As soon as the bathroom door closes, Foggy can smell the blood -- Matt's blood. It's fresher than Foggy's busted nose and not so crusty-sweet. Some of it might not even be Matt's. He's upright, limping maybe but ambulatory. Foggy pries his eyelids open, like wrenching up an old-school garage door, and feels a fresh throb of pain.

Matt must not know this place that well; he's still putting out a hand to feel for the edge of the sink or the murky outline of the radiator. This apartment is nearly empty; there's little in it to suggest it's anybody's permanent year-round dwelling, but what's there doesn't seem overtly out of place. Foggy keeps looking, his squinting eyes keep skittering around the baseboards and the taped-up windows. It's nearly pitch-black in here, except for-- a freaking night light plugged in at the baseboard, a lonely rectangle of chemical blue. He doesn't know what he expects to see.

Whatever it is Matt senses, it isn't pretty.

"Jesus, Foggy. Jesus, oh--"

For a long moment speech is impossible, and Matt is just standing there taller than life in the blue near-dark. Foggy presses his working wrist against his more operational eye socket, feeling the tenderness like a missing tooth.

Foggy tries to estimate the odds of Matt dropping to his knees right then and there. "How bad is it?" Then again, stupidly, because Murdock hasn't answered and he's not even sure he heard him trying to talk around a mouthful of spit and sore gums -- "Is it bad? Matt, are you bleeding? I think you're bleeding."

"Not bad. But you're alright. You're safe now."

"Me? What about you?" How many times has Matt been bleeding and Foggy hasn't noticed? Bleeding under his clothes?

"Safe is a relative term." He's trying for a quip, a charming Matt-icism, but it makes Foggy flinch. "It's handled."

Handled. Foggy is floating, a little island of pain -- but he's not there any more, and he could cry, he's lying on tile and not laminate tabletop, Matt is here.

One thought snags like a broken tooth.

"Where's Karen? What happened to Karen?" Foggy tries to sit up, which is stupid and instantly upgrades each distinct unpleasant sensation from discomfort to kill-me-now. Matt guides him back against the porcelain.

"Just stay put, okay? You have a concussion."

Foggy exhales sharply between the gaps in his teeth. He's dirty and he stinks and he's not wearing pants; Matt needs to be nowhere near him right now. It's just like freshman year. "Yeah, that makes sense. Was that your friend who came along with the pen light, because--"

"Yeah, she won't do that again. You can hear me alright?"

"Clear as a bell," Foggy says, feeling a slimy web of blood migrate out from between his teeth. "I think I just took a bad hit."

Already he can't remember. He can't remember, which makes him next to useless. Even trying to think about last night is like sweeping up broken glass.

Matt settles down in a cloud of painful earnestness, depositing a plastic bag of ice wrapped in a dishtowel. "Don't talk. You've got a broken cheekbone -- Claire doesn't think you'll need surgery, but you've got a hell of a black eye."

The side of his face is swollen like a plum; he can feel it. It encroaches onto his vision a little, but all things considered given that anything brighter than basically no light at all makes him want to start vomiting again and never stop, it's okay. He's fine, he's all right. He's gotten knocked around a little before. One time he got elbowed in the face playing touch football and it hurt worse than this. Foggy tries to inventory the injuries he can tell Matt about. His head, his shoulder. His whole face, which has got to be ugly, judging by the way Matt sucks in a breath when his fingertips brush his cheek -- but Foggy's whole face was a work in progress to start with. In another 12 hours he'll be needing to shave. The list of things he can't tell him about is short but memorable.

"I think I fucked up my hand," is what he settles on. His hand is bound up uselessly, close to his body, and he still feels the phantom of somebody else's grip.

"Claire jimmied everything back into place. You just need to keep it immobilized for now."

Foggy cautiously swallows a mouthful of saliva before trying to talk again. "Jimmied? Is that a technical term?" The press of the swelling would be painful on its own, but at least some of what Claire the Friendly Nurse had him dry-swallow earlier must be taking, because it's only a dull pain now, like a bruise and not like, say, a broken finger.

"Until you can get an x-ray, it's the next best thing."

"Matt, what the hell am I going to tell somebody at a hospital?" It's impossible not to raise his voice a little and immediately Foggy regrets it.

Matt lifts his chin in an approximation of a shrug. "Car door?"

"Did it bounce off my hand and hit me in the face?"

"Stranger things have happened."

Like Matt and his car accident, Matt and his mylar balloon with a monkey on it. That much is reassuring, in the sea of shifting variables: it can't be that bad, because Matt's had it worse. He doesn't have any broken ribs. He doesn't have a popped lung or a broken arm or a busted eardrum. The pit of his stomach hurts, like something is broken in there, like something is bruised. The sensation of something torn located not far off makes a nice counterpoint to it, and both of them combined present a persuasive reason not to get up and wobble away.

"Where's Karen?"

"Karen's fine. Karen's safe. What the hell happened, Foggy?"

Someone else pushes through the doorway, indistinct in the blotchy dark until the figure's close enough to be in approximate focus. Somebody wearing white. Claire holds out a hand, lets it press against Matt's chest in an eloquent gesture of forbidding. "I'm going to need you to step into the other room for a while."

Matt takes the hint.

*

"Nice place you got here," Foggy says, slippery with weird detachment as the pills settle in his stomach and Claire tugs his waistband down, slides his pants out from beneath him. "Very modern. Lots of charm."

"It's not my place. I'm just borrowing it for a little while from a friend."

"A friend who knows about your secret life of crime?"

She sucks a little breath between her teeth. "Just a friend. But yes."

Claire's still in her pyjamas, underneath the oversized white sweatshirt shucked up to her elbows. She has steady hands, and she's still really pretty, even like this -- which hadn't jumped out at him that first meeting on the night with Matt, because he'd had bigger things on his mind then -- like now he doesn't, like this isn't some confusing brute-force effort to short circuit his brain into not thinking. But she's pretty and she's all business and she smells nice, which makes sense because this must be her bathroom.

Foggy lets his brain go blank, empty like an empty room as he braces. Claire is tearing the packaging off a swab, rustling around in a gallon plastic bag for a wad of cotton.

"How many guys?" So quiet that she's practically just mouthing the words. Just in case.

Foggy's sore tongue goes to make the syllables I can't remember, but he stops. Everything is fogged and dim and gray, but he can remember. That much is concrete. Laid out plain, like the details in a brief. How many bad guys? How many doers?

"One." Just one. He's pretty sure.

Claire doesn't tsk or exhale. "He used a condom?"

"Yeah."

Foggy remembers that much.

Then, not like a doctor but like a friend: "Fuck. I'm sorry, Foggy. I really am."

Foggy doesn't know if that's dismay at this state of affairs, or just a general comment on it, on the perpetrator, on Fisk. Foggy doesn't know if that basic fact is good or bad. It could have been worse.

What happens after that could certainly be worse.

*
*
*

Claire's hands are steady; she has small, steady hands. When Foggy's voice finally comes unstuck in his throat it isn't much more than an empty rasp. "Don't tell Matt."

"I'm not going to tell anybody unless you want me to. In which case I'm more than willing to say how I found you."

His eyes are scabbing shut with salt. "Great."

"If you press charges, you're going to need to get checked out in a hospital. I can't do that here."

"I'm not pressing charges for this, all right? Why, why would I stand in a courtroom and--"

"I get it, okay. Believe me, I get it. You're going to want to talk to somebody about this. But it doesn't have to be Matt."

*

Foggy Nelson's pants are in a paper bag in the fridge so Matt can't smell them quite as well. The laundry room's all the way in the basement and no way is Claire making that haul alone, or Foggy with her. From the waist down he's 75% beach towels and little sticky wing bandages, draped for modesty in a festive throw blanket and a sheet -- why couldn't he just get shot? There would be dignity in getting shot.

The swelling darkness presses in on everything, it sucks him down like a whirlpool. Part of him feels like he should call his mom. He's not sure what he'd tell his mom, but these are the times you're supposed to call your mom. Not when you can't move your jaw without it clicking.

In the nauseating not-light from the window, Matt's unshaven face is white as a sheet. Foggy tries to focus on it, but can't fight through the blear in his eyes. Matt is sitting in a folding chair and watching him like a hawk; one of those same little sticky bandages is holding shut the cut along his hairline, what must have accounted for the blood. Foggy tries to focus on the clean white edges and instead his vision strobes.

(I know you haven't showered since yesterday. Matt knows he hasn't showered for at least three days, apart from a half-assed cleanup job with a wet washcloth. Matt knows more than that. Matt knows what he's been throwing up. Matt knows more than he ever wanted to know about Wilson Fisk. Two possibilities present themselves: that Matt has no idea what happened, and that Matt knows exactly what happened and will never ever mention it.)

He can barely hold his head up; it feels like it's been hollowed out and stuffed with old socks. He can feel himself slipping back between the pillow and the cushion. Matt's hands are on his face, steadying him, and Foggy grunts in a way that is almost certainly embarrassing.

"Can I get you a glass of water or anything? There's juice, but I don't know if it'd do you any good if your throat hurts."

Who told him that?

Foggy swallows. The sensation of being choked is embossed on the inside of his throat, and suddenly he's dizzy again.

"I'm fine," Foggy says. "Claire gave me a drink earlier." This is a lie.

Matt's stiff hands withdraw from him. "Still feel like throwing up?"

"Nope. Is that good?" He's still nauseous, awash in weird Tilt-A-Whirl dizziness every time he moves his head even a little. But he no longer wants to vomit everywhere. He'll have to get Claire a big flower arrangement or something, spelling out sorry about all the puking in miniature crinkly roses. They've gotten to know each other pretty well, him and Claire.

"Pretty good, in my experience. How's your hand?"

"Shitty." He can't even begin to think of moving it, no more than he can contemplate going on a brisk jog. "But better. Thanks."

Looking on the corners of those dark eyes creasing, Foggy thinks, what if it had been him? Matt wouldn't have been so incapacitated he couldn't walk -- he'd have limped home come hell or high water. Foggy doesn't remember being carried, Foggy doesn't remember how he got out.

Matt would have gotten out. It wouldn't have been pretty, but he'd have made it out on his own one way or another. Matt would have fought harder. Karen would have gnawed off her own arm rather than spend thirty seconds in the same room as Fisk.

Why him? Why Foggy and not someone else-- he can't say why not Karen, he can't say why not Matt, because those are shitty questions. Because he was there, or if there was something he did that he can't remember in the concussion wash of merciful forgetfulness, because he took a different route home from work, because he turned off on the wrong street--

(because he was soft--)

*

Foggy doesn't remember the time, but he sleeps the heavy dreamless sleep of the dead until the first 2-hour interval for making sure he hasn't actually died. Claire takes a look at his eyes again, and it must be all right because she lets him go back to sleep -- but it's not the same, that druggy twilit sleep where he still half-hears the floorboards creak and the doors close, where even behind closed eyes he sees murky colors. It's too fucking cold.

People are touching him while he sleeps. Claire trying to be gentle, Matt incapable of it, fumbling him in his hands like a coffee cup. Foggy wakes up a couple times and can't remember where he is, too weak to roll off the cushions and too sick to complain even though irritability surges in him. Sometimes he thinks Karen is there, and he jerks upright trying to pull up the tangling sheets to make sure he's covered, only succeeding in fucking up his hand again.

He hears doors opening and closing, bandage tape unspooling from its roll, whispers turning into raised voices. They argue about some guy named Luke for a while. Claire's friend Luke owns the place. Claire wants to make a phone call. Talking about ordering delivery, and Claire laughing, a hard gallows laugh. The words "police custody".

They're not using Fisk's name, but he might as well be there in the room with them. The words are drumming hard against the inside of Foggy's skull, he's gonna come back, he's gonna come back, he's gonna come back. Police custody. Afraid.

They argue about Foggy too. He can tell. Matt's voice, stiff. "No. That's not possible. We need to do it here."

And Claire's voice around the corner, sharp and heated. "He could have a brain bleed." Talking about him like a patient. Like some random injured civilian who just wandered in and passed out. Talking about him like a thing.

He could be sitting right here listening to you guys, is what Foggy wants to say. But he's too ragdoll weak to straighten up, and the words come out looping and garbled. If they hear it they don't let him know.

*

Matt again in the frigid dark, Matt's hands on his shoulders, trying to press him awake like he'd rather be shaking him. Foggy wants nothing more than not to be there, and Matt keeps dragging him back to the surface.

"Stay awake, come on. I need to know what you remember."

Foggy swallows, feeling his throat tighten. Dirtiness prickles on his skin. "I remember Fisk. He thought you had one of his pals whacked, and he took it really personally."

"I need a name, Foggy. Did he give any kind of indication--"

"He didn't say. I don't fucking know, Matt." Jerking back from his grip. It's like a test he didn't study for, these answers are potentially of critical time-sensitive importance to their case and they're nowhere to be found. "He knew you were -- you. Or maybe he thinks you work for the guy in the mask, I can't tell."

"What?" Matt stiffens, drawing back. "Foggy, are you serious? Are we compromised?"

"I don't fucking know, maybe ask someone who doesn't have brain damage. What does that even mean, are we compromised--"

"This isn't to make your life harder. I need to know what we're dealing with."

His lungs are aching with the effort not to scream. Keep his voice down. People can hear. Hell, maybe they aren't even in Hell's Kitchen any more. "I didn't tell him anything. You've got to believe me."

"I can hear your heart beating," Matt says, voice flat with exhaustion. "I know you're not deliberately lying."

"But you think I'm lying on accident?"

"I'm saying you wouldn't necessarily know. Tell me what you saw. What you heard."

"I didn't see anything. It was just a room, there was a table, and -- and I'd know if I told him anything, Matt. If he knew anything about you he'd be here already."

(Two options present themselves. Somebody who thought he could shake down the guy in the mask by freaking out his lawyer. Or somebody who thought Foggy didn't matter enough to kill.)

Matt says nothing.

"I'm not lying, Matt. One of his guys got shot, and he thinks you did it. He didn't even ask me any questions."

Foggy is crying now, hunching up against his knees with the sharp ugly embarrassing tears bubbling up in his eyes. Matt is recoiling. What's worse -- He had bigger shit to deal with at the time, or: He didn't even know you were gone? Where the fuck was Matt? Where the fuck was he?

"All right," Matt says, nakedly uncomfortable. "All right, I believe you."

Lifting his head, Foggy grimace-smiles, feeling his cheek tug and tear. Things were a lot easier when he was just getting jabbed full of broken glass.

*

Somewhere after that, Matt folds, and lets Claire make the judgment calls. Last time Foggy was in a hospital he was still wearing a tie. They ask him questions in the hospital; they're not like Claire's questions, and Foggy must give good answers, because they keep bumping him up in the line.

He just keeps thinking, he doesn't freaking have the insurance for this, twice in six months? After managing to get by without a hospital visit for six years -- when it rains it pours. They know that there, about his terrible insurance at the hospital he doesn't know the name of, and they let him go. They don't know about anything else. Nobody's looking too closely at his ass when he's only complaining about his face -- when somebody mugged him for his phone, conveniently thumping him in the noggin hard enough to make an ID impossible, and Claire's just his Good Samaritan friend-of-a-friend who picked him up off the ground after a bad night. It might as well be true, and he keeps stupidly groping for the mobile device that isn't there, in moments when his head's not swimming. He doesn't want to think about where it is.

They don't notice cuff marks in with the mottled bruises; either that or they don't look for them.

There's only an hour-long wait for x-rays, since the rest of him is in such piss-poor shape -- sixty minutes without Matt, too damn long when all Foggy can think when he can't even think straight is that they shouldn't have left, that it can't be that bad, that it doesn't matter if his hand stays fucked-up forever because he walked right into that one and Matt is off somewhere touching base with Luke Cage, man of mystery, and hopefully not getting chopped up into little pieces by ninjas or gangsters. Big looping sentences, forced through his brain that still feels like a sieve.

As expected, his hand's broken, but it's not a bad break, not after Nurse Claire's expertise in jimmying things back into place. He's bleeding into his underwear when the doctor tells him he's free to leave. Provided Claire can wheel him home.

They let him go. They don't know.

Compared to Claire's place, the hospital barely registers, a moment in time that winks away like nothing. It barely makes an impression. Institutional blue and gray blinks out of view and it's back to green walls, gray carpet.

The layout of the apartment as Foggy understands it so far is this:

The empty bedroom is the war room, the arsenal; Claire has some kind of bug-out bag in there permanently unzipped, like a lot of people do after what happened in '12. The empty kitchen is where Matt's burner phone lives and doesn't have room for much else. The living room is for narcotic-induced Foggy naps and the bathroom is for other stuff. Matt has generously loaned him a toothbrush and a pair of sweatpants; under other circumstances, Foggy would appreciate the sensuality of the gesture, since with Matt's senses any leisure wear of his has to be hand-stitched from silk thread by Danish virgins. (Foggy used to think Matt was just fancy, imagine that. Monastic Matt Murdock, getting attached to small pleasures.) But with his ass being basically a wad of pain and gauze it's hard to appreciate how luxe that shit is. The toothbrush is probably a lost cause.

If not for everything hurting and having a memory of the last 48 hours that's ripped full of jagged holes he'd be at ease in his domain -- sweatpants, little beige couch, a nice buzz from the pain meds, all of it. The half-furnished apartment is the size of an Altoid box but for a single lady in New York -- not bad. Less airy than Matt's place, but not lit in neon. More like a panic room. Foggy is too tired for panic; he's landed squarely in some intermittent valley of exhaustion where the dread isn't creeping up on him but already covering him, already over his head. He's too tired to be afraid.

In between sleep he watches the door like he expects someone to come through it. What good is it going to do him to watch?

*

Foggy's feet have only just hit the floor when he claps his one good hand against his thigh, hard. The sound it makes startles Matt into halting in his tracks, and in the weird hollow quiet of the apartment it must have been louder than the actual creak of the opening door. The fingers on Foggy's bad hand twitch against the taped splint.

"Excuse me, were you trying to leave?"

"Actually, I--" Matt coughs a little and turns gingerly on his heel. His shoulders are bunched up almost imperceptibly underneath his coat, but Foggy from his little island of bruises can perceive it loud and clear. All that's missing is the mask. "Yes."

"Matt, you're not seriously thinking about going back out there. I thought you said it was covered."

Maybe they already got him. Maybe the guy's already cooling his heels in jail. Wilson Fisk in a little dark room, waiting for a fancy lawyer.

Matt's face is masklike, almost completely impassive. It couldn't be creepier. "I've got some stuff I need to get from the office. For work on Wednesday.

For somebody who knows exactly what indicates when other people are lying, he's a really shitty liar. For work, because they're really hitting an all-time productivity high these days. He doesn't even have his cane. Knowing that Matt doesn't really need that thing as such for a lot of the stuff Foggy assumed he did demystifies some of his competence, but he's still blind, he shouldn't be booking it unassisted through midday traffic like that -- or early morning, or afternoon, whatever it is--

(not when Fisk's going to come back, he's going to come back and he's going to do it again)

"Bullshit. You know that place is being watched like a hawk. He wants you to bust out guns blazing so he can mess you up a second time. And I'm guessing he's low on manpower." (Manpower. Two guys in suits, maybe three, and Fisk. Foggy feels his throat starting to tighten.) "I'm not asking you this as your friend. I'm telling you. That's not what I need you to do right now, okay?"

Matt slowly, carefully lets the door slip closed. Foggy expects to hear, 'this is bigger than what you need', maybe because he knows it is -- he can't even say it's not Matt's problem. It started being Matt's problem as soon as it happened to Matt's known associate and not just some suspected pal of his alter ego. This is every bit Matt's problem and it's on Matt to make the call, but damned if Foggy doesn't hate deferring to him on anything.

Matt is still, there in the low light from behind the drawn blinds, and without the glasses his eyes are intent and dark. They're wet, too.

It's not hard to tell when Matt's mad; just usually he's quivering with indignation at social injustice and not rigid with anger because of something that happened to Foggy. All things considered, compared to the people whose cases they handle and compared to -- well, definitely compared to Matt or Karen, Foggy's lived a charmed life. Maybe that's what this is, a backlog of 28 years of misfortune getting dislodged by the universe in one colossal fuck-you to Franklin Nelson, Esquire.

Matt's hands are already balled in fists. Foggy's own wet congested breaths are loud in his ears, and he slowly watches Matt's fingers uncurl.

"Please, Matt."

Matt wipes his nose on the back of his scabby wrist, and asks, "What do you need me to do?"

"Don't freaking walk out on me, Murdock. I don't want to be alone right now." Foggy is blithering like a bad girlfriend and he can't stop, he's pretty sure his nose is running and he's pretty sure Matt must be mortified. A few more paces and he's close enough to smell him now, positively, lurching like a puppet. Matt shouldn't be going back out there anyway.

"You wouldn't be alone. There's Claire, there's Luke, there's Karen--"

(He hasn't even met this Luke guy yet, he's just bled all over his towels, how on earth is that supposed to be comforting? Foggy's cheekbone is throbbing in time with his pulse, and he can feel the craziness rising in his chest, the reedy franticness like he's gearing up to bawl Matt out--)

"So we're just the civilians? You need to stay right here and rest up and tell me if shit gets any worse. It's stupid. I'm sorry. I just need you to be here where I can see you."

He needs to know where Matt is, needs to know for sure. Needs to know he's in one place and not chopped up in a bunch of garbage bags. Who cares if the bad guys got Nelson; he needs to know they didn't get Murdock too.

Matt's shoulders untense a little; his mouth splits from its rigid pink line into something marginally more at ease, showing teeth. This is him beaten. But he's still not happy.

"Then I'll stay."

*

Claire's sleeping the sleep she so richly deserves, and it's somebody else's job to make Foggy Nelson doesn't die for another 2 hours. Matt lowers his body down next to him on the cushions -- so carefully that it's unreal, the showroom-new piece of furniture barely sags under him. Featherweight Matt Murdock, weird. The washcloth is slipping down Foggy's cheek, dribbling a rivulet of water down into his ear. Matt tugs it back into place by a corner, a weird slithering sensation administered by clean hands. "You should eat something. It's no good taking that stuff on an empty stomach."

"Better now than never, I guess. Heavy chewing might be out of the picture. Spices. Tastes. God, now I want a bagel."

"Claire has a toaster, but I don't know about bread."

It comes out kind of burned, but between the two of them, completely wrecked, they can manage two pieces of wheat toast. Who eats just one piece of toast? Matt takes the heel of the loaf, like some kind of culinary martyr. Foggy can barely handle his -- can barely manipulate a piece of toast even with the hand that didn't get pulped -- but his hunger comes back with a vengeance after the first few bites and he finds himself too embarrassed to ask for anything more, too unwilling to have Matt get up from the couch to get it. It's like they're in school again and they both have matching massive hangovers and did a lot of shit they regret and any moment now Matt will just keel over like a felled tree and slow-motion slump against Foggy's shoulder. But if he did that now Foggy would probably be sick, and Matt's rigid upright, quietly thrumming with hurt and horror.

It's Foggy who slumps, heavy with pain and too stiff to move more fluidly; his head's not exactly in Matt's lap, but there's not enough room on the couch for them to entirely not touch.

He doesn't know what time it is or how long it's been, but Foggy calls him by name. His own hoarseness sounds grating. Matt can't look at him, but he still turns his face, and the worry written there makes Foggy so scared he's been calling for him before and just doesn't remember it.

"Yeah," Matt sort of breathes. There's a scrape across his cheek, down from his mouth like a lipstick mark. Even beat up, he still looks kind of pretty. Foggy looks like a reject from the produce section, the kind of bruised fruit they can't sell.

"Would it be too weird for you to pray for me? I'm just saying, I need all the help I can get."

Matt's religious, but he's not the kind of religious that ever made Foggy feel like he was anything less for not really coming along for exactly that ride. Or for that matter, he's not the kind of guy who would do that kind of thing without being asked, except maybe really quietly. Lots of Matt's favorite things are not precisely on the Catholic Church's list of recommended hobbies either. Maybe it's just fanciful thinking thanks to his brain being scrambled but it's not like it can hurt.

Matt sighs, and rearranges his arm so he's not actually touching Foggy, he's just almost touching him. The distance between them is a chasm. "Not at all. It's not weird at all." And with scraped-up hands he makes something that from a low angle looks a hell of a lot like the sign of the cross. Foggy doesn't know why people do that, definitely not now, but he knows that they do and that he's never seen Matt do it before.

(It hurts too much to think, but he does something that's more like a prayer than he'd like to admit, lying in the dark with a hollow belly and a wet washcloth over one eye, still too broken to move -- a clear inward enunciation that he needs Matt to be fine even if he's not, that this can't be the thing that breaks it all. Foggy doesn't know what he's going to do.)