Matt sees the old man, sees the truck heading towards him, leaps forward-
His eyes are burning, and everything goes black.
Matt wakes up to a cacophony. He can hear beeping and sirens and a thousand people's voices and shouting and drilling and footsteps and wherever he is smells like death and sewers and perfume and sweat and tears and blood and he opens his eyes and he can't see, he can't SEE-
He passes out again.
The next time he wakes up, it's just as bad. The sheets scratch against his skin, his eyes are BURNING and he can't SEE and he just wants it to stop.
"Hurts," he squeaks, and his voice booms in his ears and he grimaces and everything is too much.
"You're gonna be ok, Matty," says his dad, from somewhere in the chaotic blackness, the sound too loud and reverberating, but it's somehow a comfort, like the familiar smell of Old Spice drifting down into Matt's sensitive nostrils. "You did good. You're gonna be ok."
Matt's at the boxing ring, cheering for his dad. It's loud, overwhelming, but the sound of Battlin' Jack's heartbeat, racing with exertion, keeps Matt grounded, focused. His dad wins the fight, and the crowd cheers.
Jack Murdock is bleeding out in an alley, and Matt can smell so many things, but most of all, he can smell the blood.
The orphanage sounds and smells strange, unfamiliar, and none of them feel like home. Matt makes it barely a week before it's too much, and he lies in bed on the sandpaper sheets and screams to drown out the noise. The nuns don't understand. They could never understand.
When Stick arrives, it's like a lifeline, thrown into the abyss of stimulation that's become Matt's world, but the rope's covered in thorns, and when Matt finally touches the top, bruised and bloody but ever so triumphant, he reaches out to take Stick's hand, and Stick stands on his sensitive fingers and leaves. Matt picks himself up, looks around at his new world, and it makes sense now, the sounds and smells and tastes weaving together to paint a picture of everything around him, but his heart is wounded, and he's still alone. He curses, and yells Stick's name to the sky.
Matt keeps up the training, after Stick leaves. It's a window to a land of freedom, rooftops, a path that turns the neverending stimuli assaulting his senses into a harmonious melody. He's in control now. But after Stick, he's not as trusting as he was, and he still feels so alone.
When Matt shows up for his first day of law school, he hasn't had a close friend in years. He's expecting more of the same- perhaps an asshole of a roommate, perhaps ableist lecturers, perhaps too-frequent loud parties that hurt his sensitive ears.
What he gets is Franklin "Foggy" Nelson.
Foggy smells of cheap takeout and unwashed hair, and his heart beats just that little too fast when he catches sight of Matt. But his offer of friendship is genuine, and before long, Matt begins to think, to hope, that things might turn out ok for once.
Foggy lets him take his arm, but he doesn't push it onto him. He jokes about anything and everything just as freely as he does with anyone else. He takes Matt drinking, backs him up when he has to complain about that one lecturer, and for the first time in a long time, Matt doesn't feel alone.
Of course, Foggy doesn't know everything about him. He doesn't know that he can hear heartbeats from several blocks away, that he can taste every last chemical in that candy. He doesn't know about the nights spent on rooftops and in abandoned warehouses, training his body and letting his senses free. Matt lets himself hope, though, that one day, he'll be able to tell Foggy, and that Foggy will understand. Not yet, though, he thinks. Not yet.
When Matt meets Elektra, her voice rushes through his veins like sparks. She smells of danger and high-class perfume, and they dance across the rooftops like star-crossed lovers. But it's Foggy that grounds him, his familiar heartbeat pulling Matt down to Earth, and when Elektra puts him in front of the man who killed his father, Matt thinks of Foggy and how his voice would be woven through with disapproval, and he plants his feet on the solid moral ground of his Catholicism, and as Elektra dives over the precipice, he lets her go.
Years later, Foggy finds out. The anger in his friend's voice is everything Matt thought it'd be and worse, the familiar scents and sounds mingled with the unfamiliar bitterness of Matt's betrayal. Matt thinks he deserves all of it and more, but he remembers the laughter over beers and the easy silence, and he reaches out into the darkness. Later, when Foggy finally reaches back, a thread of forgiveness just waiting to be grasped, Matt takes it, and climbs back towards the warmth.
Then everything falls apart.
Elektra comes back just as he's supposed to be focusing on the Punisher, and she gets into his head. Foggy's anger returns, castrating Matt for not being there, and Matt knows he deserves it, but he can't, he CAN'T be there for Foggy, because he finds out about the ninjas, and saving the Kitchen is more important than his friendship. Even angry, Foggy's heartbeat still brings Matt right back to reality, but it's not the same anymore, and Matt knows he's falling. He grabs on to Elektra, who never fell but dived, but in the end, it's her body in his arms and the scent of her blood in his nostrils, and the last gasp of her breath on a rainy, isolated rooftop. She dies as she lived, and Matt is left with nothing.
Foggy stops answering his calls, and Matt pretends it doesn't feel like a thousand stabbing pains in his heart. He takes on some local contract work that doesn't need him to go into court- it's dull, but it keeps the heating on and the fridge full. He works from his apartment, letting the old office go, but he keeps the Nelson and Murdock sign in his closet and runs his fingers over the engraving before he falls asleep. He throws himself into Daredevil, and now Karen knows, she sometimes sends him tips, and he gives her information in return, but she's still raw over the revelation, and she doesn't see him more than once a week. He's lost touch with Claire completely, so he prays he doesn't get injured too badly, and keeps a good first aid kit in his bathroom. He goes through the motions, but he's slowly crumbling into pieces.
Two months later, he's crouched on a rooftop near Foggy's new workplace (and that's a nest of sharks if there ever was one), listening to that heartbeat he knows as well as his own, wondering if he'll ever get to hold it close again, when Foggy leaves the building to go on an errand. He follows, silently, unnoticed, until, halfway back to the office with a tuna-mayonnaise sandwich, Foggy's ambushed by three muggers in an alley. Their heartbeats are jumpy and the scent of alcohol curls around them in a haze, and Foggy slowly raises his hands as they demand he hand over his wallet. Matt doesn't know if Foggy wants to see him at all, but he drops into the alley with a feral grin and sweeps the one in the middle to the ground. From there, it's a blur of action, and Matt is in control, a devil in red coming out of the depths of the night, and they can't stop him, because Matt lives in the darkness, and they don't. When they're all unconscious, he turns his head towards Foggy, and drops the grin from his face.
"Foggy?" he says, hesitantly, testing the waters.
"You're still an asshole, Matt," says Foggy, and his heartbeat says truth, but it says there's more to the story. "Uh, thanks for the save, though, I guess."
"Foggy," Matt says again, this time like a prayer, because his friend is alive, and he smells like home, and Matt can't let it slip through his fingers again.
"What have you even been doing since then?" Foggy asks, and he can't stop the concern creeping into his voice at the edges. "Not that I care about it that much." Lie.
"I'm not starving," says Matt, truthfully. "I miss you, Foggy."
"You should have thought about that before you went off with your ex while I had to do all the work," says Foggy.
"Elektra's dead," says Matt, and it hurts a little less each time he says it. "And there were ninjas…"
"She's dead?" says Foggy, and Matt detects the note of guilt in his voice.
"Yeah," Matt tells him. "It was the ninjas."
"I'm sorry," Foggy says, and Matt can tell that he means it.
"I'm sorry too," says Matt. "I should have told you sooner." He hears the sound of footsteps a few blocks away, and adds, "I have to go now. See you around?"
"Yeah, I'll see you around," Foggy replies, as Matt parkours back up the fire escape. "Asshole," Matt hears, but it sounds affectionate, and the hole in Matt's chest begins to heal, ever so slightly. He salutes from the top of the building, and follows Foggy back to his office, just to be sure he gets there. The receptionist wonders why Foggy took so long, and he hears Foggy tell her, "Just ran into an old friend." Matt grins, and heads off into the night.
The next day, Matt waits for Foggy at the little café on the corner he knows Foggy likes to go to for lunch. The café smells of freshly baked bread, cold meats, cheese, and three different soups, and Matt's glad Foggy picked somewhere that seems to have good hygiene standards. Foggy shows up right on cue, his stomach rumbling with hunger, and Matt's already bought what he knows is Foggy's favourite panini, along with a simple sandwich for himself. Foggy pauses a moment when he catches sight of Matt sitting at the table, glasses on, cane leaning against a chair, but then gathers himself together and marches towards Matt.
"You know, I'm only doing this because you bought me a panini," says Foggy. Lie.
"Of course," Matt says, knowing that they both know he isn't.
"I can't go into business with you again, Matt," says Foggy. "Not with… your other job."
"I don't need you to," says Matt, even though all he wants is Foggy back at his side. "I just want to spend time with you again."
"I suppose that wouldn't be too bad," Foggy tells him, heart pounding. "Josie's, 9 o'clock. And I'm inviting Karen."
"I'll be there," Matt says, and he is.
Over the next few weeks, they slowly rebuild their relationship, piece by piece, brick by brick. Foggy jokes, and Matt laughs, his heart fluttering. Karen won't stop asking either of them questions about Daredevil, and Foggy throws an apple at him. He catches it, hearing it whistling through the air when it's barely left Foggy's hand, and bites into it. There's a moment's silence, and then Karen says, "Wow."
Foggy says, "I did that a lot right after I found out. It's sort of hilarious, if you think about it." Matt grins, the patented Murdock special, as he detects the smile in Foggy's voice.
"Yeah, then he did it in front of someone else, and I had to let the pencil hit me in the head," Matt grumbles, but he's still smiling.
"Boys," says Karen.
"She just rolled her eyes," says Foggy.
"Yeah, I just rolled my eyes," says Karen.
It's perfect.
Matt keeps up with being Daredevil, though fortunately the city seems to have quieted down a bit after they cleared out the ninjas. He remembers what happened before, and this time tells Foggy about every enemy he fights that's bigger than a street corner. Foggy always seems a little discomfited by this, but he tells Matt it's better than not knowing, and his heartbeat says, true.
It's another few weeks before Foggy comes to him with a folder full of documents and says, "Can you help me with this? I mean, legally. As a consultant. Not as Daredevil."
Matt beams, and tells Foggy he'll do his best. He means it, too.
The case he's working on goes well. It's Foggy who takes it to trial, but not before he'd borrowed Matt's ears to listen in on an interview or two, and it's Matt who comes up with the key angle that they use in getting the client (who IS in fact innocent, thankfully) off free. Foggy thanks him, and suggests they could use him around the firm.
Matt, basking in the warmth of a friendship that's regrown from the ashes, says, "Or you could come work with me again. I still have the sign." Foggy, to his credit, only sounds shocked for a second or two.
"Or I could do that," he says. "Let me think about it. I mean, I like having money." It's not a no.
Meanwhile, Matt tells Foggy about all the little things- the smell of each and every dorm room in their old college building; the way the wind carves out a picture of every street and alleyway; the taste of cheap ice cream, and just how many chemicals there are in it. Each of them feels like letting go of a secret he's held close to his chest for too long, but he doesn't doubt that his secrets will be safe, because it's Foggy, after all.
Two months after Matt suggested it, Foggy shows up on Matt's doorstep saying he's quit Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz. The company was better than some, but it's still full of sharks, and Foggy says he's seen one too many.
"So where do you want to go next?" Matt asks.
"Let's do this," Foggy says. "You and me. The best damn avocadoes in all of New York."
Matt grins like a madman, and pulls the old sign from his closet. "The best avocadoes," he says. "Nelson and Murdock. Thanks, Foggy." The air smells like Thai takeout and Matt's old bloodstains, and Matt can hear Foggy's heart beating steadily above the chaos of the Kitchen. It feels like home.