God, everything hurt. This was worse than the time Matt had been hit by a car, worse than when he had chemicals splashed in his eyes. His insides squeezed. It felt like someone had ripped out his intestines, chopped them up, and then threw them back in. He was bleeding everywhere, holes in places he didn't even know his body could be punctured by. His legs had a thousand needles prickling, not leaving a dull, throbbing ache, but a constant all throughout his body. He didn't even know how he got on the couch but he knew he couldn't move, ripping the stitches would feel like ripping open his entire skin at this point.
And now, to make it worse, Foggy was yelling at him, cross-examining Matt like he was on trial because his friend had found out he was the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Matt wanted to scream, but that would probably just rip his stitches. This was a nightmare.
It had exploded in his face per usual, and the more questions Foggy asked, the more upset he started to get. When Matt mentioned his heart rate, though, he knew that was a mistake as soon as he said it.
"You can hear a heartbeat? From across the room?" Foggy's heart skipped in succession with his words.
Matt cringed but answered. "Helps to anticipate behavior," he admitted. "When someone's gonna attack, when they're lying." He could barely keep his eyes open.
"That's how you knew Karen was telling the truth - when we first met her at the precinct," Foggy said. His voice sounded far away even though he was across the room.
"Yeah." He turned his head slightly, biting back a groan of pain, but everything outside was quieter, lower-pitched. As if someone had turned down the volume.
"You listened to her heartbeat without her permission?" Foggy demanded. "We're lawyers! You can't do that! There's a system in place, and it's weird and invasive and—wait."
Foggy paused; Matt thought he heard his heart stutter, but he could barely make it out. "Are you telling me that since I've known you, any time I wasn't telling the truth, you knew? And what, you just played along?"
Matt swallowed. "Basically." Even his voice sounded quiet. His head was full of cotton, the pain, everything starting to just throb.
"If you weren't half dead, I would kick your ass, Murdock," Foggy snapped. "Am I lying about that?"
"No." Things were starting to fade out. The pain, the sirens and cars outside. Even his outline, perception of Foggy was blurring.
"Was anything ever real with us?"
Was Foggy still talking to him? The world swirled around Matt. He was falling, except that couldn't be right—he was laying down, wasn't he?
He thought he heard Foggy say something, but the words were garbled, not making any sense. He closed his eyes, letting everything else—the sounds of the city, the feel of his body—fade.