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DEVIL'S ADVOCATE!

v. "i never forget a face."

    SILVIA WATCHED WITH DREARY INTEREST as clouds rolled across the ashen sky, sending raindrops the size of quarters down upon the street outside. Through the streaked windows, partly obscured, she could make out the faint outlines of people below; some clutching brightly-coloured umbrellas, others seeking shelter from the inevitable storm.

    She had always found it hard to work on days like this; concentration slipping from her grasp with each streaming divot of water on the panes of glass. The mess of paper and folders in front of her weren't helping things in the slightest; eyelids drooping lower with each sentence she read as the rain sang her to sleep.

    "Seven across, 'dangerous sign or signal'," Foggy hummed, filling the silence, the words distorted by the pen held between his teeth. "Yesterday's puzzle is eluding me. Any ideas?" 

    "Seven across..." Silvia looked up from the files scattered across the desk, taking a sip of her coffee as she pondered the clue. "Warning?"

    "Bingo!" He clicked his fingers, scribbling the letters onto the page with a grin. "Remind me to do crosswords with you in the future."

    "What can I say? I guess it's my superpower."

    "I thought your superpower was being a kick-ass detective?"

    She nodded, smiling against the rim of her mug. "That too. Who said I can't be both?"

    "Touché, Nancy Drew."

    Matt appeared in the doorway, leaning on his cane. His presence alone was enough to draw a sigh from Silvia's chest – she couldn't have five minutes of peace in the damn office without him showing up like a bad penny.

    "Are you two working?" He asked, frowning. "Because it doesn't sound like you're working. You're being very distracting, actually."

    Foggy bent his head over the crossword, fighting the smile that was threatening to show. Alas, it was a losing battle. "Sorry, buddy."

    "Just keep it down, the walls in this place are painfully thin." 

    "Then don't listen," Silvia muttered under her breath, a scowl knitting her brows.

    "Did you say something, Flores?"

    She ground her teeth, before smiling sweetly. "No. You must be hearing things."

    "Hmm."

    Foggy looked between the two as though spectating a tennis match, head swivelling back and forth until Silvia thought it would fall off. Catching her gaze, he smirked, before ducking to the side as she flicked a ball of paper at him.

    "Watch it, Detective," he pointed at her. "I can sue you for that."

    "Not if I unearth all your secrets and blackmail you," she shrugged, grinning at his exaggerated look of horror. "Has anyone ever told you you'd be good on the stage?"

    "Born to be a star, ended up being a lawyer... Hey, have I ever told you my mom wanted me to be a butcher–?"

    Before he could continue, he was cut off as the law firm's door swung open with a screech, making the three of them wince. A few seconds later Karen sped into view, dripping rain onto the carpet, long hair plastered to her face.

    "Karen?" Foggy took in the woman's frantic demeanour, an air of panic surrounding her like darkened storm clouds. "Hey, it's okay, you're alright. What happened?" 

    "I got here as fast as I could–" she panted, clutching at her chest. "You need to– to see this." 

    Silvia noted the look of absent horror in the blonde's eyes, unease coiling like a diamond-backed snake in her stomach.

    Producing a crumpled newspaper from her bag, Karen cleared her throat before beginning to read, her words carrying the damning weight of a death sentence.

    "'Body found in Hudson River identified as Eric Stewart, New York Bulletin discovers.'"

    "Jesus–" Foggy whispered, meeting Silvia's gaze from across the table, watching as she sank lower in her seat, shoulders sagging.  

    It had to be a mistake. It had to be. She had seen him only four days prior, anxious and distrustful, but alive. Breathing. She thought of the scarred man's face, guarded, brutality splitting him open to reveal the terror inside.

    Before her interference, he had been safe.

    Silvia's breathing began to hitch, dread settling over her like a blanket of ash. Brain working feverishly, she was brought back to the time, as a child, she had fallen down the stairs in the dead of night. How her confident steps had been broken mid-stride, slippered foot just missing the next step before treading thin air. Time seemed to slow, before catching up with itself — down, down, down, grasping blindly in the dark, seeking purchase in hostile shadow.

    Her father had found her, lying at the foot of the stairs, too stunned to scream. 

    "'The forty-one year-old Hell's Kitchen native was found in the early hours of yesterday morning, our sources report.'" Karen continued, trying to push on as her voice wavered. "'And it is suspected that he–'" She stopped, shaking her head as the wind howled outside. 

    Foggy was at her side in an instant, taking the paper from her grasp with gentle hands. Scanning the text, he let out a hiss of breath, sympathy clouding his usually sunny face. "It says here that he killed himself."

    Silvia's stomach lurched, sinking like a stone in dark water.

    "That's not true," she said quietly, knotting her hands into fists.

    Foggy looked up from the article, sharing a glance with Karen before asking, "What do you mean?"

    "I think... I think they found out that I talked to him. That he helped me."

    "Oh, Silvia," He said sadly. "You don't know that–" 

    "You don't get it," the words were strangled, almost inaudible as she cradled her head in her hands. "You didn't talk to him. He was scared, no, terrified that if he tried to help me something would happen to him. This... this is my fault."

    "Vi–" 

    The room began to warp around her, as though she was viewing the scene through a narrowing lens, suffocating in the tiny space. "I'm sorry I– I have to go." 

    Silvia pushed away from the table, blood pounding in her ears. She had to get away. Had to go somewhere, anywhere else before she fell apart at the seams. 

    Escaping to the quiet of the corridor, she blinked against the sudden harshness of the lights. She was trapped, vision becoming blurred as she stumbled through the stairwell doors, leaning against the wall as her skull throbbed with each heartbeat.

    She slumped against the wall, lowering herself until she was perched on one of the concrete steps.

    Back braced against the crumbling paintwork, she lowered herself until she was perched on one of the concrete steps. The cold of it began to seep through her body, doing little to disperse the waves of nausea crashing over her.

    Counting cracks in the ceiling tiles, Silvia willed her breathing to slow, panic rising in her chest and clamouring to be noticed. Two, four, six, eight. She clamped a hand over her mouth, biting down hard against the material. Ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen. Each breath more laboured than the last, she screamed against the cloth, hand aching. 

    He was innocent, she thought wildly, screwing her eyes shut. He was innocent and now he's dead.

    The cracks began to shift and blur, a thousand spider's legs moving in unison, approaching from all sides.  She felt them on her flesh, in the dark tresses of her hair, forcing themselves into her lungs.

    A faint tapping filtered through the white noise, drawing closer as Silvia put her head between her knees. Perfect fucking timing.  

    "Flore–" Matt paused, catching himself. "Silvia?"

    "What do you want?"

    "Foggy thought I should check on you."

    She sighed. "Of course he did."

    The sound of shoes scuffing on concrete as he lowered himself to sit beside her, the silence between them a palpable thing.

    "Listen, I'm really not in the mood for the whole 'holier-than-thou' shtick, okay?" Silvia snapped, but even her venom was half-hearted. "If you're going to lecture me, don't bother."

    "I'm not."

    "What?"

    "I'm not going to lecture you." 

    Silvia frowned. "Even though I was reckless and talked to Stewart? Calling a truce, Murdock?"

    "Look, I think it was a good idea for you to talk to him." Matt said, halting as he grasped for words. "For you to see what sort of... damage Union Allied has been doing. The evidence he gave you is the most valuable asset we have."

    "He died because of me, though," She said raggedly, feeling her chest becoming tight. "And no matter what I do, I can't bring him back. I couldn't help him. I–"

    "Silvia, look at me."

    She turned towards him, trying desperately to ignore the aching in her chest. Facing him, in that moment, Silvia could have sworn he was looking right at her. That close to him, she caught a glimpse of his eyes behind the tinted lenses. She had forgotten their exact colour, she realised with a pang, looking intently at the ring of dark brown around each hazel iris.

    "Stewart wanted to help you." The words were surprisingly gentle, his tone free of the sharpness she had grown so used to. "He chose to give you the journal, to talk to you. To let you in."

    "But it's my fault," she whispered, hugging her knees to her chest, trying to trap the damning words to no avail. "He's dead because of me."

    "Don't say that. Don't even think that." He tightened his grip on the handle of his cane, knuckles turning white. "Fisk is the one responsible, but with the evidence Stewart provided... we can stop him for good."

    "You don't know that," she shook her head, each word burdened by exhaustion. "This city's diseased, Matt."

    "And if we don't help it, who else will?"

    "The police? The people who are trained to handle these things? How the hell can a P.I, a couple of lawyers, and their assistant change anything?"

    "By not giving up," he replied simply, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Plus, at this stage we can assume most of the cops are on Fisk's payroll."

    She laughed, a hollow-sounding thing that died on her lips. "Oh, we're fucked."

    "We'll make sure his death wasn't in vain, Silvia. I can't promise a lot, but I can promise that."

    She would have been lying if she had said the earnest nature of his words had surprised her. In spite of the charge of animosity between them, Silvia knew, buried deep beneath the hurt and anger, that there was one thing she could count on Matt for. The thing that, at a similar time years ago, had drawn them together in the first place.

    Despite his vices, Matt Murdock couldn't help but care.

— ¤ —

1994, Hell's Kitchen

    The waiting room was cold. Unnervingly cold, despite the merciless July sun glaring outside. In what some called the hottest summer in decades, the entirety of Manhattan seemed to be burning alive; a colony of ants slowly meeting their demise underneath the cruel glare of a magnifying glass. Grass turned brown, fire hydrants faced drought, tires melted into acrid puddles on the baked asphalt. Yet the waiting room was left untouched, its own dimension separated from the outside world as the stained-glass windows blazed from behind. 

    Silvia liked it better that way – grief had no place in summer's blissful warmth. Her father's funeral a few weeks prior had been obscenely bright; the sky above the graveyard a cloudless blue, the sun's rays reflecting against the gleaming new headstone so intensely that her eyes hurt.

    She had expected that upon her father's death, some drastic change would occur within nature; that the very balance of the earth would be knocked out of place. The sun would dim forever, the birds in the trees halting their song. The moon would no longer pull the tides onto the shore, too stricken with grief to continue. 

    But, heartbreaking as the revelation was, the world had not revolved around Sebastian Flores. It had existed before him, and would carry on long after he left it.

    As she did every week, the girl left the session while her mother remained inside the office, conferring with one of the nuns in hushed tones. She could only imagine what they were saying about her; about how the Lord would heal her sorrows when the time was right, in the usual fashion of God's plan. Silvia looked up at the wooden crucifix hanging above the door, cringing away from the figure's watchful gaze as she took a seat.

   Gnawing on her bottom lip, she stole a glance at the only other person in the room, brown eyes filled with curiosity. The boy sitting in the chair opposite had started showing up about a month after she began attending. Always alone, always silent.

    Before the words had left her mouth, the door opened slightly, revealing Sister Ruth's bespectacled face. The nun smiled at the two children, before turning her attention to the boy. "Thank you for being so patient, Matthew. I'll be ready in one minute, alright?" 

    The boy nodded, waiting until the door clicked shut before muttering, "It's Matt."

    Silvia cleared her throat, picking at the seam in one of her gloves. The material still felt foreign against her skin, itchy and wrong. It would take some getting used to, for sure. "She gets my name wrong too," she wrinkled her nose, the words too loud in the suffocating silence. "Calls me Sylvie."

    The boy – Matt – tilted his head to the side, brows furrowing behind the tinted lenses of his glasses. "What is your name?"

    "Silvia. Silvia Flores."

    "That's a nice name." He nodded slowly, mouth curving in the tiniest of smiles. "Suits you better than Sylvie, too."

    "Thanks," She said, finding herself returning the favour in a shy grin. "Matt suits you better than Matthew."

    The room grew quiet once more, neither of them quite sure of what to say. 

    "I'm sorry about your dad." He said then, fidgeting with the handle of his cane. The words were matter-of-fact, almost casual. 

    Silvia kicked her feet, the toes of her shoes scuffing against the worn carpet with a soft scratching sound. "I'm sorry about yours."

    There was no point in avoiding the reason why they were both there, after all. People didn't just show up to the parish-run counselling sessions for fun. It was no secret what had happened to their fathers; the tragic deaths of Sebastian Flores and Jack Murdock, only a month apart, had been plastered across the news for weeks. Silvia had despised it; being unable to mourn in peace, each news bulletin heralding the same thing: 'BRAVE DETECTIVE GUNNED DOWN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT; KILLED IN FRONT OF DAUGHTER.'

    Each headline had hit the grieving child like a slap. 

    They had turned his death into a spectacle, but while her father could no longer be troubled by the whispers, stares, or looks of pity, she could not afford that privilege.  

    "Does it bother you too?" Matt asked quietly, adjusting his glasses. "How differently people treat you now, I mean."

    "Every day," she admitted. "I want to forget about all the bad stuff that's happened, and they make it impossible."

    "Right? Or when they act like you're a charity case," he added with a sigh. "It was bad before, but now it's even worse."

    "Sorry, Matt."

    "It's okay," the boy shrugged. "Thank you, though."

    Silvia raised her head to look at him, frowning. "For what?"

    "For being the first person to talk to me normally, not just out of pity."

    "Well, thank you too." She smiled. "I missed just... talking about normal stuff."

    "Me too. And you know what?" He leaned towards her, voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. "If Sister Ruth says your name wrong again, I'll hit her with this–" He held up his cane.

    Silvia giggled, clamping a hand over her mouth to veil the peals of laughter as the boy joined in. With a jolt, she realised she hadn't laughed like that in months, the lightness in her chest feeling completely alien.

    The counselling sessions didn't seem so lonely after that. Despite Sister Ruth's continued interrogative questions, Silvia would grin and bear it, solely focused on who was waiting outside the office door. Adrift, she had managed to find sanctuary within the walls of the church. However, solace did not live in glittering reams of prayer, nor the cold stone hearts of the angels, but in the kind words of a boy that told her one thing.

    You are not alone.

— ¤ —

2015.

    The old church on Park Avenue had not changed in the slightest, despite Silvia's almost twenty-year absence. Once the tallest structure on the street, it now lay sandwiched between two townhouses; huddling as though cowed amongst its more modern peers. With its peeling paint and crumbling facade, Silvia couldn't help but picture a once proud woman, frail and faded beneath the weight of time's cruelty.

    Turning her face towards the sky, Silvia closed her eyes as the weak rays of sunlight covered her like a shroud. In the haze that had descended since the news of Stewart's death, she couldn't help but think of the discussion with Matt, picking apart his words and stitching them back together in search of some wider meaning.

    'I can't promise a lot, but I can promise that.'

    She could hear him now, talking with the others in hushed tones on the church steps. Despite their brief armistice a few days earlier, it seemed as though things had gone back to normal as soon as they had left the stairwell. If she was being honest, it was behaviour like this that made Silvia wonder if there was a gas leak within the walls of the law firm.

    It wouldn't have surprised her in the slightest.

    The funeral had been a muted service, with the only attendees being Karen, Matt, Foggy, and herself. The four of them had sat in the front pew, listening to the eulogy of a man who had been a stranger. Who would never have the chance to be anything more. She had spent the whole thing watching the sunlight throw patterns through the stained glass, trying to send herself somewhere far away, tuning out the words of the mass to a persistent hum.  

    "Lovely day, isn't it?"

    Silvia started, turning as the person to her left continued, unabashed.

    "I've always hated overseeing funerals, but weather like this makes it more bearable." Father Lantom shook his head, greying brows pulled together. "Not wholly bearable, though... what a waste."

    "It was a...nice service." She offered, tapping her fingers in a pattern against the side of her leg. Despite the friendly nature of the conversation, she couldn't help but feel like she was eight years old again; unable to shake the childlike fear that she had done something wrong.

   "Only doing my job, I suppose. How did you know him?"

    "He was..." she swallowed, thinking of the rows of empty pews. "He was a friend."

    "Well, I'm sure he appreciates that you're here for him."

    There was a pause as he peered at her, searching her features as though looking for something long gone.

    "You're Sebastian's kid, aren't you?"

    "What?" She blinked, staring at him as he nodded sagely. "How did you–?"

    "I never forget a face," he said with a shrug. "Anyone ever told you that you're a lot like him? Same facial expressions."

    The priest's words hit her with a pang, strong enough for words to escape her. Her father's loss was a constant ache, dulled by the passage of time, but being back in the church had ripped her scars open to pour salt in the wounds.

    During the service she had seen him, echoes of his life left between the rows of darkened pews. They had been everywhere: Sebastian kneeling in prayer, lips moving in silent worship; lighting votive candles at the nave, each one a glowing ember; taking the sacrament as the light from above turned him golden.

    Beside each of these ghosts she had seen a smaller figure, copying his actions with childish enthusiasm. Eager to please. She had once loved practising these things with her father, clutching the time with him close to her heart, a precious thing.

    Leaving a little ghost in its place, that part of her had died with him. A shattered piece of mirror glass, warped and clouded, that she could only lament.

    "No," she managed to say, blinking to clear her head, her heart. "No-one's ever told me that before."

    The priest regarded her, gaze softening. "Huh. Well, it's true."

    The sound of footsteps made her pause, the distinct clicking of heels against pavement growing louder with Karen's approach.

    "Oh- sorry to interrupt. We were thinking of going to Josie's for a drink?" she asked, fidgeting with the hem of her blouse. "Just something small to honour Mr. Stewart's memory. It's okay if you don't want to go of course, but–"

    Silvia raised her hands, a placating gesture. "Sure, why not." She glanced at Father Lantom, glad to get away from his reminders of the past. "Thanks again."

    "Of course." The older man waved her off, beginning to make his way up the stone steps. "Oh, and Ms. Flores," he paused, resting one hand on the iron railing. "The doors of the church are always open if you need someone to talk to."

    Silvia watched him disappear beneath the building's arched doorway, tugging on the hem of her glove as unease coiled in the pit of her stomach.

    She slipped a hand into her jacket pocket, cloth-bound fingers brushing against something cold, heavy despite its small size. She pictured the tarnished metal of the ring, secrets radiating off it in waves. Plucked from Stewart's little finger before the service had begun, hidden in her coat before the others had arrived.

    "I didn't know you were religious," Karen said then, light eyebrows furrowing as she scrutinised the brunette.

    Silvia thought of Stewart's face, scarred by the city's demons, twisted by terror. Bound by something more than duty, she would seek his killers. Vowing to avenge him with her cruel gifts, even if it destroyed her.

    "I'm not."

author's note:

i am,,,,,,, so sorry stewart nation (looking at you rn cheryl 🧍‍♀️). iwl i've gotten attached to him but this was necessary for the sake of the plot i swear </3

apologies for taking forever getting this chapter out but i had my leaving cert exams the whole month of june (evil i know), and wasn't able to write. however!! i'm on my summer break now which means possible consistent updates for the first time maybe ever 👀 you will be getting fed well from now on i promise!!

anyway i hope you enjoyed as always!! please lmk what you think because i value your opinions sm :'))

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