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"Brock, could you be a dear and heat up another bottle? Dean won't stop crying."
This isn't his job, Brock thinks, for probably the 50th time this month. He's supposed to be a globetrotting secret agent, an infiltrator, an assassin. A skilled, trained hand of the government, working behind the scenes. Not the bodyguard to some half-wit scientist, nor the babysitter for his two infants.
And yet, thanks to the botched mission with Quizboy, this is the hand he's been dealt. Standing in the kitchen at nearly midnight, next to his "assignment" and the bawling child in his arms, begrudgingly warming a bottle of formula under the faucet.
"Thank you," Dr. Venture says, almost but not quite curtly enough to hide the genuine relief in his tired voice. "We'll be in the nursery. I need to check on Hank."
He watches them go without saying a word, as usual, watches the scientist futilely whispering and cooing to his crying infant.
The boys are the hardest part of this damn job, because he has no idea how to feel about them. It's weird, watching them squirm around, little growing humans too stupid to accomplish anything. He's never had any interest in kids, so he tries to keep his distance.
Unfortunately for him, Dr. Venture had soon learned that being a bodyguard also meant being a spare pair of hands that he could order around, within reason. So, he ends up doing a lot of little chores involving them anyway.
When he enters the room, he finds the man sitting in the corner, bouncing Dean on his knee to try and calm him down. He eagerly takes the bottle, which Dean then latches onto like a lifeline, finally quieting the soft crying that had been the backdrop to their household for the last 20 or so minutes.
"Tuck Hank in, will you?"
He almost tells him to do it his damn self, but something about the fatigue in the man's face makes Brock decide against it. So he leans over the edge of the crib without complaint, awkwardly repositioning the blankets around the small bundle of limbs that is Hank.
Brock doesn't get the appeal of kids at all. It's been nothing but a headache and lost sleep, and he's pretty sure his new boss has aged 5 years in the span of the two months he's been working for him, judging by the deep wrinkles in his face and his increasingly thinning hair. They've gone through box after box of diapers, had a few near-death scares, and learned a lot of things that they don't teach you in school about the unpleasant realities of baby anatomy.
Sure, they're cute, in some way. Reminds him of how cute kittens are, right before they turn into claws and cat piss on your carpet—
He freezes.
A tiny, pale hand has somehow managed to grasp his pinky, right as he was drawing his arms out of the crib, curious eyes staring up at him. The fingers are impossibly small, chubby little sausages with barely any strength behind them.
"Ba," Hank offers helpfully, and for the first time, it really registers in Brock's brain that this is a small person, not some sort of particularly lifelike doll. Fragile all the same, a realization that is frightening on some level — he considers that he has more power in his hand alone than Hank has in his entire body.
"Oh," Dr. Venture mumbles tiredly, "that's cute. He likes you."
He tugs the digit free with ease and heads out without saying goodnight, trying to keep the corner of his lips from twitching.
—
The boys grow, and so too does his familiarity with the Venture family. Nonetheless, he holds himself at arm's length — he's not enough of an amateur to make the mistake of getting attached, one of the first things they warn you about in the academy.
He tries to ignore the shortcomings in Doc's parenting, at first. In the beginning, he'd taken it as the understandable failings of a first-time father — an emotionally callous comment here, a forgotten promise there. But soon enough, they begin to pile up, piecing together like a quilt of subtle emotional neglect.
And it's not his job. At all. It's not even remotely his job. Still, when a four-year-old Dean comes out of his room crying about a nightmare and Doc tells him he's busy without even looking up, it itches at him. Despite the distance he'd tried to maintain, Brock genuinely feels bad.
After a moment of internal debate, he sneaks into the boys' bedroom, careful not to wake Hank — Dean is still sniffling, though he's audibly trying to be quiet about it. He flicks on the kid's bedside lamp, settling on a stool that is far too small for him, and it doesn't take long for a face smudged with tears and freckles to pop out from under the blanket.
Dean's expression is something like fear and apprehension, and for the first time, he actually feels guilty about staying away from the boys. He hadn't really thought about how his stony facade could come off as terrifying to a child.
(He feels like it wouldn't have bothered him before. Why does it now?)
"Hey," Brock utters quietly, awkwardly. His eyes flicker over to the ample supply of picture books that Dean has accumulated. Dean's a quick learner, but the words have largely been beyond him. He supposes that's normal, for a four-year-old. Maybe? He doesn't actually know what's normal for any of this.
The kid doesn't reply. Just stares at him with uneasy eyes.
He sighs, grabbing one of the titles he recognizes as a book from his own childhood. "You want a bedtime story?"
Something about the way Dean perks up, then, fear all but disappearing, leaves a warm feeling growing in Brock's chest.
And he tells himself it's just the one time. Just covering a shift for Doc's shitty parenting, that's all.
A year or two later, "just one time" has become once a week.
—
The boys are working on some rare art project in the kitchen one day, not usually permitted access to messy paints. Brock watches them quietly, watches the way Dean clumsily paints a green "#1 DAD" on the coffee mug but the 1 is backwards, and feels something complicated stirring in him.
It feels — a little bit like pride. Like affection. And who wouldn't be proud? He's seen these boys grow from crawling shit machines into six year olds, with personalities and interests all their own. It's a miracle of life, and all that crap. But he's still not attached. Sure, he'd be a little sad to leave, now. But it's just a job.
"Don't make too much of a mess," Rusty says sternly, despite the old towels laid across the kitchen table to prevent just that. "I don't want to spend all day getting paint stains out of those clothes."
Hank is giving him a weird look inbetween painting, which he's mostly trying to ignore. The boy has been acting strange around him, and he's starting to think that he's become the kid's idol of the week, which feels somewhere between disconcerting and a little flattering. Killer secret agents probably shouldn't be some kid's idol.
Brock thinks about the fact that he actually hasn't had to kill anyone in front of the boys, yet. Sure, he's had to kill plenty of men for Doc's sake, but he always finds a way to not do it in front of them. He won't be able to keep that up forever.
Doc's guarded complaints about his own violent upbringing come to mind, the scars from every kidnapping, every 'adventure'. What does it do to a child to see someone die in front of them?
He's so caught up in the question of at what age is it okay for a child to watch you kill somebody that he almost doesn't notice Hank walking up to him, hands behind his back.
"Uh— hey," Brock grunts, crouching down to be more on the kid's eye level. "What's up?"
"I made this for you!" Hank says bluntly, thrusting a ceramic mug into his hands. It's identical to his brother's — Hank isn't much for creativity yet, he's found — except that the green letters, instead, spell out "#2 DAD". One of the Ds is lowercase, the 2 a little lopsided, but it's legible.
He's grinning before he can even help it, carefully taking the mug without smearing the green paint, the unglazed texture rough against his fingers. Hank is beaming at his apparent approval, and it's enough that Brock can't resist pulling him into a hug.
"You did good, kid," he says quietly, feeling the tiny arms struggling to wrap around even half of his broad torso in return.
"Daaaad! I wanna make something for Brock too!" Dean shouts from the table, visibly jealous of the attention his brother is getting.
Brock grins even wider. Alright, yeah. He's gotten a little attached.
—
The boys are dead.
The world has gone slightly askew, colors running pale. He can hardly stand to look at the bloodied jet engine of the X-1.
It's his fault— their fault. If he hadn't left them — if he hadn't —
"Calm down," Rusty barks, even if he's visibly shaken, himself. "We have— a contingency plan. We planned for this. We—"
Brock punches the wall of the hangar a few inches above Doc's head with a trembling hand, hard enough to leave a dent in the metal, gritting his teeth. "You don't even know if it'll fucking work, Doc! We should've been more careful!"
"Of course it'll work," Rusty snaps back, simultaneously shrinking backwards at the show of violence. "I-I'm a scientist. That's what we do. We perfected this."
Who the hell is 'we'? Brock thinks, but he leans away from him, slowly letting his fists unclench a little. He takes a deep breath. Tries to ground himself, to relax, to think of anything but the blood stains behind him.
"How long will it take?" He says, finally.
Rusty adjusts his glasses, steeling himself. Brock notices he's avoiding looking at the X-1, too. "Not long at all."
'Not long at all' turns out to be a few days, perhaps some of the longest days of Brock's life. The house feels achingly quiet: every breakfast, lunch and dinner is held in silence and with two empty seats. There is an unspoken, desperate hope between the two of them.
He'd known this was possible from the second he'd been introduced to the cloning lab. But at the same time, he'd thought — hoped — it would never come to this.
"Your dad clone you, too?" Brock asks quietly over dinner, less out of curiosity and more to reassure himself that this kind of thing isn't a regular occurrence with a superscience lifestyle.
Doc looks briefly surprised at him making small talk, glancing up from his spaghetti, but he quickly recovers. "Not that I'm aware of."
"Maybe this'll be the only time we have to do this."
The scientist twirls his fork anxiously, looking away with a forlorn expression that's surprisingly unguarded. "Let's hope."
—
The boys are alive.
It's the fourth time they've been brought back, and sickeningly enough, he finds it's actually getting easier. Death loses some of its gravity when you can just return someone from the grave like it's nothing.
But every time, it feels like they've lost something new. Just small things, here and there — that scar on Dean's forehead from running into a cupboard, Hank's memory of dressing up as a vampire for Halloween one year, the heart-shaped birthmark on Dean's ankle.
Their biology, too, is subtly different from clone to clone, though it can be hard to tell apart from the effects of puberty. Hank walks a little straighter after the third time. Dean's face is thinner, his bone structure a little neater. The first Hank had a characteristic blotch on his left iris that Brock had always been fond of.
Brock's fondness doesn't wane, but it feels sad, somehow. He wonders what else they've lost. But they're still Hank and Dean, at the heart of it, and he's long since given up on keeping his distance.
So every time the boys come back, the first thing he does is greet both of them with a rare hug.
Life goes on.
—
Over half a decade and over half a dozen deaths later, Brock sits in the OSI cafeteria and drinks his coffee out of a faded mug with letters that spell out "#2 DAD", one of the Ds lowercase with the 2 a little lopsided. He palpably feels the distance from his family. After SPHINX, he'd told himself, he was going to go home. After SPHINX.
But everything in the OSI feels so much — larger, more important, now that he's back. Can he really justify abandoning important missions, like going after the Investors or picking off the Guild's renegades, to play house with a family that hardly ever gets arched by anyone other than the Monarch?
They have a capable bodyguard, he tells himself, even if he hardly thinks of Sergeant Hatred as 'capable.' Doc barely goes anywhere. They don't need me anymore.
But the guilt simmers, nonetheless. He figures out that it's not being a bodyguard that he's missing — it's being a Venture.
He starts to doubt himself, at first. Maybe they don't need him, maybe he's no longer family to them. But then he remembers the near-two decades he spent there: the bedtime stories, the rare hugs, teaching Dean to read and Hank how to play guitar. He remembers the first time Hank saw him after joining SPHINX, and the hope in his eyes.
They likely miss him about as much as he misses them. Even Doc probably misses his presence, if only a little.
So he clears his schedule. No missions for the next week. And that evening, sitting in his bunk, he buzzes Doc on his communicator watch.
"Hey. You think I could come visit this weekend?"