Chapter Text
Trying to decide how much to tell the police proved to be an unrelenting pain in Karen’s ass, worsened because the problem kept coming up, over and over again, especially every time Frank Castle crashed his way through her life. Some amount of lying became her norm, on a sliding scale from just don’t tell them anything to tell them almost everything.
After Frank left her in her apartment, after she finished shaking, she pulled herself into the bathroom and considered the best choice for this time. Obviously, she’d need to tell the cops something. She’d left behind a lot of DNA in that shitty apartment, as near as she could remember. And there were the dead bodies to consider. Best to leave Frank out of it altogether, dead man that he was to the public. As for her face… it could have been worse, all told. She could hide most of it, though the cut through her eyebrow was going to be a hell of a thing to manage.
She could call Matt, or Foggy.
But. That was a whole teetering pile of shit she didn’t feel up to balancing at the moment.
Karen went for her phone, instead, charging now. She flipped through possible contacts, biting her lip, distracted when the phone buzzed with an incoming message.
Hey, Foggy sent, you up yet? watch your commute. big fire out at some apartment building over your way.
And no, surely not.
Karen checked anyway, looking for the most recent information, catching it on a wake-up radio show, some woman Karen used to listen to, back when her life kept more stable hours. The building she’d been in was burning, fast and hot, despite the efforts of the first-responders and all the fire trucks that followed. Karen sat on her floor, biting at her thumb nail and listening to the weather report when it came on.
Looked like this was going to be a say nothing situation, after all.
#
Karen elected to work from home. Her face could use the extra time to absorb the worst of the bruises and her knee hurt like hell when she tried to stand for too long. She was researching the relative pain-relieving effectiveness of a bag of frozen peas against the blossoming bruise on her jaw when someone knocked on her door. Her gaze skittered towards her gun—she’d brought it out and set it on the counter—and Matt called through the door, “Karen? Hi. It’s, uh, it’s me.”
Karen swore under her breath and placed her .380 in the silverware drawer as quietly as she could. He probably still heard it. Damnit. And it wasn’t like she could pretend she wasn’t here. Her heartrate no doubt gave her away while he was still down on the street. She shoved her hair back, tugged her shirt straight, and made for the door.
Matt frowned on the other side, his head cocked to the side, a little furrow between his brows. He asked, “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
“No you’re not.” Matt stepped forward and reached out, touching her cheek. She hadn’t adjusted yet to how easily he could do that, when he wasn’t stopping himself. “What’s wrong with your voice?” He took a deep breath. “Is that—that’s blood.” He stuck a hand back and closed the door quickly, before reaching for her shoulders, tracing her arms, going soft but quick, looking for injuries. “Karen, what happened?”
“Would you believe I ran into a door?”
He huffed at her with no evidence of amusement. It’d been a shitty joke. He demanded, “Who did this to you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. Karen.” He looked pained. “I can…” He twitched a hand. Karen assumed the gesture meant ‘Go put on my devil suit and beat people up’. Her life was a fucking mess.
“You don’t need to do anything.” She shook her head and cleared her throat. “It’s—it’s all taken care of, so.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing, it doesn’t—look. What, uh, what brought you by, anyway?”
“Karen.”
She blew out a frustrated breath and leaned her shoulders back against the wall, crossing her arms and glaring. Could he tell if she rolled her eyes? “I, uh, I might have irritated some people. With some of my research.”
“Jesus, I told you—”
“But it’s fine,” she interrupted, twisting her fingers together. “It’s fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.”
Matt scowled. He looked ready to bolt for the door at any moment. “Oh, right, because they’re just going to leave you alone now, I’m sure.”
“Well, yeah.”
“You’re not stupid, don’t pretend you are, they’re not going to—”
“They are. They’re all dead.”
Matt’s mouth dropped open. He gathered himself quickly. “W-what?”
She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Yeah. An, uh, an old friend showed up. And, well, helped me out.”
“Frank.” Matt didn’t ask it. His expression crinkled up and he reached up to rub at his mouth. “You mean Frank. That’s.” He took a deep breath. “Well.” His mouth quirked up but she couldn’t read the expression.
“Yeah. Exactly. So.” She spread her hands out to the side. There seemed to be a lot of space between them, lately, but she had no idea how to cross it, or even if she wanted to. Matt wasn’t lying to her anymore, as far as she knew, but he had, he had for a long time. And lately he looked like he was barely holding himself together. The situation needed sorted, but it was easier to put it off, to push it aside every time it came up. She was too tired to make the effort now. “So, um, what can I do for you, this fine morning?”
“Oh. Oh, nothing. I was going to see if you wanted to get some breakfast, but.”
She acknowledged, “Probably not a good idea this morning.” The bruises at least provided an excuse for avoiding the interaction. Too bad they wouldn’t last more than a couple of days.
He nodded and they said their awkward goodbyes, more like strangers than the friends, co-workers… more that they’d brushed up against being. She squeezed her eyes closed once he was gone and resisted the urge to thump her forehead against the door. He’d probably hear it.
#
Karen ended up changing her bandages later that night, peeling off Frank’s careful work and throwing the stained gauze and tape into her bathroom trashcan. The wounds stung more when she cleaned them, smearing bactine around on her cuts and abrasions, carefully recovering them, poking at her stitches and then wincing. Frank did good work. He could have a future in embroidery, if the whole murderer-of-murderers thing didn’t work out for him. Karen laughed at herself and shook her head.
She wondered if she’d hear from him again.
She wondered what the hell she’d say if she did. He might not be dangerous to her, not really, but every time she ran into him she added to her list of laws broken. Hard to tell exactly how many deaths she was an accomplice to, at this point. Enough to end up in prison for a very long time, anyway. And he—he killed people. Just because he’d killed some people for her didn’t make it less wrong, right? It wasn’t always in the heat of the moment, wasn’t always a kill-or-be-killed decision, and that made things, well. It made them less murky, more black than white, much as she’d have liked the entire thing to be thoroughly gray.
Karen stroked her thumb over the neat little row of stitches over her ribs and wondered if she was going crazy.
#
Life went on. Karen went back to work and started digging into a story involving some very strange hospital records regarding combat wounded vets, while picking apart the threads related to a new heroin supplier making in-roads into the area as a legitimate assignment. Her knee shrunk down to a normal size. She pulled out the stitches. She continued to dance around Matt, always a half-step out of synch with his dance around her.
She tried to stop agonizing about what exactly she should do if she ran into Frank again, which always inevitably blended into darker considerations about what was more likely to actually happen.
And then he called. The number came up unlisted. The night was well along; the rest of the office sat empty around her. Insomnia really improved her work ethic, if not her ability to fill the empty, white space of her document. She answered without hesitating, assuming it was a paranoid contact. “Karen Page.”
Static came over the line. Poor connection. She rubbed at the space between her eyebrows and asked, “Hello?” Another burst of static.
“Hey.”
Karen sucked in a breath. A dozen unpleasant reasons for Frank to be calling flashed through her mind, stirring from the places she’d tucked them away over the last week. “Frank? What’s, uh, what’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“Good, yeah, everything’s fine.”
“Oh.” Karen’d drank too much coffee earlier. It made her jittery. “Oh, good, that’s—so, what’s, what do you need?”
“Can’t a guy call to say hi?”
The idea of Frank Castle calling to chat made her snort. She stretched her legs out and tried to twist the cramp out of her back. “Sure. Why not?”
“You feeling okay?”
Karen swallowed and reached out to straighten a pile of papers on her desk. It distracted her from the renewed throb from the last of the bruising on her face. Still. “Been worse.”
Frank made a gruff sound and cleared his throat. “Good. That’s good. Look. I, uh, I thought I’d keep this number, yeah? For a while. So you just—if you ever…” He trailed off, or maybe the shitty connection cut out for a second.
Karen grabbed a pen to tap on her desk. She supplied, into the quiet, “Want to chat?”
“Yeah.” Frank snorted a laugh. “That, uh, that, too.”
“Alright.”
“Alright.”
Karen listened to him breathe for a moment. There was some kind of background noise around him. She couldn’t make it out, but it didn’t sound like anyone dying messily, so there was that. She cleared her throat. “Well, I should—I mean, I have work, um…”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Talk to you later.” The words came out automatically, just what was said before you hung up on someone.
But Frank said, “Yes, ma’am,” like it was a promise, before the phone line went dead. Karen tapped the phone against her cheek and went back to staring at her white screen. She got no further work done.
#
Despite the promise of small talk, the next time Frank called her it related directly to business. Karen almost dropped her phone in the toilet when it started ringing in the middle of her shower and winced as she answered, water dripping off of her hair and all over the bathroom floor. She said, “Hey, what’s up?”
“I got something for you.”
“Uh.” Karen grabbed her towel and did her best to dry her face. “Okay? What?”
“Rather show you.”
“Oh. Well. Where are you? Do you need me to, um, come get it?”
“Nah. Open your window.” The line clicked.
Karen cursed and tossed the phone down, toweling aggressively at her hair. She pulled on her clothes in a rush, not quite trusting Frank to not let himself in, if left too long to his own devices. She dragged a brush through her hair as she padded out into the apartment, squinting out windows until she found Frank, perched on the fire escape on the far side of her bedroom window.
She undid the lock and pulled it up, stepping back and allowing him to unfold into the room. He held a package tucked under one arm. He seemed too large in her bedroom, despite the fact that they were of a height with one another. Something about it made her heart beat faster. He turned and closed the glass behind him, and told her, “S’good you keep them locked.”
Karen rolled her eyes. “I have a front door.”
One side of his mouth curled upwards. “Seem to remember you threatening to shoot me, last time I showed up there on my own.”
“So the window seemed like a safer bet?”
Frank nodded at her empty hands and shrugged. He flicked his gaze to her hair and his expression did something complicated. He ducked his head and cleared his throat. “I interrupt you?”
“Does it matter?” The words came out sharp and she grimaced.
Frank shrugged and tapped the window with his knuckles. “It could. I can step outside, if you need a minute.”
“No, that’s—” She rolled her eyes and glanced down quickly to make sure she hadn’t put anything on inside out. Her clothes seemed to be in order. “Are you, uh, you want coffee?”
#
They ended up in her kitchen again. He handed her the packet as she poured water into the coffee maker. She folded it open and blinked at an unexpected abundance of papers. She glanced at him and he just nodded encouragingly, leaning against her cabinets. She pulled the papers out and thumbed through them, going faster as she went. Karen recognized most of the legal jargon—at least she’d gotten something from her time in the fine firm of Nelson & Murdock. She dragged her gaze over to Frank and asked, “Where did you get this?”
Frank had his hands tucked under his arms. He shrugged. “Around.”
Karen huffed a laugh and fidgeted with straightening the papers. “You know what these are?”
“Above my paygrade.”
Karen put the papers down, all the work orders, all the receipts. Near enough to what she’d been looking for to tie several large building contracting firms to the expansion of the heroin trade throughout the borough.
Frank touched her elbow and held out a steaming cup. She took it distractedly, scanning the closely printed type that went over connections she’d spent too many sleepless nights scratching away for. “I figured, you know, you might be able to do more with that than me. More good.”
She looked up at him and couldn’t stop the smile on her face. She took care to set the coffee down without spilling on the goldmine she’d just been handed, and threw her arms around him in a quick, tight hug. Frank froze at the touch, muscles tensing beneath her hands. She drew back immediately, waving a hand. “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have, um.” She wiggled her fingers towards his arm.
Frank blinked at her, real slow, like he was waking up out of a dream. He ducked his head and mumbled something, before replying, “It’s, hm, it’s fine. But I should…” He hovered his hands out to the side and then shoved them into his pockets.
“Oh, okay.” Karen tucked her hair behind her ear. She looked back at the papers and frowned. “You want to use the door this time?”
Frank huffed a laugh.
#
Karen called him back a few days later, after she turned in a completed article that had come together in a flurry once she sunk her teeth into the files. She got the answering machine and left a message that was probably mostly dead air and tongue-tied gratitude. She still hadn’t decided how she should feel about, about using him as a source, endorsing what he did more than she already had, but—
But she’d heard that the DA’s office was looking into three of the companies she’d written about, looking hard, and it seemed wrong to only acknowledge him as an unnamed source in the article. So she left her message, buzzed after a night out at Josie’s with Foggy and his new—or old?—lady friend. Matt remained conspicuously absent.
She wasn’t expecting her phone to buzz in the middle of the night, once she’d finally drifted down to weird, drunk dreams. Karen fumbled around on her nightstand for it, got a little kick of adrenaline at seeing Frank’s number, and managed to answer on the first try, mumbling, “Hey. Everything okay?”
Frank took a moment to reply. “You gonna ask me that every time?”
“Uh.” God. It was only four in the morning. Way too early for anyone who didn’t have more coffee than blood circulating through their veins. She buried half her face in the pillow. “Maybe? Are you going to answer?”
“M’fine. Got your message.”
“Oh. Good.”
“Yeah. Listen. You don’t have to, mm, thank me. That’s not, you don’t have to do that.”
Karen burrowed a little deeper into the blankets. That only resulted in her toes poking out the end. Ugh. She pulled them up and aimed for a playful tone, “Mr. Castle, how do you think I was raised?”
It must not have come out right. Frank got real quiet and Karen rolled onto her back, suddenly plagued by the horrible thought that he might actually know how she was raised, shit, she was so fucking stupid, she—
Frank derailed the nauseating train of her thoughts. “You lock your doors?”
“What? Yes. Yeah. Why? Are you out there?” She sat up, squinting out into her apartment.
He snorted a soft laugh over the phone line. “No. Across town. Just checking.”
“Oh.”
“Lock your windows, too.”
Her turn to laugh at him. “I always do.”
“Good. Good. You should, hm, you sound tired.”
“Probably.” She pulled her legs out of bed. Getting back to sleep looked more and more unlikely. “Someone called and woke me up at four in the morning.”
“What an asshole.”
Karen laughed again and wondered if he was smiling, on the other side of the city, with her voice pressed against his ear. It made her stomach, well. She bit her lip and whispered, “Be safe, Frank, okay?”
“10-4, ma’am.”
#
Frank called more frequently after that. Maybe he felt like he had permission. He always asked how she was doing, what she was working on. He seemed happy enough when she babbled about the frustrations of publishing, stories that wouldn’t come together, or the irritation she felt trying to clean up her grammar and writing style. She said, once, after she’d nearly talked herself hoarse, “Sorry. This has to be boring.”
“It’s fine,” he said, over the perpetually crappy connection. “You go ahead and talk.”
Sometimes he asked where she was. Once he called and told her to avoid some abandoned warehouses on the south side of the neighborhood. She asked, “Why?” before she could remember all the reasons it was better for her not to know—story of her life, really.
“You following the Rhonda Smith case?”
Karen grimaced. She wasn’t sure anyone wasn’t. Smith had been a high school student, went missing a few weeks ago, found and identified a few days ago with…with dental records. There hadn’t been much hope of identifying her, otherwise. Karen covered her mouth and told herself not to ask, but that was advice she never took. “You, uh?”
“Yeah.”
Karen swallowed around the thickness in her throat. She said, “Okay. Okay. I feel like I should, um, tell you to, uh.” She didn’t want to say anything more over the phone. She pinched her nose and blew out a breath. “You know w-what I’m trying to say.”
Frank hummed. He said, “Consider it noted, ma’am.”
Cops found the bodies a few days later, after an anonymous tip placed at a coffee shop on Karen’s way to work led them there. The Batman voice she used made her throat burn.
#
Maybe, Karen considered, a month later as she hurried down the sidewalk, looking over her shoulder as she dialed Frank’s number with numb fingers, she’d Stockholm syndromed herself. Or maybe people could just get used to anything, if they treated it as part of their life for long enough. She didn’t know. All she knew was that she needed to get a hold of him right away.
He answered on the third ring, “Morning, ma’am.”
“Where are you—no, don’t tell me. Just, just head to…” Jesus, where could she send him? The answer seemed obvious. There was one place where she knew there’d be no cops. “Come to my place.”
“Why? What’s the matter? Are you al—”
“Just hurry,” Karen snapped and hung up, walking as quickly as she could. Stupid heels. Stupid everything. What was she doing?
Karen beat Frank to her apartment, but only by a matter of moments. He came to the front door this time, not so subtly holding a gun tucked into his pocket. He grabbed her as soon as she opened the door, tucking her back and scanning the open floor plan. Spotting no threats beyond stacked up dirty dishes, he pushed the door shut and grabbed her shoulders, putting her against the wall and hovering close, demanding, “You hurt? What happened?” He patted at her arms, pulling her jacket aside, hands too twitchy to be still.
“Nothing, no, Frank, I’m okay. I’m okay.” She caught his hands. His pulse raced so quickly that individual beats were almost impossible to discern. He went mostly still, except for his right index finger, twitching over and over again. “I didn’t call for me. It’s—the cops got a tip about a location on what they thought was a copycat, um, of you, you know? But, obviously, it, uh, it wasn’t, so….”
He stared for a long beat and then snorted, dropping his chin and shaking his head. He was still kind of… hemming her in. “You aiding a fugitive, ma’am?”
Karen sniffed. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”
“Guess not.” Frank tugged her jacket straight and stepped back all at once, fidgeting still, like he had adrenaline to burn. He tapped his fingers on his leg. “Under the impression you thought I should be in jail.”
And the things was, she did. Or she had. Or—it was complicated. If Frank were in prison, she’d probably be dead. But he killed people, without trial or due process, simply because he thought they deserved to die, and even if they did, that was… that should have been too much for anyone to think they had the right to do. But if she’d allowed the cops to walk in on him, well, she’d seen Frank backed into a corner before. She knew the results of that. And maybe he’d be extra careful around cops, but then again, how many of the city’s finest were firmly on the straight and narrow? If she neglected to warn him, and he killed a bunch of people, wouldn’t their blood be on her hands?
She had enough death on her conscience already.
Besides. She didn’t think they would have been able to take him.
Frank glanced at her again. She’d taken too long to reply and she shrugged. “Just seemed like the right thing to do.” Frank hummed. “Anyway. Wow. I’m, um, I’m starving. You hungry?”
Frank’s eyes darted from side to side, as though he expected the question to be a trap. “I could eat.”
“Good. That’s. I’ll find some food.”
There wasn’t much in her fridge and pantry. She hadn’t been rolling in the dough working with Foggy and Matt and journalists didn’t live that large. Plus, any fresh food she managed to buy usually dried out or rotted before she could use it. Not a lot of free time for cooking in her life. She had some bread that was mostly mold free and some eggs. She waved the carton at Frank. “How do you take them?”
“Scrambled’s good.” He hovered around the kitchen table, hands drifting towards the back of one of her chairs and then away again.
“It won’t bite,” she assured him and he scoffed at her, but sat.
Karen ate dinner with the killer she’d just helped evade arrest, and put him to bed that night on her couch.
He was gone in the morning.