Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: The envelope is delivered straight to Matt's old apartment. Left on the floor outside the door. "TO THE 3 STOOGES," it says in an angry scrawl across the front.
"Does it say who it's from?" Luke asks, immediately worried about a threat.
Danny shrugs. "F.C.?"
Post-Defenders.
Author's Notes: I wasn't sure where to post this on the site. Matt doesn't make an appearance, but it borrows much more strongly from Daredevil than the other Defenders shows. Also, this was where I posted my last Defenders fic.
I don't know about anybody else, but I needed a little laughter after finishing the series last Friday. This started as a Skype conversation with the lovely Dichotomy Studios (on AO3) and became the monster you see before you. I hope you enjoy.
The Devil's Advocate
The envelope is delivered straight to Matt's old apartment. Left on the floor outside the door. "TO THE 3 STOOGES," it says in an angry scrawl across the front. Jessica carries it inside, because she's the only one wearing gloves. Luke calmly states that they report it to the police and is halfway to calling Misty when Danny rips it open and starts into it.
Inside is a notebook, about a hundred pages. Edges frayed from wear. A stained ring from a coffee mug on the front cover next to a title written in thick black Sharpie, "RE: THE DEVIL OF HELL'S KITCHEN." Danny flips through the contents, all of them handwritten. The occasional diagram halts his progress, but he continues examining the pages.
"It's about Matt," he says, "All about Matt. His armour, his fighting style, his motivations…" He flips back to the first page. The inside of the cover bears an introductory note.
"Does it say who it's from?" Luke asks, immediately worried about a threat.
Danny shrugs. "F.C.?"
Jessica tears the notebook away from him and rips open the front cover. She points at the initials at the bottom of the note, thinks for a second, and then states, "It's Frank Castle. You remember. The Punisher guy."
"The one who took out the Irish?" Luke asks.
"And the Dogs of Hell. And a bunch of other guys."
"What's he have to say?"
Jessica sighs. God damn, she has to do fucking everything. "To the 3 Stooges of Hell's Kitchen," the sarcasm in her voice is as much her own as this guy's, "I leave this as a reminder that your recent actions at Midland Circle are a fitting disgrace in a disgraceful city. Because of your inaction, your apathy and stupidity, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen – oh, Jesus." She slams the notebook shut and is about to rip it in half when Luke calmly takes the book away from her. "He says it's our fault Matt died. Like we were the ones who made him stay in the building."
Luke sighs. He parses through Castle's scrawl. "Because of your inaction, your apathy and stupidity, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen was left to die under an imploding building while you and your allies fled to safety.
"This kind of –" Luke edits out the curse word, "-stuff cannot and will not stand. You want to fight with the devil, you better make sure you know how to do that. You don't enable or encourage him to do stupid-" again with the cursing, "-stuff."
Danny is livid. Frank Castle may as well be in the room from how worked up he's getting. "Matt knew what he was doing. He said as much when he asked me to protect the city. He knew the building was coming down and didn't come with us."
"What the hell we were supposed to do?" Jessica demands.
Luke sighs. "Evidently more than we did. Castle's note goes on."
Jessica snarls. "What the hell else could he possibly have to say? Matt's dead."
"The following must be made clear," Luke continues reading from the note, "Number one: the Devil is not dead."
"Oh, Jesus…"
"Your failing to produce a body is proof enough."
"We didn't fail to produce a body! A building fell on him!"
Luke's heart is too heavy to muster a laugh, but it's a little funny how well Castle's note anticipates Jessica's remarks: "Don't blame the building; it's your ineptitude that's cause for his disappearance. Your ineptitude that left him under that building instead of hauling him to safety -"
"Says a guy who wasn't there," Danny snaps.
They really need to stop. Luke winces. "-which is what anyone remotely acquainted with the devil would have done had they been there."
"Jesus," Jessica rolls her eyes.
Luke makes a mental note for her to add to the swear jar later. They've come too far into this damn note not to see it through. "Number two: given your and the devil's propensity to make stupid decisions, you can expect him to rejoin your pathetic little gang of schoolyard bullies eventually." Cue Danny retorting that they are not schoolyard bullies and his quiet, indignant utterance of, "I am the immortal Iron Fist." Luke ignores him; they will be here all night if they keep taking breaks. He gets back to Frank's note: "When he does, he can be expected to do more stupid things, given that two of your number refuse to set a better example."
Danny stops his pacing and muttering. "Which two?"
Jessica scoffs. "Oh, it's definitely me and you."
Luke refuses to weigh in, and he keeps reading before Danny can argue about it. "Number three, when the devil finally does get himself killed, you will be held responsible."
"He's threatening us?" Danny asks, incredulous from disbelief.
"It would appear that way," Luke agrees.
"For Matt being an idiot." Jessica groans. They're all going to die. "I need a drink."
Luke can't get through the last paragraph fast enough: "Being that you're at a serious disadvantage as evidenced by your recent failure to defend the devil, I've enclosed information to assist in detaining, restraining, redirecting, and otherwise preventing him from getting himself – and by extension, the rest of you – killed. You'll notice the information is in no particular order; frankly, I have done too much by even writing this note, let alone organizing the information therein.
"Know this: I'm watching you, Stooges. I'm disappointed. Don't make me come for you. F.C."
Danny reels. He paces across the apartment, angry. At the appearance of this notebook, at its implications, at getting called out. Luke drowns him out by flipping through the book. The notes are detailed, and they paint a shockingly accurate portrait of Matt from his armour to his methods.
"What is this Punisher's interest in Matt anyways?" Danny demands. "You say he killed multiple gangs in the city."
"More like obliterated multiple gangs," Jessica intones. She slams the fridge shut again. No beer. No alcohol of any kind. Of course not.
Danny doesn't let up: "So what's the point of this? Why would a man like him be making threats over someone like Matt?"
"Someone who knows Matt really well," Luke notes.
Jessica comes to look over his shoulder. She runs a hand over the page of highly detailed illustrations depicting various knots. "Someone who wants to tie Matt up really well." She flips through the next few pages, each filled with similar diagrams. "Really, really well."
"There's a list of tranquilizers and sedatives here."
Jessica retracts her hand at that. Done, so done. "God, what is this?"
Luke laughs. "Hell if I know. It's basically a How-To Manual for incapacitating Matt. Castle goes off here for about a page and a half about how the devil is essentially a very large, semi-competent four-year-old."
"He's not wrong."
"I think that's the scariest part." Before he can stop himself, Luke begins reading aloud from one of the first pages in what sounds, to him, like a Frank Castle tone of voice. "DO NOT listen to the devil's stupid ideas. DO NOT engage the devil in argument. I repeat, DO NOT engage. You'll end up arguing with yourself for forty minutes." A scoff. Luke goes off-book for commentary. "Written like someone who's had the pleasure."
"Lawyers," Jessica snarks. There's a thin vein of nostalgia in her voice that shakes the whole room.
Luke can't help but sigh. He reads some more, but in his own voice this time, slow and patient and remembering. "Avoid conversation of any kind with the devil. The second he makes his –"
"Dumbass," Jessica supplies, knowing Luke won't read the word.
"That's another dollar for the jar," he informs her.
"We're not using a swear jar," she informs him.
Luke hums. Uh huh – you say that now. He continues reading, "The second he makes his –" he skips the word 'dumbass' but Jessica reads it anyways, "-intentions known, refer immediately to one or several of the detention methods described herein. For instance, when the devil states, 'I wish to stay behind while a building is demolished on top of me,' DO NOT clap him on the back. DO NOT praise him for coming up with a stupid idea. DO NOT give him the slightest impression that you approve of the idea, even if, in your own stupidity, you do. DO manhandle, incapacitate, and detain him by whatever means necessary in order to escort him out of the building."
Danny bellows, "Had I known that's what he was planning, I would have dragged him out!"
"We all would have," Luke reminds him.
Silence descends. They notice, finally, that ever since this notebook's arrival, the air has been creeping out of the room. The temperature seems to have dropped. That there are fewer and fewer things to say. Amidst all the Punisher's psychotic ramblings, his hard lines drawn between smart and them, right and them, good and them cut too close to the guilt their feeling not to weigh personally. Alive or dead, the devil's gone, and Matt's absence is palpable in spite the limited time they've spent together. And they should have done more, and they all take it personally, and they all hold it inside: their shame about having power and failing to save a friend; the things they would and wouldn't do given a chance to do it all over.
And Jessica says, once more with feeling, "I need a drink." She needs to loose the itch in her shoulders, the one that screams it could carry Murdock's weight along with his psycho ex's out of the hole in the ground.
Luke closes the notebook. He's survived collapsed buildings before, crawled his way out of the rubble thanks to his impenetrable skin. If he'd stayed with Murdock, they could crawl out together, him in the lead while the vulnerable devil followed close behind. "Yeah, me too."
Danny barely hears them over the thought of being the Immortal Iron Fist, of it being his responsibility to protect the meek and innocent. It's his destiny to engage the Hand and their weapons, and at the greatest test of his honour and abilities, he fled. He fled just like he fled K'un L'un, and there's another corpse in his dreams. A man in red body armour tangled in urban detritus.
"There's a bar on the corner," Danny forces himself to say. "Josie's." He doesn't drink, but he'll go.
"I refuse to pay for myself," Jessica insists. Not tonight. Not ever, but especially not tonight.
It's not worth saying: they all know Danny will pay. Either for the booze or for the place's rent. Meanwhile, he's busy with other thoughts. "Do you guys really think that Matt's really alive?"
"Not as much as Frank Castle."
"Nobody believes anything as much as Frank Castle," Luke notes. He tucks the notebook under his arm as they leave the apartment.
Danny brushes a hand over his shoulder. "You're keeping that?"
"You got a better idea?"
"Burn it." Jessica gives them both a look, expecting collusion. She finds a little from Danny.
"It's the ravings of a lunatic about how to hurt a friend," Danny reminds the room.
"It's the ravings of a lunatic who wants to protect a friend." Luke shrugs. "I'd say that says more about the raving lunatic than the friend he wants to protect."
"That he's a raving lunatic?" Jessica suggests.
Luke dismisses her. "He's meticulous. He's attentive."
"He's obsessive."
"Actually," Luke holds up the notebook as proof, "there's a line in here about that. Apparently, it's the devil who's obsessed with him."
"Uh huh. Matt's got notebooks full of Punisher doodles just waiting to send out as death threats." Right.
"If this guy wants to come after us, I want to know who he is." Luke hooks the notebook under his arm. "Make sure I can get to him before he gets to me."
"If Matt is still alive –"
Jessica cuts Danny off: "Don't say that. Don't ever say that. Ever."
"We didn't find a body."
"Because there isn't a body to find," she declares. "Because he isn't like you or like me or like Luke. When a building falls, he gets crushed."
Luke doesn't give them time to dwell, but he can feel, in the scant milliseconds before he responds, that they're all already dwelling. That Castle's notebook articulated something that was there, something none of them want to admit. And, at the very least, he got them talking. "You think that's why this Punisher guy likes Matt so much?"
Jessica sighs. "God damn it, we all know this is crazy. And don't say it's not any crazier than a guy with bulletproof skin or a girl with super strength or whatever the hell Danny is."
"Classy," Danny sasses her.
"Frank Castle is clearly on another level," Luke gives her that much, "But he doesn't seem like the type to waste his time on false hope."
"I'm not that type either," Jessica growls.
"So don't write a book on the subject." A sigh. "Like this guy did. Sweet Christmas…"
Happy reading!