Talking to the moon

"If you could see one thing again? What would you see?"

He had no idea how the conversation had started. They were both flopped down on Matt's sofa, weary intoxicated bodies haphazardly intertwined in fits of giggles and laughs, empty bottles of beer abandoned on the table next to them.

"Oh-" Foggy cut back in before Matt could even begin to form a reply. "And don't say me, because while I know it's the true answer, I think I'm too drunk for that flattery."

"Foggy, if I did miraculously get my sight back, I think seeing your mug might just blind me again." The red head laughed, arm lazily dangling off the edge of the sofa, fingers senselessly flickering up and down the ridges in the carpet beside them.

"Rude." Foggy scoffed, eyes staring aimlessly at the ceiling, alcohol dancing in his vision and inebriating his thoughts. "Anyway, what would you see."

"Well." Matt began, Foggy missing the mischievous hint to his tone. "If I could see right now I'd probably see my ceiling. Or at least I hope I would." He paused slightly to giggle. If Foggy could see Matt, which he currently couldn't due to their top to tail layout, he would imagine he would see that shit eating grin on his face, the one he always wore when he thought he was saying something smart but he was really just saying to tick Foggy off. "Imagine if I opened my eyes and saw the floor. Or another couch. Now that would freak me out."

"Oh fuck you Murdock." Foggy laughed, silently agreeing with his best friends point. That would be fucking scary. "Seeeerrrriously though. What would you want to see."

Matt paused for a moment, the only sound in the room being their soft breaths of air and lingering thoughts.

"Matt?" Foggy asked curiously after a suspicious amount of silence from the other, pushing himself into a seating position to look at his friend. He was still lying where he has been, hair like a halo around his head, unfocused eyes staring blankly at the ceiling - his glasses had been removed hours before when the first drinks had been pulled out - and a small smile tugging at his lips.

"I think I'd see the moon."

To be honest, while Foggy would claim he wasn't expecting anything from Matt's answer like a stupid taunt about wishing how he could see hot women to see if his 'hot woman sensor' as Foggy dubbed it actually worked or to be able to physically see how his work affected people, he hadn't been expecting that.

"The moon?" Foggy repeated, settling more comfortably so that his head was resting on his elbow atop of the back of the sofa, looking down at Matt bellow him.

"Yeah." Matt shrugged, an action that somehow, despite its complete and utter simplicity, brought a smile to Foggy's lips, something Matt seemed to detect through his own super freaky blind way, turning his head up to look at the other in questioning. "What?"

"Nothing." The blonde laughed through a chuff of air. "Just mellowing over the complexity that is you Murdock."

"Oh fuck off Foggy."

"Not until I find out what is so special about this moon of ours." Foggy bargained, his tone laced with a sincerity Matt obviously hasn't been expecting judging by the look it brought on his face.

"Really?"

"Of course you idiot. Now spill the beans before I make you."

"Alright calm down." Matt laughed, shifting till he was more comfortable, hands resting underneath his head and elbows sticking out at his sides. "I'd always loved the stars when I was younger, would stay up late watching them as I waited for my dad to come back from a match or would spend hours staring at them on the TV. When I was 9 my dad surprised me by borrowing a telescope from one of his friends for my birthday and took me to see the stars. And after all of it, the endless nights of trying to see the stars through the polluted sky of New York, it was the moon I couldn't take my eyes off."

When he smiled now, there was a hint of sadness, of longing, of loss.

"My dad used to tell me stories about it, about how the moon, about how the sun loved the moon so much it was willing to die each night to let it's lover breathe. I never really understood what he meant at first. How you could love someone so much even when you knew you could never be with them." He paused, his voice almost holding a sense of familiarity within the words.
"Anyway, that was my last birthday before I lost my sight, and even after then he would still tell me about them, how the moon watched over us and kept us safe no matter what. I guess it gave me some sort of comfort, because no matter what the Moon was always there."

"And after your dad died?" Foggy asked tentatively, Matt's previously resting hands now moving to pick at the hem of his shirt.

"After my dad died I was alone. But even though I couldn't see it I knew the moon was still there. You're going to think me stupid but I used to talk to the moon too."

Foggy hummed in afftermation for Matt to continue.

"It would give me a sort of comfort. I didn't get to take a lot of my belongings from my home to the orphanage, so the moon was the only thing me and my Dad had shared that I go to keep. And although it was stupid, I almost felt that when I was talking to the moon I was talking to my Dad too. Like he could hear me." He trailed off towards the end, head turned away from his friend.

"If it's any consolidation, I don't think it's stupid." Foggy declared. "Many people speak to the sky or the stars, all with their own crazy reasons; and you know what, I think I might start talking to it too."

"Oh please Foggy don't." Matt groaned, throwing an arm over his face dramatically.

"Make me." Foggy grinned, throwing himself off the sofa and across Matt's apartment in an attempt to spot the moon through the window, canning his neck as he scanned the sky.

Even as Matt had tackled him down and they had rolled in a drunken heap on the floor, laughing in each other's arms about the stupidity of their actions and conversations with the moon, he had never had never had the intention to do it.

He never thought he would be where he was now, standing at the window of his flat, face to face with the moon, tongue heavy in his mouth and tears wet on his cheeks.

"Hey Matt."

His voice cracked before he finished the first word.

"You uh- you're dead. And I don't know how to cope."

The moon stared back, streetlights illuminating the room around him like stars lighting up the sky, salty remnants of regret painting his face

"You died helping others, being a hero, and before you stop me, no matter what you say you will still be a hero. I- I underestimated how much the city needed you, and I was selfish in saying I only needed my friend."

He remembered the conversation like it was yesterday. He remembered the anger, the tears that had painted his face as they did now, the sadness, pain and regret. The hurt. He remembered it and regretted it all.

"You're dead and- and I never got to say goodbye."

The moon stared back.

"I never got to tell you how happy I was, how proud I was of how far we'd come, of our firm, of Daredevil. I never got to tell you how much I would miss you, how I wouldn't be able to cope without you. I never got to tell you I loved you."

The moon stared back, and he said nothing.

_-..._.._...-_

"Hey Matt."

The moon stared back. It's not like he ever expected a response. No, that would be stupid. Absolutely and inconsequentially stupid; but it was also stupid that he'd had to loose his best friend, so guess the worlds not fair.

"I got a new job today. Yeah I know, I finally got off my sofa and started doing something with my life. It's not as much pro-bono as I'd like, I'm still helping the little guy- actually no, I'm more helping the rich but still. It pays good. Real good." He paused for a moment, sucking in a breath. "It's not what we wanted."

He felt stupid like this sometimes. Sometimes he was too consumed with grief to be able to feel any emotions but sadness, too wracked with sobs to care.

"I'm still helping as many people as I can. Using the law to get them justice. There was a kid the other day, she was 17 and fighting to get emancipated so she could take her siblings out of an abusive home. I- I asked her what gave her the strength to go on even after all the times her appeal had been turned down. And she said it was you." He laughed, a hollow chocked laugh that failed desperately to hide the tears in his voice. "Not you exactly, but Daredevil. She said you'd helped her once. You caught their father doing something illegal, she didn't specify, and sent his arse right into prison. It was only for a week before he was bailed out by a friend, but that week of peace had shown her everything they could have if only they got away.

You helped so many people and I was too selfish to notice. You did so much and you never asked for anything in return. Sometimes I wish you would have."

The moon stared back, and he said nothing.

_-..._.._...-_

"Your funeral was today."

The moon stared back.

"All of your vigilante friends showed up and a few of the people you'd helped, people you'd made a difference too. I didn't know had that many friends." He laughed, voice already chocked with tears. "I'm sorry that was rude of me."

God he was pathetic.

"I... I just don't know how to cope. I don't know how I'm supposed to cope. Everyone expects you to just be able to move on, and yet I fucking can't. I can't sleep because all I can think of is you."

His tear hit the carpeted floor with a sound louder then the clapping thunder outside.

"You're buried next to your Dad you know? I hope you're with him now, staring down at me from the moon together. I mean you better fucking be or I'll be really embarrassed. Maybe I really would have gone mad." He paused, picking at the skin along the side of his nails.

It was an old habit of his and he hated it. Matt had hated it more. He'd managed to stop doing it before, found other ways to cope with his anxiousness and distress because he knew how much the action distressed Matt, not that he could even see him doing it. Now I guess he knew different.

"He would have been so proud of you, you know?" He lifted his head back up, eyes drawn to the starless sky. The moon was nearly full tonight, illuminating Hells Kitchen's dimly lit streets and sending a dagger into his heart. "You never talked of him much, your Dad, but I know you loved him more then anything in the world, and he loved you too."

It wasn't until years into their friendship that Matt had really talked to him about is Dad, about their relationship and what became of it after. The conversation had come after the build and fall of Nelson and Murdock, after Foggy had cast him away and pulled him back.

He'd told Foggy he was scared. Scared his father wouldn't love him if he knew what he was doing. His father never wanted him to fight. Wouldn't even let Matt be near a boxing bag.

'The murdock boys have the devil in them'

He wasn't going to let the Devil get his son too.

But Matt had failed him. He'd welcomed the Devil with open arms and dived right in, became everything his father wanted him not to be, embraced the symbol of all that hate.

"He never wanted me to fight." Matt had told him in a quiet voice, glasses barely masking his slowly forming tears. "He wanted me to live. And I can't even do that for him."

Foggy hadn't understood then. Understood that Matt would only ever live for someone that wasn't himself. Hadn't realised that when Matt didn't have that someone, someone to live for, fight for, then he stopped fighting at all.

"He would have been so proud of what you did, you know that right? Proud of all the people you helped, the lives you made better. He loved you more than anything in the world. Just like me."

When he looked again a cloud had consumed the sky, blacking it out as Foggy was suddenly aware of where he was, standing by his window in the middle of his room, pretending he was fine while he decayed away inside, bit by bit, day by day. He was standing here, talking to the moon, talking to someone who was six feet beneath the soil. Someone he never even had the guts to tell he loved.

"I did a eulogy at your funeral you know?"

The moon was shining again.

"And I know theoretically you've heard it already, when I said it at your grave you know - if thats how it works - but I thought I'd tell it to you again. Just you and me."

He took a breathe, he breathed out, and as the moon stared back he read.

His tears hit the floor before the rain ever did.

_-..._.._...-_

"I moved today."

The moon was nothing but a sliver tonight, its presence barely gracing the sky, Foggy's hope slowly dying.

"It's a nice apartment." He smiled. He'd been doing that more now. Smiling, laughing, living. "I chose it for the closeness to work as well as Karen. Theres a park nearby too, I can actually see greenery from my apartment, not just a building more crumbled then mine." His breath caught in his throat. "Actually that's a lie. I didn't choose it for that."

The streets were dimly lit tonight and despite how high end his new apartment was, the lamppost outside was flickering. The apartment was really nice, it was more then just two rooms and a bedroom, the walls weren't peeling and there wasn't a hole in the roof. It even had double glazing, can you believe that, I mean, can you believe that?

He couldn't. There was one selling factor, something that had topped it over everything else.

"It has a really nice view." He finally admitted to himself. " You'd have enjoyed the view."

Some days were better then others. Some where like that, days where Foggy would barely even look out the window, he would get up in the morning and shrug on his suit without even a glance of the sky. He would go for a drink with Karen or a new work with friends, he would come home and he wouldn't spare a glance to the chair by the window, the small armchair which's fabric was soaked with his tears and the weight of his confessions.

Sometimes he thought of Matt and he smiled. He smiled with the mass of the world on his shoulders.

"I put some Amaryllis on your grave today." Foggy announced, shrugging off his coat as he entered the apartment, placing the remaining flowers in a jug before filling it with water and placing them on the small table that accompanied his armchair by the windowsill. "I never knew what flowers you liked as you hated the smell of all of them." He laughed, sitting himself down.

Once in collage Matt had been gifted some hyacinths by a girl, apparently the colour symbolised love, even though Matt couldn't see it, and the poor dude had spent so long trying not to gag at the overpowering scent as he thanked the woman. He'd tried to raise them in there dorm room for a week out of courtesy until one night Foggy had woke up to him flu chin it down the toilet. Yes the toilet. Apparently the dorm compost bin wasn't far enough for him.

Foggy had laughed about it for days.

"I hope you like them." He sighed. "Now I think about it maybe I should've gotten tulips instead. Not much scent. Or anemones, you'd like those; they're like large buttercups that come in many many colours, like honestly Matt I do not think even my vocabulary is large enough to cover them all. They didn't have any in the shop though. I'll make sure to bully them till they have some next time." There was a fondness in Foggy's voice as he said it, as he laid his heart on the table for a moon that was barely clinging to the sky. For a heart that was never his.

Sometimes he was fine.

Sometimes he wasn't.

Today he wasn't.

God he fucking wasn't.

There wasn't anything in particular that had triggered it. I wasn't an anniversary he'd spent with Matt, he hadn't heard the tap of  cane and collapsed inside, he hadn't seen Karen huddled over a church pew, tears falling from her cheeks like prayers to the wind.

He'd simply broke down, and the alcohol had helped Matt fall down with him.

"You know, sometimes I tell myself you're out there somewhere." Foggy laughed at his own stupidity, the taste of alcohol burning his throat and salty tears scarring his cheeks. "I tell myself that you've miraculously survived and are somewhere far away - that you're living you're life. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't." The bottle in his hand brushed against the carpet, swinging slowly back and forth.

Today had been a bad day. It had been a day where he'd woken up with heavy limbs and an even heavier heart, a day his body refused to function, and his mind was intent on torturing him. Torturing him with ideas of Matt, thoughts of what could have been, and reminders of what weren't.

"I'm so glad these walls are thick because otherwise I swear my neighbours must think I'm crazy. Sometimes I think I am crazy. It's just- it's just no one else understands."

Or maybe he didn't let anyone in enough to help them understand. He was becoming more and more like Matt then he ever realised.

"No one understands that- that you're all I had. I loved you and even though I didn't have your love I had you. I had you and that was enough, and now I don't even have you."

Now he had nothing.

"I get so mad at you sometimes too," the confession hung heavy on his throat, "mad that you left, of everything you kept from me and sometimes that helps too. I doesn't change the fact I want you back, that I miss you so fucking much." He sobbed. When had he began crying? Was he crying? A wipe at his face concluded yes. Yes he was crying. Yes he was falling further and further down the hole he had promised he would climb out of.

Was there any point in trying anymore?

"You know, sometimes I struggle believing it myself," Foggy hummed, taking another sip from his bottle. He's got this far, might as well go the whole way, "that at night when the stars light up my room I sit by myself, talking to the moon hoping that - by some miracle - I'll get to you, and that you're on the other side talking to me too."

It's stupid when he said it like that. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he was just mourning. Mourning the love he never got.

If Matt's God really did exist, if there was someone up there, some benevolent figure, then Foggy hated them. He hated them with all his heart body and soul, because they had taken his heart away from him, and his body couldn't cope without it.

"God, Matt, why can't you just come back? Why couldn't you just get back up? Why couldn't you have just pulled another punch?

Why couldn't you have said goodbye?"

Through blared eyes he stared at the moon, and he said nothing.

_-..._.._...-_

"Karen came over the other day." Foggy announced as he settled down on his chair, hot chocolate in hand, eyes miraculously dry, "but you could probably smell that... or you would if you were here. But you're not. Anyway, She's doing better then me... I think. She's more like you then we realised Matt; hiding all her feelings away and looking out for everyone but herself. Even she'd probably think I'm crazy if she saw me though, talking to the fucking moon.

I think she was in denial before me though. I mean, you could probably call this denial. Trying to talk to you like nothings wrong.

I used to find her sat at one of the church pews at your-" he took a breath, "at the church you used to go to. She would sit there and cry and I would cry with her. She said it didn't feel real. That there was still hope.

I think she still goes there sometimes. Sits and cries.

It's not that different to me sitting here, on this little armchair like a grandma and talking to the moon. She feels connected to you there, in the church with Father Lantom by her side like you would do every Sunday. I tried to go, with her today but I kind of chickened out. Thought God would be able to sense my undying hatred for him and would smite me out of the air." He didn't really. But he felt like it was a reasonable feeling.

"Karen likes my new apartment, she's been placing flowers on your-" the words caught up in his throat, "she's been placing flowers on your grave too. We alternate each week now. I think you would approve of her choices some more than others."

He paused, eyes drawn unto the moon for the first time that night, meeting it's unblinking gaze. "When she asked me if I was doing well, if I was moving on, I said yes."

Foggy turned his head away, almost ashamed. He'd hated Matt for so long, hated how he had lied to him for so long. Now he was realising how easy it was, how much comfort settled in the lies.

"Then she asked me if I loved you. I said yes to that too."

The moon's gaze never wavered, holding strong and steady and swallowing down on the weight of his confession, Foggy said nothing.

_-..._.._...-_

Matt always hated new moons. God knows how he knew when they happened but he always did. Maybe he just guessed, I mean, the moon made the same rotation every month, each month of the year. So in a way you could guess it was predictable.

He'd told Foggy once that they were bad luck. That a sky without a moon was like a human without a heart. It was unusual and improper. Of course they both knew the moon was still there of course. It never actually disappeared. It just took a nap. It took a nap and for every night of it's disappearance the sun died for nothing. It died for a lover that wasn't even there.

Later on Matt admitted he hated it because it made him feel like he was crazy, that there was no point to going on at all. Because without a moon, he wasn't talking to a mass in the sky he was speaking to himself. He was speaking empty words to a father that was six feet bellow the ground and already rotten.

He said it was because in times like that, he couldn't feel anything. He couldn't feel the memory of his fathers warmth that had followed him through his childhood, couldn't picture his smile, the way he smelt or the feel of his arms crushing him in an embrace.

Foggy had never understood. There was many things he hadn't understood about Matt, things he wished he'd pressed further on or had spent more time trying  to understand.

It was like waking up from a dream into a nightmare, a smack of reality in the face.

When he sat at his window, and saw nothing but expansive darkness he saw the gap in his own heart, the hole that would never be filled as it consumed his whole being, tore him apart piece by piece.

Without a moon in the sky he was just a grieving man who had never learnt to cope. A broken soul shattering more and more each day.

"I can't feel you Matt." He couldn't feel Matt smiling down on him, hear his sharp laugh or see his ridiculous smile. He remember the warmth's he pulled him into a hug or held him in his arms. "I can't feel you."

He looked to they sky and saw nothing. His sobs were louder then his words ever could be.

_-..._.._...-_

"It's been a year since you passed away." Foggy greeted, leaning against his window as he looked up at the sky. His therapist had encouraged him to start using words like 'passed away' over brutally died. He was unsure if it helped or not. The chair was gone too. The space almost looked bare without it, replaced by a solitary table and slowly blossoming flowers.

He'd stopped buying dying ones. Flowers that's stems were cut and were already wilting. This one even had it's own pot. He and Karen had driven out to a garden centre and picked it out especially. The woman they bought it from told him it would bloom red, Foggy just hoped he could keep it alive that long.

"I've been doing well." Foggy sighed, a smile on his lips, "actually I've been doing really well. Karen and I are hanging out a lot more, you would be happy about that. She even took me hiking. I know, me, hiking. I can barely believe it myself and I was the one doing it." He laughed.

"I went on a few dates too; set up by the lovely Miss Page of course. By god they were terrible. It was like collage all over again believe me. Not something I plan revisiting again. One of them asked me my name three times. Three times! I mean I wouldn't say my standards are too high but still."

Outside his window the trees swayed in the breeze, flickering street lamp shining the road in a golden hue. "I think things are starting to look up again."

And they did. Foggy and Karen began meeting up every week, each time to do an activity more outrageous then the last. They went from rock climbing to pub crawls and simply laying on the sand of a beach, relaxing in the sun after a millennial long car drive that was worth every second.

"Karen asked what I wanted to do last week."

Foggy sat crosslegged in front of his window, arm on the small  table, cushioning his head as he admired the plant that bloomed in front of him.

It was more beautiful then he imagined it would be.

"She asked what I wanted to do. How I wanted to cope."

There was a pause in which he was sure even his heart wasn't beating, in which the world held it's breathe as he gathered the strength to speak his words.

"I took her to see the stars, and I showed her the moon."

The silence that surrounded him was both a deafening comfort all at once.

"I never forgot that story you told me you know, about how you wanted to see the moon, and the story you told me with it. The story your dad used to tell you about how the sun loved the moon so much it was willing to die each night to let it's lover breathe? You said you never really understood what he meant at first. How you could love someone so much even when you knew you could never be with them."

Foggy ran his fingers over the grooves in the wood, smoothed down by soft, methodical touches and lingering memories.

"I don't think I understood back then either. I do now though, and I think through the terrible blind dates and Karen's frivolous hiking activities, she helped more then she could ever know. She helped me realise that I will always love you, no matter where you are, dead or alive, here or half way across the world. My heart will always belong to you. And I don't think that's such a bad thing anymore.

I will always love you Mathew Michael Murdock. Fuck 'till death do you part' because I'm following you beyond the grave. You have, and will always have my heart. Not even I can change that now."

With a smile, he turned away, and as the moon stared back, he said goodbye.