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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Matt passes him his gloves for lack of anything better to do with them, needing to free up his hands to take the stack from him. He goes through it slowly, fingers tracing over each shirt, each pair of pants, in turn, summoning up old associations with each. The blue shirt he remembers leaving here, once, is thin, soft, a t-shirt, for example. A pair of slacks from more recent days feels different than the jeans he wore in college for another.

When he settles on something more casual, he holds the remainder of the stack back out to Foggy, and finally offers him a wry smile. "I'm not out looking for a fight?" He thinks that qualifies as taking it easy?

Foggy takes the gloves, fiddling with them a little while he watches Matt decide on the clothing, and then hands them back when Matt gives him back the clothing. "You didn't do that much better at school than I did, Murdock." Don't split hairs with him, guy. Though he's definitely teasing with that. That Matt wasn't out punching guys does make him feel better.

"And I have no idea what's in that box," he continues once he's put the clothing away, and he turns to where he set it on the bed, opening it up.

"I'll spare you the rest of that argument, then," Matt shoots back.

That said, he falls silent as Foggy returns his clothing to the drawer, and works on stripping himself of the rest of his accessories -- belt, batons and the holster for them. He sets them on the bed, next to the box, with a quick, apologetic look in Foggy's direction for getting in his personal space, but well. Between that and the clothes, it was getting a little hard to juggle, and he's kind of curious to find out what actually ended up here. He knows he knew at one time, but it's been awhile.

"Here's hoping for a cane and a pair of glasses, at least." And maybe something he can put the suit in, too, so he doesn't have to find more creative ways of hiding it.

Foggy can find him a backpack or something, since the box seems to lack any of those. He has better luck with the rest, though. "Ah ha," he announces after a moment, picking up a pair of glasses while he keeps looking, not bothered by Matt being in his space. They lived on top of each other for three years. "And, oh, hey. I probably should have given you this back before now. There's a cane in a holster thing." He pauses a beat. "Also a fluffy pony?"

Why did they even have that lever?

"It's not a big deal." He's probably going to 'accidentally lose' this can at some point, anyway. Whether or not he plans pointing that out, however, he stops at the mention of a fluffy pony, brow furrowing. "Wait, seriously?"

He's pretty sure Foggy wouldn't have phrased that as a question if he wasn't as surprised as he is, but -- why do they have that lever?

"Purple fluffy pony with blue hair," Foggy confirms, holding it out toward Matt, glancing his direction briefly so he can actually rest it against Matt's arm briefly, to let him know it's there.

And yes, he knows Matt knows it's there, but it's old habit - and he really isn't going to try and get out of them, to keep Matt's secret around people who don't know.

Matt reaches for it, perhaps before he should, would have before Foggy knew the truth, but it's force of habit on his part, right now, thanks to the costume. When he changes back into street clothes, he'll switch back to the act, that force of habit, too, to preserve his identity, but right now -- well, it's hard to pretend, when he's still half in uniform. It's weird how that works.

Either way, he hesitates a moment, when Foggy touches it to his arm, realizing belatedly the slip, and then moves to take it in earnest and much more slowly. It probably helps something, somehow, that he has to take the time to run his thumb over the plush doll to get a feel for it, though it still doesn't explain why they have it in the first place. He passes it back after a moment, still looking more than a little bewildered.

"We have a fluffy pony."

Foggy notices and pauses for a moment, regaining his own equilibrium as Matt takes it from him. "Considering I don't remember us getting a fluffy pony, I'm going to assume there was alcohol involved."

That was the best explanation for a lot of the weird things they had managed to get themselves into, Foggy had found.

"I can't, either, so ... let's go with that."

Drunk and possibly at a street fair -- that's the only thing that really makes sense. New York sells a lot of weird touristy things, sure, but he's pretty sure fluffy ponies aren't on that list. Fluffy Apples, maybe, but.

"Anyway, uh," he continues after a moment and with a shake of his head. He lifts the pile of clothes he's gathered, still in one hand, to indicate it. "I'm gonna get changed."

Foggy bought a plushie apple once, but he actually remembers that. He has no idea where this one came from. "Maybe Karen'll want it.

"Okay," Foggy agrees, closing the lid on the box again so he can put it back in the closet. "Bathroom hasn't moved."

"You could always offer it to her, find out," Matt suggests with a shrug.

He doesn't dwell too long on it after that, however -- instead, he adds his cowl to the list of things he's taken off already and abandoned on the bed and turns, heading for the bathroom. Several minutes later, longer than it usually takes him to get dressed, long as it took him, putting it on and taking it off at the Tower, he returns, looking more human and less superheroic, save for the suit draped over an arm. He offers Foggy a small, hopeful smile when he reenters the room. See? All back to normal. Mostly.

"Okay," he repeats, belatedly, once he's set the rest of the suit down on the pile he started and for lack of anything better to say.

Foggy nods and sets it aside, glancing at the pile of stuff as Matt adds to it and then heads for the bathroom. Foggy hesitates for a moment - and then reaches out to pick up the cowl. He's seen it before, of course, when he found Matt after the fight with Nobu that nearly killed him, but he'd had other things on his mind at the time.

Now, he turns it over in his hands, running a thumb over the cloth, the "horns", and the blanked out eyes. It's impressive work, he has to admit, and considering head wounds were the one thing Matt didn't suffer from that fight, he knows how protective it is despite its relative light weight - and he appreciates that. That doesn't mean part of him doesn't hate it, though, and he lets out a breath before he sets it aside again as Matt starts back out of the bathroom.

Foggy nods a little, idly. "Oh, uh. Karen said she was bringing something over for you, speaking of. I don't know if she did, yet?"

"She hasn't been around," he answers, shaking his head as he moves to set the rest of the suit down on the pile he's started. He knows that Foggy took a look at what he left laying there, when he retreated to the bathroom, even without having heard it. That was part of the reason why he left it there. He wants Foggy to see it for what it is -- just a piece of clothing. Nothing to be afraid of. No reason to be afraid of him.

Not that he's going to say any of that. Instead, he reaches for the sunglasses Foggy left out, next, palming them but not putting them on just yet. "I'd call her, let her know I was here, in case she showed up, so she doesn't worry, but uh ... " Well, again where he doesn't have his phone (or his comm) on him.

Foggy shrugs. "If she worries, she'll call me." That's always how it's gone before, anyway. If Karen couldn't get one of them, she'd call the other.

"I don't know what she was bringing," he goes on. "She's been worried. About you, I mean." Considering the story he had spun.

Matt nods -- Foggy has a point. It probably has something to do with the fact that, assuming he's not out in the mask, he's usually with Foggy. For not the first time, he's still grateful that that's still a thing, that he still has a right to be here, to spend time with his best friend. That it all didn't fall apart in ways he'd never imagined when his mind turned to worst case scenarios.

He looks away at that thought, the distance there meant to be brief. It lingers, when Foggy brings up what he'd had to tell her, even if he doesn't mention it directly, and Matt doesn't look up again.

"Yeah." A pause. "I'm sorry for that, by the way, for -- for making you lie to her." But the less Karen knows about this, the better.

"It's... it's not okay," Foggy corrects himself, though it's gently - he's not that mad about that part of it-, "and thank you for saying sorry. But if keeping her out of this keeps her safe, then I'll do it again."

Karen has enough people on her back from the fall-out of everything that happened with Union Allied. Never mind that it's all going to get a lot more complicated not that far in the future.

"That's what I'm hoping for," Matt says.

A long moment of pause follows, that said and as Matt fidgets with his glasses, and then he's raising his head, returning his attentions, however perpetually unfocused, to Foggy. "She -- the night she stayed at my apartment, after we got her out of jail? I promised I'd protect her. Me, not ... " Not Daredevil, even if he's saved her ass more than a few times, in costume.

Foggy nods, looking down and away from Matt again, at something of a loss himself, now, though he looks up again when Matt speaks. And speaking of saving her in costume: "I probably owe you a sorry for some of the shit I said about... you. Considering you did save her that night."

Matt shakes his head, dismissing the apology. A lot of the things Foggy said did hurt, yes, but, "If our positions were reversed, I might have done the same thing. I wouldn't have known any better -- you didn't. The press has more or less been painting me as one of the bad guys from day one."

"Yeah, but..." Foggy begins but doesn't get anywhere with it. He doesn't really want to argue about it when they've already had part of this discussion.

Finally, he just shakes his head again, reaching out to rest the tips of his fingers against the suit where Matt set it down. "Looks like Stark did good work," he says, instead, by way of changing direction - and admitting that he looked at the parts Matt left here while he changed.

Matt waits, silent, as he struggles with where he wants to go with that. When Foggy lets it go, he does, too, and with no small measure of relief. He doesn't want to get into this, again, either -- as far as he's concerned, Foggy is forgiven.

"He's had a lot of practice," he says with a shrug, going with the subject change. His isn't the first Tony has made and it probably won't be the last, given what they all put their gear through. Rather than say that, however, Matt pauses a beat before, "Plus, he had time to work out the kinks. Apparently, he started putting something together after."

After Nobu.

Foggy's expression darkens a little, at that memory. "I'm glad he did," he says simply, but Matt probably knows him well enough at this point to know what he's not saying - how freaked out he'd been both before and especially after he'd found out Matt was hurt. How relieved he is now that Matt is okay - even if he's still on board with worrying about him getting back into things too quickly.

"Sorry," Matt says at once. He can't see Foggy's expression, no, but he can read that darkness regardless and in a hundred different ways. "I wasn't trying to bring us back to that. It was ... "

Supposed to be a joke or a lead up to one, what with the implication that Tony had to have taken his measurements beforehand, and boy, isn't that creepy? Again, not that he honestly thinks it was for any number of reasons, but.

"No, it's... I don't want to get us hung up on this again, because we've discussed it, but you're my best friend, Matt. I worried about you before when I thought you just hit your head on doors occasionally, I'm not going to stop now." And he's trying to be light with that, to tease, to joke about his own worrywart tendencies, even if the more serious point stands.

Matt doesn't give an immediate response to that. It's not because he doesn't appreciate it, though, it's more because he's warring with the urge to move back towards the levity, to avoid them talking in circles again, to deflect. Not telling Foggy everything he's thinking has become a sad habit, as much as anything else he does when he has to pretend, and while he's trying to break that habit, wanting to keep his word, keep being upfront with his best friend, it's hard, like breaking muscle memory.

Eventually, though, he works through it, and despite himself, keeps to the serious, in spite of Foggy's joke.

"I still haven't had time to sit down and talk to Rogers, yet -- " Or, perhaps more accurately, Steve hasn't had time to sit down and talk with him. He's had more than his fair share of free time and if he hadn't just spent a good half hour running around, between getting here and the Stark's holodeck, that would be making him nervous. It probably will again, before too long. " -- but I have a feeling he's going to want to get more involved, after what happened."

They all will.

"I'm not sure I'm thrilled by the idea, but ... " He shakes his head. Not important, not what he's getting at. "Between that, the new suit, and Stark's AI keeping an eye on everything I can't? What I'm doing, it all gets a hell of a lot safer."

Not that he expects Foggy to give up worrying entirely just because he's trying to offer him some reassurances, but -- well, hopefully, they help.

Edited 2016-01-18 06:06 (UTC)

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