fanfiction: you can't see the ropes [part 1]

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

Title: you can’t see the ropes
Fandom: Daredevil
Pairing: Maddie/Foggy; background Claire/Karen
Summary: She’s only on bed rest for a week; how bad can it get?
Rating: T
Warnings: Depiction of self-harm and eating disorders.

Get up.

Maddie cracks one eye open, then another. For a moment, all she can see is a solid wall of red: the world is on fire, but more importantly in the short term, so is she. She can taste concrete dust on her lips, chalky and bitter, mixed in with dried blood and snot. Her throat feels raw: was she screaming? She can’t remember. The images clicking through her mind are old, kicks and punches and the scratch of uncut nails against skin, a battle fought so often that she can no longer pick out individual details. All she knows now is that she-

-lost-

-can’t move-

-failed-

But she can move, at least. With a grunt, she pulls herself up onto her elbows, then her knees, crawling forward until she reaches something solid- a wall, or possibly a pillar. It doesn’t matter. The point is, she’s upright- after a fashion- and she can move, breathe. It’s enough. She reaches up and fumbles with her mask, dragging the weight of it away from her eyes so that her face is unobscured. The night air feels good against her skin, cool and refreshing after the heat of battle. The blood, snot, and concrete dust is still there, but absent from the area around her eyes that the mask had covered. She spits into her hand and drags her palm down her face, trying to scrub some of it away. It only makes her feel dirtier, grime on grime.

What happened?

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? She came to in an empty warehouse, her opponents scattered: there are no bodies littering the floor around her and no lingering rapid-fire heartbeats to indicate that they’re waiting for her to make another move. They must have left once they knocked her out- though why they didn’t stay and kill her, she doesn’t know. Maybe they were too stupid to think of it. Maybe they didn’t think it was worth the effort, like a cat playing with a bug. You bring your paw down, crush your new toy, and then the game’s over, isn’t it? Maybe they don’t want the game to be over.

Maybe she doesn’t either.

She braces her hands against the surface she’s leaning on- a wall, it’s definitely a wall- and climbs to her feet, slowly. She hurts- well, she hurts all over, old wounds aggravated by new bruises, but most of it is concentrated in her head. She’d felt that flash of agony when she pulled the mask off, but ignored it at the time, too intent on the task at hand. Now she brings her fingers up to brush the skin just under her hairline. It’s soft and tender, and while her fingertips don’t come away bloody, she thinks that might have more to do with blunt trauma versus stab wounds than it does any stroke of luck on her part. Now that she strains to think of it, she can vaguely remember a hand in the back of her hair, her face making contact with the floor over and over. So they hit her in the head until she was knocked out. Not the most elegant of moves, but since it worked-

Her stomach, vaguely unsettled since she woke, chooses this moment to rebel, and she doubles over, vomit spattering the floor and the tops of her boots. Is vomiting a sign of a concussion? She can’t remember. Claire would know. Claire will know, actually: much as she’d prefer stalking out to find whoever did this and knocking a few of their teeth out, objectively she understands that she stands less of a chance in a fistfight right now than a newborn kitten. Medical care is a necessity: an unfortunate one, which she’d rather avoid altogether, but given her chosen vocation, very much a necessity. So she’ll go to Claire. Get stitched up, if there’s any cuts to be stitched. Put an icepack on her forehead until the swelling goes down. Then she can knock some teeth out. She’s already pulling her lips back in a snarl-smile, anticipating the shrill screams of men who thought they’d already dealt with her, the satisfaction of knowing that they don’t get to lord this over her, that this is her city and her fight and nobody can take that away from her.

She can hardly wait.

---

“Well,” Claire says, “miraculously enough, you actually didn’t break any bones this time.” There’s a snap of latex as she pulls her gloves off. “Minimal internal bleeding, too. I don’t know how you managed it.”

Maddie nods, already reaching for her coat and boots. “So I’m good to go.”

Claire reaches out, lightning-fast, and grabs Maddie’s wrist. Maddie doesn’t know how her reflexes got that sharp. “I didn’t say that,” she says. “And if that’s what you got from it, maybe we should be checking you out for hearing damage as well. You’re covered in bruises, I had to pick bits of gravel out of all of your cuts before I disinfected them– you have ten, by the way, and one of them cut pretty close to the bone- and you have a grade three concussion. That’s not ‘good to go.’ That’s as far from ‘good to go’ as I can imagine that doesn’t involve having bones actually sticking out of your skin.”

Maddie grunts, mostly to avoid acknowledging that Claire’s probably right. She usually is. It would require more self-reflection as to why Maddie never listens to her, if Maddie were the type of person to self-reflect at all. “So what, I need to sleep before I can go out again?”

Claire snorts. “Yeah, I’d say so. Only more like seven nights of sleep- actual sleep, not catnapping- and bed rest. Maybe take some time off your day job as well, just to be on the safe side. And absolutely no running around fighting crime. Not unless you want a hematoma.”

“A week?” Maddie tries and fails to keep the incredulity out of her voice. “Claire, I’m not- I can’t take a week off.”

There’s a click, and a warmth spreading over Maddie’s face: Claire’s trained a flashlight on her. “Your pupils look like saucers. Are you dizzy?”

“I was,” Maddie admits. “I’m not now.” Mostly because she’s sitting down, but she doesn’t need to volunteer that bit of information; after all, Claire didn’t ask for it. “Honestly, I feel fine. I’ve had a lot worse. It’s just a bit of a headache.”

“Just a bit of a headache,” Claire repeats, a dangerous edge to her voice. “No, a bit of a headache is what you get the morning after a bar crawl. A concussion is a bruised brain, Maddie. Do you really want to risk making it worse? I get that having a thick skull is an asset when it comes to crime-fighting, but last I checked, lawyers need their brains to work.” The flashlight clicks off. “I’m not above enlisting your friends, by the way. You think they’d be okay with you running around with a head injury?”

“You wouldn’t.” Of course, she absolutely would, and they both know it. Claire’s never actually made good on her threats to call in backup before, but that doesn’t mean that Maddie wants to risk finally pushing her over the edge. Still- “Does it have to be a week? Maybe just five days. The weekend’s coming up, so I’ll only miss three days of work, and-”

“No,” Claire says firmly. “A week. At least. I’d make it two, if I didn’t know there’s no way you’d stick to it.” Unexpectedly, she raps Maddie’s knee. Her leg jumps, and Claire sighs. “Well, at least your reflexes are working.”

Reflexes aside, Maddie’s limbs feel heavy and wooden. She tries to slide a foot across the floor, but she can’t seem to work up the energy to move it. Her eyelids, too, are weighted down, and itch like they’re full of sand. “I sh- I should go home.” She’s not quite sure how she’s going to pull that off when she’s suddenly too tired to move, but she’ll figure it out as she goes. She digs her fingers into the arm of the couch and starts to rise to her feet.

Claire reaches out to catch her wrist again. “Don’t,” she says. “Stay here. Let me keep an eye on you until tomorrow morning, just to be safe. You can sleep on the couch.”

Maddie pauses. “You don’t have to . . .”

Another exasperated sigh. “No, but I want to. Also-” There’s the quick patter of footsteps retreating towards the kitchen, and then returning a few seconds later. A glass of something that smells like orange juice is thrust into Maddie’s right hand, and several small pill-shaped objects into her left. “Take these. They’ll help you sleep.”

Maddie would put her off- why would she need help sleeping, after all, when she’s already too tired to stand up? But she knows from experience that sleep without drugs, for her, will almost inevitably be interrupted by periodic dreams that wake her, sweating and shaking. Claire hasn’t been exposed to that particular quirk of hers’ yet, and she doesn’t need to be. Obediently, Maddie brings the handful of pills to her mouth and tosses them back, chasing them with a gulp of the juice. It’s loaded with pulp, which almost disguises the sweet, powdery texture of the medication. Over-the-counter painkillers, she’s guessing.

“I’ve got Tylenol at home,” she tries to say, but her tongue feels thick, and it’s hard to get the words out. She sinks back down onto the couch, feeling Claire catch her head and gently lower her down to the pillows. She does manage to pull her feet up and under herself without assistance, though it’s a struggle. Her last thought before her eyes close- the cushion fabric rubbing against her skin like an old wool coat– is to wonder why the couch seems to smell like Karen.

---

When she wakes up, she’s on a completely different couch.

She blinks, bringing one hand up to rub her eyes. Her head still hurts, but it’s mostly localized around the bruised area; if she’s concussed, she doesn’t feel it. Or rather, she amends as she sits up, she doesn’t feel it in her head- her stomach is still turning queasily, and her head spins as she moves. She puts a hand out to steady herself, and her palm comes into contact with familiar upholstery: it’s her couch, in her apartment. How did she end up in her own apartment?

“Good morning, starshine.”

She blinks again. That’s Foggy’s voice. Now that she’s concentrating- it takes more effort than usual, which does more than anything else so far to convince her that she actually does have brain damage- she can hear Foggy’s heartbeat, the shuffle of her bare feet against the hardwood floor, the faint smell of laundry detergent clinging to her clothes. “What’re you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too,” Foggy retorts, setting a glass of something- more orange juice, by the smell- on the end table next to the couch. “Claire gave me a call this morning. Asked me to come pick you up.”

Maddie feels a small stab of betrayal. “She said she wasn’t going to involve you or Karen.”

“Uh-huh.” Maddie can hear the eyeroll in Foggy’s voice. “And what, you thought she was going to haul you all the way back to your place? I know you can’t tell, babe, but she’s tiny. Like, not quite as tiny as Karen, but still. Tiny.” She pushes the juice across the table. “Also, your pills are here. Claire says two in the morning and two before bed, and if that’s not enough then you need to give her a call.”

Maddie sets the pills down on her tongue and washes them down. “What time is it?”

“Just about-” A pause as Foggy checks her watch, “-eleven. What time did you crash at Claire’s, anyway? She said you’d been sleeping for a few hours, and you were cranky as hell when I picked you up.”

“I was awake?”

“Oh, yeah.” There’s the sound of juice sloshing; Foggy’s got a glass as well. “You woke up and snarled at me when I carried you out of there. You don’t remember any of it?”

Maddie searches her memories and comes up blank. “Nothing. Sorry.” She pauses. “I snarled at you?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Foggy’s arm settles around Maddie’s shoulders- more gingerly than usually, mindful of potential bruises, but still comforting and warm. “You were pretty out of it. You’d passed out again by the time I got you into the cab.” She pokes Maddie’s sternum. “You’re heavier than you look, by the way. Like, I’ve seen you naked and I still wouldn’t have guessed. Is that all muscle?”

Maddie’s only half-listening, her train of thought running in another direction. “You said it’s eleven. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Right,” Foggy says with another snort. “I’m gonna leave you alone in your apartment to wake up on your own or possibly end up in a coma from your fucked-up head injuries, because I really need to log those extra hours. I took the day off. Karen too- she’s going to be here in a few minutes.”

“Karen?” Maddie repeats. “But- if you’re both here, who’s-”

“We closed up shop for the day.” Foggy must feel the tension building in Maddie’s shoulders, because she gives her a squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. We didn’t have any meetings scheduled for today, and I’m sure our potential clients will understand needing to take a sick day or two. Perils of a small office.”

“You’re not sick, though,” Maddie protests. She tries to shrug Foggy’s arm off, but her grip only tightens. “Someone needs to be there, if we get an emergency call-”

“Maddie,” Foggy says mildly, “we’re attorneys,not 911. We don’t have any open cases right now, and if someone wants to hire us badly enough to schlep up three flights of stairs, they want it badly enough to wait an extra day. We have an answering machine. Karen can call them back if they leave a number. Relax.” She gives Maddie another squeeze, then heaves herself up off the couch. “Were you planning on drinking any of that?”

Maddie gives a start, looking down at the juice glass in her hand. “Uh- no. You can take it.”

“So generous of you,” Foggy says, plucking the glass out of Maddie’s hand. “And I mean it. Relax. You’re the boss, so you’re not gonna get fired, and it’s completely normal to take a sick day once in a while. Even Landman and Zach’s wouldn’t make you come in with a head injury.”

“Are you kidding?” Maddie says. “They’d totally make you come in with a head injury. They’d probably expect you to go straight from the emergency room to the courtroom with your scalp still bleeding, if you had a court date to make.”

“Well it’s a good thing we don’t work there, then,” Foggy calls from the kitchen, as she dumps the half-empty glasses down the sink. There’s the sound of a key being jiggled in the front door lock, and Maddie tenses for a moment before she remembers that Karen’s supposed to be coming over. Sure enough, there’s the familiar tapping sound of her shoes as she pushes the door open and walks in, accompanied by a cloud of perfume and shampoo- she just washed her hair this morning, it smells like, though it’s not her usual brand of product. Also- Maddie frowns, feeling her forehead crease- the smell she detected in Claire’s apartment last night is definitely wafting around Karen, along with the scents she usually associates with Claire- antiseptic, deodorant, and minty tic-tacs. Either her bruised brain is misfiring wildly, or-

“Hey Karen!” Foggy says from the kitchen doorway, then: “Whoa. Nice hickey.”

Or, well, that.

“Foggy!” There’s a whistling of air as Karen throws something at Foggy- probably her scarf. “Does the word tact mean nothing to you?”

“Right, right, sorry.” Foggy turns towards Maddie and stage-whispers “Karen’s got a hickey.”

“So I’ve heard,” Maddie says, still two steps behind trying to process this new revelation. “Congratulations.”

Karen sighs, then drops down on the couch next to Maddie. “How’s your head feeling? You’ve got a pretty bad bruise.”

“I’m fine,” Maddie says, though her fingers creep up automatically to probe the spot where her head met the concrete. Karen grabs her hand firmly, and pulls it down. “Nuh-uh. No poking at it.”

“Yes, nurse,” Maddie says without rancor. “You guys don’t need to take the day off whenever I’m- uh, under the weather, by the way. I can handle this fine on my own. I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

“We know,” Foggy calls, still in the kitchen. “That’s what we’re trying to put a stop to.”

“Well, don’t,” Maddie says, trying her best to keep a scowl from her face. The room feels hot and close, walls pressing in around her. There’s too many people. “Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, but seriously. Don’t.”

“Seriously, we’re going to.” Foggy walks out of the kitchen and thumps down onto the couch next to Karen. “And now we have a bona fide medical professional backing us up on this, so you have to take it up with Claire if you don’t like it. You wanna take it up with Claire?”

Now Maddie lets herself scowl at both of them. “Funny. Claire threatened me with you two if I didn’t behave.”

“We make a good team,” Foggy says gravely. She thrusts a bowl into Maddie’s hands. “Also, eat this. Chicken soup cures all ills.”

“Who’s Claire?” Karen asks, a second too late. Maddie lets Foggy field that question while she eats her soup, trying not to look like she’s sulking. She thinks she mostly succeeds.

---

Her first day on enforced bed rest goes better than she’d expected, all things considered. Karen goes to the office around two, at Maddie’s insistence (“At least check the fax machine”) but Foggy stays all day, keeping up a steady stream of chatter that keeps Maddie from listening for noises outside the building. They rent a movie from Netflix around dinnertime, and Maddie falls asleep about halfway through, despite the surplus of explosions designed to hold her attention. She wakes up briefly when Foggy carries her to bed- though she doesn’t snarl at her this time, at least- and curls up in bed beside her, her familiar heartbeat drowning out the street noises below. The painkillers must have a sedative ingredient to them, because she sleeps through the rest of the night peacefully, without dreaming, and even manages to talk Foggy into leaving her alone the next morning so that she can get some peace and quiet.

In retrospect, that was probably a mistake.

---

The first sounds start to carry in around noon: the insistent blare of a siren, mingled with the rapid-fire crack of gunshots. Maddie goes to the window and strains to hear more, but it’s hard to pick out individual sounds when dozens of feet are slamming against the pavement and shouted voices are travelling in every direction. She grits her teeth and thinks concentrate, filter it out, but it’s no good: her brain, normally adept at picking out the nuances of sound, processes it all in a cacophonous wail, each individual noise jostling to assert itself above the others. Every person screaming, every car speeding, every gun firing, they all think they’re the most important, that their personal panic demands Maddie’s immediate attention, but how can she pay attention to any of them when there’s so many?

Unbidden, she remembers a Bible verse, a frequently-told story from Sunday school: and the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. She’d gotten it all wrong. The temptation wasn’t in ruling the kingdoms, it was in silencing them all with a word, in sweeping away the pain in the air so that she could clear her head and think. Why can’t she think?

She crouches down low, head bumping against the radiator, pressing both hands over her ears. She’d learned a trick when she was young, of folding her earlobes over to help block out the noise, but her fingers are shaking- her whole hand is shaking- and she can’t make the right motions. She throws her head back once, twice, hitting it against the radiator again, hoping it’ll knock her back out, but all it does is inflame the pain from her bruises. If she could haul herself up and walk into the bedroom, she could get at the painkillers- screw two in the morning and two before bed, she’d toss back the whole bottle if it would calm the storm in her brain. But she can’t make herself move.

She’s not sure how long she stays there- the sirens fade, but the voices and running feet intensify, and then there are angry shouts, the sound of tires spinning against asphalt, news crews- everything seemingly calculated to keep her where she is, dizzy and nauseous. At some point, she manages to reach up and fumble the window shut, shoving the lock into place, but it barely makes a dent in the maelstrom. Nothing helps, until another voice raises above the crowd- with the help of a bullhorn, she’s guessing- and demands that the crowd disperse. There’s the buzz of angry mutters, and for a moment she’s afraid a riot might break out, but the wave falls rather than rises. Slowly, the noise levels return to normal. Maddie still stays where she is, one arm wrapped around her knees and the other braced against the wall, resting her forehead against the warm bars of the radiator. The cessation of sound has made her feel a bit better, but not enough to move. So she’s still in that position several hours later, when Foggy’s familiar footstep sounds in the hallway and the door is pushed open. “Maddie?”

“In here,” she calls- croaks, really- and slowly pulls herself to her feet. Her back aches from being pressed to the wall, her knees and ankles hurt from spending so long bent at odd angles, and her head is still throbbing. She doesn’t know what she looks like, but she’s not surprised when Foggy stops in the doorway and says “um, are you okay? You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” she says. “Fine,” she repeats, to make it sink in. “I just- um, I had a headache. A migraine, maybe? I dunno, I’m kind of queasy.”

“Oh,” Foggy says. There’s a rustle and a thump as she sets a plastic takeout bag down on the floor beside her. “Maybe not a great time for dinner, then? I brought Chinese, but we can always stick it in the fridge-”

“No, no,” Maddie interrupts, “dinner’s fine. I’m fine.” It’s partway true: the nausea has been subsiding since the noise stopped. Besides, she knows it’s what Foggy wants to hear, what Claire would undoubtedly say if she was in the room, what they all want. You need to eat right, Maddie. You need to get better, Maddie. Are they all reporting to each other? Regardless, she doesn’t want- need- to worry any of them. She can eat her dinner. She’s a big girl.

“Okay,” Foggy says dubiously. “I’ve got fried rice and egg rolls and chicken with veggies. What sounds good?”

Maddie takes the chicken and vegetables and settles down on the couch with Foggy. Her brain still rebels at the idea of eating, but it’s nothing to do with being nauseated: she’s been hungry for hours now, a familiar hollow core settling into the pit of her stomach, and it soothes her. As a child, she’d imagined that this was what martyrs felt like: deprivation in the name of growing closer to God, like all of His most beloved saints. She’s old enough now to know better- hunger is only hunger, and God doesn’t care whether or not she eats. But the hollowness is still satisfactory in a way she can barely explain. It’s something to orbit around: the sensation grounding her, reminding her who she is and what she needs to do. The knowledge that she can ignore the temptation of food, even when it hurts as a result. The way the feeling grows with every hour she neglects to eat, a concrete marker of how well she’s doing. The awareness of doing penance by denying herself something physically pleasurable.

But she can’t say as much to Foggy- Foggy’s not Catholic, and probably wouldn’t understand even if she was- so she makes an effort to eat anyway. Still, it’s a battle with her brain to pick the chopsticks up and take a mouthful of food, and while the experience of struggling to bring the portions to her mouth is briefly satisfactory, but she still wants to push the box away. She gives up after five mouthfuls, letting the chopsticks drop back into the box. Her stomach doesn’t feel quite as hollow, but it’s also not completely full.

“That’s all you’re eating?” She can hear the raised eyebrow in Foggy’s voice.

Maddie shrugs. “I’ll put it in the fridge and save it for later,” she says. “Midnight snack.” And probably she will. If she parcels the food out over the course of several days, it won’t involve having to sit down and eat a full meal, and Foggy won’t need to know. She picks the box up and heads into the kitchen, stashing it in the back of the refrigerator. “By the way, did something happen outside? I heard . . . noises.”

“Oh,” Foggy says, “yeah. There was some kind of- the news was saying it might be a gang thing, but they don’t know yet. Either way, some of the bullets went sideways.”

Maddie pauses, still holding the fridge door open. “Was anybody hurt?”

There’s a long pause, during which Maddie can tell Foggy is biting her lip, debating whether or not to say anything. “Foggy?”

There’s the sound of Foggy’s tongue dragging across her lips. “They took a few people to the hospital,” she says. “Some woman and her kid were coming home from grocery shopping- the news said they were stable, so they’re probably going to be okay. And one of the shooters got hit, too. I don’t know what happened to them.”

The cold air from the fridge is blasting Maddie full in the face, but she still hasn’t closed the door. Her stomach is clenching now for reasons entirely unrelated to her insufficient supper. People got shot right outside her window. People get shot in Hell’s Kitchen all the time- it comes with the territory- but they’ve been getting shot less since she started to put on the mask, and there’s a reason for that. That’s the whole purpose of having the mask in the first place. And she was only a few feet away, doing- what? Cringing next to her radiator because she couldn’t handle the noise. Because it made her head hurt. Because she wasn’t strong enough- wasn’t dedicated enough- to push through a little discomfort and actually do something, because she cared more about avoiding new bruises than saving lives, because she-

“Maddie.”

She jumps as Foggy touches her arm; she’d been so lost in her own self-recrimination, she hadn’t heard her approach. “It’s okay,” Foggy says. “Nobody died, the cops got there right away, and everything’s under control. They didn’t need any help.”

She wonders how Foggy knew exactly what was going through her head. Usually she’s got a fantastic poker face- a serendipitous benefit of not being able to project her feelings with her eyes. She almost managed to keep Daredevil a secret, after all. But apparently she’s actually about as transparent as saran wrap. Maybe it’s another side effect of the concussion, her facial features twisting around in ways she’s not aware of or can’t control.

“Of course it’s fine,” she says, forcing a smile and shrugging Foggy’s hand away. “Like you said, the cops are doing their jobs. Was Brett there?”

“Dunno,” Foggy says. She’s taken her hand away, but Maddie can still feel her eyes boring into her like drills. “I didn’t see him in any of the broadcasts, anyway. Maybe you can ask him the next time you see him.”

“Maybe you can ask him the next time you slip Bess her cigars,” Maddie returns, trying to sound lighthearted. She must succeed, because Foggy drops the subject after that, and even agrees- with minimal argument- to go home for the night and let Maddie sleep by herself.

She’s by herself, anyway. The “sleep” part is less successful.

However she managed to block out the noise last night- whether it was her head injury or just Foggy’s snoring- it’s not working any more. She lies on top of her bedsheets, arms stiff and flat at her sides, as noise comes pouring in from every direction- a fight between a couple living below, someone crying a few doors down, a dog barking outside in the street. Beyond that, it becomes harder to distinguish, but that makes it no less agonizing. Screams become almost a harmony, as though they’re being sung in concert. Voices- male, female, adult, child- all clatter against her eardrums, pulsing in time to the hammer-blow pain rocking through her skull. If she concentrates, she can pick out a dozen- no, two dozen- people who need her help in the nearest four blocks alone. There’s a mugging; there’s a kidnapping; there’s someone getting beat up by loan sharks, the high wheeze of their breath as their assailant drives a knee into their stomach rising up in sympathy in Maddie’s throat. Sympathy is all she has: she knows she can’t move, that she’d keel over in the face of the first punch swung in her direction, but the pain of another beating would be pleasurable compared to this. She can fight against a beating; she can come up again swinging, knowing for a fact that she’s the one taking these blows, that it’s her pain and not anyone else’s, that she asked for this and she got it. She doesn’t have to grit her teeth and bear the knowledge that other people are suffering and it’s because she’s not doing her job.

She rolls over onto her side, pressing her cheek against the cool fabric of her pillowcase. The new sensation helps, briefly. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to distract herself, mentally reciting case law and Supreme Court decisions, trying to focus on the familiar arguments instead of the ones being screamed downstairs. When that doesn’t work, she retreats to something older: I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only son our Lord. Her left hand, now stuffed under the pillow, moves automatically, fingers clicking together as though she has beads to roll between them. She makes it to the end of the Litany and starts over. Somewhere in the middle of her third repetition of the Fatima Prayer, she finally drifts off.

Sleep, however, is no more restful than wakefulness. In her dreams, she fights and loses, legs knocked out from under her, chin bouncing painfully against the ground as her teeth sink into her lower lip. Her opponent- she doesn’t recognize him, he’s just a man dressed in black with his face in shadow- laughs as she falls, then the dream shifts and she's tied down, watching helplessly while someone- their face, like the man who beat her, is all shadow and smoke- screams and writhes as a crowbar is brought down against their back again and again. She may be screaming too, but she can’t tell; there’s just so much noise.

She wakes sweating and shaking, and decides that staying awake from now on is the preferable option.