๑ï savanna

the wilderness. it hears us.

[flwries]

divider credit to @uzmacchiato ♥️

savannaᝰ.ᐟ 9teen. her/she. mexican. infj. september virgoo. icarly. journaling. mabel pines. freaks and geeks. slugs. josh o’connor’s love. apples 🍎🍏. candlehead. brown eyed girl. crochet. rubygloom. cute as a button. high school musical. gummy bears. gLeek. bridget jones. twee. stripes & polka dots. coraline. aspiring teacher. ni hao kai-lan. 🐌snug as a bug. fleabag. shopkins. jason todd's girlfriend. alice in wonderland. ₍^. .^₎⟆.

( masterlist | my sweets & lovebugs | 💌 ping ! )

[hellilovedit]

The Shed — God’s Gonna Cut You Down Part III

Husband!Dad!Frank Castle x Wife!Mom!Reader

Summary: When your currency’s blood, blood is what you’ll get. You and Frank have done good at sheltering your twin daughters from the past. They don’t know The Punisher—they just know Mom and Dad. Everything’s connected. But how? The shed’s a start.

Warnings: hurt/comfort, angst, slow burn psychological horror, mental illness, mentions of Frank’s first family, Frank yelling, stalking, hallucination or guardian angel?, self harm-ish, light gothic horror elements, lies & secrets, unreliable narrator (hehe hi), husband & wifey makeout, nightmares.

Word count: 9.3k

Series summary: What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light. After almost twenty years of retirement, Frank’s past hits your family with a vengeance; a vengeance much like his own. A bounty on your family—in blood.

Series masterlist

A/N at the bottom

Gentle (adj.): free from harshness, sternness, or violence

Frank is not a gentle man. 

Never was. 

Frank understands the importance of judgement. Of retribution. 

The first kill came when he was ten. 

Bastard deserved it, then some. 

Retirement felt like submission for a long time. Felt like… acceptance. Forfeiting. Giving up.Frank’s not a guy that knows how to quit. Not when it’s in his blood. You can only subdue a man for so long. 

But you can’t change his nature. 

Dinner’s a top priority in the Castiglione household. Yeah. You heard right. Castiglione. Attendance damn-near mandatory, same time, on time, for the last sixteen years. A ritualistic congregation around the table, inexcusable outside of sports, extra curriculars, and the occasional detention. Sun’s molten over the table, swallowing the light whole. No sunset. Just a loss of color over the alienating timber. Like the day’s dyin’. 

Frank’s at the head. 

You at the other. 

Twin daughters—Viviana and Sofia—on either side. Like if you had to, you’n Frank could snatch the girls up. Block ‘em from whatever hell Frank anticipates breaking down the door. 

A competitive scratch rakes in the walls, fighting for Frank’s attention over his family. A sound no one hears, not even him, not consciously, scraping the fried triggers in Frank’s head, manifesting in the infrequent twitch of his eye while he chews. Glances at Viviana. 

Viv’s like Frank. Bigger bones, stocky build, meat on the girl that gives the boys a run for their money and excels her in sports. Louder, quick to raise to a fight, quicker to promise violence to level a situation. Rugby player. Frank’s taste for blood must’ve been genetic. She’s got spunk, that’s for damn sure. 

He glances at Sofia as she piles pork on her bread. Wonders if she’s real, or just another guardian angel. 

Sof’s like you. Smaller. Quieter… when compared to someone like Frank, like her sister. Scrunched her nose at sports ‘cause she’s got her own talents. The things this girl can createwith her hands… Shit. That’s what she does. Creates. Makes. Give her a pencil and you’ll end up lookin’ at your reflection in graphite. Smooths her sister’s rough edges. Observes instead of reacts. She’s got heart. But where she’s got heart, all that heart, she’s got trouble, too. Shit she never asked for, but that heart’a hers won’t let it go. 

Feels too good to be true. Maybe it is. 

Even with four people, there’s a clamor over dinner. Frank’s loud. Viv’s loud. And man, they can eat. Everyone’s hands exchange dishes in greed shoves. Dinner you’ve made, ‘cause you want to, not ‘cause you got to. You’n Sof, your mini-me. Salad. Jalapeño cornbread. Slow-cooker pork. Dinner rolls. Baked beans. You name it, the table’s got it. 

“Dunno how you do it, sweetheart,” Frank says between bites, mouth full, “best damn cook I know. Gets better every time.” 

Viviana mutters soemthing that sounds like kiss ass while Sofia giggles with black sleep-deprivation rings around her eyes. 

You, you roll your eyes but they soften on Frank. Exaggerated compliment accepted. 

Ain’t been perfect. Sure as shit didn’t start that way. But it’s as close to perfect as a man like Frank’ll get, and he thanks god for it every damn day. 

“Dad, that’s the last piece!” Viviana cries, reaching over to swat the ass-end of the cornbread he can’t fit in his mouth. “Don’t be such a cocksucker! Share!” 

Physically impacted by the language, Frank blows out crumbles of cornbread into his beard, caught in a coughing fit. 

You sigh, rubbing a hand over your forehead. “Can’t we have one nice conversation at dinner? One. I don’t ask for much.” 

Cheeks taut with a mischievous grin, Sofia pushes around her fork and mumbles, “Be glad we don’t have to explain cunnling—“

“Enough!” You stop it before the word can be said. That nasty, nasty word. It’s worse than moist. Ugh. 

“Listen to your mother, goddamn it,” Frank juts a finger, dead fuckin’ serious despite post-choke watering eyes. 

The twins cackle and it gives Frank a sense of peace. 

They’re angels. Not behavior, nah. Little fuckin’ asses, that’s what they are. The reason his hair’s goin’ grey fast, and… he wouldn’t trade it. Not at all. None of the little bitchy tiffs, sobbing outbursts blamed on “girl stuff, Dad”, or the growly back-sass that brings his blood to a boil. 

They’ve got his dark hair, his eye color. Olive complexion thanks to his dominate Sicilian genetics. Your eye shape. Thank Christ, Frank jokes, they got your nose. 

Angels ‘cause they’re beautiful, yours, his, and Jesus fuck— alive. The cackling laughter around the table draws him in from his thoughts. They’re smiling. Big, goofy, all their teeth. 

Frank’s eyes slide to you with a look that says, Damn, we did alright, huh? 

Your nose crinkles with your grin. Yeah, we did. 

“Okay, but the real cocksucker is Mr. Caedes,” Viv emphasizes with the stab of her fork in meat. 

“Viviana,” you scold. 

“Yeah,” Frank gruffs, “guy’s a cocksucker, alright.” 

“Frank.” 

“What’d he do now, huh?” Frank asks, a line between his brows as he looks between the twins to gauge. 

“He’s stupid,” Viviana huffs. 

“He’s adding a family tree segment into our curriculum that makes no sense,” Sofia clarifies, shaking her head like the academic comparison of the subjects disgusts her. 

Frank can’t stop looking at how her hair’s snarled into a low, messy ponytail. S’not like Sof. Only gets like this when… shit’s not right in her head. 

Mid-chew, you speak up. “I thought he taught Recent Events?” 

“He does,” Sofia says. “That’s why it makes no sense. Recent Events and family history don’t add up.” 

“He been alright t’you girls?” Frank presses, forehead creased with an offer he doesn’t have to speak. Girls’ve mentioned him before. Mentioned comments and unfair grading system that seems exclusive for the two of ‘em. You’ve had to sweet-talk Frank off the confrontation ledge many times. 

“Fine,” Viv scoffs, picking apart her food with teenage angst. “Aside from the fact he hates our guts for no reason.” 

“Correction,” Sofia prompts, deadpan stare on her sister. “He fucking hates our guts.” 

“Whoaaa-ho-ho, alright, gonna give Dad a stroke with all the foul mouth, yeah? Watch it. Ma’s right here. Have some manners. Taught you better than that.” Frank paws crumbs off in his napkin, dark eyes taking vote. “I’ll talk to ‘im. Ain’t no problem. Jus’ gotta know ‘f that’s what you want. Be there first thing tomorrow mornin’.” 

“God, Dad, no,” Viv hides behind her hands, shoulders scrunched up. “Please don’t. The science teacher from sixth grade still won’t look at us.” 

“Good,” Frank says, “means the chat was effective.” 

“So are you gonna help us with the family tree?” Sofia asks Frank, a hopeful lift to her brows. 

“I, uh…” Frank huffs it off, suddenly very interested in a third helping. “Nah. Mama’s got that, don’t ya, Ma?” 

You inhale a silent breath, your chest expanding under the concrete weight of everything you and Frank buried years ago; secrets and trauma of bloodshed the girls didn’t deserve, you both agreed. “Yup. We’ll work on the family tree. Grandma left me lots of ancestry stuff, I’ve got it all in the shed—”

“Wait, no,” Sofia interjects. “No offense, Mom, but I meant Dad’s genealogy.” 

That seizes Frank. Stops him cold for a split second—just enough for Sofia to catch it—before he shrugs a shoulder, averts his gaze. “Ah. Told you before, sweetie pie, ain’t nothin’ there. Nothin’ worth repeatin’.” 

Nothing they need to know about. 

They know about Frank’s first wife, his kids, little details, but not… how, why. 

They don’t know what grief turned him into. 

They don’t know The Punisher. 

Sofia frowns. Slumps in on herself. Shaking her head at Frank, she relents. Same old battle, same old loss. 

Viviana rolls her eyes, mouth twitching with a snide but not surprised comment she decides to keep to herself. 

You, on the other hand… Goddamn. Always there to soften the blows. Make Frank feel like less of a fuck up, more of a man you can stand by. You give him this look—eyes soft, shoulders relaxed, one side’a your mouth lifted like you’re sayin’ it’s okay, Frankie. They just don’t understand. You’re protecting them. You’re a good dad. Same things you whisper in his ear late at night when the disease of doubt itches under his skin and there’s nowhere to go but you. Same place there always was. You. 

“So,” you usher the conversation along, winking at Frank when you catch the relief in his face. “Recent Events. Let’s talk Recent Events. What recent events are you learning about?” 

The conversation moves with you. Fuck, Frank loves you f’that. Uncanny ability t’lead this family. Him. 

“The morality of murder and implications of self-righteous behavior in the criminal justice system,” Sofia recites with a chime, as if that’s a totally normal topic. 

“………Oh?” You and Frank question in the same dumbfounded noise at the same time. 

“That’s… exact.” Frank mumbles, setting his fork down ‘cause shit don’t taste right anymore. Somethin’… off with it. Gone bad. Maybe s’just the pit openin’ in his gut. 

“It’s interesting,” Sofia hums, flicking her sallow eyes at her parents, “learning about the psychology motiving people.” 

“O…kay…” you nod along slowly, unconvincing, face faintly pinched ‘cause somethin’ stinks and you can’t figure out where the smell is, either. Same as Frank. 

Frank wipes a hand down his mouth, his beard. Shakes his head from the obscurity of it. “All’s you need to know s’that the system’s corrupt, those assholes shittin’ in gold toilets don’t give a damn about you, and they’ll take every last penny’n dime—”

Penny and dime. Sh-Shit. Color drains from his face, frozen mid-movement. Didn’t even mean to say it. Just… slipped. Slipped out and caught him off guard, firing faded memories to the forefront of his mind. Memories of Frankie. Maria. Lisa. 

Frank… leaves. Mentally. Checks-out. Goes to that dark place again, paled out as the vestiges of his past snare him. 

His daughters stare at the empty vessel at the head of the table. Watch how his pointer finger—his trigger finger—spasms on the tablecloth, his shoulders gnarled up until they tremor; a hostage to his past. 

The twins exchange a frightened look of what the hell…? then look to you for answers. 

“…Is Dad having a senior moment?” Viviana whispers, leaning towards you without breaking sight from the trance her dad’s in. 

Frank hears. But doesn’t hear. Not when he can still hear the park goin’ up in screams, gunshots ringin’ through that beautiful day. Slicin’ straight through his fuckin’ family. 

“Give Dad a minute,” you order, low and firm, but not unkind. Poised, because you’ve handled this before. 

They know he’s been to war, a marine. They just don’t know the extent of what he’s lost. 

The gears turn in Sofia’s head, visible in the gradual softening of her expression. “…It’s not a senior moment, Viviana…” she whispers, face twisting with inherited grief. “…It’s a flashback.” 

Memory turns a facet in Frank’s head. A rill of blood crawls out his nose, throat working like he can’t breathe. 

“Girls.” You command. “Outside. Now.” 

They scatter. 

You rush to his side with clear efficiency, the same emergency response reserved for the nurse you are, not the mom or the wife. 

Snagging a napkin from the table, you stand behind Frank. One hand plants on his shoulder, the other cradles the tissue under his nose to catch the warm, sluggish ooze. 

Eyes hot but dry, you force a calm, concise lure to your voice; a sweet beckoning back as Frank vibrates under your hands. 

“Okay, Frankie, say it with me. Okay? Say it with me. ‘I carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart. I am never without it—anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling’,” you murmur, thumb kneading the scar along the slat of his shoulder blade; old reminder of the bullet that pierced him. 

The poem—your promise to one another—it claws a dry, desperate suction down his throat. Sounds like he swallowed sand. And hell, maybe he is, in a memory from another lifetime. It’s bringing him back. He twists the tablecloth into a quaking fist; near detonation or near self-destruction? 

“That’s it, Frank, c’mon. You’re home, Frank. ‘I fear no fate, for you are my fate,’” you recite, bending to press your face into his temple, to grit the promise right into his head. His pulse hammers against your nose, skin sticky hot. “‘I want no world, for beautiful, you are my world, my true,‘” you smile, but it’s weighted with rue. 

Because you know what’s burdened his mind to make him this. You know the blood it’s taken and the violence it tried to process until he couldn’t. Until he broke all those years ago, using pills and booze to soften the blow. 

Blood creeps into the white napkin. A drop molds down your fingers and you ball the tissue to give him something clean. 

That’s always been your job, hasn’t it? Make him clean again. Help him. Save him. 

A recalibrating gasp rears him back, his head into your chest. His hand scrambles to clamp around your wrist, binding himself to reality. His reality—you. Instinct for certainty, his thumb digs into your pulse to feel the hit of it. 

You pull the tissue away as he throws his head back to look at you. And Christ… you look like God, and he, the saint with blood smeared over his face in his pursuit of extrication. 

“‘And it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you,’” you say, a hand cupping under his jaw to keep his eyes on you. 

Eyes dark, darting under the pressure of shame and guilt and seeing the delusion of a life he hasn’t lived in decades, Frank reaches up. Through the last shaft of dying sunlight. For you. Scarred hand shaking, big fingers clumsy as they slip for traction at the nape of your neck to bring you down. Bring you to him, until your foreheads meet in a hard, co-dependent knock. 

“‘Here is the deepest secret nobody knows,’” he rasps, voice battered. A rapid succession of blinks keeps him with you. 

Together, still bruised and bleeding from the past, you both speak the poem as a promise. His voice beaten gravel. Yours soft resolution. “‘Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide.’”

Frank stretches his chin back, mouth aligned with yours to feel the life on your breath. Let it hit his. Let you breathe life into him. “‘N this’s the wonder that's keepin’ the stars apart,’” his voice cracking where you bend over him. His body relinquishes. A man reduced to tremors rotting under his own humiliation. 

“‘I carry your heart,’” you say, velvet lips brushing his with every word so every word moves his. Relief slackens your shoulders, draping you over him.  

Frank does the same to you, pliant under your mouth and strength. “‘I carry it ‘n my heart.’”

And he kisses you like it. Kisses you with blood wet under his nose, smudged over his mouth. Kisses you like he carries your heart in his and always has. Almost an apology, because he did that for years before realizing he needs you. 

The Earth consumes the sun. 

You consume each other. 

Love and light. 

Two things that still end in darkness. 

☠︎︎

That evening…

Phones confiscated for weeknight touchin’ grass time, as Frank calls it, you sit on the porch wrapped in a plush throw blanket and watch the girls be girls. A plastic ping echoes between them as they laugh and kick a soccer ball, their chatter incoherent across the yard, their happiness unmistakable. They seem to have forgotten so quickly about dinner. Good. They don’t need to have that cloud hanging over them. 

You flick your eyes up to the sky. It’s bled out to a bleak grey sheet, but no matter where your eyes go… you see it. In the corner of your eye. A black mass in your periphery. 

The shed. 

It looms behind your daughters as a harbinger made of dilapidated doors and rotted wood. It’s as though the past—the secrets deadbolted behind those doors—want to reach out and grab them. Time beaten boards bow under decades of neglect. Chunks of shingles bitten out of the roof, yet the sun never reaches the inside. Just… a void of bloodshed and death the world isn’t meant to see anymore. Wind seems to give it a wide berth. Crickets clip their sound. Mother Nature… she holds her breath. 

The rocking chair creaks a hypotonic protest as your bare toes nudge the splintered wood panels, your other leg tucked under you for warmth. The evening’s cool breeze nips your cheeks, chills your mouth. The sound… the repetitive creeeeeakkkk, errrrrr… grates against your eardrums, raising your skin in bumps. Yet you can’t seem to stop. You need noise if the world won’t make any. 

The air out here, states away from New York on the Castiglione property—five acres of solitude and a rustic two-story carved out from the claustrophobic woods—you’ve relearned how to breathe… most days. How to exist without adrenaline dripping bile down your throat, how to listen to noises in the house at night and not bolt to your feet pleading Frank to check on the twins. So why do you taste the bile now, states away, in your home?

The girls… thank god they’ve never known the suffocation of Frank’s past. They don’t remember it. You and Frank’ve done good. You’ve protected them from the bloodshed, the psychosis, and the harsh reality of a marine-turned-mass-murderer-vigilante. Thanks to Micro, that is, who  erased what traces he could have The Punisher and Frank Castle from the internet. Impossible request, but Micro did his best. That’s all you could ask for, and you two never saw David again. That was part of the deal. 

The screen door opens with a whine, and you crane your head back to see Frank step out, mug of coffee in hand.

“Hey,” a gentle nudge, eyes following. 

“Hey, baby,” Frank gruffs back, voice scratchier from the smoke of the flashback, face cleaned. 

Callused fingers squeeze the back of your neck twice—a wordless summons with leftover tremors—and you stand, blanket gathered in your arms. 

Frank takes your spot. Drops into the rocking chair with a grunt, mug stretched away so nothing can splash on you when you nestle your ass in his lap. 

You two find each other like you always have, like you always do, melding together as though completion only happens when you’re together. Your rear parked on his thigh, legs dangling over the opposite armrest. Mug balanced on your knee, he cradles you in his other arm. Uses one foot to glide the rocker in slow, soothing waves. But… the sound’s still off. It’s… gone cold, just an obligatory function of the gliders, not the lullaby you’re familiar with. 

“Sof looked tired,” Frank says, his eyes tracking the outskirts of the timber. 

Wisps of fog weave between gnarled tree trunks, breeding a blackness so still it’s palpable. A darkness not empty, but loaded with eyes. Birds, animals…… nothing more. That you know of. Darkness hides many things. Sins, blood, insanity…… people. 

What if it’s right at your back door? 

“She’s been having nightmares again,” you murmur, an ear listening to the lurch of Frank’s heart when you tell him. 

“Christ.“ 

“She’ll be okay,” you say, taking a deep breath through your nose. Maybe to convince yourself. Maybe because you’re making sure there’s still room to breathe out there. “She doesn’t remember. It’s just… her brain trying to process.” 

“Brain don’t seem to wanna let it go. Been twelve goddamn years.” Frank muffles his vexation in the ceramic mug. 

“It was terrifying,” your brows knit, gaze wandering over the girls’ heads, to that motherfucking shed… “Some nights I still wonder if it could—“ you sever the thought with a huff, burrowing deeper into the protection Frank’s presence offers. 

His arm tightens around you; a lock of reassurance. “I know,” he says. “It won’t. Won’t let it.”

Big promise. Impossible promise. But coming out of Frank’s mouth? It’s a guarantee. 

A sticky, gooey sensation gums up your insides. Feels… gross. A violation of your intuition. You slot your face against the side of his neck, hiding from the dread bubbling your insides. It’s nothing. Nothing. 

……But in case it is? Frank has watch right now. You can rest. His beard scratches the side of your face when he shifts. Sipping his coffee, tucking his chin to glance down at the ball of you. It’s all a reminder he’s real, your family’s safe, and no one knows about the Castiglione’s out in the woods. No friends, no other family—not even the school bus. No traffic in or out besides the four of you. Frank takes care of everything so no one else has to. 

Someone, though… someone knew about the Castle’s in New York. And they wanted the Castle’s dead. Twelve years ago, almost to the day, your husband killed five of the six intruders with his bare hands. It’s still vivid in your mind. How… soundlessly they entered that night, just after three in the morning. Not a sound until you heard four year old Sofia’s babbled cries in your face, her small hands rocking your shoulders and crying, “mama, mama please,” while a masked man jutted a blade against her back and promised to field dress her. And it still haunts her. She can’t remember, not consciously, but the memories snatch her when she’s at her most vulnerable. During sleep, so she wakes screaming, crying, confused… or doesn’t sleep at all. And it’s tearing you apart. 

Frank jolts to catch you when you jar yourself out of the memory. Coffee sloshes one ugly, dark stain onto the porch. 

“Whoa, baby– hey, hey, easy. Easy, sweetheart. What’s that, huh? What’s wrong?” 

You don’t realize you’re panting until Frank sits you both forward, coffee discarded to the end table, so he can sprawl his big, heavy hand across your chest. And press, manually making room for you to breathe. 

“I- I, oh,” you say in shaky exhale, lashes fluttering to normalize yourself. “I feel… weird tonight, Frank. Real weird.” 

His face sets, this grave precision in his stillness. You always had this… intuition about you. Feeling the shit before it hits the fan. Like a… creepin’ under your skin, a rock in your gut. Started happenin’ after you got his shit straight after the pills, the booze… After he started carryin’ that picture of you. 

Your intuition woulda saved his ass in the field. Shit he woulda ignored in his former years. Now? Now it’s a fuckin’ omen Frank’s learned to respect. “…Weird how, sweetheart?” 

“I don’t know,” you gulp down your whine, refuse to let it out after all this time, but your eyes flick to the shed mocking the girls’ innocence and the timber mocking your safety. Dark clouds loud the sky, yet there’s no storm. Empty, but not vacant. A static buzz pitches in your ears, a soft cry for attention. “Will you- will you please check the shed before we go in? Just… make sure it’s all locked? That nothing’s… in there?” 

“Yeah,” he bounces a knee to soothe you. “Yeah, sweetheart. I’ll check the shed. Nothin’ in there. Girls ain’t able t’get in there. I’ll check, alright? Make sure f’you.” 

Turns out you can still breathe out here. For now. You wipe the back of your hand over your forehead and your chest deflates. “Okay. Yes. Thank you.” 

“Ain’t no problem, sweet girl,” Frank murmurs as he settles back again, reclining so your weight falls entirely on him. “Ain’t no problem.” 

A distraction, like amicably misleading a nervous dog, Frank pats your ass. Soft little things. 

You start to relax. The dread begins to unfasten from your arms. The tension in your gut uncoils… breath by breath, pat by pat… you breathe. Breathe in Frank. Warm coffee on his lips, cedarwood on his skin… that familiar concoction of comfort… safe… safe… you’re safe…

But are you? 

Something answers. 

Turns your blood to ice. Everything you feel, everything you think… 

Knock knock knock. 

Three knocks. On the wall behind you. 

Inside the house. 

Your eyes shoot open, wide and wild. 

“Sweetheart, hey,” Frank bounces you on his knee. “Breathe f’me, yeah? Settle down, c’mon. I gotcha.” 

Frank doesn’t hear it. Doesn’t know it’s everything. 

It’s confirmation. 

A promise. 

It’s death. 

☠︎

“Ew, they’re doing it again,” Viviana gags, booting the ball at Sofia’s ankles. 

The ball plinks carelessly off Sof’s feet, her body twisted to look at their parents. Frank’s sprawled back in the rocking chair, you draped over his lap. You look… hm. Sofia tilts her head. You’re not relaxed… but you’re not upset, either… Dad looks relaxed. Despite earlier, that… flashback, the blood leaking out of his nose. He always does, though. Look relaxed. Kinda. Maybe on guard is a better word. In his own intense way. Never gives the girls anything to worry about. His knees wide, head tipped back as his eyes track and track and track. He lifts a wave off your rear. Sofia waves back. 

“…It’s cute,” Sofia shrugs. 

“Cute? It’s disgusting. Dad’s so whipped for her.”

“…Isn’t that a good thing?” 

“Not for my appetite. C’mon, kick the ball back.” 

Sofia obliges. Turns back, scuffs a puny kick to get the ball over. 

Viv plants the ball under her foot, halting the game. “Mom said her family tree stuff’s in the shed,” she says. 

“…Okay? And?” Sofia raises her brows, daring her sister to vocalize the bad idea. “Dad’ll get it later.” 

“Why don’t you and I go get it?”

“By ourselves?” 

“Yup.” 

“IIIIIII don’t think that’s a good idea, Viviana…” 

“Why not? You were the one asking about Dad’s crap for the family tree. Seeeee? We can go in there, get it ourselves, andddd… I dunno, see what we can find. Dad’s hiding something, Sof.” 

“He just doesn’t like to talk about it, V. Leave it alone.” 

“You really don’t wanna know?” 

“Not really.” 

“Dad’s got six different locks installed on a thing that looks like it’s gonna collapse if we breathe wrong and you don’t wanna know what that means? What’s in there?” 

“He said to leave it alone. It’s not safe to go in there.” But her voice lacks conviction, and the shed beholds her stare. Awe at the molded boards, the bile-yellow moss eating up the sides, the frigid, lifeless air that seems to emanate from the rat-hole in the bottom of the door. 

“Honestly, Sof? We’ve tried so many times to ask him about stuff before us, about Grandma Louisa and Grandpa Mario, and I’m sick of waiting for answers. He’s hiding something, and if he won’t tell us, we’ll find out somehow.” 

Sofia stuffs her hands in her pockets and shuffles over, closer to Viviana. “…But how would we get it open? He’s got three deadbolts and three padlocks on it… it’s impossible to get it.” 

Viviana glances over her shoulder at the shed. Shrugs. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” 

Even though they whisper, the woods listen. They hear everything. 

From the blanket of darkness—

Snap. 

A branch snaps. 

Sofia gasps, stumbling when Viviana jumps back into her, the soccer ball knocked within reach of the timber’s rabid appetite. 

A branch snaps. Do you know what that means? 

It means something’s there. 

Something alive, living, breathing, watching from the shadows. 

“What the hell was that?” Viv whispers, eyes darting, her hand weaseling into her sister’s. 

“Probably just- probably just a deer. Or a coyote. Or something,” Sofia pants, their fingers bolted in a sweaty lock. 

“Yeah,” Viviana snarks, “or something.” 

☠︎

The padlock rattles an ironclad confirmation as Frank yanks on it. 

Locked. Repeats for the other two. 

Locked. 

Locked. 

Twists the handles of the deadbolts. 

The wooden doors of the shed clatter, but don’t budge. Can’t. Nowhere for ‘em to go. 

All his girls inside washing up for bed, Frank does what you ask. Check the shed. Check the locks. Nothin’ in. Nothin’ out. Can’t without his keys. Those never leave his pocket, let alone his sight. 

Against the bruising black of night, the sickly overhead above the door seizes and buzzes. Washes Frank in a nauseating strobe of yellow light as he grunts and pulls the locks. A warning, if he knew to look. 

“Yeah,” he mutters to himself, satisfied as he steps back from the secured unit. “What I thought.” 

Boot catches on something plastic as he does. 

Plastic cards clatter. His brows furrow. Lifts up his boot and…

“…The fuck?” 

There… caked in dirt, defiled in the bilious light of the shed…

Frank crouches, face contorted with confusion. Between two fingers, holding it with the respect a bomb deserves, he… lifts up your work ID badge.  

From the dirt. 

In front of the shed door. 

It wanted to be found. 

Your smile’s slathered in mud. 

Your name’s scratched out. 

And the picture you usually got clipped to the back? The one of the whole family? The girls. You. Frank. Gone. 

Why would you take it out? 

What’d you do with it?

You love that picture. 

Frank doesn’t realize it, but the answer’s under his boot. 

Scoffing at the obscurity, he stands. Takes one step for the house, and sees it. 

A cigarette stub. 

He cocks his head, your badge at his side. 

“…Smokin’ again, sweetheart?” he asks no one, asking it aloud only to help it make sense. 

Ain’t smelled ‘em on you. 

Ain’t tasted ‘em on you. 

Ain’t seen ‘em in your purse or your car or your dresser drawers. 

Unless you’ve got secrets Frank doesn’t know about. 

No need to bring it up. 

Just a cigarette. 

Right? 

☠︎

Frank stays up in the lamplight a little longer. Clock ticks. Doesn’t realize it’s a countdown. Sat back in the recliner, fingers holdin’ open a book he ain’t readin’, just… listenin’. Beretta wedged between the chair cushion and his thigh. Full clip in the mag. Waitin’ on nothin’. F’nothin’. Just a hunch—your hunch. 

Rest of the house pitch black. Loaded silence, the kind that rings. 

Tucked you in and held you ‘til you fell asleep but he couldn’t- couldn’t fuckin’ lay there with the damn mice in the walls scratchin’ away. Little nails diggin’, diggin’, diggin’ ‘til he feels the scrape in his teeth and has to move before he bites so hard he bleeds. 

Laid traps. Dozens. Empty. All empty. Fuckers won’t leave the walls. Won’t let him rest. 

Frank’s eyes stray from the page. Waits. Listens. Same shit he’s been doin’ since ten and it’s after three now. 

So fuckin’ quiet it ain’t right… 

Like somethin’s waitin’ on him, just can’t find what. 

Thinks about dinner. The girls’ teacher. The family tree. You, the fit about the shed. The family tree. His shit in the shed. The locks all done up. He made sure of it. Made sure. The cigarette… you. You keepin’ secrets? Ain’t like you. Can’t be. But— 

“…Dad?” 

Soft. Sweet. Sof. His little girl. 

Frank blinks out of it. Twists to look as she comes in, hand stuffin’ the gun into the chair. “What ya still doin’ up, pumpkin, huh?”  

Avoiding his gaze, Sofia fiddles with a hairbrush and tie. Scurries over in front of him, lookin’ so tiny. Fragile. His little girl. Fragile, ‘cause the world’s tryna break her and Frank’s tryna break the world first so it can’t touch her. Hair’s wet. A long sheet down her back, water siphoned down her shirt. 

“You shower again?” Frank asks, sitting on the edge of his recliner. Third one today. No tellin’ her no, no reasoning about it. She feels dirty? She showers. If she don’t shower? She has a meltdown. That started after the invasion in New York, too. Frank doesn’t really get it, that’s your expertise, but he doesn’t bitch about cold water or the well or anything else. Just… lets her do her thing when the compulsions hit. 

The answer’s in her hands, shoving the brush and scrunchie at him like she’s six again. “Will you please braid my hair?” 

Needy. She gets needy, too. S’alright. He don’t mind. S’what he’s here for. Here for his girls, yeah? He takes the brush, the tie. Nods to the carpet between his boots. 

Sofia folds herself on the ground criss-cross. Spine’s slumped. Shoulders rolled in. Weight’a the world and she’s only sixteen. “Sit up straight, pumpkin,” Frank says and, “atta girl,” when she listens. 

House’s quiet. Just the wet drag of the brush through thick hair. Repetition in sound, motion, until it’s all slicked back neat. Works in methodical silence. Chooses it, ‘cause she’ll talk when she wants. The fourth pull of the tines loosens her narrow shoulders. Fifth gets her to sigh, breathe right again. 

Band around his wrist, big fingers so fuckin’ careful handlin’ something so delicate—his little girl–he scoops out a section of hair. Divides it to three. Wet silk on his calluses, her trust in his hands to fix it, make it nice f’her. 

Quiet catharsis. 

Frank starts to braid. Ain’t great, but it’s solid. Straight. Tight. It’s French, eh? Counts f’somethin’. Weavin’ over the crown ‘a her head, face on the black television, Sof speaks up. 

“…Did you ever do this for Lisa?” she asks. 

His hands stumble. Lose a strand of hair and a curse goes along with it. “I— what’s that, pumpkin? Ain’t sure I heard right.” 

Her head angles back, just enough f’her profile on the lowlight. Looks like her. Lisa. Little bit. Same bits of him passed down to all his girls. 

“I asked if you ever did this for Lisa, too,” she repeats, softer, testin’ uneasy waters. 

Yeah. He heard right. Throat dries a little, words come out heavier. “Yeah,” he sniffs, reigns in the lost piece of hair. “Yeah. Few times. Not much. She, uh… liked those pigtail things. Never was good at those. Always got ‘em lopsided.” 

“So your first wife did that? Her hair?” 

Feels… wrong. Talkin’ to his kid about his dead kid, dead wife. Sof askin’ innocent questions that still compare ‘em both. “Honey,” Frank pauses mid-length of the braid. “Why you askin’ all this? Huh?” 

Little shoulders slink in a shrug, showin’ there’s a reason but she won’t spill. “Just… curious, that’s all. It’s sometimes kinda weird for me to think about. That me and Viv… we have half-siblings and they’re—”

“I know,” Frank calmly, firmly, intervenes before she can say dead. “Weird f’me a little bit too sometimes, hm?” 

“You don’t talk about them. Ever.” Little fingers grind at her own knees, like she ain’t sure how to sit with the fact. 

“Do I need to?”

Another shrug. 

Deep line in his brow, Frank knots off the braid. Sets the end gently between her shoulder blades. So fuckin’ gentle, scared somethin’ll happen if he ain’t careful enough. 

Sofia scoots around until she faces Frank. Frank, elbows to knees, big hands loose’n empty between his knees. Sof, knees drawn to her chin, arms linked around herself. 

“What’s goin’ on in that head’a yours, hm?” Quieter, the approach f’a baby animal. Still new to the world, figurin’ it out, lookin’ to him f’answers. 

“You had… a whole different family before us. And you guys were supposed to be together. And we weren’t supposed to be here. Me. Mom. Viv.” 

Frank jerks an inch. Grunts. “Enough’a that talk, right now, you hear me?” Yet he leans down. Takes the round of her chin in his fingers, gives a shake to get the thoughts out. “Hey. Look at me, Sof. Why’s all this in your head, huh? This why you can’t sleep? Up thinkin’ those things?” 

Tears bite her eyes. Shifts her chin out of reach to hide. “It’s true,” is her croaky argument. 

“No. It ain’t true. ‘N I don’t expect you to understand, pumpkin, too little f’that—”

“I’m sixteen, Dad.” 

“Yeah, too little. I don’t expect you to understand it, alright? All’s I need you t’do is trust me when I say there’s no place I’d rather be, alright? Ain’t nothin’ else f’me but you girls. You. Ma. Viv. Always been my everythin’. Your Ma, she—” his throat seals. Thinks back to the slums of New York. How he drank himself half-dead and the pills did the rest of the job. “Ain’t never met a woman like her before.” 

“Not even Maria…?”

“Not even her.” Solemn in his honesty. 

“But you still loved her, and if she were alive, you’d still be with them—”

“Sof—stop.” Tryna snuff out the light on his fuse. 

Anxiety’s got her clawin’ at her arms. Tryna get it off, off, off. “We- we’re just the backup plan—”

Frank drops to a knee, rough hands rippin’ her wrists before she cuts herself. “Sofia. Goddamn it, I said stop.” 

Somethin’ straight outta a goddamn nightmare. Grates against the old wounds, gnawin’ scars to bleedin’ scabs. Choose. If he had to choose. That’s what his fuckin’ daughter’s losin’ her shit over. Does Dad love her enough to choose her? Who does Dad love more? What he coulda had, or what he has. 

“What if—? What if you would’ve been happier with them?” Frenzied words. Terrified ideas no fuckin’ kid should ever think of. Her hands quake in his hold. She quakes, spittin’ fuckin’ nonsense. “Would you trade? If you could? Would go back and- and get them, even if it meant losing us? Would you bring them back if you could, would you—?” 

“GOD DAMN IT, Sofia—STOP!“ 

She does. 

And it kills him ‘cause she jolts back. Tumbles on her ass, hands and feet scurrying back. Away. Get away from Dad. Tears spill down her face. Fuck. 

“Hey, hey, sweetheart—” Comes out ruined, collapsed back on his heel, fingers diggin’ into the carpet ‘cause he ain’t sure he’s allowed to reach f’her. 

She won’t listen. Ugly tears now. Sobs goin’ all through the house, through his fuckin’ heart, snot down her face. 

“Sh, sh. C’mon, Sof, no. Christ. Didn’t- didn’t mean—”

“No, Dad, it’s not- I did something bad, Daddy. I didn’t- didn’t listen, I—” destroys him when she reverts to the little girl that cried to him when she got hurt or bumped her noggin ‘n it scared her or looked at him with a wobblin’ lip f’the strength not to cry. 

“Sweetheart, no, no, no. Sh, sh. Nothin’ so bad you gotta do all this, hm? Ain’t that bad, I know it. C’mon. C’mere. Talk to me, pumpkin. Ain’t gotta go at it alon—”

“I went into the shed!”

Frank-sees-double. Ringin’ pierces his ears. 

Sofia falls into herself. Hands over her red face. Palms muffle her wails. 

Can’t care about that right now. This life, this family—feels like he’s losing all over again. Worse this time, ‘cause there’s no one responsible for it but him. 

Frank’s softness cements, an ignition of fury in his eyes. 

“Sofia,” the gravel of his tone a warning. The tremor in his trigger-finger a plea. “What-did-you-see.” 

“Dad, I didn’t- I didn’t mean to, we didn’t mean to, we were just so curious, you never talk about them, we never get to ask questions, we just wanted to—”

“God fuckin’ damn it, what did you SEE?!” A deranged roar, pulse juicing in his ears as the threat of his past starts to ooze at the seams. 

Defense mechanism, Sofia raises her hands, shakes them to show it’s empty, she’s empty, no harm, nothing. “Just- just pictures!” With her head turned away, eyes screwed shut. “Pictures, of- of them! You. Them. And- and the- the book!” in a hiccuped sob, spewing out whatever she can so it ends her torment. “The penny and dime book, Dad, I’m- I’m sorry!The- um- there- there was an x-ray, too. Did you—? Did you get s-shot in t-the h-head?” 

His own fuckin’ daughter looks like too many hostages he’s eliminated. Looks too fuckin’ scared. Hands up to protect herself, can’t fuckin’ think to look at him, so fuckin’ scared she looks like a goddamn mess. 

Mess. One he made. 

“S’that all?” Frank asks through clenched teeth. Gotta make damn sure before he relents, feelin’ his heart break in real time. 

Sofia yanks her head in nods. 

Yeah. For damn sure. 

Frank topples back onto his ass. Back hits the recliner. Drags a hand down his face, sigh pulling long, heavy. Doesn’t help the suffocating burn in his lungs. Doesn’t ease the foul taste in his mouth. Hand over his mouth, eyes cast sideways to the blinds where the shed looms behind, Frank quiets. Says, “You girls… you got the version ‘a me Maria had to beg for. Shit I couldn’t be when they needed me to, too-too lost in gettin’ back out there. Gettin’ back in the shit. Don’t even know f’what. Guess it’s the only place I ever felt like home. ‘Til your Ma. ‘Til you girls.”

Drenched lashes bat, but stay on the ground. Face covered in tears, snot, blown red. Sofia hiccups and heaves closed-mouth sobs, comin’ down from it. 

“Didn’t do good by them. Back then,” Frank gestures a hand back. “Wasn’t, ah… wasn’t the person they needed me t’be. Always gone. Comin’ back lost. Gone again. Comin’ back worse than before. Pictures ain’t the truth, Sof. Ain’t all you see, yeah? Pictures’re pretty. The truth ain’t.” 

Sofia curls her legs under herself. Hunches forward, braid wet over her shoulder, head bowed. Quiet now, noddin’ along, lips swollen from cryin’. 

Frank gives Sof honesty to come back to. If she wants. Let her decide if he’s worth forgiveness. Barely a whisper, a confession: “Maria said I loved war more than my goddamn family.” 

And he doesn’t correct her. 

Frank and Sofia don’t look at each other, but Sof scurries across the floor on all fours like a frightened baby animal findin’ safety in Dad’s side. Understandin’ anger she doesn’t need to, maybe just wantin’ forgiveness for his actions. 

She buckles over his chest, arms visin’ his midsection. Frank resists the urge to cave. Can’t. Won’t. More of his shit she don’t need to carry. But his arm latches around her, jaw aching, nostrils flaring. Keeps it together. Barely. Doesn’t need to breakdown for her to feel the tenacity in his heart beat, the infinite devotion in his grip. 

“How the hell’d you even get in the shed, pumpkin, huh?” 

Sofia sniffles. Lifts her head up, expression knotted with confusion. Frank wipes the back of his hand to clean up her tears. 

“Dad… it was unlocked.” 

☠︎

Frank tips his head back on the edge of the mattress from where he sits on the ground. One knee bent up, arm stretched over it. Index finger taps nothing but air. Eyes follow the nebula star projection on the ceiling. Itches to go check the shed. Check the locks. Don’t make any fuckin’ sense. But his little girl needs him. Needs this. Shed’ll have to wait. 

The bed creaks behind him as Sofia burrows in her blankets. Faces him, curled on her side, comforter pulled to her nose. 

Takes a good look around her room. Place that’s hers, safe place. Exactly what you and Frank wanted for the girls. 

Her painted canvases on the wall. People, animals. Smeared sketches taped up. About a hundred little Polaroids tacked up, off-center. Little snippets of her life she’s proud of. Friends at school. Her and Frank. Frank and you. You and her. Her and Viv. You and her and Viv. Flowers outside. Critters in the yard. Award ribbons from school for her GPA every semester. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, muffled by the blankets. 

“Yeah,” Frank forces the agreement out, mouth numb from his earlier venom. “Me too, pumpkin. Sorry. Didn’t- didn’t mean t’yell. Didn’t deserve that. Didn’t like that.” 

“We shouldn’t have gone in there.” 

“Damn right you shouldn’t’ve. F’I ask you to do somethin’, there’s a reason.” He pauses, voice a level rumble. “You know better than that. See why I don’t want that shit in the house? Shit’s messy. Shit you don’t gotta worry about. Everythin’ I do’s to protect you girls. And I mean everythin’. Got that?” 

“Yes, Dad. I got it,” no sass, all acceptance. 

Frank’s strong. Still feels everything. Torture’s easier than hurting the ones he loves. 

Frank glances at the tremor in his finger. Muscle memory itching for a bullet, a break, his wife in the room over, fuck if he knows. Instead he finds a similar hurt in an innocent memory. 

“Ma ever tell you ‘bout the time I shaved?” 

“…Your beard?” Intrigued enough to prop on an elbow behind him, her braid hanging. “I thought you’ve always had one?” 

“Used t’be clean shaven,” Frank scratches under his chin, flicking a glance back at her. “Long time ago. Tried gettin’ rid of it when you were three.”  

“…And? Did you look ugly without it?” 

Frank rumbles a chuckle, lip quirked on one side. “Mama says I don’t.”

“Well, what she says goes,” she answers with a weak smile through the sniffles. 

“Damn straight,” but the story’s reaching the part where his smile drops off his face. “Summer, y’know, hot as hell out. Shaved it all off one afternoon. Mama came in with you while I was cleanin’ up. God, she dressed you girls up every damn day. Cute as hell. Had you in this Strawberry Poundcake—”

“Strawberry Shortcake, Dad.”

“Right, right. Yeah. S’right. Ma had you in these Strawberry Shortcake coveralls, strawberry hat thing on your little head. Looked like a goddamn strawberry, Jesus Christ. Your favorite damn thing, god knows why. She always had you dressed up. Always had people askin’ where she got this, where she got that,” but now he’s just reminiscing and Sofia’s got her chin on the ledge of the bed by his shoulder, watching artificial stars with him. “So you’n Mama come in. Ma’s gotta get your bath goin’, she passes you t’me, ‘n you just freeze,” one stuttered chuckle—then silence. His expression twitches, falling. “You freeze. Right there in my goddamn arms… lookin’ right at me like you don’t know me. Wouldn’t even touch me. You— One look at me and you bawled. I mean waterworks, Jesus Christ…” 

Sof blows a watery laugh, mouth buried in the crook of her arm to hold it together. “I did? Why?” 

“Never seen me without a beard before,” Frank huffs, wistful curve to his mouth before it falls. “Scared you. Wasn’t the Dada you knew, yeah, scared the hell outta you. You’re screamin’, I started yellin’, Mama came back in and we’re both just screamin’ at each other, you’n me, makin’ it a real shit show. You scared the hell outta me.” 

Now he’s laughing. 

Sofia’s laughing. 

They’re both laughing through the hurt.

Frank’s dissolves. “You wouldn’t have nothin’ t’do with me for a week.” 

Cute story. ‘Til it’s not. ‘Til it’s obvious how much that hurt Frank. 

“…Really? A full week?” Sofia cracks out, eyes jittering on a fray in the comforter she plucks. 

“Swear to god. Full fuckin’ week. Worst week’a my life. Got a little worried. Down there,” he nods towards the living room. “‘Cause you looked at me like that again. Like you didn’t know me. Didn’t like that. Don’t want that.” 

Before she looses it and before Frank capsizes under the guilt, Sofia flings her arms around his neck. Smashes her cheek against his. 

Christ, it settles the tremor in his finger. Soothes the rotten hole of worthlessness eating his insides. Frank’s hand covers her forearm, squeezing her in an embrace between his head and shoulder. 

“I was just… caught off-guard. You’ve never actually yelled at me like that before...” 

“Never had to.”

“Guess there’s a first for everything.” 

“Guess so.” 

“Hey, Dad?” Sof whispers. 

“Yeah, pumpkin,” Frank matches, keeping her close. 

The projector clicks, swirling a cosmic mobile above them. Easy to forget the shed outside. Easier to forget to listen to the world outside. 

“Thanks for being my best friend,” she says. 

“Thanks for bein’ mine, sweetheart.” 

☠︎

Frank tosses and turns in bed. Whatever way he moves, he drags you with him. Won’t— can’t let go. 

Checked the shed after Sof fell asleep. Locks engaged. Every fuckin’ one of ‘em. Checked on the girls again on his way to bed. 

Sleep never really comes. Stays in a tense trance, thoughts wandering, you bundled in his arms so he can’t jump off the deep end. Hell, what if that just takes you with him? 

Your lips hover the gnarled scar over his chest tattoo, tranquil breath fanning warm on each exhale. Suppresses the anger in him. You do. Always have, better than anything else.

Scritchscritchscritchscritch. 

His brows twitch. 

Scritchscritchscritchscritch. 

Nose crunches. 

A muted thump outside. 

Only wakes when you shift in his arms, peeling your head back from his chest with a sleep-slurred, “Frank…? You okay, baby?” 

“Hnnnm?” he hums, eyes cracking open to look down at you in the beam of moonlight. “Fine, sweetheart,” graveled from sleep. His hand dips under your shirt, rough fingertips circling the small of your back. “You good, hm?”

“Nothin’, sorry. Just… thought I heard you say somethin’,” sweet, sleep-slurred, nuzzling your nose over his self-inflicted scar again. “Or a noise or somethin’.” 

“Mm,” Frank acknowledges, tugging you up until you’re sharing the pillow with him. “Prob’ly jus’ sayin’ how beautiful you are, sweetheart. Look like an angel when you sleep,” a husky drawl, his nose guiding the tip of yours up to expose your mouth. “Wan’ me t’go look?” 

“You’re so full of shit,” yet your mouth twitches a grin an inch from his, leg sliding up over his hip. “But whatever. It’s getting you brownie points. S’okay, you don’t gotta get up.” 

“Yeah? What d’those get me, hm?” He caves. Steals a kiss before you can answer, tasting sleep and nothing resembling cigarettes. 

You melt against him. Hands on his bare chest, your mouth moving with his. To hell with brownie points. He’s warm and needy and your skin’s alive in the dead of night. 

He stifles a grunt against your mouth when you nip his bottom lip. Chases you back, teeth returning the favor a little harder, experimental, seeing what noise you give him. 

It draws out his name, “Frank…” in that breathy, syrupy voice and he knows exactly what it means. 

The mattress groans as he rolls you onto your back. Sheets drape over the broad stretch of his shoulders, tenting you in his weight, his heat, his scent. His forearms post up on either side of your head, mouth on a mission. A distraction to manage the incessant thoughts of the fuckin’ shed outside. 

The scratching starts again. Aggressive. Angry. Whittles away at the inflamed parts of his brain, sending a pounding pulse through his temples, lips tugging a grimace you mistake for hunger. His mouth latches and shapes yours for escapism—something you haven’t felt like this in years, not since you found him half-dead in the slums of New York. He traded the drugs and alcohol for you. A different type of consumption, but a vice all the same. The breath—delicate moans—leaving your mouth go straight into his to taste. 

Your hands tie into his hair, back arching up from the bed. You look like blissful surrender, but the feeling’s better. You want. You choose. You want to surrender to Frank, and you choose—trust—him, over and over, year after year, to be your one—your only. 

But the world’s not done with him. There’s still retribution for Frank Castle. Justice he didn’t know came with a return label. The karmic scales must balance in the same way he weighed them—by a man with the courage to harness that power. The power of delivering death or bestowing mercy. 

The power of punishment. 

He grasps and tugs on places that tell on him. The tiny skull pendant around your neck, your left ribcage like he’ll manually pump your heart. All the places he goes for when he needs a reality check. 

“Mm, hey…” you duck your head back into the pillow, forcing him to disconnect, to look at you in the faint patch of moonlight. “What’s going on, Frankie? Talk to me… I know when something’s wrong.” 

The hesitation on his tongue confirms. Yeah. Something’s wrong and he’s not sure how to say it. 

“Frankie…” you slink yourself up from beneath him, sitting now with your back to the headboard and your hands cradling his face. “It’s just me. Take your time, whatever you need to say.” 

Sat on his haunches between your legs, Frank sighs. Turns his face into your hand to drag his lips over your palm. “Kids, they, uh… fuck, sweetheart. Girls got into the—”

“Fraaank,” a singsongy voice from the corner of the room. Familiar, tone redirecting. His goddamn brother. 

“…Curt?” Frank asks the darkness. 

“What?” you interject. 

Darkness answers. “C’mon, man,” Curt coaxes. “You really gonna let it happen again?” 

Frank snaps his head out of your hands, in the direction of Curt’s voice. And fuck—there he is. Curt, hands in his pockets, throat prodding out. He rolls a nod at the window. “Take a look, Frank. You’re not so alone out here.” 

You follow Frank’s line of sight, seeing nothing. Your stomach bottoms out. Sweat clams your palms as they hover Frank’s shoulders. “Frank, hey, no—”

Before you can catch him, Frank slips out of bed. Has that tactical caution in his gait as he steps out of bed, eyes soldered to the window. 

The floorboards creak under his weight. Two steps, sidled up to the window sill, a stuttered breath contracts the rigid muscle of his stomach.

Outside? 

Beneath the seizing bulb in front of the shed? 

A man. 

“Sweetheart.” A cold, emotionless command. The kind that precedes carnage. “‘M gonna hand you a gun. You’re gonna take that gun. You’re gonna get the girls in this goddamn room. You hear me?”

“F-Frank? W-why? What’s happening?” you ask as you stray from the bed, bare feet on a invisible track for the door. 

“Get the girls in the room. Lock the goddamn door. You only open it f’me, you got that? Anyone else, you fuckin’ shoot. Straight in the chest. Center mass. Like we practice. Got that?” He doesn’t wait for your agreement. 

There’s no time. It’s not a fucking choice. It’s a necessity. 

Frank strides from the window to the nightstand. Rips the drawer open to pull out a Glock. Slaps a magazine in it. Lethality as muscle memory. Racks the slide to chamber a bullet before he shoves it in your hands. Brackets his over yours for two seconds. Long enough to drill the cruciality into you. 

His hands. Yours. Gun, metal ruthless and so frigid it amplifies the gravity of its power. 

To Frank, it’s a tool. 

To you, it’s the definition of Frank. 

He nods once at you. 

You nod once back. 

You carry his heart with you. He carries you wherever he goes. 

The moment his hands lift off yours— 

A bloodcurdling scream razes the house. Pierces his veins, heart thundering. 

A scream only heard in Frank’s worst nightmares. 

Same fuckin’ sound Lisa made when the park turned into a hellscape.  

This time? 

It’s Sofia. 

A/N: phewwwww, guys! This is more of my debut novel element. However, that’s a lot faster and more intense lol. I’m a little rusty, but I’m also treating this as a large piece so again, this chapter is a little slower. This part is setting the story. The next chapter is going to be much more intense. Either way, I hope you enjoyed this! I’m having a lot of fun constructing eerie, creepy details to give life to my work.

content is mine, always without the use of AI. do not share or repost on any other site without consent of the author (hi, me). characters are not mine. this original series idea is mine.

please consider reblogging to help this reach more people! comments are massively appreciated! if you’re not comfortable commenting publicly, consider sending an anon ask! 🩷🩷🩷 THANK YOU!

Tags (tag list open, only for 18+ users): @emma-frxst @jakegyllenhaalscharacters @tigerf-cker @harbouredsoulss @gingin3-blog @saintcastiglione @notimminent

[flwries]

again...this is so incredible! i got so intertwined with this writing that i had to do a few re-reads of it. this is amazing!!!! >.<

[hellilovedit]

Midnight Snack

Daddy!Husband!Frank x Mommy!Wifey!Reader

Summary: The lunch Frank makes for the twins looks good. Too good. And you get caught eating it. 

Warnings: Cursing, mentions of Frank’s dead family. Nothing else I can think of. Angsty start. Then fluff. Lots of fluff. Hopefully a lil’ funny fluffiness. Daddy!Husband!Frank x Mommy!Wifey!Reader. No, literally, guys. 

A/N: This was requested by anon and I had so much fun writing this! So sweet, so fun. I absolutely love when I get asks/requests. Also I have baby fever so fucking bad. Tag list is open for 18+. Also I fucking love Dad!Frank and wanna keep writing more of him. So I might.

Down to business: As always, 18+ only, minors do not interact. Reader is always a consenting adult.

Request: Hi, would u consider doing a Frank Castle fluff fic? I feel like our main man doesn't get many of those and my husband caught me with my head in the fridge the other night chomping on his banana bread that he made for the kids lunchbox 🫣 and instead of getting a telling off he joined me! We ate in secret in the dark and then snuck back up to bed 🤣 I just feel like Frank would totally be on board with this and he deserves a naughty midnight snack 😋 xxx 

W/C: 1,776 

Sometimes you catch Frank staring at his hands. Not thinking of what he uses them for, but what they’ve done, and the responsibility in them now. 

Family brings a different kind of weight to them, heavier, given it’s his second chance. 

Now Frank takes his practicality and shapes it into unconditional love, even when handling obligatory matters, his actions are rooted in love. 

Eight years ago and Frank Castle damn near fainted when the technician reported not one, but two heartbeats. You said it meant more to love. Frank said it felt like the world was mocking him for trying again. The world took two, then gave him two. What the fuck does that mean? Frank would ask himself, never you, because that wasn’t your burden to carry. But you saw the way it haunted him. Two, two, two. Two bodies he buried, two brought to life. In the ultrasound room, the probe still on your jellied belly, you watched Frank just… stare at his hands until your heart fluttered. Maybe fascinated he helped make them, maybe petrified he forgot how to be gentle with something so fragile. You’ll never forget that look. And you’ve never seen it since. 

The same night eight years ago, you watched Frank start to build. Literally, figuratively… mainly literally. He demolished the bathroom to fix up a Jack and Jill “for when they’re older”. He kicked the rotten fence down around the yard, raising instead a privacy barrier. “Ain’t no stray dogs gonna poke their heads in here, no way,” he’d said. And at night, after work, after his self-appointed renovations, the two of you would lay in bed in the lamplight, his hand draped over the entire swell of your belly, his face level with it. His eyes would track your breath, crinkle when the twins kicked at his voice, and he was simply… mesmerized. 

Plain and simple… 

Frank Castle was in love. 

Eight years later, you still can’t believe the life that’s been built for the four of you. Frank sees his past in his palms. You see everything he’s built with them. 

Hands that once splintered bone now console and smooth on bandaids to “make it all better, Daddy”. He does. The girls say so, both of them. You say so. He takes your word for it. 

Shoulders that once carried soldiers—his brothers—now serve as airborne timeout for the twins. Squeaked laughter erupts from the two girls when Frank throws them over a shoulder, their little legs kicking, their demands to be put down, or thrown into the air, or spun around eventually lost in a giddy fit of pure delight. 

Fingers once steady on the trigger now hold your shoulder instead, where Frank stands behind you in parent-teacher conferences like the unshakable wall of a man he is. One word, any word that’s said that he doesn’t agree with—it’s known. Leveled and firm, and… usually without the promise of bloodshed. 

Body weight thumps of your children throwing themselves around land overhead. From where you sit at the table, glass of wine in hand, you raise a skeptical brow at the sound. 

“For not eating their lunches, they’re full of energy,” you mumble.

“Ain’t energy. S’piss and vinegar, sweetheart,” Frank says in a contented sigh from the counter, lunch materials laid out in front of him like a battle plan. Lunch meat, bread, grapes, cheese, crackers— you name it, he’s got it.

“Sugar, spice, everything…” You blink, looking for the right words. “…somewhat nice.” 

The chair creaks as you sit back, eyes following your husband. The dexterity of his big hands as he brings together ham and cheese sandwiches. Crusts off, of course, and absolutely cut into triangles. No triangles? No consideration. 

His hair falls thick over his forehead, dampness curling the ends. You love the long hair. Plenty to run your fingers through, plenty to admire when he’s mowing the lawn and a total sweaty mess. His beard shifts with his expressions, full and long. And slowly, you’ve noticed, greying. Lots of silvery streaks, deepening wrinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smirks. Age… looks good on Frank. Happiness looks better. 

Frank shoves a thick slice of banana bread in each baggie, licking his fingers clean before he seals them up. 

Face flat, brows up, ignoring the stutter in your stomach, you ask, “…You’re bribing our children with banana bread? You’re supposed to be bad cop.”  

He looks over with the twitch of his mouth, stuffing the contents into pink and purple lunchboxes. “‘M still bad cop, baby. You better believe it.” 

“And you’re confident that banana bread is gonna get them to eat their lunches?” 

“You bet your ass they’ll eat it. Just you wait ‘n see, sweetheart, you leave it t’me,” he waves a hand, scribbling something on… something. You’ve got no idea what, and the wine says you don’t currently care. He’s confident, nodding along, voice all deep and raspy. “Your man’s got this, yeah, yeah. I got this. Don’t you worry that pretty little head’a yours.” 

“Say less,” you murmur, mouth sliding into an easy smirk. You paw your wine glass back, peering over Frank’s shoulder. “Sooo, uhhhh… we got any more of that banana bread left?” 

“Banana bread’s my last defense. Only thing they seem t’eat.” Frank shimmies the lunchboxes as he turns to stow them away in the fridge. “Goddamn kids, takin’ the good snacks.” 

“Piss and vinegar,” you recount his earlier words, slinking from the table to come behind him, wrapping your arms around his broad midsection. “They get that from you.” 

He chuckles, chest vibrating against your flat, possessive palms. “Preachin’ to the choir, Ma.” 

Frank has given you everything. 

And you’ve given Frank everything he never thought he could have. 

☠︎

Serious question. 

Why does banana bread taste better after midnight? Why is the forbidden fruit always sweeter? 

You’re not proud of it. But, really, if you think about it… your family left you with no choice. 

Okay. Maybe you’re being a little dramatic. But in the holy beam of the refrigerator light, the banana bread crammed into your face, left in the blissful solitude of night…? 

You moan and swear you’ve met God. 

What started out as a benign itch… escalated. 

You… needed to make sure Frank put fruit in the girls’ lunches. Aaaaand… goldfish. Yup, that’s exactly what you went down here to do. 

But the banana bread rang… and you answered. 

And none of it tastes like shame. You drop the last of one slice into your mouth, lashes fluttering closed to fully indulge in the quiet, the night, the snack… 

“Mmm… mhm, mhm…” you hum, your shoulders sinking with the weight of pleasure. 

Eyes still shut, you pull open the second baggie with a snap of plastic, turn on a heel to ease the fridge shut with your foot, and— freeze. 

“Sweetheart…?” Hushed, urgent. 

Frank. 

You lock up. 

Oh. Oh, god. 

“Baby, are you…?” 

His voice. He’s not… chastising. 

He’s… amused? 

You crack open an eye, mouth squished shut as you swallow the last crumb, which… now tastes like shame. “This is… not what it looks like,” you say, waving your hands no, even with the last piece of dessert in it. 

Dense arms crossed over his burly bare chest, Frank smirks. Loudly. “Ain’t what it looks like, huh? Humor me. Explain. Wanna see you try.” 

“Okay, well I was—”

Goddamn it, he’s walking over. A slow, lumbering saunter, grey sweatpants emphasizing the muscular line of his hips. You try again. 

“Well I needed to make sure—”

Hair mussed, beard flat on one side, he still looks godly after all of these years. 

“…vegetables?” you squeak. “…you forgot… veg…gie…tables…?” 

 Frank waltzes up right-in-front of you, sleep-heat radiating off his skin, smelling exactly of clean sheets and hot skin and him. 

“Okay Jesus Christ this is exactly what it looks like!” you hiss out, scoffing at yourself, turning your nose away from the bread like it’s to blame for your disgust. 

“Sh, sh, sh,” Frank shushes through a low rumbling chuckle, gesturing a hand to quiet. “Our little secret, yeah?” 

You loosen up some, eyes wary as they dart to and from him in the thin shafts of moonlight from the window. “…Yeah. Okay. I like that idea.” 

Eyes dead locked on yours, Frank makes an order: “Gimme a bite.” 

“Wait…” you murmur, shuffling your bare feet until your toes nudge his. “You’re not… mad?” 

“Mad? Pffft,” Frank cranes his head down to whisper, more discreet than necessary, grazing his bearded chin against your cheek. “Those little shits’re grounded startin’ tomorrow.” 

Your cheeks go taut with a grin, chuckling softly at the scratch of his hair. “Grounded?Why?” 

“Found the rest of the fuckin’ banana bread smashed in a coloring book.” 

“Oh my god. My fucking banana bread.” 

You both collapse into each other, laughing. Quiet, private, like it’s the funniest disclosure, because… uh, it is. 

You end up sitting on the ground together, legs pressed. Frank safe guards the fridge, his arm draped over your shoulders to keep you close. You hold down the freezer. 

You pass chunks of bread to him between your bites, your head lolling onto his shoulder as time goes on and the treat disappears. 

“So did we really just devour our bribe?” you ask.

“Part of it,” Frank hums. “Ain’t the effective part, though.”

You perk up as a request for answers, scanning the not-so-subtle pride Frank wears as he bites back a smirk, shrugs. “…Left a note.” 

“…A note.” 

“A threat.”

You bust out laughing, met with immediate hushing from Frank through his own chuckle. 

“You wrote a threatening note for the girls to find at lunch time?” 

“They’re gonna eat, one way or another. If the note don’t work, I’m gettin’ the fuckin’ funnel.”

“Frank—” your laughter fans his chest, legs weak as you roll over and give up, cherishing every split second with your husband, the deranged father of your children. “What’s the note say?” 

Frank settles back though he can’t go any further, drawing it out for comedic effect. 

“Just… y’know… what I need ‘em to think.”

“And that is…?” 

“Every time they don’t finish their fuckin’ food, a unicorn dies.” 

“FRANK!” 

Laughter stifles both of you. 

You’re on the floor holding your stomach. 

Frank’s got his head tipped back, mouth split open in a cheek-aching smile. 

You laugh to tears. 

Frank wipes his own away. 

Time ticks on, indifferent as it eats away the night. 

You take Frank’s hand and plant it over your heart, exactly where it belongs, so he can feel what he’s built there, too. 

And you thank the universe—you thank Frank—for the best thing to ever happen to you…

This family. 

Your family. 

The Castles. 

*****************************************************************

content is mine, always without the use of AI. do not share or repost on any other site without consent of the author (hi, me). characters are not mine.

please consider reblogging to help this reach more people! 🩷🩷🩷 THANK YOU!

Tags (tag list open, only for 18+ users): @emma-frxst @jakegyllenhaalscharacters @harbouredsoulss @tigerf-cker

[flwries]

this was absolutely incredible...the characterization of frank castle is so scarily spot on! i am OBSESSED!!!!!

[flwries]

my man my man my maaaaaaaan

[flwries]

IM LIKE HEY WASSUP HELLO !!!!!

OMG HI HIIIIIII

[thefateofelia]

DARLING! GUESS WHO'S BACK FROM JAIL!

word count: 16k (ops...)

summary: a woman grapples with the aftermath of her lover's sudden departure and imprisonment.as she tries to rebuild her life with the help of a therapist and a safe new romantic interest, she experiences increasingly disturbing signs.

warnings: psychological trauma/ptsd, toxic relationship /codependency, stalking/obsessive behavior, violence (descriptions of destroyed property, blood), murder references (off-screen), emotional distress/grief, possessive behavior, dissociative episodes/paranoia, emotional pain and suffering, benjamin poindexter.

The end of the world doesn't come with thunder, or with flashes in the sky. You learned that the worst way possible—the kind that isn't taught, only carved into the flesh.

The end of the world came with a note. Three words. And a silence that settled in like a permanent guest, one that never packed its bags. "Protect yourself." That's what he wrote. As if you were the most fragile creature in the universe, a piece of blown glass teetering on the edge of a fall, and he, at the same time, the only hand capable of catching you and the hard floor waiting below. As if the phrase could contain a stifled "I love you," a hopeless "I'm sorry," and a final "goodbye"—all condensed into a single line of paper that buckled under its own weight.

You woke up alone the next day. You remember this with a clarity that hurts. The sheet beside you still held his warmth, a trace of life that the body is slow to forget. The pillow still held the exact hollow of his neck, the soft indentation his head had sculpted night after night. You reached out without thinking, groping the emptiness, and for one full second—one of those that lasts an eternity—you believed he was in the bathroom. Or in the kitchen making coffee. Or in any room that wasn't the world without him. But the bathroom was empty, the towels still folded. The kitchen was empty, his usual mug in the dish rack. The entire apartment was empty in a way that hurt like an extracted tooth, the socket throbbing even after the root had been pulled.

You read the note seven times before understanding anything. By the seventh, the words were already dancing blurry before your eyes. By the eighth, you were already on the cold kitchen floor, clutching the paper with both hands like someone clinging to a float moments before drowning. And the crying came—not that beautiful, silent movie crying, but the ugly kind, the desperate kind, the kind that tears at your throat and runs down your face in snot and drool, the kind that comes from such a deep place in your chest that it feels like you're vomiting your own soul, piece by piece.

The first days were a shapeless blur, the kind memory refuses to organize in sequence. A blur of not eating, not sleeping, not getting out of bed. Time lost its meaning. The kitchen clock kept ticking the seconds, but you no longer heard its voice. You called him 47 times. You stored each one of those calls in a dark corner of your memory, like stones weighing down your pocket that you refuse to throw away. Every call went straight to voicemail, straight to that auditory limbo where words go to die unanswered. His voice, recorded at some random moment when he was still there, said with cruel naturalness: "you know what to do." You always waited for the beep. The beep always came. And you spoke, even knowing—deep down, very deep down, you knew—that no one on the other end was listening.

"Come back. Please. Come back. I won't ask anything. Just come back."

You left messages that got shorter and shorter, more and more desperate, the words tripping over each other, your voice faltering at the ends of sentences. Until the 23rd day, you stopped. And it wasn't because you had given up on him. It was because your voice no longer came out. Because you had cried so much, so deeply and for so long, that your vocal cords simply… refused to continue. As if your body had finally said enough before your soul had.

It was your neighbor from 301 who found you. Dona. A bulky woman with faded purple hair and a heart so large it seemed not to fit inside her chest—it overflowed through her small eyes and the deep voice that echoed in the hallway. She broke down the door when you didn't answer for three days. Three days in which the milk in the fridge soured, the plants on the windowsill wilted, and silence became the only living thing in the apartment. She found you curled up in his gray t-shirt—the one you wore to sleep, the one that no longer smelled of him except through a stubbornness of the sense of smell, a barely-there scent you rubbed against your face trying to resurrect a perfume already dead for weeks. Your eyes were open, and in place of your gaze there were two holes, fixed on the white wall that seemed to grow more distant by the second.

"Girl," she said. She sat beside you on the bed without asking permission, without ceremony, the way someone who has seen it all in this life and still chose to keep having compassion. She held your face with thick, calloused hands—hands that had cleaned other people's houses her whole life, that had raised a child alone, that had learned early that the world doesn't go easy on anyone. "Girl, what did he do to you?"

You didn't answer.

Not because you didn't want to. The desire was there, somewhere behind your breastbone, wanting to escape. But you no longer knew how to separate. You could no longer distinguish where his love ended and the destruction began. The two things had become so tangled inside you that they seemed like a single organism—a beautiful plant whose roots, deep down, were poisonous. You looked at Dona with dry, burning eyes, your mouth slightly open, and for the first time in 23 days there were no tears left to fall. Only emptiness. And silence. And the gray t-shirt you pressed against your chest as if he could still fit inside it.

The news came three weeks later.

Three weeks of silence. Three weeks of a ghostly routine where you learned to exist mechanically—get up, lie down, stare at the ceiling, forget to eat until hunger became a distant pang. You were on the sofa at that moment. The same sofa where he held you while you watched movies that neither of you paid attention to, because he was too busy kissing your neck, leaving a warm trail down your spine, murmuring things in your ear that you would never repeat out loud. The same sunken foam in the center, from the weight of two bodies that insisted on occupying the same space. The same smell of good mold and spilled coffee in the upholstery. Everything there. Everything the same. Except he wasn't.

The newscast said his name.

Benjamin Poindexter. The name you learned to say in the morning, still with a sleepy voice, brushing your lips against his nape. The name you wrote on bar napkins, on the edges of books, on the fogged-up glass of the shower stall. The name you whispered in cheap hotels and on stormy nights, when fear came knocking at your door and he said "relax, I'm here." The name that now came from the mouth of a news anchor with the same intonation as any other headline. As if it weren't the center of your entire world.

"Former FBI agent Benjamin Poindexter was sentenced today to life imprisonment on multiple counts of homicide…"

The rest was static.

Not literally—the television kept buzzing, the anchor kept talking, the colorful graphics kept rising and falling on the screen. But the sound of the entire world went silent in that second. As if someone had pulled the plug on reality. You could only see his face on the screen. Those pale blue eyes—the eyes that looked at you with such absolute devotion that sometimes it hurt to hold his gaze, as if he were, at every moment, apologizing for being too human. Now they weren't looking at you. Now they were fixed somewhere behind the camera, still, empty, two spheres of ice that no longer reflected anything. As if he had already given up on everything. As if the only thing that mattered—and you knew, with a cold tightness in your chest, that this thing was you—was no longer there, no longer available to be the reason he kept breathing.

The images changed. They showed him being led away by two police officers in black, long rhythmic strides, handcuffs tightening around the wrists that once held you with so much force and so much delicacy that they seemed to harbor an impossible contradiction. Head down. The white shirt open at the chest—and you saw it.

Oh, God. You saw it.

The marks. The scars. Every line of irregular tissue, every patch of skin that hadn't regenerated properly. The intimate map of his suffering, which you had learned by heart at your fingertips. You kissed each one before sleeping. It was a silent, almost religious ritual—your lips tracing those paths of pain to say, without words, I see. I know. I stay. And that place near his shoulder, where you rested your forehead when you could no longer look into his eyes. When it was too much. When love was so great that it overflowed and became a kind of agony. You rested your forehead there, and he knew. He always knew. His hand would go up to your hair and he wouldn't say anything. He would just wait. Because he knew that silence, sometimes, was the only language you could speak.

Everything there. Everything the same. Only now he was no longer yours. He would never be again. He was property of the state. A number. A file. A 3x4 photo with a little placard on his chest. The man who taught you what it meant to be loved to the marrow was now a convict, and you watched this sitting on the two-seater sofa, in the living room that still had his towel hanging on the line, his shaving cream in the shower, his last toothbrush in the cup next to yours.

You don't remember screaming.

But Dona said you did. Said you made a sound so loud and so shrill that she dropped the pan on the fire and ran up the stairs, thinking someone was dying. Said it was the kind of scream that doesn't come from the throat of a whole person. Only from someone who has already been shattered on the floor for weeks and finally found a voice for the fall.

And maybe someone was dying, yes. Maybe you died a little that day. A little there, on the two-seater sofa, watching the face of the man you loved disappear behind a steel door that would never open for you again. Or maybe you didn't die just a little. Maybe death came in slices, and that one was the biggest—a cut so deep that you would never look at a pair of blue eyes again without feeling a chill in your stomach. You were never able to decide. You preferred not to decide. You preferred to leave the question open, like a window that never fully closes, no matter how much wind and dust get in.

They didn't let you visit.

That was the first rule. The first boundary that no one needed to explain with many words. His lawyer—a woman named Agnes, thin as a hanger and cold as the glass eye she wore in place of her right one—received you in her office downtown. The office smelled of old documents and disinfectant. There was a dead plant in the corner and a 2003 calendar still hanging on the wall. The kind of place where hope comes in to rot. Agnes didn't offer coffee. Didn't ask you to sit. She opened the blue file on the table, adjusted her glasses on the tip of her nose, and said, with the same intonation as someone reading a grocery list:

"He doesn't want to see you."

You blinked. Thought you had misheard. That the words, somehow, had gotten scrambled on the way from her mouth to your ears. But Agnes repeated, slowly, as if speaking to a slow child or someone who had just suffered a concussion:

"He said, and I quote: 'Tell her I died. It's easier that way.'"

The office seemed to shrink. The walls came closer. The ceiling dropped a few inches. You stood still in the middle of the stained carpet, feeling the entire world spin around an invisible axis—and that axis was that sentence. Tell her I died. As if dying were a simple thing. As if you could receive news of someone's death with the same lightness as receiving a telegram. As if the love you had built together—in that bed, on that sofa, in that tiny kitchen where he taught you to make tomato sauce from scratch and you burned your hand and he kissed each finger—could be undone with a sentence spoken by a glass-eyed woman in an office that smelled of mold.

"Easier for whom?" you asked.

Your voice came out strange. Thin. Distant. As if it weren't yours. As if someone had taken control of your body and asked for you, because you, deep down, no longer had the strength to form words.

Agnes raised an eyebrow. The only one that worked. The one on the side of her good eye. The glass eye kept staring at you—motionless, shiny, accusatory. As if it saw things you were trying to hide. As if it knew about all the nights you lied to yourself, all the times you looked away and pretended not to see the dark stains on his soul.

"For both of you," she replied.

And that was it.

There was no crying in that office. No outburst, no plea for reconsideration, no knees on the floor begging for a second chance. You just looked at Agnes for a few more seconds—long enough to memorize the merciless gleam of that glass eye, to understand that there was no heart to be moved in there—and then you turned. Opened the door. Left.

The hallway was long and poorly lit. Your footsteps echoed on the linoleum. You clutched your purse against your chest as if it could protect you from something, but it couldn't. Nothing could. You went down the stairs because the elevator was broken (of course it was) and reached the street on a cloudy autumn day, with dry leaves piling up on the sidewalks and a cold wind cutting across your face.

And you never asked again.

Never called Agnes again. Never sent letters. Never tried to contact any lawyer, any prison official, any remote contact of someone who might reach him. You simply… stopped. Like a heart that gave up beating. Like a clock that decided it was too late to keep marking the hours.

Because deep down, in the darkest and most honest place in your chest, you knew he was right. Not about having died—because he hadn't died, he was alive, somewhere behind concrete walls and steel bars, sleeping on a thin mattress, eating bland food, counting the days of a sentence that would never end. But about the rest. About the "easier." About the "never again." About the impossibility of the two of you existing in the same world without destroying each other.

You never asked again, but you also never loved anyone the same way. The years passed—and they passed, because time is cruel and doesn't stop for anyone, not even for those who are grieving—and you met other people. Other mouths. Other hands. Other gazes. But none of them had that terrible devotion, that way he had of looking at you as if you were the last water in the desert. And no goodbye hurt as much as that non-goodbye. The one that had no last kiss. The one that had no last fight. The one that had no coffin, no flowers, no body present. The one that had only a three-word note, a glass eye, and the phrase "tell her I died," repeating in your head like a song no one asked to hear, but that never, never, never stopped playing.

The following months were an exercise in survival that didn't look like survival. It didn't have that shine of overcoming stories, didn't have the inspirational soundtrack of weekend movies. It looked like punishment. A punishment with no declared crime, no judge, no sentence read aloud—just the relentless routine of continuing to exist when everything inside you begged to stop.

You started seeing a psychologist because Dona threatened to institutionalize you. Literally. She showed up at your door on a rainy Tuesday with a folder in her hand and the most serious eyes you had ever seen in your life. "Either you go willingly, girl, or I'll drag you there; don't make me do it, because I raised three children alone and I still have the arm strength." You went. Out of fear. Out of exhaustion. Because, deep down, a tiny, still-alive part of you knew she was right.

Dr. Elaine wore tortoiseshell glasses—thick ones, sort of vintage—and had a way of tilting her head to the side when you spoke, as if each of your words was a piece of a puzzle she was trying to assemble with infinite care. Her office smelled of chamomile and had a deep armchair that felt like a hug disguised as furniture. She would look at you over her glasses sometimes, and that look alone made you want to tell her everything. Everything, really. The things you had never said out loud. The things you barely admitted to yourself when you were alone in the dark, with the hum of the refrigerator as your only company.

And you told her. Almost everything.

You told her about the note. About the silence. About the 47 calls and his voice on the voicemail. About the neighbor, about the newscast, about the blue eyes on the television screen. About the glass-eyed lawyer and the cruel phrase that had pierced you like a blank bullet—one that hurts because it seems fake, but isn't. About the nights you woke up sweating, his name on your lips, and the empty side of the bed seemed larger than the whole world.

But some things you didn't tell.

You didn't tell about the patterns he drew on your wrist while you watched TV. Concentric circles. Very slow. Very methodical. As if he were tracing escape maps on your skin. You never asked what that meant. You were afraid of the answer. You still are.

You didn't tell about the whispers in the dark. The things he said after you had already pretended to be asleep. Scattered sentences, almost inaudible, that he probably thought you couldn't hear. "I can't lose you. I wouldn't survive." "You're the only certain thing in my life." "If I ever do something bad, promise you won't hate me?" You never answered any of those whispers. You pretended to sleep. You stored each word in a little locked box at the back of your memory and hoped time would undo them. Time undid nothing.

You didn't tell how he held you. It wasn't a normal hug. It was more as if he were trying to fuse you into his own body. As if you were the only thing keeping him from shattering into a thousand irrecoverable pieces. His arms would encircle you with a force bordering on desperation, and sometimes you would feel his face buried in your hair, his breath trembling, and you knew—knew without needing words—that he was crying. He never cried in front of you. But behind you, while hugging you from behind, he allowed himself to. And you pretended not to notice, because you knew that for him shame was worse than sadness.

Some things, you decided, are too sacred to be spoken aloud. Even to a professional. Even in a room that smells of chamomile and has an armchair that feels like a hug. Some things belong only to silence. To the silence and to the pillow that still holds the shape of his head.

"He's in prison forever," Dr. Elaine said one session, jotting something down in her notebook. The pen scratched against the paper with a dry, definitive sound. "And you're trapped too. Trapped in a version of him that only exists in your head now. But he's no longer that person. He'll never be. People change, especially in extreme situations. The man you loved… he doesn't exist anymore, if he ever really existed that way. You need to accept that what you had… it's over."

Over. The word echoed through the office, bounced off the beige walls, hit the ceiling and came back. Over. As if it were that simple. As if extinguishing a love were the same as turning off a light. Flipping a switch and done, all dark, move on.

You nodded. Made the mechanical motion of yes, yes, of course, you understand, you're processing, you'll work on it. You paid for the session. Took your card out of your wallet with fingers that didn't tremble—because you had learned not to tremble; Dr. Elaine called it "functional dissociation," you called it survival. You crossed the waiting room, went down the elevator, walked out to the parking lot. Your car started. The radio played a song the two of you used to listen to together. You changed the station. Then changed it again. Then turned it off.

You went home.

Opened the door. Put away your purse. Took off your shoes. Washed your face. Brushed your teeth. Did everything a functional person does before sleeping. And that night—like every night since he left, like every night that would come after, like every night you would spend for the rest of your life without him—you slept hugging his pillow.

The pillow no longer smelled of him. That had been lost months ago, in some distracted wash, on some day when you were so dazed with pain that you didn't even realize you were erasing the last traces. The pillow now smelled of you. Of cheap soap. Of drugstore shampoo. Of poorly slept nights and dried tears. But the shape was still there. The indentation his head had sculpted into the filling. The exact depression, the precise curve that matched the back of his neck, the way he turned his face to kiss you before turning off the light.

You would hug the pillow and close your eyes. Breathe deeply. And for a moment—a brief, stolen moment, a small offense against reality—you would pretend his arm was still there. Pressed against your waist. Heavy and warm and present. You would pretend his breath was stirring your hair at the nape. That he was going to pull you a little closer, groan softly against your shoulder and murmur "I love you" in that dragging voice of someone already almost asleep.

You pretended. Because it was all that was left. And what was left was so little that you needed to protect every crumb, every fragment of illusion, as if they were the last embers of a fire that had once warmed the whole house.

The pillow didn't hug back. But you had already forgotten what it was like to be truly hugged. And maybe, deep down, you preferred it that way. Because if you remembered—if you remembered exactly how it was—then you really wouldn't be able to go on.

The psychologist insisted on a meeting.

It wasn't a request. It was a calculated move, the kind professionals use when they think a patient is stuck in a well too deep to climb out of alone. Dr. Elaine pushed a yellow piece of paper toward you—from one of those sticky note pads she used for quick reminders, always with a faded flower in the corner—and leaned back in her chair with an air of someone who had already decided the answer before you even opened your mouth.

"He's a friend of my nephew's," she said, as if talking about the weather or the exchange rate. "Very polite. Works in credit analysis. Normal. Safe. Nothing special." She paused, adjusted her tortoiseshell glasses, and added with a gentleness that hurt: "Just coffee. So you can see there are still other people in the world. People who won't destroy you."

People who won't destroy you. The phrase floated in the air of the room, accusatory. As if she knew—and she did know, you had told her almost everything—that destruction was your last love's native language. As if she were offering you an instruction manual for a life without craters.

You almost said no. The word was on the tip of your tongue, heavy and familiar, an old friend who had slept on your couch for months and refused to pack its bags. No was comfortable. No was safe. No was known territory where you knew exactly where the floor gave way and where you could step firmly. But something—maybe the exhaustion, maybe the way Dr. Elaine tilted her head with that infinite patience of someone who has seen worse cases, maybe a leftover of stupid hope that refused to die no matter how hard you tried to strangle it—made you reach out.

The yellow paper had small, careful handwriting. The name was Lucas. 34 years old. Likes hiking and specialty coffee. Has a dog named Toby. It looked like a pet adoption form. You almost smiled. Almost.

You went.

And you went for him. Not for Lucas. For Ben. Because a part of you—the part that still woke up in the middle of the night with your heart racing, thinking you felt the weight of his arm on your waist, thinking you heard his breath in the dark—wanted to prove to yourself that you could do it. That you weren't permanently broken. That he hadn't managed to destroy you completely, despite all evidence to the contrary. That you still existed outside his universe, outside the gravitational orbit of that blue-eyed, scar-shouldered man.

The café was a fancy place you would never have chosen on your own. Designer lamps hanging from the ceiling like cold jewels. Low music, the kind no one pays attention to but misses when it stops. You ordered a latte and spent five minutes adjusting the handle of the cup, spinning the saucer, fidgeting with the napkin—because you didn't know what to do with your hands. The hands he used to hold. The hands he kissed, one finger at a time, while you waited for the movie to start.

Lucas arrived late. Nine minutes. You counted because you counted everything now; time was something that needed to be measured in small, controllable portions, otherwise it slipped through the cracks. His excuse came with a tight smile: "Traffic, you know how it is." He was shorter than you imagined. Not much, but enough for you to notice. Perfectly combed brown hair, not a strand out of place. A close, almost surgical shave. The friendly, generic smile of someone who fits into any life insurance ad. He didn't have Ben's crooked smile. The one that went up a little more on one side, as if he knew a secret you hadn't discovered yet.

He asked about your job. You answered with rehearsed phrases, the same ones you used in interviews and family gatherings. He told a story about Toby burying a bone in the yard and unearthing a head of lettuce. You laughed at the right moment, at the right volume, for the right length of time. It was an impeccable performance. It deserved applause.

He asked for the check—and asked for it before you had finished your latte, which you mentally noted as a point against him—and asked if you wanted to do this again. You said yes because that's what you do. Because Dr. Elaine would be proud. Because maybe, if you pretended enough, that strange feeling of wearing someone else's clothes would eventually go away. Because maybe, if you repeated the motion enough times, eventually the gesture would become natural.

But throughout the meeting—one hour and forty-three minutes, you counted, noted on your phone, memorized—your eyes wandered three times to the café door. It wasn't intentional. It happened like a nervous tic, a conditioned reflex. You looked at the door expecting… what? Expecting whom? He wasn't going to walk in. He couldn't walk in. He was behind concrete walls, steel bars, miles away and a lifetime apart.

Twice you looked out the window, through the glass fogged by humidity. Once you looked at a man in a dark jacket sitting in the back, in the farthest corner, near the bathroom. He had his back to you, his face hidden by a dark cap, and something about the inclination of his shoulders—the way he held his cup with both hands, as if trying to extract heat from a liquid that must have been cold for a long time—made your heart stop for a second.

When you looked again, he was gone. The empty table. The chair slightly displaced. An almost full cup abandoned, as if whoever had been there had left in a hurry. As if he had been seen.

You didn't tell Lucas this. He paid the check—nine minutes late and still insisted on paying, textbook chivalry—and walked you to the door. He lightly touched your shoulder when saying goodbye. A dry, secure, absolutely normal touch. You felt the same as you would if a stranger brushed against you on the subway: nothing.

You didn't tell Dr. Elaine in the next session. She asked how it had gone, and you said "fine," and she tilted her head in that way that meant she wasn't believing you but wasn't going to push. She jotted something down. You paid. Left.

You didn't tell her that on the way back to your car, crossing the empty mall parking lot, you felt a chill on the back of your neck. It wasn't cold. It was that old, familiar shiver, coated in nostalgia and fear. The same one you felt when Ben was watching you from the bedroom door, leaning against the frame, arms crossed, while you put on mascara in front of the mirror. He would stand there in silence, just looking. And when you asked "what?" he would give that crooked smile and say "nothing, just looking." But it wasn't nothing. It was never nothing.

You turned around. The parking lot was dark, the garage lights flickering with the frequency of something that had needed maintenance for years. No one. Just the empty street and the headlights of a car parked too far away for you to see the driver. A black sedan. Tinted windows. The engine running, a thin cloud of exhaust rising in the cold air. You stood there staring for too long. The car didn't move. Neither did you.

Eventually, you got into your car, locked the doors—a habit you only acquired after he left, after the world became a place where any shadow could be a threat—and drove home.

You didn't tell her that when you entered your apartment that night, the first thing you noticed was the smell. Not an identifiable smell, not perfume or cologne or soap. It was the absence of smell. A vacuum. Something that had been there and then wasn't. You put your purse on the counter, turned on the kitchen light, hung up your coat. Did everything mechanically, on autopilot, while a silent alarm sounded somewhere deep in your consciousness.

Then you went into the bedroom.

Your pillowcase had been changed.

You froze. Not immediately—first you thought you had changed it and forgotten, that the pain and exhaustion and sleeping pills had erased the memory. But you didn't have pillowcases like that one. This one was Egyptian cotton, a white so pure it seemed bluish, with a tiny lace detail in the corner. Just like the one that had disappeared three months ago. The one he used. The one he had taken with him in that worn-out backpack, on that last morning, along with his toothbrush and phone charger. The pillowcase you had bought on a work trip, very expensive, and he liked it so much you said "take it, it's yours." He took it. It disappeared. You thought you would never see it again.

It was there. On your pillow. Perfectly stretched, the creases from the packaging still visible, smelling of baby fabric softener. Someone had entered your apartment. Someone had entered your bedroom. Someone had changed your pillowcase while you were having coffee with a credit analyst who had a dog named Toby.

You started to shake.

It wasn't a light tremor, the kind that passes with a sip of water. It was a deep shaking, coming from your bones, shaking your whole body in successive waves as if you were having a silent seizure. Your legs buckled without warning. You sat down on the bedroom floor—you didn't choose to sit, you simply fell—and stayed there, curled up against the foot of the bed, your arms wrapped around your knees, staring at the strange-familiar pillowcase on your strange-familiar pillow as if it were a snake about to strike.

Twenty minutes. You sat on the cold bedroom floor for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes trying to convince yourself that you hadn't seen what you saw. That it was a different pillowcase, that you were confused, that your memory was playing tricks. Twenty minutes trying to quiet the sound of your heartbeat—because it was so loud it seemed to fill the entire apartment, each beat a question: was he here? was he here? was he here?

You didn't tell anyone.

You didn't tell Lucas. You didn't tell Dr. Elaine. In the next session, you talked about other things, smaller things, things that fit in the office. You didn't tell Dona. Who would get desperate and probably call the police, and what would you tell the police? Someone changed my pillowcase?

You didn't tell because you didn't want to hear what any sensible person would say: you're paranoid. you're making things up. you need more medication. you're projecting onto him something he couldn't have done because he's in prison, he's in PRISON, you saw it on TV, you saw the handcuffs, you saw the cell, how could he get into your apartment?

You didn't tell because, deep down, in the deepest and darkest and most honest place, you knew the answer. You didn't know how. You didn't know when. You didn't know by what impossible, miraculous, terrifying means he had done it. But you knew it was him. You knew it as surely as you knew your own name. As surely as you knew the sky is blue and fire burns and hearts break.

And you didn't tell because, if you told, you would have to admit something else. Something you could barely face alone, in the dark, hugging the pillowcase he had returned:

You didn't want him to stop.

The signs only got worse.

The following week, a pair of black underwear disappeared from your drawer. You didn't notice the same day—it took forty-eight hours to register, because you had already given up looking for meaning in small losses, in objects that vanished without explanation, in the empty spaces that opened in your routine like tiny black holes. But the black underwear was different. You knew which one it was as soon as you noticed the empty space between the blue fabric and the red. It was that one. The one he liked. The one he always took off you with his teeth, laughing against your skin, his lips brushing your stomach as he said, in an accusatory yet loving tone, that you wore it just to provoke him.

And he was right. You did.

You searched the entire apartment three times. Opened drawers, looked under the bed, emptied the laundry basket, checked the washing machine, the dryer, the clothesline. Nothing. The black underwear was nowhere to be found. As if the floor had swallowed it. As if someone had taken it.

The following Tuesday, it appeared on top of your dresser.

Folded. Perfectly folded, the corners aligned, the fabric stretched with a care that hurt from familiarity. You knew that fold. He had that habit—he who didn't know how to fold a shirt properly, but learned to fold your underwear with the precision of a goldsmith, because he said each piece of yours was too precious to be wrinkled. In the middle of the underwear, a crease. A deep indentation, as if someone had pressed the fabric against their face while sleeping. As if they had breathed deeply there, trying to extract your scent from fabric that no longer smelled of you after so many washes.

You leaned your hand against the wall to keep from falling. The kitchen spun. The world spun. You stood there for a long minute, your forehead cold against the plaster, eyes closed, trying to convince yourself there was a rational explanation. There wasn't. You knew there wasn't.

You bought a camera. Went to an electronics store downtown, paid in cash to leave no trace on your card—as if you were doing something wrong, as if the victim were the criminal. A small, discreet camera, the kind that connects to your phone. You hid it on the living room shelf, pointed at the bed, adjusting the angle three, four, five times until you were sure it captured the bedroom door and the window and the whole bed. Then you turned it on, tested it, confirmed it was recording, and went to sleep.

The next morning, the memory card was blank.

Not erased—blank. As if it had been formatted. As if someone had taken the original card, recorded over it, and returned a blank card in its place. The same card. The same brand. But not a single frame recorded. You spent an hour trying to recover the files with internet programs, your eyes burning with exhaustion and frustration, your hands trembling on the mouse. Nothing. Zero. As if those hours of recording had never existed.

And that's when the fear changed its nature. Because it wasn't just someone entering. It was someone intelligent. Someone who knew what they were doing. Someone who didn't just enter your apartment—someone who entered and had time, had calm, had the coldness to mess with your devices, erase your evidence, reorganize your things. Someone who didn't get caught by surprise. Someone who already expected the camera. Someone who, somehow, knew you were going to put it there before you even knew.

You changed the lock. The first was a common locksmith, the kind from the hardware store. Three days later, the black underwear appeared on your nightstand. Not on the dresser. On the nightstand. On your side. As if someone had placed it there for you to find as soon as you woke up. This time you didn't even feel fear. You felt coldness. An iciness that traveled down your spine and settled in your stomach. You picked up the phone, called a 24-hour locksmith, and had them change the lock again.

The next day, the locksmith came. A bald man with a gray mustache and calloused hands. He examined the old lock, the two you had just installed, and said: "Miss, this is the most expensive one there is. Five-bolt lock, European cylinder, no one opens this without the key. No one." He knocked on the door with his knuckles, as if presenting a quality product. "You can rest easy. This is invasion-proof."

You paid. Thanked him. Locked the door behind him. Unlocked it. Locked it again. Unlocked it. Locked it. Stood there leaning against the door for a minute, listening to the silence, the beating of your own heart, the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.

The next morning, all your sleep shirts were in place. Drawer open, drawer closed, everything seemingly normal. But you were no longer the same person who woke up without examining every inch of the bedroom. You looked at everything now. Every detail. Every object out of place. Every shadow that shouldn't be there. And that's how you saw it.

One of them—the gray one, the old one, the one you wore when he was still here—was wet on the pillow. Not with water. No. The texture was different. The almost imperceptible viscosity. The smell. Oh, God, the smell. It was tears. And sweat. And something else, something you refused to name, something for which your brain created euphemisms while your heart already knew the truth. Someone had lain on your pillow. Someone had pressed your shirt against their face. Someone had cried there. In your bed. In your place. Perhaps for hours.

You sat on the bedroom floor again. You weren't shaking anymore. You weren't crying. You just sat, leaning against the wall, the damp shirt in your lap, your fingers lightly running over the wet fabric. And stayed there. For a long time.

You told Dr. Elaine. You needed to. You couldn't carry that feeling of going crazy alone anymore. You arrived at her office that afternoon with deep dark circles, unwashed hair, the sweatpants you had worn for four days straight. You sat in the deep armchair, wrapped your hands in your lap, and told her. The underwear. The camera. The lock. The wet shirt. You told it all out loud, the words coming out jumbled, rushed, as if you needed to vomit them up before they suffocated you.

Dr. Elaine listened in silence. Jotted something in her notebook—the pen moving quickly, surely, as if she already knew the diagnosis before you finished speaking. She grimaced when you mentioned the wet shirt. Not from shock. From clinical concern. The kind of concern you see in doctors when they examine a test that came back wrong.

"Listen," she said, after a pause that lasted too long. "I know it feels real. I know it feels as real as you and me here right now. But we need to consider the possibility that this is happening inside you, not outside." She tilted her head, her tortoiseshell glasses slipping slightly down her nose. "Dissociative episodes are common in severe post-traumatic stress. Small memory lapses, objects that disappear and reappear, the feeling of being watched… the brain plays these tricks when it can't process the pain."

She increased your medication dosage. One and a half pills now, instead of one. "It will help with the nights," she said. "Continuous sleep reduces these episodes." You took the prescription. Stuck it in your purse. Bought the medication at the corner pharmacy. Took it that night, the next, the one after. The extra pill left you dizzy, heavy, as if you were walking through a vat of honey. But the noises continued.

The footsteps in the hallway in the middle of the night. Always in the middle of the night. Always around 3:17 AM—you started looking at the clock, noting the times in a notebook, trying to find a pattern. 3:17. 3:22. 3:09. Slow, measured footsteps, as if someone were walking barefoot on the living room parquet, stopping near your bedroom door, waiting, breathing, and then continuing. You never heard the door open. Never heard anyone enter. Just the footsteps. And the silence that followed.

The feeling of being watched at the grocery store. You choosing bananas, feeling a weight on the back of your neck, turning around too quickly—and no one. Just the girl restocking tomato cans, just the security guard yawning at the door, just the security cameras in the corners, blinking red lights like mechanical eyes. Once you thought you saw a silhouette behind the cereal shelf. When you went around, there was no one. But the floor was wet. A small puddle, as if someone had spilled water and run away.

The hairs on your arm standing up when you walked past dark alleys. The electric sensation on your skin, the hair on your neck bristling, your heart racing for no apparent reason. You avoided alleys now. Avoided poorly lit streets. Avoided going out after eight in the evening. Your life had shrunk to fit within a five-hundred-meter perimeter around your apartment—the grocery store, the pharmacy, the bus stop. And even there, inside that tiny circle, the feeling of not being alone never completely left.

You didn't tell Dr. Elaine that one night, you woke up to the weight of a body on the bed. Not a whole body—if it had been, you would have screamed, jumped up, called the police. It was just the weight. The depression in the mattress beside you, on his side, the side you hadn't occupied since he left. The mattress sinking slowly and silently, as if someone had lain down with absolute care, the care of someone who didn't want to wake you. And the heat. The heat of someone who had been there and left before you opened your eyes. A residual heat, like embers after the fire is gone.

You opened your eyes suddenly, your heart in your throat, your body already tensed in a defensive position you didn't even know you had learned. No one. The empty room. The curtain swaying gently—but the window was closed. You had checked before sleeping, and checked again, and checked once more, until the whole neighborhood must have known you had a thing about windows. The curtain had no reason to sway. But it swayed.

You didn't tell Dr. Elaine that that night, lying in the dark, your heart still racing and your body still waiting for a touch that didn't come, you whispered into the silence of the room:

"Ben?"

Just that. A name. Three letters you hadn't spoken aloud in months—not since that last call to his voicemail, not since your voice stopped working and you learned to keep his name locked in a cabinet inside you.

And you heard it.

For a second—just one second, so fast you could swear it was your imagination—someone held their breath. That unmistakable sound of someone who had been holding the air and failed for an instant. A startle. A surprise. As if he hadn't expected you to speak. As if he hadn't expected you to know.

Then silence. A silence so complete you could hear your own heartbeat, the blood circulating in your temples, the little hum that always exists at the bottom of your hearing and that you only notice when everything else stops. You lay there, eyes open in the dark, waiting. One minute. Five. Fifteen. Your heart gradually slowed, like an engine shutting down after a long journey.

No one held their breath again. No one spoke. No one appeared.

But you knew. Just as you knew your father's name and your birth date and how to ride a bike, you knew you weren't alone in that room. Or you hadn't been. Or you still weren't, somewhere beyond your ability to see. The weight on the side of the mattress had already disappeared, the heat had already cooled, the curtain had stopped swaying. But the air was different. Denser. Heavier. Like before a storm.

You didn't sleep the rest of the night. You sat up in bed, your back against the headboard, your eyes fixed on the bedroom door, waiting. You didn't know if you were waiting for him to appear. You didn't know if you were waiting for him to leave. You didn't know if you were waiting for someone—the police, a burglar, God, death. You just waited. And the silence waited with you. Complicit. Patient. Watching.

From outside. Or from inside. You no longer knew the difference.

The night of the second date started like any other. The routine had become a survival mechanism: wake up, take your meds, work, eat the bare minimum, wait for night, sleep poorly, repeat. But that night was different, and you knew it even before you opened the closet.

You put on the blue dress. The one he bought for your birthday, two years ago. You remembered the exact moment: a gift box wrapped in silver paper, a red bow so perfect it seemed fake, and his crooked smile as you opened it. "Try it on," he had said, and you went to the bathroom and put it on, and when you came back he was there, standing in the middle of the room, his pale blue eyes so transparent you could see to the bottom of his soul. He didn't say anything. He just looked. Two years later, that look still burned in your memory like a sunburn.

You hadn't worn the dress since he was arrested. It stayed at the back of the closet, behind the winter clothes you no longer wore, like an artifact from another life. But something about that night—maybe Dr. Elaine's voice in your head, repeating the words "you need to move on" like a secular mantra; maybe the sudden desperate desire to feel beautiful, to inhabit your own body without feeling the weight of an absence; maybe a secret, almost obscene way of provoking the ghost you swore was following you—made you put it on.

The dress still fit. Snug as a glove, the cold fabric against your skin, the blue so dark it bordered on black in the dim light of the bedroom. You looked at yourself in the closet mirror and, for a second, didn't recognize yourself. Or recognized yourself too much. It was the same woman from two years ago. The same eyes, the same mouth, the same hair. Only more tired. Deeper. As if life had dug holes inside you and forgotten to mention.

Lucas arrived on time. By then, his punctuality had become predictable—a boring virtue, the kind you didn't know whether to thank or resent. He picked you up at your building door, got out of the car to open the door for you, and when you approached, he stopped.

"You look beautiful," he said.

And it was polite. Normal. Safe. The right words in the right tone, the friendly smile, the gaze that didn't linger too long anywhere. It wasn't the first time someone had called you beautiful, but it hurt the same way—because it wasn't the right voice. It wasn't the right way. It wasn't Ben's hoarse whisper, the way he had of saying "beautiful" as if it were a discovery, as if he looked at you and saw something no one else saw, something he himself couldn't name but that made him smile that crooked smile and pull you close, his face buried in your hair, his warm breath against the back of your neck. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen a lot of beautiful things, shit."

You got in the car. Buckled your seatbelt. Smiled. The automatic smile, the one you kept in your purse like an extra lipstick, for social emergencies.

The restaurant was fancy. Cloth napkins, waiters in vests, real candles on the tables. You ordered shrimp risotto and ate without tasting it—the shrimp could have been rubbery, the rice could have been too salty, the cheese could have been burnt, you wouldn't have known. The food went down like sand, washed down by gulp after gulp of red wine that you also didn't taste. Beside you, Lucas talked about his work, about the exchange rate, about Toby who had eaten a new shoe. You laughed at the right moments, nodded at the right times, asked follow-up questions that demonstrated interest. It was an impeccable performance. No one in that restaurant would guess that, inside, you were empty.

And all the while, all the while, you felt it.

It wasn't a thought. It wasn't a memory. It was a physical sensation, settled just below the skin, a constant tingling at the back of your neck and on your arms. A presence. A shadow. A weight in the air that made the hairs on your arm stand on end, bristled like those of an animal scenting a predator before seeing it. You felt eyes where there was no face. You felt intention where there was no gesture. You felt someone—and you knew who—watching you from somewhere beyond the light, beyond the movement, beyond the solid reality that everyone in there seemed to inhabit without question.

You looked at the restaurant door three times. The first, an elderly couple saying goodbye; the second, a waitress balancing a tray; the third, no one, just the dark glass and the street. You looked at the street twice. The first, a taxi passing too fast; the second, a woman crossing hurriedly, her coat open to the wind. You looked at the man alone at the bar counter once. He had his back to you, a dark jacket, broad shoulders, short hair. Your heart leaped into your throat. Your whole body tensed, alert, ready for flight or encounter—you didn't know which. When you looked again, he was gone. The empty chair. A half-finished glass of wine. A crumpled napkin. As if he had left in a hurry. As if he had been seen.

"Everything okay?" Lucas asked.

His hand touched yours for a second. The touch was light, dry, careful. Polite. Normal. Safe. His hand didn't have the calluses you expected. Didn't have the scars you ran your fingers over while he slept, learning the maps of another person's pain. Didn't have the contained strength you felt when Ben held your hand under the table, fingers intertwined, his thumb drawing slow circles on your palm. It was just a hand. Polite. Normal. Safe. And you wanted it to be another.

"Fine," you lied. The lie came out smooth, rehearsed, like all the others. "Just a little tired."

Lucas accepted the answer. Of course he did. He wasn't the type to push, to notice the gaps between the lines, to tilt his head and say "lie, tell me" in that thick accent that made you feel like the only person in the world. Lucas was polite. Normal. Safe. And completely incapable of seeing that you were falling apart inside.

He asked for the check. Paid without looking at the amounts. Offered to take you home, and you accepted because his car was warm and the leather seats were soft and you didn't want to wait for the bus at that dark stop where the lights kept flickering. On the way, the car smelled of fabric softener and cold coffee—a smell so different from what you were used to, Ben's smell that was cheap soap and gunpowder, sweat and something indefinable you had never been able to name and that was probably just him, just the unique chemical composition of his body soaked into his clothes, the sheets, your skin.

The radio was playing some random song. One of those generic romantic songs you didn't pay attention to, but Lucas's fingers drummed on the steering wheel in rhythm, and you noticed he had clean, well-trimmed nails, and that irritated you more than it should have. Ben never had clean nails. He had dirt under some, dried blood on others, small cuts he didn't even notice. You would spend hours caring for his hands, filing, moisturizing, kissing each knuckle like a small shoreline of a foreign country.

You ran your fingers over your own wrist, drawing circles without realizing it. Automatic. Mechanical. Patterns that weren't yours. Concentric circles, slow and methodical, exactly the way he did it. You stopped when you realized. Your arm was marked with red, the friction of your own skin creating a familiar heat.

"You're shaking," Lucas noticed. The car had stopped at a red light, and in the red light streaming through the windshield, he looked at you with genuine concern. Polite. Normal. Safe. How annoying.

"It's cold," you said.

It wasn't. The car's heater was on, and you were sweating beneath the blue dress. But Lucas accepted the answer as he accepted everything: without questioning, without digging, without trying to understand what was really happening behind your eyes. He turned the warm air up a little more, a kind and completely useless gesture, and you felt a sudden urge to laugh. Not from happiness. That bitter laugh that rises in the throat when things are so absurd that no other reaction remains.

The car stopped in front of your building. Lucas turned off the engine. The silence that settled was heavy, full of expectations you didn't have.

"Can I come up?" he asked.

The question came in a careful tone, without pressure, the door open for a polite no. He was a good boy. Handsome. Stable. Liked dogs and specialty coffee and probably returned his shopping cart at the supermarket. His mother must have been proud. Dr. Elaine must have been radiant.

You looked at him. The perfectly combed hair. The close shave. The brown eyes with no mystery, no abyss, no scar on his soul that needed to be kissed before sleeping. He wasn't Ben. Would never be Ben. But maybe—and this "maybe" hurt like a broken bone—maybe that was a good thing.

"No," you said.

The word came out faster than you expected, and there was an immediate relief in your chest, as if your whole body had exhaled after holding its breath for hours. Lucas blinked, processed, and then smiled the understanding smile of someone used to hearing no. Polite. Normal. Safe even in rejection.

"No problem," he said. "Another time."

You knew there wouldn't be another time. He probably knew too, from the tone of your voice, from the way you opened the car door before he even finished his sentence. You got out, thanked him, closed the door. The car stayed there for a moment—Lucas waiting for you to enter the building, like a gentleman—and then drove away, its headlights disappearing around the curve, taking with them the smell of fabric softener and cold coffee.

You stood on the sidewalk for a while you didn't measure. The cold night wind bit your bare arms, the blue dress protected nothing, but you didn't feel cold. You felt something else. An electricity in the air. A tingling at the base of your spine. The absolute, irrational, non-negotiable certainty that you were not alone on that street.

There was no one in sight. The building lights were on on the lower floors, off on the upper ones. The iron gate creaked as you pushed it. The stairwell was dark—the hallway bulb had burned out weeks ago, and the superintendent never changed it. You climbed the steps in the dark, your left hand sliding along the railing, your right hand gripping your purse strap as if it were a weapon.

Somewhere upstairs, a door closed. Not yours. Someone else's. But it was late for visitors, and Dona must have been snoring for hours, and the other neighbors you didn't even know. You stopped on the landing, breathless not from exertion, and listened. Silence. The silence of the night, the silence you had learned to recognize in all its variations—the silence of an empty apartment, the silence of a lurking predator, the silence of someone holding their breath.

You climbed the rest of the stairs at a faster pace. Fumbled the key into the lock with trembling hands—the expensive lock that no one opened without the key—and entered. Locked it. Locked it again. Put on the chain. Rested your forehead against the cold wooden door and closed your eyes.

The apartment was empty. The furniture in place. The curtains drawn. The domestic silence of an ordinary Wednesday. You dropped your purse on the floor, kicked off your shoes in the foyer, and walked to the bedroom.

You put on his gray t-shirt. The one that had been wet last time. The one you had washed four times in a row, and still the smell hadn't come out—or maybe you just wanted to believe it hadn't. Lay down on the bed. Pulled up the blanket. Closed your eyes.

Outside, on the street, a car with its engine running waited for hours. You didn't hear it. Or pretended you didn't. By that point, you had given up distinguishing one thing from the other.

The traffic light broke.

It was the first thing wrong that night—but you would only realize that later, when the pieces fit together into a mosaic of terror you didn't yet know you were assembling. You stood at the intersection for five minutes. Five full minutes, your feet cold inside your shoes, your purse heavy on your shoulder, the blue dress—the same one, the cursed one, the one you swore you would never wear again—sticking to your skin beneath your coat. The light was stuck on red, flickering irregularly in a way that wasn't normal, as if someone had opened the fuse box of the world and jumbled the wires just for fun.

In the distance, a siren. Closer, a dog barking—the caramel-colored stray from the corner, who barked at everything and nothing, but that night the bark had a different tone. A warning. An alert. Animals know before we do. They always have.

And the silence. That heavy, sticky silence that wasn't the normal silence of the city. It was the silence of a city holding its breath. A city that knew, in some instinctive and collective way, that something was waiting for you at home. Or someone.

"Weird," Lucas murmured at the wheel, his fingers tapping nervously—a tic you hadn't noticed before. "I've never seen that light like that. Must have been a lightning strike at the control center or something."

You didn't answer. Not because you were being rude—you had already been rude enough to Lucas that night, politely refusing each of his attempts to get closer, each outstretched hand, each "want to talk about it?" You didn't answer because you couldn't. Your mouth was dry. The words had locked themselves inside your throat, little prisoners behind a fence of fear. Because you already knew. You didn't know what—there was no way to know—but you knew something was terribly wrong. Your whole body knew. Muscles tense, ready for a flight you didn't know where to. Breathing short, wheezy, as if you had run a marathon without moving from the spot. Cold hands, tingling fingers, your heart beating somewhere deep in your throat.

It was the same feeling you had before a storm. That weight in the air. That smell of ozone and wet earth. That sense that the world was about to change, and that you had no control over the direction of the change.

Lucas stopped the car in front of your building. Turned off the engine and turned to you with that lost puppy expression he wore every time you said no—which was every time, because you had never said yes. "Want me to come up?" he asked, with polite hope in his brown eyes. The hope of someone who still hasn't learned that certain doors don't open for everyone. "Just to make sure you got in okay. It's very dark, the doorman isn't there… and you seem…" He hesitated, choosing his words with the care of someone who didn't want to scare you. "You seem tense. I don't want you to be alone like this."

"Not necessary," you said. Too fast. So fast that the two words merged into one—notnecessary—and the tone was drier than you intended. You saw his face wilt a little and felt a pang of guilt, but guilt was a luxury you couldn't afford at that moment. "Thank you. It was… it was good."

The lie came easily. So easily that it almost scared you. It was good. It hadn't been good. It hadn't been anything. It had been a two-hour performance where you played a normal woman going out with a normal man, and in the end you had received a note left by a ghost and discovered that the dress you were wearing had been folded on your bed while you ate shrimp risotto without tasting it. But Lucas didn't know that. Lucas didn't know anything. Lucas was a polite, normal, safe man who deserved someone whole and not the shards you called a heart.

You got out of the car. The door closed with a dull thud. You walked to the building's entrance, each step a Herculean effort, as if the ground were turning into quicksand beneath your feet. Felt Lucas's eyes on your back until you went in—polite, normal, safe, watching only to make sure you were okay, not with the devouring hunger of someone who watches because they need to see you to continue existing.

The building door closed with a click. The silence of the lobby wrapped around you like a heavy, damp blanket. The lobby was empty. The fluorescent lights flickered with the same irregular frequency as the traffic light outside, as if the whole city were having an epileptic fit. You clutched your purse against your chest and walked to the elevator. Pressed the button. Nothing. Pressed it again. Nothing. Of course it was broken. Of course. Because nothing that night was going to be easy.

You took the stairs.

Four floors. Counted each step as you climbed, an old habit, a way to keep your mind occupied so you wouldn't think about the noise behind you. One, two, three, four. Because there was noise. Light footsteps, almost inaudible, on the edge of your perception. Someone climbing behind you, keeping the same distance, the same pace. When you sped up, the footsteps sped up. When you slowed down, the footsteps slowed down. You didn't look back. Didn't look because you were afraid of what you'd see. Didn't look because you were afraid of seeing nothing. Didn't look because, deep down, a part of you already knew who it was and was tired of pretending it didn't.

You reached the apartment door. Your heart hammering so hard you felt your temples pulsing. Took three deep breaths. The three breaths Dr. Elaine had taught for moments of anxiety—inhale through the nose, hold, exhale through the mouth. It never worked. It never would. Anxiety wasn't air. Anxiety was a living thing that lived inside your chest and fed on your fear.

You put the key in the lock.

The door opened before you turned the key.

It was unlocked.

The world stopped. Not metaphorically—the world actually stopped. The sound of the street disappeared. The hum of the fluorescent lights ceased. The dog's bark downstairs fell silent. Everything hung suspended in an absolute vacuum, as if the universe had pressed pause just to see what you would do.

You never forgot to lock the door. Never. Even on bad days, on days you could barely get out of bed, on days you went without eating, without showering, without answering messages—you locked the door. Twice. It was a ritual. A prayer. A silent promise you made to yourself every night: you are still here. you are still trying. you haven't given up protecting yourself yet. The key always turned twice. Always.

The door was open.

And you went in.

The apartment was destroyed.

It took you a second to process. Maybe two. Maybe an entire eternity compressed into a blink. The human brain wasn't made to understand chaos all at once—it needs time, needs layers, needs permission to believe what it's seeing. The door creaked behind you as you stood in the doorway, your fingers still gripping the handle, your purse slipping from your shoulder and falling to the floor with a dull thud. You didn't move to pick it up. Didn't move for anything.

It wasn't mess. It wasn't the kind of disarray of someone rummaging through your drawers looking for money or jewelry. There was no method there. No search. There was violence. Pure, raw violence, from someone who wasn't looking for anything except a place to drain what no longer fit inside their chest. Anger. Real anger. The anger of someone who had waited too long. Who had counted every day, every hour, every minute. Who had dreamed every night of this moment—not the moment of destroying the apartment, but the moment of coming back to it, of finding you in it—and now, finally, after 847 nights, after concrete walls, steel bars, orange uniforms, and meals served on plastic trays, now that the moment had arrived, the anger no longer fit inside the body. It had to get out. Overflow. Break something.

The sofa—the same sofa where he held you while you watched movies neither of you paid attention to—was torn. Not just torn. Shredded. The fabric ripped into strips, the foam torn out in chunks, the springs exposed like the ribs of an animal that had died long ago. The stuffing was scattered across the floor like dirty snow, like the entrails of something that had once been soft and warm and was now unrecognizable, irreparable, dead. You looked at the sofa and felt a pang in your chest—not for the sofa, it was never about the sofa, but for everything that happened on that sofa. The cold nights when he wrapped you in a blanket and said "stay here, don't let me sleep alone." The silly arguments about what movie to watch, which always ended the same way—him giving in, laughing, pulling you onto his lap. The last night. The last time he sat there before writing the note and disappearing. The sofa had witnessed everything. Now it was on the floor, shattered, as if he were trying to kill the memories too.

The pictures had been ripped from the walls. The shattered glass covered the floor like a dangerous frost, reflecting the flickering streetlight in a thousand small sharp pieces. Your photos—the ones on your shelf, the ones he never liked because they had other people in them—all had broken glass, all had the faces of other people scratched out. Coworkers. Cousins. That college friend who hugged you too tight. All scratched out with meticulous fury, as if he had used the tip of a knife to scribble over their eyes, their mouths, their smiles that weren't his. Only your face remained intact. Only yours. As if he had separated each photo, broken the glass with a dry blow, scratched out the others with surgical care, and then—only then—returned the frame to the floor. A curation of hatred. A declaration of ownership written in broken glass.

The kitchen table was overturned. The chairs were broken—not tipped over, broken, legs ripped off, backs split in half. The plates covered the floor in colorful fragments, the silverware scattered as if someone had been looking for a specific knife. And found it. You saw the knife later—a serrated one, a bread knife, embedded in the kitchen wall up to the handle. As if he had thrown it and hit the target on the first try. As if throwing knives was just one more thing he knew how to do and you had never discovered.

The curtains had been torn from the window. The metal rod was bent, hanging to one side like a broken arm. The window glass was cracked—not broken, cracked. A perfect spiderweb in the lower right corner, right in the middle of a smaller, round hole, as if someone had punched it and the glass had held up better than the wall.

Because the wall didn't hold up.

There was a hole in the wall. Not just any hole. A hole the size of a fist—his right fist, you knew, because you knew every bone, every knuckle, every scar on that hand. The plaster wall was blown inward, the crumbled coating on the floor, and inside the hole, mixed with the white dust, there were red marks. Blood. His blood, probably. Or not. You didn't want to think about the "or not."

A lot of blood. On the wall. On the floor. In a trail from the living room door to the back, near the cracked window, where the blood formed a larger puddle. A dark puddle, almost black in the dim light, reflecting the streetlight like a dirty mirror. And inside the puddle, no—beside the puddle, because he was too careful, too meticulous, too crazy to sit in his own blood—he was there.

Ben. Dex. The man who taught you to make tomato sauce and to feel fear in the dark. The man who killed with the same hand that caressed your hair. The man who should have been behind bars, behind steel doors, behind a life sentence that meant forever, that meant never again, that meant you were free.

He was sitting on the floor. Leaning against the cracked wall—the same wall he himself had punched, the bloody fist hole a few centimeters above his head, like an inverted halo. His legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. His hands resting on his knees, palms down, his long pale fingers resting in a stillness that bordered on supernatural. Calm. Strangely calm. As if he were waiting for the bus. Or waiting for death. Or waiting for you—and maybe, to him, all three were the same.

He was thinner. Much thinner. The white shirt—the same one from the newscast, you noticed with a knot in your stomach, the same one from the conviction, the one that appeared in the photos that circulated around the world, his face plastered on every news portal as if he were a monster, and maybe he was, maybe he always had been—that shirt hung on his body like a tent, his once-broad shoulders now looked sharp, his collarbones jutted out from beneath the thin fabric like the wings of a broken bird. The face you kissed every night, that you knew better than your own, was now too angular, too sharp, as if the bones were trying to escape the skin. The cheekbones you used to kiss playfully, saying he looked like a Scandinavian model, now cast dramatic shadows over his hollow cheeks. His under-eye circles were so dark they looked like bruises—purple, purplish-black, almost invisible in the dim light. His unshaven beard was thick, unkempt, grown without care for weeks, maybe months, and barely hid the new scars. Small cuts on his chin. A red line on his jaw. A scratch on his right cheekbone, recent enough to still be scabbed over. His hair was longer. Much longer. Fell over his forehead in a way that almost hid his eyes—but you saw his eyes. You always saw his eyes.

Those pale blue eyes. The eyes that looked at you as if you were the only real thing in the universe. The eyes you saw on television, empty, fixed somewhere behind the camera, as if he had already given up on everything. Now they were different. Deeper. Hollowed out from within, like two caves where light entered but found no exit. More tired—not the tiredness of a bad night's sleep, but the tiredness of years, the tiredness of someone who had carried the weight of an entire life on their back and discovered that the weight doesn't lessen, you just get used to it. And hungrier. A hunger you recognized because it was the same as yours. The hunger of someone who had gone too long without touching, without being touched, without feeling another person's skin against theirs. He was looking at you like a man in the desert looks at water. As if you were the only thing that could quench his thirst. And the light was blinding him—you could see in his eyes that it hurt, that looking at you after so long in the dark was like looking directly into the sun. But he didn't look away. He never looked away.

His shirt was open at the chest. You didn't know if he had opened it or if it had been torn—the lower buttons were still there, but the top ones… gone. The fabric opened in a cleft from his neck to the middle of his chest, exposing the marks you knew so well. The old scars, the ones you kissed before sleeping, the ones you traced with your fingertips while he slept. That place near his shoulder where you rested your forehead when you could no longer look into his eyes. The scar on his chest, close to his sternum, that he said was from "surgery" and you never asked if it was true. All still there. All waiting for you.

But there were new ones too.

Small recent cuts, some still with stitches—makeshift stitches, poorly done, that he must have given himself, sitting in some cold cell, with a smuggled needle and a hand trembling with anxiety. A dirty bandage on his left arm, the tape already peeling at the edges, stained with a yellow that could be antiseptic or could be pus. A dark mark on his ribcage—under his arm, where the skin is thinner and more vulnerable—that could be dried blood or could be a new tattoo, something done hastily, with improvised ink and a pain he probably no longer felt. You couldn't distinguish. Couldn't distinguish anything, because the whole world had been reduced to that man sitting on the floor of your destroyed apartment, covered in blood that wasn't only his, looking at you as if you were salvation itself.

And his face. Oh, his face.

It was dirty with blood. Not his blood—you knew that instantly, with a chill down your spine that started at the top of your head and descended slowly, vertebra by vertebra, like ice water dripping down your spine. His blood was different. You knew his blood—had seen it on various occasions, in small domestic accidents, in the slipped knife while chopping onions, in the scraped knee from a silly fall. His blood was bright red, almost shiny, like stamp ink. That blood on his cheek, his chin, his temple—that blood was darker. Thicker. From somewhere else. From someone else.

And the way he didn't do anything to clean it. The way he let the blood dry on his face like a mask, like a crown, like a trophy he wasn't willing to let go of. That told you everything you needed to know. The meeting. The coffee. Lucas with his perfectly combed hair and his life-insurance-ad smile. His car parked on the street, engine running, the polite hand that touched yours for a second at the restaurant table. You didn't know. There was no way to know. No way to know that while you laughed at Lucas's unfunny jokes, while you cut your shrimp risotto into microscopic pieces to avoid eating, while you wore the blue dress that Ben had bought and that wasn't for him, none of those gestures had gone unnoticed. None.

The blood on his face was a silent confession. A declaration of love written on someone whose last name you didn't even remember. You felt a tremor start in your hands and spread, like an underground earthquake, like the ground slowly splitting open. It wasn't fear. Or it was. Or it was something so mixed together you no longer knew how to separate. Love and fear had become the same substance inside you, like two rivers that meet and never part again.

His eyes met yours.

And something in his face changed.

The rigidity. The artificial calm. The posture of someone sitting on the floor of a destroyed apartment as if it were a throne. All fell away for a second. Just one second. The length of a breath. The time it takes to blink. And beneath, deep down, you saw it.

Saw the despair. Saw the fear. Not the fear of being caught—he had already been caught, already been convicted, already been through everything a man could go through. It was an older, more primal fear. The fear that you would look at him and feel disgust. The fear that you would call the police. The fear that you would say that word he couldn't stand to hear, the word that could kill him more than any bullet, more than any sentence, more than any cell: "Leave."

You saw the man who spent 847 nights locked in a concrete cell, counting the days with nail scratches on the wall, repeating your name like a prayer that went unanswered, drawing invisible patterns on his own wrist because yours wasn't there for him to draw on. Saw the man who broke a window with his own fist—the same fist that made the hole in your wall—to escape. Who crossed states by hitchhiking, on foot, inside trucks that smelled of diesel and sweat, hidden in compartments not made for human bodies. Who killed—you didn't want to think about how many, not now, maybe never—just to get here. Just to see you. Just to come home.

And beneath all the despair, behind all the fear, buried under layers and layers of blood and guilt and madness, you saw something else. Something more frightening than the hole in the wall. More frightening than the shredded sofa. More frightening than another person's blood on the face of the man you loved.

Relief.

He was relieved. Because you were there. Because you had come back. Because you hadn't run when you saw the open door, when you saw the chaos, when you saw him sitting on the floor like a deposed king waiting for the verdict. Because you were wearing the blue dress he bought. That dress. The birthday dress. The dress he had carefully chosen, imagined you in night after night before buying it, could barely wrap because his hands trembled so much. You were wearing it. And that meant something. That meant you hadn't forgotten. That meant part of you, no matter how buried, was still his.

His breath—which you hadn't realized was held, hadn't realized was waiting, which you only now noticed his chest hadn't been moving for an eternity—came out in a slow, trembling sigh, almost a stifled sob. His shoulders, tight as piano strings about to snap, dropped a centimeter. His jaw, which had been so clenched you could see the muscles jumping, loosened slightly. A millimeter. Enough.

He raised one hand.

The right hand. The one he used to draw patterns on your wrist on nights when neither of you could sleep. The one he used to hold yours when you crossed the street, as if you were a child and he the only guardian capable of protecting you from traffic. The same hand that, you knew, had squeezed triggers. Squeezed necks. Opened doors that shouldn't be opened. His fingers were clean, you noticed. Strangely clean. As if he had washed them before waiting for you. Scrubbed with soap, removed every trace of blood from under his nails, rinsed until the skin was red and raw. As if the blood on his face didn't matter—that was an accessory, a declaration, a signature. But his hands—the hands that were going to touch you, the hands that were going to find your face, the hands that were going to ask, in the language only the two of you understood, that you stay—those needed to be clean. Pure. Worthy of you.

His fingers moved. A small gesture. Almost shy. A wave. The same wave he made when he came home late at night and you were on the sofa, awake waiting, and he would come on tiptoe and wave as if afraid to scare you. As if he wasn't sure he could still approach. As if he had rehearsed this moment a thousand times in prison—lying on the hard bed, the thin blanket warming nothing, eyes fixed on the cracked concrete ceiling—and now that the moment had come, now that you were really there, in front of him, wearing the blue dress he bought, all the words he had rehearsed had disappeared. Evaporated. Left only that small, almost pathetic gesture, a wave from someone who no longer knew what to do with his own hands.

His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. His voice, when it came out, was different. Deeper. Hoarser. As if he hadn't used his voice in a long time—or as if he had used it too much. Screamed too much. Called for you too much. Waited too much. There was a tremor in it, a fragility he hated, that he tried to hide by swallowing hard, but you heard it. You always heard it. You heard the holes in his voice, the fractures, the places where pain escaped the edges like water through a dam about to break.

"Darling..."

The word came out soft. Almost a whisper. Almost a question. As if he wasn't sure he could still call you that. As if he was afraid you would say "no, this is over, you lost the right, you lost me, go away, disappear, leave me alone." And beneath the word, you heard the echo of all the nights he must have said your name in the dark of the cell. To the walls. To the thin mattress. To the other inmates who must have thought he was crazy. And maybe he was. Maybe he always had been. But he was your crazy. The only one who loved you in a way that hurt.

His eyes glistened. Not with tears—Benjamin Poindexter didn't cry, he had told you once, on a night you woke up with him trembling beside you, his arms so tight you could barely breathe, and when you asked what had happened, he said: "People like us don't have that luxury." You never asked what he meant by "people like us." You were afraid of the answer. Still are. But his eyes glistened with something else, something that hurt just the same, that squeezed your chest the same way, that pulled the air from your lungs as if someone had opened a window at the bottom of the ocean.

His hand moved again. This time slower. More careful. As if every millimeter of air between you was a minefield. His fingers found your chin—the touch, when it happened, was so light you almost didn't feel it. A butterfly landing. A feather descending. The contrast with the violence around was so absurd, so insane, that you felt a laugh rise in your throat and held it in with force. Different from before. Before, he held you with force, with desperation, as if you were going to slip through his fingers at any moment, as if he needed to apply constant pressure to be sure you were still there. Now he touched you as if you were made of glass. As if you were the most precious and fragile thing in the universe. As if he was afraid of breaking you with a rougher movement, afraid you would shatter into a thousand pieces and he would spend the rest of his life trying to put you back together, cutting his fingers on each shard.

His thumb traced a circle on your jaw.

Automatic. Instinctive. Like breathing. The same circle. The same pattern. The same gesture he made every night before sleeping, when you had already closed your eyes and he thought you weren't watching. The same drawing he made on your wrist, your palm, the back of your neck. Concentric circles. You never asked what they meant. You were afraid the answer would be something you didn't want to hear. Or maybe you knew. Maybe you'd known from the beginning that those circles were him trying to map you, possess you, turn you into sacred territory that no one else could occupy.

Your body responded before your mind.

A betrayal. A truth. A piece of you that no longer obeyed your brain, that acted on pure animal instinct, on muscle memory, on the habit of so many nights of love and fear mixed together. Your eyes closed for a second. Your head tilted against his hand, heavy, surrendered. His skin was warm—warmer than it should be, fever-warm, the warmth of a whole life burning from within. And a sound escaped your throat. A small, painful moan, not entirely human. A sound that was both relief and despair.

He heard it.

And something in his face broke.

The control. The facade. The posture of a man who had just destroyed an apartment and sat among the rubble like a king. All fell. Not for a second this time. It truly fell. Like a house of cards finally finding the right breath. For a moment—a single, brief, luminous moment—he wasn't the elite sharpshooter. Wasn't the convicted murderer. Wasn't the fugitive who had just crossed the country with blood on his hands. He was just Ben. The Ben who pulled you closer in the middle of the night, when you were already asleep, as if even unconscious he needed to be sure you hadn't left. The Ben who whispered things in your hair, things you never repeated to anyone, things he probably didn't even remember saying because they came out of him like confessions from a sleepwalker. The Ben who was afraid to fall asleep first because he needed to be sure you wouldn't run away while he was vulnerable.

His hand trembled against your face.

His thumb stopped mid-circle. The other fingers, the ones resting on your jaw, vibrated like violin strings after snapping. The tremor traveled up his arm, through his shoulder, shaking his thin body for a second. He held his breath—you saw his chest stop—and then let it all out in one jet, as if he had held the whole world inside his lungs and could finally let go.

His blue eyes wandered over your face, slowly, as if he were re‑memorizing every detail. As if afraid of forgetting. His nose—you noticed his nose was now slightly crooked, as if it had been broken and hadn't healed right. The line of his lips—chapped, dry, the lower lip split in the middle. The new scar on his eyebrow. All the marks that prison time had left on him, all the stories he wouldn't tell, all the pieces of him that had been broken and hastily mended, without anesthesia, without care.

His thumb resumed the movement. One circle. Another. Another. A rhythm. A prayer. A thread connecting this moment to all the past nights, to all the promises tattooed on skin and in silence.

His mouth almost touched yours. Close enough for you to feel the promise of a kiss, the ghost of a kiss, the warmth of a kiss that didn't happen but vibrated in the space between your mouths like a stretched string.

His eyes met yours. And he smiled.

The smile was small. Crooked. Disturbingly familiar. The same smile he used before kissing you, before pulling you into the dark, before doing all the things you kept in your memory like a photo album you would never open again but also never throw away. But there was something different now. Something broken and lit at the same time. Like an exposed wire, sparking, smoking, but still conducting electricity. Like a house on fire but still habitable, walls in flames and the sofa still soft, windows bursting and the bed still warm. Like someone who had gone to the bottom of the well and come back, but brought the bottom of the well with him—stuck to his shoes, under his nails, at the back of his throat.

The smile widened. Showed teeth. His eye gleamed—not the wet gleam from before, but a dry, electric gleam, a little bit crazy. There was joy there. A dark, dangerous joy that you hadn't seen since before the prison, since before the note, since before the end of the world. The joy of someone who survived something they shouldn't have. Who escaped a cell that was meant to be permanent. Who came back from hell in jeans and a white shirt open at the chest, dirty with blood, thin as a thread, but alive. Alive.

His free hand—the left, the one resting on his knee—rose slowly. His fingers found your hair. Buried themselves in it. Pulled a little, not hard, like an owner. With the familiarity of someone who had done this a thousand times. With the certainty of someone who knows that hair, that smell, that temperature still belong to him. It was a possessive gesture, but it was also a request. Let me stay. Let me touch. Let me be yours again, the same way you've always been mine.

His thumb stopped mid-circle. The fingers in your hair tightened a little more. The blue eyes, those eyes that looked at you with devotion and despair and hunger and love and madness, fixed on yours like two nails. The smile was a crack in his face, an open wound, a wide-open door to a place you knew well because you had lived there for a long time.

"Guess who's back from jail?"

a/n: the ending is purposefully ambiguous and chilling. i honestly thought about another path, but i stayed firm in my choice to keep the meme. because deep down, that's exactly what he would do. he destroyed her apartment. he's covered in blood. he killed her lover on the way. he spent 847 nights locked in a cell counting the days to come back to her. and the first thing he does when he sees the woman he loves again? acts like a sitcom character coming back from vacation. is it scary? yes. but it's also him. it's that thread of madness and twisted humor that was always there, buried beneath all the devotion and violence and sick love. also... LOOK AT HIS FACE. that face of someone who escaped from hell in ripped jeans and an open shirt, thin as a thread, dark circles like bruises, dried blood on his face that isn't his. and honestly? he regrets nothing. just that it took so long. and i didn't understand why i couldn't use the gif tool correctly, but i hope you can see the credits. i don't want to offend anyone.

[flwries]

i genuinely have no words...this was INCREDIBLE

and it just scratches the itch i have for stalker fanfic and dark (non-sexual) fanfics. ugh i LOVE

[flwries]

ahhh benjamin poindexter and hysterical!reader that he stockholm syndromed...something something...they get married...she might be crazier than him...or she thinks she is...something something...idkkkk

[scarlet48]

Hello Karen

[flwries]

chilllll i'm easy

[aneurins-barnard]

WILSON BETHEL as BENJAMIN POINDEXTER DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN // 2.04 Gloves Off

[flwries]

mind you, he's making me breakfast

[baratheonpilled]

Via Peter Claffey's Instagram.

[flwries]

iwoke up with a massive swollen eye

[flwries]

when a knight of the seven kingdoms was first coming out, i had a wholeeeee fic planned for aerion targaryen. it was a modern!au fic where aerion is a deadbeat dad LOL

like i have it all planned out, it was supposed to be a mini series, but like, i just never started it...and now i don't know whether i should even write it or not...

[flwries]

nobody in my school’s library knows that i’m listening to shawn hatosy’s voice whisper in my ear

[flwries]

if this preview has convinced me of ANYTHINGGGG, it’s that i desperately need shawn hatosy featured on The Bear…no exceptions!!!

[flwries]

what a preview omg

[flwries]

“you were hard to look away from” HAHAHA WHAT YOU MEAN BY THATYY

[flwries]

im blushing and he hasn’t even done anything yet