Dear Reader, this letter is to inform you of Cupid’s curse, which will fall upon you if you don’t pass this email on to twelve friends within twelve hours.
Mycroft Holmes didn’t believe in the curse and now he hasn’t had a second date in three years… because all his first dates end in disaster.
Gregory Lestrade isn’t sure if the curse is real or not, but if dating Mycroft means occasionally getting assaulted with shrimp linguini or nearly electrocuted, it’s worth the risk. Armed with lucky charms and optimism, Greg will have to battle Russian mail-order brides, fire alarms and flying knives if he’s going to win the boy.
Notes:
Based on the summary of ’Cursed by Cupid’ by Wendy Sparrow. I wrote this in stops and starts.
The most interesting thing about the email is that it appears in Mycroft’s inbox at all. The layers of electronic security and various administrative staff should have ensured it was deleted or quarantined long before Mycroft saw it.
On the surface, it’s a simple chain letter promising a reward for sharing this banality with others and threatening dire consequences if ignored. Mycroft reads it carefully to be sure there isn’t a hidden message encoded in it, but their standard cyphers reveal nothing.
It’s merely a chain letter from an anonymously random email. There is something about the 5s and 8s in the email address that makes Mycroft suspect it’s from Sherlock -- not something he can prove without investing significant time, but probable enough that he’s comfortable with the assumption. Sherlock could be testing Mycroft’s security, trying to find weaknesses he can exploit later. Or simply doing it to annoy Mycroft.
Mycroft sighs. It’s such a shame to see a bright mind wasted on pointless puzzles.
Even if Mycroft was the type of person to know a dozen people on a purely social basis, he still wouldn’t forward a letter espousing “romantic miracles” and “the love of your life”. Sneering at the threatened “Cupid’s curse” upon all future attempts at romance, Mycroft deletes the email and thinks no more about it.
***
Mycroft is not a superstitious man. Superstition is how the unobservant make sense of the world, pretending omens and rituals give them some control over perfectly logical results. The decline in his romantic life has nothing to do with an ignored email.
It’s a logical result of circumstances. As the scope of his role has increased, so has the confidentiality of information. He no longer works directly with a particular team; it’s better to sift through multiple written reports to collate an accurate grasp of the situation. Overlapping information is the best way to ensure nothing is missed; multiple sources reduce unconscious bias.
This means that he spends most of his days working alone in one of his offices or attended by minimal, well-known staff. The only meetings he attends in person are small committees of his peers. In short, he has fewer daily opportunities to meet strangers, so it’s unsurprising that he dates less.
And then there is Mycroft’s natural inclination. He is no longer twenty and intrigued by taking a risk, nor willing to sit through four or five tedious dates to be certain the relationship will fail. He is no longer in his thirties, feeling his youth inexorably slipping away with his thinning hair and receding hairline; no longer desperate to grab at any opportunity, worried it will pass him by.
The main comfort of his late forties is that he is comfortable with his own company. He enjoys his house, his club and his work, and living out his days alone no longer fills him with dread. His leisure time is too precious to squander on dates that will not go anywhere. He is more selective, and more than happy to cease a new acquaintance over dessert when it’s obviously doomed.
He hasn’t had a second date in years because he knows who he is and has grown more adept at reading the flaws of others. Sherlock may tease him about being cursed, but Mycroft knows that’s preposterous.
***
“Do sit down, Quentin,” Mycroft chides sharply, frowning at the scene before him. He’s starting to wish he’d picked a different restaurant. He likes Gauthier, but if this nonsense continues much further, he might not be able to come back here.
“It’s broken.” The words are muffled, both from the damage to Quentin’s nose and the bloody napkin he’s holding to it. Mycroft can still make out every outraged word. “He broke my nose. That’s assault. I want him charged.”
Mycroft looks over at the hapless waiter now surrounded by other staff. His apology is blazing in the creases on his forehead, the twist of his long fingers, his weight shifted off his left foot. “He tripped,” Mycroft says. It’s as obvious as the waiter’s love for tabby cats, his aspirations to be a sculptor and his Albanian grandparents.
“He hit me,” Quentin insists, ignoring the fact that Mycroft is right. Mycroft already had his doubts about this date: Quentin’s wine choices had been pretentious and his attempt to debate the Greek economy had been woefully simplistic. Knowing the man lashes out when his pride is hurt only supports those doubts. “Somebody needs to call the police. He needs to be arrested.”
Mycroft could step back and let it happen, but the waiter will be fired and the court’s time will be wasted. Instead, he makes a call.
It connects almost immediately. “Lestrade here.”
“Detective Inspector, this is Mycroft Holmes. I need to ask a favour.” Mycroft turns away from the table, rolling his eyes at the expression of vindication on Quentin’s face. “There is a matter of an assault charge that I would prefer was handled quietly.”
“Quietly?” Lestrade echoes. “You want me to come down there?”
“If you would be so kind.”
Lestrade doesn’t argue or bicker. He only asks for the address and promises to be there as soon as London traffic allows.
The speed of Lestrade’s arrival means he must have used the siren to force his way through. It’s a slight abuse of power that Mycroft appreciates. Lestrade walks into the restaurant like he’s stepping onto a crime scene: not fussy, not showy, but certain he should be here. His shirt is open at the collar, his jacket unbuttoned beneath his trench coat, but he nods his way through the onlookers and people step aside.
He’s come on his day off, Mycroft realises, noting the day’s worth of grey stubble. It should make him look scruffy but Lestrade looks ruggedly handsome instead. For an absurd moment, Mycroft wonders how rough it would feel against his fingertips.
He blinks the thought away as Lestrade steps closer. “Thank you for coming.”
“Where is he?” Lestrade asks, looking around the room. His gaze lingers on Quentin and the napkin pressed over his face before scanning the rest of the crowd.
Mycroft nods at the poor waiter. “He tripped, collided with his nose,” he says, looking over at Quentin.
“Not Sherlock?”
“Not this time,” Mycroft says. “This was more of a personal favour.”
Lestrade’s brows shoot up at ‘personal’ and this time when he looks at Quentin, he pays more attention to the dinners between them, the casual glasses of wine and the small table for two. It’s not obvious. It could be a working dinner but Lestrade mutters, “At least one of you dates,” under his breath, and then adds, “He wants to press charges and you don’t want him to?”
“If you could discourage him.”
***
“So,” Sherlock says, fishing the broken heart from the board game between them. Sherlock prefers playing Operation because it gives him an excuse to show off his dexterity; Mycroft agrees because Sherlock brings out his competitive streak. At some point, Mycroft will stop letting his brother goad him into childish games he’ll most likely lose. “I heard your last date required police intervention.”
Mycroft rolls his eyes. There is no official record of that event, but Sherlock’s information comes from a variety of questionable sources. “It was an expedient solution.”
“It was the curse,” Sherlock replies gleefully.
“It was an unfortunate choice of dinner companion.” Mycroft scowls at the pieces left on the board. He steadies his tweezers above the funny bone. “Nothing more.”
***
Mycroft doesn’t give much thought to the snippets of Latvian coming from the kitchen. The service industry across London is fueled by people working long hours for minimum pay, and those people are frequently immigrants with limited English. Hearing a foreign language from the back of a restaurant is expected.
The date is better than expected. Paul is charming with a nice smile, and he talks about his position at the Wallace Collection with passion and admiration. They’ve discussed favourite painters and the sheer emotion in the latest exhibition, and it’s all going well until Mycroft hears himself laughing a little too loudly at Paul’s joke.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he says, standing up and making sure he feels the weight of his phone in his pocket. “I’ll be right back.”
It takes too much concentration to keep his steps steady as he takes the narrow hallway to the gents. He can feel his pulse hammering at his neck, the hot flush on his cheeks. He looks at the dimly lit wallpaper around him, the way the design shifts and swims in front of him, blurring and overlapping in endless repetitive patterns. He notes the way it makes him feel: amused and entertained. He wants to call Paul over, show him this wonderful wall.
An entactogen, then. MDMA, perhaps. Something slipped into his drink to allow for quick metabolism into the bloodstream. He thinks of Paul, Paul’s easy smile, Paul reaching across the table to run fingertips along Mycroft’s palm. No wonder the date was going so well; they’re both under the influence of something.
It must have been a member of staff. Latvian. There was a corrupt general in Belarus with ties to Latvia, a general whose illegal arms deal fell through due to Mycroft. Despite Mycroft’s excellent memory, the details are fuzzy. Right now, it’s hard to think straight, let alone strategize.
Mycroft pulls out his phone. Texts his assistant with the details, orders surveillance on the current employees. It’s a risk for him to be anywhere near his office in this state, and Sherlock is in Scotland investigating missing emeralds.
“Need me to rescue you from another bad date?” Lestrade asks and Mycroft doesn’t remember dialling. But the phone is in his hand, and Lestrade’s on the other end, and when he drags his free hand down the wallpaper, the flocking feels incredible under his fingertips.
“With some urgency,” Mycroft says and manages to drag the restaurant’s address from his memory. He relays it to Lestrade who hums as he writes it down. It’s a pleasant sound. “You must have a lovely singing voice.”
“Are you okay?” The sharp concern in Lestrade’s tone sobers him a little. “Is that some kind of distress code?”
“No, but it would be handy right now.” Mycroft can’t remember where the kitchen is relative to this hallway. Doesn’t know if he can be overheard. Doesn’t know if he’s said too much already. “I think I’ve had too much to drink.”
Lestrade mutters something about lightweights but Mycroft can hear his keys jingling. “Fine, I’m on my way. Stay there.”
When Mycroft gets back to the table, Paul is glassy-eyed. There’s a sheen of sweat across his forehead. Now that Mycroft’s looking for it, he hears the faster speech pattern and the touch of mania in Paul’s voice.
“It’s an amazing piece,” Paul says fervently, after enthusiastically describing a light installation south of the river. “We should go see it.”
“I’d like that.” He would. Mycroft wants to see Paul again, but it’s unlikely. When Paul wakes up tomorrow, he’ll subconsciouly blame Mycroft for this. There won’t be a second date.
“We should go right now.”
“I can’t,” Mycroft says but he’s saved from explaining the situation by Lestrade walking through the doors. He’s clean shaven this time, in a wrinkled shirt that he’s worn all day and his phone in his hand. His amused smirk turns into an outright grin when he spots Mycroft.
Mycroft wonders at the grin and then realises that he has listed somewhat to his right. He takes his weight off his elbow and sits upright.
Paul’s nice smile shines even brighter when he sees Lestrade. Mycroft understands it, of course, but it’s still galling. Lestrade is not there to be leered at.
“Paul, this is DI Lestrade.” He waves a hand between them. Gets distracted for a moment by the glide of his hand in the air. “Lestrade, could you explain to Paul the common effects of MDMA?”
“What?”
“MDMA. Ecstasy. Common effects.” Mycroft can’t. He doesn’t trust himself to explain the drugging without explaining the reason for it -- and that is far beyond what a civilian like Paul should know.
Lestrade is now looking at Mycroft. He must see Mycroft’s flushed cheeks, the loosened tie because he’d been desperately hot. “You were roofied?” he asks, suddenly serious and professional and devastatingly handsome.
Mycroft nods and ignores Paul, who’s staring at Lestrade’s mouth but not paying any attention to the words spoken. “The drinks.”
Lestrade frowns and starts rifling through his coat pockets. He pulls out an evidence bag, wonder of wonders, then takes the empty glasses from the table and seals them inside. “Okay, gentlemen, we’re going to A&E.”
***
The car ride turns Paul’s pale complexion to the colour of chalk. He looks distinctly nauseated, so Mycroft stays in the back of the Vauxhall Astra while Lestrade takes Paul in.
He wants to sleep this off but he doesn’t feel the least bit tired. Instead, he watches the streetlights reflect on shop windows or runs his fingers over the car’s upholstery. Leather seats would be easier to clean but Lestrade has the standard fabric option. No special requests. No special treatment. No expectation of higher recognition or higher rewards for doing his job and more.
Mycroft has both hands flat against the seat, dragging his palms over the fabric just to feel it against his skin, when the car door opens. “Okay, got that sorted. They’re keeping him for observation overnight, and his sister will collect him in the morning.”
Mycroft scowls at the thought of Sherlock having to do the same. It seems wrong. He’s supposed to be the sober one getting calls from a hospital; it’s never been the other way around.
Then he remembers Sherlock is in Scotland. Saved from that possibility.
When he looks up, Lestrade is staring at him. “Yes?”
“Your turn. Come on.”
“No.”
“No?”
“A hospital has too many staff. Too many entrances. If this was a planned attack, I’d be too vulnerable there. Take me home.” Mycroft drags a hand against his forehead, trying to think through the haze in his mind. “No, my laptop’s there. Too much information. Take me to a hotel instead. Somewhere they charge extra for WiFi in your room.”
Mycroft fishes his phone out of his pocket. He holds it out to Lestrade who blinks and then takes it. “What’s this for?”
“Hold on to that for me. I shouldn’t be left with… with…” He can’t remember the words. They’re there, he can hear them in a variety of languages, but in English that word is blank. Just a shape in his mind of keys and locks and files.
“With means of contacting someone?” Lestrade asks, still leaning into the back seat through the open door. From this angle, he looks tired. Shadows catch on the soft bags under his eyes. He should sleep more, Mycroft thinks. He should have someone to kiss him on the cheek and suggest an early night. “Mycroft?”
“Confidential information. No, that’s not the right word. Sounds similar. Or similar meaning.” Mycroft shakes his head. His vision spins a little so he holds himself very still as he adds, “Classified. That’s the word.”
“Classified?”
“The amount of information on that phone, the secrets I am privy to… I should not have access to them while I’m incapable of logical thought.”
***
Mycroft’s not entirely sure how he ended up on a sofa in Lestrade’s flat. Oh, he can guess the turns Lestrade took and how long he had to wait in traffic, but he’s not sure why. Yet he’s sitting on Lestrade’s sofa -- a deep grey-blue fabric, easy to accessorise, new but not terribly high quality -- being handed a pillow and a duvet.
“I know you probably can’t,” Lestrade says firmly, “but try to get some sleep. I’ll come check on you in a bit.”
***
Mycroft wakes up the next morning and quickly wishes he was still unconscious. His head is pounding. His tongue feels as if he’s been licking carpet.
He stretches out on the sofa and groans like a prisoner on the rack. He aches everywhere: his arms, his legs, his ribs, even his elbows.
He feels clammy, skin tacky with sweat, and shirt damply stuck to his back. All in all, it’s a disgusting feeling. He can’t fathom why anyone would wake up like this by choice.
He presses the palms of his hands against his eyes -- even his eyelids ache -- and tries to recall last night. It’s blurry snatches of Lestrade muttering soothing nonsense, a cold flannel held against his forehead, fingers petting through his hair the way Mummy used to when he caught a cold.
He remembers talking to Lestrade; the taste of sweet, milky tea. He can remember leaning against Lestrade, drooping until his head was on Lestrade’s shoulder. Warm cotton against his cheek and the smell of laundry detergent and deodorant and human being, the same smells on Lestrade’s pillow. He has no memory of what he said to Lestrade. Hopefully, it was nonsense ramblings and nothing especially classified.
Although that is why he called Lestrade. The man has proven he knows how to keep a secret when necessary, and he understands that there is a lot of grey in the world. Alongside Miss Hooper, Lestrade stands as one of the few civilians Mycroft would trust with the nation’s security.
Mycroft pulls his hands down reluctantly. From the angle of sunshine coming through the tiny kitchen window, it’s late afternoon. The kettle’s been moved and there’s the edge of a mug in the sink. Toast crumbs on the counter. Lestrade ate a quick breakfast quietly, no sign of lunch. He left some hours ago.
As expected, there’s a note on the coffee table. “Had to go to work,” says Lestrade’s chunky block capitals. “Call me when you wake up. Greg.”
There are years of filling out arrest paperwork in that handwriting, capitals used as an easier way of ensuring legibility, even spacing and a slight slant to his W’s. Mycroft places it down on the table before he can do anything as ridiculous as trace over the letters with a finger.
He picks his phone up from the table and dials.
“Hey,” Lestrade says, more gently than Mycroft probably deserves. “How are you feeling?”
“Like death would be a mercy,” Mycroft replies candidly, “but it will pass.”
“Your pulse was back to normal and you weren’t running a fever, so I figured you were past the worst of it when I left.” The idea of Lestrade checking before he went to work… It makes Mycroft feel strangely bashful. “Have you been sleeping all this time?”
“Yes. I just woke up,” Mycroft says and then wonders why he bothered elaborating. Lestrade doesn’t need him to state the obvious.
“If you want to stick around a couple of hours, I’ll get takeout on my way back.”
“No,” Mycroft says quickly. “I’ve abused your hospitality long enough. I am in your debt.”
“As long as you hold up your end of the deal.” It sounds like a joke that Mycroft doesn’t understand.
“Deal?”
“You promised me a knighthood.” Lestrade is clearly amused now. “You said people owed you favours and you could do better than an OBE.”
Now Mycroft remembers snippets of last night’s conversation. Remembers complimenting Lestrade and insisting on a way to thank him. Apparently, in the most ridiculous and pompous way possible.
Objectively, he knows it’s best that no real information was shared. But the idea that Lestrade thinks he’s a fool, that Lestrade is laughing at him, sits uncomfortably in Mycroft’s stomach.
It’s not beyond his abilities. He could orchestrate a knighthood if he wanted to. “It would take some months to arrange.”
“Yeah? So I could be Sir Greg? Make the ACPO ranks pay attention to me?”
“I think the Queen’s representative would use your full name.”
“I don’t think Sir Gregory has the same ring to it. Makes me sound a lot older and a lot posher than I am,” Lestrade says with a chuckle. “So thanks for the offer, but no thanks.”
“As long as you know your kindness was appreciated,” Mycroft says earnestly. A little too seriously given the awkward silence that settles between them.
Eventually, Lestrade clears his throat and says, “Yeah, it’s fine. Just be careful in future, right?”
“Or stop interacting with the human race," Mycroft suggests glibly. "Sometimes, that feels like the easier solution.”
***
For the next month or two, Mycroft makes it a personal priority to disassemble the support base of a particular general. He spends more time studying maps of Belarus than talking to people so it’s unsurprising that his next date is almost three months after waking up on Lestrade’s sofa.
If Mycroft’s being perfectly honest, accepting tonight’s invitation had less to do with the man, Julian Peterson, and more to do with his last conversation with Sherlock. (Sherlock had looked him up and down, grinning. “Finally decided to give in and accept the curse?” Really, Mycroft had no other choice than to prove him wrong at the next available opportunity.)
Julian is reasonably attractive: blonde hair turning white, a healthy tan, good features in a long face. He has nice hands, strong and a little rough from horse-riding. The type of man who has always been physically fit and has put effort into remaining so as he ages. He has the biceps and forearms of a man who spends time at the gym daily.
He’s objectively attractive, but more importantly, Mycroft is attracted to him. He would very much like to invite him home, to kiss him against the stair railing and let his fingers explore that carefully maintained physique.
He might suggest it if Julian would only stop talking. The man barely pauses for breath, rolling from one self-absorbed story to the next. Tales of being a merchant banker, of buying his new Ferrari, of that time at Capri where the hotel had double-booked the executive suite and tried to bribe him with a complimentary room until the suite was available. It’s bragging in the least interesting way possible.
Mycroft smiled through the first few stories but now he’s letting his mind wander, not that Julian’s taken any notice of it. Julian is attractive as long as Mycroft doesn’t pay any attention to the things he’s saying.
He couldn’t bear sitting through another evening of this, but he’s sure he can keep nodding and get through the meal. Even if it’s just a one night stand, it would be nice to be touched and feel desirable again.
Maybe saying “just” a one night stand in disingenuous. Maybe it’s expecting too much to find an attractive man who can both hold a decent conversation and enjoy Mycroft’s company. Perhaps he should learn to be satisfied with two out of three.
When Mycroft thinks back on the last few years, most dates haven’t ended well enough to even include a kiss. Of the ones that have, half of those were awkward goodnight pecks, the kind that clearly signalled that no one wanted to repeat the experience. It feels like a very long time since he’s felt any immediate pull of desire.
Mycroft’s so distracted by his own thoughts that he doesn’t notice the waiter approaching with their meals. He startles as the plate appears in front of him and instinctively flings a protective hand in front of him. It catches the heavy white porcelain and sends the plate flying across the table, landing food down in Julian’s lap.
All three of them -- Mycroft, Julian and the waiter -- freeze in shock. Mycroft stifles the urge to laugh at the ridiculous situation. Julian slowly looks down at his lap and then snorts like an angry water buffalo.
“Do you have any idea how much this suit costs?” he splutters, face going red.
“Judging by the cut, it’s one of Kilgour’s,” Mycroft says over the spluttering. From the way Julian’s glaring, tonight is a lost cause. No point holding his tongue any longer. “I’d place it around £4,300.”
While Julian takes a ridiculous fuss about dry cleaning costs and rushing off to the gents to salvage his suit, Mycroft asks for another serving to take home. If tonight is doomed, he should at least be able to enjoy a nice prawn linguini.
***
Julian doesn’t return to the table so Mycroft pays the bill and takes a surprisingly generous container home with him. He pauses outside the restaurant to fix his scarf and hears a familiar voice call out.
“Hey! Mycroft!”
When he looks behind him, there is Gregory Lestrade, trenchcoat billowing open as he strides closer. Of course, it is. A disappointing night wouldn’t be complete without Lestrade witnessing it.
Mycroft nods his head in greeting. “Sir Gregory,” he says and gets rewarded with a quick smile.
“I haven’t seen you in ages,” Lestrade says. It’s one of those imprecise terms that makes Mycroft automatically translate into twelve weeks and four days. “Everything good?”
“Busy, but nothing to worry about.” He almost asks what Lestrade’s doing here, but there’s a reflection of red and blue lights from an alley in the distance. Lestrade must be working.
Lestrade’s eyes dip down to the bag in Mycroft’s hand. “At least I’m not catching you in the middle of one of those disastrous dates. It’s a nice change.”
“Not in the middle, no.”
“Really?” Lestrade asks, not even trying to hide the grin on his face.
Mycroft glances over his shoulder and spots Julian stomping his way through the restaurant. Length and pace of strides, the width of the restaurant, the indirect route that has to be taken…
“I believe that’s him now,” Mycroft says at the precise moment that Julian pushes open the doors, sends a scathing look at Mycroft and then stalks the opposite direction. There’s a large wet mark on the front of his trousers.
The timing is perfect. It’s only made better by Lestrade’s startled but honest laughter. “Christ. It went that well, huh?”
“I did have high hopes for tonight.”
Something flashes quickly across Lestrade’s expression, a moment of sharp curiosity, there and gone. “It was going well?”
“Not really. I spent the whole night listening to his tedious anecdotes.” Mycroft can’t simply say: I disliked him but I wanted to use him for sex. There’s no way to say ‘I put up with it to try to get a leg over’ that doesn’t sound sleazy or pathetic. “But at least I have complex carbohydrates to comfort me.”
“We’ve got a two-hour wait for SOCO, so I’m leaving the team to wait for them. Perks of being the boss,” Lestrade adds cheekily. “Do you want a ride somewhere?”
Mycroft wants to go home. He wants to eat food he probably shouldn’t, sit in his warm comfortable house and remind himself that there are far worse things than being single. Like having to listen to one more boring, pretentious story.
“On the proviso that you help me finish this,” he says, rattling the plastic bag in his hand. “Honestly, it’s all cream and pasta. I shouldn’t be left alone with it.”
“Deal.”
***
He leads Lestrade straight into the dining room and then detours back to the kitchen to heat and plate the food. When he walks in, Lestrade’s sitting at the table, one place left of Mycroft’s usual seat at the head. It’s a large table but sitting across the corner of it, they’re close enough to brush elbows.
It’s nice. It means Lestrade doesn’t have to speak loudly when he says, “Were you expecting company? Or is your place always this clean?”
It’s no cleaner than it usually is. “I believe clean is an absolute. It either is or isn’t clean.”
“No, it’s a sliding scale,” Lestrade says, placing his form down to gesture to each end of the table. “Right from ’messy but mostly clean’ to ‘Gregory Emile Lestrade, clean your room, we have visitors coming’. There’s a wide range of acceptably clean between the two.”
It’s an easy conversation. Lestrade talks about his Mum and trudging dirty football boots into the house, and there’s clear affection in his tone. Affection for his parents, for a childhood that he remembers fondly. It’s rather charming and for a moment, Mycroft wishes his date had been half as interesting to listen to.
He squashes that thought as soon as it occurs. Firstly, Lestrade has dated women since his divorce: most of them up to ten years younger than him and all of them decidedly pretty. If Lestrade had any interest in dating men, it would be foolish to assume he’d have any interest in dating Mycroft. Mycroft is clever, sharp and middling attractive where Lestrade is unfairly gorgeous and a genuinely decent man. He’s a good man, a kind man; a man who works hard and expects no reward beyond the satisfaction in a job well done.
Mycroft works hard because there’s no one else who can do what he does, and there’s little value in being wealthy in an unstable country; it’s in his own best interest to keep everything running well. He’s never fooled himself into believing he is either good or kind.
“Look, can I say something?” Lestrade asks after he’s scraped the last strand of linguini from his plate. “It’s not a criticism, just… You remind me of a mate of mine, Dave. Known him since school, forever really, and he’s always had a type.”
“Go on.”
“Girls at bars, girlfriends, it’s always been blondes. But he’s happily married now. His wife’s a brunette.”
Mycroft fails to see the point. “Was she blonde when he met her?”
“No. That’s it. Once he stopped looking for a girl who looked a certain way, he found the one,” Lestrade says, displaying his own romantic streak in the choice of words. The idea that someone post-divorce and post-heartbreak could still believe in one true love -- in finding one perfect soulmate -- seems remarkable to Mycroft. He’s had no such setbacks and he’s cynical of the entire concept.
“I’m not sure I’m looking for the one. I think it would be nice to occasionally--” Mycroft stops himself before he can end that sentence in a truly pathetic way. It would be nice to have company, another warm body reading on the sofa. It would be nice to be held, to crawl into bed after a long day and fall asleep with someone’s arm around you. It would be nice to get off with someone else’s hand on his cock.
They’re all nice things to have in life but they’re hardly necessary.
“He had this idea in his head of what his future looked like, right? And restricting himself to girls who only fit that criteria meant he wasn’t really giving himself a chance to fall in love. You can’t fall for a checklist of attributes, it has to be the right person.” Lestrade reaches for his glass of water and takes a few deep swallows. “I’m just saying, you have a type.”
Not really, Mycroft thinks. They all had different professions, grew up in different areas of England. There was limited overlap in their choice of hobbies and interests. “A type?”
“It’s always bespoke suits and money and posh,” Lestrade says plainly. “Which aren’t bad things and I get that it gives you something in common, but maybe that’s not who you’re supposed to be with.”
“Those are the circles I mix in. Those are the men I meet.” Those and people who work for him, but dating the staff is bound to end badly.
The phone in Lestrade’s pocket rings loudly and they both jerk back. Lestrade pulls it out, answering quickly.
“Lestrade here. Yeah? They got there early? Mark that one in the books. Yeah. No, I’m on my way. Ten minutes? Twenty?”
Mycroft stands up, glancing around the room to be sure Lestrade hasn’t left anything. No, just his trenchcoat in the hall.
Lestrade puts the phone away with an apologetic expression. “I’ve got to go. Right now.”
“Thank you for the company,” Mycroft says, walking him out and fetching his trenchcoat on the way. “And I will give some consideration to your advice.”
“Good. Just--” Lestrade frowns as he takes his coat, apparently unsure of what to say. “Keep in touch, yeah?”
Knowing Mycroft’s luck, he’ll run into Lestrade after his next failed date. “Do take care.”
***
While he can see the merit of Lestrade’s argument, it’s easier to agree with it than act on it. Stepping beyond one’s comfort zone may be commendable, but contrary to popular movies, standing around in coffee shops, bookstores and supermarkets doesn’t help Mycroft meet anyone.
People don’t start conversations with strangers. Most of the people in those places aren’t single, and those that are have errands to run and are too busy to pay attention to anything beyond their phone.
After trying each venue once, Mycroft gives it up as a bad idea. He feels humiliatingly self-conscious and somehow invisible at the same time.
He calls Lestrade, hoping for a better suggestion of how people meet when it’s not at galleries or play intermissions. He gets Lestrade’s voicemail -- heralded by a very professional “This is DI Gregory Lestrade. Please leave a message at the tone” -- and doesn’t react fast enough to end the call.
“This is Mycroft Holmes,” he says, cursing himself for not hanging up. He barely had a reason to call. He certainly doesn’t have a good reason for leaving a message. “I was trying to get a message to Sherlock. Don’t worry, I’ll call John Watson.”
The good thing about having his metaphorical fingers in every pie is that there is always a minor issue somewhere that would benefit from Sherlock’s investigative skills. It’s an easy thing to call John Watson next, and offer paid work to Sherlock. (Surprisingly, Sherlock is bored enough to take it so that’s one less thing Mycroft needs to address himself.)
He gets dragged into a conference call with China that afternoon so he misses Lestrade’s return call. Lestrade’s message is relaxed.
“Hey, it’s Greg,” he says, “calling you back. Sherlock said he’s busy doing something for you, so you must have got in touch with him. Call me back.”
Mycroft considers calling back but it’s the middle of the night. He waits until the next day but it goes to voicemail again.
“Mycroft Holmes,” he says, and, “I was just returning your call,” and, “There’s no pressing need for you to call me back.” Awkward is the kindest way to describe the stilted recording.
Then there’s a quick trip to Washington and Lestrade calls while he’s in the air. “Greg here. I don’t know how we keep missing each other. I’ll try again later.”
And then, “Just me again. Call me back, okay?”
The next few days Mycroft is busier than he prefers, sorting out a few messes here and there. Every time he gets a spare minute, it’s an unreasonable time in London.
He has to wait until an hour before his return flight. It should be mid-afternoon in London, on a Saturday. Lestrade should be able to answer his phone.
It goes to voicemail again. Mycroft’s disappointed. He can hear it when he leaves the last message: “This is Mycroft. No need to call me back. We can declare you the winner in this game of phone tag.”
It’s silly. Orchestrating a convenient time to call does not oblige someone else to answer. It’s a Saturday and he’s not on call; of course, Lestrade would have plans for the day.
When Mycroft gets off the plane, there’s a missed call from Lestrade. He forces himself to ignore it until he has reclaimed his bags, survived airport traffic, and made it home in one piece.
The background noise in the message is loud: chatting people, mostly deep voices, the drone of a TV and the clink of glasses; the unmistakable sounds of a pub.
“Hey, Mycroft,” Greg says loudly, trying to be heard over the noise. He’s had enough to drink that his accent’s coming through, flattening his vowels. “I didn’t hear my phone ring. Call me, yeah?”
Mycroft plays the message twice more and then deletes it. He doesn’t call back. They’ve both wasted more time on this than the conversation deserves.
***
Since meeting someone in general public areas seems unlikely, it’s only logical that Mycroft would fare better in a venue where people come to meet others. A venue where being gay was presumed. In short, a gay bar.
The idea of going out to Soho seems trendy and uncomfortably close to home, so Mycroft chooses an establishment out in Stoke Newington. According to Google, the most popular hours are Fridays and Saturdays between 11pm and 2am, so Mycroft plans accordingly.
In retrospect, it’s not his best plan ever. There are two floors of dancing and bars, in spaces that would look dingy and worn if the lights were bright enough to see them. Judging by what Mycroft sees, the crowd is a mixture of gay and straight, groups loosely dancing in circles or couples gyrating together, but the majority of them of them are under twenty.
Mycroft feels unforgivably old. Even if he’d been the right age, he’s never enjoyed loud music thumping through his breastbone or been especially graceful on the dance floor. He can waltz and he can foxtrot but he’s never had Sherlock’s flair for it; he’s certainly never pushed himself against a total stranger, using them as a pole in a stripper routine.
There’s no point coming here and leaving immediately, so he forces himself to stay. He sits at the bar, back to the wall, dance floor and doorway in his line of sight. He keeps a close eye on his drinks being poured, but after one glass of hideously cheap whisky, he orders water.
He watches the young people drink and laugh, having fun, and he can’t remember ever being so carefree. It’s not in his nature. He watches them wistfully, wondering what it would be like to be... ordinary. To have a simple job, to only worry about your next pay cheque, to look forward to going out every weekend. It sounds terribly dull to Mycroft, to walk through life and only see the surface, but so many people seem content with it.
There are several free seats to either side of him, and yet someone takes the seat right beside him. Dark hair and olive skin -- Arabic mother and Eastern European father -- long, straight nose and very dark eyes. He’s older than the crowd in here but not significantly. Around twenty-nine.
His smile shows crooked incisors. “Having fun?”
“Not especially,” Mycroft replies. The young man looks confused; the music is too loud and he apparently doesn’t read lips. Mycroft leans closer and repeats himself loudly. “No, not really.”
“First time here?”
“Probably my last,” Mycroft replies.
The young man grins and says, “Mike.”
“What?” Mycroft asks, instantly suspicious. He looks to the man’s hands, but there are no telltale callouses, no signs of violence or weapon skills. He spends his days using a laptop keyboard.
“I’m Mike,” he says, tapping a hand to his chest to emphasize the point. “You?”
“Mycroft.”
From the confused frown, Mike didn’t quite catch the name. “Do you want to get out of here? Go somewhere we can talk?”
It’s absurd. Mycroft was in university when this boy was born. But he’s also been sitting here for two hours, and he hates it, and he wants to leave. “Where?”
“I know a place. Does great pancakes.”
It’s the pancakes that convince Mycroft.
***
Over a fifteen minute stroll through quiet, fluorescent-lit streets, Mike doesn’t say anything abysmally stupid. It’s standard getting to know you conversation: employment, education, location. Or what did you study at school, where do you work, where do you live now and where did you grow up. All details that Mycroft could deduce, but the conversation is no more tedious than it needs to be.
Mike asks about Mycroft’s job (civil servant for the Department of Transport) and confirms Mycroft’s suspicions about his own employment (aspiring writer, he says, but he really means unemployed).
“It’s such a modern concept,” Mycroft says because modern is sometimes the best word for immature and indulgent. “This idea of removing oneself from life in order to write. There are great books that were written while their authors held steady jobs.”
“Maybe those great books would have been written no matter what,” Mike says, leading them inside to a cafe open unfathomably late. It’s an unremarkable cafe inside, a collection of chairs and tables, with posters covering one wall. There are a few other patrons but it’s mostly empty.
They go to the counter to order -- tea and pancakes for Mycroft, coffee and pancakes for Mike -- and then take a table.
“That is my point. If the book is extraordinary, it will be written. And if it is not,” if it is as mediocre as Mycroft suspects Mike’s novel will be, given his brief description of it and his lacklustre enthusiasm, “surely it’s better not to devote years of your life solely to that one thing.”
The young man nods, considering it as Mycroft considers him. Mycroft likes his confidence, his turn of phrase, his highly photogenic mix of features. Educated to a university level, able to take advice from his elders without being awed by them. DCMS, Mycroft decides, they’re always looking for media-friendly faces there.
“I don’t disagree in theory,” Mike says. “But getting work isn’t that easy. I could go back to uni, finish the degree but I’m not sure an arts degree will actually help me find a job.”
“Perhaps I could help, with a condition or two.”
“How?”
“I know a position that needs to be filled at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.” He doesn’t know of a specific position, but he knows that Gerald Sanders owes Mycroft several favours and will find a vacancy somewhere. He can employ the boy as a casual; there’s currently an underspend in the departmental budget that allows a little wriggle room on FTE. “Nothing glamorous, office work. I think it’s casual with a view to becoming permanent.”
“Really?”
Mycroft pulls a pen from his pocket and writes on a spare serviette. Gerald’s name and email address, and then his own name. He slides it across the table. “Email your resume to Gerald and mention that Mycroft Holmes recommended you. Ensure that your resume is honest. If I am vouching for you, there will not be a single untruth in that document. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Mike says, responding to the tone of authority by sitting straighter and giving a sharp nod. “And…”
“And?”
Mike looks a little wary, dark eyes watching the serviette lying between them. “The condition?”
“Do not lie on your resume. I believe I made that very clear.”
“Oh.” The surprise and relief on his face makes it clear he’d worried the condition would be something quite sordid. Something he’d readied himself to refuse, despite the offer of employment. Mycroft thinks it a good sign of his character.
“I appreciated the pancakes,” Mycroft says, “but you really are terribly young.”
Mycroft looks up at the sound of the cafe door opening and sees-- No. It couldn’t be Lestrade. How could it be Lestrade hurrying inside wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt? This sort of coincidence is unbelievable.
No matter how hard Mycroft stares, it is undeniably Gregory Lestrade. Gregory Lestrade wearing loose grey sweatpants low around his hips and a blue T-shirt that’s been put through the dryer so many times it’s shrunk. It clings tightly across the small bulge of fat above each hip and the curve of belly; it also clings to the broad chest and strong shoulders, the lean muscles on his biceps. Not from a gym, Mycroft notes, but a clear sign that Lestrade spends less time behind a desk than he’s supposed to, and more time chasing after Sherlock and forcibly arresting criminals.
Mycroft looks away before he can be caught staring. He keeps his gaze on his cup as Lestrade stands at the counter.
“Hey, Kristy, I’m out. Any chance you’ve got a spare litre?”
“I’ll check,” the cafe girl promises and heads to the back room. She comes back quickly with a carton of milk, and Lestrade passes her a few coins.
“Thanks,” he says, tucking the milk under one arm. He turns to leave, glancing around the rest of the cafe, and stops, staring at Mycroft. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question,” Mycroft replies calmly as Lestrade steps over to their table.
“Yeah, but--” Lestrade stops when he notices Mike sitting opposite Mycroft. A quick narrow-eyed glance at his age and dress, and then it’s covered with a friendly expression. “But I’m interrupting. I’ll leave you to your night.”
“No need. I was just about to go,” Mike says quickly and Mycroft’s opinion of the young man increases when he stands and adds, “Thank you for the opportunity. I’ll email my resume tomorrow.”
Lestrade steps back to allow Mike to leave and then takes his seat. The milk stands to attention at the far side of the table. “This is a strange time for an interview.”
“I don’t think he intended it to be an interview,” Mycroft allows. “But I know a department that could use someone photogenic and smart enough to welcome guidance.”
Mycroft places his cup back in its saucer. He’s not expecting Lestrade’s hand to dart out to catch the back of his fingers and pull Mycroft’s arm towards him. His grip is firm and warm as he turns Mycroft’s hand to show the ink stamp on his inner wrist.
“Were you out clubbing?” he asks, amazed and doubtful. Lestrade releases his hand and Mycroft pulls it back regretfully. “Did you wear a blazer to a club?”
“I wasn’t going to wear a suit.” Tan trousers, plain white shirt, sports coat: it’s as casual as Mycroft’s wardrobe gets. He certainly wasn’t going to buy new clothes for this social experiment. “This was your idea, you know. Meet people beyond my social circle.”
Lestrade’s expression is indulgent and amused and almost… fond. Mycroft is very good at noticing when someone is attracted to him; he’s less familiar with the signs of being liked.
“And how did that go?” Lestrade makes it sound like an inside joke, like he’s laughing with Mycroft and not at him.
“About as well as you’d expect. Apparently, twenty is the cutoff for clubs these days. Although to be perfectly honest, even if I’d been twenty I doubt I’d enjoy the experience.” Mycroft reaches for his cup of tea and then finds it surprisingly empty. “And you? Your flat is close to here, isn’t it?”
“Round the corner,” Lestrade says. “I couldn’t sleep and I was out of milk, and this place is closer than the convenience store.”
Mycroft is suddenly aware that Lestrade probably sleeps in those clothes -- has a flash of imagining soft, body-warm cotton and Lestrade’s sleepy smile -- and that he has no good reason to keep the man from his bed. “Don’t let me keep you. You should go home and enjoy your tea in peace.”
Lestrade shakes his head. “I wasn’t talking about clubbing,” he says, ignoring Mycroft’s invitation to leave.
“I’m unlikely to strike up a new acquaintance at a coffee shop.” Mycroft knows. He’s tried.
“No, I meant…” Lestrade sighs and scratches the back of his neck. Mycroft does not let his gaze waver, does not let himself memorize the play of arm muscles in that simple gesture. Really, it’s quite inconsiderate for Lestrade to wander around in public dressed like that. “Me.”
“What?” Mycroft asks, sure he’s missed something.
“Do you want to go to dinner sometime?”
“Why?” Mycroft asks and then he realises. A date. Lestrade is asking him out. “I thought you were straight.”
Lestrade raises an eyebrow at him. “Just because I married a woman doesn’t make me straight.”
“Yet you’ve only dated women since your divorce.”
“Because I was carrying a torch for a guy,” Lestrade says grudgingly, “and it didn’t seem fair to date men I wasn’t interested in.”
“Oh.” Given who Lestrade is, that would match his sense of decency. “I won’t ask why, but I’m glad you’ve changed your mind.”
“I didn’t change my mind,” Lestrade says. “I just finally got the nerve to ask him out. I’m not sure he’s said yes yet.”
Mycroft reaches for his cup, stalling, then remembers its empty. He puts it back down and looks up to find Lestrade grinning at him.
“Yes,” he says clearly and calmly. “I would like that very much.”
***
Mycroft doesn’t tell Sherlock. He doesn’t need to. Lestrade is many things but he’s not a deceitful man.
“You should tell Lestrade about the curse,” Sherlock says, rolling another double onto the backgammon board.
“I’m not going to tell him about something that doesn’t exist.”
“Police are superstitious,” Sherlock replies, tapping his piece around the board. “He’d believe you.”
Mycroft picks up the dice. He shouldn’t ask. He knows Sherlock’s taunts are only childish attempts to annoy him. He should be smart enough to understand Sherlock’s reasoning, even if he doesn’t spend as much time around Lestrade.
He rolls the dice and moves his pieces. He ignores Sherlock’s pointed silence as long as he can. “Based on what evidence?”
“He has a lucky tie for court cases.”
“Hmm.” Admittedly, that does suggest a superstitious nature, a willingness to believe in lucky charms and curses go hand in hand. But it doesn’t change the fact that curses do not exist and therefore, Mycroft is not cursed.
“It’s only fair to warn him,” Sherlock adds helpfully, then rolls another double. Mycroft would suspect loaded dice if he hadn’t checked them himself.
***
Mycroft is secretly charmed that Lestrade suggested Gauthier for their date. He likes their selection of dishes, interesting flavours, not too complicated, not restricted to describing themselves in trendy terms of fusions and nouveau cuisine. The host might give him an uneasy glance as he’s shown to a table -- at the back, a little away from other patrons -- but that’s only to be expected.
Lestrade arrives right on time. Mycroft watches him follow the host across the restaurant. He’s wearing dark jeans and a black shirt, and a soft-looking leather jacket. For a moment, Mycroft is reminded of his schoolboy crush on a local motorcycle-riding hoodlum, something he hasn’t thought of in decades. That crush was doomed as soon as he talked to the boy and realised he was a cretin.
Lestrade grins brightly when he spots Mycroft, and Mycroft allows a small smile in return.
“Hey, I’m not late, am I?” Lestrade asks, sitting down.
“No, I was early.”
“Good. You can never tell with London traffic,” Lestrade starts, and then they’re talking about traffic woes and unpredictable ETAs, about roadworks and ridiculous drivers. Lestrade’s describing a dangerous right turn, moving the salt shaker to demonstrate, when a waiter looms beside them, and Mycroft realises they’ve been talking for fifteen minutes.
“Oh, how about a glass of wine, white,” Lestrade says, opening the menu in front of him, “and we’ll figure out what we want to order. Mycroft? Do you want a drink?”
Mycroft shakes his head. “Water will be fine.”
“Not a fan of wine?” Lestrade asks when the waiter leaves.
“Not especially. I do enjoy a good whisky, but I enjoy it more without food.”
Lestrade pulls a face. “Beer, yes. A good Guinness. I can’t do whisky.”
“No?”
“I blame granddad’s Drambuie. I stole the bottle. I was fifteen and a couple of mates and I finished the bottle. Wanted to die the next day.”
“I am familiar with the feeling. Rather recently,” Mycroft says, and Lestrade gives a snort of amusement. “Was the infamous Dave part of these shenanigans?”
“It was Dave’s idea. Not that Mum ever believed me. I was grounded for a month,” Lestrade says, dark eyes glittering with mischief. Mycroft has the sudden urge to ask about every misdeed, every naughty exploit, to learn what Lestrade was like at eight, thirteen, nineteen. To know everything that doesn’t get recorded in background files and career histories.
Mycroft looks down at his menu. People do not ask for every possible scrap of information on a first date. That would be obsessive and invasive. “Perhaps we should work out what to order.”
“What would you recommend?” Lestrade asks, and then there’s a buzz. He fishes the vibrating phone out of his pocket, frowning at the number as he answers. “Lestrade here.”
Whatever is said, it etches the frown deeper into his face. “But I’m not even on call. What about Peters and Singh?”
There’s a pause. Mycroft thinks that they didn’t even manage a drink before the date was finished. It’s still one of his better dates.
“The flu? Both of them? And Jacobs sprained his ankle. Fine, I’m coming in, but this is overtime. I had plans,” Lestrade says pointedly, and then, “Yeah, I know. I’m coming in.”
Lestrade hands up and puts the phone back in his pocket before he looks up ruefully at Mycroft. “I’ve got to go into work.”
“I heard,” Mycroft says. “Go. I’ll deal with the restaurant.”
“I’m working next Saturday,” Lestrade says, standing up. Mycroft expects some unfeasible promise of calling, some well-meaning but vague future promise. “What about drinks on Sunday afternoon?”
“Are you sure?” Mycroft asks, which is hardly encouraging.
“Come on. You agreed to a date, and this doesn’t count. We didn’t even get to the food.”
“Well, if this doesn’t count as a date,” Mycroft allows playfully, “we will have to reschedule. If we say four o’clock on Sunday, I could make it.”
“Four o’clock. I’ll text you the place.”
***
Mycroft arrives in Marylebone just before four, and wonders at Lestrade’s choice. It’s too far from his work or flat to be a local pub, yet he had specifically chosen it.
It is comfortably close to Mycroft’s place in Mayfair. Perhaps that was Lestrade’s reasoning: somewhere they could walk back to Mycroft’s. If that’s the ulterior motive, Mycroft rather likes the idea.
It’s an old Victorian style pub, warm woods and a long bar, and unremarkable at first glance. A few patrons sitting at the bar, groups sitting at a few tables, but half the tables are empty. Relaxed chatter drowns out the acoustic background music, but it’s not too loud to have a conversation.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and there aren’t a lot of patrons, but there are only three women in the place, and they’re all part of larger groups. The pairs sitting around are all men, in their thirties and older, but the body language is wrong. A little too close, a little too attentive, for straight men. Interesting.
“Oh, you found it,” Lestrade says behind him. Mycroft glances over his shoulder to see Lestrade run a hand through his hair (damp from the showers outside, rain pattern across his sweater suggests a hunched run from his car).
“Yes. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to sit at the bar or a table.”
“Do you have a preference?”
“Either is fine,” Mycroft says. The bar would be more casual and set a friendlier tone; a table would feel more intimate, would allow for a conversation that wouldn’t be overheard. He would be more comfortable sitting at a table, but either would be acceptable.
“Table, it is,” Lestrade says, leading Mycroft to the far side of the room with a gentle hand on his back. It’s high on his back, between his shoulder blades.
Mycroft only feels the lightest of pressures through his suit, and yet it catches him by surprise. There’s nothing indecent or suggestive in the gesture; on the contrary, it’s familiar and a little protective. Mycroft knows how to ward off an unwelcome roaming hand and how to defend his personal space with a withering glance. He’s less sure how one welcomes a casual touch.
If Lestrade notices him tense in surprise, he doesn’t mention it. He just leads them to the table -- a few seconds walk, nothing more -- and then removes his hand. “What do you want to drink?”
“Orange juice, please.”
Lestrade nods and fetches drinks from the bar. It gives Mycroft ample time to decide Lestrade is wearing the same dark blue jeans he wore to their last date. This time, with a deep green sweater -- wool and silk blend, judging by the fine sheen, a few small snags showing it’s been in Lestrade’s wardrobe for at least a year -- and brown leather boots. Practical for the weather, but a flattering outfit nonetheless.
Lestrade slides over a tall glass of orange juice. “Sure you didn’t want whisky? They have some quality drinks here.”
Given the age and disposable income of the clientele, Mycroft would believe it. The reason is much simpler than that. “You’ve already seen me incapacitated once. I would prefer to avoid a repeat performance. After all, dating is all about hiding one’s obnoxious traits.”
“You weren’t that bad.”
“I believe I fell asleep on your shoulder.” Mycroft adjusts his cuffs, allowing himself a brief respite from his embarrassment. “Hardly an appealing impression.”
“You were adorable,” Lestrade says. Mycroft hasn’t been called adorable since he reached double digits. “High as a kite, but adorable. Underneath all that cleverness and the fancy suits, you’re a sweetheart.”
The suggestion is preposterous. “I assure you I am not.”
“Very, very deep down,” Lestrade says, grinning as he drinks his ale.
“You stick with me, Red,” Frank drops his voice down to a whisper, “I got you.”
Frank and Matt deal with the aftermath of the attack at the Bulletin while planning on how to move forward.
Notes:
Poems and excerpts taken from (in order of appearance): November by Raymond P. Fischer And the word for moonlight is my name by Jai Hamid Bashir Loss of memory by James Langlas Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath Very many hands by Aaron Coleman Forgetting by Joy Ladin
the eleventh month of the Gregorian calendar. The last month of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.
May I be blind whenever June clouds pass;
Never lie down in sun-warmed meadow grass,
Never smell clover; my voice grow harsh and thin,
And next November leave me dead in sin.
BLOOM
This mouth is a wound from where I’m learning
how to love.
With mid December comes unforgiving cold and merciless noise.
Winter parks and Christmas fairs open, stores play Christmas’ songs from nine to five and Matthew can only allow it to flood him, drag him to drown into it as he sits in the cot by the broken window.
He sighs at the sound of Frank assembling his gun for the sixth time. They had been easy to ignore at some point, but now each click echoes around his head like a gunshot.
His head’s been getting better slowly. It took him a week to improve from the simple flu and two days of Curtis coming and going to reassure Frank the fever was not due to an infection and that Matt’s immune system has been compromised for a while due to poor nutrition and stress.
And stress hasn’t been lacking.
Fisk, and now he remembers enough of that name that his fists clench with the mere thought of it, is tearing Matt’s life apart. Not long ago he heard an APB on his name, considered armed and dangerous. There was someone using his symbol to kill people and now Daredevil was wanted for murder. A shoot to kill order was issued on Frank twenty-four hours after the whole Bulletin ordeal. Nine people died on the attack - including one that, according to Frank, was the man who shanked Wilson Fisk -, several were hospitalized and the man had escaped custody somehow.
Matt opens his eyes at the sound of Frank disassembling his gun again. “Frank,” a grunt, “Frank, it’s the seventh time already.”
“You been counting?”
Matt stands up from his place perching at the window to sit down on the (uncomfortable, flea-bitten) couch. “Hard not to.”
Frank only offers him another grunt. Puts the handgun together and drops it on the table, leans back on his seat and crosses his arms. “Past time we planned ahead, Red.”
Yeah, Matt had been thinking the same. Running wouldn’t get them anywhere, but - “You should go, Frank.”
A second. Frank’s heartbeat stops for a second before it returns, booming powerfully against his bruised ribs. Matt can feel his stare burning holes through his unguarded eyes.
“Excuse me?” At the sharp-edged tone, Matt’s hackles raise.
“This isn’t your fight-”
“What do you mean, it’s not my fight?” His voice climbs up several notches and so does his temperature, Frank’s muscles tense and ripple.
“Fisk is my problem, I’m responsible for this mess, you shouldn’t have to-”
“Ah for crying out loud, thought this Catholic guilt martyrdom fest bullsh*t had been knocked clean outta your skull-”
“Don’t change the-”
“What, Red, you want me to walk away?”
Could you do that, he asks him in another lifetime, could you walk away?
“Yes! That’s exactly what you should do!”
“And you’ll fight that guy in the Devil suit, weighting half of what you did a month ago and with your skull crocheted with wire?” His tone is mocking and it hits him in all the wrong places. Matt’s palms sting when he slams both down against the table.
“You could have died!” He exclaims at his face, his own heartbeat mingling with Frank’s until it’s impossible to tell either one apart. “And there was nothing, nothing I could have done to stop it!” The marine’s heartbeat falters before he too rises. But Matt won’t give him the chance to push and prod and bend him. He needs to understand. “Fisk found someone to kill me, Frank. Someone better, faster and what do you think he’ll do if you stand in his way again?”
“I’m not the one who dies, Red.” He growls, crowding into Matt’s space. Fast heart rate slows right down. The level of self-control of this infuriating- “So you get your head on straight, because I don’t care what bullsh*t you’re agonizing over right now, we’re doing this, you’re not doing this alone, you got that?”
Matt inhales and doesn’t let go. Frank steps and only then he exhales, when the air is slightly less Frank and he can breathe properly.
“This ain’t on you, Red.” A hand raises - he almost gravitates towards it before holding back. Frank eventually lets it drop by his side.
He should know that Frank wouldn’t do it half-way, even when it came to taking care of Matt, getting him back on his feet. Had never been one for half-measures. And yet, it still seems he thinks Matt’s worth the time.
Not like this, Red.
He sits back down, unperturbed by Frank looming over him. Since a week or so ago, they’ve been mostly ignoring what had happened, ignoring the implications in Frank’s words, refusing to voice the unmentionable.
“It’s like,” he exhales brokenly, “every piece of information I try to make sense of, it doesn’t fit. It’s like reaching for a broken cup to try and glue it together, but finding that most of the pieces are missing. I can see most of the fragments, I don’t know how it looks like when they’re together.”
Frank nods, as malleable and open as a solid wall of bricks, giving nothing away.
“Any leads?”
Matt tilts his head up. “One,” he can mostly sense Frank’s eyebrow curving up. “The man who made my suit.”
Frank stops for a moment, his arms cross in front of his chest. “How good was that copy, Red?”
Matt feels the devil smile through his teeth. “It was identical.”
The marine stops, head slanting to the side as if considering him, something in his face. His heartbeat changes, his temperature rises, blood pumping faster in a rush. Frank suddenly snorts, all the tension leaving his shoulders.
“It is good to have you back, Red.”
Frank checks his gear as quietly as he can, leaving Red to his meditation thing. Sig, couple of knives, a smoke grenade because regular ones are bound to f*** up Red’s hearing. Prepares an extra getaway duffle with a lot of ammo, because he can almost count on a sh*t storm when it comes to Matt f***ing Murdock. Makes sure to shove some of the redhead’s clothes and pills and the cream for the fading bruises around his neck.
A crumpled piece of paper from a week ago catches his eye.
He had already memorized both the addresses scribbled down in there, repeated them until they echoed with his kids’ laughter and the never-ceasing gunfire. Frank’s mind is a battlefield and he’s the last man standing on it.
At least, he thinks, eyes straying back to auburn hair, it used to be.
He worries the paper between his fingers, eyes going over the same phone number in the back.
He wasn’t here for me, Frank, Karen had said between sobs, splattered in blood as she pointed at the corpse slumped in the ground. Jasper Evans, the man who had shanked Wilson Fisk. And the bald a**hole had known. Had known Karen would find him, that she’d bring him in. He had known.
It had been a stupid move, what he did. And he was still glad Red had been completely wiped out to notice Frank being gone most of the next day after the attack. He had twenty-four hours to get Karen and Curtis to safety before he went to the address he was supplied with and killed the six people waiting for him inside.
He traces the phone number again. Shakes his head but doesn’t immediately throw the paper away, once he crumples it for the second time. It could come in handy. Maybe.
His eyes stray back to Red.
It’s been getting harder to stop himself from staring, these days. Specially now, that he knows. Knows what his lips taste like, how they move against his, how he grabs like he’s terrified you’ll let go of him.
He sits down and watches and waits.
Red insists on wearing a black cloth around his head like a goddamn sock, but Frank doesn’t do much besides ruffling his hair teasingly.
Matt only gets stuck once, during the ride. Frank wonders if he realizes it still happens. He’d just suddenly stop whatever he was doing and be very still. It wasn’t like his usual dissociative episodes, Frank isn’t sure if he’s just listening to something or lost inside his head.
He thinks maybe there’s familiarity in his state. Like a man sitting in the corner of a safe house, a forgotten black guitar on the corner, the memory of Lisa’s giggles when he tried teaching her-
Heartbeat must change. His smell - something does, because Red’s eyes snap open, his ear gravitates to his side. Frank has to drag his eyes away from the soft crease of worry between his well-defined eyebrows. Still not as sure as he once was, but focused. Ready.
His grip changes around the steering wheel. Telling Red off for listening to his heart would be too much like acknowledging the fact that Red, clueless like a newborn fawn or not, always knew what was going on inside. It was a massive tactical advantage, now that Frank thinks of it. Perfect for manipulation if you know which words provoke the strongest reaction out of someone.
But manipulation is not Red’s style, that’s for sure.
“Will you be able to track ‘im?” He stops at a red sign only to find Murdock aiming a grin at him.
“I forgive you for that.”
Frank scoffs. “Right,” he reaches his arm behind him, shoving a hand into the duffel. “You’ll need those.” Throws the twin batons carelessly on Murdock’s lap.
“Oh,” Frank keeps his eyes forward to avoid that face Red did - the guilty sh*t that seemed to scream you shouldn’t have at the same time it spoke of a gratitude that just wasn’t proportional to the deed. “Thank you.”
He risks looking.
There’s the face. Sh*t.
He shakes his head. “Yeah, yeah, altar boy.”
Red wants to go barging in for answers once they finally manage to trace Potter back to a warehouse and Frank, unsurprisingly, has to hold his leash and knock some sense into him.
So he drags Red to a rooftop, takes his binoculars out and watches.
“This is a waste of time, Frank, I can tell you what he’s doing if you insist on recon-”
“Shut up, Red.” He sighs at the put upon frown that answers him. Those f***ing eyes. “Yer nifty senses can come in handy, Red, not gonna lie, but we’re doing this my way or not at all. Don’t think I won’t chain you up again.”
Murdock frowns. Translates the words to the memory before sighing.
“F*** you for that, by the way.”
“You’re welcome, Saint Matthew.”
Red snorts softly at that and Frank can only pretend there isn’t a smile in his face mirroring the younger man. Reputation to uphold and all that.
Frank’s good at waiting - so he settles in and watches, eyes keen on every figure passing by the place. Writes down a few suspicious car plates, photographs two or three people acting sketchy.
Red’s sh*t at it.
Meditating crap or not, Murdock’s jumping out of his skin by the time Potter finally shows up. He didn’t think it was possible for a guy to fidget as much as the redhead did, but Frank’s ready to shove a bottle of Xanax in his hands and beg him - again - to sit your goddamn ass down, for f***’s sake.
He suddenly falls belly down by Frank’s side, his lips a breath’s width away from touching the skin by his ear when he speaks. “That’s him, the tall man. I think he’s bald. He smells like oil. There’s a woman with him, she’s packing heat, that’s-” Red tilts his head at the same time Frank catches the two kissing through the binocular. “Betsy’s his parole officer.”
“Betsy?”
“Yes, Fisk threatened to hurt her if Melvin didn’t work for him.” Frank’s eyes fall to his tensing knuckles. Red shakes his head in guilty dismay. “He got to him again.”
“Any surveillance cameras?”
Looks like a goddamn bird evaluating and picking a branch with the amount of head tilts he manages under a minute. “Not directly in the lot, but we might want to avoid the auto-repair shop across it.”
“Right. How we doing this?”
“Let me talk to him alone.”
Frank stops. Stares.
He’s more convinced every day that Red’s the human equivalent of a suicidal road chicken.
“When he’s tied up and unable to crack your head open again, yeah, Red, sure.”
“Frank-”
“No, so you’re telling me this guy works for Fisk and has a girl to protect and you think he’ll listen to you? This Melvin, you said he’s strong, right?”
Matt doesn’t back down. If anything, he seems more convinced that’s the way to go about it. “I can get to him, Frank, if we treat him like an enemy-”
“That’s exactly what he is until he proves otherwise!” And maybe even then. Someone had to be cautious and Red clearly ain’t gonna be it. Frank bares his teeth in annoyance. “After the stunt Fisk pulled a week ago, you think he’s not waiting for you?”
“We waited enough-”
“Like hell we did, Red. You’re remembering sh*t but you still got a wire holding your skull closed, so don’t you f***ing start. We’re doing this my way.”
Red’s skin is hot. Frank can feel it even from their distance. And his eyes- f***. “No,” he shakes his head, conviction in every movement he makes. “No, we’re not.”
“F***ing-”
“Frank.”
“You have a f***ing death wish, Red? Is that what-”
“I’ll go in there and I’ll talk to him, Frank.”
“Ah f***.”
“He helped me when he didn’t have to, he risked his life, Betsy’s life-” Frank throws his head back while still cursing, “when he agreed to it back then, and I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.” Red aims his eyes straight at him, through him, stripping bare everything in his path. “I’m not letting him down again, Frank.”
So he’s left to stare, again. Can’t stop staring. Can’t help letting whatever is blooming in his chest from spreading its vines all over his flesh and bones and taking over, consuming.
This is what he had respected about Red from day one, from the moment he realized it wasn’t stupidity or naiveté, it was sheer, unwavering faith and unbelievable strength. Faith he refused to lose in the scumbags that would beat him half to death in the streets. Faith he refused to lose when a piece of sh*t tied him to a chimney and tried breaking him, showing him he was just as dirty.
Hadn’t been ready for the truth, then. Now, he just lets it burn him from the inside out. This is Red, all of him. Missing chunks of memory and all, taking all of Frank in turn and not even realizing it.
Stares maybe for too long, because Red’s out of sorts by then. Barely listens to his stammering - he reaches a fingertip to trace the shell of his ear, the peach-fuzz texture of his lobe. The soft sigh that leaves Matt in response - it’s too much.
He clears his throat. “I go inside with you, Red, that’s final.”
Matt nods, leans into the touch for a few moments more before squaring his shoulders back.
Frank sees it coming from a mile away.
FBI storms the place, just after Frank shoots the locked gate and dodges having his head cut off with a circular saw blade - Potter is a big guy and abnormally strong and fighting him gets tricky once they’re surrounded.
Matt takes care of that pretty quickly. He takes out three agents with a few well-aimed kicks and punches. Frank is careful to hit only legs and arms - there’s time to make a run for it, but the moment Red tries-
“No!” Potter manages to grab Red around the waist with crushing force, the agonized gasp from having his broken rib jostled has Frank aiming his handgun at the man in a second. Nausea stabs him deep in the guts when Red is shoved head first to the table.
“Hey, let him go!” No clear shot, if the guy as much as clenches the hand pressed against Red’s break- “Let him go or you die here, you hear me?”
The tears give him a stop. Barely a second. “He’ll hurt Betsy!” The man exclaims, still holding Matt to the table, Matt with his fractured skull. Frank’s heartbeat speeds up more, his temperature rises.
“Let him go, you piece of sh*t, let him go-”
“Melvin,” a choked breath. “Melvin, don’t-”
“He’ll hurt Betsy!”
“Melvin, please.”
The telling sound of a canister dropping. “Red!” He fires at the man’s right arm, precisely on the muscle so he lets go of Matt. A scream cuts through the sound of the flash-bang grenade going off, Frank jumps over to Red, throwing his body over his and hands covering his ears. His stomach does swoops at the thought of checking his head.
“Hands in the air!”
“Frank-” Matt drags himself up to run palms and fingers over his face, out of sorts, looking for injuries. “Frank-”
“I’m fine, Red-”
“You!” Frank turns over to the single agent up, hands trembling where he holds his rifle, young. “S-stand up! Show me your hands!”
“Melvin,” Matt drags himself to the crying man in the corner, kneeling between the crates and boxes surrounding the plate. “You have to tell me.”
“Don’t move, either of you!” Frank takes a step forward, covering both of them with his body, hands up in the air and gun pointed up to the ceiling, fingertips straight and away from the trigger.
“Easy,” he growls, taking another step closer. Gotta keep his attention on him if Red’s getting what he wants. “Easy, kid.”
“Don’t move!”
“Melvin, please.”
“Don’t you f***ing move!” Frank stops, but keeps himself moored to the ground. No one gets past him.
“He didn’t tell me his name,” a muffled whisper comes from behind him, voice teary. “But he was FBI. Mr. Fisk- Mr. Fisk said they needed to catch you with the suit.” Footsteps approach from the hallways. There’s more in the way.
“Red, now!”
From a second to the other, all the lights shatter above him. Matt is body slamming him behind the safety of a few crates and wooden pallets as the agent starts shooting. Frank’s back to the wood, Matt pressing against his front, a hand clamped tight over his mouth.
He makes a soft shushing noise, head tilting carefully up and Frank follow the direction, having a hard time taking his eyes away from the redhead. He catches the faint light coming from the back exit. He nods.
“Please, he’ll hurt Betsy!” Potter’s cries echo through the walls as they make their escape. “He’ll hurt Betsy!”
Matt sits under the shower and lets the running water relax his tense, overworked muscles. There’s a bruise forming on the left side of his face, extending all the way to his temple. Matt senses it like a tense coiling of heat, burst veins like cobwebs spreading to his eyebrow and cheekbone.
Apparently Fisk’s plans had changed. Trying to kill him turned into trying to disgrace him again - destroy the very symbol he worked so hard for. Frame him for being Daredevil - take away all he has left.
Not according to Frank, though. He did mention once Matt had friends, but every time he tried going after a memory, as small or insignificant as it may be, he got lost in the fog. It’s there somewhere, suspended on the haze, holding its breath.
Matt feels like a fool trying to touch the unreachable.
Frank is back just as he’s finishing up. He had left Matt in the safe house and went back to follow Betsy. Make sure she’s safe, tell her to get out of town.
His heartbeat is weird.
Matt is so atuned to it, these days, that the shift crawls from his eardrums to his skin, his arms prickling in goosebumps. He pats himself dry quickly, eyebrows drawn in contemplation, tying the towel around his waist. His right side still feels stiff and weak sometimes, but he makes do.
Frank is sitting in the living room when Matt steps out of the bathroom, heartbeat pounding against his chest, palms working together restlessly. He’s agitated, there’s heat coiling all over his frame as if he was about to attack, eyes following him when Matt steps into the living room.
Frank’s heartbeat slows down but not by much. Matt claps his palms once, using the sound waves to orientate himself towards the duffle bag in the corner. Peruses inside for a pair of fresh clothes - sweatpants and hoodie, smelling of Frank. It’s only after he puts it on and the hoodie sleeves slide past his knuckles that he realizes they’re not his and almost pulls them off on principle.
The ghost feeling of a fingertip caressing the shell of his ear stops him short of doing it.
Matt sighs through his nose. Puts some socks on because there was a snow alert on the radio that morning and he could smell it in the air. Only then does he find a seat by Frank’s too-fast-too-wrong heartbeat.
Knowing the best way to approach the man when he’s geared up helps. He tucks his elbows close to his body and stays quiet. Lets Frank know he’s not a threat or confrontational.
If Castle notices his subtle try at communication, his body language doesn’t betray it. If anything, his muscles tense further, his heartbeat keeps pounding deafeningly loud, his blood pressure is through the roof.
“Frank,” he tries, carefully reaches to touch his bicep. “What happened?” There’s blood on the soles of his boots, Matt notices, sniffing the air. “Frank...”
The marine shakes his head, digs his elbows into his knees and briskly rubs his palms through the sides of his head. His breath hitches once, twice, but he never speaks whatever it is he’s got to say. Matt is just about to ask when the man suddenly leans back, stands up and stomps to the duffel bag.
The one with his guns.
“What are you doing?” No answer, predictably. The redhead jumps up too, his ribs protest at every deep breath. “Talk to me, Frank.”
Frank slams a gun down against the kitchen table and Matt fights a flinch. He’s huffing through his nose, heart speeding up. Hormone levels spike, the bittersweet stench of adrenaline clogs the air - Frank is a bomb about to go off.
“I told you. I f***ing told you. I told you we had to be careful, but you never listen to a f***ing thing anyone’s got to say, do you Red?”
“Are you talking about Melvin?” No. Something else. There was something wrong. “Frank, what happened?” He takes a step forward, fighting the urge to fall into defense position when Frank’s trigger finger twitches. “Why do you smell like-”
“Blood?” The soldier pulls something out of his jacket pocket and thrusts it into his hands, the coppery scent gets stuck to his tongue. He feels for it, the smooth polycarbonate drags across his fingers. The blood stains make it impossible for him to follow any traces of ink.
“I don’t-”
“Third body I found in the last week, Red. The third.” He takes a step back, brows furrowing down, presses his fingertips harder against the cards, can’t make sense of the ink. “Ask me their names-”
“Frank, you’re not making any-”
“Richard Murdoch, Matthew Ramirez, Louise Matthews, recognized any patterns yet, Red?” His stomach drops, blood turning cold. And Frank sees it and he’s vicious about it. Crowds into his space so Matt has nowhere to escape. “Yeah, got their eyes plucked out of their sockets while they were still alive before they were shot in the stomach, hands tied so they couldn’t do sh*t about it. This woman, Red? They left her in her kitchen. Her little kid found her. Her little kid.”
Bile is corrosive like acid when it reaches his throat, coating the back of his tongue. He thinks maybe his pressure drops, because feeling leaves his fingertips and toes.
“Fisk-”
“Yeah.” Frank takes a step closer, Matt’s stumbles back when he reaches to pluck the three cards from his trembling hands. But he’s not done yet. Frank’s not pulling any punches and Matt feels like throwing up. “Now, you got a Fed dressed in your pajamas killing people, Fisk tearing your name apart, going after Karen, going after Curt, murdering innocent people to get you out hiding and you gonna tell me this piece of sh*t deserves a second chance, Red?”
Matt’s mouth opens to answer but nothing leaves, his own heart hammering inside his chest, pressing against his sore ribs.
“I can’t k-”
“You’re goddamn right you can’t.” Cold seeps into his bones and Matt wonders if the air leaking out of his lungs is ever coming back, because suddenly it feels like there’s less oxygen in the room. He presses himself against the wall, chest barely moving. “This ends now. I’ll do it my way, my kinda justice.”
Matt shakes his head once. Shakes it again more erratically and why isn’t there any air ? Why does his chest burn like it’s being torn apart?
“No, Frank, you can’t, you can’t kill h-”
“Yes, I can!” Frank steps closer, huffing against his face like a predator about to open his jaws and sink canines into his neck. “And I’ll kill anyone else in this town if it means you’re safe.”
The air goes thicker, his heart squeezed tight in his chest and as fast as a hummingbird’s. And trapped between the beginnings of a panic attack and an elated sense of confusion, Matt feels like he finally understands Frank completely, if only for that moment. Sees all of him, the dark and the light, not fighting but constantly fusing.
“Frank,” voice weak, his fingertips tremble when he reaches out, traces the bruised contours of his face.
There are no words when he goes looking for them, still breathing too quickly, focusing on Frank. Bright like fire in front of him.
“Frank.”
“Shut up, Red,” had never heard his voice that weak, glass shattering wetly in every consonant. But his thumb comes up to caress Matt’s chin, his lower lip, his cheeks. “Shut your mouth.”
Matt kisses him.
It’s a conscious decision at first and then it’s not. It’s Frank’s lips, chapped and full against his trembling ones, his mouth hot and wet against Matt’s. It’s him swallowing all of that grief that was ever-present in Frank’s voice so it didn’t spill all over them both. It was Frank holding him up, pulling gently at his hair, a soft apology in each caress, in each peck.
It’s tasting Frank’s pain in his tongue and trying to remember a time where he didn’t make sense.
He hugs the man’s neck so he won’t let go, moaning faintly under his breath when the kiss turns deeper. When Matt can’t distinguish Frank’s heat from his own with his senses - they look like one and the same.
His breath hitches when fingers clench hard around his hip, pressing him tighter against the wall. Frank pants into his mouth when their crotches meet.
“Yes,” Matt whispers, begs, as he nods. “Yes, Frank, please-”
And his voice is so lovingly wrecked when he murmurs by Matt’s ear, biting at the side of his neck, rolling his hips against his. “Goddamn you, Matty,” a particularly hard bite makes him yelp, “goddamn you.”
“Please.”
Frank doesn’t need much more convincing. Matt lets him take them to the bedroom and doesn’t think of anything or anyone else for some time.
Red dozed off eventually, back against his chest. He had filled up some but was still skinnier than he used to be. Frank had been there for every meal he couldn’t keep down - could trace them like braille over his slightly protuding ribs.
It felt like an year ago that Red woke up for the first time in the cabin, unable to form words in a second and ready to attack in the next.
Take me home, his voice echoes.
Please, take me home.
If he thinks too much about it, at some point, his voice and Matt’s mingle. It’s him, digging his fingers into that nurse’s arm, feeling like death when he brought him close. Take, me, home.
But there was no home. Finds it in a small column in the newspaper - Kitchen Irish, Mexican Cartel, Dogs of Hell.
He buries his lips in the smooth, velvety skin of Red’s neck, following lazily the dark red bruises decorating the side and falling like a chain around his neck and collarbones. His chest, the insides of his thighs, his hipbones.
The contrast is like that of stars in a night sky - the old mottled bruises around Red’s neck had faded. Leaving behind some leftover hues of red, sickly green and yellowish - the love bites looking like little silhouettes of Mars or Venus, shining red among all that white.
Stitches were about ready to come out, too, on the wound the Devil gave him.
It felt wrong that Red’s body was so quick to erase abuse. That he took hit after hit after hit and continued there, standing, waiting for the next. There was hair very slowly starting to grow over the scar in his head, where it was bright pink and glossy.
Fingers roam down to the deep scar above Matt’s hipbones and presses softly into the smooth texture, a grounding kiss. The skin was thin were it had knitted, almost paper-like.
It was the worse one so far Frank had found on his body, while licking, biting and kissing him from his sinewy neck to the insides of his thighs. The wound had to be deep - the scar was slightly pulled inwards, like something had hooked in.
Wonders if Nelson ever saw all of those scars. Or Karen. Thinking about that - about the three of them, he tries to build a scenario. Nelson, a put-upon frown that doesn’t manage to hide his worry. Karen, a compassionate attempt at stern reprimanding. You should take better care of yourself, Matt, she’d say. And he can see Matt clear as day, hunching his shoulders over with that guilt face he did, agreeing to everything not because he particularly had any care over his own state, but because he’d hate to have them worrying over him.
Useless to think of sh*t like that now.
Gets him thinking of Fisk, though, stomach twisting in his belly. Of Nelson. Of Karen, holed up in that church, waiting for a way to get out of the country. Curt, staying at a cousin’s home in Virginia.
And Red, here, in his arms. With his come drying in him, with his marks spread all over his body.
What the f*** is he doing?
This is Matt. Matt who has an expiration date stamped on his forehead. Who dives into trouble the first chance he gets, who’s being hunted by cops, feds and scumbags alike. Priority was getting Red through this sh*t show alive, not whatever this was.
Keeping Red safe meant taking out this Devil wanna-be before he gets to Matt, because the a**hole kept on coming. Fisk can come later. He needed to resupply, get in touch with David, ask about Louise Matthews and, maybe, give a call to the owner of the phone number forgotten in his duffle.
Later, he wonders if it was the change in his heartbeat or his tapping trigger finger on the gentle dip of his waist that woke Matt up, nose still close to sweet-smelling skin.
Matt stirs, humming softly before stretching like a cat, turning boneless in Frank’s arms before he squirms, rubbing his naked ass against Frank’s covered crotch.
“M’too old for marathon sex, Red.” The fondness in his tone has no business being there.
“No, you’re not.” Matt smiles knowingly but doesn’t push. Frank doesn’t let go though, finds that he can’t, nosing the freckles on Red’s most prominent cervical bone. Then kisses it - he isn’t sure he’ll ever get to do it again, so he lingers as much as he allows himself to.
Matthew draws slow circles on the forearm trapping him by the waist, squirming at the feel of dried cum and spit between his legs.
“I...” a soft, almost soundless chuckle, “I think I dreamed about my eighth birthday.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I... Dad and I, we didn’t starve but we also didn’t have much money, you know? Food was definitely never wasted there. There’s this one time he manages a few extra bucks with a fight and he bought me a thematic cake. I never had one.” He smiles. It’s abstract, but he could almost remember how it looked like. “Lin was there.”
“Lin?”
“Lindsey. She was my friend.” Red chuckles suddenly. “I think she enjoyed it more than I did. It was Star Wars themed and she was obsessed with it.”
Red tells him about it in whispers. About how she loved every single movie she could get her hands on, how they’d compete about who had memorized the most dialogues. About his dad feeling ashamed that he almost took a tumble and some of the frosting of the cake had stuck to the box.
Frank holds him through it, one ear tight against his neck, listening for his heart, chin hooked over his shoulder. It’s quiet - like the eye of the storm, the silence after the gunfire.
Lisa had insisted on having all over her birthdays with a different dinosaur theme from ages four to nine. God forbid Maria ever mentioned doing something else. Her giggles as she ran around the house with her plastic dinosaurs in hand, diving through the air, permeate every nook and cranny of his brain.
Frank presses his lips softly to Matt’s temple, careful of his break. Moves away from spooning the younger man but doesn’t immediately get out, though. Stays there, hovering over Red’s spent form.
“Frank.” He grunts. “Thank you.”
Frank shakes his head. Standing up makes his skin rise in goosebumps, Matt’s own skin mirroring his. He’s tucking him into the blankets before he’s even realized what he’s done. Shakes his head again - Red’s got no f***ing reason-
“Nothing to thank me for, Red.” The constant, familiar itch of anger poisons the softness of his afterglow.
Red only blinks lazily at nothing, doe eyes lost. “Anyway.”
Frank stands there, and Matt lies there and none of them move. His fingertips itch to reach out but the marine holds himself back.
“Do you ever think about just... riding off?” Frank frowns, not expecting the question. “Just going away, not thinking about anything you leave behind.”
“I have nothing to leave behind.” Is his first response. Red pauses, still unmoving. Either because he hears the lie in his heart or because he knows, just knows it’s not true. Not anymore. So Frank sighs. Gives in. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“Yeah,” Matt smiles, the curves of his lips tinted in wishful red, the soft curves of his eyes disbelieving of the possibility of ever escaping. Ever getting away. “It’d be nice.”
A strange quiet takes over the apartment the next couple of weeks, while they lay low. Daredevil’s latest attack at the Bulletin and the Punisher sighting and mysterious eye-gouging murderer take over the news. They don’t leave often and Red takes in to checking the perimeter with his weird super senses and, for some reason, that gets Frank sleeping better at night.
Most of his days, he fiddles with his police scanner - looking for word of people he had marked to be in Fisk’s payroll, FBI ops, anything the NYPD caught a wind of. Cops were apparently clean since Nelson and Murdock saved the day back then.
Frank sighs at himself. Red is rubbing off on him, more ways than one.
Although, the other ways don’t happen again after that night. Not for lack of want - they both orbit each other a few feet away, pulling closer as the day progresses without noticing. Frank’s a moon courting an impossible sun.
Red is back to training, though, so there’s no time for them to suffer through talking and weird discussions. It happened, they both liked it, they both knew it, they didn’t talk about it. Simple.
Frank is admittedly a bit worried at first when Red starts - building himself up to pull ups and push ups. He appreciates that unyielding strength of his (an immovable object, a fire you just couldn’t put out), but if there’s one thing Red’s no good at, is recognizing when it’s time to stop.
Sh*t, look at all the things that happened to him and he was still kicking. Still hanging on to those high morals of his. Doesn’t matter that Frank found him half-dead with his skull bashed in, Red still had the strength to to have faith and hope and believe in people, when Frank, well, doesn’t.
Even training, Murdock doesn’t last longer than an hour at a time. He doesn’t say it but he gets dizzy and exhausted fast. Frank would watch him across the safe house - he’d drag himself to a corner, guzzle down a bottle of water with shaking arms, eat a fruit or a bite of a protein bar and then he’d sit, cross his legs and go quiet.
When he opened his eyes, minutes, sometimes an hour later, Frank could barely recognize the lost, messed up kid he brought to that shack. He’d go down, eyes dead - his arms would stop shaking, his shoulders would relax back and he’d start again with renewed vigor.
Red would do it again and again until exhaustion finally caught up to him and he’d crumble by the bed and sleep for a long time.
He gets used to being quiet around the place. Training took a lot out of him and Red slept five to six hours during the day.
While he does his thing, Frank begins researching. Fisk’s immediate detail has to be it, no other way he’d get in touch with someone trained as quickly as he did. And after Melvin’s admission, well.
Ray Nadeem’s face doesn’t surprise him among the files and pictures Micro leaked him. The thought of calling him, setting up a meeting to ask about the copycat is tempting enough, but Frank is resigned to waiting for the time being.
He’s just going through the last of the files when a somewhat familiar face catches his eyes. Chiseled jaw, blonde hair, dead shark-like eyes. There was just something about it-
Matt rises and jumps up so quickly Frank has no second thoughts when he immediately reaches for the gun in his pants, pressing it close to his chest, eyes checking all possible entrances. Bathroom, kitchen window, front door - no movement.
But Red is still standing there, eyes focused and head tilted, whole body locked in defense. He either heard something or he’s in one of his flashbacks again.
“Red,” he walks towards him, checks his breathing, his eyes. He’s calm, although alarmed. Frank doesn’t need more reassuring before pushing the redhead behind his body. “Where?”
Bathroom, kitchen window, front door. Bathroom, kitchen - Red’s face. His furrowing eyebrows and the confused little twist of his lips.
“Roof. Only one.” His muscles twitch, eyes go wide. “I know her,” he whispers, fingers suddenly reaching out to clench tightly to Frank’s sleeve. ”I know her, Frank.”
A shift of red and black in the window directly across them and Frank is shoving Red behind him again, pulling the safety off. No way she got there from the roof, there was only one f***ing person he knew that could do that and he was standing right behind him.
She steps inside the loft like a shadow spilling. Woman has a presence on her, the walls almost warp towards her.
“Matthew,” a thick accented voice greets, her tongue curling around the double T. “You’re awfully hard to find these days.”
“Who are you?”
Frank’s eyes narrow. Red may not recognize her, but Frank does. Head may be a battlefield of gunfire and contingency plans and his kid’s laughter and Red’s soft voice but he remembers her.
It gives him a stop, because that can’t be. He saw her bleed out on that rooftop through his scope, saw Red cry over her corpse.
But then there were the initial reports of Midland Circle - Daredevil and an unidentified female trapped underneath. He tries to fight the nausea that comes with the thought. He saw her die.
“The f*** you doing here?” But Matt is already stumbling forward and away, face a mask of confusion when he steps closer. Frank wonders if he feels the grief, even if he can’t properly recall it.
“Matthew, why don’t you introduce us?”
“No, wait, wait. I know you.” Her pretense drops for a moment, eyes calculating when she studies Red’s face, his body language, before turning to Frank. And by then, her gaze is a promise of death and not and easy one.
She smiles, small and dry. “What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do sh*t-”
“Frank didn’t do anyt-” Both stop at the same time. Red’s fingers close around his bicep, the muscle twitches in response. He stares at him, taking him in, the delicate curve of lips and light stubble. Lips he kissed.
The surge of protectiveness almost destroys him.
“I remember you,” he growls out, “on that rooftop with all the ninjas.” Her eyes cut sharp like a dagger when she finally stops staring at where Red’s palms were locked to him. The satisfaction is short-lived but Frank savors it all the same.
Her face changes, like day and night. The way she looked at Red rubs him off, too - something between helpless affection and toxic, hungry possessiveness. As if Matt was the embodiment of salvation and the picture of meat that she was just dying to dig her claws in.
“And I remember you ,” she smiles with little humor, “Matthew was awfully entertained with you back then.”
“Was about to say the same.”
“No, wait, you know each- Will any of you just tell me what’s going on?” The frustration bleeds into his voice but the girl and Frank are trapped in a conflict of their own. Her hands caress the daggers strapped to her thighs, Frank’s finger twitches against the trigger - but their weapons point down, Red’s presence a weighting on them both.
“What happened to him?”
“What happened to you?” He shoots back, she raises her eyebrows with a twitch of her head. “I thought you were dead.” Uses the moment to drag Red behind him again because he doesn’t trust the lady as far as he can throw her.
“I was,” Frank’s whole body tenses, heartbeat flat-lining in his chest. He tries and fails not to think of Maria, of Lisa, of Junior. “I’ll ask again then, shall I? What happened to him?”
“Would you stop talking like I’m not-”
“Got his skull bashed in,” Frank rises in volume, “and you didn’t answer mine, the f*** do you want?”
“Stop, stop, stop.” Red broke from his hold, taking three steps towards the woman before he froze altogether, his shoulders shaking. “I remember you. I remember fighting with you, you... you died, I held you-” her stance changes but it’s barely noticeable. Frank’s well aware she’s still a threat (probably never wasn’t a threat at any given moment), but something soft creeps at the corner of her lips.
She reaches out to push a strand of red hair behind Matt’s ear, quiet fondness in her touch. Almost reverent. Red doesn’t lean into it but doesn’t run either and Frank’s guts twist.
“You hurt me,” he whispered then, “I hurt you.” Her hand trembles where she’s touching him. “I don’t even know your name.”
Her eyes find Frank’s, raw and desperately trying to cover it. All of her that felt inhuman before seems to melt away then.
“Elektra,” she says, eyes still locked to Frank’s. “I heard you were missing.” Too much vunerability, her face twists in disgust at herself. Only then does Elektra finds it in herself to step away from Red and that’s about the only thing he can relate to.
Frank can still see it in her eyes. She wants to kill him - do something about Frank being in Red’s immediate surroundings. He can’t say he doesn’t feel the same, and can’t claim to not know why they both don’t do it, the reason standing shakily between them.
Their familiarity doesn’t stop there. He sees the way she looks at Matt - the hunger, the protectiveness, the helpless respect.
“Take care of yourself, Matthew.” She jumps from the same window she came from, leaving them both there, standing, unable to say a word.
NOVEMBER
There was a time
when you thought things
like that mattered.
When you thought everything did.
He shoves the over-packed first aid kit into Red’s hands and the younger man puts it into the duffle as Frank power walks towards the black batons tangled with the sheets at the cot.
“Frank, do we really have to-”
Christ Jesus, this again. “Yes.”
Red follows him like a duckling, still sporting those blushed cheeks against too-pale skin that Frank couldn’t bare looking at sometimes. He looks anyway, every damn time.
“She didn’t attack us, she clearly could have-”
“Ain’t up for discussion, Red, we’re going.”
He reaches out a hand to stop Frank on his way to the ammo boxes stacked away close to the wall because Red had nifty senses, but was still f***ing blind and kept tripping on them. Fingers curl around his bicep.
“Frank...” his goddamn voice, Jesus Christ. Doesn’t need to look at him to know he’s giving him the f***ing eyes.
“No,” he drops basic hygiene items into the getaway bag and kicks it out of the way, crowding into Red’s space with powerful steps. “This safe house is compromised. We’re not talking about this sh*t again.”
But Red is good at grasping at straws. Spent a whole f***ing lifetime barely hanging on and he’s a pro at it by now. Even more now that he’s got cabin fever - desperate for any proof of connection besides the marine.
“Please, Frank, I know her. You clearly know each other, I- she knows me.”
More than knows if Frank’s got anything to say about it. Didn’t need to be close to know she was the type of girl that enjoyed playing the game as much as she liked winning it. The cat and mouse thing was her style. Manipulative to a fault. Just look at the way Red reacted to her - like a stray sniffing an owner. Made him f***ing sick to his bones.
I know you, he thinks, selfishly, stupidly.
“You stick by me, Red,” Frank drops his voice down to a whisper, “I got you.”
Matt is still pissed. He can see it in the bullseye forming between his eyebrows. Frank steps closer, stares into the hazel-green of his eyes and reminds himself of all the marks hiding under those clothes. His mouth, his fingers, his bruises.
He kisses his cheek chastely, slowly, nosing his temple when he stops pressing his lips to Matt’s skin. Holds on to that warmth he knows he won’t have close for long.
“We can’t stay,” he enunciates, not as sure under all the solidity of his voice. Matt sighs and Frank doesn’t let him step away. Not then. Not yet. And there are those eyes again. All that light- “If something happens to you, I-” it dies down. Gets stuck in the cage of muscles spasming around his throat.
Red takes a deep inhale that Frank feels overfilling his own lungs, his eyes wide. He steps back, every muscle in his body suddenly calling him to action. But he stays - stays to watch Matthew’s face fall, understanding flooding and creating rivers in the cracks of his anger.
“Frank...”
He shakes his head in response. He already said too f***ing much he can’t take back.
Words just keep spilling out of him, these days. His chest feels flayed open. He needs back - back to before. Just him, the next target, the next mission. Not this. Whatever this is. Whatever Red is.
He turns away from Matt, grabbing the getaway bag on the floor. Shoves an extra blanket in it before closing it. Red gets cold these days.
“Let’s go.” Grabs what scrap of courage is left to look at him. Red’s face is almost serene, slightly dazed with solemn understanding. Frank thinks he preferred the anger. The anger he knew how to deal with.
They walk down the stairs and leave Harlem.
Matt rubs his hands for warmth, presses his digits to feel where old cracks and hairline fractures had knitted his bones.
Frank is quiet by his side, but his voice is all Matt can hear.
And I’ll kill anyone else in this town if it means you’re safe.
If something happens to you-
He can’t tell where one neighborhood ends and the other starts, but the scents slowly become more familiar as they go. Smoke gives way to the tall trees of Central Park that gives way to Mexican food, coffee and alcohol. Chatter rises and so do faint sirens. Grocery stores and a Greek food restaurant and universities. Something that smells like childhood.
Hell’s Kitchen.
Besides his Dad, it was one of his only intact memories. It was difficult to track people besides that. Lindsey’s voice often got mixed and he can’t always remember what she looked like. The nuns all sounded the same, the priest (the good one) was surrounded by fog and the bad one...
Well. Matt doubts he had any clear memories of him even before the injury to his head.
Elektra... he can define the edges that separate her from the other women in his life, now. The one that smelled sterile like a hospital and the other one in the rain. Elektra was the soft voice in his ears, was the way he’d chant her name when she played with him - and she did play with him. She’d chuckle as she spread him out, coo as she made sure Matt knew he wasn’t in charge. That he was hers, body and soul.
He can’t remember when her desires became his, our when his became hers. He does remember feeling utterly broken in her absence - faced with something she saw like a gift and felt like betrayal.
He remembers fighting by her side and telling himself he wouldn’t let her come too close again. But soon he was kneeling, waiting for the clarity of her touch, the unburdening of letting himself be taught, guided.
Matt figures he always liked himself better that way - when he was someone else’s.
And in the middle of all that storm and chaos, right where Matt was taught to thrive, there’s Frank. Who feels more real than anything else in his head, solid and unwavering. There’s memories of him from before and after the injury and the fog. After he decided Frank wasn’t an enemy, and...
When did that happen again? When did Frank became something between an ally and more?
He sighs and tries to ignore the uptick on Frank’s heartbeat at the sound, the minute acknowledgment of worry. It twists the knife deeper - Frank worries.
It should feel like something he should run away from. His finger sneak to his side, pressing against the finger-shaped bruises on his waist, the bite marks all over his torso, thighs and neck. Maybe it’s too late to run.
The car stops. Matt steps out of it with a sharp inhale - desperate for air that wasn’t saturated with the smell of Frank’s skin, Frank’s hair, Frank’s clothes and the air that left his healing broken nose.
It doesn’t surprise him that the fresh air makes no difference. Frank’s smell is stuck to him - it’s in the clothes he wears, in his hair, in his skin.
He wonders if Frank would do it. Grant him that unburdening. Strip him away of the control he so desperately wishes he didn’t have at times. Elektra had bent him out of shape and broken him, but Frank... Frank would put him back together, wouldn’t he? He’d never leave him behind to pick up the pieces. Set him on fire and leave him to burn.
And he wouldn’t have to hide from him, Frank’s seen all of Matt. He wouldn’t need to pretend like he did with-
Karen.
The name comes to him like a punch. It’s what Frank had said that day, to the woman who knew him at the Bulletin.
“Karen,” he suddenly exclaims. Frank grunts in return. “Karen, it’s... Karen, it’s Karen. She, she was the woman in the rain, the one who helped me at the office!” It’s muddy, perceptions are tangled, there are thoughts and feelings he can’t put to context. “I didn’t meet her at school, I met her somewhere else, but I can’t remember where, I...”
I can’t do this alone, he told her, I can’t take another step.
And then she hugged him, didn’t she?
You’re not alone, Matt.
Blurry edges sharpen like blades. Her image carved like cut-out paper in the back of his skull. Only person besides Frank and Elektra that was actively part of his life that he remembered.
Frank is quiet but there’s something weird with his body temperature. Blood pressure drops before it suddenly goes up, up, up. Not anger or frustration, something else. His heart goes scarily steady.
“Frank?”
“Yeah, that’s... She’s your assistant. I think.”
“Oh.”
Of course he knew. Matt keeps forgetting that Frank knows more that he lets on. It makes him wonder how deep Frank had been into his life before all of this. And he can’t bring himself to ask now. Not after what he said. What they’ve become - whatever that is.
“C’mon, Red.” Frank helps him upstairs, the fog buzzing in his ears. No matter how much he tries, he can’t build up a timeline around Karen. Everything he remembers splintered, wrong, lacking.
“You sound like you’re meditating when you do that.” Frank raises his eyes to meet Red only once before turning back to his gun, checking the recoil strings.
“Oh, yeah?” He asks, nonchalantly. “What does that sound like, sunshine?”
He moves on to wiping the outside, making sure the bore of the barrel is clean enough. Chances another glance at Red when he’s putting the clip back in and assembling the gun back. He’s folded into a pretzel in the middle of the room. F***, he’s flexible. How far did that leg f***ing go, sh*t-
“Your heartbeat slows, your breathing goes even. You almost sound like you’re asleep, peaceful.”
Huh. Frank isn’t sure his breathing is even now, face twisting in calisthenics when Red folds into yet another impossible-looking position. Isn’t sure he ever sounds peaceful, either. Got war in his blood. Long before his family.
He saw that in Red, too. A soldier wearing a civilian mask. A devil wearing a person suit. And right then, right there, Frank gets to see him free of the need for masks, brains knocked clean. The price of blissful ignorance.
“Generalizing, you find something to focus on, usually your own breathing, and lets your mind stick with it. It’s basically what you’re doing.”
Figures Frank’s own brand of meditation would include guns.
He pauses. Watches Red make faces and clutch at his ribs while he keeps trying to get a tricky position right. “What do you focus on?”
Matt blinks and stops altogether, tilts his head to study him in that unnerving way of his. When he speaks, he’s bluntly honest. “Your heart.”
Frank halts, waits for the punchline. For something.
“And that, what, brings you inner peace?”
F***, he shouldn’t ask. He really doesn’t want to know.
“It’s not that, it’s...” Matt turns his face away to think and Frank’s almost thankful for it. But Red’s not a quitter and he’s soon turning to face him again. “It’s safe.”
Frank stares at him, unable to process what he just heard. And then, trying to find a catch. But there’s Red, who begged him for help and ended up with his skull bashed in. Who Frank’s been arguably holding hostage and hiding sh*t from. Who once bounced a bullet in his f***ing head, telling him Frank’s safe.
“That’s f***ed up, Red.”
The redhead smiles. “I know.”
Frank shakes his head, turning away. Stands up already geared up for the discussion he knows is soon to come as he goes looking for his sniper rifle. Red’s been getting used to the new safe house the last few days but it doesn’t mean he’ll stay put when-
“Where are you going?”
Bingo.
Frank doesn’t stop moving, his back to Red. Checks the rifle before putting it back in its case and grabbing it. Stands up with a sigh. “Gonna find a devil.” And an FBI agent, but Red didn’t need to know that part yet.
Murdock stops, his silence saying a thousand things. Frank has to drag his eyes away from the last fading hickey over his Adam’s apple.
They hadn’t done it again, besides the one night they got to Hell’s Kitchen and Red... well. Was f***ing angry and determined to show it. Determined to push until Frank finally gave him what he wanted - pushed him against the wall and kept him there until he begged.
“Are you going to kill him?”
“What do you think?”
Can’t fathom how Red sticks to that sh*t anymore. Pain in the ass.
Red suddenly stands up, fists clenched tight by his sides. Frank doesn’t want to but he will knock him back on his ass if he has to.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Like hell you are.” Frank scoffs, eyes instinctively jumping to the bright pink scar over his right ear. “You almost had your skull bashed in again the last time, Red, f***’s sake-”
“I’m trained for this-” ah, f***, there he goes. Child soldier bullsh*t. “This concerns me, I’m coming with or without you.”
“Running away from something, Red?” Frank asks, thumbing back the label of his beer bottle before taking a swig, leaning back on his sh*tty bar stool. Red smiled ruefully, turning to him. Of course he was. They both were.
Frank and Matt have a one-night stand a month before the collapse of Midland Circle. Frank digs the devil out, but it soon becomes clear pieces of him stayed under the rubble.
Notes:
This story involves some serious mental health issues, including Insomnia, Suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, medicine abuse, depression and others. Be advised! I wanted to explore some more of Matt’s suicidal tendencies during s03 and defenders, so here it is. Happy reading!❤️
When Frank hears about Midland Circle, he’s walking home from a vet meeting at Curt’s, still sore with injuries from the fight with Billy and Agent Orange’s torture.
It’s not even a choice. Before he knows it, his feet are carrying him to the closest library. Looking for information on water ducts, abandoned railroads, undergrounds maps of the city old enough for the ink to start fading and the paper to yellow.
It’s not until twelve hours later that he finds the Devil’s bloodied, corpse-like body slumped by the river, smooth rocks digging into his bruised face. Frank doesn’t allow himself to acknowledge the heavy, suffocating burn churning in his chest at the sight of him - more bruises and blood than skin, chest barely moving -, and instead takes his vitals, runs his palms over his battered frame to make sure he could move him without risking further injury, mind settled in mission mode.
It’s when Red suddenly wakes up, gasping and whispering for him to bring him to Clinton Church, that Frank sees her. A silhouette, a cut-out paper shadow mocking the impression of a woman Frank had seen through his scope once, a year or so before. A woman he saw bleed out in Red’s arms.
She disappears before Frank can make sense of what he saw. He has more pressing matters at hand.
Matt Murdock is not dying on his arms.
So he takes the kid to Clinton Church, running calculations and tactical moves through his head - the medical apparel he needed to find, where he could find a doctor that would keep their mouths shut. Who could he threaten into getting him something or the other, who he could steal from - always bad guys.
Father Lantom is not as old as Frank first imagined and he’s strong enough to help him put Matthew’s skinny, bleeding body into the orphanage’s infirmary. One of the nuns tries to call 911, but it only takes a word from the Father ( it’s Jack Murdock’s son, he said) for her to drop the phone.
Frank brings in supplies. The nuns do what they can.
He grew up here, the small nun, Maggie, tells him. In the orphanage. Frank nods. He doesn’t take his eyes away from the kid the whole time. She wants him and Red gone, but she takes care of him. They swear all the others to secrecy and it’s as good as it’ll get.
I know who you are, the Father says, a week later, and Frank is yet again staring at Matt Murdock’s undisturbed, lifeless frame. Skinnier than when he first got there. I can not say I agree with your actions or even understand them, but I can only thank you for bringing him here safe.
Frank offers little back. He isn’t sure why he did it. He just never considered the thought of not doing it.
It’s two weeks of daily visits from Frank before Red wakes up. At one moment he’s entering the room of a half-dead man, at the other, he’s watching him stumble and fall from the bed, gasping I can’t see, I can’t see, weakly in the Sister’s arms until he goes limp.
After he helps Sister Maggie put him to bed, observing the other nuns hovering around and helping clean his wounds and change his bandages, Frank remembers the day at the bar, months ago. Before David Lieberman came after him. Before Madani’s involvement and Billy’s betrayal. Before William Rawlins.
Before Midland Circle.
He had been coming home from the construction site he had been working at under Pete Castiglione’s name when he stopped at a bar. It wasn’t something he usually did. But that day, the song from the carousel grated louder in his ears than the others and Maria’s voice was an echo of Hey, sleepyhead.
There’s plenty of time now that you’re home.
At a bar in Queens, he met Red.
“Lost, Frank?” he had asked, swirling a glass of scotch in his hand, a small smile in his face. Frank had considered him only for a moment before he found himself a seat by his side.
“I should ask you the same, you’re not in the Kitchen,” Red - Murdock - had chuckled tiredly, eyebrows raising in agreement. He downs the rest of his drink before knocking on the table for another. Frank gestures for the barman. “People haven’t heard much of the Devil for a while.”
“And they won’t be,”
“Huh,” Frank hadn’t asked. Maybe he should have. He had seen, even then, that something was eating away at him. Instead, he ordered a beer and another double for the auburn-haired man. “Running away from something, Red?” Frank asks, thumbing back the label of his beer bottle before taking a swig, leaning back on his sh*tty bar stool. Red smiled ruefully, turning to him. Of course he was. They both were.
They had ended on Matt’s apartment, hours later. And Frank f***ed Red long and good into his sh*tty, blood-stained couch and didn’t think of the hollow hiding behind his ribs for a while. And when he thought Murdock couldn’t possibly take any more, panting and oversensitive as he was, the man straddled him and rode him like he was made for it, with a fluttering chest and shuddering gasps.
For a while, Frank had hugged him in his bed. Spooned him from behind and held him tight. Murdock had tensed in his arms, but soon went pliant, allowing Frank - and himself - that moment to bask in human warmth and intimacy against their touch-starved skins.
“Thought you were too Catholic for this kinda thing,” Frank had joked, and it wasn’t a lie. And Matt, he laughed, Frank had liked the sound enough that it scared him.
“I’m not too good at being a Catholic,” he had answered, before his chuckle tempered down into a sigh. “It’s almost dawn.”
“You got somewhere to be?”
Someone, he didn’t say, remembering how Nelson and Murdock had dissolved, how Karen now worked somewhere else. Do you have anyone?
Matt had gone quiet. Stiff under his fingers.
“No,” he had whispered back, “nowhere.”
The next time Murdock wakes up, Frank is there, sitting by his bedside. Red is a bit more aware of his surroundings when one of the nun’s help him drink some water. He’s scarily thin and pale, his head doesn’t twitch side to side as Frank was used to seeing.
“How are you, Red?”
He doesn’t talk, staring straight at the ceiling, seeing nothing. Unlike the last time he woke up, he wasn’t trying to touch his ears. Just looking at nothing. Sucking all the noise around him like a black hole.
Matt looked blank. Like he wasn’t even there.
“Was she there?” He asks, finally, in a hoarse whisper, in what seems like an hour later but could have been only minutes.
“I don’t know,” but he does know who Red’s talking about. He didn’t think it was possible, despite the reports of Daredevil and an unidentified woman being trapped under Midland Circle. “I thought she-”
“She did,” Matt swallows thickly, somberly. “They brought her back,” he whispers, something like dread tainting all the blankness from before. “They brought her back and she was all wrong.”
Frank’s heart stutters in his chest. Because as much as he’d like to unpack all that’s built inside that statement, it’s not what matters now.
“What were you doing there, Red?”
“She didn’t let me leave.”
“ Bullsh*t,” Frank growls, pushing his feet into the ground but not making a move to stand up. Red doesn’t make an effort to acknowledge him, staring straight ahead, avoiding. He probably wasn’t even sure of where Frank was, and wasn’t that a sobering yet terrifying thought? “Bullsh*t, Red.”
Silence stretches thin until it snaps and Red opens his mouth. And Red speaks.
When he’s done, Frank stands up suddenly, the small pile of books falling from the nightstand to the floor. The feeling of unreality lasts for a mere second before he stomps away from the orphanage’s infirmary. His chest heaving in strained pants, furious, raging.
He stomps away. Away from Red.
If the Sister is surprised by his sudden hurry to leave, she doesn’t let it show. If anything, she looks resigned. She had said it before, everybody leaves Matthew.
“He needs a friend,” is all she says, folding some donation clothes by the church pews. “He’s not in a good place,” yeah, no sh*t. Her eyes stray to the hallway Frank just strode away from. “And you’re the only one here.”
“I can’t be that friend, Ma’am,” his voice is way more strained than he expected, it leaves his throat in a hoarse murmur.
She gives him knowing eyes, hidden behind indifference. “Something more, maybe?” Frank just shakes his head. He can’t. If he closes his eyes, he can remember how pink and purple neon shined against Matthew’s skin.
“Just... if you need supplies,”
She nods, Frank ignores the disappointment that radiates stronger than it should in a frame so small. Her eyes... her eyes were familiar. “We have your number.”
Frank walks away. Red’s words against his hurt lips, spilling into his bruised, mottled skin, they echo. Get stuck in his head. Repeating again and again until he can’t hear them anymore, just the movement of his lips.
He dreams of him, asleep in his bed. Frank caresses a hand through his auburn hair and Red smiles. And when Frank’s about to leave, Matt’s mouthing those words, the same words he said that night, in between silk sheets, with Frank’s love bites blossoming on his neck and chest. The same Goddamned words.
It’s a month later when Daredevil - the fake one, because Frank knows the altar boy would never... he just couldn’t. He didn’t have it in him. And then, Wilson Fisk is exposed and arrested once more.
A week later, Frank sees Red on patrol. He’s wearing all black and fighting off five, six people at the same time. When three more show up, Frank jumps in. He doesn’t even doubt himself for a second - clean slate, and all that. He covers fire for him, keeps to his rules, shoots kneecaps and elbows and steers clear from heads.
The moment they get a reprieve, Red is on him, snarling like a feral animal and pushing him away. “Red-”
“Get away,” his voice is down to a growl, and an unbidden shiver works through Frank’s guts at the sheer force of his glare. “Or you’re getting hurt.” And Red does it himself, brutal and efficient.
Red doesn’t make a sound, he’s a blotch of ink moving in the flickering lights. He fights like Frank’s never seen him fight before. Except, he thinks, that day on the roof. And Frank... Frank can’t keep up with him. For the first time since he met the Devil, he can’t keep up with him. Not while carrying the armory he has on him.
“Red, just wait-” But he disappears. Like a shadow, and Frank can’t follow him. The only trace he leaves behind a hand-print in blood on a wall.
That week, Frank runs some reconnaissance. He settles, belly down, three buildings away from Nelson, Murdock and Page’s new office. Watches through his scope as Nelson puts up their new plaque. Right then, Red seems fine. He laughs at someone Nelson says and Karen pats his shoulder with a fond glance their way. Red turns to her, smiles sweetly and pulls both of them for a little group hug.
Red shakes his head with a little smirk to something Karen says, he seems fine.
Red flinches away from their touch before leaning closer. His suit hangs loosely off his frame, he looks... tired. Skin-deep though, he puts on a show for his friends. He seems fine.
Frank sighs wearily and the Devil tilts his head subtly, dangerously, towards the direction of the rooftop Frank lying on. Red seems to consider something before smiling again towards Nelson and walking inside.
Frank leaves, hissing out a curse under his breath.
Red is being careless. Reckless. More than he usually is, which Frank never thought was possible. It’s almost like he’s tempting his God to come down himself and end him. Frank knows a little bit about that - the edge you can’t shake off, walking straight towards the barrel of a gun or maybe staying behind in a boat about to blow up. But even in the peak of his self-destructive bullsh*t, Frank wore body armor.
Red’s wearing pajamas and staying out almost all night, at all hours of the night. Kid was a danger to himself.
It’s proof to how he’s exhausting himself that, one night, Frank manages to catch up to him. “What are you doing out this late, Red?”
“Go home, Frank,” he’s getting tired of this cat and mouse thing.
“Come on, stop that,” he chides, carefully, voice low. “That ain’t me and you know it.”
But Murdock just tilts his head, “I really don’t,” Frank grits his teeth. Maybe he deserves that.
“Look, you wanna talk about it, we can talk.”
“I don’t wanna talk, Frank,” he rebukes coldly. Walls so high up around him Frank can barely see what’s behind. But his fingers are trembling, his whole body shaking tiredly. His nose is bleeding, he moves with a limp. “I don’t know what you want, but it certainly isn’t me, so go.”
“Cut the sh*t, Red,” he breaks in, last drop of his patience long gone. He steps forward into Matt’s space, who tries stepping back only to find a wall. He’s out of his game. “You think I haven’t seen it? You’ve been at it at all hours of the night, every night, you’re past burning that candle on both ends-”
“I don’t need your patronizing bullsh*t-”
“And that candle’s gotta burn on, Red. Long after tonight.”
Red’s whole frame goes still for one moment, just long enough that Frank’s hackles go down and he thinks he’s finally gotten through to him. But then, suddenly the kid is pulling him close, both hands fisted in his shirt, with such ferocity that he stumbles slightly before finding his footing. “It’s none of your business.”
“Yeah?” It hurts more than he’s willing to admit, so instead he grabs onto him too, fingers digging into his (skinny, bruised) upper arms, reaching up to tear the mask away from his face. “What about Karen then, Red? Nelson? Is it their business?” Red’s stutters, his hands loosen before his grip tightens. “You catch your death out here, you piss off the wrong guys, they’re gonna pay for it too, Red, you know that, don’t you?”
Murdock shoves him away, taking the mask with him, eyes wide, breathing shallow. Frank almost takes it back, seeing the full-body tremor that wrecks his frame and remembering that Wilson Fisk and the fake Devil wasn’t too long ago. That Red probably spent day after day wondering if he’d wake up to news of his loved one’s deaths.
“Red...”
“Get the hell away from me, Frank,” he whispers, the decibels rising just above a breath, croaking exhausted. Frank thinks he’s never seen him this defeated, this tired.
Red steps off the side of the building and disappears. Frank doesn’t try to follow.
He does follow him a few nights later and it’s too easy. Red’s out of his depth if he hasn’t noticed Frank. He finds a spot behind the huge neon sign, hoping it’s buzzing masks his heartbeat or smell or whatever it is Red uses to recognize him.
It’s four in the morning and Murdock should be done in, but despite the scarily deep circles under his eyes he’s restless, head twitching left and right, pacing in circles, rubbing his palm through his face occasionally.
Frank settles down and observes him through his scope as he goes inside his bathroom and comes back a few minutes later - showered and snug under thick autumn clothes. Red paces some more before tilting his head towards the table and just... standing there. As if he was mulling something over in that busy head of his.
Frank watches him reach out a hand for a bottle of prescription pills on his coffee table, taking three and swallowing them dry. He clenches and loosens his fists in cycles, eyes closed and up to the ceiling. Murdock looks unsettled, fidgeting, twitching. His face set in a troubled, weary expression, eyes suspiciously bright in the neon lights.
He had followed Red since eleven in the evening. He had been going at it for at least five hours, and still, he paced.
It’s half an hour later when Matt finally sits down, staring straight ahead. Head tilting and twitching towards sounds far away, hands shaking.
He doesn’t sleep. Frank leaves when dawn comes.
Thinking back, maybe it was the last straw, that night. He’d been observing Red for a while now, sometimes from behind the neon sign, sometimes through the scope of his sniper rifle. Red had lost weight, his milk-toned skin faded into a sickly ashen by the time night came and he was slacking off. The last few days, the Devil hadn’t noticed Frank following him from work to his nightly outings and that sh*t right there, that was worrying.
It was only inevitable that Red, eventually, bit more than he could chew. But Frank’s ready when it happens and soon jumps into action.
He keeps to Red’s rules for as long as he can, for as long as the a**holes they’re fighting let him. Once one pulls a gun to the back of Murdock’s head, Frank shoots his arm off with a shotgun.
The blast clearly throws Red’s senses off the rails because he falters on where he stands, hands fisting a lowlife’s collar. The guy is quick to take advantage of Daredevil’s sudden distraction.
Frank shoots his brains out the moment his knife nicks a piece of Red’s shirt off, right under his ribs.
He thinks he hears Red’s shout of no!, but Frank’s busy taking care of the others surrounding them. He looses himself easily in it, in the blood he spills, in the blood that latches onto his skin as if finding home. And Frank never feels more at home than when he’s dipped in red. The last man standing.
Red is on him the moment the last gang member falls to the ground, a hole through her tattooed neck. He’s torn off his mask and has his (tired, sleep-deprived) eyes burning wildfires into Frank’s skin. The moment Matthew’s hands dig into Frank, Frank’s dig into him too, bringing him closer, keeping him away. Wanting to appease his anger the same way he wants to watch it consume them both.
“You piece of sh*t, you piece of sh*t, I can’t believe you!” Red snarls against him, faces too close together, baring teeth and curling lips. He burns into his reserves until the last drop is the only thing keeping him anchored to Frank, and Frank is the only thing keeping him from falling to the ground. He holds him tighter - feels like, should he let him go right then, Red would fall right through the floor and be swallowed by it. “You burst into something that has nothing NOTHING to do with you and you turn it into a blood bath!”
“Yeah, you’d rather I had let that piece of sh*t stab you?” Frank snarls back, pulling him closer by his arms. Enough that he’s not sure what any of them would do should they get closer yet. He’s earth meeting fire, and Red’s embers were burning brighter than ever. “You’d rather let them go free than get the job done, Murdock?”
“These people, they have families, they have kids-”
“ For crying out loud, shut your goddamn mouth-”
“That man you shot in MY arms, I followed him for weeks, he had a kid, Frank, he had a wife,” Red heaves out a weak breath and his eyes are too bright.
“They’re better off without him!” Frank doesn’t know how he realizes it’s the wrong thing to say, only that he does. Matt looks about to cry or maybe fall apart, and Frank doesn’t think he’s ever seen him like this. It’s the lack of sleep, he thinks to himself. What else would it be?
He grew up here, the Sister had said, in the orphanage.
Murdock tries to attack again, but he’s weak. The former marine easily stops him, holding his elbows back, keeping his fists and legs away while letting his head thump against his chest. Matt snarls like a wounded animal, tries to kick him, but his muscles are quickly turning liquid and his bones rattle and quiver weakly in his attempts.
“The hell happened to you, Red.” Stupid question. Midland, Elektra, Fisk, Poindexter, - whatever those pills were, the ones he took almost every night. Naively (obtusely, foolishly) Frank had thought he’d be better once he got back to his friends, started their firm again. He thought he’d be better once Frank’s brief presence in his life came to an end.
But then again, Frank leaving had been anything but selfless. He’d always been quick to get lost in his head. Maybe that’s something he shares with Red.
His fingers find a warm, wet spot on Murdock’s ribs when he tries to twist away from Frank. Bullet graze.
“Com’on, let me patch you up.”
“Let go.” There’s something in his face, Frank can’t call it by any name he knows. Layers and layers of too much, at the same time. He’s fighting the ocean, trying to set fire to it on his own. And Red... he looks like he wants to let the tide take him away.
“Come on,” he says it softer, this time. Matthew doesn’t consent as much as he just stops fighting altogether, going deceivingly pliant against his hold.
By the time they’re entering his apartment through the rooftop access, Red’s fiery attitude has been replaced by an unnerving, blank sort of avoidance. The bone-deep exhaustion is still there and it seems to weight more then as they get past the stairs. Matt looks done in.
The bright orange of two different pill bottles catches his eyes as he makes his way to the coffee table, glancing at the name. Prozac, the almost empty one reads. Ambien, reads the half-full one. There’s another empty one, forgotten on the floor.
“Having trouble sleeping?” He asks, as casually as he can get. The marine half expects it to be the thing that finally gets Red’s fury out once again, but no such luck. A shake of his head, more of fatigue than of disagreement, is the only response Castle gets.
Red takes a first aid kit out of the bathroom and sits gingerly on the couch before taking off his compression shirt. Frank can’t help but hiss softly at the sight - Red’s a Pollock of bruises overlayed with cuts and scabs. There’s a splatter of drying blood along his neck and face - likely from the guy Frank shot.
It’s not often Frank feels guilty for a kill. Not exactly for doing it, but how he did it. He shouldn’t have done it with Red holding the guy, close as he was, hands still on him. Not with the way the kid tied himself over knots over every little thing.
He sighs, gets his mind to focus on the work. He sits facing Red, unsettled by not being able to read his face. Murdock is not exactly good at hiding his emotions and Frank’s good at picking people apart. But somehow, just then... It’s like the orphanage infirmary all over again. And Frank hates remembering that.
“Look, Red,”
“It’s been repeating since morning,” Matt interrupts, his voice oddly soft. Distant. Frank stops what he’s doing, the first stitch already done. “It won’t stop.”
“What won’t stop?” Red looks... sh*t, he looks a bit feverish. Pale and clammy. It’s certainly not from blood loss, he hardly bled enough for that. There was something wrong. Just... off. Frank’s eyes involuntarily track back to the half-empty bottle of sleeping pills on the table. The empty one on the floor.
He knew a bit about how messed up your head can get when you just can’t sleep. Frank had had nightmares for a long time after his Maria and his babies.
Matthew’s eyebrows twitch and there’s a crack in him - a chasm splitting him in half from the inside out. Just deep enough under the skin that, should Frank be a little less familiar with him, he wouldn’t have seen it.
“The radio,” he croaks out, tiredly. “Can’t you hear it? Two apartments down? No, three,” he chuckles a little, eyes bright. Frank sees the tears and freezes, stopping mid-stitch. “There’s a...” he laughs this time. “A stray adoption day at the park, like, like- like the saying?” Frank cuts off the thread, his heart thundering in his chest.
“Red..?” His mind races a mile a minute. Is he drugged? Concussed? Something’s seriously off, something...
“Like the saying, at the orphanage,” he huffs out another humorless, weak laugh. “The saying, they’d say... They said it was a safe place, until you found your forever home,” Murdock barks out a laugh, as if he finds it exceptionally amusing. Frank’s nauseated, but he holds him. Holds him because Red looks like he’s breaking and Frank’s afraid he’ll spill all over his stained floor and won’t be able to find the pieces of himself when it’s over. “Like puppies, you see? Like we were lost, stray puppies. You shouldn’t be jealous of the others, pup, one day you’ll find your forever home too,” his chuckling is nothing but a breath, now, a shaky hand coming up to brush the tears out of his face.
“But we never did,” the laughter is all gone now. A small smile the only suggestion of it ever being there, cracking at the edges. “We never went home.”
Frank has nothing to say. Wouldn’t know what to say. What could he, really? When there was nothing but Frank’s hands holding Red together there, in his blood-stained couch. The one Frank had f***ed him into months before and then left. Just... left.
He thinks he had seen this coming a long time ago. It’s none of your business, he had told himself. Convinced himself. Too deep into the ocean to be able to make sense of it.
“I’m tired, Frank,” his whisper is barely there when he finishes. “I’m really tired.”
Frank nods. Tired he understands, tired he can fix. “You need sleep, Red, yeah?” He sticks the adhesive dressing over the stitched-up graze. He glances at the sleeping pills. “You want to take one before-”
But Red’s back to his unnerving blank stare. “They don’t work,” he says, holding his stitched-up side. Frank’s hands hover over his shoulders, his lower back. Wouldn’t know how to touch him without breaking him more. “They never work.”
The marine nods. “Yeah, I’ll go,” Red twists his head towards him subtly, softly. He’s not surprised, once again. Just like... yeah. “I’ll see you around, Red.”
He averts his eyes the moment Matt opens his mouth. Frank thinks he sees him mouth something but the sound dies in his tongue before it reaches the surface. But he saw it, he thinks. He can’t be sure, he tells himself. Maybe it’s just an echo, his scarred head playing tricks on him. Maybe it’s an echo from that day, after the bar. Maybe...
“Bullsh*t, Red.”
“I knew I wasn’t getting out of Midland Circle. And Elektra... she knew it too.”
“You shut- shut your mouth,”
“Told her we were gonna die and she said... She said, this is what living feels like,” Red closed his eyes. “I knew I wasn’t getting out,” he whispered, then: “I didn’t want to get out.”
Frank stops in front of a laundromat, two blocks away from Red’s building. If he looks back, he can still see it. He could still peek over his shoulder, and if he lets his mind drift, Frank almost feels like a schoolboy again. Wondering if that one boy he shared lunch with the day before is going to come to school, so they can share it again.
He wonders if he should go back, now that Red’s voice faded among the noise in his head. He knows it will come back soon (it always does, Matt’s voice, for some reason, always comes back).
Frank keeps walking. None of your business, his own voice whispers back to him. None of your business.
And yet, he couldn’t shake off the cold in his bones. Something had happened in Red’s apartment, and Frank probably would never know or begin to understand what. It was like opening a box and hoping to find what you were looking for, and be greeted instead with a mangled imitation. Faulty clockwork.
He walks for maybe an hour, mulling it all around in his mind, as if tasting bitter wine. Red, sitting alone in a bar in Queens. Red, admitting he had no one. Red staying behind under a collapsing building with that woman. Red’s sleeping problems. His reckless behavior, his confession in that small orphanage infirmary. Matt, chuckling like life is one big, bad joke, tears in his eyes.
We never went home.
The nun’s voice, coming back to him in a whisper, everybody leaves Matthew.
Matt lying in a orphanage bed, looking so utterly at peace with his own words, conflicted with the reality in which he woke up to. I didn’t want to get out.
He freezes before crossing the street.
Frank doesn’t know what finally propels him to go back, he doesn’t know at which point did his walk turn into a run. Metal creaks and complains under his stomping feet as he takes two steps at a time, making his way up the fire escape. His pulse is booming like thunder inside his ribs, throbbing in his temples, threatening to give him a headache as he opens the door to the roof. He’s panting from his run, a palpitation in his chest when he finds the apartment silent.
Murdock’s not in his room, he notices first.
The two bottles he saw earlier on the coffee table are not there either.
He must make a sound, something, because it echoes like a mewl from a wounded animal. Frank isn’t sure if the sound comes from him, but he moves towards the echo anyway, only for his feet to kick something in the way.
The first thing he sees as he clicks the light switch on are two bright orange bottles. Both empty. But, they had been almost full before, hadn’t they? At least one of them had, he was sure-
“Red?” A crash answers him, a small, cut-off cry he’s sure doesn’t belong to him. But he knows that voice, hears it in his dreams. Hears it whispering to him during the day - he follows it to the bathroom, clicking another light on.
His stomach drops, blood running cold. Frank’s knees go weak and, in a second, he’s kneeling, holding Matt’s body in his arms as he convulsed, choking on his own spit and bile. Twitching and seizing non-stop, it didn’t matter how hard Frank held him close, positioning him sideways so he wouldn’t suffocate. It didn’t matter what he did-
“Jesus Christ, what did you do?” his voice breaks, hands shaking where they grip Red’s frame, his skin ashen. Frank glances at the empty bottles, Prozac, it displays, Ambien. “What did you do?” He asks again, uselessly, eyes stinging as he holds him, waiting for the seizure to stop. Red’s drying, colorless vomit reeks of medicine.
He calls emergency services, past caring if any of them saw through his beard and recognized his face. The words flow from his mouth in a syncopated rhythm and Frank barely hears himself over the buzzing. Nothing.
Took pills, Red’s pallid, sallow skin. Prozac, his wide eyes fighting to stay open. Ambien, his hands, shaking violently, fingers spasming. Don’t know how long ago, Red’s auburn, bright hair against white tiles, colorless vomit, foam-covered lips. Male, about 30, the way he said his name, not long ago. Seizure, no blood in the vomit, Red’s little smile when Frank held him that day, twisted in silk sheets, soft against their scarred skins.
“What did you do?” Frank asks again, voice sepulchral, begging, whispering.
He does what the attendant tells him - checks the pupils (huge), his pulse (fluttery, too quick), his temperature (cold, getting colder), his breathing (shallow, fast).
Frank holds the world in his hands as it falls apart silently, quiet as a grave. And what a terrifying thought it is. What a terrifying thought.
He doesn’t know when he starts softly rocking, trembling fingertips caressing a cold cheek, his breathing ragged, shaky. His voice rather toneless as he mumble nothings into the empty air, ( you’re okay Red, I got you, I got you Matt, here with you, M’here with you) one finger digging into Red’s neck, pressing into a tripwire pulse.
Too quick. Spasming like his muscles.
Frank doesn’t hear the paramedics breaking down the door, doesn’t hear them until they’re right there, taking him away from him, asking Frank to step back, putting a blanket around his shoulders.
He doesn’t know how much time passes before he stops fighting the paramedics holding him back and one of them is waving the bottles in front of him. Prozac. It says. Ambien.
“Sir, I need you to answer me,” Frank nods, lethargic, clearing his throat before his eyes go back to Red. “Sir, do you know how many did he take?”
“About... there was about half a bottle of Ambien. Not much of Prozac, maybe 10 pills, just- is he... is he...” is he breathing? Is he alive?
“He’s stabilized for now, but we need to move him. We’re taking him to Metro-General,”
The world is too quick around him. They have Red on a stretcher ( they’re taking him away), he fights the one guy still holding him back, but he’s weak.
“His pupils are non-responsive,” a voice floats from his right, the man with a flashlight to Red’s eyes.
“He’s blind,” he croaks out, licks his dry, parched lips. “He’s blind.”
“Okay, sir,” the medic nods to another. “Tell them we’re bringing in a suicide attempt victim,” the words, they hit him, puncture his skin. A bullet in the dark where he can’t make sense of where it’s coming from. That they call him, Matt Murdock, brilliant lawyer, fierce protector, sweet, vicious Matthew, like that. Suicide attempt victim, they say. Frank can still feel his cold skin in his palms, as if he was still holding him there. Him and Matt, trapped between white, cold tiles, hanging off the edge, unaware that they’re in free fall.
“Sir, are you his proxy?”
“I’ll call him,” voice like gravel, bleeding like tar. “I’ll call his proxy.”
“Does he have any family we can call?”
But we never did.
“No,”
We never went home.
“No, he doesn’t.”
Frank doesn’t think he ever got to go home, either. He planned to, craved it even. But home had never been his house, it had been Maria and the kids. And they died before he could remember how to feel it again. And after that...
After that, Frank wasn’t looking for home anymore.
He wonders if Matt had been, all this time.
Nelson is on him from the moment he gets there, Karen hot in his heels. His hands shake when they grab his jacket only to push him. Frank barely stumbles. “What did you do to him?” He demands, eyes furious even while they threaten to spill like waterfalls.
“Foggy-” Karen is shaken off the moment she tries to hold him back.
“What did you do to my friend?! What did you do?”
Frank doesn’t answer - what could he say? There was nothing to be said. Nothing that wouldn’t make it hurt more. He’s still numb. Still feeling the imprint of Red’s clammy skin and spasming muscles like a phantom limb.
Karen must pull Nelson away, because suddenly she’s in front of him, big, cerulean eyes worried. Teary. “Frank, what happened?”
He finds that he can talk. At least with her. “Found him,”
She frowns, confused. “What?”
“I found him,” Frank swallows. Can’t blink away the image seared into his eyelids, how his whole body went taut while he seized, how his own voice sounded frantic and broken as it boomed and echoed around the small bathroom. He makes eye contact with her. “I found him,” Karen looks lost for about a second before horror downs in her eyes and she gasps, taking a step back, hands covering her mouth. “He, he took pills.”
“What is he-” Nelson’s voice fades when Karen sobs, still staring with wild, disbelieving eyes into Frank’s. “What’s he talking about?”
“I thought, Jesus Christ,” her face looks pink when she cries, Frank remembers, for all the times she spilled tears for him. As if he deserved any of them. That same odd feeling of unreality claims him back, his skin is not his own, wet tiles touching his knees, seizing, shaking. “He said he was okay, he said- I gave him a therapist’s number, he said it was just insomnia, oh my god.”
“Matt,” Nelson’s face contorts in a ugly, painful try at confusion and Frank’s dissociating mind focuses at it, for some reason. “Matt tried to-?”
Frank averts his eyes when Karen jumps to hug Nelson by the neck, sobbing into his shoulder. His heartbeat a deafening roar in his ears, a painful stab against his rib cage. He sits down in the waiting room, with the two of them. The mismatched family Red had patched for himself but was never taught how to keep, how to hold it together.
Frank feels cold tiles on his knees, sweaty, cold skin on his fingertips. And he knows that he’s still there, on that bathroom floor, holding Red’s life in his hands.
He wonders if that’s how Matt felt, when he woke up at the church. Like he was still under the rubble, getting slowly crushed but never dying. Feeling bone after bone break, but never finding any peace.
Karen sits with him, later. While Nelson goes to Red’s place to pack up clothes for him.
He’s out of the woods and stabilizing, we’re doing our best to clear out his system. A young, wide-eyed nurse had explained. He’s alive.
Frank knows the shock will wear out eventually. He knows the next stop is anger. Some twisted Kubler-Ross bullsh*t. He’ll rage and he’ll want answers, but does he have any right to them? Does having a night with him entitles Frank to those answers? Does stitching up his wounds, finding him seizing in the floor?
“Do you think... do you think it was on purpose?” Karen asks, her dulcet tone masking the dread Frank knows is wreaking havoc, deep down.
Frank shakes his head. Does he think downing almost half a bottle of sleeping pills with some heavy antidepressants classified as a suicide attempt? Yes. Did Frank think it was on purpose, that Red wanted to die?
He doesn’t. He doesn’t know. How could he? They know Red longer than he does. Now, if they know him well... That’s another problem.
He knows Red’s lips look sweet but are infinitely sweeter once you kiss them. He knows his skin is warm like a fireplace. He knows his hair shines auburn-red in the sun and feel soft. He knows Red likes when you pull them, when you show him where you want him, how much you want him. He knows Matt’s waist is smaller than his ill-fitting clothes would lead you to think it was, and that it felt so breakable under his roughened hands. He knows Matt punches hard and is perhaps too quick to forgive and the last to give up hope. He knows the first and last person Matt Murdock will always hate and punish the most will be himself.
He knows how he sounds when he whimpers in bliss, how his legs feel around Frank’s waist, how he’s shy about his eyes, how he fights like a dancer and hits like a boxer and always, always gets back up.
And Frank knows that, should he ask his past self if he saw himself in this situation, his other would snort at his face. Should he ask his past self from days ago if he ever thought Red would pull something like this, he’d say no and yet he had seen it happening right under his nose.
Because Midland Circle was it’s own proof and yet.
“I don’t know, Karen, right before he... he cracked,” Frank shakes his head. “He’s been off, the last few weeks, I don’t know.”
Isn’t that where it all comes back to? He didn’t know. He saw it but he didn’t observe it, not really. He averted his eyes, pretended it didn’t matter. He took for granted how much Red could take, took for granted the pain he saw, the struggling.
He really doesn’t know. Maybe Red was half out of his mind and really just trying to sleep, maybe he has lost hold of himself, or maybe... Maybe he wanted to end it.
I’m tired, Frank.
Didn’t he tell him the same thing, roughly a year before?
You ever been tired, Red?
Frank feels the anger as it finally comes. Overcomes the shock with a snap, a rubber band pulled too hard, past it’s breaking point. Wasn’t it enough that he lost them? Didn’t he suffer enough, losing his wife, his babies?
But then again, Frank had walked away from him. Not once, not twice. He walked away after the bar. He walked away from the church orphanage and the night before. When he saw it, when he knew Matt Murdock was way past his breaking point.
Red hadn’t been looking good even then, sitting alone in the sh*tty bar stool. His knuckles were healed and his palms soft and Frank’s had never been rougher, full of healing sores and open ones after spending day after day hammering down walls. They had talked, and Frank had driven them to Red’s apartment and Matt had given him this small, almost innocent smile before inviting him in. He had looked pure and Frank had wanted to ruin him and so he did.
And Matt, Matt had wanted to be ruined. And then he didn’t, in the end. He wanted to let Frank hold him. Hold his brittle, cracked parts together.
But Frank had freaked out. And Red, he saw it. He noticed it even before Frank’s breath caught in his throat with guilt, panic, anger, grief. When he was leaving, Matthew didn’t look surprised or angry. It was almost like he had been expecting it. Like he never thought it could end any other way.
And then, he had mouthed - said, begged - in a faint whisper, soft like it didn’t matter, like he didn’t think it’d be heard. He had almost begged-
It didn’t matter. Frank had left.
“I don’t know,” he repeats. Karen puts one hand on his shoulder. And he hears what she doesn’t ask. Why were you there? Why are you here? “I don’t know.” But he does.
Sometimes, Frank dreams he was there when Midland Circle collapsed. In some dreams, he’s outside, watching it explode and the blast is loud enough that he can’t hear himself over it.
In others, he’s under it with Red, and he’s holding his hand as he pulls him, tells him to go, get the f*** out. Asks him why, why, why. But Red always answers the same way, always says the same thing. Frank has repeated it so many times, whispered over and over in his head, that he barely hears it anymore - just sees the movement of his lips when he says it.
This is what living feels like.
But sometimes, he says what he did when Frank was hastily putting his clothes on, leaving soft silk sheets and a naked, quiet Matthew behind. The same thing he had said the night before, when Frank left him in his apartment after his breakdown. But still, Matt’s just mouthing it. Red would never say that out loud, his own voice whispers back.
But he did, that day. He did say it. Frank just chose not to listen.
Everybody leaves Matthew.
In the waiting room, Frank thinks Matt had been asking for help in the only way he knew how. And if that’s the truth, Frank had seen it but ignored it, and let him fall.
In some dreams, Frank is the bomb. He’s the one thing that traps Red under the rubble. He’s the overwhelming deafness of the explosion before concrete comes crumbling down.
When Red wakes up, like months ago, Frank is there. It’s almost like they’re trapped in their own, f***ed up loop. He’s there to witness the surprise in his wide eyes, the opening and closing of his mouth in stuttered gasps as tears track down his face.
It takes away all his doubts. That surprise. The tears.
Red didn’t expect to wake up.
Frank’s stomach twists in anger (nausea, grief) as he stands up and goes to the door, calling a nurse before going after Nelson and Karen. He didn’t - couldn’t - stay.
When he leaves, he doesn’t look back. Afraid that Red will be saying the same thing again, the same words. The same goddamned words that would have made all the difference, should Frank have listened to them.
The next night, Karen calls him and Frank finds himself sitting in his van, staring at Metro-General’s front. The anger from before has faded slightly through the course of twenty-something hours.
“Can you stay with him?” She had said, like she was asking him to watch her dog.
Like we were lost, stray puppies.
Frank curses, hidden behind a sigh. Shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose before staring at the flaking white paint under the big, red neon sign of the hospital. He takes the small, overnight duffel bag he brought with him, prepared for any occasion. It takes some effort to get his heart rate down.
Combat boots hit the front door’s threshold before he’s even realized he’s moved.
Karen and Nelson look like sh*t.
Frank wonders if this will be the last straw for them too. If this is where Karen finally gets away, where Nelson finally gives up on his friend. Can’t be easy, Frank knows that. God knows what kept Curtis coming back to him, what kept Karen coming back or even the Liebermans. He wasn’t one to question much, at least not on a good day. Now Red - there wasn’t a single thing in his goddamn world Matt Murdock didn’t question, challenge or defy. Death, apparently, being the most prominent one of those.
“Just... be careful, F- Pete,” Karen corrects herself, sighing and passing her long, manicured nails through her hair. “He’s not...” She looks at Nelson, helplessly. The blonde shakes his head too, that same pained, torn expression from the day before.
“Make sure he doesn’t try to choke himself with his own IV,” he croaks out, coldly and Frank knows it’s none of his business, but he dares hope Nelson works through the hurt, the pain. Because if Karen leaves, Matt may close off, get sadder, quieter or angrier. But if Foggy Nelson left?
Frank thinks that would be the last straw.
Murdock turns his head away as soon as Frank enters his room, chest rising a bit raggedly. He’s still drowsy but the nurses warned that could happen. That had he taken a bit more than what he did of Prozac (they estimated between five to seven pills), he may have survived, but he’d most definitely have lasting sequels - motor coordination impairment, hearing loss, something named RASP, not any of it good things. That had the paramedics taken a bit longer to get there or Frank to find him, Red would have likely suffocated in his own spit and vomit.
That the cardio-respiratory arrest he went in when he got to the emergency room could have killed him, should it have lasted mere seconds more than it did.
Frank lets his bag drop to the ground by his feet and watches him. His slow-blinking, his shaky hands, his still pale skin, blue veins like spider-webs along his arms. Stark against an old, silvery scar by his elbow. Knife wound.
The former marine sits down with a heaving sigh. Karen had told him earlier Murdock was put under periodic suicide watch, which meant a nurse would be checking in frequently to make sure he was alright.
All the angry words he had left him in a blink of an eye. They would come back soon enough.
“Brought a book,” he offers, quietly. If Karen’s research was to be believed, the cocktail of sleep deprivation, Prozac and Ambien would be enough to get Murdock’s senses a bit haywire. And as much as a wicked part of him wanted to punish him for his actions, for the sh*t he just pulled, Frank refrains from it.
“Not going to give me a talk down?” Matt asks in a hoarse, phantom-like whisper. With all those tubes, pale like the sheets he was under, like the tiles Frank had found him.
“Figured your friends got that covered,” and it’s not a lie. Curt would say another talking down is the last thing the kid needs right now. If the goal is feeling like sh*t, Red had that part handled. If it’s making him feel guilty, realize the extent of his actions, Red was most certainly thinking about it already. “Ever read Proust, Red?”
“Yeah,” Matt looks at him a bit amused, although he doesn’t smile. He seems too tired for that. “Is In search of lost time supposed to make me feel better?” He asks and this time he sounds teasing.
“Well, he did say happiness was beneficial for the body,” Frank shrugs, a small smile in his face. It doesn’t erase where they are but it’s almost like he could just... pretend. Just for a while.
The heart monitor beeps steadily.
“He’s the father of existential crisis, Frank,” he huffs out a snort at that, watching the artificial light as it touched Red’s damaged, cloudy eyes in a haze.
“Brought poetry too,” Matt doesn’t say it but Frank can see it in the little tilt of his head, the curiosity. It fades as he sighs, tiredly.
“What did you bring?”
He didn’t actually know, Leo had been the one to tell him it was good. He checks out the cover. “Mary Oliver,” Frank’s hands scrape against his jeans as he settles back, Murdock twitches towards the sound, laying back on his sheets. “Do you want-”
“Please,” he says softly. Frank nods, and presses his feet harder against the ground. Just so he doesn’t forget where he is. He blinks a few times, eyes on the heart monitor before going back to Matt’s steadily rising and falling chest.
“I go down to the edge of the sea,” he starts, voice made of thin, breakable china. “how everything shines in the morning light, the cusp of the whelk, the broken cupboard of the clam...”
He maybe reads to him for an hour or two. Frank barely feels time as he measures it with the sterile smell of the sheets, the soft rustling of pages, the feel of a soft paperback cover, Matthew’s tender breathing. It’s rawness dims with every word, every verse.
“What dark part of my soul shivers,” Frank isn’t sure when Matt’s breath turns tremulous, or when his own voice strains in a husky grind. It’s just the words, Frank’s voice, Matthew’s breathing, the white sheets, the heart monitor. He can almost ignore where they are. Almost.
A nurse comes in, not long after he finishes Every Morning. Red seems to come slowly out of his daze as a tray of mashed potatoes and other unidentifiable food gets dropped on his lap. The fragile truce snaps in a deaf sound, and Frank watches him turn his head down to his tasteless dinner, eyes turning away for all the good they do.
Red’s rather well-trained in avoiding glances when he can’t (shouldn’t be able to) feel them.
Frank can’t say he hadn’t seen coming what happens next. “I didn’t try to kill myself,” he murmurs into his (plastic) fork, curled around himself as if saying the words are a sharp knife of their own.
Maybe he didn’t set out to, but he didn’t mind if he did. Maybe he wished for it, the same way Frank had wished most mornings before he started pulling his life together.
“What were you trying to do then, Red?” He carefully swallows any resentment or anger back, any grief. Not the time.
Red keeps playing with his food. The childish gesture would be amusing - endearing even, if not for the IV, the monitor, Red’s shaky hands, the nurse that came to check from time to time.
“I wanted to... I just wanted to sleep.”
I’m tired, Frank.
Yeah, Frank knew tired.
He knew not wanting to wake up, too.
“Look, Red, you gotta heal,” he says, voice a deep rumble, low enough not to set his senses off. “these kinda things, they leave wounds. They make us... make us bleed, right? And thing is, sometimes, sometimes you don’t even realize it, ‘cos you’re so neck deep in the blood, yeah? You’re fighting the ocean one bucket at a time, and that sh*t is tiring as hell. You gotta take those wounds, and you gotta let them scar, you kno’? Better than to leave it open, bleed out, yeah?” Don’t make me find you like that again, an unbidden, choked-out voice crawls from the depths of his mind. Don’t do that to me again.
Matt is quiet, in the wake of a revelation Frank never made. Maybe he heard it, anyway. “I don’t know how,” he finally admits. And it’s okay, because Frank hadn’t known it either. Sh*t, he was still figuring it out. Having Curt, though. That right there made all the difference. Matt suddenly sags deeper into his pillow. “I didn’t... want to die.”
But he didn’t mind not waking up either. Some part of him, probably, had wished for it so hard, so loud - took over the remaining drops of sense from his sleep-deprived head. Frank breathes through the sudden rush of anger, unable to trace it back to Red or to himself. Angry at the idiot for doing this sh*t, angry at himself for not seeing it. Angry at Nelson and Karen who saw him every day and never noticed sh*t. But then again, Matt Murdock had been hiding for so long, he didn’t even know how to come out of the shadows on his own.
Repressed, shackled-down anger comes like a punch to bruised ribs. Clawing at his throat like Ahab stabbing Moby D*ck, only to get tangled in ropes and dragged by his neck into the sea.
“You don’t do that, Red,” he growls out, earning a mildly surprised glance from the younger man. “You don’t do that your friends, sh*t, you don’t do that to them,” his voice is suddenly thick, hoarse. Frank almost stops talking, if only to hide the weakness bleeding out in his tone. “Now you listen to me, ‘cause I’ll say it once, you listening? Your life is not yours and you take your goddamn hands out of it,” hisses out, sharp like a blade, and he sees it slide right through him, makes him bleed all over white sheets. Yet Matt’s face barely flinches. “You take your life, Red, you put that on Karen, you put that on Nelson, you tell me you love ‘em but you take that from them, you wound them!”
You wound me, you tear me apart, says his heartbeat, the loud ringing in his ears. Haven’t I lost enough? Why do you want to go, too?
Frank’s selfish, terribly, horribly selfish. He’d come and go as he saw fit, and somehow believed Red would always be there, open arms and all. Some f***ed up, self-entitled bullsh*t part of him thought that Matt and him would inevitably, one day, find each other again - be it in the middle of a fight, as allies or enemies or lovers in a bed.
Matthew, he turns away with his stoic expression crumbling to shreds. That blade stabbed him right through where Frank had aimed and it was too late to claim it back now.
Red looks pained, muscles jumping like he’d rather run far, far away than stand a second more listening to what Frank’s got to say. And that’s just another thing he can’t fix, just another thing he caused that he can’t fix.
Frank had been there. Spent months sleeping with a gun under his pillow. He’d wake up sometimes looking for Maria, for his baby girl, his baby boy, and he’d think maybe... maybe he could, you know? Thought he didn’t owe nothing to no one here.
And Red, he knows all that. There’s nothing Frank has to say about it that he doesn’t know. He’s just... punishing him. Tearing the wound a little wider. And that’s not what he wants. That’s the last thing he wants. “Just... ask for help, Red,” is that so hard? He almost says. As if he doesn’t know who he’s talking to. As if Frank had any right saying it. “Ask for what you need.”
Matthew’s chest shudders and Frank wonders at how hypocritical he is, saying this sh*t. Sister Maggie had said it herself, people always leave him, she said. He could use a friend. And Frank, the first time Matt had asked of him what he needed... He left.
He just left. Maybe that’s why Red doesn’t. He doesn’t expect it to be granted, so what’s the point?
Looking at him, his hands twisting into the sheets surrounding his frame, his eyes blinking rapidly and owlishly, teary and unable to hide it, Frank thinks the dam is finally about to break. For one moment he waits with bated breath, thinks Matt’s going to ask. Talk. Anything.
Just ask, Red, he thinks, just ask.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say a word.
Frank goes home feeling the texture of his skin in his palms, from where he held his shivery arm before leaving. The smell of his hair.
Matt had looked for a while like he wanted to say something, ask something. Looked like it was tearing him apart not to. Frank had seen it and maybe Matthew knew he did.
He wished he had just said it. Help me, he didn’t think he’d say. But, maybe something small, like, read me more, or maybe, if Frank’s feeling bold and hopeful, hold me.
And wasn’t that just it? He had said it, once. Almost something like it. Like help me, and hold me. And his eyes, his eyes had said it all, too.
Ask me, Red. He would’ve done it in a second. In a f***ing second.
Whose simple presence can cause outrage they use their tongues as swords and slay me with slurs Whilst there are others who pretend to be my ally but I can see their disgust in their eyes their uneasiness in their smile
I am a person of colour
Whose beautiful traditional garments are cherry-picked and woven into a disgusting replica brandished on “Designer labels” and mocked as exotic
I am a person of colour
Whose skin is secretly envied by them they exhaust their expenses on tanning salons and “bronzing” creams Yet simultaneously they spit on my “darkness” and promote their products with the so-called beauty of “lightness”
I am a person of colour**
I shall not hide my anger at their ignorance I shall wear my skin with pride Because being a person of colour No matter what I do or how I conform They will never be satisfied
Fisk gets put away again, and it feels like that should be the end of it, but it’s not. Of course it’s not. The FBI needs a win. Who better to take that out on than the lawyers who exposed their corruption.
I am not Daredevil, Matt says so many times in so many spaces that he almost believes it.
His ability to maintain a concept of self was difficult enough before this: this new judgment day, this thing that has fractured him beyond what he thought was possible. He feels like he’s been dropped into the ocean, all his limbs weighted with stones, unable to find which way is up and which way is down, which way is surface and which way is gone.
Later, he'll try to think about it objectively, distance himself from this new kind of violence that inhabits his body. He'll grapple with the defined edges of his constantly shifting memory, carefully delineate the before from the after, turn his conclusion over and over in his mind. As it turns out, he observes, living feels a lot like drowning.
[An exploration of trauma and memory, of what it might look like if Matt's identity as Daredevil was exposed. Prison fic. Post-S3.]
Notes:
“There are things unbearable.” —Anne Carson, Decreation
I.
The moment Wilson Fisk steps up to the podium, flanked by his team, somehow more imposing than ever, heartbeats stutter and crescendo across the city: a frenetic, dissonant exposition—and Matt thinks he understands a little bit more now why crowds nearly rioted at the premiere of a ballet once, overwhelmed by its relentless unpredictability, by its apostasy.
The pagans onstage made pagans of the audience.
The memory of Fisk’s voice doesn’t even hold a candle to the reality of it. Makes his hands curl into fists, takes him right back. If his memory had been a candle, then the reality is a forest fire: violent, irredeemable.
“…to frame me. Daredevil. The killer who’s now showing—his true colors. Who’s tried to murder people in newspaper offices—and churches. Attacking our sacred institutions. Believe—me. Daredevil is our true—public—enemy.”
It feels like Matt is caught in the crossfire of feedback from every television set in the borough, the fractional delay of sound just offset enough to make it seem as though Fisk’s voice carries beyond the restraints of sound and time, as though his power is truly limitless. The gasps that follow the speech, the uptick in heart rates, the sharp smell of sweat glands and fear arousal overwhelm his senses as he parses through the confused and conflicted responses across the streets: truth, truth, truth, it can’t be true, can it be true—
A stuttering swan song of disbelief; it doesn’t matter, he thinks, it really doesn’t matter what he does, how much he does, who he tries to be—a few seeds of doubt, a handful of words, and the people he calls his own turn on him, just like that.
A half-measure; a man who can’t finish the job. One bad day away from becoming the villain of his own story. One bad day away from becoming—
Nausea battles with helpless rage inside of him as he is stricken with the realization that maybe Castle was right: the system is broken, his work as Matt Murdock is a practice in futility, almost as pointless as his work as Daredevil—not enough, never enough. He imagines for a moment what it would look like to team up with Castle, to end this—once and for all, for better or worse, ‘til death do us part; an unholy marriage of the Devil and the Punisher. How disappointing that his old teacher couldn't be here to witness the ruthlessness he’d despaired of ever finding in Matt.
Maybe there's hope for you yet—
Matt clenches his jaw against the wave of grief that follows, and pushes himself up to his feet. Foggy and Karen are waiting.
—
It takes him less time than he hopes it’ll take to arrive, barely exhilarated from the sensation of vaulting from rooftop to rooftop, the wide chasm of empty spaces below him, the promise of adrenaline that comes with every moment that he taunts death, and fear, and his own limitations.
“So, I guess you needed my help, after all,” Foggy says smugly, with, to his credit, just a trace of the bitterness that usually accompanies his words. Since that day. Judgment day. When the secrets came bleeding out from Matt’s wounds. So, Matt swallows his pride as Karen steps onto the rooftop after Foggy.
“Yeah,” Matt says. “Yeah, I did, Foggy. You’re right.”
He doesn’t add that Karen nearly died because she got involved, because Foggy gave her the idea to confront Fisk, because he did exactly what Matt asked him not to do. He doesn’t say anything because he finally understands—there is no protecting each other, and good intentions only pave the way to hurt and hell, anyway.
Fisk's speech lingers in his mind, a thick gossamer caught at the barbed edges of his thoughts, as present as the hallucination of Fisk that’s been haunting Matt's footsteps since waking up back at St. Agnes weeks ago.
The worst part, thinks Matt, was not even the speech, itself, no; not Fisk's voice, nor even his accusations; it was the heckling of the protestors fading into rapt silence, the collective gasps which greeted the accusations against Daredevil, the rapid click of camera shutters stuttering one by one into stillness: the cold realization that, after everything, after everything Fisk had done—the city believed him.
Fisk, it was Fisk, it was all Fisk—
Helpless rage rises up in Matt's chest and his hands flex at his side, curl into trembling, white-knuckled fists. Ten steps behind, always ten steps behind and nothing he did ever—
“Do you have any idea how much life has sucked for Karen and me,” Foggy interrupts his thoughts, “while you were, just, off doing your own thing?”
All Matt’s ever tried to do is the right thing, and all Matt’s ever seemed to do is get it wrong.
“No, but—I’m sorry, Foggy,” Matt says, grimacing at the profound inadequacy of words to bridge this rift in their friendship, to fill this cavernous space of all the things he's never been able to say. "Maybe I was, was wrong to push you away."
“Ok, it’s, insanely hard to fight with you if you keep agreeing with me,” says Foggy, and Matt's own heart skips a beat. He doesn't need enhanced senses to catch that Foggy's heart is almost in the quip, almost—
“Good,” returns Matt, “because I don’t want to fight with you.” He releases the breath that's been caught in his chest, and the rest of his apology comes out in a rush of words. “Look, the way I’ve treated you—the way I’ve treated you both—you deserve better.”
Foggy's breath hitches in surprise.
"Yes," he says, cautiously, and Matt can sense that Foggy has turned to look at Karen, sense that she is nodding in bewildered agreement. “We did. But... so did you."
For a moment, the words don’t register, the corner of Matt's mouth tilting up as though Foggy just made a joke that he didn't quite understand.
“I, Fog, what’re you,” Matt says, the words faltering as they tumble out clumsily on top of each other.
“Listen, Matt,” says Foggy, and his voice is doing that thing where it sounds somehow both resigned and determined. “I pushed you away, too, after everything that went down with—you know,” he stumbles, not wanting to say Elektra’s name. “But it wasn’t fair,” he says quickly, to stave off Matt’s inevitable apology. “It wasn’t fair to leave you alone like that after she showed up again. I just—Jesus, I still remember that night at Co—”
“Foggy,” interrupts Matt. Karen’s heartbeat is quickening in confusion, in concern, in interest. “We don’t, we don’t have to do this. Just, if you can let me try to do better, give me another chance—that’s all I need.”
"No, Matt," says Foggy. "I'm just—I'm trying to say that I know your relationship with Elektra is complicated, has always been complicated, and God knows you probably never learned anything about healthy relationships since your childhood was so supremely f***ed up—"
Matt releases a sharp breath of air in an unexpected huff of laughter.
“Look,” Foggy continues doggedly. “What I’m trying to say is that—I’m sorry, too. You were alone, and I know that you thought I’d—we’d—be safer that way, thanks to your own personal, a**hole Mr. Miyagi but—whoa, Matt, are you ok? What’d I say?”
He must look like he'd gotten punched in the gut at the mention of his old teacher. Matt certainly feels winded, and breathless, and incapable of explaining why. He licks his lips, as though forcing his tongue into motion will pave the way for the words to follow.
“Stick's, uh, he's... gone, Fog. She, Elektra—she killed him,” Matt says finally, quietly, as though saying it softly enough might keep it from being true; as though saying it out loud doesn't make him feel like he might fracture into innumerable, irreparable pieces. He's barely a person already, he thinks; there's no way he can survive another blow, another hit like that.
“Jesus, Matt,” says Foggy, and the sharp taste of salt hits Matt's tongue. He drags his focus back into the present; wisps of Karen's long hair are getting caught in the night wind, trailing across her tear-dampened cheeks while Foggy is... stoic, which is unlike him, his heartbeat ticking up anxiously in the silence that follows. The regret Matt feels is instantaneous; he should have known better than to task his friends with the unfair burden of grieving these complicated losses, these impossible figures who'd stolen Matt away from them before they'd ever had a chance.
“It’s, uh, it is what it is,” Matt says, his voice flat. “I thought I could help her. I thought I could—I don’t know, but,” he shakes his head and laughs, a sound that is entirely joyless. “I couldn’t.”
“Oh, Matt,” Karen says, sadly. Foggy takes a halting step toward Matt, stops himself in awkwardly aborted movement. A long moment of silence follows, before she ventures: "So, where do we go from here?"
“I don’t want to leave you,” Matt says slowly, reluctantly, “but I can’t—I can't ask you to be accomplices to what I have to do now.”
The words linger in the air between them like a challenge. Karen shifts her head away from Matt, displeasure in every closed gesture of her body. Foggy looks between them, settles on Karen: “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Um,” Karen hesitates briefly then plows quickly forward, as though that might soften the blow of the words. “Matt wants to kill Fisk.”
There is one vibrating moment of silence before Foggy's words come staccato, rapid-fire, punctuated with disbelief: “What the f***, Matt—you know, maybe that building falling on you really did mess with your head—"
“We put him in prison, Foggy—and look what happened,” Matt says, and Foggy hates that his best friend is somehow able to sound calm, and rational, and deeply unaffected while discussing his intention to cross this line that he'd sworn he could never cross, this line that could never be uncrossed. Foggy can still picture the crumpled expression on Matt's face when he'd asked if Matt had ever gone that far before—and Foggy doesn't understand how they got from there to here.
Foggy thinks he could fill books with what he doesn't understand about his best friend.
“It won't be the same this time,” Foggy returns. “This time, he’ll be thrown into some kind of supermax hole where he can’t compromise anybody. He’ll never see the light of day again!”
“Foggy, I know you’re not that naïve—”
“It’s called having faith in the system, something you used to have—”
“It’s called facing reality,” Matt snaps, but Foggy can hear the exhaustion in his voice, the disbelieving resignation, the stretch and break of him. "The reality that the system wasn't built to contain men like Fisk. Men who are too rich, and too powerful—men who take the law, who take the system and twist it into something that protects them—"
“No, Matt,” Foggy snaps back. “This isn’t you. There’s another way to do this—we just, if you can just, I don’t know, take a step back from the murderledge for one freaking second!”
“Matt, just, hear him out, maybe,” Karen interjects. Her voice is soft, pleading, raw.
“Fine.” Matt laughs, and the sound is short, and bitter. “Tell me how thelaw can possibly fix this, Foggy. I’m all ears. Please. Tell me your plan.”
"Ok, simple, step one," says Foggy slowly, deliberately. "We do this together—we devise a plan together. Step two: we, we execute said plan. Together."
“Wow,” Matt says, and laughs joylessly again. Not enough. Never enough. “That’s genius. You come up with that on your own?”
”Yeah, well, so I’m still working out the details,“ Foggy replies, but the uptick in his heartbeat belies his too-casual tone.
“Ok, ok, ok, what about this—we, we find ourselves another witness,” Karen suggests. “Someone that will flip on Fisk, but, unlike Jasper Evans, we keep them alive this time. Someone who knows the details of Fisk’s operation. Someone with nothing to lose.”
"No," says Matt, as the memory of what happened at the church returns to him in a rush of grief that nearly takes his breath again. "Someone with everything to lose."
“Nadeem,” breathes Karen. “He helped me get away.”
“Yeah,” says Matt. “His family’s in danger, he probably went back to move them. I need to go. Now. Foggy—do you think Brett would be willing to help Nadeem’s family?”
“Already on it,” Foggy mumbles, and Matt can hear his fingertips rapidly tapping the screen of his phone. Pulling the mask back over his head, Matt rolls his shoulders back and starts jogging across the rooftop, gaining momentum as he goes until he’s leaping over and across.
—
In some ways, it feels like Matt never stopped running.
Fisk gets put away again, and it feels like that should be the end of it, but it’s not. Of course it’s not. The FBI needs a win. Who better to take that out on than the lawyers who exposed their corruption.
Daredevil. Our true—public—enemy.
They’ve gathered enough evidence against Matt that there’s not much Foggy can do other than insist on protective custody, on the grounds that a blind attorney can't be placed in general population with the same violent offenders he put there.
I am not Daredevil, Matt says so many times in so many spaces that he almost believes it.
The days following his indictment are a blur of promises and threats bridged together by sleepless nights outlined with crushing absence where language used to be.
II.
It takes only one night in prison for Matt Murdock to realize that his luck has finally caught up with him; it takes thirty-two nights to fully understand what that means.
Thirty-two nights of imprisoned men yelling and banging and taunting and singing; thirty-two days of the stench and noise of convicted inmates mixed in with others, like Matt, who are just awaiting trial; thirty-two nights of listening to choked sobs and threats, favors and retributions. Thirty-two days and nights with little sleep, and less food.
Then it happens—the transfer from protective custody to general population.
Matt is almost relieved when it happens: it means freedom from the oppressive hum of surveillance cameras in protective custody always watching, always, so that he must act the part of helpless blind attorney every moment of every day and every night, or risk losing his case before it can ever get to trial, risk getting Foggy sentenced alongside Matt for aiding and abetting.
The prison guards have demonstrated petty cruelties in the past, but still—Matt doesn’t see it coming when they take him not to his new cell in general population but into an ambush. A closed room with no way out, the door locked behind him and too many heartbeats to immediately count.
It’s not that Matt ever considered himself an especially lucky person to begin with, not that he'd ever relied on luck when he could rely on himself, instead; but he's always been able to recognize when good things come into his life that have absolutely nothing to do with him—that have everything to do with chance, or else divine providence, or fate.
And if all the good luck allotted to him in life had been spent up on a singular event, Matt's ok with that—because getting assigned to Foggy Nelson as a roommate at Columbia felt like a second chance at everything good that had ever slipped through his grasp—a chance at happiness that didn’t need to be gripped tightly in his fists or hidden beneath a mask. Foggy, who saw Matt—really saw him; not just his disability or the cultivated personality he presented to the world, but who Matt was, who he tried to be. Foggy, who saw with his heart, like Matt—
He starts numbering the heartbeats, placing the bodies in the space, tasting the cortisol and adrenaline mingling with sweat in the air, his thoughts involuntarily drifting back to the last time he’d faced this many men, the cavernous space of the sky above as he and Elektra fought back to back on the rooftop where she would die in his arms. Different, he thinks, from the second time she would die: ripped from his arms below the earth as the sky collapsed down upon them.
Elektra.
It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Matt that he would all but free-fall into the kind of life Elektra could promise him, the life he'd been coldly, dispassionately shut out from in the quiet basement of an orphanage: his child's body colored with bruises he'd thought could mean love, his child's heart filled all the way up with shame—he’d been holding onto it for months, had pressed it carefully, tenderly, into the pages of his bible: a paper bracelet made from the wrapper of an ice cream cone—
So if Elektra wasn’t quite compatible with Matt’s desperate need to be good, to be so good, well, at least she knew every buried part of him: knew intimately his darkness, his grief, his unbearable rage.
Is she sick? Worse, Matty, she’s in love—
“You’re Battlin’ Jack’s boy,” says a voice from above the men, atop a set of steps leading up to a door, and there’s something about the voice that strikes a chord in Matt’s mind, that stops him in his tracks, that catches his breath in his throat.
Matt had observed the exit behind the man from the moment he’d stepped foot inside, one of three exits from the space. All closed, all locked, all useless. Guards posted outside every one, their pockets lined with blood money, their bodies full of threats. Plata o plomo. Silver or lead. Take our money, or take our violence.
Matt always chooses violence.
“What’s it to you?” he bites, fighting down the feeling that this is all more than it seems, more urgent, more dangerous than he can comprehend right now, with the evidence he has before him.
"You don't remember me?" the man asks, mildly. "I killed your father."
You don’t remember me? You killed my father. Well, I hate to break it to you, son, but I killed a lot of guys’ dads. Then let me help you…he hit hard, like this—
Matt's body turns to ice, turns to stone, turns to lead as everything comes together to form a memory:
Elektra, knife in hand, taunting Roscoe Sweeney, encouraging Matt to tell him who he was—he could taste salt in the air as he beat the other man until his face didn’t even feel like a face anymore, so bruised and bloodied beneath Matt’s knuckles. Good, he'd thought. His father's face hadn't felt like a face anymore either when Matt had found him in the alleyway all those years ago—but Elektra had disappeared after Matt refused to kill him, leaving only the lingering scent of her perfume—sandalwood, ylang ylang, mandarin leaf—as proof that she'd been there at all.
Shards of crystal like fractured stars in Matt's hearing on the kitchen floor. Matt, equally shattered, equally disposable, alone by the open door.
He'd stood there numbly until long after she left, until the lonely wail of sirens reached the limits of his hearing. Then he'd hitchhiked and stumbled his way back to the dorm at Columbia, every intention of waiting for Foggy to leave the building before returning to their room—until realizing his keys were gone, lost somehow during the messy events of the evening. Or, just as likely, Elektra had taken them before disappearing; petty retribution for not complying with her command to end it, for not meeting her own desperate need for Matt to be the mirror to her fragmented pieces—to reflect back something whole, something still worthy of love.
So Matt had knocked, humiliated, dried blood on his knuckles, on his clothes, mingled with the tears that had tracked their way down his face, and tried to ignore Foggy’s sharp intake of breath when he saw Matt, tried to ignore the frightened uptick in his pulse as the law student succumbed to his tendency to babble in distressing situations.
“Oh my god, Matt,” he had said, “you disappeared from the party last night, and I know you can take care of yourself, but I’m always afraid you’ve fallen into, like, an open manhole or, I don’t know—a sinkhole, because I guess that’s more likely to happen than quicksand, not that I really thought quicksand was an option when there’s wet concrete and—”
Matt had opened his mouth to say Foggy’s name, to reassure him, to somehow make this seem less bad than it was; instead, he'd heard himself gasp Elektra's name, barely a whisper of a sound, felt hot tears slipping out from the corners of his eyes again. The scent of Foggy’s fear had blossomed into anger, then; he had never liked Elektra, had never trusted her, had warned Matt about her so many times—and Matt had felt bitter shame rise up in his throat. But Foggy had knelt gently, quietly beside him as Matt wept wordlessly, his hands aching to feel just once what it would be like to touch someone and—not hurt, not be hurt.
And if Matt had internally railed at the unfairness of it all—he’d thought surely by now he would be ok, surely by now he would have picked up the pieces of his life and fashioned them into something whole, no longer caught in the riptide of shattered childhood dreams and loss—he didn't let it pass through his lips. Not the way he had once allowed it to pass through his lips as a child in the orphanage waking again and again from impressionistic nightmares to unfamiliar rooms, calling out for his dead father, for anyone at all. He'd learned, then, when no one came, that it was better not to ask at all, better not to burden others with his neediness, his sadness, his shame.
“Matthew?! Oh, you’re Battlin’ Jack’s boy, oh you amateur. Now I know your name, nothing to stop me from bloodying the street with your corpse, just like I did to your old man—”
Scuffle of countless feet across concrete pulls Matt's attention back to the men who circle slowly, densely around him.
"Sweeney," he all but spits, almost pleased for the opportunity to face him again. He can feel that helpless rage rising back up inside of his body again and his hands tighten into fists, aching for a fight after a month of playing domesticated house cat for the cameras in protective custody, for the prison guards whose daily cruelties and provocations were their bread and butter.
“Murdock,” the mobster responds, almost sweetly. “You put me away ten years ago, and I’ve just been dreaming about getting you back ever since. Then I read about your trial in the paper and realized that I could get you back without ever leaving these walls. Only this, this is so much better than even I imagined.”
“What do—what are you talking about,” Matt bites out through gritted teeth, mentally cataloguing everything in the room that could be used as a weapon against him, counting every heartbeat, every obstacle between him and a way out of this alive. A few inmates have switchblades tucked into their waistbands, others have clumsier weapons, and the rest carrying only their loathing for Daredevil, armed only with their bitter memories of humiliation and defeat, with the knowledge that they're locked away in here because of him.
“You see, I knew about you, sure, followed along as the media praised the poor blind orphan with a law degree just trying to do good for his community. Except it turns out that you’ve been doing it with your fists instead of your law degree—I wonder how your partner feels about that—how your old man would’ve felt about that—”
“Enough—” The word snarls out of him unbidden, his rage uncoiling inside of him until every fiber of him aches to hurt, to be hurt. “Don’t talk about them, don't you dare talk about them—”
"Did you know that your partner has personally fought every appeal that I've made in the last ten years?" asks Sweeney, his heartbeat rushing in satisfaction when Matt doesn't respond. "You didn't know, did you? Guess we're all entitled to our... little secrets—"
Sweeney's body is suddenly wracked with convulsive coughs; calluses line the inflamed membranes of his nasal passages, and Matt is hit with the realization that Sweeney had never recovered from the beating he'd given him that night, ten years ago. The thought that Sweeney must remember Battlin’ Jack Murdock every single time he takes a breath brings Matt a rush of grim satisfaction.
“You’re a survivor, Murdock, unlike your old man," Sweeney says, his voice rasping. "Unfortunately for you, so am I—and I’ve not forgotten what you did. You left me with too many reminders.”
"Then you should know now that you don’t want to make an enemy of me,” he bites, the Devil creeping into his voice.
Sweeney laughs, drawing a few huffs of laughter from the men around Matt and he is caught in the crossfire of feedback again, kneeling on a rooftop with Fisk's voice in his ears; he shakes his head desperately in an attempt to bring his senses back into focus. Feeling of solid concrete beneath his feet, uptick in the ring of heartbeats around him, low hum of the ventilation system somewhere distantly above.
“No,” Sweeney returns. “The mistake was making me an enemy, was making yourself an entire goddamn army of enemies and thinking you’d somehow never end up in here with them. Did you really think we’d never come back for you, pretty boy? For Daredevil?”
Daredevil—our true—public—enemy—
Sweeney scoffs. "You've only been here thirty-two f***ing days, Murdock, and, from what I hear, you're already losing it: talkin' to yourself in your cell, not eating, not sleeping—well, we've been here for years, so you can imagine that we are more tired, more hungry—for release, for retribution that's owed to us."
Matt’s only half-listening to Sweeney’s monologue, his senses trained on the men surrounding him. Mind, body, connection. He forcibly releases the tension in his shoulders, allows himself to relax into the stance of a boxer as he grounds up through his feet. He tilts his head, focusing on the men who are distracted by Sweeney's speech. Adrenaline is coursing through him now, his body practically vibrating with it.
“You think I’m afraid of you orthese men, Sweeney? You think I’m not hungry for a release after thirty two days and nights of listening to all the sh*t that goes on in this place?” Matt's mouth curves up in a feral smile. “Try me.”
Matt strikes the prisoner closest to him, the sole of his foot connecting with his throat; he goes down, and Matt uses the momentum from the kick to erupt into a flurry of motion as the other prisoners scramble to take their shot at the man who put them here. Slipping back on his feet, he narrowly avoids a shiv; taking advantage of the convict's imbalanced footing, Matt throws him face-first into the ascending concrete steps.
There's a sharp crack as the man's jaw dislocates on impact.
Matt steps over him to get to Sweeney but more men are already grasping at his arms, dragging him back by his prison uniform, by his hair, by anything they can get a hold of. He violently shakes off a couple of his attackers before something heavy is swinging through the air and he's forced to drop back down over the railing. He drops into a roll as he lands, swiping out a leg close to the ground to bring down the attacker closest to him, uses the momentum to spin back up to his feet. He strikes his heel down across the man's temple before Matt is grabbed again from behind, arms restrained this time. He kicks out furiously at one of the men in front of him, lands a hit on one of the men holding him and pulls away—
—but there are too many men and they've closed too tightly in on him.
He is being restrained again and this time the attacker hurls Matt against the wall, then down against the steps. He hits hard, his senses blurring in and out of focus as he swings out desperately. One man, two men, three go down, but more pile on top of Matt, their hands grabbing at his prison uniform, his arms held high behind him as he tries and fails to fend off the seemingly endless stream of attackers: a chaotic blur of overstimulation for his already exhausted and dazed senses.
Then the shiv is cutting through Matt’s prison uniform, leaving a jagged, burning wound across his chest, and he cannot help the agonized gasp that is torn from his throat as the serrated edge of the makeshift blade catches every bit of sinew beneath his skin, as men grasp at the torn fabric, cool air against his skin followed by violent touch—
Mind, body, connection. The mind controls the body—
Matt forces himself to exhale, tracks separate heartbeats out of the cacophony, and thrusts his head back savagely into the face of one of the men restraining him. His leg kicks out, and another man goes down as he wildly wrestles his way back up to his feet. His breath is coming out in gasps now; he swipes at the blood around his mouth with one hand, then lowers it to gauge the depth of the wound on his torso, the other arm still dangling at his side, numb all the way up to where his shoulder is braced against the wall.
He’ll survive the knife wound, he thinks, his body now trembling with exertion and the effort of fighting off the shock that threatens his hard-won control over his senses.
His head tilts as he gauges the heartbeats of the men still on their feet; he can sense the hesitation in their movements, their disbelief that he is somehow still on his own feet, and he knows he won't get another chance. Despite the exhaustion settling into his limbs like a weight, the long days and sleepless nights and weeks of slow starvation, he forces himself into motion, striking at any vulnerable place that might knock down these men enough for him to catch his breath, to figure something else out, to—
The world shifts beneath him as he is thrown against the side of the staircase. Matt grabs a fistful of hair as he goes down, drags the attacker down with him and staggers to his knees at the man's side before he can get back up; he hits him until he can feel bones fracturing beneath his fists.
“Careful, Murdock,” Sweeney warns, and his voice draws Matt’s focus back to the feeling that he’s still missing something, something bigger, something more urgent, something more pressing; only he can’t pinpoint what’s wrong over the sound of blood rushing in his ears, the sound of his own gasps, his heartbeat pounding against his ribcage, the cacophonous ring of heartbeats still around him, above him, his senses dazed, overstimulated, overwhelmed. What was he missing? What was he missing?
Tap, tap—tap, tap, tap—
He thinks back to his old teacher and narrows his focus, tuning out the heavy breathing of the other prisoners, the gasping, strangled sounds from men still on the ground—tap, tap, tap—there it is. A tapping sound. Sounds so familiar. Only Matt can’t place it. Another rooftop, he thinks, another lifetime. Karen and Foggy were there, he was typing out a text—
Phone. Camera. Low of hum of video in the corner of the ceiling, barely audible, barely distinct from the low hum of the ventilation system just beside it.
He stills immediately with the realization, and then something heavy is swinging toward his head again. The blow itself incapacitates him, his hands raising to his ears in a desperate attempt to stave off the high pitched ringing that follows. The pain that follows blurs his senses entirely out of focus for a moment that feels eternal. He gasps as the world swims around him, sounds coming in and out of muffled focus as he is dragged up onto his knees, his arms held behind him in a final defeat, a blade pressed against his throat.
“You showed your hand, Murdock, just like your old man,” Sweeney says as he finally descends from where he'd been waiting at the top of the concrete stairs, phone held loosely in his hand. He laughs. “Except I let Jack off too easy for what he did, I think. Should’ve waited ‘til he was home, made you watch—sorry, listen, as the bullet went through his skull, let you think you could save him, let you try to staunch the blood—”
“F*** you—” Matt half-slurs, half-gasps, fighting down the too-visceral memories of himself as a child with hands so small, too small—I think that’s my dad, I think that’s my dad—to be feeling for the familiar landscape of his father’s face and finding a bullet hole instead.
Matt swallows around the sob in his throat, chokes out: “You think getting sent to prison was the worst thing that could’ve happened to you, Sweeney? After everything you’ve done—I should’ve, I should’ve—”
“What, killed him?” says a low, familiar voice, and Matt feels like all the breath has been stolen from him in an instant, feels a horrible cold settle inside of him in its place. “Like you tried to kill me?”
“No,” he gasps, his stomach churning. No no no no no no no—
This isn’t real, he thinks, it can’t be; he’s hallucinating again, lost to himself. Poor timing, but that’s par for the course. It’s not enough for Matt to fight enemies made of flesh and blood, no; he must create phantoms to haunt his steps, resurrect ghosts long dead. Self-flagellation for the modern penitent. Better lost to himself than this: ten steps behind with a mouthful of blood and defeat.
The world around him is still swimming in and out of muffled focus, his tightly wound control over his senses unraveling under the strain of it all: metallic taste of blood, acrid sweat mingling with expensive cologne, adrenaline and arousal, too many heartbeats, too many sounds, too much, it was all too much and he's so tired, he doesn't think he's ever felt so tired before—
“What’re you—what does, no—” he tries to say, but his voice falters, catches in his throat as he fights to get the words out past his lips. Played like a fool. Always the fool. His teacher had been right about Matt; but his teacher is gone now, for all the good being right ever did him.
Did Fisk do this to you? Fisk, it was Fisk, it was all Fisk—
Matt struggles to slow the breaths that hover high up in his chest, fluttering violently like a wild bird trapped in a cage. He can't catch his breath. He can't catch his breath, and he can't tell what's real and what's—
Pull it together, he thinks viciously, but Fisk’s presence obliterates his focus, gets deep inside of him where he can't stop it, where he can't shut him out. He leans in close, so close that Matt can feel his too-warm breath in his ear, all but deafening in its proximity, in its intensity, in its intent—and, for some reason that Matt can’t immediately name, can’t immediately place, the feeling is so much more sickening than the blood rapidly seeping out onto his abdomen, than the blade still pressed into his throat.
“You’re still so naïve, Matthew,” says Fisk, quietly, for his ears alone, and Matt cannot help the shudder that wracks his already trembling frame. “There are things worse than death for men like you and men like me. Things unbearable that linger, and fester, and take on lives of their own.”
Fisk steps back, runs his fingers back and forth across the palm of his hand, a rapid brush up from the bottom followed by a slow return.
"You will only wish you had died, died rather than know what it means to have who you are stripped from you, to understand that you allowed it to happen, to know that you could have stopped it—at the expense, of course, of knowing you've all but placed a death sentence on your partner, of knowing you'll never see him again. The same choice you gave to me, Mr. Murdock. Fair's fair."
Matt’s been dealt sh*t hands before, always prided himself on his ability to take the hand he was dealt and shift the cards in his favor, on his ability to hit the mat and get back up again, fists swinging. Now laughter bubbles up inside of him. The ghost of his father had finally abandoned him, it seemed; only fitting that he should face his ruin alone. For it is we who haunt the dead, he remembers bitterly, and not the dead haunt us. He chokes back the hysterical urge to laugh, swallows down the bile that's risen again at the back of his throat as Fisk forcefully grips Matt’s jaw and tilts it up toward the surveillance camera hanging from the corner of the ceiling. Its low, dissonant drone cuts in and out of Matt's hearing like a scratched record, and he feels boneless, uncorporeal. If his body had turned to ice before, now it was dark, drowning water.
“They’re watching, Matthew,” Fisk says. “Don’t let the Devil out."
Don’t let the Devil out, he says, and Matt hears the promise in the spaces between the words, or your case will fail before it ever makes it to trial, and Foggy will get sentenced, and worse, for aiding and abetting Daredevil.
Daredevil—our true—public—enemy—
He feels like he’s been dropped into the ocean, all his limbs weighted with stones, unable to find which way is up and which way is down, which way is surface and which way is gone. Surface feels like a fairy-story told to children at night, like enchanted forests.
Light as the breadcrumbs which lead the way up, which lead the way out.
This isn’t real, he thinks desperately, like the child who hides under his covers at night from the monsters who live in the closet, who sleep under the bed. If I can’t see it, it can’t be real.
He can practically hear Stick’s response, derisive, cold: C’mon, kid. You, more than anyone, know better than that. Get up. Get up and fight back, your soft partner be damned. Just look at you, a trained warrior—and this is what you’ve become: weak, soft, useless. I was right to leave you when I did—
“Time’s up, Mr. Murdock,” Fisk says, dispassionately, and the ghost of his old teacher dissipates like smoke. Then, to Sweeney: “He’s yours. Let your men have him, but he stays alive—or you do not.”
A litany of no’s are uttered in quick succession, one after another, as if from someone else, though Matt feels his own lips moving, feels the vibrations in his throat, feels his tongue heavy and dry against the roof of his mouth as the knife is removed from his throat, as different hands roughly grasp his jaw this time, hold him still as the other men press in—
Then, nothing; only a few dull sounds in the back of his throat as he resigns himself to muteness, to what he cannot fight, to what he cannot change.
This is the moment Matt understands what it means for his luck to have finally caught up with him, the moment he understands that there is no such thing as paying his dues, that some cards can’t be shifted in his favor. He'd known the risks of Daredevil, had lived for the risks of Daredevil—thrived in the charged spaces between risk and consequence, walked the tightrope between good intention and self-destruction.
So, the consequences had arrived.
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for—
Judgment day.
The formation of a memory like the empty spaces between towering edifices, playing over and over—the smells, he thinks, the smells are what will stay with him the most—but no, because it repeats, and this time it’s the feeling of powerlessness, of observing distantly from somewhere outside of his body, the ringing in his ears rendering his assailants all but invisible to him, if not for their lingering, burning touches on his body, his skin—
But no, because the memory repeats and, this time, there’s just nothing there, and he thinks, if he could just remember, just remember what happened, how it happened, he could gather the fragments back together into something that makes sense—except that it repeats, and he remembers, and it still doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t—the blur of faceless touches, the ringing in his ears softening to a quiet drone as nothing happens, nothing, really, because if he can’t remember, then it didn’t, it couldn’t have—
—and then he’s on his hands and knees, trembling, vomiting until there’s nothing left but his own blood that he keeps swallowing and he’s dry heaving and shaking as they laugh, and he thinks, he thinks this might be dying because he doesn't understand how anybody could withstand this feeling without dying. His body doesn’t even feel like it belongs to him anymore, because it couldn’t possibly, he can’t think of a reason why—
No, he thinks, absently, what happened—it happened to someone else.
He doesn’t try to focus. There is no mind, body, connection, not anymore, not when his mind has violently rejected any connection to his body.
In this moment, there are no thoughts of Elektra, or Foggy, or even God; no illusions of a friend or hero coming to his rescue. In his experience, people showing up at the last minute to save the day is a trope strictly relegated to films and books and television shows. In real life, people rarely show up at the last minute to save the day.
In Matt’s experience, no one ever shows up at all.
Maybe later he’ll rewrite the story; give it a better ending, a better beginning, more realistic, more true—something that makes more sense. Mostly, he remembers that it started and he remembers that it ended; but it felt like it never would, and he feels like, somehow, it never will.
III.
The night passes slowly. He trades incoherent banter with phantoms and mumbles apologies to ghosts. His body trembles violently, and the touch of his own fingertips feels alien as he presses the blood back into his wounds. He can’t remember why. Memory can keep its secrets, he thinks, as a rat scurries across the floor of his new cell.
—
Morning brings a kind of clarity. Unwanted, but there nonetheless.
His phantoms (mostly) fade away at the relentless hammering of a bell. Father Lantom lingers. Something to do with Catholic school, he thinks.
“Is there a problem, inmate? Why aren’t you prepared for the count?”
There’s a heartbeat at the entrance to his cell; he probably should have noticed it before, but there are so many heartbeats, and so many voices, and the effort to focus his senses would only draw energy away from the effort to get to his feet without collapsing. The thought of being touched by anyone else right now is too much for Matt to bear.
“No,” Matt says as he shuffles carefully to stand in front of his bed. He holds his arms behind his back in compliance, gritting his teeth against the low moan that rises in his throat. “Sorry.”
“Next time you’re late for the count,” the guard says irritably, his hand resting on the baton at his side, “you’ll find out what disciplinary action means, Murdock.”
—
Attending meals is non-negotiable, evidently. Inmates in general population are not permitted to stay in their cells during mealtimes. In addition to learning that neat fact, Matt also learns that asking questions is considered ‘non-compliance’ and, therefore, also cause for disciplinary action.
Matt not-so-secretly thinks that the guard just wanted an excuse to use force, but that doesn’t change the fact that he ends up on his knees again, unable to defend himself without giving away his secret. I am not Daredevil, he thinks, swallowing down the burning desire to fight back. It settles in his stomach like hot coals, waiting to burst into flames inside of him.
The cafeteria is only a five-minute walk from Matt’s new cell, but the assault of catcalls and jeering on his ears, the sudden touches and hisses, makes it feel endless. Worse, there were so many men—he doesn't know which ones were in the room with him, which ones that—
Sweeney signals his approach with the pungent, cloying odor of cigar smoke and expensive alcohol; the combination causes nausea to rise up in the back of Matt's throat.
“You look real down this morning, Murdock,” he murmurs, standing close, too close. “So, listen, I’m gonna make this easy for you. This, last night, will just be a taste of what the next few years are gonna look like for you in here. Or, you can choose option B: tell your partner that I want out, and that I want him to get me the deal. Fisk can rot in hell for all I care. I’ll even delete that footage of you—”
Don’t let the Devil out—
“You have no idea what’s coming for you, Sweeney,” Matt spits, and turns to walk away from the cafeteria line. But the world spins disorientingly around him in vertigo not felt since he was a child: the rough fabric of his father’s shirt pressing desperately against Matt's eyes as the blue sky eroded away like film that had caught fire. I can’t see, I can’t see—
He grasps for something to hold onto, something to stabilize himself, but finds nothing, ears ringing, his senses overwhelmed. He stumbles backward into another inmate, and mocking laughter erupts from the line. Flashes of memory return to him: on his knees gasping for breath while they laugh—
All the helplessness inside of him transforms into rage in an instant, so suddenly that it takes his breath away—but before he can do anything there are hands grasping roughly at his arms, and he's hauled away.
—
Solitary.
Matt registers the small, enclosed space as the gate clicks loudly shut behind him, the footsteps of the two prison guards walking away, but he is on his hands and knees in the filth and grime of countless inmates before him and he can hardly find a shred of feeling left in him to care. His mind is a constant replaying of his latest disaster, his most recent self-destruction; a litany of no’s like a prayer, don’t let the Devil out—
His jaw clicks tight against the sudden onslaught of memories and he forcefully jerks his body back against the wall of the cell, sucks in a sharp breath of air through his nose and presses one trembling hand against the throbbing wound at his side. He can feel blood seeping out and through his new prison uniform. He can't remember what happened to the other uniform, ripped, stained, ruined; he supposes they must have thrown it away when they took it off of him. No evidence, no crime.
Time passes slowly.
He reviews all of Foggy’s cases in his mind, but the exercise is pointless, and he knows it. He’s never heard Foggy even mention Sweeney’s name, let alone mention attending any appeals. Beneath the hurt, Matt feels distantly pleased, vindicated, even, that he’s not the only one who ever kept secrets in their friendship. Still, the secret is out, and now Sweeney knows that hurting Matt hurts Foggy, knows that bending Matt will get Foggy to do whatever it takes to keep Matt from breaking. Fisk may have used the lowlife crime boss to get his revenge, but Sweeney used him right back.
It’s almost laughable. Almost.
“In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Matt says, bitterly, “I’m the idiot who can f*** things up for the people I love even from behind bars.”
His own voice sounds foreign to him and Matt hesitates to consider the ramifications of this feeling of decorporealization. A sudden echo of footsteps from the corridor catches his attention, then a heartbeat from the other side of the bars. A guard, judging by the sound of callused fingertips impatiently brushing against a baton.
“Losing it already, Murdock?” he jeers. “Get up, your attorney’s here.”
Matt doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t even shift to acknowledge the guard's presence; he’s found that if he holds himself absolutely still, he can slow the spinning and repress the nausea to tolerable levels, slightly stabilize his core temperature from its extreme ricocheting between hot and cold, burning and shivering. He'd given up trying to stop his body from its constant, violent trembling; it'd started at some point during the night, and hadn't taken a break from it since.
“Hey, you hear me? Thought you were blind, not deaf!” snaps the guard, and he slides a key into the lock. Matt hears a soft click as the latch unlocks, and the gate swings open. “Your lawyer’s here and he wants to see you. Get up.”
“I’m staying here,” Matt says flatly. “I don’t want to see him.”
“I don’t give a sh*t what you want, inmate—your a**hole attorney is threatening to file a lawsuit against this entire prison if he doesn’t get to see you, and I’m not gonna be the sorry son of a bitch who gets held responsible. So, get up, and get moving.”
Matt doesn’t bother to point out all the lawsuits they would have on their hands if word ever got out about even half of went on in here. Then again, the warden seems capable of making anything he wants to disappear. A veritable bureaucratic magician. The violence Matt had witnessed in here even before this, the things he heard for weeks on end—
He stands up slowly, one trembling hand still pressed against the wound at his side, his shoulder pressed gingerly against the wall for support. The guard unsnaps a leather pouch, then gestures wordlessly with a pair of handcuffs for Matt to put his hands out in front of him. Matt grits his teeth, pointedly doesn’t react. I am not Daredevil—
“Oh, f***’s sake,” the guard mutters. “Hold your hands out in front you, inmate.”
“Is that really necessary?” scoffs Matt. Still, he holds his arms out, bloodied palms splayed up. “I was indicted on suspicion of perjury and obstruction of justice, not for running a fight club.”
The irony of the defense isn’t lost on Matt.
“And yet, here you are in solitary for fighting with another inmate. Want to avoid cuffs, Murdock? Learn to keep your hands to yourself and your mouth shut. Your fancy degree don’t mean sh*t in here.”
The cold metal clicks shut around his aching wrists—
You're still so naïve, Matthew—
—and the guard walks him down the cellblock. Matt walks slowly, the only act of resistance left to him, feeling suddenly furious that Foggy keeps returning to the prison, keeps risking his safety; doesn’t he understand that Matt can’t keep him safe anymore? Can’t even keep himself safe.
He still feels drugged, like he’s only witnessing everything from somewhere deep inside his own body, not actually living it. Like if he tried to speak, he’d be able to say nothing at all.
The moment they enter, Foggy is all movement and barely restrained displeasure. He stands up, his fingertips pressing against the plexiglass that separates them, the clean scent of his cologne cutting through the lingering stench of the prison, and Matt, against himself, is grateful for it, for the sense of gentleness and stability that is carried with it.
Surrounding yourself with soft stuff isn't life, it's death—
“Get those cuffs off of him,” Foggy demands, redirecting Matt's attention away from phantoms lingering in the corners of the room. “This institution may be in the business of dehumanizing inmates, but he’s a non-violent offender awaiting trial, and I’m here to have a civilized conversation with a human being. Get them off, and then get out.”
The guard’s heartbeat speeds up in a rush of anger, but he complies. Matt suffers the touch of the guard once more as he removes the cuffs from around his wrists. Tries not to think about the next time the cuffs will go back on, back off, back on; the endless violations of bodily autonomy waiting for him that he can do nothing about.
“What the hell, Foggy,” Matt bites out the moment the guard has left the room. "You may get to leave at the end of this meeting, but I don’t. Maybe try not to make me enemy number one of every single guard in here.”
“What do you mean every single guard? Have other guards been mistreating you?” asks Foggy, and his tone indicates that he’s prepared to pick a fight with every single guard that has even so much as looked at Matt.
“Jesus, Foggy,” mutters Matt. “That’s the part you hear? I just meant that I don’t need you to antagonize the guards for me on my first day in general population, ok?”
“Not ok, Matt," snaps Foggy, but he releases a deep breath of his own and stops pacing long enough to sit down across the table from Matt. The breath hardly helped, Matt thinks, he can still hear Foggy’s heart racing like a cornered animal.
“Matt,” Foggy starts to say, then falters, sits down across from him and tries again. “Listen. I don’t know what strings got pulled to transfer you to general population, but I’m working on it. It wasn’t a legal transfer. I’m filing a transfer back to protective custody while Karen is investigating who’s behind this. In the meantime, I just—I need you to keep your head down, ok? There's—there's someone else in here, other than Fisk—someone who has it out for you... and for me."
“Foggy, it's fine,” Matt interrupts, not wanting to draw this out any longer than he has to. “I already know about Sweeney.”
“Sh*t,” Foggy curses. “Did something happen between you two? Did Sweeney—are you—is that why you’re in solitary? Wait, no, did something happen last night? Is that why he sent that message to me?”
For one long, disorienting moment, Matt thinks he’s going to be sick again. The nausea rises up in his throat, and he forces himself to swallow it down and keep it down. The nausea roils, threatens to rise again, his body burning cold with the effort to keep it in check. His very own Sisyphean punishment, he thinks. How appropriate. A fitting punishment for the arrogant hero who dared to challenge a god. What hubris, what naïveté.
“What did Sweeney send to you,” Matt bites out through gritted teeth, certain that if he opens his mouth any more he’ll lose the fight with his stomach. “Foggy, what did he send you?”
“Just, a text message," Foggy says, his pulse quickening as the clean scent of his sweat begins to sour with fear. "What else would he send me, Matt?”
The rigidity of Matt’s posture softens ever so slightly. He opens his mouth to talk, but finds that nothing comes out. He licks his lips, tries again: "I don't, it doesn't matter. I, just, what did he say?"
A few moments pass before Foggy answers, and he thinks that Foggy won’t let it go, whatever it is that’s bothering him about Matt’s response. Matt tilts his head back up from the table. Defiantly tries to meet Foggy’s eyes. Probably ends up looking somewhere over his left shoulder.
“Sweeney was just letting me know that he’s in here with you, Matt,” Foggy concedes, his shoulders collapsing with a resigned exhale. “Probably trying to make me sweat. But then I get here first thing this morning and they tell me that you’ve somehow already managed to land yourself in solitary. Seriously, Matt, what the hell happened? Did he provoke you into a fight?”
"Nothing happened," Matt replies bitterly, almost surprised at his own reaction, that he can still feel so hurt over something as trivial as this: that this must have been Matt's fault, that Matt allowed himself to be provoked into recklessness again.
“Jesus, Matt, do you seriously expect me to believe that? I mean, I know you can’t actuallysee what you look like, but I'm, I’m personally having major flashbacks to that time I found you dying on your apartment floor,” Foggy snaps back, leaning toward the plexiglass as he finishes his rant in a furious whisper. “So, can you, just, for once in your freaking life be straight with me? Because I really don’t want to drag Jessica or Karen into this, really, really don’t want to interrogate every single guard in here, but if you won’t tell me what’s going on—"
Foggy’s breath is high in chest, and his pulse is elevated with emotion, but his heartbeat is steady, no hint of a bluff. Panic rises up in Matt at the thought of—no. Foggy can’t. He can’t—
“This is weird.” Frank grunts. Waits for Red to say what he’s got to say. “I know this is all mine, I know it is but I don’t- I don’t feel it. I don’t remember it, I don’t...” He huffs in frustration, holds the box closer to his chest.
Notes:
Poems and excerpts taken from (in order of appearance): Memorabilia, Deborah Tall Late summer after a panic attack, Ada Limón Free fall, William Golding from Salt, David Harsent From Please bury me in this, Allison Bennis White
objects that stir recollection, valued or collected for their association with a particular field, interest or memory.
Let absence be
Altogether, but briefly, devastating.
DEVIL
What if I want to go devil instead? Bow
down to the madness that makes me.
“Morning.”
Frank’s voice brings the images alive. Fire licks at wooden walls, grime-stained windows, bolted doors and two cots, lying on opposites sides of a cramped room. Oatmeal rips through a picture of scents, a dragging sweetness that feels dense when he inhales. Packed. It doesn’t push the other smells away as much as it dominates them, mixes unpleasantly.
Sitting up require less effort than before. The smell of food isn’t as nauseating and neither is the pain - controlled for the time being.
Still, muscles shake, quake as if tearing away from his skeleton, trying to find other refuge than his skin. His head hangs off his neck like a heavy weight, putting pressure in his vertebrae and collarbones.
“Morning,” he manages back.
Frank sits down but doesn’t reach to give him the bowl of oatmeal, neither does he say anything else. The routine is expected and if somewhat of a comfort. He sighs softly. “I’m Matt. You’re Frank. We’re in your cabin. It’s, uh, Sunday? November.”
Frank’s calloused, thick palms find his, steadies his right hand before handing him the hot oatmeal. “Didn’t call me Fred this time, at least.” He grumbles under his breath and Matt isn’t surprised at the taste of coffee that comes from his lips and tongue, released into the air. Settles back against the headboard and cradles the warm bowl close, the cold morning dew dripping by the window a sonorous facsimile of a heartbeat. Slow and almost in tandem with Frank’s.
“Maybe I thought you looked like a Fred.” Frank shakes his head with a huff, mumbles a right under his breath before-
“Eat.”
Matt does. The ringing in his ear an untraceable vibration that fixates over his right eardrum, poking it with needles. It was usually worse at night.
“Are you going to tell me anything today?”
If Matthew is like a sponge - absorbing everything and anything around him at all times until he’s spilling over, Frank is rock and concrete. Impenetrable, undisturbed, insusceptible. He gives nothing away - as if he kept the world at bay. Completely unapproachable at times.
Embers and fire burn the world bright but Frank Castle was a blotch of ink dripping in the middle of his senses. A stain that stuck. The first heartbeat he looked for when he woke up.
The only heartbeat he remembered properly.
Castle shrugs, like he had all the days before. “Have nothing to say.”
Lie.
It’s barely there, not exactly a skip. His pulse speeds for not much more than a second and then settles back down.
Red - Matt, Matt, his name is Matt - takes another sip of his oatmeal, slowly processing the taste of the food, the lingering taste of the pan it was prepared in, the old spoon that mixed it. He had time, the last few days, to get himself together, if only just. Stick’s teachings, in return, are a whispered chant in his head whenever he interacts with the strange man.
So far, Frank looks like an ally. That could change and Matt tries to create contingencies - where will he run? Where exactly are the traps he heard the night before? How will he survive if he doesn’t know...
Well, most of everything about his own life.
“And about yourself?” He asks instead, sighing into another spoonful of oatmeal. “You’re military, right? Maybe former.” Tilts his head sharply to the side, listens to the unshakable, relentless heartbeat painting the room red and black. “You have an arrow scar in your shoulder. Are you with the Chaste?”
“Marines. The hell is Chaste?”
Matt’s lips press together. He thought he had mentioned them before. He had, hadn’t he? Either Frank is an ally or he’s not and if he’s not... Well, there’s a good chance he’d already know what Chaste is. It’s the only answer Matt can find that makes sense - that that’s how he got hurt, working with Stick and the others.
But the marine’s heartbeat doesn’t skip nor does it speeds up in that characteristic way.
Frank scoffs. Probably at his silence. “Yeah.”
But he needs to be sure. “Are you with the Hand?”
“I’m what?” Ignores his voice to listen hard to the beating, living thing hiding beneath marred scars and skin tissue. Breastbone and ribs. Matt breathes a bit more easily, if only for a little.
Because if Frank isn’t either of them, then how did he find him? How did he know him? How did he know, if partially, about Matt’s senses and skills? None of it made any sense.
Frustration rises and swells like a furious ocean, tidal waves rising and rising in height until they reach the skyline. “How do you know me?”
“Tell you what, Red,” he drops his empty bowl in the fold-out table. The loud rattle of spoon against porcelain makes him flinch. “You’re a pain in the ass of the highest degree.”
He tilts his head, listens closely. “But still, I’m here,” Matt begins, carefully. “Do you want something from me?”
Frank shrugs, a heavy exhale getting lost in the distance between them, and so do all of its meanings. “Want you to shut up and eat.”
Not working. Not again. “Do I have no one else to get back to?” The bigger man’s heartbeat throbs scarcely faster before it’s forced back down to a resting rhythm.
Frank watches him. “Not for now,” and it’s not a lie. Not one Matt can detect anyway, and if there’s one thing he learned about Frank since he woke up in the cabin with his head in bandages, is that he keeps to his promises. The good and the bad.
So Matt settles, for there isn’t much else he can do and the energy is already beginning to seep right out of him. He finishes the small bowl of food and takes his medicine. Tries to unlock all the tense muscles bunching under his skin and allows Stick’s voice to chant through his head: mind controls the body, body controls our enemies.
Trustworthy or not, Frank is clearly not willing to let him go.
If Stick’s alive, certainly he’ll find Matt. Trees may offer cover in a sighted perspective, but doesn’t mean anything for blind people like them. And even if Frank doesn’t know, Matt is likely working for Stick and the Chaste. They had to fight the war, after all. And why else would he get in trouble?
Come on, Matty, get to work. Dad tells him. Get to work.
He has to get back to his feet. He will. But for now, his head throbs painfully like his brain is threatening to burst out of his skull and the oatmeal plays loops around his stomach. Frank gives him a bucket when he throws up.
The first time Matthew notices something is wrong is when he’s sitting in the bathroom, taking a sponge bath. Frank helps him with the basics before leaving him to the little privacy he had, sitting beside the half-closed door. He’s glad for the shower curtains.
Even a few paces away, Frank’s heartbeat illuminated the whole cramped room with bright spots of sound, the vibrations traveling like tendrils underneath the floorboards and deep into the earth underneath. Echoed strangely against the tiles, but loud enough that finding the offered hygiene products wasn’t a hardship, even with his building migraine.
It starts as a feeling - a certainty that he’s not alone that he quickly abandons. Frank is on the other side of the door and his senses are haywire, sensitive to every input his fatigued brain can’t process properly beyond threat and safe. He leans back, careful of the plastic wrapping around his left thigh and remembering Frank’s orders not to get his hair wet.
It quickly morphs to unease.
It begins like a concept and then evolves. Swells and thickens into something closer to dread - into his heart going faster, his breathing pattern changing, choppy inhales and shallow exhales.
He isn’t sure what it is at first, the puzzle pieces are scrambled and he’s too exhausted to put them together properly. There’s a presence that doesn’t make sense, not corporeal enough that he can get a read on it with his senses. But he knows it’s there. Even if the sound waves from their heartbeats and breathing betrayed nothing.
“Do you reckon Stick would be disappointed?” He startled badly enough that the soap slips from his hand and slides across the floor towards the drain. Aghast and more than a little alarmed, he abandons the crawling sensation across his skin as the soap suds slid across the expanse of his body to try and make sense of the sound.
It felt like a thought. A thought that came too loud, enough that it felt like it was outside of his body, perched right by his right ear.
His hand closes on the side of the empty tub, nails digging and slipping at the humid, cold porcelain. “Who-” but there’s no heartbeat, no sound beyond the voice.
Until there is.
Its heartbeat mimics his own. Sounds exactly the same in its cadence, but the thing, whatever it is, doesn’t carry a smell or heat like all living things do. It’s almost apart from the world on fire, a tear on the fabric of reality he put together with his senses. Something that looked like a man, except for the thick skin and the small horns protruding from its smooth head.
“You’re trusting him, Castle will kill you the moment he has the chance, it’s what he does.” The thing shrugs, a smile cutting through its alien face.
“You’re not here,” he whispers, as if the simple statement would rip the thing apart, destroy it, send it away.
“You keep your enemies close to watch them, take advantage of them. Not so they can captivate you. ”
“I’m hallucinating,” he whispers again, nails now digging into his knees. And when did he move his hands? When did he do that? There’s a flicker of time between one second and the other that is missing. Like all the days previous to waking up in Frank’s bed and crawling to this place. “You’re not real.”
“Huh, real enough to know you’re easy prey.” The demon-like hallucination smiles big at him. “What are you going to do about that?”
The devil, he thinks. This is the devil.
“Did you miss me already, Matt?”
Red takes his sweet time in the tub. He should’ve been done with it long ago and Frank - well, he should’ve done it himself. He doesn’t doubt for a second Red could be already plotting some half-assed escape plan and stalling for time in the bathroom.
He knocks out of courtesy more than to give him privacy - had seen enough of Red in all states of undress the first three days he had been there. “Red?” No response.
Frank doesn’t wait any more than that. In his head, he runs through the list once again: bleeding from nose, ears or eyes - brain hemorrhage. Paralysis, seizure - swelling. Fever, delirium, pus - infection. Runs over it again so it doesn’t fade from his memory - not as pristine as he’d like it to be, although he never got to Red’s situation either. Names and meanings escape him sometimes, is all.
Red looks physically well when Frank walks through the door, combat boots squeaking against the tiles. He squints at him, at his nose, eyes, ear (clean), his bandages (dry), his plastic wrapped wounds (pink and healthy). He checks the place out of habit, looking for incongruities hiding between fresh, sterilized towels and semi-transparent shower curtains.
“Red,” he calls out again but the kid doesn’t answer, and Frank can’t say he’s exactly surprised. Had happened a few times already, the little shutdowns. Which is why he’s surprised when Red speaks.
“Is there-” the redhead swallows, fingernails digging into his knees, his left leg stretched across the empty tub to accommodate the pain of the gunshot wound. “Is there anyone else here?”
“Jus’ us, Red,” and he did a perimeter check minutes ago. His eyebrows furrow down to meet his eyes and Red twitches, wonders if he senses the movement somehow. “Yeah. Yer senses going a bit haywire?”
Matt startles out of a sudden, one hand closing a tight fist around his knee and the other, the right one, spasming as it tried to do the same. “Can you take me outside, please?” Voice comes as the afterthought of a whisper, barely there at all. But it echoes around the cramped space and makes its path towards Frank’s eardrums.
He sighs sharply but doesn’t mention anything else. Mechanically helps Red out of the bathtub and into the towels. Grabbing the folded clothes Frank had separated for him to use, slightly too big in places.
Doesn’t need the a**hole’s fancy senses to know something’s up but he won’t ask for now and he’s quite sure Red won’t volunteer the information either - wiped out brain or not.
The thought sits heavy in his stomach, a weight that he feels physically when he moves to the kitchen. If the memory loss is caused by brain damage, Curt says, the likelihood of Red ever regaining them is extremely small, specially considering the type of first care he received. There are other options to what was messing up his head, but for now, there was simply no way to tell.
“You remember anything else?” He asks from there, fetching the wheeling chair he had stolen from the Costas medical facility the week before. The Lieutenant doesn’t give Matthew time to deliberate, helping him up and into the chair, careful of his injured head, belly and leg.
He isn’t surprised when- “I don’t need that.”
“I didn’t ask. Sit down.”
“I’m perfectly capable of-”
“But you won’t.”
He cuts off quickly, adjusting the arm support and adjusting the wheel lock before wheeling Murdock towards the front door. “Not yet, at least.” Murdock twitches, impatience making lines like riverbanks form around his youthful face, but chooses wisely not to start a discussion. He’s been picking his fights, since he realized Frank was just as stubborn as him.
He repeats his question and watches Red’s sigh raise a condensation fog in the air, following its swirls through the cold morning air. “Just bits and pieces,” Murdock eventually answers, licking his lips. “It comes and goes.”
Frank grunts in response and doesn’t press the matter; but he does help the redhead sit in the steps like a few nights before.
To fight. For the war.
Sh*t. Of all the f***ed up things.
He shakes his head to himself, not enough of a movement that drags attention from Red, who seems content in tilting his head back towards the cloudy sky above the high trees. Won’t think about all he’s learned because they’re not part of the mission, not now. He’ll get the kid better, get him back to his life. Maybe go to the orphanage, ask some questions, start digging.
But until then, he sits in the cabin steps with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen by his side, hugging his knees against the coming cold.
“Stick taught me knives. Father Lantom and the... the nun called the cops. I got into middle school. Had a crush on Ian from History class. Dad hates Mrs. Hernandez Bakery’s apple pie.” The messy retelling doesn’t phase him but brings a flashback of their own - his head had processed information similarly, back then, the scar of the bullet just barely closed.
His brain had latched to their laughter but he couldn’t remember if the plates made it to the sink. He remembers Lisa’s little voice begging him to read her her favorite book, please Daddy, please, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember the clothes Frankie wore that day. Maria’s voice played in a loop of hey, sleepyhead but he can’t remember how she sounded when she said his name with that fondly exasperated look.
Tomorrow, baby. I’ll read it to you tomorrow, I promise.
“My wife, she, uh,” swallows the clotted knot of uncertainty in his throat and blinks against the moisture collecting around his eyelids. “She used to try some fancy dessert recipes, from time to time.” He laughs suddenly and brightly, remembering her pout when her chocolate muffins ended up burned for the third time that month and her strawberry cheesecake went wrong and liquid.
Red looks surprised at him and the anonymity is somehow... comforting. He doesn’t remember the chaos Frank unleashed in the city, doesn’t remember the headlines and the trial and much less how Frank bounced a bullet off his helmet years ago. They would’ve never sat like this, talked like this if Red hadn’t been brained in that warehouse a little over a week before.
“She was a good cook, but her desserts were bad, man. She was real terrible at it.” Red chuckles softly and deja-vu creeps over his skin like a thousand ants. It’s almost a do-over of that night in the graveyard. “The kids tried to be nice, y’know? They’d put on this face, all wide-eyed like it was the most delicious thing they’d ever eaten. Lisa, my baby girl, she was good, Red. Sometimes she fooled even me. But Frankie, my son, he, he was horrible at it, you could see it all over his face. He used to say that he wanted to be a chef when he grew up,” Murdock’s eyebrows go up and Frank scoffs. “I know, right. He’d say he wanted to be like the TV shows.”
Lisa was a good sister. She’d taste every crazy concoction Frankie came up with - even mango pancakes, once, which made her sick, and she wouldn’t let Frank or Maria tell Junior about it.
She’d always make some ridiculously funny accents when she was playing the food taster, wearing those little bracelets she used to make with her best friend (what was her name? Natalie?).
Frank tries to chuckle at the memory but it comes out a rasp of breath, his lungs tearing right off of him. She had been wearing one of those. One of the bracelets written LISA in bold orange letters. It was her favorite color since she was about the height of Frank’s knee. Remembers seeing it stained deep red when he cradled her in his lap.
Red’s voice brings him back to the porch, away from the park and Lisa. “What happened?”
Scary, how intuitive the kid was. Maybe it had something to do with his senses, but Frank isn’t that sure. He hadn’t thought much of him at first, back then. Thought he was impulsive, combustive and too naive. And then he met him again, wearing crisp but cheap suits and red shades and saw that spark of smart he tried to hide. Frank doesn’t doubt that, should he have been more present in that trial, he’d probably have managed to get the not guilty verdict, somehow.
Frank’s silence must be answer enough for Red soon turns his face away in respect. Maybe he sense it somehow; the thick knot tightening on Frank’s throat, the stinging at the corner of his eyes and a moisture he wasn’t that sure he could blame on the wind.
“I wanted to be a lawyer,” Murdock offers, his head twitches to the side subtly before coming back to the conversation. Frank catches himself wondering just how far those ears of his went. “when I was a kid.” He finishes softly, extending his injured leg with a certain amount of effort before all air left his lungs in a rush.
Ain’t sure if it’s Frank Jr’s ghost hanging over them, close enough that Frank swears he could smell that God awful shampoo he liked only because it came with Captain America’s face plastered on it but actually had a terrible scent. Maybe it’s ‘cause Red is sitting there with barely any memories left in that f***ed up head of his and remembering being a kid dreaming about being a lawyer, not knowing he made it. Against a whole sh*t ton of odds.
“You are.” he blurts out. Red turns to him, his whole body still, eyes wide.
“What?”
“You’re a lawyer,” Frank shrugs at the sudden rush of breath that leaves Red, the confusion turning into awe. Frank resists the urge to look away from the precious turn of his lips. “Good one too, when you wanna be.”
A breathy chuckle graces his ears and Frank finally turns away, a small smile in his face mirroring Red’s lips.
He waits for questions he’s sure Red made to himself a thousand times the last few days: why is he not a hospital, where are his friends, why didn’t they come looking, why, why, why.
But Murdock doesn’t. Just holds his own knees closer with that dreamy little smile upturning his lips, pulling at a long scabbed over cut by his chin.
Frank helps him inside when the exhaustion kicks in, once again, and leads him to the cot.
Where did you go?
An angry voice close to his face.
I can’t do this alone. I can’t take another step.
Soft, long hands and arms circling his shoulders.
Was it all a lie?
Salt and moisture in the air (tears), the scent of his own blood.
You’re just one bad day away-
Chains pressing him down, hands on his chin.
Where did you go, Matt?
He wakes up with the whisper a burn bright-hot spot of pain in his chest - not one from any voice that he can remember, but familiar all the same. Familiar enough that something clogs his throat, chokes up his airways. Every attempt at an inhale stops just short of completely cutting off his oxygen, the burn in his chest spreads.
Matt blinks away the tears in his eyes - where did it come from? Tries to orient himself in the space he’s in - where? He didn’t know these sheets, didn’t recognize these walls, these-
The smell. He recognizes it. Antiseptic, coffee, gunpowder. The fabric doesn’t feel as odd, once he runs his hands through it. It’s another one, but not unfamiliar. Frank changed the sheets again.
His heart pounds faster against his chest. Panic brews like a tight boiling-hot coil in his chest - he suddenly feels unsafe inside the room, the cabin walls the body of trees and earth surrounding them from all sides. There’s something he has to do, somewhere he needs to be and Matt can’t for the life of him figure out what or where.
A shuddery breath leaves through his parted, parched lips. Feels the skin of his forearms cool off where it spills - sharp like a whirlwind for his oversensitive sense of touch.
“Where did you go, indeed?” The Intruder, as Matt had taken to calling him, asked softly. His presence is accompanied by a excruciating ache that manifests itself like a weight more than the agony it really is when it spreads at the edges of his fracture, following the lines connected by wire. He doesn’t need to concentrate to hear bone grind against metal. “You’re not in Hell’s Kitchen, but that’s about as far as you know.”
He doesn’t answer. If he ignores him, maybe...
“Oh, well now, that’s just desperate.” His teeth grind together. The pull of muscle and jaw sharpens the pain, tendrils of it reaching out to take over the whole right side of his head.
Matt wonders if this is what losing your mind feels like. A steady, perfectly natural-feel of circling down the drain. Almost like it’s supposed to happen, almost like he deserved it, maybe.
“I suppose you do, but I might be biased.” The Intruder’s voice is oddly detached from where Matt senses its surreal body, the weird texture of its skin, almost like leather. The protruding horns in his skull. As for him, his own skull felt the same - broken bone oddly loose when he follows the line of sutures coming from his temple to an inch past the top of his ear.
The creature shifts, his body something like red smoke. “Who am I, again?”
The devil. He’s ought to be. Grandmother did always say Murdock boys had the devil in them. How ironic that this is how Matt remembers this - with a hallucination probing at the soft, damaged parts of his brain.
The thing laughs, the sound doesn’t rebound, doesn’t act like echolocation like a real one usually would for his hearing. At the proof of it, of the unreality, and trapped in the room with it, Matt attempts burrowing further into his sheets, nose dipping into the fabric and looking for something real - coffee, gunpowder, antiseptic, soap, skin musk.
“Are you trying to hide from me? Do you reckon it’ll help?”
No. It can’t hurt to try.
The Intruder shifts, a smoke trail left behind. The impression of lips close to his ear. “I’m in your head.”
“Then get out of it.”
Matt misses hours before, when it was only a dripping sound and an uncommon stench. One he became aware of when Frank said he wasn’t smelling anything. He thought perhaps it came from the forest, but further search led to nowhere. The smell didn’t come from anywhere physical, neither did the sound. It echoed just at the shell of his right ear.
Frank’s heartbeat had betrayed slight unease and, for his sake, Matt mentioned something about being tired and had retired to his cot.
“That wouldn’t be any fun.”
“Shut up.”
The dripping sound comes back, just around the shell of his ear. Works like an echo of the Intruder’s words. His skin the texture of leather and spandex and something inhuman, almost alive.
He sits up suddenly, muscles pulling abruptly under his skin, tightening worryingly at his shoulders where they bunch up to cover his ears. He cowers to a corner, knees to his chest. Attempts to find Frank’s pulse nearby, eyes shut tight together as to ignore the very real breathing that he can feel against his cheek, a predator’s maws ready to attack.
No matter how much he tries to work through the sounds, he’s hindered in his efforts. His own heartbeat too loud to properly allow him the focus, hammering and vibrating his eardrums. Only realizes he’s digging his fingernails into his knees when something wet and warm touches the palm of his hand.
“What was that song? The one Dad liked?” Go away, he wants to say. Needs to say it, why can’t he say it? His ability to speak was locked up somewhere deep and Matt couldn’t reach it. Couldn’t find it, no matter how much he tried or how much the muscles of his neck worked against the knot tying his throat up. “ When I was fast asleep she threw her arms around my neck.”
He clutches at his ears, presses his back against the corner of the bed, eyes shut together. But it doesn’t muffle the Intruder’s voice, neither does it stop him from singing.
Strength leaves him. Matthew lets his arms fall to the sides, eyes vacant and searching the opposite wall.
“ And then began to weep.”
“S-stop,” his voice is stubborn, it struggles to fully leave him, sinks its nails in his tongue and refuses to be let out. “S-s-stop, stop.”
It’s wrong. He isn’t sure what, but it’s wrong. Dad never liked that song. Dad liked weird country music and rock. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong, and he needs it to stop.
“ She wept, she cried, she tore her hair, ah, me, what could I do?”
Hands come up to his ears against and Red clamps them down hard, until the pressure becomes a palpable sound, bursting his eardrums. The break protests, he thinks he hears something snap..
“So all night long, I held her in my arms,” the devil’s voice echoes around the empty room, undisturbed. “Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.”
“It’s alright, kid.”
His head hurts. Eyes sting when he attempts opening them.
“I just need to clean it, yeah? You popped a stitch, s’bleeding a little.”
His head hurts. Make it stop. Please.
“Wanna tell me what happened?”
He isn’t sure. He doesn’t know.
“Someone was here,” he thinks he whispers. “Fr’nk, someone was here.”
Frank’s steady hands stop. Matthew blinks through the fog, the hands return.
“Frank, I need to go back. I need to go back.”
He shakes his head, pushes his shoulders against the bed again. Matt hadn’t realized he was trying to sit. “Just rest, Red.” Frank sighs, coffee-mint-toothpaste-eggs-and-bacon mix in the air above him. “Don’t reckon you’ll be remembering this when you wake up anyway.”
He doesn’t.
BOX
Yet I was wound up. I tick. I exist. I am poised
eighteen inches over the black rivets
you are reading, I am in your place, I am shut
in a bone box and trying to fasten myself
on the white paper.
By day ten, it’s clear something is going on with Murdock.
He wouldn’t know for sure, since Red never speaks of it. Never speaks much of anything that really matters, to be truthful - still a master in the art of misdirection even if he probably can’t remember sh*t about his life as a lawyer.
Frank is a sniper. Waiting is in his nature, as much as Curt likes to point out he has, as he so calls it, a “modern disease” and craves for “instant gratification” or some bullsh*t. When the time is right, he’ll ask and he’ll aim just right, but for now, he has other things to worry about.
If what Curt had said through the phone was true, each day that passed there was less chance Red’s amnesia was from a brain injury. The odds were much of it was psychological - Dissociative amnesia, Curt called it. Less to do with Red’s injury and much more with what happened before it.
Frank frowns, eyes locked to his food before he averts his gaze to Red once more. The amnesia might have nothing to do with the hit he took to the head, but everything else certainly did. Red slept up to twelve hours most days and couldn’t seem to sleep at all on others, no matter how exhausted he was. It’d come to a point where he’d shut down, get into that detached, dissociating state he had been on his first few days in the cabin.
The bruises under his eyes from the broken capillaries were getting better - Curt told him it was normal, so Frank hadn’t worried too much, though they certainly didn’t improve his appearance.
He does it again - twitches his head and loses focus on his food, arm settling down against the wood, hands almost fully covered by the long sleeves of Frank’s borrowed shirt. Had been doing that a lot lately, wandering away into his head, getting lost in his surroundings.
“Hey,” the crackle of gravel in his deep tone is enough to snap Red out of it. The flinch doesn’t go unnoticed. “What’s going on?” Something with his ears, maybe? Frank was pretty sure at some point they had used a flash-bang grenade, had found a canister abandoned at the warehouse entrance and track marks from someone being dragged.
Red swallows, makes an attempt to go back to his food only to yield. “Nothing,” comes the predictable response.
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” He slants his head to the side, gets to watch Red’s uncomfortable expressions morphing and changing. Murdock might have gotten better from looking like death warmed over, but he was still pale. He still had bandages around his head, thigh, torso. Bruises all over.
Not for the first time, he wonders just how exactly does he work. Couldn’t help but notice his sharp senses the last time they saw each other - in that rooftop. He had seen him nod to something he said yards away. Wonders just how those senses of his are working now that his skull is broken, fracture extending from above his ear to a few inches past it.
Frank reaches behind him into the makeshift counter, grabs the bowl of apple slices. “Eat it.”
Murdock blinks, his whole body on pause. “I-” he smacks his lips softly, as if trying to get rid of a taste he couldn’t make much sense of. Frank squints at him. “Yes.”
Compliance with Red was different, Frank came to realize soon enough. He was either buying himself time for something or he was closing off, hiding back inside his shell. Distinguishing the two was easy enough - Red was nothing if not an open book at the best of times.
Like the past ten days, Frank prods. “Remember anything today?”
Murdock shakes his head slowly, eyes roaming from the empty plate to the bowl beside him. As if looking for stains or cracks in the porcelain. He eats the slice of apple with care - too much too quick and his headache worsens, sometimes. “Just... words.”
“Words?”
Lips twist downward. He doesn’t look too comfortable sharing it. “Yeah,” he abandons the half-eaten slice on his place, somehow managing to avoid the dirty parts. “People saying stuff, sentences, but I couldn’t remember-”
“Anything in specific?” Murdock stops moving, shakes his head.
Frank lets it go, but he isn’t convinced for a second.
He sits by the table and cleans his guns and goes over the plan in his head for the fifth time.
Frank’s been stewing over this long enough. It is a bad idea and he knew it, and knew it well. Taking Red back to the city with the way things were now... well, there were a thousand different ways thing could escalate and go to sh*t real quick, and he wasn’t too happy about the odds either.
If they were out there, even if Red remembered his training (or some part of it), he was underweight, slightly anemic and injured. They go to the city and Red’s an immediate liability - he’ll have to look out for him.
In the other hand, seeing Red flicker between moments of clarity and haze gets him in some deep, f***ed up part that messes with Frank’s head. Head replays over and over again the sight of him reaching out a hand. Too late, he had said, please.
Things are starting to get complicated. At the beginning it was simple - take Red in, get him some place safe to rest, get him back to his life. But then he wakes up with his brains scrambled and what in the world does he do with that? How can he get him back to his life if Red has no goddamn idea what that means? Frank should be damn well past caring: should throw Red, clueless f***ing Red, in the middle of the city with all the wolves he pissed off that are now clamoring for his blood.
Envisions going through what Red would do if the situation was different. If it was Frank with his head messed up and a whole city bellowing to take a pound of his flesh. Tells himself Red would do the same thing - just throw him to the wolves.
But that’s bullsh*t. Not a goddamn bone in Matt Murdock’s body capable of leaving a man behind to bleed out. Not even a piece of sh*t like Frank.
So he checks his supplies before going to Murdock with the idea. Guns, knives, burners - back-up plans, safe houses he has nearby. Places he can lay low if they can’t manage the ride back to the cabin.
The city wasn’t a safe place for the Devil and much less Matt Murdock. Someone out there knows the two are one and the same, and Frank has a good f***ing guess as to who. Only a matter of time before Frank puts him down.
He’s not your responsibility.
Curt’s voice nags at him.
Take me home.
Murdock says instead.
Curtis had asked who he was when even Red couldn’t answer that himself, and well, sh*t. Who wasn’t the appropriate question, was it? What Curt had wanted to ask - and Frank knows this, knows this with the certainty that he knows that Murdock will be back on his feet, no question about it - was who was Murdock to him.
Red was a sanctimonious pain in the ass, that’s who. A holier-than-thou prick with a savior complex. A good guy. And Frank had been too late and so had Red and they were both paying for that now.
Because Frank knows better than to expect everything will go as planned, he prepares a bag with some bare necessities. A whole bunch of first aid and changes for Red’s dressings. Kid shouldn’t be moving so soon, not after getting his head sewn back together in a mob doc’s table but as good as Frank could be at waiting, it wasn’t his favorite tactical approach and neither was Red.
Frank needed him out there, doing his ninja sh*t. Murdock was one step away from getting cabin fever and whatever was going on with his ears that he wouldn’t tell.
Red may sleep a lot but God knows he doesn’t do much resting - Frank reckons he has flashbacks but Murdock is rarely coherent enough when he wakes up. And the times that he is, he doesn’t seem to understand anything at all. That’s why, when he finishes packing to find Matthew burrowed into the sheets with a peaceful, restful expression softening his features, Frank doesn’t wake him.
He busies himself around the place for a while until there’s no need to check traps or supplies and only then does he take a seat by the cot.
Red looks different since he got here.
Even with the flashbacks, the constant headaches and the effects of the concussion, there’s a weight missing from him. He still has that soldier-like posture of his, spine straight, shoulders back, but there’s something, an absence Frank can’t pinpoint. It’s in the softness of his eyebrows when he sleeps, in his easy-going talk when he’s not distracted with his messed up head.
Maybe it’s the memories he doesn’t have. Maybe.
Takes an hour for Red to finally shift, hands twitching away from the cotton sheets tangled around his waist. Frank notices the rashes all over his forearms, bright red where they had been pressed against the fabric.
“Hey, Red,” a soft groan answers him. Red scratches at his forearm. “Who am I?”
For some reason, Murdock flinches at the question; muscles tensing before he lets go. Frank’s eyes narrow at his figure, Red takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re Frank. I’m Matt. It’s Monday. November. I don’t know the date.”
Frank stares at him some more. Waits for an answer to pop out of somewhere, a reason for the slightly frenetic twitch of his fingers. Sighs when none comes.
“It’s the 21 st .”
Murdock nods, before attempting to sit up. He still swayed when he did something strenuous - walked a few steps too many, climbed up the three steps from the porch to the cabin’s door -, and sometimes when he woke up. But if Curt was right and Murdock’s amnesia was psychological, triggers could help him fill the blank spots.
The faster he got Red remembering, the faster he was out of there and Frank could go back to hunting down scumbags.
“Put those on,” Red tilts his head the second the bundle of clothes leaves Frank’s grasp, catches it neatly with his right one. The muscles there had improved just enough that Red didn’t let things fall all the time now - Curt had left him some hand grip strengtheners the last time he had been there. When Frank had thought they’d have to shove Red back in the van. As luck would have it, the seizure had been mostly due to dehydration and shock.
Murdock’s fingers explore the items - thick thermal pants, jeans, a heavy sweater and a parka. Maybe it wasn’t cold enough for the pants, but Red had lost a few pounds and had gone from fit to too damn skinny and he shivered a whole f***ing lot when night fell.
He curses under his breath and throws in some winter socks and gloves. Peruses for an old pair of boots that came with the place. A tight fit, but better than Frank’s over-sized ones.
“Wher’ we going?” He turns his head away from the redhead.
He had seen Murdock in various stages of vulnerability in the last week, but when he woke up slurring his words and curling his tongue loosely and softly around his vowels, it was just different. Got the twist in his chest to settle at the same time it only knotted up more painfully.
Reminded him too much of his kids, waking up with soft little smiles. Are we going to the park, Daddy?
Rubs at the back of his head, palm pressing into the scar. Red inclines softly towards the sound, a bit more alert - chin cocked up, irises creeping towards the upper left corners, considering.
“Your place.”
Red frowns before freezing altogether. “There won’t be anyone in there, right?” Disquiet fingers pick at the fabric, flinching away from it before pressing his fingers harder together. Goddamn martyr. “I won’t remember them.”
Frank pulls the cotton sheets away from him, throws them in the floor by the growing heap of dirty laundry he had to take care of.
Red’s relentless, though. Finds away to twist his own fingers into pretzels, picking at the skin between each one. “Don’t think so.”
But then again, what does he know? Midland Circle collapses, Red was supposed to be dead. Reports come about a man in a black mask saving a man and attacking people related to Fisk. There’s a riot in prison, Matt Murdock becomes a wanted man, and then he calls the very same day-
“That’s what your fancy hearing is for, right?”
Murdock nods gingerly. Gets up quietly and sways only once before dragging himself to the bathroom to change. He comes back dressed and already looking drained, expression unguarded. Soft. Frank looks away.
“You can sleep in the car, c’mon.”
Red does. He’s dead to the world for two hours.
Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t look any different from the last time Frank had been there.
He had half expected it to be. That its walls would be somehow marked with the Devil’s absence. If he’s honest with himself, Frank had half expected it to look like the aftermath of an apocalypse.
Stupid.
Maybe it’s because he can’t picture the Kitchen without its guardian devil. Maybe it’s because it felt like the world had changed, somehow, not much more than a week ago. Something had shattered, and yet the place remained intact.
Frank shakes his head and spares a glance at the man sleeping in the passenger seat, chin to his chest, soft clouds of breath getting puffed by his nose. He looked uncomfortable.
He waits for the next light to gently squeeze a fingertip under his chin, help him find a better angle to rest his head. Manages to lean it against the window and Red expresses his content exhaling soft, warm air against Frank’s fingertips, falling back asleep quickly.
Making sure he wasn’t resting over the injury - the place where bone was held together feebly by iron, sutures and skin - Frank avoids any bumps in the streets while driving, eyes scanning other cars and rooftops. He doesn’t think the man in the stairs necessarily knew who Red was, but his boss did.
He thinks he sees something - rooftop over an auto-repair shop, not too far from them. A blur of black and red.
It’s gone before he can register its shape and speed but he keeps an eye on all the rooftops after that. It doesn’t show up again, but Frank files it away as something to consider afterwards.
Murdock’s building is an old brick walk-up. Not as much of a sh*thole as Frank’s safe houses in Manhattan, but a sh*thole nonetheless. Red wakes up the moment they pull over a street away, head twitching sideways. He looks more alert than he had back in the cabin, taking in the city, the traffic, the passersby. Frank just watches him for a while, makes sure he’s not about to freak out like he did once or twice already before turning off the ignition key.
“Come on.”
“We’re in Hell’s Kitchen.” He sniffs the air carefully, looks ridiculously alike a dog while doing it. The same way he did with his head tilts. Frank just grunts in response - of course, of all the things to remember, Red would recall what Hell’s Kitchen smells like.
They use the fire escape. Frank catches Murdock missteps a whole lot more than the redhead would ever be willing to admit but he lets the man keep his pride.
He’s dizzy and his legs won’t coordinate with his brain - right one mostly. As stubborn as his right arm and hand. He’d raise them barely enough to make a step and trip on the next, hold himself for dear life on the handrail before Frank came along to take most of his weight, awkwardly squeezing together through the tight fit of the stairs.
Red’s exhausted by the time they make it to the third flight of stairs and Frank mostly carries him the rest of the way, Red’s legs delaying them rather than helping. It isn’t any hardship - Red doesn’t eat much and keeps even less in his stomach when he manages something.
Castle isn’t sure what he’s hoping for when Red finally, gingerly walks down the stairs to his place. Looking more like a stranger than a man walking inside his home. Maybe - stupidly - that he’d walk in, surrounded by all things Matt Murdock, and come to some kind of realization and get back to his life. Get the hell away from Frank’s because he sure as hell doesn’t know what to make of this. Of Red and him in the same space, instead of being on opposite sides in a fight.
Or maybe a spark. Something that told him Murdock wasn’t lost for good.
Murdock touches the walls with barely concealed hesitation, knuckles feeling for the polished wood. There were cracks on the walls, broken glass on the floor, a crack on one of the window panes.
Frank takes it all in and keeps quiet. Clasps his hands in front of him as he shadows Red’s footsteps inside the place. Shaky fingertips find case files over the coffee table. Murdock’s expression twists into something funny.
“I really am a lawyer,” he mumbles, some kind of innocent awe tinging his voice that Frank thinks he’d never would’ve heard it otherwise, should he have his memories straight.
“That you are.”
Murdock’s lips twitch in that confused, unsure smile, fingertips trailing the few books by the files. An abandoned, open laptop attached to a device of some kind. Braille reader, perhaps.
He stops at one of the books, fingers spasm before he traces the cover again. “Thurgood Marshall,” his eyes bob from the upper corner to the lower one, his knees still shake from the hesitation of climbing up the fire escape. “I used to read this one a lot when I was a kid.” Frank’s eyebrows go up.
There’s something that keeps pulling Red back to the book, even when he feels for the other ones. Frank wonders what is it that makes him gravitate back - a memory, a feeling. What gets him tracing the same dots over and over again on the spine.
“Take it,” Frank shrugs, lets his clasped hands fall by his side, “it’s yours.” Should probably get some of Red’s stuff too, while they’re at it. He steps towards the bedroom he peeks by the sliding door, looks for something they can use. Gym bag isn’t big enough for a lot, but enough. He empties one, leaves one of the hand tapes.
Murdock looks grateful when he reaches gingerly towards the bag, dropping the book inside with a small smile. Frank resists the urge to tell him to quit it.
He finds his cane next, discarded by the couch. Confusion and recognition battle around the creases and soft planes of his features before he carefully attempts picking it up, fingers digging into the back of the couch so he doesn’t topple over. Folds it up almost on muscle memory and seems about as surprised as Frank as he does it.
“Remember anything?” He asks, strangely hopeful, but Red just frowns - sniffs the air like a hound dog.
“I’m not... sure.”
Yeah, he doesn’t look very sure about anything, even as he drops the folded cane inside the bag. He walks into the kitchen with a sway to his step Frank has come to recognize as exhaustion. Confirms it when Murdock’s quick to try and find support on the counter, hands bumping into something. Frank catches a blur of dark red and golden yellow before it falls.
Red falls into a series of bird-like head tilts, eyes attempting to find the little red box in the floor. Knows it’s a bad idea trying to pick it up without support moments before the kid almost cracks his head open a second time.
“Jesus f***, Red,” he pulls him up before he manages to face plant like the a**hole he was. Pissed off but still mindful of his sutured up head. He takes the box himself with a curse, recognizing the smooth, vinylic surface of gift wrapping before he hands it to Murdock.
“Thanks.”
His eyes get drawn to the floor again, though. Notices the slump of clothes on the floor by the fridge, some of them with pink splatters of washed-out blood, some with bigger stains. Frank crouches beside it - it had been wet at some point, dried up all wrinkled and smelled moldy to a degree. Suit jacket, slacks, socks, white button-up and a torn, black tie.
“Hudson,” Murdock suddenly murmurs, one eyebrow quirking up as the other draws down crookedly. “It’s what I could smell before.” His hands still fumble around with the gift box, even while slanting his head this way and that, sniffing the air as if looking for clues.
Frank stands up, leaves the rumpled clothes where they are. Something had happened between the prison rioting, Murdock becoming a wanted man and Frank receiving a phone call.
Like the book, Red’s attention keeps gravitating back to the small box in his hands, wrapped up with ridiculous primness, contrasting badly with the skewered, badly tied up golden bow. He keeps tracing the line where the lid met the box, encased by glossy, bright red paper.
“I... This is weird.”
Frank grunts. Waits for him to say what he’s got to say.
“I know this is all mine, I know it is but I don’t- I don’t feel it. I don’t remember it, I don’t...” He huffs in frustration, voice edged higher before it falls, holds the box closer to his chest. Frank eyes it, gazes back to the forgotten tag on the counter. It must have fallen at some point.
Frank takes another look at Red then. The disgruntled, hopeless expression on his face. Exhales in a large huff of air. “Look, Red, this is gonna take time, yeah? You went through some bad sh*t. You gotta let your wounds heal, let that head o’yours heal.”
Except what the kid needs is a f***ing neurologist and, sh*t, a really f***ing good therapist too. And Frank would be willing to give that to him, if only he wasn’t sure it would end terribly for Daredevil and worse still for Matt Murdock to show up now.
Murdock suddenly stands straight - that fighter’s posture Frank had been used to seeing less flawless when it takes over the slumped, hopeless figure of seconds before.
“What-”
“Shh.” He looks a bit more like the Devil Frank recalled. A lot less like the helpless kid he’s been around the last few days. Frank can’t say he didn’t miss it.
“Footsteps,” Murdock whispers, mouth close to his cheek, “coming up the stairs, six, maybe seven, they...” Frank pulls the gun from the holster, one hand clamping around Red’s upper arm to pull him back. His eyes go wide in panic seconds before he suddenly shouts out: “Frank, down!”
BRUISE
Here is your space, lie down or stand or sit, it will take your shape.
Be still if you can, look into yourself for what is soft and spoiled,
for pulp, for that dark damage.
In a second, Red’s apartment becomes a battlefield.
It’d been easy once to tell Maria that home was here, with the kids, with her. But Frank knows himself better, these days. Knows how easily he falls into the gunfire, how squeezing the trigger feels more natural than making breakfast for them once did. How landing a punch is easier than landing a caress and how he’d been so selfish to think he could have both.
He has three rounds of ammo on him, thirty six bullets for his .45 caliber, one army knife - a TBI patient with no self-preservation instinct whatsoever and at least seven guys coming up the stairs to apartment 6A, armed with assault rifles and whole lot more ammunition.
He takes one second to feel for Red’s skinny frame covering his body after tackling him to the floor, his unarmored body and the crisscrossed sutures over his ear before he makes a decision. Grabs the kid by the back of his neck, dragging him off of him before shoving him backwards under the stairs as soon as bullets puncture through the wall a second time.
Red, probably completely oblivious as to where the urge to fight comes from, immediately tries to jump out. Frank presses his forearm against him, looks deep into his unseeing eyes before checking his cartridge - fully loaded, all twelve bullets in - before turning to Murdock once again.
“You stay under those stairs, you don’t make a sound, you don’t move until I say so, do you get that?” Got not time to make sure the kid understands besides a brief stare, easing up the pressure on his chest incrementally before standing up, walking low to hide behind the hallway wall.
He’s just got to crouching when a shotgun blow makes debris and chunks of drywall fly past the place his head had been, seconds before. Frank presses his gun close to his chest, stays crouched low as he waits, tonguing his parched upper lip before checking in on Red, hands covering his ears from the close-range blasts.
His breathing is too quick but Frank’s got no time to check for anything else but immediate injuries.
He roars out for the pieces of sh*t waiting on the other side of the door. “C’mon!!” The spray of bullets start again, exploding through the door and denting the wall by the fridge. Shattering porcelain mugs and plates long forgotten by the sink. He counts the time, the bullets he can hear. Keeps half an eye on Red, curled up tight under the stairs, eyes panicked.
The second the gunfire stops, Frank’s on his feet. Two burst through the door and get shot on sight. Shoulder, head - the blonde guy falls. Chest - the braided woman goes down.
A third one appears through the doorway, screaming expletives to the remaining four behind him. Frank recognizes a few operational commands - mercenaries, probably former military - before he jumps into a roll, avoiding a spray of bullets and unloading three knee-level shots at the guy. One hits home.
The gunfire starts again, Frank grabs Red by the arm and pulls him out of hiding, dragging him to the table and shouldering it down to the ground, using it as shield. It was sturdy but wouldn’t last long.
Red’s partially catatonic, but Frank had expected that too. Either he was caught in a sensory hell or trapped in a flashback or both. Probably both.
“Red, you listening?” A sharp, erratic nod. “We gotta get to those stairs, you tell me when they’re almost out of ammo, can you do that?” Another nod, more focused, more sure. “Attaboy.”
Two stop to reload, Frank lends him his palm and Red makes a small, objective map. Points the location of the four mercs still shooting, the one sitting by the two dead ones with his knee shot to hell. Immediately shows him the two as soon as they’re on their last bullet.
Frank rises up too late to do much damage, but one gets a graze to the thigh and the other falls back with a shot to their armored vest. They have little tactical advantage besides Red’s senses, they’ll be trapped if they don’t move, now. But Red can’t dodge bullets when he’s still swaying over his feet every time he moves too quickly and Frank can’t cover for him at the same time he guides him up the stairs.
So he quickly falls into another roll, shoots the second lady with the army jacket and slams his back against the couch. Bullets fly over his head.
“You got nowhere to hide, Murdock!” Army jacket lady bellows, Frank’s gaze locks at Red’s face and he waits for the signal. The shakiness and pale skin are almost completely hidden by the determined set of his brow, the tense posture he holds himself in. “Come out now and I promise I’ll make it quick, sweetie.”
Murdock rises three fingers. One goes down, another-
“Now!” He rises the moment burly bald guy on the back stops to reload and shoots him once in the head. Pulls Red to his feet and drags him up the stairs as quickly as he can without risking his goddamn head. “Frank, duck!”
He goes low, brings Red with him. A spray of bullets dent the wall over their heads and Frank shoots once, twice, three times. Ejects the empty mag and shoves another in record time before shooting the remaining three - Army jacket lady, vest dude and bullet-in-the-thigh a**hole. Gives them enough cover fire to crawl the remaining three steps to the access door and reach the rooftop.
Murdock is weak - stumbles twice before he manages to find his footing again. But as soon as they’re high up, muscle memory and adrenaline seems to get rid of whatever catatonic spell he’d been in, together with whatever remaining self-preservation instinct he had been running on when he stayed hidden under the goddamn stairs.
“Use the ledge.”
“What?” But Red - the idiot who had his skull open 10 days ago - is already running. Uses the fire escape only to hang on to it, get momentum enough and jump down to the next building’s ledge, balancing precariously before taking hold of the ladder and having it drop down closer to the ground with him hanging on to it, finding the alleyway ground with unsteady feet, knees bucking violently when he finally does.
Jesus Christ, this a**hole.
But it’s quicker, so Frank does what he says. Almost misses the first jump but manages to hang on, climbing down the ladder and jumping to the floor the moment a bullet shatters the window over their heads and another grazes his left arm.
“F***!” He ignores the urge to clamp his palm tight over the wound in favor of tugging Red’s almost non-responsive body out of the line of fire. There’s a van to the left of the building, one that hadn’t been there before. Frank memorizes the plaque seconds before spotting a tall figure waiting inside.
He shoots them in the head without hesitation, eyes immediately darting up to the fire escape where Army jacket lady was hobbling down from, and the building’s front door opening from the inside - bullet-in-the-thigh dude and vest guy burst out of it, Frank starts firing and so do they.
Red makes a sound of surprise and goes green when Frank shoves him behind his body. There are retching sounds and a splash of liquid against the back of his combat boots, but he’s got no time to check on him. Gotta keep on moving or they’ll get them trapped in the alley.
Summary: Ada Wong had always had her walls up, shielding her heart from the rest of the world. Until a certain bright eyed young man stumbled his way into her heart. And he held her heart as tenderly as she allowed him to. And that was enough for a while, until it wasn't.
Ada reminisces on memories she'd shared with him, remembering the good times and the bad times. Wondering if this was enough for either of them.
Notes: It was an excuse for me to write stories that are smaller and Ada centric.
In the quiet of night, she stares in the ghostly wet reflection of the mirror. The mists obscuring her visage until she unceremoniously wipes it with her hand. She appears like an apparition, lost in the fog.
Her skin is hot, nearly burning with the boiling waters poured onto her naked body. The burning sensation was a gentle reminder; that she was still here.
The aftermath of her daily ritual clouds the rest of the room in a humid air. The smallest breaths of the cool night air slips in as the fiery heat escapes out a tiny cracked open window.
She sees herself and yet she doesn’t. The image of the woman in front of her... isn’t her. The elusive Ada Wong. She’s not really Ada Wong, but she is. It’s her face, her eyes, her lips. She reacts to the name, but she can’t see herself anymore. Her birth name was lost, forgotten so long ago. Her new name imprinted on her and rings in her ears in the sound of his voice.
Water droplets drips from her wet tresses, her dark black hair sticking to her forehead and the sides of her face. She wasn’t naive to her own vanity, using her beauty to her advantage as she saw fit. And yet every little imperfection she saw was a weakness she had to cover, to shield away from the world.
The counter was littered with expensive products. Creams and lotions, toners and acids, all meant to turn back the wheel of time. Detailed filigree on gold covered tubes held reds and pinks; reddish hues that she coated on her lips with gentle dabs of her ring finger. Long tubes filled with a dark midnight black coated her lashes. An eyelash curler was used to bend and open her lashes. The memory of him as he fixated on her almost appeared in the misty mirror. The way he watched with adoration as she painted her lips her favourite red. The way his brow raised in intrigue at each new tool she used. They way he said the curler looked like a “torture device for your lashes.” The ‘intricacies of a woman’s beauty routine,’ he'd never fully understand.
As the rest of her shower fades away and the mirror growing clearer, the facade of Ada Wong appears again. Her sharp sleek black hair combed into a straight cut bob. Flicked out eyeliner that frames her eyes and pierces into anyone’s soul who dared to meet her gaze. Glossy red lips that pout innocently, but smirk into a viciously sly grin.
She swallows, lifting her head up high. Face framing strands of her hair fall against her cheek. Her shoulders drop, her chest falling with a slow exhale.
Ada Wong, the mercenary appears.
Act 2: “Home, or whatever home was meant to be.”
Being on the run had a few benefits. Various safe houses that Ada found refuge in were few and far between and were often tended to by unknowing caretakers that simply assumed she travelled for work. They were mostly correct.
“Caroline,” “Vanessa,” “Jessica,” “Jade,” “Violet,” “Katherine.” All aliases to only be used for those locations. Never anywhere else. She was never “home,” but when she was; her visits were short. Seemingly only a few weeks before she was gone again. She often left her “homes,” in a rush, leaving very little trace of her behind.
The occasional foreclosed home in a small but rich towns was a fun outing for her. The pools were almost always out of order and empty; but the idea of being being in a mansion was always enticing enough. On a rare occasion she’d still find one fully furnished; thankfully with a functional pool as well. They were mansions to the rich that lost their fortunes; and now they were a luxurious escape house for ‘Ada Wong’ the mercenary to take refuge in. They were a breeze to break in, it was almost intuitive for her on where the easiest points of entry were. No one ever suspects you'd be able to slip in from a cracked open bedroom window.
The rich were always excessive. She knew that. Individually picked marble slabs that travelled from across the world were used for bathroom tiles. Heated floors and luxurious spa rooms were common. Large TV screens were in every room but hidden in the walls. The rich weren’t so keen having such gaudy modern devices so easily viewable, but still wanted them to be accessible. Theatres, bar rooms and pool rooms were built into them, bringing all of the entertainment to home. Making it so that the owners rarely had to leave. Which made it all the more of a perfect escape for her.
She’d always pick her favourite window in her favourite room. Which was typically the one that let in the most light. She'd lay there, sprawling out in the warm sun as it touched her skin while she lost herself in one of her favourite books she’d carry around with her during her travels.
Hotels were a close favourite, never needing to clean up her own messes. And easy as they were furnished with everything she needed for a night's rest. The luxury ones often had a spa she’d take pleasure in. The only downside was the constant hotel switching would get tiresome. Going from one to another, occasionally needing to switch names and hair colour with a simple wig. It felt more like work than an escape.
This was the longest she had ever stayed at a single place. A quiet little house shielded by wisteria trees. The soft lilac petals coating the home in a gentle blanket. The shades of foliage changed in the light; a warm inviting pink in the orange of the mornings, and a cool mystical shade of periwinkle in the evenings.
The insides were bare at times, the odd piece of furniture she picked up from some tiny store or estate sale. Occasionally it was filled with all of her favourite little things, knick knacks she had picked up from her travels. Despite constantly losing things and leaving things behind while on the run, she found pleasure in finding treasures and giving them a home. Finding a perfect place for something that didn’t belong, and cherishing forgotten things that were left behind. Over time she found herself returning here. Gathering more treasures and trinkets and creating a home for herself.
It was the most she could make of a home. And that was ‘enough for now,’ she told herself.
The next closest thing to a home.
Was him.
A fantasy began to manifest in her dreams, becoming more intense each night she dreamt it. Each time she saw him they only grew more visceral, so close she could almost touch him and feel him against her fingers. Which made it all the more devastating each time they parted. The stinging pain of the departure and the numbness she felt afterwards when reality sank in again was a gentle reminder that she never wanted anyone to get close to her. That the reality was-
That she was alone. That the dreams she had was nothing more than that, a fantasy; and she so naively chased it only to throw it away the second it got too close. It's easier this way.
Each time she pushed him away it would only twist at her heart, tying it up in knots and strangling her. She saw the gut wrenching look Leon always had each time she leaves. He’d weakly smile, and hold back the, “when will I see you again?” between tightly closed lips.
Those times were rare; leaving him while he was able to say goodbye. "It was getting easier each time." That's what she told herself.
It was so much easier before. Peaceful. Taking the last minutes she'd have with him by watching him as he slept. His soft rhythmic breathing, his chest raising and falling. Lost in a dream; of what she wasn’t sure. But he always had a soft gentle expression on his face. The corner of his lips occasionally curling upward, his fingers grasping at nothing. Her fingertips traced into his locks, pushing aside that one stubborn strand of hair that always shielded his right eye. He was so handsome like this, so tranquil and serene. So reminiscent of that sweet face she fell in love with all those years ago.
His dark golden hair flecked with light yellows from the early rising sun. And she’d be gone hours before he’d even wake. Leaving him with her sweet lingering scent and the press of her red lips on a simple piece of parchment. Her insignia and some words that would be etched into his heart each time he’d read them. Scarring him with “what ifs” and “in another life.”
It was always easier this way. Not having to deal with goodbyes or his sweet puppy dog eyes. She caved in each time to her own selfish desire not to get hurt. Not wanting to get too close to the fire, never wanting to get burned.
But she was drawn to him, even in moments of weakness. When the lines of reality and fantasy crossed over. The white picket fence in between them that they’d reluctantly jump across over and over again. Never deciding on which side to stand on. She never wanted to need anyone and yet, his face was burned into her brain. His touch, the only comfort she’d felt in years. His smile carved deeply into her heart. The only man she’d known so intimately for so long had forever tied his thread around her and her heart.
Act 3: “Ada Wong would not be defeated by the common cold.”
Moments of weakness.
She hated them more than anything, despised letting people discover her weak spots. Pain in life was unavoidable, but how you managed it defined you. The stinging sensation from a cut of a blade was short, the pain easily subsiding with a coursing rush of adrenaline. Pinching, and numbing soreness in her feet and blood in her heels from running were injuries she’d push away, forcing herself to drag her legs as far as she could carry herself. Aches in her muscles were just an obstacle, as the idea of a safe escape was always more important. Getting out alive, was always more important. But the pain of heartbreak was more terrifying to her than any physical pain that she could ever endure.
But time and time again, her main weakness would make itself known to herself.
It was him.
Despite her chaotic work schedule, she’d make the effort to see him. Half of the time planning it, and the other a surprise. For the past while she’d leave him a letter with a code that only he knew how to read, letting him know possible dates for their schedules to align.
They had a ‘date,’ planned, and she still hadn't shown up.
The ‘common,' cold had taken over her. Causing more mayhem on her body than any possible outbreak. A simple cold that was worse than anything else she had endured. Her body ached in ways she didn’t remember, her head throbbing and fuzzy. Her chest tight and uncomfortable with each deep breath. Her nose stuffy, with each inhale causing more labouring breaths.
She refused to see Leon like this.
But a lingering afterthought was in her head, an oversight she didn’t plan for. She had already gifted him a spare key, one that she forbid him from using unless absolutely necessary.
Ada had been late by a few days. The spare key to her ‘home’, was normally housed in his night stand drawer, along with a little bear with a frayed pastel blue ribbon tied around its neck. It wasn’t uncommon for her to arrive late or early, their lifestyles were much less accommodating than most. Occasionally she’d message him that she wouldn’t be able to make it this time. All of Leon's messages to her were left unread. Phone calls that directly lead to voicemail. It had been too many days without some sort of notice from her, and Leon could sense something was wrong.
The heavy wood of the drawer pulls out, the keys grabbed quickly and held in the palm of his hand. The cold metal ring held the key and dangled from it, a small turtle charm. The little green shell covered its body, the head of it with sewn with an obscenely cute face. It was a gentle reminder of their impromptu trip they had shared together. Even though he had cleaned it, it felt like the tiny grains of sand were never going to disappear from the little crevices of it. A tiny zipper along the shell held a thin strand of paper. That strand of paper tightly rolled up and covered in a tin foiling. Decoding it held coordinates to a house, ones that were not too far from his apartment. With the numbers in hand he headed to his motorcycle, turning the key in the ignition and headed there with the fastest possible route.
Arriving at the coordinates, he double checked the numbers to ensure it was the right place. Having never been there before he couldn’t be sure that this was the house.
The home was tucked into a little cluster of houses and was far away from the city. It was a quiet neighbourhood, sparsely filled with family homes. His motorcycle made a bit of a ruckus as he arrived, and his face responded with a grimace as he quickly turned off the engine. As he reached the fence and opened the little doorway, he let his guard down. Pacing towards the entryway, his fingers grazed along one of the branches that shielded the walkway. His fingertips feeling the softness of the purple petals. Each strand of the flowers hid away another part of the home. The petals of lilac and lavender shades littered the pavement with speckles of the creamy colour. The front door was painted a shade of black that contrasted the faded red brick inlays in the exterior of the building.
The key laid in his pocket, then carefully unlocked the front door. The heavy locking mechanism unlatching. The dark coloured door swings open with a heavy gust of wind, his hand reflexly grabbing the edge before it swings too far to make a noise.
He closes and locks the heavy door behind him. The amount of locks on her door aren’t a surprise. Some of them quite rudimentary, some of them complex. He found it odd that none of them are locked though. A security system beeps, one that alerts him that the front door was opened but nothing else happens. The slim white piece of plastic juts out from the wall. Telling him the time and date and that the system is unarmed. He takes a few steps in, calling out her name once as he looks around. His head sharply turns as he hears her voice calling to him.
“Leon?”
Act 4: “I can do it myself.”
She was not going to be defeated by the common cold. Ada Wong doesn’t get snuffed out like that so easily, and yet she’s tied to her bed. Hanging on by a thread on as she gathers her blankets to warm her up only to throw them off moments later in a fit of exhaustion. Her nose is clogged, her eyes puffy, tired and red. She can barely stay awake but she can’t fall asleep either. Whatever she caught had taken over her body in a matter of hours and her meeting with Leon was quickly turned into an afterthought. A day turned to two, and three to four. How many days had passed she wasn’t even sure. At this point she hadn’t even considered sending him a simple text, her brain too scattered to focus.
The quiet of her home was broken with the sound of a motorcycle revving. The engine of it turning off and the rumbling silenced. Steps on the pavement grew louder as the sound came in from the cracked open window of her bedroom. An oversight she thought was ironic.
With what strength she has, she stumbles onto her feet. Pattering towards the window as quickly as she can, but she misses the figure as it makes it towards her front door. Struggling out of her bedroom and reaching the railing of second floor and leaning over it, she hears the front door being unlocked.
Only one person ever has had a spare key to her home.
She’s barely holding herself up, using the wood railing on the stairs to hold her entire weight as she leans against it. The stair beneath her feet creaks as she takes another step, her footing loose on the wooden panel.
Leon steps forwards into the foyer, seeing Ada’s messy head of hair as she makes it down the flight of stairs.
“Ada!” His feet swiftly carries him in a few steps towards her as she reaches the bottom of the stairs.
He’s so warm.
He had never seen her like this. Maybe with sniffles or stifled with a monthly visit. But never so- deathly ill. Her warm face was flushed all along her forehead, her cheeks slightly gaunt. Her body weak, cold and clammy. The way she held onto him was fragile and loose, like her fingers could barely grasp onto him.
He repeats her name, more urgently this time as she burrows her head into the crook of his arm.
“God damn it,” he grunts, lowering to grab underneath her knees and cradling her in his chest. Completely unaware of the layout of her home, his head swivels around. The stairs makes the most sense, returning her to where she came. With heavy steps he gathers her at the top of the stairs again, staring down a hallway and towards the one door that was left ajar.
A sigh of relief leaves his chest as he discovers it to be a bedroom. It was clean and devoid of much furniture. A vanity with a large mirror sat in the corner. Two night tables surround the top of the bed, the surfaces of them decorated with matching lamps and a clutter of medicines and a half empty box of tissues.
The bed is dressed with creamy satin sheets, the pillows encased in the same material. They were much softer than any of the sheets that he had ever slept on. The bed dips with her weight as he lays her back down. His hand reaches for one of the bottles on the nightstand to read the description. Then another and another. They’re all cough and flu related. Pain relievers, fever, headaches, congestion…
He grabs at the blankets, covering her up and feeling her forehead with the back of his hand, then her cheeks.
“Is this why you stood me up?” He asks in a whisper as he brushes her dark hair aside, a sad expression on his face as he tries to gauge how sick she is.
“Ada, why didn’t you tell me?” He continually brushes the stray strands of hair from her face, pressing his knees onto the flooring next to the bed as he leaned in closer.
“You just couldn’t stay out of trouble, could you Leon?” She asks before stifling a cough, her eyes tightly closing as she turns her head away from him.
“Did you really come here to catch whatever I have?” She asks after her coughing fit ends.
His shoulders drop with a sigh, “well, if you told me you were sick, I would’ve brought over soup or something instead of coming over empty handed,” his knee pressed up from the flooring as he took a seat on the edge of the bed.
“You’re not staying,” she shook her head.
“I don’t think you can stop me,” he smirks.
“You’re using my illness against me? How cruel, Mr. Kennedy,” she stifled another cough and sniffled her nose, her nose twitching like a tiny bunny nose.
“Wait here,” he smiles, pressing a kiss onto her forehead.
“Like I have a choice,” she mutters, rolling her eyes and turning away from him.
Leon shakes his head with a exhale and sits up from the bed.
The rest of her home is a mystery to him. Having never spent any time here, he takes a few minutes to explore. Some rooms are more tended to than others. Common areas that are more frequented and cared for and had a gentle touch from her hands. A delicately arranged floral is housed in a glass vase and sits on the dining table. A small metal frame holds a photo of him and Ada and sits on the edge of the antique piano in the study room.
Pencils and paintbrushes are scattered in a wooden tray, a delicate watercolour painting of a vase of flowers sits in an easel on the desk. The painting mirrors a similar vase holding tiny lilies and puffy pink peonies and sits a few feet away from the table. It holds the same flowers although they are wilted and dried. Dulled with the loss of colour with the edges of the petals aging and grazed with the colour of burnt tea.
A tall dark wooden bookshelf is overfilled with books. Some of them spilling out and stacked on top of each other in piles on an antique side table. The spines of the books are shades of muted colours, as if all of them were old and aged. Different styles of writings and names are scrawled inside, as if they were loved by other owners. Some with stamps embossed on the first or last pages, indicating it was from a someone’s personal collection. Leon was quick to notice she had multiple copies of the same books. First editions and rare editions of them. His lips upturned, impressed by Ada’s collection.
Leon’s eyes fall on the book that lays on top of the pile. Several corners of pages had been folded over. While some of them are bookmarked with thin cards in between the pages. His curiosity gets the better of him as his hands pick up the top most book and opens it to a random page. Her delicate lettering was written along some of the verses of the pages, her innermost thoughts and responses to the prose. He smiles briefly, laying the book back down as neatly as he found it.
The more pressing issue came back to the forefront of his head as he looked for the kitchen. His eyes catch what could only be a fruit bowl on a counter, the counter looking only like a kitchen counter. Pacing towards it, he finds the ivory coloured ceramic bowl housing bright pops of a orange citrus.
Discovering that he indeed found the kitchen, he quickly found the fridge. Opening it, he was greeted with a few fruits and vegetables. Some leftovers in glass containers and not much else that was easily accessible. His shoulders fall and reluctantly closes the fridge door. Next to the fridge, he’s greeted by a delicately set up tea station. One that looked like it was lovingly used almost every day. One of the glass jars is set closer to the front, and filled with a loose leaf tea. The brown leaves and stems filled the glass, while a few pale yellow floral blossoms were scattered throughout it.
Luckily a tea kettle is still on the stove. Grabbing it, he fills it to the top with water and closes the lid. Turning on the element and setting it down onto the heat. Leon scans the cupboards, eyeing for the one that made the most sense and opened it. Relief drops his shoulders again as he’s greeted with a selection of glasses and mugs. Not a lot of them match, maybe there was a single set in there. But most of them varied in design. Milky sea glass shades sat in the top shelf. Sturdy white mugs were housed in the middle shelf. And a variety of more delicate tea cups and ornate mugs sat on the bottom shelf. The closest one to the edge is propped up, as if it were a regular mug she had used often. Without thinking much more of it, he grabs it and spoons in a healthy spoonful of the jasmine tea. As it seeps the aroma of the jasmine fills his nose, a familiar scent that reminds him of her. Soft, floral and warm.
His steps aren’t quiet in the home, his walk back towards her bedroom alerting her of his presence. He finds her still tucked into bed, her arms wrapped around one of the pillows as she cradles herself to sleep.
“Come on, up we go,” he ironically says as he sets the cup of tea down first before reaching over to wrap his arms around her. The bed dips with his weight, his arms dragging her into his chest. The warm scent of his leather jacket would have comforted her; if she could smell anything. She frowns, her head pressing into the soft leather.
“I didn’t call you because I didn’t want you to have to take care of me,” she stifles a cough, her throat growing more itchy and scratchy with each exhale she suppressed.
“Don’t you know by now? You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” Leon smiles, his hand raised to brush aside her tangled tresses.
“You know I want to take care of you right?” He whispers, the back of his hand gently pressed on her forehead again to check her temperature. It’s still quite warm, maybe a degree less so than from before. She must have over exerted herself by simply seeing him at the door.
“I know,” she mutters and groans, her body aching too much to react to him as he fawned over her.
The cup of tea is drank graciously. It’s one of her favourites. The fact Leon had choose this one over the obvious choice of chamomile and honey wasn’t lost on her. She would’ve preferred this first. Her fingers comfortable hold it; one of her favourite cups. A thin cream mug with a simple design of red lilies stamped in the centre. Some of the flowers underneath her fingertips had rubbed off with time and use. She drinks all of the tea, along with a tall glass of water Leon rushed to grab afterwards. A simple can of soup is reheated on the stove, and Ada eats it up in a few bites. Her stomach finally feeling better after not been able to do much else than sleep and struggle to sleep for the past few days.
“Feeling any better?” Leon reluctantly asks, knowing that it seemed like her condition wasn't alleviated by much.
“A bit,” she groans, her eyes fluttered closed, her entire body curled up into a ball and tucked into him; very cat like as she drew from his body heat. She felt his warmth as he enveloped her and warmed her from the inside out.
“You shouldn’t stay, you don’t want to get whatever I have,” she manages to get out without getting into a coughing fit. Her words conflicting with her body as she held onto him tightly.
“I’m staying,” Leon chuckles, his hand rests on the back of her head, carding through her hair. His head falling towards hers on the pillow.
“Get some sleep, I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.”
Act 5: “You up for this?”
That was the first night he had spent in her home. The one safe space that she had kept locked away from everyone else, and he had been in it. With time, Ada started to feel better. The aches growing more tolerable, and her head hurting less and less. And as luck would have it; Leon never caught what she had either. He was always lucky, Ada knew that. But she hadn’t expected him to luck out on not catching whatever ailment she had though. She was grateful though, the idea of having to take care of Leon while she was also sick wasn’t a sight she wanted to imagine. Especially considering Leon was, “much more of baby,” than she was when it came to illnesses.
They slept together every night in her bed. Ada sometimes waking up, startled by Leon in her bed. She was familiar with this bed. Familiar with the silk sheets and how she’d wake up alone every night here. And now she had Leon next to her.
Sleeping next to Leon wasn’t an unusual occurrence anymore. Even her early mornings where she’d leave were less and less common.
But here?
It was her safe place. A place that was free from everyone, and yet he was there. His arm still tightly wrapped around her as he slept. His sweet face lost in some sort of dream and a light snore from him with each exhale of his chest.
Leon headed back to his apartment on the second day to grab more of his clothing and returned with a large duffle bag. Packed within it, more medicines along with cough drops for Ada.
A few days had passed, and Leon took an hour or so each day while she was napping to explore the house. Familiarizing himself with the kitchen as he spent a few hours there as well. Cooking what he could for them while ordering take out for the rest. Ada had always had taste when it came to- mostly everything, and her kitchen wasn’t lacking in that department either. Despite not cooking much (from what Leon could tell), she had a large array of spices and seasonings. Even ones that Leon had never seen or even heard of.
Her favourite teas and coffee were always on display and she had a much more sophisticated coffee machine than he did. It was easier to work with as well. Almost instinctively he was able to brew up her favourite latte.
She had grown accustomed to the sounds of Leon in the kitchen in his home. His soft humming and the taps of his feet whenever he had a tune stuck in his head.
Her home was a different story. The random curse he’d let out at a cupboard door slamming randomly was now a daily occurrence. The rolling of the wheels in the drawers were too loud for his liking, and he’d pull on them gently each morning to not wake Ada. But she heard him anyways. She noticed him doing so, hearing him being relieved that he was able to open a drawer so quietly, but would let out a hushed praise for himself. She always smiled, finding it endearing; hearing him as he made his way through the kitchen to make all of her meals for the day while she focused on recovering.
By the fourth or fifth day, he had finally figured out that the door next to the fridge was sticky and almost always needed and extra push for it to close properly. Focused on closing the door, he couldn’t hear Ada’s soft steps as she tiptoed into the kitchen.
“Need a hand?”
Leon turned at the sound of her voice, beaming at the sight of her out of bed in the morning again.
“Morning, beautiful.”
He couldn’t help but smile, he meant it.
He loved her like this. Her skin touched by the glow of the early morning sun, with her dark hair just a bit messy. Her warm pink cheeks and a lazy smile on her face. Her complexion was warmer, and although he was sure she was still a bit tired, she had certainly recovered a lot.
Ada wore one of Leon’s shirts she had stolen from his apartment, and he had a moment of realization as he noticed it and remembered that it had been gone for a few months now.
“I was wondering where that went,” he shook his head with a grin and turned back around and pushed the door again and held it until it snapped closed. The counter was littered with ingredients and extra bowls, the sink filling up as well with used dishes and utensils. The mandarins that were in the bowl were shared between them over the course of a few days, with only one lonely round little citrus fruit remaining. The cast iron skillet sizzled with bacon and eggs, all of it contained with the lid he left it on top to allow it to finish cooking.
“Where ‘what’ went,” she murmured with a coy smile and took a seat on a chair near the island, plucking the last mandarin out from the fruit bowl and began to peel it in between her fingers.
“Should’ve guessed that’s where it went,” he exhaled a laugh through his nose and began putting some of the items away from the counter and back into their respective homes.
“I guess, you’re feeling hungry?” He asked as he watched her finishing up peeling the mandarin and leaned in over the counter to press one of the orange slices against his lips. He takes it, bursting the sweet citrus fruit between his teeth and watches her plop another wedge between her lips as she bit down and relished in the sweet taste with a little smile.
Her favourite latte is being brewed up in the machine. Hissing with the milk and dripping with the espresso. Topped with the frothy milk just like how she liked it. Holding the latte in her favourite mug in between his hands, he gently settles it in front of her on the island. Leon’s smile mirrors hers as soon as he sees the corners of her mouth upturning. Her head nodding with the cup as she presses it against her lips, taking her first sip.
“And you’re feeling better?”
She nods again.
“Do you think you’re up for a walk outside after?”
/
With Leon’s full breakfast sustaining the both of them, they make their way out of Ada’s home. It’s Ada for the first time out in a few days. Leon’s leather jacket is around her shoulders, shielding her from the cool air. It’s late summer, with bits of red and orange grazing the tips of the trees. The hot sun can no longer fight against the soft cool winds. The purples of the wisteria petals scatter the pathway from her home and towards the street. The quiet homes that surround hers are family homes. Some with children that have already grown and left the nest.
The lawns are mostly perfectly manicured and flower bushes are mostly pruned and trimmed to frame each of the houses. The houses are lived in, with a few windows cracked open and letting in the cool breeze. Each house has its own personality to it. One with a colourful fence. One littered with so many trees you can barely see the front of the house. One with beautiful pale white hydrangea bushes that Ada secretly coveted. One with deep green leafy vines that have overtaken the bricks and shields the windows from the bright sun.
They walk in tandem together. Ada’s steps a bit slower as usual but she keeps up. While Leon slows his pace, trying to match hers. Leon’s hands are tucked into his pockets, his eyes counting on the breaks and cracks on the sidewalk as they pass each one.
“Where are you Leon?” she perks up, noticing how lost looking he was. They turn down another street and pass by more homes, one of them littered with brightly coloured plastic toys on the lawn. Pastel drawings of characters and shapes and letters exploded onto the concrete. A simple children’s game was drawn on one of the driveways. Pastel lines drawn into squares with numbers inside of them. The numbers faded with the childrens repeated steps, while tiny chalk pieces scattered on the edges of the pavement in an array of rainbows.
“I’m not anywhere,” he smiled softly.
“We both know, I know you better than that,” she muttered in the same cadence, reaching over to place her hands in the crook of his arm. His arms hooks into her hands, helping her along as they walked. His stride pauses so briefly, but it’s enough to stall their pace.
His arm unwinds from her, and he takes a moment to orient himself as he reaches for her hand. Splaying his fingers out towards hers and waiting for her to wrap her fingers around his.
Holding her hand as they walked.
It was a simple act, one that most couples enjoy on their first dates. But it was a privilege they took for granted. The innocent act of affection of simple hand holding was one they weren’t given, but one they would grow comfortable with time.
“Do you ever think about us?” He asks to the wind, not turning to ask her for her response.
“What do you mean?” She in return responds to the breeze, her head turning as her hair is brushed against her cheek.
It’s a standoffish response, much like he’s been used to. It’s a wall that he’d been chipping away at for years.
“You know what I mean,” he exhales, his hand retracting a bit as he spoke. His hand splayed into hers, his finger pressing into the palm of hers before wrapping his fingers into hers. A calming gesture that he did that Ada had grown used to. The way he held her hand like this was more intimate, he was present with her; and he needed her to know that.
Passing by another house she finally responds.
“You mean, married, house, picket fence, two kids?” She asks, reading his mind like it were the back of her hand. She really didn’t need all the visual reminders as they explored. Each new house they passed had so many signs of life and family. A used car that they imagined the teenage son used. A “driver in training” placard placed in the back window. Another house with a family van with children bikes left unceremoniously on the lawn. No locks, no chains. This was a safe neighbourhood that was filled with families.
And Ada was living there.
Alone in that little house in the corner, covered in the wisteria trees.
Leon’s head remained still, keeping his eyes on the pavement, watching for cracks and leading her away from those steps.
“I think it’s a fantasy normal people dream about, and some of them get to see it become a reality,” she murmured, her hand more tightly gripping his than normal.
“And what do you think we have?” He turns to ask, needing to see her face for her answer. She lowers her head, her gaze lazily on each new house as they continue walking by. Her head finally dips down, her dark lashes covering her warm brown eyes as she looks at the leaves scattered on the grey sidewalk.
She doesn’t reply.
Act 6: “If I could just forget that night.”
They walk together for the rest of the street. Silence between them and hand in hand until they reach back towards Ada’s home. It’s colder, the weather had not been in their favour. Even Leon feels a chill as he shivers, “maybe this was too long of a walk,” he grimaces as he helps Ada back into her home. His hands grip along the leather of his jacket and shucks it off of her and hangs it onto the empty coat rack nearby.
Her home was one of the more intimate places that they had shared. A secret she held for so long. One she had always at some point wanted to share with him, but the time never came. It was always easier for her to show up in his life. She’d never think he would show up like this over a simple cold. She never wanted to rely on him. But he was still there. She’d taken for granted so many things between them, so many firsts that were under less than desirable circumstances.
Ada retired to her bedroom quickly after their walk. Simply giving him a twist of her head upward and towards the bedroom. She was chilled by the walk and headed to the primary bathroom to fill the porcelain tub. Letting it slowly rise with steamy hot water as she sprinkled in a few oils and soaps to create a more luxurious bath.
Leon stood still in the foyer, lost with his thoughts. Her words alway lingered in his mind, always had since Raccoon City. But her silence somehow echoed louder.
His head turned towards the front door, somehow feeling rejected by her lack of a response. But his eyes caught the shades of metal on each of the doors that kept the world locked out of her little sanctuary. Her little home that she had created. A home that she only had ever given him the keys for. His fingertips graze along the metals, feeling how they were antiqued and brushed with age. Like she had purposely found these locks in these conditions and installed them herself.
The water runs in the home, the pipes making the loud announcement by the rushing sounds. Splashes of water grow louder as he makes his steps towards the hallway to the bedroom and the bathroom. He finds Ada as she sits along the edge, her fingers tracing shapes in the hot water as it rises to nearly the tops of the tub before she turns it off. The faucet drips, the water echoing as it spills the last drops.
Ada sees him, standing in the threshold of the door.
The sides of his lips curl upward, “Need a hand?”
/
Ada had years to grow comfortable with the way Leon’s hands touched her. Always gently, and always carefully. Tentatively watching for her reactions. She knew this, knew that he didn’t want to repeat what happened last time.
Night terrors.
A thousand times worse than your typical nightmare. Darkness always creeped into the edges of her peripheral. Her body paralyzed in fear. But it wasn’t death she feared. She feared the pain of suffocating. Countless times had she been drowning in a sea of bodies and thick gooey dark liquid. Her lifeless body sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss. Ghastly faces met her gaze in the dark waters, almost touching her with their disgusting limbs. Her arms and legs were unable to move, unable to propel her back up towards the surface. Each gasp of air was stolen from her as water leaked into her mouth and filled her lungs. All the memories of when she was child were dredged up in her night terrors. Being abandoned, being lost and tossed away like she was nothing. Fiery cities burning and lost to the chaos of the world she lived in. All of her horrors of her life culminating until-
She’d wake in a panic. Sitting up with tears streaming down her face and still shaking with fear. Her chest in pain and filling with air so quickly but she can’t feel it. Suffocating on nothing as she tightly pressed her hand to her heart. Feeling her rapidly speeding heartbeat and her heaving labouring breaths. Her eyes snapping shut, forcing herself to slow her breathing and begin counting down,
"10,
9,
8,
7,
-"
“Ada?”
Her head violently twisted towards the sound. Leon sat next to her in his bed. It was his soft linen sheets. His window that let in the moonlight every night. This was his bed. His bedroom. Leon’s hands tightly pressed into fists. Eager to grasp her in his embrace, but she had just woken from her nightmare. Her breath doesn’t stabilize, still rapid, her body still twitching from the fear. All of it not real. All of it in her head. But it felt real. Like her lungs were burning, choking her of air.
“You have them too,” he frowned. Naively hoping that she didn’t suffer from the same horrors he did. Ada had seen his nightmares, they were frequent but had slowed in recent years. He was surprised in all the years he spent sharing a bed with her, he hadn’t seen one of hers.
“Night terrors,” she mumbled, her hand in her chest raising to wipe her tears with the back of her hand.
Leon finally reached over for her. His hand raised to rest on her back, something comforting that he’d known she was used to. But her reaction draws his hand back immediately.
She flinches.
Like a terrified animal, she violently crawls away from him, desperately trying to get away from him. Not from him. New hot tears brim at her lashes. Her chest heaving with her cries.
“I’m sorry,” he panics, his breath short. His brows furrowed together tightly, already angry at himself for not realizing it.
“No, I’m sorry,” she cries, unable to stop herself from shedding new tears.
He’d never want to see her like that ever again.
Moments pass. Neither of them sure of how long until her breathing settles. The tears on her cheeks dried. She doesn’t need to explain her night terrors to him, he already knew. His hand laid next to her on the bed, waiting for her to react to him. Waiting for her to meet him in the middle. Leon perks up at the feeling of her hand on his. Gently prying his fingers away from the sheets and pressed into the palm of his hand. Mirroring the same comforting gesture. Waiting to slowly envelope each other fingers. He waits for her, his other hand ghosting along her arm to bring her closer to him. She nods, slowly moving closer until she’s finally settled against his chest.
He can feel her tensing and relaxing. Her body running on fear and adrenaline and slowly crashing. Losing the fight as she finds refuge in his embrace. Her eyes slowly growing tired, her frame getting more and more relaxed in his hold. Waiting until she finally slips back to sleep. He holds her, repeating the same comforting gesture as she sleeps.
Leon doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. The moonlight fading away until the sun peeks along the horizon.
Act 7: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
He helped her strip down to nothing, his warm hands ghosting along her body as he helped pull over his shirt she wore. His knees pressed into the cold tile, taking time to press a kiss on each of her thighs as he dragged her panties down her hips. He watches her from where he kneels, waiting for her as he dragged her panties off from her ankles. Her fingers expertly unclasped the metal of his buckle and unthreads the leather of his belt. The tiny buttons of his dress shirt are pierced out of their holes, his chest exposed inch by inch. He’s groans noticing his jeans were getting soaked with the water that spilled out, and then whines at the realization that he had little clothing at her home.
“I think I only brought one pair of pants,” he pouted.
“I guess you’ll just have to walk around in your birthday suit, Mr. Kennedy,” she teases, her attitude returning as she shucks off the rest of his clothing and sets them on a nearby stool.
The water almost overflows as they sink into the tub. The almost too hot water hugging the both of them. Light bubbles skim the surface, the scent of lavender and roses filling the air.
Ada reminisces on memories, his touch. How he’d always be so careful since that night. Never pushing her too far with what they were doing. They held hands under the water, wrapping his arms around hers as she sat in between his legs. With her pressing her back into his chest, letting her feel his steady heart beat and his relaxing breath. His lips pressed lightly on her neck, waiting for her reaction. The gentle tilt of her head exposes more of her skin, encouraging him as he lays another. He’s always been waiting, reacting only when she did. His thumb rubs her hand in a simple circle before slowly releasing, his fingertips grazing under the water and surfacing towards her shoulder and bushing the short black tendrils of her hair out of the way. Her vision blurs as she closes her eyes, her body reacting to his touch.
Each kiss is carefully placed, never unexpected. Always where she knew it was going to be. Trailing up her neck and caressing her jawline and finishing with a press of his lips on hers. Their kisses were often sensual, slow and reactive to each other.
/
It was whenever they were intimate. Whenever she let him take control. His touches transcended into more than just that. It became second nature to him. He would wait for her. He instinctively knew how to touch her, but he still waited. Waited for any cue from her. A gentle press of his thumb against her bottom lip, watching her eyes dilate into a deep dark black as she silently urged him for more.
She felt his fingers spread her legs, waiting for his hands to touch along her inner thighs, parting her folds with a tentative touch. One that awaited for her to leak onto his fingertips. Waiting for her to grasp onto him, begging him for more before he’d react. His touch on the palm of her hand, readying her as he splayed out her fingers, his thighs pressing her flush against the bed before entering her warm heat.
His lips chased hers. His eyes fixated on her every expression. Her brows knitting together in pleasure, her fluttering lashes as she struggled to keep her eyes on him, her pink lips falling open as he stretched her open. Waiting for her to move him along as she hugged every inch of him. His forehead pressed against hers, his eyes snapping shut, his body electrified with pleasure as held himself back. His c*ck throbbing inside of her, feeling every twitching hug of her walls. Her calls for him were heavenly, opening the doorway for him as he’d draw his hips back before easing back in. His hands remained in hers, keeping her close to him. Holding her as she fell apart around him, thrashing and curling into him. Losing herself to him.
/
“Where are you in your beautiful head?” His voice is warm against her ear. Soft and sweet. The ends of his hair are wet, dragging lines of water on the top of her shoulders.
“Is this enough for you?” She whispers, her lips barely moving with her words.
Unsure of her own question, unsure of Leon’s answer; she eyes the water droplets as they sink down the ivory of the tub, watching them fall into the abyss. She doesn’t want to hear his answer, interrupting any chance for words with her hands cupping the water to spill onto their shoulders.
He doesn’t answer, pressing his chin into her shoulder, sinking into the bath. He doesn’t know the answer. He never has. Never asked if what they had could be more. Time was slipping away from them. It had been ever since Raccoon City. Time was a privilege he wasn’t granted. Time taken away. Taken away from him, taken away from her.
“You’re enough for me,” he smiles.
“You always have had a way with words, haven’t you?”
“Learned from the best,” his smile reaches his eyes.
Even if it wasn’t what their fantasy could be, reality was what they had. And they couldn’t ask for more even if they wanted to. It was enough for her also. Knowing she’d let in the one person that deserved it all.
Act 8: The ties that bind."
The following few days she had finally recovered and was back to normal. Much more perky and alert and ready to go back to work. But when she received the call, she held off on taking the mission. Her fingers wrapped around the burner phone that highlighted the new task along with the compensation for it. Ada Wong, the mercenary wouldn’t take hold of her today. The cold, calculated character she needed to portray to get her work down. Today was just for her. Her and the man that so easily made his way into her heart.
They fell back into their routine, tangled in her sheets. Waking up in the early morning sun with gentle caresses against each other’s faces. A press of the lips to be shared as their first acts of affection for the day. Mingled with the countless caresses and lazy grazing of fingers on warmed naked skin. Her fingers traced the dots and lines on his arms, pressing kisses against the tense muscle and laid a lingering one on his scar. He would do the same, holding her tenderly against his naked chest. His larger hands held hers, pressing them in between their chests as he leaned in close. Peppering fields of kisses on her decollete and against her right shoulder. His kisses are loud, his lips chasing hers, wanting more with a simple nudge of his nose against hers. A smile growing on his face and a mirroring one on hers. The bed falls, redistributing their weight as he lay above her, taking his time with her. Loving her in ways he deserved to give her. It was enough for now. His silent pleas were answered in the form of desperate kisses and the simple call of his name.
/
Her fingers held a pastel lilac book. The edges of it frayed, the pages yellowed. It was one of her favourites, a simple poetry book filled with lovers poems to each other and lines of longing and desire.
Her life was mimicked in the very pages. His sweet smile that she chased. The ocean blues she found escape and lost in was his. The laughter she heard of was his. Her name she only heard in his voice. The prose typed in the pages were meant to hold your heart tenderly, and also squeezed too tightly with simple lines of separate ways. She’d find herself rereading a particular poem. Reciting the words to relive it. A red string of fate that binds two lovers. Her voice was softly singing the words, having the lines almost memorized. Her quiet tone lulling Leon as he laid with his head in her lap. Her free hand threaded through his locks to tease if he were still listening. His quiet, “still listening,” response is his hand reaching for hers, splaying out her fingers and wrapping hers into his. She held him carefully, carrying him with her always.
Even when they part, as they always did. She’d remember the words in the poem, reciting the lines and remembering him as he laid in her lap. His hand in hers, sitting on her couch in the little home she made. Surrounded by the books she’s collected over the years, with the trinkets she’d save. With all of of the flowers she’d picked and displayed. With a small white shell from that trip they shared that Leon had plucked from the sand and given her. With a framed photo of them in which they shared a tender private kiss.
A safe haven made only for her. And he had done the one thing she never thought she’d see a reality. That she’d let him into her life and had her wrapped around his finger.
Summary: it has been two weeks since Nevarro, and Din is still trying to wrap his head around the quest he’s been given. he lands the Crest on a remote, wintery planet so that he can regroup and get his bearings | Happy reading!❤️
Notes: none, this is just a little fluffy winter-themed piece!
It’s too quiet. There’s the rumbling of the engine of course, the ever-present beat of the Crest’s mechanical heart, but apart from that…there is nothing. The deafening quiet of space lingers on the edge of his mind, like a predator hovering just out of sight. It sounds like it always does, after the bounty has been brought on board and sealed in carbonite, when Din is left exactly how he likes things. Alone, with his own thoughts.
Except this time, he isn’t. Silence, it turns out, can be very deceptive.
There is a clank somewhere deep in the hold and Din jumps, tripping over the corner of a storage crate and dropping the tarp he’d been trying to look under.
“Come on, kid…” he mutters, running a flustered hand over the top of his helmet. “Don’t do this to me.”
Something else rattles, ringing sharply through the durasteel. Somewhere in the gloom a little satisfied giggle echoes, a funny trilling sound that makes him smile through the sharp exasperation in his chest. Din sighs, slumping against the crate.
“I know you’re in there,” he tells the selection of equipment around him. There is no answer, but the silence feels bated, interested. Like someone is listening. “You’ve got to come out sooner or later.”
There is another giggle and the sound of many small things tinkling as they fall. Din groans and tips his head back.
“Anything you spill, you clean up on this ship,” he says, trying to be threatening, but even he can hear the defeat in his own voice. When there is more suspiciously long silence, he sighs again and crouches, lifting up the edge of the tarp and turning his heat sensors back on. Cold blue shapes swim muzzily on the HUD, and he’s just about to give up again and move on when a patch of orange flashes by. The little womp rat is back here all right, just as he suspected. A little bloom of relief spreads headily through him, but it’s not enough to dull the panic that has plagued him for the past several hours, from the moment he turned around in the pilot’s chair and realised the kid had vanished.
The orange blur solidifies into a dense blob of red as the child comes out from behind more of the junk that Din has accumulated on jobs. Odds and ends mostly, things bounties had with them when they were taken and he’d kept because they’d looked useful. Boxes of scrap so that he can put the Crest back together when it is inevitably damaged. Stuff one absolutely would not want a small, overly curious infant to have full unrestrained access to. Din has seen the kid put a live frog into his mouth, so his opinion of the little gremlin’s judgement is not especially high. He keeps meaning to clear up, but he has yet to figure out how to baby proof a ship when the baby in question can move things with his mind.
The Razor Crest is not a big ship, but Din has quickly learned that that is very much a matter of perspective. He’d buckle the kid down if he thought it would work, but those little fingers are fast; he figured out the controls on his sleeping pod almost before Din did. The fact of the matter is that the child does not get put anywhere. He will tolerate being placed, if Din is lucky. Today he wasn’t.
The patch of glowing red shifts as Din watches. The child stoops, one small clawed hand reaching out to paw at the ground.
“I can see you, kid.” The red blob straightens, and then the shape of two large ears rotate in his direction. “Yeah, that’s right. We’re landing soon, get out here.”
There is a questioning chirp, and then the child is moving, emerging from the gloom. Din flicks off the heat sensors and looks down into a pair of large brown eyes as a body shuffles up to his leg and latches on to the fabric of his trousers with one hand. The other is closed tight, but Din catches a glint of silver through his fingers.
“Hey, what have you got there?” He plucks the kid up by the back of his robe and tucks him into the crook of one arm, then holds his free hand in front of his face, palm up. “Come on, hand it over.”
The kid makes no verbal response, but his ears flick down once, a dismissal if Din has ever seen one.
“I’m not negotiating,” Din says sternly, but it’s all a lie. He’s already starting to sweat a little at the look the kid gives him.
The child’s ears flicker again before he looks impassively out across the hold, hand held protectively against his midriff. Din keeps up the stalemate for a few moments, then hears something beep urgently in the cockpit. He sighs.
“Look, you give me whatever that is and I feed you. Sound good?”
This makes the child look up almost instantly, shifting in Din’s arms with a soft eager crowing noise. His hand twitches, and Din holds his breath. Then the cockpit beeps again and Din curses, half turning back towards the ladder. The kid has started making innocent burbling noises and is sitting placidly in Din’s arms, as if he hasn’t just dragged a seasoned bounty hunter on a several hour goose chase through the hull.
“I’ll double the jerky,” he pleads, patting the pouch on his belt for emphasis. “Come on kid, work with me here.”
The child grins. His little hand comes up and releases a collection of knuts and wire ends into Din’s palm, which he stows quickly into a pocket. He knows that he lost this round, but he’ll take whatever he can get at this point, so long keeps the kid alive and relatively out of trouble.
They get back into the cockpit just in time for the Crest to drop out of hyperspace, a shuddering rumble and then a familiar lurch sending him scrambling for the controls. There is a breathless, weightless moment as the sweeping dome of a planet materialises below, blotting out the stars. Din studies it quickly. Swirling grey clouds roiling within atmo, and where they break, mottled landscapes of white and green. He checks the navi-computer again for its name: Ayarth 4, cold, settled by mining colonies, covered in forest. Remote enough that not even Din knows it, because bounties clearly don’t stray here often. Perfect, in other words, for anyone that wants to lay low for a while.
As he sits in the pilot’s seat and sets the controls back to manual, Din feels a slight tugging on his boots and glances down to find the kid scaling his leg. He huffs out a laugh and moves his thigh so the womp rat can get a better grip, then can’t help the smile that spreads across his face when the kid drags himself into his lap and promptly sprawls, huffing as he draws his feet up under his robe out of the cold.
“You actually gonna take a nap, huh?” he asks, by now starting to recognise the sleepy droop to the child’s big brown eyes. It never happens when he hopes it will, but right now suits him just fine. The kid doesn’t say anything, but he curls his hand over the lip of Din’s thigh guard and rests his head on the exposed fabric, which seems answer enough.
As he lowers the ship into atmo and starts scanning the frozen ground for signs of civilization, Din reaches down to gently worry one of the baby’s ears between his fingers, sighing heavily to himself. The child weighs next to nothing, but he feels every ounce of the small body curled into his.
The silence presses back in, interrupted this time by the roaring wind outside and the whining groan of the engines, but Din feels it all the same. He’s never minded quiet; when they were young Paz had always been the talker when necessary, happy to utilise the attention his size bestowed upon him so naturally. Din has always preferred to watch. He can read a person’s body, know exactly how they will move next in a fight, but words have too many faces.
Now though…now the silence feels too empty. He knows the deep abyss of space intimately - the feeling of great nothingness and infinite possibility stretching out in front of him. Has welcomed it, even. But there has always been something to go back to, in the past. A tether binding him to the rest of the galaxy throughout the solitary weeks and months drifting through stars. Now though, the covert is gone. They might reassemble, in time, but he has no way to find them even if they do, and so many will be gone. He has his mission, and that alone has kept him going through the two lonely weeks since Nevarro, the image of those piles of empty beskar seared into his mind.
He’s self aware enough to know that he’s running, though. Panicking, almost. When they left, he was just trying to put as much distance between himself and the planet below in case of any straggling imperials that might try to follow their trail. Now they’re just drifting between fuel stations as he tries to fit his head around finding a people he has never heard of, let alone seen. A ‘race of enemy sorcerers’ no less…all he has to work with is a name, Jedi, and the way the kid’s ears perk up when he says it. He’s good at tracking people, good at chasing them to the far reaches of the galaxy and dragging them back to wherever they belong. But this feels like catching smoke.
The kid snuffles in his sleep and his ears twitch as debris thumps against the hull. Din watches his eyelids flicker as he dreams and sighs, directing the Crest down towards a clearing. It’s maybe a mile away from where he can see lights and dwellings nestled among the trees. Far enough away to be discrete, close enough that they can run if he needs.
Dusk is falling when he lands, casting long blue shadows against the white ground. The sky, fractured and fragmented by trees, is bleeding purple and orange from a blood red sun. As the Crest settles the snow hisses, steam billowing up around the hot engines and drifting across the windshield. The baby stirs, blinking sleepily up at Din as he runs cool down checks and flips the safety switches, locking out his codes and setting everything to standby.
“Sorry, kid,” he murmurs, settling one hand at the back of his head. It’s too much to hope that he will go back to sleep. Already his ears are pricking, his head swivelling to focus on the little of the landscape visible through the transparisteel. Din thinks that his eyes are distant sometimes - not absent, but focusing on things that he cannot see. Going beyond. It wouldn’t surprise him if the baby’s strange powers allowed him to see through walls. He can already lift beasts, strangle people and heal them with his mind - what’s one more impossible thing?
Din lifts the child off his lap and sets him in his pod, leaving him to wake up more fully as he heads back into the hold and opens the weapons cache, gearing up in quick, practised motions. The new weight of the jetpack on his shoulders is still a thrill. His last blessing from Armourer. An affirmation that this is the right path, wherever it leads.
As he slings his rifle over his shoulder there is a little chirp. He looks down in time to see the kid’s pod bump gently into the open cache door; the child has his eyes closed and brow furrowed in concentration, his hand raised. Din looks at his gauntlet and sees a little red light blinking on the pod control panel, one that he definitely did not switch on, and sighs, feeling his heart sink.
“Very clever, kid,” he says, even as he resigns himself to never being able to find the child again. “I take it that means you’re ready to go?”
The kid chirps again, giving him a toothy grin that falters into open amazement as the ramp hisses and lowers, revealing a world of muffled, glittering white. Snow has started falling again, a breaker of clouds rolling in to chase out the sunset and bringing the weather change with it. Din stops to wedge a spare scrap of fabric into the pod, looking critically at the child’s ears. He usually keeps the scraps on hand to clean his blasters, but they’ll do for this purpose too.
The kid makes a funny crowing noise, reaching towards all that white, and tilts his head up at Din in silent demand.
“You’ve never seen snow before, huh? It’s cold, so keep that on. And let me know if your ears hurt.” He steps forward and fiddles with the pod controls so that that baby will stay level with him. “Best way to explain it is just to get out there. Come on.”
He finds himself almost excited as he steps out from under the metal plates of the Crest’s belly, keeping half an eye on the kid as he scans their surroundings for any hidden threat. The kid’s mouth opens in toothy delight, his brown eyes going big and dark and intense as he stares up into the darkening sky and the maze of swirling white. His little breaths puff up into the air and he reaches for it, babbling when it slides through his fingers and dissipates into the dusk.
Then, his ears twitch, a quick reflexive motion. The kid turns to look behind him, then makes a disgruntled noise when there’s nothing there. His head tilts as he turns back to this new, interesting landscape, then his ears twitch again, flapping in a manner reminiscent of a sneeze. Din feels a smile creep onto his face as a large snowflake lands on the curve of the baby’s left ear, waiting with bated breath. He can’t stop the laugh ripping out of his throat when sure enough, the ears twitch again.
The kid whines, reaching up to cover his ears with his claws.
“It’s just the snow. It’s like rain, see?” Din says, still chuckling. He lets several flakes settle onto the back of one glove and holds it in front of the kid’s face, watching those clever little eyes latch onto the melting spots of white. The child reaches out to touch and makes a noise of consternation when the snow vanishes, bringing his hand to his mouth. “Yeah you got it, kid. It’s just water.”
He turns back to the Crest and makes sure the ramp retracts, listening for the tell-tale triple click that means the lock has engaged. Mining communities tend to be insular, but not unpleasant. Not scavengers. He doubts there will be any trouble, but then, he thought that the kid would be a regular job, if high stakes. He’s quite done with surprises.
His breath bounces around the inside of his helmet, his boots creaking as they break through the frozen shell of the snow. It’s been a long time since he saw a view like this, even longer since he got to enjoy it.
“I say we head into the settlement and see if we can get some food. What do you think?” He says, turning back to the kid. He’s in time to see his closed eyes, to hear a coo of deep concentration - but what really gets his attention is the small wall of snow shooting towards the child’s outstretched hand.
“No, kid - wait!”
It’s too late. The force of the incoming snow sends the pod skittering, the child within flying backwards with a squeal as he is painted head to toe in white. He shakes his head like a dog, ears springing free. It’s the most disgruntled Din has ever seen him.
“Bet you’re not gonna do that again, huh?” he chuckles, righting the pod and sweeping out the worst of the mess.
The kid just holds his arms out, ears drooping as a lump of snow slides off the tip of his nose. Din huffs out a laugh and picks him up, tucking him under one arm and fishing out the blanket to drape over his legs.
“When we come back later I’ll show you how to make snowballs. You had the right idea, but we’ve gotta work on your technique.” The kid huffs. “You’ve got to admit it was a little bit funny. Now, how about that food?”
The kid coos and settles his weight down, ears lifting as they set off through the trees. Din hones in on the distant flashes of strung up lights and squat houses, a warm orange glow fracturing off the ice. The child curls into the crook of his arm, now content to watch this new world unveil itself instead of bringing it to him, his face scrunching with every breath of wind. As they walk, he winds one small hand around Din’s thumb, his fingers worrying at the smooth orange leather.
Silence falls again, amplified by the way snow muffles everything, suspending them in a long unblemished moment.
But this time, with the kid in his arms and the path stretching out in front of them, Din’s mind settles, crystallizing around the most important truth.
Wherever it may take him, this is exactly where he’s meant to be.
“What’s your name?” “Red.” “No,” the man - Frank - shakes his head. His heart beating a symphony of unease. “That’s not it.”
Notes:
Poems and excerpts taken from (in order of appearence): Unlocking, Alice B. Fogel Deep Red, Kevin Killian The too late poem, Albert Goldbarth Balance, Alice B. Fogel Billy-Ray Belcourt
a brown or black complex variable material resulting from the partial decomposition of plant or animal matter and forming the organic portion of soil.
Trees are born and die, bones turn to humus,
glacier to meadowland.
RED
I’m living in your disgrace
deep red hatched cells
a doll with hands scuttles across the face
of the sea for you
come and get these memories
He wakes up and he’s nothing but the pounding ache, hammering a hole through his brain and out his skull. Nausea plays with his stomach in flips, bitter acid splashes at the back of his tongue, scorching his taste buds in white-hot sting.
He swallows convulsively - he’s numb from his feet to his waist and it recedes like the tide. Feeling returns like glass shards stabbing his thighs, knees, calves, feet. Abdomen flutters with the need to be sick, heat replaces cold and cycles back to heat all over his sweaty skin. Glass shards turn into pins and needles, he finds that moving is possible.
Hands scramble to get a purchase onto something real, scratchy cotton scrapes over his palms as they shake, muscles pulse as if trying to melt right out of his skin. His fingers feel anesthetized, skin tingles all over, merges at the right side of his face. Tingling-
Getting up makes blood rush to all the places that hurt, his perception flickers and darkens in a world that’s already painted in black and splashes of red. Maybe his knees hit the floor, he’s not sure. He’s up again - holding himself tightly to the wooden headrest of a bed before the pain converges to one place; his head. It sharpens into a ringing over his right ear, splitting him open, brain turning into static mush. He’s being taken apart from the inside out.
There are words trying to tumble their way out of his mouth, but he can’t remember how to move his lips, curl his tongue. Knows that M feels like pressing his lips, knows that L gets his tongue to dance in the cage of his teeth, but nothing moves, nothing works. Nausea swirls around once more, doubles his body weight.
He’s oddly aware of his own shaking, then. How his hands tremble and tremble as if convulsing. Moving gets the blood to pool on his legs and the throbbing muscle flares like fireworks under the skin.
He takes a step - falters. Nothing works as it’s supposed to and he pushes. When his knees fail he pulls himself up, his head feeling like an overfilled balloon, brain liquid and heavy. He smells soap and he follows it, follows the only thing that’s not hot-cold pain and the clash of lightheadedness and heavy, pounding ache that tears from his spine, to his neck, to his head and behind his eyes.
The world flickers as if it’s own fire.
And then he’s falling, knees collapsing like a house of cards. He’s unable to keep going - still, he crawls. Shoulders shake in a dance of giving up and giving more, his elbows bruise with the number of times it falls to the ground. He can’t remember half the crawl when he finally reaches the smell of soap - a bathroom.
He has to stand up, so he does. Body begs him to stop, flares in his own perception like lightening. His muscles quiver and crumple, pain screams a high-pitched agony song on all of his limbs. Even as he manages to stand up, he’s still falling, getting pulled into the ground.
He doesn’t know, but it’s not the first time he awakens in the unfamiliar place.
Cold porcelain meets him in a shock of cold and he’s vomiting before he can process the feeling of knees hitting the tiles once more. Barely registers the vile taste coating his tongue for it feels thick and tingling with palpable static as if anesthetized. His head throbs, brain pulses against the cage of his skull. Drills from the center to find surface - he’s a hollow tunnel collapsing inwards.
He vaguely registers he stopped vomiting when vertigo thickens the weight of his head. Digs through his brain on how to make his limbs move, how to get his muscles to work, so he stays slumped in the ground, a pile of failed meat. Feverish eyes scream a bright sting when he blinks - maybe he’s shaking from it, from the pain. Maybe it’s the cold from the tiles under his naked knees.
He tries to come up with an answer to questions he doesn’t know how to formulate - to where he is, why does everything hurt, why can’t he see, why is he alone - but nothing comes. Only the ringing in his right ear and the impermeable fog on his head, cut through only by needle-sharp pain.
Where.
His breath hitches and even the slight movement of his throat feels exhaustive. He forgets mechanics and only focuses on pressing his hands to the floor, finding something solid under his feet. Tries to get up, tries to get ready. Head screams threat even when all he can perceive is soap, his own sweat, copper and the ringing in his ear.
Needs to locate the threats. Find escape routes. Head pulses, throbs-
Where?
The unfamiliarity of the place feels slightly less daunting when he manages to stand up. He doesn’t recognize the cold feeling under his feet, doesn’t recognize the smell of soap or the coppery aroma that gets more noticeable every second that he balances precariously on his legs. He can’t see but he knew where the bathroom was - followed the scent of soap and bleach.
There’s something he has to do.
The thought comes unbidden, penetrates through the fog like knife cutting through cloth. And then it’s all he can think of.
There’s somewhere he has to be. Someone... someone was waiting. Someone needed him. Needed... who.
The thought disappears like smoke with the next pulse of pain against his bone, overworked muscles shake and falter as he grips onto the sink. Swaying side to side, again and again. A swirl of nausea his body mimics from his stomach. And then it’s back. Someone, someone, someone.
Fingers curl around the faucet.
He can’t open it. Right hand refuses to cooperate. His head hurts and the ringing won’t leave. He tips it slightly to the right side only for it to scream bright-white-red pain and his knees try buckling once more.
Someone waiting ( someone needed him) .
He’s there, holding himself to the sink, convinced he’ll fall to the ground again. And this time, he won’t get back up. The world is a black hole but for the fire thickening around him, a botched perception of a sink, a toilet, a shower - but it’s dull and thick like spilling ink.
He’ll fall and sink into the nothing underneath. Melt into insubstantial liquid.
He hurt his head. He hurt something else too.
His head is hurt - how, when, why - doesn’t know. Why is his head hurt? He finds the stitches like a rupture in the embers painting the perception of his own body. Follows the sutures with his fingertips, feels the swelling threatening to pull the threads apart. Almost faints from the pain when he tries pressing lightly into it.
His right ear rings - someone - and keeps ringing, it won’t stop - someone needed him.
Who?
(Get to work).
The erratic thinking is cut through by rhythmic thumping approaching - and then, the world rushes in. A heart, breathing, creaking wooden floor, birds, a deer far away, rustling leaves.
Something is missing and he doesn’t know what.
Someone needed...
Open the faucet. He can’t open the faucet. Thought turns to mush and disappears into nothing, he has one job, he has to open the faucet but he can’t. Fingers fumble but can’t hold a grip.
A solid wall of thumping heartbeat, inflating lungs and straining muscles carrying the smell of rain, smoke and antiseptic clots the doorway, the only escape route. A large hand suddenly intrudes in his space, takes the handle and twists it for him. He stumbles away from the oppressive, undefined form.
Too much battles with his perception - the worms crawling and squirming under the house, the creaking wood, the loud, thunder-like heartbeat, the choir of birds and deer and coyotes and a large, shapeless body of leaves and trees and roots.
It takes the form of a man as he concentrates, limbs sluggish where he tries to protect himself. Maybe he falls, maybe he’s still up. He’s upright, he’s upside down - his head hurts.
The man, for now he’s sure it’s a man, closes the faucet then. Tries to focus on some kind of noise that may or may not be coming out of his mouth, but is deafened by the too-fast sound of his own pulse, loud ringing and the rhythmic war-drum behind, framing the bathroom with its sound waves.
He whimpers, tries to press a hand to his right ear only to yelp at the pain, the sound echoing and stabbing his eardrums viciously. What’s happening? What the hell is happening?
Why does everything hurt? What happened to him?
Too late, the fog whispers back, too late.
“Where am I?” He doesn’t recognize the voice that leaves his own throat, uncertain in its candor. Weak.
A simple thought of what would Stick think? passes through his head before disappearing into the fog, lacerated and torn apart by the sharp ringing. Like everything else - insubstantial. He can’t reach it but it’s there, trapped in the haze. If he could just reach it-
God, his head is killing him.
“Red,” the gruff voice saturates the room and paints it bright. “Can’t be walking yet, go back to bed.” The sound helps him make a picture of himself - the embers lick at the heat gathered tightly in a straight line across his lower abdomen, in a circular wound in his right leg. Hot-white pain brings the nausea back the moment he attempts touching the sutures in his belly and he’s falling again.
The man’s arms are curling around him firmly before his knees manage to hit the ground, a solid weight trapping him and he fights the nausea if only to push the man away with a disgruntled shout. His tongue is thick and dry in his mouth when he makes a second attempt at speech, limbs heavy and unable to come up to protect himself from the stranger.
“No!” His own voice hits the tiles and echoes loudly against his eardrums. “Where am I? W-who are you?” The man’s heartbeat slows right down, the image of him flickers and he tries to grab onto it so he won’t catch him off guard should he attempt to attack. The man’s breath rumbles like the growl of a bear in his chest and he stumbles another step back at the disappointed, choppy rhythm of the man’s pulse.
“You’re in a shack,” he relays carefully, tone neutral and giving him nothing to analyze. “Outside the city. It’s me, Red.”
“No, why... Who, who are you?” He’s barely there when he asks again, mulls over the name again in his head. He’s called him that twice. Tries to savor it in his tongue as if it’ll get it to make any sense, but it doesn’t. He doesn’t know.
Something’s wrong, missing.
He tries to reach for anything that makes sense. Anything at all. The fog sits there, unreachable, unperturbed.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.
“C’mon, Red. You need to sleep the meds off for a while longer.”
A hand approaches him, cutting through the haze. “Don’t!” Red jumps away a few steps from the solid wall of a man, hands reach for him again once his knees try buckling for the second time. “Why do you have me? Let me- let me go-” The tinnitus in his right ear rises to that of a bee hive and he whimpers, head falling forward only for it to pulse dangerously, throbbing in so much pain that he barely registers it.
“It’s Frank, Red.”
It still doesn’t make any sense. Nothing does. “Why do you keep- ah, God,” the skin at the side of his head seems to swell, tries to pull at the stitches when it’s only the pain, bloating larger than life and playing with nausea settling deep in his bones. Adrenaline pulses hot, burning through it, keeping him no his feet. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
The man’s - Frank’s - answer is deliberate when it comes, deceivingly patient. “What else should I call you?” The air leaves him in a sharp exhale, sutures pulling at the side of his head, right over his ear. Can hear it like bending wires, metal against bone. He uses it to center himself, tries to work through the haze with trembling fingers and weak knees. Finds nothing.
“I don’t-”
Too late, the fog repeats, you’re too late.
His eyes sting but he refuses to acknowledge the heavy heat when it fills his eyelids with salt, burns at them. His head pounds as if protesting against it too.
“Red is... fine.” He chokes out, his whole frame shivering as if his skeleton was attempting to jump out of his skin. The man - he forgot his name again, what was it? Grant, Dent, no - steps closer again, palms turned up to show he’s not a threat.
He’s the only real thing he can track, the only thing that makes sense in the midst of all the input. Untouched by the fog even while he’s surrounded by it. Red can make out arms, fingers, a torso, a heartbeat, organs, bones - can’t make sense of his face, not yet. It gets lost among all the flames. Trying to work through the scents only proves him in worst shape, the sound of the man’s stomach digesting coffee and oatmeal almost deafens him.
“Hey,” his voice booms around the room and Red’s knees weaken, the man is there to touch him lightly, callouses meeting elbows. “Hey, I’ll just take you back to bed, c’mon.” The words make sense until the point that they don’t. His brain grabs at what he can; the quality of the man’s - Fred, Frank - voice, deep, stoic and unperturbed. The warmth of his palms, every single ridge of a scar and a callous.
His limbs are heavy by the time they stop moving, knees touching something cushy but coarse. Cotton. Doesn’t want to come anywhere near it, but he can’t fight the pull of every single muscle in his body.
“I have to get back,” he slurs.
“You’re in no shape to do sh*t, Red.”
But he has to get back before curfew. Sister Augustine uses the ruler on the disobedient ones and Matt doesn’t want-
He needs to get back before curfew.
The man is there. Hovering just at the edge of the fog, fingers digging into it and keeping it away from him. Molding his body just right so it doesn’t escape it completely. He feels larger than the world, surrounding him from all sides - mountains surrounding a forest, forest surrounding a cabin...
“It’s okay, kid.”
He lets the tide take him. Large palms pressing him down to sandpaper, the church bells ringing in his ear.
His head is splitting open.
Red cries out as soon as he wakes up, his brain pulsing against the sutures at the side of his head, throbbing. The pain radiates like lightening from it’s roots, an intricate web-patterned mesh of agony right over his right ear, extending to his temple, all over the right side of his head and the back of his eyes. The skin of his right arm feels numb and prickling, his ribs burn and splinters every time his chest rises with a breath.
His lips feel dry and cracking when his parched tongue traces the edges, a foul taste lingering in the inside of his cheeks, over his teeth. His saliva feels thick with dehydration.
“Open,” the gruff voice startles him to action. A rib shifts and another creaks and Red feels another cry dig its nails inside his throat. A large, sunken ship groans in his thorax and his chest stutters up and down with the new ache.
He tries to feel for the coarse fabric irritating his skin - tries to fight, to get the offending hands away, but it’s useless. There are birds chirping outside, loud enough that it feels like their beaks and too-fast-too-loud heartbeats are pressed right against his eardrums. The large, indistinguishable body of roots, dirt and trees extends for as far as his senses can go.
But the birds, they’re everywhere, occupying his insides like their own little cages.
“It’s just water, open up.”
Water. Water sounds good. Hands falter and fighting becomes pulling.
Opening his mouth takes a surprising amount of strength. A rough but surprisingly careful hand tilts his chin back, supporting his head and helping cool liquid slide down his throat and quench the desert-like aridity. Stray drops run down his lips and neck, a stark difference with his slightly overheated skin. Tries to reach up his right hand to steady the man’s wrist only to find it uncooperative, lifting his left one instead.
Red keeps on pushing until the right one eventually joins its twin, grip weak around a thick, scarred forearm.
He holds it tight. The man's not getting his arm back until Matt is finished.
“Slow down, Red, you’ll choke.” He responds to the command automatically, guzzling down gulps of fresh water in a slower rhythm until he finishes what’s left in the bottle. All strength leaves his muscles when he finally lets go. The man’s hands are stop him from falling down abruptly against the mattress.
This man. The man from before. Before... how long ago? Hours? Days?
Some time before. Some time. Red doesn’t linger on it. Cotton sheets catch on the bruises in his skin and he hisses.
“Hey! Stop f***ing moving around!” The man’s voice is pleasantly rough and Red stops, tilting up to hear it more closely, how it caresses the shell of his ear with a deep, gruff timbre. He’s locked in a more gentle, subtle kind of haze, then. The void doesn’t seem as terrifying as it feels inviting. “You had your skull open three days ago. Take it easy, Red.”
He giggled. It was funny. Skulls weren’t supposed to be open, and people weren’t supposed to be named after colors. Red doesn’t know what colors looks like. It’s funny.
“I’ll call you Black, then,” it feels funnier, still, because he isn’t sure he knows what black looks like either. “Dunno what it looks like but errthing’s burning-”
The tingling feeling from before traveled up all the way from his legs to his shoulders and the world went out of focus. He’s oddly aware of his body moving before he went out again. Moving and moving and he couldn’t stop. Muscles tightening and loosening and tightening again. And then he was melting into the cotton sheets, skin feeling oddly detached of his flesh, hanging of him.
Curt... back... seized again, just, come back here.
He feels two powerful arms holding him sideways, a palm cradling his head. His head is overstuffed with cotton balls until they too dissolve, and Red’s drained. He isn’t sure when he manages to move. When reaching out feels like something possible, but it happens before he’s ready for it. He carefully explores the man’s face, the heavy stubble around his jaw and lips. The tight coiling heat of a bruise under one eye.
He smiles. He’s home?
“Dad?”
“Sh*t-” the man, he didn’t sound like Dad, holds his breath before letting it get punched out of his chest. Like he’s in a ring with himself, or maybe with Red. “No, kid, just... Hang in there. Just hang in there.”
The man doesn’t make much sense. Red feels around for him, for a proof of Dad. Feels the thick neck and strong shoulders. The pain coils tightly around the grinding above his right ear. His right arm feels too heavy to keep moving. Too heavy to do anything.
He groans, hands coming to protect his head from the hellfire blazing within, hold it together so it doesn’t get ripped apart from the inside out. Hands appear out of thin air and Red can’t track them fast enough, hear the whistling of nails through air when someone forces something down his throat.
Red fights. He has to find his Dad. He needs to find him or it'll be too late. The hands press him down against sandpaper sheets, feels it scrape at his skin, take a piece of him with it. Red fights it, with everything he has in him. “What did you do to him? Where’s- where’s-” Limbs loosen even when he tries to tense them, tries to fight. The need to sleep comes so suddenly his brain barely catches up to it, fingers still twitching, attempting to grab at something.
The world is black, black, black and Dad’s face disappears with the sky when he hears the bullet. He lays down beside dad’s body in the alleyway, blood dries in the concrete.
“Eat.”
His eyes open like the fluttering wings of the bird right outside the window, picking at its own feathers with its beak. Everything smells of wood, grass, gunpowder and soil, it impregnates every inch of his skin as his eyelashes disturb the air around him. Moves dust particles in a dance of fairy lights he’s not privy to.
He’s not sure how long it’s been since he last woke up. It could be hours. It could be weeks.
The fog is easier to navigate through, this time. It’s thick and omnipresent in every pulse of blood rushing through his body, but Red finds a way around it - can make the picture of his own body in his mind, how it inhabits the space, how it’s positioned in relation to the wooden walls. He can trace his pains back to their sources, although the fatigue stops him short of it.
Every muscle in his body screams of exhaustion.
The man - Frank, he recalls - is there once more. The fog battles the fire as Red unravels the enigma of the heartbeat poised right beside him. Listens to the rush of blood and oxygen to track the edges and contours of the man’s frame. Frank’s big, a shifting solid wall of trained muscles and a too-steady pulse. There’s a certain unwavering confidence in the way his chest expands with every inhale. A man unafraid of anything.
Smells tell him more - gunpowder, gun oil, coffee, nicotine, blood, a lot of antiseptic, enough that it tickles his nose.
He’s soon interrupted when a bowl of oatmeal is shoved in his face, struggling to curl his right hand around it as easily as he does with his left one. He winces once more when a head movement makes agony strike like lightning, rooting from the cloudy epicenter of the wound by his right ear and spreading over the curve of his skull and side of his neck.
“Here,” the man turns to his left, feeling for something in a small fold-up table that smelled strongly of rust. A rough hand reaches for his, dropping two pills inside the shell of his palm. “It’s paracetamol. Curt said I can’t give you NSAIDs.” Red just nods sluggishly, realizing his mistake when the pain flares - whatever Frank says, he has other things to worry about.
Why am I not in a hospital? He wants to ask. But doesn’t. Not yet.
“Why do you smell of guns?” He asks instead. Red’s voice is only a thin thread of what it had been moments earlier. The fatigue is catching up to him quickly - too quickly. The man only snorts and Red tilts his head in slight confusion.
For some reason he can’t fathom, that gives Frank a stop. Heartbeat falters before speeding up imperceptibly.
“What’s my name, Red?” His voice catches on gravel and tar as he speaks, thick and filling the whole room with a sense of foreboding Red can’t help but mirror.
“Frank.”
“Frank what?”
Red frowns, works through the exhaustion to keep upright, oatmeal balanced precariously in his hands. “I don’t know, you tell me.”
“Sh*t,” the man shakes his head, pulse slightly faster still. “What’s your dad’s name?” Red’s eyebrows furrow closer together, analyzing a catch, some kind of implicit cue that he isn’t getting. Sees Dad’s face in his head, bruised and smiling at him.
“Why do you want to know-”
“Just answer the damn question.”
He breathes a bit deeper. “Jack.” Red offers, calmly. Tries to remember his surname but can’t for the life of him form a single letter in his head that feels right. Just Jack. Battlin’ Jack.
“Your mom’s?”
“Dunno. Never met ‘er.” Something clicks, right at the back of his head. A noise. Doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know where it comes from. Another click. He shakes his head.
Frank is quiet. A void where Red’s perceptions usually would reach him - read his heartbeat, the pulling of his muscles, the steadiness of his breathing. He leans with his elbows to his knees, shifting dark smoke against the flames and the fire.
“What’s yours?”
The noise clicks again, his stomach goes cold. Eyes shift uselessly around as if to look for those embers, that bright fire.
“What’s your name?”
“Red.”
“No,” the man - Frank - shakes his head. His heart beating a symphony of unease, of disappointment. A stark contrast to Red’s derailing one. “That’s not it.”
“Does it really matter?” He begs in a breathless voice, heartbeat erratic where it pulses like a drum against his broken ribs. Soft tissue pressing against splintered bone.
“You got yourself in some sh*t, Red,” the fog and the smoke envelop the man and he can barely track him but for his breathing, his heart, his stoic, unperturbed voice. “Some bad guys, they hit you in the head pretty bad. I could see part of your brains when I got there. Have no f***ing clue how you’re alive.”
Frank’s heartbeat changes - accelerates just for a moment, snapping his body to life before he sinks back to the controlled ease. Red feels the pull of sutures on the side of his head. The grinding of bone on bone right over his ear, the feel of metal holding them together.
“Is that why-”
“Why what?”
“I can’t see. Is... no,” no, he remembers Dad fading from his sight. The sky a far away dream. Dad promising it would be okay. “I’m blind.”
The man’s chest stutters in a breath before measuring itself once more. In his slip of control, Red sees him clearly. Smoke fades in the face of the impressionist-like strokes of scent, sound, taste, touch. Can feel the heat as it leaves his body, the bruises blossoming all over his skin, the gunpowder stuck under his nails.
“Yeah, you are.”
The fatigue weights on him, seeps the energy out of his bones like a quiet stream. The oatmeal cools off. “Why is everything so loud?”
Frank sighs, the air leaves him like a prisoner breaking free. Red feels it permeate the air. “I don’t know how you work, Red, really don’t. Just eat and go back to bed. It’ll get better, yeah?”
A skip. Barely there. “Lie,” he mumbles. Frank’s heartbeat is a war-drum, a march of soldiers across no-man’s land. He sounded almost worried. Family? No. Red only ever had his dad. Friend? Unlikely. Red's no good at friends. “Are you my boyfriend?”
Frank snorts without humor. “Nah, Red. You don’t like me very much. Just eat your food.”
He stands up, footsteps fading where the fog dampens the fire. The noise rises in his right ear as he eats, spoonful by spoonful of lukewarm oatmeal. He can’t keep it in his stomach for long.
CONCUSSION
Nothing in the room can go back.
The ashes couldn’t be paper again,
the paper couldn’t return to its parental linen rags.
3 days earlier;
Frank can’t find a pulse. He curses, fingers slides wetly and slips in blood, presses them deeper into the same spot. The puddle keeps growing, nothing thrums under his digits - there’s no f***ing pulse. And he was too goddamn late.
He keeps his hands close to the absence of a heartbeat and hangs his head. Sh*t, this wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. He lets go of the cold, progressively colder neck and curses at the sky, gathering the strength to face Red.
He’s still mumbling, lips twitching and moving uselessly, crimson-tinted. His eyes are huge and dazed as if drugged, eyelashes clumped together with dried blood - he’s covered in it. Envelops him like a second skin, a sick kind of clothing.
He stands up from the wet puddle under his feet, stains the few parts of gray concrete ruby where he steps and crouches by Red’s shivering figure, tries to find the source of the blood dripping down heavily over the side of his neck and painting his dislocated shoulder the color of his old suit.
“Ah f***!” It’s small, can’t be wider than three, maybe four inches and a half, but the broken, elevated bone in Red’s skull gave way to his brain, hidden among tufts of auburn blood-soaked hair.
Frank curses and steps back - has to work through his mind on what he knows of head injuries, anything from boot-camp to his experience on the field. Files the do’s apart from the don’t and what he’s equipped to deal with on his own. Goes through the information with single minded focus as he motions to the side and rips the shirt of a twitching, dying man in the warehouse floor.
The bone hadn’t pierced the brain and there didn’t seem to be any parts pressed inwards, which counted for some measure of relief. He was extra careful moving him even then, supporting his neck. Red was still mumbling, huge eyes blind and lost to the tar-like emptiness surrounding him from all sides.
“Sh*t, Red, work with me. C’mon, kid, work with me.”
“Ahn- mhn- nnn-”
“No,” Jesus Christ, he’s not doing this. He is not going to do this, not here. “No c’mon, kid, you don’t die here.” Frank holds on to a lifeline, attempting to press the cloth to stop the bleeding without disturbing the bone. Shifts his body to wrap a tourniquet around the bullet wound in his thigh, the knife slash across his stomach bleeds freely and gets the too-thin scrap soaking wet. He takes his own jacket off and presses against it, one hand still holding his nape to keep his head off the ground.
It starts off like a twitch before Red’s whole frame seizes. Muscles contract and loosen, Red’s body snaps alive and deteriorates at the same time. Castle uses his whole weight to press his chest down to the blood-stained concrete and keep his neck still so he won’t hurt himself further.
“Come on, Red, hang in there.”
The gunshot to the thigh, the broken ribs, the dislocated shoulder and the slash to the stomach Frank can deal with. Sh*t is way less concerning than the piece of brain he could see and the seizure. Red is a live, pulsing wire in his arms until it seeps off him like an ill-fitting suit and he goes limp in Castle’s arms.
He makes sure to put the shoulder back in place, secures the crimson-tinted wraps around the kid’s right thigh and lower stomach. Shifts him in his arms to brace his neck as best he can without proper equipment and holds the cloth to the bleeding wound.
Thick ruby liquid drips on the ground and splatters his combat boots when Frank gets Red up. He checks the unconscious and dead bodies around them - some mangled to some degree, others beginning to wake up and shook his head. This wasn’t his goddamn mess.
He gets moving. Calculates next steps.
If Frank takes him to the hospital, Red was as good as dead. Whole city would be looking for him, morning came. He sifts through the possibilities in his head before finding the only truly viable solution.
This day couldn’t get any worse.
“Does he need surgery?”
“I don’t know, I-” Frank’s got no time for this bullsh*t. Much less the kid. He takes one careful, deliberate look around the room before slanting his head towards the bloodied threshold; the dead bodies piled outside.
“Your bosses are dead, Doc. You only get out of this alive if I let you, got that?” The wiry man couldn’t be older than fifty, but the severe lines of fear distorted his face, made him look older. Frank studies exit points lazily - he had them memorized by now. “You told me you needed the portable CT. You have it. Does he need surgery?”
“Man, look, I dig bullets out of people, close up stab wounds. I’m not a neurosurgeon!”
Frank looks around, stuck between the restlessness and measured composure. He rubs the handle of his colt at the scar in his head, presses the cold metal against the skull until it stings.
He wasn’t a neurosurgeon, no, but he had good equipment. Everything a mob doctor could need to patch up sh*tbags, including some things Frank was sure was alien tech. The Italian family Frank had been planning on hitting before this whole mess started had a whole hospital fit in a room so they could keep out of sight, out of record.
“See, Doc, people say you’re the best. If they’re wrong, I got no use for you.” Frank clasps his hands in front of his body, feels the tackiness of Red’s drying blood in his palm and presses them more viciously together before loosening his muscles by sections. “Do you know how to do this or not?”
The man’s lower lip trembled, muscle caught in the limbo between giving in and giving out, dark skin shining bright with sweat in the artificial light.
“His dura looks intact. Little extrusion of brain matter... I can,” doc sighs shakily, “I can make a wound debridement, put the bone back in place with some wire and stitch it together. But if his brain starts bleeding or if there’s any internal damage we didn’t see, there’s nothing I can do.”
Frank chances a look at the kid, sprawled out in the metal table. Still mumbling - awake, and still fighting to live with every inch of strength he could gather beneath wax-like skin. The house, painted crimson in blood as it was now, stank of death and piss. His eyes meet the doc’s again, there’s no understanding or truce in the gaze, but acknowledgment. They’re doing this. Frank has no f***ing choice.
“Get ready, doc.”
0500 hours sees the sun far from fully setting in the horizon but the cold is already creeping into Frank’s bones. He abandoned the van he had stolen from the Italians in a ditch far enough away from the forest so it would keep them from looking, although Frank seriously doubted there was anyone left after the bloodbath he left behind.
Wheeling a stretcher through the woods is a challenge on its own but it’s good quality stuff and he makes do, shoving bigger rocks and rotting branches away from their path when necessary, covering his tracks when needed. Red is passed out in between the flimsy see-through sheets, head bandaged neatly with only a few bloody stains seeping through.
The trees eventually give way to his cabin and Curt’s car. He checks the plaque twice, makes sure the numbers are ordered correctly, focusing on details that would give away anything other than the expected. The beehive eating away at his brain settles, if only just as he mulls the numbers over in his head.
Details get past him, sometimes. Spill like water from his grasp, like Red’s blood from the fracture in his head. Splattering in no distinguishable pattern, thick like overheated jelly over Frank’s boots. Can’t help looking at the gauze holding Red’s head together and feeling the tingle over his own scar. The one Bill left him with.
Curt is draping new sheets over the creaking, old bed on the corner when Frank bursts hurriedly through the front door, eyes checking the perimeter, counting the booby traps surrounding them in a backwards order. Tree branch, leaf pile, can grenade, bamboo whip, trip wire, nail spikes.
The room had been scrubbed within an inch of its life and Frank can’t exactly put to words any kind of gratification as he undoes the latches holding Red to the stretcher. He had been up and moving since four in the morning, since the phone call and the warehouse and finding Red mumbling gibberish with his head open and covered in blood that wasn’t only his.
“Curt,” his voice is thick with gravel and tar-like saliva when it croaks out of him, “gotta take a look at that wound.”
“Slow down, Frank, we’ll get to that in sec.” He shakes his head but doesn’t protest further, he won’t interfere with a corpsman’s f***ing work. Never had before and won’t start now. The unease trickles to his jumping fingers and settles in the pit of his stomach like a reassurance - he’s left two battlefields, welcoming a third one. Red, Curt and him and making sure that Red’s brains stayed where they were supposed to.
Curt puts a thermometer in the kid’s ear and holds it with one hand while he carefully untangles the end of the gauze with steady fingers. “Hold this for me,” Frank’s already moving, taking hold of the device and leaving Curt to his work. Had never been this close to the kid without gearing up for a punch and the wrongness is another poke at the wasps’ nest in his head.
“Did he do it right?” The uneven tan of his forearms next to Red’s waxy parlor makes him look fragile like china. “The surgery, he got it right?”
The corpsman exhales a huff - neither a put upon sigh nor a simple breath, something trapped in the mingling lines. “I’d need a head scan to know that.”
Wants to say something useless, waiting for the temperature to stop rising and the thermometer to finally shrill out a warning, if only to see if that would get Red to wake up and stop looking like a corpse. Say something like he’s good. Because he’s an idiot and a sanctimonious a**hole but Red’s good, can’t argue with the truth of it.
“Does it look right?” He doesn’t trust a mob doc to have done it right as he trusts Curt and he certainly didn’t trust one not to give Red’s identity in exchange for safety from the other gangs, and that’s why his body is cooling off with his bosses’ back in the Costa family mansion.
“Doesn’t look infected but it could take a while to set in,” the thermometer beeps. Curt checks it and nods in passing. “Not high enough to be a fever, probably from the shock.” An open palm is presented to him and Frank doesn’t ask him what, just handles Curt the improvised head scan the doc had taken after Frank shoved a gun in the back of his head. His face twists in all kinds of complicated expressions before sighing heavily. “Was he unconscious after the hit?”
“Was awake when I found him. Mumbling sh*t, wasn’t making much sense. Passed out right after I got him to the doc’s table.”
“How long?”
“Two hours maybe.” Isn’t sure, even when he says it. The details get lost in between bracing Red sideways in the table and watching the doc put the fracture piece of bone back in place after dosing him with something, wiring it up together precariously and pulling the torn up skin over it, knitting it together in the shape of a crescent right above Red’s right ear. “The surgeon got the place clean, put that piece of bone back in place and closed it.”
Curt nods, frowning for a different reason entirely as he works the flashlight back and forth over non-responding eyes. “His pupils-”
“He’s blind.”
“Alright,” he took it in stride. Curt’s good at playing civilian but he’s still a soldier. Still trained for the job first, any and everything else later. Frank can't begrudge him for the shake of his head. Frank himself still found hard to believe the sh*t Red pulled without functional eyes. “At least they’re even.” Mumbles offhandedly, barely parting his lips as the slurred words work through the cracks. The blooming bruises starting under Red’s eyes were small but starting to spread. A mock-mask.
Frank remembers it vaguely. Seeing the same bruising under his own eyes in the mirror back then, when that bullet shattered inside his skull and lodged in the soft tissue of his brain.
Curt stands up from his looming, turning the flashlight off and sighing heavily, his whole frame moving with the weight of it that hangs oppressively in the air between them. “Fracture’s not the problem, Frank. They mostly heal on their own. Docs call it a compound fracture.” Curt snaps the gloves off his hands, throwing them over to Frank when he offers his palms.
He sees it coming, sees how the situation downs on him - Curt prepares to fire the big guns and Frank fights the urge to square himself back against it, keeping his pose neutral.
“If he has brain damage, though? He could bleed internally, Frank. His brain could start swelling, he could paralyze, stop breathing. If he gets an infection, the chance of saving him, Frank, Jesus.” Curt shakes his head, every motion a forewarn. “Risk is already high in a hospital, let alone in the middle of nowhere.”
“What do I gotta do, Curt?” He cuts to the chase and the ex-corpsman is none too happy about it, pressing his lips together in silent disapproval. Frank could almost taste it in the air in the way he could still taste the sterilized surgical tools. A stench that wouldn’t go.
“For at least six days, if you’re keeping him here,” he exhales, all the contents in his lungs leaving in a single heave. “You gotta sterilize the room. Clean it at least two times a day. His sheets will need to be changed everyday, his wound cleaned, the bathroom scrubbed every time you use it. You can’t touch him without washing your hands, can’t open the windows or you risk letting in dirt and bacteria.”
Frank rubs a palm through his eyes until the skin around it stings and he moves to pressing his knuckles against his eyeballs, feeling the pressure build up, dark and bright spots dancing at the edges before he lets up.
“Think I can do it here?”
Curt turns to him, eyebrows raised in something that looked like resignation but Frank wouldn’t be all that sure. “You have any other choice?”
It’s a fair question, one Frank would’ve answered truthfully, should’ve gotten the chance. He was nothing if not practical - if there was anywhere else he could’ve safely taken Red to, he would’ve. In a f***ing heartbeat. But there’s nowhere and here they are.
Movement stops them both short of continuing the questioning: twitching fingers sing a prelude to wakening muscles and a dragged out, weak groan. Red moves subtly under the thin stained sheet, left arm fumbling for a grip before he lets go. Frank watches it, taking an involuntary step forward when it twitches again, fingers attempting to hold the fabric before eyes flutter open.
“What’s his name?” Curt’s voice brings him out of the brief uncertainty and Frank’s eyebrows furrow down to meet at the bullseye between them.
“Matthew.”
Curt nods, pulls himself a rickety fold-up chair and sits closer to the bed. “Alright, Matthew,” he starts, his voice dropping to that soothing tone Frank had heard one too many times. “I’ll need you to stay still, you’re really hurt.” He’s dazed, still. Less so than when Frank found him, but his eyes won’t still quite stop moving around lazily. Every single movement too slow, as if limbs were being weighted down to the mattress.
“Mhn,” sounds wrong coming off the kid. Too vulnerable, lacking a fight. Frank clenches his jaw and works his trigger finger against his upper thigh before taking a step to the side.
“Eye response is good, that’s a four.”
Frank’s gaze flickers from Red’s frame, coming back and forth from Curtis and settling back again. “Hell’s that?”
“I need to know his level of consciousness. There’s a scale the docs use to track that. Might need to check it a few times. It usually gets better, but he could also step into a coma.” Frank frowns at the thought of it; locks his stare to Red’s owlish, blinking eyes and lets the severity of the situation wash over him like a wave. “Matthew, can you move your left fingers for me?”
The silence drags viscerally in the wake of it and Frank feels each second like a brand searing into his skin. Numbers lining up at the seam of skin over his vertebrae.
“Matthew,” Curt tries again, “Can you please move your left fingers for me?”
Absence of movement takes a space bigger than Frank would’ve once thought it could. He waits for it - he and Curt hanging onto the edges as they swell, separate the before from the now and all its meanings. The cabin feels larger, all the empty spaces consuming the occupied ones.
“Alright.” A sigh, Curt fumbles for his first aid kit and pulls an unopened suture needle from it. The sheets get pulled from Red’s blood-stained feet, stainless steels puncturing through dermis.
Red’s leg jerks away from the pain like a snapped rubber-band. Curt’s assessing eyes drag to meet Frank’s gaze in doubt.
“Looks voluntary, that’s a five. Not too bad. Matthew,” no response. No head tilting, at least not towards Curt. Red’s a blank sheet with nothing but bruises and stitches holding him together - every inch of him looked wiped clean. “Matthew, can you tell me how you’re feeling?”
“Mhn, mhn-”
“Sh*t,” the curse leaves him in a huff of breath, his eyes go up in useless search of something he wasn’t quite sure he ever fully believed in. Guy upstairs was either very fond of Red or not at all.
“Matthew, can you tell me your name?”
“Mmm, mmm.” Nothing more than sounds. The echo of Red’s words over the phone crackle like static around the shell of his ears, the ghost of his speeches and admonishments like a half-forgotten story he heard from someone else.
“Verbal response is not good, that’s be a two.” Curtis stands up from the chair, flimsy legs creak and cry with the movement, slanting towards the slightly smaller leg precariously. Gloves get pulled off again, thrown to the side. “He’s got moderate TBI at best, Frank. These kinda injuries either get better or they don’t. He could be talking tomorrow and then falling into a coma the day after and there’s not a damn thing you can do here to stop that from happening.” Frank turns his gaze away, locks onto Red’s dazed form instead. “This guy should be in a hospital, Frank!”
“Jesus Christ,” fingers find a thread to pull before ripping it out in a single tug. Frank interlaces them behind his head and he steps around Curt, pacing into the room. There was no doubt before, when he dragged Red away from that warehouse and brought him here. There isn’t going to be any now.
He drops his arms. Turns back to his brother. “How do I know?”
Curt sees it. Knows him long enough to know when he’s got his mind made up about something. “Bleeding,” he offers, an exhausted drag of his consonants, “from the ears, nose, eyes. Pupils dilated unevenly. Fever, seizures, loss of motor function.”
Frank commits it to memory like he once committed the names and addresses from the Cartel, the Irish, the Dogs of Hell. Paralysis, fever, seizure, blood - abort mission, find Red a hospital.
“Any of those happen, I go to the hospital,” turns his eyes up to meet Curt’s, “they’ll be able to help ‘im?”
Curt’s shrug is every inch as tired as his voice had been moments before. “With any luck, maybe.” He turns to sit back down, fingers tracing the rusty edges of the fold-up chair. “You mentioned a mob surgeon?”
“Yeah, was planning on hitting their headquarters a while back,” he scratches at his stubbled chin, eyes fixed on the grime stain on the window pane right by Murdock’s bandaged head. “Guy took a portable scan, ain’t sure if it was any good.”
“Jesus, Frank,” words are just that now; words. No turning back from this and Curt knows. Frank’s gotta do his thing but that won’t stop Curt from doing his - from trying to knock some sense into him. He’ll push and Frank won’t buckle and Curt will eventually fold, if only for the time being. “He’s had head surgery, he should be on a ventilator! Of all the impossible things!”
A hysterical, put upon breath breaks out of him as he sits down. Frank doesn’t offer him anything - it’s not the first time he’ll disappoint him and most certainly not the last.
Frank will do what he gotta do and Curt knows that. Knows him.
The taller man shakes his head once more, fingers rubbing at his eyes. “I’ll take a look at his wounds, make sure they’re clean.” The ex-corpsman dropped his hands from his face, right elbow leaning his weight into his thigh. “You sure you can’t take this guy to a hospital? There’s a serious chance he won’t make it, Frank.”
Unprompted, his mind makes its way back to the bloody two-floor warehouse. The man in the stairs.
“Yeah,” voice leaves in a wisp, barely there, shredded at the end. He clears the thick feeling bloating around his throat, perched under his Adam’s apple. “I’m sure.”
Frank thumbs the edge of the crumpled piece of paper, following Curt’s scrawl with a gunpowder blackened index, dried blood stuck under his short nails. Searches through the sh*t he had raided from the Costas. A bunch of drugs Curt advised him against using, some others that’d come in handy.
Paracetamol, broad spectrum antibiotics - some sedatives, should they need them. A whole bag of cleaning products he had scrounged for and some he had bought. Supplies for his dressings, antibiotic creams and Vaseline, so the bandages won’t stick to the sutures.
Red’s still deep asleep by the time he gets back, Curt reading one of Frank’s books absent-minded in a corner.
They’ve been checking him from hour to hour. Nudging him awake and testing his reflexes. Taking his vitals, his temp, making sure his pupils were even and there was no bleeding.
Frank scrubs the whole place down. Makes sure there’s plenty of antibacterial soap and hand sanitizer around, specially when he changes his bandages. The sutures over Red’s ear were reddish and still swollen and the dressings come out slightly damp with serous fluid and some bleeding, but Curt tells him it’s normal and Frank doesn’t overthink it.
He’s got a job, he’ll do it. And he damn well trusts Curt to do his.
By the time he’s done cleaning, the place doesn’t look the same, something odd creeping through the wooden floors. It’s not even about the stench of cleaning products or the lack of dust settling over furniture, but a presence hanging over the space. Red is a stain making itself known - and even small as he is, kid's got one hell of a presence. Doesn't demand attention but once you see it, it hooks you in and by God it won't let you go.
Twenty-one hours later, Red wakes up on his own for the second time. At first, he’s twisting the sheets in pale, ghostly hands and making sounds leaden with fatigue.
Frank has no idea how he does it. One second he’s pale and slumped in the clean sheets; the next, he’s jumping to his feet, swaying precariously over his toes, breath straining and erratic - shallow, panicked puffs of air leaving him as if he was being punched repeatedly over his ribs.
“Red, calm down,” his voice makes him cry out in shock, which surprises Frank in turn, heart jumping and body gearing up. “Hey, quit it, you gotta lay down.”
“No, no, I have to go, lemme go, I have to-”
Frank attempts an approach, only for the younger man to jump a step back, knee bobbing underneath him like a spring, caught in the limbo between giving in and holding up.
“Red, it’s Castle-” his attempts to appease only serve to incense him more, and Frank can’t say he’s surprised by that.
“Let me, I need to go, I need to, I have to- ”
“Red, you can’t move yet!” Trembling, almost convulsing fingers close tightly around the hilt of a fire iron, dazed, panic-blown eyes jumping from one nothing to another. Curt is a new presence at the threshold when Red unsteadily brings the weaponized tool up to his chest, sweat gathering around his waxy features with the effort of pointing it towards them.
If not for the dressings and bruises and the overall beaten down appearance, Red would look every inch the dangerous fighter Frank knew him to be.
“Where am I?” He asks, a quiet choke of a sound. The bandage around his shot left thigh starts pinkening before the color darkens to ruby red that starts seeping through the gauze. “What’s- I need to go,” his voice wavers again. “I need- let me go.”
Blood drips on the floor from the ruptured stitches.
“Can’t do that, Red.”
“Who are you?” Murdock interrupts again in a burst of sound, shaky as it was, it still echoed around the four old walls. Frank hands it to him, he’s got a lot of fight. Can see the recognition in Curt, too. Red was barely keeping himself together, but still he stood there, holding that fire iron up and displaying every intention to use it if necessary.
“It’s Frank, Red.” He tries a step forward. “Frank Castle.”
“Get away from me!” The marine does, palms up to the opposite wall, suspended in the air with all the things he had no idea how to answer. All the question he’d need to face once- “Where’s... where’s...” Frank sees it happening in those sightless eyes and looks away. Recognition comes and goes but it always, eventually fades. Only serves to allow the question a repetition. “Where’s...”
“Hey, Red, you got your head hurt pretty bad. A lotta sh*t’s gotta be confusing right now, but yer safe here-”
“No no no don’t come any closer!” Can barely recognize the Devil’s voice, the way it splinters in fear and disorientation. The shaking only gets harder, his joints seem to stretch against his skin, limbs jumping away from his torso as if needing to run away. “There’s something wrong-” a sob, broken as anything Frank had ever heard.
“There’s there’s something wrong, I can’t- I can’t-” words mingle and turn to mush, consonants get eaten and mixed into an auditory scrawl. Slurring the middles and catching at the end on hitched sobs. Was a wonder that Murdock still managed to keep standing, the bandage around his leg darkening further into crimson. “There’s something- please, please take me home.”
The distant ringing on his ear turns into a hive, the numbness of the swarm’s fluttering wings.
Take me home, he had said years ago. Head bandaged, no wife, no kids. Dead even if he still didn't know it.
“Take me home, please-”
Murdock’s knees finally give in and Curt steps into the room, the mid afternoon sun painting a dream-like haze over them - over Red’s open sobbing and Curt’s mumbled, comforting words.
“Please, take me home.”
Frank dodges his gaze to the ceiling and leaves the room.
“He doesn’t know his goddamn name, Curt.”
The man sighs dispiritedly in response and Frank wonders if this is where Curt will finally stop indulging him. No such luck. “You don’t know that.”
“Did you see that? Huh? Did you see what I just saw?” The incensed tone barely registers over the ex-corpsman’s features, eyes lazily following the movement of the blunt kitchen knife cutting through the apple in his hand. Curt shakes his head, drops the fruit on the table.
“It’s been barely a day, Frank. He’s been beaten half to death, shot at, stabbed, brained. You’d know something about it?”
“What, you think I did it?”
Deep black eyes search over his face, eyebrows slightly curved upwards, betraying the worry Curt couldn’t keep bottled up. When he finally gives in, he does so with a heavy, exhausted exhale; his whole frame moves with it. “I think you wouldn’t torture someone you think is worth saving, it’s what I think.” Curt shakes his head once more, eyes pressed closed.
Frank’s seen it a million times before. Patience runs right out of him even while Curt tries to hold it as tightly as he can.
“Why is he here, Frank? Who is this guy?”
The question should cut or maim or injure something in him, the way it sounds like a shriek cutting through his eardrums. Slicing through them like butter. No such thing happens - he’s a man sitting by a window with all his systems geared up for a fight and nothing left to face but his friend.
“Have nowhere to send him.”
“That’s bullsh*t, Frank!”
He wasn’t denying it. “All I can give you.” He shrugs, rolls his shoulder back when he feels a healing cut pull at the edges.
Curt steps back from the conversation at the movement and so does Castle. Takes the time to observe the other, how he prepared for another approach, how he studied his angles the way Frank would always study a building’s layout and exits before stepping inside.
“Look, I ain’t asking why a blind man got hurt the way he did,” it sounds like it’s exactly what he means to ask. Frank doesn’t give him anything. “But whoever had him wasn’t a fan. He has broken ribs, his lower abdomen is slashed, his left thigh shot through, his shoulder was clearly dislocated-”
“What do you want, Curt? What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me you’re not neck deep in something too big again, Frank!” His exasperated tone turns desperate, the thick lump of worry suffers metamorphosis, hatches out of its chrysalis like hopelessness, resignation. “You don’t die on me, not again.” He presses his palm against his head, rubs a the tight shaved hair on top. “Sh*t, Frank, what happens when this guy goes into a coma, huh? What happens then?”
“I take him to a hospital.” Frank closes his eyes, lets a long exhale flow out of his system. “Just gotta postpone that sh*tshow as long as I can.”
Curt only stared, dismay a permanent fixture in every pulling, twitching muscle of his face. Frank thinks again about disappointment and bringing Red here. The warehouse and the phone call and the man in the stairs.
“What have you got yourself into, Frank?”
“Got no idea what’s going on, Curt,” not yet. He’s nothing if not tenacious and thickheaded. He has a goal in mind. He’ll achieve it. “No goddamn idea.” The Lieutenant’s eyes find Red’s sleeping figure as if on a whim. The kid was twitching in his sleep, hands moving from time to time.
“Is he the one neck deep-?”
“It always is,” Frank interrupts, pressing his knuckles to the scar over his head. A mirror of Murdock’s. “It’s always a sh*tstorm around Red.”
they say you'll never forget where you were on 9/11 i was nine i sat in the kitchen and watched the television play out the violence hour after hour my child-like mind conflated the Two Towers in Tolkien's literary fantasy with these acts of misanthropy and i was taught at the dinner table that very evening that all of life could be reduced to capital letters defining a cosmic struggle of Good vs. Evil
and yet regardless of their affiliation on this defunct political spectrum of left left left right left politicians canonize a legacy of injustice and oppression and in order to suppress democratic expression they propagate the notion that dissent is treason
because the wars we wage are blessed by the sagely insight of rich old men who sit safely in mansions protected by picket fences as white as their skin while they play off our emotions and turn us into thoughtless sheep content to stomach the whims of politicians propagating vengeance
i will speak this out even when my voice shakes because i have seen the hypocrisy of this war on terror that relies on terror to cultivate more terrorists in order to perpetuate the notion that Orwell posited
war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is bliss isn't it
in my naïveté i rejected the reality of torture and murdered children for i nursed a secret hope that despite the pictures and videos that served as empirical evidence we were still somehow the good guys and they were the bad guys
but Americans rained white phosphorous on Fallujah dropped the world's first and hopefully last atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki we toppled democratically elected socialists whose interests betrayed our self-serving agendas cultivating a policy of extra-judicial assassination regime change is the name of the game just ask the CIA they'd tell you business is booming but then they'd have to kill you
so i switched off my TV screen and picked up books i read Slaughterhouse-V and treasured the way Vonnegut looks at the lives of even bees and butterflies as valuable intoning "so it goes" every time a living thing dies
i read O'Brien's recollections of Vietnam a month later he said that like white lies tall tales and fishermen’s yarns every war story has a bit of truth
and i've seen the proof in the photographs of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay in the aftermath of drone strikes that left pieces of kids scattered across the desert sands of foreign lands
i see the toxic side-effects of systemic violence in the eyes of homeless veterans suffering on the streets with PTSD a flicker of fear livens a deadened gaze at the sound of every backfiring engine as if they're a thousand miles away on some distant shore
betrayed by their own government once again a Purple Heart is a death sentence when there are 22 military suicides a day thanks for your service now die in silence
like bad religion the phrase war crime is rather redundant and i testify not because i aim to disrespect the men and women in uniform on the contrary
when i say F*** war it is because i cherish every brother and every sister who has perished in the churning gears of conflict
they shoved tall tales of hope for a collegiate education and far-flung travel down our throats just sign here right along the dotted line
we want you to march into hellfire we want you to send missiles into tiny huts and villages tracking cell phone signals we want you to sit down shut up and just do as you're told
to every fallen human who has been sent off to fight on behalf of this or any other corrupt nation i sincerely apologize for not taking to the streets to protest a vitriolic ideology
i regret filing my taxes when 54% or more of our budget goes to military expenditures so they could stick an M-16 in your hands and ship you off to die for abstract and so often arbitrary phrases like freedom and justice for all
you were robbed of your liberty by a capitalist system that seeks profit like a false prophet for bank accounts soar in times of war and in my apathy i hammered nails into your coffin
and i pride myself on being an anti-militaristic non-violent anarchist because i don't hate soldiers if i did i would remain silent and apathetic and let the government abuse its youth
i celebrate humanity regardless of ethnicity and creed which is precisely why i despise this system that sacrifices generation after generation for conquest and imperial notions
pray tell will we turn from the error of our ways wake up from this terrorist daze before it's too late and say
the State can try to whitewash history but i refuse to let them brainwash me Notes: I worked as a FORMER Translator/Interpreter.