It’s been over a year since Foggy died and Matt is doing fine. Well, he’s doing really good actually, he has this big new shiny house, a big new shiny law firm with his name in big print letters plastered across the front, a pretty new girlfriend who he might love and he hasn’t been back to Hell’s Kitchen since. He turned his head and left, buried that red suit under his grief and left it all behind to burn in Hells Kitchen.
It’s been just over a year since Foggy died and Matt doesn’t know why he’s hailing a Taxi to Hell’s Kitchen. It’s not even the anniversary of… that day, it’s just a Thursday afternoon and he feels the taxi turn into familiar streets. He’d asked them to take him to Josie’s but apparently Josie’s got rebuilt after it was smashed up and cornered off for the Police to show up. Josie retired, afraid of what else could happen, afraid of that sickening noise of a body hitting the floor, afraid of the death that surrounded the building that night amongst the glass of broken windows and doors.
Matt understood that. Very well. But the noises that haunt him are not the same. He can hear that heartbeat still, slowing, slowing and stopping. He could hear the breath catch in Karen’s throat. The tears welling up in her eyes and the tears that were drying on Foggy’s. All he could taste was the blood. He feels sick, his stomach flipping as they swing around the last turn towards what Josie’s became: Libby’s Cupcake Café. The taxi stops and Matt thumbs around his wallet to hand over a wad of notes. He doesn’t know what they are but by the way the Taxi driver thanks him, it was much more than necessary.
Money seems to mean less now.
Everything means less.
Stepping out onto the uneven pavement feels like stepping back home. Matt unfolds his cane and it gets stuck instantly between the slabs before he even takes a step.
He feels sick.
This is what he was afraid of, that feeling that he was home.
The Devil was back in Hell and he feels sick.
Matt pushes himself out of his head and begins down the path, smelling the overwhelming amount of too much buttercream, it hits the back of his throat and he wants to scream to get it out.
Despite it all he wants to smell Foggy.
He wants to find something, his aftershave he’d used since college after finding out that blind people find it easier to pinpoint who you are if you use the same perfumes. He never changed it even after finding out the truth.
Matt stops outside the doors to Libby’s Cupcake Café.
Why is he here?
He leans on his cane out in front of him and stands there.
Still. Silent.
He knows he wouldn’t hear Foggy’s distant laughter or buoyant voice over the sounds that have buried him but he tries. He listens for the shift of Foggy’s satchel bag against his hip or the way his hair hit the base of his neck before he cut it. He listens for Foggy’s heartbeat and it’s not there.
He tries harder and he can’t find it.
He takes a deep breath but sweet batter and thick icing hit his nose and he’s about to gag.
A thin hand wraps its fingers lightly around his arm and it takes all his strength not to strike out.
‘Are you ok sir? Do you need assistance on getting somewhere?’
It’s a woman.
She’s kind and young and there’s icing on her clothes, under her fingernails, there’s some stray chocolate flakes in her hair despite the neat ponytail and hair net.
He can’t find his voice, he really feels sick and he needs to get away from here. From her.
‘I- oh Uhm. Hah, no thank you I’m just fine.’ And he plasters on a plastic smile and turns to leave but there are still fingers on his suit, accidentally spreading icing into the fabric of his sleeve. She hasn’t noticed but Matt has and he wants to rip the suit off, bathe it in bleach if he has to.
He stops and turns back to her, she hasn’t said anything and he can’t focus his senses enough to know what face she must be pulling.
He tugs his arm away from her gently and she releases him immediately.
He can hear her heart pick up and why can he hear that but nothing else.
‘I’m so sorry sir! It’s just… I’m so sorry but you don’t look… fine.’ She’s nervous to say it, Matt can hear her heart beating wildly in her chest and the heat in his throat burns like a fire inside and he’s stumbling backwards in time with that deep thumping, his heel catches on a particular slab that sticks up more than the one next to it and he turns as he looses balance, grabbing onto the lamppost he nearly smacks into before doubling over and retching.
The hands are back and hesitantly resting on his shoulder blades but he straightens slightly to push them away. He turns to lean his back against the brick building next to Libby’s and heaves in big breaths of that mix of charred and sickly air.
His knees feel weak and his face is wet with tears as his features unwillingly contort into a deep frown and he has to go home.
His new home that is too big to crush him, too shiny to burn and too new to remind him of anything he had in his life at Hells Kitchen.
He gets his voice to work past the fire and ash now lodged down his throat and he begs for a taxi.
When his mind catches up to his words he grabs onto the young lady’s collar, gently but enough to startle her. It’s an accident really, he just has to get home.
He rights himself and let’s go of her, shuffling forward towards the quiet road with shaking knees and burning feet.
She’s calling out behind him, he’d dropped his cane and was in clearly no state to be alone, she couldn’t leave him.
‘Please just, let me call you an Uber at least? I couldn’t live with myself if I just let you go.’
He just nodded.
He couldn’t think past much of the fog beginning to cloud his mind and it didn’t click that calling an Uber meant waiting for it to arrive which meant the young lady- what is her name?- offered for them to wait inside that Cupcake Café.
He tastes bile again and it takes everything in him to swallow thickly and breathe past it so as not to throw up again.
There must be a change in his complexion for the offer to die as quickly as it was born. She leads him back onto the pavement but away from the awful puddle he left as she calls for an Uber.
Matt tries to listen to something- anything- that isn’t his or her heartbeat.
Or even anything that pulses or thuds like that godawful music playing just down the street or the steady rattle of plumbing through the wall behind them that catches every few seconds.
The city is alive and it’s haunting him and how can something that is alive haunt someone who is barely that and he really does have to get out.
Now.
He realises the girl has been talking to him and he hasn’t picked up on a single word she might have said. He cuts in, his voice low and gravelly, he isn’t really sure if it’s a whisper or a gruff command really, but he asks how far the Uber is. It’s just 5 minutes away.
He breathes.
He is grateful to the girl - he really should get her name- but he can’t listen to her, he can’t connect himself to this place anymore so he focuses on his breathing. Not his heart or pulse.
He feels the air bite his nose and the condensation coat his upper lip.
When the Uber pulls up and he is tucked into the back seat, the girl gives some short words to the driver and bids goodbye to Matt.
He really wants to thank her and apologise and give her a smile that rests her mind but he can’t and the car pulls off before he registers that it’s too late.
The drive back is less disorienting, if only for knowing that he’s getting away from the hell hole that is Hell’s Kitchen.
It isn’t too long until he rolls his window down just a crack to clean the soot from inside his nose and replace it with the purer scent of true air.
Being back in his new apartment feels like washing blood off of his unharmed hands. He truly is pure beneath the dirt and dust of a life he once lived. Right?
He has a shower after retching more into the toilet bowl.
It’s late when he collapses onto the sofa, a glass of wine on hand and listening to the dull drone of more upstate news.
The wine goes down steady and it’s not long replaced with an Irish Whiskey. The familiar drink warms him differently to the burn he had mere hours before.
They both hit the same spot though.
Roughly the same spot that a bullet had pierced through Foggy.
The same spot blood poured out of.
The same spot Poindexter had aimed for purposefully so that Matt would hear the struggle before it ended. That he knew Matt would be able to do nothing as he was busy throwing punches and ignoring the knives sinking through his armour.
No.
Poindexter didn’t know Matt was Daredevil.
He didn’t know he had any links to Foggy. It was just coincidence.
His Best Friend’s death? A coincidence?
Matt drains his glass and pours another. Drains that too, uncaring of the consequences moments before regretting them. It hits him fast, he’s not sure why.
Foggy asked him once if being blind meant he wouldn’t get ‘the spins’, and Matt felt like living proof that it’s worse as he stands and feels the world turn beneath him and leave him behind. His head falls first, the rest of his body next as he crashes luckily into the sofa but his arm flails and drags him to the floor. He’s a tangle of limbs when someone knocks at his door.
Really?
Now?
He takes a moment to try to get the spinning to settle but of course it doesn’t so he pushes through it. He bumps his head on the table as he stands, making everything on it jump and rattle. He then scrapes his knee on the corner of said table and lets out an involuntary cry as he knows there’ll be an angry mark there for a couple of days. He waves his arms in front of him on the way to the door, his senses off kilter as they float atop the alcohol.
He really must have had more than he thought.
I mean what, a couple glasses of wine and some whiskey?
He opens the door at last and Karen’s voice starts up instantly.
Her voice is a motor and directed towards the floor as she explains ‘look, I know this is super out of the blue but I’ve been staying in contact with that cupcake place that took over Josie’s since.. well you know.. and I know that it’s dumb and all but I just can’t- I can’t let that part go you know? And anyways I got a call today that someone had been a bit sketchy outside and they described- well you. And I just had to see you and I’m really sorry-‘
Then she looks up. Matt guesses.
The floor is spinning without him again and he has to grab onto the door frame to steady himself.
He gives her a smirk that they both know means Matt has been caught. Though it had previously been used with ‘caught in the office at ungodly hour o’clock’ or ‘caught with a dark bruise after a night of daredeviling again’ or sometimes ‘caught putting another spoon of sugar into his coffee because he can’t hide his sweet tooth’.
Never had it been ‘caught drowning some clearly intense emotions in an unhealthy way that for once didn’t involve beating people up in the streets but instead getting drunk alone in an otherwise pristine apartment Karen has never been to before.’
Oops.
‘Hello Karen’ Matt says at last, but who made his voice come out so slow? So monotone? (Karen has heard those words before. Heard them just like that. Just before she was pressing down on a bullet wound) ‘D’you want a drink?’
Silence.
For a little too long and Matt starts to doubt his senses, maybe Karen isn’t really there and that voice he heard was just whatever liquids in his ears whispering as they spun and refused to settle. Despite standing still, Matt feels his weight shift a little too far left and he falls slightly again, leaning his weight more into that hand that is now death gripping the doorframe.
Karen huffs out a short laugh. He isn’t sure why but despite how fake hers is, he feels a real smile plaster itself onto his face.
Well, as real as a drunken smile can be.
He’s definitely more drunk than he thought because he doesn’t process the telltale sign of shifting fabric, the onslaught of a breeze before the side of his face is overcome with an electric stinging sensation.
The crack of Karen’s palm coming into contact with his cheek bounces along the pure white walls of the corridor, barely making it to the tall ceilings of the living room before falling limp and soundless.
What hurts the most is the way the other side of his face smacks into the edge of the open door, the top of his eye socket throbbing and sensitive when he brushes a finger near the area, harder than he meant to but his judgment of special awareness is very poor right now.
Where are his glasses?
‘Wow, that hurt.’ Matt says with a short and unamused puff of laughter.
‘How long has it been?’ And there’s a spark between her words that he recognises instantly. He wants a bucket to douse it before it catches. ‘Matt? How long has it been since we- we last spoke? We talked? About what happened? Because clearly you need to talk and I know you hate it but you are not ok, Matt!’
He takes a breath to start speaking but Karen isn’t finished.
‘That girl who helped you? She’s a temp. She’s 18 Matt and you scared her. She went back in and cried and she told the others what happened, they knew it was you because- I Uhm. Well I told them to look out for you. But they rang me straight away and they told me you must have been drunk but I thought they must have it wrong but no! What is wrong with you Matt? If you need to talk I’ve told you I’m here.’
That’s a lot of words. They float around before digging into his brain and he can’t tell if it hurts worse to hear them or feel the pain of where his head hit the door.
Another sting from that spot grabs his attention and he finally processes that his glasses are currently not on his face and Karen can see him.
Shoot, he must have left them somewhere.
He gestures for Karen to come in and leaves her to close the door, walking over to the kitchen counter.
With his back facing Karen and his glasses nowhere on the side (there was some fumbling to work past the barrier that the whiskey is putting up between his senses and the world), Matt quickly pours himself a new glass of whiskey, unsure of where he left his last, and sips it as he turns around.
He hears the humourless breath Karen lets out. ‘You’re- you’re kidding?’
‘Hmm?’ He asks with the glass still pressed to his lips. ‘Can you uhh.. see my glasses ‘nywhere?’
He doesn’t need his sharpened senses to hear the electricity crackle in the air as Karen uses her last ounce of willpower not to hit him again. She instead surges forward and steals the glass from his hand and downs it herself.
‘There, I’ve had that stupid drink you offered now it my turn.’ She grabs his wrist and it hurts, burns a little when her fingers slip as she drags him to the grey leather couch. She pushes him none too gently down, his fall is less than graceful and he struggles and fails for a moment to right himself into a mostly sitting position. In doing so, he feels something crunch under his foot. He recognises the shape as his glasses and he reaches to pick them up but misses and has to feel around before Karen gives up and grabs them for him.
She places them onto the table instead of into his awaiting hands.
He tilts his head up to her, he can just about tell that her arms are crossed but can’t understand much beyond that so focuses his attention on her hands, rubbing the fabric of her blouse together with her fingers, making that scratchy sound he can’t help but hate.
‘Talk.’ She requests as if it’s easy to do so. He spends about a minute, his mouth opening and closing as it tries to figure out what he could possibly even say.
He feels it in his nose first. A hot sting behind the bridge that almost hurts his eyes as they fill with tears he really doesn’t want to shed right now. His mouth opens again and a small strangle of a sound comes out before his lips pull down and he snaps his jaw shut for his chin to shake.
He’s gone.
Foggy and Stick and Father Lantom and Elektra and his Dad and they’re gone and Elektra came back so Foggy could too but Foggy wasn’t a part of the hand like Elektra was but if there’s a way maybe someone else knows it and Foggy’s alive but he’s not because his heartbeat wasn’t where he left it.
So instead he just says ‘I feel sick.’
He grabs for his already wonky tie and yanks at it until it loosens but it doesn’t feel easier to breathe or squash down the nausea. He reaches up to pull it over his head but it’s loop isn’t big enough for his head to slip through easily so he struggles as it gets stuck just above his eyes, already pushing his hair up either side and he can hear the fabric scrape around his ears.
He lets go when he feels Karen’s hands tug more gently -yet still just as furious- at the tie for it to loosen further and comes easily over his head. He can tell his hair is a mess but he knows his clothes are worse, crumpled and untucked, the memory of being smart clinging to them desperately but the more Matt’s body slips down the sofa, the more they give up the act.
Karen’s hands are on him again, this time she’s muttering something Matt can’t quite hear- huh… that’s odd- as she pushes his arm out of his suit jacket sleeve and untangles the other arm after he ended up flailing it around in attempt to help.
She then steps back and Matt looses sense of her completely.
He can’t bring himself to worry about that so just lets his head roll back as he finally revels in the buzz he wanted from the alcohol.
Meanwhile, Karen just watches as Matt’s ever unfocused eyes roll around their sockets and his mouth hangs a little open then closes a few times. When he blinks, it’s slow and sticky, as if he is having trouble keeping his eyes open at all.
‘I wasn’t drunk.’ He says at last.
After a second Karen replied ‘huh?’
‘Earlier’ and his eyes roll again, that slow blink follows and he licks his lips as they stick together where they’re too dry. ‘With that- girl. At Josie’s.’
‘But they told me you was acting weird, that you was sick?’ Karen pushes her hair behind her ear even though it hadn’t fallen in front of her face then crosses her arms with more vulnerability than control. ‘Are you hurt? Have you… been going out? Again? As- him?’
The scoff and smirk he can’t control comes across as arrogant. As if Karen has no need to think this anymore. As if it’s not something she’s been worrying about, praying wouldn’t happen for just over a year now.
The silence digs her question through his hazy mind and he realises she’s serious: ‘No, no. Karen- look a‘round.’ He gestures his arm around his new apartment, getting dizzy again when his head moves with it and taking a second for his thoughts to float back to the surface. ‘Don’t even know where that suit ‘s. ‘Ss prob- probably dust at the bottom of a pit by now.’
After a moment -everything between them now needs a moment, as if anything quick would scare away whatever is left of their friendship, a rabbit rearing to run- Karen finally steps back into Matts limited range of senses and the sofa dips as she sits next to him, the leather squeaking loud in the quiet of the dauntingly big room. He doesn’t mean to lean into her but his body is falling that way and he really can’t stop it.
Her arm snakes around his broad shoulders and despite it all the warmth is grounding and he’s sinking into it, honing in on it, letting it become all that he can feel. She pressed her lips to the top of his head, squashing down some of the spiked up hair and the gesture is kind and friendly and he loves her again.
Again?
God, he never stopped but it’s a new love now- a better one. One deep and true and rooted by friendship because that’s all they’ll ever be and they both know it and prefer it and love it that way anyway.
But they haven’t talked since Foggy’s funeral.
Haven’t called for months.
God, why did he go back to Hell’s Kitchen? Matt sends that silent question to thy sky before changing its form and asking it out loud with a singular word:
‘Karen?’
And he feels her hum more than hears it. It’s low and close and the warm puff of air lands on his forehead. She’s so warm.
She’s home.
Not in the way the she is at home.
But in the way that she is home.
‘’m rlly cold.’ But he’s sweating. He can feel it down his back, his neck, sticking some or his hair to his forehead. He’s not cold, he knows he’s not and come the next day he won’t remember what he means but in that moment?
In that moment Karen knows.
‘Me too, Matt’
Hell’s Kitchen burns you. It leaves your skin cracked and dry, burned like another piece of meat on the grill if you stay for too long. But people who have lived in Hell’s Kitchen? Learned in Hell’s Kitchen? Loved and fought in Hell’s Kitchen? Well, they can leave. Of course they can. Anyone can. Their skin could heal, lungs could clear and minds could find peace but deep down their souls will never find a heat like it again.
When you’re used to the burn, you come to depend on it and nothing could ever compare.
Even through every kiss or every body hitting the floor, Hells Kitchen is a place made for living.
Until the day it kills you.
‘Let’s get you to bed. You’ll be sober in the morning- we’ll talk then.’
It hurts his charred heart because deep down at his core, that’s all there is.
Smoke and ash and fire and heat.
