“So, is he really dead?”
The question comes so casually, said over a sip of black coffee in a diner in the early morning hours, that she almost didn’t believe that she’d heard it.
As with everything Frank did, it was sudden, unexpected, and definitely meticulously thought out beforehand. He was aiming for casual, uninterested, but she knew he’d planned it that way. He wanted to know the answer, but he also didn’t want her to spook on him. As if it were talking about Matt that would spook her, after everything she and Frank had been through together in recent months. They never did give her enough credit.
“Who?” she asked instead, taking a deliberate bite of her bagel. She wasn’t hungry, and the bagel traveled down her esophagus slowly, like a ball of clay.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Frank said, not unkindly. “You’ve talked about your lawyer-friend, Foggy, you’ve talked about work, hell, you’ve talked about the weather, but you haven’t said a word about him. The papers don’t have anything to say about it, so either you’re hiding him away somewhere, or you’re just hoping it’ll go away if you don’t talk about it. So, what happened?”
Karen fiddled with her coffee cup instead of looking at him. Frank was intense, his eyes always piercing and putting things together. Usually, she would match him stare for stare, quip for quip, but this morning, she just felt tired.
“Yes.” She took a sip of the dregs of her cooling coffee to stall. Frank waved the waitress over for a refill as she gathered her thoughts. Karen stirred another packet of sugar into her freshened up cup. She wasn’t thirsty, but the motion was soothing.
“The short answer is yes, he’s dead. Did you hear about that building explosion six months ago? Midland Circle?”
Frank nodded, sniffing and wiping at the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Yeah. Not much in the papers about that one. Some kinda domestic terrorism, but they never caught whoever did it, and they didn’t say much about it. I figured it was some kind of cover-up, but it didn’t sound like my usual gig.”
Karen smiled wanly. “A cover-up, yeah. Just a little one. It’s funny, in a world where aliens come out of the sky and Tony Stark builds evil robots that try to destroy Eastern European countries, some things are still too strange to report on.”
“And Red was in the middle of it?”
“As always.” Karen fiddled with her hair and watched some early morning commuter traffic crawl by the window. “You know he could never stay away from dangerous things - especially things happening in Hell’s Kitchen - and this one was personal.”
“So what happened?”
“Remember those ninjas that kidnapped me and a bunch of the people Daredevil saved? Yeah, it was those guys again. And Elektra was back.”
“Elektra?” It took a lot to rattle Frank Castle, but he actually seemed perturbed by this one. “Murdock’s girl? The one who I saw get knifed?”
Karen nodded. “That’s the one.”
“Bullshit.”
“I thought so, too, but it was her. The ninjas brought her back from the dead.”
“They can do that?”
“Not anymore. Not since Matt and the rest of them dropped the building on them.”
Frank absorbed this for a moment, taking his time.
“So, what, Red did some heroic sacrifice play, let the building fall on him?”
Karen barked out a laugh, startled, edged with hysteria, because of course Frank had him pegged with only the barest of details. “That’s exactly what he did.”
“Trying to save his girl?”
“Yes.”
Frank deflated a little at that, sinking back into the booth. “Dumbass.” He muttered another string of profanity as he knocked back the rest of his coffee.
“He was definitely a dumbass,” Karen agreed mildly, tucking her hair behind her ear.
Frank’s piercing eyes turned on her again, calculating and concerned by turns. “Are you okay?”
She smiled a little, sadly. “Yeah, Frank, I think I’m okay. But, I keep thinking I’m going to see him tapping his way around the courthouse, too, you know? Off to win some other pro bono case for the little guy. It doesn’t feel real that he’s gone.”
Frank was working himself up to agitation again. “Well, I guess he is. Fucking dumbass. I knew he was gonna get himself killed with his hero bullshit. Can’t punch your way out of a exploding building. Fuck.”
Karen hesitantly reached out and touched Frank’s hand. He stilled under her touch, looking back at her with those intense dark eyes.
“I miss him, too, Frank.”
Frank scoffed, his mouth tugging into an ugly smile. “I don’t miss him, Karen. I barely knew him. But I - I respected him, you know? He went about it all wrong, but he had fuckin brass balls. Did he ever tell you I shot him in the head first time I met him? Yeah. Idiot just kept coming back, trying to preach me the ‘error of my ways’ and save me from eternal damnation or some shit. He never knew when to quit. I just knew that candy-ass saving everybody attitude was gonna kill him sooner or later. Looks like it was sooner.”
Karen nodded. There wasn’t anything else to say.
The moment was over, though. Frank reached into his wallet, threw some bills on the table. He stood up and hesitated before he started walking away.
“Thank you for telling me, Karen.”
Karen nodded again. “I thought you would understand.”
“I do.” He looked like he was going to say something else, but thought better of it. He smiled at her again before he walked away.
“I’ll see you around, ma’am.”
“Bye, Frank,” she whispered.
He was always walking away from her. She had the lines of his shoulders memorized. She watched him walk past her window, disappearing into the city. How long until it was his death to mourn, she wondered. She’d mourned him once already, been prepared to mourn every day since. Men like Frank, like Matt, they had tragedy carved into their bones, the kind of men who burned everyone around them with their fire. It was only a matter of time until he burned up, and took her with him.
If she were smart, she would get out now. Karen gathered her purse, thanked the waitress on the way out, and slipped into the streets. She should cut Frank Castle out of her life. It was the sensible thing to do.
Karen Page had always been more heart than sense.