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Look. Frank’s a bit of a fuck-up. He’s not gonna deny it. He’ll ride the wave of fuck-ups he’s done in his life until he’s dead bone tired in his goddamn grave. But in all honesty, he hasn’t fucked up since...Maria. Lisa. Frank Jr. Since he held them in his arms, their faces a mess of blood and pulp and flesh (and death.) Sometimes he think he’s messed up so bad that he’ll forget how they look like, forget that they existed, forget that Frank Castle was someone before The Punisher, and wasn’t that a name? He wonders what Maria would say.
So yeah. He hasn’t fucked up since then. The reign of terror he brings upon Hell’s Kitchen is kind of nice actually. He meant what he said in court. He liked it. He likes that he can wipe somebody (these goddamn monsters) clean off the map, his thumb pressing down and coming back red and gory. (He thinks his hands are permanently stained now, his coffee cups scattered with bloody fingerprints, but hey. The coffee ain’t tainted and isn’t that what matters?) So, no he isn’t a fuck-up when he’s killing the fuck-ups. He just fucks them up and in turn, he feels some semblance of peace when they’re dead.
The Big Fuck-Up is when he’s in the woods and he sees the colonel struggling on the ground and Frank’s heaving him up, making sure the wound in his leg catches a thorn here and there. Really drags him through the bristles. The fuck-up is when he looks up, and says to her I’m already dead. His voice comes out gravelly, like it took all the air in his lungs to say it, and it does. The words crawl up his throat and it feels like it’s choking him when he tells her. God. The look on her face. (Her bright eyes glossy and her hair falling gently over, and there’s blood down the side of her face. Frank feels like he put it there, using his forever bloody hands to scar, tear, break.) He says it though. He shuts the cabin door. He still takes the shot. This is for Maria, Lisa, Frank, this is for them you goddamn prick, I’m gonna kill you I’m gonna bury you I’m gonna. I’m gonna. Through his mind, her voice says –
(You’re dead to me. You’re dead to me. You’re dead to me.)
He finally fucked up.
She’s important to him, obviously. She...She made him feel like he was going to be okay sometimes. Like he didn’t have a goddamn vendetta against the monsters in this town, like he wasn’t going to continue this—this cause. Like he was going to be okay despite it. If he met her in another life, he wonders what they would be. If he didn’t have bruises on his face and she didn’t know how to use a gun. (He wonders if her fingers are permanently red, too.)
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The next month after that shooting on the roof, where Red is kind of kicking ass (he’ll admit), he’s in and out of the city, picking up leads, coming back to shoot people in the face. He embraces the skull emblazoned on his chest because he doesn’t feel like he’s made for anything else besides wiping assholes off the Earth, making sure there are no more dead Marias, Lisas, Frank Jrs. If he happens to watch out for a certain blonde walking the streets, he doesn’t let it affect his work. He just makes sure she gets home some days, because, honestly, he hasn’t seen someone make so many enemies so fast since, well, since himself.
Her Bulletin articles are becoming somewhat of a comfort. She’s still digging for truth—has been since she first shoved his dead family’s picture in his face. If he happens to use her targets as well, actual targets, he doesn’t let that deter him. Especially when headlines the next day try to connect him and her. (Like they haven’t been connected since the hospital room.)
Some nights, he trails behind creeps who find her digging too deep into them, and if she doesn’t pull her pepper spray (or her gun) fast enough, he’s there first, digging his hands into the blood and death and grim so she won’t have to. She never fires her gun, just threatens and she looks real cute yelling at some guy while he comes behind and gives him the real punishment. A couple of nights, she pretends not to notice him, others they look at each other across the sidewalks littered with cigarette butts and candy wrappers and it always seems like the rest of the world is blurry when she’s standing clear across him watching. The wind whips her blonde hair and she doesn’t say anything.
One night, she gestures to her apartment door over an especially contorted body lying between them — she hit ‘em with her umbrella and Frank kicks their face in — and says, y ou want to come up for coffee? Frank says no, ma’am. She shrugs. He watches her go.
They meet like this for the next few weeks. She always asks if he wants coffee, he always says no. The yes is itching to come out obviously, but Frank knows once he agrees, he’ll never walk out of her apartment without feeling like he left something important behind. (He doesn’t know if that’s a bad thing or not.) She continues to write badass articles, he continues to be The Punisher, and they both act like something isn’t happening when she goes to talk to a source and he happens to be shooting the goddamn face out of her source. Frank, fucking hell.
Oh, c’mon. It was a trap. Clearly.
She never seems scared, though. Not like she looked in the diner. He thinks about asking her what changed, but here he is, meeting her a few times a week maybe, and he thinks everything’s changed. The only time he sees her scared is when a punk spits out blood from his mouth and says Mr. Fisk sends his regards for Wesley and she won’t look Frank in the eye, not even after he’s shot the guy in the head. She doesn’t ask him up for coffee that day.
She does eventually tell him about Wesley. Tells him about the seven shots she took. Tells him how some nights she wakes up, throat hoarse, because Wesley keeps pacing in her room, raggedy-ann with bullet holes. Tells him how she didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help it. It gets his blood boiling that she was stuck in a corner that way. Glass corners with jagged edges and she got cut real bad trying to get out. He tells her it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay you were only saving your own skin and she cries. If he watches her more than usual after that, she doesn’t say anything.
Some weeks, he’s gone for a while, tracking some shady people in various areas, and he gets nervous about her. Honest-to-god nervous. He gets back a couple of days and she’s all right, her face brightening when she sees him (never brighter than his) and other days, he gets back and she’s got a bruise here and there. There’s a particularly nasty mark on her face one night, and he reaches over without thinking and traces it with his fingers. Her question remains the same — Coffee, Frank? She says it, smiling, like she knows the curve of her lips has some sort of vice on Frank’s heart. (Did he really say heart? He meant that internal organ that goes beatbeatbeat faster and faster whenever she’s close.)
He wonders what he is to her sometimes. He wonders what she thinks of him, showing up bloody and gruesome. He wonders so bad that when it rains really bad on a Monday night, and he has too many guys on him at the docks (ah, fuck, he’s gonna have more bruises on his face), he goes and finds her. Sees her walking home from work, her heels snapping on the pavement. She looks surprised to see him. Oh, is someone following me? I’m not even working on a big lead right now. She’s looking at the mess he is, blood-soaked and rundown.
Oh. Right. He clears his throat. I was wondering — I was wondering if I could take you up on that coffee. Why the fuck is he so nervous?
Karen’s face breaks into a smile. Gestures with one hand up the stairs, after you , and he swears he’s wearing the biggest shit-eating grin on his face, too.
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For a few weeks after, him and Karen settle into some type of routine. Welcome to domesticity she makes a joke whenever he stays over and helps make dinner or fixes her door locks or buys her a new coffee machine because the other one was shit, Karen, what kind of coffee have you been drinking. The word makes his insides jump. (He was more comfortable when he took on about six or seven fucking ninjas that one time — Ninjas, Red? Really? — and ended up limping to Karen’s apartment.)
He continues to check on her every once in a while (alright, like every few days) and they revolve around each other like they’re too afraid to put a label on whatever — whatever this is. They don’t ever ask each other — she just lets him in whenever he knocks, and he lets her stick a pink band-aid on his nose when it gets busted up. (When she gets that close to pin it on him, all he can think about is what it would be like to kiss her.)
He comes in truly bloody into her apartment a couple of days and she doesn’t ask him what happened and instead buys a first-aid kit and becomes a natural at fixing him. (The first time she stitches him up, he glares at her the entire time. She glares back, I’ve never fucking done this before, Frank. He’s got a couple of uneven scars on his arm now.)
They play Monopoly the nights when he sleeps over, when he’s too tired to head home (like home isn’t her). Especially when Karen jerks awake mid-sleep, scream still in her throat, telling him that Wesley won’t leave her alone. Or when Frank wakes up reliving the day at the carousel, seeing the colonel grin at Maria and his kids right before he empties his gun into them, a forever hole in his head where Frank had shot him.
Or they get out whiskey and talk about mundane shit, like what article Karen’s working on now, or what Frank’s kids and Maria used to be like (and it doesn’t hurt to talk about them so much, not with her.) Sometimes, he has a certain lead on some cretin she’s trying to bring down, and she gets so excited when she gets up to grab her notebook, like he’s gonna tell her all his secrets. (He does. He wants the fuckers exposed, too.)
They sleep in the same bed. They’re fucking adults about it. Some mornings, he wakes up and she’s got an arm thrown haphazardly over his face and he realizes she sleeps real messy and the mornings when she wakes up to his arm wrapped around her waist, his goddamn snoring in her ears, she tells him you’re disgusting, get your meaty hands off me . (But she says it so nicely that he thinks she secretly loves it.)
He thinks about the last time he touched someone so gently like this and it was before her. It was before they started whatever this was, it was before the trial, it was when his kids and his wife and him went to the carousel and he was so fucking happy with all of it. (Touching her now feels like he’s becoming undone at the seams, like being The Punisher wasn’t enough.)
Frank tries not to think about the easiness of being with Karen. It doesn’t bother him that she accepts him being The Punisher. What bothers him is that he gets along with Karen so well despite it. But when he opens his mouth to say —
I’m so fucking wrong for you. I’m dead to you. I’m dead to you. I’m dead to you. You’re gonna be dead because of me (like she doesn’t pursue death herself) — she looks up and grins because he accidentally toppled over the Jenga tower they were building on a hot summer night. So he won’t. He can’t. He doesn’t want to. His nerves singing for the blood of monsters and beasts and demons is pushed to the back of his mind when he falls into step besides her.
They don’t talk about the shit they’ve seen (and done) but when Karen wakes up in the middle of the night, looking like she’s been to hell and back, he says you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay and she nods, but doesn’t take her eyes off of him, and instead reaches up to run her finger down the bridge of his nose. I’m okay. Frank feels naked whenever she does it but doesn’t move to stop her ever. They still haven’t kissed yet (and Frank honestly blushes at the thought of yet ) but he’s not pushing. He wants her to make the decision about that.
One night, Karen shrugs I’m glad you’re not dead, Frank.
She says this right before she turns off the bedroom light, and he sits there slack-jawed, heartbeat fastfastfast and when he turns to look over at Karen, her back is already turned like she gets to have the last say about it all.
(I’m glad you’re not dead. I’m glad you’re not dead. I’m glad you’re not dead.)
Shit, he’s glad too.
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Because he’s The Punisher, shit was bound to happen. Someone end ups getting too close to her one night. He was on the other side of town, taking a hammer to someone’s fingers (and honestly enjoying it a little — the fuckin’ audacity of the guy) so by the time he swings by to check on her, he’s almost too late.
He wrestles the fucker off her body, thinking don’t be dead don’t be dead don’t you die and he doesn’t realize he’s saying it out loud until she bumps him on the head okay okay okay I get it all quiet and he sees blood seeping across her lower rib (all over her favorite dress, she’s told him so many times before). He takes his gun, shoots whoeveritis through the head, Schoonover-style, and picks Karen up and takes her to the apartment. (He would have really tortured the guy but she’s bleeding all over his hands, painting them a much brighter shade of red than they ever were). She’s saying something about almost having it and shh shh it’s okay is all he can mumble to her.
When he gets her on her bed and cuts up the dress, the gash isn’t so deep but she’s been bleeding out so long that her head is heavy and she’s slurring her words. She keeps trying to touch the side of her body and he’s batting her hands away let me let me let me I got you I got you I got you. The stitches take a while to do because his hands keep shaking. (They never shook when he dismantles the fuckers after Karen in the diner. They never shook when he aimed the gun at the colonel’s head. They fucking shake when he’s doing the most important thing he’s done in a while.)
Karen’s in and out all night. He sits on a chair near her bed at first but then gets up, starts pacing. It only takes him about seven steps to reach the opposite end of the room and he thinks (hopes) by the time he gets to the other side, she’ll wake up and ask for coffee.
He gets more and more sure that maybe he didn’t mend the cut right, maybe he missed a stitch, maybe it’d all fall apart and he’d be left with nothing but a black thread that couldn’t hold her together for him. (Uncertainty and fear and the possibility of waking up in the days after this—without her—has a hook in him and he can’t break the thought of it free because it’s dug too deep into his chest right where his heart is.)
He listens to her breathe. Frank doesn’t know when he got used to the sounds of her sleeping and it makes his breath hitch a beat about how it could be the last time. (He thinks about Maria, Lisa, Frank Jr., how he couldn’t save them, and how he got left behind with a fucking bullet in his head, and how they left him to live with it. He thinks about what he’d be left with this time. The pink band-aids on his nose? The scars she’s stitched? Her corpse? He doesn’t want to let himself think that far ahead.) His jaw clenches and he continues to pacepacepace.
Around three in the morning, her breathing is less erratic and more Karen. He rubs his eyes, checks the stitches (they fucking hold, thank the fucking lord). Frank still feels like his chest has been stretched thin but he climbs under the sheets right next to her. He lets his eyes close, not daring to touch her in case he grabs her too tight and ends up cracking her wide open. She’s okay she’s okay Karen’s okay he keeps thinking, saying, nodding. He falls asleep, repeating it like a mantra.
(Be okay. Be okay. Please be okay.)
Karen’s peering over at him the next morning when he wakes up to her voice, thick and scratchy. Jesus Christ. What happened? He tells her (and she doesn’t mention that his voice sounds not so steady).
You gave me quite the scare there, ma’am, the old name coming out. She huffs a little at it.
But then she reaches over, runs her thumb over one of his famous bruises from the trial, her fingers soft against the stubble of his cheek. Frank stays still (as much as The Punisher can be) and that’s when she reaches over and kisses him. He jerks back a little but she surges forward, meeting him there. She really kisses him, her lips chapped from the night, and his fingers (still stained with some of her blood) come up to thread into her hair. He leans forward into the kiss. It’s slow, but the feeling of her mouth burns in the pit of his stomach, and he feels like it’s been a long time coming.
Thank you.
For what?
For saving me. Again.
(He doesn’t tell her that it’s been her who’s been saving him all along.)