Assassins be Scary
Then people started exploding in the streets. Iron Man had gone missing, and half the country was in a panic, including him, until a long game of ghostly telephone informed him he had surfaced in Idaho, of all places, and had adopted a Potato Child.
Like he knew what that meant. (Was it an actual potato, like how someone adopts a pet rock, or some farming kid?)
Anyway, they were back to screaming about needles and lightning and lairs, so he politely asked them where, and they led him to NY harbor, and one of the biggest boats in the place. Something about transporting… something. And the president? Nope, his daughter, his mistake. Maybe the vice president’s, who knows anymore.
He hadn’t even known the president had a daughter. He could have a pet raccoon for all he knew.
So now he was sneaking onto a boat. (someone was holding the Preisdent hostage and stuff, Iron Man suits were everywhere, people with red skin and anger issues were functionally suicide bombs and actual Iron Man saved a bunch of people falling out of a plane? He barely knew what was happening.)
Anyway, he found the makeshift lab area of the boat, nearly got blown up a couple of times, and did some experimental ghost medicine to see if he could get their souls to be less… explode-y. Aggressive. Un-brainwashed and dangerous.
If one more person gave him a horror movie smile and ran at him to give him a red-lined hug, he was going to scream, and then Kala would hit someone, and he’d have a migraine. He just knew it.
He didn’t know how else to handle this sort of thing, so he literally was just… holding the souls in so they physically could not die, and hoping that would somehow stop the explosion, because he apparently didn’t care about his own well-being anymore. Which was fair, considering he already had a pretty chill relationship with the dead.
Listened to a bunch of explosions and yelling up top on deck, tackled a few people who tried to escape. One lady he recognized, Miss Potts of Stark Industries, he was able to disconnect from the weird science experiment nonsense, and she stopped glowing red, so that was probably fine. Ya know.
I mean, she was breathing steadily, her heart rate was good, and she didn’t seem to be in much pain? He tabled her for later.
And then he looks over, and some dark-haired dude is coming at him and Potts with a needle.
Kala takes care of him in a move straight from a cartoon, so he just watches him flop to the ground and nudges him with one foot to double-check he’s out.
He is, indeed, out.
He sighs to the now-conscious Potts. “Hi there. Uh, Stark is upstairs negotiating for someone’s life, maybe the president’s? Oh, I’m Grim, nice to meet you.” Her hand shakes slightly when he shakes it, but she seems pretty lucid and un-crazy.
“Virginia Potts. Were you-?” She glances around at the medieval chains on the wall, and he shakes his head.
“Nah, I snuck on here after someone tipped me about a hostage situation and human experimentation. I’m medically certified, so tell me how you're feeling, please? None of these guys are very positively responsive.” He gestures to a lady with a messy blonde bun, who snarls at him from the ground like a werewolf in an eighties movie. He tied her up with some zip ties about an hour ago, the ones that are heat and friction resistant and cut off circulation if you move too much, fighting the weird body heat and super strength thing. Could be hysterical strength, now that he’s thinking on it…
He holds someone’s soul in, a guy with fiery red hair and still-glowing veins (is their blood radioactive? Is that what’s up here?) to keep him from, you know, dying, and Potts looks further lost.
“How are you- what are you-?”
He shrugs calmly, pressing the shimmery copy of the man into his body firmly. “Dunno. Just seems right, and it works. So.” Liar.
She nods shakily.
The explosions putter out, and Potts disappears to either find or chastise her man, and he lets her. She was lucid, reliably conscious, and not in tons of pain, but still needed to be checked over once no one was having their soul falling out.
He can practically smell the climactic scene he’s missing, and Kala gleefully tells him what she can see whenever she pops down from spying. There are helicopters, now. And kissing. He sighs and asks if she could see an ambulance, which she said she was mainly watching the explosions. (Which was admittedly fair, if annoying)
He briefs the police squad that turns up, who are thankfully from the station that all know him by name. (It makes it so much easier and faster, it’s great.) Helps the EMTs shepherd who he can, gets checked over himself, and then escorted off-site while the FBI swarm in. A camerawoman tries to mug him, but he just stares into her eyes silently and lets the camera roll, and she quits bothering him soon enough.
He takes a well-deserved nap when he gets back, and silently prays for some peace from wanna-be comic villains.
And then one day a new neighbor was moving in. That wouldn’t be too alarming, really, normally. Mundane, actually. Single lady, nice, unassuming, calm and quiet.
Grim, used to being able to identify people by shadow, outline, facial features’ outline, hair texture, and/or voice, identified her immediately as none other than the lovely Black Widow, and then went on to have a small crisis over ‘how is no one else seeing this? Wait, is she dead? No, no colors. What’s happening? Why is a superhero living next door? Doesn’t the government love her or something?’ and such.
Kala comforted him by googling ridiculous animal’s science names. Brown bear’s is just ‘bear’ a bunch of times. Apparently.
Okay, okay. This is fine.
Shut up meme side of brain, shut.
So he just… avoids her. Easy enough; he has school, and doesn’t have a social life or leave the apartment for literally anything, so.
But she is a spy.
He sighs, and watches the bowl of cheap ramen spin in the microwave in defeat. Why was a superhero even moderately interested in him, honestly?
I mean, he did witness like, half of three and half major national security disasters. Maybe they think he’s involved. Which is bull, because he just wants his cheap burrito and people to stop being dramatic and trying to die/kill all the time around him. It’s getting old.
So he decides, one not at all unusual afternoon when his foster parents are out at ‘work’ and he’s alone with Kala and the cat, that enough is enough.
She’s doing laundry, he can see her from the balcony into the living room next door. So he sucks it up and starts talking. “Um. Hi ma’am. My name’s Grim. Can I ask why the Black Widow is stalking me?” She looks up sharply, and he swallows. He’d never seen quite that expression before, meaning this was officially uncharted territory. With shark-infested waters and a sinking boat.
Joy.
She continues folding laundry while looking at me dead in the eye. Which. Scary.
She studies me, the picture of nervous innocence. “Who do you work for, kid?”
I blink. I glance over at Kala, who is seeing if she can steal some chocolate from the ‘hidden’ candy spot I discovered on night one in the place at two AM, occasionally flying too fast and disappearing into the wall without warning.
“The cat cafe down the street? The hospital, sometimes? No, that’s volunteer… Uh, I volunteer at the station too, because I keep getting caught up in stuff and they deal with me a lot. Know me by name and everything…”
She keeps staring.
I start sweating.
She breaks the staring contest to calmly fold a skirt with confident hands. “What kind of ‘stuff?’”
“Well. You know that serial killer from Hell’s Kitchen?” Daredevil had chased him out, and so he came to Grim’s neck of the woods.
She nodded, all business. “Yeah, he’ll be in the system soon. Fought him in a public bathroom and called the cops.” His latest victim had still been yelling for help after death, and when he asked her as kindly as he could what was the matter, she started sobbing about knives and big men and the bathroom. He put two and two together, got four, and investigated.
She looked vaguely impressed, but stayed silent.
He panicked. “Not that I was in with him or anything! I heard yelling and went over to see if someone was being assaulted and just… walked right into it. You can check the records, if you want.”
She nodded smoothly, which didn’t help his nerves. “Hm. And not even a scar.”
He had Kala to thank for that. Clawed at his eyes, teeth, all the spots that felt freaky when touched by the dead for a more than decent distraction while he put in a call and made a loony-tunes style trap consisting of zip ties, water, some pens and a cat. Not the last one of purpose, but it turned out alright and the cafe got a new kitty out of it.
“Yeah. I get lucky a lot. The nurses at the ER think I’m a cryptid, and one thinks I’m blessed or something? I haven’t really figured it out yet. I only got bruises from the Boat Thing and the EXPO, it’s kinda just a thing I’ve always lived with.”
The dead had protected him for as long as he could remember. Reassuring him in bad homes, telling him where he could get food or shelter or a helpful adult. Leading him to safety when he got lost, telling him stories to cheer him up.
“The current working theory is that I used up all my bad luck when I was tiny. Or that I’m a protagonist, I haven’t chosen just yet, so I’m open to options.”
She kept folding, but nodded along every once in a while. She’d be decent company if it weren’t so creepy talking to her. “The whole neighborhood’s agreed on it, now. Something’s up? They send their kids straight my way, if they can’t make it. They’ve got jobs, so.”
“And you parents don’t mind?”
“My foster parents wouldn’t know the difference either way, frankly.” They weren’t bad at all, he had all the food and showers and bedding he could ever want. Enough freedom to be away for days at a time, see his friends and help people out, living and dead, without suspicion.
She frowned ever so slightly, and seemed to be filing away the information alongside everything else.
“How involved were you in each incident?”
He shrugged again. “I made a med station at New York: Alien Addition, helped the captives on the boat the last time, and at the EXPO I kinda just tailed after Iron Man and… Iron Patriot, is that what they’re calling it now? I cut some wires and shoved a bunch into the creek they had there, but nothing much really before I had to skedaddle because of the whole bomb situation.”
She looked up again, and his instincts screamed. She looked… concerned? Like, legitimately. Not faked at all.
Nope, no, nada. She’s a master spy. She’s totally faking it. Nope, nah, not allowed.
“And what were you trying to do at the EXPO, then?”
He blushed in embarrassment. Not his best moment. “I- uh. I knew neither of them had medical experience, and everyone was rushing around, and they both started being sniped by bots, and I always want to help…” He trailed off, shuffling socked feet on the carpet, a comfortingly worn down and scratchy shag that might have once been white but was now stuck a pale cream-yellow shade.
Who else would have known where the captives were? Would the EMTs have gotten there in time otherwise on the boat? Where scared civilians had tucked themselves away from the robots and the emergency crews?
He saved at least a handful of lives, he knew that. But he’d never be able to explain it. To the living, at least.
Spies die young, right? When she passes, he should explain the whole thing, it seemed only right.
Though it felt majorly wrong waiting around for someone to die to do literally anything, bleh.
“Alright. Pay attention to the door, by way. Surroundings are important.” Like it had been orchestrated, the front door rang, and he started. Kala was signing that it was something important from the hallway, and he scrambled over successfully without slipping or further embarrassing himself.
He opened the door, expecting his foster set back early, the mailman, someone with a noise complaint, the usual.
He did not expect Tony Stark himself.