bestavocado | (no subject)

The actual explosion is a bit of a blur in her memory. She remembers smoke and her ears ringing and paramedics arriving on site and pressing an oxygen mask against her face, and then she’s waking up alone in a bed in an apartment she’s never seen before. Except it wasn’t just an apartment, which became pretty clear when she found she couldn’t leave.

As cells go, it’s pretty nice. Better than her old apartment. There’s a kitchenette with food in it, a bathroom off the bedroom, and a living area with just… a ton of books, which she guesses are the main thing she’s supposed to entertain herself with, along with an MP3 player filled with music to someone else’s tastes. It could almost be thoughtful.

There’s a couple guards she sees on occasion, although she doesn’t think they’re there full-time because the locked and extremely strong door is pretty fucking effective at keeping her where she is. There’s a doctor who visits a few times—to listen to her lungs for smoke damage at first, and then, later, to splint her wrist after an unsuccessful escape attempt. And then there’s Vanessa, who starts calling a few days into Foggy’s captivity via a burner with outgoing calls disabled to chat, like it’s normal to chat with the woman you’re holding captive about how she’s doing and what she thinks of the books you picked out for her, like you’re both members of the world’s shittiest and most fucked-up book club. Foggy tries to refuse to talk to her at first, but—well.

It’s a nice prison, as prisons go. She has things to read and listen to. She’s not starving. It’s comfortable. After a little while, she even starts getting copies of The New York Bulletin, and when she rips out Karen’s articles and the articles about the bombing that ‘killed’ her, she finds an empty scrapbook tucked in with a food delivery to use instead of hiding them in the pages of books. All in all, she could be doing a lot worse. But she’s going to go crazy if she doesn’t talk to someone, and Vanessa’s just about the only one offering. And as affable as she seems, Foggy learns pretty quickly to step lightly when she asks how long Vanessa can afford to keep her like this considering how much of Fisk’s assets were seized when he was arrested and convicted and her food delivery shows up several days late.

Somewhere around a month, by her count, after waking up here, Vanessa tells her that she has approached Matt Murdock with an offer, and as part of a good faith offering—and proof of life, Foggy surmises, because one of the articles carefully tucked away is her own obituary—she’s going to be allowed to speak to Matt for a minute or two. She spends the rest of the day with her stomach in knots, never more than a couple feet away from the phone, until it finally rings and she all but pounces on it. “Matt?”

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An explosion, a gas line leak the fire investigators had said but Matt knew better. He had been to her apartment enough times he would have sniffed out even a weakness in the lines. It was a scam. It had to be and he'd raged as much at the police and fire teams until they had come out of the wreckage with a body wrapped in plastic.

Foggy.
He'd never hear her laugh again, never catch random things thrown at his head just because he was annoying her. She was gone

Karen was sobbing in his arms and Matt.. he couldn't feel anything.
He didn't feel anything as they rode down to the hospital. He didn't feel anything as he signed out her body to be taken for burial. He didn't feel anything the day she was buried even though it was a frigid afternoon in New York and the wind cut straight to the bone.

The only time he felt was on the rooftops at night. Chasing down every thug he could find and venting his pain and anguish with fists and feet and every ounce of fury he had left. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen was swiftly losing his grasp on things, to the point that when flowers arrived from Wilson Fisk, it had taken one Frank Castle to beat the everloving hell out of him and drag him back to his apartment.

If anyone could understand grief and loss, it was Frank, and he was probably the only thing that kept Matt from getting himself killed those first weeks.

But still, he throws himself into his work because if he focuses on the rage he won't have time to feel the grief that still threatens to eat him alive. He keeps fighting until a message comes from Vanessa and it takes a profound amount of control to keep from tracking her down and snapping her goddamned neck.

"Have his sentence reduced, early release for good behavior and I will give her back to you. Your Francine."

Two days later his phone rings. The air is punched out of him when he hears her voice. Tears slip down his cheeks as he sinks to the floor, clutching the phone like a lifeline. "F-Foggy? Foggy is that you?"

It had better be her. Because if this was some kind of game he might just forget his vow and start killing his way to both Fisk and Vanessa.

"Yeah, Matty." She sits down, too, legs suddenly not all that steady, and ends up on the floor with her back to the bed. He sounds--god, he sounds wrecked, and it's not all that surprising given that she's been following the Devil of Hell's Kitchen's increasingly erratic and violent exploits through newspaper articles, but--it's different, hearing him. "It's me. I'm... I'm okay." It's not true, especially not right now, but what she really means is I'm alive, you're going to be okay.

Edited (viciously assassinated an out-of-place preposition, carry on) 2017-10-14 01:12 (UTC)

His breathing is erratic and harsh, struggling to choke back his tears as he hangs on every word, listens to everything carefully. The cadence of her voice is correct but he's not going to trust Vanessa simply with a phone call and a voice on the line.

"What.. what did we call each other in law school?"

She laughs at that, shaky and a little choked herself from trying to control her own tears. "Avocados, Matt. Best damn avocados the city'd ever see." And then, quieter: "It's really me, Matt. Promise."

"I have to get Fisk out." And he hates himself for it, but there's no other way. He has to bring Foggy home safely before she's taken for good. "If I get him out, I can bring you home."

"I'm gonna bring you home Fog. I swear."

"What?" Her heartrate ratchets up because - no, god no, after everything they did to put Fisk behind bars? After - after everyone who died, after the bombings, after Elena? "Matt, n--"

The phone goes dead, and she just - throws it at the wall so hard that the casing cracks because he can't, he can't do this. Fisk needs to rot in jail and if Foggy has to spend the rest of her life in this stupid cell to make sure it happens, then that's what she'd do.