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edenfallingSummary: Before she died, Matt's grandmother used to look after him in the afternoons and evenings, while his dad worked a series of short-term jobs. She wasn't as strict about homework as Matt's dad, but she was strict in other ways.
Contains some familial dysfunction, unhealthy expression of religion, and the off-screen death of a not-exactly-canon character. (800 words)
[ETA: The slightly revised and extended final version is now up on AO3!]
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Now and at the Hour of Our Death
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Before she died, Matt's grandmother used to look after him in the afternoons and evenings, while his dad worked a series of short-term jobs in construction, roadwork, moving: whoever paid the most and was willing to hire a man who cancelled on short notice whenever he could scrape together a boxing match. Sara Murdock had a tiny rent-controlled apartment two blocks north of Matt's own home, and Matt would walk to her place after school, to keep him off the streets and out of trouble.
She wasn't as strict about homework as Matt's dad, which was sort of nice even though it only meant he got stuck staying up late to finish everything once he actually got home. She'd let him watch television and listen to his excited descriptions of exactly why his favorite (and in retrospect, amazingly ridiculous) cartoons were the most awesome things ever.
But she was strict in other ways.
She taught Matt to pray the rosary -- "In Latin, as it should be; none of this newfangled English rite nonsense" -- and also the Angelus, which they recited in unison, bowing their heads in respect for the incarnation, precisely at six o'clock every day. Then she'd serve dinner, usually some variation on soup or baked beans, and walk him home to wait for his dad.
Matt tended to make sure he was in his bedroom when he heard his dad's footsteps in the hallway. It was bad enough overhearing his dad and grandmother argue; getting pulled into the fights was worse. He knew Jack Murdock was a disappointment to his mother. He knew she regretted her marriage, regarded her son and grandson as proof of her own weakness and sin. He knew the devil took a special interest in their family. He didn't need to see proof repeated every night.
She gave Matt a set of rosary beads for his seventh birthday -- "I should've done that a long time ago, but some people said you were too young for the weight. Hmph. As if ignoring God ever worked for anyone" -- and insisted he pray on his own, not just when she was there to remind him. Somehow she always knew if Matt lied.
He was never sure if the prayers did any good. It seemed to him that God had better things to do than listen to people mumbling gibberish day in and day out. But there was a certain comfort in the routine, and he liked the Joyful and Glorious Mysteries. They seemed out of place in Hell's Kitchen, and some of them went a little over his head, but love and hope were good things to remember. He wished his grandmother remembered them more often.
Sara Murdock died when Matt was eight, six months before his accident. Heart attack in her sleep, just never woke up. Matt found her body the next afternoon after school.
(He can still see her face, the unhappy slant of her mouth that even the slackness of death couldn't erase. It's one of his few childhood memories whose edges haven't blurred with time and the loss of any visual referents. He's not sure if he wishes it had softened and faded like almost everything else.)
Matt forgot to pray that night, and woke shaking in the dim glow of streetlights shining through his bedroom window, terrified that his grandmother knew about his negligence and was telling God what a disappointment he was. He grabbed the rosary off his dresser and ran the cheap plastic beads through his fingers, hearing her voice -- tired, colorless, and somehow implacable -- explain the Sorrowful Mysteries, which she contemplated to the near exclusion of the others.
Matt thought about agony and scourging, about thorns and an exhausted path, about crucifixion and death.
He shoved the rosary under his pillow and did his best to pretend away the sour rush of guilt and the phantom glare of his grandmother's eyes.
In the morning, he poured the beads and cross into a sock that had lost its partner, and tucked the little package carefully away in his dresser, behind his underwear. His dad noticed its absence after a while, but he never asked. He never asked about Matt's occasional hesitation at six o'clock, either, or the way he'd mouth Latin soundlessly in place of English during liturgical responses on the rare occasions an attack of conscience made him drag his son to mass. He never asked about Matt's nightmares, just sat silently by his bed on nights when memory twisted against him and yanked him gasping from his sleep.
Sara Murdock's legacy existed in absence rather than presence, in fear of the devil rather than love of God.
(Matt still has that rosary tucked away in a dresser drawer. He keeps it separate from his dad's relics, but he's never been able to throw it out.)
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Inspired by the 4/5/15![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
15_minute_ficlets word #225: holy
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Well that was depressing. :-/
(I'm assuming the grandmother Matt refers to in episode one was his paternal grandmother, partly because her quoted line about the Murdock boys having the devil in them has the ring of an in-group insult rather than an out-group insult, but also because I think if she'd been his maternal grandmother, Matt would know more than he seems to about what on earth happened to cut his mother so completely out of his life.)
Contains some familial dysfunction, unhealthy expression of religion, and the off-screen death of a not-exactly-canon character. (800 words)
[ETA: The slightly revised and extended final version is now up on AO3!]
---------------------------------------------
Now and at the Hour of Our Death
---------------------------------------------
Before she died, Matt's grandmother used to look after him in the afternoons and evenings, while his dad worked a series of short-term jobs in construction, roadwork, moving: whoever paid the most and was willing to hire a man who cancelled on short notice whenever he could scrape together a boxing match. Sara Murdock had a tiny rent-controlled apartment two blocks north of Matt's own home, and Matt would walk to her place after school, to keep him off the streets and out of trouble.
She wasn't as strict about homework as Matt's dad, which was sort of nice even though it only meant he got stuck staying up late to finish everything once he actually got home. She'd let him watch television and listen to his excited descriptions of exactly why his favorite (and in retrospect, amazingly ridiculous) cartoons were the most awesome things ever.
But she was strict in other ways.
She taught Matt to pray the rosary -- "In Latin, as it should be; none of this newfangled English rite nonsense" -- and also the Angelus, which they recited in unison, bowing their heads in respect for the incarnation, precisely at six o'clock every day. Then she'd serve dinner, usually some variation on soup or baked beans, and walk him home to wait for his dad.
Matt tended to make sure he was in his bedroom when he heard his dad's footsteps in the hallway. It was bad enough overhearing his dad and grandmother argue; getting pulled into the fights was worse. He knew Jack Murdock was a disappointment to his mother. He knew she regretted her marriage, regarded her son and grandson as proof of her own weakness and sin. He knew the devil took a special interest in their family. He didn't need to see proof repeated every night.
She gave Matt a set of rosary beads for his seventh birthday -- "I should've done that a long time ago, but some people said you were too young for the weight. Hmph. As if ignoring God ever worked for anyone" -- and insisted he pray on his own, not just when she was there to remind him. Somehow she always knew if Matt lied.
He was never sure if the prayers did any good. It seemed to him that God had better things to do than listen to people mumbling gibberish day in and day out. But there was a certain comfort in the routine, and he liked the Joyful and Glorious Mysteries. They seemed out of place in Hell's Kitchen, and some of them went a little over his head, but love and hope were good things to remember. He wished his grandmother remembered them more often.
Sara Murdock died when Matt was eight, six months before his accident. Heart attack in her sleep, just never woke up. Matt found her body the next afternoon after school.
(He can still see her face, the unhappy slant of her mouth that even the slackness of death couldn't erase. It's one of his few childhood memories whose edges haven't blurred with time and the loss of any visual referents. He's not sure if he wishes it had softened and faded like almost everything else.)
Matt forgot to pray that night, and woke shaking in the dim glow of streetlights shining through his bedroom window, terrified that his grandmother knew about his negligence and was telling God what a disappointment he was. He grabbed the rosary off his dresser and ran the cheap plastic beads through his fingers, hearing her voice -- tired, colorless, and somehow implacable -- explain the Sorrowful Mysteries, which she contemplated to the near exclusion of the others.
Matt thought about agony and scourging, about thorns and an exhausted path, about crucifixion and death.
He shoved the rosary under his pillow and did his best to pretend away the sour rush of guilt and the phantom glare of his grandmother's eyes.
In the morning, he poured the beads and cross into a sock that had lost its partner, and tucked the little package carefully away in his dresser, behind his underwear. His dad noticed its absence after a while, but he never asked. He never asked about Matt's occasional hesitation at six o'clock, either, or the way he'd mouth Latin soundlessly in place of English during liturgical responses on the rare occasions an attack of conscience made him drag his son to mass. He never asked about Matt's nightmares, just sat silently by his bed on nights when memory twisted against him and yanked him gasping from his sleep.
Sara Murdock's legacy existed in absence rather than presence, in fear of the devil rather than love of God.
(Matt still has that rosary tucked away in a dresser drawer. He keeps it separate from his dad's relics, but he's never been able to throw it out.)
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 4/5/15
15_minute_ficlets word #225: holy---------------------------------------------
Well that was depressing. :-/
(I'm assuming the grandmother Matt refers to in episode one was his paternal grandmother, partly because her quoted line about the Murdock boys having the devil in them has the ring of an in-group insult rather than an out-group insult, but also because I think if she'd been his maternal grandmother, Matt would know more than he seems to about what on earth happened to cut his mother so completely out of his life.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-03 03:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-04 07:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-04 11:20 pm (UTC)and insisted he pray on his own, not just when she was there to remind me.
I don't have any personal acquaintance with any of the ingredients in this fic, but it feels real. Thanks for your stories. :)
- a long-time lurker
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-04 11:59 pm (UTC)