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"I'm not saying it," Matt stated quietly. His hesitant voice carried through the tunnels in a mere whisper filled with sorrow and anger. Feeling the tension in the air, Luke pulled Danny and Jessica toward the old elevator.
"That's just life, isn't it?" There was no sadness in your voice, maybe even a hint of amusement but not without a certain bitterness to it. It wasn't a moment for tears. "Someone has to be the first to say goodbye, always."
You knew that peculiar silence very well - it was the same quietness that fell anytime you were talking with Matt on the phone and someone had to hang up first or he walked you to your house and you were clearly reluctant to call it a day. Still, those drawn-out farewells were romantic in their unbearable carelessness, filled with pecks and whispered sweet words. That night, however, he wasn't going to lay in bed thinking about the taste of your lips, no, Matt was going to be greeted by a cold bed and intolerably lonely world.
"I can't let you do this," Matt stuttered out. His lips were trembling and you could hear how his voice changed as his throat clenched. "You don't have to do this. I can help you. There's always another way out, we can figure this out."
"It's always been meant to happen, tiger," you answered calmly. Matt suddenly began to hate that slow morning when you called him for the first time and how soft your hand felt against his face. "I can't change the mission I've been trusted with and neither can you. We only get to decide how to put the 'good' in goodbye."
Contrary to popular belief, humans have a curious tendency to accept their own death when they stare at its face.
The Lotus they called you - the one who rises from sins and flaws only to become purity itself. You've known you're supposed to take down the Black Sky ever since the monks of K'un Lun set their eyes on you. In the great schemes of this wonderfully bizarre and complex universe, it was you whose life was meant to put an end to an ancient war. Despite its crudeness, it was an honour to sacrifice your life so that others may live. Throughout your life you've grown ambivalent towards your fate, accepting that this final battle was your happy end in some way. It was only after meeting Matt Murdock, however, that you found yourself wanting to give your life in exchange for the definite end of the Hand: maybe after they're gone, he can finally befriend peace. If he was going to be happy in the end, death didn't mean much.
It was a curious thing to love - to rebel against nature itself, lead a mutiny against survival instinct, simply because someone made this world seem a little brighter, a little warmer.
"Yes, we can," he argued. "We did it many times. Let's just... calm down and be rational about this."
"I am calm, weirdly enough," you answered. He could tell you were telling the truth and, in a way, it terrified him; Matt was scared about your peaceful acceptance of the horrible future that was rushing in your direction. He knew you weren't going to fight against this. "For the first time, I know exactly what's going to happen. It's like the Last Judgement, something inevitable and-..."
"Stop, just stop." Matt was growing frantic, anger and sorrow already boiling inside him. His heart had been broken so many times it was thrown into a frenzy at another loss coming to strike it. "Stop this self-sacrificial shit. You're not dying, sweetheart. Not today. I'm not letting you do this."
"You know I'm not looking for permission. All I'm asking is that you don't become bitter. Now go."
The detonator beeped as you armed the explosives. There was hesitation in his step as Matt walked toward the elevator - a considerable part of him wanted to stay in those tunnels. You weren't crying and, perhaps, it was very merciful of you. Then, Matt would be physically unable to leave. For some reason, he's always been like that. Seeing him get on that elevator, knowing that he had future ridden of the Hand and all the troubles that came with it, something akin to happiness bloomed in your chest - there was a certain joy in knowing that one touched the life of a man so rare in his strangeness as well as greatness; a life filled with love is a life that's been lived and in your limited time in this world, you were beyond grateful you got to live it with him.
"Oh and Matt," you called out. He moved his head but had no courage to face you. That brave heart of yours never wavered as you watched the elevator go up while the time was only going down. Elektra's footsteps resounded in the tunnel behind you. "When you arrive in Hell, find me by the bar."
There was something graceful about letting his last memory of you be a light-hearted joke, to have you forever remembered as someone who didn't know the agony of a painful and slow death.
To Foggy and Karen, Matt never really returned from Midland Circle. Part of him stayed there, rotting away under the rubble. The love that once breathed vitality into him was now nothing but a festering wound. Whatever they were returned, had little do to with their friend - it was barely a shell of a broken man, the true meaning of the 'living dead'. He wouldn't talk to them, he wouldn't eat, he simply drank any alcohol he found at home. That one night, maybe three days after the fateful incident and when there was no liquor left at the apartment, he went out with one goal in his mind: to get blackout drunk as fast as he could. Truthfully, there wasn't much else inside his head. Everything was weirdly... quiet, hollow.
It sounded as if the lively bar was a completely different place - one, that Matt wasn't a part of. The laughter, cue balls hitting one another, the clicking of bottles, everything seemed to be far away or behind a glass wall. To put it in a colourful metaphor, he lived with his head inside an aquarium that muffled and delayed the sounds and smells of the outside world.
Only a small part of his unconsciousness registered that someone sat down on the seat next to him by the bar. The last thing he could possibly want at the moment was a stranger striking up a conversation.
"I'll have whatever he's having," you told the bartender.
Matt's body tensed up for a moment, he was a deer caught in the headlights. He froze when, to his own horror, he recognized that voice he dreaded not waking up to. Could it be?
In the low lights of the bar, you had a good look at the disaster that was Matt Murdock. The jumper he was wearing had stains on it and smelled like a speakeasy. His beard looked somehow darker or thicker as if it hadn't been trimmed. Although you couldn't see his eyes, you knew they would make him look even sicker.
He whispered your name with hurt in his voice. There was a certain hesitation in his questioning tone as if he was actually asking himself like he couldn't quite trust his senses anymore. Although, after all the ethanol that was welcomed into his bloodstream throughout the past few days, such distrust toward one's own hearing should appear as a remnant of common sense.
"Well, the Devil didn’t kiss like you do, so I bailed. Actually, I think I might have broken his heart."
"You did break mine."
"I know," you answered quietly. Matt took a big sip of his drink. "And it hurt like shit, so I came back."
"How..." He took a deep, shaky breath before he continued. "How are you alive?"
Suddenly, an overwhelming feeling of guilt flooded Matt's chest. You were stuck under that rubble for God know how long, probably scared, tired and confused. All the while he was looking for solace at the bottom of hard liquors instead of looking for you. He wanted to, he truly did but then he woke up alone in his bed, smelling the faint aroma of your perfume on the pillow and he couldn't crawl out of the bedsheet.
"As ridiculous as it may sound, it really was pure luck. A reinforcement rod kept the rubble above my head. So..." you dragged out the syllable, still thinking about whether it was a good idea to say it. Maybe it was a little too early for him? "Can I take you home or do I have to buy you a drink first?"
"Sorry, I don't put out on the first date." Matt's voice remained tired and hurt but you noticed a shadow of a grin dancing across his face for a short while.
"We both know that's a horrible lie."
Matt reached for your hand and intertwined his fingers with yours. Then, in the most pathetically desperate way a human being could, he pulled your palm towards his face and rested his cheek against it. As Matt pecked your hand, you saw a stray tear glisten in the light of the neon sign outside of the bar.