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: This chapter owes a great deal to Dichotomy Studios, who came to the rescue when I got stuck on a patch of dialogue. The conversation really clarified what had to be said here. Thank you for the help!

This chapter was originally going to be from Frank's POV, but I ran with Matt's for a little longer, so there are definitely questions about the restraint that's being shown here. I'm looking forward to exploring the aftermath of this as the story progresses. Nobody is going to take what happens in this chapter lying down.

Readers, dear readers, I so appreciate the wonderful support I receive from you! Thank you for the discourse in the comments section. You are lovely. Please, enjoy!

"I'd be better off red.

If all the things I've learned would just fall out of my head

'Cause a blade of bluegrass left a scar on my neck

And it ain't quit hurting yet.

I'd be better off red."

~Angaleena Presley, "Better Off Red"

Chapter Twenty-Six

Frank gives the ninjas a solid kick to the face on his way into the apartment. The pained moans from the doorway cut short, but there are heartbeats thrumming slowly amidst the Punisher's footsteps. The three ninjas are unconscious in the hallway. Not dead: unconscious, injured, but alive.

Matt waits for the other shoe to drop; it doesn't. Ninja pulses continue to tread softly in his ears, undercutting the hard-hitting bassline of Frank's respiration. The smell of blood washes into the apartment, prompting Matt to close his mouth against the taste. It doesn't go away: Frank carries the scent with him, along with the smoky, peaty aromas of gunpowder and lead. He's still armed, and his sights are set in their direction.

"Put the gun down, Frank," Matt orders him.

"We alone?" Frank asks.

He flicks the gun in the direction of Elektra's head as she bobs up over Matt's shoulder. The movement stirs up the scent of blood again. Matt picks through the castoff, counting donors. He smells one in particular, aged. The smell is ruddier, headier, and when the scabs bind to sutures or steri-strips, it becomes something else entirely. Splintered, almost. Punctuated. Like sparks from a campfire stinging his throat as he breathes.

Matt tries to ask. Elektra interrupts him, "Plenty more where that came from."

Frank doesn't shoot her. Wants to: the muscles in his arm tense, his tendons pull, but he never lets the motion reach the trigger. Matt hisses for her to shut up, slipping an arm to her side so he can push her out of Frank's sights. Hard to move on one leg, but he manages, using Elektra for balance.

"Wasn't talking to you," Frank circles around them, drawing nearer. "We alone, Red?"

"Yeah," Matt replies quickly. The taste of blood splashes onto his tongue. Aside for the ninja carnage in the hallway, most of what he senses on Frank is from Frank from a few days ago. Sunday, bloody Sunday. "Put the gun down."

"Yes, Frank, put the gun down."

"Elektra," Matt snaps. God damn it: she doesn't have to hear Frank's heart charging to know how damn close he is to pulling the trigger. She can see him closing in, a shark in bloody waters.

"What? He can put the gun down, can't he? Unless there's someone else he's planning on shooting."

And she would just love that. One bullet would resolve this mess they're in so quickly. "Go on then. Get on with it."

Matt holds his position in the line of fire. "He's not going to shoot you." But Frank's pulse is damn difficult to read when it's geared up. No telling what the hell he'll do, only that he's going to do something. Matt tries harder to reach him, "You're not going to shoot her."

She chimes in again, loving this. Revelling shamelessly. "Exactly. What would be the point?"

"Elektra!"

Frank keeps him guessing. "Won't have to, we get the hell out of here."

Elektra wraps a hand around his shoulder, another on the side of his neck. She releases a small, airy laugh when Matt shirks her off, insisting, "He isn't going anywhere. Especially if you shoot me."

"He's coming with me." Regardless of whether Frank shoots her apparently.

"He isn't going-"

Matt interjects, "You injured, Frank?"

The apartment descends into awkward quiet, unconscious ninja-hearts pitter-pattering around the homicidal rage billowing in the living room.

Elektra is nonplussed even as her breathing flutters. She takes the liberty of answering for Frank, "I suppose he does look as if he's been in a fight. But there are an awful lot of guards in this building, Matthew."

"Four days ago." Those sutures sure weren't there before Sunday night. "He was injured four days ago."

She shrugs innocently. Her fingers trickle down Matt's spine. "Well, I didn't fight him."

The blankness in front of his eyes is infuriating. He gets none of the softness from her performance, only the cold, calculating thrill of her vindication against his back. "I didn't," she asserts again, more convincing this time.

Matt's disappointment bubbles up in his chest. He tracks his senses around Frank to pick out the injuries: sputtering breath says broken nose, broken capillaries and bruises run hotter than most of the skin, the blood trail centers largely on his back from a sutured laceration. Frank has been through the ringer. He stayed with Matt and got his ass handed to him, and the three ninjas in the hallway are still alive, and none of this makes any sense except Elektra shirking responsibility.

Her fingers brush the inside of his wrist. "Matthew."

He tears himself away from her. The motion nearly sends him to the floor. Frank takes a step towards him but doesn't get to him before Elektra does, and before Matt can say or do anything, the gun is back in play.

Elektra beams in victory. Suddenly, it seems amazing that Frank hasn't taken the damn shot. That he would resist putting a bullet in someone who had him beaten. Someone for whom death is a non-issue. Maybe he sees it as a waste of bullet. Maybe he sees it as a waste of time. Maybe it's not about Frank at all. Those heartbeats from the hallway definitely aren't for his benefit, and neither is keeping Elektra unscathed.

Matt deflects, the rawness of it all too much to bear. He extricates himself from Elektra's grasp. "Are you alright, Frank?"

The slight hitch in Frank's respiration, that familiar stutter in his heartbeat, it brings Matt right back to the apartment in the Bronx. To those please-s and thank you-s that Frank didn't know how to abide. The common niceties that give Frank's gunning for kneecaps a serrated edge inside Matt's skull. The sigh that follows brings Punisher back. There's still a gun involved after all. "Yeah, Red. I'm good. You good?"

Matt nods mutely. He can't actually muster the words with Elektra's breath coiling around his spinal cord.

"Alright, so what's the plan, then?" she chirps, peeking over Matt's arm. Frank charges for her. Matt shoves her back behind him. "You've stormed the palace, found the fair damsel un-distressed. Now it's off to some seedy underbelly for another case of septicemia?"

Him: "Elektra."

Her: "Frank?"

Frank: "Red."

"I'm a little surprised you're even here," Elektra continues. "Can't have been easy playing nursemaid to this one for two weeks if the Punisher had to hang up his vest to do it. I did you a favour, taking him off your hands."

"You had him beaten," Matt restates. He blocks out the sound of Frank's pulse struggling to stay on beat. Something about getting beaten, about Matt's fixation on his being beaten, inspires the same irritation in the Punisher as a thank you.

"I did nothing of the sort. I was with you." And she was. Her tone, her respiration, it's a promise. She isn't lying to him.

But the unspoken truth is burning against Matt's esophagus. Old blood and sutures. Frank's heartbeat resuming its machine gun fire. "They're your ninjas."
She doesn't deny that, but she talks around it. Her voice becomes severe, indignant. "Matthew, I was with you. I wasn't going to leave you. What happened after that was up to him."

Matt pulls away from her. He doesn't leave Frank's line of fire, but he can't bring himself to be in her reach. "You said he left."

"He did leave!"

She isn't lying, which makes it worse. Matt struggles to hold himself upright as his leg spasms. "I can't believe you…"

"I said he was fine, Matthew. And he is. He's fine!" but the way she coos afterwards promises he might not stay that way. "Aren't you, Frank?"

Frank doesn't shoot her. He moves, grabbing a handful of Matt's shirt and giving it a tug. "We're getting out of here."

Elektra lunges into action. Matt shoulders Frank off and out of the way, using the momentum to knock aside Elektra's hand as it approaches. He fights her off, gently at first, but she's so damn fast. She's always been so damn fast. Eventually, he gets her by the wrists. Her pulse is jackrabbit-quick under his palms, a hummingbird slamming against the walls of a cage, and her respiration only becomes more unruly when Frank tries to enter the melee.

"Frank, no!" Matt tosses his head. He catches the Punisher's elbow to his brow for the trouble. Then Frank's twisted a fist into the collar of his shirt and is pulling him back, out of harm's way. Neither strike is hard enough to knock him off his foot, but that war-drum heartbeat tells him that won't last. The broken leg only buys him so many small mercies.

Elektra seems to sense that too. She weathers their exchange of blows with the thinnest amount of patience. The power in his muscles never wavers. Like Frank, she's one twitch shy of pulling the trigger, of unleashing hell, but also like Frank, she stops just shy of following through. One bullet tilts the scales in her favour; any more fighting tilts the scales in Frank's.

Nevertheless, Matt doesn't dare let her go. He can't let himself trust her, not for a second. Not even as her voice gets firm and earnest: "I didn't want us interrupted."

Frank sneers, "That worked out real well for you, sweetheart."

Elektra's heart starts into its homicidal pace. "Shut up," Matt snaps, sighing when Frank's heart amps up to match it. "And get off me. Give us a minute. One God damn minute, Frank!"

"Ain't got a fucking minute, Red."

"We could have plenty-"

"Stop, Elektra!" Matt's skin crawls. He doesn't want to be near them – either of them – when they're like this. When they're gnashing their teeth and bearing their claws and ready to rip each other's throats out. He shoves Elektra to the side, yanks himself out of Frank's grip, dodges Frank's rebound, pushes at Elektra one more time…

Then his right leg gives out completely, and Elektra is using his grip to pull him towards her, and Matt can't stop himself. He physically can't stop himself from crashing into her. Not without propping his broken leg on the floor.

Distantly, he's aware of motion: metal sweeping through the air beside him – the gun lowering at last. An arm hooks around his back and tears him upright. Matt reacts. He drops one of Elektra's wrists, slams his hand against Frank's face, and pushes away.

But Frank doesn't let go. He keeps his arm on Matt for support. And he doesn't have to say it; the words are etched into Matt's brain. I got you, Red.

For a long moment, the only heartbeats he hears belong the unconscious ninjas in the hallway. The promise to Lantom has long passed. But there they are, those heartbeats. Gradually, Matt leans onto Frank's arm until he isn't falling over anymore. He releases Elektra's other wrist dumbly.

She draws a few steadying breaths to keep from launching herself at Frank. Her restraint is audible. "May I get his crutches or will you try to shoot me for that too?"

Frank doesn't dignify that with a verbal response. Matt can feel his glare through the blackness though. It causes Elektra's heart to skip. Hardly the same thrill as murder, but she'll take pleasure where she can get it.

She gets Matt propped up on his crutches, taking advantage of the proximity to touch him a few more times. Matt isn't paying attention. He's listening to the pull of sutures in Frank's back, counting them. Wondering if there are more stitches than ninja heartbeats scattered throughout the apartment building. Wondering how they got here, to this moment, with Frank all but dragging him out of the Hand's custody. A clear shot at Fisk, and Frank came here instead. Came here and let the ninjas live.

The buzzing in his head reaches a fever pitch. Matt hacks away at it decisively, but he keeps coming back to those heartbeats and how they don't make sense. How none of this makes sense, and despite that, or perhaps because of it, he trusts it anyways.

Matt shuffles back on his crutches. Towards the door. Those heartbeats. "I'm going to go."

"Fucking finally," Frank moves to leave too.

Elektra's voice comes back, softer and more desperate. "Matthew, no."

"I told you I wasn't staying."

"And I told you that you don't have to. But don't leave like this."

Frank snarls, "He's not staying."

Matt softens the blow, "I'm not staying like this."

The confidence returns to her voice. "But you'll stay with the Punisher?" Her laugh is low, caught in the back of her throat under the claws of everything she could say. "Trading an army of mass murderers for an army of one mass murderer – quite the hypocrite, aren't you?"

"Your ninjas are still alive." Nope – saying it out loud doesn't make it any more believable. Matt has to listen to the garden of resting pulses blooming in the hallway.

"I'll send their regards to the Irish, the cartel, the Dogs of Hell…"

She's distracting him. Matt doesn't let her. "And how many have the Hand killed, Elektra, in this city alone?"

"Then there's no difference, is there? Except with me, you might actually walk again."

"He's walking away right now," Frank points out.

Matt could punch him. Instead, he turns back to Elektra. "Why is it so important for me to stay? What do you want from me?"

Elektra's heartbeat winds down to a slow, sad crawl. She opens her mouth to speak but never gets the chance. Behind them, Frank heaves a sigh. "Jesus, Red, what the hell does it matter?"

"It matters to me."

"Those bastards I left in the lobby are gonna start waking up and calling their friends soon."

So there's more. More than the three that Matt would hear. He tries not to give Elektra the satisfaction of seeing him leaning towards Frank, of seeing him interested, but she notices immediately. Her pulse flares. "Better get going," she says in clipped, measure tones. "Wouldn't want to keep the Punisher waiting."

He ignores her. Ignores Frank. "Tell me why."

She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial purr. "I tell you, will you stay?"

"No."

Elektra's smile hits the world on fire like so much gasoline, but her heart isn't in it. Matt senses her facial muscles trembling, forced into an expression they don't feel. Her face falls a second later. "I told you I wanted to be good."

He sees where she's going with this and no. No, he won't. "My staying won't make you good. It can't. You have to…" the heartbeats from the hallway knead against his back. They undermine what he's about to say or confirm it or God, he doesn't know, "You have to want that for yourself."

"I do! I do. But I can't do it alone, not with the way I am. Not with…the Hand."

"Red."

Her pulse is a promise. It's steadfast and loyal and everywhere, crashing down upon him in waves. "You make me better, Matthew."

"Red!"

Elektra has her hands on him again, on his waist and at his cheek. "Please, Matthew."

"God damn it, Red."

Punisher gears right back up again. This time, he's gunning for Matt, who can't think. "Just a second, Frank."

"You fucking with me? She's playing you! She's been playing this whole time!"

Her heartbeat says otherwise. "Please."

Frank tugs Matt by the scruff of his neck away from her and takes the place between them by force. Matt perceives them, flared and furious, two cobras about to strike. But they never do. It's a battle of silent promises that next time, this is different. Next time, Matt won't be there. Next time, it ends bloody.

"You listen to me," Frank growls, "you're only standing here because I know God damn better than putting one between your eyes. But you lay another hand on him, and he's the last thing you touch."

Elektra's heartbeat doesn't break pace. "It'll be the last thing you do."

Matt rubs at his sternum with one hand. He grabs Frank by the shoulder with the other. "Stop this."

Frank says it quietly, in a single breath: "God damn it, I will drag your ass out of here, Red. And I'll put another bullet in each of those ninjas on my way out."

"Say the word, and I'll stop him, Matthew," Elektra replies sweetly.

Her words are cold water on his senses. Matt feels awakened once they're said. It's a push, a soft one, but between the two of them, he's toeing the edge, so it's enough to send him falling. Matt follows the coppery taste of Frank's sutures back to reality. He comes round so she can look him in the face when he speaks. "You already tried that once. And you won't ever do it again. You're going to leave him alone."

"The Hand won't."

"Let 'em come."

Matt elbows Frank in the side to shut up and gets grabbed by the collar again. He uses his forearm to break free. "You and the Hand. You leave him alone. You leave this city alone."

She makes a sound that sets Matt's blood to boiling. A soft, sweet sigh for the soft, sweet, broken thing before her. He rips that sound right out of her: "If you ever want to see me again."

Elektra immediately falls silent. "This isn't over."

"No. But I'm leaving. Goodbye, Elektra."

He knows she hasn't taken her eyes off Frank as she says, "I'll see you later."

They leave her in the sitting room, alone. Phone disconnected. Defeated in ways she hasn't even begun to express but will be sure to, soon, in lurid, brutal detail.

Frank lets Matt leave first but after determining Elektra isn't going anyways, he trails closely. He nudges when there's a body or a pool of blood to avoid, for which Matt is grateful. The smell is so overwhelming he can't navigate. There is gore louder than even the sound of heartbeats and blood drops around him.

They don't say a word until the elevator doors are closed around them and they're headed towards the ground floor.

Matt starts, "She isn't going to let this go."

Frank has gone back to being a brick wall. Non-presence. Inhuman. "Don't expect her to."

The hum of the elevator swells between them. Matt puts a stop to it. They have come too far for Frank to disappear now.

"You didn't kill them."

Frank says nothing. Even his heartbeat seems muted.

"The ninjas," Matt reminds him. "You didn't kill them."

A sigh brings Frank down to a disinterested rhythm. "She's just going to be bring 'em back anyways."

"Wasted a lot of ammunition."

No answer. Frank's heartbeat struggles to feign apathy. The beating climbs the walls to get the hell out, get anywhere but here. Abort mission.

Matt rubs it in. "Didn't quite put them in the ground."

Finally, a reaction: "You want me to finish the job on my way out?"

Matt leaves it alone; he got what he wanted. Besides, there are more pressing questions to ask. "How did you find me?"

Frank stays as cryptic as ever. "Long story."

"Why did you find me?"

The elevator amplifies Frank's respiration. It's a different sort of geared up, somewhere between incredulity and alarm. Matt feels Frank giving him a stunned once-over, starting at his feet. By the time Frank's looking him in the face, what started as a question has solidified as a sad, statement of fact between them.

"Told you," Frank says quietly but with no less force, "I got you, Red."

They reach the ground floor. The doors open, and a torrent of blood gushes in, carrying with it the gentle rumble of unconscious heartbeats.

It's too much, this. The ninjas left alive. Elektra unscathed. Frank responsible for all of it. Matt braces himself before he can leave the elevator. Frank gives him a minute, then presses a hand to Matt's shoulder to direct him out of the building.

There's only one thing left to say, and Matt doesn't dare say it too loudly. The world is a fragile place. Delicately balanced and threatening to topple at any moment. "Thank-"

"Don't thank me."

Matt nods. "Good to have you back, Frank."

Groaning. "That's code for 'thank you'."

Happy reading!