Karen Page + post-trauma intimacy. Matt v.s Frank.

Frank and Karen are literally two sides of the same coin and it’s really no coincidence that she was instantly drawn to him and was able to see the humanity beneath the rough gritty exterior. Whereas the world saw a cold-blooded killer with no remorse, Karen saw that Frank was just a broken man mourning his family and trying to search for answers in order to bring their killers to justice. As someone who has a dark and a tragic past filled with pain and a loss of family herself, Karen sees Frank as a reflection herself and it’s why she fights so hard to prove people wrong about him. Karen Page isn’t a bad person and Frank Castle isn’t either. 

The only two Kastle crumbs we were given in Daredevil Season 3

and then they had the audacity to compare her to matt

Frank Castle murders people on the regular and there’s legit people out here saying he’d judge Karen/be disgusted at her, for selling and doing drugs when she was 19 years old…

karen: I did a lot of drugs when I was seventeen

frank, mid-snapping someone’s neck: I can’t believe you Karen, that’s TERRIBLE

Karen with Frank v.s Karen with Matt. 

Because he’s not what they say he is. He was a husband, and a father.

requested: karen and frank taunting fisk.

After Karen calls her Dad, she calls Frank.

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.’

I adored Marvel’s The Punisher and I just adore Karen Page and Frank Castle. I think the relationships between all the characters were so well done and it gave me feelings…so art!

Frank Castle and Karen Page telling Daredevil that he can’t become the person who kills people like they do. It draws a line between Karen and Matt, one that’s been drawn before (and repeatedly). She empathizes more deeply with Frank’s plight because she and him are on the same side of the line. But they both know that Matt/Daredevil can’t go that route without losing who he is. They both see that. They both tell Matt no.

Things I would have done if I was Karen Page on the run from Wilson Fisk….

Ain’t that the corner where Frank and Karen met the first time in the Punisher?

What’s the deal with you two?

Sexy Sunday - bed sharing | secretly pining for each other.