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: Matt wakes to the sudden and pervasive thought that something's wrong, but he doesn't know what.
Smells like a hospital. Feels like a hospital.
But it's not a hospital.
Author's Notes: A fill for the Whumptober-prompt 'kidnapped.' I think this could have been a good multi-chapter, too, but I wasn't ready to expand on it. Please enjoy it in it's current form!
The Devil You Know
Matt wakes to the sudden and pervasive thought that something's wrong, but he doesn't know what. Smells like a hospital. Feels like a hospital. But as he heaves himself out of bed onto two shaking legs, as he runs through his senses searching for an explanation, for symptoms, he finds nothing amiss except his dizziness and lethargy. He's tired, so tired, and his mouth is dry, and the last thing he remembers is kicking Foggy's ass at a game of pool in Josie's.
Alarms go off. Matt tears at the electrodes on his chest, the IV in his arm. He checks for injuries and, again, finds none. "Where am I?" he asks one of the heartbeats that's appeared in front of him. "Where is this place?"
"Relax, Mr. Murdock. You're in a hospital."
A hospital. Not the hospital. "Why?"
The question hangs too long between him and the growing contingent of people he can sense around him. No hospital staff is that silent in the face of an unruly patient. Hell, no hospital has this many staff to spare.
Matt scopes out the door based on the heartbeats rather than the air currents. His senses are seriously compromised, butting in line of each other, cutting each other out. He's been drugged. He's also been redressed. "Who are you? What am I doing here?"
Murmuring. Another terrible sign. Matt swings his head, listening for window panes, feeling for drafts. His other ear maps the movements of feet on the floor, items exchanging hands. They're going to come for him, and they will overwhelm him, and God damn it, there's no windows, one door, a whole crowd. Did they take Foggy? Karen? Matt doesn't get a chance to ask, not that he'd get an answer anyways. The only response they're looking to give comes in the form of a fight, one that ends in restraint and a sharp sting in his bicep, then a cool, hazy descent into unconsciousness.
Matt can't manage to get quite so awake again. Awareness comes in fragments, snapshots. Thrashing weakly against five-point restraints on a thin mattress, an IV feeding a warm cocktail into his arm. The whish and pound of an MRI throbbing dully against cheap ear plugs. Murmur of voices. Hands manoeuvring him from sitting to standing to lying down.
He's aware of silence, too, sometimes. That terrifying absence of sound, one so complete he can't even hear his own heartbeat. He tries to yell, to scream; he feels the sound rattling through his vocal chords but there's nothing. Nothing. Only the sour taste of fear building in the back of his mouth, the snap of restraints on his arms and legs, the strange pressure in his ear canal of plugs that he can't shake loose.
Matt doesn't know how long he's left like that. He only knows when the silence comes alive. A low tone emerges gradually through the abyss like the rush of blood inside his skull. It transitions seamlessly into the sound a foot makes crunching through snow, to Dad's groan as he was getting stitched up at the table, to the dial tone of their old landline. The sound rises steadily until it's a high-pitched shriek that makes Matt grit his teeth, another yell ripping its way out of his throat only to be swallowed up by an even higher pitch, a sharper screech. He writhes against the restraints he can no longer feel, winces against the fear he can no longer taste, and he wants it to stop. Make it stop.
Silence returns. Matt slumps back onto the bed. His senses gradually return, gathering in the noiseless dark. He can't hear his heart, but he can feel it, a faint tremor running through the bones of his chest, humming under his skin.
He lies like that for some time before the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Goosebumps rush up his arms. The sound is there in fear and fear alone, so low that Matt can't register it as anything other than a looming presence, a whole new kind of devil inside him. And this one isn't under his control, can't be baited by morals or ethics, right or wrong. This devil does what it will.
He tells himself he won't scream this time, but he does.
There are tears when his hearing returns. Matt wakes to a person dabbing at his cheeks, to too-harsh hush of whispers, and he tries to contain himself. He really tries, but he's so far away and sinking again, under the cover of this new Devil, this screaming, crying thing.
Silence comes to his skin. Paralysis, anesthetic. The complete loss of sensation in regions of his body. Matt gathers himself against panic, but the truth is no comfort. The sound is coming, and it does, this time with no transition from low pitch to high. There's nothing and then something. Matt's rocked by electric shocks, pinpricks, heat and chill.
He can hear them this time, the voices. They're stating numbers and factors of intensity and areas where he'll be touched next, and Matt's mouth is wrapped around a bit to stop his teeth from clenching. To stop him from biting off his tongue. He yells at them, the voices, at least until the shocks resume or the needle pierces his skin.
But then he comes to, hunched over and cowering, terror coming off him in waves and him unable to stop it, unable to fight back. His first time out of restraints, and he takes it as an opportunity for to meltdown. He's touched on the arms, his shoulders, his sides, his face, and he can't track them, can't predict them, can't defend against them.
Then a soft voice tells him it's alright, it's alright, he's done so well, he's given them so much, and Matt loses it. He comes out from under, and he rages. He punches and kicks and he isn't sure he's doing anything, but he's doing something, and it's enough that it takes more than one person to stop him.
The restraints are back, and so is the voice. A soft, well-manicured hand wraps around his. He's reassured that he didn't mean it, that it's okay for him to be scared.
Matt twists his hand in the restraint and lets loose a small keen. He grips the stranger's hand, and he lets her settle into him before he snaps back hard against her knuckles, breaking three of her fingers.
He isn't awake anymore after that. The electric shocks and the infrasounds buzz around above him, but Matt floats deep below the surface, the devil he knows for company wrapped tightly around him, lying in wait.
Fingers snapping. Hands clapping. Palms on his cheek. "Matt? Matt!" His eyelids flutter and rouse him, the sensation new, novel even, after so much sleeping. "Hey, that's it. Wake up. Come on, Matt, wake up."
Matt can't get to the surface as quick as the devil does, and Matt regains consciousness to his hand crushing a throat, a grip on his wrist that threatens to break his arm at the elbow, and a familiar voice choking.
"Hey. It's me. It's Danny."
Matt loosens his grip. "Danny?" Relief washes through him with so much force he almost collapses, but Danny is holding him upright as the restraints on his ankles are torn open.
Jessica Jones makes herself known with clomping boots and whiskey lips and a slew of expletives. She launches into a tirade against the room before heading down the hall to help with what Matt can only assume is Luke Cage pummeling captors.
Danny gets him out of the bed and goes to carry him over a shoulder. Matt refuses. Far too much has been done to him; he is getting out of here on his own two feet. "Where are we?" he asks, his weight dropping into Danny despite his efforts. The Immortal Iron Fist drapes one of Matt's lifeless arms across his shoulders and starts dragging him along. "What is this place? What are they…?"
"It's Rand," Danny says. "One of their research facilities." He slows his gait in a hallway, the battle raging on behind them. "I'm so sorry, Matt. I don't know how they found out. I didn't…"
"Not your fault, Danny." Matt grips him tightly. "Where are…?" They're fighting, but Matt can't tell what or whom. "What about Jessica and Luke?"
"They're coming," Danny says. "I think they need to work through some things first. Scientific experimentation things."
"I'm gonna need to work through some of those too." Matt moves to pull himself off Danny's shoulders. His legs shake underneath him, knees buckling.
Danny grabs him and pulls him back up, catching Matt's head when it flops on his neck. "Later," he says softly. "Let's get you the hell out of here."
Matt hangs his head, sinking again, but this time with the sounds of walls crumbling behind him, of data being erased and machines being destroyed; this time with a hand gripping him round the side, a grip he can follow back to the surface, that banishes the Devil that Rand created for the Devil he knows.
Happy Reading!