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Chapter Text

The ropes dig into his flesh, burning ridges into his skin where he struggles against their hold. He grunts, attempting to force his forearms upward despite the restraints binding them.

The door to the room slides open and two sets of footsteps enter. The first set is controlled and solid, a man with direction and intention. The second is harsher, denser with more of a harried quality to it. The air stinks of cigarette smoke and some other chemical scent - methaphetamine? Marijuana? It's a drug, but Matt's mind is too addled from his probable concussion to properly identify the smell. He'd kick himself if his legs weren't rope-bound to the wooden chair he had been unceremoniously dropped onto.

The two don't speak when they enter, but they walk straight up to him, the first man stopping in front of him, slightly to his left side, the second man stopping directly behind him. He stops his struggling, steadying his breathing and trying to analyze the situation for an escape. Blood trickles down his mask and causes his face to itch.

The first man utters something in Chinese to the second. His voice is stern, curt - an order, most likely - and the second man braces his hands on Matt's shoulders.

Matt bucks as best as he can against the contact, determined not to make whatever was about to happen easy for the duo. The first man pulls a small object out of his pocket - glass, emitting that chemical scent the pair carry - and it clicks in his head and the second it does he wishes it hadn't. He bucks harder against the weight on his shoulders, his own heart rate skyrocketing as the syringe approaches his arm.

His suit is rolled up at the sleeve, revealing his bare wrist and elbow. His hand tightens into a fist and he attempts, futilely, to pull his arm free of the rope one last time. His wrists sting and he's almost certain he will draw blood when he suddenly feels the sharp prick of a needle breaking his skin. He inhales sharply through his teeth, followed by a forceful grunt as the drugs - heroin, his mind finally supplies - snake through his veins and onward to contaminate the rest of his body.

Next thing he knows, the men are gone, and only faint laughter is audible in the distance. The laughter reverberates through his skull, twisting and morphing into an array of foreign, unsettling sounds.

His head spins and his eyelids flutter, and he wants to resist and he wants to hate what is happening but everything suddenly doesn't seem so bad anymore.

His fist unclenches and Daredevil lets go.

----

It smells like piss. But not just piss, piss and trash.

He's in another dumpster.

Matt groans, forcing his body into a vaguely upright position, despite his body's vehement protestations. Luckily, the lid to the dumpster is ajar and he climbs through a little less than gracefully, but with relative ease. When his feet land on the solid ground, the rest of his body follows and he ends up in a pile on top of the concrete.

Why did his legs give out? He takes a quick stock of his body for injuries. Head? Most likely concussed. Neck? Sore, but fine. Arms? Left one is cold, but his sleeve is rolled up for some reason. Torso? Chest a bit tight. Legs? Wobbly.

Nothing seemed too severe to be impeding his movement as much as it had so clearly something else must be at work. His memory of his abduction has gaps in it. Giant, gaping holes that terrified Matt with their uncertainty and mystery.

He remembers getting jumped in an alley, lured by the cries of a man being ganged up on by a group of Chinese assailants - men he suspected to be working for Gao. Then he remembers waking up in a room, tied to a chair and struggling to get free. His heart flutters at the memory, throat drying as his mind skips ahead to what followed.

He remembers the needle, something being injected into his body.

He was drugged. Maybe even poisoned.

But he knows that it wasn't poison, because he knows what it was and if he were being rational he would admit he was given heroin but he doesn't want to consider the possibility that he had been given the very addictive drug that he was fighting to get off the streets.

He doesn't want to consider the fact that he is craving that same very addictive drug. That his skin is crawling and his body is itching both literally and figuratively for that very addictive drug.

So he doesn't.

Chapter Text

"You were right about the concussion. You've also got some bruised ribs, some pretty serious abrasions on your wrists and ankles, and then," Claire pauses, hands hovering above him, adjacent to his left arm, "there's this."

Matt keeps his gaze forward, face betraying nothing, his expression locked in the stoic look characteristic of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. She notices the change - a slight inhale of breath and a twitch of her fingers - but she recovers seamlessly and slips back into her work.

She shoves a few of her supplies, including her stethoscope, gauze, and suture kit, back into her duffel. Once everything is inside she stops again. He can feel her desire to say something, but also her hesitation. The unsaid words push against his skin the same way they push against her lips, begging to be uttered but forced to stay put.

"Don't, Claire." He knows what she's going to say. He knows because he can feel her scrutinizing gaze dissecting the single tiny circular mark on the inside of his elbow. He can feel the uncertainty, the pity, that the knowledge - her presumed knowledge - about its source elicits.

"I didn't peg you as the type. Then again, it's usually the ones you don't expect, right?" The forced lightness in her tone makes him want to puke. She's straining to remain calm and nonjudgmental but he can smell the fear on her. Hear her heart beating faster, probably flooding her own ears with their boom, boom, boom, boom.

"I don't know, I would think masked vigilantes that piss off drug cartels would be the one you'd expected to be drugged against his will." He matches her lightness, twisting his mouth into a wry smirk. It's a pale imitation of his famous Murdock smirk, but it's the best he can muster on short notice with a concussion, bruised ribs, abrasions, and this newborn nausea roiling around in his stomach and this sweat beginning to drip down his forehead.

Her pity heightens and his stomach rebels at the observation, anger starting to rumble inside him. He quickly and politely begins to usher her out of his apartment, pacifying all of her concerns with blatant lies he knows she cannot sense, not like he can.

Yes, he'll call if he needs anything. Yes, he knows it wasn't his fault. Yes, he knows it's okay to need help. Yes, yes, yes, yes -

As she leaves she wisps away her unique scent of lavender and antiseptic with her. He clicks the door shut behind Claire, leaning against it as he does so. He slides down the length of the entry, a few near microscopic splinters of wood superficially embedding themselves into his back. He ignores them and forces himself to inhale slowly. His lungs cry out at the effort.

The desire to do what he knows he really, really shouldn't is almost overwhelming.

Matt's not an expert on drugs, far from it. He's always stayed away from anything that would cloud his mind, even in college when people were smoking left and right - he didn't. But he knows that this degree of yearning and craving, the itchiness of his skin, and the incessant pounding of his skull and stomach in sick tandem, is not normal after a single taste of a drug, no matter how addictive.

He slides his fingers up his arm, probing for the sensitive spot he knows will be near his elbow. The evidence of his failure, his defeat. His stomach tightens as his index finger brushes over it, and he almost stops, but something seems off and so he keeps moving upward. His finger discovers another bump, and his heart beat quickens. Then he finds another and another, and his elbow is practically littered with these little spots - track marks, his brain offers.

Then suddenly, everything slips a bit more into place. It explains the concern and rapidity with which Claire showed up at his apartment, her subtle comment about him going and disappearing on her. It explains the twenty-three missed calls on his cell phone and the eighteen voicemails.

Gao's men didn't just inject him with heroin to mess him up. No, their torture was more twisted and longer lasting.

They got his body addicted to the drug. They injected him again and again and again and again, over a period of days until he wouldn't be able to fight his body's craving for the drug, no matter his mind's disapproval.

Knowing this, he regrets sending Claire away, not asking her to stay with him and stop him from succumbing to the temptation the cartel embedded in him.

He considers calling her. She left an open offer for him to do so. She would understand. She would help.

Instead, the itching in his skin and the pounding in his head drive him to his feet. He wobbles at first, but catches himself.

Taking a few calming breaths, he readies himself. He stubbornly ignores the shame in his head and the uneasiness in his gut as he slinks to his bedroom. As his body settles into the silk sheets for the evening, his mind wanders, landing on a single marked packet of white powder hidden in his father's trunk.