This is based on the following kink meme prompt:
So I have this headcanon that in college and later in law school, Foggy was very involved with (queer) protest- and counterculture - organising marches, demonstrations, and generally speaking up when shit went wrong. (Because shutting up was never his strongest skill.) From the day they met, Matt was pretty much always along for the ride.
Now he wears suits. He has a business to run, and his hair is just so on the acceptable side of long. It looks like a compromise to me... And I wonder what other compromises he made, and what he won't compromise about, and what he has just plain given up on?
The sign hit the garbage can with a heavy, final thud. Foggy was shaking. Physically shaking from the adrenaline, but also from the horrific anxiety that was quickly growing in his chest, expanding outwards until he could feel his entire body vibrating, humming. Foggy reflected on the irony of the fact that he could now hear his own heartbeat. 'That'll show Matt,' he thought to himself. 'It's not that great a superpower.' He willed himself to move, to walk down the stairs and out of the building, going somewhere but with no idea where.
Despite the panic and adrenaline coursing through him, he plunged forward, needing to keep moving. Stopping meant slowing down and he didn't know if he could handle that at the moment.
Matt was the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Matt, his friend who had always taught him that the law could solve any problem. He had no clue what to do with that information. He only knew that it shattered not only the image he had of his friend, but the image he had of who he was, of who he wanted to be. Matt had made him an accomplice to something, unwittingly and without asking him. They were partners with a capital P. They had gone into business together, Nelson and Murdock, and Foggy had thought he had known what that meant, what they stood for. Now, he didn't know anything.
He kept walking, breathing heavily, trying to keep it together. He could feel the wetness of tears starting to form at the corner of his eyes, but he choked them back. He needed to be stronger than that now.
His cell phone rang, the noise jarring him out of his determined focus on putting one foot in front of the other. He pulled it out of his pocket slowly, dreading the caller ID showing him Karen's number, or God forbid Matt's, but it wasn't either of them. It was Marci.
He stopped for a moment, feeling a shove from behind him as a person on the street brushed past him and yelled "What the hell, buddy?" at him for daring to slow down on the streets of New York City. He wasn't a tourist, and so he didn't have an excuse. He moved to the side of the sidewalk in a daze, answering the phone. "what do you want, Marci?" he asked sharply, not caring how rude he sounded.
There was no answer, only heavy breathing, and slowly Foggy came to the realization that there were also choked sobs coming from the other end of the line. "I'm..." Marcy choked out, "I heard... about your client. The old woman." Mrs. Cardenas, Foggy remembered. God, how could he have forgotten? Suddenly, the weight of everything that had happened hit him like a truck and he was forced to lean against the side of a building just to support himself.
"Her name was Mrs. Cardenas, Marci," he told her, "She had a name."
"I know," Marci said sadly, "I just... I couldn't remember. God, Foggy. I'm so sorry."
"Are you?" Foggy asked.
"Yes," said Marci, "Of course."
Was Matt as sorry as Marci sounded, Foggy wondered. He had nearly died at Foggy's feet. Was Mrs. Cardenas why? Did Matt even care? Foggy realized that he had no clue what was really going on in Matt's mind anymore, that everything he thought he knew about his friend was a lie, and suddenly he couldn't hold it in anymore. He felt himself slide down the side of the cement wall like an out of body experience and realized that he was clutching the phone in his hands in front of him and that tears were streaming down his face. People passed him by on the street, but few seemed to notice or care. Someone even threw a five dollar bill at him without really looking.
"-there?" he heard Marci asking through the tiny speaker. "Foggy, are you okay?"
He lifted the phone back up to his ear. "No," he told Marci. "I don't know what to do."
"I do," Marci said. "I'm sending an Uber car for you, okay? Where are you?"
He looked up at the buildings around him and gave her a rough idea of his location. She told him to wait a few minutes for the car. When it pulled up, the driver rolled down the window and called his name. Getting in, he realized that he had no idea where he was going. He asked the driver. He didn't know if he was surprised or not that the address was Marci's.
She had texted him her apartment number, and when the car reached her building he trudged in slowly. He took note of how nice her building was, how expensive and clean. Right in the heart of Manhattan.
Landman and Zach paid well, he remembered. He thought briefly about all the zeroes in their salary offer that he had pushed back across the table when they presented it to him. About how much better Matt's vision of making the world a better place one client at a time had sounded, and how naive he had been to believe it. He should have taken the money. He'd never have been able to take a shower hot enough to get properly clean again, but at least Mrs. Cardenas would be alive, if homeless. And if he was going to feel dirty anyway, he wished he'd done it in a way that at least let him live in style.
Marci opened the door without him even having to knock, and Foggy briefly entertained the notion that maybe she had supersenses too. Maybe everyone in his life was lying to him all the time. How would he ever be able to know now, really, after everything he'd experienced. "I was worried that you wouldn't come," she said, and he shouldn't have been so relieved to know that she was waiting for him. He followed her inside.
"You look like shit," Marci said, tactless as usual. Foggy noticed that she was wearing gym clothing and didn't exactly look her best either. Her eyes were red rimmed and it startled him to remember that she'd been crying.
"Yeah, well I couldn't possibly look as bad as I feel," he said. "So I'll take that as a compliment."
"I am sorry, you know," Marci said. "I said I was and you have to believe me. I shouldn't have been such a bitch to you about her. The news reports make her seem like a really nice lady."
"She was. The best," Foggy said. "And you weren't being a bitch. You were telling the truth, like you always do. we should have settled." His face crumpled and he nearly collapsed as he realized what he was saying, and Marci moved to intercept him before he hit the ground. "It was my fault. She trusted me and I killed her," Foggy said.
"No," Marci said. "It's the world's fault. It's a shitty place, and you and Matt were just doing the best you could to make it livable. You couldn't have known."
That only made things so much worse, because Foggy knew that Matt did know, had always known, and had spent their entire friendship letting Foggy live in a fantasy. And at that moment Foggy lost it, completely unable to keep going. Marci held him for a few minutes, then pulled back and asked "Do you want to feel better?"
He nodded his head, although he didn't know if what she said was even possible.
She reached down her sweatshirt and into her bra and produced a Ziploc bag with a sad smile, and the scene reminded Foggy so much of their college years together that his heart broke a little. The bag was full of thick, green buds. "Just like the old days, yeah?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, and smiled sadly back.
An hour or so later, he still felt depressed, but the agony was gone. The pain wasn't as sharp, there was only a pleasant numbness tingling in his extremities as he laid with his head on the armrest of Marci's couch and felt the steadiness of her breath on his stomach. They lay there together, a thick gray haze filling the room with the aroma of pot smoke and blanketing them. It was comforting to Foggy, familiar.
"Matt hated that I smoked pot", he remembered and told Marci. "He never got the point. Always acted like he had better things to be doing. So serious all the time."
"He definitely had a stick up his ass about it," Marci agreed. "So judgmental, remember? You'd complain that even if you smoked it at my place or the night before, he could always tell. God, what I would have given to have seen him high just once." She giggled. "I bet it would have been hilarious."
"No," said Foggy solemnly, realizing for the first time how Matt always knew when he was high, "I don't think it would have been. I think it would have just been sad." He got a sudden picture in his mind of Matt stumbling around, his senses dulled, his paranoia increased, and thought about how few times he ever saw his friend genuinely let his guard down and smile. Wondered what it would be like to live in a world on fire. "He's sad, Foggy told Marci. "All the time, but especially lately. I never really thought about it before, but it's true."
"You're not, though," said Marci. "You're always happy, Foggy. That's who you are. I hate seeing you like this. Beating yourself up."
"Yeah, well ignorance is bliss, Marci," Foggy said "and I'm tired of feeling like an idiot. You were right. You were always right."
"I hate it though, being right," Marci said.
"Right and rich," Foggy said. "Right and successful."
"Right and miserable," Marci replied. "Right and a shitty person."
"But not a hypocrite," Foggy told her. "You know what you are. You don't pretend to be something you're not. You're honest."
"And you don't think that you are?" she asked, curious.
"I know that Matt isn't. This entire thing with Mrs. Cardenas, all the cases we've taken on lately... He's lied about so many things, Marci. And tricked me into following him like a sucker. Got me involved in things, made me a part of something that I can't walk away from now."
"Would you walk away?" Marci asked. "If you could?"
"You know, it's funny," Foggy said. "Usually in these situations Matt's the one talking me into walking away, you know? For my own good. At least that's what I always thought."
Marci laughed into his stomach, and it tickled Foggy. "Yeah he's good at that," she said. "Talking people into things and making them think it's their idea. It's what makes him such a good lawyer. Remember Occupy?"
"Oh, yeah," Foggy said wistfully, remembering. "That's right. Oh man... we were so fired up, do you remember? So convinced that we could change the world? Like we could sleep in that park forever and eventually all of Wall Street would just realize we were right and close up shop or something... what were we even doing?"
"I don't know," Marci said. "It was kinda romantic. You and I, sleeping on the street, eating communal food, passing around books, chanting 'Whose Streets? Our Streets?' and making oinking noises at the cops when they hassled us."
"You have weird ideas about romance, Marce," Foggy said, but he smiled as he said it. "But yeah... I guess it was nice. I felt like I was really a part of something. Like I was making a difference. Man, I can't believe how long we held out."
"I know," Marci said. "It's so weird to think about now. It doesn't feel like me, you know? It's like I was someone else. Like I was in a dream that Matt Murdock snapped me out of."
"He did, didn't he?" Foggy asked.
"He did," Marci said. "Don't you remember? He used to show up everyday so amused by the whole thing and bring us bagels from the deli or hot dogs from the street vendors nearby. And then he started looking more serious, started bringing you homework and reminding us that we were missing assignments and neglecting school. That was for you, you know. He could have cared less about me."
"I don't think that's true," Foggy said, and he meant it.
"Do you remember the day we finally left?" Marci asked.
"Yeah," Foggy said fondly, but the memory quickly turned bitter as he turned it over in his mind with the benefit of hindsight. "I remember that he told us that we were going to fail out of school, and him asking if we really thought that standing around on the street chanting was going to accomplish anything. Him asking us if we thought we could do more protesting than we could as lawyers working within the system to change it."
"Yep," Marci said. "God, I think he even quoted Thurgood Marshall. It was lame, but pretty inspiring. The man can talk a good talk. That night, you were back in that shitty apartment with him for the first time in a month and a half."
"He was wrong, Marci," Foggy told her coldly. "He didn't know what he was talking about. Never did." Foggy thought about the nights that Matt must have spent over that month and a half without him training, preparing to fight a vigilante war for justice in violation of every principle that the two of them were supposed to hold dear. He thought about Mrs. Cardenas' killer lying dead on the ground after jumping off a roof instead of rotting in a jail cell, and about the way Matt's choices undermined everything that Foggy had been led to believe about the purpose and necessity of law. "We should never have left that park."
"Please," Marci said, "Don't pretend that anything else he might have lied to you about makes him wrong about how much smarter you are than the rest of those dirty Occupy hippies, Foggy Bear. And how much more you've been able to accomplish in just a few months at your divey little firm than you could ever have done at Landman and Zach. That place is a nightmare. You were right about it. It takes otherwise well meaning people and sucks out their souls. I'm glad you got the hell out of there, which makes me grateful for Matt Murdock, no matter what the hell else you think he's done."
"You know, you do still work there," said Foggy.
"Yeah, well that's not going to last very long," Marci replied.
"Why's that?" Foggy asked.
"Well I don't think they'll like me very much when I hand you and Matt everything you need to prove wrongdoing in Mrs. Cardenas' case and more," Marci said. "She's still your client, isn't she? You didn't think I was going to just let her death stand, did you? It's about time I took my soul back."
Foggy smiled despite everything and rolled over trapping Marci underneath him on the couch. "I knew you had it in you," he told her affectionately.
"Yeah well, like I said, I just hate thinking about you being sad, Foggy Bear. It's wrong." she said, kissing him.
"I feel better now," Foggy said. And he was right. The anger and sadness didn't go away entirely, but Foggy finally felt like he could deal with them. And he could prove Matt's words right, even as he proved his actions wrong. The law might just be able to win this one. This time, Foggy wasn't walking away.