And Now for Something Completely Different

Or

Estranged Family Leaves for Interesting Reunions

Word Count: 4247
Fandom: House, M.D./Teen Titans Animated Series
Pairing(s): ABSOLUTELY NONE! :D
Warnings: Pedophilia is bad, Slade! OOC, Crack, Etc.
Summary: After an incident involving a window, Slade Wilson, a.k.a Deathstroke the Terminator, is hospitalized. Where? At Princeton Plainsboro Hospital, of course! Family reunions with an estranged cousin occur.

A/N:

First off, this is complete and utter crack-and also one of my favorite jokes. :D This is based off an inside joke with me and one of my friends, so I'm sorry for any confusion. This is the revised and edited version I had sitting in my computer for quite a while. All it's been doing is burning a hole in my hard drive so I decided to finally put it up.

The Teen Titans universe is some sort of quasi-mix between the comics and the animated series, with Slade having an illicit love affair with Terra and mentions of his wife and son, but also relies heavily on jokes based on Robin's apprenticeship with Slade. With that being said, on with the fic!

Dislclaimer: I don't own anything, so call of the dogs! Jesus, I want to sleep for once!

Falling.

That is the particular sensation that Slade Wilson—better known as Deathstroke the Terminator—felt as he was shoved out of the fifteenth story window. The last thing he remembered seeing was the disgusted sneer on Batman's masked face, and the slightly terrified face of Robin—his Robin, mind you—as he followed Slade's descent in morbid fascination.

He didn't quite know how he had gotten in this present situation. Maybe it had something to do with sexually harassing the leader of the Teen Titans for the umpteenth time that day after following (coughstalking) him all the way to Gotham from Jump, and then to Metropolis from Gotham. But, this time Batman, Robin's foster father and superhero partner, had been just around the corner. In a noble effort to save his sidekick from imminent rape, Batman had pushed Slade out a window.

Or something.

In any case, even though he was falling—and very quickly, at that—that one glimpse of Robin's face made the impact worth it, he thought. The very painful, very bloody impact in which he felt a couple bones break (goddamn armor doesn't do anything when the ground is your opponent) and the unfortunately non-tempered glass from the window gouge into his skin through the spandex blend of his costume, making deep, gory cuts that bled a colossal amount.

But, that one glimpse, that one quick look before he blacked out, just… made it all okay.

Which just told you how bad Slade wanted to get in the Boy Wonder's pants.

"Oh, you're awake. Welcome to the world of the living, Mr. Wilson."

A blonde girl in a lab coat hovered over Deathstroke the Terminator's bedside as she attached a bag full of what only could be painkiller meds on an IV.

Grunting, Slade attempted to sit up, but that attempt was ultimately quashed as a searing pain made itself known at the base of his skull.

"I suggest you don't attempt to sit up, or move for that matter. You cracked your skull open like an egg; everything is going to hurt."

"How long was I out?" Slade managed to croak out, his throat dry from disuse.

The blonde doctor lifted up a page on the yellow clipboard she was holding. Without looking up, she said, "About four hours. That's probably new world record, Mr. Wilson; you should have been out for at least ten, if not permanently. Many people have been a lot less lucky than you." Slade's one eye widened a little. Just how bad had he been injured? The fact that he had even been knocked unconscious spoke volumes.

The blonde doctor continued, "You have major head trauma; ribs five, eight, thirteen, and seventeen have minor hairline fractures; and you have multiple bruised bones. You also have severe skin lacerations from all that broken glass; most of which we stitched up in the ER. It's almost certain that you have a concussion and even slight brain damage, but we need an M.R.I. to confirm and you need to be conscious in order to sign the patient consent and insurance forms."

Slade's eye narrowed, and he vaguely registered that his mask was nowhere to be found, let alone on his face. The doctor, nurse… whatever, never skipped a beat in her laundry list of bodily injuries as she kept examining that stupid yellow clipboard.

Yellow. He had always hated that color.

"I'm sorry; what did you say your name was?" asked Slade, snorting with impatience.

The blonde chick finally looked up from the damn chart. "Allison Cameron, M.D; Senior Attendant of the ER." She walked around the other side of his bed. "It's a miracle that you survived that fall; fifteen stories—it was probably your armor that saved you." She made an indecipherable gesture with her free hand toward Slade's very muscular physique, muttering, "But why you were wearing it leaves me baffled."

"Where am I, exactly?" Hey, at least his throat was sounding better after he used it a couple times.

"Do you want some water or anything? I need to go get a pen for you to sign those forms, so I can get a nurse to get you some water while you wait."

Slade shrugged off the fact that Dr. Cameron—Senior Whatever of the ER—had totally avoided his question and accepted the offer of water. Now that he thought about it, he was thirsty. For revenge, he thought bitterly, thinking of the Caped Crusader that was interminable in his quest to separate Slade from his precious Robin-muffin.

But water would have to do for now.

"Alright. Water would be lovely."

Dr. Cameron nodded and exited the small room Slade's hospital bed and IV was set up in. Slade tried to sit up once more, but the ache in his skull reared its ugly head again, and he was forced to lay back and clench his one good eye shut in order to will the soreness away.

Through the haze of the pain in his head and his anger at the present situation Slade had yet to extricate himself from, he faintly heard the click of a door being opened and shut, and the rustle of blinds. As a man always on the run from something, Slade's senses were always hyperaware of everything, and not even mind-numbing pain could distract him from the tell-tale sound of a lock being clicked into place.

Despite the aching discomfort in the bottom of his skull, Slade tensed himself to spring from the bed and brutally maul whatever intruder had foolishly entered the small Intensive Care Unit that the now-unmasked supervillain currently resided in.

Footsteps started toward his bedside. They came in an odd pattern, though—a sort of, tap-THUMP, tap-THUMP, tap-THUMP. It was almost as if the man (or woman) walked with a limp and had a crutch of some kind. They continued toward his bedside for a couple more paces, but then suddenly retreated and turned toward the direction of the corner of the room Slade remembered having a chair. Cautiously, Deathstroke opened his eye, prepared to see any of his arch nemeses prepared to take advantage of his present state of weakness.

What he did not expect to see was a man he was certain he had never seen before—around or in his mid-thirties, give or take—lounging in the leather waiting chair that was set up in the far right corner of the room, swinging an oak colored cane around his head in lazy circles as if he was astoundingly bored and had nothing better to do than to play with it.

And the blinds were closed, of course. That explained the rustling.

Mildly surprised, Slade blinked owlishly (or as owlishly as a terrifying one-eyed man could accomplish) at the man. Then, suddenly irritated at the interruption of his solitude, demanded, "Can I help you?"

The guy paused in his activities with the cane and addressed Slade as if he had just noticed him. The guy with the cane shrugged, and said, "Not really, unless you can make annoying baby-obsessed (though admittedly very sexy, if not overly bitchy) bosses disappear in a poof of glitter and rainbow colored smoke." His tone was dry, with touches of sarcasm.

Slade glared icily at the man, quite a feat for someone with one eye. "Are you a doctor?" he persisted, eyeing the doe brown sport coat and denim jeans that outfitted the stranger in the chair.

The man just granted Slade with a deadpan stare. "No. I'm you're fairy godmother, and this is all a dream," he said with dead seriousness.

Slade didn't find the joke funny. "You don't look like a doctor."

"Well, you look like a dead Egyptian pirate-pharaoh," the man scoffed, raising an eyebrow at Slade's eyepatch.

Slade looked down and noticed for the first time that he was almost wrapped head to toe in surgical gauze, and that he did look like a mummy made of gauze, band-aids, and body tape. Slade started to shrug his shoulders, but remembered the pain that action had elicited the first time, and quite frankly, Slade really wasn't in the mood to feel that particular sensation right now, even if his healing ability should be numbing the pain right now. Instead, he opted for a well said, "Touché."

The stranger leaned forward and stated, "House."

Slade raised an eyebrow. "What about a house?"

"House," the man stated again, continuing, "While that is also a common noun, it is also my name. However, you may only refer to me the Almighty Destroyer of Worlds and Saver of Many Lives Your Majesty Doctor House, Head of Diagnostics Department. Or that's what most people call me, anyway."

"I'll just stick with Doctor House," Slade ground out, not really in the mood for games at this moment.

Muffled cursing could be heard from the other side of the sliding glass door as somebody rattled it in an attempt to get it open. Slade gave House a pointed look that said, 'are you gonna get that?'

Getting up without much difficulty, House limped to where the door should be and turned the slats of the slightly closed blinds in order to peer out of them. He did so for about half a second before he limped back to the chair. Slade inclined his head slightly.

"Psychotic ex-girlfriend," was all House gave for explanation.

There was only about two more minutes of rattling before a lock clicked, and the blonde Dr. Cameron made reappeared in the ICU room. Looking slightly frazzled and holding a half-full cup of water (the other half of which had seemed to make it onto the front of her scrubs) she unleashed a spine tingling glare upon Dr. House, which was utterly deflected by his cool indifference.

"If I had known there was going to be a wet T-shirt party in the ICU today, I would've brought a hose and my nephew's blow-up kiddy pool," House said while staring at the water stain that had bloomed down the front of Cameron's pink scrubs. Slade saw Cameron flush with rage, grinding out through clenched teeth, "GET. OUT."

House put up his hands in a mock sign of surrender. "Woah, no need to unleash the claws there," he said. Slade sighed.

Cameron slammed the half-full glass of water down on the table on Slade's bedside, making the liquid slosh up the sides of the cup and spill out a little over the side. Slade grimaced; at this rate, there would be no water left to drink if this kept up. "Go hide from Cuddy somewhere else," she said as calmly as she possibly could, which in retrospect wasn't very calm, "I'm with a patient."

Slade kept a straight face despite his irritation towards being referred to in the third person. House just settled back down into the leather waiting chair in the corner. "By all means," he said, making a commencement gesture with his cane, "just pretend I'm not here."

Dr. Cameron gave a haggard sigh as she prepared to accomplish the excruciatingly difficult task of attempting to ignore House. She turned to Slade, the annoying yellow clipboard in hand, and stated, "We need to know the name of your closest living relative… for insurance purposes." The last part statement seemed to be tacked on as an afterthought.

She turned her head slightly to get a quick peek of House, and miraculously enough, he was simply staring into space, back to twirling his cane. Suddenly having more confidence than she ever thought possible, she turned back to her patient, awaiting his answer.

Slade stared into space for a moment, thinking about whose name he should give them. His wife hated his guts, Grant was dead, Rose was…somewhere, and Joseph was… well… probably Joseph-ing off on a mountaintop with a guitar. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he replied: "I have a cousin named James. He's a doctor somewhere in New Jersey." It wasn't a lie, actually. Except the last time he had seen James was when he had been a teenager and Slade had been…younger. Plus that business with the incident…

Dr. Cameron scribbled something down on her obnoxious yellow clipboard. "Same last name?" she asked. Slade nodded.

House, who at this point had surprisingly said nothing, was running the name over in his head. He had seen the name of the patient on the chart on his bed—Slade Wilson. What kind of a name was Slade anyway? But, if this cousin's name was James, and they had the same last name, wouldn't this cousin's name be…?

No.

No.

It had to be a coincidence.

It had to be.

House examined the patient thoroughly. It had to be a coincidence. Really. They looked nothing alike. But, upon closer inspection….

Sometimes House hated his over-attention to detail. The shape of the face, slope of the nose….

There was only one way to find out.

Slade glanced over at House, only to see him glaring into space as the cogs and gears turned and worked in his head. Slade was on automatic as he answered the blonde doctor's questions about his insurance carrier, whether he's ever had an M.R.I. before, etcetera, etcetera. His mind wandered, however, watching the rather brusque doctor out of the corner of his eye. He was startled when House suddenly got up and limped out of the room, his cane thumping on the linoleum.

Not two minutes later did House's gravelly voice ring out over the P.A. system.

"PAGING DOCTOR JAMES WILSON OF THE ONCOLOGY DEPARTMENT; AGAIN, PAGING JIMMY WILSON. GET YOUR BUTT DOWN TO THE ICU, STAT."

Slade was confused to say the least, as was Cameron. But, since Slade had a bad-ass reputation to uphold, he kept a straight face as Cameron paused in her questioning in order to wait for House to return to the ICU. Soon enough, he limped into the small glass room and again settled himself in the chair.

Dr. Cameron gave House a strange look. "What was that about?"

House gave her an equally abnormal glance. "I'm proving something to myself."

They waited in silence for a few minutes, but before long, a rather winded looking Wilson appeared at the sliding glass door. "What is it, House? I don't have all day," he said, glaring slightly at his so-called best friend. House just pointed to Slade who was still lying inert on the bed. "Proving a point to myself," was all the explanation he gave.

Slade stared at Wilson. Wilson stared at Slade. Slade's eye widened a fraction. Wilson visibly paled. House thoroughly examined the two, doing a thorough mental analysis of both parties. After about a minute, he concluded that Wilson was just a younger, pudgier, pastier, less-terrifying version of this 'Slade' Wilson.

Wilson whirled around and grit out, "House, can I speak to you for a moment?"

House shrugged, a smug look on his lean face. "Sure; shoot."

Wilson's eyes narrowed. "In private."

House looked up at Cameron and Slade and made a motion with his cane. "Hey, both of you, plug your ears—apparently Jimmy wants to tell his best buddy a secret."

"Outside," Wilson hissed.

House adopted a mock look that said, 'Oh!' He nodded. The doctor turned to the other occupants of the room. "Hey, maybe if you press up against the glass, you can still be able to hear us!" He was barely finished with his sentence when Wilson dragged House's miserable carcass out of the door, Wilson choosing to say nothing.

When the door was firmly shut behind them, Wilson turned to House with deliberate slowness, articulating, "House. What is he doing here?"

House nodded sagely. "So he is your cousin."

Wilson grimaced. "Of course he is, you moron. His son Grant and I used to be best friends, and we used to visit each other a lot. My god, he hasn't aged a day… He's got to be at least sixty by now—"

"Why don't you ever talk about him?" inquired House, cutting poor Wilson off.

"Because he's freaking psychotic, that's why!" Wilson exclaimed, thankful for the three inches of glass that separated them from his psycho cousin. "Why is he here?"

"Somebody pushed him out a window."

Wilson chuckled darkly. "Serves him right."

House was genuinely taken aback. Something… was amiss with Wilson when it came to his cousin. "Don't ever laugh like that again, okay?" House asked, slightly afraid of this new dark Wilson that was emerging.

Wilson regained his composure. "Sorry. Something is always… wrong with me when I'm around him."

House studied Wilson for a second, and without a word went to the door. Opening it, he called, "Dr. Cameron, may I speak to you for a minute?"

Cameron, not used to House being this polite, was mystified for a moment, and stupidly did not foresee any trickery that might be involved. She strutted to the door, but before she could say a word, House had roughly pulled her out by the lapel of her coat, and brusquely shoved Wilson into the room. House quickly closed and locked the sliding door from the outside as Wilson got over the shock of being pushed. After a second, Wilson realized that he was in a room, alone, with his psychotic cousin Slade, and desperately tried the inside lock. It was no use. House had jammed it while no one was looking.

Oh God.

Meanwhile, on the outside of the small ICU, Cameron was in shock.

"What the hell did you do that for?" she shrieked, flinging the yellow clipboard to an indiscriminate corner of the room, "I was with a patient, goddammit! What's the point of locking Wilson in with him? I doubt it's medically relevant!" Cameron's screeches could be heard through the whole ground floor.

However, House—ever the king of cool—said, "I'm conducting a social experiment." He limped away a little, tugging Cameron by the sleeve along with him. "Leave them be for a while, I want to see what happens."

Cameron sat dumbly for a few minutes, conceding in being pulled along for the time being. But, once she got her bearings…

"Experiment? An experiment? The guy just got thrown out of a window, and for all we know he's suffered massive brain injury, and you feel the need in your boredom to conduct some sort of experiment? Ugh! Sometimes I wonder why I quit, but its times like these when—"

"Cameron?"

"What?"

"Shut up."

Meanwhile, Wilson was on the verge of panic.

Slade. One of the more prominent role models in his life. But… that last time… oh no. Swear to God, no way he was ever being put in that situation again. He was pressed up against the far wall, his hand still jiggling the lock in hopes of some miracle would occur and it would just pop open. Frankly, he looked like a cornered animal.

Or, at least that's what he felt like.

After a few minutes, he began to relax a bit. What could Slade possibly do with what seemed to be an almost full body cast on?

….

On second thought, he'd rather not think about that.

Wilson inched to the chair in the far corner of the room.

Pin drop silence.

They stared at each other. Wilson warily beheld the seemingly docile Slade propped up on the sterile white pillows as he inched even closer to the chair. He did not take his eyes even once off of his mutilated cousin, not even when he painfully bumped his shin on the corner of the ottoman that accompanied the lounge. Easing himself into the chair, Wilson kept staring at Slade until the tension was almost tangible.

Silence rang in both of their ears before Slade cleared his throat and said, "So."

Wilson replied with an exponentially weaker, "So."

"I'm sorry," Slade said, "about that last time. You know how I get around those women…"

Wilson scoffed. "Yeah, not really. Especially when you decapitated Aunt Miriam at that family reunion! God Slade, I still go to therapy!"

"You know I have anger issues. Plus, everybody hated that woman."

"Not really."

There was a pregnant pause, and the atmosphere of the room seemed marginally more relaxed, but not really. "So," Wilson finally said after a while, "How's Joseph?"

"…Mute," replied Slade, a small frown on his face. "Somebody sliced his neck open. Haven't talked to him (no pun intended) in years, but he might be going hippie on us."

Silence.

"Ah… How's, uh, Adeline…?" Wilson asked again, trying his hardest to relieve the tension and make small talk.

"Divorced, after she shot me. Why do you think I wear the eye patch?"

It was Wilson's turn to shrink back. "Uh, fashion statement? You were always like that…"

Slade snorted.

"How's… who was it, Terra?"

"A rock."

Wilson grimaced. He didn't even want to ask.

Awkward silence filled the room again, and Wilson could almost hear House's voice in his head. "Bonding time! Bonding time!" he sang in that mocking voice of his. Wilson snorted. Yeah. Like that was going to work.

"Oh. How's Robin doing? That's what you said his name was, right?"

Slade sighed. "Being difficult as ever," he replied curtly.

Silence. Oh.

After a while, Slade asked, "So… how's Amber?"

Wilson flinched a bit. "D…dead," he ground out. He looked up, and found that Slade looked shockingly sympathetic.

"Oh, okay. I had always liked that girl. I would have probably recruited her as an apprentice if she was a bit… younger. And had male genitalia."

Wilson leaned back into the plush surface of the lounge, willing his tensed muscles to relax. A more comfortable silence permeated the room now, and it was many minutes before either one of them said anything else.

Doctor Gregory House was stretched out in one of the few booths in the lower-level cafeteria, munching on a toasted bagel and staring into space. He barely registered the sound of a body sliding into the seat across from him, setting down a plate of the day's ration of chocolate cake. House swallowed his mouthful of toasted bagel.

"So, I take it went well?"

Wilson shoved a bite of chocolate pastry into his mouth, chewing it with more vigor than was really necessary. He mumbled something incoherently through his cake.

House's upper lip curled. "It's impolite to talk with your mouth full, you know."

"He injured a nurse," Wilson muttered.

House cocked an ear toward his friend, saying louder than required, "What? I couldn't hear you!"

"He injured a nurse!" Wilson said, louder this time.

House leaned forward even more. "I still can't hear you!"

Wilson glared into his pastry some more, positively fuming, before boiling over and exploding. "He freaking threw a vase at my head! Just because I said he was graying a little, he went and started throwing whatever he could get his hands on at me! Doesn't he realize that his whole head and goatee is gray? Ugh, he just makes me furious!" The whole room was looking at him now, but at this point, Wilson didn't really care.

House cocked an eyebrow. "How did a nurse come in the middle of this, pray tell?"

Wilson slumped back into his seat, sighing. "She came in to change Slade's meds," he muttered, defeated, "A shard of the vase cut her when she unlocked the door. She needed twenty four stitches."

House nodded, not really interested anymore. "Did you bond by any chance?"

Wilson snorted. "No," he said.

There was silence for a moment, and Wilson reflected on his visit with his psychotic, estranged cousin. After that first initial chat with Slade, James thought maybe, just maybe, they had bonded just the slightest bit. A miniscule amount.

House looked at his friend from out of the corner of his eye. "Are you sure about that?"

Wilson leant on his hand, inadvertently brushing against the painful bruise on his temple that came from one of the blunter shards of vase that had clipped him. He winced out an answer. "I'm positive."

House got up, finishing the rest of his bagel. "Well, you're boring. See ya."

Wilson scowled, forking another piece of cake into his open mouth. What a day. He shoveled in chocolate pastry in with a vengeance.

"Hey."

Wilson looked up, pausing in his attack on the innocent chocolate cake. Cameron stood at the end of the table, her yellow clipboard again tucked securely under her arm. She dropped a small piece of folded paper on the end of his table.

"From your friend upstairs."

Wilson quietly thanked her, and she gave a small smile, walking away to go resume her doctoral duties. Wilson gathered the slip of paper with a sigh, unfolding it and reading its contents.

Dear Jim,

Sorry about the vase. I'll pay for that next time I get one of my henchmen to rob Jump City Nat'l Bank. Thanks for the bonding time; I thought we really hit it off.

With love, forever and always,

Slade (Deathstroke The Terminator)

Resting his head on the table, Wilson sighed for the umpteenth time that hour. He snorted. With a dry chuckle, he folded up the note and slipped it into his breast pocket. Finishing the rest of his cake, he leaned back into the padded surface of the seat he was in, once again rubbing the bump on the side of his head.

Bonding time, indeed.

End.