Work Text:
1.
Matt woke up and thought it would be a normal day. Well, as normal as it could be after his best friend had found about his nocturnal actions. He slept in a bit, but Foggy texted him and he got to work at a normal time.
It wasn’t a normal day. It was anything but. Foggy, it seemed, had reached his limit after seeing Matt’s bruised and slightly bloodied from last night. He stormed into Matt’s office shortly after the day began.
‘I can’t do this anymore!’ Foggy hissed.
Matt’s heart shattered in his chest like broken glass. ‘Foggy-‘
‘You’re going to get yourself killed!’ Foggy snapped. ‘And I’m sorry, but I just cannot watch you do that to yourself!’ He sighed.
‘The city needs me,’ Matt argued. ‘And I’m going to be fine.’
‘Tell that to all the other people who have abilities like you! They all end up dead, or in situations worse than death,’ Foggy snapped.
Matt twisted his hands nervously. ‘I’m nor Captain America, Foggy. I’m not going to end up frozen in a natural freezer for seventy years.’
‘No,’ Foggy agreed. ‘You’re going to end up in a goddamned coffin. And I cannot let myself watch you slowly kill yourself.’
Matt knew from the beginning. He had known from the moment Foggy had walked into his office that this was where it was going. But it hurt like hell anyways.
‘And you’ll never choose me,’ Foggy said.
His words pierced Matt to the bone, but his friend continued anyway.
‘You’re so much of a masochist you’re unaware that you’re seeking your own death. You’re so wrapped up in Matt-Murdock-land that you never realize that we do care. And that your actions make our compassion hurt,’ Foggy continued. He paused briefly.
Matt could almost taste the tears brimming in his friend’s eyes. He could smell them, anyway. And they felt worse than any blow the Kingpin had ever delivered.
‘Murdock & Nelson is over,’ Foggy said, and placed paperwork down on Matt’s desk. ‘Goodbye, Matt. I hope you enjoy it.’
When the last beats of Foggy’s hearts and feet vanished from the office (Matt could still hear him as he left the firm, and it fucking hurt), Matt shattered into broken sobs. There went the best part of his life. And it was all his fault. Only a few seconds after that, his senses went dark and his surroundings vanished.
2.
The second time seemed like a nightmare. Matt woke up in bed, bruised, and then remembered what had happened. He wanted to cry, or lose himself in the sensations of alcohol and/or patrolling the city, but then his phone dinged.
‘Foggy has sent a message,’ his phone declared. ‘Would you like to hear it?’
Foggy, Matt thought. Impossible after what had happened. But…hadn’t he texted to wake Matt up earlier? Before Matt had come to work, because he had slept in? He sat up.
‘Yes,’ he said.
His voice was definitely shaky.
‘Foggy has said: Matt, wake up. We’re going to be late. Would you like to reply?’
Exactly what he had said when he had woken up before going to work.
‘What day is it?’ He asked, just to be sure.
When his phone replied with the same day that he had lost Foggy forever, he sighed and stayed in bed. Nope, he wasn’t dealing with this. Perhaps he had hit his head too hard in his last fight and now was suffering hallucinations. Or perhaps he had died and was in hell.
When the darkness came for his senses, and drowned out his world of fire, it was not sleep. It was perhaps the furthest thing from sleep.
3.
When Matt awoke from the odd darkness that had swallowed his senses for a third time, he was not in his bed. He was at his office, sitting at his desk, and he could sense Foggy coming his way. He could hear Foggy’s heartbeat, nervously fluttering; could hear his footsteps. So it was no hallucinations, he thought. Something truly odd was happening.
‘I can’t do this anymore,’ Foggy hissed- exactly as he had the last time they’d had this conversation.
‘I know,’ Matt said, because what else could he say?
Foggy wasn’t exactly looking for an apology here. He was just speaking the truth.
Foggy laughed coldly. ‘Ah. I thought I told you to stop listening to my heartbeat? It’s creepy and invades my privacy.’
Those words hurt and were just as painful as the ones he’d said the last time they’d had this conversation.
‘It’s not as if I could turn my abilities off, Foggy,’ Matt said tersely.
‘You could try,’ Foggy retorted. ‘But the problem is that you don’t try! You don’t try telling us the truth. You don’t try being honest about your abilities. You don’t try to be anything but Daredevil- because for you, Matt Murdock is nothing more than a shell. A mask.’
Against his will, a tear slipped down Matt’s face.
‘Foggy,’ he begged.
It was a plea. A plea to be heard. A plea to be listened to.
‘You’re going to kill yourself, and I can’t watch,’ Foggy said.
‘Goodbye, Matt,’ Foggy said with finality.
He placed paperwork down on Matt’s desk and walked away. This time, when the darkness swallowed Matt’s senses and consciousness whole, he welcomed it.
4.
This time, he was at the office again. He sighed and buried his face in his arms. He couldn’t do this again. He couldn’t. He couldn’t just sit here and let Foggy walk away over and over.
But what could he do about it? All of this was deserved. And what was worse was that Foggy was walking away because Matt was hurting himself. That in his quest to protect Hell’s Kitchen, he was getting bruised and bloodied and broken. Foggy was walking away because he couldn’t watch Matt commit suicide.
He heard Foggy’s footsteps approach his office.
‘Matt?’ Foggy asked. ‘Are you alright, buddy?’
He sounded scared. Because Matt had learned his lesson about lying, he decided to tell the truth.
‘No,’ he muttered.
Foggy’s heartbeat spiked. ‘What-what happened? I swore that you were okay when you walked into the office today-‘
Foggy cursed. ‘Have you been hiding injuries again?’
‘No. It’s my- my mind that’s broken,’ Matt said quietly. ‘Like you’ve always said.’
Foggy’s heartbeat smoothed out yet was still nervous. Matt pulled away from it, carefully, knowing that his friend hated him listening to his heart.
‘Matt, when have I said that?’ Foggy said.
He sounded sad. ‘Yeah, your coping methods are fucking awful, but I’ve- I’ve never said that you were broken.’
Matt laughed sourly. ‘And yet you want to leave. You want to break up the firm. That says so much more than any words could.’
Foggy attempted to say something but Matt cut him off.
‘You want to leave because you think that I’m killing myself,’ he said.
The words just rolled out of his mouth. He couldn’t stop them.
‘You think leaving me will force me to see my errors?’ He laughed coldly. ‘Foggy, you and Karen are all I have to live for.’
Foggy looked like he had been sucker punched in the stomach. And then, of fucking course, because Matt had the worst luck, his senses were swallowed whole by darkness and his consciousness vanished.
5.
‘God fucking damn it,’ Matt snarled.
He ignored the blasphemy. He had been so fucking close to reaching through to Foggy. He had been so close and then then whole damn thing had reset. Again. He was sitting at his desk again and he really fucking wanted to punch something.
Well, none of this was permanent, so he might as well. He stood up and punched the wall so hard he felt his knuckles break and blood drip down his hand. Distantly, he heard Karen and Foggy stand up.
‘Matt?’ Karen called anxiously. ‘What was that? Are you okay?’
‘Fine,’ he answered softly.
He wasn’t. He was anything but. He was Matthew Murdock, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. And he had not been fine in a long time.
6.
The last loop had ended shortly after punching the wall. The ones before that had ended after emotional distress. So, Matt thought, perhaps this would all be over if he was injured and/or emotionally distressed in this loop. Perhaps the worst day of his life- even worse than the day he’d been blinded and the day his father had died- would finally stop repeating itself if Foggy hurt him again. So when Foggy came in, Matt had the difficult job of making his best friend hurt him- physically or not.
He wondered, should this turn physical, if this would still legally be battery since he wanted Foggy to hurt him. He pushed the thought away and stood up.
‘I can’t do this anymore,’ Foggy said.
I can’t either, Matt thought, but he said nothing regarding that subject.
‘You’re going to get yourself killed!’ Foggy continued, just like in loop one. ‘And I’m sorry, but I can’t just watch you do that to yourself!’
Matt leaned forward. ‘And you think you leaving would make me live longer? Really?’
‘No,’ Foggy admitted. ‘But at least I won’t see the aftermath of you flying too close to the sun.’
Matt winced. Shit. He’d thought since he’d experienced this before (more or less, though with different words and actions) that Foggy’s words would hurt less. But they didn’t. They hurt all the same.
‘Fine,’ Matt said. His voice was as cold as frost and as hard as iron. ‘Bye, Foggy.’
Foggy put the paperwork down on the desk (again).
‘Be careful,’ he said, and then he was gone.
Matt just wondered: be careful about what? My life that’s already ruined because of my decisions and the time loop? And then the darkness came for his senses and his consciousness vanished from this time to continue this cycle of pain.
7.
This time he was immediately after Foggy’s leaving. He sat at his desk and listened to Foggy’s heartbeat grow further and further away from the firm. His plan had not worked. He was still trapped in a vicious limbo. Karen walked into his office.
‘Matt?’ Karen asked, gentle and kind. ‘What happened? Where’s Foggy- oh.’
She’d seen the paperwork, then. The ones declaring Nelson & Murdock dead. Matt opened his mouth to reply, but only a sob came out. His body shuddered as he let himself cry for the first time in years. Faintly, as if from another planet, he heard Karen approach.
‘Can I hug you?’ She asked softly.
He nodded, taken away by her kindness, and then warm arms wrapped around him. He leaned his head against her shoulder as he cried and found comfort in the fact that at least one person in this city didn’t hate him.
‘I’ve got you, Matt,’ she murmured. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
8.
Of course, that loop with Karen comforting him had ended all too soon, and now he was back at the beginning: laying in bed, trapped by memories, almost late for work. Work at a firm that would die today when his partner and best friend left him. Matt didn’t want to stay in bed again, even with the silk sheets, but he didn’t want to go to work either. So he compromised. He turned off his phone and left the apartment on a very, very long walk.
And if that walk and this loop ended with him dying that afternoon from a drug overdose after someone stabbed him with twice the fatal dose (probably working for the Kingpin), that was between him and God alone.
9.
That last loop had been terrible. Dying from a drug overdose wasn’t the best way to go, nor was it conducive to good mental health. But neither was time loops. And by the Lord, Matt wanted out. He wanted to get out of this limbo- this twisted purgatory, this demented hell of an existence.
So when he woke up again in bed, he just texted Foggy about being sick. And then he did his research. Research about time loops, to be specific. First he ended up at a Wikipedia page about paradoxes- which was less helpful than one would think- and then he found a bunch of movies about time loops. Which, again, wasn’t helpful.
He groaned. Then he found that technically he was in a time loop spiral, wherein he found himself doing what he had done before. Apparently a complete loop would happen when he died, and then he would relive his entire life. He hoped that didn’t give the damned loop any ideas about what it could pull. It had literally already killed him once.
And the emotional strain was almost far worse than the physical pain. Unfortunately, though, the loop didn’t last much longer, which left him ‘fading into black’ as best as a blind man cum superhero could, and super pissed. Pissed at the world, pissed at whoever was responsible for this, pissed at himself for being a terrible friend. But there was nothing more he could do about it…until the next loop.
10.
This time he was at work again. He sighed and stood up from his desk. He felt confined, trapped with the looming specter of the time loops looming over him, and he needed to figure out a way to get that specter to get the fuck out of his life.
‘I’m heading out,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’
‘Where are you going?’ Foggy asked suspiciously.
Which was fair, considering that Matt ran around nightly beating up assholes and borderline cosplaying the Devil.
‘Nothing red in my corner,’ he said, to let Foggy know it had nothing to do with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. ‘Just remembered I have some research to do that might be helpful with our current case.’
‘Right,’ Foggy said gruffly. He’d obviously picked up on what Matt was saying. ‘Good luck, man.’
‘Do you need me to come with you?’ Karen asked, ever-so kindly.
‘I’m fine,’ Matt said, a bit abruptly. ‘I’ll just call an Uber.’
And then he walked out and did exactly that. To his dismay, the nearest library neither had many options in Braille or any books about theoretical temporal physics. So he’d sighed and resigned himself to going back to his office and facing Foggy’s rejection for what felt like the millionth time. But then his senses and consciousness had gone dark again, his world of fire extinguished, and his mind was pulled through time.
11.
This time he had it, he thought. Thankfully, he was back at home right now- with his phone turned off and his door locked just in case Foggy came looking for him. Mentally, he pictured one of those crime walls he remembered vaguely from a detective movie he remembered watching with his dad. So, he knew that he was made up of atoms. Most people knew that these days, due to more available education and the Internet.
But he was not physically going back in time. It was his mind. His consciousness, so to speak. Whatever was causing this was projecting his consciousness back into specific moments on that day over and over again- the moments being almost completely randomized. But what was causing this, and what would stop it ? Was it a result of atomic decay- which he admittedly didn’t know much about- or a byproduct of magic? He was living in a world where it was defended by a man born in the early twentieth century, a Russian spy, a circus-trained archer, two of the world’s smartest men, and an alien creature that was literally the inspiration for a Norse god. Anything was possible.
Or was this some kind of…stimulation created by the Kingpin to torture him? He doubted that one; he hadn’t run into the Kingpin’s minions for a couple of loops now. And one would think that an organization as wicked and vengeful as the Kingpin’s tended to be would be gloating about their victory over the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.
Why was this so flipping complicated? Why did nothing make any sense? He laid back down on his bed and wondered what the hell was going on.
12.
At this point, he’d given up. This was clearly going to go on for a while, and there was nothing he could do about it. So he closed his eyes and slept.
13.
‘Matt?’
‘Just leave me alone, Foggy.’
14.
‘Matt? Why are you packing?’
‘I knew you wanted to leave, Foggy. Because of me. So instead, I’m leaving so you can stay with Karen.’
‘Matt, wait-‘
4927.
By this point, Matt had basically just given up…again. (He’d had a phase a few hundred days ago where he’d actually tried to get out again.) He had spent the equivalent of thirteen and a half years in a fucking time loop and he was exhausted. He was fine with this fate. Well, not really, but he’d made his peace with it.
What else could he do? Pray to a god he had stopped believing in a long time ago? No, he was resigned to his fate. After all, there was no mercy for the damned.