A/N: I've got quite a few arcs for this story, so the pacing is going to be sped-up a little as I don't want to waste time making a bunch of unnecessary chapters. We're gonna be diving into the action very soon.

FRANK

Vision had been the first to tell him of the visitors who arrived, one of them having been some interdimensional traveler from another world. Just a bunch of science crap Frank didn't understand. Or care for, frankly. But when word of a cure had spread throughout base, that was when Frank Castle's attention had been sparked. Among several S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and plenty of hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians living underground, rumors had sprung that the team had come up with a cure. When Vision had personally confirmed the possibility of a potential cure to Frank, he had never been more relieved in his life. For the first time ever since the death of his family, part of Frank could almost let go of the constant pain, rage, and anger inside him. He came closer to having a smile on his face than he had before…but still not close enough. He would never be close enough. Not with his family gone, his only soul and heart ripped away from him. The day Frank Castle's family died was the day the world, in his eyes, had lost any form of heart and became the cold, unforgiving wasteland he feared it would become. His family didn't get to leave to see the New World, they hadn't even lived long enough to see the world become overcome by the runners. But what of the families that had? What about the families that were suffering in fear and in pain of the runners? They didn't ask to live in fear and they didn't deserve to. They deserved the New World, the peace and tranquility that it could offer. They deserved the joy, peace, and happiness that Frank could no longer have with his own family. Perhaps his agenda of justice or vengeance was meant for avenging his family or for his own hatred of criminals. But this…the New World, it was for the hundreds and thousands of families who could raise their children, who would need to raise children of their own. Frank put his thoughts away as he shifted his body in a chair and paid attention to the screen as the rest of the team did. Coulson had been debriefing and questioning one of the two 'visitors' who had arrived. Some kid named Barry Allen, he seemed to have been no older than twenty-seven. Frank carefully observed Barry's features, his short, dark brown hair. His gray t-shirt, dark blue jeans, and black shoes. He studied his mannerisms, trying to scan for every bit of a detail that could tell him about Barry. As far as he could see, Barry was just a young and confused person. Emotionally conflicted and disturbed. Frank knew better than to trust a man based on what he appeared to be, but some strange sort of feeling wanted to convince him otherwise.

"So, how'd you get here, Barry?" Coulson's voice was clear through the security footage of him and Barry in an interrogation-styled room as Frank and the rest of the team watched. "That is your name, right? Barry Allen?"

Barry nodded as he looked up at Coulson, speaking with a raspy, low voice. "Yeah."

"What brought you here?" Coulson asked, striving for an answer to the question.

"I…used my speed," Barry said simply. "I always use it but when I came here…it was different."

Coulson frowned as he folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. "Different how?"

Barry's eyes fluttered as he looked down, a look of guilt on his face. "I tried to go back in time. I shouldn't have…but I did anyway. I used the tachyon device to boost my speed…it brought me here. I don't know why. Maybe, it's meant to be some sort of…punishment. For trying to travel through time. For trying to do what I shouldn't have."

Coulson raised an eyebrow as he lightly chuckled. "Time travel, huh? That's real? Where you're from? In your world?"

Frank shifted in his seat as he closely observed Barry's response. Barry fiddled with his fingers, looking down, unable to look at Coulson eye-to-eye when he responded. "I've fought people who can do it on their own. Yeah, it's possible."

Coulson shifted in his own seat as he tilted his head. "Why were you trying to time travel? Fight someone? Kill someone?"

Barry shook his head as he glanced up at Coulson. "I don't kill. I'm not…a killer."

The words hit Frank like a bullet in the knee, only instead of flaring up pain, it flared a controlled level of anger. The same kind he had with his conflict with Matt when they had clashed about their morals and personal restraint earlier in the apocalypse. Frank had little to no doubt, this kid was surely like Matt. At least, to a certain degree. Visibly some sort of obsession with a moral code. One that Frank lacked. Unlike most, he had no issue with killing, no problem with letting the streets be clean longer. Frank continued eyeing Barry as everyone awaited the next part of his response.

"I was…" Barry tried to say as he suddenly seemed uncomfortable. "When I was eleven, my mother was murdered. My father went to prison for it but he was innocent. Fifteen years. That was how long he spent rotting in a prison cell. All for a crime he didn't even commit. That was how long I spent…growing up, with everyone around me telling me my father deserved worse than what we got. Fifteen years of people and others thinking I was some deluded, psychotic maniac defending my father. Trying to persuade people, the police, the justice system that he was innocent but-" Barry broke off for a moment as he gulped, his eyes becoming watery as he let out a sigh before looking back to Coulson. "But nothing. Just fifteen years of hell on Earth. Then finally, one day, I found out what happened.

The man who murdered my mother was Eobard Thawne. One of my worst enemies from…centuries into the future. He'd gone back in time to murder me when I was eleven. To erase me from existence, but my future self followed him and they fought. The only thing that eleven-year-old me saw was a tornado of orange and red lightning and then…then I was several blocks away from my home before I could even twitch a muscle. So, in his anger, Thawne murdered my mom.

Years later, I'd managed to free my father from prison but then…then Zoom came along. Some psychotic, dangerous speedster who, in the end, wanted to convince me that he and I were the same. And he killed my father, right in front of me, in my childhood home…just to prove it. I beat him eventually…but it wasn't enough. None of it was enough. Everyone I'd saved, the people who were still left in my life, everyone I'd ever stopped and beaten, it. Just. Wasn't. Enough."

Barry stared blankly and endlessly as he continued.

"I wanted to be free. I wanted to leave it all behind. I wanted to live again. To be normal. To have my parents back, to have my family back. I never asked for this. To lose my family, to be the Flash, to be stuck here, to be sitting here. Right now. Telling you all this. I never asked for any of it. Ever since my mother died, every waning and endless second was just…just some painful, torturous reminder of the reality I was stuck in. I wanted to escape. I wanted to be free. I wanted to leave it all behind…so I tried to go back in time, to that very night, to make it right. To end it. I got to escape the reality I was in…but I couldn't create the one that I wanted to be in. The one I'd needed my whole life…instead, I'm here. You ask me why? Why I tried to break the laws of the universe? Why did I do this?" Barry sighed as he nodded his head. "That's why."

And suddenly, what he thought of Barry initially seemed to have been a distant second of a thought. Frank stared at the screen, his eyes and face blank of emotion as he seemed relatively stoic on the outside. But on the inside, a whole whirlwind of emotions spiraled in him like a catastrophic tornado. Something that Barry had said…about losing his family, leaving reality behind to live a normal life, fighting his enemies not being enough, wanting to be free and to have his family back. It all felt so…familiar and recognizable. Because it reminded Frank of himself. Moral codes were a far cry from what Frank had decided to judge Barry upon. Now, he was beginning to consider an ideology entirely different: that Barry was more similar to him than anyone else. Was he? And if he was, then what? Let him descend and become what Frank was? Surely, it had to be the only way Barry could survive in a world like this: overrun by the runners. He wasn't built for this world, Frank knew it. But maybe, he could be shaped and adapted for it. Or let Barry keep his own morals and let them kill him sometime in the future as Frank believed it would. Either way, the choice wasn't his to make, it was Barry's, but perhaps, Frank could give Barry a piece of mind and show him what the necessary choice was. Maybe not the right choice, but the necessary one.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Coulson stood from his chair as he walked over to Barry before leaning on the table, looking down at the twenty-seven-year-old. "I've been in this kind of job for years and I've heard all kinds of ghost stories from all kinds of people. Parents murdered as children, families slaughtered, friends killed. It's always things like this that just make people…snap and motivated to become what they become. Their personalities, their identities, who they were, it all just becomes so…transformed by one thing. For you, it was your parents' deaths. Look, Barry, I can't bring back your parents. None of us can. If you couldn't do it, then neither can we. But either way, you're here now. This place could be many things for you. A place to survive, a place to fight for, or fight against. Or maybe it can be your home, maybe we can be your family. Your friends."

Frank noticed the look of denial on Barry's face as he shook his head and responded. "I have friends. I have…part of a family."

"And I'm not asking you to forget them," Coulson said determinedly. "I'm not asking you to leave them behind or move on. I'm asking you…to not throw the rest of your life away. Help us build the New World for the thousands to hundreds of thousands of people who need it…and we can come together and build your new world. Be your new world.

Now, look, you told me you made a mistake, that you tried to time travel and it was wrong. Help us. Maybe you can remedy it. Not for someone or something else, for yourself. The choice is yours."

Coulson got off the table as he opened the door and closed it, leaving Barry to think and ponder of the choice he had in front of him. He was clearly free to leave the room on his own time. As Daisy switched off the security footage, the entire team descended into a somewhat chaotic conversation of their own reactions and personal thoughts to Barry's story. It was a conversation that Frank had little to no interest in. He got off his seat and quietly exited the room as he made his way to an elevator. It took not more than a few minutes until the elevator of the base took him to the top floor, which was really just a roof-like ground at sea level. There were several of these sort of garden-like balconies throughout the entire base, all for the hundreds of thousands of people who would've liked to see the world, or at least, what was left of it with each passing day. Each part had at least tens of people, hence why they were typically large. Frank took a slow but short walk as he kept his hands in his pockets, a cool autumn breeze blowing against his face and his jacket. He stopped in front of a small patch of grass that was in front of him as he kneeled on the concrete and examined the patch, several flowers grew from them. All of them were a specific magenta/dark purple color. All but one, which appeared to be red. Frank gently brushed his fingers by the rose as he recognized it among the other common flowers. He could see the flowers as reality, the red flower was what he saw as Barry and himself. And the change in color? Their desire to flee the reality they were imprisoned in and live in the one they wanted.

A/N: Well, thoughts? I'd highly appreciate it if those of you who were interested reviewed/commented and let me know what you think. Reviews are very much motivating and appreciated. Anyways, see you in the next chapter!