Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
(Emily Dickinson, 712)
The first time Matt meets him, he is nine and he's just thrown himself into traffic, trying to save an old man's life.
He's nine and he is dazed out laying on the street, hard asphalt under his head, under his shoulders, and there is a blaring hesitance in his nerves, a kind of fuzzy distance. It's like taking a hard fall off something a bit high, Matt thinks: the pain is going to start in soon and it's going to hurt so bad. His ears feel stuffed full of cotton, and he can barely hear anything at all; screams and shouting.
He hears "Hey there, buddy," and Matt flinches back as best he can, but his body isn't listening, is awkward and stupid and he can't move; it's all white. All he can see is white. There's something in his eyes so they feel like his stuffed-full ears, with a ringing, uncertain distance to the sky.
Matt flinches and the man says, "Hey, easy. Easy," and his hands are very gentle, touching first on Matt's shoulder, and then along his cheek; warm and soft and for some reason Matt doesn't hate it. He should, but the touch is warm (warm and strangely cold?) and it's too bright and Matt can't see, his eyes are burning, and it anchors him a bit. "You're hurt pretty bad there, buddy. Just lay still until your dad gets here, okay?"
It feels like the pain should have hit by now - or at least, he thinks he should be trying to get up and move away from the stranger. Matt doesn't like it when people touch him, really, but - it seems hard to focus on that. He feels something - more real? - at the points the man is touching him. It's too bright, though - too bright and getting brighter and his eyes are burning so, so bad -
"Oof," the man says, sympathetic, his hand (soft and cool-warm and real) moving up to Matt's forehead. He says, "Yeah, that's gonna leave a mark."
And then Matt hears his dad shouting, calling for him, and he doesn't see the stranger leave, doesn't feel him let go, but then his Dad has a hold of him, and then it's all pain, swamping over him.
--
The next time Matt meets him, he's fifteen, and this time he's not quick enough on his feet. He should have been. He's so much faster now. It still echos in his ears: the impact. The screaming. It was an accident, he thinks, but they still swarmed over the guy and started beating him and they weren't going to stop and Matt wasn't quick enough to save the child so he tried for the man, and -
It hurts to breathe, it hurts to think about breathing, but he can - which is better than the man who'd been behind the wheel of the car. Judging by the sticky, broken breaths of the man not far from him, he's in better shape than he could be, anyway. Best to be thankful for that.
And he is, but he's also in a lot of pain at the moment; he knows about pain, though. How to breathe through it, to accept and ignore it. Pain is the body's way of pointing out damage, but Matt knows the shape and depths of his wounds and doesn't need it. He doesn't need to acknowledge the pain further than recognizing it.
(What are you going to do? Cry about it?)
His senses are a dizzy whiteness, a screaming sort of silence. He knows the cops are here, knows about the ambulance, but it seems worth very little of his attention. He can't even hear his own heart beating, let alone the dying man that's being ignored.
"Oh, wait a second. You again? Jeez."
The voice sounds vaguely familiar, but it's not until Matt feels someone bend beside him and set their hand on his hunched shoulder that something clicks weirdly in his head. First - there comes a cottony distance to the pain. Then the screaming whiteness that's consumed his senses falters and fades to a more tolerable white noise.
Matt groans, half in shock and half in relief.
"Yeah, yeah. Got yourself in another pickle, did you? Just lie still here, a bit. It's a bit touch and go, but I think you're gonna make it."
The hand on his shoulder pats him - pats his chest more like, and Matt jerks a little bit, feeling like some strange jolt has shot through cloth and bone and into muscle. The other hand smooths over his forehead just like it did before - because this is the same man, Matt thinks. Somehow, he just knows it, even though he'd had to relearn so many other people after his stay in the hospital while his senses got better and louder until they crashed and crackled inside his skull.
The man draws away, but there's a shocky kind of distance to the pain, and Matt's skin is tingling like those fingers (warm and gentle) are lingering.
"Ah, jeez," the man says, and he's stopped at the side of the man paramedics are still ignoring in favor of the child they're trying to resuscitate. "Wrong place, wrong time, buddy," he says.
The sticky, wet and broken breathing of the man turns into a sort of bubbling gasp, and he groans too, too low for most to hear (but not Matt. Matt hears everything).
"There you go," the man says gamely. "It's alright. It doesn't have to hurt anymore. Nah. Don't worry about them, okay? They'll be alright. That's it." He speaks coaxingly, like calling a cat inside (Matt thinks he must be touching him).
The broken breath comes shallower, and shallower, and then it doesn't come at all. Through the distant pain of his own injuries, Matt makes a noise - it wants to be angry and hot, but it's not. It's low and wounded. Despite everything - despite all that Matt had -
"Whoa, buddy, lay still, okay?" The man is back at his side, pressing him down, back against the pavement. "You're an overeager little jerk, aren't you? Wait your turn."
"He's," Matt manages through his wet and torn mouth. "He's dead -"
"Hey, shush," the man says, a little sternly, but with warmth. "There's not anything you can do about that. Wait your turn. Trust me, the way this is going, we're gonna meet again and it won't turn out as well as these last two times."
Matt reaches up and out, snatching for his arms, for his shirt or sleeves, but his fingers find nothing and then a paramedic is at his side saying "you need to stay still, you could have head injuries" and the man?
The man is gone.
--
Matt is twenty, and his fingers are slick-slippery with blood. He thinks gut wounds aren't supposed to bleed like this, but there certainly seems to be a lot. The alley is already rank, and it's not being helped by the blood, both his own and the man who had been attacked - who then attacked Matt. Matt thinks maybe he was confused, and thought that Matt was his attacker.
"You're kidding me. We've gotta stop meeting like this."
Matt's gasping breath chokes, and he swallows, his fingertips digging into the torn sweater, soaked with blood. It's wet and iron and meat. He's dizzy and light-headed, but he thinks there's no way that he's hallucinated the same thing three times now.
"There you go, buddy," the man says, and Matt feels the touch along the wrist of the hand trying desperately to trap his blood inside, where it's supposed to be. The world goes vague and fuzzy again, like it's been muffled by fog, cool and almost refreshing against skin so much more accustomed to feeling a world on fire. "Stay put for a bit, okay? I've gotta take care of this guy first. No cutting in line."
It's slightly easier to breathe without the sensation of all his blood draining out. Matt takes deep, gulping breaths, licking his lips. It all tastes acrid and bitter, like hate and fear.
He doesn't hear the man move, but he does hear him speak again, feet away at the side of the other man bleeding out. "Hey there," he says, friendly and warm. "Looks like it's your time. No worries after this - nothing but smooth sailing. No more looking over your shoulder, no more being hungry - oh, man! The hunger! Imagine never having to go hungry again." The panicked breathing is slowing, his heart struggling to beat. "No need for drinking, no more cold nights? It's gonna be great. You just gotta ... let go. Yeah. Like that. It's gonna be okay."
The man moans quietly, awful and sad, and Matt's not-hallucination says, "No, no, no need for that. Where you're going, it's gonna be fine. You just gotta - there you go." His struggling heart beats one last time, and then it settles.
The soft, cool feeling that's wrapped Matt from head to toe makes it seem like it'd be easy and good to just - slide down the wall, and sit down to rest. Matt digs his fingers into his wound, tries to swallow the strangled shout and fails.
"Well. You're gonna be a hard nut to crack," Matt's not-hallucination says, from right beside him. He feels fingers touch his arm and shoulder and wants to jerk away, except he thinks he'd topple over and being on the ground would just make this thing's job easier. "Easy there. It's all gonna be okay, you know."
It's a little surprising how unsinister the thing sounds, really. It's influence feels gentle, muffling the pain, muffling Matt's too-sharp senses, muffling - everything. Matt feels pleasantly floaty, like he's being cushioned. Like he's caught up in an embrace. And mostly, this - this not-hallucination, soft and cool like mist and fog, sounds like - sounds like a friend, like someone he should trust, and Matt more than anything wants to pitch forward and rest his head on that shoulder.
That shoulder doesn't exist. He leans his head back against the bricks, biting his lip until it tastes hot and like blood. Matt believes in God and the Devil, but never in the sense that he'd expected - this. That a messenger of either could walk so obvious and freely on the same ground that mortal steps took.
And what other explanation is there for a thing with no heart beat, no body heat - no tangible form, despite the fact that it's clearly there?
"And of course you're a fighter," the thing, Matt's not-hallucination, Matt's - Matt's demon? It says. It speaks with exasperation, but no impatience. "Which is fine, I guess. Your fate keeps wobbling back and forth enough to make a guy dizzy. Nobody's on scene this time, though, buddy; I think this is it."
No. No, no, no. This is not it, Matt thinks, though he's not sure what 'it' is. What this is, any of it. His breath judders and stop-starts, sharp and cold like swallowing glass.
"You think so, huh," it says, tolerantly. "Well - hmm. You know what? Why not? Go on, fighter: go get your second chance."
It's not that the thing stops touching him, he can still feel it pooling around him, like vines or heavy fog, but he does sense it - pull back? The pain crashes back into Matt, and he can't strangle back the yell completely. It's not all the pain - he realizes that - but it's more than enough to electrify his sense of the world into harsh static. Matt grits his teeth - he's not going to make it in this alley, and so he rolls first his shoulder into the wall, then elbow, then palm. He pushes himself upright, and staggers toward the mouth of it.
"Whoa, careful there," Matt's not-hallucination-maybe-demon says, "There's a bit of garbage -" Matt inhales, forces himself to focus, and manages not to trip over it. "- wow. Alright. If you're gonna survive, buddy, you're going to need someone to call for help."
Matt already knows that. He can hear people not that far away. He just has to reach them - has to stay out of the grip of -
"Careful! Careful, buddy, jeez," the not-hallucination-maybe-demon says as Matt staggers. His head is ringing a little bit, and it's getting harder to tell up from down. He thinks his fingertips are stinging, that maybe he's scraped and bloodied them on the wall.
(Warm-gentle hands touch his shoulder, pressing cloth against his skin. A bit more of the pain leeches out, and Matt has to catch his breath against the lack again. The world is right-side up, and he forces himself to move, digging his fingers into his wound to keep the world sharp. The not-hallucination-maybe-demon sighs and tsks.)
The world is sharp but his feet are heavy. Almost too heavy to move, but Matt's not going to lay down here and die, not yet.
(He hears: "What's wrong with him?" and then "Oh my god!" and the sidewalk is hard and cold and scraps his skin. He hears: "Call nine-one-one, you idiot!" and there are fingers on his cheek and on his jaw, and the world turns back to mist and fog, a relief that sends up-and-down spinning away.
Then someone turns him over, and the not-hallucination-maybe-demon is gone.)
--
Matt is twenty-eight and he's nearly forgotten all about it, with other things weighing more heavily on his mind. Except now, as he's forcing his body to keep moving. It trickles in slowly and feels as though it's curling in around his ankles like an overly friendly cat. It doesn't trip him up or slow him down, but it feels a little like that. It's there again, that thing that visits when disaster strikes Matt, a short distance away and so exasperated Matt thinks he can taste it.
"You must be some kind of idiot," the thing says. "Have you seriously become a vigilante?"
Matt staggers. His head is ringing, and there is blood in his mouth, in his throat and in his sinuses and he's choking on it. He can feel that something's gone wrong inside him, but he can't stop moving. If he does, then the Russians - the kid -
"Why did you even bother with a second chance if you're going to land here again in - what? Has it been eight years? Nine? I mean, time really doesn't register to me as a thing, since - you know. I exist outside it. But, buddy, you've got some kind of life here."
He feels the softness of the thing (not a hallucination. Not a demon, either, Matt thinks. He doesn't know what it is) wrap around him, sucking away the sharpest edges of the pain, ratcheting the screaming whiteness of his abused senses down to a more tolerable level.
"Someone has to do something," Matt says - tries to say. Mostly says. Kind of gurgles and bubbles and spits a bit, too. The words taste like raw flesh and iron and bile.
"At this rate, it's not going to be you, fighter," the thing, the - the fog says. "Rush into my loving embrace and what have you done? Nothing, yet. You're absolutely refusing to go quietly into the night, you know. Could make my job a little easier, here."
Matt's ribs creak, crackle and splinter, and there is blood bubbling at the back of his throat and yet, dizzy, what comes out is half-groan, half huffing laugh. "Why should I?" he asks. The Russians are coming for him, he's gonna have to -
"What," the fog says.
It's not ideal, but with his senses dulled to a hollow roar, he can make it, he thinks. Matt grips the side of the dumpster, and everything screams inside him, but he has to survive - he has to - he has to - if not him, who will find the kid? Who?
No one. It has to be him.
His throat aches and scrapes and his jaw sparks with pain, the effort of strangling back the scream his jostled body wants to give as he tumbles into the dumpster. Each breath feels like the broken bones of his ribs are scraping through his throat, like filth and grease and rot.
Fingers curl around the angle of his jaw, and he's caught again, and the next breath releases like a sob as his jangling, electrified nerves are swept cold. "Why should you what," the fog asks him, cushioning him with an embrace, and Matt sucks in a blessedly cool breath over his blood-coated tongue.
"Make your job easier," he says, and he still has the strength to peel back his lips from his teeth. It feels a little dumb, baring his teeth at nothingness-and-fog like some kind of rabid dog, but maybe Matt's not unlike one, in the end.
"Oh boy," the fog says, something like surprise, something like panic in its voice, but by then Matt's last desperate grip on reality fails, and the hungry nothingness consumes him whole.
--
"Come on," Fog says, "Come on, Matt. If you're going to do this, then one foot in front of the other."
Matt's trying. He really is. It's gotten so bad that he keeps thinking that there will be something there from where he hears Fog's voice, keeps thinking that he can reach out and sling his arm around a set of shoulders to hold himself upright. There's nothing there, of course, because Fog is made of mist and a vague impression of warmth and according to him, he doesn't exist within 'time', which - may be why he's intangible.
(It's possible Matt's put more thought into this than he really should when he has more pressing things to think about.)
Matt feels the hands at his waist, and the opposite shoulder. "Come on," Fog says again, urging him along. "There's still a possibility of getting to a safe spot to call Claire from, if that's what you want."
Matt does want. Matt wants a lot of things, not the least of which to come to rest and feel a lot of nothing for a while. He takes another step.
"How do you know about Claire?" he hears himself ask from some kind of unfathomable distance. Fog's been with him every step of the way, seeping into the room the more that bladed chain weapon sliced into Matt's skin, and easing the man - the ninja? Fog had said ninja - into his final rest.
(There'd been something wry about his words, not quite right, not what Matt would have expected from him.)
"Well, you only visit her all the time," Fog says, all exasperation and impatience as if he can't understand why Matt thinks hearing her name from him is weird. "Although, apparently you can only hear me when you're dying, so that's cool." He doesn't much sound like he thinks it's cool; he sounds like it's expected but inconvenient, like he might want Matt to hear him at other times, which is -
"Speaking of," Matt says, and he forgets again, forgets too well, and he lurches through the space that Fog's voice is, and his feet don't get out of each other's way, and he hits the ground almost too hard. Nothings broken, but he's bled out so, so much, and it aches. It aches through him like there are bombs going off in his muscles, in his bones.
"You are one hard-headed idiot," Fog says beside him - over him a bit. The thought that Fog is on his knees at Matt's side, and bent over him. Touching him like he wants to pull Matt to his feet. "Come on. Get up, Matt. This really isn't the time to be laying around. No final resting places here."
"Shouldn't it be?" He wonders. His head is spinning. Getting up seems more impossible than this wraith of not-smoke and not-shadows at his side, and he wonders, and so he says, "Fog. Fog, Why didn't you show up when the bombs went off?"
It seemed like the perfect time for Fog to have shown up. Matt has a hard time understanding the strange, gnawing bitterness that had welled in him, higher and higher like he was going to choke on it, drown in it, the more moments that passed without Fog's voice. There'd been an accident. Bombs on bombs. And a dying man at Matt's feet. It should have been perfect.
Fog sighs, and says, "I did, but the only one going anywhere was ol' Vladimir."
Fog must have been there all along then, at Vladimir's side while Matt was trying to wrestle words and information out of him. It inspires a pang, distant and dizzy and dull. Matt thinks he should have dug the flare in a little harder, if only because Vladimir had tormented Claire so. She deserves revenge, Matt thinks. Matt sucks in a breath against the heavy weight of disappointment, and wonders: "What - Fog, what did you tell him?"
"None of your business. That's private, Matt," Fog says, "Though I guess you've been listening in before, you voyeur." His fingers prod at Matt's jaw, at his cheeks. Feels like hands cradling his face, like Fog wants to check his eyes, except Matt can still feel his mask. The tsk he makes feels a bit like it rattles in Matt's teeth and bones. "You sure are a stubborn bastard. Alright, come on. Up and at 'em."
But Matt's not done yet, revising his memory of that night in light of the fact of Fog having been there the entire time, and with faint horror, he asks, "Is that why he stayed behind? Because you asked him to?" He can't bring himself to move his head, as if he could dislodge the hands on his face even if he did, but if Fog did -
Fog pulls his hands away like he knows what Matt is thinking; one drops to rest on Matt's sternum and his influence doesn't fade, keeping the pain at a manageable distance. "That's not actually how my job works," he says, faintly annoyed. "I don't do things like that. I can't. Are you getting up or aren't you?"
He doesn't want to. It hurt like hell getting down here, sprawled out on the filthy alley asphalt. Getting up isn't going to be easy or nice. "The more I move, the quicker I bleed out," he says.
"True," Fog agrees, conceding the point. "But also the way things are going, you're going to be too weak to get up and you're going to bleed out here anyway. On the other hand, getting up and going home shows a much more favorable fate. So move your ass if you wanna live, Murdock."
Oh, that's right. He has to live. There's still Fisk to take care of. Matt moves in millimeters, and starts-and-stops, and finally he is on his hands and knees, and then he's on his feet and wobbling.
The rest of it, Matt doesn't remember; vague sensations of coolness, of his pain miles and miles away, his nerve endings suffused in cool mist, in heavy fog, and silent. He thinks he must call Claire, because he wakes up to her breath and her hands, latex and disinfectant and thread.
(And nothing of warmth or mist to sooth his screaming nerves.)
--
Matt stretches and stretches and stretches his senses, but he can never catch even the slightest suggestion that Fog is around. At the same time, Fog knew about Claire, about his burner phone, and called Matt by name, so he supposes he has to believe that even though he can't sense Fog, that Fog's around him all the time.
Well, maybe not all the time. Matt thinks that his life is probably too boring when he's not about to die, and something moves him to speak, sometimes - directed at someone who isn't there, might not even be real.
(No, he believes Fog is real. Surely he can't have an on-going hallucination of some sort for years and years and year, with reliable triggers? Or maybe he can. He's not sure. Despite the unreality of Fog's existence, Matt thinks he feels very real in some undefinable way.)
The office is often silent. Karen's gotten used to it, but she's still awkward and uncertain around him sometimes, though maybe that's due to his moods. Matt knows he's too impatient, too sharp and too soft by turns.
But when it's empty, and Matt's dealing with some obscure trail of paperwork, giving himself a headache over trying to read ink-on-paper, on trying to do work better suited for two when he only has himself and Karen (who has no legal degree, but is uncannily good at chasing paper trails) -
Well. Some people say they think better if they hear it out loud. And Matt's certainly not disturbing anyone.
(He dreams.
He dreams of fingers and hands he can't touch, of the world finally tuned to bearable channels, muffled and distant. Of nerves no longer jangling, or electrified. Coolness against the fire-that-is-the-world. Of friendly, wry tones, chiding, chiding as his body arches and strains because it is so used to fighting that it doesn't know what else to do.
He dreams of pressure, of warmth, of drowning in silk and a feeling against his skin that is almost touch but never quite makes it. Like air or smoke, drifting, brushing over inch of skin at once.
He wakes up to an empty apartment and does not reach down to where he is hot and hard. He gets up and takes a cold shower, until his muscles are tight and aching and his already tight skin puckers into goose-flesh, until everything is cold and clean and sharper than a razor's edge.)
--
His head is ringing and he feels hot-cold and all of his nerves are on fire. The danger isn't so close by now that he can't take a moment to breathe, to try to assess the damage - it's bad, he can tell that much. Can't tell whether or not anything vital has been punctured.
"You know, I promise not to be jealous if you go at least two years without courting death," he says wryly.
Matt doesn't mean to, but he turns his head. "Foggy," he says, his jangling nerves registering the - he's not actually sure how it is he senses Foggy when Foggy doesn't even have a body for a heart to beat inside, or lungs to breathe with, or skin to touch and throw off body heat. Foggy's just a definite impression on the world, about the size of a man, maybe.
Then: "Courting death?"
"Yeah, something like that. Apparently that's a thing people do? I hear it often enough, anyway," Foggy says, slightly annoyed and dismissive, but his fingers are gentle when they settle on Matt and begin to soothe his nerves. One on his shoulder, the other on the wrist of the hand Matt has trying to seal the gunshot wound closed. "You're not the only one that has near-death experiences, you know. Another gut wound? Are you kidding me?"
"I wish," Matt groans, leaning his head back against the wall. It's a bit easier to breathe now. It doesn't feel sticky, so at least his lungs haven't been punctured. That's something. Foggy's hand eclipses his own, his fingers sliding between Matt's over the wound in his gut. They're not as long as Matt's, but his hands aren't noticeably smaller, either.
"Nice outfit, by the way," Foggy says. "Very inspired. I see a lot of superheroes up close, it's the nature of the lifestyle, and can I just say, I think you'll fit right in. Well, unless you're going to die here. Are you dying here?"
Matt tries to chuckle and immediately regrets it, sucking in a hissing breath through clenched teeth. "I don't know," he says, "Aren't you the expert?"
"Look who's being a smart-ass when they're gut-shot," he says lightly. "I told you. It doesn't work like that." His hand tightens on Matt's shoulder, then moves up to press against the bare skin of his jaw. It's blessedly cool and soft, and Matt feels his lashes flutter against the inside of his mask. "All I do is make it easy, Matt. Do you want me to make it easy?"
And Matt, for a desperate, aching moment, does. He wants Foggy to say whatever magic words that will ease Matt down, to pull him into an embrace, to wrap him up in it where he doesn't have to feel the world on every last bare and screaming nerve. No more pain, he thinks. No more lonely. No more uncertainty. No more trying and trying and fighting and struggling and still failing.
(Even more, he wants to lean into that hand, to feel weight and touch and wants to test his mouth against it, what it might feel like, if despite no-touch no-smell, there might be a taste.)
"I can't stop," he says instead, and it comes out forlorn and desolate. "I can't, Foggy. If I don't do it, who will?"
"Isn't that the million dollar question," Foggy says, and he doesn't sound surprised or disappointed; Matt wonders if it matters to him at all. "Alright then. First step: get on your feet." His hand moves back down, hooks around Matt's elbow, his other still pressing Matt's hand to his gut, and he waits.
For a moment, Matt thinks he's going to be waiting for a while, and then he gathers himself back up again. "Right," he says.
Murdocks always get back up -
(- until they don't.)
--
It's not enough, he thinks, to face down a gun three inches from his skull. It's not enough to have that shot sail by, to nick him, to graze and draw blood to his face. Nor is it enough to be plunged deep underwater, so deep he can't tell up from down until he forces himself to still and listen. It's not enough to swallow poison, it has to infect him and dig deep and make him vomit and trembling and weak.
Karen is racing the clock for the antidote and the doctors think Matt is hallucinating but Matt doesn't care, because he's too weak to fight on his own and it doesn't even matter he's in a hospital - Foggy's there.
(It feels like Foggy's breathing the same air as him, each and every sweating inch of his skin numbed by his touch.)
"You're sending me some mixed signals," Foggy says thoughtfully from beside him. There's not enough room on the hospital bed for two people, but Matt still has the powerful impression that Foggy's laying right beside him.
"What," Matt says. His thoughts are feverish as it is, and he's learned over their few conversations that Foggy is probably best encountered when not distracted with pain and dizzy from blood-loss. Given what Foggy is, and what they've discovered of their limitations, Matt doesn't think he's going to get that chance.
"Well, I mean, look at it from my point of view," he says. He sounds rather relaxed. Foggy's almost always relaxed and calm, and it's easy to latch onto, to let those tones penetrate deep and set to ease the desperate pounding of Matt's heart. "You keep finding your way into this life-threatening situations - like, you know, you wanna die. But you also keep fighting and being really stubborn about actually dying. See? Mixed signals. Do you or don't you?"
His mouth is so dry that it's sticking to itself in fine counterpoint to the way he's sweating so much. "I don't do it on purpose," Matt protests. He doesn't, really. Unlike what some people have said to him (rarely to his face), he doesn't actually like pain. It's just an unfortunate side effect to be taken in stride, that's all.
"Uh-huh." He sounds unconvinced. "Well, not that I mind. You're quickly shaping up to be my favorite human. For example, I've decided that your stubbornness is kind of cute. Like a kitten!"
Matt groans, because a kitten, really, although he supposes he shouldn't expect better (if he'd gotten better, then what? What would be the point, really). "How many humans do you even know?" he asks judgmentally.
"Uh," Foggy says.
Huffing, he says, "That's what I thought," even though he didn't. It never even occurred to him to think about it at all, until now. His head spins around, faster and faster, churned by his uncertain, unsteady thoughts.
"Well, I like Karen," Foggy counters, "She's good for you, reminds you to eat and everything. And Claire! Claire keeps your insides in your inside. From what I've seen, you guys need it like that, so that's good. By the way, can't really say I'm a big fan of the way your insides are shutting down at the moment."
Matt doesn't realize what his hand is doing until he feels the edge of the bed, of the metal poles beneath his fingertips; fumbling through the space where he senses Foggy. There's nothing there, nothing to touch, conflicting signals that insist that he's reaching straight through Foggy's chest when there's no resistance to prove it. "What do you care," he asks, his tongue thick in his mouth. "I thought I was supposed to make your job easier."
His nerves tell him that hands have wrapped around his wrist, easing up his arm, even though there is no resistance, no pressure. Foggy hums thoughtfully, and finally settles his palm against Matt's face, easing the throbbing pain of dying organs, of his skin afire from the hospital sheets. Matt feels his own stubble, his own fingertips, strange and doubled where it overlaps Foggy's touch, and his feverish thoughts twist and burn and billow with smoke.
Foggy's breezy tone is gone, turned gentle when he says, honestly: "I don't care, Matt, because I can't. You care, though, so here we are." It doesn't hurt, exactly, but it feels a little desolate, and Foggy continues: "If I were something that could 'care' - well. It wouldn't be good."
"It could be good," Matt says, feeling his eyes shut. His hand presses down, like it could trap the sensation of Foggy's touch to his skin.
"It really couldn't," he says. His touch disappears out from under the places where Matt's fingertips press to his own skin, tickling along his lashes to cup over his forehead, brushing his hair back. Or that's what it feels like, which is - weird, because his hair doesn't actually move. "You're not getting any better, Matt, so get some rest, I'm not going anywhere. I'll wake you up before they save your life if I have to, okay?"
That's the last thing Matt wants to do, because their meetings are already short and Karen is far away, trying to save his life, and Matt hates hospitals. "You don't go anywhere, do you?" he asks before he can think better of it. Foggy has a job and Matt knows better than most the death rate -
"Well, not really," Foggy says. "Not in a way you'd understand, anyway. I don't have to leave to do my job, I mean, it'd be kind of silly if there were limitations on me like that. Just - go to sleep. It'll help cast the odds of survival in your favor."
It probably shouldn't make Matt relax, but it does: the thought that Foggy's always at his back, at his side. Considering what Foggy is, it shouldn't be comforting. It should be the least comforting thought in the world.
(But Matt's met him at nine, and fifteen, and twenty and twenty-eight and Foggy never leaves his side now, the only thing that Matt's known with such permanence. And he thinks - he thinks that it won't matter how many times he almost dies - Foggy will be there, and Foggy will touch him and talk to him when things are at their worst, and that's -
- Matt's never going to be alone, not as long as he's alive.)
--
(He's not going to be a lone when he dies, either, and that's a million tons of concrete and asphalt off his shoulders - the entire weight of the City that needs him and bleeds him dry, suddenly made lighter.)
--
Claire sews him up and puts him back together, time after time after time, and she says, "Do you have some kind of death wish?" and Matt laughs, and his eyes burn and he pinches the tears back behind his lids.
"Yeah," he says. He does.
--
(and it tastes like ozone and blood)