Chapter Text
The plane ride away from Kasnia is silent. Wonder Woman stares silently into the distance, face set in stone despite the ending to their adventure. Dove alternates between staring out the window and fiddling with his hands in his lap, unusually restless. And then there’s Hawk.
As far as Hawk is concerned, this mission was a disaster. Sure, the war is on pause. The way things have turned out, it’s hardly like Kasnia could do anything else. Peace, but not peace by choice. They’ll find ways to kill each other soon enough. Worse, though…
Hank glares out the window, trying to hide the thunder written across his face as best he can. Ares is still free. They couldn’t touch him: they didn’t even try. Ares is free and Don…
Hank risks a glance at Don, who is back to wringing his hands absentmindedly. Every now and again white gloved fingers trace over his wrists, softly.
… He’d looked so small lashed against the Annihilator.
“He’s weak! He’ll be killed!”
He’d walked right up to the god of war and tried to offer peace.
“He’ll be killed!”
He’d stood stock still in front of unstoppable death; a force that had hit Hank like he’d never been hit before - he didn’t even try to dodge.
“He’ll be killed!”
He just stood there, staring down death in the face, willing himself to be the immovable object to the unstoppable force even though Hank had been treating his scraped knees and black eyes since they were kids …
He wasn’t immovable. He wasn’t… strong.
“He’s weak!”
Hank didn’t mean to say it. Never meant to say it. They’d come so far since they got their powers - just a couple of kids fighting each other as hard as they fought anyone else. Their fights had cut deep back then - not to Hank, who’d never taken any of Don’s biting insults as more than background noise in a friendly rivalry. It had taken longer than Hank cared to admit for him to realize that the same didn’t apply to Don, who took everything anyone said to him personally, locked that hurt up tight, and turned it to anger.
They’d learned better, over the years. Hank might not agree with Don’s peacenik ways, but he was willing to let Don extend a hand to the trash they fought: after all, when his efforts almost inevitably failed they’d end up in a brawl anyway.
For his part, Don had thankfully grown out of his fanatical dedication to babying crooks - while he still wouldn’t hurt them directly he was finally willing to knock a thug out with his own momentum, or direct attackers into each other.
Neither of them fully understood the other, but they could get along. They could function in each other’s worlds, and they could incorporate the other into their own. They didn’t… lash out anymore.
“He’s weak!”
Don was so much stronger now than he had been, in every sense of the word. He could hold his own under fire or under public scrutiny. He could find solutions most people wouldn’t think to look for. He could stare death in the face and not blink.
“He’s weak!”
And yet, for all that he’d grown, for all that they were supposed to be two sides of the same coin… Hank still looked at him and saw someone who needed to be protected. Someone who wasn’t strong enough.
“He’s weak!”
And now… now… it had been a stupid plan. Warring factions didn’t just up and make nice because you asked them to. Hawk had indulged Dove’s stupid little fairytale plan and let his little brother out of his sight and let him walk into… walk into…
Hank’s teeth ground together as his gaze pierced the window. He didn’t understand why Don was still alive. As far as either of them could figure out, Dove was probably the avatar of peace. Ares was the god of war, and Don had hand-delivered himself into his claws.
Why pass up on the chance to kill the avatar of peace? It made no sense. But maybe it was because Don was… and Hank always hated to think it, because it felt like a betrayal to his brave, indomitable little brother but…
“He’s weak!”
Surely Ares had never cared about Don before, when he was just one in a million heroes milling around on the Watchtower. Maybe he’d underestimated him. Sent him out alive just to prove that he could, that he wasn’t scared of Peace’s avatar, that he could strike him down anytime.
But now Don had stopped the Annihilator. Alone. The Avatar of Peace had single-handedly stopped the chosen weapon of War in its tracks. Right. In front. Of the God of War.
Hawk felt his hands clench into useless fists.
Don was on Ares’ radar now. It was only a matter of time.
“He’s weak! He’ll be killed!”
Chapter Text
It seemed to take forever to make it home. The tingling of the transporter faded away, followed almost instantly by the indescribable sensation of reverting to human form.
Hank reached out to stop Don’s hand as it gravitated towards his wrist again, holding it steady as he gently turned the hand over in both of his. Angry red burns stretched around the wrist: not quite bloody but raw enough to hurt.
“...I’ll be alright, Hank,” Don offered, ducking his head in Hank’s peripherals like he was trying to make eye contact. Hank kept his gaze down before releasing the hand.
“I’ll go get the first aid kit.”
Don sighed behind him, soft footsteps following in his wake, trailing off into the living room. At least he wasn’t complaining that he could ‘do it by himself’ anymore. That was the rule they’d come up with together. No one treated their own injuries - that way nothing was hidden. Even little things.
Hank rubs ointment over Don’s wrists and fails to ignore the cut-off hiss that escapes his lips when Hank treats a particularly raw section of his wrist. The skin is so delicate now, and he can’t help but think that Hawk’s strength could crush even the bones like so many dried twigs.
Ares is stronger than Hawk. He must be. Could he find them here? Eldon was such a small city, in the grand scheme of things. It wouldn’t take much to track down the Hawk and Dove to their hometown. Find records of their first appearances saving one Judge Hall. Find that they’d saved him twice. And once they started looking into Dad, then how long would it take until… until…
A hand on his shoulder jerks Hank from his spiral, and his eyes raise to meet Don’s, crinkling at the edges in the way that makes people break down and tell him anything.
Hank wants to tell him that he’s an idiot. That his plan shouldn’t have worked. That it was the last in a string of bad plans that failed on a predictable time-by-time basis and it was dumb luck that it worked this once and that he’s ruined everything and whatever happens to him now is his own fault.
But he doesn’t say things like that anymore.
“He’s weak!”
Don looks like he’s ready to say something, and whatever it is, Hank doesn’t want to hear it. It’s probably stupid anyway.
“He hurt you anywhere else?” Hank asks instead, voice gruffer than he wanted it to be.
Don’s lips purse and he rolls up his right sleeve, carefully, revealing a nasty burn… in the shape of a hand. Hank feels his breath catch in his throat. Don raises his head, exposing his neck and the underside of his jaw, and points out what Hank had missed in his quest to avoid looking Don in the eye. Fingerprints, hidden by Dove’s mask, but too clear against Don’s skin, pressed against his jaw and trailing down his neck.
“That’s it, aside from some bruising,” Don murmurs. “His hands… when he transformed into himself he… it was like the fire was inside him, somehow. I don’t think he was trying to burn me. He just didn’t care.”
Hank’s hands shake, just for a second, because that filth had his hands on his little brother; burned him and manhandled him and took Don’s face in his hands and he doesn’t understand how Don is still alive in front of him right now when he’s been touched and burned by such evil.
“I should’ve been there.” He manages, and his voice is as even as it’s going to get. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
“Hank, there was no other way.” Don’s hand falls to his arm, tightening in attempted comfort. There wasn’t time for us to go together to capture each of them.”
“It was a stupid plan to begin with!” Hank counters, angry, so angry. “It was never going to work and I shouldn’t have let you try it!”
“It was the only plan!” Don counters, fire in his eyes now, rising to the bait and the challenge. “Wonder Woman was chasing our only lead, we were doing nothing to the Annihilator and we couldn’t exactly fight the entire armies of North and South Kasnia!”
“What, and the solution is hand-delivering you to the enemy?”
“I’m your partner , Hank, you have to trust me!”
“Trust you to use yourself as a human shield, maybe!”
And Don flinches back and falls silent and Hank wishes he hadn’t said it because even fully stretched out Don had barely covered half of that metal monster, and there had been so little time to save him before useless Kasnian bullets would have ripped through Dove on their way to the Annihiliator and when Dove had made his stand in front of the approaching juggernaut one metal fist had been three times the size of his head and the cowards behind him had just put down their guns and let Don take all the risk for their bombed-out wasteland of a country.
Truth be told, most of the reason Hank puts up with Don’s little diplomatic ventures is because he expects them to come to nothing. Nothing lost, nothing gained. Every now and again some kid will hand over a gun or offer information they can use but…
Unfettered, Don will use himself as a human shield, not just for people who deserve it but to protect trash. Criminals. Hank can never support that. Will never. Will never forgive Wonder Woman for holding him back from tackling Don out of the way of that monster, no matter if it worked or not.
“...He felt like you.” Don says, out of nowhere, and Hank squints in confusion. “Ares. His… power. Something about him felt like you.”
And Hank thinks about the fire that heralds Ares’ comings and goings - so similar to the fire that envelops his own transformation - and thinks about screaming Don’s weakness across a battlefield and remembers Don 15 years old and calling him a barbarian. Thinks about the things neither of them say to each other anymore, and wonders if they’ll ever talk about them again.
Hank pulls the burn cream from the kit and wipes some on one finger. With the other hand he reaches out to steady Don’s head, as he angles his jaw upward and away to give Hank access to the fingerprints.
Fingerprints.
On his brother.
Hank cradles Don with one hand and heals him with the other, and wonders if Ares had crushed Don’s jaw in inhuman hands, or if he had pretended to be gentle, with the casual delicacy of power restrained. If he had dragged Don away like he was inconsequential, like he was nothing, or if he had looked deep into his eyes and found something worth remembering.
Don winces and tries not to squirm as Hank works, and Hank can only imagine his writhing as a God of War put these marks on him. Had Ares heard him scream? Worked to draw out his whimpers and gasps? If Don had cried out, had the War God even cared?
Don’s pain tolerance was so much lower than Hank’s already - not that the kid ever let that hold him back. Not that he wouldn’t stand on shaking knees with stinging eyes ready to go another round.
Don inhaled sharply, and Hank wasn’t even thinking before he loosened his grasp to brush over the short blond hairs quickly, offering the comfort he couldn’t find in words.
Useless. Nothing to fight. No way to strike at their true enemy. All he had done today was stand by and watch his brother try and get himself killed. Nothing to do but stitch Don back together and hope tomorrow wouldn’t bring something worse.
Some superhero.
Some brother.
Hank tends to Don’s damaged skin with hands made to hurt, and tries to pretend those hands aren’t shaking.