Work Text:
Dreaming of A Red Sky
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Frank could barely remember a time when he hadn’t had nightmares. Dreams of drowning in an ocean of blood, raising his hands up to an unforgiving red sun hanging above him in an empty red sky. And really, most of the time Frank hadn’t even minded waking up screaming nearly every night, just figured it was what he deserved.
Besides, it wasn’t like anyone had ever heard him. Except for Matthew, that was, but Matthew was dead now and since he had, on most nights, screamed even louder than Frank, it didn’t really matter anyway.
Now, though, Frank couldn’t help but wonder, staring down at his hands dripping as red as they always had in his dreams, now he wondered if the things he’d done - they’d done, as he‘d always had to remind Matthew - if all the people they’d punished had actually been worth it.
They had all been sinners, of course - murderers, liars, deserters - Fisk’s henchmen, but, looking into the eyes of the raving mob before him, all he could see was the bloodlust in their eyes.
Like a disease, he mused silently. So many dead and yet, they’d achieved nothing. Saved no one. Certainly no one of the crowd howling for him to die.
Frank was distantly aware of the feeling of blood slowly turning dry on his hands, making his skin itch uncomfortably where it had already started to flake.
He gripped his cross tighter, wishing once more that it was his gun instead.
When he felt the noose around his neck tighten he squared his shoulders.
“Listen,” he said then, his last words, not quite loud, though still audible enough that a hush fell over the crowd instantly, the bellowed demands for his death subsiding for a moment.
“Listen to me,” he repeated, although he knew that he had the attention of everyone. “You have lost your way.”
A murmur went through them at his words, and he continued, louder. “Your God has spoken to me. He has judged you. And he has found you wanting. He has found you to be cowards. Traitors. He has found ye to be weak and pathetic.” He spat on the ground, coloring the dusty earth coppery red while the mob went wild.
Shaking their fists at him, screaming and jeering and throwing sticks and rocks.
“Do you really think,” he went on, uncaring, “that your God will let you see Heaven after what you did? After what you let Fisk do? To you, to your families, your friends? You think He will save you, after you only watched as Fisk tortured and killed and stood by, cheering, like the critters y’are? After you stood and watched him kill the only person that could have saved your damned souls? After you killed me?”
He looked down at them from the scaffold. Watched them watch him and grinned, showing them his blood stained teeth. It was deathly quiet now.
“You think what I did was bad? You call me a monster and yet, looking at me really shouldn’t be any worse than looking at yourself in the mirror everyday. I am not the monster under your beds,” his grin widened and they flinched away from him. “I am the monster in you.”
He paused and watched them look up at him, doubtful and suspicious and yet, listening to his every word and for a moment he felt as if he was in church again. The preacher before his flock. Observing them from behind the Altar, praying for their own happiness and good fortune and for someone else to bear the consequences of their sins.
Matthew had tried to, and he had burned for them. Rogers had tried, too, and they’d eaten him.
Frank had tried and now he’d hang.
Like Goddamn Atlas they’d all tried. Had all damned themselves to suffer.
Even though Matthew had seen the rotten cowardice in them all, he had still believed that people could change. That he could change people. He had tried and they’d beaten him down. He’d tried again, and again, and again. And, eventually, they’d killed him before he could try yet again. He hadn’t stood a chance. And then Frank had looked at them the next Sunday in church, some of them with new clothes and new shoes and none them looking him in eye.
Rogers hadn’t seen it. Or, as Frank thought was more likely, he had seen it, but chosen to ignore it. After all, one couldn’t be friends with a cynical asshole like Anthony Stark and not be rudely made aware of it. Yet, he’d treated them as if they were all inherently good people.
Rogers had fought for them, too. And Rogers had died for them, too. But he hadn’t gone down quietly - nothing about that man had ever been quiet. He hadn’t died behind closed doors and by the hands of people he’d considered his friends. And yet, to Frank, his fate seemed even crueler than Matthew’s. Rogers had died a martyr, a public spectacle. Being eaten alive by his own sense of duty, his drive to protect them all, save them all. By those Goddamned pigs.
Steve had been good. And they’d destroyed him.
And they knew it, too. He could see it in their eyes, their guilt as visible as their sins.
Frank hadn’t tried to soothe the symptoms, though, like Mathew with his compromises and his aversion to kill. He hadn’t tried to stamp out the root of all evil, like Rogers. Frank had tried to stop the infection from spreading, killing off the corrupted ones, the traitors and the thieves.
Frank knew that he wasn’t a better man for it, that he’d never even been a good man to begin with, but he’d tried none the less. Had fought. Had killed. And now they were gonna kill him for it, too. The irony of that almost made him laugh out loud.
He looked up at the sky that was blue now, but that he knew would turn red soon, and he thought of his family that he wouldn’t meet once it was over, because if there was a Heaven that certainly wouldn’t be were he was going.
He thought of their God that he didn’t believe in anymore, if he ever really had, and thought that it was good. He had done his best, as horrible as that had been. He didn’t have regrets.
As he listened absently to the crowd cheering and howling, now even louder than before, he purposely didn’t think of Timely, the town that had been his home for as long as he could remember, that he’d tried to save. The place that, if there was a Hell, would surely be it.
He smiled again and kept his eyes open as he stared down at the crowd once more, the people he’d once thought of as his. If they were going to kill him, he’d be sure to look them in the eyes while they did it. Maybe afterwards they‘d finally be able to see the blood dripping from their own hands, to bear the weight of their own sins.
He was still grinning as the ground opened under him and the noose turned tight and the sky turned red.