#Anyway caffeine has always triggered tremors even before i actually had whatever i have now

[fruit-snacker]

I think the cold is a tremor trigger

[twodimecastle]

all he has | ao3

a/n; @thekastlediaries, thanks for being an incredibly talented writer and making me want to start this blog? or something

The bullets. The bodies. The blood on his hands. It’s familiar. It’s routine.

She’s not.

She’s new. Unexpected. He doesn’t know what to make of her and that scares him almost as much as it intrigues him. He doesn’t know what to make of the unexpected these days, especially not in the darker corners of Hell’s Kitchen. Frank was pretty sure he’d turned out every kind of coward and asshole and righteous man the city had to offer with his twisted crusade, but she’s something different.

If he wasn’t so numb, it’d be fucking terrifying and maybe a little attractive.

But whatever it was inside him that felt anything good-anything with some sense of lightness, of wonder-died with his family. Now there’s only the relentless sense of bloody purpose that pushes him out of his apartment and into the streets at night. The purpose that had pushed him into that fight, into this hospital bed, into this room with her. With Karen. And he thinks, just maybe, there’s something about her that feels a little redemptive. That might help him, if he lets it; if he lets her.

“I need to talk to her alone,” he had said, the words dropping from his lips before he’s really aware of what he’s saying. She won’t. There’s no way. She knows who he is, what he’s done, what he could do. She’d have to be out of her goddamn mind.

“I’ll do it.”

Maybe it was the way she didn’t look at him like he was a lost cause; a monster. There was fear there, but it was different to the way it looked on everyone else’s face and there was less of it. The files in her hands weren’t shaking, and he thought maybe they should be. There was something pulling at the back of his mind that felt almost like grim amusement. The recklessness or the sheer stupidity that made her stay here, just the two of them was almost funny. She didn’t look like the type to blindly trust so it had to be a fools’ courage or wanton disregard for her own life that kept her here with him, hands steady.

She tells him about his house with more confidence than he can remember it, and that should worry him, but there’s a half smile playing about her lips and it’s more reassurance than he’s had in years. He still doesn’t understand her but there’s something about her that makes him feel like they’re the same kind of person. Fraying around the edges and hurtling blindly around each unexpected turn as they try to make it through the day, but still somehow, against all odds, in one piece.

She doesn’t drop his gaze and her cool blue eyes are deep and unreadable and it feels like he could drown in them.

He isn’t entirely sure he doesn’t want to and that scares him more than anything else. 

He’s in the stand and the eyes of the courtroom, of the cameras, of everyone watching are a heavy, oppressive weight on him. Even Murdock’s blind gaze is weighty-almost tangible with its peculiar intensity. This kind of scrutiny is unnerving. This isn’t what he’s used to. Every instinct, every fibre of his being is aching to run, to flee the weighty eyes and the judgement of the masses who don’t understand his sense of purpose; who will never understand his loss.

The weight of the other lawyer’s eyes is less hostile. Nelson is afraid, but Frank’s come to recognize types of fear and this doesn’t feel like the kind he faces down in dark alleys. If he cared to put a name to it, whatever is scrawled blatantly across Nelson’s face is tension, is pain, is trepidation. Not fear.

Karen’s stare is no less weighty than every other set of eyes in the courtroom but it isn’t oppressive; isn’t painful. There’s a measure of uncertainty in them but he can feel the low-level electricity of someone believing in him. He hasn’t felt anything like that in longer than he cares to remember. He doesn’t think he’s going to want to remember this moment, though. He knows what he’s going to do and he knows she won’t agree with it. He doesn’t need the kind of help she says he does, doesn’t want the cloying artifice of sympathy from the faceless masses, a reflexive, undeserved response to whatever bullshit fight or flight response they say Frank is exhibiting. The false compassion for the claims that he’s incapable of differentiating right from wrong, that he can’t be held accountable.

Bullshit.

His freedom is not worth marring the names of the good men out there who suffer in silence.

Frank can be held accountable. Should be held accountable.

He’s going to make sure of it.

She’s pointing a gun at him, and he’s not afraid of her pulling the trigger. He hasn’t been afraid to die in years. But there’s a tremor in her hand that has never been there before and he’s pretty sure that she isn’t going to shoot him. Mostly.

“It wasn’t me.” His voice is rough and low. As close as he gets to soothing, and given the haunted look in Karen’s eyes, Frank figures she could use a little soothing right now.

He takes another slow step into the room and her grip on the gun shifts; tightens. He’s not sure if it’s the product of careful research or blind luck or instinct or whatever, but it’s the right gun for her. Small. Effective.

“Hands on your head, or I will unload this thing, I swear to Christ,” she hisses through gritted teeth. He isn’t sure if she knows she’s lying to herself, but he slowly raises his hands to his head, not breaking eye contact with her. Her hands are shaking slightly but the gun is steady, held levelled at his head as he takes another slow, deliberate step towards her.

“It wasn’t me,” he says again. She doesn’t believe him, but that doesn’t matter right now because he can hear the faint click of a gun-not her gun-and suddenly he’s hurling himself at her, pushing her down. She hits the floor hard and he’s tucking her slim frame protectively under his. Better him than her. He’s not afraid to die. He probably deserves it.

The gunshots are deafening and there are splinters flying and glass shattering but all he’s aware of is Karen’s racing heartbeat and the way she’s trembling under him. She’s terrified. Terrified is infinitely better than dead, though.

“Stay low.” The order is issued brusquely and she doesn’t even think of arguing, just complies. Smart girl. Not smart enough to shoot him on sight, though.

He shouldn’t be here. Here in this booth, in this diner, in this city. Alive, even. Frank’s fucking positive that he shouldn’t be alive. But here he is. In this booth, in this diner. Sitting in front of her. And Karen doesn’t look afraid of him, though god knows he isn’t sure why at this point. She’s meeting his gaze for the most part, her hands are steady on the coffee cup and the heaviness in her face isn’t condemnation, it’s exhaustion. He knows it’s there because of him, because of the stupid, reckless shit he’s done over the past few days. He downs his coffee in one, savouring the bitterness as it goes down. He’s not sure if he actually likes the taste or the discomfort that goes along with drinking it, but either way, it’s all he’ll have.

He’s not surprised or even offended when she tells him she almost shot him. He’d have deserved it, and she’d have been stupid to not have at least considered it. He’s still not sure he doesn’t want her to shoot him, but his job isn’t done. What he wants doesn’t matter till his job is done.

“You don’t lie to me.”

That shakes him, though he supposes it’s true. He hasn’t lied to her. Not really. The idea of someone actually trusting him is almost absurd, given everything he’s done. It still feels good, though. It’s almost a novelty at this point. Then again, having any kind of human interaction that isn’t entirely centred around his own violence, around everything he’s done since that that damning day at the carousel. This is different, if only slightly.

There’s a catch in her voice when he prompts her to talk about Murdock. He doesn’t understand the way she keeps her distance; pushes the man away. If it’s love-and Frank thinks it is, or at least could be-the hurt doesn’t matter. Just being together is enough. But really, what does he know about love at all. He’s been holding himself apart for years-he feels more animal than human some days but all that matters is his crusade. And now, somehow, her safety.

He doesn’t want to think about how that happened.

The shot echoes through the woods but it doesn’t drown out Karen’s last words to him, ragged with desperation and a fear that he hasn’t felt from her in the entire time he’s known her.

Monster.

She’s right. He’s been telling her since the beginning, but some part of him, at the back of his mind-the part that held on to a softness half remembered from his gentler past-thought, or hoped, she’d never figure it out. It was a sweet dream. Someone who didn’t look at him with condemnation in their eyes. It’s not a surprise he managed to shatter it, the only surprising part is that she’d clung to her view of him as someone worth saving for so long.

Frank Castle is dead.

He wasn’t lying to her. He’s been dead since his family was. The good parts of him, anyway. It feels like the blood in his veins is more caffeine and rage and cold, calculating violence than life these days, and as he yanks guns and ammo down from the walls of the shed, he feels a less human than he has in a long time. There’s always danger in him, surrounding him, but tonight it feels like whatever nameless, faceless beast lurks under his skin is closer to the surface than ever. Almost consuming him. He wouldn’t care if it did. A heavy hopelessness coils in the pit of his stomach as he surveys the tactical gear on the wall in front of him and he knows who he is now, whether he likes it or not. The cold steel of the gun is familiar under Frank’s hand and his fingers curl around it, reflexively hauling it up against him, bracing the heavy weight against his hip as he surveys the shed. This is what he knows. This is what he does. It’s not pretty and it’s so far from the right thing that he’d almost laughed in Karen’s face the first time she’d told him he wasn’t a bad person. There’s blood pooling on the floor around his boots, but it doesn’t matter. It barely registers to him. He kicks Schoonover’s body to the side as he crosses to the door, pausing at the threshold. Frank Castle is long dead, but walking out of this shed is the final nail in the coffin.

The bullets. The bodies. The blood on his hands.

It’s all he has now.