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 and Foggy are captured by some underworld cronies looking to catch the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. The irony of the situation is not lost on them. They're just sorry they can't let their captors know that.
Author's Notes: Some of the language Foggy and his captors use in this chapter is ableist. It is being used deliberately on Foggy's part within the context of the chapter in an effort to play with his captor's expectations. Please let me know if it doesn't work or is offensive and I will edit accordingly.
I was overwhelmed by the positive response to the first chapter of this fic! Thank you, readers, for your kind support. I do hope you continue to enjoy this fic (as much as one can, given the focus of the storytelling).
Have a wonderful day!
Two
"Me," Foggy declares, "I'm the better screamer. I volunteer as tribute."
Matt doesn't let Foggy say another word. He can already tell Baritone's mind is made up. "He doesn't know what he's saying," Matt interjects. "Foggy is a terrible candidate for torture."
"That's not true. I am way more susceptible to torture than Matt is."
Which is precisely the problem, and not because Foggy will reveal his secret. Matt's pretty sure these gents won't believe him if he tried. No, the problem is Foggy doesn't know how to manage pain, harness it, and wield it. He's never had to deal with pain, let alone calculated, increasing increments. Matt deals with pain on a night constant basis. He's made it his lifelong education. He can handle this.
More importantly, he is not going to let them lay a finger on Foggy. "He's not more susceptible. Hard life, this one. Take me instead."
Foggy tries to jab him with an elbow and ends up just bashing their chairs together. The ring of rusted metal gives Matt hope that the seats can be easily broken.
"Matthew," Foggy warns him.
Matt forces the chairs to knock together again. There's definitely weak spots in the metal, places where the vibrations sound just a little flat. "Franklin."
Their captors have absolutely nothing to contribute. Squirrelly seems particularly mortified. His mouth flaps open and shut a few times as he tries to comprehend the scene. Baritone and Cigarettes take the negotiations in stride. Apparently, people have argued over who would be a better victim before.
Cigarettes takes Matt's side, "My money's on the small one."
Foggy tosses his head, not at all finished with this debate, "Oh, sure. Torture the blind guy."
"It's torture," Matt reassures Cigarettes, trying to keep the big guy's attention off Foggy. "It's already unethical."
"Do you really want to be the one who tortured a blind guy?" Foggy keeps going. "You think your criminal buddies are going to be all impressed by you hurting someone who can't see? No offence, Matt."
"Some taken," Matt admits.
Foggy decides to deal with that apology at another time. He addresses Cigarettes again with as much derision in his voice as he can muster, "What kind of a sick monster are you?"
Matt is surprised when Cigarettes's heart beat starts into a worry rhythm. The stakes just got personal for him. Squirrelly voices the concerns perfectly, "Yeah, I don't know if I can do a blind guy."
The attention's all on Foggy, who is about to seal the deal with closing arguments. Matt beats him to the punch. "If you think about it, blindness really heightens the effects of torture. I'm almost guaranteed to break."
Cigarettes is back on his side. He pops his knuckles in the pocket of his coat.
Foggy isn't letting this go though, "He grew up blind in Hell's Kitchen. He's unbreakable. I'm the one you want."
"The small one always breaks first," Matt offers, thinking about how satisfying it's going to be when he breaks Squirrelly's face with his fist.
As if he can hear the thoughts in Matt's head, Foggy grows even more emphatic, "HE'S A TOTAL BADASS. I'M A STICK OF BUTTER. Torture me! I bruise and cry!"
Matt scoffs. Baritone's nervous at the thought; he can smell it. "Do you really want a crier on your hands?"
Foggy ups the ante, "I also promise that I won't break for a satisfactory amount of time."
There's so much Matt wants to say and can't: shut up, Foggy. I can do this, Foggy. You don't need to protect me. He tries to tap it out in morse code with the chairs, but all he does is create a sad, tinny song to fill the prolonged quiet.
The leg strapped to his left ankle is the weakest. If he keeps at it, he can break it.
"Both of you said you didn't know anything," Baritone says, waving a hand between them to dismiss both their arguments.
"Oh, we don't," Foggy replies, "but you don't seem to be buying that."
Matt sees his advantage and takes it, "He doesn't know anything."
Cigarettes enters the fray, "You said you didn't know anything either!"
"I don't, but again, you don't seem to be buying that."
Squirrelly loses it, "What the hell are we even talking about?"
"They were arguing about who was better to torture," Baritone states.
"I am," Matt and Foggy say at the same time.
"So why don't you two just tell us what we want to know!" Muscles demands.
Baritone knows. He's had this all figured out from the beginning, but the inertia of the argument kept him from putting a stop to it. He finally puts it into words, "Because they're protecting each other. Nelson and Murdock, attorneys at law. You guys must be hell for prosecutors."
"We do our best," Matt gets back to business. "Leave Foggy alone. You want someone to hurt, take me."
Baritone likes the sound of that. Decisiveness appeals to him. "The man wants to get hurt. Let's oblige him."
"Hey, I want to get hurt!" Foggy shouts. He starts rocking his chair in the direction of their attackers.
He's ignored. Cigarettes comes over and grabs Matt's armrest, hauling him away. The chair legs screech and scratch at deafening pitches along the floor. Matt focuses past the sting on his ear drums to the reverb in the room, mapping the walls, the windows, the doors. There's an awful lot of metal around him. Small enough pieces to use as weapons. The floor is weakest a few feet from where he and Foggy were sitting.
He shifts so that his weight is directly over the left leg and makes sure it catches on every floorboard. The vibrations of sound get tighter and tighter as it drags.
Foggy continues to struggle, but his ropes are giving him problems. Sticking when they should be slipping, tightening when they should be loosening. Matt tries to reassure him, "We're going to be okay, Foggy."
They're not. Baritone knows it, as does Cigarettes, but they keep their mouths shut. Holding onto a fool's hope is the worst king of torture.
The heaps of damp lumber muffle the noise, but Matt knows the ceiling's high enough that the sound will travel. He can still hear Foggy struggling in his seat, muttering all kinds of oaths and threats towards their captors. Baritone's professional enough to let that kind of thing slide; he's saving his offence for later, when it's Foggy sitting in the stacks of lumber. Cigarettes sounds worked up, but Matt can't tell if that's from Foggy or from dragging him one hundred paces to the right.
Along the way, Matt got a good feel for the place. It's a devil's sweetest dream and worst nightmare. Plenty of places to hide, skulk, and stalk, provided the decrepit building doesn't give him away. He tests the chair leg. It gives a little as he kicks, but a few more blows are needed before he can snap it. Maybe they'll skip the little stuff for a few good punches. Maybe he can compel them that a beating is what he needs.
Another chair materializes, scratching across the floorboards. It's not in much better shape than Matt's. The taste of rusty saltwater floods Matt's mouth, followed by the sharp hint of alcohol from Baritone's cologne.
Baritone pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, taps one loose, offers it. Matt pretends not to notice. He's too busy taking in his surroundings, making mental notes, before the smoke clouds his perception.
"Hey," Squirrelly says from where he's ducking behind a stack of rotting wooden planks. The tension is getting to be too much for him. "You want a cigarette?"
"No, thanks," Matt replies, lips curling into a wicked snarl. He sees an advantage and takes it: "I'd rather not get used as my own ashtray."
Squirrelly's blood drains out of his face. He really doesn't know what's going to happen. Good, Matt decides as he sets and rests his jaw, loosening his facial muscles to keep from gritting his teeth. That'll make it easier to play with his expectations.
Baritone strikes a match and lights up. So does Cigarettes. The waft of sulfur almost makes Matt vomit. Squirrelly passes on a smoke, shaking so hard that his vibrations sound right through the dense wave of poison crashing hard against Matt. He can still perceive the room through the noxious fumes. Matt thinks he might not shatter the kid's cheekbones later out of thanks.
The smoke builds up like so many sheets of rawhide on top of him, gradually tightening. Matt's sinuses smolder and ignite. He wishes he still had his sunglasses so they don't see him tearing up from the pain.
"You know they used to call matches lucifers," Baritone says to no one in particular. He takes another drag, blows the smoke directly into Matt's face. On the outside, Matt barely reacts. Inside, he reels from the blow as he would a punch. The fire has spread to his throat.
He doesn't mean to jump but can't help himself. Baritone's fingers are at his throat, loosening his tie and tugging the collar of his shirt open. Matt hates that he didn't feel it coming. He's getting too focused on the fire draining through his nose and mouth into his chest. Suffocation feels imminent as his head starts spinning anew.
The hot, smoky air strikes the exposed flesh over his collarbones and crawls over his skin like army ants. Matt forces himself to breathe, to think, to act. He slowly draws his bloody hand into the ropes over his wrist, kicks his left leg to weaken the chair. Let them say what they want and do what they want, because they are rank amateurs when it comes to pain. They don't know anything about pain. Not yet.
Baritone takes another long drag before his heart beat can really pick up. Matt recognizes a tell when he sees it. Baritone's getting excited. This is a comfortable prologue to a horrifying future. Matt shoves his hand back into the ropes and waits. Cigarettes isn't moving, neither is Squirrelly. Another cloud of smoke slams into his face, but through the prickling heat, Matt picks up on the red hot ember of Baritone's still smoldering cigarette. He tracks it on a path from lips through the air before landing on the flesh just below his collarbone.
More smoke fills the air, this time loaded with the smell of burning meat. Matt keeps his physical reaction to a bare minimum. He clenches the armrests of his chair so hard he thinks the metal might break. He can hear his neck muscles snap tight under his skin. Inside, his whole body is screaming. The world on fire goes to white as his ears ring from the sizzle. He feels the burn in different layers of skin, keeps count even, because the fire blazes inside him long after the cigarette goes out.
He uses his agony to covertly twitch and pull at the chair leg. One leg and one arm aren't the best odds, but he can definitely get his hand on Baritone's gun fromthis distance. Maybe. Provided Cigarettes doesn't get in on the fight.
"Matches used to be people's own little personal devils," Baritone flicks away his extinguished cigarette. "Now there's just a guy in a mask. Can you think of anything important about your personal devil?"
He almost doesn't hear. Listening to the chair is drowning out the sounds of everything else. Matt swallows his urge to vomit from the smell and answers, "He wears a mask and travels at night."
The next burn he can't track. Cigarettes moves too fast for that. Two steps and he's there, using Matt's chest for an ash tray, almost causing him to fall backwards in his seat. Cigarettes says something, but Matt's beyond hearing. His senses are all focused on the tiny pool of hell next to his sternum, the one that sucks what little air he had in his lungs and makes his arms rattle uncontrollably.
When he snaps out of the fugue, Matt finds himself surrounded by a bustle of activity. Squirrelly's on the move, roving the small area for something. "It's his fucking eyes, man," Squirrelly says. "They're freaking me the hell out! I told you I didn't want to do the blind guy!"
"You should have picked me! I don't do freaky things!" Foggy shouts from what sounds like another world. "No offence, Matt!"
"A lot taken," Matt gasps. Fresh air takes good against his soldered mouth, throat, and lungs. He drinks it in like a dying man and wills the burning on his chest to subside.
"SHUT UP," Cigarettes shouts. He's about to say more, wants to by the sounds of his heart, but there's nothing to say but more threats that Foggy will happily accept.
Baritone, ever the manager, keeps everyone under control. "He'll get his turn," he tells Cigarettes. Then, to Squirrelly, "You think this is freaky? We haven't started yet. He's gonna do worse things as the night goes on."
"Why are we even doing this? He says he doesn't know anything."
"And you believe that?" Cigarettes fingers wrap around the open collar of Matt's shirt and yanks him up until his feet don't touch the ground. The left chair leg is very, very loose. He could kick it free from here, take out Cigarettes, grab the gun…
Matt heaves a shuddering breath. That story ends with Squirrelly telling anyone who'll listen about the blind guy who knows martial arts, the one with loose connections to a known vigilante. The cops'll connect the dots on that pretty quick. Nope, he's got to play this one as safely as possible. Make it all look like an accident. Give himself some plausible deniability.
"The kid here thinks you're telling the truth, that we should just let you go," Cigarettes's smell gives Matt a dry cough, one that reverberates through his whole chest from the smoke. Cigarettes laughs. He lifts Matt a little higher and drives a pinky into the new burn on his chest. "What do you say? Do we let you go? Talk to your friend for a little bit instead?"
Matt finds his line in the sand then and there. They touch Foggy, it's over. He kills them. It won't matter, then, whether they find out he's the devil. "Bind my eyes," he tells Cigarettes, "and get a handle on that kid before he blows your whole operation."
"You sound like you've done this before," Baritone observes. He's gone quiet and curious suddenly, as if the pieces of a puzzle are starting to fall into place.
"I've defended this before," Matt growls. He tucks his left leg slightly, causing the chair to keel discretely. No one notices. At least no one sounds like they notice. Baritone's not convinced, but at least he's not pondering the potential for Matt to lead some kind of double life. Matt shoots a pointed gaze at Cigarettes's heaving chest, "You gonna put me down so we can get on with this?"
He hits just the right tone to cut Cigarettes's ego, and the result is perfect. Cigarettes throws Matt back to the ground. The chair leg hits on its odd angle. Matt bends his leg at the knee. There's a snap of rusty metal, a scratch on his inner thigh, and then the floor rushes up to meet him.
The blow stuns him just enough that Matt doesn't hear his skin above his ear snap, but he does feel the hot rush of blood that follow. His leg doesn't feel great either, having broken his fall. There's a flurry of voices and movement centered on him, all distorted, and Matt makes little effort to track them. His ears have found Foggy's heartbeat, and they stay latched to the sound until the world stops spinning so fast. He's on his back, free leg caught by Squirrelly's desperate hands as Cigarettes tears his tie off and starts wrapping his face.
Matt doesn't make it easy for him. He tosses his head, dodges the binding, almost bites Cigarettes at one point until Baritone reminds him, "Your friend would make this nice and easy for us."
"I would!" Foggy agrees.
Cigarettes takes a break from wrapping the tie around Matt's face, "SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!"
"Stop encouraging him," Baritone snaps. "More noise, the more likely the Devil's going to show. Let him shout all he wants."
"What about this one?" the knot Cigarettes makes take out a clump of Matt's hair. Matt can hear the laceration on his head rip open more from the force. He bites back a small growl.
"We keep going. You, kid," Squirrelly snaps to attention. He leaves palm prints on Matt's leg from perspiration. Terror informs all his little movements. Matt can take him out last. "Your job right now is to find a small block of wood. You got that? Something I can fit under his hand."
Squirrelly jumps up and runs away as fast as he can. Matt can hear him digging through scraps of wood a second later. Cigarettes takes over pinning Matt's leg down to keep him from kicking. His grip is strong, but it loosens the longer they wait.
Matt goes perfectly still. Beneath the blindfold, he feels more like himself, like the Mask, and all his senses fall in line. He isn't bothered by the cigarette burns or the bruises or the blood draining out of his skull. He's too busy focusing on letting his arm fall loose from the ropes naturally, without his captors noticing. Finding the weak spots in their surroundings isn't difficult. Matt knows that a clumsy hit from the chair he's attached to will bring on of the stacks of wood toppling over. Then it's just a well-placed fall on Baritone to keep that gun from coming into play.
The whole thing will look like a freak accident, not the work of a devil in disguise.
"Got it," Squirrelly re-emerges from his quest.
"Bring it here," Baritone says, sinking next to Matt's side. He grabs Matt's unbloodied hand, the one still secured tightly to the armrest of the chair, and wraps Matt's fingers over the block. The wood is damp enough to give slightly from the pressure, but it holds between Matt's fingers and wrist.
There's a zipping sound, plastic against plastic. Matt recognizes the sound. A box cutter. The blade on the air leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He twitches when the point finds its way to the tip of his pinky finger.
A pair of pliers clamps down on his fingernail.
"Five fingers, five fingernails," Baritone tells him, as if he can't do the math. "I'm gonna count as I do this. I get to five and you haven't made a sound, I send someone over to count to ten with your friend. Got me?"
Matt holds his other hand under the bindings. He knows the actions he'll take - throwing Cigarettes into the pile of lumber, grabbing Baritone's gun and shooting him in the leg, Squirrelly's escape from the warehouse – but doubt nags at him. One wrong move and they'll go for Foggy. Screw his secret identity: Baritone knows better places to put his box cutter than Matt's finger if he wants to get a scream.
He can't risk it. Not Foggy. That's the real line he can't cross.
"I got you," Matt says.
Baritone's smile whistles in Matt's ears like a boiling kettle, "Make it loud, Matt."
The pliers pull up, the box cutter slips underneath, and the nail peels off Matt's finger with a red hot sting.
He screams.
Baritone's still smiling, "One."
Thank you for reading!