Chapter Text
“Wildcat, I’m fine,” Oliver groaned for what felt like the hundredth time. This statement would have been a lot more believable if he hadn’t been using Wildcat as a crutch for the last five minutes because trying to walk on his own had caused him to fall over and turn a fractured rib into what was definitely a broken one. “I can walk, you don’t need to carry me into the MedBay.” He definitely needed to be carried into the MedBay.
Wildcat sighed heavily. “You’re more beat up than when we were in the ring together,” he said, taking even more of Oliver’s body weight. “What on earth possessed you to make you think trying to take on Prometheus with no backup was a good idea?”
Hah. Possessed. “I didn’t want to bother anyone,” Oliver slurred. “He was in my city, he’s my responsibility. I could handle him.”
“Well, clearly not,” Wildcat said with a huff. “Besides, that’s the whole point of the League—to not get this injured in a fight. To get back up and accept help.”
This was a bit hypocritical of Wildcat, considering the man had once decided to join a metahuman fighting ring to get beaten up on the regular just because he felt like he wasn’t needed by the superpowered people in the League. Especially considering that Oliver and Dinah’d had to practically beat him over the head with the fact that his life still mattered.
But Oliver had tact. He was wise; he could control what he said, so he wasn’t going to mention it.
“You have no brain to mouth filter right now, Arrow,” Wildcat said.
Oh. Oliver squinted up at him as they continued trudging down the alleyway. “You don’t look mad at me,” he said, dubious, “so I do.”
“You absolutely do not,” Wildcat’s lips twitched. “And I’m furious with you. I’m just restraining myself because you have a head injury.”
Oliver wasn’t sure that made any sense. Why restrain yourself just because of a concussion? Oliver didn’t! He’d once gone to a gala high on pain meds with repetitive stress injuries in both of his hands, and he’d made his concussed wobble look like the height of drunken dancing! He’d finally beaten out Brucie Wayne in the media coverage that night. Ah, it was the little things.
Wildcat sighed again. He should probably get that looked at.
Wildcat snorted—oh, right, Oliver’d said that out loud—then rubbed his eyes through his mask. “God, what does Dinah see in you?” he muttered. He shot a glance at his transponder, which still had no signal, and shook his head. “Alright, I don’t want you walking on that ankle any longer,” he said. “Why’d you have to fight this guy in the middle of nowhere, anyway?”
Oliver had tried to lead Prometheus to less populated areas to reduce casualties, which had the added benefit of making it so that Prometheus’d had crap signal and couldn’t call for back up. Truly, he was a genius.
“Yeah, a genius at self-destructive tactics. And here I thought that you paralyzing yourself in the middle of an arena was bad enough, but at least you had Canary with you then.”
Canary was awesome. Dinah was so awesome. Her hair was so shiny, and she was so good at fighting—she’d even taken to helping him out with his hand-to-hand, and she was such a good teacher that he even managed to focus with her thighs around his neck because he was that interested in learning—
“Alright, alright, enough,” Wildcat said, and towed Oliver into a cafe. He propped Oliver up on a nearby chair. “Stay there, I’m going to see if I can get a signal from the roof.” As he stalked away, he muttered to himself, “there are things a man doesn’t need to know about his protégé, damnit.”
Oliver’s head lolled back against the wall. The lighting in here was very cheerful. Very bright. Though they could do with a change in decor—there was an overabundance of tables. Wait, no, he was seeing double. Or triple.
He groaned and closed his eyes. He’d been hit in the head and had concussions several times, but Prometheus’ strobe attacks had left some concerning residual effects. It was a good thing that Wildcat had managed to find him when he did; Oliver was a long-range fighter and once Prometheus had managed to break his bow, the fight had turned into more of a one-sided beating.
God, his head ached.
He sat there in misery for what felt like forever but was more likely ten seconds before he heard a cautious voice ask, “Excuse me, Mr. Arrow, sir? Are you alright?”
He licked his dry lips to wet them. “I’ve been worse,” he reassured the innocent bystander.
They didn’t seem reassured. “If you say so,” they said, dubious. “But if you need any medical attention or anything—I’m in training to be a nurse, so I can try to help?”
“Thanks for the offer.” Oliver was not going to be taking them up on it, but it was still nice to get. He stretched his lips (split and bruised; probably not helping his case) into a smile and gave them a tired thumbs up, only letting his face relax once he’d heard their footsteps retreat.
To keep himself awake—because it would be a very bad idea to fall unconscious—he ran through his to-do list, mentally checking off the tasks he’d successfully completed as he did so. Dinah had enjoyed her croissants; Alicia had responded to his email with a very cautious agreement to meet; Bruce had seemed ecstatic to lend him one of his financial accountants in exchange for hockey tickets (even if Oliver suspected it was only because he didn’t have any idea what a financial accountant was), and Prometheus had been taken care of, albeit somewhat… disgracefully.
Fuck, that man was too strong for his own fucking good. Well, for Oliver’s good, at least.
Hal was still off in deep space with no contact, risking his life in a war that he’d pretended wasn’t as bad as it sounded, and Oliver wouldn’t hear back from him for at least another week. And Captain Marvel was maybe interested in fucking a spider. And Oliver needed to somehow come up with a way to apologize to said spider without coming off as a dick, which he knew he wasn’t the best at.
But the remainder of the list was shorter, and Oliver was focusing on the positives. He added “find out the name of this cafe” and “come back to this cafe and give the waiter a large tip” to it.
Wait, actually, “hey, what’s the name of this place?” he asked the room at large. The ambient chatter in the room, which had slowly increased from the dead silence it had been when he and Wildcat had staggered inside, dropped again.
“The Espresso Pump?” a voice offered hesitantly.
Oliver checked another item off of his to-do list. He was doing great; who said concussions made you unproductive?
Now all he had to do was sit here and wait for—oh, those were Wildcat’s footsteps now.
“Arrow,” Wildcat said. His arms were crossed sternly, Oliver could sense it. “J’onn’s going to beam us up in a minute. If you’re going to vomit, do it now.”
The mere thought of vomiting while teleporting made Oliver’s stomach churn. Emptying the contents of your stomach while your stomach’s molecules were rearranging themselves was never a fun time.
“I’ll be fine,” Oliver waved him off with a lazy hand. “I’m good. Let’s go, chop-chop.”
Wildcat sighed (again, it was like his lungs were malfunctioning—maybe he was the one who needed to go to MedBay) and didn’t respond.
A minute later, Oliver felt the tell-tale tingling sensation of a transport. A second after that, he felt—a bed? Underneath him?
He squinted his eyes open. “Oh, J’onn beamed us straight here, huh?” he said, staring at the very distinctive ceiling of their medical center. “That was nice of him. We should send him a fruit basket.”
“J’onn doesn’t eat fruit,” Wildcat said.
“Chocos, then,” Oliver suggested.
“Please don’t,” one of the med technicians said desperately. Max, maybe? Possibly-Max continued, “We can’t afford another choco incident; do you have any idea how much J’onn does on the Watchtower? We were ruined after the last one, it took weeks to recover!”
And that was exactly why he deserved a fruit basket! So that he could know that the League appreciated him and wanted him to sleep better and that they were happy he’d ended up on Earth as his second home and—
Oliver’s mind drifted along this train of thought for a while as the various healthcare workers maneuvered his body. He was distantly aware of Maybe-Max’s horrified stare when his x-ray results came through, as well as his whispered conversation with Probably-Tiffany about the odds of his recovery (very slow, apparently), and Paige—he liked Paige—and Devon’s suggestions that they bring in a meta-healer.
Wildcat left the room at some point, only to return a while later with Zatanna, who waved her wand and said something and—
Oliver passed out.
When he came to, he was wrapped in bandages, numb in most of his limbs, and floating in a pleasant haze.
Wow. He should get magical healing more often.
“You’re an idiot,” Wildcat loomed over his bed.
“Yeah, I know,” Oliver said, contritely.
“You should have asked for help on this operation.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And you should have called for back up way sooner than you did.”
“Well, that last part wasn’t entirely my fault,” Oliver pointed out, because he had tried to call for help, he’d just been out of signal range for a while.
Wildcat’s eyes narrowed. “And along that vein: while it was tactically advantageous for you to ensure that Prometheus couldn’t reach any back up, it was reckless of you to not ensure that you’d be able to.”
“Yes, yes, alright, I made a mistake, I get it!” Oliver said. He would have pushed himself up to a sitting position to feel slightly less vulnerable, but he didn’t think he had the strength to move at the moment. “What the hell did Z do to me?” he asked, weakly raising his hand in an attempt to gesture at himself. His wrist twinged painfully, and he quickly aborted the motion.
“Healing spell,” Wildcat grunted. “Speeds up your natural healing but takes a lot of energy out of you, ‘parently. You’ll be in here for a few more hours, at least.”
Oliver paled. “Wait—how long have I been here already?” He didn’t want to bail on Alicia without any warning; not to mention, he still had an insane amount of work to do for Queen Industries, and he’d have to make sure someone could cover his patrol in Star while he was up here, and—
Wildcat shrugged. “Three hours.” Oliver relaxed. He wasn’t supposed to meet with Alicia until tomorrow, so he’d probably be fine. And he hadn’t been planning on patrolling after fighting Prometheus today even before he’d gotten benched, so he’d be fine there too.
Hold on. “Three hours?” Oliver realized. “Wildcat, did you sit over my bedside? Were you worried about me?” he teased.
Wildcat’s eyes narrowed. “You couldn’t see straight,” he hissed, crossing his arms. His muscles bulged threateningly as he continued, “I found you getting your face beat in so bad you couldn’t walk in a straight line, and you almost punctured a lung falling over. If I’d been a second later, you could have died.”
Yeah, well, Oliver almost died all the time. Besides, there wasn’t much of a point to prolonging his life. Compared to the other League members, there wasn’t much he could do with his lack of powers and tiny human life expectancy—certainly not enough to change where he was going to end up at the end of it all. Why not take on Prometheus when he had the chance to? Really show the Question the proverbial middle finger.
This time, Oliver did possess enough self-control to not say that out loud. Still, something in his face must have given him away, because Wildcat furrowed his brow, concerned. “Arrow, you’re… You know I’m happy to help, right?”
“Of course! Us non-metas have to stick together, right?” Oliver forced out a laugh, and nope, he wasn’t going to do that again.
Wildcat was insistent. “If you’re in any kind of trouble,” he continued, steadfast in his offer.
“Honestly, it was a lapse in judgement, that’s all.”
He very clearly did not believe him, and Oliver sighed. “I promise, I’m not in any trouble.” If one didn’t think about the fact that apparently, all people were bound to eternal torment and in the grand scheme of the universe nothing humanity did mattered. But Oliver was working through it, okay, he was—he was just having a bit of an off week; he’d get his head screwed on straight soon. He at least recognized that he wasn’t doing well, which was better than some he could mention.
Before Wildcat could say anything else—or, heaven forbid, express any more emotions—the doors to the MedBay whooshed open. Oliver’s head swiveled to face them (and the room spun for a bit—wow, he was out of it). “For fuck’s sake,” he groaned as the Question was manhandled into the room by an irate, smoking Dan.
“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Dan was growling. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you, Weston, are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Are you trying to get me killed?” the Question responded, voice tight with pain. “You’re the idiot who decided to throw fire around in an enclosed space like a maniac, this is your fault.”
Dan sat him down none-to-gently on the nearest cot (which was, coincidentally, only two away from Oliver). Wonderful, he was going to have a roommate. “Don’t try to pin this on me, you’re the idiot who’s apparently never heard of dodging—”
“And you apparently don’t understand the concept of aiming!” The Question started removing his coat, turning just enough that the damage was visible to Oliver, who winced in sympathy at the sight. Most of his shirt had burned away, and what remained seemed fused to his back. The skin that was uncovered, stretching down from his right shoulder to the bottom of his left rib cage, was a vivid red. Some spots were dotted black, and others appeared a waxy white. Oliver couldn’t tell if it was ash or skin, truthfully, and that worried him. The fact that the Question was still upright and bickering with Dan was honestly impressive.
Wildcat, at his side, cursed and pressed the button to summon more medical personnel.
“You ran right into my line of fire—”
“You were going to kill the head cultist!”
“She was planning to summon Tiamat!” Dan threw his hands in the air in exasperation. “Killing her was the fucking goal.”
“We still don’t know if there are any more of them,” the Question reminded him angrily. “This could have been just one cell of many, and now that they’re all dead, we’ve got no way of finding out.”
Dan scoffed. “Please, since when has talking to the dead ever been a problem for us?”
“Considering you’re a fugitive and I’m not exactly on good terms with anyone back home? I’d call it a pretty big barrier!” He hissed to himself, finally getting his coat off his shoulders and dropping it onto the floor, “Fuck, that hurts.”
“None of those cultists are going to end up in the Realms,” Dan waved him off. “We’ll just track them down in Hell—”
“Oh, wonderful, I get to third wheel,” the Question gave the distinct impression that he was rolling his eyes underneath his mask.
“—and torture the info out of them. Piece of cake, you’ll be home in time for dinner.” Dan narrowed his eyes at the Question’s wound.
“No,” the Question said firmly. “This is my investigation, we do things my way, and I’m not torturing anyone.”
“What, have you gone soft since high school?”
The Question’s jaw clenched. “I never,” he said, the picture of cold restraint, “participated in those activities, and once I was out, I made sure no one else would. Don’t speak of things you weren’t there for.”
“Right back at you,” Dan retorted.
There was a long moment of silence, before Oliver cleared his throat to draw their attention. “So,” he said, “I take it your investigation is going well?”
Dan rolled his eyes. “Of course, the pointy stick guy is here. What happened to you—got hit by a car helping an old lady cross the road?”
The Question turned gingerly on his cot to look behind him and gasped at the sight of Oliver wrapped in bandages. “What happened to you?” This was said with—genuine concern? Probably?
Oliver did his best to shrug from his prone position. “I had fun with the intel you gave me.”
The Question furrowed his brow in momentary confusion, before remembering—“You went after Prometheus?” He shot a quick glance at the significantly less injured Wildcat and deduced, “Alone? What were you thinking? Prometheus has the combined martial arts abilities of the top ten best fighters in the world, and you’re a distance fighter. You could have been killed!”
Huh. Now that he was paying attention to it, it was—really, really weird, hearing things Oliver objectively knew to be true and feeling like the statements were somehow less factual after the Question said them. He was almost tempted to argue back that of course he wouldn’t have been killed, and if anything being a distance fighter made him better suited to fight Prometheus as long as he managed to stay out of range.
Instead, Oliver quirked his lips. “Careful, Q, you almost sound worried,” he joked.
The Question clenched his fists. “Are you—” he took a deep breath, and then winced as his burnt skin stretched at the motion. “Why do you insist on being reckless?”
“Hey, you gave me the intel!” he said defensively. “Why’d you give it to me if you didn’t want me to use it?”
“I thought you might bring it to Canary, or to the Flash, or even to Atom,” the Question exclaimed. “You’ve got no shortage of people who’d be willing to help you!”
Oliver did, in fact, have a long list of people who’d be willing to help him. Wildcat wasn’t even on the list of names that the Question had spouted out, and Oliver knew that there were plenty of other League members who could say the same. He hadn’t called them, because… because some stupid, stubborn part of him had wanted to take out Prometheus by himself. Prove that he was valuable. Show that he could still accomplish things, still do good, even if he’d let his company go down the toilet and hadn’t noticed that one of his coworkers was cursed and he was maybe doomed to Hell.
But he was hardly going to try to explain that to the Question, and certainly not in front of Dan, who was the reason this bout of existential dread had cropped up in the first place. Instead, he shrugged. “I thought I could handle him,” he lied.
Dan laughed. “I’ll give it to you; you’ve got guts, at least.”
Wildcat stepped forwards. “And who are you, exactly?” he stared down at him, looming threateningly. “The League doesn’t torture people, so you can’t be a member.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised at what lengths the League is willing to go to,” Dan said with a dark, knowing smirk.
Alternate timeline. Right. Before Oliver could wonder which members of the League had been willing to resort to torture in whatever apocalyptic future Dan had come from, Oliver’s favorite med tech walked in. “Alright, what did you do to yourself—this time…” Paige trailed off, taking in the room in front of her. “You’re a new patient,” she said to the Question, and rushed to grab her scanner. “What—we should have been notified that someone was injured.” She pressed her comm. “Avery? I need you to check on J’onn—”
“Oh, no need,” the Question said hurriedly. “There’s nothing wrong with him, we’re just shielded from telepathy at the moment. Fighting cultists, and all that—you never know what tricks they’ll have up their sleeve.”
Paige shot him a dubious look, clearly not trusting that the disheveled, suit-clad man in front of her had the power to block a Martian from his mind.
Truthfully, Oliver had trouble believing it as well. Which was, he remembered, precisely the point. “No, he’s telling the truth, Paige,” he confirmed. “I heard him mention it to J’onn earlier; something about him going communication-dark for a bit. J’onn should be fine.” Hopefully the Question had continued to shield Dan too, so it would even be the truth. They really didn’t need J’onn to have another headache.
Paige hesitated, but finally said, “disregard that, Avery. We’ll need to restock the burn cream, though; have Devon add it to the requisitions list. What the hell were you hit with?” she grimaced, examining the Question’s back.
The Question was staring at Oliver in shock. Oliver winked at him. “I—” he said, and shook his head. “Ask this idiot,” the Question gestured at Dan. “He’s the one who burned me.”
“Oh, grow up,” Dan said. Paige shot him a quelling stare, and he quickly responded, “it was Hellfire, alright, so unless you’ve got anything that can treat magic burns you’re best off just getting this guy a mystery to solve.”
Paige shot Oliver and Wildcat a confused look at that, saw the matching confusion on their faces, and wisely refrained from commenting on it. “Alright, I’m going to need to—” she caught sight of the Question’s rumpled coat on the floor, and her face fixed in place. “—Carefully cut off your clothes, to avoid damaging the skin around it in case any fibres got in the wound,” she continued, through gritted teeth.
“Sorry,” Dan shrugged blithely. “You can still do his shirt, though. And I’m pretty sure he got some normal burns on his legs.”
“Yes,” the Question ground out, “because, as we’ve established, you have shit aim.”
Dan raised his hands to defend himself. “Look, if you want to get rid of a summoning circle, the quickest way to do it is set fire to the ground.”
“The ground we were all standing on?”
“Correction,” Dan pointed at him. “The ground that you were standing on. I was sensibly floating out of range.”
“Since when can you even use Hellfire?” The Question winced as Paige began cutting through his suit.
“I’ll give you one guess,” Dan gave a shit-eating smirk.
The Question's shoulders slumped. “Felicity?”
“Felicity,” he confirmed.
Oliver blanched. Wait. Wait wait wait, he remembered this now. That time that he and Dinah had been chased by that demon, it had ended with the Question saying that—that he was “Dan’s” boyfriend. …What were the odds on them being a different Dan and Felicity?
Based on the way Dan was looking at him, clearly laughing at his expression, not very high.
“Again,” Wildcat said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Dan,” Dan answered.
Wildcat waited for further elaboration as Paige grabbed some tweezers. “This is going to hurt,” she warned the Question. He nodded grimly in acknowledgement. When no further information was offered, Wildcat narrowed his eyes.
“It is against regulations to bring a non-league member onto the Watchtower,” he said lowly. “And in the incredibly extreme situation where one is invited aboard the tower, they have to submit to a psychic scan by J’onn. You are aware of that, right, Question?”
“Do you expect me to say no?” the Question asked dryly.
“Drop whatever… shields you have up,” Wildcat instructed, with a frankly uncalled for amount of hostility.
Oliver tried to sit up, and groaned again when his body couldn’t manage it. “No, don’t,” he said. “Seriously, Wildcat, he’s been in and out of the Watchtower for days now; if he was going to be a danger to us, we’d already be dead. Besides,” he continued, “I’m the one who asked him to shield.”
Wildcat looked at him sidelong in confusion. “What?”
“Apparently demon minds give J’onn a headache,” Oliver shrugged.
Dan opened his mouth to say something, but Wildcat talked over him. “Demons?” he asked, alarmed. “That—why the hell would you let a demon come on board? Ol—Arrow,” he corrected himself, “Arrow, you—you’ve been compromised,” he realized, and backed up in growing horror.
“I’m not compromised,” Oliver objected. “Dan’s not that bad. Apparently he just helped stop a dragon god from being summoned to Earth and wreaking havoc, so I’d say he's doing pretty good, actually.”
Dan choked on air, and stared at Oliver bug-eyed. “I just told you that I wanted to go and torture a bunch of dead people!” he objected.
“And you like One Piece,” Oliver said. “People contain multitudes.” Obviously he didn’t appreciate Dan’s willingness to commit torture, but he hadn’t actually done it. If Oliver was going to judge people based on what they could have done, he’d never have any friends. Besides, Dan was a demon. Torturing souls was what they did. Hating him for it would be like hating a bear for eating fish, or hating a cat for contributing to the extinction of hundreds of different species of birds. It wasn’t exactly their fault.
(Okay fine, so he was doing some mental acrobatics to keep himself calm and nonjudgemental. He’d told Dan he’d forgiven him—he was hardly going to take it back now, that would ruin all the progress he’d made.)
Dan opened and closed his mouth, at a loss for words. Paige finished picking fibres out of the Question’s wound, and carefully sidled past Dan to get to the IV pole. She’d gone slightly pale at the revelation that she was in the same room as a demon, but god bless her, she kept her cool. Healthcare workers. They make the world go round.
Eventually, Dan collected himself enough to gesticulate wildly at Oliver in frustration. “What is wrong with you?” he asked. He sounded genuinely distraught.
“I ask myself that every day,” Wildcat muttered. “This idiot decides to inject himself into everyone’s business and refuses to stop, no matter how dangerous it is to himself or others. He’s hopeless. No amount of interventions have worked. And believe me, you have no idea how many we’ve tried.”
“Hey, if I remember correctly, my ‘injecting myself into your business’ ended up with you deciding to change your ways, accept that your life had meaning, and stop trying to get yourself killed in back alley street fighting,” Oliver complained.
“It was an elite fighting arena—” Wildcat protested.
“Besides, Canary’s the one who asked me to be involved,” Oliver continued, ignoring the interjection. “That actually wasn’t on me.”
“It was your ridiculous plan to electrocute yourself using an experimental serum to convince me that I’d killed you.”
“And it worked. So there.”
“So you’re just like this,” Dan interjected numbly. “Normally. This is a normal state of being for you.”
“Beat up and in the hospital? Eh.” Oliver couldn’t dispute it.
“He tried to convince Huntress not to take revenge against Mandragora,” the Question chimed in. Paige had set up the IV by now, and a steady stream of fluids were flowing into his veins.
(His arm looked completely human. Caucasian, with a dusting of freckles and what looked like red hair, which was surprising. Oliver wouldn’t have pegged the Question for a ginger. Still, it was heartening to know that he had veins at all—he wasn’t sure what kind of anatomy spider people generally worked with.)
“His efforts might have even worked, if I hadn’t gotten involved.” Hey, that was uncalled fo—wait, fuck, what did the Question mean by saying that? Was he trying to convince Oliver that he didn’t think it would have worked, or was he trying to tell the truth?
God, no wonder he hadn’t liked to hang out around this man. His head was hurting. And it wasn’t even related to the concussion.
“Right,” Dan drawled, looking between Oliver and the Question. “Anyway, weirdo with the eyebags,” he directed to Wildcat, who opened his mouth to object to the nickname. “Don’t tell me your name, I don’t care,” he cut him off. “I’ve been contracted to work with W—the Question,” he corrected himself dryly, “as community service for my parole. I promise you, I wouldn’t be getting involved with your little Justice gang if it was up to me. I’m just going to deal with your Tiamat problem, download as much anime onto my phone as I can off of your Wi-Fi, and be on my way. No need to get your panties in a twist.”
Wildcat’s eyes narrowed. “And I’m sure that, as a demon, we can trust you.”
“Would it help if I vouched for him?” the Question asked rhetorically. “No, of course it wouldn’t, I’m a nutjob. What if I mentioned that he’s been behaving himself while on Earth? Also no,” he remembered, “because he’s clearly just flambéd me with friendly fire and admitted to killing multiple humans. That’s fair. Dan, you’re on your own.”
No he wasn’t. “If he wanted to kill us all, we’d be dead,” Oliver said. And maybe Dan would change his mind at some point, but you can’t treat a feral cat like you’re scared of it; it’d just match your energy, and then no trust would be built at all. “Wildcat, you trust me?”
“If I find out that you haven’t been mind controlled, yes,” Wildcat said.
“Then trust that J’onn scanned me when we got here, Zatanna zapped me unconscious to heal and didn’t notice anything, Dr. Fate took over monitor duty while Dan was on board and didn’t object to his presence—” Dan shot the Question a quick, confused look, and the Question seemed pleasantly surprised, “—and I’ve talked to Dan and Q multiple times the past few days. It’s fine. Hell, even Captain Marvel thinks it’s fine.” That last bit was a slight exaggeration, but considering that Marvel had flirted(?) with the Question rather blatantly, Oliver was pretty sure he’d back him up if it came to it.
Wildcat sighed, but relaxed his shoulders. “Fine,” he relented.
“Well!” Paige clapped her hands together. “I’m glad you got the posturing out of the way. Wildcat, if you and—Dan, was it? If you and Dan would get out of the MedBay, so I can continue treating my patient?” It was not a suggestion. Balls of steel, that woman. Oliver was going to get her a fruit basket. With papaya and mango and the good kind of pineapple.
Wildcat nodded, before signing quickly at Oliver, We’re not done talking about your recklessness earlier. At the first sign of danger, call me.
Aw, Oliver was touched. He gave the man a two-fingered salute as he left.
Dan narrowed his eyes at Paige. “If you make him worse, I can personally promise you a spot in eternal torment right next to Christopher Columbus. And he’s going through some gruesome torture, let me tell you; Hell spared no expense on that guy.”
Paige raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure your friend is touched by your display of concern,” she said. “Now—out?”
With one last worried look at the Question—though he was definitely trying not to seem worried—Dan turned to exit the MedBay. “Ah—Dan!” the Question called after him. “I can only shield you from a certain range—you’d probably do best staying outside the MedBay.” Then he continued, in a language that scraped at Oliver’s mind, “R̶e̶m̸e̸m̶b̸e̶r̴ ̶t̵h̸e̵ ̴t̸e̶r̴m̵s̷ ̶o̶f̸ ̸o̴u̸r̸ ̶a̶g̸r̵e̵e̵m̶e̶n̶t̵.̵”
Dan waved his hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, it’s not like there’s anything interesting on this dump anyway.”
The door slid shut behind him.
“So,” Paige asked, grabbing a scalpel. “Some of these burns are third-degree, which means I’m going to have to cut away some of the dead skin. Will anaesthetic drugs work on you?”
The Question shook his head. “If I were to tell you they were more effective on me, what would you do?” he asked.
“Figure out what dosage does work,” Paige said confidently.
The Question hummed, and then looked at Oliver for a moment, clearly deliberating over something. “Would you mind informing the lovely doctor that opiates are generally effective, though I need to take a dose that is close to 15% weaker than the recommended one for a person my height and weight? And could you also tell her that I have a very poor reaction to being held down?”
Shit, Oliver hadn’t even considered how difficult trying to give out medical advice would be for the Question. “You should also probably avoid peppermint,” Oliver chimed in at Paige’s baffled look. The Question raised his eyebrows behind his mask. Oliver shrugged. “Spiders don’t like peppermint or vinegar, right?”
“Ah,” the Question said, in realization. “Marvel told you, then.”
“Why, who did you think told me?” Oliver asked, because honestly, who else would have had the opportunity?
“Batman?” the Question offered.
“Y—Batman knows? That piece of shit!” Oliver ranted.
Paige cleared her throat. “This is fascinating and all, but I really do need to start medical treatment. 15% weaker than recommended, right? I can do that. Anything else I should know?”
When the Question didn’t say anything else, Oliver added, “Apparently he’s cursed so we don’t believe any statement he says. Questions seem to work, and ambiguous statements give a small headache. So, you know. You should probably add that to his chart.”
The Question’s shoulders tensed. “That is private information,” he said.
Oliver shot him a look. “Like my diet? Because you shared that with an entire cafeteria of service workers; I’m only telling a medical professional to add it to your medical file in case of an emergency in which you might, I don’t know, need to describe your pain levels.”
The faceless man still looked deeply uncomfortable. Oliver sought out a distraction. “So,” he said, remembering Dan’s earlier throwaway comment, “do you want to help me with a case I’ve been working on?”
Obviously, the answer was yes.
(And if working out how Queen Industries’ tax firm had become embroiled in a corporate conspiracy with ties to multiple other Fortune 500 companies, including Pepsi, seemed to help the Question’s burns heal almost as well as the magical burn salve that Paige used? Well, that was a mystery Oliver was happy to leave unsolved.)