sinkholes
Brett’s usual problems paled in comparison to the case sitting on his desk in front of him. He didn’t love murder cases and he especially didn’t love the ones involving kids.
Naturally there was a lot of weirdness circulating around this particular family of once-living people. A number of neighbors reported loud disputes and one or two had even called the police to file noise complaints. One time, someone had called about suspected domestic violence, but when the officers had arrived to the scene, nothing seemed out of order.
Brett wanted to know what they were hiding. Brewer had his money on a family fortune left in a Nana’s will. Maynard had been watching too much Netflix again and was obsessed with the occult. Ellen saw her occult and raised her simply a cult.
Brett wasn’t so sure it was any of that. He didn’t want to jump to any one conclusion before he had more shit sitting on his desk.
What he did know, however, was that the Decland family had both money and financial problems. They had two kids, one boy, aged 14, one girl, aged 10 and they had a family dog. A white little monster which looked like one of those dogs on the fancy dog food cans and which had escaped the massacre of his owners by hiding in one of the kid’s rooms.
The boy had just started at Midtown Science and Tech, and Brett just happened to have some connections there.
“You guys can’t be showing up in front of my school,” Peter lectured him and Maynard. Brett wondered if his aunt ever just looked at the kid’s backpack and sighed. The thing was falling to bits, although lovingly stitched back together with highschool Home Ec skills.
“Nothing Spiderman related,” Maynard soothed.
Peter puffed up in even greater irritation.
If there was no Spiderman, he wasn’t interested. Brett pulled the picture of his schoolmate out of his binder and offered it to the kid.
“You know him?” he asked. Peter glared at him and then snatched the picture to look at it closer. His face gave nothing away.
“He dead?” he finally asked.
Brett could neither confirm or deny at this stage in the investigation. Peter rolled his eyes.
“He’s dead,” he said, handing the picture back. “I don’t recognize him. We don’t really mix with the freshmen.”
Made sense. Alright, onto step two.
BM: Fogs you heard of any folks called Decland?
FN: the ones in the news? That’s a fucking tragedy man
BM: yeah those ones
BM: you or DD heard much of them?
FN: what
FN: oh
FN: this is detective Mahoney talking
BM: who else would it be??
FN: I dunno, santa? anyways I just experienced something incredible and now have an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G idea which your nephew will die for
BM: foggy
FN: first you gotta get one of them stuffed pikachus and then we’ll get it a hat and one of them little heart recorder things they have at Build A Bear.
BM: foggy
FN: Wade can do a fucking spot on pikachu impression, man. Like. For real. He fucked with Matt for like an hour last night. So we’ll get him to say a bunch of weird shit and then you and pikachu can be detective besties and Amos will DIE I promise you
BM: Foggy focus. Dead people. Ask DD for me?
FN: YOU ARE NO FUN ANYMORE
BM: ffs okay I will consider the pikachu
FN: THINK OF IT BRETT Y’ALL COULD PLAY POKEMON GO WITH THE PIKACHU
FN: youre thinking about it aren’t you?
FN: pretty good right?
FN: right???
BM: foggy I will pay you any amount of money to shut the fuck up about pikachu right now
FN: fuck
BM: what
FN: sorry gotta go the fucking FUN POLICE are here
“I thought you guys were close,” Maynard remarked, watching Brett slam his forehead against his steering wheel.
He sat up and re-dug his phone out of his pocket.
FN: its fucking low to text my mom brett
BM: four people have died franklin
FN: Matt’s busy pretending he’s not sleeping at his desk. KP says papa decland tried to hire her the other day.
BM: thank you
FN: text my mom back and tell her I’m being fucking cooperative
BM: will do. Thank you. will also consider the pikachu
FN: if we do the pikachu I will absolve all your sins for this month
Like a damn dog with a bone, this guy was.
Karen Page was none too pleased for Brett and Company to be all up in her business. They entered the office and Karen immediately started shoving shit out of view. He tried to tell her that they weren’t interested in any of her other cases, but she’d already yanked a black table-cloth with festive purple sparkles dancing through it out of a drawer and thrown it over her whole desk.
It had the effect of making it appear as though a business casual séance was about to take place in there.
“Karen,” he said slowly.
“I don’t know shit,” she said.
“This is about the Declands,” he sighed.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Can we talk, you know, without the veil?”
There was a long pause as Karen considered it.
“No.”
What exactly had he expected?
Karen owned up to the fact that Levi Decland had in fact come by the week previous trying to acquire her services. He thought that someone was stalking himself and his family. Karen didn’t like the look of him or the story he was telling and demanded proof.
She gave the offices a few photocopied emails Decland claimed to have received from the family’s stalker. She also sent Brett a few of the audio files the guy had recorded when this alleged stalker had called up to their apartment.
Brett didn’t really blame her for turning him away. The audio files sounded pretty weird. Fairly obscure.
“Sounds like he was fucking interrogating his delivery guy,” Karen said offhandedly.
Yeah, it kind of did.
“So you refused the case?” he asked her. “Did he leave or was he persistent about it?”
Karen sniffed and swept her hair over her shoulder.
“He was a real dick about it,” she said, “Tried to fucking yell at me like this was my problem. I told him to get out of my office if he couldn’t control himself and he didn’t want to go so I had Matt escort him.”
Matt’s version of escorting involved dragging a body through their waiting room and throwing it out into the hall. He was a one-man security team for the office and no one questioned it. The whole thing was apparently great entertainment to all those chilling in the waiting room. Hell’s Kitchen inhabitants thrived on drama.
“You know where he went after that?” Maynard asked. Karen shrugged.
“I think Matt gave him a couple of cards,” she said. What she meant was that Matt threw the guy out and then chucked a handful of fliers after him as a gesture of goodwill before slamming the door.
They then went to poke at Matt who had already been caught sleeping at his desk once that day and, from the looks of it, hadn’t learned his lesson. Foggy came in and crouched down low next to his desk, then clapped his hands together next to his ear as hard as he could. The poor sap fell right out of his chair.
“You’re such a dick,” he slurred, self-consciously wiping at his mouth. A couple of kids in the waiting area giggled before re-hiding behind the bookshelf.
“Detective Asshole wants to know where you referred Italian Cologne last week,” Foggy said.
Matt seemed to know exactly who he was talking about. As in the cologne guy, not Detective Asshole. Although he probably knew who that referred to, too.
“Gave him the usual cards,” Matt said.
The usual cards consisted of two PIs, a guy who operated the floor below them and who thought Private Investigating mandated an office straight out of the fifties, and Jessica Jones’s card, the design of which had changed since Brett had last seen one. It was purple now. Someone must have owed her a favor.
“That guy? Nah, he was fakin’,” Jessica said with her usual flat affect from her doorway. She refused to let them into the room, so they had to chat in the hallway of her complex.
“How do you know?” Brett asked.
“You seen his shit? Staged as hell. Pretty sure he wrote those emails. Fucking tore the Amazon driver a new one for no damn reason. Guy was paranoid. Course, that’s what happens when you start planning a murder,” Jessica said.
Now those were some very brazen accusations, Miss Jones.
“Hey, you don’t wanna believe me, that’s your prerogative,” Jessica said.
“You got any other type of proof?” Maynard asked.
Jones thought about it. Then seemed to decide what the hell.
“Guy put me on edge. Didn’t like him. Kind of wanted to figure out who he had it out for, so started asking around. Rumor had it he tried to hire a hitman.”
Oh, now that was new. Go on.
“Yeah, so I asked the usual players in that field, if you know what I mean. They ain’t heard anything, so I talked to Deadpool to see if the guy had crossed through any of his wires. You know how many people just go straight to Deadpool, man? It’s crazy. He’s expensive as hell. Fuckin’ amateurs, I’m telling you.”
That was horrifying. Please continue.
“Deadpool said he had heard of this guy, but obviously, he’s out of this guy’s price range. Said the guy kept making a big fuss over the fact that he wanted Wilson for ‘protection’—you know, wink wink, nudge nudge.”
Highly suspicious.
“Yeah that’s what I’m saying. Wilson normally doesn’t give a shit about people’s motivations, but beyond there not being enough cash to be worth the effort, he said the job involved kids and he doesn’t fuck with anything involving kids if he can help it.”
Wade’s morality was so chaotic, it was like trying to follow the damn stock market sometimes.
“You know who he went to next—Decland, that is?” Brett asked. Jones pursed her lips and then stretched them into a sardonic grin.
“Yeah, but you ain’t gonna like it,” she smirked.
Frank Castle was doing his best impression of a turtle and laying low and camouflaged somewhere in the depths of the city. Finding him when he didn’t want to be found was like trying to find a hay-colored needle in a pile of alfalfa.
“Why the fuck would Decland try to hire Castle? Who does that?” Maynard demanded in the passenger’s seat. “Castle and Wilson—that’s top brass, big money. Decland couldn’t have had that kind of cash.”
Brett agreed, although he was now wondering if Decland’s civil servant position had given him some insight into the way politicians played ball in this city. He might have seen something he shouldn’t have in his boss’s office.
“You think he hired the hit?” Maynard asked.
On his own family? Seemed strange as hell.
“Yeah, that’s how I feel, too.”
Maynard didn’t know as much about vigilante identities as Brett did and so, with her at his side, he needed to be more careful of who he talked to and how. He couldn’t very well just walk back over to Nelson, Murdock & Page and ask Karen to give Castle a ring. And he couldn’t go to ask Matt to go chase the guy out of hiding either.
It made things complicated.
He had to go through Foggy, who was less sold on Castle than his compadres. Foggy rarely held a grudge, but when he did, boy, you better believe he was dying with it.
Frank Castle had yet to clear his name in Foggy’s black books.
Brett decided to circumvent all that by going to hunt down Deadpool first. This was always a fucking challenge, given that the best way to Wade was via Peter and Peter wasn’t too interested in being helpful at the moment; Brett may have burned his chance back there at the school.
He didn’t have many options here though, and so had to try again anyways. Who knew? Maybe Pete and his occasional teenage goldfish memory had forgotten his ire by then.
Peter didn’t answer any texts and so Brett and Maynard had to go hunting for Spiderman, a task which required a keen eye, some good timing, and a bribe.
Peter had grown tired of the lollipops around the beginning of the month. Teenagers were exhausting. Keeping up with their interests was a full-time job of its own. Brett really felt for brand advertisers these days. On the upside, Pete was fairly reliably hungry for something at all times. It was mostly just a matter of figuring out what.
It was getting warm lately so Brett thought that a gift card to Baskin Robbins would probably go over well. Maynard thought otherwise and insisted that they get the kid a card to a bubble tea place instead. Bubble tea was popular among the youth, she claimed.
Brett yielded to her knowledge.
They eventually found Pete, but not at any of his usual perches. No, instead, they found him at war with Hawkeye the Younger behind the McDonald’s on Madison.
They were a fucking mess, the two of them. Brett could not understand this antagonism. As far as he was concerned, they were the exact same person in slightly different circumstances and with slightly different team colors.
Hawkeye the Younger and Spidey did not see it that way, of course. The two of them were engaged in full-voice argument, drawing the occasional attention from college students wandering past, when Brett and Maynard arrived on the scene.
Hawkeye the Younger was making a particularly sharp point about Peter’s encyclopedic knowledge of vintage sci-fi films being a useless sinkhole of time which might be more productively spent in honing fighting skills. Peter’s retort to this involved some strong language focused around Kate’s abysmal lack of people-skills and alleged self-centered heroism.
“Well, sorry I’d rather save people than make them feel special,” Kate spat.
“People deserve to feel special,” Peter hurled back at her.
“No, you just want to feel special.”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Dear god, these two were not old enough to be having this conversation. They should have been fighting over sneakers or something.
Brett cleared his throat and got the full-force of irritation from both of them.
“Wade’s busy,” Peter insisted.
“Yeah, being a fucking murderer,” Kate added. Peter rounded on her with fury visible even through his mask.
“You don’t know what you’re even talking about ,” he said.
“No, you’re just blind to reality.”
“Wade doesn’t murder people all the time, Katherine.”
“No, you’re right. He’s got a good 30-70 split between Murder and Terrorism.”
Okay, did he need to like, separate them or?
“He’s not a terrorist, don’t talk shit about what you don’t know.”
“Prove to me he’s not a terrorist, go on, I’d like to see you try.”
Maynard gave Brett a strong look of confliction. Yeah, he wasn’t quite sure what to do here either.
“Prove to me that Hawkeye’s not a public menace and I’ll prove your dumbass terrorism shit.”
“Clint doesn’t hurt people.”
“He’s literally a professional spy.”
“Yeah, but the worst spy. And anyways, he doesn’t do that anymore.”
“What, so you’re training to be an even worse spy than him then?”
Hawkeye the younger went quiet and still. Peter stood his ground against the wall next to the fire-escape. Kate sneered at him.
“No, go on,” she said, “Keep on talking shit. I dare you.”
“I ain’t scared of you, Katey-Kate.”
“You sure? ‘Cause I’m noticing a lack of shit-talking, right now.”
Alright, that was enough. These two were going in circles.
“Peter, Kate. Four people have been murdered. I need to talk to either Wilson or Castle. Castle as the end goal here. How do I talk to Castle?” Brett interrupted in a firm voice. He finally had both kids’ attention. Peter glanced at Kate and then jutted his chin out.
“I’ll find him for you,” he said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Kate snapped, “I’ll do it. This guy couldn’t track a guy leaving a trail of blood.”
“What the fuck did you just say?”
Alright, well. It was a step forward.
Peter and Kate could not be outdone, either of them, and so both took the job. But they had very different methods of tracking. Peter’s way of tracking involved a lot of people skills. He had contacts and perches throughout the city which he used to pull information and then observe. Then pull more info and observe.
It was a little like his webslinging, his pace.
Kate, on the other hand, was just fucking ruthless. She crashed through the city, banging into poor humans, threatening them where it hurt, whether it hurt somewhere soft or hard, and then rattled forward to the next mark like an angry pinball.
It made Brett fear for what Hawkeye must have been like in his prime.
Frequently (and hilariously for Brett and Maynard) the two collided on marks and the mark was forced to try to answer questions from two radically different approaches, with Spidey appealing to their better nature and Kate flat out dangling the consequences of not giving up info in front of their faces. In those moments, Brett and Maynard found themselves stepping in and calming the poor person, ensuring them that these two were working with the police in this moment and that no harm would actually come to their families or genitals. This worked to smooth the interaction over and put the person at ease to provide the clue for the next mark. And then off the kids went, leaving Brett and Maynard to soothe the informant and send them off home safely.
This worked until they started to get into darker territory, where the police were not welcome. Where Peter and Kate were among their people.
It was crazy how personalities changed according to context. Peter’s whole demeanor switched over from Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman to up and coming protégé of Deadpool and Daredevil, your worst fucking nightmares. Kate went from slightly grumpy Teen Hawkeye to huntress.
Their marks got older and sharper and much less forthcoming with info. Peter slammed one guy into a brick wall and told him in a dead even voice, “Talk.” Kate stared at a man with an arrow twirling between her fingers. Her dark eyes even darker under the shadow of her brow.
They were dangerous fucking kids under all that charm and teen drama. The reminder was profoundly uncomfortable.
Peter and Kate found Castle in double, maybe triple the amount of time it would have taken their mentors to locate him, but by god, they managed it and both were so proud of themselves. They hit the foot of the building he’d built his latest safehouse in and turned back to Brett and Maynard with twin grins and puffed out chests.
L’il baby vigilantes, tracking down serial killers all on their own.
Well.
Mostly on their own. They refused to acknowledge that the other had helped them in any way whatsoever.
Brett and Maynard pounded on Castle’s door and he was strongly displeased to see them. But perhaps, and surprisingly, even more displeased to see the damn kids.
“Scram,” he told them.
They did not.
Castle snarled at them.
Snarling, however, was a mode of affection, these two had learned from their elders. Then Peter noticed Castle’s dog and that made Kate notice Castle’s dog and somehow all was forgiven and forgotten between them in an instant.
“Please, Please, please,” they begged Castle with huge eyes. He looked to God for guidance and support.
“Please, please, please, Mr. Castle? We’ll leave right after. We promise. He just—he needs to know he’s a good boy.”
Castle tried to shoo them away again but made the mistake of moving about a foot too far out of the doorway. The kids wriggled past him and set upon the dog like they were, all three, touch-starved. Castle blinked at the lack of children before him and then spun around with clawed hands. His dog gave him a dumbass pit-bull grin in the center of the little room behind the door and wiggled his body from side to side as the kids lavished attention on him.
Brett glanced at Castle and saw that he’d given up his clawed fingers to pinch at the bridge of his nose.
“You are the worst fucking dog, Max,” he murmured to himself. “The worst fucking dog.”
Castle reluctantly allowed Brett and Maynard into his safehouse, provided they gave him their phones (inspected for bugs and recording devices and then dropped into a cardboard box by the foot of the door) and provided that they did not touch or ask questions about any of his shit. It was highly suspicious shit, besides the cot and other furniture that is. Castle’s computer was far too tricked out for it to be any kind of normal PC. He had stacks of notebooks with sticky notes in them. A box of meticulously organized manila folders with some office supplies inside it.
Frank Castle, if he chose not to be a mass murdering psychopath and endured court-sanctioned, mandatory trauma therapy, would probably have been the best office manager in the state of New York. No wonder he and Karen were so into each other. He probably loved to seduce her by organizing her unruly evidence collection. She probably returned the favor with his hit list notebooks.
Brett couldn’t decide if this was kinky or just plain weird. Either way, it became clear, watching Castle scold the dog while he stretched out into Peter’s lap to ensure maximum coverage in Kate’s belly-rubbing efforts, that for all his menacing, Castle had a soft spot for the kids.
He didn’t try to scare them out again and didn’t impose any rules on them like he had on Brett and Maynard.
Brett tried to break the ice by complimenting the state of the dog. Castle turned to him, supremely unimpressed, and said, “Sometimes I think he’s too stupid to live, but then he just keeps on doing it anyways.”
Right. Okay. Maybe let’s just focus on business.
“I’ve got a case involving multiple homicides right now. Involves a family called Decland,” he started.
“Decland? Oh, that fucker. Nah, not any of my marks,” Castle said.
“So you had nothing to do with them?” Maynard clarified. The dog gave someone behind them a kiss and this was followed by a sound of disgust.
“Ehn, wouldn’t say that,” Castle said, “Guy started asking half the damn underground where the fuck I was. Wilson showed up, warned me he was full of shit, but the fucker just would not shut his damn trap and I’ve got to keep a low profile at the minute. Damn near shot him myself, but Wilson was of the opinion that that was not overly wise, if you know what I’m saying.”
Huh. So Wade had been suspicious of Decland’s story like Jones then.
“Yeah, first thing Wilson comes here saying is the guy’s money’s fuckin’ weird; he don’t trust it. Also mentioned there were kids involved. I ain’t do kids.”
No one did kids, it would seem. That was a relief.
Their kids in the corner had both stretched out to imitate Max. He’d gotten excited about that and had scrambled up to sniff at their ears and walk all over them. The giggling was a little distracting and felt out of place given the state of the place.
“When you say the job involved kids, do you mean that Decland was asking for someone to kill his kids?” Maynard pressed.
Castle gave her an eyebrow.
“Well, I mean, as far as he said, the job was a terror gig.”
“Which Decland was asking for protection against?” Brett asked.
Castle’s eyebrow climbed a bit.
“Yeah. Protection,” he said flatly.
Yeah.
No. Not protection.
“Fuck,” Maynard swore softly so as not to corrupt the youth. Castle glanced from her to the kids and dog.
“They heard worse than that, detective,” he said. “Why’re y’all up in arms about this shit?”
Well.
“Two minors, shot dead at the scene. Boy, 14, girl, 10,” Brett said.
Castle’s stony face stayed smooth as a rock.
“Well, I guess you’d like the bastard who did it, then?” he said.
Brett hope to god that it wasn’t him.
“That’s right.”
Castle nodded and then sighed.
“I can’t give you that for sure,” he said, “But I imagine I might be able to get you a start. Max,” he snapped. The dog looked right at him and started wagging his tail-less butt. “Hold the fort, I’m going huntin.’”
See the thing about having Castle on your side was that it was, above anything and everything else, confusing. Comforting, because he was far less inclined to maim, shoot, or murder anyone on his side of things, but terrifying because his mere presence just set your teeth on edge. He said he could find Decland that night, which didn’t make sense because they already knew where Decland was. His cold and cooling corpse was in the morgue.
Castle scoffed at this and locked the door to his safehouse. He turned around to face Brett and Maynard, thankfully without the Punisher shirt and gear. He’d just grabbed a backpack and some street clothes.
Brett realized abruptly that he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at the other two. Now sated with puppy-time, they weren’t snipping at each other, too busy sharing pictures and selfies taken with Maxwell the Stupid.
“Y’all are done, go home,” Castle told them. Peter and Kate paused in their tittering to stare at him owlishly over their phones.
“I don’t wanna,” Peter said. Kate bobbed her head in agreement.
“Don’t care. Get.”
Peter dropped his gaze, but Kate elbowed him in the ribs and stuck up her chin. Peter watched her do that, looked at Castle, and then half-heartedly followed suit.
Castle stared him down in full acknowledgement that he was the weakest link in this vigilante trio. He dropped his eyes again and nudged Kate again.
“Maybe we should go,” he whispered.
“No,” Kate snapped. “It’s our job now, too. We can’t just leave it after all that work. Gotta see it through, Clint said so. For better or worse.”
Barton, your next job is to teach this kid to pick her fucking battles.
Brett glanced over at Castle and saw exactly what he thought of Barton on his face.
“This is your last chance,” he said. Peter got a little frightened and pulled at Kate’s elbow gently. She ripped it away.
“We’re coming,” she declared and Peter panicked, having not realized that they were now a team unit.
“We’re not coming,” he said over her, pulling harder. Kate whirled around and took his head with her and for a brief moment, the adults got to witness back of the debate and following scolding. When Kate turned them back around, she said “Coming,” and Peter looked miserable.
“I’m sorry” he mouthed to Castle.
Castle sighed and shook his head.
“Alright, whatever. But keep out of the way.”
Where the fuck was Brett’s notebook? The tolerance for the young’uns in this community was off the fucking charts.
Castle took them to a tunnel which led straight to hell. At the mouth of it, he forced Brett and Maynard to strip off their uniforms and hop into street clothes. He then leveled an expectant look at the little ones who scrambled off to do the same. Brett didn’t know where they found street clothes, but they came back looking exactly as youthful as they were. Castle slapped a palm over his face in exasperation and Brett and Maynard got to witness a quick-and-dirty vigilante lesson about making yourself not look fucking twelve.
Peter’s blue sweatshirt was rolled up to the mid-arm and his collar tucked in so that it laid flat and didn’t show over the top of the sweater’s. Castle took off his own watch and strapped it on the kid. Kate’s hair was then let all the way down and Castle produced a well-worn army jacket from his backpack which became Kate’s overcoat. Its sleeves were adjusted like Peter’s. Castle fucked up Peter’s hair and then stood back to give the two a once-over.
It wasn’t much, but they did now look more along the lines of 18 and 19 than 16 and 17.
Castle threw his hand at it and declared it good enough for now.
“You stick close,” he said firmly to both of them.
Brett got the feeling that the whole duckling thing was something they were both used to because they nodded enthusiastically, now all excited to be under the guidance of The Punisher himself. Castle just told Brett and Maynard to stop looking like narks.
Then into hell they descended.
Hell was a whole part of the city that seemed to appear at night and vanish in the morning. Kind of like a night market. It was dark, somehow wet, and paved with trash-filled streets full of people walking around with barely concealed weapons under their clothes. People from all sorts of backgrounds. Some seemed to dress alike, others stood out like sore thumbs in neon colors or fantastic outfits, looking for all intents and purposes like they were going to a rave. Folks walked by with tatts with more than personal meanings stamped all over their bodies.
Castle wove through these people casually, with the kids at his heel. Brett and Maynard had to swallow down the cop instincts to keep up.
Castle seemed to have a very specific place in mind for getting things moving. He headed north up the street. They passed a line of different bars and pubs, raucous with the night crowd. Even more rowdy than your typical NYC place, it would seem. But that might have just been Brett’s imagination.
Castle finally slowed his relentless pace and took a slight left in through the heavy door of a place with a plaque on the side declaring it once a school for girls.
Every single human being in this bar could have and should have been arrested. Every one of them. Brett recognized some of them from Wanted posters. To his surprise, Wade Wilson was at the bar. And even more to his surprise, Castle looked his way like he was the one he’d been searching for.
Wade was arguing with the guy behind the counter and his employee. He wasn’t wearing his mask and seemed perfectly at ease in the place despite that.
Peter recognized him immediately. Faster than Brett did.
Castle flinched and turned to stop the inevitable, but Peter had already lurched past him and latched onto Wade from the side. Everyone in the conversation over there panicked and then Wade whipped around and gave Castle the most furious look Brett had ever seen in his life. It promised death. Painful beyond imagination. Wade wrapped a protective arm around Peter and stood up from the bar without a word. The guys behind it bared their teeth at each other.
Wade approached Castle with Peter tucked securely under his arm.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed. “Bringing fucking narks, bringing—” he noticed Kate. She beamed and waved. Wade looked back at Castle.
“They wouldn’t fuck off, man, lay off. You’re the one teachin’ him to get attached,” Castle growled right back, unafraid of Deadpool’s wrath. Peter peeked up at Wade, confused at his face and also what appeared to be the increasing pressure Wade was inflicting on his shoulder.
Guy was pissed.
“Say that shit to my face, Francis, go on, do it,” he said, just barely audible over the din of patrons around them. Castle lifted his chin.
“The fuck did Decland go?” he demanded.
“The fuck you doing hanging ‘round the kids?” Wade shot back. He turned his gaze onto Kate. “Come here, honey,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
Peter pulled at him.
“Wade, no. We gotta see it through,” he insisted. Kate nodded hard and somehow, Wade understood what they were on about.
“Y’all can see shit through when you ain’t get carded anymore,” he said. “Outside. All of you.”
The guy at the bar gave Wade a questioning jerk of his chin on the way out, and he gave a responding jerk of his head, promising that he’d handle it.
Peter and Kate were vocal about their displeasure with Wade’s rules when they were outside at the back of the bar. They had veered soundly into whining territory and both wrapped themselves around Wade’s middle. They squeezed while he talked to Castle and Brett and Maynard like none of that was happening.
“Decland?” he said, “The one with the bad money?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah, he ain’t dead. I literally—I caught his ass here the other night lookin’ like a dick. Like you two,” he shot down at the kids. They insisted that they only looked like dicks because Castle made them. Wade ignored this.
“That’s what I thought,” Castle said. “His kids are dead.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know.”
“What kind of bastard would buy a hit on his own fuckin’ kids, man?”
“’pparently his kind. You know where he went? These guys are trying to bring him in.”
Wade frowned and then stood up straight like he’d just realized something.
“Dunno where he went, but guarantee you I can draw ‘im out,” he said. He gave Brett and Maynard a suspicious squint.
“Provided some people ain’t go ‘round talking about shit they ain’t seen.”
“If he’s out there, it doesn’t matter how he turns himself in, it just matters that he does,” Brett said. “Preferably in one piece.”
Wade evaluated him for his honesty and then made prolonged eye contact with Castle.
“Why the fuck would you kill your fuckin’ kids, man?” he said, and then started walking. The kids cheered as this apparently translated to begrudging acceptance of their presence.
In some ways, walking around the underground as a cop was stupendously delightful. You could actually see how exchanges for illicit goods and services took place. You recognized faces of folks known for trafficking rings, gang wars, armed robberies. Brett’s heart fluttered in his chest with each cluster of people they passed by in the alleys and streets they walked through.
It wasn’t a happy flutter, but more like a fascinated one. The kind you felt as a tourist, watching someone do an indigenous performance or a craft; just wanting to know more.
The other feeling he was having right then was a strong, tooth-souring, throat-clogging anxiety. Maynard kept clutching at his wrist. He didn’t blame her. Some guy walking against the current of bodies shoulder-checked Castle on purpose and Castle stopped in the middle of the street and stared after him. The man didn’t even look behind him before gunning it. People on both sides of the street watched this and folks starting giving Castle a wider berth. Castle returned to walking as though none of it had happened.
Wade, on the other hand, leading the troop, kept alternating between scolding the kids and getting distracted by people trying to talk to him on the pavements. Everyone knew Wade Wilson. Everyone seemed to want to either fuck Wade Wilson or get him to do a job with or for them.
A couple folks even looked down at Peter and one asked Wade if he was his kid in a syrupy sweet way which Brett could see was a threat. Wade told him to try his luck and see what happens.
“Plenty of people in the world who can’t count to twenty, sugar tits,” he told the guy. He dragged Peter with him, even closer after that. Brett was half-surprised he didn’t just scoop him up and toss him over his shoulder like a toddler. He himself wished he could do that with both him and Kate.
Kate appeared to have stricter boundaries on her mobility than Peter. Brett got the impression that she wasn’t allowed to go underground, period. Barton must have acknowledged and ruined every one of her earlier attempts to get through that archway, given how stoked she was to be there. Castle kept throwing out a hand and pulling her away from shit, telling her not to stare, for fuck’s sake.
They were, according to Wade, really close to his contact, when they were stopped by someone crashing into Kate and attempting to kidnap her.
Good start. Brett almost shot the guy right there until he realized that that particular black hoodie and ripped pants ensemble belonged to none other than their favorite clinically depressed Archer, himself.
“What the fuck?” Barton snarled with Kate smashed against his chest. He used both hands to muffle her protests. “What the fuck? What the fuck?"
Then he saw Brett. He mugged at Wade hard.
“What. The. FUCK.”
“Blame this guy,” Wade said, waving at hand at Castle. Castle shrugged.
“They gotta learn somehow, man,” he said.
“Are you fucking—Katherine, you need to shut up right the fuck now, I am not playing. Do you understand?” It was the most serious and articulate Brett had ever heard Barton speak. Kate went still and quiet immediately in his grip. She dropped her eyes. Barton didn’t acknowledge any of this, he was too busy trying to smash Castle’s head open with just his eyes. “She is seventeen goddamn years old, Frank. They don’t gotta learn shit until they can be guaranteed not to fucking die from it.”
“Tell me about it,” Wade encouraged. Peter seemed to have realized the full extent of the trouble he and Kate were in by then; he had wrapped a few fingers around Wade’s un-suited wrist in apology. Wade didn’t look at him like Barton refused to look at Kate.
That shit was fascinating, if Brett was honest with himself. He wondered if that was some kind of way of teaching. If this was how vigilantes and people in the underground dealt with young people. Do not let them out of your sight. Or grip. Do not acknowledge them, do not let them speak. Do not let them stare.
It was a way of moving through the world with maximum efficiency and active blindness. A way of learning to look at only what was directly relevant to you.
“Up,” Barton hissed. “Now.”
“Can’t,” Wade said. “You heard of that quad-homicide up town?”
Barton frowned and finally looked back at Brett and Maynard.
“Oh for the love of—who are you going to—“
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Everyone in their corner of the street jumped. Everyone including the vigilantes, Brett noted, which was validating. Brett didn’t recognize this woman in her leather jacket for an embarrassing full minute of her snarling at Barton. Then it hit him like a load of bricks.
The Black Widow.
She was pissed. Then she looked at Peter and went through a full cycle of emotions, Brett was sure, even though not one of them crossed her terrifyingly smooth, terrifyingly flawless face.
“Tony is going to murder us,” she hissed at Barton. “With fire. Get them out of here.”
“I’m trying, Nat. But Wilson’s got—”
“I don’t give a shit what Wilson’s got. We’ve got loyalties to maintain—”
“And I am working on fucking doing that—”
“Out. Now.”
“Nat, you need to chill out, alright?”
Nat was not freaking out in any capacity which was measurable by human means, as far as Brett could tell. But Barton proved himself to have a third eye or sixth sense or some shit because she brought her eyebrows down and set her jaw at him.
“I’m working on it,” Barton repeated. He turned back to Wade. “Where’s your man?”
“Gal. If I know her, about a block or so down.”
“How long is this gonna take?”
“Depends on how many drinks I need to buy her, you headed up?”
“Wasn’t, but am now. Here, I’ll take him. C’mere, Pete.”
“Y’all are making a fuss over shit that there ain’t no damn reason to fuss over. It’s drawing attention,” Castle interrupted. “The kids are fine. Anyone touches ‘em, I’ll handle it. More important right now is to finish the objective. Kids’ll be up top in no time and y’all can scream at ‘em to your heart’s content then.”
There was a pregnant pause while these many violent parties all communicated with their eyes. Maybe that was why Matt stayed above ground more than the others. It was an accessibility thing.
“Fine,” Barton finally said. Kate did not cheer; she didn’t lift her eyes from the ground either. “But Castle, so help me god. If even one person touches her—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Go undermine Denmark’s election or whatever the hell it is you two are doing.”
Ah, yes. Right. How could Brett forget that, for all his casual nonchalance, Barton was literally a trained counterintelligence operative.
“Wilson,” The Black Widow said without inflection.
“I’ll take him home after,” he said.
The Widow then addressed Peter.
“Next year,” she promised, “We can practice coming here. Once you’re eighteen, you can do whatever suits you. Is this fair?”
He nodded silently. The Window ruffled his hair. Then stood up and held a hand out to Barton.
“Come. We have a princess to ruin,” she said.
“Kate, be bad, don’t look at anyone, don’t take anything anyone gives you,” Barton stipulated.
“You two are disgustingly attractive,” Wade noted, waving them both off with his hands. The Widow gave him a flirty smile and then whipped around with Barton on her heels. He followed dutifully, but kept glancing back furtively towards Kate.
The gal Wade led them to was his buddy and frequent teammate Domino. Peter saw her and lit right up again like he had when spotting Wade in the bar. She noticed him, then beamed and held her arms out for a hug.
“Look who’s finally made it downstairs,” she said warmly, rocking herself and Peter back and forth.
“He’s in trouble, don’t encourage him,” Wade grumbled. “Need a favor.”
“Why trouble?” Domino asked. She was very hard not to look at. Just an absolutely stunning woman. Big liquid amber eyes and a gorgeous smile and a bit of Vitiligo around one of her eyes. She was all wrapped up in black leather and radiating heat and welcome. Brett’s mom’s voice in his ear hissed that she was not the type of girl he should even dream about bringing home.
“Mr. Castle brought us because we bothered him,” Peter told her. “Do you know a guy named Decland?”
Domino smiled at him and then smiled at Wade, patient for more information. While Wade explained, Maynard whacked Brett’s arm and gave him a meaningful grimace. He set his jaw and averted his eyes.
It was so hard, though.
Domino agreed to draw Decland out and told Wade that he owed her precisely one thing. She then looked at Castle for a long time. Castle, for his part, got a little awkward and started looking around to see if she was really staring directly at him.
“He’s yours,” Wade said flippantly. She wriggled in delight. Frank grimaced. She smiled harder.
“You’re so pretty,” she told him.
Castle appeared to regret everything that led him to that moment.
“I’m--” he started.
“Yours,” Wade said over him. “Four hours. Dinner and a show this Friday; romance her, Francis. She likes gin.”
“I love gin,” she agreed.
Brett never thought he’d be jealous of Frank fucking Castle, but there they were, he guessed.
Wade chased more than led them all back up to the surface. He promised that Decland would be delivered that following morning at the station. He warned Brett and Maynard to never show their faces around the underground ever again, so help him God.
Then he grabbed Peter and whistled so hard and so loud that Brett thought his eardrums had popped for a second. Within moments they were all joined by the Devil.
He dropped down specifically to start beating the shit out of Castle and once Wade removed him from that situation, he moved on to checking Peter all over for anything untoward. Every couple of seconds, he snarled at Castle.
Peter allowed this.
“He’s fine, Red. Ease off,” Castle groaned.
“He’s a child, Frank. I expected more from you.” Damn, look at Matt out here, shaming the fucking Punisher. Matt’s head twitched and as quickly as he’d grabbed Peter, he snatched Kate over to inspect as well. She giggled while he did this, evidently less used to the procedure than Peter was.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Clint’s gonna tear me a new one later, but I’m okay.”
Matt huffed, satisfied with this.
“You two are lucky,” he said, “One wrong turn down there and you’d have run into the Hellhounds.”
Both Kate and Peter shut the fuck up and stared at him. Castle smacked his forehead into his palm.
“Hellhounds?” Peter asked. “A gang?”
“No, kiddo. Think Max, but bigger.”
“Max is nice,” Peter pointed out.
“Yeah, that’s because Max is attended daily by someone who could have morals if he so fucking desired.”
So the kids were good and traumatized now, operating under the impression that they’d just missed a man down there who sold huge, mutated dogs trained specifically to take down anyone who wasn’t their owner. Matt showed them a hideous scar in his side, which was most likely from some other traumatic mutilation of his body, but which did indeed look like a mean, healed-over bite.
Neither Wade nor Castle did anything to hinder Matt’s ghost-story-telling. They left the kids to panic quietly at first in the beginning and then loudly by the end.
They couldn’t decide if they needed to go back and save these poor puppies from their horrible vendor or to stay clear of the place just in case they weren’t so lucky to miss the stall the next time.
Once the horror was good and stuck inside their sweet little noggins, Matt took Kate and Wade took Peter and homeward bound they went. Castle then told Brett and Maynard that they fucking owed him one, because now he was going to have to go entertain this lady who looked like she wanted to eat him alive.
But, he said. They probably had their man.
“Guy hated his wife,” he explained before they split off. It seemed like a trip through the underground without getting themselves caught or murdered was enough for him to feel more comfortable giving them the full story. “Asked me to do her in so he could get with his mistress. I asked him what he was gonna do with the kids and he said he’d pay me double to take care of them, too.”
Jesus.
“Yeah, Wilson could probably tell you more about where he got the funds. We’re talking ten to fifteen grand here.”
Jesus.
“Now, since I told him to get gone, I dunno who killed those kids and who you’ve got in the freezer at the morgue. But, if you need a hand leaning on him, go ahead and gimme a call. Can’t promise you he’ll be back in mint condition, but he’ll still be able to talk.”
No, thanks man. You’ve done plenty.
Decland turned up the very next morning, as promised. The station went into uproar. People all over asking why he’d just walked into the place. All he could say was that a higher power told him to.
Brett wondered if it was Domino or Wade.
That it might have been Domino was so painfully hot that he had to have Maynard slap him around the corner of the hallway where no one could see.
“You got problems, Mahoney,” she told him sadly.
Ah, didn’t he know it.