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He didn't mean to start having feelings for Matt Murdock. For so many years he'd been half in love with Luke ... and then Luke found Jessica ... and Danny royally fucked things up when he treated her like "flavor of the week" but she'd ended up being the one Luke had a kid with and then married. And Danny had acted like a jealous prick all the way through, and things between him and Luke these days were full of things better left unsaid, full of things that needed to be said, should have been said.
It didn't help that the whole thing had forced Danny to look and the mirror and realize that his relationship with Misty was based on transference.
~oo(0)oo~
One of the things that Danny had always admired about Matt was his grace in motion. He made perfection look easy. He didn't fight so much as dance. His movements sang with the joy of motion, of being in that body, of being alive.
He and Matt didn't have a whole lot in common, but they did share that — Matt was the only other person he'd met who seemed to "get" the martial arts the same way.
And when Matt was arrested, held without bail and sent to Rykers to await arraignment, Danny knew what he had to do. He was quite possibly the only other person on the planet with the skills to mimic the moves of Matt Murdock.
Being that he and Matt were of the same height and build, Matt's suit fit him without needing any adjustments.
And putting it on? It was like ...
It wasn't that the suit was rank and not clean. But even when washed in some sort of unscented detergent, it still had (worked deep into the weave of the fabric) something that could only be called "essence of Matt". Danny sucked it deep into his lungs. It helped him get into the right frame of mind. He needed to move like Matt, act like Matt, not like Iron Fist, not like Danny Rand.
And as he capered over the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen, performing acrobatic power moves that drew gasps of admiration and dismay, it was all he could do to not shriek his joy to the heavens. He felt so very very alive, more alive in a way than when he had plunged his hands into the molten, fiery heart of the dragon.
Danny Rand was the burnt out figurehead CEO of Rand-Meachum incorporated.
Iron Fist was the yesterday's-news former partner of Luke Cage. A serious martial artist and mystic.
But Daredevil? Man without fear. Man without limits. Man not bound by fixed forms. A free man.
And as Danny did a back handspring across the roof of a warehouse — just the way Daredevil would because he could — he realized he wanted to feel this way, live this way, be this way — forever.