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: Holy moly, it's chapter fifty. Well, installment fifty. Less than a month before the two year anniversary of this fic.
I can't believe it.
There's so much I have to say about this chapter, I don't know where to begin. It marks a culmination, of sorts, for the various themes that have been woven into this story, and the only reason I mention that is because I'm stunned – stunned – that they've all managed to make an appearance in some form. And that there were so many themes beyond Matt Needs People, which is the only theme I started with and the only one I thought I would be exploring (and the one that exists mostly in the background here).
I really thought I would get to this point and muck everything up. I suppose there's still time for that, lol. Five more chapters. Let's see if I can stick this landing.
Readers, dear Readers, you are the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky. You're the best. Thank you for everything. Please, enjoy!
"No more games, Imma change what you call rage.
Tear this motherfucking roof off like two dogs caged."
~Eminem, "Lose Yourself"
Chapter Forty-Nine
Hard to imagine what the kid hears when the ninjas finally arrive. If there are heartbeats on the rooftops or simply puffs of breath. Frank doesn't hear a damn thing. First it's just the two of them in the warehouse, then suddenly it's the six of them, the eight of them, the twelve of them. Shadows spill through the windows, filing across the rafters, so quiet that if he wasn't watching, Frank wouldn't have heard them.
The door is torn from its hinges. Elektra steps boldly over the trip line, proud as she pleases, a small army in her wake. "Sawed off shotgun?" she notes of the trap on her way in, "Cute. Surprised Matthew let you get away with that."
So is Frank, honestly, but they both probably knew she'd sweep right past it.
She marches forward like she owns the place, like it's hers to keep or destroy as she pleases. Her gaze cuts the bins and boxes down to size on a hunt. Kid's foot catches her eye at last; it's slung across the floor in her sightline, but Elektra doesn't move. She stops one of her ninjas from moving forward too. Doesn't want to place herself at risk, but hell if anyone else is touching Red.
Frank peers down his scope, shifting between the ninjas, playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo with their shrouded faces. Could pop off three of 'em before their buddies on the ceiling find him. More if everything goes as planned.
There's a series of commands that Elektra silences with a single look. She stalks a slow line towards Red, scanning the warehouse, a smile teasing on the corners of her lips. Yeah, enjoy it while it lasts, sweetheart.
"Come on now, boys," she urges, "let's not play games. It was fine for the NYPD. The Punisher versus Daredevil! Makes for a good viral video. But this is such a waste of our time."
The sight of Red gives her some pause; her smile falters, fades. Neither of them held their punches on that rooftop, so there's bound to be some blood on his lips, some bruising around his eye. Even the way he's arranged his legs gives the illusion of him having been hobbled.
Elektra shoots a glance around the warehouse, torn. She's decisive enough to come here in full force, armed, but the sheer magnitude of their shit show hits her full force. Fucking finally, Frank thinks. He's been living this nightmare for months: suspicion, rage, frustration. Keeping his guard up only to realize, too late, that his defences have already been penetrated. Can't defeat the ocean by wrestling with waves, all you get is sopping wet, and here they both are, him and her, miles from shore, drawn in by a steady tide and gentle currents into the open water only to realize that's not the sky in front of them. That's a fucking maverick. That's the wrath of God come to swallow them into the deep.
It's satisfying, watching her. Vindicating, actually. To watch from a distance as Elektra stares doom straight in the face, dares it to do its worst, and then rushes forward to meet it.
"Matthew."
Red doesn't move; Elektra draws nearer. Frank's anger slashes his vindication to pieces. He puts a little more strength on the trigger.
The kid speaks suddenly, feigning grogginess. His voice is soft, feathery, brushing along the walls of the warehouse to Frank's ears. "They don't have heartbeats."
Elektra beams by the sounds of things: "I couldn't have you detecting our arrival, now could I?"
Red's voice goes low, plunging all the way to the devil's depths of hell, and God damn, it's almost enough to make the drowning worth it. "Oh, Darling," that wild smirk of his comes back with a vengeance, "I wasn't talking to you."
Frank starts firing.
Matt finally recognizes it: the weight he's been feeling. Denser than guilt, less nauseating, but frustration fills him with pins and needles. His whole body's a live wire. And it's only lying on the floor under Elektra's heartbeat that he finally recognizes what it is.
Inevitability. The three of them, this, it's inevitable.
He waits for Elektra to touch him before rousing. Gives her a second to change her mind with a performance of weakness, one she really should detect, and maybe she does. Maybe they all know the part they're playing so well that the artifice becomes authentic. Or maybe they're so used to chaos they make it look like fate. Whatever the reason, Elektra doesn't pull away from him, and after letting Frank know to open fire, Matt takes her by the arms and throws her aside.
The Vanquish is loud, its acoustics augmented by Frank's hiding spot. He set up shop inside a tower of crates near the back of the warehouse. Insulated the walls to mask the sounds of his respiration. He aims through a thin slat that nullifies any effect of his suppressor beyond protecting his own ears. One batch, two batch, penny and dime: the ninjas can't move fast enough to dodge. Frank's too good of a shot in any terrain, let alone his own. The bodies slap against the concrete, telling Matt exactly where he doesn't want to be. He draws Elektra further into the stacks so she doesn't get in the line of fire. So she doesn't go after Frank. So the ninjas don't interrupt.
"Cute little partnership," Elektra snarls, trapping him in a lock with his arm twisted up his spine. Matt slips out easily, knocking her over so she can't catch him again. She comes back sharper and faster in response. "Cute little clubhouse too. If I'd stuck around after Roscoe Sweeney, would you have shacked up with me? Or would I have to break your leg first?"
Matt dives at Elektra; she grabs him around the waist, and he lets her spin him so he hits the floor first. But he's careful to nab her before she can do more. "I forgave you for Roscoe Sweeney."
She winds up for a blow. Matt throws her to the side but, while free, isn't fast enough to gain any distance before she is on him again. Punching, kicking, evading. His new bulk is deadweight against her lightning quick movements, her ability to slip through his senses and reappear.
A blow to his face gives him the opportunity to nab her by the wrists, to hold her before him. "And I forgive you for Sato."
"I'm not the one who killed her."
"You brought her to be killed."
Elektra rips her arms out of his grasp. "Is that what makes you such a hypocrite?"
"These ninjas aren't alive anymore."
"I'm not alive anymore." The sound of carnage rages in the background. Frank, dropped out of his nest to join the fray, works a handgun and knife. Blood spatters; shell casings tinkle against the floor. "Is that what you're planning to do to me?"
An ache bursts forth from the centre of Matt's chest, the phantom twist of Frank's grasp meeting the hold Elektra's had on him since they day they met to tear him apart. "You're not like them."
She lashes out at him again. "Like hell I'm not. Killed Sato. Tortured Fisk's men. Had your dear friend Frank beaten."
He ignores the ecstatic flurry of her heartbeat overlaying the sounds of Frank dismantling ninjas in the background. Puts his arms up as best he can to keep from being completely immobilized by her next lock, one that sees him on his knees, her arms around him, heart pounding into his spine. He presses his cheek towards hers, and there's a murmur of something in her chest, a momentary rattle. Barely a flicker, but a flicker nonetheless.
"You came back; they didn't." Matt swallows, hard, the lump in his throat unbearable. Elektra, alive. Elektra, breathing. Elektra, against him. He stops fighting to get out of her grasp and, instead, tucks towards her more closely. The murmur in her chest takes over even as Frank's war wages on behind them. "You said you wanted to be good. You have that chance now. Tell them to stop. Tell them to leave."
Another charge goes off above them, then another. Beams clatter to the floor around them; ninjas land hard against the crates. Frank roars as another small explosion rocks the furthermost corner of the warehouse.
Elektra shakes her head softly, soothed by the sounds of the battlefield. She pulls at his limbs. Matt's right arm screams in its socket from how she's twisted it, while his legs burn under him, the strength threatening to give out. He grits his teeth and forces himself to see this through. He can do this. Even as she admits to him, "They'll never let me go."
"As if they could stop you," Matt reminds her, his lips brushing against her cheek. He's having trouble breathing under her constrictions. "You're Elektra Natchios. The Black Sky." He laughs then, the sound twisted and terse from pain radiating up from his legs. "Stuff of Spartans. Best damn warrior Stick ever trained."
Elektra goes to laugh, but the sound dies in her throat. She holds her face skyward, and it seems, then, that her grip might loosen. That she might let him go, let them all go, and this little war of theirs might end.
Her lips brush against his earlobe. She whispers, "What does it matter, Matthew? What's the point? Of all of this?"
Strength refills his limbs, and Matt starts fighting back fresh. "To do better." He frees himself from Elektra's grasp, rolling forward. He rises back to his feet. She's still kneeling on the floor, her heart a somber beat in her chest. "So do better."
Took out eight with the Vanquish. Three with the Sig Sauer before it got knocked out of his hand. Four with the knife. He broke the jaw on one and set the bone with a grenade; sent him running into the depths of the warehouse towards some of his buddies.
They nick him a couple times, but the vest holds against their swipes and slashes. And ain't none of 'em getting close enough to stab him.
Frank stalks forward through the stacks. He nabs the Para from where he hid it. The weight of it in his hand is right, good. Don't know why Red fucked with his guns in the first place. Ninjas are far more concerned in lobbing his head off. Hard to do that with a bullet in their brain.
He takes a second when he can, letting the sounds of the warehouse thunder around him. The Hand isn't nearly as quiet as Red was during what passed for training in here. Their robes swish and snap, their footsteps scuffle. He pops off a round at the shape flying overhead. Another beam from the rafters lets loose. Frank dodges that and goes low, dodging a katana swipe to his neck. He sends the knife home into the ninja's leg, twists, yanks it back, then thrusts up so the blade pops through the guy's jaw into his brain.
No chance to grab it before he's fighting again, before he's barrelling through them, the fuckers. Fuck, he hates ninjas. He never fights ninjas again, it'll be too damn soon. They're all Red's problem from now one.
He's back by the workbench when he gets a brief moment of calm. His brain runs calculations: got a couple on the rafters, can't tell how many from all the smoke; two coming from the front, two coming from the side. The fuck are they coming from, at this point? Another explosion rocks whichever ninja was dumb enough to come through the remaining window. Fire forces the others to bottleneck through the stacks, headed his way. Red and his girl are off on their own – fuck. Frank unloads the rest of his clip and swipes a hand under the desk for his other Para. He takes off towards where he last saw them, finds the two of them headed his way.
They're not fighting. The hell are they up to?
Frank puts the gun on her. The kid steps in the way. "Stand down, Frank. It's over."
"It's not over." No. Not like this. Not while the undead army's creeping around. Now while psycho ex-girlfriend over there is calling the shots. She peers over Red's shoulder at him, eyes narrowed.
Ninjas hover around where they're standing. One move and their Chosen One loses her pretty face. Frank stares her down as he reminds the kid, "We had a plan."
"Plans change."
"People don't."
"People can."
"Not leaving here with any of them still standing."
Elektra steps out from behind Red. Frank keeps the gun on her as she moves. "Very well," she says with a toss of her head. The signal has the ninjas lower their weapons, has them stand down.
A wicked smile spreads across her face.
Christ Jesus, he thought Red was fast: Elektra's faster. Frank blinks and her coat's open, her hand's outstretched. A sai whips through the air, landing hard and fast through a ninja's chest. By the time Frank glances back, Elektra's got the collar of her shirt pulled over her mouth and nose, she's got her other weapon drawn, she's targeting members of her army. Some of them hesitate at first, but it doesn't take long for the Hand to shift their aggressions towards her. Elektra doesn't give them a choice.
Red flies after her, the two of them falling into perfect step. Frank holds them in his periphery as he fires, as he fights. Can't let Red's Girl get out of sight, not now that she has her claws out. Can't let Red get stupid, end up with another busted limb. The kid seems to be holding his own next to Elektra: accommodating, anticipating, adapting, same as he did when it was the two of them, him and Frank. But where then Red mimicked that bloody brawler style of a prize fighter, tonight it's hard to tell the difference between him and the ninjas. Hard to see the difference between him and Elektra.
The clip empties. Frank switches to his fists. He lays into a ninja's face until the nose is pulse, the lips are torn, his knuckles are scrapped. Grabs another by the shoulders and puts his legs to work – knee, foot, thigh. Suddenly Red's there. Back-flipped over or teleported or whatever. "Don't need help," Frank says, and Red replies, twisting around behind him to deflect a slash to his spine, "Sure, you don't."
Elektra rejoins them. "Still want to finish them all off?"
"Not like this," Frank grumbles. He pushes Red towards the door of the warehouse, still hanging open on its hinges. Time to get rid of the evidence and get the hell out of dodge before the cops show up.
He dismantles the tripwire before shoving the kid out of the door. Elektra strides past him coolly, hot on Red's heels, casting a sidelong glance his way as she passes by. Frank tugs the sawed-off shotgun from where it's hanging over the door, ripping the wire off the trigger. Then he punches the timer on the wall. Steps out. Slams and locks the door behind him.
And they run.
The explosion rocks the ground. Smashes against Frank's eardrums. He risks hearing loss to nab Red by the scruff of his shirt and guide him back on course when the noise knocks him around. No time to waste, not with the noise they've been making. Fucking unimaginable that the cops haven't arrived yet, but they're definitely on the way.
They come to a halt once they've reached civilization again, when the building provide cover from the streets. Car's not far, but Frank's not about to let Elektra know that. She wanders slightly ahead towards the glow of streetlamps, her shadow a curving wisp in the dark. Her breath barely makes a cloud on the winter air. Red stands nearer, catching his breath, both feet firmly on the ground.
Frank rolls her eyes; kid's lips are tugging up at the corners. "This fun to you, Choirboy?"
Red shrugs. "Fun for you too, Frank."
Not fun: necessary. But Frank doesn't disagree anymore than the kid does. Had to put a dent in the ninja army tonight.
Elektra turns around sharply. She pulls the shroud from the lower half of her face. "Must say, boys: you certainly know how to show a girl a good time."
Frank slips a finger onto the trigger of the sawed-off shotgun. "Night's not over yet," he notes.
"Don't pretend like you're going to shoot me too," Elektra coos.
"Who's pretending."
Red steps in the way. With his back to the girl. He stays in the way when Frank tries to move around him. Stands his ground when Frank gives him a push, planting more and more weight on his mending leg. "Stand down."
"Get the hell out of the way."
"Put the gun down."
Like hell. Frank takes a step back. Can barely see Elektra's face through the dark, but he knows her smile when he feels it. The curve of her lips cut a fine line across his abdomen, spills his guts on the pavement. The hell does Red stand being near that? The fuck does he do it – putting himself in the way of falling ceilings and pointed guns, rapists and thieves and killers? Guess having a bleeding heart makes it easier to be cut open.
"This your choice, Red?" Frank has to ask. Didn't spend weeks planning for a trip through hell for the kid to decide to stay there.
"This is always my choice," Red replies.
Frank huffs, disappointed in himself. Kid's not going with her, then. Just standing in the way.
He drops his finger from the trigger.
Red's stance loosens. He offers the slightest of nods in thanks.
Then Elektra shoves him out of the way.
Frank's finger hops back on the trigger. He swings the gun to where Red once stood, firing. Elektra kicks the weapon out of the way as the hammer hits the shell. Shot spatters. Some catches her in the bicep and shoulder, but most hits brick and concrete. The gun hits the ground.
Instinct sends Frank's left hand in front of him, ready to fend off her next attack, but through the din of his blood pounding in his ears, the ringing of her sai as it leaves its sheath, he hears Red rushing toward them. "Elektra, no!"
Frank changes course. Left hand to the kid's chest to hold him back. Right hand swings to catch Elektra by the wrist.
Snict.
The breath leaves his chest. His vest seems too tight. Cold seeps into his veins. Somewhere, the kid cries out, but he sounds so far away. The world has contracted. Now it's only her and him, him and her, and the pain is coming. A scream builds through the nerves in his side. Frank balls a fist and throws one last punch, vision cutting to black.
Elektra dodges. She comes in real close, whispering in his ear. The words garble, fade to smoke inside his skull. A pulse of pain in his side, then another: Lisa elbowing him at the breakfast table with a smile on her face, Red's fevered chest under his knuckles begging for his friend's life, his own shitty mantra, "Tomorrow. Tomorrow, baby."
He holds fast to the bitch's wrist, digging into her pressure points, never once looking away from her face as he does. No way she's getting her sai back. No way she's leaving him to bleed out in an alley. No way she's putting his death on Red's hands.
The kid seems to have the same idea. He rips Elektra from her own weapon and launches into her with fists and fury. Fuck the ninja shit; this is the Devil that Frank knows, the brawler, the fighter, doing Battlin' Jack Murdock proud.
Frank ambles over to join, sai still peeking out of his side. Blood chills as it collects in the waist of his jeans. He tears Elektra out of Red's path; she slams her palm into the hilt of the sai, knocking it even deeper. Frank goes back for more, a little wiser this time. He blocks when she tries to hit him, lands a blow to her face.
She whips back, a bloody smirk on her face, her hand heading straight for the sai. Red senses the motion and moves to defend.
Elektra retracts her hands at the last second, and instead kicks Red's broken leg out from under him.
Frank grabs her by the throat and shoves her against the wall. He places his other hand on the end of the sai, holding it fast against her efforts to pull it out.
His vision sputters. Muscles falter in his arm. Pain flashes through him once, twice, three times. Not now, baby, Daddy's busy. But Lisa's elbow keeps coming. "Stop. Stop, let her go."
Elektra wraps her delicate hands around his wrist. Beaming through the darkness.
"Let her go!"
Red throws himself into the fray, landing heavily against Frank's injured side. Pain lets loose and runs rampant, a stampede through Frank's chest, his shoulders, his arms. The strength leaves his hand. Elektra breaks free. She's about to do more when the sirens cut through the night, drawn by the sound of the shotgun. "Later," she promises him, running a short distance down the alley before vanishing towards the rooftops in a flurry of acrobatics.
Frank takes a step towards her, but his body refuses to go any further. Red appears under his arm, and Frank instinctively puts him in a headlock. "The fuck are you doing, Red? The fuck are you doing?"
"Saving your life," Red says, tearing himself out of the lock. He puts Frank's arm over his shoulders and starts limping out of the alley.
Happy reading!