Captured Guard: “I’m not telling you anything.”
GM: He starts to foam from the mouth and-
Medic: Oh, no you don’t! I tackle him out of the chair and force him to vomit. Does (Gunner) still have that juice box?
Gunner: Sure, I hand it over.
Medic: I’m going to use that to rinse his mouth.
GM: Go ahead and roll for it
Medic: *Rolls really well.*
GM: So the guard just lays there, astonished and upset he’s still alive.
Medic: “YOU THOUGHT, BITCH! No one here dies unless I want them to!”
Later, with a different guard who’s cyanide tooth she had removed before he could use it:
Medic: “Just tell us the names of your higher ups.
(Newly) Captured Guard 2: “It would be easier if I just wrote them down for you, there’s quite a few.”
Medic: “No, you can list them out. I’ll write them down.”
Captured Guard 2: “You sure? Some of them are hard to spell-”
Medic: “I am NOT giving you a pen so you can stab yourself in the throat and die since I took your cyanide tooth out.”
Captured Guard 2: “What, I would never-”
Medic: “Just list the names, asshole, and don’t bother lying. I’ll just make you wish I let you kill yourself for your group.”
She takes a breath. One in. One out. Pulls herself together. C’mon Karen. Get your shit together. Pull your fucking socks up and let’s get on with it. She shakes her head. Dries her eyes. Lets the engine rumble to life beneath her and puts both hands on the steering wheel, forgets her dad and Vermont and the tiny list of numbers in her favourites list and just fucking drives.
Do you have somewhere you can go? Sister Maggie asks and for a moment Karen’s whole mind fogs and she thinks she might cry again. But then her blue eyes shock clear as she huffs out a little breath and wonders why she didn’t think of him before.
Karen? She takes a moment. Above her, the ceiling rumbles with the church’s organ groaning to life. The air has a sweetness to it down here, rising above the damp and dust of the basement. It’s still a heavy smell, a lingering permeation of mould lying beneath, but it wraps round her, arms of warmth snaking around her shoulders. Her chest shakes with a breath. ‘Hey Frank.’
–
David calls him out of the blue on a Monday. He’s out on a run. He’s not sure when Frank Castle became a man who jogs. Maybe it’s all Pete; he’s not sure. But he likes his route. It takes him along the river. Down past the bridge. Their spot. The place where he’d met with her, months ago now, her all wrapped up in that dark coat and – ‘Lieberman,’ he pants into the phone. ‘You seen the news?’ Cold runs through him. Up from his ankles and through his calves and right along to his fingertips, ice in his knuckles and turning over his stomach.
The Bulletin. Some asshole dressed up in a Daredevil suit attacked The Bulletin. Three reporters dead. One on life support.
He holds onto the wall and leans so far over he almost falls into the Hudson river just trying to get his breath back in his body.
When he thinks to pull his phone out of his pocket, thinks to tap in the number he has memorised back-to-front, there’s already a name flashing up on his caller ID. He almost drops with relief, knees giving out as if the whole pavement had been yanked out from under him like a magician’s rug.
‘Karen?’ A pause. A shuffle of breath down the phone. Even just that – that little agonised puff of air is so familiar, so inherently her, that if he shuts his eyes he can practically see her. Can reach out to touch her, the corn silk softness of her hair, the roughness of her ribcage and the sharp spike of her elbows. ‘Hey Frank.’ ‘You’re okay?’ He clears his throat. Wishes his voice wasn’t so thick. Coated with honey and horror. ‘I’m – I, uh.’ She breaks off in splinters and he, for the first time in a long time, presses both hands to his forehead and prays, the phone caught between his palms. When he pulls it back to his ear, she’s still silent, and his voice surges, water against rocks; ‘You’re not hurt? Karen?’ Still no answer. ‘Karen. Hey. Please –’ ‘You know, I called my dad.’ Into the quiet, she laughs, hard and hurt. ‘I know. I’m as surprised as you. I wanted to go home – back to Vermont. I told him – I told him how bad I messed up. And I really messed up this time, Frank. People are dead because of me. Again. People I work with, with families. I said –’ he listens to her heave in a breath and he closes his eyes, imagines he’s with her, imagines he can wrap his arms round her and absorb all the hurt, soak it up like blood to a bandage. ‘I said that I was just trying to do the right thing. Trying to do good. But it – it went wrong.’ Her voice keens and he realises she’s crying and when he lifts fingers to his face his cheeks are wet too. The plastic case of his phone creaks under his hold. ‘He told me – he told me that’s what you do, Karen. And he – he was right. Y’know? I fuck up, I’m – I’m a curse.’ One final, wheezing breath and his heart clenches in his chest and she tells him; ‘sometimes I think we might all be better off if I wasn’t here any more. You ever get that way, Frank?’
He rests his forehead against the cool wall and tries not to scream into the stone.
‘Karen?’ ‘Yeah Frank?’ His throat is wrapped in a vice. All his words come out choked and he can’t see across the river for the blur in his eyes.
‘You forget Vermont. Forget your Dad. Fuck him. Fuck him. You come to me, alright? You come home.’
write write write 