The day Foggy finds out he's going blind, he lets go of the last shred of bitterness he felt against Matt for keeping his Daredevil secret. He finally understands, as he walks out of the hospital doors, fingers trailing along the brick wall, how easy it is to keep a secret; you just...keep your mouth shut. Let it slip from your consciousness when you're around people. Really learn to believe it when you say the redness in your eyes is just from looking at the computer screen too much, not enough caffeine, too much alcohol, lack of sleep.
It's disturbingly simple, Foggy thinks, to not tell them. Inaction is easier than action. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. The law of inertia is on his side.
(Of course, physics being on his side doesn't really help. Foggy may be a clumsy protective teddy bear to his friends but he's never been anything less than brutal with himself. He knows he's a hypocrite and a liar, and he knows there's no good reason to keep this from his friends, except that sometimes he thinks about saying it out loud and he can taste bile rising in his throat when he imagines the looks of sympathy on their faces. He doesn't want it. Doesn't want their help, doesn't want the jokes to change, doesn't want Karen tiptoeing around him, doesn't want Matt tentatively trying to commiserate. Because even though Matt's eyes really don't work, it's not the same, not the same at all. He doesn't think he can stand needing to be led, to be taught.)
Foggy knows it's going to change everything, and it's the last thing he wants. So he keeps his secret. He lets his friends believe he's just tired, just stressed, just broke.
He'd told Matt, once, that he'd like some secrets. He never meant this.
--
He gets glasses because he can't afford the surgeries. Karen compliments the frames, making some joke or other about them being sexy. Foggy grins, finger-guns in her direction and clicks his tongue. He lets Matt run his hands over them, readjusting his mental image of Foggy. When he hands them back, he says, "Not as cool as mine," and Foggy smacks him playfully.
Easy, he thinks as he slides the frames back on. This is easy.
He practices walking around his apartment with his eyes closed, trying to sense the placement of objects by familiarity and sound. He counts the paces in his daily routines--approximately ten steps from the bedroom to the bathroom, twenty-three from the bathroom to the fridge, and so on. He practices Braille (after thanking the heavens he taught himself after meeting Matt). Surreptitiously, he studies how Matt uses his cane, how it swings in a low arc around his feet, wide but not too wide. He notices how people go out of their way to either avoid Matt or help him with things he doesn't need. How people treat him like a child, like something beautiful and infinitely breakable.
That's going to be me soon, Foggy thinks once, and has to refrain from kicking a wall. He hates seeing people do this to Matt; the resigned look on Matt's face, the stiffness in his posture, the way he always refuses to even touch Foggy's elbow for the rest of the day, to win some kind of macho independence war with himself. Foggy always despised those days, but he never fully understood. He does now. He's never been the macho I-can-take-care-of-myself type, really, but he knows the value of personal independence.
Fill: Foggy is going blind, 1/?
It's disturbingly simple, Foggy thinks, to not tell them. Inaction is easier than action. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. The law of inertia is on his side.
(Of course, physics being on his side doesn't really help. Foggy may be a clumsy protective teddy bear to his friends but he's never been anything less than brutal with himself. He knows he's a hypocrite and a liar, and he knows there's no good reason to keep this from his friends, except that sometimes he thinks about saying it out loud and he can taste bile rising in his throat when he imagines the looks of sympathy on their faces. He doesn't want it. Doesn't want their help, doesn't want the jokes to change, doesn't want Karen tiptoeing around him, doesn't want Matt tentatively trying to commiserate. Because even though Matt's eyes really don't work, it's not the same, not the same at all. He doesn't think he can stand needing to be led, to be taught.)
Foggy knows it's going to change everything, and it's the last thing he wants. So he keeps his secret. He lets his friends believe he's just tired, just stressed, just broke.
He'd told Matt, once, that he'd like some secrets. He never meant this.
--
He gets glasses because he can't afford the surgeries. Karen compliments the frames, making some joke or other about them being sexy. Foggy grins, finger-guns in her direction and clicks his tongue. He lets Matt run his hands over them, readjusting his mental image of Foggy. When he hands them back, he says, "Not as cool as mine," and Foggy smacks him playfully.
Easy, he thinks as he slides the frames back on. This is easy.
He practices walking around his apartment with his eyes closed, trying to sense the placement of objects by familiarity and sound. He counts the paces in his daily routines--approximately ten steps from the bedroom to the bathroom, twenty-three from the bathroom to the fridge, and so on. He practices Braille (after thanking the heavens he taught himself after meeting Matt). Surreptitiously, he studies how Matt uses his cane, how it swings in a low arc around his feet, wide but not too wide. He notices how people go out of their way to either avoid Matt or help him with things he doesn't need. How people treat him like a child, like something beautiful and infinitely breakable.
That's going to be me soon, Foggy thinks once, and has to refrain from kicking a wall. He hates seeing people do this to Matt; the resigned look on Matt's face, the stiffness in his posture, the way he always refuses to even touch Foggy's elbow for the rest of the day, to win some kind of macho independence war with himself. Foggy always despised those days, but he never fully understood. He does now. He's never been the macho I-can-take-care-of-myself type, really, but he knows the value of personal independence.