Chapter Text
A patrol car pulls up outside, slows to a crawl.
Frank wouldn’t normally have time to notice the movement beyond the glass, but seeing that it’s one of the quiet nights at work, it catches his attention. He peeks over as the car stops and someone emerges from it. Immediately, a tingle goes down his spine. His trigger finger tenses against his thigh. It’s been a while since he’s felt this way. Not scared. Not exactly, but—
Positioned at a better angle to the door, Steve has seen the cop’s face first and is waving a plump hand in the air, as though desperate to snag his attention. “It’s Ethan,” he shouts the name, and when that doesn’t do the trick, he tries again, even more loudly, until the man outside deigns to gift him a shy little grin which fades the moment he catches sight of Frank.
The two of them are acquainted—as well as a criminal can be acquainted with a cop. Exchanging views over beers at a couple of barbecues hasn’t been enough to form a close relation. At least that’s how Frank sees it because Ethan’s enthusiasm in approaching him has, at times, pushed the point of having a crush. Frank is always polite to him, pleasant even, despite the urge to punch him between the eyes. Which has happened a number of times, more than he would ever admit. Nevertheless, what a goddamn shame it would be if Ethan had come to make an arrest. It’s only a gut feeling but it’s strong.
What else could he be doing here at this hour, the uneasiness accumulating since he looked at Frank now rolling off him in waves as he paces up and down the sidewalk?
Steve snorts “Wonder what his deal is,” then walks to the front door and opens it, laughing as he invites the younger man to get in already, but Ethan shakes his head in response. With a cursory glance at Frank, he beckons Steve to him instead and only begins to speak the exact moment the door thuds ominously behind them. Their conversation is intense, but low-pitched. Not for Frank’s ears. He watches Ethan take off his hat, turn it nervously between his hands while Steve frowns, rubbing his forehead. No more than a minute later, they both turn to look at him.
He knew his past would come back to bite him in the ass. He just didn’t know it would take all this time, give him the chance to get so damn comfortable first and then strike.
What if he came along quietly? Would that tip the scales in his favor at all or would it make absolutely no difference? He doesn’t want to hurt these people. He likes this place, this job.
This goddamn perfect life.
Driving down long roads, even and rutted, open and auspicious. Frank snoring in the seat beside her. His trigger finger sometimes twitching in his sleep, never waking him up. Nightmares leave him alone during car-snoozing, because of the rocking perhaps. Once his head touches a pillow, they begin again. Karen gets him back in the car then, speeds them away from bad dreams, horrible memories, dreadful choices. They do this for days on end, going from one place to another with no final destination in mind; comparing the quality of french fries between diners, talking about lots of different things, talking about nothing at all.
They’re walking out of one of those diners the first time he kisses her. In the neon of the parking lot, he presses his mouth to hers, mid-laughter, as if drinking it from her lips is what he was after, then pausing, their faces so close she can feel his breath shuddering over her cheek as he leans in even closer.
“Hey.”
A palpable question is building up in his tone, but he isn’t ready for the answer yet, so he doesn’t put it into words.
“Hey,” she says back.
What Karen will remember most fondly is the laughter. Laughing so hard that what they’re dragging in the dust behind them becomes a little lighter. Frank’s beard growing scratchy—scratchier. The ridiculous pair of sunglasses he picked up for her at a gas station. His palm falling on her knee, relaxed and warm. It doesn’t mean much.
But it means something.
What Frank will remember are her eyes, feeling them flitting to him before he fully opened his. Her patience, inexhaustible, mile after mile after mile. Thinking she was going to cut him loose at each stop. The relief after he realized she wouldn’t, and the fear, the frantic fear that holding on with both hands was the worst thing he could ever do to her.
Neither one of them will remember exactly how they ended up sharing a one and a half bathroom, two bedroom house in the middle of nowhere. But it has something to do with a motel, one of the less crummy they’ve stayed in, and Frank telling her they’re getting too old for this shit. While her back complains about the unfair perpetual-driving-position treatment, Karen snorts a laugh.
“Speak for yourself.”
Illuminated by the TV light, his mouth turns wider as it stretches into a smirk. “I am.”
“So what do you want to do? Live somewhere quiet, plant a vegetable garden?”
“Would you like that?”
“Just tell me where to stop.”
“Here’s good.”
I must be dreaming, Karen thinks. With her eyelids getting heavy, it’s easy to jot it down as a hallucination induced by drowsiness. “Do you even know where we are?”
“Nowheresville?”
“And is Nowheresville where you’ve fantasized about settling down?”
The smirk dissolves under the serious line of his mouth and his thumb begins tapping the remote in his hand. “Maybe,” he says, then turns off the TV, rolls over to her side of the bed, slings an arm over her. “Maybe the ‘where’ isn’t what matters.” His lips find the back of her neck and his body tenses on a breath he hasn’t fully inhaled. Bracing for refusal. She has every reason to refuse. Hell, she’d be crazy not to.
“Okay,” she whispers in the inscrutable dark.
“Okay?”
“I said okay, Frank,” Karen reiterates, hiding a languid smile under the comforter as he presses a kiss to her spine. “Go to sleep.”
So they end up playing house in an actual house.
Karen agrees easily, partly to grant Frank some peace of mind. Not bumping into neighbors every time they walk into the door cuts down the risk of someone noticing that one of the people in 2B is a dead ringer for a known criminal. And partly because… The place they end up renting is definitely secluded, not exactly cozy, and somehow, somehow it feels more like home than any other place she has lived in since she was cast out of Vermont.
The first night they lie down in their new and cloudy soft bed, Karen asks him if he’s scared. Terrified, he says. She strokes his cheek. When he returns the question, she doesn’t see the point in faking courage. They’re both still imagining that the floor is lava because anything stable seems too surreal to be true. Doesn’t mean they have to lie about it.
Mainly to appease an unfathomable yearning, Karen goes to work for a law firm, very similar to Nelson & Murdock -only with the obvious lack of Nelson and Murdock, and Frank has surprisingly little trouble getting a job at a small pizza place. The owner, a pudgy man named Steve, seems much too eager to hire him. He’s somewhat desperate. His previous cook just up and left without a word, and he needs a new one, pronto. After all, there is no way someone named Castiglione won’t know how to make good pizza, right? Karen wonders how long it will take for that assumption to crumble, but Frank is still comfortable in his humdrum position a few months later. As she’s found out at home, Frank Castle is damn good in the kitchen. In fact, he’s good in any room that isn’t a court room.
There come nights when they still have to get in the car and drive, but they’re different now. Sometimes it’s Frank doing the driving. Windows rolled down, a gentle breeze stroking their skin, some smooth song on the radio, his hand resting on the back of her neck. No threats visible in the rearview mirror. They’re safe. And they always return home to sleep in their bed.
A part of her feels undeserving of the happiness.
She doesn’t tell him that.
How much time does he have? Could he call Karen, give her the heads up? His phone is stored away in the back room locker, but if he’s quick on his feet—
The two men give him one more look, then make their way towards the entrance together, lips pressed thin and heads shaking in incredulity.
Dammit.
Should he dare hope that his only concern will be taking out the guy with the gun? Steve, who has never been the aggressive type anyway, likes him. He’s treated him almost like a son since day one. Asking him for help evading arrest wouldn’t be fair, but he might be persuaded to look the other way while Frank makes a run for it. The way the older man trudges in and blocks the door with his body after Ethan has stepped up to the counter doesn’t leave much room for hope though. His face is the grimmer of the two.
No allies then. So be it. He’s worked alone before.
Dammit all to hell.
He really doesn’t want to hurt them, but if it comes to that, he won’t hesitate. Not for a moment. There’s too much at stake. Frank wipes his hands, eyeing the ceramic pizza stone to his left. Better than no weapon at all. Just a little bump to the head. Doesn’t have to cause any serious damage. Knock them out. Get home. Ditch the truck. Karen’s car is faster and—
“Hey, Pete.” Ethan’s voice comes out a little bit shaky as he leans forward to rest against the counter. Both hands, surprisingly, nowhere near his gun. “What’s up?”
Frank nods a wordless greeting, twisting slightly towards the pizza stone, making sure it won’t take him more than a second to grab it, another to smack it flat against Ethan’s head. “You?”
Eyes focused downwards, the man nods. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“Shift almost over?” he asks.
Ethan sighs. Unless he’s stalling for backup, the delay is going to cost him. “Got a few more hours to go.”
“And you came to grab a calzone for the road?” he asks again, trying to sound convincing when he chuckles.
His laugh only succeeds in making everyone even more uncomfortable than before. A look is shared between the three of them and their interaction wavers from carefully tentative to obviously tense. Frank cracks his neck. The situation needs to be jolted into higher speed, something he could work with.
“Come on, guys, level with me here. What’s going on?” His hand begins sliding in the direction of his chosen weapon. “Did I forget to pay a parking ticket?”
Ethan all but crumbles along with the pretense. He takes and holds a deep breath for a couple of seconds, his cheeks ballooning in a comical way while he puts his hat back on, as if that’s his only source of courage and he couldn’t dream of speaking without wearing it. Then he slowly exhales. “I thought it’d be best if I came to get you.” He shrugs. “None of the other guys volunteered anyway.”
Frank is glaring at him now, more than a little impatient, feeling the coarse stone with his thumb, gently tugging it towards himself. He glares some more when Ethan tells him that “the traffic light down by Boulder and Walsh was out again”, and doesn’t stop glaring until the words “your wife” and “accident” and “totaled” have been uttered.
He isn’t certain in what order they were said, what other words were interspersed between them, which of them were supposed to be comforting, but he’s painfully aware of the world shaking apart in the silence that follows.
The moment his eyes snap open, Frank realizes his head is resting in the crook of Karen’s elbow, the warmth of her body easing him from the cold fog of dreams into wakefulness. She isn’t fully awake herself, her voice teetering halfway between a yawn and a voiceless sigh. “It’s still early,” she whispers, so softly that he can barely make out the words. “You could go back to sleep.”
“No,” he mumbles, dragging his lips across her forearm, all the way down to her palm. This is more than anyone could ever deserve. Waking up to the safety of her arms, drawing in the flower scent of her hair, her skin, with each breath. “I’ll go make breakfast.” There’s a rap on his chest, light as her fingertips, and he laughs through his nose. “In a minute.”
The sun coming through the window blinds him and as he raises a hand to shield his eyes, a thought runs through his mind, crisp and clear: he is lucky. He’s so goddamn lucky it’s unbelievable.
When the time comes to ask the question, he doesn’t do it on one knee. He simply puts the box in front of her on the table as she’s finishing her coffee. The gesture may fall short but it feels right, for them. It’s the promise that counts anyway—till death do us part. He made her that promise long before he got the ring. “I’ve been meaning to run something by you,” he begins.
The shaking of the hands pushing the box back to him doesn’t go unnoticed.
A smile freezes on his face. The atmosphere of the room shifts, tension and disbelief filling the air around them, the silence sharp and resounding. Frank breaks it with a heavy sigh. “I shouldn’t have sprung this on you.”
Winding her fingers together like she doesn’t know what to do with them, Karen says “I got so comfortable here, I—”
“Living together is one thing. Getting hitched is…” He can hear how ridiculous his own voice sounds trailing off as though he has just grasped the absurdity of his desire.
“—forgot you don’t—” A mystified expression crosses her face. “I didn’t say no, Frank.”
“I can pick up non-verbal cues just fine.” One knuckle lightly tapping the ring box, he sighs. Thinks about maybe returning it. Aggressively doesn’t want to.
Biting her lip, Karen looks away to hide how fast her eyes are watering up and it hurts, goddammit. “You don’t really know who I am or what—”
“What are you talking about? I know you.”
“—what I’ve done.”
“Of course I know you.”
“I’ve seen you at your absolute worst. Good or bad, you never hide from me. You let your guard down, you’re honest and vulnerable, and that should earn you honesty in return.” Her breath plunges into the depths of her stomach to rise back up weaker and frail. “It’s time I told you about my brother.”
He nods, slow and thoughtful. “I didn’t know you have a brother.”
The look she gives him might carry something of triumph, if it didn’t look so terribly heartbroken. “Had,” she corrects, then takes a long breath. “I killed him.” A pause, to let the words sink in for a beat or two.
Then she tells him everything. Without leaving anything out, without embellishments. The story of a cold, hopeless place that almost swallowed her whole. How she barely managed to get out with her life. How she sometimes thinks that is her punishment. The violence of her grief is staggering. Over and over and over, labeling herself a murderer, she cracks and chips in front of him, and he lets her. For crying out loud, he has to, because that’s exactly what needs to happen. First comes the breaking to pieces. The mending comes after.
At the end of her account, Frank gently touches her cheek to wipe away a tear. One of many. “You were a kid, Karen.”
“Most kids don’t—don’t get their siblings killed. I—”
“A kid that made a mistake.”
“Please.” She laughs the most bitter sound he’s ever heard. It probably tastes bitter as well. Frank remembers that taste all too well. “Don’t make excuses for me.”
“I’m not making excuses, I’m telling you.” He moves forward, opening his arms, letting her decide if she wants to seek refuge there, squeezing only after she’s buried her face in his neck. “You were young and lost, goddammit, you were grieving and trying to save everyone at the same time. Like you always do.” He clenches his jaw, crunching and swallowing the names he’d use for her father.
Her tears fall hot on his skin, contrasting the chill of her flesh as she shivers against him.
“It was my job to keep him safe.”
“It was your father’s job to keep you both safe.” The words claw their way out, catching on his throat. “And he failed.” The argument stumbles there because Karen understands he doesn’t say that lightly. “I’m not saying he deserved to—He didn’t, okay? But, hell, you didn’t deserve that treatment either.”
“He lost e—everything.”
Still trying to make excuses for the inexcusable.
He pulls back, looks into her eyes. “Didn’t you lose everything too?”
“I got you,” she says, barely audible through the whimper of tears streaming down her face.
Almost out of breath himself, Frank whispers “I’m sorry,” and he doesn’t know what he is apologizing for at first, but there is no doubt in his mind, in his heart, even in his spleen or any other organ involved in this decision—he isn’t letting go. “I’m sorry you went through all that alone.” Both hands, holding her tight. She’ll never be alone again.
“Me too,” she says and it’s unclear if she’s referring to her incurable pain or to his, but it doesn’t matter. The two end up melding into one. Somedays, they will be impossible to tell apart.
“What do you want to do about it?”
“I don’t know, Frank. It’s not like you can fix it. I can’t fix it, I can’t—”
He’d give anything to be able to do the impossible for her. Fix it. Undo it. “We could bury it. Put it in the ground next to those shriveled peppers of yours.”
“Like a dead pet?”
“Like a burden,” he says. “Lay it to rest.”
She looks up at him with an almost childlike gaze, desperate to believe in miracles. It won’t work but why not give this a shot? She’s tried everything else.
The dried up pepper plant stands bleakly in the far end of the backyard. Karen really did try to keep it alive, but the climate was too dry for it. She’d drawn some amusement from watching the caterpillars devour what had been left of the fruit, but gardening couldn’t hold her interest for long. Despite what he’d said, Frank never put much effort in a vegetable garden either. The grass was kept neat and trimmed but that was it. The two figures digging into the soil with bare hands, feeling the dirt through their fingers, under their fingernails, hoping that something will grow from the whole lot of nothing they will plant in there, couldn’t care less about the grass though. Afterwards, on their knees, they remain silent for some time, watching the neat pile of regret and misery not stir at all, as is the case with all graves.
“Is this shit therapeutic or what?” Frank says after a while.
“Maybe,” she nods and he knows it means ‘no, but thank you’.
He drapes a heavy arm around her shoulders, pulls her into a hug. With the wound put to sleep for now, exhaustion begins settling into her body and she feels steadier, if not calmer. “Anything you need, anything, you tell me and I’ll do it.”
“Can you love me?” she asks.
Hell, that is not the right question.
The right question starts with ‘how much’.
Infinitely.
‘It doesn’t change how I feel about you. It doesn’t.’
Immeasurably.
“Yeah,” he says, a soft kiss pressed to her temple. “Yeah, I can do that.”
With their hands still grimy from the mud, while Frank fills up the tub where they plan on soaking until the water turns cold, Karen rests her head on his shoulder.
“I’ll take that ring now.”
Frank’s eyebrows rise in question.
Maybe they should pick a different time, a time when she’s not shaken to her core, weary and spent. But Karen puts out her hand, fingers spread apart in waiting. He digs into his pocket, grabs the ring and slips it on her finger. It fits her perfectly and she observes the white gold band with the small sapphire perched on top with a calm expression. The way the jewel glimmers against the dirt on her hand means something too.
It means everything.