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: Maybe it's not this guy's fault he's not helping Matt to die. Fisk never did like the easy way out.
Just as well, Matt decides, testing his strength against the blanket and failing and not crying don't you dare cry. He never liked the easy way much either.
Spoilers: Inspired by the injuries from Born Again.
Timeline: Post-s2.
Author's Notes: Have you ever had a rough week and thought to yourself, "Gee, you know what will cheer me up? Writing a 1000 word, fluffy, one-shot hurt/comfort fic"? And then you sit down and start writing the first of three installments of a fic that's headed towards some very dark places?
Well, that's where I found myself this week.
This fic is inspired by the events of iBorn Again/i where Fisk has basically destroyed Matt's life, and he ends up on the run with pneumonia. This fic is written with the series in mind though and will be less plot, more Matt.
I picked this title out without realizing it's origins are biblical. More than that, they're from the Book of Job, which provides at least some of the basis for Matt's characterization.
Readers, I hope you enjoy this. It has been a rough week here, but I'm doing better, thanks in part to this fic. Thanks, also, to Dichotomy Studios, who helped give this story its teeth. Hope you all enjoy!
By the Skin and Teeth
Chapter One
The world on fire is static. Cable's out. Senses gone haywire. Matt's hearing runs amok in traffic, playing chicken with oncoming vehicles, avoiding the fuzz of pedestrians in the foreground despite their protests that he get out of the fucking way what are you blind.
His mouth and nose are no help. Sinuses are swollen and clogged, hence the poor hearing. But when he does manage to take a breath – and they're getting harder and harder to come by, what with his lungs being caked with gunk – Matt tastes the cold burn of winter. Old snow and slush. Frostbite on his tonsils and liquid nitrogen flowing into his gut.
He has one hand clamped against his ribs: numb. The other pulls at brick walls and alleyways; at concrete steps and cast iron grates. Where is he? Matt stops at the corner to get his bearings. He detaches himself from the panicky, fluttery feeling of shock setting in (he's lost too much blood), of struggling for every breath (it'll pass, it'll pass, it'll pass), of battling snowdrifts and Christmas shoppers (c'mon, Matty); of traffic (just a little further) and sirens and the very city he's trying to save (move). He gives himself completely to the fight, and it comes automatically despite his murky perception. One foot in front of the other, wait for the traffic light this time, can't afford to get hit again. And then he's dipping into an alleyway towards a hidden entrance.
He's punched a bare hand through the glass without checking for heartbeats. Not like he'll hear them anyways. His ears are full of scratching, scraping, like they're bundled up in wool. They catch the splash of blood drops onto the old hardwood, though, and the faint sound of carol singers but not heartbeats. No heartbeats. Not even his own.
Fogwell's is an oven compared to the outdoors. Matt kicks the door closed behind him. No point in locking it again. Every step carries him further into fire. Frostbite burns through his hands and face and legs and everywhere in between. He rips the ratty scarf from his neck, choking. Chest tight. His next breath of scalding air stays there in his lungs; he has to dig his arm under his ribs to force it out.
Broken ribs jostle under his hand. Blood spurts; Matt hears it. The stab wound, shallow as it may be, squelches from added pressure.
He lands on a punching bag supported by one arm and dwindling strength in both his legs. Fogwell's crashes down on him, and Matt almost lets himself be carried away with the current. To drift into heat and darkness and death. But fighting wins. It always wins. He's going to die on his feet.
Releasing his stab wound causes another pop. Warm this time. Cool over his ribs. Frigid once it reaches his hip. Matt runs his hands, sticky with blood, over the leather, imagining a warmth he can't bear and the fight he can't muster. Dad's gloved hands on his cheeks, over his hair; a whisper of Matty, Matty, Matty. I'm right here. Right here, Matty.
One punch.
Matty.
Two punch.
Right here, Matty.
His right arm falls to his side. His left falls flat on the bag, wishing for his father's face in the darkness. For his father to be there with him when he dies. But tears come, and the crying jostles his lungs. And a cough wrecks him, ripping from his abdomen to his lips. His hand is yanked from the memory of his father to the fire and flood and the hardwood floor.
Cold first, then the sound of the door creaking open. Footsteps tread heavily towards him, threatening with every beat to send him back into unconsciousness.
Matt drags his head up. The rest of him is dead weight. But there's someone approaching. Someone dangerous, smelling faintly of gunpowder, leather: Fisk's. One of his anyways. They've been on Matt's tail the whole time. Armed with matches for his apartment, newspapers for his personal life, bankers for his accounts, small-time crooks for stabbing.
Get up, Matt wills himself. Get up. But he's suddenly falling back onto the floor.
The last thing Matt feels is a hand catching his head and a pulse blooming warmly against his cheek.
They have him.
Car upholstery scrapes against the back of his head. Matt twists, itchy and claustrophobic. Oil, gun metal, and explosives bear down at him from all sides, forcing his breaths to come in shallow bursts and gasps.
A single heartbeat rumbles from the driver's seat, barely audible over the engine.
Matt rolls to his left, unable to catch a groan before it leaves him. And being that's the last of his breaths, he rolls back. He breathes through the tickle-scrape in the back of his throat to keep from coughing. The pain is excruciating, joined by body's other grievances. Bloody knuckles, the stab wound on his right side, the broken ribs just below; his left shoulder, the one he's been sleeping on, curled up on the frozen earth or in the corner of abandoned houses - that shoulder locks up in the joint.
But the van comes to a stop and Matt finds himself making a move for the back without thinking. Gunmetal nipping at him; explosives jutting into his mouth. The heartbeat in the driver's seat – why only one? Where are the rest of them? Jesus, did he really get apprehended by one guy? – a straight line, unfazed by Matt's getting up and moving or his gripping the handle on the van's back doors.
Traffic light changes. The driver's pulse surges alongside the engine into a hard turn. Left, right, Matt can't tell. He's thrown into the side of the van. Into another coughing fit. Into blackout.
They're ripping off his clothes.
Matt pounces, fists catching on a mammoth of a human being. A man, well-built, tearing at his coat, his shirts. Pulling against his stiff shoulder and twisting his ribs at an odd angle, and between coughing and hurting, Matt loses the fight.
His senses flood him with useless details – with rotting wood and leaking pipes and one mattress in a large, old room of a place that used to smell like home but now smells like the worst parts of old. Of the man handling him, Matt senses little beyond the heavy artillery. Calluses from hand-to-hand combat at which he's currently excelling as he lays Matt down onto a threadbare mattress. Springs rip at Matt's back. His right side fills with white heat and his brain lights up with another coughing fit.
The hands go for his pants. Matt bucks away. He works without breathing – a mistake. A big mistake. He falls off the mattress; chipped tile catches him. He springs back, hacking, rocking, trying so hard to crack open his chest and let the monster in his lungs loose. But then the hands are back. And that voice. Like gravel ripping under a tire, a harsh growl. Telling him to shut up. To take it easy. To stop fighting.
Matt does not shut up. He does not take it easy. He does not stop fighting. He kicks and coughs; he bucks and coughs. He gets a thumb into the guy's eye and a punch to the guy's windpipe, but his head is spinning too fast, too bright. Up is down, right is left. Sounds don't make any sense. Tears run hot down his cheeks. He's tugged back onto the mattress and can't get away again from the hand on his hip or the one on the back of his head, holding him through the worst of it.
Then his pants are gone, replaced with a scratchy blanket. Thin and useless against the chill. Matt kicks it away, but it comes back with another blanket and another, a whole collection of thin, musty blankets, topped off with a coat that smells like blood and sweat and fighting. And then he's pinned down until he stops kicking, until his eyelids are fluttering and it's warm so he sleeps. So he sleeps.
He flitters in and out of awareness: drawn by thin wheezing, swept away by fingers probing his stab wound. A needle pierces the frayed edges of his skin; cheap thread tugs the hole shut. Antibacterial ointment leaves a hint of saline in his phlegmy mouth. An adhesive bandage gets smoothed over the fresh sutures. Calluses prickle away at Matt's skin.
Fresh dressings wrap around his knuckles, and then his hand is replaced at his side.
Tape snaps. Bones creak. His ribs, the broken ones, fold into place under the pressure. The grinding carries Matt back into unconsciousness.
He's hoisted onto his knees, a towel flung over his head. Arms pulled tight behind his back. A hand presses down against his scalp to bow his head. He's pinned on bended knee, no way of standing even if he had the strength to.
The arm on his back swings him to the side. Matt tracks hardwood floor, hardwood floor, hardwood floor, then bam. Heat and steam and menthol blast against his face.
He jumps. The hand pushes on his head; the arm digs into his back as it locks even tighter around his limbs. Matt shuts his eyes and yells into the big black abyss, the angry clawing darkness. A basin of hot water and acid steams up through the towel towards his face, urging tears and snot and salvia out of every orifice. He tries not to inhale; fails. He breathes in the deadly air and inside his packed lungs, something gets knocked loose. Suddenly he's hacking, and sputum floods his throat, and he gasps for breath but nothing happens.
His screams turn to choking turn to bucking turn to terror. They're killing him. This is how he dies.
The hand on his head vanishes. Reappears under the towel and hooks into his mouth. Matt bites. The fingers push through it, digging towards his throat. The phlegm breaks. Air fills him. The fingers disappear and go back to his head where they catch Matt as the cough breaks him in two. He snaps and bends and finally hangs, limp, over the pool of menthol water under him.
He doesn't know how long the coughing lasts, how long he's held there. How long until the towel's ripped off. Cold air gnaws at his skin. Matt falls back against a thundering chest, shivering. Shocked from the proximity and the heat of another human being with nothing left to fight back. Too sick, too weak, too tired. He endures being moved with odd gentleness back down onto the mattress, under the mountain of awful blankets.
A damp cloth passes over his face, cleaning off the menthol fumes along with the tears and snot and sweat and phlegm pasted over his skin. Matt tries to follow things. He tries to use his senses, but there's a hand on the back of his neck again, soft this time, rubbing up and down. Coaxing him up until his lips meet the edges of a metal cup. Cold water dribbles into Matt's mouth. He swallows. The hands let him breath for several seconds before giving him more.
Three sips...or four? Matt isn't sure. He loses time. The hand on the back of his neck slips up into his hair. His eyes peel back as if to look. And then he's gone.
He's catching his breath and suppressing a coughing fit when something's slipped between his lips. Horse pill. Bitter. Matt goes to spit it out, but he's force-fed enough water to swallow. Then a hand clamps over his lips and nose, and that voice is back, scraping across his upper chest to swallow. Just swallow. And the taste is nauseating. Matt's stomach rollicks alongside his diaphragm. Bile splashes at the base of his tongue.
His fingers are slick with sweat, with weakness. They slip over the hand attached to his face up the wrist, the arm, to that voice. That fucking voice. The one cussing and cursing in between stop and just meds and swallow. Matt swears he recognizes it for a second, but he can't. He can't figure out what he's hearing. His head's so full and hot and pounding. He can't shake the hand. The pill is dissolving, rank and sour in the back of his throat; his gut heaves to vomit. His chest is screaming for air.
Matt swallows.
The hand disappears.
He's making the sounds of wounded animal. The cough twists his guttural shouts into whines and keens that collect with tears on his flimsy pillow. Distantly, he's aware of a heartbeat moving away from him. His captor, Fisk's guy, the one whose voice is so familiar when played through Matt's stuffy hearing, paces away from the mattress. Unnerved.
Matt snarls through his embarrassment. His voice sounds like an old, whistling kettle to his ears. "Should've…should've left me for dead at Fowell's…you want the easy way out."
But maybe it's not this guy's fault he's not helping Matt to die. Fisk never did like the easy way out.
Just as well, Matt decides, testing his strength against the blanket and failing and not crying don't you dare cry. He never liked the easy way much either.
Happy reading!