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Summary: “This is weird.”Frank grunts. Waits for Red to say what he’s got to say.“I know this is all mine, I know it is but I don’t- I don’t feel it. I don’t remember it, I don’t...” He huffs in frustration, holds the box closer to his chest. Notes: Poems and excerpts taken from (in order of appearance):Memorabilia, Deborah TallLate summer after a panic attack, Ada LimónFree fall, William Goldingfrom Salt, David HarsentFrom Please bury me in this, Allison Bennis White Happy reading!❤️     Memorabilia; objects that stir recollection, valued or collected for their association with a particular field, interest or memory.   Let absence be Altogether, but briefly, devastating.   DEVIL   What if I want to go devil instead? Bow down to the madness that makes me.     “Morning.” Frank’s voice brings the images alive. Fire licks at wooden walls, grime-stained windows, bolted doors and two cots, lying on opposites sides of a cramped room. Oatmeal rips through a picture of scents, a dragging sweetness that feels dense when he inhales. Packed. It doesn’t push the other smells away as much as it dominates them, mixes unpleasantly. Sitting up require less effort than before. The smell of food isn’t as nauseating and neither is the pain - controlled for the time being. Still, muscles shake, quake as if tearing away from his skeleton, trying to find other refuge than his skin. His head hangs off his neck like a heavy weight, putting pressure in his vertebrae and collarbones. “Morning,” he manages back. Frank sits down but doesn’t reach to give him the bowl of oatmeal, neither does he say anything else. The routine is expected and if somewhat of a comfort. He sighs softly. “I’m Matt. You’re Frank. We’re in your cabin. It’s, uh, Sunday? November.” Frank’s calloused, thick palms find his, steadies his right hand before handing him the hot oatmeal. “Didn’t call me Fred this time, at least.” He grumbles under his breath and Matt isn’t surprised at the taste of coffee that comes from his lips and tongue, released into the air. Settles back against the headboard and cradles the warm bowl close, the cold morning dew dripping by the window a sonorous facsimile of a heartbeat. Slow and almost in tandem with Frank’s. “Maybe I thought you looked like a Fred.” Frank shakes his head with a huff, mumbles a right under his breath before- “Eat.” Matt does. The ringing in his ear an untraceable vibration that fixates over his right eardrum, poking it with needles. It was usually worse at night. “Are you going to tell me anything today?” If Matthew is like a sponge - absorbing everything and anything around him at all times until he’s spilling over, Frank is rock and concrete. Impenetrable, undisturbed, insusceptible. He gives nothing away - as if he kept the world at bay. Completely unapproachable at times. Embers and fire burn the world bright but Frank Castle was a blotch of ink dripping in the middle of his senses. A stain that stuck. The first heartbeat he looked for when he woke up. The only heartbeat he remembered properly. Castle shrugs, like he had all the days before. “Have nothing to say.” Lie. It’s barely there, not exactly a skip. His pulse speeds for not much more than a second and then settles back down. Red - Matt, Matt, his name is Matt - takes another sip of his oatmeal, slowly processing the taste of the food, the lingering taste of the pan it was prepared in, the old spoon that mixed it. He had time, the last few days, to get himself together, if only just. Stick’s teachings, in return, are a whispered chant in his head whenever he interacts with the strange man. So far, Frank looks like an ally. That could change and Matt tries to create contingencies - where will he run? Where exactly are the traps he heard the night before? How will he survive if he doesn’t know... Well, most of everything about his own life. “And about yourself?” He asks instead, sighing into another spoonful of oatmeal. “You’re military, right? Maybe former.” Tilts his head sharply to the side, listens to the unshakable, relentless heartbeat painting the room red and black. “You have an arrow scar in your shoulder. Are you with the Chaste?” “Marines. The hell is Chaste?” Matt’s lips press together. He thought he had mentioned them before. He had, hadn’t he? Either Frank is an ally or he’s not and if he’s not... Well, there’s a good chance he’d already know what Chaste is. It’s the only answer Matt can find that makes sense - that that’s how he got hurt, working with Stick and the others. But the marine’s heartbeat doesn’t skip nor does it speeds up in that characteristic way. Frank scoffs. Probably at his silence. “Yeah.” But he needs to be sure. “Are you with the Hand?” “I’m what?” Ignores his voice to listen hard to the beating, living thing hiding beneath marred scars and skin tissue. Breastbone and ribs. Matt breathes a bit more easily, if only for a little. Because if Frank isn’t either of them, then how did he find him? How did he know him? How did he know, if partially, about Matt’s senses and skills? None of it made any sense. Frustration rises and swells like a furious ocean, tidal waves rising and rising in height until they reach the skyline. “How do you know me?” “Tell you what, Red,” he drops his empty bowl in the fold-out table. The loud rattle of spoon against porcelain makes him flinch. “You’re a pain in the ass of the highest degree.” He tilts his head, listens closely. “But still, I’m here,” Matt begins, carefully. “Do you want something from me?” Frank shrugs, a heavy exhale getting lost in the distance between them, and so do all of its meanings. “Want you to shut up and eat.” Not working. Not again. “Do I have no one else to get back to?” The bigger man’s heartbeat throbs scarcely faster before it’s forced back down to a resting rhythm. Frank watches him. “Not for now,” and it’s not a lie. Not one Matt can detect anyway, and if there’s one thing he learned about Frank since he woke up in the cabin with his head in bandages, is that he keeps to his promises. The good and the bad. So Matt settles, for there isn’t much else he can do and the energy is already beginning to seep right out of him. He finishes the small bowl of food and takes his medicine. Tries to unlock all the tense muscles bunching under his skin and allows Stick’s voice to chant through his head: mind controls the body, body controls our enemies. Trustworthy or not, Frank is clearly not willing to let him go. If Stick’s alive, certainly he’ll find Matt. Trees may offer cover in a sighted perspective, but doesn’t mean anything for blind people like them. And even if Frank doesn’t know, Matt is likely working for Stick and the Chaste. They had to fight the war, after all. And why else would he get in trouble? Come on, Matty, get to work. Dad tells him. Get to work. He has to get back to his feet. He will. But for now, his head throbs painfully like his brain is threatening to burst out of his skull and the oatmeal plays loops around his stomach. Frank gives him a bucket when he throws up.     The first time Matthew notices something is wrong is when he’s sitting in the bathroom, taking a sponge bath. Frank helps him with the basics before leaving him to the little privacy he had, sitting beside the half-closed door. He’s glad for the shower curtains. Even a few paces away, Frank’s heartbeat illuminated the whole cramped room with bright spots of sound, the vibrations traveling like tendrils underneath the floorboards and deep into the earth underneath. Echoed strangely against the tiles, but loud enough that finding the offered hygiene products wasn’t a hardship, even with his building migraine. It starts as a feeling - a certainty that he’s not alone that he quickly abandons. Frank is on the other side of the door and his senses are haywire, sensitive to every input his fatigued brain can’t process properly beyond threat and safe. He leans back, careful of the plastic wrapping around his left thigh and remembering Frank’s orders not to get his hair wet. It quickly morphs to unease. It begins like a concept and then evolves. Swells and thickens into something closer to dread - into his heart going faster, his breathing pattern changing, choppy inhales and shallow exhales. He isn’t sure what it is at first, the puzzle pieces are scrambled and he’s too exhausted to put them together properly. There’s a presence that doesn’t make sense, not corporeal enough that he can get a read on it with his senses. But he knows it’s there. Even if the sound waves from their heartbeats and breathing betrayed nothing. “Do you reckon Stick would be disappointed?” He startled badly enough that the soap slips from his hand and slides across the floor towards the drain. Aghast and more than a little alarmed, he abandons the crawling sensation across his skin as the soap suds slid across the expanse of his body to try and make sense of the sound. It felt like a thought. A thought that came too loud, enough that it felt like it was outside of his body, perched right by his right ear. His hand closes on the side of the empty tub, nails digging and slipping at the humid, cold porcelain. “Who-” but there’s no heartbeat, no sound beyond the voice. Until there is. Its heartbeat mimics his own. Sounds exactly the same in its cadence, but the thing, whatever it is, doesn’t carry a smell or heat like all living things do. It’s almost apart from the world on fire, a tear on the fabric of reality he put together with his senses. Something that looked like a man, except for the thick skin and the small horns protruding from its smooth head. “You’re trusting him, Castle will kill you the moment he has the chance, it’s what he does.” The thing shrugs, a smile cutting through its alien face. “You’re not here,” he whispers, as if the simple statement would rip the thing apart, destroy it, send it away. “You keep your enemies close to watch them, take advantage of them. Not so they can captivate you. ” “I’m hallucinating,” he whispers again, nails now digging into his knees. And when did he move his hands? When did he do that? There’s a flicker of time between one second and the other that is missing. Like all the days previous to waking up in Frank’s bed and crawling to this place. “You’re not real.” “Huh, real enough to know you’re easy prey.” The demon-like hallucination smiles big at him. “What are you going to do about that?” The devil, he thinks. This is the devil. “Did you miss me already, Matt?”     Red takes his sweet time in the tub. He should’ve been done with it long ago and Frank - well, he should’ve done it himself. He doesn’t doubt for a second Red could be already plotting some half-assed escape plan and stalling for time in the bathroom. He knocks out of courtesy more than to give him privacy - had seen enough of Red in all states of undress the first three days he had been there. “Red?” No response. Frank doesn’t wait any more than that. In his head, he runs through the list once again: bleeding from nose, ears or eyes - brain hemorrhage. Paralysis, seizure - swelling. Fever, delirium, pus - infection. Runs over it again so it doesn’t fade from his memory - not as pristine as he’d like it to be, although he never got to Red’s situation either. Names and meanings escape him sometimes, is all. Red looks physically well when Frank walks through the door, combat boots squeaking against the tiles. He squints at him, at his nose, eyes, ear (clean), his bandages (dry), his plastic wrapped wounds (pink and healthy). He checks the place out of habit, looking for incongruities hiding between fresh, sterilized towels and semi-transparent shower curtains. “Red,” he calls out again but the kid doesn’t answer, and Frank can’t say he’s exactly surprised. Had happened a few times already, the little shutdowns. Which is why he’s surprised when Red speaks. “Is there-” the redhead swallows, fingernails digging into his knees, his left leg stretched across the empty tub to accommodate the pain of the gunshot wound. “Is there anyone else here?” “Jus’ us, Red,” and he did a perimeter check minutes ago. His eyebrows furrow down to meet his eyes and Red twitches, wonders if he senses the movement somehow. “Yeah. Yer senses going a bit haywire?” Matt startles out of a sudden, one hand closing a tight fist around his knee and the other, the right one, spasming as it tried to do the same. “Can you take me outside, please?” Voice comes as the afterthought of a whisper, barely there at all. But it echoes around the cramped space and makes its path towards Frank’s eardrums. He sighs sharply but doesn’t mention anything else. Mechanically helps Red out of the bathtub and into the towels. Grabbing the folded clothes Frank had separated for him to use, slightly too big in places. Doesn’t need the a**hole’s fancy senses to know something’s up but he won’t ask for now and he’s quite sure Red won’t volunteer the information either - wiped out brain or not. The thought sits heavy in his stomach, a weight that he feels physically when he moves to the kitchen. If the memory loss is caused by brain damage, Curt says, the likelihood of Red ever regaining them is extremely small, specially considering the type of first care he received. There are other options to what was messing up his head, but for now, there was simply no way to tell. “You remember anything else?” He asks from there, fetching the wheeling chair he had stolen from the Costas medical facility the week before. The Lieutenant doesn’t give Matthew time to deliberate, helping him up and into the chair, careful of his injured head, belly and leg. He isn’t surprised when- “I don’t need that.” “I didn’t ask. Sit down.” “I’m perfectly capable of-” “But you won’t.”  He cuts off quickly, adjusting the arm support and adjusting the wheel lock before wheeling Murdock towards the front door. “Not yet, at least.” Murdock twitches, impatience making lines like riverbanks form around his youthful face, but chooses wisely not to start a discussion. He’s been picking his fights, since he realized Frank was just as stubborn as him. He repeats his question and watches Red’s sigh raise a condensation fog in the air, following its swirls through the cold morning air. “Just bits and pieces,” Murdock eventually answers, licking his lips. “It comes and goes.” Frank grunts in response and doesn’t press the matter; but he does help the redhead sit in the steps like a few nights before. To fight. For the war. Sh*t. Of all the f***ed up things. He shakes his head to himself, not enough of a movement that drags attention from Red, who seems content in tilting his head back towards the cloudy sky above the high trees. Won’t think about all he’s learned because they’re not part of the mission, not now. He’ll get the kid better, get him back to his life. Maybe go to the orphanage, ask some questions, start digging. But until then, he sits in the cabin steps with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen by his side, hugging his knees against the coming cold. “Stick taught me knives. Father Lantom and the... the nun called the cops. I got into middle school. Had a crush on Ian from History class. Dad hates Mrs. Hernandez Bakery’s apple pie.” The messy retelling doesn’t phase him but brings a flashback of their own - his head had processed information similarly, back then, the scar of the bullet just barely closed. His brain had latched to their laughter but he couldn’t remember if the plates made it to the sink. He remembers Lisa’s little voice begging him to read her her favorite book, please Daddy, please, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember the clothes Frankie wore that day. Maria’s voice played in a loop of hey, sleepyhead but he can’t remember how she sounded when she said his name with that fondly exasperated look. Tomorrow, baby. I’ll read it to you tomorrow, I promise. “My wife, she, uh,” swallows the clotted knot of uncertainty in his throat and blinks against the moisture collecting around his eyelids. “She used to try some fancy dessert recipes, from time to time.” He laughs suddenly and brightly, remembering her pout when her chocolate muffins ended up burned for the third time that month and her strawberry cheesecake went wrong and liquid. Red looks surprised at him and the anonymity is somehow... comforting. He doesn’t remember the chaos Frank unleashed in the city, doesn’t remember the headlines and the trial and much less how Frank bounced a bullet off his helmet years ago. They would’ve never sat like this, talked like this if Red hadn’t been brained in that warehouse a little over a week before. “She was a good cook, but her desserts were bad, man. She was real terrible at it.” Red chuckles softly and deja-vu creeps over his skin like a thousand ants. It’s almost a do-over of that night in the graveyard. “The kids tried to be nice, y’know? They’d put on this face, all wide-eyed like it was the most delicious thing they’d ever eaten. Lisa, my baby girl, she was good, Red. Sometimes she fooled even me. But Frankie, my son, he, he was horrible at it, you could see it all over his face. He used to say that he wanted to be a chef when he grew up,” Murdock’s eyebrows go up and Frank scoffs. “I know, right. He’d say he wanted to be like the TV shows.” Lisa was a good sister. She’d taste every crazy concoction Frankie came up with - even mango pancakes, once, which made her sick, and she wouldn’t let Frank or Maria tell Junior about it. She’d always make some ridiculously funny accents when she was playing the food taster, wearing those little bracelets she used to make with her best friend (what was her name? Natalie?). Frank tries to chuckle at the memory but it comes out a rasp of breath, his lungs tearing right off of him. She had been wearing one of those. One of the bracelets written LISA in bold orange letters. It was her favorite color since she was about the height of Frank’s knee. Remembers seeing it stained deep red when he cradled her in his lap. Red’s voice brings him back to the porch, away from the park and Lisa. “What happened?” Scary, how intuitive the kid was. Maybe it had something to do with his senses, but Frank isn’t that sure. He hadn’t thought much of him at first, back then. Thought he was impulsive, combustive and too naive. And then he met him again, wearing crisp but cheap suits and red shades and saw that spark of smart he tried to hide. Frank doesn’t doubt that, should he have been more present in that trial, he’d probably have managed to get the not guilty verdict, somehow. Frank’s silence must be answer enough for Red soon turns his face away in respect. Maybe he sense it somehow; the thick knot tightening on Frank’s throat, the stinging at the corner of his eyes and a moisture he wasn’t that sure he could blame on the wind. “I wanted to be a lawyer,” Murdock offers, his head twitches to the side subtly before coming back to the conversation. Frank catches himself wondering just how far those ears of his went. “when I was a kid.” He finishes softly, extending his injured leg with a certain amount of effort before all air left his lungs in a rush. Ain’t sure if it’s Frank Jr’s ghost hanging over them, close enough that Frank swears he could smell that God awful shampoo he liked only because it came with Captain America’s face plastered on it but actually had a terrible scent. Maybe it’s ‘cause Red is sitting there with barely any memories left in that f***ed up head of his and remembering being a kid dreaming about being a lawyer, not knowing he made it. Against a whole sh*t ton of odds. “You are.” he blurts out. Red turns to him, his whole body still, eyes wide. “What?” “You’re a lawyer,” Frank shrugs at the sudden rush of breath that leaves Red, the confusion turning into awe. Frank resists the urge to look away from the precious turn of his lips. “Good one too, when you wanna be.” A breathy chuckle graces his ears and Frank finally turns away, a small smile in his face mirroring Red’s lips. He waits for questions he’s sure Red made to himself a thousand times the last few days: why is he not a hospital, where are his friends, why didn’t they come looking, why, why, why. But Murdock doesn’t. Just holds his own knees closer with that dreamy little smile upturning his lips, pulling at a long scabbed over cut by his chin. Frank helps him inside when the exhaustion kicks in, once again, and leads him to the cot.     Where did you go? An angry voice close to his face. I can’t do this alone. I can’t take another step. Soft, long hands and arms circling his shoulders. Was it all a lie? Salt and moisture in the air (tears), the scent of his own blood. You’re just one bad day away- Chains pressing him down, hands on his chin. Where did you go, Matt? He wakes up with the whisper a burn bright-hot spot of pain in his chest - not one from any voice that he can remember, but familiar all the same. Familiar enough that something clogs his throat, chokes up his airways. Every attempt at an inhale stops just short of completely cutting off his oxygen, the burn in his chest spreads. Matt blinks away the tears in his eyes - where did it come from? Tries to orient himself in the space he’s in - where? He didn’t know these sheets, didn’t recognize these walls, these- The smell. He recognizes it. Antiseptic, coffee, gunpowder. The fabric doesn’t feel as odd, once he runs his hands through it. It’s another one, but not unfamiliar. Frank changed the sheets again. His heart pounds faster against his chest. Panic brews like a tight boiling-hot coil in his chest - he suddenly feels unsafe inside the room, the cabin walls the body of trees and earth surrounding them from all sides. There’s something he has to do, somewhere he needs to be and Matt can’t for the life of him figure out what or where. A shuddery breath leaves through his parted, parched lips. Feels the skin of his forearms cool off where it spills - sharp like a whirlwind for his oversensitive sense of touch. “Where did you go, indeed?” The Intruder, as Matt had taken to calling him, asked softly. His presence is accompanied by a excruciating ache that manifests itself like a weight more than the agony it really is when it spreads at the edges of his fracture, following the lines connected by wire. He doesn’t need to concentrate to hear bone grind against metal. “You’re not in Hell’s Kitchen, but that’s about as far as you know.” He doesn’t answer. If he ignores him, maybe... “Oh, well now, that’s just desperate.” His teeth grind together. The pull of muscle and jaw sharpens the pain, tendrils of it reaching out to take over the whole right side of his head. Matt wonders if this is what losing your mind feels like. A steady, perfectly natural-feel of circling down the drain. Almost like it’s supposed to happen, almost like he deserved it, maybe. “I suppose you do, but I might be biased.” The Intruder’s voice is oddly detached from where Matt senses its surreal body, the weird texture of its skin, almost like leather. The protruding horns in his skull. As for him, his own skull felt the same - broken bone oddly loose when he follows the line of sutures coming from his temple to an inch past the top of his ear. The creature shifts, his body something like red smoke. “Who am I, again?” The devil. He’s ought to be. Grandmother did always say Murdock boys had the devil in them. How ironic that this is how Matt remembers this - with a hallucination probing at the soft, damaged parts of his brain. The thing laughs, the sound doesn’t rebound, doesn’t act like echolocation like a real one usually would for his hearing. At the proof of it, of the unreality, and trapped in the room with it, Matt attempts burrowing further into his sheets, nose dipping into the fabric and looking for something real - coffee, gunpowder, antiseptic, soap, skin musk. “Are you trying to hide from me? Do you reckon it’ll help?” No. It can’t hurt to try. The Intruder shifts, a smoke trail left behind. The impression of lips close to his ear. “I’m in your head.” “Then get out of it.” Matt misses hours before, when it was only a dripping sound and an uncommon stench. One he became aware of when Frank said he wasn’t smelling anything. He thought perhaps it came from the forest, but further search led to nowhere. The smell didn’t come from anywhere physical, neither did the sound. It echoed just at the shell of his right ear. Frank’s heartbeat had betrayed slight unease and, for his sake, Matt mentioned something about being tired and had retired to his cot. “That wouldn’t be any fun.” “Shut up.” The dripping sound comes back, just around the shell of his ear. Works like an echo of the Intruder’s words. His skin the texture of leather and spandex and something inhuman, almost alive. He sits up suddenly, muscles pulling abruptly under his skin, tightening worryingly at his shoulders where they bunch up to cover his ears. He cowers to a corner, knees to his chest. Attempts to find Frank’s pulse nearby, eyes shut tight together as to ignore the very real breathing that he can feel against his cheek, a predator’s maws ready to attack. No matter how much he tries to work through the sounds, he’s hindered in his efforts. His own heartbeat too loud to properly allow him the focus, hammering and vibrating his eardrums. Only realizes he’s digging his fingernails into his knees when something wet and warm touches the palm of his hand. “What was that song? The one Dad liked?” Go away, he wants to say. Needs to say it, why can’t he say it? His ability to speak was locked up somewhere deep and Matt couldn’t reach it. Couldn’t find it, no matter how much he tried or how much the muscles of his neck worked against the knot tying his throat up. “ When I was fast asleep she threw her arms around my neck.” He clutches at his ears, presses his back against the corner of the bed, eyes shut together. But it doesn’t muffle the Intruder’s voice, neither does it stop him from singing. Strength leaves him. Matthew lets his arms fall to the sides, eyes vacant and searching the opposite wall. “ And then began to weep.” “S-stop,” his voice is stubborn, it struggles to fully leave him, sinks its nails in his tongue and refuses to be let out. “S-s-stop, stop.” It’s wrong. He isn’t sure what, but it’s wrong. Dad never liked that song. Dad liked weird country music and rock. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong, and he needs it to stop. “ She wept, she cried, she tore her hair, ah, me, what could I do?” Hands come up to his ears against and Red clamps them down hard, until the pressure becomes a palpable sound, bursting his eardrums. The break protests, he thinks he hears something snap.. “So all night long, I held her in my arms,” the devil’s voice echoes around the empty room, undisturbed. “Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.”     “It’s alright, kid.” His head hurts. Eyes sting when he attempts opening them. “I just need to clean it, yeah? You popped a stitch, s’bleeding a little.” His head hurts. Make it stop. Please. “Wanna tell me what happened?” He isn’t sure. He doesn’t know. “Someone was here,” he thinks he whispers. “Fr’nk, someone was here.” Frank’s steady hands stop. Matthew blinks through the fog, the hands return. “Frank, I need to go back. I need to go back.” He shakes his head, pushes his shoulders against the bed again. Matt hadn’t realized he was trying to sit. “Just rest, Red.” Frank sighs, coffee-mint-toothpaste-eggs-and-bacon mix in the air above him. “Don’t reckon you’ll be remembering this when you wake up anyway.” He doesn’t. BOX   Yet I was wound up. I tick. I exist. I am poised eighteen inches over the black rivets you are reading, I am in your place, I am shut in a bone box and trying to fasten myself on the white paper.     By day ten, it’s clear something is going on with Murdock. He wouldn’t know for sure, since Red never speaks of it. Never speaks much of anything that really matters, to be truthful - still a master in the art of misdirection even if he probably can’t remember sh*t about his life as a lawyer. Frank is a sniper. Waiting is in his nature, as much as Curt likes to point out he has, as he so calls it, a “modern disease” and craves for “instant gratification” or some bullsh*t. When the time is right, he’ll ask and he’ll aim just right, but for now, he has other things to worry about. If what Curt had said through the phone was true, each day that passed there was less chance Red’s amnesia was from a brain injury. The odds were much of it was psychological - Dissociative amnesia, Curt called it. Less to do with Red’s injury and much more with what happened before it. Frank frowns, eyes locked to his food before he averts his gaze to Red once more. The amnesia might have nothing to do with the hit he took to the head, but everything else certainly did. Red slept up to twelve hours most days and couldn’t seem to sleep at all on others, no matter how exhausted he was. It’d come to a point where he’d shut down, get into that detached, dissociating state he had been on his first few days in the cabin. The bruises under his eyes from the broken capillaries were getting better - Curt told him it was normal, so Frank hadn’t worried too much, though they certainly didn’t improve his appearance. He does it again - twitches his head and loses focus on his food, arm settling down against the wood, hands almost fully covered by the long sleeves of Frank’s borrowed shirt. Had been doing that a lot lately, wandering away into his head, getting lost in his surroundings. “Hey,” the crackle of gravel in his deep tone is enough to snap Red out of it. The flinch doesn’t go unnoticed. “What’s going on?” Something with his ears, maybe? Frank was pretty sure at some point they had used a flash-bang grenade, had found a canister abandoned at the warehouse entrance and track marks from someone being dragged. Red swallows, makes an attempt to go back to his food only to yield. “Nothing,” comes the predictable response. “Yeah, I don’t think so.” He slants his head to the side, gets to watch Red’s uncomfortable expressions morphing and changing. Murdock might have gotten better from looking like death warmed over, but he was still pale. He still had bandages around his head, thigh, torso. Bruises all over. Not for the first time, he wonders just how exactly does he work. Couldn’t help but notice his sharp senses the last time they saw each other - in that rooftop. He had seen him nod to something he said yards away. Wonders just how those senses of his are working now that his skull is broken, fracture extending from above his ear to a few inches past it. Frank reaches behind him into the makeshift counter, grabs the bowl of apple slices. “Eat it.” Murdock blinks, his whole body on pause. “I-” he smacks his lips softly, as if trying to get rid of a taste he couldn’t make much sense of. Frank squints at him. “Yes.” Compliance with Red was different, Frank came to realize soon enough. He was either buying himself time for something or he was closing off, hiding back inside his shell. Distinguishing the two was easy enough - Red was nothing if not an open book at the best of times. Like the past ten days, Frank prods. “Remember anything today?” Murdock shakes his head slowly, eyes roaming from the empty plate to the bowl beside him. As if looking for stains or cracks in the porcelain. He eats the slice of apple with care - too much too quick and his headache worsens, sometimes. “Just... words.” “Words?” Lips twist downward. He doesn’t look too comfortable sharing it. “Yeah,” he abandons the half-eaten slice on his place, somehow managing to avoid the dirty parts. “People saying stuff, sentences, but I couldn’t remember-” “Anything in specific?” Murdock stops moving, shakes his head. Frank lets it go, but he isn’t convinced for a second.     He sits by the table and cleans his guns and goes over the plan in his head for the fifth time. Frank’s been stewing over this long enough. It is a bad idea and he knew it, and knew it well. Taking Red back to the city with the way things were now... well, there were a thousand different ways thing could escalate and go to sh*t real quick, and he wasn’t too happy about the odds either. If they were out there, even if Red remembered his training (or some part of it), he was underweight, slightly anemic and injured. They go to the city and Red’s an immediate liability - he’ll have to look out for him. In the other hand, seeing Red flicker between moments of clarity and haze gets him in some deep, f***ed up part that messes with Frank’s head. Head replays over and over again the sight of him reaching out a hand. Too late, he had said, please. Things are starting to get complicated. At the beginning it was simple - take Red in, get him some place safe to rest, get him back to his life. But then he wakes up with his brains scrambled and what in the world does he do with that? How can he get him back to his life if Red has no goddamn idea what that means? Frank should be damn well past caring: should throw Red, clueless f***ing Red, in the middle of the city with all the wolves he pissed off that are now clamoring for his blood. Envisions going through what Red would do if the situation was different. If it was Frank with his head messed up and a whole city bellowing to take a pound of his flesh. Tells himself Red would do the same thing - just throw him to the wolves. But that’s bullsh*t. Not a goddamn bone in Matt Murdock’s body capable of leaving a man behind to bleed out. Not even a piece of sh*t like Frank. So he checks his supplies before going to Murdock with the idea. Guns, knives, burners - back-up plans, safe houses he has nearby. Places he can lay low if they can’t manage the ride back to the cabin. The city wasn’t a safe place for the Devil and much less Matt Murdock. Someone out there knows the two are one and the same, and Frank has a good f***ing guess as to who. Only a matter of time before Frank puts him down. He’s not your responsibility. Curt’s voice nags at him. Take me home. Murdock says instead. Curtis had asked who he was when even Red couldn’t answer that himself, and well, sh*t. Who wasn’t the appropriate question, was it? What Curt had wanted to ask - and Frank knows this, knows this with the certainty that he knows that Murdock will be back on his feet, no question about it - was who was Murdock to him. Red was a sanctimonious pain in the ass, that’s who. A holier-than-thou prick with a savior complex. A good guy. And Frank had been too late and so had Red and they were both paying for that now. Because Frank knows better than to expect everything will go as planned, he prepares a bag with some bare necessities. A whole bunch of first aid and changes for Red’s dressings. Kid shouldn’t be moving so soon, not after getting his head sewn back together in a mob doc’s table but as good as Frank could be at waiting, it wasn’t his favorite tactical approach and neither was Red. Frank needed him out there, doing his ninja sh*t. Murdock was one step away from getting cabin fever and whatever was going on with his ears that he wouldn’t tell. Red may sleep a lot but God knows he doesn’t do much resting - Frank reckons he has flashbacks but Murdock is rarely coherent enough when he wakes up. And the times that he is, he doesn’t seem to understand anything at all. That’s why, when he finishes packing to find Matthew burrowed into the sheets with a peaceful, restful expression softening his features, Frank doesn’t wake him. He busies himself around the place for a while until there’s no need to check traps or supplies and only then does he take a seat by the cot. Red looks different since he got here. Even with the flashbacks, the constant headaches and the effects of the concussion, there’s a weight missing from him. He still has that soldier-like posture of his, spine straight, shoulders back, but there’s something, an absence Frank can’t pinpoint. It’s in the softness of his eyebrows when he sleeps, in his easy-going talk when he’s not distracted with his messed up head. Maybe it’s the memories he doesn’t have. Maybe. Takes an hour for Red to finally shift, hands twitching away from the cotton sheets tangled around his waist. Frank notices the rashes all over his forearms, bright red where they had been pressed against the fabric. “Hey, Red,” a soft groan answers him. Red scratches at his forearm. “Who am I?” For some reason, Murdock flinches at the question; muscles tensing before he lets go. Frank’s eyes narrow at his figure, Red takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re Frank. I’m Matt. It’s Monday. November. I don’t know the date.” Frank stares at him some more. Waits for an answer to pop out of somewhere, a reason for the slightly frenetic twitch of his fingers. Sighs when none comes. “It’s the 21 st .” Murdock nods, before attempting to sit up. He still swayed when he did something strenuous - walked a few steps too many, climbed up the three steps from the porch to the cabin’s door -, and sometimes when he woke up. But if Curt was right and Murdock’s amnesia was psychological, triggers could help him fill the blank spots. The faster he got Red remembering, the faster he was out of there and Frank could go back to hunting down scumbags. “Put those on,” Red tilts his head the second the bundle of clothes leaves Frank’s grasp, catches it neatly with his right one. The muscles there had improved just enough that Red didn’t let things fall all the time now - Curt had left him some hand grip strengtheners the last time he had been there. When Frank had thought they’d have to shove Red back in the van. As luck would have it, the seizure had been mostly due to dehydration and shock. Murdock’s fingers explore the items - thick thermal pants, jeans, a heavy sweater and a parka. Maybe it wasn’t cold enough for the pants, but Red had lost a few pounds and had gone from fit to too damn skinny and he shivered a whole f***ing lot when night fell. He curses under his breath and throws in some winter socks and gloves. Peruses for an old pair of boots that came with the place. A tight fit, but better than Frank’s over-sized ones. “Wher’ we going?” He turns his head away from the redhead. He had seen Murdock in various stages of vulnerability in the last week, but when he woke up slurring his words and curling his tongue loosely and softly around his vowels, it was just different. Got the twist in his chest to settle at the same time it only knotted up more painfully. Reminded him too much of his kids, waking up with soft little smiles. Are we going to the park, Daddy? Rubs at the back of his head, palm pressing into the scar. Red inclines softly towards the sound, a bit more alert - chin cocked up, irises creeping towards the upper left corners, considering. “Your place.” Red frowns before freezing altogether. “There won’t be anyone in there, right?” Disquiet fingers pick at the fabric, flinching away from it before pressing his fingers harder together. Goddamn martyr. “I won’t remember them.” Frank pulls the cotton sheets away from him, throws them in the floor by the growing heap of dirty laundry he had to take care of. Red’s relentless, though. Finds away to twist his own fingers into pretzels, picking at the skin between each one. “Don’t think so.” But then again, what does he know? Midland Circle collapses, Red was supposed to be dead. Reports come about a man in a black mask saving a man and attacking people related to Fisk. There’s a riot in prison, Matt Murdock becomes a wanted man, and then he calls the very same day- “That’s what your fancy hearing is for, right?” Murdock nods gingerly. Gets up quietly and sways only once before dragging himself to the bathroom to change. He comes back dressed and already looking drained, expression unguarded. Soft. Frank looks away. “You can sleep in the car, c’mon.” Red does. He’s dead to the world for two hours.     Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t look any different from the last time Frank had been there. He had half expected it to be. That its walls would be somehow marked with the Devil’s absence. If he’s honest with himself, Frank had half expected it to look like the aftermath of an apocalypse. Stupid. Maybe it’s because he can’t picture the Kitchen without its guardian devil. Maybe it’s because it felt like the world had changed, somehow, not much more than a week ago. Something had shattered, and yet the place remained intact. Frank shakes his head and spares a glance at the man sleeping in the passenger seat, chin to his chest, soft clouds of breath getting puffed by his nose. He looked uncomfortable. He waits for the next light to gently squeeze a fingertip under his chin, help him find a better angle to rest his head. Manages to lean it against the window and Red expresses his content exhaling soft, warm air against Frank’s fingertips, falling back asleep quickly. Making sure he wasn’t resting over the injury - the place where bone was held together feebly by iron, sutures and skin - Frank avoids any bumps in the streets while driving, eyes scanning other cars and rooftops. He doesn’t think the man in the stairs necessarily knew who Red was, but his boss did. He thinks he sees something - rooftop over an auto-repair shop, not too far from them. A blur of black and red. It’s gone before he can register its shape and speed but he keeps an eye on all the rooftops after that. It doesn’t show up again, but Frank files it away as something to consider afterwards. Murdock’s building is an old brick walk-up. Not as much of a sh*thole as Frank’s safe houses in Manhattan, but a sh*thole nonetheless. Red wakes up the moment they pull over a street away, head twitching sideways. He looks more alert than he had back in the cabin, taking in the city, the traffic, the passersby. Frank just watches him for a while, makes sure he’s not about to freak out like he did once or twice already before turning off the ignition key. “Come on.” “We’re in Hell’s Kitchen.” He sniffs the air carefully, looks ridiculously alike a dog while doing it. The same way he did with his head tilts. Frank just grunts in response - of course, of all the things to remember, Red would recall what Hell’s Kitchen smells like. They use the fire escape. Frank catches Murdock missteps a whole lot more than the redhead would ever be willing to admit but he lets the man keep his pride. He’s dizzy and his legs won’t coordinate with his brain - right one mostly. As stubborn as his right arm and hand. He’d raise them barely enough to make a step and trip on the next, hold himself for dear life on the handrail before Frank came along to take most of his weight, awkwardly squeezing together through the tight fit of the stairs. Red’s exhausted by the time they make it to the third flight of stairs and Frank mostly carries him the rest of the way, Red’s legs delaying them rather than helping. It isn’t any hardship - Red doesn’t eat much and keeps even less in his stomach when he manages something. Castle isn’t sure what he’s hoping for when Red finally, gingerly walks down the stairs to his place. Looking more like a stranger than a man walking inside his home. Maybe - stupidly - that he’d walk in, surrounded by all things Matt Murdock, and come to some kind of realization and get back to his life. Get the hell away from Frank’s because he sure as hell doesn’t know what to make of this. Of Red and him in the same space, instead of being on opposite sides in a fight. Or maybe a spark. Something that told him Murdock wasn’t lost for good. Murdock touches the walls with barely concealed hesitation, knuckles feeling for the polished wood. There were cracks on the walls, broken glass on the floor, a crack on one of the window panes. Frank takes it all in and keeps quiet. Clasps his hands in front of him as he shadows Red’s footsteps inside the place. Shaky fingertips find case files over the coffee table. Murdock’s expression twists into something funny. “I really am a lawyer,” he mumbles, some kind of innocent awe tinging his voice that Frank thinks he’d never would’ve heard it otherwise, should he have his memories straight. “That you are.” Murdock’s lips twitch in that confused, unsure smile, fingertips trailing the few books by the files. An abandoned, open laptop attached to a device of some kind. Braille reader, perhaps. He stops at one of the books, fingers spasm before he traces the cover again. “Thurgood Marshall,” his eyes bob from the upper corner to the lower one, his knees still shake from the hesitation of climbing up the fire escape. “I used to read this one a lot when I was a kid.” Frank’s eyebrows go up. There’s something that keeps pulling Red back to the book, even when he feels for the other ones. Frank wonders what is it that makes him gravitate back - a memory, a feeling. What gets him tracing the same dots over and over again on the spine. “Take it,” Frank shrugs, lets his clasped hands fall by his side, “it’s yours.” Should probably get some of Red’s stuff too, while they’re at it. He steps towards the bedroom he peeks by the sliding door, looks for something they can use. Gym bag isn’t big enough for a lot, but enough. He empties one, leaves one of the hand tapes. Murdock looks grateful when he reaches gingerly towards the bag, dropping the book inside with a small smile. Frank resists the urge to tell him to quit it. He finds his cane next, discarded by the couch. Confusion and recognition battle around the creases and soft planes of his features before he carefully attempts picking it up, fingers digging into the back of the couch so he doesn’t topple over. Folds it up almost on muscle memory and seems about as surprised as Frank as he does it. “Remember anything?” He asks, strangely hopeful, but Red just frowns - sniffs the air like a hound dog. “I’m not... sure.” Yeah, he doesn’t look very sure about anything, even as he drops the folded cane inside the bag. He walks into the kitchen with a sway to his step Frank has come to recognize as exhaustion. Confirms it when Murdock’s quick to try and find support on the counter, hands bumping into something. Frank catches a blur of dark red and golden yellow before it falls. Red falls into a series of bird-like head tilts, eyes attempting to find the little red box in the floor. Knows it’s a bad idea trying to pick it up without support moments before the kid almost cracks his head open a second time. “Jesus f***, Red,” he pulls him up before he manages to face plant like the a**hole he was. Pissed off but still mindful of his sutured up head. He takes the box himself with a curse, recognizing the smooth, vinylic surface of gift wrapping before he hands it to Murdock. “Thanks.” His eyes get drawn to the floor again, though. Notices the slump of clothes on the floor by the fridge, some of them with pink splatters of washed-out blood, some with bigger stains. Frank crouches beside it - it had been wet at some point, dried up all wrinkled and smelled moldy to a degree. Suit jacket, slacks, socks, white button-up and a torn, black tie. “Hudson,” Murdock suddenly murmurs, one eyebrow quirking up as the other draws down crookedly. “It’s what I could smell before.” His hands still fumble around with the gift box, even while slanting his head this way and that, sniffing the air as if looking for clues. Frank stands up, leaves the rumpled clothes where they are. Something had happened between the prison rioting, Murdock becoming a wanted man and Frank receiving a phone call. Like the book, Red’s attention keeps gravitating back to the small box in his hands, wrapped up with ridiculous primness, contrasting badly with the skewered, badly tied up golden bow. He keeps tracing the line where the lid met the box, encased by glossy, bright red paper. “I... This is weird.” Frank grunts. Waits for him to say what he’s got to say. “I know this is all mine, I know it is but I don’t- I don’t feel it. I don’t remember it, I don’t...” He huffs in frustration, voice edged higher before it falls, holds the box closer to his chest. Frank eyes it, gazes back to the forgotten tag on the counter. It must have fallen at some point. Frank takes another look at Red then. The disgruntled, hopeless expression on his face. Exhales in a large huff of air. “Look, Red, this is gonna take time, yeah? You went through some bad sh*t. You gotta let your wounds heal, let that head o’yours heal.” Except what the kid needs is a f***ing neurologist and, sh*t, a really f***ing good therapist too. And Frank would be willing to give that to him, if only he wasn’t sure it would end terribly for Daredevil and worse still for Matt Murdock to show up now. Murdock suddenly stands straight - that fighter’s posture Frank had been used to seeing less flawless when it takes over the slumped, hopeless figure of seconds before. “What-” “Shh.” He looks a bit more like the Devil Frank recalled. A lot less like the helpless kid he’s been around the last few days. Frank can’t say he didn’t miss it. “Footsteps,” Murdock whispers, mouth close to his cheek, “coming up the stairs, six, maybe seven, they...” Frank pulls the gun from the holster, one hand clamping around Red’s upper arm to pull him back. His eyes go wide in panic seconds before he suddenly shouts out: “Frank, down!” BRUISE   Here is your space, lie down or stand or sit, it will take your shape. Be still if you can, look into yourself for what is soft and spoiled, for pulp, for that dark damage.   In a second, Red’s apartment becomes a battlefield. It’d been easy once to tell Maria that home was here, with the kids, with her. But Frank knows himself better, these days. Knows how easily he falls into the gunfire, how squeezing the trigger feels more natural than making breakfast for them once did. How landing a punch is easier than landing a caress and how he’d been so selfish to think he could have both. He has three rounds of ammo on him, thirty six bullets for his .45 caliber, one army knife - a TBI patient with no self-preservation instinct whatsoever and at least seven guys coming up the stairs to apartment 6A, armed with assault rifles and whole lot more ammunition. He takes one second to feel for Red’s skinny frame covering his body after tackling him to the floor, his unarmored body and the crisscrossed sutures over his ear before he makes a decision. Grabs the kid by the back of his neck, dragging him off of him before shoving him backwards under the stairs as soon as bullets puncture through the wall a second time. Red, probably completely oblivious as to where the urge to fight comes from, immediately tries to jump out. Frank presses his forearm against him, looks deep into his unseeing eyes before checking his cartridge - fully loaded, all twelve bullets in - before turning to Murdock once again. “You stay under those stairs, you don’t make a sound, you don’t move until I say so, do you get that?” Got not time to make sure the kid understands besides a brief stare, easing up the pressure on his chest incrementally before standing up, walking low to hide behind the hallway wall. He’s just got to crouching when a shotgun blow makes debris and chunks of drywall fly past the place his head had been, seconds before. Frank presses his gun close to his chest, stays crouched low as he waits, tonguing his parched upper lip before checking in on Red, hands covering his ears from the close-range blasts. His breathing is too quick but Frank’s got no time to check for anything else but immediate injuries. He roars out for the pieces of sh*t waiting on the other side of the door. “C’mon!!” The spray of bullets start again, exploding through the door and denting the wall by the fridge. Shattering porcelain mugs and plates long forgotten by the sink. He counts the time, the bullets he can hear. Keeps half an eye on Red, curled up tight under the stairs, eyes panicked. The second the gunfire stops, Frank’s on his feet. Two burst through the door and get shot on sight. Shoulder, head - the blonde guy falls. Chest - the braided woman goes down. A third one appears through the doorway, screaming expletives to the remaining four behind him. Frank recognizes a few operational commands - mercenaries, probably former military - before he jumps into a roll, avoiding a spray of bullets and unloading three knee-level shots at the guy. One hits home. The gunfire starts again, Frank grabs Red by the arm and pulls him out of hiding, dragging him to the table and shouldering it down to the ground, using it as shield. It was sturdy but wouldn’t last long. Red’s partially catatonic, but Frank had expected that too. Either he was caught in a sensory hell or trapped in a flashback or both. Probably both. “Red, you listening?” A sharp, erratic nod. “We gotta get to those stairs, you tell me when they’re almost out of ammo, can you do that?” Another nod, more focused, more sure. “Attaboy.” Two stop to reload, Frank lends him his palm and Red makes a small, objective map. Points the location of the four mercs still shooting, the one sitting by the two dead ones with his knee shot to hell. Immediately shows him the two as soon as they’re on their last bullet. Frank rises up too late to do much damage, but one gets a graze to the thigh and the other falls back with a shot to their armored vest. They have little tactical advantage besides Red’s senses, they’ll be trapped if they don’t move, now. But Red can’t dodge bullets when he’s still swaying over his feet every time he moves too quickly and Frank can’t cover for him at the same time he guides him up the stairs. So he quickly falls into another roll, shoots the second lady with the army jacket and slams his back against the couch. Bullets fly over his head. “You got nowhere to hide, Murdock!” Army jacket lady bellows, Frank’s gaze locks at Red’s face and he waits for the signal. The shakiness and pale skin are almost completely hidden by the determined set of his brow, the tense posture he holds himself in. “Come out now and I promise I’ll make it quick, sweetie.” Murdock rises three fingers. One goes down, another- “Now!” He rises the moment burly bald guy on the back stops to reload and shoots him once in the head. Pulls Red to his feet and drags him up the stairs as quickly as he can without risking his goddamn head. “Frank, duck!” He goes low, brings Red with him. A spray of bullets dent the wall over their heads and Frank shoots once, twice, three times. Ejects the empty mag and shoves another in record time before shooting the remaining three - Army jacket lady, vest dude and bullet-in-the-thigh a**hole. Gives them enough cover fire to crawl the remaining three steps to the access door and reach the rooftop. Murdock is weak - stumbles twice before he manages to find his footing again. But as soon as they’re high up, muscle memory and adrenaline seems to get rid of whatever catatonic spell he’d been in, together with whatever remaining self-preservation instinct he had been running on when he stayed hidden under the goddamn stairs. “Use the ledge.” “What?” But Red - the idiot who had his skull open 10 days ago - is already running. Uses the fire escape only to hang on to it, get momentum enough and jump down to the next building’s ledge, balancing precariously before taking hold of the ladder and having it drop down closer to the ground with him hanging on to it, finding the alleyway ground with unsteady feet, knees bucking violently when he finally does. Jesus Christ, this a**hole. But it’s quicker, so Frank does what he says. Almost misses the first jump but manages to hang on, climbing down the ladder and jumping to the floor the moment a bullet shatters the window over their heads and another grazes his left arm. “F***!” He ignores the urge to clamp his palm tight over the wound in favor of tugging Red’s almost non-responsive body out of the line of fire. There’s a van to the left of the building, one that hadn’t been there before. Frank memorizes the plaque seconds before spotting a tall figure waiting inside. He shoots them in the head without hesitation, eyes immediately darting up to the fire escape where Army jacket lady was hobbling down from, and the building’s front door opening from the inside - bullet-in-the-thigh dude and vest guy burst out of it, Frank starts firing and so do they. Red makes a sound of surprise and goes green when Frank shoves him behind his body. There are retching sounds and a splash of liquid against the back of his combat boots, but he’s got no time to check on him. Gotta keep on moving or they’ll get them trapped in the alley.  

Summary: Fisk gets put away again, and it feels like that should be the end of it, but it’s not. Of course it’s not. The FBI needs a win. Who better to take that out on than the lawyers who exposed their corruption. I am not Daredevil, Matt says so many times in so many spaces that he almost believes it. His ability to maintain a concept of self was difficult enough before this: this new judgment day, this thing that has fractured him beyond what he thought was possible. He feels like he’s been dropped into the ocean, all his limbs weighted with stones, unable to find which way is up and which way is down, which way is surface and which way is gone. Later, he'll try to think about it objectively, distance himself from this new kind of violence that inhabits his body. He'll grapple with the defined edges of his constantly shifting memory, carefully delineate the before from the after, turn his conclusion over and over in his mind. As it turns out, he observes, living feels a lot like drowning. [An exploration of trauma and memory, of what it might look like if Matt's identity as Daredevil was exposed. Prison fic. Post-S3.] Notes: “There are things unbearable.”—Anne Carson, Decreation      I.   The moment Wilson Fisk steps up to the podium, flanked by his team, somehow more imposing than ever, heartbeats stutter and crescendo across the city: a frenetic, dissonant exposition—and Matt thinks he understands a little bit more now why crowds nearly rioted at the premiere of a ballet once, overwhelmed by its relentless unpredictability, by its apostasy. The pagans onstage made pagans of the audience. The memory of Fisk’s voice doesn’t even hold a candle to the reality of it. Makes his hands curl into fists, takes him right back. If his memory had been a candle, then the reality is a forest fire: violent, irredeemable. “…to frame me. Daredevil. The killer who’s now showing—his true colors. Who’s tried to murder people in newspaper offices—and churches. Attacking our sacred institutions. Believe—me. Daredevil is our true—public—enemy.” It feels like Matt is caught in the crossfire of feedback from every television set in the borough, the fractional delay of sound just offset enough to make it seem as though Fisk’s voice carries beyond the restraints of sound and time, as though his power is truly limitless. The gasps that follow the speech, the uptick in heart rates, the sharp smell of sweat glands and fear arousal overwhelm his senses as he parses through the confused and conflicted responses across the streets: truth, truth, truth, it can’t be true, can it be true— A stuttering swan song of disbelief; it doesn’t matter, he thinks, it really doesn’t matter what he does, how much he does, who he tries to be—a few seeds of doubt, a handful of words, and the people he calls his own turn on him, just like that. A half-measure; a man who can’t finish the job. One bad day away from becoming the villain of his own story. One bad day away from becoming— Nausea battles with helpless rage inside of him as he is stricken with the realization that maybe Castle was right: the system is broken, his work as Matt Murdock is a practice in futility, almost as pointless as his work as Daredevil—not enough, never enough. He imagines for a moment what it would look like to team up with Castle, to end this—once and for all, for better or worse, ‘til death do us part; an unholy marriage of the Devil and the Punisher. How disappointing that his old teacher couldn't be here to witness the ruthlessness he’d despaired of ever finding in Matt. Maybe there's hope for you yet— Matt clenches his jaw against the wave of grief that follows, and pushes himself up to his feet. Foggy and Karen are waiting. — It takes him less time than he hopes it’ll take to arrive, barely exhilarated from the sensation of vaulting from rooftop to rooftop, the wide chasm of empty spaces below him, the promise of adrenaline that comes with every moment that he taunts death, and fear, and his own limitations. “So, I guess you needed my help, after all,” Foggy says smugly, with, to his credit, just a trace of the bitterness that usually accompanies his words. Since that day. Judgment day. When the secrets came bleeding out from Matt’s wounds. So, Matt swallows his pride as Karen steps onto the rooftop after Foggy. “Yeah,” Matt says. “Yeah, I did, Foggy. You’re right.” He doesn’t add that Karen nearly died because she got involved, because Foggy gave her the idea to confront Fisk, because he did exactly what Matt asked him not to do. He doesn’t say anything because he finally understands—there is no protecting each other, and good intentions only pave the way to hurt and hell, anyway. Fisk's speech lingers in his mind, a thick gossamer caught at the barbed edges of his thoughts, as present as the hallucination of Fisk that’s been haunting Matt's footsteps since waking up back at St. Agnes weeks ago.  The worst part, thinks Matt, was not even the speech, itself, no; not Fisk's voice, nor even his accusations; it was the heckling of the protestors fading into rapt silence, the collective gasps which greeted the accusations against Daredevil, the rapid click of camera shutters stuttering one by one into stillness: the cold realization that, after everything, after everything Fisk had done—the city believed him. Fisk, it was Fisk, it was all Fisk— Helpless rage rises up in Matt's chest and his hands flex at his side, curl into trembling, white-knuckled fists. Ten steps behind, always ten steps behind and nothing he did ever— “Do you have any idea how much life has sucked for Karen and me,” Foggy interrupts his thoughts, “while you were, just, off doing your own thing?” All Matt’s ever tried to do is the right thing, and all Matt’s ever seemed to do is get it wrong.  “No, but—I’m sorry, Foggy,” Matt says, grimacing at the profound inadequacy of words to bridge this rift in their friendship, to fill this cavernous space of all the things he's never been able to say. "Maybe I was, was wrong to push you away." “Ok, it’s, insanely hard to fight with you if you keep agreeing with me,” says Foggy, and Matt's own heart skips a beat. He doesn't need enhanced senses to catch that Foggy's heart is almost in the quip, almost— “Good,” returns Matt, “because I don’t want to fight with you.” He releases the breath that's been caught in his chest, and the rest of his apology comes out in a rush of words. “Look, the way I’ve treated you—the way I’ve treated you both—you deserve better.” Foggy's breath hitches in surprise.  "Yes," he says, cautiously, and Matt can sense that Foggy has turned to look at Karen, sense that she is nodding in bewildered agreement. “We did. But... so did you." For a moment, the words don’t register, the corner of Matt's mouth tilting up as though Foggy just made a joke that he didn't quite understand.  “I, Fog, what’re you,” Matt says, the words faltering as they tumble out clumsily on top of each other. “Listen, Matt,” says Foggy, and his voice is doing that thing where it sounds somehow both resigned and determined. “I pushed you away, too, after everything that went down with—you know,” he stumbles, not wanting to say Elektra’s name. “But it wasn’t fair,” he says quickly, to stave off Matt’s inevitable apology. “It wasn’t fair to leave you alone like that after she showed up again. I just—Jesus, I still remember that night at Co—” “Foggy,” interrupts Matt. Karen’s heartbeat is quickening in confusion, in concern, in interest. “We don’t, we don’t have to do this. Just, if you can let me try to do better, give me another chance—that’s all I need.” "No, Matt," says Foggy. "I'm just—I'm trying to say that I know your relationship with Elektra is complicated, has always been complicated, and God knows you probably never learned anything about healthy relationships since your childhood was so supremely f***ed up—" Matt releases a sharp breath of air in an unexpected huff of laughter. “Look,” Foggy continues doggedly. “What I’m trying to say is that—I’m sorry, too. You were alone, and I know that you thought I’d—we’d—be safer that way, thanks to your own personal, a**hole Mr. Miyagi but—whoa, Matt, are you ok? What’d I say?” He must look like he'd gotten punched in the gut at the mention of his old teacher. Matt certainly feels winded, and breathless, and incapable of explaining why. He licks his lips, as though forcing his tongue into motion will pave the way for the words to follow. “Stick's, uh, he's... gone, Fog. She, Elektra—she killed him,” Matt says finally, quietly, as though saying it softly enough might keep it from being true; as though saying it out loud doesn't make him feel like he might fracture into innumerable, irreparable pieces. He's barely a person already, he thinks; there's no way he can survive another blow, another hit like that. “Jesus, Matt,” says Foggy, and the sharp taste of salt hits Matt's tongue. He drags his focus back into the present; wisps of Karen's long hair are getting caught in the night wind, trailing across her tear-dampened cheeks while Foggy is... stoic, which is unlike him, his heartbeat ticking up anxiously in the silence that follows. The regret Matt feels is instantaneous; he should have known better than to task his friends with the unfair burden of grieving these complicated losses, these impossible figures who'd stolen Matt away from them before they'd ever had a chance. “It’s, uh, it is what it is,” Matt says, his voice flat. “I thought I could help her. I thought I could—I don’t know, but,” he shakes his head and laughs, a sound that is entirely joyless. “I couldn’t.” “Oh, Matt,” Karen says, sadly. Foggy takes a halting step toward Matt, stops himself in awkwardly aborted movement. A long moment of silence follows, before she ventures: "So, where do we go from here?" “I don’t want to leave you,” Matt says slowly, reluctantly, “but I can’t—I can't ask you to be accomplices to what I have to do now.” The words linger in the air between them like a challenge. Karen shifts her head away from Matt, displeasure in every closed gesture of her body. Foggy looks between them, settles on Karen: “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Um,” Karen hesitates briefly then plows quickly forward, as though that might soften the blow of the words. “Matt wants to kill Fisk.” There is one vibrating moment of silence before Foggy's words come staccato, rapid-fire, punctuated with disbelief: “What the f***, Matt—you know, maybe that building falling on you really did mess with your head—" “We put him in prison, Foggy—and look what happened,” Matt says, and Foggy hates that his best friend is somehow able to sound calm, and rational, and deeply unaffected while discussing his intention to cross this line that he'd sworn he could never cross, this line that could never be uncrossed. Foggy can still picture the crumpled expression on Matt's face when he'd asked if Matt had ever gone that far before—and Foggy doesn't understand how they got from there to here. Foggy thinks he could fill books with what he doesn't understand about his best friend. “It won't be the same this time,” Foggy returns. “This time, he’ll be thrown into some kind of supermax hole where he can’t compromise anybody. He’ll never see the light of day again!” “Foggy, I know you’re not that naïve—” “It’s called having faith in the system, something you used to have—” “It’s called facing reality,” Matt snaps, but Foggy can hear the exhaustion in his voice, the disbelieving resignation, the stretch and break of him. "The reality that the system wasn't built to contain men like Fisk. Men who are too rich, and too powerful—men who take the law, who take the system and twist it into something that protects them—" “No, Matt,” Foggy snaps back. “This isn’t you. There’s another way to do this—we just, if you can just, I don’t know, take a step back from the murder ledge for one freaking second!” “Matt, just, hear him out, maybe,” Karen interjects. Her voice is soft, pleading, raw.  “Fine.” Matt laughs, and the sound is short, and bitter. “Tell me how the law can possibly fix this, Foggy. I’m all ears. Please. Tell me your plan.” "Ok, simple, step one," says Foggy slowly, deliberately. "We do this together—we devise a plan together. Step two: we, we execute said plan. Together." “Wow,” Matt says, and laughs joylessly again. Not enough. Never enough. “That’s genius. You come up with that on your own?” ”Yeah, well, so I’m still working out the details,“ Foggy replies, but the uptick in his heartbeat belies his too-casual tone. “Ok, ok, ok, what about this—we, we find ourselves another witness,” Karen suggests. “Someone that will flip on Fisk, but, unlike Jasper Evans, we keep them alive this time. Someone who knows the details of Fisk’s operation. Someone with nothing to lose.” "No," says Matt, as the memory of what happened at the church returns to him in a rush of grief that nearly takes his breath again. "Someone with everything to lose." “Nadeem,” breathes Karen. “He helped me get away.” “Yeah,” says Matt. “His family’s in danger, he probably went back to move them. I need to go. Now. Foggy—do you think Brett would be willing to help Nadeem’s family?” “Already on it,” Foggy mumbles, and Matt can hear his fingertips rapidly tapping the screen of his phone. Pulling the mask back over his head, Matt rolls his shoulders back and starts jogging across the rooftop, gaining momentum as he goes until he’s leaping over and across.   —   In some ways, it feels like Matt never stopped running. Fisk gets put away again, and it feels like that should be the end of it, but it’s not. Of course it’s not. The FBI needs a win. Who better to take that out on than the lawyers who exposed their corruption. Daredevil. Our true—public—enemy. They’ve gathered enough evidence against Matt that there’s not much Foggy can do other than insist on protective custody, on the grounds that a blind attorney can't be placed in general population with the same violent offenders he put there. I am not Daredevil, Matt says so many times in so many spaces that he almost believes it. The days following his indictment are a blur of promises and threats bridged together by sleepless nights outlined with crushing absence where language used to be.   II.   It takes only one night in prison for Matt Murdock to realize that his luck has finally caught up with him; it takes thirty-two nights to fully understand what that means. Thirty-two nights of imprisoned men yelling and banging and taunting and singing; thirty-two days of the stench and noise of convicted inmates mixed in with others, like Matt, who are just awaiting trial; thirty-two nights of listening to choked sobs and threats, favors and retributions. Thirty-two days and nights with little sleep, and less food.  Then it happens—the transfer from protective custody to general population. Matt is almost relieved when it happens: it means freedom from the oppressive hum of surveillance cameras in protective custody always watching, always, so that he must act the part of helpless blind attorney every moment of every day and every night, or risk losing his case before it can ever get to trial, risk getting Foggy sentenced alongside Matt for aiding and abetting. The prison guards have demonstrated petty cruelties in the past, but still—Matt doesn’t see it coming when they take him not to his new cell in general population but into an ambush. A closed room with no way out, the door locked behind him and too many heartbeats to immediately count. It’s not that Matt ever considered himself an especially lucky person to begin with, not that he'd ever relied on luck when he could rely on himself, instead; but he's always been able to recognize when good things come into his life that have absolutely nothing to do with him—that have everything to do with chance, or else divine providence, or fate. And if all the good luck allotted to him in life had been spent up on a singular event, Matt's ok with that—because getting assigned to Foggy Nelson as a roommate at Columbia felt like a second chance at everything good that had ever slipped through his grasp—a chance at happiness that didn’t need to be gripped tightly in his fists or hidden beneath a mask. Foggy, who saw Matt—really saw him; not just his disability or the cultivated personality he presented to the world, but who Matt was, who he tried to be. Foggy, who saw with his heart, like Matt— He starts numbering the heartbeats, placing the bodies in the space, tasting the cortisol and adrenaline mingling with sweat in the air, his thoughts involuntarily drifting back to the last time he’d faced this many men, the cavernous space of the sky above as he and Elektra fought back to back on the rooftop where she would die in his arms. Different, he thinks, from the second time she would die: ripped from his arms below the earth as the sky collapsed down upon them. Elektra. It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Matt that he would all but free-fall into the kind of life Elektra could promise him, the life he'd been coldly, dispassionately shut out from in the quiet basement of an orphanage: his child's body colored with bruises he'd thought could mean love, his child's heart filled all the way up with shame—he’d been holding onto it for months, had pressed it carefully, tenderly, into the pages of his bible: a paper bracelet made from the wrapper of an ice cream cone— So if Elektra wasn’t quite compatible with Matt’s desperate need to be good, to be so good, well, at least she knew every buried part of him: knew intimately his darkness, his grief, his unbearable rage. Is she sick? Worse, Matty, she’s in love— “You’re Battlin’ Jack’s boy,” says a voice from above the men, atop a set of steps leading up to a door, and there’s something about the voice that strikes a chord in Matt’s mind, that stops him in his tracks, that catches his breath in his throat. Matt had observed the exit behind the man from the moment he’d stepped foot inside, one of three exits from the space. All closed, all locked, all useless. Guards posted outside every one, their pockets lined with blood money, their bodies full of threats. Plata o plomo. Silver or lead. Take our money, or take our violence. Matt always chooses violence. “What’s it to you?” he bites, fighting down the feeling that this is all more than it seems, more urgent, more dangerous than he can comprehend right now, with the evidence he has before him. "You don't remember me?" the man asks, mildly. "I killed your father." You don’t remember me? You killed my father. Well, I hate to break it to you, son, but I killed a lot of guys’ dads. Then let me help you…he hit hard, like this— Matt's body turns to ice, turns to stone, turns to lead as everything comes together to form a memory: Elektra, knife in hand, taunting Roscoe Sweeney, encouraging Matt to tell him who he was—he could taste salt in the air as he beat the other man until his face didn’t even feel like a face anymore, so bruised and bloodied beneath Matt’s knuckles. Good, he'd thought. His father's face hadn't felt like a face anymore either when Matt had found him in the alleyway all those years ago—but Elektra had disappeared after Matt refused to kill him, leaving only the lingering scent of her perfume—sandalwood, ylang ylang, mandarin leaf—as proof that she'd been there at all. Shards of crystal like fractured stars in Matt's hearing on the kitchen floor. Matt, equally shattered, equally disposable, alone by the open door.  He'd stood there numbly until long after she left, until the lonely wail of sirens reached the limits of his hearing. Then he'd hitchhiked and stumbled his way back to the dorm at Columbia, every intention of waiting for Foggy to leave the building before returning to their room—until realizing his keys were gone, lost somehow during the messy events of the evening. Or, just as likely, Elektra had taken them before disappearing; petty retribution for not complying with her command to end it, for not meeting her own desperate need for Matt to be the mirror to her fragmented pieces—to reflect back something whole, something still worthy of love. So Matt had knocked, humiliated, dried blood on his knuckles, on his clothes, mingled with the tears that had tracked their way down his face, and tried to ignore Foggy’s sharp intake of breath when he saw Matt, tried to ignore the frightened uptick in his pulse as the law student succumbed to his tendency to babble in distressing situations. “Oh my god, Matt,” he had said, “you disappeared from the party last night, and I know you can take care of yourself, but I’m always afraid you’ve fallen into, like, an open manhole or, I don’t know—a sinkhole, because I guess that’s more likely to happen than quicksand, not that I really thought quicksand was an option when there’s wet concrete and—” Matt had opened his mouth to say Foggy’s name, to reassure him, to somehow make this seem less bad than it was; instead, he'd heard himself gasp Elektra's name, barely a whisper of a sound, felt hot tears slipping out from the corners of his eyes again. The scent of Foggy’s fear had blossomed into anger, then; he had never liked Elektra, had never trusted her, had warned Matt about her so many times—and Matt had felt bitter shame rise up in his throat. But Foggy had knelt gently, quietly beside him as Matt wept wordlessly, his hands aching to feel just once what it would be like to touch someone and—not hurt, not be hurt. And if Matt had internally railed at the unfairness of it all—he’d thought surely by now he would be ok, surely by now he would have picked up the pieces of his life and fashioned them into something whole, no longer caught in the riptide of shattered childhood dreams and loss—he didn't let it pass through his lips. Not the way he had once allowed it to pass through his lips as a child in the orphanage waking again and again from impressionistic nightmares to unfamiliar rooms, calling out for his dead father, for anyone at all. He'd learned, then, when no one came, that it was better not to ask at all, better not to burden others with his neediness, his sadness, his shame. “Matthew?! Oh, you’re Battlin’ Jack’s boy, oh you amateur. Now I know your name, nothing to stop me from bloodying the street with your corpse, just like I did to your old man—” Scuffle of countless feet across concrete pulls Matt's attention back to the men who circle slowly, densely around him. "Sweeney," he all but spits, almost pleased for the opportunity to face him again. He can feel that helpless rage rising back up inside of his body again and his hands tighten into fists, aching for a fight after a month of playing domesticated house cat for the cameras in protective custody, for the prison guards whose daily cruelties and provocations were their bread and butter. “Murdock,” the mobster responds, almost sweetly. “You put me away ten years ago, and I’ve just been dreaming about getting you back ever since. Then I read about your trial in the paper and realized that I could get you back without ever leaving these walls. Only this, this is so much better than even I imagined.” “What do—what are you talking about,” Matt bites out through gritted teeth, mentally cataloguing everything in the room that could be used as a weapon against him, counting every heartbeat, every obstacle between him and a way out of this alive. A few inmates have switchblades tucked into their waistbands, others have clumsier weapons, and the rest carrying only their loathing for Daredevil, armed only with their bitter memories of humiliation and defeat, with the knowledge that they're locked away in here because of him. “You see, I knew about you, sure, followed along as the media praised the poor blind orphan with a law degree just trying to do good for his community. Except it turns out that you’ve been doing it with your fists instead of your law degree—I wonder how your partner feels about that—how your old man would’ve felt about that—” “Enough—” The word snarls out of him unbidden, his rage uncoiling inside of him until every fiber of him aches to hurt, to be hurt. “Don’t talk about them, don't you dare talk about them—” "Did you know that your partner has personally fought every appeal that I've made in the last ten years?" asks Sweeney, his heartbeat rushing in satisfaction when Matt doesn't respond. "You didn't know, did you? Guess we're all entitled to our... little secrets—" Sweeney's body is suddenly wracked with convulsive coughs; calluses line the inflamed membranes of his nasal passages, and Matt is hit with the realization that Sweeney had never recovered from the beating he'd given him that night, ten years ago. The thought that Sweeney must remember Battlin’ Jack Murdock every single time he takes a breath brings Matt a rush of grim satisfaction. “You’re a survivor, Murdock, unlike your old man," Sweeney says, his voice rasping. "Unfortunately for you, so am I—and I’ve not forgotten what you did. You left me with too many reminders.” "Then you should know now that you don’t want to make an enemy of me,” he bites, the Devil creeping into his voice. Sweeney laughs, drawing a few huffs of laughter from the men around Matt and he is caught in the crossfire of feedback again, kneeling on a rooftop with Fisk's voice in his ears; he shakes his head desperately in an attempt to bring his senses back into focus. Feeling of solid concrete beneath his feet, uptick in the ring of heartbeats around him, low hum of the ventilation system somewhere distantly above. “No,” Sweeney returns. “The mistake was making me an enemy, was making yourself an entire goddamn army of enemies and thinking you’d somehow never end up in here with them. Did you really think we’d never come back for you, pretty boy? For Daredevil?” Daredevil—our true—public—enemy— Sweeney scoffs. "You've only been here thirty-two f***ing days, Murdock, and, from what I hear, you're already losing it: talkin' to yourself in your cell, not eating, not sleeping—well, we've been here for years, so you can imagine that we are more tired, more hungry—for release, for retribution that's owed to us." Matt’s only half-listening to Sweeney’s monologue, his senses trained on the men surrounding him. Mind, body, connection. He forcibly releases the tension in his shoulders, allows himself to relax into the stance of a boxer as he grounds up through his feet. He tilts his head, focusing on the men who are distracted by Sweeney's speech. Adrenaline is coursing through him now, his body practically vibrating with it. “You think I’m afraid of you or these men, Sweeney? You think I’m not hungry for a release after thirty two days and nights of listening to all the sh*t that goes on in this place?” Matt's mouth curves up in a feral smile. “Try me.” Matt strikes the prisoner closest to him, the sole of his foot connecting with his throat; he goes down, and Matt uses the momentum from the kick to erupt into a flurry of motion as the other prisoners scramble to take their shot at the man who put them here. Slipping back on his feet, he narrowly avoids a shiv; taking advantage of the convict's imbalanced footing, Matt throws him face-first into the ascending concrete steps. There's a sharp crack as the man's jaw dislocates on impact. Matt steps over him to get to Sweeney but more men are already grasping at his arms, dragging him back by his prison uniform, by his hair, by anything they can get a hold of. He violently shakes off a couple of his attackers before something heavy is swinging through the air and he's forced to drop back down over the railing. He drops into a roll as he lands, swiping out a leg close to the ground to bring down the attacker closest to him, uses the momentum to spin back up to his feet. He strikes his heel down across the man's temple before Matt is grabbed again from behind, arms restrained this time. He kicks out furiously at one of the men in front of him, lands a hit on one of the men holding him and pulls away— —but there are too many men and they've closed too tightly in on him. He is being restrained again and this time the attacker hurls Matt against the wall, then down against the steps. He hits hard, his senses blurring in and out of focus as he swings out desperately. One man, two men, three go down, but more pile on top of Matt, their hands grabbing at his prison uniform, his arms held high behind him as he tries and fails to fend off the seemingly endless stream of attackers: a chaotic blur of overstimulation for his already exhausted and dazed senses. Then the shiv is cutting through Matt’s prison uniform, leaving a jagged, burning wound across his chest, and he cannot help the agonized gasp that is torn from his throat as the serrated edge of the makeshift blade catches every bit of sinew beneath his skin, as men grasp at the torn fabric, cool air against his skin followed by violent touch—  Mind, body, connection. The mind controls the body— Matt forces himself to exhale, tracks separate heartbeats out of the cacophony, and thrusts his head back savagely into the face of one of the men restraining him. His leg kicks out, and another man goes down as he wildly wrestles his way back up to his feet. His breath is coming out in gasps now; he swipes at the blood around his mouth with one hand, then lowers it to gauge the depth of the wound on his torso, the other arm still dangling at his side, numb all the way up to where his shoulder is braced against the wall. He’ll survive the knife wound, he thinks, his body now trembling with exertion and the effort of fighting off the shock that threatens his hard-won control over his senses. His head tilts as he gauges the heartbeats of the men still on their feet; he can sense the hesitation in their movements, their disbelief that he is somehow still on his own feet, and he knows he won't get another chance. Despite the exhaustion settling into his limbs like a weight, the long days and sleepless nights and weeks of slow starvation, he forces himself into motion, striking at any vulnerable place that might knock down these men enough for him to catch his breath, to figure something else out, to— The world shifts beneath him as he is thrown against the side of the staircase. Matt grabs a fistful of hair as he goes down, drags the attacker down with him and staggers to his knees at the man's side before he can get back up; he hits him until he can feel bones fracturing beneath his fists. “Careful, Murdock,” Sweeney warns, and his voice draws Matt’s focus back to the feeling that he’s still missing something, something bigger, something more urgent, something more pressing; only he can’t pinpoint what’s wrong over the sound of blood rushing in his ears, the sound of his own gasps, his heartbeat pounding against his ribcage, the cacophonous ring of heartbeats still around him, above him, his senses dazed, overstimulated, overwhelmed. What was he missing? What was he missing? Tap, tap—tap, tap, tap— He thinks back to his old teacher and narrows his focus, tuning out the heavy breathing of the other prisoners, the gasping, strangled sounds from men still on the ground—tap, tap, tap—there it is. A tapping sound. Sounds so familiar. Only Matt can’t place it. Another rooftop, he thinks, another lifetime. Karen and Foggy were there, he was typing out a text— Phone. Camera. Low of hum of video in the corner of the ceiling, barely audible, barely distinct from the low hum of the ventilation system just beside it. He stills immediately with the realization, and then something heavy is swinging toward his head again. The blow itself incapacitates him, his hands raising to his ears in a desperate attempt to stave off the high pitched ringing that follows. The pain that follows blurs his senses entirely out of focus for a moment that feels eternal. He gasps as the world swims around him, sounds coming in and out of muffled focus as he is dragged up onto his knees, his arms held behind him in a final defeat, a blade pressed against his throat. “You showed your hand, Murdock, just like your old man,” Sweeney says as he finally descends from where he'd been waiting at the top of the concrete stairs, phone held loosely in his hand. He laughs. “Except I let Jack off too easy for what he did, I think. Should’ve waited ‘til he was home, made you watch—sorry, listen, as the bullet went through his skull, let you think you could save him, let you try to staunch the blood—” “F*** you—” Matt half-slurs, half-gasps, fighting down the too-visceral memories of himself as a child with hands so small, too small—I think that’s my dad, I think that’s my dad—to be feeling for the familiar landscape of his father’s face and finding a bullet hole instead. Matt swallows around the sob in his throat, chokes out: “You think getting sent to prison was the worst thing that could’ve happened to you, Sweeney? After everything you’ve done—I should’ve, I should’ve—” “What, killed him?” says a low, familiar voice, and Matt feels like all the breath has been stolen from him in an instant, feels a horrible cold settle inside of him in its place. “Like you tried to kill me?” “No,” he gasps, his stomach churning. No no no no no no no— This isn’t real, he thinks, it can’t be; he’s hallucinating again, lost to himself. Poor timing, but that’s par for the course. It’s not enough for Matt to fight enemies made of flesh and blood, no; he must create phantoms to haunt his steps, resurrect ghosts long dead. Self-flagellation for the modern penitent. Better lost to himself than this: ten steps behind with a mouthful of blood and defeat. The world around him is still swimming in and out of muffled focus, his tightly wound control over his senses unraveling under the strain of it all: metallic taste of blood, acrid sweat mingling with expensive cologne, adrenaline and arousal, too many heartbeats, too many sounds, too much, it was all too much and he's so tired, he doesn't think he's ever felt so tired before— “What’re you—what does, no—” he tries to say, but his voice falters, catches in his throat as he fights to get the words out past his lips. Played like a fool. Always the fool. His teacher had been right about Matt; but his teacher is gone now, for all the good being right ever did him. Did Fisk do this to you? Fisk, it was Fisk, it was all Fisk— Matt struggles to slow the breaths that hover high up in his chest, fluttering violently like a wild bird trapped in a cage. He can't catch his breath. He can't catch his breath, and he can't tell what's real and what's— Pull it together, he thinks viciously, but Fisk’s presence obliterates his focus, gets deep inside of him where he can't stop it, where he can't shut him out. He leans in close, so close that Matt can feel his too-warm breath in his ear, all but deafening in its proximity, in its intensity, in its intent—and, for some reason that Matt can’t immediately name, can’t immediately place, the feeling is so much more sickening than the blood rapidly seeping out onto his abdomen, than the blade still pressed into his throat. “You’re still so naïve, Matthew,” says Fisk, quietly, for his ears alone, and Matt cannot help the shudder that wracks his already trembling frame. “There are things worse than death for men like you and men like me. Things unbearable that linger, and fester, and take on lives of their own.” Fisk steps back, runs his fingers back and forth across the palm of his hand, a rapid brush up from the bottom followed by a slow return.  "You will only wish you had died, died rather than know what it means to have who you are stripped from you, to understand that you allowed it to happen, to know that you could have stopped it—at the expense, of course, of knowing you've all but placed a death sentence on your partner, of knowing you'll never see him again. The same choice you gave to me, Mr. Murdock. Fair's fair." Matt’s been dealt sh*t hands before, always prided himself on his ability to take the hand he was dealt and shift the cards in his favor, on his ability to hit the mat and get back up again, fists swinging. Now laughter bubbles up inside of him. The ghost of his father had finally abandoned him, it seemed; only fitting that he should face his ruin alone. For it is we who haunt the dead, he remembers bitterly, and not the dead haunt us. He chokes back the hysterical urge to laugh, swallows down the bile that's risen again at the back of his throat as Fisk forcefully grips Matt’s jaw and tilts it up toward the surveillance camera hanging from the corner of the ceiling. Its low, dissonant drone cuts in and out of Matt's hearing like a scratched record, and he feels boneless, uncorporeal. If his body had turned to ice before, now it was dark, drowning water. “They’re watching, Matthew,” Fisk says. “Don’t let the Devil out." Don’t let the Devil out, he says, and Matt hears the promise in the spaces between the words, or your case will fail before it ever makes it to trial, and Foggy will get sentenced, and worse, for aiding and abetting Daredevil. Daredevil—our true—public—enemy— He feels like he’s been dropped into the ocean, all his limbs weighted with stones, unable to find which way is up and which way is down, which way is surface and which way is gone. Surface feels like a fairy-story told to children at night, like enchanted forests.  Light as the breadcrumbs which lead the way up, which lead the way out. This isn’t real, he thinks desperately, like the child who hides under his covers at night from the monsters who live in the closet, who sleep under the bed. If I can’t see it, it can’t be real.  He can practically hear Stick’s response, derisive, cold: C’mon, kid. You, more than anyone, know better than that. Get up. Get up and fight back, your soft partner be damned. Just look at you, a trained warrior—and this is what you’ve become: weak, soft, useless. I was right to leave you when I did— “Time’s up, Mr. Murdock,” Fisk says, dispassionately, and the ghost of his old teacher dissipates like smoke. Then, to Sweeney: “He’s yours. Let your men have him, but he stays alive—or you do not.” A litany of no’s are uttered in quick succession, one after another, as if from someone else, though Matt feels his own lips moving, feels the vibrations in his throat, feels his tongue heavy and dry against the roof of his mouth as the knife is removed from his throat, as different hands roughly grasp his jaw this time, hold him still as the other men press in— Then, nothing; only a few dull sounds in the back of his throat as he resigns himself to muteness, to what he cannot fight, to what he cannot change.  This is the moment Matt understands what it means for his luck to have finally caught up with him, the moment he understands that there is no such thing as paying his dues, that some cards can’t be shifted in his favor. He'd known the risks of Daredevil, had lived for the risks of Daredevil—thrived in the charged spaces between risk and consequence, walked the tightrope between good intention and self-destruction. So, the consequences had arrived. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for— Judgment day.  The formation of a memory like the empty spaces between towering edifices, playing over and over—the smells, he thinks, the smells are what will stay with him the most—but no, because it repeats, and this time it’s the feeling of powerlessness, of observing distantly from somewhere outside of his body, the ringing in his ears rendering his assailants all but invisible to him, if not for their lingering, burning touches on his body, his skin— But no, because the memory repeats and, this time, there’s just nothing there, and he thinks, if he could just remember, just remember what happened, how it happened, he could gather the fragments back together into something that makes sense—except that it repeats, and he remembers, and it still doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t—the blur of faceless touches, the ringing in his ears softening to a quiet drone as nothing happens, nothing, really, because if he can’t remember, then it didn’t, it couldn’t have— —and then he’s on his hands and knees, trembling, vomiting until there’s nothing left but his own blood that he keeps swallowing and he’s dry heaving and shaking as they laugh, and he thinks, he thinks this might be dying because he doesn't understand how anybody could withstand this feeling without dying. His body doesn’t even feel like it belongs to him anymore, because it couldn’t possibly, he can’t think of a reason why— No, he thinks, absently, what happened—it happened to someone else.  He doesn’t try to focus. There is no mind, body, connection, not anymore, not when his mind has violently rejected any connection to his body. In this moment, there are no thoughts of Elektra, or Foggy, or even God; no illusions of a friend or hero coming to his rescue. In his experience, people showing up at the last minute to save the day is a trope strictly relegated to films and books and television shows. In real life, people rarely show up at the last minute to save the day. In Matt’s experience, no one ever shows up at all. Maybe later he’ll rewrite the story; give it a better ending, a better beginning, more realistic, more true—something that makes more sense. Mostly, he remembers that it started and he remembers that it ended; but it felt like it never would, and he feels like, somehow, it never will.   III.   The night passes slowly. He trades incoherent banter with phantoms and mumbles apologies to ghosts. His body trembles violently, and the touch of his own fingertips feels alien as he presses the blood back into his wounds. He can’t remember why. Memory can keep its secrets, he thinks, as a rat scurries across the floor of his new cell.   —   Morning brings a kind of clarity. Unwanted, but there nonetheless. His phantoms (mostly) fade away at the relentless hammering of a bell. Father Lantom lingers. Something to do with Catholic school, he thinks. “Is there a problem, inmate? Why aren’t you prepared for the count?” There’s a heartbeat at the entrance to his cell; he probably should have noticed it before, but there are so many heartbeats, and so many voices, and the effort to focus his senses would only draw energy away from the effort to get to his feet without collapsing. The thought of being touched by anyone else right now is too much for Matt to bear. “No,” Matt says as he shuffles carefully to stand in front of his bed. He holds his arms behind his back in compliance, gritting his teeth against the low moan that rises in his throat. “Sorry.” “Next time you’re late for the count,” the guard says irritably, his hand resting on the baton at his side, “you’ll find out what disciplinary action means, Murdock.”   —   Attending meals is non-negotiable, evidently. Inmates in general population are not permitted to stay in their cells during mealtimes. In addition to learning that neat fact, Matt also learns that asking questions is considered ‘non-compliance’ and, therefore, also cause for disciplinary action. Matt not-so-secretly thinks that the guard just wanted an excuse to use force, but that doesn’t change the fact that he ends up on his knees again, unable to defend himself without giving away his secret. I am not Daredevil, he thinks, swallowing down the burning desire to fight back. It settles in his stomach like hot coals, waiting to burst into flames inside of him. The cafeteria is only a five-minute walk from Matt’s new cell, but the assault of catcalls and jeering on his ears, the sudden touches and hisses, makes it feel endless. Worse, there were so many men—he doesn't know which ones were in the room with him, which ones that— Sweeney signals his approach with the pungent, cloying odor of cigar smoke and expensive alcohol; the combination causes nausea to rise up in the back of Matt's throat. “You look real down this morning, Murdock,” he murmurs, standing close, too close. “So, listen, I’m gonna make this easy for you. This, last night, will just be a taste of what the next few years are gonna look like for you in here. Or, you can choose option B: tell your partner that I want out, and that I want him to get me the deal. Fisk can rot in hell for all I care. I’ll even delete that footage of you—” Don’t let the Devil out— “You have no idea what’s coming for you, Sweeney,” Matt spits, and turns to walk away from the cafeteria line. But the world spins disorientingly around him in vertigo not felt since he was a child: the rough fabric of his father’s shirt pressing desperately against Matt's eyes as the blue sky eroded away like film that had caught fire. I can’t see, I can’t see— He grasps for something to hold onto, something to stabilize himself, but finds nothing, ears ringing, his senses overwhelmed. He stumbles backward into another inmate, and mocking laughter erupts from the line. Flashes of memory return to him: on his knees gasping for breath while they laugh— All the helplessness inside of him transforms into rage in an instant, so suddenly that it takes his breath away—but before he can do anything there are hands grasping roughly at his arms, and he's hauled away.    —   Solitary. Matt registers the small, enclosed space as the gate clicks loudly shut behind him, the footsteps of the two prison guards walking away, but he is on his hands and knees in the filth and grime of countless inmates before him and he can hardly find a shred of feeling left in him to care. His mind is a constant replaying of his latest disaster, his most recent self-destruction; a litany of no’s like a prayer, don’t let the Devil out— His jaw clicks tight against the sudden onslaught of memories and he forcefully jerks his body back against the wall of the cell, sucks in a sharp breath of air through his nose and presses one trembling hand against the throbbing wound at his side. He can feel blood seeping out and through his new prison uniform. He can't remember what happened to the other uniform, ripped, stained, ruined; he supposes they must have thrown it away when they took it off of him. No evidence, no crime. Time passes slowly. He reviews all of Foggy’s cases in his mind, but the exercise is pointless, and he knows it. He’s never heard Foggy even mention Sweeney’s name, let alone mention attending any appeals. Beneath the hurt, Matt feels distantly pleased, vindicated, even, that he’s not the only one who ever kept secrets in their friendship. Still, the secret is out, and now Sweeney knows that hurting Matt hurts Foggy, knows that bending Matt will get Foggy to do whatever it takes to keep Matt from breaking. Fisk may have used the lowlife crime boss to get his revenge, but Sweeney used him right back. It’s almost laughable. Almost. “In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Matt says, bitterly, “I’m the idiot who can f*** things up for the people I love even from behind bars.” His own voice sounds foreign to him and Matt hesitates to consider the ramifications of this feeling of decorporealization. A sudden echo of footsteps from the corridor catches his attention, then a heartbeat from the other side of the bars. A guard, judging by the sound of callused fingertips impatiently brushing against a baton. “Losing it already, Murdock?” he jeers. “Get up, your attorney’s here.” Matt doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t even shift to acknowledge the guard's presence; he’s found that if he holds himself absolutely still, he can slow the spinning and repress the nausea to tolerable levels, slightly stabilize his core temperature from its extreme ricocheting between hot and cold, burning and shivering. He'd given up trying to stop his body from its constant, violent trembling; it'd started at some point during the night, and hadn't taken a break from it since. “Hey, you hear me? Thought you were blind, not deaf!” snaps the guard, and he slides a key into the lock. Matt hears a soft click as the latch unlocks, and the gate swings open. “Your lawyer’s here and he wants to see you. Get up.” “I’m staying here,” Matt says flatly. “I don’t want to see him.” “I don’t give a sh*t what you want, inmate—your a**hole attorney is threatening to file a lawsuit against this entire prison if he doesn’t get to see you, and I’m not gonna be the sorry son of a bitch who gets held responsible. So, get up, and get moving.” Matt doesn’t bother to point out all the lawsuits they would have on their hands if word ever got out about even half of went on in here. Then again, the warden seems capable of making anything he wants to disappear. A veritable bureaucratic magician. The violence Matt had witnessed in here even before this, the things he heard for weeks on end— He stands up slowly, one trembling hand still pressed against the wound at his side, his shoulder pressed gingerly against the wall for support. The guard unsnaps a leather pouch, then gestures wordlessly with a pair of handcuffs for Matt to put his hands out in front of him. Matt grits his teeth, pointedly doesn’t react. I am not Daredevil— “Oh, f***’s sake,” the guard mutters. “Hold your hands out in front you, inmate.” “Is that really necessary?” scoffs Matt. Still, he holds his arms out, bloodied palms splayed up. “I was indicted on suspicion of perjury and obstruction of justice, not for running a fight club.” The irony of the defense isn’t lost on Matt. “And yet, here you are in solitary for fighting with another inmate. Want to avoid cuffs, Murdock? Learn to keep your hands to yourself and your mouth shut. Your fancy degree don’t mean sh*t in here.” The cold metal clicks shut around his aching wrists— You're still so naïve, Matthew— —and the guard walks him down the cellblock. Matt walks slowly, the only act of resistance left to him, feeling suddenly furious that Foggy keeps returning to the prison, keeps risking his safety; doesn’t he understand that Matt can’t keep him safe anymore? Can’t even keep himself safe. He still feels drugged, like he’s only witnessing everything from somewhere deep inside his own body, not actually living it. Like if he tried to speak, he’d be able to say nothing at all. The moment they enter, Foggy is all movement and barely restrained displeasure. He stands up, his fingertips pressing against the plexiglass that separates them, the clean scent of his cologne cutting through the lingering stench of the prison, and Matt, against himself, is grateful for it, for the sense of gentleness and stability that is carried with it. Surrounding yourself with soft stuff isn't life, it's death— “Get those cuffs off of him,” Foggy demands, redirecting Matt's attention away from phantoms lingering in the corners of the room. “This institution may be in the business of dehumanizing inmates, but he’s a non-violent offender awaiting trial, and I’m here to have a civilized conversation with a human being. Get them off, and then get out.” The guard’s heartbeat speeds up in a rush of anger, but he complies. Matt suffers the touch of the guard once more as he removes the cuffs from around his wrists. Tries not to think about the next time the cuffs will go back on, back off, back on; the endless violations of bodily autonomy waiting for him that he can do nothing about.  “What the hell, Foggy,” Matt bites out the moment the guard has left the room. "You may get to leave at the end of this meeting, but I don’t. Maybe try not to make me enemy number one of every single guard in here.” “What do you mean every single guard? Have other guards been mistreating you?” asks Foggy, and his tone indicates that he’s prepared to pick a fight with every single guard that has even so much as looked at Matt. “Jesus, Foggy,” mutters Matt. “That’s the part you hear? I just meant that I don’t need you to antagonize the guards for me on my first day in general population, ok?” “Not ok, Matt," snaps Foggy, but he releases a deep breath of his own and stops pacing long enough to sit down across the table from Matt. The breath hardly helped, Matt thinks, he can still hear Foggy’s heart racing like a cornered animal. “Matt,” Foggy starts to say, then falters, sits down across from him and tries again. “Listen. I don’t know what strings got pulled to transfer you to general population, but I’m working on it. It wasn’t a legal transfer. I’m filing a transfer back to protective custody while Karen is investigating who’s behind this. In the meantime, I just—I need you to keep your head down, ok? There's—there's someone else in here, other than Fisk—someone who has it out for you... and for me." “Foggy, it's fine,” Matt interrupts, not wanting to draw this out any longer than he has to. “I already know about Sweeney.” “Sh*t,” Foggy curses. “Did something happen between you two? Did Sweeney—are you—is that why you’re in solitary? Wait, no, did something happen last night? Is that why he sent that message to me?” For one long, disorienting moment, Matt thinks he’s going to be sick again. The nausea rises up in his throat, and he forces himself to swallow it down and keep it down. The nausea roils, threatens to rise again, his body burning cold with the effort to keep it in check. His very own Sisyphean punishment, he thinks. How appropriate. A fitting punishment for the arrogant hero who dared to challenge a god. What hubris, what naïveté. “What did Sweeney send to you,” Matt bites out through gritted teeth, certain that if he opens his mouth any more he’ll lose the fight with his stomach. “Foggy, what did he send you?” “Just, a text message," Foggy says, his pulse quickening as the clean scent of his sweat begins to sour with fear. "What else would he send me, Matt?” The rigidity of Matt’s posture softens ever so slightly. He opens his mouth to talk, but finds that nothing comes out. He licks his lips, tries again: "I don't, it doesn't matter. I, just, what did he say?" A few moments pass before Foggy answers, and he thinks that Foggy won’t let it go, whatever it is that’s bothering him about Matt’s response. Matt tilts his head back up from the table. Defiantly tries to meet Foggy’s eyes. Probably ends up looking somewhere over his left shoulder. “Sweeney was just letting me know that he’s in here with you, Matt,” Foggy concedes, his shoulders collapsing with a resigned exhale. “Probably trying to make me sweat. But then I get here first thing this morning and they tell me that you’ve somehow already managed to land yourself in solitary. Seriously, Matt, what the hell happened? Did he provoke you into a fight?” "Nothing happened," Matt replies bitterly, almost surprised at his own reaction, that he can still feel so hurt over something as trivial as this: that this must have been Matt's fault, that Matt allowed himself to be provoked into recklessness again.  “Jesus, Matt, do you seriously expect me to believe that? I mean, I know you can’t actually see what you look like, but I'm, I’m personally having major flashbacks to that time I found you dying on your apartment floor,” Foggy snaps back, leaning toward the plexiglass as he finishes his rant in a furious whisper. “So, can you, just, for once in your freaking life be straight with me? Because I really don’t want to drag Jessica or Karen into this, really, really don’t want to interrogate every single guard in here, but if you won’t tell me what’s going on—" Foggy’s breath is high in chest, and his pulse is elevated with emotion, but his heartbeat is steady, no hint of a bluff. Panic rises up in Matt at the thought of—no. Foggy can’t. He can’t— They're watching, Matthew—  

The Heartbreak    Hearing Sam in the distance as she would be hiding. Hearing a couple of gunshots go off. Then a scream. It was Mindy. Then another scream. Then silence filled the room right outside. Managing to take a few deep breaths as she continued to hide until cue. Sam was fighting Ghostface again then this time Sam ran into the room where she was hiding in trying to close the door but Ghostface put their leg in the way preventing the door from closing all the way.Sam held a buck knife in hand and started swinging then Ghostface dodged the knife swings then grabbed Sam's bloody arm digging fingers into her open wound before knocking Sam back into the wall. But Sam had the gun near her and fired two shots into Ghostfaces body dropping him. Then as Sam went nearing the closet, she knew that it was time. Opening the closet door they came out just as Sam turned to her, a shocked look across her face as she aimed the gun right at their head looking to pull the trigger. They stood there wearing the mask and shroud as she dug her own knife into the side of Sam's ribcage hearing her scream then twisted it. Now it was time for the big reveal, the heart break.Removing the mask, it was revealed to be TARA. A darker look in her eyes as Sam would drop to a knee, "Tara?" A confused look written across Sam's facial features as she couldn't believe it. Then taking the knife out as she wiped the blade in front of her. "Why? How?" Sam looked more confused than afraid in this moment. The other Ghostface had managed to recover and stood up.Taking out the voice modulator from her pocket and brought it up to her lips. "Surprise, Sam". Tossing the voice modulator to the side, "but are you really that surprised, Sam? After everything that's happened, there was only one way this thing could of gone. Everyone looked to you, and thought you would be the one to turn. I was your f***ing anchor and broke you from all of those trances. Call my motive whatever you want. Abandonment issues. Lack of being loved".Sam held onto her wound listening to Tara, "but, why?" Tears coming down her cheek from her biggest heartbreak yet. "Tara, I've always loved you. I don't understa-"."Stop talking" Tara screamed at her sister pointing the knife at her own sister. "Stop f***ing talking before you give me a headache. You may of loved me, Sam, but not enough. Dad left because you weren't his. Mom turned into a drunk and ended up not giving two sh*ts about me. Then you came back into my life, Chad got closer. Then Chad died and it opened my eyes. I realized that no story truly has a happy ending because romance is overrated"."It's TARA?" Mindy's voice behind as she slowly came into the room with a gun in hand, stab wounds shown all over her right arm as the other Ghostface grabbed Mindy and held their knife at her throat. "Keep her there" she commanded. Then turned back to Sam, tears streaming down her own cheek, "what happened after New York? You left again. But you should of seen the way Danny looked at me after you left" wanting to get under her sister's skin as she came closer and brought the blade against her throat. "The majority of the world looked up to you, talked about you wanting to be you. I was just the forgotten baby sister who can go f*** herself, right? I have every reason to do this and my actions are justified, but are yours? Compare me to every f*** up in this family, and I'm seen as the angel among devils. But even the devil was once an angel"."But the best part has yet to come" taking a step away, "because this is just one half of tonight's reveals, isn't that right, partner?" Turning to the other Ghostface and they nodded their head. Then a sinister smile came across her face. "If you think I was a jaw dropper, then you are going to love this next part". Tara nodded to her partner as they would grab the end of the mouth of the mask then started to remove it.      

Father's day was always a bit hard for Isabella, she had lost her father when she was ten years old. She tried to make a trip to New York around that year, she was going to stay in Seattle although she had sent money to her mother to buy flowers for her father's grave site. She had much work going on with the boutique that she couldn't leave for the day. She felt bad but one thing that helped her was being able to write a letter, she wrote letters almost every year to her father, she never sent them, she kept them. This year, wouldn't be any different. Sitting down at her desk, she started to write the letter: Dear dad,Where can I begin? Its been so long since you left us, I always wonder if you would be proud of me and if you would be proud of  Aaron, your son, my brother. You would probably be upset at him for what he has been to. You probably wouldn't be happy that I left New York but perhaps you would of understand why I left. I left because mostly everything there reminded me of heartaches and sad times, great times because of you but sad because you are not here anymore. I am thankful to have had a father like you. You were strong, sweet, loving, caring and truly amazing. I know that you are above us and watching us, I feel you near me all the time. I hope I am making you proud  papà, I miss you so much. Mom is doing great and she never remarried, she always did say that you were her one true love, I hope to one day find the kind of love you two had. I miss you every day dad, I miss you so much, they say that time makes the pain easier but I feel that it is still there, it hurts badly. Thank you for being the best father and even though you left too soon, I know you are guiding me through your spirit. Happy Father's Day, papà! Ti Amo Molto! Mi Manchi Molto! Your daugher,Isa After writing the letter, she started to feel the tears coming down her cheeks. Her dog Mason started to get closer to her and snuggled up with her. "I'm sorry baby it just that it hurts still" she said softly, wiping the tears off her face and cudddling with her dog. 

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THIS POST IS DEALING WITH HER ED. IF THIS WILL TRIGGER YOU, DO NOT GO FORWARD IN READING. LOVE YOU, BE SAFE.             Hadley Remington stared at her reflection in the mirror, eyes hollow and skin stretched taut over her cheekbones. The scale flashed an accusatory number, a testament to her relentless pursuit of the perfect racing physique. In the cutthroat world of Formula One, every ounce mattered, and Hadley was determined to shed any weight that could slow her down on the track. She had always been a high achiever, driven by an insatiable hunger for success. But somewhere along the way, that hunger had morphed into something darker, more destructive. The pressure to maintain her elite status, both on the track and in high society, had consumed her. Hadley's days were filled with grueling training sessions and meager meals, her nights haunted by the gnawing emptiness in her stomach. Her parents had noticed the changes, the way her once-vibrant energy had dimmed, replaced by a brittle intensity. They tried to intervene, to coax her into seeking help, but Hadley brushed off their concerns with a practiced smile and a flippant remark about the sacrifices required for greatness. In the solitude of her private moments, Hadley grappled with the toll her disorder was taking on her body and mind. The constant fatigue, the dizziness that threatened to overtake her during long races, the way her once-sharp focus had become clouded by thoughts of food and weight. She knew, deep down, that she was spiraling out of control, but the siren song of perfection drowned out the whispers of reason. On the track, Hadley pushed herself to the brink, her skill behind the wheel fueled by a desperate need to prove her worth. Every victory, every podium finish, was a fleeting balm for the wounds her disorder had inflicted. But the high never lasted long, and soon she was back in the cycle of restriction and self-loathing. As she stood there, staring at her reflection, Hadley knew the path she was on was a dangerous one. The cracks in her façade were beginning to show, but the price of perfection still seemed worth paying. She took a deep breath, steeling herself for another day of pushing her body and mind to their limits. The race for success, for validation, for control, continued on, even as it threatened to consume her entirely.

***Loyal friends are like the glue that holds our lives together. They provide support, laughter, and a listening ear when we need it most. These connections are invaluable and should be treasured. Here is a list of those who have proven their loyalty to me:***[insert names here].***

***  I created this thread tracker to stay organized with all the stories I'm involved in with others. It's like my own personal story map, helping me keep track of characters, plots, and timelines. It's a handy tool for staying on top of my creative collaborations.¦¦¦¦​​​​​​¬ Klaus Mikaelson @The Original Bastard Hybrid - RP - ​​​​​​¬ Peter Parker @Spiderman - RP - ¬ Josh Valentine @ Josh Valentine [MCRP] - RP -  ***

In a world where vampires lurked in the shadows, young Abraham Lincoln embarked on a journey unlike any other. Armed with a silver weapon and a thirst for vengeance, he sought to rid his land of the undead. His closest companion in this dark quest was none other than Henry Sturges, a vampire who had been his oldest friend since their young adulthood.One crisp autumn evening, as they trekked through the dense forest in pursuit of a nest of vampires, Abraham stumbled over a fallen branch and landed face-first in a patch of mud. Henry, with his timeless elegance, smirked at the sight of his friend now sporting a mud mask."Having a bit of trouble there, Abe?" Henry teased, his eyes dancing with amusement.Abraham scowled good-naturedly, wiping mud from his face. "Just testing the effectiveness of a new disguise method," he retorted, his voice laced with dry humor.Henry chuckled, the sound echoing through the dark trees. "I must say, you make an excellent swamp monster," he remarked, lifting an eyebrow in mock admiration.As Abraham tried to rise, his foot slipped on a root, sending him tumbling back into the mud. With a resigned sigh, he lay sprawled on the ground, staring up at the twinkling stars above. Henry extended a hand to help him up, a genuine smile tugging at his lips."You know, Abe, if this vampire-hunting business doesn't work out, you could always consider a career in comedy," Henry quipped, his gaze warm with affection.Abraham accepted the offered hand with a chuckle, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. "And what about you, Henry? Any hidden talents besides hunting vampires and mocking your friends?" he retorted, his eyes dancing with mirth.With a dramatic flourish, Henry bowed low. "Ah, but my dear friend, my greatest talent lies in enduring your company with grace and charm," he replied, a twinkle in his eye. Lincoln brushed off Henry's words and shoved his shoulder."You be so lucky to endure me" Lincoln drawled onward with a whine as he and Henry walked off into the shadows of the darkness of the woods to hunt the vampires down and offering merely laughter in their friendship. Despite Henry being a vampire and Abraham a human, they seemed to be kindred souls with the goal of saving innocent lives.

The year was 1834, and young Abraham Lincoln found himself standing amidst the bustling crowd of New Orleans. He had been traveling up the Mississippi River for weeks now, his trusty axe strapped to his back, a small sack of possessions slung over his shoulder. He was here to make his fortune, to start a new life for himself, far away from the dreary farms of his youth. The air was thick with the scent of exotic spices, and the sound of laughter and the clanging of coins filled the air.Abraham turned a corner, and there it was: the slave auction. He'd heard tales of such places, of the brutal trade in human flesh that took place within their walls. He couldn't help but feel a mixture of revulsion and fascination as he surveyed the scene before him. Row after row of human beings were lined up, men, women, and children alike, their skin a rainbow of colors. Some were chained together, their bodies marked with the cruelty of their masters. Others stood proudly, shoulders back, refusing to let their captors see the fear that surely gripped their hearts.As he made his way through the crowd, Abraham couldn't help but overhear a conversation between two men who were watching the auction with equal parts horror and fascination. One of the men was his friend Larry Renfield, a fellow traveler and someone with whom he often discussed politics and philosophy. Larry was arguing with another man, insisting that the spread of slavery must be stopped at all costs. "It is a stain upon our nation's conscience," he declared, his voice rising above the din of the crowd. "A blight upon our collective humanity."Abraham stepped forward, unable to remain silent any longer. "Larry, you're a good man," he began, "but I don't see how ending slavery will solve anything. The problem goes deeper than that. It's the nature of men themselves." He gestured toward the auction block. "These people are not property. They are not cattle. They are human beings, just like you and me. Until we acknowledge that fact, until we treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve, we will never truly be free."The other men scoffed, "But they're not like us! They're savages! They don't deserve the same rights!" Abraham shook his head sadly. "That is where you are wrong. It is our duty, as Americans, to fight for the rights of the oppressed, regardless of their skin color or their place of birth. It is our duty to stand up against tyranny and injustice, for if we do not, who will?"The auctioneer stepped forward, a gavel in his hand. He rapped it sharply against a podium, drawing the attention of the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a fine specimen of a slave here today. Strong and healthy, he'll make a fine addition to any plantation. Who'll start the bidding?" Abraham felt a shiver run down his spine as the auctioneer spoke, his voice cold and calculating."Five hundred dollars," a man in the front row called out. Another man raised his hand, nodding in agreement. "Six hundred," he bid. The crowd murmured, their voices a cacophony of whispers and shouts. Abraham couldn't take his eyes off the slave as he was paraded back and forth, his body on display like some prized possession.Larry glanced at Abraham, his expression grim. "I can't believe this is really happening," he said softly. "How can people be so cruel?" Abraham shook his head, unable to form the words that needed to be said. He wanted to do something, to stop the auction and free the slaves, but what could one man do against such a vast and entrenched system of oppression?The auctioneer continued to call out bids, the price of the slave's freedom rising higher with each passing moment. Abraham felt a growing sense of helplessness as he watched the man being sold off like a piece of property. He glanced around the crowd, searching for anyone who might share their disgust and determination to put an end to this injustice. But all he saw were faces hardened by the brutality they had witnessed, the horrors they had endured.As the auction drew to a close, the slave's eyes met Abraham's, and for a brief moment, they shared a look of despair that cut straight to his soul. The slave's family was being torn apart before their eyes, their loved ones being sold off to strangers, their fates unknown. It was a scene that Abraham would never forget, a stark reminder of the cruelty that human beings were capable of inflicting upon one another.

The darkness was suffocating, but the silence was worse. It held no whispers of battlefields, no murmurs of speeches, no comforting creak of the rocking chair. It was just a vast, emptiness that pressed in on Abraham Lincoln, his tired body strangely light.Then, a faint glow. It grew, shimmering like moonlight on a snow-covered field, and a figure emerged. Tall, majestic, his face etched with wisdom and time. George Washington stood before him, a familiar but somehow different aura surrounding him."Mr. President," Washington spoke, his voice resonating with a gentle power, "We have been waiting."Lincoln blinked, the world around him coming into focus. He wasn't in his bedchamber. He wasn't anywhere. This place felt...at peace."Waiting?" Lincoln echoed, confused. "For what, General?"Washington smiled a hint of sorrow in his eyes. "For you, Mr. President. Your journey here has been long and arduous, filled with trials and tribulations. But you have fought for a cause greater than yourself, for a nation you believed in, for the very soul of liberty."Lincoln felt a pang in his chest, a memory of the war, the pain, the division. He looked again at Washington, the man he had so admired from childhood, the man he had always strived to emulate."But...my work is not finished," he said, his voice a mere whisper. "The nation is still divided, the wounds are still fresh. I must return."Washington laid a hand on Lincoln's shoulder, his touch surprisingly warm. "Your work is done, Mr. President. You have left a legacy, a path for others to follow. The journey ahead will be yours no longer. You are free."Lincoln looked around, trying to grasp the reality of his situation. This place radiated a peace he had never known, a calmness that washed away the tension and burdens of his life."But what of the future? What of the challenges to come?" he asked, his voice thick with worry."Those will be faced by others,"Washington replied, his eyes twinkling with a knowing light. "But they will face them with the strength you have given them, with the ideals you have instilled in their hearts. Your work will live on."Lincoln closed his eyes, feeling a weariness he hadn't known before. He had finally found the rest he had so desperately desired."General," he whispered, 'I...I am at peace now.'Washington smiled, his gaze reflecting the soft glow surrounding them. "Welcome home, Mr. President."And as Lincoln stepped forward, the world around them dissolved into a blinding light. He felt a sense of liberation, of finally being free from the shackles of his mortal life. He was no longer a president, no longer a man of war, no longer burdened by the weight of a divided nation. He was simply Abraham Lincoln, finally at peace, finally home.

 Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, walked amongst the fallen soldiers. His tall frame stooped, his hands clasped behind his back, his black suit now stained with mud and grime. He did not wear a hat, for it had been blown away long ago, and he found it rather fitting, somehow, that he should be exposed to the elements just as his beloved country was.His eyes roamed over the battlefield, searching for any signs of life amidst the carnage. He was drawn to a particular figure lying motionless on the ground, a young soldier whose uniform still bore the crispness of a fresh enlistment. Lincoln knelt beside the soldier, his hand gently brushing aside a lock of hair from the boy's forehead. The soldier's skin was pale, his breath shallow. Lincoln could see the deep wound in his chest, could feel the warmth of his blood soaking into his own clothes."Son," he murmured softly, "what's your name?"The soldier coughed weakly, his eyes fluttering open. "L-Lieutenant Jack...son, sir." He tried to summon the strength to salute, but his arm fell lifelessly back to the ground.Abraham Lincoln's heart ached as he looked into the young man's eyes. "I'm not your commanding officer, Lieutenant Jackson. My name is Abraham Lincoln. I'm the President of the United States."The soldier seemed to struggle for breath, his eyes widening in recognition. "The... the President... sir... it's an honor..." His voice trailed off, his strength failing him.Abraham Lincoln reached out, gently taking the young man's hand in his own. "The honor is mine, Lieutenant Jackson. To stand beside brave soldiers like yourself, to see the courage and selflessness you display in the face of such adversity... it fills me with pride, and reminds me of why we fight."The soldier's eyes, already dimming, grew brighter at the President's words. A faint smile curved his lips. "Sir... I... I'm sorry. I tried my best..." His voice trailed off, his breath growing shallower.Abraham Lincoln squeezed the young man's hand, feeling the coldness seeping into his own flesh. "Lieutenant Jackson, you don't need to apologize. You've done more than your duty. You've given your life for a cause greater than yourself. And for that, I thank you. I promise you, your sacrifice will not be forgotten."The sun dipped below the horizon, plunging the battlefield into darkness. The air grew chill, and a gentle breeze stirred the leaves on the trees, carrying with it the cries of the wounded and the distant boom of artillery. Abraham Lincoln remained kneeling beside Lieutenant Jackson, the young man's hand still clasped in his own. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, inhaling the smell of gunpowder and blood that hung heavy in the air."You're a good man, Lieutenant Jackson," he whispered softly. "A good man, and a brave soldier. I can only hope that those you left behind will find some solace in knowing that you died fighting for what is right. For what is just."The President leaned back, resting on his heels, and gazed up at the starlit sky. The constellations twinkled coldly, seemingly unmoved by the turmoil below. "Sometimes, I wonder if it's all worth it," he mused aloud. "All the bloodshed, all the pain... does it really make a difference in the end?"Lieutenant Jackson's grip on his hand tightened slightly, and Lincoln glanced down at the young man, hoping that his words had not caused him undue distress. "Forgive me, Lieutenant," he said gently. "I didn't mean to doubt your sacrifice. It's just that sometimes, the weight of it all can be overwhelming. But I do believe that what we fight for, what we die for, it matters. It changes the course of history. It shapes the future for generations to come."The President paused, drawing a deep breath as he studied the stars above. "We fight for a world where all men are created equal, where every person has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We fight for a world where our children can grow up free from the shackles of oppression, free to chase their dreams and live their lives to the fullest. And I believe, with all my heart, that the sacrifices we make today will not be in vain. They will not be forgotten."Abraham Lincoln leaned forward, brushing a stray lock of hair from Lieutenant Jackson's forehead. "You were a good man, Lieutenant. You served your country with honor and distinction. And for that, you will always have a place in my heart, and in the hearts of your fellow countrymen."The President's voice cracked as he spoke, and he blinked back tears. "I wish there was more I could do. I wish I could bring back the thousands of lives that have been lost on this field. I wish I could undo the pain and suffering that war brings. But I can't. All I can do is offer my condolences, and promise that we will never forget what you and the others have given."Abraham Lincoln stood slowly, his joints protesting from the long hours spent kneeling in the dirt. He reached down and gently closed Lieutenant Jackson's eyes, brushing a tear from his cheek. "Rest easy, my friend," he whispered. "Your sacrifice will not be in vain."

The air was thick with tension as Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln sat across from each other in their cozy parlor. The flickering light of the fireplace cast dancing shadows across the walls, painting the somber scene in warm hues. A heavy silence hung between them, punctuated only by the occasional creak of the floorboards and the hiss of the fire. It was the sort of silence that could be cut with a knife, and both Lincoln's were acutely aware of its presence.Their son, Robert, had recently come to them with news that would surely rip their family apart. He wished to join the Union Army and fight in the ongoing Civil War. A war that their father, Abraham Lincoln, was leading as the President of the United States. It was a conflict that had already claimed so many lives, and now their own son wanted to throw himself into the fray."Abraham," Mary's voice broke the silence, her words laced with a combination of fear and desperation, "surely you can't let him do this." She looked to her husband, pleading with him to see reason. But Abraham's expression was unreadable. He seemed to be wrestling with his own thoughts, his own conscience.Robert's choice was a cruel irony. As the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln was charged with preserving the Union at all costs. Yet here he was, faced with the possibility of losing his own son in the process. It was a conflict that tore at his very soul."Mary," Abraham finally said, his voice low and measured, "I understand your concerns. But Robert is a grown man, and he has made his decision." He paused, taking a deep breath before continuing, "Besides, what father could possibly deny their son the chance to fight for what they believe in?" His eyes met hers, searching for some sign of understanding or agreement. But Mary only looked away, her features set in a stubborn scowl.The fire crackled and spat, casting dancing shadows across the room as Abraham leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. "I don't envy you, my dear," he said softly, "having to live with the choice that Robert has made. But know this: I will never stand in his way. If he wishes to fight for our country, then he will have my blessing, and my respect."Mary looked up at her husband, a mixture of gratitude and disappointment in her eyes. "I only wish that we didn't have to lose him in the process," she said, her voice catching in her throat. "He is all we have left."Abraham reached across the table, taking her hand in his. "We will get through this, Mary," he said with quiet conviction. "Together, we will see our country through these dark times. And if it means that Robert must fight for that future, then so be it." There was a newfound determination in his voice, a resolve that seemed to strengthen them both.Outside, the wind picked up, howling through the trees and rustling the curtains of their parlor window. It was as if nature itself was echoing their turmoil. The fire crackled and spat, casting dancing shadows across the room, painting the scene in warm hues. Despite the tension that still hung thick in the air, there was an unspoken understanding between them. They would support their son, no matter what path he chose.As they sat there in silence, lost in their own thoughts, Robert's words echoed in their minds. They knew that he was a changed man, hardened by the world and the horrors of war. They also knew that he was still their son, their little boy who had once chased butterflies in the meadow and dreamt of becoming a great explorer. They ached for the loss of that innocence, but they also understood that it was a sacrifice they would have to make for the greater good.The night wore on, and eventually Abraham and Mary retired to their chambers. They lay side by side in their bed, their bodies entwined in a silent embrace. Though they tried to sleep, their minds were filled with images of Robert marching off to battle, of the horrors he might face on the battlefield. Despite their fears, they found solace in each other's presence, taking strength from the bond that had sustained them through so many trials and tribulations.As the first light of dawn crept through the curtains, Mary stirred, rolling over to face her husband. "Abraham," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the patter of rain against the window, "do you ever wonder if we're doing the right thing?"Abraham sighed, his chest rising and falling with a deep breath. "Sometimes, Mary," he admitted. "But I believe that Robert is a good man, and that he knows what he is fighting for. And as his parents, it is our duty to support him, even when it hurts." He reached over, taking her hand in his once more. "We must trust that God has a plan for all of us, and that Robert's role in it is an important one."Together, they faced the new day, their hearts heavy with the knowledge of what lay ahead, but strengthened by the unbreakable bond of love and family that bound them together. They would endure the pain, and they would survive. For they were the Lincolns, and they were made of stronger stuff