2Prologue:
"Do we have a deal?"
"Yes."
In an unknown location, two individuals were having a conversation. One was a man dressed in all white and the other had an odd appearance that was very hard to describe. The two of them were floating with no ground below them or walls around them, in a place with no form or color.
"Good, so when are you going to start?" The man dressed in all white spoke.
"It's done already." The one with an odd appearance spoke in return.
The man just smiled and said. "Don't tell me that you're not even a little bit curious."
"Not really." The odd one spoke with an obvious disinterest. "I already know everything that will happen."
"If that's the case, don't spoil the surprise for me." The man said in return. "I think I'll be going then."
"Farewell."
Saint Agnes Orphanage.
The same dream again, he thought. He's been having that dream for as long as he can remember. He doesn't know either of the men or what they were talking about. He wakes up in the same room that he lived in for most of his life, trying to understand the meaning of that dream. He lays in bed a little while longer before finally getting up.
His name is Nero. He's ten years old. Nero has a somewhat strange appearance. He has a sickly looking pale skin and his hair is white as snow, his eyes have an unnaturally vivid shade of pale gray making his eyes almost appear as white. But even with the odd appearance, he's considered a very beautiful child.
As soon as he got out of bed, Nero changed his clothes. A gray long sleeved t-shirt with black sleeves, blue jeans and white sneakers. As soon as he finished getting dressed, he left his room and made his way to the entrance.
"Nero." He heard someone calling him. He turned around and noticed that it was Sister Maggie.
"Good morning, Sister Maggie." A lot of nuns took care of Nero since he was a baby, but Sister Maggie always seemed to be the one that paid the most attention to him.
"Where are you going?" But she could be a little overbearing at times.
"I was going to go for a walk." Nero replied.
"Well, you have a visitor." She told him.
Nero already knew who his visitor was. "Matt's here? I thought he was busy with law school." Matthew Murdock was a boy that Nero grew up with, though the two are ten years apart in age. Matt kind of became a big brother to Nero while the two stayed in the same Orphanage.
"He did promise that he'd visit, didn't he?" She replied. "He's at the entrance."
Nero just nodded and continued on his way. But as he walked, he kept thinking about the dream, he's been having that dream for years and he still couldn't figure out what it was about. Who was the man dressed in all white and why couldn't he see the other guy properly. He kept asking himself the same questions every time he had that dream.
As soon as he walked through the main door. He could see Matt waiting out front with his glasses and cane, like always.
"Hey, Kid." Matt said as he moved forward to hug him.
"Hi." Nero quickly returned the hug. "How's law school?"
"It's difficult but a fair kind of difficult." He tells Nero. "Me and my roommate are helping each other in every way we can."
"Oh, what's his name?" Nero asked. He always had a tendency of asking too many questions. Like when he asked Father Lantom about a lot of scientifically impossible stories in the Bible.
"Franklin Nelson but I call him Foggy." Matt tells him.
"Foggy?" Nero asked in confusion.
"He snores super loud, the sound reminds me of a foghorn." Matt explained with a shrug. "The nickname stuck."
Nero chuckled a bit.
"You want some ice cream?" Matt asked.
"Sure."
Matt took him to a park and the two sat on a bench and ate their ice cream. Nero stood there watching some of the people passing through while Matt just listened to them. It was a sunny day in New York City. There were some old people doing Tai Chi, an old lady throwing bread to some birds and a couple walking together.
"How are things in the orphanage?" Matt asked him.
"Ok..." Nero said in a very unconvincing manner.
"What's wrong?"
"Some of the boys are picking on me because of my appearance." Nero was sort of considering telling him about the dream he'd had. But he quickly decided against it because he was sure that he wouldn't understand it either.
"Have you been fighting them?" Matt had taught Nero a bit of boxing. The boy was a natural and learned super quickly, it had shocked Matt a little bit. "You promised me that you wouldn't start fights when I taught you."
"I never start them." Nero defended, while looking away from Matt. "I just wanted to be left alone but they wouldn't leave me alone."
Matt just stayed quiet for a bit. "Look, things will get better." Matt said to him. "Trust me."
Nero just ignored him and looked up at the sky, watching the birds fly around. He always wondered what flying was like. There was also a plane passing overhead and he wondered where it was going.
"I did make a friend." Nero said, ending the long lull in their conversation.
"Really? Who is he?" Matt asked.
"Frank, Frank Castle." Nero told him. "I call him FJ though."
"Why FJ?"
"His full name is Frank David Castle, Jr." He explained to Matt. "FJ is just an abbreviation of Frank Junior."
"So that's why you used to call me MM." Matt said with a smile.
"It's not my fault you first and last name start with M." Matt chuckled a bit, teasing Matt.
The two of them talked a bit more, but after a while Matt had to take Nero back to Saint Agnes.
Matt said goodbye to Nero, and went back to the law school he was attending, as soon as they arrived at the orphanage. But Nero didn't go inside, he waited until Matt was out of sight and made his way to a different destination.
A rooftop of an apartment several blocks away from the orphanage. He goes there sometimes, to find some peace. He listens to music on an old radio he found. He could take the radio back to the orphanage but they would just confiscate it because of the noise. But that wasn't the only thing that Nero had or did while at the apartment.
The apartment wasn't in very good condition. It was located in Chelsea. Nero saw it as a place that only a person with no other option would be willing to live in. Which saddens Nero to think about, because he was born in that apartment. He found out about it after reading some of the files in the orphanage. Nero went there to see if he could find anything out about his parents. He did, but he wished he hadn't. Apparently his parents were two deadbeats that did nothing but drink and use drugs in the apartment. The landlord didn't hold back on trash talking them. Nero felt bad because the man was very kind to him, apparently they left Nero in the apartment as soon as he was born and the landlord found him after several complaints were made about noise coming from their apartment. Nero actually visited the landlord from time to time. But most times, he would only go there to spend time on the roof, because of the decent view.
He once saw Matt jumping across that same rooftop one time. He was thinking about trying to do it as well, but his fear always stopped him. Every single time he goes to that rooftop, he challenges himself to jump. But he always cowers in the last second. Today he was, again, trying to convince himself to go through with it.
"Matt did it, and he's blind dammit." Nero told himself in frustration. He was standing on the ledge of the building, challenging himself to jump onto the other building that wasn't that far from the one that he was currently on. "C'mon, you can do it." He kept repeating to himself. But unfortunately, the fear out-weighed his courage. He closes his eyes in frustration and turns around to leave.
He walks towards the radio and turns it off, and makes his way to the door.
But then.
He turns his gaze back to the ledge. He stares at it for a few minutes. He then takes a deep breath and runs as fast as he can at the ledge. In all the times he's tried to do this, he would stop at the last second. But this time, he doesn't think about it, he just jumps. He reaches for the other ledge but he's unable to get a hold on it.
He falls down the side of the building at full speed.
Nero breathes deeply as he opens his eyes, feeling an agonizing pain throughout his entire body. He can't move anything and there isn't a single part of his body that isn't hurting. With all his strength he moves his head to see the damage. He can only move it enough to look at his arm. It was very crooked. He could see a bit of bone sticking out of the middle of his arm. He then moved a bit more. To his horror, he saw that his legs were bent in a way that no one's legs were ever supposed to be bent.
Unable to move his head anymore, he tries to move his head to look around for help, but he doesn't see anyone. He was deep in an alley with absolutely no sign of anyone who could help him.
When he was about to use all of his strength to ask for help. Something happens, he starts to feel a strange sensation in his body. He feels his entire body become warm and cold at the same time, he didn't know how to explain this sensation. He closed his eyes a bit to focus on the feeling. The sensation wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. For a second he starts to think that it's death approaching him, he was just waiting for the pain to stop.
But then... Both the pain and the sensation he couldn't describe stopped.
Nero opened his eyes. He was still laying on the ground but when he moved his head to the sides, he could see that his arms weren't broken anymore. He uses them to lift himself up and to his surprise, his legs were fixed as well. He stands up without any problems and he looks up to see how far he just fell. No one could have survived that fall, Nero thinks, as he just stands there trying to process what just happened to him.
A/N: This story will take elements from several comics,movies,tv shows and animated series.
