Title: Back in the Saddle

Author: Beth Pryor

Rating: T

Universe/Timing: Potentially canon for some time in Netflix season two or beyond, set shortly after Elektra's inevitable demise.

Summary: Matt doesn't listen to Foggy. Foggy's advice was sage. Matt pays dearly. Don't it always seem to go…

Disclaimer: Oh, another thing I desperately wish I were a part of but am not. I think I'm in the wrong line of work.

Chapter 1

Foggy managed to suspend Matt's nighttime extracurriculars for three days following the memorial service. After that, Matt wouldn't be pacified by any of the regular arguments.

"It's too dangerous."

"I'll be fine."

"You're not fine."

"I didn't say that I was, but I'll be fine out there."

"Matt." Foggy paused, trying a new angle. "You're distracted."

"I'm focused."

"On revenge?" The silence that followed sounded a lot like an admission to Foggy. "That's not ever who you've been, what this has ever been about."

Matt stood. "So maybe it's about a little bit more right now."

Foggy took a different approach, one he'd sort of used before. "We can do this the other way, the right way."

"I won't kill him," Matt promised.

"I'm not as worried about that as I am that he'll kill you. And what makes you think he's hanging around waiting for you to come find him? Word on the street is that he's long gone by now." Foggy hoped Matt wouldn't ask how he knew this.

Instead, Matt shrugged before taking a couple of steps toward the bedroom. "Then I have to get back to my regular work."

Foggy raised to his full height, dropping his hands anemically to his side. "Let Tony Stark save the world. It's some kind of sick hobby to him. He actually enjoys it!"

Matt didn't turn back around but answered still. "Tony Stark's energies are focused elsewhere. He's got 'bigger fish to fry.'"

"You mean he isn't risking his life to combat muggings and break-ins? What a novel idea!"

Matt sighed, turning toward his best friend. "Foggy."

Foggy lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender he now knew Matt could sense. "I'm just saying maybe take a couple of weeks off and see if it really makes a difference."

Matt turned away. "I make a difference." Foggy knew he really needed to believe that he did.

"I'm not saying that you don't, but maybe let the others handle the big guns right now, and let the police, you know, police?"

Matt continued moving toward the trunk in the closet as Foggy spoke. "I'm going out tonight."

"Jesus, Matt." Foggy knew there would be no stopping Daredevil, but he couldn't stop this plea to whatever part was still his friend Matt. "Can I at least stay here in case you need something when you get back?"

Matt shrugged the armor-enforced suit over his shoulders. "Do whatever you want." He clearly planned to do the same.

Six hours later, as predicted, Matt collapsed, half dead and wholly bleeding, on the roof. Foggy didn't have time to pull out the "I told you so" before he extracted the burner phone from the suit's hidden pocket and punched Claire's button. She answered on the third ring.

"Matt?"

"No. It's Foggy."

"Shit. How bad?"

"Not quite as bad as the ninja thing, I don't think, but he's unconscious. And bleeding on the roof."

"I'm at my sister's in Virginia."

"What do I do?"

"I'll send someone." She heard him open his mouth to protest. "She'll be discrete. I promise. Grab the bag under the kitchen sink. It should have everything you'll need. And get him inside if you can. It's too cold. He'll go into shock."

"I know."

"Foggy?"

"Yeah?"

"You couldn't have stopped him tonight. He was going to have to go back out there, even though we both know he wasn't ready." She knew the other man would have tried his damnedest.

"Yeah."

"I'm texting my friend now. She'll be there in 20 minutes. Maybe get him out of the suit, too?"

"Okay. Yeah. Thanks, Claire."

"He'll be okay, Foggy."

"Yeah." He hung up and turned toward the heap that was his best friend. "Matt?" The other man stirred, but just barely. Foggy closed his eyes and swore again, under his breath this time. He grabbed Matt beneath his arms and began to pull him across the roof.

"Foggy?" Matt roused truly this time, pain seeping from that one word.

"You're on the roof. We have to get inside. Can you stand if I help you?"

Matt swallowed hard. "My leg's broken. But yeah."

"Okay." He reached again under the muscular man's arms. "I got you." Together they half hopped, half scooted across the roof and down the ladder into Matt's loft. Foggy eyed the couch, which represented the halfway point between the bedroom and where they currently stood. They inched across the floor, a puddle of sweat and blood trailing behind them. Matt collapsed against the soft leather of the couch (they'd finally convinced him that it was easier to clean, and he was getting used to the smell) as Foggy retreated into the bedroom. He reappeared in a moment with soft sweats in his hands.

Matt pushed up on his elbows, the mask askew on his face, his unfocused right eye visible and roaming. "What's that?"

Foggy knew by now that in this aftermath period Matt's senses would be completely haywire. Or even more haywire than usual. Matt had told him once that this was the blindest he ever felt, when the pain muddled his perception of the world to the point of utter gibberish and confusion, even dimming the 'world on fire.' "You need to change."

"I thought we've already discussed this tonight…" Matt breathed with the whisper of a grin.

"Your clothes," Foggy exasperated, not in the mood for this stab at humor. "Claire is out of town. She's sending a friend."

Matt moved off the couch with quickness Foggy didn't expect would still be possible tonight. The remainder of the color drained from his half-masked face when the injured left leg hit the floor with a millisecond of full weight transferred onto it. He crumpled toward the floor, with Foggy grabbing him just in time to avoid a second head injury courtesy of the edge of the coffee table.

"Matt! Stop it."

"No one else!" the injured man hissed through teeth clenched against the next wave of pain, as he briefly relived Claire's run-in with the Russians.

"She's already on her way. You need help. You know I can't do this alone. Let me get you out of the suit at least." Foggy hoisted him back onto the couch. "You're bleeding like a stuck pig, too. Are you stabbed somewhere again?"

"Left side," grunted Matt.

"Well. That must be a nice vacation for your right," mused Foggy as he unclasped the suits hidden fasteners and peeled it carefully off of Matt's upper body. The aforementioned wound bled freely. He left Matt's side long enough to retrieve the first aid kid from beneath the sink and liberate a pack of 4x4s from its depths. "Here. Hold pressure on that."

Matt obeyed, steeling himself for the removal of his trousers across the injured left leg. The fracture wasn't compound, but there were multiple breaks in the fibula and one through-and-through in the tibia in the area of the medial malleolus. And it fucking hurt without Foggy jerking on it. Matt held his breath until the moment of maximum impact, choosing then to try to breathe through the pain as best he could. Foggy counted to three and pulled. A whooshing roar encroached on Matt's supersonic hearing as the lightheaded feeling of pre-syncope washed over him, followed immediately by nausea and rising bile.

Somehow, Foggy noticed the greenish tint of his friend's face, even as the apartment was lit only by the cherry blossoms on the billboard outside and pushed an emesis basin into his hands just before Matt relinquished the contents of his stomach. The bleeding that had previously slowed on the left side started up again with renewed vigor following the retching. Foggy dug back into the bag for something else, anything else, when the knock sounded on the front door.

Matt groaned, managing half syllables of explicatives as Foggy left him unattended for the brief moment it took to retrieve the new nurse. Or whatever she was.

"Hey," he dispensed with the pleasantries as he pulled her through the doorway, shutting the hallway out behind them. "He's in here."

"Can we get some more light?" the woman asked, immediately surveying the situation.

"Shit. Right." Foggy ransacked the place for the lamps Claire had insisted upon, illuminating the three he could find with their beams focused on Matt as their visitor approached the couch where he had collapsed back again, eyes closed, breathing fast and shallow.

"So, how much can you tell me about what's going on here?" she asked as she continued to size up the situation.

"How much did Claire tell you?" Foggy felt they needed to establish that before he spoke out of turn.

"Enough." Matt emitted a squeaky grunt from the couch. The woman turned her attention toward him. "She said that you had a death wish, and despite all evidence to the contrary, I should thwart your best efforts to accomplish that goal." She shed her parka, retrieving a few pairs of blue nitrile gloves from a pocket before tossing it across the room. She knelt beside the couch to examine Matt, taking extreme care not to jostle him unnecessarily.

Foggy continued to dig in the kit, pulling out more gauze and a suture kit. "He says his leg is broken. We've never, um, set bones before."

"It's displaced," Matt revealed as the woman began to examine him.

"That won't kill you." She pulled his hands away from the stab wound as she surveyed his work of breathing, heart rate and skin temperature and pallor. "This could, though." She prepared Vaseline gauze to prevent air from entering the pleural cavity and covered the area. "Don't pull that off. If it bleeds through, add on top," she directed Foggy who nodded sagely, as though he understood the physiology of a sucking chest wound. Her fingers started at the top of Matt's head and moved systematically from body part to body part. She addressed Matt this time. "Claire says you have x-ray fingers or whatever. Other than the leg and the puncture wound on the side, anything else serious?"

"No. The knife nicked a rib, but there's no internal bleeding. There are no other breaks. No retained foreign material."

She nodded. Matt didn't know if she knew that he could sense that, even in his weakened state. "I'm gonna look at your leg now," she prepared him. "I'll be as careful as I can, but it's going to hurt." Matt grunted again. "I have something if you want, but Claire said you'd refuse."

"Just do it," he managed through the vice-like tightness of his jaw.

She nodded again as she began to carefully palpate the obviously deformed ankle and foot which were already swollen and bruised. "I can't fix this," she revealed after a few seconds of examination. "You're going to need a surgeon."

"No," Matt managed, hot salty tears now rolling down his face, mingling with blood and saliva.

"Matt!" Foggy placed a hand on the other man's arm.

"No hospitals. Too many questions."

The new nurse persisted. "I know a guy. We'll fix you up good as new." She reached into the back pocket of her scrub pants for her phone. Matt's right hand shot forward to knock it away. She twisted out of his reach. "If you don't stop that, I'll drug you."

The pain elicited by that set of movements forced his words out in little panting spurts. "You can't do that."

"Hide and watch," she countered. "You wanna stay in your current line of work?" She nodded toward his foot. "You're gonna need my guy to ORIF you."

"Or if?" Foggy inquired, as Matt was too busy pouting to ask questions.

"Open reduction internal fixation. That's surgery – with no weight bearing for at least six weeks afterward."

"Jesus!" Foggy scrubbed his hand across his face. He didn't know how they'd manage that, how he'd keep Matt on the sidelines that long.

What pale hue of pink that had previously returned to Matt's face drained away. He'd never been as careless as he had tonight. He knew he should have listened to Foggy, but they were well past that now. He'd have to face the music. "Okay," he whispered.

The woman patted his arm again before she stood. "Good. Let me make some calls."

"Discretion," Foggy interjected as he raised up beside her, "Is really important."

She placed a steadying hand on his arm. "I know. We'll take care of everything. I promise."

TBC