Chapter Text
Murdock’s left eyebrow reminds him of the dirt track to his grandparents’ house, of the sunshine and the colours that lit up around him and of the warm, homely dust under his feet. His right eyebrow reminds him of their car, rattled out and battered and always in need of repair. The area under his right eye is the shop that was at the end of the road. It never seemed to sell anything worth buying, but he liked it there all the same, because there were bright things hanging from the ceiling and even when he grew taller he could never reach them even when he jumped, but he always knew that to get them he had only to ask.
It’s a long time since he’s been back there, but he can revisit every time he looks in a mirror and peers closely enough at himself. He’s learnt to carry home within.
Once, he was bothered by the inside of his room at the V.A. It used to seem very small to him, and sometimes it still does, but now he’s an expert at climbing drainpipes and lowering himself from windows, and that makes the place seem bigger. The others make it seem bigger, too. Things like telephone lines and the possibility of Face’s voice at his door or at his window promising him flight in every sense of the word, open up new vistas and potential to Murdock’s surroundings.
The people in the rooms around him come and go and some of them are friendly and some of them aren’t and some of them aren’t there long enough for Murdock to tell either way. Murdock is always there, except when he isn’t. Even the cracks in the ceiling know him now. Sometimes he thinks they must be tired of looking at him, so he keeps a roll of different posters under his bed and alternates them depending on his mood. Through ten years of (mostly) good behaviour he has earned the right to a telephone, to razors, to the freedom to clip his own toenails. He still flinches when people try to touch him. Touch with Face and Hannibal and B.A. and even Amy is like magnetism and warmth. Anyone else’s hands want to move him, to control him. He’s used to being pushed and prodded and restrained. He jerks his wrists out of reach and watches peoples’ faces, finding the balance between compliance and autonomy, between dignity and defiance.
He paints stripes on his shoelaces and talks to the curtains. He’s working on being able to climb to the ceiling and stay there, hooking his fingers onto the metal framework. It doesn’t work mostly, because the metal rods bend, and the ceiling tiles are flimsy and powdery under his hands and sometimes they crack, and he comes crashing to the floor.
He is very good at being silent. If he wants to be heard, he will be.
For a long while, back in the beginning, nobody came to visit him. At the time, he barely noticed. The world had seemed very loud back then, and he couldn’t see past all the noise and the fear, and there wasn’t room in his head for visitors. He doesn’t think about that time much anymore. Things are different now, and they are better, and they are not perfect.
He doesn’t remember Hannibal’s first visit, but he knows it must have happened. There are a lot of things Murdock doesn’t remember, and even more things that he pretends to have forgotten. He remembers Face’s first visit, vaguely, through the mist of confusion those times lay on him. Face’s concerned eyes, the way he kept his distance for the first half of his visit and then abruptly came and sat so close that Murdock could feel the warmth of his body. He doesn’t remember what they said to each other, or whether they spoke at all.
Murdock doesn’t think B.A. ever visited him. Murdock has asked him why, pretending to be hurt to hide the fact that he really is, a little, but B.A. evades the question every time. He didn’t want to visit, why would he, stop asking, he’s busy, he doesn’t have time to stand around answering Murdock’s constant interrogation. But Murdock understands anyway. There is a deep anxiety in B.A.’s face sometimes that is barely masked by irritation.
Murdock stands at the window and twiddles the phone cord. He hasn’t heard from the others for a long time. Sometimes it feels like only Amy ever comes to see him. The number seems to dial itself.