WF: I should have updated this sooner, but I decided to wait until after I'd watched The Punisher Series on Netflix. (We are not going to talk about how much I cried while watching it.) I loved the show, it jumped to the top of my favorite Marvel Netflix Series, but you don't have to worry about spoilers for the show in this story. If I do decide to write Dani into the universe of that show, it'll be in a sequel or something.
Moving on! I do have a solid plan for this story, I've got an outline anyway, but I'd love to hear reader's thoughts! Let me know if there's anything that you want to see or anything that you want explained. I'm open to any and all suggestions. And thank you to everyone who's followed and favorited this story. I smile like a crazy person whenever I get an email telling me that someone new likes my story, or so I've been told, so this update is for everyone still reading!
[For anyone that's curious, I changed my username from TheIronBat to Words Fly.]
Chapter Six
Rule Number Four
DAY 6
Dani wakes up to the sound of the front door closing, and it takes her a moment of wiggling around to get her quilt off of her head. Once she can see clearly, she does a quick scan of the living room. Frank's standing in front of the couch and just looking down at her, and she can feel her face scrunching up as she looks up at him. He feels…calm, rage, determination. He's holding a bag in one hand that smells like dough and deli meat, and he's already dressed in jeans and a tee shirt. Her biggest clue that he's been out of their apartment isn't the bag or his clothes though. He's wearing that damn baseball hat again, the one that hides his face.
"Morning?" She'd meant it as a greeting, but the single word comes out as a question instead. Frank reaches up to take the hat off and tucks it into his back pocket, and Dani frees one of her arms so that she can wipe the sleep out of her eyes.
"Afternoon. I got hoagies," he says and raises the bag. Hoagies for breakfast? Well, she's eaten worse for breakfast. Like bitter berries. Hoagies are definitely an improvement over eating off the land.
"I need coffee." She's gotten used to drinking Frank's too strong coffee, even though they've only been together for a few days, and Frank just looks down at her for a moment longer before walking around the couch.
The coffee pot gurgles to life, and Dani takes that as her cue to get up. She starts to roll off the couch and manages to get her feet on the floor, and her palms take the brunt of her weight as she pushes herself into a vertical position. She takes a moment to shake her muscles out once she's standing, and her head tips to the side as she watches Frank putter around the kitchen area. He's actually setting out plates for them to eat the hoagies off of, and he's already put out their usual coffee mugs. Since he's got all of that under control, Dani starts making up the couch. The quilt is carefully folded and then placed over the back of the couch, and she decides to leave the sheet and her pillow. If anyone happens to come into their apartment and gives the couch a weird look, she'll tell them that she likes to cuddle with Frank on the couch and uses the pillow for extra support. Or something like that. Normal married couples cuddle on the couch, right?
"Do we have plans for tonight?" she asks and props her fists on her hips. She took a shower the night before so she feels clean enough, but she'll need to change out of her pajamas if they're planning on leaving the apartment.
"We do," is Frank's simple answer. That's fine. She'll annoy the details out of him while they eat. For now, she's going to go change.
The bedroom barely even looks lived in. The bed's been perfectly made, the lamp is turned off, and there's no evidence that someone has been sleeping in the room. Not that it matters, because no one is ever going to see the bedroom while they're staying here. So she moves over to the only dresser in the room and opens the top drawer on the left side. It's summer in Miami, so she pulls out a pair of black shorts and a white tee shirt. The shirt says GIRL POWER in bold red letters, and she gets a kick out of it. She finds a pair of bright red socks in the next drawer down, along with a white bra, and she quickly strips out of her pajamas. Everything goes on easily enough, and she glances down at herself. The shorts are a little loose on her hips but aren't in danger of falling off, and the shirt billows around her torso a little too much. Huh, maybe Frank's right. Maybe she does need to eat a little more.
It's not like she meant to lose so much weight. She's not even sure when she lost the weight. Being so numb and empty inside, it messes with her head. Makes her forget things. After she stopped feeling her own emotions, she stopped feeling most physical sensations as well. Except for pain. (She can always feel pain.) The gnawing of hunger faded along with her ability to feel happy or sad, and she spent her years in various cities in a daze. She only cut her hair because she kept forgetting to brush it, and she had to literally cut the tangles out. So she presses her fingers against the cuts of her hipbones and then smooths her hands up her sides, and she can feel the hard press of bone of her ribs through the thin cotton of her tee shirt.
"You fall asleep standing up, princess?" Frank's voice is a shock, even though he keeps his tone low, and she quickly drops her hands as heat floods into her cheeks. She's…ashamed. She's ashamed that she's let herself become this unhealthy, and her eyes dart over towards the doorway. "Hoagies're waitin' on ya. Hurry up."
"Just gotta get my shoes on," she mumbles. Frank doesn't say anything else. She sees him nod once out of the corner of her eye and then he's gone, and she looks down at the red socks clutched in her hand. There's no point in dwelling on the state of her body. She'll just have to pay more attention. She'll have to take better care of herself.
Her old dirty white sneakers are lined up next to the dresser, and she snags them before taking a few steps back to sit on the bed. She slides her socks on first, wiggles her toes a bit, and then tugs the shoes on. Standing up takes her a moment, and she twists her upper body to look at the bed. There's some obvious wrinkles where she'd been sitting, and she turns fully to smooth the blanket out. After the bed is back in pristine condition, she makes her way out of the bedroom.
Frank's already sitting at the kitchen table, and the table is set. There's a plate in front of Frank and another plate in front of her seat across from him, and there's a wrapped hoagie on each of the plates. Frank's large coffee thermos is sitting next to his plate, and the giant mug that Dani is starting to think of as hers is next to her plate. Next to her mug is the sugar bowl, there's even a spoon already in the bowl, and she feels something warm in the pit of her stomach. Despite the table being all decked out though, Frank isn't eating. Instead he's cleaning one of his many guns, and she grips the back of her chair and just watches the almost graceful movements of his hands as he tends to his weapon.
"Anyone ever tell you that starin' like that is rude?" He doesn't look up from the gun as he asks it, and Dani lowers herself down into her chair with a small smile.
"You know, I've never really liked guns," she says as she starts scooping out sugar. Dropping in that first spoonful is always satisfying, and she bites at the inside of her bottom lip as she carefully measures out a few more spoonfuls.
"Why's that?" She looks up after dropping in her fifth scoop of sugar, and she watches Frank put the gun back together as she stirs the sugar into the coffee and thinks of how to answer.
"They're always so loud, and it just seems so…impersonal." Frank actually pauses at that and looks up to meet her eyes, and Dani holds the look as she does a quick taste test.
"Impersonal?" Her cup o' sugar has just the right amount of coffee flavor, so she smacks her lips and carefully places the mug back onto the table. Carefully, because she's still convinced that the table's going to collapse at some point.
"Yeah. It's like…Okay, you're standing here." She moves her mug to the far right of the table, right to the edge, and taps the rim. Then she grabs the sugar bowl and pushes it to the far left and leaves her fingers pressed against the top of it. "And your target is all the way over here. Right?"
"Make your point," Frank says after looking between the two points.
"You pull the trigger here." Taps against her mug. "And someone dies all the way over here." Taps against the sugar bowl. "There's no interaction, no understanding of what's coming, it's just a whole lotta nothing."
"So the better way to take out the target is?" Dani takes her time moving her mug and the sugar bowl back to their original positions, and she feels shame burning in her gut again. In some ways, she never really had a choice. (There was a choice though, and she chose to keep living.)
"I always killed with my hands. Up close and personal." She holds her hands up, palms facing outward, and her hands don't look like they're capable of taking lives. Pale skin, thin fingers…she's not tall, and her small hands fit her small size. As she's watching, her right hand begins to shake just a little. Small twitches of her fingers, nothing too noticeable, but she presses her left palm flat against the table and curls her right hand into a tight fist.
"Pulling the trigger ain't nothing. Not for the person pulling it." Frank's hand easily engulfs her small fist, and Dani still marvels at the way his touch doesn't hurt. It's just a slide of skin against skin, a little rough because Frank doesn't heal like she does and has rough calluses, but all she feels is the light touch and the warmth. No pain.
"Is it easier than touching them when they die? Do you know what people feel like when they're dead? All of the fear, anger, desperation…it just disappears. Not slowly, or gradually. It's all there, until it suddenly isn't. It's the worst thing I've ever felt." Dani looks away from their joined hands and across the table at Frank, and she thinks she can see understanding in Frank's eyes. She's not refusing to kill based on any kind of moral code. If that was the case, she wouldn't be okay with Frank's new mission in life. She refuses to kill because she never wants to be the cause of that…that, nothingness, ever again.
"You wanna sit this one out tonight?" Under Frank's usual calm and rage, she can feel a small tendril of concern. For her. That's sweet of him, but it's not necessary. She might not want to kill ever again, but violence doesn't really bother her. (Plus, she'd never forgive herself if she was sitting at the apartment while Frank went out and got himself killed.)
"Sorry, Frank, but you're stuck with me. So what are we doing tonight?" He's still holding onto her hand, and she tips her lips up into a smile as she leans forward and lowers her voice. "Are we blowing up another building?"
"We're going to the morgue." Frank lets her hand ago after he says it, and Dani leans back in her chair and places her hands into her lap. A morgue? She thought Frank's thing was putting people in the morgue, so why do they have to go visit one? Aren't the people there already dead? "Now eat your hoagie and drink your sugar before it gets cold."
"You're kinda bossy." She says it even as she reaches for the wrapped hoagie on the plate in front of her, and Frank just gives her a look to let her know that he's not amused by her statement. She shrugs it off and digs into her breakfast, lunch if she takes the time of day into account, and tries to think of a good reason for The Punisher to go to a morgue. Before killing someone, that is. When she keeps coming up blank, she decides to wait until that night to find out and focuses instead on eating.
.xXx.
"I just want you to explain the plan to me one more time." They're sitting in the cab of Frank's truck, across the street from the morgue but with a clear view of the back entrance, and Frank darts his eyes over to look at his passenger before focusing back on the task at hand.
"We wait to see if any of Eddie's lowlife relatives show up. If they do, I take care of them. What about that is hard to understand?" He can hear her shifting in her seat, because she's still just wearing shorts and a tee shirt that causes her bare skin to squeak against the leather of the seat, and her fingers tap out a rhythm against the dashboard.
"Nothing, it's just…I thought you'd have a more solid plan. Not just a wait-and-see strategy," she huffs. He can see her out of the corner of his eye. It's hard not to. She stands out in the darkness with her pale skin, white shirt, and light blonde hair. It's almost like sitting next to a neon sign.
"Not glamourous enough for you, princess?"
She's never what he expects. Earlier, before they ate, he'd watched as parts of her started to slip through the cracks. Felt her hand shaking in his as she thought about the people she'd killed. He doesn't know what it's like for her. Doesn't know what it's like to feel another person's emotions as they die, until they're gone. What he does know is that remembering it dims the light in her eyes and makes her hands shake. Now she seems almost disappointed that he doesn't have a plan to immediately take someone out, but then he also knows that other people killing doesn't bother her. She's already seen him kill and didn't even bat an eye. So he never really knows how she's going to react to something.
Instead of answering him, she just sighs and leans back in the seat. Waiting. She keeps quiet as he scans the streets, and she starts humming after a couple of minutes. It's not a song or a melody that he recognizes, but it's slow and isn't distracting so he doesn't ask her to stop. He even catches his thumb tapping against the steering wheel along with the lazy rhythm, and he thinks he can see the edge of a smile but doesn't turn enough to make sure. The hum shifts into something a little faster as a group of men approach the back of the morgue, and it sounds close to the Mission Impossible theme.
One of the men breaks away from the group and walks ahead, and the back door of the morgue opens. The man in front has a few words with the morgue worker, and his eyes track the movement of money exchanging hands. The morgue worker steps outside and holds the door open, and the group of men walk inside. Once they're all inside, the morgue worker leans down and places something on the ground to keep the door from closing completely and then pulls out a pack of smokes. It's dark and the distance is substantial, but he recognizes the first man who'd walked into the morgue.
"Is it go time?" she asks as Frank does a quick check of his weapons. He knows that she doesn't have any kind of weapon, but she doesn't really need any either.
"Just stay behind me," he tells her and then opens the driver door. She slips out of the passenger side and silently follows behind him, and he looks over his shoulder at her before they cross the street. "The worker's gotta be knocked out. I'm just going to hit him really hard in the head, unless you've got a better way of doing it."
"I could try making him feel really exhausted? I don't know if it'd put him to sleep though, or for how long if it did work." He looks over his shoulder at her again, and she raises one slim brow at him. "What? It's not like I make a habit of manipulating how people feel. That would be wrong, Frank."
"I'm just gonna hit him then," he decides and starts to make his way around the building. They're close to the worker when she suddenly steps up next to him and then a little in front of him, and he looks down at the top of her head as she gets directly in front of him.
"Excuse me!" The morgue worker, who'd been facing in the opposite direction as he smoked, turns around at the sound of her voice. Frank can see his eyes widening just a little as he realizes that a woman is hurrying towards him, and he can feel his jaw clenching as the man obviously looks her up and down. "We got a little turned around and can't remember where our hotel is. Do you think you can help us?"
"Which hotel?" The man is eying the pale length of her legs as she steps up into his space, and he's still smiling when her body suddenly twists as she throws out a punch. The hit connects with his temple, and Frank stops walking as he watches the man crumble. He drops to the ground in an unconscious heap, and she looks almost annoyed when she turns around to meet Frank's eyes.
"Did you see that asshole checking me out? He wasn't even trying to be subtle!" She keeps her angry tone quiet, but he can tell that she wants to yell the words.
"Why'd you hit him?" Frank asks instead of answering her. Her head tilts to the side, which causes some of her short hair to brush against her shoulder, and she shrugs.
"Didn't want you have all the fun. I'll totally stay behind you moving forward though." She gestures at the propped open door, and Frank moves around her so that he can open the door and step inside the morgue.
They pause just inside the morgue, she makes sure that the door stays propped open, and he can hear voices coming from somewhere deeper inside the building. They're not trying to be quiet, and they're so loud that Frank's footsteps can't be heard. He can't even hear her walking behind him, but he can feel her sticking close to his back as they wind their way down the few hallways. They make a right, and Frank can see light coming out of a cracked open door at the end of the hallway. Voices are drifting out of the room, loud and angry, and he hears her suck in a quiet breath as they slowly start down the hallway.
"Just out of curiosity." He looks over his shoulder at her pause, and she glances up at him. "Who are you killing exactly?"
"Bobbie Gnucci. Eddie's brother." He sees her nod and she doesn't question why the guy has to die, and he doesn't owe her an explanation. So he doesn't know why he keeps speaking. "He's been questioned several times in sexual assault cases, but the cops can't ever get anything to stick."
"Sexual assault?" They're almost to the room now, so they need to keep quiet, but he answers her anyway.
"Date rape. Drugs 'em and gets away with it." He stops outside of the cracked open door, and he thinks he imagines her touching him. He's wearing a thick jacket over a tee shirt and a bulletproof vest, but he thinks he can feel a slight pressure against the center of his back. Like she's pressing her hand against the spot as she stands behind him.
"Well, he's not getting away with it ever again." She sounds completely serious, not even a little hesitant or unsure about him planning to kill a man, and her eyes have a little bit of a shine to them when he looks over at her. "Now, remember to have fun out there. Just because it's work doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself."
"You're staying in the truck next time." Her smile is wide and bright, and he rolls his eyes as he turns back around and then steps up to the door. For the first time, he starts to pay attention to what's being yelled inside of the room. Going by the quiet amused snort behind him, she's listening for the first time too.
"If some asshole thinks he can come into our city and kill my brother! He's got another fucking thing coming! We are going to find this motherfucker! And show him that you do not fuck with the Gnucci family!" Bobbie Gnucci, he assumes, yells.
"I think that's your cue, Frank," she whispers behind him. He prefers stealth, but he can make an exception and make an entrance just this once.
One hand presses against the door and easily pushes it open, and he walks into the room where Eddie Gnucci's burned corpse is lying on a table with a sheet mostly covering him up. The man he recognizes as Bobbie Gnucci is standing at the head of the table, and Frank's eyes do a quick scan of the room. There's eight other men in the room, four on each side of the table, and they're all carrying. Bobbie might be full of hot air and some rich pampered asshole, but at least half of his men hold themselves like they've had military training. He'll have to handle this carefully, and he eyes the men that can cause the biggest problems.
"You lost, asshole?" Bobbie asks. He resembles Eddie. The same thinning brown hair and dark eyes, but Bobbie's more heavyset.
"Heard you were looking for me," Frank says and looks around the room again. His first assessment still seems to hold, so he looks back at Bobbie and watches as understanding dawns across his features. Red floods the man's cheeks as a vein in the center of his forehead starts to bulge, and Franks holds himself steady as he waits. When Bobbie just continues to glare at him and starts to shake in anger, Frank looks pointedly down at Eddie's body. "Can't believe you found his body. Not with how much explosives I used."
"Kill that motherfucker!"
He always hears people talk about how things slow down in a firefight, but that's bullshit. Once he gets started, time starts to speed up. He's learned how to trust his gut, his instincts and his training, and he moves without fully processing his thoughts. Just trusts his body to follow his impulses. He sees men drop as he shoots them, feels a few bullets connect with his vest, and hears more shots than what he feels connect. He's focused on taking out Bobbie's men, so he doesn't track where the other shots are going. All he knows is that in a matter of minutes, there's eight bodies on the floor and he's got his boot on Bobbie's neck as the man writhes around on the morgue floor.
"Well, that was dramatic," he hears her comment from behind him. It sounds like she's standing in the doorway, like she never moved any farther into the room, so he turns his attention back to Bobbie. There's a bleeding hole over one of his knees, and his face is turning purple from Frank's boot crushing his windpipe.
There's things that he could say, in this moment. He could tell Bobbie that he's about to die because he's a disgusting waste of a human being. He could tell him that he's dying in payment to all the women whose lives he's ruined. Hell, he could even tell him that he's just at the bottom of Frank's list and that the rest of his family will be joining him and his brother in Hell real soon. There's all kinds of things that Frank could say, reasons for why he's killing Bobbie Gnucci, and each of those reasons runs through his mind as he watches spit froth on Bobbie's lips as he struggles at pulling at Frank's leg. In the end, Frank says nothing and puts a bullet between Bobbie's eyes.
Frank's never really been a fan of speeches.
"Good riddance," she says as he removes his foot. A quick look around the room confirms that the other eight men are dead, and he finally looks at where she's slumped against the doorway.
Blood is streaked down her left leg, starting on her pale thigh and tracking all the way down to disappear into the bright red sock she's wearing. There's more dark stains spread all over her white tee shirt. Two over her stomach, right side, left shoulder. Blood is dripping down her arms from various starting points, like a little kid dipped their fingers in red paint and drug their hands all over her. She's using the doorway to hold herself up, and he can see a hole in her right forearm closing up as she smiles at him.
"The fuck happened to you?" She's still smiling even as her brows draw down in confusion, and he steps around the bodies on the floor without paying them any attention as he moves closer to her.
"I had your back, Frank," is her simple answer. He thinks back over the firefight, remembers the dull hits of bullets against his vest, and hears more shots going off that never connected. He never saw her as he shot the men shooting at him, so she must have really stayed close to his back and managed to stay out of his way while taking most of the shots meant for him.
"Don't ever do some stupid shit like that again!" The words are there, burning his throat, but she's looking up at him with wide eyes and a proud smile on her face.
On their second day together, after he got his intel and before he watched her shoot herself in the head, they had a quick conversation in the truck. She'd followed him when he told her to stay put, because he hadn't known what she was capable of then. She told him that just because she wasn't going to kill for him didn't mean she was going to let him get killed, and he told her that he didn't want anyone getting hurt for him. Her response had been that a few bullets wouldn't hurt her, and she'd backed up that claim a moment later by taking his gun and shooting herself in the head. What'd he say before that? There'd been a quick exchange before she dove for the gun, and he hears the words as he continues to look down into her pale eyes.
"You're not going to take a bullet for me."
"We'll see about that."
From the looks of it, she just took several bullets for him. He's not sure if any of the shots she took would have killed him, but he knows that his vest isn't a guarantee that a bullet won't make it through and end him. Judging by the places where she's been bleeding, some of the bullets would have hit him in vulnerable places. Arms and legs. If any of the shots had hit an artery or torn through the muscle, he would have been down. Possibly permanently. There's no way to know for sure, but he thinks that she might have saved his life.
"You're mad at me, right? For not staying put." She looks like she's gearing up to pout, and Frank's eyes track over all the blood staining her. He's mad, he's severely fucking pissed off, but not at her. So he shakes his head and ignores the way that she's suddenly glaring up at him. "I can feel even more rage than usual coming off of you. It's okay if you're mad. Just let it all out. Come on, I can take it."
"I ain't mad at you." She still looks disbelieving, and he holsters the gun still in his hand on his hip. The holster is covered by his shirt, and he starts to take off the jacket he's wearing. "I do want to kill all those assholes again though."
"Aww, Frank, that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me," she says as she stands upright. He's holding his jacket in his hands now, and he looks down at the dark fabric. There's a few ragged holes in the material, but it's nothing obvious. Not as obvious as all the bloodstains on her pale skin.
"Turn around and hold your arms out. We can't go outside with you looking like that." She glances down at herself as if she didn't realize what she looked like before now, and her lips pull down as she makes a quiet hmm sound. She does turn around for him though, and his eyes shut for a moment as he sees the back of her shirt. There's barely any white showing through the darkening red stains.
"You do realize that I'm going to look ridiculous in this, right?" she asks as he gets her arms into the sleeves. She rolls her shoulders with a quiet hiss as he pulls the jacket up, and he tucks the collar under her hair to make sure that her blood soaked shirt is completely covered up. When she turns around, he takes a quick look at her and then reaches down. "Whoa! What're you doing?!"
"Zipping it," he grunts and pulls the two sides of the jacket together. It takes a moment for his fingers to cooperate and slip the zipper into the tab, and he holds onto the bottom of the jacket as he pulls the zipper all the way up to her throat. She's right, the jacket does look comically large on her small frame. The sleeves hang way down past her hands, and the bottom of the jacket even covers the entire length of her shorts. It also covers up all of the bloody evidence on her upper body.
"I feel like I'm swimming in this thing," she says and pinches a section of the jacket over her chest. She looks almost normal, except for the blood still showing on her left leg. He turns to look around the room, and he spots a roll of paper towels on a counter next to a large sink.
Frank has to step over two bodies to reach the counter, and he quickly pulls off a few sheets of paper towels. He folds them until he can get the square to fit in his hand, and the sink easily flicks on and sprays out a steady stream of water. He doesn't get the paper towels too wet, that'll just make them fall apart, and he flips the water off before walking back over to where she's still standing and looking curiously at him. Without saying a word, he kneels down and starts moving the wet paper towels over the tacky blood drying on her leg. One of his hands cups behind her left knee to hold her leg steady while he scrubs at her skin, and he can feel her brace her hands on his shoulders as he holds her leg up to get the blood off of her shin.
"You good to walk?" He's standing up after asking it, and he looks down at the floor. There's blood everywhere, and how much of it belongs to her?
"Right as rain. And if you're worrying about me leaving DNA evidence behind, don't. The one good thing that those bastards did was erase my existence. The cops can run my DNA all they want. I don't exist," she shrugs. He doesn't like the idea of leaving anything behind, but they've stuck around too long as it is.
"Come on," he decides. He steps around her and leads the way through the morgue, and he can hear her dirty sneakers squeaking against the linoleum as they hurry down the hallways.
The back door is still propped open, and he can hear her muttering under her breath as she makes sure that the door stays propped open. The morgue worker is still lying unconscious on the ground, but he's breathing steadily so Frank doesn't worry about him. He moves around the building and scans the streets, but there isn't any movement. They cross the street quickly and without talking, and they slide into the truck without any interruptions. He can hear her sigh as she relaxes back into her seat, and he quickly starts the truck and heads towards their apartment.
The drive is quiet, except for her occasional humming, and Frank's hands tighten around the steering wheel at irregular intervals. He knows that she can heal, that getting shot doesn't mean anything to her, but he can't shake the image of her standing in the morgue doorway covered in blood. All of that light buried under darkening blood. It ain't right. Yeah, maybe she did save him, but he doesn't like the thought of anyone taking shots meant for him. Doesn't like the thought of her getting shot over and over just to save him. Is this going to be a regular thing? Is this why she wants to tag along? So she can watch his back and take the bullets meant for him? Because that shit just ain't gonna work for him, and the two of them are going to have a serious fucking talk about it as soon as they get back to the apartment.
.xXx.
Dani walks into the apartment first, and she smiles tiredly at the sight of the couch. She wants to collapse down onto it and bury her face in her bright yellow pillow, but she can't do that yet. Mostly because she's still covered in dry blood, and she doesn't want to have to wash the sheet on the couch cushions or scrub blood out of any linens. She's already going to have to throw her shirt away, and that's not a happy thought because she liked that shirt. She reaches up for the zipper on her jacket as the front door closes behind Frank, and her left shoulder throbs hotly as she shrugs the jacket off. So she wasn't imagining things. This is going to be unpleasant.
"We gotta talk, princess," Frank says behind her. Yeah, she had a feeling that was coming. Frank had been quiet on the drive back to the apartment, but that was the norm because Frank isn't an overly chatty guy. His emotions had been all over the place though, and that wasn't like him. Frank usually felt like a strange combination of calm and rage, a kind of muted fury, but his emotions had been sharper in the truck. Hotter anger, concern, confusion…his emotions kept spiking, and she's sure it's because of what she did at the morgue.
"Can we do it while you dig a bullet out of my shoulder? I don't think I can reach it." She turns around to hand his jacket back to him, and he takes it while narrowing his eyes down at her. The pain is coming from under her left shoulder blade, and she can't get to it on her own. Not without dislocating something, and she wants to avoid that.
"Bathroom. Shirt off." He's keeping his statements short, terse, so he's definitely pissed. Dani will just have to argue her point while Frank gets the bullet out.
She flips the light on after walking into the bathroom, and she pauses as she catches a glimpse of her reflection in the dirty bathroom mirror. The blood all over her is drying into a rusty brown color, and she looks like she rolled around in a giant blood puddle. And that's an image she's not going to be able to shake for a while. With a small shake of her head, she reaches down and pulls her ruined tee shirt off. She drops it into the trashcan next to the toilet, and she gets a washcloth from the metal shelf bolted onto the wall over the toilet. (Which is a poor interior design choice in her opinion, but whatever.)
When Frank fills up the bathroom doorway a minute later, she's running the wet cloth over her arms. She remembers the blistering heat of the bullets ripping through skin and muscle, and there's still a deep ache throughout her body. She'll be fine in the morning though. After her arms are clean, she wrings the washcloth out in the sink and then starts mopping up her torso. The whole time she's cleaning, Frank stays quiet and just watches her. It should be uncomfortable, but Frank's never made her feel uncomfortable. She hadn't even protested when he cleaned the blood off of her leg, even though she's capable of cleaning herself. Obviously.
"Do you mind getting my back?" she asks once her front is blood-free. She wants to take a shower, because her skin feels itchy despite being wiped clean, but Frank's going to have to clean the blood off so he can get a good look at her shoulder.
"Yeah, hand it over." She turns the sink on again to wring out the washcloth as Frank steps into the bathroom, and he places something on the closed toilet lid before moving to stand directly behind her. Her eyes glance over to see a first-aid case, not a kit because it's too big to be a kit, and she holds the washcloth over her right shoulder.
Fingers curl around the sink as she braces her weight on her hands, and she bites down on the inside of her bottom lip as Frank starts moving the wet cloth against her skin. She took more shots in her back than in her front. Most of the blood on her stomach came from exit wounds actually, and the skin still feels tender even though she's all healed up. Like the end stages of a bruise. She took too many hits at one time, but it's better her than Frank. Bulletproof vests aren't impenetrable, and she doesn't mind aching for a night if it means that he's still breathing.
Frank saves cleaning off her left shoulder for last, and Dani's jaw locks as he wipes the blood away. All of the other areas had just been tender, but her left shoulder hurts. Burns in a way that she's not used to lasting for this long, and she has to hold herself steady when her body tries to buck away from the pain. Frank tosses the bloody rag into the sink when he's done and then leans over to open the first-aid case, and Dani peeks at the contents.
"Did you rob a hospital?" The question just sort of slips out of her, because those are some hardcore medical supplies.
"Picked up a few things here and there." She's taking that as a yes. It's not like she's going to judge him. Dani's not a fan of stealing, per se, but she's done her share of stealing to survive. So there's no judgment coming from her.
"Just get this thing out of me so I can heal." A part of her wants to slump against the sink, but she holds herself up instead. She doesn't want to make this any harder for Frank to do.
Frank's left hand presses against her left shoulder, and she can feel his thumb pulling at the skin above where the bullet is. The bullet itself is lodged under the wing of her scapula, and the muscle and bone won't heal until it's removed. There's always the possibility that her body will heal around the bullet, but the placement means that she'll always be able to feel it. She'd rather not deal with that, and she trusts Frank to get the bullet out. Something tells her that he's had his share of patching himself up, so he should know what he's doing. She saw him grab a pair of medical clamps out of the case, and that should do the trick.
"You want something to bite down on?" It's a tempting offer, but she doesn't want to waste time looking for something. Besides, she can handle a few minutes of pain.
"Nope. I just want this over with. Come on, Frank. Don't leave me like this." She puts a little bit of a whine into her voice, and it does the trick because Frank's hand tightens around the top of her shoulder.
She's just about to ask what's taking him so long when she feels the clamps digging into her skin, and she bites down on her bottom lip hard enough to break skin as the clamps push past skin and muscle. Blood coats her tongue and drips down her chin as Frank works, and she clenches her eyes shut as the first tears start to fall. It doesn't stop the tears from coming, but at least this way she doesn't have to see herself in the mirror. Frank gets the main bulk of the bullet out first, but she doesn't let her body relax until he's pulled out the last fragment. After that, she finally lets herself slump a little and lets her head hang down limply.
"Almost done, princess." Frank's voice is a quiet rumble over her right shoulder, and he places the bloody clamps into the sink before picking up the washcloth. He turns the water on and gets the cloth wet again, and she looks down at all of her blood decorating the sink as he starts to wash off the fresh blood.
"How's it looking?" she asks as the cloth moves over her skin. The feeling of relief is already flooding her now that the bullet is out, and her shoulder blade has that itchy feeling that she associates with her healing.
"Not even a mark." Frank presses the cloth against the spot where she'd just been opened up, and a quiet groan slips out of her. She might be healed, but there's still that lingering ache.
The cloth leaves her skin, and Dani pushes up off of the sink and slowly turns around. She's about to thank him for helping her out, but his dark eyes narrow down at her face. She expects him to launch into his lecture right then and there, but he steps into her space instead and then reaches around her to turn the sink on again. Dani freezes as the front of his body presses against hers, even though he's still wearing a shirt and a bulletproof vest under that, because it's been decades since she was so exposed in front of someone. She didn't think about that while he was digging a bullet out of her back, but it's hard to ignore now. Before she can start freaking out though, he straightens up and takes a half step back.
"You're a mess," he says distractedly as one hand cups her jaw. He tilts her face up as he raises the washcloth again, and she holds still as he starts to clean her chin. She completely forgot that she bit through her bottom lip. The cuts from her teeth have already healed, but she probably looks disgusting with blood streaked down her chin.
"Sorry," she mumbles as Frank starts cleaning off her neck. If it was anyone else doing this for her, she'd probably feel uncomfortable. She's only in her shorts and a bra (white so it's going to have to be thrown out too), but she doesn't have to worry about being exposed in front of Frank. She can feel him, and his primary emotions at the moment are annoyance and concern.
Once she's all cleaned up, she steps to the side and lets Frank step up to the sink without her standing in the way. She watches as he rinses out the washcloth as best as he can, and she thinks they might be able to salvage it. It's dark gray, so maybe all of the blood won't stain it too much. When he's satisfied with the cloth, he wrings it out and drapes it over the edge of the sink so he can start cleaning the clamps. First with water and then with a bottle of alcohol that he pulls out of the first-aid kit. They're so close together in the small bathroom that picking up his emotions is easy, is natural, so she notices the flash of discomfort when he bends over to reach into the case. His expression never changes, but he just felt pain.
Physical pain manifests emotionally in several different ways. Some people feel pure anguish when they're hurt physically, a few select people get angry, others have a drop in emotion that reminds her of depression, and sometimes people just feel discomfort. She's never really felt anyone push that emotion aside though. The discomfort fades under a wave of determination, but Dani knows what she felt. So she eyes Frank's torso as he continues to clean. There aren't any marks on his back, she made sure of that, but she can see some holes in the front of his tee shirt. She knew that he got shot a few times, but he hadn't moved like he was seriously injured so she hadn't worried about it. Maybe she should worry just a little though.
"Alright, your turn." The clamps are back in the case, and Frank just looks at her like she's crazy. "I know how bulletproof vests work. You might not have actually been shot, but there might still be some damage. So let's have a look-see."
"I'm fine," Frank says after a moment. She believes that he believes that, but she's not going to stop being worried until she can see that he's okay with her own two eyes.
"Don't get shy on me. Take it off," she says and waves her hands for extra emphasis. Frank's eyes lock with hers, and Dani crosses her arms as they start the staring contest. She knows she probably looks ridiculous, in her shorts and bra with her arms crossed and chin raised, but she's not backing down. After several silent moments, Frank blows out a heavy sigh and then looks down to grab the bottom of his shirt.
Dani keeps an eye on his face as he pulls the shirt off, to look for any brief glimpses of pain, but his face remains blank. His emotions stay steady as well, but there's more annoyance than anything else now. It takes him a minute to unstrap the vest and then pull it off, and she sucks in a breath through her teeth as she looks him over. The quick intake of air isn't because Frank has a very aesthetically pleasing upper body (even though he really does and it would probably be distracting under different circumstances), but because his stomach is mottled with bruises. Old ones and newly forming ones.
"Jesus, Frank," she says quietly and takes a step towards him. She can see the larger muscles in his body tensing as she gets closer, but he doesn't move away or say anything. This time it's her turn to lean around him and wet the washcloth, and she glances up at his face once she's standing up straight again.
There's a spot on the right side of Frank's stomach, right above the line of his iliac furrow, that's bleeding. It's not a deep cut, doesn't need stitches or anything like that, but it looks even worse surrounded by all of the bruises. Frank briefly looks at the spot before meeting her eyes, and he nods once in permission. That's all she was waiting for. She forces her hand to remain steady as she starts to clean off the blood that's run down his skin, but she doesn't go any lower than the line of his jeans. She just cleans what she can and wills herself not to cry as she takes in the sight of Frank's bare body. She saw him the night, morning?, that he woke her up. He'd been shirtless then too, but she hadn't really looked. Even while jokingly trailing her eyes over him, she'd tried not to notice any details. It helped that it'd been dark in the living room.
Now? Now she can see the sickly yellow color of faded bruises and the blooming red of forming bruises. By this time tomorrow, he'll be black and blue. He has the body of a fighter, muscles honed from actual fighting and not from just hanging out at the gym, but she hates seeing the damage. Because under the bruises? There's freshly knotted scar tissue and shiny smooth areas of old scars, and it's like she can read some of the hell he's been through on his skin. So by the time she finishes cleaning the blood off, her hand is shaking just a little as her own emotions overwhelm her.
He doesn't say anything as she grabs the bottle of alcohol and a gauze square, and she's thankful for that because she wants to help him. Cleaning him up and doing a little patchwork isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but she can feel her emotions choking her. The pressure lessens a little as she swipes the split skin with the alcohol soaked gauze, but she still feels. Anger at the people who have hurt him, sorrow for the man he used to be, fierce protectiveness…because Frank means something to her. No one has meant anything to her in a very long time, but Frank is special. He helps her to feel, and it's obvious that he needs someone in his corner. If he carries on the way he did in Hell's Kitchen, he'll be dead in under a month.
The thought of Frank dying, of that muted fury that she's come to associate as Frank just ceasing to be, makes her own anger rise. Maybe Frank isn't a good person, that's not really for her to judge, but she thinks the world will feel different without him in it. Will feel wrong. That might be a selfish thought, since being around him is the only thing that makes her feel human, but knowing that she's being selfish doesn't stop her from feeling anger just at the thought of Frank not being in this world. It's those thoughts, and the strong pull of her own emotions, that causes her to speak.
"I know you don't want anyone getting hurt for you and that you're probably mad that I stepped in and got myself shot up, but I'm not going to apologize. The simple truth is that I can heal, and you can't," she says as she swipes the gauze over him one last time.
"I'm not gonna use you as some kind of human shield." Frank's tone is rough, and she peeks up at him as she tosses the bloody gauze into the trash.
"No, you'd never ask me to do something like that. That's not who you are." He looks away from her eyes at that, like he can't handle hearing that there's any kind of goodness in him, and Dani locates a box of bandages in the first-aid case. "You're not asking, and I'm not offering. I'm telling you that I'll take the bullets that can kill you, because they won't kill me. I know it probably sounds crazy to you, but you have no idea what you've done for me. No idea, Frank."
Her fingers are shaking as she presses the bandage against his skin, and she stops with her fingertips pressing against the sides of the bandage. Some of her skin is touching against his, which is something that she can't do with anyone else. Everyone else she's touched, it's hurt even more than having a bullet embedded in bone. The fear and anger she feels at the thought of losing Frank, even that seems like a miracle after not feeling anything for years. She'll take all the cons of this arrangement as long as she gets to have the pros too.
"I don't like it," he finally says. His hands come up to curl around her wrists, and she looks up as he pulls her hands away. He's not angry that she'd been touching him, and she knows that because he doesn't let go of her wrists. He keeps holding onto her as she looks up at him.
"I'm not asking you to like it. I'm just asking you to…to." She trails off as she thinks it over, and Frank twists his hands until he can actually hold her hands instead of just grabbing her wrists. It's not a proper handholding, their fingers aren't laced or anything like that, but his fingers are wrapped completely around her hands.
"Come on now, girl. Spit it out," he says as she chews the inside of her bottom lip. Her weight shifts to a different foot as she looks up at him, and he looks tired. There's still fading bruises on his cheeks and across his jaw, there's smudges under his eyes, but his eyes look…soft. He's willing to hear her out, and she doesn't think she'll be hearing a lecture from him tonight.
"Rule number four, we take care of each other." Because that's what everything boils down to. If this partnership of theirs continues, that's what she wants. Frank takes care of her by being near her, and he also makes sure that she remembers to eat and drink. So she can take care of him by getting shot every now and then.
The silence drags on as they just look at each other, and Dani feels Frank as he thinks it over. The annoyance has died down a little, but there's still the scratchy sensation of concern and the kind of worry that makes it feel like there's a tight band around her chest. Frank kills people that deserve to die, and he doesn't want to see someone that he considers an innocent hurt. Even though he's seen that she'll be just fine. Instead of trying to further argue her point though, Dani keeps quiet and lets him work through it. His hands tighten around hers as he takes in a slightly deeper breath, and Dani holds still as his eyes bore into hers.
"We take care of each other," he quietly repeats. The answer makes her smile, wide and completely unrestrained, and he rolls his eyes with a quiet huff. "Go get changed in the bedroom. I'll clean up in here."
"You got it, boss."
She gets a look at Frank's back as she leaves the bathroom, takes note of the bruises and scars, and then steps out of the bathroom. She already knew that Frank had lived a hard life, that he'd lived through things that most people hadn't, but seeing him like that? Seeing just a little bit of him exposed? She's already decided that she'll do whatever it takes to keep him alive. She can't bring him peace or happiness or anything even remotely close to either of those, but that doesn't mean she can't help him. And she's going to help him for as long as he lets her.
Finis: This chapter was a little longer than usual, but I couldn't find a good stopping place. Writing this chapter was…it was somehow both easy and difficult. Because after watching The Punisher Series, I just wanted Frank to have a hug and a good night's sleep. And the more I write, the more I love Dani because all she wants is to feel human and to help Frank. (Which Frank needs.) I hate having either of them hurt, but writing their interactions is getting easier for me.
I'd love to know what you thought though! I'm always up for hearing thoughts on Frank's characterization, how him and Dani interact with each other, or anything else that you want to address.
SleepPatterns: You're not being overdramatic! Because I'd die for Dani, if she was real and not just a figment of my imagination. I'm so glad you've enjoyed the story, and thank you so much for the review!
FutureOlympian: Don't die! You gotta stay alive to see how the story ends lol Dani carrying Frank bridal style was planned before I wrote the first line of the story, so writing that scene was so much fun for me. It was so much fun that I might have to do it again in a future chapter. We'll see. I'm happy to hear that you like Dani and that you're enjoying the story, and thank you for the compliment and for the review!
deathb4beauty: Have you had a chance to watch the punisher show yet? If not, you need to see it. Like I said, there won't be any spoilers in this story, but the show was amazing. I think that's what makes writing for Dani so heartbreaking at times, because the things that she wants are what most people take for granted. Thank you for reading and thank you for the review!