Karen makes up the couch for him and the air mattress for Rory and falls asleep immediately. He can hear the girl stir on the plastic of the mattress for a few minutes before she falls asleep too. Frank lies on the couch, staring at the window until the light turns blue and the day arrives.
His mind is a police scanner, constantly buzzing between channels. The shooter from the robbery he hasn't taken care of. The body he left bloodied to a pulp tonight. The images of Rory on the computer screen. The Lisa's hair flying with the movement of the carousel, just before the gunfire had broken out. All of it echoes in his mind in turns.
There's no use pretending he'll get any sleep.
As the red glow of the stove's clock inches toward seven, Frank gets up.
Moving as quietly as he can, he makes coffee and peers into Karen's fridge. He notes a carton of eggs and not much else.
As he drinks the coffee, he wonders why he keeps collecting strays. First the pitbull, now the girl. Maybe there's still something human in him, despite how hard he's tried to snuff it out. Maybe there's someone still left who can drive him crazy, hurt him. He watches Karen sleep as he entertains the thought, but finally, he brushes it aside. Frank Castle is supposed to be dead. It's best that way, for everyone's sake.
Karen's alarm interrupts his self-exploration bullshit with a loud burst of Dancing Queen. She stirs and shuts it off, but not before Rory wakes, startled. After a quick look around the room, with the sound gone, she buries her face back into the pillow.
Karen's face reddens as she realizes he's watching her, that he witnessed her embarrassing choice of alarm. She wishes there was somewhere to hide, but the entire apartment is one open room, so she flings her robe over her shoulders and escapes to the bathroom for a shower.
Frank drains the last sip of coffee from his mug and makes another batch for her. He hasn't done this routine of domesticity in so long, and he never imagined he'd be doing it again, but it comes back easily. He sets two eggs on the counter, pops a couple of slices of bread in the toaster, and by the time she returns with her hair wet, he's served breakfast.
The unexpected gesture softens Karen. As they eat silently across the counter from each other, she finds it easy to forget who he is, what she's seen him do. Forkful of scrambled egg in his hand, face lit up by a sliver of sunlight, he looks like any ordinary person. Even his face is softer, his features relaxed.
It's nice to have someone to eat breakfast with, and she knows it must be as new to him as it is to her. If only she could keep him here, just the way he is now, normal, content. But she knows it's an illusion. This isn't all of him. The other man is inside him too. The man from the diner. The Punisher. The Punisher had tried to kill the last remnants of Frank Castle. She had seen the burnt spot where his house used to stand, and she'd known instantly that he'd been the one who torched it.
But a scrap of him had survived somehow, and here he was, sitting across from her for just a few minutes. She'd often wondered, since the first day they'd met, him lying tied to that hospital bed, what it would have been like to know Frank Castle, before that day at the carousel. She thinks she might she finally know.
When Rory wakes there's breakfast waiting for her too.
As she takes the last bite of her toast, she looks him dead in the eye.
"Now what?"
"Now we go home."
"You have one of those?" She asks with a smirk.
"Even superheros gotta sleep, kid." He fires back.
She almost laughs. "You're no Avenger."
"Fair enough." He looks around the apartment one last time. He's cleaned up every trace of their stay. When Karen returns, it'll be like last night never happened.
Satisfied, he nods toward the door and Rory follows, computer under her arm again. He's timed it perfectly- they'll blend into the morning rush, no one will ever notice the dead man and the strange girl, and if they do, Rory and Frank will be gone before anyone turns back for a second glance.
"Don't touch anything." Frank growls before she even steps over the threshold of his hideout. The place is a warehouse of artillery with a bed, a table, and a couch and not much else.
She holds up her hands as if he's pointing a gun at her and steps inside.
Frank waits to see her fear, horror even. But she takes stock carefully, and the only thing he can read is curiosity. Suddenly, she realizes there's a dog licking her bare toes and settles herself on the ground to pet him.
He watches them fawning over each other on the floor in front of several crates of explosives and below a row of guns and shakes his head as if trying to clear it. What the hell is he thinking?
But also- a more interesting question begins to form.
Why is this girl so abnormally, entirely fearless?
Any normal kid, hell, most adults, would probably be falling apart had they seen what this girl had seen in the last twelve hours. She wasn't even dazed.
"You wanted me to follow you last night."
She looks up from the dog and nods.
"How'd you know who I was?"
"Everyone knows who you are. You're the Punisher."
"They think I'm dead."
"I knew you weren't."
"How?"
"Where else would all the bodies be coming from? Trails of gangs, thugs, and assholes dropping like flies. The police might be stupid, but I'm not. I was waiting for you to come. It was only a matter of time."
Frank leans toward her, like he's trying to see her clearer. Not her, really, but the inside of her head.
"And you aren't scared of the Punisher?" He knows, objectively speaking, he can be pretty fucking menacing to even the burliest of biker gangs.
She shakes her head. "I knew I could trust you."
"How? How could you know?" He feels like he's playing a part in a surreal PSA, quizzing her on stranger danger.
She peers at him intensely, and then examines his lair for several minutes, taking in every detail. Finally, her eyes return to meet his and she opens her mouth- but hesitates.
Frank can tell she's on the brink of revealing a secret, but hasn't quite made up her mind to divulge it.
Finally, she looks down at the dog's head, lying in her lap, and starts to rub his ears.
"Because I can feel the things you're feeling." She replies, nonchalant.
Frank's eyes narrow.
"What am I feeling now?"
"Suspicious. I'm kind of freaking you out." She watches as her words sink in.
Frank knows he's good at reading people. He's really good. But this is something else. She's summarizing his state of mind, his emotions before he's even pinpointed them himself.
"How? How do you know that?"
She sighs and finally meets his gaze. "I don't know, it's weird. It's hard to explain."
Frank waits, and finally she offers-
"I guess it's kind of like- like standing in front of a mirror and watching yourself laugh, and feeling happy. Except, I'm not watching myself in the mirror. I'm watching other people, and they overflow into me."
He sits in silence, letting her explanation sink in. He knows there are people out there with strange abilities- he keeps an eye out for them, in case they ever cross paths. Red's senses hardly fall into the realm of normal, that private eye Jessica Jones is stronger than him- he's seen her in action once- and if the rumors are right, there's a man entirely unfazed by bullets too.
But Rory's mirrored emotions- a heightened empathy, he guesses they'd call it- sounds pretty fucking useless in comparison to super-strength or being bulletproof, or even super-sensitive hearing.
Feeling other people's feelings won't be keeping her safe on the streets of Hell's Kitchen.
Rory tears herself away from the dog and stands, looking around at the stacks of crates. He watches her from the couch as she examines the guns, the rows of bullets, and the disassembled rifle he'd been cleaning, lying on the table.
She stares so intently at the pieces, he can almost see gears turning in her head. Her fingers reach out slowly, as if she anticipates that he'll stop her.
But Frank says nothing.
She picks up the parts and begins to assemble them like a puzzle. In a matter of seconds, the unloaded rifle is in one piece, and she turns to Frank, pointing it at him.
She releases the trigger with an anti-climactic little click.
"I want to do what you do."
Thanks for the lovely response guys! I'm having a lot of fun writing Frank Castle so far (and reading everyone else's takes on him). :) Hope you're still enjoying!
