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.

Author's Notes: As with the previous conversation between Lantom and Matt, things got a little Hannibal-y here. I'd apologize, but I don't know that I'm necessarily sorry. I love Hannibal, and I'm happy to be influenced by it.

This chapter was another installment where I thought I knew where I was going only to discover I had gone off the map. Lantom and Matt's conversation gets pretty heavy in parts with regards to religion. I've tried to depict Lantom as being devout but realistic; he seems like the sort to understand that his faith is a leap, one not everyone is willing to take. I'm not looking to start a larger philosophical debate, so this chapter is designed to discuss elements from this story only.

Last Thursday marked the one year anniversary of my posting this fic. It's officially the longest fic I've ever written and the longest time I've spent working on one story. And I need to post a HUGE thank you here to you, Readers, who've been here for one chapter or all thirty-two; who take the time and the energy to come out, to give this a read. To leave kudos and comments and support. Thank you. I couldn't have made it this far without you, and I certainly wouldn't be able to stay without your kindness. Thank you.

"I did my best, it wasn't much.
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch.
I've told the truth. I didn't come to fool you.
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song,
With nothing on my tongue by Hallelujah."

~Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah"

Chapter Thirty-Two

Daytime blunts the thoughts that kept Matt awake the night before. He leaves some on the cot when he rises, washes more of them away with a shower, and hides what little remains of his doubt under new clothing. Frank's estimates about his size are fairly accurate; the shirt and pants would probably fit if he hadn't lost weight.

Which Frank takes the time to point out, of course. "Small enough to begin with, Red, and there you go getting smaller."

"I'll be sure to tell Lantom you're not feeding me," Matt snarks.

He hits a nerve. Frank's heartrate climbs. "Gonna tell him I keep you chained up and caged-"

There is too much going on today that Matt doesn't want to deal with to fight over a bad joke. "I'm not going to lie to my priest."

Frank's pulse stays elevated. In fact, it continues to climb incrementally. The truth, Matt realizes, is much more damning, and Punisher obviously didn't think of that when he was trying to save face by putting Matt in new clothes.

"I don't tell him everything," Matt admits. He listens to Frank retreat from the bathroom doorway and goes back to smoothing down his hair. He tries not to sound too interested or smug when he asks, "Did you tell your priest everything? Once? When you were a Catholic?"

No answer.

Matt finishes up in the bathroom. He tugs at the hem of the shirt. Tucked in would look more presentable, but he doesn't want to call attention to his depleted muscle tone.

Damn it, he has gotten smaller.

He places the toe of his cast against the ground and holds it there, reintroducing it to gravity. The weight of his thigh passes through the break. He draws the limb up after only a few seconds, light-headed from the strain.

Twelve weeks, Sato said, but Matt can't wait that long to be on two feet again. He needs to start working out. Get to fighting. And the only way he knows how to do any of that is one he can't go at alone.

"Frank?"

"God damn, yes, I used to tell my priest everything, Red."

Matt stifles a small laugh. He can't resist smiling. "That's not…" no, he won't give it away. "Everything?"

Frank's heartbeats march in a straight, orderly line. Too controlled to be the whole truth but too slow to be an out-and-out lie. "Everything he needed to know."

"You tell him about…when you came back?" Matt clarifies, shuddering inwardly: "From overseas?"

A slower, more somber pulse follows. "I stopped going to confession by then."

Matt grabs his crutches. He steps out of the bathroom. The living area in the apartment feels emptier. He reaches out with his senses, finds a couple of the ammo cans are gone. The surface of the desk is cleared. Frank's bulletproof vest is gone too, its telltale scent hanging faintly in the air along with the sulfuric tang and explosive spice of his now-absent munitions.

A different breed of regret fills Matt, more unnerving than his inner turmoil over having dared to ask questions the night before. He strikes down the sensation as much as possible with rationalizations: he knew this was coming, he doesn't have a choice, Frank has a right to self-defence, they wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for him. But nothing fills the empty spaces that ammunition used to occupy. Nothing quite covers the sensation of waters rising, of drowning from the inside out. Matt's conscience has always been too big for his own skin.

Frank is packing up the rest of his stuff across the room. A notebook clamps shut, pages chattering, before it's shoved into a bag filled with metal and gunpowder. Ne'er as Matt can tell, Frank hasn't even looked up. This is who is he, and nothing's changed.

Nothing.

"What is it, Red?"

Matt stops searching for a word to describe what he's feeling and focuses instead on Frank's question. Yes, there is, but he can't ask for it. Not with what Frank has already planned.

Frank's heartrate climbs from bored to something else: righteousness? Regardless. "This was the way it was always gonna be."

Forget words. Matt peels through his options. He can't fight. Frank already let the ninjas live once; he's not going to do it again, and Matt has nothing to leverage for them if they start on the Punisher today.

But there is one life he can save. For now. Give her a stay of execution at least. She isn't going to be looking for Frank, after all, but Frank'll sure as hell be looking for her.

"Can I make a request?" Matt asks.

"Be a fucking miracle if you didn't."

"Don't go after Sato today."

Frank winds up for a rebuttal noisily – heart crashing, zipper ripping shut, footsteps across the hardwood towards the desk. Matt stops him in his tracks. "Sato turned me over. I deserve a fair shake at her, to bring her in for the work she's been doing."

"Bring her in to make a deal with the district attorney –"

"To let her do the right thing."

"Like she did with you?"

Matt avoids the useless argument. Frank isn't going to see reason. He'll see cause and consequence, and their agree-to-disagree will end with Sato dead. Instead: "I'm asking you wait until I'm back on my own two feet. To give me a shot."

Frank's respiration hits a familiar pace. He's interested. "Yeah, and what then? What if I get to her first?"

"You do what you do, and I…" Matt swallows hard. Damn it, Frank doesn't have to do this. He's proven as much. "And I do what I do."

"You'd take her life in your hands." He doesn't sound surprised, just disappointed.

"You put my life in hers," Matt reminds him, "Twice."

"Don't owe her nothing, Red."

"It's not about what I owe."

The simplicity of the answers disarms Frank, leaves him unmoored for several seconds. The waters inside Matt stop rising. He takes a deep breath and returns his senses to the room, catching the decline of Frank's heartbeat from interested to something else. Something similar to what he beating across the room last night.

"Till you're back on your feet," Frank promises. And Matt believes him. "I won't look for her. But if she finds me-"

Matt nods. It's enough. Hell, it's almost too much. He grips his crutches tightly for support. The words pile up on his tongue and this time he doesn't turn them away, even though he's about to cross a line, one he never thought he would dare. One he never thought he would want. But he needs help, and Frank is the only one he can ask for it, and maybe, just maybe, it'll turn out different. It will be better.

"There's more." No turning back now. "There's somewhere else I need to go in Hell's Kitchen. After the church."

"Where?"

Here's the tricky part: "I have to go alone."

"You know, you warning me you're doing dumb shit in advance doesn't make it less dumb."

"It's not dumb." Risky, not dumb, but more importantly: "It's necessary."

"For what?"

"For me. To walk again." Matt is happy to bolster his argument by adding, "You don't have a doctor on-call anymore. This is one less thing to call a doctor about."

Frank feigns nonchalance right down to his respiration, but just by asking, he gives something away. "The alone part. That necessary too?"

"Yeah," Matt replies. For so many reasons, Elektra being chief among them. "But I will need some…interference. The place I'm going, it's being watched. Protected by the Hand."

"You asking me to do what I do?"

Matt backtracks. "I don't like what you do, Frank."

"But you're asking."

"I'm pointing you in the right direction to engage the Hand, something you're already planning to do." And he's leaving it at that, occupying himself instead with holding together the fragile trust, the shaky hope, that they are both better men.

Frank hums in mild disbelief. "But you're asking."

Matt doesn't correct him: "You gonna help me or not?"

The answer is given through the sound of a war drum filling the apartment. Frank's heart accelerates past interest into geared up. The rhythm presses against Matt's sternum like a promise.

Leaving is different this time around. Matt tenses his quaking nerves till they're steady and holding fast against his fear. No need to pace or wring his hands. He keeps the mission in mind. He pops a few Aspirin tablets into one pocket, jams his cell phone into the other, and heads out the door.

The way into Hell's Kitchen is peppered with strategy: with Frank's military monosyllables, his pragmatic single-mindedness. Where to go, where not to go, contingencies and back-up plans. What little he says sounds vague, but Matt can sense the detail behind it, the things Frank lets go unmentioned because he knows the ins and outs so damn well. He's got the forest and the trees worked out.

They arrive at St. Matthew's. A weekday afternoon means the church is quiet, quieter still around the side where Frank drops him off.

"Something happens, you call."

It's said to the driver's side door in an aggressively apathetic tone. Matt grabs his crutches and hops out on the passenger's side. "You too," he says. "I'll be in touch. Take care of yourself, Frank."

A small hum is all he gets in response, but again, Matt can sense the details behind it.

Lantom's heart fills the church cafeteria with a tinny beat. It's pleasantly surprised, grateful; a worried instrument played weary that's finally been brought relief. Matt hangs his head low, hoping his ears will follow. That they'll find one of the ambient sounds – water in the pipes, the muffled footsteps outside, drafts wafting into the church's vast, empty spaces. But Matt's fixed on Lantom, the quickness of the priest's pulse beneath his steady exterior, because it reminds Matt that sometimes faith is rewarded.

Doubt and guilt inevitably reappear, and once again, Matt's a sinking ship. Water rising over the bulkheads of the bad decisions that placed Lantom in a position to worry. Shouldn't have gotten sick, shouldn't have gotten his leg broken, shouldn't have driven everybody out of his life.

Shoudn't have asked. It's not him to know.

"Frank sends his regards."

Lantom draws a slow breath through his weariness, steeling himself. "I'd be happy to tell him where to send them." Matt laughs lightly, neither dismissing Lantom's words nor accepting them. "You're looking well."

"He's taken good care of me." Matt hesitates to explain the full extent of Frank's care where the Hand is concerned, but he doesn't want it to go overlooked. No matter that it means nothing in Frank's eyes. "He kept his word to you."

"No killing for one night."

"Not just one night." Matt lets the spike of Lantom's pulse rush through him. Faith rewarded is such a fragile thing. There isn't enough hope to stop the worry that the ground is about to fall out from under you. "And not for lack of trying. Or opportunity."

"Where is he now?"

There goes the ground. Matt crashes headlong into guilt and indecision, terror and panic. He has asked what should never be asked, allied himself with a man called the Punisher, and there is nothing. Nothing. He swallows hard, mouth having gone painfully dry. "I don't know."

"Is he coming back for you?"

Lantom's question is rather general, but Matt finds that time doesn't matter. Today, next week, from now until his leg is healed (and a small voice inside him nags that it may be beyond that) the answer is, "Yes."

"Is that his choice or yours?"

"I think it's a little of both." He absorbs Lantom's sigh the way he would an explosion. "We…understand each other. We don't agree, but…we understand."

"That's a long way to come from being kidnapped and having nowhere else to go."

"There is nowhere else for me to go. Nowhere that's safe."

"And Frank Castle," Lantom's skepticism colours the whole room unsettlingly yellow, "he's safe."

Strange how every other belief is shaking and uncertain save for that one, despite Matt having empirical evidence to the contrary.

"When you were here last, you were wondering about his motivations. What have you come to understand about them?"

Matt was hoping his having nowhere else to go would be explanation enough. He isn't quite sure how to articulate what's happened, to justify Frank's actions from the night at the church until now. "Frank Castle is a man with a strict code. A man who always pays his debts."

"And your leg makes him indebted to you?"

God, it sounds so stupid coming from someone else's mouth. Matt flinches from his own idiocy. "It's more than that. More than the leg. More than…more than a debt." Their previous conversation comes back to him through the haze of his memory, specifically Lantom's determination about Frank's motives. Matt speaks for himself: "There are parts of Frank Castle worth saving. He can still be a good man, Father."

Although what's the point? What the hell is the point?

Nothing.

Lantom's heartbeat dances an exasperated tango through the empty cafeteria. "Has it occurred to you, Matthew, that you have an easier time finding redeemable qualities in the Punisher than you do in yourself?"

He purses his lips against the thought that he has no redeeming qualities. "What happens when we die, Father?"

The sudden shift in his line of questioning rouses Lantom. "That's not for me to say."

"You're a man of God."

"Exactly, Matthew: a man. Not God. What happens after we die is for Him to know."

Matt can't hold himself still. He shuffles in his seat, pins and needles jabbing at the underside of his skin. "What if there's…what if there's nothing out there?"

"Matthew."

"What if this is it? This life?"

Lantom's answer is breathtaking in its simplicity. "Then this is it."

The quiet that follows is deafening. Matt interrupts in with a sharp laugh, the vocal equivalent of a punch to everything that's currently eating him alive from the inside. "Then what?"

"Nothing, I suppose."

Matt drives his point home: "Then what matters?"

Lantom gives a small shrug. His calmness is startling; Matt's blood pressure gets higher and peaks when the priest tells him, "Everything."

"Even without…" Matt forces himself to say it, "Without God."

"What's happened, Matthew?" Lantom continues in a measured tone. He wears his heartbeat to match. "What happened after you left the church that night?"

Matt can't burden Lantom with that, but trying to ignore the concern in the priest's voice or the rattle of his pulse hurts. He takes in every sensory detail he can from the Lantom like so many wounds, gradually feeling his anxiety dissipate, replaced with that familiar sense of guilt. He lets his voice get as small as he feels. "I was trying to help people, to protect them, by apprehending the guilty. To give them another chance in the hopes that they would make amends. That they would do good. Because they can, Father."

"You're looking to spare them from eternal damnation."

"I'm looking for them to spare themselves, to seek redemption." To be better. To choose to be better. "I worry it's built on a lie."

"Lie implies a knowledge of the truth. Faith, by its very nature, resists that kind of confirmation. We can't know for certain, Matthew, what's out there."

"But some can know better than others. People who have been there."

Lantom leans closer to him. "How sick were you, Matthew?"

Matt shakes his head. Jesus, this was easier with Frank, and nothing should be easier with Frank – nothing. But Frank's been there. He understands this, accepts this. Lantom can't possibly. "I'm not asking from my experience. I'm asking from others'."

That Lantom doesn't believe him is an understatement. The priest's respiration becomes a deathly serious series of prayers, prayers that may never be answered. "Memory and perception are for the living. If there is an afterlife, there's a soul. And souls wouldn't need memories or perception where it's going, and more than that, brain wouldn't know what to do upon their return."

Déjà vu all over again. The temperature in the room seems to drop. Matt is overcome by a calm that's as contrary as his current circumstances. "You don't get to take it with you."

Lantom gives a slight nod. God, if only he knew who he was agreeing with.

Matt never gets the chance to mention it. "And really," Lantom asks, "what does it matter?"

The question knocks the wind from him. Matt means to interrupt, but Lantom charges ahead. "If there's something or there's nothing, we still have to find a way to live with each other. That redemption you want people to find isn't strictly for their afterlife; it's for this life. Which means it all matters, Matthew. Everything. Good, evil, and everything in between."

He didn't think his voice could get any quieter, but Matt can't speak above a whisper. His throat is closing in. "But what if there's nothing there?"

"All the more reason for people to do good now," Lantom replies.

Matt places a hand on his stomach, trying to untwist his gut. To remind himself that he didn't know for certain what Elektra was going to say, and that maybe Frank is right. Maybe it isn't the shit you get to take with you.

"Would it change anything if you knew?"

"It would change everything," Matt utters with certainty.

Lantom shakes his head. "That's not what I mean. Would you stop doing what you do, giving people a chance at redemption, if you knew there was nothing out there?"

Matt knows what the right answer is, but he hesitates to say it aloud. It doesn't sound right in light of nothing, and even if it is, he might be lying, might be saying what he wants instead of what's true. What's real. Really, he's hobbling around on one leg letting Elektra carve up the city, letting Frank take a beating for his sake; putting people in danger over his own stupid, necessary crusade.

But it's right. It's right even if there is no heaven, no hell, no God. He's already lost so much and still believes beyond any shadow of doubt that grace and mercy and compassion are essential. "No," he admits softly, "I wouldn't stop. I won't stop."

The answer brings both his pulse and Lantom's to a slower pace. Matt has to know, "Is that wrong of me, Father?"

Lantom's heartbeat cradles him. "Intention doesn't matter in a Godless universe."

The thought that intention and circumstance don't matter to Frank shatter Matt to the core, but he holds fast to what he felt this morning when he asked for help. To the thought that everyone can be better. That they need to be better. "And if God exists?"

"The intention must be to live by His example, for goodness sake, not for the sake of salvation," Lantom replies. "I'd be more concerned if your answer did change."

Matt releases a breath he didn't know he was holding, letting the thought percolate in his head as he does. Right and wrong as absolutes flies in the face of everything he holds dear, but for a moment, he needs them to be still, be solid. He needs them to exist even if nothing else does.

Inadvertently, he circles back to the question he couldn't answer earlier about what he understands of Frank's motivations. About what the Punisher could possibly find worth saving in what he believes is a Godless universe.

Lantom eventually retreats to his office, and Matt takes a seat in the nave to wait. The hallowed space of the church is soft on his senses. Light, warm scents diffuse on the air. Comforting things like candle wax and flame, dust motes on sunbeams; old stone and dense wood. Sounds become more silken, wafting up into the rafters instead of overcrowding the pews. Everything's an offering. Everything has meaning, purpose, tradition.

There are two heartbeats lost in prayer on either side of him: an older woman on her knees, rosary jangling from her fingers as her whisper rushes skyward; the other, a younger man, silent and inert, offering nothing but thoughts and soft breathing to the saint on the prayer card he scrapes against the back of his hand.

Matt isn't listening when the doors open. The sound calls to him, of course. It rumbles through the quiet, swishes, and then quakes shut, blocking out the traffic and pedestrians outside. Matt corrects when he turns his head; he doesn't want to look eager, but he also doesn't want to look as interested as he feels. His senses have gone from dispersed to fixed, the way they do on rooftops when he's in the mask. From the whole city to one scream, so too do his senses contract from the whole church to Foggy Nelson.

Happy Reading!