Chapter Text
-Saturday-
They find her floating naked in deep waters, just before sunrise.
There is bruising along her neck and dark purple handprints trailing down her arms when Frank manages to fish her out. She's breathing, albeit with water in her lungs - the wheeze in their ears loud and bubbly. David turns, already disappearing into the stairway to reach below deck, calling to wake Curtis.
He notes the blue shade of her lips and the way her blonde hair drapes over his arm like silk before settling her on the bow of the ship. Two of the vets still have their eyes on her, and he hurries to remove his coat to cover her from further scrutiny. “Back to work,” he barks. “Yeah? Go away from us.”
“She okay?” Jimbo is dancing from foot to foot, his chin lifted towards her legs. Frank spots a trail of cracked and dry, red skin along her bruised thighs and over her knees. It flakes away in bubbling layers of half moons down her calves.
He turns to look at the remaining vets on deck before sighing. His mouth is set flat before he nods his head in a direction of get outta here, a hand pressing the coat flush to the fiberglass floor beside her. “I'll let you know after Curtis gets a look at her, all right?”
-
“Why's it always something with you?” Curtis grumbles quietly, waving Frank back. He sets down his medkit and rubs at the corners of his eyes before shaking his head, lowering to his good knee and giving the woman a brief scan over her face for additional injuries. She is still wheezing. “Why's it always gotta be when I'm trying to sleep, huh? Hey, miss?” He snaps his fingers briefly by her ear. “Can you hear me?”
Curtis moves the heavy jacket off from her shoulders a little when she doesn't respond, and Frank watches as the crease in his forehead appears to deepen. In the early light, they can see the bruise across her neck a bit more clearly. Deep shades of purples and blues trail across her throat and as he takes away her cover, Curtis’ fingers hover slightly over the slope down her arms. He meets Frank's eye and makes a fist, his thumb poking out, his right hand crossing over to compare the plum-sized markings. “Christ,” Frank mutters softly. She was held before this, and held hard.
“Get her below,” Curtis commands, now locking his kit and prepping to stand, waving a finger over her chest. “She's got water in there, and I need the kitchen table for this.”
Frank lifts the woman once more, careful to avoid the rash on her legs because god knows what that's about, but it looks painful nonetheless. David reappears to hold the door open and her right arm drops from its place on her stomach and swings loose. He gets them down the steps and quickly through the short metal hallway before he can feel a deep vibration against the arm on her back.
“Shh, shh, shh,” he starts, wedging the kitchen door open with a boot and spotting Curtis shaking out one of his shirts. She is stirring - eyes squinting against the overhead light, her mouth opening in a grimace, a low and painful whine escaping. “Hey, hey.” Her hand comes up to grip at his, nails clawing into her own waist as she tries to get out of his hold from under the coat. “Easy,” he tells her, and sets her down on the table.
The woman’s legs pump wildly a few times when he lets her go and Curtis catches her foot before his prosthetic is kicked out from under him. “Hey, ey hey,” he shouts, a hand out to placate her. His training is kicking in. “You're okay, okay?”
“Go,” she gasps, mouth opening wide and baring her teeth, “go, go.”
“You're safe,” Frank says loudly, catching her left hand mid-swing in his direction. “Curt's gonna check you over,” he tells her, only now noticing the familiar red stains across her knuckles and down her wrist.
“She's in shock, Frank,” Curtis says.
“You,” Frank tries, and it's weak and hesitant as he spots the burgundy-brown shade deep beneath her nail beds. God, what happened to her, he wonders.
“I go,” she repeats roughly.
“ Stop - hey. Listen to me, all right? You were practically dead in the water.”
Her blue eyes are wide as they track his and fall to the spot his fingers have wrapped around her hand to meet her palm. She's still breathing fast, bubbles popping in her chest as Curtis lets her know he's a medic, and they're nowhere near land for her to go anywhere else.
She lets out a soft, eerie wail between breaths and reaches up to gently touch her throat with her free hand. “C’mon,” Curtis says to her pitifully, releasing her foot when she finally stills. “Let me check you out, okay? Then you can rest up.” It's reminiscent of how he spoke to Frank when he convinced him to take this trip instead of trying to isolate himself in the lighthouse he's taken residence in for yet another weekend. I know you hate fishing, man, just - come out with us. Get some sun. It'll be good for you.
She locks up in his grip and Frank instantly starts to rub a thumb over the back of her hand to soothe her before realizing it. Her eyes squeeze shut, and her face turns towards him, into the crook of her raised arm at the motion. She rips herself from his hold with a huff after a moment and he has to take a step back when she settles her palm onto the table between them. “You got this?” he thinks he asks Curtis, feeling a bit lost for a minute, the familiar rush in his ears getting loud. Memories of late night whispers and soft hands in his hair after a nightmare flood to the front of his mind and he needs to just stop gasping for air, god, how long has it been now?
The jacket falls away as Curtis cautiously helps her into the large tee in his hands. Her steely gaze does not stop following Frank around the room until he settles in the dinner chair he’s since dragged into the corner, a hand coming up to rub at his eyes.
“Frank, where are you right now? Don't -” Curtis’ head whips back and forth from the blonde on the kitchen table to him, fingernails gripping at the longer ends on his stubbled cheek, eyes shut, head shaking side to side. “Goddamnit Frank, I need you here.”
“Here,” the woman echoes. It is angry and tired and her tone sounds just like him all at once - and then she coughs loud and wet, droplets of water spilling down her chin and onto her shirt. Curtis quickly grabs for a dishtowel from the small counter beside the sink - with a small triumphant sound in his nose - and hands it out to her. It drops onto her lap and she hisses painfully at him when it rubs against the growing rash on her thighs. One of her hands swipe in his direction. “Go.”
“Frank,” Curtis grinds through his teeth, taking a step back from the table.
“Yeah,” he mutters after taking another breath. His hand races across his jaw and up the side of his face before he looks in their direction, away from his thoughts. “Yeah, I know.” The woman wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand as she leans away from Curtis, trailing a rusty red stain across her cheek. “Hey,” he tells her softly, shaking his head slowly and finally getting to his feet again. “Don't, don't do that. You gotta -”
He points to the towel within her reach and watches as a bloody fist brushes it off of her and towards him, her gaze hard. It falls to the floor at his feet and he chucks it at Curtis.
“Gotta clean yourself up, all right?” He's staring at her hands again, dried blood caked between her fingers, even. His eyes trail up her arms, noting the handprints marking the inside of her elbows, the bruises and the dark rash climbing up to disappear under the shirt to her shoulders. Curtis hands him the towel again - this time damp - over her knees. Scuffs and rocky scrapes cover spots where the bubbling rash hasn't reached. The half-moon layers of flaky skin on her calf are covered in shiny blue and green bruises.
The six of them have been on open waters for less than twelve hours since leaving from the docks the night before. It was supposed to be a pretty easy weekend for them on the ship - an older commercial fishing vessel Curtis had inherited from his family. He looks her over, and can’t even recall if he had been able to see shore at all when he spotted her pale body appear on the port side. Frank suspects this is not going to be easy in any sense of the word.
He raises the rag in his grip tentatively, motioning towards the blood streak on her face. Her eyes briefly narrow at the towel but she doesn't shy away when he starts to wipe away the stain. His fingers are gentle as she allows him to come closer and hold her jaw still, settling his thumb on the butt of her chin.
Her gaze follows the cloth as it moves and her nose twitches like a bunny when it gets too close. It feels out of place right now to chuckle, but the silent bubble of it climbs up through his chest anyway. As the towel drags across her face his eyes track the way her lips worry together, the cold blue disappearing, a waking of bright pink color flushing her mouth.
Curtis lines the counter beside him with bandages and ointments from his medkit, muttering to himself as he digs.
When he gets the red off her cheek, Frank moves to lift and clean the hand closest to him. She pulls back before he can reach. Stubborn, he thinks lightly, but he keeps his hand out in wait, the towel in the other. She stares at it, then at him. Her eyes have turned a shade of dark blue in the fluorescent kitchen lighting, and he watches as they trace his face, pausing on his nose and then up towards his hairline. Her gaze then levels with his.
The damp cloth turns cold by the time she lifts her chin, her chapped lip jutting out just a tad. She huffs quick and looks around the room, wary attention on Curtis’ back, on the door to the hall, on the way the waves slap against the ship's window. Her eyes meet Frank's again as she then slowly places her hand into his, linking their fingers.
“ Jesus Christ, look at you.”
“Look at you,” she whispers with just as much wonder.
-
He leaves to get her some pants. She had tracked him as he moved around the room after he could finally scrub the blood away from her wrists. He knew she couldn't leave the kitchen without them, needing to only glance once at the length of her shirt and how it pooled shortly over her thighs as she continued to sit on the table. She is just as tall as he is.
The amount of blood gathered on that dishrag, her knuckles, god, they all should be concerned with how she happened upon them. Where it all happened before he spotted her drifting too close. Fuck, what happened. An unconscious woman, he thinks, by herself in the water. On a fishing boat in the middle of the ocean - however many miles away now they are from land - full of some pretty fucked up vets, goddamnit, the sight of her on that deck. The bruises, the peeling skin, the blood -
He leaves to get her some pants.
“She all right?” David is leaning in the doorway to the four-bunk bedroom they both shared with Curt. A forearm rests high on the frame, his thumb pointing behind him towards the kitchen. He's been hovering.
Frank knows he's got a pair of sweats with him to sleep in and can't for the life of him remember where he tossed them when he woke up. There's a scramble to grab his duffel under the bunk and he takes a peek at David before he tosses it onto the mattress and unzips to rifle through it. “Hey, uh, do me a favor, all right?” Toiletry bag, boxer briefs, his knit beanie, a couple pairs of boot socks, some long sleeve shirts, god, fuck -
“What are you doing?”
“Can you go check the radar?” Frank asks sharply, pushing, pointing in the general direction of the comms and control room, now flipping the pillow on the bed to look beneath, revealing his gun. “For the uh, closest ships,” he says as he doesn't think further about it - checking the magazine, then for one in the chamber - tucking it into his jeans.
“Frank , ” David says quickly, his eyes uncertain as he steps into the room, a hand rising to scratch through his floppy hair.
“The distance from shore,” he continues, roughly sliding a hand beneath the comforter. “Any, in any direction, yeah? The hell are they?”
“What are you looking for?”
“My goddamn,” he breathes through his nose, standing to look back at him. “My sweats. I wore'em last night.”
David shakes his head briefly. “That's not exactly what I meant.” He nods his head once anyway and points to the ladder to the top bunk, his bunk, where Frank's gray pair is folded neatly over a rung. With a tight thanks, he pulls them off and shakes them out. “Hey,” he's calling him back, “is she okay?”
He leaves to get her some pants.
-
She's eating some of their catch from the night before when he makes his way back to the kitchen.
Raw.
With bare hands.
Picking a thin bone from her teeth and flicking it away.
It clatters across the floor towards him like a skipping stone and Frank drops his boot over it to stop it. Her ass is still bare to the kitchen table as fish meat falls in chunks onto her lap. Frank looks to Curtis, who is pinching the bridge of his nose from the seat he's previously vacated, defeat written all over his face.
“She said she was hungry,” he tells him plainly.
“You couldn't make a peanut butter sandwich or something?” She tosses another bone away and he can hear it touch the ground as she picks and chews at some fallen pieces on her shirt. “Had to go and give her a whole fish?”
Curt's arm raises in her direction, his voice low as Frank peeks at her. “Didn't give me much of a chance to cook it.” He wrings the sweatpants in his hands and wipes his face briefly, stepping closer to her. She's managed to pluck another bone from the head of the carcass, this time setting it down beside her. “Snatched it right outta my hands. Frank, something isn't right, here.” Her legs are dangling off the edge of the table now, swinging lightly by her ankles. “You guys found her out there in the water, right?”
He sets the pants down beside her with a pat and he watches as she wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand, a pleasant and tiny hum in her chest as she swallows and follows his arm. “I got you these.”
Frank turns to look back at Curtis. He's trying to figure the next thing to say, trying to not think of where his mind could be heading, because Curt can usually be right about most things, nowadays, and he always gets that smug look on his face when -
The blonde takes a heap of fish from her lap and thrusts it below his nose, a tiny smile curling at the edge of her lip. “Ahh,” he groans, taking a step back. His arm automatically comes up in defense, holding her wrist away, avoiding where the chunk falls from her grasp and by his boots. Their eyes meet and hers narrow as if in challenge. “No no,” he says as he releases her with a small chuckle and steps away, “thank you.”
“Frank.” Curtis is behind him now, a hand over his mouth as she begins expertly ripping the small, thin skull from the rest of the meat. It comes away with fish bits still attached, and Frank watches with fascinated horror as she briefly puts it into her mouth as if it were a kid’s lollipop and it comes out clean. “Frank, look,” Curtis’ hand waves over the expanse of her left thigh after the shock wears off, where the spots of blue and green bruises lay.
Except they aren't just bruises. Just below the flaky pink and irritated red skin lies a layer of iridescent scales, a blue oil slick in tone, if Frank could label it anything. His eyes trail over her knees and down her legs in wonder, catching the shimmer growing beneath - and for a moment he forgets everything he's ever learned about the ocean.
“We've dealt with... with aliens from outer space in the city before, Frank,” Curtis mutters quietly beside him. “Something like this ain't so far off.”
“ Goddamnit.” He hates when he's always right.
A finger touches just under his chin and lifts his face - she's looking at him again. Her thumb traces his jaw, nails raking into the short scruff growing on his cheeks. It sends a tingle through his teeth and down into his shoulder and he can't hear anything in his right ear - Jesus, Curtis backs away - as she pets him a few times with the back of her fingers. He goes to stand straight and her hand follows for a second before dropping back to her lap when he moves out of her reach. “Frank,” she says. It's a whisper when she leans forward, like a secret she wants to share.
“Yeah, yeah that's me,” he tells her softly. “That's my name, what's yours?”
He watches as she tips her chin up. The very real and actual bruises still lining her neck are such a contrast to the pale pink color of her cheeks. His fingers twitch, trigger finger alive and ready as it taps against his thigh. Christ, what happened to her. Frank has to hold his own hand before he can tuck it into a pocket to make it all stop. He can see her catch the motion but she merely smiles with her teeth.
Mermaid teeth, he thinks briefly, incredulously. Sharp in places he hadn't been able to notice before when she was scrambling to escape.
“Karen.”
-
Curtis later convinces her to rest and heal.
Karen's hand grips the back of Frank's shirt at his neck as the two of them help her down off the table and she wiggles into the sweatpants. He has to hold his breath for a moment when she catches a finger along the back of his ear as she releases him to stand on her own. His tongue goes numb at her caress.
At one point soon after, her ankle rolls from underneath her as they move out from the kitchen and he grabs at her arm without thinking to stop her fall. A loud, unnatural screech from her throat echoes in the hallway and Frank has to swear through an apology when he lets go.
Her skin holds the ghost-white imprint of his hand for just a moment longer, her breath quick as she turns away, and Curtis shakes his head when he opens the heavy door to their room. “Land legs,” he laughs to himself, his tone filled with unease when he avoids her stare. Karen clicks her jaw at the sound as she makes her way inside the room.
Frank watches her palm rest against the metal bunk frame, sliding it across and rubbing at the tan comforter hanging off the side of David’s bed up on top. She even leans in to sniff it before reaching to touch the water-tight metal frame of the window.
“Better, here,” she mutters after a moment of quiet, and peers at them in the doorway with a satisfied look in her eye. Her breathing is slower now - calm - chest rising with her shoulders. She reaches over and touches Frank's pillow, squishing it hard between her fingers as she sits down on his mattress.
He takes a second to look around. There are two sets of metal bunks on either side of the tiny bedroom. A caged light overhead is old and rusted, swaying and flickering when the ship rocks too harshly. The one lonely porthole nearest his side of the room is left grimy and green with some kind of fuzzy moss Leo brought with her from science class the last time she and her brother were invited. Curtis couldn't scrub it off, and it brings in any sunshine under a grassy cover now. Her words linger in his head as the cot mattress bends under her weight. Better. This was absolute shit.
Her hand hesitantly pets at the wool blanket folded at the end of his bed and his chest tightens at the infinite, unanswered what-if scenarios running across his mind. If a thin-as-paper mattress is better, if she’s fascinated by the light reflected through a goddamned window, what the hell had she been dealing with before?
There's a clatter of shoes upon the metal stairs leading from the deck above and both men turn to see David frantically waving torn computer feed paper high in his grasp. “Hey, uh…” He gestures above. “Hey, can we talk about something here… I -”
Curtis makes the first move out of the room, smacking at Frank's chest as he tells her, “We'll be back later, okay? I gotta change your bandages after this.”
If it’s better here, he thinks - decision made - he’s gonna know all about there. “You and me are gonna have a conversation,” Frank points at her. She's going to tell him everything about the blood, about the bruises. All he wants right now are the names of whatever assholes that could have left her to die, to drown out there in the water. He can recall her whine, the protest of the steps in his process to help, his fingernails trying to dig and clean beneath her own. They stay left alone - still dingy and brown and blood encrusted. The weight of his gun against his hip bone now feels heavy with purpose.
Karen carefully lifts her legs to her chest and curls up on the opposite side of the bed against the wall. She nods tiredly. The hair that's beginning to dry on her scalp falls across her cheek like sunlight as she settles. “Before I go, yeah.” She yawns. Her eyes follow him as he steps back, away into the hall, a knuckle hitting the door when he fumbles to reach the handle and close it. He catches her smiling at the move, at him - brief and shy - and she ducks the side of her face into the crook of her elbow as the door shuts.
He has to stop himself from the ease of it, from smiling back -
“Frank, buddy, let's go!”
-
“- and there's a couple of them out there just circling some tidal islands.” David points in a sweeping motion over the horizon and away from the direction of shore. He adjusts himself in the captain's chair, taking a long swig of coffee.
The late morning sun reveals no ships to the eye, but Frank has checked over the radar again. They're at least 30 miles out from the island of Manhattan. The pinging on the console tells him that the calculated, collective movement of ships making the rounds across the city - they're all looking for something.
“Why is this even important?” David sets his notes down within Frank's reach and rubs at his beard with a yawn. “What are we looking for? Whatever it is, wanna just call Captain Madani?” He nudges at Curtis with a chuckle when he shakes his head, and the other man sucks his teeth, knock it off. “Is that girl okay? Is she awake yet?”
“We're not bringing in the Coast Guard for this, Lieberman, c'mon,” Frank tells him, peering out the window overlooking the bow, waving a hand to drop the idea. “She's gonna be fine.”
He can see the vets sitting lazily on deck, lures in the still water now that they've temporarily stopped. Jimbo’s legs are crossed over the railing and his fishing rod is tucked under his arm. Manny is sprawled across the lounge chair next to him, a book open on his chest, his mouth open in sleep. Terry paces port to starboard bow, lighting a cigarette.
“Day one, right?” Curtis says, crossing his arms and sighing. “Let's just move on, all right, get some fish. Shoot the shit with these guys. Take the girl home when she's good.” He takes a hard look at Frank, his mouth thin and jaw set. He doesn't want to spread the fact around to the others that the girl isn't really a girl.
But Curtis won't say that. They haven't even said the word out loud yet - and David should know, with the way his paranoia goes. He'd try to call Dinah if he doesn't know. That would bring more attention to their little outing than Frank really wants right now.
Just as he lifts his head to tell him so, a hand smacks against the glass from outside and gets their attention. “Hey! Hey, quit dicking around up there, could ya? Something's out here,” Terry shouts, jumping once more to reach the tall window.
The three of them lean over the console to see what is the cause. Jimbo is yanking harshly on his fishing lure, and Manny - now awake - is halfway across the rail, reaching. His foot hooks under the dock cleat as he bends.
It's almost noon. Day one, Frank thinks tiredly.
They pull a corpse from the water.
-
The first thing they notice is the suit. It's expensive, a once-soft black material with a fine silver threaded pinstripe. Some of the buttons have been ripped off.
The second thing they take note of is that it's in tatters. Blood spatter is a pink watercolor painting across the remains of the white dress shirt he wears underneath. Jimbo's hook had been lodged deep into the man's pasty gray cheek and Frank has to yank the kid's shoulder back to prevent him from lowering to his knees to grab for it.
They have to call Dinah. Frank knows it. He looks at Curtis and he knows he knows it too. David nervously grabs at the unbrushed tufts of hair hanging off his forehead and groans low, breathing through his teeth. “We uh…”
Small shards of glass are wedged through one of his eyes but it's the seven separate sets of claw marks that lift the man’s skin from his chest that Frank focuses on most. They are long, and deep enough that he can nearly count the ribs exposed from it. They are long, and deep enough to remind him of the sleeping woman below deck with blood dried beneath her fingernails.
Manny actually mimes his hand as a claw slowly over the body, his eyes unblinking. There’s a collective inhale between them. Frank steps back. Runs a hand across his cheek and into the crew cut of his hair. “I'm gonna head back,” he tells them with another step, glancing at Curtis, “I uh,” Frank points to David. “Call... call Madani.”
Those marks aren't relative to any fish or shark he knows of. If this guy had been mauled by a bear and dropped into the ocean later that'd make more sense, but even still. The angry gashes are too close to be a paw. Manny was right.
“I'm coming in,” Frank tells her when he gets to the bedroom. The metal creaks loud with a rusty whine as he opens the door. She's curled in on herself but sits up with alert as he quickly steps inside and shuts it tight behind him.
Karen's grip on his comforter releases and she scoots to the edge. “Conversation, Frank?”
“Yeah,” he says hurriedly, leaning his back against the cool metal. Nothing in or out, he thinks. His feet stand apart and he's aware of how she swings her hair now, the dirty, browning nails grasping to bring it all over to one side of her neck. “Yeah, time for a conversation.”
The bruises he can see on her arms have faded. They're a bit on the lime green and yellow side of healing, and the ones covering her neck have lessened significantly as well. His right hand lifts to point at them but he lowers it just as fast. It's only been a few hours.
“Why were you out there?” Frank doesn’t think she’s got much of any reason to trust him, but he tries for it regardless. The way she looks his way, however, the way her mouth is set flat and resolved, she’s already come to her decision about him. “What happened to you?”
“I was weak. I couldn't go home,” she tells him. Her hand wraps around a rung on the ladder beside her and strokes it with her thumb, avoiding his gaze. Her voice is smooth now, against her first words on the boat, but they’re filled with anger. Frank tilts his head to catch her eye, a clench of his jaw evident when she huffs. She stares at her toes and wiggles them a few times, eyes narrowing. “I'd been trying to get back when you found me.”
Karen says this as if it were a normal occurrence that she floats naked in open waters, covered in blood. Frank watches as she wraps her arms around her legs and buries her chin between her knees.
“You saw me.” It's a shaky declaration as she says it, but her teeth are bared, as if she is frustrated with the fact. She starts to rock herself on the mattress. “I was seen before. They caught me, too.”
He waves his hand around his neck, and her eyes follow the move. “They do all that?” Karen breathes out, looks around the room before she carefully places the balls of her bare feet on the floor. She nods. Something shifts in his head. “Who are they?”
“Bad men.” Her fingers rub against the bumps in her knees before she wraps her arms around herself. She worries her lip like before, her eyes closing.
He almost matches her soft whisper, but he can hear himself get a bit demanding. “How did you escape?” She stays quiet. “Listen I - I gotta know this, all right? I can't let you go if I don't know.” Frank’s trigger finger reacts against his belt and she follows it briefly before standing to move to the porthole. He holds it still. “I need to know if you're involved with what just happened up on deck.”
Karen's got her own stroking curiously at the moss on the window and it freezes. When she turns around, her eyes are narrowing in challenge. Frank recognizes the assessment she gives him as she crosses her arms and stands with her own feet apart. She’s mocking his stance. Her tongue darts in her cheek, but he's already made the decision to make her admit to it.
“If you just tell me what happened, I can keep you safe,” he says softly. “Something’s going on out there. There's ships out, they’re looking for something. That guy we found, he -”
“He's dead,” Karen grits through her teeth. Her fingers tug at the sleeve of her shirt, a spiral made as she twists, her knuckles white. “Dead, dead. Gone.” He watches as her chin lifts and her jaw moves to the side before she speaks again. Her eyes lower to her hands, but the way her shoulders sharply drop makes him think this is relief for her. “He can't hurt anymore.”
Frank nods to agree. “Who was he? C’mon, tell me what he did.” She looks hesitant, flickering her eyes around the room again. She paces, her hand over her mouth with a slight shake. “What do you think?” He raises his voice only slightly. They’ve got to figure out their next plan of action. “What is it, huh? You think I’ll throw you back in where we found you? Is that it? Because that isn't what's gonna be happening right now.”
She perks up as he speaks. There's a split second where he's distracted by the way her mouth lifts in a smile, then quickly changes into a flash of irritation. He knows he’s being an asshole. He tightens a fist and pushes it into the side of his leg. Focus, Frank.
He points to the ceiling, towards Curtis and David and the rest of them. “They gotta call the police about it. They're gonna end up sending search parties out for more clues and all that bullshit. They could find you, if you’re still out there." He watches her fingers flex quickly as he points again. "Do you wanna risk that?” Karen’s teeth click. “Are you up for that?"
“They can't know,” she says then, stepping forward. “It's too many already. I can't -”
He drops his chin to his chest and thinks maybe it's good that David wasn't in the room with them earlier. Curt might still tell him, though, to keep her situation out of his mouth when Dinah comes later with her crew. He doesn't want to break that to her.
“A man grabbed me from the water,” she explains. “You see me, Frank,” she repeats. “He saw me too, saw me as I am. But he held me down, kept me in the cage.” Karen slowly rubs her left hand over her thigh, another shaky breath leaving her mouth. The other runs through her blonde hair, twisting it away from her sight. “He, they… they pulled at me. My scales, he took my scales.” Her throat echoes a small whine when she turns away from him, lowering herself slowly to the ground by his bed. She keeps rubbing at her leg. “I saw four sunsets when I got to move. They let me swim in a… they called it fishbowl, I think.”
“Jesus Christ,” Frank mutters. He slides his back on the door to sit on the ground with her. It’s the dirt and the gravel that dig sharply into the lines of his palms that remind him of how she had looked at them in the doorway earlier. Calm, settled, happier. Better, here.
“The man you have up there isn't the man who found me,” Karen glances at him, and her mouth lifts in the corner, her shoulders shrugging. She hisses in pain, hand up instantly, clutching at what he knows is a bruise. Her voice turns hard. “But he works for him. He was there. Every day. Made sure I stay put, and stay still. He told me if I ever managed to get away, he’d find a way to hurt everyone I ever cared about.” Frank watches her stare down at her toes again, her eyebrows furrowing as she wiggles them slowly. “He deserved more than what I gave him. The bastard drowned first.”
“Sounds like it,” he says, tilting his head and plucking a piece of lint from his knee. “What's next, then?”
Karen is silent as she turns her head and he feels her look him over. Frank knows she's hearing his easy, nonchalant acceptance, and she bites her bottom lip and squints. In this moment, he would tell her why, if she asked. He would tell her what he's done.
The energy in the room feels charged. Hair on his neck stands at attention as their eyes meet again. She's murdered a man - a man she clearly had not hesitated with doing so, if the depth of his wounds mean anything. A man she could have enjoyed killing again. Frank knows the feeling.
“Fisk,” she reveals. It's not a what, it seems, but a who. “His name is Mr. Fisk.”
-
They have an hour or so to get their story straight.
Karen wears Frank's heavy black cargo coat and someone’s tacky green rain boots after Curtis gets her to finally scrub away the rest of the blood beneath her fingernails. Her mouth opens, nose wrinkling, but the duress is evident on Curt’s face and Frank thinks that's enough for her to turn the faucet on.
He leaves them as Captain Dinah Madani arrives on deck. David carefully wraps a thick, wool pink scarf - another left-behind gift by Leo - around Karen's neck to hide the bruising. She sticks close to him as they wander the small control room. Frank watches the bow from the window.
“She may or may not want to talk to you,” David warns her hesitantly, connecting the zipper on her jacket. “We’ve all been in her crosshairs before this, and you're fresh meat.”
Frank chokes on a laugh.
Curtis directs her crew as they follow her out, pointing off to the starboard side of the bow where they've left the body alone. He can hear the two of them greet each other in clipped tones but the blush creeping on the back of Madani's neck can be seen from his place at the console when Curt smiles lightly. His arm goes up as he says something, and her face turns to follow it, spotting him in the window. Her mouth twitches and she sighs under the shadow of her cap, her eyes flickering to his left.
Karen sways from foot to foot as she keeps her own watch on the dead man in the suit. A few officers in windbreakers take short statements from Manny, Jimbo and Terry.
“Frank,” Dinah calls tiredly, muted enough by the glass. Her hand resting at her hip drops free and then waves at them to come down. “Everyone's gotta make a statement.”
They do this song and dance every once in a while, so her tone is expected. With Frank working and living in the lighthouse off the coast in Hell’s Kitchen this does play a factor sometimes, but it only ever started after they had found the man in charge of a large drug operation shot to shit on the rocks surrounding his home a few years back.
However blatant or mysterious that particular death could have seemed, Dinah didn't fight him on it. The bullets left in that man weren't from any weapon Frank had registered in his possession. If the gun just so happened to have been found days later in shallow waters, away from the current, so it goes - and it solved some open cases they've had to pass to the NYPD.
She’s leaning in towards Curtis as the three of them make their way out of the room and down below. Karen keeps a hand on the wall to steady herself as Frank leads them, and when they hit the landing she moves to his side with wary steps in her new boots.
“Madani, hey, always a pleasure,” Frank says. His arms are open in passive greeting but she rolls her eyes at him.
“Knock it off, Castle. You wanna tell me anything different about this?”
“Ahh,” he groans loudly. Karen smiles beside him, her eyes crinkling. He takes a quick look at her, a little confused at her amused expression, before shaking his head. “We were shooting the shit upstairs, you know? Me and Curt and David, when the kid hooked him.” He shrugs. Can’t lie about that.
Dinah sighs, looking then to Karen, her hand out to shake. “Sorry, I'm Captain Dinah Madani. These are unfortunate circumstances to meet under. What’s your name, where were you in all of this?”
David coughs to clear his throat, elbowing her in the arm. It rises without a beat to meet Madani's, and she nods with a tiny, closed mouth smile. “I am uh… I was sleeping. I'm Karen.”
The story is a simple one, if the Captain before them were to ask why the blonde is here. Frank can see Madani squint against the sunlight for a moment. It’s midday, and she frowns -
Frank wraps his arm around Karen’s thin shoulders and pulls her in. He's careful not to squeeze through the jacket when he hooks her waist. “Only time I get a chance to bring her out here, and now there's a goddamn body on deck,” he shakes his head to scoff. “Moment we get back, right, hit the docks? I'm probably never gonna see this one again. Scarred her for life.”
“I'm sure there'll be other reasons,” Curtis says a little too seriously. Madani chuckles anyway. Frank feels Karen's left hand rest high on his chest, radiating warmth. It’s gentle - the tips of her fingers cradle in the hollow of his collarbone.
Her eyes drop from gazing at his cheek to her fingers, and they spread slowly over his heart. Frank thinks this could just be her playing the part with this new and unprompted touch - the affectionate, feeling his heartbeat - but the thought doesn't escape him that it could also be where she started when she murdered the suit. His hand blindly covers hers to still her movement, and he interlocks their hands on his chest, gripping hers tight.
“You confirm ID on this guy, yet?” David asks. “We're barely halfway now to where we gotta be to get -”
“Lieberman,” Madani’s eyes narrow, her fist tight. “It's a body. This guy was a person, give a little -”
Frank does not miss when he feels Karen lock up.
“Uh, yeah.” There's a crew member digging in the remains of the suit pockets with gloves, sliding down the corpse to the pants. He barely locates a wallet before he nods his head a few times. “Yeah, this is James Wesley.” It's dripping and still carrying seaweed when he's able to wiggle it out from under his butt, checking the license. “Wilson Fisk put that missing persons report out yesterday, remember?” The guy shakes his head slowly, hands at his side as he stands. “God, Captain, he's gonna be so torn up about this.”
“Nice. Nice pun, Sam. Thanks.”
There's a quick, angry hiss escaping from Karen's throat before Frank realizes it. She covers her mouth, getting closer, ducking her face into his shoulder. He settles a hand at the top of her scarf, feeling her soft hair under his palm. “Go,” she whispers urgently, “go, go.”
He walks her back downstairs.
-
It's a while before they're able to remove the man from deck, but the Coast Guard leaves them a few hours later. They scrub the area down, log the time and location, and Madani says goodbye to Curtis with a tentative shoulder squeeze. David pushes the boat forward while Manny and Terry monitor the radar for wayward vessels. They count 2 more on the waters nearest Fire Island after there is a call to local authorities on land for a body retrieval team.
“Madani confirmed all that shit out there, it's Fisk's fleet,” David tells them once they've gotten farther out into open ocean and Frank and Karen have since moved back up on deck. The sky is pink, the sun starting to set, and he breathes out through his mouth. He keeps staring at his feet and then back at Karen through sideways glances. “They're still uh... looking for something, that's sure enough. Won't spill as to what, over the radio, though.”
Frank moves away from his spot against the stern's railing and catches his gaze. Curt told him about her at some point during the day, it seems. “Hey,” he mutters, checking the erratic twitch in his wrist and then David’s tight grip in the mop of his hair. “You good?” Karen's paying no mind to them as she sits on the deck, trying to dip a booted toe into the racing water below, her arms resting against the rail in front of her. David nods a few times, leaning. Frank grabs hold of his tan jacket to keep him steady in his sway. “Keep it together, all right?”
“It's just… I mean, she's -” he barks a laugh, which causes Karen to stop extending her foot and turn to look at him. His hand is wiggling like a wave - like a tail. He freezes and Frank turns too, seeing her smile lightly but still gripping the rail a bit too tight.
“Yes,” she tells him softly.
“I mean, logic here, right? Though?” David starts to back up and out of Frank's grip, shaking a finger. He paces the length of the stern. “We had aliens -”
“Curtis said that too,” he says.
Snapping his fingers, pointing skyward, “- and the Norse gods, those guys. Have those too.”
“Still technically aliens.”
“The ocean is just, vast. Right? I get that. It's like… ninety-five percent of it, just - unexplored.”
“Can you stop shouting, Lieberman? Christ.” Frank wipes at his face before letting his hand slide up into his hair. They may be on open water miles from shore but they also have three very compliant and unsuspecting younger vets on board. They were all there. They all saw him pull her from the water in the first place. They all decided not to ask any more questions when he asked them to keep her on the down low from the Coast Guard. That can still change - none of them owe him anything.
“Sorry,” he says, taking a breath. His arms are out in a placated surrender, and he turns to face Karen. “Oh, my god. Sorry.”
“You all right?” Karen, whispers, concern dripping in her voice. When David laughs, yeah, yeah, his gaze wide and cast down for a moment, her face changes. Frank sees the way her cheeks lift with a smile, the way her eyes sparkle with amusement towards him. She chuckles with a shake of her head. It’s a good sound after the day she had.
Frank claps him on the shoulder when he looks up again. “Okay, buddy.”
“I'm gonna -” His voice is quieter. David starts to walk away, back towards the bow, a thumb pointing. “Jimbo’s doing dinner soon.”
“Okay,” he repeats.
“Call you when it's done.”
“Okay.”
Karen is still smiling shyly when Frank sighs, his elbows against the rail again. He runs another hand through his short hair, watching as David disappears. “Conversation, Frank?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he's gonna want to, later, probably.”
Her leg adjusts against the deck with slow movements to face him. A tiny hiss escapes her lip as she settles again. One hand touches the railing, fingers tapping out an echoing and unfamiliar beat. Karen looks up at him expectantly. Oh. Carefully, he tucks himself into the other side of the railing beside her, sliding his legs through. The backs of his boots thunk on the hull.
She's quiet for some time. Her pensive stare is on the coming horizon before she rests her chin against her forearm, facing him. He shuts his eyes, feeling the spray below them splash against his cheek. “He's out looking for me, then,” she tells him. “Fisk will know. He'll go after my… my friends. That's what Wesley said.”
Frank has to interlock his fingers as his elbows rest on the rail so he can't make a fist. Fisk is - last he heard, anyway - buying up old rental properties to revamp them all over Hell's Kitchen with his wife. He knows of the going-ons before, down in the warehouse district, with the drugs, the trafficking and the Russians and all their bullshit, too. Enough of it had him wanting to puke. What's he want with her?
“I came just a little too close to the surface this time,” she says then. It's a second, where she swallows, gathering herself to sit up straight. “Got my tail caught deep in a net. They dragged me in, you know, dried me out. They tied me down to this board until I wore myself out - I'm… I'm screaming, my throat, and they put me in the fishbowl, Frank, again and again, and they held me against the glass and just -”
“Jesus.”
“- scratched me away for days.”
Frank breathes out, a heavy and boiling sensation growing deep in his chest. It's familiar.
Karen bites her lip, bringing a hand down to rub at her thigh like she had all morning. “I guess - they weren't really hiding what they were doing when I was in there. Collecting from me, and their… their tools. They were all,” she touches the railing with a stroke of her thumb, “cold metal. I just, I knew, I could, I could tell that I wasn't going - oh -”
She's got tears in her eyes, burying her cheek into her elbow. The eerie wail she gave them earlier is back, low and haunting as it carries away in the wind now. Frank feels it crawl over his skin and into his bones and coat the marrow. If he thinks hard enough, it's an old friend.
Her entire goal right now is to go back there, wherever that may be, and finish Fisk off. He knows it's going to be dangerous, going against him. Highly improbable, too. Needing to know everything about where he is and who is nearby, the way she'll go about it, how she'll be able to get out once the job is done -
“They kept, they were calling me Blue,” she whispers. Karen pulls back her dangling leg and watches him mimic the move, facing her head on. His back touches a storage bench. “Like I wasn’t anything.” He looks at the way her mouth settles flat, her eyes distant as the sun lowers, the sky getting darker each minute. Her jaw is clenched. She's gotten no peace in what's happened so far, but he knows just by looking at her, she's willing to risk herself again to claim it.
He'll ask Lieberman to take a look into Fisk when they're all back at shore again and they’ve got the resources. It’s not his first rodeo. This guy’s a shitbag has-been mob boss, but if he’s able to do something like this… If he's got a team of people doing this, it's probably one of his old warehouses where -
Karen reaches towards him, pulling him out of his head. Before he can even react, her thumb rubs gently down the side of his face. She’s tracing the lines his furrowed brow makes, the crinkle in his eye - and he lets her, reveling in the way his skin wakes, the way the blood in his ears roar. Goosebumps glide down his back, and it chills him further in the sea air. She drags her fingers through the scruff growing on his neck. A small hum vibrates in her chest as their eyes meet. It's relieving, and he doesn't deserve it.
Her hand drops to his bent knee as she scoots closer to him. It grounds him here, in this moment, and nowhere else. Karen crawls into his space without another word and rests a shoulder against his chest. She doesn’t even hesitate when her arm stretches between the rails, fingers dancing against the spray. Frank thinks they’re a sight, their bodies sprawled out on the deck as the stars begin to brighten the sky.
He can tell she's still in pain, though. She's still rash-red and flaking under the sweats, and she wants to get rid of Fisk. He points over to her thigh when she drops her other hand from his leg. “Is that any better?”
Slowly, Karen pulls back a pant leg with her free hand to reveal her left calf, instead. It's turned a darker shade of blue since the last glance he got, and the previously flaky red skin around her knee has turned to a smooth, pale pink. The shimmer below is growing out like a spider's web. “Time away, and the water helped some,” she tells him, and pats the fabric back down to let it pool at her toes. Karen leans her head back against his shoulder and breathes deeply. “But time is all it is.”