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New York City isn't exactly the best place to find a quiet spot for relaxing. Too many heartbeats, everywhere, crushing and shifting and swirling about like motes of dust in a beam of sunlight. Noise and pressure and bodies swarm around in every direction, overlaid by traffic and construction and a million other sounds all clamoring for attention. Sometimes, Matt wonders if his life might be easier if he moved out West somewhere, to a place with open fields and farms instead of this overpopulated concrete jungle. It doesn't matter. In the end, he can't even seriously consider it. Hell's Kitchen is his home.
So Matt learns to control it; to master his body and his senses so he can live a relatively normal life without always being sidelined by sensory overloads. It helps, and daily meditation makes it easier to keep his center amid the screeching, growling, rumbling chaos of the city. Most days, it doesn't bother Matt in the least. Most of the time, Matt can survive in the comparative quiet of his top-floor apartment and their office in the nearly abandoned building that hasn't quite been refilled since The Incident. Most days, Matt is fine.
Today is not one of those days.
Matt isn't looking for it when he finds it, which is the way of such things, he supposes. Standing in front of the church, Matt seeks out Father Lantom's familiar presence - gait wavering from age and arthritis that the priest refuses to acknowledge; a heavily starched shirt with the collar that scratches against his Adam's apple; the scent of lemon and candle wax and too much sugar in his daily lattes; a heart that beats like a balm, calm and steady and with a forcefulness like a captain leading his men into the breach. Matt finds it not in any of the usual places but instead, coming from behind the brick building.
Curious, Matt follows the edge of the building around until he enters the little garden tucked into the shadow of the steeple. The place is cool and gentle, sheltered on one side by a large stone building that had been half-demolished in The Incident and hasn't been restored, and on the other side by the sturdy back of the church. It's mid-autumn at the time, and the little square of grass and stone path is interspersed with clusters of flowers that are drying out, brittle and cracking in each gust of wind, little flecks blowing away in a never-ending whirl of decay.
Father Lantom glances up when Matt's cane taps against the path. "Matthew," he greets. He's kneeling in the grass, and he tugs, pulling a weed from the garden in a spray of earth. Matt hears the series of grating clicks as the individual seeds break away from the bulb at the motion - a dandelion, he acknowledges somewhere in the back of his mind - and drift away on a lonely zephyr. Father Lantom huffs slightly and deposits the remains of the weed into a nearby wheelbarrow. "I was just finishing up here, going to head in and have a latte. Care to join me?"
"Actually," Matt hesitates for a moment, cocking his head as he lets his senses bask in the relative calm of the little garden, "I think I'd just like to sit here for a while."
Father Lantom must see something in Matt's face because he doesn't wheedle the way he usually does when Matt brushes him off. The priest stands up with a puff, dusts bits of dry grass from his pants, and then leaves without another word. Matt finds his way to a little stone bench tucked beneath a drooping cherry tree and makes himself comfortable.
It's far from perfect, but the buildings that stand on either side like sentinels shield Matt from the majority of the city noises. Tentatively, Matt releases the tight leash on his senses and finds that he isn't immediately overwhelmed. Plants and moisture, stone and dust. It's comforting and protected, and for the first time in ages, Matt feels like he can stop fighting so hard just to exist.
On days when the entire world is simply too much to bear, Matt makes his way to the church garden. It's rarely occupied at the times he shows up, either ridiculously early in the morning before heading into the office or in the late evening before going out to patrol the streets. Father Lantom always seems to be able to tell when Matt needs the peace, and when he bypasses the church doors to head for the garden, the priest gives him a wide berth. He waits, patient and compassionate like a good Catholic, until Matt comes out on his own, and is there to greet him with a latte and firm advice.
It's been a long night, dealing with a child-trafficking ring down by the docks, and the whole affair has left Matt feeling raw and ragged. Emotions humming too close to the surface and making it difficult to control himself. Cases with kids tend to do that to him, which Matt reasons is a totally rational response, really. Still, it's going to make concentrating on the casework difficult, and he's already put too much of the work on Foggy, so Matt gets up early and traces the familiar path to the church.
As usual, there's no one when he enters the garden and makes his way to the bench he's claimed as his own. Matt props his cane against the side and deposits his laptop bag on the seat beside him. His glasses go into his breast pocket, and Matt tilts his head back, letting his eyes drop shut. One deep breath in, and then he releases it all.
The sudden, hypnotic presence of nature washes over him. It's late spring, the days just beginning to turn from damp and muggy to dry and brittle. Everything - the slightly-too-long grass, the little rounded spots of perennials recently planted, the vines that creep over the iron fence and up the back of the stone church, the tiny, well-trimmed trees that edge the garden - all of them smell vibrant and springy and green.
The constant, low buzz of life swims around him. A bird overhead is hopping around in its nest, adjusting and readjusting the little bits of twig to make a more secure hollow for the small eggs - three tiny, lightning-fast heartbeats. The mother bird's feathers made soft, whispery sounds as they flitter in the air to help it keep balance while it works. A cat - female and in heat, by the smell - has taken up residence beneath the lilac bush, and it's grooming itself with lazy contentment, the burrs on its tongue scraping and dragging through the fur. He can even hear the bugs, the hundreds and thousands of insects flying and crawling and climbing. Air is disturbed in tiny whorls by a butterfly's wings. A spider makes a meal of a particularly crunchy little thing that strayed into its gossamer webs. A worm pushes and pulls its way through the damp earth, the contract and stretch of its muscles a natural rhythm. On a flower above Matt's head, he hears the drone of wings and the gentle tap of microscopic feet alighting on a closed bud. Not a butterfly that time - a dragonfly, he concludes.
Matt leans back and lets himself melt into the comfort of the garden, protected from the outside world by the walls of Hell's Kitchen and God. Here he's allowed to feel safe; to feel sheltered; to feel vulnerable. So while Matt's hyper-senses are distracted by nature, his mind draws forth the memories.
(The stink of fish and refuse, the thundering heartbeats of bodies - too little, too fragile, too innocent for this. Gasps of breath, the salty sweetness of tears on sweaty skin. The fear, so much fear, and confusion and homesickness and pure unadulterated panic when men with guns paw at their clothes and hair and skin.)
They were only children, lost and alone in a terrifying new world they don't understand. It had been too much for Matt because some part of him - that distant former self hidden away in the back of his mind behind all of the training Stick had (and then hadn't) given him - feels it like an echo. The little boy inside of him that he can never completely get away from relates to those children. Enough that the devil was released in a way Matt hasn't done since sending Fisk to jail. Those men who thought that the lives and innocence of children are a currency to be traded will not bother anyone for a very long time.
Once his emotions run their course, Matt straightens up on the bench. He drags the back of his wrist over his face, wiping away the salty moisture that's drying on his skin, and replaces his glasses. Slowly, carefully, he begins to draw his senses back under his command. It's easier now, now that the demons of the night are faced and dealt with and no longer scratching at the surface of his mind. Once Matt finishes, he gathers his cane, takes one last deep breath of the garden, and then heads for the front of the church.
"Good morning, Matthew. How are you?" Father Lantom asks from the open doors of the church.
Matthew takes stock, evaluates himself the way he does a new potential client, and then nods. "Better. Much better."