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: Happy New Year, everyone (who considers January 1 the start of a new year)!
I am very excited to be posting again. I enjoyed my holidays at home with friends and family, so I feel refreshed and ready to start finish what, in my mind at least, was only supposed to be one chapter. I'm also hoping that my building anticipation for a cliffhanger in this chapter doesn't render the cliffhanger unexciting.
Usually, I like to post and hope the writing speaks for itself, but I wanted to call attention to the first section of this installment to say that the scrambled-ness is intentional. Whether or not it's effective at conveying what I hope it conveys is another story.
Readers, dear Readers, I really appreciated all the feedback and discussion I got on the last chapter. It's very gratifying and humbling to hear from you, to know what you're enjoying, to read your insights, and see where I can offer clarification. I hope you enjoy this chapter. Cheers!
"He played himself.
Didn't need me to give him hell.
He could be cool and cruel to you and me…
I want to give him pain.
I'm a roman candle.
My head is full of flames."
~Elliot Smith, "Roman Candle"
Chapter Twenty-One
The OR is stifling. Frank's head buzzes with fresh gunfire. Geared up. He's geared up, and the kid called it based on his heartbeat alone.
Frank calls it based on a bunch of things. His ears are ringing. Electric current runs through him. A fresh course of adrenaline makes skin strain over his muscles. Anger hooks in the back of his throat so thick he can taste it, metallic and bloody. His heartbeat amps up steadily throughout, jabbing in his throat like fists on a punching bag. He can't stop listening. The rhythm's double time from his resting pulse, which Frank knows by rote. Spent a lot of time just him and his pulse in a nest, waiting to take the damn shot.
Jesus, he spent a lot of time just him and his pulse and Red in the apartment. On that rooftop overlooking the Dogs of Hell. He's been exposed this entire time: breathing, heartbeats, footsteps. Kid has hearing in spades. Frank tested him the night on the roof: thumbing back the hammer too quietly for the old man, but Red heard it clear as day. Same way he heard that phone call from the table even though the volume was way down.
So, what, that's how all his senses work? When he focuses? Frank's mind reels through the evidence. The pieces of the puzzle that didn't fit together until now: Red retching from the day-old smell of ammonia; him helping to set a bone in a drugged stupor; him smelling the water Frank used to wash up or listening to Frank's heartbeat.
Or, hell, him fighting blind against one man, dozens of men. A whole God damn ninja army.
Frank gets the kid laid out to go under the knife and charges out of the OR. He stalks down the hallway towards the front office. The building's quiet, still. Doors and windows locked. Under the desks, clear. Ceilings, clear. Corners, clear. There's a kennel in the back filled with quiet mewling, the occasion whine, some chirping. It's locked too, and there are no windows inside; Frank checks to be sure.
He inspects the perimeter through slats in the blinds. Streetlights reveal an empty parking lot to the front, a vacant loading dock and alley to the sides, and a quiet waterfront behind. The rooftop's empty by the looks of things too, a black line of shadow under a hazy stream of blue light.
Frank tugs his hand away from his sidearm. He stares down the darkened corridor, the one that's as empty when he first checked it. Just like the rest of this place. God damn it, what the hell is he doing? All this talk about isolating sensory details and heightened senses and that bull. Reading his God damn heartrate. Promising a priest that he won't kill when they have fucking ninjas on their tail. Frank can't believe it. This isn't him; this is the kid. The God damn kid. He marches back to the operating room, cussing internally the whole way.
The OR is dark when he returns. Frank glances through the small window on the door. Sato has shut off all the lights save for the adjustable overhead lamps, and she's stationed them above Red's leg to work. Some of the glow reaches the kid's slackened face and reflects off his perspiration. He doesn't flinch when Sato presses her scalpel into his infected calf.
Frank waits till she's withdrawn her tools from Red's injury before pounding once, loudly, on the door.
Sato starts. She lifts her head and levels a stare at Frank through the dark, her eyes as glossy and jet as her hair in the low light. Frank pays her little mind. He's got eyes for Red, whose head shifts on the table in his direction.
"Too easy, Red." Frank waits till Sato is back at work before slamming his hand against the wall. The thick walls muffle the sound in the hallway. They must buffer the OR completely. Sato certainly doesn't start this time. She is fixed on the leg. And the kid's head stops moving towards the door, instead coming to settle in the opposite direction. He hasn't heard a damn thing.
Frank releases a breath, one he didn't want to admit he was holding, and lets himself back into the OR.
"Are they really after him?"
Sato asks the question as if she doesn't give a single damn about the answer, as if her asking is strictly for his benefit. But there's a small tremor in her voice that tells Frank she likes her face where it is and would hate to lose it.
He gives a curt nod, clarifying, "They're after the people they think took him, and they're pissed they don't have him back." The bloody skull on his t-shirt scratches against his chest. Frank tugs on it. "He telling the truth? These guys are so quiet you have to track them by their breath?"
"I don't know about that." Sato pries another stitch from Red's leg. She deposits it into a small metal bowl with the others. The kid shifts his head, moaning. Frank waits; Red settles back down. He doesn't flinch the next time Sato clips a suture from his calf. "They weren't quiet when they attacked Metro General and took those patients." She draws her next breath slowly, hesitating. Fear runs deep with Sato. "Killed that nurse."
"No telling they'll even show up tonight," Frank replies. He took precautions: the worst route out of Hell's Kitchen through Midtown. Track that, ninjas. The animal hospital's on the East Side, out of their territory, and the car's parked covertly about a block away. Sato didn't cab to the door either. She got dropped off and hoofed it to the side entrance where Frank let her in, and there was no one on her tail then. Besides, the Hand can't know that she's even involved with them.
Sato doesn't buy it. She didn't think the Punisher would show up on her either, and that hardly stopped him. Her voice is cool and quiet, the same way it was when she begged Frank for her life that first night: "What happens if they do?"
Frank takes quick stock of how many promises he has made tonight, especially the one where no one else dies. Not Red, not Red's Doc, nobody. He wants to tell her that he'll take care of it, which he will. He God damn will. But Doc needs to get used to the idea that in a contest between her and the kid, she's collateral damage, at least the kind that Frank can accept.
"Get us out of here, Doc," is all he says.
Sato gets back to work in silence. Frank goes back to staring at the floor.
There's more of Red's flesh to discard. The infection ran deep, Sato tells him, packing the whole area with antibacterial ointment and saline-soaked gauze. She then runs some bandages around Red's leg to hold everything in place. "Between debridement and the antibiotics, his temperature should start coming down soon."
"Then we can leave."
She blinks when he says 'we'. Her jaw quivers under her surgical mask, but her voice is a flat line: "Yes."
Frank nods, taking his leave while she packs up. "Thanks, Doc."
A twitch runs through every muscle on the kid's body. Frank stops, listening, imagining a puff of breath waiting outside the door. All he hears is Red. "Mmm…tomorrow…" the kid works his jaw lazily, chewing through his next couple of words. His hand shifts by his side. Frank waits, but the kid doesn't settle this time. He lifts his chin. His eyes open a crack, and he says, "I'll…I'll do it tomorrow."
The muscle in his leg thigh tenses. Sato pins him by the knee pre-emptively while continuing to working with her remaining hand.
Frank comes to the rescue. He takes hold of Red's wrist, hoping the kid will isolate that sense more readily than sound alone. He doesn't, not immediately. Frank finds the kid's pressure points and squeezes lightly. Red's leg stops twitching. He tilts his ear towards Frank. Now that he has the kid's attention, "Tomorrow, Red. Do it tomorrow."
Red's brow furrows. His eyes slip shut. He tugs his arm away from Frank and fails at freeing himself. Frank has to release him so he can flop his hand onto his waist. Then he slips back under with a sleepy, "Not you."
The small window in the door shows nothing but empty darkness beyond.
Frank scoffs, challenging the kid, "Then who."
Red doesn't give an answer.
Frank's blood is buzzing for coffee. He can stop on the way home, stock up on the last couple things for Red. Meanwhile, he loots through the drawers and cabinets in the room for sterile tools and equipment, fresh gauze and dressings. Bags of saline. The duffel he brought nearly splits at the seams from everything inside it.
Caffeine withdrawal hits a fever pitch. Frank finishes zipping up the bag. They must have a coffee maker in this place. Doc could probably use one, too, after she finishes cleaning up.
Frank's about to leave and Red gets vocal again. Sputters his way through a couple consonants with none of the eloquence of earlier. The sweat on his face as thickened. He looks like a wax figure held too close to the flame. When he moves, he seems to leave parts of himself in puddles on the table.
"It's just the midazolam wearing off," Sato reminds Frank.
Shit - this again. Frank stands his ground, hoping it's a short spell and he doesn't have his face groped again. Moreover, that Red doesn't go through four or five false starts before he finally snaps out of the spell.
The kid rewards Frank's patience by flopping his hand off the table. Frank approaches. He replaces Red's lifeless arm back under the thin blanket. His fingers trail over the kid's palm; it's clammy, but the heat from his wrist is unreal. Red's burning alive, hotter than the church.
Frank places the back of his hand against Red's neck with more force than he intends, but the kid doesn't seem to mind. If anything, he seems more comfortable with the show of force than he does with any other kind of contact. "Shit," Frank moves to Red's forehead, smoothing his palm gently over the brow. He takes his hand away before the kid can try to shake him off, which Red tries to do a second later.
"Fever's up."
Doc breaks pace with her work and grabs the thermometer from her kit. Red anticipates the movement, twisting his head away from her. "Easy, kid," Frank holds him down by the forehead while she shoves the end of the thermometer in his ear. Red thrashes uselessly. He doesn't have the strength. His best defence besides squirming is a series of soft "nuh" sounds, failed no-s if Frank ever heard them. He only stops when Sato retracts the beeping thermometer and Frank releases his head. His face twists in anger. When he gets his hands on them…
Frank rolls his eyes, pats him on the shoulder, but before he can speak, he catches sight of Sato's face. Her eyes widen infinitesimally at the thermometer results before narrowing. She purses her lips into a thin, furious line.
"1-0-5," she pronounces the numbers with surgical precision. "His fever has hit one hundred and five."
Frank doesn't have to be a doctor to know how bad that is. He only has to watch Sato stare daggers into the air above Red's chest. Just in case that's not enough, though, she fills him in on the prognosis, "105 degrees and higher can cause brain damage."
No. He double-dog dares her to say it to his face. Sato meets his stare with her own but says nothing. "Give him more antibiotics," Frank demands.
"I can't."
Unacceptable. "You gave him something for the fever last time."
"For a hemolytic reaction. An anti-pyretic won't help if he's septic."
Frank tears the blanket off Red and gathers his hands together. He starts to move the kid into a sitting position. "We'll run him under cold water. Bring his temperature down."
Sato stops him. "Not if he's septic."
Can't bring him to the hospital. Inviting those ninja-bastards to kill another nurse and disappear the kid like they have Fisk's people in Hell's Kitchen. "No way. No God damn way."
The kid moans, itching to get loose. Frank releases him, unable to contain a growl when he feels Red shivering, hears Red keening softly. He has to look away when Sato intervenes on the kid's movement. Red is trying to draw himself weakly into the closest approximation of a fetal position his dying self can manage, and that spells disaster for his already disastrous leg.
"Fine," Frank declares. "I'll take him to Metro General. Drop him off. But you're going to keep an eye on him. Put a fake name on the charts. Make damn sure he gets everything he needs."
"How is he going to explain this?" she asks.
"He's going to tell him it was me. I'll confirm." Call the precinct like a psycho, cuss out Murdock and his old firm for failing so spectacularly. Exactly what the cops in this town think the Punisher would do. They won't believe he let someone live, but they'll want to believe he fucked with a blind lawyer. Looks good for their manhunt. "Pack up your stuff. Take a cab. He'll meet you at Metro General."
Sato nods shakily, terror finally bubbling to the surface, but she doesn't question him for a second. She dons her coat, slings her kit, and starts out of the OR.
"Hey, Doc," he stops her. Sato has nothing to gain by calling the police now, not unless she's prepared to go down with them. And Sato is nothing if not interested in her own self-preservation. But it's not Sato he's concerned about. "I'm going to be watching you and him. You aren't going to get the chance to so much as breathe a word about the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Not to the NYPD and not to your former employers."
"No one would believe me," she notes. Her surgeon's hands shake, and the motion catches Frank by surprise. Sato buries them in her pockets, self-conscious, "I'll take care of him."
He nods, then tilts his head to gesture her out.
She takes a step towards the door but then whips around. "This…this isn't your fault."
Frank tears his eyes from the dying kid and fires his gaze at Sato. She meets his stare, and there's a sadness in her eyes that he can't place. That he can't figure out. He's seen her focused, he's seen her scared, but here, now, she looks sorry. And not because she couldn't save Red. Sato takes too much pride in her abilities as a surgeon for that. No, she must be sorry Frank couldn't save Red.
He dismisses her. "I know it's not my fault." Two weeks in his shithole apartment, and the wound stayed fresh as a daisy, but one day in Hell's Kitchen and it's burning Red alive. Damn right it's not his fault.
Sato nods. She looks like a completely different person. Guilt drains the intensity out of her features and leaves her vacant. "It's not his fault either. Fasciotomies leave wounds that are prone to infection. You both did well, keeping it clean for this long."
Now she really has to go. Frank feels geared up by a different kind of energy, a similar fury to the few seconds he remembers from the carousel when the bullets started firing and his little girl was shredded meat in his arms. "Get going. Go."
Sato finally departs. Frank sets about gathering Red for transport. The kid rouses as he's lifted into a sitting position, his eyes bleary, the lids drooping. His head falls into Frank's shoulder and stays there, searing through the bloodstained t-shirt. "What's happening? What…?"
Frank keeps his voice low, following Sato's footsteps towards the side door. Red's doing the same. He rocks his head, a pathetic effort to clear the fog. "Oh, she's scared."
"Yeah, well," Frank doesn't blame her. She has a lot to be scared about with the kid coming to her front door. Even with the Punisher to blame. "She should be."
Red's awareness ebbs and flows. On his way in, he notes, "You're scared too," and then slips away.
Frank waits till he comes back to point out, "Not scared, Red."
"Tell that to your heart."
The little shit is smirking. Dying and smirking. Frank shakes him, "Stop listening to my heart."
"Sorry, Foggy…"
Frank scoffs. "You listen to your friend's heart too. Shit, Red." No wonder they aren't speaking. The kid fizzles out of awareness again. Frank lets it go. They got better things to do. "You're going to the hospital. And you're telling them this was me. All of it."
"Not gonna do that, Frank."
"Damn it, Red, stop fighting me. You tell 'em it was me. Tell 'em I thought you were a shitty lawyer, and I broke your leg for being such a smartass."
"You don't keep people alive," Red reminds him.
"Tell 'em the Devil of Hell's Kitchen dragged your ass away from me, then. That'll get you into protective custody, maybe keep those ninjas out of Metro General."
"It'll never work."
Frank wraps him up in Lantom's coat. "Gonna have to ditch this before you get there."
"Frank-"
"This is how it has to be, Red."
"Frank," Red manages to grab the collar of his bloody t-shirt and draw it into a tight fist. He lifts his head, swaying the whole while, until Frank grips him by the back of the neck. The touch galvanizes him, shocking him momentarily out of his fevered haze. "I don't know if I'm coming back."
Frank releases the kid's neck, letting his head drop. "Ah, Jesus, not this…"
Red struggles to get his head upright, "I need you to-"
"It's not the end, Red."
"The Hand is going to take me, and Fisk-"
Everything he tries to say next gets lost in a retch. Frank dodges the spew. He holds Red to keep him from falling off the table. When it's over, he lays Red down, lets him rest a spell while Frank grabs his bag off the counter.
He shouldn't be surprised when Red continues speaking. Shouldn't be, but is, because the bell is tolling. Red should be out. "Fisk is planning to come after me and Foggy."
Frank empties the medical supplies out of his duffel. He won't be needing them. He grabs the kid's phone off the counter and pockets it. Once done, he dons his coat and swings the bag over his shoulder, ready to leave.
Red is still talking. "He wants us destroyed, Frank, for putting him in prison, and once he's out, he isn't going to stop. Elektra…if she's going after Fisk now, she isn't going to let that happen to me, but Foggy…Foggy doesn't know it's coming."
That gives Frank pause. "Why the hell not?"
The kid shakes his head sadly. He wears guilt way better than Sato does. It comes naturally to him. "Because I didn't tell him."
"You didn't tell your best friend that his life was in danger? Jesus, Red, what the hell kind of asshole doesn't tell their best friend his life is in danger?"
"I thought I could protect him," Red's jaw shakes violently. He bites down on his lower lip. Tears eek out of his red-rimmed eyes. "I thought I could protect everyone, but I…" His next few breaths are rapid-fire. The sounds of Red steeling himself against the painful truths he's been avoiding: all million and fucking one of them. "I can't stop you from going after Fisk. I won't be able to. But please, please, Frank, please protect Foggy."
"You should've protected him yourself. Told him what he was up against."
"I know."
Frank picks at his bloody t-shirt. Scrubs at the bullet in his brain. Hears himself promise Red's priest that no one else dies tonight; promise Lisa tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow…STOP. He charges over to the table, hauling Red up into a sitting position.
"Frank, please. Please!" The kid's fingers are scalding as they ball into his t-shirt and twist. "You're going after Fisk anyways. His men will be coming for Foggy. Keep an eye on him, please. Please, Frank."
"You'll tell him yourself. Which is what you should have done." Frank takes him by the back of the head and give him a small shake. "I got you, Red. You hear me?"
"But if they do-"
"I got you." He means it. Absolutely.
Frank braces one arm against the kid's back and catches his legs with the other. The heat is shocking against Frank's forearms. Two degrees shy of brain death, and all Red can think about is a stupid decision he made and saving his friend's life. Fuck, he doesn't even fight back when Frank lifts him off the table.
There's a snap of electricity cut short. The lights in the room shut off, and the building in plunged into darkness.
Frank lays the kid back on the table, nabbing a colt from its holster the second his hand is free from under Red's legs. He can hear the side door opening, but there are no accompanying footsteps. And Frank would know: Sato left the OR door open behind her.
Oh, shit: Sato.
The image of her stricken face under the raw OR light beams amidst the chaos in Frank's head. Guilt. Fear. He should've known. Should've fucking known. Took his gun away from her head for a second, and she calls her old ninja pals.
Frank's eyes are still adjusting to the dark, but he remembers where the door is well enough to take aim.
Red stiffens below him, listing hard towards the sounds only he can hear. "They're here," he whispers. His whole body shakes. "I can…I can hear them. Frank, you can-"
"Stop, Red."
"You can still get out the front. They want me. They only want me."
Frank places his hand on Red's sternum. "Stop."
The kid's voice quavers, "I don't know how many of them there are."
It doesn't matter. He has enough bullets for them all.
Red tugs away from Frank suddenly, gasping for every breath. "Oh, God. Oh, God…"
Frank understands immediately. He moves his gun away from the doorway and takes aim at a target that will actually give Red's girl some pause before she attacks.
He points the gun at Red. The barrel fits neatly under his jaw. And the kid – the kid leans his head up, right at home on the mouth of gun.
Frank gets his breathing under wraps, stacks his face into flat lines, but he knows his heart is an uncertain rumble. He rubs a hand over Red's cheek in case the kid isn't listening.
"We need to talk," he finally tells the darkness.
A fine point of metal comes to rest at the base of his neck. Fucking behind him.
"Yes," she agrees, "Let's."
Happy reading!