Karen Page shivered into the dank little bar, the neon signs drawing her in from the cold like flickering firelight. She slid onto the bar stool with a low moan, rolling her shoulders back under her heavy coat. "I'm dying," she announced.

"I feel you," Matt replied, sliding her a beer with inerrant fingers. "Let's drink it off."

Foggy glowered at her as she took a swig. "You know, there is such thing as too far. How much time did you spend in the gym today?"

Matt chuckled. "Oh knock it off, Foggy. You're not a trainer anymore."

Karen took a gulp. "And you've admitted you understand nothing about what I do. Gym hours are not my primary concern."

"Yet another example of why ballet is not a real sport," Foggy said. "Unlike…"

"Nope," Karen shook her head, pulling off her gloves so she could grip her glass. "I'm not getting dragged into this again. Not another round of me explaining why pummeling people wildly over the head until they pass out has nothing on the intricate finesse of dance. Absolute muscular control will always be more difficult than brute strength!" but she was laughing in spite of herself.

"Oh, brute strength, is it?" Foggy was already getting drunk. "She says she doesn't want to argue, and then she keeps climbing back in the ring with me, Matt, what am I supposed to do?"

Matt shrugged, tapping his lip thoughtfully with his own bottle. "What if we taught her? One month of training and see if she isn't begging to take her argument back?"

"Matt…"

"What? I can still fight, Foggy."

"You know that's not what I mean, man. Karen's always been Karen. Able to focus on seventeen things at once. But you have to keep your head in the game with this law school stuff. It's only our first year!"

"Yeah, okay," Matt said, more tired than frustrated. "I'm gonna…" he gestured to the men's room before sliding carefully off his stool and making his way alone across the bar.

Karen chewed her lip, watching him go. It was the boxing that did it. A one in a million hit, right across the temple. It didn't look like much, but Murdock fell hard, crashing down the length of his body and hitting the ground open-eyed, staring. That impact was the last thing he was ever to see. It was the end of life for a while too, for him and Foggy both. The papers had a field day: "Newcomer Knocks Murdock's Lights Out."

Foggy had stayed by his side through the therapy, the braille, the crazy scheme to start law school at 30. Now he watched him walk across the bar just as sharply as he had watched him as his boxing coach, eyeing his balance, his stride. "Let's make it a wager," he said quietly.

"Hmm?" Karen asked.

Foggy nodded. "You train as a boxer for four weeks. At least two hours a day. At the end of that time, you come back and we'll talk. We'll see how long it takes for you to change your tune."

"Bold words, Mr. Nelson. Our history of wagers has not been a winning one on your part."

Foggy nodded. "This one I'm sure of. I just have one condition. You have to find another trainer." He lifted a hand as she opened her mouth to protest. "I can recommend some good people, but it can't be us. Look, Matt seriously doesn't need anything else on his plate right now. You know Elektra's back in town, pulling his focus. He hasn't been in school in years and he's working his ass off, but his braille isn't at half the speed he'll need it to be to pull this off. Just – don't tell him I said so, okay? He will pull it off, of course. He can do anything as long as enough people tell him it's impossible. But you find another trainer, and the deal is on. What do you say?"

Karen shook her head, gazing down at the bar with glassed over eyes and a small smile.

"What?" Foggy asked, "What are you thinking?"

She grinned up at him. "Imma kick your ass, Nelson."

She drained her beer as Matt appeared in the bathroom door again, and she darted in to kiss Foggy's cheek. "I can find my own trainer, though. Bye!"

She fluttered out the door as Matt sat down again. "Where's she off to now?"

Foggy chuckled dryly. "She scented a challenge and disappeared. You should really be used to this by now."

It was only nine when Karen arrived at the gym, so there were still a few boxers left circling bags. A couple of heads turned to follow her wispy figure as she strode between the rings.

A bald man with a skull covered in tattoos lifted his head at her with a low bark, "Hey, girlie, what the – hey. Hey, you're Murdock's girl, aren't you?"

She smiled, dropping down on the bench beside him. "How are you, Mike?"

He eyed her warily. "It's been a time."

"I need a coach," she said abruptly, "a boxing coach. Well… obviously. I need someone to teach me to fight."

"Somebody after you?"

She shook her head, biting back a grin. "No, it's a bet. Murdock thinks boxing is too hard for a ballerina. I'm going to change his mind."

Mike laughed, loud and sudden. "Alright, then. Let no one say Mike doesn't love a wager. You're sharp, flexible, you've got some muscle tone all over I'd say. But I don't think we can help you. All my folks are booked." He fumbled for a notepad in his track pants. "I can give you some names of other gyms."

"It has to be this one," her face was set in stone. "Please. I'll work early and late. I'll work around anyone's schedule. I've got money, plenty of money…"

"Well, money's not the issue, see? My boys and girls are tired at the end of the day. I pay them well. They just want to go home, have a life. I don't ask them for 'early and late'. You go two blocks down and you'll find a place where I know there's an opening."

"What about him?" Karen's finger aimed for a dark corner of the gym, lit up theatrically with a single dim bulb, where a man worked a bag, circling rhythmically.

Mike coughed. "Castle's not one of my boys. He's a fighter, not a coach. He just comes here late, works the bag for an hour or so. We don't talk to him, he don't talk to us."

"Frank Castle?" Karen asked. "I've heard Foggy talk about him. He's good, isn't he?"

"Look, you need a real coach, okay? Someone who understands your background, what you need. Maybe someone who, y'know, speaks every once in a while."

"I'll talk to him," Karen said, already getting up. "Will you let us train here?"

Mike sighed heavily, looking slowly between her and Castle. "Here," he grunted, fishing in his pocket again and twisting a key off a giant keyring. "If you're coming in late and early it won't much matter. You can pick up the bill later on. Assuming you get him to so much as acknowledge you, of course. And hey, when you see Murdock – tell him – well…"
"I'll tell him."

There were a lot of strange things happening in the world lately, and Karen's own particular superpower was the ability to get people to do things for her. Mostly this was achieved through research and intuition, and as she paced the gym towards Frank Castle, she was trying to pull together what little she had heard about him. She didn't think she'd ever seen him fight as he hadn't been such a big name when Matt was one of the top fighters in the country. His meteoric rise in the sport had all happened while she and Foggy were sleeping next to hospital beds. Still, she knew Matt probably wouldn't have liked Castle much. His brutal, bloody style contrasted Matt's carefully calculated blows. It would have been an entertaining match. There was something about Castle's past that she was trying to remember now. Some heart-rending tragedy involving a family? A wife or child, maybe? It had been years ago now, not a breaking story, but the first couple of paragraphs in a bio piece.

Karen perched herself on a little stool behind Frank's back and waited, watching his shoulders surge as his fists lashed out and back. The image was intimidating, but uncomplicated.
She said nothing, barely breathing as she studied his form, her body suddenly aching to try it herself, to show these guys what she could do.

The door slammed three times in the next half hour as boxers and coaches shouted, "See ya, Mike!" and headed into the night, weary shoulders bent under heavy gym bags.

Mike moved to his office to work on paperwork, checking out his little window every few minutes at the image of the ballerina gazing in silence at the scarred and muscled wreck of a man pummeling the same bag over and over. He shrugged one shoulder. Nah. No way could she talk him into it. Mike shoved some papers into a bag to take home and headed out into the night. She'd figure that out on her own, soon enough.

It was nearly midnight when Frank stopped, resting his gloved fists against the heavy bag, his forehead barely touching the leather. "What do you want?" he asked quietly.

"To win a bet," Karen replied.

Frank walked over to the bench, opened his bag and pulled out a water bottle. He drank for a while, then capped it. "You a reporter?"

"I'm a ballerina."

He looked her over slowly, carefully. "From the posters," he said.

Karen nodded. As soon as the ballet's PR guy had laid eyes on her sweet mouth and big blue eyes he had plastered her image all over town. "Karen Page. I need a boxing coach."

Frank took another drink. Then, "Mike has lots of coaches. I'm not one."

"I know."

He zipped himself into a hoodie and sat down, across from her but angled away.

She took a breath. "Foggy Nelson bet me that I couldn't learn to box. He says that dancing is easy and a month of real boxing would kick my ass. I don't like to lose bets." There was rock salt behind her eyes, belying the levity of her words.

"Then you should get a coach."

"I want you."

Frank sighed and stood up, heaving his bag over his shoulder. "Why?"

Karen stayed seated, looking up at him in supplication. "You're good. You're really good. And I can only work late nights and early mornings when you're already here. I like you because your fighting style is so different from what I've seen. I like you because you're not training anyone else so you'd have no distractions. I like you because I know my working with you would piss Foggy off. I'm in perfect shape, I've been an athlete since I was four years old, and I can pay. I can pay you really well."

"Money's not…"

"I need to train in this gym." Karen was standing now. She took a deep breath and pushed her hair out of her eyes, measuring her words before she spoke. "Look - Murdock won't come back here. He says he misses the fighting more than he misses his sight, but he won't come back. I just – I want him to be able to walk through the doors again. His father trained here, he trained here his whole life. He needs to come back. Even his therapist says so. If I train here, maybe it will coax him back. Mike's coaches are all busy so you're my only chance. I'm doing this, Castle, with or without you."

Frank laughed under his breath, glancing around the room. "What is this, you're in love with him?"

"He's my friend," she said. "And I love him as my friend, I'd do anything for him. You know what that's like, right?"

Frank looked at her long and hard. "I was a Marine." It was an answer.

"Help me. And I'll make it worth your time. If it's something other than money you need, I'll do my best on that as well. I'm not here to bargain. I'm here to beg. Mike gave us a key." She held it out between them like a contract.

Frank stood still for longer than she would have thought possible, his eyes on her. She focused on keeping her shoulders up and back, her breathing steady. "Have the door unlocked at 4 a.m. This is gonna kick your ass."