Red. The easiest colour recognized by the human eye, that's a scientific fact. Like everything, human's tied links to it, made it a symbol, to have a deeper meaning, be it passion, love, sex, danger. However, to Frank Castle it meant only one thing.

Justice.

Irrefutable proof of justice, poignant, real, flowing out of scum-bags and lowlifes bodies in torrents or trickles, their hearts giving out, spluttering to a stop, their life leaving them. It was the open price paid for their past sins, a stain they couldn't hide or camouflage, a truth, brutal and honest and bright.

They should have learned by now, they should understand, they should know. Sure, when they saw him coming, when the bullets started to ring out through the night, when smoke filled the air and bodies started dropping, they ran for their lives. They always ran in the end, no matter if they were Mafioso or low-level street limpet, they all begged, they all snottily cried, they all tried to get away. Some had learned, some had enough self-preservation to lock their doors and night and never venture out again, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough.

More would take their place, more would kill, more would come and Frank Castle carried on. He had to, it was in his blood now, like septicaemia. As long as they were on the street, as long as they infected Hells kitchen, as long as the last bastard breathed his putrid breath, Frank would be there to put a bullet through his cranium. Ironic really, for that was how this whole mess started, lead in his brain, in a hospital bed, his family six feet under. Circles and cycles, life in all its simplicity.

Some days Frank didn't understand how they could think they could get away with what they did, how they could carry on with their shady dealings and itchy trigger fingers. If this was the new world, if Hells kitchen had transcended, then Frank would be their god, their judgement, their judge, jury and executioner and by now they should realise, Frank never forgave, he never forgot, he didn't know what mercy was any more, let alone able to pronounce it any longer. It just wasn't in his vocabulary.

So why did so many beg for it in the end? Did they even know what mercy was? In Frank's eyes, he was showing mercy, mercy to the civilians who would no longer have to live in fear of these ratbags. Now wasn't that more justifiable than not pulling the trigger on a person who wouldn't think twice about it if you were in their position? Frank thought so, he only wished Daredevil would get clued into the real game they were playing, before it was too late for him or his loved ones.

It was all routine by now, a finely tuned clock that ticked down to gunfire and death. As soon as the sunset, when the last light beam fizzled out of existence, dampening the city in moonlight and stars, Frank would leave his small apartment, armed to the teeth, hunt like the apex predator he was and unleash the justice the corrupted courts, police and politicians kept caged and malnourished. It was hit duty, his making, his purpose. It was him and he was it, one of the same, so close together, so mixed, Frank wasn't sure he would be able to exist without it any more.

Without the hurt, the screams, the bloody knuckles, the kicks, the punches, the bites, the broken bones, the stings, the fractured and weeping soul. Without it what was he? A corpse playing at being alive, a shell, a phantom. So while he was a dead man wearing the mask of life, he found it funny as fuck how the criminals of Hells kitchen would play dead when they saw his skull iridescent in the night as he approached. A signal, a beacon that they wouldn't be playing that for not much longer, not if he had any say, where acting became wistful reality. The reality that made him breath easier, rest a little, sleep a touch.

He couldn't be the only one to feel this way, to live this way, to do what he did, no matter what that little shit Daredevil had told him on the rooftop. They, the civilians, the vigilante's, the men and women in suits, the mothers and fathers, they were all him, every single one, he was just the picture of the end, what happened after the sand timer dropped it's last few grains into the bottom. They were just one bad day from being him. However, he was honest, more than they, he was the one who shouted out the truth every night with each pull of a trigger.

He let the beast out of the cage, he set it free to prowl during the night hours. He wasn't blind, he wasn't stupid, he knew without a doubt if they could do the same with no repercussions, no backlash, they wouldn't blink before they cracked open their own self-made prisons. They were all actors on a stage, going through the motions, only he wasn't part of the cast, no, he was the heckler of life that knocked them off their comfy judgments, self-righteousness, moral compasses.

They were the cogs in the machine, they span day in day out, fueling all the things they scoffed at, they turned their noses up at, they moaned about over a cup of coffee and a scrunched newspapers. War, death, blood, how the civilized hated them, yet couldn't stop themselves from being hypocrites when it's what they first called for when the issue fell too close to home. A war waging in a far off land? Oh, we don't need to get involved, it's not our right, let them sort it out themselves, war is never the answer.

Yet, if you add in oil, money or one terrorist attack, they call for the whole countries blood to be paid in contribution. The innocents included. Hypocrites, the lot of them. It nearly made him gag. If they wanted blood, if they wanted something to feed their greed, he was all too willing to go along with it. As long as it ended with them crumpled on the ground, life bleeding out of their glassy eyes, he would be as happy as a fucking clam.

The problem was people didn't know what to be afraid of any more, they had grown fat and lazy in their indulgence. They were scared of the boy holding the gun, mugging a couple, they weren't afraid of what pushed the young teen to take those extreme lengths. They were scared of the druggy mother, derision laced in every look and glance, yet they didn't bat an eye at the drugs that had pushed her so far or the years of abuse that had sent her over the edge. They were afraid of end results, but never the catalyst, to Frank, there couldn't be a more ignorant or moronic decision out there.

For it was a decision, Frank would fight anyone who disagreed. Fear, of course, wasn't a choice, everyone was scared of something, including him. Yet, what you feared, now there was the choice. You chose what went bump in the night, what hid under your bed, what chased circles around your mind, snatching sleep from you. At the end of the day, when the time came, when it was live or die, the choice was whittled only down to two. You or them. And you had to be big enough, strong enough, ballsy enough to stand back up, spit in their face and choose yourself.

So, here he was again, standing at the beginning of the cycle, watching, waiting, praying, salivating. He had just finished with another job, a drug cartel that was mind numbingly easy to find and even easier to put an end to, when he had stumbled across the holy grail. He had been waiting for them to slip for months, to show their face, and he had been after them for even longer. A large drug cartel, based in the harbor, had proven more difficult to locate and extinguish as most of the larger mobsters he had taken out. However, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, a glimpse of absolution. On his way home, after a rather rough night of it, he had stumbled across one of the little runners making his way to the meeting point to hand over the goods to his boss.

After a good few solid hits and before a loaded, permanent goodnight, Frank had managed to get the location, and instead of heading home like he had planned, decided to put a full stop down when there should have been on there months prior. He would admit it wasn't one of his smartest decisions, not when he was already suffering from a nasty knife wound to his right thigh, another to his gut and a dislocated shoulder, but if he was nothing but one thing, a sucker for a surprise opportunity was one of them. After all, what was life without a few dazed, quick risks?

Plus, how could he go to his apartment, rest, take it easy for a day or two while he healed up when he knew they were out there, knew where they were, knew what they were up to? He couldn't. He wouldn't. It was almost animalistic, this need of his to see the right so long over due be done. He needed it, he breathed it, he wanted it. Maybe they were right, maybe he was nothing but a mindless animal, always chasing the next big meal, rabid and deranged. But if he was, if they were right, then shouldn't he just do what is in his nature? Shouldn't he just do what they expect him to do and chase? Animals needed to feed...

But still, in the night when sleep evaded him like it often did, when his broken bones knotted together, when his muscles ached, when his memories haunted him, when all he wanted was an abyss to swallow him, he couldn't help but wonder if any of this, all of this, none of this, would ever be enough. They were all at fault for this dank and dark world they lived in. Everyone. Daredevil, the mobsters, the judges, the sisters, the brothers, the aunts, the merchants, the miners, the business men in their crisp suits... Him. They were all to blame. They had moulded and made this world in their image, in their future... What did that say about them? Shame.

No one was blameless, not in this innocence forsaken world. They all had secrets, they had all lied, they had all bled and took blood, they had all hurt, cried, screamed and argued. Even Karen, in all her techno wonder colour, peach and cream smiles and supernova eyes, she was just as twisted and sick as they all were. Maybe even more so. Frank had gotten far in life, far enough to spot a liar when he ran across one, and even though she may not be full out lying, not to him at least, he could still sniff out a dark, hidden secret when one wafted too close to his nose and damn, did Karen reek of it. Whatever her past was, whatever had been done to her, what she had done, it wasn't as white light and halo's as she portrayed to the world. No, she was tainted just as every other poor fucker in this world.

Funny, maybe it wasn't just the criminals that needed to learn, maybe they could be taught a lesson or two for once. When would they, him included, ever learn from past mistakes, ever take the hard learned lessons to heart and stop repeating the past, the sins of their forefathers echoing through the generation, again, again, again, again... Again. Until, really, they were just pieces on a board, following the same path their ancestors did, falling down the same holes, breaking the same bones, committing the same sins.

Eventually, they would all fall down, all good soldiers did, and then their children would take up the mantle, make the same mistakes, fall in the same places. Cycles, circles, swings and roundabouts. It was never ending, never quitting tidal wave of rinse and repeat. Back and forth. But dammit, if it was the last thing Frank ever did, if he had to manually wrench his hand into his chest and manually pump his own heart to carry on, to finish it, he would. He would break the cycle.

They were all the same, the same soul, the same person wrapped in different skins, the only thing different between Frank and everyone else, including that piss bag Daredevil, was he had the guts and brass balls to end it all, to stand up and put his foot down, no more, damn what he had to put himself through to get to that finish line. The difference was Frank didn't care, he had no one else to care or worry about, not any more, they had taken that from him, and he sure as hell didn't give a fig for himself. The most dangerous thing in the world was a man with nothing left to loose, for he had nothing holding him back. Unfortunately, Frank was said man. A lonely existence for sure, but wrought with as much purpose and strength as one man could bare. At least Frank knew how he was going to die, bloodily, and why, fighting for justice. Not many people could boast the same, even if his name was likely to be called sooner due to his... Occupation than many others.

The end was coming, Frank knew it, Red knew it, even the civvies knew it to some extent but not before he ended some worthless lives, and that started right now. Sliding behind a rusting shipping container, back pressed against the cold metal, the frigidness seeping through his leather and Kevlar and splintering into his chest, Frank got down to business. First using a scrap of fabric from the sleeve of his shirt he tore off, he tied it tightly around the wound on his leg, the one on his stomach would have to wait until after hours, and with a hard grip on his arm, a sharp twist and bang to the metal box behind him, his shoulder popped back into joint when a hiss between his teeth and a clench of eyes.

Frank gave himself a moment for his heart rate to return to normal and his breath even itself out. However, never one to stay completely still, Frank began to load up his gun, wincing slightly when he noticed how under equipped he really was. But then again, he wasn't planning on using much ammo, this was an in and out job. Simple. Fast. Effective. Just what his head officers used to right on his reports back to the hedge honchos. His fingers didn't even tremble when he began clicking the bullets into the clip of his gun, having gone through this motion time and time again, even before he started his crusade.

He's life had never been pretty or easy. Never roses and sunshine. Even before... Before. With parents like his, a mother and father who liked the sauce a little too much, a father who favoured heavy hands, he had left for the army as soon as he had hit sixteen and never once looked back. Even from an early age, too early some shrink in a white coat with a picture perfect life would say, he had never really been the most open, or loving. He had never been good with his words, always favouring actions instead. He never really knew who to trust and who not to, never knew who was friend or foe, the two always blurring together until he was cautious around everyone who even breathed in his general direction. Really, was it such a surprise he had turned out the way he had? Frank scoffed and slid the clip back in, locking it into place with a harsh and loud slap. No. No, it fucking wasn't.

His families death had just been the shove he needed, that little tip for him to slide into this kind of life, and really, the decent had been all too easy for him, all too logical, it made too much sense. But that was what you got with a man like Frank Castle, a man who couldn't trust, a man who hated as hotly as he loved, a man who turned on people before they could turn on him, the dead man painted back to Frankenstein-ish life. Cartoony and overboard in all its absurdity. A savage. That was what he was. Maybe it would have all been better if that bullet had done its job and he was buried along with his family... Along with his humanity.

Because that had to be better than this surely, this half-life he was leading. Like the bullet lodged in his brain, it would forever be with him, stuck inside, always there. In a way, and as much as he hated to think it, let alone feel it, Frank hated them. Hated his family so much it made his gut spasm and teeth grind. They had given him everything, a family he had never had, love like no other, warmth, laughter smiles, and now with them gone, they had taken that away with them, they had left him frozen in the barren world, alone. He could still hear their voices sometimes, still see their faces when he closed his eyes, could still smell them, touch them in his dreams, and every night they disappeared again. Like he was back in that park all over again, cradling his little baby as she left this world. And then he would come to, he would blink back into reality and nothing was different, nothing had changed, like they had never been there to begin with, like they were figments his broken psyche had dragged forth to torment him.

It was like having a wound, open and seeping, and just as it was scabbing over, readying to scar a permanent reminder onto your skin, his demon's came along to pick the scabs, to let him bleed, to let infection set in, to rub salt into it and start the process all over again, the process of his world falling apart at his feet.

...Cycles and circles...

The sound of voices echoing out from behind him made Frank's eyes harden into glacial ice. Them. It was their fault. Not these men in particular, but they were part of the problem, part of what had taken everything from him. If they were the problem, he would be the solution. Breathing one last deep breath through his nostrils, Frank hammered his gun home, straightened his posture, and with the haunting memory of his little girls smiling face imprinted on his eyelids, swung out of hiding and began firing off rounds. He wasn't hiding, not behind the shipping container at any rate, no, this, him fighting and firing was him truly hiding, running from his memories, hiding from his demons that tormented him so. It was the only thing that got his warring mind to quiet, for his body to feel calm despite all the chaos raining around him.

One batch... Two batch... Penny and a... Dime...

They fell like raindrops, splattering onto the concrete under steel capped boots, forming puddles of bodies when they fell on top of each other. Frank didn't notice, didn't care, he never did until it was all said and done, only when the last one hit the deck, that's when he noticed, that's when he breathed, that's when he felt alive for those few glorious seconds post-ictal-murder set in. This is where he belonged, this is what he belonged doing, he was better off alone like he had been most of his life.

This fight, these battles he raged, the truth was they had nothing to the ones he housed inside himself, the ones that smouldered on every day, every hour, every minute, every second. He was the king of inner conflict, a gun his sceptre, Kevlar and steel his coronation gown, blood splatter his crown. Most people, when thrown into situations or conflicts where it was kill or be killed, experienced one of two possibilities. Either they became hyper aware, hyper-focused, taking in every little detail with time perceptively slowed down, or the more popular and common occurrence, total black-out. Oddly, Frank had never experienced either sensation or perception of reality. No, his vision turned red, everything swam like it was underwater, the red sea he called it, though he was no religious man, and over and over and over again, he heard one thing. His children's laughter. Even before their death, back in the deserts of Iraq, with his back against sandbags under a hailstorm of bullets and grenades, the same thing happened.

Obviously, even back then, it was too late to save him, too late to bring him back to the light, and even if he tried to go back now, he sure the brightness would burn and sizzle his pupils right out of his sockets, Frank almost laughed, then he and red would really be on even footing. He was so used to the dark now, dammit, he practically fed on it. However, just this once, this one and only time, weak from blood loss and pain, lost in the torrential downpour of his own mind, Frank Castle, the Punisher, grew sloppy. In the nanosecond that this took place in, one of the men who was left standing, not for long if he had any say, managed to get around him and with one good aimed shot, a bullet tore through his newly put back shoulder and Frank knee's folded under him like a stack of cards.

His head bounced off the rough concrete and made his vision dance for a short while as his head lolled and he flopped onto his back, hand digging into the fresh wound that would add another scar to his collection. He wasn't alone on the floor for long, as the same kid, barely in his early twenties, got cocky enough to dart over and slam his own boot down on his bleeding shoulder, ringing out a cry that was more shout than sob from Frank. Swinging up his free hand, Frank holstered his gun up, aimed it at the blob of face coloured flesh and pulled the trigger.

Click.

"Hahahaha..."

Frank couldn't help it, really he couldn't, not when he had a fully loaded gun poised at his head and his own was empty, as he lay there broken and bleeding, both physically, mentally and spiritually, his arm flopping back onto the ground beside him, a muted thud as the gun bounced away from him. Of all days to die, by all people, it would be in a harbour by a pipsqueak of a boy who sounded like his balls hadn't even dropped yet. Life in all it's fucking wonder. No, that was giving credit where it wasn't due. His real enemy, the one that landed him here, in this exact place, about to die, he could feel the noose tightening as the kid pulled the hammer back, was himself.

There was no way out, no-one was going to save him, he didn't even think he deserved to be saved. This was it. Maybe he could find peace, if he could even recognize that foreign emotion anymore. He wouldn't have to look in the mirror any more, hating what he's become because each day its just one more step away from who he was, who his wife loved, who fathered his children, who his precious boy and girl called daddy. But then again, that man died where they did, in that park, for what felt like a lifetime ago. Would he even recognize him if he stood before his younger self now? no, most probably not, and really, Frank didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Still laughing, chuckling to himself, Frank raised his head up, staring squarely at the man-child that would be his killer, teeth bloody and bared in a mocking smile.

"Go on, do it. Finish it. Finish it!"

The gun became more steady, the trigger finger pulling back and just as Frank's head crashed back to the floor, waiting for the curtains to close on the Shakespearian tragedy that was his life, a flash of brilliant lilac light up the night and the adult-boy was gone, though Frank did hear an ear ringing crash of something heavy hitting metal, denting it.

Frank didn't move, didn't blink, he barely breathed as raindrops fell out of the sky and splattered onto his skin, some landing in his eyes and blurring his already skewed vision of the night sky, his surroundings coming in and out of focus like a home made moving picture book. Then she appeared.

Pale skin, fiery red hair that went in every direction, prominent scar, freckles over an impish nose, but it was the eyes that forced his own to lock on. Green. A shade of green he had never seen before, never thought he would, didn't know it could exist with how vivid it was. Was this death?...

"I thought it would be my wife that greeted me when I finally kicked the bucket, or my children..."

His voice was heavy, croaky and just a little bit bubbly from the cooling blood congregating in the back of his throat.

"Sorry big guy, not today. But not to worry, I'm sure you'll see her and them soon. Not every day you see a muggle take on armed muggles and two deatheaters with nothing but six bullets and live to tell the tale. With life planning like that, I'm surprised you've aged over toddler-hood. Though, I'm not really one to speak..."

He had no idea what death, it, she was talking about, none what-so-ever, but that didn't stop him from laughing, even when she whispered something and he felt like everything had lifted off from him, that if she wasn't holding him by his non-injured shoulder, he would float into space. He only stopped laughing, to speak, when he felt her jostle him into what would be a fireman's lift.

"Leave me. You're what? Five-three? There ain't no way you're taking me anywhere. Just... Get out of here before the police come."

Now it was time for this weird, otherworldly, grinning manifestation of death to laugh. Yes, he was still convinced this was his brain running of oxygen, forcing him to hallucinate to ease himself into death.

"Please, I'm stronger than I look. Plus, I promised myself no more crazy shit after the war. None at all. Then you come along, guns ablaze, taking on men you really shouldn't have, saved your life by the way, and if there's anything I've learned about life, is always finish what you've started. So, stop bitching, put your big girl knickers on and let me do my job."

And if his wounds didn't come blazing to life, searing pain throughout his nervous system, Frank was sure he would have laughed, full bellied and heartily laughed, when the woman did just as she said she would, swinging him over onto her small shoulders, stood and began jogging... Actual god given jogging with him on her back. How was that even possible? The physics, no matter how you juggled it, just didn't add up.

"Your job? What? is it normal for you to run head first into fucking shoot-outs?"

His eyes started to drift, like magnets pulling them to roll up and inside of his head, though he held off, trying to stay in this strange landscape his imagination was painting.

"Merlin, even with the weightless charm, you weigh a fucking ton. What are you packing in there? Solid steel? Never mind. I'm a Heale-... What you would call a doctor. I'm taking you to my place to heal up, I'm guessing you either live in a cabin in the woods, or some seedy apartment, so my place it is."

Frank went to answer, or laugh, or cry, he wasn't sure which, he wasn't sure of anything any more. Instead, a racking cough shook his form, subsequently shaking the small woman carrying him like a sack of potatoes and finally, blissfully, regrettably, his eyes rolled back into his damaged skull, lids slinking shut as he began to fade out of the real world, the last thing he saw and heard was the copper curls and the soft lilt of the woman's voice reverberating through his being.

"Just hold on for a little while longer big guy..."

He was holding on, he had been holding on his entire life, for what, he just didn't know. And as the world and consciousness left him, he wasn't sure he was ever going to awaken to find that answer.

A.N: Boom, as promised, here is my Fem!Harry/Frank Castle fic. However, I'm not sure whether I should continue it or not...

I did originally begin to write it out in Harry's P.O.V, but Frank kept slipping in and adding his two cents until I eventually scrapped it and wrote this instead, hence my deliberation on its continuity. I will say this though, I do kind of like the premise and sparse plot I've created for this fic.

As anybody who has read my other fics could tell you, it's no secret I gravitate towards a darker, war torn Harry. However, having a fic that involves Frank Castle, that character personality has pretty much been taken up and no one really wants to read a story with two characters that are practically mirror images of each other. Well, to me at least. So, trying to figure out how to do this, I had to really dig. Thinking about both of their lives, the violence and abuse and all that, there was really only two out comes that a person could come to. Either, like Frank, a thirst for it, justice, violence and rage, or an aberration for it. Then it hit me, Pacifism and Militarist-ism. And well, I thought having two people with those mind sets clash, so to speak, would be interesting to explore, so there you go, that's what gave birth to this fic.

So, should I continue or not?

As for my other fics: I'm making a round of it. If you read my other fics, here's a quick run-down of what is getting updated next, and so on and so forth. Though, there might be a few switch around's if inspiration hits and the muse pulls on my collar.

I See You: Matt Murdock/Fem!Harry Potter

Purple Haze: Kilgrave/Fem!Harry

The Punchline: Harley Quinn/Fem!Harry/Joker

Harley's and Horcruxes: Jax Teller/Fem!Harry

Finding My Way Home: Frank Castle/ Fem!Harry

If you read these, then their is the planned schedule and if your new, give one a go if you like the sound of it. ;)

However, there will be a delay before updates as I've had a story in the works for a while and I want that posted before I start updates, as it will only divert me from my other stories. It's a Hobbit/Harry Potter with, of course, as always, a Fem!Harry. If you're interested, the first chapter should be out Thursday/ Friday and if a Kili/Fem!Harry/Fili fic.

Well, I hoped you liked it, and if so, please drop a review in my empty food bowl, they give me life. I hope you have a fantastic day,

Until next time- AlwaysEatTheRude21