Archive of Our Own

When Karen gets up, she steadfastly focuses on readying for work and ignores Frank. It would be strange of her to call in sick today of all days, and she doesn’t want to, anyway. Not with this oppressive ball of emotions hanging between them, too twisted up and heavy and undefinable. 

She needs a reprieve.

He props himself up against the headboard at some point while she’s in the shower. He looks even worse underneath the bright sunlight streaming through the windows, more of his body covered in bruises and bandaging than not. 

She wishes he would try to get more sleep, but he runs on his own independent determination, same as her, so she simply changes the gauze that has bled through slightly across his stomach and arm before moving on through her morning routine. 

He doesn’t say much, but he watches her. She keeps an eye on him, too, sees the way his gaze also flits to the windows and door often. 

Too often.

Pouring an extra cup of coffee, she intends to set it on the nightstand, but he’s stretching out his hand when she’s a few feet away. She passes it with a brush of their fingers and ignores how her throat constricts just a little bit.

Karen fixes him with a stern gaze. “Promise me, Frank, that you aren’t going to try hobbling out of here before I get back…..It’s not like you can to make it very far on that leg, to begin with, but I wouldn’t put it past you to try.”

He breathes out what could be a laugh on a better day, but his eyes stay pointed towards the windows, tongue rolling in his mouth as if he’s warring with himself over what to say.

“I mean it.”

Frank nods slow. “You have my word.”

She lingers just a couple moments longer.

“Where have you been?”

“Home,” she says honestly, passing Ellison and avoiding his gaze as she pokes at the donuts on the counter that someone brought in. There’s only the messy jelly-filled ones left; not her favorite.

He looks like he’s preparing to weather a storm when he crosses his arms. “Your story’s getting scrapped.”

That raises her head. “What?”

“It’s not personal, it’s The Punisher,” he explains. There’s hint of a grimace behind his beard. “It’s all anyone is going to want to read about for a couple days so we’re fluffing up the paper with it. You get some extra time to work on your column, it’s a win-win.”

She purses her lips.

It’s ironic, actually. Her paper is going to be filling every available inch of itself with repetitive news about The Punisher, while the only one that has the full story, the real story, on where he is and how he’s doing, she is the one that’s being sidelined.

But that’s alright. She did need the extra time.

And she would never expose Frank. She couldn’t.

Karen shrugs and still doesn’t look him completely in the eye as she fiddles with the strap of her purse. “Okay. If I’m not needed, then I think I’m going to head back home and escape this madhouse.”

“Consider me jealous. I feel like I’m herding cats.”

She doesn’t go back to the apartment; at least, not right away.

“And here I thought you wouldn’t show up this time,” Brett says when he turns around to find her standing by his desk in the middle of the bullpen. 

“Can we talk in private?”

“No. I know why you’re here, and I’ve got nothing for you, so don’t start,” he warns. He tosses his empty styrofoam cup in the trash, grabs a stack of reports, and starts to walk away. She hurries to catch up to his side.

“I’ll take something off the record, seriously. I just want a heads up if you guys maybe know something about The Punisher in the shootout that you’re keeping away from the public.”

“You, the press, want to know if there’s something being kept from the press?” Brett retorts.

She rolls her eyes. “Humor me. Please.”

He drops off the reports on someone’s unmanned desk down the hall before pausing to lean an arm on top of a filing cabinet. He frowns at her after a couple officers walk past. 

“Listen, Karen, I got a question for you, and be honest here. Why’re you really interested in The Punisher all that much? Once upon a time, he was terrorizing you, but now all I see is you running after him and messes like the one’s he’d make. Pretty regularly, too.”

She wonders what he would think if he knew about the night she’s had.

There’s no way she can share the truth, though — that her worry stems from the imagined possibilities of a surprise midnight raid on her apartment, from her hauled in on the accessory charges that she would absolutely deserve to have thrown at her, and from seeing Frank get trapped in a prison cell again.

It doesn’t matter that Brett question hits a little too close to home.

Does it count as running towards him, when he showed up first? Does it count as running towards his messes, if it means doing her job? Does it count when they all talk about The Punisher, but she sees Frank Castle?

She peers up at Brett. “I know he— he probably died on that dock, and these incidents are all just copycats, but I feel better having an idea of where he’s at. How close he is to being caught.”

It actually isn’t much of a lie at all but Brett is a sympathetic soul and he reads into the words a different way, just as she’d hoped he would. Karen hates being seen as a hopeless victim, but sometimes it has its benefits as she learns the police have exactly zero promising leads on where The Punisher is, per usual.

“What’s all that?” Frank asks as she dumps the bags on the counter and starts unloading them.

She has her back to him, but she can hear him hopping across the floor. His breathing gets a bit more heavy because of the pain, most likely from his leg, but it’s not time yet for her to give him a second dose of the meds that Claire left them with. If he even took the first dose like he was supposed to. 

She plans to check the bottle, later, before asking him.

“You’re an extra large, right?”

“Excuse me?”

She walks over and dumps the clothes in his arms. He takes them more out of confusion than anything. “I know, you’re probably not a sweatpants kind of guy, but I was not going to spend an hour trying to figure out how men’s jean sizes work, so you have to deal with this.”

Frank raises an eyebrow at her before she’s walking back to the kitchen. “No underwear?”

“Kind of hard to get a good look at that size when I’m focused on all the blood pouring out of you,” she says stiffly, cheeks tinged pink.

When she has to turn around to throw away the rest of the bags, there’s amusement written all over his face as he scratches his temple and assesses the clothes in his hands. “Fair enough,” he remarks, and she realizes he was teasing her before. A fleeting moment, and she’d almost missed it. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“How do you feel about macaroni and cheese?” She asks as he heads to the bathroom.

“Disgusting, if you’re talking that Kraft shit.”

“Guess it’s a good thing I’m not.” Shutting off the tap after filling the pot, she sets it on a burner, turns the dial, and then throws a confident smile at him from over her shoulder. “Keep an open mind. You haven’t tried my family’s recipe yet.”

He grunts in acknowledgment before closing the door.

She doesn’t exactly make it from scratch, but she does it as close as she can.

This was one of the staple meals in her house growing up whenever anyone was feeling bad or particularly down. Her mother made it plenty of times when Karen found herself sitting at the dining table, either crying or sick or both. She’d made it sometimes for herself and Kevin, later, when they found themselves left to their own devices more often than not. 

She doesn’t remember when exactly the last time she made this was, but it’s better that way. Makes it easier for her to go with her instincts of making it for another and not question if it’s a good or bad thing that the other in this case is Frank.

The changes are pretty simple — typical noodles are replaced with dumplings, and cheese sauce product is replaced with cheddar melted over the stovetop in milk.

The dumplings get slightly overcooked, falling apart at the edges, and she cakes the bottom of the pan when she melts the cheese, flirting with burning it outright, but it comes out close enough to how she meant it to. Karen passes a bowl to him where he’s sitting stretched out on the couch, and she steps the long way around to sit on the other side so he doesn’t have to move his propped up leg.

It reminds her that she should save up for a living room chair. 

She could pull over her desk one, but that would be too obvious. It is not that she is against being close to him, not particularly. They did share a bed last night. 

But then they also shared an odd morning that better went ignored. For now.

She doesn’t miss the way Frank’s eyes flutter briefly when he takes his first bite, doesn’t miss it because she’s staring, but Karen catches herself before he seems to notice. She tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear and turns on the small television that sits between the windows.

They don’t talk much except for him occasionally voicing a veto at something when she is flipping through the channels, and complimenting her once on the family recipe. She can’t help but smile then. 

If he wasn’t so banged up, if she wasn’t harboring a fugitive, one could say it was an almost comfortable situation.

Later, when she’s walking back from putting leftovers away, Frank is the one with the remote in hand, and he stops on PBS running old Sesame Street episodes. Something fond washes across his face. 

His head bobs, slightly, when she sits back down, like he’s physically sorting through his thoughts. She doesn’t plan to ask what he’s remembering, it’s enough just to see that he still is, but then he glances at her, finger twitching over the remote’s buttons without any intent to press down.

She has the distinct feeling he wants to talk aloud, remember aloud, but he’s hesitating.

The last thing she wants is him to feel like he has to keep his past bottled up. Especially not in her presence, out of everyone else.

Karen clears her throat. “Something you watched a lot?”

Frank’s lips tug upwards, for a brief second. He sets the remote down so he stops fiddling with it, so he doesn’t change the channel, and he rubs at his neck instead. “Not by choice. Puppets— if I had to choose between those awful cartoons or puppets, I’d pick the cartoons, but Frank Jr, he— he had this phase with them.”

“Did he get obsessed?” She asks, guessing as she starts to smile at the idea. She props an elbow against the back of the couch, pulls up her knees so she can sit sideways and watch him properly.

Frank huffs, almost grinning, and she’s struck by the laugh lines that pop up around his mouth. They’re faint, but she’s glad to see them emerge while he’s talking about his family. Glad to see he still has that little bit of happiness left in him, when he taps into it. 

“Yeah. Yeah, he was wild and he didn’t like a lot of things, you know, trying to rebel and be his own little man even though he was too young to know that’s what he was doing. Shit, he was— he was just four.”

Karen laughs, raises a hand up over her mouth. 

It drags a ghost of a chuckle from him. “He just got struck by the show one day, you know, the way kids can latch onto something instantly. We had to let him park his butt in front of that TV every day when there was a new episode, or he’d lose it…. That routine lasted a couple months.”

Licking his lips, Frank tilts his head down, eyes slowing from the way they’d been roaming the room as he recalled the flashes of memories.

Karen lets her head dip to the side to attempt catching his gaze. “What was his favorite character?”

He meets her eyes at the soft question. They’re clouded, but a grin spreads. “The damn Cookie Monster.”

Another laugh is muffled by her hand. “So, the piano bench….”

“Yeah. Yeah— there was a direct correlation, alright, between Frank Jr watching that crazy blue puppet and deciding to hoard cookies all over. Christ,” he murmurs, breaking eye contact as he shakes his head. 

He gets truly lost in his mind this time so she quiets, leans her head against the couch cushions, and contemplates to herself how this man in front of her could ever convince himself that he’s dead. How he could keep trying to convince her when he was doing such a poor job of it.

The episode runs in its entirety before he picks up the remote again.

They have a brief argument about the sleeping arrangements, now that he’s actually awake to protest.

It’s a pretty ridiculous idea, him in his injured state sleeping on the couch, and she says as much to him even though he scoffs. After all, her couch is actually closer to the size of a loveseat.

There is a scowl on his face and a flush blooms along the tips of his ears when she tosses an old quilt his way and insists they continue on doing the same as before — her under the covers, him on top.

There’s no chance he is going to be the kind of guy to tell her to take the couch, either, since he’s the one that brings up this argument in the first place, so he grumbles things inaudibly under his breath at various times, but the matter is settled.

She doesn’t get around to washing his clothes for almost two days.

They should be thrown out, since the jeans are torn at the ends, and the shirt has bullet holes. But, she’s not going to throw out his things without asking, and Frank doesn’t move them from her hamper even though she knows he must have seen them there while walking around her place, so she thinks that is as much of an unspoken request as she is going to get.

He’s really not a sweatpants kind of guy.

The skull sprayed across his shirt can’t be seen after she turns the garment inside out, but there’s the way the water runs red the first wash and thus makes her have to rinse them again that has her feeling paranoid.

A few of the other residents filter in and out of the laundry room while she’s there.

No one gives her a second glance.

Matt appears at The Bulletin after she ignores a couple of his calls. She doesn’t intend to do so with any sort of maliciousness, but whenever he called, it managed to coincide with her either at home or here, meaning she was either around Frank or trying to focus on work, juggling several stories at once.

Admittedly, a part of her did want to put it off, though. She already knew what the topic would be.

She shows him into her office — she’s think she is finally getting used to calling it that, but all of Ben’s things remain scattered around, neatly preserved — and closes the door behind him a bit more forcefully than is really necessary. His head cocks slight at the motion.

“Did Frank do something?”

“What? No.” She blinks a moment, then crosses her arms.  “He’s fighting me about taking the pain meds, but that’s it. Why?”

“You’re upset.”

She sighs. “No, I’m just— I’m busy. Uh, why are you here?”

“To make sure you’re alright.”

“I am. I am,” she repeats, more solidly, so he’ll believe her.

Matt has his glasses on, but she thinks he maybe, just maybe, might look a little lost. As if he can’t wrap his head around what she’s telling him. Or maybe it’s the entirely bizarre situation they find themselves in, a vast change from a year ago — even six months ago.

She knows what he is going to ask before the words come out.

“How long are you letting him stay?”

“A couple weeks. A week. I don’t know.” She knows what Claire said, what she is alright with, but Frank is Frank. She clears her throat. “Can I ask you about something else?”

Matt’s brow furrows at the sudden change of topic and he steps forward a bit as if tracking her movements as she walks behind the desk. She rifles through some papers until she finds what she was looking for. “Do you recognize the name Calvin Garcia? From…running around?” 

This is the first real time she has tried to recruit his help, first time she’s asked after his time spent as Daredevil without throwing it in his face. Realizing that makes her tuck her hair back self-consciously.

He shakes his head and leans his hands on the cane in front of him pressed into the carpet that she now knows is just for show. “No, doesn’t ring any bells. Why?”

“He’s a banker I’ve been following for a story….” Karen licks her lips, sorts through a couple more pages until she finds the stack she got slipped from a source about the charity she was looking into. “What about a lawyer, Benjamin Donovan?”

As soon as the name is uttered, Matt’s knuckles go white as he squeezes the cane. “Karen, what story are you following?”

“The prisoners that got out, that Frank killed.” Her eyes narrow at him, watching him closely as she straightens. A breath escapes her. “You know something. What aren’t you and Frank telling me?”

“Whatever you’ve dug up so far, whatever doors you’ve knocked on — you have to stop, Karen. You have to trust me.”

She guffaws, puts her hands on her hips. “Is there something about me that just screams damsel in distress, or something?”

“Karen.”

She remembers somewhat distantly how her heart used to beat faster at the way he said her name like a plea. But it doesn’t anymore.

They were treading water in the middle of a lake but now, now she knows that whatever ‘us’ had existed between them was dead and buried in a locker at the bottom of that metaphorical lake. And it didn’t matter that it had been found, that she could shine a light on it at moments like this one. 

It was never going to be pulled up and recovered.

She juts out her chin. “I know it’s someone in the prison named Kingpin. I know they’re running parts of it; they’ve got money, high connections. My running theory is they got these men out to head up some of their operation, but if that’s the case, then their operation is big, because none of these guys do the same things. Or at least they didn’t do same things in the same parts of the cities before they were put away.” 

Matt shifts on his feet as she speaks.

“There is no way I am sitting by and watching this happen and just have faith that it’ll work itself out because you two are running around beating up criminals. You could at least help me with a name; otherwise, just go. I’m busy.”

There’s half a minute where he looks agitated, and she wishes he would take off the glasses so she could see his eyes, see what flashes behind them. But then he caves, shoulders sagging as he opens his mouth. “It’s…it’s Fisk. It’s all Fisk.”

Ellison asks her, later, if Murdock was here to try poaching her back as a secretary.

It’s a joke, but of course he noticed the extra presence.

She scoffs and hopes he doesn’t hear how shaky her voice is in her retort, hopes he didn’t see how long she was in the bathroom as her shock got the better of her and she dry-heaved over the toilet.

“You could have told me,” are the first words from her lips after she closes her door.

Frank is sitting at her desk, and it only takes her a second to realize he has her files out. Some of the boxes of her research for old stories that were previously on her bookshelf are now off, sitting piled next to his feet, and the folders of her current leads that she kept in the drawers are sprawled across the desktop.

He didn’t move when she came in, at least not much, looking calm, but the gun not far from his hand tells a different story.

It should feel like an invasion of privacy, what he’s doing. She should yell at him.

But there’s nothing she is hiding in those files.

And, anyway, she is too busy simmering about something else.

She slips off her heels and hangs up her purse while he turns his head. “Fisk,” she says, flinching at the name herself, but she is able to watch him clench his jaw at it, too.

“Red finally caved, huh?”

“Not without some pushing,” she mutters, annoyed as she folds her arms and crosses some of the space between them. She doesn’t expect when Frank snorts, looks back at the files. “Nothing?”

“What do you want, you want a medal? Congratulations, you’ve figured out the head of the snake, now you can run headfirst faster into getting your head blown off. Great, fucking fantastic.”

“Jesus, Frank.”

“The Punisher taking down felons, that’s all anyone’s got to know. That’s all you got to write,” he insists, and his back is to her, but his head is starting to shake sideways now. None of the papers in front of him have moved since she walked in.

“But that’s not all the story is.” Karen says, pursing her lips and ignoring how what he’s saying, how he’s saying it, strikes her as awfully protective. She wonders if he’s aware of that, but doubts it.

“Christ, you’re like a pit bull.” It almost sounds like it could be a compliment, but he grounds out the words.

She pauses, then decides to take it as a compliment anyway before letting the conversation drop. It’s going nowhere, and fast, and she no longer has the energy to pursue it if he’s not even going to look at her. Not when the air feels thick and her stomach is in knots, either.

“You better put those back in the right order when you’re done with them,” she simply says, waving a hand at the files before heading to the kitchen.

She spends more of the week than she should have to trying to track down a new private investigator to help her look into some names associated with Fisk. This way would be easier, two sets of eyes and hands better than one as the list of recurring names and corporations she has is growing longer by the day.

However, the PI most of The Bulletin relies on is currently too busy to take on more business. The last one she used because of this problem has changed their number, and Karen doesn’t remotely remember where their dingy office was located.

So, basically, she’s shit out of luck.

“Good song,” Ellison comments as Shining Star plays low in her office. Her eyes flick up at his presence, only jolting slightly when she gets pulled from her thoughts. She pauses the music as he leans his hands against one of the chairs in front of her desk. “What are you working on?”

“Trying to put something together on the angle behind the prisoners.”

“How’d that corrections source work out?”

Karen shakes her head. “They didn’t show. I guess they got cold feet.”

“Not surprising,” he shrugs. “In my experience, they’re some of the most unreliable.”

“Thanks for the heads up.”

“Can’t win them all,” Ellison says, and it’s a weak imitation of a sink-or-swim pep talk, but it is some kind of consolation. “Can you get something preliminary to me by Friday?”

She nods.

They don’t chat a lot after that night. 

Frank has some of her files out again, the day after, but one glance at her full hands when she comes through the door and he moves away from her desk and relocates to the dining table instead, giving her the space back before she has to ask — or order, as she almost did.

At least he does put the files back properly. 

She notices he doesn’t spend much time on each, not like he would if he was really reading them. It’s more like he’s skimming, and she almost asks him a couple different times if he is looking for something specific, because she could help, but she’s still feeling a bit stubborn about not talking to him after he held back Fisk’s name.

It’s silly, and she knows it. Frank doesn’t get how much that name affects her, what it all means. Not even Matt really knows and he was the one that felt bad about sharing it, about bringing her fear back.

While it didn’t deter them, Karen had kept a light on since the nightmares about Fisk strangling her in retaliation for killing Wesley started. She had, but then Frank showed up, and knowing how important good sleep was for his speedy recovery, she started turning everything off.

Until that night. That night, she flicks the corner lamp on in the living room before sliding under the covers, and she can feel Frank’s eyes on her from where he sits at the kitchen table, cleaning his guns. She can feel his eyes but she doesn’t pay them any mind.

He leaves the lamp alone.

Karen doesn’t fully realize until she’s submitting a lackluster article on Friday with a note of apology to Ellison that the prisoner releases have stopped. The last happened a couple days before Frank got himself caught up in the cartel shoot-out, and since then, nothing.

It makes sense. All that effort is made pointless thanks to him gunning down every single one of them not long after, and instead of reporting on just those facts like a normal journalist, she has had enough investment in the situation to look beyond the murders, to look at the not very upstanding victims and why they’re back on the streets. 

She’s gotten enough tips from various sources to know that his killings and her reporting has started rumors amongst the ignorant in the police department and DA’s office. Rumors about more corruption.

It’s about damn time.

Three different stories on the murders and a handful of others on lesser-related topics after the fact are printed in The Bulletin bearing her name. There wasn’t any direct connection she could make to Fisk even after she is in the know, so he’s never mentioned, but Kingpin is used instead.

He’s not mentioned by his real name, but she also isn’t stupid.

He was wrathful enough to kill Ben and get away with it. He’s calculated enough to rebuild an empire while in prison with very few wise to it.

If she wasn’t on his radar before, somehow, she knows she will be now.

Karen isn’t oblivious to the possible repercussions, and she isn’t blinded to what could happen if the truth of Wesley somehow gets found and unearthed from its watery grave, either. But she’s not one to let fear cripple her, especially not fear because of her own sins. 

Killing Wesley was to protect herself and everyone she cared about, but her presence in the first place got Ben killed. Making sure Fisk can’t regain his influence in Hell’s Kitchen, that’s not just making sure a door in her past is closed tight, it’s a kind of atonement, too. 

She needs that.

“How do you feel about Pad Thai?”

“…How much did you get?”

She empties two-thirds of the container onto his plate because of the way his tone lifts in interest. He certainly needs the energy more than her. She walks over to put it in front of him and Frank straightens, pushing the seat back as he digs in, mindful not to drop any on her things.

Simply holding her own plate for the moment, she looks at the file open on the very top of the pile.

One of the many articles she wrote on sketchy companies in Hell’s Kitchen that was good, shed light on some shadows, but ultimately went nowhere and changed nothing. She didn’t have the money, power, or connections for it to make a difference to more than the average person on the street.

She had long accepted that, until another opportunity came along, sometimes that had to be enough.

There’s a new note made on a post-it over a surveillance picture she had The Bulletin’s PI take of one of the businessmen she wrote about but that didn’t get fired. It’s in Frank’s handwriting, shorthand that she does not understand. 

Something for himself, then.

She trusts him, even though he can be an asshole sometimes, even though she probably shouldn’t.

“I’m done with the prisoners,” she tells him as she leans against the edge of the table near him. How strange was it that she had been itching to all day, ever since talking it over with Ellison? She’s reaching for Frank, again, can’t seem to stop doing so for very long.

He sets the plate down, head turning towards hers but gaze wavering somewhere over her shoulder. “Good.”

“Whatever Fisk was planning, he’s going to find another way. I know it.”

Frank shrugs. “I told you, printing up a story won’t change anything. Only thing that’s going to stop him is me. Now you don’t have to like it, but that’s the truth. This isn’t your fight, ma’am.”

“Bullshit,” she snaps, then catches herself. 

He doesn’t know what she really means, no one does. Karen’s kept that too close to her chest to change that now. The very idea of clarifying her words — that she knows his way is effective, that she actually thinks she could support it for a man like Fisk, but that this is her fight too — it makes her chest constrict and her heart skip a beat.

Frank rakes his gaze over her entire form, like he’s trying to decipher her. She shifts.

He has a way of making her feel like every inch of her soul is being seen, and it’s as much something she longs for as something she’s insecure about.

“Sooner or later, you’re going to burn out,” he says, tone flat. “How are you going to take care of yourself then? Defend yourself?”

A bitter smile curves her lips. “I could say the same thing about you.”

Something flickers behind his eyes before he looks to the windows. “Maybe.”

Karen moves, then, but she doesn’t go far away.

She sets her plate down and takes the seat across from him.

“I never thanked you for the gun.”

It is a sudden shift in conversation, but he leans back, rolling with it easily. “You needed it. Didn’t want you to go looking for trouble with some shitty dealers,” he comments.

“You think that’s what I would’ve done?”

“Isn’t it?”

His head lolls towards her. 

“I don’t know,” she says lightly, twirling her fork. “I got a good piece last time. That’s a one hundred percent success rate.”

If she told Foggy or Matt that, they would be horrified at the image of her intentionally traversing shady areas to acquire an illegal weapon, no matter if it’s for protection or not.

Frank chuckles.

The next morning, she wakes to a strange sensation of contentment, and it takes a minute for the fog over her mind to clear before she figures it out. 

Frank’s arm is wrapped around her waist.

It’s been a while since she has had someone in her bed, and especially like this. It’s nice. Really nice.

Yet, it makes her bite back a sigh, because now she knows.

He’ll be gone today.

She knows this because he’s out cold, breath occasionally puffing against the pillow under his head in a soft way, and when she turns slightly under his grip, he doesn’t jump or wake or move at all. He’s sleeping deeper than she’s ever seen him, every line in his face smooth, and he’ll feel unsettled by this sense of calm when he wakes up.

The Punisher doesn’t do calm, he focuses on action and violence. They’ve already become too comfortable with this pseudo-domesticity as it is. 

It’s time.

She stares a little longer, while she can. 

Karen savors the visual, same as she files away in the back of her mind how it feels to have his hand spread flat over her stomach, warm and centering. She memorizes this because there is no doubt in her mind that it, that this, will never happen again. 

After everything, she needs to see him as just The Punisher and not Frank Castle. She needs to do this, needs to accept this, needs to take his shitty advice on forgetting about him even though he’s terrible about following through with it himself.

She needs to, but she can’t.

She was close to accepting that once, maybe, at least she thought she was, but she isn’t anymore. She’s been stepping back from that line since the moment she decided she was in front of it. 

Karen will never be able to see him as the monster psychopath others do. She finally accepts that now, even if it comes with a bittersweet feeling on a bittersweet day.

Emerging from the shower, she finds Frank up and in her kitchen, just like she expected. He fills a mug and passes it to her. With murmured thanks, she leans against the counter near him. A respectable distance, the sink between them, but still close in a way. Mirroring.

“I dreamt about you sometimes,” she shares. It is only one of many things she wants to say, but it feels like the only thing she really can. It feels like the most important.

He has the mug up to his lip but, at the words, he lowers it.

Karen bites her lip, and then meets his stare directly. “I don’t know why,” her lips curve in a smile that’s more like a consolation. “But, I just…I thought you should know. It helped me.”

He’s troubled. 

That’s the only way she can think to describe it, the way his brows are creased together, his eyes wide, lips tucked into a frown. There’s enough emotion across his face to make her lungs seize up.

She feels guilty, then, about causing him to look this way. To feel however he’s feeling.

Karen swallows the rest of her coffee and gathers her purse. When she leaves, he’s not moved from that counter, but his trigger finger is tapping a quick beat out against the porcelain cradled in his grip. 

Jessica Jones is a brash woman.

She doesn’t put much of an effort into pitching her services, either, and at any other time it might have turned Karen off so much that she would walk right back out Alias’s door, but she’s kind of desperate. 

Besides, even though Jones looks to never be without a flask near, she is a fast-talker with a no-bullshit attitude that appears to live and breath her work. That is exactly what Karen needs right now.

She grimaces at the retainer amount but is able to get the cash to pay it before the end of the day.

When she gets home, feet sore and mind a bit less frustrated than usual, there are no signs of The Punisher in her apartment.

The vest is gone. The guns are gone. The man himself is gone.

She may not be surprised, but she’s allowed to be disappointed.

A string of arrests occur across Hell’s Kitchen in the dead of morning.

Half a dozen corrections officers that took pay-offs from prisoners, and the small staff running a bogus charity that was actually funneling money to felons returning to a life of crime.

The charity is the one Karen was following and mentioned briefly in one of her articles. One of the officers was her potential source from last week that never showed.

For as much as she played a role in highlighting these discrepancies in the first place, her name isn’t mentioned anywhere. The only mention beyond the police running the investigation is a nod to Daredevil who showed up at one of the locations and helped run down a fugitive. Still, Karen vibrates with excitement all day, feeling a heady sense of accomplishment.

It’s not the end, but it’s something.

Frank doesn’t pop up anywhere for a couple of days since disappearing from her apartment.

She doesn’t panic, not necessarily, but Karen does keep an extra look-out for a potential spotting and dives into her research in the meantime instead of trying to pretend like she’s a normal person that doesn’t feel a strange tie to a murdering vigilante.

A report comes across the news channel late one night — allegedly corrupt businessman gunned down for unknown reasons, Punisher copycat suspected.

She knows what face they’re going to show on the screen, what name they’re going to talk about before they get to that part. It’s the man she had caught Frank making notes about from her files.

The only thing she wonders is how much farther Frank looked into the man’s brutality than she had; if he found anything worse, or if what she’d had was enough for him to justify the bullets the man’s body was now riddled with as he was carted off to the morgue.

Either way, she presses her hand to her mouth for a minute, takes a controlled breath, and then mutes the television to focus on the article she plans to have finished tonight.

These sorts of things should affect her more, probably, but what gets to her most is the wave of relief that washes over now that she knows Frank is alright and still out there, somewhere.

She watches the rooftops more closely as she walks home, but she doesn’t see anything.

The dreams don’t pick back up, either, and that brings with it another kind of longing.

It’s mid-June, and Ellison tasks her on a story about a big charity gala that the Police Department will be hosting. It will be a fluff piece, and it’s not at all what she would normally write, what she wants to write. 

She balks.

“No offense, Page, but you need an excuse to rub shoulders with some more influential figures and freshen up. Since you started working here it’s like I’m watching you turn into a hermit, and I feel bad,” he says, scratching at his beard.

She rolls her eyes at the remark. “That’s so sweet,” she comments sarcastically. “But ninety percent of them are going to end up being douchebags in person, and how does me wearing a fancy dress help my non-existent hermit problem?”

“Touché. And it won’t. But you could learn some things while you’re there, such as how to use that winning charisma better.” She smirks. “And certain people will be attending that you can get a feel for. Department of Corrections people, if you catch my drift.”

She perks up. “Some of the parole Commissioners?”

“Bingo.” He points at her. “Represent the paper well!”

She hasn’t seen Foggy since that last time he came over with burgers to catch up, and after everything that has happened with her, it feels almost like a lifetime ago. 

However, they have texted, and there’s been the brief phone call from time to time that usually correlated with when something bad happened to her. She always wondered which times of those were him hearing about it from Matt, and which were Brett, but she never asked. 

It never really matters enough to.

They see each other again after they move their plan to grab drinks four different times. The last person to preemptively cancel was her, on account of the more wanted vigilante they know crashing at her place.

She is tempted to share this with Foggy, even if he will likely explode on her with shock and fear, because she doesn’t want to keep anything from him outright, but when he walks up to the table he’s got Marci with him, so she bites back every word about The Punisher that had started to form in her head. 

“Hope you don’t mind,” the other woman says without any apology in her voice. “I’ve been dying for a dry martini all day.”

It isn’t a terrible night, not like she’d been afraid it would end up becoming. In fact, she warms to Marci after she’s had her first beer and Marci’s had her second martini. Foggy just seems content to have a night off where he can slump in his chair and occasionally chime in with witty observations.

As it turns out, Marci has a wicked sense of humor, and no shortage of stories about supposedly incompetent partners and interns alike at her firm. Karen laughs, a lot, and if that isn’t surreal enough, Marci reveals that she’s going to the charity ball, too.

“Foggy’s my plus one,” she shares, arm curling around him. He’s certainly not the most sober one in the room considering the way he doesn’t stop smiling with a red face.

“This is great!” Foggy says, relieved. “I won’t be alone.”

“Hey!” Marci protests.

“You’ll schmooze. You know I hate schmoozing.”

“You’re just not good at it,” she sighs and pats his cheek.

Karen clears her throat. “Hate to break it to you, but I’ll be there doing some schmoozing of my own.”

Foggy groans. “You can’t let a man be happy for one minute?”

She gets up to buy them another round when Marci grins and leans over to whisper something in Foggy’s ear that she definitely does not want to know a word of.

The summer is hot.

Sweltering, actually, so she starts breaking out looser sundresses when she’s at work and shorts when she’s not. She switches to a different purse, too, one with a cross-body strap so she can keep her hand in it and on her gun comfortably nearly all the time without looking too suspicious.

Part of the reason behind the purse is because of the heat, but another is because of the prickly chill of paranoia that is pressing against the back of her neck lately. She’s had paranoia before, in fact she has felt it more often than not in the past year, but this kind is different. 

It’s more permanent.

A couple times, she thinks she is being followed.

Her gaze turns up to rooftops again, but she can’t manage to catch sight of anything to make her feel better. On these handful of nights, there is nothing except the faint echo of steps somewhere behind her that she never properly sees the source of.

Karen stops leaving Ben’s car parked on the days where all she plans to do is go from home to The Bulletin. Driving just that short distance and back may feel inconvenient, but it’s safer.

The gala is not Karen’s comfort zone.

For one, it’s being held in an old brick building refurbished for expensive, modern aesthetics. It’s a big place, but it’s also packed, and she only recognizes a third of the people here, personally knowing even less of them. 

Marci is able to float through the room with a wide grin, easy laugh, and sharp comments. Foggy hangs back, by the bar, chatting up anyone he knows that comes near. 

Karen behaves much the same way as him, at first, until she spies who she was looking for, and starts surreptitiously following them around the room with a giant berth as she contemplates how she can approach them without her suspicious nature being clearly seen.

She spies Brett, at one point, looking just as secretly awkward as she feels, and raises her glass to him. He gives her a nod.

He must have friends higher up in the department now after collaring Frank in the cemetery, she thinks.

She watches him find Foggy by the bar eventually and the two start talking before Marci sidles up to her from out of nowhere, new martini perpetually in hand but a vodka spritzer in her other, too, just like the one that Karen has been liberally nursing all night.

The other blonde gives her a pointed look. “You want to blend in, you have to loosen up. Come on, suck down that liquid courage. You can’t cradle that drink all night or someone will notice. Someone like me.”

She grimaces, but she finishes off her current drink quickly.

Marci’s all smiles, passing her the other one, before turning and leaning her back against the standing table Karen is next to. “Now, which of these deer have you been stalking all night?”

Karen snorts. She points out the figures she can see with nods. “Solnick is in the purple dress, and Rhodes there, with the bald spot. Commissioner Mendelson is supposed to be here too but I don’t know what they look like.”

“Parole board, huh?”

She raises an eyebrow at Marci. “How did you know?”

Marci scoffs. “Please. I’ve had some interesting cases. Ones that didn’t end in half of the partners at my firm going to jail,” she adds, shaking her head. She grabs Karen’s arm. “I’ll introduce you.”

“Thank you,” she says, surprised but grateful.

“Don’t act so shocked. I have my moments.”

Karen does not learn much more about those she talks to other than getting a sense for their character. Or, at least, the character they present in public. 

She has a gut feeling about Rhodes that she just cannot shake, a bad feeling that aligns with the thick folder she has gathered on his flip-flopping history and questionably affordable lifestyle. But, there is nothing she can do about this tonight. 

Tonight, she trudges back up the stairwell to her apartment, and has some momentary trouble with the lock as her stomach growls.

“Ma’am,” greets a voice from around the corner of the hallway, and she jumps before recognition sinks in.

Frank stands there, unassuming, with a black ball cap on and a more pedestrian jacket than his leather Punisher one. There’s added bulk under it though that tells her the vest is on and there might be more than one pistol tucked away.

She should ask why he’s here, she should, but before she asks they get to linger in this ambiguous zone, so she holds back the question.

Aside from a new black eye in the shadow of that cap, he looks no worse for wear than the last time he was in front of her. He’s certainly standing on his feet more evenly. It makes her feel kind of glad.

“Hungry?” Karen asks, and leaves the door open behind her for him to follow. She hears him close and lock it while she’s standing in front of the fridge, contemplating. “You like pizza?”

“Hell no,” he says, scoffs, as if that’s a ridiculous question.

She smirks, almost laughs outright. “The Punisher doesn’t like pizza. I should pitch that to my boss.”

“Yeah, I bet he’d be curious about your source.”

Frank’s staying a good couple feet away from her, drifting between the middle of the room and the windows, peering out through the blinds at the street below. She puts on a pot of coffee while the microwave goes and, when they’re warmed up, passes the plate of tacos to him while keeping the pizza for herself. 

He nods at her. “You want real Italian, try Alfonso’s. Pesto’s doesn’t have a spice rack in that place.”

“Yeah, but it’s cheap.”

Frank shakes his head, as if offended, but she grins and he catches it, returns a wisp of a smile.

“Why are you here?” She finally asks sometime later after she’s put their dirty plates in the sink and kicked off her heels in front of the closet.

He finishes pouring himself a cup of coffee but stays where he’s standing against the counter, facing the wall. He takes a sip before he speaks. “You looked good at that party with, uh, your lawyer friend, and that other woman.”

“You were watching?” She gets a slow nod from him. Fleetingly, she wonders if he recognizes her dress from the trial — there’s something to say for a limited wardrobe — but it’s only a moment of a thought, and then Karen purses her lips at the sudden tension between them. “Who were you really there for?”

His head cocks in her direction before he’s taking off the hat and tossing it on the counter, running a hand through his hair. It was cut on the shorter side when she’d seen him last, but it was starting to go long again. She prefers it like this. 

Removing another mug from the cabinet, he fills it up and walks over. He hands her the fresh one and leans against the shadowed wall by the windows.

At the realization that it’s the same spot he was sat against when he was bleeding out a couple weeks ago, she swallows heavily and focuses on her cup for a minute.

“You’re still working Fisk,” he comments. 

Karen raises her head, sips some coffee. 

His trigger finger is tapping his leg, steady. She didn’t notice before now, wonders how long he’s been doing it. Wonders if it’s been moving since he entered her apartment or before that. 

“Why are you here, Frank?” She repeats.

His brow lowers as he pitches his head down to meet her stare more directly. “Your name. It’s out there. Some incompetent street thugs got an offer of twenty thousand for your head, and they were going to try tonight.”

Her chest feels heavy. “How— how did you find out?”

“I said ‘were’, didn’t I?” Frank’s gaze returns to the street as he speaks. 

“You killed them.”

“Yes.” There’s no apology, there, only a hard edge to the words.

She sets her mug down on the coffee table as bile threatens at the back of her throat and Fisk’s face floats in her mind’s eye. She huffs. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t have to run home in my heels this time.”

He mutters something that’s incoherent, and the stare she gets when he turns his head makes her heart beat even faster. “Christ, you’re going to get yourself killed. Is that what you want?”

She bristles automatically and folds her arms, stepping into his space. “I can take care of myself; I’m not a porcelain doll.”

“I know; I know you’re not,” Frank says firmly and, God willing, she believes him.

Believes that when he looks at her or thinks of her, no part of him envisions a silly girl that needs a someone to come swooping in to save her, a girl that is bullheaded but incapable of taking care of herself. Not the way everyone else does.

Hell’s Kitchen is a dangerous place for everyone, period.

She comes back to her senses after sharing his stare for who knows how long, close enough to for her to hear the occasional shudder in his breath, when a car honks from somewhere outside. Her gaze drops to his lips for a split second.

He steps away, arm nearly brushing hers, and sets his coffee down before moving to pick up his hat in the kitchen. She can already feel the loss of his presence as he pulls back, pulls away.

“Wait,” she calls when he’s got his hand on the doorknob and the cap fitted low over his eyes.

Karen’s genuinely surprised when he stops.

“Thank you.” She waits for him to turn, but he doesn’t. She wraps her arms around herself. “I still don’t like what you do, but. I understand it. And I appreciate it. Not just for me, but for the city, everyone else. There is a place for what you do…. and accepting help wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

That turns his head. “You offering to help, ma’am?”

She’s struck by the intensity in his gaze, feels a kind of heat slide along her spine. “Yeah. I am.”

“You sure about that?…You help me, you’ll only get blood on your hands.”

“I already have blood on my hands,” she says without any fuss. 

A quiet confession that’s more simple than the truths hidden in it.

His eyes flicker up and down her form before he wrenches open the door. 

“Doesn’t mean you need any more.”

Foggy calls her two nights later, leaves a voicemail on her phone sounding more than decently drunk, inviting her to join him and Marci. He complains about not seeing his friends often enough and she knows that part isn’t about her, probably isn’t even meant for her, he’s just too drunk to realize who he’s saying what to.

She doesn’t hear this voicemail for a good ten minutes until after it’s left, though, because she is in the throws of recovering from a nightmare.

Gasping for breath, she jumps from the ringing and sits up straight, blinking awake right before her nightmare turns in the direction of Fisk strangling her while Wesley’s dead eyes look on. 

This is not one she has had in a while, others about small tenement hallways and blood sliding down her fingers taking precedent. However, she would be lying if she said she wasn’t expecting this one to return.

It was only a matter of time after Fisk’s looming presence stepped back into her life.

Karen runs a shaky hand through her hair and leans against the headboard, gun pulled close to her, but she doesn’t manage to fall back asleep. 

She thanks Foggy, later, for calling in the middle of the night when he did and waking her up. He thinks she is being sarcastic and apologizes profusely for it. 

Waving off the apologies, she doesn’t really correct him.

Her suspicions about Commissioner Rhodes are proved right only a few days after she hands off what she has to Jones.

She doesn’t call, or text, she simply shows up at The Bulletin on a Wednesday and drops the significantly more heavy file on the desk. “That’s some real piece of shit you’re looking at,” she comments, deadpan as ever as she sprawls in the chair across the desk and proceeds to talk Karen through the highlights of everything she has found.

He was in Fisk’s pocket — amongst others. The Russians, the Los Zetas cartel, the rebuilding Irish. The question about his lifestyle expenses is answered with the bags of dirty money that Jones watches get transferred to the back of his car one night.

Karen’s flipping through the folder when she comes across a whole string of pictures that make her choke and slam it back closed. She curses in horror.

“I was getting to that,” Jones remarks, face scrunched in much the same way but anger clear in her dark eyes. “He gets dirty money to really grease his fingers but once a week he’s also getting first dibs on underage girls getting sex trafficked through the port. The cartel’s running it, fucking bastards.”

She rubs her forehead before running a hand through her hair, lets the information settle over her before she has the urge to punch something, or do something else much more foolish.

Karen has reported a couple times on stories like this in the past, on stories with this kind of abuse involved, but it still makes her revolt in surprise. How much time has passed since she was standing across Rhodes — a week? And he’d been lauded by everyone around him as a model citizen.

Jessica gestures at her with a hand. “Well? What’s the plan, blondie?”

She rolls her lips, looks away. One of her sources had mentioned Rhodes being in the process of presenting the governor with a convincing argument for a pardon. This information in front of her didn’t directly help her with that, didn’t help her with writing up an article putting the spotlight on Fisk outright.

But it was damaging, regardless.

And it was thorough enough that Karen could use it another way.

“Do I even want to ask how you got all this shit?” Brett finally speaks, expression turning more and more dumbfounded as he shuffles through the folder.

Karen shakes her head. “You can say it came from a source of your own, can’t you?”

“A CI? Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.” He shakes his head and can’t look at the pictures anymore.

She stands up, lingering by the table. “What do you think the chances are he’ll be convicted?”

“If we can track down just one person in these photographs? There’s no way he’s getting off.”

It’s been a while since she last did so, but she ends up going to Ellison for an article assignment.

Karen is the one that gives everything to the cops, that secretly provides the information that gets Commissioner Rhodes arrested and the cartel’s illegal port access shut down over the weekend, but she stays quiet when Ellison brings it up in the office, doesn’t rise to the bait when he throws it out. He stares at her for a minute, doubtful of her dumb act, but another Bulletin writer happily gets the responsibility.

She’s seen everything, and she got what she wanted — a piece of shit behind bars, a smuggling ring shut down, and Fisk’s first attempt at a pardon completely denied.

There’s something different about staring at a picture of brains splattered across the ground thanks to The Punisher, and then seeing young girls exploited through no choice of their own. She can’t handle looking at the latter. 

The piece Ellison hands her is covering an event about a new wing unveiling at Metro-General Hospital.

It could be worse — at least this time she can go for the free food, alcohol, and isn’t trying to scope out corrupt officials for three hours straight. There is no doubt in her that some of the donors in the room probably aren’t upstanding, but Karen needs this break, and she gladly takes it.

When she thinks someone might be following her, later that night, cold pricks against her neck once more, she just pulls out of the hospital parking lot faster.

Frank shows up, suddenly, on an innocent Thursday afternoon. She’s leaving her favorite Spanish restaurant with a bag of take-out, in broad daylight, when he falls in step beside her.

With a dog.

The hand on her gun had tightened when she heard the steps approaching, but it relaxes as soon as she sees him out of her peripheral. “Ma’am,” he greets, as if this entire moment isn’t strange.

“I didn’t think you got out in the sunlight.”

His lips tug with a brief smile. “Can I ask you for a favor?” His gaze slides sideways towards hers. “You don’t have to say yes, if you don’t want to.”

Her eyebrows raise. “Okay, what is it?”

“Max needs someone to watch him for a couple days.”

She almost asks who that is, but by the time her mouth is open, her mind clicks, and her eyes go to the dog. He’s cute, a gray pit bull that’s maybe a couple years old but definitely still on the young side. He barely sniffed her when he passed her before, seemingly accepting her as a non-threat same as his owner did. 

Karen smiles at the dog and then looks back to Frank. “When did you get him?”

“That’s a long story.” When she only stares in waiting, he licks his lips and looks away. “I lost track of him for a while. Short version, I’ve had him two weeks.”

She wants to ask after the longer version, wouldn’t mind further insight, but if he’s here at this time of day then he has somewhere to go soon that he couldn’t — or at least doesn’t think he can — put off. “Where will you be?”

“Here and there.”

They’re in front of her building now so she stops at the steps, shifts the bag in her hands. She says nothing as she fishes her keys from her purse and holds her hand out. His fingers wrap around hers for a moment when he passes the leash.

Karen bites her lip.

“Be careful,” she says, and he nods, but that’s not enough for her. “Please.”

“You have my word, ma’am.”

They stand there a moment, her reading his every expression for she’s not quite sure what, until someone walks past and she can physically see the walls go up behind Frank’s eyes. He glances away, watching the stranger for any threats, before stepping back.

He leaves in the next second, tipping his ball cap in lieu of a spoken farewell.

She shares some of her tamales with Max, deciding to pick up proper dog food tomorrow.

He enjoys them immensely. 

When she gets ready for sleep, he curls up in front of her bed, and she can’t resist taking a picture of him in all of his adorable glory. She asks him where Frank found him, but it’s not like he can respond.

“Karen, why is there a dog in your office?”

Ellison hangs by the doorway as he asks this, despite the fact that Max’s leash is stuck under one of the couch’s legs so he can’t move far, and he didn’t do more than raise his head at the stranger’s entrance.

She smiles. “I’m dog-sitting for a friend.” When Ellison only scratches his beard thoughtfully while staring at the dog, she sighs. “They don’t have anyone else to watch him and I can’t leave him home all day. It’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

“How long?”

“I don’t know— a couple days?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, okay. Just as long as he doesn’t bite anyone, or that medical bill is coming out of your paycheck.”

She rolls her eyes. “Thanks.”

The anniversary manages to sneak up on her.

It’s July, and even though she buries that part of her deep, she usually notices regardless, counting down to the date with sleep that becomes less of a chance to recharge her metaphorical batteries and more of an inescapable replay of those moments in her life, over and over again in haunting loops. 

Usually she notices, but Max has been pressing closer to her side with each day that passes without an appearance from Frank, and when she’s not taking care of him then she’s tracking Frank’s movements across the city as best she can tell and writing up about the aftermath left in his wake.

Ellison gladly gives her that assignment, saying something about her passion being absent in the hospital piece. He’s not wrong.

Karen is so focused on the work in front of her, on Frank, that she doesn’t realize it’s the anniversary until she picks up the paper and sees the date. She freezes, guilt drowning her from the inside out in the blink of an eye.

Her brother died today.

And she almost forgot.

Frank shows up at her door five days after he’s left, and the bags must be more visible under her eyes than she thought because as soon as she opens the door and turns away to set the gun down on the desk, he’s asking what’s wrong.

Max slams against his legs, though, tail wagging a mile a minute as he begs for attention.

Karen finishes her glass while Frank gives the dog some much-deserved petting. She hadn’t pulled out the alcohol right away, but after she got home, after she made sure Max was taken care of and fine, she couldn’t resist. The pull to burn out her brain enough so that it couldn’t conjure up the nightmares tonight was too strong.

With her vision a bit on the side of blurry, and her limbs are trapped in a paradox of being capable of light movements while feeling weighed down by leaden bones, she moves away from the glass. 

She could make small talk, but her mind is too full of grief and guilt to think about bringing up anything other than asking where he’s been. And it’s not like she doesn’t already know that answer. He was going rung after rung up the ladder of a network of Russian gangs that extended beyond the borders of Hell’s Kitchen and into the rest of the city.

Hence the dog-sitting.

Karen stays silent then as she grabs the small bag of dog food stashed underneath one of the kitchen counters to give him, but when she turns around, he’s already there, standing only two feet away. 

Close like this, she thinks he smells faintly of smoke, but on top of that is something stronger like mint and waxy soap. The top of his hair almost looks damp in the light. 

He’s staring at her intently, but her gaze skitters away from his.

“What happened?”

She tucks her hair back, ignores him. “I didn’t know what you fed him, but the saleswoman talked me into this apparently crazy healthy one. It was expensive as hell so you might as well take it with you.”

After a beat, Frank takes the bag from her outstretched hands, but then he turns and sets it on the counter behind him, giving her his full attention.

She wraps her arms around herself.

She wonders how much his perspective of her would be altered if he knew, really explicitly knew, what she has done before. If he knew what her first rodeo was. If he knew why she had a propensity for letting her job and this truth-seeking purpose consume her, how it was what kept her from drowning in all the tragedy and all the mistakes that plague her.

Karen could blurt that out. She could blurt it all out, right now, and it would be easy. It would be so damn easy to do that. She could let the words flow from her like a river, confession after confession, fall apart under his gaze like a part of her has wanted to for months.

There was a chance, before, with Matt. She should have told Matt. But the night had been warm, the moment light, and any sort of confession would have tainted it. 

There was another chance, with Ben, but he had already put together the pieces of her puzzle. He didn’t need to hear it said aloud. He figured it out, every part, and he looked at her no differently.

She doesn’t feel the grief-stricken, frustrated tears spilling over and leaving faint track lines down her face until Frank is cupping her jaw with both hands. She doesn’t realize she was lost in her thoughts and not really looking until she blinks and finds him staring at her with raw dread.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, soft, so soft that the sound of Max laying down on her carpet is louder, but she doesn’t notice that, locked in his gaze. “Karen?”

The quiet utterance of her name breaks her.

She squeezes her eyes shut for a second, but Frank only swipes his thumbs across her cheeks, brushing away her tears.

“My brother died today…. Not today— several years ago,” she corrects, when his brow starts to furrow. Her hands raise to hold his wrists, and she feels more solid when she does. More stable. “I almost forgot. This is the first year I’ve done that. How could I ever forget?”

Maybe she’s not asking the right person, the man in front of her constantly overcoming the lingering troubles of his head wound and his pin-pointed grief in order to keep all of his own memories intact.

But, then, maybe he is the right one, because understanding and pain dawns behind his eyes. Frank takes half a step closer as his hands slip slightly, tips of his fingers pressing against the back of her neck.

“He was sixteen. I just graduated high school. We were— we were driving, I was letting him, and we were stupid. We flew past a car and Kevin and I were laughing and we didn’t realize we’d pissed off the guy driving until he was right behind us. We came up to a curve and the guy slammed into us and—”

Flashes of the scene pop behind her eyelids, once more, and she shudders.

“It was my fault,” she chokes. “I shouldn’t have been so careless. I didn’t tell him to slow down, I didn’t notice the asshole—”

Her breathing is ragged and the tears keep coming again as she sees it happen over and over in her mind. The way they were tossed around, when the metal on the driver’s side crunched inward, how her equilibrium floated for a moment before they crashed off the side of the short cliff. 

If she dwells on it long enough, she can still hear the glass under her feet as she struggled to climb out, to move around the hood of the crumpled car, to wake Kevin up. He just needed to wake up.

Karen can hear the glass, but Frank’s shushing is stronger, and she squeeze his wrists. “That wasn’t your fault. Not for one goddamn second. You hear me?”

With a quick intake, she hiccups. “It doesn’t feel that way. I was there, and I didn’t do anything, I just watched him die.”

He recoils at the words, almost as if she’s slapped him, jaw clenching and eyes widening.

She waits for it, waits for Frank’s look to change from one of pain, waits for the judgments. 

It’s how she would expect anyone else to respond to her. It’s how she’s felt about herself ever since then.

Karen not surprised when his hands drop away, but she doesn’t expect him pulling her close in the next second. Quiet shushes brush against her ear, hand in her hair, but his arms hold her steadily on her feet as she finally sobs aloud, burying her head into his shoulder.

It takes her a while to sober up completely, and it’s only when the clock blinks four in the morning and she’s got yet another lukewarm cup of coffee in her hands that she feels completely herself again. Tired, drained, and exposed, but herself.

Frank didn’t have to, she remembers saying as much several times, but he stays. 

At some point she stopped crying and folded herself into a corner of the couch with the television on low. She didn’t want to go to her bed, didn’t want to have any chance at dreaming. Max shuffled over, pressing his head against her hand until her motions get too sloppy, and then he jumped up to join her. 

Frank put a pot of coffee on, and then eventually another.

Max rests against her now, snoring, and while he wants to be a lap dog and offer constant comfort, the weight of him on her thigh is starting to make her leg go to sleep. 

Half an hour ago, she heard Frank’s boots across the floor behind her, heard the click of the door, but Max didn’t get up with him, so she waited. He returned in a couple minutes later with a duffle bag and sat at the kitchen table. She didn’t have to look over to know what he was doing.

Karen gently shimmies out of Max’s reach, lets his head gently lower to rest on the couch instead as she stands. Her gait is a bit awkward from the leg that is slowly recovering its blood flow, but her bare feet on the floor are barely audible, and she refills her cup without making much noise.

She sits at the table this time.

She’s confessed one of the darkest experiences of her life, she’s shown how weak she really is, but he’s still here. He’s a comfort, keeping her calm, and he knows it.

He knows it, and yet he’s still here.

Karen rests her elbows on the table and watches his methodic, almost rhythmic movements for a while. Cloth slides over brushed metal and quiet clicks echo as parts snap back into place.

It’s familiar, from when he stayed here before. 

She licks her lips and then sucks in a deep breath.

“I’ve killed before.”

His movements stay steady. “You trying to surprise me?”

Swallowing, her nails curl against the cup in her hands. “I don’t mean self-defense like a couple months ago at the apartments on 47th, or— or what you guessed, in the diner.”

“There wasn’t much guessing there,” he says, after his gaze flicks over at her hands for a moment, but that’s all the recognition he gives at the other part of her words. “People, they have a way of carrying themselves differently after a death. You just shoot someone, there’s a tell for that too, but when they die….You were too sure on your feet when you pulled that gun on me.”

“That doesn’t bother you? Knowing I’ve…done that?”

“It haunts you.” Frank opens a box and starts loading a magazine, one snap of a bullet in place at a time. “If it didn’t, then maybe it would, but no…. No, it doesn’t bother me.”

“So you’re not going to even ask?”

She’s pushing, and she’s not sure why — maybe it’s because the night is already one of confessions, and she wants to keep going, wants someone to really know everything about that one period of her life that serves as a foundation for everything she is now, for where she is now — but he finally reacts, sets down the equipment in his hands. 

His trigger finger keeps moving every few moments almost on its own.

Frank raises his head and meets her stare. “I’m listening.”

Her breath catches, but she moves past it. “It wasn’t self-defense. It wasn’t by accident, or bad timing….It was two weeks after my brother died, and the police, they weren’t doing anything,” she says, and it could sound like a justification, but she’s frowning at herself, doesn’t mean it that way. “I took my father’s gun, and I went back. I drove around, waited, until I saw that car again.”

Karen pauses, but his eyes only bounce between hers, reading her.

She rolls her lips. “I followed him and I recognized him when he got out at a gas station. His face through the window— it was burned in my memory.… I didn’t— I didn’t think I could really pull the trigger, after I confronted him, I thought I was just angry and grieving….But then I did it. And it scared the shit out of me, knowing that I….”

“That you could take a life.” 

A nod jerks from her as her head bows. “I haven’t told anyone about Kevin’s death because then I remember…I remember that, and it’s just easier not to.”

Frank reaches out, puts a hand on her forearm. “Ma’am, it’s not the same. What you did and what I do. What you did and what the assholes I kill do.”

His touch feels electric, feels like a kind of forgiveness. Karen puts a hand on his and he squeezes her arm gently in response.

“You’re a good person. Been in some shitty situations, no argument there, but you’re good,” he says softly, nodding ever slightly. “Trust me.”

“I do….” She lifts her eyes sadly. “I wish you trusted me, too.”

He pulls back a couple moments later, doesn’t meet her gaze, but he doesn’t actually leave either. That, she thinks, is enough.

Two hours later, her alarm belts out a shrill tune reminding her that she has to get ready for work, so Frank packs up his bag.

It’s a mostly silent goodbye as he leashes up Max and she presses the bag of dog food into his hands from where she stands at the door. She warns him to be careful, again. His lips quirk and he says the same before pulling his cap on.

After, as she stands in front of the bathroom mirror that is rapidly being overtaken by a thin sheen of steam, she contemplates her puffy eyes and the dark raccoon circles underneath them.

She looks exhausted, but she feels the particular absence of a lingering weight on her chest.

It’s a nice change.

Frank shows up the next night. 

And the next.

And a couple days after that.

Eventually, he’s stopping by a steady three times a week, no matter how much trouble he’s gotten into. Sometimes his face is so covered in purple splotches that he’s sporting double black eyes, sometimes he’s only in the possession of a couple cuts.

She always opens the door and they always share coffee. 

It really says something about her innately messed up sleep schedule that drinking coffee with him around midnight isn’t leaving her any worse for wear.

The routine unlocks something in him, again, that reminds her of only a few months earlier when he was holed up here for a week mostly out of necessity. Sharing memories, able to talk about their respective work, splitting meals with jokes and teases.

There’s no dread about him leaving for good this time. She only waits for him to show back up.

Daredevil is spotted upstate as he helps take down and hand over a gun-for-hire ring to the local police before they could get to the governor. 

Turns out Fisk did have a backup plan in case Commissioner Rhodes didn’t fulfill his usefulness.

Karen still doesn’t have enough sources to be able to tell Ellison that the Kingpin behind the hit is actually Wilson Fisk, doesn’t have enough sources for her to get anywhere close to printing that speculation, so she sucks it up and uses the code name in her article.

The next time they meet for drinks, Foggy scoffs at the name the same way as he used to at Daredevil and The Punisher, and it takes her back to the days of Nelson & Murdock slotted around a desk or a pool table. 

Oddly enough, it makes her laugh, the old bitter bruises on her heart more healed now after all the time that’s passed, all the things that have happened. She and Foggy end up reminiscing for the rest of the night, and when he brings up inviting Matt next time, she encourages the idea.

They won’t be the same as they were, but that’s okay.

She doesn’t think, now, that they have to be.

With August comes the beginnings of Commissioner Rhodes’ trial.

Karen sits in on the jury selection process, pen perpetually scrawling notes. 

Ellison has her co-writing the articles with one of the legal experts at The Bulletin. He sits beside her, making his own notes but mostly keeping to himself after he kept actively trying to ask her out and she finally shut him down firmly.

It isn’t a very eventful process, unless she counts the way Rhodes’ face darkens when he can’t resist looking around at the sizable audience behind him and spots her amongst the crowd.

She stares him down.

“Thought you didn’t like this song,” Frank comments when she lets him in one night while Shining Star is playing from her computer.

She didn’t expect him to show up now, not after he was talking about looking into a dog fighting ring when he was here just last night.

Looking into, because he didn’t have many specifics, which she knew now meant he would stalk the city the entire night as The Punisher, interrogating criminals until he found the answers he was looking for. That kind of ruthlessness would take a toll on anyone, even him.

Karen doesn’t expect him, but the fact that he’s here makes her smile as she locks the door behind him.

“It grew on me,” she says simply. It draws a chuckle from him.

He moves easily into her kitchen, but one of his shoulders is stiff. 

She trails behind him. “Let me see.”

“I already patched it up.”

“Frank,” she sighs, exasperated. 

He casts her a look but sets the mug down and shrugs out of his jacket. While there is the jacket and boots, it’s hot out, so he’s got a T-shirt underneath, and she can see the angry red bruise stretching down from his shoulder even past the long cuff.

Within a moment, she’s stepping into his space, fingers carefully pushing the edge of his shirt up. There’s no purple spotting, at least not yet, so it could be worse. “How did you get this?”

“Car,” he says, and the gruff voice might be from some annoyance.

“Seriously?”

“There were a lot of shitbags to keep track of.”

Karen huffs. 

Her hands move to the neck hem, pulling it away to peer at a shallow cut that’s stitched up near his collar bone. The laptop sits on her desk, blue light shining out as the cursor blinks, waiting for more words to be typed, but she’s forgotten the article entirely as she lifts up the bottom of his shirt. 

“You should be more careful with your ribs,” she says quietly, thumb skimming the sight where one of the yellowed and fading marks has been re-injured and turned blue. Despite all the damage, his skin is soft here. It’s a strange sort of juxtaposition that catches her attention.

After a moment, one of his hands curls around her elbow, touch warm and gentle. “Ma’am.”

Her lips twitch but settle into a smile again when she speaks. “I know. You’ll live.”

She intends to tease Frank with the words as she lets go of his shirt, lets it drop back in place, but when her chin lifts, he’s staring that way again, wide-eyed and intent, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like a tease at all.

It feels more meaningful than that.

She lets go of his shirt, but her hands rest against his chest, and his other hand finds her waist when her gaze falls to his lips. Heat flushes along her skin. Karen’s already leaning forward when his hands tighten and he meets her halfway.

They crash into each other, her fingers carding through his hair — she loves when it’s grown out like this — and his mapping a path under her shirt, up her back.

It’s hard to tell who deepens the kiss first when there’s something like a growl at the back of his throat and her head is dizzy as she leans against him, slots herself between his legs when he leans against the counter and pulls her with him.

He tastes overwhelmingly like bitter coffee — she thinks she loves this, too.

The hand he has under her shirt has found her bra, and one of hers has started bunching up his own shirt again to take off, when he pulls back.

It could break her heart — Frank has the power to do that, she thinks vaguely, a speech about two hands coming to mind — but then he leans his forehead against hers, sharing quickened breaths with her as he stares with hooded eyes.

“Stay,” she gasps, pleads.

It’s the first time Karen has asked him outright.

She never intended to, but then she never meant to fall for him, either. And this, this thing between them, is starting to feel an awful lot like that.

His hands slide down to her hips as he moves his head to rest against her shoulder. She leans against him. “I’m right here,” Frank promises. “I’m right here.”

Her lips are red but she holds onto him calmly as the warmth radiating from him cocoons her.

He’s here, and he’s not leaving, not really. Any step out her door from now on is only a temporary step away, and she thinks that maybe it has been for a while now, it’s just been hard to see.

Neither of their jobs will ever be over. Crime won’t stop being committed, lies won’t stop being told, and Hell’s Kitchen won’t ever stop serving as a breeding ground for both of these problems.

But. That’s alright.

Frank wraps his arms further around her and kisses her neck once, twice, until she sighs and turns her head enough to press her lips into his again and melt into the embrace.