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 tried something a little different with this chapter. Rather than provide a whole scene dedicated to what Matt was doing while Frank was out, I interspersed his narration with exposition. I wanted to save everybody from a flashback. I hope this is effective. Also, because this chapter is from Matt's perspective, there are some gaps in his knowledge. I can't see him knowing a whole lot about ammunition.

I decided Frank's assault rifle of choice would be the M16, so all my research is based on that. His ammo cans (which I mistakenly referred to as munitions cases last chapter – apologies) are carrying loaded magazines because he likes to be prepared. As a Canadian and a non-soldier, I know very little about assault rifles. I sincerely apologize if my research is poorly represented or flat-out inaccurate.

Speaking of being Canadian, my internet history over the past week has probably been flagged for its numerous searches about assault rifles, which are illegal here. Canadian government, I beg pardon: what I searched, I searched in the name of fanfiction.

Readers, sweet readers, thank you. I meant to get to Karen in this chapter, but Matt's actions with the bullets means she won't be around until next time. Your patience and support are most gratifying. Thank you!

"Give us a tantrum

And a know-it-all grin

Just when we need one

When the evening's thin…

'Cuz you're working at building a mystery

Holding on, and holding it in

Yeah, you're working at building a mystery

And choosing so carefully."

~Sarah McLachlan, "Building a Mystery"

Chapter Ten

The bathroom door opens, unleashing a noxious cloud of ammonia. Matt's already drunk more than his fair share of the odour. He gags: nothing comes up. His stomach's painfully empty, and the muscles surrounding it were unprepared for the day's activities.

His leg is so broken. The bones are still in alignment; Matt was careful with them on his way out of bed or to and from the bathtub. Yet his whole body voices unanimous disappointment from his head to his toes. He has pain in uncharted territories, places his body had to invent to communicate how broken he is, and they're nowhere near as loud as his leg.

The only happiness he feels is from the rage he senses building in the bathroom, where Frank's furious heartbeat is stomping its hooves like a bull ready to charge.

"Ammonia…weakens brass," Matt points out, gagging on the word 'ammonia'. He dumped the whole bottle into the tub with some warm water and the contents of the munitions cases. Dozens of magazines, Matt can't remember how many exactly, are staring up at Frank from a shallow pool.

Frank gets the tub draining. Then he clomps out of the bathroom on a warpath.

Matt eases his broken leg off the metal case he's using for elevation, bringing the splinted limb to rest on the floor. He pushes himself into a sitting position against the wall in preparation for a fight. As if he's capable of fight. "Your…your ammo might still be usable. Might not." Military ammo has probably changed a lot since the late-1800s, when ammonia was first discovered to cause the cartridge to split. They might be able to withstand the soak, but Frank probably won't want to take the chance by firing them. "You should call your supplier-"

The attack comes seemingly from nowhere. Matt springs into action too late and too weakly to stop Frank from driving a forearm into his neck and pushing him up the wall. He unleashes the remaining hell in his limbs – punching, prying, hitting – but there's not much left. He's done too much heavy lifting what with the empty munitions case, the chain, his broken leg, and those magazines. Hauling them to the bathroom and back again.

In short order, Frank pins Matt's right hand. He absorbs blows from the left. They're nothing. Matt is nothing to him.

"You think this ends with you, Red," Frank speaks in measured tones. He has lectured while strangling people before. "You think I drop your ass off at PD and that's that. No more Devil of Hell's Kitchen. They ship you off to SuperMax with all the guys you put away-"

Matt doesn't listen to the details. He'll manage; he'll make it. He doesn't need to think about prison. His brain flashes instead back to the routine he's been following, the one that got him through over an hour of lift, hop, rest, gag, hop away. Opening the munitions case attached to his ankle felt, at the time, like the worst part. Frank half-buried his under the others to ensure he wouldn't escape. Matt had to heave three metal cases onto the floor before prying open the lid on his. He took the magazines out, stacking them on the cot, and the smell of brass got him thinking about whether Frank has ammonia. And what the chances are that it's nearby.

Turns out it's a lot closer than Matt thinks. Ammonia trickles into his lungs. Matt coughs. His thoughts return to the present where the rest of him is floundering. Frank's loosened his grip just enough for him to breathe.

"You're not gonna pass out on me, Red," he says. His voice is a shower of sparks on Matt's face and upper chest. "You gotta get this through your God damn head: this starts with you. You go to SuperMax, Wilson Fisk's gonna give you hell. And out here? The NYPD is going to want to talk to everyone you've ever had contact with. That's Nelson, that's Karen; that's your neighbours, your landlady, your parish priest."

Frank crushes Matt's windpipe again. The world on fire burns up the last reserves of oxygen in his brain. Matt tosses both arms against Frank's, who couldn't care less about the weak blows. "Anybody who might've known or should've known about your secret identity. And once they start asking, who else is going to want to know? You've pissed off a lot of people, Red. A lot of people who aren't going to buy that your lawyer friend didn't know what you were doing at night. That your secretary wasn't in on the secret. This starts with you, Red, and it doesn't end until the lives of everyone you know are up in flames. Do you understand me, Red? Tell me you understand."

Frank loosens his grip. Matt's shaking serves as a nod; the nerves in his body have gone raw, and his broken leg is a flaming battering ram at the base of his thigh. But he doesn't believe it. Foggy, Karen, Lantom: they all have plausible deniability and access to good counsel. They'd have protection. He's kept his distance so they could be protected.

His eyeballs are cresting inside his skull. "I get it, Frank."

A sigh, an eye roll, an unspoken, God damn it. "No, you don't." Frank tears his arm away and Matt falls. He hits the ground with his right hip to spare his broken leg. "You don't get it, because if you did, you wouldn't be fucking up shit for yourself. You wouldn't be begging me to drag your ass to the NYPD."

"You have wanted me out since I got here…" Matt tries to say more. He can't: sweat drains out of him, mixing with the ammonia to create a corrosive pool lapping his skin. He wants to be sick. He wants to be sick everywhere. His abdominals thrust up, rearranging his insides until his stomach is in his mouth. "I did you a favour."

Pain is everywhere, decentralized from the impact: tearing up and down his limbs, stomping through his muscles, scraping over his nerves. Hard to tell what belongs to him and what he's absorbing from Frank, whose body is radiating with personal indignation. Matt becomes vaguely aware that Frank has stopped pacing.

"Oh, what is it, Frank?" he doesn't get an answer. The space where Frank is standing has the sensory qualities of a black hole. "Are you upset? Go ahead…go ahead and hand me over to the cops. I am so sick of your God damn duty bullshit."

Frank cuts right to the chase, "You're an idiot, Red."

Matt shoves a hand against his still-knitting broken ribs. If this is about the worst-case scenario Frank spelled out for him, he hopes he passes out. "Thanks."

"You want to lecture me about duty when you're pushing people out of the way of falling ceilings?"

"What I do I just do," Matt growls, only too happy to feed Frank's words back to him.

Frank kneels and takes him by the broken ankle. The coal fire in Matt's leg gets stirred up to a blaze. Distantly, beyond the sound of his groaning, Matt hears the chain rattling away from his leg. Frank's unbound him. "Yeah, you just do. Got no sense of consequence, Red."
"You're right – I've got no sense of consequence. Me. I'm not the guy out there murdering people!"

Matt reclines onto the floor. Having to carry that empty case every step of the way – every step – to stop the chain from pulling on his broken leg has drained him. Even after it was emptied, the damn thing weighed a tonne. Eventually, he had to put it on the floor and use it to rest his broken leg on between hops. He's only too happy when Frank picks up the cases and carries them away.

The ammonia was under the sink. Why he remembers that now is a testament to his exhaustion. Matt replays his work: unburying the case tethering him to the cot, emptying the magazines from the case. Disconnecting his IV tube without removing the port. Hopping to the bathroom. Filling the tub. Then he hopping back to the cot for the magazines. He could only carry a few at a time, Frank had so many. Too many for him to move all of them, but Matt's pretty sure he got most of them submerged. Pretty sure. He can't tell because there are more bullets in the apartment. His mouth is full of them: big and small; brass, steel, and copper.

He finally dumped the ammonia into the tub and high-tailed it out of the room before the fumes could get to him. Like they're getting to him now.

Matt lifts his head off the floor, deploying the only question he has left before Frank hauls him off to the precinct, "Who was it tonight, Frank?" The Punisher's pulse is one pissed-off tempo. Good. Matt rubs it in as best he can from the floor. If this is the last thing he does, he's going to make it count. "Was it Foley and his boys, or some other group of desperate guys making a bad decision? Who were you hunting, Frank?"

Something heavy hits the wall to his right. The smell of canvas and sweat breaks through the clouds of ammonia, sending an icy chill through Matt's veins. He reaches out even though he doesn't need to, even though he knows what he's going to find, even though he doesn't want to find it. He doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to be known.

Frank has no time for his ignorance. "I was hunting you. Mission accomplished."

Matt's fingers close around the strap on his gym bag. The contents are primarily fabric. Laundry detergent and silk drains out through the zippers. "You were in my apartment," he says dumbly, trying to make it sound right. It doesn't: not the idea or the physical evidence of it actually having happened.

Frank, still seething, says, "Did you a favour, Red: now you don't have to go to the cop shop naked."

"How did you find where I lived?"

"Your address is on file at St. Matthew's."

The cold is worse than the pain, less forgiving. Matt gathers himself against it. "You were at my church." That statement doesn't sound right either. "How did you…?"

"You told me, that night on the roof? Got real excited about me knowing the name of the church. Makes sense though – Hell's Kitchen kid, last nameMurdock. Good little Irish Catholic boy who dresses up like the devil to beat the shit out of bad guys," Frank scoffs. "Sounds like something out of a comic book."

Matt would kick himself if he had the strength. It sounds like a whole series of rookie mistakes, actually, from him tipping his hand about faith to Frank breaking into his apartment. He was being careful, covering his tracks, turning Matt Murdock into a dead end. Trust Frank Castle, fellow dead end, to be able to find a road back there.

He leans over and unzips the gym bag, waiting for the other shoe to drop, only to find reality's worse than any ulterior motive. Frank brought him an overnight bag with clothes, his cell phone, some books, toiletries, his sheet.

Matt closes the bag. The cold running through him solidifies into a big guilty knot in his stomach. He thought he wanted to puke before? He really wants to puke now. "I thought you were out killing," he says dumbly.

"And soaking those magazines in ammonia – that was gonna stop me? I don't need bullets to kill, Red. All killing needs is a person who's alive when you get there and dead before you go. Besides, I got more bullets."

"Yeah," he winds up for his big closing argument, "but not those ones."

"Well done, counsellor. Tell me more about how you know so much about consequence. You got about three minutes before I'm dragging you to the car." Frank's trigger finger taps against the top of his desk like he's firing off a round. The sound echoes from the drawer beneath where he's striking. Matt tries and fails to read the contents before Frank is speaking again, but there's clearly something important in there. "While you're at it, you're going to tell me why the Japanese are looking for you."

Matt doesn't want to plead his ignorance, but he doesn't know what else to say, "The Japanese are looking for me?"

"Had a few of those ninja-bastards chase me up the Hudson Parkway after I left your place. The ones who attacked you and your girl."

Wishful thinking isn't helping, but what other explanation is there? Matt has been clinging to the idea secretly for so long that when he smelled her in his apartment, he thought he was making it up. He can't tell Frank that though. "I don't know," he says, tugging the blanket higher on his body. "Nothing."

"Nothing," Frank scoffs. "It's nothing, than I got no reason to keep you around. I'll drive you to the precinct right now."

He means it. He hauled ass over the Hell's Kitchen as a courtesy. Grabbing Matt's stuff. Going through his apartment. Matt isn't sure he can muster the thanks when the Punisher's seen where he lives. He tries to assemble a response that doesn't sound crazy, "The woman they killed."

Frank knows, "Your girl."

"She wasn't anyone's girl," Matt corrects him. "She was…important to them."

"So they were looking for her?"

"No. I think she's…" there's no other way to put this, "I think she's looking for me."

A pregnant pause, long enough for Matt to retract what's been said, before Frank reminds him, "She's dead, Red."

Matt says nothing.

Frank adds, "You carried her off that rooftop."

He did more than that: "I went to her funeral. I saw her buried."

"The dead don't come back, Red."

"Tell that to the man that killed her. He burned to death in front of me."

Strange to hear Frank's respiration change, to sense his temperature dropping. He's so stable that Matt picks up on the shift immediately. "What makes you think she's alive? Aside for…aside for her killer." Who Frank is not convinced burned to death, thanks very much.

Matt doesn't have any other choice but say it aloud. Frank's trigger finger is over top of that drawer and its mystery contents. His car keys are in the pocket of his hoodie; Matt can hear them jingle. If she is out there looking for him, and he's placed under arrest, there's more at stake than a trip to Supermax and fallout for Foggy and Karen. The Hand are going to tear through the cops with extreme prejudice.

"I…smelled her. In my apartment. Like she'd been there recently." He can't afford a question about how he smells people, so Matt distracts Frank from asking, "It's why I went to the basement that night. I thought she was going to be there."

Frank does not take the bait, "You smelled her?"

"Yes," Matt shirks away from Frank's pointed stare, slumping against the wall. He doesn't want to talk about this. Frank has already seen inside his apartment, picked through his personal effects. He's seen things Matt didn't trust Foggy or Karen to see. And he grabbed the sheet. Frank's a pragmatist; he grabbed what was necessary, but he made a point of grabbing the silk sheet.

Frank interrupts Matt's mortified inner-monologue, "I'm gonna need a little more than that, Red,"

He already has so much, especially compared to the nothing Matt has on him. "You said blindness causes other senses to compensate. My senses compensate." There. That's it. That's all Matt's giving him.

Again, Frank doesn't fall for the distraction. "Just how stupid do you think I am, Red? I've seen you: you're a blind ninja who can hear people coming a mile away and sense when his broken bones are back in place. Your senses don't just compensate. Your senses are…something else."

He might not have the words to describe them, but Frank's putting it together. His silence washes over Matt and corrodes worse than the ammonia. "If the Hand's looking for me-"

Frank stops him, "The Hand?"

"The Japanese. The ninjas. They're known as the Hand." Frank signals his skepticism with a small shift in his weight and a soft grunt, but please, Matt, do go on. "If she is alive," he doesn't want to use the word 'if, but Frank's having a hard enough time believing him as it is. Matt knows she's alive: he knows, "and she's got the Hand looking for me, they're not going to leave Hell's Kitchen until they do."

"They care about Fisk?" Frank asks. His heart picks up to a please, say no pace. Evidently, he wants Fisk all to himself.

"No," Matt can't think of a reason she would care. Unless Fisk came after him, of course. Then she might slash Fisk's throat and offer up his corpse in tribute. "But if they're still in Hell's Kitchen when Fisk leaves Supermax, they're going to have their hands full."

Frank's heart settles back into rhythm, vengeance assured. "They're not the only ones."

"No, they're not." The whole city is going to have their hands full when Fisk gets out.

"This…the Hand – they gonna come knocking on my door?"

Matt smirks, "You scared, Frank?"

"I'm pissed off, Red. You fucked with my ammo and got ninjas coming after you."

"Not really going to be your problem, is it? You hand me over to the police?"

Frank's trigger finger moves off the top of his desk. He's silent, considering. Matt tries to read him and comes up with nothing. He's a man of his word, Frank Castle, and he did promise the precinct, but he's also a man of action. His standing around has to serve a function.

"Get dressed," he finally orders.

Matt sighs. He digs into the contents of the duffel bag again, finding a cluster of t-shirts shoved in the bottom. He grabs one, tugs it on. The layer of sweat hugging his skin protects him from the abrasiveness of the cotton. That's not a good thing. "Might make it harder for you to staple my body armour to my chest if I'm dressed," but to be fair, Matt's never stapled body armour to someone before.

"Not taking you to the precinct, Red. Got a tub that needs cleaning."

The ammonia has diffused into the apartment. Matt can't imagine what the bathroom smells like. "Isn't that a bit of a half-measure?" he asks.

Frank's glee is fucking audible as he struts off to the bathroom. He's only too happy to feed Matt's words back him. "I was thinking it was more like a second chance," he says sardonically, "Little bit of hope that I don't want to snuff out."

The shower runs the whole time Matt struggles with his underwear and sweats. His shirt is soaked through with perspiration when he finishes, making the apartment smell that much more miserable. His leg feels like absolute hell, the perfect accompaniment to the astringent air.

Frank joins him and, without saying a word, slashes off the bottom of Matt's left pant leg open with a knife, freeing the splint and swollen limb. Then he helps Matt up – still not saying a word – and gets Matt up and into the bathroom.

Gagging against broken ribs is all Matt knows besides the slippery-sour odour of ammonia permeating every cell on his body. He retches nothing, just hangs his jaw as his abdominals spasm. Frank sets him down next to the tub. Water spritzes from the shower against his face, reviving Matt to his agonies. His leg is still broken – surprise, surprise – and has taken to chomping on his knee. His ribs ache with every breath.

A cold shock starts in his forearm. Matt's thoughts clear; his pain sharpens. Frank's reattached his IV, and the sudden rush of saline is dizzying. He didn't realize how dehydrated he was.

Frank turns the shower off. "Don't suppose you've ever handled ammo before, Red." He isn't waiting for an answer, thank God. He pulls a magazine out of the bottom of the tub. Matt listens to the water splashing. He can sense trace amounts of ammonia inside on the bullets. Frank's fingers are singed with irritation, but he doesn't take notice.

He shoves the magazine into Matt's right hand. Matt hisses. Traces of ammonia sting his palm. Frank ignores him, grabbing Matt's left hand and forcing Matt to touch where the first round is peaking. The round is the length of his palm, meant for an assault rifle. Matt seethes; he can't feel any splitting along the cartridge. The brass doesn't feel any different in his hands at all.

Frank has to know that too, but he doesn't mention the cartridge casing. In fact, Frank hasn't mentioned the bullets much. Matt can't remember them from when he was being strangled, and that was Frank at his most geared up. They must not be damaged. Or maybe they're not what Frank's actually pissed off about.

"Each magazine holds thirty rounds," Frank draws his attention back to the bathroom. "Looks like you got about thirty magazines in there. You're lucky unloading these things goes faster than getting them into the tub."

"Yeah, lucky," Matt scoffs.

"Got no one to blame but yourself, Red."

He doesn't disagree. "What do I do?"

Frank puts a coin in Matt's left hand, a quarter by the feel of things, and guides Matt through the motions. Depress the coin down the side of the topmost bullet, through the centre of the magazine. One round after another falls out onto a towel he's lain on the floor.

"Toss the magazines. Lay the cartridges out to air dry." Frank is about to leave him to it, but takes a second to ask, "You need anything?"

Fentanyl is sounding really good right about now. A huge dose of it. Knock him straight out of this ragged, raw state his body's in. Matt shakes the thought out of his head, "No."

"Your leg can't be feeling too good."

"I'm fine." He's not, but Frank has seen too much of him. Relief opens him up; pain helps close him down.

Frank doesn't argue. He stands up and walks out of the bathroom.

Matt slips on the next bullet. The magazine drops onto the towel. His hands shake madly, clouding his senses as they spring to trace the frantic air currents. But the world on fire isn't in his head anymore: it's in his leg, and it's hotter and fiercer than his impressionistic view of the world ever was. Tears drain out of his eyes, and Matt struggles to hold back a sob.

He snaps back into action suddenly, working on pure instinct: snatching the magazine off the towel before continuing. Round after round falls out of the magazine.

Dimly, Matt's aware of Frank taking a step out of the bathroom doorway. How long he's been standing there, Matt doesn't know.

Happy reading!

Additional Notes:

Matt's actions are based off something I learned in a history class about British ammunition in the late 1800s reacting to ammonia from horse urine. The cartridges split, causing the powder to dampen, rendering the bullets useless. According to my research, ammonia may or may not have adverse effects on contemporary ammunition depending on the concentration and the exposure. I say may or may not because the message boards were undecided. Some current gun owners do use ammonia-based solvents to clean corroded bullets; others refuse. Contemporary ammunition has been treated against splitting, particularly military-grade ammunition, which is why, as Matt cleans the rounds at the end of this chapter, he can't feel any damage.