Work Text:
“Foggy’s been asking after you,” Karen says. Matt pauses in the middle of doctoring his coffee, but she knows no amount of sugar will sweeten her words.
Sounds of the diner around them. Sounds of what lies unspoken between them, louder by far. Eventually Matt asks, “Why are you acting as his intermediary?”
“Because we used to be friends, all three of us, but you two especially.”
“Yeah? When was the last time we talked, he and I?”
She bites her lip, displeased at both her ignorance and the mild, uninvested way he asks. “I don’t know. You were going through a rough patch.”
Matt shrugs. “It couldn’t have been that close a friendship anymore, then.”
She is so glad Foggy isn’t here. To hear Matt casually dismiss years of closeness would kill him all over again. “He was your best friend,” she bites out. “And you loved him. Why didn’t you tell him before the surgery?”
An arched brow. “Respectfully, that’s not your business.”
He’s not wrong, but... “No,” she says after a lengthy pause. “I suppose nothing you do is, anymore.”
“Oh come off it, Karen.” Acerbity pricks through, the first time he’s lost his calm. “You’re the one who decided you no longer wanted any part of my life.”
“Yeah,” she counters, equally sharp, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”
To her astonishment, he shakes his head. “You shouldn’t. You were right to walk away.” She stares at him, appalled, as he draws a breath. The equanimity he pulls on is like any other of his masks, the smile he forces crooked and rueful. “I’m not good for you. For anybody.”
“Tell that to Foggy.”
It hovers between them, full of glass and needles. But he doesn’t engage. Instead he says, “You’ve been doing well, Karen,” like he’s confronting her with a difficult truth. Maybe it is difficult, when the unspoken addendum is “Without me.”
And it’s not like she can deny it. She thinks she should want to. Karen grimaces, masks that realization with an equally-bitter sip of coffee, decides to spare his feelings in another way. “It still doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
In spite of his own professed detrimental influence, he looks shyly pleased by her statement. But then his expression blanks entirely when she adds, pointed, “So does Foggy.”
“Ah.” Placing his hands on the table, he pushes away. “And that is no longer my problem.”
“You used to be friends!”
“So did we. From all indications, neither of you were involved in my life anymore. Not for a long time.” His cane snaps straight, as unyielding as his posture. “So I need you to ask yourself why you’re bothering now.”
He turns away, implacable, then pauses. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for his loss. But do me the favor of letting me live with my decisions.”
“Even if you don’t know what you lost?”
Her words are stones. His are steel: “Even then.”
And then he’s gone.