A/N: I've read a lot of great fics about this topic lately, so this wasn't really necesary lol, but I coudn't help but write my own version. It will be kind of a series of one shots. Still don't know how many. Hope you enjoy it :)

Prologue

Frank Castle did know fear. War was all about blood and shit and fear, and as far as he could remember, he had been fighting a war all his life. He was used to it. He felt comfortable with it most of the time. A good soldier had to know fear if he wanted to survive, because fear could help you to stay alert and focus if you knew how to use it properly. Undomesticated fear, though, could eat you alive, and Frank had seen too many men losing their shit in the battlefield to be damn sure of it.

Frank had learnt to embrace this own fear long time ago because there was no other option if he wanted to survive. The fear of dying in some goddamn dusty dessert too far away from Maria's touch, the fear of never seeing his children ever again that it never disappeared. The feeling was always there in every single mission, running down his spine. So he had to keep moving, to keep shooting, to keep breathing day after day to get the shit done to come home. In those moments, he preserved his fear as a treasure. He knew what it looked like, what it felt like. He could recognize it smell. He could control it and make it his best weapon, because Frank knew that once you were capable of understand your own fear, you could understand everyone else's. And, in the middle of those fucking nights standing in front of the enemy, that knowledge made him stronger.

When his family was taken away from him, the fear became anger. After that day, the only feeling left was rage. Rage and guilt and loneliness. He gladly let those feelings took over his soul until they became his best friends, eating everything else inside him. They were the perfect ingredients of his revenge, and with the portrait of his family at his side and all the memories locked down inside his chest, he didn't need any other thing while blood of murderers and criminals was being spilled around the country because of The Punisher. Frank Castle didn't feel fear any of those times because there was nothing left for him to be afraid of anymore.

Until Karen.

One

Karen Page used to believe in destiny. When she was a child, she had an unnerving propensity to see hints of that magical hand of fate in every single detail surrounding her, and she secretly enjoyed to drive her parents crazy by choosing the other way around and always taking the opposite of what they had expected: blue over pink, piano over guitar or basketball over baseball, just because she knew she was the only one catching the signals. She was a smart girl and she had learned to pay attention. Through the years - and thankfully for everyone around her - that fascination to find the bigger plan in every single dust dot kind of simmered down, and her interest eventually shifted to resolve more mundane problems like to find out who had stolen her brother's bike or why Miss Anderson's curtains were always closed. But even then, Karen was still a strong believer that everything happened for a reason. From time to time, she would find herself thinking longingly about what destiny was planning for her and smiling hopeful at the future.

But then his brother suddenly died and her world felt slowly apart in the years that followed.

When Kevin died, her family died with him. They were never a perfect family or even a happy one, but without Kevin and the beginning of her obsessive quest for answers, the loneliness took over Karen's life without mercy. If that was what destiny had been planning for her, she decided that she didn't want to be part of it anymore; she was going to fight it. Karen left Vermont making that promise to herself and to Kevin, and she had been fighting since and against all odds, every time destiny had tried to knocked her out in that hell of a city.

Karen knew loneliness painfully well, but she had known happiness too, she remembered it, and after all the things she had been through, she wasn't willing to give up her hope for things to get better. She was still a fighter.

On good days, being all by herself wasn't so bad. She took long walks around the city and aromatic lavender baths to clear her mind and to relax her body. She tried to cook some silly cake for work just to watch Ellison's sceptical expression while eating his probably too sugary portion, and she even was able to sleep more than three hours at a time.

On bad days, her memories came back to haunt her. She let herself cried and then she tried to hold on to the things that made her happy, like her work at the Bulletin or sharing a beer with Foggy from time to time now that Matt was gone.

On lucky days, she managed to get out alive from another kidnapping.

Three weeks was all she could wait before calling agent Madani. Karen knew she was recovering from some bad head injury taken in a fight in Central Park – that had been suspiciously notified to the press - and she didn't want to sound anxious over Frank Castle's safety in front of a federal agent, as much as she thought agent Madani could have help him at some point. Frank had been reported dead - once again - a week after the hotel explosion, but Karen had refused to believe it. It was too convenient.

She tried to put some flowers on her window at first – same white roses he had brought her - but, when nothing happened a week later, she felt kind of silly for trying and took them off.

Frank had been vanished one more time and, even if she didn't want to believe it, the truth was that he actually could be dead and she was increasingly worried. By the third week after the hotel incident, Karen hadn't slept enough to be a functional person anymore.

Once agent Madani answered the phone, she didn't really have to ask.

"Off the record?"

"Of course."

"He is a free man now."

And that was it. Karen doubted that Frank Castle could ever be a free man at all but she just nodded and thank her, breathing a sigh of relief and being still surprised by the news when she hung up. Frank was alive and he was no longer being persecuted by justice. It was way better than anything she had expected to hear.

But then, the feeling of loneliness hit her bones harder than usual.

Three weeks.

It was really cold on the waterfront when Karen arrived, with the sun already setting. She didn't intend to go there in the first place but, somehow, during her walk, her own steps carried her to the exact point where she and Frank had been meeting barely a month ago. It had been a long week of work at the newspaper and Ellison had been grumpier than usual with all that Christmas spirit that was already filling the air of the city. It was almost Friday night at the office and, having her article for the next number ready, her first thought was to call Foggy to invite him to dinner. Then, she remembered that he had a girlfriend now and, since Matt wasn't around anymore, every time they met, they made each other sad with all their shared Nelson & Murdock memories. So she had changed her mind in the last minute. Again.

Karen had finally left the Bulletin with her head full of words about a series of unresolved houses robberies that she had been following for the las two weeks, and without any other plan, she had decided to take a walk before going home to clear her mind.

She had been watching the landscape for a while, last rays of the Friday sun reflected in the quiet water. It was really calm there with just some couples passing by, and Karen let her eyes closed for a second, allowing herself a brief moment of peace.

She heard some footsteps approaching as she opened her eyes again.

"Hey."

Frank was standing right there, looking cautiously at her. His presence didn't felt real and Karen needed a moment to focus.

"Is this a coincidence?"

Frank shrugged, smiling briefly.

Of course it wasn't. Just like it wasn't a coincidence last time he approached her as a homeless man in the street.

"You called Madani."

Karen looked away, her gaze focused on the soft waves of water as her heart was pounding faster.

"Did she tell you?"

Did you call her?

"Not exactly."

She looked at him again. As far as Karen knew, Frank didn't need to hide anymore, yet he was wearing that kind of undefined sportsman outfit with that black hoddie that he seemed to be comfortable with. Even with his hood on, Karen could tell that his hair was longer, and that a thick beard was growing fast all over his face. He looked more like a boxer than a marine.

"¿Are you spying on a federal agent now?"

"No, ma'am." The shadow of the beard framed his jaw when he smiled at her openly. "We just have a friend in common."

David Lieberman.

Karen didn't say it. She didn't have to. Instead,

"I'm glad you have friends, then. I heard you are a free man now."

Frank frowned and looked away, physically rejecting those words.

"Yeah, well - I guess Pete Castiglione is."

"Pete?"

He nodded.

Pete Castiglione. Karen looked at Pete whiletrying to reconcile the name with the man that was standing in front of her. It didn't work well.

With a stoic movement, Frank put his hood down, his gaze steady in the middle of the dark while looking at her again.

"I didn't mean to disappear like that, Karen. I just wanted to let you know that I was still alive. I mean, I wanted to let you know sooner."

She felt her breath painfully catch in her throat.

Three weeks.

"¿What happened?"

"Things just got –uhm- complicated." He paused and Karen nodded. She knew Frank well enough to understand that, in his vocabulary, complicated usually implied a huge amount of blood and dead bodies.

"It wouldn´t be you if it wasn't complicated."

His smile reflected hers.

"I try my best."

An apology was the last thing Karen had expected from Frank Castle. She wasn't even sure she had the right to demand one – or anything - from a man that have been saving her life practically since the day they met, and lately had been more like a ghost to the world than anything real. But he was offering one and it was very welcomed.

Karen checked his exposed face out for a moment, leaning a little bit closer by instinct. There were no bruises on his skin that she could tell, no scratches to be seen. It was almost odd to be looking at Frank that clean and kind of hypnotizing. Last time she had paused to check on him like that, they were standing in an elevator after an explosion, and he was awfully damaged after saving her life again.

And he was definitely closer.

The knot she was feeling in her chest pulled a bit tighter and Karen look away maybe a little too rudely. She had to clear her throat before she could talk again.

"And how is Pete doing so far?"

Frank moved his head from side to side while shrugging. Karen was sure that his new identity wasn't feeling like a gift at all. She was surprised that he had even accepted the opportunity.

"Trying to figure it out what the hell is gonna do with his new life I guess."

For a moment, he looked exhausted under – what Karen knew – was the weight of that new life that has just started.

"Don't be too hard on him. He will do well, eventually."

Frank burst a short laugh and they remained silent for a couple of minutes. The temperature had dropped quite a bit, and her body was starting to shake.

"Tell me, Miss Page. What is a woman like you doing in a place like this on a Friday night?"

She was the one shrugging this time, holding back a shiver.

"Just walking."

Frank nodded.

"Let just walk, then." Karen looked at him, confused. Then she focused on the arm he was offering her. "Come on. I'll walk you home before you freeze to death."

"It's that Pete or Frank who's talking?"

"Both."

He was gazing at her in amusement and Karen couldn't help but laugh.

What the hell.

Maybe they could pretend, if just for a moment, that they were two normal people walking home on a Friday night. Maybe it felt good. She slipped her hand through the crook of Frank's arm with a soft movement while leaning toward him, the warm of his body wrapping her as they started walking.