Superheroes

Tired of Waiting

Stiles is quiet when he pads back into his and Derek's rooms, squeezing in between his alpha and father. His dad raises an eyebrow at him, but Stiles shakes his head. That gets him a narrowed-eye glare from Lydia, but he ignores that, too.

He doesn't voice his thoughts until he and Derek are in bed for the night, Stiles staring at the ceiling with his brain running nonstop.

"Barnes told me that in addition to his mind-control, they conditioned his brain to respond to command words. They're still active and could flip him into the Winter Soldier." Derek's arm around his midsection tenses, but the alpha stays quiet. "Do you think you could use your claws to go into his mind and remove them?"

The moment the question leaves his lips, he wants to jerk them back. He's always known that once something is spoken to the universe, it can't be taken back, and this makes him nervous. He wants so badly for this to work for Barnes, but Stiles also knows that sometimes, problems aren't solved so neatly.

Stiles lets Derek think about it, focusing on his breathing in the dark room. Derek rubs his thumb across the patch of skin exposed between Stiles' t-shirt and sleep shorts. He stops right before he speaks.

"Maybe. There are a few possible problems."

Stiles bites his lip. "Which are?"

"His mind is fractured. It's difficult enough going into a mind that is whole and altering it." Stiles winces but gestures for Derek to continue. "His healing may be another problem. I don't know how long my claws would have to be in his neck to work through everything. His healing could kick in and try to force me out before I'm done."

Stiles' body feels heavier, like a weight pushes down on his chest. Derek starts rubbing that patch of skin again in comfort. "I knew it was a long shot. I told him it was, but..."

"I'm not saying it's not possible at all," Derek tells him. "Aren't you the one always talking about how the mind is resilient and its recovery constantly surprises you?"

Fuck, yes, he does say that. But he wasn't talking about magical voodoo at the time. He was speaking about human brains that hadn't been cruising down electric avenue for the better part of a century.

"But I've only done this a handful of times. I wasn't even the one who helped with the Nogitsune."

Stiles winces, because that leads into a point that he really didn't want to bring up but knew that he might need to. "Right. And that was all thanks to Peter coaching Scott and Lydia through it." He angles his head so he can actually look at Derek to judge his expression. "Do we need to loop him into this?"

Derek's eyes are shut but one of his eyebrows raises anyway. The silliness makes Stiles grin. "You willingly want to bring Peter into this clusterfuck?"

"Tell me how you really feel," Stiles remarks dryly.

At this, Derek opens an eye. "I know you want this to work, but that's a loaded gun and you know it."

"Yeah, but Barnes deserves it," Stiles replies softly. "You should have seen his face when he heard about it. Heard about the option. Even if it doesn't work or we can't even attempt it, I want to be able to say I tried everything."

Derek sighs and closes his eyes. "Let me make a proper pro and con list, then we can discuss bringing in Peter."

With that, Stiles finally settles because it's not an outright no. He'll take it.

True to his word, Derek makes a legit list of the pros and cons of working his magical claw weirdness on Barnes to reverse the trigger words. In addition to the ones they discussed, Derek brings up the fact that just trying to get rid of the trigger words could end up triggering Barnes, which would be a disaster.