Chapter Text
He stands at the end of a precipice. The bottom is infinitely far, he can’t sense what’s down there, and he can’t jump to find out. His veins are filled with ice, weighing down his limbs, and he is trapped, trapped, trapped. The hollowness inside of him has grown so tangible he’s begun to hear the echo.
He knows what this is. He’s antsy, stir-crazy. He needs something to fight, needs it like breathing.
The only way you can tell you’re alive is when you’re one small misstep from dying. It’s been that way for a long while now.
His brain is turning hot, loud, fuzzy with inactivity. He misses the kingpin, shouldn’t have killed him so soon, could have drawn it out, played with him, should have betrayed him and left him alive to fight back. Fisk was the sort of man who liked a game, liked to think he was winning, was clever enough to keep going, come back swinging. But Matt was impatient, impulsive, that’s always been one of his faults. Matt went for the satisfaction of fresh blood, of winning, and was left with the cold corpse dissatisfaction of having won.
Matt is a predator without prey. No, worse than that, if he’s being honest. Matt is prey without a predator, pacing his enclosure, wasting away without the thrill of being chased, without the threat of being hunted to give his existence some hint of meaning.
He is running his fingers over plans, orders, files, without really reading any of it. He’s going over an operation down by the docks, child trafficking (and a small, feeble part of him twists up at the thought of it, but he doesn’t notice. He’s well versed in ignoring that small part, has been since he was small, wouldn’t recognize it if it was pointed out to him.). He’s meant to be poking holes in the operation, figuring out the weaknesses before they can be exploited, making sure it all runs smoothly. But what’s the point? Fisk might have done something, but he’s dead. Matt can see the weaknesses, the shatter points, but what point is there in fixing them? It’s not like he’s fighting himself.
Unless.
Why not? Why the hell not?
Nothing’s stopping him. Otomo’s watching, the Hand is always watching. But he’s not sure if Otomo would have finished him, even though the Hand wouldn’t want him to, and he’s in good standing these days, has a lot of leeway, all he needs is to slip away for a moment.
He wears red. The black outfit would be simplest, the one he wore when he was younger, an anonymous assassin, but the Hand might recognize him in it.
He does not bring his sword. He does not bring his sword because his swordsmanship is too recognizable, but he also does not bring his sword because he does not want to.
He loves the sound of steel slicing through air, loves the scent of fresh blood, the feel of flesh and organs yielding beneath his blade. He is a master, and the sword is an extension of the self, the self an extension of the sword.
But sometimes the burning is hot and wild within him. Sometimes he needs the all encompassing wholeness of a body thrown behind a punch. Sometimes he needs the bruises on his knuckles to remind himself they’re real, to feel like flesh and blood. Sometimes he needs his body not to be an extension of the sword, just for a moment, just to breathe.
If he’s going to do this long term, he’ll need weapons of some sort, but for now his fists are enough.
He melts from shadows he only knows are there through feel and reasoning. He melts from the shadows and hears his goons’ hearts beat faster, their breaths catch. He fights. Guns fire, but he is shadow, he is free, unstoppable, inescapable. His fists are bloody and he grins.
He wears red. Red like his father red so they can’t can’t see your blood (he wonders, absently, if his blood still runs red, or if it’s black, dead, if there is ink flowing through his veins instead of life, his body the brushstrokes of the Hand). Red, so they can’t see you bleed, and he does bleed. Because he is good, but there are many of them, and this is his operation, the Kingpin isn’t an easy man to beat. So he is bleeding by the end of it, of course he is, he always bleeds, he’s always broken open, has been since he was a kid. He smells his own blood, and it smells human, it smells real.
But before long he has them all subdued, lying senseless on the ground, not dead, he didn’t bring his sword. He stands above them all and breathes, and his heart beats fast with exhilaration, alive, alive, alive.
He frees the children.