Chapter 25

"Come on, Matt. It's time to get up." Foggy had woken up a few times during the night to find Matt stirring restlessly in his bed, and knew that he hadn't slept well. Now, he seemed too tired to want to respond. "Come on, I showered already, the bathroom is all yours."

"Leave me alone, it's still dark out." Matt turned away from Foggy and out of the grasp of the hand on his shoulder.

"No, it's not." Foggy looked out the window. "Oh wait, is that some kind of blind joke? It's really not that funny, you know." Foggy still smiled in spite of himself.

"I'm so not ready for this." Matt was talking into his pillow now.

"Yeah, you are." Foggy sat down on Matt's bed to annoy him, hoping that would get his friend out of bed. "There's coffee, you know."

"Alright. Good. Man, I think my rhythm is all screwy again."

"Well, it's seven thirty, and we need to get out of here in half an hour."

"Yeah, I know. By the way, what's up with you? You didn't strike me as a morning person before."

"I'm not, really. I guess I'm just in a good mood."

"I'm glad one of us is." Matt got out of bed and pulled out the top drawer. His jeans from yesterday were probably still presentable but he definitely wanted a clean shirt.

"Oh come on, last night was a blast and you know you're going to kick ass at the try-outs."

"And how would you know that, exactly?" By now, Foggy at softened him up to the point where waking up didn't seem like such a bad idea. And he wasn't really that nervous about the debate, it was more a general feeling of not being on top of things.

"I guess I just don't see you as the type who breaks under pressure. Do you know where that place is? Where they are holding the try-outs?"

"I have some idea of where the building is, yeah."

"Would you like me to go with you?"

"You're free to come, if you want to, but I'll be okay." Matt pushed past Foggy into the main room.

"Do you think they let people watch? I think it sounds like fun," Foggy yelled through the bathroom door. After a few seconds he heard Matt turn the water on.

"Yeah, that's probably fine," Matt yelled back, smiling at Foggy's enthusiasm. If Foggy had wanted something more from their not-really-a-date with Angie and Molly last night, it didn't show. On the contrary, it seemed to have given him a boost.

Matt stepped into the shower and let out a groan of pleasure. He liked showers, because the sound masked everything else around him and the steady gentle pounding of small beads of water felt so good on his body. He tried to empty his mind and think about absolutely nothing at all, but the events of the last week raced through his mind.

On the whole, he had to admit that things had gone better than expected. He hadn't anticipated making friends with his roommate, and in retrospect, he realized just what a relief it was to room with someone he could feel completely at ease around. He knew Foggy thought of himself as just an average guy, but Matt knew that wasn't true. One of the positive aspects of standing out from the crowd the way he did was that it usually caused the disingenuous and truly insecure people to withdraw, leaving only those who would base friendship on something deeper. Foggy was one of those people.

He was also relieved that most of the logistical snags had been dealt with. He knew that he'd have to get a second reader some time in the next week, but Angie, at least, was working out great. And he enjoyed her company too. Even the bad stuff didn't feel so bad anymore. Or maybe it was just a conscious choice to not let that bug him. Dwelling on it was futile, and he knew he'd done too much of that. He let that realization work for him as he envisioned the day ahead. Deep down, he knew his odds of getting on the debate team were good.

Matt enjoyed a good friendly battle of words. It was a fun challenge to try to find the perfect argument to support any notion, and he knew he was good at it. He would have to be if he was ever going to be a good lawyer. It was also the only 'sport' where he could compete honestly and on an equal level. For most things, he would either have to hold back, disguise his abilities or deny them outright, or find himself on the other end of the spectrum, at a disadvantage. In debate competitions he'd always had the advantage of being able to easily pick up on nervousness and lies. He knew when his opponent wasn't really buying his own arguments and he could use that to his advantage. He also had a good feel for which way the judges were leaning. But all that seemed fair since he had certain disadvantages as well. His blindness was occasionally a distraction, not to him, but to everyone else. And, at the end of the day, no trick was going to save him. If he won, it would ultimately be because of his own wit and not his heightened senses.

As far as Joel went, Matt knew he'd faced down enough bullies to deal with him. But he wasn't used to people being openly hostile that way. He'd put up with condescending attitudes countless times, even from the very people who were supposed to be helping him, and he knew the subtle insult of low expectations. But most people kept their low expectations to themselves, and when they slipped it was always unintentional. On the one hand, it could have been refreshing to be around someone who wasn't going to cut him any slack. On the other, Matt felt bad enough about having been assigned a subject that might require an unusual amount of sighted assistance without Joel being a jerk about it.

But there would always be jerks. It was hard to do anything about that very basic fact of life. Matt could only take responsibility for his own actions, and he'd promised himself, and his father, that he would always do his best. It was all anyone could ask. He was going to stand up for himself, and for anyone else who might need it. He would do all in his power to live by that simple motto.

Power... As he thought about that word, it wasn't the first time he was hit by a sense of both shame and isolation. With the exception of Stick, a man whose very presence had been so mysterious that his long absence had started to make him seem like a ghost, no one knew what Matt could do. Having a secret that big and not sharing it with anyone did weigh heavy on his mind at times. Would he ever be able to tell anyone? Would that someone be Foggy? Or his dad? He had often wondered what his dad would say if he found out. Matt imagined that Jack would be relieved to hear that his life as a blind person wasn't quite the struggle it would appear to be, and just how much he treasured the new world he'd discovered.

Then again, it wasn't the same as being sighted. Before the accident, he and his father would take regular trips down to the docks to look at the ships coming in and watch the sunset. Occasionally, they would walk all over town, sometimes as far south as Battery Park where they would have a perfect view of Lady Liberty herself. With his sight gone, things were different. They still went places together, but their activities had changed. Matt wouldn't have minded doing all of the same things they had always done, but he knew it pained his father too much.

Just like his son, Jack had grown up in a dirty part of town with not much to look at, yet had a great appreciation for beauty; much more than anyone expected from a guy who beat people up for money. When you didn't have much, you tended to appreciated the little things. Despite his abilities, Matt could no longer share in the enjoyment of many of the things his father valued, and all the photographs of his mother and his childhood days were just glossy pieces of paper. Closer than ever in some ways, an invisible barrier remained. Matt knew that his father would have given his own life to bring him back to the sighted world, but that world wasn't his anymore, no matter how clearly he could hear it, smell it and feel it. Even if Matt chose to tell him, things would never be as they once were.

Another worry Matt had when it came to letting people know, aside from the vague and slightly paranoid idea that he'd have his head cut open by ruthless doctors, was to not have his blindness taken seriously. It was a realization he'd made fairly recently, as he was finally beginning to make at least casual friends with the 'd word'. While he got over describing himself as blind within a few months of the accident, it was only in the last year that he could stand being referred to as 'disabled' without cringing. He knew it really wasn't such a terrible word and finally beginning to own it was a relief, in a way. It meant accepting the places his heightened senses couldn't reach, the same places he felt would be called into question if people around him would learn about his extraordinary abilities.

When he'd gone to camp the first summer after the accident, he'd met a guy about his own age who could see relatively well and easily pass for sighted in most circumstances. In fact, everything about him appeared so 'normal' that he felt it had sometimes been implied that he was exaggerating when he couldn't see something. Matt knew that if people couldn't even wrap their heads around something as simple as low vision, how would anyone be able to make sense of what came easy to someone like him and what didn't?

No, this wasn't something he could announce to the whole world. But he knew he'd have to tell someone eventually. Maybe if he met someone? Matt smiled to himself, only dimly aware of how much time had passed when he heard Foggy knock on the door for him to hurry up. He had reached a decision. When he met the girl of his dreams, he would tell her. He would find someone to share his secret with.

ooOoo

Matt made sure to be the first one to show up in the cafeteria for the group assignment get-together with Joel, Georgia and Joanie. He could find people he'd met before by their smell or sound, but he wasn't supposed to be able to do that so he had to play dumb until his name was called. To avoid that particular scenario, which made him feel both stupid and like something of a fraud, it was better to be early. It was also a good habit to have since he had a nearly impossible time of trying to find people he hadn't met before.

He found an empty table by asking a question of whoever happened to be around, even though he knew it wasn't taken. Sometimes doing things the blind way seemed natural, or even necessary, but many of the things he did was an act. Fortunately, it was a well-rehearsed routine. No one had ever questioned whether he could see more than he let on. He had to "fake it" so that no one would accuse him of doing just that. But no one ever said life had to make perfect sense.

Within a couple of minutes, Joel showed up. If he had known him better, Matt could have picked up his scent and heartbeat sooner, but as it were, he registered his presence when he was about fifty feet away.

"Hey, Matt. It's Joel." He grabbed a chair, scraped it across the floor and sat down.

"Hey." Matt let a hint of a smile play across his lips. He didn't have to be cordial, but he could try to be civil.

"So, I just wanted to tell you..." Joel hesitated for a couple of seconds, "I'm sorry I gave you a hard time before." His voice told Matt that he was sincere, but there was a rather grumpy tone to it. Apologizing was probably not something he did very often.

"Yeah, you were kind of an asshole." Matt wasn't going to let him off the hook with an 'it's okay, all is forgiven'.

"I guess I need to work on my social skills, huh?"

"Here's the thing, Joel..." Matt took a few seconds to put away the book he had out. He could hear Joel's steady heartbeat and knew he had his attention. "Don't presume to know me. Okay?"

"Okay." He nodded, and Matt could sense his head sort of bob up and down.

"I get that people assume things about me, even though that's none of their business. It's not something I can change except by setting people straight if they give me the chance, but disrespect is never cool. I never liked the silk gloves types, and I get the feeling that you're more of a gloves off kind of guy. I appreciate that, but I'm not going to take any crap from you or anyone else."

"Okay. I respect that."

"And, having said all that," Matt smiled a little longer this time, "I must admit that this isn't the subject I would have picked."

"Same here." Joel chuckled. "So, are we cool?"

"Yeah, I guess so. I kind of have this thing about second chances."

ooOoo

"Okay, Murdock," Eric said, leaning forward a little like he was coaching a boxer just about to go into the ring, "we have the line-up on the board, but I'll come get you when it's your turn, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay." It was almost hard to concentrate on Eric's voice when his own heartbeat was so loud in his chest. He wasn't terribly nervous, but definitely on edge.

"So, Eric," Foggy piped up, "is it okay for people to stay and watch?"

"You're the cheerleader, huh?" Eric said jokingly. "Well, if Matt and this Julie Parsons person are both okay with it, you're welcome to join us."

"So, that's my opponent?" Matt thought about the name, as if that would give him a clue to what her style might be.

"Yeah. In the meantime, you guys stay out here. We can't have anyone listening in there since you're all debating the same thing. That would be unfair to the people who have to go first."

"Okay, we'll be around." Matt made a conscious decision not to eavesdrop through the wall. He wasn't going to cheat.

"There are some chairs over here." Foggy looked at the jumbled collection of chairs that seemed to have been lined up against the wall outside the classroom for this particular purpose.

Matt reached with his cane toward one of the chairs. He knew it wasn't taken and the sound when he tapped against it confirmed it. He reached down with his hand and took a seat, absent-mindedly listening to all the other loud thumping heartbeats all around. There was a heavy scent of nervousness in the air and some people were mumbling under their breaths. He seemed to be the only one with an escort, so there was no talking.

Foggy took a seat too and checked out Matt's competition. They all looked rather prim and proper, but aside from that, he guessed they must come from all walks of life. In the group of about twenty people, every ethnicity and social class seemed to be represented. Hesitant to disturb anyone, Foggy remained silent and noticed that Matt took out his tape recorder. He might have had notes on the tape that he wanted to listen to, or maybe it was a book.

Foggy tried to guess what Matt was thinking, sitting there with his head leaned back against the wall and his eyes, which were only ever visible up close and from the side, staring into apparent nothingness. Foggy wasn't really that worried for his friend. The others present didn't exactly look like the village idiots of their respective home towns, but from their one week together, Foggy had come to expect a lot of his roommate. They hadn't had much time to study yet, but Matt seemed to be on top of every single subject and he had a core academic knowledge of a wide variety of subjects that was nothing short of amazing. His brilliance seemed to be the result of equal parts interest and necessity. Without hard cash, and with a limited ability to perform many types of manual labor, his mind was his only asset. He was literally paying his way through life with good grades, awards and achievements.

Foggy didn't know that kind of pressure. He got good grades too, and it was expected of him, but for Matt academia was a high-stakes game that he couldn't afford to lose, and it was clear that losing wasn't something he was used to. Was that what Matt was thinking about? About what might happen if his winning streak and long line of successes in the face of adversity would come to an end? His scholarship didn't ride on his making the debate team, but maybe he was afraid of losing steam, that destiny itself would appear and declare that 'this is the end of the line for you, Matt Murdock. Did you really think you were going to make it?'. From the stern expression on Matt's face, Foggy imagined that maybe Matt really was thinking something like that.

Matt was still working his way through that same John Grisham novel, and he could just as well have been listening to white noise since his mind was a million miles away anyway. He felt bad for Foggy who just had to sit around and wait, though he'd never actually asked him to, but after about ten minutes Matt noticed Foggy taking out one of his books so he could read to pass the time. It would be about a half hour before Eric came out and called his name. Matt jumped, and was reminded of how he'd done the same thing, while listening to the same novel, less than a week ago in Gina's office. Both times, it had felt like waiting at the dentist's. Matt stood up and noticed Foggy do the same.

"You want me in there or not?" Foggy asked. It had occurred to him again that maybe Matt wasn't so keen on him listening in.

Matt smiled. "Do whatever you feel like. But it doesn't bother me if that's what you're worried about."

"Okay, I'm coming in then." Foggy looked at the other person who had stood up, a thin girl with very pale skin who was nervously playing with the strap on her backpack. Meanwhile, Eric had approached them.

"So, I guess I should show you where you're going to be." Eric touched Matt's hand the way he'd seen Foggy do and was immediately rewarded with a firm grasp around his arm. When they approached the door, Matt seemed to fall back and move behind him automatically as if he'd known it was there.

As soon as they entered the larger room, the air seemed to shift and Matt noticed the other people sitting in the front row. He was wondering who they were. "Who else is here?"

"Oh, right." Eric took Matt over to an appropriate spot and worked his arm out of his grip. Before he got the chance to gather his thoughts, Julie, Matt's opponent came over.

"Hey, I'm Julie. It's nice to meet you." She took Matt's hand as soon as he put it out.

"Hi. Matt Murdock." Matt heard Julie walk back to her own spot a few feet away as soon as she let go of him. The others in attendance were still quiet, and Matt felt scrutinized. He reasoned that he would have felt even more awkward if it hadn't been for his heightened senses since he knew more about them than they would ever suspect, but for the time being, they were still just anonymous heartbeats, breath sounds and a mixture of scents.

"Yeah, I guess I should tell you about the panel. We have the faculty advisor, Mr. Dillon, and me and another couple of people from the team, Jacob and Emma." The people in question followed Eric's introduction with a soft hello.

"Would you hold this for me?" Matt folded up his cane and held it out in Eric's direction. He definitely wanted his hands free, and he'd also noticed that if he kept the cane, people tended to spend too much time looking at it, rather than focusing on him.

"Sure." Eric grabbed it, and walked across the floor to take his seat. "Okay, like I mentioned before, we're debating capital punishment. Julie, I want you to take the affirmative side, and Matt, you'll take the negative. Okay?"

"Sure." Matt let out a sigh of relief. He was better at arguing this side. He listened for Foggy and found him a couple of rows back, his heartbeat unusually strong, but steady. At least one person in the room was wholeheartedly on his side.

"This is just to get a feel for your style and what you're made of so the rules will be very simple. I want two minute introductions from both of you, then we'll do two rounds of one-minute rebuttals and that's it. Nothing fancy. Formally, the resolution is 'capital punishment can be an appropriate form of punishment in modern society.' Julie, you'll go first."

Matt's nervousness gradually started giving way to excitement as he listened to Julie's side. She was actually quite good, but he felt that she went a little too 'old testament' considering they were debating the death penalty in modern society. He was psyched to get his turn. It wasn't jumping from a building, but the adrenaline rush was the same and he loved that taste of adrenaline.

When Julie was done, Eric passed the ball to Matt. He took a deep breath and stood up a little straighter.

"In the case of capital punishment, we need to consider two separate but equally important notions. The first is a matter of ethics. Is it ever justifiable to take a human life? And, if so, should this be the responsibility of the state and national government? I feel that it is not in the interest of any modern democracy to act as executioner. I will admit, however, that the ethics here are certainly debatable and that vengeance is an age-old human tradition which many feel is still warranted.

Are there people whose crimes are heinous enough to deserve the ultimate punishment? Perhaps. But who gave us the right to take a human life to avenge another that can never be restored? It is ultimately a form of hypocrisy.

The more important aspect here has nothing to do with ethics, however. If we are to give ourselves as a society the divine right to take lives, we also have to match this power with a divine level of insight. We must know, beyond a doubt, that the truth has come out, that the jury is not swayed by anything other than the evidence at hand, and that the evidence itself is sufficient to prove the guilt of the accused. We can no longer talk about reasonable doubt, there should be absolutely no doubt. There is no room for error.

I believe in the justice system, but I do not believe that it is infallible. We know that people have been wrongfully convicted in the past, and I believe that modern technology will show that these convictions are more common than we would like to believe. Just this spring, we saw the first case of a man being exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence. His was not a capital offence, but I am convinced that innocent people have been executed and that more will meet the same fate, because of human arrogance. Because we presume to have all the facts.

Until we can truly know, far beyond a reasonable doubt, whether people are guilty or innocent, the hypothetical debate of whether we should be allowed to kill people in the name of the justice system is irrelevant. As a society, we are not yet mature enough."

Matt felt himself to returning to normal after operating on auto-pilot, the way he always did. He tried to get a feel for whether his speech was well-received, but could only hear steady heartbeats and pens scratching paper. Foggy sounded a little calmer however, while Julie certainly did not, and he heard her hesitate when it was her time to speak up. He had to fight hard to restrain a smile. He was pretty sure he was doing okay.

ooOoo

"Hey, we should go somewhere and celebrate!" Foggy was almost bouncing down the street leading to their building, and he usually wasn't a bouncing kind of guy.

"Wait a sec, Foggy. First of all, I can't afford to go out every night. Secondly, don't you think we should study or something?"

"Yeah, I know. But you made the team, we should at least do something. How about we order pizza? On me."

Matt laughed. He could tell Foggy was dying for a pizza. "Okay, we'll get pizza."

"Great. So, I bet you're probably going to get to travel and stuff, right? You said you'd never been anywhere, but that's all going to change now, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so. I never even thought about that. We should at least get to go to other universities on the East coast." The thought of it was rather exciting, even though none of those places would be as comfortably familiar as Manhattan. Maybe it was time to surrender control and just go along for the ride for once.

"Now, what am I going to do?" Matt was starting to find his niche, but Foggy wasn't sure what his was yet.

"You'll think of something."

ooOoo

Matt got on the phone as soon as he got back to the apartment, excited to tell Jack about his latest accomplishment. He didn't even bother with a standard greeting when he heard his father's voice on the other line. "Dad, I made the debate team!"

"Matty? What… That's great." Jack was surprised by the call and Matt didn't give him much time to digest the news. "That's really great, son."

"Yeah, I really wanted this and now we might get to travel and stuff. I never even thought about that, but that's a definite possibility. Anyway, it was really fun and this guy who's head of the team lives on my floor and he's real nice and… anyway, I just wanted to tell you." After carefully controlling the speed of every word, Matt had gone into full rambling mode, and now he suddenly sounded like a ten-year-old with a sugar high.

"I'm real happy for you Matty." Jack couldn't really relate to many of the things his son liked to do, but Matt sounded ecstatic, and that was all that mattered. Jack could feel his eyes almost start to well up. This was definitely a different Matt than the one he'd had lunch with a few days ago.

"Thanks, Dad. Listen, I have to go, Foggy ordered some pizza and it'll be here any minute. Tell everyone back home I said 'hi'."

"Will do." Jack laughed. "You know I bet you're going to put this whole neighborhood on the map some day. Even that nice lady down at the store asked about you."

"Well, I'm not exactly running for mayor or anything. But when I'm famous, I swear never to forget my roots," Matt joked.

"Well, Hell's Kitchen will thank you for that one," Jack joked back. "I'll talk to you later, Matt. I'm real proud of you, you know that."

"Yeah, I know. Bye, Dad."

After hanging up, Matt listened to the sound of someone walking down the hall, accompanied by the smell of tomato sauce and melted cheese. He hadn't even realized how hungry he was. "Foggy, the pizza is here."

Two seconds later, there was a knock on the door, and Foggy gave Matt a perplexed look. "How do you do that?" He shook his head and shrugged it off. "Never mind, you don't have to answer. Attention to detail?"

"Something like that." Matt smiled from the couch where he'd laid down to take a rest from all the excitement of the last hour. He heard Foggy fumble with the cash and noticed how the room filled with an almost dizzying aroma when the pizza was set down on the coffee table.

"I'll go get knives and some napkins. No need to get up or anything," Foggy joked. Matt looked like he'd won a million dollars, and Foggy thought the grin on his face was funny as hell.

"You know, I'm starting to feel like anything could happen."

"Sure, this is college. If things don't start happening soon, I'll be really pissed." Foggy thought about it, and realized he didn't know the debate team meant that much to Matt. Or maybe it wasn't the debate team, but the fact that he'd reached yet another stop on the road to wherever he was going. Lady Fortune was still smiling on the guy who'd once been struck down by the worst case of bad luck anyone could imagine.

"Anything could happen, Foggy. I'm really starting to believe that."

ooOoo

Friday marked the last day of the first week of classes. Aside from that, the day was unremarkable. The stifling heat of August was gone, and the sun felt like a warm touch on Matt's face, rather than like the burning heat of a radiator turned up to the max. The high of last night had started to settle, but he was in a better mood than he'd been at any time since arriving on campus. Many of the 'buts' and 'what ifs' had been laid to rest, and it was time to really start looking ahead. His dad had said he had great things ahead of him, and somehow, it all started to feel like he might be right.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Matt and Foggy would pass the library to get from one class to the next, and that act would have been routine this morning as well, if it weren't for the fact that Matt's world was about to be turned upside down once more.

If it weren't for the favorable wind, Matt might have missed the intoxicating scent that reached him from the top of the stairs, and if Foggy hadn't taken an accidental nose-dive into the cement, spilling his books all over the steps, the group of people from which the scent was emanating wouldn't have made their brief stop to look at the commotion. There was a faint laugh coming from the young girl in their midst. It wasn't mocking, but innocent, and it sent a jolt up Matt's body in a way he'd never felt before. The scent had to be hers too, and Matt felt his pulse begin to pound in his chest so hard that it felt like his ribs wouldn't be able to hold his heart in place.

Foggy paid no attention to anything except getting his books back in his backpack, and he swore under his breath at his own clumsiness. He suddenly felt Matt's hand on his shoulder, shaking him. "What is it?" Foggy was annoyed until he noticed the desperation in Matt's face.

"Those people… Who are they?"

"Eh, what?" Foggy turned around in the direction Matt's nose was pointing. "Looks like some girl with an entourage. Why?"

"Tell me about the girl."

"Well, for starters, she's looking at you." Foggy grinned, amused by Matt's sudden interest in someone he should barely be able to perceive.

"Everyone looks at me, big deal. Tell me what she looks like."

"Well, she was actually looking at you the good way." Foggy smiled, but Matt looked dead serious. "What she looks like? She's very pretty, dark. Long hair, brown, almost black. Expensive tastes." Even Foggy could tell the difference between Old Navy and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Matt said nothing, but listened intently to the conversation up ahead. The girl hadn't said much, she was obviously being given the grand tour, but her words bore the traces of an accent. He listened a little longer, hoping to catch a name. When it was finally spoken, he smiled. With both her scent and a name to go on, he would surely be able to find her again. "Elektra…" he said, his voice barely a whisper.

"What?" Foggy was wondering if his friend was possessed because he was certainly acting like it.

"Foggy, I have to find her again."

"Alright, we'll find her. First, we need to get to class. You coming?"

Matt nodded and swallowed hard. They would find her. "Yeah, I'm coming."

"Matt, I swear, sometimes you're just the weirdest guy." Foggy looked at his friend, who finally seemed to be able to shake off the strange feeling that had temporarily overcome him.

Matt smiled, his heart still feeling too big for his chest. "This won't do, Murdock," he thought to himself, certain that he wouldn't get anything done until he could track down the mysterious stranger who had walked past him and into the void beyond his reach, leaving a trace of herself behind. I have to find her.

THE BEGINNING

Author's (final) note: For anyone who hates me for ending the story this way, rest assured that I will have the opportunity to revisit the Lost and Found universe. The full story (novel...) will be available in pdf-format for download in a few days on my website (go to .). I will also write a Christmas story set a few years later in the same universe that I will post in a few days so keep your eyes open for that. Thank you all for reading!