knight!Matt Murdock who, after coming home jaded from war, had his eyes gouged out from a crossroads deal gone wrong. see:
To endure pain was one thing, but enduring loss was another. Helpless, he knew himself to be, and in his inability to stomach being powerless, he did as desperate men have always done.Β He knelt at a crossroads at midnight, and upon the thinned veil, he called out for his God to listen. Sweating wretched beads of blood, he prayed,Β Bless me, O Lord, with the power to protect, and endow upon me the strength that I lack, so that what the wicked dreads will come upon him, and the desire of the righteous will be granted.Β
Winds howled and stilled, giving way to rustlings in the hedgerows.Β
Very well, the voice in the bush said. I will make you more than a man.
Upon its response he had become a touch frightened; he fell lower to the ground and prayed fervently. Blessed be you, my Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle, he extolled. Are you my God? he asked wondrously. Or are you an Angel?
It only laughed.
Finely tongued and disembodied, the voice humoured him, and offered him divine-limbed vigour. It took him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the glory of a life to be lived deliciously, with senses of the hawk, ears of the wolf, a nose of the hound, reflexes of the serpent. Only one thing did it want in return, and all the better for it, it said sweetly. It would only take the one thing that caused him such pain in his dreams at night. That made him weak.Β
A trade more than fair, was it not? That he might never again be accosted by those visions, those memories of the horrors of war?Β
It would take only his eyes for a world seen more truly.