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The Hellmouth is closed. With it, Hell's Kitchen was suddenly released from the vast majority of horrors that had come to plague it. Not entirely, though; a few straggling demons had made the place home, a thing Matt Murdock wouldn't stand for.
Fortunately, he's become good at killing demons.
Not long after his final kill of the evening (it's strange to reference killing, but where demons are concerned, there is no room for conscience), Daredevil found his way to a bodega open all hours. There, he tidied up, and bought some tacos.
Now, as the hour creeps upon 3am, he's perched atop a building on the outskirts of Hell's Kitchen, listening for the telltale sound of a distinctive *thwip*.
*
And thwip she does. Anya doesn't always patrol Hell's Kitchen, because everyone has their routes. Their favorite territories. And she wouldn't want to step on anyone's toes. But she also wants to check in on her new friend.
The smell of tacos wafting up finally does it for Anya. Only a local bodega could do it right and these smell delicioso. Several thwips in a row and followed by a long silence, filled with the ripple and snap of not-quite skin tight clothes being pulled at by the breeze of her dive.
Finally a last thwip arrests her 'fall', and she comes to rest on the wall of the bodega, about 5 feet off the ground. "Hey D. <How's it going?>" She speaks Spanish to him like a native speaker, not using the careful Spanish she reserves for Gringos.
*
Beneath the mask, Daredevil is grinning. He's experienced such horrors in, at least to his perception, the past two years. A familiar sound, a familiar voice? It has him feeling comfortable again. "<Hey there, girl>," he replied in easy Spanish, before tossing a brown bag containing a trio of delicious tacos toward Anya. "Think fast!"
He has every belief that she'll catch them.
"Meet you topside," he quips, before flinging a Billy club skyward. Moments later, there is a similar sound of wind against skin tight clothing, as Daredevil rises up to the rooftop above. There, he flips over the edge, lands in a three point stance, and whips the grappling tool back toward him.
"They taste as good as they smell," he tells Anya, with a big smile on the exposed half of his face.
*
Anya plucks the bag neatly out of the air and shifts against her feet stuck to the wall. Moving one foot to brace on top of a one-inch window frame, that is more than enough of a launching pad. Anya bounds up the side of building without even using a webline, coming to a comfortable crouch on the lip of the building.
"Well, you know how to pull me out of hiding, at least," she says with a smirk, rattling the bag. She takes her gloves off and tucks them into her waistband before retrieving the first taco.
She takes an enormous bite, nearly half the taco, and starts talking. Not very ladylike. "You hear about City Hall today? That was me." Sure, and the Storm siblings, but Anya /rescued/ Sue Storm, so God forbid she crow about it a little.
*
With a stretch and a snap, Daredevil removes his gloves as well, and stuffs his face with one third of a taco. Clearly he's at a disadvantage!
"Mo," he emotes with a mouth still chewing. "Meen oub musting - hold on."
Chew, chew, swallow.
"Been out busting stray demons all day. And all night. What happened?" He hasn't had a chance to look at the papers.
With taco juice dripping down his arm, he reaches aside for a backpack. The zipper comes undone, and out comes a thermos and two portable, plastic cups. The thermos is opened, and a clear liquid that smells suspiciously of tequila is poured into each glass. "I'm guessing it has everything to do with you, crooks, and setting up a few citizens' arrests?"
*
"Ug, and moral quandaries, if you can believe that," Anya says. The exasperation in her voice is both exaggerated, and still complicated. She's pretending something actually complicated is simpler than it is.
"Those Humanis First creeps were protesting, and some muties decided they'd have enough." Anya huffs in frustration. "<I /get/ it! Of course I do.> But every time mutants do that it just makes it worse for the cause."
"On the other hand," Anya says, her tone giving away /so/ much about her feelings. "I got to shake Johnny Storm's hand today." Unrelated. Unimportant. Except neither of those things.
*
Matt continues chewing on his taco, even while rising to join Anya at the lip of the rooftop, offering her a plastic mug full of tequila.
"Everything we do is a moral quandary," he answers. "The mutants are misguided, but they have every reason to be upset. They aren't responsible for their conditions, just like you and I aren't responsible for hours. I think…"
He pauses long enough to finish his taco; a beef lengua number with dill-spiced lemon juice. "- think what they really need is guidance."
Matt grins crookedly. "Only gonna get louder, you know."
Matt nods his head after sipping at the tequila. "So, how is it that you can climb walls like that?"
*
Anya accepts the cup and sips, making a happy sound as the warm liquor trickles down to warm her up from the inside. "I get what you mean," she says. "I just get frustrated when people…"
Anya sighs and takes another bite, giving herself time to think. "It's like what that Reverend King was saying about not using violence in the process, you know? Fighting crime is one thing, but mutants won't make anything better for themselves by literally fighting city hall."
"Sorry, I know I'm preaching to the choir," Anya says with a chuckle. She sips the tequila again. "My hands and feet. They stick. Like a spider, I guess?" She shrugs. It's as much a mystery to her.
*
With a fervent nod, Matt chews and swallows to be polite before weighing in. "King's ideals are impressive, but it's very hard for an oppressed people to allow themselves martyrdom in the hope of change," he tells her. "Especially when that change is not guaranteed to come quickly."
There comes a long pause, during which Matt sips on his own tequila. It's not his drink of choice; usually, an ice cold beer does the trick, a spot of Irish whiskey when something harder is needed. However, the tequila he notes does go quite well with these delicious tacos.
"I question whether I'm doing the right thing every day," he admits. "Not where demons are concerned, but these mobsters. I've seen them get busted, locked, post bail, and get right back to it while their lawyers work the devil's magic. The system is flawed by its own sense of justice. Lean too heavy in one direction, and you're no longer looking at America, freedom, due process."
He draws another drink from the cup. "These guys think they're invincible, because they have stacks of cash and top notch attorneys. They don't really understand the language of our justice system, because they cheat the justice system." He looks away from Anya with a frown, clearly conflicted about his own decisions. "I speak in a language they do understand."
*
"I get where you're coming from," Anya says quietly. "But I look at it a little differently. Where you see a pointless run of sixty days in jail, I see as sixty days of freedom for the family left behind." Anya sets her food and drink down on the building and puts her hands together in front of her.
Cocking her hand back, Anya slowly draws five strands of webbing, each one attaching from the end of one fingertip, trailing up to her wrist. "C'mere Dee," Anya says, turning to one side so Daredevil can reach out for the web. She takes one of his hands in her free hand so he can follow along with her idea.
"See, so this thread here, this is sixty days where nobody bothered Guido Gambini. But if we come back to the start here? There's another strand. There's the one where you put him in jail, and his kid gets to sleep all night without worrying about when dad gets home. For two whole months." Anya sighs and adds, "I'm not sure his kid thinks that time is pointless."
*
Its fair to say that Anya has Murdock's attention before she pulls out some webbing. Sixty days of freedom for the family left behind, a quite thoughtful way of painting a number of people left as collateral damage in the wake of organized crime.
"Alright," he answers, sobered in spite of the tequila that still burns in his belly. He scoots closer and reaches a hand over, slowly. His blindness is always more apparent when he's not swinging like a madman from building to building, or throwing his fists around to bloody up some Italian muscle.
His expression remains hidden mostly, as he failed to remember being polite and removing his mask. An easy thing to do, considering he doesn't really need it. What does show is the way his mouth turns a frown, then flattens out while the red above his concealed eyes stretches upward, a clear sign that his forehead is scrunching up in thought.
Moving his finger down to her wrist again, he then glides it up a third strand. "This is the one where Guido Gambini isn't ordering hits for sixty days," he offers. "Sure, someone else may be calling the shots, but they just aren't as ruthless as him."
*
Anya nods. "Exactly. It's easy to focus on the one strand, and lose sight of the tapestry. But there are so many strands and interconnections, for me at least, I have to focus on the part that makes sense to me. It's a logic fork."
She plucks the web strands and leaves them in Daredevil's hand, then she stands and stretches her legs a bit, walking around. "I'm not a lawyer. I don't know how any of the legal justice system works.So I'm not out to punish those guys. I'm out to by some time for the folks stuck at home. Maybe even a chance to escape and get out of his reach forever."
*
Pulling his hand away, Matt turns to study the webbing now stuck to his fingers, with a thoughtful frown on his face.
"A lot of these fellows would be getting life, or close to it," he tells her, "if they could just see what they've done. It's all drawn up in what remains hidden from law enforcement."
Maybe he's realizing that roughing up the bad guys isn't the only way. Maybe there are some other ways he could entirely destroy the relationship between attorney and trial, by working to expose these criminals in ways beyond mere charges, charges for only what the police can see.
*
Anya nods and sighs, "Well, if there's ever a way I can help you buy more time for the people here, you let me know." Spider-Girl pauses to wolf down the last taco, but she doesn't bother with any more tequila. "This is my town too. You don't have to do it all alone."
Anya takes a slow step up to the edge of the building, savoring the wind on her face. "And now you know how to find me," she says, balling up the bag the tacos came in. "See ya 'round, Dee." And she steps off the side of the building. Of course she thwips at the end, but swings just low enough to drop her trash in the proper receptacle on her way by.