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I.
Matt did not enjoy being awake today. It wasn’t that anything particularly bad had happened, he just… didn’t want to be awake. Be alive, even. The second he opened his eyes that morning he had been exhausted. His whole skeleton seemed to creak and moan when he got up and his muscles ached with every shift of his body, even breathing took more effort than usual. He was tired, and he wished he didn’t have to get up, or think, or breathe. But, he did it, because Foggy would worry. Foggy would worry that Matt had finally walked into oncoming traffic, or something. Who knows, but either way Foggy would be worried. So, Matt dragged himself out of his bed, forced his body into clothes that seemed to weigh on him like a ton of bricks, went through all the daily motions, and left his apartment.
Walking was an exercise in futility, it felt like. Every step was a task on its own, and it hurt to take them. But he pushed on, and he kept going, because he had to. It hurt, he could feel every tendon, muscle, vein, and bone shifting in his feet with each step, heard them shift, and wished that he didn’t have to be alive to deal with it. But he did, and he was, so he kept on. Kept on going until he made it to the offices of Nelson and Murdock, and then kept right on going. Kept going until he made it to his office, kept going after he made it to his chair and had to start working, kept going as he read through file after file, and kept going when he had to talk to Foggy and Karen and convince them he was okay and not wishing he could stop breathing right this very second. It worked, of course; with a perfectly timed smile and a laugh sweet enough rot teeth out of their skulls. They believed him. They went back to their desks and their work and remained none the wiser.
The end of the day could not come soon enough. Matt wanted to cry when it was finally time, but that took more energy than he had. He just had to get home. He just had to lay down and rest for a little. That would solve this issue, right? That would fix everything, just one night to rest. One night that his bones wouldn’t gain a new bruise, one night that his muscles wouldn’t ache, one night where his entire body didn’t beg for rest. Just one night. The city could survive just one night.
Stick would probably yell at him for that, tell him he was a coward and a pussy and that warriors don’t take breaks, warriors don’t rest. Stick wasn’t here to yell at him, though, and Matt was not a warrior. Matt was just Matt. Tonight, the Devil would not be let out. Tonight, and only tonight, the Devil would be put to rest.
Matt got to his apartment, shockingly, in one piece. He wished he hadn’t, wished he had nearly ‘tripped’ into oncoming traffic more than once on the way, but he made it. He didn’t bother to change, he just shed his jacket, loosened his tie, and slithered in between his silk sheets to hide from the world for the night. It was less comfortable than normal, but Matt couldn’t find it in himself to really care. He was uncomfortable enough just existing today, what was a little more? Not much, clearly, since Matt had no intentions of ever getting up again, or at least in the foreseeable future.
Just this one night of rest. Just this one night of letting his broken body heal. Just this one night, Matt deserved it.
II.
Another day that being alive was trying the patience of one Matthew Michael Murdock. Not a normal day, not just an average day that was wrong the second he woke up, but an actual bad day. He started out feeling a little off but kind of okay, really, but it all spiraled downward as the day carried on. He had a fractured rib that just kept creaking, kept aching no matter how carefully he moved; had a bruise that stood out a little more on his jaw than he had realized. He spilled coffee on himself on accident, had to lie about running into a doorframe, actually ran into a doorframe when his focus slipped for just a second, twisted his ankle a little bit on a stumble… the list just kept going and the events compounding on top of each other. There was no reprieve from the day, not a single second. Matt and Foggy had to meet with a client, and Matt may have possibly, maybe, sort of zoned out for a few minutes of the meeting and repeated a question already asked, and Foggy may have taken notice of it but that was fine.
Foggy cornered him after that meeting to ask if he wanted to go home, to rest and take a day to get it together, or something, and that was less fine. But Matt, in true Matt Murdock fashion, declined; said he could tough it out the rest of the day, and he could. Well, he could if the cloud that had been hovering over him all day would dissipate. It, in true hovering cloud of gloom fashion, did not dissipate. That was even less fine, but still totally fine. Matt wishing that God would take mercy on a poor sinner and smite him right there was totally fine, and this day was absolutely the first day in his life he had wished for such a thing in a totally, absolutely joking manner. Totally.
Except it really wasn’t, and Matt really wasn’t fine, and his body felt like lead and every step he took hurt again and breathing hurt again and not just because of his stupid, creaky rib. Existing hurt, for no reason at all, and Matt just wished it would stop. He would rather die than have this day keep going, but Foggy and Karen were both still around and whoever that kingpin was still happened to be out so that meant Matt had to stick around to keep them alive, at least. He may suck at taking care of himself, may be the worst person in the world for it, actually; but he could sure as Hell keep his friends in one piece.
Even with that knowledge, Matt’s desire for some good, old fashioned divine intervention and angelic smiting did not go away. He still hoped for it every single movement he made for the rest of the day. Still wished that his lungs would just collapse under the weight that seemed to be sitting on hem and let him die already, but no such wish was granted. Like God would answer a Devil’s prayer anyway, though.
That was fine, though. That was fine, Matt was fine, Karen and Foggy were fine, everything in the world was completely, absolutely, totally fine. Everything was fine.
III.
Nothing was fine, everything felt broken, and Matt did not have the strength for it today. Rather than move to silence the alarm that would not stop talking, he just stayed still, his face pressed into his pillow. He did not have the energy for this. He barely had the energy to keep his lungs working, how was he meant to make his body do what he wanted? Well, he figured he wasn’t.
So, he lay there, alarm still sounding, and tried to slip into sleep again. It did not work.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, his phone also started to go off. Fog-gy. Fog-gy. Fog-gy. Fog-gy. Huh, two things Matt didn’t have the strength for. Ka-ren. Ka-ren. Ka-ren. Oh, three things, now. That was not fine, but Matt couldn’t do anything about any of the three things. Not when his entire body turned to stone, not when his body felt broken if he so much as twitched. Thankfully he had no one else that was really in his life to call him. Claire kind of counted, but not really. She was part of the Devil’s world.
Matt debated the pros and cons of just getting up, forcing his body to listen even though he would rather be six feet under than moving at the moment. Pros; no one will worry. Cons; moving, working, getting dressed, using energy. The cons seemed to outweigh the pros, so Matt was alright to stay where he was. He wasn’t exactly happy with it, but it was better than moving. Better than trying to make his broken body – because it had to be broken if it felt this awful, right? – attempt to push off of his bed, which was silk and soft and kept him wrapped in warmth and in a little less pain. At this rate, he was sure his body would just stop working by his next birthday. The little aches and creaks his body had were only growing in number and ferocity, and he had no intentions of stopping what he did, so the numbers would only continue to rise and rise until one day they, inevitably, get him killed.
Matt was wishing that day was today, but as usual, God would not grant him that. Probably for the best, really, Matt knew where he was going when he died and it was not the fun place. Not with everything he had done. Not with the things he had thought of doing.
Matt was so absorbed in his train of thought that rapidly turned into a straight up train wreck; he didn’t pay any mind to the knocking on his door. Didn’t listen to the calls of “Hey, Matt, buddy, are you home? We’re kind of worried,” and didn’t listen to the announced intention of Foggy to get into his apartment using the roof access. Because Foggy was a good person and was worried about Matt, as he should be. Matt, of course, would argue that no one needed to worry about him, he was a Murdock and always got back up, he was Matt so he was fine, but Foggy always saw right through that.
There was no fooling Franklin Nelson, he was a lawyer for a reason. Matt absently remembered that fact when he heard his door open, heard Foggy descend the stairs from the roof access, and heard him walking closer to Matt’s bedroom. He stopped paying attention at all when Foggy got to the room’s doorway, going back to the blissful absent mindedness he was in earlier, mind gently cycling through the same thoughts it had been going through for the past however long he had been laying there.
Nothing was fine, and Foggy’s soft “Oh, Matt,” was proof enough of that.
IV.
Matt was not fast enough. Not even the Devil helped him get there fast enough, there was no way. Except, that little voice in the back of Matt’s mind whispered that there was a way, you were just too slow to get there. His traitorous mind did not stop whispering to him, even as he called an ambulance and tried to keep the man he had failed to protect alive. It was just a mugging, really, how did it manage to go so wrong? If anyone should have been the one injured here, it should have been Matt. But no, because Matt wasn’t fast enough to stop the man from trying to help in the fight. Because he wasn’t fast enough to just stop the mugger before the man got the sense to try and help out.
Matt cursed himself the entire time he was kneeling by the man, hands held over the gash in his body, failing to keep all the blood in his body. The man was awake, of course, and knew what was happening, as if being stabbed wasn’t bad enough; he had to be awake in the aftermath. The real kicker was that the man was apologizing. To Matt. Why, though, when it was Matt’s fault? The man had no reason to be sorry, he was just trying to help, and Matt was… Matt was not at his best, anyway, it was on him. He tried to assure the man of this, but he was not having it. The man said to him “Enough with the martyr complex, it was my choice,” like it made everything okay, like it made Matt lose his guilt or change his mind. It did not.
Matt still cursed himself for it even when paramedics arrived, when they took the man off Matt’s hands, and told Matt that the man would live, he would be fine. Matt believed them, their hearts were steady when they told him this information, so they at least thought it was true, but he still worried. Still blamed himself for the wound that man had, and any resulting complications from it. It was one thing for Matt to be hurt, another for anyone else. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was supposed to be the one who got hurt, the one who died if he had to. He would’ve rather died from that knife than have what really happened happen again, even if the man’s injury was survivable, and it was.
The point was that Matt was too slow, and that was going to eat at him until it put him into an early grave; or maybe the being too slow itself would put him in the grave, it was hard to know what the future held when he could barely think of a future beyond this current moment.
Either way ended with Matt in an early grave, and he didn’t have any objections to that idea.
V.
That night, the city went up in flames. Not in a figurative sense, the flames had already left their mark on Matt, and he hadn’t been able to stop it. Fisk, that was the name of the man who was destroying Matt’s city piece by piece. Matt was determined to find him, but first he had to make it out of here with that Russian, Vladimir, alive. The chances of either of them making it were looking slim, but Matt couldn’t let anyone die on his watch (except maybe himself, but no one needed to know that.)
Getting out of here was going to be painful, for both parties involved it seemed. Vladimir was bloody and had his heart stop once already, there was no telling if it would happen again; and Matt was bruised in places he didn’t even know you could bruise, maybe bleeding a bit too, probably with a broken bone or two, but that was fine. His heart was still beating, and hadn’t stopped once. He was not the main concern.
Thankfully, the Russian decided to be helpful in this escape. He helped Matt escape the room they had fallen into, and helped him get out of dodge before Fisk’s men got to him. It cost the Russian his life, and that was going to eat away at Matt, too, but there was exactly a snowball’s chance in Hell that Matt was going to convince him to leave with him and turn himself into the authorities.
Getting out alive was a gift, or so Matt thought for the first ten minutes of being out and alive.
When he heard that Fisk had pinned the murders on him, the deaths all of those police, the bombs and their victims, and heard that the city he had bled for, and would willingly die for believed it, he wished he hadn’t made it out. If he hadn’t, maybe Fisk would’ve let the dead lie, and he wouldn’t have been blamed. His city would’ve still believed in him, would’ve let him do his job without so much fear in their hearts.
It seemed like no one still believed in the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, and instead believed that he had finally lived up to his name. Lived up to it by breaking out the fire and death that haunted the city that night, upheld his reputation with the blood of innocent people.
Matt would rather die than have those lies believed.
+ I.
Matt was bleeding out.
Matt had launched himself out of a window, into the water that chilled him to the bone, and was bleeding out as he did it. He was bleeding out, and he had no way to stop it. Claire was too far out, he would never make it to her before he collapsed, everything already ached and his lungs burned and his bones creaked and his mouth tasted like blood.
He was not going to make it to her, but he could make it to his own apartment. He could make it. He could stitch himself up; he would have to. Matt was throwing himself across rooftops as fast as his broken and bruising body would allow, stumbling with every landing and nearly falling and being unable to get back up again. His lungs screamed for more air than he could pull in, his body cried for rest, just a little break, but Matt knew that if he took one, he may never get up again.
So, Matt kept throwing himself over rooftops, over and over and over again. His own building seemed so far away; it was like one of those hallways you run down during dreams. It just kept going on and on for longer than was normal, but you were left with no choice but to keep going forward.
Matt was, eventually, able to find the end of his never-ending hallway.
He finally got to his roof, and nearly collapsed as soon as he hit it. His whole being was screaming for rest, now. The creaking sounds of his bones had turned to cracking, his muscles burned, the cuts on his body still wept his blood out, and his mouth still tasted like copper and dust. He could not grant them rest, though. Not yet. He still had to get himself patched up. He still needed to survive.
This time, he wanted to live.
This time, Matt thought, God would once more not grant his wishes.