fanfiction: say a little grace for me

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

Title: say a little grace for me

Fandom: Daredevil

Pairings: background Maddie/Foggy

Summary: “Does it ever get easier? Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons?" Maddie and Karen have a heart-to-heart.

Rating: T

Maddie has two modes of sleep: actual genuine REM sleep, usually induced by painkillers (and therefore by Claire) which she can’t be roused from even if someone blows into a trumpet next to her ear. The other is a slightly deeper form of catnap, from which she can be awoken with the slightest creak of the floorboards. The former is rare; the latter is normal. It’s not that she enjoys being woken up by the sound of someone slamming their door four floors below her bedroom, but it does have its advantages. She wouldn’t be much to the city use if her ears weren’t finely attuned to danger- even if “danger” more often than not turns out to be a raccoon overturning a garbage pail in search of a midnight snack.

Because of all this, the sound of a key in the lock jolts her instantly out of sleep. She makes several mental calculations in the space of seconds- she’s in Foggy’s apartment, so chances are the visitor isn’t looking for her. Whoever it is has a key, so presumably Foggy knows them. Foggy is neither stupid nor careless, so she wouldn’t have handed her keys out to just anyone. So, short of someone swiping a set and getting them copied, whoever’s currently opening the door is 1. known to Foggy, 2. probably a friend, and 3. someone Foggy doesn’t mind coming in to the apartment in the middle of the night.

QED

It never hurts to be cautious, though, so Maddie carefully wriggles out of bed. Foggy is still asleep, pressed against Maddie’s side with an arm slung over her waist; Maddie has to be gentle in order to keep from jostling her awake. As an afterthought, she slides her pillow into the indent her body left in the bed, so that the surprise of a sudden empty spot won’t wake Foggy up. She pauses, and hears the sound of Foggy’s bare arm sliding against cotton: deprived of Maddie’s heat next to her, she’s curled up against the pillow. Satisfied, she heads for the bedroom door.

As she pads down the hallway, she can smell the intruder: soft floral shampoo overlaid with cold sweat that says fear. Not imminent fear, though- that has a different taste, saltier and more acidic. This is old anxiety, burned down low but still flickering; the scent of someone used to tamping down on unease. That, plus the soft tapping of low-heeled shoes on the floor and the light sound of breathing confirms what Maddie already suspected.

“Hi, Karen.”

“Jesus Ch-” Karen drops the bag she was holding, sending the contents cascading to the floor in a heap. Maddie winces. “What are you doing here? You scared me!”

Maddie just raises an eyebrow.

“Right, right, sorry.” She hears Karen’s knees come to rest on the floor as she starts to collect her belongings. Maddie goes over to help, but Karen waves her off. “No, it’s fine. My fault.” A pause. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Not really,” Maddie says, because it’s sort of true (if it hadn’t been Karen, it probably would have been something else) and because she wants to coax the sound of peace back into Karen’s voice. “You have a key, then?”

“Yeah.” Karen finishes stuffing her things back into the bag and stands up. “Foggy gave me one awhile back, while you were-” There’s a pause, the faint sound of air whistling, then she says “sorry, I just waved. While you were out of it, with your . . . stuff.  Anyway, she said I could crash on the couch whenever I didn’t want to sleep at home, and I haven’t been sleeping great, so . . .”

“So.” Maddie agrees. That explains the key- and more importantly, the bitter alkaline taste lingering on Maddie’s tongue. “You want something to drink? Or should I just head back to bed?”

“You can if you want.” Karen draws a shaky breath, and Maddie knows she’s not going to get any sleep tonight no matter which couch she crashes on- her system is still skipping with misplaced adrenaline, a fight-or-flight instinct kicked into action without any tangible threat to flee from. No wonder she hasn’t been sleeping well. “I’m fine, honest. I’ll just get a nap in before work starts.”

“Sit on the couch,” Maddie says, with a slight jerk of her head. “I’ll make tea. You like tea, right?   Earl Grey?”

“Yeah, if you have it.” There’s a pause as Maddie pads to the kitchen, then Karen calls after her “wait, how do you know which teas are in the cupboard?”

“I can smell them,” Maddie calls back, pulling the Earl Grey down from a shelf. Honestly, even without her sense of smell, it’s not difficult for her to navigate around Foggy’s kitchen- she’s kept all her pots and pans in vaguely the same configuration since they were in college. Teakettle sitting next to the stove. Mugs in the cupboard over the stove. Teabags in a box on top of the microwave. Microwave next to the sink. The kettle is already half-full of water, so she just tops it off and sets it down on one of the burners before removing two mugs, dropping a teabag into each, and carrying them back out to the living room. “The water’ll take a few minutes, but here’s your mug.”

“Thanks.” Karen takes one of the mugs from Maddie, fingers cold and clammy when they brush against hers’. For several long minutes, the only sounds are the faint hissing and crackling of the stovetop, Karen’s quick, quiet breathing, and the more distant noise of Foggy snoring. It rained earlier, but it’s stopped now; Maddie can smell the dampness drying on the pavement outside, water stripping the fire escape down to rust. Karen shifts back and forth in her seat, pulling her legs up and under herself. Maddie waits.

“So,” Karen finally says, just as the kettle in the kitchen starts to whistle. Maddie gives her an apologetic smile and pulls herself up off the couch, retrieving the kettle and pouring hot water into both their mugs. When she’s done, she sets the kettle down on the coffee table and sits back down. “Sorry. You were saying-?”

“So,” Karen says again, “what woke you up if it wasn’t me?”

“Oh . . .” Maddie shrugs vaguely. She curls up, pressing back into the couch and wrapping her arms around herself. “Not much. I’m a light sleeper anyway.”

“I guess you would be,” Karen says, “with the enhanced senses and all.”

“Pretty much.”’ When Karen doesn’t respond to that, Maddie prods gently. “How come you haven’t been sleeping?"

She hears Karen open her mouth and then close it, teeth clicking. “I-” Maddie can’t see, but she knows Karen’s going through all the motions of reluctance: lip-biting, shoulders hunching, staring at her tea instead of at Maddie. “I dunno. Lots of stuff, I guess. I’ve been having bad dreams since- since Daniel, so it’s easier to just stay up and drink lots of coffee.” There’s a sloshing noise as she brandishes her mug. “This is the first time I’ve had tea in . . . awhile."

Maddie nods. She can- well no, she can’t relate. Once, a long time ago, maybe she could have, but the washing-off of blood has become so routine to her, it’s hard to remember a time when she lost sleep over it. Or maybe it’s the sleep loss that’s become routine. “Do you want to talk about it? The dreams?”

“Oh . . .” Karen lets out a shaky laugh. “Just the usual stuff. Nightmares. Usual nightmares.”

There’s a catch in her voice. Maddie waits.

“Staying up and thinking isn’t a whole lot better,” she adds, “so I’ve been watching a lot of late-night TV. It’s a good thing my credit card has a withdrawal limit, or I’d have blown so much money on infomercial crap by now. Does anybody actually need electronic foot massagers?”

“I guess it depends on how often you wear high heels,” Maddie says, smiling.

“I guess, yeah.” Karen’s heartbeat is slowing, but it’s not normal- not yet. It’s still rabbit-quick, waiting to touch down and start running again. She sounded like a hummingbird before, though, so this is an improvement. She draws another shaky breath. “Does it ever get easier? Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons? Or even figuring out what the right reasons are?”

Maddie’s pretty sure they’re not talking about Daniel anymore. She’s also pretty sure Karen didn’t mean to let that slip, and would scrabble backwards if Maddie drew the fact to her attention. So instead, all she says is “I don’t know. I guess it depends.” She pauses. “Not really.”

A slow, disappointed breath. “Oh.”

“I guess it’s kind of a good thing,” Maddie adds, “or else we’d stop being able to tell what the wrong thing was.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Karen whispers. “That it’s all going to stop meaning anything. That I won’t feel- guilt or shame or anything like that. That I’ll stop caring.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Maddie says, and she means it. “A conscience isn’t something you just click off one day. You’re pretty much stuck with it.”

“I’ve read things,” Karen says, heartbeat increasing again. “About- people who started out thinking they were doing something good, and then it just went wrong, and they never stopped. You know, cult leaders and stuff?”

“Well first of all, you’re nowhere near being a cult leader,” Maddie says. “Second of all, you need to stop reading creepy Wikipedia entries, because that’s not helping.” This draws a tiny laugh from Karen. “Third of all-” She trails off, twisting her hands around her mug. It’s started to grow cool, and she hasn’t even drank any of her tea yet. She’s too busy trying to find the right words, the verbal key she can twist so that all of this will make sense. “It’s like- you don’t go to church, do you?”

A rustle of hair as Karen shakes her head. ”Never have.”

“It’s hard to explain, otherwise,” Maddie says. She puts the mug down and sits forward, hands resting on her knees. “Part of going to church, of being Catholic, is accepting that everything happens because of God’s will. That we have a higher purpose than just- existing. So if there’s a higher purpose for me, then it’s not about making these decisions, or knowing for sure that I’m right. I just have to do what feels right and hope that God’s hand is in it somehow.”

“History wasn’t my best subject in school,” Karen says, “but from what I remember, people doing stuff because they think it’s God’s will never ended well.”

“Not always,” Maddie points out. “Joan of Arc-”

“Was burned at the stake for witchcraft. I definitely remember that.”

“But she accomplished so much before that happened,” Maddie says. She can hear the pitch of her voice shifting upwards. “She saved her country; she became a saint. Some people would say that’s a fair trade.”

“People who aren’t her family or friends, maybe,” Karen says. Maddie can hear a faint smile in her voice, distant fondness. “So is that you, then? Saint Maddie of Arc?”

“Maddie of Hell’s Kitchen.” Maddie says ruefully. “And I’m not much of a saint.”

Some days, she feels just the opposite. When bones crack under her hands and blood spills down her face and she feels a sense of hot, righteous purpose rushing through her- it’s hard to believe things could be that easy. That the savagery she finds so much satisfaction in could somehow have divine justification behind it. “Besides, we weren’t talking about me. We were talking about you.”

“We were talking in general,” Karen says softly. “I’d rather not talk about me, honestly.”

Maddie nods. “So what do you want to talk about instead?”

“God, I don’t know.” There’s the sound of Karen’s throat flexing as she swallows some of the tea. “Infomercials?”

“Infomercials, then,” Maddie says. “Are they really that entertaining?”

“Not really,” Karen says. “but like I said, it’s better than sleeping. Or just lying in bed and thinking.”

Maddie can empathise. She’s been there. “Well until you feel like sleeping again, you can always stay up with me. I’ve gotta be better than infomercials, right?”

Karen giggles a little. Her heart rate is finally starting to decrease, returning to relatively normal rhythms. “So we’re going to have a bunch of slumber parties, is what you’re saying?”

“Who’s having a slumber party?”

Karen and Maddie both look up. Foggy’s standing in the hall, yawning widely, still bleary with sleep. “Also, why is my living room full of people? Did I send out party invitations and then forget about it?”

“Just to me,” Karen says. “Keys, remember? Anyway, Maddie and I decided we’re going to start having sleepovers everynight.”

“Insomniacs Anonymous,” Maddie agrees.

“You’re both weird,” Foggy says, but she says it with affection. “You’re like nocturnal animals. Bats? Or maybe owls.”

“I like owls,” Karen says. “But if we’re going with animals in general, I’d rather be a koala bear. They’re cute.”

“Honey badger for me,” Foggy says. She yawns again, coming around to flop down onto the couch on Karen’s other side. “I don’t give a fuck. Or wouldn’t, if I liked staying up late, which I do not.”

“Could have fooled me,” Maddie says, smiling, earning a pillow thrown at her head. She ducks, then comes back up and lobs it back in Foggy’s direction. “What? I’m not the one who instigated all those bar crawls in college.”

“You instigates at least half of them, so don’t split hairs, Foggy says, and by the tone of her voice, Maddie can tell that an accusatory finger is being jabbed in her direction. “Anyway, you haven’t picked an animal yet.”

“A nocturnal one?” Maddie ponders. “Hmm. A raccoon, probably.” It clicks the more she thinks about it. They both like masks.

“I could say something about your diet consisting of garbage, but I’m a nice person,” Foggy says, ostentatiously magnanimous. Maddie throws another pillow at her, and gets it lobbed right back at her head in retaliation. Karen shrieks and ducks. “Guys, guys- maybe not when there’s mugs full of tea sitting on the table?”

“Thank you for protecting my furniture, Karen,” Foggy says. “Also, there’s tea?”

“Kettle’s right there,” Maddie says. “Pour yourself some, if you want.”

“Nah. I’m not thirsty.”

Karen’s voice chimes in, something about the merits of Earl Grey as a sleep aid. Foggy offers a rejoinder, and Maddie smiles, leaning her head back against the couch cushions. She can hear every heartbeat in the room thumping in sync, growing slow and peaceful as the hours stretch on. Everyone here is content, safe in their little enclave. As far as being able to sleep is concerned, that’s really all she needs.