Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: Foggy shakes him, screams his name. Matt pats his friend's shoulders, fingers tacky and sticking and then, suddenly, numb. "I'm fine. I'm fine, Foggy. It's fine."
"Get an ambulance!" Foggy yells.
Matt falls into the courthouse steps wondering why.
Author's Notes: Another one-shot from the Whumptober prompt friendly fire.
The title is taken from a famous piece of criticism from William Blake about Paradise Lost: John Milton, who wrote the poem, was "of the Devil's party without knowing it." Make of that what you will.
The Devil's Party
The whole thing is over in seconds, but Matt's thoughts stretch the attack in an eternity. Why didn't he sense the gunman on the steps of the courthouse? How did he miss the telltale scent of metal, the sudden spike in heartbeats, especially when they're all so clear to him now?
The smell of blood overwhelms the smell of gunshots when it's over. Foggy lies underneath him on the steps, groaning. Matt pats him down, his hands oddly cold despite the hot, slick wetness coating his palms. He finds blood on Foggy's shirt, a huge patch of it, and Matt can't breathe. He chokes on the gout of copper streaming over his friend.
"Oh, my God," Foggy says.
"No, it's fine. It's fine."
"Matt!"
He catches Foggy's hand in his, ears filled with the sound of their heartbeats – one charging on, terrified, while the other sputters, coughs, plunges into shock. Matt opens his mouth to say more, but his tongue is thick. Blood coats the back of his throat.
There's pain, but it's faint, distant. It cries out to his brain at a distance like the screams and sirens in the city, like an echo, someone else's pain. Matt leaps to respond, rallied by a cry for help that isn't his, but when he touches the spot, it is him, his side, and the single touch brings the nerves to life. Fire explodes from the wound, very present and very real and very much Matt.
Foggy shakes him, screams his name. Matt pats his friend's shoulders, fingers tacky and sticking and then, suddenly, numb. "I'm fine. I'm fine, Foggy. It's fine."
"Get an ambulance!" Foggy yells.
Matt falls into the courthouse steps wondering why.
Wheels rattle down a long corridor. Hushed voices crowd and teem. Focusing is impossible. His thoughts cloudburst faster than they appear, so the words and motion flow past him, dragging him along for an uncomfortable ride.
His skin is irritated. Scrubbed down by sandpaper blankets, crisp bandages. Matt shifts an arm and the slight motion sends him whirling. His brain sloshes around inside his skull, and he's going to be sick. He tosses his head, gasping when the motion tugs at the inside of his nose. There's something in there. God, he can feel it in the back of his throat, bobbing against his gag reflex, this long strand of something.
"Get it out," he rasps at them, the voices. He can't get his hands free, and they have so many hands, too many hands, pushing him down. "What is it? What are you doing? Where am I? Where's Foggy? Is he alright?"
"I'm right here. Right here, Matt."
"I can't…I can't…"
The hands back off, swatted away. The last ones left register as familiar through the sickly haze mugging up his senses. Matt breaks anew. "There's something in me. They put something in me."
"They were taking the bullet out of you," Foggy says.
"My face…"
"That has to stay."
Matt goes to shake his head, but the pull in his nose stops him. He bites back a cry. "I'm gonna be sick."
"No, no, no…" Foggy's heartbeat overflows from his mouth, spilling over everything, another ocean for Matt's brain to float away on.
"Deep breaths, Mr. Murdock. Deep breaths." Sing-song, feminine. Matt wants her to go away. Wants them all to go away. He prays to disappear, and after a shot of sunburn into his right arm, they finally do go away, vanishing into the ether.
They all tell him what happened, but the details don't stick. Nothing sticks. Matt fizzles in and out of conversations, his body on autopilot at best, danced around like a puppet on strings at worst. Turning down his meds doesn't help. His pain sounds louder than it is, worse than it feels. Matt blanks out and comes to in the middle of things: Karen putting ice chips in his mouth, a nurse removing his nasogastric tube, Maggie holding his hand.
"You were dreaming," she says, but Matt doesn't remember.
He pieces the story together from fragments in his memory. A man drew a weapon on the steps of the courthouse. Fired two shots before the cops got him. "You pushed me out of the way," Foggy says.
"Thank God Karen wasn't there."
"Yeah," Foggy says, but he still sounds disappointed. "Thank God."
Matt's starting to walk around the floor when Brett visits. The conversation starts strange, circling around the fact that they're in a hospital, that Matt's shaking and sweating and on a liquid diet.
"What is it, Detective?" Matt asks, sounding exactly as curt as he wants to.
Brett doesn't fault him whatsoever for the tone. In fact, the detective's heart only sounds more guilty. "That bullet they pulled out of your gut. It was from one of ours."
"We're suing. We're suing for everything."
"Foggy –"
"We're taking the guy's badge, his house, his marriage – if he has one. Everything."
"It was an accident, Foggy."
"Forgetting a birthday – that's an accident. He shot you, Matt. You almost died."
"He was protecting people."
"No, he wasn't! Not everybody! He certainly wasn't protecting you!"
"Foggy." Matt can't win this, not from the side of a hospital bed, his guts in utter turmoil from the walk he's taken around the floor. He hangs his head and ignores the stabs of anger piggybacking his nausea. "Leave it alone."
Foggy storms out of the room.
Matt can still hear his heartbeat thundering angrily down the hall.
They don't sue the NYPD. The DA doesn't press charges either, likely a bid on Tower's part to mend fence after Fisk.
Gifts start arriving: foods when Matt can eat solid meals again. A newly crocheted blanket. There's a collection taken in church. Matt tries to say no, but Maggie insists that its good to give people something to do, some way to help. She says this in her usual dry tone, like he's a sullen-spoilt four year old, and after, when Matt's glaring at her, she tells him not to laugh too hard or he'll break his stitches.
He donates the money to St. Agnes's. He passes off the blanket to another patient on his floor. He tries to issue a statement in the paper absolving the NYPD, but Ellison calls Matt personally to say that he can't print that, no matter how many papers it will sell, because Karen will make sure it's the last thing he ever does.
It's his second night at home when Matt wakes during the night to the smell of coffee and construction billowing from doorway to his bedroom. A heartbeat rumbles lowly, thunder from a gathering storm. Matt asks who's there; he can hear them. The only answer he gets is the heavy march of footsteps up the stairs, buckles clanking against leather boots. Coffee scent lingering well into the dawn.
Brett comes for another visit. Foggy's in the process of kicking him out when he says, "I'll leave. I promise. As soon as I have your word that you'll call off the goon squad."
"What goon squad?" Matt asks.
"The one harassing Officer Remini. Since you got shot –"
"You mean since Officer Remini shot him," Foggy states.
Brett's heartrate, already high, doubles its pace. "He's had his house broken into! People are calling him out on the streets! Every client you guys ever had have come out to make his life hell. Your old crew, the special ones – bulletproof guy, the ninja billionaire, that PI – they've all had separate run-ins with Remini. Jessica Jones threatened to literally tear him a new asshole."
"That doesn't sound like Miss Jones." Foggy shrugs. "Is he sure that's who he was talking to?"
"Back off, Counsellor."
"No, you back off, Brett. The NYPD got off easy. Officer Remini got off easy. He's lucky he shot the one lawyer in the city with a conscience when the DA is looking to kiss ass."
"Lucky." Brett scoffs. "Damn it, Nelson. You're a bleeding heart for some of the worst people imaginable. People who actually intend to do the shitty things they do."
"And if any of them had shot Matt, I would be just as unsympathetic as I'm being right now."
"He got tailed last night," Brett says. "Cornered in an alley. Some big guy. Didn't see his face, but he scared Remini shitless."
Matt leaps back into the conversation, his blood running icy-cold in his veins. "Is he hurt?"
"Yeah. Could've been a lot worse, the way Remini tells it. Says the guy mostly talked. About duty. About responsibility. About protecting and serving."
"That doesn't sound like anyone we know," Foggy says, and thank God, he believes that. Matt doesn't say anything to the contrary.
Brett ignores Foggy: "Murdock, I'm begging you."
The smell of coffee comes back to Matt, undercutting the entirety of this conversation. He holds his guts in place while they churn around inside him. He doesn't know what to do with it, with any of it, especially not that cloud of coffee he can still taste from the far side of the room.
He talks about the not-knowing to Foggy later, earning a scoff and a lecture. "Someone got hurt unjustly," Foggy says, "The neighbourhood leaps to defend that person, but because that person happens to be you, you don't understand."
"That doesn't explain –"
Foggy cuts him off: "You should have just let me sue the crap out of them."
"Yeah," Matt says, doubting that would have stopped Frank or the neighbourhood from issuing their warnings. "Probably."
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