Living Alone
THREE WEEKS LATER
Frank had gotten comfortable with the idea of being alone. Silence was his friend. The dark was where he worked best — where he felt most like himself.
But up until a couple weeks ago, he'd started craving the light again.
Bright, shining locs of gold with a smile like honey to match.
Karen Page had dragged him, kicking and bleeding, back into the land of the living. And now she was gone, and he missed her like hell.
He missed the way she touched his shoulder when she passed. The way her voice softened when she said his name. The smell of her coffee. Her laugh when she let it escape.
Frank fucked up. Plain and simple. Told her to leave, and she did.
He didn’t know what he expected — Karen Page was a woman of her word. And he’d handed her everything she needed to pack up and never come back. Pride and pain in one neat little push.
So now he filled the space with shadows again. Went back to what he knew.
He stopped going to group. Stopped answering Curtis' texts. Stopped pretending he wasn’t slipping into the Punisher like it was a second skin.
There were cases — plenty of them. Scum still ran the streets. The city didn’t stop turning just because his heart did.
Riley came by sometimes.
Banged on his door until he let her in. Brought him food he wouldn’t eat, and stories he barely listened to. She’d ask about cases, try to make him talk, force him to remain human for just a few minutes before she slipped back out into the night.
She reminded him of someone. Maybe Lisa, if she’d grown up with blood under her nails and steel in her spine.
He liked the kid. Not in any romantic sense — God, no. Like a daughter, maybe he was craving what he lost. Who knows.
Trouble was probably the last shred of humanity he hadn’t burned away. The dog still cried at night. Sat by the front door some evenings and whined like it knew something was missing.
Like it knew Karen wasn't coming back.
Frank would lie awake listening to it. Staring at the ceiling like it might collapse on him.
Some nights he’d go to the roof just to breathe. Other nights, he wouldn’t bother at all.
It was cold. The kind of cold that seeped into your bones, even in California.
Frank stood in the alley behind Riley’s place, checking the clip in his gun, waiting. She was late. Again.
She’d been pushing harder lately — taking bigger risks. Hunting alone. He didn’t like it.
After Karen left, he didn't really know how to deal with his own grief on top of Riley's. He went into the shadows, and sometimes she would join him. And that scared him a bit.
Not because she was reckless — though she was — but because she reminded him too much of himself.
And he knew exactly how that story ended.
“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” he said when she finally showed up.
Riley shrugged, hands stuffed in her jacket. “So are you.”
He didn’t respond. Just turned and started walking.
They hit the streets together sometimes now. Not like partners — more like ghosts haunting the same block.
Frank didn't talk much. Riley didn't push. It worked.
But it wasn’t life. Not really.
But it would do. Frank didn't plan on staying any longer. When the Punisher came out, Frank Castle had a tendency to fade.
One night, he came home and the couch still smelled like her shampoo.
Three weeks, and it hadn't faded.
He sat down anyway. Let the ache in his chest sit with him for a while.
He smelled it, desperately. An ache played in his chest and it was killing him. He wanted to cry and snap his own neck. He was an idiot. And a coward.
He didn't call her. Not once. He didn't know how to even being that conversation and honestly he was to scared to try.
She was right to leave. That’s the part that hurt the most.
She was right.
Because he’d let Riley in, and Curtis, and hell — even the damn dog. But not Karen. Not the one person who wanted all of him. Who asked to carry the weight and meant it.
He didn’t trust her with the worst parts of himself.
Not because she couldn’t take it. But because he couldn’t stand the look on her face if she did.
The disappointment. The heartbreak.
He could live with blood on his hands. He couldn’t live with that.
Trouble whined at the door again, soft and broken.
Frank stared at it, eyes hollow.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Me too.”
Three Weeks.
That’s how long it had been since she’d heard his voice outside of nightmares or half-finished dreams.
Karen Page was no stranger to silence.
She’d learned, over time, that silence could be a weapon, a balm, a punishment. It could hide things. Destroy things. You could bury whole lifetimes in it.
She’d filled hers with work.
Morning to midnight, chasing sources, dissecting articles, re-editing pieces that no one had even asked her to revise. She triple-checked facts that didn’t matter and took the assignments no one else wanted — the grimy, underreported ones about overdoses in alleyways and missing women with no one left to report them missing.
Her editor told her she was on fire lately. Said her instincts were razor-sharp.
But she wasn’t sharp.
She was splintering.
And no one saw it.
Karen would go home every night, crawl into her cold lonely bed, and miss the life she was starting with him.
Her, Trouble, and Frank. They were a unit for a time, no matter how small it was. They meant something. And Karen could fix it. She knows if she went to Frank right now, he would apologize and everything could be the same.
But she didn't want the same. She wanted more. Karen wanted him healed and whole. Karen wanted ALL of Frank Castle or nothing. No lies or secrets or half-truths. He couldn't give that to her right now.
Not yet.
The moment played on a loop in her mind. It shouldn’t have meant so much. Just a walk-by. But something in her stilled.
She had looked up from her phone, half-expecting nothing, and there Riley was — cutting through the space like a shadow.
No hello. No acknowledgment. Just one glance.
And that glance told her everything.
Karen hadn’t seen Riley in a few weeks. Since… everything.
Since she left Frank. Since the house got quieter. Since Riley started drifting from her desk job and into places Karen couldn’t reach.
Riley looked like hell.
Her face was tired in a way that sleep couldn’t touch. There were hollows under her eyes. Faint bruising above one temple, like someone had tried to hide it with makeup but didn’t have the energy to finish. Her hands were balled in her hoodie pockets, but Karen had caught the sliver of a wrapped knuckle, red and raw.
She didn’t need to ask. She knew.
She knew.
Riley had been with him.
Not just with him — in the dark with him. The same dark Karen had clawed her way out of.
It made her sick. The guilt rose like bile in her stomach and she wanted to cry her eyes out. The Punisher was back, and he had a friend.
She knows its not really her fault, Frank is a grown man and Riley is old enough to make her own decisions. But god did it hurt.
Was it that easy for him? To crawl back into the place she had to drag him from? It was devastating. It felt like all they had could be replaced with that damn skull on his chest and blood on his hands.
She sat in her car after work that night, hands still on the wheel.
She could’ve gone home.
She could’ve called. Texted.
Walked right into Riley’s apartment and demanded the truth.
But she didn’t.
Because she wouldn’t be asking for Riley.
She’d be asking for Frank.
And it hurt — more than she thought it would.
She could lie to herself all day long, tell herself she was over him, tell herself walking away was the right choice. But that thread was still there.
It tugged every time she saw pictures of Trouble on her phone. Every time she passed his street.
Every time she opened her fridge and saw the bottle of whiskey he’d picked out for her birthday she never got around to drinking.
He was still in her life, even if he wasn’t in it.
And Riley was her reminder.
She didn’t hate her for it.
She just hated that he had let Riley get that close — when he never let Karen all the way in.
A few nights later, Karen sat at her desk, doom-scrolling through headlines from back home. She did it often. Quietly. Secretly. When she couldn’t sleep.
It was self-inflicted torture, sure, but there was something about Hell’s Kitchen that still felt like home. Even after everything.
But tonight, something was different.
The air around her felt heavy, wrong. Like the weight of a city bearing down on her shoulders.
Her coffee was cold. She didn’t remember pouring it.
And there it was.
WILSON FISK WINS ELECTION IN SURPRISE LANDSLIDE VICTORY.
She froze.
Her stomach lurched, bile rising in her throat.
She clicked the article. Then another. And another.
Photo after photo of Fisk in smug smiles, surrounded by crowds he bought and power he stole. A city that either forgot or forgave everything he ever did.
Karen couldn’t breathe.
Fisk had won.
Not just in the courtrooms — in the streets.
He was running the city now.
She kept scrolling. Kept digging, even though her heart was slamming against her ribcage.
She should’ve stopped. But she didn’t.
And then she found it.
BREAKING: Gunfire at Fisk’s Banquet.
Local Lawyer Wounded Shielding Civilians.
Matthew Murdock in Stable Condition After Shooting.
Her heart broke.
She read the words over and over again, hand clenched to her mouth.
Matt.
She hadn’t thought about him in so long. Hadn’t let herself.
Maybe that was sad. She was getting to live a new life and Matt was still out in that damn costume doing what he thought was right.
But now, the past was screaming.
It wasn’t love. Not in the way she once thought. Matt was never the epic love of her life.
But care? God, she cared.
She cared like hell.
And she knew what it meant — if Matt was back on the streets, if Fisk was mayor, if people were dying…
The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen needed someone in his corner.
And there was only one person she could call.
The one man who could meet that kind of fire.
Her fingers hovered over her phone.
It was late. She shouldn’t call.
He might not answer.
But something in her — that reckless, relentless part that had always loved too deeply — pushed her forward.
The phone rang.
Once.
Twice.
She was about to hang up when she heard it.
A breath. A voice. Hoarse. Familiar. Tired.
“…Karen.”
She closed her eyes.
“Frank.”
She tried to keep her voice level, but it cracked on his name.
A long pause.
Then:
“Everything alright?”
She could laugh at that if it didn’t hurt so much.
Everything had never been alright between them. That’s what made it what it was. What made it real.
“No,” she said, quiet. “Not really.”
Another silence.
“I need a favor.”
He didn’t ask what. Didn’t hesitate.
“Anything.”