Trial and Error

N. Clevenger (August 2015)

Notes: This isn't the follow-up to "Beer and Blood" you might have been hoping for. Nor is it the crack!fic I've been writing to try and make it up to you. No, it's only another random fill for – say it with me, now – the Daredevil kink meme and my h/c bingo card. We're going to call this one the wild card square. Just more of the same.

Netflix/Marvel canon. I make no money because they don't belong to me.

He can do this. He can definitely do this.

Matt takes a deliberate breath, shifts his cane from his right hand to his left and pulls open the door. Sound ricochets off the high-ceiling of the courthouse entrance like tennis balls coming at him from every direction, making it difficult to pin down the positions of all the bodies surrounding him. Doing nothing to help his headache. He thinks about turning around, going back home.

But him being here is Important; Matt's certain of this much, even if he's less clear on the why. He's hoping that when he finds Foggy – because the courthouse implies Foggy, doesn't it? – he'll be able to fake his way through long enough to refresh himself on the details. It's not a brilliant plan.

Especially if they've got a trial.

Because, well… courthouse. The same certainty that had hissed its way through the pounding headache this morning to assure him that there was somewhere he needed to be had also been quite insistent on the where; the only thoughts, really, that had been allowed to fully form at all as he'd stumbled his way through his daily routine. It's probably a trial.

No problem. He can handle a trial.

You keep standing here, people are gonna start thinking you can't handle anything.

Even Stick sounds obnoxiously loud this morning. Though Matt's forced to concede that he's got a point when he's suddenly surprised by a hand on his arm; he jerks away automatically, barely prevents those same reflexes from retaliating.

"Sir?" a young female voice asks. "Do you need assistance?"

"No." Matt flinches at the sharp annoyance in his tone when it bounces back at an odd angle from somewhere across the room. He knows he's mostly irritated with himself. That he hadn't noticed her approach. "Thank you," he tries again. Kinder this time, though it sounds brittle and forced to his ears. Matching up perfectly with his weak attempt at a smile. "I'm fine. Admiring the architecture."

In his mind, Stick snickers. The girl makes a confused noise, something between polite agreement and actual words; it doesn't manage either, but it results in her hurried departure. Matt suspects he'd feel worse about this if it weren't for the throbbing of his head. Clearly, he needs to get moving. To find Foggy, to gather what details he can before he's expected to put on any kind of a performance. If this lobby dress rehearsal is any indication, he might be a little off today.

The flickering shapes of his world are dim, indistinct this morning; too easily altered by intruding sensations as he walks toward one of the metal detectors. Wavering under the shrill assault of a cell phone. Smearing when he passes through a lingering cloud of perfume. He can't trust what the fire wants to tell him. Matt puts his briefcase through the x-ray machine and fumbles his keys out of his pocket. He misjudges his path through the plastic arch and clips it with his shoulder on the way through.

It feels as if the whole room's watching him, a spectacle in the center ring. The security guard standing beside the machine certainly is. His coffee breath is too close – a direct echo of the scent wafting up from the cup waiting at his station – and it's aimed in Matt's face. It takes more time than usual to filter through all the stimuli, to get a working image of the guard.

Calm, experienced. But wary. Still watching him.

Matt's not sure why this is exactly, but he allows his shoulders to slump a little under the incessant beat in his head. Intentionally making himself look as nonthreatening as possible. He collects his things on the other side of the scanner, trying to be subtle as he runs a hand lightly over his tie, his buttoned suit jacket. All seems as it should be. Even when he gets past the guard and checks his zipper.

Still he can't escape a skittering paranoia that people are staring; his cane taps on the marble floor as he crosses to the bank of elevators, and it sounds unnaturally loud despite the rest of the noise zinging about the lofty space. Tension vibrates up and down his neck while he stands stiffly in front of the metal doors, tuning itself to the frequency of his headache. Such a challenge to look natural when you're actively trying. He doesn't feel as if he's at all accomplishing it.

He's alone in the elevator, though it takes a minute to figure this out through the stale cigarette smoke and body odor. He runs his fingers over the braille numbers to find the right button; the heavy doors slide closed, trapping him in with the smells. The car begins its climb with a lurch that sends a whiplash of vertigo up from his feet to his head, and he has to brace himself with a hand on the cold steel wall. Saliva pools at the back of his tongue.

Matt gags, swallows. Considers briefly the possibility that maybe he'd been hit harder than he'd thought.

But there's no time to reconsider. He's committed now; the elevator brakes with a jarring thud that rattles all of his bones. A last deep breath of the pungent air makes him cough, spiking silvery shivers of pain through his skull. As the doors grate open – with an off-balance screech that rakes nails over his eardrums – he lifts a hand for a quick examination of his hair and tries to stand up straight.

Get it together, boy. Crying over a bruise.

Matt latches on to the faint familiarity of Foggy's aftershave, pastes a fresh smile on his lips and moves that way. Karen's with him. They're standing in front of the emptiness of a big window, and he counts five other people milling about the corridor as he walks toward them. It's too much work to narrow it down to anything more specific than that.

This thought seeps slowly into his brain, and he chastises himself for it. Though that scoffing may be coming from Stick. It's more difficult to tell the difference today.

"Jesus, Matt. What the hell happened to you?"

"Huh?" He blinks in Foggy's direction, remembers a step too late to make his feet stop walking. Matt moves back a pace, and the world shifts disturbingly that way. "Am I late?"

"You're filthy."

"S'a clean suit," he protests, the first argument that comes to mind. He'd freed it from the dry cleaning plastic wrap this morning; the tetrachloroethylene underlines the universe, a chemical thread woven through everything.

"Not the suit. Your face." The word breaks into independent letters made of smoke; they drift around the sides of his head to reunite at the back of his skull. Matt raises a questing hand toward his jaw. Karen says something about sitting down.

He brushes his fingertips over his skin and the whole area lights up. They come away gritty, smell of dirt and oil and asphalt. Had he showered this morning? Of course he had.

Right?

He can't actually recall. It chills him, this gap in his memory, but there are hands on his arms and he's distracted when his feet start to move without his direction. The air goes thick and slippery; Matt wants to tell them to stop, but he's afraid that the only thing that's going to come out of his mouth is the moan ghosting around in his head. Or the banana he'd had for breakfast.

Had he eaten breakfast? He doesn't want to think about it.

His knee finds the carved stone of a low bench, a second before he's virtually forced down onto it. "What happened to you?" Foggy asks again. He's clearly stressed; Matt reminds himself that he needs to find out what they're doing at the courthouse. "How'd you get here?"

This feels unimportant, but he answers anyway. Maybe he can trade for information, a subtle swap. "Cab. What time is the –?"

There's no real end to the sentence, but Foggy cuts him off before it becomes obvious. "Did this cab drag you here?"

Matt scowls at this ridiculousness; the expression pulls at his bruised temple, pushes at his sore jaw. "Course not." The whole point of taking a cab had been to avoid the overwhelming swamp of the subway. To make things easier, more comfortable. It would've hardly been more comfortable to have been dragged behind it. Probably illegal, too.

"Well that's what it looks like." There's a discussion over his head about water, but Karen's heels click away before he can ask her to get some for him as well. Foggy spits – uncharacteristically inappropriate, here in the hallway – and Matt's about to comment when a damp roughness that smells slightly of coffee and chocolate scrubs at his cheekbone.

He tries to bat at it, but there's a strange disconnect between his brain and his arm and his fingers flutter uselessly against his leg. "Quit it." It seems impossible that there should be so much more substance to the air up here than downstairs. Matt twists his head away, and it's like moving through water. "Foggy. Stop."

"Seriously, Matt – this is not a good look on you. Did something happen last night?" His voice arcs too sharply and Matt flinches. Foggy misinterprets. "Karen's not here. Talk to me."

Another swipe at his skin with what Matt's realizing must be Foggy's handkerchief; he finally gets his arm up to curl a hand around his friend's wrist, annoyed at being treated like a child. "Know she's not. She's at th'end of the hall." It's offered as proof of his spatial awareness, his coherency. It just sounds petulant.

"Did you hit your head?" Foggy asks. Matt can hear his frown turning down the corners of the words, shaping them serious. This is why telling Foggy had never been part of the plan.

Matt's pretty certain that there was a plan at some point. "She went left," he says.

Foggy's fingers sweep over the lump near his temple, pushing back the hair there; they both suck in a breath. "Aww, geez. Yeah, you hit your head. Okay. Okay." He really sounds stressed. Matt's a little concerned that this case might be bigger than he'd thought. "Okay, are you hurt anywhere else? Did you call Claire?"

"S'at the vending machine. Doesn't have enough change." It's taking a huge amount of concentration to track Karen, but he can't seem to stop. She's rooting through her purse. He tells Foggy this too, hoping that the continuing demonstration will ease his nerves.

It doesn't seem to be working. Maybe because for some reason Foggy's having a completely different conversation. "Claire's not here," he says, dropping his hand. "We've got to get you out of the building. Before the Delevans see you."

"What?" The Delevans had a son. He'd died… at school? Negligence. "M'fine." This feels more true now that he knows why they're here. A pretrial meeting with their clients. No problem.

"You're kidding, right?" Foggy asks. Matt should have taken this as rhetorical; he shakes his head in answer, and everything dissolves into a sloshing nausea. There's no way he's going to be convincing if he throws up on Foggy's shoes. "I'd bet my nonexistent medical diploma that you've got a concussion," his friend says, oblivious to the peril he's in.

"Do not," Matt mumbles, swallowing hard. Stick's laugh is all jagged edges, slicing the inside of his head. Gonna need fancier words than that in the courtroom.

"That," Foggy says. "Right there. Exhibit A. Followed by B: you don't slur this badly when you're drunk."

Had he been slurring? He doesn't think so. Matt tries to replay the snippets of conversation he's had since he got here, but he finds only static. He's pretty sure that he'd talked to someone though. Downstairs? His head aches; he slides his fingers up under the bridge of his glasses to pinch at his nose.

Foggy's not yet done presenting his evidence. "C: you're way too pale. Like freakishly close to the same shade as your shirt pale. Oh, and the one I probably should have led with: you've got a bump that's the size of a golf ball on your head and you look like you were pulled down the street behind a team of horses. Is that last one two? Maybe that should be two."

"Why… why would there be horses in Hell's Kitchen?" He's never seen a horse. Except for in a couple of old movies when he was a kid. He wonders what they smell like. Whether those manes are silky or tangled coarse.

"Jesus," Foggy says again. Matt opens his mouth to tell him to quit swearing in church. Closes it quickly when he remembers that they're still at the courthouse. "Did this happen last night? Why didn't you call me? Or Claire?"

"M'fine. S'a bruise. Lucky shot. I can do this." He stands up to prove the point. It's a mistake only comprehended after the world begins to settle from its spin and he's back on the bench.

"You're a lot of scary adverbs right now, my friend. Trust me when I say that 'fine' is not one of them." There's a swish of fabric against fabric as Foggy checks his watch. "We've got two hours before we're due in court," he says. It doesn't sound like he expects Matt to confirm this, which is good as he can't. "I'll see if I can get a postponement. I'm thinking the Medical Emergency card. We've got Alinez – she likes you. I'll tell her you got crazy food poisoning or something."

The mention of food makes his stomach roll. It suddenly occurs to him that he's in a very public place, that he's painting a pathetic enough picture already. Desperately measured breaths in and out through his nose. Coffee. Tetrachloroethylene. "Fog, no. I can –"

"You can't," Foggy insists. Matt winces, misses the rest of what's said because he's lost in his utter loathing of those two particular words stuck together. "I promise I'll be vague when inventing embarrassing details. It'll work."

You gonna let him tell you what you can't do? Stick grumbles, his opinion plain. Get up, boy.

But where Foggy's seeing adverbs, all Matt's got are adjectives. Sickening odors and discordant noises, porous stone under his fingers and weighted air holding him down. He hasn't managed to stand by the time he picks out the signs of Karen returning.

"Here comes Karen," Foggy says unnecessarily. "Please, Matt. Let her take you home."

She's using a new mint shampoo; he'd missed it when he'd first arrived. "Sorry that took so long. I had to dig through everything in my purse to find a quarter." There's the splashing of contained liquid, the crunch of the plastic in Foggy's grip when she hands over the bottle. Matt hears the seal break on the cap.

"Here." It's more insistence than offer, though he doesn't understand immediately that he's the one Foggy's addressing. "Drink."

Matt obediently raises a hand, and the wet bottle is pressed into it. He's incredibly thirsty. He hears the elevator doors open, three more people disembarking onto the floor. Four. The wail of a baby splits through his skull.

Foggy's spinning some story about a mugging; Matt wants to interject, but he doesn't have anything better. It seems like they've given Karen this excuse more than once, though. Surely at some point it's going to be less believable.

"So I'm thinking you get him back to his apartment, and I'll take care of things here," Foggy tells her. It sounds reasonable and deliberated and like Matt doesn't get a vote.

"Are you sure I shouldn't take him to a hospital?" Karen asks.

Matt scowls. "Okay, one: I don't need a hospital. And two: still conscious, still sitting right here. Not deaf."

It's what he'd meant to say anyway, but the silence that now surrounds him suggests that it may not have come out exactly as intended. Foggy's balance shifts back and forth, indecisive. "Probably," he says to Karen. "But good luck –"

Matt pushes himself up, determined to make his case; the universe goes liquid, drenching him icy cold from the crown of his head down to his toes. It's unexpected. Almost as surprising as when somebody suddenly messes with the gravity, pitching him face-first into Foggy's shoulder. His limbs feel absurdly heavy.

"Right," Foggy amends. "Hospital."

"M'okay," Matt mumbles into the lapel of Foggy's suit. Detergent and deodorant. Toothpaste and soap and all the countless other bits that compose his best friend. The world rocks more gently like this, and he considers staying this way forever. He wonders if Foggy would mind.

"We so don't have the time to argue about this. The Delevans are going to be here any minute."

Matt's finally able to lift his head; his glasses feel crooked, the right side of the frames embedded into his face. He makes a clumsy swipe for them, and his hand lands on Foggy's chest. He might be a little drunk. Impressive, since he doesn't think he's been drinking. "Fog…"

"No, Matt. You need to go with Karen. They're going to think… Actually I have no idea what they're going to think. But I can promise you that it's not going to be an impression that our struggling fledgling law firm wants to project."

"S'not that bad." He's just dizzy; it's already going away. Matt runs his hand down the front of his suit, doesn't find any wrinkles. "Clean suit." He can't understand why Foggy's making this out to be more than it is. He can't look that rough. They'll never know.

"Yeah, you already said that. And I believe you. The issue is not with the suit, my friend."

Compared to Foggy's, Karen's fingers are long and thin where they rest on his arm. A barely-there pressure, uncertain of liberties allowed. "We'll get a cab. I'll stay with you."

That baby definitely needs to be changed; he can't understand why its screaming or smell hasn't yet conveyed this to the parents. Applesauce. Carrots. He thinks about going over there and saying something, but the hallway stretches farther than it seems it should in that direction.

"Okay gross," Foggy says. "And you realize you're making my point for me here? I'm pretty sure this hallway's the same length it's always been."

"What?" It's difficult to think through the baby's howling, the beat of Foggy's heart. The shiver of glass panes in the windows under a breath of wind, the whirring of the elevators trudging between floors. His own blood moving sluggishly through veins and arteries. But he can't recall Foggy ever having the ability to literally read his mind; he would have remembered that. "How'd you –?"

Foggy's breath hitches, his entire body going stiff under Matt's fingers. "Shit. Shit shit shit."

"What do you want to do?" Karen asks.

Matt's struggling to catch up, searching for the new danger. Boots, birds. Hope, heartache. The far end of the hallway continues its crawl away from him, and he doesn't think his pulse used to be so deafening.

"… 's happening?" The question sounds incredibly confused, but Matt's grateful that someone else has thought to ask it. Even if for some reason they're doing it in an imitation of his voice. The mimicry is annoying – and not very good, only a little bit like him – but it saves Matt from having to ask it himself.

The answer comes in the form of sodden cloth slapped into the side of his face, frantically rubbing at his abraded skin. Matt yanks his head back in surprise, but the handkerchief obstinately follows. It's in his mouth. He spits it out, trying to get away. An unsteady half-step in reverse bumps him against a body. Karen. A hand tightens around his arm. Foggy.

Focus.

"The Delevans," Foggy tells him, with another rushed attempt to clean his face. "You gotta stand up straighter than that. And, uh… try not to say anything."

It's insulting, but now Matt notices that one of his hands is still curled in the front of Foggy's suit jacket. Maybe he could do with a little advice. He lets go, trying to ignore the way the noises of the corridor merge into a high whine before separating themselves out again.

He's distressingly ungrounded. He works to force his expression into the opposite of this.

He's fine.

Mr Delevan smells like Sister Mary Elizabeth. Gin, Matt corrects himself, smoothing his frown and holding out a hand. They're moving at the same time and he's not paying enough attention; their hands collide awkwardly before fitting together. Delevan clears his throat. Matt swallows and breathes through a rigid smile.

Mrs Delevan's fingers are uncalloused and the way they flutter against his makes Matt think of a bird. A little one, each heartbeat trembling every feather. When the contact is broken, he rubs his fingertips together in an effort to rid himself of the unnerving sensation. It doesn't work. Nor do his feet when the group begins to move down the corridor.

Proprioception. It's a good word. A good feeling. Matt misses it.

A hand closes around his elbow, support when he stumbles. "Stop talking," Foggy whispers. Urgent, next to Matt's ear. He ducks his head as Foggy's exhale tickles the tiny hairs, and the universe slip-slides into a new angle. Matt presses his lips together, trying to stop the groan that wants to wiggle free. He wills the world to right itself. Wonders what he'd said.

"There's a bird in here," he tells Foggy. Someone should see about letting it out. Do they just call Animal Control when that happens, or is there some kind of specialized bird division? Are they going to be able to catch and release it without trouble? Maybe he shouldn't have said anything. Maybe it would have gotten out on its own.

They're still moving forward, but the grip on his arm has gotten much firmer. To the point of being uncomfortable. Still it's no competition for the pain in his head.

"This isn't going to work," Foggy mutters.

"Sshhhh," Matt says. Sister Mary Elizabeth is going to hear them.

The small conference room they've borrowed is too warm; he's already sweating under his collar. Though only on one side, which seems strange. No, wait – it's water, still trickling down the side of his neck from the hastily overdone sponge bath. Handkerchief bath. Matt wipes at it as he finds his chair, annoyed. Foggy should have been more careful. He's supposed to be making a proper impression, and he doubts that looking half drowned is helping.

Sitting again is a relief far more wonderful than he could have ever predicted, and Matt forces himself not to slump in the chair. Foggy instantly takes control of the room; Matt hopes that he didn't just thank him aloud. He bites his tongue, something finite and manageable to concentrate on. Allows the sound of his friend's voice to wash over him, fill the room, instead of focusing on the actual words.

This seems to be successful, for a while. He knows he should be paying more attention to the details – How long had Foggy said? Two hours? – but they swirl around his skull and he has to remind himself not to physically reach for them to keep them still. He knows all of this already. It's in his brain somewhere. It's simply a matter of jiggling the information loose from around the pesky knot on the side of his head.

Pesky? That one doesn't feel like an actual word.

Foggy clears his throat; Karen coughs, a sound too delicate to be unsculpted. Matt's teeth find his tongue again.

By the time they get around to reviewing the Delevans' testimony, it seems to Matt that they must have surely been in here for nearly both of those two hours already. And that their group has used up most of the oxygen in this room. His hands are fisted in his lap, but he's certain that the top of the table will be blissfully cool were he to flatten his palms against it. His forehead. God how he wants to put his head down.

He's lying.

Stick shoves him back into the conversation, though it's a scramble to pull together the threads. The boy, the accident. Never caused any trouble. Hesitation.

"You're lying."

Something slams hard into his shin from the right, and Matt can't choke down his surprise. It takes a second to identify it as a shoe. Foggy, because he doubts Karen can kick that hard. And she's on his other side. Focus. Matt gets the message, but it seeps in too slowly to be of any use; across the table, Mrs Delevan is making choking noises of her own. There's no need to see them to be able to pick up on their outrage.

He tries quickly to salvage the moment. "What I mean is, I… your son, he…" The words tumble out of his mouth with an alarming lack of control or direction.

Solving nothing, and now Mr Delevan is on his feet. "Just what are you saying? Who the hell do you think you are?"

Foggy's standing too, desperately placating, and Matt thinks that he probably should be as well. He tries it; the room tips over. The armrest crunches a new bruise over the old ones on his ribs as he bounces off of it when he falls back into the chair. Different from the ache in his head, and for a moment he revels in it.

"… wild accusations," Delevan's saying when Matt fades in again. "You think just because you're blind that gives you an excuse to be an asshole? And what are you, drunk?"

You should know, Stick sneers.

Or possibly it's Matt. In retrospect, he can find no other explanation for the room's sudden explosion into motion.

His name in Foggy's voice and Karen's trying to get his attention and someone's crying in the hallway and there's a jogger outside. Garlic and grass, cologne and whatever that chemical is called that they used to last clean the carpets – he's almost got it, but the metal detector goes off and he's yanked downstairs – and that crying might be coming from inside the room. A woman. Sister Mary Elizabeth leans in too close, her breath hot on his skin, and when she pulls the arms of his chair to face her everything dips into a sickening spin. He doesn't know where he is. The only thing he can tell is that she's not the one crying.

Foggy's angry; something's wrong. It's almost all he has, this knowledge, with the exception of his certainty that the one thing Sister Mary Elizabeth hates most is little boys who whine. Whimper. Sniffle. He needs to get away from her, before he makes it worse for himself by doing one of those things. She's angry, too, though he can't remember what it is that he did. The gin she exhales coats his throat.

He's not supposed to move, not until she's done, and even though he knows this his arm's coming up to shove her back. She's shocked – it radiates off of her bright from the dark, and a useless whisper warns he'll suffer for this later – but it puts enough distance between them for him to make an escape. Foggy's loud now. Way too loud.

Foggy. Matt's spine hits a wall. They're in the alley.

And he isn't sure why anymore, but Foggy's here and there's danger and it's his job to get them out. Nevermind the nauseating way the night air is whirling around him, the inexplicable headache and the disturbing sense that the smells surrounding them aren't quite matching up with where he knows them to be. He can still protect them. Matt tries to push Foggy behind him, to keep him out of the reach of the man approaching – the stranger's heading directly for them, and he reeks of gin – but Foggy's fighting him on it. There's no time to figure out why before the guy's on them. Matt gives up trying to reason it through and takes a swing.

It connects, as he'd expected. The subsequent grunt of pain that sounds remarkably like it came from Foggy, less so; the noise freezes Matt's arm before it can fly again. A hand on his wrist, his shoulder, a familiar voice murmuring in his ear. The conference room snaps into undeniable focus around him and his legs stop working. Carpet under his knees.

The Delevans. He's going to throw up.

He swallows down the bile but not the moan; his brain struggles to reconcile the scattered fragments of the last few moments with where he finds himself now. Courthouse. Delevans. Alley. No… Why is he thinking about Sister Mary Elizabeth?

"What did I do?" The one thing he actually intends to say aloud, and it feels nearly inaudible.

"You definitely made an impression." Foggy's beside him. On the floor. The room they're in is empty; there's plenty of people out in the corridor, but stretching his senses that way opens a floodgate that he shuts down as quickly as he can. Matt fights to breathe evenly. "Can you stand up? We're going to get you out of here."

"But… the Delevans… Did I –?"

"Karen's talking to them. If they're still in the building. Don't worry about it."

He'd gotten off at least one good shot in the alley before… the alley was last night. But his fingers are still cramped in their fist, and he remembers… God, had he hit somebody? "Foggy…" It's another moan.

"Later," Foggy says. "Maybe I should call an ambulance."

"No." Nobody will forget the blind man being wheeled out on a stretcher. An image that will stick; he has to work here. Matt tries to put together a convincing argument. Or at least a complete sentence. "M'okay. You should… you should go talk to them… 'pologize."

For whatever horrible thing it is that he did. He winces as this thought jumps around, seeking a place to land. To dig in, to take root.

"Probably." Foggy's breath shifts across Matt's face as he turns his head toward the door, back again. "Forget them. That guy's a jerk."

Disoriented as he is, Matt knows Foggy well enough to be able to hear that he doesn't mean this. "Grieving," he mumbles anyway. It hurts to acknowledge it. The least he suspects that he deserves.

"Yeah," Foggy agrees with a sigh.

Gravity pulls his chin toward his chest. "Fog… tell me I didn't…"

"You didn't." It's said swiftly, displacing any air that might be used for discussion. Without a doubt as to the question. "You wanted to," Foggy admits, when Matt lifts his head to protest this obvious warping of the truth. "But it's okay. Nothing happened."

This too feels a hurried and glossed over assurance, but now the door opens. Foggy's hands disappear. Matt works to push himself up from his knees. It's Karen; she enters and closes the door behind her, but she remains on that side of the room.

"I, um… I did what I could. They want to talk to you – they have questions. About the trial."

She's clearly speaking to Foggy; Matt lurches to his feet mostly because he feels foolish on the floor. And because it seems like it should help. Something. It doesn't – anything – and the only reason he doesn't end up back on the carpet is the arm thrown hastily around his waist. Foggy's got impressive reflexes.

"I should…" Matt starts, but his hand is directed to a chair and the rest of him down into it.

"Sit here for a minute while I go deal with them? Exactly what I was going to say."

Matt frowns. Had that been…? He doesn't think so. He removes his glasses, rubs at his eyes.

"You gonna be okay until I get back? Because I can –"

"Yeah. Go." He wants to go home. The threat of an ambulance keeps him sitting up relatively straight – as best as he can tell – while Foggy's flat footsteps cross to Karen and the door.

"You should put some ice on that," she murmurs. She may as well be leaning over Matt's shoulder for as clearly as this reaches his ears.

Ice? His fingers spasm around the glasses in his hand; he tries to unclench his jaw. His grip before he bends the frames.

"Later," Foggy says to her. "Later," he repeats, this second thrown back across the room though Matt hasn't actually said anything. The door opens, and he exits into the hall. Matt lets his head drop down onto the table.

He'd been trying to protect Foggy. In the alley. Except Foggy hadn't been in the alley last night. Sister Mary Elizabeth. No. Delevan. No…

The carpet muffles the sound of Karen's heels, but the smell of mint is everywhere. Matt can't find Foggy's voice in the jumble of the corridor; he should be able to easily. "Tell me. What happened." He doesn't lift his head. The frustration – fear – colors his tone, reflecting it back at him from the table top in the Daredevil's growl.

"Everything's fine." It might be the least persuasive he's ever heard her. "How are you feeling?"

Like he's on a boat in the middle of the ocean during a storm. Or so he imagines. He hates boats. "Karen." It's supposed to sound more demanding than it does. "Please."

"You're not yourself, Matt. Everything's fine. We'll go soon, get you checked out at the –"

"Dammit, just –" He'd gotten the demand that time, but it's instantly lost along with everything else the moment he raises his head from the table. Karen's gone. The room. Up, down. A bit of the groan that pushes through his teeth is trapped rumbling around in his skull.

"Matt?" Karen has more hands than she used to; none of them remain where they are long enough for him to envision their shape on his clothes. "Hang on, I'm getting Foggy."

"Don't. M'okay." His groping fingers find her sleeve. He's pretty sure he's not fooling either of them, but she doesn't pull away. Matt inches his fingers further forward, circling them around her wrist. A solid point to focus on in all the confusing motion. "Please, I need to know."

Still she dodges. "Things happened really fast. I'm sure Foggy can –"

There's no comfort to be found in this half answer. "God…" Had he hit Foggy? Why would he hit Foggy?

Karen sucks in a breath. His fingers are digging into her flesh; it dents under the pressure. He releases her as fast as he can when this registers. The carpet catches at the legs of the chair as he tries to get away from her, and everything wobbles dangerously.

"Matt –"

Mint and applesauce and Sister Mary Elizabeth, and Matt finally figures out where the floor is when it rushes up to smack him in the side of the head. The air's forced out of his lungs by the hard armrest; he's making a terrifying gasping noise in his attempt to gather it back, but it's all he can manage. If only the world would be still for a moment – just one – he could sort out what's happening.

The flames have dwindled to pinpricks of sparkling lights. The short fibers of the carpet push their way between his lips.

Stick's voice cuts through, clipped and clear and cleverly finding a way to bypass his brain. Breathe. Get up. You're defenseless on the floor. Matt's body obeys on its own; a sightless blink, a tiny hiccup in time, and he's wedged up against the potted tree by the wall. Partially under the table, a low ceiling above his pounding head.

Breathe. Start at the center.

Heart pumping, circulating blood though lungs that are getting enough oxygen no matter what his mind thinks. Back and out again to his head, his torso. Arms, legs; fingers, toes. Artificially cooled air on his face, the backs of his hands, and there's a wall behind him. A table hanging over his head with a wad of dehydrated gum stuck to it. An empty room, but in a crowded building. Not empty. Karen's here.

He's positive of this. Certain that they'd been talking, though not as sure about how he'd ended up on the carpet. There are far too many holes in this day. Foggy walks through one of them now, inarguably here though Matt hadn't heard the door open.

Get up, Stick's voice hisses around the room. This time Matt's legs refuse the command; the ceramic planter is gritty under his fingers, but he can't find the strength to leverage himself to his feet. Foggy crouches in front of him, teleported from his silent entrance to this spot without a trail in between. The wide lip of the planter bites into the underside of Matt's knuckles.

"I talked to Claire," Foggy says, his tone a wrapping paper layer of calm. "She's expecting us. You ready to get out of here?"

Matt doesn't have to pick at very much of the tape to get a glimpse underneath. Foggy's way more worried – tired, angry – than he's letting on, and there's a lot of effort going into pretending otherwise. Because of Sister Mary Elizabeth. The Delevans. When had he given Foggy Claire's number?

It's all mashed together into an unidentifiable entrée, and Stick will be disappointed if he can't separate out the ingredients. A hand on his arm. But he needs another minute. "Fog…"

"She's waiting at the hospital for us, and I'm not going to be the one to call and tell her we're not coming." The rebuttal is prepped and delivered before Matt can offer even an opening statement, and he wonders if Foggy had come up with it while still out in the hall. "Cab or ambulance, buddy. Your choice."

The heavy planter is a solid fixture in the unending motion of his universe; he clings to it, fighting to form thoughts amidst the rare spaces in the rhythm in his head. A plastic bottle appears from nowhere to be directed into his hand, room temperature and nearly empty and he wishes it were colder. Maybe Foggy has some ice.

You should put some ice on that.

"What happened?" He tries to put all of his weight behind it, but it's barely a whisper. "What'd I do?"

"I'll tell you about it later. Over a beer. Once we're sure you're not bleeding inside your brain or whatever."

"Now," Matt gets through his teeth.

"Is that gum?" Foggy says. "Gross."

The ceramic doesn't crinkle like the plastic, though his grip tightens around both. The tension in his jaw is adding to the headache, and he's beginning to think that the big planter might be a good place in which to throw up.

"Look, he was in your face. And you were obviously confused. It was a misunderstanding."

"But I… I think I hit…" You think? He knows.

He doesn't know anything right now.

"Yeah, well…" It drifts away into the blackness. It doesn't seem like there's any more; the air conditioning tickles unpleasantly over Matt's scalp. But now Foggy continues, "I, uh… I could see what you were going to do, but I couldn't stop you in time. Like I said, you were confused."

Assault. Arrested, maybe even disbarred. "… pressing charges?" He doesn't want to ask it, has trouble getting it out.

"What?" Foggy's a burst of confusion; it glows a hot expanding white before it fades. "Oh. No. Delevan's fine. Though I doubt he'll be giving us that five-star Yelp review."

A grunt of pain shaded to sound like Foggy. Twisting through Matt's mind with the taste of recent memory. It takes a couple of attempts to click the pieces together, but eventually they fit; even in the dark, he doesn't like the picture. "You got in the middle. God, Foggy… m'so sorry…"

"Relax," Foggy tells him. New tape over the holes in the wrapping paper. "You barely got me. A decidedly glancing blow. You punch like a blind guy."

"Not funny." Matt doesn't need Stick to point out that this too feels like a lie. But he doesn't know what he's supposed to do about it. Even negligibly afloat in this sea of disorientation, it seems wrong to simply let Foggy sweep it away. "How… how bad?" The question breaks in half, spreads its bitter flavor over his tongue.

"A tiny bruise, which will totally heal. In the meantime, I think it lends me a bit of mystery. Which can only help."

"Still not funny," Matt tells him.

"Neither is the fact that you're still on the floor, Matt. You know I don't even have to dial 911, right? I can just shout for an ambulance. It's a government building, there might even be one waiting outside…"

Courthouse. Conference room. It feels as if this might not be the first time he's had to remind himself; Stick assures him that it isn't. One of Foggy's knees pops when he shifts his weight. "M'okay," Matt slurs automatically, and the smell of coffee surges past all the mint with Foggy's sigh. Apparently not the answer he'd wanted, then. Matt frowns, sifts through the mush for something else. "Cab."

Because he doesn't think there's any way he's getting out of the hospital. Not if Claire's been involved. And Foggy had definitely said something about Claire. He'll play along; when they get there he can ask her to examine Foggy. Be sure that there's no serious damage.

"Up," Foggy says. Part statement, part question; Matt nods, and immediately wishes that he hadn't. He concentrates on the ceramic cutting into his skin. On not leaving a disgusting mess for housekeeping. "Slow," Foggy cautions. Matt sends him a scathing look, but it's cut off abruptly when the tug of his eyebrows cracks across his forehead to make everything worse.

"M'sorry," he mumbles again, once he's mostly standing. Foggy's pinning him awkwardly to the wall with his shoulder, doing a large chunk of the work; it's difficult not to notice. "You were right."

And the floor is flat. Absolutely not moving. He can't ask for confirmation.

"Clearly the lesson here is that you should always listen to me. Class dismissed." Foggy peels him off of the wall, and a fuzzy blanket descends over Matt's senses. Consciousness flickers. He struggles to breathe it back. "You okay?"

He's tired of responding to this. They don't believe him anyway. "Bacon-wrapped sushi," Matt mutters. He's not entirely sure how he managed to come up with this contrary proof to Foggy's supposed omnipotence, but he's glad he did when it earns him a snort of amusement.

"Delicious," Foggy insists. He pulls Matt's arm over his shoulders, and the world reorients. "You're the only one who doesn't think so. Ready?"

"I can walk. On m'own." He's not positive that this is true; it simply seems like the thing to say. Stick's pushing for it anyway, determined to show no weakness. But Foggy's warm and stable, and Matt's leaning into him without meaning to do it.

"Did we not just talk about you listening to me? How'd you get such good grades in school?"

His first steps are an intoxicated stagger, even with Foggy's support. "Cheated off you." As they near the door, he searches for an indications that there might be a well-meaning crowd – or angry mob – waiting for him outside. He can't hear anything but murmured conversations blending together.

Foggy ignores the obvious flaws in this explanation. Some of the stress in his tone dissolves; Matt feels rewarded. "Only you would get better grades than the guy you're cheating off of." Annoyance only for show now.

Matt realizes he's missing something; his fingers come up to his face and he's sure. "My glasses…"

Karen slides into focus, suddenly back in the room. He's really not paying enough attention, and he waits for a predictably snide remark from Stick to lash him for it. Nothing. Stick's pissed at him. Or it's just that they're both exhausted. Matt can't ask anybody for confirmation on this either.

She nudges the glasses into his hand, and he puts them on. It makes him feel a bit calmer, this barrier, but they still feel misaligned across his nose. One side bending in further than the other. "I've got the rest of your stuff," Karen says. Matt forces out a belated thank you, distracted by his pointless attempt to straighten the frames.

When they reach the door, he tries to pull away again. Foggy refuses to release his arm; Matt doesn't remember him being this strong. "Le'me go. Not going out there like –"

Foggy's frustration flares amazingly close. "Like what, Matt? Like a human being who sometimes needs a little help?"

"I don't want…" Curiosity. Pity. "They'll think…" Incapable. Pathetic.

It splinters off, and he wonders if Foggy's going to make him say everything out loud.

He doesn't; Matt feels like a traitor for having doubted him. "Yeah, I know. But trust me – the worse you look, the better it probably is for us in the long run. Or have you forgotten, Counselor, that we're trying to ditch out of a trial?"

"D'we even have clients?" He doesn't want to go out there, but he's got very few options. It's a bit of a strain to locate the grate covering the air vent; he tries to gauge the size of the opening when he does. It would be uncomfortable, but Matt thinks he could fit.

"A technicality, and one that in no way invalidates what I said. You'll have to try harder, my friend." Foggy directs him a short detour to the right, out of the way of the door as it's pulled open; it's got to be Karen's doing, because Matt counts both of Foggy's hands. One circled around his wrist to keep his arm captured over Foggy's shoulders, the other a pressure on his sore ribs that Matt's doing his best to ignore. "Better yet," Foggy says, dragging his focus back, "you could stop arguing and just come with me."

The corridor has grown more populated since the last time he was in it; there's a flash of something too much like panic, and Matt almost yanks Foggy back into the conference room. Longer this takes, the more likely it'll be a scene, Stick warns. This sounds a valid point, and Matt lets it move his feet out of the doorway.

As unbalanced as he is right now, Foggy would probably be able to catch him before he could get that grate off and scramble into the vents anyway.

"You're like twins, with those bruises," Karen comments from behind them.

Matt flinches, and there's no chance that Foggy didn't feel it. Another apology pushes at his lips; he tries to come up with something to add to the repetition to make it echo less hollow. He can't. And he's blind to the humor that Karen sees.

But it doesn't matter because Foggy won't let him say it. Won't let him stop walking. His fingers squeeze Matt's wrist. Reassuring.

Conspiratorial. "Don't worry about it," Foggy says in his ear. "We'll come up with an awesome backstory in the cab."

end