“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
The quality of the pounding changes abruptly. No longer sharp and staccato, it’s now heavier and rhythmic. Forceful. Deliberate. She realises he’s using his shoulder instead of his fists, ramming his whole body, hard and heavy, against the rotting, pitted wood.
Yesterday that wood was new and golden and smelled of fresh varnish. Yesterday the carpet was clean and there wasn’t blood on the walls and decay in the air.
Yesterday there were no monsters in the streets.
Except maybe there were.
It doesn’t matter. Old or new, the door won’t last long - she knows that much. It’ll splinter under the force of him and then all hell will break loose in this tiny hotel room in this tiny town at the end of the world.
Although, she concedes there’s a good argument to be made for that having happened already.
“Goddamnit Karen, open the door. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Jesus Christ, it even sounds like him and that feels like a special kind of cruelty. His voice was such a comfort once. Gentle. Kind. Soft, but only for her. It made her feel warm and safe and cared for in a way she’d thought she’d forgotten - if she’d ever really had it to begin with. But now … now that thing on the other side of the door has taken that too. The same way it’s taken his heavy eyes that say so much and show even more, the same way it’s stolen the rigid set of his jaw, the scars on his hands and the way his mouth twists when he’s trying not to laugh.
The same way it’s ripped their memories from her and made them its own.
(They all think you’re a monster. I know you’re not
You sure about that?)
No, no she’s not. Not anymore.
She wonders if the monster thinks it loves her. She wonders if it thinks she might love it back.
(It doesn’t change how I feel about you
It should
It doesn’t)
It still doesn’t, but this… This does.
She waits for another loud crash to disguise the sound of the magazine sliding home and clicking into place, and then she waits again for the next one to pull back the hammer.
THUMP! Click. THUMP! Click. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Despite the blood and sweat that’s slicking the handle, her .380 is comforting and solid in her hands. It feels heavy and real. Dependable. Sad thing that it’s become her most trusted and only companion.
(.380, it shows thought)
Yeah, yeah it does. She’s all about showing thought after all.
She wipes the tears from her cheeks and takes a step towards the door, positions herself against the wall, and watches as the rotting wood bulges under his weight with each blow. With any luck his momentum will keep him going when he breaks through so that his back will be to her.
It’ll give her a split second. That’s all. But maybe a split second is all she needs.
She’ll shoot him.
No. Not him. It. She’ll shoot it. She’ll shoot it and leave another monster dead in her wake.
“Karen, please,” he’s saying. “Please. I can’t lose you too. But we need to go now. It isn’t safe. Come on my girl, open the door.”
She’s not stupid. Of course it would say that. Of course it would prey on her feelings to manipulate and confuse her. It’ll tell her what she wants to hear, make all the promises he never did. It’ll say it can find it in itself to love someone real and alive and not in its dreams. It’ll love her and not another war.
It’ll make it mean something.
Except it won’t. It won’t. It’ll tear her apart and leave her here in the filth.
She’s not stupid.
That thing on the other side of the crumbling hotel door isn’t Frank Castle and that’s why she’s going to kill it. She’s going to punish it for pretending to be him. She’s going to murder it and she’s not even going to blink.
She raises her gun, takes a breath of bitter air and waits.
And, when he finally crashes into the room and she’s staring at the back of his shaved head, a terrible, wonderful voice starts whispering in her ear.
But Karen… but Karen, what if it is? What if it is Frank Castle?
In which Frank Castle’s dog really likes his new neighbor, Karen Page: she loves animals too, so they start talking when he goes out for a walk in the park.
in which karen becomes a reluctant cat owner. in a post-dds3 world with spoilers for tps2. written for kastle valentine 2019.
It wakes her up in the middle of the night.
She’d been dreaming of Fisk again – the cold hate in his eyes as he towered above her, so sharp he could snap her in two without even moving a finger. During the day, it’s easy to remind herself that he’s back behind bars where he belongs. That she’s safe. That even if that stops being the case, she’s still nowhere near helpless; she knows how to take care of herself.
The dreams are always another story.
She squints into the dark of her ceiling, things still trying to take some kind of shape in her mind. There’d been a gun this time, on the table between them. She’d been reaching, only to find her hands suddenly tied back behind her chair…
Karen’s dozing off when she hears it again.
Scratch, scratch. Scratch, scratch.
It’s louder this time, more insistent. Any notion of sleep has now left her, and she sits bolt upright in her bed, ears straining.
It’s coming from her window.
She’s halfway to the drawer with her gun when the scratching fades, and for a moment there’s nothing but wind, and the faint sounds of late-night traffic below. And then—
Mew.
[read more below or continue on ao3.]
It’s clear, and plaintive, and “You've got to be kidding me,” Karen groans, throwing on a robe before padding her way over to the windowsill.
There, perched on the other side, with slow-blinking grey orbs and a thick coat of black fur, is a cat staring back at her.
“Okay,” says Karen. “Hi, I guess.”
She’s always been more of a dog person. But the thing is so small and forlorn, it’s probably freezing outside, and who can hold her accountable for bad choices made after 2AM anyway, so she unlatches the window and cracks it half-open.
“Do you want to come in or not?” sighs Karen when the cat only sits there and blinks at her some more. “Going once…twice…” She steps away from the window to give it more room to decide. A breeze works its way in, and she shivers, firmly closing the front of her robe.
The cat gazes at her a second longer, and just when Karen’s about to give up and call it a night, it slinks a paw inside, patting around as though feeling things out, before leaping onto the floor. One of its hind legs, she notices, is shorter than the others, giving it an odd little sway as it walks, but its movements are otherwise steady, assured.
By the time Karen’s closed her window and turned back around, the cat is nowhere to be seen, save for a blur of possible movement near the foot of her coffee table.
“Please, make yourself at home,” she speaks into the semi-darkness. There’s a faint but unmistakably smug-sounding yowl from the general vicinity of her couch cushions, and Karen trudges back to her own bed, half-hoping that when she wakes up in the morning, this will all have turned out to be some very strange dream.
…
“You got a cat?” asks Matt the next day, and she curses his sense of super-smell, the hint of amusement as he quirks his head in her direction.
“More like the cat got me,” grumbles Karen, making a beeline for the kitchenette without bothering to dump her things off at her desk. All the coffee in the world isn’t going to wake her up from this nightmare, that apparently she’s become one of those people. Those people who give off the impression of owning a cat.
“I tried to get us a cat once,” Foggy pipes up. “But Marci said over her dead body, so I decided not to press the issue.”
“I would gladly let you take this one off my hands.” Karen sips her coffee, leaning into the wall for a moment. “Matt…you seem like a cat person.”
Matt’s face twitches with a smile. “I don’t know whether I should be insulted or flattered.”
“Oh, I do,” says Foggy helpfully, before turning back to Karen as she treks slowly over to her desk. “Why don’t you drop him off at a shelter or something? The cat, I mean. Not Matt. Of course.”
“Of course,” echoes Matt, with a shake of his head.
“Seriously, though. They could help find him a good home. One that doesn’t have to be yours, if you don’t want it to be.”
“Her,” Karen corrects absentmindedly. “It’s a her. I think.” She sets down her mug, picks up the day’s Bulletin that Foggy’s made a habit of bringing in for her. She should grab some more bread from the store on her way home. The cat had gone through her last loaf earlier that morning.
“So what do you have against them, anyway?” Matt’s thumbing through case files, still looking faintly entertained by the whole situation.
Karen turns to the crime beat section, her old stomping grounds. The headlines rush together, no particular names standing out. She breathes again, and shrugs to Matt, “Nothing against them. They just don’t happen to be dogs.”
“Fair enough,” says Foggy. “Though I had this one cat growing up and sometimes I swear you could not tell the difference.”
“They have zero loyalties to anything, apart from themselves. And they’ll walk all over you if you let them.” She frowns at the memory of trying to shoo the cat back outside that morning, the look of disdain she’d gotten in return before the cat jumped onto her bed and made herself comfortable there.
“Some might call that self-sufficient.”
“And I saw a study once suggesting that most cats recognize the sound of their owner’s voice over a stranger’s, but only ten percent of them actually bother to acknowledge it.” Not that she'd planned on naming the thing or testing out any part of this theory.
“Nothing against them, you said?” Matt asks her in an innocent tone.
“You know,” says Foggy, “if I were to die suddenly, just keel over in my living room one day, and my cat had to starve – let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Marci’s, I don’t know, she actually made good on her threat if I got one – I would not blame it for eventually needing to eat both of our bodies.”
“Cats wait on average fewer days than other pets do under those circumstances.”
“I thought we were on the same side here, Matt.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” groans Karen, dropping her forehead into her hands. “I can’t leave her at a shelter. She has this gimpy back leg. Nobody’s going to want to take her.”
“Shame,” Foggy says mildly. “Wonder how this story ends?”
…
She takes the cat to the vet. On the unlikely chance that the cat’s been chipped and belongs to someone (she doesn’t), and to get that leg checked out while they’re at it (healed from a bad break that had never been properly tended to).
She tells herself she’ll give it one week, max, to figure something out. Something more permanent, that doesn’t involve cat litter strewn all over her bathroom, claw marks on the sides of her couch, and more than one broken glass that she shouldn’t have left on the counter.
At least she has an excuse not to think about buying flowers for her windowsill anymore.
Karen tells herself all of this until they’ve left the vet a second time, with a schedule for catch-up vaccines and a two hundred dollar bill that’s telling her otherwise: this cat is now hers, whether she likes it or not.
She’s never been more grateful for Matt’s heightened senses, when it saves her the trouble of having to admit it out loud. To his credit, he breathes not a word, though she doesn’t miss the way his mouth turns up at the corner sometimes when she re-pockets her emergency lint roller, or starts cutting out coupons for Petco in the Bulletin ads.
And Foggy's only comment, after a few weeks of staying silent on the matter: “So when can I come meet your new girl?”
…
They fall into an easy routine.
The cat is the first thing she sees in the morning, sharp little paws kneading relentlessly into the blankets until Karen finally rolls out of bed with a groan. She’s stationed by the door when Karen returns from the office every late afternoon – sometimes late evening, depending – winding herself around Karen’s legs, tripping her up and loudly asking for food in the same breath.
She’ll never admit it, but it’s…kind of nice, to have this small ball of comfort, curled warmly beside her at night. Nudging a cold, wet nose in her ear when she falls asleep with the TV still on. Ignoring her, too, on days when she simply can’t be bothered, sitting by the window with a prowling gaze on the squirrels and pigeons instead.
It’s quiet, and the quiet is something Karen wants so badly to count on. To believe that the noise can be over, that maybe her ‘after’ can be something as simple as coming home to a stray that’s decided it belongs with her there.
The dreams come less frequently now, and it’s nice, to be able to sleep through the night again.
Karen still doesn’t know what to call her, which appalls Foggy more than anyone else. But none of the things he suggests sound quite right to her, and she keeps stalling, saying she’s sure the inspiration will come at some point.
“What are you waiting for?” Matt finally speaks up, without judgment, only a gentle curiosity to his tone, and Karen wishes she knew how to answer him.
…
When his name starts showing up in the papers again, Karen’s running late for work. The cat had hurled up a hairband at breakfast, and as an apology for showing up probably smelling like vomit, Karen had grabbed bagels on her way in.
Something’s wrong the moment she walks through the door. Matt’s back is to her, but it stiffens at unnaturally sharp angles before she’s even opened her mouth to greet them, Foggy doing his level best not to betray anything in his own expression.
“Did you know?” Matt asks without turning, an accusation in every word.
Karen shakes her head, bewildered. She’s still standing in the doorway, bag limp at her side. “Know what?”
Foggy meets her gaze from his desk in the corner. “Frank,” he says, and it feels as though all the air has been sucked out of the room, her chest burning with things that she’d long thought snuffed out. “Frank Castle is back.”
…
His face is splashed all over news outlets, every bit as battered and bruised as Karen last saw it so long ago, as their bodies swayed together in that elevator stopped between moments in time. She wonders, in all the months that have passed since then, whether he’s known any peace – any healing – or if the bleeding’s never stopped.
He’s wearing the vest as he charges down streets on CCTV, and even with the volume on mute she can feel the ricochet of his gunfire, hear the ground-out fury of his voice every time his mouth curls on a snarl.
The cat has taken an interest in the news as well, looking alert as the camera goes blurry around Frank for a moment. Her tail thwips back forth, back again, and then she’s stretching over Karen’s leg, resting her chin on her two front paws. She lets out a low, rumbling purr when the edges of Frank begin to sharpen again, her eyes never leaving the screen.
“Not you, too,” sighs Karen, scratching behind her ears as the footage replays. Frank storms down the street one more time, face set in so much rage. She reaches for the remote, but can’t bring herself to shut it off.
She doesn’t sleep much that night.
When she does dream it’s short, fragmented. Impossible to piece together in a coherent way. Fisk pays her another visit, but in place of the gun this time it’s Frank on his rampage, his outline fuzzy with static, and no sound comes out when he's shouting at her.
“Frank,” she says, and her voice sounds strong as she reaches for him, each time he gets close enough to touch her. “Frank.” But then his footsteps rewind, and he’s running towards her only to backtrack again, over and over without closing any new distance between them.
Karen’s never been one to take stock in dreams, but it feels oddly like foreshadowing, when she un-cuffs him from his hospital bed a few days later.
So make it mean something.
Turns out it never meant anything at all.
…
Karen calls out of work for two days, after that. Hoping that’s enough time to get Frank’s scent out of her skin.
She needn’t have bothered. They would’ve put two and two together, after seeing the news. The shootout on the overpass. The TV reports of Sergeant Mahoney giving interviews from his own hospital bed, staying strangely tight-lipped on the matter of Frank Castle’s escape from his custody.
Karen wears flats to the office, and doesn’t say much under Matt’s own wordless scrutiny, the tight smiles that she knows don’t reach his eyes beneath those darkened frames.
There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said.
Poor Foggy’s left with the task of mediating the silence between them, telling stories, cracking flat but good-natured jokes about their clientele, finally resorting to asking after Karen’s “She Who Still Has No Name” cat.
“She’s fine,” says Karen, thinking of late nights watching the news, and the content little meow every time Frank’s scowling face appeared back onscreen.
Matt breaks his silence at last, uttering a quiet, “Was it worth it, Karen?” He speaks without slowing the speed of his fingers over the papers in front of him, and the blood floods up to her ears in one deafening rush.
Screw you, Matt.
But then the image of Frank is fighting to the surface again, stumbling forward without daring to touch her in any way before turning his back on her for the last time. I don’t want to. I don’t want to.
It’s impossible to say, in that moment, which of the two has disappointed her more.
Was it worth it, Karen?
“Always.” Her tone is perfectly even, but her heart is pressed tight to the walls of her chest, and she’s not sure even she knows the difference anymore, between the truth and the lie.
…
Karen tells herself a lot of things. That she can’t forgive him so easily this time – if he even gives her the chance not to. And perhaps that’s what burns her more than anything else, that he’s always the one who decides when to show up, with flowers or a burner phone (a broken-sounding Please, and a soft kiss to her cheek that she’d felt there for days afterward). He’s always the one who gets to say no. He’s always the one who does the leaving.
She tells herself it doesn’t matter. There is no more this time, or whatever comes next, not for them. He’d made it quite clear where he stood on the matter.
(At least one of these things is definitely a lie.)
Karen winds up so determined to make it mean nothing, on her own terms, that in retrospect she should have known.
Her cat – Karen’s tentatively started to call her different names in her head, just to get a feel for how they sound – should have clued her in too.
After the newscasters start to run low on fresh Punisher material, her cat takes to sitting by the window for long hours instead, as if he’ll just come strolling around the corner of her block next.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t hold your breath,” Karen mutters, turning away as a garbage compactor rolls down the street.
Mrrow, says her cat, unblinking.
“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t make the damn rules.” Karen sinks into the couch with coffee in hand, a book on something lighthearted in the other. She props her feet on the table, tosses a throw over her knees, and focuses on the forgetting of things for a while.
She starts back awake to a series of clattering sounds, blinking through a haze of sleep and the dim lighting of just-sunset to find her cat pawing animatedly at the window. She catches a flash of something dark in the periphery, so quick she thinks she might have imagined it.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake…” Karen wraps the blanket over her shoulders and drags herself across the room, sighing all the while. She crouches down over the cat, running a hand over her back to calm her. “What did you find, hmm? Was it a big bad raccoon?”
The cat makes a chirping noise, and Karen looks up.
“Definitely not a raccoon,” she breathes, heart slamming up against her rib cage as Frank eases himself down from her fire escape. He opens his mouth, the gravel in his voice smoothed out by the windowpane between them.
She would still know the sound of her name in that voice anywhere.
“Karen. Hey.”
…
She can feel his eyes on her as she moves around the kitchen, trying to remember where she’d last put her bottle opener. Two beers sit unattended on her kitchen island, a bead of sweat dripping down each neck, and when had it gotten so hot in here?
She grips the edge of the counter with both hands, forcing herself to breathe for a moment.
She still can’t bring herself to look at him.
The cat is purring up a storm at his feet, tail brushing over his legs, spine arching in a very clear demand to be picked up.
What did I tell them? Karen can’t help but sigh. No loyalty whatsoever.
“Ah,” grunts Frank, glancing down with a slightly bemused expression, and Karen finds herself holding her breath again, wondering. He’d always struck her as more of a dog person. “Hey, sweetheart.”
His gaze flicks back to hers, searching for any signs of disapproval before he’s bending over, scooping the cat up in one hand.
“Got yourself a guard dog, I take it?” He lets out a low chuckle, lower lip snagging between his teeth as the cat crawls over his chest, rubbing her forehead under his chin. God, what a traitor.
“Yeah.” Karen crosses her arms. “Something like that.”
Frank brings his other hand around to cradle the cat’s shortened back leg. Karen can hear her purring from all the way across the room. “She, uh. She’s a real friendly one, isn’t she.”
Karen’s tone is sharp, pointed. “She’s not that great at deterring intruders.”
Frank drops his head down, nodding to himself for a moment. “Look, I can go, if that’s what you want, Karen, I just. Had to see how you were doing.” The sentiment falls flat and they both know it, a cringe twitching across his features. He surveys the room, and she can see him measuring out the space in his head, all the things still standing between them. He nods again, giving the cat one last scratch to the chin before releasing her. “I’ll go.”
Karen shrugs a shoulder at him, shaking her head. “It’s what you do best, Frank.” The words are out of her mouth before she recognizes the dark place that they’d come from, and the shame of it stops her short.
It’s what you do best, Karen.
Frank knits his brow together, looking more somber than she’s ever seen him, and he turns to leave.
“Wait.” She uncrosses her arms, holds out a hand to him before letting it drop. “Just – wait.” She comes around to the side of the island and stops there, gazing at him, willing him to understand her. She can’t be the one always reaching for him. Not this time. Not anymore.
Frank closes his eyes for a second, draws in an audible breath like he’s searching deep within himself for something. When he looks at her again, he seems to have found it, his expression painfully bare, and she can see every one of his bruises, new cuts that have formed over half-healing scars.
Slowly, he makes his way over to her – less gingerly than he’d needed to at the hospital, but there’s still a carefulness to his movements, like she might decide not to let him any closer, and he wouldn’t blame her for it.
Karen swallows, gestures into the space between their bodies. “What is this, Frank?”
His breath shudders out. His voice is gruff, hoarse like he hasn’t used it in days, and maybe he hasn’t, not in this way. “You mean something. To me.” He redistributes his weight, nudging himself just a little bit closer. She still hasn’t moved.
“God, Karen, I—” Frank shakes his head, mouth pulling upward with a kind of disbelieving laugh. “I did some thinking, after, with the kid, okay, and it made me think, made me realize—”
He breaks off, gaze piercing through hers. His body goes perfectly still, and she knows the effort it’s taking him, knows that it can’t just be nothing, that it never was, after all.
“You might mean more than anything else that there is, and that – that scares me. That terrifies the shit out of me, yeah? That gonna be okay with you, Karen?”
His voice cracks on her name, and suddenly they’re swaying together, her arms coming up to his shoulders to steady him. To steady them both, and it’s messy, it doesn’t un-complicate all of the damaged pieces that don’t fit quite right with them yet, but it’s a start. It’s a start.
Her breathing evens out in time with his, and then she slides her fingers down to gently grasp around his wrists. His palms turn upward, dwarfing her own. He squeezes her back instead of letting go.
“Both hands, right?” she says to him, and he whispers her name like a kiss to her forehead.
…
He eventually falls asleep on the couch, with her copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up still splayed open over his lap. The cat is comfortably dozing away on his chest, his arm draped protectively around the side of her body. The furrow lines between his brows are smooth, relaxed, and there’s no movement behind his eyelids, no tossing and turning like she’d seen at the hospital.
It’s a disarming sight, and for a moment Karen can only stand there, watching the rise-fall-rise of their slumbering, before tucking a blanket over them both.
She lets a hand linger, brushing back some stray hair from Frank’s forehead. The top of it has gotten long, she thinks, with a feeling that she realizes is fondness, and it leaves her chest warm as she starts to tiptoe away from the couch.
Impulsively, she leans back over him before she’s out of range, pressing a light kiss to the square of his bruised-up jaw. He stirs without waking, but the cat blinks up at her for a second, stretching her paws and closing her eyes again when Karen gives her head a gentle little scratch.
“Night, my love,” she whispers, and they’re both shifting, curling into each other as Karen takes another step back. Frank’s nose is half-buried into the cat’s fur now, a deep, sleepy rumble sounding out of his throat, and it’s hard to look away from them, like this might all simply disappear if she does.
Karen forces herself into her bedroom, but she leaves the door open, and she falls asleep to the thought of what this new after could be – just Frank, and this cat, her two broken strays that have made a home out of her heart for good.
…
Fisk is there again, shouting things and threatening violence, but he’s started out farther away this time as he advances toward her, and from this distance, he almost seems small.
“Karen.”
She looks around, confused.
“Karen!”
Something warm closes over her wrist, a phantom touch that she can’t see, but she would recognize the sound of her name in that voice anywhere.
She puts the gun down.
Frank is hunkered over her when she opens her eyes, his gaze troubled and bright in the dark of her bedroom as his mouth forms over her name over and over. “Hey. Y’okay?” He rasps the words out, still bleary with the last remnants of sleep. His hair is standing at an angle on one end, and Karen resists the urge to run her fingers through it.
He helps her sit up, one hand palming the back of her skull, and it’s warm, he’s warm all over, as she leans an arm into the crook of his shoulder. The bed bounces slightly under their weight as he reaches with his other hand, sliding a rough thumb over her elbow, pressing the bridge of his nose to her temple and breathing in deep.
“It’s always the same dream,” she tells him, and she knows he must hear it, the echoing of his own previous words.
Frank licks his lips, hanging his head with something like shame for a moment, as though he wants to ask of her things that he has no right in asking.
“Listen, Karen, I…” He trails his fingers over the soft part of her forearm, before coming to linger down by her wrist. “You were there for me, always are, even when I don’t—” He breaks off again, watching the way their hands twine together. “Guess what I’m trying to say is, if I can be that for you, I’d. I’d really like to give it a shot, yeah?”
Frank looks at her now, face sculpted in moonlight, so vulnerable that Karen aches all over to look back at him. She tightens her grip on his hand. “I’d like that too,” she tells him.
He lands a kiss to her knuckles, tender and careful, warm with the promise of more. She can feel his breath shaking over her skin, cooling the spots his mouth had touched. She rests her head against the slope of his shoulder, eyes drifting closed as he brushes his fingers up and down the side of her arm before finally weaving into her hair again.
There’s movement at the foot of the bed, and a soft chirruping meow as the cat pads over to join them, tail grazing their hands where they’re joined.
“She got a name?”
“Work in progress,” hums Karen. “Kind of thought for a while she would just up and leave at some point, before I got something to stick.”
Frank’s quiet for a moment, mouth skimming back and forth over her hairline. She pictures those lines in his brow creasing again, deep in thought about what she’s said. “That right?”
“Mm.”
He comes to rest with his mouth by her ear, nuzzling a slow little kiss there. “Think it might be time to give her one, then.”
Karen stretches into him, head falling sideways, letting him find her pulse point next. “Think so?”
“Yeah,” Frank murmurs, heat tracking over her skin as he breathes her in like time has no meaning – like he wants to learn all that he can of her, and then keep on going, no end in sight, no war zones, just this. She thinks she’s never wanted anything more either. “Yeah, Karen. I do.”
Apparently Kastle events are the only way I can write fics so keep them coming I guess?
Anyway this was inspired by @spacearts gorgeous #KastleChristmas gift to me (which I don’t think I will ever be over) and I kept my promise to myself to write a fic based on it.
One more note - This does take place after TPS2 but it does ignore all events after episode 11. It’s because I started writing this days before the season dropped and I was not in the mood to adjust what I wrote to fit canon. Sorry not sorry.
Enjoy!
The steam from her coffee gets caught in a gust of wind. Perched on the window sill above her radiator it disappears then reappears, like the flow was replaced with another. Karen cautiously moves the cup closer to her. She doesn’t want the wind to turn her coffee cold too quickly. The window shouldn’t even be open, fall was finally giving way to winter. But Karen wasn’t quite ready to seal her apartment up for months on end. So the cold wind blows, now its relentlessness rustling up the flower pot of white roses that were also on the window sill. The petals and leaves shiver, brought to her only a few days ago by Frank.
“Okay fine.” she murmurs. She closes the window and looks down below. He’s on her mind, but then again when is he not? Especially now that he’s a stoic part of her routine. A few months ago he dropped in again. They hadn’t spoken since the hospital, she knew better to leave him be. He was not in a good place then and her directness about their relationship was brushed off. She was almost resigned to the way things ended but then there he was, standing in her doorway, asking for a way back into her good graces. Why he ever thought he was pushed out she’ll never...
It doesn’t matter now. He found his way back and that was enough. They spent that first night discussing their recent traumas. It takes them a week to catch them both up and most of the nights end with them in tight, overbearing hugs, crying at the absurdity of it all.
They get past it though and they commit to staying in touch, Frank vows to choose love over war from now on. He starts stopping by a few times a week. They have dinner or just drinks, depending on their moods. He’ll bring her flowers every time. They now talk about mundane topics and it all feels so right. For them it shouldn’t but their respective shitstorms have settled and for once it was nice to talk about co workers and subway delays or laugh at a puppy video on YouTube with him.
Karen pulls her dusty pink cardigan closer and clasps the top button. She turns to the case file she put down on the love seat. She should really prep, Amy Bendix is in hot water again and she has turn to Nelson and Murdock for help. No doubt they were recommended by Frank. She sits back down, opens Amy’s case file. Karen laughs at the amount of identities this girl has racked up.
Just then the locks on her door begin to turn. Karen goes still but quickly remembers. Frank insisted for two whole weeks on not having a key to her place. But after a slightly embarrassing climb in through her bedroom window and their schedules not always lining up it wasn’t long until Karen put that spare key into his palm and he accepted it with silent gratitude.
The door opens and Karen gives Frank a quick wave. She takes a sip of her coffee and feigns going back to the file but she doesn’t get past Amy’s aliases. Frank puts his backpack down and hangs his coat. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him come into the living room. He’s been completely bruise and injury free since his return and Karen still can’t get over it. He looks human, real. Not some harbinger of death or broken parts barely stitched together.
“So uh, Amy told me you took her case.”
“Yup. The arraignment is on Monday.” Karen confirms.
“The boys give you a hard time?”
“Eh, not really. They are worried about her past... activities. But Matt knew Amy wasn’t lying about taking the money.”
“You think they’ll be able to avoid jail time for her?”
“Oh definitely. She might have to do community service though...”
He shrugs. “The kid can take it.”
She laughs. Frank crosses to her and stands behind the seat.
“Anything good?”
“Oh have you not read this?”
He chuckles.
“Just kind of skimmed it...”
His hand rests on her shoulder. Both of them are still for a spell. Karen keeps chickening out on placing her hand on his. But then she feels it. A soft pressure on the crown of her head.
“Frank...”
“I’m sorry was that...”
“No, no.” She shifts in the seat and looks up at him. He’s trying to hide it but he’s scared shitless. A line was crossed and they’re gonna have to have an actual discussion about this relationship but Karen knows she doesn’t want to go back. She takes his hand and has it cross over so that it’s on her left shoulder. She grips his fingers and he catches up. A second later he crouches over the seat and into the hug she had made for them. The temples of their heads are touching and their breathing synchronizes. They stay like this for a while with only the sounds of the wind and her radiator accompanying them.
“Thank you.”
“It’ll be fine Frank. Amy has nothing...”
“No. Thank you. For letting me back in.”
He kisses her temple. God she wants him to kiss her. It feels like it could be possible now...
“You hungry?”
On cue her stomach rumbles. “I guess so.”
“Don’t worry. I got it.”
He stands back up and heads to the kitchen.
Karen closes Amy’s file and picks up her mug. They’ll have plenty of time to talk about her case. But right now dinner needs to be made.
Frank is such a romantic I'd love HCs about that. Reasons.
Frank buys Karen flowers as often as he can, not always white roses though. Sometimes it’s other ones. It depends on the time of year. Tulips in the spring, Gerber Daisies in the summer, etc
Not many people know this, but Frank can dance. And sometimes Frank will dance with her. It’s usually just in her living room or kitchen but it’s sweet all the same.
Karen’s never been one to celebrate her birthday or Valentine’s Day before. But with Frank, it changes. He will give her little gifts. A bag of candy, or a silly stuffed toy that makes her smile. Cheesy things that she would hate with anyone else but him. But him giving them to her she loves.
Summary: Karen receives a surprise gift and phone call from Frank on Valentines Day.
Rating: G
Written for: Kastle Valentine Week by @kastlenetwork
Preview below, read the rest on ao3.
“Why did you come, Frank?”
“I told you. Wanted to say thanks.”
“You already did. You know, every time I see you I don’t know if it’ll be the last time. Every morning I wake up and I half expect to see the headline that you’re dead.”
“Did you forget? I already am dead.”
She sighs, frustrated. “You know what I mean, Frank.”
He exhales deeply. “Look, you know me better than that, Karen. I’m not the one that dies.”
“No, you’re the one that does the killing.” Her words are harsher than she intended them to be and although Frank is tougher than anyone she’s ever met she knows she’s hurt him.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no… You’re—It’s okay,” he replies, his voice quiet. “I’m, er, I’m sorry. I should…uh…I should go. It was good to see you.”
“Frank…” She wants to beg him not to leave her again but knows that no amount of begging will change the circumstances that has them perpetually trapped in this limbo between love and loneliness. Karen is starting to wonder if this is simply where they belong, and this is all they’ll ever be – two connected souls that pass by one another on occasion, always close but never close enough, words shared but so much left unsaid.
