aworldonfire | rp | all the hurt that brought me here

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rp | all the hurt that brought me here

It's a miracle, he thinks, that he got away from Nobu, from Fisk. It's a miracle that he made it back to his apartment, as beaten as he is. It's a miracle, but singing the praises of God doesn't follow him much past the door, not because he doesn't want to but because, while he's still alive, still fighting, he's rapidly devolving into hysterical thought thanks to the blood loss, and what he's stricken by, standing in the doorway of the rooftop access, is that he remembers what red looks like, would swear he could see it.

It's in the taste of his own blood in his mouth, after all, the wash of pain in his stomach and chest that rushes over him whenever he draws breath, the smell of metal (not his own, not copper, so much blood, oh, God), clinging to his wounds, where he was stabbed again and again and again. It all permeates as much as Clint's cover's body spray did, the red, making it hard to think, hard to see beyond his absent sight, and he takes a drunken step forward, presses his fingers to the wall that runs alongside the steps that come down into his apartment, hoping it will help, praying for a touchstone. He makes it down a handful of stairs, something like wild optimism rising in his chest, alongside the pain (he can make it, if he can just make it to the phone, make it to Claire), before it all goes to hell.

His foot catches on something, something likely broken by him, by Stick, less than a handful of days ago, and he trips. He hits the remaining steps face-first, so fast it takes him a moment to register what just happened, to grunt, no more winded that he already was (is his lung punctured? he can't tell. it hurts. father forgive him -- both of them), and try to sit up. All he manages is to slide the rest of the way down the steps to the ground and for black to join the red, a memory of tunnel vision closing in on the edges of his mind's eye, as what little he can get from his other senses slips, stutters, unconsciousness creeping up on him. He doesn't try to get up again, after that, just lays there, panting. He doesn't even hear the door opening again above him, practically miles away.

He doesn't know how many minutes pass, him laying there, but eventually and what seems to him suddenly, something occurs to him. He shifts again, not trying to get up this time but to press his shaking fingers to the comm at his ear, always worn, just in case, but rarely used outside of his team ups with Clint and Natasha. It takes him three tries to actually get there, actually find his ear, and when he manages, it takes a moment more of false starts to fight past the black and find the breath for his words. It never occurs to him to think that the Avengers, if they're listening, already know what's going on, if only to a certain degree, that the comms are always transmitting, always receiving, that help may already be on the way.

"Little -- little help here?" he chokes out. "I need help. Please."

The red and black catch up to him, after that, as relentless as he's ever been in the same colors, and he slips into something like twilight.

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"Probably not," Matt agrees, touching his fingers to the bandages Bruce left in his wake. He forces himself not to pick at them, sooner rather than later, and moves his hands away, to rest along his waist.

"Anyone get the license plate number of that bus?" he mutters, mostly for his own benefit and as he settles. He doesn't expect an answer. What he does want to know, when he realizes he can't hear his partner's heartbeat, is, "Where's Foggy?"

Please tell him you didn't feed his cinnamon roll to the ninjas.

Clint chews noisily for a moment, stopping himself from making the comment he almost does when Matt stops himself from going for the bandages. "I'm pretty sure you got hit by the whole fleet," he replies, anyway, and swallows before he actually answers the question. "He went out with Nat to bring back coffee. We thought he could use a few minutes out of the apartment while things were calm."

None of them were really expecting ninjas to descend in the middle of the day, but even Clint wasn't entirely comfortable with Foggy going out by his own.

Not that Foggy would have gone out on his own without some nudging, anyway, but.

Matt lets out a breath, relieved. It's not that he actually thought Clint and the others would do anything to put Foggy in danger and so on, but it's still a relief to know he's not, to know that one of the other Avengers is with him. It's one less thing to worry about over the course of the next few days and until he stubbornly refuses to be kept in bed, to actually give himself any more time to heal.

"Thanks," Matt says, either way, and as if that relief isn't obvious.

"You're welcome," Clint returns, simply, eating his - or Matt's - in relative silence for a few moments before he speaks again.

"So, other than roadkill, how're you feeling?"

He has Steve and Bruce's assurance that Matt was doing better before he fell asleep, but it's also a sincere question. Clint was worried, okay?

"That's about the gist of it," he answers, shrugging lazily. He's tired, still, despite having slept as long as he did, he's in pain again, noticeably albeit not quite as badly as last night, and so on and so forth. He really needs more rest and, probably, to take more pain meds, though getting him to do the latter may or may not end up being an experience.

"Worried Foggy knowing is going to end up biting me in the ass, somehow," Matt adds, belatedly. Whether he means he's worried Foggy will change his mind about not being angry at him, worried that someone will get to him, now, because of him, or something else, who knows? Really, it's probably a case of little of column a, little of column b.

Clint wrinkles his nose. "Uh, well. I don't know your partner that well, so I can't promise it won't end up sucking, but just seemed worried when we got here. Also like he might have been ready to take us both on if Steve and Bruce hadn't been around, but." Another bite of cereal follows.

Also, yes, it will be an experience, because Clint is both under explicit instructions to make sure Matt takes the medication - and Clint himself does actually know the value of the good drugs, even if Natasha usually has to sit on him to get him to take them. It's pretty obvious to him, at least, that Matt needs them, anyway.

Matt lets out a breath of a laugh at the mental image of Foggy trying to fight Clint and Natasha. His amusement, however, is short-lived in the face of his own worry, and when it fades, so does the smile that accompanied the sound.

"I think having Rogers be the one to show up helped," Matt admits. He's not stupid. He knows how good it looks, having Captain America show up to vouch for you. Bruce being there probably didn't hurt, either, even if Foggy doesn't realize who he is -- Avengers' Personal Medic isn't a shabby title, either. "But ... "

Well, Foggy's had time to digest, now, had time to think, and that usually doesn't bode well for the people on his bad side.

Edited 2015-12-20 06:08 (UTC)

"There wasn't a lot of calculation," Clint admits. "They were the most free at the time." Not that Bruce and Steve hadn't likely been the best options anyway, between their assorted skills, but there was also the fact that the rest of them had been otherwise occupied when JARVIS had first picked up the fight.

"But Cap's definitely the best one if you need a character witness."

Even if Steve is also more of a headache for a lot of authority figures than most people realize.

Nodding, Matt falls silent for a moment, his expression turning thoughtful. When it clears, he blows out a heavy breath and shakes his head faintly. "Well, either way, not much I can do about it now, I guess."

Foggy knows. He can't change that. He'll just have to deal with it and hope that that knowledge doesn't get him killed in the long run. If nothing else, it at least gives him more of an incentive to come out on top, both in his war on Fisk and in general. If nothing else, "At least I'm pretty sure he won't punch me, at this point."

Or try and turn him in.

"Unless you're a time traveller, not so much," Clint agrees, fishing a few pieces of cereal out of the milk. "And I doubt it. I don't think he's the kind of asshole to hit you when you look like you do right now."

You look like shit, Matt. Has anyone told you that?

"I'm guessing I look as bad as I feel?" That's mostly a rhetorical question -- yeah, he got that ~~this~~ he looks bad, thanks. He touches one of the bandages again, forces his hands away again. "If it makes you feel any better, I heal fast?"

Or will once he gets the chance to get off of the couch and meditate.

"Little bit," Clint agrees, even if it was a rhetorical question - and then pulls a face. "Comforting as that is, pretty sure Bruce getting to you makes me feel better than that. Also, if you make like a good little ninja and take the meds he left, which I will get you water for."

His tone says he's not arguing about this one - even if he also fully expects to have an argument about this.

"I'll take the antibiotic he left," Matt promises, shifting to pull himself into a sit more slowly this time.

He's pretty sure the fact that he actually manages a full on sit and not the half-hearted lounge that was his best last night is a point in the Don't Need to Take Your Pain Meds category. He will argue properly if Clint pushes him on it, however. Taking them last night was one thing, but taking them now? Well, first and foremost, he's a Murdock, too stubborn and proud to need help getting up off the proverbial mat, and secondly, if last night was any indication, the meds make him groggy, and he doesn't want that, right now. Doesn't need it, even if he probably does need the sleep. He needs his head on straight, if he's going to bounce back, if he's going to keep going.

The eyeroll is - perhaps literally, considering who he's talking to - audible. "And the pain meds. Because just looking at you's making me sore, and I'm actually on a rare streak of not getting my ass kicked."

He will hide them in cheese and sneak them to you, Matt, don't test him on this.

It must be, if the face Matt makes in response is any indication. "I can live with the pain. Feeling like my thoughts are wrapped in cotton? Not so much. It'll mess too much with my perception."

Even if he doesn't plan on going vigilanting tonight, he doesn't like the idea of being left all but literally as blind as he pretends to be.

Clint gets that, he does, but. "I get that, believe me." His hearing might be a slightly less major handicap than Matt's blindness, but he knows how much it sucks when he can't wear his aids for whatever reason and has to resort to reading lips. "And I get that you heal fast - but you don't have to push yourself to get back out there. Me and Cap and Nat can keep an eye on things until you look less like you're going to keel over laying down."

He pauses a beat, and then, somehow both more seriously but also more flippantly, adds, "Also if you don't take the pills, Bruce will kill me, and I'm way more afraid of him as the team medic than as the big guy."

"Not that I blame you," Matt starts his counterpoint, "but I kind of need to be able to focus for the healing thing."

And that's the truth, even beyond not liking the idea of being truly blind while he's drugged up and never mind the fact that he wants to push himself to get back out there. He can't let Fisk have time to recover -- or, perhaps more accurately, move on to whatever he must have gained in lighting Nobu up at the end of their fight. He needs to keep going and he needs to do it himself. Not that he doesn't trust the Avengers to play by his rules, without supervision, just -- well, Stick sure as hell didn't, even after promising him he wouldn't kill anyone.

A shadow falls over his face at the thought of his former mentor, hurt and, more importantly, anger writing itself in the set of his jaw as it tightens. It spreads to his shoulders and he's aware enough of it then to let out a breath, to try and let it go. He manages, however briefly, and goes on to explain, "It's a -- a meditation trick. If I can kind of control what my body's doing, where the blood's flowing ... "

He can speed up the healing process. It's no healing factor, true, but it helps. It's how he's managed to walk away from some of the worse beatings he's taken, like the first time he and Claire met. He'd argue that maybe that's why he was still breathing after the fight with Nobu, but he's pretty sure he wasn't together enough for much beyond calling out for help. It doesn't help him much, right now, that his thoughts return to Stick, either -- or maybe it does, as for a moment following, he's tempted to give up his argument, to take the pills, just to spite him and his bullshit training. He can refuse to be whatever Stick was trying to make him and accept help, when it's offered. He can stop being stubborn for five minutes without it killing him, so it won't kill him.

Letting out a breath, his jaw works silently, tight again, the words on the tip of his tongue, and -- no. He has better things to worry about than spiting Stick, right now. Still, what he manages finally isn't another outright refusal, but, "Tell you what -- how about some middle ground? I'll take half of one."

Clint's not a mind-reader, sadly, so he sees the procession of emotions but doesn't know the reasons behind them. He also tries not to bristle prematurely - especially when Matt essentially ends up agreeing to it. "Works for me. I can see if he's got anything that won't put you out, too, if that's your case against it."

There's probably some extra strength Ibuprofen around the Tower.

"Most of it," Matt agrees with a nod. Which is to say, he'd appreciate it if Clint could get him something less likely to knock him on his ass, but until then, yes, he'll take half of what he has, as promised.

That latter bit in mind, he tilts his head in the direction he knows the kitchen to be, over his shoulder. "If you can find my cereal, I figure you can find the glasses?"

Clint stands from his perch, humming an affirmative as he makes his way back over to the kitchen. "I thought I'd start with loudly going about normal things before I started banging pots together to wake you up," he returns as he rinses out his bowl and then grabs a glass to fill it, bringing it back over to the couch. He sets it within Matt's reach and then picks up the bottle of pain meds, opens it, fishes one out, and halves it. "Here's this one."

"I wondered what all the -- " He makes a vague gesture, one likely meant to indicate Clint and his loud, obnoxious chewing. " -- was about. I'm glad it didn't come to the pots and pans, though. You'd be a little hard pressed to actually find any."

Blind people and kitchens still do not mix, as a general rule, after all -- regardless of how many things Tony has done for him, accessibility-wise, and despite his abilities. Chances are, if he has anything, it's something Foggy brought over, after conning someone else to cook for him.

Regardless, though, he reaches for the water, able to find it this time where he couldn't last night, and holds out a hand for the pill. He pushes it into the palm of his hand with his thumb, once Clint's passed it along, quietly double checking to make sure it's only half and despite the fact that he heard Clint break it, and when he's satisfied, pops it into his mouth and downs it with a mouthful of water. A small, sour face follows (God, that tastes terrible), and then, he says, "Next."

"I was under instructions to see if I could get you up at least long enough to take more drugs," he supplies as he picks up the other bottle to fish one out and hand it over. And yes, Mr. Paranoia, he did actually pick up the other bottle. "I thought it was better than getting within range of a punch if I tried to poke you awake."

Edited 2015-12-22 04:09 (UTC)

"After the nights I've been having lately?" Well, like he said (or didn't say) earlier, it probably would have been a punch. Rather than say that outright, however, he shrugs, takes the second pill, and then offers, "Probably a good idea."

No offense, Clint.

None taken. A lot of people seem to enjoy punching him on purpose, really, so an accidental one wouldn't even bother him.

Other than the whole ensuing black eye, obviously.

"I thought so." He caps the medicine bottle, setting it back on the table. "And keep being a good little superhero and taking those, okay? Because I mean it: Doctor Banner is a lot scarier than the Hulk."

"Pretty sure I'm not a superhero." Just a guy in nylon who takes way too much pleasure in beating the crap out of bad guys. "But yeah, alright, I get the picture." Even if he's not entirely sure how Bruce is scary without the Hulk.

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