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He’s at his second home. Some random rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen, no different than all the countless roofs he’s staked out.
The ground behind his shoulders is stiff. He twists around for a moment, trying to get more comfortable. Then settles in and continues staring up at the night sky. Not that there is anything to see. No stars in the city. Just a giant pool of black night. He lifts his cigarette up in the air, lines it up perfectly with his view, and gives it a flick. The flying embers light up his sky. Closest thing he’s gonna get to stargazing.
The red sparks shooting through the darkness brings back a memory.
The night he had saved the Colonel’s life.
They had all laughed about that night. Him and his unit. For those that had been there, Frank would do his impression of the Colonel, “Listen son, I think it’s a good idea to attack,” while howls laughter would follow. Dark humor, the kind you have when there are men and women on the base who everyday leave and never come back.
If he hadn’t have saved that scumbags life - Maria would still be alive. Lisa. Frank Jr.
Typical. That shit was God’s kinda of funny, right. No good deed goes unpunished.
That moment of him trying to be goddamn Boy Scout, that’s what caused this damn mess. Going around saving people didn’t work. It was the wrong answer. The only way that worked was killing the damn pieces of shit. If you took out the lowlife, you took away the need for people to be saved in the first place. Just made sense.
Red, he just didn’t see what had to be done. What needed to be done. Red, he didn’t have it in him. Ah. Let him waste his time, spend his life running around in his damn pajamas playing rescue, that’s his own business.
Frank bowed his head, ever so slightly.
Of course that was before...
Frank had been there. Last month. Across from the roof. Didn’t need to hear a word to understand what was playing out in front of him. It was the same scene Frank had lived out. Woman you loved dead while you stood breathing.
Maybe Red would change after this. Maybe that woman’s death, whoever she was, would spark something in him. Like it did with Frank.
He’d been so certain about Murdock. Something akin to guilt passed through this thoughts. "Hold on to it with both hands, you've got everything", what a shitty piece of advice.
She had been there that night too. While Murdock was trying to use his two hands to hold on to his dying lady; Karen had stood on the ground and stared up at Frank. Unaware of the tragedy that had just passed. Unaware that world of a man she'd loved had just come crashing down.
Should have kept his mouth shut. Not given advice to her - advice that probably got her damn heart broken.
He hadn’t plan on seeing her again. Hell, certainly didn’t plan on it being a few days after the night in the woods. Once she caught sight of him, he expected her to ignore him. Turn away from him, like he’d done to her. At least glare at him. Do something.
Instead, she just stood there looking up at him with - admiration? Nah, relief? Excitement? No, that couldn’t be it either. He didn’t let himself stay long enough to find out. Maybe she was just in shock.
He couldn’t be that man. The one who had laid down his life to save her from a round of bullets. That was just instinct. Didn’t mean anything. The one who had joked with her during her visits in jail, gotten her to laugh. The one who shared childhood stories in the hospital. Those were just moments of politeness to the woman who uncovered something he didn’t.
Searching for answers, that's how it all had started. Man, he should have known how it would end.
The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had beat up the bad guys in a school boy attempt to wipe out corruption. Hah. He laughed when he first saw it, then it occurred to him that if the cops couldn’t pin anything on the gangs, couldn't provide him a name of his family's murderer, he’d solve the problem himself. Which lead Karen Page straight into his life. Searching for the truth. That had been enough, for a time, for a moment, that was enough.
Once the Blacksmith had revealed the connection to Kandahar, Frank knew what needed to happen. He didn’t need to just take out those three piece of shit gangs. He needed to take out all the gangs, all the fuckers who stank up the city. He'd never find peace in killing just the men who took his family away, he had to take out all the men like them.
He had been afraid once, he'll admit it, that this man, this revenge was all he could be.
He scratches his chin in thought, squinting at the darkness above him. Trying to recapture her face. The fire in her eyes as she told him, “don’t you deserve to know.”
She thought he deserved things.
She said once he didn’t judge him. Did she judge him now?
Frank Castle looks up at the moon - the only light in an otherwise sea of darkness - and tries not to be reminded of her. Her pale skin.
The cigarette burns against the night sky.