Homecoming | The Punisher

7. Walking on Eggshells

Words: 1824

They only hugged for about a minute or two when Frank suddenly pulled away. LC became instantly cold until she felt his rough hands cup her cheeks. She knew he was studying her deformity, but she couldn't look him in the eye as he did. She had always hated how she looked but never as much as she did when he gazed upon her. She felt embarrassed by her hideousness, her body posture shying away from her father. 

Frank couldn't complete a single thought. His head was a disarray of colliding words and raw emotion; emotions he hadn't felt in years. 

With a shaking hand, he reached and grazed his thumb over her nose. Half of her cartilage was missing, exposing her vestibule and making it appear as she had a hole in the center-left of her face. Her entire left cheek was discoloured in proportion to the rest of her because she had a skin graft that stretched from her lower eyelid to her mouth, where the half of her upper lip should have been. 

Frank knew pain. He lived in it each and every day, but this was agony. 

As the Punisher and a soldier, Frank had taken many lives: evil and pure. And yet, any guilt he harboured over his kills couldn't compare to the guilt that gutted him while he stared at his daughter's crippled face. 

He had done this. 

He was responsible for the hell she'd been through and had to live with every time she looks in a mirror. His actions caused Agent Orange to devise an assassination scheme through gang warfare. His trust in his country exposed his family to the line of fire. His past with Cerberus put a bullet in his daughter's beautiful face. 

There was without a doubt in Frank's mind that Lisa wasn't any less beautiful now than before the trauma. The bullet had accomplished many things, but it could never succeed in taking away her beauty. Frank would never stop being thankful that she didn't take after his looks. She still had her mother's high cheekbones, small ears, wonderous eyes, and defined jaw. There was no room for ugliness on her face.

Instead, the bullet left a permanent reminder for Frank, one that would haunt him for the remainder of his life. He'd give anything to take away all of her wounds. Those bullets should have hit him. 

Not Maria.

Not Frank Junior.

And not Lisa. 

Just him and him alone. 

He couldn't have hated himself more than in that moment; a moment, no matter how mentally agonizing, he wouldn't dare replace it for anything else. 

He gently lifted her chin towards him, guiding her hesitant but warm brown eyes to his. There was so much he wanted to say, but there were no words that could project his remorse. "We need to go," he spoke, aware of the danger he was putting her in by remaining in the middle of the street. 

LC frowned out of confusion until Frank took hold of her wrist lightly. She let him lead her to his BMW. She didn't protest when he ushered her into the passenger seat. Her confusion didn't waver when he drove them back to the Triad's compound. 

"Wait here," Frank requested and quickly left the vehicle. 

LC stared after him, bewildered but grateful that he didn't tag her along. She didn't want to step foot into that building again. That didn't mean that she enjoyed waiting in the BMW either. She could have passed the time by turning on the radio, but in order to hear the music, she'd have to blast the volume, alerting any potential threats lurking nearby. 

Waiting in the dark was daunting especially when she was parked beside a building that housed a massacre. She kept looking back and forth, searching for the blue and red lights. The flashing lights never came. The streets remained empty.