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: It finally struck me that this story is six chapters away from ending. That this story is almost two years old
In the course of typing that sentence, the period key on my keyboard died. I am literally copy-and-pasting in periods. This fic killed my period key. I would say it died doing what it loved, but only because my keyboard's primary function is fanfiction.
Readers, dear Readers, I cannot thank you enough for your kind support, your time and energy and engagement. You are amazing. Thank you so much. Please, enjoy!
"[He] doesn't hesitate.
He exhibits no restraint
He takes and he takes and he takes…
He changes the game
He plays and he raises the stakes
And if there's a reason he seems to thrive
when so few survive, then God damn it,
I'm willing to wait for it."
~Leslie Odom Jr., "Wait for It"
Chapter Forty-Seven
Thought at first he might save the warehouse for when Red's ready to fight, but Frank's glad he didn't. Going to war gives the kid some appreciation for common sense and self-preservation, and thank Christ, because they're so close to the end Frank can taste it. The trip to hunting ground makes Red more careful, not less.
He pushes himself, sure. Gives up on the crutch entirely to make laps of the apartment, the parking lot, the roof. He bounds up and down the stairs. When his right knee wobbles, he sits, gathers himself, and then gets back to it. Sets Frank's teeth on edge after a while, the way Red just goes and goes and goes. All hours of the day and night, taking breaks to meditate and sleep and eat – fuck, he eats - before he's back at it again.
They start spending more time at the warehouse. Frank leaves a trail of breadcrumbs for Red's girl to follow. Nothing so obvious that it looks like a trap, but the fake name, money trail, and rumours about vigilantes are bound to catch her eye. Coming and going from the apartment in the dark covers their tracks, decreases the chances that the ninjas are going to follow them back there instead.
At the warehouse, Red bounds from floor to ceiling, boarding up windows and slinking across beams; Frank on the ground, building defences, asking questions about the enemy. Every time he thinks shit can't get any crazier, Red starts off about some new ninja nonsense, confirming that the parade of crazy is only gonna march on where the Hand are concerned.
Frank's digging through one of the toolkits, waiting for an answer about how the old bastard Stick fits into the story, when a screw hits him in the back of the neck. The ceiling creaks ominously above him, but the kid's playing with the echoes. No way of telling if the metallic moans are his footfalls or the wind or the wrath of God about to rain down.
"Everything alright up there, Red?" The, "Yeah," he receives in response sound neutral enough and comes not far from where he's working.
Shadows churn. Frank stares them down. He crushes the screw in one hand and the quiet with the other.
"Sorry."
The kid doesn't sound sorry. Begs the question about why he apologized at all.
Sure enough, couple minutes later, another screw snaps against Frank's back. Hits too hard to have just fallen.
"You working or messing around?" Frank demands.
"Just checking the stability on these beams."
Frank grabs a pair of pliers and slams the toolkit shut, issuing a long, loud creak overhead. Red's shifting position, trying to perceive around the sound and make out the details with those wild senses of his.
Heartbeat thundering – in his ears as much as Red's, no doubt – Frank picks up his coffee. Muscle memory takes over. Taking a sip puts his respiration nice and even, gives him the opportunity to scan the rafters without giving anything more away to Red. Nothing in front of him. No clumsy shadow with a bum leg lumbering through the dark. Kid must be hanging back, putting himself out of sight. Silence rings loud and clear in Frank's ears; Red ain't moving no more. He's waiting for a reaction, and Frank knows exactly what's gonna happen in Red doesn't get one.
The ceiling brews, and Frank lets it. He takes another sip of coffee. He grips the pliers tights in one hand. He puts down his cup and enters a roll just in time for a small block of wood to make impact where he was standing.
There's no apology this time, not even a fake one. Red's voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, because of course it does. Of course he found the one part of the ceiling with the best acoustics. "You're gonna have to be faster than that, Frank!"
"Ninjas aren't gonna be chucking shit at me from the ceiling," Frank snarls. He tosses the pliers onto his work bench to cover the sound of him nabbing the Para he stashed underneath.
The weight of it in his hand's all wrong. Empty. The fucking clip is empty.
"You're right," Red notes. "They'll do worse."
Frank chucks the gun into the rafters, letting it knock and clatter and mess with the devil's ears. "You fuck off with that patronizing bullshit, Red." Frank paces forward, drawing the kid out as he heads towards another hidden piece. This one even the kid hasn't found; it's sporting a full clip. "Faced a hell of a lot worse than ninjas. You think about what you're gonna do, they show up? They had your ass once before. Only thing that stopped 'em was me."
That keeps Red from saying more, but a sigh echoes across the ceiling. A kind of non-verbal, "If you say so."
A chill rushes down Frank's spine. He whips around to catch the devil straight to the chest. Frank shoves the gun between them on their way to the ground, lining up a shot to Red's heart.
The concrete catches him. Frank grips Red to him through the shock of it rattling against his skull. He twists the gun under the kid's breastbone. The devil's smirk grows wilder.
Frank shoves at him. Gets back to his feet. Fucking asshole. "You're dead," he snarls.
Kid laughs in his face and returns to the rafters, but not before saying, "So are you."
God damn it, he is.
Frank's dead the next couple of times too. Red finds new and increasingly creative ways to get the jump on him. Leaping off crates at the warehouse, through one of the windows at the apartment. There's no pattern or warning. Sometimes Frank hears the scuff of a foot or a puff of breath; occasionally, it's the absence of sound that tips him off. Red's so quiet he takes all the noise in the room with him before tackling Frank to the floor.
Surprise attacks on the devil are damn near impossible now that Red's senses are working full throttle. Frank grills him on what gives an attack away and gets the dumbest shit in response. "You breathing rattled against the dust" or, "Your foot shifted a few inchest on the floor" or, "Your trigger finger twitches when you're about to attack." Makes the excuse of, "Your heartbeat," sound downright normal, and really, fuck that. Best Frank can do is run distraction. The echoes in the warehouse are great for Red's subterfuge, but they also reap havoc on his senses. Frank makes a point of tracking down some sonic grenades for when this is over.
Eventually, Red bores of the game. The hell else is new. He gets all quiet and listless at the warehouse. Barely says a word on the way back to the apartment. Second the sun goes down, he slips out for what Frank thinks is a lap of the parking lot only to be gone for almost an hour. Frank is about ready to take a drive and look for his ass when he hops back up the stairs.
He's down to using only his right leg again. His hood is pulled halfway down his face. A fresh smattering of red gleams on his chin. He takes off his gloves to reveal mashed and bloodied knuckles.
Red goes the bathroom sink running; Frank throws in a handful of ice cubes. The kid sinks his hands all the way to the bottom of the basin, pink swirling up from his wounds.
"Good thing your girl hasn't shown up yet," Frank notes.
"I'll be ready," the kid replies darkly. In case there's any doubt.
"Hm." Still standing on one foot, but sure, he'll be ready. Frank scrubs at the kid's hair even as Red bucks against him. "If you say so, hero."
Red takes the next night off. Won't admit to why, but the ice pack on his leg says it all. He's moody and pissy and the worst kind of company, so Frank ditches for a bit. Takes a drive, makes a couple calls, arranges some things for transport, comes back when the kid's sulked himself to sleep.
Pain in the ass: the kid and the waiting game. Frank knows both too well, so the first thing he does after coming home is replace the ice pack on Red's leg and tug the blanket a little higher, up to Red's shoulder. Then he gets some shut eye. Gotta be ready. Tomorrow night's gonna be busy.
Frank packs a couple things when they leave the warehouse the next evening and drives to a solid vantage point. The kid doesn't question the detour. He hops out of the vehicle and immediately starts up to the roof.
He's climbing easier than before. Using his left leg some, but he's saving himself for what's coming.
"You hear that?" Frank asks as they settle in against the cityscape. He starts assembling the Vanquish as the kid listens.
"You mean the four guys on the ground floor?" Red leans slightly over the rooftop ledge. "Yeah, I hear them."
"They armed?"
"Does it matter?"
Frank scoffs. No, it doesn't. He plants the Vanquish legs on the rooftop ledge and adjusts the scope so he can see. One door, two windows: all of them possible exits where Red's concerned. He dips between the possible targets, making a wager with himself how many times he'll get off a shot before the kid finally takes them down. "Well, what are yah waiting for: go flush 'em out."
Red balks. He buries his hands in his pockets and eases all his weight onto his good leg, no intention of going anywhere. But no sooner has he opened his mouth to say as much than he clams up. He sniffs, then he's shaking his head, smiling. "We're gonna talk about this later," he says, tugging his hood over his face and leaping off the roof.
Frank doesn't hear him hit the ground. Next thing he knows, he's putting rubber bullets against guys' kneecaps to keep 'em from getting away from the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.
Nighttime seems a whole different war from the day. Red isn't lurking in the shadows, launching sneak attacks. At night, the war's out there in the city. During the day, they got no one else to fight but each other.
Weird how the dark can be so revealing like that.
They're back on the fire escape. Well, Frank's back on the fire escape. The kid's slinked onto the roof and perches overhead like a fucking gargoyle.
"Why rubber bullets?" he asks.
Frank stares into the bottom of his coffee cup, oddly at ease: with the question, with not answering. He lets Red do his lawyer thing of filling the silence with speculation, allowing every dumbass explanation the kid comes up with to roll off his back into the darkness. There's no truth to any of it. Can't prove shit.
"Sounds like you already got your answer," Frank replies.
Red lines up for another attack. "You hadn't used them yet. Makes no sense for you to start now."
"Times change." People don't, but times do. There are fights coming that require bruises instead of bloodshed, at least for a little while. "Don't you worry, Red. I'm packing lead for when your girl's ninja army arrives."
He polishes off the rest of his coffee, waiting for the attack, but nothing comes. Red actually shuffles slightly away from the edge of the roof. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, the Daredevil, drawing himself away from a leap and a fight. He just sits there, uncertainty written all over his damn face. Not a new look from him, but definitely a new context. Red's never uncertain where killing is involved.
"Don't tell me I wasted my time tonight, Red. Don't you fucking say that." The rubber bullets weren't his first choice, nor were the kneecaps shots, but out of respect for the leg and being this close to on his own again, Frank's willing to tow the line. God help the devil, the devil says it isn't necessary. Bullshit it isn't fucking necessary.
Red nods slowly to himself, coming to some conclusion up there in the shadows. The look of uncertainty slips away until the only sign of it is the occasional quiver in Red's chin. "I told you one of the Hand burned to death in front of me. Guy called Nobu. The only way I could track him was the sound of his weapons. His body didn't make sounds, not anymore. Not after so many centuries."
"Oh, fuck." Here they go with the ridiculous ninja shit again. Frank rolls his eyes and puts his back to the kid. They aren't gonna fight; they're gonna have more crazy ninja storytime.
"It's the same for other members of the Hand: I couldn't track them by a beating heart, because they didn't have one. I had to follow their breathing."
"So what's the problem, then?" Frank casts a glance over his shoulder towards the kid, too frustrated to look him straight-on. "They ain't alive. You can't get pissed off at killing something that's already dead."
"Not all of them are dead," Red admits. "One attacked my apartment: a boy, couldn't have been more than sixteen. I could hear his heart beating. He was alive."
"Was?"
A pause, a loaded one. "Elektra. She killed him."
Frank considers this. "The Hand bring him back?"
"No. He was taken care of."
Like Sato.
"Whatever the Hand does to bring people back from the dead," Red continues, "it doesn't bring them all back."
"So as long as they don't have a heartbeat…" Without finishing his sentence, without turning around, Frank knows Red's nodding. Might not get to take the vision of the afterlife with you, but hang onto your heartbeat or even the devil's of hell's kitchen don't have compassion for you.
Frank huffs, a cloud of his breath vanishing into the night. "What does that mean for your girl?"
The answer fires out of Red at top speed: "Elektra has a heartbeat." But he sighs a second later, muttering under his breath. "She has a heartbeat…" Doesn't make sense, that. Why she gets one. Why she gets one and the other ninjas don't.
"You said she was special," Frank offers.
"Yeah." Kid doesn't sound convinced that's the whole story though. Doesn't help, Frank suspects, that they're both asking the same question to themselves: if it would really make a difference, her having a heartbeat or not.
Frank turns round but still can't bring himself to look at the kid, only at the slash of the lamplight against the bathroom window. He knows what the answer would be, it was Maria they were talking about. Or Lisa. Or Frank Jr. Heartbeat or no, family's family. Full stop.
He looks up at long last, takes in the image of the kid with one ear on the city, his crumbling face settling into new resolve. "Couldn't've told me this before I stormed your girl's penthouse?"
Red laughs.
"All those ninjas got off easy."
"There were a lot of heartbeats in that building."
"But you don't know how many weren't there."
"All the more reason," Red insists, the joke no longer funny, "not to take the risk."
Frank doesn't accept that. "I can't hear heartbeats, Red."
"I can."
Unbelievable. "You're gonna tell me who I can and cannot shoot in the head? No. No, fuck that."
"I'm already going to have to be telling you where the ninjas are, you don't figure out how to track their movements."
Frank moves towards the bathroom window. "Fuck, this again..."
"I've gotten the jump on you over a dozen times, Frank. And I've got a broken leg."
He puts down his coffee mug on the window sill. Jumps from the rail of the fire escape landing to the ledge of the roof and pulls himself up to where Red's waiting for him.
They sleep late the next morning. Frank does some running around. Finalizes the details for his next move. Won't be able to return to the apartment after shit goes down with the ninjas, and he isn't about to let Red know where his next safehouse is what with the kid getting back to his old self again.
He takes his time with everything. Efficiency's great, yeah, but it's been a long time since he hasn't been beholden to some self-sabotaging dumbass with no sense of consequence. Being untethered is a luxury: bit of a mindfuck, actually. He comes and goes and doesn't have to think about the shit Red's getting up to when he's gone.
They go out that night, and after their first takedown, Frank falls back. Red disappears into the night, and even though it feels like there oughtta be, there isn't a sense that Frank needs to follow. He packs up his nest, runs some recon, makes some notes about shit to do in the warehouse, then goes back to the apartment.
Stillness greets him, and Frank stands for a moment, struck by the thought that he's seeing the space for the first time. He rented for the mission, for floorspace. Barely gave it more than a passing glance before handing over a bundle of bills to a manager who hasn't visited the property since. Now there's hardwood where the weapons would be. Two beds where there used to be one. Two coffee cups on the desk, two towels in the bathroom, two sets of clothes stashes in bags, two. God, that line between them in the beginning, the one that Frank couldn't shake, it disappeared somewhere along the way without him noticing, and now it's back. It's loud. It's blaring. Not because the kid is there, but because the kid isn't.
He turns on the lights. The room comes into soft focus, dispelling the edges cast by the shadows. Frank can move into the space, reclaim it a little. Coffee mugs into the kitchen. The Vanquish in its case covering up the hardwood. Can't quite shake the feeling though. Guys he knew lost all sorts of things overseas: hope and faith, sure, but arms, legs, and everything in between. Swear to God they could still feel 'em too, even years later. Get a rush of cold over a hand left rotting in a desert or a twitch in a leg chewed up and spat out by an explosion. Used to think it was nonsense, Frank did, but now he's walking through the apartment feeling something that isn't there. Feeling absence.
The bathroom window is thrown open. Footsteps trod unevenly across the floor – one heavy, the other light. Frank comes in, throwing on the light, to find Red sitting down on the edge of the tub. Blood drips freely over his shaking right hand. "Guy had a knife," he explains as Frank gets a towel pressed against the wound to his bicep. "I didn't move fast enough."
Frank grabs the kit. He swats Red's hand away. The cut's a deep swipe into the muscle. Kid winces when Frank tears open his sleeve. "Could've just taken my shirt off."
"This ain't a shirt. It's a patchwork quilt, all the times you stitched it back together." Frank preps a needle. He digs into the kid's arm, earning a smaller wince over the first suture than he does from ripping the shirt. "You cut anywhere else?"
"My side." Red gestures to a thin slash south of his ribs. "That one doesn't feel very deep."
"How's the leg?"
"It's good."
That's the truth. Would've said 'it's fine' otherwise. Frank knots off the last stitch, trims the thread. He douses the whole area in peroxide and then covers it with some gauze held by a strip of tape. Kid isn't lying about the slash on his side; the bleeding's already stopped. Scabbing has started to form.
Frank heads to the kitchen. The coffee cups are where he left them in the sink; he rinses them out. The sound of Red hobbling around fills the whole apartment, causes the floorboards to creak and the walls to moan and brings the building to life.
They meet on the fire escape. This time, Red's hunkered down like he used to, one leg stretched out in front of him. His cast open so the cold air can reach his injury. He holds up a hand to accept the coffee Frank offers him; the sleeves of his hoodie fall loosely and baggily around his arms. Because it's not his hoodie, Frank realizes. It's the fucking sweater from weeks ago. The Devil took it back.
Evening at the apartment the next day gets interrupted by a knock on the door.
Rina stands, head bowed under a curtain of her hair. Hands folded in front of her as one foot hangs back, heel fixed in the direction of her apartment. Frank gives her the time she needs, offering, "Ma'am," while holding his ground at the door.
She composes herself. Mostly. Her hands rattle against her lap. "Things have been happening," she begins. "At the shop, the clients, the girls, they talk. They say people have been getting hurt. Bad people." And then, quietly, "It's none of my business."
Frank fixes his gaze on the sharp part in her blonde hair, waiting. If this is a warning, they need to leave, grab the few bags of their shit and go. And they need to make sure Rina has somewhere to lay low for a while, because if the NYPD so much as tries to bring her in for questioning, they got another thing coming.
Rina isn't hesitant about warnings though, despite her skittishness. This isn't that. "One of the girls at the shop, Annika, she was attacked last night. He ex-boyfriend He had a knife. He had been drinking. He was going to kill her." She pauses, the severity of that statement knocking the air out of her chest. "He would have killed her."
She doesn't say more. The air between them grows heavy with what happened instead, neither of them needing to put it into words. There are rules in their building, boundaries. Questions that don't get asked, lies that are never exposed. The less they know about each other, the less they owe each other, the better.
Frank offers her a nod: neither an act of apology or understanding, simply acknowledgement. He broke the rules. Brought Red into the building, brought the ceiling down on them all. "Ma'am."
She doesn't take a step back then. Wants to and would under normal circumstances, but ultimately doesn't. Her friend is alive, and the man who tried to change that is in the hospital. So Rina offers a grave proclamation. "You come for dinner tomorrow. Both of you."
"No, no," she's already fed them for months now, "That's not necessary, ma'am, really."
But Rina is already walking away, nodding as she goes. Less for Frank than for herself. An attempt to convince herself that this is necessary, that she can do this. "Yes, you come. You both come. 6 o'clock."
Her apartment door slams shut behind her. Frank listens to it lock, needing that sound before he steps back into his own apartment. Red's sitting there on his cot still, eyes shut and breathing measured, seemingly world's away, but God damn it, Frank knows better.
"Don't you start," he snaps.
Without missing a beat, Red replies, "I didn't say anything."
Happy reading!