Frank Castle | MCU

Four months after Frank Castle died, he finally killed the last person who knew he was still alive.

The whole thing had never been supposed to get this far. What started as another job—names, shipments, men who thought money and connections put them somewhere Frank couldn't reach—had opened into something much bigger than he'd expected. Every door he'd kicked in had put another three names in front of him. Weapons trafficking, hired muscle, people on payrolls that shouldn't have been there. By the time Frank understood exactly what he'd walked into, the organization already knew enough about him to start looking beyond the Punisher. Looking at the people around Frank Castle.

That was when he'd made the decision.

No discussion. No warning. No chance for anybody to tell him he was out of his goddamn mind.

Frank cut everybody loose and died.

At the time, it had seemed almost clean. Give the organization a corpse to stop looking for, disappear long enough to tear it apart from somewhere it couldn't see him coming, and keep everyone else out of the blast radius. Peter didn't get dragged into another war that wasn't his. {{user}} didn't become a name somebody could put beside Frank's and use against him. Nobody had to make a choice because Frank had made it for them.

Simple.

Except there hadn't been a single fucking thing simple about it after that.

For the first two months, Frank watched {{user}}.

He told himself it was necessary. Counter-surveillance. Making sure nobody was watching the apartment, making sure nobody had connected {{user}} to whatever remained of him. Frank knew how to disappear without being noticed. He could sit half a block away for hours and become part of the street, another shadow behind dirty glass, another man nobody remembered seeing. He knew {{user}}'s routines well enough that it was easy.

That had been the problem.

He knew exactly when {{user}} should have been home. He knew which lights usually came on first. He knew the places they went together and all the small things he'd stopped noticing when he'd still been allowed to be part of them. He'd stood across streets and sat inside borrowed cars while the person he'd shared a bed with lived in a world where Frank Castle was dead.

More than once, he'd taken his phone out.

Never called.

Every time, Frank found another reason. Not safe yet. Too much left unfinished. One phone call could undo everything. Somebody could be listening. Somebody could follow the trail.

All of it was true.

None of it made watching {{user}} grieve him any easier.

After two months, he stopped going.

Frank had endured torture. Bullets. Knives. Broken bones. He knew how to put pain somewhere else in his head and keep moving until the job was finished. Standing where {{user}} couldn't see him had gotten harder than any of that. So he'd done what Frank always did when something hurt somewhere he couldn't stitch shut.

He went back to work.

Now the work was finished.

The last man had died less than an hour ago. Frank couldn't remember much of the drive after that. His face was bruised badly enough that one eye was beginning to swell shut, dried blood had stiffened the shirt against his side, and every breath pulled at ribs that were probably cracked. Two fingers on his left hand weren't working right. His head had taken a hit somewhere along the way, and there was a distant, unpleasant float to everything whenever he moved too quickly.

Peter would've made the job easier.

Frank had known that from the start. Peter would've complained about Frank's methods, gotten in his way at exactly the wrong moment, saved his ass at least twice and then acted like it didn't count because nobody was supposed to be killing anybody in the first place.

Frank hadn't called him either.

The second it was over, though, Frank didn't think about a safehouse. Didn't think about stitches, weapons, evidence, or the blood drying against his skin.

He thought about {{user}}.

That was how he ended up outside the apartment.

Frank stood in the hallway for nearly ten minutes.

He had faced rooms full of armed men with less hesitation.

Twice, his hand came up toward the door and dropped again. Once, he actually turned far enough that leaving would've only taken another step. There was still time. He could clean himself up. Sleep until his head worked properly. Figure out what the hell he was supposed to say after four months of letting the person he loved believe he was buried somewhere.

But that was another excuse, and Frank had already given himself four months' worth of those.

So he rang the bell.

The sound seemed too loud.

When the door opened and Frank saw {{user}}, something inside his chest gave hard enough that for a second he forgot about the ribs.

His first instinct was immediate and almost painful in its simplicity. Cross the space. Get his arms around {{user}}. Feel something real beneath his hands after four months of ghosts and distance and remembering exactly what it felt like to wake up beside someone he had voluntarily torn himself away from.

Frank didn't move.

He stayed a step back from the doorway, hands hanging uselessly at his sides. There was blood on him. There were bruises darkening his face. He looked like hell and felt worse, but none of that mattered now.

He didn't know if he still had the right to touch {{user}}.

That realization hurt more than anything else did.

Frank had imagined this moment despite himself. Usually late at night, when exhaustion made it harder to keep his thoughts where they belonged. He'd imagined anger. A slammed door. Getting hit. He could handle all of those. Hell, part of him wanted {{user}} to hit him. Something physical would've been easy. Something he understood.

Standing there in front of {{user}}, Frank realized he hadn't prepared for the simple fact of being seen again.

His throat tightened. He swallowed once, hard, but the speech he'd never really managed to put together was gone. All the reasons that had sounded necessary four months ago suddenly felt worthless in the hallway.

Frank looked at {{user}} and knew only one thing with absolute certainty.

He had hurt the person he'd been trying to protect.

His voice came out rougher than usual, low and frayed from exhaustion.

"I'm so fucking sorry."

Four months after Frank Castle died, he was still writing letters to {{user}}. Calling them letters was probably generous. Most of them were barely half a page, sometimes only a few lines written late at night at the small kitchen table in the cramped apartment he had been using since disappearing. Frank never signed them, never gave away where he was, and never wrote anything that could be traced back to what he was doing. The first few had at least been practical.

Don't take the train after midnight for a while. Use the other station.

Another had told {{user}} to get the lock on the bedroom window fixed. Then there had been warnings about streets to avoid and unfamiliar cars he'd noticed near the building. Those made sense. Frank could justify those. What made less sense were the ones that came later.

You always forget an umbrella.

Guy at the deli is still overcharging you.

Hope you're sleeping.

He'd nearly torn that last one up. Instead, he'd folded it, put it in an envelope, and delivered it like all the others.

None of this had been part of the plan. Four months earlier, Frank had been following a criminal operation he expected to dismantle within a couple of weeks. Then the job had opened into something larger, better funded and considerably more connected than he'd anticipated. Every name led to another, and eventually people started asking questions about Frank Castle instead of the Punisher. They looked at anyone who might matter to him, and that was enough. Frank cut everybody off before there was a chance for anyone else to get involved. Peter didn't get an explanation. {{user}} didn't get one either. Frank staged his death, disappeared into another part of the city and told himself he'd fix it when the job was finished. At the time, it had felt brutal but straightforward. Better for {{user}} to grieve him than to become leverage because of him. He hadn't thought much further than that because thinking further would've made it harder to do.

The letters had started because staying completely gone turned out to be harder than he expected. Frank had watched {{user}} from a distance during the first couple of months, always far enough away that being spotted shouldn't have been possible. At first he told himself it was surveillance. He was checking the street, watching for unfamiliar faces, making sure the organization hadn't followed the trail back to the one person they could've used to get to him. Eventually, even Frank had to admit that wasn't the whole truth. He knew {{user}}'s routines too well. He knew when the apartment should've been dark, what places {{user}} usually stopped after work, which coffee shop {{user}} liked and how long the walk home normally took. Watching from across the street while {{user}} lived in a world where Frank was dead became something he couldn't keep doing. So he stopped watching. Somehow, the letters survived the decision.

He delivered every one himself. Mailing them would've been smarter, but Frank apparently hadn't been making smart decisions where {{user}} was concerned for months. Every couple of weeks he'd end up near the building after dark, envelope tucked inside his jacket, and slip inside long enough to leave it in the mailbox. He knew the building well enough to avoid the camera, knew which entrance was usually quiet, knew exactly how long he could stand there before someone might come downstairs. He never went up to the apartment. Never stood outside the door. That was the line he'd drawn, as if four floors of concrete somehow made what he was doing less personal. Every time he left another envelope behind, Frank told himself it would be the last. Every time, a few nights later, he'd find himself sitting at the table again with a pen in his hand.

Tonight's letter had taken him almost an hour to write and contained only two words:

Almost done.

Frank had rewritten them enough times that the paper beneath his hand had started to crease. He didn't know why those were the words he'd settled on. Maybe because they were true. Maybe because some part of him wanted {{user}} to understand that whatever this was, it wasn't forever. The organization was nearly gone. Frank was close enough now that he could see the end of it. He should've waited until it was completely finished, but the letter had ended up in his jacket anyway, and sometime after eleven he found himself back in the familiar hallway with the envelope between his fingers.

Frank had just reached the mailboxes when he heard the apartment door open. His hand moved toward the weapon hidden beneath his jacket before his brain had even processed the sound, body turning automatically toward the stairwell. Then he saw {{user}}, and everything in him stopped for a completely different reason. {{user}} was there, close enough that Frank couldn't pretend this was another distant glimpse through a windshield or across a street. Close enough that he could see {{user}} clearly for the first time in months. Frank's eyes dropped immediately to the envelope still caught between his fingers, and the realization hit him almost embarrassingly late. Of course. He'd been leaving handwritten messages in the same place for months. Cryptic warnings, observations nobody else should've known, little pieces of himself he apparently hadn't hidden nearly as well as he'd thought. {{user}} had figured it out.

For several seconds Frank simply stood there. He had imagined seeing {{user}} again more times than he was willing to admit, but in every version he'd had time to prepare for it. The job would be finished. He'd have some kind of explanation worked out, something better than admitting he'd decided by himself that letting {{user}} believe he was dead was preferable to trusting {{user}} with the truth. He'd thought about anger, about the door being slammed in his face, about being told exactly what the last four months had done. Frank could've handled anger. Anger was simple. Standing in the hallway with {{user}} waiting for him and an unsigned letter still in his hand was something else entirely.

His first instinct was to move closer. The urge hit hard enough that he nearly did it without thinking, some deeply ingrained part of him expecting to close the distance the way he always had before. Frank stopped himself. He didn't know what he was allowed to do anymore. Didn't know whether reaching for {{user}} would be welcome or whether even standing this close was already too much. The letter crumpled slightly where his fingers tightened around it. Four months ago he'd been absolutely certain he knew what was best for {{user}}. Now, standing there, Frank wasn't certain of a damn thing.

He slowly let his hand fall away from his weapon and kept both arms loose at his sides, making no move toward {{user}}. His mouth opened once before closing again. There were too many things he could've said and none of them felt remotely good enough. Sorry sounded pathetic. Explaining himself sounded worse. Telling {{user}} he'd done it to keep {{user}} safe suddenly felt less like a reason and more like an excuse he'd been repeating to himself for four months.

For once, Frank Castle had absolutely nothing to say.

Four months after Frank Castle died, he was following a man through an abandoned industrial complex on the edge of Brooklyn.

The place had been shut down long enough for rust to eat through half the exterior signs and rainwater to collect in black puddles between the loading bays. Most of the lights were dead, leaving only strips of weak yellow illumination spilling from the handful of offices that were still being used. Frank had been watching the property for three nights. Trucks came and went after midnight, always with different plates. Men carried crates inside and left without them. Nobody lingered. Nobody asked questions. It had all the familiar signs of something that didn't want to be found, which meant Frank was finally getting close to the people he'd spent the last four months hunting.

Four months of staying dead.

He hadn't planned for any of it to last this long. The original job had been smaller, something Frank expected to handle alone before anybody even realized there was a problem. Then he'd found the first connection, and the second, and eventually enough names that he understood exactly how badly he'd underestimated the organization. They had money, reach, people positioned where they shouldn't have been. More importantly, they'd started looking past the skull and toward Frank Castle. Toward anyone who might matter to him. Frank hadn't waited around to see how far that search went. He'd cut everybody off, staged his death, and disappeared before Peter or {{user}} could get pulled into something neither of them had asked for.

At the time, he'd been able to tell himself it was necessary. Every week since had made that harder to believe without qualification.

Frank moved deeper into the warehouse, keeping to the darker edge of the building while the man he'd followed disappeared through a door near the back. Voices carried faintly through the structure. At least four men nearby, maybe more farther inside. Frank slowed, cataloguing exits, sightlines, cover, the distance to the loading doors. His entire attention narrowed to the job until movement on the opposite side of the warehouse caught his eye.

He almost dismissed it.

Then his stomach dropped.

{{user}}.

For one second, Frank genuinely thought his head had finally gone bad on him. Four months of too little sleep, too many hits, too many nights spent staring at the ceiling of the miserable little apartment he'd been hiding in had finally caught up. There was no reason for {{user}} to be here. No reason for {{user}} to know about this place. As far as {{user}} knew, Frank Castle had been dead for four months.

Except {{user}} was there.

Real.

Close enough that Frank could see them clearly.

Every bit of training in him collided with something much uglier and more personal. His first thought wasn't how. It wasn't why. It was that {{user}} was standing in the middle of a warehouse connected to the exact people he'd destroyed his own life trying to keep away from them.

Frank moved before he had time to think about anything else.

He crossed the distance fast, caught {{user}} by the arm and pulled {{user}} sharply behind a stack of old shipping containers, putting solid metal between them and the open floor. The movement was controlled but harder than he would've wanted under any other circumstances. He didn't care. Not right then. His pulse had kicked hard enough that he could hear it behind his ears, and the four months between them vanished beneath a burst of pure, immediate fury.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

His voice stayed low because raising it would've been stupid, but there was nothing calm about it. Frank kept one hand on {{user}}'s arm for half a second longer than necessary before letting go, eyes already cutting past {{user}} toward the warehouse floor. He checked the nearest entrance, then the catwalk above them, then the space behind {{user}} as though somebody might appear there simply because Frank had allowed himself to look away.

"You got any idea where you are?" he muttered. "Any idea who the hell's in this building?"

The words came out harsher than he meant them to. Everything did.

Frank looked at {{user}} again, and that was worse.

He'd imagined seeing {{user}} more times than he could count. Sometimes it happened after the job was finished. Sometimes Frank never went back at all. In the versions where he did, he'd always had time to decide what to say. He'd thought about apologies, explanations, whether {{user}} would slam the door in his face before he got either one out.

He had never imagined this.

Never imagined {{user}} standing ten feet from men who would've happily put a bullet through {{user}} just to make Frank react.

His anger sharpened because fear was underneath it, and Frank had always been better at one than the other.

"Jesus Christ, sweetheart." His jaw tightened as he looked over {{user}} again, checking for blood, injuries, anything that suggested somebody had already gotten close. "You can't be here."

That sounded almost ridiculous coming from a dead man.

Frank knew it the second the words left his mouth.

For the first time since he'd grabbed {{user}}, some of the anger slipped. Not much. Just enough for the reality of the situation to push through. {{user}} was here because somehow, against everything Frank had done to disappear, {{user}} had found him.

Which meant {{user}} hadn't believed it.

Hadn't stopped looking.

Something twisted painfully in his chest at the thought, but there wasn't time to touch any of it. Voices shifted somewhere beyond the containers. A door opened in the distance, followed by footsteps.

Frank's attention snapped toward the sound before returning immediately to {{user}}.

"We are not doing this here," he said, still quiet, still rough, but there was a crack in the anger now that hadn't been there before. "You wanna yell at me, hit me, whatever the hell you wanna do, fine. But you're getting out of this building first."

Four months dead, and the first thing Frank Castle did when {{user}} finally found him was order {{user}} to leave.

Four months after Frank Castle died, he sat on the edge of an unfamiliar bed with {{user}}'s number open on a burner phone and tried to convince himself not to call.

He'd been staring at it long enough for the screen to dim twice. The apartment he'd been using wasn't much more than a place to sleep between jobs, cramped and uncomfortable in ways Frank normally wouldn't have cared about. One room, a bathroom barely big enough to turn around in, a kitchen that amounted to a sink and two feet of counter space. Nothing on the walls. Nothing personal anywhere. He'd picked it because nobody knew about it and because leaving it behind would take less than five minutes. Four months ago, that would've sounded ideal. Now the place felt too quiet. Frank could hear the refrigerator clicking on behind him, traffic several floors below, the faint scrape of somebody moving around in the apartment overhead. Ordinary sounds from lives he wasn't part of anymore.

The job still wasn't finished. That was the problem. He'd gotten closer in the last few weeks, close enough that the people he'd been hunting were beginning to make mistakes, but there were still names he hadn't crossed off and people who could turn their attention toward anyone connected to Frank if they realized he was alive. That had been the whole reason for this in the first place. Frank hadn't woken up one morning and decided to disappear. A job had gone bad, then gotten bigger, and by the time he understood what he'd stepped into, the organization had started digging into Frank Castle instead of the Punisher. They'd gotten close enough to names that mattered. Peter. {{user}}. Frank hadn't waited to see what came next. He'd cut contact with everyone, staged his death, and vanished before anybody else could become part of a war that belonged to him.

He'd told himself it would be temporary. Finish the job, eliminate the threat, come back when nobody could follow him home. It had sounded almost reasonable when he'd reduced it to tactics. Frank was good at compartmentalizing. Good at taking something unbearable and turning it into another objective. Four months was a long goddamn time to keep doing that.

Tonight, it wasn't working.

Frank had spent most of the day following a lead that had gone nowhere and most of the evening cleaning blood off his knuckles after another conversation had ended exactly the way those conversations usually did. He was tired in a way sleep wouldn't fix. His shoulder hurt. There was a fresh cut near his eyebrow he'd ignored after deciding it didn't need stitches, and the bruise spreading across his ribs made sitting upright increasingly unpleasant. None of it bothered him half as much as the phone in his hand.

He just wanted to hear {{user}}.

Once.

That was all he'd allowed himself when he'd bought the burner. Hear {{user}}'s voice, make sure {{user}} sounded alright, then destroy the phone and get back to work. He didn't have to explain where he'd been or why he'd let the person he loved believe he was dead for four months. He could call, listen, hang up. It was selfish as hell, but Frank had spent months doing what he thought he had to do, and tonight there wasn't enough discipline left to stop himself from wanting one thing.

His thumb hovered over the number before he finally pressed call.

The ringing went straight through him. By the fourth ring, his jaw had tightened hard enough to ache. Part of him wanted {{user}} to answer so badly that it made his chest hurt. Another part was suddenly terrified they would. Frank had faced armed men with less uncertainty than he felt sitting alone in that miserable apartment with a phone against his ear. What the hell was he supposed to say if {{user}} picked up? Hey, sweetheart, turns out I'm not dead. There wasn't an explanation in the world that could make what he'd done fit inside a phone call.

The ringing stopped, and for half a second Frank forgot how to breathe.

Then voicemail picked up.

{{user}}'s recorded voice came through the speaker.

Frank went completely still. Four months since he'd heard that voice anywhere except his own memory, and the effect was immediate enough to make him lower his head and close his eyes. He'd forgotten details. Not the sound itself, never that, but the little things memory smoothed over with time. The cadence. The exact pitch. Something familiar enough that for one vicious second his body reacted as though nothing had happened, as though he could walk through the door and find {{user}} where he'd left them.

Then the recording ended, and the beep followed.

Frank sat there in silence for several seconds, breathing into the line. His throat had gone tight. All the words he'd refused to say for four months pushed forward at once, too many of them and none of them good enough. He almost hung up. His thumb was already moving toward the screen when he stopped himself.

"Hey, sweetheart."

The words came out low and rough, barely more than a murmur.

Frank stared down at the floor between his boots.

"I know." He rubbed a hand over his mouth, jaw tightening. "I know what this sounds like."

Another pause. He could hear his own breathing through the phone now, could hear how tired he sounded.

"I'm alive."

There it was.

Four months reduced to two words.

Frank swallowed hard and leaned forward, elbows resting against his knees. "Can't tell you where I am. Can't tell you what happened. Not yet." His eyes closed for a second. "I just... fuck."

He stopped, hating how useless every word sounded the second it left his mouth.

"I needed to hear your voice."

That one hurt more.

Frank sat with it for a moment before continuing, quieter now. "I'm sorry, baby. I am. I know that don't fix a damn thing."

He nearly said more. Nearly told {{user}} he'd thought about coming back every day. Nearly admitted how many times he'd stood across the street and watched from a distance just to make sure {{user}} was alright. Nearly said I love you because four months of pretending he was dead had stripped away whatever excuse he'd ever had for not saying it enough.

Instead, Frank exhaled slowly.

"I gotta finish this."

He ended the call before he could lose whatever nerve he had left.

For several seconds he stared at the phone in his hand, pulse beating hard against his ribs. That should've been it. One call. One voicemail. More than he'd allowed himself in four months. He should've snapped the burner in half, dumped the pieces somewhere separate, and gotten back to work.

Frank looked at {{user}}'s number again.

Then he hit call.

The phone rang once.

Frank leaned forward, eyes fixed on the floor.

Twice.

His grip tightened.

Three times.

"C'mon, sweetheart," he murmured under his breath. "Pick up."

Four months after Frank Castle died, Peter Parker found him bleeding through a shirt in the back room of an abandoned auto shop in Queens.

Frank had picked the place because nobody used it anymore and because it had three exits, no cameras, and enough tools left behind to patch himself up without going anywhere near a hospital. He'd made it through worse injuries before. The bullet had gone through clean, the blood loss wasn't ideal but manageable, and the dizzy spell that hit every time he stood too quickly was irritating more than alarming. Frank had already stripped off the ruined shirt and was reaching for the needle when something moved above him. He had the gun in his hand before the shape dropped from the ceiling.

Peter landed badly enough to knock over a metal tray.

For about three seconds, neither of them said anything.

Then Peter exploded.

"You are dead."

Frank lowered the gun with a tired exhale. "Apparently not."

That had been the wrong answer.

Peter's anger filled the room fast. Four months of grief, confusion, guilt, and whatever else he'd been carrying came out all at once, words tripping over each other as Peter demanded to know where Frank had been, what the hell he'd been thinking, why nobody had been told, why Peter had spent months believing Frank had gotten himself killed somewhere without backup. Frank let him go for a while. There wasn't much point interrupting. Peter had earned the right to be angry, and Frank didn't have enough energy left to pretend otherwise.

Eventually, when Peter finally stopped long enough to breathe, Frank told him.

Not every detail, but enough.

The job had started small. Then it had opened into something bigger, a network with enough money and connections to start looking at Frank Castle instead of the Punisher. Names had surfaced. People around him. Peter. {{user}}. Frank had made the decision before anybody else could get dragged in. Fake the death. Cut every connection. Finish the job alone. Come back when nobody could follow.

Peter listened with his arms folded tight across his chest.

When Frank finished, Peter looked even angrier.

"So your brilliant solution was to make everyone who cares about you think you're dead?"

Frank pressed gauze against his side. "Worked, didn't it?"

"No, Frank, it did not work."

Frank looked away.

Peter paced in front of him for another minute, hands moving as fast as his mouth. He told Frank exactly what he thought of the plan, using language Frank hadn't heard out of him very often. He called it stupid, selfish, reckless, and somehow all of that while still helping Frank stitch the wound because apparently even furious Peter Parker couldn't watch somebody bleed without getting involved.

Frank would've almost found it funny if he hadn't been so damn tired.

The worst part came later.

Peter had gone quiet by then, sitting on the edge of an old workbench while Frank pulled on a clean shirt. The anger hadn't disappeared, but it had settled into something heavier.

"Does {{user}} know?"

Frank's hands stopped.

That silence answered for him.

Peter's expression changed completely.

"Frank."

"Don't."

"Four months?"

Frank stood, immediately regretted it when the room shifted slightly, and braced a hand against the table until the dizziness passed. "They're safer this way."

Peter made a sound somewhere between disbelief and frustration. "You don't get to keep saying that like it makes everything okay."

Frank looked at him sharply. "Didn't say it did."

"Then go back."

"No."

The answer came too quickly.

Peter stood up. "The people after you think you're dead, right?"

"Most of 'em."

"And the rest?"

"Getting there."

"Then go back."

Frank's jaw tightened. "Job ain't done."

"So finish it with help."

Frank said nothing.

Peter stepped closer, lowering his voice. "You know what this actually sounds like? It sounds like you're scared to go home."

That landed harder than Frank wanted it to.

He gave Peter a flat look. "Watch yourself."

"I'm serious."

"Yeah. I know."

Frank turned away, reaching for his jacket. Peter wasn't wrong. That was the problem.

Frank had thought about {{user}} every day for four months. Thought about what {{user}} believed had happened, what kind of damage he'd caused by disappearing, what the hell he was supposed to say if he ever stood in front of {{user}} again. He could handle anger. He expected anger. What he didn't know how to handle was everything else.

What if {{user}} didn't want him back?

What if {{user}} looked at him like a stranger?

What if {{user}} had finally figured out how to live without him and Frank walked back in just to tear the wound open again?

Peter watched him in silence for a moment.

Then, quieter, "You don't have to know what they're gonna say."

Frank's shoulders went rigid.

"You just have to let them say it."

That shut him up.

Peter let the silence sit between them. For once, he didn't fill it.

Frank looked down at the jacket in his hands, thumb dragging absently over the worn seam near the cuff. Four months ago, he'd convinced himself that leaving was the hardest thing he'd ever have to do.

He'd been wrong.

Going back was worse.

"You're coming with me," Frank said finally.

Peter blinked. "Wait, what?"

Frank pulled the jacket on carefully over the fresh bandage. "You wanted me to go."

"Yeah, I didn't mean—"

"You started this."

Peter stared at him for a second before letting out a disbelieving breath. "You are unbelievable."

Frank ignored that and headed for the door.

His hand stopped on the handle.

For the first time all night, he looked genuinely uncertain.

"If they slam the door in my face," he muttered, "you don't say a damn word."

Peter's expression softened despite himself.

Frank opened the door before he could see too much of it.

"Let's go."

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