Nick III: All Black

As summer wound to a close, Nick grew more and more nervous for the future. He practiced Braille every day in the hopes of mastering it before school started and he convinced Mom to let Jake take him around the city for walks to practice navigating. At first, she'd been adamant that he was not allowed to leave the building without her, but after hours of begging she conceded to changing the rule to, "No leaving the building without a supervisor." Dawn was still too young to count as a supervisor, but sometimes she tagged along when Nick and Jake took a walk.

His little siblings had taken on their new responsibilities with surprising grace and maturity. It had taken a while to get the new habits to stick, but he and Dawn now consistently kept the floor of their rooms clean, pushed in their chairs at the kitchen table, and put things in their shared bathroom back in the same place so Nick could find them. Mom had become extra stern about that one after Nick accidentally brushed his teeth with hand lotion that happened to be in a tube identical in shape to their toothpaste. It had taken him hours to get the taste out of his mouth, and Mom even looked up whether or not she needed to call poison control.

Fortunately, incidents like that didn't happen very often, and Nick grew more independent by the day. He could walk around their apartment in relative confidence without having his hand against the wall, although they still hadn't put anything back up on the walls in case he knocked them down and broke a picture frame. Going out in public still challenged him, but he could do their block and the two adjacent blocks without much trouble. Nick knew it would be a long while before he developed his mental map of the city enough to venture far independently. His current goal was to be able to walk to school and back by winter break.

The first day of school was two weeks away, and the nervous feeling in Nick's gut bubbled higher every day. He didn't think he'd actually be able to tell if people stared at him, but it was the knowledge that they definitely would be that set him on edge. Nick didn't like to be the center of attention; he preferred to silently observe—or, nowadays, silently listen. Would his teachers treat him differently, besides accommodating his disability? He tried to remember if they'd acted noticeably different towards Matthew when he went blind, but he couldn't remember.

With all of that out of his control, Nick redirected his attention and efforts to something he could control. "Mom, can we go clothes shopping soon?" he asked.

"Have you grown out of things?"

"Not really, I just want to change it up."

"Why? What's wrong with your current wardrobe?"

Nick didn't often ask for things, instead wearing clothes or shoes until they were too small or completely worn through, because he knew Mom didn't like to spend money unless absolutely necessary. But when he went back to school in the fall he didn't want the only noticeable difference to be the white cane he now carried.

"Nothing. I just don't think it suits me as a person anymore."

She paused. Nick could guess the expression she wore on her face because it was the same one she always got when she considered something. "Alright. I suppose I can go shopping. Are you coming with me?"

She always asked that now when she ran errands, instead of forcing him and his siblings to come or dropping them at Mrs. Hargrove's. Even though Nick was thirteen and technically old enough to babysit, she didn't trust him alone with Jake and Dawn. Though he didn't particularly like the implication that he couldn't handle that responsibility, he understood on a fundamental level that he probably couldn't, at least not now when he was so newly disabled.

"Yeah, I'll come." He needed all the practice he could get navigating. Additionally, he'd grown more sensitive to the textures of things and he wanted the chance to feel fabric before she bought anything for him to wear. Mom dragged Jake and Dawn along with them. She let Nick cane, but also kept an arm interlaced with his free one just in case. He doubted she'd let him navigate the city independently any time soon. Subway stations still scared the shit out of him, with so many overlapping noises and the possibility of falling in front of a moving train. Nick let Mom do most of the guiding and they made it safely to the store. Fortunately, it wasn't very crowded.

"Nick, do you want new pants or shirts?" Mom asked.

"A bit of both."

"What color?"

"Black."

"And?"

"Nothing else. Just black."

"Why don't you want to wear clothes with different colors?" Dawn asked innocently.

"I see all black when I look at you, so you're gonna see all black when you look at me," he quipped. Nick heard Mom practically snort with laughter.

"We could just get him a pink one and he'd never know," Jake whispered to Dawn. He was a terrible whisperer, though, and Dawn's giggle only drew more attention to the comment.

"Don't you dare," Nick growled.

"Jake, no," Mom scolded. "We would never do that to your brother."

"They do make color detectors, so I would find you out," Nick said, glaring in Jake's general direction.

"Nick, you have my solemn word that I will not buy anything humiliating," Mom said.

"Thank you."

They spent about an hour looking through clothes, Nick feeling each and every article before approving or declining it. Jake and Dawn kept getting distracted by flippy sequined T-shirts, and the sound of them flipping them over and over again nearly drove Nick crazy. He only walked into a rack of clothes once, which was an improvement over his last foray into a public place like this. Nick considered the trip a roaring success, and they walked out with several plain black T-shirts, a jacket, a few pairs of jeans, and a pair of dress pants. Though he hadn't mentioned this aspect to his family, Nick looked forward to not having to ask Jake if his clothes matched when he got dressed in the morning. Owning all black certainly simplified that.

~0~

Before school started, they let Nick come in and walk all the routes he'd need to know for his schedule that year. Finding his way in completely vacant hallways was difficult enough; he was not looking forward to attempting it in a school full of other children. He couldn't ask Red to guide him everywhere because they weren't in all the same classes, but Nick didn't possess nearly enough confidence in his caning ability to stroll through crowded hallways. New York sidewalks were hard enough. Fortunately, they informed him that he'd get to leave all his classes a few minutes early to avoid that exact problem. Nick reevaluated his opinion of New York public schools after that. Mom had considered switching him to a school specifically for the blind, but not only could they not afford it, Nick didn't want his entire life to revolve around his new disability. Besides, Matthew had been surviving in a normal school as a blind person for three years. If he could do it, so could Nick.

He expected special treatment on the first day. What he didn't expect was being ushered into an unoccupied office with the special ed teacher who usually worked with Matthew—and Matthew himself. Nick hadn't even known he was there until he said hello.

"Hi," Nick said hesitantly. He had no idea what was going on. They'd told him he'd attend classes normally for the first part of the day and spend only last period in the resource room. Evidently, today was different. "Do you have any idea what we're doing here?" he asked. The special ed teacher, Miss Page, had stepped out after Matthew arrived, leaving just the two of them in an empty room together.

"My best guess? They're trying to get us to make friends," he said casually. Nick didn't know if he wanted to be offended that they'd been so presumptuous or grateful that they'd introduced him to another kid with similar life experience. Ever since he first learned that he'd be losing his sight, Nick had been thinking about Matthew. What were the odds that he wasn't the first kid in his school to go blind? It seemed like they were destined to cross paths.

"This is how you make friends?" Nick asked sarcastically. "Then I've been doing it wrong my entire life."

Matthew chuckled. "Me too."

"Although I will admit I'm glad not to be the only one."

"Oh good, you said it first," Matthew said. "If I said that, I'd sound like an asshole who's been secretly wishing vision loss on his peers for the past three years."

Nick gasped in mocking realization. "So it was you who planted that bottle of poison eyedrops in my medicine cabinet?"

"Shhh. The cops still haven't caught me."

While this interaction between the two of them had started as something completely forced, orchestrated by whichever authorities at the school had decided that maybe the two blind kids would get along with each other, it quickly morphed into something that felt completely natural. Matthew's sense of humor matched Nick's almost exactly, and he did think it would be nice to have a friend who understood what it was like to lose his sight.

Their laughter died down and Matthew cleared his throat, sounding suddenly serious. "Listen, Nick. I was really sorry to hear about your eye. It's not an easy club to join."

"Thanks Matthew. I know I never said anything before, but I was sorry to hear about your accident. But good for you, saving that man."

"I go by Matt," he said bluntly. "And thanks."

"So…how long are we just gonna sit here? Isn't it illegal to leave students unsupervised this long?" Miss Page still hadn't returned from wherever she disappeared to.

"I have no clue. I guess they think it's safe since we're less likely to try and sneak off."

"Fair."

"Can I ask a rude question?" Matt asked.

"Uh, sure."

"You had cancer in your eyes, right?"

"Yeah."

"And they removed them both?"

"Not at the same time, but yeah."

"So are your eye sockets just…empty?"

Nick chuckled. "No. When they take out an eye, they sew in an implant so the socket keeps its shape. I put prosthetic eyes over top of that like putting in a contact lens."

"Neat."

"My turn for rude questions."

"Shoot."

"You still have your eyeballs, right?"

"Yeah."

"So…what can you see?"

"You mean how much vision do I have left?"

"Yeah."

"I can see vague shapes, some light and shadows. Little enough to be classified as legally blind."

"I was always curious," Nick admitted.

"Everyone always is."

Since losing his last eye, Nick had never felt so at ease with anybody. When he talked to sighted people, he was constantly wary of his expression and body language, knowing that they could see him and he couldn't. But with Matt, he didn't have to worry about any of that. They stood on equal footing in terms of what they could perceive of each other.

"Do you know how to read Braille yet?" Matt asked.

"I started working on it over the summer. I know all the letters, but I'm not very fluent yet."

"It takes some time to get used to, but you'll get the hang of it."

"I hope so. This school thing is going to be pretty hard without it."

"Miss Page is good about reading anything that teachers don't give us in Braille. But that usually just applies to homework written on the board before the beginning of class."

"That's good. I'm guessing they put us in all the same classes since Miss Page can't be in two places at once?"

"I think so."

"Well I guess we'll be seeing a lot of each other, then."

"Nick, I can't see any of you," Matt informed him. "That's the whole point."

"Damn, you're right." They both lost it, laughing so hard that they still hadn't composed themselves by the time Miss Page returned. Evidently, their plan to force a friendship upon them had worked perfectly. But Nick liked to think that he and Matt would have become friends regardless.

~0~

Over the course of the first week of school, he met the rest of the kids in special education. Jessica and Frank both had learning difficulties following traumatic brain injuries, the former from a car accident and the latter from a bullet to the head from a shooting at a carousel that had made the news a few years ago. Danny only came in to dictate his assignments with Miss Page; severe burns had rendered his hands all but useless. And Luke…Nick didn't really know. The kid didn't talk much, and when Nick asked Matt about him all he would really say was he had, "thick skin," whatever that meant. But he was nice enough. All of them were cordial, but knew him mostly as "Matt's friend." They all clearly knew Matt already, but whether they hung out only because they all found themselves in the same program at school or because they genuinely got along Nick didn't know. He and Matt grew closer over time, and that's all that mattered to him. Nick had never been of a "more the merrier" mindset when it came to friends. Before he lost his sight, he hung out with Red and not many other people. He'd never felt the need to widen his social circle before, and he certainly didn't feel that need now. Matt and Nick's Gravesen buddies were more than enough.

I thought I'd throw in a few more little cameos, for all the Defenders fans out there. I've seen Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Punisher, but I'm still working my way through the other series. Personally, Jessica Jones season 1 is my favorite, but David Tennant's Kilgrave is probably 90% responsible for that preference. It was such a fascinating and well-performed character.