Chapter Text
Upon his death, Karen follows a predictable timeline through the various stages of grief. The first, is shock.
She hears the shot, or at least she thinks she does. As she stumbles down foliage and onto the deserted road, she feels a deep, decisive sound rattle the silence. She hears the beating of birds’ wings as they fly away. She feels the air grow impossibly colder, and blames the shaking of her limbs on that. She remembers the ground, branches making the impact harder against her knees. But she doesn’t feel the sting.
Like most people in the midst of a tragedy, the pain doesn’t come until later.
In the months following his death, she couldn’t possibly tell you what happened after that moment. It was almost like when you’ve had one too many drinks, and you remember the night; the details, the laughter and the frustrations, in perfect detail. But the journey home is always forgotten. Perhaps it’s because of the idea of moving towards safety, but Karen doesn’t remember how she got into the car, and drove all those miles.
She doesn’t remember stopping for gas, and the gas station cashier asking if he needed to call someone for her. She doesn’t remember the time she got home, where she parked the car, how many minutes she stopped on the stairwell to stare blankly at the wall as tears rolled down her face.
All she remembers, is waking with sunset peeking through her curtains the next day, dust particles floating in her room. Her head foggy as though she had spent a long night in Josie’s. Dried blood from her head crumbles on her pillow. And she remembers wondering why her body felt so empty.
As most people do after experiencing such a shock to their body, to their heart, Karen naturally gravitates to denial. She puts the emptiness down to hunger, and rises from the bed.
There never seemed to be an active decision to ignore the events of the night before, but for some reason, every time the memory threatens to rise, like a choked sob in her throat, Karen would banish it. She would throw herself into an activity; she would get into a debate on the intentions of the newest NYC vigilante in Queens, or look at gruesome crime scene photos and try to find another person’s bloody hands holding the weapon. She swears that she doesn’t notice the tell-tale signs of a murderer once known.
The emptiness is still there, and she tries to fill it with food, or friends. One night, she sits alone in her apartment, her bullet-ridden wall still crumbling occasionally as though tempting her to the fringes of remembrance. And she drinks. Red wine mostly, but once that creates waves in her stomach and she still feels empty, she finds some forgotten whiskey in her cupboard. Whether it does the trick, she can’t be sure.
All she knows, is that she wakes the next morning, with a blanket over her shivering body, and the empty bottle sitting on her kitchen counter. The emptiness remains.
This… This… Whatever this living is. This continues for five weeks.
Of course, in her world, the dead don’t tend to stay dead for long.
Perhaps it’s her inconvenient choice in career, or his own manipulation (though he’d never admit to it), but Karen starts seeing him. Everywhere.
It starts in reflections of windows. It’s only a moment, in which she jolts like a gunshot has gone off in her ear. She sees dark clothing hanging off a broad figure, a baseball cap, with crew cut hair peeking out. Sharp lines on a weathered face. But it’s the way he holds himself that makes her notice. The military stealth. The obvious weight on his shoulders.
She’d spin so fast her balance would take a moment to catch up. But by the time she would focus on the spot she saw him, he’d be gone.
Which he is, she would tell herself, angry at her hands for shaking with adrenaline, he’s gone.
The thing is, once she sees him, she can’t stop seeing him.
He’s walking out of the door of the coffee shop as she turns to order, he’s climbing onto a bus as she looks up from her phone, he’s casting a shadow that lasts a mere second in her stairwell as she turns on the light.
And at work, no matter how hard she tries, she sees him. In the angles of bodies, in the descriptions of police officers, in the fear of caught criminals.
It is only when she walks in to her shabby apartment, after a late night of staring at a computer screen in the office, that she has to convince herself she isn’t going crazy.
It is just so typical that the stubborn man that is Frank Castle refuses to stay dead.
“Fr-” the word chokes before she breathes it. She can’t say it. She can’t bring herself to say his name. The handle to her front door squeaks under the pressure of her tightened hand. The hallway light illuminates a figure she thought she’d never see again. A figure stained in red, mottled with purple, staring with dark eyes. He is breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, head lolling forward, eyes closing in pain “I’m sorry.”
In a rush that nearly has her stumbling backwards, the pain of the last night they shared hits her. The way she cried, the way she wished she had heard those words from a man so incapable. The way she left him. The way he left her first.
She moves without prompting, closing the door and bolting it. She moves to his side and crouches. Touches his skin, wet with blood. You’re here, she wants to say, where have you been?
Instead, she throws his arm over her shoulder. Tries to lift him (in hindsight, a laughable effort). He helps her with a groan that mixes with a short puff of breath. They stumble to the bathroom, with him growing heavier on her by the second.
She doesn’t have the luxury of a bath, so she doesn’t hesitate to push him onto the toilet seat.
When she turns the light on, and sees the extent of damage, she wonders if it wouldn’t have been better for him to stay dead.
The man in front of her would be unrecognisable, were it not for the eyes that are silently, carefully regarding her. The darkness in them is familiar, but she doesn’t want to believe she feels that warmth that he always reserved for her. She left that a long time ago.
She swallows. She steadies her shaking hands. He opens his mouth.
“I-” Her hand is covering his intended words within a second. He can’t be here, not now. After all this time, when he left. When he didn’t say goodbye.
His eyes soften imperceptibly, in an understanding way that makes her stomach feel bitter for being so predictable. He doesn’t try to speak again.
In the silence of the night, Karen gets to work repairing the dead man walking.