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reckoningss · 5 years ago

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Mercy Springs - Four

Summary: Mercy Booker holds these truths to be self-evident: animals are significantly more relatable than people and working as a veterinary tech in a sleepy little town is as close to the “good life” as she’s going to get. When a strange man shows up at her clinic after hours with an injured dog, she has a decision to make – go on living the quiet life she’s come to know, or open the door to the exhilarating unknown.

Pairing: Pete Castiglione/Frank Castle x OC (Mercy Booker)

Warnings: Language, Violence

Wordcount:

A/N: Sh*t’s about to get real

Four pairs of pale, bruised hands reached for her. Mercy kept swinging. She flailed, wielding the bat like the lifeline it was, only just keeping her attackers at bay. They rushed in and retreated with every arc -- ebbing and flowing -- their eyes glittering. All jagged teeth and breathy laughter like a pack of hyenas.

That made her the prey.

The cap of the bat met the wall, shattering one of the clinic’s many certificates and littering the floor around her sneakered feet with more glass. Something in her chest tightened; she’d swung wide, only a few inches or so but the movement was enough. One of them rushed in, his clammy heat enveloping her. Bony hands clamped down on Mercy’s tricep halting her backswing. She jerked back, threw her shoulders and center mass away from the hooded assailant, but his fingers dug into her flesh -- dimpling, bruising with a strength that his lean figure belied.

“Gotcha.” Sour air washed over the side of her face as he hissed.

Mercy almost flinched away, but she gritted her teeth and let loose a growl. It was deep and angry, a warning with no action to back it up, but the rumble in her chest set her blood racing. Hot. Ready. She was going to fight like an injured animal and they’d have to put her down to get out of here alive.

Another stalked forward with arms outstretched. Mercy leaned back into her captor, her shoulder forcing air from his lungs as she kicked out as his companion. Her foot caught the interloper in the jaw -- hard --skin molding to sneaker, something in there cracking. His lips sprayed an arc of blood against the wall, one of the doctor’s diplomas dappled a vital red, and he stumbled back, clutching with shaking hands at the dripping carnage of his mouth. Beneath the gasping gurgle of his throat the clack of teeth against linoleum.

Mercy’s heart sang. She helped things for a living-- fixed broken creatures. She’d set countless bones, stitched wounds, and administered aide without the slightest concern for all the scratches and bites. But right now, at this moment, Mercy wanted to break. To shriek and rage and tear into with her teeth.

“Bitch!” someone shouted.

She lashed out again when another approached, but this one was ready and quick, wrapping long fingers around her ankle and yanking. All of Mercy’s weight came out from underneath her -- her world tilting, that weightless sinking feeling in her stomach. The bat slipped from her grasp.

Mercy hit the ground hard, pain radiating up and down her spine. Gasping, mouth agape like a fish out of water, lungs useless and unable to take in air. A high ringing sounded in her ears, overtaking all of the sounds around her. She hurt. Ached. Pulsed. Her head, her back, her hands and feet. She could have cried her breath came back to her, flooding her lungs with air.

There was no time to cry. No sooner had she started coughing than they hauled her up, the wooden shaft of the bat beneath her chin, depressing her newly reopened esophagus. She wrapped her hands around it, trying in vain to lift it from her throat.

“Ah ah ah.” The leader was in front of her now. His switchblade glittered as he waved it in her face. “Behave.”

Mercy knew he was aiming for intimidation; she wasn’t very adept at people, but that much was obvious. But she didn’t still against her captor’s chest out of fear, it was simple self-preservation. Survival instinct. Turning inward and delving beneath the staccato hammering of her heart, Mercy could only find the faintest layer of fear. She tried to summon it, to cultivate it, but mostly she felt anger.

That’s not the correct response to this situation.

But she was angry. Furious. Vengeful. And if she was going to die, she’d rather feel fire than ice.

“We asked you nicely before,” the leader whispered, his voice rattling low like a snake. “We won’t be so nice anymore.”

“Fuck you.”

The words were out of Mercy’s mouth before they’d even fully conceptualized in her mind, but there they were. Hanging over her head like the blade of a guillotine. The leader’s face darkened beneath the overhang of his hood. His knife and teeth flashed.

“Have it your way.”

Mercy had always prided herself on being particularly observant. Sure, she couldn’t always decipher all the things, but she noticed them. Which is why it came as a surprise to her when a dark figure materialized behind one of her attackers. It wasn’t there and then it was, palming the head of the young man and slamming it into the wall. One of the frames splintered with the force. Another hail of debris on the littered floor. Another body slumped among the wreckage.

“What the fu-”

The grip on the bat to Mercy’s throat had loosened ever so little and she took the opportunity to launch back and headbutt her captor in the nose. Pain blossomed in the the crown of her head, but she grasped the bat and wrenched it from free.

“You fucki-”

Mercy chocked up on the familiar grip and swung at the same time she turned. Wood crunched against the attacker’s shoulder, sending him to the floor in a yelping, agonized heap. She held the bat on him even as she craned her neck to view the chaos behind her.

The figure had already subdued the other interlopers. The one she’d kicked lay unconscious, bleeding onto the tile. With one seemless movement, the figure slammed the leader to the floor and sank the knife into his thigh. The hooded goon howled like a wolf caught in a bear trap and promptly fainted.

The figure stood to full height again, shoulders barely rising after the feat of fighting off three people. Mercy pointed the cap of the bat at the center of their chest.

“Don’t come any closer!”

The figure bared its palms before raising a hand toward its head. Mercy hefted the bat onto her shoulder again. “I swear to God.”

The figure pulled the hoodie from their head, revealing a familiar face.

“Pete?”

His face looked austere in the dim light filtering in from the streetlamps --deep set eyes and high cheekbones. Mercy nearly dropped the bat in relief. She might’ve hugged him, but she rarely initiated physical contact, especially not of her own free will.

“What are you doing here?”

“Are you ok?” Pete ignored her question, taking a step toward her, hands still upturned. “Did they hurt you?”

Mercy shook her head. Her back, head, and arms would disagree with her, but she’d come out of this ordeal on the winning side. “Not really, no.”

Pete took another step forward, entering her bubble, the inner sanctum of her personal space that she kept, largely, impenetrable. Even Dr. Leibowitz knew not to invade her bubble on most days. Mercy breathed through her nose, taking in his cherry wood smell and standing stock still. He was closer than she allowed most people, but he’d just saved her life so she would tolerate his closeness. For now.

He didn’t touch her, just looked at her intently like he was scanning her for injuries. She knew that had to be what he was doing, it didn’t make his proximity easier. His breath feathered over her face, prompting Mercy to shut her eyes. She hated his nearness but, at the same time, she liked it too. It made her feel safe. Her fingers flexed around the baseball bat, wanting to curl into the soft fleece of his jacket and pull him in.

That has to be the adrenaline, she told herself. You were this close to losing your life and now you’re going crazy.

“You should call the cops.” Pete’s deep voice pulled her from her thoughts. “Are they already on their way?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t get to call them before...” Her eyes flitted over the five prone bodies on the floor, some still as the grave.

Pete strode over to the reception desk and snatched up the landline. He extended it toward her expectantly. “Call the cops.”

“I will.” Across the skin of his exposed forearm, a red slash. She took hold of his wrist, ignoring the phone altogether. She was surprised that her skin didn’t crawl when it contacted his. It warmed. “Let me take care of that first.”

Pete tried to shake off her grasp. “It’s nothing. You need to get the police out here.”

“You need to be gone before they get here.”

“You expect me to leave you alone here? With them?” The disbelieving arch of a brow.

“They’re all half dead,” Mercy exaggerated. “And I have a bat.”

“Mercy.” He said her name like a whole sentence. Mercy--full stop. She found herself looking up into his dark eyes, full of something she couldn’t quite place. She wanted to believe it was concern. And maybe fondness.

“I will call the police, but you have to be gone.” He looked as though he wanted to argue but she cut him off. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, Pete, but I don’t think you want the authorities poking around. I’ll tell them it was one of their own. Tell ‘em he ran off.”

She took the phone from him, ignored the graze of her fingers against his. “Please.”

Pete wasn’t happy about it, but he left. Steel-toed boots crunching through the splintered wood and shattered glass. Mercy watched his wide back disappear into the night after he stopped to give her one final reluctant glance. Only then did she pick up the receiver with trembling fingers and dial those three numbers.

While she waited, wiping Pete’s finger prints off the door and carefully from the handle of the knife, she found something. Crushed beneath the bulk of an overturned chair. She pulled it out with careful hands and cradled it as the telltale red and blue began to strobe across the clinic’s interior.

A wrecked bouquet of blush-colored flowers, stems snapped and petals strewn and wilted. And tucked into the sweet smelling destruction, a card that read:

thank you -P.

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