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Dinah Madani has never been in love.
She has been close, once. In high school. Until she realized the stupidity of romantic love as soon as she left for college; as soon as things fell apart at the whisper of a challenge. So she’s kept things cool since then - one night stands, flings, bar meetups. Once or twice she made the mistake of letting herself care, but it’s been a long time.
And then came Billy. Billy Russo, with his pretty face and his scars and his honesty. I like this , he’d said to her back on the waterfront, when he was lying and she was too close to notice. I like that you trusted me with this.
And so she let herself care. Just a little. And then a little more. And then, too late, after they’d leapt too far past sex into him bathing her, holding her, comforting her - then the penny dropped. Then it became haltingly clear; she was too close. Billy had been an assassin with a pretty face and alternative methods, and she’d let herself look past it.
So she’s tried to ignore things. She’s sure she should be coping instead, but she’s always been better at compartmentalizing than dealing. Even now, even though it’s been three weeks and things have gone back to too normal, and too alien. Frank Castle is dead, again; and not dead, again. She is back to work with the knowledge that she helped, in some small capacity, to bring down the people behind Kandahar. She reminds herself of that every day, every time Sam’s bloody face manifests into her mind.
Of course, Billy is still in the hospital.
It shouldn’t surprise her that she chooses the reckless, awful option of going to see him. She doesn’t know why. Because she needs to have closure, or to gloat, or to spit in his face and tell him she wished he died? She likes none of the options, and all of them. The elevator door dings on his floor.
His room has two beat cops waiting outside of it; less security than she’s comfortable with, and she makes a note to talk to someone about that when she gets back to work. She holds her badge up, waits for them to check the number. And then she’s ushered through - to him.
She can’t see his face. That’s her first, startled thought - that Billy Russo, the pretty liar, the gorgeous thief, has bandages so thoroughly wrapped around his head that she can hardly even see his eyes. She hates it and is relieved by it all at the same time - part of her wanted to see those gorgeous brown eyes one more time, if just to tell herself that she could look at this man she nearly fell for and understand that she despised him.
“Dinah.” Russo greets her coolly, not moving a muscle. Like he was waiting for her. Like he knew she would come.
“I wanted to see you,” she replies as brusquely as she can manage. “I wanted to make sure that you were as close to rotting in hell as you could manage from this side of the veil.”
And he laughs. Laughs, and it sounds real. She tries to connect this with all the other times he’d laughed with her; comforted her; cared for her. Fake, fake, fake. Nothing but lies and manipulation. Nothing but a murderer.
“I think we know which one of us is in the flames, Madani,” he smiles (she thinks), and she straightens her back, clenches her fists as she steps toward him. She loathes herself. She loathes every part of her that cared for him, but she loathes him even more for choosing to be this way. For choosing to lie to her so blatantly; and then turning to bleed everyone he cared about without batting an eye.
“You killed Sam,” she says, reaching a hand to rest on his shoulder. “You are a liar, and a murderer, and you deserve worse than this.” And then she moves the hand, just a little. Just enough that she’s covering his windpipe; just enough that he gasps. And then she steps back.
“Remember, if you are ever free.” She stands with her hands loose at her side, her feet slightly apart; a ready stance. “I will find you. And I will break you, again. Until it’s obvious to everyone what kind of a monster you are.” And then she is done. She turns to leave, and -
“I have had no one .” Billy’s voice is a feral sort of snarl, filled with too many different cadences of rage. “My mother left me. My foster parents hated me. I had nothing and no one, I had worse than no one -”
She remembers, when a grown man tells you you’re pretty, you know nothing good’s coming. She aches for the boy he once was; the boy who was broken, and used, and discarded. But this man in front of her is not him; not a boy, not innocent. So she looks back at him, and then she leaves.
She wallows, after the visit. Relapses into the relieving guilt her memories give her; a constant replay of her time with the murderer of her friend. She deserves this, she’s decided long ago; picks at the scabs of their relationship to remind herself. Your fault, your fault, your fault. Her attempt at atonement.
She goes back to work full-time, and she doesn’t sleep, and she thinks of Sam too much.
Your fault.
She dreams of him, bloody and alone, and of Billy stabbing him while she laughs. While she sobs.
She doesn’t visit the cemetery.