If it weren't for Elektra, Sam wouldn't have thought anything of passing a man with red hair and round red glasses on the street.
But Elektra had stopped by one night to tell Sam that Daredevil was dead, and Sam had been seeing his face on every passing stranger in a suit ever since. His vision wasn't helping matters, warping heights and colors into impressions of Matt Murdock.
This-- this wasn't an impression. Or maybe it was a different kind, one created by some instinct he didn't know he still had rather than his eyes failing him.
He heard the quiet tapping of a white cane first and stepped aside automatically. Then he saw the loose sweep of the tip, not quite dragging across the pavement. The careful movement of the forearm, the steady steps, the glasses Sam had only ever seen in one place.
Even with his fucked-up eyes, he could see the shine of the red lenses in the sun.
He wasn't wearing a suit. Sam's brain had seen the black and filled in a suit jacket, but it wasn't. All-black, buttoned up to the neck, white square under his chin.
A clerical collar.
It had to be a mistake. Another grief-fuled half-hallucination of the man who'd found Sam halfway around the world twice and saved him both times. He'd had plenty of those in the weeks since Elektra had broken the news.
He saw him again, a week later. Same cane, same glasses, same shirt and collar.
And then the man easily sidestepped a teenager on a skateboard, and his shoulders tilted to the side in the exact same way Daredevil had taught Sam to dodge an opponent so long ago, and Sam knew.
He didn't realize he'd stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk until someone bumped into him, shouldering him back into reality. Matt -- because it was Matt, it had to be -- was gone.
The third time he managed to get himself under control and tail Matt wherever he was going. He tried not to think about learning to tail someone as he trailed about a block behind, keeping the sweeping motion of the white cane in his sight.
They turned the corner, and the spectre of a church suddenly loomed over them. Catholic, Sam guessed, by the broad stained-glass windows bleeding light out over the street.
It made his heart pick up, stumbling over several beats as he abandoned his tailing. The clerical collar he could ignore, let his eyes skim over it and explain it away. With small things, his vision wasn't always reliable anyway. But he couldn't ignore this.
It's not the same, he tried to tell himself, forcing his hands still. That was a cult. The Catholic Church is thousands of years old. Well-established. It's not the same.
It took him a week to convince himself to go back -- not as Sam, but as Blindspot, perched on the roof of the bodega across the street. He stayed invisible for as long as his battery would allow him.
It was just long enough to see Matt leave the building late in the afternoon. Sam watched him make his way down the sidewalk and ignored the twisting in his stomach.
He staked out the church again, and again, and did his best to forget all the times he'd done that before, with a different man at a different church in a different neighborhood.
It's not the same it's not the same it's not the same.
He did his research and decided to attend Mass.
At least, he tried to. But panic seized him like twenty long, thin fingers as soon as he reached the top of the front steps, and he had to turn back through the crowd of nicely-dressed New Yorkers, mumbling "excuse me" as he went.
He couldn't breathe until he'd crossed back into Chinatown, shielded from the church by the concrete and steel of the buildings. His hands were shaking, his vision fading faintly. He had navigated back to his neighborhood on pure instinct.
Sam pulled himself up onto a rooftop and collapsed onto the hard surface. He could feel his heart pounding against the bricks.
Okay. So he couldn't go to Mass. Even now, he could hear pieces of sermons in his head. Phrases Tenfingers would repeat to the congregation. Mantras. Parables. He didn't know what they were called. They had lived inside his head for years.
It's not the same. But it certainly felt like it.
It took him another three days to gather enough confidence to go back -- not for Mass, just to go in. Just to see it, to make sure Matt was safe. He could do that much.
The ceilings were high, the afternoon sunlight seeping in through the stained glass and making Sam's vision odd colors. The narrow wooden benches that spanned the sanctuary were nothing like the chairs that had filled the temple. There was an altar at the far end, with candles in jars and a small incense burner under a suspended crucifix.
Sam couldn't get further than the nearest bench. He gripped the back of it with both hands to stabilize himself and tried to breathe, to focus on the wood under his palms and the faint smell of something like pine. Neither of those things had been part of the Church of the Sheltering Hands. Nor was the cross at the opposite end of the room, over the altar.
He knew the figure sculpted onto the cross was supposed to be Jesus, but for just a second, it looked like another one of Muse's pieces. Faintly beautiful, in a horrifying way that latched around Sam's lungs. A victim nailed ignominiously to the wall, illuminated in blues and greens and red.
Bleeding, from hands and feet and side and eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes.
The back of someone's fingers against his arm caught his attention, careful in the way that only came with concern. "Are you alright?"
Sam glanced over to find Matt standing next to him. "Yeah," he said quickly.
No hint of recognition in Matt's face or posture. He really didn't remember. Sam couldn't bring himself to meet his eyes, even though Matt wouldn't have been able to tell.
"You seem anxious," Matt said carefully, and Sam knew he could hear his rapid heartbeat. He tightened his grip on the back of the bench and inhaled the smell of woodsy citrusy whatever. His vision was swimming in the stained-glass light, narrowing and darkening.
Maybe he was cursed. He'd made a deal with the Beast. The devil, little d. He'd abandoned his post in Japan. Been led astray, Tenfingers would have said. Being on holy ground, after that -- it was a miracle that his eyes hadn't been burned out of his skull. That he hadn't been struck down.
It could still happen. It would. He was going to die. He--
"--should sit," Matt was saying. "We can sit in this pew here, or we can go outside, if you'd be more comfortable that way."
Sam offered Matt his elbow, like he'd done a thousand times working in the DA's office half a lifetime ago, and Matt took it.
Matt didn't need a sighted guide, not with his radar sense and his extensive training, and certainly not with the white cane in his other hand. But the slight pressure on Sam's arm was familiar, almost comforting, as they made their way out of the church.
He managed to make it to the base of the church steps before his legs gave out and he dropped onto the bottom stair. Matt, seemingly unsurprised, let go of his elbow and sat down next to him.
"Breathe," he told Sam. "In through your nose and out through your mouth."
Sam breathed.
"Slower," Matt added after a moment. "You're alright."
Sam rested his elbows on his knees and tried to breathe more slowly. The concrete was solid, and the traffic from the street was only faintly muted by the ringing in his ears, and Matt's hand was on his shoulder just like it had always been in the aftermath of the worst moments of his life. His mother's death. Losing his eyes. His deal with the Beast for Muse's death.
He was alive. Matt was alive.
He kept his head down, not wanting to catch a glimpse of the clerical collar. He could pretend for a little longer that nothing had happened. That he'd never gone to Japan and Matt had never died and Elektra had never appeared in Chinatown to tell him.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"God, no," Sam said before he could stop himself. "Sorry."
"It's okay," Matt replied, and Sam could hear the amusement in his voice. "I don't mind. I'm Father Matthew."
Father Matthew. He wasn't touching that right now. "Sam."
"How are you feeling, Sam?"
He shrugged, careful not to displace Matt's hand. "Better, I guess."
"Do you want to call someone, maybe?"
Until a few months ago, he would have called Matt. The irony was not lost on him. "Nah. I just need a minute or two."
Matt nodded and adjusted so he was perched more comfortably on the step next to Sam. "Take your time."
"Aren't you supposed to be doing priest stuff?"
It was Matt's turn to shrug. "I think God will understand."