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 think I need to compile a playlist as this fic winds down. I keep finding tracks that speak to the characters, and with only nine (or so) chapters remaining, I won't be able to fit them all.
I lifted a few details from The Punisher for this chapter, specifically about Maria's Sicilian background, as well as her and Frank cooking. There's also a line in here that I attribute to Stick, about where he got his name that's from an earlier ficlet I wrote ("Stick Comes Back" from Just in Case).
Readers, dear Readers, I say this every time, but I would not be here if not for you. Thank you for all your kind support, your time, and your patience. Please enjoy this installment! Cheers!
"I always felt that it was wrong
To lay my world in foreign hands,
…And not so long ago I seem to think
That I had the whole thing figured out
Only to find myself
Trapped at the heart of someone else.
But now I finally see the other side
And just in time before I let it pull me in again."
~George Ogilvie, "Foreign Hands"
Chapter Forty-Three
"You wrenched that knee of yours pretty good."
Matt manages his disappointment at Frank's observation. He is holding himself together as best he can. "Worth it - getting you beat."
Frank makes a hum that sounds like a, "Yeah, right," on both counts – the knee and the beating. He's too busy hefting the window in the frame for a proper rebuttal, but his quiet stings more. Almost as much as Matt's right knee the more he tries to help.
He relays a litany of excuses – that he rested it, iced it, medicated it, and somehow the damn thing's worse today than yesterday. All the while reason plays with a Frank Castle-level of dryness through his head. Swelling can take up to seventy-two hours to reach its peak. He knows this and is still pissed off to find it's true.
Matt presses a hand against where the window hits the frame, holding it in place as Frank fits screws on a drill. The winter reaps hell on his fingertips; it intensifies rather than soothing the heat in his knee. Frank can't budge him out of the way fast enough. Matt braces himself against the fire escape rail and aggressively accepts the pain in the lamest, most desperate meditation he's ever performed.
The sound of a window pane sliding open and shut draws him back to reality. Frank gives a small huff of approval. "Good as new."
"Needs a frame," Matt notes. He senses Frank nodding, but the longer he goes without saying anything, the more Matt notices everything that isn't being said. All those things he used to ignore or rebuke ringing crystal clear in the diminishing space between them.
He forces his right leg to straighten. Unpeels his frozen hands from the rail. Makes himself look ready to work.
Frank throws the window open and then stands there, waiting.
Matt tries to wait too, but ultimately, he gives-in before his knee can. He slips into the bathroom; Frank closes the window behind him.
Snow insulates the building. The sounds of the city are denser, deeper. They spread out from their source and come to Matt obscured. Footsteps bleed together; traffic congeals into a paste. Frank's heartbeat drums against the new windowpane while Matt's own crashes in his ears. Sirens and screeches arrive blunted, barely registering even with focus.
Matt closes his eyes and breathes, but his mind won't slow. Thoughts work to fill the quiet, quicken the stillness, to give him mobility when he has none. The dull thud of a hammer against the outer wall is the last straw. He gives in, at last, to the flurry of mental detours plaguing him. God, how long has it been? Since he got here, since he stopped counting the days? There's a stretch before Sato's death where he just…he doesn't know. And he's spent so much time fighting since – in his head, in his heart, in real life, that he's lost track. Of everything, it seems, not just time. His anger's a memory. Sato's death is a dull ache rather than a stab of fury. And Frank is…Frank is…
Matt grabs the windowsill and sits up. Refocusing. Pushing himself through that sputter of words – Frank is, Frank is – and the impossible certainty that accompanies them to the world outside the apartment. Elektra, who feels worlds away. The Hand, who seem to be a lifetime ago. The city's gone quiet, and without the police scanner, he's got nothing. No news about Hell's Kitchen. Home. Lantom and Karen and Foggy and damn it, Foggy.
Matt's heart sinks. He reaches for his phone and listens for the umpteenth time to the notification that he has one new message. Easy to ignore while preparing for battle, but now he has nothing, no one, no excuse. He toes the ledge, hoping his fingers will make the decision for him. They don't. Matt's left listening to the white fuzz of the phone line, the automated voice asking if he's still there before relaying instructions for how he can listen to the message.
He deserves it. Whatever Foggy left on his voicemail: he's earned it and then some. So why can't he bring himself to hit play? He wallows in what feels like cowardice – what is cowardice. Running away from Foggy, avoiding his responsibility, that's the very definition of cowardice. Especially if it feels okay, if it feels right.
The hammering stops. The bathroom window flies open. Matt drops the phone from his ear. He listens as Frank steps inside, kicking snow off his boots and dropping his tools and blowing into his hands against the cold. The window slams shut behind him.
"Are you still there?" Matt's phone asks him again.
Frank strides past, shedding his coat along the way. His heartbeat elevates in surprise though his voice never achieves a tone beyond disinterested. "Calling someone, Red?"
Matt shakes his head. He ends the call, puts his phone on the table, and sinks back down onto the cot, twisting onto his side as he does. "No." He pre-empts Frank's next statement with, "I'm fine. I'm tired."
It's the truth. Not the whole truth, but it's as close as he cares to get. Frank's heartbeat settles back into a fixed march, suspicious but willing to let that suspicion stand. He must be tired too. He walks to the kitchen. Pops open a cupboard, the fridge. His heart is a ticking clock. One beat in front of another. One breath and then another. Matt catches himself falling into step with the rhythm. Certainty unfolds through him, aching but comforting. Like a strained muscle finally relaxing, an infection draining. Hurt cresting before relief.
Gradually, he's aware of having unravelled at some point. Of having rolled onto his back. Of the surest, steadiest heartbeat fortifying the walls of the apartment, building a stronghold and keeping the watch. As much reassurance as a rallying cry for Matt, who finally sinks into the deep meditative dark.
Hands on his wrists: Matthew. Through his hair, over his cheeks: Matty. In his face, up close and scolding: Matt!
Matt jerks awake, sitting up. He scrubs a hand over his face, his neck, his chest; he kicks the ice pack off his knee, swings his legs off the side of the cot, and nabs his crutch. His right knee stings as he rises, but he can't rest. He won't rest. He needs to move.
The apartment's gotten thick. Air's taken on weight. More than the heat blasting from the radiator. Matt breathes hard through a heady blanket of basil, tomato, eggplant; salt and steam and starch. Pots boiling, pans sizzling. He ignores the way the room spins, the way he seems to float through an atmosphere where every breath feels like a first bite.
Frank's voice emerges from the haze. "You awake, Red?"
He thinks so, "Yeah."
"You hungry?"
Matt's stomach replies before he can. He puts a hand over his waist, muffling the sound. "I could eat." His brain finally catches up with the situation. "You cooked?"
"Didn't have much of a choice. You weren't gonna do it. And Rina's already mad about the fight. Not gonna poke that bear by feeding you MREs or protein bars."
"She wouldn't have to know."
Frank scoffs. "She would with you being the shitty liar you are."
Matt supresses a smile. Give Frank the Irish mob or an army of ninjas, it's a party. Pit him against a tiny, timid neighbour and panic ensues. "I'm not going to tell her."
No response save for a dish clattering onto the counter. Frank loads it up with ingredients and marches it out of the kitchen. Matt finally catches up with the situation jus as a plate is shoved into his hand. "You take this over to her. She'll take it from you."
"I don't think she's going to take it from either of us."
"She'll take it from you." And then, because he's not so sure anymore, "Tell her I made too much."
Matt takes a deep breath of what Frank's made, marveling a little at the smell of it. Balanced flavours, perfectly seasoned. That Frank cooks doesn't surprise him so much as Frank cooking well. "Smells delicious."
"Pasta alla Norma," Frank replies, as if the name means anything to Matt. "Don't you bring that plate back."
Matt steadies himself on his one leg and gets to stepping.
Without music, Rina's apartment is a quiet shuffle of footsteps and a heartbeat like hummingbird wings. The footsteps stop short when Matt knocks. The heartbeat gets faster.
Matt recognizes the sounds all too well. He knocks again. "Rina?" One of her feet slides in the direction of the door but otherwise she stays rooted to the spot. Matt tries, reaching out to her as best he can. "It's uh…Frank's brother. It's Matt." His name sounds strange coming from his own mouth. "It's Red." Still strange, but slightly less so. "Frank made dinner tonight. Too much. He…I…we were wondering if you might want some. I'll just...leave it here. By the door."
He puts the plate on the floor, lingering for a moment after doing so to bear witness to Rina's thrumming heartbeat. "Have a good night, Rina," he tells her, then hobbles back to the apartment. He puts his back against the door as he closes it, giving his knee a break while he listens.
"She take it?" Frank asks.
Matt raises a hand and shushes him. A chain lock unlatches behind him. The deadbolt clicks. Rina's terrified heartbeat spills onto the landing, nearly drowning out the sound of her picking up the plate and drawing it into her apartment.
Her door slams shut. The locks snap back into place.
"Yeah," Matt tells Frank, "She took it."
Later, when they're digging at their own plates, Matt hears the tentative scratch of a needle on vinyl. Debussy begins playing quietly through the apartment building.
"I think that means she likes it," Matt notes.
Frank releases a sigh, a non-verbal, "She better," but not, Matt suspects, because of the effort put into the meal. A home cooked dinner is Frank's Hail Mary apology, his final blaze of glory. If this didn't work, nothing would.
The music is turned up a little louder. Matt takes another bite. "Who taught you to cook?"
"Mom started. Didn't really care about it then. Maria, though…her family's Sicilian. No getting anywhere with her without knowing my way around the kitchen. Had to learn fast." Frank works his way through a few more bites before adding, "She used to make this. One of those heirloom recipes, see. Came over with her grandmother from Sicily."
Warmth pulses through Matt. He carries the plate in his lap with greater care. "It's good."
Frank tosses his shoulders, his heart a somber tick in his chest. A countdown clock resigned to its fate. "Hers was better." He stabs at his plate, shovels through a few more bites. "What about you, Red? You cook?"
Matt smirks. "Yeah, I cook. No heirloom recipes, but I can put together a meal."
"Your dad teach you that?"
"Dad taught me how to open cans and follow instructions." Hands ghost along his face from the memory. Matt tries his damnedest not to send them scattering. "I had to teach myself if I wanted anything different."
"Must have wanted something different a lot, once your senses started compensating."
Heat bursts against the insides of his cheeks. Matt tilts his head away, chewing the bite he's taken longer than he has to because his stomach's churning. That sense of relief unfurls through him anew, and he finally has a word for it. Nice. It's nice, damn it. It's nice to be understood. "Not at first," Matt says. "House rules: I ate what we had. But the older I got, the stronger my senses got. I started training. I could taste everything that had happened to my food. Chemicals, if it had been processed. Dirt and bacteria from being handled. I had to learn how to cook for myself."
"Training taught you that?"
Matt nods. "Yeah, the guy who trained me, first day I met him –" he shouldn't be talking about this. Frank doesn't need to know. He doesn't want to know. But his pulse taps expectantly, the story already having begun. Matt's gone too far to stop. "He took me out for ice cream. Helped me focus, showed me all the things I hadn't tasted before."
"How old were you?"
"Twelve."
Frank shifts in his seat, fingers flicking along the edges of his plate. He's utterly unreadable until, "The hell kind of asshole is this guy."
The metrics of Frank's morality walk a razor's edge between horrifying and comical. Matt's riding the same blade, split down the middle between guilt and that certainty. A jab about killing Sato festers in his throat. Frank and Stick aren't the same kind of asshole when it comes to kids, but there's no doubt in his mind they would agree about murdering Sato.
Probably for the same reason.
"This asshole got a name?" Frank asks.
Matt's mouth hooks itself into a smirk. "Stick."
Frank grumbles. "Don't give me that shit."
"No, that's his name: Stick."
Another beat passes between them, one Matt recognizes as an opportunity to change his answer. He holds his expression, impassive, until Frank finally accepts that he isn't being messed with. "Jesus, Murdock. Used to think your life was like a comic book? You're life is weirder than a fucking comic book." He stabs at his dinner a little more, his heartbeat wild and erratic. The fork hits the plate. "Stick? Really? The hell kind of a name is that?"
Matt laughs and feeds him Stick's usual response: "An accurate one. During training, he would wield this wooden sword. A stick." Hence, "Stick."
Frank picks his fork back up suddenly and goes back to his meal, the joke not so funny anymore. The joke not a joke anymore. "The hell kind of asshole," he says and leaves it at that. Whatever else he thinks about Stick is expressed through the furious tapping of silverware stabbing into porcelain. Matt hears each one accompanied by a silent but certain, "BANG."
Nighttime comes; the city calls to him. Matt reaches into his bag and makes a fist around his thin black shirt, unleashing a cloud of sweat and bruises into the air. His knee throbs in warning. There'll be none of that tonight.
He pushes the suit down into the backpack and rises, shaking, onto his throbbing knee. The muscle burns steadily. Matt grips the wall, easing some of the weight off the joint. It's not enough. He sits back down on the cot, rubbing at his thigh to ease the strain. One more night, he decides. Meditation, ice, rest, and tomorrow he'll be ready. Matt lies down, a balling up a hoodie under his knee to elevate it. He falls asleep so quickly his dreams blend seamlessly with reality. His phone asks him if he's still there, but Matt can't reach it, not with his wrists pinned and Dad's hands on his face and Foggy shouting at him, "Matt!"
His leg is stiffer when he wakes. Matt takes Aspirin dry and forces himself to stretch, to get the joint warm and working. He can't spend another twenty-four hours cooped up inside.
He meditates badly throughout the day. Reads when he can't focus anymore, but the words blend together on the page. The walls close in; Matt braces his arms against them to give himself some room to breathe. He forces every muscle in his leg to relax, to rest, but the tension just grows.
Dusk comes. His right leg burns under his sweats. Matt doesn't bother changing. He makes the short, painful hobble to the fire escape and plants himself on the landing, furious with himself. The bitter bite of metal on his thighs is penance for getting himself stuck.
He tracks through the soundscape. Voices swim and cascade around him. He draws them in, one by one, hanging onto them, as if hearing them, bearing witness, will stop the bad from happening.
The bathroom window springs open. Matt's focus snaps back, coming to revolve around Frank's boots hitting the metal landing. His near-silent huff as he reaches down, bruises pulling. The scent of coffee hits Matt square in the face. He takes the mug that's being offered, wrapping his hands around it. "Thanks."
Frank says nothing. He goes to stand by the rail, nursing his own cup of coffee. Matt tunes him out easily now; there's no walls to contain him. Nothing about his respiration or form or smell that speaks through the natter of the Bronx. Matt sinks into the haze, free floating through footsteps, tires on pavement, laughter; hustle and bustle.
Glass cracks. Matt perks up. He follows the sound down a side street, through an alley. Voices ebb through a newly shattered window.
He puts the coffee down. Grabs the rail of the fire escape.
"What is it, Red?"
"A fight." He parses through the voices. "Man and a woman."
"Where?"
"Close." Matt pulls himself upright. His knee throbs the whole way and stubbornly refuses to straighten. He's cussing himself out when a cry pierces his ears. The dull smack of knuckles against flesh fills the air followed by a threat.
He can't check the assailant's heartbeat for deception, and he doesn't have to. The tone tells Matt everything. "He's gonna kill her." He doesn't bother with his crutch, just hops towards the stairs.
Frank tosses back the rest of his coffee. Shit. Matt moves. He grabs Frank by the arm. Frank tears himself away. Matt tries catching him again and fails miserably, his knee issuing a warning shot as he twists too much. His leg flashes hot while the rest of him goes cold. The shakes hit him hard and fast. Another shout hits his ears from the fight. The surrounding area is quiet. Where are the cops? Has nobody called them yet? And even if they have, they aren't going to make it in time.
He braces himself against the rail of the fire escape, gets his leg in line, and tries. He tries so damn hard. His leg can burn and his head can pound and everyone he's ever loved can rage against him that this is a stupid idea but he has to do something.
His knee makes it to the edge of the stairs and no further. Matt feels it wavering, on the verge of giving out. He clings to the fire escape rail, praying with every breath that the fight stops. That the cops get called. That he makes it down the stairs. Nothing happens. He still holding fast to the rail when Frank emerges from the apartment: pistol in one hand, a phone in the other. He shoves the former into the front of his jeans, the latter into Matt's sternum on his way past. Matt almost drops it trying to nab Frank again.
"You call me up," Frank says, tossing on his hood. He takes the stairs two at a time. "Let me know when I'm getting close. Which direction am I headed?"
Matt slams a hand into the fire escape rail. "Don't do this, Frank."
"Where'm I goin', Red?"
"Frank!"
Combat boots hit the parking lot. "Clock's ticking," Frank reminds him casually.
The fight drags on in the distance. Furniture crashes. Matt lets out a small yell as he slams his back into the outer wall of the building. Brick scrapes against his back as his knee gives out under him and he sinks into a sitting position. Then, heaven help him, he makes the sign of the cross and points, "That way."
Happy reading!