November

"Hey, I'm heading out."

With a small snort, Karen jerked awake and blinked against the light from her computer screen. Rubbing her eyes with one hand and feeling around for her cup of coffee with the other, she asked blearily, "What time is it?"

She could hear the smirk in Frank's voice even if she couldn't see it yet. "Almost two-thirty. You work too hard, beautiful Karen."

"Says the world's most terrifying hypocrite."

Letting the bitterness of her cold coffee snap her eyes open, she finally took a good look at him. He was dressed for work, boots laced, a gun tucked in his right, another sitting in the belt of his pants. His heavy Punisher coat, body armor, and assault rifle were in the bag slung over his shoulder. She made a final note of his current bruises so she'd know exactly which ones were new when he came home again.

Laughing again at her sleepy state, he kissed the side of her head and turned to the door.

She pushed Bully out of her lap and went after him, tripping slightly over the couch, "Hey, hey, hey. What are you doing? You don't get to leave like that just because I'm half asleep."

She gave him a quick but heavy kiss before he could say anything back. Smiling faintly, their noses touching, she whispered, "Stay safe, Frank."

"Yes, ma'am." He pressed another kiss to her lips before opening the door. "I should be back tomorrow night."

Watching him descend the stairs until he was out of sight, she locked the door and went back to her article on the corruption families applying for low-income housing had been facing in recent months. It wasn't the most high-profile story she'd ever done, but after her last one, Ellison had demanded she stay a little bit under the radar for a while. No more uncovering sex trafficking rings almost singlehandedly, stealing six drugged, exploited girls in the middle of the night with in a cab, and taking them to the police station to give statements. The cops had missed the opportunity to arrest about half of the men involved, citing lack of evidence, but the editor had still called it a win. Almost three dozen girls being freed from virtual enslavement and given a second chance was what Karen considered a victory, but she wasn't crazy about being told to cool things down. Systemic corruption was as low profile as she was willing to go.

Bully returned to his spot snoring in her lap. Whenever she heard gunfire in the distance, one of the normal night sounds of Hell's Kitchen, she looked toward the window and felt worry grip her chest but then went back to her work and her coffee.

If she weren't so stupidly content with what she and Frank had, she might've actually listened to the cynic in her that cackled at how pathetic she was, needing someone else so much, letting him have so much power over her happiness. But she was. Both hands hanging on, she was happy.

Three days later—three horrible days later—she had maybe twelve hours of sleep under her belt and Karen knew she looked like absolute shit as she raised her hand to knock on the door in front of her. It was going on eleven, maybe even midnight since she'd left her apartment with Bully's leash in one hand, her bag with pistol in the other, and stumbled her way to the building she hadn't been to in months.

Frank wasn't back. Knowing that filing a missing persons wasn't really in the realm of possibility, she'd given him as much time and benefit of the doubt as her conscience and blood pressure could take.

A couple steps beyond desperate, she pounded on the door before her and called, "Matt! Shit, Matt, please be home."

She let out a relieved sob when she heard footsteps approaching on the other side. Clearly not having left for the night yet, her friend appeared when he pulled open the door and frowned at her. "Karen, what are you doing here? What…What's wrong? And why do you still have a dog?"

Not waiting for him to invite her in, she stepped past him and leaned against the wall beside his door, "Frank's gone."

He stiffened slightly and she knew what he was going to ask before he said it.

In the last months, he'd…come to tolerate her relationship with Frank. At heart, she thought it was just hard for him to know that the man who had the opposite philosophy was so close, especially when Matt was so viciously questioning every move he himself ever made. Having the proof of the existence and efficacy of the other way was hard to have around, let alone dating the woman he'd dated and then let go. So even though he'd made the decision to keep being her friend, it wasn't what it had once been.

It wasn't a tradeoff she would've asked for, but she loved Frank. She'd take keeping him over making up the distance with Matt.

Foggy was different. He was still scared to death of Frank, but he put that away for her sake. He treated her man much like he treated her pit bull: with friendliness and a great big side of caution to make sure he didn't get eaten. Frank found it funny, but he really did like the guy.

The sleep deprivation was starting to tug her thoughts on tangents she couldn't afford.

"Before you even ask, no, he didn't leave. He wouldn't just leave."

Without his glasses, Matt blinked at the ferocity in her voice but nodded, "Okay. What do you want me to do?"

Running a hand through her hair, she sank down to his floor with a sob, "I want you to find him, Matt. Please. Please, help… Help me."

She was a mess, a horrible sobbing mess and she hated herself a little bit for it. Her lack of sleep hadn't let her put it away, though.

"Alright." Maneuvering around Bully with none of the hesitance she knew he feigned in public, he grabbed a box of tissues off his counter and brought them back to her. "Alright. I'll help. Just…what can you tell me? Who was he going after? When did he leave? When did he think he'd come back."

When it came to those facts, it didn't matter how little sleep she had. They were like the rank and serial number prisoners of war gave. They were burned into her memory. "I don't know. He never mentions it. I just hear about it at work the next day. He left at two-thirty in the morning three days ago. He said he'd be back the night after. But he's not back yet, Matt. Oh my god, he's not back. He died once. I can't... I…"

Her hands were shaking violently where she was petting Bully, the poor dog probably dizzy because of it.

She could tell that dealing with Frank Castle's hysterical girlfriend hadn't been something Matt planned on doing that night, but she also knew he wouldn't turn her away. He was too good of a person for that. It didn't matter how exactly he felt about Frank, she was his friend and he still cared.

Kneeling down, he awkwardly hugged her until she got her breathing under control again and she clung to the touch like she was drowning. "It's alright. I'm going to do everything I can, Karen. I'll find him…one way or another, I'll find him."

"I know." She let out another deep breath and nodded, "Thank you, Matt."

He smiled faintly, "You're my friend, Karen. You don't need to thank me. Come on."

He gently ushered her further into his apartment and got her settled on the couch. Trying to remember what it felt like to not have her constricting chest crushing all the air out of her lungs, she vaguely listened as he grabbed his cell phone and told it to call Foggy.

"Matt, what…It's like midnight."

"And you haven't gone to bed before then on a Thursday in ten years. Foggy, I need your help."

"I didn't exactly say I was asleep, Matt."

Under different circumstances she might've laughed at Foggy's tone and Matt's involuntary noise of irritation. "Hi, Marci."

The woman's voice was clearly annoyed when she greeted in return, "Murdock."

"But seriously, Foggy, I need you to come over. Please."

The silence that followed was filled with their friend weighing his options on how to discreetly ask what was going on. "Does this have to do with the pro bono work you were doing when we last talked?"

Marci snorted in the background, "How does he have the income to do pro bono?"

"Yes. It…There are some things from the Castle case I could use for reference. You did more on that case than I did."

"I'll be right over."

"But Foggy!" Whatever else Marci had to say was cut off when he hung up the phone.

Again, Karen might've laughed at Foggy's looming fight if Frank wasn't possibly out dead somewhere. She had no idea how Maria Castle had done it, survived with her sanity intact as her husband went off to a warzone for months at a time where him dying was a distinct possibility. She had absolutely no fucking clue.

She'd thought that because she'd done this once before, it would somehow be…more known if something ever happened to him again. She'd stood by a dock and listened to them say he was dead. She remembered the feeling. She remembered it every time he went to 'work,' strapped the skull to his chest and pulled on his coat like it was another layer of armor. That feeling she remembered…it was absolutely fucking nothing compared to the scratching, screaming terror beating on her heart with a stick that hadn't let up in the last twenty-four hours.

Coming back over and placing his hands on her shoulders, Matt tried to calm her once more. He must've heard her heartrate jump up or something equally impossible that he did every day. "Foggy's coming over to wait with you. I don't want you to have to be here alone. I promise I'll do everything and look everywhere I can. Okay?"

She didn't trust herself to speak so she just pursed her lips together and nodded, confident he could figure out what she was doing.

"Okay."

Within fifteen minutes, he emerged from his bedroom in the red suit she'd seen up close more times than probably anyone other than criminals had. Mask under his arm, he gave her another quick hug before disappearing out his window and heading for the roof. Hastily dressed and panting slightly, Foggy arrived maybe ten minutes after that.

A smile finally got through when she saw the lipstick stain on his neck after he pulled her into a hug, saying in his strangely calming way that everything was going to be okay. Because it was Foggy, her smile managed to grow slightly when he looked down at the dog at his feet and nodded, "Oh…Bully's here, too…yay. We'll have to play or something…"

Letting out a deep breath—like those actually worked—she stepped over to her purse. Digging blearily through it, she dropped her keys and phone and a used coffee cup and her pistol onto Matt's table. Foggy flinched away from the gun at first, but managed to shrug, "You really are the Punisher's girlfriend."

"I had one before. I've had one since Fisk. Me having a gun wasn't Frank," Finally finding what she was looking for, she pulled a tennis ball out and tossed it to him. Bully immediately went onto his hind legs, panting in anticipation of his ball being thrown. "He tried to chew through the door when I was at work yesterday. I had to take him with me to interview people today. He misses Frank. He knows something is wrong."

Gently throwing the ball for the dog, he stepped forward again and pulled her into a hug. She could feel him open his mouth, probably to reassure her that Frank was fine and Matt would find him and everything would be okay. He closed it again before any words came out and hugged her a little tighter instead.

"When's the last time you got any sleep? You look like shit." When she laughed weakly, he shrugged, "Hey, your boyfriend's not here, I'm always incredibly honest about such things, and Marci has trained me to not be afraid to say such things to women who aren't her. I mean it lovingly."

Rubbing a hand down her face, she tried to remember, "Yesterday night maybe."

Foggy nodded, "Yeah, that's not actually a phrase and I'm going to take it to mean too damn long ago. Is your heart pumping blood or coffee at this point?"

She made some sort of noise but she wasn't sure if it sounded more positive or negative as he threw the ball once again and directed her to the couch. "Lie down, try to maybe get some sleep, be more up and running when Matt comes back. Short of calling the cops, you've done everything you can."

Her addled brain wasn't sure why but the words made her start to cry. Sighing, Foggy squeezed her shoulder, "Yeah, being on the outside of this whole vigilante thing really is shit. I hear you."

Still hearing the sound of Foggy throwing the tennis ball and Bull scurrying after it, his nails clicking on the wood floor, she wasn't sure that what she did was actually sleep. It was more that her body refused to keep functioning when it had a perfectly good couch beneath it. It demanded rest even if her brain, her heart, couldn't quite stop hyperventilating.

Bully's tail was thwacking against something as he wagged it and Foggy was talking to him when her body returned to her. Maybe it was the sky lightening slightly through the buildings to the east and maybe something in her just knew that she needed to be awake, but within seconds they both heard a pounding on the door.

Yelling at a whisper, Matt panted, "Foggy! Foggy, help. Open the door!"

"Shit." He scrambled to his feet and had the door open before she got herself completely upright, pushing a hand back through her hair. All the tears and crippling terror was out of her when she saw the unconscious body draped across Matt's shoulders, a good bit of the red on his outfit having been added to. Tears gone, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail with shaking hands and stood.

The last time she'd sewn Frank back together, he'd been awake and there to keep her steady. She didn't know if whatever was wrong with him was something that could be sewn or butterfly bandaged or anything in the realm of what she could do, but he wasn't awake to help her. She was going to have to keep herself steady.

Kicking the door closed, Foggy asked the questions she wanted to as he took Frank's other arm and pulled it over his shoulders so he and Matt could share the weight, "What do you think happened? Where'd you find him?"

"I'm not sure," Matt panted. "I think whoever it was drugged him or something. There was a needle broken off in the side of his neck. It smells like some sort of drugs. I'm not sure which. He must've killed whoever it was, though, because he was in a ratty apartment that smelled like him, was filled with guns and bullets and everything. I think he just got back there before the drugs kicked in."

Shedding her coat because she hadn't even thought to earlier, Karen ordered, "Get him to the bathroom. We can put his bloody clothes in the bottom of the shower and get a look."

They both paused and looked at her—or Foggy looked at her with slightly widened eyes and Matt tilted his head in her direction. The former noted slowly, "Why do I feel like you've done this before?"

"Because I have. The Punisher's girlfriend, remember. Frank's not very good at staying out of trouble." She tried to smile faintly but it failed and her strength wavered until she got a hold on it again. Both hands. Hold on with both hands. Wiping away the tears with the back of her hand, she urged, "Come on."

Looking down at his bloody hands and the new stains on his shirt, Foggy was visibly wavering when he and Matt got the man laid down on the bathroom floor. She said without looking back, "Foggy, keep Bully out of here. He likes trying to jump up on the toilet."

"No problem. Come here, dog terror of New York."

Matt pulled his mask and gloves off and let them fall to the floor before he knelt down beside her. If he had anything to say about the change in her behavior, he didn't comment on it. Instead, he just said as she started peeling Frank out of his coat and Kevlar, "His heartbeat is strong, slow from the drugs I think, but strong. He's got some cracked ribs and he took a hit to the head. From the way his cuts are, I'd say it's been twelve, maybe eighteen hours since he got them."

She nodded shakily as she dug the first aid kit from the left inside pocket of his coat where it lived. Starting on his Kevlar, she asked in an effort to distract herself, "H-How can you tell all that?"

"Old blood smells different than new. His injured ribs creak faintly as he breathes. There's a louder pulse in his head where he got hit."

"I-Is there anything from the waist down? There's so much blood, I can't tell what's coming from him."

He paused for a moment, tilting his head in the way he had. "His left thigh. There's a cut, deep but I think it's clean."

Lips pressed together, holding back the vomit she could feel starting to roil in her stomach, she grabbed the knife Frank kept on his hip and began cutting away his shirt.

"Karen, we need help. I don't…I don't know how to deal with head wounds, especially since he's already taken a shot to the head before. Neither do you."

"Well, do you have a better fucking idea, have some vigilante surgeon on speed dial?" She was snapping and she knew it.

Sighing, she was about to apologize before Matt replied with a soft voice, "Well, I don't have Foggy patch me up when I come home bloody."

"You're welcome!" Foggy called from the kitchen, searching through the fridge for anything that looked safe for dogs to eat.

She looked between the two with confusion until Matt added, "Her name is Claire. She's a nurse who's helped me before. I don't know how she feels about Frank, but she'll help. I promise he'll be in good hands, Karen."

He was speaking to her like he was reassuring a child and for a moment she wanted to snap again, tell him she wasn't a fucking kid, she'd known what she was getting into being Frank's friend and then his…more. Then she looked down at her fingers, still trembling where they held the first aid kid in one hand and his bruised, bloody face in the other. She heard the sobs coming from her throat right after and realized that maybe his words were exactly what she needed to hear.

"Okay. I-If she'll come, then okay. I'll just stitch him up until she gets here. I can do that."

Squeezing her shoulder, he nodded, "Okay, I'll get you some water to wash out the cuts."

Wiping at her nose, she added to his retreating back, "And a towel you won't mind burning, please."

Matt's bathroom was thankfully much bigger than hers and she only had to do minimal crawling and climbing to successfully get Frank's boots and pants pulled off. Looking at the oozing gash right below the bloody hem of his boxers tipped her stomach over the edge. Holding her breath until she was to the toilet, she let go of what food she'd remembered to eat and the coffee that had been keeping her alive.

That over, she let out a long breath and reached into the kit for gloves. Getting them on and ripping open the packet of antiseptic wipes, she whispered to the unconscious man on the floor, "You're going to be the death of me, Frank Castle, but not tonight. You hear me, Marine, not tonight."

Matt returned with a towel and water, kneeling down where there was room and saying, "Claire's on her way."

She just nodded to that. Without another word between them, she settled in to first clean then either stitch or use the medical superglue in the kit to stick him closed again. She wasn't sure what Matt was searching for as he stayed, handing her things and holding the towel where she directed his hand, but it was the most comfortable around him she'd felt since before that night on the roof, in the hospital. She knew he still didn't really understand, without knowing about Wesley he couldn't, but he could see how she felt about the man bleeding on his bathroom floor.

And apparently that was enough to still his concern for the moment.

The sleep deprivation was pulling at her vision when a knock came from the door followed by a tired voice when it opened, "I just got off of a twenty-four hour shift and my pillow was looking real sexy when I picked up that phone, Matt."

Karen didn't look up when Matt disappeared from the doorway, just kept wiping the blood off of Frank's chest and face.

"I know, Claire, and thank you for coming anyway."

"This isn't really like you," the woman noted, a dry sort of amusement in her voice, "asking for help."

"It's not for me."

She sighed, "Of course it's not. Hey, Foggy."

"Always a pleasure, Claire." There was a heavy hint of irony in his tone and the woman laughed slightly because of it.

"Okay, so who can't go to the hospital now…oh." Karen looked up at the darker-skinned woman in the doorway and easily recognized the resigned exhaustion on her face. Putting the bag on her shoulder down, Claire shook her head, "I really just need to go into business for this, start charging for how many hours before dawn it is. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, the Punisher, my list just keeps growing…"

Kneeling down, she held out her hand to Karen, "Claire Temple."

Shakily pulling off a glove, she grasped it and returned, "Karen Page."

"He yours?"

"Yeah, he's mine."

Raising her eyebrows and letting out a breath, she noted while pulling her gloves on and beginning to examine his most obvious injuries, "I bet he's just great for your blood pressure. Did you do these stitches?"

Karen nodded, somehow both comforted and intimidated by the woman's presence, "Yeah, he taught me. One time he couldn't reach."

"Well, vigilantes are the ultimate do-it-yourselfers. Makes sense," Claire offered, nodding at the work before her. "Not bad for a journalist. They'll do the job. So, what am I here for?"

Matt took over then, "He took a hit to the head and somebody drugged him. We're not sure how long he's been out, so…"

"Yeah, calling the nurse when previous head trauma includes a bullet to the brain is probably a good idea. I'm not crazy about moving him, but now that he's not bleeding from all over I'd rather have some actual room. Matt, if you're fond of your sheets, get them off. Let's take the Punisher to bed, Karen."

She couldn't be sure if Claire Temple had gotten her dry sense of humor just from being a nurse who worked twenty-four hour shifts or if having to patch up vigilantes on her nights off had kicked it into a higher gear, but she appreciated the woman's honest way of looking at things. It reminded her of Frank a little bit.

Between the two of them, they got him upright and, even though his feet dragged a little, managed to keep his head still on the way to Matt's bedroom. Karen wondered fleetingly after they got him settled how many times the bed had held an injured body. More than hers.

With nothing but willpower left to help her, she kept her eyes open as the nurse started really looking at him, muttering things to herself as she went. Only once did she pull away, surprise in her eyes, "…Jesus."

Noting where her hands were, Karen's mouth twisted into an understanding smile, "It's weird the first time you touch it, isn't it. The bullet hole."

Exhaustion made her add, "He doesn't like it when you touch it for too long."

"I'll keep that in mind," Claire replied, returning the bleak smile. "Why don't you sit down? You sewed him back together. You've finished your round."

Matt's hands on her arms, he guided her to a chair and she fell into the strange limbo that had her body asleep but her ears still working. Claire said a couple of things about pressure, pupil response, and already being tired of gunshot wounds to the head, but none of it brought her back to complete consciousness until the woman knelt before her and placed a hand on her knee.

Jerking violently, Karen frowned at the sun coming in the windows. When had it become morning?

The other woman smiled faintly at her shock. As soon as Karen's eyes went to Frank, though, her face straightened, "He's okay. He's pretty beat to hell, but something tells me you're used to that."

She gave another wry smile before going on in what Karen realized immediately was her nurse voice, "From what I can tell, the smack to his head wasn't that bad. His eyes are responding like they're supposed to and without some sort of scan that's the best sign we can get. Whatever drug they put in him is what put him on his ass. Just from his symptoms and knowing what he does, I'm going to guess that he went after somebody who transports humans when they shouldn't be. It looks like some sort of sedative to me. I already told Matt this, but if he doesn't wake up in the next six hours, give me another call. And put as much water in him as you can manage. Go down to the drug store and get some iron supplements. He's got a good clip of blood to build back up."

"And," Claire paused for emphasis, "by whatever persuasive power you've got over him, don't let him go back out for at least two weeks. The blood loss and cracked ribs are bad enough. I don't know what kind of shit this drug in him will do. Keep him home, get him to sleep, make him stay out of trouble."

Karen couldn't help but snort at that. Claire shrugged, "Do what you can."

Pushing herself to her feet, she followed as the woman gathered up her medical supplies and slipped her bag back onto her shoulder. They quietly walked past Foggy asleep on the couch, Bully drooling on his chest, when Matt approached. Not sure what he had to say to the woman, Karen reached out a hand and squeezed her arm, "Thank you, Miss Temple. Really. Thank you so much."

The resigned smile was back when she shook her head, "Oh, we're way past titles, Karen Page. If you ever need help again, give me a call. Whether I'm willing or not, Vigilante General is always seems to be open."

With a final nod of goodbye, she left Matt to walk her to the door. Smiling slightly at Foggy as Bully twitched in his sleep and the man snorted in response, she grabbed her phone from where she'd put it earlier that night. It was almost nine and she was an hour late to work.

She sent a quick email to Ellison saying she was sick before dropping the dying phone back on the table and staggering back to the bedroom and Frank. Just as she was passing the threshold, she heard Claire whisper fiercely, "That's why you don't pull away from everyone, Matt. I mean, look at them. Not right this second, but that's happy."

So tired she could hardly see straight, the statement meant very little to her she just continued on her path to the bed. When they were both conscious, they were going to have a discussion about some sort of communication when he was gone so she didn't have to do more forty-eight hour stints of complete terror, but her brain was far away from that.

All it had successfully settled on was that Frank was alive and he was going to stay that way. It wasn't a terribly high bar to be setting for a relationship that could smash her heart into tiny little pieces, but she could worry about getting him to pick up his shirts and leave her alone about keeping the spoon in the yogurt container when it was in the fridge later.

With both hands, she was holding onto what she had: two friends willing to help her in the middle of the night, a dog that approved of half of those friends, and a man she loved so much she almost couldn't breathe.

She grabbed the pillow not beneath Frank's head and pondered where to finally collapse for a moment. Matt's bed was bigger than hers, but Claire had deposited Frank smack dab in the middle. Not giving it a second thought, she dropped the pillow to the floor and collapsed after it a second later.

Not quite able to get his eyes open, Frank woke up with a groan. He could already feel new stitches holding his skin together and the sharp pain of broken ribs. The drugs Karen's sex traffickers had shot into him had really fucked him up. If one shot of it put him out that hard, he didn't even what to think about what it had done to the teenage girls they gave it to to keep them quiet and sedated. Thanks to Karen they hadn't had any girls to hurt in a couple of weeks. Thanks to him the nine guys who hadn't gone underground after not being arrested would never hurt any girls again.

But shit his head hurt. "Son of a bitch."

He hadn't quite recognized the feel of a soft bed beneath him or his lack of shirt and pants, but the male voice that hit his ears had his eyes immediately open, "Here, drink this. You need lots of water."

With a somewhat manic gaze, he took in his surroundings, a fairly bare bedroom, door opening up into an equally sparse living room from what he could see, Red standing to his side with an opened bottle of water.

Answering his unasked question, the man said simply, "You're in my apartment, Frank. You'd been gone for three days and Karen asked me to find you. Now drink."

Again cutting him off, he added, "Yes, I get cranky when there are men in my bed."

He had to fight the urge to laugh because he knew his ribs wouldn't thank him, but it was a tad bit hard with the perfectly blank expression on Red's face. The unfocused eyes somehow added to it. He took the bottle of water and took a long swig that polished off about half of it. Voice hoarse, he finally got out, "Where is she? Where's Karen?"

Red tilted his head to the side and nodded toward the edge of the bed. Rolling over with a grunt, he peered over the edge to see her bright blonde head of hair spread out over a pillow on the floor. There was no way the rug was comfortable but he recognized the peaceful look on her face where she was stretched on her side. It was a peace that only came from being so dead tired that anywhere with the space to lie down was sacred. It was a look every soldier knew well.

"I don't think she sleeps particularly well when she's worried."

His hand paused on its way down to touch her at Red's words. Sending him a sideways glance over his shoulder, he finished the movement and laid his battered hand on her head, running his thumb along the top of her ear. She inhaled more deeply in her sleep but didn't wake. It was probably strange, but he loved watching her sleep. He had with Maria, too, his kids. It was just so deep inside him comforting to know she was safe, that she was near and safe and his even though she was the one unconsciously making him stop what he was doing and just stare like an idiot. Nothing was going to hurt her while she was asleep and he was watching.

Behind him, he could feel the man's stare even if he didn't really have one. It was in how he sat in that chair, shoulders tense and head tilted in a way that said even if he couldn't see it like everyone else, he knew exactly what was happening in front of him.

"You have something you want to say to me, Red? Nelson already gave me the talk about hurting her a few months ago. I'll believe in his threat more than any of yours."

"No," Matt replied, leaning forward and tossing a second bottle of water onto the blankets by his legs. "No, I don't have anything to say. I just have one thing to ask."

He paused and it finally made Frank look over his shoulder. The eye contact seemed to be what he was waiting for and he said, "Last year, you told me on that roof that we don't get to pick what fixes us, makes us whole, gives us purpose."

"I'm not really hearing a question in there, Altar Boy."

That was a lie. He knew where Red was going with it and from the way he smirked back at him from the chair, he knew it, too.

"As much as I hate to admit it, you were right. I probably couldn't walk away either, but what made me whole is dead and I haven't found anything else to replace it. I want to know about you. Is what fixed you then, made you whole and gave you purpose, is it the same thing that fixes you now, Frank?"

It got so quiet for a moment that Frank thought he could probably hear his own heart beating just as easily as Red could. Hand shaking slightly where it still rested against Karen's hair, he shook his head, "No, Red. Something else fixes me now."

Neither one of them needed him to say that she was what fixed him now, filled up the empty spaces until he was something resembling a whole. Not his dead family. Not his completed vengeance. Not punishing people, even though it came damn close. No, it was Karen Page.

It went unsaid in the air that hung between them until Matt stood and shrugged, "You might want to give that a little thought at some point."

Red was telling him that if he really wanted to keep her, make her his purpose, at some point he might have to give up punishing the guilty. Not tonight, probably not tomorrow or even next month, but at some point he'd have to be ready to make that decision, to hold on with both hands or let go. Even if another part would put up a hell of a fight, something deep inside him already knew which purpose he'd pick.

It was sleeping on the rug beside the bed, not dead in the morgue.

As he walked out of the room, Frank called quietly at his back, "You're not a pussy, but you are kind of an asshole, Red."

"Don't go sweet on me now, Frank. Save that for Karen."

Begrudgingly as it was, he probably needed to admit that he liked Red a little bit.

Sliding his hand down to her face, he pushed the hair away from her eyes, waking her. She blinked in the way she had, taking in the whole room right before letting out a yawn. A few more had her staring up at him and a smile spreading across her face.

"Hi."

Feeling the tiredness of just having been up talking to Red starting to creep in, he smiled faintly back and tugged on her arm. She crawled up beside him, pressing a kiss to his mouth that was too desperately relieved for his liking. Downing the rest of his water when she offered it to him, he started on the second before lying back down and bringing her with him. Not caring about his ribs or the superglued cut on his arm, he held her to him with both hands as he fell back asleep.

A/N: Because no Netflix Marvel anything is complete without Claire Temple! She's my favorite character across all the series, so I had to include her somehow. And yeah, this got a little more philosophical at the end than I thought, but there we go. This is the last one except for tomorrow. Here's hoping it posts correctly. Thanks for reading, review if the desire takes you, and I hope you enjoyed. :) See you tomorrow.