AN I love Matt Murdock and all of his flawed good intentions so much. It's been a delight to be able to study him as a person without the extra crazy baggage of powers and alter egos. Like with the rest of the eyes blue!verse, this story hasn't been so much about fixing problems, but recognizing them and navigating to a place where the person is able to properly take care of them and themselves. I could literally cry over Matt having a proper support system, and also being in an emotional place to take on Stick and not spiral.

Thank you everyone who has enjoyed this story with me.

Warning: discussion of and allusion to past child abuse

Matt heard the door unlock, heard Claire call out for him.

"Yeah, Claire," he mumbled, face aimed toward his lap. His head would have been between his knees if he'd had the energy. He had barely managed to leave the voicemail asking Claire to come over.

He'd tried forgetting Stick's words using meditation—his clean, healthy alternative to masturbating or hiring a hooker or some other despicable way of giving into his addiction. It sort of worked and it sort of didn't. He wasn't doing anything harmful physically, but he kept replaying the conversation in his mind, each repeated word shaking loose a little more of his confidence.

"Matt, where are—whoa. Uhm, Matt? Why are you sitting on the floor?"

"Because I couldn't make myself go to a chair," he mumbled. Claire was quiet for an eternal second, not moving from the middle of the doorway.

"So you parked it against a wall?"

"Yeah."

Claire moved closer to investigate. He could already hear her nurse voice as she evaluated him. "Matt, did something happen?"

He tipped his head up at her. He made himself smile to show this was not as bad as it looked. He didn't even know why he felt so miserable. He wasn't bleeding. He hadn't lost anything. He still had a shitty foster father and a mountain of flaws and failings. There was no point in feeling sorry for himself just because he'd had a reminder of that fact.

"Stick came over."

"Stick? As in the foster father that didn't even let you call him 'Dad'?"

"Yeah. Him."

"Oh, Matt."

Matt loved Claire for a number of reasons. She was smart, kind, no nonsense, considerate, funny. But most of all, she never let pity enter her voice when speaking to him. Normally, he hated hearing that sickening understanding in her voice, hated her knowing what a raging mess he was. But in moments like this, he absolutely adored her for understanding the pain in his chest and not looking down on him for it.

He sat there, face turned up, hoping and praying for her to make it at least a little better.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"No," he said, a choked laugh squeezing off the word. "Hell no, that's the last thing I want to do."

"Okay. Do you need me to do anything else…?"

"No," he whispered. "Please…just stay here."

Claire waited for a moment, then knelt in front of him. He could feel her knees brushing against his ankles, tucked neatly between his splayed feet. He closed his eyes, despising the fact that even now he felt aroused by the idea of her skin touching his. Matt wished he could blame Stick for that, wished he could pile on every single one of his bad decisions and make it all Stick's fault. Matt would have loved for the man to be responsible, just once, to realize just how horrible a human being he was. It would probably be enough to make Stick collapse from the weight of it. At least, it felt that heavy when all that responsibility settled around Matt's shoulders.

But he couldn't. Stick hadn't caused his string of girlfriends and one night stands and sleazy bathroom encounters. That had been Matt, trying to fill an emptiness inside him with one of the surefire ways he knew how to feel good. But that emptiness was Stick's fault. Or maybe Matt's. He shouldn't have become so attached to someone so cruel. Which made it Stick's fault again? No, Matt was just being a child and not taking blame when blame was due.

Claire waited as he chased himself around his head. She didn't say anything, didn't give any signs that she was annoyed at having her time wasted. She just sat there, hands on her lap.

Claire had taught him early on that there was value of talking things out. She was all about candor, required that things be discussed eventually, if not right away. It had taken a long time for Matt to understand, to feel the persistent need to tell her what happened. At first the words had stung his mouth (Spartans didn't need confidants), but then he realized that telling the truth wasn't a confession of weakness. It was a detox, a purge of the poison in his soul. That, he had realized belatedly, had made him feel better. Only this time, it was in a way that lasted.

Matt breathed through his nose, fighting his hatred of letting people know just how much of a wreck he was.

"I…Stick showed up at my office a few days ago. And then today he dropped by. And…" He swallowed, grimacing like the words tasted bad. "He said I was flying too high."

"O…kay? I don't know what that means."

Matt sighed and leaned his head against the wall. He didn't even pretend to find Claire's face with his eyes when he spoke. They weren't speaking, he was flinging horror stories into the ether.

"Stick loves Greek myths. He'd talk about them all the time. They're his parables. He had Odysseus and Perseus and the gods the same way other people have Jesus."

"Only…he wasn't saved by them?"

"No," Matt scoffed. "He doesn't care about damnation. He cares about this life, about doing as much and being as strong as you can. He'd bitch for hours on Sunday before a neighbor picked me up for church, about how I'm wasting my life worrying about something that probably doesn't exist."

Matt pursed his lips. He didn't tell her about his habit of avoiding Stick on Sundays until he got back from Mass. That was at least one good thing about Stick; he left the past in the past. Sunday afternoons were completely fine, despite the warzone of the early morning, so long as Matt didn't try spouting his knowledge on the trinity or sainthood (that too, he learned to stop doing fast).

Not telling her wasn't lying. It was saving a new bit of shame until he was stable enough to tell it.

"His favorites were the Spartans," Matt continued. His voice was flat, the words falling straight from his mouth to his lap. "They were tough, they didn't need anyone, they marched into battle without fear."

"That…makes a lot of sense, actually."

"What? How?"

"The first time I came over here, my first thought was that your apartment was Spartan."

Matt blinked, face heating up. "I don't understand."

"You had nothing," Claire said, a slight laugh in her voice. "There was a rug, a couch, a chair, the shelves over there. The place felt cold. Nice, but cold. It didn't seem like you made this place your home."

Matt shifted, trying to smother his words of disbelief. Stick had always said Matt strayed to the side of opulence. There was no way his genuine leather couch and silk sheets could be Spartan. Not when his childhood had mostly been spent on a cot, worn out wooden chairs, and cold linoleum. His apartment was practically a suite of excess, both now and then. And it had been the exact first thing Stick had picked up on when he walked through the door. If Matt's apartment was a physical stand-in for his heart, the first thing people had to see was how soft it was.

"Tell me more about what happened with you guys. When you were a kid, I mean," Claire prompted, her hand on his knee.

Matt cleared his throat, trying to think. He had told her the vague outline of his childhood, skimming over day to day experiences in favor of the major events. She knew, for example, that Stick had insisted on Matt using his nickname (earned at a bar for the cane he used), but not that he had slapped Matt the first time he'd tried to call him 'Dad'. She knew that Stick had once treated him to the rare luxury of ice cream, but not that Matt had puked it up fifteen minutes later when Stick forced him to run for half an hour, an object lesson on self-denial. She knew that Matt loved and hated the man, respected and feared him. Cuffs and comfort had blurred together, each one becoming indistinct from the next. That was how Matt had had to deal with it. Picking out details made him want to be sick.

"Well, he…didn't exactly take care of me," Matt began. "He stopped trying to be an okay dad when I was young, fourteen, maybe. But we made it work. It was better when I tried to not be such a burden. Then I graduated, and…he kicked me out."

"What?"

"Once I was eighteen, he didn't let me stay. I couch surfed until I got to college."

"What did you do for breaks?" Claire asked. He could hear the anger in her voice, the disgust that Stick had abandoned him for one reason or another. But she bit it back, keeping her voice low and considerate.

"I stayed with Foggy's family."

"So you haven't seen him in years?"

"No. Not until the other day."

"But now you're doing too good for yourself, you're like that guy, the one with the wings, right? And he flew too hard and he destroyed them?"

"Icarus," he whispered, skin prickling like he could feel the feathers and wax through his shirt. "His father made him a beautiful pair of wings, but warned him not to fly too near the sun or too near the sea. But Icarus didn't listen, and he flew high enough to make the wax on his wings melt. He fell into the water."

"And that was it, the end?"

"No," Matt said, voice small. "Daedelus, his father, he flew down to save his son. But he got his wings wet, and they were too heavy to lift them back out."

"So they drowned," Claire finished, voice flat. "And Stick came here and, what, said you were going to be burned by your success and you believed that?" Claire demanded, fingertips digging into his legs. "You believe that saving children from horrible situations—"

"Custody's not about decency, it's about the most expensive lawyer."

"—unearthing this huge scandal with Fisk through a family lawsuit—"

"Wilson Fisk was basically hauled off to the DA once we found out he was heading up a graft ring—"

"Helping people, Matt. You think every good thing you've done in court is some trick, all because one mean old man came in here and said so?"

"Claire, it's not that simple—"

"No, Matt! It's exactly that simple!" Claire leaned forward, the pressure of her palms disappearing from his knees as she set her hands against his face. "Matt, you know you're doing good, so I don't get why you're suddenly saying you're not."

"What if I'm getting drunk off the hype? Stick was always right about these things. Pretty soon I'll be chasing a paycheck, not justice."

Claire was quiet a moment, hands still holding his face. Her touch was always so gentle with him, no matter how upset she became. He could feel the tormented mix of disbelief and disappointment and hate tumbling up inside her, but she never directed it at him. Her thumb stroked his cheekbone, feather light as it went back and forth, back and forth.

"I wish you wouldn't be so afraid of trusting yourself," she whispered.

Matt worked his jaw. "My judgment hasn't always been the best."

"According to you or to Stick?"

He closed his eyes and cracked a tired smile. "Both."

"And that little girl you told me about? Gracia? What's your judgment on her? Just a paycheck?"

"No."

"And why's that?"

"Because—because we need to keep kids safe from shitty parents like hers."

Shitty parents like his.

"Okay. That sounds pretty convincing to me."

"But Claire—"

"Matt," she said, the words so serious and placating that he closed his mouth. "I don't think you'd be this upset if some part of you didn't think your foster dad was wrong."

Matt swallowed. He didn't have words for her.

Claire sighed and mumbled, "Come here," before folding him into her arms. He felt her pulse in her neck and closed his eyes. He clenched his teeth and forced his breath to stay even, to not let it hitch, to not give birth to the tears that were clamoring inside him. There was only her and the dark, beautiful smell of her lotion.

"What did I do to deserve you?" he whispered into her hair.

"You kept fighting, even after days like this."

He sighed out a smile. Fighting didn't really feel worth it on days like this. But the days after…they were pretty okay.

"Have you told Foggy any of this?"

"No," he mumbled. He closed his eyes, shrinking from the thought of explaining all this yet again. Foggy, while every bit as accommodating as Claire, likely wouldn't appreciate finding out that Matt had blatantly lied to his face. Again. He was supposed to have stopped that.

"You probably should," she murmured, hand stroking his hair. "He deserves to know."

"Please stay," he asked. "Stay the night. You could come to service with me tomorrow."

He knew it was edging toward that damnable line, pressing them beyond what might have been good taste. He didn't know what good taste was anymore. But if she stayed, he swore to himself that he would behave. He would not touch her, would not imagine anything perverse. He would just be thankful that she had chosen to be there with him.

"Don't change the subject."

"Claire—"

"I need to hear you say it, Matt."

He sighed, then nodded. "I'll tell Foggy, first thing Monday."

"Okay, good."

He listened to the sound of her breathing, shivering slightly as it skated across his skin.

"You…never gave me an answer," he said, so terribly afraid that she would say no.

Claire let out a slow breath. "I don't know if that'll be okay for you," she said carefully.

He clenched his teeth.

"Will it?" she asked.

Matt furrowed his eyebrows, thinking hard, trying to force the knowledge of whether or not he would truly be able to behave. Surely he could control himself after today. Surely he could be decent after she comforted him like this.

"I think…it'll be okay."

"I don't have a toothbrush," she said.

"I have a spare," he told her, breaking into the first genuine smile in days.

"I don't have a change of clothes, either. When's Mass?"

"Nine."

Claire groaned and sagged into him. "Then I'll have to get up early to go back to my place and change."

Matt's smile widened. Claire, whether by nature or her late shift at work, hated early mornings.

"I'll go with you, so you won't be alone. You could sleep on my shoulder on the train or something."

She groaned into his neck, then heaved herself upright. "You better not draw on me if I fall asleep during the service."

"I won't. But Father Lantom might call you out in his sermon."

Claire snorted, then got to her feet. She took his hand, then hoisted him up beside her. "Come on, mister. If I'm gonna do this, we're gonna eat and then hit the sack, ASAP."

That night, after they'd eaten and brushed their teeth and changed, Matt held Claire close. Holding didn't count as touching. Holding counted as loving, because Stick was wrong and Claire made him better. Foggy made him better. People made him better.

"No getting fresh with me, alright?" she told him, more tease than warning. "I will definitely fall asleep if I have to wait for you to do confessional for being unchaste."

Matt laughed and kissed her neck. Just once, nothing more.

"What, you think I'm kidding? The moment you say 'bless me Father, for I have sinny sin sinned' is the moment I'm out like a light."

Matt snorted, shaking slightly as he buried his laughter in the pillows. Pleased chuckles rumbled through Claire's chest, not loud enough to even make a sound. He composed himself, focusing on the even rhythm of her pulse.

"Thank you, Claire," he whispered.

"Yeah? For what?"

"For loving me."

"Awh, loving you's the easy part," she said. She rolled over and kissed him, three quick pecks on the mouth before she settled back into the pillows. "The hard part's getting you to be quiet so I can sleep."

Matt smiled, savoring the smell of her curled up with the clean warmth of his sheets.

"Good night, Claire. I love you."

"I love you, too, Matt."