Girl, You Taste Like Sugar

“Don’t get all sweet on me now, Frank.”

The words are said with just a hint of amusement, and Dani knows that she should leave. She’s ducked down behind some headstones, a few rows over, and she can leave the graveyard before hearing anything else. She learned a long time ago how to sneak away, be silent, but she stays. The voices are unfamiliar, but the glimpses she caught of the two men are unmistakable. Red suit and horns? That can only be The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Daredevil. The man now sitting propped up against a headstone has to be the man that people are calling The Punisher. Dani knows that she should leave, knows that this is none of her business, but she slows her breathing and strains her hearing instead.

The two talk easily for a moment, like banter between friends, and Dani curls in tighter on herself. Feels the rough surface of the headstone she’s behind against her cheek. Then the masked vigilante asks about a rhyme, something that The Punisher says before killing, and the man who has been terrorizing Hell’s Kitchen begins to speak. His voice is low, raspy, and so full of emotion despite the quiet words. Dani’s fingers dig down past the grass and into the dirt as The Punisher, as Frank, tells his story.

As Dani listens to a story not meant for her ears, she feels something for the first time in decades. Tears steadily drip down her chin as she feels her own sense of grief for this stranger. Not pity, never pity, but her throat burns as she forces herself to remain quiet. She can feel the emotions coming from both men, but those emotions feel like mere whispers under the weight of her own. For years and years, her own emotions were numbed under the onslaught of others’. Every single thing that she has felt for the past twenty-three years has belonged to someone else. All of the anger, guilt, lust, happiness, grief…all of it belongs to the people that she can never escape. She sticks to big cities so that can she drown herself in it all; small towns hurt too much because the people become too familiar. Surrounded by thousands, there’s so much sensory overload that she can barely pick out a single person’s emotions. Yet, sometimes, it still becomes too much.

Fear is running rampant through her small corner of New York. Maybe that’s what she gets for moving into Hell’s Kitchen. So many bodies have been dropping, and it has everyone on edge. She needed to escape, just for an hour or two, and the graveyard outside of the city seemed like the perfect place to regroup. The dead can’t hurt her. Then they showed up. She could feel them coming long before they reached her, and she doesn’t know why she didn’t leave when she first felt the crushing weight of the men’s emotions. They’re the only two around her for miles, but she still feels like she’s drowning. It’s only getting worse the longer Frank speaks. (She doesn’t care about the catchy nickname that the citizens of Hell’s Kitchen have given him, because she can feel that he’s just a man. Not a monster, like they say.)

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is crouched down as he listens to Frank talk, and the masked man is as far from a devil as a person can get. She’s felt evil before, shivered and screamed as it burrowed into her bones and turned her stomach. This man, who puts on a mask to save the city, is not evil. Everything about his emotions is conflicted. Feeling him hurts. The fear, the anger, the guilt, the loneliness…The Devil is feeling enough to bury her, but it’s nothing in comparison to him.

Frank continues to talk, about his family, and Dani continues to cry as his emotions rush through her. He is resigned. To what, Dani isn’t sure. Maybe to whatever he believes his fate is. He’s also tired. A kind of tiredness that makes it nearly impossible to keep on living. The man who has been systematically killing off the biggest criminals in Hell’s Kitchen is so tired that she’s surprised that he can still breathe. Surprised that he can handle the weight pressing down against him and dragging him down. When she hears the tears catch in his throat, listens to his voice break as he talks about his little girl keeping him on his feet, she knows she needs to leave.

She understands The Punisher now. She understands Frank. So it’s time for her to leave now, but she can’t. She keeps listening, and she keeps feeling. Not just them, not just The Devil and The Punisher, she feels her own emotions. After twenty-three years of being numb on the inside, two decades of being forced to only feel human through the emotions of others, she feels something of her own. Emotions that belong to her and her alone. She feels anger towards the people who took away Frank’s family and broke him like this; she feels grief for the man that Frank used to be; she feels hope that The Devil can make things right.

“I think I’m done.” Frank’s words are so quiet that she can barely hear him, and she squeezes her eyes closed. As sirens come closer and The Devil talks to the cops, Dani makes a decision. She’s going to stick with Frank. Not just because she believes that he deserves to have someone in his corner, which she strongly does believe, but because being in his presence is the first time she’s been able to feel her own emotions. She needs to know if it was a fluke or if Frank is somehow special.

She stays hidden as the cops surround him, and she slinks her way through the city to follow after the ambulance he’s in. The whole time he’s chained to a hospital bed, she sticks to the roof and waits. Listens as his legal counsel is changed and then shakes her head when she recognizes the conflict of emotions down below. There’s something ironic about a lawyer being a vigilante. She hates it when he goes to jail, and she hates listening to people scream at him throughout the trial. What do they know? Nothing, that’s what. Absolutely nothing.

The phrase, walk a mile in another person’s shoes, never really meant much to her when she was younger. It was just another stupid saying that her grandma liked to say when she was trying to guilt Dani into being a better person. Then the experiments happened, and she figured out what her grandma had been talking about all along. You can’t understand a person until you’ve felt what they’ve felt. There’s not a single human emotion left that she hasn’t felt, at varying degrees. Frank Castle feels things so deeply that it leaves goosebumps across her skin. It’s like nothing that she’s ever felt before, and she feels more of her own emotions whenever she’s near him. Just like she thought she would. She feels angry at the people who judge him without knowing him; she feels gratitude for the young woman, Karen, that continues to believe in him; she feels a little annoyed at Murdock for having Frank locked up and then bailing on his defense, but she knows that he has other worries as well.

When Frank breaks out of prison, she’s afraid. So scared that her teeth grind together as her jaw locks. She was only moments away from breaking her own code when Fisk set him up to get killed, but Frank proved them all wrong. He survived, and Fisk granted him freedom. She was in town to witness Fisk’s business dealings, and she doesn’t trust him. The day will come when he’ll walk free, and he’ll want Frank dead. Because Frank is a threat. One that Fisk won’t be able to ignore. She hasn’t felt hope, true hope, in a really long time. It doesn’t stop her from hoping that Frank will leave. Leave Hell’s Kitchen and never look back. He doesn’t. That’s not who he is, and she accepts that. Accepts him.

The house where his family once lived goes up in flames, and it’s almost like she can feel the heat from inside the truck. She can’t, of course, but she can imagine it. The way her skin would tighten against the heat, the sweat that would bead across her skin, but she’s a safe distance away. Hidden. She only looks up just enough to see Frank walking away from the flames, and he never looks back. He hasn’t moved on, she’s pretty sure he never will, and she ducks down as he gets closer to the truck. She stays buried under luggage in the backseat as the truck moves out of town, and she counts potholes and watches the squiggles behind her closed lids as the tires keep rolling.

She’s been shadowing Frank Castle since the night he was arrested, and it’s about time to reveal herself. Being a stalker is far too much work.

“Hi!” The truck swerves at the sound of her loud yell, and she sees a flash of stars as her nose explodes in pain. It only lasts for a moment, to the count of One-Mississippi, and she flicks her tongue out to catch the blood on her top lip. While she’s still processing that she’s been punched hard enough to actually make her bleed, a hand grabs the front of her tee shirt and pulls her from the backseat into the passenger seat.

“Who are you?” It’s not yelled. His voice is perfectly calm, but that’s probably because there is a very large gun pointing at her face. Geeze, the barrel is like the size of her eyeball.

“I probably should’ve waited until you’d stopped, huh?” The truck is pulled off on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, but she still probably should have waited. Maybe until he was out of the vehicle. Patience has never been one of her strong suits though, and she’s been so patient for so long.

“Don’t make me ask again, princess.” She raises a brow at that but doesn’t comment. She can feel his shock, his curiosity, and a strong sense of anger directed inward.

“Why are you angry at yourself? I’m the one that technically broke into your getaway vehicle.” His eyes narrow on her, but every other inch of him is perfectly calm and still. Including the finger he still has on the trigger.

“How’d you get in?” Oh, so that’s what the self-anger is about. She managed to get past his defenses and hide in what should have been a protected area for several hours, and he’s blaming himself for not noticing her. That’s not his fault. She’s gotten really good at hiding over the years.

“I opened the door and curled up in the back floorboard under what I’m assuming is a bag of ammo. It wasn’t very comfortable. My leg started cramping, so I thought I’d come up for air and introduce myself.” The look he shoots her is very clear, and she lightly clears hers throat. “My name is Danielle Montgomery, but I prefer Dani. Or just Dan. Totally up to you.”

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right here.” It’s not a request. That’s a demand if she’s ever heard one. The gun is still aimed directly at her face; if he pulls the trigger, she’s pretty sure not even dental records would be enough to identify her. Not that she has any dental records, but still. The point remains.

“Because you’re a good man, and you’d never kill someone that didn’t deserve it. I haven’t done anything to deserve a death sentence.” His cheek twitches at the word good, and she feels a brief slash of guilt. Revulsion.

“You don’t know anything about me.” The tone is still calm and controlled, but she knows what people hide under the surface. She’s shaken him.

“I know a lot about you. I’ve been following you, since the graveyard. I thought about breaking you out of the hospital, but you were really banged up and I am most definitely not a nurse. Then I thought about breaking you out of jail, scene be damned, but you managed to get out. I hate that it was Fisk that did it, that guy never does something without a hidden agenda, but I was happy that you were free. That you got your answers.”

The more she talks, the more his face seems to shut down. Maybe she shouldn’t have revealed so much at one time? What if she accidentally breaks him? Frank Castle may be one tough sonuvabitch, but everyone has a breaking point. She watches the way that his body tenses, and her body language mirrors his as the barrel of the gun presses against her cheek. Just under her left eye. It’s cold, so cold, but she forces herself not to react. Not to move. One wrong move, and this could all be over before it even gets started.

“You’ve been stalking me.”

“Technically, yes. There was never any ill intent though. I just…I only…I don’t really know how to explain it.” She’s never been particularly eloquent. Now she can blame it on the onslaught of emotions that she has to deal with; she can’t thank the coffee guy when the woman behind her in line is mentally screaming. She was never all that eloquent when she was younger either though. Words move from her brain too fast and trip over her tongue, which normally leaves her stumbling and rambling her way through conversations.

“What. Do. You. Want.” Every word is forced out from between clenched teeth, and the pressure against her cheekbone increases just the smallest amount.

“I just want to exist in the same space as you, that’s all. Give me one week. If at the end of that week you want me gone, I’ll disappear. Like a weird dream,” she says with a small twitch of her lips.

"Why?” That’s something that she has pondered many times over the past few weeks, and she only has fragments of answers. A part of her is hoping that spending more time closer to him will put all the pieces together and give her the full answer that she needs.

“You help me, and I think I can help you too. If you’ll let me.” She’s turned sideways in the passenger seat, with her back pressed firmly against the door, and she stays still as his eyes rake over her. There’s not much to look at; she probably looks like a small child sitting next to him.

“How can you help me?” She doesn’t like his tone, it sounds like he’s mocking her, but she’s not going to argue with him. Not when there’s a gun still pressed against her face.

“Give me a week, and I’ll show you.” She states it like a challenge, which is apparently the right thing to do. He pulls the gun away and stows it back in his jacket, and she lets her neck pop as the tension slowly leaves her body.

“I don’t trust you.” The truck is already back on the road, moving onto wherever their destination is, and she smiles.

“Of course you don’t.” She’s pretty sure that if the situation was reversed, she would have kicked her ass out and spun out of there. Frank in intrigued just enough to keep her around, because he doesn’t really view her as a threat. If that changes, she’ll be able to feel it.

“And put your seatbelt on.” Her quiet laugh seems out of place in the tense atmosphere, and the click of her seatbelt sounds as loud as a gunshot. It’s going to be a fun week.


The sun is breaking over the trees when Frank pulls up in front of the cabin, and he looks over at his passenger. It’s been hours, and she’s been asleep the whole time. It’s possible she’s been faking it, but he doesn’t think so. Every now and then, a limb would twitch or she’d murmur some nonsense. She shouldn’t even be here. He should have tossed her out on the side of the road, but she knows so much about him. She even knows about Fisk, which is something that he’s kept to himself. She’d gotten into his truck and stayed hidden for hours, without him ever once detecting her presence. He doesn’t feel threatened by her, but he’s not going to make the mistake of underestimating her. Even if she does look like a runaway teen.

Her denim cutoff shorts have a small rainbow on the left leg, complete with glitter. Her thin white tee shirt is covered in small gray skulls, and he can tell that she’s nearly too thin under the fabric. She’s small, short and thin, and she looks like she’d break if she tried to swat away a fly. Her blonde hair is nearly white, almost the same washed out color as her skin, and brushes by her chin in thick frazzled waves. Like she’s constantly running her fingers through it and pulling on it. She looks harmless, but she hasn’t fooled him. The entire time he had a gun pressed to her face, her eyes stayed locked on his. Pale blue, wide and blank, never wavered. She never once looked afraid.

He stretches a hand out towards her, to grab her shoulder and shake her awake, but she jerks away before he can make contact. This time when those pale eyes meet his, there’s a small amount of fear in them. He can tell by the widening of her pupils, at the way her breath stutters in her chest. She didn’t even blink while looking down the barrel of a gun, but she’s scared to be touched? She’s a curious little thing. His curiosity might get him killed, but he’s willing to risk it. For now.

“Rule number one, don’t touch me.” There is an edge of steel to her words, and she’s nearly pressed flat against the door. As far away from him as she can get, like she’s afraid of him. Finally, a normal response.

“Rule number two, no lies.” She crosses her arms under small chest and tips her chin up.

“I think I can agree to that. So, where are we?” The leather of the seat creaks as she scoots forward to look out of the windshield, and the sunlight highlights the dark circles under her eyes.

“A cabin in the woods.” With that answered, he opens the door and climbs out. He can hear her clambering around, and they lock eyes across the expanse of the backseat after she opens the back passenger door.

“You didn’t bring me out here to kill me, did you? Because I warn you, I don’t die easily.” She says it all with a smile as she grabs two black bags that he doesn’t remember packing, and he feels a muscle in his jaw tick as he realizes that they’re hers.

“It’s a place to lay low for a while, off the grid. No one knows about it.” The rest of the bags are his to grab, and he listens to her hum as they walk up the few steps onto the front porch. He pulls out a key to unlock the front door, and the thick scent of dust fills his nose as soon as he walks inside.

“Lovely. When was the last time someone actually stepped foot in this place?” When he looks over his shoulder, her bags are at her feet and she’s tracing a line through the dust clinging to a small table next to the covered couch.

“Feel free to leave if it’s not up to your standards, princess.” He uses a boot to open the bedroom door, and he’s only a little surprised when she follows him inside.

“Nah, it’s alright. I lived in a cave once. If I can survive that, this should be a piece of cake.” Maybe she really is a runaway. Is there someone out there looking for her? A family that’s searching for her? “You’re worried, about me. Why?”

“Does your family know where you are?” There must have been a look on his face, something that she was able to notice and pick up on. He needs to be more careful around her.

“No family. It’s just me,” she shrugs. She looks too young to be on her own, and he tells her as much. “I’m older than I look, and I’m pretty good at taking care of myself. Don’t worry about me, Castle.”

“How have I helped you?” She meets his eyes and then immediately looks down, and they both watch the way that her dirty white sneakers disturb the dust on the floor.

“Let’s save that conversation for after we’ve settled in, huh? I’ll go make sure there’s still a couch under all that plastic and dust.” She disappears from the room like it’s on fire, and he hears shuffling coming from the living room a moment later. He’ll play it her way, for now, but he’ll have his answers before the day is over.


“Who knew beans could be so tasty?” Dark eyes narrow over at her, and she lets out a small sigh as she slumps back against the couch. The couch that still smells like it’s inhabited by a family of dust bunnies. Frank’s in a recliner across from her, and he’s done waiting if she’s reading the look on his face right. She can also feel his impatience, frustration, annoyance, and curiosity. It’s marking her kind of itchy.

“How have I helped you?” he asks again. Even though she can clearly feel his every emotion, she can feel her own too. She’s nervous, afraid of rejection, and uneasy. That’s what makes this all worth it.

“Not helped, that’s past tense. You help me. Present tense. You’re helping me right now.” Her insides feel shaky; how long has it been since she felt her own nervous energy tickling at the edges of her senses? “I know that doesn’t explain much. To really explain, I’m gonna have to tell you a story. A really crazy story, so try to keep an open mind, okay?”

“How crazy?” She doesn’t know where to begin, or how, so she might as well start at the beginning.

“I was born on the twenty-fourth of March, in nineteen sixty-six.”

“You expect me to believe that you’re fifty years old?” Yeah, it sounds crazy, but she gave him a fair warning.

“Open mind, remember?” He nods, and she watches the way that her fingers bend over her knees as she continues on. “My dad wasn’t ready to be a father at sixteen, so he skipped town. My mom, who was also sixteen, died during childbirth. My maternal grandparents raised me, and they did the best they could. They’d had my mother late in life, and they weren’t prepared to start the process all over again. I graduated high school in eighty-four, and I thought about going to college. Being a progressive woman and all that, but I was broke. We were broke. I saw this ad for a medical trial and decided to give it a try.”

“And?” She’s never told this story, because she’s never had a reason to. For years, she has stayed hidden. What if she breaks down halfway through?

“The interview was very extensive. I thought they were just really random questions at the time, but they made sense later on. They were looking for people that no one would miss. The few friends I had moved off after high school, and my grandparents were very old. I was young, healthy, and completely unattached. There are also some anomalies in my family tree, but I didn’t learn about that until later. They told me that I was a perfect candidate, and I signed up without reading the fine print. I thought it was a government trial, but it turned out it was a private company. They were experimenting on people with enhanced ancestry.”

“You’re an enhanced.” People with gifts, with powers, aren’t a secret anymore. Especially not after the Battle of Manhattan.

“I wasn’t born enhanced, but the genes were there. Hidden. Locked away. The doctors were able to trigger them, so to speak, but they didn’t stop there. They kept pushing to see what else could be done. To see what a single person could be capable of. Think of it as the super soldier serum. I’m no Captain America, but I’m strong. I’m fast. Durable. My healing is above average. If you had shot me last night, I’d be just fine.”

“Also explains why your nose isn’t broken.” He’s not surprised, because he’s already guessed that she’s something a little more than average. Time for the kicker though.

“My senses were enhanced, but that’s not the worst thing they did. I could handle that kind of torture.” His confused look makes her pause, and she decides to be completely honest. “They had to test me. Test my limits. How much stronger was I? I beat my fists against metal and concrete, just to see if I could break through. I ran until my body literally gave out and couldn’t move anymore, to see how long I could last. My healing was tested more than anything else, to see just how much I could recover from. Nine years of constantly being tested, but that’s not what broke me.”

“What did?” He’s not batting an eye, because Frank Castle knows about torture.

“Like I said, they kept pushing me. I don’t know what they were trying for, but they wanted some kind of mental gift. Something beyond the physical. Instead of something useful, like telekinesis, I got stuck with empathy. You think it’d be helpful, right? To always know what the other people in the room are feeling? After a while, I even learned to project, to manipulate.”

“Not seeing the downside here, princess.” Her eyes narrow just a little bit at the title, but she rolls her shoulders and does her best to explain.

“Sometimes I can shut it out and not feel anyone, but it takes a lot of focus. It wasn’t until I escaped the facility that I realized just how bad it was. I went numb and started drowning in everyone else. When I felt anger, it was because the guy on the bus next to me was arguing with his girlfriend. When I cried, it was because I passed someone on the street with a smile that was dying inside. Nothing I felt was my own. I tried going to the most remote places, but I just felt nothing there. I decided that drowning was better than the numbness, so I returned to society.”

“What’s this got to do with me?” She can’t tell if he believes her or not, but that’s okay. She can prove it, and she will. Once the story is over.

“I was there in the graveyard that night, when you told your story to the Devil. I cried, and I realized that it was me that was sad. I could still feel you and the Devil, but my own emotions were stronger. I thought it might be a fluke, so I followed you. It kept happening, but only when I could sense you. I know it sounds ridiculous, but you make me feel. That’s something that I thought would never happen again, and I have you to thank for it.”

“You really expect me to believe all that bull—” Before he can finish, she focuses on what she can already feel of him. The annoyance and confusion, the strong disbelief, and then thinks of happiness. Pure happiness. The way that it lights a person up inside, the warm feeling that spreads across the skin, and listens as Frank Castle laughs. When she opens her eyes, his head is thrown back and he has one hand braced against his stomach. She cuts the feeling off abruptly and watches with wary eyes as he slumps back against the chair.

“Believe me now?” Happiness is something that Frank hasn’t felt in a very long time, so they both know that his laughing fit came from her. “Or would you like an encore? Wanna make a suggestion?”

“You had no right!” Fury…so much fury that she can taste ashes in the back of her throat.

“No, I didn’t. No right whatsoever, and I will never manipulate your emotions again unless you ask.” She hates the manipulation more than feeling forced emotions. Having to feel every emotion of the people around her is one thing, but having the power to twist the emotions of others? It’s wrong, and she can’t always control it.

“I would never ask.” He sounds so sure, but she’s not.

“I can take away the pain, or anger. I can keep you calm in dangerous situations. All you have to do is ask.” She might hate the manipulation, but she owes him. She was starting to forget what it was like to even be human until him.

“Because I make you feel?”

“Ridiculous, I know. There are so many people out there that would love to be numb. To let go of the anger, the pain, the hate…but I lost all of the other emotions as well. No happiness, satisfaction, contentment. Nothing. I was so empty.” Maybe it’s the tone of her voice, but something digs at him. Lessens the fury at the show part of her show-and-tell. He doesn’t pity her, that’s not what he’s feeling. He feels…sad, for her. “You felt it too, didn’t you? The emptiness?”

“In the park, when I realized they were gone.” He doesn’t have to explain, because she knows. She followed him and others, until she had the whole story.

“Imagine that moment lasting for years, all while drowning in things that you’ll never feel again. I could see it, taste it, hear it, feel it skittering across my skin…with nothing left deep down.”

“Why me?” He’s feeling resigned again. He’s not going to turn her away, not yet at least, because he believes her.

“I honestly don’t know. It just…happened,” she says and shrugs. She can’t explain it; she can barely explain how her abilities work, so she can’t explain this anomaly.

“I’m not finished.” She blinks, three times, as the words sink in. He may have gotten his answers, but there’s still much left to do. He’s found a purpose in this new life of his, and he’s not going to change.

“As part of the experiments, they pitted us against each other. They didn’t want the weak ones; they wanted the strongest. Had these collars that were literally bolted into us. If we didn’t do what they wanted, well, let’s just say I’ve never felt pain like that before or since. Sometimes I wish that I had just let them kill me, but I wanted to survive. I wanted to be free. In nine years, I killed fifty-eight people. Once I was free, I made a promise to myself. To never take another life. They created me to be a weapon, but that’s not who I am. Do you understand? I am not a weapon.”

“I understand. Do you understand who I am?” Everyone has conflicting emotions, ups and downs, and Frank’s no different. When he kills, there’s no confliction. His surety when he pulls the trigger is almost serene.

“I understand. So, rule number three, we accept each other as we are and promise not to try to change each other.” He leans forward in his chair, braces his elbows on his knees, and she copies him. Their eyes lock, and she wonders what Frank would look like without the bruises on his face.

“We are who we are,” he agrees. She nods her head and smiles as she leans back, but Frank stays in the same position. “One last question.”

“Hit me.”

“Why don’t you like to be touched?” She bristles a little at the question and taps her fingers against her bare thighs.

“It, uh, it hurts when people touch me. The emotions become sharper, like it’s almost too much for me to handle. I’m one of those annoying people who throws money on the counter instead of just handing it over.” She says it with a dry laugh, but she hates it. Hates how cut off she’s been all these years.

“How’d you fight if just touching hurts you?” It’s a curious question, one that she doesn’t have to answer because of the painful memories, but she wants this to work.

“Most of the fights were before the empathy. It came towards the end, my last year there. By then, I was fighting less. I’d already proved myself.” She feels her chest tighten and crosses her arms over her stomach as she bends forward. Pain and guilt. Grief. She watches as droplets splash against the pale color of her legs and hears her own rough laugh. “It’s been so long since I grieved for them. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to again.”

“You’re laughing because you’re sad?” He’s definitely judging her, but she doesn’t care. She can feel again, and her guess was right. She feels more strongly when she’s close to him.

“Humans are so complex; they never feel just one thing at a time. There’s always so much going on inside of them, sometimes at completely different ends of the spectrum. Happiness and grief. Thank you," she whispers and lets her eyes fall closed.

“You’re welcome.” She listens to the sounds of him standing, the creak of the floorboards and slight rocking of the recliner, and she has to force her eyes to open again. Tears are still gathered in her eyes, and a few more spill over when she blinks. Fifty-eight lives were taken by her hands; they deserve an ocean of her tears.

“Going somewhere?”

“To bed. We’ve got a field trip in the morning. Spare blankets and pillows are in the hall closet.” She listens as his footsteps fade away and then as the bedroom door closes, and she wipes at her cheeks before standing up. She grabs some sheets to lay under her, a thick quilt to go over her, and a thin pillow that she is definitely going to have to fold in half.

She settles onto the couch easily, being small has its perks, and closes her eyes against the dark room. There’s a good chance that Frank will drop her off somewhere tomorrow, and she’ll respect his decision. If he wants her gone, she’ll stay gone. He’s given her a gift, doesn’t matter that it’s unintentional, and it’d be selfish of her to force her presence on him if he doesn’t want it. Doesn’t want her.

“I really hope he lets me stay,” is her last thought before drifting off to sleep.