Crawling in From the Battle
Aug. 18th, 2015 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
devilwithoutfearHers was the first place he thought to go, instinct weaving its way through a blossoming headache as Matt pulled himself up from the stairwell where he'd fallen. His shoulder hurt. Each one of his heightened senses pinged at him, registering a strange dissonance at the way they filtered the world around him. It must have been a concussion, but he'd weathered worse with the same driving force behind his actions.
Keep moving. Move to safety.
Hers was the sanctuary where he fled.
Somehow, he remained sharp enough to find refuge away from sight. Somehow, he managed to evade the congregation of armed men who had pushed him back from the warehouse where he'd found them. (Abandoned buildings were a dime a dozen, he had thought drolly, And they were occupying everyone of them.) Them, them, he didn't even know who they were yet, and here he was running back to her, where they could find her again if he wasn't careful.
The thought slipped through his mind like sand through a sieve, there and flickering out of existence again as his limp arm hung beside him. He dug deep from whatever well pushed him forward through pain, entering a portion of white noise while his feet moved forward until he wasn't moving any longer. Until he was supine on top of a bed, his cowl removed and a figure standing over him, healing hands working over him, assessing him with a touch that lingered somewhere between determined and gentle. His shoulder popped and the white noise turned blurry, a cold compress offered that crunched and crinkled beneath his touch while he held it into place.
"Thank you," he remembered murmuring to her as black took over the corners of his sightless world.
"Maybe consider staying in one of these nights?"
It might have been her voice that said it. Maybe it was a corner of his subconscious, layering Claire's voice atop its own commentary. She tried to wake him up, and for several hours he faded in and out, not sure what might have fallen past his lips until he finally managed to stay awake long enough for her to sleep. Lucidity ebbed and flowed like waves lapping against a shore, reminding him of when he was younger. When he could still see the crystal aura of the water as it tossed its way onto the piers. The last time he heard her voice, he was sure it was her speaking this time.
"I need to head to work. Remember, no sleeping this one off."
A small flash of a faint smile danced with amusement, memories surfacing of his father having to muscle through one punch too many to the head. "No sleeping this one off," he repeated. The door shut and left him alone in there, able to get up shortly thereafter and wander his way around Claire's apartment with ginger steps. The sensation of sunlight danced across his skin and made him less apt to hustle outside, still dressed like Daredevil on a day where he'd be spotted much more readily than others. If he was surefooted, perhaps. And maybe by nightfall he would be, ready to make another sweep of the neighborhood. His phone at home would be ringing. Foggy and Karen would be wandering by, wondering where he was.
Matt frowned and considered what his apology would encompass, having no better way to fill the time.
What could he say to her? To them? To anyone who ever spent a second of their life worrying about him? Trudging to the bed, he lowered himself on top of it, seated first, then lying down with eyes fixed blindly toward the ceiling above him. As the sounds of the city encroached upon him, he worked to shut them off and place them on the shelf where they belonged. Here he was, surrounded by her scent and in her house and yet the seeds of temptation to go out again that night were already attempting to gain a foothold on him. All because he didn't know yet who they were.
No, Matt thought, forcing himself to be honest. It was something more. Something so fundamentally in the core of him that he couldn't seem to find its genesis. It had been with him since he was a kid. Since he was Stick's pupil. Raging like an angry tempest even through college and law school. Maybe it was an obsession. The Murdock stubbornness that didn't know how to stay down even when being laid on the mat. Maybe it was an inherent martyr complex; the part of him trying to atone for something. The devils within him. The loss of his father. Maybe, he thought, he really was the last line of defense this neighborhood had, forming his own corner of that war Stick always talked about. A tenuous line formed the border between Daredevil and Matt Murdock, laying out the most basic of dilemmas: to want something and yet, want to push it all away in the next breath.
Admit the turmoil, however, she found her way back into his thoughts.
Claire. How many times had he wandered to her, needing to be stitched up with so much left unsaid between the two of them. Words, dancing on the tip of his tongue needing to be birthed, but never finding their way past his throat. He didn't know what they'd be at this point.
Stay. Don't go. Please, stay.
But what would he have to offer her regardless? Nothing but constant disappointment. Constant risk. Constant this and constant that because he was a (hero/martyr/addict) person who would always be flirting with that line in some way or another. The Claire in his mind was strong and somehow fragile at the same time. Hard as nails and delicate as paper and she would keep feeling the razor blades across her heart again and again each time he answered that part of him that just wouldn't stay down. Maybe it wouldn't be in the form of a cowl and armor, but somehow the self-destructive force of being a Murdock - of being him - would take hold and toss him into the next round, and damn if he didn't know that he succumbed to it each and every time. That he wanted to succumb. That a part of him needed to feed the monster while baptizing its actions in an earnestly believed piety.
How could I ask her to want anything to do with that?
Especially after she had made it clear to him. She knew herself well enough to know that he was that knife that would wound her worse than even the most violent blow the Russian's baseball bat managed to inflict. He had a soft heart and well intentions and a love that would race through the flames of passion, but he would cut her just as deep and even he didn't even want to be that to her. To Foggy or Karen, either. To anyone.
Stick was both right and dead wrong. Absolutely truthful and naive in his own way about the function of the human heart. His own heart betrayed him. The paper bracelet presented a chink in his armor and though he walked away from it, it still proved the old man could bleed, even if he only allowed the thinnest strand to show. Matt wasn't that hardened yet; that weary or cauterized. And even he didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
All he could tell, in those hours of twilight which faded into the night, is that he still smelled her scent in the room.
And he still tasted that stolen kiss on the tip of his tongue.
Keep moving. Move to safety.
Hers was the sanctuary where he fled.
Somehow, he remained sharp enough to find refuge away from sight. Somehow, he managed to evade the congregation of armed men who had pushed him back from the warehouse where he'd found them. (Abandoned buildings were a dime a dozen, he had thought drolly, And they were occupying everyone of them.) Them, them, he didn't even know who they were yet, and here he was running back to her, where they could find her again if he wasn't careful.
The thought slipped through his mind like sand through a sieve, there and flickering out of existence again as his limp arm hung beside him. He dug deep from whatever well pushed him forward through pain, entering a portion of white noise while his feet moved forward until he wasn't moving any longer. Until he was supine on top of a bed, his cowl removed and a figure standing over him, healing hands working over him, assessing him with a touch that lingered somewhere between determined and gentle. His shoulder popped and the white noise turned blurry, a cold compress offered that crunched and crinkled beneath his touch while he held it into place.
"Thank you," he remembered murmuring to her as black took over the corners of his sightless world.
"Maybe consider staying in one of these nights?"
It might have been her voice that said it. Maybe it was a corner of his subconscious, layering Claire's voice atop its own commentary. She tried to wake him up, and for several hours he faded in and out, not sure what might have fallen past his lips until he finally managed to stay awake long enough for her to sleep. Lucidity ebbed and flowed like waves lapping against a shore, reminding him of when he was younger. When he could still see the crystal aura of the water as it tossed its way onto the piers. The last time he heard her voice, he was sure it was her speaking this time.
"I need to head to work. Remember, no sleeping this one off."
A small flash of a faint smile danced with amusement, memories surfacing of his father having to muscle through one punch too many to the head. "No sleeping this one off," he repeated. The door shut and left him alone in there, able to get up shortly thereafter and wander his way around Claire's apartment with ginger steps. The sensation of sunlight danced across his skin and made him less apt to hustle outside, still dressed like Daredevil on a day where he'd be spotted much more readily than others. If he was surefooted, perhaps. And maybe by nightfall he would be, ready to make another sweep of the neighborhood. His phone at home would be ringing. Foggy and Karen would be wandering by, wondering where he was.
Matt frowned and considered what his apology would encompass, having no better way to fill the time.
What could he say to her? To them? To anyone who ever spent a second of their life worrying about him? Trudging to the bed, he lowered himself on top of it, seated first, then lying down with eyes fixed blindly toward the ceiling above him. As the sounds of the city encroached upon him, he worked to shut them off and place them on the shelf where they belonged. Here he was, surrounded by her scent and in her house and yet the seeds of temptation to go out again that night were already attempting to gain a foothold on him. All because he didn't know yet who they were.
No, Matt thought, forcing himself to be honest. It was something more. Something so fundamentally in the core of him that he couldn't seem to find its genesis. It had been with him since he was a kid. Since he was Stick's pupil. Raging like an angry tempest even through college and law school. Maybe it was an obsession. The Murdock stubbornness that didn't know how to stay down even when being laid on the mat. Maybe it was an inherent martyr complex; the part of him trying to atone for something. The devils within him. The loss of his father. Maybe, he thought, he really was the last line of defense this neighborhood had, forming his own corner of that war Stick always talked about. A tenuous line formed the border between Daredevil and Matt Murdock, laying out the most basic of dilemmas: to want something and yet, want to push it all away in the next breath.
Admit the turmoil, however, she found her way back into his thoughts.
Claire. How many times had he wandered to her, needing to be stitched up with so much left unsaid between the two of them. Words, dancing on the tip of his tongue needing to be birthed, but never finding their way past his throat. He didn't know what they'd be at this point.
Stay. Don't go. Please, stay.
But what would he have to offer her regardless? Nothing but constant disappointment. Constant risk. Constant this and constant that because he was a (hero/martyr/addict) person who would always be flirting with that line in some way or another. The Claire in his mind was strong and somehow fragile at the same time. Hard as nails and delicate as paper and she would keep feeling the razor blades across her heart again and again each time he answered that part of him that just wouldn't stay down. Maybe it wouldn't be in the form of a cowl and armor, but somehow the self-destructive force of being a Murdock - of being him - would take hold and toss him into the next round, and damn if he didn't know that he succumbed to it each and every time. That he wanted to succumb. That a part of him needed to feed the monster while baptizing its actions in an earnestly believed piety.
How could I ask her to want anything to do with that?
Especially after she had made it clear to him. She knew herself well enough to know that he was that knife that would wound her worse than even the most violent blow the Russian's baseball bat managed to inflict. He had a soft heart and well intentions and a love that would race through the flames of passion, but he would cut her just as deep and even he didn't even want to be that to her. To Foggy or Karen, either. To anyone.
Stick was both right and dead wrong. Absolutely truthful and naive in his own way about the function of the human heart. His own heart betrayed him. The paper bracelet presented a chink in his armor and though he walked away from it, it still proved the old man could bleed, even if he only allowed the thinnest strand to show. Matt wasn't that hardened yet; that weary or cauterized. And even he didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
All he could tell, in those hours of twilight which faded into the night, is that he still smelled her scent in the room.
And he still tasted that stolen kiss on the tip of his tongue.