Spoilers: References to and various spoilers for Daredevil season two, The Defenders, and The Punisher season one. References and coincides with my other fic, Fireplace, but you don't have to have read that to read this.
A/N: These characters and their dynamic is under my skin. I don't even necessarily want them to be a couple, but I want them to be together, sharing a dark world of trust. Ugh. You can read this as platonic or pre-romantic, either way. It is what it is. Open to interpretation. Thanks for reading.
The more he thinks, the less he's sure. But the war – his war – is over, and instinct alone doesn't serve him well anymore.
He knows, on some level, that Curtis and the support group are helping. Slowly, he's making his way back into the world. Frank Castle might be a ghost, but Pete Castiglione still had a chance to regain some sense of normalcy. Whatever that was.
There had been an evening when a young woman came to speak to the group about coping mechanisms. Pete had hovered in the doorway listening to her speak about trauma and depression. She talked about finding an anchor to life, something to hold you to the earth and give meaning to existence. She wasn't a soldier or a psychologist, but the way she spoke held everyone's attention.
He was really uncertain about things for a good week after that. He chased thoughts in circles until he found himself sleeping rough in the sleigh of the carousel, bruised and bloody knuckled, without knowing how he'd gotten there. Then he high-tailed it for the Liebermans'. But when Micro caught him lurking in the shadows of the garage, he knew he couldn't keep using David's family as a surrogate for the one he'd lost.
He walked. It would have been pacing, but he didn't move back and forth. He walked the length and breadth of Manhattan Island practically fourteen times over, at disorderly angles, losing himself in the city that didn't feel like his anymore. As it got colder, and darker, and the days got shorter, his route became defined. He moved the van, checked the hospital, went to group, circled Hell's Kitchen, and repeated. As Christmas approached, the circle tightened.
Finally, in the early hours of Christmas Eve, he stopped. He watched roses appear in the window before the lights went out.
He bundled in on himself and waited. And chased thoughts. Memories of Christmases, and Easters and Halloweens, played in his mind like a highlight reel. The tears welled in his eyes and subsided again, over and over. But clearest of all, and always repeating, was his little girl's smile. His strong, beautiful, joyous baby girl. Even more than Maria and Frankie, Lisa had been his anchor through his deployments and the uncertain moments between life and fear on the battlefield. She had made him a father. And she was gone, gone, gone. All of them were gone, now.
Rage had been his anchor, and that was gone, too. The Liebermans were whole now, and didn't need him to watch their backs anymore. Madani and the others had tried to give him back a life, but they'd handed him back a well of anguish. They had only given him more time to sit in his darkness without leaving him a light.
He watched Karen Page flicker in the darkness.
He watched her leave in the morning and considered following, but something about the flowers sitting in her window, amongst the Christmas lights, kept him in his perch. He knew there couldn't be anything pressing to tell him because he would have caught wind of big news if there were any, and even bad guys took the holidays off. The white roses didn't mean danger or intel this time.
Frank Castle tried to imagine why the flowers were there. He pictured the crease of frustration and concern on Karen's brow, and the way she had yelled at him about loneliness, once. He pictured her smile, and the way she chewed her lip when she thought, searching for the right words. He wondered if the flowers were even meant for him.
He tried to imagine Karen Page in a room full of Christmas lights and poinsettias, with a family, and those lawyers, and an assortment of coworkers from her paper. He imagined a long table weighed down with food and wine glasses, and cookies sprinkled with red and green sugar. But the image shifted, and it wasn't Karen welcoming him into the room he'd built in his mind, but Lisa, grown tall and beautiful, a young woman. Then Frank Jr. stood beside her and ushered Maria to the front of the crowd. An impossible future.
The image shattered as his fist collided with the brick parapet.
He walked his route, stopping in to wish Curtis and the group a half-hearted "Merry Christmas," though he couldn't articulate much else. He caught up to Karen as she left the paper in a cluster of coworkers. He watched them drink together through the fake-frosted picture window at a bar a block over. He pretended he could hear their conversations, turning from polite to rowdy as the night progressed, and her smile mischievously grew.
He lost her when her boss insisted on putting her in a cab and sending her home, but Frank was silently grateful to the man for looking after her. He used to look out for her. Because he'd used her as bait. He put her in harm's way. Even though she had knowingly let him in the end, he felt responsible. But he couldn't look out for her like that man in the tie could. He couldn't call her a cab and walk her to the curb as Frank Castle. But maybe Pete Castiglione could, one day.
He didn't see her go in, but he knew she was in her apartment from the shifting and flickering light inside. He could see her movement with his naked eye, and followed it until the windows grew still.
Maybe this could be his anchor. Maybe protecting a bright, determined young woman who seemed to court danger could give him some focus. Some meaning. Maybe…
"Merry Christmas," he whispered to himself, and settled back into the shadow of a doorway across the road.
As he gazed at the multi-colored lights in the window above, he let himself slip back into the holiday memories from before. For a moment, he was on deployment again, replaying his children's laughter and his wife's kisses while nursery rhymes sang in his head. He remembered how Karen had walked him through the memory of their home once, too, recalling the details he had been so afraid of losing. Maybe it was time to let go of the pain that went along with those details.
When the overhead lights went out in the apartment above him, Frank watched for the movement to subside again. He crossed the road and leapt for the bottom rungs of the fire escape. He made himself small as he huddled outside her window. He could easily reach through the railing and press his fingers against the cold pane that separated her world from his.
The window shifted. It was unlocked. Frank swore under his breath, then hesitated. He had a choice. Soon he was leaning over the fire escape and carefully shifting the potted roses off the windowsill. He moved as quickly and quietly as he could, but couldn't believe the sight of the woman standing over him with her gun drawn didn't greet him. When his anger – and slight fear, if he could admit that – stopped ringing in his ears, though, he could hear why.
Karen Page lay sobbing somewhere just out of sight.
Instincts of a different sort, that had remained mostly dormant for so long, began to burn inside him. An instinct to sooth, to hold, to console. It wasn't his place to do any of those things, though. He was trespassing on Karen in so many ways. Guilt mingled with his paternalistic instincts and set him on fire. Maybe he couldn't or shouldn't invade Karen's privacy, or co-opt her emotions, but Frank could listen. He stood, solid as an oak, and exposed, until the crying stopped. Then he waited some more.
When it seemed like exhaustion had claimed her, he allowed his own tiredness to seep in, and lowered himself to the sofa cushions. He listened to the quiet of the apartment, the city outside, and let the sight of Christmas lights in an otherwise dark room blur out of focus. He drifted.
The sound of a door closing and the rush of water from a faucet roused him from his reverie. He awoke with the vigilance of a father, not a Marine, flushed with anxiety over the well-being of his family. He was in her home, uninvited and intruding, and soon she would know it, but he couldn't make himself leave. He could picture her face, pinched in anger, or pink with embarrassment, and he could recall the sight of her .380 leveled at his chest, but he stayed. When the water went off and she eventually stepped around the corner, it was that exact look and that gun that greeted him.
He raised his hands in surrender, and spoke, "It's me. Karen. It's me." He watched her expression shift from anger to something resembling surprise, and back to anger again. But when she carefully tucked her pistol into the pocket of her robe, and looked back at him with relief, relief flooded his body, too.
She spoke his name, and he felt his mouth lift. He heard the echo of loneliness in her voice, and in her footsteps as she closed the space between them. He felt the well of anguished darkness inside him begin to flood. He held her against himself carefully, afraid to smother out the light, and waited for her to let go. But she didn't. She shook with cold, but held him still, and goddammit, Frank needed that light.
He gathered her closer, holding on for dear life. He struggled to hold back his tears, to keep from collapsing in relief, as the joy of her acceptance washed over him. He breathed in her pure scent and willed the warmth of his disappearing anger into her cold but living body. He savored the connection of his meaning to her life, until he too began to shiver.
Then he pushed away. Careful. Broken. His thoughts creeping in. The more he thinks, the less he's sure. He knew what he wanted – what he needed – in that moment, but knew that he wasn't alone in his thoughts. He had heard her sobs, too. She had told him once that he'd be dead to her. But he had gambled on her pure heart once before, and knew she trusted him. He needed her, and she might let him tear her world apart without actually needing him.
She closed the window and returned. Her radiant blue eyes searched his face and her hand found his cheek. Her smile pierced him, and for an instant he sees the impossible future. His grown children waiting for him.
"You're alive," Karen says, laughter in her voice.
"Yeah," he says. "I am." His words are a sigh, a release. He meets her smile.