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: Defenders was a grand old time, wasn't it?

I wish I could say that travels were to account for how long this chapter took, but I had difficulty approaching the fallout of the previous installment. I got the characters into something season two didn't prepare me for, and while this whole fic seems like an exercise in that, I never get used to my own sense of utter bewilderment at where this fic has gone.

Writing from Frank's perspective was one of those surprises. There are gaps in this chapter, purposeful ones, because he has a habit of letting things stand in his periphery. I hope those moments are evident without being heavy-handed. Matt is coming back in the next chapter.

Readers, dear Readers: I don't tell you enough how grateful I am for you, and even more than that how lucky I count myself for the readership that I have. Give yourselves a big pat on the back. Thank you so much. Enjoy!

"You're dripping like a saturated sunrise.
You're spilling like an overflowing sink.
You're ripped at every edge but you're a masterpiece,
And now I'm tearing through the pages and the ink.
…and he's blue."

~Halsey, "Colors"

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Detectives haven't hit the streets. Explains why Red's so quiet. He's waiting to be in the clear before he attacks. Can't risk exposure by grappling with the Punisher when there's a corpse in his living room.

Frank wants a second – one God damn second – of stillness. Of silence. One second without that billboard light cutting across his visions, those shadows lurking from every corner; without listening to Red's argument about morality playing through his head on repeat. One second to appreciate that he can't hear gunfire right now. One second to revel in a job well done.

But there's no time. Red's Girl made sure of that, put them in close quarters so no matter who got the Doc, Red would have a good swing at them.

"Nothing else for it, Red," Frank tells him. "You're thinking she could have walked out of here, but to what? I gave her my word. And even if I didn't, your girl –"

Red isn't quiet, but he's fast. Cops must be too far to hear him clunking from one side of the room to the other. Frank dodges the first blow. He's primed for the second. Red still manages to grab him by the collar and rattles off another series of punches. They're weak; he's got no foot to pivot on, and so help him, he fucks up that leg again…

Frank grabs the kid before he can. He puts a fist through Red's defensives, drives it up and into Red's Adam's apple; hooks his arm over Red's shoulder and his hand behind Red's neck. Then Frank pulls back and Red struggles. With only one leg for balance, tugged onto a hard angle, the kid's swings start to lose momentum. Hard to keep up an attack when he's almost dragging on the floor.

He lets out a yell like that one from the night with the Dogs, like Frank's got him in chains. And it's can't just be the fist on his throat he's railing against: it's the girl, it's the dead doc, it's the broken leg, it's the neverending shitshow of his life story.

I fucking get it, Red. "If it wasn't me, it was your girl or those ninjas," Frank promises. The kid has to see that.

"That's not why you did it," Red snarls at him. "Don't try and justify this to me, Frank. She wouldn't be in danger if –"

"If she hadn't been at that butcher shop. If she hadn't been deep in the shit."

Red yells again and jumps, getting his good foot back underneath him. Frank takes advantage. He takes the first from Red's throat and catches his left knee, yanking the limb off the ground as he shoves the kid backwards. Red catches him by the shirt, but Frank drops forward, bringing Red straight down onto the hardwood floor. The kid rails on him anew. Frank tugs himself upright, Red's broken leg slung over his arm for protection. He jostles the limb a little for emphasis that the kid can't feel through his temper. "Jesus." Frank groans. This has to fucking end.

He puts one foot on Red's chest. Drops his knee onto Red's good leg to pin it. Somehow manages to keep the God damn broken limb from getting mangled in the process. Fuck. "Listen to me, Red." The struggle below him continues. Frank digs his foot a little deeper into the kid's chest, gritting his teeth and pursing his lips and God damn, Red still putting up a fight so good it's not his broken limb that has to worry. He's gonna break an arm trying to get free.

And then he's still. Scary still. Drawing back into himself, less on retreat than a chance to regroup. He did that on the rooftop, too. Slip into silence before he came back swinging. Frank gets an exit strategy in order as he speaks. "You listening?" No response save for Red's ragged breathing. The level of control he's demonstrating is tissue thin. Frank's working with milliseconds. "Those meds aren't gonna last forever –"

"Fuck you, Frank."

He keeps talking, "- and eventually the ninjas are going to come looking for your girl."

"Get the hell off of me."

Frank's heel drops a little deeper into Red's chest. He tightens his grip on the kid's broken leg. "Gotta get rid of that body."

Red squirms underfoot, unraveling into a fresh fight. "No."

"Nothin' else for it," Frank mutters. He looks at the Doc's corpse, crumpled against the wall, head flopped on a broken neck. "You want to explain to the cops how it got here?"

"We can't…we can't just destroy her body."

"I can." Ninjas mystic powers are no match for the Hudson. Hardest part will be getting Sato's corpse to the car. Can't risk being spotted by going out the front door; he'll have to haul the body across the roof, down the fire escapes.

He looks back to find Red making that face, the one where he's trying to keep all his righteousness bottled up against the cold hard facts. Because he knows, just as well as Frank: "You leave her here or drop her at the cops, those ninjas or your girl finds her. And they work their crazy magic on it, bring her back."

"She's nothing to them."

"But she's someone to you," Frank reminds him. "Your girl knows it. You think Sato got dragged here just for me?" Now he has the kid's attention, because he's right. They both know he's right. And Red's pissed, but he's starting to see reason, starting to see himself in all this. "They'll bring back Sato as many times as your girl needs. No amount of hope'll change that. You want to do right by the Doc, you get rid of what's left of her so there's nothing for the Hand to find. No blood trail, no body."

Kid's bottom lip is quivering something fierce. Trying to build a rebuttal, no doubt, or put together some other plan. Too lost in thought to launch a counter-attack.

Frank eases up on detaining him some, makes it a little easier for him to breathe. "You know I'm right, Red." He lowers the broken leg to the floor and steps back, releasing Red as he rises to his full height. The kid pulls himself into a sitting position against the coffee table. Seething. Not enough skin of his tiny frame to hold in that rage boiling away inside him.

Leaving Red to it, Frank begins looking for something to wrap the body in, something that doesn't belong to Matt Murdock. Something the Hand won't notice is missing when they come by the place for Elektra. He goes to the kitchen and digs under the sink for garbage bags.

"Why didn't you just kill her?" Red asks.

It's weird: the way the light cuts across his face, the direction he's turned his head, Red's looking at Sato's corpse. Got his eyes full of her. Frank tears his gaze from the sight and gets to ripping garbage bags down the seams, ignoring the glow of Red's skin against Sato's slumped form in the shadows. "I saw the needle in her pocket. Gave her a push to use it."

"That wound was shallow."

"Yeah, well," Frank makes a pile of plastic sheets on the counter, "Couldn't have her going into shock before she put your girl out. You got duct tape?"
Red doesn't answer. "You used her."

The anger runs through him, hot and fierce and hungry. He didn't get his fifteen seconds of ceasefire after he killed the Doc, Red sure as shit isn't getting a conversation. "I've been using her the whole time. Duct tape, Red. Let's go."

"That night at the animal hospital –"

"Jesus Christ, Red."

But the kid's got a point to prove. "- you let her go."

"I was letting her go to Metro General to get you admitted under a fake name, not to call in her old friends on the ancient ninja brigade."

"And if she'd done that," oh, fuck, the kid's using sarcasm; now it's serious, "you'd've let her live, wouldn't you, Frank?"

"Stop, Red."

"She was terrified from the moment you walked into that butcher shop –"

"She had every reason to be."

"- and no reason to think that you'd ever let her live."

"Don't make excuses. No fucking excuses."

"She didn't have a choice."

Frank slams the cupboard he's searching. "And who's fault is that, Red? Who's fucking fault is that? I didn't put her in the butcher shop. I didn't sign her up to do work for the Hand."

"No, you just put a gun to her head."

"You're God damn right I did. And I would've put a God damn gun up to the head of anyone else in the city if it meant saving your life."

Something crosses Red's face, something more than just the billboard light. A twinge. An expression. It's gone as quickly as it appears, but Frank needs to clear the image of it from his head. Wash the fucking words out of his mouth about things he'll do to save Red's life. "I told her the only way out of this was doing exactly as I said, and I said to keep you alive and keep her damn mouth shut. Not my fault she wanted to fuck up one of those two things. Now, where is the fucking duct tape, Red?"

The kid tosses his head towards the cabinet along the wall. "Bottom drawer, right hand side."

Frank storms over to it. "Why you gotta make everything so difficult."

Red lets out one angry laugh and parrots him snarkily. "Why do you gotta make everything so simple."

Sato's corpse cleans up quickly. Frank wraps her up in plastic and secures the sheets with tape. The blood on the floor is all that's left of her.

Fight seems to have drained out of the kid some. He's inching up onto his good foot, ear poised in the direction of his new cast. Frank gets up, retrieves the damn thing. "Don't waste your breath telling me you can do this yourself," he growls, but Red's not looking to waste anymore of his breath on Frank. He sinks back onto the floor, brooding, and Frank's content to leave him to it.

The old cast comes off, revealing sweat-damp dressings mottled with dried blood. Red's surgical incision reminding them that not nearly enough time has passed since his third operation to be running around Hell's Kitchen. The limb's so swollen that there's no comfortable way to bind it even with the new cast's lightness. The Velcro straps cut into Red's injuries, and he winces despite his fury.

Jesus Christ, the red of the thing. Might as well be wearing his costume again.

Frank finishes with the cast, gets back to standing. "You got bleach?" Red shakes his head. "Ammonia?"

Another shake of the head. Figures. But Red gets himself up and moving. "Vinegar," is all he says by way of explanation. Takes him a couple hops to balance himself out. The new cast is a lot light than his old one, that and his leg can't be feeling too pretty. He traces an uncertain path around the sofa using his hands to guide himself more than Frank's ever seen him do. The blank expression on his face is easy to ignore until the billboard light sweeps across him. Red's bottom lip looks thinner than usual, because he's biting it. He's biting on his lower lip.

Frank stops him from going any further. "I'll get it." And then, under his breath, "The hell you think you're gonna do – help? How are you gonna haul a bucket across the room on one leg? Jesus, think." And even if he does that, the kid's just gonna fuck it up anyways, muddle those delicate senses of his with vinegar and bloodstains. "Where?"

Red shrugs once, and the anger in his movement fills the whole room. He mutters the location. Frank checks out the window on his way past to find the detectives' unmarked car gone.

"You got a jacket or something with a hood, grab it now," he orders, pulling some cash from his pocket and shoving it at the kid. "Then you head out the front door. Take a cab –"

"I'm not leaving."

Frank understands immediately: the kid's not leaving Elektra. "Would've done her before the Doc if I was gonna kill her."

A scoff, a light one. Barely audible. "You let Sato get her out of the way for you."

"And why the fuck you think I did that?"

The question is out of his mouth before he really thinks about it. And rather than try and explain it away, Frank lets the silence stand. He shove the bills back in his pocket. Grabs the rest of the shit to clean up the blood. Sets a bucket to fill in the sink and mixes it with the rest of the kid's vinegar. The kid lingers at the fringes of his vision.

Frank shuts off the tap. "She'll stay here. Sleep it off." Red doesn't move. "You're gonna be riding with a dead body, you stick around."

"I'm already an accomplice," Red notes darkly. "What's accessory after the fact?"

"Fair enough. You still need a hood to cover up that blubbering face of yours."

Red springs up from the couch and hops down the hallway towards his front door. The scowl on his face is easier to stomach than his pout.

Frank nabs the bucket from the sink along with a towel and stays focused on the task of sopping up blood. Red's audible behind him, hopping back from the front door. He's a black spot in the shadows until the billboard light sets his cast alight. Bobbing in Frank's periphery, he sounds like he's unlatching and tugging at a section of the wall. A latch opens. Hinges squeak. He gathers what sounds like fabric into a backpack, and then he's out, pushing the wall shut again to lock it.

Damn. Missed that when he came by the apartment.

"Got yourself a little devil-cave, Bruce Wayne?" Frank asks.

Red takes a seat on the couch. "I've still got some secrets."

"Uh huh." Right. He's not an open book. Frank finishes up with the last of the blood on the floor. The air reeks of vinegar, and there are still swirls of pink visible in the surface from the billboard light.

He grabs a towel and mops up the mess, then disposes of the rest of the evidence: washing out the bucket and tossing the bloody rag and towel into another garbage bag. He takes in one hand, heaving Sato over his opposite shoulder. He casts a glance at Elektra, makes sure she's asleep on the bed, before starting up the stairs to the roof. "Five minutes. I'll meet you outside of that dive bar on the corner."

"Yeah," Red agrees.

Sigh. That tone. Resignation as deception; he makes it so God damn easy. "You're not coming."

A bigger sigh. Kid's thought about this obviously. "Where else am I gonna go, Frank?"

Less a question than a statement of a sad fact. Frank adjusts his grip on the corpse over his shoulder. "Told you from day one, you wanna go…"

Red slows it down for him, but all the meanness in his voice ain't for Frank. "Where else am I gonna go?" A scoff, and then another sigh. "I can't…I can't risk anyone else."
"Then don't," Frank fires back. He's about to say more but Red cuts him off.

"I'm safest with you."

The silence Frank wanted, the one he was craving, comes crashing down on him with an almighty vengeance. No gunfire in his head, no flashes of phantom explosions. No Maria, no Lisa, no Frank Jr., no nothing. Just Red's quiet voice and his utter, terrifying sincerity. "I'm safest with you." The man who just broke a woman's neck in his living room, who took out five ninjas earlier, who cracked a bullet off this kid's head what feels like an eternity ago and has strangled him multiple times since. They've both said how fucked up this is, but it's even more fucked up now.

Frank can't look at the kid, the sad expression of resolve on his face in spite of everything. "Dive bar," he says, "Five minutes." And then, for who knows what reason, "Don't make me come looking for you."

The menace creeps back into Red's voice: "Thought you said if I wanna go –"

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. "Don't make me come looking!"

And Frank gets the hell out of there before either of them can say more.

Frank hauls ass across the rooftop; Sato's corpse ain't so light anymore. Once he gets to the stairs, it's easier. The weight is good for his momentum. The final drop is difficult to negotiate. He can't risk the noise with everything happening in Hell's Kitchen tonight. Instead, he carries her down on his last jump, absorbing the hard jut of bones against his shoulder.

He slips the body into the trunk behind some equipment. Closes it up and locks it. The city swells inside his head then, filling all the empty spaces, drowning out the kid's confession. Drowning out his promises, every one of them. They should have quit a long time ago, but Frank looks back and can't figure out where it would have made sense. How they would have justified it. With him being such a dumbass lately and the kid trying so fucking hard to save everyone.

He drives around the block, scanning for unmarked cars or more detectives. They must have fucked off, gone to check on those ninja corpses scattered around the church. The rooftops are clear. Whatever else Red's girl said, she came alone. It's the kind of psychotic confidence he expects from Red, but there Elektra goes proving two can play at that game.

Five minutes, the kid's not there. The dive bar has an empty front. Neon lights sizzle in the window: Josie's. Frank scans the alley on his drive past. Still nothing. "Fuck, Red, don't make me. Don't make me." He drives around the block again and it's still nothing. The kid isn't walking out of his front door. Maybe he hasn't left the apartment. Or maybe he has and fucked off into the night on one leg.

One more circle, and suddenly, there Red is, dipped into the alley with his hood pulled low, one crutch clamped under his arm. He hobbles towards the vehicle and sinks into the passenger seat, His face is turned towards the door and stays that way, hidden, at least directly.

His reflection in the window says more.

Don't ask. But out the words come: "The hell happened?"

"Nothing."

Frank grabs the kid by the shoulder and twists him around. Red allows Frank a good view of his profile and nothing more. "What is it, Red?"

Red doesn't even fight himself loose. He stays in Frank's grasp. "Nothing. Let's go, Frank. Drive."

Happy reading!