To say that Matt should have seen the car coming is incorrect. He's blind. Of course he shouldn't have seen it coming. He should have felt the vibrations it made as it sped across the asphalt. He should have heard the surprised murmurs of the other pedestrians at the crosswalk when it failed to yield and burned through the recently red light. He should have smelled the driver inside with his shirt soaked through with sweat and fifty thousand in cash packed in the backseat. But the only thing that registers before he steps off the curb is the hitch in Foggy's voice.

The sedan hits him, never slowing. For a terrifying instant post-impact, there's nothing; no world on fire, no vibrations felt under his feet or his fingertips, nothing tangible his senses can latch on to. The moment passes and he hits the ground. Hard. His body crumples against the street, skidding a bit as he's tossed out of the way. Everything goes far away, like he slipped underwater. The world swirls above him, a mess of sounds and smells, but they're too jumbled to mean anything. Everything slips though his grasp and drifts on by. He doesn't think he's breathing.

Someone might be calling his name.

—

He had to help. The truck was coming and the man was in the middle of the street and someone had to help, but nobody was even paying attention, nobody even noticed. Well, maybe they had but they were just ignoring it, but he had to help. He had to help. Of course he had to help.

His feet dash out into the crosswalk. He reaches out his arms and shoves and squeezes his eyes shut and waits.

—

There's hot asphalt at his back, his limbs flung akimbo. He can't breathe. He waits for the acrid metallic scent to fill the air, a noxious mix of charred rubber and something vaguely electric, but it never comes. He only detects the usual rotting stench of New York City at high summer. His eyes aren't burning, but he can't. He can't. He can't see.

Something warm drips down his face. "I can't… I can't see." He can barely muster up enough lung capacity to wheeze.

The next breath he attempts is little more than a harsh gasp, ragged in his throat. Someone's calling his name. Is it his dad?

No. It can't be. His dad's dead. He's been dead a long time.

Right?

"––Matty, Matty, just breathe, it's okay, just breathe." The hysterical note in the voice somewhere above him betrays the words of its speaker. It's not okay. Nothing about this is okay. "It's okay, just stay with me."

I'm not going anywhere, he wants to say, but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is another gasp. He still can't see. There are hands on his shoulders, at the base of his neck. He flinches away from the contact, jerking across the ground, causing a searing pain in at least eighty percent of his body. Everything threatens to leave again.

"Matt, stop! It's me, it's Foggy!"

Foggy?

But. But. That means.

"F…Foggy?" The name is mostly a groan. Foggy.

Of course.

"I'm right here, Matt." There's a quiet sigh. A hand encompasses his own, lifting it upward. "Feel my face. I'm right here."

The face under his shaking fingertips doesn't belong to his dad; the angles and wrinkles are all wrong, there's too much give, it's so much softer than his dad's face ever was, there's no scar over his eye, no thrice-broken nose. He feels the muscles pull and bend as Foggy forces a smile. "Feel familiar?" Matt feels the vibrations from his voice.

Car. Street. Foggy.

Ow.

"Just hold on, Matt, an ambulance is coming."

Ambulance? Ambulances mean hospitals. Matt snatches his hand back.

"No, Foggy, I'm okay––" Well, maybe not "okay", but he's definitely had worse. Probably. Shock is making feeling his injuries kind of difficult. But he's sure it can't be that bad.

"You're really gonna pull the 'I'm okay' card lying in the street after being hit by a car, Murdock?" His voice shakes. Matt's never heard Foggy's voice shake like this before.

Matt opens his mouth, then closes it. Swallows. He doesn't, like, do hospitals, doesn't Foggy know that? He's sure Claire could help, he could give her a call, she'd be able to patch him up, sans ambulance ride and hospital stay and––

"Matt, breathe!"

Why is breathing so difficult lately?

"Foggy," he gasps. "Foggy, I can't––"

"Matt, listen to me." His voice gets closer. "You're a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. A vehicle that ran a red light struck a pedestrian, that's you. Now, in normal circumstances, people go to the hospital when they get hit by cars. And, I don't know if you can tell right now, but you have attracted quite the crowd."

Matt can't tell, actually, and that's getting to him. He uses his concentration to focus on breathing.

"It's gonna be okay, buddy." He feels Foggy run his fingers over his forehead and relaxes into the touch. A hand slides over his own again.

Things are starting to fade, like water lapping at his sides. Matt remembers lying in bed, a hundred years ago, listening to the tinny sounds of the city streaming into his bedroom through his window. Fire engines, police cars, ambulances, all shrieking their ways through the streets. Some, he reasoned, were definitely on their way to foil a bank robbery in progress somewhere in Midtown, or maybe extinguish the flames of a tenement on fire on the Lower East Side. Maybe his awful downstairs neighbor who was deathly allergic to peanuts had been snuck some by his ex-wife in an elaborate murder plot to get his money.

He's dimly aware that the sirens growing louder every second aren't en route to rescue a collapsing crane or a cat in a tree, they're for him, lying bleeding in the street, just off the corner of Foggy's favorite bodega and down the street from their office. He coughs, feeling the water bubble over his face, filling his nose and mouth. "Foggy," he tries, not actually sure if his lips are capable of forming words.

The hand in his squeezes tighter.