Chapter Text
She can barely tell the difference any more between her reality and her nightmares. They seem like one and the same. Always hunted, always haunted, by both the living and the dead.
It was him or me, him or me, him or me, Karen repeats in her mind over and over again, like it could give her any absolution, any peace.
She gives up on her makeup after a few weeks. It doesn’t cover the damage she’s done to herself, so there’s really no point. Her eyes are always blood-shot and rimmed with red circles, her nails and lips are bitten ragged, her skin is deathly pale, her hands shake when she’s not paying attention. There’s no point in pretending to be whole. She hasn’t the energy.
At night she puts herself to bed with a bottle of bourbon and the .38 under her pillow. She wakes with her finger caressing the trigger and she hates how easily the weapon fits in her hand, how much comfort she takes from its presence. At the same time she chokes back revulsion and terror, the mere touch of metal enough to create the scent of blood, the bloom of red on white cotton, the lolling of a head on a silent chest, the slump of a lifeless frame.
Karen knows what monsters look like. Hard not to recognize your own kind when it’s the face you see in the mirror every morning.
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The air in the office has felt just slightly warmer since before they put Fisk away. He knows it’s the heated flush from Karen’s skin, that every morning before she enters the building she dumps a splash or two of Crown Royal in her coffee, that her water bottle is rarely filled with water anymore in favor of Grey Goose.
Once or twice a day, he catches the scent of tears from her desk, hears the smallest hiccuping sobs as she types away at the computer or manages the files.
When he says good morning and asks how she is, he’s not even surprised that her heartbeat doesn’t change when she says she’s fine. A person can get so used to being not-fine that it becomes their default, their normal and Karen has been fractured for months now. She keeps herself so numb.
Every night when they leave the office, Matt starts to ask if there’s anything he can do for her, but she’s always painfully still and quiet as she gathers her things and moves to the door, as if keeping still and quiet could keep her from shattering completely. He’s afraid that upending her equilibrium might be worse than letting her keep on. Besides, everyone has their secrets, himself included, and she’s more than entitled to hold onto or let go of hers. He won’t press.
One night he finds one of his dad’s old boxing buddies, drunk to death beneath an underpass and he feels the breath leave his lungs.
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She runs her hand over the edge of the book in her lap while the other swirls the dark liquid in a no longer full enough bottle. It takes so much now to get her hazy and unfeeling, but she’s always been persistent and the night is young enough. Every time she blinks he’s sitting there, dead and dripping red in the corner of her bedroom, hooded eyes staring blankly back at her.
Karen almost pays no mind when her window creaks open, thinking she’s just hitting the sweet spot right before she can drift off, but then there’s a dark shadow crouching on the sill, framed by her white curtains flickering in the breeze.
She blinks slowly at it as it inches into the light and she can see red horns and eyes swathed in blackness. Tears begin falling loosely down her cheeks as she reaches under her pillow and finds the gun, pointing it at the apparition.
“I knew I was going to hell, I just thought I had a little more time. But I must be some special kind of damned for the Devil to escort me himself,” she slurs as she cocks the gun, “Maybe if I put up a bit of a fight, we can make friends.”
“Karen,” the figure says in answer, voice low and rough as he raises his hands in surrender, “I’m not a hallucination or any supernatural being. Do you remember me? That night a man tried to kill you in your apartment, I was there to stop him.”
Her hand wavers but she doesn’t drop her aim. “Oh, you’re him. The mask. Or whatever they call you these days. That was when I was better. Now… You’re supposed to punish people like me, right? Liars, murderers, bad bad people. So come on. Punish me. I deserve it. I deserve it.” She tilts her tear-stained face upwards, eyes absently searching the ceiling for some imagined divine condemnation, tongue swiping at the tears that skate across her lips.
His voice suddenly sounds pained, almost anguished. “Karen, I’m not here to punish you, I promise. I just want to talk. Could you put the gun down? Please? I promise, everything’s okay.”
She nods and moves to set it on the bedside, but quicker than it seems she’d be able in this state, she brings it back up and presses it to her temple. His sharp intake of breath grates at her ears and she presses the barrel harder into her skin.
“Maybe I should just punish myself, take the coward’s way out and let the universe deal with me. I’d rather not give anyone else the satisfaction. Certainly not one of Fisk’s men and if you can find me so easily then I’m as good as dead anyway.”
“Karen, wait,” he begs softly as his hands tug the mask from his face, “It’s me. It’s Matt. Please, let’s talk, okay?”
Her hand drifts slowly downwards until the gun lies harmlessly in her lap. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut and scrubs at her face with her free hand, her silent tears evolving into violent sobs.
“Matt… No. No, no, no, no, no, this is so much worse than dying. Oh God, I never wanted you to know, never wanted you to hate me, oh God and now you know. I wish I was dead. You and Foggy, you’re so much better than this, you deserve so much better. It would be better for everybody if I was dead,” she rasped, hand curling loosely around the gun.
Slowly, so slowly, Matt eases all the way into her room and kneels beside her bed. He covers her hand with his own, coaxing the weapon from her grasp and setting it a safe distance away. Still holding her hand, he angles his face to where he approximates hers must be and waits a few heavy moments.
“Karen, why do you think you deserve to be punished? Why would Foggy and I hate you?”
“Because I shot a man dead,” she answers plainly, her lovely face twisted and torn by misery.
“Will you tell me what happened?”
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“…and I just kept shooting him, Matt, I just kept shooting. And then they killed Ben and it’s all, it’s all my fault. My fault.”
“I think you did the best you could in a bad situation, Karen. I think there wasn’t an easy choice at all and I’m so glad you chose yourself.”
She scoffs and turns away from where he now sits beside her on the bed, feeling so small and scared under his sightless stare. “I didn’t have to kill him. You know I didn’t. It was… It was bloodlust. I wanted to kill him for taking me and hurting me and threatening you and Foggy. I didn’t have to kill him but that’s what bad people do, Matt.”
He places a light hand on her shoulder. “And then what? He was able to chase you? Able to call reinforcements, let Fisk and everyone under him paint a target on your back that very second? You’re not bad, Karen, you’re a human being.”
She's silent for a long while before she turns back towards him. “At least then I wouldn’t see him in my dreams. At least then my hands would be spared of his blood. At least then I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be suffering any more. There’d be emptiness, silence, and I could rest.”
“Karen,” he says softly, “I get what you mean. That animalistic urge towards bloodshed. But punishing yourself for a choice you were forced to make and then executing your decision as best you could is just not kind to yourself. You were caught in a storm and you survived.”
“Oh God, please tell you me you haven’t killed anyone, Matt. You’re too, too good for that.”
His hand drifts down the length of her arm and laces with her fingers. The room is blanketed with a heavy, charged silence, feeling very much like the sort of air that causes heat lightning on a damp summer evening.
“I haven’t, but I’m really not, Karen. I’m not. Do you remember when I was really badly hurt and Foggy told you I was hit by a car? I went out to find the people that killed Elena and I went out to find Wilson Fisk. I wanted to kill him that night. I tried and I think I would have succeeded if I hadn’t been thrashed within an inch of my life just beforehand. I know how you felt, Karen. I know that twisted sense of triumph. I wanted him bloody and suffering before I killed him. And then the next morning I was sick to my core because of that feeling. What I can’t know is how it feels to have gone through with it but I think that I couldn’t have handled it. I think you’re ten times stronger than me, Karen. This painful life is all choices and happenstance and we’re caught in the middle of it but you faced them both and made it out alive.”
“But I’m not handling it. Every day since I did it I’ve drifted in and out of wanting to die. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Me dying. No one would miss me. I’m unimportant and I’m a murderer.”
“Even if any of that was true, more than anything you would miss out on yourself, Karen. Honestly, Foggy and I would miss you desperately. I would hate myself for the rest of my miserable life if I knew what was happening to you and I couldn’t do anything to help stop it. I love you and Foggy loves you but none of that matters if you don’t love yourself. If you killed yourself, you’d never get the chance to see all the great things you’re going to do, the great person you’re on your way to becoming. You’re more than important. You’re irreplaceable.”
With that, her tears overflow like a river after a pounding thunderstorm, and she curls against him, seeking shelter. They stay like that for a long time while she sobs herself dry and he strokes her back. He can tell that she's on the verge of sleep and is reaching down to pull the blankets back over her when she speaks.
“You’re staying, right? Please…”
“I’m always staying, Karen. I’m not going to quit on you,” he answers softly, tucking her quilt around her back.
She sighs contentedly, whispering a thank you as she starts drifting off again. After a minute or so, he hears her mumble, “In the morning, when I’m sober, you are in so much trouble for lying to me, Daredevil.”
He laughs. “Okay, Karen. That’s fair. But also in the morning, when you’re sober, we’re going to find a nearby AA and you’re going to start attending.”
He feels her smile lazily as she tucks her head against the joint where his arm meets his shoulder.
“Love you too, Matty,” she mumbles, and then she's out, and he's so grateful that she can't hear the little stutter that his heart gives at the sound of that old nickname on her lips. Finally, he falls asleep cradled by the sound of her even breath and the scent of her hair and the warmth of her soft skin.