Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: You know you've got problems when Frank Castle is lecturing you on the importance of friendship.

Or: how Matt's broken leg becomes the least of his concerns.

Warnings: Spoilers for season 2.

A blink-and-you'll miss it kind of spoiler(ish?) thing about Luke Cage.

Author's Notes: Apologies for the delay between updates! I though report cards were cutting into my writing time, but the weeks that followed were far busier. Amidst it all, I had a difficult time figuring out where, exactly, this chapter was going, but it gradually became apparent to me. Best of all, I got to include a character I have been meaning to add for a while, whose proposed scene has since been reworked.

I am working under the assumption that Matt didn't converse with Lantom as much - or at all, really - during season 2, since the priest is presented as an invaluable voice of reason in season 1. Lantom is therefore really only aware of the events up until his conversation with Matt in "Penny and Dime". I have written Matt as keeping him him in the dark about Elektra. I also realized, rather happily, that this conversation between Matt and Lantom in this chapter was an unintentional throwback to themes I had worked with previously in the Hannibal fandom. That was fun.

Readers, dear Readers, I can't thank you enough for your kind support! I hope you enjoy this chapter, and that you are all doing well. Cheers!

"Come, please, I'm calling.

And, oh, I reach for you.

Hurry – I'm falling. I'm falling.

Show me what it's like

To be the last one standing

And teach me wrong from right

And I'll show you what I can be

Say it for me, say it to me…

Say it if it's worth saving me."

~Nickelback, "Savin' Me"

Chapter Eighteen

Lantom places a latte on the table beside him. Matt wraps his thumb and forefinger around the mug. The heat takes his mind of his leg, elevated on a chair. Reopening the wound has taught the injury new ways to scream.

The question pops out of his mouth before he can stop himself, "Do you have any Aspirin, Father?"

"I have something stronger than that, you really want to take the edge off," Lantom tells him.

"Aspirin's fine," Matt says, trying to sound confident. Hard to tell if he succeeds. Lantom isn't about to believe anything he says with Matt looking as bad as he thinks he does. Humour seems like a safe bet: "Besides, I don't think whiskey would mix well with my antibiotics."

Lantom misses the joke, "Wasn't talking about whiskey. Got some leftover codeine from tearing my rotator cuff earlier this year."

Matt can't say yes. "No, thank you, Father."

A sigh, a deep one. Lantom's backed into a corner: "I can't help but wanting to insist on it, Matthew. You really don't look well."

He doesn't feel well. His head aches, his stomach's upset, there's a cold sweat breaking out across his arms. Convincing Lantom not to call the ambulance was a hard sell. Matt can't see that conversation going well a second time. Besides, the Aspirin he took at the apartment is doing nothing. He nods his assent, "Thank you," and Lantom stalks off to get the medication.

When he's alone, Matt lets his weakness show. He catches his face in his hand, scrubbing under his glasses. His eyes are watery, achy. The sweat from his brow makes them sting. He grips his left knee, begging the muscles to release, but pain begets pain, and he has been let his hurt grow unchecked for too long. Not to mention that smell, heady and sour, clinging in the back of his mouth. Him. Shaky, shivery, sweaty him. He turns to face the latte to spare himself the shame.

God, it's been so long since he smelled espresso. He takes a sip, and his stomach tenses, unhappy. But he needs the flavour. He needs the texture. He needs a tether to the way life was, a reminder that there is a world outside of Frank's apartment and the holy mess brewing in Hell's Kitchen.

Lantom strengthens the gravitational pull in the room. He presses the pills into Matt's right hand, introduces a glass of water to the left. Matt utters another thanks, swallowing the tablets and all the water. His stomach is momentarily appeased. Guess it's dehydration he's feeling as much as stress and sick and pain. Matt rubs at his left thigh again, waiting for the medication to kick in so his body can uncoil from the tangled knot he's becoming.

"Your friend was by, looking for you," Lantom opens. Not the first thing Matt wants to hear when he's so on edge, but there's a comfortable distance here, in the church. The seal of confession creates a separate space for their conversation to take place. "Hadn't seen him around for a while."

The distance vanishes. Matt is swept back into the thick of it, "Foggy?" He expected Karen.

Lantom doesn't elaborate. He doesn't see the need. "I started fearing the worst. So did he."

"I'm sorry, Father," Matt tries to remember if he apologized to Foggy for the same. The thought probably hadn't occurred to him.

The apology is unnecessary. Lantom isn't looking for apologies: he's looking for an explanation. "Where have you been, Matthew?"

"I've been staying with someone."

"Not a friend," Lantom knows all his friends. Well, the people Matt used to call friends.

Matt searches his vocabulary for the right word to describe his relationship to Frank. He wonders if one exists: in any language, not just English. They had a connection to each other that was damn near impossible to define. "No, not a friend," friends don't strangle other friends into unconsciousness. They do grab silk sheets on supply runs though. "Not…not really. An acquaintance. I…" Matt abandons finds just one word, "I saved his life, he saved mine."

"Someone like you."

"Yeah," except, "No."

Lantom clarifies, "Someone who operates outside the law."

"Yes."

Both their vocabularies are at a loss. Lantom searches for a bare minimum and comes up with, "An ally?"

"Ally is a strong word, Father," of that, Matt is absolutely certain. "Our motives are…our motives are similar, I think, but our methods are completely different."

"He prefers peace to punches?"

"More like he prefers bullets to punches."

Lantom's heartbeat triples. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat under the weight of exactly who Matt is talking about. "My God, Matthew."

All he can do is nod in response. "Yeah."

The sense of security drains from the room. All of a sudden, the Punisher is there, with them, looming over every word, creeping through the silence. Lantom gets his respiration back under control. He folds his arms across his chest to help. The certainty drains from his voice, "You saved his life, he saved yours?"

"Yeah," but that's not the half of it, not by a long-shot, and Lantom sure as hell knows it. Matt can hear him wading through the assumptions about Frank's character, piecing together a portrait of a man who hangs people from meat hooks but tends to a fellow fallen vigilante. Or maybe Matt's projecting that into Lantom's silence. "We were in the middle of a firefight. I broke my leg pushing him out of the way of a…a falling ceiling. He hauled me out, found me a doctor, took me back to his place to rest up."

"This isn't the first time he hauled you out of a fight," Lantom notes. "That stake-out with the NYPD. With Grotto."

"Yeah," Matt swallows the lump in his throat. "That was different. He wasn't…he wasn't looking to save my life then. He was looking…looking to see how far I'd go. How far I'd go to...to save a life."

Lantom sees right through him, "He wanted to see you go as far as he goes."

Matt feels his refusal with new freshness. The line drawn between himself and Frank presses into his chest like the chains from that night, and he wears the weight poorly, buckling. "Yeah. But I couldn't. I couldn't. What he does is wrong, Father. I know that. But he didn't have to drag me out of that basement or…or find me a doctor or not hand me over to the police. He didn't have to keep me alive." Not that night in the basement or that night on the rooftop.

"Are you asking me to divine the reason of a man called the Punisher?"

"I'm asking for clarity," Matt's head buzzes with more than indecision. Laying this to rest will free his thoughts to tackle Elektra or Fisk or Foggy or Karen or that smell, that sour smell undercutting the damp wafting from his broken leg. The one that reminds him something is wrong with every breath.

Matt dismisses the fear. His leg relaxes. He doesn't have to fight against his nerves anymore, and the church is kind of his senses. The walls block out the sounds of the street. The latte returns to buffer his nose against the sour smell wafting up from his wound. He could hide here, claim sanctuary, just for a little while. He revels in Lantom's quiet, secure in the knowledge that the priest will have an answer for him, or at least a question he hadn't considered before.

He snaps out of his reverie when Lantom says, "Aside for an obvious trade of a life for a life, someone who considers killing a punishment saves another man's life for one of two reasons: one, that man does not deserve punishment."

Matt buys that to some extent. He's heard the resignation in Frank's voice, the underlying tone of, "You are not worthy." Matt might piss Frank off, but he hasn't earned a bullet yet. More than that, punishment rings redundant for Frank with regards to Matt. There's not much to do that Matt hasn't already done to himself.

He dismisses the thought. Pity doesn't drive Frank. If Matt's worthy of punishment, Frank would have punished him already. Bottom line. "What's the other reason?"
There's a quality to Lantom's voice as he speaks, something Matt hasn't heard in a long time. A light in the darkness. An improbable sound of hope. "They've found something in that man worth saving."

Matt dismisses that explanation outright. "There's nothing about me the Punisher considers worth saving."

"All due respect, Matthew, but you'd be the poorest judge about the qualities of yourself worth saving."

He has to laugh. It keeps him from vomiting.

Lantom continues, "Besides, I think the more interesting question is what is it about Frank Castle that you're trying to save? I assume that's why you haven't turned him over the police yet."

"He can tear through the police," Matt offers in his defence. Weakly. He folds his arms across his chest for heat.

"He has torn through the police," Lantom corrects him.

"Yeah," Matt shakes out his arms, too hot all of a sudden. The room bites at him through his sweat-dampened hoodie and sweats. "But he's not the devil, Father. He's a man who lost everything, lost himself. I have to believe he can find his way back to that again."

Lantom gives Matt a very long, very serious glance. "He isn't the only one."

Matt doesn't dignify that with a response. He hasn't lost everything. He chose to do away with it all. "What do you think I should do?"

The priest sighs. He thinks it's perfectly obvious what needs to be done. "I think you need to get as far away from this man as you can, Matthew. You're debating his motivations, but what about your own? You say you've been at his place since your injury. Where is that? Do you know?" He doesn't wait for Matt to answer. He doesn't have to. "And despite being in close quarters with him, you've had to come to me to discern what his intentions are."

"There is nowhere else for me to go, not now."

"Lying is a mortal sin."

Matt corrects himself, "There is nowhere else I can safely go."

"Safe for whom?" as if Lantom doesn't know the answer.

"For the people I care about," Matt spells it out for him. Heaven help Karen if she takes him under her wing with the Hand on the loose. If following the story doesn't get her killed, harbouring Matt might. He's already taken a risk coming to the church hoping ninjas don't attack in broad daylight.

"Need I remind you that you're at a disadvantage."

"He's had me at a disadvantage before."

"Not like this." Lantom's gaze crawls over him, cataloguing his pallor, his trembling; the way he's been gradually tilting away from the conversation. The fact that he accepted something stronger than Aspirin returns to haunt the conversation anew. Matt's disadvantages are so clearly displayed it's a wonder they haven't called them out by name.

Lantom is careful to soften the blow of his next words, saying, "There are a great many things about you worth saving, Matthew. You need to ask what about yourself is Frank Castle trying to save. More importantly, you need to ask if it's a quality you already possess or one he hopes to cultivate."

"You think he can coerce me to kill?"

A chill passes through him. The room is bitingly cold. Something is very wrong.

Amidst this, Matt senses Lantom shaking his head. "No, but I think you are in a position to be coerced, far more than you were on that rooftop with Grotto. You've gone through a lot of changes lately. Distanced yourself from people who remind you of why you started your mission in the first place. I don't believe that you would ever take a life, but I know how easy it is to be coerced when you have no one left to remind you of who you are."

Matt allows himself a smirk. As usual, Lantom has found a way of commenting on things he knows nothing about: Elektra's resurgence, the final promises to one another, how easy it would be to slip away and leave Hell's Kitchen for the reaping. "I have you," he states, certain of that much.
Lantom hums, skeptical. Of himself as much as Matt. "You need to be careful, Matthew."

He nods, but not in agreement. It's his second mortal sin of the conversation. They both know being careful isn't Matt's forte.

Staring. "You really don't look well."

"I'm fine…" but the words sound too light and too loose coming from his slackened, sick jaw. Matt tries again. "I'm fine, Father." He taps the pocket with his phone in it as if there's a call or text waiting for him. "Besides, I won't be here much longer."

Another hum, more knowing this time, but Lantom isn't pressing. "I've got a couch in my office. You ought to lie down."

"Are you coercing me, Father?"

"No," Lantom rises from his seat. "I'm telling you. Get a move on before that codeine really kicks in."

Matt reaches for his crutches, unable to refuse.

"Matthew."

He snaps awake, disoriented. Hot. The air has condensed into a swamp while he slept, and it wears on Matt like a second skin. He drinks in mouthful after mouthful and never seems to break the surface. No way to read his surroundings beyond the oppressive weight of the atmosphere.

His heartbeat is a throbbing baseline. He waits for Elektra's to emerge through the haze, but there's nothing but the wet mouthfuls of sour air, of saliva curdling in the back of his throat. Commands fumble in his brain. They lose their way en route to his arms, hands, and fingers, and every second he spends lost, Matt gets sicker and dizzier. He's drowning on the outside, burning on the inside, and this is wrong. So wrong.

Matt rolls onto his side. If she was there, her hands would be all over him: forehead, neck, shoulders. "I've got you, Matthew." But he's alone. Lying on a couch in Lantom's small office. The priest's heartbeat filters dimly through the walls from a long way off, and Matt can't hear another breath besides his own.

He draws his arms up to his chest to get himself back under control. To centre himself in this space. Lantom's office is wooden and creaks like an old ship as rain falls in sheets outside, generating a hum that swaddles Matt's hearing. The church is empty. The streets churn with traffic. Matt pries his phone from his pocket and double taps for the time. His sweaty fingers slip over the screen, but he eventually learns it's early evening. He has no new messages.

The thought that he's been abandoned is first and loudest in his brain, and Matt can't conceive of a good reason to shake it. Frank doesn't have a reason to come back for him. Hell, it's easier for the Punisher to leave him behind. Mission's over. Matt's mobile, and there's people who can see him through the rest of his recovery. No need to bunk with the devil anymore.

Matt gags. He inches until his head is on the arm rest of the couch, but he can't escape. The smell is back, heavier from sleep, and he tastes more than sweat and fever. His screaming leg has unleashed a cloud of sour, rotting meat. Alarm klaxons blare dimly through his knee and thigh: infection. He has an infection.

He holds a fist to his mouth to hold back a cry. The tears are already flooding down the sides of his head into his damp hair. Matt scrunches his eyes tight to get rid of them as quickly as possible, cry the last of them so he can get to work. Work to do. His other hand fumbles with his cell phone only to freeze up when the voice activation service comes up. Matt has no idea what the hell he is going to do. The best Frank can manage is call Sato, but they're both going to know that treating an infection in the field is idiotic. Matt needs a hospital. He's needed a hospital since that ceiling fell on him.

More tears. Matt slams his fist into the back of the couch. He can't go to a hospital. Nevermind the explanations, the legal fallout. The Hand has no problem storming Metro General. He may as well take to the streets and wait for one of Elektra's sentries to pick him up, disappear into the ether and whatever she has planned for them. If there is a plan. She hasn't tried to make direct contact with him. Her interests lie wrapped up in disappearing Fisk's people. No telling what happens after the Hand take him, disadvantaged and coerce-able as he is.

He sits up, unable to contain a shout in agony. His leg, his God damn leg, hurts worse than the night on the fire escape. The fever isn't a buffer; it's an enhancer. Matt's focus slip-slides away from the softness of the church to the sharp edges of the infection seeping under his skin. Fire stabs through his veins. Hurt is a manacle on his broken bone. His head spins, thoughts corkscrewing down, down, down. Matt grabs the back of the couch to keep from falling. He clutches his cell phone to his chest. There has to be something he can do. Some way he can fix this before Frank arrives – if Frank arrives – and drops him off on Metro General's doorstep so more of their nursing staff can be killed by ninjas.

The number is buried in his phone. Matt tries to say her name, but his voice breaks. He has to scour his call history from weeks ago to find her. He listens to the ringtone, praying he doesn't hear the next one. Praying she picks up.

Her voice has always had a way of carrying him out of panic, but tonight, it's especially soothing. Matt's mixed her up with the phantom sensations of Elektra's touch, and he immediately hates himself for it. "Matt Murdock," she sounds pleased and apprehensive. These calls are never free. "Long time, no speak."

"Hi, Claire."

"You-" she holds the word for an extra syllable to emphasize how bad this is, "do not sound good."

First time ever he doesn't immediately say, "I'm fine." Matt can be honest with her. "I'm not. I uh…I've got an infection."

Her tone switches from friendly to clinical in a second. "How bad?"

"I don't know." He's never had an infection before. More than that, he's never had an injury this complicated before.

Claire sighs, "Gotta be pretty bad, you calling me."

Matt concedes, "Yeah."

"You can try cleaning it, but it depends on how deep it is. And how far the infection's progressed. Are you alone, Matt?"

Lantom isn't far, but he is definitely phoning an ambulance if Matt calls for him now. "Yes."

"Describe the wound to me."

He considers how honest he should be with her. Tell the truth, her only advice might be to hang up so he can call the ambulance. Lie and her advice might be meaningless. Scrubbing at a two-week-old surgical incision and the fractured bone underneath sounds like a worse idea than a slow death from septicemia.

Matt braces himself against the back of the couch for her disappointment. Claire never pulls punches with him, a fact for which he's grateful, but his leg is doing a good enough job reminding him how stupid he is at the moment. "I had a…procedure. My leg was crushed. The doctor set the bone and took out a piece of tissue-"

Claire stops him, "Your leg was crushed, and then someone gave you a field fasciotomy?"

His leg booms and crashes from Claire's support. Matt grips his knee to shut it the hell up. "The surgery isn't the problem. I...I popped a few stitches today. Got it caught on-" don't say dumpster '"-on some metal. It was cleaned, but…but not deeply enough, I guess."

She is still reeling from news about the backdoor invasive surgical procedure that he's had. Takes Claire a while to come back with the bad news. "Matt, I know you don't want to hear this, but you need to go a hospital."

"I can't, Claire."

"You have to. You need a clean room, sterile dressings, all the antibiotics, and that's if you don't need to have your leg opened up again, drained, or cut off. Post-operative infections kill patients, Matt! I've seen it happen in hospitals, let alone wherever the hell you are."

"Those ninjas who attacked Metro General, they're looking for me. I get admitted, they'll come back, and I can't…" his jaw locks up. He can't finish a sentence that starts with those words. Matt amends his previous statement. "I won't be able to stop them."

Claire scoffs. Always a rock and a hard place with Matt Murdock. "Well, you won't be able to do much of anything, this goes untreated. What about this…doctor who did your surgery?"

"I don't know her number." Matt heaves a shuddering breath. "Can you come take a look at it?"

Matt knows before she responds that she can't or that she won't. Her answer takes far too long in coming, a beat or two more than it would if she were going to reluctantly agree. He interrupts her, "Please, Claire. I'm sorry. I wouldn't call if there was anyone else."

"I know," she stops him, and Matt's suppressed rambling causes more tears to spring into his eyes. He knows where this is going. "Look, I'm not in Hell's Kitchen anymore, Matt. After what happened at the hospital, I came home to Harlem. By the time I get there, you will need a hospital. Or the morgue."

The quiet of the church is no longer comforting. It's lonely. Matt reaches out with his hearing to reassure himself this isn't the case, but even Lantom's heart is difficult to hear. Claire's gentle breathing trickles down the phone line, and in his blindness, Matt perceives her drifting further and further away.

"Matt?" she asks.

Distantly, he's aware of another voice coming through on the line. A man's voice. The words are muddled, but he's asking a question. Matt pieces together that he's asking Claire if she's alright.

Matt wonders if he ever did that. It probably never occurred to him once she was out of harm's way.

"Thanks, Claire. I'll let you go."

Briefly, she considers stopping him. Holding him on the line for a few more seconds. Lord knows, Matt wants her to stay with him. What happens after they disconnect is a terrifying mystery. But the man is asking Claire another question. She returns. "I'm sorry, Matt."

"You have a good night."

"Matt," she's using a tone that Matt has never heard her use before. "Please. Please go to a hospital. Give them a fake name. Get them to place you in protective custody. Call your lawyer-friend-"

Fear grips him in a vice and crushes the last of his breath from his lungs. "Goodbye, Claire."

He hangs up.

The quiet that follows, the terror that claws into him, the all-consuming panic of what happens next, makes Matt think of the first night on the rooftop with Frank. Of his crystal clear perception – just for a moment – of what he would feel if he pulled that trigger and took Punisher down. Grotto would still be alive, behind bars. Hell's Kitchen would be safe. But he would never be able to go home again. He would conquer one horror and unleash a world of others upon himself.

So Matt does what he does best: he takes this situation upon himself. Points the gun where it belongs for a change. He calls Frank and goes to voice mail. Good. "Don't bother coming to get me, Frank. I'm gone." Then he shuts off his phone, tossing it onto Lantom's desk, grabs his crutches, and gets the hell out of there.

Lantom calls to him. Matt blocks the priest out. He has no time, no time at all, before sunset comes and the Hand emerges and they come bursting through the windows. He charges for the front doors with all his remaining strength, growling and groaning the whole way but never stopping. Never thinking about stopping. His leg grows heavier, his arms grow weaker, but he has work to do.

Work to do, Matty. Work to do.

He has to stop at the final pew before he passes out. His breath is coming in short bursts. His head spins. Matt loses one crutch when he grabs the back of the pew for support. The church disappears around him, sucked out in a vacuum of space that leaves him untethered, unbalanced, free-floating in a giant, black void.

His right leg buckles. He lands on the seat of the pew and struggles to gather his senses. Taste – sour, hearing – scrambled, touch – sweaty, slick. Unable to read the vibrations as coming from around him or inside him.

Lantom's hand comes to rest on his shoulder. Matt grabs the priest by the forearm. "You have to leave," Matt says. Footsteps appear on the steps towards the church's front door. The Hand has abandoned all sense of stealth. He pushes at Lantom. "Go. Go, Father. Go. You have to."

The door opens. It's too late. Lantom doesn't let go of Matt's shoulder even as the figure approaches.

Another hand comes to rest on Matt's opposite shoulder. Matt tastes blood and GSR and rainwater, and he lets out an enraged shout. It shouldn't be possible for this to get worse, but there he goes again: failing.

Happy reading!