Chapter 1
It’s been 5 days, 3 hours, and 2 minutes since he had last been touched.
After burying Elektra, with the man who had raised them both at his side, Matt retreated, ballasting the walls he had started to erect since the Castle case disintegrated. Stick, predictably, didn’t stay – couldn’t get out of there fast enough, it seemed. He hadn’t even lingered at the simple service Father Lantom presided over, choosing instead to wait for Matt outside, skulking just beyond the church’s heavy oak doors.
When Matt finally surfaced, blinking in the cold winter air, puffs of steam rising from his breath, Stick grabbed him by the elbow and directed them back to his apartment. The weekend crowd parted before their red-tipped canes, tapping out a staccato rhythm in tandem. Dimly, Matt was aware of the sounds of a normal Sunday afternoon – dogs panting at the end of their leashes, a whispered conversation between two lovers clasped close two blocks ahead, the squeak of bicycle wheels stopping just before the light turned red. The world had continued spinning while Matt’s life had ground slowly to a halt.
There wasn’t much to say in the end. All the words between them spent – exhausted in that brief exchange at the top of the hill, the metallic clang of a shovel as it packed the hard snow over Elektra’s grave, the only accompaniment piercing the silence.
Stick gathered up the satchel slumped at the foot of the kitchen island and slung it over his shoulder. At the threshold to the door, his back facing Matt, he hesitated for a moment, “You’re gonna be okay, kid?” Matt floundered for a response, not realizing it hadn’t been a question; and between one breath and the next, Stick was gone.
The next day, before he lost his nerve or talked himself out of it, Matt called Karen and asked her to meet him at their old office. Karen deserved to know, to be offered a clean break.
Foggy was already set – wooed by the imposing Ms. Hogarth herself for a plum position at Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz and sharing an uptown apartment with Marcie, far from the mess of Hell’s Kitchen. In their last conversation over beers at Josie’s, Matt thought he detected a flutter in Foggy’s heartbeat, a tremor in his hands, when they signed the documents officially dissolving their partnership, transferring all liability and any remaining cases to Matt, who would carry on as an independent contractor. What had Foggy said that night at their office -- that he was hoping Matt would try to talk him back into Nelson & Murdock, but relieved he had not? Vainly, he hoped the glasses would hide the tears he could feel collecting in his eyes.
The evening – a grotesque, funhouse-mirror version of the one that had given birth to Nelson & Murdock – had ended in an awkward handshake and Matt wondered if Foggy could sense the strain in him, every line held taut. The slight slump he allowed himself, as Foggy’s retreating back disappeared beyond Josie’s swinging doors, was dwarfed by the chasm that had materialized inside of him.
So he climbed the stairs to their office, not eager to sever another limb, but resigned to its inevitability. Karen was already waiting for him, her voice tinged with impatience. It was inexcusable – the number of times he’s kept her waiting, kept her guessing – it seemed only fair that after his revelation, after the horned mask in a brown paper sack, he had had to wait, while Karen disappeared for a walk.
Hours later, after the setting sun had chased away the last vestiges of warmth from the day, she turned up at his door. Matt stepped aside and Karen brushed past him, leaving a faint cloud of curry in her wake. She was upset, incredulous. Like Foggy – that day he found Matt passed out on his apartment floor – she wanted to know the how of it (could he see? was it all a lie? how could it be anything other than a lie?) and the why of the secrecy.
Matt addressed the how – by now, after explaining it to both Foggy and Claire, he could roughly sketch out the mechanics of his abilities, was prepared to counter the initial disbelief – but the secrecy; that he held close to his chest, like the fragile and unexamined thing it was, and hoped Karen wouldn’t press.
He swallowed down the lump that formed in his throat, remembering when he had almost let his secret slip once – years ago with Foggy – an unguarded moment when they were both drunk on beers and high on life’s possibilities. When Matt almost allowed himself to believe he could let someone else in without everything ending in catastrophe. That time, Stick’s voice, harsh and mocking, pulled him from the brink, extinguishing the words rising in his throat.
Karen wanted to see the suit, waited while he flipped the clasps and buckles that secured the closet. When he swung the hinges of the trunk open, a softly breathed out, “Holy Shit”, escaped before she fell silent.
A faint rustle as a curtain of hair fell over her face. “You and Foggy had me almost convinced it was alcohol. It makes a lot of sense, you know, the secrecy, the abandoning of social and professional commitments – it certainly sounds like an addict,” she said, her voice brittle. The accusation stung.
Finally, Matt closed the distance between them, one hand taking hers and placing it over his chest while the other gently gripped her forearm, her warmth thrumming through his fingers. He ached at the contact, tried to school his expression into a semblance of neutrality. “I don’t need him to be a part of me anymore," he said steadily. "And I don’t want him to be.” His heart beat out “Believe me, believe me”, but his head willed her away, to safety.
Karen’s hand slipped out from under his and she took a single step back.
That had been 5 days, 3 hours, and 2 minutes ago.