CHAPTER 19: FOUNDATIONS
The heavy bag swung on its chain, leather creaking with each impact.
Three days since the crash. Three days since I'd woken up on Claire's couch with a new understanding of what my power could do—and what it might cost me. The bruises had faded faster than they should have, that enhanced healing working overtime, but the memory of helplessness lingered.
I hit the bag again. Jab, cross, slip.
"Your footwork's better."
Matt's voice came from the doorway of Fogwell's, where he'd been standing for—how long? A minute? Five? The man moved like smoke.
"I've been practicing," I said. The lie came easily. What I'd really been doing was fighting for my life against six Russians, but that wasn't information I could share.
Matt tilted his head in that way of his—processing something I couldn't perceive. Heartbeat, probably. The slight catch in my voice. Whatever tells a blind man with superhuman senses could pick up that I couldn't hide.
"Something's different about you." He moved into the gym, cane tapping a rhythm I'd come to recognize as casual rather than navigational. He didn't need it here. Knew every inch of this place by memory and sound. "You move with more... purpose."
"Near-death experiences will do that." True enough, if vague.
"The Union Allied attack?"
"Among other things." I stopped the bag's swing, turned to face him. "I've been thinking about what I need to learn. And I realized I've been approaching this wrong."
Matt's expression shifted—curiosity breaking through his usual guarded neutrality. "How so?"
"I've been trying to learn how to hurt people. How to punch harder, strike faster." I shook my head, feeling the sweat cool on my neck. "That's the wrong priority. I need to learn how to survive. Defense first. Everything else second."
For a long moment, Matt said nothing. Then something that might have been approval flickered across his face.
"Most students want the opposite," he said. "They want to feel powerful. Want to know they can hurt someone who threatens them."
"I don't need to feel powerful." The words came out with more weight than I intended. "I need to stay alive long enough to do what matters."
The next two hours were the hardest training session yet.
Matt had me working on defensive footwork—how to angle away from attacks, how to create distance, how to turn an opponent's momentum against them. We drilled the same movements until my legs burned and my lungs ached.
"You're dropping your guard when you pivot." His voice was calm, instructional. "An opponent will read that. Exploit it."
"I'm trying—"
"Try harder."
I gritted my teeth and ran the drill again. Pivot, guard up, angle away. Pivot, guard up, angle away. The repetition was numbing, but I could feel the pattern starting to imprint itself in my muscle memory.
This was what I needed. Skill that didn't depend on my power surging to life. Technique that would work whether I was fighting one person or twenty. If I could survive long enough without enhancement, I could save the power for when I truly needed it.
The heavy bag became an opponent in my mind. I moved around it, keeping my guard tight, never letting it get a clean angle on me. Matt watched from the edge of the ring, head tilted, processing every sound of my movement.
"Better," he said finally. "You're learning to think defensively. Most people never get there—their ego won't let them accept that surviving is more important than winning."
"I've never cared much about ego." Another half-truth. In my old life, maybe I had. But transmigrating into a world of superheroes and crime lords had a way of clarifying priorities.
Matt smiled—an actual smile, not the polite mask he usually wore. "That's rare. Hold onto it."
The gym was dark by the time we finished.
Matt had turned off the overhead lights hours ago—he didn't need them, and I'd discovered I could navigate well enough by the glow from the street outside. We sat on the edge of the ring, passing a water bottle back and forth, catching our breath.
The smell of old sweat and leather filled my nose. Decades of fighters had trained in this place, left their blood and dedication soaked into the mats and the heavy bags. There was history here. Weight.
My eyes found the glass case in the corner. Jack Murdock's gloves, preserved behind glass like holy relics.
"Your father trained here," I said. Not a question.
Matt went still. The comfortable silence between us shifted, became something more fragile.
"Every day," he said finally. "Sometimes he'd bring me. I was too young to really understand what he was doing, but I remember the sounds. The rhythm of it. Fists hitting leather. His breathing." He paused. "After the accident, after my eyes... I could hear those memories differently. Understand them better."
I didn't say anything. This was the most Matt had ever shared about his past—about anything personal, really. Pushing would make him close up.
"He wasn't a great boxer," Matt continued, something wry in his voice. "Good, but not great. Never had the killer instinct to be a champion. But he never stayed down. No matter how hard he got hit, he always got back up."
"That's where you get it from."
Matt's head turned toward me, surprise flickering across his features. "Get what?"
"The stubbornness. The refusal to quit." I gestured around the gym. "You could be anywhere. Doing anything. You're a brilliant lawyer—you could be making six figures at a corporate firm. Instead you're here, training a rich guy who can barely throw a punch, running a practice that loses money helping people who can't pay."
"That sounds like criticism."
"It's admiration." I meant it. In my old life, I'd known plenty of talented people who'd sold out the moment the price was right. Matt Murdock had been given every reason to take the easy path, and he'd chosen this instead. "Not many people would make the choices you've made."
Matt was quiet for a long moment. Then he reached over and gripped my shoulder—a brief contact, but genuine.
"He would have liked you," Matt said softly. "My father. He had a sense for people. Could tell the real ones from the fakes." He stood, reaching for his cane. "You're real, Roy. I don't know what you're running from or what you're trying to prove. But you're real."
I watched him walk toward the door, uncertain how to respond. The compliment—if that's what it was—felt unearned. I was lying to him every day. Hiding powers he didn't know about. Keeping secrets that could get people killed.
But I was also trying to help. Trying to protect this neighborhood and everyone in it, including the man in front of me.
Maybe that was enough. For now.
"Thursday?" I called after him.
Matt paused at the door. "Thursday. Eight PM. And Roy?"
"Yeah?"
"Whatever you're carrying—whatever second chance you're talking about—" He tilted his head, listening to something I couldn't hear. "It's real. I can hear it in you. Don't waste it."
Then he was gone, leaving me alone in the dark gym with the ghost of Jack Murdock and the weight of everything I couldn't say.
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