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: The word 'flurrious' appears in this chapter and is not a typo. Well, I mean, technically it is, but I kept hearing that word in my head when thinking about Rina's heartbeat, so I used it.
I originally intended to have this chapter posted Friday in celebration of my birthday; unfortunately, this installment came with a great deal of resistance. First with Matt and Rina's conversation, which occupied me for several days, and then came my indecision about the conclusion. There were no less than five possible endings for this chapter, one of which I really, really wanted to include, but it just didn't make sense. Thankfully, I think the ending I went with will make what happens next a more logical development.
Readers, dear Readers, I can't thank you enough for sticking with this fic. I wouldn't be this far if it weren't for you and for your kind words and your insights into the characters and your just generally being awesome. Know that. Thank you.
"Maybe if I tell myself enough
Maybe if I do"
~Ingrid Michaelson feat. Great Big World, "Over You"
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The piece of glass in Matt's foot is a far cry from a compound fracture, but Rina's attitude towards both remains the same. Her skittishness takes a backseat. She targets the injury with broad strokes and programmed efficiency. Matt's guided into Frank's rolling desk chair. Rina grabs towels from the bathroom, Frank's kit from under the sink, and plants herself on the floor. She doesn't bother with gloves or tweezers. She fits her tiny fingers under the lip of the glass, reminds Matt that this will hurt, and then yanks. Glass shreds against the muscle; fresh droplets of blood slap against the floor.
Fear takes hold of her heart again, and Rina's voice is meek once more. Her head twists, agitating the air, as she no doubt surveys the mess he's made. "You must have fallen a lot."
Matt nods. The piece of glass pops out of his foot with a squelching sound that turns his stomach. His blood rushes hot and cold in his veins with embarrassment.
Rina clamps a towel against the wound, hard. Her dainty thumb is a needle straight through Matt's foot. "The records…" she says quietly. "You and Frank…you don't have to do that. Not that I'm ungrateful. They're just not necessary."
"You don't have to cook for us," Matt notes.
She is quick to reply, "I cook too much." But after a long moment of knowing silence passes between them, Rina continues, "You are healing. You need your strength. Frank, he…he usually has these…these packages. Military rations. MREs?" Matt can hear Rina's face twisting in disgust. "No good."
She unclamps the towel from his foot, inspecting the wound. A sigh escapes her. She presses the towel to his foot and his foot to the ground. "Put pressure on that," she says, rising. "It shouldn't need stitches, but I can call your doctor to be sure."
"No," Matt says, sharper than he intends. He softens his voice before speaking again to keep from frightening Rina. "I'm sure it's fine. Thank you."
Rina believes him, or at the very least she doesn't press. Her heartbeat starts rising again the second the job's done, but instead of running, Rina looks for another task. She heads to the kitchen, starts digging through cupboards.
It's too much. Matt moves to get up. "Rina, you don't have to –"
She returns with more supplies: an ancient dustpan and broom. "There is glass on the floor."
"I can get it."
"No! No." He senses her hands between them gesturing. Rina's terror is palpable, so much so that Matt has a hard time discerning if she wants him to stay sitting for his own protection or hers. Likely both. "You stay. Keep pressure on that. I get the glass."
Matt stays seated for her sake. He listens to her movements: the slash of the broom across the floor, the trickle of glass gathering into a pile, the patter of her heartbeats. Work only takes the edge off her proximity to him. Rina still clears the path to the door first and foremost, giving herself an easy getaway.
She takes care of it all: the glass, the water, the pills, the nightstand; the cot, the clothes, the quilt. She even forces the window above the cot open, letting in a fresh stream of breeze. Matt's foot has knitted by the time she finishes. Rina wraps the wound in a bandage, smoothing down the edges of the medical tape as she secures the binding.
He's about the thank her, but Rina's off and moving, muttering a litany of apologies and Russian phrases and something about the fridge being empty under her breath. She moves so quickly that she slams the apartment door shut behind her, prompting her to issue an apology from the hallway. Her footsteps flutter back to her apartment.
The order Rina leaves in her wake punches Matt in the stomach. Bandaged foot, clean space, fresh air. If she only knew. If she only knew the things that he had done, the people he helped put down, the body he helped Frank hide. And now he's throwing tantrums, attracting the neighbours to come coddle him. "You want her to change your diaper too?" Stick asks, prompting Matt to climb back onto his bleeding foot and hobble to the cot.
She's sorted everything. The backpack's under the pillow, the duffel is in the middle stuffed full of dirty clothing. Quilt and sheets are folded neatly at the foot of the cot. Matt eases himself down, back into the space, waiting for the floor to fall out from under him or the ceiling to crash down. Nothing happens. Chill splashes against his back on its way in from the window revealing the sparseness of the apartment, the vacancy. Matt's whole body fills with a familiar ache of home, because the space reads like a smaller version of his flat in Hell's Kitchen. His own solitary corner of the world made all the more solitary with Frank's absence.
Matt pulls his hands off the cot before he can tear it apart again.
Rina returns and puts a hot plate of food in his lap. Red meat in the drippings, potatoes and carrots and garlic. Nothing fancy, but the richness of the smell sticks to Matt's insides, a poultice around those wounds he's let fester.
He feels a wry smile creep across his face despite himself. "I can cook," he tells her.
"There is nothing here to cook," Rina replies. She paces unsteadily to and from the door, her heartbeat telling her to run as the rest of her tries to stay. Eventually, she compromises, taking a seat in Frank's chair. Away from Matt but with a clear path out of the apartment if she needs.
The loose fabric of her shirt twists and creaks between her fingers in a struggle to find purchase. To find stability. Matt isn't the only person who hasn't had company in a long time.
He finds a fork on the edge of the plate: heavy and ornamental. Real silverware, a little tarnished with age, probably inherited from the same person who stitched together the quilts Rina's been lending him. Matt pokes at the plate, identifying things by texture before taking a bite.
Conversation comes slowly. Matt doesn't know where to begin, if he even should begin. Rina's nervousness eventually compels him to ask, "How long have you known Frank?"
"Since he moved here."
"Did you recognize him from…before then?"
Rina's hands stop playing, coming to rest in her lap. Her heartbeat doesn't let up, but her breathing slows, projecting a calm she doesn't feel, an innocence she can't claim. The life drains out of her voice. "He must have one of those faces," she replies.
Matt's heard her tone all too often: from the interrogation room. Rina has all the airs of a cornered suspect. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean…" but what the hell did he mean? He's supposed to be Frank's brother.
"So act like his God damn brother," Stick scolds him.
"He and I," Matt begins, searching for words and finding the truth fits oddly well, "aren't close, and with the stuff on the news, I never thought he'd have neighbours, let alone neighbours who'd cook for him."
Rina's heartbeat settles somewhat. Takes Matt a long second to realize that he's smiling. She straightens in her seat, shaking off her earlier performance. "I know he is a good man. That he protects people." After a pregnant pause, she adds, "He protects you."
Matt plays chicken with that same sense of dread from when Rina left the apartment, the one that speaks of quiet and abandonment and erasure. But the catastrophe he's waiting for never arrives.
He takes another bite rather than speak.
Rina waits until he's finished chewing before asking, "Sorry, but…why are you and Frank not close?"
There are too many reasons. Matt settles on the easiest. "We're just very different people. We always have been."
"Then-" but Rina stops herself, reconsidering. She tries again, faster this time, "But you are – I'm sorry, just that…you are staying with him. Close or not, he brought you here. Twice, he brings you back here."
Brought him here, fed him, cleaned him, tended to his injuries, got him silk sheets and books and clothes and killed the doctor. "Yeah," Matt agrees, taking another bite.
"Maybe he wants different?" Rina offers.
Matt shakes his head. "He doesn't want different."
She flinches. "Sorry…"
"No, no, Rina, don't be. I'm sorry." He prods at what's left of the meal on his plate, sighing. Directing his anger back where it belongs. "I'm sorry."
It takes her a long time to come back to the conversation from where she's fled, and when she does, Rina's voice is almost a whisper. "Maybe he needs different."
Matt lets the accusation drain out of his voice before speaking. "Does he seem different to you?"
She shrugs. "He did when you were gone."
"You said he was worried."
"He was worried. Focused. He wanted you back, and he wanted you well. He…I can't explain, and it's not my business," and she's sorry for ever bringing it up according to her tone, "but he was different. For Frank, he was different. Being alone…it changes people, especially when they lose somebody close."
Matt holds the bite of food in his mouth, on-guard against the sour taste building in the back of his throat. Frank's furious explanation of, "To save your life," plays on repeat in his head amidst a torpor of other thoughts. Of Dad, of the Castles, of Foggy and Karen, of Elektra. Because Rina is right: it isn't simply being alone. Frank and him haven't been alone for a long time. It's loss, and more than that, knowing what you've lost, that changes people.
But what the hell did Frank lose when he was taken by the Hand – a mission? What the hell are they to each other anymore? Matt forces himself to swallow and sits there, not speaking, the answer arriving in the form of a feeling akin to wings unfolding in his chest, each stemming from pressure on his sternum where Frank's taken hold and refuses to let go.
Rina stays to watch him finish everything on his plate. She takes the dish from him before he can get up to give it to her. "You rest," she says, backing towards the door. "I will come by again if Frank is not back. If it is not trouble."
Matt shakes his head, a little bewildered to have her leaving after so much time in the same room. "It's not trouble. Just don't trouble yourself."
"It's no trouble for me."
He pulls himself out the tailspin they're dragging each other into with a sincere, "Thank you, Rina. For everything."
His hand is working its way out, looking to shake hers, but Matt remember Rina's skittering heartbeat at the last second and stops. He raises his palms in surrender before making a point of putting both hands in his lap.
The posture draws Rina out of her terror. Her footsteps scratch across the floor back towards him. Matt senses her hand in the air, the faint floral scent of the perfume on her wrist, coming towards his head. She rethinks the motion at the last second, moving down for his shoulder; rethinks that too and simply retracts. Matt hangs onto the sensation of her body heat on the air for as long as he can. He buries his other thoughts quickly before Stick's voice can find them: that it's been too long, too damn long. That he misses it.
Rina inches out of his reach, stammering, "Your hair. It's short."
Matt nods. "Shorter than usual."
"It looks good."
The sound of her heartbeat fills the room like a flock of doves. Matt breaks into a wild smile. "Thank you," he says.
Rina swallows. Hard. "Okay – sorry – bye."
She races out of the door so fast it slams behind her. Matt hears her apologizing again from the hallway on her way back to her own apartment. The sound of a needle scratching on vinyl follows, then Chopin fills the building and drowns out the vacancy of Frank's apartment.
Meditation is easy to achieve afterwards. Matt sinks out of awareness to a calm headspace. Dark and warm, pulsing softly with his own heartbeat. He doesn't start when the rolling barrage of footsteps hit the stairs, interrupting Vivaldi. He simply blinks, shuffling around on the cot to get his good foot on the floor. His right foot stings and pulses from the wound left by the glass, but the deeper muscle tension is gone, replaced with a comfortable looseness, a flexibility, that hasn't been there for a long time.
Matt waits for the door to fly open, for Punisher to come inside and find the Devil of Hell's Kitchen waiting for him. He waits for the fight he's been craving. But no sooner has Frank hit the landing then Rina's music stops. Her door opens at the far end of the hall. Footsteps scurry out, a pair of cheap ballet flats slapping on the floor. Rina stops, her voice bouncing off the curtain of hair she uses to hide her face. "Uh, excuse me? Frank?"
Amazing how quickly his pulse shifts. From a march to a resting rate, Frank has nothing but patience for Rina. "Ma'am?"
"Uh…I just thought you should know…your brother, he…"
Frank's heartbeat climbs by degrees. "Ma'am?"
"…he fell."
The last vestige of control drains out of Frank. He rounds, heartbeat roaring into action, and practically charges through the door into the apartment.
Matt's wears his smirk on the inside, but he lets Frank know it's there. "Hi, Frank."
He forces himself to feign nonchalance as Frank's respiration bounces between enraged and relieved. Matt bars his mouth against the flood of questions and accusations rising in his throat. He revels in the satisfaction of pulling the Punisher out of attack even as doubt blooms inside him as to whether it was an attack that brought Frank charging into the apartment.
Frank paces off the last of his energy, a scribble of frustration in the world on fire: palm scratching against scalp, heart pounding through his chest, footsteps knocking against the floorboards. He finally comes to a stop by the desk, and his heartbeat sinks into a rhythm of carefully controlled frustration, one Matt recognizes all too well. It's been his soundtrack since breaking his leg.
"Red," Frank replies casually.
Rina is in the doorway, her flurrious heartbeat cutting the tension between them like a knife. "He has a cut on his foot, but he is all right. He said he didn't need a doctor."
"Not that we'd have a doctor to call anyways, right, Frank?" Matt asks.
Frank changes the subject: "Only got one foot left. The hell did you do?"
Punisher's pulse is a steady throb of why-I-oughttas that only fuel the strength behind Matt's glower. "I'm fine."
"He fell," Rina provides. "There was some broken glass. I clean."
Again with the change in subject: "You trashing the place, Red?"
Matt is ready to reply, but Rina injects, "He fell." Her heart scrambles into her throat. Matt listens to her struggling to swallow it back down into her chest. Frank must be looking at her, and regardless of how he's doing it, Rina is terrified. Her voice goes soft. "He fell. He's fine, but he fell."
Frank's withdraw from the room is so gradual that Matt's confident he's the only one who feels it happening. The room goes from static to stable with a few deep regimented breathes – in, out, in, out. "Thank you," Frank says at long last, scrubbing his head as he does. "For lookin' in on him – thank you. You shouldn't have to do that."
That last part is directed at Matt. A whole sentence made up of shrapnel and barbed wire that digs under his ribs the way Stick's voice scrapes inside his skull – "Pussy."
Rina's presence is a balm. She holds fast between them, her nervous energy forcing them both to cool their heels. The whole atmosphere in the room changes a second later when she stammers, "Also, your fridge is empty."
"Empty?"
Rina responds with a racing heartbeat and emphatic nodding and a quiet, "Yes. Empty. No food. He should have food. Not from packages. It's…" her voice gets even quieter. "…it's not my business."
Matt flashes her a soft smile, aware just as she is of how hollow her words sound. Rina places a hand on the doorway, probably to keep from fleeing back to her apartment, and hurls one last quiet statement to the room. "And he should not be alone so much."
There. She's finished. Rina digs a heel into the floorboard in testament to her seriousness right before she apologizes under her breath.
Frank's bearing down on him; Matt's senses prickle from the friction. Heartbeat, breathing, the placement of his feet on the hardwood floor, his stillness. A collection of tiny sensory details that scratch at Matt little by little, until finally, like emery to a match, he ignites in a shrug against the sensations.
The self-satisfied thrum of Frank's heart follows. "No, he shouldn't be."
Rina's more than a little shocked at having been listened to. Her nod is a stern slash through the air. "Well, good day."
"Ma'am."
"Rina," Matt tells her retreating form. He marks the sound of Rina's door closing, of her music resuming. Of her backtracking through the apartment until her heart is pressed up behind the door in anticipation.
The apartment billows in her wake, atmosphere churning. Two fronts colliding into a storm.
Happy reading!