Chapter 1: Blood on the Welcome Mat
The groan was low, guttural, a sound that didn’t belong in the familiar chorus of Peter Parker’s building—the drip from the sink, the thump of a bassline three floors down, the perpetual sigh of traffic on the street. This was the sound of a body giving up.
It ended with a soft, final thud against his door.
Peter was on the floor before he was fully awake, one hand braced on the cool linoleum, the other reaching for the knob. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Could be a drunk neighbor. Could be a trap. Could be—
He opened the door a crack, the chain taut.
She was crumpled in a heap on the grimy hallway tiles, a splash of chaotic color against the peeling beige wallpaper. A woman. Dark hair fanned out like a stain. She wore black, which made the blood seeping through the torn fabric at her ribs look impossibly vivid under the flickering neon from the window at the end of the hall. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting jittery shadows that danced over her form.
“Hey. Hey, can you hear me?”
Peter disengaged the chain and dropped to his knees beside her. The air smelled of ozone and copper. He pressed two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was there, a frantic butterfly trapped beneath cold skin. Her face was turned toward him, pale and streaked with dirt and something that looked like soot. She was maybe his age, or a little older. Her eyes were half-open, a startling, lucid blue, but they were glazed, seeing nothing.
“Okay, just… stay with me. Don’t move.”
His mind, still fuzzy with sleep, snapped into a cold, clinical checklist. Trauma. Bleeding. Possible internal injuries. Call 911. He was already reaching for the phone in his pocket when her lips moved.
No sound came out. Just a shape, a silent word.
Then the air around her curled fingers sparked.
It was a tiny thing. A faint, golden ember that flickered to life just above her knuckle, danced for a millisecond with a faint hiss, and died, leaving a tiny wisp of smoke and the scent of a snuffed candle.
Peter’s hand froze an inch from his phone.
Random victims didn’t do that. Trap or not, 911 wasn’t equipped for this. The normal rules were off. He looked down the empty, silent hallway. No pursuing footsteps. Just the hum of the city, indifferent.
“Alright,” he muttered to the unconscious woman. “Plan B.”
He slid his arms under her, careful of the wound at her ribs. She was lighter than he expected. He hauled her inside, kicking the door shut with his foot, and laid her gently on the threadbare rug in the middle of his studio apartment. In the better light, the damage was clearer. The gash was ugly, but not arterial. The blood flow was sluggish. The real concern was the pallor, the shock, the whatever-the-hell that spark was.
He moved fast. He grabbed a clean dish towel from the rack, folded it, and pressed it firmly against the wound, tying it in place with a long strip of fabric torn from an old t-shirt. His hands worked on autopilot while his brain raced.
He knew one person who wouldn’t ask normal questions. One person who had a stash of medical supplies that didn’t come from a CVS and who operated in the grey spaces where people with… sparking problems… might need to go.
Frank Castle.
The thought sat in his gut like a stone. Frank’s solutions were permanent. His moral boundaries were written in gunpowder and blood. But he was also the only ally Peter had right now who wouldn’t flinch at the supernatural. And his last safehouse was a concrete bunker of a warehouse in Red Hook.
Peter looked at the woman. Her chest rose and fell in shallow hitches. She was someone’s daughter. Someone’s target. She had power, and it was failing. He made the call.
He dragged his worn duffel bag from under the bed. The suit inside was more patches than original material, the reds faded, the blues bruised. He pulled it on with the practiced, hurried motions of a man getting into a work uniform. The fabric settled, a second skin holding his fear in check. He was no longer just Peter Parker, broke and tired. He was a set of capacities. A way to move through the night.
He gathered the woman up again, cradling her against his chest. She murmured something incoherent, her head lolling against the spandex on his shoulder. Her hair smelled of smoke and rain.
He shoved the window up, and the cacophony of the city rushed in—honks, shouts, the distant wail of a siren. The night air was cool and damp. He adjusted his grip, ensuring the pressure on her makeshift bandage was steady.
“Don’t die on me,” he whispered, though he knew she couldn’t hear him. “Not tonight. I’ve had a really long week.”
Then he stepped out into the void.
For a second, they were in freefall, the world a dizzying blur of brick and glass and light. The woman’s breath hitched in terror, even unconscious. Then the web-line caught, went taut, and the swing began.
The rhythm was different with a passenger. He couldn’t take the sharp corners, the breakneck dives. It became a long, soaring glide, a ferry ride through the concrete canyon. He moved from anchor point to anchor point with exaggerated care, his muscles straining with the extra, fragile weight. The wind whipped past them. Below, the city sprawled like a circuit board of endless problems.
He dropped onto a lower rooftop, his knees bending to absorb the impact, and sprinted across the tarpaper to launch again. Her blue eyes flickered open for a moment, gazing up at the speckled, light-polluted sky, filled with a confusion so profound it felt like a physical ache. Then they closed again.
“Who are you?” he asked the night.
Red Hook was a maze of shadow and rust. The warehouse Frank used was nondescript, a decaying tooth in a mouth full of them. Peter landed in the alley beside it, the usual grace replaced by a heavy, two-footed thump. He was panting. Adrenaline was the only thing holding the fatigue at bay.
The steel door was reinforced. He knocked twice, waited, then knocked three times. A sequence.
A slit at eye level opened. A pair of hard, dark eyes assessed him, then the woman in his arms. The eyes didn’t widen. They just took in the blood, the suit, the unconscious form.
The door opened with a metallic shriek.
Frank Castle stood in the doorway, a silhouetted mountain in a grey sweatshirt. He wasn’t holding a weapon, which somehow made him seem more dangerous. His gaze went from Peter to the woman and back.
“Spider-Man.” Frank’s voice was gravel in a blender. “You bringing me trash or a patient?”
“Patient. Maybe both. She’s hurt. And she… did something. With her hands.”
Frank’s eyes narrowed slightly. That was the only cue he gave. He stepped aside. “Inside. Now.”
The safehouse was one large, bleak room. A bank of military-grade medical supplies lined one wall next to a table covered in disassembled firearm parts. A single bulb hung from the ceiling. Frank pointed to a battered metal cot.
Peter laid her down. Frank was already there, scissors in hand, cutting away the torn t-shirt and the dish towel. His movements were efficient, brutal in their precision. He cleaned the wound with something that smelled sharply antiseptic. The woman whimpered, a faint, animal sound.
“Clean slice. Deep. Missed anything major. She’s lost blood, shocky.” Frank packed the wound with gauze and began wrapping it with a professional tightness Peter could never manage. “Now tell me the part that got a wall-crawler to bring her to me instead of a hospital.”
“She made a spark. From nothing. In the air.”
Frank’s hands didn’t pause. He finished the bandage and straightened up, looking at her face for the first time. “A mutant?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t feel like that. It felt… old.”
The woman on the cot stirred. Her eyelids fluttered. Her hand twitched, and the air around her fingertips shimmered with heat haze. A tiny flame, no bigger than a match head, bloomed and died above her index finger.
Frank didn’t flinch. He watched it die, then looked at Peter. “So she’s a problem.”
“She’s a person,” Peter said, the weariness making his voice thin. “Someone did this to her. Dumped her on my doorstep.”
“Which makes her your problem. And now, mine.” Frank crossed his massive arms. “I don’t like magic. It doesn’t follow rules. You can’t put a bullet in it.”
“She’s not magic. She’s just a woman.”
“She’s a beacon,” Frank corrected, his voice flat. “Whatever cut her up is gonna be looking for that light show. You led them here.”
As if on cue, the woman’s eyes snapped open. True consciousness flooded into them, blue and blazing with panic. She tried to sit up, cried out at the pain in her side, and fell back. Her gaze darted between the masked figure in red and blue and the grim, scarred giant looming over her.
Her voice was raw, a scrape of sound, but it filled the silent room with a single, terrified, and utterly confused word.
“Where?”
“Where?”
The word hung in the air, thin and cracked. Her eyes, that shocking blue, darted between the masked man and the hulking silhouette near the cot. They held no recognition, only a deep, feral panic. She tried to push herself up on her elbows, a grimace twisting her features as a fresh bloom of red seeped into the bandage on her ribs. Her breath hitched, a wet, rasping sound that spoke of more than superficial damage.
“Hey, it’s okay, you’re safe—” Peter started, his hands up, placating. He took a half-step forward.
A bookshelf against the far wall erupted into flames.
It wasn’t a normal fire. It was a silent, instantaneous bloom of orange and gold that engulfed the old paperbacks and a stack of Frank’s tactical manuals. No smoke, just a roaring, contained inferno that licked at the ceiling tiles.
“Whoa!” Peter yelped, backpedaling. His own adrenaline, already singing from the swing across the city, spiked into overdrive. He moved without thinking, a blur of red and blue, grabbing a fire extinguisher from beside the door. “It’s okay! We’re not going to hurt you! Just try to breathe, lady, you’re gonna burn the place down—”
He was talking too fast, moving too fast. His energy was all jagged edges and sudden motions. To her terrified eyes, he was just another threat, another violent shift in a reality she couldn’t grasp. The air around her hands shimmered again, heat waves distorting the light. A ceramic mug on a nearby workbench cracked with a loud ping.
Frank moved.
Not with Spider-Man’s hyper-speed, but with a deliberate, unavoidable solidity. He stepped between Peter and the cot, ignoring the burning bookshelf. He didn’t look at the fire. He looked only at her.
He crouched down slowly, bringing his massive frame to her level, a tree bending at the trunk. The floorboards groaned under his weight. He didn’t reach for her. He just placed his hands on his knees, broad and steady.
“Look at me.” His voice wasn’t loud. It was low, a vibration that cut through the crackle of the flames and Peter’s frantic fumbling with the extinguisher pin. It was the sound of bedrock.
Her wild gaze skittered over his scarred face, trying to escape.
“Look. At. Me.” The command was absolute, devoid of malice, devoid of fear. It was a rope thrown into a storm.
Her eyes locked onto his. The flames on the bookshelf guttered, dimmed to embers, and died as suddenly as they’d appeared, leaving behind blackened, smoldering ruins and the acrid smell of burnt plastic and paper. Peter stood frozen, extinguisher in hand, the immediate crisis fading into a haze of smoke and shock.
“You are in a room,” Frank said, each word measured, an anchor dropped into the sea of her panic. “You are on a cot. You are injured. You have a broken rib. That’s why it hurts to breathe. Do you understand?”
A ragged, shuddering inhale. A tiny, trembling nod.
“You don’t know where you are. You don’t know who you are. That’s the injury inside your head. We will deal with it. But first, you deal with the rib. You breathe. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Do it with me.”
He took an exaggerated, slow breath in, his broad chest expanding. He held it for a three-count, then let it out through pursed lips, a long, steady stream.
Tears welled in her eyes, mixing with the soot on her cheeks. She tried to mimic him, but the inhalation caught, hitching into a painful gasp. She whimpered.
“Again,” Frank said, his voice unwavering. “Just the air in this room. Nothing else exists. Just the air, and the sound of my voice.”
She tried again. This time, the breath made it in, shaky and thin. She held it, her terrified eyes wide on his, and released it in a quivering sigh. The shimmering heat around her hands faded, leaving only the chill of the dank warehouse and the smell of her own blood.
Peter lowered the fire extinguisher, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a hollow awe. He watched as the man of war performed his most precise operation: keeping one lost, broken woman from coming apart at the seams. He saw her focus narrow to the point of Frank’s gaze, her universe collapsing to the rhythm of his breathing.
“Good,” Frank murmured. “Now, do you have a name?”
The tears spilled over. She shook her head, a frantic little motion. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. The confusion was back, but the raw terror had receded, banked by his impossible calm.
“That’s alright,” Frank said. He didn’t move, didn’t break the connection. “We’ll need to call you something.”
From behind him, Peter’s voice, softer now, stripped of its frantic edge, floated through the smoky air. “Sage.”
Frank didn’t turn. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It just… fits her.”
The woman on the cot—Sage—stared past Frank’s shoulder at the masked man. Her breathing, still pained and wet, began to find a slower, deeper rhythm. She looked from one to the other, two impossible men in a concrete box, the only solid things in a world that had been utterly erased.
She looked from one to the other, two impossible men in a concrete box, the only solid things in a world that had been utterly erased.
Frank broke the stare first, turning his head slightly toward Peter without moving from his crouch. “Get the medkit. Top shelf. And a blanket.”
Peter moved, grateful for a task. The boxy, olive-drab kit was heavy. He brought it over, along with a rough wool army blanket that smelled of dust and gun oil. Frank opened the kit with a click, his hands selecting items with cold familiarity: a fresh roll of gauze, surgical tape, a packet of antiseptic wipes.
“We need to secure the ribs before she moves again,” Frank said, his voice all business. “You sit her up. Gentle.”
Peter hesitated for only a second before he stepped forward. He slid one arm behind Sage’s shoulders, the other supporting her head. “Okay, Sage. Just a little lift. On three. One, two…”
He lifted. She cried out—a sharp, sucked-in gasp that was worse than a scream. Her body trembled violently against him, a fine, constant vibration of shock and pain. Her head lolled against his shoulder. He could feel every ragged breath she took.
“I know,” he murmured, the mask making his voice a stranger’s even to himself. “I know it hurts. Almost there.”
Frank didn’t waste time with sympathy. He tore open the packet with his teeth. “This will be cold.” He pressed the wipe to her side, cleaning away the fresh blood seeping from the bandage. She jerked, a full-body flinch, and Peter held her steady.
Then Frank began to wrap the ribs. He looped the gauze around her torso with a firm, practiced pressure, each pass tightening the bandage to immobilize the broken bone. Sage trembled softly with each revolution, her eyes squeezed shut, tears tracking clean lines through the grime on her cheeks. The pain was a live wire, sending stabbing sensations through her ribs with every heartbeat, every tentative breath.
“Try to breathe shallow,” Frank instructed, his fingers taping the end of the gauze securely. “Deep breaths will feel like glass.”
She nodded, a tiny, miserable motion. Peter started to lower her back down.
That’s when it happened.
A cough rattled up from her chest, involuntary and wet. She turned her head away from Peter’s suit, her body convulsing with the effort, and a splash of dark, crimson blood spattered onto the grey wool blanket.
Time froze.
Peter stared at the blood, bright and wrong against the drab fabric. His stomach clenched. “She’s coughing blood. Frank, she’s coughing blood. I didn’t… I didn’t realize it was this bad.” His voice climbed, the alarm stripping away the last of his cool. He’d carried her, swung with her, thought it was a bad cut. This was internal. This was lungs.
“I see it,” Frank said, his tone grindingly calm. He caught her chin, turning her face back. Her lips were stained red. Her breaths were becoming quicker, shallower, a precursor to panic. “Look at me. You have a contusion. A bruised lung. It’s from the impact. The bleeding is minor. You will not drown in it. Do you understand? You will not drown.”
He said it with such absolute conviction that Sage’s frantic eyes locked onto his again, searching for the truth in his granite face. She gave another weak, bloody cough, but she kept looking at him.
“But we can’t move her,” Peter said, his mind racing. “A hospital—”
“Is not an option,” Frank finished, his gaze still on Sage. “They ask for IDs. They call the police. Whoever did this to her will be monitoring intake. It’s the first place they’ll look.” He reached into the medkit and pulled out a small, clear vial of liquid and a syringe. “This will help with the pain and inflammation. It will let you breathe.”
Sage’s eyes widened at the sight of the needle. The air around her wrist warmed perceptibly.
“No fireworks,” Frank said, prepping the injection without looking at her hand. “This is medicine. It will help. You have to choose to let it help.”
Her chest hitched. She looked from the needle to Frank’s impassive eyes, then back to Peter’s masked face. There was no trust here, not really. Only a desperate calculus of survival. She gave a single, tremulous nod.
Frank administered the shot with a swift, clinical motion. She barely flinched. Within moments, a slight slackening of the terror in her shoulders was visible. The painful tightness in her breathing began to ease, just a fraction.
Frank stood up, his knees popping. “The blood is from the lung tissue. It should stop if she stays still and calm. Which means no more surprises.” He said this last part directly to Peter. “You, mask off. You’re scaring her.”
Peter blinked.“What? No, I’m not—”
“You’re a symbol. Symbols get burned. Right now she needs a person.” Frank turned and walked toward the smoldering bookshelf, assessing the damage.
Peter looked down at Sage. She was watching him, her expression a complex map of pain, fear, and a dawning, exhausted curiosity. The mask was a barrier. Frank, for all his brutality, was right.
He hooked his fingers under the edge of the fabric at his neck and pulled it up and over his head. His hair was damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead. The warehouse air felt cold on his skin.
“Hi,” he said, offering a weak smile. “I’m… Peter.”
Sage studied his face—the ordinary, tired features, the hazel eyes that held a worry too deep for a stranger. The visual disconnect between the friendly, weary man and the agile, masked hero was almost as jarring as the memory loss. Some of the tension around her own eyes softened.
“Peter,” she repeated, the name a foreign object on her tongue. She tested it, as if trying to recall its meaning. Then her brow furrowed. She lifted her hand, staring at her own clean fingers as if they belonged to someone else. “I… I burned your books.”
A laugh burst out of Peter, sharp and surprised. It echoed in the grim space. “Yeah. Yeah, you kinda did.” He nodded toward Frank, who was silently dumping a bucket of sand on the charred remains. “His books, though. So don’t sweat it.”
The ghost of something—not a smile, but the potential for one—touched her lips. It vanished as another thought surfaced, darker, slipping through the chemical haze of the painkiller. Her blue eyes clouded.
“They were chanting,” she whispered, her gaze turning inward, staring at the concrete wall but seeing nothing in the room. “Their hands were cold. So cold. They wanted the key… but I… I destroyed it…” nausea washed over her. “They were so angry…”
Peter and Frank exchanged a look over her head. The quiet in the warehouse was no longer just an absence of sound. It was the silence that comes just before a storm breaks, heavy and charged with a terrible, gathering weight. The blood on the blanket, the cryptic words, the cold chanting hands—they weren’t just patching up a victim. They were staunching a wound that was leaking something much older and darker than blood.