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: Oh, my gosh, I thought the Rina chapter was long, but this chapter ballooned. Again, I considered dividing it, but with this, there just wasn't a suitable break in the events without mucking up the pacing of the finale.

There was a moment, during writing, when I thought my ending was going to completely change, but I decided against it, since I'd already written a fic similar to what I was visualizing. I'm happier with the way the chapter turned out. Without giving away too much, there's been a lot of moments for Frank to exert his agency and show how much he's developed. Matt is more flexible, so it doesn't always show when he's changing, but he makes a choice here that I thought was really significant. It's a choice that really altered the tone and the beats in this chapter.

Readers, dear Readers, I thank you. I thank you so, so much. I hope that you are well. I hope that you're excited. Four more chapters after this! I hope you enjoy!

"Well, [she] was runnin' after us, I was screaming, 'Go, go, go!'
But with three of us, honey, it's a sideshow.
And a circus ain't a love story. And now we're both sorry.
(We're both sorry)
…You were drivin' the getaway car,
We were flying', but we'd never get far.
Don't pretend it's such a mystery:
Think about the place where you first met me."

~Taylor Swift, "Getaway Car"

Chapter Fifty

They speed through Harlem.

"Turn, here," Matt says, to no avail. Frank continues heading south. "There's a clinic –"

"Not going to a clinic."

"Where are we going?"

No response. The heartbeat in the driver's seat gets wrapped up in a heady, bloody void. Matt presses his knuckles into the window pane, icing them, distracting himself from the white heat in his leg, from the twisting in his guts. "You can't just rip that sai out and put yourself back together." Still no answer. Damn it. "A couple sutures and some Aspirin aren't going to fix this, Frank. You need a doctor."

"Need you to shut up," the void says, then, after a few ragged huffs of breath, "Need you to let me do what needs doing."

Matt presses his knuckles even harder into the window. "She doesn't need killing."

"Sure as shit doesn't need you protecting her."

"I wasn't protecting her. I was stopping you." There's a difference.

"And who's gonna stop her, Red? You think about that?"

"I tried," Matt says darkly.

"You tried." A scoff. "You sent her ass right back to her ninjas and whatever the hell else she's got planned."

"All the more reason for you to go to a doctor."

"And lead her right to their door? Have an army of ninjas show up at your friend's clinic? You want that?"

"I want you –"

Frank huffs dismissively and continues as if Matt hasn't spoken: "No way in hell. She wants to come after someone, she comes after me."

Matt wonders if that's why he can't smell bowel. It's not like Elektra to miss. Killing Frank obviously wasn't the goal of the attack, but debilitating him somehow, that sounds exactly her style. He tries again, "Where are we going?"

He thinks Frank isn't going to answer until, "Safehouse."

"You're just going to let a blind guy go digging around in your abdomen."

"Should've thought about that, before you got between me and her."

"I did," Matt snarls. He got held back. Remember, Frank?

The void in the driver's seat seethes.

Twenty minutes pass, maybe thirty, and they pull into a back lane. Frank's out of the car in a flash. Matt follows as quick as he can, but dragging the dead weight of his left leg gives Frank a solid lead. Stairs? Shit. Frank's charging upward, blood dripping every step. Matt heaves himself up using the bannister.

Frank unlocks the door to a unit, disarming the traps he's put in place as he does. Matt slips inside; he closes, locks, and arms the door behind them. Water damage wafts through the walls. The building smells of musty carpet, cigarette smoke and animal urine and old shoes. People lived here once but no longer, and the building's stuck in limbo between development or demolition. Matt slinks further inward to find the space has been rewritten with Frank's artillery. Bombs and bullets. A one-room war to go with a one-man army.

The steady cycle of ragged breathing nearby catches suddenly, hurtling Frank out of the subspace he's entered.

"Frank." Matt hurries, catching Frank on his way to the floor.

There's a trail of copper behind them: a mixture of blood and chalk; the point of the sai raked a ditch in the drywall from where it sticks out of Frank's back. "Kit's in the corner," Frank mutters. His hard consonants slur from blood loss. He clamps a hand in the front of Matt's shirt before Matt can retrieve it. Knuckles shake against Matt's sternum. He feels Frank's fight for consciousness rattle to the top of his head and the tips of his toes.

"Your duffle's in the trunk of the car," Frank adds. He shoves the keys at Matt with his free hand. Matt handles them dumbly, his fingertips numb. That cramped knottiness in his guts gives way to a sinking hollow.

Frank's heartbeat staggers its last several paces. "You get this thing out of me. You patch me up. You get the hell out of here."

Matt grabs him. Shakes him. "I'm not –"

"You get the hell out of here," Frank orders.

Then his hand drops off Matt's chest and he passes out.

The kit's loaded with a bunch of leftover supplies from the leg. Some of it's helpful: gauze and suture kits; ointment and antibiotics. Some of its not: vials of medication that Matt can't identify, dosages he can't measure. He can find a vein by touch but stabbing it's a whole other story. That means no IV for Frank, no transfusion, no painkillers. Just Matt tugging at Elektra's sai. His desperate, unspoken prayer: please, God. Please.

His focus is punctuated with small blessings. The sai isn't laced with the Hand's poison. The blow didn't puncture any of Frank's internal organs. Elektra hit a sweet spot above his hip, stabbing through muscle. Painful but not life-threatening. Matt cleans the wound tract. He sutures the exit wound hurriedly. He can't get the needle threaded for the entry wound. His bloody fingers slick over the thread. The needle slips out of his hand. Matt curses. He grabs another suture kit and rips into it and finally gets Frank's front closed up.

Antibiotic ointment. Gauze. Bandages. Matt scans through the apartment. Past Frank's pulse, low and slow but holding steady; through the haze of ammunition. Matt finds a stash of bottled water under a workbench in the corner. The case is half-hidden under a tarp covering the contents of the desktop. Circuitry, electricity – radio? Whatever. Matt grabs the water. He cracks one, forces some down Frank's throat along with antibiotics and Aspirin. Then he pops an Aspirin for himself and, without missing a beat, he heads for the car.

He returns, heavy laden with their duffels and the last of the supplies. The sound of Frank's pulse is a relief. Matt loses himself in the sound as drops the bags. He unfolds his cot from the Bronx apartment and hauls Frank off the floor and onto the bed. There's no blanket and the baseboard heating's taking forever, so Matt improvises. He balls Frank's jacket into a pillow and drapes his own over Frank as a blanket.

He surveys the space though there's no real need. Frank's shuttered up this safehouse the way he shutters up everything in his life. Walking around the upstairs landing reveals a trapdoor to the attic, one that's been nailed shut. The faint scent of gunpowder wafts down, telling Matt he doesn't want to force his way up or force his way in.

Two bedrooms, one bath, windows boarded up in each. Wires criss-crossing the ceiling with no discernable destination. There's a terrace off the master bedroom; Frank's boarded it up, too, for security reasons and strung up some traps that Matt can't untangle. He thinks, at first, it's his senses that are the problem, but then it registers that there's nothing to sense. No gunpowder, no explosives. Whatever's rigged in the room runs quiet, present only in absence, giving Matt the distinct impression it's designed for someone other than the run-of-the-mill intruder. Designed for someone who's arrive from the roof rather than the street, someone who'd kick the door in first and ask questions later.

Someone who's never been inside the room before, who wouldn't know what to expect.

Matt gets the message loud and clear – come through the back door, he wants to bust Frank's ass. He adjusts the strap of his duffel, storms back downstairs, and gets the hell out the same way he came.

Accessing the roof from the outside isn't difficult. Matt navigates a hurried path up the iron rails, drain pipes, window sills, and eavestrough. Then he throws himself into the sharp bite of winter nighttime, into the loose, open air of a cloudless sky. Heat billows from chimneys and exhaust pipes, but the world on fire is embers doused in impending snowfall and a frigid breeze off the Hudson. Sounds come in crystal clear; Matt can sift through the rattle and bustle, the conversations from passersby, and suddenly, his heart is aching in his chest. The hollow pit in his guts is filled up by one thought: home. He's home. He's back in Hell's Kitchen.

Matt eases into the city. Every step towards the edge of the rooftop brings greater clarity. The streets unfold around him, pathways unraveling from the sounds and smells, all of them leading him back to his apartment. Little dangerous to be heading there tonight with the Hand and Elektra on the prowl, but there are hiding places. Sheds, rooftop accesses, abandoned buildings, places where he can lay low, get out of the cold, keep an ear out for Frank, rest his leg.

Damn it, his leg. There's a great swell of pain in the shape of Elektra's boot that shoots all the way to his bone. Matt shuffles back, grimacing. His right knee bobs; he catches himself, but the damage runs hot and cold in his veins. Strength gathers and fades in his limbs. He sinks onto the rooftop ledge in spite of himself, and no sooner is he sitting than the great chasm opens up inside him anew. The city splits down its core, swallowing up the sounds, the scents, everything, leaving Matt on the fringes of nothing. There's nothing.

Matt throws a fist into the brickwork once, twice, three times before he stops keeping count. A groan looses itself from his lips. Tears well up in his eyes, blood pushes against the underside of his skin, and Matt sits, and he breathes, focusing. Focusing. Hell's Kitchen is still there behind him, around him, and it's not going anywhere, not if he can help it.

But he should've known. He should've known what Elektra was planning in the alley. Should've known that she couldn't be trusted. He should've trusted Frank's instincts, should've known that Frank would…should've known Frank…

Matt's senses stir. The city comes back to him, the road home. He's only a couple of blocks from his own apartment, he's on a straight stretch with the church. Midtown chatters away in front; the Hudson behind. No other strategic advantages beyond the location, and really, anywhere in Manhattan would do in a fight with the Hand. Yet Frank chose this place, this abandoned brownstone in the middle of Hell's Kitchen, as his next safehouse. He chose traps that can't be detected. And his choices walk the same infuriating line between coincidence and significance as everything else Frank does, but given the choice between the two, Frank is always going to choose significance. Don't get to take nothing with you, so everything here and now has to mean something.

"Fuck you, Frank," Matt says. He gets back to his feet, hauls his duffel over his shoulder, and heads back inside.

The sound of the door slamming rouses Frank. "Thought I told you to get the hell out of here," he mutters.

"Yeah," Matt replies, throwing his duffel to the floor. An insurgent force against the odour of Frank's artillery. "You did."

Less a question than a statement, but one delivered with as much malice as Frank can muster: "So?"

Matt sits down, elevating his leg on the bag. Tears prickle in his eyes – relief, this time. He wipes them aside. "So you want me the hell out? You're gonna have to throw me out of here yourself."

"God damn it, Red."

Matt unstraps his cast, releasing his leg and solidifying his staying there. Frank's heartbeat soars from across the room. He shuffles around on the cot. Matt holds his ground, waiting for boots to tramp across the floor, for that first good swing. But no matter how geared up Frank's heartbeat is, he doesn't get up off the cot. He can't. Pain or vertigo hold him there until he's out again, his final sigh promising they'll discuss this later.

Sounds of struggle. Blankets ruffles. Bandages snap. Stitches screech as they pull from movement. "You want a hand?" Matt asks, already knowing the answer.

"Want you to get lost," Frank says predictably. His efforts to minimize the sounds he's making are useless. Matt hears every catch of his breath, every grunt and groan, as he struggles to hold gauze and wrap bandages at the same time. Lord only knows how the process turns out. Frank certainly doesn't narrate, nor does he ask for the assistance he needs. He eventually lays back down on the cot and pretends to sleep even as his heart hammers away in his chest like a wild dog in a crouch, about to attack.

Matt offers him antibiotics. Frank nabs at them and takes a swing, one Matt dodges. The pills hit the floor, and when Matt tries to go after them, he gets caught by the neck. He manages to escape, but Frank cuffs him across the cheek for the trouble. "I got it." No thanks to you. Then Frank groans, twisting on the cot towards the floor.

Matt pushes him back on the cot. "You're going to rip your stitches."

Frank pushes right back like he's gonna rip Matt's face off, and he doesn't stop till he's grunting. Matt feels the damp, cold rush of sweat breaking out across Frank's skin as if it's his own. He snatches a fresh capsule and presses it to Frank's hand; Frank recoils, his sneer audible, but he's clutching the pill nonetheless. He lays back onto the cot, anger ill-contained by his steady, scraping breath.

"We've still got some T3s, if you need them," Matt says.

Frank snaps, "I'm fine," even though he isn't. His pulse is elevated; blood swims thinly through his veins. Nothing to do but sleep and yet sleep's the last thing on Frank's mind.

Matt rolls his eyes. He gathers together the pills and the water and places them on the cot where Frank can reach. Then he limps back towards his side of the room.

He whips around and catches the bottle of pills when it's chucked at his head.

Gasping.

Matt springs up against the wall. He didn't mean to fall asleep. He winces, his shoulder tight in the socket, his bones painful in his skin. The fight with Elektra come to the fore.

"Frank?" The gasping quiets. "Frank, are you alright?"

"Fuck off, Red."

Matt rolls his eyes. "Good. Glad you're okay."

He's about to stand up when, "Why're you even here, Red? Not keeping an ear out for ninjas. Not playing medic. You looking to answer the door when your girl comes knocking? Give her the grand tour?"

The barb doesn't work, because they both know it's bullshit. "Making sure she doesn't show up and finish your ass off." Matt talks over him. "And she wouldn't have the chance to do that –"

"- if you hadn't been standing in the fucking way!"

"- if you hadn't gotten in my way!"

"Oh, you want to be the one lying here, that it? Didn't get enough of my hospitality when you broke your God damn leg? 'Cuz I'd be happy to give you a taste of this."

That does it: "No, you wouldn't, Frank! You know God damn well that's not what you're gonna do!"

Frank huffs and puffs. His heartbeat sputtering. Blood loss and pain catching up with him. Matt holds onto the sounds, cradling them between his ears. Hoping they'll settle back down, that the pain and weakness will overwhelm them. That he'll remember them later, when this is all over - stifled grunts and stiff fabrics; the bristles of his hair against the pillow; the heat from Frank's palms, his fingers easing out of fists.

Then the present catches up and Frank is sitting upright. Matt groans. Damn. More shit he should've seen coming. "You're going to rip your stitches."

Poor choice of words. Frank's feet hit the floor. He gets himself standing with the help of the wall.

Matt rolls his eyes, the smell of copper flooding his nose. He'll remember this too. "Now you've ripped your stitches."

Footsteps thud slowly across the floor towards him. Frank carves an inevitable warpath even as his body quakes and crumbles on the way, fizzling Matt's spatial sense. Blood drops spatter against the weathered tile, a trail of red that traces back, back, through their respective histories.

Matt rises onto his one good leg. He lets his other hang, burning and throbbing, toe brushing the floor in case he needs to balance.

He pretends not to notice how close Frank gets. Pretends that he's surprised when the hand twists into the front of his shirt. His reaction's too late; he can tell from the stutter in Frank's heartbeat, that weird mix of anger and uncertainty and anticipation. No idea what he's going to do, only that he's going to do. They both are.

The air swells with everything they could say, the truth and all their evasions from it. Matt knows the script too well by now. "You fight me later," he starts, only to get tugged by Frank and told, "I fight you now."

"Later," Matt promises. "I'll be here when you wake up."

"Better not be."

Matt speaks quietly, trying to keep the room from tumbling down around them, "That's not what your pulse is saying."

"How do you know? How the hell do you know that's what my pulse is saying?" Frank doesn't sound like himself. The wetness of his voice, every letter dripping, saliva thickened by blood loss. Matt leans closer as Frank rips at him. "I didn't want this. I didn't ask for this. I said till you're back on two feet; you said till we beat your girl. But there's no beating her your way, Red. And if you're so good at listening to people's pulses, you have to know that."

"She didn't kill you."

"Not for lack of trying."

Matt leans in closer. "You don't miss; neither does she."

Frank's heartbeat falters and redirects, charging ahead with a new strategy. "I had my hand on hers."

"And you, what?" Matt laughs. "Let her stab you in the hip instead of the heart?"

"I had my hands full at the time."

Matt shouldn't be able to feel eyes on him, but Frank's gaze is a shot through the skull, through the chest. The question bubbles up on Matt's tongue like blood from a punctured lung, but he can't. He can't. There isn't an answer in the world he's ready to hear – not a lie, not the truth – as to why Frank held him back.

He leans back on his heel and Frank follows. "God damn, I didn't want–" and Frank's heart leaps into his throat, blocking his next word, his next breath; his head dips limply atop his neck. Matt catches him by the arms as his weight shifts from one limpening leg to the other. Gradually, he draws Frank down until they're both on the floor together.

Frank still has him. Hell, Frank has him even tighter. He's going over the ledge and taking Matt with him. So Matt goes. He lays Frank down, then and only then peeling Frank's hand from the front of his shirt. He slips his hand inside the thin gap between Frank's fingers, meeting Frank's grip with his own till their fists are bound up in each other.

Gradually, Frank's strength wanes; his heartbeat slows. "Tomorrow," he mutters, "Tomorrow, tomorrow…"

Matt tightens his grip, holding on and never letting go. Dad's voice is going in his head – work to do, work to do – but the urgency's gone. Bleeding's slow from Frank's ripped stitches. The work that needs doing is being done right now.

The sunlight feel gray against his skin, murky and diffuse, for which Matt's grateful. He's not sure he could tolerate the crisp, diamond chill on his skin, that magnified brilliance of a cloudless sky. The city sounds strange enough as it is. People going about their business, traffic unceasing, and all the while there's a war going on behind the scenes. Elektra and the Hand, Fisk in Super Max, the denizens of thieves, murderers, drug dealers, and other criminals.

Frank sounds normal. He's up and moving around, this time with greater success than his charge earlier in the day. Matt hears him tugging at the tarp on the desk, hears him clack and tap and spin some things. Grainy radio static becomes audible, followed by an interplay between dispatch and patrol cars.

Guess Frank got another police scanner to go with his new place. Guess he doesn't have to worry about someone breaking it now.

Matt creeps down the back of the house, pops through the back door. Voice weave on the police scanner: codes, protocols, SWAT, Queens. More presence in absence; the vagaries speak to the magnitude of the situation. Matt comes to stand at the threshold of the war room, across from Frank, whose respiration perfectly understates the conversation coming through the scanner.

"What's happening?"

"Prisoner transfer," Frank replies.

Matt doesn't ask questions: he states the obvious. "Super max."

"Yeah."

No, please, God, no.

"Fisk."

A long silence. Frank's unavailable for comment, having seeped out of the room at some point. Matt's left to his own devices. "How could he arrange transfer that quickly?" He would have known if Fisk was planning to leave the island. Frank certainly would have known. No, this has to be recent. Last night recent. "What happened?"

Frank's silence makes sense suddenly: he doesn't know. Matt reaches for his duffel and pulls out his phone. No sooner is it powered up than the notifications pour in: missed calls, text messages, news alerts. Voice mails from Karen, Foggy, and private numbers. He almost throws the damn thing across the room.

"Doesn't matter," Frank decides.

"Bullshit it doesn't matter," Matt snaps. He finally gets past his lock screen and starts double tapping Karen's texts. "Fisk getting –" he cuts it off, moves onto the next. "CALL ME." Next. "Riot at Ryker's. Guards and inmates dead. Call me."

Matt puts his phone to sleep again. "Fisk owned Ryker's. Guards and inmates. How the hell was there a riot?"

"You really asking that question?" Frank thunders away from the police scanner, advancing on Matt. "Less than twenty-four hours ago, we were beating and blasting the shit out of an ancient ninja army and your wacko ex-girlfriend. Now there's a prison riot where guards and inmates end up dead, Fisk's getting his fat ass off the island, and you're asking how that happened."

"Elektra has no reason to go after Fisk."

"You sure about that, choirboy?"

Matt shuffles back slightly, away from the jabs of Frank's respiration against his chest and neck. "Elektra isn't going after Fisk." She's simply used the Hand's grudges for her own personal gain. "But she's hoping you will."

Frank's silence takes on a horrifying new weight. "You're not," Matt says, listening hard for a reaction he can't detect. Frank's blotted himself out of the world and left only the march of his heartbeat behind.

"Hard to lay a trap with a prison transfer. Lotta road to cover."

"Ninjas, Frank," Matt reminds him.

"And with her on my tail?" Frank shrugs sharply, continuing as if Matt hasn't spoken. "Two birds, one stone."

"You're in no condition to fight."

Frank's already strategizing around that part. He comes back with, "And what happens, I don't go, Red? Her ninjas want Fisk in the ground. It's a trap for him as much for me."

"So don't go. I'll go."

"You'll go."

"I'll go. I can get through to her, Frank. I can-"

"Me getting stabbed, that was you getting through to her?"

"That's why you're not going." Matt hates the way he sounds: begging, pleading. Desperate. He puts the mask on, lets the devil out. "I am."

Frank is an infuriatingly blank space. He stretches his left leg, pressing his foot into the floor releasing a long creak that preys on Matt's senses. "I go, I fight. Fisk dies, ninjas die, your girl…" he doesn't say it, but that comes as little comfort to Matt. "You go, you fight. Fisk lives, is transferred, escapes. Gets killed by ninjas."

"Gets justice."

"I can't take that chance." Frank moves back towards the desk. "I'm going."

The world on fire burns hotter inside Matt. He stands, planting both feet on the floor, barring the doorway. "Then I'm going with you."

"To get in my way? Nah. No more. It's over."

"It's not over." Not for them.

Frank scoffs. "Don't do this, Red."

Now who's begging? "Not doing anything, Frank."

And just like that, Frank's back in the room, all of him. Rising temperature and roaring heartbeat and both legs as firm on the floor as Matt's. He yanks open the desk drawer, slams it shut again, then he marches forward, on a collision course with Matt.

Matt steps forward to meet him. He swings with his right, his left. Goes in with his legs. Frank keeps his injured side out of reach and relies on grapples, locks, one that Matt slips through. He comes around behind Frank and throws his fists towards Frank's skull. Frank whips around at the last second and tackles him to the floor.

A blow to his stab wound doesn't deter him: Frank's on a mission and Matt ends up with his left arm pulled so high on his back the bone is millimeters from being dislocated. He tips forward to ease the pressure and Frank wraps an arm around his neck, then tugs him back while pushing him down. Matt can't unfold his legs underneath him. He can't free his left arm. He throws his right fist into Frank's forearm over and over, but he's still getting air. He can still breathe. "You call this a chokehold?" he laughs.

Frank bites down near Matt's ear. His teeth clamp into plastic and pull, freeing something thin and metal and oh, God, Matt's stomach twists into a knot from the smell. The smell that shoots ice into his veins and narrows his perception to pinpricks and speaks of a blackness so complete Matt almost pukes right then and there.

Last night, on the phone to Elektra, Frank talked about a needle, one Sato left him, and his heartbeat was a straight line as he spoke. All this time, he's had a trump card, one he alluded to – God, that night with the ammonia, Frank was fingering the desk drawer. He was thinking about it even then – but he's never used it. Not when Matt was training, not when they were fighting. Not until now.

"No," Frank says. This isn't a chokehold.

Then he stabs the needle into Matt's thigh.

Matt finally gets his left arm free and elbows Frank in the same place Elektra stabbed him. But the damage is done. The needle's out. A sour cold something is swirling through Matt's thigh, catching a lift on his bloodstream. "Why?" he asks. "Why would you…why did you keep it?"

"Because I knew you," Frank says from where he looms.

The blackness in front of Matt's eyes begins expanding, swallowing up his remaining senses. He has minutes before he's out.

Better make the best of them. Frank knows him so well, he'll be expecting this.

Matt whips around and attacks.

Happy reading!