Work Text:
Nicholas grits his teeth and clenches them hard enough that he can hear the enamel groan and creek in his ears, hard enough that his jaw starts to ache and throb. The present pain was a futile attempt to drag his focus away from the phantom aching in his torso that has each breath clawing at his throat and whistling through his teeth in the same way the air had whistled through the holes perforating his torso not even half an hour ago. The result of yet another unplanned and messy shootout under the burning suns in some godforsaken shithole in the middle of nowhere. The usual crap that led to the simple crush of glass between his teeth and the acrid, stinging of chemicals as they burned down into his body against the tide of metallic blood that gurgled up his throat. The ache and pain as the bullets were forced out of his chest and the stinging of his flesh knitting together behind the bullets exit from his flesh and the Eye’s serum atomised from where it churned within his blood.
He doesn’t bother looking down anymore and keeps his eyes staring into the peeling wallpaper of the old motel they’re now holed up in. There isn’t anything to see.
Spotless.
Always spotless. Can’t be having defects or scratches on a weapon, it could interfere with performance and aim, and the Eye of Michael is always meticulous when it comes to disassembling and reassembling their weapons. What was the Serum that kept him alive if not another part of the Punisher’s maintenance kit? After all, he had to keep his arms maintained and functioning in the field.
Another breath hisses out between Nicholas’ teeth and not even the clenching of his jaw could pull his awareness away from the shredding and stabbing of glass, too much like the crunch of the vial splintering into his gums, that attacks every part of his body that the chemicals have seeped into. He might no longer bear any outward evidence of the damage done but his body refuses to let him forget. It was considered an acceptable price for him to pay under the Eye’s gaze.
Under Conrad’s gaze.
Weapons are numb to any pain caused when fixing them and readying them for the next battle and The Punisher is no exception.
Beyond the glass running through his veins, there is the tugging and pulling of his skin across his torso to contend with and box away, with the way the serum makes his skin feel like some kind of ill-fitting casing that pulls and catches and yanks painfully against bones and muscle. Nicholas can only ride it out by keeping his body tense and taught, reducing movement as much as possible to help distance himself from how wrong his body feels, how it rebels against the shape it has been forced and tempered into through the repeating, unending reforging and the burning of the furnace that even now runs alongside the glass and poorly-sized threads of his body.
Even the two pairs of hands, one set large and firm and the other set small and not quite as soft as they used to be, touch him so gently as they remove blood from the pristine planes of his chest set Nicholas’ nerves aflame like the snapping and biting shock of electricity. Not the pleasant kind those hands normally elicit but something more like the crackling of electricity that would remind him of the boundaries that the Eye expects of its armaments.
Time passes with the quiet murmur of voices in his ears and the touches of gentle hands that slowly feel less and less like they’re tracing fire into his flesh, working instead to coax the knots out of his muscles and before Nicholas can truly register it he’s cocooned in the warmth that no longer hurts, the shards of glass in his veins has finally dissolved, and all of the energy has drained from him as his eyes drift close. He finally rests, no longer the Punisher in the cold, uncaring grasp of the Eye of Michael but Nicholas D. Wolfwood in the safety and care of those who treat him as more than the weapon he has been made to be.