Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Karen thought she wouldn't be able to fall asleep after what happened at the hotel. She thought she would be too amped up on adrenaline, too worried about Frank to close her eyes and drift off peacefully. The reality is other.

Once showered and clean of blood and dust, she slaps a few butterfly bandages on her forehead cuts and all but collapses in her bed. She lets herself sink in heavy darkness. She doesn't dream.

There's a weak rasping noise at her living room window—the one opening on the fire escape. Probably the neighbor's cat that's always asking for food and trying to get in at all hours of the night.

It usually stops after a few seconds.

It doesn't.

Karen glances at her alarm clock. It's not even 2 in the morning. The rasping noise doesn't stop and Karen is tired and if that cat doesn't go the fuck away soon she's gonna cry. She muffles a scream in her pillow and gets up.

It's not the cat.

Frank is leaning against her window on the fire escape, wrapped up in a blanket of some sort. Karen gasps and hurries to it. The ice cold air of November whips at her face when she pulls the window open but it doesn't even register. Frank raises his head to meet her eyes. He looks even more exhausted than in the elevator, if that's even possible.

“Frank,” she says and stops. She has no idea what to say. It looks like there is less blood on his face than a few hours before, but in the weak glow of the street lamps she can't be sure. She climbs over the windowsill and crouches down to take a better look at him. She wills her fingers to stop shaking and pushes down the blanket from his face. He lets her tilt his head on the side, never taking his eyes off her, not saying a word. She bits her lips.

“You need medical attention,” she says around the knot in her throat.

“I just wanted to see you,” he says. “Make sure you're alright.”

She can't help but laugh in disbelief.

“If I am alright?” Her voice cracks a little. “Jesus, Frank, look at you,” she sighs, pushing her hair back. Her body seems to take this moment to register the fact that she's outside in shorts and tank top during a November night.

“You're cold,” he says after she starts shivering.

“Yeah, and you're hurt so get inside.”

He shakes his head. “I need to get back.”

“Not before you let me take care of you.” She stands up, holds her left hand to him and waits, unmoving despite the cold. He sighs wearily and clasps her forearm. He gets on his feet with difficulty and Karen can see he's unsteady, keeping his right arm close to him, a bit hunched forward as if to protect his ribs.

She helps him get inside, then directs him to the bathroom, where she keeps a very extensive first aid kit—so extensive it's not even first aid at this point, it's illegal emergency medical practice.

He sits down on the edge of the bathtub, dropping the blanket on the floor, looking at her, waiting to be told what to do. It weirds her out. It's like he used all of his energy, all of his anger, to protect her at the hotel and hoist himself up the elevator shaft, leaving behind a shell of a man, looking so lost, so done, she wonders if he'll ever have that rage to fight again.

She helps him out of his bulletproof jacket. He rips off the piece of metal sticking out of his arm before they take his shirt off together. He winces and grunts at every movement. His torso is a patchwork of black, blue, purple and red blotches, and the skin around his shoulder is burning to the touch and discolored in a few places. A bullet graze on his left side is bleeding sluggishly but bleeding all the same.
That bullet was meant for her.

She looks at him and feels the tears well up. She puts a hand over her mouth, trying to keep the tears from spilling out—he doesn't need that. He needs her to be strong and take care of his broken body.

“Karen,” he says, his voice low and hoarse.

“Take the rest of your clothes off and sit in the bathtub,” she says more firmly than she thought she could. “We need to clean all that shit up.”

He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

She rummages through her kit to find the special soap she keeps to clean up injuries while he undresses. He climbs over the edge of the tub and sits down, his knees to his chest, his forehead against his knees. Karen grabs the showerhead and kneels down next to the tub.

“Tell me if the temperature is right,” she says, almost whispers, when she turns the faucet. Frank grunts in response.

He says nothing as the water runs down his head, his nape, his back, a river of pale crimson and brown. She makes him raise his head and unfold himself to clean the wound on his head and the one on his side.

“You're gonna need stitches for your head,” she says softly once she can actually see the gash instead of blood-matted hair sticking to his skin.

“Yeah. I'll do it.”

She snorts. “You're not stitching your own head, Frank. I'll do it.”

“You know how?” he asks.

“Have you seen my first-aid kit?”

He leans forward and his eyebrows raise imperceptibly when he catches sight of the medical supplies littering the floor.

“Did you rob a hospital?”

She smiles. He already looks and sounds more like himself.

“Old habits,” she answers. He looks at her, curious, but she shrugs. Tonight isn't the night for that particular conversation. She grabs the soap.

“Turn around a bit, I'm gonna do your back,” she says. Frank's back muscles are rock hard under her hands. “Am I hurting you?” she asks in a whisper. Why she feels the need to lower her voice is unclear, but it's one of those moments where everything is so fragile, almost brittle, that the smallest thing could shatter it.

“I'm not gonna break, Karen,” he mumbles from where he dropped his head onto his knees once again.

“Doesn't mean you have to be in pain if I can help it.”

He snorts but she feels him relax, a few muscles at the time. When she reaches for his nape, he tenses again for half a second. She tells him to turn back to her and as delicately as she can, she starts cleaning the gash above his ear. He's watching from the corner of his eyes, not as if he's expecting her to hurt him, but more like he's studying her. He winces briefly when her fingers touch the deeper end of the wound.

“It's not bleeding anymore.”

He nods.

She gives him the soap bottle and lets him finish cleaning up the rest of his battered body, going to her closet to find some clothes to give him. There's only a pair of sweatpants found at Goodwill and bought despite it being three sizes too big because it was 3 bucks and the softest material she had ever touched. She looks for a shirt but finds her brother's college zip up hoodie instead.

She takes a deep shaky breath. It'll be okay. It's not like it's clothes for a one-night stand—not that she does those anyway, she doesn't have the energy for it. It's Frank. And if there's one person on this earth she trusts with something of her brother's, it's him, the Big Bad Punisher who's actually really not that bad.

She knocks lightly on the bathroom door.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

He pulls the door open. He's at the sink, wearing only a towel around his hips, surveying the contents of her kit. She doesn't ask if he feels better. He's not covered in blood anymore but that doesn't mean he's fixed.

Sometimes she wonders if he'll ever be.

“Do you have any injuries on your legs we need to take care of before you put these on?” she asks.

He turns to her. “I can patch myself up, Karen. You don't have to this.”

She sighs. “Just answer the damn question, Frank.”

He lowers his head, not before she catches the corner of his lips pulling up in a tiny smile.

“No ma'am, no leg injuries,” he says. She can hear the slightly mocking edge on his voice. She holds the pants out to him with an eyeroll. He puts them on from under the towel, only grimacing a little when he has to bend at the waist. She indicates the bathtub edge for him to sit on with a movement of the head then turns back to the medical kit.

“I'm gonna stitch your head first, okay?”

“Okay.”

She goes to work, kneeling on the floor next to him. He doesn't move, not when she pierces his skin with her needle and not when she pulls on the thread to close the gash as best as she can. He takes deep breaths each time but doesn't wince and she tries not to think about the fact that it's probably because he's used to this, used to the pain, both from the injuries and the stitching up afterwards.

“We should put some gauze on that,” she says when she's done, “but knowing you, you're probably gonna rip it off once you're out of here.”

She tries to keep the concern out of her voice, she does, but she can't hide the fact that she worries about him.

Frank doesn't reply to that. “You're good at this stuff,” he says instead.

She stands up to take the rest of the supplies she needs. It's not to avoid his gaze or that way he has to state things and ask questions at the same time. It's not. She stitches his arm where the piece of metal was embedded, puts some gauze over it and wraps his biceps with ace bandage. She kneels on his other side and makes him raise his arm so she can access where the bullet grazed him. It's not deep enough to require stitches but not shallow enough to be left alone. She applies antibacterial cream, butterfly bandages and tapes a square of gauze over it.

She lets her fingers linger over a piece of tape. She's back in Vermont, taking care of her brother after a nasty encounter with their father. The steps never change, a mechanical ritual that she has come to know by heart. Clean, disinfect, protect. Doesn't matter the cause of the violence, the result is always the same. Kevin always gets hurt so she doesn't have to.

“Karen?”

Frank's voice snaps her back to the present. She raises her head and meets his gaze, so intense she has to fight the urge to look away.

“Are you sure you're okay?”

She swallows before answering. “Yeah. I'm fine.” She rakes a hand through her hair. “I'm fine,” she repeats. She grabs the saran wrap. He frowns. “For your ribs,” she explains.

“I know. I didn't think you'd know.”

“I'm full of surprises,” she replies.

“That you are,” he says as he stands up.

They wrap his torso. He tests the tightness by taking a few deep breaths – as deep as they can be given the state of his ribs.

“Good?” she asks. He nods. “Anything to do to your shoulder?” She hasn't forgotten the way he held himself in the hotel kitchen, or in the elevator, or even an hour ago in her living room.

“Just ice and ibuprofen, I guess.”

She gives him Kevin's hoodie. He tilts his head when he sees the University of Vermont logo and how it's clearly too big to have been hers from the start.

“My brother went there.” She gathers the elements of the kit she hasn't used and put them back in, then she grabs the ibuprofen pills she keeps in easy reach in the cabinet above the sink and heads back to the living room and into the kitchen.

He follows her a beat later, holding his holstered gun with one hand. He puts the holster on the coat hanger, then joins her at the kitchen island.

She fills a glass with water and slides it over to him with the pills and an ice pack.

“You should stay here a few days,” she says and really, she's as surprised as he looks. She hadn't planned on saying that but now that it's out there, she can't take it back. And she supposes she kind of wants to keep an eye on him while he heals.

He shakes his head, looks to the side, shuffles his feet. “I can't. It's not over. I—I can't.”

“At least stay the night. You need to rest.”

He swallows his pills and takes the ice. She can read the struggle on his face, in the way his eyes are shifting restlessly, never staying too long on one point, sliding to the door before coming back to the kitchen.

“Please.”

His eyes come back to hers. He has the same expression he had on the elevator when she told him to go.

Lost. Tired. Sad.

“Okay,” he says from the back of his throat. “Okay.”

“Thank you.”

He keeps looking at her and she doesn't avert her eyes. They're not as close as in that damn elevator but she still feels the warmth radiating from his body. If he wasn't injured so badly, she'd just listen to her guts and hug him.

She reaches out to him instead and puts a hand on his arm. She looks at his bruises, his scars. He lets her, doesn't try to back away, his gaze unmoving from her face.

“I'm—” she chokes a little, shakes her head, tries again, “I'm really glad you're alive.”

When he pulls her to his chest, it's like a dam has been broken and all the tears she tried so hard to keep inside come out. He makes shushing noises against her temple and rubs circles into her shoulder.

“It's okay,” he whispers. “I'm here. I'm okay.”

“You're not,” she answers, thumbing at the bandage hidden under the hoodie.

“I saved your life. It's what matters.”

She closes her eyes and tries to repress the new wave of tears welling up behind her eyelids.

“You matter too.”

He doesn't answer anything to that. He doesn't believe he matters, he showed her and told her so several times already. Maybe if she keeps repeating it he'll start believe it.

He makes a noise that she'd have called a whine coming from anyone else when she pulls away from him.

“You need sleep,” she says. “Take my bed, I'm taking the couch.”

He snorts. “Not happening, Karen.”

“You'll be more comfortable on the bed. Your ribs will thank you in the morning.”

“I've slept on worse things than your couch.”

“Stop being a goddamn martyr and take the bed, Frank.”

She crosses her arms, daring him to challenge her one more time.

He looks away from her face. “Okay.”

She grabs a pillow and a blanket from the closet in her room. He sits down on her bed, still keeping his eyes on her.

“Are you sure—”

“Yes, now go to the fuck to sleep.”

He smiles his tiny corner-of-the-lip smile.

“'night Karen.”

It's not the first time she sleeps on her couch. Hell, it's not even the twentieth time.

She's used to work late on her articles, giving up to sleep when the sky starts to turn pink with the first lights of the day, too tired to cross the few feet separating her from her bed.

She's used to sleep on her couch, but at the moment, she can only stares at the ceiling, her ears straining to hear Frank's breathing. He said his ribs were pretty okay considering, and while she trusts his judgment about the severity of his injuries, she can't help but be paranoid and thinking that a rib is going to move and pierce a lung in his sleep.

His is not a peaceful sleep but she knows better than to wake up a veteran-turned-mass-murderer from his nightmares. He would never hurt her with a clear mind. Doesn't mean he wouldn't while disoriented from bad dreams and memories.

She waits.

It's five thirty in the morning when she decides to stop waiting for a sleep that's never coming and do something useful instead. She makes some coffee and settles on her kitchen island with her computer. She takes care of her emails first. There are already a few messages from fellow journalists asking her about the hotel incident, about the Punisher's involvement, about Lewis Wilson taking her hostage. At the top of the list, flagged important with a subject typed in all cap is a message from Ellison, instructing her to stay the fuck at home for the next few days, not to talk to any journalist that isn't from The Bulletin and to take care of herself goddamnit.

He sounds like a dad. Not her dad off course, who would have been more prone to sneer at her and say something cold and cruel along the lines of deserving to be hurt because she's nothing but a brainless idiot asking for it anyway. It's not like he never said something like that before.

She drinks some coffee to shake the memories away and types a brief reply to Ellison.

She loses track of time working on her computer until she hears the distinctive noise of bare feet on cold hard floors. She turns her head away from her screen to see Frank wobbling toward the kitchen.

“There's coffee if you want.” She smiles when his face lights up at the mention of coffee.

He grabs a mug from her cupboard. He turns to her and holds out the pot, glancing at her almost empty mug. She pushes it towards him across the kitchen island.

“Already working?” he asks while filling their mugs. He gives hers back and she wraps her hands around it.

“Yeah,” she says, not looking at him. “I need to stay on top of things.”

“You should rest,” he answers.

She glances up. “Look who's talking,” she snorts.

He turns his head on the side, looking away, the corner of his mouth curling up around the rim of the mug. It's the face she has learned to recognize as his “you got me there” face.

She closes her laptop and they drink their coffee in silence. He's mostly looking at his hands, lost in his thoughts but alert to his environment, always. His face is unreadable. He seems to be breathing a bit easier.

“I should check your injuries,” she says in the emptiness of her flat.

He looks up at her. “I feel fine.”

She fixes him with a flat stare. “That's not optional, Frank.”

She checks his wounds, redoes his dressings and gives him more ibuprofen for his shoulder. He complains more than the first time around, which is probably a good sign. A dying man wouldn't be such a pain in the ass.

“I should get going,” he says when she's done.

She raises her eyebrows. “You're going to come out of my apartment with torn out bloody clothes, a bulletproof jacket with at least five bullets stuck into it and that face in broad daylight? I know this is Hell's Kitchen but that's a shitty plan, Frank.” She tries to keep the anger out of her voice but it doesn't work.

He's already shrugging off Kevin's hoodie. He didn't even bother to zip it back up after she checked his side.

“I need to go back, Karen.”

She leans against the bathroom sink and crosses her arms. She pinches her lips, hard. She wants to shout at him to just rest for one fucking day. She knows it's useless. He's pulling on his shirt, and despite the black fabric, she can see large patches of dried up blood all over it.

She goes back to the kitchen. Perched on her stool, her legs folded against her chest, a fresh mug of coffee between her hands, she gets her breathing and anger under control. She knows deep down that he was never going to agree to lay low for a few days. It's Frank, for fuck's sake, it's not like the man cares about his physical state beyond its ability to kill the people who deserve it.

He walks out of the bathroom as she drains the last drops of her coffee. He's back to his normal self, cargo pants and combat boots clashing with the careful way he puts the folded sweatpants and hoodie on the coffee table. She slides the mug she filled back up to the end of the counter. He looks surprised by the offer.

“This isn't an olive branch,” she says. She can't stop him from going back out there but he's like her, more coffee than blood at this point, and it's all the help she can provide to him at the moment.

He walks to the kitchen. There's no noticeable limp or discomfort in the way he moves, no slight flinch when he bends or twists his torso betraying rib injuries.

“Thank you,” he mutters before taking a sip.

She shrugs. “It's just coffee.”

He puts down the mug and he stares at her until she looks at him. “Not just for that.”

She nods.

A few minutes later, he's sliding his bulletproof jacket on, grabbing his holster from her coat hanger and walking to the fire escape. She's leaning against the counter, watching him move around her flat in silence.

“Frank,” she says when he's almost at the window.

“Yeah.”

“Don't die.”

His face then is soft and vulnerable like it was the first time he came back in her life, giving her potted roses and calling himself an old-fashioned guy. “Okay”, he says, just like he had then.

“Okay”, she repeats and the déjà-vu is so strong she's wondering if she's gonna have the courage to stand up and hug him fiercely again. He smiles and maybe he's thinking the same, but he opens the window and disappears through the fire escape.

She lets a shuddering breath escape. She can't help but think that she was seeing Frank Castle for the last time. She walks to the window on unsteady legs and closes it. The emotional exhaustion added to her sleepless night catches up to her then. She grabs Kevin's hoodie from where Frank left it, puts it on and collapses on the couch.

Maybe she should feel ridiculous to wear the hoodie after he's worn it, but it has always been her comfort item. It makes her feel small and invisible to the world and its ugliness. So what if it smells a bit like him? It's not like there's anyone in her flat to judge her for it anyway.

She sleeps until the early afternoon, wakes up to a few text messages from Foggy and Trish and a missed call from Matt. She sends reassuring replies to her friends and eyes Matt's contact info. She doesn't need to hear his worried voice or the unavoidable sermon he'll serve her after admonishing her for being reckless. Doesn't need to hear him curse Frank for putting her in danger (as if she wasn't perfectly capable of doing that all on her own, thank you) and scoff when she'll try to explain that Frank saved her. She can already hear him say how Frank is a dangerous psychotic mass murderer who should be behind bars and how she should stay away from him and how come she never told him he was alive?

She hasn't even talked to him that she's already mad at him. She switches off her phone. Today isn't the day for Matt Murdock's personal brand of catholic hypocrisy and sanctimonious bullshit.

She doesn't hear from Frank the next day. Or the next. Or any other day afterwards. There's nothing in the news about The Punisher's arrest or death, not even after that strange shooting at the carousel that's being painted as a gang war incident.

Chapter Text

It's a week and a half after the carousel. She's working on her couch on a late afternoon, in too old jeans and Kevin's hoodie, when her phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.

- coffee?

She huffs a laugh and types a reply. There's only one person who could ask her for coffee like this.

- When?

- now?

The diner at the corner of 57^th and 9^th looks like any other nondescript diner in New York. She spots him near the back exit, facing the rest of the room. She sits on the other side of the booth.

“You look like shit,” she says, well aware that she does not fare much better. She hasn't bothered to change before leaving her flat, just slipped on a pair of battered old Chucks and a jacket. Her hair is tangled up in a messy bun and she knows she looks like she hasn't slept in days. That's because she hasn't. But at least she doesn't have healing bruises and cuts all over her face unlike a certain someone who's trying to hide under a beanie and a hood.

He snorts. “Feels like it too.”

She removes her jacket and asks for coffee when the waitress shuffles to them to refill Frank's mug. He doesn't say anything about her appearance while the waitress fills up her mug as well, but Karen can feel his eyes lingering on the too long sleeves over her hands, on the dark circles under her eyes.

“You okay?” he asks when it's just the two of them again.

She pushes a strand of hair away from her face, wraps her half-covered hands around the mug. “Yeah,” she says without looking up at him. “Just... you know. Lots of work. Trying to know if you were still alive. Trying to figure out what happened after you left.”

He nods in his mug. “Found anything?”

She glances up. “Nope.”

That makes him chuckle. “Yeah, they're good like that.”

She leans forward. “Are you gonna tell me what happened?”

“Might take a while.”

She sits back on her bench, her eyes never leaving his face. “I don't have anywhere else to be,” she challenges. “You?”

He fills her in. Liebermann. Rawlins. Russo. Madani.

Technically, Frank Castle is dead. She warns him that she's never calling him Pete.

“Fine by me,” he says to that.

He tells her about the support group and no, she's never meeting Curtis because they'd join forces and never stop nagging him about taking care of himself.

“That's called being your friends,” she says.

“Are your friends bullying you into being more careful with your stories?” he counters.

“You are.”

He mutters a “touché” in his coffee mug.

Later, he orders pie for them and argues that she's lost weight and needs to eat when she tries to say no. The slices are huge and he laughs when she glares at him above the mountain of whipped cream topping the cherries.

“So,” she starts, fiddling with her fork.

“Hm?” he grunts.

“What are you going to do with your newfound freedom?”

He takes a forkful of pie and shrugs. Then he downs some of his coffee.

“Dunno. I'm going to group. I'm reading. I can't go out that much yet with that face.” He gestures at his head with his fork.

“Is the beard coming back then?” she teases.

The corner of his lips curls up and he looks at her with laughter in his eyes. “Mock me all you want, but no one suspected anything at that time.”

“Yeah, no one would ever think the Big Bad Punisher could be a hipster.”

“Shut up”, he half-laughs, half-groans.

“So that's a yes?”

“Yeah, that's a yes alright.”

It's easy to be with him. To just be Karen and Frank, without threats, without urgency. Without bloody hands and tearful eyes. He insists on paying and when she says it's her treat next time, he relents good-naturedly. There's no question that there will be a next time. They walk back to her place together and he has his fists deep in his hoodie's pockets but there's no tension in his shoulders.

Once in her flat, she curls up on the couch while he makes more coffee as he tells her about Liebermann's family. He talks about how they invited him for Thanksgiving dinner, but he wasn't ready to celebrate a holiday around a family yet. He talks about taking the time to grieve his own properly now that he doesn't have his war to hide behind.

At the end of the evening, his voice is hoarse. After talking so much, he must feel like his skin has been scrubbed raw. That's how she felt every time she was leaving her therapist's office after Kevin's death. The last thing she wanted was to be alone but there was no one around to be there for her and her parents were the last people on Earth she would have turned to.

“Do you want to stay here? For the night?” she asks softly.

He clears his throat. “Nah,” he says. “I'm going to group early tomorrow morning. And I could use a walk.”

“Okay.”

She walks him to her door. They stand face to face awkwardly, not finding words after so much has been said. It feels like the elevator again, only with no blood and no life or death situation. It feels like if she lets him go, she'll never see him again and she'd like to stop feeling like this every time they see each other now, please and thank you.

She takes his hand. “Don't be a stranger, Frank,” she says quietly, her eyes fixated on their tangled fingers.

“I won't,” he murmurs. “Hey. Look at me.” She does. He leans forward and touches his forehead to hers. “I won't.”

She closes her eyes and lets her head falls against his neck, her arms around his waist. He wraps his around her shoulders, a hand against the back of her neck.

He pulls away with a kiss against her temple.

“Goodnight Karen.”

She sleeps better after that day. She saves his number in her phone after he assures her it's not a burner. They text each other a lot, about everything and anything, at any hours of the day and night. It's not like any of them keep a healthy, regular sleeping pattern.

- ever read “we have always lived in the castle”?

- When I was a teenager, why?

- what the FUCK is that book

She stifles a laugh in her office and Ellison looks at her suspiciously from the other side of her office window.

- i don't like harry potter.

- Books or movies?

- both.

- Some people would burn you at the stake for that.

- are you one of those people?

- No, I was always more of a “His Dark Materials” fan.

A week later, she receives the first volume of The Book of Dust at her place. There's a note written inside the cover.

I liked the first trilogy better than Harry Potter too.

She grabs her phone. 

- So what would your daemon be?

- i've been thinking about it since i finished the books. you?

- I took a quiz one time on buzzfeed. Said it'd be a raven. Not sure what to think of it.

He doesn't reply for several minutes.

- says mine'd be a wolfdog. cliché.

She can almost see the face he's probably making at that moment. Disgruntled and confused at the same time, a slight pout twisting his mouth.

- kafka's pissing me off. why does no one react in his goddamn books?

- Never read Kafka before. Should I?

- do you like being frustrated as fuck

- I'm friend with you aren't I

- cute.

She's at Josie's having a drink with Foggy. He looks good, better than the last time she saw him after he'd pulled two all-nighters to wrap up a case. He's good at his job and she'll never not think that he deserved way better than what Matt could give him.

Her phone buzzes and the name Pete flashes on the screen. She's never been more relieved to save his number under his fake name than right now.

“Who's Pete?” Foggy asks.

“A friend,” she answers and brings the phone to her ear while swiping over the screen with her thumb in the same movement. “Hi Pete,” she says. She hears him chuckle on the other end of the line.

“I take it you're not alone?”

“Yeah I'm at Josie's,” she answers and starts fiddling with her beer bottle label.

“And Micro was afraid I'd get botulism,” he says with a low whistle.

She rolls her eyes despite the fact that he can't see her. “What can I do for you?”

“I need a name.”

She sighs. Not a social call, then. “Okay, give me all the infos you have and I'll see what I can find.”

Foggy loses interest at that and hollers at Josie to get them a basket of mozzarella sticks. She mouths a thank you at him.

On the telephone, Frank hasn't said a word.

“Pete? You still there?” she asks. The label is coming loose.

“Uh, yeah, yeah. But, uh...”

“Don't tell me you have basically nothing on the guy and you expect me to unearth everything on my own.”

“It's not like that!” he says. “I need a name for the dog,” he adds.

She stops tearing apart the beer label and frowns. Foggy glances at her.

“The dog? What dog?” she asks.

“The one I found today. He's a puppy, so. No name,” he explains, almost shyly.

She imagines Frank with a puppy wrapped in his jacket and her brain short-circuits a little. “Uh,” she says eloquently. “Send me a picture.”

He grumbles but agrees before hanging up. Foggy offers her a mozzarella stick.

“You need to find a guy from a picture of his dog?” he asks. She's not sure if his tone is mocking or impressed. Knowing him, probably a bit of both.

She laughs. “No, my friend, Pete, he apparently just found this puppy and he wants me to help name him.” She shakes her head at the absurdity of the situation and empties the rest of her beer.

Foggy squints at her. “You and this... friend? You're close?”

She glances at him and shrugs. “Well yeah, he's my friend.”

“Just your friend? I mean Marci wouldn't let me make name suggestions for her cat and I live with that cat too. You must be something special to that guy if he wants you to name his dog.”

She opens her mouth to tell him that it's Marci he's talking about but her phone buzzes again. She opens the message and is greeted by the cutest puppy she's ever seen. If she had to guess she'd say he's at least part staffy, with a short golden and white fur and big floppy ears. He's curled up in a black hoodie and seems very content to lay there.

Foggy leans against her to see the picture.

“Yeah okay, I admit, that's a very cute dog,” he says. She nods. “But I still maintain what I said. Do you have a secret boyfriend I don't know about, Page?”

She snorts. “Secret boyfriend? With my workload? Right.”

“Puh-lease, if I have time to have a girlfriend, anyone has time to have a significant other.”

“You live and work with her.”

“Do you work with Pete?” he asks. “Do you live with him?!” he gasps immediately after.

“Foggy.”

“Do you?”

“No. And,” she adds as she throws a stick at him, “he's not my secret boyfriend.”

He catches the stick with a laugh, raises his hands in surrender.

She's pleasantly buzzed when she gets home that night. She tells herself to find a way to see Foggy more often. He doesn't deserve the distance she's carefully applied since the whole “Matt is cheating on you and also he's Daredevil and has been lying to you since day one” debacle. Foggy had nothing to do with it.

She ditches her heels, collapses on her couch and calls Frank.

“Kafka,” she says when he picks up.

He groans immediately. “You're not helping me name the dog anymore.”

“C'mooon.”

He pauses. “Are you drunk?”

“A little. But Kafka is a good name anyway.”

“You haven't even read Kafka.”

She rubs at her eyes. “Point, but Fitzgerald or Melville don't make good dog's names.”

He laughs. At that moment, it's honestly the most soothing sound she has ever heard. She settles more comfortably on the couch and closes her eyes.

“What ideas did you have?” she asks.

“None. I'm not good with names. Why do you think I asked you?”

She shrugs even if he can't see her. “How can you be bad with names..?”

“I named my kid Frank Jr.,” he says flatly. “You really need more proof?”

That joke catches her completely unprepared. How are you supposed to react when a guy who has lost his entire family and went on a murderous rampage to avenge them jokes about his dead son's name?

“Karen?” he says when she doesn't respond. “You there?”

She takes a deep breath and sits up. “Yeah... yeah, I'm here. Sorry.” She rakes a hand through her hair. “Did you ask Curtis?”

He groans. “Hell no. He'd say something boring like Rex.”

She laughs. “Why don't you bring the dog around tomorrow? I'll make coffee.”

He agrees and they hang up.

It's not an excuse to see him, she thinks to herself.

It kinda is.

She's not hungover the next morning and she silently thanks her lucky star for small mercies. Even with only one beer from Josie's she's sometimes still nauseous even after sleeping —Josie's alcohol is unpredictable like that.

She spends the better part of her morning working on her coffee table, downing pot after pot of coffee. Real estate corruption will never not make her mad, never not make her think of Mrs. Cardenas. No matter how many crooked prospectors she and Trish uncover and expose, there are always more waiting to take the newly vacated spots. Sometimes it feels like she's trying to empty a sinking boat with a pierced bucket.

She's hammering away at her keyboard after a string of frustrated texts to Trish when there's a soft knock at her door.

Her spines pops when she gets up. She checks the peephole, gets a fish eye view of Frank's massive beard and opens the door. She snorts when he comes into full view. Beside the beard, he's sporting an unevenly knitted beanie under the hood of his jacket.

“I don't have any Blue Ribbon,” she jokes and steps aside.

He rolls his eyes and walks in, closing the door behind him.

“Where's the dog?” she asks when no fluff ball follows after him.

He opens his jacket. Against his side, supported by the crook of his arm, is the puppy, oblivious to the world and snoring peacefully.

“It's too cold out there for him,” Frank says. She tries very hard not to coo because this is seriously adorable. And that's a word she'd have never thought of using to describe Frank. The Big Bad Punisher Saves Puppies And Keeps Them Warm In His Jacket. That'd be a nice change from Developer Evicts Low Rent Tenants Over False Promises.

She holds her arm out a little. “Can I?” she asks then bites her lower lip.

“Sure.” He hands her the puppy who barely registers the change of environment. She holds him close to her and sits back down on the couch. She's gonna be covered with dog's hairs and she regrets nothing. Beside, she's wearing her comfy but shapeless sweater and her comfy but three sizes too big sweatpants. They've seen worse things than dog hairs—Frank's blood comes in mind for the sweatpants.

“There's fresh coffee in the kitchen,” she says without looking up from the sleeping pup.

Frank huffs a laugh. “I see you only made me come here for the dog,” he says as he walks to the kitchen.

“I never tried to pretend otherwise, right Kafka?” she whispers, her fingers playing with the soft fur.

She hears Frank sighs in the kitchen.

“Don't call him that,” he warns as he opens the cupboard to grab a mug. She looks up at him with a shit-eating grin. He holds her stare for all two seconds before looking away with his trademark corner smile. “You're never gonna let it go, right?” he chuckles.

She shakes her head. A few strands of hair escapes from her bun. “Nope,” she says, popping the “p” exaggeratedly.

The look he gives her could be described as fond if she didn't know better.

He joins her on the couch and asks about her current story. She groans but she explains the issue roughly, interrupting herself to answer Trish's own frustrated texts. He asks a few seemingly innocent questions. She knows him, though, and knows he's trying to figure out if she's going to be in danger soon. She isn't.

They talk about books. Into the Wild was pretty okay, but that's a shitty way to die.

“Wouldn't mind spending a few weeks in the wilderness, tho,” he says. She grimaces. “What? Miss Page is a city girl born and bred?”

She snorts. “Nah. I've just had my share of nature when I was growing up in Vermont.” He looks at her like he wants to know more but she doesn't give him the time to form his question. “Where would you go? Alaska, too?”

He shrugs. “Just going upstate would be a start.”

He talks about an old idea of his, something that he'd thought about for when he'd retire from the Marines, before everything went to hell. He'd thought about buying an old farm in the countryside and turning it into a dog rescue and sanctuary.

“You know, for those pits and staffies that don't stand a chance in the shelters because everyone think they're just heartless killing machines, because no one try to see behind their bad rap.”

The dog snuffles in her lap and resumes his snoring. She doesn't say anything about the similarities between the dogs and himself, even if she really wants to.

They order food, talk about more books and which movie adaptations are worth it and which aren't. Snow starts falling outside. They eat their food and drink more coffee. He leaves before the snowfall turns into a snow storm.

The dog's absence leaves a cold spot over her legs. In the end, they haven't discussed his name further.

She finishes her story with Trish and when the article ripples and is quoted in other investigations on real estate issues in the city, Trish invites her for a drink and they toast their success.

On her way back home, she passes in front of a small mom and pop's hardware store. They have dogs collars with engraved tags in their window. She goes in.

She spends Christmas Eve with Trish and Jess and too much booze and has a Christmas Day lunch slash hungover cure at the diner on 57^th and 9^th. Frank arrives a few minutes after her, a familiar lump in his jacket. He slides in the booth and takes her in.

“Rough night?” he asks after a few seconds of silent observation.

Her nod is weak. “Word of advice: don't try to outdrink Jess. Or even Trish,” she answers flatly. Those women's tolerance to alcohol is otherworldly. It wouldn't even surprise her anymore if they were actually Thor's long lost half-sisters or something.

“I'll keep that in mind,” he says as if she had just shared a great piece of wisdom. Maybe she did. She's pretty sure Jess would love to arm wrestle with him and then challenge him to a shot contest. A girl gotta find her fun, she'd say.

The waitress, Chloe her nametag reads, fills their mugs and takes their orders. Once she's gone, Frank opens his jacket zipper halfway down, just enough for Karen to be able to see the dog's head. It reminds her of the package she's been keeping on her since the hardware store. She reaches for it in her bag and slides it across the table.

“What's that?” he asks.

“A book,” she deadpans.

He rolls his eyes but he's smiling when he takes the package. He opens it with swift movements and freezes when he sees what it contains. A leather dog collar with a silver name tag, “Kafka” engraved on it.

“Karen,” he groans and she loses it and laughs out loud, even if it hurts her head. “It's not his name,” he protests.

“Yeah? What are you calling him then?” she asks breathlessly. She wipes her eyes and when she faces him, he's definitely looking at her with fond exasperation. No doubt about it. “And don't tell me you're calling him Dog. That's just sad.”

He sighs and leans back in his seat, careful of not jostling the pup. “Fine, I won't. You win.”

“Merry Christmas Frank.”

“Right. Merry Christmas,” he grumbles. To his credit, he really sounds like he's trying to be annoyed or angry, she just knows him better than that by now.

They eat their plates of artery-clogging food and waits for a break in the snowfall to leave the diner.

“Sorry I didn't get you anything,” he says when they're in front her building. She waves his apology away.

“Please. You let me name the dog.”

“You didn't give me much of a choice.”

She laughs. She never laughs as much as when she's with him. He smiles, observes the streets around them, his eyes shifting rapidly from one place to the next. Old habits die hard. She hugs him, mindful of not squishing Kafka and he kisses her forehead.

Foggy invites her for New Year's Eve, saying Marci is throwing a small party at their place. Marci's idea of a small party is apparently to invite every single person she has ever met in her life. The apartment is filled to the brim with people who look like they could all belong in an episode of Suits or any other glamorous Hollywood vision of high-powered lawyers drama, and Karen feels very much like she has no business being there.

Foggy saves her with two glasses of what must be champagne, but she's not enough of an expert to be sure.

“Small party, you said,” she says. To his credit, he has the decency to look at least a bit sheepish.

“Yeah, well, you know. At first it was a small thing but then. Marci happened.” He shrugs. “You could've brought your secret not-boyfriend, you know.”

She rolls her eyes. “Foggy—” she warns.

“How's the dog by the way? Did he have a name yet?” he interrupts with an innocent smile.

She sighs. “The dog is fine and yes, he has a name,” she says. “Kafka,” she adds when Foggy wiggles his eyebrows at her.

“Was that his idea or yours?” he asks. She sees where he is going and he is as subtle as a brick to the face. She tells him as much. He laughs, unapologetic, but cuts himself off suddenly, his attention shifting to the other side of the room.

Before she can catch a glimpse of what caused him to change so radically, he's grabbing both her arms and pulling her in a hallway.

“Okay, I kinda forgot to tell you and trust me I really wanted to tell you, I didn't want to ambush you or anything—” he says, stumbling over his words in panic.

“Foggy.”

“Matt is here,” he says quickly, as if the words were burning his tongue. “Marci invited him.”

She blinks. Nods. “Uh.”

Foggy squints at her. “That's all you're going to say? I thought you'd be more, uh, affected?”

She thinks about that. A few months ago, she probably would have been yes. Now? Sure, Matt isn't her favorite person in the world, far from it, but she doesn't feel anger towards him. Mostly she's just... Indifferent? It doesn't hurt anymore to think about what happened between them.

“Guess I'm over it?” she shrugs.

“Does that have something to do with your secret boyfriend?”

She throws her hands in the air. “No! You know why? Because I don't have a secret boyfriend!”

Marci's head pops up from the corner. “Who has a secret boyfriend?” she asks. “Also why are you two hidden in the hallway?” she adds as she walks to them. “You do know that the idea behind a party is to socialize, right?” She wraps herself over Foggy.

“I was just warning Karen that someone invited Matt,” he says with a pointed look.

Marci sighs. “I just thought it was time for you two to get over yourselves and save your friendship. And now that dear Karen is over it thanks to her new boyfriend, you can stop torturing yourself over a misplaced sense of duty, Foggybear. Yes, I heard your conversation, congrats Karen.”

Karen ignores that last sentence and frowns at Foggy, who seems ready for the ground to open and swallow him. “I've never asked you to pick a side. I've never expected you to.”

He shrugs. “I know. But Karen, you're my friend and he treated you like garbage and he treated me like garbage and we both deserved better.” He drains the rest of his drink. “I didn't pick a side, I was always on your side.”

“Now that that's out of the way,” Marci giggles and Karen wonders how much she already had to drink, “let's talk about that boyfriend of yours.”

Marci takes them both swiftly by an arm and drags them back to the main room. She grabs new drinks for the three of them before plopping down on a couch and gesturing them to do the same. Karen doesn't feel like she has much of a choice anyway.

“So.” Marci turns to Karen. “Tell me more about him. How did you meet, what does he look like, what's his name and why isn't he here tonight?”

Karen feels her shoulders sags. She takes a sip of her drink. “First of all, he's not my boyfriend.”

“He let you name his dog,” Foggy cuts.

“Yeah well he would've named him Dog otherwise,” she replies and drinks more from her glass. She has no idea what it is, but it's good and she's gonna need a lot of it if Marci and Foggy keeps on this line of questioning.

“What's his name?” Marci asks. “Not the dog, the not-boyfriend,” she adds.

“Pete,” Foggy answers before Karen has even the time to open her mouth. She glares at him.

“That's boring,” Marci remarks and Karen can't help but chuckle because yes, it's a boring, dull name. And that's who Frank is supposed to be now. A boring, dull, normal guy. “What's he like? C'mon Kar, give me something here!”

Karen thinks about it for a second. They clearly don't believe her when she says he's just a friend so why not stop fighting it and play along.

“Alright, what the hell,” she mumbles to herself. She gives a brief description, trying to focus on things that would never be linked to The Punisher. Like the beard, the beanie that she had learned has been hand-knitted by Liebermann's kid. The fact that he doesn't like Harry Potter all that much is met by a scandalized gasp from Foggy and when she says that “Pete” is addicted to coffee, Marci claps her hands together excitedly and assures her that the guy is her soulmate.

“Why didn't he come with you?” Marci asks. “He sounds like a great guy.”

“Uh. Well, we're not together-together,” Karen explains and wow, well done, a reporter regressing to middle school expressions to talk about her love life. Or the absence of it, in that case. “And he likes to keep to himself. Not a big fan of crowds or loud places, you know.”

Marci asks for a picture of Pete, and when Karen says she doesn't have any, she asks for a picture of the dog. She coos over the picture of Kafka with his new collar Frank sent her a few days after Christmas and gets up to get more drinks. Foggy slides closer to Karen.

“I'm happy for you, Karen. Pete seems great for you.”

“Thanks, but like I said—”

“Yeah yeah, you're not together. You want to though,” he states. It's not even a question, he's just saying it like he sees it.

She sighs. “I don't know. I like what I have now. And he has a past, issues he needs to deal with before moving on. I don't want to ruin anything by moving too fast.”

“Wow, you really like him.”

She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Guess so.”

Marci comes back with three glasses.

“Head's up, Matt is coming our way. Should I be more obnoxious with my questions about Pete so he can realize you've moved on from his cheating ass?”

Karen bursts into laughter, almost choking on her drink. “Thanks Marci, but I really don't care what he thinks anymore,” she says, well aware that Matt has probably heard everything they said since he stepped foot into the apartment. Okay so maybe she still wants to hurt him a little. She can always blame the alcohol Marci keeps bringing her for that.

“Here they are!” shrills a woman guiding Matt to their couch. He thanks her and takes a few measured steps in their direction.

“Hi,” he says. “Foggy. Thanks for inviting me.”

Foggy shrugs. “It was Marci's idea.” Marci jabs him in the ribs with her elbow. “But, uh. It's nice that you came,” he adds while glaring at his girlfriend.

Matt huffs a small laugh. It kinda makes Karen wants to shake him and shout at him to drop the act and the false modesty.

Apparently the anger is still here then. Good to know.

He turns to her.

“Karen.”

“Matt.”

“I was kind of worried, after the hotel, you never answered my calls—”

“I'm fine,” she cuts, coldly. She sees Marci and Foggy debating whether they should leave them alone at the corner of her eye. She doesn't want a scene but it's so typical of him to try and guilt trip her the minute he has the opportunity to talk to her. Yep, that's definitely anger, alright. “You know what? I'm gonna get me another one of these,” she says, holding out her glass. She gets up and leaves without giving any of them the time to say or do anything.

She grabs some food and a glass and looks for a more secluded area, which end up being the guest room. She nibbles on her mini-sandwich. She shouldn't have come. She should've spent the night at her place, eating take out and drinking beer like any other year. She could be on her couch in sweatpants watching Tombstone or any other classic western, had she not decided to please Foggy.

She slides open her phone.

- Why did I decide to go to this party again?

- that bad?

- Well let's see. There's more people than I see in a week, they're all lawyers, oh and Matt is here. And I could've been at home stuffing my face with fried rice.

Her phone rings a few seconds after sending that last text.

“You okay?” he says, low and gravelly.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “Just... I thought I was over it, and I am, but I still have all that anger, you know? I just want to punch his “I'm a nice altar boy please love me” expression off his face.”

Frank chuckles. She can see his smirk as if he were in the room with her.

“I know the feeling,” he says. “Do you really have to stay?”

“I guess not. I mean. I told Marci and Foggy that I'd be here but they'd understand it if I was leaving. I just don't want it to look like I'm avoiding Matt.”

“Yeah we wouldn't want to wound your pride,” he teases.

“Asshole,” she laughs. “Maybe I could make it seems like it's an emergency.”

“Like what? You're going through fried rice withdrawal and need a fix?”

“Stop mocking me or you're not invited to watch Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer shoot stuff.”

“Tombstone?”

“Yup.”

There's a few seconds of silence. Then: “Okay find an excuse to leave, I'll meet you at your place with Chinese.”

He hangs up without waiting for an answer, because, well. He doesn't really need to, right?

She goes back to the living room, trying to look as worried as possible as she navigates between the guests. When she reaches the couch were Foggy and Matt are sort of arguing but not enough to raise their voices, her story is ready.

“I'm really sorry, I have to go,” she says. They turn their heads to her. Matt frowns.

“Karen? Is everything alright?” he asks in that overly-worried way of his.

She pushes her hair back, like she knows she does every time she's anxious and explains in her most concerned voice.

“Yeah it's just, uh, Pete, he's at the emergency vet clinic. There's something wrong with Kafka and I—I just can't leave him all alone, you know? I'm really sorry, Foggy. Thank Marci when you see her.”

She grabs her coat and walks to the front door rapidly, but she can still hear Matt asking Foggy who that Pete is and Foggy answering “Pete? Oh, that's her boyfriend,” in the most relaxed voice she's ever heard him use. She sort of wishes she could see the expression on Matt's face at Foggy's words.

She catches a cab because fuck taking the subway on New Year's Eve. When she arrives in front of her apartment building, she sees the front door closing on Frank's silhouette. She pays the cab, jogs up to the door and pulls it open. Frank turns to her when she rushes into the hall.

“That was quick,” he comments as they climb the stairs to her flat.

“I told them you needed my help,” she says with a conspiratorial air.

His eyebrows shoot up. “That I needed your help?”

She shrugs. “Well, not you you. Pete. Aka my secret boyfriend.”

“Your secret boyfriend?” She didn't know his eyebrows could go further up but apparently they can.

“That's you.”

He tilts his head with a smirk. “Am I now?”

“It's what Foggy has been calling you since you called when I was at the bar with him,” she explains. She opens her purse and stars looking for her keys. “According to him, you can't be just a friend because you let me name your dog,” she continues. He frowns. “I know. I tried to tell him that you would've named the poor thing Dog and that I had to come to the rescue, but he doesn't want to hear it. And since I hadn't talked about you before and no one has ever seen you, him and Marci are now convinced that you're my secret boyfriend,” she finishes while opening her door.

They step inside and she takes off her heels with a sigh of relief. She loves wearing heels. There's almost nothing that makes her feel removed from Vermont as much as wearing heels, but she has to admit that sometimes she'd love nothing more than living her life in jeans and Chuck sneakers. She wonders what Kevin would say if he could see her in her pencil skirts and silky blouses—if he would even recognize her.

Frank drops the bag of take out on the coffee table. The sound makes her snap out of her thoughts and she pushes the wandering thought about her brother to the back of her mind. She shrugs off her coat. Frank unzips his jacket and Kafka jumps from his chest onto the couch. The pup promptly flops down to snuggle the cushions. Frank snorts at his dog. From Karen's perspective, it looks like there's a giant cinnamon roll on her couch. Which reminds her that she's really hungry.

“Can you take care of the food?” she asks. “I'm gonna get changed. No way I'm spending more time than necessary in a dress,” she says, coming into her bedroom.

She hears him chuckle. “Could've sworn you were born in a pencil skirt,” he calls from the living room.

She passes her head through the doorway to glare at him. “I was a secretary at a big shot company and then a paralegal assistant, you really think I had much of a choice in the way I dressed?”

He tilts his head and shrugs. “Dunno. I spent half my life in fatigues, I'm not really an expert in the clothing department.”

She ducks back in the bedroom. She unzips her dress, removes her tights and slips on her sweatpants and a tank top. She glances at her open closet. What she said to Frank was true. When she had first arrived in New York, she had been a country girl trying to distance herself from her Vermont roots, working jobs demanding a certain appearance. The blouses, skirts and heels have become an armor. They say she isn't Karen, daughter of Paxton and Penelope, sister to Kevin anymore. She is Karen Page, proud New Yorker, nothing more to see here.

She sits on the edge of her bed. Does she still need that armor? It's not like Ellison is enforcing a very strict dress code at the office. She's probably the most formally dressed employee of the newspaper, if she's being honest with herself. Sure, she likes the skirts and dresses. But it's not her. It's a mask she wears everyday to hide herself from the rest of the world. And for someone who has sworn to uncover the truth everywhere she looks, it's a tiny bit ironic.

She shakes her head and ties her hair in a quick bun. Now isn't the time to psychoanalyze her clothing choices. She promised Frank a western and he promised her some fried rice and she doesn't need to think further than this.

Chapter Text

Three days into the New Year and shit hits the fan. A random guy tries to mug her on her way back from work. She manages to bash his head with her bag, heavy with her gun and the folders she took from the office. She runs all the way back to her place, breaking a heel midway. She takes her shoes off and keeps on running until she's safely locked away in her flat. Her heart is thumping hard in her chest, ready to burst out of her ribs. She takes a few deep breaths.

It's not the first time this happened to her. Not even the second. She lives in Hell's Kitchen after all. Not the safest place in the city.

She wills her hands to stop shaking. Then she removes her ruined tights and dumps them with the broken shoes in her trashcan, takes off her dress and hops in the shower.

She lets the too hot water turn her skin red and she keeps breathing. Just breathing.

She's okay.

She's okay.

She's okay.

Maybe if she repeats it enough it'll become true.

The next day, she enrolls in the same self-defense and kickboxing classes Trish is taking. The instructor takes one look at her face and just asks for some medical paperwork without further question. She doesn't know what he saw in her eyes and she doesn't care.

She used to be afraid of the violence within her. But now, she is done being afraid. She has no one to impress, she doesn't have to pretend, to cultivate her delicate persona anymore. She doesn't care about what Matt is thinking, about the pedestal on which he has put her. Foggy hasn't seen her as an immaculate angel to be protected in a long time. Trish is the one who has pushed her to come to the class. Jess doesn't give a shit about anything as long as the few people she cares about aren't hurting.

And Frank had seen through her immediately in that dingy diner after she had held him at gunpoint.

The only person for whom she is still pretending is herself and honestly she's tired.

Frank panics a little the next time he's over at her place. He came to return a book and is perusing her bookshelf to take a new one when she takes off her hoodie. He turns sharply in her direction when he catches sight of the blue and purple spots on her shoulders and forearms.

“What the fuck, Karen?” he mutters as he rushes to her to inspect her bruises more closely.

“I'm fine. It's from my kickboxing class,” she says. She aims for the most soothing tone she can muster. She doesn't need Frank to freak out on her over a few bruises. “I'm not hurt.” Of course she didn't say a word to him about the attempted mugging. No need to give him an excuse to take his guns out and come out of retirement.

Pete Castiglione has a clean record and she won't do anything to change that if she can help it.

“You're taking kickboxing classes?” is all he says.

“And self-defense.”

The corner of his lips curls up. “Attagirl.”

There's a proud glint in his eyes.

They hit the gun range together. She suggested it first. He wasn't one to say no to that.

He teaches her how to better hold her ground, first with her .380 then with different types of guns.

“You never know what you'll have access to when you'll be in a situation that calls for a gun,” he says, as if ending up in a situation calling for a gun is a total normal thing for her. If the last year is anything to go by, it actually kinda is.

She already knows how to take apart and clean her gun, but he still teaches her tips and tricks, things too often overlooked to watch for. He doesn't question her sudden spike of interest in weapons' handling and isn't surprised by her familiarity with firearms. He doesn't ask, she doesn't offer.

Foggy calls those afternoons their “gun-dates”. She has given up on trying to correct him about her relationship with “Pete”. After all, he does raise a few relevant points.

“Have you gone on dates lately?” Foggy asks around his bottle of beer.

It's another evening spent at Josie's and the slight but pleasant buzz of alcohol is coursing through her body.

“You just said I was going on “gun-dates” with Pete,” she says and she's sufficiently tipsy to actually make airquotes with her fingers.

Foggy rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but you're also telling me that Pete isn't your boyfriend. So. Have you been on a date in the past months?”

Karen shoves a few fries in her mouth. “No,” she says. “And it's not that I don't want to,” she adds immediately, “it's because I don't have the time.”

“Okay, so what are you doing with your time then?”

“Well, you know. Work. Kickboxing classes. Drinking watered down beer with you.” She winks at him and he makes his “really, Karen?” face. “Going to the gun range with Pete. Running with him and Kafka. But mostly work.”

“Riiight,” Foggy says, the elongated vowel dripping disbelief.

“What?”

“You do spend a lot of time with him. Is he going on dates?”

She almost chokes on her beer. “Pete? On dates? No.”

“Why not?”

She pushes her hair back and thinks about it for a few seconds. “Well. I don't know actually. He used to have a lot of, uh... issues? But he's doing better so maybe he is seeing people.” She shrugs. The idea of Frank going on a date is weird and she wonders how that would work, building a relationship with someone who thinks he really is just Pete, a random guy who likes dogs and has read every single book written by Kafka despite the fact that it makes him send her frustrated rants via texts. How do you build something with someone if you have to lie and hide everything you were until a couple of months ago?

Foggy's voice cuts through her thoughts. “Wouldn't he have told you?”

“We don't tell each other everything.”

As she says it, it immediately feels heavy and wrong on her tongue. Maybe she doesn't tell him everything. But he does. He really does. He's spilling his guts to her at every turn, hiding nothing from her, disclosing every part of him, of his grief, of his healing, even the ugly parts, especially the ugly parts. Despite his sometimes closed-off face, he's an open book to her. She has seen him defeated and resigned in that hospital bed, murderous more time than she can count, proud, hurt, beaten beyond recognition, scared, worried, angry, focused, happy—or as happy as Frank Castle can be—she has seen him peaceful and almost carefree, eating Chinese take out and drinking beer, reciting the Tombstone dialogues along with the actors on the screen.

It feels unfair to him that she has been carefully closed-off about her past, except for that spaceship in her closet story she has shared with him all those months ago, when she was still just his lawyers' assistant.

She tucks those thoughts in the back of her mind, with so much others like them. Maybe one day she'll be strong enough to face them.

Maybe one day.

By the time spring chases the last of winter's icy wind, the heels have disappeared from her closet. When her last pair of ballet flats finally gives in to too much wear, she gets a pair of flat ankle boots. And if those boots look a tiny bit military inspired when you squint, well, that's a coincidence, right? It's not like she's in charge of the fashion trends.

Ellison teases her the first time she comes into the office in skinny jeans.

“You're finally giving up the paralegal look, Page?”

She laughs. “Yeah, I thought I should look more like a journalist.”

“Careful, you're this close to get yourself a puff vest with multiple pockets.”

The runs with Frank and Kafka get longer each week. They follow the water, loop through a park, go back to the river, the dog trotting next to them with his tongue lolling out of his mouth in glee. Her stamina improves and the kickboxing instructor praises her progress. She wonders what it'd be like to wrestle against Frank. Given that his arms are bigger than her thighs, it wouldn't be much of a fight but she still thinks it could be fun.

“Yeah, sure,” he says when she talks to him about it. “Gotta find a place for that, first.”

“You could always swing by the gym.”

He gives her a strange look. “You're not afraid people are gonna recognize me?”

She snorts and pokes at his beard. “With that hedgehog on your face? Not a chance. Maybe Trish will, but she can be trusted.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Her instructor shrugs and says it's a good idea.

“If you get attacked, it's most likely the attackers will be big burly men rather than slender women,” he says. “Can't hurt to have practice.”

Frank comes to her next morning class, with a beanie pulled low on his forehead and a zip up hoodie with the hood up—his trademark look for when they're outside. She introduces him to Trish as Pete, and Trish doesn't squint. No one does in the class. They just accept him as Karen's friend.

During the class, Karen isn't as self-conscious as she thought she'd be with him next to her. Not that he's the type of guy who would try to point out and mansplain her mistakes to her, but she thought she'd be more intent on showing him how well she can protect herself now. Instead, she just focuses on going through the warm up and the exercises as if it were any other class.

They fight as planned at the end of the two hours. He has strength and years of practice as advantages, but she's quick on her feet and she can feel he's holding back. There is almost zero risk she's actually gonna hurt him so she goes all in. He seems surprised by the force of her blows and he smirks behind the beard and the protective helmet.

She manages to land a few punches and she's proud of herself when they decide they're done.

“Nice fight,” he says to her, low in his throat, as they shed their equipment. She punches his shoulder lightly and looks down to unwrap her hands, but she can still see the corner of his lips curl up.

Trish corners her in the ladies' locker rooms.

“So, this Pete,” she starts. “How long have you been dating?”

Karen sighs. “We're friends. Really good friends, yes, but that's all.”

“Uh. Could've sworn there was some electricity between you two.”

“Yeah that's what happens when two people kick each other's asses,” she deadpans before hitting the shower with the hope it'll end the conversation.

Frank is waiting for her outside the gym and they walk to her flat together.

“You planning on replacing Red with all that training?” he asks. It's the first time he questions her about her new routine. She knows it's not just about the kickboxing. He's a clever man, even if he's often underestimated on that front.

“I just want to be able to stand up for myself,” she says softly. She wants to say a lot more, but not now, not here in the open street. “Coffee?” she offers when they reach the door of her building.

They climb the stairs in silence. It feels heavy to her, pregnant, but maybe that's just because she knows she's gonna tell him things she has kept locked away deep inside her for too long. Because it's time.

Once inside, she starts a coffee pot and leans against the counter, her lower lip between her teeth. He's watching her with a frown and comes to lean on the other counter, facing but not crowding her.

“You okay?” he asks. She can see he wants to come closer. Wants to maybe brush his fingers against her arm, or maybe cup her cheek so he can look at her face.

“You know how we don't lie to each other?” she starts, still not looking up at him.

He nods slowly. “Yeah.”

“I've never lied to you. But I've kept things to myself. A lot of things. You've been nothing but open with me and I gave you nothing in return.”

“That's not true.” He takes a step towards her. “You gave me a lot and I—I've never expected anything from you, Karen.”

She crosses her arms. Uncrosses them. “But I want you to know. You deserve to know.” Her voice is shaking and she hates it. She bows her head down. She doesn't want to cry, damnit.

He takes another step and raises his hands to her upper arms. He tilts his head a little, trying to catch her eyes. “I don't deserve to know anything if you're not ready to speak about it.”

She meets his gaze. She sees nothing but concern and affection and it kills her, how he can be so goddamn open like that. She nods. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in a hug.

“C'mon, let's have that coffee.”

She curls on one end of the couch, her legs folded against her. He sits close enough to her that she can wriggles her toes under his thigh. He raises an eyebrow at her when she does, but he wraps a hand around her ankle and rubs circles into her skin. They drink their coffee in silence, but it's not the same restless atmosphere that she felt before. He isn't waiting for her to talk, he isn't waiting for anything. He's just content to be here.

After a few minutes, she unfolds herself and sits properly next to him.

“I don't want people getting hurt because of me anymore,” she says to her mug.

He turns his head to look at her, but doesn't say anything, as if sensing that she needs to get it all out in one go or she's not going to be able to.

“What I told you is true. I want to be able to stand up for myself. I don't want to rely on other people to be safe.” She pauses. Bites her lower lip. “My brother, Kevin.” She takes a deep breath and swallows around the knot that has formed in her throat. “He was always protecting me. Our father... He wasn't a good man. He was violent. Abusive. Our mother wouldn't do anything about it. Said we deserved it. Kevin would always put himself between me and our father. He wouldn't let anything happen to me. He wouldn't even let me patch him up afterwards but sometimes I had to, because he couldn't do it himself.” She turns to him. “That's how I became good at patching up people,” she says, a sad smile on her lips.

The looks he gives her makes her want to cry all over again. It's not pity. It's never pity with him. It's anger and sadness, worry and admiration. He reaches up and brushes a strand of hair away from her face. She turns her head back to the coffee table.

“He was always talking about how we were gonna get the fuck away from Fagan Corners and come to New York, find a shoebox of an apartment and live there together. He didn't want to leave for university. Didn't want to leave me alone with our parents. But I insisted. Our father wasn't as violent as before, I thought. So Kevin left.” She shivers at the memory. “My father broke my cheekbone the next weekend.”

She hears Frank's sharp intake of breath. She can see him closing and tightening his fists and opening them again, lying his hands flat against his spread legs.

“I called Kevin because I didn't know what else to do. He got in his car and decided to drove all the way back home.” Her voice is breaking but she needs to have everything out in the open. She sniffles and looks up, as if she could keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks that way. “He died in a car crash that night.”

There's no stopping the tears this time. Frank pulls her against his chest and holds her close, making low shushing noises and rocking her slightly.

“I got you, I got you,” he keeps repeating.

She clenches her fist in his hoodie and lets the tears disappear into the black fabric.

“It wasn't your fault,” he says once she has calmed down a little. “You were scared and traumatized and you needed your only source of comfort to be here. It wasn't your fault. You hear me? It wasn't your fault.”

She bursts into tears once more. He tightens his grip on her.

“Let it go,” he whispers. “Just let it all go.”

She sniffles. “It happened again,” she says through the tears. “People getting hurt because of me.” She tells him about Daniel and his blood in her hair, on her face, her clothes, her hands. About Mrs. Cardenas. About Ben Urich. “Even you,” she finishes.

He loosens his hold on her enough to look at her in the eyes. He's frowning. “What about me,” he asks.

“You've gotten hurt. A lot. Just to protect me.”

He clicks his tongue and pulls her against him once more, leaning his chin against the top of her head. The beard isn't as scratchy as she thought it'd be.

“The way I see it,” he says, his voice low and soft, “you were doing the right thing every time. And the people responsible for those deaths are the assholes you went up against. And if you hadn't gone against them, worse things would have happened.”

She nods against his hoodie. His voice is a rumble against her ear that helps her get her breathing back in check.

“And you don't have to feel guilty about me. I chose to protect you, every time. And I'd do it again, no doubt 'bout that. You saved my life a few times too, y'know. I'm still here thanks to you. You're a good person, Karen,” he finishes and no, she's really not and she can't let him think that.

“I killed a man,” she blurts.

He stops rubbing circles into her back for one second. “Okay,” he says, and his hands are moving once more.

“His name was Wesley. He was Fisk's second-in-command. He kidnapped me and didn't even tie me up. He even left his gun on the table,” she scoffs. “I took it and I shot him. I shot him seven times while looking at him in the eyes after he told me I couldn't do it.”

She swallows. It's the first time she says it out loud. It's the first time the truth about Wesley is known by someone else than her, the person who killed him, more than a year after the facts. She breathes deeply, and it feels easier somehow.

“It was self-defense,” Frank says.

She nods. “I know. I used to feel bad about it, really bad. I used to hallucinate him, to have nightmares. I felt guilty all the time. But not anymore. And it scares me. 'Cause someone shouldn't be able to take another person's life without feeling anything about it, right? But that's where I am. I killed James Wesley and I don't feel guilty. And I wonder what that makes me.”

He snorts. “You're asking the wrong person.”

“You're the only one I can talk to. I thought about telling Matt but that was during your trial and he was saying to whoever was listening that taking a life was a capital sin and that anyone who had ever killed someone needed to rot in jail for the rest of their lives, no excuse acceptable.”

Frank grunts. “Red has his head way further up his self-righteous ass if he truly believes that when he's handing out concussions and cerebral traumas every night.”

She laughs weakly. “Like Batman.”

“What?”

She hears a smile in his voice.

“Like Batman. He says he doesn't kill, but I'm not sure hitting people repeatedly in the face and hanging them upside down are without serious consequences.”

He laughs then, and she feels light, lighter than she's ever felt in a long time.

She just told him things she had never even said out loud to herself, let alone anybody, but he just took it like he takes everything with her: he opens his arms, accepts whatever she throws at him and takes it in stride. She could tell him to jump and he'd ask how high. It should be terrifying, but it mostly feels like she's not alone anymore.

She falls asleep against his chest, his hands a comforting weight on her back.

When she wakes up, he's gone but there's a note on the coffee table.

Went to pick up food and Kafka. Got your keys.

She goes to the bathroom to clear her face from the remnants of sleep and tears, puts her gym clothes in the laundry basket. Then she makes coffee and sits at the kitchen island with her computer. Her inbox is already overflowing. She sends an email to Ellison to warn him she's working from home this afternoon.

She's lazily weeding out her emails, half sprawled across the counter with her head in her hand when Frank comes back, Kafka running between his legs to get to her.

“Hey you,” she says. She abandons her computer and hops from her seat to crouch down to the dog level. His tail is wagging a mile a minute and he covers her face with doggy kisses when she starts petting him.

She hears Frank snort and walk to the kitchen.

“That dog likes you better than me,” he says as he drops a grocery bag on the counter.

“That's because you're the strict parent,” she answers with her face still in Kafka's fur.

“So what does that make you?”

She gives a few more rubs to the dog and stands up, brushing off her shirt—as if there is any chance she was getting rid of the dog's hairs peppering it now. In the kitchen, Frank is grabbing the coffee pot. He makes a face when he sees it's empty.

“I don't know,” she says. “The nice aunt that keeps getting him gifts?”

“Oh, so you're the one undermining my authority, then,” he smirks and takes her mug.

“That's my coffee.” She crosses her arms on her chest and tries to keep the smile off her face, knowing full well what's gonna happen next.

“Uh-uh,” he grunts, takes a sip and grimaces when the lukewarm coffee hits his tongue. It's her turn to smirk.

She balances her life between her work—writing stories that piss off bad people but never bad enough to put her in real danger, and her friends, and she feels content. Satisfied. She still has nightmares, but the tension that used to inhabit her body and threaten to snap at anytime is mostly gone. She doesn't feel like she's walking a tight rope anymore.

She sees Foggy and he tells her he's talking regularly to Matt again. Apparently, Matt is asking about her, but he never tries to call anymore. She shrugs and asks Foggy about his latest case and they drop the subject.

She gets invited to Marci's birthday, a “tiny thing between us girls” that turns out to be an entire day at a spa with free sparkly alcohol. While it's not Karen's thing, she can't help but admit that yes, being pampered for a whole day and talking about anything but work with other women is nice and maybe she'll consider Marci's offer to have girls' days more often. Marci smiles wide and asks her if she's still dating Pete and if she's ever gonna introduce him to her friends. Karen answers that she'll think about it and closes her eyes, focusing on how good massages feel on her overworked hands.

Sometimes Jess joins her and Trish during their self-defense classes and she wipes the floor with them, but it's good, because it makes Jess come out of her studio slash office and it makes Trish and Karen fight against another kind of assailant.

The instructor doesn't even ask them why they know people so skilled at fighting.

She donates her fancy clothes and lives her life with approximately two pairs of jeans and five tshirts.

She keeps running with Frank every morning and he swings by after his support group when she's working from home. Sometimes she dogsits Kafka when he goes to work—a construction job a guy at the support group helped him get. They cook a real meal because “No, Karen, you can't live on take-out and coffee alone”. He reads while she works and they walk Kafka together.

It's simple and domestic and far away from the violence that permeated their lives until a few months ago. They hug and he kisses her temple in front of her building, staying on the sidewalk until she waves at him from her window, safely back in her flat. Some part of his paranoia never truly goes away. She's not sure it should make her feel safe, but it does.

Chapter Text

Summer in New York is hot, sticky and annoying. Karen hates it. The AC in her office isn't even working properly, like in the rest of the building, and there's a city-wide fan shortage, like there is every year. It's as if the city has no memory of the previous summers—summers that were just as hot, sticky and annoying—and didn't plan efficiently for the current one.

There's no AC unit in her flat and she keeps her windows open in the hope it'll create an air flow in her living room. It's not really working. She does it anyway.

She switches her boots for Chucks and her jeans for light cargo pants. She's tempted to cut her hair to a short bob, but ultimately doesn't because she remembers how annoying growing hair is, remembers that frustrating length of long enough to be in the way and not long enough to be tied back. She sticks to top knots.

Ironically, the only place where she finds a bit of fresh air is the gym. Their AC is blasting cold air so people don't drop from heat exhaustion during classes. Frank comes back a few times and even if he kicks her ass during every single one of their fights, he teaches her new moves, new ways of dodging a blow and surprising her opponent. He isn't holding back as much as before and she's glad for it, glad to not be seen ready to shatter.

It's the middle of July. Karen is tying up her wet hair after her post-kickboxing shower when Trish slides next to her at the locker room sink.

“Do you have some time to spare?” she asks. To anyone else, she'd sound casual, just a normal woman asking a friend to hang out. But Karen hears the tightness in her voice, sees how Trish wants to frown and bite the inside of her cheek.

“Sure.”

They go to the nearest coffeeshop and sit at a table next to a window. Karen plays with the straw of her iced coffee, waiting for Trish to start talking.

“Jess stumbled upon something a few days ago,” Trish starts. She's drawing patterns in the condensation of her plastic cup. “She was following a guy, classic suspicion of cheating husband thing, and he drove to the docks.”

Karen sighs. Nothing good ever happens at the docks. It's like the place has a neon sign proclaiming “shady shit happening here, criminals welcome, superheroes and vigilantes please look the other way.”

“The guy is in the import business,” Trish continues, “but Jess found the time of the delivery and the delivery itself suspicious. She took pictures. Now, we can't see much on them, but we think it's illegal animal trafficking.”

Karen frowns. That's a new one. Usually, the docks are more home to some good ol'arms smuggling or the occasional but always murder-thoughts-inducing human trafficking. She nods.

“You want me to help you expose it?” she asks.

Trish shakes her head. “I'm giving you everything. My producer is okay talking about corruption cases, but since the whole Lewis shitshow he's trying to keep the more bloody criminal stories out of my show.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Not your fault. You're also more versed in the criminal underworld and I think it's better to have that case in expert hands.”

Karen snorts. “You make it sound like I'm a badass journalist who could say “oh yes, I know a guy, he owes me one, he'll talk” or some shit.”

Trish smirks. “Aren't you one though?” Karen rolls her eyes and Trish finishes her drink. “I gotta go, but I'll bring the file tomorrow evening if it's okay with you?”

“Yep.”

The deadbolt of her door is unlocked when she comes back from the coffeeshop. She isn't even surprised. She gave Frank her spare keys a few weeks back and he's at her place more often than not these days.

Kafka is sleeping sprawled on the kitchen tiled floor—probably the place of her flat where the heat is the most bearable.

“It's me,” she calls as she closes and locks the door.

“Bathroom”, Frank calls back.

She toes off her shoes. The door to the bathroom is open when she walks by. She catches a glimpse of a bare-chested Frank in sweatpants shaving his head with a hair clipper—he probably brought it over, it's not like it's an item she'd use. She dumps her dufflebag in her closet next to a pile of his clothes, takes out the dirty gym tank top and leggings and goes to the bathroom to put them in the laundry pile.

“Need help?” she asks as he's twisting his arm to reach the back of his skull. He holds out the clipper to her. She buzzes the rest of his already short hair and comes back to places where he didn't get all of it. He doesn't keep a military cut anymore, he just buzzes everything off. She rubs her hand over his skull when she's done, shaking the loose short strands clinging to it. Then she takes his hand razor and his shaving cream and shaves the back of his neck.

“I still don't get why you keep a massive beard while being basically bald,” she says as she works.

“Longer hair is a pain in the ass,” he answers. He's not wrong there. A lock of her hair keeps escaping her top knot, brushing against the back of her neck as she moves. “Beard hides my face.”

She grabs a towel, cleans the remnants of cream off his skin and chases the last of the cut hair on his shoulders.

She takes a step back. “All done.”

“Thanks.” He takes his shirt from the edge of the tub.

“Now can you tell me why you're doing this here?” she asks as she dumps the towel in the laundry pile.

He blinks, his shirt forgotten in his hand.

“I wasn't gonna do it in the kitchen?”

She snorts. “I mean here. In my flat.”

“Uh.” He starts putting on his shirt. “Electricity went out in my building,” he says, his voice muffled by the fabric over his face. “Some shit melted in the electric box or something,” he finishes, popping his head through the collar. He tugs on the rest of the shirt to cover his stomach. “You workin' tonight?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Just have a few emails to send. My deadline was this morning.” She walks out of the bathroom and to the kitchen. Frank follows close behind.

“That explains why there's no more coffee in the box,” he comments and she stops dead in her tracks. She completely forgot that she'd finished the last bag to finish writing her damn article.

“Shit,” she moans. She needs coffee and she really doesn't want to go back outside to the store.

“I bought some,” he says close to her ear, then he puts his hands on her shoulders and pushes her gently towards the kitchen island.

She plops down on a bar stool and he pours her a mug.

“Why do you need coffee if you're not working tonight?” he asks. He still gives her the mug.

“I want to start researching something Trish talked about today. She's bringing me a file tomorrow.”

Frank leans against the counter, cradling his own mug. “About what?”

“Potential animal trafficking on the docks.” He tenses for a second. She frowns. “You know something?”

He shakes his head. “Just that it could be dangerous.”

She shrugs. “Nothing new in Hell's Kitchen.”

She spends her evening at her desk looking up for past articles about animal trafficking in the city and files them all in a new folder on her computer desktop. Frank makes a salad and puts a bowl next to the pad where she has been scribbling notes. She takes her eyes away from her screen. He's leaning against her desk frowning at her.

“Thanks,” she smiles.

“I still don't get how you survived living alone,” he mumbles. She tries to swat him but he dodges her hand easily, without even looking at her. “Eat your salad before you forget.” She rolls her eyes but he has a point. She stopped counting the number of times she completely forgot the plate sitting next to her laptop, too absorbed by her work to stop and eat.

Two hours, a bowl of salad and two mugs of coffee later, she's still in front of her computer without any plan to move. Frank, however, has apparently different plans. He takes the back of her chair and turns it around. She glares at him when they end up face to face.

“What, pray tell, are you doing, Castle?”

He stands up, walks behind the chair and rolls it away from her desk, not giving a damn about the fact that she's sill sitting on the chair and protesting.

“You work too much.”

“Since when do you know anything about healthy behavior?”

He stops the chair next to the couch, makes her get up gently but firmly and sits her back down on the couch. Then he takes the chair back to the desk, fetches a sleepy Kafka from the floor and plops the dog on her lap.

“Now you relax or I'm switching you to decaf,” Frank threatens, bending at the waist so his face is at the same level as hers.

Her eyes go wide. “You wouldn't.”

“I would.”

“This is my place.”

“It's for your own good.”

“I'm taking back your keys.”

“Your window lock is shit. Should do something about that actually,” he adds after half a second of reflexion.

He keeps staring at her until she gives up.

“Ugh. Fine,” she sighs, leaning back into the cushions. She puts Kafka next to her. She loves the dog, but she also loves being able to feel her legs, a difficult feat when one has 32 pounds of muscle and fur on their thighs. The puppy whines a little, kneads the cushion and flops down, his head on her lap. She rubs the soft fur above his eyes.

Franks sprawls on her other side.

“Liebermann wheeled me like this once,” he says.

She snorts. “Really?”

“Yeah. After he drugged me.” He huffs a laugh and shakes his head.

She totally needs to hear that story.

“Nah, that's nothing,” he says when she asks for it, but he has that smirk that tells her he's only holding back to annoy her and her curiosity. She pokes at him until he caves in and tells her the story of how Liebermann and him became basement-roommates.

“How did you two survive so long in a bunker without killing each other...?” she wonders when he's done with his retelling.

“I was killing other people to burn off the frustration,” he shrugs.

She doesn't flinch anymore when he talks about his past activities. Hasn't in a long time. She doesn't remember when it stopped bothering her, knowing that he had so much blood on his hands, knowing that he could drop someone from a rooftop without an ounce of hesitation. Maybe it was after Lewis? Before? She doesn't know and she's not sure it matters a whole lot now.

He tells her more stories about his living with Liebermann in the bunker, plus some more from when he's invited over at the Liebermanns' house and has to stop himself from cursing the guy in front of his kids.

At some point, she lays down on the couch, her knees bent as to not disturb Kafka from his spot. The top of her head rubs against Frank's thigh when she twists her neck to see the expression on his face as he talks. He drops his hands in her hair and plays with the strands loose from her half undone bun. She's not even sure he's conscious of doing it, still telling her about the last stupid shit Liebermann did.

She doesn't mean to fall asleep but she does, realizing it only when Frank nudges her awake.

“C'mon. Go to bed.”

She turns on her side, trying to hide her face in his tshirt.

“No.” It's nice on the couch and she's comfy and her bedroom is too far away.

He sighs. “You're not sleeping here.”

“Yes I am.”

“Don't make me carry you. Again.”

She turns back to roll her eyes at him.

“That happened once. And you kept fireman-carrying me even after I told you I could walk.”

He smirks, completely unapologetic, and stands up, holding out a hand to her. She sits up and bats it away. She can stand up on her own, thank you very much. He doesn't stop smirking.

She brushes her teeth, changes into a pair of shorts and a tank top and collapses face down on top of the bed. It's too hot to get under the sheet, even with her bedroom window cracked open. He takes the other side of the bed.

“Don't stay on your back,” she mumbles from where her face is smashed into the pillow. He turns his head to her, an eyebrow up. “You snore when you're on your back,” she offers as an explanation.

He snorts. “I don't snore.”

“I'm pretty sure your nose has been broken at least ten times.”

“And?”

“You snore.”

He laughs. “Go to sleep, Page.”

She spends the next day digging into the newspaper archives, searching for something, anything even remotely related to animal trafficking. Ellison pops his head through her door and observes the state of her office silently. It looks like a hundred boxes of archive exploded in there, yes, she's aware of it.

“You know,” he finally says, “I'm not even surprised anymore when you pull shit like that.”

It makes her laugh.

“Have a pitch ready on my desk by tomorrow afternoon,” he sighs and retreats back into the newsroom.

She wonders if it's progress or if the guy just gave up on her ever doing her job by the book because in the end, what she does works and that's all that matters to him.

She comes back home earlier than she expected and Frank is tinkering on her windowsill when she opens her door.

“Should I ask?”

“'m taking care of your window locks. Told you they were shit.”

Okay then.

She drops her bag next to the coat hanger, toes off her Chucks and rubs Kafka's head on her way to the kitchen. She grabs two beers and joins Frank at the window.

“You're gonna get a sunburn on your head,” she says. She climbs the windowsill and sits down on the fire escape, her legs dangling between the fence bars.

“I'm almost done,” he mutters between the nails he's holding in his mouth.

He sits down next to her a couple of minutes later and she passes him the second bottle of beer. He mumbles a thanks. There's not much to see from the fire escape, but it's enough to distract her from her work and the file Trish is bringing. She watches a car drive by in the street below. She can hear an ambulance siren a few blocks away, Kafka drinking from his water bowl in the flat behind her, Frank's finger tapping against the bottle on her left.

“You're home early,” he says.

“Wasn't much for me to do at the office.”

They drink their beers in silence and watch the light turn gold. Frank takes their empty bottles and brings them back inside. He comes back to take his toolbox from the fire escape.

“Gonna do the rest of the locks,” he says.

She turns to him with a frown. “The other windows don't open on a fire escape.”

“Doesn't mean they're not a point of entry.”

“For who? Spiderman?”

He raises his eyebrows at her and makes his “are you seriously joking about your safety right now” face. It's a face he makes quite often.

“Fine,” she relents. He smiles from the corner of his mouth, satisfied, and goes inside.

Trish knocks at her door an hour later. Her purse looks heavier than usual and she shoves a coffee cup into Karen's hands as soon as the door opens.

“You're gonna need it,” Trish says.

She dumps the file on the coffee table—or rather files, plural. Karen quirks an eyebrow at her and Trish shrugs helplessly. “Jess dug up some more?” she offers. “And I did too?”

“Not gonna complain,” Karen says.

They sit down on the couch and Trish walks her through the mountain of papers, pictures and random observations scribbled on the back of liquor store receipts. Karen gets up to make coffee when their paper cups are empty. She doesn't know if it's the noise or the smell, but Frank appears from the bedroom where he was setting up the last improved window lock. She grabs a third mug from the cupboard.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” he asks flatly, gesturing at the coffee machine with his screwdriver.

“Hi Pete,” Trish calls brightly.

“Trish,” he nods to her and turns back to Karen. “I'm serious about the decaf, Page.”

“Work,” is all she answers. She shoves a mug in his hands and goes back to the couch with the ones for Trish and her.

He turns to the files littering the coffee table and the floor around it. He whistles and mutters a “well, shit” under his breath. Kafka appears on the bedroom threshold, no doubt alerted by the whistling, and Karen laughs. She calls the dog to come closer. He does so dutifully and drops his head on her lap to be petted.

“Didn't know you had a dog,” Trish says.

“Not mine, his,” Karen replies.

“I still maintain that he loves you more,” Frank mutters as he goes back to the bedroom.

“That's because he has good tastes,” she calls. His only answer is a loud snort.

Trish squints at her.

“What,” Karen says.

“Oh nothing, nothing.”

They go back to the files.

Once Karen's hand isn't on Kafka's head anymore, he curls up at her feet and promptly falls asleep.

Karen makes more coffee and turns on the lights when night falls.

Frank comes back to the living room for a refill, his screwdriver switched for a worn out paperback. He doesn't say anything about the papers strewn across the rug, about the fact that it's past ten and she's still drinking coffee, or about the fact that there's currently a blurry picture of a van sitting on Kafka's head.

“Take out?” he asks instead.

She smiles at him from where she's sitting cross-legged on the floor, a pad in one hand, a folder in the other, a laptop in front of her and two pens stuck in her hair.

“Thai okay?” she asks to Trish, who's pretty much in the same state, only sitting on the couch.

“Sure.”

Frank whistles and Kafka wakes up, the picture falling from between his ears. When he sees Frank putting on his boots and grabbing the leash, the dog jumps to his feet, tail wagging and tongue lolling out of his mouth. He practically jumps on Frank when he unlocks the door.

“Don't forget the—” Karen calls when Frank is stepping in the hallway.

“Fried tofu, I know!” he calls back as the door closes on him.

She turns back to the paper she's currently reading but feels the weight of Trish's stare on her.

“So when were you gonna tell me that you're dating and living with the Punisher?” Trish asks in that light tone of hers.

Karen drops her file and looks up at Trish, eyes wide. Trish is staring at her, her face a mask of calm and normality, as if she had just asked what Karen planned to do on her weekend.

“C'mon, Kar, I'm not an idiot, you should've known I was gonna figure it out,” Trish says.

Karen sighs and rubs her aching neck. “Yeah, I know, but I can't just go yell in the streets who he really is, so it's easier to pretend with everyone.”

Trish rolls her eyes. “I'm not talking about that.” Karen frowns. Trish goes on. “It took me two times in class with him to realize he wasn't really "Pete". Although the beard is a nice touch,” she adds like an afterthought.

Karen keeps on frowning. “So if you're not talking about his real identity... You're talking about...what exactly?”

Trish looks at her like she's being deliberately obtuse. “The dating thing. The living together thing. The you have a dog together thing?”

“I already told you,” Karen sighs. “We're not dating. And he's here today because he was fixing my window locks.”

Which isn't completely true since he was also at her place the day before and slept there, but isn't a total lie either. He did fix her locks.

“Uhuh,” Trish says and Karen doesn't need to be particularly perceptive to hear the utter disbelief in her friend's voice. "Is that why he was reading a book in your bedroom?"

“Can we go back to the evil people trafficking cute animals, please?” Karen pleads.

Frank comes back with enough food to feed a dozen people. They clear up a corner of the coffee table to put the take out boxes on it and he sits down on the floor next to Karen after grabbing three beers from the fridge. They eat together. He doesn't even ask questions about their case, still playing the part of Pete, normal guy from Queens who doesn't have any interest in gunning down criminals. Kafka tries to sniff out the fried shrimps carton in his hands. When Frank makes a wide movement that takes the box away from the dog and in front of Karen, she takes the opportunity to steal a few pieces from him. He turns to her with a look of exaggerated betrayal on his face and she wishes she could take a picture of it. He steals some fried tofu when he thinks she isn't looking. She glares at Trish who looks like she's watching her favorite sitcom happening in front of her.

They try to keep reviewing the files and articles while Frank puts the leftovers in the fridge and the rest in the trash, but ultimately decide that they're in no shape to work anymore and need to take a break to come back to the files with fresh eyes.

Karen walks Trish to the door and tells her she'll give her any update she has on the case, even if Trish isn't officially working on it. Trish hugs her and steps in the hallway.

“Thanks for the food, Pete,” she calls as the door closes on her back.

Frank comes to stand next to where Karen is glaring at the closed door.

“She knows,” he says matter-of-factly, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel.

“Yep.”

“You trust her.”

“Yep.”

“Okay.”

He goes back to the kitchen to drop the towel.

She gathers the haphazardly strewn files in neat piles, tries to find a way of organizing everything Jess found and what she could unearth with Trish. What was supposed to be a quick clearing of the coffee table turns into another fall in the research rabbit hole—until Frank grabs the folder she's holding from her hands, puts it back on a pile that he takes in his arms and dumps everything on her desk.

“Frank—”

He whistles. Kafka lifts his head from the floor. Frank whistles again, lower this time, and points at her. The dog gets to his feet, skitters across the hardwood floor and jumps to the couch, flopping down on her with all his weight and effectively knocking the breath out of her. Kafka licks her face and waits eagerly, his front paws on her shoulders.

“What the fu—“

“Good boy,” Frank praises behind her.

She cranes her neck back to glare at him. “Did you train the dog to keep me away from work?”

“No,” he deadpans. “Now if I go walk the dog,” he says, bending forward with his forearms against the back of the couch, “are you gonna go back to those goddamn files or can I trust you to go the fuck to sleep?”

He leans his head on his crossed arms and turns it on the side to stare at her. She stares back.

“You sound like my grandpa,” she says.

He huffs a laugh. “Really,” he smiles, half of his face hidden in his arms.

“Yeah,” she looks down to Kafka, who dropped his head to her chest, his paws on either side of it. She rubs his ear. “We used to go to his place when we were kids. He was nice. He would tell us to sit down at the dinning table to do our homework and he would always says “don't start doing shit as soon as my back is turned!” in the typical voice of a guy who smoked too much.”

She turns her head on the side. Frank is still watching her, his eyes and his smile soft.

“You didn't answer my question tho,” he says after a few seconds.

“Don't have to if I come walk Kafka with you,” she answers with a wriggle of her eyebrows.

He snorts. “Good point.” He whistles and holds out the leash for Kafka to see. The dog immediately jumps from the couch and rushes to the door.

The air is still warm outside but it's not the suffocating heat of the day anymore. They walk around the block mostly in silence, shoulders knocking together, Kafka trotting in front of them and stopping every few feet to watch them catch up with him.

“You're quiet,” Frank says as they wait for Kafka to be done with a thorough dumpster examination.

“Could say the same for you,” she counters.

He smirks. “I'm always quiet.”

“That's not even remotely true,” she laughs.

Kafka comes back to them, turns around on its legs, and trots back ahead. Frank deliberately bumps his shoulder against hers.

“You're thinking about that new case, aren't you.”

She side-eyes him. “Maybe.”

“You already talked about it with Ellison?”

“Not really?” she shrugs. “He knows I'm onto something new. He wants a pitch for tomorrow afternoon,” she adds as she pulls open her building front door. Kafka darts inside and runs up the stairs. They follow at a steadier pace.

“Think he's gonna approve it?” Frank asks. His steps don't echo across the empty staircase. It's surprising how light he is on his feet despite being essentially a block of muscles in combat boots.

She nods. “Yeah. He trusts me by now.”

Frank clears his throat. She turns her head to him but he doesn't add anything and avoids her eyes. He unlocks the door, pushing an excited Kafka on the side to open it.

“Frank, what's going on?” she asks once they're both inside her flat. In the kitchen, Kafka is lapping loudly at his water bowl.

Frank rubs his buzzed head. “It's just...” He stops, seemingly frustrated, and sits down on the couch. He leans his elbows on his legs and drops his head in his hands. Karen joins him quietly, folding her legs under her as she sits down.

“What is it?” she asks in her most gentle voice, the one she uses when she feels him on the edge of freaking out or melting down—whichever it could be. She puts a hand on his arm, just below the hem of his short sleeve and that makes him turns his face a bit on the side, just enough to meet her eyes without moving his hands from his forehead. The muscles of his jaw are shifting beneath his beard. She rubs circles into his biceps. She can feel the difference of texture in his skin when she touches the scar from where the piece of metal had torn open his arm, where she had stitched him up all those months ago.

“I know you can take care of yourself,” he finally says. “Alright? I know you can. I know.” He swallows. Drops his hands between his knees. “But whatever's happening at the docks it's—it's—” He tightens his fists, seems to notice doing so, forces his hands to relax. He grinds his teeth together. She slides closer. “It could be fucking dangerous, Kar. The people trafficking shit? They ain't fucking around and you can't come too close to them, they can't suspect a goddamn thing, alright? 'Cause they wouldn't hesitate to hurt you, to—to kill you and—” he takes a deep breath, turns back to her— “I can't. I can't lose someone else. I can't lose you.”

All of his emotions are raw on his face, in his glistening eyes, and her heart is breaking a little all over again. He has known too much pain and too much loss and deserves to finally be at peace, finally lives a quiet life devoid of fear, and yet here he is, watching her, looking as lost and afraid as when she told him to go through the elevator shaft. But this time, there's nowhere else for them to be, so she gets as close to him as she can, her knees against his thigh, and reaches up to cup his face and lean her forehead against his. He closes his eyes and some of the tension drains from his jaw.

“You won't lose me,” she murmurs. “I'll be careful, I promise. You won't lose me.”

He nods.

That night, they don't sleep on their respective sides as they usually do. Instead, he wraps his arms around her body and clings to her, mindless of the already warm night. She lets him, because he needs to reassurance, and because maybe she does too. She falls asleep promising herself to never put that expression on his face again.

He's gone when she wakes up but Kafka is still snoring at the end of the bed. Early shift at work, then. There's fresh coffee in the pot and a post-it on the mug next to the coffee machine telling her Kafka already has his morning walk.

She works at her desk all morning, compiling the notes from the previous evening, labelling each folders, printing online articles and saving all digital files in four different places. It's a little before noon when she decides she needs to have a more global view of the case. She takes out a box of thumbtacks, a roll of tape and a post-it block, and starts covering the two walls next to her desk with pictures, copies of invoices, printed out articles, anything that can help her put the puzzle together. To anyone else it probably looks like a mad conspiracy theorist took over her interior decoration, but she has a system and she doesn't need someone else to understand it. She slaps colored post-its over a few zones of her wall. Companies to investigate in yellow. People to background check in orange. People who could know something and talk to her in green.

It's only the second day of her investigation but thanks to Jess, she already has more than she usually has at that point. It doesn't mean it's going to be an easy one; she's getting good at estimating how long a story will take her and this one she counts in weeks. Too many players to check, too many variables to keep in mind.

Frank comes back in the early afternoon, takes one look at the walls and makes a new pot of coffee.

“You eaten?” he asks.

“Mmh,” she answers, still in front of her wall with the post-it bloc in one hand and a marker in the other, tapping it against her chin.

“Coffee doesn't count as food.”

“Mmh.”

“We should go to Florida.”

“Mmh.” She stops tapping her pen against her face. “Wait, what?” she asks, turning away from the pictures. Frank is leaning against the counter, a cup of coffee in his hands and a smug look on his face.

“Knew you weren't listening” he says.

She rolls her eyes, grabs her empty mug and goes to the kitchen.

“You know how I get when I work.”

She reaches for the coffee pot but he stops her with a hand on her arm. “Did you eat today?”

“Why?”

He takes back his hand and wraps his arm around him, resting the elbow of his other arm on it.

“'Cause I know you?” he says, bringing his mug to his lips.

She notices then that his beard is grayed with concrete dust. It makes him look older and her insides twists in a weird way. Men like him, men doing what he used to do, they don't often have the luxury to grow old enough to get gray streaks in their hair or beard. That feeling in her guts feels like hope and she wonders when she started believing in him having a tangible future, an after that isn't just a sort of Purgatory waiting room before shit inevitably comes knocking at their door once more—before he has to put on the Punisher persona again.

“What?” he asks, looking slightly worried by her silence.

She shakes her head. “Nothing. You have dust on your face.”

He shrugs. “I'll go get a shower once I'm sure you've eaten.”

“You know for a guy you used to live on uncooked canned food, you have a lot to say about healthy eating.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I was a fugitive living in the basement of an abandoned steam plant. What's your excuse?”

She glares at him. “Fine, you win, try not to look so smug about it,” she says, turns around and opens the fridge in search of something edible. She grabs a box of thai leftovers and sticks it in the microwave. He's still chuckling in his mug when she turns back.

“How's the investigation going?” he asks, pointing at the wall with a movement of his head.

She fills up her mug, daring him to stop her again with a quirk of the eyebrow. “It's gonna be long.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “There's a lot of people to identify. I'm gonna try meeting up with Turk, see if he knows anything.” Frank frowns at the name. She puts a hand on his shoulder. “I'll be careful. I promised you, didn't I?” she says softly.

He unhooks his arm from around his ribs and wraps it around her instead, pulling her in a half-hug. He kisses her temple.

“You did.”

Ellison approves her investigation and gives her three weeks of writing only minor pieces so she can focus on her story. She keeps her promise to be careful and arranges to see Turk in a bar. It's a shitty bar in a shitty part of town, but it's better than a back alley, and Frank is sitting behind the pool table, ready to have her back if she signals for it.

She follows Frank's tips when she stakes out the warehouses on the docks and never takes unnecessary risks. Sometimes she calls for Jess to take over when it could become too dangerous for a single non-superpowered woman. Sometimes they watch the docks together, passing a thermos of coffee between them, more often than not spiking it with whisky from Jess's flask when nothing is happening.

She tracks shell company after shell company. The process is painfully slow and frustrating but every time she feels like screaming, Kafka's head appears on her lap and the dog softly whines until she takes time off from her endless research to pet him. And maybe Kafka is naturally perceptive but she wouldn't put it past Frank to have trained his dog to force her to take breaks. Or maybe she should say their dog, given the fact that Kafka spends more time in her flat than his, even when Frank isn't there.

Between Frank's knowledge of criminals, Turk's info and the collective digging done by her, Trish and Jess, Karen is able to put names on most of the faces in the pictures stuck on her wall.

She's careful.

She's not careful enough.

There's a knock at her door two weeks in her investigation. She checks the peephole and tenses when she sees Matt on the other side. Kafka immediately comes to her when he senses the change in her mood. She opens the door.

“Matt,” she says, already steeling herself for whatever sermon he's gonna serve her after six months of radio silence.

“Hi Karen,” he greets. He tilts his head on the side, toward the bathroom where Frank is taking a shower after he came back from work covered in grim and dust. “Is this a bad time?”

Kafka growls a bit. She shushes him and sighs. “Come in.”

He steps inside. Two years ago she would have described the place to him to help him navigate between the pieces of furniture. She knows better now. She still feels like she was made a fool, doing all those things to accommodate for a blind man that isn't truly blind, still feels like she was taken advantage of.

“What do you want?” she asks bluntly. She isn't in the mood for pleasantries. She never is anymore with him.

“You're investigating the docks,” he says in a measured voice.

“Are you stalking me?” she counters, crossing her arms.

“What? No, Karen, I'm—I was patrolling and I just saw you, that's all.”

“Why are you here?”

“It's dangerous, Karen.”

“I know. I can take care of myself.”

“You don't understand. It's not one of your corruption cases, those people are real criminals, with blood and death on their hands.”

She is trying very hard not to lose her calm but he is testing her patience. She grinds her teeth together, takes a deep breath.

“I know. I know what I'm doing.”

“Karen—”

“Why are you here, Matt?” she finally bursts out. “If you're here to ask me to drop it, you're wasting your time.”

“Karen, please—”

“No. You don't understand. I'm not the person you put on a pedestal and lied to constantly under the pretense of protecting, alright? You don't know who I am. Stop thinking you know what's best for me and stop thinking you have to protect me because you don't. You really, really don't.”

Her nails are digging into her palms, but she's not going to relax, not until he finally gets it and stops seeing her as a damsel in distress needing to be saved by the white knight he thinks he is.

He opens his mouth but the bathroom door opens and he turns to the sound instead. Frank looks at her with a question in his eyes but she shakes her head. She can handle this. He disappears in the bedroom.

“What is he doing here?” Matt asks. She can feel him try to rein in the outrage in his voice. He's not doing a very good job.

“He's my friend,” she says flatly.

Matt scoffs, turns around, rubs his face, the wheels turning in his head practically visible.

“Is that Pete?” he spats.

“Yes.”

“You're dating the Punisher. Wow, Karen, what is wrong with you? He's a murderer, a criminal!”

“And?” She is two seconds away from punching him in the throat.

“He doesn't deserve you! You deserve—”

“What?” she asks loudly. “Please tell me what I deserve! Do I deserve someone like you? Is that what you're saying? Someone who cheats and lies all the fucking time? You know why he's my friend? He never lies to me. He never has. Which is way more than I can say for you.”

Matt sighs and he has no right to have this long-suffering expression about him. “Karen, it was to protect you, don't you get that?”

She takes a deep breathe. “You know what's another thing Frank never did? Patronize me.”

“Karen—”

“No. You shut your mouth and you listen for once. You have no right to judge me and you certainly have no right to decide what's best for me. I am not your friend and I don't need you. Now you have five seconds to get the fuck out of here before I punch you in your hypocritical face.”

Matt swallows. Kafka growls next to her and this time, she doesn't shush him. Matt walks to the door.

“I'm sorry,” he says as he opens it.

“I don't care.”

The door closes on his back. She breathes deeply for a few seconds before moving from her spot and turning on the lock. Kafka butts against her hand with his head. She crouches down to pet him and he rolls on his back, his mouth open in a big doggy smile.

“You okay?” Frank asks from the bedroom doorway.

She nods and stands up, going to refill her coffee mug.

“Gotta say I'm glad I'm not on your bad side anymore,” he comments lightly. “I thought you were gonna clock him.”

She snorts and fills a mug for him too. “Thought so too.”

She rubs her neck, trying to make the tension in her muscles disappear. Her upper back is stiff and she really wishes she had punched Matt, if only to relieve her of her frustration. She leans against the counter and gives Frank his mug when he joins her.

“Thanks.”

He drinks his coffee while occasionally stealing glances at her. She tries to ignore it for a while.

“What?” she finally says.

“You sure you're okay? Need to go punch some stuff? Kick my ass at the gym?”

“You literally just took a shower.”

He raises his eyebrows. “And?”

She thinks about it for half a second. “Let's go.”

Chapter Text

Karen never considered herself a tactile person. Touch was something to be feared growing up, was violence and danger—not comfort, never comfort. Even after leaving Vermont, touch was an aggression, a breach of her personal space. It was her boss walking too close to her, brushing her naked arm with a lewd comment in his mouth, a guy in the subway taking advantage of the crowded wagon to “accidentally” feel her up. Even with her past lovers, touch was just a mean to an end. She had never been one to cuddle after sex, to sleep in someone's arms. It used to make her feel trapped.

Matt had been different, but his touches were too careful, too measured, as if she was as fragile and brittle as an ice sculpture, as if she was one of his God's angels fallen to Earth.

So there's something to be said about the easiness with which touching comes between her and Frank. It's a brush of fingers when passing a coffee mug, a hand on the arm when one of them needs to reach over the other to grab something, an arm around her shoulders as they walk, a kiss to the temple, a kiss to the forehead, a brief side hug to say good morning. It's sitting close to each other, their sides flush against one another, it's his fingers playing with her hair when she lays her head in his lap, her hand against his cheek when he's on the verge of a panic attack. It's rubbing circles on her ankle, on his shoulder, on each other's backs. She doesn't feel trapped when he sleeps in her bed and ends up holding her against him. It doesn't suffocate her when his arm is around her shoulders when they're watching a movie on her couch.

It's reassurance, a way to tell each other that they're here, uninjured and safe.

He isn't touching her as if she was made of glass either. He knows exactly what she can take when they fight at the gym, and never gives less than that. For the first time in her life, someone treats her as their equal.

Frank respects her and appreciates her, with none of that sainthood pedestal bullshit. She's human. She's herself. And that's more than enough for him.

Sometimes, he's out of town for a few days, called on construction sites out of the city. On those days, Kafka stays with her and they cuddle on the couch, pretending they don't miss him. If she has to go to the office, she takes the dog with her and everyone in the newsroom asks to pet him because he's the less intimidating pit bull she has ever seen. Kafka smiles at her colleagues and rolls on his back and even Ellison can't resist rubbing his belly.

These days though, she's rarely in the office, still working the animal trafficking case. She's close, she knows it, the last piece of the puzzle barely out of her reach. She stalks down Brett Mahoney at the precinct, deflects his questions about the Punisher's whereabouts, asking instead her own questions about the activities at the docks. The detective tries to warn her off, as expected, but still gives her a few tips to chew on. He asks her to be careful. She promises to be.

She spends the walk back to her place from that meeting planning her next moves, reviewing in her head her sources and potential sources, trying to figure out a way to tie loose ends—she knows viscerally they have to connect, she just doesn't know how.

She unlocks her door to find Frank half asleep on the couch, Kafka sprawled on his chest. She rubs the dog's head and drops a kiss in Frank's short hair on her way to her desk. He stirs and his eyes flutter slowly open.

“Hey,” he rasps in a sleepy voice.

“I'll be right here,” she says from where she's bent over her desk, scribbling some ideas on a notepad and adding the info Brett gave her to her wall. After a month of investigation, it has spread beyond her desk area and looks more like the work of a demented conspiracy theorist than ever. She slaps post-its on top of older ones, moves a few pictures, changes some names.

She hears Frank moves around the flat behind her and a coffee mug soon appears next to her hand. She looks up at him.

“Thanks,” she smiles. She drops her pen and notepad and goes to hug him. He squeezes her against him with the hand not holding his coffee and presses his lips to the crown of her hair.

“Busy day?” he asks.

She nods against his chest before taking a step back and leaning against her overflowing desk. “Went to see Brett at the precinct. How was your trip?”

He shrugs. “Same shit as usual.”

She snorts in her mug. “You owe Jess a bottle of whisky and some arm-wrestling.”

“That so?” he asks with a smirk.

“She came with me for a meeting with a source. Said she was replacing you as the invisible bodyguard, hence the debt.”

He seems to think about it for a moment. “Makes sense.”

She smiles. She loves how easy it is to just be with him. No tension. No expectation. Nothing left unsaid. She leans her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes.

“I'm glad you're back,” she says.

“Missed me?” His tone is teasing, and yet she can detect the sincerity of his question.

“Kafka did,” she teases back.

“Mh-mm. I missed him too.”

Later, he asks for a recount of anything that happened in his absence, about the progress of the investigation. He asks about any potential danger, as he always does when he's been out of town for more than two days: if there was someone following her, a suspicious car down her street, anything out of the ordinary she might have noticed. That amount of paranoia would probably annoy her if it were anyone else. But it's him. She reassures him and that night, she sleeps in his arms, another of their rituals after being separated. He needs the contact, the tangible proof that she's here and that it's real. If she's honest with herself, she also sleeps better knowing he's back by her side.

The puzzle that is the investigation is almost complete. It all ties back to one pseudonym, a man pulling the strings from the shadows—a man who calls himself Kingpin and who's better at staying hidden than anyone should be able to while controlling a net so wide it's making Karen dizzy when she tries to wrap her head around it.

Now all she needs is just to figure out who's hiding behind the name.

Ellison asks her for a first piece on the story. She writes about the tip of the iceberg, afraid to compromise the whole thing if she reveals the extent of her knowledge while she doesn't have the final piece. She's keeping her promise. She's being careful.

The story has been published for two days and her inbox is overflowing with emails. She's thinking about asking Ellison for an assistant because half of those emails are crap and she can't answer the rest without wanting to bash her head against her desk.

She's walking home from the office, enjoying a rare reprieve in the relentless heat of August. She has decided to take her evening off: no research, no review, no staring at her wall. She can already taste the ice cream she's going to eat on her fire escape, with a good book in her hand and Kafka at her feet. She deserves a break, so she's going to have one and she's going to enjoy it, damnit.

She notices the silhouette jumping at her from the alley half a second too late and pain blooms as a fist connects with her ribs. Her breath is knocked out of her. She tries to stay upright and defend herself, but her arms are grabbed from behind and held there by a second assailant. She lets the adrenaline take over. She kicks the first attacker in the knee. His shout pleases her viciously as he stumbles back. She twists her arms to break the hold the second guy—she's pretty sure it's a guy—has on her. He curses when she frees one of her arms. She reaches back blindly, trying to punch something, anything, but the guy wraps a forearm against her throat and squeezes. Stars start to appear in her vision. She grabs the arm choking her and tries to push it away from her. The grip he has on her is tight. He's dragging her further back into the alley. She can feel her strength bleed away from her with every second passing. The first man stands back up and punches her in the sternum. She can't breathe but the only thing going through her head is Frank, looking lost and terrified, tears in his eyes. I'm sorry, Frank. I'm so sorry. She's thrown in the corner between the wall and the dumpster, hits her forehead agains the metal. Blood trickles down the side of her face. Her head spins. She puts her arms on the top of the dumpster and slowly pushes herself up. They cage her in, towering over her. Her vision blurs but she sees them smiling at her like hyenas readying for the kill.

“Kingpin says hi,” one says before a fist catches her in the jaw with enough force to bash her face against the wall. She slumps down on the floor. She's conscious enough to bring her arms over her head.

She blacks out.

Everything is white. Blurry.

There's too much light.

Is someone talking to her?

Why is everything so fucking blurry?

Her head is killing her.

Did she got drunk with Jess last night?

Or maybe with Foggy? It's weird, she feels like she hasn't seen Foggy in a while. She should see him more often. Maybe he's mad because Matt told him about Frank? Did Matt tell him?

Opening her eyes is hard. The left one feels heavier than the other. It doesn't open all the way.

It's not so bright around her anymore.

The ceiling above her is white. She's not at home then. Her ceiling has so many humidity stains it looks like an abstract painting. She's not lying down completely. The upper part of the bed is slightly raised. She frowns and pain assaults her head. She groans weakly. Something moves on her right. She slowly turns her head in the direction of the sheet rustling noises. Frank's face appears in her limited visual field. His forehead is creased with worry and despite the slight blurriness, she can see the fear in his eyes. She doesn't like it. She has sworn never to put this expression on his face again. She tries to raise a hand to cup his cheek, like she does every time he looks even remotely like this, but she finds her limbs to be heavy, as heavy as if they were weighted down by lead. He sees her aborted movement and grasps her hand between both of his.

“H—hey,” she says. Her voice is hoarse, barely above a whisper. She tries to smile but her entire face hurts. Everything hurts and she doesn't get why.

He smiles but it's not his happy smile. It's a sad and concerned smile, the kind of smile you give to someone who's dying to reassure them that everything is gonna be okay and they can let go now.

“Hey,” he replies and he sounds like he just spent two days chewing on gravel.

“What—wh—” Talking is painful. Why is talking painful? There's a dull ache in the side of her face and her ribs feels like they just made the acquaintance of a heavy truck.

Frank sits close to her on the side of the bed, twisting his torso to face her, her hand still in his.

“Don't try to talk, alright?” he whispers softly. He smooths her hair from her forehead, his touch light, lighter than it has ever been. She wonders if she has a wound there. It'd be the only logical explanation for how light his fingers are. “You're in the hospital,” he says. He swallows. She can see his throat working beneath the beard. “You were attacked on your way home. You—you have a mild concussion and a few bruised ribs.” He finishes, his head bowed down.

She tries to tighten her hold on his hand. He meets her eyes and his are glistening with unshed tears. Seeing this is more painful than any of her injuries at the moment.

“I'm sorry,” she mouths. Tears rolls on the sides of her head.

He wipes them down with his thumb, ever so mindful of the bruises that must apparently be covering her face, and leans in close.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for, okay? You just have to rest now.”

She sniffles. “Didn't k—keep my promise—” she stutters weakly.

He squeezes her hand. “I don't care. It's okay.” He cups her cheek, brings his forehead gently to hers. “It's okay.” She nods imperceptibly. “You go back to sleep now, okay? Go back to sleep.”

He kisses her forehead, keeps his lips against her skin a beat longer than usual. She closes her eyes but opens them again when he pulls away.

“Stay. Please,” she whispers.

“I'm not going anywhere. I promise.”

He brings her hand to his lips. It's wrapped in bandages. When did she hurt her hand?

She falls asleep once more.

When she wakes up again, her head is clearer. The pain is still here and she's still a bit fuzzy around the edges, but it doesn't feel like her brain has been stuffed with cotton anymore. The memories of what happened for her to land in the hospital are still out of her reach though. She can guess the blurry edges of them but that's it.

The light assaults her eyes when she opens them fully, or as fully as she can. She notices now how her left eye is nearly swollen shut, how the entire side of her face is heavy and burning hot. The right side of her jaw is hurting more than after receiving a punch during kickboxing classes. She can't breathe as deeply as she feels she needs to, her ribs locked in a vice. Every breath sends a stabbing pain through her torso. Her blood is pumping in her knuckles and her neck is stiff. Her legs are mostly okay, but that's probably only because she's lying down in a bed.

Overall, she feels like death warmed over and she's already fed up of it.

She'd like to sit up, but the idea of moving any part of her body is overwhelming.

She remembers waking up earlier—during the night maybe? She has no idea how much time could have passed since... well, since anything actually.

She slowly turns her gaze to the side. The chair is empty. She hears the door open on her other side. She tries to look in that direction but with her swollen eye, she doesn't see much. A nurse materializes above her. She looks like she's in her fifties. Her graying hair is braided in neat cornrows drawing spirals on her head. Karen follows the patterns with her eyes. It makes her dizzy.

“Hi, miss Page. How are you feeling this morning?” the nurse asks.

Karen opens her mouth. It hits her how thirsty she is. She tries to swallow.

“C—can—” she starts but saying the entire sentence sounds impossible. She tries again. “W—water?” she asks, her voice weak and raspy.

“Sure, honey,” the nurse says with a smile. She lifts up the already raised part of the bed more and gives Karen a glass with a straw. “Slowly now.”

The cool water feels like heaven in her parched mouth. She sips as slowly as she can, even if she wants nothing more than drain the entire glass and more.

“Are you comfortable like that?”

Karen nods. “Yeah.” She looks around but Frank isn't in the room. “Hum, where is—” she cuts herself. How should she call him? Did he give a name? Did he just say he was a friend?

“Oh, your boyfriend went to get himself a coffee. Sweetheart stayed all night watching over you. Now it's usually not the hospital policy to allow it but he was so panicked, the doc let him stay. It was that or stabbing him with a sedative.”

It takes a few second for Karen to wrap her head around everything the nurse just said.

“Thanks,” she finally says.

The nurse removes the IV bag above her bed, checks her heart rate and blood pressure, and scribbles down on the chart.

The door opens and Frank steps in. He looks terrible, with dark circles under his eyes and worry lines deeply embedded into his skin. He hasn't looked like this in months and the guilt for being the one to cause it gnaws at her. She smiles at him all the same.

“Ha, here he is,” the nurse says with too much enthusiasm for Karen's concussed head. “Your girlfriend was looking for you, mister.”

He smiles shyly, as if caught doing something he wasn't supposed to, and walks to the chair. Karen reaches for his hand and he interlaces their fingers together.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Like shit,” she answers honestly.

The nurse laughs. “Well that's a good answer. Now, honey, on a scale from 1 to 10, how's the pain?”

Karen thinks about it. “Five?”she says. Frank clears his throat and gives her a stern look. She rolls her eyes as well as she can—which is to say not that well. “Seven.”

The nurse looks at them fondly before injecting the content of a syringe in her arm. If the immediate fuzziness is any indication, that was some nice painkillers.

“Get some rest now. The doctor will be with you this afternoon,” she says as she leaves the room.

Karen turns her head to the side, so she doesn't have to look at Frank from the corner of her eye.

“Did you sleep?” she asks. “The nurse said you watched over me all night?”

He grunts. She tugs on his hand to make him look at her. “Yeah,” he finally says.

“How—how did I get here?”

He rubs at his neck. “Some teenager found you in the alley,” he says, his throat tight. She rubs the back of his hand with her thumb. “He called 911 and then the EMT called me. I didn't know I was your emergency contact.”

She wishes he could lie down next to her and wrap her in his arms. There's nothing she wants more than a hug right now. And if she's reading his face as well as she thinks she is, he could use a hug as well.

“Of course you're my emergency contact,” she says. “No one knows me better than you do. And we live together,” she adds, her speech slowing down with each second passing. She yawns. Those are strong painkillers. “Why do you even keep your flat,” she goes on. Her eyelids are heavy. She struggles to keep her eyes open. “You should move in,” she finishes, barely articulating her words.

Frank smiles at her. “Yeah?”

She nods sleepily and drifts off with the ghostly sensation of his lips on her temple.

The third time she wakes up, Frank and Trish are talking quietly in a corner of the room. When she notices she's conscious, Trish rushes to her.

“How are you?” she asks.

“I'm okay.”

Trish raises an eyebrow. “Karen.”

“I feel like shit. But better than whenever it was I was awake last.”

“This morning,” Frank says. “It's almost four in the afternoon right now.”

“Doctor been here yet?” Karen asks.

He shakes his head. “She wanted to see you awake.”

“I'll go get her,” Trish says and leaves the room.

Frank sits down on the bed.

“Do you think I'm allowed to drink coffee?” Karen asks. “Coffee sounds good right now.”

He chuckles. “We'll have to ask the doc.”

She sighs. Hating hospitals, she believes, is basic human nature and she's not one to stray from that rule. It's not the smell, even if it's quite terrible, or the scratchy sheets. It's just this utter inability to do anything without help. Like right now.

“Help me. I need to go to the bathroom.”

She pushes the sheets away with fumbling hands. He helps her sit up and steadies her with a hand on her back when her head starts to turn. She waits for the dizziness to pass.

“I could carry you,” he says carefully, as if he knows it's going to anger her. She doesn't even have the energy to feel mad about the fact that she needs any kind of assistance.

“I just need to take it slow.”

She puts her feet on the floor. He puts an arm under hers, mindful of her bruised ribs, and supports her as she stands up. No bout of nausea hits her this time. They shuffle slowly toward the bathroom. Frank stays outside. She manages to sit down on the toilet seat and then stand back up on her own.

Small victories.

She wavers to the sink, leaning heavily against it when she reaches it. She gasps when she sees herself in the mirror. Her eye is swollen shut, a patchwork of angry red and purple blotches. She has a stitched up gash on her forehead disappearing into her hairline and scratches and cuts all over her face, along with more bruises of various shades across her nose and cheekbone. The right side of her jaw is swollen and as bruised as her left eye. She unwraps her bandaged hands and washes them, trying not to wince when the soap hits her scrapped raw knuckles.

She stares at the blood-matted hair around her head wound. A bath would be great right now—a burning hot bath in which she can sink and forget that her body feels like one giant bruise. She touches her cheekbone with trembling fingers. She breathes through her nose, bracing her ribs as she does so, and exhales through her mouth.

“Karen?” Frank asks from the other room.

Her hands are shaking when she opens the door. She leans against Frank again, letting him bear most of her weight as he brings her back to bed. She collapses on the mattress with a sigh of relief. One trip to the bathroom and her energy levels are already empty. Fucking great.

Frank pulls the sheets over her and sits down on the chair.

Trish comes back with the doctor, who reads her chart, asks her the same questions the nurse did, flashes a light in her face and tells her she's going to stay one more night for observation.

Karen sighs. “Why can't I go home now?”

“You're concussed. You can't stay alone and you need to be monitored.”

“I don't live alone,” she says. “Can't he monitor me?” She turns to Frank, her eyes pleading. He probably wants her to stay in the hospital for his own paranoia's sake, but she knows that he'll respect and support her decision if she isn't being completely unreasonable.

“Do you have any medical training?” the doctor asks him.

“I was in the Marines,” is all he says.

It's apparently enough for the doctor who scribbles down instructions on a notepad and tells them she's going to fill the paperwork to release Karen.

“One more thing,” Frank calls as the woman is crossing the door. “Is she allowed coffee?”

“Not for the next couple of days.”

The door closes.

“Fuck,” Karen grumbles. It makes Trish and Frank laugh.

Frank leaves to go get her some clothes. The ones she was wearing when she was brought in are in a plastic bag, covered with blood and grim. Head wounds bleed a fucking lot if the state of her top is any indication.

The nurse comes back with some food. Mashed potatoes, applesauce, jell-o. Karen has flashbacks of post-wisdom teeth surgery. At least this time, there's no disgusting baby food. Whoever thought it was a good idea to mix fish and carrots together is a goddamn sadist.

Brett Mahoney comes through the door a few minutes after the nurse has taken her half-finished tray away.

“What the fuck, Page?”

“Hi, Detective,” she greets tiredly. “How did you know?”

“Ellison called me.”

“And I called Ellison,” Trish says. “Pete wasn't in any state of handling your boss.”

Speaking of Pete, the last thing Karen needs is Frank stepping in her room while Mahoney is here. She flashes her eyes at Trish.

“Can you call him and see where he's at?” she asks, hoping Trish gets the implied plea to keep Frank far away from the detective. Trish nods and winks at her behind Mahoney's back.

“Who's Pete?” he asks.

“My boyfriend.”

“Uh.” He clears his throat, takes a notepad out of his pocket. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Karen closes her eyes briefly, trying to collect her thoughts.

“I was walking home from work. Two men attacked me.”

“What else? Did you see their faces?” he presses.

“I think so. I don't remember what they looked like. I know they were both white.”

Mahoney nods and writes on his pad. “Did they say anything?”

She pushes her hair away from her face, wincing when she brushes against a bruise. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe as evenly as possible. The memories are here, right in front of her, she only has to close her hands around it. She can. She knows she can. She has to.

“I—I can't remember,” she finally says. “I think they did but I can't—I can't—”

“Page, it's okay,” Mahoney says in a quiet voice, effectively calming her down. Now isn't the time for a panic attack. “Let's just go through it all together, alright?”

He asks her to tell him about leaving the office, where she was walking, what she was thinking about. They get to the attack. He's patient with her, careful. She even thinks she sees a flash of anger when she tells him about hitting her head against the dumpster.

“They smiled,” she says. She can see them in front of her now, preying on her, coming in close. “Kingpin says hi” she whispers at the same time as they do in her head.

“What?” Mahoney asks. It shakes her out of the memory.

“They said Kingpin says hi. That's the only thing they said.”

“Kingpin,” he repeats. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Yeah. It's the man I'm investigating.”

He frowns. “The animal trafficking stuff? I thought you said you weren't in any danger.”

“We published the first part of the story a couple days ago.”

He sighs. She can see the conflict over his face. He wants to ask her to drop the story, give him everything she has and let the police do its job.

“I know you're not gonna let this go, Page. I'm not gonna ask you to. I can recognize a battle I can't win and I think I know you by now. You're gonna get to the bottom of it regardless of the threats, am I right?”

“You are.”

“That's what I thought. I'm gonna assign you a police protection.”

She snorts. “No.”

“No?” he repeats, his eyebrows nearly reaching his hairline.

“No.”

He rubs at his face. “I can't force you to accept it, but can you at least tell me why you don't want it?”

“I just don't need the police to protect me.” I just don't need the police to be too close to Frank.

“Does this have anything to do with the Punisher?”

She huffs a laugh and grimaces when her ribs remind her that she really shouldn't do that. “There's been no sighting of him since at least November, don't be ridiculous.”

“I had to try,” he shrugs unapologetically. “Take care of yourself. If you remember anything, don't hesitate to call,” he says as he walks to the door. “And please,” he adds, his hand on the handle. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

Her headache is back. She sinks against the pillows and closes her eyes.

She must have fallen back asleep. She wakes up to the sound of the door being opened and closed. She blinks, tries to keep her eyes open. There's a dufflebag on the floor under the window. Frank is reading in the chair. He closes his book and puts it on the nightstand when he sees she's awake.

“Hey,” he says, leaning towards her.

“How long was I out?” she asks, pushing the sheets away.

He helps her sit up on the side of the bed.

“An hour or so. The nurse just came in with the wheelchair.”

She glares at him. “I can walk.”

He snorts. “Sure you can,” he smirks. He kisses her forehead. She leans against him, breathes him in. He smells a bit like Kafka. The dog must have been all over him when Frank dropped by the flat.

Trish helps her get dressed with the stuff Frank brought back—her oversized sweatpants, one of his tshirts and her brother's hoodie. Karen loves him a little for bringing all of her comfort clothes. She tries and fails to put on her Chucks by herself. Trish rolls her eyes at her stubbornness and slips the shoes on her feet.

Trish and Karen engage in a stare-down until Karen relents and sits in the wheelchair. Trish wheels her down to the entrance where Frank is signing the last of the paperwork, then she calls a cab.

Karen spends the ride half-asleep on Frank's shoulder. She definitely needs both his and Trish's help to make it up the stairs, and lies down on the couch as soon as they get in the apartment. Despite being overexcited to see her, Kafka doesn't jump at her or tries to get her to pet him. Instead he sniffs her gently and whines a little, as if he could feel the pain radiating in her entire body. She pets him weakly.

“Do you want me to go walk him?” Trish asks. “You guys could use some rest.”

Frank gives her his keys and Kafka's leash. The dog leaves Karen's side. She hears a thanks, a hushed conversation, her door closing and then the silence.

Frank squats down next to her. He brushes a few strands of hair away from her face, then rests his hand against the pulse point on her neck.

“What do you need?” he asks softly, his face earnest.

She reaches for his hand, covers it with hers. You, always you.

“A bath.”

“Alright. I'll be right back.”

Frank wakes her up gently and she'd really like to stop falling asleep the moment someone isn't talking to her. He helps her get up from the couch. Standing up is hard, her ribs protesting every movement, sending stabbing pain in her sides and her sternum. They walk slowly to the bathroom. She's leaning heavily against him and almost asks him to carry her. The bathroom door looks way too far away for her current state. They pause midway. She tries to control her breathing but her lungs are grinding against her ribs when she inhales and white spots are dancing in front of her. She closes her eyes and hides her face in his chest for a few seconds.

“C'mon. Almost there.”

She nods and they start walking again. She sits down on the edge of the bathtub, exhausted and ready to swallow all the painkillers she left the hospital with.

“This is fucking annoying,” she says as Frank removes her shoes.

“Mh?”

“Not being able to do any fucking thing.”

He huffs a laugh. “You're gonna be a cranky patient, aren't you.”

She smiles, an apology forming on her lips. He cuts her off.

“Don't say you're sorry. I don't mind.”

He helps her remove her clothes and climb into the tub. The water stings her knuckles but the warmth soothes her aching muscles. She sinks down and lets the water cover her face, her hair. She feels all the cuts on her skin like tiny needles. When she sits back up and brings her head out of the water, Frank has grabbed a washcloth from the cabinet under the sink. He soaks it in the bath, wrings the excess water out of it and gently dabs it around her head wound, cleaning off the blood encrusted there.

“Am I hurting you?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

She shakes her head lightly, her eyes on his face. He's biting the inside of his cheek as he focuses on her head, a slight frown between his eyebrows. She reaches up and rubs a finger against his forehead, dripping water over his face.

“What the—”

“Stop frowning.”

He laughs and flicks water at her. “Lemme work.”

He washes her hair and her back, always careful of her bruises, and massages her stiff neck, rubbing at the knot of muscles between her shoulders. She almost falls back asleep from his touch and she isn't afraid to admit that she straight up whines when he pulls his hands away and lets her do the rest. He sits on the floor next to the tub as she washes herself. She tries not to look too much at her chest, a patchwork of blue, purple, red. One of the bruises is drawing the imprint of a boot. She doesn't remember that blow. She thinks she's glad not to.

She gets out of the tub with Frank's arms never far away from her. He puts her bathrobe around her, then wraps her hair in a towel, making sure the edge doesn't rub against her stitches. She lets him, too exhausted to try and pretend she can do anything on her own. She's already struggling to keep her eyes open.

“Bed?” he asks her with a hand cupping her neck, his thumb against her pulse point.

She nods. They shuffle to her bedroom. She sits down on the bed as he looks for some clothes. He holds out her pj shorts and one of his tshirts. She tilts her head as she takes them.

“Better not to have a constricting shirt for your ribs,” he offers as an explanation.

“Makes sense,” she mumbles.

“You need help with those or I can get you something to eat?” The idea of food makes her scrunch up her nose. “You need to eat,” he says. “For the meds.”

She sighs. “Fine. Nothing I need to chew on.”

He kisses her temple and leaves the bedroom. She drops the bathrobe and the towel on the floor. Sliding the shorts on needs a bit of creative problem-solving to avoid bending over too much, but the tshirt isn't a challenge, as long as she doesn't raise her arms high enough to pull on her ribcage. She lies down on her back and listens to the noises in her flat, trying not to fall asleep this time.

Frank is opening the fridge. The key turns in the lock and Kafka's clawed paws are clicking across the hardwood floors. The rumble of Trish and Frank's conversation is too low and inarticulate for Karen to understand what they're saying. A dish is put down on the counter. Trish's steps come closer to the bedroom.

Karen turns her head to the doorway.

“Hey,” she says to Trish, who comes to sit next to her. “Thanks for everything.”

Trish smiles. “Don't worry about that. Feeling better now that you've washed off the hospital smell off of you?” Her tone is playful.

Karen tries to smile back but her jaw is starting to throb with pain. “It'll be even better once Frank gives me all the painkillers.”

Trish has a brief laugh. “He really likes you, you know,” she says, soft and sincere. “I'm glad you found each other.”

“So am I,” Karen says, her throat tight.

Frank comes in with a tray. She sits up and Trish takes as many pillows as she can find in the room to make Karen a backrest. Frank sits on her other side and puts the tray on the nightstand. He takes the bowl and gives it to her. It smells like the packs of instant chicken noodle soup she keeps in her cupboard in case of emergency. Apparently, this is an emergency.

“You don't have to eat everything, but try at least half,” he tells her.

She sips at the bowl slowly. It doesn't have a lot of flavor, but she's beyond caring at this point. All she wants are her meds and then sleeping with Frank next to her and Kafka at her feet. She makes it through a bit more than the half, just to please Frank, before giving the bowl back. He exchanges it for a glass of water and a few colored pills.

Trish leaves after making sure they don't need any of her help anymore. She makes Frank promise to call if there is anything they need in the next few days half a dozen times and gives him her office number in case she doesn't answer her cellphone.

Karen watches the exchange with half-lidded eyes, her pills slowly doing their job through her body. Frank walks Trish to the door. When he comes back, an indeterminate amount of time later, he's changed into his sweatpants and Kafka is following closely. The dog jumps on the bed and lies down carefully next to her legs.

She removes the pillows from behind her back and pushes them toward Frank's side of the bed. Then she scoots down and lies flat on her back, her head turned so she can watches Frank settling down. He turns on his side and grabs a pillow, folding it in half and sticking it under his head. She brushes his naked torso with her hand.

“You comfortable?” he asks, taking her hand in his and keeping it close to his chest.

“Yeah. It sucks that I can't have a hug,” she says and aims for a pout.

He smiles. It reaches his eyes. There's no trace of frown or sadness on his face. She likes that. He lets go of her hand and comes closer, laying his head on her pillow and circling her with his arm around her, below the bruises.

“Better?” he asks, his face inches away from her.

She slides the hand trapped between their bodies up and under his cheek.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“For what?” he answers as softly.

“Everything. Taking care of me. Being here.”

He raises his arm from her hips to the side of her face. “There's nowhere else I'd rather be.” He drops a kiss to her wrist. “Now sleep, okay? I'll be here when you wake up.”

Chapter Text

Fingers lightly brushing against the exposed skin of her arm pull Karen from her slumber. They slide under the hem of her sleeve to settle on her shoulder. The mattress behind her dips. Bearded lips press against her temple. She turns on her back, a smile forming on her lips.

She freezes and gasps when stabbing pain shoots through her body.

“Easy, Kar,” says Frank's voice next to her ear.

She opens her eyes with difficulty. Her face hurts. Her ribs hurt. Her everything hurts. She takes a few labored breaths.

“So, that wasn't a bad dream,” she says once the pain has receded a little, just enough to be manageable and not make her want to puke as soon as she moves her little finger. She turns her head to Frank. He's sitting cross-legged on the bed, a hand still on her shoulder, rubbing circles into her skin.

“'Fraid not,” he answers. She sighs. He brushes a strand of hair away from her face. “Time for your meds.”

She braces herself and slowly sits up. Her ribs are protesting every second of the process. Frank fluffs her pillow and adds more behind her back. Once she's sitting upright and comfortable—or as comfortable as someone with half their ribs bruised can be—he gives her a glass of water and her meds. By the time she has swallowed the pills, she's ready to go right the fuck back to sleep. Her head lolls back against a pillow.

“Please give me coffee,” she moans with her best approximation of Kafka's puppy eyes. She even reaches for Frank's hand.

He snorts. “Nice try. You heard the doc.”

“I'm miserable.”

“It's just for a few days.”

“I'm going to murder someone. And since I can't go far, it's gonna be you.”

He smirks. “I'm terrified.”

She stares at him. She tries to give him her murder-stare but her eyelids keep dropping so it's probably not that intimidating.

The pain in her body is slowly dying down to a dull globalized ache. Her head is heavy. The fuzziness is creeping back. Painkillers are great and so, so annoying.

“You comfortable?” Frank asks. She nods. “I'm gonna go walk Kafka. D'you want anything from the store?”

“We still have ice cream?” she mumbles.

“Yeah.”

“Then I'm good.”

“Okay.”

He cups her neck, drops a kiss on her less injured cheekbone and leaves the room. She falls asleep again before even hearing the front door.

She manages to go to the bathroom on her own, supporting herself on the walls and the furniture. She limps back to bed right after and it feels like she's going to need the rest of the day to recover from such an adventure. It doesn't help that the heatwave is hitting the city again. When Frank comes back, she's starfished on top of the sheets, eyes closed because keeping them open is too much effort.

“We should move to Alaska,” she calls when she hears him in the living room.

“Thought you had enough of nature?” he calls back, walking to the bedroom.

“I've had enough of that fucking heat.”

He huffs a laugh and sits down on the bed. “How's the pain?”

She opens her eyes. His arm is close to her hand, so she brushes it with her fingers. “It's okay for now,” she says, her eyes on the movement of her hand.

“Wanna go to the couch?”

“Shower first.”

She stands up and walks without his help, but he still stays close, ready to catch her and take on her weight if need be. He turns around when she undresses and she thinks it's kind of funny since he's the one who removed her clothes and helped her get in the tub the night before. Climbing across the bathtub edge on her own takes some effort, but she braces herself against the corner of the sink and against the wall and manages to get herself in the tub. She takes a few seconds to breathe through the pain. She pulls on the shower curtain and lets the water hit her. She hears Frank sitting against the bathtub.

“Don't wet your stitches too much,” he says, his voice muffled by the water spray.

He holds out her towel for her when she's done and dries her head wound carefully.

“I'm gonna put on some antibiotic cream now, okay? Tell me if I hurt you,” he warns.

The ointment doesn't hurt but it smells like shit and it's gluing strands of her hair together, making it look greasy and stringy.

“I look like Kurt Cobain,” she says flatly.

He smiles as he puts a last dollop of cream around the stitches. He presses his lips on her shoulder.

“So fucking cranky,” he mumbles against her skin, but there's no animosity behind his words. If anything, it seems to actually amuse him to no end.

She puts on shorts and steals another of his tshirts. When she joins him in the living room, shuffling close to the walls, he's reading on the couch and there's a bowl of ice cream on the coffee table. She sits down next to him. She tries not to wince too much as she does, but she knows he sees through her bullshit—always has. He wordlessly passes over a throw pillow, then the bowl once she's settled.

She leans against him instinctively. He lifts his arm and puts it around her shoulders.

“You working today?” she asks and digs into her ice cream.

He closes his book, keeping his page with his index finger. “Nah, I called my boss. Took the rest of the week off.”

“And he just said yes?”

He shrugs. “Told him I needed to take care of my girl. I would've stayed here anyway.”

She kisses the most easily reachable part of exposed skin, which turns out to be the side of his neck. “Thanks.”

She eats her ice cream in silence. He re-opens his book and keeps reading. When she's done eating, she snuggles closer to him, heatwave be damned.

“Did you think about what I said?” she asks.

He raises an eyebrow, looks at her from the corner of his eye. “Gonna have to be more specific.”

“About moving in.”

He puts down his book. “Wasn't sure if you were serious or if it was the painkillers talking.”

She snorts. “When's the last time you slept at your place?”

He turns his head away with a brief laugh, the corner of his lips curled up. “Yeah, okay, maybe you got a point.”

“Mh-mm.”

“You sure you wanna live with me?”

“I already live with you.”

“You won't be able to use the 'this is my place' excuse, you know that, right?”

“I can always kick you out to the fire escape.”

She wraps an arm around him. When her ribs scream at the torsion in her torso, she puts her legs on his lap. He holds her against him, his chin on top of her head.

“You're sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then.”

He makes the trip to get his things that afternoon. He doesn't have a lot. The only notable addition is the massive black bag that she knows contains enough fire power to invade a small country. She doesn't care. She knows what she was signing up for. Even if the Punisher is technically retired, she never thought Frank had given up on all of his weapons. The guy would probably feel more naked if he didn't have a sniper rifle in close range than if he was actually naked.

Drowsy from her second dose of pills of the day, she watches him put his books on her already crowded bookshelves from the couch.

She's fed up of being useless. She wants to move as she pleases, she wants to stop falling asleep all the goddamn time and she wants to close that fucking investigation and especially destroy the guy orchestrating that shitshow. She can't even muster the energy to be properly frustrated. Kafka still whines a little and nudges her hand. She rubs his head weakly. He gives her chin a lick before going to Frank, headbutting him in the shins.

“I think he's worried about me,” Karen says.

“Mh-mm. Stayed next to you all night,” Frank replies, looking at the bookshelf like he doesn't know where to put the book he's holding in his hand. He finds a spot, squeezes the book between another one and the side of the shelf.

“'s not the only one,” she mumbles. Articulating is hard. Fucking pills.

“Can't blame us for worrying about someone we love,” he says, grabbing another book from his bag.

This time she doesn't wake up because of pain, or because of Frank bringing her food or meds. She's back in the alley. She's on the ground, her head in her arms, trying to protect herself, but they keep hitting her, kicking her in the ribs, in the kidneys. They pry her arms away from her, roll her on her back. One of them puts his boot on her throat, but when she looks up at her attacker, it's not the guy from the alley anymore. It's Wesley. It's Fisk. It's the cop who tried to strangle her in her cell. It's her father, looking down at her with cold dead eyes and a sneer twisting his despicable face. He presses down. She can't breath, her windpipe crushed, blood gargling in her mouth.

She startles awake, covered in sweat. She fumbles as fast as she can to the bathroom and dry-heaves above the toilet bowl. The motion is killing her ribs, but she can still feel the blood against her tongue, dripping down her chin. She can still feel the boot against her throat.

Hurried footsteps follow her.

Frank sinks down to the floor next to her, a hand on her back, the other reaching to keep her hair out of her face in case she finally throws up. She waits for the nausea to pass. When she's sure she's not gonna vomit, she collapses against his chest. He puts an arm around her, pushes the strands stuck with sweat away from her face.

“Nightmare?” he asks in a whisper. She nods. He holds her against him, slightly swaying back and forth. She closes her eyes. She forces herself to breath in sync with him, focusing on the movement of his chest against her, on his hand on her back, and the one on her hip.

“What do you want to do?” he murmurs against her hair.

“Can we watch a movie?” Her voice is hoarse, raspy. She swallows, but the taste of blood is still on her tongue.

“Sure.”

They slowly get back up. She brushes the stale taste in her mouth away, leaning heavily against the sink. Her legs are shaking. Her chest feels like it's being stabbed from every side. Kafka is waiting for them in front of the bathroom entrance, his ears pointing forward, his eyes wide. He whines when he sees her. She makes calming noise, repeating that she's okay, she's okay. He sniffs her hand when they walk past him, Frank taking most of her weight, and stays at her side the whole walk back to the couch.

They watch My Name is Nobody—because westerns never get old—snuggled up against each other, Kafka sprawled on her legs. She's half asleep for most of the movie but she doesn't fight it. She just needs to be close to Frank, to feel safe again.

He carries her to bed that night.

She doesn't dream.

Her eye is less swollen the next morning. Her eyelid isn't as heavy anymore and she can almost open it all the way. The pain in her jaw is losing its intensity but she's still far away from being able to eat what she wants. Luckily, fried rice isn't an issue. Frank brings back some for lunch.

“I was thinking,” he starts around a mouthful of sesame chicken.

“Uh-oh,” she teases, digging her toes in his thigh. He throws a balled-up napkin at her. She has a brief laugh before her ribs start burning. “Ow, shit.”

“Serves you right,” he smirks.

She rolls her eyes. “Alright, what were you thinking about?”

He puts down his food and wipes his hands and mouth on a napkin before turning on the couch to face her.

“I know I told you I'd let you do your investigation on your own, yeah?” he says in earnest. She frowns a bit.

“Yeah...?”

“And I still stand by what I said. I promise. I know you're capable of handling your shit—”

“Just say it, Frank,” she presses.

“Liebermann could help.”

And okay, she wasn't expecting that. “I thought he was retired.”

“Officially, yeah.”

“I don't want to cause him any trouble.”

“The guy went against the entire US government, I don't think a shady businessman registers as a threat to him.” He shrugs. “Just think about it, okay?” he adds and picks up the carton of wontons.

He's not wrong. She's still struggling to identify the person hiding behind that string of shell companies and Liebermann definitely has resources she doesn't have access to. And she's beyond ready for the investigation to be over.

“Can he come here?” she asks.

Frank turns his head to her. There's relief in his eyes. “I'll call him,” he says. Then, “thank you.”

She smiles. “Gotta watch over your blood pressure.”

He snorts. “Asshole.”

“Takes one to know one.”

She naps after taking her meds, but it's not the deep slumber of the previous day. She's conscious enough to feel Kafka cuddle against her on the couch, then hear him follow Frank around the flat. She even wakes up when Frank brushes his hand against her face and tells her he's going out with the dog. She nods, he kisses her temple and she falls asleep again.

She's awake when he comes back with a paper cup in his hand.

“Is that coffee?” she asks immediately.

“Shit, I was hoping you'd still be sleeping,” he mutters. “It's almost empty,” he replies.

“Please let me drink coffee.”

“Nope.” He drains the rest of the cup and dumps it in the trash.

“Sadist.”

Foggy calls her that evening.

“Oh my god Karen what happened are you okay?” he bursts out when she picks up the call, not even letting her say anything.

“Hi Foggy. Calm down, I'm fine.” She shuffles on the couch, trying to find a position in which holding up her phone doesn't hurt. Stupid fucking ribs. She ends up with her head pillowed on Frank's lap. He puts an arm around her, just above her hips.

“Trish called me and I'm so sorry I couldn't come to the hospital, I was out of town and they didn't let me leave because we had this huge case—”

“Breathe.”

Frank snorts loud enough that Foggy hears it and stops in the middle of his panicked apology.

“Is that Pete?”

Karen glares up at Frank and sighs. “Yes.”

“Oh. Is this a bad time?”

“What? No. Seriously Foggy, stop stressing yourself out. I'm fine.”

Foggy takes a deep breath. “I'm still sorry I couldn't come. And I'm sorry I didn't call either.”

“It's okay. I know you sold your soul to the firm.”

He laughs. She asks about his trip, he tells her about his latest case and how he wants a freaking vacation. Marci sends her hugs and is buying her a spa session for when she'll be back on her feet.

“She doesn't have to do that,” Karen protests.

“Don't fight it.”

They chat, promise to make plan to get together once her face will have lost its bruises. They're close to hang up when she bursts:

“Foggy?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Have you talked to Matt recently?” she asks. She hates how unsure and hesitant her voice sounds. She puts her hand on Frank's arm. His fingers slide under the hem of her—his—shirt, brush the skin of her hip. It grounds her.

“Recently when?”

“Last couple of weeks?”

“Uh, yeah, we grabbed a few beers at Josie's before I left for my trip, why?”

She bites her lips. “Did he say anything about me...?” she asks.

“He said you were investigating some shit at the docks.”

“That's all?”

“What's going on, Karen?”

“He didn't mention Pete?” There's a silence on the other side. “Foggy?”

“Matt has met Pete? Why? When? Why haven't I met Pete?!”

She sighs. “Matt came by when Pete was over.”

“I assume that didn't go well?”

“Well, Matt was here to try and get me to drop the docks investigation.”

Foggy snorts. “What a dumbass.”

“Exactly. And then he sort of met Pete and I almost punched him in the face?” Frank laughs. “Stop listening to me and read your book,” she says to him. He smirks.

“What?” Foggy asks on the phone.

“Not you, the dumbass on my couch,” she says, but slides her hand to Frank's and interlaces their fingers together.

“O-kay,” Foggy says slowly. “Why is Matt so upset about your boyfriend?”

“Uh. He thinks he's not good enough for me?”

“How can he know that?”

Karen winces. She really needs to tell the truth to Foggy but she can't do it on the phone. They need to do that face to face with a lot of alcohol—a lot.

“Probably with his creepy sixth sense bullshit? Or his holier-than-thou mind-reading?”

It seems to be a reasonable explanation for Foggy. They hang up a few minutes later after promising to grab a beer together soon. She sighs and drops the phone on the couch cushion.

“Everything okay?” Frank asks without taking his eyes of his book. She knows he's not reading. He hasn't turned a page since she asked Foggy about Matt.

“Yeah. I don't think I can keep lying to Foggy about who “Pete” really is for much longer. It's not fair to him. But I know it's for your safety and it's your life, and it's not my decision to make and—”

Frank closes his book and looks at her.

“I trust you.”

She squeezes his hand.

“I trust you too.”

On the third day out of the hospital, some green starts to creep out on the edges of most of her bruises. The boot imprint over her ribs, her eye and the area around her stitches, however, turn black. At least she can fully open both eyes now.

Frank is reading on the fire escape when she gets out of the bathroom. Her ribs are still sore and tender but she can walk mostly upright to the kitchen. She'll take any progress over being on bed rest. She gets herself a glass of water for her pills. Kafka is sprawled on the floor, snoring softly. The air is already unbearably hot and it's not even ten. She longs for the end of the summer, or at least the end of the heatwave. She sits on the windowsill.

“Morning,” she says.

“Hey.” He folds the corner of his page and closes the book. “No nightmare?” he asks, looking up at her.

“Nope.”

He smiles but seems to notice something about her stitches and squints at her forehead.

“You didn't put on the antibiotic cream.”

“Ugh. I forgot.”

He stands up, brushes her shoulder on his way in and goes to the bathroom. He comes back just a few seconds later, the ointment tub in his hand. He squats in front of her.

“Hold still.”

He dabs the cream carefully over the wound. He's always frowning when he does that, when he takes care of her. It reminds her of a kid focusing on their work to do their best. It's cute. She raises a hand to his head.

“Your hair's getting long,” she says, her fingers in the short strands.

“Mh-mm. 'm thinking of taking care of it today. Y'think you can help?”

“I didn't break my arm.”

He snorts. “Okay. All done.” He stands up and goes to wash his hands.

She ties up her hair despite the ointment sticking it together, then she stands up and joins him in the kitchen. She grabs the vinegar bottle. Frank watches her with one eyebrow up. He follows her in the bathroom and leans in the doorway, curiosity written all over his face. She puts the vinegar on the edge of the sink and takes out a pack of cotton balls from the cabinet underneath.

“What are you doing?” he asks as she soaks a cotton ball with the vinegar.

“You don't know that trick?” She dabs the cotton on the bruised areas of her face. “Makes the bruises fade faster.” She winces a bit when she starts doing her black eye. She clears her throat. “Kevin taught me.”

He stays in the doorway during the whole process. She gently massages the less painful bruises, avoids the cuts that haven't scabbed yet.

“It needs to sit for 30 minutes. Take off your shirt,” she says and takes the clippers from the cabinet.

He dumps his shirt on the floor and sits on the edge of the bathtub. She steps between his knees. She buzzes his head, brushing the short hair off his head after each pass of the clippers. She's careful with the raised scar above his ear. His hands are never far from her, settling on her hips, on the side of her legs. She kisses the top of his head when she's done and steps to the sink to rinse off the vinegar.

Frank leaves the flat for a long walk with Kafka in the park.

Karen takes the opportunity to open the files of her investigation for the first time since the attack without having to face Frank's disapproving “you should be resting” face. Maybe something will jump at her now that she's spent days away from everything. She sends a mail to Ellison to tell him she's fine. He sends her a “don't even thing about working right now, Page.” It makes her laugh.

She rereads everything, all the articles, all the research, all the notes. She stares at her walls. She wonders if she missed something, something big, something that would unlock everything. There's a headache starting to press against her eyes. She glances to the kitchen. It's been more than two days. She can have coffee, right?

Right.

The coffee pot is slowly filling up and Karen sighs at the smell. So what if she's addicted? It's not like it was an issue until three days ago.

She finally has a mug of coffee cradled between her hands and is inhaling the steam when the door opens, Kafka dashing to his water bowl to lap at it as loudly as usual. Frank's eyes zero in on her immediately.

“Karen.”

“The doc said a couple of days.”

He sighs and hangs the leash on the coat hanger. “Until you don't have concussion symptoms anymore.”

“I don't.”

“Kar—”

“Frank. I love you but if you take that coffee away from me right now, I will strangle you.”

He laughs. The corners of his eyes crinkle when he does.

“I love you too, you pain in the ass,” he says as he walks to her. He kisses her softly. “You're the worst patient I've ever had and my kid spent an entire night puking on me once.”

“I'm still drinking the coffee.”

The next day, Liebermann asks Frank to come over because he needs help repairing something and David is “fucking useless when it comes to get his goddamn hands dirty”. Despite the annoyed way Frank says it, there's affection in his voice. He would probably violently deny it if Karen pointed it out, though.

“You sure you're okay to be alone all day?” he asks for the hundredth time.

She rolls her eyes from the couch. “Will you just leave already.”

He chuckles but walks to the door anyway. He turns back, one hand on the deadbolt.

“What?” she asks. She stands up and joins him.

“Call me if anything happens. I can come back.”

She cups his jaw and smiles. “I'll be fine. But yes, I'll call you. I promise.” He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against hers. “I can ask Trish or Jess to come over if it makes you feel better,” she says.

He snorts. “Nah. I just need to learn how to stop being a paranoid asshole all the goddamn time.” He hugs her, mindful of her still aching ribs.

For all the time she spends staring at her wall and reviewing her files, she's still stuck. She texts Jess, asking if anything new happened since she got attacked. The text she gets back doesn't provide any help: same old shit. She combs the internet again, looking for an article that would've escaped her and Trish's eyes. There's nothing. The final piece is just not there.

She texts Frank to remind him to ask for Liebermann's help. At this point, the hacker is her only option. Frank's only answer is don't forget to eat. She can't even bring herself to be annoyed because it's past two in the afternoon and the only thing she has in her system is coffee. She heats up some leftovers and eats on the fire escape.

The place is empty without Frank and Kafka. It's the first time in months she's truly alone in her flat for more than a couple of hours. It's lonely. She didn't use to mind, but maybe that was because she hadn't known what it was like to be with someone who truly and totally got her. Right now, she can't even distract herself with work. The investigation is a dead end and if she keeps on running in circles she's gonna have to scream off the frustration. Not sure the neighbors will appreciate it. She can't go to the shooting range and she can't go to the gym. What did she do when she didn't have anyone? She glances at her bookshelves. She notes that they are going to need another one while she tries to remember her life before Frank. Was it really just work and sleep, with a few beers with Foggy thrown in the middle and the occasional book? That's depressing. She feels sorry for her past self.

She settles on the couch with a book picked at random. It's an old worn-out paperback, its pages filled with annotations—she recognizes Frank's scrawl.

She doesn't know if she's more enthralled by Fitzgerald's depression or by Frank's notes. If he's writing in all of his books she's going to have to read them all so she can rediscover classics. She might even try Kafka.

She jumps when her phone rings.

“Hi Foggy,” she greets when she picks up.

“Good news! An appointment got cancelled so I have the rest of the day free. Wanna meet somewhere?”

She gets up and glanced at her face in the small decorative mirror next to the couch. The vinegar trick isn't an instant miracle unfortunately.

“Err. I still look like I hugged a door with my face. Can you come over?”

“Sure, see you in a bit.”

She surveys the living room. There's no denying that she doesn't live alone anymore. Kafka's bed—largely unused since the dog sleeps at her feet every night—is in the corner next to the couch, and his toys are scattered everywhere across the floor. Frank's used novels clash with her mostly pristine and eclectic collection. There are jackets on her coat hanger that are clearly not hers and there's a pair of men sneakers on the floor next to hers. She's surprised at how lived-in her place looks, actually. It's not a sterile place where she sleeps between two work days anymore. It's a home.

She starts a new pot of coffee. When she opens the door, Foggy gasps.

“Holy shit, Karen, that's worse than I thought!”

She snorts. “Trust me, it looks better than two days ago.”

He doesn't look reassured. They sit at the kitchen island. Foggy takes out a bakery bag from his case and produces two apricot danishes to go with their coffee. As they chat, she sees him glancing at the room, alternating between her investigation wall, the man's jacket next to her purse and Kafka's bowls. She guesses now is the perfect time for the big reveal. Better here than in a public place.

“Karen,” he says. She looks up from her mug. “Did Pete move in with you?”

“Uh.”

“You said you weren't living with him last time I asked. But it seems to me that you really really are.”

She sighs. “It's a recent development. With the whole—” she motions at her bruised face “—it kinda, uh, accelerated things?”

“So you two are a thing. He's not a secret not-boyfriend anymore.”

She shrugs. “I don't know what we are. But it's okay. It's not confusing. At least until someone asks about it,” she adds with a pointed look.

He laughs. “I'm not judging. If anything, despite the whole shiner on your face, you look and sound better than, uh. Before. I still don't get why Matt is so upset about the guy, though.”

She clears her throat. Okay, here it goes. “Well, Foggy, I kinda have something to tell you—” he starts to open his mouth but she adds precipitately “—but please don't freak out okay?”

“Why would I freak out?” he asks with a laugh.

The door opens.

“Hey it's me,” Frank calls.

Karen drops her face in her hands.

Perfect. Fucking. Timing.

Everything is silent for a moment, except for Kafka excitedly coming to them.

“Nelson,” she hears Frank say.

More silence. Then:

“Karen?” Foggy asks in that voice he has when he tries very very hard to be calm but is actually totally freaking out inside. She peers at him through her spread out fingers.

“Yes?”

“Why is Frank Castle walking into your place like it's his?”

She drops her hands from in front of her eyes and tries a smile. “Remember how I told you not to freak out?”

“Pete is—He is—you are—” he takes a deep breath. “You are living with Frank Castle.”

“Yes.”

“Frank Castle is Pete.”

“Yes.”

“Pete, your secret not-boyfriend.”

“If you wanna call him that, yes.”

He stares at her. She tries to look as apologetic as she feels. She's not sure it transpires through the bruises. From the corner of her eyes, she sees Frank walking to the kitchen. He brushes her shoulder when he passes behind her.

“How,” Foggy finally bursts.

Frank answers before her. “Got a new identity thanks to Homeland,” he says as he pours himself a mug of coffee.

“No wonder Matt was pissed off,” Foggy says, the tension in his shoulders seemingly disappearing.

Frank huffs a laugh and sits next to Karen. He steals a piece of her danish.

“I wanted to tell you the truth sooner,” she says. “But—”

“No, no, I get it. Secret identity and shit. Totally get that,” Foggy rushes.

“You do?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“So you're cool with, uh... all of it?” she asks gesturing at nothing in particular with her hand.

“I'm not gonna lie. It's a bit of a shock that your boyfriend is the guy I was defending for murdering thirty-seven people,” Foggy says. Frank snorts. Karen glares at him. “But uh. As long as you're happy, you know?”

She smiles. “Thanks, Foggy.”

He sips at his coffee. “I really wish I could've seen Matt's face when he realized who was Pete.”

“It was hilarious and then it was annoying,” she says. She swats Frank's hand away from the rest of her danish.

Frank smirks. “I think the words you used were “infuriating self-righteous asshole” when you were beating the shit outta me on the ring.”

She pops a piece of danish in her mouth. “Sounds like me.”

Foggy squints at them. “On the ring?” he asks.

“I needed to burn off the frustration. We went to the gym.”

“You're fighting. Against each other. For fun.” It seems to disturb him more than Pete being actually Frank.

Frank and Karen glance at each other and shrug. “Yeah.”

Foggy leaves half an hour later to meet Marci at the office.

“So that went well,” Karen says as she closes the door. She goes back to the counter where Frank is reading, his mug next to his hand.

“Mh-mm.”

She kisses the top of his head. “How did it go with Liebermann?” she asks and refills her mug.

“Needed the spark plugs of his car changed,” he says.

She sits down. “Uh-uh.”

He glances at her, amused at her obvious disinterest in car mechanics. “He said he'd try to come over soon.”

She smiles. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks when he keeps on watching her, the corner of his lips curled up.

“Y'know that innocent act won't work on me. I knew what you were asking, you goddamn workaholic.”

“No idea what you're talking about,” she says around the rim of her cup.

He huffs a laugh.

They drink their coffee in silence, Frank turning the pages of his book the only noise between them. She looks up at him a few times between sips until he finally asks, without raising his eyes from his book.

“What's going on in that head of yours?”

“You don't think it's weird what Foggy said?”

He glances at her from the corner of his eyes. “What did he say?”

“He called you my boyfriend.”

“Uh. Well, we live together.”

“I know but it doesn't feel right to call you that. It sounds—I don't know, it sounds scarce.”

Frank closes his book to look at her fully. “What would you call me then?”

She bites her lips. “I don't know.” She takes his hand, traces the calluses in his palm.

“Your partner?”

She smiles up at him. “Sounds like we're gonna go rob a bank.”

He shrugs. “At least it's an original date idea.”

“I'm good with our Western and take out nights.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “Is that what you call me?” she asks.

“Mh?”

“Your partner?”

He grunts, scratches at his beard. “Never really thought about it, you know. You—you're family. I didn't think I'd ever have one again after Maria and the kids, but—” he looks down at their joined hands “—yeah. You're family.” He glances up at her, frowning a little as if uncertain of how she'll react.

She reaches up to cup the back of his neck. She rubs the tip of her fingers against the buzzed hair at the base of his skull. His frown eases up. “You're my family too.”

Chapter Text

“Oh my god.”

“What?” Frank asks, walking to where she has frozen in the middle of rearranging her wall. She has one hand over her mouth, the other holding a bunch of papers and pictures.

She thought it'd be a good idea to re-organize her leads in a more easily readable way for when Lieberman comes over. She didn't think it would open up new possibilities. But the pattern the links and the different elements of her investigation are creating is undeniable.

She's seen it before.

Last time was in her office, when it was still Ben's, and he was using playing cards, not post-its. The King of Diamond was pinned where her post-it with “Kingpin” written on it is currently stuck.

It's been a long time since Union Allied and the rest, but this can't be a coincidence, right?

“Karen?”

Frank puts a hand on her arm. He tips his head a little, trying to catch her gaze. She shakes herself out of whatever shocked state she was in and focuses on him. She removes her hand from her mouth, rests it on his chest. She looks at him wide eyed.

“I think I know who Kingpin is,” she says, barely above a whisper.

“'thought you had nothing new?”

“I―I don't. It's a―call it a gut feeling.”

She drops the documents she's still holding on her desk and pushes her hair back from her face, only wincing a little when it pulls on her stitches.

“It's going to sound crazy.” She bites her lips, starts pacing. “Maybe―maybe I want this solved so badly I'm just forcing myself to see connections that don't exist―”

“Karen.”

She snaps back to him. He closes the distance she created between them and puts his hands on either side of her face.

“You've always had great instincts. What are they telling you now?” he asks, looking at her square in the eyes.

She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, like before jumping feet first in the water and not knowing where the bottom is. “Kingpin is Fisk.”

As she says it, it feels like the idea gains credibility, like she summoned it into existence by her very words. Out loud, it's not a coincidence, a link she has created out of thin air. It's real. Fisk is Kingpin and even in prison, he manages to rule over several criminal enterprises. Sure, it's not the empire he was building when they took him down, but if her info are correct―and she's 99% sure it is ―he's on his way to restore way more of his power and influence than she's comfortable with. She thought she wouldn't have to worry about Fisk ever again. He was supposed to be locked away, he was supposed to never be able to hurt her again. It was supposed to be over, she was supposed to be safe―

“―en, Karen, hey, look at me.” Frank's voice sounds like it comes from very far away. Why is she on the floor? And why is there not enough air in the room now? “Breathe,” he says, gently moving her so she's sitting between his spread knees, her back on his chest. “C'mon, breathe with me.” He puts a hand on her chest, mimicking the rise and fall of his own behind her. “C'mon.” His mouth is close to her ear and his beard is tickling her neck. She closes her eyes, focusing on his low voice counting slowly, and she feels the panic subsides bit by bit, letting the pain in her ribs take over.

“Fuck,” she mutters when she's able to breathe on her own again. She folds against him.

He moves her to the couch, then makes coffee.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asks, putting down two mugs on the table.

She leans against him when he sits next to her. “Fisk tried to have me killed... at least three times, I think?” Frank tightens his arm around her. “Before we put him in jail, I was terrified. I had nightmares about him finding out I had killed Wesley, or that I was the one finding his mother, not Ben. Every single day, I had to wake up and fight not to let the fear consume me completely.” She touches her neck, tries to rub away the phantom sensation of the guard tying the bed sheet around her neck. “I only felt safe again once we put him away.” She takes one of the mugs and cradles it in her hands. “But now, it feels like―it feels like everything we did was for nothing,” she finishes, her eyes on her reflection in the coffee.

“It wasn't,” Frank says quietly. She turns her head to him. “You're a damn good reporter, Karen. In all the stories you've uncovered since that piece of shit was thrown in jail, how many tie back to him?”

She frowns. “Just this one. Are you saying there might be more?”

“No. I'm saying that when you're looking into something, you never let go until you've been to the bottom of it. If Fisk had made a move before that trafficking shit, you would've found out about it.”

She clears her throat. “You're sure about that?” Her voice cracks a little.

“Positive.”

She reaches for his hand and interlaces their fingers together. “Thank you.”

He squeezes her hand. “Anytime.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Now. What's the plan?”

She takes a deep breath, ignoring the dull pain in her ribcage. “We get Micro here and we find a way to prove Kingpin is Fisk.” She grinds her teeth together. “And then we destroy the son of a bitch.”

When she turns to Frank, his eyes are shining with pride and something else―admiration, love. His lips are curled up in a tiny smile and she almost expects him to say “attagirl” or something of that vein.

“We?” he asks instead.

She gets why he does. She's always been adamant that the animal trafficking story was hers to deal with, that it was her job and that beyond his occasional bodyguard role, she didn't want him involved. But if Fisk really is behind all of this, it changes things. It took a lot to take him down the first time, and even that wasn't enough to truly annihilate his influence. She's going to need every help she can get.

“You can be my sidekick,” she shrugs with a smile.

He barks a laugh. “Sidekick, uh?”

“Mh-mm.”

He leans in, kisses the corner of her lips. “Sounds good to me.”

David Lieberman is pretty much what Karen expected, based on Frank's stories. The guy looks your regular IT technician, like someone who grew up too fast and never adapted to his towering height and too long limbs. Karen knows better than to underestimate him, though. His ill-fitting clothes and disheveled hair can't hide the spark of intelligence shining in his eyes. This is a man who survived what was basically a public execution, hid for more than a year, managed to find Frank despite all of the other man's precautions and brought down people who were supposed to be untouchable―and he did that from a bunker while wearing a bathrobe most of the time.

“Nice to finally meet you, Karen,” he says brightly when he steps in her flat.

“Likewise. I heard a lot about you,” she answers, leading the way to her desk.

David chuckles. “Really? I wish I could say the same for you.”

She doesn't miss the way he grins at Frank and how Frank glares at him from where he's making coffee. David doesn't seem to be impressed in the least by the murder-glare directed his way. Instead he just joins her in front of her wall. He whistles.

“That's some serious shit.”

“Yeah, you can say that.”

She lets him take in everything displayed in front of them. His eyes are jumping from one document to the next, lingering on a picture, snapping to another, his hands joined in front of his mouth. Frank comes to stand next to her, wordlessly holding out a mug. She takes it, brushing her fingers against his as she does.

David turns back to them after a few minutes with a deep frown on his face.

“I have a question,” he says. “And from me, it's probably gonna sound weird, but. Why the fuck aren't you giving this to the police?”

Karen sighs and puts down her mug on top of a pile of folders on her desk.

“I can't prove it yet, but I'm fairly certain that the man at the top, Kingpin, is Wilson Fisk.”

“As in the same Wilson Fisk your former legal firm put away a few years ago?” She raises her eyebrows. David shrugs. “Yeah yeah, I looked you up.”

“Lieberman,” Frank growls.

“What?” David exclaims. “You can't blame me for wanting to know who I'm gonna talk to! You weren't exactly forthcoming about her, man.”

Next to her, Frank inhales sharply. Karen raises her hands. “Okay, okay, guys! It doesn't matter.” She looks at David. “Yes, it's the same Wilson Fisk.”

“Isn't he in prison?”

“He is,” Frank mutters. “That ain't stopping him. He had half the guards in his pocket last time I saw him.”

Karen grinds her teeth. Frank has told her about meeting Fisk in prison a long time ago. At the time, she hadn't thought Fisk could be a serious threat again, just a man who wanted to rule over whatever cage he was in. She's still angry at herself for being so goddamn naïve.

“If he has the guards working for him,” she says, “there's no telling who else is. Police officers, lawyers? We can't reveal anything until we can expose everything.”

David seems to think about it for a moment. Then he tilts his head, twists his lips and shrugs.

“What do you need me to do?”

Karen clears out her desk so David can use it and collect whatever info he needs to help them. He takes one look at the endless string of shell companies she tracked and snickers.

“Oh, this is going to be fun.”

He opens his laptop, plugs in the USB stick she gave him and immediately buries himself in her folders. She lets him work and goes to the kitchen where Frank is preparing lunch. She doesn't ask what he decided to cook. She grabs a knife and follows his instructions. He has told her once that cooking helped him ground himself when he was back from a tour, his mind still hearing gunshots and explosions, his hands shaking, itching to hold a rifle again. At the time, cooking was giving him a purpose. It was just a matter of following simple instructions and staying focused to not burn the whole thing.

She had never given much thought about cooking before that particular conversation with him. Food had never been a priority for her, it was only a necessity to keep on living, keep on working. Sure, her grandma had taught her a few recipes. “For your husband”, the old woman had said. Food had been something to share, and for the longest time, Karen hadn't had anyone to share it with.

She slices the vegetables he washes and puts next to her cutting board, the flat silent except for David's typing, Kafka chewing on his toy and the quiet directions Frank gives her.

Fifteen minutes later, she's nursing a cup of coffee, leaning against the counter, watching Frank stir the vegetables in a pan. David's still typing away at her desk, occasionally muttering incomprehensibly in his beard. Frank pays him no mind so she doesn't either. She's not the one who lived with him for weeks in a basement.

“I'm gonna suggest something and you're not gonna like it,” Frank says. “But just―don't get mad and think about it, yeah?” he finishes, raising his eyes to meet hers.

She frowns. “Go ahead.”

“Maybe we should tell Red.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Did you specifically wait 'til I wasn't holding a big ass knife to say that?”

He chuckles. “Maybe. But look, we need all the help we can get to take down Fisk, you said so yourself. And yeah, Red's an asshole, but he helped the first time around, yeah?”

She sighs and puts down her mug, pushes her hair back. “He'll just want to do everything by himself saying it's his responsibility or whatever bullshit he'll think of this time.”

“Who's Red?” David calls from the desk.

“Daredevil,” Karen answers.

David turns the chair around and looks at them with wide eyes. “You know him?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. Used to date him even. Terrible idea, 0/10, do not recommend.”

Behind her, Frank snorts. David is still staring at her.

“You used to date the Devil of Hell's Kitchen,” he says flatly.

“Yep. He's an asshole.” She turns to Frank. “And we're not telling him shit. Remember how I was this close to punch him in the face last time I saw him?”

“She almost punched Daredevil. Off course, she did,” she hears David muttering on the other side of the room. “Why expect anything different from Frank's girlfriend.” The typing noises resume.

Frank raises his hands in surrender and goes back to stirring the vegetables in the pan.

“I'm not expecting a fight, Frank,” she says quietly, stepping closer to him. “Fisk is still locked away, and yes, he has men on the outside, but I just need that last piece of the puzzle to connect everything to him and then he's done.”

He glances up at her. “I trust you.” He turns off the heat under the pan. “But permission to tell him if it all goes FUBAR?”

She puts a hand on his arm. “Permission granted,” she smiles and kisses his cheek. He chuckles.

They eat on her rarely used dinning table. David tells them about what he thinks he can do and how long it'll take him, about the sources he can find for her so she can confirm her suspicions, prove Fisk is paying people off and build a story strong enough it'll destroy him and his influence once and for all. David also talks about his kids' latest school projects and he teases Frank about a book Leo made him read and despite the glares and the mutters, the banter at the table and the way they move with each other makes it clear that their friendship is a strong one. She sees David switch from being Micro, the hacker, to David, the friend and father. It reminds her of Frank, many many months ago, in that shitty diner, teasing her with an easy smile across his bruised face one moment and butchering the Blacksmith's men and telling her to stay away from him in an icy voice the next.

As David tells them about something his wife did, Frank glances at her, probably worried because of how quiet she's being. She gives him a tiny smile. She's okay. She's not afraid of him burning all of his bridges behind him anymore.

David leaves after doing the dishes with Frank while she rests on the couch, knocked out by her meds. The doses are decreasing and yet she still feels like a ragdoll after taking them. She can't wait for the day she doesn't have to take them anymore.

Frank squats down next to her, a dishtowel swung over his shoulder.

“Feeling okay?” he asks.

“Mm-mh. Just―you know, the meds.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you―you'll be alright on your own? Thinking of going to group this afternoon.”

He hasn't been since she was in the hospital. She nods. “Sure. Don't worry about me.”

He smiles. “I always worry about you.” He puts a strand of hair behind her ear and keeps his hand there, looking at her. His beard is coarse where she cups his jaw, coarser than around his mouth, where it's soft against her skin when he's burying his face in his neck when they hug, when he kisses her, when she sleeps tucked against his chest.

His thumb is rubbing circles into the tender flesh behind her ear. She smiles lazily at him. She never can guess what he's thinking about when he's like that, just watching her with these gentle eyes, half a smile on his lips. He seems peaceful, though, and that's enough for her.

“C'mere,” she murmurs. She softly pulls him to her, kisses him. His hands slides to the back of her neck when she does. He rests his forehead against hers when he breaks the kiss, the smile returning to his lips.

“I'm gonna be late,” he says in a voice lower than usual.

“Okay.”

He kisses her temple and stands up. She watches him go to the kitchen, throw down the dishtowel on the counter and come back to the living room, walking to the door. He whistles and Kafka's ears perk up. The dog trots happily to him, his tail wagging when he sees the leash. Frank glances back at her with a smile.

“See you later.”

The chiming of her cellphone wakes Karen up from her nap. She extends her arm to the coffee table and fumbles around blindly for her phone, opening one eye to check the screen.

“Hey Trish,” she greets.

“Did I wake you?” comes Trish's voice from the other side.

“Kinda. Don't worry about it. So, uh, what's up?”

“Nothing in particular. Just wanted to check up on you. How are you doing?”

“Yeah, uh. Good. I'm good. Still looking like shit but I'm getting the stitches out tomorrow.”

“Oh, that's good. And the ribs?”

“Well, let's just say that you won't see me at the gym anytime soon.”

Trish makes a sympathetic noise. “Are you getting enough rest? You're not getting back to work yet, right?”

Karen glances up at her wall. “Yeah, yeah, don't worry. Frank's taking care of me.”

“Didn't leave, uh?” Trish voice sounds amused.

Karen clears her throat and pushes her hair back. “He kinda moved in.”

“Really? How many months ago was that?” Trish deadpans.

Karen chuckles. “Actually, I asked him in the hospital.”

There's a silence.

“So you really weren't living together before that?”

“Not officially.”

Trish whistles. “But you've been dating for a long time.”

“If you call going to meet a source in a seedy bar a date, then, yeah, sure.”

Trish makes a frustrated noise. “C'mon, Karen, you know what I mean.”

“I guess we're a couple, yeah,” Karen sighs. “Feels weird to call it that, though.”

“For how long?”

There's a rustling noise on Trish's side, then the sound of someone setting down a glass.

“Is Jess here?” Karen asks.

“Yep!” Jess answers. “C'mon Blondie, how long have you been climbing that tree, I have a bet to win.”

Karen sputters. “I―I haven't.”

A beat. Then, “How,” Jess says.

“What are you waiting for?” Trish asks at the same time.

Karen stands up. “Look, if you want an official start, he kissed me for the first time three days ago.” She goes to the kitchen, puts her phone on the counter on speaker and starts a fresh pot of coffee. The last one is nothing but cold dregs.

“Three days?” Trish asks in a disbelieving tone.

“Could've sworn you were already married the first time I met the guy,” Jess adds.

Karen lets them babble about her relationship with Frank, her hands going through the familiar motions of making coffee. She snorts when Jess starts arguing about their betting pool.

“Who's in on it?” Karen asks. “Just you two?”

Trish laughs. “Oh no. There's Malcolm too, uh, wait I have the list right here―”

“Karli,” Jess adds.

“From the gym?” Karen asks.

“Yeah,” Trish says over the sound of a paper being unfolded. “Actually everyone from the class is on it. You guys are not subtle when you beat each other's ass,” she adds. “Even James's on the list.”

“James? James our instructor?”

“The one and only.”

Karen sighs, resigned to the fact that her private life isn't private at all. “Okay. Who won?”

“Sure as fuck ain't me,” Jess says. “Tell your boy he owes me a bottle for not making a move sooner.”

“Well, most of us thought you were already together when he came over the first time,” Trish says. “Some said you were going to be together soon and then they said that you were together after the second and third times. Hazel and Omara were pretty certain of that.”

“We all were,” Jess grumbles.

Karen laughs. “What did Malcolm say?”

“Same as me. You guys were married as fuck.”

“Alright,” Trish says. “if we go by elimination process, the person closest to the reality is... James. Shit, he's gonna have a field trip with this,” she adds dejectedly.

Karen pours herself a cup. “What did he say?”

“Not together yet, should happen by the end of the summer if one of them pull their head out of their ass,” Trish reads.

“Pretty spot on,” Karen comments.

“What is?” comes Frank's voice from the front door.

Over the phone, Trish and Jess become really silent. Karen hesitates a bit. There's a possibility he'll get all embarrassed, but there's also the possibility he'll find that betting pool hilarious. Especially once he hears Jess's frustration.

“There's a betting pool at the gym,” she says as he walks to the kitchen.

He brushes her shoulder when he walks past her. “About?” he asks, fetching a mug from the cupboard.

“You,” Jess says on the phone.

Frank raises an eyebrow. “Me?”

“Us,” Karen corrects.

He pours himself a cup and leans agains the counter, frowning in the direction of the phone. “What about us?”

“The question was are you or are you not together, and if you are, since when,” Trish explains.

Frank snorts. “What?”

“Yeah, I know, we need new friends,” Karen deadpans. “On the plus side, James won.”

“Well, he's a smart guy.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “What was his answer?”

Trish repeats it.

“Guess the win depends on how you count,” Frank says. “We had a relationship long before I kissed you, Kar.”

“Yeah, well, it's kinda hard to pinpoint a clear start. What would you say?”

“Could say that we had something right from the start.”

Jess makes a retching noise. Karen raises an eyebrow at Frank.

“The first time I saw you, you were shooting at me with a shotgun.”

Trish tries to muffle her laughter. She fails.

Frank sighs. “I already told you, I wasn't shooting at you, I was shooting at that piece of shit.”

“Who was right next to me.”

“Holy shit, you guys are so fucking married,” Jess exclaims.

“Anyway,” Trish adds, “we're sticking with the first kiss timeline. Bye!”

She hangs up.

“You were never in any danger,” Frank says after a few seconds of silence.

“I know,” Karen smiles. She grabs the pot to refill her mug. “You have to admit it wasn't a meet-cute, though.”

“Yeah, well. Still turned out pretty okay, what d'you think?”

When she turns to him, he's watching her, a smug expression on his face. She huffs a laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, we can say that.” She kisses his jaw. “How was the group? Did Curtis chew your ass for missing it for a week?”

“Nah. Told him what happened the first time I wasn't there.”

She hums and steps out of the kitchen. She hasn't checked her emails since this morning and she hopes that, maybe, Ellison has stopped being an overprotective dad and has decided to give her something, anything, to write. She needs to keep busy and there's nothing more she can do with the Kingpin mess.

“He asked 'bout you today,” Frank says from the island counter.

She glances up at him with a frown as her laptop whirs to life. “He has never met me.”

Frank's eyes dart away from hers the way they always do when he's opening up about something.

“I, uh... I talk about you, sometimes. In the group, you know?”

“You do?” she asks.

His eyes dance between the window, his coffee, the wall, the end of the couch where Kafka is lightly snoring, her.

“Yeah. We talk about the stuff that helps―stuff that keeps the bad thoughts away, that―that makes us remember there's a reason we survived all that shit, yeah? And the people there, they talk about coming home to their families from Iraq, Afghanistan, how their kids have grown, how their parents got old when they weren't there, shit like that. They talk about―about settling back into their routine, the Taco Tuesdays, the walks in the park after school, the Sunday lunches.”

He rubs his beard. She hasn't moved from her desk, stilled by his words. She wants to come closer to him but at the same time, it feels like he needs the space to get the words out. He swallows a bit of his coffee.

“I couldn't relate to that at first, y'know? 'Cause all the bad shit, for me, it happened here and all the stuff they were talking about―being reunited with your partner, with your kids, your fucking dog―all that, it was―it was gone. And yeah, Curt was there but it wasn't―it wasn't the same.” He clears his throat. “You know the first time I thought it was over, I was just―I was just existing. I'd been living just to kill, to punish the ones who had taken my family away from me and then it was done and I had nothing left. And I was just waking up every morning, wondering why the fuck I wasn't dead, what the fuck I was supposed to do now that everyone was dead.” His eyes track something outside the window. He wets his lips, casts down his face to the counter. “When Madani gave me this new identity it was―it was the same, you know? What am I s'pposed to do? Shit, I can't do normal after all the things I've seen, the things I've done. How am I supposed to talk to the people at the group? They're fucked up from being overseas and I'm thinking that I'd take being over there any day rather than being here, 'cause at least I wouldn't have to face that―that void.”

He's silent for a few seconds. He rubs at his face and she can see his eyes glistening. She watches him, ignores the tears she can feel rolling down her cheeks.

“And then you were here.” He looks at her right in the eyes. “You were here and you just―you just accepted me like I wasn't a goddamn disaster, you called me up on my bullshit, you let me into your life, you named my dog for Christ's sake. You―you gave me a home. You gave me a reason to keep going. And then I could relate to the others. So, uh, yeah. The group knows about you. They know you're important.”

She swallows around the knot in her throat. “Frank,” she says in a breath.

He looks up at her and seems to really see her for the first time since he started talking. “Hey,” he says and walks towards her. “Shit, Karen, I didn't say any of that stuff to make you cry.”

A wet laugh escapes her. “I'm a crier, get used to it,” she sniffles.

He cups her face, rubbing away the tears with his thumbs.

Later that night, when they're lying down in the dark facing each other, she tells him about how lonely she was before he came back, how her life was just a succession of stories and takeout dinners, how everything felt disconnected, as if she was watching her body go through her life in autopilot.

“How are you feeling now?” he murmurs, his fingers brushing against the side of her face.

“I'm here. Really here.”

“You'll tell me if it gets this bad again?”

“It won't.”

“You can't know that.”

She gives him a tiny smile. “My life is nothing like it was a year ago. Not just you,” she adds. He's still frowning a little. She puts her hand against his naked chest. “But I'll tell you if something's wrong. I promise.”

He nods and cups the back of her neck, pulling her to him, kissing her and holding her close.

She comes with him for Kafka's morning walk. Her bruises are easily hidden behind a pair of sunglasses and she's pretty sure there's a spring in her steps when she finally gets out of her flat. She feels like coming out of some sort of limbo. Sure, that week spent between the couch and the bed wasn't all bad and pretty cool things happened―like, for example, totally randomly, Frank kissing her―but she's more than ready to move on and go kick some stuff. Waiting three more weeks before being allowed back at the gym sounds like hell at the moment.

So she settles for a walk around the block at 6 am, a travel mug full of coffee in the hand not attached to Frank's, an always eager puppy trotting in front of them.

Chapter Text

Tying Fisk to the shit happening at the docks takes time. Lieberman is good, but he's no miracle worker and Fisk knows how to cover his tracks, knows how to work the system in his favor.

Karen hates Fisk more every passing day.

Her face loses the last remnants of her bruises, her stitches are gone and Ellison finally replies to her emails asking for an assignment. She writes about the petty crimes happening in the darkened alleyways of the city, about a string of burglaries interrupted by an unidentified vigilante―she knows it's Matt, recognizes his modus operandi, but the police doesn't, so she writes nothing about Daredevil even if she could. Gang violence has died down since the Punisher's killing spree, but there's sometimes a brief flare of it to keep her busy for a few days.

Criminal organizations tend to stay as quiet as they can these days, as if making too much noise and shedding too much blood could wake the Punisher up. Frank Castle is officially dead and six feet under but his shadow still floats over the streets, like the Boogeyman of organized crime.

If the walls in Karen's flat weren't still covered with the animal trafficking investigation, it could almost feel like she's back to her regular baseline.

She joins Frank to a Sunday lunch at the Liebermans', becomes fast friend with Sarah, answers all the questions the kids have for her―it'll never not be weird to hear them call Frank Pete―, watches Frank debates the ending of a book with Leo, and it shocks her how natural it feels, how normal it is to be there and share a slice of typical suburban life with them. This is a usual Sunday for them―even for Frank. It can be hard to remember that this is what his life was like between two tours, before Kandahar and the carousel. Karen feels a pang of jealousy, a longing for the happy childhood she never had. It's weird how something that seems to be the norm for most Americans is one of the most foreign things for her.

She likes the life she has. She just wonders what it would've been like to have a loving family growing up, how she could've turned out if her father hadn't been a piece of shit, if Kevin hadn't died because of him. She ultimately pushes all of the “what ifs” to the back of her mind. She got trapped too many times in that downward spiral to know that this way lies only madness and bitter regret.

August ends. She joins Frank and Kafka back for their morning run. Her ribs are sore at first, but she soldiers through and soon the gut wrenching pain is just another bad memory.

Frank frowns and gives her a worried once-over when she announces her intentions of going back to the gym. He doesn't try to talk her out of it, though. She shows up at the first kickboxing class of September, even if Trish is tied up in a meeting with her producer and can't be there with her. Karen is ready to punch stuff either way.

“Go home, Page,” James says as soon as he sees her walking to the locker room.

She glares at him. “I'm fine. I can run again.”

He raises an unimpressed eyebrow at her and crosses his arms. “Bein' able to run and bein' able to take hits are two very different things. And since you have no sense of self-preservation, someone has to have one for you. Go home, I ain't teachin' you shit today,” he finishes with a finger pointing the door.

“C'mon, James. You owe me one.”

He snorts. “Since when?”

“Since you won the bet about me and Pete, remember that?”

He smirks and shrugs. “If my info are correct, you didn't do nothin' and Pete is the one who took the shot. So technically, I owe him a favor.”

Karen opens her mouth, but the little shit is right and she really can't retort anything to that. She crosses her arms and pouts. James gives her a very proud grin.

“See you in three weeks.” He turns around and disappears behind the door leading to the boxing room.

She doesn't even have the time to yell at him indignantly for making her wait three more weeks because people from her class start to come in and crowd her with question about the bet, her relationship status and her recovery―in that order.

She flops face down on the couch when she comes home. Frank emerges from the bathroom with nothing sweatpants hanging low off his hips, rubbing a towel on his face.

“'thought you were at the gym?” he asks, his voice muffled by the fabric over the lower half of his face.

“James benched me for three more weeks,” she grumbles into the armrest.

She hears him step closer and feels his lips against the back of her neck but something's off. She turns on her side and gasps. His beard is gone. She reaches out, touches the now smooth skin of his jaw. Without any bruise, any cut, any dark circles under his eyes, without the beard and the few salt-and-pepper hairs in it, he looks ten years younger.

He chuckles, no doubt amused by the awe on her face.

“Why?” she ends up asking once her brain is back online.

“Got plaster stuck in it today, it was easier to just shave the whole thing,” he shrugs. “Don't like it?” he adds, a hint of teasing in his voice.

“It's not that,” she says, still brushing his jaw. He leans into her touch. He reminds her of Kafka nuzzling against her hand, asking to be petted with his big puppy eyes. “It's just weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I don't think I've ever seen you shaven and uninjured. One or the other, but never together.”

He snorts. “So what d'you think? You like that face?”

“I always love your face.”

She pulls him to her and kisses him, marveling at the difference in sensation against her lips, her skin, her fingers. He nips at her lower lip, trails kisses along her jaw to her neck, rests his face there.

“Love you,” he mumbles against her skin.

She hums, one hand on his buzzed head. “You big sap.”

He chuckles and she laughs, tickled by his breath under her ear.

“You're one to talk.”

He kisses her there a few more times for good measure and stands up. She will forever deny the little whining noise she makes when the warmth of his body leaves her space.

“'was thinking of making a risotto for dinner,” he says as he extends a hand to her. She takes it and lets herself be pulled up, stealing a kiss once she's on her feet.

“Need help?”

“You can chop the mushrooms.”

Her kitchen had never seen any action beyond coffee and microwave before Frank settled into her life. Now it's practically the center of the flat. Frank likes to try new recipes and she's always happy to play sous-chef. The fact that Frank usually stays bare-chested after the shower he takes first thing after work has nothing to do with it. Nothing.

They talk about their days, dodging Kafka who's always trying to get any piece of uncooked food he can. Frank, for all his talks of Karen spoiling their dog, is the one who slips him a piece of carrot. Kafka chews it loudly. When Karen turns to Frank, he smiles unapologetically and she rolls her eyes without any heat.

Frank tells her about the new kid in the construction crew, a twenty-something vet who just got out and still looks like he's back there. The kid, Nick, has apparently taken a shine to Frank, recognizing a fellow Marine. Frank has talked about Curtis's group and the kid has said he'd give it a shot, even if he wasn't sure it was going to help at all. Frank doesn't say it, but Karen can hear it all the same, the comparison with Lewis Wilson.

“I think it could help him, you know. Having you,” she says, bringing her chopped up mushrooms to him. She hip-checks him.

He bumps his shoulder against her. “Never thought I could ever help someone. Can't say my coping mechanisms have been the healthiest.”

She squeezes his arm once. He glances at her. “That's not true anymore.”

The corner of his lips curls up and his eyes are soft when he answers. “Thanks to you.”

“You did all the work,” she smiles. He snorts.

David calls her when she's at work a few days later.

“Does the name Vanessa Mariana mean anything to you?” he asks as soon as she picks up.

Karen is stunned for half a second.

“Karen?”

“Yeah, I'm here, sorry. She was Fisk's girlfriend, had an art gallery in the city. Why?”

“I tracked the shell companies and her name popped up at the top of the food chain.”

“Holy shit.” She stands up and closes the door to her office. “She's the one orchestrating everything from the outside?”

“It certainly looks that way.”

A chill runs down her spine. “Is she in New York?”

“Nope. Last place of residence I found was in Andorra.”

“Spain?” she asks, pinching the bridge of her nose. She can feel a headache building behind her eyes and that's the last thing she needs at the moment.

“Close enough. It's a small principality between Spain and France. Kinda like Monaco but in the mountains. Tax heaven, no extradition treaty to the US.”

She swears under her breath. “How do we prove she's doing Fisk's dirty work?”

“He's probably passing directives through his lawyer. There's no sign of correspondence between Fisk and Mariana directly. I'm gonna dig up more, see what I can find.”

“Thank you, David.”

She hangs up and rubs her hands over her face. She needs coffee. She wishes Frank could just materialize in her office with a giant thermos full of his special ultra-black coffee. He did it a few times, but now that his beard is gone, he's too easily recognizable, especially in a building full of noisy journalists. Ending up with Frank and Ellison in the same room will turn into a disaster any way she looks at it.

She drags herself to the break room and fills her mug with the watered down tastes-like-cat-pee-and-socks-juice coffee Tyler from accounting makes. He insists to anyone who's listening that he makes the best coffee and it tastes just like it does in Italy, and doesn't let anyone else touch the coffee maker. At first Karen tried to argue with him but ultimately gave up in front of the baby-boomer's stubbornness, just like everyone before her. Even Ellison is no match for Tyler.

She grimaces as she takes her first sip and adds some cream and sugar to the offending beverage, something she'd never do with proper coffee.

She takes a second tentative sip. It tastes like sugared cream with a bitter aftertaste but it's better than nothing. She sighs and goes back to her office.

Ellison knocks on the open door soon after she sits down at her desk.

“How's it going?” he asks, leaning against the door threshold.

“Someone needs to keep Tyler far away from the coffee machine,” Karen grumbles.

“Good luck with that,” he snorts. “I meant with the story.”

She pushes her hair back and exhales. “I got some new info.”

“Judging by your face, it's not good.”

Karen tilts her head at the rest of the office. Ellison gets the message: he steps further into the room and closes the door behind him.

“What is it?” he asks, frowning. “Should I be worried? Do you need police protection? Again?”

She shakes her head. “Do you remember Vanessa Mariana?”

Ellison raises an eyebrow.

“Fisk's girlfriend?”

“Herself.”

“What about her?”

“She's pulling the strings for Fisk from Andorra.”

“Are you sure?”

“My source is pretty good.”

Ellison sighs. “Your sources are always good, Page. It freaks me out sometimes.”

She smirks at Ellison's backhanded way of giving her compliments. “Fisk's lawyer is probably the one relaying the orders but I can't prove it yet. And I doubt he'll want to talk to me,” she says.

“No shit,” he snorts.

He doesn't add anything but she recognizes the look on his face as “Ellison thinking hard and you're probably not gonna like what he's gonna say”. He crosses his arms, strokes his beard, adjusts his glasses. He opens his mouth, glances her way, frowns and closes his mouth only to open it again.

“If you have something to offer...” she prompts.

“How did you make the connections the first time around?”

Not what she expected. She takes a moment to think about it.

“We had the things we uncovered at Nelson&Murdock, with some of our clients. What was dug up by Ben,” she says. Her voice doesn't waver too much at the mention of Ben, but the pain and anger are still there, alive and well, wanting their revenge on Fisk.

“That's it?” Ellison asks.

She looks up. The smug expression on his face is like a giant sign pointing to where he wanted to get from the beginning.

“Daredevil,” she says with a frown. “He brought us info and told us how to confirm it officially.”

“He saved your life a few times too. Why don't you call him? Or Batsign him? Daredevil-sign him? Does he have a Daredevil-sign? That'd be pretty badass.”

Karen refrains from telling him Daredevil is actually blind―even if he can see and perceive way more than the average person.

“I'm not calling Daredevil to help me in my case,” she says instead.

“Why not? A source is a source.”

“We're not on the best of terms.”

Ellison laughs. “You managed to piss off the Devil of Hell's Kitchen?! Only you, Page, only you.”

“Actually, he's the one who pissed me off,” she shrugs. That makes him laugh even harder. She waits for him to calm down. “He's a real asshole, you know.”

“Okay, okay,” Ellison says, wiping under his glasses. “Swallow your pride and deal with this mess of a story, we need to get it out there asap,” he says in a commanding tone and leaves her office.

Karen leans back against her chair, lets a deep breath out and straightens back, her attention shifting to her computer. Time to dig.

Frank isn't back from work yet when she gets back home. Kafka welcomes her like he hasn't seen her in four months. She crouches down and lets him jump on her and lick her face. He's getting bigger and stronger every week and staying upright when he leans against her is getting harder. When his need to be thoroughly petted and appreciated is satisfied, she gets up and takes off her boots, before changing into more comfortable clothes and putting on her sneakers. Kafka loses his mind all over again when she grabs his leash.

Karen grabs her phone and sends a quick text to Frank.

- at the park with kafka

The park is only a short walk away from her block and Karen only starts running when they reach its fences. She adjusts the length of the leash so Kafka can run comfortably next to her, his tongue lolling out of his mouth in glee. He knows which way they're heading and runs faster when they're near their destination: the enclosed area of the park made specially for dogs.

Some of Kafka's playing buddies are already there and Karen waves at their owners from afar. She unclasps the leash and Kafka dashes toward the other dogs. Karen stretches on a bench nearby, keeping an eye on him, staying alert to any sign of real aggression. Kafka is a well-behaved dog, but she knows, she knows that if anything goes wrong between him and another dog, he'll be the one to be blamed―because he's a staffie and staffies are evil, everyone knows that.

She feels more than she sees Frank approaching and sitting on the bench next to her. She glances at him from the corner of her eyes and smiles.

“Hey,” he greets as he kisses her temple, his growing stubble tickling her skin.

She leans against him. “How was your day?”

“Got Nick to come with me at the support group.”

She takes his hand in hers. “How did it went?”

Frank rubs circles into the back of her hand, his eyes strained on Kafka. “He was real silent at first. All intimidated and shit. But Curt worked his magic, you know?”

“You think he'll come back?”

He shrugs. “Hope so.”

Karen jumps back a little when Frank whistles loudly in the direction of the dogs, but when she turns her head to see what the problem is, Kafka is already running to them, everything in his body screaming “Dad is back!!” in the way only a dog can do. Frank rubs at Kafka's head and back, squatting on the ground so the dog can put his paws on his shoulders. Frank ends up flat on the ground after Kafka nudges him too hard, but it doesn't seem to bother him too much to have a slobbering dog on top of him. Karen snaps picture after picture. She has to. It's her contribution to history.

“How was your day?” Frank asks once he's back on his feet and reattaching the leash to Kafka's collar.

“I got an interesting call from David,” she says. He raises an eyebrow. “Then I had the most terrible coffee in existence and then I had an annoying conversation with Ellison.”

He snorts. “'bout what?”

“Daredevil,” she says, letting out a long-suffering sigh as she opens the gates to exit the park.

“Ellison knows Red?” he asks.

“In a way. Let's talk about it at home.”

“Okay,” he says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and tucking her against him.

Karen doesn't start talking immediately after the front door closes on them. She takes the leash off of Kafka, who saunters to his water bowl as usual, and hangs it next to one of Frank's jackets.

It's late enough in the day that making coffee would be considered unreasonable by most people, but it's her, and it's Frank. At this point, their bodies are so used to the constant flow of caffeine that it doesn't keep them from sleeping at night. And sometimes, just sometimes, they drink more than their usual coffee pot, because there are nightmares to keep at bay, memories to keep buried and they just know that it's going to be one of those nights.

So she gets a pot going and Frank comes lean against the kitchen island. She can feel his eyes on her and tells him about Mariana as she goes through the familiar motions. It's not hard to guess that he doesn't like what she's telling him one bit: his arms are crossed, his eyebrows drawn together, a muscle in his jaw ticking. His voice is tight when he asks her what she plans to do.

“David's looking into it. See if he can make a connection.”

He doesn't seem to relax. “And Red?”

She turns away from the coffee pot and leans against the counter. She sighs. “Ellison said he could help. Talk to the lawyer.” She doesn't make air quotes when she says talk but it's a close call. Intimidate the info out of the guy would be a more accurate description. “That man is certainly not going to talk to me.”

Frank extends a hand to her and pulls her gently to him when she takes it. She steps between his legs, his arms loosely circling her waist.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

She casts her eyes down, looks at where her hands are splayed on his chest. His tshirt isn't doing a great job at hiding the corded muscles underneath it.

“I don't know,” she finally breathes. “Every time we have new info we can't act on it and we're not getting any closer to stop them. So yeah, maybe Matt could help.”

“I sense a but.”

She shrugs. “Do you think I'm too stubborn?” she asks, raising her head to meet his gaze.

He snorts and looks away, his mouth curled up in a smile. When he looks back at her, he's smiling but there's also a seriousness to him. “Karen, you're the definition of stubborn. And look, I ain't Red's biggest fan, but if he's your only option you should let him help. You can't talk to that lawyer and I can't either because I promised you I'd never do anything to compromise this new identity.” She exhales. He presses a kiss to her forehead. “I say we wait to see what David finds, yeah?”

She nods and lets him hold her closer to his chest. He cards his fingers through her hair, massages her scalp and she feels a tension she didn't know was there disappear.

Karen finally meets Curtis. It's weird to think that it's been practically a year since Frank came back in her life and yet she's only meeting his brother-in-arms now. But Curtis is special. He's the last person who knows who Frank was before. He knew his family, his wife, his kids. He knows how Frank was as a father and a husband, as a man without grief and pain devouring his insides. It's not that Frank doesn't want them to meet, he has said to her the only time she asked when she was gonna meet Curtis, it's not that he thinks they're not going to get along either because they're going to like a house on fire. It's something else, something he can't voice properly, can't put words on properly. It's about his former life and his after colliding, it's about the two people who knows him best being in the same room and him being raw and open and utterly vulnerable before them. It's so many things and nothing at the same time. It's about Frank needing time and Karen giving it to him.

Which is why she's quite surprised when she comes home one evening to Frank and Curtis sharing a beer on the couch, laughing together and greeting her comfortably as if that's something they do every week.

“Hi,” she says, “didn't know you had company,” she adds as she bends over to remove her boots.

“Yeah. Kinda forgot to text you about it,” Frank says. “This is Curtis.”

She can't help her lips from slowly smiling. Frank ducks his head and takes a swig of his beer, but she can still see the slight blush spreading over his face. She turns her attention to Curtis.

“Glad to finally meet you, Curtis.”

“Likewise, ma'am.”

“Please call me Karen,” she says with a wave and steps towards the kitchen. She drops a kiss on top of Frank's head as she walks behind the couch. “Any of you needs a refill?” she asks, opening the fridge to get herself a beer.

“I'm good, thanks,” Curtis answers. Frank grunts in a way she learned to recognize as “no thanks” a long time ago.

She sits down on the couch between the two men, guessing Frank will be more at ease if he isn't sandwiched between her and Curtis. Frank scouts towards the edge of the couch to leave her more space and she leans against him, turned in Curtis' direction, one leg curled under her. Frank wraps an arm around her shoulder.

Curtis is easy to talk to and even if all they exchange is small talk, it doesn't feel useless and empty the way it feels with most people. She asks about his jobs, about the group, answers his questions about her unusual professional career, laughs at his jokes. He tells a story about his and Frank's first few years in the army that has Frank groaning in embarrassment but in the end, he laughs with them anyway.

“I should get going,” Curtis says an hour or so later.

“I'll walk you out,” Frank says. “Someone needs his evening walk.” At his words, Kafka perks up and starts panting.

Karen says goodbye to Curtis, invoking an article to finish as an excuse not to come with them. If she knows Frank at all, he probably needs some time alone with his friend.

She's deeply engrossed in her article writing when Frank comes back. She hears Kafka's claws clicking on the floor, the zip of Frank's boots, followed by the soft shuffling of his socked feet across the room. His hands fall on her shoulders and start kneading her trapezius muscles. She closes her eyes, leaning away from the computer.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Mh-mm,” he answers as he moves her hair on one side to kiss her neck. “You done soon?”

“Just have to proof-read and send it over to Ellison.”

“Gonna start on dinner then.”

The smell of caramelized onions is just starting to waft out from the kitchen corner and Karen is almost done with her proof-reading when Frank's phone rings loudly in the silence.

“David,” Frank says.

Karen swivels in her chair, curiosity piqued and proof-reading forgotten. Frank is stirring the onions in the pan and has wedged his phone between his shoulder and his ear like a busy business woman in a 2007 romcom. He's humming here and there, a sure sign that David is feeling a bit monologue-y tonight, but he has his back to her and she can't read his face to see if whatever David is word-vomiting at him is good news or not. The only sign she gets that it is serious is when Frank puts down the spatula, turns off the stove and takes his phone properly in his hand. He turns halfway and he glances at her. His brows are furrowed when he looks away to the window, then her again, then the door.

“When?” he asks, and his voice is rough, gravelly. It's the Punisher's voice.

Karen gets up and slowly approaches him. He hangs up after a tight “Thanks, David” but doesn't turn to her. His body is tense, tenser than she's ever seen him in the past few months. She gets closer. His fist are balled up against the countertop, his knuckles white and his veins bulging under the pressure. He's practically vibrating from rage. She rakes her brain trying to figure out what could have sent him in such a state. Billy Russo's face briefly flashes before her eyes and even if she's not religious, she prays it's not that, prays he didn't wake up to make hell rain on them, prays he will never do and will forever stay in that coma, away from Frank and his new life.

“Frank?” she says, softly.

He closes his eyes, takes deep breaths. Slowly, his fists open. She covers his hand with one of hers, reaches up with the other to cup his jaw. He leans against her palm and opens his eyes.

“What is it?” she asks.

“It's Fisk,” he says and while his voice is still low, it doesn't hold the same anger as before anymore. It's soft and sad too, like he's bracing himself to say something that he knows she doesn't want to hear, like he knows he's going to hurt her and hates himself for it. She frowns. He looks down at their entwined hands. “He has a hearing to get out of jail for good behavior.”

Her entire body goes cold. Ice fills up her chest and keeps her from breathing. The words echoes in her head but she can't understand them―how could she? How can a monster like Fisk get out for good behavior? So soon even? He must have a judge in his pocket, must have paid someone at the DA's office, probably even the DA, because there's no way something like that could fly without corruption involved. She tries to ask for more details but her voice is stuck and only produces choked cries. Black spots dance before her eyes.

“Karen, breathe with me,” Frank's voice is coming from very far, piercing through the fog and buzzing of her mind. He tilts his head and forces her to look at him in the eyes, a hand over her chest. “C'mon sweetheart. Inhale,” he says and exaggerate the motion, “and exhales.” She puffs her cheeks and blows air out shakily, pushing her hair back over and over again. “Look at me. C'mon look at me. I'm here.” She nods, her eyes never leaving his, anchoring herself to them desperately while focusing on his hand on his chest and the one rubbing circles on the spot where her neck meets her shoulder. He repeats the exaggerated breathing motion and she follows, one, two, three times, until the tremors subside and she's left boneless, collapsing against his chest, exhausted. “I'm here,” he keeps on repeating like a mantra.

She sniffles, takes a few more deep breaths and detaches herself from him.

“How has this been kept secret?” she asks weakly.

Frank pushes a strand of hair behind her ear and keeps his hand there, splayed half on the side of her head, half down her neck. “David just found out.”

“Fuck. That fucking bastard. If he gets out I'm going to kill him,” she says and she knows as the words come out of her mouth that she means them, that they're not some show of bravado or metaphoric vague threat. She's going to stare down that piece of shit, she's going to look at him in the face and tell him she's the one who killed his beloved Wesley before doing the same to him. And she knows Frank will be right next to her. He's looking at her like he was in that shitty diner, talking about her gun and how it wasn't her first rodeo―appreciative, admirative, proud even?

“You're kinda hoping he'll get out now, right?” he asks, proving once again how well he knows her, inside and out.

“If it means I get to blow his brains out, yes.”

There's a tiny, sad smile on his lips. She knows he doesn't want her to have blood―more blood―on her hands, but she also knows he gets her. She's not afraid of wishing death upon someone anymore, of wanting to inflict it herself so she knows for certain that it's over and done for. She silences the annoying voice saying that she can't be judge, jury and executioner, that only God can chose who lives and who dies, that voice that sounds exactly like Matt.

She used to disagree with Frank's methods at the very beginning. She doesn't, not anymore, not after witnessing first hand that prison does jack shit for motherfuckers like Fisk.

This renewed hate for Fisk doesn't keep the nightmares at bay, though. His massive hands are tight around her throat, squeezing and squeezing, his face twisted horribly in a laugh as he strangles her, his body a heavy weight pinning her on the floor, crushing her limbs and breaking her bones.

She startles awake, almost elbowing Frank in the nose. His hands are on her, his face creased with worry. Kafka is whining softly on her other side. She waits until her heart isn't trying to beat its way out of her chest to talk.

“Sorry I woke you up,” she says, her throat hurting as if she just spent the last half-hour screaming, which―now that she thinks about it―she probably did. Kafka licks her cheek. She hugs him to her chest and hide her face in his soft fur.

“Don't worry about it”, Frank replies, like he does every time she wakes him up with her nightmares. She does the same when the roles are reversed. They always apologize to each other even when they know they have nothing to be sorry for. It's part of the ritual, like Kafka cuddling closer to them afterwards, and Frank―or her, depending on who was the lucky one this time―picking up a book to read out loud until she falls back asleep.

Frank turns on the bed lamp and grabs one of the books stacked high on his nightstand. This time it's Witch Child, a book Leo told him to read countless times. Karen settles with her head on his chest, Kafka against her, Frank's voice a low rumble underneath and above her. He reads slowly, deliberately, taking his time to unravel the story of a young girl fleeing England's persecutions. Karen closes her eyes. Kafka starts snoring, his breath tickling the skin of her arm.

The DA's office hasn't changed much from the last time Karen was in it, flanked by Foggy and Matt and going toe to toe with Reyes. Karen tries not to think about how that last visit had ended, with bullets flying everywhere and Reyes' body bleeding on the desk. It seems like they installed bullet proof windows since.

Otherwise, it has still the same sterile atmosphere that's permeating any kind of office where you know you're going to be bullshitted within an inch of your life and won't be able to prove anything because the fuckers occupying it are politicians first and servants of justice last.

Which is exactly the type of person the new DA is, a young arrogant son of a bitch who thinks he can get rid of her with a few complicated yet empty sentences. He reminds her of Russo and she despises him even more for that.

“Mr. Fisk is exhibiting exemplary behavior in prison and he is well within his rights to request a hearing,” the DA says. “As long as he's not deemed a danger to society, I can't voice any opinion against it.”

Karen snorts. “Not a danger to society? That man is a murderer, you know that right?”

The DA clears his throat. “I'm well acquainted with Mr. Fisk's case and while he has been convicted on multiple charges, murder isn't one of them.”

“What the―” Karen starts. Maybe swearing at the new DA, however insufferable he is, is probably not the best idea to have at the moment. Instead she takes a deep breath and tries to keep her calm. “DA Moore, have you ever heard the name Ben Urich?” she asks in her most diplomatic voice.

Moore frowns slightly. “Am I supposed to?”

“Ben Urich was a reporter at the New York Bulletin and he was one of the people investigating Fisk. Do you know what happened to him? Fisk killed him for getting to close to the truth.”

“Look, Miss Page, I hear what you're saying, but if Mr. Fisk hasn't been convicted of this man's murder, there is nothing I can do.”

“What about Mrs. Cardenas?” she challenges. Keeping her anger in check is getting harder every passing second.

“Who?”

Karen raises both her eyebrows at the DA. “Have you really read Fisk's files? Or just what his lawyer gave you along with a fat stack of cash?”

“Are you accusing me of having been bribed, miss Page? If so, that is a pretty serious accusation and I hope you know what you are doing.”

“If that's a threat, I hope you know that these don't work on me,” she retorts with a smirk. She's pretty sure she sees the confidence leave Moore's face. Actually, he looks distinctively uncomfortable.

“I'm gonna have to ask you to leave. Now.”

“Sure. Wasn't planning on staying anyway,” she says, gathering her things, the smirk never leaving her face.

She leaves the office without a second glance.

She's a couple of streets away from the DA building when her phone rings.

“How did it go?” Frank asks immediately after she picks up.

“Moore is an asshole and I think I kinda scared him a little.”

“Attagirl,” he says fondly. “No one is following you,” he adds completely casually, like it's a completely normal thing to say to the person you're on the phone with.

She stops walking and looks around. She doesn't see anyone that could be Frank on street level so she looks up. Sure enough, a silhouette is breaking the clean line of an apartment building's roof, dark against the gray New York sky. An arm waves at her.

She rolls her eyes. “You couldn't come down and talk to me in the street like a normal person?”

He snorts. “I'm a dramatic asshole.”

“No shit. Come down here.”

It's a few minutes before he emerges from an alleyway on the side of the brick building. She watches him walk to her with that little swagger of his. He's smiling too, that weirdly shy smile he always has when her eyes are on him. Like he feels a bit self-conscious or embarrassed of being exposed to her.

“Hi, dramatic asshole,” she greets with a smile that's a little fond, a little mocking.

He scoffs. “Hi, scary lady.”

She can't help the laugh bubbling out of her. “First of all, I wasn't even that scary,” she says as they start walking toward the subway station.

“Oh, you sure 'bout that? You can be pretty scary, y'know.”

She punches him lightly on the chest. His hand takes her wrist and he draws her closer, kissing her temple and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “I just slightly implied that he wasn't clean and that I was going to find out about it no matter how much he threatens me?” She shrugs. “It's not my fault he's a pathetic coward.”

“Jesus, lady, where's your sense of self-preservation?”

Karen turns to him, unimpressed. “Pot. Kettle,” she says flatly.

Frank huffs a laugh. “Yep, guessed I walked right in that one.”

“Yep.”

“So. Think that DA's crooked or not?”

She hums. “Not sure yet. I'm gonna ask David to poke around his bank accounts a bit. Bribing a DA isn't cheap and probably not done exclusively in cash. Fisk must have a bullshit company or foundation for that.”

She calls Foggy that evening. They make small talk, catching up on whatever happened during the couple of weeks they haven't seen each other, before Karen asks the question that is the reason of her call in the first place.

“So, Foggy, what do you think of the DA? Had to deal with him much?”

She can hear Frank muttering a “real subtle, Page” on the other side of the room. She picks up one of Kafka's toys from the floor and throws it at him. He dodges the rubber bone but not the pitbull following it and goes down with an “oh shit”. Karen wishes she wasn't on the phone so she could've have filmed the whole thing. For posterity.

“...why?” Foggy asks on the phone after a too long silence.

“Oh, you know me, I'm curious.”

“Yes, Karen, I know you and right now you are bullshitting me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Okay I went to his office today and he's a douchebag and also potentially in Fisk's pocket.”

Foggy chokes on something and coughs. “What the hell?” he asks once he's now longer struggling to breathe.

“Fisk is having a hearing to get out of jail. So I just went to the DA and confronted him about him.”

“As one does. Jesus fuck, Karen.” Foggy sighs. “How did it go?” he asks in a tone suggesting he is reluctantly accepting the fact that she'll never choose the reasonable, safe course of actions.

She sums up her visit to Moore. “What do you think?” she asks when she's done.

“Well, could be either way. He just arrived in the office so maybe he doesn't know all the details of the case? And anyone being accused of bribery would react like this, you know.”

“So what you're saying is that he's either incompetent or corrupted.”

“Or both.”

“Not helping.”

“I'll see what Marci thinks of him,” he says.

Karen thanks him and they hang up.

Frank is still on the rug, Kafka on top of him. The dog is licking and nuzzling his face as Frank rubs his flanks.

“I'm feeling left out,” she says with a smile.

Frank lifts his eyes to her, grinning from ear to ear behind Kafka's head. “No one is stopping you from joining.”

And well, he's not wrong. She stretches down next to him, one hand joining his on Kafka's back. The dog has calmed down and is on his way to take a nap on top of Frank.

“You smell like dog's breath,” she says as she lays her head on his shoulder.

“Sexy,” he deadpans, “Want a kiss?”

“Not really,” she chuckles, but he's already turning to her and dislodging Kafka, who huffs at them and goes to pout in his bed. “Your dog is a drama queen,” she says, trying to avoid Frank's dog-saliva scented cheek.

“Yeah, I wonder where he gets that from,” Frank idly says. “You should probably investigate that next.”

She snorts. “That's not going to be a very complicated investigation.”

Chapter Text

Ellison asks for updates on the trafficking story. Karen doesn’t have any, so he asks for updates on Fisk’s release story. She doesn’t have any either. It seems like everything connected to Fisk is frozen, standing still and holding its breath so no one can find anything.

He gives her a fluff piece to write and it feels like a punishment.

That night, she goes home frustrated to an empty apartment—Frank is at the vet group and brought Kafka with him. He said the dog helps, not only him, but also other people. Having Kafka around convinced a former army ranger that she needed a service dog apparently. Karen is happy they are out there helping people, but she also would very much like to have them both home at this very moment.

Call her selfish.

She drops her bag on the floor, kicks out her boots and goes straight to the kitchen. There’s a cup of coffee left at the bottom of the pot. It’s long cold. She would never microwave coffee in Frank’s presence, but she’s tired, frustrated and he’s not here so to hell with it.

She burns her lip when she takes her first sip because of course she does, why would her shitty day stops at the door of her apartment after all?

She slides the window opens and sits on the fire escape. The first signs of fall are starting to appear in the city. The leaves on the tree are turning that almost too-deep green color that is just waiting for the plunge into red, the wind is a bit sharper, the sky a bit less blue. Despite that, it’s still warm out and she watches the sun disappear behind the buildings.

She’s halfway down her mug when a dark shape moving on the building across the alley catches her eyes. She thinks about her gun, forgotten at the bottom of her bag on the other side of the apartment, but before she has the time to dash inside and close the window, the shape disappears only to reappears on the stairs under her, the distinctive hood catching the light coming from the main street.

“Hi, Matt,” she says.

“Karen,” Matt says, his voice tight as usual.

“What are you doing here?”

She’s too exhausted to get angry and accuse him of stalking her.

“Fisk is getting out of prison.”

“I know.”

He climbs the last couple of steps to reach her level and sits down on the metal grate.

“He also has some trafficking business that Mariana is controlling from Europe,” she adds. “I’ve been working on it for the past few months. I’m stuck now.” She can hear Frank’s voice, arguing about getting Matt on the case, and yes, okay, the man has a point and stubbornness is getting her nowhere as of now. She’s tired of this case and there’s no point in pretending otherwise for some misplaced pride. “I think that’s how he’s made enough money to bribe his way into freedom. I couldn’t get anything from the DA. Or Fisk’s lawyer. My… associates couldn’t either.”

“Your associates? You mean Frank?”

Karen snorts. Of course Matt had to go there.

“Frank is retired, Matt.”

“But—”

“Right now,” she interrupts him, “he’s at a veteran support group with our puppy, probably planning how to adopt all the dogs from all the New York shelters, train them and give them to other vets for free. His current hobby is trying all the recipes from an Italian cooking blog and the last time he was near a firearm was because I wanted to go to the shooting range.”

She doesn’t count the fact that he still has enough weapons in the bedroom closet to arm a small army.

“Okay,” Matt sighs. “I just wanted to make sure you were aware of Fisk’s release.”

She suppresses a shiver. “I am.”

“I’m going to see what I can find about it. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Thank you.”

He stands up and goes to climb down the fire escape.

“I could— I could send you what I have,” Karen says. It feels like an olive branch. Maybe it is. They used to be friends, even if he was lying all the time. They’ll never be friends again, but a neutral ground would be good—relaxing. There would be one less thing to direct her anger at, at least.

“If you want to.”

“I will.”

“Thank you, Karen,” Matt nods and disappears in the alley below.

When Frank comes back, Karen is still on the fire escape despite the temperatures having dropped significantly. He joins her and hands her a plaid before sitting down next to her.

“Mind telling me why we’re out there?” he asks.

She smiles and wraps the plaid around her. “Well, I’ve had a day,” she says, leaning against him. “And you came here on your own,” she finishes.

He puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer. “Couldn’t let my girl freeze to death now, could I?”

“Mmh, I guess not.”

She closes her eyes. Frank smells like the cheap coffee Curtis makes for the group. She could fall asleep right here and then.

“Tell me about your day?” She knows he won’t push if she doesn’t talk, but she can’t stay silent, not about Fisk, and not about Matt.

“Should we move inside?” she says.

“Thought you’d never ask,” he answers and stands up, pulling her to her feet in the same movement.

Karen tells him everything when they’re in the kitchen making pasta all’Ortolana. Or rather, he chops vegetables more and more forcefully as she explains the events of the day. Thank God for sturdy cutting board.

“So Red is in now?”

She shrugs and grabs a piece of carrot. “I guess we are… exchanging information. Working toward the same goal without working together? I don’t know.”

She munches on her carrot. Are Matt and her working together again? Would it be something she’d like?

“Hey,” Frank calls softly. “You okay?”

She nods. He puts down the knife, wipes his hands on the kitchen towel he keeps on his shoulder. He hugs her and she doesn’t mean to cling but she does anyway. Her breathing comes out shaky and uncertain. When he pulls away, he cradles her face with both his hands, looks at her with an intensity that would make her turn away if it wasn’t him.

“I’m exhausted,” she replies to the question she sees in his eyes. “I need it to be over and done.”

It’s his turn to nod. “Okay,” he says. He kisses her forehead. “Okay,” he repeats against her skin.

–

For a while, nothing changes. Even with Matt in the loop, they can’t find anything new, can’t make a move and Karen is this close from burning everything pinned on her wall. She’s stuck writing fluff pieces and reports on minor crimes.

She tries to exorcise her frustration with longer and longer runs, with exhausting herself during her kickboxing classes. Nothing helps and she’s still wound up tight, like she has a coil inside, ready to jump and spring out of her.

And then shit hits the fan, because this is what shit does.

It’s the end of another long day and when Karen closes her office door, she is ready to slide right on the floor and cry for a bit. But she thinks about Frank, waiting for her at the apartment because they decided to try to act like normal people and have Trish and Jess over for dinner.

So Karen straightens up, exhales deeply and leaves the newspaper building. The subway entrance is a couple blocks away from the offices and today is one of those days where Karen is really glad she has stopped wearing heels and flats. Her boots are her comfiest pair of shoes and yet she is still more than ready to take them off.

She is really glad to be wearing these shoes when she notices the shadow following her.

She accelerates her pace, hoping she’s just being paranoid and whatever it is will disappear when she gets into the subway.

Only she doesn’t reach the subway.

Two men emerges from a side street in front of her.

“Excuse me,” she says, trying to playing it cool as if they’re just random people, as if she doesn’t know that they’re here for her. She slides her arm near the opening of her messenger bag and tries to step around them.

One man grabs her arm. She immediately breaks his hold and sends a silent thank you to James and his self-defense lessons. It won’t be enough. The man who was tailing her has now caught up to them and there is no way she can make it out at three against one. She plunges her hand in her bag and whips out her gun.

“Leave me alone,” she says. Her voice is much stronger than what she was expecting from herself.

“We just want to chat,” one guy says.

“I don’t.”

“Well it’s not really your call, Miss Page.”

She readjusts her hold on the gun. “Did Fisk sent you? If he wants to talk I can go visit him in prison, no need to send second rate thugs to bash my head against a dumpster. Again.” She has no idea where that bravado comes from. She can kind of picture Frank being half proud and half appalled by her behavior. Where is your goddamn self-preservation instinct, lady?

The men start chuckling.

“Well that’s the thing, he isn’t in prison anymore and he wanted you to be the first person to know,” one of them say with a cold and slimy smile.

Her breath freezes in her lungs. She doesn’t have time to react when the three of them pounce on her and knock her out cold.

–

Karen regains consciousness after what feels like seconds and days at the same time. Everything is blurry at first but there is no bright light, no insistent beeping. Not in a hospital then. She straightens up and a sharp pain shoots through her left shoulder. She’s sitting on an office chair, her arms tied to the armrests. At least it’s not behind her back. Her head is killing her but she forces her eyes to stay open and looks around. A warehouse. How unoriginal. No table in front of her this time. The only light in the room is coming from the dirty industrial windows covering the top part of one wall. The light is vaguely orange. She knows this type of light, knows it’s coming from those old street lamps that are only left in a few areas of the city. From the few things she can gather from her surroundings, she’s probably at the docks.

Again, how unoriginal.

There is no guard that she can see in the room. People keep underestimating her and it has helped her too many times for her to be annoyed about it anymore.

Her bag is nowhere to be found. She’s starting to regret not taking Frank seriously when he joked about getting her an ankle pistol and holster. Not that she could reach it with her wrists pinned against the metallic armrests with those damn plastic zip ties.

She can’t panic. If she does, then she lets fear takes hold on her and she won’t be able to think straight. She needs to assess her situation and figure out of to get out. She doesn’t know how long she’s been out but she had three people waiting for her at home. She isn’t alone anymore. Frank, Trish and Jess will do something—probably even Matt because Frank or Jess will have warned him. People are looking for her.

It’s a relief but she also can’t rely on it totally. It could be hours before they find her and she could be dead in the next five minutes. The panic tries to creep up. She shakes her head. She is going to make it, she just has to find how.

Chair, metal, heavy, can’t be easily broken.

Her ankles aren’t tied up though. Karen tries to stand up, with the chair on her back, but it’s too heavy to be moved around. Being bent over, she sees her boots and hope blossoms in her chest. She twists a leg until her ankle reaches her hand. Unlacing the boot isn’t easy and the position makes her entire body hurts but she has to try. She pulls on the string, removing it from the boot’s holes completely and, with the help of her teeth, slides it between the zip ties and her skin and brings one end to her other hand. She has seen this trick on the internet once, cutting through zip ties with the friction of a shoelace. She hopes it works. She needs it to work.

The shoelace burns against her skin. Karen swallows down the tears and keeps on going, her teeth clamped so tight around the shoelace that her jaw is hurting.

Sweat slides down her face and falls on her jeans, tinting the fabric a pale red. Wound on my head, she thinks distantly, cataloging the info for later.

She can see the shoelace halfway through the plastic when a door opens with a loud bang. She drops the string in her hand and hides it as best as she can in her fist before looking around for the newcomers.

And sure enough, Fisk is there, standing tall and evil in his fancy suit, as if he had never been to prison to being with.

“Miss Page,” he says with that calm and cold tone of his.

“Fisk,” she all but spits.

“You have been a thorn in my side. You really can’t stay out of my business, can you?”

Karen snorts. “I’m a journalist. Being nosy and all up the business of pieces of shit like you is what I do, you fucker.”

The few thugs around Fisk seem to tense up, probably expecting their boss to start hitting her or to at least shout, but Fisk chuckles. And okay, insulting a homicidal crime lord is certainly not the best way to ensure her continued survival, but Karen is angry—no, she’s furious and she’s ready to have all the frustration from the last months explode at his bald face. She tugs on the string in her fist instead.

“How do you like dear old Ben Urich’s office then?”

She keeps herself from growling at him—barely.

“You know, journalism can be a dangerous profession. You ought to be careful or you could end up like your old mentor.”

She rolls her eyes. Wesley, Fisk, all the same: they like hearing themselves talk so much they make a few dozens death threats before doing anything.

“What do you want, Fisk?”

“I appreciate your dedication, Miss Page—”

“Cut the bullshit.”

Fisk clears his throat.

“I know you’re not one to be silenced by money. You leave me no choice but killing you.”

“What are you waiting for then?” And yeah okay, she probably has no common sense left at this point.

“We have guests coming. We can’t start the party without all of our friends present after all.”

“Our friends?” she asks.

Fisk smirks. “Our dear Daredevil has saved you too many times to let you down now, hasn’t he? And I have it on good authority that Mr. Castle has also played your knight in shining armor just a year ago. I’ll be happy to kill two birds with one stone and have that much less vigilantes running interference in my business.”

Karen laughs. An open, frank, loud laugh that visibly destabilizes Fisk.

“What’s so funny now?” he frowns, his voice tense, like he’s barely reigning in his anger.

“Does your good authority knows that Castle is dead?”

“Really? And here I was, impatient to kill him. I guess I’ll have to content myself with Daredevil then.”

Fisk gestures to his lackeys and they all walk back to the door on the other side of the warehouse. They disappear in the darkness and their footsteps echo against the high walls.

She doesn’t dare move until the door loudly close on them. She takes back the shoelace in her mouth and hand and resumes her work. The zip breaks with a snap. She doesn’t wait to start on her left wrist. The slicing goes faster now that she has one hand completely free and it’s not long before the second zip snaps as well. She puts the shoelace back where it belongs quickly, missing half the holes and wrapping the too long strings around her ankle.

She isn’t sure there is absolutely no one watching her, what with all the dark corners in that place, but it’s a risk she has to take. She takes a deep breath, stands up and runs to the nearest shadow. She flattens herself against the crates, listening for any noise. It’s already a trap for Matt, but it could be a trap for her too. She feels like she got out of that chair too easily. Sure, those zip ties are pretty unbreakable for someone who hasn’t checked every single “In Case Of Kidnapping” survival tips but leaving her alone without a guard seems like pushing it. Then again, Wesley left his loaded gun on the table in front of her when he kidnapped her so clearly Fisk’s people aren’t the brightest when it comes to abduction.

Nothing happens. She has to decide where to go. She doesn’t know where the door Fisk and his men took leads and she isn’t keen on ending up face to face with them just now. The outside world is just on the other side of the wall, but the windows are out of her reach and there is a good chance Fisk has more men outside.

What she needs is a gun. She moves from corner to corner but beside a few empty wood crates, there is nothing in the room, not even a crowbar or something vaguely resembling something you could hurt people with. There is a sealed door on one wall and no other way to get out than the only other door. Seems like she doesn’t have much of a choice then. She prowls along the walls and the crates until she’s next to the door. She doesn’t hear anything from the other side, but she also has no idea of how thick the walls and the door has. There could be an army on the other side for all she knows. She squats down and waits.

There’s a soft thud somewhere on her right. She turns her head sharply, scans the darkness around her, expecting one of Fisk’s lackeys to jump on her. Or ninjas. It has been known to happen. Her empty hands make her feel naked, vulnerable. She itches for the comforting weight of her gun against her palm.

She retreats further back in the dark corner, fully prepared to jump the person currently moving around the room. She hears it when they get to the empty chair. The sound of metal scrapping against the concrete floor makes her teeth hurt.

Finally, she can discerns a silhouette, walking toward the door rapidly.

She readies herself. The person reaches her level and she pounces, only for her attack to be easily blocked by an arm clad in red leather.

“Karen, it’s me.”

“Matt?”

Karen drops her arms.

“How do you know I was here?”

“Frank launched a rescue mission. Some guy named Micro told us you’d probably be here,” Matt replies, touching the door in front of them.

“Where’s Frank?” she asks, glancing behind him.

“Clearing the way out with Jess apparently,” Matt says, his head tilted toward something she can’t hear. “Alright, let’s go.”

He opens the door. Behind it is some sort of office with monitors for surveillance camera. There’s a table against a wall, with half-eaten sandwiches on top of it. Whoever was here left in a hurry.

Matt crosses the room, still listening to whatever he’s listening. She joins him on the other side. Her bag isn’t in here, but she sees the handle of a gun sticking out of a jacket thrown over a chair. She grabs it, checks the magazine.

Matt turns to her. Despite the mask, his face is perfectly readable to her: he’s surprised and he doesn’t approve.

“You got your weapons, I got mine,” she says in a tone that leaves no room for discussion.

Matt looks like he wants to argue, but even he can see that now is not the time to debate gun use.

“Okay,” he says.

When he opens the door leading out of this room, the sound he was tracking finally reaches her ears. Rapid fire from semi-automatic weapons, single gunshots from handguns, grunts, the very distinctive sound of a fist meeting flesh repeatedly, a body meeting a wall.

They engage into the hallway, progressing slowly, checking the adjacent rooms for enemies. They only find Karen’s bag, stuffed into a closet. Her gun is still in it, untouched. She slides the bag strap across her body and motions to Matt to keep going. She’s about to berate herself for motioning to a blind man, but he nods and starts walking again.

They end up in a room much like the one she was being held in, only smaller and with more crates. Karen can’t see Frank or Jess from where she stands, but she spots several of Fisk’s men. Before she can take them out or at least wound them, Matt creeps up behind them and knock them out cold. Karen leaves him to it. Between him, Jess and Frank, the other guys don’t stand a fighting chance.

One guy tries to take her as a shield but she’s quick to pistol-whip him. He falls down on the floor like a rag doll.

There’s the sound of footsteps on metal just above her. She moves away from the wall and peers up. Fisk is on the catwalk, flanked by two henchmen, gripping the railway so hard his knuckles are turning white as he looks down at the scene before him. Her blood boils instantaneously. She doesn’t wait for Frank or Jess or Matt to notice him and do something. She immediately points her gun to him and fires. The bullet misses him by a fraction of an inch but it got his attention. He looks down at her, and for half a second, he seems surprised to see her here, ready to put a bullet between his eyes.

“Kill her,” he simply orders his men.

She dives behind a crate while looking for a way up. She hasn’t seen any stairs or ladder since she got into this room but to be honest, she wasn’t exactly touring the place, what with the bullets flying everywhere and all.

She takes a few shots at the men on the catwalk. Fisk is walking away. She has to think fast.

“FRANK!” she shouts, not checking where he is or if he can even hear her. “UP!”

She doesn’t wait to see if he’s understood her. She climbs a couple of crates piled up near the catwalk and jumps. The railway catches her under the ribs, cutting her breathing for an instant, but she’s too busy checking if the goons are still there to really care too much about it. They’re both down, their blood dripping through the metallic grate.

“FISK”, she roars just as the man reaches the stairs at the end of the catwalk, and fires. This time, the bullet reaches its destination and Fisk crumples on the floor with a grunt, his hands coming to his leg.

Karen runs to him. Jess jumps on the catwalk just next to him.

“He’s mine,” Karen warns her, her gun leveled on Fisk’s head.

Jess shows up her hands and positions herself between Fisk and the exit.

Matt is the next to join them.

“Karen,” he says in his too-calm “let’s do the right thing” voice. “It’s over. We got him. We can get him to justice now.”

Karen snorts. “Yeah ‘cause that worked so well the first time.”

There are steps behind her but she doesn’t turn. She knows it’s Frank and it’s only now that she realizes that it’s silent in the warehouse. It smells like gunpowder and blood, but it’s silent, except for Fisk’s grunts.

“We’re not doing that again,” she says, getting closer to Fisk. “We’re ending it once and for all. I don’t want that fucker coming back again.”

“Karen,” Matt starts.

“You heard her, Red,” Frank says. It’s the Punisher speaking and they all know it.

She doesn’t check what face Matt is making. Her entire focus is on Fisk and he is looking right back at her, snarling. He opens his mouth, but before he can start one of his endless monologues, she plugs him in the knee. He howls.

“That’s for Ben,” she states calmly.

“You filthy—”

She puts another bullet in his elbow. His shouting echoes around the empty warehouse.

“Are we really gonna let her do this?!” Matt cries out to Jess. Karen sees her shrug in her periphery.

“You’re not letting me do anything, Matt,” Karen says. “You don’t have the monopoly on vigilantism.”

She squats down next to where Fisk is bleeding out.

“I’m gonna kill you tonight, Wilson,” she tells him. “But before that, I want you to know one thing.” She doesn’t care anymore if Matt sees the monstrous part of her. It had to happen eventually. “I’m the one who killed Wesley. I shot him seven times with his own gun and it was only seven bullets because the gun ran out.”

Fisk snarls and roars, launching his uninjured arm toward her. It’s too clumsy not to see it coming and she swiftly moves out of the way, then points the gun at his head.

“Karen, please, that’s not who you are!” Matt tries to plead again.

She looks up at him with cold eyes.

“You don’t know who I am,” she says, and fires.

Chapter Text

The gunshot echoes in the warehouse for a few seconds before silence falls, blanketing the four of them and Fisk’s lifeless body.

Karen slowly lowers the gun, hyper aware of her breathing, calm, controlled, so different from when she killed Wesley. Killing Wesley was an act of desperation and panic, born from the fear that was shadowing every moment of her life at that time. Killing Fisk was deliberate and thought-through. She had wanted to kill him since she first suspected him to be the origin of that shitshow at the docks. She had known she was going to kill him the moment she had taken the gun from that discarded jacket, had been sure of it when she had seen him on the catwalk.

It was a murder, pure and simple, no gray area about it, no self-defense blurry maybes.

She tears her eyes away from the bleeding corpse. Jess hasn’t moved from her spot but she isn’t frozen like Matt, who Karen has never seen so still, so confused, so at loss for words. His mouth is moving like he wants to talk, but what is there to say? She just killed a man in cold blood in front of him. She just shattered his worldview with a bullet, took everything he knew about her—thought he knew about her and smashed it to pieces. Gone is Saint Karen, pure and innocent, fragile, naive Karen and yet she can see he’s trying to cling to that idea of her, to make sense of what just happened in a way that’ll fit his black and white world, to reconcile his idealized version of her with the person who standing in front of him with the blood of a dead man on her hands—refusing the reality, that reality where she killed a man a couple of feet away from him after admitting to have already killed another one.

Behind her, Frank steps closer, just enough to reach out and touch her arm. She looks at him over her shoulder. His mouth is a thin line and he has blood splattered over his face and neck, but his eyes are kind and warm, asking her if she’s okay without needing to say it out loud. She nods.

“We— we should go,” Matt says tightly.

Karen doesn’t need to have his hearing abilities to know that the police must be on its way. As shady as the docks are, a shoot out will never go unnoticed and unreported.

They exit at the back of the warehouse, in the dark, the lamps above the alley looking like they haven’t been in working orders for years. Jess walks without hesitation toward another abandoned warehouse, this one dimly lit by the few still functioning street lamps of that area. Against one of its walls is what looks like Frank’s truck.

Frank nudges her in that direction too.

“Let’s go,” he says. “Need a ride, Red?” he asks behind him.

Karen turns. Despite the mask, she knows Matt’s doing his own version of staring at them. He weakly shakes his head.

“No, I— I need some air”, he mumbles.

“Suit yourself,” Frank says, turning away and grasping her hand in his as he does so.

They’re halfway home when they see the first police cars heading toward the docks, sirens blazing. They leave Jess near her building and drive the few blocks left in silence, Frank’s hand gripping hers in her lap.

Kafka greets them at the door as if it’s any other ordinary night. Karen crouches down immediately and buries her face in the dog’s neck. She breathes in the familiar scent, listens to the pants and the heartbeat. She exhales shakily. Frank kneels next to her. As soon as he wraps his arm around her shoulders, the dam breaks.

It’s not heavy sobs and whimpers. It’s not tears of sadness, of shock, of pain.

She sags against his chest, releasing Kafka, and the only thing she is able to feel is relief. She hides her face in his shirt. The smell of blood and gunpowder reminds her of another time, when he was still fighting his war and she was still fighting loneliness, when he had tackled her to the floor of her previous apartment, saving her from the Blacksmith’s bullets, when they had found a few seconds of peace in an elevator and she was certain she was never going to see him again.

But he’s here now, real, solid against her, holding her as she comes to the realization that it’s truly over now, that Fisk can’t hurt her or any of the people she cares about because she made damn sure of it. Because she killed him without any hesitation and would do it again in a heartbeat. She truly is a murderer now. No ifs or buts or maybes about it. She took someone’s life in cold blood and she knows the world is a better place because of it.

“Karen,” Frank says softly.

She raises her eyes to his, sees the concern there.

“Hey,” she says. It’s the first thing she says to him since they said goodbye that morning before she left for work, her shouting at him to kill the two goons excepted.

“Hey,” he repeats, his voice breaking slightly.

She cups his cheek, brushes the specks of dried blood on his cheekbone. He closes his eyes and leans into her hand.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

He chuckles without any hint of humor and opens his eyes, looking at her with an intensity she knows is only there when he’s scared of losing her.

“Am I okay? Christ, Karen, I’m not the one who was fucking kidnapped,” he says and drops his head, hides his face in her neck. His arms tighten around her. He’s shaking. She turns in his arms and holds him right back. Hugging each other while sitting on the floor isn’t the most comfortable position but she doesn’t care. All she knows is that they both need the contact, the physical reassurance that the other is okay and if it means kneeling on cold hard floors for hours while Kafka nudges them and licks whatever skin he can reach, then so be it.

“Did they hurt you?” Frank asks hoarsely, his face still against her neck.

“I’m fine,” she soothes. She tugs at him gently. “Frank. Frank, look at me.” He breathes in and out, once, twice, and the air tickles her skin, but he finally straightens up enough to look at her. She slides her hands from his shoulders to his neck, scraping the buzzed hair at the base of his skull. Some tension finally drains from him.

“I’m fine. I’m fine, I promise,” she whispers.

A muscle ticks in his jaw. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down and finally, he nods.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

He holds her against him under the shower spray, his hands roaming over her body, making sure she’s whole and safe and here. She knows that’s why he does it because she does the same as she washes the blood off of him.

“I thought I was going out of my damn mind,” he says as they lay tangled with each other in their bed. She can’t see the detail of his face while in the dark but she doesn’t need to. She knows his eyes and his expressions by heart by now. “You weren’t coming home and then you weren’t— you weren’t answering your phone and I—I—”

She takes his hand and puts it over her heart.

“I’m here now. You found me.”

“David.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He slides closer and tucks her against him, his arms around her, warmth and strengthwrapped against her. He’s always so warm next to her. She closes her eyes, inhales the familiar scent, a mix of laundry detergent, the generic soap they both use and Frank. Kafka jumps on the end of the bed and settles to sleep.

“I love you,” Frank whispers in her hair. “I love you so goddamn much.”

She nuzzles against his chest.

“I love you more,” she mumbles against his skin, not resisting the desire to challenge him about something that has been settled a long time ago.

“Don’t try me, Page,” he warns with a chuckle.

“Wouldn’t dare do that to the Big Bad Punisher,” she says, her words slurring with sleep the more she talks.

He runs a hand in her hair and kisses the top of her head.

“Go to sleep.”

She wakes up to the sound of her phone ringing after what feels like only a couple hours of sleep. She’s alone in the bed. She turns over, trying to find the motivation to leave the warm cocoon of blankets, when Frank enters the bedroom, her phone in hand.

“It’s Ellison,” he says before dropping a kiss on her forehead.

“Thanks.”

She wonders for half a second why Ellison is calling her at 8 in the morning when it’s her day off before the events of the previous night come back in a flash. She clears her throat and takes the call.

“Hey Ellison,” she says. Next to her, Frank mouths “coffee?” and she nods, squeezing his hand briefly as he turns to leave.

“I tried calling you three times this morning, what in the goddamn hell are you doing?” Ellison swears in her ears.

“Uh, sleeping? You know that’s a thing people do when it’s their day off?” she replies. She shoves the blankets off of her and grabs a hoodie.

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

She can’t help rolling her eyes, despite the fact that he can’t see it. Play it cool, she says to herself.

“Whatever, why are you calling?”

She hears Ellison take a deep breath.

“Fisk’s dead.”

She stays silent, waits to see what details he’s going to offer her. When he doesn’t add anything, she lets out a sigh.

“Fuck.”

Ellison barks a laugh. “Pretty much.”

She exits the bedroom.

“What happened?” she asks. Kafka trots happily to her and she sits down on the floor so he can greet her properly.

“He was shot,” Ellison answers. “There was this huge shoot out in a warehouse at the docks. Several people dead.”

Frank glances at her from the kitchen with two mugs in hand. He points at the kitchen island then at the coffee table, a question on his face. She nods to the coffee table.

“That’s it? Who were those people?”

She frees herself from the dog, gets up from the floor only to flop down on the couch. Frank sits next to her and holds out a mug. She takes it with a silent thanks.

“Other than Fisk, all the people found dead were low life criminals. No surprise here. Police is thinking about a deal gone wrong. Or something about territory encroachment. Or someone with a grudge against Fisk.”

“So they have no idea,” she concludes and takes a sip of her coffee. She swears when she burns her tongue.

“What?”

“Nothing, just too hot coffee. Is that everything we know so far?”

“Yep, just wanted to tell you first thing. We’re gonna have to figure out how to deal with your story now.”

She frowns and sets her mug down. “My story?”

“The trafficking? You were sure Fisk was at the top of that right?”

“Yeah, right,” she says. “Shit,” she adds with a sigh a second later. “Who are you putting on Fisk’s death?”

She leans forward, her elbows on her knees and starts massaging her temple. Having a headache was not in her plans for today.

“You know I can’t give it to you, Karen. You have too much history with the guy, you, you’re—”

“Biased, I know,” she finishes for him.

“Listen, here’s what we’re gonna do. Tomorrow, we’re gonna see how we will treat your investigation and in the meantime, you’re gonna enjoy your day off and you’re gonna tell your boyfriend to stop being so rude. Deal? Good.”

Ellison hangs up before she has the time to react to any of it. She puts her phone on the coffee table and turns to Frank.

“What did you do?”

“I may or may not have answered his first call, told him it was fucking 6am and hung up,” he smirks.

She smiles and bumps his shoulder. He barely budges. Instead, he puts the hand not holding his mug on her leg.

“How you feeling?” he asks her, his voice suddenly low and serious.

She swallows.

“I’m—I’m okay,” she starts, her eyes on her coffee. “I don’t regret what I did. I don’t know what that makes of me, but I don’t care. I’m not afraid of it anymore. I think—I think I knew it was going to come to this. I think I’ve been mentally preparing for it since the beginning.”

She raises her head and meets his eyes. She isn’t afraid of him judging her. Never was.

He nods and links their fingers together.

“Just tell me if you need to talk about it. It doesn’t have to be me. Curt could help. You just tell me, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

*

Another gun at the bottom of the Hudson.

*

The police’s conclusion is turf war. Mahoney doesn’t seem convinced when he answers Karen’s questions, but he also seems to imply that no one in the department is exactly hellbent on finding out who truly killed Fisk. Good riddance is what Brett says once Karen clicks the recorder off.

She writes her trafficking story, lays out all of Fisk’s and Mariana’s dirty laundry and isn’t surprised when Interpol comes knocking at her office’s door asking for her to give them her research.

*

She doesn’t have to remember to stop and breathe anymore.

*

She visits Ben’s grave and tells him everything, Frank and Kafka next to her. She doesn’t cry. Her voice doesn’t waver as she tells the cold granite how she put a bullet in Fisk’s head.

*

When Foggy calls a few days later, oblivious to the whole thing, she asks him if he has seen Matt lately, and when he says he has and that Matt seemed weirder than usual but wouldn’t talk, she asks Foggy to come over.

She tells him everything, about Wesley, about Fisk, because he deserves it, because she’s done having secrets, because she wants him to know who she is, who she really is, even if it means shattering their friendship. There have been too many lies between the three of them. If Matt wants to keep it up, fine, but she won’t go down that road again.

Foggy listens to her with the face of someone who just got punched in the guts. They get drunk on whisky afterwards and he sleeps on her couch.

In the morning, he complains about Frank’s coffee being too strong and Frank threatens to not give him any pancakes if he keeps it up. Karen laughs despite being hungover and she knows they’re going to be fine.

Foggy leaves their apartment with a smile and Karen doesn’t feel the urge to triple lock the door immediately after.

“You good?” Frank asks, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Yeah. Yeah I am.”

She joins him in the kitchen and steals the mug from his hands, takes a sip of the barely warm coffee.

Kafka sniffles in his sleep and his paws bat at the throw pillow next to him.

Her apartment doesn’t look like a crazy investigator’s anymore, the walls white and empty, the floors no longer covered with cardboard boxes and loose papers.

She can feel Frank’s eyes on her, waiting. She leans against his shoulder and he kisses her forehead.

“Now what?” she says, barely above a whisper.

“Now we live.”