She knows it can’t last, like it’s a truce the world has temporarily granted, fragile and held together by the most tenuous of things. A house of cards, really, and she eyes it warily, even as Matt’s let down his own guard now that Fisk isn’t around. No one has stepped up to the plate to organize criminal activity on the scale Fisk had managed, his empire ran haphazardly by lesser minds, as lesser threats.
So yes, Matt has let them in more, her and Foggy, now that his nightly excursions seem almost too easy. Not that they don’t leave him bruised and battered, but he seems less afraid of pulling his friends in when there’s not a criminal mastermind behind them, just poor attempts at the throne.
Still, she‘s tense that whole spring, into summer, then the fall, waiting and watching that house of cards. The Jack of Hearts looks a little bit like Foggy, who’d grown a goatee and then shaved it off in favor of just a mustache despite Karen needling him mercilessly for it.
“Karen, I’m going through my eras of TV Hunk. We’re in the Tom Selleck phase, do you know how many women swooned over his mustache? I will not be bound by societal changes.”
“Does Marci like it?”
He glances sidelong at her, pauses then lets out a defeated sigh. “Yes, or you know it would be gone in 30 seconds.”
“Ok I’ll work on her. Every time you come into the office I picture you sliding across the hood of a 70s muscle car like you’re in Magnum P.I. and I can’t take you seriously.”
“Reminds me of that time when Fr--” Foggy stops himself, but she knows.
“Yeah,” she says softly, her eyes flicking up to meet his gaze then leave it. “Yeah it does.”
It would be a lie to say she didn’t think about Frank, but Murdock, Nelson and Page had been a good distraction this last year. Setting up the firm, finding a new office in the Kitchen, and just playing serious legal catch-up to the two avocados at law were enough to keep thoughts of him to a dull roar (she’d bought them little namesakes, glass-blown ones with painted-on sunglasses and a mustache, from a stall at one of those weekend art festivals that were always popping up around the city).
Still, at night when she tosses her keys on the side table and the lonely weight of her quiet apartment settles into her bones, she thinks of him. Of how he couldn’t look at her in that damned hospital room, eyes darting, of how he pushed her away with his own stubborn, selfish aims. Yeah. Yeah, she’ll have a lot to say to him, if she could.
But he’s been gone this past year, or maybe just terrorizing some other part of the country’s criminal organizations. Like she’d thought earlier, New York was missing some of its seedy underbelly these days. It’s why it worked, this house of cards.
It comes crashing down that Thursday night.
It had been a good day, Matt heading into court in the afternoon, Foggy finally breaking the industrious quiet by announcing he’s always wanted a putting green in his office.
Somehow that has evolved into a three-hole miniature golf course where the final hole is a ramp to Foggy’s blown-up face from an old political poster with the mouth cut out. Karen’s sides hurt from laughing as the city settles into the dark of evening.
“Wow, you really suck at this,” Foggy laughs.
“I did not know I needed to practice -” she bursts into giggles -”putting a ball - oh god - p-putting a ball into your m-mouth”.
Foggy loses it too until a text buzzes both their phones. They both sober up from the laughter, each thinking the same thought as they reach for their mobiles. Matt’s been gone too long.
Sure enough, it’s a text from him, and Karen’s heart sinks from the vagueness of it.
Won’t be able to make it out tonight. You two have fun and see you in the a.m.
She looks up to see Foggy’s expression as he studies the words on the screen like an Ancient Text, the backlight and the now dim light in the office lending him a haggard expression. It's the first time she’s seen it in a year.
“He’ll be okay, Fogs.” She isn’t sure she believes it, but she says it anyway. She doesn’t think he believes it either, but he smiles all the same. She marvels, not for the first time, at how trauma is a form of time travel. Because despite the progress of this past year, her and Foggy both remember Matt, before, and they are right back there again in an instant.
Foggy’s expression almost breaks her heart as he nods and takes an absentminded last putt, the ball rolling up the braille legal book ramp and straight into the picture’s mouth.
Karen hasn’t changed a bit, despite all that’s happened, and she knows this is a bad idea but can’t stop herself all the same. She’d said goodbye to Foggy at the office doorway, mumbling something about cleaning up the casserole dish from one of their recent sliding scale (if you could call it that) clients. Foggy had been on the phone with Marci, but had paused - Karen’s heart aching with the kindness of him - for a moment, holding his hand over the speaker.
“You sure?” He'd mouthed before speaking in a whisper. “This isn’t about Matt, right?”
She’d shrugged her shoulders. She wasn’t going to lie about that, at least. “Maybe it is, but it’s okay. I just want to have some time to think, and scrubbing cheese off this casserole dish will sadly give me time.”
He’d left then, with one worried glance backwards. She’ll have to keep an eye on her phone tonight, she’s willing to bet he’ll at least text to check in on her.
It had been the silences from Matt that had scared them the most. She isn’t doing that to Foggy.
Still, she’s pretty sure he wouldn’t approve of her rifling through Matt’s files, her notes, and the Bulletin trying to triangulate where the hell Daredevil is off to tonight. She figures it out when she sees the line in the local crime beat from last week, from a paper she hadn’t yet let herself start reading again until now.
Ex-FBI Officer Charged with Death of Priest, FBI Officer Escapes From Prison
She drops the paper and scrambles to her desk, pulling out the drawer that holds her purse, shaking, and grabs her gun, her breath ragged in the quiet of the office, the gun almost sucking the light out of the room, matte black. She stares at it for a moment before raising it in both hands, her feet unconsciously shifting apart to ground her. She feels the trigger under her finger, safety still on, she knows, and she presses the trigger once, twice, three times, over and over until her face crumples and she slides to the floor.
She doesn’t give herself much time to let the pain rule her, she never does. If Bullseye is back, then that’s what Matt is looking into, and she knows he’ll need help despite not wanting it. Not to mention she has a score to settle with that psycho. Her hand shakes as she locks the office up until she stares at her fingers, willing them to calmness.
The church still looms taller than her faith, which isn’t hard to manage, she thinks wryly. The night holds an early fall chill, a breeze off the river teasing the hairs at the nape of her neck where her hair is pulled into a low ponytail. Quiet rules the street with the church lit gently by low exterior lights as she eyes the windows and tries not to think about the past. She’s almost about to give up, thinking that she’s guessed wrong, when she sees the heavy front door shift. A figure darts through, too broad-shouldered to be Matt, she thinks, then the door shuts without a noise and she’s staring into a face lit lowly for just a second before the man ducks into the shadows.
Frank. She’s frozen there, on the sidewalk, and she knows it’s the stupidest thing for her to do so she darts off the path onto the grass that edges the church’s lot. She’s not sure if he’s seen her, and can’t spot him anymore in the darkness, and she has a moment to think - god how on earth did he just disappear like that? before he’s in front of her, finger to his lips at her impending shriek of surprise, his face familiarly blood-spattered and sporting an almost goofy grin. It doesn’t make sense, any of it, and she stares at him in confusion as he tugs her hands into his, holding her out like he wants to look at her, take stock, that grin lowering like a sail as his eyes grow more intense and how can he be so casual and what is going on and -
“Ma’am,” he says, his tone teasing.
She relaxes, because there can’t be any danger here if he’s acting like that, but then tensing back up because honestly, what the hell?
He must see it in her face because rumbles an apology. ‘M’sorry. Just…seeing you like that, reminded me of…” he trails off, dropping her hands to tug at his hood in mimicry of his beggar routine. “And you’re still all heart now, I don’t even need to ask.”
Something about the way he says it, almost proprietarily, pisses her off. Her eyes flash in the shadows they’ve found themselves in, pulling deeper in as a car passes and breaks the silence with loud, low bass. “Yeah, Frank? What clued you in there?”
She wants him to say it. Doesn’t want to have to spell it out.
His head punches back slightly, taking the blow. He changes the subject, or maybe it’s still the same one. “I came back as soon as I heard. The church’s been clean so far, surprised though. Guy like that usually wants to win where he lost.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Karen admits. “So what’s with the blood?”
He touches his face, as if reminding himself. “Research.”
She almost laughs.
“Where’s Red?” He rasps out.
“This was me trying to find him,” she says and watches his face soften out of the corner of her eye.
“I’m sorry, Karen.”
She waits, staring down at where the grass, wet from the day’s watering, sticks to her sneakers.
He clears his throat. “I wasn’t there for you when he came after you the first time. Fuckin' killed me to hear about it. Killed me to know you were hurt and scared and I wasn’t around to help.”
He’s not saying the right things, but they’re still good ones. She smiles a timid smile, glances up and lets him give her what he can. She’s got a year of therapy on one Frank Castle under her belt. “It’s okay, Frank.”
She knows he wants to say more, say something about the hospital. She pulls him in for a hug, kisses his cheek in a spot bare of blood. Maybe she’s the one that isn’t ready this time.
“It’s okay.”
She feels his lips on her neck, a brief chapped kiss, before he pulls back and stares into her eyes like he’s trying to solve her mystery.
“I just want to find Matt, Frank. Make sure he’s okay.”
Maybe he hears it in her voice, the unspoken later, maybe he just senses the urgency.
“Alright then, let’s go.” He grabs her hand again, pulls his hood up with another. She’s so in shock that she doesn’t move until he starts tugging. He looks back at her, casually throws back, “You’re going to do it anyway. At least I can keep an eye on you this way.”
It both pisses her off and makes her smile. Her feelings are never black and white for Frank Castle, but it definitely seems like he’s accepted some things about her, at least. She squeezes his hand that dwarfs her own, callused and warm, and follows him away from the church, into the heart of the city.