Who: Rocket and Matt Murdoch What: Stumbling through the caves (HG scenario) Where: A coridoor near the bat cave When: late in Day 2, after sundown Rating: Some language, talk of death Status: complete
Matthew was on his own again, moving towards the cacophony of bat cries as he walked painfully slowly, one foot in front of the other on hopefully solid if sometimes slightly slippery ground, always keeping the jagged cave wall under one hand. He was mentally mapping his environment out by counting the number of steps and by how the ‘feel’ of spaces changed as he moved in whatever direction he was going. This was a change from the narrower corridor he had been in before - the feel of the breeze told him that the space was opening up in front of him. It started to get slimy under his palm, and the background noise got louder as he entered the main chamber. There was no light coming in - not that Matt could tell - but he couldn’t feel any warmth in here and he thought he couldn’t hear anyone else.
He touched his head injury which Bail had re-patched up nicely for him with his clean-ish hand, rubbing his fingers to check if he’d started bleeding again. Matt wasn’t all that interested in acquiring weapons, but he really needed to find a long stick of some sort that he could use to help locate objects around him. Unfortunately he seemed to have ended up in passageways and caves, having to reach out into the blackness and hope that he wouldn’t walk straight into a cragged rock or wall surface.
Occasionally there was the odd scampering noise, which he attributed to rodents and other small creatures, but nothing that sounded like the echo of human footsteps, so Matt was completely oblivious to the fact that he was suddenly not alone.
Rocket stayed in that damned shelter as long as he could stand it, but eventually whatever-the-shit was making noise outside those ‘windows’ ground way too hard on his instincts; after catching up on sleep, food, and re-bandaging the gash in his shoulder, he made his way through the sewer and back into the dark system in search of a better hole to dig himself in.
At least he had his new-fashioned canteen full of water that didn’t smell like ass, his homemade bombs, flashlight hat, and a bag full of plenty of food to last through this fuckfest for several days; now he just had to make sure he kept it, and that meant keeping himself away from pretty much everyone else.
At first, when he spied the man across the guano stink-hole, his stiff and uncertain movements reminded of the things outside the shelter windows. It was dark- dark even for his night-fixed eyes, which meant it was after sundown, and the hole up top was black. Most of the bats were gone, out hunting in a place none of them could get to, but Rocket still didn’t want to draw the attention of the swarm.
That saved the guy from a hasty judgement. Instead, Rocket kept an eye on him while getting closer, intent on getting through the passage he was coming from; the longer he watched, the more he realized something was really wrong with the dude.
He was right next to him, and he didn’t seem to notice. It clicked in Rocket’s brain a second later.
“...Holy shit- dude, you’re the blind guy,” he said out loud, but still lowly. No sense in scaring the poor sap, or whatever bats were left in the cave. “Those psychos put you in here? Man- what a sucky deal.”
Rocket's voice from out of nowhere somewhere near his shins in front of him scared the bajesus out of him. Matt's eyebrows flew up towards the ceiling and he stumbled backwards, almost slipping and falling. He was sure with the way the noise carried throughout the cave that he'd hear someone else coming in. Was this guy here all along just watching him? And why did his voice sound like it was coming from very close to the floor?
The voice didn't sound like it belonged to a child. Thank goodness for that - it was cruel enough to put adults through this. Was the other guy lying down? Would it be rude to ask? Matt just stood there and blinked slowly a few times before the words that answered Rocket's question came to mind.
"Uh- wh- yeah. Well it's- not ideal for everyone." Matthew didn't deserve any special considerations just because he was blind.
"Why are you on the ground? Are you hurt?" Matt took a couple of small steps forward, crouched down and reached out into the darkness.
Rocket sort of expected that reaction, but it didn’t stop his teeth from flashing in a bit of a smirk- amused, but not. They were all kind of hard-up for amusement in this shit-hole.
This literal shit-hole, currently.
“Whoa-pal, keep those mitts to yourself,” he said, easily stepping out of the way of that hand, but he didn’t go far. He just didn’t exactly want to be used as a guide-animal. “Y’know, technically you’re on the ground, too- I just don’t stick out as much. The real question here is how the shit you plan on survivin’ down here…”
Matt pulled his hand back, curling it into a loose fist. "Sorry," he mumbled softly, still not realising he was talking to someone who wasn't human. To be fair, he'd probably be somehow even more confused if he ended up touching fur. Matt had been straining his ears and relying on what was left of his tactile senses to get through the arena, but that didn't mean he would throw his respect for someone else's need for personal space out of the window. He straightened up and took a small step backwards again, relaxing with a sigh when both his feet were on solid ground.
"I- don't know," he confessed with a quiet sigh. Using his hands to gauge the distance away from the ground, slowly he lowered his butt until he was sitting so it didn't feel like he was talking down to some animal. He wiped the cave slime off of his palm on the side of his thigh before resting his forearms on his knees.
"Not for long I presume. At least I won't see it coming. I guess." A small laugh. All those blind jokes would have been funny if it wasn't so tragic. "If you've hurt your leg or something I can- wash it out and tie it off," he offered.
It was safe to say that Rocket wasn’t exactly in the habit of talking to blind Terrans (his distinct lack of political correctness or understanding of his own ableism was plain as the smell of bat shit), but he could assume just by the way the dude flopped around that he was at a severe disadvantage.
“I ain’t hurt-” he reiterated with a sigh, seeing as his witty retort earlier was met on ‘deaf’ ears. Oh well. Terrans rarely laughed at his jokes. “I’m a third your size. But at least you got a sense of humor out of it.”
If he were in the guy’s shoes, he’d be swearing even more than he did back in that goddamned tube.
“You-uh…” Rocket scratched the back of his neck with one paw, his lip curling up with a rare moment of contemplative thought that didn’t center around himself. “You know… if you want... I could. Well. Make it quick for you? If it took you this long to get here, I can promise you, man… the rest of this place ain’t any better.”
"Oh. Oh I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to- offend you." Matt didn't remember encountering any midge people with dwarfism in the facility. But then he couldn't claim to be able to put a smouldering image of a face to each of those 120-odd heartbeats he could hear in the building.
Make it quick? Matthew blinked a few times, embarrassment giving way to a completely blank face right up until the realisation of what Rocket meant slowly started to sink in.
"I-..." It sounded... nice, actually. Quick and painless. A good death with what was left of his dignity was all that a man could hope for. More than what a man like Matthew Murdock with so many sins still unaccounted for deserved. Uncertainty danced in his eyes in the darkness, and then a familiar pang of guilt hit him and he lowered his head, biting down on his bottom lip. Reluctantly Matt shook his head.
"I wouldn't- I couldn't do that to you." Who knows, maybe he was talking to a serial killing dwarf. Maybe it wouldn't weigh down on Rocket's conscience at all. But if this experiment was going to send Matthew to perdition, he wasn't going to drag what appeared to be a merciful soul down with him.
Shrugging his backpack off, Matt held it out in the general direction of Rocket's voice with both hands. He could feel his left fist trembling ever so slightly, and he took a deep breath to try and mentally steady it.
"If you want my stuff you can just take it. You don't have to... loot my corpse or- hurt anybody."
Most people who actually knew Rocket would never use the word ‘merciful’ in a description of him unless it was preceded by the words ‘definitely not’- and those were his friends. He didn’t have a soul to save- that much, he knew without question- but he had influences in his miserable life that he couldn’t help but view as gleaming examples of how he could be a little less miserable. Losing Yondu had left a huge, gaping hole in his chest, and the only thing that lessened that pain was when he was doing things that he knew his friend would do.
Yondu may not have even asked.
Rocket looked between the dude’s face and the bag he was holding out; by reflex, he reached out for it automatically, but something stopped him. His teeth gnashed and his jaw went tight before he huffed a sigh that oozed frustration.
“Dude, I ain’t gonna take your shit unless you’re dead… and believe me, just sayin’ that feels freakin’ weird.” Yondu wouldn’t have left an innocent cripple to die of thirst in the middle of a damn killer cave. Rocket adjusted all the stuff he was carrying and put his back on the cave wall beside the poor guy- not quite in reach, but close enough to carry a conversation. “But let’s see what you got- maybe… y’know, there’s somethin’ you could actually use.” Thinking about it a little further, Rocket’s current inventory did not include a knife or an actual gun or anything that would help in delivering a truly painless death, and he wasn’t particularly certain he could snap the guy’s neck in one go by strength alone. He didn’t want to leave him more crippled.