Chapter Text
“Is this a joke?” Tony Stark laughed as he stood behind the bar pouring what had to have been his fourth glass of whiskey in the span of five minutes. “Remind me again, what happened?”
“For, what, the third time?” you raised an eyebrow. “Why…?”
“I just don’t get it. How does my daughter come across Frank Castle and live?”
“He’s actually really nice, you know. It’s giving me tortured, misunderstood soul.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t you dare fuck that man,” Tony said, pointing a finger at you. “Tortured and misunderstood? That’s like catnip for you, isn’t it?”
“Pft…no.”
Tony cringed. He pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to process what you had just told him. He took a quick sip of whiskey, exhaled slowly, and put both hands on the counter as he stared at you.
“Okay. Run me through this one more time. Why did the Punisher just drop you off at the tower like it was a first date?”
“Man, I wish…” You trailed off. “Anyway, I took myself out to dinner because you were busy…”
Flashback:
This was a rare moment, a quiet dinner out in the city just for you. You wished your dad could join you, but he was too busy working on one of his suits, and given that you had accidentally blown up the arm piece of his newest suit trying to fix the coding of it, maybe him staying in the tower to work on it while you went out seemed like the best idea.
With a corner table to yourself, you happily enjoyed your dinner by yourself, scrolling through your phone and treating yourself to a delicious meal that was definitely worth your father’s absolute meltdown. Besides, not like he hadn’t ruined several of your projects before. Technically ,this was perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
While enjoying your dinner, you heard a group enter and be seated by one of the larger tables at the back of the restaurant near you. You glanced up and noticed the man in a charcoal suit and couldn’t help but to wonder why he appeared familiar. You shrugged and continued to focus on your dessert, carefully sipping your cappuccino before diving into the tiramisu.
“Ms. Stark, what a pleasure,” the man approached you with a slight nod of his head. He noticed your confused look, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Can’t say that I do. I’m sorry,” you set down your fork and glanced up at him, “You are…?”
“Apologies, madame. Joseph, you can call me Mr. H. We met some time ago. I think you were a kid.”
“Sorry, I don’t recall,” You said to him. “But if I was a kid that’s probably why. Enjoy your dinner, Joseph.”
“You too, doll,” He smiled at you, a smile that sent a shiver down your spine as he walked back over to his table where all his associates had already sat down and were waiting for him.
Something felt sour about that interaction. You couldn’t remember who this man was for the life of you. Granted, your childhood was a little iffy. Memories were fuzzy here and there, but to your defense, that happens when you’re abandoned as a child and left to a parent who doesn’t really parent you through the formative years of your life and instead leaves it to his assistant, bodyguard, and best friend to do it until life scares him straight.
After your meal, you paid, stood up to leave, and noticed two of his associates stand up at the same time as you. Shutting your eyes, your muttered to yourself that this was going to be a long night before you started to slip through the restaurant by going through the kitchen, shouting apologies and making up nonsense that it was a Stark-level emergency.
It made no sense, but if you throw out the name Stark enough, sometimes the rules just didn’t matter.
Stepping into the alley, you looked around quickly, saw the coast was clear, and started to speed-walk out of there. You made it onto the busy street, pulled the hood up from your jacket, and brought your phone to your ear as you started walking back to the tower.
“Oh, look, my daughter is calling. Perhaps she wants to apologize?” Tony asked as he answered the phone. “Or perhaps she wishes to beg for forgiveness for trying to ruin her father’s lifetime achievement.”
“First of all, you say everything is a lifetime achievement. Secondly, I already apologized, and you’ve ruined plenty of my shit on accident. Grow up, bro. Thirdly, no. I’m calling because I have a question.”
“Fine, I suppose I’ll allow it. What’s the question?”
“Do we know someone named Joseph? Or calls himself Mr. H?”
“Mr. H? Sounds stupid, hold on,” Tony sighed and referred to his computers while you were walking around and glancing over your shoulder. “Oh, that’s that mob guy, Hammerhead. You know, the one with the massive forehead?”
“Right, right. Would I know him for some reason?”
“Nah,” Tony said easily as he went back to his construction. “I mean, there was one time we were in New York when you were a kid. I don’t remember, I was with the Victoria’s Secret Angels, but Happy and Pepper said some guys wanted to kidnap you when you were a kid and hold you for ransom. Never happened, though.”
“What? Why—why didn’t I know this?”
“You were a kid, duh. Besides, no one got close to you. Happy’s the best guard dog there is, and Pepper’s a neurotic little darling. You were perfectly safe. Why are you asking me this?”
“Curiosity,” you shrugged. “Just saw him at a restaurant. He said hi.”
“You should probably come home,” Tony said quickly. “Do I need to come get you? I’ll send a suit.”
“No, no, I got it.”
“I’ll send two suits. Oh, or maybe Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Those two old fucks need something to do other than walk around here talking about the good ol’ days, which weren’t really that good, to be frank.”
You chuckled and shook your head, “Dad, I’m fine. I can handle it. Don’t worry.”
“Fine. Just head home, then. Talk to you later, pumpkin. And I guess you’re forgiven. Maybe.”
You snorted, “Love you too, dad.”
After hanging up the phone, you glanced into the shop window you were passing by. Using the reflection, you noticed two men had been following you from the restaurant. You rolled your eyes. This was going to be annoying. For once, you didn’t leave the house with a weapon of choice. It was a quick walk to and from the tower to the restaurant. You figured that, hey, maybe just this one time you would be fine.
What a terrible mistake.
Now you understood why Steve walked around with his shield in a backpack sometimes.
You turned a corner and found yourself at a one-way street. This was better than a dead-end. You could just reach the end of the block, turn, and probably catch a bus or just run to the tower. As you were walking down that block, a van, which was very clearly going in the wrong direction, started racing up the one-way street and swerved into a driveway to block your walking path. You turned your head and saw the two men from before had come to a stop behind you, a series of chuckles rising from them and the same men that were jumping out of the van.
You sighed and took the belt off of your jacket, wrapped the end of it around your hand, and nodded once, “Okay. Who wants to go first?”
One of them charged at you.
If you were a child, this would have terrified you, but you were an adult now. You had a few years coming to terms with how different the world was, finally accepting the fact that life wasn’t what it used to be, things would keep changing, and if you didn’t want to constantly be in fear, you needed to accept the help of others, and you needed to accept that your days hiding behind a computer were long gone.
You used the belt like a whip, your skilled weapon of choice. You wrapped it around one man’s neck and yanked tightly. He jerked towards you, but, ultimately, the nylon coating on the belt worked against you and it quickly unraveled itself. You swore under your breath.
With an open palm, you struck his ear and watched him stumble away disoriented. It gave you time to focus on the other men who were ganging up on you. Unfortunately for you, without a weapon, your fighting skills for something like this weren’t AS good as, say, Natasha or Steve. You were taking hits, but you were dishing out what you took.
With a split lip, a red cheek, and definitely some bruised ribs, you were still standing as they were trying to load you into the van. You grabbed one of them and smashed his head through the passenger-side window. You were kicked in the back and slammed into the now unconscious man. Then, you were grabbed by the shoulders and you could feel them trying to push you into the back of the van, but you were planting your feet and holding on to the frame of the car door to keep from being forced in.
“Let the woman go and step back,” a gruff voice said from behind all of you.
This confused the men attacking you. They were distracted, and even you managed to turn your head just enough to see who was there. It was hard to make out who it was. A tall man in jeans, a cargo jacket, the face you couldn’t really see under the baseball cap. All you really could make out was the fact that they were eating a slice of pizza that you could smell from where you were.
You had just finished eating, but, damn, that pizza made you want a slice, now.
“Beat it, dipshit,” one of them spat. “This doesn’t concern you.”
The man shrugged and looked around to see who else was on the block. Oh, good, no one but this group of mobsters and you, “I see a woman getting beat up, it concerns me.”
Suddenly, guns they hadn’t been using on you for the purpose of keeping you alive for their plans, were now being taken out and pointed at this mystery man.
“That’s cute,” he chuckled.
He went to take another bite of his slice, but someone shot it before he could. He looked at his slice and pursed his lips as he studied the burning hole sent through the pizza before tossing it to the ground.
“Okay. You guys can put the guns down now, step away from the woman, and walk away with your lives or you can die. Simple as that.”
They were laughing. These men were laughing at his threat, but you knew better. No one would make such a calm and composed threat if they couldn’t back it up. You used this moment of their distraction to your advantage, or you tried to. You pushed off of the van to get away from the open door, but felt a gun hit the back of your head. Stumbling, dizzy, and disoriented, you were shoved into the back of the van just as the first shot rang out.
You cradled the back of your head with one hand as you started to crawl towards the two backdoors of the van. There was chaos happening outside of that van. Everything happened so fast, they didn’t get a chance to even follow you in. There were gun shots going off, and several went through the van walls and nearly hit you. You could hear screaming and crunching sounds that made you feel sick, and you’d been in a bathroom after Thor had three protein shakes. You thought nothing could be worse than that.
You stumbled through the double doors and found your footing after pushing yourself off the ground. Holding your head, you leaned against the van after shutting the doors and peaked around the corner. You watched as this man broke a man’s elbow, his wrist, and then grabbed the gun from his hand and used it to break the man’s face over and over again as he screamed bloody murder.
One of the men found you. In a last-ditch attempt, he tried to grab you and use you as a human shield. If he held a gun to your head, maybe this guy would stop terrorizing them. He never got the chance. You knocked the gun from his hand, slammed your fist into his nose, then brought his head down on your knee before throwing him to the ground.
He may have been the only one alive. The rest of the men, as far as you could tell, were all dead. You glanced up at the man who was panting as he fired a bullet into the head of the man you just took down, all because his hand flinched towards your foot. He looked up at you, and just as quickly as you figured out who he was, he realized who you were.
“Oh, hell,” his gruff voice seemed so disappointed to see you. “Okay. You? You need to get the hell out of here, billion-dollar princess, before more trouble comes.”
“Holy shit,” you mumbled as you took in his features, nothing but a cut on his cheek from this fight to blemish them. “The Punisher himself.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered and waved his hand dismissively. “Get out.”
“Thank you, Mr. Castle.”
“It’s nothing. Look, are you gonna leave or what? Cops’ll be here any minute. I don’t think you can avoid this kind of publicity.”
“You saved me a lot of trouble just now. Let me do you a favor,” you replied as you took out your phone and started typing.
“What is that? The hell you doing?”
“Someone attacks a sort-of Avenger, the kid of an actual Avenger, different authorities will take over. SHIELD will over this for you. Least I can do.”
He blinked, “Thought those guys were done?”
“Yeah, yeah, you and everyone else,” you nodded as you put your phone away. “Sorry about that pizza.”
“No, no, it’s fine. Not like it was Lombardi’s or anything.”
You scoffed, “Lombardi’s? You’re kidding me, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“That pizza is shit,” you laughed in his face. “That’s tourist trap garbage.”
“Hey! Lombardi’s is an institution.”
“Yeah, I bet it was, but now it’s shit. The name now surpasses the product.”
“Yeah? Yeah? Is that so? And whaddya got, huh? Let me guess, you think John’s on Bleeker Street is better?”
You scoffed, “Don’t insult me, Castle. I’ve had a very bad last five minutes.” You got a chuckle out of him as you continued, “You want a good, classic slice? Scarr’s, and that’s just for Manhattan. I got a few places in every borough.”
“Yeah, I bet you do, rich girl.”
You tutted and shook your head, “You underestimate me.”
“Me? Me? Oh, no, no, I don’t underestimate you. These guys, they underestimated you. If ya didn’t held out as long as you did, I wouldn’t have made the save.” He said. “You would’ve had it, though.”
You nodded, “Damn right I would have.”
You then spotted the familiar flashing lights of a SHIELD vehicle approaching. You swore and grabbed the belt for your jacket off the ground as you muttered for him to follow you. Frank did so, no questions asked, the two of you running down the block before he whistled and led you down another path that ended up in the two of you effectively vanishing from the area.
“Thought SHIELD would take care of it?” He asked.
“Yeah, I just didn’t feel like talking to them,” you shrugged a shoulder. “I owe you one. Let me get you another slice of that garbage pizza.”
“Nah, forget it. They were closing early tonight. They’re definitely done,” he waved his hand dismissively before shoving both hands into his pockets. “Where’s the rescue squad to get you, huh?”
“None. I’m just walking back home.”
He hummed and looked around, “All right. Let me walk you back, then. Can’t have any more people try to kidnap the princess.”
You rolled your eyes, “Don’t call me that.”
“What? Princess?”
“Yeah, don’t.”
“Ah, come on, princess. It suits you,” Frank replied as you two walked down the street.
“Is that so?”
“Yup,”he nodded and studied you closely. “Soft eyes, those long lashes, the blush. I saw your hands, too, when you clocked that guy, they’re delicate, real soft lookin’. You’re a princess,” he explained. “But you’re a tough one.”
“A tough princess.”
“Uh-huh, a real tough cookie.”
You chuckled and shook your head, “You are not what I expected.”
“How’s that?”
“Calling me princess and a tough cookie. Media makes you seem like a deranged psychopath, you know?” You glanced at him as he stared straight ahead on your walk. “But you stepped in to help a stranger. You warned those guys to back off. Didn’t even fight until they shot your pizza, which, I respect and I would do the same. You’re kind of soft, dude.”
He grumbled, “Don’t go around saying that now.”
You snorted, “Secret’s safe with me.”
Your walk was quiet the rest of the time. He kept his head down, face hidden so that way no one approached either of you, whether to start a fight or to scream about him being the homicidal maniac known as The Punisher. You kept your face down as well, but, generally, you weren’t as distinguishable in a crowd as your father. You could vanish a little. Comparatively, you weren’t as noticeable as him, which you didn’t mind. It made everyday life that much easier.
You two approached the tower. Frank stood outside and let out a low whistle as he studied the building. You rocked back and forth on your heels before sticking your hand out for a shake, “Thanks again, Mr. Castle.”
He snickered and stared at your hand before shaking his head, and finally, shaking your hand, “S’okay. Don’t mention it” he nodded. “Call me Frank, too.”
“Got it, Frank. Thanks.” you cleared your throat, “Maybe we can get pizza some time. My treat. I’ll show you what real pizza tastes like.”
He laughed and shook his head, “You’re real fucking crazy, you know that? Bold too to insult Lombardi’s like that.”
“I didn’t hear a no.”
Frank smirked. He mulled over this proposition before nodding his head, “All right. All right. We’ll do that, since you’re paying.”
“Good. How do I reach you?”
“You’ll figure it out,” he nodded as he started to walk away. After leaving you standing there for a few feet, he turned around and called out to you. “Better yet, I’ll find you.”
End Flashback
Tony looked worried as he sat across from you. He shook his head slowly as he replayed this in his head over and over again, “That man is nothing but death and chaos, kid. Stay away from him.”
“So is being a superhero for the world,” you shrugged. “Hell, we live with Thor. He’s got some pretty bad luck if you ask me.”
“Okay. How about this. That man is on a fast lane of the dark path. You shouldn’t be with him on that journey.”
“My mom abandoned me as an infant and never once ever tried to contact me. My dad was an absent father until he had his own near-death experience, and I’m surrounded by gods, super-soldiers, aliens, and random science experiments on a daily basis and constantly, constantly, constantly, am compared to my dad and how I live in his shadow and will, likely, never outgrow him. What makes you think I don’t have one foot on that path already just from resentment?”
Tony frowned, “Y/N, pumpkin — “
“Relax. I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine. I’m not going to go run off and start murdering people for fun,” you explained to him. “But I am absolutely, 100%, going to get pizza with Frank Castle. I think.”
Tony groaned, “I don’t know where you get your bad taste in horrible men.”
“Probably your bad taste in horrible women,” you quipped.