His heart beat so loudly in his ears, the rest of the world seemed dulled in comparison. He could feel each breath he took, rattling through throat, lungs and nose, conscious that it may be her last. She had been so pale, so pale... His Vanessa was always...glowing. Her skin shone with a sunlight that had nothing to do with the ball of gases that lit up the blue sky above his head. Hers was an internal one, a shining, beautiful star that could never be dimmed.
Until now.
They wouldn’t let him in the room. Not family. Not spouse. Right now, he was nothing but a man. Wilson Fisk, the Man.
Useless.
He barely felt the chair arm beneath his grip any longer, his knuckles red and then white, grasping as tightly as he dared, trying to ground himself back to this godforsaken planet where he might lose her.
His mind was lost in fantasies of vengeance, of squeezing the life out of whoever had tried to take her from him. He knew. He knew there couldn’t be any other reason why this had happened. The others were a sacrifice to conceal a true goal, lambs to a much bigger slaughter. He didn’t care about them any more than he could care about the starving, poverty stricken citizens that lined the alleys and gutters of Hell’s Kitchen. One might look, perhaps throw change into begging cups, but that didn’t change the fact that they would likely not live to see the next sun rise. There were scum on the streets, monsters in the shadows, this he had always known. They would eat the destitute.
But he had never thought that those monsters would follow him all the way to her.
Through the little window he could see her, a flickering flame of goddess lying on starched white sheets, tubes running from every limb, machines quietly beeping in near silence reassurance that she still lived.
Stable, they said. But she was still unconscious. What if she never woke up?
The once blackened organ in his chest constricted at the thought. It would not be a heart without her. Fisk pressed a palm to the glass that separated them, desperate for any kind of contact that would bring him closer, to let her know that he was here, he wasn’t going anywhere, he loved her... God, he loved her so much.
“Is she going to be okay?”
The voice broke him from his reverie, jerking him back to sound existence. The hospital was louder than he had realized, the hustle and bustle of doctors and nurses filling the void that had previously so consumed him. Rounding on the newcomer, Fisk instinctively bristled. No one was so quiet that they could sneak up on him, not ever. Especially not now, with his rage bubbling so close to the surface that he felt ready to break bones with his bare hands.
But there stood a young woman, looking as tired as he felt, arms wrapped tightly around herself as though to stave off the cold, clinical place all around them. She glanced over his shoulder, gesturing to where his lover laid silently in the little white room.
“She’s in good hands here, I promise you. They’ve always looked after—” She bit her lip, dropping her gaze to the floor. Fisk felt his walls tremble at the sight of this tortured soul. Perhaps even she had come here tonight with loss and pain, seeking comfort with others. With him.
“Thank you. Your words...they mean much to me.” His voice was almost gravelled with exhaustion. Turning back to Vanessa, he sighed heavily, squeezing the back of his neck in an attempt to alleviate the tension that had begun building there. There would be no sleep until he had her back in his arms, alive, and well.
“May I ask...what happened to her?”
The woman drew even with him, the outside of her arm brushing his with unexpected warmth.
He hesitated. “Poison.”
The woman gave a low whistle and shook her head. “And she’s still alive. Lucky.” Reaching over, she gently patted his arm. The absurdity of the gesture almost raised his eyebrows. To nearly having his most dear treasure die, and then to receive a comradely touch on the arm by a complete stranger in the one night?
Truly, Hell’s Kitchen was an unpredictable place.
“Yes. Very lucky.” Understatement.
“Do you know who did it? Or did she do it herself?”
“She would not do such a thing!” The fire came to his words so sharply it surprised him. He came back to himself, holding the stranger by the shoulders in a grip so tight it would surely have had to hurt, but she continued looking at him, entirely unperturbed.
“No. Of course, she wouldn’t.” She smiled. “She loves you, doesn’t she? And you her.” The last sentence was decidedly not a question.
Fisk loosened his grip, lowering the woman back to the ground with all the gentility that he could muster, and releasing her. “Yes.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“They say—,” he swallowed hard, “they say if she does not wake, there may be further complications. They say she may be...damaged.” The thought churned his stomach in ways too deep to describe.
“Damaged.” The woman tested the word, rolling it around her mouth, across her tongue, feeling it and everything it meant. She smiled again. “You’d do anything to avoid this. To save her from that fate. Wouldn’t you?”
Again, it was not a question.
The world began to quiet around them, people fading into the backdrop like actors on a film set, the shadows in corners stretching all the way up to the ceiling, a veil of darkness. For that moment in time, there was nothing in the world but the two of them, and the cold, metallic stench of this house of sickness and death.
Fisk’s throat went dry. The woman continued to smile that smile that no longer seemed so comforting, or kind. Now, it chilled him to his very bones. But he still replied.
“Anything. The entire world... It means nothing if she is not in it.”
“Hmm.”
The fragility, the vulnerability, it had left her. Where he had thought her another suffering heart, he saw the truth now. This was no gentle woman, but a predator. And he had been so foolish, so...weak, to let her in.
She turned from the viewing window, moving across the narrow hallway to sit in the chair he had occupied mere moments before, curling her pale fingers around the arm where his had left dents in the pliable metal.
“Unless I help you,” she said tonelessly, “she will die. She will lie in that bed, wasting away to nothing. She will be nothing but bones, and where then will her shining light be then, hm?”
Wilson looked at her, really looked, saw the hungry bestial look in her eyes and shuddered down to his core.
“I...will not let that happen.” He snarled the words, meant every one. She looked like she might laugh.
He’d just as soon crush her throat.
“No. No, you won’t. You’ll spend thousands, millions. Every doctor from here to Botswana will come, and they will treat, and poke, and prod at her until she’s more pincushion than your ‘shining light’, and then what?” She rose from the chair, lips curling back to expose dull teeth. “You’d let her suffer through all that? The medicine, and the pain, the suffering.”
The word was spoken with such relish, such delight, as though his Vanessa was her favourite meal being prepared with such care and tenderness, that it would feed her through this lifetime and whatever came next. The rage flickered close, so close he could taste the sweet copper of it on the back of his tongue but he held it in check.
A businessman knows a negotiation when he hears it.
“What is it you want of me?”
Black lashes fluttered shut, and black eyes opened to stare at him. Her eyes swam in infinite blackness, reflecting only his own face back at him, his own steeled gaze.
“I want your suffering,” she hissed the word again. “I want your heart. You were born so light, and became so dark by your own choosing. The world turns its back on you, so you turn your back on the world.” She grinned wider. “Such a cliché, but it works.”
He gritted his teeth. “Stop stalling. Talk. You want something from me. And if you can save her—”
“I am talking, you’re the one not listening,” she shot back, crossing her arms across her chest much in the way she had done when she first arrived. Only now it was a challenge, not a comfort. “I won’t just save her. I’ll do more than save her. I’ll bring her back to you. Perfect, and clean.” She waved her hands much in a manner of a magician showing off his finest trick. “Healed. She will not be touched by sickness, nor pain. Not for the rest of her life, however long it will be. But...”
The smile grew, showing even her back teeth now. “You must understand. There will come a time where you will pay for her. One day, in your future. Not now, perhaps not even ten years from now, but someday...I will seek payment. In full.”
“I have money.”
She did laugh then, high, and girlish, and horrific. Mocking. Hating.
“Money. That’s all you types can care about, isn’t it? Material gains. I want more than that. More than anything on this Earth could ever provide but...as I said.” She bowed her head slightly, as if to show her sincerity. “Not today. But soon.”
Nails biting into his palms, heart pounding, Fisk considered, tilting his head to properly look over his wounded love. There was always a chance...always a possibility that the doctors were wrong. What if his Vanessa opened her eyes, smiled at him in her secret way as she always did, and life continued as normal? He would find those who would seek to harm her, and he would make them pay. All of them, he would make them suffer for how she had suffered, every moment of agony. He would relish in it, the brutality.
But...
What if the doctors were right? To see the light gone from her eyes, the glow of her skin, replaced by silence and endless pallor would be more torture than anyone could endure, least of all him. He had only just found her. To have her taken like this... It would be more than he could bear. Vanessa’s death would take him with it.
Fisk wet his lips, tearing his eyes from her to the creature in the black hooded jacket. The woman blinked, eyes suddenly honeyed brown once more.
“Save her.”
He would live to wipe that smile off her face. He swore to whatever God there was.
Still smiling that smile, the smile that belonged to his Vanessa, the woman stepped toward him, raising herself on the tips of her toes and pressing herself against him like a lover. The revulsion rose, but he held it down, the pull of whatever he had agreed to compelling him forward.
“Kiss me.”
She tasted sour, the artificial flavour of cherries, concealing something akin to rot, but her lips were still soft. She coaxed his bottom lip between sharp teeth for a moment longer than eternity and bit down.
He cried out at the pain, and was suddenly and completely alone. He touched his finger to his lip and it came away bloody.
--
Vanessa’s eyes snapped open, body arching and mouth open to take in a monstrous breath, life flooding back into her veins.
Saved.
--
In the dark of the warehouse, Wilson Fisk sat next to the body of his best friend, inhaling the gunpowder in the air, the blood, the faint aroma of a perfume he had never smelled before then. His heart swelled in his chest, a scream of torment rising in his throat but falling short, instead leaning over and pressing his lips to the cold forehead of his former assistant, his friend.
He felt the eyes, but did not see them, sparkling with gleeful exhilaration from somewhere in the back of his mind. But he would forever see the red mouth parting in that grin, that damn smile.
“And now we’re square.”