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dc-said-bi-robin-rights · 11 months

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Joey’s never liked the cabin.

He doesn’t hate it, not like Rose does, but he’s never liked it. Never. No matter how much Slade and Grant called him a wuss for it, Joey never quite warmed up to the concept of living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, isolated and with no one around for miles, for large periods of time with only his fucked-up family for company. And if he didn’t like the idea of it, he disliked the execution even more—disliked the animal heads Slade mounts on the walls, disliked the deerskin rugs that decorate the floors, disliked the pretentious mythological artwork hung up in the bedrooms (Slade liked Achilles, even though he didn’t understand him), and specially disliked the way it felt like his Pop’s domain, like the rest of them were just guests in someone else’s house despite the fact he had supposedly built the cabin for them.

The things he disliked most about the cabin, however, were also the things that had brought him the most joy as a child: the statuettes.

Slade had never liked art, and he had called Joey a garden variety of words that would now be considered slurs for not being made of the same stuff as him and Grant more that once, but he had never begrudged his son his love for art or his gentle nature. Rather, he had prized it, encouraged it even, holding it up for anyone who would listen as irrefutable proof of the fact that he was capable of making something good, that Slade Joseph Wilson’s only legacy wouldn’t be violence and death and broken things. The statuettes had been part of that.

It had been Joey idea, of course. Slade had no mind for painting, but his hands were steady and his fingers precise—too precise, far too precise, even hiding it, specially hiding it—and he had taken to woodcarving like he had been born to it. The two of them had developed a system, eventually: every time Slade went on one of his “safari trips”, he would carve a statuette of the biggest animal he had managed to hunt on that trip and bring it back with him when he returned home so Joey could hee and haw over it for a little while before moving on to something else. Sometimes the statuettes were normal things, like deer (antelope, his father would correct him sometimes, or moose, or gazelle, but to Joey they were all deer), but other times they were stranger animals, fiercer animals, things people weren’t supposed to hunt in the way Joey understood the word, like sharks or elephants or even bears. He would ask his mom about it often, while his father was gone, but Adeline would only laugh and say Slade made those hunts up so he wouldn’t get bored of the statuettes… if she was feeling particularly kind that day. Otherwise, she would scoff and reply that Slade “had an active imagination” for achievements he felt he was owed regardless of whether he had earned them or not. Joey had always gotten the feeling she wasn’t talking about the statuettes anymore when she would say that and would quickly extricate himself from the conversation as soon as he could, leaving his mother to her mutterings, which would often continue long after he had left the kitchen.

Joey hadn’t believed the statuettes were fake valor then and he still doesn’t believe it now, even knowing what he now knows about his father’s “safari trips”. The stuffed shark head that once sat in the closet but now hangs above the fireplace is proof enough that not all of his father’s hunting trips were invented, if indeed any of them ever were. More likely he took the opportunity to indulge in both his hobby and his actual occupation while he was away from home, leaving his wife and two kids alone in a world in which he had painted a target on their backs. It would certainly fit with his actions up until that point.

One day, Joey had gotten the bright idea to try and replicate his father’s work while the man himself was away, just for the fun of it, and that had been incorporated into the system as well when he came back: Joey’s replica would stay in the family home in Vermont from now, and Slade’s original would have a place of honor on the mantelpiece of the cabin. It was a perfect arrangement, and it suited the imperfect father just as perfectly, so much so that Slade had once joked that he would have to go on safari trips more often, so eager was he to witness his son’s often superior replicas of his work. They had all laughed, then. Now, just the thought of that makes Joey feel likes he’s going to be violently sick.

Had he—had his innocent wish to impress his father by creating better replicas of whatever he had carved on his trips—been responsible for someone’s death? How many people had Joey indirectly killed by giving Slade Wilson a reason to hurry home every time he left? One? None? Many?

Joey doesn’t know, and it makes him want to take a knife to his own arm whenever he thinks about it, so he pushes the rogue thought aside and concentrates on navigating his vehicle through the trees ahead of him. He’s wearing long sleeves, as always, but Rose isn’t stupid: if his knife is even a centimeter off and his cut begins to bleed, she will notice, and there is no way in hell he can play off preferring to keep his sleeves rolled down when there’s an open cut on his arm. Joey has kept his cutting a secret from the rest of his family for a good decade, he isn’t about to be discovered on the one day that should only be about her little sister and her mental health.

Speaking of his little sister…

Rose is leaning against the cabin wall with her arms crossed, clad hair to toe in motorcycle leathers next to the sleek shape of her Harley. She looks up as his beat-up van struggles into the clearing, and Joey exhales in disappointment when he sees the cigarette wedged between her bottom and top lip trailing smoke into the air. He really did think she’d quit for good this time when he’d suggested she keep an unlit cigarette in her mouth whenever she felt stressed just to ward off the temptation. He had read about it in a book somewhere, how it apparently helped smokers in the process of quitting feel at ease without giving them the temptation to actually smoke. Evidently, he needed to read better books.

Shaking his head, he shifts the stick into its ‘park’ setting and climbs out of the van, nodding at Rose when she flicks her gaze over to him and raising his hands to sign. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Rose mutters, taking one final puff of her cigarette and leaning her head back against the wooden wall of the cabin with a sigh, closing her one eye a moment after as if in indifference.

Joey knows better, though, is maybe the only person in the whole wide world who knows better, so he simply waits until Rose is done gathering herself before speaking again, his lips curling into a smile. He knows Rose is wearing her motorcycle leathers instead of the sweater and beanie combo she would usually wear to an excursion such as this one because they feel more familiar on her skin than the alternative, but he can’t resist to urge to tease his sister a little over it. “Nice outfit.”

“Shut up,” she retorts, opening her eye and letting the cigarette drop onto the porch, stomping on it a moment after to ensure she doesn’t accidentally ruin their plans for the day. She pushes away from the wooden wall and walks up to the back of the van, quirking an eyebrow at him when he walks around to stand beside her. “Slade?”

Joey raises his hands to sign… before lowering them when he remembers that full conversations are still past his sister’s understanding of ASL and turning on his subvocal transmitter on instead. He doesn’t like using it much on account of the excessively robotic tone it assigns his voice, but… well, this is a special occasion, after all.

“He thinks we’re gonna have a picnic.” Joey dips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a keyring, twirling it around his finger with a smug smile. He doesn’t hate the cabin, but he does hate Pops a little, and that’s reason enough for him to smile about what’s about to happen. “Even gave me the emergency keys so we wouldn’t have to bother him about setting up the new biometrics.”

“Of course he did,” Rose snorts, shaking her head at their father’s complete lack of awareness regarding his children before looking back at Joey and putting a hand on her hip. “You got the stuff?”

Joey rolls his eyes at the dramatic, tv-like phrasing and walks forward, unlatching the van’s safety mechanisms and pulling open the door to reveal several gasoline containers in sizes that have been illegal since the 60’s. Joey still thinks it’s overkill, but if Rose wants this place gone from the map, who is he to object? “Yep. You owe me, like, half a grand, by the way.”

The gasoline had actually been nearly three and a half grand, but Joey is the Vice President of a large company and Rose hasn’t actually charged her clients anything for her “mercenary work”—which, these days, just seems like normal vigilante work with extra steps—in months, so he doesn’t mind footing the bill a bit just this once, even though his sister would probably find his little white lie condescending in the extreme.

“Ask Slade to cover it,” Rose replies flatly as she walks forward and grabs up a container one-handed, pulling it out of the vehicle like it weighed nothing and bringing her knee up momentarily so she can hold it against something as she unscrews the cap. “It’s his fault we’re doing this in the first place.”

Joey can’t argue with that. “Fair enough.”

Rose holds the gasoline up to her nose and takes a sniff, grimacing when it does, in fact, turn out to be gasoline—way to trust a guy, little sis!—before looking up at him with a frown. “You sure you don’t want in on the action? D-Slade messed with you even more than he messed with me.”

Joey shakes his head and leans forward to grab a thick plastic bag from the van, noting Rose’s slip-up somewhere in the back of his mind. “I don’t think competing with each other about who Pops hurt the worst this time is something we should be doing in the first place, for the record, but no thanks. You have fun, though.”

“Oh, I will,” Rose says, eyeing the gasoline container with something like hunger in her eyes. Joey briefly wonders if he made a mistake by agreeing to this before dismissing the thought as too self-righteous by half and giving her a competitive check on the shoulder as he walks past her and climbs up the stairs to the porch, laughing when Rose scoffs in amusement and follows after him, tilting the containers so that she leaves a trail of gasoline in her wake.

As he and Rose walk up to the front door, a panel on either side of it retracts, revealing a square hole with a brand-new biometrics scanner inside of it on the lefthand side of the door and a hollow cylinder on the right. Joey grins and tosses the keyring into the air, catching it by the single jagged, cone-shaped key it contains when it comes down and inserting the key into the cylinder. There’s a buzz, and Joey moves the key around in the cylinder before two sharp beeps ring out and the door unlocks. He turns to look at Rose and grins, making a show of pulling the door open for her with a stiff sweep of his hand reminiscent of Wintergreen’s excessively British mannerisms. Rose rolls her eyes at the bad impression and walks forward, pausing only to stand on her tiptoes and kiss his cheek before walking inside the cabin.

“Come on!” Joey calls after her, his grin widening. “Not even a snort?”

There’s no answer, so Joey sighs and follows after her, stumbling halfway through the doorway when the living room rises up to meet his eyes like a fuzzy, half-remembered memory. It’s a simple space, made entirely of wood, with six windows, a table for four, and a small fireplace above which hang the heads of half a dozen different animals with plaques underneath detailing the exact time and means of their deaths. Everything looks exactly as it should.

Shaking off his sudden disorientation, Joey turns to look at Rose and finds her gaze lingering on the far corner a beat longer than is necessary before looking away. He resolves not to ask, though he has a feeling he knows what happened there.

“Well,” Rose says eventually, giving him a glance out of the corner of her one eye. “What are we waiting for?”

Joey doesn’t need to be told twice.

They go room to room, Joey grabbing anything that stands out to him and stuffing it in the bag while Rose drenches every last inch of the floor in gasoline, making several trips on account of how overboard she’s going. There is a tightness to her face, a viciousness, a kind of hunger in her eyes that she’s doing a bad job of suppressing. She knows exactly how much this place means to their father, knows it is the one place he still considers his beyond its usefulness as a safe house, and not only does she not care, the thought excites her. Look at me, Slade Wilson, Joey can’t help but think she’s saying in her head. Look at me as I take something from you for a change.

Joey doesn’t hate the cabin, but he doesn’t love it either, so all he does is shoot her a thumbs-up and a smile when she turns to look at him. It doesn’t make her laugh, doesn’t even make her smile, though her lips do quirk up slightly when she responds by sending him an eyeroll and walking out of the room, and maybe that’s enough of a victory to still count under the circumstances.

“Hey, Joey!” he heard Rose’s voice call out from outside the cabin. “You coming or what?”

Joey doesn’t answer, focused as he is on the statuettes on the mantelpiece. Should he save them, the way he saved the few family pictures that hadn’t been looted by either Slade or Adeline in the years following Grant’s death? Should he leave them to burn in the coming inferno?

What do they mean to him, really? Does he—

“I’m freezing out here, Joey!” Rose’s voice, again.

“I’m coming, hold on!” Joey responds, quickly throwing the statuettes into the bag and heaving it over his shoulder as he walks out to find the sun already long gone from the sky and Rose waiting for him with her hands in her pockets next to the very last container, which is open and dripping down gasoline even now. It’s an oddly beautiful sight, all things considered, thanks to the way Rose’s milk white hair is backlit by the moon and the peculiar silvery sheen that comes from the thick, oily gasoline doing its very best to reflect the starlight. It would make a good painting, Joey suddenly thinks, digging his phone out of his pocket and taking a picture before putting it away and walking over to Rose, who eyes him and specially the bag over his shoulder dubiously but says nothing.

She looks so much like their dad even in the dark.

“You wanna do the honors?” she offers, pulling out her lighter and tilting it towards him.

“It’s your day,” Joey says, putting the bag down on the ground. “You do it.”

Rose shrugs, her other hand emerging from her pocket with a cigarette. She sticks it in her mouth, lights it, takes a single puff from it, and then tosses it at the ground.

Flame leaps up in front of them and rushes towards the house, and soon Joey’s vision is entirely consumed by flames. He and Rose just stare for a while, before his gaze slides down to the bag still clutched tightly in his left hand by his feet.

He thinks about a lot of things, in that moment. He thinks about the good times. About Grant. About those few times his Pops came home to a happy house that was as happy to see him as he was to see them.

He also thinks about everything else. The way Grant died. The way his mom and dad hit each other all the time and he just had to listen to it happening. How Slade slept with his fiancée. How Slade turned his boyfriend into a monster. And he makes his decision.

He hands a bemused Rose the bag with a smile that looks just a bit too wide to fool anyone this time. “Ten bucks if you manage to get it unto the terrace before it collapses.”

Rose looks down at the bag, then up at him. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

She shrugs and extends her leg, the ghost of a grin coming onto her face at the prospect of some fun to wrap up this depressing, horrible night. “Fine, have it your way. Just don’t come crying back to me when you’re short ten bucks.”

“I didn’t know trash talk improved your performance,” he quips, and there is definitely a glint in Rose’s eye now.

“Oh, you’re on.” Rose tenses her back leg, muscles straining as she rapidly turns and lobs the bag in an arc that goes a good ten meters in the air before ending atop the burning terrace, as Joey knew it would. She grins—actually grins, wide and happy and smug and brilliant, and maybe none of this even matters as long as he can make his sister grin like that. “Ha! In your face, Joey!”

Joey’s smile is soft as he shakes his head. “Don’t get an ego over it, sis.”

She grins wider, more giddy than she’s been in a while. “What? Butthurt I beat your challenge fair and square?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Joey opens his arms, and for once his sister accepts without an eyeroll, squeezing his waist in a quick hug before shifting over to lay her head on his shoulder. He presses a kiss to the top of her head and turns to look at the burning cabin. “It’s kinda pretty, isn’t it? The way the colors…”

“Joey?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

“Fine.” He lays his head on top of hers and smiles. “Happy birthday, Rose.”

“…Thanks, Joey.”

They stay like that for some time, watching the cabin burn.