Work Text:
If It Is Broken
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
"The Arrow and the Song" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1845)
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Armor can't serve much purpose
If it is broken.
- Michael Kusi (2018)
The tarpaper roof has long since given up the last of its sun-baked heat to the night. Frank is glad of this as he lays in prone position, powerful scope zeroed in on the waterfront warehouse below.
That bastard is down there somewhere. Christopher McDougal, 54, rap sheet long enough to put the Manhattan yellow pages to shame. Since the age of 18, he's spent just as much time in prison as he has out of it.
But that is just the lesser stuff. The so-called "victimless" crimes. Because no one fucking bothers to scratch the surface enough to see what sort of activities his "victimless" monetary crimes are funding. How he pays hackers to help him keep his activities deep and anonymous. How he rents every apartment in a ramshackle 3-story building—each apartment under a different pseudonym, of course—where he keeps freaks around the world entertained with what he streams for top-dollar from the make-shift studios.
Some of the victims aren't even 10 years old.
Frank clenches his jaw and continues to wait. It's what he does best.
McDougal has apparently been working a side gig as a driver for some of the heavies of Hell's Kitchen, and is one of the drivers from the little convoy that pulled up to the dockside warehouse a while ago. A number of men went inside, including Wilson Fisk. Frank would recognize that bald-headed giant anywhere.
No matter. His business is not with Fisk. It's with—
Gunfire coming from somewhere in the warehouse catches Frank's attention, and before he can quite pinpoint its location, an upper-level window crashes outward. Something splashes into the water below.
Frank zeroes the scope in on the water about where he thought the splash originated. Judging by the shape of the moonlight reflecting on the surface, he can see where something has momentarily disturbed the pattern of ripples. He moves his sight with the current, waiting for whatever it was to surface.
Nothing does.
Shouting voices bring his attention back to the door of the warehouse. Men are spilling out, shouting frantically, guns drawn. The all rush to the north side of the warehouse, toward the mysterious splash. Most run along the dock, obviously hoping to spot whatever it is. A few others run along the bank of the river.
They're not accounting enough for the current, he thinks. Unless whatever it is they're looking for sinks. In which case, why bother looking for the surface of the water?
With guns. The thought hits him like a mallet. The men aren't looking for something, they're looking for someone.
Frank sweeps his scope along the river with renewed intensity. Moonlight, water, lights, asphalted shoreline—all sweep by in horizontal blurs as he scans. He's not sure what he is looking for, but Christopher McDougal will have to wait.
Frank's scope catches on a shape in the water. He tenses. No, it's just an old barrel full of god-knows-what. He—
... no, wait.
There's someone there, clinging to the barrel. The person manages to reach shore, tries to get to their feet, stumbles.
Frank increases magnification and squints through the scope, trying to make out details. He can't see, though, because half of the person's face is wrapped in a mask...
Frank's gut drops with sudden realization. "Son of a bitch," he whispers.
With a sigh and a roll of the eyes, he stows his weapon and rushes to the fire escape. He descends the six stories as fast as his boots will carry him, without sending him tripping ass over teakettle. The metallic rattling of the fire escape stairs ring loud in his ears, and he's sure at any moment the gunmen will note his presence.
The final ladder descends under his weight to the ground, but Frank drops off before it is halfway down. He stands straight to regain his bearings. The shouts still echo from nearer the warehouse than where Red is. At least, for now.
Lips tight, Frank strides with purpose across the access road that separates the building and the warehouses on the dock. The goons with guns are still too focused on the water. Their situational awareness ain't shit, he muses, and he is able to make his way down to the shoreline without being spotted.
He makes his way to get to the masked idiot. "What the fuck are you—"
The rest of Frank's question is cut off when he has to dodge a blow aimed for his head.
But the masked man is too weak to be much of a threat. His own punch throws him off balance, and he falls back into the water.
"It's me, Red. Frank." Frank's eyes dart about. The distant shouting voices are steadily drawing closer. "C'mon, we gotta get you outta here." He gets his arms around the man's torso and heaves him to his feet, noticing but not having time to fully register a number of cuts in the black clothing.
They'll have to deal with that later.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
The safehouse Frank has been using the past couple of weeks is too far away, and the masked man is in no condition to travel under his own steam. Even if Frank could carry him that far—the scrawny bastard is actually heavier than he looks—he couldn't do it without drawing a lot of unwanted attention from everyone on the street.
It's too dark yet for a proper examination, and right now Frank’s goal is to get them holed up safely—but there are enough cuts in Red’s clothing to tell Frank that the other man will probably need at least a few stitches.
But the farther they travel, the more of Red's weight Frank has to support, until he is all but carrying him while his feet shuffle along beneath him.
And he is being quiet.
Red is never quiet.
He's gonna be in rougher shape than I thought...
"C'mon, Red, up here."
Frank maneuvers them up a couple of steps to a nondescript building. The doorway opens onto a set of narrow, steep stairs, with only old plaster walls on either side.
He is about to ask, "Think you can make it?" when Red groans and slumps against the wall.
"Shit!" Quick action gets Frank under him before he can fall to the floor.
Instead, Red flops loosely over the Marine's shoulder.
With a grunt, Frank hoists him up into a fireman's carry and, using the walls on either side to help him balance, takes Red upstairs to his safehouse.
Once inside the bare apartment, Frank starts toward the sofa... but on second thought, he decides that the light in the living room is inadequate; he’s pretty sure he’s about to have to apply every little bit of knowledge he picked up from medics and battlefield first aid. His focus needs to be on examining and repairing Red, not making him comfortable.
The barebones apartment doesn’t have a kitchen table, but it has a bar countertop that separates the kitchen from the living room. Frank lays the masked man upon it and flicks on the lights.
For the first time, he gets an idea of Red’s injuries.
“Jesus Christ,” he says in a low voice. Wonders how the other man managed to not drown in the river. Wonders how he managed to make it almost to the safehouse upright, despite Frank’s assistance. Wonders how he’s not dead.
The calm washes over him then. The calm he sometimes felt in battle right before the shit really hit the fan. Frank has a clear task before him, and he needs to act.
Because this location is not his primary safehouse, it is not as well-stocked as it might have been otherwise. There are the basics: some non-perishable food, bottled water, a couple of hand guns and ammo, some toiletries, a couple changes of clothes, and first-aid supplies. The medical supplies are much more than what the average household would have on hand, but they are still basics—items meant to help hold a soldier together long enough until they could be transported to proper medical facilities (items he means to use to keep himself going as long as possible, to take out as many of Them as possible).
Frank takes a breath, scrubs his hands, cuts away the black clothing—wet with blood and river water—and, after the briefest hesitation, peels off the the mask and tosses it aside. "How do you see outta this thing anyway?" he mutters.
For the first time, he lays eyes on the whole of Red's face. He's in too much of a hurry to fully appreciate the beauty of the man before him, but on some level, something in him kneels in speechless wonder while the rest of him sets to work prioritizing the injuries.
There are so many injuries.
There is a particularly horrific wound on his upper right side that seems to be the source of most of the bleeding. So that is where Frank begins. It goes deep. So deep. It will be a miracle if vital organs haven't been lacerated.
Frank carefully but quickly packs that wound with gauze, eliciting a sharp yelp that tapers off to a whimper from the unconscious man.
“Sorry ‘bout that, Red,” Frank says, hoping somewhere Red can hear him. Wishing he had a name other than 'Red' to call him by, even though he knows that will always be his name for him. “Gotta get this bleeding under control.”
No time to close up that wound. Not yet. He rolls Red onto his left side so that he can get at the open gashes there. They’re deep but not catastrophic. Frank slaps some gauze onto those as well before rolling him over again onto his back, letting the man’s own weight provide pressure to help staunch the wounds there. There are dozens of smaller cuts and scrapes that are no longer bleeding; Frank ignores them for now.
An unknown length of time passes during all of this. Only the slow, metronomic dripping of the kitchen faucet behind Frank and the gradual strengthening of light showing through gaps in the curtains mark the passage of time, though not with any measurement Frank can readily interpret. Adrenaline and urgency keep him alert. However, he feels a crash coming on the heels of all this.
Once all of the bleeding wounds have been addressed, Frank turns his attention again to the terrible wound in man’s side. He wants to check the status of the bleeding, but hesitates. Thinks he remembers somewhere that he should put new gauze on top of old, that removing the old gauze now might get the bleeding started again.
“This is beyond me, Red,” Frank says, not expecting an answer.
But to his surprise, Red rolls his eyes open and gasps, “Phone. Claire.”
Frank blinks for a second, then goes to the wet trousers crumpled in a couple of pieces on the kitchen floor. He feels around and finds a low-tech burner phone in a pocket. When he flips open its face and presses buttons, the screen stays dark. “It got too wet. Not working.” Frank snaps the phone shut and and tosses it on the counter by the sink. “I can drop you off at a hosp—“
A hand darts out and clasps Frank’s wrist.
So fast, Frank muses in astonishment. Even when he’s more than half dead, he’s so fast...
“No...” A gasped breath. “Hospitals.”
Frank looks down at the hand grasping his wrist with failing strength. “Red, you could very well be dying on me...”
“That’s ok.” This comes out fast, as though he isn’t sure how many breaths he has left and wants to pack as many words onto them as possible. “Let me die.” Gasp. Eyelids flutter. “No... hos... pitahhh...”
The final syllable turns into a sigh and seems to burn up the last of his strength, the last of his consciousness. His eyes—which never did lock onto him, Frank notes with some unease—roll to show the whites, and his body goes limp.
For a moment, Frank stands uncertain on what to make of that. Goddamned martyr complex, he muses. But in a way, Red has also freed Frank to make mistakes. There’s some difference, in his head, between "doing something wrong that will cause Red’s death" and "doing everything he can to cause Red's life."
“All right, Red,” he says to the unconscious man. “Double or nothin.”
Frank works well into the day, using antiseptics on the open wounds and closing them up with clumsy stitches. He cleans the dried blood from around the area before applying more gauze as dressing and taping it into place. The process repeats on the wounds on the back, across both of his forearms (they line up to reveal the path of a single blade strike; he must have been holding his arms up in an attempt to block), his legs.
Finally, grainy-eyed with fatigue, Frank tends the dozens of small cuts. Mending them with butterfly closures and regular ol’ band-aids seems laughably amateurish compared to what he has been doing for the past... how many hours? It was still dark when the pair arrived at the safehouse; now the sunlight peeking through gaps in the curtains is nearing the strength of midday.
Frank doesn’t trust the stitches enough to carry Red into the bedroom, so instead he drags the single-size mattress into the living room, pushes it as near the bar as it will go, and lowers the unconscious man onto it.
Staggering under his own fatigue, Frank retrieves the blanket from the bedroom and covers the other man. And, with nothing else in his power that he can do, he collapses onto the couch and falls into a dreamless sleep.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
A harsh sound jerks Frank from his sleep and has him sitting upright instantly, brain racing to orient himself. Dark outside. Kitchen light on. He was asleep on the couch. The sound...
His eyes zero in on the form lying on the mattress on the floor nearby. Red's eyes are open wide, panicked. He gasps for breath, and it is obvious that each gasp brings a new agony.
Frank is kneeling by his side in an instant, not even remembering his move from the couch to the mattress. "Red? Shit!"
He detests this sense of uncertainty and helplessness. He hasn't felt uncertain since That Day, when he didn't know how he was supposed to move on with his life. Regained a sense of purpose when he decided on his mission. Hasn't felt helpless since he lost all hope.
So why have these feelings returned? For a masked stranger who has traded more blows with Frank than anyone else ever has?
But he has seen something like this before. In the desert. The concussion from the blast of an IED knocked them all off their feet. The ones who were lucky. Some no longer had feet to be knocked off of.
He remembers the kid they called Kansas, gasping in much the same way Red is now. Remembers the field medic moving in with a sureness Frank wishes he felt now.
"Pneumothorax," Frank says, pronouncing the word even as he hears it in his memories. "I think you have a pneumothorax."
He jumps to his feet, grabs the medical kit he used earlier—supplies all but completely exhausted now—and a small flashlight. Fuck the dim lighting in here.
"Which side, Red?" he demands, returning with the supplies. "Which side hurts?"
A pale hand flaps weakly at his upper right chest.
"All right, hang on." Frank kneels on that side, swabs alcohol in the area (he's not sure where exactly he's going, so he settles for mostly pouring it over a sizable section of the exposed skin), and fixes the largest gauge hypodermic needle he has to a large syringe.
Frank takes a breath. "I'll try to do right by you, Red. I don't even know your name, but I'll try to do right by you." Then adds, "This will hurt."
He holds the flashlight in his mouth, aiming it at a spot near the clavicle, and allows his memories to drift back to the desert. To the actions of the medic. Where had he jabbed? Here? The hand that holds the syringe is surprisingly steady, though Frank's heart feels fluttery in his chest.
Frank has never been one for hesitation, at least not with anything that didn't involve his kids—
No. Put that thought away. No time for it now.
—and he doesn't hesitate now. He hovers the needle above where he thinks it needs to go, and he plunges it through skin and muscle.
Red doesn't have the breath for a scream, but he manages the closest thing to it.
"Hang on, baby, hang on."
Frank feels almost as breathless as Red. Wishes there were a god worthy of his faith. Won't waste a prayer on a god that took his babies away.
Slowly, he retracts the plunger of the syringe. He breathes a sigh of relief when no blood wells into the chamber. The plunger moves easily, and somewhere he remembers that this means it is not fighting a vacuum. It is indeed sucking air from where it should not be. A jolt of panic. Unless he is in Red's lung and is sucking air from there? Shit, he doesn't even know that it's a pneumothorax that he's dealing with. If he'd been able to take him to a fucking hos—
Red's breathing grows quieter. Relief joins the panic in his eyes.
"Okay. Okay okay." Frank's heart eases into a steadier rhythm. "That's good. That's good, Red. Easy."
When the syringe is full of air, Frank detaches it from the needle while carefully holding the needle in place. In a quick motion, he expels the air from the syringe and reattaches it. He begins drawing out more air.
Red's breaths come easier, deeper.
Three-quarters of the way through the second syringe, the plunger begins to resist Frank. He pulls a little more for good measure, but when it doesn't give, he pulls the needle from Red's chest.
"I think we got it all," Frank says. Broken sleep and the departure of adrenaline has exhaustion nipping at his heels once again. But he won't sleep. Not yet. Not until Red is resting comfortably.
Red says something that Frank doesn't catch.
"Say again?"
"Matthew," Red says. "My name is Matthew."
A small smile touches Frank's lips. "Matthew, huh. I like 'Red' better."
Matthew manages a small smile of his own. "Why... 'Red'?"
"Don't talk too much," Frank warns, but eases back until he is seated on the floor. "The piping on your clothes, I guess. Sounds better than 'Black,' right?"
A bead of blood wells from the puncture in Matt's chest. Frank wipes it away with a bit of gauze and applies one of the few remaining band-aids. A fucking band-aid for a collapsed lung, he thinks, amused.
But as he applies the bandage, he thinks back to the first time he saw Red.
"The piping," he continues, "and the neon light from that giant-ass sign, you know? The first time I saw you. On that roof. Everything was red. I guess it just sort of suits you."
Matt's gaze is still fixed on the ceiling. "Suits me... better than... 'baby'?"
Frank blinks, goes still. "What?"
"You called me 'baby.'"
Frank's thoughts dart this way and that. Had he?
"If I did, it was a slip. Back when I used to bandage my kids' bloody knees or somethin. I was a little caught up in the moment there, Red."
There is a silence between them for a moment, a silence in which wisps of memory are allowed to twirl in their pretty dresses before skipping off again into the past. The memory brings the familiar rush of pain, but it brings sweetness as well.
To chase away the memory, Frank's mind returns to something that has been needling at him. "You haven't looked at me once." He feels he is circling a truth that is so profound as to be an abyss. "...and your mask. I used to think the fabric was see-through. It's not, is it."
It isn't a question.
Matthew smiles faintly.
Frank runs a hand over his face. "Jesus Christ. I mean, I've heard of people with... gifts... running around out there. I guess I shoulda assumed you were one of them."
He stares at Red, a million questions running through his head ranging from how long have you been blind? to can you fly? But the other man's eyelids drift shut, and soon his breathing falls into some semblance of a peaceful rhythm. Questions will have to wait.
Besides, he has already had one important question answered this day.
My name is Matthew.