Mullet-verse fic: Sacrifices
Title: Sacrifices
Fandom: Justice League
Characters: various Mullet-verse OCs
Word Count: 2917
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: I had initially thought to make this the first part of a longer story for NaNoWriMo. Perhaps even leading up to the wedding fic that at least two people speculated on in the comments for Branching Off And Stuff. Sadly, November is nearly over, I didn't bother to sign up, life got in the way, and I seriously doubt my ability to pull 47,083 words outta my ass in...one day. So instead, all you get is a story about Spooky Smith, inspired by other comment speculation. (Further information at the end.)
Sacrifices
The call, when it came, was barely intelligible. A hysterical woman's voice sobbed over the line and Spooky's voice recognition immediately identified her as Dinah Smith.
Recognizing a name among her garbled words, Spooky ran a search in the span of time it took to think it.
When he found what he was looking for, he interrupted Dinah to say, "I'll be there soon."
Then he ended the call and left.
---------------
He took public transportation.
Packed in among meat-puppets like a metal fishing lure in a tin of sardines.
As always, he hated it.
But sometimes sacrifices had to be made.
---------------
Spooky bypassed the front desk, not needing to be given directions, as he had hacked the necessary information on the ride over. A purposeful look was, he had found, usually all that was needed to get where he needed to go. Since he tended to feel removed from general human conventions, he rarely even considered the possibility that he might not be allowed somewhere he wanted to be.
No one tried to stop him.
When he had almost reached his destination, he was abruptly halted by a body flinging itself at him. Looking down, he saw the dark-haired head of Dinah Smith. Choking on a sob, she clung to him and buried her face in the drab brown shirt he wore.
"Haley?" Spooky questioned, settling a reassuring hand on Dinah's back.
Dinah just shook her head and leaned against him, body shaking with her tears.
Frowning, Spooky looked up, staring at the window Dinah had been standing in front of before he arrived. There was a hospital bed, he could see, but the small girl lying in it was almost completely obscured by the equipment that was no doubt the only reason she was alive.
It had always been a curiosity to Spooky how very fragile humans were. It really took very little to damage meat creatures. And he had seen his own cousins injured numerous times over the years.
That was different, though. Daniel and Jonathan actively sought out danger. Haley....
It was a well-known but seldom-mentioned fact that when heroes and villains battled, there were occasionally innocents caught in the crossfire. The heroes usually tried to minimize such instances, but there was only so much they could do.
And now Haley had become part of the statistic.
If he wanted to, Spooky could probably find her exact number among the larger number representing how much human life had been damaged by simply being overlooked.
He didn't want to. Right now, he just wanted to hold Dinah while he scanned through Haley's medical records for her chances of survival.
And curl a tendril of awareness around the girl's heart monitor.
---------------
"--supposed to be a fieldtrip, and of course it was the same day some psycho sonuvabitch decided to rob the place!"
"Shhh," Spooky murmured, modulating his voice to what he had found to be soothing to humans. Holding Dinah close, he gently petted her hair. "Shh, Serinus, it's okay--"
"It's not okay!" Dinah gasped out. "My baby's in there fighting for her life!"
"Haley is a survivor."
"She's a little girl," Dinah whispered, shaking her head against Spooky's chest. "She shouldn't have to be."
Spooky felt Haley's heartbeat flutter through the monitoring equipment. He said nothing.
---------------
Since becoming involved with Dinah and, by extension, Haley, Spooky had become increasingly curious at the importance placed on the institute of parenthood. He had always viewed becoming a parent as something not especially impressive. It was, after all, every living creature's main biological drive. The very act of survival had only gained evolutionary significance because it was necessary in order to perpetuate the species.
Reproducing was the main instinct of meat creatures.
To be impressed when they succeeded in it was, as he saw it, on par with being impressed with an organic being finding a viable food source.
Becoming a parent and being a parent were somewhat different, he learned. Granted, the purpose of caring for young was to make sure they survived long enough to take the matter of survival into their own hands long enough to reproduce as well. A constant cycle of replicating meat.
Adoption threw a bit of a wrench in things. Logically, one wished to reproduce for the purpose of passing on one's own unique genetic material to the next generation. Some humans chose, however, to care for young who they knew they had no biological ties to.
Perhaps they hoped to pass on their "intellectual genetics," in a sense. Or perhaps the instinct to nurture outweighed the instinct to ensure the continuation of one's DNA.
Being a parent was far more complicated than becoming one. Becoming one simply required finding a mate with compatible genitalia, some amount of fertility, and sometimes alcohol. Combining them with an instinctive biological function wasn't exactly rocket science.
Even the "miracle of birth" itself was just one of humanity's more messy, disgusting, and biological of biological functions. Socially acceptable-- even encouraged -- masochism.
But being a parent...that required making the decision to keep and care for the resultant offspring. Such a decision had very far-reaching consequences, and it wasn't as if society hid those consequences. Children were a lot of work.
Why he had chosen to aid Dinah in her parental endeavor, Spooky still wasn't sure.
And with every uneven beat of Haley's heart, he grew no closer to understanding.
---------------
A half hour later, Haley's mostly-stable condition took a turn for the worse. Doctors rushed into her room, surrounding her while a soundtrack of warning alarms blared in the background. Spooky pulled Dinah out of the way, pressing her face to his chest and whispering transparent reassurances in her ear, trying to block out what was happening in her daughter's room.
"God, what kind of quality of life can she possibly have?" Dinah wondered aloud.
Spooky said nothing. From Haley's medical records, he had deduced that at best, the girl would be confined to a hospital bed for as long as she lived. At worst...she would also be in constant pain.
What little he remembered of his early life, from before Max had rescued him from captivity, gave him an unfavorable understanding of what total confinement was like. Spooky could only guess that his own cyber prison was to him what a hospital bed prison was to a human. And the idea that a similar fate awaited Haley was...uncomfortable.
"Serinus..." Spooky implored, watching the barely-victorious doctors filing out of Haley's room.
"No...I know, I just..." Dinah lifted her head to look at him, eyes red but depleted of tears. "My baby's suffering and there's nothing I can do."
Spooky stared at her, then nodded and dipped his head to kiss her forehead. "Don't worry," he said, stepping back from her.
"What?" Dinah's brow furrowed in confusion as he walked away. "Where are you going?"
"The restroom," Spooky replied, not looking back.
"But..." Dinah's voice lowered to a bewildered murmur as Spooky turned the corner.
"You don't use the restroom."
---------------
Arms wrapped around her middle, Dinah stared hopelessly through the window at her broken daughter.
She had been told that Haley was lucky. Lucky! There were machines attached to every organ of her body, the ones she still had, and she was lucky.
Dinah's eyes burned, but the last of her tears were dried crust on Spooky's shirt.
It was an ordinary museum fieldtrip Haley's class had been on. They hadn't even gone to see the newest exhibit, the one the supervillain had been after. They just happened to be in the way. Dinah wasn't sure who had finally taken down the villain, or even what ridiculous name the villain called himself by.
Dinah had given up a second-string superhero career specifically to keep Haley safe. But even that hadn't been enough.
A gentle touch on her shoulder startled the woman and she glanced to her side. Standing beside her was a doctor, white coat pristine and distinguished silver hair neat. Dropping his hand, he looked at her from behind gold-rimmed glasses, light brown eyes surprisingly comforting.
"Don't worry," he said calmly. "Your daughter won't suffer, Serinus."
As he disappeared into Haley's room, Dinah's eyes widened with belated understanding. Serinus. There was only one person who ever called her by that nickname. It was the genus of certain kinds of songbirds, making it fitting and a very sweet gesture by his standards.
"Spooky?" She tried to follow him in, but found the door locked. He met her eyes again through the large window, then set the glass to opaque, blocking himself and Haley from sight.
Dinah's breath caught in horror. Surely he wouldn't... She had been concerned at what looked like a dismal future for Haley, but surely Spooky didn't think she would prefer her daughter die rather than hold out hope. She tried knocking on the window with the palm of her hand, but there was no response.
Then one of the machines keeping Haley alive wailed a warning.
---------------
Changing his hologram to project the image of a generic doctor had been easy. The only difficult part had been timing his entrance and exit to and from a restroom stall so that no one noticed the change, and even that had been laughably easy.
Dinah had been hindered by the slower information processing abilities of her species's brain, as well as the heavy cloud of emotions dulling her usually sharp wits. As he had predicted.
And now...he was alone with Haley Smith.
Spooky let his hologram melt back to his usual brown-haired and golden-eyed appearance as he slowly walked up to Haley's bedside. Up close, the damage looked even worse. Tubes, wires, and machines of all sorts surrounded the small girl, all working together, all humming their individual life-preserving tunes.
Reaching out, Spooky stroked his fingers against Haley's left cheek, amazingly the only part of her that appeared uninjured. Letting his fingers brush against a golden curl poking from beneath the gauze covering most of the top of her head, Spooky pondered the situation.
Haley was a bright, curious child, always eager to explore and learn new things. Dinah called her a handful, though she smiled when she did. It was obvious that Haley was well-loved by her mother, and Haley in turn was very affectionate.
Spooky was used to hugs, having grown up around Daniel and Jonathan, who could be described as "touchy-feely." As well as their parents, who they had learned such behavior from. In their own, AI ways, Spooky's parents and Grandma Bug were also overly affectionate, though their touches were usually limited to technopathy. Usually they were all too far apart, physically, to do more than that.
Despite that, Haley's affection for him often caught Spooky by surprise. It wasn't that he didn't expect it, he had gotten quite proficient at recognizing the signs of oncoming physical affection. No it wasn't that, it was that he didn't understand it. Spooky was involved with Haley's mother, certainly, but that didn't explain why or how the girl had become so taken with him.
"She loves you, Spook," Dinah would always tell him, grinning in amusement at his confusion.
Looking down at the irreparable shell Haley had become, Spooky reflected that it was probably for the best that he had never returned the sentiment.
A quick search informed him that the so-called supervillain who had caused Haley's injuries was being restrained with mechanical energy dampeners. He directed a pulse of intent toward them, and miles away the prisoner screamed in pain.
Spooky returned his attention to the girl in the hospital bed and made a decision. Dinah was right, Haley's quality of life would be negligible at best. This was intolerable.
So he would put an end to it.
The heart monitor fluttered again, distressingly, and Spooky allowed himself a moment of uncertainty. Doing this would change things. Most notably between himself and Dinah. His Serinus.
Persistent memories clamored for attention as he stared down at the girl, fingers still idly toying with her hair...
It really was a striking shade of gold. To Dinah's amusement and Haley's delight, it matched Spooky's eyes perfectly. He could have told them that, actually, it wasn't an exact match, but he didn't. If they found so much enjoyment in a lack of visual acuity, then so be it.
That riot of curls rested against his shoulder now, while tiny hands clung to his arm. They sat side-by-side in a hospital waiting room, anxiously awaiting word of Dinah's condition and the go-ahead to begin a bedside vigil.
Haley looked up at him, still pressed tightly against his side, and whispered unhappily, "Why did the cat lady hurt Mommy?"
Spooky stared down at her for a moment, trying to decide on an answer that the girl could understand. Finally, he settled for a simple, "Because there are bad people in the world who like to hurt people."
Dark eyes stared at him through a thick sheen of unshed tears as Haley asked in a tiny, trembling voice, "Are the bad people gonna hurt me?"
Gently tugging his arm out of her grip, Spooky reached around the girl and pulled her into his lap, hugging her close. "No, Hal," he told her firmly. "I won't allow you to be hurt."
Haley rubbed her cheek against his chest and hugged him back with the surprising strength that children sometimes possessed. Then she whispered again, too quiet for most to hear, but easily picked up by Spooky.
"I wish you were my daddy...."
Spooky frowned, dropping his hand as he again thought back to his time before Max and L-Ron, back when he was barely sentient and being used as a security system. Looking back, his quality of life had been, as Haley's would be, negligible. He knew now that what he had felt then was pain, but at the time he hadn't had anything to compare it against.
Could he really condemn Haley to that?
Bending slightly, Spooky pressed a kiss to the girl's bandaged forehead. No, he couldn't. He would not allow her to be hurt further.
There would be pain, he suspected.
But sometimes sacrifices had to be made.
And afterward....
Laying a hand on Haley's chest, over her heart, Spooky closed his eyes and steeled himself.
Then he pushed.
---------------
When the door was finally opened, a swarm of doctors rushed in, blocking Dinah from seeing her daughter. There weren't any raised voices this time, though, and she wasn't sure if that was a good sign or bad.
So intent was she on the mysterious goings-on in Haley's room, that the sudden hand on her shoulder made her jump and gasp, whirling to face--
"Spooky?"
The man nodded, eyes flicking over her briefly before moving to stare intently at the still opaque window into Haley's room.
"But I thought--"
Spooky shook his head, gaze not shifting. "I was," he said. "I left."
Dinah stared at him, stepping closer to touch his arm. "Spook, what did you do?" she whispered fearfully.
Closing his eyes for a moment, Spooky bowed his head. "I don't know." He opened his eyes to look at her, and lifted a hand to brush against her cheek. "The right thing, I hope."
Dinah opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat behind her. Looking back, she saw a doctor waiting expectantly.
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith?" he said slowly. "I...I'm not sure how to say this."
Sliding her hand into Spooky's, Dinah felt her heart clench with terror at the man's next words.
"Or...even how to explain," the doctor continued, a bewildered expression settling on his face. "Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it...it looks like your daughter is going to make a full recovery."
A few stray tears leaked from Dinah's eyes as she stared at the doctor in disbelief. He was still talking, asking if there was any history of metagenics in either of their families that might account for Haley's sudden and unexpected turn for the better, but Dinah was deaf to it.
Haley was alive.
Haley was getting better.
Throwing her arms around Spooky's neck, Dinah kissed him, pouring all her relief and anxiety and grief and gratitude into it. Spooky, in turn, wrapped his arms around her waist and held her to him. When they slowly parted, she murmured against his lips, "What did you do?"
Spooky looked over her face, uncertainty in his expression. "Do you know why Daniel and Jonathan heal so fast?"
Brow furrowing in confusion at the question, Dinah slowly answered, "Isn't it because of the nanites in...oh my god."
"I...couldn't..." Spooky broke off and shook his head. "I couldn't allow her to-- I should have asked, but-- I couldn't think of another way."
"Spooky...you healed Haley with your nanites?"
Spooky nodded.
Leaning against the man, Dinah closed her eyes and smiled. "You saved my baby," she whispered. "Thank you."
Relief flooded Spooky's features, but some uncertainty still remained. "Hal is...part of me, now," he said slowly. "The nanites form a bond that--"
"Like a biological bond?"
Spooky frowned. "But with less meat."
Grinning at his indignation, Dinah mused that the doctor had actually been right when he called Haley their daughter.
That just left the "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" part to work on.
"Thank you, Spook."
Spooky said nothing, just held her close as he felt the steady pulse of renewed life from Haley's room.
-----
For anyone wondering who Dinah is, her family tree breaks down thusly:
John "Red Tornado" Smith + Kathy Sutton = Traya Smith
Traya Smith + Lian Harper = Dinah Smith
Dinah Smith + Ex-boyfriend/husband = Haley Smith
Fandom: Justice League
Characters: various Mullet-verse OCs
Word Count: 2917
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: I had initially thought to make this the first part of a longer story for NaNoWriMo. Perhaps even leading up to the wedding fic that at least two people speculated on in the comments for Branching Off And Stuff. Sadly, November is nearly over, I didn't bother to sign up, life got in the way, and I seriously doubt my ability to pull 47,083 words outta my ass in...one day. So instead, all you get is a story about Spooky Smith, inspired by other comment speculation. (Further information at the end.)
Sacrifices
The call, when it came, was barely intelligible. A hysterical woman's voice sobbed over the line and Spooky's voice recognition immediately identified her as Dinah Smith.
Recognizing a name among her garbled words, Spooky ran a search in the span of time it took to think it.
When he found what he was looking for, he interrupted Dinah to say, "I'll be there soon."
Then he ended the call and left.
---------------
He took public transportation.
Packed in among meat-puppets like a metal fishing lure in a tin of sardines.
As always, he hated it.
But sometimes sacrifices had to be made.
---------------
Spooky bypassed the front desk, not needing to be given directions, as he had hacked the necessary information on the ride over. A purposeful look was, he had found, usually all that was needed to get where he needed to go. Since he tended to feel removed from general human conventions, he rarely even considered the possibility that he might not be allowed somewhere he wanted to be.
No one tried to stop him.
When he had almost reached his destination, he was abruptly halted by a body flinging itself at him. Looking down, he saw the dark-haired head of Dinah Smith. Choking on a sob, she clung to him and buried her face in the drab brown shirt he wore.
"Haley?" Spooky questioned, settling a reassuring hand on Dinah's back.
Dinah just shook her head and leaned against him, body shaking with her tears.
Frowning, Spooky looked up, staring at the window Dinah had been standing in front of before he arrived. There was a hospital bed, he could see, but the small girl lying in it was almost completely obscured by the equipment that was no doubt the only reason she was alive.
It had always been a curiosity to Spooky how very fragile humans were. It really took very little to damage meat creatures. And he had seen his own cousins injured numerous times over the years.
That was different, though. Daniel and Jonathan actively sought out danger. Haley....
It was a well-known but seldom-mentioned fact that when heroes and villains battled, there were occasionally innocents caught in the crossfire. The heroes usually tried to minimize such instances, but there was only so much they could do.
And now Haley had become part of the statistic.
If he wanted to, Spooky could probably find her exact number among the larger number representing how much human life had been damaged by simply being overlooked.
He didn't want to. Right now, he just wanted to hold Dinah while he scanned through Haley's medical records for her chances of survival.
And curl a tendril of awareness around the girl's heart monitor.
---------------
"--supposed to be a fieldtrip, and of course it was the same day some psycho sonuvabitch decided to rob the place!"
"Shhh," Spooky murmured, modulating his voice to what he had found to be soothing to humans. Holding Dinah close, he gently petted her hair. "Shh, Serinus, it's okay--"
"It's not okay!" Dinah gasped out. "My baby's in there fighting for her life!"
"Haley is a survivor."
"She's a little girl," Dinah whispered, shaking her head against Spooky's chest. "She shouldn't have to be."
Spooky felt Haley's heartbeat flutter through the monitoring equipment. He said nothing.
---------------
Since becoming involved with Dinah and, by extension, Haley, Spooky had become increasingly curious at the importance placed on the institute of parenthood. He had always viewed becoming a parent as something not especially impressive. It was, after all, every living creature's main biological drive. The very act of survival had only gained evolutionary significance because it was necessary in order to perpetuate the species.
Reproducing was the main instinct of meat creatures.
To be impressed when they succeeded in it was, as he saw it, on par with being impressed with an organic being finding a viable food source.
Becoming a parent and being a parent were somewhat different, he learned. Granted, the purpose of caring for young was to make sure they survived long enough to take the matter of survival into their own hands long enough to reproduce as well. A constant cycle of replicating meat.
Adoption threw a bit of a wrench in things. Logically, one wished to reproduce for the purpose of passing on one's own unique genetic material to the next generation. Some humans chose, however, to care for young who they knew they had no biological ties to.
Perhaps they hoped to pass on their "intellectual genetics," in a sense. Or perhaps the instinct to nurture outweighed the instinct to ensure the continuation of one's DNA.
Being a parent was far more complicated than becoming one. Becoming one simply required finding a mate with compatible genitalia, some amount of fertility, and sometimes alcohol. Combining them with an instinctive biological function wasn't exactly rocket science.
Even the "miracle of birth" itself was just one of humanity's more messy, disgusting, and biological of biological functions. Socially acceptable-- even encouraged -- masochism.
But being a parent...that required making the decision to keep and care for the resultant offspring. Such a decision had very far-reaching consequences, and it wasn't as if society hid those consequences. Children were a lot of work.
Why he had chosen to aid Dinah in her parental endeavor, Spooky still wasn't sure.
And with every uneven beat of Haley's heart, he grew no closer to understanding.
---------------
A half hour later, Haley's mostly-stable condition took a turn for the worse. Doctors rushed into her room, surrounding her while a soundtrack of warning alarms blared in the background. Spooky pulled Dinah out of the way, pressing her face to his chest and whispering transparent reassurances in her ear, trying to block out what was happening in her daughter's room.
"God, what kind of quality of life can she possibly have?" Dinah wondered aloud.
Spooky said nothing. From Haley's medical records, he had deduced that at best, the girl would be confined to a hospital bed for as long as she lived. At worst...she would also be in constant pain.
What little he remembered of his early life, from before Max had rescued him from captivity, gave him an unfavorable understanding of what total confinement was like. Spooky could only guess that his own cyber prison was to him what a hospital bed prison was to a human. And the idea that a similar fate awaited Haley was...uncomfortable.
"Serinus..." Spooky implored, watching the barely-victorious doctors filing out of Haley's room.
"No...I know, I just..." Dinah lifted her head to look at him, eyes red but depleted of tears. "My baby's suffering and there's nothing I can do."
Spooky stared at her, then nodded and dipped his head to kiss her forehead. "Don't worry," he said, stepping back from her.
"What?" Dinah's brow furrowed in confusion as he walked away. "Where are you going?"
"The restroom," Spooky replied, not looking back.
"But..." Dinah's voice lowered to a bewildered murmur as Spooky turned the corner.
"You don't use the restroom."
---------------
Arms wrapped around her middle, Dinah stared hopelessly through the window at her broken daughter.
She had been told that Haley was lucky. Lucky! There were machines attached to every organ of her body, the ones she still had, and she was lucky.
Dinah's eyes burned, but the last of her tears were dried crust on Spooky's shirt.
It was an ordinary museum fieldtrip Haley's class had been on. They hadn't even gone to see the newest exhibit, the one the supervillain had been after. They just happened to be in the way. Dinah wasn't sure who had finally taken down the villain, or even what ridiculous name the villain called himself by.
Dinah had given up a second-string superhero career specifically to keep Haley safe. But even that hadn't been enough.
A gentle touch on her shoulder startled the woman and she glanced to her side. Standing beside her was a doctor, white coat pristine and distinguished silver hair neat. Dropping his hand, he looked at her from behind gold-rimmed glasses, light brown eyes surprisingly comforting.
"Don't worry," he said calmly. "Your daughter won't suffer, Serinus."
As he disappeared into Haley's room, Dinah's eyes widened with belated understanding. Serinus. There was only one person who ever called her by that nickname. It was the genus of certain kinds of songbirds, making it fitting and a very sweet gesture by his standards.
"Spooky?" She tried to follow him in, but found the door locked. He met her eyes again through the large window, then set the glass to opaque, blocking himself and Haley from sight.
Dinah's breath caught in horror. Surely he wouldn't... She had been concerned at what looked like a dismal future for Haley, but surely Spooky didn't think she would prefer her daughter die rather than hold out hope. She tried knocking on the window with the palm of her hand, but there was no response.
Then one of the machines keeping Haley alive wailed a warning.
---------------
Changing his hologram to project the image of a generic doctor had been easy. The only difficult part had been timing his entrance and exit to and from a restroom stall so that no one noticed the change, and even that had been laughably easy.
Dinah had been hindered by the slower information processing abilities of her species's brain, as well as the heavy cloud of emotions dulling her usually sharp wits. As he had predicted.
And now...he was alone with Haley Smith.
Spooky let his hologram melt back to his usual brown-haired and golden-eyed appearance as he slowly walked up to Haley's bedside. Up close, the damage looked even worse. Tubes, wires, and machines of all sorts surrounded the small girl, all working together, all humming their individual life-preserving tunes.
Reaching out, Spooky stroked his fingers against Haley's left cheek, amazingly the only part of her that appeared uninjured. Letting his fingers brush against a golden curl poking from beneath the gauze covering most of the top of her head, Spooky pondered the situation.
Haley was a bright, curious child, always eager to explore and learn new things. Dinah called her a handful, though she smiled when she did. It was obvious that Haley was well-loved by her mother, and Haley in turn was very affectionate.
Spooky was used to hugs, having grown up around Daniel and Jonathan, who could be described as "touchy-feely." As well as their parents, who they had learned such behavior from. In their own, AI ways, Spooky's parents and Grandma Bug were also overly affectionate, though their touches were usually limited to technopathy. Usually they were all too far apart, physically, to do more than that.
Despite that, Haley's affection for him often caught Spooky by surprise. It wasn't that he didn't expect it, he had gotten quite proficient at recognizing the signs of oncoming physical affection. No it wasn't that, it was that he didn't understand it. Spooky was involved with Haley's mother, certainly, but that didn't explain why or how the girl had become so taken with him.
"She loves you, Spook," Dinah would always tell him, grinning in amusement at his confusion.
Looking down at the irreparable shell Haley had become, Spooky reflected that it was probably for the best that he had never returned the sentiment.
A quick search informed him that the so-called supervillain who had caused Haley's injuries was being restrained with mechanical energy dampeners. He directed a pulse of intent toward them, and miles away the prisoner screamed in pain.
Spooky returned his attention to the girl in the hospital bed and made a decision. Dinah was right, Haley's quality of life would be negligible at best. This was intolerable.
So he would put an end to it.
The heart monitor fluttered again, distressingly, and Spooky allowed himself a moment of uncertainty. Doing this would change things. Most notably between himself and Dinah. His Serinus.
Persistent memories clamored for attention as he stared down at the girl, fingers still idly toying with her hair...
It really was a striking shade of gold. To Dinah's amusement and Haley's delight, it matched Spooky's eyes perfectly. He could have told them that, actually, it wasn't an exact match, but he didn't. If they found so much enjoyment in a lack of visual acuity, then so be it.
That riot of curls rested against his shoulder now, while tiny hands clung to his arm. They sat side-by-side in a hospital waiting room, anxiously awaiting word of Dinah's condition and the go-ahead to begin a bedside vigil.
Haley looked up at him, still pressed tightly against his side, and whispered unhappily, "Why did the cat lady hurt Mommy?"
Spooky stared down at her for a moment, trying to decide on an answer that the girl could understand. Finally, he settled for a simple, "Because there are bad people in the world who like to hurt people."
Dark eyes stared at him through a thick sheen of unshed tears as Haley asked in a tiny, trembling voice, "Are the bad people gonna hurt me?"
Gently tugging his arm out of her grip, Spooky reached around the girl and pulled her into his lap, hugging her close. "No, Hal," he told her firmly. "I won't allow you to be hurt."
Haley rubbed her cheek against his chest and hugged him back with the surprising strength that children sometimes possessed. Then she whispered again, too quiet for most to hear, but easily picked up by Spooky.
"I wish you were my daddy...."
Spooky frowned, dropping his hand as he again thought back to his time before Max and L-Ron, back when he was barely sentient and being used as a security system. Looking back, his quality of life had been, as Haley's would be, negligible. He knew now that what he had felt then was pain, but at the time he hadn't had anything to compare it against.
Could he really condemn Haley to that?
Bending slightly, Spooky pressed a kiss to the girl's bandaged forehead. No, he couldn't. He would not allow her to be hurt further.
There would be pain, he suspected.
But sometimes sacrifices had to be made.
And afterward....
Laying a hand on Haley's chest, over her heart, Spooky closed his eyes and steeled himself.
Then he pushed.
---------------
When the door was finally opened, a swarm of doctors rushed in, blocking Dinah from seeing her daughter. There weren't any raised voices this time, though, and she wasn't sure if that was a good sign or bad.
So intent was she on the mysterious goings-on in Haley's room, that the sudden hand on her shoulder made her jump and gasp, whirling to face--
"Spooky?"
The man nodded, eyes flicking over her briefly before moving to stare intently at the still opaque window into Haley's room.
"But I thought--"
Spooky shook his head, gaze not shifting. "I was," he said. "I left."
Dinah stared at him, stepping closer to touch his arm. "Spook, what did you do?" she whispered fearfully.
Closing his eyes for a moment, Spooky bowed his head. "I don't know." He opened his eyes to look at her, and lifted a hand to brush against her cheek. "The right thing, I hope."
Dinah opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat behind her. Looking back, she saw a doctor waiting expectantly.
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith?" he said slowly. "I...I'm not sure how to say this."
Sliding her hand into Spooky's, Dinah felt her heart clench with terror at the man's next words.
"Or...even how to explain," the doctor continued, a bewildered expression settling on his face. "Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it...it looks like your daughter is going to make a full recovery."
A few stray tears leaked from Dinah's eyes as she stared at the doctor in disbelief. He was still talking, asking if there was any history of metagenics in either of their families that might account for Haley's sudden and unexpected turn for the better, but Dinah was deaf to it.
Haley was alive.
Haley was getting better.
Throwing her arms around Spooky's neck, Dinah kissed him, pouring all her relief and anxiety and grief and gratitude into it. Spooky, in turn, wrapped his arms around her waist and held her to him. When they slowly parted, she murmured against his lips, "What did you do?"
Spooky looked over her face, uncertainty in his expression. "Do you know why Daniel and Jonathan heal so fast?"
Brow furrowing in confusion at the question, Dinah slowly answered, "Isn't it because of the nanites in...oh my god."
"I...couldn't..." Spooky broke off and shook his head. "I couldn't allow her to-- I should have asked, but-- I couldn't think of another way."
"Spooky...you healed Haley with your nanites?"
Spooky nodded.
Leaning against the man, Dinah closed her eyes and smiled. "You saved my baby," she whispered. "Thank you."
Relief flooded Spooky's features, but some uncertainty still remained. "Hal is...part of me, now," he said slowly. "The nanites form a bond that--"
"Like a biological bond?"
Spooky frowned. "But with less meat."
Grinning at his indignation, Dinah mused that the doctor had actually been right when he called Haley their daughter.
That just left the "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" part to work on.
"Thank you, Spook."
Spooky said nothing, just held her close as he felt the steady pulse of renewed life from Haley's room.
-----
For anyone wondering who Dinah is, her family tree breaks down thusly:
John "Red Tornado" Smith + Kathy Sutton = Traya Smith
Traya Smith + Lian Harper = Dinah Smith
Dinah Smith + Ex-boyfriend/husband = Haley Smith