Matt is holding a mug of shitty coffee in his hand.
Correction: Matt was holding a mug of shitty coffee in his hand. Now it's on the floor in pieces, which is an apt description for his life.
"Matt?" Karen asks from the other room, and he is suddenly, awfully grateful that Foggy's out to get lunch, that Foggy isn't here to see him break, too.
"Sorry," Matt croaks out. The coffee and ceramic shards are on the floor at his feet. Is there coffee on his shoes? He doesn't know.
"Hey, hey. It's okay. Don't move. I got it," Karen says, coming over to presumably clean up Matt's mess of a life.
The coffee, he means. That's a lot easier to fix.
"I'm sorry," he says, feeling absurdly like he's drowning again—Was that just last week?—and the water is on all sides, everywhere, trapping him in, keeping air and life and noise out, filling his lungs and head with dark and murky thoughts.
He'd almost given up, down there.
Karen rushes to throw everything in the trash and wipe up the spill, and then she takes his hands into her own. They stand there, facing one another, though he cannot see it. He realizes, belatedly, that his hands are trembling, so much more obvious now that they're cradled in Karen's still and strong and firm hands.
"What's going on in that head of yours?" she asks softly, squeezing his hands a little despite the tremors that he can't seem to stop.
Matt swallows. "Wasted a mug," he replies, which isn't the ideal answer, and she's disappointed, he knows it.
"We can get a new one," she says. "We'll go mug shopping, next week. Get one with silly pictures on it you can't see but clients will ask about, or get one of those ones you can draw on with a marker." She pauses. "Or, get a few textured ones so we can all feel the difference."
Matt breathes in tandem with her before he even registers that he had trouble with it before. "That'd be nice," he says, very quietly, so unlike the Matt Murdock in court, so weak and small.
"Yeah," she says, pulling him over to the table and pulling out a chair. He sits down, and then she sits down in another chair, and they're still there, facing each other in the same space.
"I think I gave him the wrong advice," Matt whispers after a minute. His hands had gradually stopped shaking, but now they're starting up again. He seems to have no control over his body. Did he ever?
"Aaron James?" Karen says, connecting the dots. "I noticed you pulled him aside after the trial."
Matt nods. "He said...he said that he just wanted his life back, and then I told him that no one could, that you had to take it back yourself, but what if I was lying to him?" he gasps out, shuddering, his shoulders shaking too. "What if you can't take it back either, and it's just stuck in the void or something and you're left with nothing."
"You're not nothing, you don't have nothing," Karen says, reaching up to place her hands on his shoulders.
"I thought I had taken it back," he admits. "But everything's gone to shit, and what right do I have to give him advice or- or false hope when my life's a mess, too?"
"Life is messy," Karen says suddenly, voice thick like she's trying not to cry, and the guilt curls in his stomach because he hadn't meant to make her cry. Damn it, Murdock. You can't do anything right. "And you will fight against it but sometimes it'll get messier. It's not something you can control. It's not your fault."
"It feels like it," Matt mutters.
"No," Karen says, and he can imagine her shaking her head vigorously. "Remember that you have taken it back. How many people can say they took down Fisk and survived?"
Matt pauses. "Is that a rhetorical question, or...?"
Karen laughs a little. "Not my point."
"Sorry." He also laughs a little, genuinely smiling. He reaches up to grab onto one of her hands and realizes that he's stopped shaking.
"Your amazing lawyer skills have helped us win case after case for good people," Karen continues. "You're an inspiration to Hell's Kitchen, whether you like it or not." And then, much quieter: "Aaron James looks up to you for good reason, and so do I."
"Karen," he starts to protest.
"It's true," she says. "Believe me."
And without question (without hearing her heartbeat), he does.
So what I've realized writing this fic is that canon Matt Murdock is a lot easier to write than this AU Matt Murdock. When you write in canon Matt's POV, you obviously can't use sight, but you can still describe other characters' actions, for the most part, and you're not lost as much. You even have the added element of hearing heartbeats and other things like that. In this AU, Matt's completely blind, there's no way around it, and at first, as an author, you try to get around it 'cause you're so used to it, but you soon realize that you can't. You're restricted from describing a lot, but you have to find a way to still make things clear while being as accurate as possible.
I guess my point is that writing this fic has been a very interesting experience.
