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She’d never make a good lawyer. She knew this.
Matt knew it, too.
It annoyed her, the pretense. What he said was have you ever considered law school? but what he meant was, you’re just as good as Foggy and I.
She didn’t need him to say it. She already knew it.
Maybe that’s why the conversation went off-track. She wanted him to know, the way she knew. She would never make a good lawyer because she didn’t care so much about the how of it as the why of it. Matt made sense as a lawyer. Forever the Catholic. Constantly trying to figure out the right from the wrong. Karen knew there were no rights and wrongs after the fact: only what had happened and what hadn’t, the storm and its aftermath.
Justice was an illusion. A comforting illusion, for people like Matt, who could believe.
Karen couldn’t.
It surprised her, how easy it was to buy a gun. She’d expected some sexist bullshit at the very least, armored herself against the sneers from some guy behind a counter, heard the voice in her head, a tobacco drawl, now what would a pretty thing like you want with a gun?
But there were no condescending questions. Barely any questions at all. She’d walked in with her carefully researched request and the guy had smiled, held up his hand, and gone fetch.
It felt good, for once. To get exactly what she’d asked for.
It didn’t feel like fate when the gun fit in her hand. The grip aligning wasn’t destiny. The weight on her palm didn’t feel like something to anchor her to the world. She didn’t go in for that sort of thing, anyway. Best to leave prophecies and portents to the experts, who advertised their palm readings on the corner of 9th and 42nd.
Still, when she slid the chamber into place and heard the click, she thought for a moment she heard her future.
“People that get inside you and…and…and tear you apart, and make you feel like you’re never going to recover…”
Karen sat across from him and listened to the sound of his voice like rolling thunder and wondered if he heard his words. Heard the person they described. Wondered if he’d ever taken a second to realize that he’d never met a person he hadn’t torn apart from the inside. Wondered if he realized that none of the people he’d placed a bullet in would ever recover from Frank Castle.
She didn’t wonder if she would ever recover. She already knew.
She wouldn’t.
Matt holds the daredevil mask in his hand and something inside her falls into place at the same second something breaks irreversibly, beyond repair.
She never expected this.
She feels like she always knew.
A thousand thoughts run through her head but she says nothing. The silence stretches. The anger takes over.
“You…” her voice is a whisper.
“All this time…you…” she hisses the last word and suddenly her voice isn’t a whisper it’s a knife.
Matt isn’t wearing his armor now. He’s finally let her in, showed her all his soft, vulnerable parts the way she’s always begged him too. She’s glad.
All she wants now is to wound.
“Yes. It’s me. I’m…well, you know,” his voice gets that affable tone, the humble, self-effacing, gee-aren’t-I-just-a-sweet-little-catholic-boy accent, and she wants to throw something at him.
“You…” her voice doesn’t sound like her own. “After everything. After Frank…” her voice breaks.
“Frank?” Matt sounds incredulous, “Frank Castle? I just told you I’m daredevil and you want to talk about an old case…”
He laughs and it sets something in Karen on fire.
“HE IS NOT JUST SOME CASE”
“Karen—”
“No,” she can’t handle this. She grabs blindly, for her bag, her sweater, “Just…no, Matt.”
The door slamming shut echoes behind her.
When he finally shows up at her door, the blood on his collar looks like lipstick.
She has to remind herself that it’s not the same. It might be a woman who left that stain, but it’s not the other woman. He’s not Matt. There are no mystery girls in his bed with lipstick the color of blood.
Frank Castle has no secrets.
It’s a cliché, isn’t it? To come home with that bright red spot on the inside of the fabric. Right next to the most sensitive spot on your neck, the pulse point, where the skin is softest…
“I, uh…I” His rough and tumble voice comes pouring out and she stares at that spot on his collar and she doesn’t wonder what she should do. She knows what she should do.
He asks her to let him stay.
She shouldn’t...
But she does.