Matt, Karen, Frank, Foggy – they were all tied up in each other. It was a hell of a story, but when you were living it, it felt more like a nightmare. Everything had gotten so tangled up and twisted around, the bond that used to keep them standing had become the thing choking them – and Foggy hadn’t known what else to do but walk away. To issue the final ultimatum. A part of him had hoped it’d shock Matt, that it’d knock him out of whatever madness overtook him during the Castle case, that he’d never really let Foggy walk away. But he had. “Yeah, she’s not the only one,” Foggy whispered, picking up the empty bottle of eel and toying with it. Just to give his hands something to do. “You’ll have to tell me sometime,” he said, glancing over at Matt. “Maybe not right now. Considering we’re unpacking a lot and I’m fairly certain my head will explode if we go too much further into the twilight zone.”
Life was never meant to be this complicated. He knew he was signing up for a different life than his parents when he went to law school, but he thought it would be trials, not vigilante murderers coming back from the dead after those trials. He thought his biggest fights would be in the court room, not trying to convince his partner and best friend not to risk his life every night. He wished walking away had been as simple and clean a break as he imagined it – but he couldn’t deny that even when they weren’t speaking, he’d been thinking about Matt. Wondering if he was okay. If he was alive.
Foggy inhaled, held his breath while Matt spoke. He wanted to understand, but the world Matt described – that wasn’t his world. He didn’t hear everything, he didn’t see a world on fire. He saw a world that could be changed from inside the system, a world that had so much potential, even with all the crazy things happening every single day. Their lives had almost been normal once – or at least, they had seemed normal once. “I’m not saying it’s a bad goal,” he said quietly, setting the bottle down. “I just – I hope you know everything you’re getting into, everything you’ve been into. Because yeah, maybe it’s God’s plan or something, or maybe it’s just – ya know, a freak accident. Maybe none of this really is your responsibility. You can’t fix the whole world by punching out bad guys.” But it was a foregone conclusion at this point. Matt Murdock was stubborn as hell, and there was no stopping him once he set his mind to something. “You’re not that person,” he said quietly. “You’re not. I just don’t want you to be a dead person, either. Martyrs get a nice mention in the history books, but they don’t ever seem happy.”
He leaned back, holding onto the bar to keep his balance. The reality was starting to hit him, settle into his stomach like a heavy weight. Really, that worry had never gone away. Foggy could pretend that with enough distance, he could forget, but how did you forget a guy like Matt Murdock? You just didn’t. “I knew she was bad news,” he said, shaking his head. “Didn’t I say that? I said that, I know I did.” His brow furrowed, and he bit his lip for a moment. “So if she was… helping you with this, if she knew about it all –” A fact that stung, just a little bit. Not only was Matt getting laid while Foggy wasn’t, but this random girl had known things about his best friend that Foggy wouldn’t find out for years. “Then what happened? Why did she leave?” he asked, because he’d never gotten a straight answer before. “Fair enough,” he whispered. “But you’re… okay, right?” he asked, a tiny note of desperation in his voice.
It was like the decision to forgive had already been made. The second they walked in here maybe, or maybe it happened months ago. Maybe it happened the day after Foggy walked away, and he’d just been too angry to see it. But Matt was right – they were kind of married to each other. They were always going to be in each other’s lives, for better or worse. “Actually,” he said. “I got married yesterday. To Sharon Carter, remember her?” But his joke didn’t land any better than Matt’s, there was too much at stake right now. Foggy reached out, clasped a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “You’re a mess,” he agreed. “Like, eighty percent of the time. But hey, some girls dig that. And I’ve never seen anyone as passionate as you, Matt. You’ll figure it out,” he said firmly, like he was making a promise.
He was making a lot of promises in his head right now, couldn’t find the words to say them aloud. All he knew was, he was in this now. This weird, crazy life his best friend was going to live. Foggy couldn’t stop him from going down this path, but maybe he could make sure he wouldn’t walk it alone. “I was being polite,” Foggy said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “We are going to be very, very sorry tomorrow morning in court.” He shook his head, tried to process this brand new twist, and just sighed heavily. “I knew she was trouble. I mean, hooray for beating death and all, but…” He didn’t know how to feel about Elektra. She had broken Matt down completely in college, and when she returned to his life, she did it again. She left a wake of destruction in her path, but Matt fell for it every time. “And your heart?” he asked, biting his lip. “Does that mean you two are… you know, back together? Because as your newly reinstated best friend, I have to make my disapproval known.” Not that it’d make much of a difference – and it was hard to deny something that would make Matt happy, even if it was fleeting.
Maybe all happiness was fleeting. After all, most people didn’t get a second chance at life. Once death took you, that was it. Maybe you just had to take what you could get while you had the chance – and this felt like a chance. Foggy let out a long breath, not quite a sigh, just a moment to breathe. “Okay,” he said softly. “But you can get it, right? Why this would feel… the way it feels.” Neither of them had ever been great at talking about their feelings. Personally, he blamed society, for making men feel like the only emotion they were allowed to feel was anger. But he and Matt were more than just anger, they were more than negative, violent emotion. They had whole worlds inside them, and maybe Foggy wouldn’t ever understand every part of Matt’s world… But he’d sure as hell try.
They were both desperate tonight. Desperate to hang onto each other, even when the world wanted to rip them apart. Desperate to make each other understand everything that had been going through their minds during the Castle case, and maybe even before that. There was a lot of history to unravel, but Foggy felt like his feet were on solid ground for the first time during this conversation. “Then I guess we gotta stop lying to ourselves, huh?” he whispered, feeling the magnitude of it all hit him like a tidal wave. “I can take care of myself, you know. I helped an Avenger take down a whole group of street thugs the other night. On accident, and mostly I just cowered, but still,” he said, biting his lip again. He closed his eyes tight, but realistically speaking, he knew Matt was just being honest. “Okay,” he said again. “That’s what I needed to hear. Josie!” he called, holding up the bottle. “We’re gonna need another one of these to go, all right?” Josie rolled her eyes, but slid another bottle towards them. Foggy turned back to Matt, and stood up, enveloping him in a tight hug. “You’re a stupid asshole,” he muttered, voice muffled by Matt’s shoulder. “I needed to say that at least once. But fact is, you’re my stupid asshole, so – your place or mine to continue this little catch up?”
In many ways, it felt as if Matt’s life in between training with Stick, going to college and where he was now had been stalled. When he wasn’t out fighting the war that his mentor had trained him to fight, it was as if he was just biding time, like he could breathe in but that breath just got stuck in his chest. When he was out as Daredevil, he was alive in ways that he could never imagine. He was helping people, he was hearing the people of Hell’s Kitchen, the place that he loved, the place that loved him, thank him for what he was doing, call him a hero, trust him that he would protect them against anything, even if the fight was stacked impossibly against him. Matt wished that he was the kind of person who could find life in his day job, but he wasn’t. He doubted he would ever be.
“Agreed,” Matt said, raising his hand to Josie for the last drink of the night, grateful that at least the conversation about Frank would be stalled for the meantime. There was plenty to discuss regardless, and what the Punisher had done or would do in the future was tied up intrinsically to both of them, a problem that wouldn’t go away anytime soon. They could leave it on the back burner for one night, Matt was sure of it.
Matt nodded, listening to Foggy with the same respect as he had given him. “I see perfectly clearly, Foggy,” he replied. “I’ve seen everything that goes on in this city, or at least the scum that’s under the surface. I’ve heard it bleeding out every single night. Maybe if everything was quiet again, maybe if I could put my head under my pillow and tell myself nothing was happening, things would be different. But I can’t hear a woman screaming on the street and convince myself not to go out and help her. I can’t hear a kid crying and not want to go and be what I’ve always been.” At the beginning, it had been as simple as that. Helping people, individuals, and making them feel safer. Then the mobs came. The gangs. Navigating the politics of Fisk’s criminal empire, and getting tangled in it all the way down. Now, Matt knew he couldn’t be a half measure. He needed to be a hero, and that was exactly what he was going to do. “That’s why I’m not only the Devil,” he said, keeping his voice low, not that anyone was listening in Josie’s anyway. “I’m the lawyer, too. Two sides, same coin. I can’t have one without the other.”
He knew what Foggy was worrying about, because he had been in the same position. He had watched his father get down further and further into the rabbit hole. Even if Matt had only been a kid, he understood what it meant. Jack was never pleased with good enough, and eventually, it got to a stage where he couldn’t say no. Being a lawyer was first and foremost, Matt still believed in the system, but there were gaps in that system that only Daredevil could fill. “You said that a few times,” Matt said, smirking despite himself. “She figured it out, Foggy. I couldn’t deny it, and I trusted her. Still do.” Despite the overwhelming evidence that he probably shouldn’t, he bet that he always would. “I told you, it was complicated,” he said. He took a breath, and then, “Her father died. Things changed. She changed, I changed. And then one night, I realised just how much, and she left. I don’t know where she went, she never told me.”
Okay was a relative term, and one that Matt doubted had ever applied to him - at least it was in the same realm as fine. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Better than I’ve been in a long time.” Most of that was down to the fact that even though Foggy was clearly creaking out, his friend was still standing in front of him - or sitting, on the barstool - and it sounded as if that desperation, that emotion, was translating itself into a bridge between them. “Sharon?” Matt repeated, smoothly covering up the fact that he almost choked on his vodka. “Yeah, yeah, I remember her. Nat’s friend. Nice girl, besides threatening to stab me in the head.” And aiming the knife towards it. And throwing it.
Foggy had always been better at holding onto people than Matt had, at repeating and appreciating what he had and not pushing it away. Maybe that was because he understood that he deserved it, because he saw his own worth, or maybe it was just the entire being of Foggy Nelson that encouraged people to stay. Matt was willing to bet it was a bit of both. “Hey, maybe you’re fucked, but I have an open and shut grand auto case. I’ve been working on that bad boy for a month. There’s no way the judge is giving us anything but guilty.” And then, the conversation moved to something far less open and shut, possibly the furthest from it. “My heart is complicated,” Matt sighed. “I don’t -- no. I mean, I don’t think so. She just came back, and she’s working things out, and I …” Luckily, Foggy kept talking, even if it was expressing his disapproval. “Noted,” Matt said, smile pulling on the corner of his mouth. “Not every day you get to have a conversation like this about one of my exes, right?”
Matt nodded again, feeling as if this entire night he had just been a poor imitation of a bobblehead, all things considered. At least they were on the same page now, though, instead of crying in his apartment or screaming in the bathroom of a courthouse, Karen outside wondering what the hell was going on. “I get it,” he said and then, to prove that point, “Dad.” Matt knew what it was like to worry. He knew what it was like to hear that gunshot and know something had happened, that deep, writhing dread in his gut. He knew how his dad’s blood felt on his hands, same way as Foggy knew his. At least in Matt’s case, he was doing something to help people.
“Which Avenger? If you say Hawkeye, I’m finding a new best friend. I’m taking that reinstated status and shoving it broadside up your ass.” It was all said with a joking tone that was rarely hard for Matt to access when he was in Foggy’s company. Girlfriends and tragic loves aside, there was something to be said for the simplicity of a best friend - even if it came with its fair share of complications, too. “Another one? Are you sure we’ll be able to feel our legs if we drink that on the way back?” Matt said with a bright laugh following his words. It was as if the world had lifted itself up off his chest, and he was loving every second. When Foggy barrelled into him, Matt didn’t hesitate before wrapping his arms around him too. After all, he had heard him coming. “You’re worse than a mother,” Matt replied, fondness seeping through every word. “Depends on who has more booze. Plus, you can’t sleep on my couch, and I’m not getting a bad back before tomorrow. Billboard, you know.”
