a/n: I was somehow convinced into writing Kastle fic by tumblr user hencethebravery and I am not even sorry because these two are such destructive lonely people who just need a break and I love them. here's just something soft. (title from nate pritts' poem, suddenly appear.)

It's strange, seeing each other when they're not in the middle of some never ending war, or plotted out revenge, or an actual fucking gunfight. Frank tries not to think about the blood on her face or the crack in her voice; her body barely moving, covered in rubble and scars that he knew would take months to go away. He can still see them, faint outlines on her face a few shades darker than her skin. It's the first thing he looks at when she pushes the hair away from her face.

It's strange but it's also the complete opposite. Familiar. There was a point in his life when the only thing familiar to him was the sound of bullets, the incoherent stuttering of a dying man bartering for his life.

And now—

Now, Karen watches him with those wide, blue eyes and he's not entirely sure if he's going to be decked in the face or not. He has it coming, really. Has a lot of shit coming, if he's being honest with himself.

Because that's what he's started doing. He hears Curtis' voice in his head, pulling him back to the fluorescent lights of the church basement, the room taking on that silence it always does after one of them is done talking; that space trapped in between time where everyone is more in their heads than in the room, reflecting on all the confessions that have been made.

"You have to stop hiding from yourself," Curtis had said. Frank had been the last one to talk, and when he'd looked up, Curtis was staring right at him. "We were all different people when we were out there. We did things we wouldn't have done before, maybe wouldn't do now. These people, right now, in this world, that's different. We gotta learn them, know them, accept them." Curtis had meant it for everyone, Frank thinks, but he'd meant it for him. Or he was just being a self-absorbed prick. Either way, it stuck.

Frank is trying to know himself. Half the time, he ain't really sure what that means. But a lot has changed in the months since he had fought with Billy at the carousel, since Frank Castle died once more, and Pete Castiglione came back into the world. It's probably hard to get to know yourself when you're two different people but, fuck, Frank has been enough people and has had enough roles that if he starts keeping track of 'em all, he's gonna lose his damn mind.

But Frank Castle without a war is tough shit to figure out, because he doesn't exactly know what to do with his hands when they're not breaking, destroying, or tearing something or someone apart.

"You're good at fixing things," Leo told him once when he'd gone over for dinner. His thoughts were a raging mess that he'd tried to keep in check all throughout the meal and then she'd pointed at the broken window above the kitchen counter, said that her dad and Zach had gotten too excited while playing ball. He'd laughed, trying to picture Lieberman missing a catch, too used to the image of him in his fucking robe, sulking around the basement they'd lived in for what felt like years. And he'd fixed the window. And, yeah, okay, he knows his way around tools but that doesn't have to mean anything.

Frank reads enough books to know when things imply other things. He'd told Leo that when she'd pushed it, had reminded him that he'd helped them. And then she'd scoffed, live wire of a girl that she is. She'd looked a convicted killer dead in the eye, raised her chin, and scoffed.

How can he really learn anything about himself when everyone's got different versions of their truth plastered to his name?

Frank shuffles his feet in the doorway for what feels like the twentieth time, curling his hands into half fists while Karen Page stares at him. She didn't hug him when he showed up, has just been watching him with a mix of emotions on her face for the few minutes he's been here.

"I'm gonna make coffee," she says finally, leaving the door open in invitation as she walks back to the kitchen.

No decking him, then. Alright. Good start.

Then again, the night's only started and Karen has always been good at surprising him. He steps into her apartment and shuts the door behind him.

"Where have you been?" she asks after a while.

"Around," he says. He feels ridiculously big in her apartment, his heavy boots making too much noise in the quiet.

She stops her stirring and looks over her shoulder at him, eyebrows raised, pointedly unamused. He would laugh, but he knows better.

"Been trying to get my bearings. It ain't easy dying so many times, you know."

"Actually, I don't. Dead men don't like sharing their experiences with me," she bites back, a controlled fury in her voice. He's been gone for a few months, laying low, relearning himself and all that bullshit. He'd reached out, in the beginning, to tell her he was alright. About two months after that, he'd sent her a pot of daffodils, and that was the last time.

He grunts, says, "Sorry," but eats up the last syllable. He'd expected her to yell, to ask more questions, but she walks back, and finds a spot on the end of couch, puts down both mugs on the coffee table and waits.

He follows her cue, leaves some distance between them when he sits down, and tries not to swallow the hot coffee all in one go. "How, um, how's it going?" he asks, even though he damn well knows, rips open The Bulletin every morning to read her pieces and find out what kind of corruption she's been elbow deep in for the last week or so, what kind of trouble he can only imagine she's plunged herself in. He knows about her professionally, anyway. Personally, is another matter.

"Just great," she replies, and he scoffs. There's a soft laugh that escapes her and he's not sure she meant for that to happen, but it feels good to see relief on her face, briefly. "I was worried," Karen adds, looking at him finally after minutes of staring a hole into the edge her coffee table. She doesn't say about what, but he can put together a few endings to that sentence.

"I, uh, sent you flowers."

"I got them." She nods to the door at the far end of her apartment. Her bedroom, presumably, just a few strides away, but he doesn't ask.

"Had to lay low," he explains.

"Yeah, I know."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Karen looks at him, drags her eyes across every inch of his face. He's grown his hair out a little, let the scruff cover his cheeks and his chin so he looks a little less like Frank Castle, Dead Vigilante, and a little more like Pete Castiglione, Resident Common Man. Frank feels her watching him, right there on his skin, pinpricks forming in the wake of it.

"I've been—I've been doing group. With Curtis," he tells her once she's picked up her coffee, taken four tentative sips of it before cradling it to her chest. It's not that he's filling up the silence, he wants her to know. Wants her to learn him alongside him, or something.

Karen nods. "Everyone at work hates me because I've gotten the most bylines these last few months." She takes a gulp of her coffee. "I have more enemies than friends in this city."

"Join the club." He smirks and it gets one out of her too. He finishes his coffee and gets up to make more. With little trouble, he finds his way around her kitchen cabinets, the sounds of objects hitting against each other the only noises around them. The city is still, or they're so used to it's clamour that they've learned to tune it out. Whatever it is, the stillness in the air makes him move slower. He's got nowhere to be, anyway.

Maybe there's some joy to be found in the fact that he still takes his coffee black, like before, like before the before. He's getting tired keeping track of all the lines drawn like barriers, dividing events and personas.

He sits back down, two mugs and the pot set on the table, just as Karen finishes her first cup. It had taken a while, to come here. Frank had kept watch, sure, made certain he'd be there if she got herself in the middle of another fight. She's got a knack for that, after all. But he hadn't needed to jump in front of a bullet to see her—it woulda been easier that way.

Karen's knee bumps his when she shifts. She starts talking about this park she walks through some days and this fair they set up there every weekend, and he's telling her about the stray that he's sure is a Rottweiler-Pitbull mix that waits by the corner of Frank's building for Frank to feed him. She mentions how she gets drinks with Madani sometimes, he brings up Leo and their long-winded discussions on books that might as well garner the label of a book club.

Their voices get softer the longer they speak; it's far from anything substantial. Far from anything he'd thought they'd talk about when he saw her again.

He doesn't think about it, the last time he'd had some kinda peace like this. Because this isn't peace, not really. His trigger finger's always tapping against the side of his thigh but man, he doesn't want to pull apart what that means. Frank doesn't think about comparison, and Karen—

Karen's smiling at him.

And it isn't new, but it isn't often either.

And it's—

Well.

"It's good to see you," Frank says, echoing her words from last time. But this isn't like last time. He's got the memory of her in that elevator, bloody and hurting, trapped in his mind. He'd wanted to save her, then, from everything outside of that small compartment. Frank feels the pull of that, even now, even without the guns and the fucking bombs. He sees it, the weight of something, everything, pulling her down even as she straightens her spine, pushes her chin up a little higher.

"It's always good to see you," Karen replies, and if it weren't so silent he doesn't think he'd hear her. It takes him a second to take it in, grunts and looks down at his hands in reply.

For the first time in the last few months, he feels his fatigue as he unconsciously sinks into her tattered couch, becomes a part of this apartment that looks barely lived in, touched only on the surface. Frank is tired, down to his fucking bones. But right now, nothing of his feels like it's hurting.

Karen's hand hovers over his elbow, her fingers just skimming the fabric of his shirt. The minute stretches between them, and above his own breathing, he can hear hers, too. When he looks at her, the corner of his mouth stretches up, just that much, but enough so that look she's giving him goes away. Enough so that he feels the soft press of her fingers on his arm.

And even though they've made it through that pot of coffee, they still haven't run out of things to say to each other. As slow as they're talking, comfortable, measured silences in between, they might be talking till the sun comes up.

He doesn't notice when or how, but when he notices, Karen's right side is pressed against his left, shoulder to knee. There's no urgency in it; as though they've been working themselves towards each other all this time, undetected, quietly.

And somewhere between her recounting of her copy editor's irritation with her, her voice simmers down to something like a mumble until Frank can't hear it anymore. When her head finds his shoulder, he waits a few good minutes before guiding his arm around her, his own eyes beginning to grow heavy. He's conscious to wrap his fingers around her side carefully, and he feels it, a slow blooming in his chest; a safety that winds around the both of them and nestles into him.

(And talking about honesty, and things that stick—)

Karen sighs into the crook of his neck. "Thanks for the flowers, Frank," she pushes out, sleepily. And then, again, quieter, "Thanks."

He pulls her just that much closer in reply, steadily pressing his lips to the top of her head and lingering for a few seconds before letting his eyes drop shut, his nose buried in her hair.

Frank doesn't want to get into the tangled fucking web of truths that aren't full truths because they aren't objective. But for the sake of honesty and all, he decides he kinda likes this version of his truth.