#punisherff

summary: karen, back in the swing of babysitting, gets to meet more of the people in frank's life — and tears open some wounds along the way. characters: frank castle/karen page rating: g warnings: n/a word count: 51.8k+ (ongoing) a/n: listen, i am aware this chapter comes two months after the last one. don't look at me. it's been a Time.

____

chapter one .|. chapter six chapter two .|. chapter seven chapter three .|. chapter eight chapter four .|. chapter nine chapter five .

____

Karen was fucking tired.

If she’d thought taking care of a small child on an unreliable schedule had screwed her sleep schedule, she’d had another thing coming when she’d committed to taking care of said child and her father. She could’ve taken more days off — Frank had offered her the rest of the month, to compensate for his illness — but she’d refused, citing her desire to keep up a regular schedule. Which was true, for the most part, and only partially to cover up the fact that her tiny apartment suddenly felt unbearably empty after almost a week of being around Frank.

Even as tiny as her place was (“it’s not tiny, it’s cozy ,” Foggy always said), it felt lonely without the noise of another person. Before she’d started working for Frank, she’d never considered how truly alone she was most of the time. Outside of Foggy and her regular meetings with Ellison, she’d gotten so used to being on her own that other people almost felt like an extraneous bore, an extra weight on her shoulders that she never really wanted.

But with Frank…it was almost like there was no weight at all. Maybe it was because he was gone so often that he didn’t really make much of an impact anyway, or the fact that he was so quiet that she might as well be alone anyway.

But when he did speak…his voice was some kind of missing piece for her brain, a white noise machine she hadn’t known she needed. Not musical, in the sense that movies and romance novels always describe it — no, it was far too rough for that — but comforting in the same kind of way.

God, she ought to take Foggy’s advice on writing schlocky romance novels to supplement her income.

"Home."

The word tastes different on his tongue tonight. For a moment, he believes it to be alcohol's handiwork that lends it bitterness and leaves his mouth dry. He tips his glass in mock-salute to the empty chairs around the dinner table. Takes another swig straight out of the bottle. Sets it down and glares at the label as though the force of his will alone will be enough to strip it from existence.

He's never been a drinker.

Scratch that.

He never used to be one, but there are a lot of things he never used to be that he currently is. He supposes he should count himself lucky that Madani had rolled her eyes at him and scrapped him off the list of 'wanted dead men' he's certain Homeland keeps in a desk drawer somewhere he can't reach. (He's not used to not being able to reach information. Treats intelligence as a commodity to give free access to. He thinks that's all right, but he's not the one keeping secrets.)

Fucking 3AM and he's no closer to sleep than he was four hours and half a bottle of dignity ago.

He thinks Sarah knows. There's something about the set of her shoulders lately, as though bringing him home is another burden stockpiled onto the woman who already does a better job at shouldering the world than Atlas ever did. There's something about the way she sees him and not sees him at the same time. Looks at him as though she brought home a stranger, and he still wears her husband's face.

He can't bring himself to stay in bed. Goes through all the motions – brush teeth, brush hair, undress, kiss the wife, read a book before bed – and still sneaks out the second his eyes meet the ceiling and stay fixed on it despite the sleep that tugs at his eyelids and makes his body go heavy. He's careful not to wake them. Toes past the bed and steps over any lingering toys Zach always seems to stockpile outside his door at night. He's not always successful at avoiding Leo, but his baby girl seems haunted by things he knows better than to try and shield her from. She just stares at him for what feels like forever before patting the bed beside her and letting him rest his head on her pillow.

David often thinks he can break, right then and there, but Leo's eyes are too familiar and her stuffed bunny she sleeps with again always gets in the way of his mouth when he tries to get a word out.

He thinks she knows, anyway.

He's done terrible things to keep them safe. He's the kind of man to bargain with Death and come out victorious. He's alive when he shouldn't be. He's in one piece where he has no right to be. He thinks that's trouble.

summary: frank thinks back to that springsteen concert with maria. characters: frank castle/maria castle rating: g warnings: n/a word count: 3.1k a/n: i don't think it's ever established whether frank actually got to go that bruce springsteen concert that maria got him tickets to in season one — i would assume the answer's no — but i got a bug in my bonnet and decided to be soft. enjoy.

______

Frank can’t hear The Boss without thinking of Maria. 

It doesn’t happen often — hell, his lifestyle doesn’t really afford much time to listen to music — but it does occasionally. In corner stores, or from the open window of a cab, some driver bobbing his head aimlessly to the sound of “Born to Run”. He hears it in the park on warm summer afternoons, on those days when Karen forces him to get out of his dingy little apartment on pain of death.

(For his health, she says, despite having sewn up a hole in his arm the size of a golf ball not three days before. He doesn’t question it.) 

It always strikes something in him when he does hear it, rare as it is. He’s not sure what it is — Karen’s the one who’s good with words, not him — but it’s there all the same, sitting at the base of his sternum like a lead weight, lingering like an omen. Not doing anything, just…there. Unfailingly, every time. 

He can try to distract himself, jam headphones in and play something else, call Karen or David or — god forbid — Dinah and let their words wash over him, drowning out the sound of songs he still knows every word to. He can try all he wants, but they end up stuck there, in the back of his head, and he’s singing them for the rest of the day, half-mumbled little tunes that are only mostly in key while he’s walking or doing what he calls the dishes. 

And every time, his brain goes back to that day. 

summary: frank castle gets dragged to therapy, and wanda maximoff makes a friend in the punisher. characters: frank castle & wanda maximoff (w/ a brief appearance from marc spector) rating: g warnings: n/a word count: 5.5k a/n: me, the entire time i was watching multiverse of madness: oh, wanda and frank really should sit down and have a talk. 

_____

Marc had bugged him into going to group therapy. 

How the fuck that had happened, he had no idea. It wasn’t really therapy, per se, at least not in the sense that Frank thought about it. No cold church basement, no vets sitting in a circle with Curt passing out donuts or coffee. Group was sterile, forced. Like kids the first time they do presentations in middle school. It was uncomfortable, and no one liked doing it. At least, not at first. 

And Frank hadn’t agreed to go in the patient sense. Just to tag along, listen to Marc bitch for a couple of hours so he could verify the stories about Kandahar, the same shit that had fucked the both of them up in slightly different ways. (When he thought back on it, he had it easy compared to Marc.) He was there as a visitor, an observer. He wasn’t a superhero and he’d never claimed to be. Not the way Marc was — or pretended to be, whatever. God knows he didn’t have the energy for that. 

“Just…try it out,” Marc said, like they were twenty and it was pot, not in their forties and mentally fucked beyond reason. 

So he’d gone. Left Amy and Maya and Karen at the apartment and promised to be home by dinner, sitting through two train changes and a bus, because Marc didn’t trust Ubers, for whatever godforsaken reason. It was a bad idea, he could feel it in his gut, but he went anyway, nearly falling asleep on the PATH train and spacing out the rest of the way.

No, the place his friend dragged him to wasn’t a cold church basement. Not at all. 

But then that fucking kid showed up. 

summary: maya lopez has nowhere left to go. no family she can trust. but no matter how hard he tries, frank castle will always be a father. characters: frank castle & maya lopez (platonic) rating: g warnings: minor mentions of injury/blood (non-descriptive) word count: 2.9k  a/n: guess who’s got two thumbs, watched the hawkeye finale, and immediately though maya and frank needed to interact and bond? this girl. this is a purely self-indulgent piece, nothing to do with canon at all, but i needed to get it out of my system anyway. thanks to @jonbernthalsdoeeyes for beta reading! ________

Frank didn’t like when people showed up out of nowhere.

He kept an apartment in Queens for that reason. No one came to Queens. Not even Karen, unless she needed something. It was as far away from human civilization as he could get without leaving the city, close enough to keep an eye on everyone without getting roped into their shit. He liked the silence, the space to breathe without wondering whether someone would question how and why he was doing it. For once in his life, he enjoyed living in a place without orders or expectations.

So no, he didn’t like unexpected visitors. Didn’t like solicitors, nosy neighbors, even people who knew him stopping by without dropping a line first. He couldn’t escape the jumpiness that came with it, the immediate response from all of his nerve endings to expect disaster. Frank Castle was not a great host, and he had no desire to be.

But when a kid, hardly old enough to drink, knocks on his door half-faint from blood loss, he’s willing to let some things slide.

summary: karen page is a down on her luck reporter for the bulletin, digging up whatever dirt she can find to claw her way into a byline and her big break. the only problem? money. until frank castle and a craigslist ad for a babysitter enter her life. characters: frank castle/karen page rating: g warnings: n/a word count: 26.7k+ (ongoing) a/n: i would say i can't believe i haven't promo'd my most successful fic to date on tumblr, but i also forget to promo most of my fics, so...here. have this open-ended disaster. thanks to @jonbernthalsdoeeyes for serving as beta once again!

____

Childcare needed.

Infant girl, 1 year old. Six days a week, non-standard schedule in a housing plan uptown. Must be willing to work odd hours. Access to in-home amenities, but no space to board. (Can provide stipend for gas.) Rates negotiable. Previous experience preferred.

Karen stared at the Craigslist ad, the ugly purple font seeping into the space behind her eyes and pushing at her brain til it ached. The words swam in front of her face, incomplete sentences picking away at what little energy she had after a long day of talking to plastic-faced politicians  — her least favorite part of her job.

It was a sparse listing, if anything. No name, no specifics beyond the age of the kid and days of the week. She wondered if it wasn’t a ruse, some kind of sugar baby thing to lure young women fresh out of college into a scam. It was Craigslist, for Christ’s sake; it wouldn’t be the first time, nor would it be the last.

But even then — she was broke enough to consider it.

And it’d make a hell of a story if it were true.

summary: karen finds an old relic of frank's that triggers a memory. characters: frank castle/karen page, frank castle/maria castle (flashback) rating: g warnings: n/a word count: 5.8k a/n: blame this on @sunnyoberyns and our 2:30AM snapchat rants about letting frank have happy memories. she’s an enabler. __________

Karen would never get used to intruding on Frank’s space.

He’d never had a space to intrude on before, not really. She’d met him in hospital rooms and courthouse holding cells, on park benches and her own front stoop. She’d never associated Frank with one particular place — not even the one she’d broken into — and it felt odd to have an address stored under his ‘name’ in her phone.

It still wasn’t much — couch they’d found along the road, pile of books stacked up in the corner. Nice kitchen, if a little messy. Safe, from everyone but Dinah. And David. But no one was safe from them.

She’d only meant to drop off a housewarming gift. Nothing too dramatic — one of those silly, mug-sized plants you can buy at the corner store. Small enough not to scare him. A pleasantry to pair with a hug and a “hicongratulationsbye” at the door. She had work to be doing, deadlines that needed to be made. The world didn’t stop, so neither did she.

And yet, she lingered.

summary: karen's off on a new adventure, leaving new york behind. will frank come with her? or will she have to leave him behind? characters: frank castle/karen page rating: g warnings: n/a word count: 16.6k (ongoing) a/n: is this me using a series of vignettes to project as both a journalist and an avid traveler? perhaps. am i still going to use it to enable my own romance writer bullshit? absolutely.  _________ chapter one chapter two chapter three __________ “You want me to go where?”

Frank never looked small. It wasn’t in his nature. He was tall, muscular, intense — like a brick house stacked on cement blocks, as David had put it. He was the kind of person you gave a wide berth if you didn’t know any better. (And even if you did...sometimes you still left some space.) He was a storm, an energy that filled every room he walked into with something no one could ever identify.

Frank was not small in any sense of the word, but he looked it as he leaned against Karen’s fridge. 

It hadn’t been intentional, what she’d asked. She hadn’t even expected to see him that day — or that week, or that month. He came and went like the storm he was, and even forecasts were useless. Perhaps that’s why she’d asked. On the off chance she wouldn’t get to before it was too late. 

Or maybe it was impulse. She never could keep her mouth shut. 

“Italy.”