as certain dark things are to be loved
she was starting to lose count of how many times she’d wound up in a hospital room with frank castle.
based on ‘the way i said i love you’ prompt 2. with a hoarse voice, under the blankets. for @lindigo.
The first few days in the hospital were…disorienting.
A rotating door of people in scrubs. White coats, sometimes, with their clipboards, and the pen lights they dug out of their pockets at obscenely odd hours in the morning.
They gave different names, but their faces all looked the same to Karen. Distracted. Unsmiling. Some of them downright apprehensive, lingering near the foot of the bed as they asked their questions and then disappeared for the rest of the day.
The room had no windows. Well – there was one small opening that barely passed as a window, wedged into the wall up toward the ceiling, with two decidedly inhospitable-looking metal bars blocking the view to whatever was down there.
She was starting to lose count of how many times she’d wound up in a hospital room with Frank Castle.
He was half-slumped over, breathing soundly in his sleep when she shifted around to gaze at him. He’d trimmed his hair, sometime in the last few months since she’d seen him, but it looked like it was starting to grow out again at the top, curling slightly over his forehead.
She resisted the urge to reach out and touch it.
He hadn’t been sleeping well here. There were shadows under his eyes, and his face was twisted in discomfort, arms twitching as he tossed and turned his head with a grunt. She had to look away for a moment, remembering how his voice had cracked last time, telling her things about his family. Things he was losing, things he might never get back.
“Frank,” she said softly. “Frank.”
Her hand touched his arm, and he started awake, head whipping around to gather his bearings. The moment his eyes landed on her, everything seemed to go still, and his whole body relaxed back into his chair for a moment.
It was a new thing, to see him wake up like this and not look quite so – haunted, as she’d come to expect. Like her being there had calmed him, instead of making him turn away, and she shouldn’t be thinking about what that could mean, really she shouldn’t, and yet.
“Hi.” Karen sank her head against her pillow, hand slipping away from his arm. The effort of that alone left her winded, and she counted to three for the room to stop spinning again.
“Hey.” His voice came out in a rasp, sleep-roughened, but then he sat up with a startling alertness, leaning forward to fix his eyes on her. “You okay?”
She almost smiled at him. “I’m fine,” she said firmly. Then, in a much lighter tone, “You know, we should really stop meeting like this.”
Frank scoffed out a short laugh. “I’m not the one who’s been laid up in bed this time.” He clasped his hands together, finger tapping out a nonstop rhythm against his knuckles. He rocked forward in his seat, head bowed and bobbing slightly as he shifted just a little bit closer to her.
Karen watched him for a moment, the way his jaw tightened as he swallowed back whatever he wasn’t going to say. How his gaze kept pinging back down to her hand, resting on the edge of the bed near a break in the guard rail.
Slowly, she turned her hand over, opening up her palm to him. Frank gave a small shudder before taking it into both of his, grip callused and warm as he ran a thumb over the bones of her wrist.
She fought the urge to close her eyes and just…feel this, while she could.
It took her a second to realize he was speaking. Low under his breath, muttering, “You’re okay,” over and over as he held her hand tighter in his. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
There were so many things Karen wanted to ask him – Why, Frank? Why here? Why now? – just to hear him say the words. She knew she should be angry with him, for carving himself out of her life and then bulldozing back in when staying away no longer suited his needs. For never giving her a say in the matter.
She should be angry, and she was, but she was something else too, and that…that part was always harder to fight when he was right here, in front of her.
It hadn’t surprised her, that first morning she’d woken to find him prowling the length of her room in half-shadow. Moving around like something caged in, until she croaked out his name and he’d been by her side in an instant, looking at her like she was the only thing to keep him from flying apart.
He sat with her during the day, drinking hospital coffee with a satisfied grimace while reading to her whatever he could find, snorting his way through brochures on the walls, magazines that he’d nicked from one of the waiting rooms.
He was careful not to bring in any papers, and she was careful not to ask.
When the horoscopes at the back of the Cosmo got old, Frank pulled out a book from his back pocket – a slim paperback of translated poems by Pablo Neruda – and he read these aloud to her instead, in a deep, husky voice, never quite meeting her eye each time he paused to turn the page.
She didn’t know what he got up to at night while she slept. What she did know was that he would be back in his chair again by morning, with a new slew of bruises mottling his face, knuckles raw as he reached for her hand.
He wouldn’t look her in the eye then either.
[continue on ao3.]
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The Blood in The Blue
[Chapter 1]
word count: 8776
-Saturday-
They find her floating naked in deep waters, just before sunrise.
There is bruising along her neck and dark purple handprints trailing down her arms when Frank manages to fish her out. She's breathing, albeit with water in her lungs - the wheeze in their ears loud and bubbly. David turns, already disappearing into the stairway to reach below deck, calling to wake Curtis.
He notes the blue shade of her lips and the way her blonde hair drapes over his arm like silk before settling her on the bow of the ship. Two of the vets still have their eyes on her, and he hurries to remove his coat to cover her from further scrutiny. “Back to work,” he barks. “Yeah? Go away from us.”
“She okay?” Jimbo is dancing from foot to foot, his chin lifted towards her legs. Frank spots a trail of cracked and dry, red skin along her bruised thighs and over her knees. It flakes away in bubbling layers of half moons down her calves.
He turns to look at the remaining vets on deck before sighing. His mouth is set flat before he nods his head in a direction of get outta here, a hand pressing the coat flush to the fiberglass floor beside her. “I'll let you know after Curtis gets a look at her, all right?”
-
“Why's it always something with you?” Curtis grumbles quietly, waving Frank back. He sets down his medkit and rubs at the corners of his eyes before shaking his head, lowering to his good knee and giving the woman a brief scan over her face for additional injuries. She is still wheezing. “Why's it always gotta be when I'm trying to sleep, huh? Hey, miss?” He snaps his fingers briefly by her ear. “Can you hear me?”
Curtis moves the heavy jacket off from her shoulders a little when she doesn't respond, and Frank watches as the crease in his forehead appears to deepen. In the early light, they can see the bruise across her neck a bit more clearly. Deep shades of purples and blues trail across her throat and as he takes away her cover, Curtis’ fingers hover slightly over the slope down her arms. He meets Frank's eye and makes a fist, his thumb poking out, his right hand crossing over to compare the plum-sized markings. “Christ,” Frank mutters softly. She was held before this, and held hard.
“Get her below,” Curtis commands, now locking his kit and prepping to stand, waving a finger over her chest. “She's got water in there, and I need the kitchen table for this.”
Frank lifts the woman once more, careful to avoid the rash on her legs because god knows what that's about, but it looks painful nonetheless. David reappears to hold the door open and her right arm drops from its place on her stomach and swings loose. He gets them down the steps and quickly through the short metal hallway before he can feel a deep vibration against the arm on her back.
“Shh, shh, shh,” he starts, wedging the kitchen door open with a boot and spotting Curtis shaking out one of his shirts. She is stirring - eyes squinting against the overhead light, her mouth opening in a grimace, a low and painful whine escaping. “Hey, hey.” Her hand comes up to grip at his, nails clawing into her own waist as she tries to get out of his hold from under the coat. “Easy,” he tells her, and sets her down on the table.
The woman’s legs pump wildly a few times when he lets her go and Curtis catches her foot before his prosthetic is kicked out from under him. “Hey, ey hey,” he shouts, a hand out to placate her. His training is kicking in. “You're okay, okay?”
“Go,” she gasps, mouth opening wide and baring her teeth, “go, go.”
[Read the rest on ao3]
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kastledaily brings you, kastle week April 8th - 14th
Favorite eps/ Favorite scene: what’s on the tin, lads.
AU day: go wild, any and all kastle AUs are welcome!
A poem or song you associate with kastle.
Favorite Frank scene or eps.
Favorite Karen scene or eps.
Favorite season of kastle: Daredevil season 2, the Punisher season 1 or 2, etc.
Free day! Anything you want, parallels, quotes, OTP tag, everything goes!
We’ll be tracking the tags: #kastleweek2k19 and #kastledaily, so make sure you tag your creations appropriately! If you don’t see your posts making it onto our blog, please reach out to Maddy, Meg, Sarah, or Alex and give us a heads up.
Fanfiction, gifsets, edits, moodboards, poems, fanart, etc. Whatever you want to make, we support! (Just make sure to tag anything ~* adult *~ properly so we know that going into the reblog!)
We look forward to seeing what y’all come up with <3
xoxo.
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