Work Text:
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
-John Keats, "Ode on Melancholy"
Frank’s world was torn away from him by Karen and Foggy. He opened the door to Red’s apartment, back from a week out of town, to find them packing up the place.
“Frank?” Karen said. Her eyes and nose were red.
“Jesus - Karen, get behind me,” Foggy said, putting an arm out protectively, as if he needed to protect Karen from Frank.
“Where’s Mattie?” Frank growled, taking in the cardboard boxes, Red’s things out of place. She’d be pissed off, if she couldn’t find anything.
Foggy’s face crumpled. Karen covered her mouth with her hand.
“Oh, my God, the clothes…” she muttered.
Frank’s clothes, that he’d kept here.
“What happened?” Frank said.
They told him.
He lost time.
He was sitting on the couch, Karen next to him.
“You were sleeping together,” Foggy said. “Jesus Christ, she had a type.”
“Foggy,” Karen said. Her hand was on Frank’s arm.
“Elektra,” Frank said.
“What?” Karen said.
“That’s what he means,” Frank said. “About her having a type.”
Red had died with Elektra. She’d chosen Elektra.
He looked through the bedroom door, like he had so many times before to see her asleep, silk sheets wrapped around her, protecting her scarred skin.
He wanted to burn the place down, but that wasn’t an option. Instead, he wandered her city, feeling her presence around every corner. He passed the rubble where Midland Circle had been, where she still was. They were digging, but she was forty stories down. It would take months, years to find her, if there was anything left of her.
He’d asked her to bury him next to Maria. She’d never told him what to do if she went first.
He was being written out of her story, both Mattie Murdock’s and Daredevil’s. As far as anyone was concerned, the last time he saw Mattie Murdock was when he was dragged off to Ryker’s. And Daredevil died with Elektra Natchios, saving the city she loved. If they were ever found, they’d be preserved together forever, clasping each other like the bodies in Pompeii.
Her city felt empty, without her. Frank heard the wind whistling through the canyons of the streets, and found himself wondering what she would have heard on it. He knew he should be out there, stepping up to do the job she’d left empty.
On the rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen, it wasn’t hard to follow the sounds of trouble. A fight. A gunshot. Frank slid down a fire escape to help the skinny blond kid fighting three thugs, when the kid ran up the brick wall, flipping backwards over one asshole to kick another one in the face.
Frank remembered Red moving like that.
Only one way to make the gaping wound inside him hurt less, and that was to hurt someone else. He slammed one of the assholes against the wall, head-first. And again. Until a strong arm grabbed him around the chest and pulled him backwards. The asshole slid to the ground, leaving blood on the wall.
Frank twisted and punched the - skinny blond kid - in the face. The kid fell back, brushing away blood from his nose, and raised his hands to fight, but Frank already had a handgun out. The kid took a moment, taking in the situation and the muzzle pointed at his face, then grinned.
Frank felt the cold touch of metal against the side of his neck.
He turned his head, just enough to get the girl in white in his peripheral vision, and she stepped around him, the tip of her sword circling his neck.
“You OK, Danny?” she said, not taking her eyes off of Frank.
“Not even broken,” the kid - Danny - said.
“Drop it,” she said.
“Don’t work that way,” Frank said. “You drop it, or your boyfriend gets a bullet between the eyes.”
She smiled, and that was when Frank realized he was in way over his head. He saw Danny move, faster than any human being had any right, and the gun was on the ground, and the girl kicked him, and for a moment she was wearing red instead of white, and Frank’s back was against the wall.
“You’re the Punisher,” Danny said, shoulder-to-shoulder with the girl. Her sword was inches away from Frank’s nose.
“And you’re Danny Rand,” Frank said, recognizing the face from the news. He spit blood onto the ground at Danny’s feet. “The fuck are you doing in Hell’s Kitchen?”
Danny took a deep breath.
“Paying a debt to a friend,” he said.
Frank snorted. “Red?”
“Daredevil.”
“Yeah, I know who she is.” Frank gestured to the bodies around them. “You think this is going to bring her back?”
Danny raised his chin.
“She asked me to protect her city. So we’re doing that. From people like you.”
“She say that?”
“She didn’t want anyone to get killed.”
Frank stared at the streak of blood on the wall opposite him.
“Didn’t save her,” he said quietly. He took a step to the side, and the girl’s sword followed him. “I’m going. You can put it away.”
He left the gun where it lay on the ground; he had more. He turned his back on Danny Rand and the girl in white and walked away.
Red’s ghost walked behind him as he stalked through her city, but she was always gone when he turned to see her.
At home, at the shitty studio that counted for home today, he stared in the mirror.
He was an inconvenient part of her story, now. All the people in her life, all the ones who’d turned their backs on her, all the ones who had left her at the bottom of a pit to die, they’d decided that he was something her legacy needed to be protected from.
He picked up the electric razor, the one she’d given him when she’d complained that his beard irritated her skin.
None of it had saved her. Not the armor, not the faith, not the refusal to kill. Maybe if she’d been willing to take the easy way, just once, she could have…
The razor buzzed around the sides of his head.
She’d chosen sacrifice, atoning for sins that paled in comparison to his.
He ran his hand over his newly-cropped head, brushing stray hairs into the sink. He looked younger, to his own eyes. The way he had before he’d met her.
He wondered if there was anything left of the person he’d been, anymore.
The assholes who had killed her were dead. The Blacksmith was dead. All he had left were threads to pull, finding the pieces that didn’t quite fit. Then he could rest.
Then, when it was all over, maybe he’d be able to admit he’d loved her.