Work Text:
It was a normal afternoon. It was a good day, actually: they’d made a breakthrough on a case, and at Foggy’s suggestion, were about to take a coffee break. It was calm, even, as Matt unfolded his cane and Karen turned off their fax machine, and then her cut-off scream broke the world in two.
It all happened so fast.
One minute Matt was looking forward to his insanely sweet latte, and the next his best friends and partners in Law were just - gone.
No heartbeats, no quiet breathing, not even the faint shuffling of one of them moving. Only the smells of Karen’s perfume and the taco Foggy had for lunch had lingered, but even those were wiped from Matt’s senses by the sudden cacophony outside the building.
Yelling - car tires shrieking on the road - a crash -
Matt’s heartbeat roared in his ears and he choked back a scream, hands shaking as he reached out desperately. Foggy had to be there - Karen - people didn’t just disappear.
A distant explosion - a closer one - so much yelling, it hurts - it hurts -
His hands went to his ears, a vain attempt to block out the noise (he didn’t even know what had happened, it’s like nothing he’s experienced before, a citywide crisis that is torture), and he doubled over, practically whimpering, begging for Foggy, for Karen -
A child crying, sobbing, thrashing against a seat belt.
Matt Murdock is a lawyer. He’s an orphan, a Catholic, a vigilante. He’s the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.
When the world falls apart, even the Devil is a hero.
He straightened up abruptly, swallowing his panic and attempting to zero in on the crying child. It was just outside the building, stuck in a car, he thought, which appeared to have crashed, somehow, without anyone in the driver's seat. In fact, the child was alone in the car, and Matt decided there was no time for his suit, no time for a mask, and he shoved his glasses firmly on his nose before hurrying towards the road.
Foggy and Karen have to be somewhere. He’ll find them. He will.
For now, he winced at the increased chaos as he stepped outside, frowned at the amount of crashes on just a few streets. People were running, hiding, a strong smell of blood, of smoke. Whatever has happened, it's big.
The car is upside down, Matt realised, and the child is still wailing. He nearly tripped, stumbling on some unidentifiable object on the pavement, ducking around what seems to be a safe but terrified pedestrian. In the back of his mind, he hoped people would be too distracted by the disaster to notice the blind man casually saving a kid.
Matt reached out a hand as he neared the car, stopping when his fingers brushed the hot, rough rubber of the tires. He felt downward, noting that the window is intact, but the side of the door is dented. The kid’s cries rang in his ears, and his head was beginning to ache, his throat stinging from the smoke and dust. The door opened, to his relief, and the child’s sobs stopped abruptly, turning into an anxious whimpering.
‘Hey,’ Matt murmured, reaching out carefully to find the kid. ‘Hey, what’s your name?’ he asked gently, fingers hovering a hair's breadth away from them.
The kid sniffled, before mumbling out something that is probably ‘Lily.’
‘You’re okay, Lily,’ he told her quietly, and it’s sort of true: he can’t smell blood on her, and since she could talk and respond to him she’s hopefully not badly injured. All the same, as he cupped his arm under her, she whined again, and he winced at the idea of jostling an injury. ‘It’s okay,’ he repeated, ‘you’re okay.’
Matt’s head pounded, and the fact of his missing best friends constantly hovered at the edge of his thoughts.
‘Hold still,’ he muttered, as he fumbled upward to find the buckle of the girl’s carseat, which is harder than he anticipated to undo with one arm supporting the kid and his senses still fighting against the unexpected barrage of information. Lily was crying again, quieter this time, but he managed to free her and lifted her free from the car.
The pedestrian is gone, he thought, as he cradles Lily in his arms. The street is busy, but not with passer-bys - people are distracted, searching, or crying, or helping others. Safer, hopefully, in terms of nobody growing suspicious of Matt Murdock’s blindness. Still, he ducked his head surreptitiously as he hurried back inside.
Lily struggled out of his arms once they’re inside, and Matt crouched down to what he thought was around her level.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked softly, attempting to narrow his focus onto the young girl. It was easier said than done, with the frantic state of the city around them, but he noted heat radiating from one of her arms, and she was still sniffling unhappily.
Where were her parents? Who was driving the car?
Matt pushed the bewildered questions to the back of his mind, with the nagging worry of Foggy, Karen, and attempted a caring smile.
‘I can help,’ he promised, ‘are you hurt?’
Lily started sobbing again, painfully loud, wet noises that stung Matt to his core. She moved, awkwardly, uncomfortably, and cried harder. She had to be hurt, that much was obvious, but Matt couldn’t tell quite where, quite how. He was much more used to recognising injuries on himself, or more distinct wounds where smells of blood and radiating heat could lead him to the spot.
Eventually, Matt shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it round the little kid’s shoulders, slipping his phone out of the pocket as he did so. Lily sat down and he thought she huddled into it, to his relief. Hopefully it would provide some form of comfort while he sorted out what to do.
Opening his phone, he ran his thumb along the apps until he heard contacts, and quickly located Claire. Hopefully the nurse would have more information on what was actually happening, and if not she could at least help the kid out.
She didn’t pick up.
That was fine. It was fine. Claire was a night shift nurse, she was probably asleep, or called out for an emergency shift with the state of what was happening outside. She was just busy.
(Karen and Foggy had disappeared. They were there, and then they weren’t.)
(Claire -)
Matt shook his head minutely, forcing the gloomy possibilities to the back of his mind. He would just have to take Lily to the hospital. Or call an ambulance? But he dismissed that possibility just as fast as he considered it, his senses were already crowded with ambulance sirens and screams. There was no need to take an ambulance when they could walk there. Not when it could help someone more injured than the kid.
He grabbed his cane from where he always left it, tucked safely by his desk.
‘I’m going to pick you up, okay?’ Matt thought Lily nodded, hearing the brushing of hair against shoulders and a mumbled yes. Thank God the kid was small enough to carry, what with the disaster seemingly still occuring outside, he didn’t want to risk her wandering off.
With Lily securely on his hip, Matt strode determinedly in the direction of Claire’s hospital, cane tapping side to side in front of him. It wasn’t far, but the streets were crowded with panicking pedestrians, injured people and various - well, he wasn’t actually sure what the miscellaneous obstacles he kept encountering were, but they were in his way. An upturned hot-dog cart was one of them, based on the smell alone.
He let his urgency carry him onward, a mask over the terror and confusion that warred in his chest.
It didn’t take more than half an hour to walk to the hospital, but Lily began fussing more on the way. Matt wasn’t too surprised, she was barely more than a toddler, and was in a frankly bizarre situation.
Once they entered the ER - not without some battling with the automatic doors that kept trying to close on Matt’s cane while he located them - he lowered the kid to the floor, where she clung to his side unhappily. It was as she tried to grab onto his trouser leg with both hands that she let out a shriek and dropped one arm back down to her side, and he realised that must be specifically where she was injured.
‘We’re going to get that fixed,’ Matt muttered, leading her carefully towards the reception area.
It was an exceptionally crowded waiting room, only confusing his already exhausted senses even more. Whatever was happening to the city, it was unprecedented.
People arguing, about what had happened, people crying, people screaming, the strong scent of blood, so much body heat it practically burnt, people claiming it was impossible for others to ‘just disappear’ -
It wasn’t just Foggy and Karen.
Matt’s chest tightened, his hand clenching around his cane handle, fingernails digging into his palm. That wasn’t possible. It didn’t make any sense, and if - if it was true, and people were disappearing, and Matt hadn’t just finally cracked and developed hallucinations or something: where were they going?
Would he ever find his best friends?
He pushed his ever-increasing concern away, as the person currently speaking to the receptionist finished up. Lily whined at his side, and he bent down to pick her up, ensuring his cane hung securely from his wrist.
‘How can I help?’ the receptionist asked, already sounding exhausted.
‘She was found in a crashed car,’ Matt tells her, dancing around the fact that he found her. A sighted person finding the kid and then letting him take her to the hospital was … hopefully more feasible. ‘No driver or parents in sight. I think she’s hurt her arm somewhere. Oh, her first name’s Lily, but that’s all I know,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Right.’ The complete lack of surprise in the receptionist’s voice was testament to how massive whatever was happening, whatever had happened to Karen and Foggy, actually was, and the weight gathering in Matt’s chest only grew heavier. ‘I’ll get a social worker to take her off your hands, and we can get her seen too.’
Lily wriggled in Matt’s arms, pressing her soggy face into his neck.
‘She’ll be … okay?’ he asked uncertainly, shoulders tensing at the thought of just leaving the little girl here. It was all too similar to being nine years old, terrified by the sudden darkness, the agonising burning of his face, the doctors that spoke about him like he wasn’t there. (But now he was older, and this kid was different, she wasn’t him, and he wasn’t back in that hospital, begging for help from a world he couldn’t see.) He steeled himself, taking a subtle deep breath, and secured his hold on Lily.
‘She’ll be fine,’ the receptionist reassured him, a warm tone only slightly marred by the echo of resignation. ‘Her arm just looks grazed. She’ll be placed with a temporary carer while we figure out who she is.’
Matt nodded silently, slipping his cane back into his hand as he made his way towards the busy waiting area again.
***
Having left the kid in the care of a social worker, Matt hovered outside the hospital, hoping to hear something - some news, some information, anything - about what had happened.
Instead he heard sobbing, arguing, shouting. He heard people begging for equally confused police officers to listen to them, heard people yelling the names of their friends or family, and heard phones ringing with no-one there to pick them up. A baby was crying in the cafe across the street, a nervous teenager trying to convince her boss that its mum had vanished in front of her eyes.
Daredevil doesn’t come out during the day.
Matt Murdock is for when the sun is up, is for working hours. The lawyer, cane in hand, doing his best to help in the legal way, the slow way. The way that deals with things after they’ve happened, that helps the victims claim something back from a shattered life. Not the way that might, just might, prevent it happening at all.
He went back to his apartment, and opened up the false-bottomed trunk.
The red leather of his suit absorbed the heat quickly, and Matt grimaced at the sweat gathering underneath his helmet. But he could hear someone calling for help in the building behind him, a girl, he thought, stuck partly transferred to her wheelchair.
Daredevil climbed out onto the roof, the sun glaring overhead, and went to help.
***
It was in between escorting a couple lost kids to the police station and calling an ambulance for a man passed out in his apartment that Matt spoke to Brett Mahoney.
‘The people I was with disappeared,’ he explained flatly, barely caring enough to deepen his voice while wearing the suit. ‘One minute they were there, the next they weren’t. Know anything?’
Mahoney’s shoulders slumped.
‘I was hoping you would,’ he admitted, and Matt’s stomach curdled at the disappointment in the sergeant’s voice. ‘We’ve been getting reports of the same thing since noon. People disintegrating into dust right in front of our eyes. I - I saw it myself.’ His voice broke, and Matt stifled a wince as he backed off.
‘I’ll let you know if I find anything out,’ he assured him, before attempting to sidle away and disappear. It probably worked less effectively in the broad light of day, but it wasn’t like he had any way of telling.
Disintegrating into dust.
He hadn’t realised, when Karen and Foggy’s heartbeats had simply vanished, that they’d - presumably - disintegrated.
Matt had, frankly, been hoping for some mysterious portal or teleportation. Abduction by aliens, maybe. Anything that gave him hope that they were still there , still alive. Still able to come back to him. Disintegration, well, it didn’t imply that. It couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be. People didn’t do that, didn’t just turn to dust, or ashes, or whatever. It wasn’t physically possible, not in a way that he wouldn’t have heard, or smelt.
Hadn’t he just been considering alien abduction with complete sincerity, though?
Daredevil ducked into the alleyway by the police station and threw up.
***
It was evening when Matt stopped to rest, sat on the roof of an apartment building with his cowl set aside as he listened. There - a television played in the flat two floors down, one person watching, their heartbeat fast and unsteady.
‘Official shield reports… half the global… unclear…’
Matt dug his nails into his palms, centering himself on the dull pain as he re-focused his senses. He was almost too exhausted from the chaos of the day to zero in on the news broadcast enough to actually process what was being reported. It was disorientating, and his stomach curdled at the thought of his potential vulnerability.
‘Half the global population wiped from existence.’
He nearly fell off the roof, stifling a panicked scream as he sat bolt upright, frozen in place.
It didn’t make any sense.
His head spun, the rest of the news broadcast fading into the constant cacophony of the city around him as he stumbled to his feet, staggering backwards. A shaking hand clawed at his chest, where lungs were collapsing in a way unrelated to his bruised ribs, and he let out a strangled yelp as he bumped unexpectedly into the building’s roof access. He hadn’t even noticed the wall behind him.
Pressing his back against the door, Matt focused unsteadily on the rough, rusted metal that stung even through the thick material of his suit. It wasn’t enough. (He wasn’t sure anything would be enough to calm him after this.)
It couldn’t be true.
It couldn’t.
He gasped uncontrollably, sinking onto the roof again, rocking against the metal door. There was - his suit was - he scrambled to feel his chest, only to realise that the damp soaking into his suit was tears, rather than blood.
Daredevil threw his head back and sobbed to the sounds of the city.
***
He wasn’t sure if he slept.
Matt was sitting on his sofa, leather sticky and unpleasant against his thighs, when his phone rang from its position on the coffee table.
‘Claire Temple. Claire Temple. Clair-’
He knocked his phone onto the floor in his haste to answer, lurching after it until he was knelt on the floor, phone in hand and chest heaving.
‘Matt?’ Claire’s voice was harsh and staticky, the first noise he’d been able to fully focus on since the news report the night before. She sounded upset but resigned, the tone heavy like she’d had a bad shift. ‘Matt!’
‘Claire - Claire?’ He mumbled, throat dry and face stiff from dried tears. ‘Claire, I’m .. I’m here.’
The relief in her response did nothing to soothe the grief that hung like a numbing fog in the air around Matt. ‘You’re okay,’ she breathed, and he didn’t correct her.
‘Matt, are Karen and Foggy-’
‘Don’t,’ he spat, with more venom than he’d meant to. ‘Don’t - just - don’t.’
(It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true, or he thought he might just stop breathing on the spot. Spontaneously combust, or something.)
Claire didn’t push it.
‘I’m sorry it took me so long to call,’ she said instead, in that gentle and soothing tone he knew she used for patients. ‘There were - I took emergency shifts at the hospital. Long night. Luke - um-’ her voice broke, and Matt inhaled sharply.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, heart sinking in the knowledge it would do nothing. Nothing could fix this now. ‘I’ll miss him.’
‘Me too,’ Claire told him, then hung up.
Matt sank back onto the floor, his phone lax in his hand. His heart pounded in his ears, far too fast, and the buzzing of the neon sign across the street drew him back to reality. Claire was fine. Claire hadn’t disappeared, her heartbeat blinking out of existence before he’d even had a chance to turn around. Not like - not like - but it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. He bit his lip, muffling his breathing before it had a chance to speed up, and dropped his phone to reach across and fumble with his watch. It read 6:24, meaning Claire had probably just finished the night shift.
He thought it was closer to three AM when he’d returned home through his skylight, shaking more than he would’ve liked to admit after calling 911 for a woman that had taken an absurd amount of sedatives. She’d stammered out that she’d watched her only child disappear in front of her eyes that morning, that her husband was serving in the Armed Forces and she had no idea of his fate, and that she couldn’t even find her dog now.
Matt had waited for the paramedics with her, had tried desperately to keep her awake, had watched wordlessly as she was swarmed by an emergency response team.
He didn’t know what had happened to her. He rarely did, in those cases.
He was fine.
It was Friday morning, and he was going to go to the office, and Karen would be there with cheap coffee and information on the case they were working on - a dad trying to claim guardianship of his daughter from her evidently neglectful mother. Matt had insisted they’d take it, despite Foggy’s repeated nudges that they weren’t really family lawyers.
Foggy.
Foggy would be there with some donut or croissant caked in that powdery sugar that stuck to the roof of Matt’s mouth for the rest of the day, bothering him whenever he spoke.
They’d both be there, and Matt would be fine, and the world would be back on track again.
Half the global population wiped from existence.
Matt swallowed roughly, locating his phone again and getting to his feet. There wasn’t time to dwell on his feelings, not now. He was only in a loose undershirt and silk boxers, the suit presumably abandoned somewhere in his apartment, and he had to decide what to do.
Work. He’d had an appointment with a potential client today, a Mrs. Watts. Unlawful dismissal. It would be an easy case… assuming she still existed.
Taking a deep breath, he tilted his head, orientating himself in the room. It was harder than it should be, his senses thrown off from the stress of the previous day, focusing too much on the quiet crying coming from a flat three floors down and the never-ending buzzing of the city’s electronics; that was something he was usually able to ignore completely.
He was by the sofa, obviously, the coffee table to his right. The sharp scent of soaps and lingering ammonia from the door even further to that direction, which was where he made his way towards, growing more confident as he affirmed that he was right and woke up enough to be fully aware of his surroundings.
Nothing ever really changed in Matt’s flat, a rule he’d had ingrained into his life by numerous OTs after losing his sight. It was so much simpler to move around with the neat predictability of organised furniture and open floors. There was only so much his heightened additional senses could do, and they took so much effort to hone in a way that truly showed off the environment that he delegated that solely for his patrols as Daredevil. If he didn’t, he was pretty sure he’d be too exhausted to even consider patrolling.
That had been one of the trickier things to get used to during college. The orphanage had been strict, bedrooms kept clean and tidy enough that he could function easily, but dorms were nowhere near as orderly.
Foggy tried, he really did, after a freshly hungover Matt had stumbled home only to trip over several piles of abandoned clothes and various junk.
Still, even with Foggy making much more of an effort to tidy up after himself, old habits die hard. Matt had entered cautiously each time he returned back to their room alone, either keeping his cane in his hand or probing ahead with one foot as he made his way towards his area of the room.
He lost count of the amount of times he’d poked a sleeping or otherwise unconscious Foggy, who seemed to be unable not to do things on the floor, despite the perfectly serviceable bed and desk right there. It was almost endearing.
Who was he kidding, it had been completely adorable.
Matt stopped outside the bathroom, leaning forward to press his head against the door with a groan. This couldn’t be happening.
It was meant to be a normal Friday.
His phone clunked awkwardly against the door as he shoved it open, dropping the mobile carelessly onto the side of the bath before bending down to splash water over his face. Maybe if he just woke himself up more, if he cleaned off the disgusting mixture of blood, dried tears and sweat that caked his cheeks, it wouldn’t be so real. Maybe he could forget what had happened yesterday.
There were more bruises than he’d thought, hot patches of sore skin on his cheekbones and chin, and a nasty scrape by his lip. He’d been off his game.
Matt didn’t realise how badly he was shaking until he reached out for the soap and lost his grip immediately, letting it slip onto the floor. It bumped unpleasantly on his ankle, the sticky dampness sending a shudder up his spine, before he simply gave up.
He rinsed off his hands, picked up his phone again and left the room.
Making his way to his bedroom, he located the discarded suit and helmet lying in front of the closet by the rancid smell of dried blood. Grimacing, he nudged it to the side to slide open the concealed closet door. The relief of fresh cotton suits, the crisp aroma of supposedly unscented fabric softener, mixed with the distinct smell of Foggy.
Matt stumbled backwards, his heart leaping into his throat, his eyes suddenly stinging with fresh tears as he veritably whimpered.
Really, he should’ve expected the reminder, considering that Foggy kept a handful of his clothes in there for whenever he stayed over. Not to mention the various comfy shirts that neither of them knew anymore who they belonged to, all so stretched and stained that it barely mattered anymore.
This knowledge did nothing to calm Matt, who clamped a hand firmly over his mouth and rubbed desperately as his face. It was a painful thing, so close to the real Foggy, so palpable and physical, right in front of him.
He could reach out and take a handful of the soft pyjama pants that his partner had worn just a week ago, when he’d curled up on Matt’s bed to wait for him to get home from patrol, but it wouldn’t be him. It wouldn’t be Foggy.
According to the news, it would never be Foggy again.
As his chest heaved in a useless, dry retching motion, Matt crouched on the floor, both hands now tight over his mouth. He could - he couldn’t - he wasn’t sure if he was breathing, the rough leather of the Daredevil suit against his calf the only thing grounding him in his bedroom as he bent over, folded into himself.
It was - it was wrong, it wasn’t - it couldn’t be - desperation surged through him, and he clawed at the floorboards, searching desperately for his phone, which he’d mislaid at some point between opening the closet and collapsing on the floor.
For a moment he found only the spandex and leather, then the smooth wooden floor, distracted by the painful gasping of his lungs. It hurt , and his stomach clenched, and his heart - his heart - there was a pounding in his ears, and maybe - maybe he was dying, maybe this new torture of No Foggy, No Karen, No anyone would be over -
Cold plastic brushed against his fingers, and Matt grabbed the phone eagerly, the panic receding slightly.
He just had to find the news.
It had to be wrong, falsely reported, some complicated other thing that was going on. Mass kidnapping, alien abduction, mysterious portal hopping - he didn’t really care. Anything that would bring his partner, his friends back.
His hands were wet with tears and spit, slimy against the phone screen, and he fumbled for a moment before giving in and speaking directly to the voice assistant.
‘Late - latest headlines.’
Half of the world’s population -
Global disaster as 50% of all living beings -
Avengers still not available for comment -
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister takes place in office after disappearance -
Influx of emergency service requirements after shocking -
Half of earth’s -
Half -
Population -
Permanent -
A guttural sob forced its way out of Matt’s throat, before he threw his phone across the room. It hit the wall to his left with a resounding crack, and the mess of noise that he’d long since stopped comprehending went silent.
He didn’t want to believe it.
He didn’t know how to.
***
It was in a numb, sleep-deprived haze that Matt had picked up his phone (damaged but functional), and forced his body into something resembling office attire. He’d barely tasted the health food bar and chalky protein shake that he’d managed to chug - all those nighttime extracurricular activities meant he had to keep his nutrition in some sort of manageable state - before he’d made it out the door and down the stairs.
He was sure that across the city, across the world, even, people would be calling out of work. It wasn’t surprising after such an unprecedented event. To tell the truth, he’d even heard people doing just that, across the street from him, a couple in the apartments below, to the side, behind. All over.
Non-essential workers, even essential ones, most likely. All taking completely understandable compassionate leave.
Matt didn’t even work for anyone. He was his own boss, he organised his own hours. He could cancel the meetings for today, he could cancel them for the next week if he wanted. Court next Thursday: probably cancelled. It was highly unlikely for everyone involved in the case to still exist, surely?
Still, he found himself halfway to the office before he even considered not going.
Surely it was obvious. People would need help. That was what he did. Even with his limbs weighted down with a heaviness he hadn’t felt since he was ten, even with his head spinning and breath hitching every time he dared think of something other than the movement of his cane in front of him.
It was only when he paused on the curb by the coffee shop that he frequented every other morning that Matt truly registered it.
His city was wrong.
The sounds had changed. The routine walk that he did nearly every day was different, too far off to just be daily irregularities: the most glaring change being the very cafe he’d stopped outside.
A cashier whose voice he recognised was serving customers, the cafe opened like usual. Outside, a dog drank thirstily from what Matt assumed was a bowl near the door, and someone was leaning against the wall. What threw him off, though, was the distinct lack of things he was used to, recurring customers and details that he took note of - however subconsciously - nearly every morning.
The cat that lived in the cafe had to be gone. Despite the lingering scent of cat food and dusty fur, he couldn’t hear her purring, or the scratchy sound of her rubbing up against some curious customer.
There was no sign of the old man who always, without fail, sat at the table closest to the door. Matt recognised his heartbeat, now, after months of walking past it each morning, and it wasn’t even in the vicinity of the place. Instead, a new pair of two-fast heartbeats were situated in the window seats. A young couple talking in hushed, despairing voices.
So many voices met his ears with the same hopeless notes, crushing any lingering doubt that Matt had tried and failed to cling to on his way down to his office.
‘Can I help you cross, young man?’
He’d been standing there too long, he realised, as someone put their hand on his arm.
Tightening his grip on his cane, Matt froze, forcing himself not to flinch away. It was fine. He was fine. This happened regularly, he was meant to be used to it. Used to strangers seeing his disability as a reason to ignore boundaries, to press into his personal space in a way that sent his mind reeling back to things he’d really rather not remember.
It wasn’t a nice thing to be used to, but he had long been resigned to the reality of being visibly disabled.
(Foggy had always bristled, tried to get in between him and the intrusive stranger, a show of protectiveness that he’d only toned down after a gentle talking to about Matt being able to handle it and the awkwardly infantilised feeling it gave him. It had been sweet, really, the way he’d still glower righteously at anyone getting too close, even after witnessing it for decades.
He wasn’t there to stare daggers at whoever this was now, and Matt felt himself choke up even as he tried to dismiss the stranger’s concerns.)
‘I’m fine, really,’ he assured her, brushing her off hastily, all but yanking his arm away to cross the street. He could’ve been politer, would’ve been, usually - it was only some kind old lady, based on her voice. It could’ve been much worse, it had been in the past.
Still, his nerves were possibly on their last legs.
And Foggy wasn’t there.
The changes in the city only grated on him more as he walked. Office buildings usually filled with chatter that acted as white noise now lay empty and desolate. A bakery a block away from his office lacked its usual comforting smell of fresh bread, and Matt forced back a shudder as he recognised it as the one Karen often visited. At one point, he had to stop unexpectedly, his cane bumping into something large and imposing - he tilted his head, listening to the way footsteps and voices bounced off it - a crashed bus, abandoned but smelling painfully of vomit and blood.
It was eerie. Almost apocalyptic.
Still, there were a lot of people in New York. The intricacies of what happened - the loss of half the heartbeats, half of every breath and conversation in the city - were lost even to Matt’s senses.
The city lived, but Matt’s friends, his family, did not.
This fact really began to sink in when he arrived at their office, stopping on the doorstep. His hand hovered in the air, automatically lifted to run his fingers across the braille on the sign by the door. It was something he’d been doing since they’d re-started the firm, a silent reminder of who he had, of who he was outside the suit. Someone with friends, someone who people cared about, as much as he liked to pretend otherwise.
He didn’t have to pretend anymore.
Matt clenched his fist, pulling it away from the sign without daring to touch the raised metal. It was… it hurt , knowing whose names were written there, above and below his own. Immortalised in bronze. Outliving the people themselves.
Pulling his senses inward, Matt all but held his breath as he folded up his cane, tucking it under his arm to open the door to the office. He focused on his heartbeat, on the undertone of blood and sweat still lingering on his skin, on the pulsing warmth of the bruises littering his ribs. Maybe - maybe, if he didn’t listen too hard, if he didn’t focus too much, he could almost imagine that Karen and Foggy were waiting for him in there, cheap coffee and all.
It wasn’t true, of course.
He shut the door behind him, wincing at the too-loud click of it closing. No welcoming voices. No concerned Foggy, tutting over the scrapes on his face. No eager Karen running down the plan for the day.
Nobody.
Nelson, Murdock and Page.
Matt thought maybe he’d been living someone else’s life for the past two years. Someone with way better luck, someone not cursed by his bloodline and his sin. Someone who was actually allowed to build up a law firm, small and struggling as it was, someone who could form fragile friendships again after completely destroying them. Who could have a lover, even, who cared enough to work through the layers of denial and pain that surrounded his sexuality. Who was even willing to understand his vigilante side, in a way. Who loved him.
It wasn’t his, not really. It was a dream, of sorts, that had been shattered at last by the nightmare of whatever the fuck had happened to the world in the last 24 hours. It had never been his. He should’ve known better.
Murdock boys have the devil in them, and this was Matt’s eternal punishment.
Death would be too sweet for him.
***
The women he’d been meant to meet with - Mrs. Watts - hadn’t shown. Whether she was caught up in some familial loss or if she herself had disappeared along with half the city, Matt had no way of telling. He’d sent an email, filled with reassurances that he could still take her case if she needed, and flopped exhausted on his desk.
He didn’t even get the relief of feeling empty. Not this time.
Matt hardly remembered the direct aftermath of his Dad’s murder. It was a muddy mess, confused with all the other years of his childhood that he’d lost. Fragments of memories, of refusing to talk to social workers, of lying flat on cold orphanage cots, of being crushed under the overwhelming nothingness.
Then he’d grown up, and Stick had left, and something had snapped in him. He was already marked as a troubled kid, a disabled kid, and the sudden onslaught of anger, of screaming and uncontrollable sobbing, of going from spending days in bed to punching a nun in the face: none of it had exactly helped him seem more normal. He’d pretty much screwed any chance he had of a long-term foster placement. Stuck at the halfway-home forever.
Sounded about right. It was around that time he’d stolen a pair of scissors from school.
This time, it felt like he’d been dropped straight in the deep end, straight into the bubbling cesspool of pain that was losing Foggy, losing Karen. Losing who knows who else. He hadn’t had it in him to phone anyone, not daring to risk listening to the dial tone click to voicemail.
There wasn’t anything left of him to break. Matt was shattered over his desk, whole body burning with bruises, wondering if this was it. If his mind was finally giving in, if he’d find himself trapped in hospital within the next week, if there even would be another week to live. The world had ended, really, and any chance Matt had of living the life he’d crafted for himself was over.
It had been over since Foggy’s heartbeat faded out of existence, and it hurt.
The door opened and Matt straightened up in a rush, his breath stalling as his senses spun, reaching out in confusion to see what was happening.
A heartbeat, young and fluttering with nerves, the gentle tread of footsteps in worn trainers.
‘Hello? Is anyone here?’
‘Sorry,’ Matt forced out, pulling himself to his feet. ‘I’ll be right out.’
He’d left his cane by the front door when he’d come in, having gone straight to his office where - if he tried not to think - he could almost imagine Foggy and Karen were just outside, working in silence. In fact, he didn’t think he’d even turned the lights on, which probably added to the confusion of whoever had come in.
A client, presumably.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked as he left his office, one hand brushing along the wall to find the light switch. Lawyer voice. Polite, gentle, understanding but professional. He could do it. He was used to it.
He was used to doing it with Foggy there too, but he couldn’t think of that now.
‘Uh. I need a lawyer…? I think.’
It was a kid, hovering anxiously near the door. An older teen, maybe, barely an adult at most. Their voice sounded wet, like they’d been crying. Matt swallowed, nodded, gestured for them to sit down in one of the waiting room chairs. They weren’t used much, they didn’t have enough people coming in and out for that, but it was simpler than ushering them into his office.
He sat down next to them, the chair easy to find with their body heat radiating from the left of it.
‘So. Why do you need a lawyer?’
‘He disappeared.’ The ache in the teen’s voice felt like it was taken right out of Matt’s chest, an echo of the way his heart clenched in between tender ribs. ‘I don’t - um - the news.. He’s not..’
‘I know,’ Matt soothed hastily, his hands fisting in his suit jacket. ‘I know. Who was it?’
‘My uncle. I - we’d only been living together for a year. Please, you have to help me, you have to, I can’t go back into the system. I can’t.’ They were choking up, wet against wet as they scrubbed at their face. It was all too close to home. ‘I’m nearly 18 - mostly - I can’t. His .. I can’t afford rent. I don’t know…I don’t know what to do.’
‘I’ll help,’ Matt said without hesitation.
That was the first of an influx of clients with similar stories. People unsure how to claim life insurance for someone without a body or death certificate, people desperate to get custody of their grandkids after both the parents disappeared, people wanting to sue for damages caused by cars without drivers.
A painfully high amount of people begging him to help find their missing relatives, the same stories of how missing person reports didn’t go through, of how people just vanished, how they refused to believe they’d been ‘snapped’ out of existence. He’d had to explain that he didn’t even have an investigator anymore, voice cracking each time he said Karen’s name, giving each frantic person a list of PIs that might be able to help. Just on the off-chance that one of them was looking for someone comatose in hospital, someone who disappeared in a mental spiral, rather than someone turned to dust.
It seemed unlikely.
It kept him busy for days, almost busy enough that he didn’t dwell on his partner’s, his friends’ disappearance. Almost.
It didn’t keep him busy enough to stop him going out at night.
***
Daredevil was a small town vigilante. Not a hero, not world saving, at least not beyond spending a few years bringing down a crime boss and some weird ninjas. He tried not to think about the ninjas.
Muggings, robberies, domestic disturbances, lost kids, the occasional unpleasant trafficking ring. That was what Daredevil dealt with.
After half the population disappeared (the news was calling it a Snap. He hadn’t had the time or energy to figure out why.), there was a pretty rapid influx of something else as well.
Matt was used to it. Used to talking down people from bridges. Disarming someone with a gun pointed at themselves rather than a terrified shopkeeper. Waiting for paramedics to arrive while someone seized after an overdose.
He’d thought, long ago, that suicide rates were highest during winter. Loneliness during the holiday months, seasonal depression, whatever. It had made sense, it seemed to be something widely accepted.
It was wrong.
When Matt started listening harder, started paying attention instead of desperately praying for it all to go away, he realised they spiked during Spring. Didn’t know why, just knew they did.
Spring was when half the world disappeared.
The hardest part wasn’t convincing people to step back from the edge, wasn’t finding makeshift bandages for the homeless woman who slit her wrist, wasn’t even comforting the 16 year old who begged him not to call an ambulance.
It was the ones he missed. The guns that went off before he reached them, the stopping of the heartbeat far more agonising than the bang . The people he heard sobbing, fumbling with pill bottles while he sat with a client, or stood in court. The people whose bodies hit the cold water of the hudson river when he was still too far to help.
Those were the ones that weighed on him when he made it home, practically falling through the skylight to peel off the suit and lie panting on the floor.
Matt understood it.
He’d understood it before, when he’d gripped Elektra’s arms in a collapsing building and let himself die, even more when he’d given up in the middle of the street, when he’d all but begged lowlife criminals to beat the breath out of him.
He’d gotten better. For a while, he was the living proof that depression wasn’t forever, that people could recover. Even ex-child soldiers with dead Dads and acid scars.
It hadn’t been perfect. Of course it hadn’t. There’d been days when he’d struggled to get out of bed, days when he’d blown up at Foggy and thought that it was all over, days when he’d stared at his shaving razor harder than he should’ve. Days when he’d nearly quit Nelson, Murdock and Page for good (again).
But before he knew it, the good days started to outweigh the bad. Getting up and having breakfast started feeling less like an uphill battle and more like living. He took his medication, he slept and he ate and he even took showers. He still went out at night, but he came back and let Foggy check he was still breathing.
Matt came back, and he was loved.
That was the most important part of it, really. Not the medication, not the attempts at therapy - it was difficult to connect when you had to hide 50% of your life - not even the valiant efforts at self care.
It was his friends. It was Foggy and Karen. A handful of others.
For the longest time he hadn’t believed it. Matt was used to being lonely. Daredevil was almost the epitome of loneliness (he always said he worked alone, even when he’d accidentally sort of teamed up with the Defenders, even when Deadpool wandered into his missions, especially when he stumbled into Spiderman and realised he was a literal kid). Maybe, just maybe, he’d started to think that Matt Murdock didn’t have to be alone.
Clearly, the universe disagreed.
If he lingered a little too long at the edge of the skyscrapers, if he pushed down memories of drowning long enough to stare at the river, if his hands shook a little too much when he opened his pill bottle - well, it wasn’t like there was anyone left to care. The thing is, getting better is hard. It takes effort, it needs support. Needs friendship. It would be so much easier for him to just give up.
He wasn’t going to do anything. He had ways of dealing with things. More importantly, he had people to save, and Daredevil wasn’t going anywhere.
***
Matt felt like he was wading through blood. Sticky and clotting, pulling him back every time he tried to move forward. Foggy’s blood, except Foggy hadn’t bled, Foggy didn’t even leave behind a body to bury.
Only dust that blew away before Matt could’ve felt it.
Foggy’s family had reached out. They were glad he was alive, but Foggy’s dad was gone, and assorted members of their extended family. Candance too. The news had sent Matt reeling, his stomach clenching as he dropped his phone and hurtled to the bathroom.
He was drowning in blood. His dad’s blood, Battlin’ Jack, who was shot in the head decades ago. Matt washed his hands over and over, rinsing off vomit and desperately scrubbing at his palms. His hands were sticky, blood dripping down his wrist - he could feel it, he couldn’t breath - he clawed at the skin, smearing soap up his arms.
Foggy’s dad was gone, and Matt was 10 years old again, kneeling in a back alley and cradling his Dad’s head in his hands. He’s 10, and sitting in a police station with blood soaked hands and brain matter on his shirt. He’s 11 and blood spurted from his nose as Stick stood over him.
He was 32 and screaming in his bathroom, water soaking his shirt as he leant over the sink.
He wished they hadn’t called. It would’ve been simpler to pretend that he hadn’t spent Christmases round at the Nelson’s, to tell himself that he’d never met Foggy’s parents, never imagined himself as a real part of their family. To keep the loss at arms reach, a vague possibility - probability, considering the size of Foggy’s family - that he’d never have to face up to.
As it was, Matt crawled into bed and curled his hands into his chest, his breath stuttering as he tried not to imagine his Dad’s blood soaking into the silk sheets.
***
Two weeks.
Foggy and Karen had been gone for two weeks.
It felt like it had been years. It felt like they’d been alive yesterday. He was meant to be in court with Foggy. He was meant to go examine that mould-infested building with Karen. Foggy was meant to be in his bed, warm and soft, and Matt was meant to wear his t-shirt and sleep to the sound of him snoring. He was meant to play pool and drink cheap beer that he’d taste for the rest of the week with them both.
It felt like they’d never been there. Like he’d been in some drug-induced haze where he was happy and had friends.
A lot of scotch and cheap vodka had appeared in Matt’s apartment.
He’d turned up drunk to court a week before, only to discover the trial was postponed anyway. The rest of that day was a loss, a mess of bottles smashing on his apartment wall and guttural sobbing all he remembered before he’d mostly sobered up and donned the red suit.
The sharp glass scattered across his kitchen floor waited for him to return.
When he’d told Foggy he was Daredevil, the other man had accused him of finding some new, infinitely more fucked up way to self harm.
‘So it wasn’t enough that you self-destruct on your own, you had to drag random criminals into it too? Don’t try and tell me you don’t! I’ve seen you limping, come into court covered in bruises, seen the way you move like you’re trying not to cause more pain! I’m not an idiot, Matt. It’s not right. What about the system - what about you , Matt? Do you really care so little about yourself?’
Matt knew what it looked like. He knew Foggy had found blood stains too many times back in college, knew that the straight, neat scars on his legs were still visible just from the way Foggy’s heart rate spiked when he changed in front of him.
Still, he had been wrong about Daredevil. Matt wasn’t foolish enough to pretend - even just to himself - that his escapades as the Devil were entirely healthy, but they weren’t fueled by wanting to hurt himself. They were more like a form of atonement, a final chance to fix some fucked up part of the world that God couldn’t reach, or didn’t care enough about to try to. Maybe, if he was entirely honest with himself, they were a way to share his anger with the world - his anger against the system that failed, over and over again, or his anger against God Himself, who hadn’t bothered to listen to the prayers of that 10 year old trapped in an orphanage.
The cutting was different. It was controlled. It wasn’t wild, unpredictable, dangerous, not like fighting mobsters and muggers out on the streets.
Sure, it was risky, but he was careful. He could feel the blood running through his veins if he paid close enough attention, made sure he didn’t hit anything vital, and took care not to go too deep. Kept everything clean. He was careful to stick to his legs, well aware that he wouldn’t be able to see blood leaking onto the crisp white of his shirts, and nothing ever went too wrong. It all healed fine. He’d even occasionally stopped during the past couple years.
The thing was, Matt needed it. He didn’t think he’d ever leave his bed without it.
***
One of Foggy’s t-shirts was under his couch.
Matt wasn’t sure if he really hadn’t noticed it, or if he’d just pretended not to so he didn’t have to face up to the fact that Foggy was never coming home to wear it. Either way, his fingers found it when he flopped uselessly on the floor in an attempt not to aggravate what was probably a cracked rib, and he had to hold his breath to stop himself from sobbing.
He sat up gingerly, struggling to reach under the sofa without aggravating said injured ribs, and eventually succeeded in extracting the shirt.
It still smelt like Foggy.
Lifting it up to his chest, Matt tried to stop his hands shaking long enough to properly press it against his face. It smelled like Foggy. He could smell it before he even got it close to his nose: the musty odour of old sweat, the expensive aftershave he knew Foggy had only started using when he noticed how specific Matt was about his own shampoos and soaps, the starchy, sweet smell of crisps and chocolate.
Holding the floppy cotton against his face, Matt could almost imagine Foggy was there with him. His chest ached with longing, for the real man, for his actual partner’s warm, soft body to hug and hold close. For a shirt that Foggy had just shrugged off rather than one that’d been lying there for who knows how long.
He wasn’t sure when he’d started crying, wasn’t sure if it was over the pain of his busted ribs or the deeper agony of loss, or both. The shuddering sobs sent more sparks of pain up and down his ribcage with each breath, and he hunched over the shirt, hands fisting in the fabric.
It was only when he realised he was getting the t-shirt soggy with his tears that Matt jerked away. Dropping it like it was red-hot, he shivered silently for a moment before rubbing at his eyes and forcing his breathing to even out. He was fine .
He was fine.
Foggy was dead, and Matt was sitting on his apartment floor, crying into his best friend’s shirt.
The shirt made its way into his keepsake chest, folded lovingly next to his Dad’s old robe and his bible. He slumped down next to it, the lid up and one hand resting on the t-shirt, and just sat.
Matt’s world had ended more times than he could count. When his face had all but been burnt off by acid, when he’d heard the trigger of the gun that shot Battlin’ Jack Murdock, when Stick had scoffed and walked away. When Electra had died in his arms. When he’d held his breath and listened to a building fall down around him -
Like he said. More times than he could count.
When half the world disappeared, Matt’s life came crashing down around him for the final time.
He’d died that day too. His life had ended alongside Foggy’s and Karen’s. Not turned to dust like them, sure, not even bled out on the floor or jumped off a bridge. It was a quiet death. The death of his last shred of hope, of the pretty bandaids of warm hugs and love that had been holding his life together.
Matt Murdock died when his best friends disappeared in front of him, and only the Devil remained, ready to tear his life apart and build all his walls back up again.