Teenage Lobotomy
“What do you mean not the hospital?!” he shrieked. This was too much, too much. After the decimation and all the bullshit with the Avengers, Carl was barely becoming content with going back to a somewhat normal routine. High school may be bullshit, but at least it was mind-numbing enough to distract from existential crises.
His boyfriend turning out to be a vampire was not on his list of “things that may have surprised me last year but this year ain’t shit.” He was very, very shocked.
Even more so when some chick comes in and fucking beheads him. Though not before Mark got a good fight in, and now this girl was practically bleeding out from a deep cut in her abdomen.
“Just get my phone, it fell over there,” the girl rasped, her voice shaking with effort. She and Carl were both putting pressure on his jacket that he had pressed on her wound in a vain effort to stop the bleeding.
“You need a HOSPITAL, I’m getting that phone and calling 9-1-1…” Carl panics as he gently removes his blood-soaked hands to go find the phone. He wipes his hands on his jeans and doesn’t think about his rolling stomach.
“No, I swear… No hospitals, please… I’m friends with the Avengers, they can be here in a few minutes, I’m sure…” Oh, fuck. Her voice was weaker. She was wheezing. He doesn’t care if the Avengers can get here yesterday, this chick needs a hospital. The phone is on the ground in the shadows, but he finds it and is incredibly relieved to see that it’s functioning after the fight. He’ll call whoever she wants once he knows the ambulance is on the way.
~
“She looks pissed,” Dean remarks, taking a seat next to Natasha in the hall after getting a glimpse of Claire through the open door.
“It’s amazing how true that is even when she’s in a fucking coma,” Natasha agrees.
“Whoa,” Dean marvels. “Careful, Black Widow, I think you just had an emotional nip-slip.”
“Don’t be such a man, Dean. It’s unbecoming,” she responds, face schooled into neutrality once again.
“You know, you may be a spy, but I’m a hunter. I can read people maybe 80% as well as you can, and you…” Dean whistles a low note, then continues. “You are not as calm as you want to seem.”
“Good job. A-plus deducing skills. You could be the next Sherlock.”
“You get chatty when you’re emotional, huh,” Dean muses.
“And your jackassery doubles.” Dean doesn’t respond, getting the point. He was just as distraught as her right now, and to be fair, he was being a jackass. Poking the bear and all that.
They sat in that hallway for about eighteen hours. Natasha ignored all calls from Tony, Pepper, Steve, Rhodey, and even one from the raccoon. Dean didn’t get quite as many calls, but ignored the three he got from Wade (who had finally shared his name with Dean not one week prior) and even one from Pepper. Dean was actually surprised that none of them just came to the hospital anyway. He supposed that the deliberate denial of the calls clued them all into the fact that Dean and Natasha were okay enough to keep their phones charged and hit end every time they rang, rather than just let them go to voicemail.
That kid from her case, Carl, had stayed at the hospital until Dean and Natasha arrived. Despite Dean being much closer to her location in the Midwest, Natasha arrived at about the same time in the quinjet. The kid called the two of them after he called the ambulance, freaking the absolute fuck out on the phone with Dean and minimally calmer on the phone with Nat while he and Claire rode in the ambulance. He had some wounds of his own where the vampire, Mark, had… well, fed, and roughed him up a bit, but he was fine after a couple of stitches.
Dean pitied the kid. He pitied a lot of people, and kind of hated himself for it. The existence of monsters wasn’t enough, the apocalypse wasn’t enough, the decimation wasn’t enough… the universe just kept throwing shit at people. Why God didn’t just wipe the whole slate clean and throw out the notion of life altogether at this point was beyond him.
A text from Wade finally broke him out of his latest depressive cycle around the sixteenth hour of waiting.
Wade: I KILLED A GHOUL! ALL BY MYSELF! BE PROUD OF MEEEEEE
Dean didn’t reply, but he almost chuckled. His little huff drew the attention of Natasha, who looked over in time to see the next message come in.
Wade: I know your ignoring me for some reason but just check in to let me know youre okay or something
Dean: im good. A friend is hurt. Just waiting.
Wade: gotcha. Don’t go too existential in the meantime
Hm. He was at least glad Wade didn’t give him some cheesy get-well-soon message to relay.
“Who is Wade?” Natasha asks, speaking for the first time in nearly ten hours.
“New hunting buddy,” Dean replied shortly. Natasha hummed quietly.
“New?” she prodded.
“Yeah, met him after leaving the compound,” Dean continued, not really in the mood to get share-y but not willing to deny Natasha either.
“And if you didn’t know him before, how’d he end up a hunting buddy? Did you try to kill the same thing?” Dean finally just gave in.
“Actually no, he stalked me for a bit and noticed I was killing ‘people’,” Dean added air quotes here, “and decided I was a murderer and he threatened to kill me. Said that a friend of his had helped him stop killing cause he used to be like, a vigilante or something, but that he would make an exception for me. I explained about monsters and he believed me, so he started helping out.” Dean wasn’t sure about sharing the part where Wade couldn’t die. Wade didn’t seem to be affiliated with the Avengers and Dean didn’t know if that was intentional.
Natasha hummed again, looking thoughtful. Maybe she already knew about Wade. Dean wouldn’t be surprised. She didn’t seem keen to talk about it anymore, though so they lapsed into silence once again.
Around the seventeen-and-a-half-hour mark, the doctors said that Claire was showing signs of waking up soon. Dean and Natasha moved from their spots in the hall to the two chairs in the room with her.
When Claire’s eyes fluttered open, the angry look on her face dropped for a moment. She looked young, almost childish. Above all, she looked afraid. But then she caught Dean’s eye, and they both smiled. A tear slipped down his face, and Claire apparently was alert enough rolled her eyes. Dean just chuckled dryly and grasped her left hand from his side of the bed. Claire turned to the other side when she felt Natasha grab her other hand.
What happened next both shocked Dean and warmed his craggy old hunter heart. It also made him long for Jody. And Jack.
Claire’s smirk from rolling her eyes at Dean dropped instantly. Her face was blank for a few seconds, then shocked, which prompted Dean looked at Natasha. His jaw almost dropped to see her openly crying. Upon turning back to Claire, he was nearly equally shocked to see Claire crying too. But not out of frustration or anger. Her face was open, she wasn’t trying to hide away her emotions, whatever they were right now. A smile, small and nervous, crept onto her face, and suddenly Natasha was yanking Claire’s shoulders forward gently and wrapping Claire in her arms. Claire squeezed Dean’s hand tightly, and he lifted his other hand to her upper arm and squeezed gently in return. He couldn’t see her face, but he felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted off of him. She was okay.
~
“Tony, this is amazing and all, but… I’m not a superhero,” Claire said, running the material over her hands. Sheer, somewhat matte material only a shade lighter than Claire’s skin.
“And that’s why it’s not a superhero suit. If it was, it would be much more decorative. I call it the ‘Hunter’s Baselayer,’ and I have one here for Dean, too,” Tony explained, getting another piece of fabric from the bag he brought with him and handing it to Dean.
Dean and Claire unrumpled the fabric to find some sort of leotard with long sleeves and legs. It was incredibly lightweight, and had some stretch to it. There were no seams, but rather a lone, light green circle on the chest that was just barely thicker than the rest of the fabric.
“You just bop it right here on the circle, and it loosens to let you in,” Tony said, demonstrating by bopping it and holding open the newly enlarged neck-and-back opening. “Then, bop it again and it’s skin tight, but not restricting,” he continues, bopping it once more so it shrinks into its smaller size and the back closes up at the top. Dean notices that despite the no-nonsense tone of his explanation, Tony’s gaze is far away. “Finally managed to make a sheer fabric that is about 86% stab- and slash-resistant. Anything at an angle of 77 degrees or wider to your skin will be deflected, and 77-85 degrees will be significantly resisted. If someone manages to jab you straight on, the fabric has nanotech designed to stop the bleeding, and the circle on the chest will blink with coded colors for medical advice. Yellow flashing means keep the object inside, black and white flashing means removed the object and the suit will deploy the nanotech to get the wound under control. Hold your hand on the circle for more than three seconds, the compound is alerted to an emergency and given your location. Five seconds, both the compound and local emergency services will be notified.”
“Take a breath, Tony,” Natasha said gently, smiling.
“I tried to simulate teeth biting it, and I do have to say that it was significantly harder to penetrate than a normal shirt, but not impenetrable. Knives are a little more regular, easier to predict, teeth, especially when the force is coming from multiple directions and compressing, is-”
“You heard the spy, Tony,” Dean interrupted, standing up and clapping a hand on Tony’s shoulder. He could feel how much stronger Tony was just from one touch. “These are… amazing. I’m not really a leotard man, but it definitely beats getting stabbed. This is… too much. Thank you.” Dean retracts his hand and puts it on the back of his head, ruffling his hair a bit.
“Yeah, Tony. And the car… thank you,” Claire said, in a rare moment of unconcealed, open gratitude.
“I do what I can. We gotta take care of each other, yeah?” Tony winked and stepped back, watching as Natasha and Claire looked over the fabric some more. Claire announces she’s gonna go try it on, and Natasha smiles after her.
“Tony… thank you,” Natasha says plainly. Dean has a feeling that Tony knows, understands the gratitude she’s getting at that is so much bigger than her words. He feels it too. Knowing that Claire is going to be that much safer when hunting is immeasurable. Again, he finds himself thinking of Jack, wishing he could protect him too. He shoves those thoughts down, though more gently than he would have a few months ago.
“It’s what I do,” he says simply in return. Natasha gets up to follow Claire, and Tony makes a motion to leave, too. Dean nods at Tony before he turns to go, but Dean jumps up after a thought occurs to him.
“Hey, Tony, wait,” he says, stopping Tony at the door. “Have you ever heard of a guy named Wade that Nat might have some beef with?”
Tony looks skeptical. “What kind of beef?”
“Eh, she just saw I was texting my hunting buddy, and she got all silent on me. Seemed like she wasn’t telling me something. I don’t know if it’s real beef or not, but I figured it would be worth asking.”
“Who is this guy? You said hunting buddy? So, you’ve known him for a while.”
“No, I just met him a few months ago. He’s a bit of a loose screw but a dependable guy,” Dean adds.
Tony signs, closes his eyes and his head bows slightly.
“This guy happen to be a mercenary?” So Tony did know.
“Ex-merc. Says a good friend helped him get off the killing train.”
“Jesus. Yeah, we know him. Wade Wilson. He’s one fucked up guy,” Tony admits.
“He’s definitely a bit wacked out. But he’s a great hunting partner. One of the best I’ve ever had, right behind my… well, my brother and, uh, angel friend. From before.”
“From what I know… he’s a decent guy,” Tony says reluctantly, as if not wanting to believe it. “If Nat has a problem with him, it would be because she doesn’t trust him, but to be fair, she doesn’t trust a lot of people. He just has one major advantage over her that most people don’t, so even if he is decent, she’s gonna be wary.”
“What’s the advantage?” Dean asks, though he has already figured it out. He’s almost certain.
“The guy can’t die." Yup. "Some crazy government experiment gone wrong. He was tortured a lot, experimented on and they fucked him up so bad that he’s a bit messed up in the head, more so than before. He was a merc before the experiments, but he stayed one after.”
“Till this friend of his got him to change,” Dean added, a little defensive. He trusted Wade. And he had already learned more about him in a five-minute conversation with Tony than the previous months spent fighting with Wade. He almost felt like he knew too much now, as if he had betrayed Wade’s trust.
“Yeah, well that friend had a tendency to see the absolute best in people,” Tony said, voice almost a whisper. “Not saying he was wrong, just, keep your guard up. Wilson is a wild card.”
“Seems like you know a lot about that friend, huh?” Dean had his suspicions already. He knew that Tony had a kid. Not a biological one, but a kid who was involved in some sort of Avengers nonsense and knew more than most teens. Tony acted weird around Nat and Claire with their bond, was overprotective of everyone but especially Claire, and got misty-eyed at seemingly random points in conversation. Whoever this kid was, it was the same ‘friend’ of Wade’s that they were talking about now, if the quiet voice and gloss in Tony’s eyes was anything to go by. Tony remained silent.
Dean decided to continue, “I don’t know if you want to hear this, but maybe it could help: Wade really cared about that kid.” Tony looked up, as if shocked to hear Dean figure it out. “He absolutely reveres him. Hardly ever talks about him, cause its too hard, but when he does mention him, you can tell. Wade hasn't even said the kid’s name or why he was hanging out with Wade to begin with-” Tony scoffs lightly, but Dean presses on, “But damn, that kid must’ve been something good to get Wade to change his ways like that. And he may be a wild card, but I trust him.”
Tony had a stray tear on his cheek, and he jolted to wipe it away as if he had just noticed.
“Yeah, well, that’s Peter for ya. That’s his name. Peter.” Tony is whispering, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
“Wish I could have known him,” Dean says, hoping that he isn’t overstepping but not wanting to be insensitive either.
“Yeah. He would have loved you two, as crazy as you both are.” Tony looked like he was itching to leave, edging toward the door again, so Dean stepped back to give him space.
“See you around, Tony.”
“Don’t be a stranger, Dean.” Tony walked away, and Dean felt a melancholy aura settle over him. When Claire and Nat called to him from down the hall, the feeling was already tucked away in the back of his mind.