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farfromstrange · 2 months ago

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Do No Harm

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: (Not) A Greater Woman

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Summary: Your tendency to self-destruct tears down everything in your path, even your best friend. Though it is Claire's secrets, in the end, that have you fearing for your life.

Warnings for this chapter: ANGST, Heavy on the angst (18+), alcohol abuse (and everything that comes with it), mentions of alcoholism, mentions of child and domestic abuse, mentions of suicide, bad coping mechanisms, Reader is being unfair, needles, mentions of drugs, self-destructive behavior, violence, faint allusions to sexual assault

Word Count: 3.4k

A/n: ...and ending on a cliffhanger. Classic. I purposefully wanted a lot of raw dialogue. I wanted Liv to say things she doesn't mean because she has problems and she needs help. I wanted Claire to be on her last straw because mental illness is hard on everyone involved, just to different degrees. Mental illness does funny things to people, after all. Please, heed the warnings.

Read Chapter 15: (Not) A Greater Woman here on AO3!

In your dream, far beyond the never-ending void of darkness, there is a little girl. She’s running around a field of bright white daisies, carefully picking those she deems pretty enough to be made into a flower crown. The sun is shining down from above, and it’s so peaceful there, far away from the bustling of the city.

A woman calls from somewhere north. The little girl turns toward the distinctive sound, waving her daisy-filled hands. “Daisies, mommy!” she says, unstable on her little toddler legs.

The woman chuckles. “I can see that, darling. You want to come over here for a second? I have to reapply your sunscreen.”

Such a beautiful summer day, you think to yourself as you feel the breeze against your skin. The little girl doesn’t protest. She takes the daisies and runs up the hill to her mother.

They are the spitting image of each other—matching braids, matching overalls, and matching smiles. At what point in life does the candle blow out, and children who once believed in all the good in the world turn into cynical adults? At what point in life does the magic end?

When the woman calls out this time, the name she utters sends a shiver down your spine. You look around yourself, but there is no one but you, the little girl, and her mother, and neither of them seems aware of your presence in the vast field of daisies.

The realization slowly dawns on you that the girl with stars in her eyes isn’t just any little girl finding solace in nature, she is you.

Within seconds, the daisies turn to dust. You look down, expecting to see a sliver of green, but you find yourself standing in a pile of ashes instead. First, it is ashes, then it is grass again, and then, you’re standing before a marble gravestone in a crowded cemetery in the suburbs of San Francisco.

That is why you hate summers; one second, you’re happy, and the next, the person you love most is ripped from your bare hands.

When you think about your mother, you only remember the good days. Though somewhere in the faint distance of your mind, tucked away in a neat box that you once locked and threw away the key, are pictures of her crying. Pictures of her lying in bed for days as your father tried to coax her to at least eat something.

You remember the times she used to yell at him, completely apathetic, and you had to watch from your doorway down the hall as she bullied him away. You doubt he ever noticed you there. In reality, your mother had more bad days than good. The tumor was growing uncontrollably inside of her, but every time he took her to the doctor, they sent her home with another psychiatric diagnosis.

You were only a child, a toddler, you didn’t know any better. You only wanted your mother. But you lost her, and shortly after, you lost your father to the impossible power of drugs and alcohol.

You swore yourself you would never turn into him. After years of taking care of him, you swore to yourself you would never touch a bottle of liquor. You would never make the same mistakes he did.

Until one day, you did.

No matter what you do, you might never outrun the cycle of self-destruction you were born into.

Your eyes flutter against the iron curtain keeping them shut. You’re trying to fight your way out of this godforsaken nightmare, but someone seems to be holding a sledgehammer to your head. Thud, thud, thud. It’s hollow, at first, then quickly turns sharper.

“Liv,” a faint voice breaks through the cotton in your ears. “Liv, hey! Can you hear me?” she asks.

The world is too bright when you finally open your eyes. With the pounding headaches comes a wave of toe-curling nausea, and before you know it, you’re hunched over the edge of Claire’s couch, reality crashing into you like a tidal wave, and you’re motioning for something, anything, to empty your guts into.

Just in time, she puts a bowl in your hand. A mix of alcohol and pure stomach acid burns its way through your esophagus, traveling from your stomach out through your mouth.

If only the memories were erased, the physical pain would be much easier to bear. You can still see them, clear as day in your mind. Matt, the empty restaurant table, and the bottle of vodka you drowned in—it’s all coming back to you now. One would think that drinking yourself into oblivion would work like a wet towel on a dirty whiteboard, but the brain can be powerful in upholding the clarity of painful memories. Once again, you have fallen victim to your psyche. You destroyed your body again, and again, it was for nothing at all.

“Easy.” Claire wraps a hand around your hair. “You’re gonna rip out your IV.”

You catch a glimpse of the tube sticking out of your arm, attached to the bag of yellow propped up on the backrest.

“What?” you pant.

It doesn’t make sense to you. None of this makes sense. She is coddling you like one of her patients. After what you did, you hardly deserve it. The things you said to her seem so cruel now in retrospect, but you were drunk and angry, and you didn’t know how to listen. You didn’t want to listen. So, you picked a fight because that is what you do best—pushing the people you love away.

“It’s a banana bag,” Claire states. “Don’t ask.”

“Well, I am asking.”

“Perks of a nurse’s apartment. Free drugs.”

“Criminal,” you mutter.

“Anger issues,” she retorts. “Somebody’s gotta make sure your ass doesn’t die from alcohol poisoning, so…”

Nerves do funny things to people. Some start pacing, others try to breathe, and Claire hovers. It is her job to do so. To be there. To take care of others. And she is the first to try and save something that seems beyond repair. To her, nothing ever really is.

She reaches for her medical bag. “Here,” she says, handing you a wrapped aspirin. “This should help with the hangover.”

You ignore her. “What time is it?”

“Little after five.”

“In the morning?”

“In the evening. You were out for over twelve hours.”

“Fuck!” You try to sit up without ripping the needle out of your arm, but even the slightest movement turns your stomach around.

The next curse comes with a gush of stomach acid. Your muscles contract, and you empty your guts into the bowl.

Claire growls, “Stop moving.”

“No. I need to–” You retch. “Uh, I need to be at work in a few hours. I need to… go home.”

You convince yourself that if you breathe through your nose, you won’t vomit. You won’t pass out. The pain won’t consume you whole. You reach for the aspirin, after all, to at least try to numb what you destroyed.

“You still have alcohol in your blood.” She stops you. “You can’t operate like this.”

You push the bowl aside. “I have patients, Claire,” you say. “I need to check on them. If I don’t, I’ll get fired. People could die.”

“Are you really that irresponsible?”

“I’m not drunk anymore.”

“Oh, yeah?” She reaches for the breathalyzer, wherever she got that from. “Blow into this,” she says, “and we’ll talk.”

You grind your teeth. Your eyes flicker between the device and her face. She looks smug—so fucking smug. You push it away from your mouth; you’re going to fail, anyway. Setting foot in the hospital would be gross medical negligence, and you refuse to be that person.

Claire nods. “Thank you. You’re gonna call in sick to work, and I will make sure you’re sober enough by tomorrow for your next shift.”

“Is that all you’re gonna do?” you counter.

A pause, and then, “I’ll come back when the time’s right,” she says.

You want to ask, what if the time is never right? But the tension wraps around your neck like a noose, and you find yourself suddenly unable to talk.

Life as you know it is over, you have to face that. Things will never be the same again. Claire might never be the same again. As much as it hurts, the cycle of life always finds ways to fuck you over, and you just have to accept that.

You watch as Claire busies her hands, as she keeps hovering, and the words she said last night before you passed out come back to mind. Do you want to turn into your father? You could get nauseous again just thinking about it. “What you said last night,” you begin, “about me turning into my father…”

She stops rearranging the furniture, but she doesn’t turn around to you. “You want me to say I didn’t mean it?” she asks.

“I want you to tell me the truth,” you say.

“The truth?”

“Yeah.” You sit up straighter, holding onto the needle in your arm. “Do you really think I’m like him?” A grunt slips past your lips. “I mean, is that how low you think of me?”

Claire scoffs. Her eyes slip from you to her hands in her lap. “I asked if you wanted to turn into him, I didn’t say you already were. ‘Cause even if that’s not the case, you’re on the best path to doing so anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Seriously?” She gets up, towering over you, and you have no choice but to let her; you don’t have the energy to fight back. “All the drinking, picking fights, and feeling sorry for yourself? That’s not an indication?”

“I have bad coping mechanisms, yes, but that doesn’t mean–” but you get interrupted.

“Bad coping mechanisms,” Claire snickers. “Right.”

“I’m not like him and you know it,” you say. “You know I’d rather die than be like him.”

“If you keep going like this, you will die.”

Your eyes roll back into your head. “I had a few drinks. I didn’t snort a line of coke and started beating the person I was supposed to protect senseless. You know why?” You raise your voice high enough for it to crack. “‘Cause I’m not like my father!”

The sound travels back to your ears, and you flinch at the shrillness of it all. You swore years ago that, no matter how miserable you get, you would never let the pain get the better of you. You’re still functioning. You are not like your father because you’re still functioning. Or are you, after all, just lying to yourself?

Your life has been a burning trash pile for so long that you forgot what normal even is, but maybe you are the reason it hasn’t stopped burning yet. Maybe it isn’t the trauma or the fact that Matt stood you up but you are the one pouring gasoline into the fire.

You’re not functioning, but you can’t possibly admit it.

“You’re using alcohol to escape,” Claire says. “You know who does that? Alcoholics. You’re an alcoholic.”

“I am not an alcoholic!” you snap.

Your mind is a continuous loop of, take it back, take it back, take it back. You just want her to take it back.

Instead, she throws her arms up in the air. “My point is that you can’t keep going like this. You can’t drink yourself into a coma at every minor inconvenience. You’re gonna end up dead in a ditch one day, and I won’t be there to bail you out.”

You manage to pull yourself together enough to rise from the couch. “I don’t need you to bail me out! I don’t need you to do anything,” you tell her, so sure of yourself.

“You’re my best friend, for fuck’s sake! I’m here. I’ll always be here,” she says, “but I can’t help you if you keep destroying yourself just because you think nothing fucking matters anymore!”

“I’m not some broken thing you need to fix, Claire! It is my life! Mine!”

“You know what? You’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t stop you from killing yourself.”

You shake your head. “I managed to survive before I met you, and I can do it again.”

You try to tell yourself that she isn’t the reason you’re still alive. You try to tell yourself that she is just another person in your life and that you will survive if you lose her. Life would be easier if she wasn’t who she is.

Upon your words, Claire doesn’t move a muscle. “Okay,” she says. “Fine.”

Infuriating.

“God, I wish I’d never met you!”

In the fallout of your outburst, there is quiet. The words seep into her skin like radioactive material. You watch as it poisons her, as it poisons every good memory you made together over the past two years as though it never meant a thing.

You can’t believe you said that.

“Well,” Claire finds her voice again after seconds stretched into hours, “that makes two of us. But you know what? I won’t stand in your way. I’m done.”

The words die on your tongue.

“I’m gonna take a walk, and when I come back,” she says, “I want you gone.”

“Claire–” you start.

You have never seen her so distant, so beside herself. She reaches for her coat on the rack. “You know how to remove an IV, don’t you?”

“You think that’s gonna hurt me?” you try to engage her one last time, waiting for a reaction, anything to tell you that she isn’t going to walk out on you.

That she isn’t about to abandon you.

That you didn’t just ruin the one good thing in your life by not knowing how to keep your mouth shut.

Because you were so angry at yourself you took it out on her like a fucking sociopath.

“No,” Claire chuckles, breathless to no end, “you don’t need me for that. You never did.”

The door falls shut behind her.

For a moment, you think it’s a bad joke and that she will turn around and come back, but one minute turns to two, and the door remains closed. You are left alone in a strange apartment with a strange cat, trapped in a grave you dug for yourself.

A greater woman would run after her. A greater woman would apologize and beg her to come back. A greater woman would not be a coward when faced with the reality of having pushed her best friend away—because she has no one else. You have no one else. But you’re not a greater woman. You claim to be; you want to be, but you are far too screwed up for that.

You press a finger just above the needle, slowly pulling it out of your arm. The sting is unlike the thousand cuts every one of your breaths is marinating with salt. An inferno has taken over your body, but you have no more fight left in you.

You are done.

You ignore the blood spurting from the superficial wound, reaching for your coat instead. Your steps are far from straight, your vision is blurry and you don’t have any money, but you would be damned if you stayed.

Just as you’re about to drag your sorry ass to the exit, the door rattles. It’s subtle, but it’s there, followed by the relentless drag of steel boots along the hallway outside.

The uncoordinated turning of the knob stops you in your tracks.

Claire has a key.

The woman who lives here has a key, and she is still with her ill brother.

You are either having hallucinations, finally losing your mind or someone is trying to get into the apartment—and it isn’t Claire.

You back away, step after step toward the window. As if you could survive a jump from this height. As if you have the guts to jump.

That rattling is so familiar—too familiar.

Someone kicks at the fragile wood, and your heart drops to your stomach, dissolving in the acid. Voices start to overlap in a language you don’t understand. You have nowhere to run.

The irony of it all almost makes you laugh. You pushed Claire out of the apartment she’s staying in; you pushed her out of your life, and now someone is trying to break in with you inside. It seems like karma of the highest order.

Your mouth opens in a gasp as the door flies off its hinges, and you come face to face with two men. Strangers covered in scars.

You don’t scream.

You don’t run.

They certainly expect a reaction out of you, shouting orders in Russian to each other to surround you, but you are tethered to the ground by the roots of an invisible tree. Your blood runs cold, clogging the arteries leading to your heart, but you still can’t run.

Pointless is the only word that comes to mind. Fighting back is pointless. You want to curl up and die. To let natural selection take its pick. You can’t say you don’t deserve it because that would be the biggest lie of all.

Their grabby hands reach for you. “Take it,” John’s voice pipes up in the back of your head. “Take. It!” And if it were him, you would run.

God knows what they want to do to you. They have the same evil in their eyes as he had. A million worst-case scenarios cross your mind, all worse than the mercy of death, and your muscles thaw. A switch is flicked. You break out of the ice, sprinting around the coffee table to get toward the door just when they think they can get to you. Russian obscenities fall from their lips, and you swear you can make out the name, “Claire,” along the lines.

They will not get her, and if they get you, at least they won’t have her.

You should have listened when she said there are some things she just can’t tell you. You had no right to be mad. What has she gotten herself into? What has she been suffering through without you?

She always had to bail you out. Even when you thought she chose herself, she was still choosing to protect you. What a fucking fool you are.

You catch the eyes of a boy, a teenager, on your way to freedom, the two men shouting behind you, and his broken brown eyes break your heart like a porcelain vase. He looks so guilty, so shocked to see you there, and it only takes you a moment to recognize him.

He’s bleeding.

“Not Claire,” he chokes out in his broken Spanish accent, even after you shake your head and scream for him to run, but it’s too late.

They don’t care that you’re not her. They grab you, and you scream again as they tear you to the ground. You barely feel the blood pooling under your nails, dragging along the splintering floorboards. Adrenaline forces your body to fight back, to kick, and to cry out for help, but like all those years ago, no one hears you.

One of the men grabs your hair and forces your head into the wood. Your temple splits open under the sheer force, blood splattering everywhere. For a moment, you only hear your heart racing in your ears. You can taste it on your tongue. The lights blind you, and they are whiter than they used to be.

You’re painfully aware of the hands dragging your limp body toward the door. T copper and dirt in your nostrils are a toxic combination of scents that remind you of death, and you might just die tonight. Physically and emotionally, you might die.

You’ve been begging for death to come and get you, but now that he is knocking on your door, you don’t want him anymore. Not like this. Not after everything you survived to get here. This is not how you want to go out.

“Help,” your lips form the word as an incoherent whisper. “Help, please…”

It’s too late. Consciousness slips through your fingers, and darkness overcomes you like a total solar eclipse. Though unlike before, you are not floating. You are not at peace. There are no daisy fields or graveyards.

This new darkness is empty, vile, and eerily familiar, too. When you finally succumb to it, thoughtless existence is all that is waiting for you on the other side—or perhaps, purgatory.

Tag List: @shiorimakibawrites @allllium @siampie @auroraslibrary @roseallisonparker @abucketofweird @capylore @kniselle @sumo-b98 @peachstarliight @thatonegamefish @danzer8705 @kakamixo @littlehappyperson @atemydadforbreakfast @stevenknightmarc @zheezs14 @shouldbestudying41 @kiwwia-wiwwia @writtenbyred @echo-ethe @kezibear @peterbarnes @littleagxs @silas-aeiou @scoliobean

#matt murdock #matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x fem!reader #daredevil #daredevil x reader #matt murdock angst #do no harm #charlie cox

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farfromstrange · 1 month ago

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Do No Harm

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Thirty Minutes

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Summary: After the Russians came to take you, Claire discovers the chaos in her apartment, and she has a call to make. There is only one person she can think of who can fix this--Matt.

Warnings for this chapter: ANGST, violence, mentions of alcohol and blood, S1 plot, self-loathing, religious imagery, mentions of alcoholism

Word Count: 4k

A/n: This is the kind of chapter that took me so long to write because it's necessary for the rest of the story but I really just want to write the following scenes. But alas, I got it done. I only had the dialogue to begin with, and I tried to do the characters justice.

Read Chapter 16: Thirty Minutes here on AO3!

A lot can happen in thirty minutes.

In thirty minutes, over 8000 babies are born.

In thirty minutes, over 3000 people die.

A lot can happen in thirty minutes and most of the time, it does.

In thirty minutes, lives are lived, lives are lost, and lives are given, and the world keeps turning, but it doesn’t necessarily have to take thirty minutes for a life to drastically change. All it takes is a second for the world to stop turning, and a life to be destroyed.

Claire left the apartment for thirty minutes. She took a walk around the block, her mind reeling with the weight of your argument. It would be a lie if she claimed that it didn’t hurt, that she didn’t consider not walking out because people have continuously hurt you all your life, and that is not your fault.

You don’t know what’s good for you. You don’t know what it’s like to be loved unconditionally. You are not to blame for the people who abused you. Claire knows how fragile you are. Trauma like the one you endured is not something that goes away easily, but there is only so much abuse she can take. There is only so much she can do to try and help you.

Sometimes, to help the person you care most about, you have to walk out on them; you have to leave them to their own devices, give them space and time, and hope they realize that they need help. But she can’t help but think that the reason you are so miserable now is her fault.

Claire told Matt to stay away from you. She told him that he is far too dangerous for you. You barely knew him, so she figured it wouldn’t hurt too much. A little bit of pain is better than death, she thought. In the end, though, she only made you face your trauma all over again because, against all odds, he actually did what she told him to. She didn’t think it was that serious until you stood on her doorstep last night, and she feels guilty—she feels so guilty she could throw up on the street.

Matt is a good guy, but he is a mess. You need someone put together enough to deal with your mess. He isn’t the right person for you and yet, the times you talked about him you sounded the happiest you had in years. He made you happy. She is the reason that happiness is gone now, and you turned to the bottle—again.

Thirty minutes.

It feels like an eternity has passed when Claire drags her feet up the stairs. She promised the beaten-up man in the mask she dug out of the dumpers that she wouldn’t leave the apartment. She wouldn’t leave until he solved the problem with the Russians. Until she was safe.

It was only supposed to be a few days of hiding out, but she lost more in a few days than she gained in two years. She is utterly exhausted. Lying is exhausting. All she ever wanted was to keep you safe, and you still got hurt. If she is destined to fail, what is she even trying for?

Thirty minutes, that’s how long she was gone. As she enters the building, the air feels different. A shiver runs down her spine, curling in her stomach like a black cloud of doom.

Claire takes a tentative step forward. The floorboards creak. It is almost as loud as the faint sobbing streaking out into the hall through the gap in her door.

There are claw marks on the floor. They’re faint, but they’re there—gashes left by a set of sharp nails that weren’t there before. And there’s blood, a trail of blood leading from the door into the apartment, and her heart drops into her stomach.

She pushes the door open. “Liv?” she asks. No answer. “I swear, if this is your way of getting back at me… this is not–” the ‘funny’ dies on her tongue when her eyes fall on the destruction left behind, the open window and—

Santino is cowering against the wall, beaten up and bleeding, staring back at her like a deer caught in headlights. The bottle of bourbon she bought at the liquor store downstairs falls out of her hand and shatters, mingling with the traces of blood. Your blood.

“Lo siento,” the boy cries. I’m sorry.

He tells her he couldn’t stop them. He tells her that he told them where she’s staying, and they took her—you. They took you. Two strange men took you when it should have been her, and it is then she starts to feel her heart bleeding into her chest.

Santino’s just a child, she thinks. He’s a child who got dragged into a mess much bigger than him, and it’s her fault.

It’s all her fault.

Last night, Matt learned what it sounds like when your heart breaks.

He listened as it sped up over the dishes clattering in the restaurant. First, it was nerves that had your body shaking against your will. But nerves turned into worry turned into fear, your heart relentlessly hammering against your ribcage. It was hurting you. Every beat brought you closer to the inevitable truth your mind refused to acknowledge.

Until your heart began to pump the blood a little slower.

Until the clock turned minutes into hours, and you’d downed your fourth glass of wine.

You kept a faith you claimed you never really had until time ran out, and you realized that he wasn’t coming. Fear turned into utter disappointment, and your heart cracked. It cracked, and then it broke, shattering like a wine glass on a white cloth.

When he first met you, you were crying over losing a patient—a child. You seemed particularly vulnerable to him, almost broken, in a way, but he also knew that it takes a special kind of strength and resilience to do what you dedicated your life to.

You confided in him. You had your heart broken by the people who were supposed to protect you most in this world. You could relate to what he went through, and yet when Claire said that he would only ever hurt you, that you deserve better—so much better—Matt didn’t hesitate to prove her right. In vowing to stay away from you, he did the very thing he was trying to avoid. But at what cost?

God and the Devil are laughing at him. He can kneel on the cold wooden benches that line Clinton Church and pray for His forgiveness; he can confess his sins to Father Lantom as if he’s writing a book about them, and try to repent, but every time he puts on that mask, he is giving away pieces of himself. He sacrifices his happiness for the greater good of the city he loves and for justice, and he lies to the people he loves. He lies, and he ultimately ends up pushing them away.

Matt sabotages himself over and over again. He pushed you away. He broke off something that was not quite a thing yet, but it could have been; it could have been so beautiful. He ruined it, again.

He hasn’t slept since.

When it’s not you, it’s him: Wilson Fisk. The name runs in circles around his mind. It is a whirlwind tornado he cannot seem to stop. He knew something was off when this nameless stranger came to Nelson & Murdock to hire them to defend an obvious murderer. A juror being paid off, the hung jury—it all seemed like an intricate game orchestrated by a third party to assess them.

He tried to keep his work separate from the man he becomes at night. Maybe it was Karen that put them on the radar, or maybe it’s simply because every bad thing in Hell’s Kitchen seems to be connected somehow, and he has put himself in the middle of it. He saved Karen and protected her from a worse fate, but unless he finds a way to stop the boulder from running down the hill toward them, his friends will always be in danger. He attracts it like a fucking magnet.

Healy impaled himself because he pushed for a name. He caught him, and his curiosity killed the cat. Wilson Fisk. He has never heard of him before. No one has. But if he is the reason for everything that has gone wrong, he needs to find him and he needs to stop him.

Matt doubts he would have a chance with you if he came running back. When he can make sure that you are safe, maybe he can crawl on his knees back to you and beg for your forgiveness, but rationally he knows he doesn’t stand a chance.

He hurt you. He broke your heart. He tore through the already friable tissue, and he ruined something that could have been so good for him—for both of you.

No amount of praying can fix that.

His mind is elsewhere as he and Foggy step out of the precinct into the cool night air.

“My mom wanted me to be a butcher, you know that?” Foggy says.

Matt sighs, tapping his cane along the sidewalk. “Oh, not the butcher story.”

“I said, ‘No, Mom, I want to be a lawyer.’” A pause. “I don’t remember what I said next.”

“No, you never do,” he says.

Foggy doesn’t take note of his snark comment. “But I’m fairly certain it wasn’t about bailing out a piss-drunk electrician who nearly burned his house down.” He looks across the street, tugging his friend’s arm in the process. “Let’s cross.”

Matt knows very well where the street is and where the cars are coming from, but he follows his lead without using much of his senses; he trusts him.

“Ed’s wife left him, Foggy. It was an accident.” His nails dig into his jacket. “Admittedly involving cigarettes and gasoline, but still.”

He had to do some good tonight. He had to make sure at least one broken heart wouldn’t crash and burn. And it’s work. Getting a friend out of a misdemeanor might not be what Foggy signed up for, but it is work they would otherwise not have. After what happened at Healy’s trial, it’s been piles of paperwork and unpaid bills, and Matt really couldn’t stand another second of running his fingers over pages of Braille.

They cross the street under Foggy’s observant eye. “I could be carving my own corn beef. Making my own pickles. Having a little shop of my own…” he trails off.

“You got your own office,” Matt murmurs.

“We have office space,” Foggy corrects. “An actual office would involve plantery and equipment. Fax machines or whatever successful people use.”

He chuckles. “I don’t think they use fax machines anymore.”

“How would I know? Which is endemic to the problem.”

They stop. Matt can feel his eyes boring into his skull, smell his sandalwood cologne and the deli sandwich he had for lunch, the one with the onions and extra pickles.

“Matt,” Foggy asks, “what if we’re doing this all wrong?” There is a certain uncertainty in his voice. “What if Landman and Zack was the way to go?”

Fear. Worry. Concern. It all plays together.

“You hated interning there,” says Matt.

Foggy shrugs, approaching the street to hail a cab. “I hate being broke.”

If his life weren’t so complicated, he would try harder to give his friend what motivated him to agree to his ballsy idea to start this firm in the first place. Matt knows Foggy has sacrificed a lot for him, sacrifices he surely did not deserve for keeping him in the dark, but when it comes to Foggy, the fear of losing him, of him running away, paralyzes him.

“You think Landman and Zack would’ve helped out Ed?” he asks.

“No. But they had free bagels every morning, and they had furniture that didn’t smell like a pack of cigarettes. And elevators… God, I miss the elevators.”

“We’re doing good here, Foggy.”

He turns around. “Are we?”

“Yeah,” Matt nods, “we’re making a difference.”

A cab pulls up to the curb just as his phone starts to ring in his breast pocket. Not the one he always uses. The ringing is new, not yet very familiar, but he recognizes it almost instantly.

“You have a new phone?” Foggy asks. “We can afford that?”

Matt pulls out the burner phone he bought just a few days ago. There is only one person it could be, only one person who has this number. He flips it open. “Hey, one sec,” he answers, moving away from the speaker to address his friend once more. “Foggy, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He holds open the door to the cab, eyes roaming over Matt’s figure. “It’s a girl, isn’t it? You got a new phone just for your girls.” He slides into the backseat. “My life sucks.”

Again, he chuckles. “Get home safe.”

The motor roars and Matt listens as the yellow car drives away with Foggy inside. Once he’s sure that he is out of reach, he lifts the phone back to his ear.

“Yeah, Claire, what’s up?” he says.

She breathes shakily through the line. He can hear her heart racing at a million miles an hour, beating out of her chest like a fright train. Tears lace her voice when she finally finds it in herself to speak. “You have to come over,” she says. “Right now.”

The urgency surprises him. Not so long ago it was him uttering the same words. The wind brushes through his hair. “What happened? You okay?”

“It’s not me,” Claire whispers. “It’s–” She almost says something else. Another word. Another fact. Another name. Her lungs contract and her breathing gets just a little harder.

His veins feel as though they are about to burst. He can taste his heart on his tongue. Who, he wants to ask. Why are you calling me? But he doesn’t need to ask her to know the answer. He doesn’t need her to tell him because even from across the city, her reaction speaks louder than words.

“It’s Liv,” she chokes out, and Matt nearly drops his phone in the gutter. “Someone took her. The Russians...”

You never got involved with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. You weren’t there when he threw the fake Detective off Claire’s roof. You have no idea who he is, you only know that Matt Murdock is an asshole. He wanted to keep it that way. He stayed away to keep you safe.

They were looking for her. They were looking for Claire, and somehow, they found you.

They took you.

“Please,” she’s so close to tears that the word barely makes it out in one piece.

The phone snaps shut, wandering back into his pocket. ‘Someone took her,’ it keeps repeating on a loop. Matt folds his cane, and he takes off running. He runs faster than he ever has, not caring if someone sees him. Not caring if someone wonders why a blind man is running in the middle of the night as if he can see. Not caring if someone questions his identity.

He runs and runs and runs until his lungs are burning and his legs are hurting, and he runs even faster toward the apartment above the liquor store. Toward Claire.

He runs toward you, for if he lost you he would never be able to forgive himself.

The door to the apartment is already open when he arrives. The distinctive copper of blood hits his nose. It has seeped into the floorboards, seeped into skin. Your scent hangs heavy in the room. He can smell you on the couch cushions and the discarded needle on the living room table. It’s your blood, and hints of someone else’s. You’re everywhere yet nowhere at all, and for the first time since he met you, he can’t feel you. He can’t hear your heartbeat. He can’t make out your presence because neither are you at the hospital nor are you safely tucked away at home where you should be.

Liquor and rubbing alcohol cling to the oxygen. A broken bottle of bourbon lies shattered on the floor. You weren’t just taken; you spent the night here. Why? What on earth were you doing?

“Oh, thank God!” Claire exclaims.

“What happened?” Matt asks. His ears are ringing. “Where is she?”

She moves away from Santino who sits motionless, crying, on her sofa. He recognizes his heartbeat faintly from the night on the rooftop with Detective Foster. What a pathetic alias, he thought. But the boy they kidnapped is the reason he is even in this mess. He thought Claire would be safe. He thought he was doing the right thing.

They hurt an innocent child. They were going to hurt Claire. They hurt you; they took you, and he isn’t sure which scenario is worse. He doesn’t want to imagine.

“They found Santino, beat him, and he told them where I was,” she says, lip quivering. “Liv spent the night here. We fought, I went for a walk, and… he told them she wasn’t me, but they didn’t care. They just took her.”

He reaches for the nearest chair. “Fuck!” The wood splinters against the wall.

Claire flinches. “Matt.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be here. You weren’t–” He inhales deeply. “You weren’t supposed to go anywhere. What the hell were you thinking, Claire?”

“What was I thinking?” she bites back. “She was falling apart! That wasn’t my fault!”

Her words cut his skin with the force of a thousand blades. He’s bleeding out in an endless pool, and she goes and twists the knife one more time.

He ruffles his hair, tugging at the strands for some kind of lifeline. The ground beneath his feet has long melted away. He’s staring in the face of certain demise, but it won’t be him who dies. No, death would be too merciful. He is destined to watch everyone around him fall apart and die before the pain inevitably kills him, too.

Everything he touches turns to ashes. It rots from the inside out, and then it dies. A withering field of flowers unable to grow new seeds. A graveyard.

“I told you to stay away from her,” Claire snaps.

“I did,” Matt says. “The second you told me, I broke things off. I stood her up. I told her she deserved better. I did everything so she could make me the bad guy. She had nothing–” He gasps for air. “She had nothing to do with this.”

“You painted a fucking target on her back!”

He matches her volume, even goes above it as the echo threatens to break glass. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“No, you broke her. She almost drank herself into a coma last night because you couldn’t let her down easy. That’s why she was here. You broke her!”

“I–” It takes a long moment to register.

You almost drank yourself into a coma. You got so drunk you had to sleep on her couch, so drunk she had to hook you up to intravenous fluids, so drunk the two of you fought to the point your friendship imploded, and it was all because of him. Because he thought turning his back would make it easier for you to hate him.

He turned his back on you. Like a coward.

“I was on that rooftop with you when you put that guy into a coma, not her,” she says, spitting bitterly at his feet with tears clouding her hazel eyes. “I was the one they were looking for.”

Matt begins to pace. The weight of the guilt pressing down on him is making it hard to speak. “Are you sure it was the Russians?” he asks.

She deadpans. “Oh, I don’t know. Did you piss off anyone else?”

“No, I–”

“She wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for you!” A tear rolls down her cheek and gets caught in her necklace. “That girl has been through hell and back, and she can take one hell of a punch, but she’s barely got any fight left in her. Now, part of that’s my fault, but she doesn’t deserve to get dragged into your bullshit!”

“I know!” he cries. “Don’t act like she doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“You don’t get to say that!” Claire cuts him off. “You don’t know her! She’s dedicated her life to saving people,” she says. “She beat the odds more than once, and she should be here right now instead of me. So, I need you to get out there and beat the shit out of whoever you need to get her back. Put them in a coma. Carve their hearts out. I don’t care! I need you to fight for her because if she dies… if she dies, I will never forgive you.”

Her heartbeat remains steady throughout. Her words aren’t some overly emotional reaction to the fear of losing a friend, her best friend, but they are the blatant truth. In her heart and her soul, she knows she would never forgive him if you died, and she doesn’t care what he needs to do to get you back. If she could, she would burn the world down herself.

It’s not romantic love that drives her. She just knows you. She knows you, and she has grown to love you in a way that is hard for outsiders to comprehend—for those who don’t know you. She’s protective of you. She cares about you. She’s your person, and she is yours, even when you hate each other.

She will never stop fighting for you to the best of her abilities, but this is beyond her capabilities. Claire has no choice but to place what little faith she has left, no matter how mangled or broken, in Matt’s calloused hands. She might be furious at him, she might even want to claw his eyes out and sacrifice them to Satan, but she does know he cares. He cares more than most people. And if there is one thing the two have in common it is that they care about you. That has to be enough.

“Okay,” Matt whispers.

“Say it,” she commands.

“I’ll find her,” he says, louder this time. “I promise, I’ll find her.”

He needs to find you. He needs to tell you the truth. He needs to hold you in his arms, safe and sound, just to make sure you’re alive. He needs you to be alive. He prays you’re alive.

He is sure he’s losing his mind to the smoldering flames of fury. He can’t think, can’t hear anything over the rushing of his blood, and he can’t fucking breathe, but he has to—for you. He has to get it together for you.

So, he does. He takes a deep breath. He pulls the black suit out of the chest under the stairs in his apartment, and he stands on the rooftop until the city has gone quiet, and all that remains is you.

He is going to find you, and when he does, those who took you will have hell to pay.

#matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x fem!reader #matt murdock #matt murdock angst #daredevil #daredevil x reader #do no harm #charlie cox

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