Chapter Text
“Matt, I really don’t want to do this right now. Just…I need the number of your nurse friend.”
“She’s not really my friend anymore,” Matt says, voice dripping with concern even over the phone. “Are you okay?”
Karen’s got her fingertips pressed to her mouth, her blue eyes wide and her blonde hair hanging in her face as she turns over her shoulder to look at New York’s Most Wanted currently sprawled in the middle of her living room floor.
“I’m okay,” she says. Not technically a lie.
“I’m coming over.”
“No, no, no. I don’t want…I just need…”
“I’ll find Claire. She doesn’t work at the hospital anymore, but I know where she’ll be. But I’m coming too.”
“No, Matt, don’t…!” But he hangs up, and she drops her phone on the counter, where it skitters across the cheap laminate, loud and harsh in the otherwise silent room. “Shit!”
The clean back of one blood-slick hand pressed to her mouth, the other curling anxious fingers in her hair, heedless of the gory streaks she’s leaving, she turns again to look at Frank on the floor. He hasn’t moved since he fell there, moments after she let him in. And she doesn’t even have a box of bandaids, and the last time she talked to him she said he was dead to her, so why the fuck is he here?
She’s angry. She’s so, so angry. And yet by the time Claire and Matt show up – Claire annoyed as hell at being roped into this again and Matt vaguely guilty as always – Frank’s got a pillow under his head, and most of the blood cleaned off his face, because she really is just the softest person, and she hates that.
“Before we go in,” she says to them both, blocking them in the front hall. Her new place isn’t quite a palace, but it’s bigger than her last one and at least has a few interior walls – it’s enough to give her some control over the situation. “I’m guessing, Matt, that since Claire got the privilege of being allowed to know your big secret months before I did, that means she’s discreet. And I know you can be discreet. But I want you to promise me that you won’t do anything stupid here. Just help me and then move on. And don’t lecture me.”
“Like he’s ever gonna miss an opportunity for that,” Claire says with a snort.
“I don’t lecture,” Matt replies, sounding wounded, and now it’s Karen’s turn to snort as she leads the way into the room. Matt takes about half a second to forget how fucking offended he was at being called a lecturer. “Karen, what the hell is the matter with you?”
“Ha!” Claire barks, pulling on her purple latex gloves. “Wish I’d bet on it.” She looks at Karen, and her smile drops into a kind of exhausted professionalism. “Tell me what happened to him. What am I looking at here?”
“I don’t…I have no idea. He just knocked on my door. I haven’t seen him in months. I haven’t…and he’s…”
“Okay, that’s fine. I wasn’t expecting this to be easy anyway. Matt, do me a favor and stand by? I don’t want this guy trying to punish me for sticking a needle in him.”
“Frank wouldn’t,” Karen says, not so much defensive as she is just…certain. Frank wouldn’t.
“Karen, you’ve seen what Frank can do.”
“Yeah, Matt. And so have you.”
They stare each other down for a minute, and he’s thinking of the boat and the warehouse with the meathooks, and she’s thinking of him on the rooftop saving Matt, and of his body shoving hers down into the carpet, and the diner, and the woods. Because what Frank does is fucking horrifying, but it’s also not bad. It’s not Hydra or Fisk or any of the gangsters who go around killing for turf and criminal enterprises. Frank is different. And he’s brutal and he’s mean and he’s effective, and she wishes that Matt could understand that.
But Matt can’t. And part of that is why she loved Matt once and it all…honestly? All of this is just overwhelming, unfair bullshit.
“One of you throw the staring contest and help me out,” Claire says. She looks between them like she’s figured it all out already and is just hoping at this point that neither of them try to tell her about it.
It’s Karen who kneels down beside Claire and puts her fingers where directed. And it’s Matt who paces, running shaking fingers through too-long hair and looking almost as bad as Frank, bruises peppered across his face. She wants to ask and offer him some ice, but she doesn’t. That’s not them anymore, as much as she wishes it was.
Claire is a good nurse. Would probably make a good doctor. She has this impassive expression, a neutral kind of empathy. Karen’s always wearing her heart on her sleeve, so she immediately respects the hell out of this woman who can let one sympathetic quirk of a grimace lift the corner of her mouth but then tell Karen to press harder with the compress in an even, no-bullshit tone.
“Well, the good news is I can stop the bleeding,” she says once she has worked with Karen to open his skull-emblazoned bulletproof vest and then unceremoniously cut through the black t-shirt beneath. “He’s got a few busted ribs from the impacts of the shots, and this looks like a stab wound under the arm, but it doesn’t look too bad. Nothing major hit. He lost a lot of blood, though. That’s probably why he passed out on you.”
“Please,” Karen says. “Just…do what you can. I know it’s asking a lot.”
“Yeah, well. It is what it is.”
She’s exhausted, and Karen knows how she feels. Knows that Claire has more than just two vigilantes in her life, too. Matt mentioned it once, about how she patches them up and puts them back on the street.
“Seems like there would be more than one nurse in New York who could do this,” she says, and Claire laughs. Ragged and honest.
“It would seem like that, wouldn’t it? Now hand me that needle.”
Frank wakes up suddenly, with a grunt that’s pain and anger and disorientation. Claire’s ready with a knife she pulls out of nowhere and flips open, but Karen angles herself between them, putting one hand down on Frank’s bloody chest, fingertips just lightly pressing against the skin over his heart.
“Frank, don’t move,” she says, and he doesn’t. Every muscle tenses, but it’s like her fingertips are Thor’s hammer, weighing him down, keeping him in place. He doesn’t push a millimeter towards her.
“Who is she?” he asks, voice hoarse and disused, his eyes never leaving Claire’s. Matt steps into view and Frank lets out a groan that makes Karen smile even though she’s still tearing up with anxiety and worry.
“She’s a friend,” Claire answers for herself. “And she’s the only nurse in the whole city of New York willing to secretly come out here in the middle of the night and keep you from bleeding out on Ms. Page’s floor. So you want to be a good boy? Lie back down and let me do my work.”
“She’s good, Frank,” Karen promises. “She helps people like you.”
“Criminals?” Frank wonders, and Claire’s eyebrows lower like she’s getting ready to fight.
“Vigilantes,” Karen says, and finally he looks at her, and she tries to smile. She reaches out with her other hand and takes his, delicately, in her own. He gives her a look like he thinks she’s rearing back to spit on him, but he doesn’t pull his hand away, and she’ll take a win where she can get one. “So please, Frank. Just trust me. I couldn’t do it on my own, so I called for help. She’s helping you. Please.”
The pause that stretches out as he searches her expression seems to last forever. She remembers what the Colonel said, back at the house: unnerving. It’s unnerving how he can see into a person. Matt, he can read their heartbeats and tiny, miniscule changes in breath, changes in movement, can tell when you’re lying. But with Frank, it feels like he’s looking straight into you. Straight into you and judging at every moment whether you’re worthy.
“Yes ma’am,” he finally says, softly, and Karen nearly sobs.
“Well,” Claire says when she’s done, drying off her newly clean hands with Karen’s only dishtowel. “You’re not the worst patient I’ve ever had. But you need to rest. That gonna be a problem?”
“I can lie low,” Frank says. He still doesn’t trust her, still doesn’t smile, still looks a little like a caged animal waiting to be led to slaughter, but he’s sitting up now, propped against Karen’s couch, and he seems grateful.
“Those stitches will need to come out,” Claire warns.
“I can take ‘em out,” Frank replies, and Claire smirks a little at that.
“I bet you can,” she says, and it’s raw and appreciative enough that Karen has to hide a smile. “If that’s everything…”
“Thank you so much,” Karen says, and she goes to Claire and hugs her. The older woman seems surprised at first, but eventually returns the gesture, one hand rubbing calming circles on Karen’s back.
“Call me anytime,” she says sincerely, reluctantly, and she writes her number down on a sticky note before she goes. Karen clutches it, watches her walk out, and wishes she had asked Claire to stay because now it’s just her and Frank and Matt, and nothing about their shared history says this is going to go well.
“Matt,” she says warningly before he even speaks, and he’s affronted enough by that that she at least has a chance to brace herself. “Look, I know what you want to say…”
“And yet you keep putting yourself in harm’s way like this.”
Her voice lowers to a harsh whisper, though she knows Frank is still listening. He may not have Matt’s particular gifts, but this apartment isn’t exactly huge, and while they can’t see him from the kitchen where they’re lurking, that certainly doesn’t mean he can’t hear them.
“He came here, Matt. I didn’t seek him out. I haven’t seen him in months. And even if I did…”
“You would! That’s the problem!” Matt hisses.
“It’s not your problem,” she fires back. Her arms are folded across her chest, tight, creating a barrier between them that she knows he feels.
“Karen, you know…”
“I know you feel responsible for me. But I’ve told you a million times that I can take care of myself.”
“And yet you wind up being taken hostage, being shot at, being in danger…”
The ‘because of me’ isn’t spoken, but with Matt it doesn’t need to be, and she hates it because he’s kind of right. Not that it’s all about him – she gets into plenty of danger on her own, thanks – but that, historically, she hasn’t been able to take care of herself. People just have a habit of showing up at exactly the right time for her.
“This is why I didn’t want you here,” she says, and she means it. It burns within her and when she lets it out, it burns the inside of her throat like bile.
“You didn’t want me here because you knew I’d say something like this, and because you knew I’d be right.”
“Right about what? We have this argument every single time we talk, and I’m so tired of it, Matt! I’m so tired. And you’re wrong about Frank. Frank wouldn’t hurt me.”
This last part pitched so low that she’s hoping Frank doesn’t hear her, because it’s embarrassing how sure she is of that. Especially after the way they left things.
“That’s naïve.”
“Why? Because he’s a vigilante?”
Pointed, stated, her eyebrows high and daring him to judge. He heaves a sigh and looks at her with disappointment, and she wants to scream, because how did they get here of all places? How did she and Matt end up like this?
“I’ll be back later to check in,” he says, sensing a finality to her cruel response. She knows he’s not going far. He’s going to go lurk around the rooftops in his suit and listen for trouble. As eager to prove her wrong as he is to keep her safe.
“Fine.”
It’s not giving him permission. It’s not. It’s an indication that she knows he’s going to do it anyway.
“Fine,” Matt says, which is petty but unsurprising because everything they’ve done lately has been, and he stalks towards the door without saying a single word to Frank, who’s watching them both, impassive as always.
She closes the door behind Matt. Stays facing it for a moment, with her hand on the wood. Then she locks it. All four locks.
Locks herself in her apartment with a wounded mass murderer, and she feels safe. Maybe she really is naïve.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Frank says, sudden and a little defensive. She turns to look at him, and he’s looking around at her carpet, now stained with his blood. She tried to catch him when he first fell, so it’s all over her clothes, too. And her chest and hair.
“It’s fine,” she says, pulling her hair back. But it’s too little too late, and she can feel his blood crusting in it. “Let me get you a blanket.”
She expects him to argue, but he just watches her as she goes into the bedroom and comes back out with a sheet for the couch and a big blanket her grandmother knitted her when she was a child. He gets up when she approaches, grunting a little, one arm tucked across his stomach, holding his ribs. But he doesn’t complain, and he takes one side of the sheet and helps her lay it out over the couch.
“You gotta clean off first,” she says when he almost goes to sit on it, and he grunts again, displeased. “You have to get that blood off you.”
She doesn’t threaten to kick him out if he doesn’t, but he doesn’t seem to need the motivation.
“I’ll need clothes,” he says, looking down at the tatters of his black t-shirt on the ground.
“Luckily for you, I’m a big fan of men’s sweatpants,” Karen says dryly, and she goes back into her bedroom to retrieve them.
He’s leaning in the doorway when she finds her black pair, and it’s surprising how quietly he can move when he wants to. She’s used to Matt sneaking around, appearing out of nowhere with a quip about something he overheard from a floor away, but Frank seems too solid to move as silently as he does. He’s not exactly a subtle man.
“Thank you,” he says, and he’s doing the thing where he looks into her soul, and she doesn’t want him to, doesn’t want him to see anything there (not your first rodeo, he said), so she lowers her gaze to the bandaged up wounds on his chest.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she says.
He doesn’t like that she insists on being the one to clean him, but admits he can’t reach his back, and admits he’s still a little lightheaded, and when she points to the bathroom, he goes. She dips a washcloth in steaming water, makes him sit on the toilet seat in her narrow bathroom, squeezes in beside him and tries not to think about how intimate this is.
It doesn’t have to be awkward. It doesn’t have to be intimate. It only has to be one person cleaning the blood off a second person. How come it can be so utilitarian when Claire does it, but Karen’s hands are shaking and her breath comes too quick? Maybe because Claire is used to it. Used to people she cares about turning up half dead and needing her help. Or maybe it’s different when Claire works on Matt. Maybe she’s just as scared. Hard to imagine, but then again, Karen knows almost nothing about that side of Matt. Only knows what he told her, months ago, in an attempt to salvage the ruins of their relationship that ultimately fell too flat.
Maybe Karen’s just too damn soft to do something like this for another person without it meaning anything.
Or maybe it’s just Frank.
You’re dead to me, she had said, but when he collapsed in her living room and she felt frantically for a pulse, that had been the farthest thing from the truth. You don’t say no, no, no and sob please wake up to a man you want dead and gone, and she wishes there was a way to tell him that without actually telling him that.
When she wrings the washcloth out in the sink, the water turns pinkish red, and she looks down at it and feels some sort of shift, some sort of cracking in her head. Some change of angle that has it hard to breathe for a second. The anger fades. The stubborn pride.
“What happened?” she asks finally, and she runs the washcloth over his back, around the edges of his bandages, working off the dried blood, moving lower, trying not to look into her gentleness at all.
“Got ambushed. My fault. Wasn’t paying attention.”
“Who was it?”
A long silence until she walks around him to rinse the washcloth, looks down at him, and he heaves a sigh that, on any other man, might have sounded petulant.
“Been working on the Blacksmith stuff.”
Now she gets why he was reluctant to say it; not exactly her best memory of him. Probably not his best of her.
“Someone fill the void you left in his organization?”
“Something like that.”
Frustrated, she wrings the washcloth out again, gets it wet again. The water’s hot, and it turns her hands pink, but she likes it. The heat helps her focus. She knows better than anyone how much Frank Castle can talk once he gets going, but it’s the getting him going that’s the hard part.
“I’ve been doing some work on that myself,” she says, walking back over to him. He’s guarded in a way he hasn’t been since she first walked into his hospital room, and she knows that whatever she wants from him, she’s going to have to pry it loose.
“Yeah,” he says, and now she makes the insanely questionable decision to kneel between his legs to work on his side, where there’s a huge mess of blood, and he looks away. Maybe under all those bruises, he’s blushing too.
“Yeah?”
“Read it,” he admits. “Gave me a few ideas.”
“Great,” she laughs, and he gives her an answering smile, a little pained and so quick that she’s not sure it isn’t mostly grimace. “Giving The Punisher leads.”
“I’d have figured it out eventually,” he says, absolving her though she didn’t ask for it. “And they were gunning for you, anyway.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she mutters. He considers for a second, fingers tapping on one knee. She’s got her elbow propped up on his other thigh as she leans in closer to scrub at another stubborn smear that arcs up from his kidneys to his ribs. She’s doing her best Claire impression, but she’s pretty sure her skin is red. Giving her away. Making her look frazzled and flustered even though, when it comes down to it, she’s finding this surprisingly easy.
And Frank says, “three of ‘em were outside your apartment.”
She goes very still, scarcely breathing, and when she lifts her eyes he’s looking down at her, and he’s got this look like he smells something bad. It’s a scrunched up, aching look. It hits her right in the chest.
“When?”
“Three days ago.”
“Did you…?”
“Yeah. Quiet, so you wouldn’t know I was…around. Anyway, they’re dead. But the rest of them were still out there, and they weren’t gonna go away. It wasn’t just him. It wasn’t just the Blacksmith. It never is, right? There’s always someone new. The three men outside your place each had a few hits under their belts. The colonel was hiring real serious criminals. Who else you gonna get to run drugs, I guess. Guns, too. Ammo. Heard rumors of people, but so far I ain’t turned up anything.”
“Trafficking runs through a guy they call Chainz.”
“That right?”
“Yeah. With a Z. This, uh. Scrawny white guy, I’m told. All elbows and knees. My informant tells me most people call him Spider Monkey, because Chainz is a ridiculous name.”
“Right.”
They smile at each other, both tentative, and she stands up, the washcloth long gone cold.
“So who ambushed you?”
“Don’t know. Bunch of the same, at first. Some Blacksmith guys, some of something else. I broke up some sort of…meeting.” Quiet for a second, maybe thinking of the meeting that tore apart his family. “Guns. Guys who think they can punch harder’n me. Simple. But this one guy showed up. Fightin’ everybody. Got me out of nowhere with a knife. Threw it right at me. Halfway across the warehouse. Hit me right under the vest. I got a few shots off, but he kept his distance. Managed to avoid it. He was like some kind of circus freak acrobat. Kind of like your friend Red.”
“Daredevil?” Karen asks, and she folds her arms across her chest again. Like just mentioning Matt makes her want to put her barriers up, protect her heart with her hands. “We aren’t exactly friends.”
“You are sometimes. When he ain’t in a mask.”
They look at each other for a long moment, and she’s a little afraid to breathe. Karen knows it’s kind of a toss-up as to who Frank likes less: Matt or Daredevil. If this wasn’t Frank, she’d be afraid of him. But it is Frank, so she’s really just worried about having to listen to a rant about it.
“You know,” she says finally.
“Listen, I know people think I’m just a big, idiot, ex-marine psychopath…”
“I don’t think that.”
A grunt. Doubtful. “Yeah, well. I notice things. People. That’s how I’m still alive. That’s how you’re still alive, too.”
His body shielding hers. She remembers. She nods.
“I didn’t know until he told me,” she says. “Maybe I’m the idiot.”
“Maybe you are,” he says, but he’s smiling a little.
She looks away, grabs the soft black sweatpants off the hamper, shoves them in his direction.
“You should get changed,” she says. “I’m tired. You’re tired. We can talk about this in the morning.”
“Won’t be here in the morning,” he says. And her eyes meet his.
“Be here in the morning.”
His mouth twists into a grimace, but he says, “yes ma’am,” and she believes him.
God help her. What does this guy have to do to get her to not believe him?
He takes a while to get changed; she hears the water running, hears him cleaning up whatever blood got on her bathroom floor, and she’s warm and grateful for it. She has time to get him a glass of water and dig a bottle of painkillers out of her purse and put it on the coffee table next to the couch. She uses peroxide on the carpet, but that’s a losing battle and she knows it, and it’s a shitty rug anyway. She bought it at some chain store for fifteen bucks and it’s already got coffee stains all over it from her late night research sessions. She’ll get rid of it in the morning.
She’s washing her hands in the kitchen when he walks out of the bathroom, shirtless and scarred but clean at last, looking better, looking pale and tired and still a little unsteady but at least looking alive again. Looking good, too, which... She averts her eyes before he spots her watching.
“Thank you,” he says, and she smiles, but it’s thin and uncertain, and he seems to sense her discomfort, because he doesn’t say anything else. Just goes to the couch, and she dries her hands and looks at the only thing on her fridge: a picture of she and Matt and Foggy at Josie’s. Before everything that eventually tore them apart. And she’s so fucking lonely, and she doesn’t want to say anything, but he’s the only person here, and she knows why it’s weird, knows why there’s something hanging in the air between them when there wasn’t something there before.
“I didn’t mean it,” she says before she can stop herself. And there’s a long silence where she’s afraid to leave the kitchen, and she hears him shifting uncomfortably on the couch.
“You knew what you were saying,” he says finally, and she closes her eyes. He’s right. She knew what she was saying. And at the time, she had meant it. She thought she meant it. And importantly, she knew what it would mean. “Don’t- don’t just pretend you didn’t. You knew what you had to say, and it didn’t work, and you were angry. I get that. But don’t act like you didn’t know.”
“I knew,” she admits. She walks out from around the wall to look at him, and he’s sitting on her couch and watching her the way he did in the diner. Impassive. Ready to understand, but doubting that he’s going to. You always serve bullshit, or is that just her? She folds her arms across her chest and waits.
“And you said it anyway.”
“I said it. I wanted to hurt you.” It’s maybe the most honest thing she’s ever said. “I wanted to scare you, and I wanted to hurt you, because that’s what I was feeling.”
“You knew I would pull the trigger. I always pull the trigger.”
“I hoped…I hoped you wouldn’t.”
“Why? He was gonna kill you somewhere quiet and leave you to rot. Why him? Why’d you choose him to get all high and mighty on, huh?”
“Because I knew he could tell me what you wouldn’t, and I wanted to know the truth.”
He laughs, hollow and bitter. A scoff, and he looks away from her. Down and left, shaking his head like he always does when he can’t quite look at her.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Frank.”
“What’re you sorry for? Doesn’t matter why you said it. You said you didn’t mean it. Well, that’s bullshit. You meant it. I’m the monster they all say, right? I pull the trigger and I’m dead to you. You’re done.”
“Does it look like I’m done?” Karen asks, her voice harsh, broken in the middle. She spreads her arms wide so he can see the blood drying on her white shirt, on the pale skin of her chest and neck from where she held him when he fell. Lowered him carefully to the ground. Felt for a pulse, for a heartbeat, sobs forcing their way from her throat. She speaks slowly and carefully, trying to meet his eye. “Do I look like someone who believed you when you said ‘I’m already dead’?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, looking her over. But shakes his head after. Speaks softly. Doesn’t engage with her passionate outburst.
“That’s on me. I did this. I came here.”
“And I wouldn’t want you to be anywhere else.”
Raw honesty. She wishes it could have been like this with Matt, when he told her he was Daredevil. Instead, she gave him a too-careful, sanitized reaction that only drove them farther apart.
“Look,” he says, but he doesn’t go any farther, and maybe there’s something cooking, but she’s impatient now to say the words. Like he’s Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, and he’s going to just disappear if she waits too long.
“I shouldn’t have tried to stop you,” she says. “I knew. I knew what you were doing, and I knew who he was, what he had done to you, and you- you saved me again, and I knew you. This isn’t…at the time, I didn’t know any of this. It was just raw and I don’t really know why I said it. Maybe I did mean it, at the time, but if I had to choose my words again, Frank, of course I would choose different ones. Of course I wouldn’t try to stop you. Matt thinks I’m naïve, that I think you’re some misunderstood soul, but that’s not it. I know who you are. I told you: I think you belong in jail, but I- I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand. I shouldn’t have said what I did. It’s because I know you that I knew what it would mean to you to hear it.”
“Shouldn’t have come here,” Frank decides, and he starts to push himself up, but it’s so stupid because he doesn’t have a shirt that isn’t torn to shit, he looks like he’s been cut into pieces, and he’s still wavering, still a little half dead. Where is he gonna go? How’s he gonna make it to wherever he’s been hiding?
“Frank, please. It’s been months, and I’m sorry. Please stay.”
He scowls, clenches his jaw, but he sits back down, and that’s all she can really ask of him.
“I didn’t ask for this,” he mutters, and she knows he means all of it. Whatever connection they’ve developed, be it friendship or just reluctant companionship. Whatever it is, it took them both by surprise.
“You didn’t have to,” she says, and he looks away. “Goodnight, Frank.”
A grunt. Soft, though. It’ll do.