Matt sensed Frank long before he showed up. He recognised his distinctive gate, how he walked with his back straight, shoulders back, chin raised and proud. He could tell it was Frank by the smell of gunpowder and coffee beans that permeated his every pore, but just around the edge of his scent he caught a whiff of the pitbull he'd rescued from the Irish. He could tell it was Frank because, really, who else would join him on a rooftop at three in the morning but Frank himself?
Matt knew it was risky to sit with his feet hanging off the side of the building without his mask on, but he could not find it in himself to care. He did not gesture in Frank's direction as the other man sat down beside him, smacking his lips as he downed the last of his coffee and pulled out a thermos from his coat pocket. He did not blink as Frank offered him the styrofoam cup.
"So," Frank began, and as he turned to face Matt with his hands on his knees, Matt smelled traces of flowers and ink on his clothes. "Who was the woman?"
Frank caught Matt's stifled wince. "You don't have to talk to me about it, Red. I just figured it wouldn't hurt to get it off your chest."
Matt shook his head. "Are you asking me as Daredevil to talk about her?" he asked. "Or are you asking me as Matt?"
Frank shrugged. "I'm asking whoever needs it the most."
Matt sighed. "Elektra. Our relationship was… complicated."
With a snort, Frank put his coffee down behind him on the rooftop. "Story of our lives, huh?"
"Complicated in that I only just found out that it was all a lie," Matt continued. "I met her as a drunk college student who wanted something new. We dated for a semester before she tried to make me kill the man who ordered my dad's murder."
Matt could feel Frank's sudden inhale. "That was ten years ago," Matt sighed. "I didn't see her again after that, until the start of your case."
"So that's why I was left with Karen and Nelson in the hospital?" Frank asked, and Matt nodded into the night.
He fell back into silence, but Frank could see the cogs turning behind his unfocused eyes, lit green in the yellow lights of the city. Frank knew the look on his face well: the face of love lost, of a first love never to return.
"After my dad died," Matt began, and Frank listened intently, "my mom left me to the church. In the orphanage, I was approached by an old blind guy who went by the name Stick. He taught me how to - how to get past my disability, that I was stronger than everyone else because I didn't have the distraction of vision. He's the reason I know how to fight at all."
"So he adopted you or something?" Frank asked, but he knew the answer to his question when Matt let out a mirthless laugh.
"The second he realized I thought of him as a father figure, he abandoned me and I didn't see him again for twenty years."
"That's a no, then."
Matt shook his head. "But sometime before he started training me, he trained her. Elektra. She was his prize student. It's why he didn't have any patience with me when he realized I was… 'too soft', as he put it. He wanted to train warriors, and she was that. He left her before he came to me, but they stayed in touch."
He took a deep breath into the brisk winter air. "He wanted me back but I was already in college, so he tried to get me to forget about my friends, about my education. About anything that could've possibly been normal in my life. He sent Elektra to distract me, and it worked."
"Almost," Frank interrupted. Matt raised his head but Frank shrugged it off. "You said you were only with her for a semester. This guy, this Stick, made her distract you, and it almost worked."
"I guess," Matt breathed.
Matt didn't say anything more after that, instead let his senses take over. His nostrils filled with Frank's scent, gunpowder residue and coffee and dog, but Karen's scent was there too. He could smell where she lingered when she hugged him only earlier that evening, where her hands rested on his ribcage and her hair brushed against his shoulders.
"First loves, right?" Frank asked gruffly.
Matt chuckled softly. "Right," he agreed.
They fell in silence again just before Frank took a heavy breath and, standing up, he muttered, "'m sorry you lost her."
"I never really had her," Matt admitted, but Frank was already climbing down the fire escape.
a/n: if you read just about anything i've posted for any fandom at all, you'll notice the recurring theme of pain, death, and angst. #sorrynotsorry
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