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Matt Murdock was struck blind at 9 years old.
Far from dark and stormy, it was on a bright and sunny day. And that only made it worse.
He remembered the old man and the truck, remembered watching the face of his panicked father and the light of the afternoon sun disappearing under splotches of burning painful black that would become all he knew.
That last memory would be forever seared into his mind’s eye.
Much less distinct was the memory of the night before. Of every night before.
Light pollution robs the city sky of stars and can make one lose interest in gazing into the night.
Matt Murdock wished he had gazed while he still could.
Because while the last glimpses of sunlight were burnt in place, Matt could barely remember what the stars looked like..
The endless heavens above God’s earth, incomprehensibly vast and immeasurably beautiful, the scattered pearly dust of constellations, the overseeing eye of the moon, all became blurry and distant.
He could almost recall the way in which moonlight would paint the late-night world in surreal greys and silvers, washing over everything with a cool light that made the familiar strange and terrifying and exciting.
But as time passed, memories fell to ash in his world on fire.
In a way, he could still experience the sun; in the thickness of the air, the warm feeling of the light's rays against his skin, and the coating of sweat from every pore.
But the moon…
There’s no sensation to moonlight.
Matt cannot feel the silver reflection of the sun into night, cannot taste the greyscale world it makes, nor the shifting of its phases.
And he missed it.
Missed the moon.
Missed the night sky.
Mourned it..
Matt Murdock was struck blind at 9 years old, and would give anything to see the sky one last time.
Marc Spector died in Egypt beneath a cold, watchful moon that would become all he knew.
And when Marc’s lips pressed against his, just for a moment, Matt’s burning world was painted silver.
And everything was bathed in moonlight.