Matt Murdock (
blindninja) wrote in
reverielogs2018-07-18 08:56 am
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Open
» WHO? Matt Murdock & OPEN
» WHEN? Now
» WHERE? Deck 6 => 6.27 => Deck 5
» WHAT? Arrival
» WARNINGS? TBC
Arrival Hall (CLOSED to Frank Castle)
It's cold.
He's not where he was before. He knows that much. He squeezes his eyes shut and lets his senses go, scanning his surroundings like an uncalibrated radar. Metal. Lots of metal, clanging, banging. But everything is wrong. Lighter, like things are floating even when they're not. People are talking. Laughing, maybe. But distant, like the next apartment building over, or somewhere down the next block. The fine hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck stand with the low buzz-hum of the vessel, creaking, engine churning like an old ship, suspended in space.
It's like a hangover, except. He feels heavy even though he's light. Shackles on his feet. His head hurts. Everything hurts. And God, what is that noise?
Less of a waking up, more of regaining consciousness as Matt rolls over with a pained cry and a grimace.
His hand crawls over to the smartwatch, trying to mute the beeping and humming and screeching grating against his ears. What day is it? What time? What happened? He clutches the device with one hand and runs the other hand down his body. Daredevil's gone. Only Matthew. A jumpsuit covering the bandages. Stitches. Blood. No pearly gates, no apostles. No questions to answer about how he's lived his life, whether he's lived it well, whether he's repentant. Paid enough of a price. Just a jumpsuit... and a pair of boots?
"...lectra." Talking feels like rousing up a sandstorm in his throat. He groans and struggles to his feet, using energy he doesn't have to drive him forward. Out. Just the one thing on his mind.
I have to save her.
He gets blood on his palm as he presses his hand over a wet bandage, stitches having been ripped as he sluggishly stumbles deliriously down the corridor. His boots clunk along at an uneven, unsteady pace. Everything is too loud. Too cold. Too heavy. There's blood on the wall where he braced himself against it. And then there's a door. Everything flickers behind his closed eyelids. Black, red, black, red, black, black, black...
Room 6.27. Where everything's a little quieter. And he can just focus. Keep the red lights on in the dark.
6.27. Matthew. Chapter Six. Verse Twenty-Seven. 'Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life?'
Hn. That's funny. The chuckle bubbles to the surface. For all the pain He's inflicted, God still has a decent sense of humour.
Departure Lounge (OTA)
He doesn't take kindly to being dumped in the med bay, but there's not much of a fight he can put up against Frank Castle in his current state. He's not sure how long he's been resting there, but when he's well enough to orientate himself again, he's not staying in the med bay. The machines are noisy. He has questions. He's scared.
Matt makes it two steps out of the med bay before space sickness kicks in. The sheer wrongness of the gravitational pull throws him off, throws everything around him off. He sinks down to his knees and clutches his head, curling up against the wall. He looks pale, like he's about to throw up.
» WHEN? Now
» WHERE? Deck 6 => 6.27 => Deck 5
» WHAT? Arrival
» WARNINGS? TBC
Arrival Hall (CLOSED to Frank Castle)
It's cold.
He's not where he was before. He knows that much. He squeezes his eyes shut and lets his senses go, scanning his surroundings like an uncalibrated radar. Metal. Lots of metal, clanging, banging. But everything is wrong. Lighter, like things are floating even when they're not. People are talking. Laughing, maybe. But distant, like the next apartment building over, or somewhere down the next block. The fine hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck stand with the low buzz-hum of the vessel, creaking, engine churning like an old ship, suspended in space.
It's like a hangover, except. He feels heavy even though he's light. Shackles on his feet. His head hurts. Everything hurts. And God, what is that noise?
Less of a waking up, more of regaining consciousness as Matt rolls over with a pained cry and a grimace.
His hand crawls over to the smartwatch, trying to mute the beeping and humming and screeching grating against his ears. What day is it? What time? What happened? He clutches the device with one hand and runs the other hand down his body. Daredevil's gone. Only Matthew. A jumpsuit covering the bandages. Stitches. Blood. No pearly gates, no apostles. No questions to answer about how he's lived his life, whether he's lived it well, whether he's repentant. Paid enough of a price. Just a jumpsuit... and a pair of boots?
"...lectra." Talking feels like rousing up a sandstorm in his throat. He groans and struggles to his feet, using energy he doesn't have to drive him forward. Out. Just the one thing on his mind.
I have to save her.
He gets blood on his palm as he presses his hand over a wet bandage, stitches having been ripped as he sluggishly stumbles deliriously down the corridor. His boots clunk along at an uneven, unsteady pace. Everything is too loud. Too cold. Too heavy. There's blood on the wall where he braced himself against it. And then there's a door. Everything flickers behind his closed eyelids. Black, red, black, red, black, black, black...
Room 6.27. Where everything's a little quieter. And he can just focus. Keep the red lights on in the dark.
6.27. Matthew. Chapter Six. Verse Twenty-Seven. 'Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life?'
Hn. That's funny. The chuckle bubbles to the surface. For all the pain He's inflicted, God still has a decent sense of humour.
Departure Lounge (OTA)
He doesn't take kindly to being dumped in the med bay, but there's not much of a fight he can put up against Frank Castle in his current state. He's not sure how long he's been resting there, but when he's well enough to orientate himself again, he's not staying in the med bay. The machines are noisy. He has questions. He's scared.
Matt makes it two steps out of the med bay before space sickness kicks in. The sheer wrongness of the gravitational pull throws him off, throws everything around him off. He sinks down to his knees and clutches his head, curling up against the wall. He looks pale, like he's about to throw up.
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"Thanks for that, by the way. I had to traumatize her with the whole sordid story." He taps Matt to get him moving, voice tight but not angry. He heads to the mess hall with a clipped gait, nudging them into the thronging dinner line and pressing a tray into Matt's hands.
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Matt clutches his tray and lowers his head as if he could study his reflection. He can't, of course. The weight of it is a little strange though. He turns the tray over between his hands before lifting his head and turning towards Frank again.
"She looks up to you, Frank. I hope you'll do right by her." There's nothing more Matt could say to Frank about it that wouldn't be insulting, like 'I hope you know what you're doing', 'don't mess this up' or 'don't let her down'.
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Frank inputs the code for the best coffee, his fingers over Matt's so he'll learn the sequence. He lets him take his hand away then, waiting until he has a firm grip on his tray again so he can set the coffee on top of it and start putting in a code for something simple. Pasta dinner. The noodles are soggy and the tomato and meat aren't real, but it's the thing Frank gets the most comfort out of from these things. He can give Matt a full lesson on the machines later, getting himself the same meal and nudging Matt to the table he and Karen and Kamala usually sit at. He knows from experience if he glares just the right way no one will bother them.
"What? You're the only one who gets to keep a secret identity?" he teases as he sits down, immediately taking a long sip of coffee and sucking it off his teeth audibly. It's a vow that Matt's secrets are safe with him, no matter what he tells other people. Some things are just sacred, and Frank never went out there with a mask the way Matt did. He wanted people to know who he was. "This place isn't New York. No one except a few Avengers will know who you are anyway." Oh yeah, they have Avengers and they still haven't gotten back. Doesn't bode well, does it?
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He can vaguely perceive the buttons and coffee's clearly the important one to learn so he picks that up straightaway. Food can wait. Besides, whatever Frank got him... did not smell like food.
Matt licks his upper lip as he balances the tray in one hand and reaches out by his thigh with the other, feeling for the edge of the table he knows he's coming into contact with. Running his fingertips along the cool edge of the table, Matt bumps his heavy boot loudly against the seat, still not used to the weight of it as he sits down awkwardly and hunches over his meal.
He knows he's going to get shit from Frank for saying grace and crossing his heart but compared to all the other shit he's already gotten from Frank so far, just trying to have a meal together pales in comparison to the usual abuse. Matt barely manages to keep a straight face on as he chews on a twirled forkload of pasta, setting the fork down quietly and licking the inside of his cheek before nursing his 'coffee'. Somebody's a fussier eater than he's let on.
"Your identity wasn't secret," Matt reminded him. Probably makes the Boogeyman thing more effective, knowing who he is when he's staring you down before he pulls the trigger. "Why would the Avengers know anyone? They didn't care when they were wrecking my city."
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Matt isn't taking any of this in stride, but when does he ever? Frank is more patient than he looks, or then he once was anyway. He can wait the other man out if he has to. When he slanders the Avengers though, Frank has to laugh, oh man.
"Be a little louder so Cap hears you and wrecks our table, too." Though that's probably too much effort for the guy, honestly. At least from what Frank has seen. He leans over his tray, voice dropping to an octave he knows only Matt will pick up on. "I did it, Red. I got every last one of 'em. When we get back, Kitchen's all yours to dig your knuckles into bullies to your heart's content, alright. I'm out."
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"He wouldn't assault a blind man," Matt comments dismissively. He might have a few disparaging thoughts about the Avengers but there's a special place in his heart for the boy from Brooklyn who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, who is incidentally also technically a veteran. A much higher opinion than the big green wrecking ball, the billionaire playboy or the tourist with a hammer, anyway. If Matt knew anything about Steve's stance on Registration he'd be scoring even more points.
It's hard to feel happy for Frank when 'I did it, Red' means he went Rambo somewhere and shot someplace up, leaving a pile of bodies in his wake.
"How do you feel, Frank?" Matt can't help but ask. He's not asking it like an adult would ask a child 'what do you have to say for yourself?' He just wants to know. "Are you at peace?"
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How does he feel? He comes back to the conversation with an uneasy expression writ over his face. Should he tell Matt about all he's endured here? Would he even care? Would he believe him? And furthermore, does he even want to get into it when he'd finally managed to move past the whole event? Frank doesn't feel patronized to, though, that doesn't even really cross his mind. Still, sarcasm comes easier than true self-analysis almost always.
"Well, I'm on a haunted space station that wants to kill us all, so yeah. I'm a yogi master." He laces his fingers and sets them on the table, abandoning his food since Matt doesn't seem to be eating either.
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"How do you feel about killing everybody you set out to kill," Matt reiterated, his voice gaining a dull edge to it. Also, Frank said a lot of things at him earlier, but Matt's pretty sure he never said anything about 'haunted'.
"I'm asking about closure, Frank. Whether you even know what that is." Because displacing difficult emotions in lieu of trying to protect someone who isn't Lisa Castle and everyone else here in this damned place is not closure. Would Frank's wife even have wanted this of him? Did he even think of that when he was pursuing his blood-soaked agenda? Or did he just want to make everyone else hurt the way he'd been hurt?
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Maybe that was a little too telling, honestly. That he feels more at home in a place that's terrorizing him than in his own city. Still, Matt has to know what he's asking isn't fair. After another beat if Matt can manage to keep his mouth shut, Frank will open his again.
"It feels... empty. The same. Better, worse. I'm glad they're gone. That they can't hurt anyone else." That doesn't mean he's glad he's alive. It doesn't really mean... anything, in the end. "So much happened you don't know dick about. Ask Kamala if you want to fill in the gaps." Since thanks to Matt he'd had to tell her every gory detail. Nightmare fuel, she'd said. Well, try living it.
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He winces and withdraws, clutching his head with his right hand as the sudden onset of vertigo made the bright lights and the machines buzz too loudly, the ship groaning in his ears. The rest of that 'you don't get to go on your killing spree and unburden yourself on someone else's kid and it's not fair on her and blah blah blah' lecture fizzles out abruptly as his boots stumble a few centimetres backwards and he grabs onto the edge of his table with a white-knuckled grip.
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"No, dipshit," he manages gruffly, real fear clenching his heart, obvious in the way the pace picks up. "She's my friend." Frank has a few of those, now. He did always manage to pick them up wherever he went, not that Matt would know it. But he's joined the community here, when people need his help he's always there. And that includes ungrateful lawyers who didn't even try to help you the first time around, he supposes. At least Matt's right about one thing: he didn't want help then.
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It's just Hurricane Matthew's way, barging into a situation with insufficient information, making assumptions, running his mouth, dispensing accusations and judgemental comments left and right. And maybe after some introspection, after he's broken everything Matt might be able to manage a seemingly heartfelt apology and beg for forgiveness. But by then the damage is done and sorry doesn't mean shit anymore.
"Just leave me alone, Frank." Before he gets even uglier and says something he's going to regret. Matt buries his head in his hands and squeezes his eyes shut while the floor starts tilting at a 6 degree angle under his boots. "Please."
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"It's not gonna happen, okay? You're here so we're in this together now."
It's as simple as that for the Marine. He puts a hand on Matt's calf to see if he can take contact of any kind. He really doesn't want to have to carry him out of here, but he will.
"Just... take a breath, focus on my voice. Shut everything else out."
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Slowly the background noise drifts out of focus, like the mess hall is in a different room far away from here. The floor starts to right itself as his senses wrap around Frank, darting from heartbeat to electrical activity under the skin to those vocal cords vibrating, turning air into his voice.
“...I don’t like space.” Yeah, Matthew is whinging now. He doesn’t like space and he doesn’t like Frank. Yet what is he surrounded by, and who’s keeping him company? Story of his life really.
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"Yeah, me either, buddy. Let's get up?" he suggests, voice soft and impossibly gentle as he slowly moves to get up, hand on Matt's knee for a quarter of an instant and then a more solid touch as his hand settles on Matt's shoulder. "If you're ready, I'm right here."
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"Don't suppose you've figured out the Ubereats app," he mutters, turning his wrist with the communicator over. It's as big of an olive branch as Frank is going to get right now.
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"I thought you would have said something," he continues, blinking a few times. "But I made you relive all that. And I didn't mean to." Or, in other words, sorry.
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"I didn't really think it would make me a lotta friends here, you know." An easy joke like they're old pals, being some psycho murderer back home wasn't going to get him any trust with these people and he needed that to help them. It's what he's singularly focused on these days, that and supporting Karen so she can open up more of the station. The not-quite-an-apology catches him off-guard and he shrugs a shoulder, not sure how to respond. Matt wasn't going to tell anyone else, apparently. That meant his preempt to Alex was hasty, but their relationship hadn't suffered for it so maybe it was better he know the truth anyway. "I relive it every day anyway."
In other words: you're forgiven. He pushes a long puff of air from his nose in a noisy exhale before patting Matt's back once to tell him to stay put. Then he goes back to their table to clear their trays before rejoining him at the replicator, scooping bars into his pockets for the trip.
"Think you've had enough medbay for one day?" Matt would probably have to go back and soon if his injuries persisted, but he'd rather release him on his own recognizance than truly have to babysit him 24-7.
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He'd always pictured Frank as painfully alone, which is partly why he didn't think he'd be teaming up with people, making friends. Maybe trying to fly solo isn't going to work in a place like this. He doesn't yet know enough about the troubles they're facing here to figure that much out yet. They're kind of the same, really, as much as Matthew would hate to admit it. They're lonely people. Matt has friends but he also thinks of them as people he has to protect, dreams he has to preserve. Even Frank Castle is fairly high on the list of people he wants to save, whether Frank himself wants to be saved or not.
This is a good thing, regardless. Lonely people making friends. If the circumstances were any better he'd be happy for Frank.
In the end, for better or worse Matt doesn't have to say anything awkward when Frank gets back to him.
"If you take me back there I will throw you into the elevator shaft."
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He's glad they're back to sniping, a bemused sniff countering the other man's threat. Frank pats him on the shoulder and nods before nudging him towards the exit. "Deck 6 it is." Once they're in the elevator, Frank allows Matt the chance to engage his own boots himself, not unlike training his dog in so many ways. He watches carefully for the expected response and when it doesn't come there will be gentle corrections, but never force. He slaps the '6' and the close door button and turns on his own boots, waiting patiently with his hands clasped in front of him.
Once they reach the deck they're both now apparently residents of, he glances at the blood that's no longer there. He'd done his best to clean up, though he's sure Matt will be able to smell it still. He can almost convince himself he can, after all, and the other man has much keener senses than he does.
"It's unlocked now, but you can lock and unlock the door with your communicator. I think I can rig the keypad to take a voice entry so pick a four digit code you can remember in case you lose your watch." He's expecting Matt to ditch it often, honestly. "There's a terminal inside your room and you can find them throughout the station if you need to get a hold of anyone without it, too." But that's not an excuse to ditch it on purpose!!!
The room has also been cleaned in the time Matt's been in medbay: clean sheets and a meticulously made bed awaiting him.
"Here," he offers softly, handing the other man the glasses he'd found and also cleaned up from where they'd been sitting on the bedside table. Then he dumps the protein bars on its surface from his pockets instead. "Water from the tap is safe. Clean clothes in the dresser." Yep, Dad alert (yikes.)
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He stumbles on his way into the elevator but he rights himself, turning his head partially over his shoulder as he tries to rock on his feet and engage his boots. "Just like trauma recovery," he mutters softly. He's not talking to Frank in particular, it was just an observation. Baby steps. Disorientation. Unfamiliarity. Fear. He's not used to it, but he's been here before. The parallels are there between this and recovering from his injuries in the accident, learning how to use a cane, how to read braille. Hurting himself in the dark walking into things, dropping things, telling dollar bills and clothes apart. Frustrating, and slow, but eventually liberating.
Matt makes his way to his room. He's not sure how it ended up as his room but since he's bled all over it he'd feel bad moving into anywhere else and making someone else stay here. He can get there just by the smell of cleaning liquid smothering the scent of his own blood, but he places his hand on the doorframe just in case.
Frank knows him well. He won't be keeping his watch on until he realises he needs it and he's knee deep in trouble. Even with audio functions, this thing that keeps talking at him would sooner or later grate on his nerves. Matt tends to isolate himself especially when he thinks he can't even get around without assistance anyway. He's not going to be talking aloud at what seems like blank screens to him while everyone in the background can hear him.
"Do you always nag this much?" Matt quips when he slides his shades on, concealing the vulnerability and uncertainty in his eyes.
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"You'd know that already if you ever listened." No, seriously, how are you only now noticing the Dad vibes?? Something clicks when Matt puts on the shades, a mask of sorts even if they aren't devil horns by a longshot. Still, the familiarity helps him breach the subject he's been putting off. "Two weeks ago... something happened to me, Red." This clearly isn't a personal anecdote for entertainment value, it's a PSA. This happened to me and it could happen to you, too.
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"Do you want to sit and talk about it?" They might not get along but if this is a confession, Matthew's door is always open.
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"Things happen to people here. So far... so far they're always temporary." But that could change at any time, clearly. Frank starts by talking about others because it's never easy to talk about himself, and especially not to Matt. "My friend Alex, he... he had all the water squeezed out of him like. I think he died, I'm not sure, but then he came right back and-- a girl drowned. She came back too, but blind. A Marine I know, taller and bigger than me, she. She wasted away to nothing, then filled back out again like it never happened, and. I."
It's hard, it is, but he has to just say it. Matt's right, this is all serious. He wishes it weren't, that this was all an elaborate prank. But he'd seen it all with his own eyes. Matt would just have to trust his, he supposes, something that doesn't come easy for him either.
"I lost my hearing. Then my sense of touch... It only came back a few days ago." In the most excruciating way possible, he doesn't say. Maybe he's said enough, really. "Sorry to dump this on you, but if you're next--" He needed to know anyway, Frank is just grasping at straws to blame himself.
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