Karen lays her palm against the flat of the stone once more, her skin stinging with the press of snow, before she wishes Ben a Merry Christmas. She needs to get to Doris to drop off her present -- a sort of sad excuse for what Karen considers baking and some conversation from someone who isn’t wearing scrubs for a change.
She sees him before he sees her. Or, at least she thinks that she does -- with Frank, Karen can never be too sure. He looks far away, though. Not physically -- he’s actually sat fairly close by to where she’s walking (and trying not to slide) down the iced sloped path.. But, his eyes are drifted over in that way they used to be when she’d first spoke with him while he was strapped to that hospital bed with cops stationed outside of his door. The alertness that she learned he always possesses mangled and twisted deep with tragedy and distorted memories of the life he lost. Hazy and confused and hurt in a way that she understood -- a way that she connected with no matter how many strange stares she received in the process. No matter how many times she could see the pointed look in Ellison’s eyes.
Frank is still Frank, of course, so she knows that he’s aware of her presence by the time she’s five tombstones away. He doesn’t look away from the one in front of him, though. The top plane is covered in snow, just like every other stone surrounding them. The vases secured along the sides are full of dead and frozen flowers.
“Frank?” she asks, her voice tangling with the wind that’s blowing snowflakes into her hair. She’s promised herself, months ago in the woods, that she would never speak to him again, but his finger twitches and her eyes drift down to the headstone that he’s staring at and she steps closer still. “.... Christmas makes everything twice as sad,” she says -- to him and to herself. Frank’s head bounces lightly in something of a nod and reaches to his side to brush away the snow covering the seat next to him.
For @boyfriendhook. Once again I’m literally the worst writer, I’m sorry. But, mostly I’m sorry that your Secret Santa never came -- I feel so bad about it, I don’t know what happened. I also don’t remember your wants because I already deleted the forms at the end of Kastle Christmas week, so I hope this is nothing that you absolutely didn’t want and that this edit [lol mostly the edit] makes up for everything in at least some way. I hope your holidays were good!
