Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: You know you've got problems when Frank Castle is lecturing you on the importance of friendship.
Or: how Matt's broken leg becomes the least of his concerns.
Warnings: Spoilers for season 2.
Author's Notes: After so many chapters of struggle, I was shocked to find this one came together as quickly as it did! Especially with Matt being such a hot mess of emotion!
I attributed this chapter's song lyrics to the singer, not the songwriter, in keeping with my previous chapters, but I happily point to Lin-Manuel Miranda and declare, "He did it. He made this song."
I did some research on whether an ultrasound can be used to check if a broken bone has healed. Sites suggest that yes, it can; however, if my research is incorrect, I beg pardon with medical professionals out there. In my defence, Claire is canonically a wizard with medical technology.
Speaking of Claire, I have her dating Luke, but I have given very little consideration to the timeline between these series or the events of Luke Cage. I hope this isn't distracting.
Readers, dear Readers: thank you so, so much for your kind support, your wonderful responses, your engagement. Please enjoy!
"(Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it)
I am the one thing in life I can control
(Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it)
I am inimitable. I am an original.
(Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it)
I am not falling behind or running late.
(Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it)
I am not standing still: I am lying in wait."
~Leslie Odom Jr., "Wait For It"
Chapter Forty-Six
The clinic is a work in progress. Matt can smell its having been vacant in the damp concrete. Piercing through the shroud of abandonment, though, is a kind of warmth that comes with labour. This is a place where the hours of operation are a list of suggestions, where the candle gets burnt at every end. Where the resources are limited but everybody knows how to improvise.
Matt comes around to the side door as instructed, slowing once to track sirens a few blocks over. People are scattering. Chain-link fences rattle. Footsteps smack against the pavement. No sounds of Frank in pursuit. Strange.
Strange.
Burying the feeling sends Matt's heart into the pavement. He knocks at the door and prays for a quick response. Soft-soled shoes tap against the chipped tile instead; the footrace in the distance plays on Matt's nerves. He draws himself up tight against the rumble of his own pulse through the asphalt. Things aren't strange: they're fine.
The door lets out a weary sigh as it's opened, or maybe that's Claire. She sounds tired, but not the kind of tired she was at Metro General, run ragged from disciplinary ER shifts. This is purposeful, meaningful exhaustion. This is the kind of exhaustion she likes.
"Kind of expected you to come climbing in through the window like old times," she greets him.
Matt gestures to his crutch. "Not really up for much climbing lately."
"Like that would stop you."
"Touché." He's probably been doing more climbing on one leg than he did on two. "You sound good, Claire."
"I feel good," she replies, letting him inside. Matt follows behind her through a store room into an examination room buzzing with old electrical work. The fluorescence and antiseptic mixes into a harsh, sickly green odour, a kind of washed-out teal smell mixed with the aged tile. "You look good too. Aside for the shiner."
"I feel good." Well, better. Comparatively speaking. Matt keeps all that to himself. He comes to a stop in the middle of the examine room, parsing through the astringent swirl of chemicals.
Claire helps: "There's a bed just to your right."
Matt nods in gratitude. He knew there were beds but not where. The room feels a lot louder than it should with only two people inside. "How long have you been here?"
"Couple weeks." She grabs a cart. Wheels squeak across the floor towards his bedside. Claire comes to a stop and snaps on a pair of gloves. "Had to rattle a few cages for funding, take on a few volunteers, but we're open: 8 to 4 officially. Twenty-four hours if we could have it our way."
Matt gets himself up on the bed completely, stretching out his legs. "Maybe someday."
"Yeah. Maybe. If only there were a vigilante nurse who could see multiple patients at once."
"Isn't that you?"
She laughs. "Nah, I'm human. One who knows my limitations." Her voice drifts away from his chest, towards his leg. "Nice cast."
"Thank you."
"Not exactly subtle, is it?"
"Subtlety's not really my thing."
She gives another laugh. Starts undoing the straps on the cast. He lifts out his leg and lays it on the bed. Claire's heart plods through the next several beats at the sight. "This is going to leave one hell of a scar," she notes with a sigh.
Matt shrugs. "One more for the collection."
"Two more."
Oh, right – the split in the back of his calf from where the beam hit him. Forgot about that.
Claire finishes her cursory examination, lowering his leg back onto the bed. The muscle aches from her touch, but the bone is silent, holding strong under the throb. She flips a switch for the machine on the cart. Portable ultrasound machine. "You said this was a crush injury?"
"Started that way, yeah."
"Then what?"
"What do you think?"
She releases a breath, unsurprised. They both know this injury has never truly been the ceiling's fault. She nabs a bottle off the cart and gives it a hard shake, knocking the contents towards the nozzle. "This is gonna feel cold," Claire warns, alerting Matt's skin to the sensation. The gel hits him with an icy shock, soothed only by Claire's hand working it over his shin.
Matt releases his next breath slowly, trying to wrangle his thoughts to order. He keeps circling round certain details of Claire's touch - her long fingers, her taught knuckles, the smoothness of her palms. Her hands are everything Frank's aren't, and it's unsettling how he searches for points of comparison. How he waits for the heat of Frank's palms, the prickles of calluses, and how, in their absence, he's overwrought.
He buries the feeling as Claire presses the ultrasound probe to his leg. The murky swirl of the machine sends soft vibrations through his aching muscle.
Claire stares at the machine, her pulse slightly elevated, hard at work. "Shout out to your surgeon. Whoever it was did a great job." Her sigh is more impressed than exasperated. "That bone is set perfectly."
"Well, she had to open it up three times, so –"
She is giving him a look, one that washes over his face like a spray of cold water. Matt beams. Been a while since he got glared at without the threat of homicide.
The probe runs through the gel over the break, scanning. "She open it up three times in the field?"
"Only twice. Third time was in a medical facility."
His confidence wavers, stomach churning at the thought. The medical facility. Elektra's hands on the back of his neck. Perfect and cool and thoroughly different from Frank or Claire's.
If she notices, Claire doesn't say anything. Too engrossed by what she's seeing on the monitor. She shuts off the ultrasound with a heavy sigh, pulse a disappointed thrum in her chest. Matt sinks into the gurney; he can't help himself. The undercurrent of her dismay is too damn strong. He's dragged right down into the swirling current of what her heartbeat tells him: he isn't ready. The bone isn't set. He's stuck, and he's tired, and Frank's tired, and Elektra is out there, and the city – his city – needs him.
Claire rubs a wrist across her forehead. "I know I'm going to regret saying this, but it looks like you can start putting some weight back on it."
Matt's body floods with adrenaline. He springs off the bed right then and there. Claire puts he hand on his shoulder. "Not your full body weight and not for long periods of time. You really should be working with a physiotherapist, make sure you don't mess anything up."
"I'll be fine."
"Go easy on it or you won't be. You don't want your surgeon to have to open it up again."
The excitement dissipates somewhat. "No." Can't have his surgeon open up his leg ever again.
Claire switches off her gloves and shuts off the machines, rolling the cart away. Her respiration is still a long, slow crawl, a far cry from the elation he'd detected when he arrived. Matt tries to swallow the hurt at hearing the hollowness in her voice. Claire's way of distancing herself. "How'd you get here? Do you need a ride?"
"No, I have a ride. Thanks."
"Didn't think you and Foggy were on speaking terms."
"We're not. Not really. I…" cold sweat prickles between his shoulders. He's been waiting for this line of questioning since he got off the phone yesterday, but Frank's not the sort to pry into that kind of thing. Not anymore. Matt accepts the cast when Claire offers it to him and slips his leg back inside. The plush interior prickles his skin, eager and ready to be free. An explanation tumbles out of his mouth. "We had a fight. An argument."
"An argument."
Matt tries again: "A disagreement."
Better. Claire is curious: "About?"
How to describe it? "Defensive manoeuvres."
"You're not going to elaborate about that."
"No." Foggy's voicemail was lecture enough.
Claire releases a breath. "I'm seeing someone now. Guy kind of like you. Can do incredible things. Fights for his city, but he doesn't shut people out."
Matt hardens himself against what she's said, letting her words run right off him, but under his skin, the statement teams, brewing. Stewing. Not the statement he expects either. "I didn't shut Foggy out of anywhere he wanted to be."
"You know he worries about you. He's called me a bunch of times wondering where you are, how you're doing. That doesn't sound like somebody who wants to be shut out."
"Letting Foggy in doesn't stop him from worrying."
"No, it shouldn't. Friends worry about each other. And that worry used to mean something to you."
Matt grips the edge of the mattress until the tendons strain against the backs of his hands. He twists, dropping his legs down the side, letting the blood settle into his feet. "It means something to me."
Claire has no doubt. She is resolute. "I believe in what you do, Matt, but you can't do it alone."
"What choice do I have?"
He almost asks it. Almost. The words are lined up, on his tongue, ready to spill out if she presses him. And, God, it's so true, so painfully true, that he wants to know. What the hell choice does he have? All these people saying he shouldn't be alone, he can't be alone, no one makes it on their own, but they don't stay, not with the way he is, or they can't stay, not with the way they are.
Instead, Matt says, "I can't do this with him. He wants me to stop. He thinks I should fight legally. He thinks that should be enough."
"It should be."
"Yeah, but it isn't."
"Maybe someday it will be."
"But it isn't. Not yet." Matt flashes her the makings of a sad smile, trying to bolster the sound of her pulse as she distances herself from him again. "I haven't turned my back on the hope that it will be better someday, only on the idea that I need to change who I am for that to happen."
"I've told you to change."
"You've never told me to be someone that I'm not."
"I have told you to be safe. That's kind of the same thing."
Matt nods along. Yeah, fair enough. "I have been doing just fine without him."
Claire regards him steadily; he can feel her gaze hitting him square in the face. She speaks in that tone, the one that wants to provide good, objective counsel but knows different, knows better. "Maybe you have." She must see him deflate at that, even as her heartbeat refuses to give her away. "But it takes more than stitches and surgery to do what you do. The city that you're fighting for, it isn't just an idea. It's flesh and blood; it's people. And people are easy to love at a distance. But the ones that know you, that love you – the real you, not the idea of you –"
"The mask isn't the idea of me."
She keeps talking, "- they're the ones that define you. They're who changes you, for better or worse. You need to remember who you're fighting for."
"I can't keep people around for inspiration. I can't…" and that really is the end of the sentence – just that: I can't – but Matt is giving so much of himself away in the conversation, so much of what he can't articulate. The things that claw and gnash and tear away from the core of him. Claire doesn't deserve this, dealing with his mopey, pity party bullshit, and Matt can't stand how the thought comes to him in Frank's guttural snarl.
He retraces the steps of the conversation. "It isn't fair." God, he's such a child. Of course, it's not fair. None of it is. Life isn't fair, and he knows this, but it's never bothered him quite like this before, not in this context. He has to be more specific. "Foggy, Karen, you –" Frank, Elektra, Lantom, Dad "- deserve better."
"You don't think we believe that too? For you?"
Claire makes it sound like a suggestion, but that makes it worse. "I'm fine," Matt says.
He hears her nodding, feels that crawl of her jaw through the air on the back of his neck. "You think my guy should cut me loose? Spare me the pain of losing him?"
Matt beams. His insides are crumbling away, but the thought of someone trying to get rid of Claire? "I don't think he could if he tried."
She huffs, smiling appreciatively but sadly. "Could say the same about Foggy."
Their phone call buzzes away inside of him, trapped in that same festering pocket of everything else he can't face. Foggy's voicemail, angry and embittered about Frank taking shots outside of the church, the same voice that answered the phone when Matt called. At the time, the fury spoke the loudest, and Matt matched Foggy's tone, blow for blow. But sitting in the clinic, Claire's heartbeat murmuring across the way - the gentle warmth of it – slow footsteps crossing weathered wood, the lone survivor on a storm-battered ship - suddenly it's the quiet of the phone call that speaks louder. Foggy, on the other line, listening to him, crying faintly under the tirade.
Matt drops off the gurney onto his one good leg. He positions his broke leg under him, easing more and more weight towards the ball of his foot. The floor greets him, solid under foot, then a spark of pain when the muscle realizes what's happening. He immediately withdraws, but his point of focus is fixed on finally. Finally, he is back on two feet. So what if it hurts: the right thing always hurts. His leg, his heart, Foggy…right things, they hurt.
Right?
"Thank you, Claire," he says.
Her hand, her bare hand – tender but tough, hard-worked but relieved – comes to rest on his shoulder. Matt holds himself at an angle away from the touch, all the better to absorb Claire, to hold onto her for as long as he can.
She slips away too soon, always too soon. "Take care of yourself."
He nods to her, forcing a smile he doesn't feel. His broken leg lowers and touches the floor, sparking his senses fresh with a finally he doesn't feel either. "You too."
Matt pretends he's meeting his ride a block south of the clinic to slip out of Claire's sight. He perches on a rooftop, shoulders up against the cold. Hands in his pockets, fingers on his right playing across the screen of his phone in anticipation. Frank told him to call, and he will, but not yet.
He takes his time riding the ebbs and flows of Harlem. Foot traffic is light. Cars rumble down the street. Jazz music pulses from an underground club as a bassline doofs and pounds from down the street. A heartbeat passes on the sidewalk below – a man, big guy, broad-shouldered with hands bouncing inside the front pocket of his hoodie. He comes to stand next to the front door of the clinic to wait.
The door rattles as it opens. Matt rises slightly from his hiding place, listening, poised to throw on his hood and hop down if need be. The man's pulse quickens as Claire steps out. She slams the door, checks the lock, and then her heart is quickening too. Blood rushes to her cheeks or maybe that's his, Matt's, as he sinks back down on the rooftop.
He focuses on the music, on the buzz of electricity, on the voices from the line-up outside a club. Still, Matt can't help overhearing the sound of Claire's hand being held, of her footsteps being matched. Of the low voice asking, "How's your friend?" and Claire hesitating, her scarf swishing against her neck as she surveys the rooftops.
"You're not gonna-" the man cuts off midsentence as if signalled. "Okay," he decides, "How are you?"
Claire's reply consists of holding his hand more tightly and saying, tiredly, "I'm good."
They fade into the cityscape and Matt lets them, hating himself for not providing Claire with more privacy. All his talk about people deserving better, and here he is eavesdropping on her and her new boyfriend.
He pulls his phone from his pocket and unlocks it, but then he sits, stewing in a wave of indecision. Call Frank. Go back to the Bronx. Or maybe go straight back to Hell's Kitchen, let him work out rehabilitation on his own. Not like there's anything tying them together. His proposing a stand against Elektra seemed more realistic before last night. Now, Frank's debt is more than repaid, and they both have work to do.
The prospect of returning home compels Matt to act. He calls Frank, spares just enough time to relay that he's finished, then disconnects, dragging the sounds and smells of Harlem close as a balm against his insides.
"Call Foggy," Matt tells his phone, but he doesn't get to the first ring before disconnecting. He buries his hands in his pockets, clutching his phone so tight the screen might snap. He hops to his right foot, plants his left on the ground, and presses. The bone holds but not without pain. He is going to need to rebuild the muscle in his calf before he'll be getting too far.
Frank's car pulls up outside the clinic. The familiar smell of exhaust wafts across the rooftop. Matt grabs his crutch and is off the roof, tumbling across the lid of the dumpster to land in the alley before he remembers that he doesn't need it. He lifts himself off the damn thing, reveling in the joy of being free, of being almost his old self again.
Finally.
He goes to put the crutch in the dumpster. Where it belongs really, and definitely where it's headed when he gets home to Hell's Kitchen. Seems like a waste to have to lug the damn thing around.
The car rolls up to meet him at the mouth of the alley. The passenger window between him and Frank comes rushing down. "You hit your head on your way off that roof? Haven't been on that leg in weeks. You're low weightbearing. At best. You bring that crutch and get your ass in the car." Frank continues grumbling as the window rolls back up. "Still hopping around on one foot...Jesus…"
Matt draws the crutch away from the lid of the dumpster as Frank commands, but he doesn't prop himself on it. He puts his left foot on the ground in front of him and half-steps, mostly-hops the five paces to the waiting vehicle. His leg muscle's screams grow with intensity the whole way, but he makes it and sinks into the passenger seat. He's greeted by the ticking timebomb of Frank's heartbeat, the sound of his muscles tensing under his skin, the implicit threat of violence bearing down on him from the driver's seat.
"And get that smirk off your face," Frank growls.
No way in hell, Matt thinks, tossing the crutch in the backseat.
Heading across the Harlem Bridge into the Bronx brings some of the chaos inside Matt to settle, at least until Frank takes them off course.
At first, Matt thinks he's trying to obscure the route back to the apartment, but rolling down the window reveals them entering a different neighbourhood. Industrial. Warehousing. The scene of metal runs heavy from a nearby scrapyard.
"Where are we going?" Matt asks.
Frank doesn't answer, not even as he pulls into a gravel lot and parks the car. He shoves Matt's crutch at him before leaving the vehicle.
Matt joins him in the lot, listening. Errant snowflakes spark against his skin, carried on the breeze from a metal roof, ringing softly in the cold. The building before them is long, stretching back into a dark infinity. Broken glass rattles in high windows; winter wind wheezes through the vacant rafters.
He follows the scrape of Frank's footsteps towards squeaking hinges and a rusty door. Inside reeks of tarps and wooden crates undercut by metal and oil and the spicy-tang of gunpowder. Frank's cache of weapons, the ones from the apartment, safely stowed since he murdered Sato.
The smell turns Matt's stomach. He treads as lightly as he can into the space, saliva curdling with every puff of dust that hits his lips. Frank slams the door behind him, and despite the broken windows up at the ceiling, the air on the ground is stagnant, thick with war.
"What are we doing here?" Matt asks.
Frank has slipped amongst the stacks. His voice breaks and bounces off the walls of the space. "What do you think?"
He draws a hand over the nearest crate, the tingle of explosives radiating into his palm. "I think I'm going to start dismantling weapons, you don't wanna tell me what this is."
Takes Matt a second to figure out the acoustics to track Frank with how deep he's gotten. "You said we needed a plan. I started planning."
Matt leans his crutch against the wall. He hops onto a tool chest, skips lightly onto a pile of weapons cases, and jumps up to get himself into the rafters. He lifts his head until his hearing clears and the space opens and the echo will be the loudest. "This is an armoury."
Frank keeps talking, stalking. "Not quite."
The wind chooses that moment to gust, painting a clear portrait of the warehouse. Rough terrain loaded with potential hiding places. Frank's weapons cache to build traps. Block off the windows and the rafters won't rattle, concealing which beams are safe and which aren't.
Matt swings across the ceiling, coming to the centre of the room. When he mentioned a plan, he assumed for storming Hell's Kitchen. "This is a trap."
Frank's voice appears from below him. "Got the Bronx cops on the horn about someone fitting your MO. Knew from the beginning: it's only a matter of time before they show up."
"There's been no sign of the Hand in the Bronx. Elektra would be here by now if she knew where I was."
"Don't know what to tell you, Red. Your girl didn't become Queen of the Ninja Cult for nothing."
Elektra's voice finds him, then, in a spiral of winter. "You've never been hard to find."
Matt slips away from her, swinging onto one of the larger, wooden crates. He looms, catching the sudden spike in Frank's heart rate straight to his chest. Big, bad Punisher wasn't expecting little Daredevil to sneak up on him.
Give Matt hope that the ninjas will feel the same way.
"Let's get to work," he says.
Happy reading!