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Frank wasn't intending to pretend that a haircut, a cleaner shave, and a new doodle on his vest were enough to fix whatever had broken down within him during the past months.
Putting himself back together after the carnage he went through and stumbling onto the streets with a newfound resolve to bring justice does nothing to quiet the storm inside his head.
When Frank drags himself into his newest hideout, an empty basement tucked only a few blocks from his former apartment, he's running on fumes. After a long day spent tracking down the last of Ma Gnucci's thugs, he is exhausted enough to forsake all remnants of gentleness.
His shirt sticks to his skin painfully when he removes it, and Frank forgets to be mindful of the cut on his chest, resulting in him tearing off the fresh scabs along with his clothing.
The painful sensation is sudden enough to sober his exhausted mind, making him hiss in a sharp breath through gritted teeth.
Fuck.
The X-shaped wound is bleeding now, and the jagged skin around the edges looks irritated. It's ugly, red, and flaking. It also stings horribly.
"Well, that looks infected," the voice says. It rings in his ears and makes Frank want to smash his head against the concrete wall, hoping that a concussion will make it go away.
However much he hates it, her voice is a salvation in itself too.
Frank wants her to never stop talking.
So he stays quiet, in hopes that if he doesn't react, doesn't acknowledge her, then that strange, unyielding remnant of Karen Page that resides in his mind will grow bored of him.
She never does. "Wanna tell me what happened? Why is this crossed out?" she asks, fingers splaying against his bloody pec.
It's that game of pretend again, the one where she acts as if she doesn't already know the answers to all her questions.
He doesn't give her any, still set in his resolution to ignore her presence.
That makes her angry. "So now you're not talking to me?" Karen scoffs. "Of course! That's so you, Frank! Is this how you treated your family, too?"
Her words sting worse than any wound ever could.
"Leave me alone," Frank finally responds, his voice far from demanding; it's not an order, it's barely a whisper.
It doesn't faze her; not even a dog would obey a command spoken this weakly.
"How much longer is this going to last?" she questions, dabbing his jagged skin with a cotton pad. She swipes it across his chest with practiced ease, cleaning the wound of old, dried-up blood and pus. "How much longer will you keep pushing everyone away?"
Instead of answering, Frank zeroes in on her hands. Karen's touch is gentle, incredibly so. He begins to remember an old memory of her working on his injuries, but his mind is fuzzy; he can't quite place the details.
Perhaps the scene never existed to begin with? No, it had to; otherwise, he wouldn't be able to replicate the feeling of her warm palms against his skin so well. And warm they are. It surprises him how real she feels.
"Are you here?" he murmurs, not for the first time.
She shrugs. "Yeah, of course I am. Where else would I be, Frank?"
Frank frowns. She's lying. Karen is in Hell's Kitchen. He knows as much. Sure, at times, he was certain he'd only imagined her face on the news, that the woman on the screen was merely another illusion, but now he is almost certain that what he saw was true.
And if Karen is in Hell's Kitchen, then she can't be with him right now.
"Don't lie to me," he rasps.
Karen shoots him a look. "I'm not lying."
Frank wants to believe it. He needs his faith to be enough to somehow will her to his side.
"Why did you come?"
She stills, pausing the process of patching him up. "You needed me."
"Karen, I—"
"No," she cuts him off, angry again. "I would have helped. God, I would have given up everything for you. You always knew that. Why didn't you tell me you needed me? Why didn't you call, Frank?"
"I didn't. I don't need..." he tries.
"Don't lie to me," she repeats his previous request, the tips of her fingers slowly trailing up his shoulders, reaching to pull him closer. "Not to me."
Frank feels a shiver running down his spine. He wants to tell her that he is well aware of her self-sacrificial tendencies and that it is the main reason he tried to stay away—for her sake. Because she deserves more. He wants to say it all, yet he can't make a sound.
He is unable to protest when she wraps her arms around him.
Not that he'd want to; he instantly curls into her embrace like she's the last thing keeping him from losing his mind, which, perhaps, he already has.
"Stay," Frank whines, his fingers digging hard into her back as if he could keep her there by force.
This time, it's Karen who doesn't respond, so he keeps talking, his voice growing weaker with each word: "Please, stay. Please, Karen. Don't go."
His pleading is pathetic and undeniably pointless; he can already feel her hold on him loosening. "No." Frank clutches her tighter. "Please, no."
In the end, there is nothing he can do.
When he snaps out of it, it's as if Karen was never there to begin with.
He stands alone in the cold basement, blood still seeping from his chest. No one came to wipe it off or apply gauze and bandages over it.
As Frank looks down, he is sure of two things: one, there was no one here but him, and two, Karen was right; the cut is definitely infected.
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Unable to stay still for long, Frank searches for another hideout; abandoned places always seem to be calling to him, and he makes his choice quickly.
The simplicity of finding a new safehouse doesn't come without a price. The place he chooses this time, an old warehouse, is completely trashed. The building is falling apart so much that it's practically a ruin, yet that's not enough to scare him off.
He barricades himself in, builds a new armory, and sticks photos of his next targets onto a wall.
When everything else is done, Frank decides to shave. After all, whenever his beaten-up mug crosses the news and front pages, it is almost always clean-shaven. The beard he has grown doesn't bother him, but Frank knows it would be more useful as a disguise, and it won't be a disguise if he lets it become a part of his image.
Frank doesn't own a razor, so he takes his hunting knife to his neck.
It's a slow process; each scrape is slow, but at last, his jaw is clean.
Frank stares at his reflection in the cracked mirror. The man he sees staring back looks tired—not just on the outside. Sure, he has dark shadows under his eyes, but it's what he sees within them that shows true exhaustion.
His gaze carries a familiar glint. He'd seen it hundreds of times in opponents who ran out of weapons and ways to run. Theirs were the eyes of cornered prey. His are lacking even that last remnant of fight. They look devoid of hope.
Slowly, Frank's hand stills, the sharp edge of the knife resting against his throat. It feels as if time has slowed down; his heartbeat thunders in his ears.
He could simply press a little harder. It would take one sharp drag against the skin—a motion he knows far too well. One slash, and it would all be over.
Frank's hands tremble at the idea, the movement enough for the blade to break skin. Blood leaks from the small wound and trails down his neck.
"What are you doing?!"
He flinches hard; the knife slips from between his fingers and hits the ground. The loud clank of metal echoes throughout the warehouse.
Right.
There she stands again.
She is furious, anger written clearly across her face.
Karen looks so distraught that, in this moment, he can barely look at her without guilt clutching his chest, making it hard to breathe.
"What are you doing, Frank?" she repeats. The game of pretending not to know starts again.
"Shaving?" he grunts and reaches to wipe the blood with the back of his hand, which only smears it onto his jaw.
Karen ignores the lie. "You think you deserve it?" she presses. "An easy way out?"
She never would have said that, Frank thinks. A part of him knows that it's his own mind that taunts him so; another part desperately needs this to be real. Needs her to be real.
"Just go," he begs, taking a step back.
Karen scoffs. "You don't mean that."
"Yes, I do." He clenches his fists. "Get out."
"I'm not leaving. I'm always here, I told you."
Something horrible claws at his chest. Hope?
"You promise?"
"Yeah." Karen leans closer, her fingers reaching to carefully prod at the cut on his neck. "God, that's ugly." She frowns.
"Not the best bedside manners." He manages a smirk.
Miraculously, she smiles back. "That's why I'm not a nurse," Karen reminds him. "I still always patched you up when you asked. Remember, Frank?"
Frank nods. He doesn't remember—not fully anyway; it's all blurred memories he can't be sure of now. But he'd sooner die than disagree with anything Karen says now.
"All those aches." Her hands slide down his neck, tracing the edges of the uneven scars marking his skin. "Just how many for me?" Karen asks with a little too much emotion in her tone.
There were bruised ribs, a dislocated shoulder, shrapnel in his arm, cuts on his neck and face, even a bullet that grazed his head. Frank sustained many injuries while trying to protect Karen. And they were all... "Worth it," he mumbles, tilting his head to connect their foreheads.
She lets him; their eyes meet. For a moment, Frank thinks he only ever wants to see his own when gazing into hers.
It had been far too long since anyone held him. Touch deprived of violence feels more like a distant memory to him nowadays.
A low, guttural sound rumbles in his throat, as if words can't express what he feels properly. He just stares at her, desperate for her to never let him go again.
"I'm here," she whispers. They're so close that he can feel her breath against his skin.
"Yeah?" Frank sighs, relieved.
Karen nods. "Yeah. So don't you leave me now."
"Yes, ma'am," he agrees.
She shifts closer, their noses bumping together, their mouths just inches apart. Frank leans in to kiss her.
He doesn't make it in time.
Frank staggers; there's a strange metallic taste in his mouth, his ears are ringing, and Karen is gone.
He can't catch his breath. When he comes to, he kicks the dropped knife out of reach and curls in on himself, his back braced against the nearest wall.
The ringing doesn't stop until he collapses unconscious.
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"Go home!" yells the kid.
Frank can't go home.
He can't go, for he knows that if he sees her again, he could only fall to his knees, beg Karen to say she's real, and then not believe her when she says she is, too afraid that she'd turn to nothing in his arms just as she had all those times before.
The hallucinations are always the same, and he falls for them each and every time.