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daredevilkink2015-06-22 07:24 pm
ddk_mod) wrote in daredevilkink2015-06-22 07:24 pm
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Prompt Post #4
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Re: FILL: "Mercy" (2/3)
(Anonymous) 2015-07-17 03:42 am (UTC)(link)He slid the final piece of the reassembled gun into place, breathed in the bracing scents of gunmetal and death. Convince him to leave the city. For most people, the prospect of convincing Matt Murdock, the Daredevil himself, to leave Hell’s Kitchen would seem an insurmountable challenge. But Foggy knew exactly what to say. He had always known, ever since Matt came roaring back into his life that first day in undergrad, precisely what it would take for him to make Matt leave and never come back.
He had rehearsed this conversation a thousand times, a thousand ways, the scenario shifting constantly to reflect the varied entailments of their conjoined lives, but the basic content, the core of the matter, always remained constant. And every scenario, every single one, ended with Matt leaving. Since finding out about Daredevil, Foggy had also begun to have difficulty imagining a scenario in which Matt wouldn’t kill Foggy on his way out. Most nights, that prospect terrified him into sleepless, silent distress.
Tonight? He was planning on it.
The roof-access door opened quietly, and Foggy’s mind slipped into high gear.
Daredevil stalked down the stairs. He was limping slightly, but no more than usual. That was good—Foggy needed him to be all there tonight.
“Foggy?” he asked upon reaching the foot of the stairs. “What’s wrong?” He tilted his head, no doubt scenting the metallic air. “And why do you have a gun?”
“Matt,” Foggy replied, “I haven’t been being entirely honest with you. I think that we should talk.”
Matt hesitated a moment, clearly unnerved. Then he slinked over to the couch opposite Foggy’s chair, sitting down tense on its edge.
Foggy took a deep breath, squared his jaw—and sighed. “For God’s sake, take off that mask. I need to talk to you, Matt, not him.”
Matt apologized and dutifully slipped off his cowl. Uncovered, his face telegraphed his emotions, clear as day in the eerie half-light: unease, confusion, curiosity. Fear.
Maybe it would have been better if he’d kept the mask on.
Foggy breathed in again, and started talking before he could lose his nerve. “I’ve told you before that my mother wanted me to be a butcher. That was the truth. But you’ve never met my mother, so you couldn’t possibly have understood what she actually meant when she said that.” Foggy could already feel cold sweat beading on his back, and this was the least of the things he had to say tonight. He anchored himself on the gun in his hand, squeezing the handle with bruising force, and plunged onwards. “My mother’s name is Rosalind—Rosalind Sharpe.”
Matt inhaled sharply. “You’re—you’re with the Irish? The mob?”
Foggy’s mouth twisted ruefully. “Born and raised. When your mom’s the woman who runs half of the operation, it’s hard to avoid getting sucked into the family business. My older siblings were groomed for management positions, off the street, as safe as you can get in this business. But me? My mom wanted me to be a butcher.” The gun in his hand was warm. “An assassin.”
He heard Matt shift on the couch, but he kept his eyes trained out the window, watching a cherry blossom infinitely travel its looping path down the side of the neighboring building. “They—they have a particular way of training butchers. They always start them young: young enough that they don’t attract attention from the police, and young enough that they don’t know the meaning of what they’re doing.” Foggy turns the gun over in his hands. “I was eight when I shot a gun for the first time. I was nine the first time I killed a man.” And, thank God, the last.
“Oh God, Foggy—“
“I’m not finished,” Foggy interrupted him. He was only halfway there; he couldn’t afford to stop now. “I didn’t understand what he had done—they explained it to me, but all I made out was that he didn’t do what he was told, and that what I was going to do to him was what happened when people don’t do as they’re told. I didn’t need any more than that, really. He never saw it coming until I had the gun in his face. He had just enough time for the fear to come into his eyes. Or maybe he knew it was coming, and the fear had been there long before I was. Either way, that fear was all I saw in his eyes when they closed.” Foggy paused and considered his next words. This was the most important part, the one that would seal his fate and Matt’s: the execution was paramount. “It wasn’t until his kid showed up that I started to realize what I had done. That I had taken away a life. A person.” He swallowed. “Someone’s father.”
“Foggy…” Matt’s voice said, thick with tears.
Foggy could feel tears gathering behind his own eyelids now. “The kid was my age—“
“Foggy, please, don’t—“
“—and blind.”
Re: FILL: "Mercy" (2/3)
(Anonymous) 2015-07-17 03:56 am (UTC)(link)Re: FILL: "Mercy" (3/3)
(Anonymous) 2015-07-17 03:59 am (UTC)(link)Foggy didn’t need supersenses to hear Matt’s breathing stop. Reflexively, he glanced over at his friend, hunched over and shaking with his hands over his ears, as though he could block out the words, or the heartbeat that confirmed the truth of them.
When Matt finally drew in another shuddering breath, Foggy tore his eyes away and continued. “Normally, these days, you would kill any kids old enough to hold a grudge, especially boys. But things were different back then, and since the kid was blind, nobody thought anything of letting him go.” With the worst of it over, Foggy suddenly began to feel weightless, giddy, like he was in a free-fall. He giggled as a tear slipped down his cheek. “I guess the joke’s on them now, huh?”
Matt’s voice, shaky and gravelly with rage: “You—you told—?”
In his elated state of mind, high on the anticipation of incipient death, Foggy understood what Matt was asking: You told them about Daredevil? Foggy had done nothing of the sort, could never do that to Matt—but anything that could make Matt fear for his safety, that could drive him out of the city, was something worth letting Matt believe. In the months since he found out about Matt’s abilities, Foggy had become adept at circumventing his lie-detecting abilities with half-truths and half-answers. This would be his final test of those skills. “Told what?” he asked, excited, jumping to his feet. “That you’re the masked menace that’s been terrorizing them for months? That you’re the one who’s been singlehandedly dismantling their operation piece by piece?” He laughed. “You should have known better than to mess with us, Matt.”
He was already well past the point of no return; all that was left was to twist the knife until he pushed Matt over that point, too. And for that, he had to be able to watch Matt’s reactions. He focused the full weight of his tear-soaked gaze on the man on the couch in front of him. He had hunched over even further now, curling into himself as his muscles coiled tighter and tighter with the anger that had to be inundating his system. That was good—Foggy could work with that.
“Did—“ Matt began. “Did you—were we—was any of it—was it real?”
Foggy’s heart was pounding faster than he had ever felt it before; the room around him seemed to glow, incandescent in the light of revelation. If he had been any less elated, any less ecstatic, Matt would surely have been able to hear his stomach clench and then drop when that garbled plea finally made sense of itself. Does he really think that I could do something that cruel? That I could fake a friendship like this one just to keep tabs on a potential threat?
Half-truths and half-answers. Let him think anything that might push him over the edge. “I’ve been lying to you for years, Murdock,” Foggy said coldly. “Don’t make me start being honest now.”
Foggy watched the shudder pass through Matt’s spine, saw the instant in which his muscles recoiled, sending him jolting upwards and stumbling for the door. “I—I need to get out—”
“Stop right there!” Foggy said, finally raising the gun he’d brought, cocking it, pointing it right at Matt. “The only way you’re leaving here tonight is over my dead body.”
When he heard the shouted command, Matt froze; when he heard the gun’s safety click off, when he sensed that it was pointed at him, Matt’s face crumbled, his tears collecting in the anguished lines of his face like pools on the face of a cliff. “Foggy, please, you don’t want to do this—“
Provoke him, Foggy’s racing heart screamed at him. You’re so close to ending it. Just push him a little further, and this can all be over. “Come on, Matt. I already killed one Murdock. It’d be nothing for me to take down one more.”
Matt’s eyes closed in anguish, and Foggy braced himself for the storm of fury that he had made of Matthew Murdock. But moments passed—minutes, hours, Foggy was in no place to say—and Matt made no move towards him.
Did he need further prompting? “Just give me a reason, Murdock,” he said. “Come at me, I dare you—“
“You’re bluffing.”
Foggy’s stomach lurched. “What?”
“You’re bluffing. You’re not going to shoot.”
This wasn’t right. “Do I sound like I was fucking lying?” Matt’s jaw clenched. “You’re in denial, Murdock. The truth isn’t always what you wish you could be hearing.”
“I know that!” Matt shouted. “But I know you. I know you. I know that you wouldn’t do this to me. Not unless someone put you up to it.”
Foggy swallowed. “You think you know me? What the fuck do you know about Foggy Nelson?” He checked the sightline of the gun, adjusted his aim. “You do not want to test me, Murdock.”
“But I do,” Matt said. Finally, he started advancing on Foggy, but slowly and with his hands up—nonaggressive. Foggy took a step back, steadied the gun that had begun to shake in his hands. Three feet away from Foggy’s face, not two inches from the barrel of the gun, he came to a stop. “If it’s true—if you never felt anything for me, if what we had was really nothing but a—a game—then go ahead,” he said, placing his hands over Foggy’s on the gun. “Shoot me,” he offered, raising the gun until the barrel rested against his own forehead. “Believe me, at this point, you would be doing me a favor.” He closed his eyes against his flowing tears and waited.
Foggy felt like the air had been knocked out of him. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Foggy was never supposed to get a chance to use the gun: Matt was supposed to knock it out of his hands on the way to claiming the life of his father’s murderer. He wasn’t supposed to call Foggy’s bluff. The truth was that he couldn’t kill Matt any more than he could sit by and let Matt be killed. But if he showed weakness, if he let Matt talk him down, then everything would be wasted.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
Foggy gritted his teeth. “I killed your father.”
“You didn’t know what you were doing.”
“I’m a murderer!”
“You were a child.”
Foggy’s breath caught in his throat. He tasted tears on his lips. “Fuck,” he said, engaging the safety on the pistol and drawing it away. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.”
Matt opened his eyes as he released his grip on Foggy’s hands and the gun. His gaze shone in the light of the billboard, the depths of his sorrow highlighted by fluorescent white and hazel. “What do you mean? How was—how was this supposed to go?”
“You’re supposed to hate me,” Foggy said, sinking to his knees, letting the barrel of the gun clatter against the floor. “You’re supposed to leave. You’re supposed to punish me.”
Matt’s silent above him, his pain visible in his defeated stance, audible in the uneven patterns of his breathing. “Is that what you want?” he asked. “To be punished?”
Foggy looked up to him. Was he offering? Was there still a chance to salvage it? “Yes. Yes, please. Matt, please,” he said, taking Matt’s hand and slipping the gun into it. “Please,” he said, holding his hands behind his back and lowering his head like a sacrificial victim. “Please,” he said, closing his eyes, “Please, just do it.”
He heard Matt sigh above him, a weary sound that made Foggy’s heard keen. “Okay.”
Foggy crouched, waiting for death. The elation he had felt after revealing his secret hand burned down to ash in his chest, but there were still slivers of that contentment to be found. No more secrets. No more pain. No more disappointment.
He jumped when he heard a metallic click, and looked towards the source of the sound. He saw Matt dismantling the gun, throwing the parts alternately down each end of the alley outside. Foggy swallowed, then returned to his penitential pose. Matt was right: he didn’t deserve a quick death. Matt had the right to kill him whatever way he saw fit, which apparently meant with his bare hands. Foggy’s breathing picked up as he heard Matt approach. God, he hoped that Matt wouldn’t hate himself too much afterwards. He had already suffered enough because of Foggy.
Matt kneeled in front of him, putting himself at the same height as Foggy. Foggy tensed as he felt Matt’s arms reaching towards his neck, and then started when he found himself pulled up against Matt’s chest. “Matt, what are you—“
“You don’t need to be punished, Foggy,” Matt said, his voice thick with emotion. “Nothing I could do would be worse than what you’ve already done to yourself.”
Foggy began to struggle against Matt’s hold, but Matt only adjusted his grip and pulled him closer. “Goddamn it! What the fuck are you doing, then?”
Foggy felt it more than saw it, the pained half-smile that Matt pressed against his ear. “I’m forgiving you.”
Foggy sobbed. “No. No!” he said, pushing against Matt’s grip, knowing all the while that it was hopeless. “Fuck you, you bastard! You fucking coward! Let me go!”
But Matt didn’t let him go, no matter how hard he struggled, no matter how much he shouted. Finally he gave in and collapsed, weeping, into his friend’s arms. He listened to the sounds of their heartbeats, felt Matt’s arm drawing soothing patterns over his back, and heard to the quiet whisper of Matt’s stuttering, tearstained voice:
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name…”
This was the third time in his life that Foggy Nelson was saved by Matthew Murdock.
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven…”
The first time, Foggy watched a lost little kid crying over his father and swore that he would never be the cause of something like that ever again.
“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we for—forgive those who t-trespass against us…”
The second time, Foggy let an idealistic law student pull him away from his Family’s side of the law and towards the path of justice and righteousness.
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil.”
The third time, Foggy began to be forgiven.
“Amen.”
Re: FILL: "Mercy" (3/3)
(Anonymous) 2015-07-17 06:54 am (UTC)(link)Re: FILL: "Mercy" (3/3)
(Anonymous) 2015-07-21 06:29 pm (UTC)(link)Foggy trying to goad Matt into killing him ... I can't even handle my emotions. Oh gods. I wanna hug them both.
Re: FILL: "Mercy" (3/3)
(Anonymous) 2015-07-21 06:37 pm (UTC)(link)(Thank you for this, blessed anon!)
Re: FILL: "Mercy" (3/3)
(Anonymous) 2017-05-24 01:06 am (UTC)(link)Foggy constructs the whole thing so carefully too, provoking Matt but not lying to him. All of it engineered to drive Matt out of Hell's Kitchen with his own death as part of the catalyst.
It's just perfect that it all comes undone on the one thing Foggy doesn't predict. Forgiveness.