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: I knew this chapter was coming before I really knew where this story was going to end. Way, way back in the earliest days of this fic, I planned for this chapter to happen, and I planned for it to be happy, comforting, wonderful.
But then fifty chapters of this story happened, and the happy, comforting, wonderful chapter I planned got complicated, got fraught. I no longer had such a neat and tidy resolution here, and as frustrating as the writing process was, I'm quietly proud of how this story has come together, of how much deeper the relationships have become in it.
There is a final installment coming by mid-August to round everything off. For now, I hope you, dear Readers, enjoy this chapter!
"Loving it higher stays.
Lovin' until we hate.
Pushin' until we break
I hope your heart don't disappear.
Lovin' you ain't easy.
It's fire and then it's rain.
It's fire and then it's rain."
~Elijah Wood x Jamie Fine, "Ain't Easy"
Chapter Fifty-Five
Fog settles in low and thick atop Matt's thoughts, and he becomes aware that he's in the backseat, Devil at the wheel, running and flipping, lassoing and sling-shotting across town. The Hand are long gone, as is Elektra, as is Frank, but he's following something.
He stops, taking a second to get himself back under control, but suddenly, he's spinning. His body stings and aches and burns. Tears and sweat comingle, scalding under his mask before freezing in the stubble on his chin. His stomach rollicks, bile sloshing against the back of his throat, knocking hard against his diaphragm that staggers through its motions. Breath comes too quick and then not at all.
The Devil pushes him down, down into the backseat of the vehicle, warm under a leather duster, leg elevated on his armour, thoughts spinning and churning with the idea of fear. The notion that this should be terrifying, but it isn't. Not with the Devil driving.
Not with the Devil driving.
Hell's Kitchen pierces the haze, but Matt is still a passenger when his hand wraps around the handle on his rooftop access. When he spills onto the landing of his cold apartment and closes the door behind him. He stumbles down the first few stairs, takes a tumble down the last of them. Knocks his already knocked heard around some more, but that's okay. He's okay. He's fine. He tears off his mask. Tosses it aside. Lets the cold lick at his sweat-soaked hair, ease some of the heat raging through him. He really can't catch his breath; his ribs sting and stubbornly hold their position. His vocals go from ragged grunts to thin squeaks. Not good. Aspirin. He needs Aspirin. Some ice. Work to do, Matty. Get up, Matty.
But he won't. His legs won't. They're throbbing limbs full of blood and pain. Matt fumbles at the brace in a peace offering. The mechanism is spring loaded. He yanks a dial or presses a switch or something. God, he was hardly listening when Melvin put it on him. Couldn't hear over the screech of pain under his knee and around his ankle. And it's going to hurt when it's free, too. Hurt and swell. He should get the suit off as quickly as possible. He might not be able to once the circulation is back.
Work to do. Get up, Matty.
His hands are shaking too bad to grab the zipper.
His head's spinning so he has to sit down.
His chest hurts so bad he can't breathe.
His fist hurts when he punches the wall.
When he punches the wall.
When he punches the wall.
He should be out there with Elektra.
He should be out there with the police.
He should be out there with...
His fist drops to his side. His hearing cuts out. He waits for the blackness of the room to stop churning. Waits for the adrenaline to ebb. The apartment recedes, opening up into more and more blackness, until the whole world is an empty hole and he's alone at the heart of it.
Matt tries again for the zipper, groaning. The sound gives him company, filling up the vacant crannies of the space. He unzips to his mid-back before his broken ribs stop him. Before his sound cuts out and he's alone again, and he grips the step and tells himself he can breathe. He can breathe. He's fine. He's fine he's fine he's fine
"Hell of a night, huh?"
Matt jumps up to his feet. Nearly busts the bannister doing it. Gradually, the sound of his heartbeat yields for another. Latent scent of Greek salad and Old Spice. Leather shoes and a new coat. "Foggy? Wha…?"
"Yeah."
"What are you doing here?" Matt gulps. He can't figure out where Foggy is: kitchen, couch. The whole space sounds the same to his ears. He straightens, everything under control. Everything fine. "I'm fine."
"Didn't ask, but okay. You're fine."
Foggy makes his way through the apartment, dragging a plastic case. An echoey box? The first aid kit. Must be a first aid kit. Matt sinks back down onto the step, his eyes rolling back in his skull as he does, and Foggy's heartbeat flares – he notices. And it's worse. The noticing is always worse.
"You didn't have to come," Matt says, trying to sound stern even with the pinched sound of his own breathing.
Foggy notices that too but refuses to comment. "I didn't know where else to go," he replies, arranging the supplies at the bottom of the stairs. "I couldn't go home. I couldn't go to work. I couldn't face Karen. So…I came here. I've been here the whole time."
"Waiting for me."
"Waiting for something." Foggy's hand appears at his back; Matt pushes himself forward, reaching around to help, but his hands don't reach or they fall or they're swatted away. The rest of the zipper comes down with no help from him. Foggy yanks the suit open around his shoulders. Down his arms. "I thought the cops had you for sure."
"So did I." Matt wraps his arms around himself the second they're free. The chill from the apartment isn't so nice anymore; it stings. The shivering starts and doesn't stop no matter how hard he tries.
He distracts himself, distracts Foggy: "They uh…they got Frank."
"That's good."
"Yeah." Yeah, he supposes it is. Frank went willingly. No fighting, no violence. Handed himself over to the cops. To kill Fisk. That's why he did it. He wants to kill Fisk.
The suit comes to his waist. Matt stands, shaking, gripping the hem of his briefs to keep them from coming down as Foggy pulls. He sinks back down, stopping Foggy from going any further. The brace is holding the rest of the suit in place on his leg. Matt reaches. "Here, you have to –"
"I see it," Foggy swats his hand away.
Matt groans. God, he wants this night to be over. "Twist it?"
"You don't know?"
"No, I think it's –"
Foggy heaves a massive sigh and presses down hard. "Here."
The brace pops open.
Matt thinks he yells. Thinks. He certainly feels the sound ripping out of his throat, but what he hears is the blood rushing back into his veins and the suit stretching around the swelling limb and the smack of his head against the step. Foggy's fingers tear at the suit. He's begging it to come off. Matt pulls back, helping him along, and finally, mercifully, the suit spills onto the floor. Sour, reeking of sweat, blood, and tears.
The leg is holding. Swollen, painful, stiff at the ankle, but the bone is solid. Particularly with the growing inflammation making Matt's limb hot and tight. Better than a damn brace.
Foggy cracks a couple ice packs, his heart doing things that Matt doesn't care to read – spiking in anger before petering off resignedly. The cold of the ice packs is bitter, one clamping down like an upper jaw while the old injury chomps up from within like the lower. He's lost for a couple minutes, senses fixed on that agony, rousing only when his respiration has fallen in line with Foggy's own. When they're breathing at the same mournful pace as the other.
"Thank you," Matt says. He winces from the subtle increase of Foggy's heartbeat as a response.
Foggy, to his credit, tries to cover up his aggravation: "You've got broken ribs?" Matt nods. "Lift up your arms. Let me see."
"You can't just take my word for it."
"You've got blood on your lips."
Matt's brain muddles through the connections Foggy's making. He wipes his mouth. "From getting punched in the face, not a punctured lung."
Foggy's pulse gets a little faster and plays like the Jaws theme as he cracks another ice pack and tosses it into Matt's lap. Matt picks it up and holds it to his busted ribs, his stomach sinking as the pack oozes into the shape of Fisk's shoe and Elektra's fist.
Frank didn't go for his ribs.
"Anywhere else?" Foggy asks.
Matt shakes his head, sending the apartment spiralling. He fakes his way through the nausea and disorientation. "No. No, I'm fine. Thanks, Foggy."
That ought to be the end of it. Certainly seems that way when Foggy stands, when he stalks several paces through the apartment, but he lingers, his heartbeat holding Matt in suspense. Foggy's pulse is even faster now, circling in the bleak murk of the apartment, and Matt has to remind himself that this isn't a predator about to attack. This is Foggy. He has survived Foggy.
"You don't have to stay," Matt offers. "You can go."
The heartbeat gets faster still. "Is that what you want?"
"Isn't that what you want?"
Foggy doesn't answer. He doesn't know what he wants.
Matt doesn't know either. He used to: all Foggy's tics, his tells, seemed so clear, but Matt's head is throbbing, his thoughts are thick and as swollen as his leg, and tonight's been such a mess, such utter chaos, that Foggy's uncertainty seems small by comparison. "I'm fine."
"Again, I didn't ask."
"Then what do you want, Foggy?" They've covered the highlights, the "You don't have to be here" talk and the undercurrent of animosity swirling around the "I hate that you're a vigilante" discussion.
Foggy still doesn't know. His body is a scribble of conflicting timbres. Him trying to sound accusatory sets Matt even more on edge: "I thought you were gonna die."
"Well, I didn't."
"But I thought you were."
"And I didn't." Is that what this is about? "Your conscience is clear. You can go home."
"God damn you, Murdock." Matt rolls his eyes. They've definitely had this conversation before. "I'm not here out of guilt. Not everybody does shit out of guilt."
Matt almost lets that stand between them out of sheer exhaustion, but he can't. Not after tonight. "I never asked you to do this."
"You asked me to drive you to your armourer. To the East Side."
"And then I told you to go. Which you did."
"Yeah, I did. But not before I left a dent in my steering wheel because I thought it was the last time I was gonna see you!"
Matt's eyes burn. He bites down on the insides of his cheeks so hard the blood drains out of his skull. Anger fuels the fire of his senses, gives them a burning kind of clarity. Puts Foggy into harsh contrast with the chilly void of his apartment. "I never…" but he's already said that. They've said all this. "What do you want from me? And don't say you want me to stop. Because I'm not going to stop. And I'm not going to apologize."
"Yeah, I know that part. Okay? I get it! But you're not the only one who can't quit shit that's not good for you! I tried! Every time you came back, I walked away! But one stupid phone call from the Punisher – THE PUNISHER! – and I'm right back here."
"You're still here."
"Yeah."
"So am I, Foggy. I'm…" Matt chokes. Anger vanishing. Never really there in the first place. His lower jaw rattles so hard that he almost bites through his lip trying to stop his teeth from chattering. "I'm still here," he musters. "I thought it was the last time I was going to see you too."
"Then why did you go?" Foggy asks, his voice cracking.
Matt shudders against the chill of more than just the apartment. "Because this is who I am," he says. "Because it doesn't matter what I want. What matters is that you're safe. That the city is safe. That even people like Wilson Fisk are safe."
"You matter."
He shakes his head, skin crawling from the tone of voice that's being used. No, he doesn't. "Foggy –"
"You matter."
That's more like it: anger, Matt knows. Anger, he can handle. "I don't matter," he says quietly. Peacefully. He shuffles his feet to dodge the overflow of Foggy's heartbeat streaming across the floor. The sound grows, thumping about Matt's ankles, his knees, his thighs, his chest. It's cacophonous suddenly, gathering strength from beyond Foggy, from beyond the apartment.
Matt gathers the ice packs from his leg and chest. "Go, Foggy. I…I can't. Just go. Go," he says, managing, somehow, to get onto his right leg. He hops through the concussive waves of heartbeat towards the bedroom.
Foggy speaks; Matt ignores him. He's too busy following the floor careening under his foot, dipping suddenly at an odd angle. Matt tries to put the devil back in the driver's seat, but it's too late. His knee is buckling. He puts a hand out to steady himself and the wall churns under his palm like an upset stomach. Like his upset stomach. Pure heat rushes through him, soaking his shoulders in sweat. He drops against that wall (get up, Matty). He careens toward the floor (work to do, Matty). He stands unsteadily, left arm outstretched for balance. The right hangs, hand balled into a fist at his side.
He opens his fingers. Brings the hand to the back of his neck and holds it there. The fingers not quite big enough, palm not quite warm enough, grip not quite strong enough. Still, the touch is enough to bridge the gap in his frenetic thoughts. To reach back through this shitty night to Frank, to Frank gripping him, to Frank walking towards the waiting flood of cops.
Matt's hands slips off his neck back to his side. His other arm drops. He follows, legs turning to jelly. He draws his back to the wall, his arms to his waist, and stretches out his stupid broken leg until he's sitting on the floor.
The apartment seems so empty all of a sudden. So huge and so empty, and the calamitous tremor of guilty heartbeats makes the whole space seems huger and emptier, loaded with a kind of anti-presence. That sense of something so aggressively non-existent, so desperate to disappear, haunting every corner, seething with words only Matt can hear.
Don't you say a God damn word, Red.
It's fine, Red.
I got you, Red.
Matt releases a breath, centring himself, letting the apartment exist as a feeling somewhere between comfort and dread. And the feeling fills him up, puts his eyelids shut, brings his thoughts to settles, because that's his real home. Right there. On the edge of what's safe, about the fall headlong into a fight.
Foggy finds him, appearing as if by magic at his side to grip his shoulder, to drag him off the wall. "No," Foggy growls, "No, no, no. Wake up, Matt. Come on."
Matt's insides crumble. He rocks on the waves of Foggy's pulse and the lingering ghost of a war drum radiating through his chest, rattling his breastbone. His head wants to hang. His brow lands on Foggy's bicep, is shuffled over to Foggy's shoulder. He gets back to the wall, dodging Foggy's touch as much as possible.
"I can't," he says finally, jaw chattering. "I can't do this. I can't."
"What? What can't you do?"
The words are right there, right on the tip of his tongue, neatly arranged into sentences and everything, but Matt can't bring himself to speak them. He can't bring himself to hide his resistance either. He needs to say it, but he hears how they sound, those words. He hears how pathetic and lost and weak they are, especially in the larger context of tonight.
Foggy shakes him. "Jesus, Matt, would you say it? Please?"
Matt closes his eyes. Stick's voice is blaring inside his skull about how pathetic he is and the only logical solution is to spit it out, all of it, the horrible truth: "I can't watch you leave again. I can't. So if you're gonna go, please just go. Now. You won't hear from me again, I promise."
There's more. There's so much more, but Matt doesn't want to waste time. He already has Foggy inching back from him. Already has that distance he wants, the distance he needs, even as his body burns from the thought of listening to Foggy's retreating footsteps, to another door slam, to another person walking out of his life. God, how does Frank do this? How do any of them do this alone?
Foggy doesn't let go of his shoulders even as Matt's prying himself away. "How do you think I feel every time you go out in that suit? And even when you come back, I'm just waiting for you to go again!"
"So go," Matt insists. "Just go."
But Foggy doesn't go.
Tears stumble down his cheeks. Matt doesn't bother wiping them away. More words on his tongue. This time he doesn't try to hold them back. He puts more and more of his weight on the wall, his head falling back by the crown till he's staring skyward into blackness.
"I'm tired, Foggy," he says, speaking in echoes and unable to stop himself, "Have you…have you ever been tired?"
Foggy's voice is soft, softer than it's been in months, and Matt feels like he's on fire. Like he's burning. "I'm tired right now."
"Not…" but the words fail him. Matt doesn't have the vocabulary. Doesn't have the strength. Doesn't have the balls to take the rug out from under Foggy and let him know that it is hard to face yourself, harder still to live as yourself, and harder than all that when the world needs you – you know it needs you – but refuses to make a place for you.
God, it was easy with Frank, and nothing's easy with Frank. But Frank knew tired. Frank knew done. Frank knew about getting knocked down, about being alone. And while Foggy has caught glimpses, he can't know. Can't know unless he's been there.
Matt wipes at his face. He draws his arms around his sides. The shaking's starting up again, and holding himself too tightly makes his ribs sting. Quietly, he takes them back to common ground. "Can I have some Aspirin?"
Foggy sighs. Disappointed. But he says, "Yeah. Sure," and goes over to the cupboards, releases a small, almost imperceptible sigh of dismay, but retrieves the Aspirin. He grabs a glass of water, too, and brings them back to Matt.
The Aspirin goes down easy. Water helps ease his muscles, release them from cramping. Foggy doesn't linger. He moves through the apartment, checking through the closets, shuffling the blankets on the bed. Matt listens but doesn't track; he can't bear the uncertainty in the heartbeats, not knowing where they go from here. It would be so much easier if Foggy just left.
But Foggy doesn't leave: he comes back, arms heavy-laden with supplies. The discards ice packs from the stairs and – Matt sniffs – a bag from the bedroom. The duffle from Frank's, the one with his stuff. The one he doesn't remember taking from the safehouse.
Foggy must notice his confusion. "I grabbed your stuff. I was going to just leave it here, but…"
"But you stayed."
"Yeah." Zippers rip open. Fabric shuffles. Foggy drops a pair of sweats into his lap, followed by a pair of socks and a hoodie. "Here. Put those on."
"Thanks," Matt says, wincing when Foggy's heart rate refuses to acknowledge he's spoken. Suppose it's good that he'll be dressed when Foggy finally goes. He doesn't think he can move from his place on the floor, and falling asleep, undressed, in a cold apartment seems apropos for the way his night is going, but that doesn't make it appealing.
Foggy doesn't help when he says, "You're wrong, you know. You do matter."
Matt winces again as the fleece of the hoodie prickles against his sweat-slick skin. He manages the zipper by himself out of pride, of purpose. He isn't going to argue the point with Foggy further, because no, when it comes to the city, when it comes to the people, he doesn't matter.
Foggy releases his umpteenth sigh of the night and actually has to walk away. Matt rolls his eyes, conceding that fine, he'll argue, he'll argue if that's what will make Foggy go faster, but Foggy cuts him off. "You've lost weight."
"No, I –" but the sleeves contradict him, hanging past his wrists, as the rest of the hoodie bulks around his chest and shoulders. Matt picks at the fabrics, confused, trying to place the hoodie by texture, by scent. There's a lot of him in the fabric, but below that, faded, is dust and must, coffee and rusted meta and nighttime. The misplaced memory of Fogwell's, the perfectly placed memory of Frank.
Matt drapes his arms around his waist. Saying nothing. Shivers subsiding. Warmth radiating from around his sternum. I got you, Red. I got you. Right to the bitter end.
"I take it this is yours too?"
Takes Matt a long moment to identify what's being offered. Foggy has to clarify. "It's a cast." The old one, the first one. No longer smells like him, but the Velcro straps take Matt back to the beginning.
His leg's not ready. Matt already has a hell of a time getting the sweats on using only one leg. "I need to ice it, Fog," he says.
"Yeah, but we gotta go."
He's almost afraid to ask. "Where are we going?"
"My place."
"Foggy –"
"No. I don't want to fight about this, alright? I dropped you off tonight! I did that! And it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but I did it."
"I said you could go," Matt say. "I told you to go."
"Where? There's nowhere I can go where I don't care what happens to you! Even the Punisher knows it!" Foggy draws a series of steadying breaths, and suddenly, his uncertainty, his resignation, it turns into resolve. "I hate that you do this to yourself. I hate that you can't see how important you are, how much you matter."
Matt fingers the cuffs of the hoodie. He absorbs the blows from Foggy's pulse. "I'm beginning to see that."
Foggy's temper becomes a simmer. Acceptance or resignation, Matt can't and doesn't try to tell the difference. Either answer guts him. "You need someone, Matt. You can't do this alone. And I'm not ready to accept that's who I am, but I do know I am not leaving you here."
The black hole of the apartment swells around them. Matt's ears ring from the emptiness, from the cold, from the quiet. He shakes his head, hurting. Angry. At once denying that he can't do this alone and then accepting that it's true, God, it's true. He can't do this alone. He has to rely on former friends and the Punisher because he's so incapable. Sitting on the damn floor while Foggy puts the cast on his leg. As if he's actually going to leave. As if there's anywhere for him to go, anywhere he belongs. People like him, like Frank, like Elektra: they all end up bloody and alone in the end, and it's better that way. Better to dip in and out of people's lives, to come and go as a phantom, as a devil. Better to stay here, on the damn floor, than let Foggy find a shoe for his good foot, help him up, drape a coat over his shoulders, and walk him towards the door.
Better. But the voice that follows Matt out of the apartment reminds him you don't wanna be like me, Red.
Happy reading!