achilles come down.

DETRANSITION, BABY.

“mm,” dinah murmurs in tacit agreement, tries not to think about how she sometimes wonders if they’re made of the same stuff, deep down—scraped together from cast-offs of the same cosmic mold. she doesn’t believe in being made in anyone’s image, not really, but she can’t read an article about quantum entanglement these days without thinking about the matching bullets in their skulls and the invisible scars the same man left on both of them.

if fate, predestination, any of that means anything, this would be a hell of a way to find out.

DETRANSITION, BABY.

“if i’ve learned one thing over the years?”

nightcrawler – they can’t call him kurt, can hardly wrap their head around the irony of the people who’d taken him in giving him that name of all names – is difficult to call an example of parenting, given that they never even interacted with their son until he was nearly an adult, and that’s an odd thing to grapple with in and of itself, that all their experience with the subject comes from others. 

the media loves to spin horror stories of the brotherhood kidnapping children, because of course they do, but no child has ever come to them who had anywhere left to go. magneto even tells them about the school, usually, gives them a choice, and many take it, but some know already that assimilation isn’t possible for them, or that they’re made for something bigger.

it’s not exactly parenting, either, but a chance to fight back is the best nurturing mystique can offer them.

NETFLIX'S DAREDEVIL STARTERS.

the coarse towel stings against the tender wound in his side. luckily, the knife hadn’t nicked anything terribly important; unluckily, though, it’s serving to be a terrible pain in the ass. there’s plenty of areas where all sensation is lost on his body, buried in scar tissue, but not here. frank watches the way gabriel’s dark sleek head shines in the light from stained glass and closes his eyes gently against the patter of rain against the church’s old walls. if he’s lucky, maybe the whole thing would collapse on him. 

unfortunately, frank’s never been the lucky type. the sting of peroxide is far away and soothing in a familiar sort of way, even. his eyes open when he feels gabriel withdraw from him, dragging his own feet to the ground as he tests the way his side tugs and pulls against his movement. the bleeding’s stopped long enough for frank to be satisfied, and he knows it’ll heal over in an ugly, nasty way, like everything else written on his body.

“ - star wars,” he says without much thought, “and i’ve got someone, don’t worry. i’ve had worse. if i didn’t come in here, i would’ve used duct tape or some shit,” which isn’t really an exaggeration, but frank searches gabriel’s face to see if that makes him laugh anyway, even if it’s also not funny.

 “i appreciate your help. you can leave me here, y’know. go back to sleep or - uh, y’know, whatever it is you people do here, father - ?”

the duct tape comment does get a baffled smile out of him as he dutifully plasters overs the cut over frank’s eyebrow with an R2-D2 band-aid, if not a laugh.

“it’s a wonder you’re alive. now stop moving and let me see that.” frank’s pliant enough with bone-deep exhaustion that despite the fact that he’s a marine-turned-killing machine with forty pounds of muscle on him, gabriel doesn’t have too hard a time maneuvering him back onto the pew and taking away the towel. his side doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, but he doesn’t trust it to stay that way at this rate. “hold still another minute. i can’t do much, but i can at least get that dressed.”

already he knows that cleaning away the blood soaking through frank’s shirt is more than he can do with a plain towel, so as anxiety-inducing as it is to leave him out of sight again, he does it—comes back with a bowl of warm water (and a bottle from the pantry for later) and gets to work. he pushes up the t-shirt just enough to expose the wound completely and wipes away what he can of the drying blood streaked across the firm, pale muscle of frank’s stomach.

it feels a step more—not perverse, but more of an overstep than all the rest, but he does it as dispassionately as he’s able—imagines himself irene of rome, tending to the bloodied body of saint sebastian.

he knows his cleaning and dressing is far from adequate, but it’s a few steps above duct tape, and as long as frank actually stays still, it should hold through the night.

“—ortiz,” he finishes belatedly. his name’s on the website; frank could look him up at any point as it is. “gabriel ortiz. —and i doubt i’m going to be sleeping tonight whether i’m here or not, so i may as well keep an eye on you.”

he sits back, takes off his last bloody pair of gloves and hands frank the bottle of water.

the light that shines inside the parish from the stained glass window above soaks gabriel in red and blue and green light, makes the blood on his hands glisten. he heaves himself to a half-seated, half-lying down position, propped against the back of the pew as his long legs hang off the edge. uncomfortable, but less pressure on the gaping stab wound in his side that trickles a slow but steady stream of blood through his fingers. 

“you’re right, mostly yuppies these days,” he breathes out in pain, sets the money clip back into his inner jacket packet. “i don’t want to be salvaged. i just want to make sure i don’t bleed out tonight. one day, i’ll return the favor for you, father.” 

he winces as he stands to shrug off the heavy jacket and, what’s worse, is the vest, but it’s less weight to carry, now that the gun’s out of his hands too. his skin-tight shirt sticks to his skin in an unpleasant way from all the sweat, blood, and grime. 

“you wanna get me the kit, you don’t gotta get your hands dirty,” frank breathes. a beat, haphazard, as he looks gabriel over and meets his gaze once more, lips parting for a moment before a smile twists his features, half-amused. stupidly enough, all frank can think of is red, and thinks it’s because of the church but maybe it’s the saving him part, too, especially when he least deserves it. 

“ - it’s - frank, by the way.”

“let’s hope i never need you to return the favor,” gabriel says, and castle talks about getting his hands dirty but he’s already taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves as he heads over to lock the door, make sure that at least no one else walks into this. he would have been locking up within the hour, anyway, and one sleepless night with a mass murderer bleeding all over the church won’t kill him. leaving castle to his own devices might kill him, though, and—call it valuing human life. or running on fumes. one or the other.

the stab wound is far more obvious as castle manages to get out of his gear, and ugly enough that it really needs better care than gabriel is going to be able to do with do with equipment that doesn’t normally need to serve anything more than a kitchen accident or some sunday schoolers’ scraped knees, but he digs out a box of latex gloves and grabs a few fresh towels along with the kit anyway.

“i hope you have someone you can call to take a look at that if i can get you through the night. hold this,” he sighs, pressing one of the towels against the wound and castle’s hand into the towel. it’s not bleeding fast, but it’s still bleeding, and he couldn’t do stitches even if he had the tools for it. “keep the pressure on until the bleeding stops and and stay still. i’m sure you can handle a little stinging, c—frank.”

he pulls some peroxide and cotton balls out of the kit and gets to work on cleaning some of the other cuts and scrapes he can see. it all fills his mind with questions about how frank’s night had been going before he stumbled in that, morally and legally, he really shouldn’t seek out any answers to.

and beneath all that, it’s oddly nostalgic. someone was always getting patched up at st. agnes, whether from fights, accidents, the metal ruler sister may kept in her sleeve, the sheer peer-pressured stupidity of twenty-some boys seventeen and under packed into one place—they all had battle scars back then. the ones they showed off, the ones no one talked about. some more than most.

“ain’t looking for sanctuary, father,” ironic that this is the one time he’s stepped foot in a church since marrying maria, and if he believed in that shit, he knows he’d be sent straight to hell for barging into a sacred space carrying all of his bullshit demons with him. sacrilege, isn’t that the right word? that’s what this is, anyway, the scrape of his minigun against the old oak pews as he drags his weight along with it, the way his blood leaves a trail up the aisle, the black melted snow his boots had tracked into the front door. 

“you can kick me out on my ass and i’ll leave, but,” that’s a big but, for someone who can barely stand, but he manages, letting out a breathy exhale that whistles first in his chest, “i don’t think you will. i just need - one night, that’s all.”

that’s when he thinks to dig for cash in his pocket, but realizes most of his money clip’s soaked with blood that isn’t his and that’s bribery anyway, technically, which feels like it’s breaking a commandment of some sort. in either case, he offers it gabriel’s way.

“i ain’t - fuck, i ain’t some lost soul looking for salvation, or whatever bullshit the old irish catholics come here for,” he scrunches his nose as the wail of sirens passes by, "i can be out before the sun comes up.”

“no, i don’t want your money.” gabriel holds up a hand, doesn’t touch the—literal blood money? that castle’s holding out to him. it would be bad enough to take money from anyone seeking shelter, but there’s a whole other level to accepting payment from a fugitive.

harboring a fugitive. that’s what this is, really—every second he doesn’t call the police or doesn’t send the man out onto the streets, he’s an accomplice to whatever he’s done tonight. but... there’s always a but, and here it’s the second look he takes at him—at the bruise and the pallor to his face beneath it, at how much of the blood might be his. it’s the rattling to his breathing and the stiff way he holds his limbs. gabriel sighs, fear giving way to the sort of resignation that he suspects only new yorkers can understand, and he sits on the pew a healthy distance away.

“not many irish in this neighborhood,” he says, as if it matters, and squints at castle in the low light. harboring a fugitive, yes, but this one... “salvation would be a tall order, but as much as i wish i could prove you wrong...”

whoever put frank castle in a position to beg for a hiding place is worse than him, that much is obvious. he knows the sorts of people castle kills, which means knowing the sorts of people who want him dead in return. and he hears things. in confession. in passing. a pimp shot dead on his doorstep here. a gang of neo-nazis bombed out there. he’s never considered himself a violent man, and he’s certainly no supporter of the way the punisher operates, but the city has its own rules, and he isn’t the first lone gunman (so to speak) his home has exalted as a savior.

if everything happens for a reason... he thinks, and lets his train of thought drift to blake’s tyger. did he who made the lamb make thee.