Matt Murdock
09 August 2016 @ 09:43 pm
Open | Sometimes ghosts find you no matter how far you run  
Matt has been in Itinere for a few months now. He's settled, as much as he can, and he's come up with a routine, but he still doesn't have a purpose. Daredevil isn't something that's needed here nor is practicing law something that's necessary. He feels rudderless and useless without something to do, some way to help. It's with this useless feeling that he wakes up one morning, showers, dresses and grabs his keys from the side table out of habit more than anything. He locks his apartment door and notices a new key on his keyring, but it's also an old key, one with edges worn and notches that he could trace in his sleep. His heart catches in his throat and he pushes hope and emotion down. It's just a key, he tells himself then takes the elevator down and heads out the main door of the apartment building to grab a cup of coffee.

He walks along the street as he usually does with his coffee when a familiar smell stops him in his tracks and it occurs to him that maybe the key isn't just a key. With a little exploration, he figures out which building is new, which building wasn't there yesterday morning when he'd taken this walk. His hands slide along bricks, feeling a building that's been a part of his life for as long as he can remember, a building that ought to be in Hell's Kitchen and not here. At the front door, he gets the key out and tries it, unsurprised at this point when it unlocks the door and he steps inside. He can't see the room that's actually in front of him, but he knows what it looks like regardless, or he knows what it looked like when he was nine years old, when he used to go to the gym with his dad and hang over the ropes of the ring while he practiced. It smells exactly the same and that smell evokes Matt's childhood memories, good memories of afternoons with his father, of his father's refusal to teach him to box because he wanted him to use his brains instead of his fists.

Despite Matt's memories, the gym isn't quite the same. It contains many elements of the old gym he'd spent so much time in. There's a boxing ring and a slew of punching bags, but there's also a cardio room with treadmills and exercise bikes. It's also got Murdock's Gym on the sign out front, a fight poster of Battlin' Jack Murdock and an advertisement of his last fight. His robe is there as well encased in glass. Matt will spend the rest of the day exploring those differences in this gym and the one from his childhood. Feel free to come in and disturb him. He could stand to be pulled out of his memories.