A/N: Okay real quick because this chapter is crazy long and we actually have scenes (like plural *gasp*), just a quick public service announcement. As far as blood and general unpleasantness goes, we're starting to flirt pretty heavily with an M rating in this one. I figure if you're here, you've already seen Daredevil and you'll have watched worse, but here's a heads up. Oh, and for people interested in chapter music and whatnot, Paint it Black the Hidden Citizens cover wrote the first half of this chapter (there's a fanvid; it's wonderful). Okay, I'm done.
July
Deep down, Karen knew that she should've waited longer outside her office for a cab. Ellison had said she needed to be extra careful. Nothing was too paranoid until they got her story on O'Brien and his attempts to step into the spot of Hell's Kitchen's unfriendly neighborhood crime boss into print. Even then, paranoid was probably for the best until the cops caught up with her reporting.
But it was warm, a few hours after the sun had gone down, and she could tell it was going to start raining soon. In the time it took to get a cab flagged down, she could be over halfway back to her apartment. Hand inside her bag, fingers curled around her pistol, she started the walk.
The sky was spitting out raindrops when she got the feeling in her stomach, the itch on the back of her neck. She had no idea where it came from or what it meant…except that it was wrong. Something was wrong. Her fingers tightened against the already warm metal of her gun. Her index finger started twitching and a part of her wondered if she'd been around Frank too long.
That was when she heard it and subsequently cursed herself for not having noticed it before. Only just louder than the rain and her heels clicking as she quickened her pace, she could hear the low idle of a vehicle behind her…only there weren't any headlights piercing the darkness on the block the streetlights didn't take care of.
Something must've shown on her face because the few people she passed who made even marginal eye contact quickly averted their eyes, glancing over her shoulder and hurrying along themselves. One thing that could be said for the residents of Hell's Kitchen, they knew how to mind their own business. They kept their heads down and kept going.
Some of the sputtering rain had gotten into her shoes, making her skin rub uncomfortably against the insides and her heels slip. She was about two seconds from taking them off and breaking into a run when she heard the squeal of tires from behind her. With a scream, she only just got herself out of the way when the old beater swerved onto the sidewalk right in front of her.
Her pistol was out and in both hands before the sound was completely out of her throat.
Not caring if it was the wrong direction, she stumbled out of her shoes and flew at a dead sprint back in the direction she'd come, away from the car. Even hiked up to her thighs, her pencil skirt didn't give her much of a stride and far too quickly she heard panting, pounding footsteps, and a roaring engine coming after her.
She heard the squeal of brakes at the same moment her feet left the ground and the right side of her body smacked into something hard. Vision flickering in and out of blackness, she only realized she was face down on the asphalt, her chest screaming and straining for breath, when she heard the voices above her.
"What the fuck, Jimmy! We were supposed to grab her and take her back, not hit her with the fucking car!"
"I was only going like five miles an hour! She's fine, probably just knocked out, which we would've had to do anyway. Just grab her and let's go. I don't wanna be out on the fucking town when Daredevil and the fucking Punisher clock in for the night."
She heard grumbling from the first man and at least two others. Finger still twitching, she slowly noticed that she still her gun in her hand, her knuckles scraped to hell but her grip solid. Moving as little as possible, she flicked the safety off.
Karen didn't hesitate when she felt a hand on her shoulder and it promptly rolled her over. The sound of her shot ripped through her ears before she fully realized her twitching finger had pulled the trigger and the recoil slammed into her newly injured wrist. A man she vaguely recognized as one of Connor O'Brien's thugs shrieked as fire tore through his shoulder and sent him onto his ass.
Aside from her labored breathing, none of them made any sound or chanced a move for the next ten seconds. Holding back tears and the need to throw up, she looked at the three men before her down the barrel of her pistol.
"Fucking bitch!" the man leaking blood all down his shirt finally shouted, breaking the spell.
Before she could fire again, she heard the sound of sneakers on wet pavement behind her. The hit to her head came just as she caught sight of the fourth man over her shoulder and the flickering blackness took full hold.
When she came to again, she felt wetness on her face and the sound of a voice trying to be both Irish and New Yorker was all that made it through the ocean her ears were surrounded by.
"Aye, yeah, here she comes."
A sharp slap to her face hauled her out of the ocean and deposited her firmly, painfully back on solid ground. Groaning deep in her throat, her eyes blinked open to see the face before her. She'd never found Connor O'Brien particularly attractive and that didn't change with closer proximity.
He grinned at her, "Yeah, here she is, my little bitch of a lass. You're the first blonde I haven't wanted to fuck, you know that? Like at all, in the slightest."
A dull throbbing in the back of her skull, she only partly noticed what he said. She couldn't blink away the dizziness gripping her head and her eyes wouldn't focus. Her right arm was bleeding through her torn shirt sleeve, the cream already overtaken by red. Holy shit, how did Frank do this? Be hurt all the time. Between the thought of him and the angry fingers that closed around her throat and started to squeeze, all remnants of her haze vanished. Connor's face, arm stretched out toward her, focused in before her eyes.
"Hey you listen when I fucking talk to you! You got me, bitch?"
Eyes fixated on his wrist, the only thing she could see before his hand disappeared beneath her chin where it was squeezing, she nodded shakily. "Y-Yes."
"Aye, good."
She took in a desperate gasp of air when he let her go and turned around. Immediately, Karen's eyes shot around her surroundings. Connor and fifteen other men, including the one she'd shot earlier, were on a roof and she was in a crumpled heap at the base of the building's water tower. Her gun was in Connor's hand and her bag was on the ground a few feet away. She'd gotten used enough to noticing guns on Frank that she could spot all the ones these men carried inside their jackets and in the backs of their pants, a few just out and in their hands.
As the reality of the situation dawned on her more fully, the black at the edges of her vision retreated and just how very fucked she was started to pump through her chest.
She wasn't sure what Connor's end game actually was—scare her, rape her, kill her, whatever way he chose to try and silence her—but he was well-staffed to accomplish any of it. Without having to ask, she knew why he was going so heavy on the manpower just for her. Between Matt and Frank protecting the streets, going out in numbers was as smart a plan as any for the criminals of Hell's Kitchen.
Only a desperate hope in her chest, she slid her eyes around to the neighboring rooftops. Through the sputtering rain and light pollution, she couldn't see anything. No red mask with horns. No white skull spray painted onto Kevlar. Not tonight. She was on her own.
"Now you, Karen Page, you are a real pain in my ass. Do you know that?"
Connor looked to her expectantly and she had to cough against the blood congealing in her mouth before she replied, "I'm sorry…"
"Aye, not yet you're not."
He nodded toward her with a jerk of his head that looked more like it belonged in a bad action movie than her real life, but it was real enough when two of the men beside her grabbed her by each arm and hauled her up. Her bloody right shoulder crunched sickeningly at the force and a scream ripped from her mouth.
It echoed off the buildings around them, cutting through the sounds of the city at night and it immediately gave her an idea. Matt had said once that he listened. He knew where to go because he listened. She kept screaming with as much oxygen as she could suck in, so loud that her throat was raw and her ears rang.
"Oh shut up!" Connor shouted back at her, bending down and grabbing her bag. "Come on. The quicker we get this done the better."
Grin on his face, the man walked over to the edge of the building and nonchalantly sat on the ledge. He smiled back at her as he took her bag and held it out into the open air. Her already pounding heart went ragged when he released his grip and it plunged the six floors down to the sidewalk. Over the blood hammering in her ears, she could hear her laptop come to its violent end.
"Aye, let's send you after your work, shall we?"
She struggled against the holds the men had on her, her bare feet scraping against the roof. She hardly even felt the cuts that had her leaving bloody footprints the closer they got to the edge. He never felt the pain until after, Frank had said. Holy shit, she needed an after. With everything she had, Karen wanted an after.
The sob gathering in her throat didn't think she was going to get it.
Trying and failing miserably to keep the shake out of her voice, she noted, "Throwing me off a roof is a bit of an escalation, isn't it? Y-You sure you want to step it up to murder? I hear that gets you visits from a man with a skull on his chest."
"Oh, I'm not worried about the Punisher, lass." The over a dozen armed, jumpy men around him said otherwise, but she stayed quiet. "The way I figure, what better way to take it to the next level, take my spot, than showing everyone in Hell's Kitchen that I silence the people who talk shit about me. You see, come tomorrow, the cops will have come and hauled your body away and your little fucks down at the paper will write a nice article about you and how fucking sad it is that you're dead. And everyone will know it was me. They won't be able to prove it, but they'll know that I'm the one who made you eat pavement, made sure you have a closed casket."
She was at the edge, her struggling having accomplished nothing, and all she could do was look down at the sidewalk so very far below. One of the men had a hand digging into her back, perfectly ready to give a simple shove and be done with it.
Standing there, staring down at her own death, she felt it again. Once before in her life, Karen had sat seemingly helpless as a man threatened everything she was and everything she loved. He'd sat there and smiled at her, so fucking pleased with himself. James Wesley had been infinitely more intelligent than Connor O'Brien and tenfold more intimidating because of it, but that hadn't stopped her before.
There was something about people threatening her life that made her backbone straighten, her eyes narrow, and her chest fill up with every bit of righteous anger that burned so viciously inside her. Because fuck them. The last thing they saw wasn't going to just be her fear. She wondered for a fleeting moment what Ben's last words to Fisk had been. Had he been like her? Had he even had the chance?
She braced her ragged feet against the low wall, struggling against the hold on her arms a last time, before turning to Connor. She smiled faintly, "It's cute you think that will work."
His smile shrunk into a glare and he pointed her gun at her, pressing the muzzle against her forehead. "It's a nice piece you've got here, lass. You pick it out yourself?"
She just stared back at him as he thought about pulling the trigger, pondered if he'd rather just shoot her right there or get the poetic ending he'd been going for.
He hadn't decided yet when the head of the man on her left exploded.
Screaming, she threw herself down to the roof as another half dozen gunshots filled the air. Over the shouting of Connor's men, more than one of them firing back at the darkness, she heard a well-known voice, "No killing, Frank!"
"Not the fucking time, Red!"
A smile she knew was on the hysterical side stretched across her face. A red streak she immediately realized was Matt started punching its way through the men around her, bones crunching in his wake. A roar she'd heard once before, huddled beneath a counter in the back of a diner, broke through all else and like a dark, angry shadow Frank swung his assault rifle at the nearest head.
For a short second, she just breathed, stayed completely still and just breathed air into her aching chest and thanked whatever was looking out for her for not taking that particular night off. Then the foot stepped on her wrist, pulling another scream from her. Her gun still in his hand, Connor was trying to run. His men were holding their own but falling steadily and he was going to run. And that meant he could try again.
She scrambled to her feet, tripping initially, and ran after him. With a shout, she lunged forward and wrapped both arms around his waist. They both crashed to the roof and she immediately started pounding his hand against the concrete. Blood rushing through her ears, adrenaline raging through her body, she didn't even feel it when he punched her ribs once and then again. As soon as the pistol was out of his grip she snatched it up and pointed it at him.
Matt and Frank were still fighting, far fewer men upright even those few minutes later. She sent the brawl a sideways glance, unwilling to take her attention off Connor for long. She almost missed it because she was moving her eyes too quickly, but something made her look back. One of the men on the ground was still conscious. Groaning against whatever injuries he had, he was raising his gun at the nearest target.
"Frank!"
She saw him look over his shoulder just in time for two shots to go off. The man's hit Frank in the back, stopped dead by his Kevlar. Hers caught the blonde man in a basketball jersey and expensive sneakers where his neck and shoulder met. Her hands started to shake even harder when he began gurgling on the ground, blood spitting up out of his mouth, flowing down his face toward his ear.
Holding in another scream, she caught Connor moving and she swiftly pivoted back, Matt and Frank forced to the back of her mind.
But Connor was up and charging into her before she could get another shot off, the gun skittering away. The back of her head smacked into the concrete again and her vision flickered violently. She felt the knife slide into her while the world was still dark. It was along her side, catching skin more than anything. He'd missed. When her sight flashed back to life, Connor had pulled it out and had the knife raised to plunge back in and hit something much more central, more vital. She could see it in his eyes. He was going to kill her.
Arms flung out to both sides, she could just feel something metal at the tips of her right fingers. Her body didn't hesitate.
Her fingers wrapped around the piece of pipe, probably something left over from the last time the water tower was maintained, and she swung. She felt the crack in her wrist at the same time Connor's skull collapsed beneath the metal. He crumpled to the side from where he was straddling her. She followed and her arm swung again and then a third time.
She didn't realize that the primal wail cutting through the air was coming from her until she had to take a breath and it paused for a second.
Connor's head was gushing blood and something grey and mushy was coming out of the side, but her arm raised up to hit him again. She had to be sure, something terrified inside her screamed. She had to be damn fucking sure. She didn't get to land the final blow because a red baton zipped through the air and knocked the pipe from her hand. It clattered to the rooftop a few feet away. Matt's voice smacked into her ears a second later.
"Karen! Karen, stop! Stop…"
Her wail devolved into a keening sob as she pushed herself away from the bloody lump that had once been the man's face. Her right wrist lying at an odd angle, she brought up her left hand to cover her mouth.
"Oh shit, shit…Oh my god."
She whimpered against the hand over her mouth until the dizziness spiraled beyond her control looking at what she'd done. Unable to do anything with her right hand, she leaned against her left and threw up right there. It was all over her fingers and in her hair and there was blood, so much blood, and the splitting pain in her side made her try to scream mid-vomit.
Hands too big and too warm to be Matt's ignored the half-digested food and stomach acid and pulled her blonde hair out of her face. Frank's arm wrapped around the front of her shoulders, holding her up when her elbow buckled. She clutched desperately at him with her working hand and he gently shushed her until her stomach quieted.
She went straight from throwing up to sobbing but he didn't tell her to stop. Pulling her away from the puddle of vomit and leaning her against the edge, he just whispered, "It's okay. You're okay. Come on, let me get a look."
She screamed in pain when he pulled her right arm away from her body, her sleeve hardly even attached anymore and the fabric red all the way through. The dizziness was getting worse and she could feel blood from the knife wound flowing down to her thigh.
"Since when do you have a gun?"
Looking over to Matt crouched a few feet away beside Connor, she saw it in the bit of his face that was revealed by his mask. More than that, she could hear it in his voice. He'd just seen—in whatever way he was capable—her shoot one man in the neck and literally bash another's skull in with a pipe. He was…disgusted by her. He'd witnessed her newest dark and terrible and he didn't like what he saw.
Whatever picture of her he'd kept inside himself, whatever he'd thought was Karen Page in his mind had just been shattered.
Anger was easier to grab onto than the soul-shattering knowledge that she agreed with him and she shot back in answer, "Since people started wanting to fucking kill me, Matt!"
"Not now, Red," Frank demanded, voice harsh. Turning back to her, he said more softly, "Hey, hey, no yelling. You can be pissed off at him when you're patched up."
"I-I don't understand, Karen. I—"
"What part of not right fucking now do you not understand, Red?!" the man knelt in front of her, hands covered in her blood, roared over his shoulder. "What else is there, Karen? Is it just the arm and the wrist?"
Biting her bottom lip, she lifted her left hand away from where she'd been pressing against her bleeding side. Her vision was starting to waver again. "They might've hit me with a car, too…"
"Fuck." He reached forward and pulled her shirt out of where it was tucked into her skirt. "Fuck…"
One of the few things she could still see through her dizziness was the terror in his eyes. She smiled faintly, the blood probably negating any comfort she could convey, "Hey, it's okay. I'm not your job, Frank."
The look she never understood bored into her in that moment and she was sure that if she could've felt them, her toes would've gone extra tingly. She'd made it to the after and all the hurt had slammed into her, but she wasn't sure that was why she couldn't breathe.
His voice was hoarse when he pushed a bloody strand of hair out of her face, "Yes, you are. Hey, hey, hey. Open your eyes back up. I reenlisted and you're every bit my job. You got that? We need to get you to a hospital. Altar boy!"
The thought of Frank walking into an ER with her pushed the haze from her vision. Covering her side back up, she let out a deep breath that came out another sob. In the distance she heard sirens coming their way. It might've just been her probable concussion, but she thought she saw blue and red light bouncing off the buildings a few blocks down, too.
"No." She shoved weakly against his shoulder. "The cops are coming. They'll take me. You both need to go. Go. Don't make it my fault you get caught by the cops. Either of you."
To his credit, Matt didn't seem particularly pleased with the idea of leaving her either, but the stubbornness on his face was nothing compared to Frank's. They were both going to learn a lesson about the stubbornness of Karen Page when she was bleeding out on a rooftop surrounded by dead or unconscious bodies of men who'd just tried to kill her if they didn't get going. Given she could only use one arm, breathing hurt, and she was quickly losing the ability to see, that probably wouldn't be terribly intimidating but she ignored that truth.
Filling her voice with every last bit of strength she could wring out of the pain, she shouted, "GO! Now! Matt, don't make me say it again."
She let out a sigh of relief when Matt pushed himself to his feet and tugged on the strap of Frank's Kevlar. "Frank, come on. The cops are less than a block away. She's going to be okay."
When they were both out of sight, disappearing into the darkness, she leaned over and threw up again. Pulling herself across the concrete with her left arm, trying and failing to crawl a few times, she snatched her gun back up when one of the men on the ground started groaning. She huddled there, shaking, with the gun pointed in his general direction until the cops burst through the door to the roof.
Brett was one of the first and she immediately saw the recognition on his face.
"I might've found another shit storm, Brett…"
Two rooftops over, Frank's hands were shaking. It was more than just the nervous energy he always had. It was more than just his trigger finger twitching. His hands were fucking trembling.
And his chest felt like someone had just hit it with a battering ram, his ribs collapsing into his heart, his lungs too squished to get in any oxygen. He was almost blind with the pain of it.
But there was nothing wrong with his chest. His only broken rib was from a fight two weeks before and it was half healed. Tonight, it had barely even taken a hit. The bullet to his back would remain more annoying than painful until he pulled the vest off. No, there was nothing physically wrong with his chest. That didn't make it any easier to breathe.
Panting, whether from exertion or seeing his friend beat to hell, Red was bent over at the waist beside him, hands braced on his knees.
"Get out of here, Altar Boy. Go home, put on some normal fucking clothes, and go to the hospital."
"What?" Seeing her flatten the shit out of that asshole's skull really had thrown the guy for a loop.
Frank growled and shoved the man, not entirely sure he wouldn't pull his rifle and point it at him if he didn't move his ass, "Get to the fucking hospital! You're her friend and you're not dead and I fucking can't, so get to the damn hospital, Altar Boy!"
Whatever haze of confusion Red had been swimming around in seemed to clear and he stood. With the mask covering his eyes, Frank couldn't quite tell what the man was thinking, but he could guess easily enough. He wanted to know why Karen seemed to still be on good terms with him, why she was talking to him like she knew him, like they were friends. He wanted to know why the look on his face was pretty damn close to one that would've been there if they were talking about his murdered family.
Red was blind but he wasn't stupid. It hadn't been his best moment when he had the bright idea to not love Karen back, but when it came to the world around him, the man could probably see better than somebody with eyes that worked. How didn't matter, but Frank knew that he could. He was perceptive.
On the street below the ambulance pulled up to the curb. He looked down to it when they opened the backdoors and he saw Red tilt his head toward it, listening or whatever it was he did. He didn't wait to see them bring down a stretcher with a blood-covered blonde strapped to it. Taking a step closer, he grabbed Red by the material at the base of his neck, "Not tonight, Red. You don't get your answers tonight. Now go after that ambulance…Please."
The man glanced down at the hold he had on his suit, pensive. After a moment, he gave a short nod, "Alright."
As soon as he let him go, he sprinted across the roof, flipping onto the next one and vaulting over walls. Letting out a long groan, Frank sunk down to the ground and propped his elbows against his knees. He rubbed his face with a bloody hand once before letting his head fall back against the brick behind him.
In an effort to make the world stop spinning so wildly around him, to focus on something, anything, he muttered quietly while staring upward, "One batch, two batch. Penny and dime."
"Can you think of anything else you can tell me, Karen?"
Hissing as the nurse beside her bed bumped her new wrist splint, Karen shook her head as gently as she could manage.
Moving wasn't a comfortable activity at the moment. Between the bruised hip bone where she'd been hit by the car, a mild concussion from multiple smacks to the back of the head, four bruised ribs from hitting the asphalt and Connor punching her in the chest, raggedly cut up feet, a sprained shoulder, severely scraped up right side of her body, the stab wound that had taken four stitches on both the front and back, and a nearly broken wrist that would have to be in a splint for the next four to six weeks, the most comfortable she'd been since getting to the hospital was inside the CT scan to check for internal bleeding where she wasn't supposed to move.
Still on the initial wave of painkillers they'd shot into her so they could patch her up, it had been a beautiful half hour. It was only dampened when she'd started frantically asking in her compromised state where Frank was, why wasn't he there. She wasn't sure how Matt had explained away her desperate sobbing, but no one had asked her about it. They'd been strong drugs.
"No, Brett. I think that's everything."
The man smiled sympathetically at her as he put away his notebook, "Alright. As strange as I feel saying it, I think Daredevil and the Punisher actually did me a favor tonight. I wish everyone had your luck when it came to him. Attacked once, kidnapped after that and now he's saving your life."
"Maybe he doesn't think I need to be punished. He's not a bad person…just extreme."
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense." He didn't sound like he actually found much sense, but she ignored the lie. Laying a comforting hand on her shin through the blanket, he concluded, "I'll know where to find you if I need anything else, but I don't think there's going to be much more to say about all this. We'll try and get your personal effects back to you as soon as we can. Heal up, Karen."
"Thanks," she returned, watching as he nodded to Matt and Foggy before walking away from her hospital bed and turning down the hall. The hospital was busy and she hadn't gotten her own room. She wondered fleetingly if Brett got tired of having cases that came to him already closed because of Matt and Frank. Pulling her injured wrist to her chest, she looked to the nurse, "I'm sorry, when do you think I'll be able to go home?"
Foggy's head swiveled to look at her with wide eyes. "Jesus, Karen, you just got here."
"Yeah, and aside being beat to hell, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm stitched back together. I want to go wallow in pain in my own bed and in my own pajamas."
The nurse smiled kindly at her and replied before the scoffing Matt and Foggy could say anything, "We'll keep you for at least a few more hours, until morning. We need to let you try and get some sleep and wake you up just when you're getting comfortable to keep an eye on that concussion being worse than we thought. After that, you're right. You need some bedrest. Call in all the sympathetic friend favors you can get, start begging with your boss."
Double-checking her greatly lessened painkiller drip, the nurse excused herself after saying with a glare to her visitors that she needed to rest.
Foggy let out a sigh and shrugged, "That kind of sounds like we're dismissed for the night."
She smiled, "Go home, Foggy. I know you have work in the morning and all I'm going to do for the rest of the night is sleep. I promise I'm okay. Just don't mention to Marci tomorrow that you're so tired because you were with me. I'm in no condition to defend myself from the jealous lawyer woman."
He laughed a little before moving past Matt and leaning over the bed to hug her. It hurt but she kept the groan of pain inside, too grateful for the show of comfort to mind a little more ache. Pressing a kiss to the side of her forehead before pulling away, he ordered, "Just don't try and take the cab back to your apartment alone. Call one of us. I'm a partner now. I get lunch whenever I damn well please."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Nelson."
"Love you, beautiful Karen."
She hiccupped a laugh that was also a sob, "I love you, too, Foggy."
He hugged her once more before clapping Matt on the shoulder and leaving, too. That left only her and the darker haired man and she was painfully aware of how awkward things suddenly were. She wasn't sure what was causing the most friction: that she and Frank were still friends, that she'd started sobbing because he wasn't there when drugged all to hell, or that she'd murdered two people right in front of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen who refused to kill anyone.
None of them were things she wanted to talk about.
"I need to sleep, Matt. Please, it's been a really long night."
With the closest occupied bed only six feet away, he lowered his voice before saying with what she almost thought was disappointment in it, "I…I want to understand, Karen."
"Understand what?"
If he couldn't hear the anger, her complete lack of tolerance for his questions, in her voice, she bet he could in the accelerated beeping of her heart monitor.
"Just…how we got here. How…Karen, how?"
"How could I smash that man's head in with a pipe?" She made her voice as quiet as humanly possible while still retaining her irritation. "Matt, you're a blind martial artist ninja who moonlights as a vigilante, complete with suit and alter ego. You had to learn…whatever it is you do years ago. I didn't. Normal people, weak, simple, normal people who don't know how to fight can't do what you do. When people threaten us, there's a much higher chance they'll succeed than fail and we know it and it's terrifying. We get scared and we fight back in whatever way we can. He kidnapped me on the street, hit me with a car, tried to throw me off a roof, and stabbed me. When he was there, I wasn't…I didn't think, Matt. I just kept him from hurting me again. I'm sorry I…"
She breathed shakily through a sob before going on, "I'm sorry I broke your code. I'm sorry you're disappointed in me. I'm sorry I'm not the Karen you thought you knew, sweet, pure, helpless Karen."
"No, no, that's not—"
"Yes it is, Matt!" The two patients across from her both turned to stare and she quickly lowered her voice again. She was crying and when she looked over, there were tears coming from beneath Matt's red glasses, too. "Yes it is. I'm not that girl you have in your head. I'm scared, broken, killed someone and might have to again someday Karen. Matt, I love you. Everything about you…even that stupid Catholic martyr complex you have that makes you think you don't need any help. You're one of my best friends. I still want you to be, but y-you're going to have to figure out if you can still be mine."
She saw in the set of his shoulders, the way he wiped at his face, that he hadn't. It wasn't an instant decision.
"And Frank? Is he your…friend?"
She couldn't tell where the displeasure in his voice came from, some lingering anger because he'd let her go and he thought Frank had found her or that she was so obviously attached to a man he saw as nothing more than a murderer in the shades of black and white that made it easier for him to sleep when he got home from patrolling Hell's Kitchen late at night.
"Yes, Matt, he is. And more than that, he's none of your business."
Tightening his grip on his cane, he stood with his head tilted toward her for a few long moments. Exhaustion that only pain and drugs could induce started to pull on her and her eyes were desperately trying to stay open by the time he finally spoke.
"Well, you're certainly strong Karen now, too. I'm sorry I didn't see it before." His lips pressed into a small smile, trying to lighten the impossibly heavy conversation they were having, leave it on a teasing note, "I'm sure Ben Urich would be proud of the investigative monster he created."
She knew he had no idea that was the absolute worst thing to say to her in that moment, but another violent sob burst out of her. As he flinched at the unexpected sound, she whispered, "I was already a monster..."
She laid there and cried, from deep in her stomach cried, and she didn't notice when Matt silently left. Gently shushing her, the nurse came back and tried unsuccessfully to coax out of her what was wrong. She couldn't talk, couldn't even see out of the hole in her chest, and all she knew was that she wanted that stare. She wanted the look that said it was okay, that he knew and it was okay and she wasn't any kind of broken he couldn't handle.
She wanted Frank Castle to hold her and tell her it was okay in the low voice that rumbled through her.
With little other option, the nurse turned up her painkiller drip and, the drugs flowing through her veins, she slowly dropped off to sleep.
After getting himself back on his feet, Frank shouldered his rifle and started the long walk home. Bully whined happily up at him when he came in the door. The smell of blood didn't bother the dog in the slightest and he just sat with a wagging tail as he put all his guns back into their places.
Peeling off his heavy coat, he looked down at his hands in the light. They were red and caked with blood. They always were when he got back. While Bully didn't mind the smell, he never licked his hands until he'd washed either. They both knew it wasn't something that was supposed to stay.
Tonight was different. His knuckles were a bit busted up, less than usual actually, and so some of the blood was his own. Some of it was also those pieces' of shit from the roof. But a lot of it was hers. Too damn much of it was hers. It got hard to breathe again and he avoided looking at himself in the mirror when he went to the sink and started vigorously scrubbing.
He'd known ever since that night in the diner that she'd killed someone before. There'd been something in her eyes when she agreed that it wasn't her first rodeo. She'd been resigned and tortured at the same time and he'd known. She had a death on her hands and it was eating her from the inside out because she was that much better of a person than he was.
Now she had two more, one for his sake and one she wouldn't be forgetting in a hurry. With everything he had, he refused to make the connection between that knowledge, knowing how much she was hurting somewhere out there where he couldn't go, and the sharp pain in his chest.
Tongue lolled out, Bully trotted into the bathroom and hopped awkwardly up onto the toilet. The dog never had enough room and half the time he fell right back off, but he liked sitting there next to him when he came home. He stared up at him, a question seeming to lurk in his dog eyes.
"Yeah, you're right. Let's go."
Frank quickly splashed the worst of the blood off his face and changed into something less gory. He tied Bully's leash to his collar and tossed the dog's full food bowl into a small bag along with an extra pistol and his shorter shotgun. They waited across the street in the shadows until the police cruiser parked outside her apartment building pulled away.
The spare key she'd given to him and hadn't remembered to take back slid easily into her deadbolts and her door opened without incident. Yipping happily, Bully tugged the leash out of his grip and trotted excitedly inside. To hell with the fact Frank was the one who fed him, the dog was head over paws in love with Karen and her peanut butter.
He didn't blame him in the slightest.
Letting out a deep breath, he was just about to step inside when he caught the eyes looking at him from next door despite it being two thirty in the morning. As soon as Karen's elderly neighbor saw him looking at her, she opened her door farther and leaned against the jam. She had a heavy Balkan accent when she said simply, "The police came by to ask about her. They said she was hurt. That some," she spat out a harsh word in a foreign language that he didn't need a translation to know was a curse, "tried to kill her."
He nodded, "Yes, ma'am. She's at the hospital."
"You're here to help her." Arms crossed over her chest, she looked him up and down a few times.
It didn't really sound like a question, more an observation that he wasn't allowed to take issue with, but he nodded anyway, "Yes, ma'am."
She was already turning to go back into her apartment when she nodded, "Good. She deserves good man."
Frowning at the feeling that said he'd just been approved of, he stepped fully into Karen's apartment and shut the door behind him. Head hung low, Bully plopped down in front of him after an unsuccessful lap around the space to find her and whined. He put his bag down on the floor where she usually set her briefcase full of files when she got home from work and rubbed his dog behind the ears.
"Yeah, I know it's shit, bud. We have to wait. She'll come back." He hoped Bully couldn't hear the uncertainty in his voice.
Painfully preoccupied, fighting the helplessness he'd felt only a few times before in his life, he set up Bully's bowl by her kitchen counter, pouring the food that had shifted around in the bag back into it, and placed his guns in the corner where she usually put them. He grabbed coffee supplies from where he'd seen her grab them a hundred times before and started a fresh pot. Then, sinking onto the couch and trying to ignore how it smelled faintly of coconut because he was sitting on her side where her hair rested when they sat and ate dinner, ignored bad television and talked instead, and she told him 'not tonight,' he settled in to do the only thing he could that didn't involve being arrested or pissing off Karen.
He waited. And shit, did he hate it.
Well aware of just how beat to hell she was, Karen took Foggy up on his offer and called him when the hospital decided to let her go at ten the next morning.
Her splinted wrist made crutches problematic at best and her bruised hip begged for someone to lean against when she was up for more than a few minutes. If Foggy was there to take her home, then maybe the hospital wouldn't look at her and decide they wanted to keep her longer. As soon as he was in the doors, she was up out of the wheelchair they'd insisted on and latched onto his arm, shoving her keys and phone the cops had returned earlier that morning into his hands.
She fell asleep against him in the back of the cab, clad in gifted scrubs from her morning nurse, absently listening to his sweet attempts to cheer her up and distract her from her obvious pain. He made an attempt to pick her up and get her out without waking her but her still shattered nerves had her awake, screaming, and swinging at his face as soon as his arms slipped beneath her legs.
Forever the sweetest guy she'd ever known, he smiled off all her apologies and simply took her arm, opened the door to the building, and helped her up with stairs with a cheerful, "Let's get you home, beautiful Karen."
It was strange to hear the epithet from anyone but Frank even though Foggy had coined it.
She was lagging badly by the time they reached her floor. To her surprise, her neighbor was in the hallway, watching them stumble awkwardly up the stairs. The woman pulled her into a hug when she was close enough. Too quietly for Foggy to hear, she whispered, "The dark man with the dog is there to take care of you."
Without any permission from her, her knees sagged and a sob came out of her as a relief as potent as her painkillers flooded her whole system.
"Hey, are you okay?" Foggy asked, resting a hand gently on her shoulder.
She pressed her mouth into a smile and nodded, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I've got it from here. I'm just going to collapse on my bed and sleep until next week. You can get back to work."
He looked at her for a long moment before turning his gaze to her neighbor, "You'll look in on her?"
"Yes, of course."
"Alright, I'm calling you tonight though…and tomorrow morning and tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow night and probably—"
She smiled more genuinely as she took her belongings from his hands and pulled him into a hug, "I get it. Thank you, Foggy. You're a good friend."
"That's what they say. Foggy Nelson, friendship extraordinaire, can occasionally be seen being a pretty damn good lawyer, too."
"Bye, Foggy."
With another look to her neighbor, he finally let go and started retreating down the stairs. She made it look like she was getting her key in place until he was fully out of sight then actually unlocked it her door. With a gentle squeeze to her arm and a quick nod, her neighbor went silently back into her own apartment.
So close to home, so close to safe, and so heartbreakingly close to not alone, her hands started shaking as she turned the key. It was morning. Frank was in her apartment, waiting for her to get home. It was morning and she wouldn't be saying 'not tonight'.
She was two dead bodies past 'not tonight'. She was a death threat and staring down at a sidewalk and the complete, utter, gut-wrenching horror when Matt knocked the pipe out of her hand past 'not tonight'.
When her trembling hands got all three locks open and she collapsed into her apartment, she didn't see him at first. She didn't see anything except excited, happily whining pit bull flying at her from across the room. His sixty pounds hit her like a truck and she crumpled on the spot, smacking into her fridge on the way down.
It didn't matter.
The smile was on her face as soon as he started licking her, tail wagging so forcefully his entire rump was shaking. "Hi Bully! Hi. I missed you, too. Yeah, hi."
Just as she was trying to extract her splinted wrist from where it was painfully smooshed between them, she heard the heavy footsteps approaching. Her tears threatened just from the well-known sound. They started to fall when he knelt down behind the dog and pulled him away by the collar, "Hey, hey, come on. Calm down. You're going to hurt her again."
Bully strained against his grip as he shifted her legs and closed the door with his free hand. She was gasping against the lump in her throat when he flicked the locks closed and then reached out to push her hair out of her face. It was the first time he'd done so without both of them covered in blood and she took full notice of how warm his hands were.
"Hi, Frank."
"Ma'am."
As soon as he fixed her with that look, the watery laughter she managed at their routine greeting devolved into sobbing, deep from the bottom of her chest where her dark and terrible was tearing at her insides she just sobbed. Like when she'd stood in her shower after throwing Wesley's gun into the river and realized with perfect clarity just what she'd done, she covered her mouth to hide how hard it was to breathe.
"Hey. Hey…Karen, you're safe. You're safe. You're okay."
Gentle and understanding and so obviously giving a damn, his voice made it worse and she squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't deserve the look. She'd killed three people. She didn't deserve the look that didn't hate her for it. Her lip was quivering so violently her words were stuttered when she whimpered, "I-I-I've killed three people."
"I know."
"Th-They're dead because of me. I killed them."
"I know, sweetheart. It's okay."
She wasn't sure which part made her sob harder, the sweetheart or that he was doing exactly what she'd always known he would, tell her it was okay and that he understood and, most importantly, that he stayed. She couldn't doubt him about the last, because as soon as he said it his hands went to the back of her head and pulled her toward him.
Sliding an arm under her legs, he picked her up and was carrying her across her apartment before she could even open her eyes. When she did, she just buried her face in his neck that was right there and grabbed onto his shoulders with both hands. She vaguely noticed Bully trotting after them, whining quietly because his dog instincts knew that his humans were upset. The dog only hesitated a short second after Frank sat the two of them down on her bed before jumping up after them. He sprawled out across the blanket at the foot and for a long moment she just looked at him lying there with his belly up, tears still falling. She was jealous. He'd been through some shit. He had the scars to prove it and yet he seemed perfectly content with himself, tail constantly wagging.
Frank was still quietly shushing her, running a hand down the length of her hair like he'd been comforting distraught, murderous women his whole life. Minus the murderous part, she supposed he had. Father of a daughter and husband to a pregnant wife twice over, his family had probably given him plenty of practice.
"You're okay."
She wasn't sure how many times he'd said it, but she finally realized it wasn't true. Shaking her head, she gasped out, "No, I'm not. I killed three people. Oh my god, I'm up to three."
"Did you want to?"
Frowning, she looked up at him for the first time. "What?"
That look on his face, he repeated in his low voice, "Did you want to?"
"N-No, but that doesn't change that I did, Frank!"
"Were they going to hurt you?" He added a second later with a flash of the gaze she didn't understand, "Were they going to hurt me? Red, Nelson, your family, other people who didn't deserve to be hurt?"
She knew he was asking about Wesley, the only one he hadn't seen with his own eyes, with the last question and suddenly her mouth was moving, tripping over sobs and wavering inhales.
"H-He was Fisk's assistant, h-his doer. He drugged me and kidnapped me because I was working with Ben. I woke up in this building and he just sat across the table from me, smiling at me. Fucking smiling at me as he told me if I didn't take back what I'd said, started writing about Fisk in a way he liked, he'd kill everyone I cared about, Matt and Foggy and Ben and everyone they could find. Not me, they wouldn't kill me, just everyone around me until I was alone. H-His phone rang and I grabbed his gun off the table. He thought I was bluffing a-and then I put seven rounds in his chest. I," her voice broke even more than it already had, "I watched the light go out. I-I kept going because I wanted him to be dead. I wanted to be sure he wouldn't hurt anyone. I-I saw it go out."
Frank's hand hadn't stopped its movement through the whole story. He didn't take in any sharp, shocked inhales when she said just how viciously she'd shot the man. He didn't move to get up, leave her alone in her apartment and never look back. The only movement she'd felt was his arm tightening around her waist when she said she'd seen the light go out.
Before he said anything, she could feel a difference in her tears. The tumor inside her loosened its grip and her shuddering, her body trying to shake the dark and terrible out, lessened. For the first time, she realized just how warm she was, wrapped up in a cocoon of honesty and concern and Frank that she already knew she never wanted to come out of.
"What did you do? Afterward."
No longer gasping for every breath, she felt his voice vibrating through her ribs. Her eyes partially closed as she really felt his fingers brushing through her hair.
She almost laughed at the absurdity of the memory when she answered, "I drank an entire bottle of whisky and stood in the shower until I couldn't cry anymore."
She felt him nod where her head was pressed into the crook of his neck. "I threw up. In the Marines, the first time I took a shot that hit home on a head that wasn't a silhouette on paper, I threw up for ten straight minutes when I got back to base."
"I do that now."
"Not with a stab wound in your side you won't." She smiled faintly but didn't say anything. "So, they were going to hurt people and you didn't want to. I'm not seeing how you're at fault here."
She blinked slowly a few times, "B-Because I…I killed them. I-I didn't have to kill them."
He shrugged and the movement took her upper half with him. "Do you really believe that? Fuck what Red says for a minute. Do you think that, in that moment, you could've done anything else to stop them from hurting somebody?"
The answer was out of her mouth before she thought about it, second guessed herself into changing her conclusion. "No."
His lips were right next to her ear when he whispered, "Then let go of it, Karen. You don't have to keep it forever."
She started crying again, but the tears weren't such heavy, poisonous things. Sniffing against them, she breathed out, "I'm so tired, Frank."
"I know." He gently pulled her face out of his neck and said with a small smirk, fingers still running through her hair, "I hear concussions will do that to you."
Smiling weakly back, she replied, "Mine is minor I'll have you know."
"Then you can minorly sleep it off." Picking her up again, he helped her to her dresser to grab something besides the scrubs she was in. Given the enormous scrapes all along her right leg and arm, she decided on the softest pajama shorts she owned and the biggest t-shirt. He carried her to the bathroom and then back to her bed when she was done. She didn't quite summon the willpower to tell him she could still walk.
Bully still at her feet, she looked up at the man after she crawled under her blanket and set her head down on her pillow with a sigh that came all the way from her toes. Almost immediately she felt sleep pulling at her, her literally bruised brain begging for rest. She wasn't so tired that she didn't know what she was saying and the uncontrollable loopiness the hospital's painkillers caused had worn off hours ago. But she still found herself looking up at him, the gaze she didn't understand staring steadfastly back at her, and asking quietly, hopefully, "Are you going to stay?"
"Yeah. We'll stay for a while."
"Good," she breathed before reaching out and tugging on his arm until he sat down beside her. Maybe there was a little painkillers still left in her that was granting her such courage. Looking at his feet, she noted with a smile that felt strangely liberating, "You're wearing socks in bed."
"I'm on the bed," he answered initially and she happily basked in his easy grin for a few moments until he leaned down and pulled them off, letting them drop to the floor beside the bed.
She realized it was the first time she'd ever seen his bare feet when she saw the large scar on his left one. Exhaustion still insistently pulling at her, she nodded to it, "What happened?"
"The Irish drilled through it."
"I'm sorry."
She heard him chuckle lightly before she felt his hand return to her head. His thumb brushed over the wispy hairs at her temple and he said quietly, "Go to sleep, beautiful Karen."
Home and safe and so perfectly not alone, it wasn't hard to fall asleep. For the first time since she'd shot James Wesley seven times in the chest, the full, crippling weight of her dark and terrible secret wasn't quite so heavy when she did.
She jerked awake that night to her phone ringing. Before her eyes were even opened, her mouth asked, "Frank?"
"Present and accounted for."
As effective as any drug, relief washed through her.
Groaning, everything between the back of her head and her scabbed feet sore, she blinked blearily until he came into focus. He was sitting on her couch, sprawled out as usual, reading one of her books. The sight made her smile for a reason she couldn't quite grasp and she put it down as being grateful he was still there.
She tore her gaze away and picked up her still ringing phone as she pushed herself into a sitting position. "Hi Foggy."
"Oh good, you're still alive."
"Thanks Foggy."
When Frank brought her a cup of fresh coffee a few minutes into the conversation, she smiled again when she saw he was still barefoot.
A/N: Thanks for reading everybody, review if the desire takes you (thank you guest reviewers I can't personally message!), and I hope you enjoyed. :) See you tomorrow.