Frank's been in that kind of crazy, so deep in it that he sought it out. Now that he's started crawling out the other side he realizes that he doesn't want to go back. But his brush with the Seminary, that's not a scar, not a real might-have. Just a stop on a straight line where he didn't get off. He can't regret what the Marines gave him, even with what it led to.
He watches Red haul his ass up and get them coffee. "Dumb-ass," he mutters in thanks, fondly, as the heated ceramic is placed in his hands. Takes a burning sip with an appreciative sound. "Hells yes I would have. I woulda pissed in your holy water and chuckled about it."
Matt carries regrets so heavy that it sometimes feels like they'll crush him but he knows that he has to live with those choices. He sees the ways that his decision to put on a mask caused a butterfly effect of destruction in his life but it doesn't mean that he would have gotten a happy ending without it. Probably not. He just would have been less prepared for a fight that feels like it was inevitable.
"Yeah, of course you would've," he replies, smiling faintly over the brim of the mug. "What else did you want to be as a kid? Besides a priest. You know, before my accident, I thought I might have to join the army to get an education. We were poor and I knew a kid whose dad went to school on the GI Bill. Can't quite picture me that way." Swings and roundabouts.
"Bet you were a scrawny kid." Frank muses over the image in his head. He doesn't know much about Red that doesn't start with a kick in the head on a dark rooftop. Red didn't need digging into and he sure as shit already knew how to beat himself up when they met. They might only - still - have a tenuous ally-ship, but Red's never been anywhere close to being on Frank's list. Which leaves a big ol' cluttered room of his past that Frank's never even tried knocking on. He knows the old man's a part of it. And Elektra. But that's about it.
"Y'know I can't see it. You in fatigues, bitch' and moanin' about what's fair and moral in war." His knee's starting to ache. "With that silver tongue though you might have just fast-tracked to JAG. Huh." He snorts, breathes in the steam of the coffee. "Wouldn't look bad in that uniform, though." Red, the confidence in his body even when he's hiding it, buttoned up in sharp Dress Blues.
"But me? Nothin'." His thumb rubs the side of his mug. "There was nothin' except getting out. Creativity ain't my strong suit, Red. There was just my shitty little couple blocks in Queens, and when I was old enough the Marines gave me an out." An out of New York, an aggressive outlet for his rage.
"Yeah, I was. I didn't start putting on any muscle until I started to train after I lost my sight," he answers with a shrug. He knows a lot about Frank because of the case and the trial, but most of that is just words on a page. Second or third hand. He likes these times when they are actually talking and he can get the story directly. Perspectives shift.
He faintly smiles at that, "Without the accident, without all of that, I'm not sure where that morality would've landed. If I could still see, I'm not sure how much time I'd have spent reading Thurgood Marshall and forming strong opinions on social justice." Swings and roundabouts. Different paths. "Pretty sure my dad would've shut that down anyway. He was big on the idea of a better life than the one he had." Not that the opinions of the dead necessarily matter; he solves more things with his fists than Battlin' Jack would've ever wanted him to.
"Was it worth it?" he asks after a moment. "What it cost you compared to the bill coming due if you'd stayed?"
"Dads," Frank says, low, "really know how to swing their weight around." God knows he did, probably too much for how often he was gone. When he was back he felt like he had to make up for it. He knew then how hard that was for his family. He knows it now.
Another long sip of coffee; definitely better than his shit. For a minute he just tastes it and lets the question settle between them. Then:
"Yeah. Every second of it."
He looks into his mug then out the window at New York, the breathing sea of lights that never sleep. He used to hate this city, but Red was right. He's right more often than Frank lets him believe. Frank came back, was pulled back. Wanted to be back. He's no better than the stink of this place, he deserves it and it deserves him. Difference is now he understands that.
"If I hadn't joined I know I wouldn't have met Maria. Wouldn't have been sitting under that tree, at that time, with that guitar. I would have never got to hold my babies, see my face in theirs. Even if I had to do it all again knowing where it would end, I would. I would. I would just hold them tighter while I could."
"Yeah. He's been dead over twenty-five years and I still hear his damn voice in my head," he replies softly. He knows all of the ways that his father sacrificed for him and all the ways that Matt wished that he hadn't, but that feels like another one of those alternate realities. One that haunts him the most.
The answer makes him faintly smile before taking another sip of his coffee. He hears the world outside; the window is open in the kitchen and sound carries but he ignores it for the rhythm of Frank's voice and the steady pull of his heart. "I'm glad you had that," he says simply and leaves it at that. Frank Castle doesn't seek out or want his sympathy and Matt doesn't offer it. He provides only as much understanding as he can muster as someone who never had children but who has lost a hell of a lot in his life. He's buried too many people and that's something they have in common.
"Stick asked me if it was worth it after I buried Elektra. I think he was hoping I'd say no. But it's always worth it."
Frank snorts, shifts just far enough to slide the mug onto the coffee table. Shuffles it a quarter-turn. Wonders if he should pry further but has to be real with himself - he's never met a knife he doesn't want to twist, just to see what more there is. He pushes himself up and heads into the kitchen, the breeze from the window cool on his chest as he opens freezer.
"Watchin' you two..." Down the scope of a rifle. It wasn't his fight, wasn't his kill. But how it played out, well. Frank's hand lingers for a moment against the cold of another ice pack. "Watching you work. That was like watching a goddamned ballet. She was your ride or die?"
"Yeah, that's pretty much Stick in a nutshell. He was an asshole," he replies with a faint laugh.
The question doesn't bother him. He's had time to mourn and he's lost since then so it's hard to quantify where the pain of Elektra's loss starts to mold into others. "You will be surprised to hear this but me and Elektra were complicated." It's a flimsy joke. "She was my college girlfriend. My first love. Maybe my only love, if I'm being real with myself." People had come and gone out of his life before and after her but none held the sway over him that Elektra had. "Yeah. She was. You know that building that fell on me? I was only under it because of her. Once it became clear there wasn't a way out, that we were gonna die together? I found myself at peace with it. Only problem was I didn't."
Frank doesn't understand a whole lot, but he understands what two people who know the guts of each other move like together. It's like finishing each other's sentences but without the need to aggrandize about it: it just is. It's not flash, and bang, it's self-awareness that includes another person as self. He and Maria could move around their kitchen like that. He and Bill, fuckin' Bill, they had that once upon a time when they were shoulder-to-shoulder under a goddamn hailstorm of bullets.
Red and Elektra fought like that. Like they'd ripped into each other far enough to share the blood and came out the other side.
Frank grabs the ice pack and knocks the freezer closed. "Midland Circle? Yeah, I heard about that. Only thing is..." Frank drops back into the chair, chases his knee with the ice. "I don't see how a dead woman got under that building with you."
He and Elektra could move like they shared a single pulse. Cynically, he could say it was because they were trained by the same asshole who had forced them to a collision course with each other in some pathetic attempt to win Matt back to a war he wanted nothing to do with but it had felt like more than that. Especially in the end.
He faintly smiles in response and sets his empty mug aside to go back to resting on the couch. Even going so far as to pull the plush throw blanket off the back of it to wrap around himself while his head settles into a throb instead of a spin. "Yeah. They brought her back from the dead. It's a...long story. She wasn't her at first. But she remembered me. Remembered that I loved her in the end. That's the part that matters." Easy to say when he's just handwaving her return from the dead. "Mourning her twice--that's a bitch."
Frank accepts the hand-wave, though his mouth opens, stays quiet, closes. He knows there's shit out there that's happening that doesn't involve him. That he doesn't want to be involved in. Metas. Crazy shit. So what if it includes resurrection?
Yeah. So what.
"I don't think there's many things in this life anymore than can break me, Red." Frank roughs a hand over the top of his own head before settling his chin in his fist and letting go of a long, slow breath. "But that would do it. Gettin' Maria back, just to--"
Doesn't involve him. Never gonna. There wasn't enough left of her to come back. His hand in his lap is shaking; he curls it into a fist. "I'd eat a fuckin' bullet." The words are nothing but breath and gravel, too low for anyone to hear aside from this man keepin' him company, wrapped in a goddamn blanket and head-injury. Frank gets to his feet, scraping his face with a palm before dropping the ice pack onto the table and moving away. The bathroom door slams behind him.
It wasn't Matt's first introduction to crazy shit but it was a hell of a punch in the gut that, if he's honest with himself, he's not so sure that he's really completely recovered from. Even with all of the years that have passed, it's part of the what-ifs and the alternate realities that he thinks too much about. What if he'd been able to save Elektra? What if they'd just left together and, for once in his life, he didn't do the right thing?
"Yeah. When she came back...she didn't have her heartbeat. I didn't even know I was fighting her at first when she came back and came at me as an enemy. And then...I mean. I guess that's why I was pretty comfortable dying with her." He knows that Frank has taken in the words and lines were drawn. He doesn't follow when he backs away and flees to the bathroom. If he just found out about people coming back from the dead? Yeah, he'd probably do the same.
He stays where he is. He tries to focus elsewhere away from any sounds Frank might make or the way that his pulse is faster. Privacy. Some measure of respect. He listens to the world beyond the room instead. Strains for distant sirens and neighbors and any part of the world that isn't invading Frank Castle's space.
Frank runs the tap. Splashes cold water on his face. Grips the sides of the sink hard enough to turn his knuckles white and stares at himself in the mirror.
He's had a death-wish since his family died, never any use pretending otherwise. His heart was dead but it was still beating so he decided to put those beats to good use. Walking into bullets, abuse, dumb-decisions and dead-ends the way only a suicidal man could, and yet none of it stopped him. He'd said Maria and the kids were worth it and he meant that, he said he'd do it again. But another go-around is different then what Red's told him. That's a second chance. And to lose it...
He knows that he couldn't survive that. The only rage left in him would be pointed inward. He knows it, because he still has nothing else, and can't hold his own eyes in the mirror.
It takes a few minutes for Frank to come out of the bathroom. Walks past Red to pull down two glasses and grab the bottle of good whiskey. Dumps them on the coffee table and pours more than a finger into each before pressing a glass into Red's hand. His pulse is steady now, his breathing even. "I don't know what the fuck we're drinking to. Just feels like..." He shrugs and downs his own pour in a single swallow.
Matt would have been content to die under Midland Circle and there was a time when it felt like it was a tragedy that he hadn't. He's past that, he thinks. For the most part. Sometimes he thinks about Elektra and he wonders if maybe he could have done something different to save them both but in the end, death is supposed to be the end and as much as he hates it, he has to believe that things happened the way they did for some kind of reason. Faith. Blind and stupid faith but he doesn't talk about that part of it.
Frank returns and there's whiskey. He considers telling him that it's really only the celebration stuff, that the mourning whiskey is a different bottle where the taste doesn't matter, but he doesn't.
"To the women we've loved," he says, holding up his glass with a faint, nearly pained smile. "Elektra would've liked you. She didn't hold my same sense of morals so she probably would've loved how you bust my balls about it." He takes a sip of the whiskey and lets it burn on the way down before he drops his head back to the cushion.
Mourning should fucking matter, in every way, up to and including the whiskey. Mourning deserves the highest shelf shit there is.
But Christ, Red.
Christ.
Frank shakes his head and teethes whiskey from his bottom lip. "To the women we've loved," he just repeats, setting the glass back down on the table. Maybe Red's made his amends, made them good enough to say shit like that. It's only fresh to Frank. "To be fair, from what I've seen you know how to pick 'em." Maybe he would have liked Elektra too but they'll never know. Like Maria, she's just an empty shape where a woman once was.
He exhales. Lets it go. "You got anything tonight that needs sewing up? Gonna have to tell me; I can't sniff it out." But the first-aid box was taken out before he got here, so there's something.
There's no way to compare his college love who left his life in tatters and returned to blow it up again to the wife that Frank loved and lost and he wouldn't presume to. Except to know what it is to mourn, they were nothing alike and neither were their relationships. One was a marriage that, from everything Frank has ever said, was built in real love and the other was a love built in a push and pull of light and dark until neither one of them won.
"Foggy used to say my real super power was finding the most beautiful and morally questionable woman in the room," he faintly smiles.
Matt shifts, pushing the ice pack on his ribs over to the side. "No. Thought maybe the inside of my lip but it stopped on its own. Those always feel like mountains instead of molehills. Ribs and my head are enough to deal with for now." He doesn't ask about Frank. He already knows.
That line gets a breath, a laugh, yeah. "Yeah, I can see that. Got a lot fuckin' charm when you've got a tie and a cane." Asshole has an undeniable charm even when he's being an asshole. Frank hates it enough that it circles back around to a grudging respect. "Luckily I don't have the same problem. Never been in danger of anyone accusing me of being charming."
He's drifted during the conversation. Physically. Now he opens the fridge. Just looking. Shooting shitbags always eventually makes him hungry.
"They teach a course on it in law school," he deadpans as he stretches out on the sofa a little more. Elongating his spine feels good and he turns his hips to adjust his back. "You have a special kind of asshole charm." It's not the same thing, of course. Matt can lay it on thick in the straight world of suits and ties and day jobs and Frank doesn't have to these days, but there's still something about Frank that pulls him in all the same. The confidence in himself and that what he's doing is right.
He doesn't pay it much mind when Frank looks for food. There's leftover Korean, ingredients for a salad and a few other staples that would require some cooking to make into anything resembling a meal. He assumes Frank will go with the low energy leftovers.
If confidence was the same as charm, he'd have had a much easier time with all the badges in his life over the last few years.
"Yeah that's what they all tell me," Frank says as he starts opening the tops of leftovers, sniffing. He slides one onto the counter. Then he goes back into the fridge. "That my asshole's got a lot of charm." More shit hits the counter: lettuce, carrots. Two eggs are grabbed from a cutesy little holder like god didn't invent packaging for a reason. "You know I bet I fell into the same trap that everybody does, you tell me."
Water, frying pan, pot, the clickclickwhoosh of a gas burner catching. "Looking through the scope that night, you didn't have your mask on. And I thought, 'shit, Red kinda looks like that shitbird lawyer who never showed up for my case.'" Efficiently pre-cut salad vegetables in the pan, he scrapes them around before starting to open and close cabinets while they begin to sizzle. "But then, right, and it's funny, because the next thought comes - 'nah, that shitbird's blind. No way he's up here on a fuckin' roof in red jammies fighting...' Well, goddamn ninjas, I guess."
Red can probably smell it when the sesame oil is opened up. Soy sauce. Chicken bullion. Staples of anyone with half a taste-bud in New York. They hiss as they hit the pan. Water boils and the two eggs are dropped in. "So I told myself I was crazy and wrote it off. Then the next time I see you - got yourself to a hearing of mine eventually - you said my name. That was it, you know? I couldn't see past either suit, not until you said my name." Vegetables wilt, are stirred. "That's when I knew it, but you know, I'm not so sure most people can. I think most people thought just what I thought - no way a blind guy could be the Devil. Christ, Red. I mean. That right there is some kinda bait and switch."
Matt stays settled on the sofa while Frank makes himself at home in his kitchen. He has no objections. He’s comfortable with Frank’s presence and there are no secrets to be gleaned from the contents of his refrigerator except that he doesn’t take great care of himself. He eats clean when he can and it explains why he has what he does but not how bare it is for everything else.
The story doesn’t surprise him. He knows the broad strokes of it. He smiles while he lays on his side, listening to Frank’s voice and the sizzle. “I heard your heart skip a beat when you figured it out. I knew you had,” he confirms.
“If you want to call it a trap, sure. The same that everyone has. Don’t take it personally.” People tend to. As if they should have pieced it sooner. “I knew who I was defending even if you didn’t know about me. I remembered what you told me in the cemetery. One batch, two batch. I think that’s why I took the case. I knew you were more than a psychopath.”
Yeah, his heart had definitely taken a little tap-dance. A little tap-dance, in fact, had been necessary to get his brain around what he knew, what he saw on that roof and had talked himself out of.
Frank's going to say something about Red knowing who he defending when 'one batch, two batch' wipes it away. The spatula doesn't stop so much as stutter, one off-beat clunk against the side of the pan.
He'd forgotten that. Forgotten explaining it to Red. Hearing it now he can catch the edges of the memory, pry them away from some of the blood loss, pain, rage but... it's not all there. Talkin' about Lisa, yeah, but - not why, not how. Just the smell of the earth, the cold of the stone against his back, the shape of the Devil in the darkness. A Devil who'd saved his ass that night. Who thought - out of everyone else in the city - that he was worth that effort.
"Man you pissed me off that night." A dismissive sniff. Frank dumps the left-over container full of noodles into the pan. "Saving those assholes from me." Frank tips the pot into the sink and turns on the water to cool down the eggs. "I was too pissed off to even be impressed by that bouncing trick shot." Bowls are pulled from a cabinet, a pair.
He winces slightly at the clatter, not from the volume of the sound but because he knows that he has inadvertently struck a nerve with Frank and his memories that he hadn’t intended to pull on. He offers a weak smile of apology in response to it and doesn’t comment further on the remark. Of course he remembers what Frank told him. It was soft and tragic in the wake of a violent, terrible night.
“Is there a night that I haven’t pissed you off?” It seems rhetorical. Probably not. “I didn’t care about your revenge. I just wanted to get you out alive. That’s what matters.” He expects that could spark an argument and he doesn’t want that. Instead, he pushes himself upright with a soft groan since it seems like dinner is almost ready. “Was a pretty good shot though. You sometimes act offended that I call myself blind. I assume that sort of thing is why.”
Eh, he's all fuckin' nerves on his best day. He'll take the silver lining; more that he knows that his shit stinks too, the less of a fuss he'll make the next time it's pointed out. Frank hadn't offered that story to an impartial witness, any ol' Joe Schmoe walking down the street. He offered it to Red, because even though he was pissed at the guy, there was already some of their personal brand of fucked-up trust beginning.
No moral argument tonight, though, or maybe not about the point made: getting Frank out was what mattered to Red. Frank doesn't agree with it in general but that's only his opinion - and it's an opinion tempered by knowing now that he would have never found the real answers behind what happened to his family if he'd died in that place.
A bowl is tucked into Red's hands as Frank once again lowers himself into the chair. "Damn straight it was a pretty good shot. That's what pissed me off." He forks some stir-fry into his mouth, blowing at the heat of it around the chewing and swallowing. "And you're the hot-shot lawyer, you tell me. Is there a legal definition that I'm missing? I know you don't need that cane but I'm guessing when you're reading those big fancy books that you're not seeing the words."
Getting Frank out alive had mattered. Nothing was going to be made better by him dying at the hands of the Irish and he knows that Frank told him that whole story because he'd heard him whisper the words right before guns were fired and because he'd chosen to stay with him next to that gravestone instead of leaving him. They had been in a war together, even for just a night, and Matt had felt trust start there, even if he still didn't have any when it came to Frank's ability to have any semblance of self control. That's why he was there. The angel on his shoulder dressed like a Devil to forcefully still his hand, even if Frank bitched and complained about it.
"I'm legally blind by every definition that would be used to assess me, if that's what you mean," he answers as he waits for the contents of the bowl to cool a little bit. "I can't see color. I can't see screens or words in a book that aren't braille. Sometimes I can feel them, depending on how they were printed, but it's not sight. I have an idea of what you look like because of the sound of the room moves and how your heartbeat and your voice make the noise that vibrates, and from hitting you, from touching you, but I have no idea what color your eyes are. I can't see the sky or a sunset. It's more..." he pauses, tilting his head down while he considers the answer. "It's not all black for me. It's reds. It's like seeing the world on fire. The way people describe it as echo location or sonar or...it's a world burning, all the time."
He doesn't think he's ever really taken the chance to explain it but he knows Frank has made enough sarcastic comments that he probably deserves to actually know what he's fighting next to. "I don't need the cane but I don't navigate the world like someone with normal sight, so it's just easier to put on a facade." He takes a bite. "This is good, by the way. Thanks."
The sarcasm's always come from the fact that Red contradicts himself. He uses a cane and then leaps across rooftops. Fumbles a drink when it's convenient, catches an apple in the next moment. Frank's already seen Red fight - a description now isn't gonna change anything.
"Yeah you're welcome." Almost absent, pushing it away to continue on with the conversation at hand. "Why's it easier - because you'd have to stop and explain to people why you don't act like a blind guy? Easier to meet their expectations?"
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He watches Red haul his ass up and get them coffee. "Dumb-ass," he mutters in thanks, fondly, as the heated ceramic is placed in his hands. Takes a burning sip with an appreciative sound. "Hells yes I would have. I woulda pissed in your holy water and chuckled about it."
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"Yeah, of course you would've," he replies, smiling faintly over the brim of the mug. "What else did you want to be as a kid? Besides a priest. You know, before my accident, I thought I might have to join the army to get an education. We were poor and I knew a kid whose dad went to school on the GI Bill. Can't quite picture me that way." Swings and roundabouts.
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"Y'know I can't see it. You in fatigues, bitch' and moanin' about what's fair and moral in war." His knee's starting to ache. "With that silver tongue though you might have just fast-tracked to JAG. Huh." He snorts, breathes in the steam of the coffee. "Wouldn't look bad in that uniform, though." Red, the confidence in his body even when he's hiding it, buttoned up in sharp Dress Blues.
"But me? Nothin'." His thumb rubs the side of his mug. "There was nothin' except getting out. Creativity ain't my strong suit, Red. There was just my shitty little couple blocks in Queens, and when I was old enough the Marines gave me an out." An out of New York, an aggressive outlet for his rage.
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He faintly smiles at that, "Without the accident, without all of that, I'm not sure where that morality would've landed. If I could still see, I'm not sure how much time I'd have spent reading Thurgood Marshall and forming strong opinions on social justice." Swings and roundabouts. Different paths. "Pretty sure my dad would've shut that down anyway. He was big on the idea of a better life than the one he had." Not that the opinions of the dead necessarily matter; he solves more things with his fists than Battlin' Jack would've ever wanted him to.
"Was it worth it?" he asks after a moment. "What it cost you compared to the bill coming due if you'd stayed?"
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Another long sip of coffee; definitely better than his shit. For a minute he just tastes it and lets the question settle between them. Then:
"Yeah. Every second of it."
He looks into his mug then out the window at New York, the breathing sea of lights that never sleep. He used to hate this city, but Red was right. He's right more often than Frank lets him believe. Frank came back, was pulled back. Wanted to be back. He's no better than the stink of this place, he deserves it and it deserves him. Difference is now he understands that.
"If I hadn't joined I know I wouldn't have met Maria. Wouldn't have been sitting under that tree, at that time, with that guitar. I would have never got to hold my babies, see my face in theirs. Even if I had to do it all again knowing where it would end, I would. I would. I would just hold them tighter while I could."
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The answer makes him faintly smile before taking another sip of his coffee. He hears the world outside; the window is open in the kitchen and sound carries but he ignores it for the rhythm of Frank's voice and the steady pull of his heart. "I'm glad you had that," he says simply and leaves it at that. Frank Castle doesn't seek out or want his sympathy and Matt doesn't offer it. He provides only as much understanding as he can muster as someone who never had children but who has lost a hell of a lot in his life. He's buried too many people and that's something they have in common.
"Stick asked me if it was worth it after I buried Elektra. I think he was hoping I'd say no. But it's always worth it."
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Frank snorts, shifts just far enough to slide the mug onto the coffee table. Shuffles it a quarter-turn. Wonders if he should pry further but has to be real with himself - he's never met a knife he doesn't want to twist, just to see what more there is. He pushes himself up and heads into the kitchen, the breeze from the window cool on his chest as he opens freezer.
"Watchin' you two..." Down the scope of a rifle. It wasn't his fight, wasn't his kill. But how it played out, well. Frank's hand lingers for a moment against the cold of another ice pack. "Watching you work. That was like watching a goddamned ballet. She was your ride or die?"
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The question doesn't bother him. He's had time to mourn and he's lost since then so it's hard to quantify where the pain of Elektra's loss starts to mold into others. "You will be surprised to hear this but me and Elektra were complicated." It's a flimsy joke. "She was my college girlfriend. My first love. Maybe my only love, if I'm being real with myself." People had come and gone out of his life before and after her but none held the sway over him that Elektra had. "Yeah. She was. You know that building that fell on me? I was only under it because of her. Once it became clear there wasn't a way out, that we were gonna die together? I found myself at peace with it. Only problem was I didn't."
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Red and Elektra fought like that. Like they'd ripped into each other far enough to share the blood and came out the other side.
Frank grabs the ice pack and knocks the freezer closed. "Midland Circle? Yeah, I heard about that. Only thing is..." Frank drops back into the chair, chases his knee with the ice. "I don't see how a dead woman got under that building with you."
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He faintly smiles in response and sets his empty mug aside to go back to resting on the couch. Even going so far as to pull the plush throw blanket off the back of it to wrap around himself while his head settles into a throb instead of a spin. "Yeah. They brought her back from the dead. It's a...long story. She wasn't her at first. But she remembered me. Remembered that I loved her in the end. That's the part that matters." Easy to say when he's just handwaving her return from the dead. "Mourning her twice--that's a bitch."
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Yeah. So what.
"I don't think there's many things in this life anymore than can break me, Red." Frank roughs a hand over the top of his own head before settling his chin in his fist and letting go of a long, slow breath. "But that would do it. Gettin' Maria back, just to--"
Doesn't involve him. Never gonna. There wasn't enough left of her to come back. His hand in his lap is shaking; he curls it into a fist. "I'd eat a fuckin' bullet." The words are nothing but breath and gravel, too low for anyone to hear aside from this man keepin' him company, wrapped in a goddamn blanket and head-injury. Frank gets to his feet, scraping his face with a palm before dropping the ice pack onto the table and moving away. The bathroom door slams behind him.
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"Yeah. When she came back...she didn't have her heartbeat. I didn't even know I was fighting her at first when she came back and came at me as an enemy. And then...I mean. I guess that's why I was pretty comfortable dying with her." He knows that Frank has taken in the words and lines were drawn. He doesn't follow when he backs away and flees to the bathroom. If he just found out about people coming back from the dead? Yeah, he'd probably do the same.
He stays where he is. He tries to focus elsewhere away from any sounds Frank might make or the way that his pulse is faster. Privacy. Some measure of respect. He listens to the world beyond the room instead. Strains for distant sirens and neighbors and any part of the world that isn't invading Frank Castle's space.
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He's had a death-wish since his family died, never any use pretending otherwise. His heart was dead but it was still beating so he decided to put those beats to good use. Walking into bullets, abuse, dumb-decisions and dead-ends the way only a suicidal man could, and yet none of it stopped him. He'd said Maria and the kids were worth it and he meant that, he said he'd do it again. But another go-around is different then what Red's told him. That's a second chance. And to lose it...
He knows that he couldn't survive that. The only rage left in him would be pointed inward. He knows it, because he still has nothing else, and can't hold his own eyes in the mirror.
It takes a few minutes for Frank to come out of the bathroom. Walks past Red to pull down two glasses and grab the bottle of good whiskey. Dumps them on the coffee table and pours more than a finger into each before pressing a glass into Red's hand. His pulse is steady now, his breathing even. "I don't know what the fuck we're drinking to. Just feels like..." He shrugs and downs his own pour in a single swallow.
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Frank returns and there's whiskey. He considers telling him that it's really only the celebration stuff, that the mourning whiskey is a different bottle where the taste doesn't matter, but he doesn't.
"To the women we've loved," he says, holding up his glass with a faint, nearly pained smile. "Elektra would've liked you. She didn't hold my same sense of morals so she probably would've loved how you bust my balls about it." He takes a sip of the whiskey and lets it burn on the way down before he drops his head back to the cushion.
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But Christ, Red.
Christ.
Frank shakes his head and teethes whiskey from his bottom lip. "To the women we've loved," he just repeats, setting the glass back down on the table. Maybe Red's made his amends, made them good enough to say shit like that. It's only fresh to Frank. "To be fair, from what I've seen you know how to pick 'em." Maybe he would have liked Elektra too but they'll never know. Like Maria, she's just an empty shape where a woman once was.
He exhales. Lets it go. "You got anything tonight that needs sewing up? Gonna have to tell me; I can't sniff it out." But the first-aid box was taken out before he got here, so there's something.
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"Foggy used to say my real super power was finding the most beautiful and morally questionable woman in the room," he faintly smiles.
Matt shifts, pushing the ice pack on his ribs over to the side. "No. Thought maybe the inside of my lip but it stopped on its own. Those always feel like mountains instead of molehills. Ribs and my head are enough to deal with for now." He doesn't ask about Frank. He already knows.
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He's drifted during the conversation. Physically. Now he opens the fridge. Just looking. Shooting shitbags always eventually makes him hungry.
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He doesn't pay it much mind when Frank looks for food. There's leftover Korean, ingredients for a salad and a few other staples that would require some cooking to make into anything resembling a meal. He assumes Frank will go with the low energy leftovers.
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"Yeah that's what they all tell me," Frank says as he starts opening the tops of leftovers, sniffing. He slides one onto the counter. Then he goes back into the fridge. "That my asshole's got a lot of charm." More shit hits the counter: lettuce, carrots. Two eggs are grabbed from a cutesy little holder like god didn't invent packaging for a reason. "You know I bet I fell into the same trap that everybody does, you tell me."
Water, frying pan, pot, the clickclickwhoosh of a gas burner catching. "Looking through the scope that night, you didn't have your mask on. And I thought, 'shit, Red kinda looks like that shitbird lawyer who never showed up for my case.'" Efficiently pre-cut salad vegetables in the pan, he scrapes them around before starting to open and close cabinets while they begin to sizzle. "But then, right, and it's funny, because the next thought comes - 'nah, that shitbird's blind. No way he's up here on a fuckin' roof in red jammies fighting...' Well, goddamn ninjas, I guess."
Red can probably smell it when the sesame oil is opened up. Soy sauce. Chicken bullion. Staples of anyone with half a taste-bud in New York. They hiss as they hit the pan. Water boils and the two eggs are dropped in. "So I told myself I was crazy and wrote it off. Then the next time I see you - got yourself to a hearing of mine eventually - you said my name. That was it, you know? I couldn't see past either suit, not until you said my name." Vegetables wilt, are stirred. "That's when I knew it, but you know, I'm not so sure most people can. I think most people thought just what I thought - no way a blind guy could be the Devil. Christ, Red. I mean. That right there is some kinda bait and switch."
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The story doesn’t surprise him. He knows the broad strokes of it. He smiles while he lays on his side, listening to Frank’s voice and the sizzle. “I heard your heart skip a beat when you figured it out. I knew you had,” he confirms.
“If you want to call it a trap, sure. The same that everyone has. Don’t take it personally.” People tend to. As if they should have pieced it sooner. “I knew who I was defending even if you didn’t know about me. I remembered what you told me in the cemetery. One batch, two batch. I think that’s why I took the case. I knew you were more than a psychopath.”
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Frank's going to say something about Red knowing who he defending when 'one batch, two batch' wipes it away. The spatula doesn't stop so much as stutter, one off-beat clunk against the side of the pan.
He'd forgotten that. Forgotten explaining it to Red. Hearing it now he can catch the edges of the memory, pry them away from some of the blood loss, pain, rage but... it's not all there. Talkin' about Lisa, yeah, but - not why, not how. Just the smell of the earth, the cold of the stone against his back, the shape of the Devil in the darkness. A Devil who'd saved his ass that night. Who thought - out of everyone else in the city - that he was worth that effort.
"Man you pissed me off that night." A dismissive sniff. Frank dumps the left-over container full of noodles into the pan. "Saving those assholes from me." Frank tips the pot into the sink and turns on the water to cool down the eggs. "I was too pissed off to even be impressed by that bouncing trick shot." Bowls are pulled from a cabinet, a pair.
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“Is there a night that I haven’t pissed you off?” It seems rhetorical. Probably not. “I didn’t care about your revenge. I just wanted to get you out alive. That’s what matters.” He expects that could spark an argument and he doesn’t want that. Instead, he pushes himself upright with a soft groan since it seems like dinner is almost ready. “Was a pretty good shot though. You sometimes act offended that I call myself blind. I assume that sort of thing is why.”
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No moral argument tonight, though, or maybe not about the point made: getting Frank out was what mattered to Red. Frank doesn't agree with it in general but that's only his opinion - and it's an opinion tempered by knowing now that he would have never found the real answers behind what happened to his family if he'd died in that place.
A bowl is tucked into Red's hands as Frank once again lowers himself into the chair. "Damn straight it was a pretty good shot. That's what pissed me off." He forks some stir-fry into his mouth, blowing at the heat of it around the chewing and swallowing. "And you're the hot-shot lawyer, you tell me. Is there a legal definition that I'm missing? I know you don't need that cane but I'm guessing when you're reading those big fancy books that you're not seeing the words."
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"I'm legally blind by every definition that would be used to assess me, if that's what you mean," he answers as he waits for the contents of the bowl to cool a little bit. "I can't see color. I can't see screens or words in a book that aren't braille. Sometimes I can feel them, depending on how they were printed, but it's not sight. I have an idea of what you look like because of the sound of the room moves and how your heartbeat and your voice make the noise that vibrates, and from hitting you, from touching you, but I have no idea what color your eyes are. I can't see the sky or a sunset. It's more..." he pauses, tilting his head down while he considers the answer. "It's not all black for me. It's reds. It's like seeing the world on fire. The way people describe it as echo location or sonar or...it's a world burning, all the time."
He doesn't think he's ever really taken the chance to explain it but he knows Frank has made enough sarcastic comments that he probably deserves to actually know what he's fighting next to. "I don't need the cane but I don't navigate the world like someone with normal sight, so it's just easier to put on a facade." He takes a bite. "This is good, by the way. Thanks."
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"Yeah you're welcome." Almost absent, pushing it away to continue on with the conversation at hand. "Why's it easier - because you'd have to stop and explain to people why you don't act like a blind guy? Easier to meet their expectations?"
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