The War for Hell's Kitchen
Falling and Breaking
By: Brenli

This felt correct.

Yeah, this felt about how it should have. Stalking about in the dark and putting bullets in the scum of Hell's Kitchen. A relentless, driving force of reckoning.

"Multiple shots... I got no idea where they're coming from, no. And our outside perimeter's not gonna-"

Someone should've told that guy that speaking when there was a shooter around was a terrible idea; he might have lasted a few more seconds if he hadn't placed that call.

Michael stepped up to the still groaning man and finished him off clean, and was immediately on to the next step. He had to keep going. He couldn't stop. This was correct... even if it felt wrong. It was correct.

He didn't waste time because that just made him think of the poor Miss. He hoped she listened to him, hoped she went for protective custody. It was for her own good. It would keep the Blacksmith and Lucifer Fisk and even himself away from her... but just in case she didn't. Just in case... he had to move fast.

It didn't take long to find plenty of narcotics, neatly wrapped and tucked into a crate he had to use a crowbar to pry into. Looked an awful lot like heroin. So this was what his family died for? Heroin?

Disgusting.

Michael immediately began dumping the gasoline he'd been toting around all over the wrapped-up drugs, and from there began his trail all across the boat that the crate had been sitting in. He worked fast because it kept him distracted. It was correct. All the while keeping an eye out for any new scum to dispatch. He'd taken care of several but he needed more. He needed the violence, he needed the war to drown out the doe-eyed peace he didn't deserve.

Fuck.

"You still here, chickenshit?" Michael began growling like a wild animal, an uncaged lion. "It's just you and me, now!" Where was he? He had to have been somewhere near. The Blacksmith... The man who'd robbed him of his family and nearly robbed him of his brown-eyed-

Fuck!

The rage turned his words razor-sharp and jagged as a serrated knife. "You hiding? Huh? You afraid?" His great big can of gasoline ran out. No matter. He'd brought more, began dumping it all across the deck as he stomped in erratic directions. This was correct... This wild, unhinged madness. It was all he had, all he was allowed to have.

A bullet whizzed by him, and oh God... It was like waking up.

A rush hit him, he felt like he was alive. He immediately took up his rifle and shot back, several bullets hitting the cabin door. Cute, the guy thought the door was gonna save him. He moved in, walking past a table covered in bundles of the accursed stuff that had brought him so much grief. There were two doors next to each other at the corner of the room.

Door number one? Empty.

Door number two had the prize he was looking for, shooting at him the moment he pulled the door open."Looks like you're all out!" He spoke when he heard the tell-tale click of emptiness. "That's all you got, huh?"

The sorry scum set his gun down with a moody clank. "The cash. The shit. Just take it. Take it all!"

Michael stepped into the doorway with his rifle at the ready. "That what you think's gonna happen, huh?"

"Please..."

"You think you're gonna talk your way out of this shit?" Michael shot him square in the center of his chest, set his rifle aside in favor of his pistol. "I've been looking for you." He kicked him hard, the steel toe of his boot causing the sorry scum to groan. "You're the Blacksmith... Say it."

"God, I don't wanna die!"

Yeah, they never did. He shot him again, this time in his thigh, making him scream. "Say it. I want you to tell me. Say, 'I'm the Blacksmith.'" He pressed the barrel to the sorry scum's nose. "Say, 'I'm the Blacksmith. I killed your wife.' Say it! Say, 'I killed your baby girl!'"

"I did it! I did it!" The sorry scum was wide-eyed and stammering. "I'm the Blacksmith. I'm the one you want...! Just finish it, finish it!"

"That's what you want?" Michael growled before his voice dropped to a cruel whisper, sticking the barrel in the scum's quivering and gaping mouth. "Here it comes."

"Don't shoot him, Michael! Michael!"

What the f-? "Oh, for Christ's sake!" It had been a long time since he'd seen the guy, but he was no less sick of him. "Get outta here, Red!"

"He's lying, Michael." The Devil of Hell's Kitchen persisted, wondering how the Punisher couldn't piece it together, himself. Couldn't he see that the man was being entirely too compliant, too weak to be responsible for the kind of mess that caused the loss of his family? This was the price of warlike rage... "We're here for the same reasons, all right? I want the Blacksmith just as much as you, but he's not him."

But Michael didn't budge. Kept the barrel of his gun in the poor man's mouth. The fact that he paused at all was a miracle.

So Uriel latched onto that miracle, however small it was, in all the darkness swallowing up his city and himself. "I know when someone's telling the truth, Michael. He's not."

"Bullshit! Just get outta here!" He suddenly roared. How dare he...? How dare this piece of shit vigilante show up to rain morality on him? He needed this! Michael needed this, it was the correct thing, it was the only thing!

"He's not the man you came for, Michael!" Uriel kept on trying, nerves making him grab for the nearest possible weapon – a hammer, nothing fancy, and nothing he hoped to use.

"It's me, I swear...!" The poor man's mouth broke free of the gun barrel and sobbed.

Michael shifted, pressing the gun against the man's face, growling in cruelty, "Are you lying to me?" It took saying it out loud to truly consider it; even if it was helpful, he still fucking hated Daredevil for it. "Are you lying to me?"

"He's not the Blacksmith. Put the gun down." Uriel's voice smoothed itself out, and Michael despised it.

Despised that velvet fucking tone, that sounded somehow familiar, but he didn't have the means to consider why. Not now. Not with his gun pressed to a man's face, on a boat filled with narcotics, having shown up only moments after using two dead bodies to form a barrier between himself and – fuck. "Either way..." He aggressively dug his claws deep into this. He needed this...

"You kill him, we have nothing..."

"... you die."

Uriel didn't give him the chance to pull the trigger, sending the hammer flying at Michael's hand. He knocked the pistol free perfectly, in such a way that even the ricocheting hammer dodged the man. He'd already had to sit by while the Punisher killed a man before him; he wouldn't let it happen again...!

There was silence. Uriel could hear the heartbeats, the poor man's as flighty as a bird's and Michael's thumping hard as bullets. There was no way for him to stop Michael from kicking the man in the face; he was too far away.

"... You just couldn't let it be, could you?" No... of course the fucking altar boy of a vigilante couldn't. He had to show up in his stupid fucking red suit, acting like he had a halo on! He had to fucking ruin everything! Michael's aggression changed direction, made him stomp toward Daredevil. "You just couldn't let it!"

Uriel was ready for the impact, callused hands trying to go for his throat, but he grasped onto him and managed to just barely hold him back. "You kill him, we have nothing, Michael!" Why didn't that make sense to him?

But Michael was in no mood for talking. The best he could do was let out a fierce and almost painful kind of roar, monstrous, as he pushed Uriel out of the cabin, pushed him to the ground. Started punching him. "When are you gonna learn?" He bellowed. It felt like the flesh of his throat was splitting, he was so mad...! He got up and started kicking him, sending the steel toe of his shoe straight into the Devil's gut. "Mind your own God damn business!"

But it would take more than that to take Uriel down. God, after that poisoned arrow? Kicks to the gut were like mere tickles. After all that he'd lost, or let go? Michael's fiery aggression was nothing. "God damn it, Michael!" He scrambled to a stand. "We want the same thing!"

Right. Sure they did. And him having to chain him to a rooftop and tape a gun to his hand was just a prank. "That's bullshit... That's bullshit!" He charged at him, fists swinging. What he'd give to just beat this overgrown man to a pulp! What he'd give to just fucking fight...!

"I don't want to fight you...!" Uriel snapped in frustration, attempting to restrain him. "I don't want to fight you!"

"Yeah? You want me to take it easy?" Michael slammed his forehead into Daredevil's exposed, mocha-skinned chin and forced him back against the nearest crate. Hit him, repeatedly, letting out wild roars.

At last the Devil of Hell's Kitchen had enough, and punched him square in the middle of his bruised face... and Michael definitely had to hand it to him. As annoying as he was, he had a damn good hit on him. It rung his bell a bit, made him stumble backward and backward until he crashed against yet another crate. The one he'd opened. His hands slapped against neatly-wrapped bundles of heroin, the stuff that his family died for...

Disgust hit him. Disgust made the rage flare anew within him, and he didn't allow himself to think. Michael didn't want to think, anymore... He yelled, wordless, and lunged at him again.

This time Daredevil easily moved around him and kicked him, right in the center of his back, sending him careening into the side of the boat. "Stay down, Michael."

What was he, a wild dog? "I'm so sick of you...!" Michael flung himself forward again, thoughtless, aimless. Just... angry. Just violent.

It was Uriel's turn to headbutt him, to force him back, but it had been more like throwing the man. Tossing him against still more crates... and he didn't relish this. He wouldn't have in the first place, but something about this felt off. Didn't feel like prior fights with the Punisher. This was like going against a bull who'd been primed for the bullfight. Too wild. Too bewildered. Too restless. And even more blind than himself. He couldn't read minds, but something had changed. He didn't know what.

When he reached down to help Michael stand, he reacted with a harshness that only affirmed all the off-center feelings Uriel was sensing about this. Shoving off the hand on his arm. Growling, "Get off me!" Like the ginger-haired man had wounds to lick.

God... didn't they all have wounds, these days?

Michael panted. It felt like his throat was charred, like he was burning from within. "You just couldn't let me have it, could you...?" He paced. He was livid. He was... he was upset, he was... "You just couldn't let me have it." His knees buckled and sent him to the ground, his back against the dingy wall of the boat, and when he rested his hand on his forehead, he could feel it shaking. "One second in peace..." The word opened up a deep dive into... into something else, into fucking in a car, into a conjugal dream, into coffee with a single drop of creamer in it, and suddenly he was trying to build a bridge across the chasm with a slur of moody words. "It was right there; you had to sweep in; you feel good about yourself? Piece of shit...!"

"Oh, come on, Michael. It wouldn't have been the truth, and you know it." Uriel didn't give the man the luxury of rising to his words; all it really made him feel was pity. He wondered if he ever got this way in his interactions with Nema. Not violent, but mean. Maybe not, or else why would she be so keen on defending him, on trusting him? He struggled with the idea... Uriel himself was no good for her, no. But if so, how in the world could she think so highly of the Punisher? "I can't let you start a war for the wrong reasons-"

"Maybe a war is what I need." Saying it was... comfortable. It felt correct. It felt wrong, like something was missing, but it also felt correct. "... Maybe I need that." To destroy terrible people who did terrible things to wonderful people. To make sure no one lost the way he'd lost. "These people, they took my baby girl from me. They killed my kid! Don't you get that?"

Uriel knelt down as Michael bellowed out the painful words, and had to yell over them to be heard. "Then do right by her! Help me! Work with me to find the man who gave the order!"

"And then what, Red?" Michael scoffed. "We gonna... We gonna bring him in for justice?" His fist swung in a mocking motion, disgust poisoning his words. "That what we're gonna do? Your way's bullshit, Red! It doesn't work; I need him... I need him gone. It's gotta be permanent!"

"I-"

"It's gotta be finished!" Then it could never happen again.

"I understand! You're right...!" And it damn near crushed Uriel to say it out loud. He hated it. It made him feel like retching, but... he didn't need his eyes to see all the damage going on around him. How all of his attempts were like pushing on a razor-edged pendulum; the harder he shoved, the harder it came back, slicing all he protected to ribbons. "My way isn't working... So, maybe... just this once..." His breath came heavy; he couldn't believe he was about to say this, about to set himself down a path that made his skin crawl. Uriel had to cross himself before he could continue, and saw many, many Hail Mary's in his future. "Maybe... yeah, your way is what it's gonna take." It was Uriel's turn to feel a chasm open up before him, but unlike Michael, he allowed himself to feel the empty dark of it. Murdering for what was right, God... he wasn't too afraid to admit to himself that he wished he had a hand to hold through the idea. A slim one with smooth calluses, with tapered, deft fingers. Her hand. Zephyr's hand.

But he'd already let her go.

Uriel could hear the erratic, frenzied heartbeat of Michael's slow to an even pace, but it felt foreboding. Sure enough, when he spoke, it was to make the chasm in Uriel's mind that much wider, that much deeper.

"Red, just this once? No." Michael shook his bruised head. It was clear that for all his vigilante games, he'd managed to stay clear of the blood work. That he was not warrior enough right now, more like a bureaucrat, like a jury, a judge, a prosecutor. "No no no no no, Red. That's... that's not how it works. It's just..." The sneer of a bitter smile left him, leaving only the rumbling finality of his voice. "You cross over to my side of the line... you don't get to come back from that." No matter what glimmers of pale gold sunlight appeared, offering him peace. "Not ever."

The sound of tires screeching pulled the attention of both men, shifting to try and get a sense of what it was.

"I count ten. Armed." Uriel murmured.

… How the fuck did he even do that? Michael had no clue.

"There's a lot of gunpowder below decks," Uriel continued, as Michael saw the shine of headlights. Several cars, pulling up... the sorry scum in the cabin must have phoned them in. "Any of these guys starts shooting, this whole ship-"

"It'll blow straight to Hell." Michael finished for him.

"We gotta get off this boat before they open fire." Already Uriel was moving, looking for the best way to sneak off.

"You're God damn right, you do." He moved quick, too quick for the Devil of Hell's Kitchen to react, shoving him right off the edge of the boat and into icy cold water.

But he wasn't gonna be responsible for the possible death of Daredevil.

Michael took a deep breath and stood. "One batch..." He thought of his wife, bleeding on the grass behind him. "Two batch..." He thought of his baby girl, faceless. "Penny and dime." He thought of Miss Nema Page, and how she'd almost... she'd almost... "Here I come." He steeled himself for the worst, should it happen. "Here I come..."

"Been a long time, hasn't it, Michael?" One of the Blacksmith's men called out with a sneer, "Kill him!"

They opened fire, all of them, bullets spraying toward the boat on which he stood. He dodged them, but all the diving and running in the world wouldn't keep the gunpowder from lighting, from bursting in a terrible, blinding-bright display of fire.

Uriel spluttered to the surface as the boat burst into flames, scrambling up to the pier. Groaned, trying to process what had happened... His had been the only body to hit the water. Where was Michael? Was he still on the boat...? "No..." He could feel the heat of the flames wafting toward him in horrible waves. Why would Michael stay on the boat? That didn't make any sense! He'd been itching for justice, gone mad with the need to take down those who'd robbed him of his family. How could he get what he wanted if he was dead...?

He crouched down behind big metal drums as he heard the wail of police sirens and continued wracking his brain. Michael had to have escaped as well, right? But then why hadn't he simply jumped overboard behind him?

"Oh my God..." Uriel heard Nidhegg Mahoney sigh in dismay.

"Nidhegg?"

What...?

"Be careful, Nema!"

What was Nema doing here? Uriel felt his mind scramble. She shouldn't be here...!

"Cover these bodies." Mahoney instructed other policemen before speaking to Nema again. "Castle said he was coming here? You sure?"

Uriel heard the tacking sound of her heels, the whisper of heat and wind through her hair, ruffling her pea coat. She was hurrying, stopping, hurrying, stopping. Breathing hitched as she no doubt was looking at each body that littered the dock. As if looking for someone.

Looking for Michael, definitely. Why did Michael tell her where he was going? Maybe she'd pried the answer from him, or maybe he simply trusted her? She certainly seemed to trust him, if their last argument indicated anything. Trusted him more than she trusted Uriel... He felt like he was missing pieces, here... but he knew Nema wasn't apt to share them with him. Not anymore.

"Fifteenth Squad Sergeant to Central. Pier 81 and four-one street." Nidhegg spoke into his two-way radio. "I need FD and ambulances forthwith, and notify Harbor to respond. And Narcotics; this could be the largest heroin seizure in years...!"

"Michael..." Uriel could hear the whimper in Nema's voice... tear-stained. Torn up. Not what he anticipated from her, regarding the Punisher... "Why...?"

Her heartbeat was rapid. Panicky. So fast it almost sounded like it might break apart, or like it was already broken and was left with a heartbeat that seemed painful to bear.

Another explosion sent fire into the sky, and she was weeping. Not openly, but as he hung his head, he heard the sniffing inhale and the shuddering exhale.

She was weeping, and trying hard to keep it to herself.