When the Smoke Clears

Chapter 5

It took Frank two months, two fucking months, to get out of that shit hole prison. By that time, he'd well-and-confirmed that Karen was, in fact, alive. His hope had been mostly assumption until he saw some Bulletin articles that solidified it. Stories started showing up with Karen's name attached to them: bulldog journalism attacking the government agencies and insurance conglomerates that absorbed every dime belonging to the people who disappeared and were now refusing to return a single penny of it. She was back. She was back, back– at least that's how it seemed– and already causing a stir. Frank knew he had to see her.

Breaking out of jail in the middle of a humanitarian crisis wasn't exactly easy, though. Frank tried all his cards before finally pulling out his ace and calling Agent Midani. Her favors to him were more than exhausted by this point, but he didn't have a choice. He wasn't exactly rich when it came to friends in high places... if Midani could even be called a friend. Whatever she was, she agreed to help. Midani was a busy woman, though, go figure. These kinds of things took time. At least, they would have, had the world not been losing its mind. Frank supposed he should've been thankful it was only two months, but every second was agony.

After a botched prison transfer and some questionable paperwork, he was on his own again. Midani was very clear in telling him that his favors were used up, and if he ever called her again she'd personally escort him to the nearest jail. Message received loud and clear, he set off for New York.

He had plenty of time to think on the way there, to plan for what he might do when he saw Karen. For years, Frank had toed the line between knowing he'd never see her again and wondering what he'd say to her if he ever had the chance. He should've been prepared by now, to tell her how sorry he was, how much he hated himself for the things he said last time he saw her; how much she meant to him, but time had only served to compound his guilt. Loathe as he was to admit it, Frank had given up on Karen. He believed she was dead and gone, and he stopped looking for her. He threw in the towel the day he let himself get locked up. Karen didn't deserve that. Karen, who'd always fought for him, even when the rest of the world wrote him off as a psycho piece of shit. She'd saved him in more ways than he could count, and, in return, he abandoned her.

Now, as Hell's Kitchen loomed on the horizon, Frank wondered if he was making a mistake. A part of him felt he should stay away, even after everything he went through to get here— maybe Karen didn't want to see him; maybe her life was better off without him—but at the same time, he knew he had to find her. If Maria and the kids ever magically came back from the dead, he would've moved mountains to see them again, even if he thought they were better without him. Karen was no different. She was family, just like them. He had to stay the course.

The state of things in the city was somewhere between "progress" and "thinly concealed chaos" when Frank arrived. Thousands of people were still displaced, despite attempts by certain charitable organizations to establish glorified refugee camps around New York. The homeless population had skyrocketed, and now the government was stepping in with "offers" to return people to their countries of origin. It was deportation, no matter how much they tried to dress it up, and it wasn't going over well with a lot of people. There was crime, panic, and a general state of unrest in Hell's Kitchen that made Frank feel like he never left. Whatever those super-powered Eagle Scouts were hoping to achieve by bringing everyone back, he doubted this was it.

The day was waning, and a storm was rolling in. After checking around her usual haunts– Josie's, which wasn't Josie's anymore; the Bulletin office– Frank decided to scope out a protest happening in Lenox Hill. Karen had been writing about other protests and demonstrations she attended recently, and Frank figured that, if change was happening, she was likely a part of it. So, after parking the car he "borrowed" from Lieberman— his first stop upon his return, much to David's dismay— Frank headed for Rockefeller University campus. Dressed in dark blue jeans and a black zip-up with the hood pulled over his head, he approached the crowd.