Chapter Text
Matt wasn't trying to seriously hurt the guy - he only wanted to stop him from running off and getting himself caught, after all. But it was starting to get dangerous. He could feel it, a strange sensation in the air. It was more noticeable than Danny's rapid heart rate, the heavy sound of his breathing, the furious note of blood pumping through his veins. The fire that was his vision saw each motion, aided by the sound of fists and feet cutting through wind. He blocked a hit, noting the strength behind them that grew rapidly as they fought. If he wasn't wearing his armor, he would likely have been bruised.
He could hear Luke pacing behind him, ready to interfere and stop the fight. Jessica hadn't moved after trying, and failing, to calm him down, but he could hear her heart beating with each pass, growing faster. Stick was impassive, a barely noticeable presence in the room. A presence that slipped away, out of the immediate range of Matt's abilities while he was focused on the fight.
And then she grabbed Danny by the hood of his shirt, flipping him to the ground.
He heard that noise again. As if electricity was rushing through... something. Flesh? The air suddenly tingled with anticipation, burning and strong. It was distracting, that feeling. The sound. He missed Danny's words in his confusion. The air was thrumming, loud and harsh. His ears were starting to burn. The sensation was nearly overwhelming, and he realized moments too late that he had not picked up on Danny rising to his feet, stepping forward. Luke pulled Jessica back as Danny charged forward. The sound was close now and it made him wince, trying to back away.
And then he saw the burning outline of a fist moving towards him. Too late to dodge, but he moved sideways just enough that it struck his shoulder instead of his head.
And it struck with all the overwhelming force of a train. He was hurled backwards, unaware of anything other than a deafening wave of sound. He crashed clean through a support beam, which busted under his weight and momentum, and he flew nearly halfway across the room. His ears rang, and he brought up his arms to cover them as to ease the pain.
But his right arm wouldn't move, not one bit, and he wasn't even sure why.
Until the pain blasted past the shock and it tore through him as if something had just sunk its teeth into his shoulder and shook it violently. He gasped, rolling to his side, grabbing at his shoulder in a way that made the pain much worse. His chest ached, making it hard to breath, as if he had pulled several muscles. He was unable to bite back the groan of pain, trying to get onto his stomach, get his feet under him and stand. He had never felt so much pain in one limb before - not even when he had been shot. It was worse.
The sheer agony he felt when he tried to focus on the area to determine the damage was enough to send his senses elsewhere. He staggered to his feet, holding his shoulder, abruptly aware that his world on fire had been put out, likely from the pain. He could hear Jessica and Luke rising from the floor, their hearts racing, breaths hard. Danny was rising slower, a hitch in his breathing, an oddity in his heart rate.
Matt stumbled back, as confusion began to muddle his senses. A different kind of ringing.
Pain.
His hand brushed over the armor, shocked to find that the heavy plates had actually broken, sunken in. He could feel blood slopping down his arm, from where the tips of armor had cut into his skin.
But worse, was the deep, throbbing pain deep within, of broken bones and torn muscle.
"Shit. Are you alright?" A male voice said. He sensed people near him, too close. He recoiled away, bumping into the wall, tension prickling through him. It was too much. He tried to raise his working arm into a fighting stance, to protect himself. He knew he was injured, his shoulder too badly damaged to be used. He wouldn't be able to fight effectively with only one functioning arm but he would try.
"Calm down, we're trying to help asshole." He recognized the speaker, and the smell of alcohol on the breath the words came from. Jessica.
The larger person near him must be Luke. He could hear a rapid heartbeat further away, radiating some emotion he was simply too distracted to try and understand.
"We need to get your armor off," Luke said in his calm, steady voice. But his heart rate was alarmingly fast, betraying the worry he must be feeling. "Is your shoulder broken?" He focused on those words.
Broken? Undoubtedly. But how badly?
Pain. It gripped him as soon as he tried to focus on his shoulder, aware of the inherent wrongness of the injury. He could hear - and feel - the blood pulsing weakly through the veins. Hindered in many places. Broken vessels giving way to blood pouring into the muscle. Fragments of bone shredding flesh, spread neatly across the shoulder blade. He wasn't aware that he had collapsed, too busy trying to feel out what was wrong, too wrapped up in the agony. They had caught him, lowering him to the ground. The bruising was absolute. As if every inch of flesh on his shoulder had been equally mashed. The pain pounded rhythmically with his too fast heart. It ate away at him. It wasn't just his shoulder the hurt. The pain was sharp across his chest, muscle too taut, too stretched. He wondered if the punch had managed to pull so hard that it tore the connected tissues.
He was snapped out of his internal processing by someone shoving him forcefully onto his back. He struggled, but proved no match for super strength.
"Hold still dumbass," was Jessica's harsh words.
He focused on her, and her strength. They were trying to peel his armor off, and he had no real choice other than to let them. What was he going to do? Break his fist trying to punch Luke in the face?
He gritted his teeth, barely biting back a scream when they got to the right 'sleeve', and tried to separate the broken plates from his arm. The plates tore free of skin, blood oozing faster.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry," he picked up on the mumbling voice of Danny who had approached quietly, radiating guild.
No one paid him any attention, and his armor was pulled free with a sharp twang. Merlin would be horrified to see the damage done to his carefully crafted suit.
Agony.
They were trying to move his arm through his sleeve, to see the extent of the damage underneath. He couldn't quite hold back that scream, as shattered shards of bone grated against each other, slicing into more unprotected flesh, shredding blood vessels. The world on fire returned for a brief moment as an explosion of red, before fading quickly to back.
===============
"Shit. Shit. SHIT!" Jessica swore as he screamed in clear agony and passed out. She had tried to be careful at moving his arm as little as possible, but that clearly had not worked quite as well as she had hoped. The only benefit was that his unconsciousness allowed her to finish, and she froze momentarily at the sight of the arm. The skin was bright red, not counting the blood from the cuts. It spread over his entire shoulder blade and even moved near to his chest. That would be a particularly nasty looking bruise. But that wasn't what really caught her attention. It was the state of the shoulder. She could practically see the bone caved in, broken severely under the force of the hit.
And it occurred to her in that brief moment that Matt, despite his abilities and skill, was completely human. He had no increased durability or unbreakable skin or skeleton. If he had been hit in the head or chest he wouldn't be injured. He would be dead.
The very sight of it made her want to vomit. She wasn't a doctor. She didn't deal with wounds.
She knew someone who did.
"I'm calling Claire," she said, in a tone that offered no argument. Luke had simply stopped moving, as if aware that there was absolutely nothing he could do to take care of such an injury. And also nothing he could do to help. Danny stood behind them with an awful expression of guilt combined with horror and shame. She glared at him. "Don't just stand there, fucking help," she snapped. She was in no mood to deal with the emotional train wreck that was the immortal iron fist as he called himself.
She dialed Claire while she glared at him, watching him flinch and rush over to Luke and look around in obvious uncertainty at what to do. Claire picked up after the second ring.
"Is someone dead?" The nurse asked.
Jessica made a scoffing sound. "You always assume the worst. Nah. It's Matt. Got his shoulder busted to hell and he passed out."
There was a brief silence on the other end. "He passed out?" Claire sounded shocked. "Does he have a head injury? Is he bleeding out?"
"It's badly broken. He did get punched in the head but the dumbass was fine after that," she added. She gave her their location, and added an unhelpful "we have no fucking idea what we're doing," just to get through that they were sitting around not being helpful.
Then she hung up.
They lapsed into an awkward silence that ended up not being broken until the door was opened, nearly fifteen minutes later. Danny kept looking between the ground and his hands, as if unable to comprehend that he had done this with his own hands in a fit of anger. Luke got up and paced. Jessica swore, walked around, and took a swig from her emergency flask of alcohol, ignoring Luke staring at her with disapproval. She deserved to drink after that.
Matt just lay there completely unconscious. She was sure if he was awake he'd be saying some weird shit about heart beats or the food down the street. Or screaming in pain. She didn't know.
Claire stopped for a brief moment to take in the scene. She seemed surprised to see that Matt was, indeed, unconscious. Jessica didn't want to know why and didn't care to ask, as the nurse rushed up to kneel beside him. She took in the extensive bruising and cuts and misshapen bone very quickly. She didn't even touch it. "What the hell was he hit with?" She asked finally.
Danny looked away, unwilling to meet her stare.
Luke, as if experiencing a brief moment of sympathy, said nothing.
Jessica felt no such sympathy. "Iron brain got in a mood and punched him with his glowing fist," she said without hesitation.
"You what?" Claire glared at Danny who continued to look away.
"I... wasn't thinking," he finally spoke up, looking immensely uncomfortable.
Even Jessica was feeling secondhand anxiety from Claire's glare on him but fortunately the nurse finally sighed and turned away.
"He needs a hospital."
No sooner had the words left her mouth - and she had tensed up as if ready to move when she spoke them - than Matt jolted awake like a psycho ninja and lashed out with his good arm with a strangled cry of pain. Claire moved with practiced eased, as if for some weird-ass reason this was a normal occurrence for her. Luke moved quickly to hold down the arm while Matt writhed on the floor, nothing but pain stretched across his face.
"Matt you need to calm down. It's me, Claire," the nurse said gently, braving to grab his good hand in her own. Surprisingly it worked, and the blind lawyer/blind ninja calmed down slightly.
"Claire?" His words were a groan, every muscle tense with pain.
"Yeah. I need to know if you are hurt anywhere else, okay?"
He was silent for a brief moment, breathing in and out steadily. Luke let go of his arm, apparently deciding there was no more reason to hold it.
"My chest hurts.. and my back."
Ah right. She had been hurled to the ground by a shock wave, but she had seen the support beam that had mysteriously been knocked down after she got up, in the direction Matt had been sent. He must have slammed right through it.
"Okay, I'm just going to look," the nurse said. She began to pull away the shirt that they had left alone after just getting it past his shoulder, and Jessica released another slew of curses that had Luke staring at her.
There were scars. So many scars. They marred his chest and stomach, of varying sizes and intensities. The majority of them looked like cuts or stab wounds. One on his lower stomach looked so large she couldn't even imagine what had caused it. She suddenly understood why Claire seemed so familiar with Matt's antics. She must have been the one to take care of the majority of those wounds.
"What the hell did that?" Luke asked, staring directly at the big one.
Matt must be aware of their gazes and likely guessed they were looking at the most severe injury, because he had no issue explaining. "A.. ninja. A shoge hook."
Jessica had no fucking clue what a shoge hook was but judging by Danny's strange expression it must not be anything good.
"Your shoulder is most likely shattered. You'll need a surgery to try and repair the damage," Claire interrupted their questions. Shattered. No wonder he was in so much pain. She had broken a bone before and that hadn't been very fun. But she had the benefit of healing factor.
"No... no hospitals," Matt protested in his usual stubborn ass way.
But his argument was weak, because he was rapidly sinking back into that state of unconscious.
Jessica took another swig of her drink. This was going to be a long day.
==============
He woke to a quiet room. He expected the beeping of many machines. The overwhelming stench of sterility and disease and blood and death. The sounds of pagers going off, of impatient men screaming at nurses because they had been waiting. Of patient's screaming in pain. Of computer's whirring and keyboard's clicking, metal trays and metal utensils clattering off the floor. The overwhelming sensation of a hospital.
But he didn't.
He was lying on something relatively comfortable, and very familiar. It smelled of home. He was home, in fact. He was on his couch. And he had no memory of how he got there.
There was a heart beat in the room with him. Someone sitting on the chair opposite. It took a few more seconds of listening to recognize the heart beat and scent of lavender shampoo as Claire. There was no one else here. But he could catch the stale scents of alcohol that told him that Jessica had likely been here. Maybe the others too. It made him slightly uncomfortable that they had been in his home without his permission.
"Stop pretending to be asleep," Claire said. He hadn't noted a change in her heart rate, but maybe she was just so used to it that she didn't react.
He raised his head slightly. With the motion, a ripple of pain spread through his shoulder and chest, but it was significantly decreased compared with before. Now aware of it, he was hit with a myriad of sensations: the warmth around his shoulder, the restriction of his arm. The smell of dried blood. Metal. So much metal. He could taste it on his tongue. Feel the coldness of it in his shoulder. The bones had been shifted back into places. Stitches knitted his flesh back together. It was slightly... disconcerting.
Everything felt different.
The taste of metal remained on his tongue as he spoke. "Feels strange... cold metal against bone," he remarked.
Her heart raced quickly, for a moment. Then steadied again.
"Didn't have much of a choice. It was that or immobilize your shoulder for months and we both know how that would work," Claire responded. He understood. He truly did. Without the metal he would never get use of his shoulder. Maybe he wouldn't even with it.
"Tastes weird," he mumbled quietly. Metal was like acid on his tongue.
"That's... strange," Claire replied. But she was used to the strange things he often said. And how deeply in tune he was to his body, just via his senses. "I highly recommend painkillers. It's not going to feel well once everything wears off."
He heard her words but it didn't mean he would listen. They both knew that.
He was at least grateful that they had taken him home immediately following the surgery so he wouldn't wake up in the hospital. "Thanks, Claire."