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October 12, 2019, Hell’s Kitchen Park
It’s a warm autumn evening; the scent of pumpkin-spiced coffee hangs in the air, and the leaves on the trees are turning colorful.
He walks through the park that once felt so familiar to him.
Every afternoon after work, they used to walk here.
Together, hand in hand.
A group of girls runs past him, laughing loudly.
He rolls his eyes, even though there’s really no reason to be annoyed.
But it feels wrong that others are allowed to be happy—
while he suffers.
Now that Matt is gone, there’s really nothing left that doesn’t annoy him.
Matt.
Since he’s been gone, the world has basically been nothing but emptiness, sadness, meaninglessness—
— “Frank?” A woman’s voice behind him calls his name.
Frank.
It had been a long time since anyone had spoken his name.
184 days, to be exact.
The memory immediately triggers a painful stab in his chest.
He turns around.
The woman smiles at him warmly.
“Hello, my name is Amy, and you are Frank Castle,” she states.
“Do you have a minute?”
Frank studies the woman.
Tall, with long brown hair, glasses framing her blue eyes, and a smile that looks familiar to him.
Very familiar, in fact.
“So, what do you say? Do you have time? It really won’t take long—it’s just…”
“No, no, I have time. It’s just that you… you look like…”
“Matt?”
They are both standing under a large walnut tree, whose leaves filter the warm light of the evening sun.
Amy looks at the man; he is tall and broad-shouldered, almost intimidating, but in his gray-blue eyes she sees pain and sorrow.
Frank looks as if he might faint at any moment.
She knows why.
That’s exactly how she looked when she received the news.
It had been evening.
Spring.
The season when everything begins to bloom again, the animals return from their peaceful slumber, and everything comes to life.
She had just gotten home from work when she received the call.
From Maggie.
The woman who had raised her and Matt after their father had passed away.
The nun who had loved every child at the Father Lantom Church orphanage as if they were her own.
Her voice had been completely choked with tears, and Sister Maggie had searched for a long time for the right words.
For the right words that would never come, because there were no right words for what she had to say.
Her voice was very soft, barely audible, when she finally spoke the sentence into her phone.
“Matt has passed away, Amy.”
Amy remembers exactly how her heart skipped a beat.
Her vision went black—
The world had stopped—
Her world had stopped.
- “How do you know M—how did you know him?”
The deep voice of the man standing across from her snaps her out of her memories.
She takes a deep breath and tries to compose herself.
“I’m his sister. His twin sister.”
A long silence follows this statement.
A silence that speaks louder than a thousand words.
“How—why—what, I, I... Matt’s sister?”
Frank’s voice is nothing more than a whisper.
“Yes, I’m Matt’s twin. Amy Murdock.”
The man tries to say something; he opens his mouth, only to close it again.
Castle has gone completely pale.
“I’m sorry for just barging in on you like this, but I—I just had to find you and talk to you about Matt. After he died—”
Her voice breaks at this word.
“After he died, I went to his apartment. There, I found several emails on his laptop addressed to a Frank Castle. So I found out where you lived and came looking for you. I know I sound like quite the stalker right now, but you see, after Matt died, I hadn’t been in touch with any of his friends. I wasn’t even sure if he had any… Matt and I were never really close. Sure, we wrote to each other at Christmas or on birthdays. But we never had a strong relationship or regular contact… After my 18th birthday, I moved to London to study. Matt never left New York…
I don't really know what I'm doing here either. I just—I just wanted to find a connection to him... To Matt.”
The words hit Frank like a punch in the gut. He feels the world start to spin before his eyes.
Matt would have told him about a sister; he wouldn’t have kept something this big a secret from him.
Although… maybe he would have.
Matt hadn’t told him he was Daredevil until five months into their relationship.
So, maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched that Matt had kept a secret sister from him, too.
She’s standing right in front of him now, looking deep into his eyes.
“I—I, well, this is very surprising. Matt never told me about a sister.”
His voice sounds uncharacteristically small and quiet.
The woman nods slowly and then begins to laugh softly.
A shiver runs down Frank’s spine.
Her laugh resembles Matt’s so much that it’s almost eerie.
There’s no doubt about it.
This woman is Matt’s sister.
“Yes, Matt always had a habit of leaving out important things. Especially when it came to me.”
Amy says, visibly lost in a memory.
“I felt very lonely after he died. Which is funny, since Matt wasn’t really part of my life even before that. But it still hurts. Every single day. Knowing that I’ll never hear his voice again, his laugh. That I’ll never see him again.”
These words strike Frank right in the heart.
She had just described exactly how he felt every day.
Now knowing that Matt is still so deeply missed by someone gives him a certain sense of comfort and validation.
“You have no idea how much it means to me to see you.”
His voice is barely audible.
Frank feels tears welling up in his eyes.
He hasn’t cried in a long time.
To be exact, the last time was 184 days ago.
After that, he had forbidden himself from crying. His father always said, “Crying won’t bring the dead back. So stop it and don’t be a wimp.”
But he can’t hold them back.
He doesn’t want to hold them back.
All the immense pain he thought he had mostly suppressed comes crashing down on him.
Tears run down his cheeks.
He closes his eyes.
He tries to pull himself together.
Then he feels a gentle hand on his arm.
Frank opens his eyes; Amy is standing in front of him, looking him straight in the eyes.
Tears have welled up in her blue eyes, too.
Strange, Frank thinks.
Strange how intimate a moment between two strangers can be.
Two strangers connected by only one thing.
Pain.