It's something he needs in the beginning, those bittersweet memories floating along the periphery of his vision, foggy in the dim light of the hospital. A reminder of everything he lost to fuel the vengeance burning inside of him. He needs to remember that his family was more than a pool of blood on the grass, more than pain shattering his skull every time he closed his eyes.
Karen clears away the fog for him, holds up the images of his smiling wife and kids so he can't forget. She helps him reforge the neural networks in his brain, re-creating a permanent place inside the gray matter for his family to live.
He was so blessedly numb before. Remembering is painful, his heart rending nearly in two at the sight of Lisa's smiling face, at the faint sound of Frank Jr.'s feet padding softly in the hallway.
It's clear to him that he has a death wish in the beginning, that there is a howling void inside of him where his family had once been. He yearns for the feel of bullets tearing through his chest, for the blackness to engulf him completely. But Karen fills the darkness, pushing him back from the edge of death with her burning determination. He doesn't want to remember.
But she makes him. Her soft smiles are a reminder of what it's like to have a beautiful woman who cares deeply. He doesn't like it, doesn't need the humanity plucking at his heartstrings in the middle of the night. He fights it the best way he knows how, with monosyllabic replies, refraining from invitations to touch. He's the very definition of a cold shoulder. And yet he can't bring himself to do the one thing that would really work. He keeps coming back, again and again, like a stray dog who's finally found a soft place to lay, wary but exhausted.
The last straw comes on Lisa's birthday. He knows he didn't mention it to her. The date looms on the calendar getting closer and closer as he tries to push it away, making him surly and tense with every sunrise. It lands on a beautiful spring day, something he wouldn't have noticed if Lisa hadn't always pointed out the Easter lilies poking up through the grass, considering them her very own birthday present from Mother Nature. He sees them on his way to get coffee, and again, the slash of pain feels like a knife in his heart. He doesn't want to remember.
And Karen, she's quiet when he picks her up that night, glancing at him furtively from the corner of her eye as they drive in silence to meet a skittish source. There's something under surface of her silence, a tightly wound expectation that makes Frank uncomfortable. He doesn't know if it's because she's about to get some primo information, or if she's just trying to keep from blurting out her condolences on this horrible date.
Frank is the muscle, as promised, and he watches as Karen cajoles and coaxes information out of this latest asshole. There are echoes of empathy in her voice like the ones he'd heard in the hospital. Silently he wonders if it's real, if it ever was. A flash of paranoia whispers to him that maybe she was using him all along. The feeling fades quickly. Her empathy is real, it always is.
He doesn't mean to follow her up to her apartment when they're done, but the lights are out in the stairwell, and he knows danger is drawn to her like a moth to a flame. She walks through her door without looking back at him, leaving it open because she knows he'll follow. It's just one more step into her apartment, and the alarm bells are going off in his head.
There's a present sitting on the counter, a little box wrapped in shiny foil paper. The bow on the top is a purple confection with a dizzying number of loops and folds. And there's another memory, Lisa's favorite color. The pain is almost unbearable, and it catches in his chest, taking away his breath. He can't hear the words that accompany Karen's soft smile as she presses the gift into his hands, using her own soft palms to curl his lax fingers around the box.
That's it. The low simmering rage inside of him boils over, it isn't fair and he knows it, but it's her fault. She makes him remember. And he doesn't want to, God help him but he doesn't want to remember any of it.
"Frank?"
There it is again, the soft tone of empathy coloring her voice, imploring him to give way to weakness, to memory. The box crushes beneath his blunt tipped fingers. He looks down at his hands and barely recognizes them, knuckles scarred and knobbly from crashing into unyielding surfaces over and over. They're not the fingers that braided Lisa's soft blonde hair, that looped the brightly colored elastics around the ends. His voice is thick. "Stop."
Her nervous chatter stops, confusion flitting across her features. "What?"
"No one asked you to do this." His nostrils flare, jaws tensing as he holds back the emotion that makes his voice raw.
"I know, but-"
"You have no idea what this is like." He doesn't yell, but the snarling growl has the same effect, and Karen withdraws, the tiniest bit of fear flashing across her face. Frank continues, "I need to forget. I can't live waking up every morning just to be ripped to shreds by the realization that they're gone."
"No, Frank-"
"I'm trying, can't you see? But is not working. I'll never be the man you think I once was. Frank Castle is gone, remember? He's dead."
Karen shakes her head, fighting back her own angry tears. "No, Frank, you can't forget about them. Remembering is hard, but-
He cuts her off, his voice raised. "Enough! They're not yours to remember, Page, and they're not mine anymore either!" He tosses the crushed box back on the counter. "I can't go back, and I don't want to. Pulling the trigger is easier when I don't have the sound of your voice in my head, when I can't remember the way Maria's hands felt, or Lisa's sloppy kisses and Frankie's clumsy hugs. Let them rest in peace, Karen. Let me do my job."
He turns to leave, half hoping she's too stunned to respond. But he knows better, and isn't at all surprised by the sound of her voice yelling after him, tinged with passion and more than a little anger. "You can't turn your back on the past, Frank. Trust me, it sneaks up on you in the worst moments."
He shakes his head, slipping through the open door and out into the dim hall. The worst moment of his life has already happened, and he wants nothing more than to forget. Remembering is a mistake. Karen is a mistake.