Chapter Text
“Matty,” Jack says softly, touching his son’s hand gently. “I want you to meet a friend of mine. His name is Foggy and he’s a good man.”
“Foggy? Like the weather?”
Jack huffs out a soft laugh and replies because Foggy can’t fucking breathe. “Yeah, Matty. Just like the weather.”
Nine year old, recently blinded Matt, is just as sweet and kind and thirty two year old, long time blinded Matt, and Foggy wants to scream and yell at how unfair the world is.
But he doesn’t.
Instead he talks to Matt, acts like one of Jack’s buddies from boxing or whatever, and learns way more from nine year old Matt about his life than he did adult Matt. (That makes him angry, because now he knows that his secrecy is not developed genetically from his dad, but from mistrust or from Stick. Maybe both. Either way, he wants to give this blind asshole a piece of his mind.)
After Foggy leaves, he goes home and plans again. He’s going to save this fucking kid no matter what.
Jack drops in around midnight, looks at the sheets of paper surrounding Foggy and sighs. It’s like he’s familiar with the task, probably because he’s done it too. Strange how they both suddenly dedicate their lives to saving someone who has another twenty odd years left to live.
“He knows that you’re not a boxing buddy.”
“Big surprise. He’s smart.”
“Yeah. Got big hopes for him- but you already know that, right?”
“He may have mentioned it once or twice. He liked to think that you’d be proud of him. You would be, I think.”
“I’m always proud of him.” And shit that hurts, because Matt was uncertain, always saying that he thought that maybe his dad would be proud of him, not that he knew. He wonders if it’s just a Matt thing, or if it’s because of some blind old dude who treated him like shit. He wants to say both.
“He graduated law school, top of the class.” Foggy says because he has nothing else to say. “We were both offered internships and Landman and Zach and we took it. Few weeks later and Matt was already unhappy because he wasn’t helping the world the way he wanted to.”
“Yeah? I’m not surprised.”
“Yeah. We, uh, we started our own law firm together, Nelson and Murdock, and we took pro bono cases and helped those who needed the help. Got us in a bit of danger sometimes, especially when we got gang members put in jail, but it was worth seeing the difference”
“You guys did good.”
“We did.”
“I’m sensin’ a ‘but’.”
“But then I found out that Matt was Daredevil, and then it all kind of went downhill from there. We lasted for a little while after that and then it was-” he hesitates, because he could totally just spill and say everything about Elektra and how she fucked Matt up in college and how she almost did it again, but he doesn’t. “He got too involved in being Daredevil and it was really just Nelson and Nelson. Karen - our secretary -, uh she and Matt were dating for a little while and then there was a misunderstanding and then, we just kind of fell apart. I got a new job, Karen got a new job, and Matt was just Daredevil.”
“What else?” The man was like a shark, too smart and once he had caught a blood trail he wouldn’t let off.
“You’ll be pissed off with me.”
“Then don’t tell me.”
“I cut ties with him.” He says anyway because he’s got to get this shit off his chest, to express his guilt and frustration and anger and-. “So did Karen, I think. I don’t really know what really happened in between our law firm falling apart and him...” he can’t say the words to Matt’s father, because it feels so, so wrong. “I found out that a significant person in his life died and I wasn’t there to support him for it. Kind of fitting that a significant person in my life died, and he’s not around to support me.”
“He’s still around in this timeline.” Jack says, after a while. “We still have time to save him.”
It’s more reassuring when someone else says it.
-
Foggy hangs around at the Murdock apartment when Matt gets released from hospital and the three of them hang around and they watch movie (with audio description from the two people who can actually see), and Foggy takes care of Matt when Jack has a fight at night, and it’s almost like one perfect little family.
Except Matt has migraines, and nine year old Matt is not as good as hiding his feelings as law school Matt was. It starts with a furrow in his brow, tensing of his jaw. Jack looks unsettled when he leaves, soothing a hand over Matt’s head and telling Foggy to make sure he gets dinner and goes to bed at a decent time.
He can do that.
Except when he’s finished making the famous Nelson Mac’n’Cheese, he finds Matt curled up in his bed, hands clasped over his ears and tears on his face. He gives the kid painkillers and tries to coax him into eating but he’s so out of it, delirious and sometimes shouting in pain. Sometimes the shouts don’t make sense, other times, Matt is calm enough to tell Foggy about the teenaged girl who just got mugged a block away or the thief that just tried to break into someone’s apartment.
Christ, if he knew Matt heard things like that on a daily basis, maybe he would have been more open to the idea of Daredevil, because it’s torture for Foggy to get a second hand version of what's happening. He wants to go out and help these people but he can’t because he’s powerless and weak and he’s trying to look after this kid.
By the end of the night, when Jack returns, Foggy knows it’s inevitable to stop Matt from becoming Daredevil.
He wants to give up hope.
But he doesn’t.
For Matt.
-
He tells Jack this when they next meet up and Matt is asleep upstairs, sleeping off another migraine.
“Matty is always going to try to help someone, Foggy.” Jack tells him, sounding exhausted. “He saved an old man who he didn’t even know and became blind. I’m pretty sure this is just representative of the shit that he’ll do later on in life.”
“So what’s the point? How do we stop it?”
“I don’t think we can.”
The words are unspoken, but Foggy knows that Jack is silently saying ‘maybe we should just let god take control here and let matt’s life go the way it’s supposed to go’. Neither of them say that they know the meaning though.
They’ll keep on fighting for this dumb kid that means everything to the both of them, even if neither of them believes that he can be saved.
But they’ll keep fighting.
Because it’s Matt.
-
In law school, when Foggy had still been naive and young and a little bit high, he had asked “Matt, do you love yourself as much as I love you?” It had been random but hey, Foggy had been high and stressed and so, so overworked to the point that he didn’t understand half of the words that he was typing, so sue him. (Do it, he has a law degree, he’ll take you down.)
And Matt’s hand had paused over the braille textbook. “Uh, I don’t think anyone could have as much love as you, Fog.”
And high, naive and tired Foggy had taken that as an acceptable answer and normal Foggy had never bother to ask because it just seemed to personal and weird, even for how codependent they were. Matt didn’t like feelings talks, and Foggy didn’t like the wounded, trapped animal look that Matt would get every time he initiated, so he never really bothered unless it was important.
Now that Matt is gone and Foggy is alone in the world, he thinks that maybe he should have initiated them more, forced Matt to cry out his feelings and then be there with ice cream and personal audio description for lame movies.
Maybe if he had initiated one talking about how fucking irresponsible and self sacrificing and dumb Matt was, he wouldn’t have died. Maybe if he had told Matt that yeah, those people out there matter, but he matters too and it’d be nice to have him alive, then he wouldn’t have died.
Maybe if Foggy had reminded Matt that he had so, so many people to love him and to support him, he wouldn’t have died.
Instead, Foggy had cut all ties with him and had ignored his calls.
He’s beginning to think it’s his fault that Matt’s dead.
And that rolls around in his stomach like a bowling ball, uncomfortable and heavy and painful and he thinks he might break under the strain. Maybe Foggy should go find ten year old Foggy and tell him to protect this dumb blind kid with a hero complex and make sure he never goes a day without feeling loved.
But he doesn’t.
Because, maybe, just maybe, that he isn’t the right person to save Matt.
-
A month passes and then another and then all of a sudden it becomes 1993 and Matt is one year closer to losing his father and Foggy is still out of ideas. Every one of his plans end like the last, none of them ever have a solid concrete foundation. As the year passes, Foggy can almost see Matt dying.
“You’re stressed.” Jack tells him one night, leaving Matt in the safe and gentle and loving care of Josie (who is twenty years younger and still just as bitter.), and takes him to the gym. Fogwell’s (an establishment that he knows that Matt used to go to), is empty when they arrive, and Jack teaches Foggy the appropriate way to wrap his hands and then holds the punching bag while Foggy takes out his rage.
His punches are sloppy and angry, all force and no skill, because he can’t save Matt. Because no matter what he’ll do, Matt will still die. Matt is still going to die underneath Foggy’s hand, still going to fade away and leave nothing but a corpse and broken friends, and there is nothing Foggy can do to stop it.
Afterwards, Jack sits down and passes a bottle of water to Foggy. He breathes out a heavy sigh, leans back against the wall. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Mm.”
“You’re thinking that we’ll fail anyway. You’re thinking that I’ll die next year and then Matt will die at the age of 32, and maybe you’ll get stuck in the past again, like this never ending loop.”
“Wow, I thought you were a boxer, not a philosophical mind reader.”
Jack huffs out a laugh that is not a laugh at all. “I’m scared for him. But I’m determined not to die next year.”
“Watch out for guns.” Foggy mutters, but his heart isn’t in it.
“I was thinking,” He says, and then pauses. After a long moment, he continues. “You’re good with him.”
The implication does not need to be said.
“I’m not father material.”
“And you think this Stick guy is? You think I was ready to be a father to this kid? You already know him Foggy. So, just- take care of him when I die. If I die.”
“Jack-”
“Please, Foggy.”
“I can’t be my best friend’s father.”
“And I’m not asking you to be. I’m asking you to be there and to take care of him and to keep him in a loving home, not in an orphanage. Not with this blind guy who teaches him to be a ninja or whatever the fuck ever.”
“I-”
“Say yes, Foggy.”
“Okay.”
-
1994 creeps closer and closer, and Foggy’s heart is uncomfortable in his chest. He watches Matt get more and more confident every day - he knows the apartment by heart by now and he doesn’t need the cane and he can read braille now, so things are looking up.
Both Foggy and Jack ignore the oncoming year of 1994 and they take Matt out for ice cream and to the park and Foggy gets to know this brilliant, amazing kid, who is only missing 12 pieces out of 100.
And then one day Matt trips and hits his head and wow both Foggy and Jack reach instant stages of panic because head injuries plus being blind isn’t a good combination, but Matt laughs them off and waves them away.
And then when Foggy unthinkingly says “how many fingers am I holding up?” there’s a moment of silence and bated breath until Matt rolls his eyes and says, “three, you asshole.”
Neither of them yell at him for his language because they’re too busy laughing. Foggy will say that he laughed so hard that he cried, but in reality, it’s because he sees more and more of his Matt every day and wow, it hurts way, way more than he expected it to.
He thinks a lot about the upcoming year and what it’ll mean for Matt and what it’ll mean for him and Jack. He demands that Jack tells him about every fight he has, who it’s with, in the hopes that maybe he’ll recognise a name and tell Jack not to fight that night and just stay home because it’s better to be recognised as a coward than it is to leave your blind son alone and dooming him to die at 32 due to bullet wounds.
Matt reads and reads and goes to church and is overall a snarky little asshole that old ladies love and every one in the church finds it their life mission to tell Jack (and sometimes Foggy) how polite and well raised Matt was and that he was going to grow up to be a handsome young man who does some good in the world. Jack says thank you. Foggy wants to say that they’re right.
1993 passes quickly enough and Matt goes back to school and makes a friend named Darcy and studies and becomes the top of his class and then it’s 1994 and Foggy feels a permanent feeling of nausea. He stays at the Murdock apartment far more than his own and bonds with young Matt who is now almost eleven and too smart and perceptive for his own good. He bonds with Jack, as well.
The man is a lot like Matt in a lot of ways, more dry humour and sarcastic remarks rather than the wittiness he was used to, but he forms a relationship with the man and finds himself genuinely sad at the idea of him dying. He helps stitch up wound and disinfect cut knuckles and looks after Matt after a fight that knocks Jack off his feet, and he begins to think that maybe he belongs in this family.
And then one night when Matt is asleep and Jack is a few bottles deep in beer, he says; “they’re offerin’ to pay me off to lose a fight with Creel.”
Creel.
Wow, that name seems way too familiar and Foggy’s chest twists uncomfortably like someone has just poured boiling water down his esophagus. “I don’t think you should do it.”
“It’s a lot of money, Foggy. If I win, we can move out of this shitty apartment and somewhere that is better for Matt. It’ll be enough for us to live on for years.”
“Jack.” Foggy is quiet. He doesn’t want to risk Matt waking up and overhearing. “I think- I don’t think it’s safe for you. For Matt.”
“Alright.” Jack nods, face twisting with a grimace. “I won’t do it.” He takes a long swig of his drink, and sets it down on the table. It says more than that needs to be said.
-
Two days pass after the day that the fight was supposed to happen, Jack is still alive, and Foggy is hit with so, so much relief because now it means that Matt won’t meet Stick, right? Means that he won’t be shipped off to the orphanage and won’t be loaded up with bullet holes at the age of 32. It means that he won’t be Daredevil.
He is ridiculously, insanely happy.
A week later, Foggy goes over and Matt says “Dad’s sick”.
He’s met with a feverish Battlin’ Jack Murdock who is knocked down with the flu and can’t get up, and it’s pityingly adorable how his glares look when he’s too feverish to do it properly. After almost a week of looking after him and Matt and himself, he drags Jack to a doctor so he can just get some antibiotics and sleep it off so Foggy can go home and actually sleep.
Instead, Jack is sent for blood tests.
Instead of a flu diagnosis, Jack comes home from his latest appointment, a brooding, sulky mess. He says that nothing is wrong and goes to bed. Foggy tries to distract Matt, describes movies to him and asks for his help with dinner and then they play monopoly until it’s Matt’s bedtime.
An hour after he’s sent Matt to bed, he silently creeps into Jack’s room. The man is awake, but is staring up at the ceiling. His eyes are glassy and puffy, as though he’s been crying (and that’s probably why Matt had looked so disturbed and distressed earlier- Foggy had been dreading another migraine.)
“Jack, what’s going on?”
Foggy expected the worst, but he expects it gently and not straight up in his face, but Jack Murdock is forward. He doesn’t fuck around. “I’m dyin’, Fog.”
“Shit.”
Wow, because Matthew Murdock just CANNOT possibly have a good way, no matter what forces are at play. Because Jack will still die and Foggy will be hopeless because he’ll be grieving his best friend and his best friend’s dad, and Matt won’t be considered in good hands and then he’ll be sent off to Saint Agnes and then to Stick.
No matter what plan Foggy has, it never goes right.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Doc said it’s terminal, ain’t no point doing treatment that we can’t afford. Suspects I’ll be dead by the end of the mid-year.”
Mid year.
Four months away.
He had four months to prepare Matt for his father’s death and get him into good hands - maybe someone is looking for a disabled, emotionally unstable boy to adopt.
He has four months to prepare himself to lose yet another Murdock.
“But- Matt-” He doesn’t know how to form words. He’s seen his best friend die, but it was within a matter of a minutes. He had been given half an hour with Matt, and he had believed that he would live until he had been abruptly ripped away from him. For some reasons, four months to say goodbye to Jack seems so, so much more terrifying.
“I know.”
And Foggy feels as though the foundation of his world is shifting, shaking. He’s been caught in bomb explosions before, and it couldn’t compare to the pain he feels. He tries not to sob, tries not to make it harder on Jack, because Jack’s the dying man here. Jack’s the one that’s dooming his son to a life of pain and an early death.
But he does sob, and Jack doesn’t judge him for it.
But Matt, Christ, this kid is too intuitive because five minutes later he’s in the room, demanding to know what was wrong. Foggy goes to lie, to tell Matt that everything is fine and it’ll be okay.
Jack is first to speak and he doesn’t lie to Matt because he deserves nothing but the truth. He is gentler though, than he was with Foggy. He explains it calmly and wraps his arms around Matt when he starts to sob and after a moment, with tears running down his own face, he opens one of his arms up to Foggy.
And Foggy accepts.
It’s almost like an official invitation to join their family.
-
Jack get sicker and sicker and thinner and thinner and Matt gets sad and sadder and doesn’t feel like eating. He stops going to school, tells Foggy and Jack that there are more important things for him to do than learn shit he already knows.
Jack doesn’t want the kid around to watch him fall apart and get sicker each day, doesn’t want the kid to see him take painkillers because it hurts so bad and then throw up everything he’s had to eat that day, but Matt was born a lawyer and argues his way out of school, says that he can get Darcy to catch him up.
No one argues with his logic.
It’s late April and Jack has two months left to live, apparently. Foggy’s heart hurts, a lot. Matt seems more solemn every day because sometimes Jack is not always lucid. Sometimes, he is delirious and screams for people neither of them have ever heard of and tries to fight.
Foggy feels as though he might be dying alongside Jack.
“Grief,” Karen had said after a night after too much drinking, “is worse than sickness, because it’s in your head but it sits so bone-deep like a chronic illness. It doesn’t really ever go away, either, I don’t think. It still hurts, sometimes. All the time.”
Matt was dead, and Foggy hurts - it’s been two years, and Foggy still hurts.
And now Jack was dying, and Foggy hurts.
There’s only so much hurt a man is capable of, and Foggy thinks he might be close to his limit. Thinks that maybe he might die after Jack does, so he starts planning. He talks with people who he had contacts for when he was a lawyer and being self sufficient and not living off of money that he just has for no reason, and he thinks that he might find the perfect match for Matt. They’re an elderly couple who have already had kids and grandkids and they’re just looking to have another kid to join their household to give it some life.
So Foggy does an interview with them and they are the kindest people he’s ever met, they’re catholic, which is a good match for Matt. The man doesn’t seem like he could be Stick and seems like the sweetest peach off the tree, because they don’t react with pity when he says “Matt’s blind, but he’s smart and he’s a good kid”, they just understand.
Their names are Beverly and Theodore and Foggy tells them he’ll be in touch.
And then after meeting them, he throws up in some back alley because yeah, maybe they’re wonderful but he had promised Jack that he would look after Matt and make sure he was safe and raise him right. He rolls the guilt around in his mouth, can’t decide if it’s better to ship Matt off to a stable couple who will raise him right, or if he should just keep Matt to himself.
But they’ll be grieving. They’ll both be grieving.
Matt doesn’t need that in his life.
-
“I need you to tell me that it’s okay.” Foggy begs, tears streaming down his face, in one of Jack’s lucid moments. Matt has a migraine and is upstairs whimpering loud enough to be heard from here but he says that he just wants to be left alone so Foggy leaves him alone and then realises that he should never leave a child in physical and emotional pain by themselves.
Beverly and Theodore would know what to do.
“I can’t look after him after you’re gone, Jack. I’m not- This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be! God, you fucking asshole, how you get sick and fucking start dying,” yelling at a dying man for dying is perhaps, not Foggy’s finest moment, “I can’t do this alone. I’m going to fuck him up even more and then- FUCK!” He wants to drive his fist into the wall, wants to make it crumble around his anger.
“Foggy.” Jack snaps. “Do what you think is right.”
But Foggy doesn’t know what is right. He’s not a parent. He can’t replace Jack and even after two years he’s still fucking unsure about what do sometimes, not sure what to do in situations that Jack takes care of ease. He’s not ready to be a foster father to the eleven year old version of his best friend.
And then-
Fuck, Foggy doesn’t think about them because it makes his brain hurt, but the paradoxes. What if Matt goes ahead and goes to law school and then meets the Foggy that actually belongs to this time? He doesn’t even want to know what would happen, doesn’t even want to know if a Foggy exists in this timeline or if he fucked his family up by accidentally traveling to the past.
“I need you to forgive me,” Foggy says slowly, once he’s calmed down. “I need you to tell me that I’m doing the right thing, and that I’m not going to fuck everything up.”
“No one ever knows what the right thing is until it’s done, Fog.”
And that doesn’t fucking help.
“I don’t know what to do, Jack. If I want to go with this couple, I have to confirm it soon and get the paperwork processed as fast as I can so everything is ready by the time-.”
“Why are you talking to me about this?”
“Because you’re his father?”
“Don’t you think Matt knows better than the rest of us what’s best for him?”
And god fucking damn it, he’s right.
-
“Matt, we need to talk.” Wow, Foggy did not mean to make it sound like a break up speech, but that’s basically what it was right? ‘It’s not you, it’s me and i’m too fucking emotionally ruined to look after you. How do you feel about moving in with some old couple?’
“What’s up?”
“I-”
“If this about what you and dad were talking about the other night-” This fucking kid. This is the kid that graduates and becomes one of the greatest lawyers in Hell’s Kitchen, so he really, really shouldn’t be surprised. “- if it makes you happy, Foggy, then I’ll go to this new home. As long as I still get to see you.”
But it won’t make me happy, Matty, Foggy thinks. He might throw up again.
“What do you want to do, Matt?”
“I want my dad not to die so I don’t have to have this conversation.”
That makes two of them.
“Matt?”
“I don’t want to burden you, Foggy. You’ve still got to get married and have kids of your own one day and be a cool lawyer in Hell’s kitchen.” It’s as close as a ‘I’ll be adopted by this old couple’ he’ll get.
“Did you want to meet them? See if they’re right for you?” This feels so fucking wrong, like he’s talking about shoes or a new couch or vacuum cleaners. He wants to say. ‘Matt, I will love you and protect you and keep you safe for your entire life so you don’t die in your best friend’s arms prematurely.’ He doesn’t though, because he’s a fucking idiot.
“No.” Matt says, shakes his head. “If I do, I’ll find something wrong with them and then I won’t want to go to them because they’re not my dad. I trust your judgement.”
Matt really fucking shouldn’t, because Foggy has proven at least four hundred times over the last few years that he is not a good role model, but Matt is just about to lose his father and he doesn’t deserve to have this burden on his shoulders.
“I promise we’ll see each other still, Matt.”
It’s a lie.
-
As June approaches and Jack gets sicker, Foggy feels as though he might actually be dying because he’s never been so depressed in his life. He’s gotten the paperwork sent through and now it’s being finalised and in a few weeks Matt will have a new family and Jack Murdock will be dead and Foggy-
Foggy thinks that maybe the past is better without him in it.
It’s one of those days where they’re all curled up on the lounge that is not big enough for all three of them, but they make it work. They watch Back to The Future because Jack had wanted to, with this weird smirk on his face. And then they watch other shitty movies that none of them pay attention to. Matt falls asleep, leaning on Jack, and Jack looks close behind him.
“Fog.” He says quietly, “promise me that you won’t leave him completely alone when I’m gone.”
Jack is fast approaching his dead, all of his toned muscles are gone and he’s skinnier and paler than he’s ever been. Foggy’s kind of glad that Matt can’t see the difference, can’t see how gaunt and deathly his father looks.
“Sure thing.”
It’s another lie.
Foggy’s getting good at them now.
And then Jack goes to sleep and then never wakes up, and had Foggy known that the last thing he ever said to one of his friends was a lie, he might have not lied.
But he lied.
And Jack was dead.
And Matt was crying and screaming and begging because he had woken up the moment Jack’s heartbeat had just failed.
But Jack doesn’t wake up.
Because Jack is dead.
-
The movies lie when they say that funerals happen on rainy days, because Jack’s funeral is on a beautifully sunny day. Had it been any other day, Foggy might be sighing into the the sun and telling everyone that it was a lovely day.
But, no. Today was Jack’s funeral and maybe it was Foggy’s last day in the past. Today is not a day of celebration.
It’s a day to remind him of his failure.
(Logically, he knows that he’s saved Matt from his shitty life and he will live past thirty two and everything will be okay, but he still feels like he’s failed him.)
The funeral is small and short, simple but catholic. It’s everything that Jack had wanted. It’s over soon enough, and Foggy doesn’t cry. He doesn’t cry when Matt is too stoic and too young and too fucking Matt, no matter how much he wants to.
He doesn’t cry when the coffin goes in the ground.
He doesn’t cry when the dirt covers his friend.
He doesn’t cry when he leaves Matt and his new family at the graveyard, doesn’t cry when he finally hears Matt break down and sob at how unfair the world is and screams for his dad to come back.
He cries when he realises that the last words he will ever hear from his best friend is ‘No, please come back, it’s not fair.’
When Foggy is looking at the clock in the apartment, counting down the minutes until he leaves the past and the future behind him, he cries.
He thinks about Jack and how much pain the man had been in, and he thinks of Matt with his new family that were entirely too nice and understanding and not Foggy. He thinks he might regret it, for just a moment. He wonders if he can kidnap him, steal him back.
But no, he has to leave. The past wasn’t made to have him.
And even if there was a way back to the future for him, he wasn’t made for it.