Chapter Text
Fisk is put away for good, and they all live happily ever after.
What a joke.
Matt has never believed in happy endings. He’d indulged them before his father had died, maybe, living vicariously through the neatly structured storylines they put in children’s books at school. And maybe there are people out there who get what they really wish for, in their guiltiest moments, no matter how needy they may feel.
But tracing the creases of a crumpled ice cream wrapper bracelet in his hand, he’d come to a cold and startling realisation. It’s simple.
There will never be a happy ending for someone like him.
Foggy and Karen can tell something is wrong.
When Matt’s left for his lunch break, and they think he’s out of earshot, they speak in hushed tones.
“… make things easier on him by giving him some space?”
“That’s difficult when we don’t even know what’s wrong. And when has Matt ever asked for help of his own accord? I don’t want this to fester, Karen.”
Foggy’s words sting and register as ironic at the same time. Stick had spewed a great many maxims, harsh words he’d loved to hammer home alongside even harsher blows, but Matt most vividly remembers the one about friendships being infections that fester. Cut them out quick, and they can’t come back to bite you in the arse later down the line.
In this context, the analogy rankles. Foggy and Karen aren’t an infection. If anyone’s hurting people in this relationship, it’s him, by being unable to resist the siren call of company every time, by always trying to have things he can’t have. But he supposes Stick would propose the same solution either way.
The crackle of wind past Matt’s ear, as he stands motionless in the street, sounds like a hoarse voice. Stop being a pussy, Matty, and pick up the knife.
Soon. They’ll decide he’s not worth all this trouble soon.
“Ah, I’m sorry. I actually meet with Maggie on Saturdays—I’ve been helping out at St. Agnes.” Matt’s voice sounds off coming out, but his mouth moves of its own accord.
Karen’s close enough that he can hear the soft brush of fabric against wood from where she’d tentatively asked him out for drinks—she’s leaning against his desk. He has to reach towards her to feel for and grab a file he’s planning on reviewing at home.
“Okay,” she says, consideringly, “and how are things with Maggie?”
Matt raises his eyebrows. He’s not doing as bad as he could be on that front. Their relationship as mother and son still prickles like a wound sore to the touch, and he’s certainly not going to be calling her ‘mom’ anytime soon, but they mostly skirt around that in their interactions.
“I’ve forgiven her, so.” He shrugs as he packs his stuff away.
But Karen’s heartbeat, previously rabbit-quick, slows to a steady thud, and she inhales deeply as if she’s about to say something practised. It rankles, the way she and Foggy have been tiptoeing around him. He thinks they’ve been talking about him when he really isn’t around, as well. If they’re finally growing tired of him, they should say it to his face.
Instead, she says, “I really hope things get better for you two, but you do know it’s okay to admit it’s hard, or that it might take a while, right?”
Matt blinks. “What?”
There’s the silky rustle of her tucking hair behind her ear. “I’m not saying we’re the exact same, or that everyone deals with parental issues the same way, but— you know about my father. You know how he treated me.”
And Matt does. As she speaks, a familiar indignation boils up inside him—on her behalf. Every time she speaks about her family, the same line of hurt laces her voice. For her father to continually rebuff her attempts at reaching out, despite her obvious distress—well, it grates at Matt the same way he thinks it would grate at anyone else.
Karen continues, “If he were to suddenly turn over a new leaf and try to fix things with me, I don’t know how alright I’d be with him after all this time. And even if we managed to start that— that process of healing, it’d be difficult. There’s grief, so much of it, on both sides, and if anything is similar between my situation and yours, it’s that.”
She lets out a soft puff of breath. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, reconciliation takes time, and a lot of work. Acknowledging that is okay.”
Matt is silent for a while.
There are a few things he thinks of to say that he shoots down immediately. One of them is in an embarrassingly childish voice, that clamours that it wants everything to be okay now. Isn’t it enough that he hasn’t had his mother for all these years? Can’t it be alright that every time they speak, they awkwardly dodge around the nature of their relationship, and that the subject of his childhood feels like a bomb of emotion ready to blow over?
Another possible response that goes through his head is one he recognises would be absurd to voice.
But it rises out of somewhere. Whether that be just the back of his mind, or somewhere genuinely deep and immutable within his subconscious, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, not when the ache that accompanies it is so real and gut-wrenching.
This response voices the thought: I don’t think anyone would be willing to try that hard, for me.
Karen’s heartrate has ticked up in worry, and he realises with a start that she’s still waiting for him to say something.
“No, I’m sorry, you’re right,” Matt stutters out. He can’t believe he’d entertained the idea of pursuing a relationship with her when he can barely be present in a conversation with her.
He needs to leave, suddenly.
He cycles through variations of polite farewells in his mind, chest winded like he’s fragmented and cobbled-together. He knows now that it’s Foggy and Karen who have been healing, slowly but surely, since the re-establishment of their firm. It seems Matt has left some unidentifiable piece of him trapped under Midland Circle.
“Thank you, for— the advice,” he manages, briefcase tucked under one arm and cane gripped tightly in hand as he backs toward the door. “It means a lot.” And it really does, that she would share this part of herself with him, but he just can’t exist in this space of genuine and heartfelt honesty right now.
Karen is moving forward, a bit urgently, like she’s losing him. He might be losing himself.
“You know I really mean it,” she says, “when I say you can come to me and Foggy, for anything at all. Matt, we just want to know you’re doing okay.”
“I am doing okay, Karen.” He forces a tight smile. “But I'll talk to you tomorrow.”
Maybe Stick was right. Matt is a pussy. But he’s tried Stick’s way, and they just came back. He’s too weak to cut them out completely and he knows he won’t be able to handle the fallout when it comes.
In the end, he takes the coward’s way out. He unlatches the doorhandle and escapes. It feels, inexorably, like giving up.