“I don’t want to lose you.” Foggy says, the shape of the words engraved across his tongue like a prayer etched in stone. An epitaph to a lost cause.
Matt doesn’t smile in response. Matt never smiles here, not once, still cocky and sure, glowing as brightly as the summer sun glaring down on them in the middle of street. He smirks.
“You won’t.” Matt answers and that never changes either, not once in all the lives Foggy’s lived and relived. Matt’s promise stays the same.
As always, the worst lies Matt tells are the ones he doesn’t know he’s telling.
-
The first time Foggy wakes up, head throbbing and throat aching, Matt’s name is lodged in his throat like a cough, windpipe spasming around the shape of it, as if he already knows it would go unanswered if he utters it out loud.
Because Matt is gone. Gone just like Foggy knew he would be if he kept putting on that fucking suit and Foggy’s heart clamps down hard behind his ribs, contracts like it’s trying to make itself small but the pain stays the same.
And then his phone rings.
-
Foggy tries at first to make sense of it, figures there must be a reason Matt keeps dying and Foggy keeps waking up on the same summer day back before the world went to hell in the handbasket they wove all for themselves.
The easiest answer he can think of, the one Foggy holds on to the longest, gnashes on like a dog chews on a bone until it brittles and snaps, is that he’s meant to save Matt.
Because what other reason can there be in the world for this—death by a thousand cuts, each repetition and loss another wound, razor thin and bleeding free—if not to keep Matt alive.
Foggy tries and tries and keeps trying and Matt dies all the same. The whole thing is one long drawn-out joke and Foggy’s sick of waiting for the punchline.
-
He stops counting sometime after Matt dies for the forty-seventh time.
(Bullet to the head. Foggy finds him just in time to be there when he goes.)
-
Some loops last hours and some loops last months and one loop goes for almost a year, goes so long Foggy gets comfortable, lets his guard down and thinks his work is done. He lays down in his soft, warm bed, presses a kiss to Karen’s shoulder through her t-shirt—that’s a new development but not one he turns away, his bones aching with loneliness. Karen doesn’t look at him like he’s crazy when he tells her the truth as best he can understand it, and they each love Matt enough to understand what it means to lose him—and the world makes sense like it hasn’t in a long, long time.
Foggy drifts off to sleep without a single thought about Matt.
Waking up from that one is like a knife to the gut, summer sun streaming through the windows of his apartment, empty except for him, and he knows, he knows, Matt’s dead all over again.
Foggy sits in his living room and cries for the first time since before he stopped counting, cries so hard he stops breathing, chokes on the hopelessness and frustration of knowing that nothing ever changes.
Foggy cries until Matt comes looking for him, climbs through Foggy’s kitchen window even though it’s the middle of the goddamn day, confused and unsettled because Foggy left him waiting, never met him on the street corner like he always does this first morning. “You weren’t answering your phone.” Matt says, voice small, smaller than Matt ever sounds today.
Foggy can’t catch enough breath to actually explain to Matt what’s gone wrong. Fuck he doesn’t know where to start.
(He tried, a few times, in the beginning. Matt usually didn’t believe him. For a man who got super senses from having chemical waste spilled into his eyes and regularly fights off undead ninjas, he’s surprisingly skeptical about Foggy’s groundhog day experiences. They usually argue, Matt accusing Foggy of grasping for a way to keep Matt from doing what he needs to do to keep the city safe. Foggy stopped trying once he figured out that Matt dies all the same. Even now, stuck on repeat, Foggy can’t stand when their last conversation is an argument.)
Matt sits at Foggy’s side on the couch and Foggy reaches out to touch him, curls his hands into Matt’s sweat-damp shirt, already wrinkled from whatever acrobatics Matt performed scaling the side of Foggy’s building.
“It’s okay.” Matt says, because the worst lies Matt tells are the ones he doesn’t know he’s telling. “It’s alright.” He touches his hand to Foggy’s fevered face, the gesture so unfamiliar to Foggy now that its almost enough to startle him into stillness. Matt’s thumb wipes at the damp skin under Foggy’s left eye, follows the mess of salt water down to the corner of Foggy’s mouth. “Just breathe, Fog.” Matt says, like he used to when they were in school, and Foggy used to marvel at Matt’s ability to know when he was panicking and flipping out, and even now that he knows about heartbeats and super-senses, Foggy still quietly marvels at how careful Matt can be.
“I love you.” Foggy chokes because he never said it enough, before, or after, never says it enough and maybe, maybe, if he does Matt will understand, Matt will understand why its important for him to not get himself fucking killed.
Matt’s face wrinkles, brow creased, eyebrows furrowing towards the center of his face, glasses sliding just a little down his nose. There’s a sheen of oil and sweat building there already. “I love you too.” He answers, half-dazed, and Foggy shakes, holds on to Matt tight and wonders what will happen if they never leave this apartment again. Whether Matt will live if they just stay right here. Together.
“Remember that okay.” Foggy begs, and Matt nods, but Matt never remembers, not once, not even a little. His slate gets wiped clean each and every time they reset and Foggy doesn’t know if it’s meant as a mercy or a cheap trick. It feels like a punishment now, to watch Matt make the same mistakes over and over again.
-
Foggy gets shot. Foggy almost always gets shot. The repetitions where he actively tries to avoid getting shot usually end worse than the ones where he does and nowadays the snap of the bullet through the window is almost a relief, the pain slicing deep before the adrenaline blots it out. Glass grinds into his scalp when he falls to the floor and he looks over, breathing hard, at Matt covering Karen as best he can, before the he figures out the shooter’s gone and then he’s scrambling over to Foggy, pressing his hands against his shoulder to try and stop the bleeding.
Foggy wonders what would happen if the next time—there’ll be next time, he knows there will be, because Matt dies, that’s what Matt does, he dies and Foggy can’t save him—Foggy wonders what would happen if he sought the bullet out instead, if he leaned a little to the left and took the bullet a little closer to his heart, if it tore through his chest or sank into his throat.
Matt always dies but Foggy wonders what would happen if he died first instead. “You’re not going to die, Foggy.” Karen breathes, crawling over the glass towards them, and Foggy blinks, grunts when Matt presses his hands down harder. Usually Karen goes to the door and screams for someone to get help but not today, today she kneels by Foggy’s head and strokes his hair back from his sweaty face and Matt’s hands shake.
“This is new.” Foggy hisses. It still sucks.
-
Once, just once, they get Frank Castle free. Elektra doesn’t threaten their witness and no one gets kidnapped. Nelson and Murdock stays open and they tell Karen together about Matt’s extracurricular activities. They don’t break up.
Matt dies alone in his apartment in the middle of the night during a freak earthquake that shakes a shelf loose.
Who’d have fucking thought.
-
This is how The First Morning goes: Foggy wakes up in his bed, in his tiny apartment, and on the bathroom door his pink shirt is hanging, ironed and waiting for him to put it on. On his phone there’s an alarm set to go off in fifteen minutes so he can call Matt to make sure he’s—alive—awake. There’s sweat on his temples and his hair is already frizzy from the humidity of New York City in July.
That never changes.
This does: Foggy leans forward and presses his lips to the stubbled corner of Matt's lips.
Matt goes so still that Foggy sort of expects him to crack in two.
“What was that for?” Matt asks, brow creased and mouth red, color rising in his sweat-sheened face. A fellow pedestrian walks around them and elbows Foggy’s bag off his shoulder. “I wanted to try something different.” Foggy says, at a loss, and in his head he can still hear the newscaster’s breaking the top story of the night, Daredevil spotted falling off a rooftop, found dead at the scene.
Matt’s mouth twitches into a grin, bemused and soft. “Uh. Okay.” He scratches at the back of his neck. “Good morning to you too.” His smile widens, Matt’s early good mood still evident in the laugh lines that spring forward, the lightness of fingers when he takes Foggy’s elbow again. “C’mon Mr Nelson, time waits for no man.”
(Later, in a dingy courthouse bathroom, in the middle of a conversation that still ripples with anger and disappointment—fuck that doesn’t change—Matt grabs the front of Foggy’s jacket and drags him close, slams their mouths together. It’s less a kiss than a challenge and Foggy twists his fingers into Matt’s shoulders and holds him in place, wants Matt to understand everything he has to lose.)
-
“I’m tired of losing you.” Foggy says and this time Matt doesn’t smirk, cocky, warm, and sure. The sun beams down on them and a busy pedestrian elbows pass Foggy, impatient. Sweat beads at Matt’s temples, his nose starting to go a little red under the bridge of his glasses. Under the stark sunlight Matt’s mouth moves, flickers into something that isn't a smile, it’s smaller, sadder. Maybe this time he knows, Foggy thinks, holds on to the thought for the span of a single heartbeat and then lets it go because Matt never does.
“You haven’t lost me.” Matt says, like he wants it to be true, fingers squeezing around Foggy's arm. Sweat prickles down Foggy's back. Like clockwork, blood collects on the back of Matt's neck. Foggy wipes it away.
"Not yet." Foggy answers, watches the confusion flinch across Matt's face.
-
The morning after Foggy sticks the suit in an unmarked duffle bag and smuggles it into a police precinct he wakes up to Karen puttering in his kitchen.
She looks terrible, face pale and eyes red, hair falling out of her hair tie. She slept in the same clothes she was wearing at the precinct and all of her looks rumpled, creased, shrunken like a wool sweater tossed carelessly into a dryer.
Outside the window the sky is a dreary pale grey-blue, winter still whittling its way through the city, and Foggy’s phone screen glares out a series of reminders, meetings with Harlem PD.
Matt’s name is lodged in his throat, windpipe spasming around the shape of it, and Foggy already knows it’ll go unanswered if he says it out loud. Karen eyes him with watery blue eyes, and they stare at each other for a long second, caught in incredulous silence.
Because Matt is gone. Gone just like Foggy knew he would be, but he’d wanted to believe he could change. He’d raked his mind for the one thing he’d never done, not once, had gone up to Matt and put that fucking suit in Matt’s hands and actually thought it would be enough to make a difference. And it had, in a terrible way, it had. Just not for Matt. Foggy’s heart clamps down hard behind his ribs, contracts like it’s trying to make itself small but the pain stays the same. Even now, after all this time, it hasn't changed. Foggy closes his eyes.
He wonders, if he keeps his eyes closed long enough, if he can have another chance. Just one more.