Chapter Text
It’s a cold fucking night in February. Rob knows this because he’s awake, in his apartment building, where the heating has gone out (again) and he swears there’s frost crystallizing at the edges of the stupid cracked window.
And he’s awake, because somebody called him at God’s good hour of four AM.
After the nice lady says “There’s been an incident. Do you know Johnathan Murdock?,” it gets kind of hard to listen. Gets a lot harder when she says he’s been shot in an alleyway.
Here’s the thing: when he pictures bad things happening (and he does. Lord knows he does, just like anyone does, when it’s dark out, and it’s cold, and sleep won’t come fast enough. And it’s not always the world-breaking sorrow of a reality that doesn’t exist, probably won’t ever exist. Sometimes it’s just his morbid imagination, wondering how he’d deal with it if all of a sudden, the world lost its need for foremans and Sue caught an awful illness, and the house got foreclosed and he was all alone-)
When he pictures bad things happening, it’s cinematic.
For one thing, if something goes wrong, he’s going to be there when it happens, or at least damn soon after the fact. He’s going to have his moment to do something, and maybe he fails, and maybe he doesn’t, but he always gets to try. He always gets to plead his case to his boss before the termination papers come. He always gets to tell Sue it’s gonna be alright, and talk to the doctor about the best and worst case scenarios, and figure out a plan. That’s all Rob’s ever needed, was the chance to prepare.
But that’s all fantasy. Reality’s a little meaner than that.
Because Jack Murdock, the guy he’s spent nearly a thirty years arguing with, the guy who was there for him when his brother died, the guy who takes punches like they’re love-taps and lays him out in the ring like a mat when he feels like it, the guy who was gonna take Rob’s fuckin' daughter to school when he had to make it in early-
Jack Murdock dies when Rob’s asleep. He can’t do anything about it. There’s no trying to push him out of the way of the bullet, or talking him down from taking the deal with Roscoe. There’s no putting pressure on his wound to try and keep the life in him. Rob can’t call an ambulance, or shake him by those meaty shoulders and scream “stay with me.”
Jack Murdock dies, and he can’t do anything, cus it’s four AM, and he just woke up. It’s already done by the time the call comes in. Putting on his socks and his shoes to go down and identify the body feels automatic and pointless. The fuck does it matter, what happens next?
Nobody gets it. He’s the brains of this whole operation, always has been. He calls the boys up one by one to tell them what the nice lady told him, as numb as if he’d never felt a thing in his life. The news is met with a long stretch of silence from everyone but Keith, who lets out a little squeaky noise that he’s never going to be able to replicate for the rest of his whole life.
The thoughts are fighting for supremacy. He doesn’t know which one he ought to think first, so he focuses on putting one foot in front of another on the way down to the precinct.
And then, before he knows it, he’s running. He’s at a dead sprint down the sidewalk through the rainy streets of New York in his pajama pants.
Because the thoughts finally start to get in line.
Jack’s dead. Roscoe got him. Nobody said anything about Matt. His kid, the little menace that sat in their corner and called his daddy an idiot so they could all agree with him. Maybe Matt’s dead, too. (He’s gotta be able to run faster than this.) Maybe he’s all alone at Jack’s duplex, waiting for him to come home. (He should have had a plan for this one.) Maybe he’s at the precinct, asking someone to tell him there’s been a mistake, and that corpse doesn’t belong to his daddy. (He’s going to hurt someone.)
He’s going to hurt someone very badly.
He breaks the doors down to get inside, and everybody's already there. Joe’s got Marty all wrapped up in his arms while he falls to pieces. The only thing Rob can see of him is a mess of shaggy black hair sticking out from under Joe's collar, and Joe- Joe isn’t an expressive man. Doesn’t talk much, but he’s got this haunted look in his eyes, like he needs the hug more than Marty does. Neil’s hands shake when he talks to the receptionist. Keith looks up when Joe comes in. Meet his eyes with a soulful stare, all bloodshot and tired around his blue irises.
Behind all of them, Matt’s sitting on a chair, bawling his eyes out. He won’t keen when he cries like most kids do, but he’ll sit there and choke and gasp and sniffle while Vick kneels in front of him, talking low. He's alive, and it's no comfort to him.
It’s a room full of everyone who knows Jack, and every last one of them except his son is from the damn gym. That’s a reflection for a later time. Joe walks over to Niel, because he seems the least preoccupied of anyone, and sets a hand on his shoulder.
Niel looks up at him, and he looks haggard. His dark, short hair is sticking up like he's been running his hand through it too much. They’re all getting on in years, but this is something else. The lean, wiry quality of his limbs reads more like thinness at the moment. Like maybe he's been eating enough, but it sure doesn't show now. The numbness hasn’t quite left Joe yet, but he thinks he’s probably giving the look right back to him.
“He been identified yet?” he asks, real quiet. It feels like a crime to break the soft choir of sniffling in the reception area.
Niel seems to agree with that sentiment. He shakes his head.
“Nobody’s got the heart just yet,” he admits quietly. “We’re all waiting for somebody else to do it.”
“I told him, Rob,” Marty croaks, still clinging to Joe. His voice, usually nasally on its own, has taken up a gravelly quality. “It ain’t fair, he told me- he told me he took the money again, he didn’t say anything about-”
“Hey, hey, Marty,” Rob says, feeling his own voice like ice. He jogs over to the middle of the room to quiet him, because they’ve got a sniffling child on their hands who just lost his dad, and he doesn’t need to hear the details tonight.
Joe gives Marty a big squeeze.
“Nobody’s fault,” he says gruffly.
“Yeah,” Rob says softly, watching Marty’s face as it toes the line between anger and anguish. “Nobody’s fault.”
It’s darker than he means to say it, because that’s the thing- it is somebody’s fault. He can name at least two people whose fault it is, and Jack’s name’s at the top of the list.
“Matty found him first,” Marty rasped, now with the sense to keep his voice down. “Rob, the cops found him, and then Matty found him, and I don’t know what to say- I think the pigs got to talk to him first-”
“Vick’s got it, Marty,” he said solemnly. “I get the idea we’ll get our chance to talk to him. Take your time.”
“How are you calm right now, man? What the fuck are we gonna do? Kid’s got no family, he-”
“Yeah he does,” Keith says, finally standing up from his silence to join the huddle they had formed. “Course he does. Look around. If you assholes won’t take him, I will.”
Robert doesn’t have a temper, most of the time. But one of his brothers just died, and Keith has decided that everyone in this room is at fault somehow. The declaration comes from a good place and sails right down into a bad one.
“Fuck you, Keith,” he snaps, keeping his voice to a whisper. “Course we’ll take him.”
“Hey,” Niel says, sidling up to them from the receptionist’s desk. “Let’s figure out the custody battle later, alright?”
He’s right, the bastard. Robert gives him a mean glare anyway, just for being more mature than him, and points at Keith. No point in pretending he was going to be the bigger person.
“Uncalled for.”
Keith, because he’s a jackass, but a real sweet one, doesn’t defend himself. Rob walks up to the receptionist to take Niel’s place.
“I’m ready to see him.”
And it’s a fucking lie, is what it is, but they can’t stand around in the precinct all night, mourning half of the truth. He can’t set a plan in motion with half of the facts, and he wonders idly when the mourning is going to kick in. Marty was right to call him on that, because he’s cold as stone for the moment. It’s just a matter of time until reality comes up behind him and kicks him face-down into the pavement, but he can use every second up until that point to figure shit out.
Niel’s obviously been doing his best, but he doesn’t have a bossy bone in his whole body. Mature or not, if Marty’s next decision was to set the precinct on fire, Niel would shrug it off, tell him it was reckless, and take the rest of them somewhere they’d have plausible deniability.
She nods solemnly and picks up a landline to murmur something into the receiver. It’s hard to sympathize when the world’s falling down, but he does anyway. She’s got a building full of grieving blockheads and an orphan. She looks as exhausted as any of them.
“They’ll bring you back,” she says, setting the phone down. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” he says. Tries to mean it.
He’s not sure what to take from the walk back. Every last one of them shuffles after him, a funeral procession that was waiting for the leading man to show and make the first move towards the graveyard. Vick’s at the back with Matty, and they’re holding hands now.
It’s like his brain’s not really looking at anything. If they took him to a random room and left him there, he’s not sure he’d be able to find his way back out again. It’s the middle of the damn night, and he’s disoriented. His head’s starting to hurt, but his heart’s starting to pound.
Feels like reality’s coming around the corner.
He’s gotta talk to his wife about the promise he made out there. He’s the least likely of any of them to lose custody, but with little Kaitlyn on the way, he’s not sure about the logistics. He’s not sure about how Matty’s gonna take that- trying to make his peace with a dead dad, new guardians, and a baby of their own to take care of. He wonders if he’ll feel like more of an outsider because of it, and maybe it’s best to leave him with Niel, because Niel’s got a spare room, but Niel also doesn’t come home until real late at night- never settled down, that one. And Marty would be good to him, but he’d raise a hellion on accident, and Matty’s always been stubborn enough as it is, without knowing how to escape handcuffs, and lying to cops. Joe’s a steady fella, but Matty’s gonna need someone who can actually talk about emotions, or he’s gonna take tonight and repress it into a little tiny ball that’ll explode on him when he’s about sixteen- happened with Jack, and Matty’s got the sprouts of that same illness, starting to pop up through the cracks-
The door opens, and Rob’s planning gets cut short. There’s a body on a table under a sheet. The shape looks familiar already. He hangs from his sanity by three fingers. Everybody else is waiting for him to make a move, and he goes inside. Joe and Niel are the only ones with the heart to follow him in.
Every step towards the table is forced and quiet, like he’s afraid to wake him up.
After about five seconds of staring, he realizes the cop across the table is waiting for his go-ahead.
He nods dumbly.
The sheet comes down slowly. Respectful.
There’s a bullet hole in Jack’s forehead. All that composure Robert’s been carrying with him shatters into nothing.
“That’s Jack,” he whispers.
“Murdock?” the cop asks. He’s got a clipboard in his hand.
“The one and only,” Rob says.
The cop nods, scribbles something down, and then folds the clipboard down against his thighs, where he can have a moment of silence.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Can we have a moment, officer.”
That doesn’t come out as a request, and he doesn’t treat it like one. The cop bows his head in acceptance and leaves the room to inform everybody else outside.
Rob stares at one of his best friends. The stitches in his wounds are performative, this time. They’re there for show, because nobody wants to see their loved one mangled like that. His head’s gone icy cold; he feels like there’s an iceberg climbing through him, about to fall off the edge of a cliff, and then it does, and the room blurs behind the tears in his eyes.
“Jack, you idiot. You jackass, you fucking dope, ” he grits. “The fuck did you go and do that for? The fuck is wrong with you, man, you’ve got a son, you piece of shit. You’ve got us. Fuck. Fuck. ”
He kicks the leg of the table, and a heavy hand lands on his shoulder.
Joe’s eyes are closed. Neil’s right there with him, eyes still glued to Jack like he can’t stop looking at him. Rob lunges in to hold the both of them in a sloppy disaster of a hug that’s all folded arms. It takes a second to adjust it into something sustainable, and he’s fighting his way in.
“Fuckin’ asshole, ” Rob carries on, choking. “Fuckin’ piece of shit.”
“Robbie-” Niel starts, and his voice is shaken. He’s trying to talk reason when he’s mortified like that. Like he's seen a ghost.
For once, Rob’s not hearing it.
“He killed himself, Niel. He’s got a son to worry about, and he killed himself. Just gonna leave me like that, the fuckin’ dickhead- like this. Not like this. I can’t- He’s my brother, Niel, he- he-”
Joe’s meaty hand tightens around his shoulder, and for the first time tonight, he decides to pipe up.
“You’re talking too much,” he says. His voice is laced with concern, because he’s right, and Rob likes to carry on and on when he’s upset, but God damn it, he has earned that right tonight.
“He’s my brother, ” he cries out, and doesn’t try to stop himself. Niel’s finally got a good enough grip on him to try and crush him.
“He’s our brother, man,” Niel sniffles. “Let it out.”
And Rob does.