a/n

Greetings and welcome to my very first Daredevil fanfic! I'd like it noted that I am not familiar with the comics in the slightest, so all work corresponds with the TV-verse. I should also state that I am not super familiar with the Marvel universe as a whole, so please correct me if I make any silly errors in that regard.

The chapters you are about to read are disjointed - oneshots, all; and in no particular chronological order. Please refer to the notes at the beginning of each chapter for some idea of where they take place in the chronology. Thank you and please enjoy!

Chapter 1: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Missing scene from between "Speak of the Devil" and "Nelson v. Murdock." In which Foggy finds Matt half dead, puts two and two together, and doesn't call an ambulance.

Foggy's heart is in his throat as his fingers hesitate, hovering over the edge of the mask. He already knows. He knows he knows. He's been looking at that mug for years - years - he knows that's Matt's nose, Matt's lips, Matt's jaw. Matt's blood. Okay, no, he's not all that familiar with Matt's blood as it relates to other people's blood, but whatever, that's not the point. The point is that the so-called terrorist, the man in the mask, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, is… is…

"Matt?"

Somewhere in the pit of his stomach he's found his nerve and lifted the mask - and yeah, it's Matt. Why his lips formed it into a question is another story. Maybe it's because he doesn't want it to be Matt. "Shit… shit…"

Matt's eyes are fluttering, rolling sightlessly, his left arm flopping uselessly. He tries to talk, but it just comes out a whisper and then a groan.

How, how? Why? Foggy bends close to him, his right hand going for his phone again, his left tapping his friend's face. "Matt. Matt, talk to me."

"Foggy…?"

"Yeah, buddy, it's me. I'm calling an ambulance, just hang on, okay?" And by 'hang on,' he of course means 'don't die.'

Because yeah, it kind of looks like Matt is dying. There's blood everywhere, and his breathing doesn't sound so good. Kind of tight, fast, and ragged. Foggy's gaze sweeps his body quickly. There are deep gashes all over - a few especially notable ones on his chest and stomach - and the swelling over his left cheekbone says fracture to Foggy's completely untrained eye.

Matt manages to groan, "No," clear enough to be understood, and starts doing the incredibly stupid thing of trying to push himself upright.

"No, no, no, no, don't do that," Foggy says as he punches 911 into his touchscreen keypad again. He puts his other hand on what appears to be an uninjured part of Matt's chest and tries to push him back down into the floor. "You could have broken ribs or something and I don't think you're supposed - "

His words are cut off as Matt lunges forward, knocking the phone out of his hand. The movement has Foggy scrambling and Matt writhing.

Foggy grabs his phone from where it's skittered away. "The hell are you doing? We need an ambulance!"

"No," Matt growls, in a voice that's not his. "No hospitals, Foggy." The effort of stringing words together makes him melt back into the floor again, each breath an ugly, gravelly groan. Actually, one or two of them almost sounds like a sob. Oh, God.

"Are you insane? Actually, clinically, insane?" Foggy demands, but his finger is hesitating over the call button anyway. He kneels beside Matt again, peeling black fabric away from hot, bloody skin. "Matt, we need to go to the hospital. This is not optional! You cannot opt out!"

"Can't," Matt coughs. "I… I'm… th-they'll…"

"They'll what, Matthew? Save your life? Yeah, that's the point, thanks." He presses the button.

With a sound between a groan and a growl, Matt lurches halfway upward again and takes another swing, this time just barely missing Foggy's face and only because Foggy has the good sense to move out of the way. "No," Matt says again, falling onto his side on the floor. The mask has slipped up off his head and lies discarded beside his wild, blood-slimed hair. "Not… safe… for me."

"Yeah, I know, you're Hell's Kitchen's Most Wanted, but what the fuck am I supposed to do, here, huh?" He can't help himself. But he's killed the call before it connected, anyway, and he's not even sure why.

Matt's eyes roll back a little. "C-Claire," he chokes out.

"What?" Foggy kind of wants to strangle him for being so vague, but that would be counterproductive to the whole saving-his-life effort going on here. Or not going on, as it were.

"C-Call…" He hyperventilates a little, holds his breath, and tries again, pushing the words out past his teeth: "Phone… table... "

A thousand nasty things spring to mind for Foggy to say, but he settles on a wordless snarl of frustration instead and stands up, crossing the loft in a few swift strides to where the phone is sitting on the table. He cycles through the contacts list, ignoring the tinny voice that reads the menus aloud as he goes. Claire. That's all it says. No last name, no other details. Just Claire and a phone number. He pushes dial and hastily walks back over to Matt. "It's ringing. Who am I calling, anyway?"

But Matt doesn't answer. His eyes are closed and his head has lolled to the side, his breathing still rapid and audible but regular. Foggy kneels and peeks at some of the wounds. So much blood. Unsure of what else he can do, he presses the phone between his ear and his shoulder and starts tearing strips off Matt's shirt to staunch the bleeding with.

"Hello?" Claire's voice is a strong, musical alto, if slightly breathless.

"Um," Foggy replies ineloquently. "This is, uh - I'm - "

"Who is this?"

"Matt's been hurt!" blurts Foggy, before he can stop himself. "I'm sorry - I'm just - he's hurt and it's bad and he told me to call you, I can't take him to a hospital, and he said - "

"Okay, okay, okay!" Claire stops him there. She lets out a long breath that just sounds like a crackle of static through the phone. She says something under her breath in Spanish. Then: "Tell me what's going on. Where are you? What happened?"

"I don't know. He's all… cut up, like he's been through a blender or something." That's stupid, Foggy knows, but it's an awful lot of blood. This is no time to deflect with humour however - not even dark humour. He recovers quickly. "Not literally. He's unconscious, also."

"Where are you?"

"His."

"Are you safe?"

"Huh? Um - "

"Is it safe there? Is whoever hurt Matt gone?" Claire sounds impossibly patient. Something crinkles and rustles a lot in the background.

"Yeah," Foggy says, glad to be able to answer one question with confidence, at least. "Yeah, it's safe here."

Claire blows out another static sound. "Okay. I'm just grabbing some things and I can be there in twenty minutes. Don't hang up. Do you know any first aid?"

Foggy wants to cry with relief, but he doesn't. "A little. Not much. Not enough."

"First things first - ABCs. Airway, breathing, circulation. Make sure nothing is obstructing his airway, make sure he's breathing, make sure you can find his pulse. To do that, you're going to put two fingers in the hollow under his jaw, between his trachea and the muscle on the side of his neck."

Check, check, and check. "Okay. Yes. ABCs, got it."

"Breathing?"

"Yeah. Yes. But, um, it sounds bad."

"Bad how? Whistling? Wet?"

"No, neither of those, just sort of - fast, ragged?" Foggy wonders who the hell he's talking to, but he's also relieved that she sounds confident and in control - two things Foggy does not feel right now. He'll take it.

"Fast and ragged is fine. Long as he's breathing. Pulse?"

"Yeah."

More rustling in the background, and the jingle of keys. "Count."

Foggy presses two fingers into the hollow of Matt's neck and counts, ignoring the cold clamminess of his skin, because that can only be really, really bad. Skin isn't supposed to be cold. In his head, his counting sounds something like onetwothreefourfivesixseven because Matt's pulse is really, really fast. And that can only be really, really bad, too. Right? Probably. Yeah. Shit…

"Out loud," Claire encourages.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…"

After fifteen seconds, Claire stops him. "Okay. Good. Good." She sounds relieved. "What's your name?"

The question surprises him and he forgets for a minute. Then he remembers. Foggy Nelson, avocado at law. "F-Foggy."

"Foggy? Foggy. You said he was bleeding - where is he bleeding from? What kind of a wound?"

"Uh. Woundssss. Like, many, all over. Knife wounds, at a guess?" Foggy explores.

Matt groans.

"Is he conscious?" Claire must have heard.

Foggy looks at Matt's face and Matt's eyes are still closed. "No, he's not."

"You need to put pressure on the wounds."

"Lady, there are like a dozen of them and I only have two hands!" He puts the phone on speaker and sets it on the floor nearby, going back to ripping Matthew's shirt to bits to use for plugging up knife wounds.

"Find the worst one."

That's the one in his side, easily. It's longer and deeper than the others, angry and gaping and bleeding much more freely. He presses the wad of fabric into it, which causes Matt to make another sound that he doesn't like, one that makes his own eyes water sympathetically.

"You need to push a lot harder than you think," Claire instructs. Car horns sound from her end of the line. She must be driving.

"That'll hurt," Foggy observes, gulping.

"Yeah, it will, but it's better than dying. He'll thank you for it later."

Sorrow and dread twist Foggy's expression and he takes a deep, cleansing breath, blowing it out through his lips like he always sees in movies when female characters are giving birth. Hee hee hoo and all that. He sees why, now. It's kind of centering. He drives a little more of his weight into the wound.

Beneath his hands, Matt thrashes, a wretched awful cry getting tangled up in his throat as his eyes fly open again. His back arches, fighting against the pressure on his side.

"Shh," Foggy soothes, glad Matt can't see his face. He's grimacing in sympathy with his friend, he can't help it, and so he's glad, not for the first time, for Matt's blindness. He can feel the sting of tears at the corners of his eyes, but he tells himself it's sweat. "S'okay, buddy, s'okay. You're gonna be okay." He has no idea if he's lying or not.

Matt is making this awful choking sound now, somewhere between a gag and a sob, and he's grasping with weak hands at one of Foggy's wrists.

"He's conscious," Foggy updates Claire. "ETA?"

"Ten minutes, ish. Just keep breathing, you're doing good."

"I don't think he can hear you, Claire," Foggy says, watching as blood soaks through the fabric between his fingers.

"I was talking to you, Foggy."

"Oh." Yeah, breathing is good advice, Foggy decides. He sucks some air through his teeth.

Matt is losing the battle again, his struggles weakening, his moans turning to vague little near-whimpers.

Foggy groans himself, because blood is seeping through his fingers and it's warm and wet and feels a lot thicker than he thought it would, and he really doesn't love that Matt is falling asleep again. "Talk to me, Murdock," he begs through his gritted jaw.

"...F-Foggy…"

"I'm here. Say something."

Uselessly, Matthew's eyes roll toward the sound of his voice, staring off over his right shoulder somewhere. Well, not really anywhere. Nowhere. "S-sorry," Matt grunts. Ah, that good old Catholic self-flagellation. I'm the one bleeding on the floor, but I'm still sorry you have to deal with it.

Foggy's mouth becomes a grim line. "Yeah, you better be."

Silence falls, punctuated in short spurts by the street sounds through the phone, and Matt's barely-stifled groans. His bootheels grind into the fractured floorboards as his legs pedal pointlessly.

"Keep him talking," Claire urges.

"Claire?" Matt asks breathlessly.

"I phoned her, like you said." Foggy resists the urge to call his friend some colourful names.

"This isn't… I didn't mean to… ah… ah..." His face contorts in a fresh wave of agony.

"I know, I know. And once I'm sure you're not gonna die, we're going to have a big fight about that, but I need to make sure you're gonna live before I kill you."

Matt makes a sound that wants to be a chuckle, but it's a gasp and a choke and Matt's eyes roll back again, the lids fluttering closed, all the muscles of his chest and neck straining until they can't anymore. The taut lines melt and Matt's head lolls. His lips are moving but the words have no sound.

"No, Matt, no." Foggy taps his face, but Matt's eyelids only twitch in response. "Matthew. Agh, he's out again!"

"Okay. Still breathing?"

"Yes!"

"I'm almost there. Sit tight."

It takes hours for Claire to arrive. It's half a day between the sound of her car door closing and her footsteps walking into the loft. Wait, no… no, that's not right. Minutes, not hours. Just minutes. The timer on the call says twenty-two minutes fifteen seconds when Claire disconnects. Foggy's arms ache from pushing down on squirming Matt. Previously squirming Matt, to be more accurate - he's still now. Scary still. Foggy does the ABC thing as Claire turns on lights and pulls stuff out of a bag she sets on the floor. Airway, breathing, circulation. He can hear his breathing and see the pulse flickering in his throat, so that's… good, he supposes.

When the woman called Claire - hot, very hot, Foggy notices even under the current circumstances - kneels beside him and places a hand on his shoulder, he sees that she has a stethoscope hanging around her neck and purple nitrile gloves on. "Are you a doctor or something?" he asks hopefully, his voice rough.

"Or something," is the cryptic answer Claire gives, but it's good enough for now, it has to be.

Awkwardly, the two of them manoeuvre Matt to the sofa, and Foggy is incredibly thankful that he's unconscious for that part, because there's only so much gentleness to half-dragging a person across a room.

Claire cuts Matt's clothes off him and it's only then that Foggy takes in the true scope of his injuries. The sight takes his breath away. "Is… is he… is…" he chokes, for once at a loss for words.

"He's gonna be fine," Claire murmurs, examining the wounds. "Most of the bleeding has stopped already. You did a good job with this, Foggy. Really good." She grabs a plastic bag of something off the floor and tears it open. "Needs some stitches. A lot of 'em. But… I think he's gonna be okay."

It's only now that Foggy realises his own breath has been coming too quickly, his heart hammering an electronic dance rhythm against his chest. He lifts his hands to run them back through his hair, but stops himself, remembering they're coated in Matt's blood. It's dry now, making his skin feel tight and weird. "Who… who are you?" he asks again, watching her work. She's quick but methodical, her fingers moving with practised precision as she threads stitch after stitch through Matt's torn flesh.

"I'm a nurse," she says, her concentration taken up by the task of putting Matt back together. Foggy wants to say something about how nurses don't usually do stitches, but he bites it back. He's just thankful that this nurse does them.

Matt stirs, Claire shushes, and Foggy tenses; only one breathless word passes Matt's bloodied lips.

"Foggy…"