A/N: My Jack Murdock feelings are unstable. Don't touch them.
You stand in the back, at first, just to keep an eye on him. Your cuffs are threadbare and the new stitches are stiff and stinging on your cheek. You haven't been to church in years, but you know your duty and you're not making your blind kid go alone.
In the end, you fall short. Of course. It's too hard—you're unworthy, all there is to it, and he knows you can't bear it any longer
He always knows.
So he tells you, 'It's alright, Dad,' and he goes to church on his own. Every Sunday. Saturday confessions. Your mother would bless you for raising a saint.
Something to be proud of at last.
You don't belong there, and someday, maybe he won't either. But for now it's enough to take the hits so he doesn't have to, to tell him it doesn't hurt too bad—just a cut, just a bruise, just a hairline fracture.
Nothing that can't be fixed. Or at least, nothing that's worth fixing.
You don't belong in churches. Not with the holy, not with the kind of people who can see God. You're a fighter and a failure, a man drenched in too much blood. Not the kind of dirt that gets scrubbed off to Sunday whiteness.
Not the kind of soul that can be saved.
You don't say these things to Matty. You rag him and tease him and ruffle his hair, like you always have, and you love him so deep and sharp it hurts. But you let him figure out for himself that his old man's a sinner, because when you want to tell him, the words won't come.
Every scrap of goodness you can make and be, for the rest of your life, is for him. You'll lose and lose and lose, bleed and fall and get up again.
It's worth it. If he needs you to lose, you'll do it.
And then he needs you to win. It's a moment that you could be proud of, if it didn't mean the end—and the rest of the world can damn you for going, but you know it's for him.
The doors open before you, and the flood of sound and light surrounds you.
You walk into church the only way you know how.