Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He can keep her safe.

It’s not really a formulated thought. It doesn’t have a beginning or an end inasmuch as thoughts ever do. It’s more of a feeling, a sudden swell of emotion that overcomes him briefly before ebbing away and hiding in his bones, waiting, watching, readying itself until the time comes and he thinks of her again.

He looks at the newspaper on his desk, the dozen or so open tabs on his laptop. The gun and the house keys on his bedside table.

That time is now.

On some level it soothes him - the knowledge that he is capable of doing this, that he has the necessary skills and resources to make it happen; that he knows where the pitfalls are, where the mistakes hide and how he can avoid them.

He’s better at it now too. He’s had practice. Jesus fucking Christ, he’s had practice. And experience is a cruel teacher, the cruellest fucking bitch he’s ever met. It’s a bad thing. A very bad thing, but maybe some good can come out of it too.

He can keep her safe.

But there’s something else. Another level, another aspect to this that isn’t all confidence and conviction. A place deep in the pit of his belly that is nothing but a nest of doubts and worry, of fear and rage. He guesses he wouldn’t be remotely human if he didn’t acknowledge those little sparks of terror twisting around his spine and making him feel weak and helpless. He would be even less human if that weakness didn’t enrage him, if it didn’t make him want to punch the walls until his knuckles were bloody and his heart was empty.

Maria. Lisa. Frank Jr. Pools of blood and gunfire. Sobbing - his own, as he cradled them in his arms when they were already dead and he should have been.

He shuts his eyes. It’s been almost three years but the pain still feels fresh. Raw. It makes him wish he’d never been able to remember - that Karen Page and her pretty eyes and her gentle voice hadn’t found a way inside him and unlocked those memories, brought them crashing out of him. Most of the time though he’s glad she did. Times when he’s thankful he could put Schoonover down like the rabid dog he was, times he thinks of himself as some kind of avenging angel that the city needs.

Times when Karen Page’s eyes and her pretty smile make all of this seem worth it.

Most of the time though, he just wishes he’d died too.

But apparently not even a bullet to the head can see to that. Apparently there’s something in the universe that wants him to keep living, that’ll defy the laws of logic and medical science to keep him alive and kicking.

Once he wasn’t sure why. Now he’s starting to get an idea.

He doesn’t need to, but he picks up the newspaper again. She’s on the front page - she always is. It’s been a while, but he’s watched her byline change from a generic “staff writer” to a straightforward “Karen Page” and now finally to Karen Page: Senior Reporter and he feels a swell of pride even though he has no right and never will have. He does want to pat himself on the back for calling it though, does get a certain satisfaction in knowing he was right about her all along. She’s smart, she’s tenacious, she always had it in her and she didn’t need to hide behind that nervous camouflage. She kicks ass and takes names. She’s done both with him already.

He scans the article. The news doesn’t get any better on the fourth read through.

Some low life, going by the name of Marcus Ward, has been released from prison after serving only about eighteen months of his sentence. That in itself doesn’t sound altogether like a story worth telling and that moron that calls himself the editor of this rag seems to think so too by assigning it minimal space at the bottom of the page. Not that Frank can blame him. Criminals get their sentences commuted all the time and this case is really no different. Ward turned state’s evidence against some low-level gangsters he once pulled a few jobs for. It led to their arrest and a lead on the the methamphetamine influx that’s been ravaging the city. It’s really nothing exceptional.

Unfortunately the reason Ward went to prison in the first place wasn’t exceptional either. Assault. Battery. Child endangerment. At the time it was front page news; the pictures of his wife’s bruised face and broken bones made all the papers. You couldn’t turn around in Hell’s Kitchen without seeing Joanie Ward’s black eyes and lacerated cheeks wherever you looked.

They were a little more discreet about the three-year-old son Luke, who got himself caught up in the mess. His broken bones and cigarette burns didn’t make the papers, but Frank knew about them anyway. He also knew that Luke’s favourite toy was a tatty teddy and he liked to eat mac and cheese for breakfast. Probably more than his father knew anyway.

Either way Joanie and Luke are safe now. After the trial she went to stay with an aging aunt in Denmark and, as far as Frank knows, has made a life for herself there. And Ward’s on a no-fly list so it’s not like he’ll really be able to do any Danish adventuring now that he’s out. Frank’s not all too concerned about the safety of the ex-wife and kid.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not concerned. He is. He’s very concerned. Because in true Karen Page fashion she’s left out the part of the story that affects her directly, she’s left out what Ward said when he was convicted, what he promised. She’d say it wasn’t important and he guesses from a news perspective it isn’t and would come across as indulgent.

The problem though is that it is important. In fact it’s so fucking important that he’s itching to just make plans and get her ass out of town and somewhere safe, deal with her objections and outrage later. But that feels too much like going behind her back, which in turn feels too much like lying. And yeah, he’s not going to do that. Not to her. Not to the only person in the world who still thinks there’s good in him.

Doesn’t change the facts though. Doesn’t change them at all, even though they’ve been left out, even if they’ve been deemed un-fucking-important. Because almost two years ago when Marcus Ward was found guilty as sin by a jury of his peers in the fine state of New York, he did something. He did something bad. And if he wasn’t already deserving of Frank’s specific brand of punishment, it would have been all the excuse he would ever need.

Unfortunately, he never got the chance. And holy fuck he wishes he had.

Because after he was pronounced guilty and the gavel fell and the judge demanded order in the court, it was no surprise that Ward lost his shit, that he started shouting and swearing and threatening. And if there was any doubt about exactly what kind of an asshole he was, it was gone. What was a surprise though was that Joanie wasn’t the recipient of his wrath. In fact he barely seemed to notice her sitting a few rows back in the gallery.

Instead he turned and swore up and down to a courtroom full of people that when he gets out he’s coming for her . For Karen Page. For her and her alone and he’s going to murder her, rip her limb from limb and piss on her corpse. That he’s going to do things to her she can’t even imagine and she’s going to be begging him to put her out of her misery before it’s over. And no, that’s not just hearsay, that’s not some bad rumour or some nightmare Frank’s imagined into being to torment himself with. The video was all over Youtube. Marcus, middle aged and balding, broad in the waist and narrow in the mind, red-faced and spitting into the camera about how that bitch - that bitch Karen Page - ruined his life and he was going to make her pay, he was going to make her pay with everything she had.

That story, while never appearing in The Bulletin , had made it into some of the other papers, the more sensationalist ones which liked pairing pictures of pretty blonde women with those of dangerous men and the words “rape” and “murder” in the headline. Maybe it could have been something, but even they had dismissed it as nothing but bravado and rage - something Ward would get over when he had some time to cool off in a jail cell.

They obviously don’t know all that much about rage.

Not much at all.

It’s not the first time since Frank heard about Ward’s case and Karen’s involvement in it that he wishes she’d come to him first. He can’t blame her though, can’t blame her for thinking he wasn’t an option or that she’d never see him again. It had happened only a week or two after he took Schoonover out. Single digit days since he told her to stay away from him for what must have been the hundredth time and apparently the first time she decided to listen. That asshole boss of hers had her writing a story on the one and only women’s shelter in Hell’s Kitchen and it seemingly took her to some strange places. Because, from what he understands, it was there that she met Joanie and Luke and heard their story of terror and suffering and it was her gentle encouragement as well as pulling in a few favours from Foggy that eventually led to Joanie pressing charges and divorcing Marcus.

It was all very above board. All very proper. All according to the letter of the law. And he knows it would have been so much better if it hadn’t been. If he’d known about it to take care of Marcus and his predilection for using his fists. If he’d been in a position to deliver his own brand of justice - or injustice, depending on your perspective (and whether or not your name is Matthew Murdock).

And while Frank doesn’t necessarily enjoy what he does - in many ways it’s a means to an end, although to what end he’s not sure - taking out Marcus Ward would have made him happy. No, he lies. He would have fucking loved it and he’s not even slightly ashamed to admit it. Scum is one thing, low-level mobsters and petty criminals, drug dealers - they're all cheap. A dime a dozen. But the kind of man who'd hurt his own children, who'd rape and murder and lay his hands on a woman in a way she isn't perfectly happy about is a whole other story.

And now that whole other story has been released. And despite what the tabloids said back then and how dismissive they were of his threats, he’s coming for her. Coming for Karen Page and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

Except there is.

~~~

He can keep her safe.

But there’s something he needs to do first.

He has what Maria used to call a “new recruit”. It’s about three weeks old, vaguely pitbull and sleeping in a huddle of blankets on his bed with an alarm clock to mimic its mother’s heartbeat. And it’s hungry. So he holds it in his arms on a heating pad and feeds it. It’s small and he has to use a syringe filled with some strange vet-approved mixture which he’s been assured is almost as good as mothers’ milk.

He’s always had a knack for finding strays and rescues, bringing them home to Maria and watching as she rolled her eyes, shook her head and told him that he couldn’t keep doing this. A homeless dog here, a box of stray kittens there. Once even a fucking African Grey parrot that was luckily promptly returned to its owner. What they didn’t find homes for, they kept.

His new recruits.

This was different though. He didn’t find this tiny soul wandering the streets or take him off some junkie willing to sell him for a quick fix. It wasn’t nearly that straightforward. Nothing ever is. He got word on a dog-fighting ring, with a trafficking business on the side, running out of Pennsylvania. So he decided to take a little trip and see for himself.

The details are a little blurry. Some asshole hit him over the head early on with a hammer. It didn’t knock him out but it did make him angry and fuzzier than he would have liked. Although not nearly as fuzzy as the jumped up scumbags at the property were hoping for. And, by the end of it all, he was watching from the bushes while four policemen led a bunch of Ukrainian women covered in blankets into the relatively safety of their vehicles. It wasn’t a perfect ending. These types of things seldom have those - he knows enough to have accepted that. It's a damn lot better than what any of them could have expected though. It's not exactly a new lease on life but it's a lease and a life nonetheless.

And the nameless, tiny grey bundle in his arms licking weakly at the tip of the syringe, is something else with a new lease on life too.

The ASPCA had been there too, no doubt called by the cops when they arrived. And they took the fighting dogs out one by one, keeping them well away from each other and loading them into crates in the backs of their vans. He's not an idiot. He knows those dogs have been destroyed. They've been hurt and fought too often. Maybe one or two will be lucky - the mothers or the bait dogs but he doesn't want to delude himself into that either. Which is why when he found the emaciated, flea-ridden waif in the bottom of an old wooden crate he didn't have it in him to leave it behind.

So he didn't. He's a lot of things but he's not that particular type of monster.

The result is he now has a tiny puppy wrenched from its mother far too young. And he has to hand feed it and keep it warm and watch it like a fucking hawk lest it start fading away. And all because some assholes somewhere thought they needed to make a quick buck of the pain and suffering of something small and helpless.

And isn’t that the biggest fucking joke you ever heard? The big bad Punisher: Annihilator of Hell’s Kitchen’s Scum, Meathook Connoisseur and Valiant Protector of Stray Puppies.  It’s fucking ridiculous, but it’s what he does. It’s what he has to do.

And no, he doesn’t actually have the time for it. He doesn’t really have the space either. And this really is fucking insane. But he thinks he has the commitment and somewhere he hears Maria whispering that he has the heart too. The love. He’ll see it through.

He always does.

He can keep it safe too.

~~~

He goes to her.

He doesn’t know what else to do. He waits outside her office with a hoodie pulled down low over his eyes and a scarf almost covering his mouth.

This is reckless. Dangerous in the worst possible way. The world thinks he's dead and he's more than happy to keep it labouring under that delusion. And yet here he is. Ready to give it all up for a girl with high heels and pretty blue eyes that he can't stop thinking about whenever he sees her.

And when she comes downstairs, wrapped in a long black coat, boots clicking on the pavement and he sees how the cold winter winds whip her hair around her face and the gentle moonlight turns it almost silver, he knows that it'll be a while before he stops thinking about that too. And it’s wrong and it’s stupid and it’s everything he should run away from. But he won’t. He was strong enough to do it once, he’s not sure he has it in him to do again.

He watches her for a second. He could take her arm, walk her away from her building. She'd realise it was him soon enough but that seems like a dick move - scaring her unnecessarily and then act like it was for her own good.

So he doesn't. Instead he calls to her. Softly. Gently. Like he always did.

“Ma'am.”

She freezes, coat flapping around her legs, hand tightening on her purse strap and there's a moment he thinks she'll carry on walking. Ignore him like he's a ghost that haunts her which she's learnt to endure rather than appreciate.

And who could blame her? It's not like they parted ways on good terms. Not like “You're dead to me” can really be taken any other way than the obvious. Not like he didn't hit back and tell her to stop wasting her time, to stay away from him. Because he's not what she thinks. He's not good . Even if there are moments, like now, that he really wishes he was.

He guesses the moment on the roof doesn't count, the little flare he saw in her eyes, the way he had to force himself to look away. To leave. Saving Red’s ass that night was just an excuse.

But then she turns and her eyes are as big and pretty as he remembers and she doesn't look like this is the worst thing that ever happened to her.

“Frank?” she says and her voice isn't hard, isn't angry. It’s guarded, hesitant, but there’s something else too. A hopefulness, a curiosity, that he’s pretty sure is not just in his head.

For a second he wishes things could be different. That he didn't need to be who he is. That he could be different Frank Castle and she could be the same Karen Page and they could meet in another world and another time when the Punisher didn't need to exist to keep him alive.

Sometimes - more often than he cares to admit - he imagines it. Imagines what he'd be like if he could deal with loss like a normal person. If he could cry and grieve and hurt and then one day move on. But he can't. Because that's not the Frank Castle he is. Even if it's the one she might need.

But those thoughts are not for here and they're definitely not for now, and the truth is he's not even sure where they came from.

What he is sure about is that he's staring, that his mouth is hanging open and that he can't believe he never noticed the dimples in her cheeks when she smiles, or the way her hair curls around her ears even when she has it pulled up and away from her face.

“Can I walk with you?” he asks and even to his own ears it sounds overly chivalrous. He's never shied away from a certain standard of respect when it comes to talking to her. He still calls her “ma'am” even if in his head she became "Karen" a long time ago. Opening doors, taking coats, offering his arm ... these are all things he'd do without a second thought, but somehow this - requesting to walk with her - it sounds silly, even to him.

Apparently not to her though. In fact she barely seems to register the question and he realises she's still taking him in. Absorbing him the way he did her.

He wonders what she sees. A man who maybe once could have passed for decent looking, now with a grizzly beard and a broken nose, small faded scars that you don't need to look too closely to see. He hasn't been fighting lately and he's not bruised ... so there's that. But even he has to admit, it's not much.

And that's when he realises he's missed her.

It hasn't been that torturous ache he feels every goddamn second of every goddamn day for Maria and the children. It hasn't been a source of pain that he's been willing to carve his heart out of his chest just to be rid of. Nothing that dramatic. But it's been there. A longing, a loneliness that he's suddenly aware had settled into his flesh and bones and then magically disappeared the second she walked into the street in front of him. And all he can think of how good it feels to be near the person who gets you; who, despite everything, believes in you.

He's not sure she feels the same way though. Because her expression changes and then she's looking at him like she doesn't quite trust him, like she's worried this could be a trick and that even if it was, she might fall for it anyway. Like she doesn't quite trust herself either.

He supposes he deserves that. He’s not remotely surprised that he puts her on edge even if there is something else to this strange thing between them that he comes close to calling “friendship”.

But then she nods. Sure, he can walk with her. There’s a stall around the corner that sells some kind of fancy Viennese hot chocolate in anticipation for Christmas and she’d like to try it. Would he like some too?

He shakes his head. He’s never been one for hot chocolate. Too sweet, too sugary. Maria used to joke that it wasn’t a good match for his soul which, like his coffee, is black and bitter. At the time that couldn’t be further from the truth, but now it feels like a prophecy. Maria always did know him better than he knew himself. But the thought that somehow, somewhere she could have seen this - seen him and what he has become - makes him feel ill and cold to his bones.

Karen shrugs though. Apparently the state of his soul is not part of this specific conversation nor is it currently giving her much cause for concern and he’s eternally grateful for that.

She doesn’t say anything as they walk. There’s a calmness to her he didn’t expect, a kind of world-weariness that he knows he’s played a part in creating, but hates all the same. He also knows that it’s at least 50% an act. He hasn’t seen her for 18 months - she must have wondered where he was and if he was still in the land of the living, inasmuch as he’s ever been in the land of the living. And yet… and yet she’s walking with him as if he’s someone she sees regularly, a good acquaintance or even a distant friend. He always knew she was guarded, and now he wonders if this is just a new incarnation of that. Stay calm, smile, pretend. Pretend pretend pretend. He hates that. He knows she must too.

She gets her hot chocolate. He has to admit that it smells good and rich and there’s a small part of him that wishes he had capitulated and gotten one as well. That maybe he needs some sweetness too. Something to counteract how bitter he’s become.

But she’s not sharing and he can’t really blame her. Instead she’s just walking silently next to him, boots crunching in the snow on the sidewalk, the reflection of the streetlights glinting in her hair.

It’ll be Christmas soon, he thinks idly, glancing at the cheerful red and green design on her paper cup. Christmas and all the bullshit that comes with people going nuts over crap they don’t need. People making a big deal out of the ceremony and religion of it without realising they’re being pagan as all fuck with their big, decorated trees and their jolly, fat man who brings presents to the nice and, depending on your specific interpretation, lumps of coal to the naughty.

Maria would have told him to stop being so cynical - he can all but hear chiding in his head. But then Maria wouldn’t know the man he is now. Wouldn’t recognise the father of her children underneath the skull he sometimes wears on his chest. So, he guesses he can tell himself that her opinion of him doesn’t really count.

He can tell himself a lot of things. Some might even be true.

“You look good for a dead man,” Karen says eventually and when he looks at her, her eyes are blue like tanzanite and shining and even though he knows he’s noticed that before, it feels like the first time.

He shrugs. “Amazing what coffee and a good night’s sleep can do.”

She snorts. It’s not elegant but it’s a good sound. Genuine. And again he realises how much he’s missed this and how important it was that he stay away. Because this ... this strange friendship they seem to have fallen back into without missing a beat, is a problem. And he knows it’ll just be harder to leave the next time round. Harder to stay away.

He doesn’t know why. Except he knows exactly why.

“You wanna tell me why you’re here Frank?”

Short. To the point. No holding back. It’s the reason he always liked her. Once you cut through that slightly anxious exterior, get rid of the shyness, all that was left is steel.

She kicks his ass - and he’s so fucking grateful for it.

(Rip my heart out, step on that shit and feed it to a dog.)

He pushes the thought away.

“Marcus Ward has been released.” If she can be straight and to the point, so can he. No bullshit. No lies.

She takes a sip of her hot chocolate and he’s amused by the thin brown line that sits just above her top lip when she looks back at him. There’s a moment, short and fleeting as it may be, when he genuinely considers reaching out and touching it, wiping his thumb across her mouth and smearing the chocolate and her pale lipgloss on his thumb.

He doesn’t. He’s not that much of an asshole. But it worries him that he wants to. That he can imagine what her lips would feel like under his hand, the smooth skin of her cheek where his fingers would brush against her face. The taste of the chocolate mixed with her lipgloss as he sucks it off his thumb, the little flare in her eyes as he does.

It’s another thought he has to push away, another wave of heat he has to ignore and he looks down, looks at the toes of his boots crunching in the snow, the flickering of the streetlights in the puddles of water on the sidewalk.

She shrugs, takes another sip.

“I know Frank, I wrote the story.”

She says it so nonchalantly, so easily, as if she’s discussing her favourite show or whether she’s going to have soup or pasta for dinner and she doesn’t much care either way. And suddenly he’s angry with her, that heated wave inside him boiling and turning to something else that he doesn’t really recognise within himself when it applies to her. But it tears through him in a way he doesn’t like and can’t really explain. Except he can.

It’s not that he expected her to leave well enough alone, because Joanie and Luke were nowhere near any given definition of “well enough” and the truth is if he’d known at the time, he wouldn’t have left it alone either. But that’s the crux of it - if he had known. Because if she had come to him, told him what was going on, Joanie and Luke’s trouble would have ended right there. There would have been no drawn out court case, no scrabbling for evidence and no one left alive to make threats against Karen Page. And she’d be safe, safe as she could be at least. There wouldn’t be a madman hungering for her suffering, walking the streets, imagining all the ways he could snuff the light out of her eyes.

But when he looks at her - that thin line of chocolate still outlining her top lip, the way the cold November wind lifts her hair and leaves her skin covered in a rash of goosebumps - the rage ebbs and he can’t get it back. He can’t even try. She’s good. She’s so so good. He could only dream one day of being that good.

He can’t blame her. She did the right thing. He knows she did.

“He’s going to come for you.”

He doesn’t bother softening the blow. She wouldn’t appreciate it if he did.

“You think?”

He purses his lips, looks away. “Don’t give me that bullshit. You’re too fuckin’ smart for that.”

She doesn’t say anything and carries on walking, her steps slow and deliberate and he has to adjust his pace to stay level with her.

There’s a family coming in their direction, boy of about nine stomping through the puddles and splashing his sister’s coat. He tries not to concentrate too hard on that picture, tries not to let it get to him when the father takes his wife’s arm, when the daughter has enough and stuffs a handful of snow down her brother’s sweater.

It’s too much. Too close to home.

“The tabloids seemed to think he was just letting off steam when he said it.” She still hasn’t really looked at him and he wants to reach out, touch her face. Tell her they don’t need to talk about this crap, that Ward is inconsequential because he’s going to put him down anyway and can’t they rather just go back? Can’t they talk about how they were before he killed three men in front of her, before he all but begged her to walk out of his life? Can’t they try again and he promises not to fuck up this time. Promises that he’ll give her more joy than grief. Promises that he’ll do his best to keep those promises.

But he doesn’t say any of this. Those words aren’t for now. Maybe they are not for ever.

“Tabloids don’t know shit.” It’s lame. It’s all he has.

She nods. She’s a smart girl. Smarter than most. It’s something else he’s always liked about her.

And then she blindsides him.

“So, you going to punish him?” Casual. No inflection. No judgment. And he realises she’s changed even more than he thought since he last saw her. There’s a hardness to her now. She’s guarded and world weary and he isn’t surprised. She’s been through hell - if he’s honest he’s put her through some of it himself. And then of course there’s Red and whatever shit he has going on with her right now too. They haven’t been good to her - he hasn’t been good to her. Not many people have.

No bullshit. Not anymore.

She stops walking and when he looks at her, she’s looking back, unflinching. Testing him almost. Daring him. And he wonders when the tables got turned, how she knocked him off his feet and how he’s suddenly scrambling and trying to stay upright. And then he hears Maria in his head asking why he ever really thought he was.

She always was a smartass.

“Come on Frank,” she says, cocking her head. “You can’t tell me the thought hasn’t crossed your mind.”

No. No he can’t. She doesn’t even seem remotely upset by this.

The truth is he has no leads on Ward and that in itself is worrying. It’s not like the man has resources, it’s not even like he’s particularly smart or capable. He’s a bully. He’s loud and brash and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb. Still, it seems he stepped out of that prison yard onto a transport into New York City and fell off the face of the Earth. Which would be great, if Frank believed it for one second.

But it’s early days yet and he’s going to call in favours. Spent the morning with a burner phone and list of people in high places who’d prefer not to get on his bad side. So he’s waiting, he’s reasonably confident this shouldn’t take long to sort out. And yet … and yet here he is. And here she is. And he knows that every second Ward is unaccounted for is a second too long.

“I can’t find him,” he says. It sounds bad. Lame. And it makes him feel ashamed even though he knows it shouldn’t. It’s only been a day, a few hours really. Still … it feels like he’s not doing his job, like he’s failing.

Again.

Oh please God, not again.

But she nods like she wasn’t really expecting anything else.

“So why are you here Frank?” she asks. “After all this time when you stayed away and pretended that this…” she indicates vaguely between them, “doesn’t matter.”

It hurts in a way he didn’t expect, drives a fucking knife inside him and twists it. She’s merciless and she has every right to be, he has no right to anything else. He’s undeserving of her grace - he always has been. He won’t apologise though. She’d hate that more than his disappearing.

Instead he’s quiet for a long time while he looks at her, trying hard not to let the snowflakes in her hair distract him, the reflection of the moonlight in her eyes.

“Come on,” she says. “You gonna tell me to lock my door? Make sure my .38 is loaded?”

Yeah he knows. This is ridiculous. He is ridiculous. There’s literally nothing he can tell her that she wouldn’t already be doing already. And he doesn’t know what to say to her. Doesn’t know what he’s offering until it’s already out in the world.

“Let me keep you safe.”

There’s a moment - it can’t be more than a second but it feels like hours, days even - that the world goes silent. No laughing children, no cars fighting the evening traffic, no sirens. The night itself feels heavy and close, like the air has descended and blocked out everything but him and her and his words.

Let me keep you safe. Please. Let me.

She’s looking at him, eyes boring right through him like she can see everything he’s ever done and everything he ever will do. Everything he could do. Her gaze drops to his hands and he’s suddenly aware that he’s clenching his fists, that his nails are cutting bluntly into his palms. He knows what she’s thinking, that she’s wondering how many more men he’s killed since she last saw him.

It’s not a question he can answer. He doesn’t know. He’s stopped counting.

He knows it isn’t enough though. That there’s at least one more name that belongs on that list. And she won’t be safe until it’s there. Until then he can try.

He can try.

He clears his throat, searches for the words.

“I can take you somewhere you’ll be safe. I have a place. Just until this…”

“A place? You mean like a safe house?” Her voice is hard, cold even and he has to catch himself. Stop speaking.

It sounds ludicrous, he knows it does. She hasn’t seen him in almost two years. He left her in the fucking cold in the middle of a forest so he could go and kill a man. He abandoned her and pushed everything they meant to each other and could mean to each other away. And here he is, asking her to literally go away with him, to let him whisk her off to an undisclosed location with him being the only person on Earth to know where she is. She’d be mad to say yes. Completely fucking out of her head. But God, oh God , he wishes she would. Him and her and nothing but woods and mountains between them and the next living soul. They could be together and he could be with the one person who makes him feel like he could be good. Like it’s possible.

It’s selfish. It’s so fucking selfish. And no amount of telling himself it’s for her own safety would convince him otherwise.

But she’s saving him from himself and shaking her head, wiping that chocolate stain from her lips in what feels like a double betrayal. Or disappointment. He’s not sure he can tell the difference anymore.

“Ma’am-”

“No,” she says. “I’m not running away from my life because of some wife-beating piece of shit.”

“It’ll just be for a few days…”

She shakes her head again, angry this time. “No Frank. I’m not going to put my tail between my legs and hide every time something shitty happens in my life.”

There’s something in her voice, something that makes it waver, and he narrows his eyes. Looks past the pretty hair and pale skin and he swears he can see something else. Something that looks like familiarity, like resignation.

She’s been here before he realises. She’s had the choice to run or to stay and fight. This really isn’t her first rodeo. And suddenly he feels stupid, so goddamn fucking stupid for even coming here, for daring to ask. Of course she would say no. There’s no universe in which she says yes.

All the same he sighs. And his feet feel like lead in his boots. It’s not that this was unexpected. Not really. He had to try - of course he did - but truthfully, the idea of Karen Page running away with him is as ridiculous as the idea of Maria walking through his front door and telling him everything was okay. It was stupid and naive and easily the most foolhardy thing he’s ever said to her and he feels like an idiot for even asking, like all that training and discipline he’s forced himself to endure and overcome is just slipping away from him. She makes him stupid and weak. She gives him hope when he shouldn’t have it. And he hates her for it. But he doesn’t.

And now he needs a Plan B, a back up. At least until he’s found Ward; found him and put him at the bottom of the Atlantic where he belongs. He’s not above using cement shoes. He really isn’t. But until then he needs something. Because he’s not going to fuck up again.

He’s not .

She’s looking at him, eyes like chips of ice and suddenly he feels small. Small and inconsequential and unimportant. Mostly he feels like a piece of shit though. Because this isn’t fair, because you don’t just ignore the people you care about, walk out of their lives and leave them to imagine whatever fate they can has befallen you. It’s not right. Of all people he should know that.

He has no words. No explanations. He can’t say he’s sorry. He can’t even begin to.

“I… I just want you to be safe ma’am.”

It sounds so trite, so small for what he really wants to say, for what it actually means. For the depth of feeling that exists behind those few simple words. It’s pathetic.

It’s also the best he has.

But she doesn’t roll her eyes or look away. She doesn’t hit back with something harsh and cold about looking after herself and not needing his help although she has every right to. She doesn’t walk away and leave him there in the cold and snow and the wind. She can be infinitely merciless when it comes to him, but she can also be the opposite.

And when he thinks about it, his words might be stupid and expendable, useless and thrown like pennies into a long forgotten and malfunctioning wishing well, but they have something. Something important.

They have truth.

He can keep her safe.

And that means something. It has to.

She must feel it too because all of a sudden she seems to soften. Not a lot, not even noticeably to the untrained eye, but some of the steel goes out of her spine and her lips curve into a small smile.

She still cares. Despite everything, she does. And that is almost too much to bear. Almost .

She takes a step towards him, a step into his space and he can see the snowflakes falling on her lashes, melting on her lips. She smells of something flowery and fresh but not too sweet and suddenly he realises how long it’s been since someone got up in his face like this - someone he wasn’t planning on eviscerating or throttling; how long it’s been since he’s been this way - any way - with a woman.

These are also dangerous thoughts. Too dangerous. But he can’t seem to push them away. Can’t find the room to make them fit.

And then she reaches up and touches his face, palm gentle against the scruff of his beard, fingertips against his cheek.

There’s a split second when he revels in how normal this must look to anyone who sees them. How to the world he isn’t The Punisher and she isn’t Karen Page. How they’re just friends - lovers even - who met after work for a stroll through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. How they have a familiarity the world has decided means one thing and one thing alone. How the world is wrong but he wishes so so much that it wasn’t.

He tries not to turn his head and nuzzle her palm. He comes close to succeeding.

“That’s kind of you Frank,” she says. “Thank you.”

It’s genuine, heartfelt, but she also makes it sound like it doesn’t really matter. And again, he’s inconsequential and irrelevant - someone who hurt her too badly for her to bless with redemption again.

He thinks what she doesn’t realise is that what she thinks of him is just as irrelevant. She can hate him with every fibre of her being or be as indifferent to him as she is to the bleak sunlight on an otherwise rainy day. But she has to be safe. She has to live. He doesn’t care what he needs to do to make that happen.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she says.

He doesn’t want to be. Not to her. Not to the only person who gives a fuck about him. But he has to. She has to understand that too.

But he’s not sure she does.

She runs a thumb along his side of his face, adjusts the edge of his scarf and the lapels of his coat, and then - seemingly on a whim or a flare of insanity - she presses a kiss to his cheek.

“That’s for caring,” she says and then turns on her heel and walks away.

~~~

He can keep her safe.

It’s still a feeling, something that sits in his bones and his heart, something that makes him feel as warm as the place on his cheek where her lips brushed against him.

He has a Plan B.

The truth is she’s not going to like it much more than Plan A and there’s a lot about it he doesn’t like either. Because yes, this feels like lying, this feels like an invasion of privacy. But Ward is still out there and even though the idea of going out to hunt for him alone gets his heart beating fast and his bloodlust running hot, he knows Karen Page living is more important than Marcus Ward dying.

He feeds the puppy again. It’s going to need a name because “The Puppy” is just starting to sound lazy. He wants something regal, something noble, but still something practical enough to call out without sounding like a jackass. Because yes, despite his concern over time and space he knows he’s not going to be giving him up. There’s no way he’s going to dump him at a shelter and leave him to his fate. That is something he just doesn’t have in him and somewhere in his head he imagines Maria with a deeply satisfied grin on her pretty face.

He calls in more favours. He surprises a few people, pisses off a few more, but in the end he’s got a fair few of them digging deep for Ward. It doesn’t solve the immediate problem though. It doesn’t solve the problem that Karen Page is going to bed in a world where there’s a man out to murder her.

He briefly considers going to Red. Briefly. But he shelves the idea just as fast. He’s not sure exactly where things are standing in the world of Karen Page and Matthew Murdock; doesn’t know if this is something he should even be meddling near , let alone in .

Also, it feels insulting - circle the wagons around the pretty lady because everyone knows there’s no way she can look after herself. Let the men take care of it until the baddies are gone and then let her out again. It’s bullshit and she’d call him on it. And she’d have every right to.

That doesn’t mean he’s going to leave it entirely. He doesn’t want to insult her but he also doesn’t want her dead. The risk simply isn’t worth it.

So he does what he can. He gathers the puppy up in his blanket, takes a supply of the milk mixture with him and heads out through the falling snow to his truck. And when he’s parked outside Karen Page’s apartment and he can see the warm lights shining through her bedroom window and the darker shadows as she moves through the rooms, he considers that maybe in another world this would be close to stalking. But he doesn’t care. Her safety outweighs his place in her good books.

Like she knew earlier, it doesn’t matter. It never did.

He can keep her safe.

~~~

It goes much as he imagines it will. He sits and drinks coffee and the puppy sleeps next to him, little snores reverberating through the truck, gentle ticking of the alarm clock a strange and yet somehow comforting accompaniment. He keeps the heat on, keeps his eyes on the street outside her apartment, takes note of when she turns the lights out, when the world goes quiet.

It’s lonely - he can’t deny that. But then again, he’s always lonely so he thinks he might be used to it now.

She has a ground floor apartment - he has no idea how she organised that, can’t imagine she’s getting paid all that well at the paper. But she’s smart, resourceful and if anyone can make it work - can stretch their cash far enough - it’s her. She even has a flowerbox, currently empty, and he can see a welcome mat outside her door. He wonders what it says. Maria always like the slightly wry ones. For years the bright red one outside their door said “We love all our guests - some for coming, others for leaving”. Later, when that got too threadbare he got her one saying “Beware of the wife, kids are also shady, husband is cool”. He thought she’d hate it, but she didn’t. He thinks she got a kick out of it every time she walked over it.

But Karen, Karen he’s not sure of. He thinks it might be straight and to the point. Something with big letters saying WELCOME. Or maybe, depending on her mood the day she bought it, something saying LEAVE.

He’ll never know though. He’ll never darken her doorstep. Not like that at least.

So he waits.

He watches the people who pass her door: an old woman walking a little fluffy white dog; a group of teenagers up way past their bedtimes; a couple who spend so much time kissing each other he genuinely wonders if they might not end up fucking in the street against one of the cars. They’re all unremarkable. But then Marcus Ward is unremarkable too. Unremarkable doesn’t mean safe. He knows that all too well.

But no one seems specifically interested in Karen Page’s front door. They all carry on walking except for the couple. And even they move on after some long kisses and gentle touches.

Him and Maria used to be like that when they first got together. They couldn’t keep their hands off one another. He remembers how he loved the swell of her hip, the curve of her waist and how he would spend ages tracing the lines of it; how when they were out his fingers would linger on her and even though she kept up a good game face, he could feel the way she arched into him, the prickling of goosebumps through her clothes.

But that’s all gone now. Gone and lost and all he has is a nameless puppy hanging onto life by a thread and a pretty blonde girl who might see him as not wholly evil but something she has to endure rather that enjoy. He guesses that’s still better than nothing.

At 2am he takes the puppy and stuffs him into the front of his coat, gets out of the car and takes a brisk walk around the block to clear his head. It doesn’t help much but it feels good to stretch his legs, breathe in the cold air. He’s tired, but that’s okay. He’s been tired before.

(Too tired to play ball with my boy. Too tired to take my wife to bed.)

More thoughts. More thoughts he needs to push away. But they don’t go easy. Not at all. And as he stands there in the starlight and the snow, the world transformed into something both monochromatic and filled with colour he hears Maria’s voice. She’s telling him it’s okay.

And he shakes his head because it’s not. It’s not okay at all. She’s wrong. Even if she was never wrong before, she is now.

He hunches his shoulders, goes back to the truck. The puppy - who he thinks he might call Gregor - is awake and they play for a while before it collapses back into the blankets and sleeps with his hand on its belly.

And then he waits. And he waits. And the streets start getting busier again and the sky lightens slightly. And at eight o’clock when she comes downstairs for work, looking as fresh and beautiful as he feels old and stale, he drives home. He calls it Night One.

He has no idea how many more there’ll be.

~~~

The first month is the hardest. Or so he thinks. He sits outside her apartment all night, he snatches a few hours sleep in the morning, and in the afternoon and early evening he hunts. But his predatory instincts are failing him and Ward’s disappearing act would be something he could almost admire if it wasn’t stressing him out so much. He puts pressure on his contacts, threatens them with meathooks and waterboarding and he thinks they might half believe him even though there’s very little chance he would employ either of these things. He’s The Punisher but these are decent people for the most part and he doesn’t hurt decent people. Still though, the fact that Marcus Ward has managed to go Harry fucking Houdini on his ass is more than concerning.

The puppy gets bigger, stronger. He still feeds it its special milk formula mixture five times a day but he’s going to move onto solids soon. He keeps the heater on in the truck at night, lets it sleep when it doesn’t want to play.

It still doesn’t have a name though. Gregor wasn’t working. He’s tried Odin, Thor, but they felt fake and forced so he’s resigned himself to waiting it out until the name comes to him of its own accord. They usually do. They always have in the past no matter how many “recruits” he brought home to his pretty wife and their pretty lives.

The people who pass her apartment at night vary. A homeless man, sometimes a few prostitutes and a pimp that Frank makes a mental note to investigate a little more closely when he has the time. The old lady still walks her dog and he keeps an eye on her too because the night streets of Hell’s Kitchen don’t seem a safe space for little old ladies, nor their fluffy white dogs.

Karen comes and goes, her routines fairly regular, traceable and one night it hits him with the force of a freight train that he’s watching the life of a lonely person. Maybe someone as lonely as him. She leaves for work at the same time every day and comes home around six-thirty every night, maybe a little later if she’s gone to the store. She sometimes goes out again but it’s rare and she’s usually home before midnight. Nelson comes to her place one Friday but from what he can tell they stay in and drink wine because he calls a cab home in the early hours of the morning and Karen doesn’t emerge until 3pm the following Saturday. And he wishes he could go to her and he wishes he could tell her that he knows how she feels, that he feels it too and she’s the only place that makes him feel grounded and part of something. And he wishes he didn’t feel like some kind of sicko stalker and he wishes a lot of things that’ll never come true. But he wishes they would anyway.

And, in the early hours of the morning, when everything is quiet and snowy and the moonlight tinges the world silver he imagines Maria in his head and she talks to him. Tells him nonsense that he can’t believe she would ever actually say: things like she forgives him, things like he deserves happiness, things like he's not a monster. And sometimes he has to get out of the truck, walk it off hard and fast, breathe harsh and deep until he can't hear that thing that’s using her voice anymore. Because it can’t be her. Because she wouldn’t say things like that to him. She wouldn’t lie like that. She wouldn’t forgive.

Sometimes though, sometimes it feels like he’s spinning out of control and his blood is boiling in his head, thick and viscous like magma and if he’s not careful he’s just going to explode; go down in a rain of blood and guts, his bones shattering and nerves short circuiting. And that’s when the puppy earns his keep, shows his purpose. He makes little doggy noises and nuzzles Frank's hands, licks his fingertips and leaves the musty smell of puppy breath on his skin. He brings him back and makes him focus; keep his eyes on her window, her door. And then he’s able to ride out the night until he can go home and crash. Eat. Hunt. Start the whole sorry business all over again.

And it is a sorry business. It doesn’t get any less sorry. His contacts continue fail spectacularly.

So he sits and he waits and he watches Karen Page’s apartment. And he feels like a stalker and a creep of the worst possible kind but he tells himself he doesn’t care. He’ll do this until the day he dies if he needs to. He’ll protect her with everything he has because that’s what he does. And what he should do. And he comforts himself by imagining how good it will feel when he eventually has his hands around Ward’s throat, when he sees the life going out of his eyes. How he’ll treasure those scabs on his knuckles and the bruises on his face when he’s done. How there is nothing in the world he’d rather do than put that piece of shit down like the piece of fucked up scum he is.

In the meantime he can keep her safe.

Chapter Text

Christmas is tough.

It always is. She doesn’t have family, and her friends are few and far between. And even those friends come with certain complications, certain edges that cut a little too sharp and a little too deep.

There’s Claire. Claire who is beautiful and wonderful and the type of person who makes you look long and hard at yourself and ask the difficult questions like why you deserve this; what it is you could have possibly done to have a friend who is one step away from sainthood. She’s the best friend anyone could ask for. She’s also technically the person who saves Matt’s ass on a semi-regular basis and that complicates things. Because she might love Claire more than life but there’s always an elephant in the room - one that she doesn’t think will ever leave. They don’t talk about Daredevil. They don’t really acknowledge it even though it’s something of an open secret now, but it makes things awkward, strained even, whenever he comes up. And Karen can’t deny that she still feels like a fool for not knowing, that she’s genuinely mortified whenever she thinks about how blind she was, and maybe how blind she still is.

It’s a similar issue with Foggy who could probably put Claire to shame in the sainthood stakes. He’s good and kind and fierce. But he also feels like he’s being forced to play favourites, even though that’s not really true. Her and Matt are both perfectly capable of acting like adults and it’s only as uncomfortable as they make it. And they try not to. They really do. She thinks on some level they both realise that their friendships with Claire and Foggy are more important than any water under the bridge between them. Any lies either of them have told themselves or each other.

And then of course there’s Matt. Matthew Murdock. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Daredevil. And while they’re not on bad terms after all this time, there’s still something sensitive and a little thorny there, a distrust which she can’t quite shake. It’s not even the fact that she found another woman in his bed. Or that he has this whole other life she never knew about, although that’s a bitter pill to swallow in itself. It’s not even the lies really - even if they don’t help. No, it’s his perception of her. She feels like she’s been cast in a role he understands, that she’s the pretty lady and he’s the dashing gentleman. And even that in itself would fine, except for the fact that that is all he knows and all he wants to know.

He can smell the evil in Hell’s Kitchen but not the .38 in her purse. He can hear things miles away but not the way her throat chokes up when he wonders aloud whatever happened to James Wesley. He can feel the exact threadcount on a set of sheets but he can’t feel the way her heart beats and her hands shake when he mentions Frank Castle’s name. And to be fair, even she can’t put that into words and she doesn’t want to.

And yes, then there’s Frank Castle. The man who should for all intents and purposes not be on her friend list, the man she should not want to see or be near. But she’s never been good with “shoulds”, never found space for them. And despite everything that he’s done and everything that he will do and everything she knows he could do, she has a place in her heart for him - a place that’s warm and vast and it’ll take a lot more than wishing and hoping and “shoulds” to make that disappear.

And that’s why his absence hurts so much. She didn’t think it would. Not after the last time. She thought she was over it, over them and all that they lost. And then there he was, standing outside waiting for her, looking for her. Like he had a right to. Like he could . Like it was his job. And she’s tried to put him out of her mind, but she can’t. He won’t go. He won’t leave. And she doesn’t want him to.

All the same she hasn’t seen him, not since that day when they walked through the snow and he asked her to go away with him. And when she puts it like that it sounds so romantic. The big bad Punisher asking her to run off with him, to let him take her to a secluded location that only he knows about and stay there with him. She would have been crazy to take him up on it, but now she thinks it was crazier not to. She passed up an opportunity that will never come again. She lost something there’s no way she’ll ever get back.

It’s not even the protection he was offering that was appealing. She has her .38, she knows how to use it. If and when Ward shows his ugly mug she’ll be fine. She doesn’t need some enraged, semi-unhinged vigilante to see to that. She’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

All the same she needs him. She does. Because he gets her, because she doesn’t need to pretend around him. Because she’s not lonely when he’s with her.

But he’s not with her.

And Christmas is tough.

She looks at herself in the mirror. She’s a different person to the Karen Page from two years ago. Harder. Confident. A little more fearless. She’s stopped with the bullshit and expected the same of others. She guesses that’s another thing to thank Frank for, something else that puts her in his debt.

It’s okay though. He won’t expect repayment. He doesn’t look at the world that way. He’d be horrified to hear that she did.

She applies some lipgloss, a little more rouge to her cheeks, gives herself a final once over and straightens her pretty blue wool dress, tugs at the brown suede boots that cover her knees. She looks fine, more than good enough for Christmas Eve with Foggy and Marci. And yes, Matt too.

Claire will be there as well. Claire and her new beau who people claim is bulletproof. It sounds insane but she believes it. She’s seen far too much not to.

And the truth is she’s happy to be doing something , happy to be going somewhere . Christmas might have an edge but it has a fucking electrified barbed wire fence when you have to spend it alone. She knows. She’s been there too.

And she can’t help it but her mind wanders back to Frank. This will be his third Christmas without Maria, without his children, without everything that let his world make sense. And that breaks her heart. She wonders where he is, what he’s doing and she wishes she knew how to find him, how to reel him back into the world for just a few minutes so that he knows he doesn’t need to be alone. Even if it’s only for one night.

But she can’t. Frank Castle is pretty much lost to her. Pretty much lost to himself too. The Punisher - that part of him that is all bad and all rage - only allows glimpses of the old Frank, the real Frank, into the world. Fractions of seconds when he saves dogs and sings bad songs, moments that The Punisher realises he isn’t strong enough to handle and so he sends Frank out to take the pressure off, to ease it. It’s a fucking cruel game that he plays with himself. It’s vicious and sadistic and it lets him martyr the goodness he still has. And she hates it. But there’s nothing to be done.

Christmas is tough.

She picks up her purse and heads over to Foggy’s.

~~~

Later Matt walks her home. She didn’t ask him but he insisted and she knows that there’s an ulterior motive, that he thinks he might be invited inside for a nightcap. And once he would have been. Once when she was sweet and naive and she couldn’t believe that somehow she had the attentions of someone as handsome and charming as Matthew Murdock. But not tonight. It’s not even that she thinks he’s hoping to sleep with her. Matt’s a lot of things but he isn’t that kind of manipulative. He’s just hoping to talk to her really, see how much she’s actually forgiven him and how far she’s moved on. She wishes she could tell him in a way that would make him listen.

She tried. At dinner, between Marci’s endless and perfectly cooked dishes, she tried to nonchalantly bring up aspects of her life that Matt wouldn’t know about. She talked about work, about the stories she’s written, the places she’s gone. She told them she started cycling and joined a book club which she hates but it gets her out of the house.

But Matt barely seemed to notice. And when he brought up Frank Castle and wondered idly where he is and what he is doing, he didn’t seem to notice the catch in her voice either. Nor the way her heart suddenly felt like it was about to burst out of her chest and how she did everything she could to change the subject.

Matt didn’t notice but Claire did. And Foggy. And she hopes neither of them will demand too much by way of explanation.

She tells herself there’s nothing to say. Not really anyway. She’s seen him once in the past 18 months and even though the visit was awkward and brief, it didn’t mean anything. Just like the way he looked at her didn’t mean anything, nor the way she could see his fingers twitching at his sides and she knew he wanted to wipe the sheen of hot chocolate off her lips. She tells herself none of that means anything.

She tells herself a lot of things.

Christmas is tough.

And firmly saying goodbye to Matt at the front door and leaving no room for objection is even tougher.

He wants to talk. Really talk. It’s been too long and he knows she’s lonely and he is too. And they were friends once and he’s not asking for more but he misses her. He misses her so much and he knows things can’t be what they once were but maybe they can be something. Something good.

And maybe they can. But not now. Not on Christmas Eve when the snow is falling and the fairy lights are twinkling prettily in the windows. Not when the world is quiet and children are snuggled up in their beds waiting for Santa. Not when the very universe is demanding other things of all of them.

But when she looks at him, at that square jaw and high cheekbones, that mop of dark hair hidden beneath a warm hat, she doesn’t have it in her to tell him all this, to dash his hopes so cruelly. He’s not asking for a commitment, he’s not asking to date her, to woo her. He’s not asking to be a partner. He asking for some of her time and it seems unnecessarily mean-spirited to say no. So she doesn’t.

She agrees to meet him in the new year for a coffee. Just a coffee, nothing else. It’s not a date. It’s a catch up. And he agrees. I’ll hold you to that Karen Page , he says and she believes him. He will. And she’s glad. She’s tired of being lonely and Matt can be good company when he’s not being righteous, when he’s not trying to justify himself.

They’ll never be what they could have been. But maybe this can work.

Maybe.

He turns to leave and she realises she has no desire to call him back, no wish that he would stay a little longer, that this wasn’t the end of the night and possibly of something else too. He feels it, she can see by the small sad smile on his face, the dejected way he flips his scarf around his neck and bundles his hands into his pockets.

“Goodnight Karen,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”

“You too Matt.”

He nods and she watches as he walks out of the courtyard onto the street. But then he pauses and turns back to her and she can make out the frown on his face, the way he’s cocked his head like he can sense something no living human being can. Or should.

“What?” she asks and he shakes his head.

“No, nothing,” he says but he looks unconvinced and she can see how he’s breathing in the night air, facing the line of cars parked along one of the side streets.

“What?” she asks again.

He smiles. “It’s crazy really. I just thought for a second that Frank Castle was here.”

It’s a strange thing - one she’ll wonder about a lot later when she has time to think about Matt again - but somehow she doesn’t react to that. Not outwardly at least. Her heart drops into her belly and despite the freezing temperatures her palms start to sweat and her skin prickles. But she keeps her voice neutral, steady as she can, and she doesn’t think even Matt can pick up the slight waver in it.

“Yeah Matt, that is crazy.”

He nods, grins and waves goodbye, turns on his heel and he’s gone, tipping his hat to an old lady and her little white, fluffy dog as he crosses the road and disappears into the night.

And then she’s alone, even though she knows she’s not.

She stands by her door for a few minutes, looking out at the snowy sidewalks, the pretty bright lights from the windows and her gaze falls on the line of cars parked in the street perpendicular to hers. They’re crammed in nose to tail and she wonders how many of her neighbours are having Christmas parties of their own tonight, how hard the mulled wine is flowing and how many turkeys are roasting. And then she sees the black truck wedged in between a Mini Cooper and an old Ford pick up. And even though she knows there are millions of trucks just like that on the roads, that it’s probably more American than apple pie, and if she just walked a few feet in the opposite direction she’d probably find five more exactly like it, there’s no doubt in her mind that it’s him.

It has to be.

It’s just the kind of thing he would do. Just the kind of Plan B he’d make after she refused to be whisked away into oblivion with him, when she turned him down and changed fate and why everything has felt so wrong since then.

And she has no idea what to do about any of it.

In her head, she marches up the road, bangs on the window and demands to know what he’s doing, why he’s here. In her head, he tells that the world has fallen apart and he needs to hurt it back into shape again. In her head he opens the door and she climbs inside and she tells him that she’s missed him and she thinks she might love him. And in her head he takes her hand in his and presses it to his lips and they don’t need to talk again.

But that’s all in her head. And she’s much, much braver in her head.

She sighs, leans against her door for a moment, takes a second to appreciate the beauty of the falling snow not yet turned to horrible city slush, and then goes inside.

~~~

It’s almost midnight when she sees him get out of the truck. She’s sitting at her window, a cup of hot chocolate clasped in her hands. She hasn’t changed her clothes, she hasn’t changed anything in fact. She’s been waiting. She needs to see it for herself. Be sure it was him.

Patience isn’t her strong suit but tonight she’s forced it to be an exception. She’s watched people come and go, seen guests leaving her neighbours’ houses, kids playing in the snow and lovers who were kissing so hard and so much, she wondered if she should carry on looking or just wait until they’re done. But the black truck hasn’t moved and whoever is inside it hasn’t either. She wonders why she’s being so coy about it, why she’s even giving him the benefit of the doubt and pretending there’s a chance that it’s not him, that it’s just some other soul hanging out in a truck exactly like his on Christmas Eve.

She’s pretty sure she should be angry about this. She knows she makes excuses for Frank, she gives him leeway she hasn’t given to anyone else in her whole life and that includes boyfriends and best friends. But there’s something about him and the way he doesn’t push, the way he doesn’t underestimate her that leaves her feeling more amenable to him, has her breaking her own rules and putting her feelings of righteous indignation aside. He has credit in the books of Karen Page, she’ll allow some bad behaviour from him, more than she would allow from others.

Also, she has to admit, she gets it. It’s not like this idea that he needs to protect her doesn’t piss her off. It does. But it also doesn’t come out of nowhere. It doesn’t come out of some twisted idea that she’s helpless and can only be safe when he makes it happen. It’s so much more than that. It’s the chance to succeed, to find a place in the world that he understands. And there’s a really big part of her that doesn’t want to deny him that. Doesn’t think she can. He’s been through enough.

So when she goes downstairs to her front door, it’s not to chew him out. And when she walks out into the cold night air, it’s not to tell him to go home and when she sees him standing on the grassy verge next to her apartment, dog lead in one hand and his gloves in the other, she doesn’t feel even the slightest bit angry.

He’s here. He’s freezing his ass off in the snow for her. That means something. It has to. She wants it to.

He doesn’t notice her at first. He’s muttering about something, fiddling with the dog lead and she sees some kind of vaguely pitbull waif that’s cute as a button attached to the other end of it. It’s looking at him like he must be quite mad to expect anything of it in temperatures as low as these. She takes a moment to wonder about this, how he manages to find these strays and lost souls; how a man with so much blood on his hands can be so tender and so gentle and care so deeply. She thinks she has her answer though. It only makes sense that someone who can hate as much as he can, can love in the same way. It’s always the kindest souls that hurt the most, the softest hearts that become the hardest.

He murders her inside and she doesn’t want him to ever stop.

She watches him, his broad shoulders, the long coat flapping around his ankles and the moonlight that seems to cast its glow on everything but him. She wonders if maybe it’s afraid of him. Maybe it doesn’t think it has enough light for him, that it’ll just be sucked into the black hole that is Frank Castle and disappear forever. There’s a part of her that knows exactly how that feels.

She doesn’t care.

He stiffens when she says his name, body going rigid and she can almost see him bristling underneath his coat. But it’s not rage. Not at all.

If anything it’s shame. And it breaks her heart.

He’s a shadow as he turns towards her, dark and monstrous. Almost unfathomable. But she knows his face, she knows his eyes, black as the night and seeing right through her. She knows the set of his jaw, the strange but gentle pout of his lips. She knows him . She knows everything about him. Everything that matters and she doesn’t care about the rest. About the bad bits. Not now.

He calls her ma’am, he saves her life, he wants to keep her safe. He’s a good man. He’s a good man who has done some very terrible things, but that doesn’t change anything. For now it’s inconsequential.

For now.

“What are you doing here Frank?” It’s a stupid question. She knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. She needs him to say it though.

Glance at her face. Eyes meeting hers. Fingers twitching at his side.

In the distance she can hear cars and, below that, music, something subtle and festive caught on the wind and meandering its way through the night air to them. He hears it too, cocks his head slightly, but he doesn’t say anything.

Instead he grinds his teeth, bites his lip and continues to look at her like she shouldn’t be here. Like it’s her who’s invading his space and overstepping the as yet unspoken boundaries between them. And maybe she is. The night and the dark and the cold is his time, it’s his home, his sanctuary , and maybe she shouldn’t be here.

She’s never had much time for “shouldn’ts” either.

There’s a long moment when it seems like he won’t speak, that he’ll just glare and hope that’ll frighten her back inside. He should know that’s nothing more than a fantasy though. He doesn’t scare her. Not even a little bit.

“I couldn’t find him,” he says eventually and she can hear the shame in that, the depths of his failure. “I tried, but he’s still out there.”

He looks away, down at the puppy, at his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

He breaks her heart. Snaps it clean down the middle and leaves it in pieces on the ground. He’s so lost, so incredibly off track - halfway down the road to madness and losing salvation by the second. She doesn’t know if she can save him anymore. If anyone can.

“Frank,” she takes a step closer to him, raises her hand and he watches her warily. She knows he’s expecting an explosion, that he’s waiting for some kind of retaliation. That in a way he’s craving it.

So when she touches his face and her fingers press into his cold skin, it’s almost like she’s betraying him. Like she’s giving him love when she should be giving pain and it’s the last thing he wants and maybe the only thing he needs.

And she wants to tell him no. There’s nothing to be sorry for. There never was. That she’s made her peace with him and everything that he is. That he’s not a failure and he’s not a monster and right now he can just be a man, walking his dog on a snowy evening. And he can come inside where it’s light. he can get warm and he doesn’t need to suffer anymore.

“It’s okay Frank,” she says and it is. It really is. Because it’s Christmas Eve and he’s here and she’s here and the world is magical and she wants so very much for it all to be okay.

His hand closes around her wrist but he doesn’t pull her fingers away from his face. Instead he just holds her there, looking for something - a lie, a truth maybe. She isn’t sure. But then he finds it and something inside him softens the tiniest bit. Some of the horror and the fear goes out of his eyes and he turns his head to nuzzle her palm, lips barely even touching her; beard scraping gently against her skin.

She realises that this is what he wanted to do before when he came to her at her office. He wanted to hold her like this and rub against her hands like a bad dog looking for forgiveness, like an animal searching for a place they can feel safe. He tried then, he started - she didn’t miss the way he shifted into her, that gentle scrape of his stubble - but he caught himself. He stopped. He didn’t do it how he wanted to, how he hoped. And then she’d kissed him and that didn’t go to plan either. Because she didn’t want to just press her lips to his cheek, she didn’t want it to be so brief, so fleeting.

Neither of them got what they wanted. Not then.

But maybe now is different.

She steps into his space, steps right up so that her dress is brushing against his coat and the toes of her boots are touching his. She’s not cold. In fact she feels warm all over, even though her skin breaks out in gooseflesh under his breath and she trembles violently as his hand slides from her wrist to her arm and squeezes.

Her gaze drops from his eyes to his mouth, flickers back again and despite his darkness - or maybe because of it - she sees a flash in his eyes, a flare of something heated and frightening and a little disturbed. And then she can’t wait anymore.

She’s gentle when she presses her lips against his, tentative even. She’s a little surprised by her own lack of confidence, the way he doesn’t need to do anything for her to feel like he’s pulling the rug out from under her, that she could fall. Except she knows him and she knows he won’t let that happen. That he’ll never let that happen.

There’s a second that he doesn’t respond, an eternal moment when she wonders if she’s read this wrong; if he doesn’t think of her the same way she does of him and that he’s enduring her and her childish little fantasy of the big bad Punisher and his affections for her. But it’s only a second.

Because then he surges against her, arches his body so that it’s flush with hers and covers her mouth with his. And he’s so warm and so wet and he tastes faintly of coffee and underneath that of rage and hurt. But she can soothe that, she can quiet it for now, she can give him that reprieve and she opens herself to him, lets him slide his tongue messily between her teeth, lick at her mouth and taste her own fear, her own grief.

He pulls her closer, one hand dropping to her waist, the other tight around her shoulders, dragging her out of the cold spiralling winds and into the warm haven his body has made for her.

The leather strap of the dog leash stretches across her back, biting into her but she doesn’t care about that. She doesn’t care about the falling snow or the sirens she can hear in the distance. She doesn’t care about anything except the way his fingers are twitching on her hip like he’s not sure he should be touching her like this and the taste of him, the brush of his tongue against hers as he groans into her mouth.

He’s not rough. Not at all. But he’s demanding and a little desperate and for a second she thinks he might overwhelm her. His need and his desire might be too much and she won’t have it within her to satisfy him, that she won’t fully understand it and she’ll leave him in a worse state than she found him. But she doesn’t. She moves with him, lets him take the lead, counters him when he gets too much, and encourages him with her lips and her hands and her voice when he hesitates. And she lets him kiss her and hold her and touch her like she’s the only goddamn thing in the whole goddamn world that matters.

And the snow falls down and the wind howls and when he finally pulls away, lips swollen and mouth open, she’s trembling and unsteady and drawing long hard breaths of the frigid air into her lungs.

She wants to kiss him again. She realises that almost instantly. She wants him back in her arms and his body pressed up against hers. She wants to frame his face with her hands and run her fingers through his hair, taste his lips. She wants to put her hands inside his coat and touch the bumps of his ribs, arch her neck so he can put his mouth to her pulse and his hand to her breast. She wants all of that, all of him. Every last scarred, incidental millimetre.

And he wants that too. She can see it in the way his eyes are eating her up and how he seems to have forgotten everything else in the world, including the puppy who has given up and is now sitting on his boots.

But he has to break her heart first. He has to. He has to get in his own way. He always does.

“I’m sorry,” he says and it takes her a moment to understand what he’s saying, what he’s apologising for. “I shouldn’t have… that was...”

“No, Frank, please…”

Her voice doesn’t sound like hers. It’s thick and husky and she’s not even sure if actual words are coming out of her mouth or just some form of garbled glossolalia. “No you should…”

But she can see she’s losing him, that this was too much and too soon and he’s retreating back into the safe place where he kills and tortures and suffers. And it feels like someone has just doused her in ice water and suddenly she is freezing. Suddenly she’s feeling every snowflake, every gust of wind. The warm space he gave her is disappearing, diluting itself in the winter, turning the blood in her veins to ice.

“You…” he starts, closes his mouth, opens it again “You can’t…”

“I do,” she says. “I do.”

But, like his heat, she can feel his kisses fading and his resolve hardening and she knows before he does it that he’s going to walk away. Knows it like she knows her own heart, like she knows his.

And he does. He has to. It’s them. It couldn’t go any other way.

They have to hurt. They have to wound. They have to punish.

He untangles the leash, lifts the puppy into his arms and gives her a hard look before he turns, heads back to his truck. And she wants to scream at him to come back, that he can’t just leave like this. That this is fine and she wants it and she’s wanted it for longer than she can actually remember and she just pretended she didn’t by forcing the feelings away because, like him, it was the only way to get through the day.

She stays quiet.

He has to go. She knows he does.

She watches as he gets to his truck, fights the keys out of his pocket and gets the dog inside. And then he suddenly looks back, through the snow and the cold. Seemingly against his own will, takes a step towards her. She doesn’t allow herself any hope and seconds later he shakes his head, turns again like he’s fighting his own body and what it wants to do, rests his hands against the bonnet of the truck and breathes long and hard. Another glance at her and then he slides in behind the wheel and drives away.

And leaves her. Leaves her in the cold, with his warm kisses on her lips and an empty space in her heart.

~~~

He drives. He’s not sure where or for how long. He’s not even sure why. Atlas, because that’s a fucking stupid name for a puppy, and the one he’s currently trying out, is awake and agitated on the seat next to him. He’s always known that dogs can sense moods, that they pick up on anxiety and this little mite, saved from the clutches of almost certain death, already seems to be a pro. But he’s not all too worried about that now because he has a fuck ton of other shit to think about. Because it feels like his life just snapped into a dozen pieces again right in front of his face. And he’s so fucking enraged and so fucking frightened and so fucking confused and so fucking everything he shouldn’t be. Because the world was starting to make sense again. It was. Not good sense and not a lot of it but it was settling into something he could deal with, he could control. There was him and there were the men he needed to murder. And there was blood and there was pain and there was punishment. And if he stuck to that - if he kept things simple and easy and saved those who needed saving and killed those who needed killing then he could find a way to see the days through. It wasn’t nice, but it was simple. He could do it. He could beat the pain back and hide it away and let it out through the suffering he caused.

And then there was her. Her and her pretty blue eyes and her pretty blonde hair. That voice that sounded like truth and words that could mend him.

He told Red once that we don’t get to pick the things that save us. He was right but he wasn’t finished. He should have said that we don’t get to pick the things that break us either. But it’s too late now.

He’s shaking and he grips the steering wheel tighter, grits his teeth against the little shivers of shame that course up his spine, tries to forget the feel of her in his arms. She was so soft and warm, a little fire against him and she tasted sweet, of cherry lipgloss and mulled wine. And she wanted him. He knows that now. He might not have been with a woman in a very long time, but the way she arched into him, was unmistakeable.

And that can’t happen. It can’t .

It’s every single kind of fucked up and every single kind of wrong and he’d be insane to pursue it and she’d been insane to let it be pursued. He’s not fit for something like this. He’s angry and violent and, even he has to admit, unhinged to the point of where even he isn’t sure where he ends and madness starts.

He’s no good and he’s a bad man and she’s everything he’s not. And she deserves so much better than him. So very much. And somewhere in his head Maria chuckles and whispers that for someone who makes it a hard and fast rule to not lie to Karen Page, he sure as shit can lie to himself a lot.

So he pushes her voice away too. Because she doesn’t know him anymore.

Because she can’t.

He drives.

Eventually, and it could be hours later because he’s lost track of the time, he stops near the pier, watches the snowflakes falling into the river and wishing that melting into oblivion could be so easy. Behind him is a row of houses that are lit up like no one ever heard of global warming and they’re competing in some kind of Christmas lights competition. He used to say that there was always one asshole who’d buy out the Hell’s Kitchen Christmas lights’ quota every year and decorate his house like it needed to be seen from the fucking space station. Well there wasn’t just one this year, there was a whole fucking street and maybe a bunch of assholes got together to do this because it looks like a fucking carnival and he hates every goddamn flashing bulb in this whole goddamn flashing city.

He sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, leans back against the seat.

He has nowhere to go - he never does on Christmas anymore - and that’s a bitter pill to swallow despite being well-practiced in the art of loneliness. It’s been three years now. It still hasn’t got any easier. And the one place he did have - the one safe haven in this fucking blizzard of his life - she’s taken from him. She’s stolen it and now he has nothing.

And somewhere in the back of his head he hears Maria telling him that he knows that isn’t true, that he needs to stop telling himself stories and he just can’t block her out. She’s too stubborn, too tenacious. He was never a match for her. It was hilarious that she even let him try, that she indulged him.

He shakes his head. He can’t carry on like this. Not anymore. He can’t keep it together. He’s so tired. He’s been doing this for almost two months now and it’s just gotten harder. Watch. Sleep. Hunt. That’s all there is and he’s not doing enough of any of it. Like he didn’t do enough for Maria, like he couldn’t save her either.

And Maria tells him to stop talking shit.

He can’t fight her too. So he doesn’t. He sits and he waits for her to say what she needs to, what she wants to. He lets her use his broken mind and his shattered heart. He lets her destroy him.

And he weeps while she does.

He’ll never really know what happened. He’s not sure he believes in God anymore, in angels. He’s also pretty sure that it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for him to start hallucinating, to suffer delusions. But he can smell her, that heady mix of her skin and the gentle fragrance of some French perfume he could never pronounce and never tried to. And he can hear her voice, clear and soft as if she was sitting right next to him.

It doesn’t have to be like this Frank. It doesn’t.

But it does.

You have to stop hurting yourself.

I can’t. It’s all I have left.

It’s not. You know it’s not.

It is.

Go to her.

I can’t.

You can.

What if I fail her too?

You won’t. You’ve never failed anyone

That isn’t true.

It is.

I’m a bad man.

You can be good again. You can make it good again.

I can’t.

You can start now. You can make the bad things good. You can take them back.

Maria…

One batch. Two batch…

No.

Penny and dime.

No, please.

Penny…

and dime,

Here I come.

Here I come.

~~~

He can make the bad things good.

He goes back. There are moments that he doesn’t think he will, that he’ll turn the truck around and fuck off home, but he can’t make himself do that either. And that’s how he finds himself - a very unhappy Atlas stuffed into the front of his coat - banging on her door.

He thinks it’s well into the early hours of the morning by now, thinks she’s probably asleep and he’s the last person she wants getting her out of bed. And he’s cold, he’s so fucking cold. The snow is coming down heavily and everything is covered in an icy white blanket. He can feel it in his hair, sliding down his neck, crunching under his boots  Still, he’s been cold before - nights spent in the desert under the stars can drop lower than freezing - but this feels different. This feels like the cold is coming from the inside and that nothing he does will ever make him warm again. And maybe he deserves that for pushing her warmth away. For leaving. Again.

He deserves every single second of her rage, her disgust, her anger and he’s prepared for it, ready to take it on. He doesn’t care if his back breaks under the pressure of it.

But when she opens the door she doesn’t look angry. She hasn’t changed her clothes and her hair is still loose and messy from the wind but her mascara is a little smudged and her lipgloss is gone. If anything she looks relieved - maybe not happy, but still like a weight has been taken off her shoulders. And for a while he can just look at her. Look at her and forget the cold, forget the pain, forget everything that has gone wrong and how much it hurts him deep inside. It’s not that she’s the light. She isn’t. There’s a strange darkness to her that he has yet to understand, to qualify. But she is something resembling it, she is something that maybe a dead man would consider to be an approximation of hope.

And she’s beautiful.

He hasn’t planned anything to say, hadn’t really thought it through. When your Christmas miracle is you tripping about your dead wife chewing you out, you don’t get too much time to practice speeches and plan ahead. He guesses if he had he wouldn’t be standing here with a puppy in his coat and the faded blood of a dozen dead men on his hands.

He’s has nothing. And then he does.

It comes out, his voice ragged and heavy.

“I do,” he tells her. “I do too.”

He thinks it might be the most truthful thing he’s ever said to her. Maybe the most truthful thing he’s said since after he woke up with a bullet in his head and a family in the ground.

Fuck the hospital and the prison. Fuck the diner and night in the forest with Schoonover. That was a starting point, a pinprick in time, a practice round which was heading towards this, preparing him. Maybe it was preparing her too.

He can make the bad things good.

She cocks her head and she’s still half-hidden behind the door and he doesn’t think it’s all about keeping the heat inside. It can’t be, because he’s already feeling warmer.

He reaches out, touches her blurred mascara. Her skin is soft like he knew it would be, soft and warm and he wants to touch her again. He wants to cup her face, trail his fingers down her neck to her shoulders. He wants to pull her close, feel her fire underneath his hands, feel her curves and her edges, her bones and the life that pounds through her veins. The life that he can now feel pounding through his.

This is insane. There’s no way it could ever work, not with who and what he is. But he can try. For her he can try.

“How long?” she asks and if she was anyone else he would ask her to clarify, he wouldn’t assume. But she’s Karen Page and he shrugs.

“This?” he makes a vague gesture to the snow and his truck, doesn’t wait for her to nod. “Since Ward got out.”

She bites her lip and he knows she’s expecting more. That she has every goddamned right to expect more. That he owes it to her and he should be on his knees now and begging.

He takes her hand, puts it to his heart, holds it there. “This…? For about as long as I can remember.”

She wasn’t expecting that, he sees it in the way her eyes widen and she looks away like it’ll overwhelm her if she stares at him too long.

It’s okay. It’s a lot to take in in one night. A few hours ago The Punisher was busy kissing her and now he’s telling her he loves her. She’d have to be crazy to just let that slide, to take it on as if it was just any old thing and she was just any old girl. Not even this new Karen Page, the harder, world-weary one has that. Not even her.

“Why’d you come back?” she asks.

Another shrug. “I always do. Figured I’d save time.”

She lets out a dry laugh and he can’t help but smile as well and he twists his fingers into hers, keeps her hand pressed against his flesh, ignores the interested way Atlas is sniffing at her.

“I’m glad you did.”

No lies. No artifice. She means it and he feels his heart pounding like a jackhammer in his chest because he’s not sure when the last time was that someone really wanted him around. That he was needed and not just endured.

It’s enough. It doesn’t need to be anything else. This will still go down as the best Christmas he’s had in years even if he has to turn around and walk away, go back to his stupid truck on this stupid street and watch her stupid window until dawn. There’s nothing more in the world that he could ask for when she’s looking at him like he matters, like he means something; when she’s letting him hold her hand over his heart like she doesn’t know it’s already hers.

“You wanna come in?” she asks and before he can even formulate a thought he hears himself saying that he doesn’t think he should.

But she narrows her eyes and pushes the door open wider and behind her he can see a sparkling Christmas tree, and the gentle glow of one of those fake ass fireplaces that look like shit and cost a fortune to install.

“I don’t think you should either,” and her voice is almost playful. “But I’m willing to take the chance.”

He won’t cry, won’t weep. He’s done that already but he needs a moment to take this in. To believe it. He trusts her more than he trusts anyone in the whole world but sometimes he needs to remember it, to let himself feel it because the feeling itself is so unfamiliar.

So he nods, breathes, looks down at the ground. Her doormat says “HI. I’M MAT” and he has to hold back a laugh.

“If you piss me off, I can always kick you out.”

That’s true. She could. She probably would too.

He looks up and meeting her eyes isn’t terrifying. “I’ll hold you to that.”

She opens the door and he steps inside and it’s easy. He takes a second to look around: the simple furnishings, the heat, the fairy lights she’s strung up from the roof. It’s pretty and it’s warm and it feels so right. It’s just like her.

Just like her.

“You gonna introduce me to your friend?” she asks looking at Atlas. “I’m guessing he’s been keeping watch too.”

He smiles. “Yeah, been doing a better job than me.”

And then she reaches into his coat and pulls the puppy out, buries her nose in the fur on the back of his neck and breathes deeply. And it shouldn’t make him feel like this. It’s just a puppy and she’s just a girl but the sight of her holding the little furry bundle and letting him lick her face, seeing how his little tail wags back and forth so fast it just becomes a blur and he can’t help it. His mouth goes dry and his heart breaks and he has trouble finding the words.

“They were going to turn him into a fighting dog,” he rasps and she looks at him sharply. “I took him away before they could break him.”

He can make the bad things good.

She swallows, sucks in her bottom lip and runs her fingers through the puppy’s fur, scratches him behind the ears.

“His name is Atlas,” and even as he says it he knows it’s wrong. His name isn’t Atlas. It was never going to be.

“That’s a really stupid name for a puppy,” she says and he nods. He doesn’t like the prophecy of it, doesn’t think one little dog should have to carry the weight of the world on its shoulders.

She looks down at the little wriggling bundle in her arms and puts a finger to his nose and it goes still for her, watches her with his big brown eyes.

“What do you say we just ignore all those silly names like Atlas and we just call you Jellybean until we figure something out.”

Frank can’t help it. He snorts. If there’s something he’s come to realise about temporary pet names, is that they stick around. You don’t start calling something a name with any kind of regularity and suddenly stop. He looks at the puppy. He guesses Jellybean is it. And he doesn’t hate that at all. And apparently neither does Jellybean who’s now licking Karen’s fingers and chewing on her hair and letting out little puppy yelps as he does.

It feels normal. It feels special. It feels like a lot of things he hasn’t felt in a long time.

Eventually she puts Jellybean down, and turns to Frank, helps him out of his coat and hangs it near the door and then she looks at him for a long time. He’s not sure if she’s waiting for something or if for some reason he doesn’t think he will ever fathom, she just wants to look at him, take him in, drink him up the way he’s wanted to with her.

And suddenly he has no idea what to do with himself. She’s let him in, she’s christened his dog, she’s forgiven him time and time again and when he told her he loved her she didn’t flinch. But now he doesn’t have anything left, he doesn’t have another move, another card to play. But the way she looks at him tells him he doesn’t need one. The expectation is all in his head anyway.

“You wanna sit down?” she asks and he follows her to the couch. Sits.

She’s also a little nervous, he can see that too. But he doesn’t feel any particular desire to set her at ease. This is what it is. It’s the start of something and beginnings are always hard. Maybe not as hard as endings but close enough. He thinks they’re just going to need to see it through. Whatever “it” may be.

He can keep her safe. He can. But maybe not from him. Maybe that’s the challenge they’re both going to need to live with.

She knows it too. She has to.

She offers him hot chocolate and he knows it’s just to find something to do, something to focus on that isn’t him. He surprises himself when he says yes, when the idea of something sweet and warm doesn’t make his gut churn and evoke some kind of ridiculous visceral disgust. He can let himself have it. And if she’ll have him, he can let himself have her too.

She goes to the kitchen and he can hear her boiling water and banging cupboard doors and he doesn’t know what to think except that this is madness and he shouldn’t be in here. He should be out there in the snow. Watching and protecting and doing all those things he knows how to do. All the things he should do. Being here means the world is out of step, that there’s something wrong, that he’s messed up somehow and created a situation where this can happen.

That maybe maybe the world is starting to make sense again.

He can keep her safe. He can make the bad things good.

He can do that inside too.

She comes back and she’s carrying two mugs. They both have cartoon cats on them and he likes that even though it’s absurd. But then only a few hours ago he was kissing her and tasting her and so maybe absurd isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Maybe it’ll be okay.

She sits next to him and she can’t miss the way he’s looking at her, how he’s studying the line of her jaw, the plumpness of her lips, the way her hair spills over her shoulders and how he has to fight himself not to touch it, not to trail his fingers down her cheeks and push it out of the way. How he wants to put his mouth on hers again and taste her.

He shouldn’t be thinking this way but he is. And there’s nothing to be done for it.

She hands him his mug, pulls an oversized throw which is really more of a blanket over her legs and leans back into the couch. Sips. Watches him.

He doesn’t say anything. He sips too and it’s good and sweet and he wonders why he didn’t give this stuff a chance before. Maria loved it, the kids loved it too. And he understands why. It’s not an everyday thing, not something he could see himself giving into too often, but it’s Christmas and it’s cold and maybe even he deserves a little warmth, a little sweetness.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” he says and she nods, calls Jellybean over who’s eagerly sniffing the Christmas tree and helps him onto her lap.

“I know why you did though.”

Of course she does. Because she knows him. Because maybe they’re more alike than they think.

He bites his lip but doesn’t say anything. She can unpack it if she wants, if she feels the need. But she seems to think that it’s unnecessary and it probably is. Instead, she reaches out and puts her hand on his chest, over his heart again and he looks down at it, waits quietly until his whole world becomes her palm on him, until he can’t feel anything else other than the place where her body touches his.

“For as long as you can remember?” she asks and there’s a little demon that rises up in his chest to explain, to tell her that it wasn’t right from the first day, that he’s still loves Maria, that she was his whole world and he doesn’t want her thinking that he could just pass his wife over for the next pretty face that comes along. But there’s no need. No need because she knows.

“As long as I can remember,” he tells her and takes her hand off his chest, presses a kiss to her fingers and smiles as she uses the opportunity to wipe a line of hot chocolate off his lips with her thumb.

And then she pulls her hand away and touches her own heart, watching him with eyes that are hard and determined. He realises that she wants him to see , she wants him to acknowledge what she’s doing and saying, and he does. He can’t not. The world doesn’t allow for this to be ignored.

“Me too,” she says. “Me too.”

He thought it would feel different. That it would be frightening and like falling down into something dark and unknown again. That he’d need to watch out for the sharp edges and things that could hurt. That it would be wonderful and terrible at the same time. Something that would warm his heart and break it in the same split second.

It doesn’t feel like any of those things.

It’s not scary and it’s not frightening, and wonderful doesn’t come close to being the right word to describe it. Instead it’s easy. It’s right.

It’s safe .

She puts her mug down on the table and takes the throw off her lap and helps him put it over their legs, moves in so she’s sitting with her thigh against his and her breast pressing against his arm. And like a fucking switch he’s suddenly so tired he can barely keep his eyes open. His limbs feel heavy and his mind is fuzzy and then she’s moving in, pressing a kiss to his cheek and he finds the energy to brush his lips against hers and put his arm around her.

He gathers her close, breathes her in and rests his free hand against Jellybean’s head. And he wishes he wasn’t so tired and he could savour this, take his time running his hand along her hipbone, up her back, into her hair. He wishes he could talk to her and touch her and steal kisses she wouldn’t really consider stolen. But he’s warm and he’s safe and her arm is tight around his middle and for the first time in years he feels something he could come close to describing as content.

There’s time for talk. There’s time for kisses. There’s tomorrow.

“It’s okay,” she whispers, breath hot against his neck. “You can sleep now.”

And he does.

~~~

Later his phone buzzes and he ignores it, doesn’t want to move from her warmth, her head against his shoulder, her hand which has snuck under his shirt. But then it buzzes again and she shifts next to him, sighs a little.

“Sorry,” he says and reaches into his back pocket, squints at the too bright screen and message on it. It’s short and to the point.

Ward. 32nd and 4th. Have a shot. Take him out?

And for a second his blood runs hot, scorching through his veins and he can almost taste the copper on his tongue, feel the skin breaking over his knuckles. He’s waited, he’s waited so long for this. So long to punish this wife-beating, child-abusing piece of shit. It’s all he’s thought about for months. Ward has consumed every waking moment of every day in one way or another and now they’ve got him. And he could be the one to end it. He could be the last thing Ward sees before he dies, he could have him begging for mercy in minutes if he left now.

And then he looks at her and none of that makes the slightest bit of difference. It ebbs like a low tide and all but disappears. He doesn’t want to leave, he doesn’t want to see Ward. All he wants is the feel of Karen Page pressed against him again, her head back on his shoulder and his arm tight around her.

“You need to go? Something you need to do?” she asks and he doesn’t need to be Matt Murdock to hear the disappointment in her voice.

But he shakes his head, tugs at her gently until they’re all tangled up in one another again and he can’t figure out where she starts and he ends and he doesn’t want to.

He sends a text. It has one word.

Yes.

And then he doesn’t think about it again.

He kisses her hair and breathes her in and she smells of something vaguely citrusy and fresh.

“No,” he says, tightening his arm around her, finding that soft curve of her hip and pulling her close. “No, there’s nothing I need to do.”

And there isn’t. There’s literally nothing in the world more important than her and this.

She nods, presses a kiss to his neck and he falls asleep to the sound of her heartbeat.