Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Wilson Fisk is not a kind man.

He is not a kind man, but he is not immune to the opportunity given to him by the tale of woe Henry Lopez paints about his brother losing a wife in some kind of car accident leaving him a single parent with a kid to raise.

Behind Henry Lopez’s back, his new assistant James Wesley rolls his eyes at the litany of talents Henry talks about when speaking of his brother’s abilities.  Wilson appreciates the gesture even as he notes the need to wipe the habit from Wesley’s behaviour. 

Wilson holds up a hand and Henry immediately falls silent.  Wilson enjoys that quality in his men.  “You may tell your brother he and his daughter have a home here with us.”

“Thank you, sir,” Henry bows and leaves as Wilson waves him away.

James escorts him out and returns with a file.  “William Lopez’s file, sir.”

Wilson smiles at the young man.  He’s newly graduated and naïve in many ways but Wilson can see already that Wesley will be a great asset once he’s moulded into his position properly.

“Thank you, James.  You may leave me,” Wilson flips open the file and doesn’t look up as James departs the room, confident that his dismissal will be followed. 

William Lopez’s file is brief.  His background is a cautionary tale for all boys raised in poverty and seeking a place to belong; gangs and trouble, small crimes leading to big crimes.  Lopez had swiftly risen up the ranks of his gang.  Smart as a whip, physically gifted in the martial arts, loyal and ruthless.  He’d done time and had been working on parole when he’d met his wife, Taloa. 

The rest of his file was a short summary detailing how love had apparently redeemed the former gang leader.  He’d worked as a mechanic and married.  His wife had given birth to their daughter, Maya.  By all accounts Lopez was a good father.

Wilson picked up a picture of the young girl.  She’d been born deaf.  A genetic defect inherited from her mother.  He frowned remembering that her uncle had detailed that Maya had been in the car with her mother when she’d passed; that she’d lost a leg in the accident.

Accident.

Lopez’s crimes had caught up with him; an enemy cutting a brake line had destroyed William Lopez’s life in Tamaha.  Certainly Lopez had made his enemy dead after, but it was a good lesson to learn, Wilson mused.  One could never be complacent about one’s enemies.  Lopez had made a mistake in giving into love, exposing a weakness.

He ignored the rush of jealousy that he felt at Lopez’s success in finding a great love; ignored his own deep longing to find the same; his deep fear that he never would.     

Wilson placed the picture of the child down into the file and closed it.

He sat back.

Lopez was an asset Wilson could cultivate.  Giving Lopez a job would ensure his loyalty.  He could make New York a good place for him to land, be welcoming to him and his daughter.

o-O-o

As soon as he sets eyes on Maya Lopez, Wilson feels a sense of kinship he has rarely felt with another.

Damage recognises damage.

Maya Lopez is seven years old and damaged.

He doesn’t mean her deafness.  He doesn’t mean the stump of a leg that he can see still newly wrapped in bandages.

No.  There’s something in her eyes.  Something broken.  Something rageful.  And something powerful.

She’s lost everything, but her father.  Her father who is responsible for the loss of her lovely mother and who is the reason they have been banished from their community.  Clearly Maya Lopez is in need of a better role model.  One who will shape and mould her into using her rage and power, rebuilding her brokenness and damage into something beautiful.

She needs Wilson.

Broken and damaged is a state he is deeply acquainted with; he knows how to build something powerful from that foundation.

He tunes back into William Lopez’s gratitude litany.

“…and I’m sorry to bring my daughter, but Henry wasn’t available, so I thought…”

“You were right to bring her,” Wilson interrupts him.  “She’s delightful.” He made an impatient gesture at William.  “Introduce us, please.”

William stutters to a stop.  “Of course.”  He crouches down to his daughter and glances up as Wilson looms behind him. 

Wilson’s eyebrows rise slightly as the man signs to Maya.  He doesn’t know what he is saying.  He will not tolerate that for long.  He prefers to pretend ignorance in languages, he does not like to be ignorant.

“Maya,” William says out loud as his hands carefully sign, “this is my new boss, Wilson Fisk.”

“I am delighted to meet you, Maya,” Wilson says. 

William dutifully repeats Wilson’s words.

“The people who work for me are family,” Wilson says.  “That means you and your father are my family now.  You will always have a home with me. You may call me Uncle.”

Surprise paints over William Lopez’s face as he translates, but gratitude burns in his eyes unlike his daughter.

Maya’s dark eyes look up at him suspiciously.  Something within her recognises him as a threat.  She doesn’t trust him.

Not yet.

But she will.

o-O-o

It’s not a hardship to spend time with Maya.

Wilson enjoys being Uncle to her.

William is grateful since Henry is kept busy as his brother’s guide to New York and cannot always be there to watch her.  And Wilson keeps William very busy, giving him more and more responsibilities, even when James looks askance at him. 

It helps that William is very good at his work.  He is not a good man.  He is an accomplished criminal.  The illegal car shop runs well under his management and begins to build a reputation.  It becomes a good base for other activity. 

More than that, William is capable of delivering threats, of carrying them out. 

Wilson tracks his kills.  Evidence is always useful so long as it does not tie back to Wilson himself.  He’s already planning for the day when he’ll take William out of the picture.

Maya deserves better.

Maya is thriving in the school Wilson has arranged for her.  She’s smart and she deserves the very best education.

William had acquiesced to Wilson’s arrangement to keep her out of a deaf school.  Wilson had made it a condition of William’s employment.  William would see her chained by her deafness, constrained and limited to a deaf world.  Wilson means to free her.  His Maya will need to operate in his world.

He has also arranged for an advanced prosthetic.  It took money and bribery (and only one murder) to get her pushed to the top of the list, but it was worth it to see her walk; to see her participate in the martial arts he’s organised for her and a small group of the children of his employees.

She and Kazi Kazimierczak have begun a friendship. 

He’s ambivalent about it but William is encouraging since Maya misses her cousins.  Wilson is grateful that William’s mother-in-law is a witch who hates the man who married her daughter.  She has not yet reached out to comfort her granddaughter in the year since the move.  Wilson will watch in case she does and protect his investment as always.

It pleases him that Maya feels safe with him.  He is honoured by the feel of her tiny hand encased in his.

He pauses in adjusting the cufflinks, thinking of the day before and the ice-cream vendor.

He had sought to keep her away from the violence of his true self for longer.  Maya’s reaction though, her acceptance of him…perhaps he was not the only one to recognise a kindred spirit; a broken and damaged soul remade and filled with rage and power.

He remembers how she had kicked the vendor herself, taking her own revenge upon the man…

It was glorious.

Wilson will help her achieve her glory.  They are family.

o-O-o

Wilson watches from across the room as Maya comforts Kazi after the death of his father.  The wake is filled with people but only Maya and Kazi occupy the corner by the window.  They are huddled together on a love seat, hands left free to talk but heads almost touching.  He sips on his drink as he contemplates the closeness of the teens.

William walks up to stand beside him.  “Sir.”

“You did well, William,” Wilson says quietly.  “I know it was not an easy task given your friendship with Aleksy.”

William doesn’t flinch.  He’s spent too much time in Wilson’s employ to flinch.  He doesn’t say anything though which is wise.  Wilson approves. Best not to acknowledge you are the murderer at the wake of the victim. 

It is a shame to lose Aleksy, but Wilson cannot allow disloyalty.  The world has grown a more brutal place with the advent of aliens, Avengers and irritants like Daredevil.  Wilson misses James.

Wilson gestures to the two young people.  “They seem closer.”

William shifts to face Wilson, his back to his daughter so she cannot look across the room and read his lips. “Maya doesn’t make friends easily,” he says.

Wilson hums.  “That is all this is?” He questions.  “Friendship?”  It seems like more.

William sighs as he looks back at his daughter signing briefly.  “She’s telling him he will always have a home with her.” He looks at Wilson and shrugs.  “Young love, you know.”

It does not please Wilson to hear of it.  He wonders why Maya hasn’t said anything to him.  He thought he had her whole confidence.

“She doesn’t want anyone to know yet,” William continues as though he’s read Wilson’s discomfort.  “She’s not ready to trust he’s as sweet on her as she’s sweet on him.”

And yet her father knows.  Wilson hums again.  “Walk with me, William.”

Kazi is not who he would have picked for his Maya as a first love.  He’s a good soldier, a decent fighter.  When he grows up, he’ll no doubt become as solid a lieutenant as his father before him had been, until the betrayal.  He’s an excellent sniper already having shot his first kill the previous year.  But he’s not good enough for Maya.

Wilson is certain that nobody is good enough.  But there is some serendipity in her choosing Kazi.  The young man is his.  Kazi was born knowing he was his father’s successor.  Perhaps he can even use Maya’s fondness for Kazi, Kazi’s fondness for her to further his plans for Maya. 

Wilson knows William is not approving of the match.  Maya is his little girl and William seeks to protect her from the violence and horror of their work.  William does not recognise the creature Maya is under her skin for all she wins fight after fight at the dojo and in the ring.  But one day they will stand at a wake for William and Maya will need a friend.     

“I believe I will take young Kazi under my wing,” Wilson says conversationally.  “He will be in need of guidance.”

o-O-o

The Blip happens.

Wilson would like to shoot whoever came up with that moniker for an event which has come close to destroying the world.

His own world is as safe as he can make it.  His Vanessa survives.    

Out of prison thanks to the lack of guards and the feral state of the world, Wilson returns to New York to pick up the pieces of his empire. There is an abundance of opportunity, one Wilson is happy to exploit to rebuild.  Some heads of his criminal network remain; others have been blipped away.  New threats are emerging in Madripoor, in New York itself.

The authorities had dismantled a lot after his arrest and conviction, but Wilson’s organisation has always been an iceberg with the more substantial part of it hidden under the surface, invisible to most.

William’s operation is one such hidden gem and William himself has survived. 

So has Maya.

Wilson tasks William with New York and dealing with Daredevil who has also survived. 

(Matt Fucking Murdock).

One day Wilson will deal with him once and for all, but the time is not right. There is too much to do and it pays for Wilson to remain in the shadows.  He tasks Kazi, himself newly released from prison, with shadowing William. 

Kazi is loyal to Wilson.  He reports faithfully on every operation, every action, every conversation…

“I overheard William and Henry talking about sending Maya back to Tamaha,” Kazi informs him calmly as though Wilson cannot see how his hands are clenched into fists.  “They say things are becoming too dangerous in New York.”

Wilson sips his wine and sets it to the side.  He pats his mouth with a napkin.  “Is he so afraid of the Daredevil?”

Kazi shakes his head.  “There’s a new player, another masked freak…”

“Ronin,” Wilson supplies himself. 

He has been tracking the vigilante.  Ronin is ruthless in taking down criminals and organised crime operations.  There have been rumours that he took out a crime lord in Singapore the month before, killing a dozen men in the process.

Wilson admires the violence even as he silently acknowledges the threat.  Murdoch will never kill him.  Not unless Wilson destroys his family first.  Ronin, on the other hand…

“I think perhaps it is time for us to let Ronin know about the type of man William Lopez is,” Wilson says, looking up from his steak and meeting Kazi’s eyes.

Kazi swallows hard, but he nods, determination gleaming in the depths of his gaze.  He doesn’t want to lose Maya either.

o-O-o

Wilson watches the footage of Maya in her first assignment again and again.

She’s everything he had hoped she would be. 

Fierce in her fury.

She had met violence with violence, and it had been spectacular.

Wilson isn’t even upset that Murdoch showed up. 

Maya held her own in a way that Wilson hasn’t seen any of his men do.  She had been glorious.

He watches the footage again.

His phone buzzes with an update from Tamaha. 

Wilson pushes his annoyance aside. Henry had been lucky to survive the meeting he’d had Ronin target.  He’d been the only sensible one who had shown an ounce of self-preservation and hidden as soon as Ronin had appeared.  Wilson would admire the survival instinct if Henry’s continued existence was not an irritant.   

Still, it had been easy to convince Henry to disappear back to his hometown in the wake of William’s execution by Ronin.  Henry had been shaken by his brother’s death, useless at comforting his rage-filled niece, desperate to leave the life Wilson had given him.

Wilson had ensured Henry hadn’t even tried to convince Maya to leave.  Maya wants to stay to track down the Ronin.  She sees Henry leaving as a betrayal.

Wilson has assured her that he is looking.  He is not.

He is not so foolish as to invite closer scrutiny from a being who is his inner demon made flesh and given a sword rather than a hammer.

Kazi slides into the room.  “You wanted to see me?”

Wilson nods.  He gestures for Kazi to step around the table to the laptop as Wilson steps away.  Kazi watches in silence before drawing straight.

“Maya’s training has begun,” Wilson says softly.  “She will take over from her father.  I suggest you work on rebuilding the business so she has something of value to inherit.”

It’s a sign of how well Wilson has trained Kazi that the younger man simply swallows down any protest that as William’s second Kazi should take over.  “I’ll need more men.  We lost too many.”

“Go to the Russians,” Wilson orders.  “Offer them a deal.”

“We’re giving them money?” asks Kazi, evidently surprised.

“Of course not,” Wilson says as he stares at the art on the wall. 

It’s not evocative or beautiful.  He believes his Vanessa will hate it.  One day she will return and the walls will be covered by only the things she loves. 

He doesn’t bother looking back to Kazi.  “Tell them they join us or Ronin will find them too.”

o-O-o

Maya is brilliantly competent.  She rules her organisation with the same firm hand that Wilson rules his whole Empire.

Her business remains steady through the continuing saga with the Avengers compound getting decimated by another alien invasion after they had successfully reverted the Blip.  For weeks the news of Tony Stark’s sacrifice and speculation over the whereabouts of Captain America dominates the news.

Wilson ignores the drama and focuses on keeping a low profile.

Matt Murdock is similarly quiet.  Daredevil occasionally interferes with their operations, but otherwise the lawyer seems to focus on his actual law firm.  The Blip has led to hundreds of lawsuits; hundreds and thousands of displaced people.

In the midst of the madness, all signs of Ronin disappear.

Maya is incandescent at their usual Sunday dinner.  She rages beautifully.

Wilson calms her.  Ronin has disappeared before only to re-emerge in time.  Wilson tells her that he is certain that this will be the case once more.  Her opportunity for revenge is not over.

Quietly he wonders at the disappearance.  There is a rumour that he was killed by the Black Widow in Asia.

International movements draw his attention from New York in any case. 

He manages to procure an experimental serum.  It’s supposed to be the Super Soldier Serum recreated.

It does nothing.

Wilson rages for a whole day.

He sets it aside when Maya arrives for their usual meal. 

She brings the news that a meet with a rival gang at a restaurant has fallen foul of the irritating bug that is Spiderman.  Not for the first time Wilson wishes that the Avengers had left the Blip alone.

He listens as she tells him through their new interpreter how she has handled the situation.  She has managed to extract their people without issue.  There are plenty of boys in blue who are happy to take bribes to look the other way.

Maya rules her patch quietly and without fuss.  She deals with betrayal with a ruthless efficiency her father lacked. 

Wilson is proud of her.

His creation.

His Maya.

He doesn’t need a serum, he reflects, as he sips his wine and lets himself simply enjoy Maya’s company.  He has power.  He has family.  He has Maya.

o-O-o

Ronin re-emerges.

Wilson is not amused by the sudden strange antics of the vigilante.  The interruption of the auction seems unlike him.

Kazi is confused by the differences he noted during his fight.

Wilson wonders if someone else simply found the suit.  The auction was meant to hold items stolen from the wreckage of the Avengers compound.  If Black Widow had indeed killed Ronin, it would make sense for his suit to have been there.

Perhaps unwisely Wilson shoves the problem of Ronin aside.  He needs to focus on the situation with the Bishop woman.  Eleanor has been an asset in the years since her husband’s death, but he senses that she is becoming a problem.  She’s distracted by her daughter and far too involved with the Duquesnes.

At least she does go through with killing Armand Duquesne III when Armand threatens to expose Bishop’s relationship with Wilson.  He’s surprised that she frames her fiancé for Sloan Limited.  He’s annoyed that he’s lost the shell corporation, but Maya is savvy and has spread their assets – Sloan is not the only front for the business she operates.

He’s worried about Maya.  She is the daughter of his soul.  He knows her rage and her fury, but there’s been too much attention drawn to their operation over the past week since the supposed reappearance of Ronin.  Fires.  Shoot-outs.  Car chases.  An Avenger is taking too much interest in them.

Wilson has had to return from his Christmas Hawaiian vacation with Vanessa to deal with it.  And with Bishop who had insisted on a meet. 

Maya had never trusted Bishop.  She was right, Wilson muses as he watches as Bishop walks away.

He calls Kazi.  Kazi tells him everything. 

Wilson is disturbed to hear how close Barton has come to their operation.  He believes though that Barton is only trying to protect Bishop’s troublesome daughter.  The archer is soft-hearted. 

He’s more disturbed about how close Ronin got to killing Maya. The vigilante’s competence in taking down the men and isolating Maya…

Maya’s obsession is going to get her killed.   

He’s angry at Kazi for letting her down.  Angrier still when Kazi insinuates that Ronin must have told Maya who called the hit on her father.  Yet, there is truth in Kazi’s anxiety when he explains how Maya has questioned Kazi’s absence at the meeting when Ronin struck, when Ronin killed William.

He texts her and Maya arrives at the restaurant he’d set-up to meet people he doesn’t trust. 

He knows immediately.  He knows her.  She’s turned on them.

His Maya.

It’s time to remind everyone that the city belongs to him.

o-O-o

Wilson wakes up in a private clinic.

He’s surprised he wakes up.

He distinctly remembers Maya shooting him.

Perhaps, he reflects staring into the mirror and the scars the bullet has left behind, the serum he had taken hadn’t been so useless after all.  He remembers all the blows from the Bishop women that he’d suffered before Maya had found him. 

The Bishops.  He growls.  They will pay.

Maya will pay.

Anger suffuses him for a long moment.

Maya is his creation. 

His.

How dare she turn on him!

He, who has given her everything.

And yet…

Is she not the kindred spirit that he has always known her to be? 

He had killed his own father for hurting his mother.

He had taken a hammer and beaten his father to death.

There had been a moment in their confrontation, the headlights pooling light around them, when Wilson had looked into Maya’s eyes and seen himself as he had faced down his father.

He does not blame her for shooting him.

He has hurt her.  Not that she knows that for certain.  Suspects, yes.  It is a shame how easily she believed that he would order William killed, but also – do they not recognise the monster in each other?

He strides out of hospital and takes back control in a snap.  That’s when he learns that Maya may have shot him, but she is everything he hoped she would be; she is fighting to be Queen.

Kazi is gone, disappeared in the wake of the attack, presumed dead.

In his place a stumbling idiot details what has happened with the shipment, with Zane Carter’s departure for Tamaha, Wilson revels in Maya’s brilliance.  She is what he has made her.  It consolidates his view that she deserves a place at his side regardless of her attempt to kill him.

Wilson gives the idiot no further thought, his mind focused on Maya.  He can win her back.  Offer her the empire she deserves as his heir. 

But first, he calls Carter and orders him to leave Maya alive.  Wilson will speak with her.  They are still family. He’ll go to Tamaha and bring her home. 

o-O-o

After his initial outburst, Wilson doesn’t give into the rage that fills him head to toe on learning Maya has left Tamaha, refused his offer to come home to New York with him.

His empire has been greatly destabilised in his long convalescence.  He cannot simply destroy a private plane and have access to another with a snap of his fingers.

He will again one day, but not this day.

He sets aside his love for Maya.

She doesn’t deserve it.

Has he not been a better father to her than William had ever been?  Who is she to sit in judgement of him?

He had thought when she had left the hotel room that she understood; that she realised that they could go forward together with a new shared understanding between them that they were the same.

(He ignores the part of him which weeps that she did not put him out of his misery with the hammer – not the hammer, Wilson will never part with it; ignores the part that is relieved that she did not take the opportunity he handed her since it would only have led to her own death.)

Maya thinks she has a place in Tamaha.

He owns Tamaha.

He has since he set up his operation in the town and sent Henry to oversee it.

He’s planned for this moment.

He will raze Tamaha to the ground.

If Maya thinks he isolated her before, she doesn’t know anything.  He will take everything from her.  As she has taken everything he ever gave her and razed it to the ground.

Carter is gleeful as Wilson orders him to arrange a massacre at the Pow Wow.  He’s a sociopath.  Useful, but he lacks the intelligence Wilson prefers in his lieutenants.  Still, he can get rid of Carter in due time.  In the moment, for that moment, he’s useful.

Wilson determines to take care of the rest himself.  He knows just who to target. 

He arranges for a little girl to collide with Maya’s grandmother.  He can be charming.  It’s a matter of a few moments of conversation to lure her into a position where he can capture her.

Her cousin is more suspicious when he knocks on her door.  He can see the spark of a warrior in her that he saw in Maya.  But she’s softer, weak.  A threat about her grandmother gets her cooperation.  He can see on her face as he pushes her into the barn that she knows they are only there to teach Maya a lesson.

And Maya will come for them.  He has no doubt about that. 

He trained Maya.  He knows her.

She’s what he made her.

o-O-o

Wilson is shaken. 

He’s barely aware of the drive to the airfield.  He ignores the chatter in the front as his hapless aide tries to find out what else had happened to their plan.  Carter’s dead; Henry Lopez had taken him down.  The army he’d brought neutralised by Maya’s stupid cousin. 

(Wilson misses James Wesley’s quiet competence so much he aches with it).

Maya had beaten him.  And yet, that is not what disturbs him.

There had been something fundamentally different about the Maya who had stepped into the barn to face him, and the Maya he had raised.

He had wrongly dismissed the traditional garb she had worn as a costume.  A way to get to him without notice from Carter or the men he had brought in.  Yet it was not just that, he realises in reflection. 

It was a reminder of her tribe and of her origins, so different from the uniform she had worn in New York.  Never a tracksuit – she had rolled her eyes at her father’s insistence that men in tracksuits blended into the background, but typical of a young woman living life in the city – jeans, t-shirts, jackets.

In hindsight, the outfit had been a warrior’s mantle.  A sign to him that she was no longer his.

But hers.

Wilson has only ever seen himself in Maya.  Yet standing opposite her and seeing her accept her innate power, he believed he had seen the woman who had loved William Lopez standing at her shoulder: Maya’s mother.  A spirit, long dead, yet somehow echoing through Maya.  Wilson had never cared to remember her name.

As the car comes to a standstill, Wilson brushes a trembling hand over his face, fingers gliding over the scars left after Maya had shot him.  She had taken the physical pain of them away with a touch.  It wasn’t the only thing she had helped to heal.  His hand presses against his heart.  She has changed something fundamental within him.  Had what he thought he had experienced actually happened as bizarre and unlikely as it seems?  Had she somehow managed to enter his mind, his soul, and tried to take his pain? 

(She could never take his pain.  It was HIS.  And yet…something within him has changed.)

He’s still shaken.  He gets out and enters the plane.  They’re leaving Tamaha, returning to New York, his home ground.  It had clearly been a mistake giving Maya a home field advantage in their confrontation.  He had underestimated her.

(Part of him is proud.  Part of him wonders at the strange otherworldly power he had seen Maya embrace even while he covets it.  She had been magnificent.)

The news catches his attention.  Mayor.  Of New York.  He settles back in his seat, calming as his mind turns the possibility over. 

Mayor.

 It speaks to him. 

A new start. 

Yes.  He’ll let Maya go for now.  She will return to him in time.  Her life in Tamaha will never be enough for her.  She loves him.  He feels that.  Why would she try to heal him if she did not?

Wilson will focus on the future, on rebuilding his legacy.  He needs to stabilise his empire.  He needs to clean up the mess his absence has made.  Perhaps it would be better to sweep everything aside and begin again anew. 

Mayor.

He likes the sound of it.

Wilson settles back, calm once more.  His vision of New York, born again.

o-O-o

Maya casts one last look around the dojo as she closes up for the night. 

It’s hers.  Her dojo.

Although Henry had tried to gift her the space at the skating rink, she has a lease agreement for the large room with two adjoining storerooms, one of which Maya turns into a tiny office.  The large room has been swept and cleaned. 

Bonnie had dragged in her crew from the fire station and helped paint the walls a fresh bright white.  Skully has sourced a lot of the equipment.  Biscuits had helped her set it all up.  Her grandmother had created the tribal banners that decorate the walls and hang from the ceiling.

Her first classes have taken place.  Kids wanting to learn to fight, but who will be tempered by the practice and learn discipline.  Women of all ages wanting to learn self-defence in an ever-increasingly strange world.  Even a few men show up, a couple to simply test her, a couple who genuinely want to learn from her.

She feels a sense of satisfaction at her first week of business.  It’s a brand new type of satisfaction and so different from the dark satisfaction of her past when she’d won a fight, beaten someone, killed someone. 

It’s a pure satisfaction from a normal and decent job done well.

Her mind darts to Ronin, to Barton.  There have been moments in the past month where she’s wanted desperately to talk to him, to ask him how he made himself more than a weapon, created a family, became a hero.

But she has never reached out to him, too aware of his warning, of the feeling of being defeated by him.

She flicks the light switch off and locks up.

She leaves through the new bar area Henry has created in the refurbishment.  There’s a television playing with subtitles.  She glances towards it and the news headline stops her in her tracks.

“Wilson Fisk announces New York Mayoral Run.”

Maya’s heart pounds.

Henry sidles up to her.  He talks and signs quickly.  “Not your problem.”

Maya takes a breath.  It’s not her problem.  She doesn’t know if she has healed him.  Uncle’s – Fisk’s pain is deep and entrenched.  But she has tried. 

He is gone from Tamaha as though Fisk Shipping has never existed in the town.  Henry had already given up his job when the firm had simply closed up in the week following the Pow Wow.

The news show flickers to another headline and Maya takes another breath.

She nods at Henry.

Fisk is not her problem.  She’s free of him.  She isn’t just a weapon anymore.  She isn’t the monster he made her. 

New York is not her problem.  There are enough superheroes there to manage Fisk.  Daredevil will still be a thorn in his side if no-one else; Hell’s Kitchen is his territory.

Tamaha is hers. 

There is no warning omen.  Her ancestors remain quiet.

She signs as much to Henry who grins at the mention of Daredevil keeping Fisk in line.  They say goodbye.

Maya heads to her motorcycle.  She’s putting her helmet on when there is flash of memory…

Her mother sits by her father near a campfire, laughing.  Their hands are entwined.  Love.

She comes back to herself.  Her heart aches with grief for her parents.

It’s dark in the parking lot.

She wonders what her mother is trying to tell her.

Maya shakes herself.  It’s time she went home. 

The ride back to the cosy house of her childhood in uneventful, but when she pulls into the driveway, she sees a truck she doesn’t recognise.

Kazi steps around the side of the house and into the pool of light from the light she has affixed to the porch roof.

Maya carefully gets off the bike and sets aside her helmet.

There is no warning of an enemy, she tells herself, even as she looks him over to catalogue the threat he poses as he walks closer to stand within touching distance.

He looks the same as the day she’d left him bleeding and dying in the winter cold of New York after he’d fought her, unable to break free of Fisk, of Fisk’s world.

He has the same curly hair, same sad eyes.  He still makes her heart skip like it did when they were teenagers sharing kisses in corners; of when they’d been each other’s first everything.

Kazi raises his empty hands slowly and signs.  “Hello, Maya.”

Maya signs back.  “Kazi.”  She stutters to a stop uncertain at what to say, what to ask.

“Barton saved me,” Kazi says.  “Got me medical attention.  Once I healed, I ran, hid.  Thought a lot about what you said.”

Maya presses her lips together, unable to hope.  When she’d tried to leave New York after learning the truth from Ronin, from Barton, she had forgiven him whatever role Kazi had played in her father’s death; had offered for Kazi to leave with her.  He had been so torn and tortured, so trapped by Fisk.

“I don’t want to be in Fisk’s world anymore,” Kazi says.  “You killed that part of me.”

Maya can feel the hope begin to bloom in her chest.

“I would like…” Kazi hesitates.  “If your offer is…if you still want me, I would like to be a part of your world, Maya.”

There is a moment where they simply look at each other. 

Still and silent.

Maya signs slowly.  ‘You will always have a home with me.’

And then she moves, arms opening to welcome him as he catches her and accepts her fierce hug.  His arms wrap around her tightly.  His face burrows into her neck and she can feel him tremble.

Maya holds on and remembers her mother’s message. 

Forgiveness. 

Healing.

Love.   

Maya eases back and takes Kazi’s hand to pull him toward the house.  She ushers him inside, turning on the light to flood the kitchen with a warm ambient glow.

There’s another flicker, a flash across her mind, a vision as she goes to close the door… 

A little girl chases a dog across the backyard of her home; dark curls like Kazi’s but her eyes are Maya’s.  Not an ancestor, but the next in the chain: Maya’s daughter yet to be born; the echo still to come.

Maya blinks and silently thanks her ancestors for the glimpse of her future.

She closes the door on the darkness and steps into the warm light of her home.

fin.