fanfiction: trouble you took from her eyes

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

Title: trouble you took from her eyes
Fandom: Daredevil
Pairing: Karen Page/Claire Temple
Summary: She’s not quite ready to let this slip from her fingers.
Rating: T

Her problem, Claire reflects, is that she’s always giving herself great advice and then proceeding to ignore it entirely.

This whole Karen thing is a case in point. She knew going to her apartment was a bad idea, but she did it anyway. She knew kissing her was a bad idea, but she did it anyway. She knew- hell, she promised herself as she was leaving that she wouldn’t go back again, because while sleeping with Karen might not be the mother of all bad ideas, it’s at least some kind of distant relation. And yet, here she is, almost two months to the day later, propped up on her elbow in Karen’s bed, watching her as she sleeps.

As far as Claire knows, Maddie still doesn’t know about them. As far as she knows, Maddie doesn’t know a lot about Karen- maybe it’s because she can’t see, or maybe it’s because she’s distracted, but there’s a million tiny things she thinks Maddie should have seen at some point but hasn’t. Like the fine worry lines around Karen’s eyes- even when she’s sleeping, her face never quite seems to relax. Or the way she’s gotten into the habit of hunching her shoulders defensively, and now has the knotted muscles to prove it.  Or how she jumps at the slightest sound, breath catching when a car alarm goes off nearby, fingers curling into fists when someone bangs on the door a few apartments over. Things Claire sees and recognizes, because she does them herself- has been ever since she found herself tied to a chair by a pair of Russian gangsters and realized that her life was even less safe than she’d thought- but that Karen doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have any reason to mirror. Maddie should have noticed.

(Of course, maybe she hasn’t noticed because they’re not sleeping together. Not that that should prevent her, but- there’s an intimacy here that can’t be replicated anywhere else.)

So on the (frequent) occasions where Claire finds that she can’t get herself to sleep, she does this instead: sits up, watches Karen, traces the contours of her face with a feather-light fingertip. Her mouth is a thin pink line (not that it’s any less talented, she thinks, flushing at the hours-old memory) her nose turned up slightly at the end, her hair bright and fine. They don’t look anything like each other, Claire thinks, and yet there’s some many things about Karen that she recognizes in her own reflection. Funny how things work out like that. Funny how they were moving on parallel paths that somehow managed to intersect in spite of it all.

Karen stirs a little in her sleep, lips parting, a low whimper sliding out from between her teeth. Claire recognizes that too, the nightmares. This isn’t the first time. She slides a hand under Karen’s head, turning her face towards her. “Hey,” she says “hey sweetheart, wake up. It’s just a dream.”

She blinks awake fuzzily, pushing herself upright before her eyes are even fully open yet. “I’m-” she says. “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t wake me up,” Claire says, leaving her hand tangled in Karen’s hair. Her fingers are pressed to the underside of Karen’s jaw, and she can feel the hummingbird beat of her pulse underneath her fingertips. “I couldn’t sleep. Want to talk about it?”

“N-no,” Karen says, pulling her knees up against her chest, hugging the sheets against herself. “It’s nothing. It’s fine. It’s just a nightmare.”

Claire just looks at her. She’s well-versed enough in these kinds of relationships (good at keeping secrets, like she’d told Maddie) to know how these things end: eventually things splinter under the weight of too many secrets combined, cracks ignored until they ran too long and too deep, both parties retreating to lick their wounds on their own. There’s not much to be done about it; she went through it with Maddie, she went through it with Mike, she’s been through it with- god, who’s even keeping track anymore? The point is, she can’t break people open and look inside them, much as the idea may tempt her. She doesn’t have the right, and anyway, she doesn’t know how. She signed up for this when she decided that “heroic and emotionally unavailable” was her particular wheelhouse when it came to partners. Saints and martyrs, bloody and alone- she knows the score.

And yet. And yet.

She’s not quite ready to let this slip from her fingers.

“I got kidnapped once,” she says instead, holding Karen’s gaze steadily, because at least one of them has to tell the whole truth. “And tied to a chair.”

Karen slides down slightly, still clutching the sheets. “What? When? Why?”

“It was . . .” Belatedly, Claire realizes she’s lost track of how long it’s been. It seems like that’s the kind of information that should stick effortlessly, but apparently not. “A few months ago. I don’t remember exactly. These guys knew that I knew Maddie, and they . . .” She shrugs, trying to ignore the knot tightening between her shoulder blades at the memory. “Well, they wanted to get at her. I was Point A, she was Point B.”

“Jesus,” Karen says, shifting a little closer and letting one hand fall away from the sheets so that she can wrap it around Claire’s. “What happened? Did they- ?”

“Beat the shit out of me, yeah,” Claire says with a mirthless chuckle. “Broke a few bones, even. They didn’t do any permanent damage, which I guess makes them either really good or really bad at their jobs.” It strikes her- as it has many times since that night- that they could easily have killed her without the slightest compunction. She’s not a major player; she’s a pawn, if that. A stepping-stone to the person they were actually after. If they’d killed her and tossed her in the Hudson, who would have noticed? Maddie? Her bosses at the hospital? Maybe, if she’s lucky. “Or maybe it’s just because Maddie tracked us down and got me out before they did anything worse. I don’t know.”

Karen nestles her head into the hollow of Claire’s collarbone. “You ever dream about it?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” Claire looks down at her. “It’s hard to forget, you know?” She doesn’t mention helping Maddie patch Vladimir together, because she’s not really sure she can explain it. Contrariness, maybe. The impulse to be the better person, even if ‘better’ here is being defined as ‘not being a soldier for the mob.’ Whatever. She runs her hand lightly through Karen’s hair. “What about you? Since we’re swapping kidnapping stories and all. You ever get snatched?”

“Ha,” Karen says into her neck. “A few times, yeah.” She’s quiet for a long time, so long that Claire almost thinks she’s gone back to sleep. Then she says, so quietly, “People died because of me.”

“Hmm.” Claire keeps running her hand back and forth; it’s soothing, for both of them. “If you mean ‘died because they kidnapped you,’ that’s not really your problem, you know?” Her heart is thumping so hard, she’s certain Karen can feel it. This is it; this is someone actually being honest with her, at least in part. This is her actually knowing things instead of picking them up piecemeal from abbreviated statements and mumbled sleep talk. She’s afraid to move in case it breaks the spell.

“Yes,” Karen says, then “no. Kind of.” She lifts her head enough to press a kiss to Claire’s shoulder. “I mean- one of them was a reporter. I got him involved. I tried to get him on our side, to write about Fisk, but he found out because-” A shudder passes through her. “Because I fucked up. I got us caught, and he’s the one who got hit in the crossfire. Like I said, because of me.”

Claire doesn’t say anything, but keeps moving her hand. She thinks if she stops, Karen might take it as a sign of rejection and clam up again. Karen takes another deep breath before continuing. “And the other one, he- because he kidnapped me, yeah, I guess.” Another shuddery breath. “Because he kidnapped me and he threatened me with a gun and then he put it down on the table because I guess he thought- he didn’t think I’d notice. He didn’t think I’d do anything about it.”

Claire tightens her arm around Karen. “But . . .”

“But I did.” Her face is hidden against Claire’s neck again words muffled. “I picked up the gun. He pretty much dared me to shoot him, but he’d said he would hurt all my friends, and there wasn’t . . . I couldn’t . . . I didn’t have a choice.”

Claire wonders how many times Karen’s repeated that to herself since it happened. Probably as many times as she told herself never again, never again after she watched Maddie torture that guy on the roof. At some point, it seems, they’ve all been hit by shrapnel, and now they’ve all got wounds that are weeping infection and rot. No real way to clean them out, either. But talking helps.

“I also watched Maddie torture a guy,” she says, tone conversational. Karen bursts out in hysterical giggles. “She gave me a mask and everything. I looked like Ghostface.”

“Yeah,” Karen says, “yeah.” Her pulse is speeding up and slowing down in fits and starts under Claire’s fingertips, and their bodies are tangled together in a knot so tight Claire doesn’t know how they’ll manage to extricate themselves. Maybe they won’t. Maybe that’s fine. “That’s not everything. I can’t tell you everything. There’s some stuff, it was a while ago, I wish it would go away, but -”

“Hey, hey,” Claire says, because Karen’s voice is growing higher and more agitated with every word. “You don’t have to tell me everything that ever happened to you. I’m not worried about that.”

Karen shivers a little in her arms. “Maddie and Foggy- they don’t know, about any of this. I never told them.”

“I figured,” Claire says. She puts her nose against Karen’s hair and breathes in. “Thanks. For telling me.”

Karen lets out another shaky laugh. “Thanks for not kicking me out of bed.”

“I wouldn’t do that, come on,” Claire says. When Karen doesn’t answer, she pinches her arm lightly. “I’m serious.”

“I know you are.” They’ve both sort of sunk back into the pillows so that they’re half-lying down. Karen’s ankle is hooked around Claire’s leg, and she’s stroking her calf lightly with her toes. “I know. I trust you. Just . . . give it a bit to sink in?”

“You can have all the time you want for it to sink in.” Claire pauses. “As long as that doesn’t mean hiding stuff. Can that be the deal?”

“No hiding,” Karen repeats. “Got it. Good?”

Claire kisses her eyelids, then her forehead, then the tip of her nose. “Good.”