Chapter Text
-Tuesday-
Amy left early to meet a friend at the diner for breakfast.
David's got half of a thumbprint cookie in his mouth while he types like a madman on his laptop. Frank paces the back deck with his fourth cup of coffee, steady with focus as he listens to the erratic clack clack of keys. The morning sun shines, warm across the span of his back as he spots the waves crash against the rocks at the bottom of the dock.
The new information from the kid helps narrow down the paper trail to a few warehouses previously owned by businesses that have since disappeared. David states they're not so much disappeared, than they are forgotten and lost to record keeping. Shell company inside one to another, he says, and so on.
Frank feels like he’s carving a trench in the dark wood below his boots as he continues to tread back and forth. He's half a mind to go inside and start cleaning his gun - because at least the chore makes him feel more useful than this. “What else you got?”
“I'm working on building from Fisk's schedule. Car service, restaurant expenses, y'know, it's all in here.” His eyes peek away from the screen to look him over again, lingering high on Frank's chest where Karen's scales are hiding beneath his Henley. “That guy's funeral is tomorrow,” he says after a moment. “Autopsy came back, the file was officially posted with drowning as the cause.”
Frank considers the words as he surveys the Hudson River in his cliffside backyard, sipping from the mug in his hands. Karen's face had looked so angry, her words tight. He deserved more. He turns a bit to face him with a slightly amused lift to his mouth and a short nod in agreement. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Yeah, she did mention that.”
“James Wesley was mutilated, though,” David says factually, reaching for another cookie off the plate in front of him. “He was alive that whole time?”
The breeze picks up a bit before the sliding glass door opens to the kitchen and Amy greets them. She's got a to-go container in one hand and the other is shoving the door closed as she steps out. “Who was alive?”
“No one,” Frank tells her dismissively, shaking his head and settling into one of the patio chairs by David. She doesn't need to worry about him more than she does already. The kid sets a glare towards him, and he eyes her right back. She pulls out her own chair across from him, leaning back enough to teeter and turn her face to the sky. “Stop that,” he grunts, reaching for the food container. Thinking maybe bacon, a cold pancake, or a half-eaten egg sandwich is available to steal from her, he pops the lid. “What's left?”
David responds at the same time she does, turning the laptop his way, and her head lowers to meet his eyes, her finger pointing -
“I narrowed… I found the place, I'm just not sure -”
“Oh, that's not - I texted Fiona about that stuff last night and she gave me -”
Inside the to-go box is a decorative armlet with a shiny platinum setting. It's thin, with the metal shaped into a collection of leaves. Deep green scales are locked on top with a resin, the shimmer of them now a faint likeness to what is still against his chest.
It's heavy when he takes it out and holds it in his palm. David sits up to get a closer look and breathes out quickly. Frank scrubs a hand over his face with disbelief, hearing himself groan. This was real, though. Green, he notes as he turns it - one way, and then another against the sunshine - with some blue mixed in, just like she said.
“Jesus Christ.” He looks to the kid, her eyes low and brows furrowed with inquiry while his thumb runs the length of the metal. Cold, he recalls Karen's words again. “This?” He waves the armlet in her direction. “This is dangerous.” Frank briefly wonders if the scales could still hold their healing powers while layered in resin and slapped in an expensive setting. Or if Fisk's wife had just asked for more, and that's why he wouldn't let Karen go when he found her.
“Now you tell me,” her hands hit the table and she nods. “Okay.”
A thumbnail traces one of the stems, and he has to bite down on the urge to try and snap them with a bend of his hand. His voice is a low growl when he speaks. “Can I keep this?”
Amy waves her arm with barely a care, reaching for one of the thumbprints. “It’s for you,” she tells him.
“Frank, I found it,” David repeats. “Timestamps, delivery dates, the blueprints, all of it. I got it. Are you… You sure you wanna do this?”
He shuts his eyes for only a moment, the memory of Karen's fingers tracing his cheek after their dive coming forward. It'd been such a comforting touch, her concern soaking into his muscles - the bones - with each soft drip of water off his brow. The feeling of her tail wrapped tightly around his thigh, bringing him in close, her fin brushing past his ankle. Words echo in his ears as bright and clear as the water looked now. You're okay, she had told him. She had been so confident and sure - he wants that for her, too.
He shoves the armlet into his jeans pocket. “Yeah, yeah, I made her a promise.”
Amy tries to meet anyone's eyes as she sits up straight in her seat at the comment. “Whoa, who?”
David sighs, pulling at his hair and baring his teeth with no regard to her outburst. “Yeah, no, I know, but this whole thing’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I thought this was a guys getaway. What happened this weekend?”
“Don't give me that bullshit, David. This piece of shit is going after her, you know, he's gonna just keep coming.”
Hesitantly, and only after taking a deep breath, he hits a button on the keyboard, and sends him everything. Frank's phone vibrates in his pocket.
“You guys!”
-
It's a water-rotted building at the end of the docks.
Frank looks through the scope on his rifle from across the street, groaning loud when there’s not much more to see from the large windows than black curtains. He hangs back for a few moments, debating his decision to wait for Fisk’s arrival to hit him there on the roof or if he should find somewhere to hang out in the rafters of the old building.
Gunshots pop pop pop inside the warehouse. He grabs for a few guns from his weapons bag - the decision made for him.
The ground floor windows on the ocean side are deeply salted from sea spray, and the wood panels nearest the bottom of the boathouse have been eaten away. It’s near impossible to see anything beyond the crust. He hears the shouts of protest, the demands to stay back, hey, don’t - and he manages to quietly break the lock on the side of the boathouse garage.
Inside, the narrow docks are flooded from high tide. Frank slides the door shut, leaving him alone to the darkness. He hears the ocean lap loudly against the edge, where the entrance to the rest of the warehouse is located.
Where’d she go?
The shaky voice is fading - just inside the warehouse, their footsteps marching away, further from the door separating them from him. His boots splash in puddles as he leans his back to the wall, trying to stay out of sight from the window in the wooden door.
A shadow casts over the glass soon after, a guard attempting to peer into the boathouse. The knob rattles a bit before it opens, and Frank waits - for the body to come into view, for the brief check of whatever weaponry the guy’s holding. A gun rises off his hip - his eye aligning with the scope. It scans the water slowly. “You in here?” The man breathes heavily, stepping into a puddle. “You stupid little goldfish?”
“Just me,” Frank growls, reaching to knock the gun out of his hands from his spot behind the door. It’s when he wraps his arm around the guy’s neck and tightens does the realization dawn on the guard’s face about what’s going to happen. His fingers dig into Frank’s wrist, clawing as he chokes on a shout.
This part he can live with, he thinks as he leans in. Shh, shh, shh. It’s gonna keep her safe. He feels the pressure release, hearing the harsh crunch of a neck shattering under his hold. The guard’s struggling arm goes slack, and he falls to the ground. He drops him with a splash.
The two others he can see in the next room wander, their whispers together hushed and shaking. Did you see where she went?
He can see rows of tables. There’s an assembly line of forgotten hand tools, assorted metal presses, and barrels of resin mixtures. The place is deserted. With no mermaid, there’s no business.
It’s the raised platform in the back center of the room, though, that breaks his composure for a second - that gets a shaky breath out of him. A half-empty glass tank of water sits on top, holding a deep crack running through one side and across another. The fishbowl. With a closer inspection, he spots a poorly cleaned blood stain off the edge. The spatter trails to the floor, and the tile around the area is pink from an evidently lazy scrub. Wesley, he hopes, but he’s not optimistic enough. He remembers how deep her wounds had been.
Frank moves his way past the entry, disappearing into a corner of fresh barrels, into shadows where the high windows can’t find him, where the group of guards mingling at the other end can’t catch him. The area cuts back from the wall, hiding a narrow stairway to the catwalk overhead. He takes two stairs at a time, eyeing the top for a spot to linger and set up his gun. David’s notes told a story of how Fisk would be visiting the facility at some point that day, so he makes a mental checklist for -
He trips over a body.
It’s dark enough in the stairwell that something like this shouldn’t come as a surprise to him, but the groan as his boot steps down onto the man’s bare leg is loud enough to get his heart pumping and his hand reaching for his pistol. There’s broken glass - lightbulbs, and part of a window somewhere, he notices - littered on the steps. “Hey,” Frank grunts, resetting the boot back onto his knee to keep the man on the stair. A muffled crunch of glass causes the man to hiss in pain. He cocks the gun.
His eyes adjust to the dark after a moment, and the older man on the edge of the stair waves a hand his way. “Please, don’t. I… My glasses,” he’s not wearing any - “I can’t see for the life of me,” he says with a whisper. “And… and that thing…” his panic trails off into a disbelieving whimper. “She left me without my pants.”
That thing. He can feel his lip turn, scowling.
The guy’s without pants. He sees that. The wave of his pasty arm tells him that he’s without a proper shirt, too. Plus the guy’s unarmed, the broken glass pieces around him seem too small to grip. “Talk,” he says low, letting his back touch the stairwell.
Frank grinds his boot further when the man hesitates, and he quickly bends to cover his mouth as he cries out. “All right, okay, okay.” He breathes heavy, looking down the stairs before Frank grabs a hold of his chin to make him look his way instead. His fingers divot in the fat of his cheeks. “Okay! Jees, I’m just the accountant!”
“Keep your voice down,” he growls, bending into a crouch and pushing the old man’s head back to be flush with the wooden wall.
“I keep... the files are kept upstairs,” he starts. “Finances, numbers, you see, so I was coming down and she just… she, she came back, just came up from nowhere, tore my suit, and knocked me out.” His eyes spin, still in a daze. “Christ, this is embarrassing.”
Frank shoves him back, dropping his hold. He’s still got on an undershirt and he’s been left in briefs, with his shoes still on. There’s a plum-sized bruise growing just under his jowl. He nearly smiles.
“There’s no way I can leave now when people are still -”
“Shut up,” he says, standing and tucking away the gun and stepping over him. “You know where she went?”
The old man points back downstairs, and Frank nods. What a pathetic piece of shit, he thinks. He kicks across the guy’s cheek and watches him crumble against the wall, mouth open, his eyes closing. He moves up the staircase.
From the catwalk, he’s able to see the entirety of the warehouse. His steps are careful, the metal walkway groaning under the pressure. He ducks out of sight, keeping a count of the guns below. The room is built around the tank and the closer someone could get to the outer wall is the closer they’d get to a shipping box. Frank spots three guards walking the line. One fiddles with a few switches after a moment, hitting buttons - the metal presses being activated. A loud hiss runs through the room as the machines whirr, the molds at work.
He counts a few more picking with the abandoned hand tools, chains clattering against tables. There’s a light and easy chatter, some laughter, even. It’s only after he hears a soft slap against the floor does he look across to the windows. A wary blonde in baggy gray dress pants rocks from bare foot to foot, grabbing a lab coat off a row of hooks on the wall and throwing her arms into the sleeves. Her damp hair is tied high into a ponytail with a dark green scarf, and she turns to face the rest of the room. She’s got the old man’s glasses on the tip of her nose, her shirt buttoned lopsidedly. He sees her.
Karen.
She’s not gonna fool anyone with that outfit, Jesus Christ.
He wanted to get this done and over with before she risked even more exposure. How long has she been here?
At this vantage point, he’s able to cover the other exits in the room, and spot where other doors lead to. Frank starts to unload his rifle from his back. She looks up and she sees him. Her eyes widen, her mouth opening with horror. “No!”
A shock runs through him from the side of the neck. Pain strikes every nerve from the tip of his tongue to his knees, down through to his toes. His teeth clench tight. Frank falls back - stiff - knuckles turning white as his hands form to fists. He tries counting the seconds that pass, to remember his training, but it feels like it’s never ending. It takes him a moment but he recognizes the voice at his ear as his arms fall limp and his eyes start to close from the pain. Fight it, fight it.
“It doesn’t work on her outside of the tank,” the old man whispers, pocketing his stun gun and grabbing at one of Frank’s legs. Fight it. There are shouts to stop right there and don’t come any closer, you hear me, from the guards below. Guns cock at the ready - bullets fly - ricocheting off the machines. His arm reaches, slow, his knife is tucked just behind his back - his whole body screams at him, shaking from the stun. He can’t - he’s tugged back down the stairwell. “But for you…”
Fight -
-
The scents of salt water and soot reach his nose first as he wakes. With every deep inhale, the bulletproof vest squeezes, unmoving. He should have killed the old man, he thinks, struggling to extend his fingers. Frank’s head rests against a lap, his legs sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs. Fingers stroke through his hair, and he can smell it all now. Fire. The gunpowder. Blood, somewhere. There’s always blood.
Karen gently pats at the kevlar. He opens his eyes to see her fingernails are crusted and red again. Her mouth turns flat and she’s not looking back at him. “I said be careful, Frank.”
“You okay?” His arm lifts against the residual shock, feeling out for hers, checking for any wounds. The iron in his nose is too strong. He can nearly taste it. “They didn’t hurt you?”
“No,” she whispers, worrying her lip, her eyes chasing whatever is beyond the barrels they seem to be hiding behind. “No, but I… I did this.”
“Attagirl,” he mutters, grunting softly before looking around. There’s a fire burning off in some corner of the warehouse, no one is chasing them, and they’re both alive. She did do this.
He bends a leg to allow himself to sit next to her, and a sharp pain hits him against his thigh before he can get up. Karen’s hand slides from its place on his chest to just above his knee, and she breathes out slowly. Frank watches her grip a piece of curved glass wedged deep in his jeans and doesn’t pause when she rips it from his skin. He groans, teeth bared as he breathes through it. The glass from the stairs. Pressure releases, and blood trickles, darkening a trail up his thigh. He hears the scratchy clink of it landing when he moves his back to the wall and she adds it to a pile beside her. Fresh stains cover her fingers, reddening the old rust color already caking on her knuckles. The blood in his nose had been his own.
“Thank you,” he tells her. He’s grateful. There are more pieces, though, and he can see where else she had been pulling before he woke up. The still body of the old man lays further up the dark staircase.
“Do not,” she says tiredly, grinding her teeth.
The back of her hand swipes just above her eye, streaking blood across her temple and on one of the metal arms of the glasses she still wears. It is just so utterly familiar - here, in this moment - that he nearly chuckles in relief. He reaches to guide his thumb across her face to remove it, and catches her gaze just as his hand shakes from the aftershock. Karen sighs a bit, her mouth quivering before looking away, back to the rest of the room. She doesn’t deny the touch.
As he strokes past her ear and against her hair, Frank only realizes now that the green scarf she used to tie it up hadn’t been a scarf at all. She curls her knees up and rests her head upon her arms, turning to watch him while his finger trails lazily through the ponytail at her back. He can’t stop the small lift of his mouth, the way his eyes soften for a moment as he looks at her. It’s seaweed.
“What?”
He’s struck with the thought that he didn’t actually think he’d ever see her again when she left the morning before. Their days had been numbered from the start. He knew it. She knew it. And yet here they were -
“Nothing,” he says gently, dropping his hand to his lap. Frank looks out into the warehouse, watching smoke billow out from one of the open windows high up near the ceiling. He pulls at the shards in his lower legs. The fire grows, and there are a few distant shouts to put it out. He won’t hesitate to let the whole place burn down - good fucking riddance - and he figures there’s still time for the two of them to get out of there safely if she wanted. He’ll carry her out himself, if she doesn’t.
Karen adjusts the eyeglasses when they slide down her face. “I tried to hide,” she tells him in the quiet. “Make me look like Jimbo,” her fingers tap against the frames, then falls to the curve of her knees. “Try… try to blend in, like on the boat.”
Frank considers this.
Considers the warehouse, the idea, the lab coat. The fresh set of legs. He glances briefly at her high ponytail, the seaweed hair tie draping past her shoulders, and the pale gray shirt with the uneven buttons. “It might have worked, yeah, if you looked anything like Jimbo.” On her wrist is the old man’s watch, which reminds him -
Her face tilts to the side, huffing with light irritation. “Frank -”
“Can you see with those?” He begins to rip into his tactical gear, pulling velcro, feeling for the cool metal of the platinum armband he tucked away. This was part of an idea he had earlier, to leave it where she could find it, if he got here before she did. To lay it across Fisk’s corpse, he thinks, or making it even simpler, and letting it hang from the doorknob of the boathouse after it was all done.
But she was here, now. Here, on the floor in the corner of a warehouse she had been held against her will in, with bloody hands and a dark determination that greatly rivaled his own. She should ultimately know why she had been taken , at least. He can give that to her.
Karen pulls her glasses down by the bridge, letting them fall. Frank hears them clatter to the floor when he pulls the jewelry out. Her eyes catch the leaves, the gentle curve and the immense shine, and her hand hovers over his to take it before she claps both over her mouth. “What… how? Oh no -” Recognition and horror cast over her face.
“This is what he’s been up to, all right,” he whispers quickly. The ice of the platinum finish is a stark difference to the warmth of her skin as he pulls at her wrist to give it to her. She inhales a sob, her face turning away. Frank feels her fingers curl over the piece, murmuring incoherently. “This is what they fished you out for.”
Her breath is shaky as she leans into the barrel beside her, muffling herself, the solemn wail deep in her chest becoming a shiver up his spine. “They took him,” she struggles to say after a moment. Her knuckles turn white as she brings the armlet in close to her chest. “They… I know these, Frank. His… his colors...”
“I’m sorry.”
He knows it’s not enough, and half of him is sorry he even said it. At some point, apologies become so foreign to the ear it’s hard to even figure they’re really words anymore. Still, he reaches for her knee and squeezes, listening to it all fade out as she mourns her brother a second time. The hitch of a watery gasp, the distant crackling burn of wood, the whoorrsh of a few fire extinguishers. The way she whimpers so softly, looking at everything but what she holds in her hand.
Karen wipes hard at her face again before she’s shoving the piece back towards him. Her fingernails are as sharp as her words. “What is it,” she demands. “What does it do?”
“It uh… Nothing.” Frank fumbles with the hinge, watching the faded shimmer of green scales reflect the light. It pops open. “You just… you wear it,” he says, hesitantly clasping it just above her elbow when she presents it to him. She recoils only slightly when it clicks into place, and he can see the goosebumps rise up on her skin. Her knees shake as she pushes herself further against the wall. It’s lifeless, he thinks. Lifeless and cold. Metallic and dead.
“Oh…”
“Do you -” he starts to ask, watching her breathe heavily past her hand and close her eyes. His theory over the scales eats at him. “Maybe Fisk knows what they can do? That -”
Her head shakes wildly before she can look back at him. She glances down at the green, petting the leaf shape of resin that covers her brother’s scales. “No… no they would never have worked for him, even if he did know.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t give them,” Karen says through her teeth, bringing her forehead down to touch the metal. “Even when... when we die,” she continues, turning her face to him, then towards his legs. There are still glass shards buried deep in his thigh. It is an excruciatingly slow pace, but he can feel his skin being pulled from the inside to push them out. The bleeding in the spots they’ve pulled out by hand are already sealing up. “With Kevin - they would not work. Taken is not given.”
The fire on the other side of the room could not burn as hot as her fury, but the embers creeping in close will get to them regardless. They have to leave. They have to make it to tomorrow. They can make a better plan of attack somewhere else - anywhere else but the floor of a burning warehouse. Frank steals another glance her way as he moves his sidearm to his lap, readying himself against his lacerations to move. The adrenaline only starts to kick in when she shakes her head. “Karen, we can’t stay here.”
“No. No, he’ll be here -”
“It’s not safe. We have to leave, yeah? We can -”
“- Frank, the men with guns, when I knocked them down -”
“- find him somewhere else, you know, we can - I can -”
“- they saw me - listen, okay, so he’ll come and I’ll have him -”
“- keep you safe while we figure this out.”
“- right here.”
“Karen…” he repeats, shaking his head as she points to his wounds. She would rather him not push it any further than he’s already done, it seems. Stubborn, and definitely unlikely. He’ll hold out as long as they have to, then. Fire at their heels, if they have to. This is her mission, and he gets that, but it’s his mission to keep her safe. Frank rocks his head to the side to meet her gaze, and he catches her already staring back. “All right.”
She smiles at him, a little sad in the eyes as she presses a hand into his shoulder. Her thumb traces the ball of muscle before sliding her fingers to rest at the back of his neck, and without a second thought he leans a little into it. Frank can feel his pulse race in his ear at her touch before she gasps lightly, her other hand coming up to hold her neck. She yanks at it, pulling a dart. He watches her place it slowly down in her lap, her hand falling further - thudding heavily against the floor. The hand on his neck slides away, limp as it leaves him cold. He can see her trying to look at him, her gaze full of alarm and off focus, beyond him.
A dart hits him in the shoulder.
“Karen? Hey. Hey, stay with me, okay?” He cups the side of her face with one hand when her eyes flutter and roll, her body going slack. “Hey -” Frank reaches for his pistol with the other, turning to take aim at whoever took the shot.
It happens quick. The tranquilizer has buried itself in his skin and his hold on her fails. She drops to a crumpled heap beside the barrels like a ragdoll. He fights even harder to stay awake this time, catching a man in a lab coat matching Karen’s adjusting a dart gun on his arm a few yards away. The larger man beside him steps closer into the corner.
His hands stay clasped behind his back, his mouth a smug line as Frank’s own eyelids start to flutter. He’s starting to get a headache in the struggle, and the way the man moves with such ease makes him feel like he’s staring at another nightmare in slow motion. “Leland had told me you were here, Mr. Castle. Thank you so much for bringing her back.”
No.
No, no no no.
Frank’s vision swims, his eyes are heavy - and his finger pops the trigger once, twice, with one last bit of energy. He’s been holding his breath, he realizes, and feels his cheek rest against Karen’s hair when his body reacts further to the toxin - collapsing next to her - his arm dropping fast.
Shit, what was in that sedative?
The shine from the lights overhead is bright, and he registers that they reflect off Fisk’s bald head before his eyes close.
He should have killed that old man, not her. He knew -
-
“We’ll get someone to look at it, you should be fine,” he hears Fisk say. “For now, just get her in there. We have work to do.”
Frank comes to in a chair.
His hands are zip-tied to it, feeling the nylon bite into the skin on his wrists as he pulls. The scent of smoke is heavy, but the fire is gone when he opens his eyes to look. His weapons are missing. There is a moment he spends to focus on his growing headache, watching the ceiling spin as he breathes a few times through his nose. Keep breathing, keep breathing. Enough oxygen in his system should help speed through the disorientation.
He spots Fisk pacing just ahead of him, fidgeting with his cufflinks.
A few of the guards from before are bruised - beaten from Karen’s offensive take - clearing out fire extinguishers and bringing in towels to pick up the foam off the ground. Frank can hear them mutter their own grievances after they shout to the others standing at the exit doors to help. He chances a glance as far as his neck would let him to make a note.
Fisk has him planted in front of the fishbowl tank. He can see Karen lying unconscious in her own chair on the platform beyond the glass, the Lab Coat tech beside her on a stepstool, pushing with a pained hiss at the metal lid to open it.
The entire length of the guy’s right arm is covered in blood, and he can see browning handprints on the coat from where the guy tried to stop the bleeding. Karen’s splattered with them too, her gray shirt covered in a stain. He’s decidedly not fine, Frank thinks with a tilt of his lip. He’s bleeding out - and fast. Got him pretty good, too, because he’s dripping on the floor now.
But he missed his original target, and that’s what makes him clench his teeth and pull at the restraints again. It catches their attention.
“I love my wife, Mr. Castle. I do. I would do anything for Vanessa.” Fisk’s eyes survey the warehouse before turning back to him. “I wanted to show her in all the ways I could. Something unique, I thought. When my crew found our first mer… thing, I knew it was the way to go. But we had a limited supply of our last batch.
“A living mermaid… you see, we found she can heal in layers. Her scales keep their shine, and her colors -” his hand wavers as Frank yanks at the cable ties, a small grunt escaping his mouth. “They’re more vibrant.”
His head rolls to the side to follow Fisk’s steps.
“My wife loved her surprise. I wanted to give her more. Blue will be that, I’m sure of it.”
“That’s what you think you’re gonna do, huh? Let her go.”
“Those wounds of yours could kill you, Mr. Castle,” he tells him after a silent lap, tapping a finger to his chin. A fist is at his side, his knuckles white as he surveys the blood and glass in Frank’s jeans. He points. “They look painful.”
Frank glances back at the platform. Karen’s attached to wires leading to machines nearby, and an array of metal tools are lined up next to her. He watches the lab tech struggle to lift her out from her chair. Watches him drag her across the floor and over the stepstool to get her to the fishbowl. Blonde hair skates across the surface of the water in the tank as she hangs part of the way in, an arm limp to the side. Frank breathes in heavily again, his vision finally clearing, his mind filtering through all the ways he could kill a man with his bare hands.
“Let her go,” he repeats.
“I will… I will hate to see a decorated war hero like yourself perish for such a subpar reason.”
He scoffs a laugh. This fucking guy.
His chin drops to his chest, feeling the scales still at work. The slow inch of glass being pushed out, the skin knitting itself back together beneath it. A large slice near his thigh sticks out, and Frank moves his knee against the chair, bouncing with impatience, imagining that he can grasp it with his tied hand.
“Did you hate when that Wesley guy perished, too?” Fisk leans further from him, his eyes beady with hatred, mouth pulling for a grimace. Frank shoves his chin high to catch his gaze again. Anything to carry on the distraction. She’s still unconscious up there. He figures he won’t have to wait longer for a weapon if his reach is good. “You read that report, right? You get to see his body yet? I saw his body. Mangled piece of shit.”
“Enough,” he barks.
“D’you uh... you count how many times -”
His fist collides with his cheekbone, but it doesn’t stop the chuckle from leaving Frank’s throat. If this was this guy’s version of simple torture, he considers it poor.
It almost soothes his headache to watch her finally wake when the tech gives her a shove off the edge and she splashes in with a yelp. Karen’s tail forms quickly while she spins in the narrow space, the deep blue color revealed when she struggles, when she shakes out of the stolen pants. He hadn’t been able to see it at all when they were last together - the lighter blue in her fluke, the underlying green shimmer, the tiny fins just below her hip - but he knows now that he could never have imagined how beautiful it would actually be.
She cries out as her hand presses flat against the glass beside her head, her eyes widening and her teeth bared. Her long tail bashes against the wall of the tank - hard. Once rattles the metal hinges holding everything together. Twice lets them all hear the crack on one side of the fishbowl expand. Fisk turns and walks away from him to see the commotion, his head to the side, sighing. “Use the stick this time,” he commands to the guy on the platform when he steps closer. “We have a business to finally get back to.”
The lab tech stumbles on the stool on his way up to the tank, a long rod in his hands. The buzz of electricity hits his ears as Karen screams beneath the surface, Leland’s words loud at the front of his mind. Frank locks up a fist and pulls, groaning to himself when she suddenly becomes silent.
The chunk of window in his thigh is protruding enough now to touch, and his hand tugs the rest of it out with a few quick breaths and a soft squelch. He can feel the scales strip from his skin at the edges as they continue to work. Frank saws at a cable tie, hearing it snap. He goes to work on the other three limbs, eyeing the guards across the way to -
There’s a splash.
It’s violent. The stunner clatters off the edge and to the floor, and Karen drags the tech under. His arm is high in the air, trying to hold on to something. He claws for purchase at the glass to escape, his screams echoing in the warehouse. Karen’s got a hand on his neck though, her tail wrapped around his leg, keeping him flush with the tank.
Frank nods towards Karen and the water when Fisk roars in frustration. “She’s subpar, huh?”
She digs her nails in when he begins to kick out at her, when the guards in the room turn their attention on the fishbowl.
The one at the back door creeps forward in defense, gun aimed at her while another shouts for orders. He doesn’t notice he’s loose as he steps beside the chair.
Frank takes the rifle offline, stabbing him just below the helmet, feeling the sharp edge of the glass slide like butter through the skin. With a turn and harsh rip back, he watches him fall - watches the blood begin to rapidly puddle on the floor. Watches the prickling cuts caused from gripping tight on his fingers heal just as quickly as they came. He takes aim with his new weapon at the others and fires.
Fisk dodges out of the way as bullets fly from each direction, and heads to the platform. Bullets cross and a few hit the tank, the crack expanding, the water starting to leak. Karen gives a shout, blood clouding in the corner of the fishbowl, the tech finally going limp -
He takes out one, two more guards, feeling their bodies thump to the floor beneath his boots.
The last runs towards the boathouse door in an attempt to escape, unhooking a small can from his belt and letting it soar across the warehouse. Frank shoots him in the knees for good measure. He falls with a painful scream.
The blast that follows blows him off his feet and leaves him sprawled halfway on the platform stairs.
Flames are engulfing the ocean-facing wall again when his eyes open, eating away at the wood, the black curtains, and shattering the windows. This time, the reach is too high for a hallway fire extinguisher. It burns through new barrels, the shipping supplies, and creeps towards a row of tables. Air is getting thin already, and smoke coats his lungs.
They have to leave. The room is ablaze, and there are bodies everywhere, and he only wants to know if she’s okay.
He finds Fisk lying on his stomach a few feet away, a fresh bruise forming in his cheek. Blood flows from a head wound. “Ooh hoo, look at you,” Frank sings low, bending to a knee and rolling him over to get a better look. He can feel his lip curl up in a snarl as he hears the struggle, the hiss of his staggered breathing over the roar of the fire behind him. “You piece of shit.”
Could it be so easy, he wonders. They can always leave him here to die of smoke inhalation, or a nasty head wound. Let him choke on his own blood. Give him one last hole in his skull, he hopes, the heavy lead to bury deep into the wood floor beneath where he lay. Let the building and all the bad that came out of it just burn away. He wants that for her. He wants that.
“Frank -”
Fisk’s hand reaches up grasp at Frank, tearing his collar with the force of it. He swings a fist into his jaw, grunting with satisfaction when it meets. Frank can feel the cold burn of a cut appear and the two of them start in on each other. His head drops into the mission. A grab for a neck, a knee to the chest, an elbow to the face, a headbutt, punches to the side. He roars -
He hears a thwap of wet hit the ground, a splash in the deafening crackle of burning wood.
Fisk gets a look at the scales on his chest after tugging him close to throw him back to the ground. He holds him there with immense curiosity on the now-sealed cut in Frank’s jawline, the inexplicable fact that he holds no bruises. “It works on people?”
They’re already hanging on by a sliver at his heart, he can feel it. Fisk is smart, though, and he’ll deduce the truth even if he doesn’t tell him outright. Karen’s words on how scales work when they are given and never taken would only be lost on him.
He moves for the eyes in the moment of hesitation, his thumbs pressing in with ease like pushing the start button in Curtis’ car. This was what he had come for - the blood, the fire, the end of it. He begins to roar in pain, reaching blindly for anything he can while Frank tries to knee him over onto his back. From above, a hand wraps around Fisk’s neck, digging nails into his skin - locking in deep and tearing out the meat of his throat.
Karen ends it with red under her fingernails and a shaky breath.
Fisk reaches for only a few seconds more when she shoves him aside. Blood begins to pool into the water leaking on the floor, and he stills.
Her eyes scan Frank’s face for the briefest of seconds and drop to his chest. He looks her over just the same - his arm touching hers, her cheek, the soft curve of her tail - to check for any signs of damage from the stunner rod, if she was hit with any gunfire. She’s nodding to herself as she turns away. He knows where her mind is going - the look, her shock, it’s not unfamiliar territory for him. “You okay?”
One of the support beams across the ceiling starts to crumble. They’re not safe, and the fire has been going on long enough for him to guess they won’t be alone for much longer. He’s got to get her out of this place. Everything else will burn.
Frank moves to his feet and wipes at his chin, looking out into the warehouse to find the best course of action to get them out. She’s hovering over Fisk, her palm on his shoulder.
“Hey, c’mon, what -” He watches Karen swipe at her hip just as her tail begins to dry out, the blue becoming pale pink, the sharp bend of her knees forming, toes stretching when her fluke melts away. A layer of her scales extends past her wrist, and she smacks his face with it, rubbing them in aggressively and letting them adhere to his cheek. They cover one of his eyes and a part of his lip. “What are you doing?”
“Fixing him,” she says, eerily calm. Her jaw is set, her gaze never leaving the man on the damp floor.
“What? No, Karen -” his arms wrap around her to lift her away. Blood continues to coat the bottom of his boots, and he can see the outline of vertebrae leading to his skull. There’s no way this guy could still be alive after doing what she’s done. She slips from his grasp, pressing her fingers even harder into Wilson’s face. “Let the bastard die, right? That’s what you wanted.”
“And he will, again,” she nods, turning to meet his eyes. Her lip quivers. “He will. After what he did to Kevin -”
“You got him,” he tells her breathlessly, hearing more glass shatter, the room getting hotter.
Frank holds his hand out and sees her hesitate to take it. For a moment she only breathes, her chest heavy, grimacing back on Fisk’s graying face. Karen wipes at his cheek then, the scales melting into the puddle his body lays in.
He’s one more broken window from lifting her up and carrying her out to shore when he feels the wet slip of her hand against his own.
“Will it be enough, Frank?”
-
She rises from the shallow water in the boathouse, meeting him at his crouch and pressing her nose to his cheek. Her touch is gentle, fingers slightly shaking upon where they rest on his collar. After everything that happened inside, her hair still smells of the ocean.
“It’s not safe for you to be here,” he whispers to her. Faint sirens can be heard in the distance - police, fire, the ambulances. He’s got his own plan to maneuver his way back to the lighthouse undetected, but she shouldn’t be anywhere near here when the authorities arrive. Who knows what they’d do to her if they found her. The unimaginable has already been done before - Frank cannot let that happen again.
Her hand is damp as she wipes at his face, drawing her thumb over his jaw, his cheekbone, and the center of his crooked nose when she leans back to see. He watches watery trails of Fisk’s blood chase a blue vein on her wrist before dripping onto the floor. Karen’s eyes soften, a small huff escaping her mouth when she plants both her hands on the edge of the dock. “Is it safe for you?”
He doesn’t have the answers she’ll be looking for. There’s no way to figure what will happen next - whatever he tells her isn’t going to be what she needs. He thinks she sees that when he catches her gaze, the hard set of her mouth when she stares back. She’s so goddamn stubborn. “Karen, you gotta go.”
The boathouse is getting smoky from the fire they just escaped beyond the door. It won’t be long before the window shatters, the wooden walls turn to ash. It won’t be long before someone else will arrive. Her jaw juts to the side before nodding, letting go of the edge and pushing back, away from him. Again, he thinks, as her tail kicks up, the mixed shimmer of green and blue hitting the light from the lowering sun outside the garage.
“Hang on,” he calls out a little defeatedly, going to his knees. His body leans over the wet dock towards her. “Just - god.”
Frank reaches, his hand cradling the back of her neck and bringing her in close. He rests his forehead against hers, wishing for better circumstances. Any other circumstance. Karen hums a soft, anxious tune as he kisses the corner of her lip, feeling her linger, feeling her press a little firmer. This isn’t goodbye, he wants to believe. He won’t say it.
“Good luck, Frank.”
Neither will she.
-
“What?”
Curtis stares hard at him from the other side of the high table. He’s got a finger pointing at him, the other hand distractedly tapping a beer bottle against the laquered wood to the beat of whatever is spilling from the jukebox across the room.
“You… you’re so goddamn lucky that place burned to a crisp before they could get inside.” His voice is grating. Tired doesn’t cover his tone. “With the shit you pulled?”
Frank picks at the label on his own beer before chuckling low, shaking his head. “Ahh,” he mutters, “well.”
It’s a few days since the remains of Fisk’s body have been identified. He had gotten out of there with just enough time to grab his weapons bag from the opposite roof and slink into the evening, losing himself to the shadows in the alleyways before the detectives pulled up to the building. The muted TV above the bar plays a recycled helicopter feed of the aftermath, the dark and billowing black smoke escaping the roof illuminated by spotlights before abruptly turning to the weather for the rest of the week.
Curtis leans back in his seat and sighs. “Dinah got the in on what the cops found. Told me they still can’t get a read on stuff in there but they’re trying to chock it all up to some kind of bad rivalry.”
Frank looks around the dingy area they’re situated in for just a second - they should probably go if they’re gonna get into this now. Rivalry would be the easiest thing to conclude, though, with how much shit Fisk had been responsible for. He slides out of the chair to stand. “She even allowed to know that?”
“Not normally, no,” Curt picks at the fry plate between them before getting the clue and following. “But her report on that guy we pulled up last week matched with the marks they could actually see. Wanted her opinion.” The bartender appears, clearing the small pile of torn sticky labels in front of where Frank had been, grabbing for the empty still in his hand.
“Thanks, Josie.”
“Cut that out,” she calls over her shoulder when she walks away.
The air is warm when they step outside - damp from light rain. A fog rolls in on top of that, swirling under a streetlamp just ahead. “You know, they’re still trying to figure out how his throat ended up so many feet from where he landed,” Curt says, leading them off towards the parking lot. “No weapons, no discernible fingerprints, they said they’d never seen something like that before.”
She’s a goddamn force of nature. He knew it, when they first found her, fighting for her life - knew it when she choked on memories, telling him her story. How her eyes flashed with her anger, seeing her so willing to risk herself for another, and then when he felt her rest a hand to his chest in want. He knew it as she brought forth a man’s life to splatter across his face and she delicately wiped it all away in the fallout.
“You know why that is,” he grunts, keeping his eyes low to the ground before huffing, rubbing at his chin.
“Yeah, I know why. Shit, Frank.”
They fall into a comfortable silence when they get in the car. Frank focuses on the fog creeping closer, watching it spin beneath the light until he can’t see through it anymore and they turn into the street. Sounds of the city fill their ears when he rolls the window down. Laughter leaving the bar, tires splashing against rain puddles, the burst of a car horn a few green lights ahead. It all gives him a moment to wonder where she is right now. How she is. Will it be enough?
Curtis breaks first. “They arrested the wife for violating a fishing regulation, apparently.”
“Christ,” Frank mutters, leaning an elbow out the window and settling a hand across his lip. He doesn’t figure that’s going to be a long jail time. “What didn’t Madani tell you?”
He ignores the dig, rubbing a hand through the short hair on his head and giving him a quick glance. “They couldn’t even identify what they had in there before everything blew up.”
There had been nothing left inside. Nothing that could be traced back - that much Frank has a guarantee for. “Fisk, you know, he uh… he kept saying it was a gift. Maybe she knew where it all was coming from after all that?”
“Can’t be too sure,” Curtis says, looking out past the red light they’ve stopped at to the group of people meandering across the road. One girl squeals with laughter when a friend spins her. A guy drunkenly belts out lines of a pop song when they hit the crosswalk. Curt shakes his head. “She was adamant it was all just dyed snakeskin. Like she never actually went to the warehouse, just made the design blueprints.”
“What’s Madani think?”
His hand lifts from the steering wheel, uncertain. They take a turn off the main road towards the water when the light turns green, and Curtis meets his eyes with a thin line of worry, a gentle sigh escaping his mouth. “You think she’s gonna be okay?”
And then just like that, they aren’t talking about the case anymore.
Frank shifts in the passenger seat. He thinks he’s never been one for optimism. The shit in this city piled up so high it bled out into the water for christssakes - it rivals the stench of garbage on the nearby curb. Any other time, to any other question, he may have just scoffed in his face and said don’t do that. But this time, his answer is as easy as breathing. “I hope so.”
-
Frank spends the next few weeks tidying up the Kitchen.
Vanessa Fisk didn’t know what her husband had been up to in that warehouse, and the city mourns the loss of a successful business mogul. Not many more roaches make themselves known and crawl out from the shadows for very long.
The summer sun burns just enough each morning to keep him appreciative of it. He squints at the horizon in front of him, sipping at black coffee in his mug to pull out the feeling of fitful sleep. It’s early. Early enough that focus comes easy to him, listening to the seagulls and the boats at the pier down the road. There’s even a distant splash off to his left - he figures it’s a local kid, maybe throwing rocks off a cliff in a poor attempt to skip them, until he spots a small flukeprint.
He waits a second. Amy had mentioned seeing a humpback whale a couple of weeks ago, but he’s never been back here in time to spot it. Not common enough on the Hudson to spot something like that nowadays. There’s a shiver in his spine when his mind goes in another direction, but he doesn’t let it linger long. He can’t.
A minute. Two minutes. Three.
His phone rings inside the house.
-
“Frank?”
He’s got a to-do list for tomorrow from Sarah in hand when he hears it coming from out back. They need a whole new garbage disposal, their dryer isn’t drying, and it’s cheaper for everyone if he just did it. It’ll keep him busy now that things out on the streets have cooled down a bit.
“Yeah?” The back porch doors are open, and he waves quick in greeting as he heads to find his toolbox in the next room, closing windows as he goes, catching Amy out on a pool float tied to the end of the dock. She left them all open when she went outside before the sun went down, and it’s been sweltering the whole day. It doesn’t help that he stays in dark jeans and boots, either, but that’s another thing entirely.
A stack of his books lie beside her on the wood, the flashlight from her phone turned on in her hand. He knows she can hear him, so the silence that follows only makes him scoff. He turns, close to leaving and going to the home improvement store without waiting for an answer, he just needs his keys. If he goes now, he won’t need to deal with much of the traffic in -
“ Hey, Frank, uh -”
“Goddamnit, kid,” he shouts back, coming to the back door. “What? I’m -”
Gonna head out again for a little.
Gonna take the truck.
The words don't come, though. A flash of deep blue way out in the river disappears below, only to resurface ten feet closer, tail rising slightly, the fluke splashing and lowering again. A shimmer of iridescent green sparkles off the current.
“Do you see that? What is that?” Amy’s got a knee up on the float, already paddling closer and reaching to stand, her moves frantic.
It’s his fault, he wants to say. He wants to say anything - after seeing the look she gives him. He never told her more than what he thought she needed to know. Frank takes a step past the glow of the porch light, slowly lifting a leg to undo the laces in one of his boots when the moon catches the white halo of her hair on the water. This can’t be real.
He doesn’t even bother with the second set of laces, toeing them both off with ease. Amy motions from the edge of the dock, following with her flashlight when the blonde dives for a second time. She creates a flukeprint in the water, and he nearly chuckles to himself. It comes out sputtering. His socks come off. He’s gotta be -
Seeing things.
Seeing her.
Seeing -
“Karen.” She hits the surface again, smiling from a distance, her chin high at him. She swims in a little more, and he’s already breaking into a run down the dock, pulling away at his shirt.
He’ll meet her out there this time, his decision made - jumping off and vanishing beneath the cool water. There’s a panicked and surprised shout from above, but he moves anyway, furthering himself out with a few swings of his arms to where she is. It’s dark. Almost too dark to see which way he’s headed until the reflection of the lighthouse beacon becomes clearer.
Karen reaches him from her place in the middle of the river, wrapping her tail tightly around his leg and bringing them back up to the air. Her arms feel warm against him when they reach it, one hand gliding over the muscles in his back, the other cradling his neck. Frank stares, nearly incredulous - wading with one arm and the other palming her cheek. He’s missed her. Her eyes close gently and she sways into his touch, her breath shaky as his thumb traces the curve of it. His voice is a whisper, heavy with disbelief when he drops his hand. “Hey. What are you doing over here, huh?”
She makes a small noise in her throat in return when she looks back. The moonlight hits her just enough for him to see her bite her bottom lip. Her heart is racing - Frank feels it pounding under his fingers until he feels her tail tug him even closer. Karen runs her nails across the nape of his neck and he watches her eyes lift mischievously to his, feeling the resulting shiver race down his spine. “Just really good to see you.”
A real chuckle leaves his throat this time. “It’s good to see you, too.”
Karen’s gaze falls soft as he says the words. It’s a goddamn relief to know she’s okay, to see she made it away safe. He had hoped - he had wanted...
Her smile is wide, baring teeth as he holds her. His fingers follow the dip of her waist until it blends with her scales. She kisses him then - brief but heady, pressing herself against him. He can hear Amy’s distant shouts for clarity from the dock, and Karen laughs into his mouth at the sound. Frank shakes his head without another thought, pulling her back in for another, his fingers winding into her wet hair. He tastes joy on her tongue.
The water is cold but her hands never leave his skin, warming him down to the bone. Even the platinum armlet he gave her before bears heat as it brushes against him. He’s glad she’s here, his thoughts haven’t been far from her for very long, but why is she? “What are you doing, huh, what’s got you out here?”
“It’s summer,” she tells him in a breath, and then he remembers what she told him on the ship. “We go further... we stay low until the boats leave.” Karen turns to peer at the moon for a moment, her eyes calm when she looks him over again. “We don’t surface for a while.” Her fingers touch his face before she settles on his jaw. Her tail loosens from his leg and she huffs to herself after a moment, suddenly hesitant to speak.
“What is it?”
“Can I stay low with you, Frank?”
Yes. She could ask him for anything, it didn’t matter. “You want to?” Karen nods. Jesus Christ. He can’t help himself from resting his lips upon her shoulder, pressing an open mouthed kiss to her skin, unbelieving. “Okay,” he whispers against her. “Yeah. You stay as long as you want, you hear me?”
“I’d like that.” Her voice is light, a weight lifted from the worry. Did she think he would have said no?
He wants to ease it further, maybe mention the area doesn’t get much activity beyond a few boats during the day, a couple of asshole swimmers sometimes, but only on the weekends. Something shifts in the inky black of the water between them and then she’s wrapping herself around him again, her arms around his neck, her legs -
The heel of her foot digs into his back and Frank locks an arm around her tight to keep her steady. He touches a newly formed hip in return, gliding his hand slow to hold the ball of her knee. He can hear the quiet hitch in her breath as he continues to wade in the water, and it’s so unlike the moment they had on the boat. “Do you want this skin?”
“I love this skin, Frank.” Karen smiles softly when the realization of her change dawns on him, and she muffles her laugh into her hand. “Look at you,” she says, full of wonder.
It’s almost difficult to breathe when she meets his eye - he can’t fathom what he’s done to have the universe decide he deserves something like this. It nearly leaves him shaking. He’s lost too much in his life before. After everything he’s done out there, the situations he’s put himself through since losing his family, he could never imagine he’d get lucky enough to feel this type of way again. And about a mermaid.
Frank pets at her cheek with a finger, marveling at the way her face burns with a blush. She practically glows beneath the moon. “Look at you.”