Matt Murdock (absolve) wrote in saveatlantisic, @ 2018-09-29 01:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, *chel, *laura, claire temple, matt murdock |
23 September
characters. Claire Temple & Matt Murdock
time. Morning | location. Breckentale
rating. PG | status. Complete
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The days of being surprised by where she was waking up were behind her. Or so Claire thought. Instead of the flowered wallpaper that adorned her tia’s guest room, the wall in front of her was more to her taste. Which was strange, her still drowsy brain thought, because she hadn’t redecorated yet in New York either. It took another few long moments for her to register that she wasn’t alone, and why she wasn’t alone. On the nightstand, there was a photo of her with a man she was deeply familiar with, a moment she remembered, although she didn’t understand how. “What the --” Her body tensed briefly before she remembered that if she was fully aware of herself, he might be to, and there was never any hiding from Matt Murdock. (If he wasn’t Matt Murdock, she didn’t know what she’d do.) Quietly, “Matt?” Jolted awake by the sound of Claire’s voice so close to him, Matt could not conceive of the long spaces between them. He was supposed to be dead, buried by a mound of dragon bone and rubble. The city saved. Opening his mouth, he lay still and listened. The familiar rhythm that was Claire’s heartbeat close to him and, awash in warmth, he determined they were in a bed. Then, the memories came flooding back. Or, rather, the reality came flooding back. Micah O’Malley, the boxer. The simple man. The seeing man. And his brilliant wife. He had no explanation for what he was, where they were, or what they were doing now. But whatever it was, he felt the guilt clamp down on him. It stilled him. “I’m here.” His voice was like a sucker punch, like someone had stabbed her with a knife. It knocked the wind from her for a moment, and she couldn’t think straight. Then she turned, heedless of where they were and why. “Matt,” she said, breathless, despite the fact that she hadn’t done any work at all. The last time she’d seen him - Claire shivered. She hadn’t thought she’d see him again. She moved a hand up to touch the soft hair at his temple, and then let it rest on his jaw. “What do you remember?” It wasn’t a question she would have ever asked before, but between her own memories and the memories of a life she knew she’d never really lived (right? Or had they lived it? In some way?), she didn’t know what else to ask. “I remember …” Matt shuddered. He remembered dying. But he also remembered his name being spoken by hushed voices, the tight constriction of cotton gauze. He remembered Micah’s whole life. His moral dilemmas. His flaws. His great love for his Em. Slowly opening his eyes, they inescapably rolled skyward. The world was on fire again. “I remember being ready to die. But I remember being married to Em … and she was you.” When aren’t you ready to die? Claire thought. It was enough to place what he knew in line with what she did, though, and that was the first step. The next one involved a whole lot of questions that she was sure neither of them could answer. “We said good bye to you,” Claire whispered, and it still ached just as much. Or maybe that was Em, residuals of some life Claire couldn’t explain, because Claire had understood what Matt was doing and even though she hadn’t liked it, she knew she couldn’t stop him. Em, on the other hand, would have been more heartbroken. “I’m glad that it was you. Micah.” She was still wearing her ring; she could feel the metal pressing into her finger. “If I had to be married to someone.” At least he wasn’t a stranger. At least the love they’d shared felt plausible. He didn’t know what to say. Micah’s life with Em was something Matt had only glimpsed through a dream once or twice. He hadn’t ever experienced it and rarely found it in the small pile of desires he claimed for himself. “Claire --” was the beginning. Not a warning. He was tired already and concerned that his presence was somehow unwanted. Matt sat up, pushing his feet upon the floor, back arching as he stood to stretch out muscles that should have been … well, they were sore. Sore from matches that weren’t his. He still felt the lingering twitch of pain in his ribs from a haymaker Micah didn’t block. “But he isn’t me.” “Wait, don’t --” Frowning, Claire pushed herself upright. “I know he’s not you,” she stated, though it wasn’t that clear-cut in her head. But it was true. Regardless of what had happened to them, that life wasn’t really them. “I just meant…” Maybe he didn’t feel the same, she thought. So much had happened since that night at Metro-General, and they hadn’t been given enough time to catch up before Midland Circle. “I thought I’d never see you again.” And if it had been Luke she was waking up next to… Claire knew that wouldn’t have gone over well at all. “You shouldn’t be,” he reasoned. And he couldn’t understand why he was there now (wherever there was); couldn’t understand why Claire would be saddled with him by whatever ordered this strange, indefinable world. He took a deep breath. “I know. It … it makes it easier, knowing it was you. But I still …” he paused. “I’m sorry.” He was sorry he made the hard call in Midland Circle. He was sorry that he wasn’t Micah. Sorry that he felt guilty for waking up with a woman who didn’t have a choice to wake up next to him. “I …” he hated how tentative his voice sounded. “I’m going to go try to sleep some more. There’s a sofa somewhere, I’m sure.” “That’s it?” Claire was incredulous. After everything they’d been through, he was just going to leave her? Again? “You’re just going to --” She hesitated, only because she knew it wasn’t really fair. He hadn’t asked for this any more than she had. Then she sighed heavily and threw her hands up in the air. “You don’t need to apologize for this, Matt. It’s not your fault. I think there’s a guest room down the hall.” It didn’t feel right to let him leave when she wanted to try to make sense of what was going on, but it was always impossible to stop Matt once he got his mind on something. Claire didn’t think that had changed much. “That’s it?” he repeated, turning around with a flattened brow. “I don’t really know how to process what happened to us or how I’m even alive right now. But I wanted to give you the space. We’re not … they were. And I don’t want to presume anything. I’ve presumed too much in the past.” He wasn’t leaving like she thought he would, which threw her for a moment. Then, at the realization of what he thought he was doing, she laughed sharply. What she wanted was her friend. They were still that, at least, right? “God, for someone who’s as in tune with how people feel as you usually are, sometimes you are so far off the mark. Matt, I’m not asking you to give me space.” In emphasis, she reached out for his arm. “I know we’re not them, I got your point the first time. We are not that. But I don’t need you to give me space.” Matt paused, understanding that he should stay but unsure of what to say or do. He hadn’t planned for this possible outcome. Instead, he reached out and met her, drawing closer. Softly — “You okay?” Truthfully, Claire didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. “Always,” she said, dryly. Claire hadn’t really been okay for a while, though. Things with Luke had crashed hard, and fast, and it was only once she left that she felt like she could breathe again. It wasn’t okay, not by a long shot, but she felt better once she was touching him again. Grounded, like she wasn’t in it alone. “Are you? Besides how fucked up whatever happened to us is.” After he gave her a snort for her flip answer, he considered the question. Micah and Matt rolled around too freely in his mind to be of any use at all. He couldn’t seem to parse them for long moments at a time. Instead, he squeezed her hand. “Doesn’t matter. We will be.” He sounded so sure that Claire believed him for a second, before remembering all of the shit they’d been through already. Were they okay, after all of that? She still couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, it was one thing piled on top of another. “It matters,” she insisted. “To me. How you’re doing has always mattered to me. Even when you’re off God knows where and won’t call. You’ve always mattered, Matt.” The corner of his lip flicked upward in a smile. “Thanks Claire.” He didn’t have Micah’s easy grace anymore. But he did, at least, hold a memory of Claire’s face close to his heart. Claire without the flames engulfing the world around her. “Once we figure out where we are, then I can deal with what we left behind.” What we left behind. Claire shivered a little. She didn’t want to think about that -- whether he meant their lives in New York or the life they’d been living here. She didn’t have a clue where to start thinking about the latter. She’d said she was glad it was him, and that was true, but it put them in more vulnerable place than she was comfortable with. “All right,” she agreed, quietly. She couldn’t ask for anything more than that. She knew better than to push him. “Do you --” Her voice faltered momentarily as she thought about the life that surrounded them in the house. “Do you want me to give you space?” She’d asked him to stay for her own benefit, without thinking about what he might need. Now that she felt her feet a bit more steady underneath her, so to speak, she didn’t feel right forcing him to stay if her company wasn’t what he wanted, too. Matt’s jaw tilted, listening to the tentative note in Claire’s voice. He knew that she was not the kind of person who would stand on ceremony, but for when it came to the comfort and the feelings of others. In shock that he lived (and that he was somehow, brought into a different world and a different life), he could perceive that she would be his touchstone. However long he would be here and breathing. “You want me here,” he said simply. “Claire, this is the only place I feel …” He shook his head. “I don’t know anything in this world except for you.” Even though he couldn’t see her, Claire was sure that he could feel the emotion in her. That was why she’d wanted him to stay, too. She wasn’t nearly as isolated in her own head as he was, but he was still the only thing her heart knew, even if it was all jumbled, too. Fuck it, she thought. She didn’t know what was appropriate in their circumstances, but she didn’t care. She closed the space between them, disregarding the fact that they were both still dressed for sleep, and wrapped her arms around his neck before he could protest. “I missed you.” Slowly, as if still waking, Matt entangled his arms round Claire’s waist and buried his face in the crook of her neck. Staying there several moments, happy to just breathe and live, when he thought he was consigned to the sleep of death, he eventually straightened. “Let’s not go anywhere without one another.” The familiarity of the embrace hit Claire so strong that she was reluctant to let him go. Even though a lot had changed, so much still felt the same. Claire didn’t quite know where to start unpacking all of it -- what she’d seen in Harlem, what she’d done with Danny and Colleen, what had happened in Matt’s absence. They had time, though. At least, she hoped they would. “I think I can handle that,” Claire agreed. She didn’t want to be far away, not until they got a better grip on what had happened to them. “And you get into trouble when I let you out of my sight.” A smile to indicate his agreement with the assessment of his capability for ‘trouble’. He waited for a moment, drinking in the familiarity of their surroundings. Micah and Em’s sweet little house; the domesticity of it all. He wanted to tell Claire that he had a hazy memory of waking on a cot, of attempting to reach over to grasp at a glass of water and then ... Instead, he kept his thinking in the present. “I think the next question is why here and why us.” “I have no clue.” Claire sighed. Even if she tried to guess, she didn’t think anyone they’d faced before could do something of this magnitude to them. It was a helpless feeling, to not have any memory of who’d taken her this time. “I don’t remember seeing the others,” she continued quickly, brushing off the memories of the Russians, “but maybe I wouldn’t know - maybe they’re here and we just didn’t meet yet.” Like how she and Matt had met first, she thought. After another moment, she admitted, “I don’t even think they’d know I was gone. I wasn’t in New York.” “No, nor do I.” And he had hoped he would know his unlikely compatriots or even his best friend in this world or any other. But such as it was, he didn’t give himself much time to consider the multiple outcomes before Claire provided him with a thread he couldn’t resist pulling. “You weren’t in New York? Why?” She should have known he’d ask - this was lawyer Matt Murdock showing through - and she regretted spilling even a little once the words were out. She was still so angry, if she let herself dwell on what had happened. He would keep after her if she didn’t explain, though. “Things got bad with Luke. Like punching holes in my mom’s apartment wall bad. So I kicked him out and I left.” Matt would be proud, she thought. Angry, too. “I don’t really want to relive all of that right now. So that’s the short version. I can tell you the longer one later. I just…” She felt like an idiot. “It’s a mess.” Cool-headed, gentlemanly Luke was the last man he ever thought would end up doing something like Claire described. And Matt’s anger was there. It was in the clench of his jaw and the thin line of his pursed lips. The vigilante group that saved the city at Midtown Circle pivoted at Claire’s influence, her empathy, her heart. But instead of falling into a spiral, asking more questions and feeling all the more impotent for that rage, he turned back to her. A breath. He imagined her cheeks tinged with a blush, illustrated by a wave of heat within the room. “I’m here when you need me, okay?” Matt’s imagination wasn’t wrong, and although Claire knew he could still tell, she was glad, in that specific moment, he couldn’t see her like Micah could. His scrutiny already made her feel like her heart was torn wide open, and if she hadn’t felt on the verge of tears, she might have laughed to hear words so similar to her own tossed back at her. It was easier to just move on. Forward, always. “I know,” she told him. And this time, she believed him. She stretched forward to drop a kiss onto his forehead, and then moved to slip off the bed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get back to sleep, so I’m going to make some coffee. Do you want anything? I know - not coffee. Breakfast?” “All the breakfast,” he said, following her progress with his shoulders. “I’ll be down to help …” Claire paused in the doorway and looked back at him with a smile. “Take your time. I’m not going far.” It was a comment on the size of Micah and Em’s cozy little house as much as it was a promise. They didn’t have anyone else they knew here; she wasn’t going to leave him, especially not now. |