Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Frank hasn't seen white torture since he was overseas. Now, he's found Red curled up in a hole in the wall, sense-deprived, and he killed the guys who did it too quickly for him to truly be known as the Punisher.

Warnings: this story includes extreme sensory deprivation and isolation used for torture.

Timeline: After the events of "New York's Finest" but before "Penny and Dime". Spoilers until then.

Author's Notes: I'm still reeling from the finale of season 2, and it seems like the only response is my usual response – write some h/c. Actually, with Frank involved, this is more like hurt/hurt slightly less? Or hurt/hurt differently?

This is actually based on a prompt I received for JIC asking for Matt subjected to sensory deprivation. I can't find the name of the prompter in my notes, but I thank you, anonymous source of inspiration! This will be a story in three parts with Punisher and Matt, because one thing I can say for sure is that the Punisher was done so, so right. I hope that I have written him halfway accurate here.

Readers, thank you for your kind support! I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the second season! Please enjoy!

True Colours: A Triptych

Part One: Red

They got quite the set-up: an old brownstone struggling against dilapidation at first glance, but up-close the ground feels eerily stable like it's gotten thicker under your feet. The foundation has been reinforced. Theirs is a basement made for screaming, tussling, and whatever the fuck else the lowlifes have going on these days. Frank cases the place and spots one guy returning with take-out for four. Quite a party. Frank wonder who the guest of honour is, whether he's a gang affiliate or some poor guy getting squeezed for info.

Security is lax. These aren't the lowlifes Frank thought based on their slovenly errand boy: they've got enough training to hold a gun, some idea of what aim is. But they're greedier, hungrier, simpler, raised on action movies and videogames given how many of them pull the trigger well past their clips being empty. They think throwing enough bullets at a situation solves problems. Maybe in an open area, but the basement is a torture-chamber-formerly-known-as-workshop. There's shit and shelving in various stages of mantling that provides cover for Frank as the bullets fly. He even gets a chance to stand still for two of them - let 'em feel like they have the upper hand for a second – before he blows one's head off and tosses a knife into the other.

Errand Boy dashes for the stairs and catches a slew of bullets in his back. His spine splits open and spills tomato sauce and angel hair pasta on his short flight towards the ground. The last guy fumbles to reload. Fuck, he can't even do that right. His hands are shaking. Because it's real easy to be king of the fucking castle when you're the one getting the jump of people. Frank aims and waits. Once the gun is loaded and pointed towards him, Frank fires. Twitchy slams into the tool bench and lands on the floor in a heap, a perfect circle of blood on his forehead; a heap of brain and gore on the wall behind him.

The basement goes quiet. A thin mumble of blood dripping and Frank's heart pounding runs in the background. He scans the area, wondering if there's someone he missed, but nope: one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Upstairs is quiet, rotting. Nobody else comes to join the party.

Frank takes a walk around to see what the boys were up to down here, whether they brought anyone to play lately. Old blood mottles the tools decorating the walls. Chains lace the ceiling like party streamers. There's a mop and bucket in the corner that stink of death. The drain in the corner has been cleaned more thoroughly than a hospital OR. Yeah, yeah, Frank fucking gets it: this place is a torture chamber. Now where the hell is the person they were working on? Or at least what's left of him? Four guys wouldn't just hang out in this basement when they could be getting their own take-out.

An empty glove catches his eye. From the angle it looks to be giving him the finger. Frank lifts it from the shelf, searches for a match. There's blood on the knuckles, and the black and red material is strong, black-ops grade. "Fuck," he hisses, recognizing the glove. He's been punched by this glove. He finds the other under the shelving unit. The body armour is heaped in the corner, pants too, and the devil mask is on the bench. Fuckers were probably taking turns wearing it, getting a peek through Red's eyes.

Keeping the mask is one thing. As far as souvenirs go, they could do worse. But the armour seems like overkill unless they were planning on wearing it. Red's definitely here, in the basement, tucked away in some hidey-hole buffered by the extra concrete lining the foundation. Frank leans close and tracks the walls, knocking occasionally for an echo of empty space.

He doesn't get far before there's an answering knock - persistent, rhythmic – from inside the wall. Hidden behind a shelf of car parts, scrap metal and half-finished inventions. Frank shoves it out of the way. The seam in the drywall is obvious, as are the padlocks sealing it shut. Frank shoots them off and rips the wall open.

Three feet high, two feet deep, and two feet wide. It's the world's worst coffin and Red is curled inside it. At least, Frank thinks that's Red. Admittedly, it's hard to tell when he's not wearing his costume and is tangled up in a tiny crawlspace. Frank recognizes the posture though. The defeated kneel that comes from being restrained and cut off from light and life. His hands are restrained behind his back in a bloodied denim bag that's been cable tied into place. He's been shackled with a motorcycle helmet, blindfold, and a gas mask to strip him of his senses. No sight, no smell, no sound, no taste. Red wrapped up inside himself until he rots from the inside-out.

"Jesus," Frank hasn't seen this kind of shit since he was overseas. It was monstrous then and it is fucking monstrous now. He scans the bodies, wishing even one of them was alive enough for hurting. Blood drips and rot answers him. Fine then. Frank'll find out who they were working for. Fuckers like these aren't smart enough to come up with white torture on their own.

He turns back to Red, who has enough sense to know his prison is open. He rocks up and down with every breath. Fear makes him even less recognizable. Frank rolls his eyes, sighing. "No easy way to do this, Red," he decides, reaches in, and pulls Red out by the scruff of his coveralls.

It's a fight: a bad one, a weak one, hardly worthy of being called a fight save for Red's dedication to the cause. He is determined to do something, worthless as his efforts are under all this sensory-depriving gear. He sabotages the sitting position Frank drags him into so he can use his legs as a weapon. Frank lets him horse-kick the air a couple of times before grabbing him by the shoulders, fumbling with the strap on the helmet. He tears it off Red's head and tosses it away, earning a knee to the jaw for his trouble. Frank's lip splits on his tooth.

"Fuck, Red," he makes quick work of the blindfold and backs off, giving Red some time to adjust to the light and see him. Red spends a long time bowed under the harsh basement lights. Jesus, he's a kid. A fucking kid who plays dress-up and beats up bad guys. Frank bides his time guessing how long he was in the box: fifteen minutes, an hour, a day. He tilts down, getting a look at the kid's face to see if his eyes have adjusted yet. The basement isn't bright, but the fluorescence might be making his eyes burn if he's been in the dark for long enough. Yet Red's not blinking. He rollicks up and down with measured breaths, staring into the floor blindly.

Frank shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot: fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. They left him in there long enough to fucking blind him, and instead of ripping the confession out of one of their worthless lungs, Frank has to break the news to the kid by himself. He mutters some lie, something about the basement being dark, before he gets his head out of his ass and plucks the ear plugs out of Red's skull.

"You hear me now?" Frank asks.

Indeed, Red does, as evidenced by his spasming and screaming raggedly into the gas mask. He flops backwards into the wall, slamming his head between his shoulders, eyes squeezed tight against what, fucking what? The basement is quiet. The neighbourhood bustles dimly outside the concrete. Frank nabs the kid by his shoulders, "Red. Red, stop, stop. Jesus…" A stamp of blood marks the wall where he was knocking.

Red's tantrum continues in all its back-arching, eyes-bulging, wheeze-screaming agony. He bucks, he spasms, he kicks, he cries, and for the first ever, Frank is back in the fucking desert with one of those baby body marines who left home too soon and learned what war was too late. "Red, listen to me. Fucking look…" he swallows, flits his eyes away. These assholes took his eyes. He grows a pair and gets back to the job, "Listen to me, Red."
The kid headbutts him. Frank catches Red's face with his chest and tears off the gas mask straps. It clatters to the floor when Red tosses himself back towards the wall.

"Better?" Frank asks.

Red pukes. Gross, goopy strands of bile splatter on the floor, in his lap, across Frank's boots. Yep, exactly like the fucking desert, 'cept he doesn't smell like partially digested MREs afterwards. Snot, tears, blood, and bile dribble out through Red's cracked lips. He hesitates to breathe again. "Yeah," Frank agrees, "stinks down here."
As if in response, Red's thrashing starts up again. He bucks against the wall, his bound hands, his tears. The sounds coming from his throat more animal than human, all dry and broken and desperate. "Okay, Red," Frank thinks he gets it. He drags Red away from the wall before he can give himself a concussion. The kid falls back into his chest with a weak scream. Frank draws a knife and slashes the cable tie. He has to dig it out of the kid's skin and rip the denim off his mangled wrists to get Red free. There's blood pooled in the bag, blood all over the kid's fingers, up his wrists. Deep slashes mark Red's forearms from his fright with the cable tie. Frank's amazed he didn't severe an artery when he clearly reached the bone with his struggles.

Red keens as he lifts his arms, newly freed, towards his ears. They get halfway to his shoulders before they fall back to his sides. Finally, Frank gets it. He places his hands on either side of the kid's head and holds them there, blocking out the sound. For a moment, he's done worse, not better, but then something takes hold and Red settles down. His moans quiet. His crying stops. His breathing evens out, adopting the rhythm of Frank's steady heart rate.

"How long they have you in the box, Red," Frank comments, because the basement is quiet. Dead quiet, literally. Red's making worse noises than his captors could. What Frank is really asking is how long it took to break him, because Red is really, truly shattered. "How long they have you in the box."
He leans Red back against the wall, breaking one hand from either ear at a time to lift Red's shaking palms up as replacements. "Hold," he orders, and the kid falls in line, crushing his skull, squeezing his eyes shut until his eyelids picker. Frank pats him on the shoulder, retreats to collect Red's costume before they leave.

Amidst the soft sounds from a recovering Red – bare feet shifting against the concrete floor, tired moans emerging from his mouth, the almost-cries he emits when he tries to let go of his ears and can't – Frank picks up on something else. A quiet, pained groan. He inspects the bodies: one fish, two fish, red fish…ah, red fish is waking up and appreciating the knife in his chest.

There's not a single siren in the distance as far as Frank can hear, and he climbs the basement stairs to hear, stepping on one fish's body as he goes. New York's Finest. More like New York's Latest. He sets Red's costume on the stairs and descends.

Red Fish coughs, staring at the knife sticking out of his ribs dumbly. He can't figure out how it got there, what it's doing there, who it belongs to. Frank is only too happy to answer those questions for him. He looms, then kneels, palming the handle of the knife. Gives it a twist.

"Frank."

"You with me, Red?" one look tells him the answer's no, Red's barely there. His head's still framed by his bloodied hands, and his face is crumbling. He stares blindly into the ceiling, mouth open from exhaustion, and continues struggling for self-control. "Jesus, can't string two words together for yourself, but I go to get my knife back out of a guy's chest-"

Red gets one foot on the ground, then the other. He pushes himself an inch off the ground before falling. Frank scoffs, rips his knife out of the guy's chest, and slashes at his face until his eyeballs are draining out of their sockets.

Under the screaming, Frank hears Red's feet give out from under him. Hears him collapsing on the floor with an animal groan. "FRANK!" his yelling is little more than a rasp. His hands struggle to find his ears. The sobbing starts up again from the noise or being fucking blinded or having his stupid moral code broken five feet away – whatever. Frank leaves the guy screaming and bleeding, blind as the kid who wants to forgive him, and wanders back over to Red.

There's a small puddle of saliva, blood, snot, and sweat from where he can't lift his face off the floor. He covers his right ear with his hand but can't see to find the left, or maybe he wants to listen to the guy bitching his eyes some more. Frank takes it as an invitation and nabs Red by the arm.

The kid jumps onto one leg, something that would have helped him attack if he had any strength left to speak of, but all he manages to do is fall. He cracks his head against the floor and drops limp in Frank's grasp, stunned. "Finally made yourself useful," Frank shrugs. By the time his struggle continues, Red is over Frank's shoulder, and they're on their way up the stairs. Frank picks up the costume on their way out of the basement.

Red's moaning gets louder as they move up the stairs. Frank pats him on the hip, about to tell him to shut up when Red drops limply against his spine, passed out.

"Oh, thank Christ," Frank says, already dreading the lecture he's going to get for blinding somebody. He really doesn't want to hear about the fire he starts as a parting gift. Strange, though, that when the building collapses four blocks later, Red dangling over his shoulder like a wet noodle, Frank thinks he feels the kid reach for his ears again and moan.

Happy reading!