[Note: for reference, I've put Karen in another studio apartment, but this one is nicer and bigger than her old one- hence being able to see her kitchen from her bed. I know it's been a few days, I've been sick so this is the first chance I've gotten to publish. More this weekend for sure! hope y'all enjoy this chapter! :) ]

It's been a quiet night so far, which proves only to be unsettling. She's been in New York long enough that she's become accustomed to falling asleep to the sounds of chaos, the sounds of the city that never sleeps. So when she's woken up in the middle of the night by a dish clattering in her kitchen, it's almost comforting. The adrenaline coursing through her veins has become so familiar that sometimes she misses it.

Karen grabs her .380 off her bedside table sits up in bed, gun trained on her kitchenette. A dark figure is standing over her sink, looking through the cupboard. Breathing heavy, she cocks the .380. The figure goes still, hands above his head. His fingers tap against the top of his head, restless.

"Are you kidding me?" Karen lowers her weapon. "Frank, what the hell?"

Frank chuckles. "Good to see you're prepared for when someone actually breaks in."

Karen's heart is pounding hard in her chest. "You scared the hell out of me." She puts the gun back on the nightstand, then gets out of bed, pulling a sweatshirt over her head. It's cold in her apartment, and she considers pulling on sweatpants over her sleeping shorts, but the cold hitting her legs reminds her to stay awake. She crosses her arms over her chest, not bothering to turn on the light.

"What are you doing here, anyway?"

He continues rummaging through her cupboard. "I was uh, trying to leave you a note about the apartment robberies."

There's a pad of paper on her coffee table, with a few lines hastily scribbled onto it.

"Ok, so you did that… why are you going through my cupboards?"

He turns to face her, frowning almost bashfully. There's a cut over his eye that's bleeding heavily, sending blood dripping down his cheek. He gestures to it.

"This damn cut opened up. You got any band-aids or a first aid kit or somethin'?"

Karen almost laughs, arms dropping to her side. "You broke into my room and now… the Punisher needs a band-aid?"

"Well… yeah."

Karen scoffs and walks into her bathroom, reaching under the sink for the first aid kit. "Most people don't keep these in their kitchens, Frank." She stands up and gasps from the closeness of him, looming in the door way.

"Sorry," he mutters, taking a step back.

She hands him the kit. With his boots on, he's a couple of inches taller than her, so she has to look up at him to see the cut properly. It's a couple of inches long, and it looks like he glued it together himself, but the top bit had ripped during the night, and was now bleeding freely. It had dripped down onto his shirt, blending in with the black fabric. The light in the bathroom illuminates the bruises on his face, and she can't help but sigh.

"You're always covered in bruises, Frank. Am I ever gonna see you without them?"

Frank smiles, looking away from her. "I honestly don't know."

Karen sits on the edge of the tub while Frank tends to the cut above his eye.

"So, how many of them did you get?"

"All three of them. Sent a call to the cops, they'll find 'em."

"Dead?"

Frank fixes her with a steady gaze. "Dead. They deserved it."

Karen nods curtly. They had definitely deserved to be punished- one of their victims was going to be wheelchair-bound the rest of his life, and who knew how many other homes they had hit in the area—or how many people had died because of their greed.

Frank finishes up at the sink, sticking a band-aide on his brow. He smiles, but it's sad, a smile for a memory.

"The last band-aide I used had little trains on it. Frank Jr… he liked trains. Liked patching people up. I wasn't even hurt, he just…. He liked to help." Frank's gripping the sink with white knuckles. "Dammit. I thought I…"

"Got rid of it?"

He nods, jaw clenched.

"Frank, you can never get rid of those memories. Burning down your old house… that might've helped you lose the connection, but you still had a family. That all happened, Frank. And you're never going to forget it… the only thing you can do is swallow that pain and try to move on." She doesn't say that she knows he can never really move on, that it was a mistake to kill the Blacksmith when he did, because now it'll be so much harder to get to the truth. She doesn't tell him that she knows what it's like to be tied down by your past, to feel like you're never going to escape it.

Frank lets out a bitter laugh. "I know. I know. Becoming the Punisher… that was supposed to let me leave Frank Castle behind…"

"Frank, your family… it hasn't even been a year yet. You need time. You're never going to forget them, and I know you don't want to, no matter how much you think it'll help the pain—it won't. It'll just make you lonely."

"Is that what you are? Lonely?"

Karen looks away from his eyes, pulling at the sleeves of her sweater. "Sometimes. A lot, actually."

"I'm sorry," Frank says, letting go of the sink. He takes a step towards her, but then hesitates and whips around, heading back into the studio apartment.

Her breath catches in her throat, the next one coming out in short bursts. It's too easy to trust him.

Frank is sitting on her couch when she walks into the living area, scribbling away on her notepad. He finishes and stands up quickly.

"Frank…" Karen says, barely a whisper.

He fingers the band-aide above his eye. "I'm good." He grunts. "You're out of coffee," he mutters, then he's gone, slipping through her front door.

The apartment feels colder when he's gone, and louder.

There's a drop of blood on her coffee table, glistening in the dim light coming in through the windows.