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Another rain of bullets and blood. Another actual monster taken down by the supposed one clasping her hand in his as they flee from another exploding building. Karen has to admit to herself that somewhere along the line, she started aching for this.
Not because she craves the danger, the violence, but because it means that Frank is here. Whether he’s initiating the bloodshed, or coming in like her own personal cavalry to exfiltrate her from a situation more or less of her own making: when she’s in danger Frank always manages to appear in the nick of time.
Once, just once, he told her “I will come for you” but at this point it feels like that wasn’t just in reference to the particular situation she was in at the time. It feels like he must have meant: I will always come for you.
Frank presses her against the alleyway wall, his arms protective around her head, putting his body between hers and the blast. Karen feels the heat, within and without as she stares into his face so close to hers.
The sound of the explosion has her ears ringing and they are both of them covered in blood, not all of it other people’s. Both of their breaths are ragged as they try, unsuccessfully, to catch up on getting enough oxygen to their lungs.
This is as close as they ever seem to get, so Karen savors it anyway. She wonders if some part of Frank does too, even though he is always the one pulling away. He has to. Or maybe she just needs to believe that for her sanity or her pride.
Frank releases her finally, before scanning her with his eyes and hands for serious injuries. Karen feels the loss like that of a blanket ripped from her body on a winter night, leaving her bare and shivering.
“I’m fine” she manages to say, nevertheless. She is: in the way he’s looking for. Short of some scrapes and bruises, she’s in one piece (thanks to Frank).
He nods, taking another uneven gulp of air, eyes wild.
“You should . . .” Frank swallows, taking another few strained breaths. “You should go, Karen. Leave me.”
“Nope,” she doesn’t even think before saying, putting her hands on his face and shaking her head. “Not this time, Frank.”
“Why?” he asks, pressing his forehead into hers, one arm against the stucco of the building.
“Why do you keep telling me to go? Why are you there every time I get in over my head, Frank? Why do you care that I’m safe?”
She doesn’t want to let him slink off into the distance again. Every time it gets a little harder. Surely she can’t be the only one that feels that way, even if this pattern has become so calcified between them that breaking it feels like dropping a fragile vase.
“If you don’t leave, I’m going to start getting some real dumb ideas.”
“Oh really?” She bites her own lip, feeling like she has plenty of those of her own. “What kind of dumb ideas?”
Mine are thinking this time could be different. Mine are getting my hopes up again and again.
“Ideas like . . . like you are intentionally pissing off some real dangerous people, like you put your life on the line on purpose.”
Frank runs his tongue across his lips. It takes everything in her not to chase that movement with her own but Karen made a promise to herself a long time ago: no matter what, she’s not taking what isn’t offered when it comes to Frank.
“And if that was true, I’m not saying it is, but if it was . . . why exactly would I do that?”
Frank hesitates. He brought it up, but it feels like he just realized what he half said and wishes he hasn’t. But then he opens his mouth and says it anyway.
“So I’ll come handle it for you, even though you told me not to . . . repeatedly.”
He’s not entirely right, Karen ended up in that building because she was looking for answers, which had nothing to do with Frank, but she also can’t say she hasn’t thought about it.
“I’ve told you what I want,” she manages. She has repeatedly. Probably as many times as he’s told her to get away from him (that he needs her to be safe).
“Why?” he asks, before confirming that yes he does know what she is saying. “Why do you want there to be a future for me?”
Karen wraps one hand around the back of his neck.
“Because I care about you,” she starts, before deciding that isn’t enough. “Because I keep hoping that maybe, just maybe, if you decide to have a future you might choose one with me.”
Frank leans into where their foreheads are touching.
“That's a crazy thing to want, Karen,” he murmurs, the vibrato of his voice this close sending tingles through her.
The way he says it is softer than the words, fond even, and Karen’s heart leaps at the hope that he’s not about to push her away harder than before.
“Then I must be crazy, because that’s what I have wanted for a long time. Maybe it’s selfish but I want you.”
Frank’s eyes flutter closed for a moment. Karen’s chest is painfully tight with anticipation as she starts to close her own, leaning in to meet his mouth with her own, only to feel him pull away at the last moment.
"You got your gourd rattled - I don't thi-”
Karen wants to cry or to scream. Frank does this every time and it isn’t fair. There was a point when she felt like the unreasonable one, wanting something from a man still reeling from a loss no person should have to go through, but now it feels like Frank is just being cruel (to himself, but she’s suffering from the impact of it anyway).
"No, no I did NOT, because YOU took the blow-"
She will not let him make another excuse. Not again. She can’t bear to hear him out as he tries to.
“This isn’t the time-” he insists.
“I know you, Frank, alright. As soon as you think the coast is clear and I’m safe once more you will disappear again. So this is the time, because it is the only time you will let us have."
That seems to get through to him, at least a little. If nothing else, Frank is realizing or being reminded that she does want to see him, that he’s the one keeping away for his own reasons. Karen knows that he thinks being around him is a death sentence, that he has convinced himself he is keeping her safe by staying away most of the time. But most of the time that means he doesn’t have to see how that decision impacts her.
“Alright,” he says, pushing off of the wall he pulls his face away from hers and nods slowly. “I tell you what. We get through this, take down this crooked fuck. When we’re done, I’ll put on clothes that aren’t soaked in blood and we will go have coffee without expecting some asshole to show up and try to shoot either of us, and I’ll listen to whatever you have to say then. That good enough for ya, Karen?”
Frank’s lips are softer than they have any right to be as he presses them to her forehead. Apparently that part of her memories is real even if so much about them when it comes to Frank has warped. Replayed over and over, they have gotten distorted with the transformation or realization of her desires.
It wasn’t a kiss, when his lips grazed her skin the first time, her body had been sandwiched between him and the floor, his body interposed between hers and harm.
In her memories it transformed into one anyway. The terror faded and the moment slowed down and, when she’s all alone, she can feel him like they are back in that moment (except it’s not that moment, not really).
It wasn’t a kiss, she sometimes reminds herself. When his lips had pressed against the back of her neck, it wasn’t a kiss, just incidental collateral closeness. He had been protecting her from bullets and the warmth of his breath against her skin, the softness of his lips right at the nape of her neck: it had been as much not the point or intention as the weight of him on top of her.
In the moment she had known that, just as she suddenly had known with a frightening certainty that he was telling the truth. Frank Castle is a killer but he’s not a liar, and she could trust him (does trust him).
It hadn’t been a kiss. It had been protection: a human shield. Karen hadn’t really been sure what she had done to earn that from him exactly yet, but apparently she had.
Like a monstrous feral dog won over by a passing gesture of kindness, the Punisher had followed her back home and assigned himself the job of being her protector. That she had almost been able to make sense of.
And yet, the tenderness of his hands, brushing her hair. The warmth of his breath sending tingles down her spine that had nothing to do with the cacophony of bullets flying all around them. That, it took her much longer to understand.
She does now, though. Karen is relatively sure she understands them both now.
“You better survive to make good on that promise,” she answers, kissing his cheek before she lets go of her hold on him. If he can kiss her forehead, that much is permissible, surely.
“You once told me I never lie to you,” he reminds her, reaching out and cupping the side of her face with one hand. His face is red, not simply from the blood covering it, but from under his skin, like he’s blushing.
“Yeah,” she nods, “But you lie to yourself sometimes.”
That’s the part she has come to realize since that conversation in the diner which feels like a lifetime ago. Frank might not lie to her, but he doesn’t tell her everything and he is damned well capable of lying to himself. We all are.
“I’ll bring you flowers,” he says in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood, but all she can remember is that day in her apartment: the way seeing him had rattled her more than she thought possible, the overwhelming urge she had succumbed to in wrapping her arms around him.
She had flung her arms around him, pulling him tightly against her. He wasn’t prepared for it, neither of them had been, but he had given way to it. His head had slipped a little more towards her neck as he relaxed in submission to the wave of something she hadn’t understood yet, and suddenly his mouth wasn’t pressed against her shirt but her skin.
Karen’s arms had pulled even more tightly around him in response. His lips had moved against her skin: not exactly a kiss but not truly not one either. For a moment they had stayed like that, wrapped close together, swaying slightly in her living room.
Karen had remembered herself at last, pulling back quickly, feeling like if she held him any longer there would be no coming back from some line she wasn’t sure what it would mean to cross. Frank had barely raised his eyes from the ground as she did.
“It was really good to see you” she had breathed, barely above a whisper. That was an admission that she had hoped they both could handle.
“It’s good to see you,” he had reciprocated. He had wanted to see her too, she realized, not just because he needed her help with this Micro. She hadn’t been sure what to do with that information, but Karen had known right then and there that neither of them would be able to forget either fact.
She had realized she was touching her neck (where his face had been pressed, where his lips had touched) and known she must look like it was a lot more than that. Her heart had been pounding as she had moved her fingertips to her lips and imagined his mouth there too, realizing that it had been more than comfort she was groping blindly for when she reached for him.
All of it comes back like a wave crashing on the shore, when he mentions flowers. Karen hopes that it was intentional on his part, but she can’t be sure.
“Still an old fashioned kind of guy?” she probes.
“Yeah,” he nods again, stroking her cheek before he drops his hand and backs away a few steps. “Looks like I still am. So please, Karen, run now. Get somewhere safe. Play the fleeing damsel in distress and let me be your knight in dented ass kevlar.”
Flinging herself against him with her face buried against his neck, Karen prays ( she doesn’t know who or what to) keep him intact once more. Frank trembles slightly, as her mouth presses against his skin. She wonders if he’s thinking about that same day she was just a moment ago, if he considered that a kiss as well, as she drags her lips up towards his ear.
“Stay safe,” she whispers, squeezing him more tightly for a moment before she lets go. “You stand me up and that really will make you a monster.”