Chapter 10
Karen Page did not want to do this.
But the hotheads in her life have left her no choice, apparently.
She takes the stairs up the building, unable to keep still long enough to endure another damn elevator ride. Her shoes pinch at her toes and her head is swimming. She had waited a full day. Just one. But it was already too much. She had wasted too much time while the people she cares about most are out there, vulnerable, or worse.
Sleeping alone in Frank's home, if you could call it that, was a weirdly intimate experience. She kept on expecting him to walk through the door and wake her, like the old sitcoms with a "Honey, I'm home!" echoing through the basement. No such moment came.
Trying not to think about it, she pauses on the landing to take her foot out of the shiny pastel pink shoe, rub her pinky toe, and continue on her ascent towards a terrible inevitability. Just like when she went to Frank when Sky was taken, she knows there really isn't an alternative. However, things are different now. Like how she and the Punisher nearly got naked in her kitchen. Yeah. That happened. And Karen won't soon forget it, even though she keeps pushing it to the back of her mind.
"Fucking hell," she whispers to herself. She really didn't mean for any of this to happen and definitely not with the Punisher. The big, bad, Punisher.
What the hell is wrong with me?
What is your fascination with Frank Castle?
The thing about kissing someone so deeply and confessing so much in that moment is that, no matter where she turns, she's always feeling him. She'll be walking on the street and smell him, or at least something that reminds her of him. She'll press her fingers to her lips and remember how his lips felt pressed against hers. She's dangerously near schoolgirl level obsession.
He's dangerous, a murderer, a man. That's what she sees above all else, a man too much like her. He sees things properly, clearly, unlike any other man she's ever had feelings for.
So this is inevitable. She has to do what she can. She has to save Frank Castle.
The man she loves.
That brings her to a full stop.
No way, no way. Maybe she was just sleep deprived? She's probably losing her damn mind. No that can't be the truth, there must be another explanation, any other explanation, for that stray thought, that weird confession to herself.
She wishes she could ignore the ring of truth to it, as she presses the palms of her hands into her eyes. She wishes…maybe she doesn't even know what she wishes. Just something else.
She reaches the floor and dammit she thought she would be more ready to face it, not less. With all that's been going through her head though, it's like she's drunk and unable to tell a lie.
Huffing out a breath she walks onto the floor, the dim lights making her feel like she's in a tomb. Her heels clip along on the hard floor and the rhythm is the only thing that keeps her from faltering.
On her left she sees the door.
And just like with Frank she freaks out a little when she knocks.
This is a terrible idea-this is a terrible idea-this is-
The door opens.
"Karen?"
She sighs. "Hi Matt."
Sky's Father was Orthodox Christian, specifically Coptic, and so Sky grew up very afraid of Hell.
Suddenly though, Hell doesn't seem so far away to Sky.
It was easy enough to gag her and tie her up when her very will to live was being tested. She sobs frantically against the cloth in her mouth.
It can't be-it can't be-it can't be- On a loop in her head.
She's in full shutdown mode. Full on breaking apart at the edges.
Vaguely she realizes the Punisher is there. He looks at her worried. Why isn't she fighting her bonds? He seems to say. He sees too much, as always. But she has no fight in her. Not after what she's just seen.
Rawlins hauls her up by a rope he has around her neck. He even had her change into a dirty prison jumpsuit, just to humiliate her. Or to make Frank angry.
"Don't think about doing anything too rash Castle. I have your pet on a leash here. And about thirty snipers have both you and her in their crosshairs. I know you'd hate to bury her if she didn't have a face anymore." He laughs, as if he said something funny.
Frank's voice is violence incarnate. "You bastard."
Rawlins holds up his finger. "Oh no, I don't think you should be doing that, Castle. It would be better if you didn't have to bury this little Skylark at all, right? Funeral costs kill in this city."
Sky isn't even able to bring her eyes up to see Frank drop his gun. She just hears. It all sounds hollow, like it's faraway from her.
I think I'm going into shock.
Her skin is clammy, and her hands feel cold. She can't really bring herself to care. Her brief first aid training in middle school comes back to her in that moment, strange enough. Identify what has caused your casualty to go into shock. If it is excessive bleeding, begin by applying pressure to the wound. Wrap the casualty in a blanket if possible, and call for medical aid. Remember, shock can be life-threatening, so don't ignore the signs.
This is not the time for a monotone female voice to be relaying facts about shock in Sky's mind, but she can't really seem to stop it.
She also can't seem to stop panicking.
Her hearing goes fuzzy. I think I am going to faint.
Frank can't believe they got him.
He is so good. Everything is calculated. Everything is thought of.
When he took down the Irish it was meticulous, even getting caught was part of the plan. He can honestly say there is no plan here.
He glowers at Rawlins, and Rawlins just smiles in return.
He still has a fucking eyepatch over the eye he lost when he and Castle had last danced this dance. What a sickening time, he had shown just how much of a monster he really was. Frank was convinced he felt nothing at all. Nothing for the wife he had tortured and valued less than shit, nothing for the lives he had taken or otherwise destroyed. Willian Rawlins was a monster, and it takes a monster to know one.
Rawlins was not an unattractive man, with his dark hair combed back and a sharp jaw and figure well sculpted from his time being a CIA operative. It was the eyes that gave him away. Frank had never registered their colour, just assuming they were shit brown. But how he looked at people, how his eyes showed no soul behind them. They were empty, like looking into the eyes of a fresh corpse. Except these eyes followed you wherever you went, stalked you, always calculating what would benefit him most, what could cause the most damage.
"You know what I'm capable of Castle, and I'm just surprised you let me catch you! My God, Frank-fucking-Castle," he begins to walk towards Frank, dragging Sky by the rope around her neck. She still doesn't fight. The only thing telling the world that she's even alive is the shaking radiating from her body.
"Frank Castle," he says again as if tasting the name. Frank looks at him, stares into that one, dead eye. He's clean shaven and wearing a dark blue suit with a pinstripe shirt underneath. He looks very different from the CIA shitbag he was before.
"What do you want?" Frank is barely able to spit out.
Rawlins' eye widens. "Obviously I want you Castle! Now, this isn't to mention the bad blood we have between us, this is solely business." He makes eye contact with one of his minions and they grab Frank roughly and search him producing the rest of his weaponry. "At first I was bent on killing you, taking you off the map because you were just so damn persistent and such an annoying thorn in my ass. But then I realized just how valuable a man like you could be to me. Although, there are no men quite like you, right Castle?" One minion kicks in the back of his leg and he falls clumsily to the ground, only his instinct and training keeping him upright. It's humiliating to kneel to this piece of shit.
Rawlins stares down at him. "I was amazed when I realized you would come for her. The first time I took your pet all I wanted was information. To be fair," he squats down in front of him, "My thugs weren't exactly gentle."
Frank gets just enough leverage on his right foot to be able to headbutt him with all possible force. Rawlins stumbles back, swearing as he clutches at his bleeding nose and bit lip. Blood drips slowly onto his clean shirt and the streetlight shrouds him in a momentary light like that of an opera house. He looks more natural this way, bleeding while trying to grapple for power.
Frank smiles. "You may want to get that looked at."
Rawlins spits in Frank's face, showering his left cheek in blood. "Ever the same, Castle."
But Frank sees his persona is fractured, and the manipulation is broken momentarily. Rawlins turns from him and kicks Sky in the head. She falls without making a sound, her eyes closed.
"Take them to the base," is all he says, his words muddled by the blood in his mouth.
Frank is ready to fight the moment they bring him up.
But instead someone stabs him in the neck with a syringe, pumping something into his bloodstream. The images around him cloud and the last thing he manages to say -before darkness takes him- is a vow.
"I will come for you. I won't stop."