Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: You know you've got problems when Frank Castle is lecturing you on the importance of friendship.
Or: how Matt's broken leg becomes the least of his concerns.
Warnings: Spoilers for season 2.
Author's Notes: These characters…these characters are so much fun to write. And by that I mean they are deep, complicated, rich, and I hope like hell I have done them justice here.
I needed to spend one chapter with Frank and Karen before catching up with Matt again in the next chapter. Comfort is difficult to provide for a guy like Frank, but I tried to write a couple of those moments here. More is in the works for upcoming chapters too.
On that note, I have slowly come to realize that one of the drawbacks to limited third-person narration is that it's limited, especially where Frank is concerned. He's not so interested in reading Karen's emotions, so I struggled with fleshing out her reactions with respect to Frank's perception.
Readers, you lovely folks, thank you for your time and support. I love hearing your speculation and insights. I hope you continue to enjoy this fic! Cheers!
"The devil's gonna make up my dying bed."
~Rag'n'Bone Man, "Die Easy"
Chapter Twenty-Four
The door to her building has been upgraded. When Frank was last here, he picked the lock easily. He had full access to the building, catching those cops at her door completely off-guard. He doesn't bother trying it today. The landlord must have put in a call to national security for that door and deadbolt. Or maybe a certain reporter argued on behalf of the tenants after her apartment got shot at, and her lawyer-friend backed her up.
Good for her; bad for Frank. He takes cover where the steps to her apartment meet the wall and waits.
Eventually, the front door opens. Plain, dumb luck has her heels snapping against the concrete. She's down the stairs and hailing a cab before the door slams behind her.
Frank inches out from his hiding spot just as a cab pulls up. "Karen."
She starts, turns; one hand flies into her purse while the other slams against the cab, fumbling for the door handle. That look in her eyes catches Frank off-guard. Always has. Fear isn't usually an advantage in a fight, but for Karen, fear is strength. Fear is power. Once her hands are shaking and her lips are trembling, adrenaline lights a spark in her eyes and there is literally nothing she won't do. Frank saw it that night he came to her apartment, when she pointed that gun in his face. She would have killed him. She would have pulled that God damn trigger, he didn't do what she said. For Karen, being afraid is the hardest part. Everything that comes after is easy by comparison.
He raises his hands again today for her to see, but Karen doesn't stay afraid for very long. She stops reaching for her purse, knocking on the roof of the cab instead before stepping away from it. Frank hides his face as the vehicle pulls away.
The worry has returned when he looks back. She's finally taking it in: his bloody knuckles, his swollen face, his solitude. "Where's Matt?" she asks.
Frank keeps his hands raised despite the blood oozing from under his shoulder blades. The movement has split open what few scabs have managed to form on his back. His vision shimmies, shakes, and Karen seems to glow. "We go inside first?" He might fall over.
Karen throws her hands up and shoots her gaze away from him, towards the ground, eyes blazing with fresh rage.
"He's alive," Frank offers.
"For now?" she counters, glaring at him, her lips pursing into a dagger. She softens upon looking at his bloody, broken face again. "God damn it, Frank…"
Frank doesn't want to do this on the street. The conversation or the passing out. "He's fine. Physically, he's fine, and he's going to stay that way."
Karen scowls at him. Her head shakes in a series of tiny no-s. This is Murdock they're talking about, and Frank's the fucking Punisher. Karen rightfully throws her hands up again in furious surrender before marching back up her steps, discretely gesturing for him to follow.
The holes in her drywall have been patched and repainted; her windows have new panes. Karen locks the door behind him. Frank drops the duffel in the corner. His hand then falls against the wall and stays there, collecting his weight.
He pushes himself upright and forces himself to let go, to stay the course. Concussion, blood loss, bruises; aches and pains and exertion: Frank knows these things. He trusts these things. "Place looks good," he says as if his head isn't a swollen meat sack. As if they're two old friends.
Karen moves towards her couch to drop off her bag, kicking off her heels along the way. "Not the first time I've needed my drywall patched," she replies in a stern tone. Frank wonders if this isn't the first time someone shot up her place, too. Her voice goes soft suddenly. Rage quits simmering and takes up residence in her tone like cold iron, "Jesus, Frank, your back-"
He checks the carpet where he's stepped, worried he's left a trail of blood. He hasn't. She's finally gotten a look at his wound, is all. Karen takes him by the shoulder. She pushes him gently to get a better look at the cut. Her hand falls away to cover her mouth. The shock drains the colour from her face.
Frank stops her from pointing out the obvious bad news. "Needs stitches. You got sewing thread? A needle?"
"A medical licence?" Karen adds forcefully.
"Nah. Just pop a couple knots in there. Keep me from bleeding to death."
She scoffs, knowing as well as he does that bleeding to death isn't the worst of their problems. Still, she moves to the writing desk nearby, digging through one of the drawers until she retrieves an old cookie tin. Maria had one like that. Didn't even sew, but she had it filled with needles, bobbins, ribbons, and small scraps of fabric. Lisa liked to play with it; she'd sew badges she'd give away to friends and family. Made him one that looked like Cap's shield when he shipped out. Damn thing faded in the desert sun and eventually unwound, but the idea of it is so clear in his head that Frank sees stars on the edge of his vision.
"What the hell happened?"
He blinks. Karen digs through the tin's contents. She finds a wheel of needles and a thimble and several plastic-wrapped collections of threads. Complimentary personal sewing kits from motels. "On the phone last night, you said Matt was sleeping. You made it sound like everything was fine."
"Lot's happened since then," is all Frank can say.
"Fisk?"
Frank hums, shakes his head. His mouth tastes cottony and feels that way too. She's going to have to hurry. No universal donor is coming to save him.
He waits for Karen to open the bathroom door before stepping inside. There's barely enough room for one of them, let alone two, but neither are about to let Punisher's blood stain the carpet. Frank's already taken a big risk by coming here. He can't go leaving a trace.
Karen puts the needle and thread on the counter of her sink. She sidesteps out of the tiny space. "I need to call my editor," she says, "but then you are telling me everything."
Everything. Frank wonders where the hell to start. How he lied about the infection, why he lied about the infection; that there's a secret organization that call themselves the Hand who can bring people back from the dead? He lets the chaos in his head settle to a productive din, breathing through the rolling barrage of thoughts - got you, Red and tomorrow. Tomorrow, baby. I'll read it tomorrow. Daddy's tired…
STOP.
Frank follows Karen's voice away from Lisa's childish pleading. She speaks quietly with her editor in the other room, feigning illness: "Sorry, Ellison, that I didn't call sooner. Thought I could work through this." The lie prompts Frank to make himself useful. He pulls off his ruined t-shirt, swallowing a grunt as his shoulders pull against the open slash on his back.
Shit, he looks bad. Fucking ninjas did a number on him. The katana left a clean slice through his skin, a pair of thin, curling lips under his shoulder blades. Too shallow to reach his spine but deep enough to make him think twice about moving much. The rest of him is a smattering of bumps and bruises. A few cuts where the skin snapped from their laying into him. No broken ribs, but there's a growing ache when he breathes from swelling. This is topped off by his face, which is a disaster. Two shiners in the making, a cut on his left cheek, split lips, and a broken nose, which Frank waits to straighten until Karen is off the phone.
There's a series of tiny cracks that build into an explosion. Frank growls, huffing through the pain like a bull about to charge. Blood drains over his lips into the sink below him. He gets the water running, washing the traces of it away before splashing some on his face and scalp.
He opens his eyes and Karen's there, offering him a towel. Frank takes it, scrubbing at his face, neck, and head. She grabs a first aid kid from under the sink and hands him other things: gauze and steri-strips. As he finishes with his face, "What happened?"
"What do you know, about Murdock?" he doesn't want to waste time on an explanation about Elektra if Karen already knows. "He tell you about what he does, how he does what he does?"
She shifts from foot to foot, her eyes widening briefly from just how much she knows. "He said he told me everything."
That's helpful. Or not. Red doesn't know the definition of forthcoming. "He tell you about his girl?"
"Elektra?" Frank gives her slight nod between bracing the swollen arch of his nose with steri-strips. Karen toes the floor of her bathroom, thinking. "Yeah, he said they…met in college and dated for a while. He…" her voice goes quiet. Frank glances at her, worried it's his hearing that's the problem. Turns out it's Karen struggling to find words. "He told me it was over. That it had been over for a long time. She...Elektra…had been trained by the same man who trained Matt, apparently, but she wasn't…she wasn't like him."
Kid has a knack for fucking understatement. Frank lets her continue, splashing water in his mouth to wash the bloody mucous out of his throat. "She was killed in a fight with a-" Karen sighs, searching for words again, but this time they're words she can believe instead of words she can accept, "-a secret, ancient ninja army. One that Matt admitted he didn't fully understand."
Frank stops pulling punches. "They took him."
Karen pauses, trying to catch up with the conversation. "The secret, ancient ninja army?"
"And his girlfriend," he adds.
"The one who was killed?"
"Yeah."
"That's not-"
"Shouldn't be, no," Frank pushes past her to take a seat on the edge of the tub. He lets his slashed back drain into the basin behind him. Karen waits for further explanation. Frank sighs, recognizing the interrogating tactic even if he can't appreciate it. "When you called last night, he was sick. Leg got infected." He can see her shock and fury in his peripheral vision, the way her head twists atop her neck to survey the magnitude of what he's said. Frank keeps talking, tries to make the pile of shit he's in seems smaller. "Doc couldn't get his temp down. She sold us out. Called in this ninja army and Murdock's undead girl." He gets to the conclusion. "They took him."
Karen draws a breath. One of her bony hands balls into a fist, and Frank readies himself to catch the swing she's about to take at him before it lands. Except that she's not about to take a swing. She's just pissed, chest heaving with rage.
He nods, taking it, "I'm gonna get him back."
Karen storms out of the bathroom.
Glass clinking and a cupboard door slamming is his only response. Frank drops his hand into his hand, letting the skin stretch apart further on his back. The sting blasts through the murkiness of shock as it settles in, lets him face Karen head-on when she stomps back into the bathroom. She has a bottle of whiskey in hand. Cheap shit. The top's off and on the counter in a second.
Frank shakes his head, relishing the burn from his back. Pain is a better anesthetic than liquor. "I don't need that," he informs her.
"Not for you, asshole," Karen replies. She toasts him before taking a long pull straight from the bottle. She slams the bottle down, grabs her needle and thread, and steps into the tub. Fear is the hardest part; it's all downhill from there for Karen. "You are lucky I was a member of 4H in high school. Now keep talking."
There's not much more to tell, but Frank stops looking at their conversation as a fact-finding mission on Karen's part and more of a staying-conscious mission on him. No, he doesn't know how the ninjas brought her back. Yes, it was definitely her; Murdock even confirmed it. No, she hasn't killed him; she wants him alive.
The conversation ends when the pain finally catches up with Frank. When he can't deny that there is a needle diving in and out of an open flap in his skin, that Karen's blood-slickened fingers slip and pinch and burn. He shifts forward, propped on his arms propped on his knees. Walls are melting, floor's bobbing; his fingers have gone cold. Lisa's voice is back in his head, and he can't understand what she's saying, but the tiredness is back. His bones ache with an exhaustion he hasn't felt since before the carousel.
"What do you think she wants from him?" Karen asks.
Frank has to remember what 'him' they're talking about first. He ends up answering to avoid the phantom rumble in his head of tomorrow, baby girl. I'll read to you tomorrow. "Hell if I know." He doesn't really care much about finding an answer. Red's Girl obviously isn't in for killing the kid, but that doesn't mean shit. This is a broad who plays the long and the short in equal measure, who takes her secrets to the grave. They'll know what she has planned when her plot is underway.
Sensing the conversation is over, Karen grabs the whiskey again. She pours it over her handiwork, and the sting of the whiskey helps drown out the sound of Lisa's laughter as the carousel takes her around again.
The subsequent silence swells with Karen. Her uncertainty meets his apathy to the point where he's surprised that she speaks first. "Thank you," she smooths a hand over his upper back. Her fingertips peel a fresh cut over his shoulders. "Thank you for staying with him, Frank."
He gets his ass up and away from her. The dizziness, the chills: they hit Frank like old friends, spurring him forwards. He scrubs his head, grabs his shirt off the floor, every intention of putting it back on. Getting back out there. "My car's in the East Side," he tells her. "You give me a ride, you never have to see me again. I'll get Murdock back and get gone."
Karen rolls her eyes. She throws on the tap in the tub, washing her hands and feet and the porcelain. His blood turns the water baby pink.
Frank speaks up; she probably didn't hear him. "I said-"
She shuts the taps off. "I heard you, Frank."
"Let's go, then."
Karen towels off her hands and feet. "You said he was sick, right?"
"Getting better by the hour," Frank says, hating that it's a threat as much as reassurance now. The better Red gets, the more likely his girl is to take him away.
Karen makes a good point nonetheless. "She isn't going to risk taking him out of the city, then. She's going to want access to doctors and medical supplies, things that leave a trail. One we can follow without rushing off into broad daylight when there's a very large reward for one of our arrests. When you just had your ass handed to you in a fight."
"Trail's getting cold," Frank reminds her, but the line sounds hollow, tinny. The acoustics of the bathroom mess with his hearing or maybe it's those injuries, the ones Karen keeps talking about, catching up with him.
"The trail's already cold, but it's not going anywhere. And you're in no position to start following it." He feels the blood-crusted t-shirt pulling against his hand. Karen's wrapped her fingers around it. She isn't letting go. "Besides, I can call around while you're washing up."
Frank shakes his head. "No. No. You see this? You see what they do?" he makes sure she's looking him straight in his mangled face. His ballooning nose and racoon eyes, split cheek and lips: not a look he wants for her. "This ain't the half of it. I did not come here to drag you into this."
A smile – exasperated with disbelief – appears on her face, "You have used me as bait!"
Jesus, they can't do this now. "Still sore about that, huh?"
"You put me right in harm's way! So don't you dare tell me to stay out of this."
Frank shakes his head. "You do not get involved in this."
She yanks the bloody t-shirt out of his hand and acts like she hasn't heard him. "Wash up and get some rest."
The intensity in her eyes, the way she stands her fucking ground, it's so much like Maria – like Lisa – that Frank gets lost. He has one yelling and the other screaming, doors are slamming. Neither one for starting fights but, boy, could they end them with sound and fury and gunfire's blazing, and they're in pieces. They used to dig in their heels till the earth hit their knees when it came to a fight, but suddenly they're in pieces on the ground.
He blinks and finds Karen a step further away from him, drawing breaths like she's only just realized who she's been challenging, who she's convincing to stay. Frank takes a step back, too. He brushes his newly stitched back against the bathroom door for clarity. "You don't get near 'em. You don't ask questions, you don't go snooping."
"Yes, fine," Karen declares. Of course she understands him. In the most literal possible terms.
"I mean it," he growls at her. "You don't do a damn thing."
"Fine," she snaps, storming out of the bathroom. She returns with a fresh towel. His blood-sullied t-shirt is gone. "Wash up."
Frank accepts the towel mutely. There's a word for this. He's said it before, heard it said a thousand times since the kid moved in, but it's impossible when she's looking at him. Big doe eyes and platinum blonde hair; freshly plastered drywall looming behind her. He pushes the memory of bullets chewing up her apartment, his hand in her hair, her frantic gasps of breath on his neck, his racing thoughts of not this time. Not this time, you fucking bastards. He pushes all that shit back where it belongs only to have it meld with newer memories he can't shake so easily. Red's sweaty fists wrapped in his bloody tee, staggered breathing, and a stricken, desperate plea to save Foggy.
Christ, it's like the kid goes looking for falling ceilings to push people out from under.
"Thanks," he mutters, needing to close the damn door to give them some distance. His gratitude isn't simply for the towel.
Karen nods in response. She shifts uncomfortably and seems to want the door closed as badly as he does. "I'm putting on some coffee. You want some?"
Frank sighs. Best news he's heard all day. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
The feeling is similar to the one at the hospital after the Irish: this muggy, druggy haze. Storm clouds and fog. World's gone soft, warm, and dark. Stuffy. He can't breathe through his nose. Frank drags his face across the surface of a pillow; he waits for a response and receives none. Whoever he hears out there isn't watching. They're moving across a tiled floor. Digging through drawers. Opening and closing a heavy metal door.
He used to wake up like this. When he came back. Jet-lagged and tired, kids running him wild, he'd collapse into bed for most of the afternoon and wake up to Maria in the kitchen. Dinner in the oven. But the house is on fire. He made it that way. And Maria – well, whatever's left of her – is six feet underground.
Frank rises off the pillow in one swift motion. Pain sparks through him, breaking through the haze. He reaches for his gun but can't find it. Ends up punching at the night table and nearly takes out the glass of water there. He's already got the target in his sights across the room, because that's how he operates. That's how his eyes work. He aims, he fires, then he finds something else to shoot at.
Jesus, it's a good thing he doesn't have a gun. It's Karen he's staring down. Standing in her kitchen wearing oven mitts and a shocked expression. He's lying on her bed. Shit, why is he in bed? He grips a fistful of the blankets bunched around his waist. "How long I been out?"
Karen rips off her oven mitts, "Couple hours." Frank comes to vaguely recall his lengthy shower followed by a string of coffees and some plain toast, most of which they consumed in silence. At some point, she started pouring through files on the couch. Frank took the bed to catch a few winks.
She points to a steaming casserole dish on the stovetop. "I made dinner."
Frank isn't sure. The sun's down. He should be heading out. Can't exactly do that with what little clothing he's wearing though. The t-shirt is long gone. Pants, too. He traded those for a bedsheet. Karen took them and his socks for the laundry. He's about to ask – he has to ask. He doesn't want to, but there are gaps. There are always gaps in his memory when it comes to the little shit. But he never has to pose the awkward question, because he spots a pile of clothing folded at the foot of the bed.
"I ran out while you were sleeping. Picked you up some things. I think it's the right size."
The response pours out of him automatically: "You shouldn't've done that." Risking enough by harbouring him, and now she's made a supply run: single woman picking up men's clothing in his size. Frank rises with the sheet wrapped around his waist. There's streaks of blood on it and her pillowcase. Shit. More trace. "Shouldn't've have done that."
"Cops would have been at my front door by now."
"And these ninjas would have been at your throat." He grabs the stack of clothing, searching for cover. Her apartment has none. The whole thing is open concept. He can see her, she can see him. Bathroom seems so damn far away, one long walk past her, through her space. But if he paces at the foot of the bed one more time without saying something, without doing something, the ninjas had better get their asses in here. He can't take this shit.
Karen seems to feel the same. She finally realizes this is happening, straightens, nods twice, and then turns around to face her stove.
Frank makes quick work of the process. Tears into the new package of briefs and socks; unfolds the pants – his, cleaned and dried; rips the tags off the new t-shirt and hoodie. Pulls everything on. When he's done, he walks over to the edge of the kitchen. Karen turns back around.
"Everything…uh…" she gives him a once over. "Everything fit okay?"
She can see that it does, but Frank doesn't blame her for asking. The obvious question spares them the other concerns. "Yes, ma'am."
Karen nods, backing up. "Uh, it's chicken casserole. Nothing…nothing fancy, but…you should eat something. You've only had toast and coffee since this morning."
Frank nods in return. Sure, food. Then get the car. Then get out of her life.
Then get Red.
He ought to have known something was up. Karen had to clear papers and folders off her couch so they could sit down to eat. She moved a legal notepad with coiling script from her coffee table. An open laptop with several tabs open sat on the kitchen counter. She turned the sound off, but e-mails continue arriving. Frank inhales his meal the second it's offered, but she sits there five solid minutes during dinner and takes to staring at the surface of her coffee table with a guarded, guilty look in her bright blue eyes.
Frank rolls his eyes. She may as well have it tattooed on her forehead.
"I know you told me not to look into this-"
He puts his fork down. Let's the clatter of silverware on the table end that thought right there. "I meant it."
"She paid us," Karen insists. She grabs one of the folders from where she stacked them and opens it to a page of numbers. Transactions. The last days of Nelson and Murdock, attorneys at law. Frank pulls the folder towards him, eyeing the single highlighted entry. A massive credit to the account made shortly before his trial.
"Elektra hired Nelson and Murdock. She wanted legal representation, Matt told me, while she investigated some of her father's old business dealings."
Frank considers this. He eyes the transaction more closely. "Orpheus International. Probably a shell corporation." Red's Girl doesn't strike him as a CEO in more than name only.
"Very much a shell corporation. One that was acquired shortly after Elektra's death by the Roxxon Corporation along with several of her other financial assets." She moves to flip over the financial record and must notice the look on his face. She thinks it's about the Roxxon connection, but Frank seethes because she's digging herself into this shit with Red.
Karen doesn't consider that. She's got eyes for the hunt and only the hunt. "I know, I know! It sounds like a stretch. But Roxxon has always had shady dealings. It's entirely possible they're affiliated with something like the Hand. And...and…" She flips the first record over to reveal a stack of papers, handwritten notes mainly, along with map of Manhattan she's started to mark with x-s and circles. "Roxxon owns a slew of property holdings throughout New York, but particularly in the Upper West Side. Business spaces, residential units-"
"Private medical facilities," Frank adds, regarding her steadily. He focuses on the pain in his back, the slow and steady burn, instead of the pressure exploding through his chest from the sight of her.
Karen folds her hands over her knees, preparing for her closing argument. "Look, maybe I can't…fight ninjas or hear heartbeats or put on a mask to fight crime, but you don't need that. We need to find Matt, and I am very, very good at finding things. Let me…let me do this."
Frank sees the trap coming a mile away. He continues eating. "You're not really asking me," he scoffs.
Beside him, Karen finally picks up her plate and starts on her dinner. "No."
Happy reading!