Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“If you know anything, anything, that will get me closer to finding out who he is, then God damn it, you are going to tell me!” Ellison takes a deep breath. “Or you can clear out your desk,” he finishes. His eyes drilling into her skull, determined, hurt, desperate.

Karen’s breath hitches. The hospital room disappears, and she’s back at Penny’s Place, nineteen and scared, facing her father, hearing him say he doesn’t want her at her brother’s funeral, or anywhere near Fagan Corners for that matter.

Another father figure is rejecting her and all she can think is “I deserve this”. Because she killed her brother. Because she brought Evans to The Bulletin’s offices and made her colleagues the targets of a homicidal Daredevil impersonator. She can’t argue with Ellison. She fucked this up. She had a good thing at the journal, and now she doesn’t and it’s on her.

It’s always on her.

She leaves the room without glancing back at Ellison, holds the tears until she’s out of the hospital and in her car.

Her world is once again crumbling to dust around her and the only thing she can do is watch the ashes run through her useless fingers.

*

Telling the truth about Wesley’s death to Fisk is freeing, exhilarating and terrifying all at once. She can’t help the shiver of satisfaction running up her spine when she sees him realize exactly who he has in front of him, who he has continuously underestimated.

There’s a split second where she knows for certain that he’s going to crush her throat between his meat-beater hands and all she can think about is how her murder will be caught on tape, how there will be no more doubt about who Fisk really is. She thinks about Foggy who’ll make damn sure the FBI locks Fisk once more. She distantly thinks about Frank, who she hasn’t seen or heard from since he disappeared into an elevator shaft, shrapnel in his arm and blood running down his face.

And then there are handcuffs around her wrists and agents pushing Fisk away from her and Foggy’s disappointment at the doorway.

She puts on a brave face, pretends she’s shaking from her rage at being interrupted and not because Fisk was seconds away from giving her the same fate as Ben Urich.

There’s no turning back now that Fisk knows she’s the murderer of his favorite lackey. She has to make him go away or she has to disappear. There’s no more alternative here. She has burnt all her bridges and she’s not planning on dying without a fight.

*

“I was just trying to do the right thing. It just… It went all wrong.”

“That’s what you do, Karen.”

She pushes the echo of her father’s voice to the back of her mind while she waits for Ellison to show up at the food cart. She balls her hands into fists inside her coat pockets. She can pretend they’re not shaking that way. Her heart is beating like it wants to burst out of her chest when Ellison finally appears and her rib cage is on the verge of exploding when she makes her move and joins him.

She expects some shouting, some “get the fuck out, Page”, some hate in his eyes.

She doesn’t expect him to hug her tight, like he’s happy she’s here, like he’s relieved to see her alive.

She wishes she could enjoy it, linger, pretend they’re fine and she doesn’t have a price on her head. She can’t waste time, not now, not when she’s not even sure Ellison is going to agree to help her and Foggy in their crazy plan but it’s all she has at the moment.

If this fails, she will have to disappear for good.

*

It fails. Of course it does.

*

She wishes she could cry and alleviate the tension building inside her but she doesn’t have the time. She has a disappearing act to plan.

*

Nothing can look like she planned this. She has to become one of those missing people that are never found, forever looking at passers-by from a fading “have you seen me” poster, destined to be torn away by the wind or covered by another poster, forever a still face in a forgotten police file.

She goes back to her place to change one last time, throwing on a different dark hoodie and jeans, leaving the discarded clothes on a heap in her bedroom. She grabs an inconspicuous gym bag from the back of her closet, shoves just enough underwear and plain t-shirts to last her for the next few days inside, along with the picture of her family, a few boxes of ammunition, her gun, the bottle of good scotch from Ellison, and after brief moment of hesitation, the potted roses Frank gave her. The plant doesn’t have any flowers anymore, but it’s small enough to fit into the bag. She doesn’t think about what it means, she pretends she doesn’t think about Frank and how she left the flowers on the windowsill for days, how she tried calling the last number he used to reach out to her, only for an automatic voice to tell her that the number wasn’t attributed anymore.

No surprise there.

When she’s done, she looks around her place. Her closet is still bursting with clothes, there are still personal items peppering the shelves, a few dirty plates are waiting in the sink. It doesn’t look like the apartment of someone who ran away. It looks like it’s waiting for its owner to come back, to eat the leftovers in the fridge before they go bad and wash the plates before the sink develops its own ecosystem.

She turns around, locks the door and heads to Fogwell’s Gym. She takes out some cash from her bank account, but not enough that it could look suspicious if anyone were to look at it. Afterwards, she burns her credit cards behind the gym.

She wishes she could do all of it by herself, but she won’t do this to Foggy, or Ellison. They deserve to know the truth and she might need their help to pull it off too.

She tells Foggy as soon as he joins her at the gym. He takes it like a punch in the guts, wide eyed and disbelieving, but the surprise turns into sad understanding.

“I’ll help you, Kar. Just tell me what I need to do.”

She lets out a heavy breath, pulls on the sleeves of her hoodie. “Once I’m away from here, I need you to go to the police station to file a missing person report. But I don’t want to waste actual police resources either...” She trails off.

Foggy puts a hand on her forearm. “Do you trust Brett?” She nods. “I’ll let him in on this. And now that I’m the new best friend of half the NYPD, I’ll get them to help us.”

“How?”

“I’ll figure it out. You can trust me.”

“I do.”

She calls Ellison from her phone, and she knows it’ll be the last thing she does with it.

“I’m going to disappear” is the first thing she says.

To his credit, he doesn’t try to change her mind. He accepts it with the same regretful understanding as Foggy. And just like Foggy, he asks how he can help.

“Foggy will file a missing person report. He will contact you when the time is right. I need you to publish a blurb about it or something. Just so my disappearing act looks real and believable.”

Ellison sighs. “And it wouldn’t be if The Bulletin wasn’t talking about the disappearance of one of its own, I get it.”

She tries to ignore the warmth that spreads in her chest at hearing Ellison call her one of their own despite everything that happened.

“I also just wanted you to know the truth,” she says in a small voice. “It wouldn’t be fair to you to let you believe I was missing or dead for real.”

“I appreciate it, Page. I really do. And uh– I wanted to tell you, you know, about the other day, at the hospital, I wasn’t– I shouldn’t have–”

“It’s okay,” she says. Hearing her editor struggles with his words is probably the weirdest thing that happened all day and Foggy has just agreed to get the entire police department to help her pull a Gone Girl.

“It’s really not,” he answers with a sigh. “I was scared and angry and I took it out on you–”

“It was my fault–”

“No,” he cuts, harsh. “You listen to me, Karen Page. You were doing the right thing, you were doing your job and you were doing it well, because that’s what you do, Karen. You’re one of the best reporters I’ve ever had the honor of working with and Ben would be real goddamn proud of you and don’t you ever forget it.”

There’s no way she isn’t crying after that.

*

She meets with Turk in a back alley that night. He doesn’t bat an eye when she asks him to get her fake papers, only asks what new name she wants, says he’ll drop them behind Fogwell’s Gym in the morning. He refuses her money, claiming it’s his repayment for always protecting him when he was giving her tips on some underworld activities he didn’t approve of. Also for saving his life all those months ago, he adds with a hint of humor.

When she thinks about that night, being a hostage with Turk isn’t the first thing that comes to her mind. She sees a silhouette on a roof. She sees a wanted vigilante who could’ve stayed hidden but chose to step into the light just long enough for her to know that he was still here.

Is he still around now? She knows he’s alive because she nagged Madani about the carousel shooting until the agent gave her something but it’s all she could say. How is he going to react to reading in the paper that she’s missing? She has no way to contact and warn him. Does he even care at all anymore? He could’ve booked the first plane to Argentina for all she knows.

She wants to believe that, after everything that happened with Fisk and the fake Daredevil, Frank would’ve showed up to make sure she was alright. Hadn’t he said that he couldn’t let anything happen to her?

Her workplace has seen a massacre. She has given a fucked up press conference going against the biggest threat the city had seen since the alien invasion.

And nothing. Not a single hint that Frank was there.

It’s selfish, wanting him to be there, after she told him time and time again to stop, to rebuild a life without violence, without revenge. But at the same time, she knows him. She has to believe he went away. She doesn’t want to imagine any other reason for his absence.

The next morning, her new papers are where Turk said they would be. She dyes her hair with a dark brown drugstore dye in the gym’s locker rooms and flushes her sim card down the toilet. Foggy drives her to the bus station. He gives her some cash despite her protests.

“Tell Matt Fisk knows about his real identity,” she reminds him, tugging her hood over her head.

“I will.”

He hugs her and she gets off his car, walking straight towards the first bus out of town. It smells like stale sweat and piss. She folds on herself against the window and watches New York become New Jersey.

*

When the bus stops in Cleveland, Ohio, she needs to decide if she goes south or if she keeps on going west. Staying isn’t a possibility, New York is still too close, but then again, it feels like New York will always be too close.

She buys a cheap paperback and a ticket for Des Moines, Iowa. She has never been this far west before. Her back is protesting against the uncomfortable seats of the Greyhound, her nose is revolted by the smell coming from the bus’ toilets, but there is no turning back now. She opens the book.

She finishes it somewhere in South Dakota and remembers nothing of it.

*

After several days of shitty buses, she ends up in Bumfuck Nowhere, Montana. She likes the mountains. They remind her of home, but they’re different enough from home that it doesn’t hurt to look at them. She takes a room in the cheapest motel she finds. She gives her new name to the woman tending the reception desk with a voice hoarse from disuse and tries to ignore the uptick in her heartbeat when she lies. She is Rose Borgen now. Middle name Karen. The best lies are the ones closer to the truth.

Her room is not as shitty as the very first apartment she had found when she first arrived in New York all those years ago but it’s a near thing.

She puts the plant on her nightstand. She wonders again why she decided to take it for half second before she decides it doesn’t matter. It’s here now. She puts away the boxes of ammunition in the small safe in the closet, hangs her clothes and puts down the bottle of scotch Ellison got her after her first story on the night stand.

She sits on the bed. Now what?

She should probably eat something substantial after days of surviving on bus station food. She feels no hunger though. If she’s being honest, she feels nothing.

She goes up, checks that the door to her room is locked and sits back down on the floor, her back against the bed and the bottle of scotch in her hand.

The first swig burns but her eyes burn more.
By the time she downed a quarter of the bottle, she’s crying heavily, violent sobs racking through her body, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

She has no idea about what to do, she’s alone in an unknown town and she is terrified. It’s not the first time she’s in this situation, but it’s the first time she’s leaving people behind. She already misses Foggy and Ellison fiercely, and it might be the scotch talking but at the moment she’s even missing Matt, sanctimonious bullshit included.

She takes another swig and she misses Frank, even when seeing him meant only danger, emergency, death. Somehow it was easy to exist in those moments. No bullshit, no lie, just the two of them trying to deal with a situation, no matter how fucked up the situation.

She falls asleep on the carpet next to the bed.

She wakes up feeling like a truck just passed over her and a rat died in her mouth. She showers with burning hot water and tries to recognize the stranger staring back at her in the mirror. Her pale skin is made even paler with her now dark hair and the purple circle underneath her eyes. She looks like every teenage runaways/junkies she’s ever met in New York.

Gone is the prim and proper Karen Page.

She throws on some clothes, pockets her new id and her cash and heads out.

There’s a diner down the road. It looks like her family’s diner, only they actually have customers. It doesn’t smell like desperation and disappointment in there either. She sits down in a booth, her back to the wall, able to see the entire room. A fifty-something woman, Debbie the nametag says, pours some watered down coffee in her mug and Karen asks for eggs.

The food is good and Debbie refills her mug as soon as it’s empty. Karen watches the street, scanning the cars and trucks coming and going, the people walking by. She glances at the door every time someone comes in. She doesn’t know what to expect, she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but paranoia saved her life too many times for her to try and temp it down.

She pays for her meal and thanks the woman.

She walks back to the motel room. She turns on the TV and skims through the channel but there’s predictably nothing interesting to watch. She stops on a nature documentary just so it’s not silent in the room.

She needs to find herself a job or she’s going to go crazy. She has never dealt well with having nothing to do, having nothing to drown her thoughts and memories.

*

She’s back at the dinner the next day after grabbing the local newspaper. And the day after that day. And the day after.

She skims through the jobs offers but, even if she’s the opposite of picky at this point, there is nothing for her. This corner of the world only needs carpenters, a science teacher and a fuckton of construction workers. Something about a ski resort being built a few dozen miles away.

She’s been doing that four days, surviving on diner coffee and tomato soup, when Debbie comes over to take her order.

“You looking for a job?” she asks instead, motioning at the still open newspaper next to Karen’s beanie on the table.

“Yeah.”

“You new ‘round here, right?”

Karen nods.

The woman observes her a few seconds. “Ever worked at a diner?” she eventually asks.

“Yeah.”

“You any good at it?”

Something like hope swells up in Karen’s chest. “I’d like to think so.”

“Good. Eat then come to the counter. We might have a job for ya.”

*

It’s not glamorous. It’s not easy. But it’s a job and Karen is grateful for it. She buys a new phone plan under her fake name. The first thing she does once it’s working is shoot a text to Foggy.

“Found a place.” She doesn’t add anything. He’ll know. He’ll tell Ellison. Her only contacts are Debbie and Greg, the diner’s owners, Foggy under the name Nelson because you can never be too paranoid, and Ellison under Mitch. She doesn’t call him or text him but she likes to know his number is there. She doesn’t need her father’s number saved. She knows it by heart but it’s useless. He needs to believe she’s missing like the rest of the world. And if their last conversation is anything to go by, he probably wouldn’t mind if she never showed sign of life again.

She goes to the online Bulletin’s page and reads the articles about her disappearance. She expected a mention in a five-lines post. Not an entire folder about it.

JOURNALIST KAREN PAGE MISSING AFTER SPEAKING AGAINST FISK

STILL NO NEWS ABOUT JOURNALIST’S DISAPPEARANCE, FISK REMAINS SILENT

“NO LEAD” SAYS NYPD REGARDING THE SUSPICIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF JOURNALIST KAREN PAGE

She checks other newspapers websites.

THE BULLETIN’S STAR REPORTER MISSING

WHERE IS KAREN PAGE

BULLETIN’S REPORTER DISAPPEARS DAYS AFTER MASSACRE

There’s a video. Foggy plays the concerned friend and lawyer, Ellison makes a speech about wanting Karen to come home safe. Brett Mahoney avoids the camera and tells the journalists to let the NYPD do its job.

Karen feels a bit stupid and guilty about being the reason this whole masquerade is even happening, but people are taking it seriously. Karen Page is missing and no one will find her. She died somewhere between Indianapolis and Sioux Falls in a rundown Greyhound bus.

*

She has nightmares. Fisk is strangling her. Frank is shot down in front of her. Wilson shoots Frank in the hotel kitchen and then presses the bomb switch. Fake Daredevil kills everyone from the newspaper again. Ellison bleeds to death in her arms and tells her it’s her fault. Fisk strangles Foggy and makes her watch. The corpse of her brother stares at her with glassed-over eyes and tells her again and again how all of this is her fault.

Every night brings its lot of horrible visions, but every morning, Karen puts on her apron and her nametag that says “Rose”, checks if the potted plant needs water, if a side needs more sunlight, pulls up her dark hair in a bun and heads for the diner.

It’s like working at Penny’s Place and not at all. The major difference is that here, she’s appreciated. Debbie thanks her for helping her, like she isn’t the one who saved Karen’s sanity by giving her the job in the first place.

The people coming to the diner are welcoming enough for a small town. It probably helps that Debbie and Greg took her in.

Debbie asks about her family one day.

“It’s just me,” Karen says. If Debbie notices how glassy Karen’s eyes get, she doesn’t comment on it.

From that day onward, Debbie acts as if Karen is her long lost niece. She calls her “sweetie” and Greg calls her “kiddo”.

It’s nice. Karen lets herself have it, selfishly, even if she doesn’t deserve any of that kindness.

*

Karen moves from the shitty motel to a tiny furnished apartment.

She’s back to wearing only basic jeans, flannel shirts and boots.

Rose is a simple girl. She enjoys chatting with Joan the single mom who comes for a coffee every day after she has dropped off her kids at school. She laughs at the poor flirting attempts from Alex the police deputy and tells him she’s flattered but it’s not going to happen. The deputy smiles self-deprecatingly and tells her he had to try his luck once. He bids her good day when he’s done with his bacon. The next day he greets her like nothing happened.

Rose likes reading and she swaps books with Ann the school nurse and Gil, one of the factory workers. They talk about starting a book club.

Rose enjoys buying herself plants when she has some money left after the bills are paid. It brings life to her tiny apartment and it keeps company to Frank’s roses.

She doesn’t think about what it means that she keeps them on her windowsill.

*

She reads The Bulletin online version every day.

She sends Foggy a postcard that’s a picture of the town that is now hers with its name underneath. She writes “Thinking of you” and she signs with her fake name that is becoming more and more familiar these days.

The articles about the missing reporter are fewer and fewer, going from a full front page to a few lines in the middle.

Hopes to find missing reporter Karen Page alive very low after weeks of unsuccessful investigation.

A month later, still no new leads on the disappearance of Karen Page.

The Bulletin mourns one of its own.

She reads up on Fisk. He’s still playing everyone, acts like the good Samaritan working with the FBI to take down the criminals of the city. He even got married that bastard.

The only way she finds not to scream in rage and hate is to drown herself at the bottom of a bottle so she just stops keeping an eye on him altogether.

She figures if something ever happens, Foggy will let her know.

*

She watches the mountains.

She doesn’t know where her life is going but she doesn’t jump at every sounds at night anymore. She still keeps her gun loaded, and close to her bed.

There’s Christmas Eve, and Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. The diner is closed for those days and she declines Greg’s invitation to join them for Christmas. She’s in no mood to celebrate anything, she doesn’t want to take advantage of their generosity even more than she already does. She sends a message to Foggy. She nearly cries when he sends back “I hope you’re well”. She’s not.

She goes to bed early on New Year’s Eve and the new year starts without her noticing.

*

Despite the constant flow of customers, her burgeoning friendships, and Debbie and Greg’s presence, Karen is lonely.

How could she not?

She wonders what is going to happen when Fisk goes back to jail. If he goes back to jail.

Can she come back to New York, and say “Surprise, I’m back”? Stranger things have happen in New York, that is true.

She misses being a reporter. She misses the adrenaline, the sense of justice, of doing the right thing always associated with uncovering the underbelly, the corruption.

She doesn’t miss the constant fear for her life, the disappointment when the people she exposes suffer no consequences. When people worse than the previous ones take the place of the ones going to jail.

She doesn’t miss New York, not really. She misses Foggy, and Ellison, and she would never admit it out loud without being drunk again, but sometimes she misses Matt. Certain parts of him anyway. Not the holier-than-thou, Catholic martyr, compulsive liar parts.

She misses Frank but she’s been missing him for so long now, the ache of his absence is like an old friend, she’s used to it the way she got used to missing her brother like a missing limb.

Karen is lonely but she doesn’t see her situation changing anytime soon.

*

It’s a slow day at the diner, a rare occurrence since the entire town, which is admittedly not that many people, eats there.

Debbie is sitting at a booth doing the accounting for the month. Karen has been wiping the same spot on the counter for the past five minutes.

“You okay there, sweetie?” Debbie asks without looking up from the books.

Karen’s head snaps up from the non-existent stain she’s been scrubbing. “Hm? Yeah. Yeah, Debbie, I’m fine.”

“You seemed very thoughtful. Dare I say melancholic.”

Karen leans against the counter. Snow is falling outside. She doesn’t know what to say until she’s saying it. “I was thinking about maybe getting a dog.”

“Always a good idea,” Greg says from the kitchen. “Best thing in the world, dogs.”

Debbie nods, still doing the accounting and not looking up. “During the day you could bring it here, poor thing shouldn’t be alone all day.”

“Yup, it wouldn’t bother anyone here, that’s for sure.”

Karen relaxes and huffs a laugh. “It looks like you’ve already decided for me.”

“Well, kiddo,” Greg starts, coming out of the kitchen and drying his hands on a towel, “you look like you need some company and you already rejected Alex and Martin. It’s a small town you know, we don’t have that many single men for you.”

She outright laughs at that.

“Greg,” Debbie says in a disapproving tone. She has finally abandoned her books and is looking at them over her glasses. “Maybe Rose isn’t into men, maybe she’s waiting for the right gal. You shouldn’t assume things, hon.”

“It’s okay,” Karen chuckles. “I just don’t want a relationship right now.”

“Ah. Lemme guess, you were in a complicated relationship before you came here and you’re not ready for something new yet?” Greg says with a serious face.

Flashes of Frank comes to her mind. They have never been together but it was definitely complicated. She thinks about Matt and the lies and his death and subsequent come back to life. That was also far from simple.

“Something like that.”

Greg nods wisely. “I get it, kiddo. Get a dog. It’ll do you good.”

“You can take a day off to go to the shelter,” Debbie adds. She nods once, twice, and turns back to her numbers.

*

The shelter is in the next town over. Greg lets her borrow her truck if she promises to come back with a box of donuts from the shop he likes that Debbie never lets him go to because someone needs to watch their sugar intake.

The shelter employee, a man with copper brown skin and long black hair, takes her in the back, where the dogs are kept. They’re loud and excited. The man tells her to take her time and to not hesitate if she has any questions.

Karen doesn’t know what she’s looking for until she sees it. It’s a gray mutt, folded on himself away from the cage’s door. She can’t see much of him and he reminds her of herself in those Greyhound buses, afraid and alone. She crouches down next to the cage and waits.

The dog gets curious after a couple of minutes. Slowly, he unfolds and stretches, eyeing her warily. He approaches. Everything about him screams caution. He’s a mix, but there’s definitely some dogo argentino or staffie in there. He has a scar coming down his left ear to the side of his face. He plops down next to her and sniffs her jacket. She offers her hand and he licks her fingers.

“Hi,” she says in a gentle voice.

She touches his muzzle. His fur is soft, silky and he tries to get closer to her despite the bars. He lets her pet him, licks her hand.

“I’ll be right back”, she says.

She goes to the smiling employee.

“Do you need any help?” he asks.

“I think I found the right one.”

They walk to the dog’s cage and his smile grows bigger, more sincere.

“Oh, you like Frank?”

Karen’s heart stops. “Excuse me?”

The guy laughs. “I know, right? Such a weird name for a dog! But yeah, that’s Frank. He’s about four. He’s a cutie but people are afraid of him because he’s part pitbull.”

It’s Karen’s turn to laugh. “He reminds me of someone I use to know. They even got the same name.”

She worries she said too much—she wonders when she’ll stop being so paranoid, but then the man beams and tells her it was meant to be. He makes her fill some paperwork, she pays the adoption fees and adds a little something more. He gives her the address of a good vet in town and tells her he’ll come check on them in a few weeks and she walks out with a beaming dog looking up at her. He climbs next to her in the truck cabin and lays across the bench with his head on her lap. She drops her hand to his flank, burying her fingers in his fur.

“It’s so weird that you’re called Frank,” she murmurs.

The dog huffs and sighs as an answer as if to say “I know right?”

She makes a detour on her way back to grab Greg’s donuts and then drives straight back to the diner.

Greg and Debbie are at the door before she’s even done parking the truck. The dog jumps immediately after her when she climbs down the with the box of donuts in one hand. He stays at her side, almost hiding behind her legs when they reach the door.

“So, that’s Frank,” Karen says, the name heavy in her mouth. She gives the donuts to Greg and Debbie ushers them inside before crouching down to greet the dog.

“Weird name for a dog. He fits you,” she says and then mutters about her bad joints. Greg goes to put the donuts on the counter and comes back with a bowl of water and a bowl of kibble.

“Do you always keep kibble in the diner in case your waitress brings back a dog?” Karen jokes.

Greg shrugs. “It’s already been decided that he was gonna spend lotsa time here, right?”

She smiles.

Frank is happily munching on the kibble, giving them big doggy smiles every time he looks up at them. His right ear is flopping more than the left one and he’s the best thing Karen has ever seen, weird fated name or not.

*

Her mornings go like this now: wake up, walk Frank, take a shower, get dressed, check on her plants, go to the diner, get breakfast with Greg and Debbie, feed Frank, open the diner for the day. The mutt usually flops down next to the end of the counter, where he can watch her around the diner but also behind the counter.

The patrons love him as quickly as Greg and Debbie did. They call him the mascot of the place. The shelter employee checks on them after a month and becomes a regular. Karen learns that he’s called Henry and that he and his husband have five dogs. He shows her pictures after pictures and they trade stories about them. It feels a lot like friendship.

She starts calling the dog Frankie. It’s easier, less harsh for a dog—at least that’s what she tells herself, ignoring the way saying his name makes her feel, and he recognizes himself anyway.

She spends Valentine’s Day serving the Couple’s Special at the diner. One of the regular grandpas, Bob or Rob or another nickname for Robert, is scandalized at the idea that she doesn’t have a Valentine. He pays for his lunch and holds up a finger.

“I’ll be right back.”

He comes back with a small bouquet of flowers. He removes his faded trucker hat when he offers them to her with a “Happy Valentine’s Day, young lady.”

One of the other regular old guys whistles and another shouts across the room that “he’s way too ugly for her.”

“You’re just jealous you haven’t thought about it first!”, Bob (or is it Bobby maybe) shouts back.

Karen laughs and graciously accepts the flowers with a kiss on his cheek. The other old guys holler until Debbie steps out of the kitchen.

“Stop behaving like goddamn children, you bastards!” she yells at them. They fall silent, looking all but chastised. It makes Karen laugh more.

The flowers go in a vase that stays on the counter until all the petals are wilted and falling.

She laughs more freely these days. Her gun is on her nightstand but the nightmares are far and few between. The comforting weight of Frankie against her helps keep them at bay. He always licks her face when she starts trashing around and sometimes she wonders if he has been trained to be a service or emotional support dog, before he ended at the shelter.

One of the ladies of the knitting club knits him a doggy sweater and Karen can’t help but snap a picture and send it to Foggy. You can only see Frankie on the picture and she doesn’t sign the message but she hasn’t changed numbers since his text on New Year’s Eve. He’ll know it’s her. He sends back a thumbs up emoji.

*

The little book club she started with Ann the school nurse and Gil the factory worker expands. Two of the knitting ladies join, as well as a deputy, Riley, and his wife Alicia.

They start reading Moby Dick.

*

Some of her plants need repotting and doing so while keeping Frankie from playing with the dirt is a harder challenge than planned. She wasn’t trained to compete with sixty solid pounds of muscle. He ends up covered in dirt so she takes him outside and they wrestle in the snow. It’s as much a way to tire the dog before the night as it’s a way to clean him without having to struggle to put him in the bath.

They get home and she towels him dry. She redyes her hair, takes a burning hot shower and they lay together in her tiny couch afterwards. Frankie sleeps in her lap while she reads about Ahab. The more she reads, the more he reminds her of Frank—the human, the Punisher, her friend—and his never ending quest.

Chapter Text

Winter slowly turns into spring, the sun peeking a little more everyday out through the clouds, rising a little further up from the mountains. Rays of sunshine are now entering the diner and Frankie follows them, lying down in the light and changing spot as soon as shadow covers him.

Karen is alone in the front: Debbie has taken the day off to visit her brother, and Greg is happily whistling off-tune in the kitchen.

Joan the single mom and Alicia are taking their breakfast together, planning one parents’ thing for school or another. Alex is reading his newspaper at the counter, summarizing articles out loud for Karen while she’s preparing a new pot of coffee, her back to the door.

The bell on the door jingles.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” she calls, putting the pot under the coffee maker. She grabs the other pot, half-full but still hot, and a mug from the shelf for the newcomer. At this hour, it’s probably one of the knitting ladies or another mom joining Alicia and Joan.

She turns on her heels and immediately drops both the pot and the mug.

Frank Castle is standing in the entrance of the diner, right here in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, Montana. The beard is back, but his hair isn’t as long as it was the first time he came back into her life.

He looks at her like his heart is breaking in a million pieces and being put back together at the same time. She’s pretty sure she has the same look on her face.

“Hey,” he says and God, how did she miss that voice.

She presses her hands against her mouth and tries to keep the incoming sobs inside. Around them the diner is dead silent and she feels the eyes of everyone on them, on her. A tear rolls down her cheek. She hears the soft padding of Frankie’s paws on the floor, then the dog is snuggling against her legs.

Frank takes a step forward, uncertainty and hesitation coloring every single one of his movement.

Greg chooses this moment to barge from the kitchen, brandishing a spatula like a baseball bat.

“What’s going on–” he starts shouting and stops, observing the scene instead. He lowers his arm and gets to her level, eyeing Frank suspiciously. “Is everything alright, kiddo? You know this guy?” he asks with a hand on her shoulder.

Karen nods, not trusting her voice not to crack if she talks.

“He dangerous?”

Frank shuffles a bit at that.

Karen shakes her head. She sniffles, rubs her face, swallows, and smiles weakly at Greg.

“It’s okay, I got this,” she says.

“Go sit on a booth, I’ll clean this up.”

“No, I can do this.”

“I know you can, but I said I would. Go.”

She squeezes Greg’s forearm as a thank you and silently points a booth to Frank, not meeting his eyes. Frankie follows her and settles next to her on the worn-out leather while Frank sits on the opposite bench.

Greg says something to get the attention off of them. She doesn’t listen to his exact words, too distracted by the fact that Frank fucking Castle is in front of her, bruise and wound free.

She buries a hand in Frankie’s fur and the dog snuggles closer to her.

“I like your hair,” is what he opens with.

She glances down at the brown strands falling from her bun. These days she’s almost forgetting that she wasn’t born with brown hair.

“How did you find me?” she asks.

“Nelson,” he says, glancing at the dog, then at Greg who’s coming to their table with fresh coffee. Frank thanks him when he puts the mugs down on the table. Greg pats Karen’s shoulder and leaves.

“No one knows I’m here,” Frank says, once Greg is out of earshot.

“Is– Is everything alright? Did–” She takes a breath, tries to slow her heartbeat down but the anxiety and paranoia are back. “Did something happen to Foggy? Ellison?”

He shakes his head. “They’re fine. Nothing happened.”

The vice around her chest loosens just a bit. She pushes her hair back. “Why are you here, Frank?”

She wishes her voice wasn’t shaking so much. Frankie nuzzles her side and she drops her face in his fur. She closes her eyes and inhales the scent a second, just enough to ground her.

“I… I wasn’t in town when, uh, everything happened. I was down in Kentucky. With Curt. We were, uh. Visiting a friend’s grave. Didn’t have a connection to the outside world or anything, you know. I’m sorry. I should’ve been there.”

He’s looking down at his coffee when he finishes. Karen takes a deep breath and wraps a trembling hand around her mug.

“I wasn’t expecting you to. It’s not like we were in touch at the moment.” She says it as emotionally detached and matter-of-factly as she can. She doesn’t want him to know how much it hurt to be ghosted by a dead man who wasn’t really that dead.

“Ka– Rose,” he corrects himself after glancing at her name tag. “I made a lot of mistakes. I thought it was safer if I wasn’t around while I was getting my shit together. I should’ve let you know. I should’ve done a lot of things. And I should’ve been there for you,” he finishes, his voice cracking slightly on the words.

Karen hides her face against Frankie’s muzzle, trying to push the tears at bay. When she faces Frank again her heart breaks all over again. He looks downright miserable.

“How did you– When–” she starts, but never finishes her sentence, the knot in her throat making it impossible for her to speak without bursting into tears.

Frank seems to get it anyway. He always does. He inhales shakily and rubs his face with the hand not holding his mug. He’s not using the handle, she notes, a weird, inconsequential detail, to remark when the guy who took multiple bullets for her is in front of her after months without any contact.

“I had a hundred of messages from Lieberman when I got out of the woods,” he starts. “About Fisk, the fake Daredevil and all that shit. Next day, there was this front page about you missing. And I– I sort of lost it there. Drove like a maniac back home. Only slept when Curt was driving.” His voice is rough and hoarse. Frankie whines, turns his head towards him. Karen lifts her arm and Frankie jumps down from the bench, climbs next to Frank, licks his hand and comes back next to her, looking satisfied he did the right thing.

Franks snorts. “Smart dog you got there.”

“The best,” she smiles. She takes a sip from her coffee, staring at him until he keeps on talking. His eyes wander over the rest of the diner before going back to her.

“I went to David and Madani but they didn’t know anything. Couldn’t find you. I went to your place and… Jesus, I didn’t know what to do. I had David hack into the police files and they had nothing either. Found Red one night.”

“I bet that went well.”

Frank snorted. “We beat the hell out of each other.”

“And?”

“And he told me you were fine.” He scans the street on the other side of the window. She recognizes it as one of his ticks. He’ll scrunch up his nose soon, maybe clench his jaw. She knows his right hand is on his thigh, his trigger finger tapping against the denim. She distantly wonders when she had taken the time to memorize his body language so well. He clears his throat. “He didn’t know anything else. So I found Nelson. Seemed like he would know more than Red.”

She doesn’t ask him why. He was there at his own trial after all. He was there to witness how unreliable Matt was, how good a team she and Foggy were. She doesn’t ask him how he knew Daredevil and Matt were one and the same. It’s obvious once you’re not blinded by pseudo romantic feelings for the guy.

“You must have scared the shit out of him.”

“Yeah. Took some time to convince him I wasn’t there to kill him or anything.”

“And he told you where I was?”

“Took some convincing too but yeah. He showed me the postcard. Said he didn’t know if it was just a town you passed by or if you were living there.”

Her eyebrows nearly join her hairline. “And you decided to cross the country just in case I hadn’t sent a random card to Foggy?” she says, her disbelief supplanting her surprise.

“I needed to be sure,” he mutters, looks away.

“Sure of what, Frank?”

“Sure that you were alive. That you were safe.”

Karen reaches across the table and lightly grabs his wrist, his skin warm and surprisingly soft under her fingers. He looks up at her like he’s shocked she wants to be near him.

“I am, Frank.”

“Okay,” he says from the back of his throat, as if everything is too much for him at the moment.

“Okay.”

She removes her hand and finishes her coffee. He’s staring at his wrist like he can still see her hand there.

“You hungry?”

He glances up. She never thought she’d think that, but right this moment, Frank looks shy. “I could eat,” he says nonetheless.

“Bacon and eggs okay?”

“Sure.”

She tries to get up from the bench but Frankie stubbornly refuses to move his head from her lap. She rolls her eyes.

“Move.” The dog sighs. “Frankie, down.”

On the other side of the booth, Frank chokes on his coffee. “Your dog’s name is Frankie?”

“Frank, actually. Don’t let it get to your head,” she smirks, “I didn’t choose it.”

Frank snorts and calls the dog to him. Frankie changes bench with a huff.

Karen feels Frank’s eyes on her as she heads to the kitchen. She doesn’t turn, tries to play it cool instead, even if her heart is still beating like it’s gonna jump out of her chest.

“Hey, Greg, can I get a plate of eggs? With some bacon?”

“Coming up,” Greg answers, putting down stripes of bacon on the griddle. He glances at her. “You okay?”

Karen puts some sliced sourdough bread in the toaster and leans against the wall, her arms crossed against her chest. “Yeah. It’s just. Someone I didn’t think I’d ever see again.”

Greg seems to turn her words in his head. “Is he the one from your “it’s complicated” relationship?” he asks after a moment.

She sighs. “We were never a thing but it was complicated, yeah.”

Greg glances at her again, then behind him through the door window, at Frank, before coming back to her. “Looks like he’d like the both of you to be a thing.”

She laughs derisively. “Nah. He’s just a very protective friend.”

Greg raises an eyebrow. She challenges him to say something with a look.

“Whatever you say, kiddo.” He relents and shrugs, cracks some eggs. “You gonna eat too?”

She shakes her head. “Don’t feel like it.”

He eyes her but says nothing.

“If you need to take the rest of the day off, you tell me,” he says when he gives her the plate. She arranges the toasts next to the eggs.

“Thanks, Greg.”

She grabs the coffeepot on her way back, gives Frank his plate and refills their mugs.

“Anyone needs a refill?” she asks the room at large. Several hands shot up. As she’s pouring the coffee, the regulars all ask her if she’s okay. Alex tells her he can call some back up if she’s being harassed. She reassures him, refills his mug and puts the coffeepot back under the coffeemaker.

“You ain’t eating?” Frank asks her when she’s back at their table.

“Not hungry yet.”

She brings her mug to her lips, keep it there even after taking her sip. She can see the mountains from where she’s sitting. She’s practically sure she can see the mountains from anywhere in town, but this spot is a pretty good one. She knows Frank is still staring at her. He isn’t very subtle about it.

“What are you going to do, Frank?” she asks without looking away from the outside world.

“What d’you mean?”

“Now that you found me.”

Frank shrugs. “Didn’t think that far.”

Karen gives him her best “are you kidding me right now” stare. “Seriously? You just drove across the entire country with no plan in mind except finding me?” She lets out a disbelieving laugh.

“I took two bullets for you, why’s finding you across the country so weird?” he says, smirking a bit behind his mug.

It makes her pause.

She doesn’t feel like laughing anymore. Her voice is cold when she speaks again. “Maybe because you’ve been radio silent since the goddamn hotel. If it hadn’t been for Madani caving in, I’d have been thinking you were dead for a whole fucking year, Frank.”

“Technically I am,” he says, not meeting her eyes.

“Spare me the “I’m already dead” bullshit, Frank, we’ve already been down that road and I don’t need a repeat.”

“No, I mean–” he glances up at her. “Technically Frank Castle is dead. I got a new name and all that shit.”

She stares at him. To his credit, he doesn’t avert his eyes, just holds her gaze with a lost puppy expression on his face.

“I thought you were ignoring the flowers on the window because you were a wanted man again,” she says in controlled voice.

“Ka–”

“You know when I discovered that Matt wasn’t dead and that he had let us think so I was so goddamn mad,” she says, trying not to raise her voice too much. She’s distantly aware of the worried glances Alex and Greg have been sending her way since she sat down with Frank. No need to cause a scene. “I thought “how could he do this to us?”, “how could he keep on lying to us after he told us he would never do that shit again”?” She shakes her head, swallows down the sobs rising in her throat. Frankie whines against her thigh. She looks down at him, pets his flank. “You know what else I thought?” she asks without tearing her eyes away from Frankie’s fur.

“Karen–”

“I thought “Frank would never do this to me”, “Frank has never lied to me, why would he start now?” I thought that surely you had a very valid reason for staying away, even though you were alive.” Her head snaps up, her eyes meet Frank’s. She pretends she doesn’t see the sadness in them. “I thought we were friends, Frank.” Her voice breaks on his name.

“We were– we are.” He reaches across the table and takes the hand that isn’t on Frankie in his. “I– I have no excuse. I had to learn how to live without a mission. I was a goddamn mess. Thought it was better if I wasn’t involving you in my bullshit.”

She sniffles.

Deep down, she knows she’s being unfair. Frank went to Hell and back again and again, and she can’t really blame him for taking his time healing. But the crushing loneliness of the past… months? Years? Well, if she’s being honest, it started when her mother got sick and never really left, and the weight of it is just killing her at this moment.

For some reasons, Frank disappearing hurt more than the rest of her long list of disappointments. Maybe because she thought they had a connection, a link, something more authentic and real than anything else she had in a long time. Maybe because he was just the last name in the long list of people abandoning her, the proverbial drop that made the glass overflow.

She puffs her cheeks and exhales, before pushing back the strands of hair that escaped from her bun with her free hand. His look is pleading, open, vulnerable. She wants to hug him and she realizes she hasn’t yet. Before she left New York, she always thought that crushing him against her–as much as someone like her could crush someone like him–would be the first thing she would do when she would see him again.

She swallows.

“I’m sorry, Frank.”

“No, I–”

“I’m not mad at you. Not really. Not anymore. I just–” She squeezes his hand. “I’m really glad to see you.” It’s not everything she’s feeling, not even close, but she doesn’t want to pour her loneliness out in the diner.

He seems taken aback by her words. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I missed you.”

His thumb is rubbing circles into her knuckles. “I missed you too.”

Karen wonders what they look like to the rest of the diner, holding hands, repressed tears in their eyes. Some melodramatic emotional assholes probably.

“Where are you staying?”

He huffs a laugh and observes the street. Whatever he says next, he’s embarrassed by it. “I, uh. I just drove directly here from the last motel.”

She tries not to smile and fails. “Where was that?”

His head ducks down but he looks up at her when he answers with a self-deprecating grimace. “Wyoming?”

She snorts. “You drove all night?”

“Kinda.”

“You’re a dramatic asshole, you know that?” she says, and maybe she’s a bit too fond when she says it, but she finds that she doesn’t care.

Frank doesn’t seem to care either. He chuckles. “It has been said a couple of times, yeah.”

Now that the surprise and anger have passed, she notices the lines on his face, the circles under his eyes. She frowns.

“When’s the last time you slept?”

“Couple hundred miles after the state border?”

To his credit, he seems sheepish, but she still rolls her eyes.

She stands up. For a moment, he seems wary of what she might do next.

“C’mon,” she says, jerking her head towards the door.

He smiles a little, shakes his head. “Are you kicking me out?”

“I’m making sure you don’t die from sleep deprivation. After everything, it’d be pretty dumb,” she answers in a flat tone that doesn’t leave anything up for debate.

He sighs but stands up all the same.

“Got to your truck while I get my keys.”

She knows him well enough still to know he could protest, he could say he can take care of himself. But he doesn’t, and she doesn’t know if it’s because he wants to indulge her or if he’s just too exhausted to fight.

He pulls out a couple of bills instead. “That enough to cover breakfast?”

“More than.”

“Good.”

She takes the bills. He squeezes her hand and turns back, exits the diner. She ignores the eyes she can feel on her and goes to the register. The money put away, she goes to find Greg in the kitchen, Frankie on her heels.

“I’m back in 30, is it okay?”

“Told ya you could take the day.”

She shakes her head. “I’m just getting him to my place so he can sleep. That dumbass hasn’t slept since he crossed from Wyoming.”

Greg smirks. “Sounds like the boy was in hurry to get to you.”

“He thought I was in danger.” She shrugs.

Greg squints slightly.

He and Debbie never asked why a young woman like her had appeared out of nowhere in their little town one day, where she came from or anything from her past after Debbie’s initial inquiry about her experience as a waitress and her question about her family or lack thereof. Karen sees the questions in their eyes, the looks the couple exchanges when she says something just this side of shady. Frank’s arrival is only going to raise more curiosity.

She’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it.

She grabs her messenger bag, her jacket, and exits through the back door. She’s had enough attention on her to last for the next few days. She whistles sharply at Frankie who joins her after looking mournfully at the sausages Greg turns over on the grill.

Frank is leaning against his SUV, a beanie tugged low on his head, looking at the white mountains contrasting starkly against the deep blue sky.

In New York, even in the middle of summer, the sky was never blue, always dulled by a layer of smog. It’s only when she got to this place that she realized she had missed that blue, so specific to winter in the mountains. She would never in a million years go back to Vermont, but she can admit she has missed some parts of living there—parts she’s rediscovering here and it doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would.

Frank notices her then. He clears his throat.

“So. Where to?”

“My place for now. Guess we’ll figure the rest once you’ve slept,” she says, reaching for the door handle of the passenger side.

“Fair enough.”

Her apartment is a two minutes drive away. They don’t talk except from her giving him directions, but from the corner of her eye, she sees him glancing at her a couple of times. She pats Frankie’s head where it’s resting on her lap. The dog lets out a contented sigh.

“Wouldn’t have taken you for a pitbull person,” Frank finally says, low and gravelly, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to say it out loud.

She leans against the window, slightly turned so she faces him a bit more. “Yeah? What do I strike you as, then?” She says it as a challenge.

A tiny smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Well now that I’ve seen you with him it’s hard to imagine anything else, you know?”

She hums. It makes sense, she guesses. “I didn’t know what I was looking for when I went to the shelter,” she admits. “I just saw him and it clicked.”

“Good. That’s good,” he mumbles, more to himself than to her.

He parks in the street of her building and follows her up the staircase until they reach the third and last floor. She tries not to think about when she took him back to her apartment in New York.

It’s easy, because her new place is nothing like the last—it’s functional, there’s no overflowing bookshelves, no frames peppering the walls, the only personal touch the plants lined along the windows, but it’s also bigger, not as dark and cramped.

It’s hard, because he’s standing in exactly the same way than before, fidgeting with his beanie, looking like he’s lost and she’s his only beacon.

“Make yourself at home.” She gestures at the couch.

Frankie jumps on one end of it and snuggles into the cushion, tugging the plaid folded over the back of the couch to him. Frank sits down next to him heavily. He removes his jacket, rubs at his face, his neck.

She goes to get him a second blanket and hands it to him wordlessly. He lightly grasps her wrist when she starts to walk away. He doesn’t talk immediately, but she knows him. He needs time to find his words, to arrange them properly so he’s not misunderstood.

“I’m sorry I barged in like that. You got away from all that New York bullshit and I’m—I’m—”

She takes his hand in hers and pulls gently, until he gets the hint and stands up in front of her. She tilts her head to catch his elusive gaze.

“I was surprised. But now, I’m just happy you’re here.”

It sounds like a repeat of their conversation in the diner, only this time it’s just them and a sleeping dog.

She hugs him. Like the last time, her arms are tight around his shoulders. Like the last time, he’s hesitant but wraps an arm around her waist—then two. She closes her eyes and lets his presence wash away the loneliness sitting in her chest. There’s no urgency this time, no “we might be dead by tomorrow” feeling.

Frank falls asleep almost as soon as he’s lying down on the couch. Frankie changes spot to cuddle against Frank’s chest. Karen can’t help but rearranging both blankets around them before heading back to the diner, leaving a double of her keys on the coffee table, just in case Frankie needs to be walked.

When she opens the diner front door, all conversations die down. She rolls her eyes at the glances everyone is throwing at her as discreetly as they can—which is to say not discreetly at all.

“Alright,” she sighs and then straightens up to address the entire room. “You guys are not subtle. If you have something to say, say it.”

She walks straight to the counter and pours herself a coffee while they all look at each other, no one daring to be the first to speak up.

Greg is the one to break the silence, because of course he is.

“You left Frankie at your place?”

“Yeah. Decided to snuggle on the couch with Frank,” she says over the rim of the mug.

“You named your dog after your ex?” someone asks next.

“I didn’t pick my dog’s name and Frank isn’t my ex,” she replies flatly.

Alicia snorts audibly. “Riiight,” she says, stretching the word so much you can practically see the sarcasm dripping from it. “We all saw the looks homeboy was giving you, Rose.”

If there’s something weirder than hearing someone call Frank “homeboy”, Karen has yet to encounter it.

“Does anyone want something to drink or eat before you make me regret coming back here?” she asks, slightly exasperated by the fact that her entire town is populated by middle schoolers.

“Yeah, guys,” Greg says, clapping her on the back, “the girl abandoned her long lost boyfriend with her dog just to be here with us, be nice to her!”

Karen rolls her eyes, tilts her head just enough to glare at her boss. “Not helping.”

He grins smugly and heads back to his kitchen. “Can’t wait to tell everything to Debbie,” he calls over the sounds of sizzling meat.

Karen is not looking forward that particular conversation. And knowing Debbie, she’ll want to give her own version of the shovel talk to Frank no matter what Karen will say.

The rest of the day is quieter, especially after the last person to witness Frank’s arrival directly leaves, though Karen has no doubt that the news is already spreading throughout the entire town, all ten blocks of it.

Frank comes back in the late afternoon, Frankie trotting happily next to him. He sits at the counter, seemingly oblivious to the way the rest of the patrons are watching him. Even if they weren’t here the first time, they’ve heard of it, or they’re just curious. This isn’t a big town, new faces are always noticed. Especially when the new face belongs to a guy who seems very comfortable with the nice but mysterious diner waitress.

Karen knows that people wonder about her, not just Greg and Debbie. You don’t end up in such a remote place just by chance.

Karen doesn’t even ask beforehand and slides a full coffee mug in front of him.

“Thanks, Rose,” he says and it’s weird to hear him say her fake name with such ease.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah, you were right. I needed the sleep.”

“I’m always right,” she says flippantly but her smile is smug.

He chuckles, shakes his head a bit. “Ain’t that the truth.”

Greg calls for her from the kitchen and she hurries to go grab the hot plates.

“Homeboy’s back?” Greg asks as she piles a three plates on her arm.

“You know he is, you gossip.”

A fifty-something old man from the heart of Montana shouldn’t look so proud at being called a gossip.

She heads back out and serves the table waiting for their pancakes. When she turns, Greg is coming out of the kitchen. She powerwalks back to the counter but she isn’t fast enough.

“So,” Greg starts, leaning against the counter in front of Frank. “Who are you?”

Frank is doing a great impression of a deer caught in headlights. Karen would have never thought she’d see this expression on his face one day.

“Friend of Rose’s?” he ventures.

“Don’t you have pancakes to flip?” Karen asks as she slides back behind the counter.

“Nice try, kiddo, but no. I’m meeting your friend. It’s called being polite, you should try it someday.”

Frank snorts at that, but it’s the wrong move because it brings Greg’s attention back to him. He seems to realize that too, if only a bit too late.

“You got a name, Friend of Rose’s?”

“Frank Castiglione, sir.”

She isn’t the only one using a fake name then. Greg frowns.

“Don’t ‘sir’ me, it makes me feel old.”

Frank huffs a self-conscious laugh and she can’t figure out if he’s genuinely embarrassed or if it’s just an act to appear as non-threatening as possible.

“Sorry. Guess old habits die hard.”

Greg perks up. “You military?”

“Was. Marines.”

At that, Greg smiles, big and bright, and rolls up his sleeve until his biceps is visible and with it the old, almost faded tattoo on his skin. She can only make out the words in the banner, but not what the banner is wrapped around. Semper Fi.

Frank smiles too, more reserved, but she recognizes it as his true smile. The sincere one, different from the one he uses when he’s trying to get away from a situation with something else than his fists.

They talk about their services, only the broad lines for Frank, but Greg seems happy enough to have found a fellow veteran. Karen leaves them to it, busying herself with cleaning and coffee refills.

“Where you from, Frank?” she hears Greg finally asks after a story about his time in Kuwait.

“New York.”

“Is that where you’re from too, Rose? New York?”

Frank stares at her. She can read the worry in his eyes, the questions there. Did he say too much? How much do they know about her? She ignores the vice in her chest and looks up from the mug she’s wiping.

“I’ve lived there, but I’m from Vermont,” she says, hoping the forced lightness in her tone isn’t too obvious.

It seems to satisfy Greg, but his curiosity isn’t easily quenched and he asks the question she so desperately hoped he wouldn’t.

“How did you two meet then?”

And, well. How do they respond to that.

He chased my client, and by extension me, throughout a hospital with a shotgun.

He was arrested for the murder of thirty-something people and I convinced my law firm to defend him.

She glances at Frank who is already watching her, his finger tapping against the white porcelain of his mug.

“Work,” he simply says.

She snorts, because it’s the truth.

“What’s so funny?” Greg asks. “Were you a waitress back then too?”

She ducks her head down, smiling to herself. He didn’t lie. It was work, when you get down to it.

“No,” she starts, grabbing another mug to wipe, “I was an assistant at a law firm and Frank needed some, uh, legal advice. I had to convince the lawyers I worked for to help him.”

“Why?”

“One was an asshole and the other was afraid of Frank.”

It’s Frank’s turn to snort.

“Did they help tho?”

“They were fucking useless,” Frank says with humor in his voice. She glances up, ready to scold him a little for bad mouthing Foggy, but he speaks up again, more serious this time. “Rose wasn’t. She helped me see things clearer, get some closure, get back on track. Kinda saved my life,” he finishes, his eyes on her intense and deadly serious.

She stares at him, too stunned to think of something to say.

“Well damn”, Greg says. He looks impressed, almost has admiration in his eyes. He probably wouldn’t look at her like that if he knew all the terrible things she’s done.

“You saved my life a couple of times too,” she says around the knot in her throat.

“Times as in plural?! Damn, kiddo.” The expression on Greg’s face is now one of worry and bemusement. He must wonder what kind of life she used to live. She sort of wonders that too.

Frank breaks the tension with a laugh. “Oh yeah, this one has a knack for getting in trouble. Kinda wanted to bubble wrap her and never let her outta my sight at some point.”

He might means it as a joke but it still stings. He’s the one who didn’t show up for months, despite the roses on her windowsill. She swallows the bitterness. He had his reasons—good reasons, too.

“You say that like you’re a responsible adult when I know for a fact that you were living on coffee and nothing else for a while,” she replies, trying to pretend that this is normal, that their banter is a part of their friendship.

“And tell me exactly what did you eat today?” Greg pokes at her. “Pot, kettle, kiddo.”

Frank puts down his mug and gives her his most “I’m concerned about you” stare. “You didn’t eat?”

Karen sighs. “Snitch,” she mutters at Greg, who laughs and goes back to the kitchen, no doubt to prepare her a plate. She knows him and protesting against his dad instincts is a battle already lost. “I’m fine,” she says to Frank. He doesn’t seem convinced.

“I’ve seen your fridge. It’s empty, you know that?”

“That’s because I’m always eating here.”

He grunts.

Greg comes back with two plates he puts down in front of them on the counter. Burger and fries. Frank frowns at his.

“You gotta eat too, son,” Greg says to him. “On the house.”

“Aww look at that, he has adopted you,” Karen mocks, a fry halfway to her mouth.

Greg swats at her with a kitchen towel on his way back to the kitchen. “Be nice.”

They talk about easy stuff. Karen describes the town, the people living there, Henry and the shelter. Frank mentions some weird roadside attractions he saw on his way here. Karen is surprised that he even noticed anything while driving in what was more or less a manic state, but doesn’t mention it. It’d bring them back in to the serious and heavy. She isn’t ready for that. She just wants to enjoy good food with a friend, her dog quietly snoring at her feet.

Frank talks about Kentucky too. There are some stuff he doesn’t say outright, like how his friend, Gunner, died, but he smiles when he recounts the tale of their first meeting, imitating Gunner’s southern accent and all. He’s doing a terrible job at it.

“I’m a Marine, not a comedian,” he replies when she tells him so.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she hears Schoonover tell her that Frank was great at doing impressions. She doesn’t want to know if it was another lie. She locks the memory down behind a mental door and refocuses on the man in front of her, the man she was sure she was never going to see again. He looks good, healthy, even if his nose looks like it’s more crooked than it was before. How that’s possible is beyond her.

He tries to steal some of her fries when he’s done with his. She swats his hand away and that makes him chuckle.

Despite the baggage between them and their own pasts tainted with loss and pain, it’s easy.

Later, Frank decides he wants to walk around town. Karen tells him to take Frankie with him. She’s worried her dog isn’t getting enough exercise, what with all the scraps of bacon and sausage she knows the patrons are slipping him. He has a very efficient “I’m a sad puppy please be nice and feed me” face.

“I like him,” Greg says as he watches Frank walks down the street with Frankie jumping around him.

“That was fast,” Karen comments without turning her head to look at him.

“You let your dog go with him, it’s all I need to know.”

“He once rescued a dog from a fighting ring,” she says. She doesn’t know why she says it. Or maybe she does. She wants the people of the town to see Frank as she sees him, as a good man, as someone you can trust with your dog and your kids.

Greg whistles. “Yeah, I like him,” he repeats. “I hope he sticks around.”

She ignores the pointed look he gives her, the one that reminds her so much of the way Ellison uses to stare at her when he was seeing right through her bullshit.

She hopes he sticks around too.

She goes home and for the first time in a long time, her place isn’t empty. Frank is reading a book on the couch, a hand on Frankie who’s softly snoring on his lap.

“Hey,” she greets.

“Sorry to invade like that,” he says, rubbing at his neck. “Frankie was tired and all.”

“It’s okay. How was the walk?”

She hangs her jacket next to his, tries not to think about how everything feels so normal. Domestic even. Him on the couch, her dog loving him, his jacket on the wall.

“It’s a nice town. I like the mountains.”

She sits down in the armchair next to the couch.

“So. You thought about what happens next?”

She needs to know. She can’t just get used to his presence only for him to fuck off to God knows where again.

He puts down the book on the coffee table between them. It’s her second-hand edition of Moby Dick. A corner of the cover is curling up and the pages are slightly wavy from previous water damage. Her bookmark sticks up, a quarter of the way from the end.

“I did.”

“And?”

“I know you can’t come back to New York. Not yet anyway.” He scratches his beard. “Red said he’d take care of things.”

Karen snorts dismissively. Matt has a God complex the size of Alaska and despite his “I’m a good Catholic boy” act, the amount of pride he nurtures would make the devil blush.

“I’m not waiting for Matt to clean up this mess,” she says. “I’m not even sure I want to go back there anymore.”

Frank’s face is unreadable. She kicks off her shoes and brings her legs up against her chest, her chin on her knees.

“I miss Foggy, and Ellison, but there’s nothing for me there anymore. I lost my job and even if I hadn’t, I’m not sure I would have been able to keep working there. I’m responsible for the death of my coworkers, no matter what anyone says.” She exhales, pushes away the strands falling from her bun. “I wasn’t planning on working in a diner again, but it’s fine. I’m fine.”

“You happy?” he asks.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. But I don’t feel like I’m going to be shot down any second, so that’s a start.”

He nods. Maybe he understands that status quo situation. Never truly happy, but safe, and considering their lives, it’s all they can realistically ask for.

“What are you going to do, Frank?”

“Well. I drove here. I’ve never seen this part of the country before. Might as well enjoy it. Say it’s a vacation.”

She likes the sound of that. She unfolds from the armchair and stands up.

“Drink?” she asks, crossing to the kitchen.

“Sure.”

He was right when he said that her fridge is empty. There’s only a few bottle of beers on a shelf, a container of leftover soup.

“You took them with you,” he says from behind her. When she turns, a bottle of beer in each hand, he’s next to the window, staring at the potted roses.

She joins him. “It felt wrong to leave them back there,” she says, like it’s not a big deal, like she hasn’t been wondering why she has taken them every day since she left.

She gives him a beer and he takes it with a muttered thanks.

She doesn’t offer him her couch a second time and he doesn’t ask, saying he’s going to check into the motel he saw on his way here, the motel where she stayed her first week there. He leaves her apartment after hugging her tight and letting Frankie slobber all over him.

She closes the door behind him and collapses on her couch, Frankie immediately coming to rest against her, licking her cheek carefully. She pats his back.

“What a fucking day, right,” she murmurs to her dog, trying to make sense of the events of the last twelve hours.

Frankie’s tongue lolls out of his mouth. She circles his body with her arms and rests her head against his. It’s easier to breathe when she can feel his heartbeat against hers.

Frank fucking Castle. The Big Bad Punisher (only not really). Here in Montana. For her.

She can’t wrap her head around it but at the same time, it’s not that unbelievable.

Chapter Text

She wakes up with a crick in her neck, a few hours after falling asleep on her couch, as the clock on the kitchen wall says 4am. She’s supposed to be at the diner in two and a half hours. She decides against going back to bed, taking a shower and then settling on the couch to read until it’s time to leave instead.

“ROSE KAREN ELIZABETH BORGEN,” Debbie booms before Karen even has the time to fully open the diner’s door.

Fake name or not, you know you’re in trouble when your boss slash adoptive aunt wipes out the middle name. And add a random third one for good measure.

Frankie, totally oblivious to the drama around him, inspects the diner before finding a spot against the counter and flopping down there. Karen kind of envies her dog at this very moment.

She tries to play it cool, as if she has absolutely no idea why Debbie would be upset with her.

“Hey Debbie. How was your trip?” she greets, unzipping her jacket as she walks to the counter.

“Don’t you “hey Debbie” me, young girl. I can’t believe you kept something like that from us!”

Karen ties the apron around her waist. “Something like what?” she asks, turning to start the coffeemakers.

“Your boyfriend?!” Debbie exclaims, following her around as Karen preps for the day.

Karen looks up at the ceiling, asking a god she doesn’t believe in for strength.

“Look,” she says, turning to face Debbie, “I don’t know what Greg—or anyone else for that matter—told you, but Frank isn’t my boyfriend. He’s a friend. A close friend, yes, but just a friend. And I don’t want this town scaring him away with the gossip.”

Debbie crosses her arms, raises an eyebrow. “From what I heard, it was all very dramatic. There were tears. And a broken coffee pot.”

“I wasn’t expecting him to show up. He surprised me, okay?”

“Hmm-mm.”

“Don’t “hmm-mm” me, Debbie.”

Debbie waves a hand dismissively. “Whatever. Where is he, I need to meet him. Greg says he likes him, but that boy likes everyone. I gotta see for myself. When is he coming here?”

“I don’t know. He’s staying at the motel.”

Debbie smiles. “Well then, tell him to join us for breakfast. Ruth can’t make coffee for shit.” She pats Karen’s cheek and disappears in the back.

Karen sighs and extracts her phone from her back pocket. Somehow, she’s pretty sure that Ruth’s coffee wouldn’t be the worst one Frank ever had. She texts him anyway.

Debbie wants you to join us for breakfast.

His reply is almost immediate, despite the early hour. She isn’t surprised he’s up.

Do I have a choice?

No.

She tucks her phone back in her pocket and goes through the motions of preparing the tables. Greg and Debbie are laughing and teasing each other in the kitchen, the easy banter between them making Karen smiles to herself, and soon enough, the smell of bacon and fried eggs wafts through the main room, mixing with the aroma of coffee rising from behind the counter.

The sun is timidly poking behind the mountains, bathing them in soft pink light. Karen pauses in her tasks to watch it rise. When the snow has melted a bit more and the trails are practicable, she should take a day off and hike. Henry told her there was a beautiful lake hidden up there. It’s still too early in the spring for it to be free of ice and snow, though. It’s just something to look forward to, and she’s surprised she’s even projecting herself in the future, instead of living day to day like she’s been doing for so long now.

She could even borrow Greg’s truck and drive to Glacier Park one day. She has seen so many pictures of it, some of them on the diner’s walls, she wants to see it for herself. See if it’s as magical as everyone say it is.

Maybe she could go with Frank.

The pink light turns to gold.

The bell above the door jingles, followed by the sounds of boots stomping on the doormat to shake off the snow. Frankie jumps to his feet and trots to greet Frank like he hasn’t seen him in months. His tail is wagging so hard his whole butt moves with it.

“I think my dog is in love with you,” she says, watching them fondly. Frank crouches down and pets Frankie, who immediately starts licking Frank’s beard.

“Hope I’m not too early,” Frank says, trying to avoid the dog’s tongue as he speaks.

“Just in time, young man!” Debbie exclaims from the kitchen door.

Frank stands up with a worried glance at Karen. She just grins. Debbie walks to him, her eyebrows furrowed, squinting. She barely reaches his shoulders and yet she manages to be the most intimidating person in the room. Karen tries not to laugh at the obvious discomfort on Frank’s face. He looks like a kid ready to be scolded by a very strict school teacher.

“So you’re Frank,” Debbie starts.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Greg says you’re a vet.”

“I am, ma’am.”

Karen brings a hand to her mouth to stifle her chuckles. At Frank’s feet, Frankie looks very disappointed to not be able to lick the beard anymore, but his tail is still wagging, thumping softly against Frank’s jeans.

“Frankie likes you,” Debbie observes.

“Yes?”

Karen laughs audibly this time. Frank looks so out of his depth, so unlike the man who challenged an entire court room, who saved her from Schoonover, from Wilson.

“You make Rose cry one more time,” Debbie starts with her index finger up, “and I’ll personally end you. No one will find the body. No one will even look for the body.”

“Oh my god, Debbie, stop that,” Karen exclaims, walking to them to save Frank—and herself—from Debbie’s shovel talk.

“I’m just sayin’,” Debbie shrugs, “the entire town would pretend nothing happened.”

“Yeah and I said I didn’t want the entire town to scare him away,” Karen says sternly. “And I’m a crier, okay? Are you gonna bury every DVDs of Pride and Prejudice too? ‘Cause that movie makes me cry every time, you know.”

Frank puts a calming hand on her forearm.

“It’s okay, Rose. I get where it's coming from.”

And yeah, she guesses he does. He blew up his cover when Wilson decided to go after her after all. If there’s one person in the world who knows what it is to feel protective of her, she believes it’s him.

“If you’re done threatening Rose’s boyfriend, the food is ready,” Greg calls from the table where he has put down four plates.

Karen buries her face in her hands. Frank awkwardly shuffles next to her.

“Not my boyfriend, Greg,” she says loudly from behind her hands.

“I don’t hear him complaining,” Debbie remarks.

“It’s because he’s too polite to tell you to fuck off,” Karen says, dropping her hands down.

Debbie huffs and turns away to the table, but she’s smiling.

“Sorry about that,” Karen whispers to Frank.

“It wasn’t that bad?” he tries.

She levels him with a look that has made Ellison wave a finger at her and leave the room more than once. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He looks away, a tiny smile on his lips.

They sit down on one side of the booth Greg picked, him and Debbie on the other side. Karen tries very hard to ignore the way her friends are watching her and Frank like a couple of hawks.

“So, Frank,” Debbie starts around a mouthful of toast, “what are you doing when you’re not visiting Montana?”

Frank puts down his mug, fidgets with his napkin. “I uh, I’m kinda figuring it out at the moment, you know? I was in the army since I was a kid so uh, yeah. I gotta relearn how to live now that I’m out. I was in construction for a while. Doing odd jobs on the side too, fixing sinks, garage doors, shit like that.”

“And now?” Greg asks.

Frank shrugs. “I got some money on the side. Figured I could take some time for me, visit a friend.”

He glances at her. She bumps her shoulder against his and takes a bite of her pancakes, ignores the smirk on Debbie’s face.

Greg talks about Montana and all the things to do around here. Karen is pretty sure he was a tourism board member in a past life. The guy knows how to sell his state.

“I was thinking about driving to Glacier Park one of these days,” Karen interjects at some point. It launches Greg into a monologue about the park, its mountains, its lakes, the best spots, the tourist shit to avoid.

Next to her, Frank is more relaxed than she’s ever seen him. He smiles freely, he laughs, his hand rubs Frankie’s head, his knee bumps against hers a few times.

“If you wanna explore together,” Greg says at the end of their breakfast, “you can have your day, Rose.”

“You know, after you’ve said that all day yesterday, it really feels like you’re trying to get rid of me,” Karen muses jokingly.

“I’m just saying, your friend is here, you should spend some time together.”

“I don’t want to impose—” Frank starts.

“Nonsense,” Debbie cuts. “Rose, you’re free for the day. Don’t show your face unless it’s to grab a bite.”

They’re all but chased off from the diner, Frankie pouting at having to leave just when he had found a good sunny spot. They climb into Frank’s truck.

“Sorry about that. They kinda ambushed you.”

“They’re good people.” He turns the key and the truck rumbles to life. “Where to?”

Karen leans against the headrest, watches him watch her. She smirks. “How do you feel about dogs?”

He laughs. “Alright, lead the way.”

They go to the shelter and Henry welcomes him like he’s an old friend and winks at Karen when she introduces him. He shows them the newcomers and Frankie walks along the cages with them, sniffing and sometimes licking the dogs in them. They get the more excited ones out to go play in the backyard expending far behind the shelter. Frankie wrestles with a mutt twice his size. Frank throws snow ball after snow ball at a young one-eyed husky. Karen watches them from the porch bench, grateful for the cup of coffee Henry put in her hands. He has two volunteers with him today, he can take a break to chat with her, he tells her when she asks.

She has a blanket thrown across her lap, with Leaf, the oldest of Henry’s dogs, a German shepherd mix, sleeping next to her under her own blanket.

“So that’s Human Frank, uh?” Henry comments as he watches him being tackled by the huge mutt.

“Yup.”

“I see the resemblance with our Frankie,” he jokes. “Nice of him to visit you,” he adds after a while.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see him again,” she says.

“Because of you moving away?”

“Because I hadn’t heard from him in a year when I moved away.”

“Damn. I get why you broke that coffee pot.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You heard about that?”

“I think the whole county did.”

“Jesus, people need to get a life.”

Henry laughs, bright and warm. “Did I told you that the entire county basically conspired to get Jay and me together?

“They did?”

“Yeah. They were tired of us pining after each other.”

“That’s sweet.”

He nods.

“It is. Don’t be too upset with them, they’re busybodies and huge gossips but they mean well. They’re looking after their own. And they adopted you, Rose.”

Karen takes a sip from her cup and hopes the steam will hide her blushing.

Later, Frank joins them on the porch, his nose red and three tired dogs trailing after him. He accepts the steaming mug Henry holds out to him with a slightly out of breath thanks and sits on the bench on Karen’s other side.

“Think they got enough?” Karen teases after the husky flops down gracelessly on the wooden floor.

Henry whistles. It’s probably not everyday someone manages to exhaust a young husky.

The big mutt is next, Frankie snuggling against him soon after.

“Okay, this is adorable,” Karen coos.

“Feel free to adopt Bear. He’s eating for five,” Henry says, half-serious.

“I would if my flat was bigger, you know. When I was a kid, I wanted to have one of those big farmhouses and adopt all the dogs that couldn’t find families. The old ones, the sick ones. I just wanted my own huge dog sanctuary.”

“That so?” Frank says with a smile.

She shrugs. “I had no concept of money at the time.”

They leave the shelter in the early afternoon after sharing lunch with Henry and the volunteers. They drive back home, Frankie sleeping at Karen’s feet, the radio quietly playing nondescript rock songs.

“What do you want to do next?” Frank says in a low voice, as if he doesn’t want to wake Frankie up. Karen isn’t sure anything could wake her dog up at that moment. Sausages, maybe.

“I don’t know. It’s your vacation after all.”

He glances at her. “You’re the one living here. What do you usually do when you’re off?”

Karen leans her head against the window. Clouds are accumulating around the mountains, low and dark. It might snow again soon.

“I don’t have that many off days,” she starts, her face still turned away from him. Her breath makes fog against the glass. “I’m at the diner just about every day. I stay busy because if I don’t—” she swallows around the knot forming in her throat. It’s okay she tells herself. It’s Frank. They’re always honest with each other. It’s their thing. “If I don’t, I start thinking about everything that happened and then I need to drink more whisky than what’s reasonable and no one wants that.”

She tries to add a laugh at the end, but it comes out strangled. She rubs a hand down her face. No need to start crying now.

They stop at a red light and Frank’s eyes are heavy on her. He puts his hand on her forearm, squeezes lightly. She glances at him.

“You’re doing fine, Karen.” His thumb rubs circles in her skin. “Last guy I know who faked his death lived in a basement eating canned beans for a year.”

“He had the entire government on his ass, not just one city’s mob boss.”

Frank shrugs. “My point still stands.”

The light turns green.

“Turn left then right,” Karen instructs after taking a deep breath.

“Where are we going?”

“Home Depot.”

Frank’s brows disappear under his beanie. “Need to repair something?”

“Just taking advantage of your truck.”

They walk out of the store with a cart full of various potted plants, enough to take the entire back of the truck, and Frank drives them back to her place.

Karen would feel bad about Frank hauling the bigger plants upstairs, but she knows he wouldn’t accept anything else. They arrange the plants in her apartment, Frankie ignoring them to go snuggle on the couch. Karen might have gone overboard with the greenery, but after living in shoeboxes in New York, she wants to enjoy the space she has here. And it’s basically the only personal touch she can bring with all of her belongings still in New York. She wonders what happened to it. Surely Foggy wasn’t as foolish as she was and didn’t pay her rent for her. He probably packed everything up and put it in storage, for when she comes back. If she comes back.

“Coffee?” Frank asks.

She snaps out of her thoughts. “Not sure I have some here.”

He snorts and looks at her, kind of incredulous, like he can’t quite believe what she’s saying.

She shrugs. “I’m not really living here.”

“Diner it is then?”

“Yep.”

Frankie barely lifts his head when they call him and huffs, turning away from them.

“I think you broke my dog,” Karen says as she’s locking the door behind them.

“You said you were worried he wasn’t getting enough exercise,” Frank says, unapologetic. She bumps her shoulder against his.

They walk to the diner, enjoying the last few rays of sunshine. The clouds are thicker, spreading further away than a couple hours before. A few people greets Karen, throwing curious glances at Frank who hunches over a bit and smiles like he’s embarrassed—his non-threatening stance.

They get to the diner just as the wind picks up.

“I hope you’re only here for food!” Debbie calls without raising her head from the register.

Most of the patrons turn toward Frank and Karen, in a chorus of “hi, Rose” with a couple of “hi, Frank” in the middle. Of course everyone knows who he is by now. Two days is a long time in a town like this one.

“Coffee actually,” she says to Debbie, who shrugs.

“Close enough. Go sit, I’ll be right here.”

“I can take care of it—” Karen tries.

“Don’t even think about it. Sit.”

They get into a booth in the back. Frank sits so he can see the entire room, and usually Karen would be uncomfortable at the idea of not being able to see the door, but she isn’t on guard when she’s with Frank. She knows he has her back. She knows he’ll keep her safe. It hits her how much she had missed feeling that particular brand of safe, a feeling she only experiences when she’s with him, even if there’s a bomber at her back, a drug dealer pointing his gun at her in her car, an entire SWAT team ready to shot them to hell, or fucking ninjas kidnapping her for some sacrificial bullshit or another.

If Frank is here, she’ll be fine, simple as that.

Debbie gets to their table and fills their mugs.

“Just holler if you want food.”

“Thanks, ma’am.”

Karen wraps her hands around her cup, her eyes on the liquid swirling inside. She hears Debbie walking away, Frank taking a sip.

“You okay?”

She raises her head. He looks concerned.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling tentatively. “Just—just thinking.”

“Can I ask what about?”

No need to lie. They don’t lie to each other. “You.”

His concerned expression turns into one of curiosity, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Should I be worried?” he asks. His tone is slightly humorous, but she hears the seriousness underneath.

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “No. I was thinking about the times you saved me. How you always made me feel like everything was gonna be okay.”

He seems genuinely surprised by this. “Even when—”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know what I was gonna say.”

“No need.”

She sees his throat working beneath the beard and he looks away, toward the window and the outside world quickly getting darker. His trigger finger rubs the back of his other hand.

“And now?” he says, his voice low and gravelly.

“You came here for me. Even if you didn’t know for sure I’d be here.”

He rubs his neck. “I wasn’t there for you before.”

“You’re here now.”

They drink their coffee without talking, a parenthesis in the otherwise noisy diner. The knitting ladies are exchanging tips on the best yarn. A group of teenagers are teasing each other and laughing loudly, carefree and confident. Debbie is calling the food orders, Greg answering above the sounds of the kitchen. There’s a kid throwing a tantrum somewhere behind their table, a couple of deputies talking about their next vacations.

“You wanna eat here?” Frank ends up asking.

Karen is starting to feel some hunger, but could do without the very obvious glances Debbie and Greg are throwing their way every few minutes.

“How do you feel about takeout and a movie at my place?”

It’s incredibly domestic and it should be weird since she has spent more time with Frank while at least one of them was in possibly fatal danger than not, except that it’s not. Offering a movie night at her apartment still fits into that strange relationship they have, somehow.

“Are you gonna make me watch Pride and Prejudice then?” he teases.

She chuckles. “You can pick the movie if I pick the food.”

“I don’t mind Pride and Prejudice. Lizzie is a badass.”

Karen bursts out laughing. Just when she thinks she knows Frank, he surprises her with something unexpected like that.

“She reminds me of you, actually,” he keeps going. “Wicked smart, unafraid. Stubborn as hell.” He grins.

“This stubbornness saved your ass, don’t you forget about that,” she points out.

“Never.”

They finish their coffee and get up.

“Not eating here?” Debbie asks when they approach the register.

“Not tonight, ma’am,” Frank says as he gives her a couple of bills.

Debbie looks at the money, then at Karen before turning back to him.

“Make her eat vegetables,” she stage whispers to him, taking the bills but dropping them in the tips jar.

Karen rolls her eyes. “I can take care of myself.”

Frank raises an amused eyebrow. She glares at him as a warning—or as a challenge to say anything, she isn’t exactly sure which.

The night has fallen fully during their time in the diner and the wind is now blowing with a ruthless intensity, dropping the temperatures in freezing territory. Karen zips her jacket all the way up and crosses her arms. Leaving the truck at her place seems like a terrible idea in retrospect, no matter how short the walk between the diner and her building is.

She can’t help but swear when a particular gust of wind makes her feel like her ears are going to fall off. Frank stops her with a hand on her arm. She turns to him, strands of hair flying everywhere around her face.

“What are you—”

But she doesn’t get to ask her question because he’s very close to her, tugging his beanie over her head, making sure her ears are covered before stepping away.

“Better?” he asks as he flips his hood over his head.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

They walk close to each other, shoulders knocking, until Frank wraps his arm around her and tucks her against him. She’s grateful for the heat she feels radiating from his body despite the frigid temperature and the thick layer of his jacket. Maybe it should be once again weird, to be this close to him without the situation being a fatally dangerous one, but it’s not. It’s natural, just like hugging him was, just like going to the shelter with him or buying fucking house plants were.

Her relationship with Frank Castle consists of him saving her with his fists and her saving him with her wits, but also of playing with dogs, eating breakfast with her bosses slash adopted uncle and aunt, going to Home Depot, and walking down the street tucked against each other apparently.

Three days ago she was sure she was going to spend the rest of her life without hearing from him again, wondering where he was, what he was doing, if he was safe, or even alive. It’s only been two days but he’s already burrowing between her ribs, filling the empty space in her life so naturally it’s as if it was shaped for him.

Despite the comfort of Frank’s proximity, Karen is relieved when her building comes into view. They hurry up the stairs and bask a few seconds in the relative warmth of her apartment. Frankie greets them like they’ve been gone for days and then goes to sit next to his empty bowl.

Karen chuckles. “Can you feed him while I order?”

“Sure.”

The only takeout place opened that day—not that they have an abundance of takeout restaurants in the first place anyway—is the Indian one. She gets them more food than necessary. Maybe he’ll stop nagging her about her empty fridge if she has several containers of leftover in it.

The kid in charge of the deliveries arrive some thirty minutes later and his eyes go wide when he sees Frank on the couch, perusing the Netflix menu with Frankie draped all over him. Great. No one is going to believe her now when she says Frank isn’t her boyfriend—not that they were actually believing her before.

She gives the kid a generous tip that will do nothing to keep his mouth shut, locks the door behind him and drops the bags on the coffee table.

“So? What are we watching?” she asks as she’s retrieving beer from the fridge.

“Ever seen John Wick?”

She peeks out from behind the fridge door and gives him a look. “A guy gets revenge on the Russian mob and then gets a pitbull? A little bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

Frank chuckles but doesn’t protest.

They end up watching The Mummy, then the second one, but Karen puts her veto when Frank hovers over The Scorpion King, starting the third Mummy instead.

Karen is drowsy from the food, the beer and the warmth of Frankie snuggling into her and Frank just inches from her, and really, there’s not much she can do to avoid falling asleep against Frank’s shoulder.

She wakes up as Frank gently calls her name. The TV is turned off.

“What time is it?” she mutters.

“Past two.”

“Ugh, shit.”

Frank starts to get up. “I shouldn’t have stayed so long, I’m—”

“No, Frank, it’s okay. I—” She stops, takes a breath. He sits back down, watching her, waiting for the rest of her sentence. Maybe it’s the beer, maybe it’s her half-asleep state, maybe it’s the fact that she has been hiding how desperately alone she’d been truly feeling for so long and she just can’t anymore, but it’s definitely something, because she would have never had the guts to say what she is going to say next if she was her regular New York self. “I wanted you to stay.” She drops her eyes to Frankie’s fur and hopes she isn’t blushing too noticeably.

“Yeah?” he asks as he resettles properly against the back of the couch.

She threads her fingers through the soft fur of her dog, nods. “Yeah. Rationally I know you’re here, in this town, but I can’t help but feel like I did in New York. That every time I was seeing you could be the last. Even now I think that if you leave tonight, you could not be there tomorrow. That you could just take your truck and drive back straight away if there was some punishing to be done in New York. And then I would be alone again.”

She isn’t brave enough to glance at him as she says it, or even after. Just admitting what is going on in her mind makes her feel like a spoiled brat. As if she’s asking Frank to give up his life for her. Which she would never do. She just needs some reassurance that he won’t go radio-silence once more.

“Karen.” He puts a hand on her shoulder and from the corner of her eyes, she sees him ducking down, trying to catch her gaze. She stops staring at Frankie’s fur and raises her head, just enough to meet Frank’s eyes. His hand travels higher, almost as if he wants to cup her neck but doesn’t know if he can yet. “I can’t promise you I’ll always be here for you, ‘cause that’s bullshit and no one can be sure of the future.” He swallows and she catches the muscle of his jaw tick once. “But I’m here now. And I have no plan of going away. I’d tell you if I did. So if you want me to stay, I’ll stay. Okay?” His hand finally cups the back of her neck and he brings their foreheads together.

She closes her eyes. “Okay,” she nods.

“I should get going, tho. It’s late,” he says after a moment.

A glance to the window tells Karen that she was right about the clouds: snow is falling in thick clumps.

“You’re not driving. You drank and it’s snowing.”

Her tone is harsher than it probably needs to be, but Frank doesn’t seem to be rattled about it. He just takes a look outside and scratches his beard.

“You’re right.”

He takes the couch and Karen reluctantly sets up her alarm for barely three hours later. She used to do a lot worse when she was working at her family’s diner, but she was nineteen at the time. Getting up after a night of partying and doing drugs and looking fresh while hungover was a lot easier then.

*

Frank is awake when she emerges from the bathroom not enough hours later.

“You can stay and go back to sleep,” she says in a voice that isn’t fully awake yet, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He dismisses her apology with a wave of his hand. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

She pulls her hair into a low bun and, when she sees it’s still snowing, slips a thicker jacket on—the one she found in the army surplus part of the second-hand shop next to the animal shelter. Foggy’s cash and what little money she was able to take out of her saving account got her across the country and settled here, and while her job is okay, it doesn’t pay that much. She’s fine with that. She doesn’t need silk blouses and perfect pencil skirts anymore. Karen Page used to live in high heels and elegant coats from trendy stores. Rose Borgen is more of a combat boots and army jacket from Goodwill kind of girl. She doesn’t feel like she’s losing herself, though. The pretty dresses and impeccable chignons were parts of a role she was playing as much as her new fake name is. At least now she looks more like the girl her brother used to know, the drugs aside, and it’s a strange way to make peace with her situation, but it works, sort of.

Frank does raise an eyebrow at her jacket.

She shrugs. “It’s warm and durable.”

“Don’t I know it.”

She grabs her bag. “You have the keys, you can stay as long as you want,” she says as she puts on her shoes. She straightens up and whistles toward the couch. “C’mon Frankie, time to go.”

The dog raises his head from the cushion without much energy. He turns to the window, then back to her and whines. Karen rolls her eyes.

“Yeah I know, I don’t want to go either but come on, we’re gonna be late.”

Frankie huffs and puts his head back on his paws. Karen groans.

“I can bring him later, if you want,” Frank offers.

“If you’re ready for another round of Debbie’s twenty questions.”

“I’ll be fine.”

She turns to the door, fumbling with her keys. “Thanks, I owe you one.”

He waves a hand. “No such thing.”

She gives him a smile over her shoulder and leaves her warm cocoon to face the cold. The closer she gets to the ground floor, the more she can feel the ice seep into her bones. And she’s gonna have to walk through the wind and the snow to the diner. Fucking great. She really should get herself a car at some point, no matter how ridiculous it is to drive a ten minutes walk.

“Hey!” calls a voice from upstairs.

Karen raises her head toward the top of the staircase. Frank is leaning on the railing, frowning.

“You need a ride? It’s a fuckin’ storm out there.”

She lets out a breath and smiles. He smiles back and hold up a finger in the universal “one sec” gesture. She hears him lock her door, followed by the sound of his quick but quiet steps. How a man his size can be almost silent while essentially running down three stories in combat boots, she doesn’t know, but soon enough he’s next to her, swinging his truck keys.

“Ready?” he asks with a jerk of his head toward the door.

On the other side, snow is swirling in the wind, orange in the street light.

Karen sighs. “Nope,” she says, but opens the front door anyway. The wind is immediately whipping at her face, sharp as a knife and cold as hell.

“Fuuuck,” she curses and above the wind, she can hear Frank chuckling. He wraps an arm around her and steers her in the direction of his truck.

She has to brace herself to get back out once they reach the diner, but the promise of hot coffee and crispy bacon helps give her some courage.

She puts her hand on the handle but turns to Frank instead of opening the door.

“Thank you. I owe you two, I guess.”

“Told you already. Ain’t no such thing as you owing me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now go before you’re really late.”

She has the impulse to kiss him on the cheek, just like he kissed her near the water all those months ago, so she does, refusing to overthink it.

“See you later,” she says softly before wrenching the door open and jumping into the snow storm, slamming the door closed behind her.

She runs to the diner and practically hurls herself inside it.

“Jesus fuck,” she curses, shaking the snow from her jacket and boots.

“Language,” Debbie says flatly from a table, wrapped into a thick knitted cardigan, a steaming mug between her hands. “Is that Frank’s truck?” she asks, leaning toward the window.

“Uh yeah, he drove me here,” Karen says as she removes her jacket, trying to play it cool, even if she knows that no matter what she says or how she acts, Debbie will picture her own version of their relationship and nothing will be able to challenge it.

“It’s not even seven o’clock yet,” Debbie remarks with a tone of feigned innocence.

“I know,” Karen says, slipping behind the counter to put on her apron and gets herself some coffee. She isn’t quite ready for people and talking this early in the morning after so few hours of sleep.

“And Frankie isn’t with you this morning,” Debbie goes on, watching her as Karen makes sure everything is at the right place behind the counter.

“He isn’t,” Karen agrees with the same fake light tone. The sugar packets container is full and she doesn’t need a new bag of coffee beans yet which means she has literally no excuse to run to the back. She sits on the stool behind the register and tries to enjoy her coffee instead.

“So?” Debbie prompts, still watching Karen like a hawk.

“So what?”

“Are you still gonna bullshit me with your “he’s just a friend” crap when he clearly spent the night at your place and is probably back there with your dog?”

“Language,” Karen mutters. Debbie just glares at her. Karen sighs. “Alright, yes he slept at my place—on the couch,” she immediately adds when Debbie’s grin gets bigger, “because it was late and I didn’t want him driving in the snow while tired and after a few beers.”

Debbie hums. “Interesting.”

“It’s really not.”

At seven o’clock, Karen turns the “closed” sign to “open” and hopes the soon to be here customers will save her from any further poking from Debbie.

But Karen has never considered herself particularly lucky, and this isn’t the day it’s going to change: Debbie has taken advantage of Karen stepping away from the counter to slip into the kitchen and has apparently managed to bring Greg up to speed with Karen’s personal life in the few seconds it took her to flip a sign, and they are now both standing at the kitchen threshold with a conspiratorial looks on their faces.

“Frank slept at your place last night.” Greg isn’t even asking. He’s stating the fact, and it’s a fact that makes him smile like a demented clown.

Karen kind of snaps at that, because she’s tired, because she has a lot of emotions and feelings she needs to process but never took the time too, because she wants her life to be simple and it’s not.

“Yes!” she exclaims, throwing her hands in the air. “Yes, he did! Because we had a few beers and it was late and it was snowing and it’s called being responsible adults! Now can you please stop acting like middleschoolers? I know my relationship with Frank is super intriguing to you for whatever reason, but please stop? It’s weird enough to have him here after a fucking year of nothing, and I don’t need you to put pressure on me while I’m trying to figure out what the fuck is happening.”

She takes a big breath after that and exhales through her mouth. Greg and Debbie aren’t saying anything and she can’t look at them. She can’t. She threads a hand through her hair and turns her head away, trying very hard not to cry.

“Sweetie?” Debbie calls in a very soft voice. The kind of voice you use to talk to a wounded animal you don’t want to scare away. “We’re really sorry.”

Karen sniffles and nods, but doesn’t look at them. “It’s okay,” she says. Her voice cracks a little. “I know you didn’t want to upset me or anything. I’m just a little emotional.”

“Kiddo,” Greg starts in a firm voice. “We didn’t mean to, but we did, and that is not okay. So yeah we’re sorry.”

She glances at them. They do look very concerned for her, and beside Ellison, Karen has never had a parental figure being worried about her. It makes her feel like she’s seen. Like she matters for who she is and not because she’s skilled at one thing or another or useful to have around. Like she could be loved unconditionally. She takes a step toward them and hugs them both. She no longer tries to rein in her tears.

After a moment, Debbie steers her toward a booth and sits her down, coming back with three mugs in one hand and a coffeepot in the other, while Greg disappears into the kitchen.

“Is he having breakfast with us today?” Debbie asks as she sits in front of Karen.

“Don’t think so,” Karen replies, her voice a bit strangled. She clears her throat, takes a steadying breath and grabs a mug. “He’s gonna come over later with Frankie,” she continues, pouring coffee into the white porcelain. “I’m glad that he’s here, you know?” Debbie nods but doesn’t say a word, as if sensing that Karen needs to say everything she has to say in one go or she’s not going to say anything at all.

Karen sighs. “But at the same time, it’s—it’s overwhelming. I’ve never had him so close for so many days in a row.” She isn’t counting the days spent preparing the trial when she says that. Those days feel like a lifetime ago, both her and Frank totally different people than they are now, and at the same time not that much. It’s confusing. She rubs a frustrated hand down her face. “We never had time before. There was always this—this sense of urgency. And now we have time to just fuck around with Henry’s dogs at the shelter and it’s so fucking normal.”

Debbie tilts her head. “What’s the problem then?”

Karen wraps her hand around her mug. She frowns. That’s a good fucking question—one she knows the answer to but she’s too much of a coward to really acknowledge it. But at the same time, she has nothing left to lose, so why pretend?

“It’s too easy. And I’m terrified, because in my world, if something like that is easy, it just means it’s going to go real bad and people are going to get hurt and then I’ll be left with nothing. Again.”

Debbie puts a hand on hers and Karen looks up. “Hon, I don’t know what you’ve been through but I’m still sorry you had to suffer this much. You have the right to be happy. You shouldn’t be afraid of it. And from what little I’ve seen of him, that boy isn’t going away. You’re not alone, sweetheart. You have him. And you have us.”

Karen is too close to tears to really answer her so she nods, trying to smile but feeling more like it’s a grimace.

“Now you should tell that boy that the family breakfast is always open to him. I like him,” Debbie says in her “listen to me young lady” tone, effectively diffusing the tension that has built since Karen’s outburst.

Karen’s laugh is watery, but it’s a laugh all the same. “Well thank you baby Jesus for that,” she tries to joke. “Frankie has adopted him and it’d break his little puppy heart if you didn’t like his human.”

Debbie huffs with a smile just as Greg walks out of the kitchen balancing three plates in his hands. He frowns when he sees Karen.

“Deb, did you make Rose cry again?”

“Those are happy tears,” Debbie answers sternly, making Karen laughs again. “See?”

The snow stops falling an hour after they finish their breakfast. Customers start trickling through the doors a few minutes after that.

Karen is leaning against the table where Ann, Gil and Theodora, from her book club, are getting their late morning coffee fix and debating with them the next book the club is going to read, when Frank arrives, in a black hoodie, black sweatpants and running shoes, a very tired looking Frankie trailing behind him. The dog goes straight to where his food and water bowls are stashed and then lies down next to them.

Karen raises an eyebrow. To his credit, Frank looks sheepish. Whether it’s because the patrons are practically all staring at him or because he exhausted Frankie before it’s even noon is anyone’s guess, though.

“What the hell did you do to my dog?” she asks across the diner as she walks to the counter.

“Hello to you too, Rose, how’s your morning going,” he mutters with a smile.

She plants a mug on the counter and nods at the bar stool in front of it pointedly. “Don’t be a smartass and answer my question.”

She can feel the eyes of everyone on them and she decides she doesn’t care. Let them think whatever they want. As long as it’s not hurting anyone, why the hell is it her problem?

“Went for a run. You said he needed more exercise.”

Karen softens at that and fills his mug. He takes it with a quiet thanks.

She folds her arms over the counter. “Didn’t you freeze out there?”

“Little bit.”

“What did you do this morning besides turning my dog into a drooling rug?”

He snorts a bit at that, takes a look at Frankie who’s still lying down on floor. “Called Curtis,” he says between two sips. “He ain’t super happy about me being away.”

Karen frowns. “Why?”

“I, uh—I usually go to this vet support group he’s taking care of. And me being here means I can’t go there and he doesn’t like that.”

Guilt squeezes Karen’s chest and she looks down at the counter, swallowing the knot forming in her throat. Frank is putting his life on hold for her, maybe even jeopardizing his stability. She isn’t sure she’s worth it.

Frank seems to sense her growing distress though, because he puts a hand on her arm and ducks his head to catch her eyes.

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. K—Rose?”

She meets his eyes at his almost slip up. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” She glances around the room but the patrons have gone back to their plates.

“I was thinking that uh, you know, maybe there’s a group? That I could go to while I’m here?”

Her heart grows three sizes. She smiles and puts her free hand over the one he still has on her arm. “I can ask Greg,” she says softly.

“Ask me what?” Greg asks, his head popping out from the kitchen threshold.

Karen jumps a little and Frank’s hand slips away. She turns towards the intruder. “Privacy, Greg, for starter—”

“I heard my name!”

“—and also if you know a vet support group in the area.”

Greg’s face turns serious and his eyes go from Karen to Frank, who’s very busy studying his coffee.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah I know a few. I’ll get you the addresses.”

Frank looks up. “Thanks.”

Greg waves him with a greasy spatula and disappears back into the kitchen.

“You okay?” Karen asks in a low voice. A voice just made for the two of them.

“Yeah it’s just—it’s weird you know. Doing what normal people do.”

Karen feels her eyebrows shooting up. “Is that what we’re doing?” Hiding from a crime boss in the asshole of Montana under a fake name isn’t exactly what qualifies as normal in her book.

Frank smirks. “Having coffee at a diner with a friend? Going to a support group and trying to process my bullshit without killing anyone? Sounds pretty normal to me.”

Karen tilts her head, conceding his point. If you ignore the fact that her new life started with her faking her disappearance with the help of an entire police department, a lawyer and a newspaper editor, you can say that it’s indeed pretty normal.

Chapter Text

For all it changed in a day, Karen keeps her life normal—as normal as it can be for them. She doesn’t take any more day off. If she’s honest with herself, and she tries to be these days, she’s not very good at not being busy, even with Frank for company. And despite what he said about not leaving anytime soon, she isn’t going to turn her life around and fit it around him. Rather, he finds ways to fit into the cracks of her life.

She tells him to keep the keys to her place and he slowly becomes Frankie’s second parent. He runs every morning with the dog at his heels and drops by the diner on his way back.

He goes back to the shelter every few days, to play with the dogs and have coffee with Henry on the porch. With Greg's help, he finds a vet group he feels comfortable with. The community center they gather at is in a town 40 minutes away on a clear day, more than an hour and a half if it's snowing. He goes on Monday and Thursday nights and smells like dust and stale coffee afterwards.

One day in the third week he’s here, he asks if he can join the book club in a way Karen would’ve described as shy if it wasn’t Frank. They all welcome him with their arms wide open and immediately attack him with questions about his favorite author (depends on his mood and the genre), his favorite book (he doesn’t have a specific one but he liked Moby Dick—Karen snorts at that and mutters “gee I wonder why”. He shrugs and gives her his special, private smile), what he thinks they should read next (he doesn’t know and he later tells her that all he could think about were the books stacked in Lieberman’s bunker and one that was about feminism and cyborgs). He gets along great with Gil the factory worker who chose Moby Dick for the book club in the first place, and the three of them end up watching a football game on the small screen of the only bar in town. The football game is more of an excuse to get together than anything else. Karen spends the evening watching them argue about specific moments of the book, interjecting with her own opinion here and there. Frank looks smug as hell when she agrees with him the first time, but it’s his look of indignant betrayal that makes her laugh when she sides with Gil afterwards. She takes a sip from her beer, keeps watching Frank from the corner of her eye. It’s hard to believe the bearded man next to her talking passionately about chasing a whale is the same man she met bruised and strapped to a hospital bed. He catches her watching him. His eyebrow slightly rises, a silent question. She smiles and takes another sip of her beer.

They have regular takeout and movie nights. Sometimes he sleeps on the couch and sometimes he goes back to his motel room. Karen wonders if she should offer him the couch full time because there’s no way living in a motel is cheap, but Frank tells her not to worry about it. Apparently, Lieberman gave him a very generous “thank you for bringing me back to my family” gift. When she insists again, he looks away.

“I still—I still have nightmares, you know,” he mutters. “Not every night. Don’t want to burden you with that shit.”

They finish watching that night movie in silence, and if Frank notices Karen is leaning against him more than usual, he doesn’t say anything.

*

There is no more snow storms. The sun rises earlier every day, bathing the mountains in soft light. Soon, Karen doesn’t need to wear five layers of clothes not to freeze to death.

She is taking her breakfast with Frank, sitting in the booth at the back that has become theirs, when the thought hits her. He’s been here a month.

“Something wrong?” he asks when she stills.

She shakes her head and a few strands escape from her loose ponytail. “No, it’s just—you’re still here.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You only realize that now? Way to make a guy feels special here, P—Miss Borgen.”

Funnily, he has taken to her new first name almost immediately but her fake last name doesn’t stick with him. He never asked her why she chose those particular first and last names. Maybe he just assumes Turk picked them out for her. He probably doesn’t imagine her trying to find a name that doesn’t sound too fake—like Jane Jones or something—somewhere between burning her credit card and meeting in the underbelly of the city with a criminal. He probably doesn’t think she saw the potted roses peeking out of her duffle bag and then thought about him and how he had vanished from the surface of the Earth, so she thought she’d take inspiration from him and looked for the translation of “castle” in as many different languages as she could find. Norwegian was as good as any. With her pale skin and blue eyes, no one would bat an eye if her name sounded vaguely Scandinavian.

“You with me?”

She looks up quickly. He seems vaguely concerned.

“Yeah. Yeah it’s just that it’s been a month. And you’re here. Most people don’t take a month long vacation.”

He shrugs, brings his cup to his mouth. “I like it here,” he says after taking a sip. “Not gonna lie, sometimes I miss the city. But it ain’t for me anymore. Can’t hide my face forever, you know? Also not like I have a lot waiting for me back there either beside Curtis.”

Karen pushes some bacon around with her fork.

“What are you going to do then?” She doesn’t have it in her to look at him in the eyes when she asks. She doesn’t want to get her hopes up—because yeah, she really wants him to stay.

He clears his throat.

“You think there’d be work ‘round here for a melodramatic asshole like me?”

She smiles and meets his eyes. “I think it could be arranged, yeah.”

There’s a smile on his lips too. “I still gotta go back to New York before that. Take care of some stuff.”

She nods. “Could you—could you go see Foggy? Tell him I’m okay?”

“Sure. Anything else? Some stuff from your old place?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it. When do you think you’ll go?” She tries to keep her voice from cracking on the last word. She succeeds, barely.

“I was thinking Friday morning.”

It’s Wednesday morning. She only has two days before he’s gone and the old fear is back. Once Frank leaves Montana, she is never going to see him again. He’ll get arrested in New York, or killed by some criminal. Or he’ll just decide to stay in New York and she’ll be here, alone once again.

As always, Frank reads her like an open book. He leans across the table, his arms folded on top of it.

“Hey,” he says softly. “I’m coming back. I’m coming back, okay? You can trust me on that.” He ducks his head to catch her elusive gaze. “Karen,” he says, his voice like a plea, barely above a whisper, for her and her only.

She meets his eyes. “I do. I do trust you.” She takes the hand he has resting on top of his arm. “You’ve never lied to me.”

“I’m coming back.”

He doesn’t say “I promise” but she hears it all the same, feels it when his fingers tighten around hers.

She nods. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

*

Frank comes by her place before leaving. It’s stupidly early in the morning, but she knows he wouldn’t have been comfortable saying his goodbyes in public, no matter how well liked in town he is now.

Karen is drinking coffee at her kitchen table and she doesn’t jump out of her skin when she hears the key in the lock. She’s used to it by now. Frank comes in and joins her, sitting down as she sets a second mug on the table.

“I told Foggy what I needed from my old stuff,” she says, without even greeting him first. She has to get to important things out so it doesn’t come out jumbled afterwards, once she’s on the verge of tears because he’s leaving, and even if he said he’d be back, they can’t be a hundred percent sure. Life is a bitch like that. They both know it all too well. “He knows you’re coming. He said he’d put it out of storage and at his apartment.”

“Okay.”

They drink their coffee in silence. Not even Frankie is making a noise, as if he can sense the tension in the air. He stays on the kitchen floor next to her seat, and hot puffs of air brush her ankles rhythmically.

Frank reaches over and takes her hand in his. He stands up, rounds the table and pulls her to his chest, wrapping her in his arms. His hoodie is soft under her cheek. It smells like freshly done laundry and she closes her eyes, inhales, tries to commit this moment to her memory.

They sway a bit. His arms tighten around her, slow and cautious, as if he’s afraid to hurt her.

“Don’t get in any trouble while I’m gone,” he mutters into her hair.

She moves back just enough to be able to look at him. “Be careful. Please.” Her voice is hoarse and Frankie is whining at their feet.

Frank pulls her close again, his lips against her forehead. “You take care.”

She has to fight the tears that threaten to spill. She’ll see him again, she will. She repeats it to herself like a mantra. She pretends she isn’t thinking of the hotel elevator. At least, this time, there’s no blood, no sweat, no smell of gunpowder, no dust, no shrapnel, no residue of the explosion in her hair.

“I’ll call you. Promise.”

She nods. She walks him to the door, the knot in her throat tight, as tight as the vice around her heart and lungs.

Frank grabs the handle, but doesn’t actually open the door. Instead, he turns to her.

“I’ll be here in two weeks, top.”

She crosses the tiny space between them, hugs him again.

“Drive safe.”

He kisses her temple and leaves.

Karen closes the door, leans her back against it, and slowly, so slowly, slides down to the floor as the tears she has been so valiantly repressing since she woke up blur her vision. Frankie crowds her immediately, whining, pacing around her until she tugs him to her chest and buries her face in his fur. The tears run freely. It’s not a silent crying, no, it’s ugly, broken sobs, that rattle her chest, make her feel like she’s drowning in them.

Afterwards, when her breathing isn’t so labored and Frankie has licked her cheeks clean of salt, she gets to her feet and cleans up the mugs left on the table. Then she washes her face, braids her hair back. Once the puffiness and redness in her eyes can be blamed on the cold morning wind, she takes her bag, slips on some shoes, calls Frankie and together, they make their way to the diner.

Two weeks.

It will be fine.

She goes through the familiar routine of her mornings. Preparing the diner for the day, having breakfast with Debbie and Greg. Opening the diner. Greeting people. Listening to Alex give her the news and laughing at his fake 50’s radio host voice. Preparing a bunch of coffee to go for the factory workers going in, getting full plates and decaf for the factory workers getting out.

She gives Joan a large coffee in a paper cup as she brings her kids to school and when she’s back afterwards, Karen brings her usual blueberry pancakes with extra syrup. She gets tea and apple pie when the knit club arrives and Theodora asks her where she is in her reading of Little Dorrit for the book club. Ann the school nurse is the one who chose the book, never missing an opportunity to bring up Dickens.

It’s a busy morning but then the inevitable late morning lull comes and Greg gets out of his kitchen and takes the coffee Karen has prepared for him.

“No Frank?” he asks after looking over the room.

“Nope,” she says, not looking up from the tab she’s preparing. It takes everything in her to sound normal, as if she didn’t have a breakdown over him leaving this morning.

Greg frowns. “You guys had a fight?”

She slides her pen in her apron’s pocket. “No, he just had to go back to New York.”

“He coming back?”

Greg sounds really worried now. Karen looks up and tries to smile, tries to look confident and reassuring. She probably doesn’t succeed very well.

“In two weeks.”

Greg relaxes and shifts his attention to his coffee. “Good then”.

He saves her from having to explain Frank’s absence to Debbie when she walks in just after lunch. Karen is in the storage room looking for more napkins when she overhears them talking in the kitchen.

“Just so you know, hon, Frank’s gone back to New York,” Greg says. Karen stays very still, trying to guess Debbie’s expression without risking going closer to the door.

“What?” Debbie says, and she sounds stunned, shocked even. “Why?”

“Rose didn’t say.”

“Did they have a fight?”

“She said they didn’t.”

“Then why did he leave?! That boy is hung up on our Rose!”

Greg snorts. Something is sizzling on the stove. A chair scraps on the floor.

“I think everyone but those two know that, hon.”

Karen rolls her eyes. Have people never heard of friendship?

“Is he coming back tho?” Debbie asks, a thin layer of anxiety coloring her voice.

“Rose said two weeks.”

“You think he’ll stay after that?”

There’s a silence. Then the sound of meat patties being flipped on the grill.

“I dunno, Deb. At first he said he was just taking a vacation, after all.”

“Hon, he stayed a full month, that ain’t no vacation.”

“True. He also came to the meetings.”

Debbie hums.

“I hope he’ll stay here,” she says in a definitive tone. “He’s good for Rose. She looked happier than I’ve ever seen her this last month. Remember how she always looked so melancholic and lonely before? I was getting real worried about her—”

Karen decides she has heard enough. She grabs her box of napkins and quietly goes back to the front of the diner.

Debbie gets there a few minutes after. She greets her as usual, goes to pet Frankie, doesn’t ask about Frank.

Karen takes her break with a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese, sitting at their usual table. The clouds are low today, the mountains hidden behind a thick gray curtain. Frankie settles next to her with his paws on her thigh.

The sandwich is good, but she barely tastes it. Her mind is far away, imagining being in the truck with Frank, watching the Montana landscape passes by as the Lewis range disappears in the background. She glances at the clock above the counter. He must be out of Montana by now.

She finishes her coffee, clears the table and goes back to work.

*

He calls her from Rapid City, South Dakota, that night.

She tells him Greg and Debbie already miss him and he laughs.

She finds a flannel that doesn’t belong to her draped on the back of the armchair. The fabric is thick and soft, the pattern black and dark red, and she remembers seeing it on Frank a number of times. She feels stupid for thinking it, but it seems like a promise, something like “I’m still here” and “I’m not leaving you, not for good”, and “I’ll be back.”

She wears it the next day, its warmth a small comfort as Frank is getting further and further away from her little corner of the world.

*

Over the next couple days, he texts her every time he stops. Sometimes pictures. Rochester, Minnesota. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A picture of Lake Michigan taken from a place called Chesterton in Indiana, a few miles out of Chicago. Then the endless flats of Indiana and Ohio, corn fields after corn fields and the occasional “Repent” and “Hell is Real” signs. Pennsylvania woods. New Jersey.

He calls her in the evenings, asks about her day, about Greg and Debbie, about Frankie. Always hangs up after saying “I’ll be back soon”.

*

The first pictures of New York is like a punch in the guts. It’s just the skyline, taken on the river’s shore opposite of Hell’s Kitchen.

It used to be her home.

It was never easy, living there, knowing what was hiding in the darkness. But she had made it her home and she had liked it.

Now though, the thought of going back only brings out fear and sadness, a touch of bitterness too, and the overwhelming need to scream, scream at the top of her lungs and never stop.

*

Days pass.

Snow melts and the roads are a disgusting mess of slush, oil, gravel and mud. Karen carries a rag everywhere to dry Frankie’s paws before getting inside, to the despair of her dog who seems very happy to be dirty and greasy, thank you very much.

Gil asks Ann out and she says yes, of course she says yes. Their first date is at the diner and Karen observes them from afar. They’re cute and shy and ridiculously, completely in love with each other already. She guesses it’s bound to happen when you’ve been hovering around each other since high school (according to Debbie, who’s also watching with a steaming cup of coffee in her hands).

Alicia, who’s always planning one thing or another for the school with Joan and who still calls Frank “homeboy” when talking about him with Karen, announces her new pregnancy and Debbie throws a party at the diner. Practically the whole town turns up, a few people from neighboring towns too, Henry and Jay among them. Alicia cries a bit and blames it on the hormones. Her husband Riley, also known as the softest deputy of the county and who cried at every chapter of Little Dorrit, cries too and blames the alcohol. They fool absolutely no one.

Karen watches them all, this community, this huge family who adopted her without asking questions, despite having God only knows how many of them for her. She mingles a bit but mainly stays on the side, making sure the buffet table isn’t running out of any of the dishes prepared for the occasion, going in the crowd only to top off people’s drinks.

She tells Debbie and Greg she’ll take care of cleaning and closing after people have left. Debbie gives her a concerned look but doesn’t protest. Maybe she has figured out that Karen needs to stay busy by now.

Her phone starts vibrating in the middle of the party. She fetches it from her back pocket and checks the caller id—it’s Frank. There’s not a lot of people who have her number, even less that aren’t at the party, so it’s not a total surprise, but she still feels a small thrill under her ribcage. He hasn’t called her in a couple of days, texts only, as he was never available when she wasn’t working.

She steps out of the dinner and onto the terrace at the back of the building as she accepts the call.

“Frank?”

“Hey, Karen.”

He doesn’t sound injured or dying or anxious. It’s always the first thing she checks when she gets him on the phone. His voice is soft and warm in her ear and her lips stretch into a smile without consciously meaning to.

He asks her for some news. She leans on the terrace railway and talks about the party, how happy Alicia and Riley are, how Debbie is on her way to get really tipsy really fast. His chuckle is a low rumble on the other side of the line, a comforting sound, and she wishes more than anything that he was there with her tonight.

“How are things going in New York?” she finally asks. He’s been gone a week and a half now.

“Actually that’s why I called.”

“Yeah?” She doesn’t let her voice wavers, despite the fact that she’s practically certain that he’s calling to say that he has to stay longer, that he won’t make it back before a month, two, six, ever.

“Yeah, I’m driving back tomorrow.”

The smile that splits her face at that moment is so big he can probably hear it from all the way across the country.

“I’ll be home in three days,” he adds.

It makes it even more real to her. An actual date. A countdown.

Home, he said.

“We’ll be waiting,” she says, emotion strangling her voice just a bit, but not enough for her to be embarrassed about it. There’s not a lot she’s embarrassed about when it comes to Frank, to be honest.

The door to the terrace slides. It’s Greg, coming out to have a smoke.

“Frank?” he mouths to her, pointing at the phone. She nods. He grins. “Tell him I say hi,” he mouths again.

She chuckles. “Greg says hi,” she says into the phone.

“’s he as drunk as you said Debbie was?” Frank asks, sounding like he’s smiling.

She observes Greg, who walked to the other side of the terrace to give her some privacy and also not asphyxiate her with his cigarette. He’s looking up at the sky. When she looks up too, the stars are so numerous and so bright she can’t even make out constellations.

It’s one of the things that stunned Karen the most the first few weeks she was here. Something she was used to in Vermont. Something she had forgotten during her time in New York. Stars and constellation and the Milky Way arm barring the sky.

“I can’t say,” she answers. “He’s smoking and looking at the stars.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“No stars in New York?” she asks, despite knowing the answer will be.

“Nope,” he says, popping the p exaggeratedly. “Alright, go and enjoy the party. See you in three days.”

“See you then.”

I’ll be home, he said.

Chapter Text

Karen gets pictures from Frank’s return trip in reverse order than two weeks ago. She smiles wider at each new one and puts imaginary pins along his route in her mental map of the country.

Debbie and Greg don’t comment on her almost febrile state the whole three days it takes to Frank to get home. They give her glances and knowing smiles, but refrain from teasing her. Knowing them, it must take them some superhuman efforts.

Frankie is more excitable than usual, as if he tunes in to her mood. She goes out of her way to try and tire him, but without Frank’s morning runs, Frankie is still full of energy after spending hours playing with Karen or with Henry’s dogs.

She can barely sleep the night after he tells her he’s crossed into South Dakota. It means he’ll be there the next day, and she’s practically vibrating out of her skin.

The next morning finds her awake before her alarm even rings. There is no point in rushing through her routine, but she does it all the same, Frankie yipping happily at her ankles, tail wagging, tongue lolling. There’s no indication as to when Frank will arrive back in town and yet the two of them are acting as if he’ll be here as soon as they reach the diner.

Karen doesn’t quite remember when was the last time she was this impatient for a thing to happen, when was the last time she felt like she had the right to even allow herself to experience true happiness.

Frankie bounces ahead of her on the sidewalk, turning every few feet to check on her.

They’re so early that they arrive before Greg. Karen starts the coffeemakers and prepares the rest of the room as the coffee drips slowly in the pots. Frankie doesn’t stick to imitating a rug on the floor this morning, he follows her among the tables, zig-zagging between the chairs, bumping into her legs playfully. She hears the back door opening and closing, followed by heavy steps.

“Hey, kiddo!” comes Greg’s voice from the kitchen, quickly followed by the man himself appearing in the kitchen threshold. “You’re early today.”

Frankie rushes to go greet Greg, who crouches to rub the dog and let him lick his face. Karen lets them wrestle on the floor between the kitchen and the main room to pour the freshly brewed coffee into two mugs. She perches on the bar stool behind the register with her mug and puts the second one on the end of the counter for Greg, once he’s tired of being pinned to the floor by sixty pounds of fur and drool and puppy love.

The puppy greetings out of the way, Greg sits at the counter and thanks Karen for the coffee.

“So? Any particular reason you arrived before me?”

Karen shrugs. “Woke up, couldn’t go back to sleep.”

Greg leans across the counter. “You okay? I mean… ‘S it bad ‘couldn’t sleep’ or good ‘couldn’t sleep’?”

She gives him a smile she hopes is reassuring. “I’m fine, Greg.”

He frowns a little, and he’s thinking and focused so hard on her she almost expect to see cogs working inside his skull.

“Wait,” he says, his face smoothing back to normal, “isn’t Frank due to be back today?”

She pushes her hair back, and upon noticing that her cup is empty, she turns to grab the coffeepot. “Uh yeah,” she says, aiming for a detached attitude. She turns back to a grinning Greg and raises the coffeepot. “More coffee?” she asks.

“Sure, kiddo,” he answers in a knowing tone. She isn’t fooling him and he is making sure she knows it.

It’s a regular morning, with regular customers. Karen serves the coffee, takes the orders, laughs with a deputy, argues with Alicia about The Crucible but concedes she hasn't read it since high school, brings pancakes and eggs and sausages and bacon and toasts to the tables, let Frankie eats a bit of ham that fell to the floor. Debbie arrives around eleven, just before the lunch rush, hugs Karen, pets Frankie, kisses Greg.

Karen doesn’t jump every time the bell above the door jingle, her head doesn’t whip out towards the door nor does her heart beat faster. Absolutely not.

She doesn’t check her phone, doesn’t take it out of her bag. She knows she’ll be tempted to call him if it was in her pocket.

The lunch rush leaves them drained. Karen prepares some fresh coffee while Debbie sits at the register, waiting for Greg to bring them their lunch.

The three of them sit at the counter, Debbie on one side and Karen and Greg on the other, enjoying the lull of the early afternoon. Karen stretches her legs and rolls her ankles, stiff and heavy from having been running on her feet all morning.

“We should hire someone to help me in the kitchen,” Greg says around a mouthful of BLT. “Not for the entire day, just lunch.”

Debbie nods, scrapping the bottom of her bowl of soup with her spoon. “I’ll see if we can manage it and pay them more than minimum wage. Give you a raise too, Rose.”

“Hm?” Karen drops her sandwich in her plate. “No, Debbie, I’m fine, I don’t need it.”

“Pssh, non sense. How are you gonna move to a bigger place if you don’t earn more money?” Debbie says sternly.

Karen stares at her. “A bigger place?”

“Well yeah, your place is tiny for two people and a dog.”

She can feel her eyebrows nearly reach her hairline. “Two people?”

Debbie gives her a flat look and Greg ducks down his head with a smile, seemingly very amused by the whole situation.

“You and Frank. Boy’s gonna live with you now, right?”

Karen chokes on air. “Uh, we haven’t talked about it? Actually we’ve never talked about being housemates?”

Debbie rolls her eyes, muttering “housemates” under her breath. She takes a sip of her coffee. “You are both hopeless,” she states and then stands up to clear their plates.

Karen frowns but before she can open her mouth and do a repeat of her “Frank and I are just friends thank you very much” speech, Greg puts up a hand and shakes his head. Debbie disappears in the kitchen without glancing back.

“Don’t try it, kiddo,” Greg says. “Even you have to admit that it’d make sense, Frank moving in with you. He was practically living with you already before he left.”

Karen snorts and tilts her head. “And how would you know that?”

“Ruth.”

She huffs. Of course, Ruth from the motel would keep track of the people staying in (or out) and then spread any gossip she could get across town.

“Just because he’s been staying over a few times, it doesn’t mean we should live together. Maybe he’s the kind of guy that leaves his dirty socks in the bathroom and next thing you know we’re strangling each other over who used the last of the toothpaste.”

She doesn’t believe a word she’s saying. Greg doesn’t seem convinced either.

“The guy was military. No way he’s leaving dirty socks everywhere.”

“That’s what you take out of this conversation?”

“I can be as deliberately obtuse and stubborn as you, kid.” He gives her a grin. She sees his hand coming to late to duck and can’t avoid him ruffling her hair, her ponytail getting even more undone than before. She tries to get away, but his other arm wraps around her shoulder and keeps her in place. They’re both laughing and the few remaining patrons are cheering on them. She finally manages to free herself of his hold and swats his hand away. Greg is laughing and retreating back to the kitchen but not before she throws a balled up napkin at his head and scores.

“Good aim,” comes a familiar voice from behind her.

She turns on her heels. Frank is looking at her from his crouch on the floor where he’s petting an ecstatic Frankie. She must have been too busy playfighting Greg to hear the bell.

“A girl’s gotta know how to defend herself,” she says, slightly out of breath and trying to straighten up.

Frank smirks. “With a napkin?”

She rolls her eyes and tugs on her hair tie. “Shut up,” she mutters as she smooths her hair back and ties it up on top of her head. A couple of strands escapes immediately. They're lighter than before and Karen wonders distantly if she should dye her hair again or let the last of her shitty hairdyes fade for good.

Frank gets back on his feet and crosses the distance between them, hugging her with no hesitation. There’s no lingering, or emotions spilling out between them this time. She steps back and takes a second to observe him. No bruise. No cut. The beard is shorter. Satisfied, she jerks her head toward the pots behind the counter.

“Coffee?”

“Always.”

She slips behind the counter and he sits in front of her, removing his hat and rubbing at his hair. It’s shorter too. She fills up a mug and slides it to him.

“How was the trip?”

Frank scrunches up his nose. “Saw Murdock.”

“Oh boy.”

He chuckles. “Nah, ‘t’was fine. He was at Nelson’s place when I came by for your stuff. Already put it at your place, by the way.”

“What, no driving straight here without sleeping?” she teases.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he grumbles but he’s smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

She leans against the back counter. “No punching Matt either, then?” She motions at his face and at the clear absence of bruises on it.

“Nope. Pretty sure Choirboy wanted to tho.”

Karen clicks her tongue and looks down, crosses her arms in front of her. “Pretty sure the guy always wants to punch something anyway.”

“Not wrong. Looked like he wanted to tear my eyes out when I said I was gonna stay here with you.”

She looks up. “You told him?”

“He was being all sanctimonious and shit and he pissed me off.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Frank clears his throat and rubs at the back of her neck. “He didn’t understand why I was taking your stuff. He said I was dangerous to be around, that I should leave you alone, that you should come back to New York where he could protect you.” A vein is throbbing at his temple. He grinds his jaw. “As if—as if you were his thing, like he had the goddamn right to decide for you. So yeah. I told him I was driving back here and staying. With you.”

“I bet that went well.”

He raises a shoulder and brings his cup to his lip. “He punched the wall and left,” he says before taking a sip.

She snorts. “Don’t look so smug about it.”

He smiles at her from behind the porcelain. The look she gives him is definitely fond and she doesn’t care who knows it.

“You hungry? Eggs, bacon, sourdough toast?”

“Way to make a guy feel predictable,” he laughs.

“You’re a creature of habits, Frank, admit it,” she says, already heading to the kitchen.

“Only if I can kidnap Frankie this afternoon,” he calls after her.

She waves a hand. “Sure, he missed you.” So did I, goes unsaid.

In the kitchen, Greg is already flipping three eggs on the stove, the bacon sizzling next to it.

“Your boy is back, then?” Debbie asks from where she’s loading the dishwasher and looking too focused on it to appear natural. Karen wouldn’t put it past them to have been stuck next to the door, doing their best to eavesdrop on her conversation with Frank.

“Yep.”

“Good.”

Greg passes her the plate a few minutes later with a wink. She rolls her eyes but gives him a smile anyway before exiting the kitchen.

She puts the plate in front of Frank. “Here you go. Enjoy.”

She leaves him to his meal to serve a couple of tables. There isn’t a lot of people at this time of the day and she’s grateful for that. As soon as the news of Frank being back hits the rest of the town, the gossip mill will be reactivated at full speed.

“So what’s your plan this time?” she asks as she gets back behind the counter.

“Find a place, find a job, get a dog?” he says, his mouth half full. She snorts.

“You’re welcome to crash on my couch in the meantime. Nightmare or no nightmare,” she adds deliberately and gives him a stern look to drive her point home.

“Yeah?” He’s giving her his corner-of-the-lip smile, that smile that feels like it’s only meant for her, like a secret known only by the two of them.

“Yeah.” She thinks about what Debbie said and takes a big breath. Then she jumps. “Actually, Debbie said we should find a bigger place.”

He frowns a little, his smile still here but fixed, like he doesn’t quite understand what she’s saying. “We?”

“As in you and me, living together. House sharing.”

His mouth twists and his private smile turns into a full blown one. “Damn lady, no dinner and a movie first?”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh please, with all the takeout and movies at my place? We’re way past that.”

He opens his mouth but she throws a sugar packet at his head. He catches it, the bastard. “Don’t be an asshole,” she warns.

He raises his hands in surrender and leans forward, crossing his arms on the counter, his face serious once again. “So that’s what Debbie said, uh? What’s your thoughts on that then?”

Karen gets closer and steals his mug, sipping a bit of the black unsweetened coffee. He doesn’t even protest, just keeps on staring at her with an amused look.

“We could get a house. It’d be nice to have a backyard for Frankie. Get another dog. Henry will love us forever if we adopt Bear. I think it’d be fine,” she says, somewhat contemplative. “Except if you think we’re gonna end up killing each other over some stupid shit cause we’re both stubborn assholes?”

“Keep stealing my coffee and it might happen, yeah,” he says, gently taking the mug back from her. “Speaking of stealing, isn’t that mine?” he asks, looking pointedly at the flannel he left at her place and that she’s been wearing more or less every day since he left.

She straightens up. “Not anymore.”

“If we do end up living together, you gonna take all of my flannels and hoodies?”

She grabs the coffeepot and pretends to think about it. “Probably, yeah,” she says, slipping from behind the counter to go see if anyone needs a refill.

“Don’t suppose I have a choice?”

“Nope.”

“Can’t wait,” Frank grumbles, but there’s no animosity behind it. In fact, Karen would almost call his tone fond.

She taps his shoulder as she walks behind him and leaves to make her round of coffee refills.

As soon as she’s at the table furthest away from the counter, Debbie and Greg jump out of the kitchen like two devils out of their boxes and pounce on Frank. From where she stands, Karen can’t see Frank’s face, only hear his amused thank you when Debbie excitedly welcomes him back then leans close to tell him something Karen can’t hear.

Theodora stops her with a hand on her arm when she walks by the knitting ladies’ table.

“How long is he stayin’ this time?” Theodora asks her in the special voice all old ladies seem to develop and master to exchange gossip as if it was anti-government conspiracies.

“Uh, well, he’s here for good this time,” Karen replies and the old lady immediately beams at her. “You now have all the time in the world to argue about The Tenants of Wildfell Hall.”

“Splendid. People need to know about Anne Brontë more,” Theodora says in a definite tone.

“What about Jane Eyre? Have you folks read it yet?” one of the other knitting ladies asks. Karen is pretty sure her name is Millie, but she isn’t one of the regulars, so she can’t say for sure.

Next to her, Theodora rolls her eyes.

“Jane Eyre is like hearing Carolyn talk about her marriage with Leonard.”

“It was romantic!” Might-be-Millie protests.

“It was bullshit, that’s what it was,” Theodora says dryly, pointing her knitting needles at her friend.

“It’s called passion, Theo.”

“And that’s why you ain’t invited to book club, Millie.”

Karen laughs. “Ladies, come on.”

“Speaking of passion and romance,” another woman—Dorothy—starts. “How is it going with Tall Dark and Handsome over there?”

The entire table of 60 years old and older ladies, until then only giggling at their conversations or glancing up between two rows of purls and whatnots, turns towards Karen, who smiles as innocently as she can. She has literally faced Wilson Fisk and refused his offer for tea before looking at him right in the eyes and spatting at him in cold blood how she had killed his best friend. She can face half a dozen of sexagenarians. Maybe.

“What do you mean, Dort?” She hopes Frank isn’t looking her way. He has always been able to read right through her bullshit. “It has always gone great.”

Theodora purses her lips. “Are you still trying to pretend you kids are just ‘good friends’ then?” She says in such a sarcastic tone, Karen almost expects her to do air quotes with her fingers.

“Yes, two adults can be just good friends. Now, does any one of you want to order something or need a refill?”

Frank stays a bit over an hour, at the counter. He nods every time Karen raises the coffee pot in a silent question, so she keeps his mug full and he drinks it all. She’s pretty sure his blood is more coffee than hemoglobin at this point. A few people greet him and he salutes them back, adopting an easy smile, asking about how it’s going. Karen can see it’s an act, the line of his shoulders always staying just this side of tense, the smile not reaching his eyes totally—tiny details lost to others but not to her. Karen is an observant person, always was, but most importantly, she has seen him relaxed, on her couch, cuddling with Frankie and eating takeout in front of a terrible movie or another.

He leaves with Frankie and the promise of taking care of dinner.

The rest of the afternoon passes in a whirlwind of questions about Frank. If he’s back, how long he’s staying this time, what he’s going to do as a job, if he’s going to move in with her, where he was. No stone is left undisturbed.

Alex and Martin even ask if Frank would consider joining the police because a bunch of their current deputies is retiring soon. Karen almost chokes on air. Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, once the most wanted man in New York—maybe even the country—becoming a Montana deputy. She can’t wait to see his face when she’ll tell him.

Greg dismisses her early in the evening. He might say he’s doing it because he can close on his own and because she deserves the extra rest, but Karen knows it’s because Frank is back. She doesn’t even try to argue—what’s the point? She does want to be at home watching a bad movie with Frank and her dog curled against her rather than close the diner.

The smell of homecooked food permeates the air in the staircase of her building. Her stomach growls. She really hopes Frank has the takeout ready. She climbs the stairs two by two and the smell only gets stronger as she approaches her door. She opens it cautiously. Frank is in her kitchen, cooking. Not just re-heating takeout like she’s been doing for the past six months, but actual, honest to God, cooking.

“Francis David Castiglione!” she says loudly. “What the fuck are you doing to my kitchen?”

Frank barely raises his head from where he’s chopping things on her kitchen island. She didn’t even know she had a chopping board. The knife is his by the look of it. But the board? A mystery— though she wouldn’t put it past him to have gone to the store and bought the things that her kitchen was lacking, i.e. everything.

“Using it,” he replies matter-of-factly. “You should try sometimes,” he adds and she rolls her eyes as she removes her jacket. “How do you know my full name?”

She hangs her jacket next to his and turns to give him a flat look. He glances up, sucking something off his thumb, and raises an eyebrow at her.

“I was in your legal team, Frank,” she says.

“Pretty sure Murdock doesn't know my full name.”

“Pretty sure he was too busy fighting off ninjas and fucking his ex to bother learning it,” she replies with the same tone, lying down on the couch and closing her eyes with her head pillowed on Frankie, who only sighs and gives her forehead a lick as an acknowledgment of her presence.

The rhythmic chopping of the knife stops.

“He fucked his ex while he was dating you?” Frank asks.

“I wouldn’t call our single date and a half dating,” she answers without opening her eyes. “But it certainly looked like it, yeah.”

Frank doesn't answer immediately.

“Shoulda punched him,” he grumbles eventually.

Karen laughs and the chopping resumes.

“It was during your trial,” she says. “Went over to his place to know why the fuck he was never in court and found a very pretty and mostly naked girl in his bed. Didn’t stick around to ask for details.”

“Fucking Christ,” Frank mutters, barely audible over the rhythmic chopping sounds.

She opens her eyes, curiosity getting the best of her. She turns on her side so she can see Frank in the kitchen.

“What are you cooking, by the way?”

He grabs an unidentified vegetable and starts slicing it.

“Stir-fry.”

“You went to the grocery store?”

“It's a thing people do, yeah.”

Karen snorts. Under her head, Frankie grunts. She apologizes for disturbing him by dropping a kiss on his head and gets up, joining Frank at the island. She's almost certain the knife he's using to prep his veggies is a military grade combat knife. He's fast and precise in his movements, slicing and dicing like one of those sushi chefs she's seen on TV during one of her long nights of insomnia.

She sits on a stool, drops her head on top of her arms and watches him work in silence.

“You okay?” he asks after a few minutes.

“Tired,” she mumbles against the fabric of her sweater. “People wouldn't stop asking me questions about you today.”

“About me? Why?”

“'Cause I'm the person who knows you best here?” She turns her head so she can glance up at him. He's frowning.

“I get that but why are they curious about me?”

She raises an eyebrow. “They don't see many new people in this town. Also you're part of the life I had before I came here and everyone is curious about my past. They don't ask but I know they want to.”

Frank puts down the knife. He grabs a towel and wipes his hands with it.

“What have you told them? 'bout you I mean?”

She sighs. “I have no family and I needed a fresh start away from bad memories. And it's the truth. Not the whole truth, but the truth anyway.”

He makes a movement as if he wants to add something to the conversation, but only takes the chopping board to transfer the vegetables into the pan. He grabs a spatula and starts stirring.

“So, what did they want to know 'bout me?” he asks.

“Where you were, if you're staying, how long you're staying, if you're looking for a job, that kind of stuff.”

He grunts.

“Are you gonna look for a job?”

He shrugs. “I guess. It'd look suspicious if I wasn't working, yeah? Can't really say where my money's coming from.”

“Alex and Martin asked me if you were interested in joining the sheriff’s department.”

Frank snorts. “Just imagine Madani's face if I did.”

Karen straightens up and stretches. Her back and neck pop satisfyingly.

“You've seen her? When you were in New York?” she asks.

“Nah. Left her a message telling her I was leaving town. Must be a relief for her.”

He adds spices that weren't in her kitchen when she left that morning to the vegetables.

“You know of any other place that's hiring?” he asks, picking a piece of carrots and popping it into his mouth. He scrunches up his nose, adds more spices, stirs again.

“Greg is talking about hiring a second cook for the lunch service,” she says, putting her chin on her hand. “And I think Ann mentioned something about the current PE teacher retiring. And there's always the construction site for the ski resort.”

Frank grunts. “Yeah, I think I'm done with construction.”

Karen tilts her head. “How so?”

He frowns. “I've never told you?”

“Apparently not.”

He huffs a laugh and rubs at his neck with the hand not stirring the vegetables.

“So uh, you remember that thing you covered, couple days before I found you? Murder Suicide in Little Italy you titled it.”

“Hm-mm.”

“It was me.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You know?”

Karen stares at him. “Once again, I was on your legal team. I spent days, nights, committing every single thing in your file to memory. Hell, I could recreate the Kitchen Irish massacre with my eyes closed! So yeah, I know you're the one who killed those guys in Little Italy. I just don't see how it's related to you being done with construction.”

Frank winces. Then he tells her about the kid he was working with, who shared his lunch with him after the three assholes ruined his. He tells her about the butchered robbery and how the assholes wanted to kill the kid in the concrete vat, how he was on site that night because he couldn't sleep and destroying his body knocking down wall after wall was better than seeing his wife being shot down over and over again. He tells her about killing the assholes with the mass and feeling nothing about it.

He tells her as he keeps on stirring the vegetables, his eyes on the pan, like hypnotized by the swirling motion of the spatula.

“David found me because of the Little Italy thing. Saw me on a camera. Recognized me.”

It says a lot about how her last couple of years have gone that Karen isn't that much fazed by Frank's revelations. At least there's no meat hook this time.

She makes a non-committal sound and goes to the fridge. It’s full for the first time since she moved in, almost six months ago.

“Makes sense,” she says as she grabs two bottles from behind a bag of lettuce. “Beer?”

She closes the fridge door and looks at him over her shoulder when he doesn’t answer. He’s staring at her with a mix of confusion and something else that she can’t quite place.

“Frank?”

He clears his throat and checks on the vegetables.

“Gotta say I was expecting something more than just ‘makes sense’ from you,” he says without looking up from the pan. “What happened to the killing ain’t the answer policy?”

She goes to him and hops on the counter. He takes the beer she’s holding out for him.

“I’m not the same person I was a year ago, Frank,” she says. She rolls her unopened bottle between her palms. It’d be easy to drop it, glass and beer all over the kitchen floor. It’s safer to put it down next to her, so she does and grabs the edge of the counter to stop her hands from fidgeting. “And I’m not talking just about my Gone Girl act.”

She’s staring at a speck of dirt on the floor but she sees Frank turning off the stove from the corner of her eye. He puts a lid on the pan and then stands next to her, leaning against the counter. Their shoulders are almost touching. She can feels the heat from his body radiating through his flannel.

“I saw Fisk play everyone,” she says. Her voice cracks. Her knuckles are white. “He became the fucking king of jail, he got the FBI eating out of his hand, he got out and back into his fucking penthouse and I’m pretty sure he corrupted 99% of the agents in charge of his so-called surveillance and everyone is just watching it happen and they’re not doing anything—” Her voice is furious but she forces herself to keep it low because otherwise, she’s going to scream and she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to stop once she starts. The ball of pent-up rage and anger that has been growing since her mother was first diagnosed with cancer is taking all the room inside her chest now and it feels like it could explode at any moment.

She looks up to the ceiling as she inhales slowly, trying to push the rage down. Frank puts a hand over her clenched fist. She exhales and drops her head down, consciously relaxes her locked knuckles.

“It just feels like all the work we’ve done to prove he’s a piece of shit and to put him in jail was for nothing. He’s out, he’s rebuilding his empire, he’s turning the public opinion and the fucking FBI is complicit in all of it. He even found a fake Daredevil to work for him.” She raises her head to look Frank in the eyes. “I would very much like to kill him,” she says and her voice doesn’t waver.

He doesn’t look surprised by her words, just like he wasn’t surprised by her pulling a gun on him after Reyes’ murder, just like he wasn’t when she’d confirmed it wasn’t her first rodeo with a gun. Far from it.

“’S that why he put a price on your head? ‘Cause you went to his penthouse to kill him?”

She has a brief laugh, void of all humor. “No. I’m not that hot-headed.” She sees a smile on the corner of his lips. “I knew the FBI was watching. I went there to confront him, to anger him enough that he’d show his true face, on camera.”

The hand on hers tightens. “He could’ve killed you.”

“I know. It didn’t seem important at the time.”

He makes a choking noise.

“Kar—”

“I was so angry, Frank,” she cuts him. “That bastard sent a homicidal maniac to my office. I saw him kill half of my colleagues. He had my informant murdered right next to me and I couldn’t get the blood out of my shirt. No one was doing a goddamn thing and I needed—I needed to do something. Anything. And I—I didn’t care and I—I—”

“Hey,” Frank says, and he’s now in front of her, his hands cupping her face, trying to get her to look at him in the eyes. Her vision blurs and tears roll down her cheeks as she closes her eyes.

Frank wipes the tears with his thumbs. “Hey, Karen? Karen, look at me, please.” His voice is so earnest, almost pleading. She opens her eyes. “You’re okay. I’m here.” She nods and focuses on breathing. He keeps fixing her with his intense eyes, rubbing at her skin with his thumbs and she’s reminded of the hotel kitchen, after the explosion, when he cupped her neck among the dust and debris.

She focuses on the sensation of his fingers on her skin, grounding herself with his presence and soon, her labored breathing calm down. He wraps his arms around her, holds her close to him.

“I killed one of his men,” she murmurs against his chest. “His assistant. He kidnapped me, threatened me. I took his gun and shot him seven times.” She says it dispassionately. She made her peace with Wesley. She doesn’t regret it, never has, never will. “I told Fisk because I needed something to taunt him with. That’s why he wants me dead.”

Frank holds tighter. “He’ll never had the chance. You’re safe. I promise.” She wraps her arms around his torso. “You’re safe,” he says again. She nods.

They eat sitting close together on the couch, Frankie curled up against Frank.

They don’t bother with a movie—neither she nor Frank could focus on a screen at the moment. When they’re done eating, they don’t move, just put the dirty plates on the coffee table and settle back against each other.

Karen isn’t ready to step away. She needs his presence, needs it to remember that as long as he’s there, she isn’t in any danger. He won’t allow it. She leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes.

“Have you thought about it,” she speaks up in the silence, “us sharing a house? Or a bigger apartment?”

She can feel Frank moving ever so slightly under her head, but he isn’t going away.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“I’d like that. Less risks of you getting into trouble if I can keep an eye on you at home,” he jokes. She chuckles. “And I wouldn’t have to sleep on a couch.”

She almost asks him if he wants to sleep in her bed tonight, with her. She wouldn’t mind sharing, having a presence with her in the darkness of her room that isn’t her dog—no matter how much she loves her dog. But she doesn’t ask.

She doesn’t ask, but in the end it doesn’t matter.

She goes to her bedroom, Frankie on her heels, and Frank takes the couch. Karen falls asleep to the sound of Frankie’s breathing and Frank’s light snoring.

When she wakes up a couple hours later, it’s still pitch black out. As she slowly regains consciousness, she becomes aware of three things: one, she’s parched, so she fumbles in the dark for the water bottle she keeps on her nightstand and drains it; two, Frankie isn’t on her bed anymore; and three, he’s crying in the living room.

She stands up on weak legs and drags herself into the next room, mentally preparing herself for having to go out to let Frankie relieve himself. Except that he’s not crying at the door at all. He’s sitting on the floor next to the couch, his face close to Frank’s, who’s visibly in the middle of a nightmare.

Karen hesitates. How are you supposed to wake up a traumatized vet and former vigilante with PTSD from a bad dream without endangering yourself?

She’s debating between calling his name, shaking his shoulder slightly, throwing a pillow at him and just sitting next to him and reading a book aloud when he jerks awake. Even in the dark, she can see how wild his eyes are, unfocused, seeing things that aren’t here. It only lasts a second. Then he sees her, and Frankie. He puts a hand on Frankie’s head and pets him until the crying stops.

“I woke you?” he asks in a hoarse voice.

“No. Heard him crying.”

Frank nods. Frankie licks his ear and nuzzles his neck.

“He’s not gonna leave you tonight,” Karen observes. She sighs. “Come on,” she says before her brain has the time to overthink it.

Frank raises his head back to her. “Uh?”

She jerks her head towards her bedroom. “C’mon I wanna go back to sleep and I can’t sleep without Frankie anymore. You’re not the only one with nightmares.”

She hopes her tone leaves no room for hesitation and she turns back into her bedroom. She slides under the covers and waits.

Not even two minutes pass before the other side of her mattress dips under Frank’s weight and Frankie jumps on top of the covers, lying down at their feet.

She turns on her other side. Frank is a dark silhouette next to her. “Comfortable?” she whispers.

She can barely see him incline his head towards her. “Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.”

She hears and feels him more than she sees him turn on his side, facing her, one arm under his pillow and the other bent between them. It feels natural, like he always belonged there.

“Thanks, Karen.”

She reaches over and takes the hand lying between them. “Thank you for being here.”

“Always.”

Chapter Text

Karen wakes up with Frankie curled up in front of her and Frank at her back, spooning her with an arm thrown over her waist. It’s the most comfortable and safe she’s felt in a long time and if there’s one thing she doesn’t want to do, it’s getting out of bed. She snoozes her phone alarm clock.

Frankie is warm and soft against her. He smells like home. He puts a paw against her cheek and sighs when she nuzzles his neck, but doesn’t open his eyes. He’s usually this close to her when he’s had to wake her up from a nightmare during the night. She doesn’t remember having some that night, but Frank is curled around her like he’s trying to shield her from something, so she doesn’t discard the nightmares entirely. She’ll have to ask him.

Her second alarm clock starts ringing and she stops it immediately. No need to wake up Frank. She turns on her back, careful not to disturb his arm around her and glances at him. His face is smashed into his pillow and his hair sticks in every direction. From what she can see, he’s serene, his traits smooth, his jaw slack and his brows relaxed. She would like nothing more than to go back to sleep against him.

She finally finds the courage to extract herself from her cocoon of warmth and lifts Frank’s arm just enough for her to slide from under it. Frankie immediately huffs from the loss of her body heat and shuffles closer to Frank, whose arm curls around the dog as soon as he’s close enough. Her heart melts a little at the sight.

Karen reluctantly leaves them and goes to make herself ready for the day.

She eats her breakfast with Greg, reading yesterday’s paper and checking out the job offers as well as the rental listings. Greg just munches on his toast, not looking much more awake than her.

“Wha’ kinda job ‘s he lookin’ for?” he asks after about ten minutes of silence.

She drains the rest of her coffee. “Anything really.”

“You lookin’ for a new place too?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “Not a lot of two bedrooms in my price range, though.”

“Two bedrooms?” Greg frowns.

“Yeah. Frank and me.”

“Yeah I know that. Why d’you need two bedrooms? I might be sleeping on my feet here, but don’t think I didn’t notice whose hoodie you wearin’, kiddo.”

Karen lowers her eyes to her chest. She is indeed wearing the hoodie Frank had on the previous day, but for once, it wasn’t intentional.

“Doesn’t mean anything,” she mutters.

“Whatever you say,” Greg says with a sleepy wink before lifting his mug. “Hey, does the boy cook?” he asks once half of his coffee is gone.

“He made stir-fry yesterday. Why?”

“’Think he might wanna help out for the lunch rush?”

“’s that an excuse to annoy him as much as you annoy me?”

Greg just laughs. He stands up, takes out a bandana from his back pocket and ties it up around his head.

“Alright, time to work, kiddo.”

Frank comes in with the first few other customers and sits at the counter while Frankie runs to Karen to greet her with dog breath and drool. She loves her dog, she really does.

“Slept well?” she asks Frank between two licks from Frankie.

“Yeah. Thanks. Didn’t hear you this morning.” His voice is still hoarse from sleep. Somehow it doesn’t sound like his Punisher voice, despite the roughness of it. No, his morning voice is low and gravelly, but there’s a softness to it, something that makes her think of lazy mornings having coffee in bed and staying in, letting the outside world do its dance and ignoring it under warm covers.

She sends Frankie on his way and stands up, washes her hands.

“You were both completely out of it,” she says while drying her hands on her apron.

She grabs the coffee pot and a mug.

“Coulda wake me. Walk here together,” Frank says behind the hand rubbing at his face.

She puts down the mug in front of him and fills it. “You looked like you needed the sleep.”

He smiles at her and lifts the mug, takes a sip of the burning hot black coffee swirling in it. He smacks his lips.

“I guess I did, uh?” he says witch a chuckle.

“Yeah. Hey, uh—” She clears her throat. “Did I get nightmares last night?” she asks in a low voice.

He frowns. “If you did you didn’t wake me. Why?”

“It’s just—I woke up with Frankie in my face, and that usually happens after a bad night.” She shrugs. “I don’t remember anything so I just wanted to check with you.”

“Yeah. Didn’t notice anything.” He glances around the room, his finger lightly tapping against the counter. “You good?” he asks, his gaze coming back to her.

“Yeah. Don’t worry.”

She scans the tables for a mug in need of a refill, but the deputies’ are still mostly full and it's Wednesday so Joan only drinks one because on Wednesday her dad is taking care of the kids. Karen pours a mug for herself and puts the pot back under the coffeemaker.

She slides the newspaper towards Frank along with the diner menu.

“What—”

“I’m giving you the menu so you don’t feel too predictable,” she says and he chuckles. She’s pretty sure he mumbles “smartass” but she chooses to ignore that and goes on. “And the newspaper so you can search for a house. I’ve started looking but the rentals aren’t cheap.”

He frowns. “You know money ain’t an issue.”

“I’m not going to make you pay for my part of the rent, Frank.”

Frank rolls his eyes. “I know that. I’m just sayin’ that if I gotta pay a bit more so we can have more space I’m okay with that. Maybe if I have my own closet, you won’t be able to steal all of my hoodies,” he adds with a pointed glance at her.

“Fat fucking chance,” she snorts.

He shrugs. “A guy gotta stay optimistic.”

She leaves to tend a table. When she comes back, he’s focused on the newspaper, menu discarded on the side.

“You know what you’re eating?”

“Yup.”

“Eggs and bacon?” she teases.

He huffs a laugh. “It’s cute that you think you’re funny.”

She swats his arm. “Be nice.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he grins. “Mushroom omelet, please.”

“Got it.”

She calls his order to the kitchen and comes back to him. She motions to the newspaper.

“Anything interesting?” she asks.

“Nope.”

A couple minutes later, Greg calls from the back.

“Don’t forget to tell him about the job,” he says as she takes the omelet.

“Why don’t you tell him?”

“’Cause there’s a bigger chance of him saying yes if it’s coming from you.”

Karen rolls her eyes and takes his order to Frank.

“So,” she starts as she puts down the plate in front of him. He looks up at her with a mix of concern and curiosity. “You thought about jobs yet?”

“No?”

“Greg has an offer but he’s too much of a pain in my ass to do it himself so I get to be the messenger.”

“I heard that!” Greg yells from the kitchen.

“That was the point!” she yells back.

Frank’s concerned look morphs into an amused smile.

“Alright, what’s the offer?”

“Second cook here, for the lunch rush, mostly.”

His eyes widen. “Why does he think I’m good for the job?”

Greg’s head pops out from the kitchen door.

“You know how to make pancakes?”

“Yeah?”

“Good ya hired!” Greg disappears back in the kitchen only to come back a few seconds later. “I mean you can think about it and all, but if you want it the job is yours.”

Frank looks a bit disoriented. He blinks a few times.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, a timid smile curling up the corner of his lips. “Thanks, Greg.”

Greg gestures with the spatula as if to say “it’s nothing” and goes back to the kitchen. Frank turns to Karen.

“’S that how you got hired?”

Karen shrugs. “Pretty much.”

Frank leaves with Frankie when the morning rush starts to go see Henry and the dogs at the shelter. She knows that Bear, the giant mutt that Frankie loves almost as much as he loves Frank, missed him a lot during those past two weeks. Henry has been sending her pictures of Bear looking especially miserable with captions like “when is Frank coming home??” and “Playing with Henry just ain’t the same”.

Sometimes Karen wonders how she manages to always become friends with drama queens.

“See you at home,” Frank says as he leaves bills on the counter—always more than necessary.

Debbie, who arrived a bit after 8, perks up at that and grins when Karen gives her the bills so she can put them in the register.

“Stayin’ with you, is he?”

“Yes. And before you hear it from your huge gossip of a husband,” she says a bit louder than necessary so Greg can hear from the kitchen, earning a smug laugh in return, “we’re also looking for a house to share.”

Debbie smiles bright and large at that.

“I knew he’d be more than okay with living with you.”

“I know you did.”

“Are you still just friends?”

“Yes we are.”

“So he’s sleeping on your couch?” Debbie frowns. “That can’t be comfortable.”

Karen knows it’s better if she doesn’t answer. No matter what she says, she’ll only feed the gossip mill.

“Did Greg ask him about working here?” Debbie asks.

“If you mean “Did Greg ask me to ask Frank about working here”, then yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He has to think about it.”

Debbie grins and pats Karen’s arm, as if she already knows Frank is going to say yes.

Her apartment is empty when she goes home after her shift. The place feels cold. She isn’t used to total emptiness anymore, Frankie having become her shadow in the past months. She sits down heavily on the couch. She removes her hair tie and rakes a hand through the strands. The dye is fading more each day, the shitty quality of it not resisting to the multiple washes a week she has to go through to keep her hair from smelling permanently like grease and bacon. Is there really a good reason for her to keep dying it? Would it even truly keep someone from recognizing her? It somehow feels easier to just keep dying it rather than waiting for the blond to grow back.

She drops her head against the backrest.

If she’s being honest with herself, she has no idea what she’s doing. She has always lived one day after another, a case after another, a story after another. Starting to think about planning something, about building a future always felt like tempting fate to come and fuck it all up—which it did, invariably, even without an invitation to do so.

She is technically missing. On the run from a powerful city mob boss. Living under a fake name. Deciding to move in with Frank definitely feels like blaring at the universe to make it all collapse and crumble.

She stares at the box containing the things Frank brought back from New York. She hasn’t moved it from where Frank left it, to the right of the front door, next to the bed Frankie never uses. She knows what’s in it, and yet it feels as if it belongs to someone else. She wonders why she told Frank to bring it back. Maybe because he offered to. Maybe because she wanted to pretend the Karen from New York wasn’t completely gone.

She walks over and kneels beside it. Inside she finds a scarf she thought was pretty casual—at least it was when she lived in New York—but would now be way too overdressed for her current life. It’s soft and warm, though, so not a total waste of space. There’s a few books, Kevin’s copy of Slaughterhouse Five annotated within an inch of its pages. She holds it close to her heart as she keeps on taking things out of the box: a small wooden chest with her sentimental value jewelry, an old band t-shirt, so worn out it’s almost see-through, an oversized sweater, her laptop.

She puts the books on the shelf next to her second-hand ones, Slaughterhouse Five closer to the framed picture of her family. The rest goes in her bedroom closet.

She wanders in her apartment, looking for something to do, to busy herself with so she doesn’t have to think. The plates in the drying rack next to the sink go into the cupboard, the cutlery into the drawer.

Maybe she should start preparing something for dinner. She texts Frank. Maybe Henry gave him enough lasagna to feed an army, as he usually does.

Do I start cooking something?

The answer is almost immediate.

I got it. Back in 20.

She puts her phone on the coffee table and flops down on the couch, at a loss as to what to do. She curses at herself. She used to live alone, had for many years and yet, there never was this sense of hopelessness, of being utterly lost, of floating in a space and feeling untethered, aimless. There was always a case to review, a story to write, always some work to get lost in. Now though, her work stops at the door of the diner. Sometimes it feels like her life does too.

She gets up to check her plants. She waters the ones who need it, cuts off dead leaves, turns them so all sides get some sun. The potted rose plant is showing the beginning of buds. It makes her smile.

Then she’s back to square one, so she fetches her laptop from where she’s stuffed it between two flannels, settles on the couch and opens it. There’s a post-it note stuck to the screen.

All clean! :) — DL

She smiles. Of course Frank would’ve brought it to Lieberman to make sure that no tracking device or malware has been placed there. Of course he would’ve made sure it’s safe for her to have it.

She boots it up and ignores her work folder to check Craigslist and other websites for a place to rent. The majority of the rental listings are for short-term, vacation houses closer to the ski resorts, obvious scams (Craigslist) or studios smaller than her own.

She puts it down on the coffee table and closes her eyes, just for a moment.

Karen wakes up to the smell of lasagna with a warm furry body snuggled against her. She opens her eyes slowly, her brain like mush and her eyelids like lead. Frank is in the kitchen, humming a song she doesn’t recognize, taking a dish out of the oven.

She decides getting up is too much work, so she wraps an arm around Frankie and curls up around him—that’s when she realizes there’s a blanket thrown over them.

“Morning, sunshine,” Frank says from the kitchen.

She pops her head up, just enough to see him walk over with a plate in each hand. He puts them down on the coffee table, goes back to the kitchen and comes back with cutlery and two bottles of beer, that he sets next to the plates.

He takes the end of the blanket and lifts her legs, sits down and puts them back down across his lap. Then he takes a plate and holds it to her.

“C’mon, food time.”

She grunts but scoots over in a sitting position and slides her feet under his thigh. Frankie huffs at the change and goes curl up in the armchair instead.

“Thanks,” Karen says as she takes the plate. “How’s Henry?”

“He’s good. Annoyed because Jay is working too much,” Frank replies. He uncaps the bottles and takes a swig from one. “He says we need to find a house with a big backyard.”

“Why?”

“’Cause we’re adopting Bear apparently.”

She laughs around a mouthful of lasagna.

“We got no say in the matter?”

“Nope.”

“Okay then.” She nudges him with her toes. “Pass me the beer?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She nudges him harder. “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me.” He laughs and gives her the second bottle. “Speaking of houses,” she starts again, “I still haven’t found anything, even on the internet,” she says and motions to her laptop with her beer. “Thanks for having Lieberman check it by the way.”

Frank hums, his mouth full. He swallows and takes a swig from his beer.

“Ever thought about buying?” he says. “More choices that way.”

Karen gives him a flat look. “Most of my money is on accounts I can’t access and I’m living on a waitress pay.”

Frank seems to think about it.

“I think I could help with that.”

She squints at him. “How?”

“Lieberman. He could have your money transferred to your new account without it being suspicious. The NYPD isn’t actually looking for you anyway, right?”

She sighs. “Yeah, I guess. Fisk might be, still.”

“I’ll call David. See what he can do.”

“Okay.”

He turns his attention back to his plate, but she can only push the food around. Buying is a way bigger deal than renting. It’s permanent. Definitive. It’s not tempting fate, it’s sending the invite with neon lights and a fanfare. It’s endangering everyone in town if Fisk ever finds out the truth.

“You okay?”

She raises her head from her plate. Frank is watching her with a frown.

“I—” she starts but doesn’t know how to put the proper words on any of her concerns. “Is it a good idea?” she finally says for a lack of better idea.

He puts down his plate on the table and turns to her.

“What do you mean?”

She sets her plate next to his, folds her legs under herself, rakes a hand through her hair. She doesn’t know how to explain anything. She used to be a writer and now she doesn’t seem to be able to find the words. Frank watches her patiently.

“Aren’t we putting the people of this town in danger?” she ends up asking. “What if Fisk finds me?”

Frank leans forward and covers her fidgeting hands with his own.

“What’s the alternative, Karen?” he asks softly, his thumbs rubbing circles in her skin. “Running away to another town? Becoming a hermit in the woods? Going back to New York?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’m just—I’m just terrified,” she says in a whisper. She sniffles. “I feel like everything is going too well, you know? Usually that’s when everything goes to shit and right now I’m just waiting for it to happen. I have this coil, tight inside my chest, and it’s ready to go off and—and there’s this voice in the back of my mind telling me that’s something terrible is coming—”

She’s cut off by a sob. She takes a big gulp of air and puffs her cheeks, exhales.

Frank tugs at her hands.

“Hey, come here. C’mon,” he murmurs.

She collapses against his chest, lets him hold her and rub her back. Frankie jumps from the armchair and comes close to them, puts his head on her knee and whines. She drops a hand to his fur, grounding herself with their combined presences.

“It’s okay,” Frank says into her hair. “They’re never gonna find us. You’re safe. We’re safe. I promise.”

He cradles the back of her head and keeps on murmuring to her.

She believes him.

*

They’re eating on each side of the counter the next day when Greg comes out of the kitchen and slides next to Karen. He leans over the counter to stares at Frank, who stops chewing his sandwich. He looks like a hamster with his eyes wide and his mouth half full like that.

“So Frank,” Greg says in his most serious voice. “You thought ‘bout my offer?”

Frank swallows. “You mean the offer you made through Rose?”

The napkin he’s wiping his mouth with doesn’t do a great job at hiding his smirk.

Greg rolls his eyes. “Yeah yeah whatever, just answer the question.”

Karen pours herself a fresh cup of coffee and pretends she isn’t dying to know.

“I have two questions. One,” Frank taps one index finger with the other. “What are the hours, and two—” He taps his middle finger. “Is the bandana the mandatory uniform?” he says, pointing at Greg’s head. “Not sure I could pull it off as well as you, but y’know, I can try.”

Greg snorts. “You a shithead you know that?”

Karen laughs.

“Yeah, it’s been said once or twice,” Frank grins.

“’S that mean you in?”

Frank’s eyes flick to her briefly before going back to Greg. “Yeah, yeah I’m in.”

Greg lets out a very enthusiastic “Hell yeah” that gets the entire diner to turn to them.

“Frank’s the new cook,” he explains and the place erupts in “congrats” and “good for you, man” and “does that mean you’re finally retiring”. That last one comes from the ninety-two year old man who only comes down twice a month because he lives up the mountains and “that road is a pain in the ass to drive.”

“I’m only fifty-eight, you antique motherfucker,” is Greg’s eloquent answer as he goes back to the kitchen.

Frank laughs and there are thin lines marking the corner of his eyes. Never in her wildest dreams has Karen thought she would one day see him like that in a public place. Carefree. Happy almost.

As if sensing her mood, he looks up at her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m glad you decided to say yes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. They’re gonna turn it into a whole thing, but I’m glad.”

Frank raises an eyebrow, a corner of his lip curling up. “They?”

“The town.”

He hums. “I was more thinking ‘bout how you gonna boss me around,” he says as he lifts his mug to his lips.

“As if that was new.”

*

The town does make a thing about it.

Theodora throws out a remark about how it must be nice to work together. Riley finds the entire thing extremely romantic but Riley finds everything romantic, addicted to rom-com as he is—which is not the first thing you’d expect from a 6’2” Black deputy with biceps the size of Karen’s thighs. Debbie gives them knowing glances and self-satisfied smiles every time they joke or exchange banter more than usual in the kitchen. Karen is pretty sure she saw her high-five Greg about them at some point.

Ann, Alicia and Joan basically squeal in delight the first time they see Frank in the kitchen. When Karen goes to their table to take their orders, they’re more interested in knowing everything about that recent development and what it means about her relationship with Frank than in actually ordering food. Karen can explain Ann’s behavior with the fact that she’s in her honeymoon phase with Gil and Alicia is pumped full of hormones (and she’s also married to Riley so there’s that), but Joan has no excuse. She’s just her regular unapologetic self.

“I could just stay in this diner all day while munching on pop-corn and I’d be happy,” she says. “This is better than anything I could find on Netflix.”

Alicia and Ann nod solemnly at her words.

“It’s like having our own sitcom here,” Ann says.

Karen laughs. “Oh please, you and Gil are way more sitcom material than me and Frank would ever be.”

Alicia snorts. “Honey, you are in so much denial.”

“I’m going to switch you to decaf,” Karen threatens.

“Don’t you dare. I can only have one cup a day, I have to make it count!”

“Then stop projecting your fantasies on me and tell me what the fuck you wanna eat.”

Eventually, Frank working part-time at the diner just becomes a normal thing. People still throw them looks like they know something she and Frank don’t, but otherwise they act as if Frank has always been part of their weird little diner family.

The fear inside Karen finally settles. Frank is here. His clothes are inside her closet and his shoes are next to hers. They’re going through every real estate ads, sitting in a booth or at the counter between during their breaks. Frank and Greg sass the hell out of each other and Debbie tries to pretend to be annoyed with them because they are “children, the both of them”, but it makes everyone laugh and Frankie is yapping and jumping in Karen’s legs because that’s what he does every time he senses her being happy. He does it a lot these days.

Chapter Text

When she was still living in Vermont, Karen loathed her day to day life, the routine, the fact that people had known her since she was in diapers, the fact that everyone knew each other. She hated the small town, the lack of privacy.

In New York, she had loved being one anonymous face among millions. She changed apartments too often to grow ties with her neighbors, had been just another secretary at different firms.

Until Union Allied and Daniel dead in her living room, that is.

She had thought it would be different with Matt and Foggy. She had truly believed that they could be their own family, that she had found the place she belonged to, but Matt’s lies and the trial disaster and the end of the firm had shown her how fragile and delusional that idea was. Ellison and the Bulletin was still a wound too raw for her to really think about. In the end, it had just confirmed what she already knew at the time: she was destined to be alone, forever drifting from one place to another without bonds or tethers.

And yet a small town in Montana and Frank Castle of all people had just blown that vision of her life to pieces.

She enjoys her life in this tiny mountain town where literally everyone knows her, her dog, the fact that Frank lives at her place now and that they’re looking to buy a house.

She has a routine and it’s comforting. She has breakfast with Greg and Debbie while Frank runs with Frankie. Alex is among the first customers, always reading the newspaper out loud in his 50s radio announcer’s voice. He leaves the paper on the counter when he has to go to work so she can check the house listings with Frank when he comes in with the dog half an hour before taking his lunch shift. They go to the shelter at least once a week, sometimes twice. Henry asks them every time if they have found a house so they can take Bear home with them. Frank goes to group two nights a week and he calls Curtis every weekend.

Some afternoons, he stays at the diner after his shift so he can argue with Theodora about books. When Karen goes to their table to refill Frank’s mug, Theodora usually leans towards her as if she’s gonna share a secret, but she only says something among the line of “your boy is stubborn as a mule,” to which Karen laughs and answers “nothing new here.” Frank pretends to be annoyed, but he pays for Theodora’s tea and pie anyway and kisses her cheek when she leaves.

Some nights, Frank sleeps in her bed, some nights on the couch. Most nights are started on the couch and finished in the bed, because of his nightmares, or hers, or theirs. Frankie is the first one to alert them, to wake them up before the nightmares get too bad and to bring them together so they can shield each other from the mountain of trauma they are both carrying. They don’t really talk about it. It’s just a thing that happens and that became part of their lives, just like saving each other back in New York, having takeout and movie nights, or working together at the diner did.

They visit a few houses but not one strikes them as theirs. Karen doesn’t really mind if it takes them months to find their house. She likes her apartment and how they fit in it. She likes the entire corner of the living room being taken over by her plants. There’s more of them now. Every once in a while, when he comes back from group or from Henry’s, Frank buys some more. There’s a Monstera Deliciosa growing so fast Karen is pretty sure it’s planning to take over the world—or at least her window. Their bookshelf is filling up fast and while she hasn’t come around to print them yet, Karen has a couple of pictures she plans on framing and hanging on her walls. She hasn’t asked Frank if he would like to hang the picture of his family yet. But she will.

They made the place theirs and the only reason Karen actually finds to move out is to get something bigger to adopt more dogs. Otherwise, she likes it. It’s a home in a way no place has ever felt like since her mother died.

The entire town acts like it’s its job to find them a house, though. Debbie’s work, no doubt. The woman who makes all the desserts for the diner tells them about the cabin her late brother left her but has no idea what to do with, so Frank goes to check it out one afternoon.

“How do you feel about living with no running water and no electricity? And definitely no contact with the outside world in case of snow?” he asks when he comes back to the diner after driving there.

Karen doesn’t even raise her head from where she’s writing the tab for a table. “Thanks but no thanks.”

“Yeah, figured as much.”

Next is Riley’s neighbor’s cousin’s—or something like that—old vacation house, but it’s in the shadow of the mountains almost all day. Karen has lived in dark apartments the entire time she stayed in New York. She didn’t become an entirely new (or almost) person to live in the dark again.

They see a house that is nice enough, but the backyard is literally the size of a stamp. Frank finds black mold behind the wood paneling of another one. Dorothy’s husband tells them about a house for sale in their neighborhood but the electricity grid is a safety hazard and Karen isn’t ready to die in a house fire or electrocuted while taking a shower, thank you very much.

“You need to find something soon,” Debbie says one afternoon as she refills their mugs. Karen and Frank are eating a slice of cherry pie at the counter, needing some comfort after yet another disappointment.

Karen is wary of what Debbie has in mind at the moment but she bites anyway. “Why?” she asks.

“Poor boy here can’t spend his life sleeping on your couch,” Debbie says.

Frank frowns and glances at Karen who shakes her head imperceptibly. Debbie does not need to know about their sleeping arrangements. She pretty much thinks they’re married already without adding that piece of information to the rest.

“Couch’s not so bad,” Frank says.

Debbie rolls her eyes but leaves them be.

*

Karen is alone at the counter after a slow Tuesday lunch hour when Alicia comes sauntering through the doors. She sits at the counter in front of Karen and beams up at her.

Karen chuckles. “Hi Alicia. What’s up?”

“I am throwing a baby shower!”

“That’s—nice?”

Karen has never been to a baby shower. She didn’t have any extended family in Vermont and since then, she has never been close enough to a woman to be invited to one. But she imagines it must be nice for the future mom and Alicia looks ecstatic, so she smiles and tries to be excited for her.

“I know!” Alicia says, all but clapping her hands in delight. “It’s Saturday!” Before Karen can think to an appropriate answer, Alicia adds: “You’re invited! I’ve already cleared your schedule with Debbie, she’ll get Frank to cover for your morning shift as long as he doesn’t make the coffee himself. We’re doing this at our place and it starts at 11 am. You can carpool with Ann and Joan.”

She stands up from the stool and leans over the counter to kiss Karen’s cheek. Then she saunters back to the doors, leaving Karen confused behind her.

“What the fuck,” Karen mumbles to herself, watching Alicia go.

“Language,” Greg says behind her.

She jumps. “Jesus fuck, Greg, wear a goddamn bell!”

He’s too busy laughing his ass off to chastise her about swearing again—not that she’d pay attention to that anyway since he swears like a sailor. When he’s finally sobered up, he motions at her.

“What got you so freaked out?” he asks.

“Alicia just invited me to her baby shower after apparently conspiring with your wife to make sure I’ll be there.”

Greg shrugs, apparently not surprised to learn that Debbie has been meddling in someone else’s business.

“Where’s the problem? Beside, you know, deciding without you and all that.”

“I’ve never been to a baby shower before. I have no idea what to get her. And when am I supposed to go buy a gift? It’s not like I’m gonna find anything at our local Home Depot.”

Greg sighs. “You know what? Take the rest of the afternoon. Stop panicking. Steal Frank’s truck and go to the big city, do some shopping.”

Karen snorts. “If I steal his truck, he’s going to murder me.”

Greg laughs loudly. “Oh please, you’re the only person that would ever get away with it, that guy is a harmless puppy when it comes to you.”

She rolls her eyes, but can’t help the tiny smile stretching her lips. “Are you serious about giving me my afternoon?”

“Yes. Now go get your future nibling a cool gift.”

“My nibling?” she frowns.

“You’re gonna be Aunt Rose to that kid, everybody knows it,” he replies as he goes back to the kitchen.

The walk from the diner back to her place is a blur of hearing “Aunt Rose” in her head over and over again, trying to remember anything she can from what she heard of baby showers, circling back to “Aunt Rose.” She’s only distantly aware of Frankie trotting next to her as she powerwalks home.

Frank is on the couch skyping with the Liebermans when she arrives to her apartment. He raises his head from the screen of her laptop, frowning, probably wondering why she’s back hours earlier than usual with a panting Frankie in tow.

“I need your truck,” she says, slightly out of breath from walking so fast.

She can see his eyes scanning her for any potential injuries or signs of distress.

“Everything alright?” he asks, dropping a hand to Frankie’s head when the dog goes to him.

“Yeah, I just—I need to borrow your truck.”

He turns back to the screen. “Leo, I’m gonna have to call you back, sweetheart, alright? You take care.”

He closes the laptop after Leo’s reply (“Bye Pete” and Karen still thinks that Pete is the name that fits him the least).

“What’s going on?” he says as he gets to his feet.

“I need to go buy a gift for Alicia’s and Riley’s kid.”

Frank frowns. “It’s not her birthday yet?”

Karen gestures impatiently. “Not Julia. The yet to be born one. Alicia invited me to her baby shower. It’s Saturday,” she says as she goes to the kitchen.

She needs some very black coffee. Frank follows her.

“Okay. Why do you look so panicked?”

“I’ve never been to a baby shower,” she says as she grabs the half empty pot. The coffee has long gone cold but she doesn’t care much about that at the moment. She pours it into a mug. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to get as a gift—” She sticks the mug into the microwave. Frank scrunches up his nose. “—not to mention that I’m terrible with kids anyway and Greg just called me Aunt Rose! As if I could ever be a good influence on that kid! Or any kid for that matter! I’m a fucking fugitive!”

“Karen—”

“And what are people talking about at baby showers? Kids? Weddings?” She know that she’s flailing and panicking about a throwaway remark from Greg of all people, but she just can’t stop her brain at the moment.

“Karen—”

“I don’t know anything about that shit and what if they ask me about my life? What am I supposed to say?”

“Karen,” Frank repeats, putting his hands on her shoulders.

“What?!”

“Breathe.”

She does, keeps her eyes on Frank’s, takes deep breaths and tries to remember how it feels to not be panicking the hell out.

“Thank you,” she says once her heart rate has gone down and she can think beyond “Aunt Rose.”

“You faced a suicide bomber without flinching, Karen. A baby shower ain’t gonna be the end of you.”

She snorts and punches him in the chest. “Don’t mock me.”

“Never.”

She squints at him. There’s no smirk, no cocked eyebrow. His eyes are as serious as ever. She allows herself to step closer to him with a sigh and rests her forehead against his shoulder. He wraps his arms around her.

“By the way, Alicia said that Debbie is going to make you cover for my morning shift,” she mumbles into his sweater.

He snorts. “Nice to know I have a say in this.”

“I didn’t either.”

The beeping of the microwave startles her.

“I got this,” Frank says. He steps away from her and gently nudges her toward the couch.

She sits down heavily. Frankie jumps next to her and puts his head on her lap. Frank comes back and sits on the coffee table. He holds her mug out to her. She takes it gratefully.

“Wanna talk about that freak out you just had?” Frank asks.

“Not really?”

“Okay. What do you want to do?”

She stares at her coffee. She knows what she would like to do, but it’s selfish, it will probably hurt him more than anything else, bring back painful memories and if there’s one thing she won’t allow, it’s bringing him pain.

“Karen?” he asks again, putting a hand on her knee.

“I—Did—did Maria had baby showers?”

He swallows and drops his gaze to where his fingers trace patterns on the rough denim of her jeans.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” she says softly.

He shakes his head. “It’s okay. I want to talk about them, you know. I just—I don’t know how.”

She covers his hand with one of hers.

“She didn’t have one for Lisa,” he says, his voice cracking just a bit on his daughter’s name. “The priority was organizing the wedding at the time. I don’t know if I ever—if I ever told you that but Maria and I—we’d only been together for three months when she got pregnant. I asked her to marry me as soon as she told me. So the wedding—it was, it was rushed, yeah? She wanted the perfect wedding, with the perfect white dress, and all that. I’d have given her everything she’d ever asked, you know. After that, she just didn’t want to go through organizing anything else for at least two years she said.”

Karen puts down her mug and her second hand joins the first around his.

“What about Junior?” she asks, biting her lower lip.

“I wasn’t—I wasn’t there. Didn’t even get a leave when Maria was in her last month. I came back when he was already a couple of months old. He was—he was scared of me.”

“I’m sorry, Frank.”

He sniffles, rubs at his stubble with his free hand. “Yeah. Me too.” He clears his throat. “I can help you find a gift. I know what kinda shit babies need.”

She chuckles wetly. “Okay then.”

The drive to the nearest baby store takes them a bit over an hour. Halfway there, Karen gets a text from Debbie listing the stuff that has already been bought or claimed.

“That woman is a damn psychic,” she mumbles as she reads the text.

“What does she say?” Frank asks, his eyes glancing quickly at her before going back to the road.

“Basically Alicia and Riley still have stuff from when Julia was a baby but the clothes have gone through her entire extended family’s kids. And stuffed animals are always appreciated.” She puts her phone back in her pocket. “Do you think they’ll have stuffed pitbulls?” she asks after a few minutes.

Frank chuckles.

The store is full of pastel colors and pregnant women and Karen couldn’t feel more out of place, even more so with Frank dressed in all black and combat boots next to her. All he is lacking is his skull vest.

“Is it too late to pretend I have tuberculosis so I don’t go?” Karen asks him. She feels lost and out of her depth and she doesn’t know where to go to find the things she came here to buy and why is there only blue or pink in that damn store? Are gender neutral baby clothes an unknown thing in Montana?

“Yeah it is,” he says with a smirk. “Now stop being so dramatic and help me find the toy section. That place is a damn maze.”

“Hi!” says a too high and too enthusiastic voice behind them. They turn towards it. A young salesclerk with strawberry blond hair and a too big smile quickly seizes them up before continuing. “I’m Leelah, how can I help you today?”

Karen is ready to tell her politely but firmly than they can manage on their own but Frank glances at her as if to say “I got this.” She gives him a slight nod and he turns his most charming smile towards Leelah, whose smile turns a bit more genuine at the sight. Karen almost snorts, but she can’t really blame the girl.

“Thank you, ma’am. We are looking for the toy section actually.”

“Oh boy or girl?” Leelah asks before taking a quick look at Karen. “Or maybe it’s too soon to know? You’re really not showing! Congratulations!”

Karen splutters and chokes on nothing. “Not for—It’s not for me,” she manages to say. “A friend is having her baby shower this Saturday.”

It doesn’t dampen the girl’s enthusiasm. “Sure! Follow me!”

She promptly turns on her heels and marches through the aisle. They follow a few feet behind her. Karen sees the smirk on Frank’s lips.

“Not a word,” she says tightly.

“You’re really not showing, tho.”

“I will shove this blanket down your throat, Castle.”

There is something to say about seeing Frank Castle laughing freely in a baby store, with a green, yellow and purple baby blanket he just took from her thrown over his shoulder.

They exit the store an hour later with a bag full of baby clothes of various sizes and colors, a stuffed wolf and a stuffed shark. There was no stuffed pitbull, much to Karen’s dismay. She’ll have to try on the internet.

*

Saturday arrives way too quickly for Karen’s taste. She hasn’t had another freak out about the baby shower, but she’s still feeling queasy about it.

“You’re gonna be with your friends, it’ll be fine,” Frank says to her as he cuts up roasted pieces of chicken on the Friday night, Frankie looking up at him with high hopes.

It stops Karen in her salad tossing.

She likes Alicia and Joan and Ann. She just hadn’t thought about them as her friends truly until now. She thinks of them as a unit made of three people, and she’s just hovering next to them. She still feels like she’s supposed to stay on the outside of things, live her life as an observant in this town rather than an active member. Yes, Greg and Debbie basically adopted her, Theodora made a sweater for Frankie, Dorothy is this close to pinching her cheek in greetings and Joan regularly complains about her teenage daughter while sitting at the counter, but Karen still feels like she could just as easily not be there and nothing would change for the town. Which is obviously stupid now that she thinks about it—Greg did say that she was going to be Aunt Rose after all.

“Karen?” Frank calls.

“I’m fine.”

“Mh-mm. You wanna try that again?”

She glances at him over her shoulder. He’s leaning against the counter, arms crossed, an expectant look on his face and the chicken divided between their two plates.

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “I’m not good at the friendship thing.”

“Our friendship looks pretty good to me.”

“It’s different,” she says.

She turns back to the salad and tosses it some more.

“Is it?” he asks behind her.

“You know what I mean.”

Frank snorts. “Not really.”

She turns fully to him this time. “C’mon, Frank. How many friendship start with one person shooting at another with a shotgun in a hospital? How many friendship involve meetings in prison, using your friend as bait—” To his credit, Frank winces at that. “—t-boning their car with your truck to save them from a drug lord, dismantling a fucking bomb without talking or any of the shit we’ve done? We are not normal people, Frank.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“And you know who I really am. They don’t.”

It’s Frank’s turn to roll his eyes. “Stop freaking out for two seconds and listen to me.” He gets closer to her. “Listen to me, okay? Fake name or not, you’re still you. You’re with these people every day in the diner and you’re great with them, alright? They love you. They might know you as Rose but they love you. You could tell them who you really are and they’d just be more protective of you. Greg—He—fuck, he talks about you like you’re his own daughter and he’s so goddamn proud of you, yeah?” Karen feels tears coming at his words. She knows how much Greg and Debbie care about her, but knowing and hearing it from another person are two different things entirely. “And Debbie, she—she goddamn threatened me to kill me if I was ever hurting you on the first day she met me.”

Karen’s laugh sounds a bit like a sob too. “She did,” she says.

“Yeah. I don’t know what’s happening in your goddamn thick skull, Page, but get this into it: you’re gonna be fine. ‘Kay?” She nods. “Didn’t hear ya.”

“Okay,” she replies with a smile.

“Good.”

The next morning, Frank leaves early for the diner and takes Frankie with him.

Ann calls Karen at 10 o’clock.

“We’re on our way,” Ann greets her brightly. “We’ll be at your place in 15!”

Karen looks down at the pj pants she’s still wearing.

“I thought it was at 11?” she asks. Alicia and Riley don’t live so far away from downtown that they’ll need forty-five minutes to get there.

“Joan is a punctuality freak.” Karen can hear Joan protest on the other end. “See you in a bit!”

Ann hangs up before Karen can say that she definitely won’t be ready in fifteen minutes. For starter, she has no idea what one is supposed to wear at a baby shower. Is it a casual event? A semi-formal event? Is she expected to dress up?

A shower sounds like a good starting point.

She’s barely put on a pair of jeans and a tank top when there’s a knock at the door. She curses under her breath and goes to let her friends in. They’re both dressed pretty casually. Karen feels a knot relaxes in her chest. She’s got this.

“Sorry, I’m almost ready,” she says as Joan and Ann step inside.

“No worries, we’re definitely not late,” Ann smirks.

“I like to be prepared,” Joan replies.

Karen runs back to her bedroom. “Make yourself at home, I just need two minutes,” she calls.

She throws on a flannel (hers or Frank’s, she has no idea), actually takes the time to braid her hair instead of throwing it in a top knot and goes back to the living room to put on her boots.

Ann is inspecting her bookshelf while Joan is sitting on the couch. Karen tries not to visibly wince when Ann picks up the picture of her family.

“Is this your family?” Ann asks.

Karen swallows. “Was.” She can see Ann’s face starting to crumple. “It’s okay,” she says quickly, not wanting to hear another “I’m sorry.” Joan looks concerned like only a mother can be. “It was a long time ago.”

It was but it still feels like it all happened just a few years ago. Ann puts the picture back. Karen finishes tying up her boots and tries to ignore the way they are looking at her.

“Alright,” she says. She stands up and goes to grab her jacket. “Ready.”

“No Frankie?” Joan asks.

“Nope, Frank took him. Said that if he had to “wake up stupid early” to cover my shift, he gets to have the dog.”

“Fair.”

Karen shrugs. “I don’t know why he’s complaining, he’s always up early anyway.”

A look passes between Joan and Ann but Karen doesn’t have the strength to try to figure out what it means.

They pile up into Joan’s Chrysler minivan, Joan and Ann in the front, Karen in the back. Bruce Springsteen’s voice fills the car when Joan turns on the ignition.

But I'll wait for you

And if I should fall behind

Wait for me

Karen knows that song. Something must show on her face, because Joan glances at her in the rearview mirror.

“You like the Boss, Rose?” she asks.

“Uh, yeah sure, who doesn’t?” Karen replies, attempting for nonchalant.

Truth is, the only reason she knows this song is because it was Frank’s and Maria’s wedding’s first dance. It was an odd detail to be written in Frank’s file. Karen had noticed it during one of the long nights spent working for his trial, then looked it up on Youtube once home.

She had cried the first time. And the second. And the third. She had blamed it on being exhausted and stressed out from the trial.

She has never talked to Frank about the song. Sometimes she wonders if he still listens to Springsteen, if it was his idea or Maria’s. The only time she has ever seen him listening to music was in Ben’s car with the Shining Star tape. She’s not sure she can count it as him listening to music. It’s hard, somehow, to picture him focused on music. His finger is almost always tapping a staccato rhythm that never seems to match anything and it would feel strange, unnatural, if it stopped and aligned itself on an existing song—or maybe Frank has his own song inside of him.

When they get to Alicia’s and Riley’s house, the driveway is already filled with cars.

“How many people are supposed to be here?” Karen asks as she grabs her gift bags from the trunk.

“Well,” Ann shrugs. “Basically all the women of Alicia’s extended family are here so we’ll at least be… twenty? Twenty-five?”

“Holy shit,” Karen breathes.

“You weren’t expecting that,” Joan says.

“Understatement of the year.”

“You’ll be fine, you deal with us assholes every day at the diner.”

Karen takes a few deep breaths and follows them to the front door, trying to remember Frank’s words from the night before.

The baby shower is a whirlwind of cakes, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, women going back and forth between the kitchen, the living room and the garden and Karen is never going to remember all of their names. She feels a little bad for it. At the same time, twenty women were just introduced to her in less than five minutes. She can cut herself some slack.

Alicia makes Karen sit and tells her not to move and try to pull the same shit as the previous party.

“You’re not here to be a waitress, Rose,” are her words. So Karen tries her best and socializes.

A woman that might be Alicia’s aunt or maybe her older cousin tells her that Alicia talks about the diner a lot, and that it made her want to go into town more but at the moment the roads between the reservation and the town are in too bad a shape to make the trip too often.

One of the teenagers decides to tell Karen everything she knows about rodeo, repeating several times that she’ll be the youngest woman ever to win a rodeo champion title.

Karen remembers her journalism roots and gets people to tell their stories instead of telling hers. It works, for the most part of the day.

And then her phone vibrates in her pocket.

It’s a message from Henry. When she opens it, she’s greeted by a picture of Frank, sitting on the floor with his back against Bear, Frankie sitting next to him watching intently as Frank feeds a tiny pup with a bottle.

Karen just feels everything in her melt at the sight.

“Holy shit,” Ann whispers above her shoulder.

Karen doesn’t jump at the sudden intrusion, too focused on the picture to care.

“What the fuck?! How is this allowed?” Joan asks.

Alicia, until then talking animatedly with one of her aunts and two women looking a lot like twins, turns to them.

“What’s going on?”

“Henry just sent the most adorable picture to Karen,” Ann says.

Alicia hurries to them. She melts at the sight of the picture.

“Oh no. Oooooh no, you can’t show me this. I’m pregnant, every emotion is stronger, oh my god, this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m going to explode from cuteness.”

Karen’s phone goes from hands to hands as every woman in the room fawn over the picture.

“I thought he was working your shift today?” Joan, ever practical, asks.

“Just the morning,” Karen says. “He often goes to the shelter to help, but I didn’t know there was a new litter of pups.”

Her phone comes back to her. The picture is just as heart melting as before.

“Your husband is a very handsome man,” says one of Alicia’s aunts—Laura or Lara. Something in L.

Karen can feel the blood rising in her cheeks. “He’s, uh, he’s actually not my husband.”

“Boyfriend, then, who cares.”

“They’re just friends,” Ann says with enough sarcasm that her thoughts on the matter are clear to everyone. “They spends their days mooning at each other, but they’re just friends, Laura. They’re not dating.”

“Why not?!”

Alicia sighs. “That’s the million dollars question.”

“I’m right here,” Karen says.

Joan pats her arms. “We know, honey. But seriously, what is wrong with you two?”

And there are so many things that Karen wants to say to that. She wants to tell them that they’re both damaged, that Frank has a wife and children, and he’ll never get to see them again, to hug them again, and that he’s hurting so much he wakes up screaming himself raw. She wants to say that he loves his family and that she’ll never try and take their place. She wants to say that everyone she ever cared about died or abandoned her or got hurt and that she can’t lose him and she won’t take any risk. She’s never been surrounded by this many women in her life and she wants to unload but she won’t. She can’t. It’s not her place to tell Frank’s story and they can’t know who she was, what she’s done. She can’t put them in danger by telling them the truth.

So she shrugs. “Nothing wrong with friendship,” she says.

It seems to mellow them.

“I’m gonna ask Henry to send me all the puppy pictures,” Alicia says.

“Or you could go there with Riley and overdose on the absolute cuteness of your husband cuddling puppies,” Laura says.

“Can’t do that, he’ll want to bring them all home.”

Several women nod.

“Your husband is soft,” says one of the twins.

Alicia’s smile makes her entire face glow. “He really is.”

Joan stands up. “Alright, enough lovey-dovey bullshit, who wants more cake?”

Karen comes home exhausted, feeling like she could burst at any moment from all the cakes and pastries and cupcakes she ate, but also content and at peace.

Frank is sitting at the island, her laptop open in front of him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

“How was it?”

“I ate my weight in sugar and you made twenty five women’s hearts melt.”

Karen sprawls on the couch, careful not to wake up Frankie who’s rolled on himself on the end cushion.

“...what?”

When she looks up, Frank’s eyebrows are nearly at his hairline and he has his most “what the hell, Karen” face.

She grabs her phone and tosses it at Frank.

“Check out Henry’s last message,” she says. She adjusts her position in the couch, lying down more to attempt to relieve her poor stomach.

He’s silent for a couple of seconds.

“I didn’t know he took a picture,” he finally says. “So… That’s heart-melting?”

“Ridiculously cute, yeah.”

“Because of the pup?”

“That. Also I think it’s the “big manly man being soft with a tiny and fragile creature.” I don’t know, it does something to us.”

The face is back. “Big manly man?”

Karen snorts. “Oh please, you know what you look like.”

He scrunches up his nose.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Alicia’s cousin is going to be the youngest female rodeo champion and will destroy anyone and anything that’ll get in her way.”

“Good to know.”

“Rodeo is really big around here.”

Frank nods. “Kinda get that impression, yeah.”

“Wanna try?”

He scoffs. “Pass. I’m too old for that shit.”

Karen snorts.

“Alright, Grandpa. What’s new for you except puppies?”

Frank shrugs. “Greg sang a fucking Disney song the entire shift and it got stuck in my head for the rest of the day.”

“Which one?”

He looks at her like he wants to say “do I look like I know the title of a goddamn Disney song, Page?”, and, okay, he has a point.

She smiles and motions at the laptop.

“House hunting?”

“Mh-mm.”

“Anything good?”

He makes a “eh, maybe” face. “C’mere.”

She groans. The island is a mere few feet away but moving from the couch feels like an impossible task.

“You come here,” she says, channeling her best puppy eyes.

Frank rolls his eyes with a huff of laughter, but grabs the laptop and joins her anyway. He nudges her legs. She lifts them just long enough for him to sit and drops them on his lap. He sets the computer on top of her shins, angles it so she can see the screen from a slouched down position and goes through the numerous open tabs, offering a few comments on each house he bookmarked.

“So the plan is to spend the rest of our lives visiting houses, then?” she asks after the tenth or so tab.

“Pretty much.”

Chapter Text

The house hunt amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

“I’m tempted to find an abandoned house and remodel it entirely,” Frank says one evening. They decided to eat dinner at the diner, too exhausted after their shifts and then visiting houses to bother cooking for themselves that night.

“Even if David manages to get me my money back, I’m not rich, Frank,” Karen says.

Frank sets down his cup of coffee with a sigh. “I know you want us to split everything 50-50, but honestly, Lieberman gave me more money than I know what to do with.”

“Frank,” she starts.

“How about that,” he says, “if we find a house that needs lots of work, we split the cost of the house itself, and I cover the remodeling. And you come help me when you’re not working here.”

She smiles. “You just want a chance to boss me around, don’t you?”

He chuckles. “Yeah, it’d be nice for a change.” He takes a bite of pie. “So? Whatcha think?”

She swirls her coffee, leaning her chin on her hand.

“It’s a lot,” she says after a moment. “But at the same time, every house we saw needed work, so why not? Go big or go home, right? Or both, I guess, in our case.”

He smiles, and his eyes are crinkling at the corners.

“Alright.” He gets up.

She raises her eyebrows, confused. He walks over to the counter and asks Debbie for a pen, then grabs a napkin next to the register and comes back to their booth. He sets the napkin flat in front of him and uncaps the pen with his teeth.

“What are we thinking?” he says around the pen cap.

She frowns. “What do you mean?” She reaches out and takes the pen cap from between his lips before he swallows and chokes on it. She’s not sure she can do the Heimlich on him. Too much abs and other muscles in the way.

He huffs a laugh and explains. “We’re gonna build whatever we want. So. Your dream house, what is it?”

She bites her lips. She never really had the luxury of indulging in such dreams, and now Frank makes it sound attainable, easy even.

“I don’t know? A nice backyard for the dogs I guess?” He writes it down on the napkin. “Hmm, lots of light for the plants.” She thinks of it room by room. “The kitchen is your thing so I’ll let you deal with that.”

He snorts. “Fair,” he says. “C’mon, what else?”

“I don’t know. Room for more books? At the rate we’re going we’re gonna be able to open a library by the end of the year.”

He chuckles. “Do we go full on rich assholes with fireplace in a room we call the library?”

“With dark wood paneling and leather armchairs? Dead bear as a rug?”

Frank grimaces. “It sounds like every higher up’s office I’ve ever been in.”

Debbie approaches their table with a smile.

“What are you kids planning?” she asks as she refills their cups.

“Frank decided that we were gonna remodel an entire house,” Karen says in a dry tone.

Debbie’s eyebrows nearly meet her hairline.

“Damn, son. You know anything about that kinda crap?”

Frank shrugs one shoulder. “Kinda, yeah.”

Debbie whistles. “Good for you. That’s a whole lotta troubles you’re getting into. That ain’t no joke.”

“I know. Couple of guys from the vet group said they could help.”

“You talked about it with them already?” Karen asks.

“Well yeah, I didn’t pull the idea outta my ass, y’know. Didn’t want to tell you without having a plan.”

“Smart,” Debbie comments. “Want me to ask around about old houses?”

Karen and Frank exchange a look.

“Sure,” Frank says.

“I’ll let you know then,” Debbie replies and leaves for another table.

They spend the rest of the afternoon filling up the napkin with ideas. When they get home, the napkin goes on the fridge door and they start looking at real estate websites immediately.

They check out dozens of places in various states of disrepair. Karen starts to think it’s a lost cause, but Martin mentions an old farmhouse just out on the edge of town. He doesn’t know who owns it, never saw it inhabited or open in his entire life, but he says it’s pretty nice for an abandoned house.

Karen doesn’t how bad a shape a house abandoned for thirty-five years or so is going to be in, but Frank and she drive there, following the instructions given by Martin.

The house isn’t crumbling on itself, which is a relief. It looks like a late 19^th, early 20^th century farmhouse, with used-to-be-white wood paneling and a front porch, two stories high and what might be an attic trying to pass as a third story. Karen likes it immediately.

“Look,” Frank says. “There’s a chimney.” He points at the roof.

“We’re going for the rich assholes library then.”

He chuckles and parks the truck in the alley leading to the house. There’s no fence around the house, no “No trespassing” or “Keep out” signs on the door. The name on the letterbox is completely faded. Frank inspects the stairs, then the pillars and planks of the front porch and steps on it carefully, putting his weight on it slowly. When it doesn’t give up under him, he walks the length of it, testing one plank after another. Then he signals to her that it’s safe to come up.

The door opens easily. They explore the first floor, empty save for a table and a few chairs. There’s no clue as to who used to live there but Karen feels the thrill she used to feel when she was starting a new story, thinking of the places she could go to find information, the people she could interview. Frank examines the stairs before they get to the second floor, which is also empty, as well as the attic, populated only by a colony of spiders if the number of webs is any indication.

The house is spacious, with a veranda at the back, attached to what might have been a living room, or a dining room, with a beautiful view on the mountains. Karen can already imagine it filled with plants.

After over an hour of going from room to room, examining the floors, the walls, the ceiling, looking for one massive issue or another, they go back to the front porch and sits on the stairs, watching the sun set behind the mountains.

“I love it,” Karen says.

“Yeah, me too,” Frank replies. “Gotta find its owners tho.”

She bumps their shoulders together. “Lemme take care of it. Finding shit is my thing.”

He huffs a laugh. “I remember.”

*

Karen starts by visiting the County Recorder Office at the town hall. She’s greeted by a middle-aged cheerful woman with the roundest salt-and-pepper afro Karen has ever seen. She asks her about the farmhouse property deeds. The clerk shows her a computer.

“You can do your own research on this database. We only started digitizing our files so it’ll only tell you the filing number of what you’re looking for and I can retrieve it for you.”

Karen thanks her and settles at the ancient looking computer. The keyboard clacks loudly when she types. It reminds her of the family computer they had in Vermont, with its CRT monitor and the tower making as much noise as a small rocket being launched into space.

She enters what she thinks is the address for the farmhouse but nothing turns up, so she tries with the name of the road in front of it, then the road on its side. One house appears, but it isn’t the right one.

Karen goes back to the front desk.

“You found the number you wanted?”

“Actually no, but maybe you could help me out? I’m interested in the farmhouse on the north edge of the town? The one a little bit away from the crossroad with the row of trees next to it?”

“Oh yes, I see the one you mean! Unfortunately, our records only go as far back as 75. We lost everything during the flood of ‘74, you see. We had the inhabitants and the local historians to help us rebuild as much as we could, but no one gave us information on this house. I’m really sorry.”

Karen asks Debbie and Greg next, to no avail, so she mentions the house when she serves the knitting ladies.

“An old man lived there when I was a kid,” Dorothy says. “He was a recluse, didn’t come in town a lot. I think he died in the late 60s? Or the early 70s. It was definitely before the flood.”

“Oh yes, I remember,” another lady adds. “Didn’t teenagers pretend the house was haunted to scare themselves?”

“That we did,” Theodora says. “We would dare each other to go inside at night.”

“But the old man, he didn’t have any family? No one claimed the house afterwards?” Karen asks.

“A truck came after he died and cleared the house,” Dorothy answers. “But that’s all. The old man lived alone. There were rumors that his wife had been a nurse during the war and that she’d died during a bombing in Belgium or something. Sorry I can’t help you more, darling.”

“You helped plenty, don’t worry.”

She excitedly shares what she found with Frank when she gets home that evening. He only closes his book and frowns at her in return.

“I could be wrong but it doesn’t sound like we know more than yesterday,” he says in an uncertain tone.

“Well, we know it hasn’t been lived in since 1975,” she says as she removes her jacket and boots. She hangs the jacket on the rack, kicks her boots against the wall and turns to Frank, untying her hair at the same time. “Tomorrow I’m going to the library, see if they have any archived newspapers from the 60s,” she adds and sits down on the floor so she can give Frankie all the love he deserves.

Frank puts his book on the coffee table. “Why?”

“So I can look at their obituaries and find our mystery old man’s name,” she replies as she raises her head to avoid being French kissed by her pitbull while talking.

“How are you gonna know it’s him?”

She pets Frankie one last time and stands up. “Instinct,” she says, wriggling her eyebrows, and he laughs.

“I trust you then,” he says, raising his hands in the universal surrender gesture. “You taking a shower or we eating first?”

“Are you hungry?”

“I can wait.”

Karen rushes through her shower and slips on a pair of sweatpants (Frank's) and a flannel (formerly Frank's, currently hers). When she emerges from the bathroom, Frank is reheating their leftovers with Frankie sitting full of hopes at his feet.

Karen takes out two plates and settles at the kitchen island.

“What's new on your end?” she asks.

Frank turns off the stove and brings the casserole of green beans to the island. “According to the county sheriff's records, no murder has ever taken place on the property,” he says as he fills up their plates.

“Well, that's a start.”

He sits on the other side of the island and stabs a piece of green bean.

“Also Lieberman called. He took care of your money. Should be on your account.”

“Great,” she says with her mouth full. “Thanks.”

“You gonna buy your own clothes so you stop stealing mine now?” he says with a grin.

She rolls her eyes. “Nah, I have to save it, I let some crazy guy talk me into renovating an abandoned house.”

“Hm, seems like a great guy.”

“The worst.”

Fortunately for Karen, the library archives have always been kept in the attic of the building and thus survived the flood of ‘74.

Unfortunately, the library hasn't digitized anything, so she calls Debbie to warn her that her half-day off just transformed into a full day off. Debbie just laughs at her misfortune and wishes her good luck. Frank joins her in the library's attic, sitting down between cardboard boxes.

“Debbie told me I’d be more useful here and gave me my day,” he says when she looks at him in surprise.

“You left Frankie at the diner?”

“Yep. What's the system?” he asks as he looks at the dozens of boxes around them.

“One box at a time starting with 1960. Check the obituaries. We're looking for a man, widowed, no kid. Maybe survived by a distant relative. Interesting stuff on the right, the rest on the left. Once we're done with a box, we regroup. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The attic smells like dust and old books and clouds of dust fly around them every time they take out a new stack of newspapers out of the boxes.

As it turns out, not many widower without kids died in the 60s. Some obituaries include the address of the deceased for the wake, but the address for the farmhouse doesn't pop up.

At the end of the day, they're covered in dust and smell like mold, but they have a list of five potential previous owners.

They walk to the diner. Frankie barks when he sees them through the windows, but when they get inside, he doesn’t approach them, eyeing them warily, taking tentative sniffs instead.

“You two look like you spent the day in my grand-mother's basement,” Greg says as a greeting.

“Close enough,” Frank replies.

They sit down in a booth and order coffee and eggs. Karen unfolds the paper where she wrote the names.

“Now what?” Frank says.

“Now, we investigate them,” she says with a smile.

He leans against the backrest, tilts his head on the side. “You're really enjoying this, ain'tcha?”

“What, digging stuff up? Yeah,” she says. “Reminds me off—well, you know,” she adds with a sigh. “Before.”

Greg brings them their food and coffee. Frank watches him go back to the kitchen before speaking up again.

“You miss it? Being a reporter?”

Karen looks to the side, where the setting sun paints the mountains and the sky in shades of gold, pink and mauve.

“I miss the excitement of finding things. The adrenaline rush you have when you make the connections. I miss Ellison sometimes.”

She pauses, takes a sip of her coffee.

“But?” Frank prompts.

She takes a deep breath. “I thought by exposing people, exposing all the ugliness of the city, things would change, you know? People would start caring, people would start standing up for what's fair, for justice.” She huffs and she can only feels resentment and bitterness. “But people just don't care.” She stabs a piece of bacon with her fork. “And those who do just end up crushed by the entire system. So no, I don't miss my old life.”

Frank nods without a word, like he's taking in everything she just said.

“So how does it work? The names? Who are we asking?” is what he asks next and she's relieved that they're going away from the dangerous territory that is her relationship with her previous job.

“We start with the eldest people in town. And we proceed by elimination. Simple.”

As it turns out, it’s not so simple.

They are able to cross one name off the list because the guy’s great-nephew inherited his house and lives in it.

The four others were apparently loners who never connected with the rest of the town and no one remembers them or where they lived.

After days of fruitless searches, Karen is just ready to go and squat in the house without asking anything else to anyone ever again.

“Why did I say it was going to be simple again?” she moans from the couch, sprawled over the backrest with her feet on the coffee table, carefully avoiding the few empty bottles of beer sitting there.

“How about we take a break from all this, uh?” Frank comes back from the kitchen with two fresh bottles and hands her one. “Feet off the table,” he says as he sits down next to her.

She grumbles but removes her feet from the table, only to put them on his lap instead. He side eyes her as he drinks from his beer but says nothing and puts his free hand on her ankle.

“So what do we do during our break?” she asks when Frank doesn’t elaborate on his idea. She’s a little tipsy and ready to hear any terrible ideas he might have.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. What do you usually do when you’re on vacation?”

She has a brief humorless laugh. “The last time I had a break I was 11 and my main activity was playing Uno with my brother in our room because my mother was too sick to drive us around and my father was busy running the diner into the ground.” She snorts. “That fucking bastard,” she mutters. She takes a swig of beer before looking up at Frank. “You know what he told me? After what happened at the Bulletin? ‘Cause, yeah, I called him! What a stupid fucking idea, right? But I did. I called him and I told him I wanted to come to Vermont for a while because I was terrified of staying in the city.” She takes another swig. “You know what that fucker said? “I’m afraid it’s not a good time.” No shit it’s not a good time, my entire office was just slaughtered and I ended up with my witness’s blood and brains all over me!”

“Karen—”

“And it’s not even the worse thing!” she cries out, pretending she doesn’t see the concern on his face, pretending she doesn’t realize how angry and loud she’s being at the very moment. “Wanna know what was the worse thing? When I said that I was trying to do the right thing but fucked it up he said “that’s what you do, Karen.” Who the fuck say that to their kid? I’m the only family he has left and, yes, I’m responsible for 50% of that situation, but still. He’s still supposed to be my father,” she finishes in a much quieter voice. She might have underestimated her degree of tipsiness.

Frank squeezes her ankle. “Karen—”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak the fuck out.” She sniffles.

“It’s fine.” He clears his throat. “You know, if there’s one thing I learned from the support group, it’s that, uh, you gotta—you gotta talk about the bad stuff, yeah? ‘Cause otherwise, if you keep it all inside and push it down and down and down, then it just—it just kinda festers, you know?”

Karen nods wordlessly.

“So don’t you ever apologize for talking about that stuff with me. I’m here for you, okay?”

She swallows the tears rising in her throat. “Okay,” she says in a tiny strangled voice.

“Okay,” he repeats. “C’mere.”

She scouts closer to him, her legs entirely over his lap and drops her head against his shoulder. He wraps an arm around her.

“Now I don’t say we gotta talk about any of what you just said right now, but when you’ll want to I’ll listen.”

She grips the hand he has on her knee. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

She stays in his arms and calm slowly washes over her.

“I knew it was a terrible idea to call him,” she murmurs in the silence. “But I was so afraid, so lost, it’s the only thing I could think of doing. I thought we were still family when it counted. Guess not. I truly have no family anymore.”

“Bullshit,” Frank interrupts. “We’re family. You and me.” He tightens his hold on her.

“Frank—”

“And your father, well he’s an asshole, okay? And clearly he doesn’t know you at all. ‘Cause you ain’t fucking up everything you do. I wouldn’t be alive without you, Karen. I probably would’ve never remembered my family properly, or known what truly happened to them if it weren’t for you.”

There is no question of whether they’re sharing the bed or not that night. Frank holds her close to his chest and despite all the terrible things that happened in her life, Karen wouldn’t change a thing if it meant not sharing this moment with him. It’s incredibly selfish of her and, realistically, if she could give his family back to Frank, she would, in a heartbeat. But at this very moment, Frank is the only person able to stop her heart from bleeding out from loneliness, and sadness, and fear.

“Ever since my mom got sick,” she says in the darkness, “I’ve felt like there was this hole inside of me. A black hole, swallowing up everything and growing bigger and bigger every day, until all I felt was emptiness.”

He’s silent behind her but his thumb rubs a soothing rhythm into the skin of her arm.

“It only got worse when Mom died. I tried to fill that hole with helping my brother and my dad, but it didn’t work. It only made it even bigger.”

Her voice is barely rising over a murmur. It’s fitting, somehow. She wouldn’t be able to lay everything out in the open in the light of the day, with the same voice she uses to ask what people would like with their bacon at the diner. She’s not religious but she imagines it’s the voice you use in the shadows of a confessional. Matt could tell her if it is.

“In college I started doing drugs and going to parties until it was all I was doing.”

She tells him about dealing, about having to keep the diner afloat despite her father burning more money than they had, about being the only reason they were still somehow in business and about her father being unhappy with her work anyway. She tells him everything up until that fated night, the burning trailer, her dumbass boyfriend beating the shit out of her brother and her being high as fuck and shooting the guy in the arm and getting the hell out with her brother in the passenger seat.

Frank seems to guess where it’s going, holding her even closer, as if ready to keep her together as she breaks into a million pieces. Her fingers dig into his arms as she tells him about hitting the fence and flipping the car over and blacking out only to wake up to her brother dying next to her. She’s crying. Remembering her father’s face, how he screamed when he went to the ambulance, will always tear her open like it did that night.

“I told him I was going to take care of the funeral arrangements with the reverend,” she whispers between two sobs. “He said he didn’t want me there.”

“Jesus Christ,” Frank says.

He turns her in his arms until they’re face to face. She cries herself to sleep against his chest, exhausted and raw, but feeling safer than she’s ever felt before.

When she wakes up the next day for her morning shift, Frank’s arms are still wrapped around her. And the day after that. And the day after.

For a full week, she’s never alone when she wakes up. Frank stays close, as if his physical presence could keep the ghosts of her past at bay. It does, for the most part.

Except one morning, Karen wakes up to an empty bed.

Frank’s side of the bed is cold, Frankie nowhere to be found.

She glances at the alarm clock, squinting against the shiny green numbers. 4 am. She knows she won’t be able to go back to sleep before she has to leave for the diner. She sighs and kicks off the covers.

She finds him in the living room, sitting at the table in front of the window. It’s raining outside. She wonders if maybe the sound of it battering at the pane is what woke her up. Frankie is sitting up next to the chair, his head on Frank’s thigh. She pads across the room, making sure her socked feet aren’t totally silent so he can hear her coming. She’s not sure she could sneak up on him, but he seems lost in thought, and startling him doesn’t seem like a great idea.

“Hey,” she says quietly when she’s close to the table. She sits in the other chair.

His eyes are far away when they slide to her. They take her in and refocus slowly. She waits until he has fully come back to their living room before reaching out to put her hand on his forearm. He looks like he just woke up, blinking and confused.

“Nightmare?” she asks.

He shakes his head and looks away from her, back to the window. “No,” he says in a raspy voice.

He doesn’t say more for what feels like hours. She keeps her hand on his arm and waits. His eyes are bloodshot, glassy.

“It’s—it’s Lisa’s birthday today,” he finally says, his voice barely a whisper.

She bites her lower lip. Her thumb rubs circles into his skin. His hand covers hers and holds tight.

“She woulda been sixteen today. Sixteen.” He swallows, sniffles. His gaze comes back to her. “It hit me when I went back to New York. I went to visit them on the anniversary of—of—” He sniffles again. The muscles in his jaw tick, the hand on hers tightens. “I saw the dates on the stones and I thought—I thought that my little girl would’ve been sixteen this year. Learning to drive and shit. I would’ve grown a head full of gray hair worrying about her. And Junior—Junior would’ve been fourteen and he would’ve made us crazy being an asshole teenager, ‘cause he just—he just would’ve, you know, he was so much like me.”

His voice is breaking every few words. His eyes are filling up with tearsand Karen’s heart breaks all over again. She doesn’t know how many times a heart can break, but hers seems to have an infinite capacity to do so for Frank Castle.

She carefully extracts her hand from his, stands up and rounds the table. Standing next to him, she gently pulls him to her until he gets the hint and leans against her. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, cradling his head with one hand. His hand comes up to grasp at the fabric of her sleep shirt.

He cries silently, without huge body wracking sobs or wails, just tears and tears rolling down his cheeks and dampening her shirt. She holds him through it, bowing down her head so she can press her lips against his hair.

“Sorry,” he murmurs into her stomach afterwards.

His fingers relaxes against her shirt. She slowly loosens her hold on him but doesn’t move her hands away. He rubs at his face.

“You don’t have to apologize for this,” she says. “Ever.”

He looks up at her. “Did I wake you?”

She shakes her head. “The rain did,” she answers, looking at the rain hitting the window.

“Yeah.”

For a while, there’s no sound in the apartment except for the rain and Frankie’s occasional huff. They watch the water roll down the glass, his head still against her stomach and her hand on the nape of his neck.

“You going back to bed?” he asks.

She glances at the microwave clock. It’s almost 5.

“No. My alarm is gonna go off soon anyway.”

He lifts his head off of her. “Alright. I’m gonna make coffee then.”

Her hands slide away from him. He gets up. She follows him to the side of the room where the kitchen is and sits at the island.

“Do you want me to stay with you today?” she asks as he pours the coffee grounds. She knows today is his day off.

“Nah. Don’t change your life for me, Karen.”

“Frank,” she says. He doesn’t pause in his task. “Frank,” she repeats a bit louder. He turns to her, looking a bit apprehensive of what she is going to say. “This isn’t about me. It’s about you and if you need or just want me to be with you today. There’s no reason for you to be alone, except if it’s easier for you, alright?”

He visibly swallows before answering. “Yeah. Yeah, alright.”

He turns back to the coffeemaker, pushes the start button. He leans back against the counter as the coffeemaker rumbles to life. He rubs his face with one hand, his other hand against the counter with his finger tapping rapidly against it. His eyes dart to her a few times and she waits. She’s becoming fluent in Frank’s body language at this point. He’s thinking about it, probably wondering if he’s going with the self-sacrificial bullshit again or if he’s going to allow himself a little bit of comfort for once.

“I—I’d like that,” he finally says. “You—you sure it’s okay with Greg and Debbie?”

She gets on her feet. “I’ll call Greg,” she says as she walks to him. “What do I say if he asks why?” she asks when she’s at his side.

He looks down at his feet.

“I—I guess the truth,” he says, glancing at her. She raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Looks like I’m gonna stay here a while, yeah? I can’t—I can’t go on and pretend with everyone they never existed. I might—I might slip up and mention them one day, you know? It’s best if they know the truth. Not the entire truth, but parts of it.”

It makes sense. They both know he’s not at the point where he’ll casually mention something related to his family, but something inside her warms at hearing him say that he thinks he’ll reach that point one day.

“Okay.”

She calls Greg at 5.30am, once she’s sure he’s up.

“Hey kiddo, what’s up? You good?”

She glances at Frank, dozing off on the couch with Frankie sprawled halfway on him.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. I—I was just wondering if I could take today off?”

“Uh, yeah sure. Everything alright? You sound weird.”

“Yeah, I mean.” She sighs. “Not really. It’s Frank.”

“Something wrong?”

She clears her throat. “Today is his daughter’s birthday.” She can feel Greg frowning in question on the other side. “She would’ve been sixteen,” she adds.

Greg doesn’t answer immediately.

“Shit,” he curses quietly. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Could you—could you keep it on the down low?”

“Of course, kiddo. Take care of him, yeah?”

“I will.”

She takes Frank half-empty mug and finishes it, sitting at the window with her knees to her chest. Truth is, she doesn’t know what to do to help him. She just knows that she has almost always been alone on the anniversary of Kevin’s death and on his birthday, and she would’ve done anything to have someone with her to chase away the crushing loneliness and the suffocating grief.

She unfolds from the chair and grabs two blankets from the armchair. She drapes one over Frank and Frankie, wraps herself in the second one. It might be May, but so far the weather has only been chilly and rainy.

Frank stirs a little. He opens one eye.

“You called him?”

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

“Thank you.”

She gives him a small smile.

“Do you wanna go back to bed?” she asks.

From the look of his face, she’s guessing he didn’t sleep at all before that nap on the couch.

“Yeah, that’d be—that’d be good.”

He goes back to sleep in her arms, Frankie by his hips watching over them both. He falls asleep first, a testament to how exhausted he must be. She follows not too long after.

She wakes up with her face buried in Frankie’s fur, one of his paws against her neck. She shuffles closer and circles his body with an arm. He huffs and sighs, and yeah he has bad breath but he’s the best thing in her life—aside from the man currently bringing her coffee to bed.

“What time is it,” she asks, her voice muffled by her dog’s fur. Her view of her alarm clock is blocked by Frankie.

Frank puts down a mug on her nightstand and sits on the edge of the bed, his own mug in hand.

“Past 10.”

“Jesus. I haven’t slept this late since...” She actually can’t remember. She pets Frankie’s flank and disentangle from his paws, sits up so she can grab her mug. “Thanks for the coffee,” she says before taking a sip. It’s dark and strong and bitter and probably no one in the world would drink it beside her and Frank.

“Sure,” he says, looking at his hands.

She shuffles closer to him, mindful of the dog between them. “How do you feel?”

He sighs before looking at her. His eyes aren’t bloodshot anymore. “Better.” He clears his throat. “Do you—do you wanna watch a movie? I was thinking maybe—maybe we could watch Lisa’s favorite, you know?”

“Sure. What is it?”

He chuckles. “Anastasia. She and Maria would sing the December song all the time, got it stuck in my head even when I was overseas.”

Karen smiles. “I love that movie too. Kevin was always scared during the boat scene.”

“With the nightmare? Yeah, Lisa was the same. She’d snuggle all up against me, no matter how many time she’d’ve seen it.”

“Well it is pretty scary when you think about it.”

“Yeah.” He smiles, shakes his head. “Yeah, I guess it is.” He glances at her. “You hungry?”

They eat a blueberry pie Frank bought when she was still sleeping.

“It was her favorite,” he says as he cuts the pie. “She went through a period where she was obsessed with blueberries. Turning her face all blue with them. Even got Maria to buy her blueberry bubblegum. I don’t know where that obsession came from. It lasted for months. It calmed down eventually, you know, but she’d still ask for blueberry pie any time she could choose the dessert.”

“Well, blueberry pie is pretty good.”

He smiles, like he knew she was going to agree.

They settle on the couch, plates in hand, and Frank starts the movie.

Karen had forgotten how beautiful it was, even just aesthetically. She remembers wanting to own a music box just like Anya’s, with the necklace to go with it.

She eats her pie and snuggles against Frank when she’s done. She pretends she doesn’t notice him crying during the December song. She just stays close and his arm wraps around her.

The rain is still falling when the movie ends.

They walk Frankie as quickly as they can, but they’re still drenched by the time they come back inside. Frank takes a shower while Karen dries Frankie before he shakes himself dry and splatters water everywhere. He still doesn’t like having his paws dried for him, but better to wrestle with him a bit than having muddy paw prints everywhere in the apartment.

Once she’s showered and dried, she decides it’s time to work on finding out how to acquire the farmhouse again. One week of doing nothing about it is a sufficient break.

Frank is napping on the couch, a book opened face down on his chest. She curls up on the armchair with her laptop and dives into the wonderful world of Montana’s real estate laws.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed when Frank wakes up, grumbling and groaning as he does so. He sits up and the book falls in his lap. He puts it down on the coffee table, rubs his face and blinks up at her.

“What are you doing?”

“Researching real estate laws.”

He makes a non-committal sound, scratches his beard. “Coffee?” he asks.

She bookmarks her tabs and closes her laptop. Her spine pops satisfyingly when she stretches. It makes Frank wince.

“Yep.”

They eat some more pie to go with their coffee.

“Found anything?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. If it doesn’t work I can always become a real estate agent,” she jokes. She hasn’t had to read that much law texts since her time at Nelson&Murdock.

Frank huffs a laugh. “You’re too honest for that. You could never convince anyone that black mold is just a minor inconvenience.”

Karen remembers that agent well. She doesn’t know who was the more ready to punch him in the face, her or Frank. Or maybe Frank was just tense next to her because he could sense she was ready to go to town on that sleazy motherfucker.

There’s a knock at the door just before seven. She exchanges a glance with Frank and goes to answer it.

“I come bearing food!” Debbie proclaims as soon as Karen opens the door, raising two groceries bag ready to burst.

“Hi, Debbie,” Karen says and grabs one of the bags, moving to the side so Debbie can come in.

Frank gets up from the couch.

“Hey, Deb,” he says and takes the other bag.

“Hi, honey.” Debbie hugs him and pats his cheek when she steps back. “I know you kids can take care of yourselves, but Greg was worried y’all weren’t gonna eat anything. So he made me bring you all of this.”

They put the bags on the counter. Frank starts putting away the various Tupperware boxes. Debbie slides in one of the island stools.

“You wanna drink something, Debbie?” Karen asks.

Debbie snorts. “Anything but Frank’s coffee.”

“Hey,” Frank protests without any conviction.

“Honey, this ain’t coffee, it’s motor oil.”

Karen chuckles. Frank throws her a betrayed look. She raises an eyebrow. “You know your coffee is too strong for normal people.”

“You drink it just fine.”

“You’re a bad influence,” she says, patting his arm twice before turning to Debbie. “Is tea okay?”

“Sure.”

Behind her, Karen can hear Frank vaguely mumbling about tea being just leaf water and how his coffee is just fine, thank you very much. She hipchecks him when she reaches for the box of tea leaves in the cupboard next to him.

“Stop grumbling, old man,” she says.

He rolls his eyes. “I said I was too old for rodeo once. Once, K—Rose. No need to remind me.”

Debbie barks a laugh. “You’re never too old for rodeo! A strong man like you would be just fine!”

Frank turns on his most charming smile. “That’s kind, Debbie, but my bum shoulder wouldn’t agree.”

Debbie waves with her hand, as if to chase away Frank’s words. “Tssk, if Greg can still do it, anyone can do it. Speaking of,” she adds, and leans over the counter a bit. “Next weekend there’s this big rodeo event a couple towns over. Greg and I are both going. Usually we close down the diner, but we thought maybe this year you two could take over? Dort is always complaining when we close the diner for rodeo events.”

Karen looks up at Frank, who shrugs imperceptibly. She gives him a slight nod and turns back to Debbie.

“Sure. No problem.”

The conversation is interrupted by Frankie, very insistently whining near the door.

“I’ll go,” Frank says, putting a hand on Karen’s arm to keep her from moving.

“Thanks.”

He grabs his jacket, the leash and leaves with the dog.

Karen pours the boiling water in the teapot, very much aware of Debbie’s eyes on her.

“How is he?” she asks after Karen has put the kettle back down. Obviously Greg has told her the reason of Karen’s absence.

“He’s...” She sighs and pushes her hair back. “He’s as well as can be expected, I guess. It’s the first time he’s not alone for this too, I think it helped.”

Debbie frowns a little, like she’s thinking about something and wants to ask, but seems to think better of it. “Of course it helped,” she says, her face smoothing back to a more neutral but compassionate expression. “You being here for him is very important, Rose.”

Karen shrugs. “He talked a bit. About her.”

She pours the tea and slides a cup towards Debbie, who wraps her hands around it.

“That’s good,” Debbie says. “That’s good.”

They sip the tea in silence, until Debbie breaks it.

“Did you know her?” she asks.

Karen shakes her head. “No. I met Frank a couple months after it happened. He was—he was in a very bad place.”

They don’t say anything for a while, the rain the only sound in the apartment.

“You said it’s the first time he’s not alone for this,” Debbie starts slowly, almost cautiously. “He’s separated from his daughter’s mother?” she asks gently.

Karen freezes for a second before letting out a deep sigh. She runs a hand through her hair.

“Uh. She, uh. She died too. His wife, his daughter and his son.”

Debbie’s dark skin takes an ashen tone. “At the same time?” she says in a trembling voice. Karen nods. “Jesus Christ,” Debbie curses.

And yeah, that’s pretty much the only thing there is to say about the whole situation. Karen bites her lips. She knows Frank told her she could tell the truth—a safe version of the truth anyway—to Greg and Debbie, but it still feels like she has revealed more than she had a right to.

“Rose?”

Karen looks up at Debbie.

“He’s lucky to have you. I hope he knows that.”

Karen smiles tightly.

“I’m lucky to have him too.”

Chapter Text

The following days come and go without anyone mentioning Karen’s absence or looking at Frank with pity in their eyes. At least, not that Karen is aware of. She wants to believe she would’ve noticed it; after all, she has plenty of experience on being pitied. She likes her life here, but she’s still aware this is a small town. It’s different—so different—from Fagan Corners, but it is still a small town and small towns like that don’t know privacy and everyone feels entitled to any tragedy happening there.

Yet, there is no glances, no whispered hurried conversations hushing as soon as Frank and her come into the room.

Greg teases and Debbie coddles—no difference from normal life here.

Theodora decides to make a sweater for Frank and asks Karen what Frank’s favorite color is.

“Summer is pretty much there,” Karen answers, a bit confused as to why Theo has suddenly decided that Frank needed a sweater. “And I’ve only ever seen him in black. Or gray.”

She doesn’t include the pale blue of his hospital gown the first time they were face to face, or the orange of his prison uniform—or the dark red stripes of his flannels, as it doesn’t seem enough fabric to be worth mentioning.

Theodora rolls her eyes. “I know, that’s why I’m knitting him a colored sweater. Your man needs to be made aware that colors are a thing.”

Karen snorts. “Good luck with that.”

Theodora tsks her discontent and orders some pie, a clear sign that the conversation is over—for now.

Frank comes out of the kitchen, wiping his brow with the sleeve of his dark gray and burgundy flannel shirt, just as Karen gets to the counter.

“Hey what’s your favorite color?” she asks. “Black and gray don’t count,” she adds before he answers.

He pauses and frowns, mumbles a little. “Why you askin’?” he ends up saying.

“Theodora is making you a sweater.”

His frown deepens and his mouth twists in confusion. “...it’s May.”

Karen shrugs. “By all means, go argue with her.”

And Frank, the big bad Punisher who faced the scum of the Earth without a single flinch, winces, and Karen laughs.

Theodora decides the sweater will be forest green, so Frank “doesn’t go in anaphylactic shock the first time he wears color.”

Greg and Debbie leave on the Friday night before the rodeo tournament with no recommendation or advice other than “don’t let Frank near the coffee machine,” which makes Frank roll his eyes.

Karen and Frank are at the diner at dawn, prepping for the day to come while Frankie is taking a nap next to a window. Clearly his humans woke up too early for his delicate dog sensitivities.

Frank is on pancake duty. Karen hops on the counter next to him to mix her waffle batter. They used to do just that with Kevin, back in Vermont, sitting on the counters in the kitchen, whisking batter and sometimes throwing lumps of it at each other.

After a few minutes of silence, Frank puts down his whisk and looks up at her.

“You okay?” he asks.

She frowns and glances at him, keeping on mixing the batter. “Sure? Why are you asking?”

He shrugs, looks to the side and then past her shoulder before his eyes come back to hers—only for a moment and then they’re back to fleeting around the room.

She sighs. She puts down her mixing bowl and turns to him. “What’s going on, Frank?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, but he looks at her head on.

“You had a nightmare. Last night,” he finally says.

She bites on her lower lip. “I don’t remember.”

“Figured you wouldn’t. You looked pretty out of it. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She nods silently, her eyes on the broken corner of a tile on the opposite wall.

“Did I say anything?” she asks, and she hates how her voice shakes a little.

“You called for Foggy,” he answers. “And for Red,” he adds after a beat, looking down at the mixing bowl in front of him.

“Oh,” is the only thing she can say.

“I woke you up, you mumbled something about Fisk and you fell back asleep.”

She swallows. “I don’t remember,” she says again, bites down on her lip.

Frank rubs his neck.

“You got news from them?” he asks after a pause.

She shakes her head. “Not really. Foggy sends me texts sometimes. I check on the Bulletin website from times to times. Nothing has changed. They’re still trying to catch Fisk. Foggy says the FBI agent is helping. It’s the only one not corrupt according to him.”

Frank is watching her, patient like he always is. He doesn’t ask if she wishes she had stayed in New York to help them because he probably knows she doesn’t know herself. He’s most likely relieved she flew away from the danger for once, but she also knows that if she ever wanted to get back in the game, he’d be right next to her on the front lines. He has unfinished business with Fisk same as her.

And that’s part of the reason why she’s determined not to go back, even if sometimes, the urge to dive head first into battle is an itch under her skin that she can’t scratch.

Frank deserves a life where he doesn’t need stitches every two days, where he’s not worried about what’s left of his loved ones being kidnapped, tortured, murdered. He deserves a normal life, he has suffered more than enough to earn it.
It’s all she ever wanted for him and it took her fucking off to the ass-end of Montana for it to happen but he has it now. She would rather face Fisk again than endanger that—ironically.

His hand on her knee drags her out of her thoughts. She looks up.

“You don’t really talk about them,” he says, and he sounds cautious, like he’s not sure he has a right to ask.

She shrugs. “There’s not a lot to say.”

He looks like he wants to say more, to ask more but he only looks down at her knee, where he’s rubbing circles with his thumb. “But you’re okay?” is all he asks, glancing up sideways.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he says softly.

She puts her hand on his and squeezes, and he nods and goes back to his pancake batter.

Karen goes to the front to start the coffee makers and make sure the diner is ready. She turns on the radio—an old analog one with clunky knobs and a bent antenna. She thumbs through Greg’s collection of tapes and slips an unmarked one into the slot. Johnny Cash’s voice fills the diner.

Karen moves through the tables, checking syrup bottles and napkin holders, head bobbing to the beat of I Walk The Line, singing softly along the lyrics.

The song changes and Frankie wakes up from his nap and starts trotting next to her, jumping on his hind legs when the music gets rowdy. She dances with her dog in the middle of the diner, because it’s Johnny Cash, because Frankie is wagging his tail, because she’s not in mortal danger, because she can. The thought is oddly liberating.

She hears a snort in the middle of Cocaine Blues. She turns toward the noise and finds Frank holding two plates, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile that’s half fond half a smirk.

“Want some breakfast here, Johnny?” he asks, putting down the plates on the counter.

She rolls her eyes with a smile and slides behind the counter to pour two mugs of coffee, turning the volume of the radio down on her way.

“You like country?” Frank says.

She pushes his mug in front of him. “I like some country,” she says. “Johnny Cash? Hell yeah. The “I have a big pick-up truck with a confederate flag on it” stuff? Not so much.”

Frank chuckles. “Fair.”

“I really like the songs where the women get to kill their abusive asshole husbands too,” she adds idly.

He barks a laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Those are some good songs,” he says, looks at her above his mug, smile half hidden behind it. “Greg has any Springsteen in those tapes of his?” he asks.

Karen feels herself freezing slightly, but Frank looks as relaxed as ever. She shrugs.

“You’re gonna have to take a look,” she says with a nod toward the radio.

She doesn’t mean it as in “take a look right now” but Frank stands up and joins her behind the counter anyway.

He goes through the tapes, some easy to identify with their cover artwork, others less so, formerly blank covers scribbled and crossed out, probably from the many times Greg has recorded over old stuff.

Frank snorts at a few names, and finally makes a pleased little noise. He changes the tape, presses play. Karen recognizes Dancing in the Dark. She smiles at Frank rocking his head to the music.

“That man is the best,” he says, glancing at her.

“Weren’t you, like, seven when this song came out?” she teases.

“Eight. And good music ain’t getting old, Page, remember that,” he says like he’s giving a very important life lesson here.

She laughs openly, doesn’t even try to pretend she isn’t mocking him and he hip-checks her in retaliation. The coffee in her mug swerves dangerously. She yelps.

“Respect the coffee, Castle!” she protests.

“Respect the Boss, Page.”

She snorts, ready for another snarky remark, but the bell above the door cuts her off.

“Finally someone with good music taste in this town!” Joan exclaims from the door, and she joins them at the counter, swaying to the music, a bright smile on her face.

Frank points to her with a click of his tongue. “Boss fan?”

“Hell yeah,” Joan says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, sitting on a stool in front of them.

Frank gives Karen a pointed look. “See? Joan gets it.”

Karen rolls her eyes with a smile. “Time for you to go into the kitchen, old man. Get the lady her pancakes.”

Frank huffs. “You tryin’ to be more Debbie than Debbie?” he jokes on his way to the kitchen.

“I take that as a compliment,” Karen calls after him. “Coffee?” she asks back to Joan, who just laughs as she nods.

“You two are already on your way to become the new Debbie and Greg, I hope y’all know that.”

“Not sure if the bandana would suit Frank.”

“Maybe a backward baseball cap?” Joan offers before bursting out laughing, quickly followed by Karen.

Frank pokes his head through the door. “I heard that and I remind you that I’m holding your pancakes hostage, Joan.”

She sticks her tongue out at him.

Despite his (weak) threats, Frank gives Joan her pancakes and when a couple of guys from the factory get in, he ducks back into the kitchen, already throwing some eggs, sausages and bacon on the grid. Karen is 85% sure that he remembers most people orders. One of these days he’ll make her job useless. She greets the workers and sure enough, they all want the full egg-sausage-bacon breakfast. They tell her how nice it is that the diner is still open despite the fact that practically the entire town is at the rodeo.

“Especially when it’s your lovely face that we see in the morning,” one of them says with a wink.

Karen chuckles, but before she can reply anything, another guy elbows the first one. “Careful, dude, Frank is gonna have your head if you start flirting like that.”

Karen snorts.

During the mid-morning lull, both Karen and Frank take a break behind the counter with some much appreciated coffee.

Joan crosses her arms on the counter and leans over it.

“I have some great news,” she says conspiratorially with a big smile.

Karen raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Remember my sister?” Joan asks. “In Michigan, with a kid and an asshole ex-husband fighting her for custody even tho he’s an alcoholic with priors?”

Karen doesn’t remember Joan ever talking about it but she vaguely nods her head anyway because it seems like the right thing to do.

“She won! After three fucking years!” Joan exclaims, gesturing wildly in the air.

“That’s amazing!” Karen says, sincere.

“That’s great,” Frank adds before moving the mug to his lips. “Wait.” He stops the movement, frowns. “How did it take three years if the guy had priors?”

Joan’s face darkens. “He has contacts with the local sheriff department.”

Frank grunts, and Karen knows him enough to read the subtle expressions on his face. He is disgusted by the situation and, given the information and the occasion, he would gladly pay a visit to the ex-husband and the rotten police department.

He told her once, when he was on the run from a still unknown threat, lost and haunted, that he was old-fashioned. At the time, it was probably more of an attempt at a joke to explain the roses, but she knows there is a part of truth there as well. He’s old-fashioned, and in his eyes, hurting women and kids is probably one of the biggest offenses one could commit. It’s probably true for everyone with a bit of common sense, but Frank just takes it to the next level.

“She safe now?” he asks.

Joan nods. “She’s moving here with the kid. They’re gonna live with us.”

“When is she arriving?” Karen asks.

“In a couple of days, probably. Gotta pack their stuff, cancel their lease, that kinda thing. She already quit her job so it shouldn’t be long now. She’s worried she won’t find work here but I told her that with all the roadhouses between here and the next big city, it won’t be any trouble. She’s a bartender,” Joan adds, like an afterthought.

“Maybe Debbie will adopt her too,” Karen says and Joan lets out a loud laugh.

“Beth is truly not enough of a morning person to work at a diner.”

The bell rings right after the lunch rush—admittedly a much calmer rush than usual thanks to the rodeo tournament—making Frankie lift his head from his sun patch and bark, which is highly unusual. Karen looks up from the register and is greeted by the sight of Henry and a very happy Bear on a leash. Frankie is on his feet to greet them in the blink of an eye.

“Henry!” Karen exclaims, leaving her check receipts to hug him.

“Hey, Rose,” he says with a smile. “Frank told me you were both stuck here all day. Rodeo, uh?”

“Yep,” she replies as she squats down to receive her greet-and-lick from Bear.

The massive dog nudges her happily right until Frank passes the kitchen door, when he promptly abandons her and pulls on his leash to get as close to Frank as possible. With Frank around, she could as well be a potted plant. Or a piece of wallpaper. Bear doesn’t care anymore, Bear only wants Frank. Frank joins them before Bear can dislocate Henry’s shoulder from tugging too much on his leash and gets a face full of hairs and dog’s saliva as a hello.

“Hey, man,” Frank says to Henry behind the wall of fur and love. “Was this big boy missing us?”

Karen snorts. “Missing you, you mean.”

“Aw, Rose, don’t be jealous, you had me all day,” Frank replies with a smirk.

She swats him with her kitchen towel on her way back to the counter.

“Coffee?” she asks over her shoulder.

“Yep,” Frank replies before Henry can.

Karen rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t asking you, old man.”

Frank huffs a laugh. He and Henry follow her to the counter while Bear and Frankie curl up against each other against a wall.

They chat about the shelter while sipping their coffee and even though he doesn’t say anything, Karen can see the tension at the corner of Henry’s mouth, the line between his eyebrows, the way he hunches over his coffee. When she goes to take the order of a couple of newcomers, she can see his leg bouncing up and down. She’s never known Henry to be the nervous fidgety kind.

When Frank has to go back to the kitchen to prepare a couple of waffles, she refills his mug and asks in a quiet voice:

“Everything alright?”

“That obvious, uh?” he says, smiling sadly.

She shrugs with one shoulder. “I’m just pretty good at reading people. What’s going on? Anything we can help with?”

Henry sighs, a deep, pained sigh, the type that only comes when you’re tired and overwhelmed and the only thing you want to do is removing the burden you’re carrying from your shoulders, but you can’t quite do it.

“We’ve had a couple of rough weeks lately, at the shelter. More vet costs, more special food, more special treatments, less adoptions. It’s getting harder to keep everything afloat. Jay helps but we can’t run both the shelter and our household on his salary.”

Karen bites the inside of her cheek.

“Have you thought of doing a fundraiser?” she says, immediately feeling pretty stupid afterwards. Of course he must have thought about doing it.

“We have a donation page on our website. It’s not working that well.” He shrugs. “But don’t you worry your pretty head about it. I’ll find a way. Always do,” he says. His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it’s not as sad as earlier. Karen knows that she is going to worry about it, no matter what Henry says. He’s her friend, she can’t not.

“How are things going here?” he asks, obviously not particularly caring about changing the subject abruptly.

“Good. We have more patrons that I thought we’d have with the tournament.”

Henry rolls his eyes. “Please. I wasn’t talking about that and you know it.”

Karen frowns. “What?”

He rolls his eyes again and his entire upper body with it. “You and Tall, Dark and Handsome?” he says in a low, conspiratorial voice, his eyes flicking toward the kitchen for a second. “You’ve been flirting non-stop ever since I arrived.”

She can feel her eyes going wide. “What the hell?” she yell-whispers. “We have not. And shut up about that, he could hear you.”

“If you haven’t, then why does it matter if he hears?” Henry smirks.

Karen squints at him. “I will kill you with a spoon.”

“Rose, darling. You’re so far in denial you might as well be in Egypt.”

Karen decides to be mature and not reply; instead she glares at him. Henry chuckles.

“You know one day, one of those townsfolk, if not all of them, is going to lock you two in a closet until you figure it out.”

“I’m making their coffee, they wouldn’t dare,” she says, but she isn’t a hundred percent sure of that. Henry’s smirk tells her that he knows it too.

Henry leaves, taking Bear and Frankie with him so the dogs can play and run together while the humans work and drink more coffee.

He brings back a tired but content Frankie at the end of the afternoon, gives a one armed hug to Frank and a wink to Karen and leaves them to close down the diner.

Frank and KAren get home that evening with heavy legs and sore feet, but they’re quite satisfied with their day. Karen wasn’t exactly worried about having to manage the diner without Debbie or Greg, but maybe she was a little, in the back of her mind. Thanks to her family diner, she has quite the experience in dealing with everything, running the day-to-day stuff, keeping on top of the rushes, making sure everyone is happy, but Debbie and Greg are a reassuring presence during her work day, and yes, she missed them today, not that she would tell them that directly. Greg would be smug and insufferable for days.

“Hey,” Frank says as he’s reheating something on the stove. Karen twists where she’s lying down on the couch so she can see him.

“Hm?”

“Henry okay? He seemed a bit...off.”

Karen sits up, stretches her aching neck. “The shelter is going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment.”

“How rough?”

“He didn’t say, but I think it’s not looking good. Not enough adoptions or donation to cover all the medical expenses.”

Frank grunts and scratches his stubble, still stirring the pot. “Think we should do something ‘bout it?”

“He said not to worry, that he’d find a way.”

Frank looks at her over his shoulder. “Yeah, because you’re so good at leaving shit like that alone,” he says with a smirk.

She gets up and joins him in the kitchen. “I’m not saying I won’t think about it,” she says, hopping on the counter.

Frank glances at her. “But?” he prompts when she doesn’t continue.

“But I’m not sure about what I can do, beside a fundraiser. And if I was deciding to organize one, I couldn’t hide it from Henry and he would probably make me stop because he doesn’t want me to worry about any of it. And I don’t want to embarrass him either.”

Frank hums.

They don’t talk about it for the rest of the evening, but Karen knows from his face that he’s planning something.

Sunday morning is an even quieter affair than the previous day. Karen even has time to research real estate laws and try to find more about the farmhouse on her laptop, Frank sitting on the back counter behind her.

“We could look for another house, you know,” he says. “I’m sure there’s more like this one ‘round here.”

She glares halfheartedly. “I defeated a prosecutor’s attempt to hide the truth, I’m not losing to some stupid real estate bullshit.”

Frank laughs so loudly that the rare patrons in the diner lift their heads from their plates, probably wondering what the hell happened to make the usually scowling cook laugh like that.

“Okay, Badass,” he says after his laughter has died down. He hops down from the counter. “Do you want some pancakes while you find a way to beat that shit?” he asks, coming next to her, his hand warm on her shoulder.

“Blueberry,” she answers, still staring at her screen.

His hand trails across her back on his way to the kitchen. He’s smirking when she glances back in his direction.

The old ladies show up shortly after eleven, claiming their usual round table near the window. They order their usual pie and tea, compliment Karen on one thing or another (“your hair is so much nicer this way” and “your skin is beautiful, dear, you look positively radiant” and “where is that cute dog of yours, I have a treat for him”).

They take out their knitting and cross stitching and crocheting, like they’d do if they were in their living room. Which Karen supposes, is kind of the case, given how often they’re here. Theodora is knitting Frank’s sweater, scrutinizing her work and stopping every now and then to look at it at arm length. Theodora is very focused and serious when it comes to knitting, but she seems even more so now that she’s working on the sweater.

The old ladies are crafting, but they’re also chatting rather intensely, their voices too low for Karen to pick up what they’re saying from a distance. They hush up suspiciously when Karen arrives with their pies and their tea, glancing at each other like they were trading state secrets.

Henry’s joke from the previous day comes to her mind. Maybe they are planning to lock her and Frank together.

That’s a problem for Future!Karen, she decides. There’s no point in worrying about something that she has no control over. What she can control, however, is her dive into real estate law.

“So you didn’t burn the place, then?” Greg’s voice calls from the front door, a few minutes before Karen and Frank are due to close down the place.

Karen turns from where she was cleaning a table.

“Your faith in us is admirable, I’m touched,” she deadpans.

“Can I have some coffee or did Frank make it?” Debbie asks from behind Greg, her voice just this side of too loud so she can make herself heard all the way to the kitchen.

An unintelligible protest comes from the kitchen. Karen smiles. “The coffee is safe, Debbie.”

They take a seat at the counter and start narrating their rodeo adventures.

The diner doesn’t close for a while.

Debbie decides to give them their Monday off, but for some ungodly reason, Karen’s sleep is interrupted by Frank’s alarm blaring out at what is probably very early in the morning.

“What the fuck,” she mumbles into her pillow, burrowing under the blankets.

Fortunately for her and Frank’s phone, the alarm stops as quickly as it started. She feels Frank leaving the bed, followed by Frankie. The bedroom door creaks open and closed. She’s almost back asleep when the bedroom door opens again.

“Want coffee?” Frank asks.

Karen opens one eye and glares at him. “It’s the middle of the fucking night.”

Frank chuckles. “It’s past 8.”

“Exactly. Fuck off.”

He’s laughing when he closes the door. Bastard.

He comes back a couple of hours later, just as she’s stepping out of the shower. She joins him in the kitchen without bothering to dry her hair. There’s a mug waiting for her on the coffee table, next to a plate with a bagel in it. She sits next to Frank on the couch.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she says, grabbing her mug. Frank hums into his own mug. “Did anything interesting this morning?” she asks, aiming for a flippant tone.

Frank smirks. “Bought you a bagel.”

She gives him a pointed look. “You did not get up early just for a bagel, Frank.”

He glances at her, looking like he’s trying to stay serious for all of two seconds before chuckling. “Alright,” he relents, leaning against the back of the couch. “I went to the bank.”

“Should I ask why?”

Frank shrugs. “You can.” She rises her eyebrows at him. “I made a donation to the shelter.”

“Henry is going to kill you,” she says and bites in one half of the bagel. Frank shrugs again and steals a piece of the other half before she move the plate away.

Sure enough, Henry barges into the diner the very next day and marches to the counter where Karen is refilling the coffee machines in beans.

“What did you do?” he asks.

“Hey, Henry,” she says, cool as a cucumber. “Want some coffee?”

“I wanna know why I got this massive donation to the shelter right after I talked to you.”

She pours him a coffee anyway before turning towards the kitchen door. “Frank!” she calls. “It’s for you!”

She pushes the mug towards Henry with her most innocent smile, grabs a coffee pot and goes to make a refill round. She sees Frank coming out of the kitchen and going to Henry from the corner of her eyes. She glances at them as she goes around the diner refilling mugs and taking new orders. Henry looks somewhat mollified by whatever it is that Frank is explaining to him, Frank’s face painfully earnest the way it is when he’s trying to do something good and needs someone to accept it. She knows that face well from all of the time it was directed at her.

She ignores the way her stomach clenches when she remembers that night on the waterfront, when he was trying to convince her that he needed to protect her no matter what, and finishes her round.

Back at the counter, she pours a mug for Frank. He acknowledges it with a tiny squeeze to her forearm as he keeps his head turned towards Henry, focused on their conversation.

She calls the new orders to Greg, cuts out some pie for Dorothy and brings it to her. The knitting ladies are still being secretive and suspicious as ever, but no one has tried to shove Frank and her in a closet yet, so she’s still pretending everything is normal.

“Why did Henry steal my cook?” Greg asks when she goes to the kitchen to unload the dishwasher.

“Frank made a donation for the shelter and has to convince Henry not to murder him over it,” she replies, taking the plates out.

Greg snorts. “Well, if you kids do end up buying a house, you should probably keep your money, right?”

Karen doesn’t answer immediately. How does one explain to someone that one’s housemate has more money that he knows what to do with because he fought corrupted and murderous government people with the help of a hacker?

One doesn’t.

So she shrugs. “Frank knows how to budget. And we both think that the shelter’s survival is more important than buying a house. Especially when we can’t figure out how to buy that fucking house in the first place.”

“Ah,” Greg says. “You still stuck with the farm?”

She sighs. “Yep. It’s becoming my white whale.”

When she comes out of the kitchen to bring pancakes and eggs and bacon to various tables, Henry and Frank are laughing at something, all signs of tension gone from their faces.

Henry doesn’t stay long afterwards, tipping her too much for his single mug of coffee and the slice of cake he ordered to go.

Frank returns to the kitchen, saying “all good” and pecking her on the cheek as he passes by her as she’s preparing someone’s check.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he adds and she hums, smiling to herself as she keeps adding items to the register.

Are you and Frank finally together?

The text comes in the evening, from Alicia’s number. Karen answers with a bunch of interrogation marks.

Martin was at the diner and he saw Frank kiss you on the cheek and he told Riley who told me.

Karen snorts. Clearly the town’s deputies have too much time on their hands. She says so to Alicia who replies she needs gossips because her life right now resolves around having swollen ankles and peeing every ten minutes.

Karen chuckles.

“What’s funny?” Frank asks next to her.

She puts her phone on the coffee table and sprawls on the couch, wedging her toes beneath Frank’s thigh. “Alicia is complaining about the side effects of pregnancy and wants to hear gossip.”

He huffs a laugh and removes her feet from under him. She whines in protest. He glances at her, a tiny smile lifting up the corner of his lips, and puts her feet on his lap instead.

“You notice anything weird with Theodora and the others?” he asks as he starts massaging her feet.

“You too?”

She doesn’t know why she’s so surprised by the fact that Frank noticed it too. Yes, he isn’t as often on the floor as her, but he is an extremely observant person, even now that his entire survival doesn’t depend on it.

He nods slowly, looking lost in his thoughts, despite his hands working the ball of her left foot. “D’you know why?” he asks, looking down at her face.

She shrugs and is relieved when he turns his head to her feet. She doesn’t actually know what is going on with the ladies, but she does have an idea—thank you, Henry, and she’s never been very good at outright lying to Frank. She also doesn’t know how he would react to the idea that the town’s people are probably plotting to lock them in a closet so they can admit their so-called undying and eternal love to each other.

For all she knows, Frank feels literally zero attraction to her, no matter what other people are telling her. She can’t mess up the one relationship that has never disappointed or hurt her. She keeps her mouth shut and closes her eyes.