Chapter Text
3 am, and Frank was being haunted again by the memories of a life that would never come back. Not the warzone, not Afghanistan and not the merry-go round at the park; no, the memories that haunted him were before that inauspicious day. His beloved wife, waking him up for breakfast and then dying after a very clear gunshot. Frank gasped loudly in his tiny apartment, feeling the emptiness of a long lost life and a sudden thud on the wall. It must have been the apartment next door, but with the thud, came the silence, and then Frank was left alone again with his rambling thoughts.
He looked at the ceiling, feeling unsure at the momentary relief to know that at least, the miserable space he called home, was real, but none of the things he wanted were. He hadn’t heard from Karen in months, and he knew she didn’t want to either; she tried to move on and her last words were a cruel reminder.
You’re dead to me
It was so clear in his head; her voice, her slim figure covered by that black camel-coat and the vapor that came from her mouth as she took deep in and out breaths. She was one of the few, alive, things that were clear in his head. He was out of his skull, as he used to say to her, but he knew a few things about the real world. Sometimes he wished he could call her and tell her to meet for coffee or something similar, but he was not a fool. Karen was better off alone without him.
Sobs from the other side of the wall dragged him from his thoughts again; female ones most probably, mixed with yelling, growling and grunting. He rubbed his temple, knowing he was no hero to no one and thinking he shouldn’t involve himself with people in general. He looked at his hands, aching from an untreated open blister, and exhaled deeply, getting up and ready to go to the building he had started working at recently. He didn’t even have bandages to cover it.
Peter Castiglione didn’t have those.
He tried to sink in he was not Frank Castle anymore, or that he shouldn’t be. No more Punisher, no more vigilante work; just a regular man living on his own and making the most of the day, waking up at 3 am because of the nightmares and hearing his neighbors fight.
He hung a light jacket over his broad shoulders and closed the door behind him. In the hallway, he saw a petite woman crying next to a door. She was in very light clothing; just a pair of sports shorts and a loose top that looked more like a short dress from how oversized it was for her. She was crying, or at least in the last phases of it. She wiped the tears with the back of her shaky hands and in inadvertence, Frank saw a trace of dried blood from her bottom lip that seemed unnaturally plumped. He carried on with his walk and even though the guilt crept up and down his back, he pretended to not have seen a damned thing.
He didn’t see the girl again until late the next morning. He was coming back with groceries and she was in the same spot he saw he just hours earlier, only now she had changed position. She was lying in fetal position on the dirty tiles, which were most probably cold and humid, because the whole hallway felt like that too. He didn’t like injustice, that’s why he was the Punisher in the first place, but Peter Castiglione couldn’t get into trouble, not for Frank’s desire to make justice.
He stared for a while, holding the bags tightly in his hands until his knuckles whitened, and then he realized that this was not his problem; neither Peter’s nor Frank’s. He left some bread next to her because he thought she must have not eaten a thing in these hours and then he got inside both his apartment and his thoughts. He was alone with Moby Dick and the burning memories of his family. The oldest of the Castle children, Lisa, playing guitar along with him, and Maria, waking him up in a white and blue dress and the brightest of smiles. Frank could’ve sworn she was there, kissing and touching him, and with that thought in mind, he fell asleep with the book in his hands.
Until it was 3 am again and the awful routine woke him up. It was the same dream; same start and same ending, and apparently, the same real sounds that accompanied it; instead, with the thud didn’t come the silence, but loud cries for someone to stop. High-pitched screams and the wall being punched for the hundredth time; it was usually at this hour, but it could repeat along the day a few more times. Both Peter and Frank had had enough.
He stormed inside the neighbors’ apartment, kicking the door open and looking at the painfully heart-clenching scene. The girl he had seen sleeping in the hall had a purple eye and more blood, fresh this time, coming from her lip; her hair was messed up as if it was forcefully pulled and bruises of all sizes and shades of severity adorned her uncovered legs and arms. She was shaking uncontrollably but it wasn’t cold what had her in that state. It was fear, pure fear.
The couple stopped the minute the splinters flew from the door being opened. The man was holding up his fist and the girl –because she didn’t look old at all— was curled up on the floor.
“What the fuck, man?” The attacker growled. His drunk self awkwardly turned to Frank and he walked, or tried to, towards the Punisher.
Frank was way bigger than him, in all aspects; his shoulders were broader and he was at least a head taller, and Frank had quite a big head himself. The man attacking was thin, so very thin that Frank might have broken him just like a twig. He easily dodged a wobbly punch and in a swift movement of hands, Frank punched him back and made him fall. It was a futile warning because it only made the slim man jump up and get another shot at fighting, but it only got him to a state of unconsciousness. Frank helped the girl that was still curled up on the floor.
She recognized him right away; the beard and long hair could not hide the face of New York’s most dangerous man, and what was worse, Frank Castle was a man that everyone thought dead. She knew there was nothing more reckless than going anywhere with him, but at least if he ever dared to hurt her, it would be a one time only, and then she’d be finally dead.
She crawled towards him and got up on her bare feet. Frank looked around him, the apartment didn’t have much, and it incredibly had less than his own. There was no sight of a bed and perhaps the torn sofa made up as one; there was no wardrobe, but instead, a few duffel bags that were also a useful replacement. Frank promised to not help anyone else, especially after what happened with Schoonover. It had cost one of the realest relationships he had had after his family’s death, and he lost it because of the untamable rage that ran through his veins.
But there she was, a tiny, apparently defenseless, girl that couldn’t be more frightened if she wanted to and Frank thought he would feel even worst if he didn’t do shit about it. At least, that would surely make him sleep a bit better at night.
“Pack your stuff, you can’t be with this douchebag anymore,” Frank said in a low voice as he looked away. “Do you even have stuff to pack?” He looked at the girl with the doe eyes, but she wasn’t looking at him; instead, she looked at the man lying with his eyes closed on the floor. “He’s just knocked out, he’ll wake up in a few hours feeling sore,”
“Why?” She spoke in a barely audible whisper. She couldn’t speak any louder, all the screaming for help had left her with a sore throat and a hoarse voice.
“You guys didn’t let me sleep at any time of the day,” Frank replied simply. “Now come on, I have coffee and a bit of bread at my place,” he started walking towards the torn door and looked at a way of fixing it. “I’ll fix it tomorrow, I think that, for now, you need a shower, and a place to get some real rest,” she nodded silently and walked along with Frank back to his apartment.
She took a deep breath, looking at the man she knew she didn’t love anymore, and trying to get over months of violence. She stopped in her steps and kicked him in the stomach; it was a weak kick, but at least, she had some sort of payback.
Frank welcomed her inside and started making coffee. It was barely 3:30 and even though coffee was a terrible idea, he didn’t have anything else that was warm to offer. He had some bread and jam to eat and he started making sandwiches for both while his neighbor entered the bathroom.
She looked at herself in the mirror, touching her hollow cheeks with her bony fingers. It had been a while since she last saw herself in a mirror. She traced her swollen lip with a bruised hand, thinking about how long her former partner would have taken before he killed her. She would become just another number in the pile of women murdered and that scared her. She washed her face and swore to herself that she would never let that happen again.
The smell of coffee made her smile and dragged her out of the bathroom; there he was, Frank Castle. He seemed less scary with all that extra hair, and actually, the beard gave him a softer, nicer, look. She looked at her feet and realized she hadn’t changed since that day they saw each other in the hallway and she could feel the garments all stiff from the dirt and blood. Frank was sitting on a torn armchair next to the table, which had only one stool that was obviously not matching. She took the stool and placed her hands on the mug. It was so warm that she couldn’t help but to smile weakly.
Frank couldn’t understand how such an innocent creature like her could be trapped into such awful situation. Never in his head would he have thought of hurting a woman, not even as the Punisher; that was just out of the picture. He couldn’t quite grasp why or how any men would hurt women. He saw her as she drank the coffee, how she sighed in relief; relief for the sudden safety found.
“So, do you have a name or something I can call you?” Frank asked in between sips.
“Yes,” she nodded; her voice sounded less raspy, “I’m (Y/N) (Y/L/N), and you’re…?”
“I’m Peter Castiglione,” he hurried to say.
“Yeah, right, and I guess that makes me Madonna,” she chuckled lightly and rolled her eyes. “Look, I might have been beaten up and thrown against a wall a hundred times, therefore my brain has suffered quite a lot, but I am not an idiot,” she looked at her coffee and sighed heavily. “The beard looks cool, it terrifies me a lot less, if I’m allowed to add,”
“Smart mouth? Why weren’t you that smart to get out from there? If I’m allowed to ask…” he repeated her words.
“It’s not that hard to explain,” she shrugged. “Abusive partners manipulate you until you have no free will; that’s what Greg did to me, and although I knew I was being manipulated, I was made believe no one would want me for being a coward,” she rose her eyebrows quickly and had one last sip from her coffee. “It’s a normal behavior on them, but… I guess I was indeed an idiot for not stepping out when he laid his hand on me for the first time,”
“And how do you know that?” Frank asked, his intrigue growing more and more each second. She seemed so sensible that he really couldn’t sink in that she could have let anyone hit her. “You seem quite aware of what an abusive partner does, yet you couldn’t stop it,”
“Yeah, my dad was sort of violent to my mom, well very, and that’s why she left him,” she exhaled heavily, “but it’s very different when you’re there, living it in first person,” she shook her head lightly. “Before everything happens you feel invincible, and you’re like ‘I will never let a man hit me, I am so much better than that’ and all that shit, but you’re not,” she said softly and gulped. “You don’t know what to do when your partner, the person who claims to love you the most, throws the first punch. You never see that shit coming, even though he’s been yelling at you and treating you like garbage for a while. You go along with it because it was just a slip, and they’ll never do that again,” her voice trembled. “And then it happens, again, and then you have to lie at work until your body hurts so much that you can’t go there anymore because you can’t stand the questions and looks,” she stayed in silence for a while. “And when you quit your job, they get furious. They blame you for everything bad that happens, and they hit you again, and you can’t go to any job interview because you’re all bruised and you’ll have to explain that you accidentally hit the cabinet’s door, but you didn’t and they all know you didn’t,” her voice cracked and her chin trembled. “And the cabinet hits you again and again, and then it’s not just the face, it’s your whole body and then you have to say you fell down the stairs over and over again, and you can’t ask for help, because everyone you thought was going to be there is also blaming you for not having enough self-respect, even people you don’t know will judge you, and you begin to question yourself: am I really this worthless?” Her eyes filled with tears and she was shaking now. “Am I really such a coward that I can’t leave a man who does not love me at all? And when you start believing what they tell you, you know there’s no turning back, and that your death will come eventually either as suicide or as homicide,” she burst into tears and hid her face with her hands as she cried all the tears and all the frustration kept for so long.
Frank was tongue tied and so shocked by the normalization of the violence lived that he wasn’t sure what to do, but he knew now that he had to protect her at all costs, even if it meant killing one more person. He himself was a violent person and he even got out of prison the hard way, but even his own carnage for personal revenge had its limits. He placed a hand on her back and gently rubbed it, keeping the silence until he was sure she was not crying anymore. When she got straight again and sniffled the last few tears, (Y/N) looked at Frank feeling a bit silly for spilling everything out with a stranger. She giggled and dried the tracer where tears had been with the back of his hand, wincing swiftly from the pain on both her cheeks.
“I think you need some sleep,” Frank announced just like a dad; it was around 4 in the morning and the night had been quite intense. “Do you have stuff that you need from your old place? I can get them for you while you get a shower or something… And then straight to bed,”
“A white duffel bag inside one of the cabinets, and there’s some money under the sink, it’s all cash,” (Y/N) yawned, stretching her purple arms as if she hadn’t done it in a hundred years. Frank rose an incredulous eyebrow at her, making the question quite obvious. “What? The man was too stoned to remember where he put all his money, besides I was thinking to buy a gun with it,” she shrugged carelessly.
“But then you would’ve gone to prison,” he said matter-of-factly.
“It would have been completely worth the damn,” she smiled weakly and feeling more exhausted than ever. She yawned again and headed towards the bathroom again. “Thank you… Peter,” she nodded. “If it wasn’t for you…” she bit her bottom lip and shrugged, slowly disappearing inside.
Frank shook his head and walked back to (Y/N)’s old apartment. Greg was trying to wake up, and when the Punisher noticed he was awake, he grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and easily lifted him from the floor, pushing him to the wall, making way less noise.
“Listen to me, you little piece of shit,” Frank growled as he placed his forearm under Greg’s throat and a hand on his mouth to keep him silenced. “You will not lay a hand over (Y/N) ever again, you get me? Nod if you do, cause if you yell I’ll throw you out the window,” the scared man beneath him nodded rapidly. “Now pack your bags and leave this shit hole, and if you ever dare hurting another woman I’m going to know, and you wouldn’t want the big, bad Punisher behind your sorry ass, now would you?” Greg shook his head nervously. “Good boy,” Frank let him go at watched as he ran away down the stairs.
He took the duffel bag and the small Tupperware from the places he was told and carried them back to his place. (Y/N) was sleeping, but shaking from the cold because she was not under the cover. Frank scoffed and placed one of his huge jackets over her. She sighed and slowly opened her eyes.
“Peter?” She mumbled sleepily. “What happened?”
“You shitty ex will not bother you again,” he whispered softly as he sat down next to her. “And he will never hurt anyone else; that you can be sure of,” he smiled weakly; (Y/N) replied the smile and snuggled under the warm garment.
“Thank you, Frank,” and after those words, she fell asleep again.