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 meant to post this last night, but this chapter was the challenge that kept on challenging. I tried a bunch of different things, nearly scrapped most of it in a fit of delirium last night; went to bed thinking there were four things I needed to change in the morning and only remembered two of those things when I woke up…
This was in addition to the difficulties I had finding the right song for this chapter. Initially, I debated between Lifehouse's "Broken" and Ed Sheeran's "Save Myself," but neither seemed to fit Matt's state of mind, to say nothing of the fact that I already had a chapter called "Savin' Me." Later, I picked Mo Kenney's "Unglued" (and that song is brilliant. Please, please check out Mo Kenney). That song ended up getting cut when this chapter turned into more of a training montage.
I had finally settled on Eminem's "Till I Collapse" when I changed the ending of this chapter, thereby necessitating a different song. At a loss and at my wit's end, I went to Spotify and typed in "Try." Sure enough, the first song had everything I needed from the melody to the lyrics. I can be really and truly daft sometimes.
Readers, I had to say a big, huge thank you to each and every one of you for giving this story your time and efforts. I couldn't do this without you. Cheers!
"Where there is desire there is gonna be a flame.
Where there is a flame someone's bound to get burned.
But just because it burns doesn't means you're gonna die.
You gotta get up and try."
~P!nk, "Try"
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Matt breathes as slowly and shallowly as possible. can't recognize his apartment through the brutal landscape. There isn't a safe place for his senses to land. Blood and vinegar make for a wicked combination of smells. The sound of Frank's footfalls on the rooftop is amplified by Sato's corpse slapping against his back with every step. Matt tries to mask the sound with his heartbeat, but if he lets his respiration get as quick as Frank, he's going to run from the apartment, and there's nowhere for him to go.
He counts the minutes using Elektra's breathing as a guide. Five minutes, Frank told him, meaning Matt really ought to be standing. He should be heading down the stairs if he wants to be on time. But not a single part of his body is prepared to carry him down to that car with Frank Castle in the driver's seat and a corpse in the trunk.
Of course, he isn't prepared to wait for Elektra's army to show up either.
Matt pulls his cell phone out of his pocket without really knowing why. He has no one to call. The device vibrates in his hand from unchecked notifications: one new voice mail, one missed call from Foggy.
Oh, Christ, not now. Not now, Foggy, please.
Matt unzips his backpack and shoves the phone deep inside, burying it along with the rest of his guilt. Slinging the pack over his shoulder, he gets up and onto his crutch.
A soft hum emerges suddenly from the bedroom. Elektra shifts on the pillows into a more comfortable position and sighs. Her voice emerges, soft and lazy, like she's waking from a pleasant nap. "Is the doctor dead?"
Matt doesn't answer; Elektra hums again, deeply and contentedly. "I smell vinegar. Someone's been cleaning up bloodstains."
"Why did you bring her here?" Matt demands.
Her voice is low, groggy. All the makings of honesty without the actual honesty. "I wanted to know that you were all right."
"You could have done that yourself."
Another sigh: beleaguered. Fine, if he wants to play this way. "I wanted to show you."
She slips into silence, feigning sleep, her heartbeat a coy murmur from the bedroom. Matt digs a fist into the arm rest of his couch. "Show me what?"
"…who he is."
"I know who he is."
Elektra clarifies, "Who he really is." She draws a languid breath, bringing her heart rate back down to an unreadable pace. "I thought if you knew he wouldn't change, you'd leave him. But I failed to anticipate how much he'd change you."
"I haven't changed."
"Oh, haven't you?" Elektra's gaze creeps under his skin. "The Punisher killed six people today, five of them at your behest."
He tries to move and doesn't. "Good-bye, Elektra."
"You've just helped him dispose of the sixth."
"I didn't want her to die! I tried –!"
He stops himself. This is what she wants, exactly what she wants: she wants him to stay. Matt wipes the errant tears from his eyes. "Look, if you want to fight with me –"
"I don't want to fight you."
"You've got a hell of a way of showing it."
"We could save each other, Matthew. Me from the Hand, you from Frank Castle."
He scoffs, suppressing his doubt, his fear that she's right. Maybe he really is changing. "And who'll save us from each other?" She doesn't answer, because there is no answer. There is no future for them together. There's no future for him and anyone. "You brought her here to die, Elektra."
"You brought Castle out to kill," she notes.
Matt's anger overpowers his guilt. Temporarily. The guilt is always there. "My leg isn't going to be broken forever, and the second I'm back on two feet, you and Frank Castle and the Hand are getting the hell out of my city."
She snuggles into his pillow with one last hum. He hears the smile creeping across her face as she slips back into sleep. "We'll see."
Matt hobbles a few more steps towards the door before she adds, "Oh, and by the way, Matthew: that conversation we were having back at the penthouse?" Yet again, his body won't move. He absorbs the blow of her next three words with his back before he gets the hell out of the apartment.
The sound of her parting promises haunt Matt on the lonely, painful walk to Josie's. He's reliving it when he sinks into the passenger seat of the car. When Frank asks him what's wrong, it's all Matt can do not the start a fight then and there.
"Drive," he orders, and mercifully, Frank does as he says.
"Matthew."
He jerks awake. No trace of Elektra save for the voice in his head, and that's drowned out by the sounds of the city. The Bronx is still asleep.
Frank marches through the apartment, out the door, and down the stairs. The sound of the car starting rips through the morning like a gunshot, and Matt winces, nerves snapped and fraying. He curls up tighter on his side – arms around the waist, knees against the wall, running as much tension as he can through his muscles to bear the brunt of what he's done.
He can hear the corpse in the trunk; he swears he can hear it. They didn't ditch her on the drive back. Must be where Frank's off to now. Matt pieces through the sounds. Sato's weight must make some kind of change in how much power the engine has to exert or how the car's parts rest together as a whole. And he wants that, deserves that much at least. The sound, the smell. Sato's death weighs on every other part of him; his senses shouldn't be immune. They feel unbearably light in comparison to the rest of him.
But the vehicle vanishes into the soundtrack of the city along with any remaining trace of Sato, and Elektra's voice comes back to him from last night. Matt unravels to face the apartment. Artillery fumes ripple in the air above him. He drops his face into the pillow, focusing on the scent of his pack under the cot. Home radiates faintly through the canvas and cushion.
He reaches, checking the zipper for signs of intrusion despite knowing Frank wouldn't leave any. Despite knowing that Frank wouldn't, period. Full stop. Matt winces again from the weight of that knowledge. Once this unspoken fact, now this glaring reality, solidified and articulated, that there are lines that Frank doesn't cross when it comes to…when it comes to…
Matt unscrews his expression and shoves his forehead onto the pillow, waiting for the phantom chains across his chest to loosen. Somehow making it harder to breathe helps. Fighting for air makes it better. He doesn't stop until only the now-familiar weight on his sternum remains. Then he stretches through the zippers into the backpack. He finds his prayer book for support, leather soft as down feathers from age. In his head, he's reciting prayers, a myriad of them, one after another, against the onslaught of shit from last night.
God, what a shitty night. What a relentlessly shitty night in an endless parade of shitty nights. Vinegar and blood from the hardwood. Frank charging o'er the rooftops with a corpse flapping against his back and chest. The voicemail from Foggy he can't bring himself to listen to. Elektra in the bedroom. His heart this frantic tick amidst it all. He screwed up. Damn it, he screwed up.
Matt releases his grip and digs deeper, taking hold of Dad's robe. The red of it screams up his fingertips as loud as it did the day Dad brought it home. God, he doesn't deserve it. Doesn't deserve any of it. The robe is stupid. It's needless, an indulgence. But Elektra loves other people's indulgences. She loves undermining them, loves proving just how needless they are. And everything he does is an indulgence to her. Dad's robe, Sato's life: stupid, needless indulgences.
Matt wipes the tears from his face on the pillow. He stops biting his lower lip before he draws blood. God damn it, he was there. He was right there. He could've saved her; he should've saved her. Fuck his leg, fuck Elektra, fuck Frank, fuck excuses - he should have.
His hand dips further into the bag, nails chipping along the wood of his old clubs on their trip to his old pants and shirt. The old bandana he used as a mask.
He should've saved her; he should've stopped Frank instead of asking him for help.
And next time, he will.
A few hours of meditation quiets his broken limb enough that Matt can make a lap of the apartment. There's a good twenty-or-so feet between him and the far end to work his good leg. The fire escape stairs will help too, though his injury throbs at the thought. A clear path runs through the centre of Frank's place, perfect for working his core, and then there's the punching bag rife with Punisher smell that Matt can't wait to get his fists on.
He resists. For now. Without the crutch, the new cast messes with his equilibrium, tricking his senses. He can feel the sides of the cast hugging around his injury, considers it added bulk, but when Matt moves, he overcompensates. It's his own weight that he's competing against, not the cast. His first few hops nearly land him into the desk.
It takes several laps for him to get his bearings. By then, he's shaking. His head spins. The swelling around his break is still up from yesterday, so his leg is a steady fire under the cast. Matt forces himself back up, but he can't make it to the kitchen. His right leg refuses to move no matter how much he burns, well aware it won't hold his weight for another lap even for an ice pack. Matt sighs, compromising. He hobbles towards the bathroom, gripping the wall tightly to carry his own wretched weight.
The bath is so good it's awful. Hot water gives his guilt new weight, new intensity. Matt feels it rush through the skin to press upon his bones, and it's holding him together as much as it's tearing him apart. He's more undone when he finishes, guilt compounding instead of washing away, but at least when Frank gets home, Matt wears nothing of his workout.
Not that Frank's looking. He pops into the apartment to fill his thermos with coffee, not stopping once on his trip to the kitchen. He says, "Evening, Sunshine," in passing.
"Fuck off, Frank," Matt snarls.
He thinks he catches Frank sighing. The sound's so quick, Matt can't be sure. "Will do," Frank replies. He gets his coffee and leaves.
It's like that for days – a greeting and a nickname of increasing condescension from Frank, a curse from Matt. Then silence. No more late nights on the fire escape. No more swapping stories about fights or family. Frank's out: in the parking lot working on the car or off doing God knows what around town. He takes most of the artillery with him. Matt keeps an ear out for sirens. Listens to the police scanner and checks his phone for news. Whatever Punisher is up to must be slipping under their radar though, or maybe he's building up to something.
All the more reason, Matt thinks, to work.
Recovery is slow, painful. Every day he manages to be back on his feet, he spends another off, shrunk into a ball on the floor or sprawled on the cot learning. Tracing new aches to their source, figuring out how to work his body without his left leg. Pushing his anger down, down, down inside him when he faces another setback. When he slashes his forearm on a hard fall into the desk or wrenches his right ankle when he lands funny heading down the fire escape stairs.
He's getting there. He has to be. His appetite is back, his swelling is down, his clothes start to fit better. One night, Matt ventures out on the fire escape and manages to get himself up onto the rail. He shakes and rattles but eventually finds his balance with one foot on the rail and one hand on the edge of the roof above. The change in altitude is dizzying, and he wants to stay up there forever with the Bronx crashing through him in waves. Wants to dive headlong into the torpor and let it wash him towards the sirens in the distance.
Frank's footsteps head into that bathroom, and the inside of Matt's skull goes red. He balls one hand into a fist, swearing inwardly that the only way he comes down is if the bastard makes him come down. But the window slams shut with a mutter of, "Fucking freezing." The bathroom door closes. The shower runs so hot that Matt feels the steam through the bricks at his back.
The next day, alone again, it's the pace that bothers him. The slow pattern of hop, stand, hop, stand: there must be a better way. Only his calf is broken; the thigh can still pull weight. So Matt hops, lowers, the meat of his right leg burning from the exertion of holding himself steady. He props his hands on the floor to alleviate some of the strain. Then slowly, tentatively, with every sense fixed on his broken leg, Matt lowers his left knee to the ground.
A wail of pain builds below the knee where the muscle pulses against the break. Matt recoils as if scalded, half-expecting Frank to pop out from the kitchen grumbling about shooting his shin off at the knee. Yet after a very long, very slow throb that ripples all the way to his scalp, Matt calls his body's bluff and tries again. Fire builds in his calf with the added weight on his knee. He pays careful attention, ready to pull back before the muscle shifts the bone.
But then the pain stops rising, and Matt's balanced perfectly in a crouch.
He holds the position for longer than he's able before easing himself off his foot and laying back on the floor. Sweat drains out of him. He can't stop shaking. Pain renders his legs dead weight.
Dad's voice comes back to him, loud and clear: "Get up, Matty. Work to do."
Matt makes the sign of the cross and gets back up.
His right foot shakes underneath him, and the whole apartment sharpens into focus. The chain holding up the punching bag screeches in his ears.
Matt lays the first punch into the bag using his approach to generate some power. The leather is chafed and raw and covered in Frank: his knuckles, his blood. There's a thrill in breaking up the scent for a second, in sending it scattering. And when it comes back, when it's Frank in front of him instead of a bag, Matt punches again, this time with his left.
He takes it slow, pacing himself against observations of his limits. Paying serious attention to the differences in each blow, what muscles he's moving, where he's generating power from. Minding that he doesn't twist too far on his ankle, that he keeps his wrists straight. The burning in his right thigh that once seemed sentimental becomes a full-fledged fire, a desperate scorch to stop. But Matt finds a rhythm staying in one spot, by adjusting his height. Can't bob and weave on one leg, but he can dip into a crouch, come back with a jab. Try his hands at crosses and uppercuts.
Frank killed her. The bastard killed her in cold blood with his bare hands and left her to rot in a trunk until morning before dumping her in the river.
Matt lets out a yell. He sweeps his next fist up into an overcut, one that comes down exactly where Frank's face would be on the bag. The blow lands; the bag jerks back, chain clanking. Air rushes to fill the space the bag once occupied, sparking with particles of Frank, of leather, of sweat, of work, of the Devil himself. Of the devil unleashed.
That moment between the blow landing and the fight ending: it's bliss.
The bag swings back to centre with a squeak of chain, and Matt drops. First to his knee, where he rests a bit, chest heaving for breath. Then he lands on the floor, sliding back until his shoulder blades hit the wall. His broken leg pulses with red heat. His shoulders and arms and fists aching gratefully in the aftermath. The blood on his knuckles from where the bag bit back fills Matt with a grim satisfaction.
He takes a cold bath this time, anger seeping out of his pores until the water's warm and his insides are ice. His knuckles sting as he lifts himself out. Nothing a little meditation can't fix, but bare-knuckle boxing clearly isn't the best idea if he's looking to be his old self again.
The clothes under the bed are all worn, laundry service having ended the same time Frank and him stopped talking. Matt slips into the least-worn pair of sweats and scrounges for a shirt. The cleanest he can find is a hoodie, and one sniff explains why: it's Frank's. He's worn every shirt except Frank's since Sato was murdered.
Matt crumples the sweater into a bundle and chucks it back where it belongs, back to Frank's side of the apartment. He runs his hands through the inside of his duffel, shuffling the books to scoop out handfuls of Punisher-polluted air until he catches a whiff of home again. Home without the stink of vinegar, without the copper tang of blood. Before. He wants to go back to before, when he was alone.
He checks the side pockets. One's empty. The other smells faintly of Fogwell's. Shit – more Frank to clear out. Matt rips at the contents and makes to throw them across the room along with the hoodie, but he's caught by the slight scent of his own sweat. They're his hand wraps. Frank must have grabbed them along with the clothing.
Matt's hands drop into his lap. The rest of him drops straight through the floor. He clings to his hate, his rage: it's justified, it's right, but it's also gone. Slipped right through his fingers from the gaps in his fists from trying to hold onto hand wraps and silk sheets. There are lines Frank doesn't cross and lines he does, and try as Matt might, he can't help tripping into them, struggling himself straight into knots.
He drops the hand wraps across his lap and buries his face in his hands, scrubbing his hair, grounding himself in the present. Frank murdered Sato, and he murdered her because that's who he is. He murders people. He isn't going to change, he isn't going to get better, and Matt's an idiot for thinking otherwise. All hand wraps prove is that Frank didn't clean out a gym bag properly before he filled it with clean clothes and a silk sheet.
Stupid, needless, an indulgence. One Frank mocked but didn't destroy.
Matt swipes at the night table, knocking it to the floor. Glass shatters. Water dribbles through the cracks in the hardwood. Pill bottles clatter. The hand wraps ripple and snap when they're tossed into the mess.
He grips the edge of the cot, taking it with him when he rises. It's not enough to dump the bedding; Matt has to flip it. He has to tear at the frame until the whole bed is dismantled, until his corner looks how he feels. But none of the ripping or the punching or the yelling is enough. Matt's left swaying amidst wreckage of his own, every wound having been self-inflicted.
The thunder of his own heart takes on a soft echo. Another heart, lightning fast, thrums from outside the front door. Matt listens to the rush of hesitation rifling through the air. Rina's arm rising, falling, rising, falling. Hazarding a knock only after hissing a curse at herself in Russian. "Hello? You're making a lot of noise. I'm…I'm…" her heart speeds up, reeling before settling at last on, "…I'm sorry."
Matt has no idea how to respond. He starts by running a hand through his still-damp hair, palms bristling from the spikes of his too-short locks. The air coils with dust and sickness; sweat and splinters. Floor chipped from him throwing the furniture into it; pill bottles, broken glass, and water everywhere. "I'm sorry, Rina. I'll keep it down."
She shuffles on the other side of the door, shoes scratching against the floorboards nervously. Gearing up for a complaint? No, Rina's heartbeat is a-flutter for an entirely different reason. "Are you…is everything all right in there? Do you…did you fall or…? It's not my business, but…"
Her worry seeps under the door like an incoming tide, pooling around Matt's bare foot. "I'm…" but the word won't come. None of them do: not fine, not okay, not all right. He swallows hard and tries again, reaching as he does to tug one of his hoodies out from the mess he's made of the cot. The fabric is ripe with scents, but at least it will cover the bruises mottling his chest. "I just…I knocked something over."
Rina mutters another apology along with, "It sounded like you were fighting," as Matt searches for his glasses amidst the pill bottles on the floor. He finds them at last, throws them on his face, and hops to the door.
A piece of broken glass splits through the bottom of his foot. Matt nearly faceplants into the door from the sudden shock of pain. He grabs the handle and heaves himself upright, groaning as the shard sinks deeper into his skin.
He opens the door to keep from screaming.
Rina's heart breaks the sound barrier. She takes one very large step back into the hallway. "I'm sorry."
Matt holds out a hand, trying to put her at ease. Her terror pulses against him. "No, I'm sorry. I'm -"
"Your business is your business, I just –"
"- having trouble getting around today."
"- I was thinking you had fallen, and last time you fell, you nearly bled to death –"
He sighs. "I am sorry for that too."
Rina can't hear him. Matt can barely hear himself over the terrifying rush of her circulatory system. "- and Frank is going out so much. I wanted to be sure."
"I'm fine, Rina." There it is: the word that failed him earlier, back now that she needs to hear it. "I'm all right. I'll be -" he shuffles, just barely suppressing a grimace as the glass cuts through the meat of his foot. "-I'll be more careful."
One of her heels moves back even as she's taking a step forward. The horror in her heart subsides briefly, entering that decisive rhythm Matt vaguely recognizes from the night she found him dying on the fire escape. "Your foot is bleeding."
"It's fine."
"There is broken glass on your floor."
"Yeah, I stepped on some. It's fine. I'm fine. I'm sorry I bothered you."
Rina huffs, dissatisfied in a way that resists Matt can't internalize. She isn't angry with him. She raises a hand towards the door and takes another cautionary step back. "I can...I can help with that. Your foot."
Matt sighs. His hand shakes at the thought of closing the door. Rina's heartbeat moves over the skin of his face and neck, a soft caress of vibrations, and slowly, it dawns on him how long it's been since he's spoken to someone. Since he's been close to someone.
The smell of artillery overwhelms his pathetic, desperate need for company. He pushes the door slightly, his heart sinking for the knowledge that Rina won't come back. She's too scared and too skittish to risk rejection a second time. "I'll take care of it, Rina. Thank you."
"I can help," she insists. "Sorry, please, just…I can help."
The pressure in his foot mounts. Matt feels the strength in his leg wavering. He could lock her out, Rina won't press, but then what? She calls Frank? Matt can't stomach the thought. Frank coming home to find him reinjured, to find the apartment in disarray. Cot in ruins, broken glass on the floor. The ensuing conversation plays out in Matt's head as a series of huffs, groans, and eyerolls. Punisher dipping into the kitchen to refill his Thermos before marching back out the door for more murder and mayhem; smug in the knowledge that the Devil of Hell's Kitchen doesn't have a leg left to stand on. Nowhere to go, no one to turn to.
His throat balls up into a fist so tight Matt can't swallow. The best he can manage is to give Rina a small nod before letting the door swing open.
Happy reading!