Chapter Text
Something was wrong.
Matt stopped dead in his tracks. “Sir?” The voice of a security guard called out to him. “Sir, do you need assistance? Mr. Murdock?”
Matt raised his right hand and shook his head, quieting the guard. The last thing he needed was more sounds right now. He needed to listen. He was just off of 54th street, standing outside the Midtown Community Courthouse. He’d been there enough times that the security guards knew his name. He didn’t need assistance.
He needed everyone to shut the hell up.
Something was wrong.
Matt cocked his head to the side and took a deep breath.
He could hear crying in Brooklyn. Screaming in Murray Hill. And in Midtown…
In Midtown…
Matt didn’t understand what he was hearing in Midtown.
It was like fingernails dragged across thick, knitted socks; like soot falling from a long extinguished fire. It sounded like Foggy dislocating his shoulder trying to prove to Marci that they didn’t need to hire someone to move the refrigerator. It sounded like Sister Josephine’s biology class when they’d dissected frogs and one of them hadn’t been quite dead yet. It sounded like nothing Matt had ever heard before. It sounded like insanity.
Matt shuddered.
Something was wrong.
It was moving. It was moving fast and Matt didn’t know what to do.
Matt always knew what to do.
Matt had no clue what to do. The screams were moving closer. The sounds of cars crashing and planes falling from the sky and cell phones dropping to the ground and people disintegrating…
People disintegrating?
It was moving fast. It was moving closer.
There were people to protect, but how did you protect people from nothingness? From oblivion? From a single breath and then the person next to you was screaming so they didn’t breathe your ashes into their lungs?
Something was wrong.
Matt didn’t have his suit and, in that moment, for the first time ever, he decided it didn’t matter.
He had to do something.
This was his city.
And something was wrong.
It struck fast. He knew it struck fast, had heard it strike fast, had felt it around him, but somehow he’d expected it wouldn’t strike him. He was different. He knew better. He could fight it.
It didn’t care.
He kept moving, even after he was nothing. First his left arm, then the left side of his jaw. His left foot. His shoulder. His torso.
What did it feel like to be pulled apart at the seams?
Shockingly, it didn't feel like much of anything. It certainly didn’t hurt. It felt soft, really, like a breeze coming in off the ocean at night. It tingled a bit, like when you sit on your foot for too long and it starts to fall asleep. Pins and needles. A phantom arm that you knew was your own, but at the same time wasn’t.
And then.
Nothing.
Matt was intimately familiar with darkness. Darkness was at the root of everything Matt did. Darkness was who Matt was.
This was not darkness.
This was nothingness.
No sound. No movement. No smells. No texture. Nothing around him. Nothing within him. Nothing touching him. Nothing to touch. His body was gone. His heartbeat, his breath, the sound of his own cells dividing.
Nothing.
Silence.
Emptiness.
Absolute.
Matt was not.
New York was not.
The world was not.
Matt floated. He wasn’t sure for how long. What was time when you were nothingness? He did not think. He did not feel. He did not wonder. He knew that he once was, as much as the void could know anything. He did not stop to wonder if the void should not know anything.
And then.
Bright.
Matt’s mind helpfully supplied the word as he flung his arms across his eyes.
Bright. Red. Wrong. Danger.
Matt sprung to his feet --
Why does the void have feet?
-- ready for action, fists in front of his face, eyes frantically working to focus on something. Anything.
Red. Wrong. Red. Bright.
Matt blinked. There was something coming towards him. Black and thick and hard.
Wrong. Danger. Fight.
Matt squared his stance, blinked against the red, and swung.
Wait. Red?
His fist collided with an immovable object. Something --
A foot?
--swept out and caught him by the ankle. He felt himself go down.
That’s not what the sky is supposed to look like… Matt thought, eyes staring at a swirling, blood red horizon. It’s been a long time, but I know that’s not what the sky is supposed to look like. He hit the ground and, blissfully, everything went dark again.