut behind her.
Alone in the quiet room, Matt sat on the edge of the bed, the weight of the offer settling on him. It was a lifeline from a world he’d never wanted to be part of. An acknowledgment that his war was seen, and that it mattered.
After he changed, he weighed the communicator in his palm. Then, with a slow, pained movement, he slipped it into the pocket of the sweatpants that had been left for him. He wouldn’t use it. He knew he wouldn’t. But for the first time, the option was there. A small, silent promise in his pocket. And somehow, the pain felt a fraction less heavy.