Tabula Rasa

Part 1

Chapter 1

At the last moment, the landing turned into a forward roll.

Coming to his feet on the barren rooftop, Matt rubbed at the faint ache in his left knee. It had been niggling at him all night - for the last couple of nights, if he was honest - and he didn't think a harsh, two-footed touchdown after that jump from the other building would have done it any favours.

So he'd softened the impact. Tucked his body, and allowed his momentum to carry him forward in a roll across the hard, damp concrete.

He was learning to accommodate for the toll the years of parkour, jiu jitsu and general wear and tear had taken on his joints.

It was ironic. Now that his mind and soul were relatively at peace with what he did when he put on this suit, it was his body that was turning on him.

He'd spent so long wrestling with his conscience over this double life - the morality of it; the legality of it; the secrets he had to tell; the brushes with darkness when he gave into his rage. But he was finally at a place of equilibrium, and his last encounter with Wilson Fisk had helped get him there.

Because he'd left him alive.

At the height of his rage, and in a state of complete frustration and disillusionment...he hadn't killed Fisk. He had tip-toed up to the edge of his moral red line, but he hadn't crossed it.

Though calling it a line was a massive understatement. It wasn't just some mark in the sand. It was a cliff. A jagged rock face overhanging a dark, turbulent sea. He'd peered over that cliff, stared down into the pitch-black roiling waves below and had contemplated jumping. He had convinced himself that the means justified the ends, and that he could handle the fall.

But he'd been kidding himself.

He never would have survived the landing. He would have been consumed by those waves, forever struggling to catch his breath as he was battered by the churning mass of his guilt.

His friends knew that. Father Lantom knew it. Even Fisk knew it - he'd goaded him on towards the end, as he'd knelt bloody and defiant on the floor of his penthouse. Fisk had wanted to bring him down to his level, to corrupt him completely in one last act of vengeful cruelty.

But it hadn't worked.

And now Matt knew, deep within his heart, that he wasn't capable of taking another person's life. If he couldn't kill Fisk - the monster who had tormented his city and murdered with impunity and threatened his friends - then he couldn't kill anyone.

The knowledge was liberating, in a way.

Of course, the devil still resided in his soul; the beast that was formed of rage, that craved violence with a gnawing intensity, still lurked within him. But it was not a murderous beast. Embracing that side of himself would not lead to the ultimate corruption of his soul. Which meant Matt was now free to don his devilish persona. He didn't have to sublimate it. He didn't have to lock away his urges and impulses just like he'd once locked away his suit.

And he didn't have to let it define him either. After surviving the building collapse, he'd indulged that baser aspect of soul, becoming nothing more than the devil, misguided in the belief that it was his only way to succeed in his mission.

But he'd been wrong. He'd been left lonely and unfulfilled...and ultimately ineffective.

He needed a balance between the two. Between Matt Murdock and the Devil.