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 dust is still settling from Midland Circle when Frank returns to the city.
Sequel to It Takes a Village. Season 3 AU.
Author's Notes: I wasn't planning on this. I had ideas. A file titled "Every Time Frank Could Have Shown Up In Season 3." Conversations with friends. But I wasn't going to put this into words until Tumblr decided to show me a mash-up of gifs depicting Frank saving Matt.
And then it just sort of…clicked. Well, no, it didn't. There were two versions of this story in the works for a while before dear friends helped clarify which version was going to get posted. I spent an additional forty-eight hours agonizing over my decision. But ultimately, posting this felt like the right thing to do.
And then, 17 chapters later, someone asked why this wasn't posted on ff dot net, and I remembered that I had an account there too.
FF dot net Readers, my apologies: I got into the habit of posting elsewhere due to the content of my fics, and I completely blanked on sharing this here. Good news is that there are 17 chapters of this fic! And they will be making their way onto this site slowly but surely as I edit them! Bad news is that eventually it will be a WIP again, so there may be delays between updates. I appreciate your patience in advance.
If you haven't read It Takes a Village, here are the major plot points:
- Matt breaks his leg saving Frank from a collapsing ceiling. Frank repays him by taking him home and nursing him back to health.
- Matt and Frank fight during this time. A lot. But then they gain a respect (and deep, irrevocable affection) for each other.
- Elektra shows up. She works for the Hand. She and Frank fight over Matt.
- Fight scenes.
- Elektra breaks from the Hand and leaves to kill their remaining members in part to save Matt from being arrested.
- Frank lets himself be arrested at the end to save Matt from also being arrested.
- Matt rebuilds his friendships with Karen and Foggy, particularly Foggy.
There is more, but I feel like that's a good primer for the uninitiated. And if all you're looking for is shameless Matt-whump, well, have no fear! Because you'll definitely find that.
One last note: in the show, Matt requests Clinton Church, but I called the church St. Matthew's in Village, so it's called St. Matthew's here for continuity.
Enjoy.
For Forever
Prologue
The news reaches Frank: Midland Circle collapsed, ninjas suspected, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen presumed dead. "Haven't found a body," CO Booth whispers through the bars, "But they're pretty sure he isn't walking out from under a collapsed building."
Frank's not, but he keeps that to himself. Matter of time, he tells himself. Like everything about Red, it was only a matter of time. And knowing Red, it's only a matter of time before he shows back up. Doesn't stop Frank's head from getting quiet though. He listens to Booth's footsteps retreat down the hall, then he closes himself off to everything in the cell block, thoughts fixing on what he's going to do when the doors open.
Cell block opens. COs eye him, but Frank's been good these past couple months. Made deaths look accidental. Avoided fights where guards can see. Played the upstanding inmate so well they don't mobilize when he joins Wilson Fisk in the weight room. There are a few inmates hovering, obviously loyal. Frank plays it cool. He feigns heading to a bench, even has one guy come up prepared to spot, then in one swift movement, Frank weaves back, grabs a weight, and smashes it into Fisk's knee. The Fat Man goes down. Frank swings again, cracking Fisk's hip, shoulder, and chest before a combination of inmates and COs put him on the ground.
He comes to in the infirmary. He counts a couple of busted ribs, two broken fingers, and a sprained wrist through concussion fog. CO Booth is at the door; CO Watson flanks him, panties in a bunch because he wants Frank in the hole ASAP. Doc mutters something about how they probably should've posted extra guards around the one guy in gen pop they know for sure Frank wants to kill.
Watson makes some other asshole comment that Frank ignores. He's busy blinking the gray out of his vision, trying to confirm Fisk's location. Couple of COs are hovering in his periphery. Medics circle a bed, the hulking body of the Kingpin just visible within their cluster. Blood and bruises stand out amidst the white coats.
"He's not going anywhere," Doc says. He holds up Frank's injured hand, pressing a tablet into Frank's palm as he works, a tablet he bandages into place while tending to Frank's wrist.
"Thanks, Doc," Frank mutters.
Watson arranges another beating for Frank when he gets to the hole, enough for him to spend the first hour in solitary on the floor, dazed, soaking in a pool of his own blood. He gives his head time to clear, lets the darkness sharpen before his eyes. He's beaten and bloody and concussed, but his thinking is the clearest it's been in months. The path is so clear, so perfectly clear.
He reaches his injured hand to his mouth, scraping under the bandage with his tongue. He swallows the pill left by the Doc with a chaser of blood from his busted lips and nose.
Doc doesn't like him, but the Doc doesn't like Fisk more. They've had a deal in place since Frank arrived, a ready-made escape route that starts with the breaking of Wilson Fisk and ends with the death of Frank Castle.
He tries to prepare himself, but nothing prepares him for the shock of paralysis. The cold rush through his blood. The last remaining heartbeats before his brain goes as dark as his cell.
Frank wakes up in the body bag mid-transport. Lies still till they stop, lets himself be unloaded, but the second the doors slam behind them, he busts out of the bag. He takes out the two orderlies rolling him to the oven, treats the other employees to sleeper holds, and only when he's rendered everyone unconscious does the full weight of what he's done hit him. His muscles give out. He drops to his knees. His blood gets sluggish and oozy in his veins, tugging like a blanket through his skull. Adrenaline doesn't do shit except push him toward cardiac arrest. Doc said he needed to take it easy, but Frank doesn't have time to take it easy. He's got minutes before the guys on the floor start waking up. A few minutes after that before they get every cop down here, throw his ass straight back in solitary. The Devil and him both underground.
He gets to his feet, and his next few steps nearly put him back on the floor, but he manages to get himself to the breakroom. Bunch of lockers on the back wall: Frank busts into them, grabs himself some clean clothes and a set of car keys, then he strips, staggers, and redresses so that by the time he's out the back, he's looking halfway respectable. Certainly well enough that no one's going to stop him on the drive through the city.
Hell's Kitchen can't come fast enough. Frank pulls over, parks illegally. Ditches the keys in the passenger seat, and hops the hell out, double-timing it down the alley. He orients himself – no easy feat. Shit, his head's spinning. His hands are shaking. His heart's bashing against his rib cage. Takes everything Frank has left to get his ass off the street. Once he does find some place to hide, he drops into a corner and lets his eyes shut, the details of the plan coming together even as the grasp on his senses falls away.
He doesn't dream. Head's a dark place, oddly silent. Got his crosshairs fixed and nothing gets in the way. When he wakes, Frank tends to his injuries out of necessity. He steals some better clothes and takes a walk.
Air's thick around the site; Frank's sinuses burn. He tries to catch a glimpse of the sorry excuse for rescue teams that ain't gonna find a damn thing but eventually gives up. He heads to the library, temples pounding, sinuses on fire. The archives let him crash-course city planning. Sewers run through every fucking inch of the city. Underground tunnels that'll be flushing shit out of the system. Frank grabs a cup of coffee on the way to the Hudson where he spends the afternoon checking sewage, waiting for the devil to show up.
The sight of the empty beach disappoints him. No search crews, no Red, no nothing. Frank walks around well into nighttime, scanning his flashlight over the rocks and the litter, watching animals churn and shift past the light. Waiting for Red to show up the way Red always does: out of nowhere with some bullshit quip, trouble nipping at his heels.
God damn it, where is he? They're almost on day three with no sign of the Devil, and there's no way the kid is going to pass up the chance to be a Christ metaphor.
Pain lances through Frank's head so suddenly his knees almost give out. He reaches for his face and knocks his busted nose and fuck, why's he doing this? Why is he fucking doing this? Busting out of prison and wandering around in the dark. Not bothering with reason or rationale even though it's stupid as hell, pulling through debris and sniffing sewer water and scouring garbage. Devil's dead. Or he's not dead: he's pulled himself out already and plunked himself on a nearby rooftop to get a good view of the show Frank's making in his honour. Little shit.
Frank stops, drops to his haunches, counts to ten. The pain in his head gives way to pain in his chest. His blood still running like sludge. His heart's working overtime. Stomach's a mess, too. One more pass, he decides. One more and then he'll call it a night, come back in the morning with fresh eyes.
Water rushes through the drainpipes ahead of him. Debris scatters on the beach. Frank listens to the slick, wet slap of runoff against the sand. He trails his flashlight along, one pipe after another, almost missing the sudden flash of red in the beam.
He reaches for the sidearm he doesn't have even as his feet carry him forward, his body knowing faster than his brain what he's going to find. Past the next drain, Red's dragging himself across the sand, the only sounds he's making a series of weak groans.
Frank shuts off his flashlight. He rushes forward, taking the kid by the shoulders. Rolling Red's a bad idea: he's not moving properly, the kid. Legs are stiff and arms are folded up to his chest. Need to check him over before picking him up.
Red's not much of a conversationalist. He drops back into the sand, his eyes still open, his jaw unhinged, the glazed look of a corpse written over his face. His skin's blue under the moonlight, mottled with blood and bruising. Frank cups a hand in front of his mouth, relieved to feel a breath against the backs of his fingers. He gives Red a quick pat-down, committing the swelling in the lower back and hip to memory. Then Frank grabs Red by the shoulder and goes to lift him.
The kid snaps awake in his hands. "Red," Frank says, waiting for a reaction that never comes. Red's moving but not stirring. Just hangs there in Frank's hands, every inch of him sinking into the ground.
Frank holds tight. "Stay with me, Red. Come on." He adjusts his grip, lifting Red up, putting him on his knees in the sand and hoping that doesn't strain the back injury too much. Still, Red does nothing. He weathers the movement like a puppet on Frank's strings, his eyes fixed skyward. Mouth agape.
Claps to the face do nothing; Frank's playing with a corpse. "No, no, not yet, Red, you hear me? Not your time yet. Not yet."
The kid blinks in response. Best he can do, it seems, under the circumstances. Moves not a muscle aside for that. Frank's hushed litany earns that slow drop of Red's eyelids, then he's back to staring in the empty shell of the Devil's mutilated body. Only thing left of the kid is his body, and he doesn't seem to be even aware of that.
His chapped lips twitch. Frank leans closer, his heart in his throat from the thought this might be it. Red's about to draw his last breath. Instead, what Frank hears is, "Sain-" The kid sinks out of himself for a second, and Frank's heart skips a beat, but then he's back again, "Saint Matthew's. Father Lantom."
Red's eyes shut after that. Job done.
Frank doesn't waste any more time. He wrestles the Devil over one shoulder, ignoring the protests from his own chest for how Red doesn't make a sound: not a moan or a groan or a sigh, nothing. He flops lifelessly against Frank's back on the way off the beach. He drops into he backseat of the car Frank busts into, dead weight, nothing but an empty shell of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.
Frank gets into the driver's seat. He hotwires the car and has it in drive before his brain catches up to him, asks what the hell is going on. Jesus, he doesn't know. The noise is back inside his skull – gunfire and explosions and buildings coming down. Invasion of New York level shit. Red's barely breathing back there. Should be in a hospital. Could be in the morgue.
He slams a hand against the wheel, knocking himself out of his fugue. "You asking for last rites, Red? That what you want?"
No answer. Frank tears his gaze out of the rear-view mirror for the road, pulling his foot off the brake as he does. "This isn't the end." And he says it again, 'cuz he means it. "This isn't the end. You stay with me, ya hear?"
But he drives the kid to St. Matthew's anyways.
Happy reading!