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Foggy was dying.
Foggy was on the ground in front of her and there was so much blood and he was dying and nobody was going to be fast enough to save him.
Matt wasn't here, Matt should be here, it was Foggy, he should be here he could fix this maybe he could save him.
Daredevil saved people.
Matt saved Foggy. Surely. Surely. Someone would come and help. Someone could save them.
Matt would know how far away the sirens were. How long they had until help was going to arrive, until someone could stop all this blood and Foggy's gasping breaths and panicked searching eyes. Matt would -
There's a smack on the ground behind her. She doesn't look.
She can't.
A heartbreaking sob bursts from her chest as she feels Foggy's heart stop beating beneath her hands. Whoever, or whatever fell behind her is not moving.
She does not look.
The world is fuzzy and something is ringing and screaming in her ears and all she can see is Foggy's face, and he is not searching anymore. His face is relaxed, and if she could ignore the blood all over her hands as she brushes the hair off of his face, she could trick herself into thinking he was just asleep.
It is all she can have eyes for.
There's a shout behind her. The flash of a torch waving over the scene, a scream. "It's Daredevil."
Something else breaks inside of her heart. She turns, her hand still holding onto Foggy, and looks at the body behind her.
It - he, is still alive. Matt is still alive but his breaths are wheezing through his lungs, and there are blades sticking out of his chest and this needs a hospital, this is beyond anything they would ever be able to repair. The Daredevil cowl is still on him, for now. She knows it will surely soon be ripped from him, and there is nothing she can do to protect them anymore. He needs the medical assistance.
A paramedic pulls her off of Foggy, and she tries to clutch onto him in her panic, her eyes not leaving Matt as people swarm around him. He would know Foggy was gone, if he was conscious enough to have heard it. Would have known he was dying before he had even died.
She is not sure if he fell or if he was pushed.
Someone shouts that there was someone else on the rooftop, that they were fighting. The knives in one of her friends, and the bullet in the other should have been evidence enough of that.
Her world is a kaleidoscope of colours. Emergency lights flash around her, torch beams scatter across the road, blue and red of police, the red and white of every ambulance's hazard lights. Too many, for what had happened. There were many witnesses, shock blankets wrapped around shaking frames, the sobs of relief, of everything being over. Someone wraps one around her, and the crinkle of the fabric is yet another addition to the sensory overload she is fighting through.
They slip a neck brace onto Matt. Slide a spinal board beneath him. Lift him onto a stretcher. He doesn't seem to be conscious, his body limp despite its struggle to breathe.
"I know him." She walks towards the ambulance, and forces herself to act as though she belongs in there. One friend is gone. She refuses to lose another. "He's my friend."
"Everyone's Daredevil's friend. Try again love."
"I know who he is under the mask. Please." They look at her, at her shaking hands, blood and tears mingling on her face, the desperation as she tries to crane her neck to see into the ambulance. Despite the panic, something softens in the paramedic's eyes, and they push the door open for just a second, and she slips inside, staying well out of the way. One of them nods at the chair, and she sits, quiet and silent, tears blurring everything in front of her.
There's blood. So much blood. They pack around the injury, the knives stabbed into his chest, and then one of the paramedics falters, looking to the other. "Suit."
"Yeah."
Ever so gently they lift the cowl from his face, and pass it over to Karen, who holds it with trembling hands. "He's blind. No light perception. Matthew Murdock." He doesn't move, doesn't fight against it, stays there wheezing. It is everything they have tried to protect against, hiding and keeping his identity as the safest secret to them all.
Sharp metal shears are pulled out, and Karen knows that normally they would leave clothing on. That it was too dangerous to jostle someone this much.
But she can see something in the paramedic's faces. Vaguely even recognise them as local, even if their faces weren't familiar, as they ever so slowly removed the Daredevil suit from Matt. It comes off in tatters, small pieces, as the ambulance continues to hurtle towards the hospital.
Karen is left with a trash bag full of the shredded remains of Daredevil.
Everything is a blur when they reach the hospital. Matt is rushed away, down a corridor, a swarm of doctors and nurses already surrounding him. Karen is ushered to a waiting room, and she sits, with shaking hands, not knowing what to do next.
Eventually her bladder makes itself known, and the face that stares back at her from the mirror is a horror show. Blood mixes with tears mixes with the mascara running down her face. She grips the sink with white knuckles, and then furiously starts to scrub at her face and hands with the cheap soap.
It mostly succeeds in making her cry more, the sting of antibacterial. It's the middle of the night and she is alone, and the lights are far too bright, and she thinks Foggy is dead and she worries Matt might be joining him.
She can't get the blood out of her blouse. It has congealed and dried in her hair, and around her nails, and her eyes look haunted and shadowed. She clutches onto the black bag she has been gifted, holding the soul of a vigilante, of a devil, and she is not sure if she believes in a god anymore but she prays to the one that Matt holds his faith in. Someone must save him.
At some point she falls asleep in the uncomfortable chairs of the waiting room, hugging the suit like it is a child. The blunted horns of the cowl leave imprints in her arms when she wakes up, the pain is grounding, doing something to try and help keep her in the here and now. For a moment, she is not crying.
Her voice breaks when she speaks to the receptionist. Asking. Begging. That there must be some news.
All she is told is that he is still alive.
She cannot prove that she has any right to know how he is doing.
He is alive.
Her voice shatters again when she asks where Foggy has been taken. If his family has been contacted.
It is not fair.
He is so many floors below, in the cold and dark.
There is nothing she can do here. They suggest to her she goes home for now. New clothes. Speak to Matt's next of kin.
Somewhere in her phone history she has Maggie's number. She dials, and when the sister answers, all she can do is sob, words slipping out between the tears.
"Foggy. Matt. Hospital."
Maggie responds, in a voice far too calm, but with the undercurrent of many tears. "I'm on my way. I won't be long."
They've never really had much to do with each other. But here, in the sterile white of the hospital, they cling to each other like they are going to drown. Karen has been crying for a while, but this is the first time she feels as though she can actually let go, and for a moment they are completely, utterly united in their grief and worry.
It is interrupted by the quiet cough of a nurse, who looks at them with a sombre expression. They hold hands as she talks to them, walking with them to where Matt is.
Stable. On a ventilator, and hooked up to oh so many wires and tubes that Karen can't even begin to understand what they are for. He looks peaceful, for once in his life. Crisp white bandages wrap around his chest and shoulders, dressings cover his face and arms, but even beneath those bruises peek out. There is the heavy bulk of casts on his legs beneath the sheets.
"He is still very badly injured, he needs to fight. He's not out of the woods yet."
Karen lets Maggie sit first, to gently lift one of Matt's hands into her own, mindful of the IV leading out the back of his hand, an oxygen monitor clipped onto his finger. There's a chair on the other side, and Karen sits, brushing Matt's hair from his face, wincing at the sight of him intubated. He's sedated, the nurse explains, with all the painkillers, and the surgeries, and waiting to see if he can breathe on his own again.
"How badly was he injured?"
It's a shopping receipt of injuries and surgeries.
The knives that had been embedded in his chest. A fear that they had likely nicked his heart, or a lung. Even if the suit had protected him before, in the fall it would have surely dug deeper into his body. A punctured lung, the reason behind the wheezing death rattle the last sound she'd heard from him. And the injuries from the knives, torn muscle and skin and the blunt trauma of the blades shattering ribs, twisting their way into his body.
Broken bones. More than his ribs, both his legs were broken in various places, a fractured collarbone, a smashed hand where he'd maybe tried to save himself. Head injuries. Concussion more than likely. Bruises, torn muscles, merciful dislocations instead of breakages in some places. He'd been lucky to land on his back, to have landed on his front would have surely meant immediate death.
Those words chill Karen right to her core.
Sedation is a better way to heal. Where he does not have to be aware of his injuries, of the pain, of what happened. Karen knows it is for the best, but she needs someone to share her grief with, as selfish as it feels.
Foggy's family. She feels as though she needs to see them. They must know by now, someone must have told them. She is not sure whose responsibility it is to tell them.
She was there. Is it hers?
They must know. It's now getting close to sunup. Surely. Someone would have told them. She doesn't know who she would ask about this.
Matt isn't out of the woods yet.
They say it could be days. Even weeks, before he wakes up. That all is important is to let him heal.
They say he can probably hear them though. That it is good to give him voices he can fight for, that he knows there are people here for him.
Karen knows that the most important person to him is never going to arrive. She hopes she can be enough for him to hold onto. Sister Maggie sends her away, asks her to get changed out of her bloody clothes. Karen barely makes it to the hallway before she can hear Maggie's tears, and her own eyes echo the sentiment.
She's walking out of the hospital in search of a taxi, and then there are arms around her and a woman's voice crying and talking to her and she can't understand the words or recognise the voice until she is released from the embrace.
It's Foggy's mother.
Her heart wants to break. Has perhaps even already broken. Shattered into pieces yet again and she is unsure if she is ever going to be able to put it back together again.
"I'm so sorry."
"Matt was hurt?"
"Yeah." She is so painfully aware she is clutching the Daredevil suit still, and she is covered in Anna's son's blood, and it's a beautiful morning and isn't that so painful. It should not be so nice when they are all so sad. "He's. Hurt. Badly. ICU." Single words are easier. Single words don't bring as many tears. "I'm sorry."
There's no easy answers here. She feels as though she has been grieving her whole life. "Have you- have you been to see him?"
Anna nods, tears continuing to flow. "It isn't fair."
"I hate it."
Karen doesn't feel as though there is anything she can say to fix this, and they remain in a surprisingly comfortable silence for a few moments.
"If there's anything I can do for you all, please let me know."
"And you."
She can see the rest of the Nelson family approaching, faces marked by tears, and right now she doesn't feel like she can deal with that. Climbing into the first taxi that doesn't baulk at her bloody clothes, she heads home. Buries the suit in the back of her wardrobe, showers, and all of a sudden it's many hours later and she has fallen asleep, sprawled across her bed.
For a blissful moment, the pain in her eyes and head is from a hangover, and the awful events of the night before hadn't happened. But there's a blouse on the floor stained with blood, and blood beneath her nails that all the scrubbing doesn't seem to remove. The thought of food makes her stomach turn, and she's not sure what she is supposed to do next.
Take over from Maggie at the hospital. Perhaps take her some food. She makes herself bullet points, an hour by hour plan of her life, to do what she can to keep Matt alive. To keep herself alive. To go through the motions.
The first few shifts she takes in the hospital, all her attention is on Matt. Every slight movement one to panic over, to wonder if he is waking up, but the machine keeps breathing for him, his heart keeps beating in a steady rhythm. She scrolls through the news on her phone, talking about the silly stuff.
"There's a raccoon in Queens that has learnt how to ride a kid's bike. Nobody is admitting to who taught it, or adapted the bike so it was usable for a raccoon, but he can pick up some speed down the streets."
She scans quickly over talk of murder, of gunshots, of a killer on the loose.
"We're here with you Matt. Come back to us."
Nurses flit in and out of the room at intervals, adjusting wires, checking on the machines, adjusting and moving him to prevent sores. Karen weakly smiles at them each time, offering thanks. At some point, the basic chair beside Matt's bed had been replaced with a reclining armchair, after both her and Maggie had woken up with cricked necks too many times. A small patch on the back notes that it had been donated to the hospital, with thanks from a family.
She all but lives and breathes the hospital.
And then the talk about Foggy's funeral begins, and she is invited to the talks, and she wishes that Matt were awake. That he would surely have wishes, and things that he would like included. All the family wish that Matt could be there. That he would surely like to speak, but they cannot wait forever. Foggy deserves to be at rest.
They plan to postpone it as long as possible. In the hope that Matt will wake up. He is, was, Foggy's closest friend. With Daredevil being a part of their world, Karen imagines that talks of deaths and funerals would have come up in their life. That Matt may be the one that knows the truest what Foggy's wishes are. Were.
Days turn to weeks and the funeral director softly says to the family that they can wait no longer. That if nothing else, Foggy needs to be laid to rest, even if they wish to wait for a memorial at a later date. Foggy deserves more than that. There's the ever present awareness that Matt may not wake up, and so they proceed with the funeral. He would understand. He wouldn't blame them.
Maggie sits with Matt whilst Karen attends the funeral. She tells Karen later that she sang him the hymns she often associates with funerals, spoke of prayers of peace and wishes that Foggy would find his place in heaven. They are both full of apologies that he cannot be there, but will ensure he can visit and pay his respects as soon as he gets out.
They don't know if he can hear them. He remains sedated, unconscious, breathing steadily through the assistance of the machines. Finally he is deemed strong enough to breathe on his own, the forceful machine removed from his throat, replaced with the gentle in comparison oxygen mask. The nurse tells them his sedation has been lowered, yet more tests are carried out, and they hope he will wake up soon.
Wordlessly Karen and Maggie agree that now, more than ever, he is not to be left alone. Time is endless, sitting in this room of pure white, the beep of machines keeping her friend, her son, alive.
They talk. Until their voices are hoarse, and conversation topics are scarce to find, about anything and everything. A constant background of the world outside these walls, voices they hope will pull Matt back from the brink.
One day, night, evening, time isn't really real, the hand Karen is holding in her own twitches. Matt's face twists in discomfort, and she holds him tighter. "Hey Matty, you're okay. You're in the hospital, but I'm here."
She's not sure if he was ever really awake, his face smooths back out, either from her reassurance or from the drugs that pump back into his system and drag him under. It's a step in the right direction, a nurse tells them. He's been through a lot, his body and mind need to heal. He'll probably be in this in between stage for a while, but he's a fighter. The nurses and doctors seem more confident that he is going to make it now.
"He's over the worst of it. He survived the surgeries. He'll pull through."
When he does wake up enough to speak, the only word he says is Foggy's name.
"He's not here right now, you're stuck with me." Karen does her best to smile, and hopes that Matt can't hear the part lie. He seems content enough with the answer, squeezing her hand back. His grip is painfully weak to the Matt she knows, and she hopes he will heal.
She thinks, she knows, Daredevil is dead. But hopefully Matt Murdock will live. He has to. His fits of consciousness are few and far between for a while, but the professionals don't seem concerned. The machines he is hooked up to start to disappear, as they deem him stronger.
His bruises heal. He is more aware of the exercises the physiotherapist who visits puts him through, before it felt like an unnatural experience, as they manipulate his limbs. It will likely be a while before he walks again, they warn her, even after his legs heal, he has lost muscle mass already from laying bedbound this long.
He is being fed through a tube. Karen knows that this is needed to keep him alive, but the fact of it existing, that Matt, who is always so independent, needs all this help. She knows he would hate it, if he was lucid enough to care. He hates hospitals. Has already tried to remove his oxygen mask. She knows it would be overstimulating enough for her, oxygen, feeding tube, IVs, catheter, the heavy weight of casts and bandages and dressings. The smell of antiseptic, of chemicals and medicine and the uncanny scent of death and dying.
She dreads having to tell him about Foggy. For now, he is not awake enough to know something is wrong.
The Nelsons come by one day. Karen knows that they saw Matt as another son. Foggy is dead.
Matt doesn't wake up whilst they are there. She isn't sure if that is better or worse. They bring some items of Foggy's, a blanket, a sweater. When they leave, Karen sobs, but tucks the blanket around Matt in the hope the familiarity will help. She pulls Foggy's sweater over her own clothes, lifting the collar to inhale the scent of her friend.
Her eyes continue to water in grief.
"Please Matt. Come back to us."
She hums, and she doesn't recognise the song she is humming, but she continues. Her voice is hopefully familiar enough to Matt to help him. During some of the stories she tells, he squeezes her hand back, she is not sure if he is conscious or if it is just a reflex.
It's the stories about Foggy, she realises some time later. She searches her memories for the good times, for the joy. To talk about his ambitions to start up an office softball team. The skip he did when he'd cross the street. How he always tried to hide the face he made after a sip of Karen's coffee. The effortless way he would reach over to straighten Matt's tie, to uncurl the collar on Karen's blouse, before they headed into a meeting or a courtroom. How his family had so simply and silently accepted the both of them into their arms, those who had no family to really call their own. She smiles awkwardly at Maggie on this one, in the years Matt didn't know she existed, the Nelson's had been all he had. The sister just nods sadly in response. "It is good he had them."
Marci, of all people, turns up one day, an MP3 in hand. "I had these. From way back, I made a copy for you. It's been helping me, I don't know if it would help you, and him." Playing the audio, clips of law debates, of classroom recordings, of Foggy's voice so many years younger making his arguments. Mock trials, or simply a class topic, the best soda available in the canteen, in which Foggy managed to speak far too long on the joy of Dr Pepper. The audio clicks onto the next, and a laughing Foggy introduces "How would dogs wear pants? Is it like this, or this? The first picture I pointed to shows a sketched dog with jeans on, and the pants just cover its back legs. The second picture has all four of the dogs legs covered, there's a suspender-type brace going over the back of the dog to keep the pants on."
Somewhere, in between clips of schooling and presentations, there's a drunken giggle Karen can recognise as Matt's. "Abogados."
"Avocados!"
"Abogados."
"That's what I'm saying Matt! Best goddamn avocados in New York."
"Not in America?"
"Nah. We'll be realis-" Foggy's voice pauses, hiccuping before carrying on. "Realistic. New York. Then the world."
"I see!"
"You -" Foggy breaks into laughter, soon followed by Matt's. "Love you."
"Love you. Here, fist bump. Best avocados in New York."
The recording ends. Karen presses replay.
"Love you."
Replay.
"Love you."
Foggy always loved everyone. Anyone who came into his life was immediately family. Immediately his. She'd seen that with the both of them, their fist client, and then their longtime friend. A trio that would stick together despite the worst.
She wasn't sure how she would survive this though. If they would survive this.
All she wanted was for Matt to heal.
His hands twitch in hers, and he grumbles in discomfort, face screwing in concentration. "Hey Matty." His hands flex, curling and uncurling, twisting side to side as though confused, and she runs a hand over the back of the one with the IV in. "You're in the hospital. You have an IV in your hand, here, it's helping you heal." There were many criss-crossing pieces of medical tape keeping it on, warnings of his confusion making him prone to pulling it out. His nose scrunches as he makes an unimpressed face, as though realising there were multiple things on his face. "I know. They're keeping you alive Matty."
"Ffff."
"It's frustrating, I know. You're okay. I'm here, Maggie's here, she's asleep right now." In the comfortable chair, curled on her side, a blanket tucked around her. It was a position the both of them had found themselves in many times, neither willing to let Matt wake up on his own.
Matt smacks his lips, confused. He seems to try and tilt his head, an expression Karen is used to him making when he is trying to figure something out, but freezes on the feel of tubing and mask moving around him.
"You thirsty?" She reaches over, pressing the call button, it's the most aware she's seen him so far. "I'll see if we can get you some ice chips or something. Are you in pain?"
Again, he only looks confused, as though trying to connect ideas or thoughts together but failing.
"Squeeze my hand if you're in pain Matt."
He doesn't, and she's not sure if that just means he's still confused, or if he's being Matt and ignoring the pain, or if the meds are working as they should. It feels like a pointless question to have asked him.
A nurse walks in, and reassures both Karen and Matt that everything is okay and that this confusion is normal. He's hesitant to give Matt water, or even ice, but offers Karen a cup of water and a small sponge, "You can run it over his lips. It will help. He's not actually dehydrated, he's got the IV and tube, it's more a mouth feel." He switches out the oxygen mask to a nasal cannula, warning Matt with every action he takes, and pumps the head of the bed up so that he is sitting upright a bit more.
"There you are sir. Your friend has the call button, let her know if you're in pain or anything. Someone will be around on their usual rounds in an hour anyway."
Karen isn't really sure what to say to Matt. She talks about anything and everything, but isn't really sure how much he is understanding. He likes to be touching someone else, they realise. That without one of their hands in his own he seems distressed, and scared.
The nurse explains he is still under some level of sedation, as well as an insane amount of painkillers. That being blind, he likely relied on other senses more, and he might not be able to track where they are in the room as easily. They are to all take it slowly.
The only word Matt has said so far is Foggy's name.
Slowly, slowly, his periods of being awake and aware last longer. He hums in agreement to their conversations, seemingly tracking them better.
One day, when a nurse is in changing the dressings on his chest, he croaks out "What else?"
The list of injuries still feels endless. Both legs are still in plaster and healing. Deep angry wounds on his chest, fractured and shattered ribs hidden beneath torn muscle. A collarbone still repairing. The bruises that once covered him now healed, over a month since the accident. Probably brain injury, long lasting effects from a concussion.
Matt nods, furrowing his brows as he seems to track his own body and injuries. "Foggy?"
"Not here right now. Later." Her heart races with the lie. He seems content enough for now with that answer.
Karen starts to bring in audiobooks. A constant background of something Matt can concentrate on, when her and Maggie struggle to think of conversation. Safer than the radio, where they cannot control what is spoken. She worries for the day he will piece it together.
His hands scratch at his face, at the beard growing in more than he would have ever liked it. It's a soft and gentle day when he lets Karen help him, and she can't quite hide the tears on looking at him. At the old Matt she knew before.
"How long?"
"About 6 weeks now. You're looking better, healthier." He was more aware. They were encouraging him to drink and try and eat normally, that they would like to get him off of the tube, and potentially out of bed. He'd be in a wheelchair for a while, with two still broken legs and countless other injuries still healing.
"Foggy?" He always sounded so sad when he asked about him. Like he knew he had been badly injured as well.
"He'll be around later."
"Karen." His face clouds over in anger. "Lie?"
"Oh. Oh Matt." She'd sailed by so long in him not being able to hear her lies.
"Karen?"
She takes a deep breath, holding Matt's hand in her own, and braces to break his heart. "He didn't make it Matt. When he was shot, outside Josie's, when you were hurt as well. He didn't pull through."
"No. No, I heard him. Here." He's agitated, pulling at her hands, tugging at the bedsheets. Every cell of his body itching to leave and check for himself.
"He's not been here, I'm sorry."
"Heard him! Heard him! Voice!" His words are short and clipped and angry. Karen worries he is going to pull at the wrong wire, rip his IV, or his feeding tube, or the oxygen. She snakes a hand over and presses the call bell that lays on his mattress.
"It was a recording Matt. Marci sent some in, it's nice to listen to his voice. We thought it might help you." She keeps her voice low and gentle, like she's speaking to a spooked animal, and rubs at his arm in comfort.
"No. Nononono. He can't be gone."
"I'm so sorry Matt."
His breathing turns to hysterical tears, and a nurse rushes in, concern evident across her face as Karen tries to soothe Matt from where he's near hyperventilating. He's too injured to be shaking and rocking like that, she's sure of it, and whispers to the nurse, "I had to tell him some bad news. Help me."
It's with practised hands the nurse slides something into Matt's IV, and in a moment he relaxes, tears still falling from his eyes as he slips into a restless sleep.
When he wakes up again he is crying, but he looks confused.
"Karen?"
"Hey Matt. Still here."
"Mhmm." He holds onto her hand, and doesn't ask about Foggy again. She's not sure whether to be scared or relieved. She doesn't want to upset him again.
He wakes up confused and tired and cold. His mouth is parched with thirst, there are plastic tubes and cabling and the fabric of dressings wrapping around him.
The sheets on him smell like Foggy.
There's something inside his nose, running down his throat, disappearing inside his body. Sharp cold oxygen forces itself into his lungs, there's a dull painless ache across his chest. He thinks he should be in pain.
He knows he should be in pain. He can't move his legs and he's not sure if they even exist.
He twitches his hands. He'd heard Foggy's voice. He can sense someone is in the room with him.
Foggy.
It had to be. He stretches out a hand, seeking the warmth of another soul.
The hand that clutches back at his isn't Foggy's. He knows Foggy's, soft and gentle and warm. This hand is cooler, the skin looser, an almost invisible creak of arthritis and age.
He remembers to listen. To hear more than the noise of his own broken body. That the murmuring is a person, is a voice.
Maggie.
This feels like a place to need his mother.
He thinks he should be scared. He smacks his lips together, wishing for water. Thinking he should be hungry. He hadn't eaten since before they went to Josie's, however many hours ago that was.
Maggie is speaking to him. He tunes into her words, clawing his way through the fog of his own brain.
"'re okay Matty. You were hurt, you're safe now. I know you're probably confused but that is okay, the doctor said to expect that."
He tries to answer, but only a hum escapes him, his throat croaking and cracking. He's not sure why it feels so difficult to talk. To exist.
"Are you thirsty? Do you want some more ice chips?"
His brow furrows in confusion at the word 'more', but he nods regardless. It's not the refreshing drink of a glass of water he feels he wants, but maybe his throat is injured too badly for that. As Maggie feeds him the slivers of ice, he leans into her hand, desperate for anything to ground him.
"You're okay. You're in a good place Matt. You're safe." Everything itches and aches and his thoughts and words swirl like soup. He tries to track his own health and body, but everything is muffled under painkillers and sedation and confusion.
He was hurt.
He had been fighting Bullseye.
He'd been stabbed. He remembered knives being in him.
He remembered blows to the head. A fight. Too many injuries.
Hearing Foggy get hurt. Get shot. Karen's panic.
Falling.
Or being pushed.
Or jumping.
He wasn't sure.
There had been knives in him. Stabbed through the suit. Through skin and muscle. Glancing off of ribs.
He was sure Dex was aiming to kill. Had always been, in all the fights they had had before.
Karen had been crying. Before? Or recently?
His memories were hazy. Liquid dripped into his veins. There had been tears. Screams. Talking about him. To him.
Foggy's voice.
It hadn't felt. Real. Stuck through a haze of unconsciousness. A glimmer over what was real, where everything felt as though it was in a dream land. Strangers' voices. A bustle of panic. Skin being tied, sewn together again. His body being undone and redone, the cracking and crunching of bones. A flush of blood close to the surface of his skin, bruises surely making a kaleidoscope of patterns across his body.
Did they know?
The people in the hospital.
He had been in the suit.
The world must know.
He must be as good as dead.
He is surprised he has not heard police here. It surely wouldn't take them this many hours to arrest him. Arrest the Devil.
He is injured. He has casts on his legs. A cast on his left hand. He has dressings on his chest, on his body. The room reeks of medicine. His stomach is filled with paste from a tube that drips sustenance through his nose and throat. His veins are filled with blood, and medicine, and water.
Is the blood his own?
He wouldn't know how to tell.
Maggie feeds him another ice chip. The world spins in a haze, it drops from his mouth landing somewhere on the sheets, somewhere on Foggy's blanket.
Tears slip from his eyes. He doesn't know why he is crying.
"Hey, you're okay. It's okay."
Maggie. When did she get here? She holds onto his hands, dabs at something on the sheets, on his lap.
His legs itch.
He reaches, and everything in his body screams in pain.
He falls backwards, and that hurts, even against the soft bed. He is tangled and trapped in wires and cables and he reaches over to tubing that is in his uncasted hand. In his vein. Wrong wrong wrong. Medicine. Drugged. Wrong. Against his will. They are going to hurt his friends. He needs out. He needs to save them.
"Out out out out." The words sound warbled to his ears. He shakes his head, and then wheezes as nausea forces its way up his throat and chest. If he could just take out what is keeping him tied.
A hand grasps onto his wrist, a stern tone. "No. Matt, no."
His mother.
What was she doing here, where were his friends, where was his family. He wants his dad.
How was she so strong? He should be able to break her grip. His hand without the tubing is restrained, locked together, a heavy weight of a glove.
She shouts. For help? What does she need help for, he can't hurt her. Not trapped like this. He winces, pulling his hands over his ears, or trying to at least. The tubing in the back of his hand stops him and he hates it. Hates it hates it hates it hates it.
He needs it out.
She won't let him. He reaches the hand up towards his mouth and grabs it with his teeth and pulls the tube and immediately is assaulted with the smell of fresh blood and something is shouting and beeping and there's suddenly more people in his room and someone is holding him and his arm is held down and there is something squeezing his hand and he can't breathe but he is also breathing perfectly and it is not him and he is not in control and he is not in control and he wants his dad and he wants Foggy and he wants Karen and and and and he doesn't want to be here.
There's a sharp scratch in his thigh, above the heavy weight of plaster and dressing and he freezes for a moment in fear, grabbing onto whoever is closest in desperation, batting at people with his frozen hand, trying to pull his bleeding one from the grip of a stranger.
Maggie is crying.
His mother is muttering prayers.
The world slips away from him.
He can't move.
He can't move.
He- There's two voices in the room with him.
Sleep claims him again.
He blinks back to awareness. He remembers panicking.
There is. A strange tube in a new place.
It pumps sweet syrup into the vein of his arm. He doesn't like it. It is different to before.
He shakes at his right arm in disgust. His wrist is locked in place. He tries the other. It does the same.
They have tied bricks to his legs. They are going to drown him at sea. He can't swim anyway.
He can't hear anyone in the room with him. No voices. Everything is too loud to hear a heartbeat.
There's a device in his hand. He toys with it, finding a button, and when he goes to press it he drops it. It clatters to the floor and skitters somewhere, hiding in the corner like a scared animal.
A presence appears beside him, and he jumps, as much as the bricks will allow. A voice speaks, and he thinks he hears his name, but nothing else really makes sense. He doesn't know if he recognises the person it belongs to. He makes a noise of a question, and they repeat themselves but it is no clearer. It refuses to make sense, the syrup that has replaced his blood makes life impossible to understand.
The stranger holds onto his hand, and he can feel clearer now the bandages that wrap it, the dressings he does not remember receiving. They trace shapes into the skin that is exposed, and he sinks into the reassurance like it is quicksand. Small hands.
He sinks beneath the surface of the sand made of syrup.
When he wakes again, he can hear crying. He mumbles, wanting to reach for whoever is upset, but his hands are bound. He is trapped. He is going to prison. They know.
The stranger sniffs at his movement, and he thinks he can hear them scrubbing at their face. Or perhaps it's the patient in the room next to him. Slowly his brain is starting to let him have more awareness of the space beyond the bed he is attached to, even if it often does not make sense.
He thinks the person is Karen. They- she approaches, and brings with her the smell of dirt and flowers and outside. "Sorry, hayfever."
He thinks this is a lie. But everything feels muffled, he cannot hear her heart, cannot hear the triggers and ticks that come when someone hides the truth. He flexes his hand, wanting to reassure her. Wanting to hold her. Or to be held.
He is scared.
She is. Sad?
Is he dying?
When will he be awake for Foggy's visit? He misses him. He has been here, he can smell him on the blanket that is wrapped around him. She runs a hand down his arm, humming gently.
"Hey Matty."
"ey." Why does talking hurt? And take so much energy?
"It's good to see you more awake again."
He shakes his wrist, pulling a grumpy face.
"I know. You were pulling your IV out though. It's to keep you safe." Lie? Truth? Has he been arrested?
There's something cold at his lips, and he takes the ice chip from the hand that has appeared there. He is losing time. He scrunches his face in confusion as he chews on the ice.
She sniffles again. He hadn't known of her suffering with hayfever before. He thinks. He would have noticed that. That's something you know about your friends.
Why was she crying?
He wanted to hug her.
She straightens her shirt, shakes out her hands, fiddles with something on a table. Static noise, and then music, a speaker of some description. Matt hasn't heard music in here before, he tilts his head, listening to the song.
"I'll be five minutes. You've got the bell there." She folds his hand over the small device. "Five minutes."
He thinks she told him where she was going, but the memory has flitted away. He hums an agreement, or at least a noise, he's not sure where his voice has gone he would like to find it again. The door closes and he is alone, empty, abandoned. He listens to the music, somewhere he thinks he recognises the song it is playing. A radio host he doesn't recognise starts to speak, talking of the weather, announcing the time and date.
10th July. 4:30pm.
Well that didn't make sense. It was May. It had been Cherry's retirement do at Josie's. Pre-recorded.
It felt like a significant date though. 10th July. The memory of why was on the tip of his tongue.
And then it vanished as the next song came on. He tapped his fingers together to the tune of the music, wanting his arm to be free. He could be trusted.
It was so much.
Everything was so much.
Pressure on his legs. Constricting bandages around his chest. A tangle of oxygen and feeding tubes around his face. A hand encased in concrete, the faintest scent of blood in the air, mixing with bleach and medicine and unfamiliar chemicals. Someone was crying somewhere. It was inside his brain. It was floors away. It was tears of joy. It was grief.
He was confused. He wanted to cry.
He was crying.
Someone was wiping the tears from his face and he wasn't sure who or why. He presses himself into the touch, letting them caress him, hold him, as he stifles the tears.
"Pain?" It was Karen. He shrugs in response, he doesn't know anymore. He wants it to stop.
"Want to stop."
"I know. I know. You're getting better." Her voice is thick with tears, and he isn't sure why. He shakes his wrists, wanting the restraint off. "I'm sorry. You were pulling your IV out, you need that to keep you healing. You were badly hurt Matt."
At some point he must have fallen asleep. He awakes to the bustle of a stranger around him, he tries to track their movement, as they check on his wounds, as they push more drugs into his bloodstream, as the feeling of his stomach filling without his will becomes more apparent, the coldness of liquid nutrition flowing through his nose and throat. The sticky syrup in his veins takes away the pain that had been threatening to take him over again, and with it they bring a haze of confusion and sleep. The nurse leaves, and he's briefly aware of someone asleep in the chair beside him, before even that awareness vanishes from his mind.
He wakes up from a dream.
He wakes up shouting Foggy's name, and Karen is there and fussing him, and he tries to hold onto the memory of the dream, of a drunken night walking back to their campus apartment, of promising each other forever.
Where was Foggy?
He asks this to Karen, and she skirts around the question for a moment. He asks again, begging, pleading in what limited words and thoughts he has.
"He didn't make it Matt." She is holding onto his hand, stroking his face, his hair, being close in whatever aspect she can be. "He's gone. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Lie? Truth? Truth? Confusion?
He has memories of hearing Foggy's voice in this room but he is not sure if it was a dream.
He cannot be gone. He would know, surely? In his heart? This is just another dream, a nightmare, despite how real it feels. He will wake up and they will be fine, he will be at home and they will all feel safe.
Oxygen whistles through the machine beside him, into his lungs. A monitor echoes every beat of his heart.
He cries.
He sobs, and he feels like he is drowning, that he is slipping under the surface and his hands are tied, he is restrained and held and prevented from any sort of escape. He wants to curl up small and hope that to hide away will undo what he is hearing, what he is learning but he cannot move. "Please."
Tears fall down his face, and he tastes the salt of them in the air, in his mouth, and Karen is hugging him and crying and the blanket over him smells of Foggy.
But Foggy is dead. Foggy is dead and there is going to be a funeral surely, and his family. His family. The Nelsons, who all but took Matt in as their own.
It feels like it is his fault.
He hopes he is suffering for his sins enough in here. Chained to a hospital bed.
He cries himself to sleep with Karen beside him.
He awakens with a start, moving to stretch his arms and being shackled in place. Something feels different, lighter.
His hand. Once encased in rock, immobilised, is free now. He flexes it, and it aches, but it feels healed. His legs are still weighted in brick.
His hand is healed.
His hand is healed .
How is his hand healed? It's only been a few days.
Unless it was just a sprain. But they said it was broken. They said broken. They said it was broken but why would the cast be off? It's only been a few days. It's only been a few days since he fell. Panic rises in his chest, and a hand clutches onto his own, and he jumps at the surprise, he hadn't heard anyone there he hadn't known someone was in the room with him.
"Hey Matty."
It's his mother. Maggie. He doesn't know what to say to her.
"What day is it?"
"Oh, it all blurs into one nowadays. Saturday." He thinks she waves a hand in the air, in a dismissive action.
Saturday made some sense. A week since. That tracked, surely? Just a sprain. Nothing major. Maybe he'd dreamt up that they'd said it was broken.
He wasn't sure if he could trust his own memory.
"Others?"
"Getting some food." Her explanations were clipped and short. He felt like she was angry at him. Tears welled in his eyes unbidden. Why did she hate him?
"Okay." He falls quiet, tapping his fingers together in a restless pattern as he tries to piece together what had happened, what was happening. The soup of painkillers in his blood makes it all hazy.
His movements and fingers slow as sleep drags him back into its embrace. Somewhere vaguely there are voices, a man and a woman who talk to Maggie.
His friends?
He rests easier knowing they are there.
Foggy is telling a story. He talks of college, of the debate classes. Of how a dog wears trousers. Memories Matt had forgotten, but the chatter is a welcomed comfort, here nestled in Foggy's blanket, his scent and voice surrounding him.
He wants to talk to him.
The haze doesn't release him enough. He slips in and out of consciousness, never pulling himself out enough to answer back.
When he does find his words again, it is only Karen in the room. He pouts, confused, feeling strange, twisted and turned to be laying on his side. His hands are still shackled. He wants to make a deal for them to let him free.
He is restless. Sleep hovers at the edge of his awareness, and it hurts to concentrate too much, but he wants out. He could rest at home, surely, with Foggy and Karen's help.
He just wants to sleep.
He drifts back into the emptiness.
There's a story playing when he wakes up. He doesn't recognise it, but it is soft and gentle and kind. He wonders if it is perhaps a children's book. The person in the chair next to him is writing something, scratching pen against paper.
His legs itch beneath their weights. The dressings across his chest and arms seem to have lessened. There are still too many tubes around him. Oxygen, food, catheter, IV. He wants them off .
He can't voice this. He wants them to unchain him.
Perhaps he could escape. Discharge himself.
He can't walk.
He's not sure if he can persuade someone to help him.
He cries. Karen sweeps the tears from his face.
He sobs. Maggie tuts over him and reassures him he is going to be okay.
His breath catches in his throat as he asks where Foggy is. Karen's words stutter and fail before she can tell him. "He's gone. Matt, he died. When he was shot, the same night you were hurt, he didn't make it." He sits there numb for what feels like hours, before the drugs take him back under again.
"Abogados." He announces, next time he wakes. It feels important. It's Foggy's word. "Avocados." He hums, satisfied with the memory, a good dream. Their days in college. There's a blanket tucked high around him, he can't move his hands, but he scrunches his face down into it and inhales the scent of his friend.
"Foggy." It's safety. He drifts back to sleep, even as a voice starts to speak to him. Not Foggy's. Perhaps he can find him in his dreams again instead. He thinks he is missing. Lost. Like Matt is.
"Please. Free. Please. Free." He repeats the words on loop, overwhelmed with everything that surrounds him, wanting out of the handcuffs. "I will be good. Please."
There are numerous voices around him. Female, male, strangers and those more familiar. Gentle but confident hands enclose his wrists, unbuckling the padded restraints. He stretches his arms out, wincing as it pulls on wounds and the stickiness of dressings. He can feel everyone's eyes on him, and he folds his hands back onto his lap again. He has to let them trust him. He doesn't want to be restrained. He thinks he caused it to happen, he thinks he was bad, that he tried to hurt himself even if he didn't really mean to.
Strangers talk about him as though he is not in the room, but they sound positive. They reassure his friends, his mother. There is always someone beside him. He remembers Karen the most.
One time he wakes, and stretches, and almost punches Karen in the face where she has fallen asleep, leaning over the side of the bed. "Sorry sorry sorry sorry." She laughs, and he realises he hasn't heard anyone laugh in here in a while. She had seemed, still seemed, sad.
He doesn't like to hear her so sad. He was going to get better, she didn't have to be sad. She stretches, mumbling the sleep from her voice, before starting to fuss over him. Things felt clearer than they had done in a little while.
Karen explains that they have lowered his pain relief a little. Ease him off of some of the sedation. That they'd like to get him out of bed when they can, even if to just sit in the chair instead, or be wheeled in the chair to somewhere different. He is more aware of his injuries, but he can manage the pain. Pain shows it is healing. Pain shows that he has fought to -
He was fighting to save, help Foggy. Where was Foggy? What happened to Poindexter?
"Foggy?"
Whatever joy and positivity Karen had held in her voice rapidly vanished into the ether. "He's not here Matty."
"Where is he?"
"He died. He's dead Matt." Tears choked her voice, and this conversation felt like a dream. "They couldn't save him."
It couldn't be real. It had to be another nightmare. Another bad terrible dream. He picks at the skin on his arm, wanting to wake up.
It was real. He sobs, tears breaking through, and he reaches arms out to Karen to hold her, to hug her. Their voices are both filled with apologies and sorrow and companionship.
He didn't know how he would go on from this. How was he supposed to live in a world Foggy didn't?
When the drugs start to blur the world around him, he lets them. He slips into a restless sleep, hoping that when he wakes up it will have been but a nightmare. In his stints of awareness, he notices the people in the room around him change. Karen passes off to Maggie, a promise of "get some sleep."
With his mother's voice, he feels like a young child again. Trapped in hospital after losing his sight, his father beside him. She should have been here then. They had missed so much, but at the same time, she had always been there. Watching out for him. Letting him believe he was abandoned.
He found his own family. Found Foggy and Karen. He didn't think he needed Maggie, with her lies, with the hidden truths of many years. He let her in though. It was good. It was okay. They may never be mother and son, but they could at least be something closer to friends.
The sounds of her knitting, the clacking of needles against fabric, lulls him back into a more restful sleep, as the bustle of the corridors around him slips into something much quieter. It must be nighttime. Quieter on the wards. The occasional footsteps of nurses on their rounds, peeking a head into his room, the near silent movement of the door, occasionally Maggie acknowledging them when not sleeping herself.
A morning or two later, they ask, or rather announce, that they want to try and get him up. Just as far as the chair his friends have been using. A change of scenery - he doesn't miss the winced noise the nurse makes on telling him it will be a different view for him. It is exhausting. They do everything for him, and he still feels as though he has run a marathon, sat propped up in an armchair. He fidgets, restlessly picking at the fabric, running his hands over his dressings, until Maggie places something into his hands.
"What is?"
"It's what I've been making. Hats, for the smallest babies. We do drives with the church sometimes, and it feels good to give back to the hospital for the time we have spent here."
He investigates the item in his hands, every knitted strand of yarn, intricately crafted together. Such a soft material, and such a tiny item. Evidence of what gentle things hands can create. Not just violence.
He dozes off there, and Maggie continues her knitting when it is clear he is not up to conversations.
When he does wake, there's a tray of food beside him, and someone tapping at his knee. "Do you want to try to eat something?"
He was desperate for it. Any other time he would have been annoyed at a nurse for waking him up, but here, as dull and boring as the mashed hospital food was, it felt like a step to being better.
He eats too quickly and almost chokes. Even with the tiniest of teaspoons of food, it coats his throat in a way that is unfamiliar, as his throat and lungs battle for priority, over eating or breathing. A straw is placed in his mouth, appearing out of nothingness, and he starts to drink but it is taken back from him so quickly. "Slowly Mr Murdock."
He pouts, and realises Karen is in the room with him from her laughter, and it is such a sound he has missed. She has been worried and sad about him, he knows. She doesn't say it but she carries what can only be described as grief on her shoulders.
Worrying about them both. He needs to get better. One less person to worry about. It's his job to protect them.
The next time they get him out of bed, it is to a wheelchair. Talk of x-rays and scans and tests, and all he can do is follow the flow of the doctors and voices around him. He follows the instructions like a puppet, freezing when the sound of a saw comes closer, before realising it is not to attack, but to remove the casts from his legs. It vibrates through his very bones, but at the end of it all he is released.
He can no longer hear the sound of creaking ships within himself. Or in the places where he can, it is but slight.
He gets better at feeding himself. The tasteless mash loses its enjoyment. He is cleared to start trying to move himself to the wheelchair - with all casts removed he feels more free, and more like himself again.
He loses time still. He knows that time isn't real yet. The doctors tell him he is improving but he still feels so lost and missing. Everything itches with new growth and healing, he longs to rip the tubes from his skin where they hang like snakes over him.
They drag him into a wheelchair, and Karen is left in charge once they have done all they need to do to him. Tests, and bloods, trying to establish what part of his brain is still broken. Words are hard for him, and he gets frustrated trying to have a conversation even if his mind knows what he wants to say.
He wonders if Karen is going to take him to Foggy's room, now he has been allowed to leave his own. He doesn't ask though. He might not be up to visitors. He misses him. She takes him outside, and they sit in the sunshine, and it is good to feel the sun on his face. He tips his head up, his eyes closed, feeling the warmth on his eyelids.
He tries to joke with her when she clips the chair on a wall on the way back to his room, "You insured for this v- vehicle?"
"You want to steer?" She jokingly lifts the hands off of the handles, and he rolls freely for a second, his hand clutched around the infusion stand he is forced to drag along with him, a constant drip of drugs and painkillers into his system.
She grabs back onto his chair, and guides them back to his room.
"Want help?" She locks the wheels of the chair once they are back in the room, parked close to his bed.
"I try." He can't miss her hovering beside him, and on weak shaking legs he pulls himself onto the bed. He is not Daredevil anymore. He is not sure if he will ever be again, weak and lifeless like this. She tucks Foggy's blanket around him again, as the tiredness sinks into his bones and he feels himself quickly losing a battle with consciousness.
When he awakes, Maggie is there, and Karen is gone. He picks at the soft food she offers him, a promise of the feeding tube removed if he can prove he can eat normally. They've progressed him to some sort of bread, soft and warm.
He would love a coffee. He doubts that is encouraged. He doesn't want to ask for it for fear of being refused, and so instead sips on the juice he is given. There is talk of tapering off the painkillers, especially now he is able to take them himself. That his injuries are healing well, and they do not want him to be reliant on it. Torn muscles are all but healed, they say it won't be long until they will be encouraging him to walk.
An unfamiliar voice greets him one day, and he begins a rigorous stretch of physiotherapy, as they reteach his legs to walk properly, and to hold his weight. He knows painfully he has lost muscle mass in the short time he has been in hospital.
He sleeps for the rest of the day after it, and the cycle repeats too many times for him to count, until they have him standing between two handrails, a promise that the floor in front of him is clear, and that they will catch him if he falls. He walks into the void, slow shuffling steps, the voice of the physiotherapist in front of him guiding him.
It repeats. It gets easier. The feeding tube is removed in what feels like torture as it slides back through his throat, and they disconnect his arm from the IV, leaving the cannula in for now. They teach him how to use a crutch as a guiding cane, how to balance what he needs, and reassure him it will not be weak to use the wheelchair and ask a friend for help. He is annoyed they have clocked him so easily.
He takes walks through the corridors with Karen, looping outside to enjoy the sunshine, finding their way to the hospital canteen.
As bad as the coffee there is, it is a welcome friend.
Her voice is hesitant one day, as they are sitting on a bench outside. "Would you like to visit Foggy?"
"Yes. Yes please." He wishes he could run, because he would like to run to his friend, and hug him, and hope that he gets better as quickly as Matt did, for his injuries to have improved in mere weeks.
"Do you want to take him flowers or anything?"
Flowers. That's something Foggy would appreciate. Spring flowers, and he knew the hospital shop sold them. He nods to Karen, reaching a hand over to her as he hears her breath catch.
"How is he?"
"Oh. Oh Matty." The scent of salt tells him she is crying, and he is confused. He had to be on the mend, they would have told him if he was in a bad way, surely? "Matt." She clutches back onto his hand, and twists in her seat as though to look him in the face, reaching for his other hand.
"He died, Matt."
He is confused. His brain fizzles out for a moment, and he doesn't know what to say, and then he realises he is crying, and Foggy is dead .
"What?"
"They did all they could. But the bullet hit his heart, and he was gone before they could do anything to save him."
Why had nobody told him?
"Secret? Why?" His voice raises in anger and in grief and in confusion.
"I thought you'd remembered. I thought you knew . I'm sorry." They are both crying, both close to hysterical. "I told you before, in the hospital, a few times. We both told you."
He's not sure what is a dream and what is real anymore. "I heard him. Before. When I was sleeping."
"We had a recording. Marci sent it in, but I stopped playing it when it was making you confused. He never made it to the hospital."
"Funeral?" He should have been there. Why hadn't anyone taken him?
"We waited as long as we could in hope you could be there, but we had to. I can take you there if you want to know where he is."
"What day is it?"
"It's the 2nd of August."
His heart flips a thousand times in his chest as he tries to pick out the lie in her voice, confusion rising into panic for how much time he has lost. That the speed of his healing wasn't a miracle, wasn't the wonders of modern technology but instead a broken brain and a broken mind.
"Can I go back to my room." He feels lied to. He feels like he cannot trust his own memory, trust his friends. Foggy can't be dead.
Karen's voice was speaking only the truth though. She helps him back to his room, and he climbs into his bed and hides beneath the blanket that only barely smells like Foggy now.
When they come in with his meal later, he simply turns over and ignores it. He sleeps through the night, and he wakes up crying.
Foggy is dead .
Foggy is dead and either they refused to tell him or his brain refused to remember it, and he is not sure which is worse.
His mother is here. He doesn't want to speak to her. He cries, and ignores her, and pretends to go back to sleep as she starts to talk. He does actually fall asleep, and when he wakes up, Karen is beside him, and she is holding a coffee, and he wonders if that is what woke him up.
She offers him one. He shakes his head, and pulls the blanket up around himself. "Do you want to go for a walk?"
"No." He curls up again, wondering if he could sink through the mattress and out of the world.
"Are you in pain? Do you want some more painkillers?" Her hand hovers near his call bell.
"No. Not pain." Not like that at least. Guilt perhaps. The feeling of his heart split open for having failed.
He dozes.
Someone, Karen he thinks, wakes him up for food. He doesn't want it.
Someone else tries to get him to drink. He refuses.
In some moment between sleep and awake, he hears talk of feeding tubes again. Of forcing him to live.
But what use is it? Even if they fill him with sludge and nutrients, his heart does not want it. His heart and soul are dead .
Foggy is dead.
He lays there, listlessly, familiar and strange voices around him.
Sometimes, in the lost hours of the night, he hears Foggy's. He reaches out his hand for him, to clutch onto the body that must surely belong to that voice, but grasps onto nothing.
A priest comes to offer counsel. Matt doesn't register his name.
Somewhere the prayers start to sound more like last rites.
He takes that as permission to let go.
His breath slows. His heart slows.
He slips away in the night.
When they have to announce the cause of death, all they can say is that Matthew Murdock died of a broken heart.
That he had been showing signs of improvement. That he had been getting better.
But the person he was getting better for was dead, and so all he could do was join him.
Their graves are not quite neighbours, but they are close.