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They’ve had a tough few weeks with their current case. It’s been a proverbial roundhouse kick in the combined faces of Nelson, Murdock, and Page from the beginning throughout every other step in the process. The whole case was fouled by bribery, Coercion, Witness intimidation- the whole shebang.
Their client was an ex-gang member but he was a mousy, small fellow with his near-constantly fearful, wide eyes looking over his shoulder. Despite his spineless appearance, he was snitching on his own gang to save his younger brother, who was nearly killed by the gang leader’s cousin after he witnessed something he wasn’t supposed to. After the failed murder attempt, it was no surprise that the unconscious man was continuously under threat. Their client, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you decided to see it, witnessed the attempt on his brother’s life and was then able to get him care and Nelson, Murdock, and Page’s assistance.
The case has plenty of evidence and a perpetrator with so many priors, his rap sheet looks like a CVS receipt, so neither lawyer was particularly worried about their ability to win the case. The issue now was that their opponent had a way of scaring the jurors, their client, judges and anyone else potentially involved in the mission to send their client to prison. Matt in particular has been on high alert since the case began, constantly hypervigilant in an attempt to keep everyone around him protected from potential danger.
The sustained hypervigilance was leaving him near debilitated with headaches at the end of each day which made his extracurricular activities even harder on him because he could hardly focus past the nausea that had become such a constant during the case. He hadn’t been so constantly overstimulated since college. Back then, he was so constantly on edge with the amount of stimuli entering his brain due to the change in his routine. Foggy witnessed several panic attacks during those years, though both men choose not to talk about it and often act as though it never happened. Matt especially, likes to act as though he’d never hyperventilated on the floor of a barely clean dorm bathroom.
After several days of deliberation, jury selection and then reselection, and being forced to defend their client from being threatened into going back on his claims, their small firm made it through the preliminary parts of the trial. They’re passed the planning phases, passed the ‘easy’ parts and they’re fully in the meat of everything, now.
They’re about to begin day 3 of 3 of the trial, and they know they have it in the bag with all of the evidence and their combined debate skills but Matt can’t relax. He’s twitchy and on edge, nervous about something but he can’t understand how or why or when the danger will come to a head. He’s learned to trust these instincts, after a lifetime of being hurt when he ignored them, and his senses have treated him very well through a life filled with strife.
Despite his haywire senses and the misgivings that have plagued him for days on end, the final day, somehow, goes by without a hitch. They give their closing arguments passionately and poignantly, then the jury deliberated for several hours, and, finally , delivered a guilty verdict.
After the stress they’d dealt with during this case, it’s finally finished, and they’re walking together, Nelson, Murdock, Page, and their client, down the steps of the courthouse. Matt’s chuckling good-naturedly at a joke Foggy has told several times in the years he’s known him and he knows Karen’s face is flushed red with joy due to the uptick in her temperature and heart rate when all hell begins to break loose.
Matt’s “vision”, his world on fire, fades into static that blurs the sounds directly around him in order to heighten his senses enough to inexplicably know when danger is near. He hears a slightly faster than normal heartbeat a few meters away, then the rapid-fire rabbiting heartbeat of their client. Despite his paranoid nature, the man’s heart rate has been steady since the verdict; his fear now leads Matt to believe he’s in the process of recognizing someone dangerous- such as a gang member sent to kill a snitch.
Time seems to slow around him, and it feels as though he has all the time in the world between nanoseconds. The sound of the sweat of the assailant’s palm touching and creating friction with the handle of his now uncovered gun has Matt’s hair standing on end. From the second the gun is visible to the scared client, to the time it’s pointed in their direction, Foggy, Karen, and the police around them realize what’s about to happen. In the millisecond between the gun being seen and the gun being cocked, only Matt is in motion because he’s the only one who’s been aware of the danger for longer than that instant. The cocking of the gun is louder than any boom could have been with his current focus and sensitivity levels and the adrenaline that bursts through his body at the sound propels him in the path of the bullet in order to push Foggy, Karen, and their mousy client out of the way of the oncoming projectile.
Pain explodes both in his ears at the gunshot, and then in his body at the bullet that enters him a millisecond after the shot. At first, it felt as though someone had turned and punched him in the gut, but as soon as he’s caught up with what happened, the pain nearly sends him into oblivion. People are screaming, some with demands and some in a blind panic, and Matt’s ears are ringing painfully. None of the sensations directly around him have returned, so Matt strains to listen to what Foggy is babbling about from behind his ear.
Behind..? Matt is blind but he’s not often disoriented- he’s got an impeccable internal compass and he generally knows where he is and what he’s doing. Currently, he’s gasping for breath- is he panicking?
He’s-
He hasn’t had a panic attack in front of another person in years , he’s usually very good at getting away and hiding from the embarrassment he always felt when his mind and body betrayed him. He hated losing control of himself because especially with his senses, if he wasn’t in control, he was nearly catatonically helpless. Foggy witnessed his fair share of Matt being outside of himself in college, and even though it got easier the more he had to handle it, he always thought his heart was going to pound out of his chest with a primal sort of fear.
The first time it had happened was due to Elektra. She’d said something especially cruel to an already stressed out Matt and circumstances had lined up just enough to send him over the edge of being completely overwhelmed. He’d barely found himself through their dorm doorway when the panic hit and sent him to his knees. He couldn’t hear or sense Foggy in the room over the sound of his own ragged breathing and pounding heart so when hands were suddenly on his shoulders, Matt had flinched violently .
“Oh, shit… Fuck. Okay, buddy it’s just me. Just Foggy, shh.” Foggy moved away at first as if scalded, but then gently retook his friend’s trembling hands and slowly lifted them until they were touching his own face.
Foggy had tried his best, that first time, and the thought was incredibly cognizant of Matt’s blindness and disorientation. However, Matt had never had anyone to help him through the panic attacks other than Stick, who was particularly violent when Matt was anything less than 100% , and therefore the introduction of even more stimuli in his already half-fried brain was enough to leave the blind student passing out in Foggy’s arms, much to Foggy’s own distress.
After that, Foggy corralled the cat-like Murdock into a very tense, serious, conversation about personal safety, triggers, and how Foggy could best help in the future. Getting Matt to talk about how he felt was similar to herding twelve cats into a filled-up tub of water, but despite that, Foggy felt closer to him after that talk. They were best friends, and he never wanted to be so helpless again. Matt felt similarly, of course, and hated feeling weak, but vulnerability with Foggy wasn’t quite as horrific as with anyone else.
After several moments of burning and pounding sounds assaulting every nerve ending in Matt’s body, he concluded in a detached sort of manner that he was not having a panic attack. At 30, he was more in tune with himself than he’d ever been before, and could actually (usually) pinpoint if he was feeling panicked, overwhelmed, or just plain tired. At the moment, he knew he was winded, in pain, and unable to hear anything other than his own rapid heartbeat and two others directly on either side of him.
He thought there should be something else going on right now, but he just… Couldn’t remember.
“Matt! Fucking… I’m so sorry.” Despite a part of his hindbrain recognizing the sweet cadence of Karen’s voice, the part of his brain that consciously told him who was who was offline and then his cheek was smarting as though Fisk was back and beating his ass again.
He sputtered, one part in pain and another indignant, but he could almost feel his brain come back online, “Wh-,” he gasped in pain as his entire torso lit up in agony, “Did you, did you slap me?!” Matt’s vacant, pained eyes turned towards the person he could finally identify to his right as Karen.
He heard her laugh through tears, “You weren’t responding! You, you-”
“Matty, you looked like you were dying!” Foggy interjected with a gust of a sigh.
“I- I, uh,” He licked his lips, trying to ignore the taste of the blood coating his lips, “I’m fine, are you- is the client?” He took as deep of a breath as his failing body would allow, and then startled when he was shifted by the person- Foggy- holding him from behind.
Foggy was breathing raggedly, and his hands were wet and coated in blood- which was concerning enough for Matt’s addled brain to encourage him to try and sit up to check on the other man.
“Whoa!” Karen’s voice sounded closer than before, and her hand- it was smaller, smoother, and less shaky than Foggy’s- pressed against his shoulder and forced him back down despite how he’d normally be several times stronger than her.
He felt… Noodley… Useless and shaky and weak.
Foggy outright laughed, “I’ll bet. Being shot sucks.”
Matt cocked his head, not unlike a dog, “Did I… Say that out loud?”
“You did,” Foggy nodded, he could hear his hair swaying and brushing against the collar of his suit, “and we’re fine, bud. Just you’re hurt. The cops are here and the ambulance is here and… And you’ll be just fine. You’ll be fine.”
Matt nodded jerkily, “I’m sorry.”
“What for, Matt? Matt?!”
But Matt’s unseeing eyes were already rolled up in the back of his head.
He’s unconscious for the panic his passing out causes, he’s unconscious when the paramedics scoop him up and take him away, packing the heavily bleeding wounds, he’s even unconscious when his blood pressure tanked in the ambulance and he nearly crashed before he got to the hospital. He’s not aware of Claire finding him in the trauma bay half dead, and half bled out- he doesn’t hear her heartbeat accelerate in a panic at seeing him so… Still and small.
His consciousness returns slowly, first his hearing sharpens and he can differentiate all of the heartbeats, voices, and Television noises in the hospital around him. Then he can pinpoint Foggy and Karen and… Someone else, someone familiar; he smells gunpowder, coffee, dollar store cologne- Frank? In the room around him. Foggy and Karen are asleep by the sound of their deep breathing, but Frank is awake and standing guard like a dog near the window.
“Wh- Frank?” His voice is scratchy from… Plastic… A tube? He licks his lips; definitely a tube, he must have been intubated before he woke up.
Frank didn’t so much as flinch, he just crushed the soda can in his hand and tossed it in the trash across the room before standing up with a world-worn sigh, “Red, you really did it today, huh?” He tsked, “Gotta be more careful, man... Only I can kill you, got it?”
“What?” He asked unintelligently, blinking owlishly, and completely lost from being out of it and drugged up for so long.
“Don’t get yourself killed as the lawyer or I can’t have my way with you as the Devil,” He then did something Matt would consider very un-Frank-like, he genuinely laughed, “You should see your face right now, Red.”
Still unfiltered from being sedated so heavily, Matt blurted out, “I can’t see at all-”
Frank laughed again and then nudged Karen’s shoulder as he meandered past her, “Boy’s awake, funny as fuck too.” He shook his head, and then walked out the door, smiling slightly the whole way out.
Matt got an earful about being self-sacrificing when he woke up again later to a freshly showered and fed Foggy and Karen. He’d, apparently, fallen asleep the second Frank had left earlier which apparently (jokingly) enraged Foggy and Karen, who decided he had done so on purpose to avoid being scolded. Matt, ever the good Catholic, took the verbal ‘abuse’ from his friends good-naturedly, and then accepted the gentle hugs from them with grace.
He asked about the shooter, the case, their client, and what was going to happen, but Foggy just waved off his concerns, citing Brett and-
Their friendly neighborhood Punisher.
“They’ll take care of it, Matty, just focus on recovering enough to wingman for us again because chicks love the tall, dark, handsome and wounded look!”