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: You know you've got problems when Frank Castle is lecturing you on the importance of friendship.
Or: how Matt's broken leg becomes the least of his concerns.
Warnings: Spoilers for season 2.
Author's Notes: I'm free, I'm free! The school year is over, and my holidays are beginning! As a result, I'm looking forward to resuming a regular writing schedule. Thank you for your patience!
I allude to some of the less savoury aspects of narcotic use in this chapter. They're vague, but I feel compelled to warn you, dear Readers, in case you are a bit squeamish.
I appreciate all of the feedback I received about Frank's depiction last chapter. I will definitely be going over his final speech to Matt; I felt that it worked, but it clearly needs some tailoring to clarify exactly what his intentions were.
Dear Readers, I am truly grateful for your kind patronage. I hope all is well! I hope you enjoy this new installment!
"I can turn it on
Be a good machine.
I can hold the weight of worlds…
But I'm only human,
And I bleed when I fall down.
I'm only human,
And I crash and I break down."
~Christin Perri, "Human"
Chapter Five
Cold first, then warmth: water sluices over his chest and shoulders, and for a moment, he has an impression of the tiny bathroom. The tub rots into the floor over a snarl of copper pipes. Mildew and mould collect in the crannies, and the water is so hard that calcium wafts through the air, filling Matt's teeth with mineral grit.
He focuses, though, and the impression vanishes. He's swept easily into the wake of the hard-tilting fluid of his inner ear. All the stillness, the silence, replaced with a tremulous pounding in his chest and screeching from the walls. He balances head on the tap to stop spinning; closes his eyes, finds his breath, but the world vortexes out and away from him. The only constant is the sharp burn from his calf as dressings unpeel from the exposed muscle.
"Use it," Stick tells him, and Matt does, tugging at the lance of agony until he's back in the bathroom, slumped in a shallow bath of hard water. His broken leg is elevated on a makeshift plywood shelf at the tub's back corner so his surgical wound can be drenched in sterile saline.
His broken ribs tell him to ease up on his breathing before Frank can. They're stiff and aching and unhelpful. They cloud him. The fires in his mind's eye grow hazy, smearing on the insides of his skull like rock paintings. What's more is he is content to let them. Matt can't muster the strength for anger or frustration, though he's aware of both simmering away inside of him. Adrenaline mounts to a fist in his stomach and sucker punches his respiratory system into overdrive.
Matt tosses his head, lost again. The tap is cold comfort on his temple.
"Talk to me, Red," Frank urges. "You alright?"
Short answer: no. No, he is not okay, and the longer he lies like this, the less okay he is. Somewhere beyond the haze of narcos and pain, the disorientation brought on by blindness, Matt becomes aware that he is naked. His embarrassment climbs with every revelation that follows. His skin no longer stinks of dried sweat. His abdominals burn from latent cramping. He vaguely remembers being carried here. He shifts his arms to give himself the illusion of privacy, of dignity. It doesn't help. All he does is remind himself of all the crap that has to have been going on when he's been out.
Frank makes it worse, as usual: "Ain't got nothing I haven't seen before."
"Shut up, Frank." Better yet, never speak again. Go away, disappear into the blackness along with everything else. Matt shrinks as much as his battered body will allow. He's always been acutely aware of the difference between being blind and feeling blind. One weighs on him; the other preys on him. He feels the latter now with renewed vigor. There's a whole world in the blackness acting on him, and he has no chance of fighting back like this.
Frank stops what he's doing to toss a damp washcloth over Matt's groin. Matt almost tosses it back: almost. Frank isn't going to give him a second chance for coverage. He gets the washcloth now or never.
The sense of exposure amplifies. Frank isn't staring. He is fixated on redressing the leg. But he's right there, Frank Castle, and he's been there for more than a quick wash in the tub. And his heart rate doesn't change for a second. He is a march towards entropy in common time.
Matt balls his hands into fists. He bites his teeth together and his jaw muscles stings louder than his leg from the strain.
Frank makes it worse some more, "Don't know what you're so nervous about."
He can't articulate everything that he is nervous about, so he says again, exhaustedly, "Shut up, Frank."
"I kept you out for two days. Starting to stink. Narcos blocked you up the whole time, and you finally took a…"
Matt bucks his leg, shutting Frank up and getting him to back off in the process. The motion kills him, but it pales in comparison to his mortification. Every inch of Matt wakes up at once. He slams his fists into the sides of the tub. He takes a kick at Frank's face when the bastard tries to pin his mangled leg down. He huffs and puffs and shoves himself hard into the front of the tub. The tap juts into his neck, and he is seated upright for the first time since having his leg crushed.
The vertigo alone is horrendous, but Matt is at the mercy of a body he doesn't recognize. Injuries crop up out of the ether, joining his leg and ribs. Suddenly it's not enough for him to hyperventilate. He has to groan and grunt through several breaths to get himself under control.
Frank's presence is a boon to the whole process. The way he sits there, hunched over the leg, a stable constant beyond the chaos of Matt's body. Unfazed and unbroken. "I know this is shit, Red, but you're not doing yourself any favours by fucking your leg up some more."
Matt seethes. He knows that. The knowing is what makes it terrible. "How long am I non-weight bearing?" he asks instead of the more terrifying question, "How long am I here?"
"Not as long as you will be, keep fighting like you do."
"God damn it, Frank…"
Punisher's prodding the leg again, laying out a neat layer of damp gauze over the open wound. The sting gives way to a cool sense of relief. No infection. The incision smells pink and glossy, salty with saline. Frank's done a good job. "You're gonna need a doctor again to close this up. We'll see what they say."
"You going to kill this one too?"
Frank doesn't answer. He opens a fresh package of sterile equipment – bandages by the smell of things, and tells Matt, "This is gonna hurt, " before it hurts. Matt jumps against the tap so hard he nearly breaks another three ribs. He returns to his senses slumped into the corner of the tub. Water laps around his tired forearms, cooling quickly. Frank is tying off the bandage on his leg so gently and so loudly at the same time. His heart is beating double time. Actually, he has two hearts beating out of sync.
"Still with me, Red?"
Matt figures out what he hears, "Somebody's coming."
"Figures," Frank snaps off his gloves, tosses them aside. Matt doesn't listen for where they land. He follows the footsteps bound for the apartment, the ones Frank goes to meet.
"Are you armed?" Matt asks. He doesn't get a response, and his hearing is all over the place. He misplaces Frank amidst rattling pipes, footsteps, and creaking floorboards. "Frank, are you armed?"
The bathroom door latches. Matt's perception clarifies as the vibrations pass through the walls. He is alone, immobilized, and Frank is out there very likely with a gun to his neighbour's head.
"Get up, Matty: work to do." Dad's voice this time, more galvanizing than Stick's. Matt gets himself back into a sitting position and forces himself out of the tub.
He barely gets to the rim before the strength in his arms gives out. There's not enough water to catch him. Matt hits the bottom of the tub with enough force to knock the wind out of him. He tries again though, damn it. The inertia of the fall is such that he can twist onto the edge of the tub and hang there for scant seconds before he's lowering into the tub again.
His leg. His stomach. His weakness. Matt lies in a pathetic puddle of all three, trying and failing to find his breath amongst them. He can't help himself from reaching, but his arms won't do what he needs them. The muscles won't tense without shaking. His fingers loosen.
Voices reach him. The neighbour's heartbeat goes at the speed of hummingbird's wings. She speaks in a rapid whisper, one that gets muffled between Frank and his front door. Frank, however, is loud and clear: "Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. My idiot brother, ma'am. Got himself in with the wrong people. He's staying with me till he's back on his feet." Matt waits for the tell-tale click of the hammer pulling back, a chamber rotation. He sniffs for metal. Nothing strikes him but the copper piping. Either Frank doesn't have a gun, or Matt is too useless to find one.
The Stick in his head suspects it's the latter. "Pussy," he adds.
Matt can't disagree. He catches his breath in time for the front door to close, but he's still shaking as Frank traipses through the apartment outside the bathroom. He folds his arms across his chest to generate stability. There isn't much to be found. Matt scrubs the tears out of his eyes before they can fall.
It's never been this bad. Not after Nobu. Not after the Hand. Frank shooting him in the head had less of an impact than this.
The door opens. Matt drops his hands back to his side and forces his gaze towards the ceiling, projecting what he hopes is nonchalance. "You didn't kill her," he states flatly, though if he's honest, he is asking a question.
A towel hits him square in the chest. Matt catches it before the water can. "Not going to kill my neighbours, Red," and unless Matt's mistaken, Frank is disturbed by the suggestion. Offended, even. What the hell kind of monster kills their neighbours?
"Yeah," Matt laughs, "You're all heart."
"Nothing about the heart. What's the worst thing she sees, she looks in this place? Some scarred, squirrelly kid with a bashed-up leg. Big difference between this and a chained-up vigilante on a rooftop."
He forgets that it all looks the same to Matt. "She got a name?" he asks by way of a distraction.
Frank doesn't have to think about it, "Rina. Lives on the far end." Probably the one who spied them staggering in together but was careful not to give herself away. Matt breathes a sigh of relief that he didn't know he was holding. Somewhere in the druggy span of two days, he was worried Frank's kill count would be getting higher. "There's two others: Al or something, and uh…Melvin? Martin?"
The names dissipate as soon as they're spoken, irrelevant in a way Rina's isn't. Men don't feature in Frank's memory the same way women do. Matt isn't aware of him ever having killed a woman.
Besides the doctor, that is.
"They know who you are?"
They must. Frank's image has been a mainstay on news networks since his trial and escape. The fact that he maintains a residence is surprising. Matt can't sense major differences in his physical appearance. Frank, however, sets the story straight, "If they do, they must not care much."
"She sounds scared," Matt tells him.
Frank chuckles, "Nah, she's just shy. She can't carry a conversation, but she'll cut your eyes out soon as look at you. Little while back, two guys followed her home from work. She slashed up their faces before I could get to them."
"Great," his stay in Homicidal Hotel gets better and better. No wonder the neighbours haven't called the cops. Frank might be the least dangerous person in this place.
"She let 'em live," Frank offers.
"Did you?"
Frank answers by appearing at Matt's side and taking him by the arm. The callus on his trigger finger aggravates the Fentanyl itch burning around Matt's IV port. Of course he didn't let them live. Matt lets Frank sling his arm on the back on his neck. He flexes his bicep, curling his forearm into the suggestion of a stranglehold as Frank moves to lift him.
He stops a second later with a choked cry. His leg. His stupid leg. His stupid, burning leg swells with blood. The splint creaks as the shredded muscle expands, and Matt's hearing fixes on that instead of his own wretched grunting.
The horror continues when Frank tries to carry him again. Matt pins a shaking fist on the man's chest, towel clasped firmly in his fingers, to stop him. He swallows hard against his flustered gag reflex and holds another cry inside his mouth. With his free hand, Matt slings the towel around his waist. Then he shifts all his weight to Frank and hops out of the tub.
He pukes something hot and sour onto the floor, and the smell stays with him every awful hop towards the bathroom door because he can't breathe hard enough to compensate for his broken leg. Frank switches sides at one point to give him space to elevate it, but Matt's thigh can't bear the strain. He has to balance precariously on the edge of the board holding his leg together, dragging it across the tile, praying it doesn't get caught in the chips.
"Swear to Christ, you fuck up that leg-"
Matt can barely speak, but that good ol' Murdock blood won't let him stay silent even as his leg tears itself apart from the inside, "I'm not gonna…not gonna…"
"I'll pick you up again, Red."
"Move, Frank."
They do: out the door, around the corner, back onto the cot that smells of a twisted, sick version of Matt. Naturally. He doesn't want to land in the near solid cloud of two-day body soil, but his body doesn't give him a choice. His leg needs to be elevated or else it is going to chew itself off at the knee. The muscle is shoving against his incision to make an escape.
Senses fail. His brain melts from black to scarlet to bright, bright white, and an eternity passes before another fire joins the mix, this one liquid and blooming in his arm. Matt comes undone, muscles loosening. Groans weakening. The white goes dim, pain receding, slipping out of focus in a quiet rush along with everything else.
A hand sweeps over his face. Not Frank's: his own. Matt didn't notice he was moving. His bones have detached from one another. God damn Fentanyl. How much more can Frank possibly have?
Frank doesn't answer, mostly because the question wasn't spoken aloud. He spreads the blanket back over Matt. Funny – the blanket is softer than Matt remember, not to mention a completely different fabric, and its floral scent covers the more acrid smells coming from the cot.
"This isn't yours," he slurs dumbly.
Frank avoids the matter entirely, "You think you can eat something, Red?"
Matt abandons the trail of thought but not the blanket. He twists his good foot against the fabric, relishing the smooth chill of cotton on his skin. No more of that spiny, polyester monstrosity Frank kept him covered with for the past two days. "Depends on what you're offering," he replies.
The shrug is audible, "Soup."
Figures. There's so much metal in the apartment, Matt can't tell canned goods from munitions. "No, that's alright, Frank."
"Suit yourself."
He pops open a Tupperware container. The smell that comes out is fresh. Nothing chemical or processed about it.
"You cook?" Matt kind of had Frank pegged for a military rations kind of guy.
"Once," but not anymore. Like so many other things.
The answer finally oozes through Matt's brain, "Your neighbour brought you soup."
Frank does that strong, silent thing he does, where he almost disappears from Matt's perception. His heartbeat lingers, but his body heat drops. His personality vanishes. The same mortification that had Matt beating the bath tub winds Frank up so tight he becomes a terrifying absence in the room.
Matt makes it better: "Yeah, I'll have some soup."
Slowly, the absence refills.
Next thing he knows, Frank stops the empty mug from falling out of his hand. Matt falls back onto the cot in a doze. Soup and Fentanyl – what a dizzying combination. His head swings back and forth on the pillow to alleviate the spinning in his skull.
He feels better. Less anxious about waking up to new pain. More settled.
The blanket rises up to his neck. Matt rests.
The fuzz of a police scanner draws his awareness.
"…Foley and his guys again…trespassing…said they were looking for a place to get drunk."
"Aren't they always?"
"I told them to get lost. Saw them headed down forty-second towards the waterfront."
"What was the address again?"
The answer gets lost under the sound of Frank donning his Kevlar vest.
Punisher is getting geared up.
Happy reading!