At Peace Hotel in Hell's Kitchen, Alvin sat on a chair by the bar counter while Stark paced back and forth in front of him like a caged beast.
Bucky, who had been shot twice by Natasha, had lifeless eyes. He stared expressionlessly at Alvin and Stark, seeming not to care at all about the bullet wounds in his shoulder and abdomen.
But as the blood continued to flow, Bucky's face grew paler and paler.
Maybe it was true, as people said, that when someone was about to die, their whole life flashed before their eyes. The moment he was shot, Bucky had awakened from the brainwashing.
Alvin glanced at the silent Bucky, then looked at the agitated Stark and shook his head helplessly.
A video recording of Howard Stark's murder had put Stark and Alvin in an impossible position.
Watching Stark repeatedly reach for the pistol on the bar counter, Alvin let out a long sigh...
He didn't try to persuade Stark to abandon this sudden hatred with some grand, self-righteous speech.
That would have been "immoral," in his view. You weren't the one involved, and you could never understand how the victims felt.
Alvin understood Stark, because he'd once been in exactly the same position—when he'd wanted to kill Colleen.
Danny Rand, meddling where he wasn't wanted, and his good friend Matt Murdock had tried to stop him. He still remembered it clearly. The feeling of being betrayed by his friends had been awful.
The helplessness and anger of being bound by morality and friendship, combined with the imbalance between that and his own strength, had nearly cost him control of himself.
But back then, he'd been doing it for a few children he'd never met. Stark, on the other hand, was facing the man who'd killed his