trustinthedevil | ☽ WAKEDEVIL ☾

The night's winding down for Matt. It's been quiet, but the sort of quiet that feels almost foreboding. Call it intuition from doing this for as long as he had, but Matt knows the difference a night without anything happen and a night that's the calm before the storm. He just didn't expect the storm to come so soon.

Matt hears it only because he hears everything. Something shifts, a sound like a piece of paper ripping, a little crackle in the air as he moves across the rooftops to get back home. He stops just short of tripping over someone just lying there. Breathing, not dead, but Matt knows they weren't there before. A man, he thinks, and as Matt crouches down to investigate more, a strange feeling of familiarity hits him. Not quite dejá-vu, but something similar. The sound of papers fluttering in the gentle breeze pulls Matt out of his thoughts.

He pulls off one of his gloves and runs his fingers over the page. The paper feels normal, and, luckily for Matt, it must be from a typewriter. The letter stamps hitting the page have left the slightest indent that he can roughly decipher by touch, but only makes Matt frown more. It's about ... Him? About both parts of him, Daredevil and Matt Murdock. It makes Matt's hair stand up on the back of his neck.

And that nagging feeling is still pulling at him.

Maybe it would be better if they weren't only a few feet away from his door. He doesn't know if he likes someone knowing about him, someone he doesn't know (everyone has a smell about them even when they're freshly showered, Matt doesn't know this one), so he makes a decision in the moment. Matt picks the man up and hoists him over his shoulder, and inside the apartment, Matt puts the stranger down on the couch.

Now, it's just a waiting game. He takes off his helmet and sits in one of the chairs, running his fingers over the pages he found until the man comes to.

//Matt knew the moment he sensed the writer that this was it. That something was happening. He could feel it like he could feel physical things imperceptible to others and hear the spectacular: something was coming. Something both he and the devil inside had never faced before. As he watched the writer, fingers running over the page of the manuscript, he waited with anticipation.//

Alan wakes up with a start like he always does: a gasp, wide eyed with panic, memories and nightmares and dreams and stories mingling in a heady cacophony of noise and wonder and sound and pain.

Almost immediately, he brings a hand up to touch at the space in between his eyes, writing himself immediately to a sitting position, willing himself to calm down. It takes only a moment--he's used to this, this fucking loop--but with one singular, short, staccato breath, he centers himself as much as he can and looks over at the other man.

"Holy shit."

It fucking worked.

Matt knows the man's about to wake up. He can hear the subtle shift in the internal organs and system, the lungs filling with air to push out when consciousness comes back. He listens, seeing in his own way how the stranger moves and takes his moments to settle in.

He has questions. Not a lot, but important ones, and his mind is working on prioritizing them. His tongue passes over his bottom lip, a little tic of his when he's trying to figure something out. Matt decides to start with the simplest question.

"Who are you?"

He's real. This worked, and this is real, and maybe--fucking maybe, finally--he's able to get out. Alan's frantic gaze sweeps over the room. An apartment. Clean, well taken care of, but effecient in its design and furniture placement. A neon light from a billboard shines in, spilling over Matt Murdock's handsome features.

That's good.

That's light.

He has to focus.

"My name is Alan Wake," he finally answers, "Matt--you have to listen to me, there's something coming, something that came with me."

"Alan Wake?"

Like the writer?

Of course that just makes more questions than answers them, and maybe Matt could have explored those except Alan address him by his name. It puts Matt on high alert all over again.

"How do you know me?"

Alan Wake is probably a popular enough name. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the man who went missing over a decade ago. Either way, Matt doesn't know an Alan, and he doesn't know how Alan would know him. Especially how Alan would know he's Daredevil, too.

"Yes," Alan's voice soars over Matt's, desperate, nearly cutting him off as he realizes he's just sort of sitting here.

It worked. It worked, though. It definitely worked. Matt's here, and confused, but it worked.

"Listen--it's my fault, I'm sorry I had to drag you into this, but there's no time. There's an overlap here. I could get out but I also held the door open long enough for other things to get in."

Alan Wake, the writer who went missing while Matt was still in his early years of university, is sitting here and he's raving about something. And he's being honest about what he's saying, even if Matt is lacking the context to fill in the gaps. That's enough to make him relax a little.

But Alan's going to need to calm down and lay things out a bit more clearly, and there's only one thing Matt can think of to help someone feel like they can relax.

"You sound like you need a drink."

Alan doesn’t hide his frustration–it’s there, buried in panic and fear and desperation for someone, anyone, to listen and actually hear what he’s saying–but his head hurts, and he feels the crushing weight of those 13 years all at once and also not at all, a strange, rippling feeling that’s making it very hard to be coherent.

He’s a writer.

He’s supposed to be coherent. It’s his job. And yet?

Alan exhales, pushes long hair out of his face, and tries to slow his heart beat. Panicking isn’t going to get him anywhere.

“You know what? I think I do.”

Matt's already up, moving to his fridge to grab a couple of beers out of it. The tops get popped off, and one his return back to the couch, he gives one to Alan. Instead of sitting, though, Matt paces a bit.

"I think you need to start from the beginning. And you need to tell me how you know who I am."

Alan takes it gratefully, savoring the feel of cold glass against his too warm skin. His head is starting to hurt.

Then again, when did it ever stop?

"Right. You... with what I'm about to say I'm going to sound crazy, but I need you to keep an open mind."

"I'm used to weird shit, try me."

And if Alan really knows who he is, then Alan has to be aware that Matt will know if he's lying. Matt takes a long drink from his bottle, then turns to Alan, putting his hands on his hips to brace himself for what he's about to hear.

"Okay." Fuck it. Alan takes a long drink, too.

"There's a world that's next to our own. Sort of. Bad shit--uh. Wrong...things. Forces of darkness." He knows this sounds crazy.

He also knows Matt is aware he's telling the truth.

"Its... it's a fucked up mess and complicated, but the long story short us that I was stuck there. Trapped. And while I was trying to find out how to leave, I, uh..."

God. Alan breathes out. Touches his forehead.

"I think I connected with you. Subconsciously. And I was able to use you to project myself here."

"All this time you've been missing you were trapped in another world?"

It should sound crazy. Matt hates that it doesn't. Between the invasion led by Loki and Danny Rand being stuck in a realm that exists outside human space, this doesn't seem all that unbelievable.

"And all of those ... Dark things. Did they come with you?"

"Yes." It's not the entire truth, but it's enough. It's a start. He exhales.

"The rules are different. They're different here, too--I saw you." Creepy? Probably creepy. Alan's head is pounding.

"Sometimes visions trickle down, you..." a sigh.

"I saw you. Fighting, at first. Glimpses. And when I saw you at court, too, I put two and two together. A focal point I could write my way to. You basically saved my life."

Matt huffs a breath out if his nose, but what is he supposed to do? Alan isn't lying. Alan is being so sincere that Matt can't fault him.

"Should I ... Help you find someone?"

"No." Alan's response is immediate. "Im already putting you in danger, I can't--" he breathes out.

"I can't do it again. Not to the people I know." A glance at Matt. "You of all people should understand."

"You broke out of that place and you don't even want to go home?"

Matt does, actually, understand. He did pretty much the same thing, but he purposely hid himself away. Alan didn't.

☽ WAKEDEVIL ☾

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