Work Text:
It amused Frank, sometimes, that Red was named for The Devil, and yet he never collected souls, never really attempted to exact true retribution or make others pay for their sins with their souls. He just wanted justice, punishment. And Frank…well…he was the true soul collector, racking them up every night, like a middle aged man at a bowling alley, knocking the pins down and yet they still, somehow, kept popping right back up for him to take another swing. He thought, at times, that they were named wrongly. Maybe they should swap.
Sometimes he got tired of it. The constant scourge of humanity, the drug dealers, the traffickers, the child molestors, rapists, murderers…they wore on him. They weighed his soul, dark and shriveled as it was, down to almost nothing. There were times, truly, that he felt soulless. There were times he looked in the mirror, catching his own almost black eyes and thought he must surely have lost his soul by now, after all the killing, all the war.
But then, he’d catch a glimpse of gold hair, floating on the breeze, or a whiff of roses from a woman passing by the alley he was lurking in, waiting to strike, and he’d remember that he’d given his soul to her, handed it right over to her, for safekeeping, bit by bit over the years they’d known each other.
The first shard slipped into her hands that day in the hospital, when all he’d known to call her was “ma’am”. The first time he’d said the word, “please” since the day Maria and his babies were stolen. He hadn’t begged anyone for anything since that day. Certainly not for mercy or their time. He didn’t want anyone’s time…until she’d shoved that picture of his family in front of his face, righteous indignation lighting her beautiful eyes, so different from Maria’s, but no less captivating. She’d brought his family back to him, in that small, tender, kind way, and in doing so, she’d gathered a fragment of his soul in her delicate hands without him even realizing it.
Then sitting in prison, waiting for his hearing, she’d looked into his bruised and battered face and informed him that he wasn’t a monster, even though he knew damn well he was. But she swore he wasn’t and refused to let him say he was. A sliver slid across the table to her, against his will this time, he’d sensed it happening, and he’d tried to stop it. He’d tried to scare her off, but she was more ferocious in her certainty that he was a good man than he was in his certainty that he wasn’t. So fiercely protective of him even though he didn’t want her to be. He’d wanted nothing more than to escape that cell, murder all the men responsible for blowing up his world, and then escape the world himself when it was over. But that sliver of his soul slipped across to her and tethered him a little tighter.
Meeting her eyes across the courtroom as he’d gone apeshit on the stand, blowing up her defense of him, he’d tried to steal that sliver back…and he’d almost succeeded, but she was stronger than she looked and she held onto it with a heart like a steel trap. As they’d dragged him away from her he’d kept his eyes from hers, afraid she’d take another.
And when he’d escaped and found himself standing on the wrong end of her gun at her apartment, a huge chunk of it had wedged itself between their bodies the moment he’d leapt on top of her to shield her from the bullets being sprayed around the room. In that moment the two fragments of his soul that she owned had called, he’d heard them, to the rest of his blackened soul and forced him to protect her. Those pieces had informed him that she was theirs to care for, to safeguard. He’d had no choice because he’d known, in the moments he’d climbed her stairs that he was either going to die by her bullet or by protecting her from them.
She was his.
Somehow.
He’d thought he’d snatched them back that night in the woods when she’d spat, “If you do this, I’m done. You’re dead to me.” He’d closed his eyes as he’d closed the door to the ramshackle cabin and tried to make his peace with the fact that he’d finally shaken her loose, even though he was forced to admit he hadn’t wanted to. But those shards of soul stayed with her, despite his best efforts. She was their true owner now.
And so it continued. Slivers and fragments, chunks and hunks, pebbles and flakes, all deserting him to find safe harbor in her light.
Floating on the wind from beneath a blanket where he huddled waiting for her.
Trailing along on the scent of the roses he pulled from the bag he’d carried into her apartment, his first time offering her a real way to contact him.
A slice had snuck away to bury itself in her body as she’d grasped him, holding him so tightly to her that he’d had no choice but to breathe her in and accept the brief respite from his war, there in her soft, strong, gentle arms with his flowers on her table.
He stopped trying to stop them that day.
He gave her one freely the moment she’d handed him her gun and explained her plan to him after the hotel cooler had exploded and shrapnel had embedded itself in his arm. She’d instructed him to wrap her in his arm and hold the gun under her chin. She’d told him she trusted him, knew he wouldn’t hurt her, that he was the only man she’d ever trust to hold a gun on her that way…and in that elevator, after she’d helped him escape, he’d pressed his forehead to hers and closed his eyes and willingly slid a large chunk of his bruised soul into her keeping. He’d wanted her to have it. He’d needed her to have it.
And then Billy had admitted his crimes and he’d had no choice but to make him pay.
And pay.
And pay.
Until Billy had come back to haunt him.
Until Billy had used the one thing Frank clung to against him. His own code. He’d made him break his own fucking code in the quest for vegeance.
And he’d known, standing over the bodies, as he screamed his pain and torment, that even though she’d been collecting his soul in pieces and parts, like they were somehow precious instead of soiled and black and filled with hate, that he’d have to cut the rest of his soul away, to keep her safe. To keep her from getting the blackest, most disgusting, most tormented parts of it. Because if she took those into herself, surely they’d make her into what he was. And he couldn’t have that. He couldn’t have her light extinguished. He couldn’t bear to see those blue eyes go dark with malevolence.
So he’d pushed.
He’d shoved.
He’d ripped himself away.
He’d torn the most bloody, ragged, wound he’d never be able to heal into himself and into her.
For her.
Only for her.
His light.
The angel to his devil.
He’d let her help him one last time, but only so he could run from her. So he could keep her safe, take his darkness away from her. He knew he couldn’t take the pieces she’d collected back, but he was damn sure going to keep her safe from the rest of them.
He’d watched her walk away and it had taken everything in him not to call out. Not to beg her to forgive him. Not to tell her that he was ready for the “after” she wanted for him. For them.
He hadn’t though.
And he’d stayed away for ten years. Those restless pieces of his soul constantly clamoring inside him, looking for their lost pieces, craving a reunion, begging every day to be rejoined with their fragmented brothers. Pleading for Karen to make them whole again.
He’d gotten used to denying them. Sometimes he even craved the pain it caused him.
And then, she’d called.
She’d called and those pieces had leapt. They’d stormed his gates, demanding their release into her keeping.
He’d tried to offer them. He’d tried.
But she’d turned him down and in his pain, with the broken pieces of his soul crying for her as she stood in front of him, he’d had no choice but to wall himself up again. To lay brick after brick between them, until she’d turned to leave with Red.
“You asked me for a favor,” he’d called, as she’d turned to go. “I did it.”
He’d had to say it. One last attempt. He was begging her to accept what he was offering, to forgive him for the wound he’d gouged in both of them that day in the hospital and to take him and make him whole again.
But her eyes had held his, softly, and filled with resignation. He could have sworn that as she’d said, “Yes, you did. Thank you,” the pieces of him that she owned had looked out at him with grief and longing.
But then she was gone.
And he was back where he’d started.
Alone.
At war.
Again.