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You’re ten years old the first time they kill your dad. Almost a teenager, and teenagers are practically adults, which is good because it turns out you can’t trust anybody. Your friends? They aren’t your friends anymore; Kyle and Jayden and Andy say things—about your dad, about you—that make you want to break their skulls against a wall and smear their brains across the brick, and you would, if you were strong enough. You would.
Your mom is not your mom. For a while she was this flat-eyed stranger who constantly smelled like wine and pretended you didn’t notice. Then some of the light came back to her face. Only a little—she’s still a stranger who cries late at night and pretends you don’t notice.
Your sister plays along. That’s why she and your mom love each other. They hate you. At least your mom hates you; her face drops whenever you come into the room. She doesn’t touch you anymore, except to pull you back or push you away. She pretends it’s all your fault, though. (Zach, you have to calm down. Zach!)
(Hate you? Zach, baby—) She pretends it’s not the truth.
It doesn’t matter. You know the truth.
+
Pete doesn’t like you. He doesn’t make a big show of covering it up like Mom does. So that’s okay.
You still hate him.
Leo loves him. He listens to her talking about her stupid books and calls her sweetheart, and she’s such an idiot that she falls for it, hook, line and sinker. You’re not an idiot. You don’t trust him. With his beard he looked homeless. Without it he looks mean.
(You look mean, Leo snaps.)
This is some kind of scam. You’re not sure what kind, since Mom won’t let you get on the laptop to research common scams and Leo’s acting like this greasy bum is her new best friend and nobody listens to you, no one ever listens to you—
+
He calls her sweetheart. He doesn’t call you anything.
You don’t care. And you are not mean.
+
Kyle corners you in the locker room and punches you in the stomach. Twice. You feel it there, throbbing, for the rest of the day. Even hours afterward you can’t catch your breath; when you get home you lock yourself in your room but it doesn’t help, the walls are closing in and the ceiling is slamming down and you can’t breathe. You gasp and gasp—it sounds like crying. It doesn’t help at all.
+
You decide then. You want it to end.
+
He won’t let you. It’s not his choice. He’s got nothing to do with it, except he does because your mom is an idiot and your dad is never coming back and you are so scared—you want it to be over, you want it to be over, you want to get off the ride and you want it to shut down for good, you want it to be over—
“Shh,” Pete says, his voice rough in your ear, his hand cupping the back of your skull so hard you wonder if it’ll crack. “Shh, shh.”
Your forehead rocks against his chest. Through your tears, you hear his heart pounding. You grab fistfuls of his T-shirt and his fingers squeeze against your skull; there’s a catch in his voice. You’re not lying. You heard it. And you can’t do anything else, so you hold on to him as tightly as he’s holding on to you.
+
He didn’t hurt you. You remember that—you try to—after it all comes out.
+
The second time they kill him your dad comes back much faster. Your mom hits him until she can’t anymore, till she’s just crying. Till he’s hugging her. Leo’s hugging him. Then you are, finally, hugging all of them. You should be happy. You’re a little happy, but you’re mostly scared.
“You need to find Frank,” you say. Leo grabs your hand and squeezes it hard.
“Please, dad,” she says. “You need to find him.”
Both your fingers go white. Leo didn’t see the man with the slicked-back hair and the dead eyes, the one who liked tying people up and hurting them. You don’t think you’ll ever tell her much about him; you"re just sure he’ll hurt Frank as badly as he can. Which is a lot. He won’t kill him, though.
That’s the worst part. It makes you picture Frank sprawled on the floor, beaten to bloody meat. And his eyes are open. They’re blank, blood-red, and he’s gurgling and he wants it to end as much as you did, he wants it all to go away but the pain stays, and it grows. It grows and grows.
You want him back. You want to hold him again, like you’re holding your dad now. You want him miles away from the man with the slicked back hair who says he loved him when he never really did.
+
You did.
+
Or at least you could have, if you’d had enough time.
+
The next time you see him, Frank is Pete again. He’s in the hospital. Same as the FBI agent, the pretty one who says she’s no good with kids but held your hand all the way back from the drop-off, when Mom was crying and you were crying so hard you almost didn’t notice. Mom says it"s all too much--Pete or Frank or whatever they"re calling him now is in no shape to see anybody. You and Leo beg all the same, and finally your dad cracks.
“Okay, okay. I’ll see what he wants. You hear me? I’m just going to see.”
Except when he comes back he’s smiling wide enough that you almost take off running right away.
“He said bring them in.”
Mom says, “Tomorrow. Give the man at least one good night’s sleep.”
You don’t know how you can wait that long. You fall asleep on the couch next to Leo, waiting.
“I miss him,” you whisper to your sister, right before drifting off.
She grabs for your hand again. “I miss him too.”
Fast. You’re up, speeding through the city in the morning, so fast it feels like a dream. You’re at the open door. Dad is behind you, Leo is beside you, squeezing your hand while you squeeze back. You want to step through. It’s all you want to do. You can’t.
Your sister takes the first step. “Pete?” she asks, shy as you feel.
“Hey, sweetheart,” says the man in the bed. His face is cut, splotched greenish-black. He looks more like Frank Castle now than he ever looked like Pete. He turns his eyes to you. “Hey, buddy.”
You flinch. The bruises turn his sockets deep and hollow as a skull’s. It doesn’t matter; Leo pulls you forward, clambers up on one side of his bed as you sit on the other. She wraps her arms around Pete, very, very gently.
“We thought you were going to die,” you say. The breath rasps out of you too fast. The walls draw closer, the ceiling drops lower. “You almost died.”
Pete keeps one arm around Leo. With the other he reaches up to brush the sleep-mussed hair out of your eyes.
“You don’t worry now,” he says. His thumb slides down to rub against your cheek. Stays there till your breathing slows. “Buddy, I’m not going anywhere. You hear me? I’m not going anywhere else.”
+
Some part of him will always want it to stop. You know this because you know his story now—you know him. Some part of Frank Castle will always want to die, worse than you ever did.
Still. He stays.
He saved your mom, your sister, your dad. You.
He saved you. When you were mean and empty and he was emptier, crumbling, all fury and loneliness and longing for something he’ll never, never have again. He saved you when there was nothing for him to gain. Then he turned around and did it again.
You don’t know how, but you do know this—you would hold up the sky for him.