There was something about the Christmas lights hung around the office that kept distracting her from her work, due in a dwindling couple of hours in Ellison's inbox. She had never been one to procrastinate – not even in school, on the most boring, benign book reports, but something about this particular task still felt insurmountable.
This time of year was already off-putting, painful, and it was right now more than ever that the city of Hell's Kitchen needed a glimpse into exactly who it was that fought its' battles – but there was a blurring line between them and herself now. A gaping grey area that she had fallen into and could not accurately retrace for others to see because the details that it bore were not all hers to share.
A reporter bound by her research. Just her luck.
It wasn't reaching the two-thousand word count that still stuck her fingers heavy to the keys, it was knowing when to stop. What to share with the public and what was absolutely, indefinitely, only hers. How was she supposed to tell the city that its idols were so flawed – damaged to the point of vigilantism in their search for self-repair? What could she say of the hearts behind the actions without coming across as defensive and objective as she felt?
She couldn't help but think how much easier it would be with a little insight from the parties in question, but she couldn't make herself answer Matt's phone calls just yet and Frank had disappeared for the better part of two weeks, vanishing from her fire escape before she could return to the window to pass him his jacket back. It still hung from the hook by her front door, a silent, sentient guardian and the only sign that he had ever been there that night or any number before.
Still, he was all around her.
Each morning after, she would walk into her office to a new case file on her desk, stuffed with pictures that would have once made her lose her breakfast. A well dressed Wall Street type strung up by his own tie, two men found contorted in a back alley only a few blocks away from her apartment, a lone assailant found beaten to a lifeless pulp too close to her favorite little coffee shop to be coincidence – varying degrees of punishment for their intended sins and ones of the past that were now left up to her to uncover. The grimier men with foul secrets were usually unrecognizable, their faces split in various places and splattered in red. The proud ones that knew too much were put down quicker, mercilessly, a single shot to the head or chest depending on what mood their spilled information left him in.
It helped her in her search, giving her a starting point and leading her to easily link their names to multiple heinous crimes each and every time. Linking them to everything but Fisk it seemed.
Yet Karen would not confirm their killer, not to Ellison or anyone else – would not speak the words that he probed her for each time he walked into her office with a new file and wary look on his brow. Instead she would scrunch her own at the information inside them as if they truly stirred the disgust they should in her and distract herself with the work of an average reporter. One that had to start from the bottom of her research and work her way up. Not one that had come to intimately understand that which she studied and had to actively fight back against thinking about too often – worrying about.
To the city, Frank was a dead man and it would have him no other way.
The dreadful memory still snaked through Karen whenever she was reminded of it, the heat from the blaze thickening the night air, dead bodies scattered along the dock, the morning sun rising over head and helping her to scan each of the faces that were pulled from the flames, all while silently praying to whoever listened that she wouldn't recognize any of them.
It was the first time she would attempt to determine what he was to her. What it was about him that twisted in her rib cage so tightly when she believed him dead.
But he had somehow made it through the fires of hell a second time.
Her eyes fell from her computer screen to the pale bruises around her wrists. It was oddly comforting to know she had not been the only one to face the unforgiving wrath of Hell's Kitchen and come out a different person on the other side – a different person entirely, but still alive.
No, everyone who dared to call the place home was forced to feel the heat for themselves in a way that was always too personal for repair.
Phantom images flashed behind her eyes then. Devils and death. Horns and skulls. Red and white.
And before she realized it, her story was pouring from a few shared hells onto paper.
Karen held the newspaper between her gloved hands, passing the older woman in the small news stand a five dollar bill before waving off the change and moving quickly down the sidewalk. Her eyes scanned along every word of her article a full three times before she made it through the door of her apartment, searching for mistakes and arranging the words a different way in her mind each time to be sure she chose the best ones.
It wasn't the first article she had ever had published. There were a few before it, petty crime and street gossip, but this one was so much more than a fluff piece. It was recognition. An apology.
Acceptance.
She glanced up at the dark jacket that sat heavy on her coat hook as she shrugged off her own and hung it beside it.
Hopefully he would feel something similar should he ever read it himself.
Days bled into night unnoticed, each one of them spent searching the streets for any sign of useful information in ways that left his knuckles raw and burning.
This, though, felt like a fresh bruised rib.
There had always been that too familiar expression etched within the mask she tried, weary and threadbare beneath taciturn smiles. And why the fuck was that all he could think about right now with bloodshot eyes and much bigger threats at play?
Frank's hands stained the damp newspaper in the dim lamp light, his fingers clutching as he read.
He couldn't help the small glimpses into her past he'd gotten from the very first time he met her eyes, too blue and close at his bedside in that dreary hospital room. Over the months since then, he had involuntarily picked up bits of it in her habits. The security found in the handbag she clutched tight beneath her arm. How she would flinch at the smallest sounds, or check over her shoulder every handful of steps, even while treading the city streets in the light of day. And although it was so long ago now, he still felt the pang of guilt every once in a while for uncovering, much too easily, the fact that she had surrendered her driver's license just before trading in Vermont for her current address.
He would never ask to have the blanks filled in without reason. And damn good reason at that. But as he took in the first few lines of her latest news article, another piece fell into place.
Look into your own eyes and
tell me you are not heroic,
that you have not endured,
or suffered, or lost the things
you care about most
The words stilled him where he stood for a divine moment. Body and mind. Never really since the day that took his life from him had he been one to chase the light or want it anywhere near him, but now that it was there behind his eyes, he knew he should be clawing at it. Gasping for it. Needing it.
Frank set the news article on top of the growing pile at his bedside, trading it all for his rifle instead.
Christmas struck like the flu. She had gotten used to spending them alone, the feeling one that she had learned to live cordially with instead of letting it drive her mad.
This year though, she would spend the evening in the elegantly decorated ball room of Foggy's new law firm, feeling underdressed as ever, though she had spent most of the week since she'd gotten the invitation picking out an outfit all the way down to the toenail polish that impeccably matched her heels.
The high ceiling bellowed over them, holding on to the music and rolling it around them loud enough to make talking a strain. Other employees and their guests with too much alcohol in their system flooded the dance floor, their tired eyes and fake laughs leaving her feeling envious of their ease.
Foggy sat across from her at the small round table, looking nervous but patient as ever.
Karen took another long sip from her champagne flute before trying a smile at him.
"This is nice. I needed this."
Some of the tension left Foggy's face and he held his glass out between them to clank it with hers.
"I couldn't agree more," he replied in that tone that let her know Matt had beaten her to him.
He would start first, but it wouldn't take him long to get her to vent about it. She would find herself leaving out the bits on what led her to discover his identity and who it was that kept her alive long enough to do so, another abyss of grey area that was not hers to color in.
The alcohol had to be to blame when the silence began to stretch on longer and longer and he finally convinced her to join him and Marci on the dance floor. And though warmth filled her belly and a smile curved her lips at Foggy gyrating in circles before her, she never felt so alone.
Resolutions weren't happening this year.
She had made a few the year before, ones that were meant to bring her life back from the precipice and into the realm of something normal. Not too long after, her coworker would be murdered and left bleeding at her feet, and she'd be framed for it.
No, this one she would be spending alone on her fire escape, wrapped tight in her comforter, a warm mug of coffee between her fingers, listening to the symphony of voices cheering and echoing over the buildings from Times Square as they counted down the remaining seconds of the year.
When the display of fireworks scattered across the sky, brightly announcing both end and new beginnings, her first instinct was to let her eyes close, finding solace instead in the way the sound of angry gunpowder shook straight through her chest into the wall behind her and awoke every nerve along her skin.
Karen had felt something similar the last time she had sat there, with all the warmth that was Frank at her side. And although she hadn't seen him in the months since, she had to believe he was never too far gone. She could feel it when she walked home from work late at night, unable to stop herself from glancing along the rooftops. How occasionally when she would go out to get her coffee in the morning after a particularly rough night of research, it would already be paid for. The peace she found in not having to check over her own shoulder every waking moment.
Something had changed that night though, and his distance after stifled out any last small fractions of doubt. There was so much more to Frank Castle than the world cared to know. So much of him that he believed to no longer exist.
So much left to hope for, that when she let her eyes slide open they strayed to the shadows instead of the sky. If he really was out there watching over her, she would return the favor.
If it wasn't important, she wouldn't be here.
Karen repeated it to herself like a broken mantra as she made her way, quiet as possible up the rickety stairs that seemed to never end, the reason for her unannounced visit tucked in a folder under her arm.
Her false bravado left her when she stopped in front of the door that had to be his. Apartment 74, the only one on the hall with a shiny silver door knob, unlike the rusting gold toned ones that adorned all the others. Reinforced locks and no welcome mat. He may as well have spray painted a giant skull over the chipping green paint.
Karen took a deep breath, remembering the words she'd practiced on the way over and risked three even knocks. It sent her heart hammering in her chest for a reason she couldn't quite place and as the seconds stretched on, she fought the urge to turn and run. This was a bad idea.
For all she knew, he could have vanished from her fire escape and gotten the hell out of dodge. It would have been the most reasonable action for him to take under his circumstances, him being a ghost and all… So why did the thought of it burn in her chest?
But she knew better, knew him better, and if he wasn't held up tending his wounds, he was working.
The hall whined under her heels as she made her way along it, finding the end and going up the final half dozen stairs that led to the roof access. Her hand was slick against the doorknob when she turned it, pressing it open.
A painfully cold night awaited her, even for February, its bite sinking straight through her layers, turning her fingers icy and sending her breath of something very near to relief curling like smoke in the breeze.
All she could see was the back of his head, the rest of him sheathed in a thick long-coat black enough to make him mesh with the shadows. He sat facing away from her on a small pile of cinder blocks, his hands working at something on the gun across his lap.
She shut the door securely behind her, using the small window of reprieve to gather her thoughts before making her way with careful steps toward the center of the roof. The view was one that left her feeling robbed by her rent. Frank faced Central Park, the snow-capped skeletons of trees that seemed to come right out from the edging of the building sparkling in the moonlight. To their left, the usually brackish water of the Hudson reflected back at her a cream pale yellow.
"You ever hear of a phone call?"
It rumbled from him quiet enough that he could have been talking to his weapon, but it was Frank enough to let her know that time did nothing to change the man. He would never know that only once had she tried one of the old numbers he'd used to contact her long ago only to find it disconnected, or how badly she wanted to punch him in the shoulder blade right then.
"Because that's what you do right? Call the people you need to talk to?" She measured her words, glancing over at him. At her distance, she could see that his hair had grown out a little, more even across his head, no longer the tightly faded style of a marine.
A grunt shook his shoulders, but he gave her nothing back.
When she couldn't take the quiet any longer, she closed the distance to his side, her heels keeping steady rhythm against the concrete.
"Where have you been Fr…?" She started to ask before she could see the edge of his face, but when it came into view, it stunned her still.
Deep bruises marred the bridge of his nose, bleeding purple beneath eyes that had not seen sleep for far too long, like a thick layer of war paint that never seemed to fully leave his features. A thin gash ran down his face high on his cheekbone, looking fresh and angry in the soft light. It illuminated the skull on his chest, the armor under his long coat rising and falling with his breaths. Karen counted four before she noticed the blood stain forming at the top of his thigh, trailing down from somewhere beneath his chest plate.
"…Frank," she breathed.
"You shouldn't be here," he spoke evenly, too calm, like she wasn't right beside him trying to convince the air back in her lungs, his mangled hands still steadily smoothing the oiled cloth along the barrel of his gun.
"What happened? Who did this to you?"
A part of her knew to expect it when he didn't answer her, turning instead to pull a long, thin rod out of the case at his side, hooking the rag at one end, and sweeping it into the gun. It was meant to be a distraction from whatever it was that kept his eyes from meeting hers. What she didn't anticipate was the way it left her gritting her teeth.
She took the final step that would let her face him and reached out to grab the rifle by the base of its barrel. Frank would stop her easily, one hand wrapping tight around the muzzle and the other moving quick to the opposite end of the stock. He held it still instead of pulling it away and she was close enough that he couldn't hide from her anymore.
"You're not gonna like it." He met her eyes and something about the way they flickered hesitantly dulled the frustration blooming in her belly. Words that others would have used to protect her, he used to prepare her. "I don't think it's Fisk." He finally said, his eyes moving back and forth on hers, always reading.
"What do you mean?" Karen straightened, her hand falling back to her side. "It has to be. He has the resources… the reasons. Who else could it be?"
"I don't know yet," he confessed sounding every bit as weary as he looked. "They're new. None of em' would give up Fisk. A few didn't even know who he was."
"Goddammit," she pushed her hair back from her forehead and cursed the air. "Every time we get close to keeping that monster locked up for good the trail disappears. There has to be paperwork, camera footage, something to show how he's getting through to these people from inside a max security prison…"
"Hey," he called, drawing her back to him. "It doesn't work that way with these types of assholes. The right amount of money can hide just about anything." He flexed his fingers. "That's why sometimes they need something they can't put a price on." He shifted his weight to put away his cleaning tools, the struggle of it twisting his expression. "It ain't shit, but it's all I got right now. Your turn." He nodded toward the manila folder beneath her arm.
Karen exhaled slow, her attention returning to the black pool of blood that now stained the ground beside him. One of many injuries received doing the dirty work she could never ask of him. She steeled herself.
"Let me make sure you'll live long enough to hear it first."
She would swear something timid touched his eyes just then before they left hers. She took a moment to convince herself it was real after it was overtaken by something rougher and forced.
"I can take care of myself."
"Maybe," she returned unyielding, "but you look like shit and it's freezing out here."
He'd watched her make her way down the sidewalk toward his building, the line of his sight aimed just over her in case someone had made their final decision to follow. Told himself he wanted her to knock on his door and give up when he wasn't there to answer, to turn around and go home. That her distance was what kept her safe.
Maria's voice would echo in his head when he toyed with the thought too long.
Bullshit. You know where she's safe.
Safe. He cursed under his breath at himself when he heard Karen coming up behind him.
The idea in itself was a lie. Nowhere in the city was safe for her right now, he'd spent an exhausting few weeks learning that firsthand. And he had every intention of letting her know why…
Until she was right there looking at him. Right through him, with eyes that should have been too clear to carry the same look he would find in a mirror.
He didn't mean lie to her but she already wasn't sleeping, likely due to whatever she had uncovered in her own research and clutched against her so tightly. He would tell her what he'd learned later when he was sure – when pain and the soft scent of lilac weren't dulling his judgment.
Karen couldn't say the tiny apartment wasn't exactly what she'd expected. It was like walking into the images posted from the first time the NYPD staked out one of his safe houses, long before she knew anything about the man behind the murders. She would have to blink away the memories of the countless victims' pictures she would go through after that in search of the truth.
Instead, she focused on how the chaos was so distinctly organized around her. Bullets covered the surface of a small desk under a blacked out window, in perfect lines of sorted size and caliber. Cans of food were meticulously stacked along the small kitchenette counter, each of their labels facing forward. Even his small cot was turned down without a single wrinkle, more likely due to him never actually using it than out of habit.
Frank's free hand braced against the door frame as he limped in behind her, dark eyes following her when she turned to take the weight of his gun for him, having to hold it with two hands to prop it up against the wall behind the door.
It would catch him off guard when she moved back around it to help him pull his coat off his shoulders and duck under his arm to take some of the burden off his injured side. Sure fingers wrapped into the material over his ribs and he couldn't remember the last time someone touched him there without leaving a mark.
"This alright?" She asked.
He couldn't decide if it was in reference to his pain or if she was asking his permission. Not like it had ever been essential to her before.
"Yeah," was all he answered with because he couldn't deny the support was nice. Foreign.
Springs whined beneath his weight as he eased down onto the cot, Karen's hand remaining on his shoulder until she was sure he was steady. Her eyes were all business now, reminding him of the way she had once tore mercilessly though old case files with him in an interrogation room.
"First aid kit?"
"Bathroom," he pointed her in the right direction.
"Don't move."
It was a soft but pointed order, given to him in the way only she could. He couldn't think of the last time someone had the guts to give him one outside of court rooms and prison walls, but this was one he had no intention of disobeying.
For the time being, she was in his sight. She was here where no one would lay a hand on her. And he couldn't deny feeling as bad as she claimed he looked.
By the time Karen returned to the room, Frank's shirt was thrown over the back of the desk chair, his fingers working at the clasps on the side of his vest. The awkward twist of his torso edged pain on his face.
"Here, let me."
Karen set the first aid kit on the bed beside him and shifted the chair so that she sat in front of him, first quickly slipping free the clasps at his right, then more carefully over his damaged side. She helped him tug his vest up and over his head, repeating the motion with his blood soaked undershirt, holding the back away from his hair and face as he ducked out of it.
Frank groaned when he straightened and it was the first time her eyes had seen the bare skin of his torso and the galaxy of marks and scars that dotted it. The center of his defined chest just beneath his throat was a deep red exploding into lighter purples and yellows as it traveled the distance across to either of his shoulders. Thin scars marred his sides like a tally, some still raw with fresh stitches and one seeping just beside his navel where they had torn.
She tried not to swear but it slipped past her lips anyway in an attempt to make sense of what she felt at the sight of him like this.
His fingers pushed against the muscle just above where he bled while he studied it.
"Not as deep as it looks."
But something else had grabbed her attention and she couldn't stop herself from reaching out toward the angry spot on his left shoulder, perfectly round and black against his russet skin. Her heart raced, but her hand stayed steady and he stilled under the soft exploration of her finger tips.
It was freshly healed over; rough, calloused skin taking the place of the softer flesh that surrounded it. Barely a month old.
There was no denying that she knew what Frank was up to when he would disappear, even if he did his best to hide the worst of it from her. But now, she couldn't help but feel responsible for each of the new wounds that painted his skin. This thing between them – whatever it was, she may never be certain of what to label it, but if there was one thing she would bet her life on without question, it was that Frank Castle would do everything in his power to ensure she kept it.
She would never be so selfish as to feel it was somehow deserved.
"I'm so sorry Frank."
And she was. For so much more than she had any control over. She was sorry for the frenzied, insatiable drive in him created by the cluster of seconds that devoured Frank Castle the man and spit out the Punisher. Sorry that it chased him from his warm bed every night to the unforgiving city streets in search of a penance that would always be just beyond his reach and the barrel of his gun. Sorry that if either of their hearts still sat properly in their chests, she could imagine herself falling in love with a man like him. Settling down with him somewhere far away from the endless concrete and grime.
But he would never leave, and she would never go back.
"I read your article," he said a moment later, his gravelly voice cutting through the silence and she realized then how much she'd missed it. He nodded his head toward the night stand and in the dim light, she could just make out the small pile of newspaper clippings, stacked neatly in the corner a few inches high. Her hand slipped away from his skin as she stared at them. "What you do is important Page, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let some selfish prick take that away."
Karen couldn't help but to wonder how he always knew what to say to get the reaction he wanted from her, be it disgust, or mind-numbing frustration, or this feeling that begged her to smile at a shirtless serial murderer. Maybe this is how he would say 'I love you' if the emotion still had room in him to grow.
She pushed her hair back from her face and cleared her throat.
"I just wanted you to know that I'm here whenever you need me. You don't have to hide from me Frank."
He surprised her with a breathy grunt. "Yeah, cause that sure as shit failed miserably."
Her eyes met his and she couldn't stop the curve of her lip at the glint of amusement she found there.
"I'm serious," she blinked, shifting forward and her expression sobered. "You can't disappear like that again. Not without telling me."
Something in her words left him warring with himself, tightening eyes that went back and forth between her and the space behind her. Of course he would read between her words that this is how she would return his affection if it could ever rightfully belong to her.
"This is not a good idea."
"I know," she breathed, reaching out slow to still his restless hands between hers. "But it's all I ask."
The sigh that came from him was drawn and submissive. Unsure.
She could feel the tense restraint in his hands when they carefully turned down around hers, his fingers testing her skin, and couldn't remember a time when she felt braver. Safer.
"Yes ma'am."
Frank's eyes would fall from hers and linger on where they touched for a long moment before growing distant. He released her, easing his legs up onto the bed and lying down.
Karen knew not to push him any farther, instead using it as her cue to fix his broken stitches and clean up what she could of blood stained skin.
The new lead she found could wait until tomorrow. The rest of the night would be spent on silent repentance and some much needed sleep.