October
"Hey, you the reporter, right? The one who writes about the bad shit and heroes and everything. Who almost got thrown off the roof?"
Karen looked up from the shelf of groceries before her to see the woman who'd addressed her. A quick look was all it took to tell her the Latina woman was likely a prostitute. It didn't really matter, so Karen just nodded with a small smile, "Yes, that's me. Karen Page."
She held out the hand not holding her basket to the woman and she grasped it with her ridiculously long, gold-painted fingernails.
The woman looked over her shoulder once and then up the aisle before saying in a low voice, "I might know some shit for you."
Surprise wasn't really something Karen showed a whole lot of anymore when it came to sources who approached her on the street, at least outwardly. Getting tips from a hooker was a first, but certainly not the strangest thing to happen to her. Putting down her basket, she grabbed a small notepad out of her bag and a pen. "Okay. What do you have?"
"I have a distinct lack of customers is what I have. It's happening all over the Kitchen. Us girls on the street are losing business. I heard my guy talking about it the other day."
Something told Karen the woman's guy was actually her pimp, but she just nodded encouragingly, jotting down notes as the woman went.
"There's new people in town. Russians or Romanians or some R shit. They're bringing girls over in boats or something, setting them up in places around here for cheap. Now, I'm not doing as bad as some other girls out there, but…" Her brown eyes narrowed and her voice lowered, clearly unhappy with whatever she was about to say, "I can't compete with jailbait. That shit ain't right. A girl oughta be able to lose her virginity on her own terms before she starts having to go to work if you know what I mean."
Karen's pen paused in her fingers. So, sex trafficking. Sex trafficking of minors. Though it had yet to ever really go out, she felt the anger ignite in her chest. Finishing her thought on the paper, she nodded, "Yeah, I know what you mean. There anything else you can tell me?"
The woman shrugged, "I know the cops don't know shit. My guy heard it from a guy who sold some crack to one of the Russians or whoever they are that they're passing money off to one of the port guys to leave them alone. One of my old guys works for them now I think, pulling up 'old clientele' to take in. This isn't just a pick up somebody in your car kinda shit."
"Okay, thank you. I'll start looking at it. Just, one question. How do you know the cops aren't already working on this?"
The woman smirked darkly, "Because one of my regulars is a boy in blue and he's a talker when his pants are down. I asked him about it, about why they're not all over this shit, it being kids and all. He said they ain't heard nothing and that if anybody like me comes in talking about it, it'll go straight into the trash. Girls like me ain't credible sources apparently."
Without another word, the woman turned and walked back out the door. Brain already whirring to life, planning calls to make and records to search, Karen tucked her notebook away. Absently grabbing the remaining items on her grocery list, she was back on the street and doing a walk that was closer to a jog all the way back to her apartment.
When Frank knocked on her door a few hours later, using his key once she called for him just to come in, she already had the coffee table filled with notes and she needed to plug her new laptop in so it wouldn't die. The fresh pot of coffee she'd started before she sat down was half gone.
Bully trotted over and immediately flopped in her lap, pouting slightly when he got only one-handed belly rubs. She felt Frank sink down onto the couch beside her after pulling his boots off. Gazing at her notes and what was on her screen for a moment, he asked, "New story."
"I think so. I got a tip from a hooker."
She smiled at how quickly his eyebrow shot up. Leaning a little more heavily against her, chin on her shoulder, he took a second look at the harbor records she had pulled up on the laptop.
"She changing professions and becoming a sailor?" At her flat stare, eyebrow of her own raised, he amended, "What's she know about that she thought Karen Page needed to be in on?"
"Sex trafficking. Apparently somebody is bringing girls in on ships and taking away from her business."
"Girls?" His tone was clearly asking if there was an age-related reason she'd chosen that word. She nodded. There was always the chance that the woman's source could be wrong, a lot were, but Karen was going to assume the worst until something proved it better.
Pulling back, he pressed a kiss to the side of her head, "Stay safe, beautiful Karen."
"Yes, sir."
She'd never said that to him before, but the smiled that pulled across his face made her wish she had. And, as he pulled her closer and gave her a proper kiss of greeting, she was grateful for a countless time that Frank didn't try to talk her out of it, keep her at home, keep her locked away somewhere, safe but useless.
Two days later, legs asleep and pistol clutched so tightly in her hand that her fingers were starting to cramp, Frank's words were on her mind. 'Stay safe, beautiful Karen' had become her mantra as she kept herself completely still, refused to let her breathing give her away.
She'd found the port authority man being bribed. She'd followed him to work in his brand new Escalade that he shouldn't have been able to afford. She'd walked a ways behind him to his office and waited outside under the guise of a woman taking surveys. And then, at almost five o'clock when the rest of the office was emptying of people, she'd silently followed him to the dock that was supposed to be under maintenance but had a boat moored beside it.
And that was how she'd found herself breaking into the small portside office after he'd left and looking at a ledger full of names, ages, weights, and pictures of naked teenage girls drugged out of their minds.
After swallowing down the urge to vomit, she'd immediately started taking pictures, noting the page the book had been opened to and documenting everything within reach. Most of it was in Cyrillic and therefore beyond her comprehension, but she committed the few names she could make out to memory.
She was hardly halfway through the book, hating deep down inside her that given she was illegally there nothing she had could be taken to the police, when she heard the engine outside. Freezing, she glanced over her shoulder to just make out the two figures climbing out of an SUV and coming toward the door.
Panic pounding in her chest, she flipped the book back to its previous page and crawled in the nearest hiding place: beneath the large metal desk. Tripping over the computer cords under her heels and only just getting into a position she could hold as the door opened, she internally rolled her eyes at her life. First vigilantes, then ninjas, and now she was huddled beneath a desk like she was in a James Bond movie. Her life was ridiculous in the most spectacular of fashions.
She wondered if Ben had ever gotten stuck under a desk.
The two men who entered were speaking a language she didn't recognize. The hooker's guess that it was Russian or Romanian seemed plausible, though, as they laughed about something. She couldn't see anything but their legs from the knees down until one of them pulled out the chair and flopped into it. His spread knees were mere inches from her face when he finally got himself settled, the computer's fan above her kicking on. Only an awkwardly placed metal bar kept his feet from being able to slide forward and nudge into her.
The pistol on his hip sat and stared at her, letting her know how much shit she was in if they realized she was there.
The keyboard clicking beneath his fingers and the mouse sliding across the metal surface were loud in her ears as she crouched awkwardly in the tiny space. As quietly as she could manage, she eased her pistol out of her bag…just in case. With a simple squeeze of her twitching index finger—it was a nervous habit she'd acquired from Frank, she'd realized since July—she could relieve the man in the chair of both his balls and his life.
But then what? She was stuck beneath a desk and she'd have to shove the guy out of the way. If she'd learned anything about organized criminals in the last year, it was that they tended to shoot back without hesitation.
Stay safe, beautiful Karen.
A loud ding rang through the space and she jumped so violently she nearly smacked into the man's knees. Biting her newly trembling lip, she kept herself from letting out a breath of relief as the man across the room checked his phone. She silenced hers as quickly as she could, berating herself for not having done it to begin with. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she remembered she was supposed to meet Foggy for dinner and drinks that night. Foggy wasn't the type not to call and check on her when she didn't show. He wasn't even the type to not show up at her door. She tucked her phone into the waistband of her skirt so the light of the screen wouldn't give her away when he got to her apartment and found out Frank didn't know where she was either.
Stay safe, beautiful Karen.
Taking as quiet of a steadying breath as she could, she settled in to wait with pistol in hand. She wasn't dying. Not tonight.
The daylight coming through the window had completely shifted to streetlight when the man above her—Dmitry, she'd learned—finally pushed the chair back. His fingers stopped pressing the keys and the computer fan slowed to a halt.
After however many hours of listening to the language she didn't understand, doing her best to ignore her body screaming at her, the movement didn't immediately register to Karen. Her brain just continued playing through the happy thoughts she'd dredged up to cling to. Drunk Foggy and the beginning of 'beautiful Karen' was in there. Bully eating peanut butter and the wonderful rush of energy when her first coffee of the day kicked in. Gingersnaps when she was a kid. Friday nights at Josie's with Matt and Foggy. Waking up next to Frank in the morning. Stay safe, beautiful Karen and the memory of Frank singing to Queen on the radio the week before were ringing in her ears. She'd never been particularly fond of Fat Bottom Girls until it was from his mouth, but it had instantly become her favorite Queen song.
It wasn't until the light was out and the two men had locked the door behind them that her body finally caught up.
Not letting up her grip on her pistol at all, she shifted onto her numb legs and slowly crawled out from under the desk, looking warily into the darkness. Headlights shone through the window and she watched as the car pulled away.
The stumbling walk through the port was painful and took her far longer than she would've liked. Somehow everything from the waist down was both numb beyond feeling and burning with pain, her knees crunching with every step. The search for a cab once she managed to get out without being noticed, asked why she was there, was worse. She let out something close to a sob when she climbed out of the yellow car and looked up at the familiar brick building. Her finger was still twitching against her gun when she got her key into the door of her apartment building.
She could hear the voices through her door when she got to the top of the stairs. Pulling her phone from where she'd hid it five hours before, she saw twelve missed calls from Foggy. Sighing, she leaned against the door casing and knocked. Doing so much as opening all three locks just felt like too much in that moment.
"Frank, it's me."
The voices immediately paused and she could hear Bully's happy whining in the silence that followed.
She managed a smile when the locks clicked and the door opened, revealing his worried face and an enthusiastic pit bull. "Hi."
His eyes scanned her from head to toe and then back up, looking for injuries, before Frank replied with a gentle smile of his own, "You're late, beautiful Karen."
Letting out a groan that came all the way from her dying toes, she reached up and wrapped both arms around his neck. They stood there in the doorway for a minute, her just clinging to him on her faltering legs, until he wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet.
Shutting the door behind them, he set her down on the kitchen stool, not really retracting his arm even as she kicked off her heels and let her bag drop to the floor.
From near the couch, Foggy noted with laughter in his voice that was clearly trying to disguise worry, "Well, I'd thought you'd just found a hotter date than me, but I'm starting to feel like that's not what happened…"
When she just smiled faintly in his direction, loudly cracking her stiff fingers, he pressed, "Where were you, Karen?"
"Hiding under a desk from probably Russian sex traffickers…for five hours."
He blinked at her slowly a few times, taking that answer in, probably questioning her sanity a bit. Sinking down onto the arm of her couch, he shook his head and peeked a grin up at her, "I can't believe I got stood up for that."
Frank's fingers threading through her hair and Foggy smiling at her, knowing she needed a friend in that moment more than he needed answers to his questions, she couldn't keep a relieved laugh from bursting out of her throat.
"I didn't stand you up, Foggy. I'm just…really late."
The man shrugged, "Okay. I'm a lawyer. I'm willing to buy that. I'm hungry. How about you, beautiful Karen?"
Pushing down the pain in her legs and the horrible things that were sitting on her phone, evidence of just how terrible human beings could be to one another, she smiled, "Starving."
It also suddenly occurred to her that she really, really needed to pee.
Foggy slipped back down to the floor and grabbed his coat off the back of the couch, smirking comfortingly up at her again. "I think I can manage grabbing something. There anything you don't eat, Tall, Dark, and Terrifying?"
She giggled slightly at Frank's new name and the way he raised his eyebrows at it. Foggy just stared guilelessly back at him, his perfected lawyer's gaze in his eyes. Finally, Frank shook his head and replied with a small smirk, "Nope. I eat anything."
Just as Foggy was pulling the door closed, she called after him, "If you get Mexican, just get him tacos."
"What other Mexican is there?" Foggy asked, looking over his shoulder in confusion. She rolled her eyes.
When Foggy was gone, Frank nodded, kissing the side of her head and murmuring, "I know I've said this before, but I like him."
She laughed lightly before pushing herself to her feet and immediately wincing as her knees cracked. Letting her hair pull away from his fingers, he didn't say anything more as she stiffly walked to the bathroom. When she turned the faucet on to wash her hands, he appeared in the doorway with her favorite pajama shirt—which happened to be one of his he was never getting back—and the leggings she slept in. She could've sobbed in gratitude.
Grabbing the front of his shirt, she pulled him to her and properly kissed him for the first time since she'd gotten back, holding on until his tongue was moving against hers and his fingers had retaken their place in her hair. She loved how he did that, held her to him, cradled the back of her head like she was something precious. It was one of the girliest ideas she'd ever gotten into her head, but it either made her heart speed up to excited or calm back down from panicked every time he did it.
His forehead was resting against hers when he asked in a whisper, "You found something?"
Thinking back to the pictures, she nodded shakily. "Oh yeah."
"Bad?"
Taking the clothes from his hand, she pointed to her phone in answer. Pressing a kiss to her forehead, he stepped over to it and unlocked it as she slipped out of her work clothes and into her pajamas. She could see the exact moment he got to her pictures. Frank Castle was the Punisher and the Punisher was Frank Castle. They were the same man, but she knew the look he got in his eyes when he wanted to take his rifle and use it on someone terrible.
Voice still shakier than she'd like, she said when she was completely changed and he was still flipping through what she'd found, "I'm going to find them and I'm going to stop them."
She wasn't entirely sure if she was saying it to reassure herself or to tell him that she was going to punish them in her own way, but he looked up at her words. He didn't have any looks anymore that she didn't understand and she knew the one staring back at her. He believed her. It didn't matter that she was just a blonde journalist, a woman who was about the exact opposite of intimidating, and whatever else made people look at her and dismiss her. That wasn't what he saw and so when she said she was going to take down a group of sex traffickers making life absolute hell for a bunch of teenage girls, he believed her.
"Never doubted you for a second, ma'am." She smiled at that and was about to speak when he added, "Not so sure about your shoes, though. How did five hours under a desk in those treat you?"
Karen rolled her eyes, "You hush, Marine."
He'd just reached out to grab her hip and pull her to him when Foggy knocked loudly on the door, "I am announcing myself so I do not see anything that might blind me. I would not be as self-sufficient as Matt."
Laughing as Frank huffed slightly in annoyance, she went and opened the door.
Her apartment wasn't really set up to allow for three people to sit and eat comfortably, but after pushing the couch back, the Chinese take-out was spread out on the coffee table and they each had spots on the floor. Karen was technically in Frank's lap, but Foggy still called it being authentic.
"So," Foggy began as he handed out chopsticks and passed around the beer he'd also brought, "sex traffickers. I probably don't want to know before I eat, right?"
Expertly popping the top off the bottle, Karen shook her head after taking a long swig, "You really don't."
"Well, if you need any expert legal opinion," with a smile, he gestured to himself with both hands, beer in one and chopsticks in the other. She laughed just as he'd intended, Frank smirking with his arm around her waist, and all things considered, she couldn't think of a better way the overall terrible day could've ended.
Then Foggy pulled out a final carton out of the large paper sack. "And these are for you, beautiful Karen."
She peeked inside and her smile widened, "Foggy! You got me the sugar donut dumpling things! I could kiss you."
Mouth half-full of fried rice, he vehemently shook his head. "No! No. Don't say those things. Remember in the hospital when you said I wasn't supposed to mention you to Marci because you were injured and not fully capable of defending yourself? Well, I'm at 100% right now and there's no way in hell I'm picking a fight with your boyfriend."
She laughed against the couple of dumplings she'd already shoved into her mouth. Smirk clear in his voice, Frank repeated from over her shoulder, "I like him. Nelson, I like you."
Foggy didn't look completely sure how he felt about that, but he merely shrugged after spooning some sesame chicken onto his plate, "Now I just have to win the dog over."
As if summoned, Bully trotted over and started begging for food.
Karen jolted awake to the sound of seven gunshots and the picture of James Wesley's dying face behind her eyes late that night. She could feel the phantom pain of the recoil in her wrists and the metallic tang of blood that wasn't real filled her nose.
Breathing heavily, she ran a shaking hand through her hair before reaching the other out to turn on her lamp. Though it didn't work and she knew it wouldn't, she put a hand over her mouth to try and smother her sobs.
A heavy, impossibly warm arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her onto her side. "Hey. Hey, it's okay. You're okay."
She sobbed harder at feeling Frank's voice through her bare back but she clung to his arm, hugging it to her chest as he pressed a kiss to the side of her head. His knuckles were a bit ragged, scabs covering the skin, but the rough texture was strangely comforting. She'd never held his hand when his knuckles had been unharmed. It was a part of him and at the moment he was holding her together.
"You're okay."
She'd never had nightmares before she'd told him about Wesley. She'd think about what she'd done late at night, drink more whisky than was healthy and be bleary-eyed the next morning, but she'd never once dreamed about those five minutes, about her dark and terrible. Now he, Connor O'Brien, and the man whose name she'd never cared to learn haunted her sleep at least once a week, oftentimes twice. The day she'd had without a doubt had something to do with them showing up tonight, but it was by no means her first rodeo.
She hated it. With everything she had, she hated it. Just as she'd stepped away from hating herself quite so much, something new had to pop up and shove it back in her face. Frank had said with a shrug and kiss to her forehead after he witnessed one for the first time that she'd had it buried for a long time. She hadn't let it get out. The parts of her that didn't listen to reason were flushing out the bad feelings they'd been forced to live with for over a year the only way they could once she got it out, let the secret go.
She just had to let her psyche bleed all the bad out, like lancing a boil. The description had been disgusting but apt.
Wishing she could just curl up and disappear into his chest, she rolled over and pressed her face into him when he continued whispering, "Shh, you're okay."
Her breathing wavered slowly back to normal, helped by his fingers running up and down her back. When she could tell the worst of it had passed, she let out a deep groan. He wrapped his other arm around her and kissed the top of her head, "I know it's shit. I'm sorry."
"I want it to go away," she moaned, allowing herself to wallow just a bit. "Frank, when will it go away?"
Not stilling his fingers, he shrugged and she knew that he was going to let her have her moment of misery, "When you're ready."
"I'm ready. I promise I'm ready."
Letting out a deep breath, she let go of her irritation as best she could. She could be angry at her subconscious for needing more time to process all she wanted. That wasn't going to make it heal any faster. She just had to fight her way through it. Being skin against skin with Frank afterward, soaking in all his warmth and concern, feeling so undeniably safe, all that sure as hell helped. She was so absurdly grateful that he basically lived with her now.
She knew that sometimes he wasn't sure how to handle it, doing all of it again, sort of dating and her giving him a drawer and waking up next to her. He had trouble reconciling the man that the death of his family had created and the one who held her and quieted her as she sobbed because he loved her. She hadn't quite figured out how to tell him that they were the same one, he'd just been complicated, complex, he'd evolved as he went. But she never saw any of those thoughts bothering him when she needed him to hold her together and she was grateful for that.
He chuckled gently and she smiled at the feel of it, running her fingers across his stomach because she just liked physically knowing he was there. "Apparently you're not, sweetheart."
Pulling the blanket he usually stole the majority of up over her chest, she looked up at him from where she was resting on his arm. She had no idea how it didn't go to sleep with how often she woke up lying on it, but he hadn't complained. After that awkward little stumbling their first night when she thought he'd wanted distance and she'd been wonderfully wrong, he'd done nothing but reach out and pull her closer.
Out of genuine curiosity a few moments later, she asked with a slight frown, "Why do you think it doesn't bother you? I know it's kind of different, but…"
"I'm a soldier. Killing is what we do and I'm good at it. Always was." He shifted until they were eyelevel, his bruised nose almost touching hers. Fingers absently running through her hair, he continued, "They can say whatever the fuck they want in the recruitment ads about protecting and helping and whatever else, but when it gets down to it, soldiers are there to kill people. I was a sniper. Putting bullets in people was literally my whole job."
"Does it feel different now?"
Karen never really asked him about it and never when it wasn't in the middle of the night and the reality of his self-imposed job felt far away, but he always answered when she did. She wondered if he didn't like explaining himself sometimes, talking about it to someone he knew wasn't going to run away. Floating in the grey, she had yet to stamp out how she felt about it into words, something with labels and black and white. If she'd realized anything, it was that she didn't need it set down like that to love him.
The feel of his voice through her chest brought her out of her thoughts. "Yeah, I don't wonder why about the ones now."
A small laugh broke out of her at that, because it was just such a Frank thing to say, so matter-of-fact and practical. He quirked a smile back at her and the darkest bits of the conversation were over.
Rolling onto his back, still playing with her hair, he said with a smile a moment later, "Once Lisa was in charge of the classroom goldfish for the weekend and the thing died Saturday night while she was asleep. She ran down the stairs the next morning to feed it and the damn thing was just floating belly up. She cried every time she saw a goldfish for the next six months. She wouldn't even eat fish sticks…and she'd lived off fish sticks. Frank Jr. was all about hot dogs and chicken nuggets, but with her it was fish sticks."
She smiled as she slid an arm over his chest. It was so different, to hear him tell her stories about his family not just because he was sad or missing them, but because he wanted to share them with her. "I'll bet school lunches during Lent were fun."
"Shit, she used it as the perfect opportunity to get Lunchables every Friday for over a month."
She gasped and pushed herself up to look at him better, "The pizza kind? The pizza kind are the best."
Shaking his head slightly, Frank just grinned up at the ceiling, "Why do you know that?"
"Because at Union Allied, Lunchables were my Friday lunch treat. After a long week of being called Kathy and told to get coffee, I deserved that juice pouch."
For a long moment he just stared at her, smirk on his face and hand tangled up in her hair. She'd gotten so used to not understanding what was staring back at her and she'd liked it anyway, looking forward to the zing it sent to her toes and having the moment to just stare back. She couldn't even describe how infinitely better it was now that she knew what it meant. From the first moment she'd mentioned his family in that hospital room on the wrong side of the red tape, she could feel deep in her stomach just how much he loved them. It did something to her when she felt the same thing but about her, something wonderful and terrifying and…irrevocable.
He squeezed her to him and whispered when her face was close, "You're fucking adorable."
Smiling, she leaned down to kiss him. Just as he'd wrapped his arms around her waist and she could taste the black coffee and toothpaste on his tongue, a loud clatter came from the other end of the apartment.
Looking particularly pleased with himself, Bully panted at them beside his overturned water bowl.
Karen snapped her eyes back to his and immediately said, "He's your dog."
"Not tonight, he's not," he laughed, shoving her toward the edge of the bed. She tried to shove back but he was too heavy. As she opened her mouth to argue, he added, "I lived through two infants and about eighteen total months of sleep deprivation. You're not winning this one, sweetheart."
"Fine," she huffed, gently smacking his side before slipping out of bed. Halfway to the kitchen, she threw over her shoulder, "Stop staring at my ass."
"Not a chance, ma'am."
Yawning, she was refilling the bowl after rubbing Bully's head when Frank's warmth appeared beside her and grabbed the paper towels to start mopping up the spilled water. She smiled before wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades.
A/N: Thanks so much for reading, review if the desire takes you, and I hope you enjoyed. :)