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A blind man walks home in the dark.
The irony of it aches under the pain from his gunshot wound.
The very tired lawyer hears the heartbeat in his apartment from the lobby of his building. He stops to sigh once before he heads to the stairwell.
Matt Murdock would know the sound of Frank Castle’s heartbeat even if he was dead.
The Punisher's heart sounded like a howl of rage in the middle of a firefight. The roar of a shotgun, the zipper-like hiss of an automatic. It sounded like a heavyweight just standing there and soaking up punches but who would just not fall. When he was wasn’t fighting, it sounded like large cats at the NYC Zoo pacing in their exhibits. Matt used to stand at the railings of those enclosures during orphanage field trips as kid, listening. Listening to those low rumbles and heavy, steady heartbeats and realizing they were always, always ready to leap and attack.
Listening to Frank Castle’s heart was like standing at that railing again.
The blind man walked into his apartment. The NYPD helicopter whirred outside his window and he felt the heat of its strobe light on his bruised skin. He grunts as stitches threaten to pop as the he collapses on the living room couch. His head lands on a soft cushion and in a kinder world he’d be able to close his eyes, shut some of the symphony of the city off and sleep. But it wasn’t a kinder world.
Daredevil turned his head to the burning shadow and raging heart in the corner of his kitchen.
“You’re pretty much the last person I expected to find here.” The reply was pure Frank.
“You know you’re a wall-to-wall asshole? Power goes out, you got nothing to make a goddammit pot of coffee in this house.”
His voice is a gravelly assault. A verbal fist aching for a fight, always looking for a fight. It never fails to activate something childish and confrontational in him. Frank is the living embodiment of his own beliefs but through a mirror, darkly. Frank’s existence proves him wrong and horned hero knows that the marine fighting his own war feels the same about him. So they push each other’s buttons. His reply is flip.
“Well, not everyone lives in a fallout shelter, Frank.”
“is that a new costume? What do they call you now? ‘Nightgown man’?”
Fucking asshole. A fucking asshole who was walking a perimeter, scanning the windows and….protecting the wounded man even as he berated him. Matt sniffed, his scent was agitated and not just the usual amount of agitated it was whenever they spoke. He was ready for a fight, a real fight. The lawyer frowned and sniffed again. Soap, shampoo, freshly cut hair and……Clubman? He snorted.
“What about you? Aftershave and a haircut? That all for me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did it for you.” His words are mocking but his tone wasn’t. Matt’s lawyer brain turned on at that mismatch and he cross-examined the hostile witness.
“I thought this wasn’t your fight.”
“Yeah, well. I got a phone call that changed my mind.” Phone call? Who could call the Punisher? And a more interesting and baffling question would be; who on earth could change Frank Castle’s mind about something?
“Care to be more specific?”
“No, I do not. I made a promise I was gonna get you out of here alive. That’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”
His heartbeat changed ever so slightly with that bravado. Matt could hear his jaw clench and his eyes narrow. He didn’t want to divulge the answer. The witness was refusing to answer, your honor. Only a few people knew he was Daredevil and only one of them could possibly have the ability to contact and convince the Punisher to do something. Now his own heartbeat changed, it fluttered with irritation and something….else. His fists clenched and he frowned in the darkness, the damned aftershave made sense now.
Karen.
His mind stepped back years to her voice defending the Punisher to him and Foggy. It had baffled him how the sound of her heart changed when she discussed the mass murderer.
It didn’t baffle him anymore.
“Northwest side of the house. There’s a van full of shitbags. You clock that?” Matt groaned again, he needed focus on the immediate physical danger to his life. Not to the existential risk to a future happiness he wasn’t sure he even wanted.
“Yep.”
“I’ll tell you right now, I’m not playing patty-cake with these fan boys. I’m choppin’ ‘em up. You understand me?” He sat up.
“I’m not sure I want that kind of help, Frank.”
“Well, that’s the kind of help you’ve got.”
Frank asks him an impossible question. Why he would take a bullet for Wilson Fisk. Frank always cut through the bullshit.
“That is a good……”
A phone goes off.
Frank’s phone.
Someone is calling the Punisher. The apartment’s air fills with song lyrics. A normal person wouldn’t have heard the ringtone over the roar of the helicopter outside but Matt isn’t a normal person.
‘🎵Goodnight my love, that tired old moon is descending. Goodnight my love, my moment with you is now ending.
It was so heavenly, holding you, close to me. It will be heavenly to hold you again in a dream….🎵’
Forget Kingpin or Bullseye, a feather falling on his nose could have knocked down Matthew Murdock at that second.
The tune snapped off as Frank ripped the phone out of his jacket and answered it. He turned to the window and muttered lowly but he might as well have been screaming in Matt’s ear.
“Yeah? Yeah, I’m here, with him. He’s on his feet. Hurt but moving. You close? No, wait for us. Enemy close. Kar…Kar….listen, don’t come yet. Don’t…damnit. Yeah, yeah. Just…keep your distance ‘til you see us. Please?”
Matt wonders if he’s in shock again. Was he still in the hospital? Benny Goodman? Ella Fitzgerald?. Frank Castle speaking softly and somewhat obediently? At a low gravelly purr?
But the deeper shock was sound of his heartbeat.
It quickened but it also…...settled down. In an instant, and for just a moment, the living war machine was as calm as he had ever been around Matt.
The hero knew what Frank’s heart sounded like when he was trying to kill him, when he was fully enraged and when he was bleeding out from a dozen wounds. He had listened to the deepest, most destroying agony he’d ever heard from a human heart when the killer was slumped against a gravestone and speaking of his murdered family. He had heard it thump awkwardly at his hideout when he attempted his very narrow version of understanding with Matt. But this was a new song from that heart. He heard the old man’s mocking voice again.
“…...worse. He’s in love.” Stick was always right, in the end.
Frank Castle was in love with the person who called him.
And the woman’s voice; also stenciled on his heart and in his brain, was filled with…...concern, fear….love. all that came through the phone’s speaker, just as loud.
Karen Page was in love with the man who answered the phone.
But he didn’t have time for that. A van was pulling up in front of his apartment building. A van filled with armed people. The shitbags were coming to visit. He heard their radios, their chatter and the sound of readying weapons. They entered the building. He’d deal with realities of that phone call if he was still alive in ten minutes. He stood and spoke.
“All right. They’re on the move.”
“You’re not gonna do it with your ass hangin’ out?”
He threw a single finger over his shoulder as he moved to his bedroom and his gear. Irritation and…...jealousy pushed the dry remark out his mouth.
“You can listen to more Benny Goodman tunes while I get dressed….grandpa.”
The sudden skip in that heartbeat and angry bull snort from Frank’s mouth gave him a small smile as he left the room.
****
After winning the fight and losing another apartment, he stood there in the street with Frank Castle. Headlights hit them and a car stopped.
His heartbeat, which had been surprisingly calm even after swinging off a six-story building and landing on a car, sped up even before she stepped out of the car. Matt hugged his ribs and looked at Frank.
Karen looked up at the ruins of his apartment and then he heard her turn her head to them.
It became a duet. Almost instantly.
Matt stood and stared at Frank. Grateful his mask covered his eyes.
Their hearts were beating in sync.
A heavy thump; angry, sad but also…. with a new hope to it. a lighter, tighter drumbeat responds; not as heavy but just as fast and powerful. Mournful with a hopeful tone that didn’t sound new at all. They sounded like a sad Irish love song to the son of Jack Murdock.
Karen called them over and they staggered to her, grousing at each other.
He listened to their hearts sing to each other for the entire car ride back to Frank’s hideout. They didn’t speak, they didn’t have to.
Daredevil wasn’t baffled anymore by Karen Page and the Punisher.