Blackout | Matt Murdock

chapter twenty-two | the vigilante buddies in action

Things get worse before they get better.

And by worse, Michaela means she's hit rock bottom at least three times in the span of thirty minutes and she lost track of Matt ten minutes ago and Peter is working on getting Mordo back in the game through various DnD-inspired means—

Suffice it to say, she's having a rough go of it.

Another shockwave catches Michaela off guard and she hits the ground at an awkward angle, her shoulder twisting sharply at the joint and sending jolts of agony all down her arm. The impact drives the air out of her chest, her next inhale choked and bitten-off. The ringing in her ears drowns out the rest of the world and for a moment, Michaela lays there, blinking through cracked lenses and watching the smoke rise around her. Copper pools on her tongue and she swallows, knowing that turning her head is only going to rile up the nausea churning in her gut. Fuck, she hurts. Everywhere. From the grit stinging her palms and the insides of her wrists to the throbbing of her head and the blooming ache of bruises on every not-too-bloody patch of skin she has left.

Fuck. Just—fuck everything.

A shout, garbled and distorted from all the many bells she'd had rung recently, has her scrambling to move, to turn over, get her feet under her. She doesn't recognize the voice – she barely recognizes the sound of her own fucking thoughts – but it pricks at her instincts just enough to provoke a response. She gets onto her knees, ignoring the bright flair of pain from her hands scraping over the ruined asphalt, then staggers upright, and suddenly there's an arm around her and she's getting turned, someone's talking—

The goggle's are busted anyway, she thinks as she shoves them up and then off completely. Black-tinted plastic shakes free and probably lodges itself in her hair, another thing she'll have to look for if she gets a chance to hose down in the shower. But in the moment it's worth it, considering she's finally able to make out exactly who's staring at her with abject concern and an inappropriately handsome face.

"C'mon, Sparky, you gotta talk to me," Luke Cage says, and, shit, she's only just tuning in but he's been talking at her for a while now, yeah? She guesses as much based on his word choice as well as the subtle shake he gives her. She blinks again. Luke cocks his head, darting a glance over his shoulder then zeroing back in on her. "I'm not playing punching bag for Daredevil, so you gotta work with me here."

Her tongue feels thick and fucking useless in her mouth, but Michaela gets ahold of herself long enough to say, "Dare-Daredevil's more likely to, to get into the spinny kick bullshit when he's mad."

Luke's mouth curves into a slight smile that's more smirk-adjacent than it has any right to be in this scenario. "There she is. Snarky as the papers make you out to be, huh? Good to know they got something right. Now, how're you feeling? Saw you take a nasty hit to the head a while back."

A hit to the—Right. Right, right, that was the last time she got knocked off her feet. Lost her balance and careened straight into the side mirror of a miraculously undamaged car. That would explain the persistent headache and the nausea, actually, so it's good that Luke reminded her about it.

But, wait.

"You're here?" she blurts out, and she knows she's making the most incredulous face because not only does it pull at every cut she has but it gets Luke laughing.

"Yeah, we're here," he says. "Jess and I figured you guys could use the assist, since that guy multiplied or whatever."

Multiplied. Fuck, yeah, Cato did do that, didn't he? Michaela had an uncomfortably flashback to when she and Matt met Bailey, and that led to a guilt spiral of epic proportions, because Michaela can only hope that Bailey doesn't try and get in on this action; she should have texted them, laid the whole thing out and gotten Bailey to promise they wouldn't get involved. But alas, Michaela is forever an idiot and while Bailey had been on her mind earlier, she hadn't thought to check in with them, too worried they'd take it as an invitation to ascend to sidekick-dom without Michaela's actual say so.