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— One thing I know is that the only way out is to find something that you care about. Those kids, they might drive you crazy. They might make you completely batshit, but they're the reason you're gonna get through this.
— Have you found something to do that for you?
— Maybe. Yeah, maybe.
Someone is following Karen Page. She’s sure of it.
It’s only fifteen minutes into her trip to the mall when she feels it, although she’s not sure how. A prickling on the back of her neck, maybe. Pure survival instinct. Whatever it is, it’s caused a tightness to her chest as she walks quickly from store to store, being careful to stick to well-lit, populated areas.
The impending sense of doom follows her as she goes, no matter how quick she makes her gait. Her heart races as she pretends to examine some shoes on a rack in a department store, unable to concentrate. She only has a moment’s warning— the faint smell of oranges— before she hears a voice right behind her. “Karen.”
She lets out a small scream, dropping her bag and spinning around.
Frank Castle blinks and takes a step back.
Several people in the vicinity turn to stare at them.
Karen realizes her hand is pressed to her mouth and pulls it away to smile awkwardly at the bystanders. “Nothing to worry about,” she calls. “Everything’s fine.”
As soon as they turn away, she rakes her hair back with her fingers and hisses, “Jesus, Frank! A little warning would be nice!”
Frank bends to pick up her fallen purse. She takes a moment to give him a once-over while he does. He’s dressed in a baggy black hoodie, jeans and combat boots, and for once, doesn’t have any fresh scars on his face, just a five o’clock shadow. He looks good. She averts her eyes.
Once he’s risen, he tugs on the rim of his baseball cap and hands her purse back. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Just the sound of his voice, so gravelly and soft at the same time, makes Karen melt fast enough to forget her irritation. “It’s okay. I just,” she stares at him, “You surprised me, that’s all. I haven’t seen you in ages. Not since—” The hotel.
Frank nods, hearing what she doesn’t say. She’s not sure whether she’s imaging the blush tinting his cheekbones.
“I was beginning to think you were never going to reach out.” She folds her arms. She’s been buying white flowers and putting them on her window sill for the past few weeks in the hopes he’d see it and come by. Then after a while she’d started to feel silly and self-absorbed doing it, but now she’s glad she hadn’t just thrown them away.
“I wasn’t sure I would,” Frank replies. “Didn’t want to mess up your life some more, right.”
She sighs. “You don’t mess up my life, Frank.” When he doesn’t answer, she asks, “So what made you change your mind?”
His broad shoulders lift in a shrug. “Well see, I go to this group now,” he says. “This group for veterans.”
Karen blinks. “Oh. That’s good.” She isn’t sure how this is answering her question, but then again, it’s always hard to tell where he’s going when he starts on one of his stories. So she waits.
“It helps, a bit. Other times it scares the shit out of me, thinking I’ll end up like the rest of them.” He chuckles.
“Like what?” she asks. “Like, well-adjusted?”
He cuts her a look before he clarifies. “Like normal.”
His expression has turned somber, and she thinks about what she’s heard down the grapevine. That he got revenge on Russo, and everyone else that was a part of his family’s slaughter. A chapter has closed on Frank Castle’s life, and a new one has begun, and he doesn’t know what to do with it, or even who to be, after everything. She understands his struggle, and it makes her ache.
Instead of saying any of this, she reaches out and puts a hand on his arm.
He looks down at it as he continues quietly, “A while back the guys in the group said I should, I should, get out more, y’know. See the people I care about again. Reconnect.”
He’s not looking at her while he says it, but somehow Karen feels lighter upon those words. She’s someone Frank Castle cares about. It’s been reaffirmed time and time again, but every time he says something like it, a fresh wave of giddiness washes over her.
Still, she can’t help but rib him. “So, you decided to ambush me in a shopping centre?”
“Ambush you? Ambush?” He scoffs, but there’s a trace of a smile on his mouth. “Get outta here, Karen. Ambush, she says. What am I, some dirtbag mugger now?”
He makes it sound like the worst of insults. Grinning, Karen says, “It’s really nice to see you, Frank.”
“You too.” He studies her. “You look good.”
She knows he doesn’t mean that her hair is curled nicely, or that her cherry-coloured coat compliments her skin. He means that she looks well. Healthy. Emotionally stable.
She stuffs her hands into her pockets. He doesn’t say anything more. There’s a moment of sticky awkwardness, before both of them speak simultaneously.
“Well, I’ll get out of your hair then,” Frank says, at the same time Karen says, “Want to get a coffee?”
When he pauses, Karen rushes to repeat herself. “Want to get coffee?”
He tugs the rim of his cap down again. It’s a habitual tick, Karen suspects, from a time when he was constantly on the run from face-recognition cameras. “Just came to say hello. I don’t wanna interrupt your shopping thing.”
“Well, coffee after, then,” she decides. “For now, you can make yourself useful and hold my bags.” She cocks up a brow in challenge, and gets a smile out of him in return, the kind that crinkles the skin around his eyes.
“Yeah,” he says, posture relaxing. “Yeah, I can do that.”
—
An hour passes without Karen even realizing it. He doesn’t talk much, unless she asks him something, but when she glances towards him she sees that he’s not looking at her, he’s looking around. Alert. Scanning the perimeter.
But he’s also very helpful.
When Karen’s going through a rack of dresses and asks his opinion of two different ones, she’s not really expecting him to regard the question seriously.
“What’s it for?” He asks, hand reaching out to run his fingers along the material of each.
“It’s for a work dinner,” she replies, chewing her lip in anxiety at the thought of it. There’ll be a lot of people there and she has to make a good first impression. She just doesn’t know what to choose.
His brow furrows and after a moment he gestures to the blue dress. “Go with that,” he says, and then, gruffly, without looking at her: “Brings out your eyes.”
And later, when she’s in an appliances store, trying to find a replacement for the slow cooker she had dropped on concrete last week, Frank steps up and nudges a box on the shelf with his foot. “Try this one.”
She looks at it and then up at him. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a slow cooker aficionado.”
His expression doesn’t change. “That’s the one my wife had. Made some of the most delicious food I ever tasted.”
“Oh.” She pauses. To glide over the moment she adds, “First the dress, now this. I should bring you shopping more often.”
The ghost of a smile crosses his lips. “Yeah, don’t count on it. Fluorescent lights giving me a damn headache.”
—
When shopping’s done, they walk over to the coffee shop in the mall. It’s not quite as cozy as the diners that Frank loves so much, but it does the job.
In between cups of coffee and bites of muffin, Karen finds out that he’s set himself up with a new construction job and a little apartment. And in turn, he finds out about what’s been happening recently with her life and… her second life.
“I heard about Red,” Frank says, gently, and Karen looks down at her half-eaten muffin. “I’m sorry about it. I know what he meant to you.”
And there’s something about that which irks her, strangely. Not his words of comfort, but the implication. Before she can stop herself, she says, “It wasn’t like— what you’re thinking, between us. Not by the end.”
“Yeah? What was it like?”
His question is honest, curious, instantly accepting of what she’s told him even though he was once adamant that she should hold on to Matt with both hands; Karen opens her mouth to answer. But nothing comes out.
The truth is, Matt Murdock drove Karen crazy. He twisted up her insides and made her doubt herself and him and everything because he never told the damn truth even though she was so desperately ready to listen. She loved him anyway, because there was no way not to care about a person when you’ve been through so much shit together, when you have each other’s backs for the big things, for the times when shit gets real.
But for the daily, for the little things— the little things that make up life, Matt was no good for her. She understands that now.
She lifts her eyes. Frank’s patiently sipping his coffee, waiting for her to sort out her thoughts. Or ready to move on to a different topic if she wants, probably. But she desperately needs him to know this.
“We were family,” she settles on, finally. “So it hurts that he died, but— he and I, we weren’t right together. I accepted it a long time before that building fell on him.”
The waitress comes by at that very moment with the bill, and Frank thanks her with a tip. When she’s gone, and they’re finishing off their muffins, he chuckles.
“What?”
Frank waves a dismissive hand. “Nothing, just— what kinda asshole lets a building fall on him?”
Karen stares. Then she bursts into laughter; she can’t help herself. Frank is grinning the whole time while she laughs, and even still after it’s faded.
“He saved everyone,” she informs him then, trying to keep a straight face.
“Bet he did,” Frank says, with a hint of admiration in his voice along with the humour, and raises his cup. “Here’s to you, Red, you dramatic son of a bitch.”
Karen grins and clinks her cup with his.
—
Once they walk out of that coffeeshop, he helps her carry her bags to her car, and then they’re just standing in front of the still-popped-open trunk, Karen fidgeting with the sleeve of her coat. The silence stretches on too long to be normal.
“Well, I’d better get going,” she says regretfully, turning to face him and clasping her purse in front of her with both hands.
Frank nods. “Yeah.” Then he stares at her, and she gets the distinct impression that he’s drinking her in, every detail. Like he doesn’t think he’ll see her again.
He turns around at the same time Karen catches his arm.
“Wait,” she says, but he’s been frozen from the moment she touched him, so the request is unnecessary. She searches for words to explain what this last few hours meant to her but comes up with nothing that really does it justice. “You want a ride?” she eventually ends up with.
He shakes his head. “No, no— you go home. I’m fine.”
So then she’s just standing there, in silence, until he adds, “Well, see you around, Karen.”
“Will I?” she asks, and now he turns around to look at her, hands in his pockets. She cocks her head, brushing back hair that’s fallen into her vision. “Will I see you around, Frank? Because every time I do see you there’s a part of me that thinks it’s the last.”
His eyes become wide and solemn. “That’s bullshit, Karen. I’m around now. I’m—” he falls silent, scuffs his boot against the pavement. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Give me a way to contact you,” she insists, stepping forward. “Give me an e-mail, or a phone number or anything that’s not just— flowers on my windowsill.”
“What’s wrong with flowers?” When she’s silent, he loses the light tone. “I’ll give you Curt’s number. You call him, he’ll tell me.” And he lists it out for her. She, slightly shocked that he’s actually giving her something, scrambles to find a pen and paper.
He takes the pen from her and writes the number out, block letters, surprisingly neat and in smaller print than she’d expect for such a large hand. Then he closes the lid of her trunk.
You ever need me, you know how to find me,” he says. “And I’ll work on getting a phone, yeah? It’s just— old habits and all.” He shakes his head. “I sound like an asshole, don’t I.”
A smile tugs on her lips. “No, I promise you don’t.” Although it can be frustrating that it’s difficult to contact him, she can also imagine why, given his past, he might be reluctant to carry a cell phone that can be so easily tracked. “I understand.”
He stares at her a long moment, like he can’t believe that she’s smiling at him, and then he awkwardly starts backing away. “Well, I’ll see you around.”
“Frank.”
He pauses in his steps.
“I will be calling you,” she tells him lightly as she walks over to the driver’s door. “Just warning you. And thanks for stopping by today.”
He turns around and his eyes are impossibly soft for her. “Anytime, Karen,” he says. “Anytime.”
There’s a warmth in her chest, at the knowledge that he means it. That this time, she can be certain that she will see him again. She gets in her car, watches him melt into the shadows and drives off with a smile still on her face.
When Karen arrives home, the first thing she does is water the flowers on her windowsill.