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: Frank goes looking for Red and finds the Devil instead.
Season 3 speculation.
Author's Notes: I promised myself after finishing It Takes a Village that I would take a serious break from writing Frank & Matt h/c. Village covered so much ground, and I didn't want to repeat myself. I wanted to write something different.
Then Marvel dropped the teasers for Daredevil season 3, along with a whole bunch of terrifying info about how Matt starts the season, and I couldn't get back to writing Frank fast enough. What I initially worried would be too similar ended up being very different. This isn't any Matt I've ever written before. And yet it also feels very much like Matt? Does that make sense?
Readers, dear Readers, it's good to be back, even though I've returned to a very different world. Please, enjoy!
The Last of the Real Ones
-One-
He knows Red ain't dead: they didn't find a body, and hell if they think a falling building could do what the rest of the fucking city couldn't. Closest that kid has ever come to dying is the bullet Frank put between his eyes the night they met, and a fat load of good that round did.
No surprise, then, when the man in black starts showing up in stories from the Emergency Room. When The Bulletin dedicates a front page to people's shitty cell phone photos of a shadow vaguely shaped liked a man slinking around alleyways and away from streetlamps. Frank doesn't bother with any of it. Devil's gonna do what the Devil's gonna do, and while it's shitty for Karen, who knows Murdock is out there but hasn't heard from him, no good's gonna come from chasing down a man who don't want to be found. Can't help those who don't wanna help themselves. 'sides, it looks like Red needs more help than any one person can provide.
It's when the shooter shows up that shit changes. Hell of a shot, this new guy. Takes out targets with a skill that Frank's not used to seeing from anyone but himself. He tracks the guy, counts the kills, makes notes. Ends up finding a spatter of blood that don't make sense. No corpse to match, and this guy doesn't let people live. Gotta be quick to dodge a round from his gun. Dumb enough not to wear a helmet, too: only a head shot bleeds that much.
Quick and dumb? Sounds like Red. Frank waits for the streets to go quiet for confirmation, but the Devil's spotted again that night, and the night after, and the night after that. And with each spotting, it's becoming more and more amateur hour. Frank puts a bullet in one guy who swears he sank a knife into the Devil's side; he beats down another guy who does an impersonation of the Devil staggering dumbly during a recent fight.
He stops tracking the mystery sniper; he'll deal with that asshole later. Frank starts putting the pieces together on the Devil's location. He calls in a favour from Micro, but the Devil's gone off-grid. He lives in blood spatter and word on the street and leaves pieces of himself all over town.
Frank eventually finds him in a fight that ends worse than it should. Devil gets a gun to the head, and he holds that position too long, long enough that Frank almost blows his cover to intervene. The gunman ends up with a broken hand and a fractured skull, and as he follows the Devil from the fight, Frank is finds the fucker still has a pulse for him to steal.
The Devil weaves a clumsy path to – Jesus fucking Christ – an abandoned, derelict church. Fuck, Red. Actually: "Fuck me." Frank really ought to have seen this one coming.
Red comes and goes via the roof. Frank slips through the chain-link fence and makes quick work of the padlock and chains on the back door. He enters to two sets of steps. Devil lives downstairs, but as if the metaphor isn't obvious enough, there's blood leading that way. Smears on the wall from where Red needed to guide himself. Footprints descending dazedly, sloppily. Frank tracks them with his gaze knowing better than to follow them without checking for traps.
There aren't any. No trip-lines or alarms. Frank puts a foot on the first step. A long, loud creak echoes through the recesses of the church.
Fuck.
No point in being stealthy now. Frank thunders down the steps into a storeroom. He busts open the obvious fake wall on the far side to reveal a darkened stone chamber. Moonlight streams through the window to barely reveal black patches of blood on the floor and walls. A mattress made out of old coats. A punching bag, snarls of gore-clotted rope, a rosary.
Frank yanks the string under the bare bulb dangling in the centre of the room. The light sways, bouncing from wall to wall. Light to dark, dark to light. Everything has to be a fucking symbol for the kid, don't it?
Red's vanished into thin air, it seems, but he haunts the room, creeping over the back of Frank's neck, setting his hair on end, shooting goosebumps up and down his arms. There's nowhere to go except into the stonework. Room's got no rafters, no furniture, nowhere to hide. Got darkness as his ally, and a hole for him to crawl through, and Frank backtracks. He heads back for the storeroom.
The fight is waiting for him. Frank takes a hard knock to the face and ends up back in the Devil's hovel. Light swings away from the doorway, letting the Devil into the room sight unseen. There's the dull thwack of a weapon loosed on the air. The bulb shatters. Frank is plunged into darkness.
He kicks himself upright, just in time for the first volley of punches. They're bare-knuckle boxing each other, and Red's faster, meaner, dirtier. Clawed out of his fucking grave and will claw his way straight through Frank if he has to. Frank has no choice but to go hard. Red makes like a killer with all his head shots and gut punches, his non-stop barrage of hits.
Frank's eyes readjust to the moonlight, revealing the blood draining out of Red's nose, over his lips. Looks like a fucking vampire, but he's feeding on himself. He doesn't block even one of Frank's punches; shit, he opens himself up, gives himself straight over to the blows, to the impact.
"Red." The name doesn't register.
Frank tries again: "Red, it's me."
The Devil lays into him harder than before
Frank tackles him. Sends him straight into the wall. Shit, maybe the kid doesn't recognize him. Maybe that building knocked more out of him than his willingness to wear body armour. "Fuck, Red – it's me." Frank grapples with him, trying to get him in a lock; Red stubbornly refuses to be tied down. He thrashes wildly, recklessly, tossing his head into the wall as he does.
He springs out of Frank's grasp, staggering. He turns back to the fight; Frank kicks him down. Red isn't on the floor for long. He jumps back up, whipping away. He makes a sound, something like a growl, the weight shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. Then he turns some more, away from Frank, and he stays that way long enough for his breath to start coming in short bursts.
Frank rises. He scrapes a boot along the floor. Red catches the movement, but he can't seem to track it. He twists his black-clad head around until his face is visible just over his shoulder. Until Frank can see his breath catching on his bloody lips, till he can see the fear written in the lower half of his face.
Frank gets a good look at the smirk as it makes a triumphant return. Red lets out a yell, heaving his fist up overhead. He comes back with a vengeance. Grunting and growling and roaring. That blow to the head knocked the last bit of Red out of him so that only the devil remains.
They tumble across the floor, Frank trying to pin the kid down. The Devil refuses. He rolls, flips back, puts himself right in Frank's grasp only to slip right out again. He appears behind Frank, knocking Frank's legs out from under him, and Frank falls neck-first into one of those bloody lengths of rope the Devil grabbed from the floor.
"RED." It's the last one word Frank says before the rope closes down on his throat. He chokes, his next breath catching. He thrashes wildly, trying to get back on his feet. He's yanked back onto his heels, the Devil hanging him with his own two hands. The moonlight flickers, blackening around the edges, the darkness closing on him.
The Devil's bloody breath sweeps across Frank's ear. His words cold clock Frank's ear drum. "You really shouldn't have come here, Frank."
Frank lets out a soundless roar and reaches, gripping the Devil by the back of the neck. The Devil responds by yanking the rope through Frank's windpipe into his brainstem. Then he twists, hard, swinging Frank's head straight into the wall.
Happy reading!