He follows the rabbit hole: down, down, down.


"Dude, I'm hungry , come on ," Foggy groans, snapping his file shut. His stomach groans, too. It's a low, irritable grumble that Matt knows so well he could probably identify it out of a lineup.

Matt shrugs. His fingers glide quickly over his paperwork until he finds where he left off. "It's only, what, eleven?"

"Yeah, and , we've been working all morning on nothing but hot liquids. I don't know about you, but I didn't have breakfast."

"You know, most people can survive until noon on green tea and coffee. Some people can even go past noon, if you can believe it."

Foggy rolls his eyes hard enough that Matt catches it.

"I saw that," Matt murmurs.

"I'm sure you did. Alright, " Foggy decides, drumming his fingers on the table impatiently. "Eleven is close enough. I'm calling it."

"So call it."

"I'm gonna. It's lunch time." Foggy slides his chair back, defeated, and Matt can sense him shaking his head. He pats his pockets for his wallet and heads towards the door. "You're gonna be real jealous when I come back with banh mi and you're stuck with - not banh mi," Foggy warns. He pauses in the doorway, and Matt can hear his heart anxiously pick up the tiniest bit of speed.

"I'll live with my choice," Matt promises, waving a goodbye over his head before picking up where he left off. "Don't worry, I'll snack on something later."

The door clicks shut. "Sure you will," he hears Foggy mutter from down the hall.

Shit.

Matt pushes his paperwork away and runs a hand over his face, frustrated.


It's becoming more obvious, now - obviously, it's becoming more obvious. Half the time he's ducking out of the office at lunchtime to run some spurious errand and the other half he brings himself a packed lunch; methodically-cleaned veggies in methodically-cleaned Tupperware, eaten with methodically-cleaned silverware.

He prefers the lies to the packed lunches. They're easier, really: they come with much less scrutiny.

Sometimes, on his way back from made-up errands, he hears Foggy and Karen discussing and speculating in hushed tones. He listens to them from the hallway, leaned up against the wall next to the office front door, as they commiserate over paperwork and cold coffee and half-eaten takeout.

- I'm just saying… I don't know what I'm trying to say. I'm just saying it's weird for Matt to bail on Thai food.

- Maybe he's watching his sodium?

- That's not funny.

- I know. Sorry.

- Something's up, you know?

- He's stressed. He'll be okay.

And it's true: Matt will be okay. He always is. The dishonesty is uncomfortable, but Matt knows well enough that explaining everything to Foggy (everything meaning broken senses and not all the underlying shit he won't even tell his priest ), wouldn't make Foggy worry any less. Just the opposite; it would probably kick Foggy's worrying into an even higher gear of scrutiny and stress and well-intentioned worrywart mothering.

The last thing he needs to do is present Foggy with another problem he can't fix.


Foggy gets back to the office with banh mi and an iced coffee and Matt's pretty sure he waves it around the office as he eats it just to get the smell creeping up Matt's nose.

"Alright, you were right. I should have gotten takeout," Matt admits, good-naturedly. He waits until Foggy's finished eating to say it, though, because he knows without a doubt that if he hadn't Foggy would've offered him half.


The public latches on to Colin's story quickly, just like they do with all tragedies involving little kids. It's only a few days before his name is released to the press, but they all call him the Harbour Angel anyway.

The nickname (Is that what you call those kinds of things ? Matt wonders darkly) makes him want to crawl out of his skin every time he hears it - from the radio of a passing car, from his neighbour's TV left on at four in the morning, from hushed conversations over brunch heard from two blocks away.

The community sets up an evening vigil in his memory, banding together around the memory of a boy no-one bothered to look for, a boy nobody rallied around when he was still alive. It's an opportunity to light candles that warm their faces and hands, but it doesn't change anything.

Matt goes anyway.

He tries to sneak away to attend without Foggy or Karen suspecting anything, ducking out of the office with a mumbled excuse and a flash of a smile, but they're already two steps ahead of him.

"We're all going," Foggy says, his hand heavy on Matt's shoulder. It's half-statement, half-don't-argue-with-me, and Matt almost finds it in him to feel grateful. Karen pulls on her big wool coat and loops her arm through his, their bodies bumping gently against one another as they walk the handful of blocks towards the community gardens, Foggy following behind.

The vigil is packed. There are more people than can fit in the walled-in garden and they spill onto the sidewalk and street, obstructing traffic. The solemnity seems to permeate the area, though, because no-one honks. The cars just creep through the crowd, engines humming and radios turned down.

"There's a lot of people here, easily a couple hundred," Karen says for Matt's sake. "Do you want a candle? They're lighting candles." Matt doesn't, not at all - he wants to be part of the rite and entirely separate from it at the same time - but he still nods, once, and she lets go of his arm with a gentle parting pat on his hand. "Be right back."

His ears catch the sounds of a Hail Mary, whispered softly somewhere in the crowd, and he follows along automatically, lips moving soundlessly,

- Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at our hour of our death. Amen.

"You say something?" Foggy asks.

"Nah." Matt shakes his head. "There's a chill in the air." He shoves his hands under his armpits and tries to quiet the din of voices from the crowd all fighting for dominance in his head.

- and when I saw his picture on the news, I couldn't believe it -

- little blond thing, what kind of monster -

- those men will pay, does New York State have the death penalty?

"Yeah," Foggy nods. He blows into his hands and rubs them together. "Nice to see all these people showing up. Showing they care." He touches Matt's back, a small gesture. After the past few nights - waking up to half-remembered nightmares and twitchy fists - the touch should have made his brain spark and his body yank away. But it's neutral. Calming. It's ok, even though nothing's okay.

Karen wanders back with their candles and Matt lets her guide his hand to the cheap plastic handle.

Soon, the crowd is a sea of little flickers of heat: hundreds of heartbeats and tiny candle flames. It takes Matt a while to identify the nostalgic ache that rises in his chest, but it comes back to him all at once. He remembers coming to the community gardens as a kid. He'd always try to come just as the sun was setting, right when it got dark but the humid summer heat was still settled thickly across Hell's Kitchen. He'd pull on his dad's sleeve and tell him to hurry up, that they were going to be late . Because, at sunset: that's when the fireflies would come out.

Tonight's too cold for fireflies, but the tiny flames are close enough and Matt hopes, he hopes they can be seen. Way up there. Matt crosses himself covertly before they leave and tilts his head towards the sky with a silent prayer.

Di meliora.


It's not long before he tracks down Colin's - he doesn't want to call them parents. Parents is more than they deserve.

The cops couldn't make the charges stick, so they go free, and Matt quickly finds them squatting in a warehouse with a vinegar-and-sweat aura of heroin fumes and body odour. The smell floats for half a mile around the place and he has to approach the entrance with his nose pressed into his elbow.

Curled up together on a ratty corduroy couch, they're the most stereotypical junkies he could have imagined. They have greasy hair and knobby, scabbed bodies and sour breath like the steaming piles of garbage that line Manhattan's streets in the summer, the ones that make him stumble back like he's been punched in the nose on the days the temperature hits 85. Nodding in and out, they don't notice him right away, so Matt pulls the guy up from the sofa by his throat and tosses him against the wall like a ragdoll.

It wakes him out of his stupor quick enough.

The guy tries to explain, his tongue slowed and fumbling from the dope:

"We didn't know what to do!"

Tries to reason with Matt, as if someone in a mask is someone looking to be reasoned with:

"We needed the money. He's a good boy, but we needed the money."

They both cry, snot-nosed and pathetic, hands out and begging for forgiveness:

"What were we supposed to do? We couldn't pay them back, we don't have any money. They were going to kill us. It was our only way to pay back what we owed."

"They said they'd take care of him, how were we supposed to know?"

Their pathetic attempts at wiggling their way out make Matt's jaw twitch and his fists tighten and he has to punch the wall, his fist making the brick shudder ever so slightly, to keep himself from wrapping his fingers around the man's throat. Pain radiates from his knuckles, glowing and pulsing, and it eases the rage in his brain just enough that he's able to remind himself why he's here.

The distraction is just enough that he can remind himself he doesn't kill. Won't kill. Won't let this motherfucker be the exception to that rule.

The worst part is: he can tell by their heartbeats that they believe their own lies.

"Where can I find Zotov?" He hisses, lips millimetres from the junkie's ear. His hand is wrapped in the guy's shirt and he presses him backwards.

There's a grinding sound, the sound of the guy's shoulderblades pressing into the rough brick, and it's met with a painful wheeze escaping from the junkie's lips.

"Who?"

Matt pulls his head back and drives it forward again, his forehead connecting hard with the bridge of the motherfucker's nose. There's a second satisfying clunk, as the guy's head bounces off of Matt's skull and cracks backwards against the brick.

He scrambles like a rat in a trap and lashes out with every limb, grubby fingers scratching at Matt's face and torso.

Matt slams his fist into the guy's nose to subdue him.

"Don't fuck with me," Matt warns. There's blood pouring out of the guy's face and Matt does his best to avoid the biohazard as his fingers find purchase once again on the junkie's shirt.

Matt whips him to the ground and kicks him, once, twice in the ribs. Once more in the teeth, for good measure. He feels the split-hotdog sensation of the fucker's lip busting open under his shoe and a bolt of satisfaction shoots through Matt's brain.

The guy is on all fours and crying like a little kid, drooling a puddle of blood onto the floor through the holes left by his missing teeth. Matt kicks him in the gut again, hears the thud of the impact against his liver. "You better start giving me something useful before I rupture every last organ barely keeping you alive."

You see, the thing about junkies is they don't have much resolve.

Don't ask them to keep your secrets.

The guy must have decided that he'd rather keep the last couple of rotted teeth in his mouth, because he starts leaking information: slow and steady like an oilspill, and maybe none of it is good, maybe none of it is true - he's just a fucking junkie, half out of it and desperate to keep the rest of his teeth - but Matt lets him cry on the floor until his words run out and his breaths turn into ragged sobs.

"They said they'd take good care of him," he chokes out, once his information runs dry. "They said our debt would be wiped clean. They were paying us - in, in -" he digs in his pocket and pulls out something small. Matt sniffs the air and holds out his hand and feels tiny balloons of heroin drop into his palm. "They said he could come back after a few months."

From his heartbeat, Matt can tell he's most likely telling the truth. He still breaks the bastard's jaw in three places, anyway, as his wife (co-conspirator, travel partner on the road to hell - whatever) screams bloody murder, huddled up in the corner.

"They should have killed you instead."

He says it quietly over his shoulder as he leaves, contaminated blood dripping from his knuckles. Then he leaves them there, leaves them in the vinegar-and-sweat squat to live with their sins.

From the sounds of their heartbeats receding behind him, he can tell they know he's right.


The anxiety from the junkies leaves him on edge (murderous might be the right word, but it's exactly the mental state he's trying to avoid), so he heads straight to Fogwell's to spend the energy sizzling in his muscles.

It's a good idea and a bad idea, all at once: a good idea, because it gives him the opportunity to pummel the hell out of something that won't up and die from blunt force trauma.

It's a bad idea, because he's been running on near-empty since his senses have shot to eleven and the last thing he needs to do is burn more calories than he can afford.

In the last two-weeks-and-change he's lost seven pounds (and eight ounces - he doesn't need a talking scale to know exactly how much he's down). It's not enough to be immediately visible with clothes on - his jaw is just a touch sharper, his trousers just a smidge looser. But he can feel the difference clear as day when he shifts his weight from foot to foot, or when he pushes himself out of bed in the morning.

When he runs his fingertips over his arms, his stomach, his ribs, he can feel the distance between skin and muscle growing smaller, millimetre by millimetre.

It's a sick thought, the kind you hide in the deepest untouched part of your brain, but it feels oddly like his real self is coming to the surface. He feels like Saint Catherine - his spirit becoming cleaner, purer, less weighted-down by the profane. (Whatever. He reminds himself: Saint Catherine was a kook.)

He also doesn't have enough energy right now to spend it worrying about any of that shit (his punches getting weaker, his metabolism chewing at his muscles like a hungry dog, the hazy aura creeping in at the edges of his senses) so he focuses everything on the heavy bag.

Hard jab, right hook, bob, jab, jab, hard hook with the left.

Come to think of it, he's not sure if he can blame oversensitive senses anymore, if his avoidance of food is becoming less out of disgust and more out of habit, whether the gnawing hunger in his stomach is becoming a comfort rather than an annoyance - No. Stop. Matt shakes his head and hisses a breath and squares off again, fists clenching and unclenching. Refocus.

Attacking the bag with a steady rhythm sets the stage for him to replay the junkie's words over and over, search for clues in the muttering and mumbling and sobs:

- Michael - Markus? Markus Wurth, maybe. Somebody Cohen. Molina. Some guy with a crooked nose - bad teeth, like real bad and black around the edges. I don't know man, these are all just names I've - we've - heard. We don't know nobody. Just names, overheard - sometimes they'd let Colin come home and he'd tell us names but I don't know, I don't know -

He runs through the list, over and over, committing it to memory:

Michael. Thump. Markus. Thump-thump. Cohen. Thump-thump. Molina. Wurth. Thump. Bad teeth. Thump.

Foggy calls him halfway through, because that's what Foggy does. He's always had an innate sense of when Matt would least like to answer his phone.

"Hey." He puts it on speaker and sets in on the ring next to him, then continues to pummel the shit out of the heavy bag.

"What's that sound?" Foggy asks. "Are you punching something?"

"Yeah," Matt grunts, a few more staccato thumps filling the silence for good measure.

"Well, could you maybe," - thump thump thump thump - "stop punching? For like a second? Jesus." thump - "MATT."

Matt stops, more because he's out of breath than because he's heard a single word Foggy's said, and he reaches out with wrapped hands to steady the bag. He pants hard. He can hear his knuckles creaking. "Sorry, yeah. I'm listening. Sorry,"

"It's okay," Foggy says. "I mean, it's good you're - nevermind. I know it's your brain-clearing ritual. Like me and spaghetti."

Matt snorts a laugh. "Yeah, totally the same."

"Eating can be a ritual. Eating is actually, like, the ultimate ritual. Worldwide. Whatever - that's actually an excellent segue, thanks for setting it up, because we're doing an old-fashioned family dinner tomorrow night."

Damn it. Matt closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the heavy bag. "We are?"

"Yes, and because I am an incredibly transparent person I'm just gonna up and tell you it's because you look like hell and your fridge is nothing but condiments and that's what friends do when their friends are going through a tough time. They make their friends a casserole. And then they make their friends eat that casserole."

"I guess I'm the one who's transparent?" Matt laughs hollowly. He regrets saying it almost as soon as it comes out of his mouth. It means admitting to more than he's really willing to admit to.

But Foggy just makes an earnest sort of noise and says, "Yeah, man. I mean, well, no - you're a fucking brick wall. But I have X-ray vision."

And it's true.

"I should tell you," Foggy continues. His voice becomes a little darker, a little more guarded. "Something kind of fucked up happened."

"Are you guys ok?" Matt asks quickly.

"Yeah, yeah," Foggy says, just as quickly. "Sorry, I shouldn't hit you with vague statements like that. Sorry. Anyway. We got a phone call the other day - same day as the vigil, I didn't want to bring it up before, but, one of those fuckers from the basement called. He was looking for representation."

"Jesus," Matt swears. He pounds a hand against the side of the bag. "He didn't go straight to Landman and Zack? The big guys?"

"From the sounds of it, the big guys didn't want the bad press. And the dude doesn't have two dimes to rub together. Which is surprising," Foggy hisses. "You'd think child-trafficking was a lucrative racket."

"I guess it was just a passion project for him," Matt says. It's gallows humor, and Matt isn't sure he has it in him for gallows humor tonight but it helps, just a little, to hear the anger in Foggy's voice. Helps to hear the anger that mirrors his own.

"Anyway," Foggy says after a moment. "Karen hung up on him once she figured out who he was. You know, on the phone, he mentioned wanting to sue 'The Daredevil'? Your first defense case with you on the wrong end of it." He laughs.

"Wow," Matt says softly. "Well. There's a first for everything."

"He wanted to sue for 'excess force,' like you're on police payroll or something. Not the sharpest tool."

"I mean, if we can get me put on city-paid leave, it wouldn't be the worst thing. I could use a vacation."

Foggy barks a laugh, just once, then falls quiet again. "I'll let you get back to your - you know. Punching. Just don't bail on us tomorrow, okay? Come for Sunday dinner."

"I will," Matt promises. He adds, because he knows he should, "Thank you. For looking out for me."

"It's my job. I'll see you later, man." Foggy disconnects.

His words hang in the air for a few moments before Matt picks up his rhythm on the heavy bag: twice as hard and twice as fast.