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He's dreaming, discontent and wandering. The construction site, the sound of a crane moving back and forth, beeping, the grind of a saw on wood. The insistent pounding of a jackhammer. He hates it here so much, but he's waiting for someone, for something. The clang of metal bleeds louder and louder, footsteps at his back and shouting voices, and—
"Are you kidding me? You've got to be kidding me," someone says, a little too loudly. There's the thump of a body into concrete. The metal in his dreams turns into the rattle of chains. Matt squeezes his eyelids shut tighter, disoriented and head aching. He waits for the ringing to stop, listening for the heartbeat across the room.
Hawkeye— Barton. Clint, brash and bold. No broken bones this time, though the faint cling of dried blood lingers. "Oh, hey, counselor," he says.
"What's happening," Matt says, hoarse. Clint hums questioning but not like he's heard, and Matt shakes his head and doesn't repeat himself. The answer is self evident, anyway.
Clint sighs and stretches out with a rustle of fabric. "You know who it was?"
Matt bites his lip just to feel the sting of it. He feels sluggish, like he's been drugged, but he knows his body. He hasn't. The only bitterness on his tongue is from the scent of old blood in the air, and the disappointment of failure thick in his throat. Caught. Who knows where he is now?
"The Hand," he says. Clint goes still. A moment passes where he doesn't say anything, and then he's swearing a blue streak under his breath, muttered and furious. Matt stretches out his hearing past him but can't make anything out, and the strain makes the migraine start back up in his temples.
Clint spits a final fuckin shit, accent curling around the words. "Them?" he demands tightly. "Thought it'd be the Russians. Fisk, even. The hell d'they want with me?"
"I hope they don't," Matt says, soft but modulated enough he's pretty sure Clint can hear. He hopes it was just that— Clint was with him, and that's all it is.
That carries its own kind of guilt, but the guilt he can bear. The fear, he can't; he's Daredevil, God.
"Me too, bud," Clint says grimly. "What do you know?"
"They've— " Matt hesitates, does his level best not to flinch from the thought. Beyond the room there's rustles of cloth everywhere, and indistinct voices, but not towards them yet. Hand ninjas, moving around and around.
"Okay," Clint says, ready to move on, shrugs gracefully with another clank of steel. Matt steadies himself; he can talk about the fucking Hand to get out of a tight spot.
"It's fine," he says in a huff of breath. "Frank's supposed to be in charge, right now, but I haven't been keeping up with Hand politics so for all I know this is just another splinter cell."
"Castle?" Clint repeats, wry and a little disbelieving. Matt nods. "Sorry he's an idiot, man."
"Hardly your fault," Matt says.
Clint shifts, face turned towards Matt's. "Why do they want you, then?" he amends.
"They always want me," Matt grumbles. He wants to run a hand over his face, but the chains are an effective enough deterrent.
"What is it, Chaste?" Clint asks, after a beat.
"Something new," Matt dismisses.
"Your life is actually the worst," Clint says decisively. "I really thought it'd get better after Fisk was dealt with, but I guess not."
"Tell me about it," Matt huffs. He stretches out his fingers, looking for wiggle room, and finds nothing.
"God," Clint sighs. "Whatever. What do they want from you?"
That's a better question. Matt has no idea, except maybe the usual— but they're pissed at him, he thought. After the Beast, and everything, and anyway they have Frank already.
The thought sends a pang to his chest that he tucks away neatly without examining it.
He doesn't answer for long enough that Clint's even breaths slow with his heartbeat. Not sleeping yet, even though Matt knows he can conk out anywhere he so pleases.
It's — the thing is, Frank hasn't come for him. Frank knows what he's building up to, and he hasn't come for the Fist.
And Frank's stubborn. Matt doesn't think he'd change his mind, this far down the line. So this has to be yet another splinter group, displeased with their new High Slayer. Matt doesn't want to think about Frank and what he's doing. Things are always complicated with him. He's not sure what it means if it is Frank, waiting for him. What it means if he locked Matt into this cell and didn't kill him.
So he doesn't, just tunes back into the beat of Clint's heart. There's real fear somewhere in his own chest, but not enough for it to matter.
In the end, it doesn't take long for someone to come for them. Matt sits up a little straighter and Clint comes awake just a moment later, before the door creaks open.
They're stupid enough to get close, which is just about what he expected from a faction that locked Daredevil and Hawkeye in the same goddamn cell. Matt bares all his teeth and back far enough into the wall that he can spring forward hard if he needs.
"Hello, Daredevil," someone says softly. They haven't taken off his mask yet, and so Matt braces himself for the long run.
It's not quite a ransom situation, but it's not not. He's a bargaining chip, he's made to understand quickly.
They want Elektra. They want Elektra to stop. They took Daredevil for that. To make her turn her attention away from her final goal, the thing she's fighting for with singleminded focus.
Elektra won't, though, not if he knows anything about her. And he does. So she won't stop, and that's the only thing Matt's holding to. That, and the knowledge that she's Daredevil too. It's not just him left to this city, to his people. That he joined her, but she joined him too.
They don't touch him. He's not sure if they're afraid, or if it's just that they know they couldn't hurt him, not enough that it would matter. They don't touch him, and they don't understand the Fist, Matt's King to Elektra's Queen.
They turn to Clint instead and Matt holds his flinch in as a breath he releases slow.
"Hey, what's all this," Clint says, artificially light. "I got nothing for you, friend." The man at the forefront growls, and gestures the others away. Clint tracks them across the room with minute shifts in his breath.
They knock his head into the wall on the way out, and Matt thanks heaven for his thick fucking skull.
"Red," Clint says, gentler. Matt groans.
"Sorry for getting you into this," he says tiredly. Clint makes a motion like he'd nudge Matt if they weren't on opposite sides of the room and chained to their respective walls.
For most of his life he'd never left New York proper, and all of a sudden he's everywhere. He wishes he didn't have to do this, but cults are unfortunately his goddamn jurisdiction.
And Clint doesn't even know who he is. Everything about this is bitter.
He's not sure how long they're in there, because this faction is stupid but not stupid enough to deliver meals at regular intervals.
Being here is making him think of awful things. It's almost harder not to, not to think of Frank sitting in that rotting courtyard, and yeah, he is stupid. Clint had said it, and Elektra had meant it, and they'd both been right.
But he's seen Maria now, and.
Frank is more human than any of them. Or at least, he's as human as Clint. And they've all loved and died, brutal cycles of it. So it doesn't matter.
Being here is fucking with his head. He can't falter or they're lost. He can't falter or they've lost, because really it's just him, him and Elektra, and theres nothing to do about it.
The Fist is the solution. Still. Frank is doing awful things, but at least it's better than what the Hand had been, before him.
Matt shakes his head, focuses on the ringing in the back of his head, on the grooves of the concrete under his fingers. "Hey," Clint says again, soft. He winces when he speaks, careful not to move around as much as he's used to, and he's talking quiet at least.
"Your head," Matt says.
"I've had worse," Clint says dismissively, which, yeah. He's an idiot, of course he has. Matt doesn't apologise again, though.
He doesn't know how long they've been in there for before the screaming starts. Then just eerie silence.
The footsteps are erratic, but the heartbeat is unmistakable, and the humming— well.
"Who is it," Clint asks, face turned towards Matt. The door crunches open, steel and bloody bone before Matt can answer.
"You scared Pete bad, Red," Wade says sunnily. Matt grimaces. Clint makes a quiet noise of surprise.
"You know," he says as Wade turns and reacts exaggeratedly to his presence, "when I asked Tasha who got the kid in the divorce, I wasn't exactly expecting it to be you two." Matt listens to his breath between words, and it's a little short but nothing too bad.
"Shut it, Barton," Wade tells him good naturedly, first steps across the room to Matt's side and checks him over, two breaths unchanging in the air.
"I'm fine," Matt says, nudges him away. Lifts his chin to indicate Clint. "That one's got one hell of a concussion, though."
"Huh," Wade says. "What are you doing here anyway? Aren't you s'posed to be on the West Coast or something?"
Clint groans. "I wish I knew," he says a little wearily.
Wade crouches down and starts picking at the locks on Clint's hands, murmuring quietly to him with his mask up. Matt tunes them out.
He can't hear anything. "How much time do we have," he asks finally, grudging. But it's just them.
"An hour, tops," Wade says airily. Under his voice is the indignant quiet complaint of Clint's. "C'mon, toots. Got places to be. Spiders to reassure."
Clint rattles the last of his chains at him grumpily, and Wade passes him another one of the lockpicks before he comes back to Matt's side. "Wade," Matt says urgently.
"Oops," he says, and works quicker. Behind the open door, Matt can hear shouts.
"Gotta plan?" Clint asks, stretching out his wrists. Matt flexes his ankle.
"Nope," Wade says. "Don't die, I guess. I already lost a finger today, you know. Clubs, bow, arrows. Let's go, c'mon. Up up up."
He reports back to Elektra. Turns out it's been five days, and that the spider had looked for him after two missed patrols and a scheduled spar.
There are resources better dedicated to other things, and it's not like he can't take care of himself, but he still thanked Wade quietly before he took off.
"Not a major problem, I hope," Elektra says archly.
It's not.
War keeps rolling, the Fist a slow-moving finality. That was— he'll deal with it. Puts off facing Frank again, anyway.
"Come on, then."