#literally does nothing other than give him trauma bc i'm a terrible person' BUT YA KNOW WHAT

[posedthreat]

QUINN’S ROLL DURING INFINITY WAR & ENDGAME.   Now, this is sort of going to encapsulate a little bit of everything that Quinn would be going through for that particular time - AND, I’m going to be throwing in things that I think would 100% happen but that I won’t be incorporating Officially bc they’d sort of detract from what other characters were doing. It’s kind of a ‘it’s not official but like if anyone ever wanted to write these things with me I 100% want to’. The easiest way I can think to explain it (and how I explain it to myself in my head), is that all of these things would be, theoretically, if Quinn actually was a part of the MCU, they are things that 1) his character would be involved in and what he would bring to the movies, OR, 2) “writer’s cutting room floor/editing room floor” type things, like ideas that writers might have had but scrapped in favor of going other routes, or cut for time. ANYWAY, LET’S GET ON TO THE PAIN.

We’re literally just going to start at the end of Infinity War, because that’s what REALLY matters here - and, point blank, Quinn both DOES and DOESN’T survive the snap. Sounds weird, but... Let’s go deeper. Quinn would have been in his suit in the battle in Wakanda, and - generally - I write the suit as enhancing his healing all the time, but working better when he’s actually inside of it. So. He’s in pain after the fight, which is weird, because he largely doesn’t feel pain - at least at that point in his life. He’s had the suit long enough that his pain receptors are so fried that it takes a genuinely massive injury in order for him to feel it. He acknowledges this is weird, but going up against Thanos was a massive undertaking that he’s never done before - it was a massive fight overall, so he sort of... writes it off. After all, he doesn’t generally worry about his own wellbeing. Like. At all. SO. He witnesses people being dusted. And the fact that these people are suddenly GONE takes precedent over the fact that he’s... in a moderate amount of pain.

Over the next five years, he... does what he can to help. But the pain after the battle never goes away, and in fact, steadily gets worse. And worse. But, in his own words, ‘everything is fucked’, so... He just does what he can to handle the pain. Takes ibuprofen with breakfast every day, and alcohol with dinner every night, he just... MAKES DO. By the third year of “the blip”, he’s wearing compression clothing underneath his normal clothing because it just seems to help, even if it’s a small amount, and he’s in such a massive amount of pain that he’s willing to do just about anything that helps. 

By the end of that year, he’s beginning to get grey at the edges. And that only lasts a month before he’s literally falling apart, about to disintegrate into ashes just like everyone else did after the snap, and it’s only some quick thinking from Nat that gets him into his suit before he actually falls apart, and he lives in that suit until the “reverse snap” that brings everyone who was dusted back. He’s still in incredible pain, but the suit is enough, at least, to keep him from disappearing completely.

It’s the concept of the universe trying to take the life it was supposed to take in the snap, combined with the suit - being considered a biological life form that ISN’T supposed to disappear by whatever part of the universe was making that call - fighting tooth and nail in order to PREVENT that from happening.

At the end of the Endgame battle, he’s... dealing with a fair amount of trauma, just solely from the constant pain he’d been in before it all. And though he doesn’t hurt anymore, he’s practically terrified to get out of the suit, because there’s a part of him that thinks he’s going to fall to dust. He needs to be coaxed out (by who isn’t really all that important), and when he does, he all but collapses onto the ground, because... He’d been in the suit for... Pretty much an entire year, and he’s not used to being on his own two feet. 

NOW, SOME THINGS THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED AND THAT I’D TOTALLY WRITE OUT IF SOMEONE WANTED TO INDULGE ME... 

You know the whole ‘Hulk putting on the infinity gauntlet’ thing? It’s just like... A concept... Of like maybe... ... Quinn getting out of his suit (bc the suit both is and isn’t a part of him so he couldn’t use it while in it) and literally beginning to fall apart, solely so he can do it because he firmly believes that with the state he’s in, if the power kills him, it’ll be okay - that everyone else being pretty much fully functional and without him is better than one of them being injured on TOP of him, who’s essentially using his suit as a life support system at that point.