Darcy is only half listening to you. JSYK. (halflistening) wrote in incompletedata, @ 2017-09-26 13:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | marvel: mcu: darcy lewis, marvel: mcu: matt murdock |
Who: Darcy Lewis and Matt Murdock
When: Hunger Games, Day 3
Where: Room A, The Fallout Shelter
What: Not killing each other, singing.
Rating: PG, for language
Trigger Warning: HUNGER GAMES
Status: log; Complete.
After wishing Rocket the best of luck and parting ways, Matt continued onward, deeper into the caves. He liked the caves. Cold and dark and chambers full of sound - it was as close as he could get to a level playing field as the unhinged violent people he was up against in the arena. By now he was slightly delirious from the blood loss, but quietly thankful that the only major altercation he had was on the first day. He followed the sound of dripping water until he was shin-deep in it. The sound of him trudging through the water changed and - sure enough - when he reached out and touched a wall it was manmade. There was something rancid about the water and that combined with the squeaking confirmed his suspicion that he was in some sort of sewer and headed in the right direction towards the source of water. Fingertips trailed down the wall as he continued walking, following the wall until there was no wall. Mindful that there were sharp things in the water - but also leeches, so he couldn’t walk too slowly - Matt tried his best to clear most of the hazards, giving himself small cuts and scratches in the process. No doubt some of the sharp objects were protruded above the water, but it didn’t really matter to a blind man. Licking his lips, Matt warily started up the stairs once he thought he’d done the best he could and swallowed hard when the stairwell opened up into some sort of open space. Oblivious to the dancing shadows on the wall, relief washed over him when his hands made out the few sparse amenities the room had to offer. Dropping his backpack next to one of the cots, Matt sat down and sighed, burying his face in his hands. Sitting around sobbing wasn’t going to do anyone any good, and right now he was more inclined to scream and throw something across the room, but he didn’t have the energy for it. That and he should probably check the room out before trashing it. He smoothed down the sides of his legs, feeling around for any leeches and other insects. It wasn’t particularly pleasant ripping them off his clothes, but at least the shoes they’d been outfitted in were waterproof, and none of the parasites were attached to any of his open wounds. He gritted his teeth and poured clean water over the various scattered cuts and bites, busying himself with tying anything off with more torn strips out of his jumpsuit that needed to be covered. Darcy was tired. She was wet and cold and there was water in her boots and her arm throbbed and all she wanted was to find somewhere where she could sit down and dry out and just rest. But this was The Hunger Games and death was possibly just around the corner- either from her fellow Tributes or from the arena itself. While Phasma had told her to stay hidden as best she could, holing up wasn’t going to work any more. She was hungry and thirsty and she had already taken all the painkillers in her survival bottle, dry because she hadn’t been lucky enough to score some potable water and she was saving the tiny packets of water that had come in the survival bottle for a real emergency. So that was where she was- cautious exploration in a search to find water and maybe a little food. She made her way from a larger cave, skirting around the area of the cornucopia (because she was not going to take her chances there, thanks) and through a cave that had far too many mushrooms and way too many bats. She managed to crawl, almost literally, through there without waking those flying nightmares. After that, she made it to what was obviously a sewer. The water in it was higher and grosser, but the walls and floor were more level than in the caves, even if she tripped and stumbled a few times. The stairs were a welcomed sight and she could have cried with relief when she saw them… But of course someone else had found the room before she did. She stopped half-way in the entry, blinking as she adjusted to the weak light. “Um… I come in peace?” He didn't hear her coming down the sewer until she started up the stairs. Gripping the edge of the cot, Matt lifted his head warily and moved to stand. He didn't really want to fight but every little noise set him on edge and after his unpleasant altercation on the first day, he felt like he had to be ready for anything. When he heard her voice he breathed a sigh of relief and his shoulders slumped. He might not be able to read anything off of her right now but the woman he met back in Romeo was not someone looking for a fight. And even if she was, well - he'd observed her fight during the training courses. Even with his handicap, if they were both unarmed he could probably take her down. Leaving his bag by the cot, he approached the sound of her voice cautiously. Funnily enough he'd probably hurt himself more if he tumbled off the edge of the stairs, not to mention the embarrassment. "Freddie Mercury," he greeted after taking a couple of steps towards her. 'God, please don't take a swing at me.' Darcy’s relief was audible. She eased her bad off her shoulders, around her make-shift splint with a soft hiss, and dropped it to the floor. “It’s good to see a friendly face, Matt.” She took a step towards him and paused. “You’re friendly, right? I hope you’re friendly. I am in way too much pain right now to offer up much of a fight if you’re not.” She didn’t think he was looking for a battle, honestly. The way he held himself said that he might be in a fair amount of pain as well. "I'm not going to hurt you." But if she tried anything she could expect him to fight back. He'd gotten this far basically stumbling around in the dark and apart from throwing a punch at some crazy lady who gave him his head wound, he'd actually made it up to this point without hurting anyone else. A part of him was quietly proud of himself for that, and he'd like to keep it that way. It did mean that he wouldn't be able to vent his frustration trashing the room now that he had company though. His anger still needed an outlet, but it'd have to wait. Taking a couple of steps backwards, he issued her a silent gestural invitation to the space. "I just got here. There's uh... water, bathroom- well. Oh. I guess... you can- see for yourself." It probably wasn't immediately clear whether it was the head injury, the sheer exhaustion, or maybe Matt just normally talked in disjointed sentences. He hadn't found the can of peaches yet and there was no way he could notice the downright terrifying shadows silently moving on the wall. Darcy noted the way Matt was speaking… it wasn't the same as he had the other day, when he'd helped her during training. But that could be exhaustion. She knew she was exhausted, and she didn't think other people were much better off. But with the whole fighting each other question resolved, because she wasn't attacking anyone if she could help it and especially not someone from her Block, Darcy moved her bag to the cot he hadn't been occupying and took a look around. “What even is this place? It does not look like something that should be attached to those hell caves. It looks like something out of an Ed Wood movie.” “Uh I… don't know. Some sort of bunker.” It had to be if they were still underground. He didn't know what anything out of an Ed Wood movie sounded or felt like either. He had no frame of reference. “What can you see?” Matt groped around in the darkness for the corner of the cot just before he walked into it, cursing under his breath. “Shit, dude.” She almost rushed forward, almost told him to watch out, but the guy was blind and obviously without whatever mojo let him parkour around normally. He'd made it this far and this long on his own, and had done a damn good job helping her learn to suture, so she didn't think that coddling would go over well. “Let me paint a word picture for you before you accidentally give yourself tetanus from all the dirty, rusty shit in here.” She described the bunker to him, trying her best to give him approximate distances to things from his current position. She mentioned the window, but she didn't mention the shadows on the other side of it. Because they were underground and it was dark as hell out there, other than the glow worms and the few other lights, so she had to be hallucinating them. Or maybe they were floaters or something. She was getting older and that was a thing apparently. Darcy took a seat on the cot as she spoke, digging through her backpack. “There's a can of something on the shelf and I'm pretty sure my Swiss Army knife has a can opener thingie on it. So yay dinner? Or lunch. Hell, it might be breakfast for all I know, my sense of time is all messed up.” “Why is there a window in an underground bunker?” he asked, making a confused face. But at least he could sketch the place out in his head, painting streaks of red all around him where his remaining senses couldn't right now. He was the last person she could rely on to tell her the time of day. Moving slowly over towards the shelf, he patted it down until he found the peaches. Gingerly lifting it as if being slow wouldn't trigger any traps it could have been rigged to, he stopped holding his breath once he had successfully removed it from the shelf and felt the weight of the can in his hand. “I'm not hungry,” he said as he turned and held the can out towards her. “No idea. There’s a door, too, but there’s a shelf blocking it, so I’m going to guess that it either doesn’t work or the shelf is there to keep whatever might be on the other side out.” Darcy stole a glance toward the windows but couldn’t see anything from the angle she was at. Maybe that was a blessing. She took the can, but studied Matt while she did it. There wasn’t much in the cave to eat besides those gross looking mushrooms that she hadn’t yet tried and bugs of various sizes. She’d seen a couple of snakes, but she wasn’t yet brave or hungry enough to try catching one. So this can of whatever it was? Was definitely a fortuitous gift. It had been a couple of days since she’d had anything close to a full belly, and Darcy doubted that Matt had been eating better. “Okay… I’m saving half for you anyway. You might not be feeling hungry now, but it might hit you later.” She found her Swiss Army knife and set it and the can aside, pulling out the Nalgene bottle her survival kit had come in. “Do you have a canteen or something? I’m going to fill my bottle, I can fill yours too, while I’m at it.” “Yeah let’s- let’s not move the shelf,” he agreed softly. He was more concerned about how much energy it would take, and really judging from the ‘instructional video’ or whatever it was that had been played to them, it wasn’t likely to be an escape route. Their choices were limited - stick together or cut their losses. And if they happened to survive long enough, they’d still have to cut their losses. Accessing some blocked off door wasn’t going to change that. Matt didn’t protest against her conserving the food, even though he had no intention of having any. He was used to fasting. She’d need the other half tomorrow. “I do.” He turned his head over his shoulder and moved his hand through the air, moving back towards his cot slowly until his palm found its cold edge again. At this pace he could probably outlast a few people just by how slowly he was taking things. “You ever killed anyone before?” he asked seemingly out of the blue, his head lowered while he rummaged around for his canteen. Darcy blinked at the question, watching Matt. That was a seriously weird thing to ask, but in this situation, she guessed she could understand where it came from. So she swished the last bit of gross water in her bottle around and gave it a sniff before she answered. “Kind of? I mean…” She shrugged. “Not really. But I sort of helped a little bit. In London a few years ago. With the whole Convergence thing and the Dark Elves. I mean, Jane and Erik and Thor did the heavy lifting, but I was there to help.” Darcy took a drink of the water that was left in her bottle and grimaced slightly. The iodine taste was strong in the dregs of the bottle, but it was better than dehydrating to death and she didn’t see a benefit to wasting drinking water. “What about you?” After grabbing the canteen in one hand, Matt sat down on the edge of his cot and sighed, rubbing his face tiredly with his free hand. He hadn’t really touched the water beyond using it to clean out his wound, so there was still a lot of it left. “Not yet.” He’s thought about it, long before coming to the facility. And he was under no illusions that they might be faced with some difficult decisions here, involving all sorts of murder and mayhem. “If I was capable of it, if I had to do it so that you could survive - would you want me to?” He lifted his head, unseeing eyes fixated in her general direction. Selfishly he wished he could hear Darcy’s heartbeat right now just to be able to know what she was thinking. Now that was something that Darcy would have to think about. Because that was a lot to ask of a person- not the question itself, but to kill another for them. That was a huge burden to put on another person’s soul and honestly, she didn’t think she could ask that of anyone. Even if her own survival was on the line. “No. I don’t think I would. Like… Okay, so. In London, when the Dark Elves were everywhere, they almost got me. Like, there were four or five of them and one of me and I was unarmed. I thought that it was going to be the end. But then my intern Ian smashed them with a car because gravity was seriously weird. And everything got weird after that.” She’d kissed him, after all, and for a hot minute thought that there could be more. But once the dust had settled, Darcy had seen it for what it was- the adrenaline and thankfulness coloring her decisions. “If you’re going to kill someone in here, it shouldn’t be for my survival. That’s too big a burden to ask of anyone.” Ultimately it'd be something that would happen so fast that Darcy wouldn't have a say in it. He's realised that dying for someone was much easier than killing for them. And if all Matt had to do was die if he thought he'd be doing Darcy or whoever a favour, he'd gladly do it without question. Killing though - killing weighed heavily on his mind. Especially seeing as right now he would have to try and do it with his bare hands. He shuffled backwards and brought his legs up, wrapping his arms around his shins, tucking his chin between his knees. Maybe it wasn't worth worrying about. As he shook his canteen he couldn't even sense by feel or weight or sound how much water was left in it. "If you have to, I'd like you to leave me behind," Matt heard himself say, his voice low and quiet. More likely than not he'd go off on his own and not give her that option anyway, but it paid to say it now, just in case. "Won't hold it against you." Oh shit. Dude had a martyr complex. Darcy sighed and set her bag aside. She stood with a slight groan, because her sore, over-tired muscles had gotten used to the relative comfort of that cot, and plopped down beside Matt. “Wow, moving was a very bad move. Or maybe it was not moving that was a bad move.” She nudged him gently, settling back against the cool wall. “But listen. I’m not leaving you behind anywhere. If you want to go off on your own, I’m not going to stop you, because I’m pretty sure you could kick my ass. Mostly, though, I’m not leaving you behind anywhere because that’s not what friends do and I think that in our normal captive lives that we could probably be friends.” He'd heard the shuffling noises and footsteps but couldn't help but tense up instinctively when she touched him out of nowhere. Forcing himself to relax, he stretched his legs out and sat his canteen in his lap. Something to fidget with and keep his hands busy made conversing easier. "I- can't even tell where your ass is." Unintentionally funny comment, maybe. "I'm not used to being a burden," he confessed with his head half-turned towards her, though his eyes didn't move from where they were fixated somewhere on the ground. "I don't want to die a burden. I don't want you to get hurt because you thought you owed your- your useless, disabled neighbour anything." The more he talked the more agitated Matthew became. Yeah, sure, it wasn't fair, but up until now most of his life hadn't been fair. That was nothing to complain about. It was the helplessness that frustrated him. Even if he had his enhanced senses back, even if he magically could see, he'd still be sitting here having the same moral dilemmas. "I'm not a good friend, Freddie. I'm not a-... I'm not a good man." A martyr complex and some serious self-esteem issues. It was okay. Darcy had this. “First of all, you’re not a burden. And you can trust me on that, because I find lying morally abhorrent. And a total waste of time. So if you were going to be a burden, I would tell you.” Maybe in a nice way, but if she thought that hanging with Matt was going to be more dangerous for either of them in this completely fucked up scenario, she wouldn’t have insisted that she wouldn’t leave him behind. “We basically just met, so I wouldn’t expect you to know that about me yet.” She reached over and snagged the can and her Swiss Army knife, then went about opening the can. “And I think you’re harder on yourself than you should be. A person who is really not a good person doesn’t sit around thinking about what a bad person they are, Most of the really bad people out there don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about whether or not they a good or bad person. And the fact that you’re questioning that tells me that you are a good person… Or at least a better person than you think you are. So here’s the plan. We’re going to sit here in this creepy ass room and eat whatever is in this mystery can and get some sleep. And when we can’t take the creep factor any more, we’re going to fill up our water bottles and then see how far we can get. There’s definitely more caves and I totally found a hot spring the other day.” He felt compelled to point out that good men didn't go to confession and ripped their hearts out three times in a single week. He rubbed his calloused knuckles and his jaw shifted left and right as her words sat uncomfortably in the space between them. She was right of course - only those with a conscience were burdened by it. Everyone else was... blissfully cruel. "Smells like peaches," Matt commented offhandedly when she managed to pierce through the lid of the can, still with Day 3 well underway not yet realising just how much he could rely on what was left of his senses. How many sighted people sniffed canned fruits? He of course was still dwelling on the fact that he could normally tell it was peaches before she'd even opened the can. "What's creepy about the room?" he asked innocently, turning his head away as if he could hear something amiss. "We should stay here. I mean we're- hot spring or spa pool, we're not on vacation. We'll have the advantage if we hole up in this room." “I think you are seriously underestimating the creep factor in this room,” she said, hissing softly when the twist of the can tweaked her injured wrist. “If you can imagine a George Romero zombie? That’s totally what it looks like is outside those windows.” She peeled open the can and grinned in Matt’s direction, even if he couldn’t see. “You’re totally right, it’s peaches. Hello, sugar high, here we come.” "Oh." It wasn't like he doubted that she could see... zombies? But he couldn't sense it for himself so it was difficult to fathom in that regard. Matt thought he usually had a good sense for imminent danger, but that probably came with being able to hear things coming from miles away. Surely he'd be able to hear a nearby zombie though? Didn't they... stumble and groan? He just smiled even though half the time it looked like he was smiling to himself. A part of him was tempted to tell her not to overload herself with sugar because it'd make her go to the bathroom more, and that was water they didn't have to spare, but he didn't want to burst her bubble. "Well I'm not hearing them coming, so. Enjoy your meal and try and get some sleep. I'll let you know when the zombies attack." Or, well. She’d know when she hears the very unmasculine scream when Matthew was getting torn to shreds. “We will enjoy our meal. You need the calories too. And then we will drink entirely too much water.” Darcy couldn’t help that it was her nature to be as positive as possible in situations and she was way past the age of caring if people thought about it. “And after we both get some rest, we’ll reassess and decide what to do.” The blankets and sheets on the cots didn’t look exactly soft and inviting, but after a couple of nights of sleeping on the ground with bugs and rats and snakes, it was probably going to be blissful. Plus there was the toilet. That alone was enough to make her want to stay there a while, but apologizing in advance for that was likely about to go down in there would probably make things awkward. “But I’m totally washing my hands first, because I don’t want cave gunk getting in our peaches.” "I'm- actually on a liquid diet." It was never too grim for a laugh. Short of forcing the peaches down his throat she'd have a hard time convincing him to eat anything. He actually didn't mind the dirt and grime so much since he couldn't feel every single particle clinging to his skin or making his nose itch. He ran his hand over the sheets, curling his fingers into the coarse fabric. If they weren't in this life-or-death situation he would most definitely have spent more time appreciating just how much of his independence came from his heightened senses. While she got up and went to clean her hands, Matt drank some of his water. He couldn't smell any blood but he touched the makeshift bandage wrapped around his head wound again and rubbed his fingers just to be sure it was still dry. “You mean, like… Alcohol liquid diet? Or weird ass new age cleanse liquid diet?” Darcy rinsed her hands with what was left of the water in her bottle and wiped them on a clean patch of her shirt. It wasn’t the best, but it would do for now. She only wished she had something like a Tupperware container… That way, if Matt really didn’t want to eat, the peaches would be easy to transport and they wouldn’t go to waste. “Because those cleanses don’t actually work, you know. Pseudo science.” Darcy noticed the touch to his injury, though. “How’s your head?” "I didn't know there was more than one type." Matthew preferred to spend his time running his fingers over pages of old-fashioned books than getting some accessibility robotic voice to read out diet fads on the internet to him. "I'm fine." Dry fingers. No blood. He'd already lost too much of it on the first day, he couldn't afford to lose too much more. Long- and short-term memory still intact. Nothing to worry about yet. Even if there was something to worry about he probably wouldn't tell her. "Hey, can you do me a favour? When you're finished?" he asked when all her shuffling about fell to silence. She must have sat down and started eating or something. "Can you sing me one of the classics?" This might be the only time he wasn't going to regret every offkey moment of this. “Oh yeah. Some delusional soccer mom somewhere decided that a ‘cleanse’ means having no food and only, like, unsweetened lemonade with maple syrup and cayenne pepper for who knows how many days.” Darcy shook her head, snorting. “Puh-lease. I like food and I like trying new new and interesting flavor combinations, but that just sounds like liquid hell.” They lapsed into silence once she settled back into the cot she’d claimed as her own for the moment. Then he asked her to sing, just as she slurped up a peach like it was a fat, fruity spaghetti. She choked on it, laughing. “Seriously? The thought of unsweetened lemonade, maple syrup (did that make it sweetened lemonade?) and cayenne pepper (spicy sweetened lemonade?) all mixed together made Matthew feel nauseous. He made a face as colour seeped away from his pale cheeks. Now she could most definitely have the whole serving of peaches to herself. "Can an-y-bo-dy~ find me... somebody to love?" Matt made a noise that sounded suspiciously like an embarrassed giggle. He wasn't half-bad but there was no way he was hanging on until the crazy notes. She couldn't make the song somehow worse than her rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. Darcy flopped back, banging her head lightly against the wall as she laughed. It was… nice. For someone who was normally pretty light-hearted (and, frankly, loud), she had been very serious since the Reaping. “You are way better than me. Maybe you should be the one singing.” "No no no no. That's not happening." Matt hadn't been that self-conscious when he was a young boy in church but these days he'd much rather be the non-vocal pianist. He rested his head against the wall, close enough to the window that if he pressed his ear to the wall he might have been able to hear some weird distant sounds. "Consultation's free but I charge by the minute." It felt like it would have been a long time since anyone had laughed within these cold concrete walls. Or sang. Darcy folded the peeled-back lid of the can back over and set the peaches aside. She’d had enough for the moment. Much more and she really would have a sugar high to go with a fair amount of gastric distress. Her smile lingered as she settled in on the cot. “I’m not feeling Somebody To Love right now. How about some Fat Bottom Girls? Or maybe even Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin?” This was a bad idea. She was going to ruin every classic on what could potentially be their last few days alive. Still, Matthew couldn’t help but laugh, this hollow, sad kind of laugh. Maybe he shouldn’t dwell on what he did and didn’t deserve and just try to suffer- or, well, ‘enjoy’ the moment. “Yeah,” he nodded, pursing his lips. Maybe he should be bracing for impact. The zombies might come sooner to shut them up. “Yeah okay. Maybe some Janis Joplin.” Darcy could hear how fake Matt’s laugh sounded. God, this guy needed… something. Someone to talk to maybe. Like… a psychologist or psychiatrist or something. But she liked him anyway. What the hell did that say about her? “Oh Lord… won’t you buy me… a Mercedes Benz…” She wasn’t much of a singer. She could admit it. And she didn’t care because she sang when she wanted to because she liked it, not because she was good. Her voice was a little pitchy sometimes, but it was much better suited for a Janis Joplin song than the dulcet tones of Freddie Mercury. She nudged Matt with her toes when she got to the part asking for a night on the town. If there was anyone who needed a night out, it was Matt. If they weren’t, like… in the middle of the Hunger Games where they might have to kill other people. He was pleasantly surprised when he was expecting a completely horrendous, relentless assault on his eardrums and got something... not horrendous. He lifted his head as his eyebrows rose, and his warm smile widened. He had to laugh when they were trapped in some bomb shelter with a sewer to the left and zombies to the right, and she was sitting there crooning about a Merc. It was so out of place and yet reminded him so much of New York. "I'm countin', on you Lord, please don't let me down. Prove that you love me, and buy the next round..." he joined her for a while, then he chuckled, licked his lips and shook his head. Jesus. What the hell were they doing here? "That's not as bad as your Bohemian Garbage Salad," he teased once the silence stretched between them when she'd finished. "Hey. If we get out of here somehow and you're ever in Manhattan, look me up. Murdock's my last name. I'm a defence lawyer. I'd take you out for a night on the town. You'll love my city at night." “I’m actually in Manhattan once in awhile,” she said, adjusting the pillow under her head so she could see him. She was relaxing… which was weird because of where they were. “Jane presents at the Hayden Planetarium sometimes, when we’re not on the lecture circuit.” Did he just ask her out on a future date? Or was it a friend thing? Probably a friend thing, because it would be weird to ask someone on a date in a fallout shelter surrounded by shambling horrors. She assumed. “I’m going to remember that and take you up on it, so you better not be surprised when I show up at your door, singing Bohemian Garbage Salad.” "Along Central Park West." He knew the place. He had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of Manhattan and could navigate it even being as blind as he was now. He knew the island he'd spent his whole life in as intimately as he knew criminal law as it was practised in his state. If she pressed he could talk about these things for hours and bore her to death before the zombies even came close. "It's a deal then." Matthew seemed homesick - among various other things - but talking about it wasn't as upsetting as he thought it would have been. Deal, not date. A friend thing then. Cool. Friends she was great at. “So where are we gonna go on our night in Manhattan? You know all the cool places, don’t you? We’re never really in one place for long enough to learn where all the cool spots are.” "Of course. You'll want to go around Manhattan with a native. What would you want to do on a night out? If you want to catch a show on broadway it's got the best Italian. Next block down on 8th Avenue - you could drink your way down classy nightclubs and shitty dive bars, cut across West 42nd Street, eat your way up 9th Avenue. Thai, Chinese, Japanese - you couldn't do it all in one night." Thinking about all his old haunts now, it was easy to see how he'd taken all those home comforts for granted. All those chefs and waiters who knew what day he would come in and what he would order before he even walked through the door - he didn't know if he'd ever meet them again. "What about you? Where are you from?" “Are you trying to make me fall in love with your city? Because that’s how you make me fall in love with your city.” She was joking, but not really. Everything Matt had listed were things that she loved- mostly the shitty dive bars and the millions of take out places, but it sounded like heaven. “I grew up just outside Philly. A little town called West Chester. It doesn’t have any of those things. Just a lot of trees and Revolutionary War battlefields.” She stifled a yawn, but her eyelids were starting to dip. Sleep would probably be happening for her soonish. “My dad still lives there, and one of my uncles.” "There's not a lot about it not to love." Sure there was the traffic and the high cost of living, but there was always something going on somewhere. He didn't have a hard time getting around despite the vision impairment. The city didn't sleep but neither did Matt on most nights - it worked out great for him. He went a little quiet when she started talking about her family in Philly. It was disconcerting trying to listen to something in the silence and not getting much by way of feedback. Unaware of how tired she was, he just kept going, hoping to keep their conversation on something that wouldn't get them down. "Tell me about your dad?" Darcy’s smile grew, thinking about her father. “My dad is a huge guy. Like, not fat or anything, just tall and solid… So he constantly makes fun of me for being a runt.” She laughed there, because she was short. There was no denying it. “He works in construction and quietly disapproves of some of my life choices- like not really using either of my degrees that he's still paying for.” She missed her father, truthfully. Frequent conversations with him and her step-mother didn't erase the fact that she hadn't been home in a long time. Her life was just… busy. And while Bill Lewis might not always like or understand it, his wife Maureen did. “What about you? What's your family like?” His mental crimson painting of Darcy did depict a petite figure. What her father must have looked like towering over her did make him smile. Of course, the inevitable question came, and Matt just shook his head, his Adam's apple bobbing uneasily in his throat. He didn't want to bring the mood down when they were doing so well, but. After having asked and her being so forthcoming, he owed Darcy at least something in return. "My mother, she- I- don't know her. Didn't want us I guess. I don't blame her. We were struggling to make ends meet. I uh, lost my sight when I was 9." Matt scratched the back of his head and sighed. God it felt like a lifetime ago. "Dad didn't- he was killed not long after." He didn't really have anyone to go home to. He'd cut off his longtime friend and business partner. His other colleague whom he thought he had something with wanted to 'cure' him of his nightly activities like vigilantism was some sort of disease. His ex-girlfriend was dead. Really it wouldn't have bothered him if he was destined to die in the arena. "Sorry," he heard himself apologise. "Didn't want to bring the mood down. But I don't have a lot of happily ever afters." Darcy’s heart went out to Matt. She could empathize with him. “I’m sorry about your dad,” she said softly. “My mom left too. When I was little. She married my dad when she was young and there was a pretty sizable age difference between them. And I guess having me was too much for her or something because she took off when I was in preschool. So my dad raised me until he remarried, then Dad and Mo raised me.” She cleared her throat and shifted on the cot a little. “I’ve only seen my mom a handful of times. She likes to make promises about visiting but then she gets distracted by whatever mouth-breather she’s currently seeing, so I don’t count on her ever.” “And you don’t have to apologize about anything, dude.” Her voice was stronger then, putting aside their shared tragic backstories of parental neglect and loss. “Just because you don’t have happily ever afters yet, it doesn’t mean they won’t happen. You’re a freaking catch, man. A defense lawyer and good looking? And you’re not all cocky about it? You’re basically a unicorn. You might just need to make your own happy ending, rather than waiting for some princess to rescue you from your castle.” The worst thing was that he didn't really remember what his father looked like anymore. It'd been over twenty years since he felt his father's face. He wouldn't know those bumps and ridges if he felt them now. But, well, at least they both had some shitty stories to tell. It didn't make Matthew feel any better but it did make him feel less awkward about bringing the mood down. She even managed to make him laugh with her unicorn comment even though he felt slightly embarrassed. It wasn't an offhand comment he's never heard before, but she wouldn't say the same thing if she knew about Daredevil. Matthew came with more baggage than a 747. "You mean 'Beauty and the Beast'?" he commented with a snicker. "Let's just take things one step at a time and figure out how to get out of here first." “I was thinking more Super Mario Bros, but Beauty and the Beast works too.” This was where Darcy really shined- her knowledge of random trivia was second to none. “Did you know that the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast was heavily influenced by the story of Bluebeard? Only in that story, it wasn’t an enchanted rose and the remnants of many, many temper tantrums being hidden, it was the corpses of dead wives who didn’t pass muster. Which is pretty fucked up to me.” She yawned audibly then, her eyes slipping closed. “Dude, I really, really like talking to you but I am wasted tired. Mind if I nap a bit? Then we’ll switch and I’ll keep an eye on things while you nap.” Not bad, Freddie Mercury. Not bad. She was just full of surprises today. They probably all were, if Matt took the time to get to know them all. If only he had more time - wasn't that what everyone wished for? He could do all the things he thought of doing now. Matthew had a few roses in his secret garden. Few and far between. He didn't want anyone else touching or wrecking them - not even with death weighing heavily on his mind. But maybe, in another life perhaps, he could be talked into lowering the drawbridge from time to time and letting a few people in. "Not at all. Get some sleep." A tight-lipped smile fleeted across his face before he rested his head against the wall, listening out for the zombies. |