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The 500 Word Ficlet Challenge

Basic premise: You toss me a challenge/prompt/thought, and I try to meet it in under 500 words.

Let the buyer beware: I cannot promise good writing, swift writing, clever writing, or that I will even answer your prompt. Especially not anonymous prompts.

Instructions: One idea per person, please.

If you choose to give me a prompt, leave a comment here on the rules chapter. You may select from these fandoms:

1. Marvel: Deadpool

• Either of the movies (Deadpool or X-men Origins), Marvel 616 or similar, any AU that can be reasonably described.
• Gen or any pairing except Spideypool. I mean, you can ASK for Spideypool, but the chances it will be answered are not good. (Spideypool requests will have better luck in the 5+ AU group)

2. Marvel: Cable

• Marvel 616 or similar, any AU that can be reasonably described. The only caveat for Cable is that I haven't read anything except Cable & Deadpool, excerpts from Messiah War, his time in New Mutants, and X-Force #1-30. So there is a body of work related to him that I simply haven't read yet.
• Gen or any pairing that fits in with the reading mentioned above.

3. Transformers

• All continuities except the latest cartoon (Robots in Disguise and after), the most recent IDW comics (post Titans), and the Unicron Trilogy. I will consider any AU, provided it can be reasonably described and applies to giant robots. I will not write any AU that makes them not giant robots (Ex: Human!AU, Dragon!AU, etc). Them being giant transforming robots is the whole point.
• I've RPed a nigh upon shocking number of Transformers, so I'm willing to take most of them on for 500 words or less. I have RPed Optimus Prime and Prowl the most, though.
• It can be gen or any pairing that does not include Overlord or the DJD (because I hate them).

You can also request something you'd like to see in an ongoing work.
Example: Suicide in Cablepool Summer Camp AU

Or something you'd like to see in a completed work.
Example: Scott Summers in Honeysuckle.

5+ AU

Send me an AU in the comments below and I’ll give you 5+ thoughts/stuff about it.

So for Deadpool, Cable, or Transformers ... Go!

If you choose to request for this challenge, then leave me a comment on this first chapter and tag it "5+".

Chapter Text

Nathan didn't look up when Wade burst dramatically through his office door. He counted himself lucky that Wade didn't just swing through the windows on a rope. "You cheat! You cad! I trusted you! Trusted you with my heart!"

"The molecular fabrication modules are operational," Nathan said calmly, "which you would know if you came through the lobby."

"Final-fucking-ly," Wade threw his hands up in the air, "I thought I would starve!"

"You can't starve."

"That's not the point!" Wade stalked over and slapped his hands down on Nathan's desk, "and stop distracting me! I came here for a reason!"

"I was born this pretty, Wade, it can't be helped." Nathan finished signing his name before he leaned back in his chair.

"You, that's, argh, true, but not why I'm here!"

Nathan lifted an eyebrow, amused, "Then why are you here?"

"How dare you sully the good name of Providence! My reputation lies in tatters! No one is going to respect me in the morning after this!"

Wade fished in the waistband of his shorts for a piece of paper, which he unfolded and shoved into Nathan's face.

Nathan frowned at the copy of his email response to the German Chancellor. "And?"

"How dare you cheat on me with Google Translate!" Wade braced his hands on the desk as he leaned in, "I thought we were tight, Nate! I thought that you respected me! Instead you slip into that hussy site in the dark of night and philander with her!"

"How did you get a copy of this?" Nathan asked calmly, "And how would you know I've used Google Translate?"

"Because I stalk you. Obviously," Wade rolled his eyes, "and Weasel set up your internet connection ...and then shamed me with this email when I called him this morning. He knows how unfaithful you are! How could you, Nate!?"

"Weasel speaks German?"

"Don't change the subject!" Wade leaned even farther forward, getting nose to nose, "I speak German! Why didn't you ask me?!"

"You speak French."

"Yes, but I also speak German! And speaking of French! What travesty did you type in there?! 'Jarey mete de peer tut fortune metay vee jet de suvre comme su monseir justcot de luni ver'?"

"Nothing," Nathan muttered, despite the heat that suddenly threatened to color his cheeks as he glanced away, "it was just nonsense."

"If someone's been making fun of your mom's consumption of sugar ... they've been doing it wrong."

"Wade, I was typing in what you said the night before," Nathan said slowly, "so if you've been insulting my mother ... you've been doing it wrong."

"I never insulted ... your ... mother ... " Wade's voice faded into silence. Nathan switched his focus back to Wade and watched with a certain dawning glee as his pale eyes skittered around the office as he looked for exits.

"What did you say, then?"

"Nothing!" Wade said, sounding strangled.

Nathan leaned forward and purred, "Wade ... "

"I gotta go! The replicators are offline!"

"Wade!"

Chapter Text

Prowl did not anticipate finding any native autonomous mechanical life forms on this planet, where the dominant life forms were tool using organics. So the cry for aid was a surprise.

Long before this planet had sentient life, Prowl was called from the Well of Sparks to protect and serve. Whatever the war has made of him, however it has warped his coding, it can't destroy his base function. Some things can't be changed. Prowl was sparked an enforcer and whatever else he might be now, he will always also be this.

Nathan Summers woke slowly and stayed still. He was being moved -- felt like a car.

"You are safe, Cable of Providence. I will not harm you." The voice was synthetic, piped through speakers. "We will arrive at the medic facility of Night Nurse in approximately eight minutes."

If they already knew he was awake, there was no value in pretending sleep. Nathan opened his eyes. He was lying in the back seat of a car. There were seat belts strapping him in, like he was strapped to a gurney. They loosened on their own when he made an attempt to rise and strapped themselves cross body when he was upright.

"Who are you?" When Nathan looked forward, he could tell he was in the back of ... a police car? There was glass separating him from the driver, but the driver seat was empty. The road passed by through the windows. "What are you?" he corrected.

"I am Prowl of Praxus, an autonomous mechanical life form from the planet Cybertron. I answered your symbiont's distress call."

"Me, boss," Belle chirped, but it was a very muted chirp, hushed. A mouse taking care in the shadow of an owl.

"You were damaged and require repair," the voice continued as if Belle had not spoken.

Nathan gingerly touched his side, where he remembered taking a blow. There was a spongy foam like composite over the wound site.

"You were leaking. This adhesive is used to seal line ruptures and suppress internal fires. It is only mildly toxic to organics. Your symbiont has been provided the formula that will aid in detox."

"Thank you." That was a somewhat alarming, but blood loss would kill Nathan and a toxin only might. As a field patch, it was sufficient. "Why would you take the form of a car?"

"My alt is a ground pursuit vehicle primarily commissioned for law enforcement. This form is analogous."

It could turn into something other than a car, which was good to know. "How long have you been on Earth?" Nathan asked, because Providence had been gone for years.

"Five years," the car answered and then expanded, deducing what Nathan would ask next, "The Phalanx brought this planet to my attention. Your infonet briefly entertained me, but the political movement you fostered was surprisingly fleeting even by the standards of your species."

Nathan was being sassed by an alien robot. How had this become his day? "Everyone's a critic."

Chapter Text

1. Woodstock 2008: Providence was destroyed and the citizens that used to live there were made homeless.

The X-Men don't take them in. How could they? Thousands of people, majority non-mutant? They dump them on the US government and wash their hands of it. In the wake of the Super Hero Civil War, though, the US government doesn't want the refugees of Providence (and why should they after Cable's shenanigans?).

As the chosen spokeswoman for those refugee citizens, the former Providence immigration secretary (NPC Margaret) hunts Wade down and demands that he do something about it.

(dramatic Optimus Prime voice over) And so began the war So begins the Great Siege of the X-Men.

Wade can be really annoying when he doesn't mean to be. When he means to be, he's a downright menace. When accompanied by thousands of displaced people, with no where else to go, who like him way more than they like the X-Men ... it's Woodstock 24/7 on the lawn of the mansion. Calls to legal authority to have them moved are completely ignored.

It's inevitable that the X-Men succumb to peer pressure. They raise the remains of Providence and gets it reassembled enough to float. After which, the annoying lawn pests promptly move out and take up residence on their floating dump.

Victory is sweet ... and kind of smelling like fish. Well, that's what soap's for.

2. Be Fruitful and Multiply: A population of one can be destroyed. A population of many is harder to get rid of.

Genosha was a good example of how keeping all of one's eggs in one basket was a bad idea. If a giant murderous robot appears, it would be good to make it chase after many targets instead of being able to focus on only one. So after the repair of Providence ... Wade gets the flight engines repaired and then starts construction of more ships. With more ships, they stop being the island of Providence and become the archipelago of Providence.

(There's also the fact that people have kids and immigration is a thing. Unless the population of Providence remains static, they either have to take land from other countries or they have to build their own. This is a two birds, one stone solution ... even if Wade didn't think of the second reason until after he had implemented on the first.)

3. Two National Industries: Wade pays for more islands with blood money and the power of tourism.

"Welcome to the archipelago of the sovereign nation of Providence. Home of not just the best food in the Pacific but also the best tourist experience money can buy. Relax in the unique environment of a floating city, the home of the future. Spend your days drifting on the South Pacific, visiting ports in Indo-Asia, and enjoying the hospitality of the most Zen place on Earth. End your journey with a gentle flight through the stratosphere and an day's orbit around the Earth."

4. Faith in the Fourth Wall: When discussing Providence, Wade likes to call them the Mary Sue Islands.

The more special snowflake Providence is, the better its chances. Monarchies and benevolent dictatorships always get a leg up. Just look at Wakanda, Latveria, and the Inhumans. He knows how these things work and he's totally doing this on purpose to thwart the awesome cosmic power of the Marvel writers, who he knows are just waiting to make his islands another Genosha.

5. These Islands have Three Dads: One day, Wade asks Tony Stark what will happen to his AIs when he dies. This eventually kicks off the great collaboration between the archipelago and Stark Industries in creating the living islands of Providence.

After taking a few cruises on the archipelago and getting a feel for the people who had chosen to make their home there -- the people who had sat on the X-Men's lawn until they got what they wanted, the people who had cleaned up and repaired the original island, the people who were dedicated not just to the ideal that had started Providence but the islands themselves -- Tony agreed to allow his AIs to be integrated into the ships.

Tony will never tell Wade, but it wasn't just for the sake of his AIs (who, with proper care and maintenance, can live forever). It was also for Wade's sake (who would also live forever). Human or machine, immortality wouldn't be as bad if they weren't alone.

+6. Reunited At Last: When Wade first sees Nate, he punches that asshole in the face. Then he has to grab him (and then he hugs him) because of the baby and Wade had completely forgotten about the baby. Nate doesn't give him shit about it because stab his eyes, what happened to Providence?!

+7. The Fly High Life: To Nathan, its almost a shock how much has changed. He's on Providence, a ship he had left at the bottom of the ocean ... and it's only the crown jewel in a sea of glittering gemstones, the flagship of a fleet.

The original 25 living ships are now 200 and they have five times as many AI-less escorts. This is an aerial nation, housing normal humans and mutants, the living ships and their citizens living peacefully together. They float on the ocean, fly in the clouds, or drift through space ... whatever suits their moods or the needs of the fleet.

+8. Little Book of Grudges: This isn't a war torn dust bowl ruled by a mad tyrant. This isn't a helpless village. This isn't a desert with one lone man and a child. This. Is. Providence. When Nathan's enemies come, they find that Nathan has more allies than he knows what to do with.

+9. Better Offers than Paradise: Wade wants Hope and Nathan to stay.

Let the past be in the past. It's obvious that whatever importance Hope might have had back in the twenty-first century to mutant kind ... that need was temporary at best. Life and mutation have found a way. The population of Providence is proof of that.

This could be their home. The whole of the future isn't perfect ... but that too can change with time and Wade has the luxury of time. He'd like to spend some of that time with Nathan and Hope.

Nathan doesn't take him up on his offer.

+10. Meddlesome Kids!: Nathan and Hope return home a few months after they left.

... but Nathan skips backwards first. Just far enough to tell his Past Self in the belly of Providence preparing to destroy it ... not to destroy it quite so thoroughly.

... and it wouldn't hurt to drop a word or two in Stark's ear ... that the future is brighter because of his children.

(Nathan Summers can't help but meddle. He's an interfering old so-and-so.)

The reconstruction of Providence is well underway. The future is secure.

(Nathan is a little bit smug that he had something to do with it ... but mainly he's proud.)

Nathan takes the present Wade up on his future self's offer.

Skip a little bit to the left, into a world where the light casts a longer shadow ...

+11-AU. Protection Racket: Having a secret fleet is dead useful when the aliens invade.

The building of the extra islands would make Providence enemies that it couldn't afford. So Wade builds them underwater.

The rising of his ships from the ocean to surprise attack the alien incursion is one of those things that make a really nice headline. Folks are pretty grateful for the last minute save. Extra points for showmanship.

Wade's offer to use Providence as a Earth Protection Force also makes good headlines.

(The best hands are our own. Right, Steve?)

His willingness to space the Avengers when they try to knock his ships out of the sky ... is not a nice headline.

His willingness to burn down capital cities when their governments make aggressive moves towards Providence ... the headlines keep getting worse, really.

And after that ... well, it's just a few short steps to the total domination of Earth.

... but at least they're safe from aliens.

+12-AU. Summer Children: Wade has different, but equally crazy, quirks. He loves his inanimate island ships like they were his own children. He is very serious about it.

He is ecstatic to introduce Hope to her two-hundred brothers and sisters! One of them is even named Hope too! They're gonna love her! And Nate! Who doesn't love Nate?

And Evan! They're gonna have to make a state visit and see Evan! Nate would be so proud! Look how nicely Evan has grown! And look at his passel of adorable children that Wade gets to dandle on his knee!

+13-AU. Raise the Cable Banner: Wade wears red and black, but the colors of Providence are blue and silver.

+14-AU. Long Live the Eternal Emperor: The strangest thing about the future isn't Providence or Wade, it's Evan.

En Sabah Nur rules the earth. A benevolent, eternal dictator married to the Queen of the Underworld. (Wade's rules of flouting the laws of Marvel continue!) Wade makes a state visit so he can introduce Nathan to his grandchildren and Hope to her cousins.

Evan calls Wade 'Father' with fondness and exasperation in turns. He embraces him as though they were really bound by blood and he welcomes Nathan with every evidence of joy at his arrival. He asks them to stay and confides that his Father could use the company. (This future is surreal in the extreme, is all that Nate can think.)

Evan's wife is publicly fond, and privately pragmatic. ("Evan's father can crush us beneath his boot heel, Summers. He destroyed his enemies and gave the land to my husband to rule ... and he has far more ships now than he did then. So it behooves me to ensure that he always looks upon his adopted son with favor." Nathan is almost glad to see the dark lining in all these bright clouds.)

... but then she's ancient, raised in a time before democracy was a speck in a Greek's eye. She doesn't grieve for liberal notions of republics or representative rule. Her only nostalgia is for the days when she could kill a slave for failing her (now sadly forbidden). (Nathan is somewhat disturbed by how likeable she is for an elder demon.)

Chapter Text

1. Through a Fridge Darkly: When Deadpool told X-Force and Cable what he had been doing for the last 900 years ... he lied.

Wade had only the dimmest recollections of who these people even were and he made a heaping pile of shit up while he tried to remember where he had seen Mr. Mc Glowey Eye over here. Something about that one glowey eye ... made him want to put it out. Put out all their eyes. Judgey much? Judging him because, what, exactly? They got to time skip and he didn't? Their mission couldn't be that important if it took them 900 years to get around to it.

That's the thing about time. It wears tall mountains down.

It wore Wade down too. Slow and steady and relentless, until he woke up one day and realized that he just didn't care anymore. There was nothing to care about. All his contemporaries were gone. His friends were gone. His enemies were gone. His children were gone. Nate hadn't kept his promise ... and Wade was still stuck there. Alive. Without meaning. The part of him that had long struggled with being good, with being heroic ... withered and starved.

With the fall of the modern world and the rise of Apocalypse, few pleasures remained to Wade. No TV. No junk food. No fun. Not much sex when he looked like a walking disease in a now fairly uneducated populace that exists on subsistence farming. Killing was the only pleasure left ... and there was no reason to stop killing.

Except even killing gets boring.

He found ways to spice things up. They just weren't very nice ways.

And they only got worse.

There was a hole in Wade that could no longer be filled ... save with the suffering of others.

2. The Thorn on the Rose: Time was a funny thing. The longer Wade lived, the less human he became.

The healing that kept him living changed, like all things change beneath the press of time. In 900 years, Wade has been honed, steel sharpening slowly and steadily into adamantium. He's stronger and faster now ... and he heals ... fast. He had already shrugged off bullets, now he shrugs off dismemberment.

In the time it takes Wade's body to fall from Stryfe's hands, he grows new legs. The cannon wasn't meant to kill Stryfe, just weaken his armor ... and Stryfe was kind enough to put himself in arm's reach. It takes only seconds for Wade to shell Stryfe like a crab and kill him. Telekinesis scrabbles uselessly on Wade's skin, slipping off like he was greased. His mind slides easily out of Stryfe's grasp. Stryfe has the facade virus to thank for that, for giving Wade enough pieces of Nathan to make him immune to Nathan's powers. That's what comes of messing with things one doesn't really understand.

Then he turns his attention on Bishop. It's a very short fight.

3. I Show Not Your Face: 900 years is a long enough time to learn patience, even for Wade.

It just takes some time to really remember Nate, though Hope captures his attention immediately. She's just so small and cute and red haired and -- breakable.

What was so important about her again? So valuable that Nate left and never came back? That was worth letting the world fall to ruin for 900 years? What was it?

Well ... maybe Wade can find out. He can play a different game. He was a father ... a few times early on, before the rot set in.

Nate is kinda gullible, huh? He accepts future Wade at face value, on the memory of the dog Wade used to be, wagging his tail as he came running when Nate called ... the one that still knew what love was. The one made of more than teeth and rage. Wade doesn't remember what that was like anymore ... but he has gotten so much better at pretending.

Going with Nate, finding a nice little place -- scenic, really -- to raise Hope, until she's all grown up -- such a short bit of time, so so short, Wade can pretend for this long, for this mere eye blink in time, for just this long he can be something he is not.

(He forgot how nice it was to be with Nate. Why is it so nice? He missed this.)

( ... but it only makes him angry to be reminded of things he's not allowed to keep.)

(It's no secret that Nate plans to raise Hope here ... and leave.)

(They'll leave him.)

(Just as soon as they've finished using him.)

4. But Your Heart's Desire: After Stryfe, killing Nate is easy.

It's making it look like someone else murdered him that's the tricky part. Baby telepaths are just so nosy.

Wade takes his time to set it up. He's only going to get to kill Nate once and he wants to enjoy it properly. (He does. He does. He does.)

Then it needs to be laid out just so, to lay the stepping stones to the future that Wade wants the past to have. The one where he gets to have so much fun with Hope, just him and his girl ... for the eye blink in time that he'll get to have her. He points the murdery finger squarely at the ones who chased Nate and Hope here to start with.

She's his beautiful baby girl ... and Wade's the only one in the world now qualified to raise her, when her powers rage out of control in her grief and pain. The only one who can just reach inside and turn her power off, like flipping a switch, tickling the facade virus that lies inside her blood and bones.

Nate couldn't have known what it would be like, to have the facade virus in everyone ... with only Wade having the spare key. Too bad it took so long for him figure out how much fun that could have been. All these missed opportunities.

Wade loves (to use) Hope. Wade's teaching Hope (all about vengeance). Wade is preparing her for the day Hope will have to return home and fulfill the destiny that Nate (that Wade) intended for her.

He never lays a finger on her. He never raises his voice. He's never ever mean. He's devoted (to the terror he'll bring the old faithless world, the world Nate loved more than Wade) to her happiness and well being.

Wade just makes sure she can never love the old world ... the world that reached out and took Nate from her.

5. Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn: In Six Minutes -- A Six Minute War -- Hope kills millions of people in vengeance for her father's death, for the sake of her other poor, grieving father.

The future that Bishop tried to prevent is the one he brought upon himself.

It makes Wade so happy.

Chapter Text

Nathan is in the inferno that Providence has become.

Then he is in an endless gleaming space and three figures were before him. "Am I dead?"

Do you feel dead? The child is not a child, but a wooden mannequin without face or hair. It fingered the endless folds of their dress, stroking over a rainbow of embroidery, the pattern so thick and intricate it dazzled the eye, before coaxing a green thread loose from the weave and casting it into the air.

Death was most displeased that we took you from her. The woman is tall and thin, her limbs like candle sticks, her skin as smooth and white as wax. Her hair is a waterfall of pure gold and her eyes are gleaming coals. She catches the thread and draws it through her fingers, measuring out a generous length before she lets it fly.

She was quite cross.

You should thank us for our care. The man is craggy and stooped, his skin as cold and dark as iron, and rust creeps across him like a cloak. He catches the thread between fingers edged in sharp and gleaming silver, and the green bleeds away at his touch. He snaps his fingers and the thread sheers and falls away. All around him, threads have fallen, a pale and rotting carpet upon which he rests his hooked feet.

"Thank you," Nathan says cautiously, "you shouldn't have."

Oh, but it was so much fun to tweak her tailbone.

Such lovely words you have to fit such a lovely voice.

Ungratefulness.

They spoke together, words overlapping like river stones. Only Nathan’s experience with telepathy allowed him to understand them. "Who are you?"

You've seen us before.

We are the stream that flows forever.

Until it doesn't.

We are Time.

Are these forms not pleasing to you?

Would you prefer this one?

The doll spun into the woman's arms and burst into flame, melting them into wax and color that spilled across the man. He stood and strode forward. His limbs smoothed and straightened, his skin brightened to gleaming bronze. Nathan drew in a sharp breath at the stolen face. "Why did you bring me here? What do you want from me?"

This close and Nathan could see beneath his metal skin to the clockwork within, thousands of mechanical parts fitted together in endless precision, winding and turning. When his hands reached out to cup Nathan's head, they were warm and smooth. Wade's face smiled at him. It has gears for teeth.

Why should Death get all the toys?

We have needs too. I bet you taste so good.

You traveled through our essence. Why are you always such a tease? Take responsibility.

Nathan's alarm grew --

I want a toy too. One for my very, very own.

You don't mind if we have you, do you? Just a little taste ...

You're beholden to us. You'll give us what we wish.

-- and spiked as Time leaned in and kissed him.

Chapter Text

1. Inevitable Things Are Inevitable: Wade Wilson joined the army.

After the death of his father and the settlement of his estate (if a wreck of a house and a pittance of a life insurance can be considered an estate), Wade went where he had always planned to go: the army.

Now, fresh from the army and in possession of an even more run down house, Wade finds himself a job at the local coffee shop, The Beanery.

Wade usually pulls the night shift or the early morning shift. The late because Neena Thurman stopped wanting it after she broke up with her boyfriend, who used to meet her there after work. The early morning shift because Wade scribble notes on cups.

Sandi Brandenburg might be the local latte foam artist ... but Wade Wilson is there to brighten a customer's day with "Good luck on your geometry test!" or "Perfect hair day! My stubbly locks are jealous" or "Your shirt brings out the color in your eyes" or even just a "Happy Monday! It's all downhill to Friday from here!"

2. Objection! Hold it!: Nathan Summers is working his way through a law degree and avoiding his dorm room, which he shares with old high school friend Terrance Blood. T-Blood likes to party and have girls over. Nathan just wants to study and not field questions from T-Blood's lady friends.

After the library closes, his favorite place to study is the corner booth of The Beanery, a 24 hour coffee shop near the university.

Nathan had started going there because his ex-girlfriend Neena had worked there and being there when she had gotten off shift had almost assured Nathan the opportunity to spend time with her. Post break-up he had avoided the place ... but the convenience of it had eventually drawn him back.

3. Flash Card Dating: Wade and Nathan's first real discussion is six months after they meet over the counter.

The week before Nathan's winter finals, he spends most of his night at The Beanery, cramming. During a quiet spell, Wade offers to test him on his flashcards.

While initially a little reluctant to impose on a virtual stranger, Nathan could use the help, so he accepts. After running through the set three times with the third time being perfect, Wade suggests a break and a muffin to celebrate.

Over the shared muffin, they have their first talk. It's nothing special, there's nothing serious or earth shattering ... no great revelations are made. It's just two guys and a soon to be disposed of muffin and arguing over how old is too old by the sell date ... but it opens the door to more.

4. Setting Phasers to Stun: Afterward, they start to notice each other more.

They exchange more than shallow greetings and pleasantries at the register.

It wasn't that Nathan was blind before ... he just wasn't paying particular attention to how Wade held the mop when he was cleaning up late at night. Or how he lifted boxes over his head. Or the way he focused on the cups when he scribbled his notes. Nathan would prefer that he lavish that amount of focus on him.

Nathan's a good looking guy, sure, but he's just one of hundreds of good looking people that cycle through the store ... except now Wade's starting to wonder if his shirts were always this tight? Or his eyes this blue? Those eyelashes are definitely criminal. No one should be that infuriatingly attractive all the time. It's just not fair.

Wade gives up scribbling cheerful encouragements on Nathan's cup and descends into childish insults.

Nathan takes on a long suffering expression ... and criticizes the hell out of his mopping all evening.

The more mopping right next to his booth -- with all the flexing of muscled arms that entails --- the better.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, yanno.

Wade whacks Nathan's boots under the table with that mop in pure retaliation for the slander he has cast upon his cleaning.

With Wade half bent over to aim the mop, Nathan takes the opportunity to grab his ass.

5. Flirtation Skill Level Up: With their eight year old level flirtation detante broken by Nathan's wandering hands ... they end up making out in the booth.

6. Actual Adulting: Wade likes his job.

While making it with Nathan might be the thing that's now constantly on his mind, Wade doesn't intend to screw that up. If they're gonna climb each other like trees, they won't be doing it at The Beanery.

Nathan is perfectly happy with Wade's ultimatum.

It's much easier to bang Wade silly in a bed, in Wade's house, where they won't be constantly interrupted by customers or Nathan's roommate.

Really, Wade's plan is genius.

The AU where everything goes AU instead of actually being AU: The Marvel-616 Coffee Shop AU

+7-AU. A Path Diverges in the Force: Instead of raising an island, Cable (and Deadpool) open a coffee shop in Manhattan called the Presso Cino.

Merging with Wade might have saved Nathan's life, but the consequences of sharing DNA with him have repercussions that Nathan couldn't possibly have foreseen ... like the visions.

It's a throw away comment, just one statement in a long string of them that endlessly pours out of Wade's mouth. It meant nothing. It should mean nothing. Except for Nathan it triggers what he can only later say was a vision, a glimpse of an impossible, unbelievable future.

Nathan changes course, as abruptly as if a brick wall had suddenly appeared in his path. From saving the world to declaring his intent to start a coffee shop in the middle of a sentence.

This is, of course, complete crazy talk and Wade is happy to tell him so.

Loudly and at length.

All the way back to the US.

... but Wade still followed him.

+8-AU. Not Good At Everything: Nathan can't make coffee (and also can't bake or cook).

This probably shouldn't have been a surprise.

Coffee wasn't drunk in North America in the time period Nathan grew up in. He knows others enjoy it, but it isn't his drink of choice. While Nathan might know his way field rations and can fix a replicator with a shoe string and a hammer ... modern cooking is well outside of his skills. In addition, Nathan has been the field leader for as long as he can remember and field leaders aren't cooks.

Still, Nathan starts out making the coffee because he doesn't want to man the counter. Wade loves the cash register so much (his, all his! glorious capitalism will reign supreme!) he doesn't even complain about getting the 'lesser' responsibility.

The first customers of the Presso Cino are Domino and Taskmaster. Neena is there to find out if Nathan is being mind controlled. Tony is there to make Wade serve him coffee and trash talk about how the once mighty owner operator have fallen into the dreaded service industry. Wade is immune to trash talk when he's here to take Tasky's money.

Nathan's career as a barista is short lived. The first two cups are sipped and Neena immediately stages a coup to oust Nathan from his espresso machine throne and put Wade in his place.

Upon proving his competence with the machine, Wade is declared the new kind of baristas and Nathan is exiled to the cash register.

The people rejoice!

+9-AU. Wade's the Best at Finding People: Nathan Summers might possibly be the most nosy human being to walk the earth, but it's Wade who knows everyone's business.

Wade's a talker. He chats up every customer who hangs around the pick-up counter a second too long. He knows every birthday, the names of all their kids, whether or not they're getting a promotion, and if they're cheating on their partners.

It doesn't take Nathan long to realize that Wade mines information the way other people mine gold.

In contrast, Nathan is ... awkward. Interacting with modern people outside of a battlefield ... with people who aren't X-Men or other supers ... that's not something he does much or at all. Wade might make small talk seem as easy as breathing, but to Nathan it's like learning calculus.

Practice, though, begins to make perfect.

+10-AU. Falling in Together: Nathan thought Wade would swiftly tire of the novelty of running a shop and leave, bored with the lack of action ... but he doesn't.

At first he thought it was because they were sleeping at Wade's apartment, both passed out after the unexpectedly exhausting labor of shop ownership. It would be hard to kick out your sudden room mate when you were both too tired to care about who was sleeping where.

Then he thought it was the entertainment value. Wade was so gleeful every time he took Taskmaster's money and Taskmaster practically gloated over his cups of coffee. Then there was the cackling that sometimes emanated from the espresso machine while Nathan sorted out some thorny miscommunication over syrup and cup sizing ...

Then he thinks it's the visions. Nathan got them from Wade. He knows he did. So surely Wade must see what Nathan had seen and had agreed that this, of all futures, was the best one ... and yet ... Wade must have had visions long before Nathan arrived and he had never changed the arc of his own actions, never forged a different path for himself, never cared what the future held.

Eventually, Nathan runs out of reasons to give himself and just asks Wade why he stayed by his side.

That Wade liked him was not the answer that Nathan expected to get.

... but it was the best answer of them all.

... and Nathan would use it to bind Wade to him permanently, to make him a partner that Nathan could never lose.

+11-AU. None Shall Pass!: Their shop goes almost entirely unnoticed by the super hero community until the usual drama rolls its way destructively down the street.

Wade can never resist a fight, so he's out the door in a second. Those swords on the wall aren't just there for decoration. Neither are the guns under the counter. Just because Wade is domesticated doesn't mean he's lost all perspective. Nathan tolerates Wade's paranoia only because he's just as paranoid.

Despite being well prepared for war, Wade doesn't bring any of it. This is recon only! Nathan can bring the arms if this is going to require the equivalent of an air strike.

Spider-Man doesn't appreciate his fight with Rhino suddenly being interrupted by Deadpool wearing an apron. The only saving grace is the fact that Deadpool seems to be unarmed. An unkillable unarmed smartass happy to be a target ... okay, so maybe it isn't as annoying as it could be.

Much slower to join the battle is Cable, who casts his eye and mind across the battlefield that used to be a street and decides that will be just enough of this nonsense.

The glowing shield that spreads across his storefront and then down the street, cutting across to shield the other side of the street and effectively trapping the combatants ... ends the fight.

Cable floats above them, a picture of cool annoyance. Deadpool cheerfully waves at his co-owner and bitches about how he ruined his fun, completely breaking the tension.

Rhino gives it up. Cable is well out of his weight class and has the upper hand. Spider-Man appreciates the save, but he's confused ... and mildly alarmed.

By the time the police arrive to take Rhino into custody, peace has been restored.

Cowed by Cable, Rhino sits outside Presso Cino, drinking a huge mug of coffee and grumbling imprecations at Spider-Man, who is perched on his shoulder drinking his own coffee and munching on a muffin.

Cable is repairing the street, downright annoyed at all these shenanigans, while Wade is peddling single serve espresso outside the Presso Cino's door like a barker at a circus attraction.

+12-AU. Gossip Spreads Faster Than Spilled Coffee: A super of Cable's magnitude does not just serve coffee. A hitman of Deadpool's reputation does not just make coffee.

There's got to be some world ending shit up in here.

Some secret government conspiracy. The alligators are breeding in the sewers and they're conducting a survey of extermination. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four have gone evil and they're spying on them while they determine how best to counteract the threat. Something!

Every gossip and their dog has to visit the coffee shop to take in the sights, buy coffee, and report back.

Business has never been this booming.

+13-AU. Help Wanted: With all these new customers, Wade and Nathan could use some help.

Nathan could just move everything with his mind and work some Magician's Apprentice wizardry up in here ... but even with the magnitude of his powers, their constant focus heavy use is exhausting.

While a novelty to their customers, it's also disquieting to watch gravity be so mocked. Creating unease is exactly the opposite of what Nathan wants to achieve.

Some help, though ... that could be just the thing. There surely have to be some young people out there looking for a job.

Nathan gets his opportunity to bring it up when Cyclops shows up to check on him.

Scott is there to see if Cable is being mind controlled. Or suffering from memory loss. Or being blackmailed by Deadpool.

Nathan deflects his concerns. Just because he's sleeping with Wade and engaging in legitimate commerce with him doesn't mean he isn't in his right mind. In fact, he would like to be in an even righter mind and get at least one day off a week ... perhaps Cyclops could send some of his job seeking students over to work part time?

The request initially catches Scott off guard ... but the more he thinks about it, the better an idea it becomes. Deadpool hasn't killed anyone with coffee yet. Nathan seems to be ... content ... even if he has completely lost his mind. The kids should be safe enough working under Nathan's eyes ... and it would be good to get some of them out among regular people, proving that mutants can work just like everyone else ...

No, the more that Scott thinks about it, the more he thinks that the school should sponsor more businesses like this.

+14-AU. Nothing Says Harmless Like "Can I take your order, ma'am?": It's hard to feel threatened by Apocalypse when he's a skinny kid behind the counter, wearing an apron, repeating your order as he punches it into the register.

Evan just wants to get away from the Institute and get a little space without being constantly questioned about where he's going. An after class job at a coffee shop sounded like just the thing.

He wasn't expecting Wade to be there. Or extremely scary Cable politely interacting with customers. Or Taskmaster showing up to imperiously order his usual. Or Spider-Man poking his head in to pick up his own cup when he was in the neighborhood. Or everyone else who was completely baseline in every way.

It's ... different here. Different from being raised as a clone, a copy of other better people. Different from being isolated in a school full of students who judge him for things he's never done. Different from supering and all the drama that goes with it.

Evan likes it.

While Evan isn't the only one of Scott's students to take a shift at the Presso Cino, he's the only one who stays, deciding that he wants a shop of his own when he has more experience.

+15-AU. Long Term Planning has Nothing on Cable: Everything Nathan has done has been to achieve one end.

The purpose that he has devoted his and Wade's lives to.

The outcome foreseen in a vision so many months ago: Save Evan, save the future.

Serving coffee would never have been the path Nathan would have taken, but he doesn't scorn the path just because he had never foreseen it. The ends justify the means ... and these are some of the best means that Nathan has ever had to use.

There was more than one path to this outcome ... but in the end, this one was the cleanest, the one with the least amount of loss. The one that gave him Wade and a marriage that he'd never thought he'd have again.
...

Being fully powered and on hand to shut down the House of M and the Civil War before it gets completely ridiculous doesn't hurt either.

Chapter Text

Two way communication through time is functionally impossible. Nate always has to be such a big damn hero, flittering off to help the X-Men or kidnap destiny children and fleeing with them through time ... and Wade's stuck taking the long way. He hates it.

The idea of the drop box had been bounced around once or twice between them, idle conversations in their down time. Wade just has to make those idle conversations a reality.

He knows where all of Nate's safe houses are and all of his secret stashes. He can let Nate know just how annoyed he is with being left behind alone.

So he does. At the beginning anyway.

It's just ...

Wade always starts out meaning to troll Nate. He gets twenty chickens into a bin before remembering they'll be chicken bones by the time Nate finds them and it's Domino who's scared of them anyway. The one hundred and twenty-two mouse traps strung together like a Rube Goldberg machine looks down right mean by the time he's finished assembling it -- Nate could be in trouble and hurting when he opens that safe house, the last thing he'll need to do is untrap Wade's traps. The six hours of Rick Roll on an mp3 player seems stupid if Nate can't even sync up to it.

That's how it always starts ... but somehow it always ends up in a care package (and all of Wade's heart spilling out on the paper. He wants to wad it up and burn it, but he never does. It's not like Nate will really show up here and find it and then actually read it, right? Right. Wade's just pissing into the wind. Lancing a wound. Filling time for when Nate never comes back and Wade smells the roses and his damn fool heart figures out what his head already knows.).

Nathan reads them all and keeps as many of them as he can. To leave pieces of Wade's broken heart behind for scavengers to pick over? No. They can have the guns and the food and the clothes and everything else that's left, but not this. No one can have this.

Guns and ammo and grenades. The future might have cooler tech, but a gun is a gun and a grenade is a grenade and humans are still made of flesh and bone. Clothes, not for Nate, but for the little girl he's taken with him. Coveralls and sneakers and fleece jackets with polka dots on them. Toys and stuffed animals and candy treats. StarkTech and camping gear, kerosene and matches. ... and food. So much food. Crates of it packed away, MREs and protien bars and dried fruits and vegetables and grains in sealed tins and cans and cans of everything under the sun. Wade Wilson had turned his paranoia to maximum effort and stockpiled in every safe house, every hidden basement, every tucked away contact point the two of them had ever shared with everything someone on the run would ever need.

Wade's not there, but he's always there anyway, watching Nathan's back.

Nathan knows he and Hope are going home, just as soon as they can come home, even if there's no way to tell Wade, no way to let him know that they still love him and they will come home again.

Nathan Summers, on the other hand, is using their drop box system completely inappropriately. He doesn't only travel forward in time, he also makes regular trips backwards, if only to top off his bank accounts. Spending a few extra hours in the past to get something fun? It's not a big deal.

Erotica from every era, from something as respectable as the Kama Sutra to the first black and white nudes. The tawdriest and silliest romances he can find, that have rightfully slipped through the cracks of history as so much trash. The worst bits of poetry scrawled on a scrap of foolscap (and some he's even made himself, slipped in with rest). A naughty music box, a raunchy knockoff of a Fabergé egg, a cleverly painted risqué fan, and an assortment of odd sex toys.

He's not just sending Wade naughty notes about how he'd like to see him next ... though watching Wade babble (and occasionally blush!) every time he comes home keeps Nathan digging in the back end book shops and red light districts all through time. Smut and cheesy romance might set Wade's heart aflutter, but the weapons make Nathan feel better. The katanas were easy ... but after that he finds things that are just as useful.

Wade's immune to most of what science can throw at him, but magic is something else entirely and all of the best weaponsmiths are in the past. Swords dedicated to Death that cut through spells. Daggers that always find their mark. Collars that prevent ensorcellment. Iron and silver trinkets to cheat all sorts of petty tricks. Nathan will ensure that Wade will still be there whenever he gets back.

Wade Wilson is already hard to kill, but the protective runes that drape all over him have made even Dr. Strange hesitate to turn him away from his door. Luckily a healthy dose of guilt trip still gets him to wipe his feet.

Chapter Text

On Providence, drifting aimlessly in the Pacific Ocean, the afternoons were too hot to work outside. While the ocean breeze and an occasional rain storm provided some relief, the heat reflecting from the metal was enough to scorch bare feet in the mid afternoon. The work cycle had split into two, with a five hour shift in the morning, from before dawn until early lunch and then in the late afternoon until late evening.

As such, Nathan was used to late evenings, early mornings, and a long afternoon nap. His interlude with Neena left him pleasantly boneless, but it wasn't enough to get him to sleep this early. He'd stayed in bed for Neena's sake, snuggling until she had fallen asleep. Now he relaxed his shields, choosing to listen to the island rather than get up and get back to the paperwork he'd set aside for Neena's company.

The island hummed, the sleepy dreams of children mixing with the relaxation of their parents. There was a party towards the south, excitement and anxiety in equal measure. Open shops were starting to call for closure, disappointment and relief and contentment. Irene was pouring herself some wine and Margaret was working late and Wade -- Smoke and saffron spilled in aimless patterns through the sky, whirling upon the downbeat of great wings, a dome of feathers that could block out the moon -- was close by.

A shadow landed on his balcony, a figure in the moonlight. It touched fingertips to the glass door and then turned away, hopping onto the railing in preparation to leaping to the next. On impulse, Nathan flicked the latch and pushed the door open with a thought. Normally, it would be open anyway, to catch the evening breeze and let Wade in. The shadow that was Wade hesitated, before taking the opening door as the invitation it was, and slipping inside.

The curl of smoke diffused as Wade's mind focused. Saffron flowers fell around Wade, transforming into sparrows and bursting through the open door, swooping across the room to fall upon the bed in a storm of feathers. As inquisitive as real sparrows, they hopped across the covers, pecking and poking at the folds as thought Nathan had hidden seeds inside the thread count.

Well, Nathan smiled against Neena's shoulder with sudden wicked amusement, pressing a kiss to the skin there, I have been hiding some seed. Just not birdseed.

A sparrow climbed up the cover from Neena's side, clinging to the edge of the fabric with sharp claws, until it was even with Nathan. Then it puffed up its feathers and pecked Nathan sharply on the nose. Nathan drew back in surprise and the sparrow smugly stole his place on Neena's shoulder, feathers puffing out until it was a brown and cream ball of fluff. One of its fellows clambered up to join it, chirping at Nathan derisively.

Amused now, Nathan rolled over, reaching back to grab the pillow to resettle himself more comfortably and shoving the covers down to disturb the whole fluffy lot of them. The sparrows trilled their dismay as they burst into the air and then promptly resettled, undeterred by Nathan's efforts to evict them. Two of them determinedly landed upon his stomach, their tiny claws tickling, though not as much as the beaks they happily stabbed into his belly button and then into the folds of his technovirus, looking for nonexistent seeds. Neena's scolded Nathan's in frosty little chirps, but Nathan's ignored them completely.

Nathan glanced up from his tiny companions as Wade approached. His mask waggled about, making it difficult to read him as he took in the bed, but he sat down next to Nathan anyway. The moment Nathan took his attention off the sparrows, they exploded into thick, rising dough.

The pancake they had become smothered him like blanket, warm and steamy, dripping syrup and butter into his hair. Nathan snorted to contain his laugh, speaking softly so as not to disturb Neena, "I'm not cold, Wade. Its impossible to be cold in Providence."

Wade looked at him like he didn't know what Nathan was talking about, which was nearly as amusing, "Way to start a conversation, Mr. Apropos of Nothing. I would have started with 'don't you have a date today?' and 'in bed before midnight? are you sick?', maybe peppered it with a little, 'how dare you cheat on your paperwork with this paper white hussy!'."

"Neena isn't a hussy," Nathan said placidly, warmed by the fact that Wade was paying attention, but he hardly needed to worry about Nathan's lack of sleep when no one could confirm if Wade ever actually slept at all. Suffering the curse and benefit of constant regeneration, Wade seemed to derive all the rest he could possibly need by vegetating in front of the TV for six solid hours a day.

"She's a hussy because she's sleeping with you and you're a hussy, though not as much of a hussy as Eleanor, who had a date with two different guys tonight, which ended in fisticuffs. Fisticuffs is a cool word. Have you listened to it? Fisticuffs. Fisticuffs. Fisticuffs. That's just magical, is what it is. Anyway, they both broke up with her, but she deserved it since she was leading Josh on for three weeks now while texting Raj on the sly, which we all knew about since Jamica got into her phone and read all the messages to the book club at their Saturday meeting two months ago, but we were waiting to see the inevitable fallout since you know what it's like when you try to get inside a love triangle. The claws come out, Tiger Guy, and then it's just hurt feelings and broken friendships and binging on shitty music. And then!"

"They're completely in love with each other."

Neena had thought Irene was wrong. Or she'd been exaggerating, making assumptions that simply weren't true because Deadpool's lack of filter had that affect on people.

Everything seemed unchanged. Wade was just Wade. Running his mouth constantly and generally making a nuisance of himself, flirting outrageously with her and Irene, depending on who was standing in front of him at any given moment. Nathan was still dramatic and grandstanding, he still liked to have things his own way ... and he was still a wonderfully uncomplicated lover, warm and comfortable and satisfying.

... except Irene wasn't wrong. Sweet Christmas, Irene was completely right.

For there was Nathan, chatting away with Wade, in the middle of the goddamn night, in their goddamn bedroom, on their goddamn bed, where they still lay after having had goddamn sex, right next to her goddamn naked and formerly sleeping body.

Wade sat on the bed on the other side of Nathan, leaning back on his elbows as he tapped on Nathan's blanket covered thigh to make his point, voice lowered to a theatrical whisper in what was a pathetic effort not to wake her. Half propped up with a pillow and the arm he had folded behind his head, Nathan murmured quietly in response. His metal hand rested low on his stomach when he had shoved the blanket down, twitching occasionally for no particular reason Neena could see ... unless it was the suppressed urge to catch Wade's tapping fingers in his own. Neena wasn't blind to the display Nathan made, reclining indulgently, skin gleaming in the moonlight and soft radiance put out by his eye.

That wasn't even the worst part. No, the worst part was the way Nathan sounded, the rumble of his voice low and soft and pleased. That was his 'you delight me' voice. The tone his voice took when Neena shoved him down on the bed and showed him what she wanted. The tone reserved for exceptional skill in battle that had nothing to do with their powers and everything to do with their cleverness. A tone that was now being used to discuss cramming Irene's office full of stuffed animals that he and Wade would win at the fair that they were going to go to on Thursday.

Irene had, if anything, downplayed the situation.

"How long have you been together?" Linda Carter asked as she checked his IV.

Nathan blinked in confusion, baffled by the question. When he failed to answer, Lina gestured to Wade, who had fallen asleep in the chair beside his bed, slumped over, his head pressed against Nathan's thigh. Nathan didn't see how that connected to anything. Wade only fell asleep when the area was secure. It was incredibly reassuring, a sign that Linda's facility was everything it claimed. Prowl was likely still outside, a more formidable guard than even the fiercest human medic.

"Together," she repeated, stressing the word slightly. Her eyebrows rose as Nathan continued to stare at her blankly. The man could not be that oblivious to the way he was tracing the seams of Deadpool's costume, stroking the fabric like it was skin ... unless the drugs were hitting him heavier than she thought. "How long have you been dating Deadpool?" she finally clarified.

Realization filled Nathan, "We're not dating." Everyone made that mistake. Nathan couldn't imagine why. "We're friends."

Scott Summers had been waiting his whole life for this. The fact that Nathan was almost thirty years older than him in no way compromised his happiness or the bloom of smug satisfaction. If anything, it enhanced it. Fifty five or fifteen, it seemed that some things were universal.

The wind blew, the sun rose in the east, and boys still stumbled into the house from a night out looking guilty as hell for getting caught by their parents. Guilty and covering it with sulky, grumping 'I'm an adult, really!' attitude. Scott Summers lowered his newspaper, which he had been reading to pass the time, and drank in the discomfort of his only child. "Wade and Nate, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S---"

"It's too early in the morning to hear this from you," Nathan snapped, annoyed into speaking by Scott's off-key singing.

"It's never too early to wish my son every possible happiness with his future husband," Scott replied with unholy glee, "Or to provide advice on K-I-S-S-- "

Nathan leaned forward to put his forehead against the fridge door as if praying to it for patience. "Please stop. It's just sex. Which your time's insufferable dependence on 'dating apps' has facilitated."

"You've stayed with Wade all weekend, every weekend, for the last four weeks." Scott fixed Nathan with the full force of his 'don't pull your nonsense with me' look. "That's not a booty call, Nathan, that's a relationship."

Chapter Text

1. Pool of Drowned Girl The dangers of international travel are numerous.

Wade and Nathan were doing fine right up until they fell into the water. It wasn't even the falling in that was the problem. It was the part where they surfaced and found out that they were now women.

After the very manly shrieking and clutching of now missing and added body parts had subsided, their guide had finally been able to explain to them that they had fallen into one of the area's cursed springs: Pool of Drowned Girl.

They were now cursed to become what had drowned in the pool and there was no way to break the enchantment.

Nathan was certain that this could be fixed. He'd traveled through time, been kidnapped by demons twice, and saved the world, and had X-Men for parents. This couldn't be harder than that!

Wade, more wise to enchantments and the difficulties of getting Dr. Strange to fix them, held a funeral for their dearly departed dicks right on the spot.

2. No One's Above Hair Pulling It was the spring of drowned long haired girl.

What surprises Nathan is how suddenly they're overflowing with hair.

They've both lost some height, a lot of muscle, and packed on lovely, rounding fat instead. Wade has the shape of a 1940's pinup girl with a cascade of golden hair that reaches her knees ... though why his female self should keep a voluminous wave of hair when his male self can't even keep any eyebrows was a mystery of the universe.

A glance in the water's reflection reveals that Nathan was annoyingly less buxom than Wade, being tall and slim and graceful in comparison to his voluptuous companion. His hair has also mysteriously extended in length, a white waterfall of smooth, straight hair that nearly brushes the ground. He's had long hair before, when he was younger, but never this long or so smooth. Nathan pulls it up to get it off the ground and ties it into a rough and sloppy bun.

After groping up his own chest with demented glee, Wade was happy to grope Nathan up too ... which started their first fight as women.

It was a scuffle that Nathan was glad no one else saw, because he had won by grabbing Wade by his delightfully silky hair and yanking.

3. Breaking Points

Wade has suffered so much trauma as a man that he can't handle the idea of suffering it all over again as a woman.

On the plane ride home, sitting in the back of the plane with too much time to think about what this change really meant, was the point where it stopped being about teasing Nathan until he laughed or fought him ... and started being about what it meant to Wade and his future.

Wade has suffered terrible things. He's been brutalized, tortured, raped, and killed as a man. He doesn't want to experience those things again in new ways as a woman. He knows he's alone. Wade has never had backup. He's not welcome in teams like the X-men. There would be no rescuers looking for him if he slips up or if someone gets a lucky shot. Wade takes risks that regeneration can handle because men aren't as valuable as women, because his looks are not desirable, because no one believes him when he says he's unkillable, because the attempts to copy his healing have only resulted in monstrosity and death.

There was safety in being the failed experiment, the one that everyone knows was disposed of because it was worthless.

Now Wade's worth has just gone up. The idea of being strapped down again, if only to find out why he is now a she, being taken back to places where they cut and cut and cut ... is terrifying.

He can't push it out of his mind. It gnaws at him. It won't even be a secret that Wade could hide, where he could just reinvent himself as a women and pretend to be a burn victim, because they're reporting back to the X-men and there are no secrets that stay secrets in the X-men.

His enemies will know and eventually they'll come looking for him.

...

With all of Wade's gleeful mischief -- from dramatically mourning the death of their manhood to groping Nathan's new breasts -- Nathan had thought that Wade had taken their changed status fairly well. Certainly with more ease than Nathan had.

He thought that right up until Wade broke down in tears on their flight home.

There wasn't anything Nathan could do except hold him and try not to burst into sympathetic tears himself as the jagged shards of Wade's pain and terror tore at him.

4. Retail Therapy

Nathan has no intention of suffering through a debrief with his father over the humiliation of tripping and falling into a cursed pool of water. No thanks, his dignity has suffered enough on this trip. His father can just accept an communique that they're alive and successful.

In the wake of Wade's meltdown, Nathan also has no intention of letting his friend out of his sight. It may just be empathic resonance, but the feeling that Wade will be taken from him the minute he's no longer watching is sharp enough to induce Nathan's own paranoia. He doesn't trust these people not to talk. ... and while he's not entirely certain that it isn't just Wade projecting too strongly across their bond, he recognizes that they're both off balance and need to regain balance before facing the world.

Instead of heading to the X-mansion, they go to ground at one of Wade's safehouses instead. Remote, isolated, and far from prying eyes. Nathan didn't even know Wade owned any property in Canada. For a guy who was born there, Wade hardly ever speaks of it.

It's the first time either of them relax and now, rather literally, let their hair down. And shower with blessed hot water. And shop.

Jammed up with Wade on the couch, Nathan starts with the admirable philosophy of researching their predicament. That's not where he ends up. Wade quickly grows bored of the pitiful television reception, tires of cursing out the static, and turns his attention to stealing Nathan's laptop for something more interesting that boring research.

Wade's got a banging (if still ugly) body, so the only solution to this problem is to cover it completely in the most fantastic dresses that money can buy. He didn't have the gams for this before, but now there's no reason not to wear every dress he's ever wanted. Satin? Lace? Ribbons everywhere? Enough embroidery to bankrupt a small country? He needs it. ... and Nate needs them too. Of course he does. A tall elegant drink of water like Nate needs to swim in dresses.

Nathan would protest, but Wade's cheerful again on his quest to make them pretty, so he doesn't. No, instead he capitalizes on it by asking Wade to braid his hair.

Grim paranoia moves to sleepover levels of inanity as hair is brushed and braided, clothes are discussed, and the lack of nail polish is dramatically bemoaned.

5. Reinvent Yourself (With Bold Faced Lies)

Wade's impulsive response to his own change, that he should reinvent himself and go to ground, sticks in Nathan's mind.

They are changed.

Nathan might not be ready to give up on finding a way to break their curse, but magic is not his expertise and no one is answering the phone at Dr. Strange's. This lack of availability is starting to feel like magical malpractice.

It's practical to accept that womanhood might be their status for some time and they can't hide forever. Nathan just isn't sold on letting it be common knowledge.

A little misdirection, a little smoke and mirrors, a little bold faced lying ... that could work.

Nathan goes on missions all the time. He crosses time less frequently, but it happens. What's to say that he and Wade weren't simply swapped by accident with their cross dimensional female duplicates ... and the whole mess will get sorted out at some point in the distant future?

Wade's always on board for bold faced lies, especially when it's about one's performance in bed, but he suggests that instead they should just do whatever they want and don't bother with silly little things like explaining themselves. He not so subtly points out that Nate does this all the time anyway, so why stop now?

They could also make a giant spectacle of themselves because Nate is good at that, and if it was a giant magical spectacle, then eventually Strange would have to show his gobbledygook babbling face for no other reason than to upstage them.

Then they could beat his red caped ass until he fixed them. Or seduce his red caped ass with their incredible boobs and dangle sexual favors over him until he fixed them. Wade figures they should eventually try out a dick, and it might as well be the potentially curse breaking dick attached to the magical malpractice parading around as Sorcerer Supreme.

Nathan must admit that Wade does have a point.

Just not at bout the dick.

+6. Plot Armor Clothes make the women more than they make the man.

Nathan doesn't really care about clothes as long as they're comfortable and can support his guns. The fashions of this time are mostly inexplicable to him anyway.

Wade, who has muttered incessantly about plot armor since he started deciding what they should now wear into battle, has a different philosophy entirely.

Which is how Nathan ended up wearing this:

The flowing blue underdress falls to his ankles. Over that was a short vest dress of finely linked golden mail. Above that, was the white tabard, heavily worked with gold embroidery. White heelless boots, white kid gloves, knives in both his boots and in his belt, which was rings of gold. Wade's braiding this sides of his hair back to keep his vision clear, though he hasn't done much to shorten the white waterfall of Nathan's hair. Ornate golden hair pins, the handles of wickedly sharp stilettos are set with precision, framing his head in a crown of gold.

Nathan's nearly to the point where he's going to fling one of these knives at Wade, because while he might look lovely, this is hardly battledress.

Or stab him with the ornate spear that Wade hands him -- but the moment his hand grasps the handle Nathan realizes that this is not a spear. It's a psi-lance and where had Wade even found a psi-lance? The resonance between him and it sings out, briefly, at his inquiring pulse ... and the whole room lights up as his clothes sing back.

The metal in his clothes is more precious than gold, it's resonance ore, the natural amplifier of psychic energy ... and an ounce of it in the future cost the earth. It's not hard enough to hold the edge on a weapon, and its price makes it too costly to try. There was only the decorative scrollwork made of ore on the psi-lances he had used before, just enough to make a spear a psi-lance. Now Nathan is wearing it like armor. His mail, his belt, his daggers, the pins in his hair, the thread in his clothes ... everything he had thought was gold is actually resonance ore.

Nathan feels faint as he stares at Wade's smug, grinning face in the mirror. Now he knows what Wade meant about plot armor. Nathan was wearing enough ore that he could crack the earth in two and not even feel the strain. The woman in the mirror isn't wearing weapons to battle, she is the weapon.

The woman, Nathan, is not a tired warrior out of his own time, struggling with a people he doesn't really fit with ... she is a priestess of old forgotten gods, a queen of ancient realms.

Honestly, he could get used to it.

... and Wade is her dark hand maiden.

On Wade, the red underdress and dark red petticoat ends just past the knees. The overdress is red and black and lined like his previous suit, with billowing sleeves flare like bird's wings when he twirls. Where it doesn't flare out, it is snug, cut close around Wade's bodice and waist, with a satin finish and red or red or black on black embroidery that picks out patterns that only show when caught in the light.

Wade still doesn't show even the barest hint of skin, preferring to cover his arms with flowing sleeves and gloves, his legs with black tights and boots, and his head with his ever-present mask. Only his hair shows, pulled up and back in a style similar to Nathan's, pinned with dark enameled sticks that Nathan knows are also blades.

When Nathan fingers the skirt, he can feel the pattern in the cloth that hums at his touch. There's resonance ore here too, woven into the cloth, and a pattern that, while beautiful, has nothing to do with beauty and everything to do with enchantments. Nathan's not familiar with the mystic arts, but every now and again he can almost feel them, teasing at the edges of his awareness.

Nathan doubts they could brawl in all this finery, but there's no question that brawling won't be necessary when Wade's given him enough resonance ore to destroy the earth.

+7. Magical Girl Spirit Slayers

They had sparred, of course. They've both lost strength. That difference is more obvious in Nathan than in Wade, who's blessed and cursed with constant regeneration. In exchange for strength, their balance and speed has increased. Wade was agile before, now he can nearly bend into a pretzel mid-fight.

Nathan's telepathy has alarmingly weakened, but his telekinesis has gotten so strong he almost has difficulty controlling the sudden surge in raw power. He had thought it was just coincidence that of those he knew that had the mind arts, the men tended toward stronger telepathy (Charles Xavier) and the women stronger telekinesis (Jean Gray).

Their first test mission starts with a bang and ends with the whimpering of their enemies.

For Wade, a dress just allows for more posing opportunities. With a sword in each hand, it doesn't slow him down at all. He's foregone guns for the enchantments woven into his clothes. The ore in them makes it easy for Nathan to find him and rain down destruction on his position ... which is the whole purpose of having a friend who's always had the firepower of a tactical nuke.

Nathan just walks through the camp, his shields brush away fire, smoke, and bullets. Enemies fall, either because Wade has killed them as he dances around Nathan like a whirlwind of steel, or because Nathan has blown out the back of their heads with a thought.

The rescue of the villagers goes smoother than Nathan would have expected. He can't quite pin down why they respond better to him now, untouched by filth he waded through to get there, cool and calm and benevolent. Even Wade's gore splattered company doesn't seem to bother them when Wade so obviously defers to his instructions.

Is it because they're women? Motherly figures? Is it the aspect of religion? The expectation that a monk or nun should help the needy, so their help is easily accepted?

It makes Nathan wonder, though, if he would have been more successful selling Providence as an Askani belief than as political philosophy.

+8. Travel Between Dimensions?

Word runs ahead of them like a forest fire stirred by the wind.

Supers are nearly a dime a dozen in the world, but mages and priests? Magic isn't nearly as common, and who even thinks about religion anymore?

Yet here is a priestess and her hand maiden ... and the people they've rescued when the doorway opened between their dimensions.

Scott probably should have known that any world's version of Cable and Deadpool could never settle on being low profile.

+9. The Power of Salt Cures All Magical Maladies

Dr. Strange does eventually show his face ... after Nathan started a whole new religion and started building a mystical temple from which to teach his new acolytes.

Unfortunately, the springs of drowned everything are a well known mystical hazard, mainly because there is no known cure and efforts to dispel the curse have failed.

... but then, about five years later, in a ridiculous battle on a island, they get knocked into the ocean and turn back into men.

What? In a thousand years, nobody thought to use saltwater as a cure for spring of drowned everything?

Nathan has some words for Dr. Strange and his magical malpractice.

Chapter Text

Time Storm

1. Hope is dead.

Nathan Summers can't handle it. The failure and grief of it is just too much. This was the child of his old age, the one he chose for himself ... and she is gone now, a light snuffed to soon. Nathan is tired of burying children when he should be the one who was buried.

He will fix this. No matter what it takes.

2. Ellie is dead.

Wade has exacted brutal vengeance because all he's good at is vengeance ... but he wasn't good enough to save her life. Not strong enough, not fast enough, just not enough. Everything he loves dies. Wade is just tired, so tired, he wants to sleep, he wants to end. Can he just end? He never wants to feel this way again.

Then along comes Nate and offers him the chance to change it.

It's strange.

Wade goes with him, because of course he will, but Nate's not himself and Wade knows it. Nate would never countenance destabilizing time itself just to save one life. Still, if Nate's going to go do something self sacrificing and crazy, Wade should go with him to maybe be the one to do the self sacrificing crazyness instead. He's the one who deserves to die.

3. Realizations

A few hops in and Wade realizes he's actually grown as a person. It's sobering. Was it parenthood that changed him? Was it Nate long ago during their first team-up? Or is it the fact that Nate is practically unhinged with grief and it's thrown their whole dynamic off, leaving Wade feeling like the adult in this relationship all of a sudden when normally he's the loose cannon.

Wade doesn't want to step up, doesn't want to be the person who says 'maybe we shouldn't kill them all' or 'maybe we shouldn't leave a smoking ruin behind us'.

However, someone has to be heroic around here.

4. Time Storm

It only takes a few hops through the time stream for Wade to understand that something is wrong.

In his own dimension, in his own time, Wade can see the shape of the world, but only in broken flashes. Being physically dipped in the stream of time, crossing dimensions ... that is giving him more than just flashes. He can see it, the web that is the whole damn multiverse ... and the web is breaking, fraying thread by thread.

Every 'verse in the multiverse should be separate, only crisscrossing at points they have in common. Now, too many threads are bundled up together in snarls, weighing everything down, tearing threads from their moorings and pulling them into the snarls. Other threads, their fellows torn away, hang into nothingness, slowly unravelling until they disappear. He can see where the snarls will get so heavy they'll tear a hole into the web and fall away into fragmenting destruction.

Their own 'verse is in the heart of a snarl, dragging so many other 'verses down with it.

Once, this might have been repaired by careful nudging, bumping threads away from each other. Or with careful snipping to remove a single tangling thread.

This is well past that point.

This is triage now.

To repair this, if it even can be repaired ... will require brutal amputation.

To save the whole, to save everything, Wade will have to cut away what can't be saved, splice what can be spliced, and hope the rest can fend for itself until he has the time for it.

Wade suspects that they won't be able to save their children. They'll be lucky to save their own 'verse.

He doesn't think Nate is going to be able to see it that way. Not anymore.

It'll be up to Wade to be Nathan fucking Summers now, and see to the whole instead of the parts.

He already hates every minute of it.

5. Sexual Healing: There are no healing cocks, but there is a very distracting one.

Wade has a lot of feelings about the way he's going to have to play this now, manipulating Nate into helping him fix the multiverse ... so he has guilt sex with Nate. Lots and lots of guilt sex.

Nathan is not in the loop. He's too caught up in grief and loss and pain and this new mission to realize what's happening around him

Nathan, however, is extremely distracted by Wade hopping enthusiastically into his bed. He doesn't think Wade has suddenly fallen in love with him or is even acting on their long unresolved sexual tension, he interprets it as comfort and companionship and something like absolution. A 'feel better, Nate! you're too gloomy and now I'm gloomy, let's have sex, sex will make us happy'.

Nathan does not want to feel happy right now, but he does want comfort and he does crave companionship, and he does sleep better when the knot of tension loosens up after Wade's plowed him into the mattress. As a practical palliative, sex is working just fine to keep the endorphins and the dopamine hits coming to his system.

It's comforting to have a warm body to hold onto a night. It's comforting to have Wade shake him out of his nightmares. It's nice to get laid with such demanding regularity.

Of course, he can't be Nathan Summers and not overthink everything about it.

He had long come to the conclusion that their UST would never be resolved. He wasn't even sure that Wade actually wanted that from him. Oh sure, Wade babbled on about it in his filterless way, but that was exactly that: lack of filter. No one wants every random thought in their brain to be acted upon, especially when the very next thought is 'no, I don't want that'. Nathan is used to ignoring people's constant thoughts and he gives Wade's babbling the same courtesy. He hears it, but he lets it run past him as white noise.

He always thought that if it was more than passing fancy, then Wade would do instead of just talk. Wade acted on impulse all the time. If his desire was more than fleeting, he would eventually impulsively come onto Nathan and then Nathan would be happy to reciprocate.

Perhaps it had been about the sex, in the end. Wade is a lot more aggressive and dominant in bed than Nathan had assumed he would be. He doesn't know why he thought that, unless it was the fantasy of his own preferences. He can even get why Wade would want to be in control when he is so often out of control and why he might have assumed that Nathan could never give that control up. If Wade thought they were simply not sexually compatible, then why set himself up for rejection?

It's distracting. Wade is distracting. Being in bed with Wade is satisfying, and extremely distracting.

Nathan likes this. Nathan really likes this. He didn't think he would.

+6. Oops!

Wade starts from the outside and works his way in. It isn't that hard to send them hither and yon across realities. He has crazy on his side here. He drops all kinds of valuable people into portals just so they have to chase them. He flings himself into portals so Nate has to chase him.

Honestly, there is a lot of chasing going on and Wade thought Nate would start to suspect something, but either the sex is melting his brain into mush or the fact that every world they run through requires some dumbfounding thing they need to do to right a wrong or salvage a crisis that maybe Nate thinks Wade has some sixth sense for taking them where they need to be.

Well ... Nate's not wrong.

+7. Time Heals All Wounds

By the time they get to the knotty bits that Wade had been putting off for last, Nathan finds himself again. The dark fog of grief lifts, dispersed by the wind of action and the burning sunlight of an old/new partnership. One day Nathan wakes up and doesn't think 'Hope is dead' first thing in the morning. One day he wakes up and realizes that Wade has been taking point because Nathan had been dropping the ball.

Wade had risen to the occasion, not because Nathan had demanded it or expected it or wanted it, but because it had been necessary. There is a core of steel and duty in Wade that Nathan hesitates to challenge, afraid to watch it fade away if he takes control.

So he doesn't. He let's Wade lead and he follows, throwing himself wholeheartedly into this new dynamic. There's nothing wrong with trying it, without a veil of grief to blind him.

They save the multi-verse, because of course they do ... but they never manage to save their daughters.

Trading Places

+8. Errors in Judgment

Young Cable's trip to the past started out well enough. He sorted out his older useless and overly sentimental self by killing him. He was halfway to fixing the X-Men properly. The plan was in place and he only had to execute on the plan. Then the guy in the red and black suit had showed up looking to avenge the sentimental old man. Then that guy had proven extremely difficult to kill and make the killing stick. So Cable broke his healing into pieces with a little well placed telekinesis and killed him properly. He took off that mask so he could do an ID and inform the stubborn idiot's next of kin ... and felt his stomach bottom out in horror.

This was his guardian. This was the man who had stood between him and a bullet more times than Cable could count. Now it made sense why he would avenge the old man's death. His guardian could hardly be expected to know that events had changed when he was this far back in time. Oh no. What if this was the starting point for his guardian rather than the end point? If this man stayed dead then Cable was dead too. Even if there was no damage to his own time stream, he still owed this man a debt that he could not repay with death. He had to fix him.

Cable intentions were sound, but he was lacking information.

He never knew his guardian's name. He never knew his history. He was not familiar with his powers. This man had saved him, but he was always a mystery, stepping in and out of his life too quickly to track. Cable had long assumed that the clan elders had sent his guardian, but that wasn't the case.

When Cable placed his guardian in the regen capsule he had brought with him and fixed what he had deliberately broken inside him ... he had no idea that he should have just left him alone.

+9. The Morning After

Wilson woke up in the regen capsule with the smiling face of some cute kid beaming at him through the glass.

He also woke up without the slightest flicker of pain. It was silent between his ears, the loud chaos of broken thoughts finally still and clear and properly aligned.

Lack of pain made him feel like he was floating on a cloud, a sensation that persisted as the kid helped his out of the capsule and over to a chair. His hands looked weird. He asked for a mirror and the kid happily got it for him.

This was not his face. Well, it used to be his face before the cancer and the experiments and the healing had completely wrecked it. He barely recognized himself with smooth, even, normal skin and hair. Actual hair was curling over his ears. Those were his eyebrows and his eyelashes and that was even a bit of stubble trying to sneak it's way onto his chin.

What in the ever loving hell?

Emotion struggled to surface through the cool blanket of his calm, through the thoughts that ran a thousand careful calculations to determine what he should do now. What was the best way? What was the best response? How could he use this to his advantage? Use this kid who hovered around him so eagerly, like a puppy that craved recognition and attention.

Wilson discarded the shadow of emotion as useless and smiled sweetly at the kid, the possible architect of his repair, and laid on the charm.

The kid spilled everything in a hot second: his whole life story, how he got to this time, how he killed Wade's ally, then he had killed Wade, then he had fixed Wade because he hadn't meant to kill Wade, and Wade wasn't mad at him was he? He was really sorry! Wade still liked him, right?

Wilson gave zero shits for the kid, for Cable. He owed him a solid for this, though, for the cure that he spent his whole broken existence looking for and had been unable to find. Now, with a properly functioning brain, he could see that the kid had probably tweaked something in his healing factor that made it actually able to differentiate the cancer from the rest of him.

Sure, the kid had managed this after a whole slew of screw ups, but he managed it. Wilson could do right by him in turn.

Well, that was Wilson's plan and honest intention ... right up until the kid reached into his mind.

+10. Consequences

Wade and Nate had a psylink since the facade virus had merged them into one person. Nate had always been hesitant (and selfish) about breaking something he didn't remember ever making in the first place. They didn't do much about it. It just was. Nate described it like a light, like a flame inside of him that never went out, not even when Wade was dead. To Nate, it had always seemed to be a comfort. To Wade, it felt like an anchor, Nate's anchor, that kept Nate coming back to Wade when Nate might have left. It was a thread, fragile and precious, tied to the kite that was Wade, keeping him from flying away with the breeze and crashing into the ground, that kept Wade grounded enough in reality to keep him from flying away into a forgetfulness that would erase even Nate from memory.

A freshly broken psylink is a bleeding wound in the spirit, a slicing gaping vortex of pain and loneliness and loss. It cried out for vengeance and Wade believed deeply in vengeance.

This Wade, the Wade who once was, the Wade who existed before he was tortured into broken pieces of himself, the Wade who's sane, this Wade also believes in vengeance ... he can just temper it with cold, hard calculation.

The kid hurt him. The kid fixed him. The value of the fix is greater than the value of the hurt.

If Wilson cared deeply for Nate once, he no longer can recall that emotion properly, and Nate is dead. Wildon can't allow anyone to think he values allies lightly, so recompense would be required, except the kid voluntarily provided Wilson's repair. A wergild more valuable than cold hard cash.

The kid has made up for it and then some. Wilson is now in deficit. Wilson will repay what is owed.

... but telepathy is a violation and Wilson has defenses now that he never had then, defenses created by the facade virus, that stole pieces of Nate and gave them to Wade. He also has a broken, bleeding psylink and the shattered, shredded remnants of his own ruptured life.

Cable reaches for him and Wilson drags him down and tears him apart without even meaning to. The psylink is a broken bond desperately seeking to be restored, it punches Cable open for no other reason than Cable feels like Nate, it rips holes in him trying to find the other half of a link that doesn't exist in Cable and when it doesn't find it, it sinks remora teeth into him and forces the other shattered half into being. It bonds Cable to Wilson by force, with psychic violence. It is powerful, fueled for more than a decade by a clingy omega level telepath and Wade's own internal rage. Forced into the bond, the connections equalizes without care to either participant, giving them pieces of each other. For Wilson, this is minor discomfort. He is long familiar with Nate and Cable has not suffered what Nate has suffered. For Cable, this is like going through a shredder, this is channeling unfiltered madness and vicious chilling coldness into a wounded spirit.

Cable -- young untested and untried Cable, still full of idealism and hope and dreams -- shatters.

Cable sees what Wade has seen. He sees through the veil of the world into the gearwork itself, the paper and pencils that draw them, the words that give them life. He sees and the seeing shatters him like glass.

What came first for Wade? Had be broken and come to knowledge, to truth? Or had he seen the fourth wall and been broken against it like glass striking a tile floor?

Now Wilson knows the answer. It was the knowledge that had broken him and it breaks Cable in turn.

+11. Whoops

Wilson doesn't feel guilt or shame. If he used to feel it, he grew out of it.

What he feels about the broken shell of Cable is something like responsibility. He broke it, so he bought it. You fuck the maiden daughter, you got to marry her. Those are the rules.

So Wilson accepts that the broken, babbling Cable now weeping on his lap is his to take care of. Mostly he feels annoyed. He strokes the kid's hair, enjoys the visceral sensation of how soft and fluffy it is and how he can actually feel it and nothing else ... and feels less annoyed.

Wilson barely feels emotions that aren't rage, but he likes them in other people, especially the positive ones. He can fake the appearance of emotion enough to elicit the responses he prefers to have. He doesn't understand love, but he still wants to have it, this thing that can't be bought with cash, can't be traded for except through life long commitment. It's obviously of great value and Wilson likes things that have value, that increase his own value. Valuable things are not discarded.

Wilson would have married Vanessa on a feeling no greater than attraction, would have accepted providing for her and pretending to love her for the rest of his life in exchange for a willing woman and passable cooking to come home to. It was a deal Vanessa didn't know she was making since she didn't know what she was marrying, but Wilson would have kept that faith with her anyway. Her willingness to care was enough. Accepting the boy is a minor inconvenience in comparison to that old commitment.

They are linked now. He can feel the now twisted love and admiration, broken and desperate, hurt and afraid. Wilson lacks empathy, but he also lacks enjoyment of pain. He can bask in these emotions, warm himself on them, and not seek to cause greater suffering.

Being able to feel an emotion, even if it's not his own, is a novel pleasure. He likes it.

The kid had a mission, hadn't he? A plan? Wilson will handle that.

To Cable, Wilson is winter. A clear day in the antarctic, cold and sunlight and the clarity of ice. There is nothing here to find warmth in, nothing to hold on to except icicle shards and soft, stinging snow.

Cable falls asleep, soothed by the blanket of cold that sweeps across their link to envelope him, numbing pain and distracting his fitful chaos with a thousand carefully laid out steps to crush whatever might stand against them.

+12. Usefulness

Even if Wilson can no longer see through the fourth wall and no desire to since the price was so high, doesn't mean he doesn't regard Cable's skill as priceless.

No one had valued Wade's madness. They had never seen a use in it, had only ever been irritated by it. Even Nate had only tolerated Wade's fits and been happy when Wade settled back into his 'baseline' crazy. Wilson however, knows that he only needs to sift Cable's babbling for diamonds. Even the dross has value, even if it has no immediate value. He keeps it all in mind, slotting every tidbit of information away until the moment it becomes useful.

Cable finds this intense, unerring focus from Wilson when he speaks to be incredibly gratifying and soothing. Wilson likes him. Wilson listens to him. Wilson values him and it is important to be valuable to Wilson. If Wilson has no kindness he also has no cruelty. The absence of emotion would be troubling if it wasn't so all encompassing. Nothing generated emotion in Wilson. He simply didn't feel it. Wilson, however, was willing to fake it to make Cable feel more settled and happy.

Later, after being buffeted by the emotions of others, without the ability to shield himself reliably ... Cable comes to find the ice fortress of Wilson to be infinitely soothing to his battered psyche.

In equilibrium, they find a use for each other.

+13. Wade Wilson is an efficient hunter.

How do you kill a ship? With torpedoes. How do you kill a flying ship? With anti-aircraft missiles.

Ahab chases Cable because he can see him running, blind to the fact that he can see him. He thinks Cable is alone. He soon learns otherwise.

The moment his ship materializes over Cable, thinking to overwhelm the boy before he can jump again, and a dozen missiles slam into it. The ship staggers, rocked by explosions. Her time engines spin up with a whine, but to no avail. The first dozen missiles are followed by a second wave, that tears the ship into fire and shrapnel. Ahab had gotten so used to fighting mutants he had forgotten and humans are perfectly capable of using weapons in addition to themselves.

Still, Wilson is a not a fool. He scours the debris and he makes sure their enemies are ashes/.

Kidnapping teenagers is even easier than destroying ships. The ship had made him procure ordinance. The teenagers are just idiots. Wilson and Cable set the baby X-Men in a cross-fire. The first dart takes down the telepath. The second grounds the flier. The third knocks down the distance damage dealer. The fourth put the last down. In less than a minute, the teens have been teleported out, stolen from the lawn of the mansion, where they thought themselves safe.

For Cable, it might have been an act of desperation to attack the mansion. For Wilson, it's just good tactics. Hit the enemy where they think they are strongest, where their guard is weakest. No one expects an attack at home.

They're ghosts and the mission that Cable wanted to execute is a success.

Trading Places AU When I throw Extermination out the window and do whatever I want!

+14-AU. What Once Was Lost

To Logan, Deadpool is a yapping dog that sometimes decides to bite you, usually at the most inconvenient times. To solve this occasional problem, he often just cuts Wade down and gets on with it unless he has a use for Wade's typical brand of crazy and resilience.

He doesn't much remember the Wade before the Workshop. There are dim recollections of a smiling face, of a cold scent completely lacking in fear, of charming good looks if that was your sort of thing.

Taskmaster remembered, because he had taken one look at a picture of the new Wade and hung up on them. That should have been a clue. Domino hadn't been able to get him back on the line and had eventually resorted to calling Bullseye, the only person she happened to think of who might remember what Wade used to be like. Bullseye looked like he was about to have a spontaneous orgasm and hung up on them. That should have been a fire alarm warning them to exit the building because the building they were in was now on fire.

Wilson seems like their ally in the beginning. He's cured, yanno? Wanna see, Logan? I missed you! It's been forever! Give us a high claw and let's go for drinks that are on me!

He's certainly got the looks and a rakish charismatic charm that has an alarming number of teenage girls sighing over him in an instant. He smells good, crisp and cool and healthy, uncluttered by nose watering chemicals or the stench of madness and decay. He sounds good, the irritating rasp smoothed into a pleasing tenor that lulls the ear. Logan forgot how easy it was to listen to Wilson talk, well, sense.

It's so easy to talk with Wilson about old times and half forgotten shenanigans that Logan lets down his guard. The guy's just looking for work, honest work, not whatever it is he's been doing while he was crazy. Have you seen the hell holes I think I was living in, Logan? Just give me a chance! If it doesn't work out, I'll get gone! I don't want to ruin your good thing here. Or yanno, be a bad example to these kids. Geez, they're so short. Were we ever that short? I guess you're still that short.

Logan can't lie, it's the low key insults that convince him. That's still the Wade he knows, just sane and steady and probably not a threat to the kids. Besides, the X-Force work isn't around the kids anyway and Logan thought a crazy Wade was good enough for that kind of work, let alone a sane Wilson.

The very first mission is enough to send a trickle of unease down Logan's spine. Wilson doesn't need them at all. He executes the mission mostly without them, in spite of them, without getting even a hair out of place. There's none of his usual issues with carelessness, with talking too much, with dying or bleeding out or losing body parts at inconvenient moments. If Logan didn't have proof (of Wilson stabbing himself in the hand and watching it close before his eyes) that Wilson still had his healing, he would think that Wilson had no powers at all. That is the frightening part. This mission required powers. They were tapped for it by SHIELD specifically because it was outside of a baseline human's ability to deal with.

... apparently not beyond Wade Wilson's ability to deal with it.

Logan would be more concerned if Wilson didn't act mostly like the Wade he knows, seeking attention from him, looking for approval, flirting with Domino, talking shop, a little casual bragging to annoy Logan with. He smells the same, always the same, cool and crisp and healthy.

Eventually it occurs to Logan why this bothers him, but by then it will be much too late.

+15-AU. Know Thyself

Logan can handle battlefield tactics. He has enough real world experience to make up for his own reactive nature and berserker tendencies. However, he prefers to rely on better strategists if they're available, like Scott Summers. Nathan is fucking insufferable, but just as capable as his father.

Logan did not remember Wade being this good of a planner, but when the evidence is before his eyes, he can't deny it. It doesn't take long for Wade to slide into the role of mission planner. He slots himself into it so effortlessly that Logan can't remember how he got there, only that it was sensible to do it. They talked over some beers post mission? Shot the breeze about what went wrong and how to fix it? Played the hindsight is 20/20 game?

It probably doesn't matter. Wade is good at it. Good at assembling fragments of information, good at using all their strengths and shoring up their weaknesses, good at gaming the enemy system, and even better at managing it on the fly, in combat, turning them on a dime when the enemy inevitably makes a plan completely worthless. Wade is the best live battle tactician that Logan has ever seen. He makes Steve Rogers look like a child tripping over blocks. Logan would suspect some kind of precognition mutation if he didn't know that all the records he has access to clearly state that Wade was a baseline human before the Workshop.

Logan can't imagine how Wade was ever discharged from the army. Even if he suffered from a riot of issues which he obviously doesn't suffer from, this kind of tactical skill belongs at the helm of an army. This is a general's aid, if not a general himself. Whatever failing Wade had could surely have been handled? The army manages a wide variety of personnel problems with rigid structure and sharp discipline, often with better success than civilian life can manage.

It never occurs to Logan that the army has two hundred years of experience in managing personnel and they might actually know better than Logan why Wilson was unfit for command.

+16-AU. Betrayal

Logan lets his guard down. He's never felt the need to guard against Wilson in particular. Wilson has always had too many tells that give him away the moment he does something that he shouldn't.

Missions go reasonably well. Wilson interacts politely with the mansion's inhabitants when they happen to be there. He mentions getting an apartment when he gets paid. Logan sees no problem with that. A man this attractive is going to find someone to warm his bed eventually and Logan doesn't particularly want to see them or smell them.

Wilson already smells like he's been wearing Nathan whenever he disappears on 'leave'. Color Logan completely not surprised. Of course Nathan would have to check out the new and improved Wilson. That man was so fucking nosy. Logan should be grateful he hadn't shown up to try to take over X-Force.

Wilson didn't join X-Force to find an equilibrium for his new self, to remake himself. He didn't join for companionship or for old time's sake or for finding others like himself. He joined them because they're stupid. They're easy. They have ties to the him that was mad, to the him that would work with them for mutual gain. He joined them to get access. He didn't join X-Force, he infiltrated X-Force ... and from X-Force, the X-Men and SHIELD, and from SHIELD, everyone else.

... but the X-Men are what matter in the moment. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. There are a dozen different drugs that suppress mutations and putting them in the water is easy. Not in the mansion's water, oh no, in the township's water. Come and attack a city service and see how many heroes come to put the hammer down.

Then will come the lawyers and the press and the circle of accusation and counter accusation that will muddy the water so much that they many never figure out it was Wilson who's sabotaging them.

But all of that is Plan B. Plan A is weakness. Weaken them and strike them down.

+17-AU. Along Came a Cable and ruined Scott's day.

Wilson is just the forward scout. Cable is the arriving army. Cable is also the distraction.

Scott doesn't know what to do with the sudden arrival of his son. He hadn't even been aware that Nathan had left? Or what he had gotten into to make him this young.

He's just so young. Not a child, but barely a man. He's younger than Scott for once and Scott struggles with the paradigm shift. His boy needs him. Cable is struggling with his shifting powers and he has come home, to the only place where he could find help.

Despite every aid Scott brings him, none of them can help him. It's not just his powers, which fluctuate wildly, from weak to strong to insanely powerful, it's also the madness that prevents any other telepath from being able to get inside his mind to shore up his shields for him.

Scott calls X-Force home. He doesn't know what Cable needs, but Domino, Siryn, and Wilson have been his friends in the past and it's possible they know what could help him.

Wilson doesn't struggle at all. The moment Cable catches sight of him, he's magnetized to his side, babbling and demanding. Wilson ruffles his hair and tucks him under his arm, making noises of acknowledgment now and again when Cable seems to be winding down.

This picture is right, in the sense that Scott is used to them ending up on the same side of the room and immediately in each other's orbit when given ten seconds of inattention ... but the picture is also horribly wrong, so completely inverted that Scott's thinks for a moment that this is not Wade and Nate at all, but their reverse doubles from another dimension.

For an instant, intuition flares and dies.

Chapter Text

The machine explodes, sending a shockwave of light and sound through the warehouse.

Nathan throws an arm up to protect his eyes as the wave passes him, making his skin crawl. He drops his arm, sights on the next target and pulls the trigger, grateful for the unanticipated boon of the lightshow.

It takes almost too long to realize that the person cutting a swathe across the room towards him isn't Wade. His trash talk is wrong, sharper and harder and vicious. He's not taller, but he's still bigger, with broader shoulders and rippling muscles. This man is an idealized tank, a picture perfect super soldier in a red suit. He uses the swords in his hands as if he actually knew how to use them.

Nathan puts him in his sights the moment he gets too close for comfort, "Who the fuck are you?"

Deadpool cocks his head, "Aren't you a little short for a storm trooper?"

"Fucking jackass," Nathan mutters, already irritated by this imposter. He doesn't even sound the same.

Deadpool leans right over his gun, heedless that it's jammed into his chest, and blinks strange pale eyes at him, "Cable?"

"Who the fuck else would I be?"

A manic grin stretches Deadpool's mask, "Oh, this is great."

Nathan pointedly shoves the gun further into his chest, "Where's Deadpool, fuckwit?"

Deadpool squeals with glee and reaches out to ruffle his hair, "The mouth on you, little muffin Nate ... and the hair, holy shit. Look at these gruff, steel locks." The gloved fingers stroking the bare skin of his temples sends a shudder down his spine and something brushes across his mental shields, purposeful and prickly. Nathan grits his teeth and pulls the trigger.

This Deadpool is fast. His eyes track from Nathan to the gun just as Nathan's temper surges and he jerks backwards, bending nearly in half. The blast flares where Deadpool used to be as he does a handstand flip. Nathan throws himself backward to avoid heavy boots to the chin as Deadpool vaults back to his feet and into a crouch. Deadpool's hands goes to the hilts of his swords rather than the guns at his hips as he clicks his tongue, "Now, now, that wasn't very nice, tiny Nate."

"Put your mouth to good use, shit stain, and talk," Nathan snarled, putting the bouncy red fucker back in his sights, "Or I'll pump you full of lead and dismember your useless corpse to get my ammo back."

Pale eyes widened in surprise and Deadpool laughed incredulously. "It's like I'm in opposite land," he told the air. "Adorable munchkin opposite land."

Nathan swiped the charge on his gun to the maximum setting and bared his teeth in a mean grin as the power pack whined.

"As if you've got the balls to fill me up, short stack," a vicious smile stretched Deadpool's mask out of shape, "I've got my own Nate, you know, and he's not nearly as short and over compensating as you." The wispy sense of his mind goes sharp and Nathan pulls the trigger.

Deadpool lunges for him, rolling under the blast as his sword nearly slices Nathan's gun in two. Adamantium flickers across his mind as his wrist shield flashes on. A sword skids across it trailing sparks and Nathan whips the useless gun around to club him.

"Making friends, I see," a voice rumbles from the side as Deadpool rolls with the blow and Nathan doesn't give him time to recover, immediately following up with a punch to the throat with his metal fist.

Deadpool hops back to put distance between them, swords rolling over his wrists in silent threat. "I'm a friendly guy, Nate," he rasps from a bruised throat, "my milkshake brings all the telepaths to the yard."

Nathan backs up as well, cautiously flicking his gaze to the side, where some other costumed weirdo stands, having come through the hazy fracture in reality behind him.

"Who the fuck are you?" he asks flatly.

Other Costumed Weirdo puts the imposter Deadpool to shame. He was a head taller than him with broad shoulders and bulging, rippling muscles. It was easy to see every one of them in the skin tight yellow and blue number he was wearing. His left arm was winding silver metal so polished it gleamed. His left eye burned with golden flame. The right eye was clear blue, set in smooth tan skin. Ruffled white hair and white stubble on a chiseled jaw made him seem older than he probably was.

Perfect lips twitch into a small, irritating smile, "Another universe's you." The 'better' before the 'you' is silent, but loud and clear all the same.

"Alternate universes," Nathan grunted, "what a shit show."

"Quite." Cable murmured, lips quirking into an almost smirk. This fucker was an asshole on par with the obnoxious red imposter, the way he seemed intent on rubbing Nathan the wrong way. "Wade."

Cable focused on Deadpool and the sense of him expanded, a sudden tide of telepathy that flowed from him outward, washing across Nathan, across the warehouse and ever outwards. It did not stop. There was no end to this one's strength or range as he eclipsed Nathan's ability to grasp the edges of him in an instant. The soft currents that Nathan could sense were full only of Cable as his will encircled the earth, swamping all lesser telepaths … and they were all lesser to Cable.

Deadpool responded. There was no other word for the sensation, the sudden shift of that prickly purposefulness, that staticky discomfort that made Nathan's skin crawl. They recognized each other mind to something. Cable's shoulders instantly relaxed, "Wade," he repeated, relieved.

"Look, Nate, he's like a fresh diamond!" Deadpool draped himself across Nathan's back, rubbing his cheek against the top of his hair as he hugged him enthusiastically. Nathan instantly slammed his elbows back into his stomach, regretting having taken his eyes off him for even a second. "Oof!"

Cable put his hand to his mouth and his eyes twinkled, "And by fresh, do you happen to mean a gray craggy rock just cut from the ground?"

"Don't just say it! He's sensitive!" Deadpool gasped and covered Nathan's ears, "A tender, grubby crumpet! Can't you see it's opposite world here, Nate?!"

Nathan turned and punched him in the gut as hard as he could. "Personal space, you dumb fuck, learn it!" When Deadpool rocked back, curling over the aching body part, Nathan shoved him away.

The air felt colder, a ripple of feeling that presaged an oncoming storm. Nathan turned back and bared his teeth at Cable, unwilling to show even the slightest bit of weakness to the silent threat. "If this dithering dildo is yours, then get him out of my fucking space."

Behind him, Deadpool shifted and the faint impression of his mind was suddenly clear and sharp, crystallizing into a dome of spreading feathers in the cold, the instinctive mantling wings of a terrible unseen raptor.

Nathan backhanded him before he had even realized he had done it, his own response to a threat that grabbed him right in the gut, an atavistic response to a predator. He did not like this Deadpool and now he knew why. He was a telepath killer. "And bring Wade over," he added flatly.

"Stop hitting my Wade," Cable snapped back.

"He keeps asking for it," he snarled furiously, his shields clamping down tightly in defense, ready to fight both of them.

The crack behind Cable rippled and Nathan's Wade hopped out, tripping as the edge proved to be more uneven than he expected. It effectively interrupted the escalating fight as he tripped and fell into Cable, throwing him off balance. "Ooof! Sorry."

Beside Cable, Nathan's own Wade seems pale in comparison. Thin and faded, grubby and scuffed and real beside such perfect, clean definition.

Cable threw an arm over his shoulders as he moved to regain equilibrium and Wade happily groped his hips and ass and travelled up to investigate his washboard abs and chest. Cable huffed and stifled a laugh, looking amused by this shameless opportunism rather than annoyed. Nathan meanwhile, was so fucking annoyed he was grinding his teeth.

"Hey," Wade grinned at Nathan around Cable's bulk, "look what I found, Cable! Can I keep him?"

"No," Nathan snapped furiously. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as Nathan locked gazes with his counterpart. "Thanks for bringing back my Wade," he said gruffly, gesturing roughly at Wade to let go and come over here right now, "but you should probably get back where you belong."

Confused and pouting, but so, so trusting, Wade reluctantly stopped his groping of other men and drifted away from Cable and back to him. As soon as he got within arm's reach, Nathan yanked him against his side. Confused, Wade hugged him in return, resting his cheek on top of his head … a gesture that Nathan would otherwise never have permitted, "Oh, this is nice. I like it."

"You talk too much," Nathan grunted, but didn't break his eye contact with Cable. He jerked his chin at the taller him, "Get lost."

"I suppose everything has worked itself out," Cable murmured languidly, which fooled Nathan not at all, "Come along, Wade."

"A mean crumpet," Deadpool complained as he followed Cable through the rip in reality, "He didn't like me at all!"

"I can't imagine why. You're so likable."

The rip sealed behind them.

"Good fucking riddance," Nathan growled at empty space.

Some extra content for your viewing pleasure since this is a write and post adventure:

… but what about Wade and Cable?

Wade must have gotten turned around during the light show because this wasn't Kansas anymore. Well, smelly New York warehouse that suddenly didn't quite look like the same smelly New York warehouse. The mooks had also changed outfits like magical girls, switching off the yellow shirts for yellow suits and beehives for heads. What in the ever loving fuck?

He killed the last beehive fetishist and looked around for Nathan. They should blow this popsicle stand.

Another costumed weirdo ducked into the room and Wade swung his gun up just in case.

"Wade?" the other guy asked, the warm rumble of his voice confused as he let the massive gun drop to his side. The guy was big, easily a head taller than Wade with broad shoulders and bulging, rippling muscles. It was easy to see every one of the perfectly defined beauties since he was wearing a skin tight yellow and blue number that would put pro wrestlers to shame. His left arm was winding silver metal polished so brightly it gleamed and his left eye burned with golden flame. The other eye was clear blue set in tanned skin and the ruffled white hair made him look older than he probably was.

Wade quietly freaked out that Perfect Ten knew his name. "Hey, costumed weirdo!" he squeaked and cleared his throat, "Who are you?"

Fine white brows drew together in thought, "I'm Cable."

"The fuck you are!" Wade blurted, completely incredulous. His Nathan was short and rough and grumpy.

"I am," Totally Not Cable said mildly, flicking the safety on his gun and holstering it, "You, however, are definitely not my Deadpool."

"Excuse you! I am 100% Deadpool, accept no substitutes!"

Stud Muffin ignored this, which was pretty much like his own Nathan, and turned to look over the destruction in the room, "There would be no reason for you to be here and for Wade to be gone unless … hmmm … the explosion probably caused a temporal distortion of some kind and you two switched places."

"Sorry, but I can't hear you over the sound of all my blood rushing into my dick," Wade said, distracted by the way that skin tight yellow fabric moved across the most picture perfect ass he had ever seen. It should be framed in a museum.

A broad silver hand reached for him and Wade flinched back, but it only settled on the top of his head and tweaked the little red fabric seam there. "Honestly," Cable chuckled. Wade cautiously looked up, but the other man's eyes were only crinkled in amusement and pleasure. "Not a single filter on any of you." The hand slid down to cup the back of his neck, gripping lightly and making a shudder roll down Wade's spine over how warm and firm that hand felt, the soft press of a thumb right below his ear.

"I have plenty of filters," Wade shot back belatedly, mesmerized by the shining silver coils that shaped into an arm and the way he could almost feel the warm emotions from Cable.

"Mmmmmhmmm," was the dubious sound in reply as Cable chuckled again, "I'm a telepath, remember?" He stroked languidly down Wade's spine and tugged him forward so that Wade nearly tumbled into his side, tucking him under his arm. All thought promptly left Wade's head and was replaced by white noise as there was all this perfect everything under his hands and pressed against him. "Guh."

Cable chuckled, a low rumble against Wade's ear, and he cautiously placed his hands down on perfect hard muscle, swallowing convulsively. He stopped abruptly as the lust impacted part of his brain finally caught up and processed words, "What do you mean telepath?!"

The original outcome of Nathan and Deadpool

"Put your mouth to good use, shit stain, and talk," Nathan snarled, putting the bouncy red fucker back in his sights, "Or I'll pump you full of lead and dismember your useless corpse to get my ammo back."

Pale eyes widened in surprise and Deadpool straightened with an incredulous laugh. "It's like I'm in opposite land," he told the air. "Adorable munchkin opposite land."

Nathan swiped the charge on his gun to the maximum setting and bared his teeth in a mean grin as the power pack turned up with a whine.

"You can fill me up all you want, short stack, if you got the balls for it," Deadpool put his hands up lazily, stretching shamelessly, showing off every rippling muscle, "but I'm Deadpool and I don't know where your Deadpool is. If we're lucky, we switched places when the machine blew up and my Cable'll be able switch us back."

"Alternate universes?" Nathan growled and Deadpool gave him finger guns and a kissy face.

"If you're Nathan too many middle names Summers. I've got my own Nate, you know, and he's not nearly as short and over compensating as you."

Nathan didn't relax as he mulled that idea over, tuning the insults out. An imposter might be a simpler answer … but this was a terrible imposter if he was supposed to fool anyone who had talked to Wade for more than five seconds. There was also the fact that this guy knew his name, which he hadn't been casually sharing around. No, alternate universes were well within the possibilities for time theory … he just hadn't thought this particular organization was dabbling in that kind of tech.

"Alright, I believe it," Nathan sighed and lowered his gun, grunting, "Let's sweep this place for anything that hasn't already been trashed."

Deadpool cheered and promptly threw himself at Nathan, hugging him close and ruffling his hair. He smelled like Mexican spices, smoke, and rot. Nathan settled a hand on the small of his back and Deadpool took that as an invitation to shamelessly rub against him like a cat, nuzzling the top of his head. Nathan huffed from where his face was jammed into Deadpool's shoulder and stabbed him in the gut. Deadpool jerked in surprise and Nathan held him in place by the same hand he took as invitation and twisted the knife, yanking it upwards to gut the man like a fish.

"What the fu-ugh-ck, Nate," Deadpool choked on his own blood as he sagged against him.

"I don't trust you for shit," Nathan said flatly, shoving him off the blade, uncaring as he collapsed on the floor, holding his guts in, "If you're actually a Wade Wilson, you'll heal up just fine." He bent over only enough to wipe his blade off on Deadpool's red suit, briefly gripping the copy's chin to stare into pale betrayed eyes," … and if you aren't, then too bad."

Chapter Text

"Hey."

Scott Summers jerked in surprise, finger tips going abortively to his temple before falling back to the ship's rail again. The tall, white haired man beside him just swayed the beer can he was holding out side to side.

Scott took the Budweiser without complaint to cover both his embarrassment and his reaction, cracking the tab open to take a sip, "Thanks, Mr … ?"

The older man wrinkled his nose lightly, "Just Nathan, thanks."

"Scott," he jerked a thumb at himself as Nathan leaned back against the rail and looked past Scott onto the ocean. If Scott had to guess, he'd say that Nathan was at least fifty with that white hair and he was making Scoot look like a small man. He was at least a head taller than Scott and his biceps were wider than Scott's thighs. He had an eyepatch over his left eye and a glove over his left hand, which was holding his beer. War wounds? He was old enough to have been in one.

"Do I have something on my face?" Nathan asked, his smile more a lopsided smirk of amusement.

Scott winced and knew Nathan couldn't see it past his glasses, "Sorry." He cast around for a topic that wasn't digging into a stranger's personal wounds. "Why me?"

Nathan tilted his head, "Why what?"

Scott lifted his beer to illustrate his point, "Why talk to me?"

"Ah," Nathan took a sip of his own can as if reminded that he had it, "You've been brooding over here since we left port. Thought you needed to get out of your own head a bit."

"I wasn't brooding," Scott muttered and felt himself blush like a kid for protesting something so silly.

"You were absolutely brooding," Nathan said smugly, teasingly, "Like a little storm cloud raining on the deck."

If he could cover his eyes he would have, but with the glasses and his powers, that escape was denied him. He struck Nathan lightly on the arm with his beer can instead, "I've known you for ten seconds and I already know you're a jerk."

"A jerk who brings beer," Nathan smirked and his eye was the same tone as the ocean, which meant it was blue.

"There is that," Scott agreed, smiling despite himself and took a sip to avoid having to stare right in that eye, "Is Anchorage your last stop?"

Nathan nodded, "I want to see some sights and then I was thinking about going east into Canada."

"I'm originally from Anchorage. I could show you around."

Nathan smiled and the skin around his eye crinkled, softening the chiseled good looks into something softer and more personal, "I'd appreciate that." He offered his beer for tapping. "A guide for the price of beer. Am I great or what?"

"Sure, you're a great old man," Scott snickered and tapped their cans together with a little tink.

… and for once since her death, Jean was the last thing on his mind.

Chapter Text

An Insult That Can't Be Allowed To Stand

"Hey, boss," Wilson stepped into the room, gazing flickering over Stryfe before focusing on him, "You want me to take out the trash?"

Tyler blinked at him, frozen in a timeless second of incomprehension, unable to figure out what Wilson could even be talking about -- the insult is so casual and urbane, so fundamentally dismissive of the threat standing in front of them, the horrific nemesis that has stalked his entire family -- that Tyler doesn't even process it properly.

Stryfe doesn't have Tyler's problem. His power lashes out in an instant, a vicious barbed loop of telekinesis flickering with the speed of thought, a ice pick of telepathy stabbing with the same thrust.

Two things happen at once. One: Tyler reacts as only a war trained child of the clans could, he uses his mind link with Stryfe to yank, ripping memories out of his head and into the air in a cacophony of distracting images. The mnemopathic attack disrupted Stryfe's focus and with it his attack. Two: Wilson shoots Stryfe twice in the face, his gun in his hand so blindingly fast that Tyler did not even notice him move. The bullets waver in the air, caught in the vortex of disrupted telekinesis and drop to the ground.

"Well fuck you too," Wilson says cheerfully, drawing his swords and charging across the room.

Stryfe meets him with a roar. The swords are useless, clanging off his armor and skidding uselessly against the spikes. Stryfe laughs maniacally as he backhands Wilson with a telekinetically enhanced fist, his power wrapping around the swords and shattering them in Wilson's hands.

Wilson hits the ground and rolls, shedding the shattered remnants of his weapons around him like so much shrapnel. Malice radiates from Stryfe in a wave, buffeting them both with his will, the joy he will take in their pain. Wilson shakes his head and and then his whole body like a dog, as though he could rid himself of Stryfe that easily. Tyler pushes back, grabbing a memory of the time he was five and broke his leg in a game trap, stabbing Stryfe with the pain, with the sickening crack of broken bone, with Aliya's distress.

Stryfe's head whipped around to Tyler, the terrible focus of his will slamming into Tyler's pitiful shields like a hammer. Tyler was not a telepath, but a mnenopath, he had no natural defense against telepathic attack. He knew that memory was a risk, because Stryfe liked pain and he especially liked remembering how he hurt Tyler's mother ... but it was the first one that came to his mind to use. Tyler almost buckles, almost breaks under the assault, but he has been his sire's plaything before and he will ... not ... b ... e ... n ... d

Wilson kicks Stryfe's legs out from underneath him, sending the larger man to his knees with a grunt. Stryfe's focus wavers and Tyler slips out from under the pressure.

Wilson hits Stryfe from the side like a wrecking ball, sending the two of them tumbling into a vicious grapple that surprises both Stryfe and Tyler with the power of it. Tyler didn't know that Wilson could hit someone that hard. Stryfe's armor buckles under Wilson's fists.

"I'm gonna shell your ugly crab face and grill it on my brand new swords, coward," Wilson snarls, silver glinting around his fists as he punches a dagger into the gap of armor plating in Stryfe's shoulder, making his sire shout in pain. Tyler grabs the newborn memory and magnifies it, tying it to a string of similar memories.

Stryfe throws Wilson through the air with a thought, a burst of 'get away!' that is also physical form. Wilson rolls in the air like a cat, ready to rebound and attack. Tyler summons a holographic projection, a living memory of a wall and Wilson uses it as a spring board to throw himself right back at Stryfe. Stryfe's eyes widen in surprise and he ducks. The bullet Wilson nearly puts through his head shatters in the air.

For a long, fraught minute, there is only pure melee as Wilson grapples with Stryfe and Stryfe tries to disengage and when he fails to disengage, tries to tear Wilson apart. Tyler has only one task and that is keeping Stryfe's powers disrupted with his own attack, summoning memory after memory, rifling through Stryfe's brain with desperate focus to find something he can truly use. He couldn't do this without Wilson, without his implacable attack. It doesn't matter how hard Stryfe hits Wilson, Wilson just keeps rebounding as strong as he was before, spitting blood and teeth into Stryfe's eyes as he uses those daggers in his fists to punch holes in Stryfe's armor. Slowly, but surely, he is shelling Stryfe, clawing him out of his armor.

This is ... harmony. A perfect battle song. Tyler can never be his sire's equal, he was born with an inferior power, but he is the only person in the room who can actually focus his power. Wilson is relentless, keeping the pressure up perfectly while his mouth runs on furious autopilot. It is glorious to see Stryfe struggle, to see him dirty his hands. Tyler's joy paints the mind currents in a riotous glow of rainbow light ... and he can only see it because Stryfe sees it and Tyler is reading his memories as soon as they are born, magnifying the perception of the pain Wilson is inflicting on him.

Wilson's wings stretch wide, translucent feathers mantling in the radiance, casting pale tessellating shadows across his prey, the mind currents ripped to shreds by their passing.

Stryfe and then Tyler freeze, still and motionless, as the camouflage is broken and the unseen predator is for a split second outlined clearly in their thoughts before being obscured once more.

Memory unspools in Stryfe without Tyler's help. A memory that Stryfe has stolen, ripped from Aliya's head by force, as he had stolen many such memories before. A memory passed from parent to child, from teacher to student, in an unbroken line from antiquity, a warning that they were not the apex predator among human kind. That there was a threat that lurked unseen in the dark, unknowable, invisible, before it tore you apart. The memory of what a telepath killer feels like.

The memory of what Wade Wilson feels like.

Wilson only sees Stryfe's hesitation and strikes. Stryfe, previously unwilling to yield to men he knew to be his inferior prey, bolts with a shouted "[Bodyslide]!"

Wilson pulls himself up from the ground, where the teleportation has dropped him, and shoves his hands into his lower back with a groan, "What a fucking coward."

Tyler heaves in air, Stryfe's side of their mental link abruptly silenced by distance. He snorted a breathless laugh, "A dangerous one."

Wilson shrugs and lifts his mask to spit blood across the floor, "Want me to follow him and fuck him up?"

Tyler would love for Wilson to hunt Stryfe down and gut him ... but cooler heads must acknowledge that such actions would be deeply stupid. Just because Stryfe had some kind of terrorized sensory recall in the heat of battle didn't mean that the recall was even real. Tyler had sent Wilson after Cable and Cable still lived. That wasn't exactly the mark of a natural born telepath killer. "No. Leave it. He'll stick his head out again in due time."

"You're the boss," Wilson hummed agreeably, kicking at the shattered remnants of his swords with a sigh.

Wilson really was reliable, wasn't he? Tyler thought with pleasure, the remnants of battle high still coursing through his veins. It was a successful battle. They had won. It was worth celebrating. "I am," he said, satisfied.

"Didn't know you had powers," Wilson said mildly, watching him sideways.

"It wasn't your business to know. It isn't particularly useful in a fight," Tyler returned with equal mildness, "Are you looking to renegotiate?"

Wilson rolled his shoulders, "No?"

"Hmm, good," Tyler let his eyes slide down Wilson's frame, taking in the curve of muscle and the torn skin that had already healed, "I might be."

Wilson eyed him warily as Tyler reached out to run his hand down the path his eyes had followed, "Yeah?"

"I think double the fee is fair if I want two services from you instead of one," Tyler purred, slipping a thumb under Wilson's mask to push it up. Wilson did not jerk away.

"Sure it is, boss," Wilson's voice climbed in pitch before he cleared his throat, "but you're not getting a great deal on that, uh, second servi -- mmph."

Tyler licked the blood off Wilson's lips as he drew back, "I think you should let me decide what is or isn't great service."

Wilson's hands, the fists that had battered Stryfe, came to rest feather light on his hips, "Boss, I don't think - "

"I'm not paying you to think," Tyler cut across his protests and pushed him back against the wall, biting at his throat, "I paying you to kill my enemies, look very pretty, sound very pretty, and now to fuck me stupid."

"You're blind and also deaf," Wilson told him very seriously, which was not, Tyler noted, any kind of 'no'.

So Tyler gave him the only sensible response, which was shove his tongue down his throat.

No one could say that Tyler's blood didn't run true.

Two Bros Run Away Together and Plan a Murder

"For Christ's sake, Wade, this the seventh safe house we've been in!"

Wade whipped around to squint at him, "And that makes it safe?"

"Yes!" Weasel snapped, "The trail is cold by now!"

Wade twitched as he circled the room and obsessively checked the corners, "He's a telepath, he could still track us."

"That'd only work if someone who wasn't us knew where we were going."

Wade opened a floor to ceiling cabinet and prodded at the inside walls, "But what if he could hear us?"

"We're in a city with more than thirty million people!"

"Yeah, but you stand out."

"Fuck you, you stand out even more! I barely leave the house."

"We could go to Canada where there are no people," Wade said thoughtfully.

"Canada is cold."

"It's not that bad."

"Cold like Siberia. You made me maple syrup snow candy in summer."

Wade sighed like that was a nostalgic vacation instead of a hellish freight trip with live cargo and the worst wifi on the planet. Which reminded Weasel.

"And I need wifi! Without wifi we are fucked! Do you hear me? Fucked!"

"Primus! I'll get you wifi. I'll solder a dish to the damn roof. You're such a whiner," Wade huffed, crossing his arms over his chest and glowering moodily as Weasel gratefully dumped his duffel bag on the floor and gently set his work kit on the table.

"Good," Weasel hissed, feeling justified in his pissiness.

"You're such a girl," Wade muttered.

"You're a paranoid shit head," Weasel shot back, tired.

"It's not paranoia if he's actually out to get us!" Wade snapped, beginning to jitter again around the room again, "The San Francisco house was supposed to be safe."

Weasel took his glasses off to rub his eyes, "It was in Sister Margaret's directory. It wasn't a secret. He probably just had to skim the proprietor to get that info if those assholes at the bar didn't just give you up for a couple of bucks."

Wade swore viciously enough to blister paint.

"We can kill those snitches later," Weasel said, quite reasonably, he thought, "No one knows about this place. If we keep our heads down he's not going to find us."

"Fine, fine, we'll stay."

"Thank you god, finally! I'm starving."

"So much for keeping our heads down," Wade snipped, but it was so bitchy that Weasel ignored him.

...

When Wade finally showed his face, Weasel winced and frankly told him, "You look like a bigger pile of shit than usual."

Wade flipped him the bird with both hands, "Fuck you."

"That's never as fun as you say it is," Weasel said mildly, even as he watched his friend with tense shoulders.

"You're just a wuss," Wade sniffed as he yanked the mini fridge door open and stared mournfully at the contents before listlessly selecting a beer.

"My moon petal skin is delicate."

Wade snickered and leered at him halfheartedly. He popped the tab on the beer and chugged it down. The can was crushed roughly in two hands and tossed flattened into the garbage can. He grabbed a second can and slumped down on Weasel's spare computer chair, spinning idly.

Weasel flickered a glance at the garbage can, reminded again that his friend could break him like a toothpick if the mood took him and Wade had good reason to be moody as fuck right now. He slouched even farther in his own chair and tilted his head back in Wade's direction.

Wade looked back with cold, clear eyes, as pale and empty as glacier ice. He clicked the can down on the table and smiled a smile that Weasel had not seen for years, smooth and sane and colder than Siberian winter. "He overplayed his hand."

"You'll have to translate that for me," Weasel said bluntly, preferring this Wade over the one that was moody and chaotic and could not be anticipated.

"I thought," Wade's eyes went distant and far away, seeing the horror that Weasel had thankfully been spared, "that Al was just unlucky. She was at home, so when Stryfe found it, it was natural he would kill her."

"I follow you," Weasel agreed softly. That was just sense. There was no reason he would have let her live if she was right there to hurt. The safety of the San Francisco house was only in secrecy. They had to kill Stryfe for Al, but it was almost business like. They didn't need to start a full scale war to give her the respect she deserved. It had been as much about Wade's reputation as it was about repayment.

Wade traced a path on the beer can's condensation with his finger, "Vanessa ... " he paused and closed his eyes, breathing in for a moment, "Copycat hasn't played ball with us for years. She's not in our circle."

"Yeah."

"She doesn't know our business. She broke with Tolliver before he died. We're publicly at odds," a plaintive note leaked into his voice, making it waver.

Weasel bent to get his own beer out of the fridge to give Wade a second to get his shit together.

"He doesn't even aim her at us. He aims her at Cable," Wade sneered on the call sign, his personal dislike of Cable some leftover remnant from working with Tolliver. Wade had been weird about Tolliver, didn't want to disappoint him ... like he wasn't just a job.

Weasel withheld the jab he had lined up for Tolliver and Tolliver's weird shit. He popped the tab of his beer instead.

"There's no purpose in offing Copycat," Wade refocuses again, coming back to the original point, "It's sadism. Perversion prioritized over pragmatism. He takes a risk with a woman who can turn into him if he holds onto her too long and then drops her corpse off in his twin's bed."

"Wait," Weasel blinked, now aware of the risk in this set of logistics, "how long does it take her to pick up a new copy on purpose?"

"A couple minutes."

"What the fuck was he doing?!"

"Fucking her, of course. He was hurting her, so it probably slowed her down a little because she would have been distracted," Wade said distantly, far away in a horrible place inside his own head, "but she's been roughed over during a fuck before, so I don't think it would have slowed her down enough. She probably switched over to someone she thought would make him stop. She wouldn't want to turn into him because she wouldn't want his thoughts and his memories. He was raping her."

Weasel suddenly wished that Wade would stop, just please stop because he didn't want to know what their Vanessa had suffered at the end.

"It would have to be someone she had already changed into recently. A fresh imprint or a saved one. A man would work, right? The bigger the man, the better."

Weasel swore and shoved his beer aside, choking on air and horror.

"She probably turned into Cable."

Weasel covered his mouth with his hands and shuddered. "Oh, god, no."

"I bet Stryfe loved that. He would have stopped playing around. He would have gone straight to the mind rape because he couldn't imagine letting her go anymore. A toy like that? That changes into what you always wanted? Jackpot."

Weasel helplessly shook his head, feeling utterly sick.

"Cable's powers are weak. He's no match for Stryfe, especially at a disadvantage." Wade took a wavering breath, "That dumb bitch. She should have turned into me. What could he have done to me that would stick? He doesn't know shit about me. She could have faked being dead and gotten away."

Weasel lunged forward and slapped his hand over Wade's mouth.

Wade blinked watery eyes at Weasel over his covered mouth. The tears were hot where they struck his hand. He pressed his hand tighter over Wade's mouth to shut him up and blinked hard against his own tears, voice hoarse, "She was in pain. She couldn't think clearly. She just reacted, that's all. Turned into the biggest good guy she knew, right? Bigger is scarier and Cable was one of the biggest good guys she knew. She was just trying to make herself safer and Cable felt safe."

Wade sobbed brokenly against his hand, a horrible hitching noise that was breaking both their hearts, "She didn't know. She couldn't know it was the wrong choice."

It was quiet except for their broken breathing as they both struggled to regain their composure. Vanessa was dead and the only thing they could do for her was vengeance. Tears were useless and weak and Weasel scrubbed at his eyes to be rid of them.

Wade reached up and took his hand and gently pulled it away. He blinked and Weasel could see him putting the grief away, pushing it down under ice. "It's okay, Weas," he smiled that glacier smile beneath chillingly flat eyes, "That stupid fucker just showed us how to kill him and we're going to fucking murder him."

...

Wade unclipped the teleportation disk from his harness and held it up, spinning it on one finger.

"Hey! Be careful with that!" Weasel snapped, pulled from his morose contemplations.

Wade rolled his eyes as he flipped it in the air, caught in on the drop, and set it down on the table between them, "I teleport. How?"

Weasel glared at him for his treatment of the precious teleporter that Weasel had carefully and lovingly assembled the ten million times Wade had broken it. "With that."

"But where did you get it? Did you invent it?"

Weasel opened his mouth to snap and then paused, "I bought it," he said thoughtfully, "as stolen goods."

"From who?"

"The usual people," Weasel pushed his glasses back up his nose. "Huh, now that's a thought. Where did it originally come from?"

"It looks a lot like that glittery fizzing thing Stryfe does when he runs away."

"He's a jerk," Weasel smirked, grasping the twisting path of Wade's thoughts, "I'd steal his stuff and sell it."

Wade grinned back, "He's got a lot of bases and a lot of mooks."

"That's a lot of potential leaks," Weasel grinned, laughing as he grabbed the teleporter and shook it in the air, "If it's like this, I bet I could trace it." He tapped his chin, staring at the ceiling, "I'd need to catch the frequency of that fizzy trail and I'd need a transmitter."

Wade made a face, "Ugh, math."

"Shut it," Weasel said cheerfully, "Or you'll have to check my math."

"I'm out of here. I'm going! I'm leaving right now!"

"Bye, Wade," Weasel waved at his departing back.

...

"I'm going to need more drugs and explosives," Wade said as he dropped a convenience store bento on top of Weasel's workstation.

Weasel looked up through his jeweler's glasses and got an eyeful of mask threads. "Already?" He switched glasses so he could rifle through what Wade brought him.

"I'm swimming in mooks and safe houses. I don't know where this asshole is getting the funds for this, but when I do, we're going to be sipping pina coladas in the Caribbean after buying Madripoor."

"Ahh, thievery, our bread and butter after murder," Weasel hummed as he fished around in his drawer for a pair of clean chopsticks. "The last creeps give you anything interesting?"

"He's got an energy shield built into his bitch armor," Wade made a face as he popped the lid off his bento and stole Weasel's chopsticks. Weasel glared at him and fished for another set.

"That guy," Weasel muttered, "What kind of enemies does he fucking have?"

"Well, he has us."

Weasel smiled a nasty smile before popping the octopus shaped wiener into his mouth. Those things were just too damn cute. "Transmitters almost done," he said around a mouthful of meat, "where you wanna test it?"

"Canada."

"Fuck you."

Wade peeling his mask up to eat picked radish, grinning, "Word on the ground is that he has all these toys 'cause he's from the future."

"The hell?"

"You'd think his tech would be better if it was from the future, right?"

"How far in the future?"

"Like forever. Two thousand years or some shit."

"Wow, that's just," Weasel stabbed his pickled egg, "that's gotta be a lie."

"The teleporter's cool, but not that cool."

Weasel finished swallowing the egg before replying, "Got a plan for the energy shield?"

"Think it's stronger than a tank?"

Weasel squinted into the air, thinking, "The power source would have to be real good, at least as strong as what Iron Man's running around with. I could get a meter that might be able to test it."

"Ah, stalking, my favorite sport after theft."

"You could just shoot him to test it."

"I don't want him to think we're smart," Wade dismissed that suggestion.

"Can't have that," Weasel agreed dryly.

...

The moment Wade walked through door, Weasel jabbed a finger at his 27 inch computer screens and hissed at him in furious annoyance, "What the fuck are you doing?"

Wade flicked a glance at the live feed of a twenty foot billboard of Siryn and Wade's seventeen syllable verse that extolled her charms. He dramatically clutched his heart. "I'm hurt by your accusations! Hurt! I'm declaring my undying love to the girl of my dreams. Is that so wrong?"

"Are you trying to get her killed?!"

Wade gave him finger guns and winked, "Weasel, Weasel, Weasel ... iambic pentameter never killed anyone."

Weasel gestured at the screen, "That's haiku!"

"Potato, Potatoe."

Weasel buried his face in his hands, shoving his glasses up with his hands as he groaned, "Why? Just why?"

"She's a college girl, Weas," Wade plucked his glasses off his head and held them high when Weasel lunged for them, "Old enough that she doesn't want or need Daddy Cable's protection anymore and young enough that she still thinks that dramatic high school movie love confessions are romantic."

Weasel glared up at him, nearly nose to masked nose, "That just makes her easy pickings to guys like us."

"If we were actually good looking," Wade sighed.

Weasel rolled his eyes. He was very comfortable when he wasn't forced to shack up with Wade. "I'm still good looking."

Wade squinted at him and put Weasel's glasses on his own masked face to look at him dubiously.

"Shut up!" Weasel snatched the glasses back and hopped away, shoving them back on.

"I didn't say anything," Wade virtuously demurred before shrugging, "Anyway. She's going to go out and look at it, of course."

Weasel frowned in confusion.

"Out, flying all alone to look at her poor stupid lover boy's declarations of undying love," Wade said cheerfully, putting his chin in his hands and cooing.

"Like I said: Are you trying to get her killed."

"It's not like Stryfe is going to be waiting there right now. He's two states away," Wade waved a hand dismissively. "I'm going to serenade her next. Maybe send some flowers. I'll get an advertisement on a radio show. Women always like diamonds, just these big ol' rocks." Wade made a holding motion with his hands, like he was weighing rocks or breasts, "Do diamonds deliver? It's going to be great!"

"Wade ... " Weasel sighed expansively.

"... and then I'll put up another billboard and this time when she goes out, Stryfe is going to be waiting because he won't be able to help himself."

Weasel blinked at him, turning the idea around in his head as he pushed his glasses up his nose, "Oh, I get it now. This is a trap."

"I'll be just a thousand yards away ready to put a bullet in his head." Wade smiled a shark's smile. "She won't have to worry about a thing."

White Haired Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Nathan shoved Theresa out of the path of the energy blast with a short burst of will. She cleared the scorch trail and rolled in the air, wings folding as she let gravity take her down in a controlled dive. Assured she had it handled, Nathan darted behind the cover of a roof access and hit the power setting of his gun to maximum before taking aim at Stryfe. His twisted twin's hair glinted in the sunlight like a perfect target.

White hair spread across his pillow, mottled with streaks of rust red. Blue skin pale in death, bruised purple and turquoise, the blood already starting to settle in her back from how long she had laid there. The whole room smells like a charnel house.

Wait for it. You have all day. All year even. Your whole fucking endless life. Patience.

Bright mother, he hated Stryfe. Nathan had barely known Copycat ... but he had never wanted to find her brutalized corpse in his bed, either. If that was what Stryfe planned to do to Theresa ... Nathan grimly pulled the trigger. He wouldn't let him, he would kill him before he got the chance!

The rate of fire of his BFG is three pulses per second at the highest setting. It's slow, slow, slow and too fast for us, so breathe.

Anticipate.

Feel the rhythm.

Stryfe grinned at him as he lifted his arm and the energy shield in the armor absorbed his shots like so much incoming charge, rippling from the resonance of impact, its internal battery regenerating with every shot Nathan fed it. That insufferable piece of well equipped shit!

There.

The high velocity armor piercing round punched through the down phase of the ripple, at its lowest threshold when it absorbed the shot into the energy matrix, and struck the shield emitter dead on. The bullet went right through Stryfe's arm, shattering his armor into shrapnel and tearing his arm off at the shoulder. The bullet hit the shield on its outward trajectory when the shield was at its highest ebb, right before the damage to the emitter would have caused it to disperse. The bullet, an unstoppable force, hit the shield, an immovable object. The bullet did exactly what it was meant to do: pierce a tank armor and turn into so much high velocity molten shrapnel ricocheting inside a small space. Except instead of a tank, it was a personal energy shield. The shield overloaded and dispersed in a shock wave of released energy ... which was the only thing that saved Stryfe's life.

Oh fuck you and your fucking insufferable luck you plot protected piece of shit!

Nathan threw his own personal wrist shield up to protect himself from the shock wave as it shredded apart anything unprotected in a twenty foot radius. I will gladly blow the son of a bitch who made that shot, he thought as he relished the sound of Stryfe's incoherent screaming as he clutched the stump of his arm, a ragged thing of bone and clinging flesh.

A magazine ejected a round with a clattering ping and Stryfe threw himself backwards as the second shot punched through the space he had previously inhabited, the force of moving air cutting a line across his scalp that splattered blood across the roof. The building behind him showered masonry and dust into the air with a bang of exploding bricks.

Stryfe hit the ground screaming "[Bodyslide!]" and was gone in a rippling flash of translocation.

A bolt punched through the flash, dragging tessellating light fragments before it slamming point down into the rooftop, the light at the end of the shaft blinking red. It, somewhat surprisingly, didn't explode.

Deadpool landed on the rooftop in his own flash of transportation, a rifle dangling from one hand and a still smoking pistol in the other. He struck the back of his hand to his chest and snapped at the air, "Is it working?"

The transmitter that must have been in his suit somewhere didn't even crackle. It was whisper quiet, but Nathan could still pick up the way the air changed slightly. Deadpool was not working alone.

Nathan stretched his mind out, feeling the lights burning brightly all around him. Theresa was warm and calming down as she made a slow looping turn now that Stryfe was no longer around to cut her out of the sky. Deadpool ... there was nothing there. His mind was perfectly cloaked, so unreadable it didn't even register to Nathan at all. A hunter's perfect silence. There was only a small air shift from the electronics on him.

So tuned in, Nathan could hear the whisper of a response, "[It caught enough to trace. I'm backtracking it now.]"

Backtracking?

Deadpool holstered the pistol and turned in place, surveying the roof.

Tolliver was dead. Nathan hadn't bothered to keep track of Tolliver's paid men. They weren't his problem. He was wishing he had paid attention. One of those bought men, in this primitive backwards time, had just mutilated and nearly killed Stryfe. Nathan would like to buy him a damn beer and propose. How high was Deadpool's marriage price? His clan would probably ask for a lot after this.

Nathan cautiously came out from behind cover, slinging his gun over his shoulder, "That was good shoo -- "

Deadpool whipped around, grip shifting backhand on the rifle as he swung it like a bat across Nathan's face. Nathan caught the blow on his metal arm and felt the impact all the way to his shoulder. Enhanced strength, Deadpool had enhanced strength. He hadn't used that during their previous fights. Nathan grabbed the stock of the gun and yanked as hard as he could, pulling it free of Deadpool's grip and immediately tossing it to the side to clatter against the edge of the roof. Deadpool rabbit punched him in the gut.

Theresa's shadow crossed them as she screamed, "Wade! Stop! That's Cable!"

Deadpool laughed, deep and dark and cruel, "I know!" as he slammed an elbow down onto the back of Nathan's head.

"I'm not your enemy!" Nathan twisted, pushing the elbow aside with his shoulder and head butted Deadpool in the face.

Deadpool reeled back, but only to use the momentum to vault backwards, boots missing Nathan because he had backed up. Deadpool landed in a crouch beside the embedded bolt, "Maybe I just hate your fucking face, old man!"

That was ... really unfair and fair at the same time. Nathan wrinkled his nose and held up his hands to show he didn't mean Deadpool any harm, "Fucking Stryfe."

The lights on the end of the bolt switched from red to green. The whisper of air from Deadpool's suit shifted, "[Got it. Updating location data now.]"

Deadpool's smile stretched the fabric of his suit as he yanked the bolt out of the roof, spinning it over his fingers like a baton before slipping it into a pouch. He straightened. "Fucking Stryfe," he agreed in a cheerful singsong, "Waddaya think? He want his stuff back? Finders keepers am I right?"

Confused, Nathan's hands dropped back down to his sides, but Deadpool didn't continue his attack. Instead he strode across the roof and picked up a mangled piece of flesh and metal. Stryfe's hand and wrist maybe?

"[Done.]"

Deadpool waved it around, heedless of the blood splatter, "I think this is enough DNA to get past his teleportation blockers. Kind of him to leave it behind." He sighed sweetly, folding the body part beneath his chin as if treasuring it in lieu of Stryfe, "He's always thinking of other people. What a guy."

There was no way. Even with a DNA trigger and a targeting location point, Deadpool still would haven't the verbal keycode to get access. The locking system on translocation tech was reasonably secure and even though Stryfe had been stupid enough to scream it as he got away, Deadpool would have only heard it once, distantly, over the sound of his own gunfire.

"Now how did it go again?" Deadpool smiled at him across the gap, beautiful and terrible as he snapped his fingers, "Oh yeah, [Bodyslide]."

Nathan lunged across the gap, reaching out to grab Deadpool as the last syllable of inflection perfect Askani fell from his lips.

Deadpool vanished into teleportation flashes and Nathan grasped only air.

Women Prefer Diamonds

"Terry! Terry! Oh, there you are -- "

Theresa punched Wade in the face with her whole body. His head whipped to the side and he staggered, obviously not expecting that reception.

"You used me!"

"Sweetheart, babe, red haired diva of my heart -- "

She shoved him and he rocked back lightly but otherwise didn't move.

"Did you even mean any of it? Was any of it true at all?"

Wade looked down at her, his mask expressionless and still.

Theresa took a shuddering breath, feeling herself waver dangerously on the edge of a sob, humiliated that she had let her guard down, that she had thought even for a minute that he had really meant it. "You -- "

"I brought you something," he said abruptly, holding up an opaque bag.

"I don't want anything from you," she snarled, stabbing a finger in his chest.

He sighed and opened the bag, "Babe, we couldn't be anything until I could settle some scores." Wade reached inside the bag and pulled out a white wi --

Theresa recoiled from him with a scream that tore the bag to shreds.

Wade ignored the bag's destruction as he held up Stryfe's head, a hand fisted in bloody white hair. The eyes were dark, gored holes. The jaw gaped, slack with death. It smelled of old blood and the start of decomposition.

Theresa clapped her hands over her mouth in an effort not to sick up all over the floor.

"You don't like it?" Wade asked her mildly, as if he wasn't offering her part of a man's corpse. "He cost me more than those diamonds."

Theresa stepped back, horror climbing up her throat with her gorge, and bumped into someone. She shrieked and whirled around and felt nothing but overwhelming relief when she was it was just Nathan.

Nathan rested his hands on her shoulders, gripping gently and kindly, "Are you alright?"

Theresa gasped out an automatic, "I'm fine."

Her team leader looked over her shoulder and Theresa, overwhelmed, could not process the expression on his face because she had never seen it before. He glanced down at her again, "Want me to take over here?"

Wade huffed behind her, "Why do you gotta butt your ugly face into everything, old man?"

Theresa instantly nodded. She was not at all ready to accept a head as a gift. "Shut up, Wade."

Nathan squeezed her shoulders again and let her go, stepping around her to confront Wade head on.

Wade cocked his head to one side and wriggled the head in a way that utterly nauseated her. She tossed her hair and folder her arms over her chest, nose lifting into the air.

Nathan stared at the head for a long moment and then his focus shifted upwards to Wade's masked face. Wade straightened his shoulders with an insouciant roll, rocking onto his toes as if ready for a fight. "Is it really him?"

"Verified and everything," Wade confirmed with every indication of cautious pleasure, "We're looting his safe houses right now, so even if he did have a back door somewhere," he shrugged and the head swayed, "I'll just find it and kill him some more."

Nathan nodded, tension relaxing from his shoulders. He smiled, a bright thing that transformed his face into pure happiness, "Marry me."

Wade dropped the head in shock, "Sphincter says what?"

Theresa shrieked in surprise.

"You killed Stryfe," Nathan said, dark pleasure burning in his voice, "That's ... "

Wade actually retreated and tried to slide behind Theresa. "That's what?" his voice went high pitched before he coughed and cleared his throat.

Oh, that was adorable. Nathan wanted to peel that suit off of him and lick him. "Very attractive," he purred, "I know a man like you has a lot of offers, but I promise you will not be disappointed if you accept mine."

"Oh my god," Theresa breathed in horrified shock as Wade grabbed her shoulders and physically lifted her up and put her between them. "Nate, what are you doing."

"Terry," Nathan said very reasonably, he thought, "He killed Stryfe."

"That is not a marriage recommendation!! That's his job! He kills people for money!"

"Listen to the women, she's talking sense," Wade nodded over her shoulder.

"I always talk sense!"

Nathan gazed deeply into Wade's eye lenses, purring, "You have a beautiful voice to go with your beautiful aim."

Wade choked on air.

"I could listen to you all day."

"Oh my god." Theresa groaned and buried her head in her hands.

[ ... since this is a Write and Post Adventure, I present here the original form of Nate's proposal ...]

Tolliver was dead. Nathan hadn't bothered to keep track of one Tolliver's paid minions ... but that was before that paid minion mutilated and nearly killed Stryfe. Now Nathan would like to buy him a damn beer and maybe propose. How high was Deadpool's marriage price? His clan would probably ask for a lot after this.

Nathan came out from behind cover, slinging his gun over his shoulder, "That was good shoo -- "

Deadpool whipped around, grip shifting backhand on the rifle as he swung it like a bat across Nathan's face. Nathan caught the blow on his metal arm and felt the impact all the way to his shoulder. Enhanced strength, Deadpool had enhanced strength. He hadn't used that during their previous fights. Deadpool leapt backwards and brought the rifle up to point the business end at Cable.

Theresa's shadow crossed them as she screamed, "Wade! Stop! That's Cable!"

Deadpool laughed, deep and dark and cruel, "I know!"

"I'm not your enemy!" Nathan exclaimed rather fruitlessly since he immediately had to shove the gun barrel to the side with a pulse of will, just enough to send the bullet into the roof access behind him, which promptly exploded into obscuring dust and showering masonry. Nathan dived into the admittedly dubious cover of the dust cloud and rolled out of his previous position.

"Maybe I just hate your fucking face, old man!"

... And that was ... fair.

Fucking Stryfe.

But where was Deadpool? He should be able to feel ... and he couldn't. He wasn't there.

"Wade! Please! Don't! He saved my life," Theresa shouldn't have to beg for his life, Nathan thought with annoyance, but he still appreciated that she was buying him the opportunity to get clear and get leverage.

"Theresa, sassy red headed babe of my heart, get out of my fucking way and let me execute -- "

"You will not!"

"It's a mercy killing," Deadpool hissed, "he'll thank me for it!"

"I will never forgive you," Theresa hissed back, stabbing a finger into his chest.

Deadpool ... hesitated. It was a small shift, a small wavering of implacable resolve, but it was enough to tell Nathan that Theresa had won. He stepped out of the dispersing dust.

"This isn't over," Deadpool snapped, just as vicious in defeat as he was in victory, slinging the rifle back over his shoulder, "I have a score to settle with you, old man."

Nathan hummed in the back of his throat, "I don't have a grudge with you."

Deadpool sneered right through the mask, "The boss had one with you."

"Tolliver is dead."

"All the more reason to punch your deadbeat ticket." Deadpool punched one of his hands into the other hand.

"Marry me."

Deadpool froze in shock, "Sphincter says what?"

Theresa shrieked in surprise.

"You shot Stryfe," Nathan said, the coil of dark pleasure from the memory burned in his voice, "That's ... "

Deadpool actually backed up and tried to slide behind Theresa, "That's what?" his voice went high pitched before he coughed and cleared his throat.

Oh, that was adorable. Nathan wanted to peel that suit off of him and lick him. "Very attractive," he purred, "I've been married before. I promise you will not be disappointed."

"Oh my god," Theresa breathed in horrified shock as Deadpool grabbed her shoulders and physically lifted her and put her between them. "Nate, what are you doing."

"Terry," Nathan said very reasonably, he thought, "He shot Stryfe."

"That is not a marriage recommendation!! That's his job! He kills people for money!"

"Listen to the women, she's talking sense."

"I always talk sense!"

Nathan stared soppily into Deadpool's eye lenses, "You have a beautiful voice to go with your beautiful aim."

Wade choked on air.

"I could listen to you all day."

"Oh my god." Theresa groaned.

Chapter Text

They were crossing the bridge hand in hand when the dark haired woman passing them from the other side suddenly paused, "I know you."

Theresa blinked as Jamie politely brought them to a stop, "I don't think so, Miss ... ?"

"Oh, I don't know you," The woman held her hand out for Jamie to shake, "I'm Mary."

Jamie shook hands with her automatically, offering a greeting in turn, "Jamie Madrox, nice to meet you."

Mary didn't let go of the captured hand, rubbing her thumb over the back of Jamie's hand as she looked him up and down, her eyes bright with interest, "You have such soft hands, Jamie."

Nonplussed, Jamie answered with a "Thanks?" as he glanced at Theresa in confusion.

Theresa unconsciously straightened as Mary smirked in her direction, "A little smaller than your last boyfriend, huh?"

"Excuse me?"

"Softer too," Mary lifted Jamie's hand to her cheek as she rubbed against it like a cat, "Soft and weak and easy." Malice flickered in her eyes, "I guess all your boys are easy."

Theresa got in her face and shoved her back with a hiss, "Get away from him."

"You gonna protect him from the big, bad pussy?" Mary leered in Theresa's face before blowing Jamie a kiss over Theresa's shoulder, "You want to be protected from me?"

Jamie wasn't sure whether to be disgusted or kinda interested as he grabbed Theresa's hand to pull her back, "Terry, ignore her. Let's go."

Theresa fumed as she glared up at Mary, not knowing her at all and not appreciating that Mary seemed to have her grasping sights set on her man. However, Jamie did have a point about not starting a brawl in the park and just letting this go.

"What a fucking pansy ass bitch," Mary said with disgust, "Almost squeals as much as Wade."

Jamie mouthed 'Wade?' in pure confusion. He didn't know anyone named Wade.

What did Wade have to do with this? She hissed like a teakettle, "What did you just say?"

Mary grinned, mad and manic and bright, as she lowered her voice into a gravel throated purr, a poor mimicry of Wade's damaged voice, "I said: Why did you do this to me? Why? Why? Why?" She laughed high and cruel, "Men are such whiners."

"I'll make sure you never hear anything ever again," Terry snarled.

"Oh," Mary looked delighted, "you don't know."

Theresa held herself back from slapping her only because she actually did want to know what Mary was on about. "Know what?"

"You're the one who slept with him."

"I never slept with Wade," Theresa snapped because she hadn't and what the hell was wrong with this woman?

"Of course you didn't," Mary said cheerfully, "I did that. Wearing your face." She blew a kiss.

Theresa took a single deep breath. Jamie yelped behind her, "Terry! Don't!"

Why did you do this to me?

Then she SCREAMED.

The fight that followed tore the park apart.

Chapter Text

The resonance wave swept through Hope and found no kin. That was the messy business when it came to blood magic ... adoption didn't matter, blood mattered. The inscription of the orb was cryptic but clear enough: Blood of my blood, bone of my bone, only offspring alone may restore my spirit and revitalize my flesh. Hope was no kin of Nathan Summers. She was the child of duty, not of his body.

Hope swore and racked her brain. She needed bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh to restore his life. Cyclops wasn't going to work, because he wasn't Nathan's offspring ... and because he had already given him life. Couldn't regift that life. Wretched magical restrictions.

Damn. Her dad was old, right? He obviously wasn't a virgin. He had to have some kids somewhere, right? Hope bit a nail rather rebelliously because her dad would tell her to quit biting her nails and she missed him so damn much and she was mad at him for dying -- that's right, she was named after his wife's sister. She bit more furiously ... and his wife had at least one kid. A son, right? Dead, though, or she was sure that she would have at least heard more about him.

Well, she would just have to find him at the when before he died. He'd want to help her, she was sure.

Hope rolls out of the portal a girl on a mission, taking in the room in a split second, scanning for powers she can use.

Blonde hair, blue eyes, handsome face, broad shoulders. That was a match for the picture she had finally managed to get her hands on of Tyler Dayspring. He dove behind the desk, yelling for aid. Good reflexes, her brother. Can't fault him that, she thought. There were five auras in range. Three human and therefore useless. One that slipped through her grasp like smoke. She noted that, it felt weirdly familiar. One, her brother, a mutant.

.... who wasn't a telepath. Damn his eyes! What power was this? She had no shields anymore!

The door to the room slammed open before Hope could find the words to say what she had originally intended to send him mind to mind and couldn't because Tyler wasn't a telepath .... and Deadpool hit her like a damn truck.

They hit the ground and rolled. Hope tried to get her legs under her to throw him, but he was, frankly, better than her. Also stronger and faster and bigger and taller. Couldn't discount that. He never had any problems hitting girls. Damn his egalitarian point of view. Give her a misogynist to fight every day!

Deadpool hauled them to their feet, his fist in her long hair as he yanked her head back with it. The other wrenched her arm up behind her back in a grip that would dislocate it in a second. Even with one hand free there wasn't much she could do with it. Wade hadn't even flinched when she had slammed a knee into his balls. He kicked her feet wide and she bucked back only to slam her butt back against the sharp edge of his hip as he checked the motion. She swore at him like a dock whore. He just laughed and called out, "Got your girl, boss. She's a real firecracker."

Tyler stood up from behind the desk, a gun in his hand that he didn't holster as he rounded it and approached them. His blue eyes were cold. "Talk quickly, girl, or get maimed," he said with shocking calm brutality.

For a second, Hope froze, because it didn't compute. The casual cruelty from her dad's son. Even if she was a stranger popping out of a portal and he took it as an attack, jumping straight to maiming was rather extreme. Wade casually yanked on her hair to jolt her to words and she swore at him again because why in the blazes was Deadpool here?

Tyler sighed a put upon sigh as he checked his gun's safety, holstered it, and then pressed a hand to her forehead, "Sure, we can do this the hard way."

Hope screamed as Tyler rifled through her memories like shuffling a deck of cards. They blurred past without care to how much it hurt. Her whole recent history flicker switching through stuttering moments as he looked for whatever he was looking for.

//I'll find my brother she thinks as she rifles through her dad's files.//

//The resonance wave swept through Hope and found no kin.//

//Doctor Strange shaking his head as he refuses to return her dad's spirit to his body. Nevermind that it was magic that had taken him.//

//"I'll do whatever it takes to get my father back!" she screams at Cyclops, hating him for just giving up. She hates him, hates him, hates him.//

//Her dad's empty shell of a body in the rubble, killed to save her life because she was so stupid as to face the mage without protections.//

Tyler paused lovingly on that memory and played it again, then again and again and again. She can't feel his glee because he has no telepathy, they can't talk mind to mind, but she can see it on his face through the blur of her tears.

"Looks like Cable died," Tyler said with such satisfaction as he stroked her cheeks gently, wiping the tears away with his thumbs.

"She did it?" Wade asks, interested but not actually interested. The disinterest of a person who doesn't actually give a shit.

Hope heaves a sob and feels like such a stupid little girl for crying because Wade doesn't care and he always had cared before.

"In the future," Tyler wrinkled his nose, mildly annoyed that he hadn't been the one to do it, "Poor thing, got her own dad killed."

"Huh," Wade doesn't gentle his grip, just takes that in thoughtfully, "So why's she here? Wait, how far in the future?"

"Far enough for her to be born and grow up," Tyler was frowning at her now, lines folding between his eyes.

"Surprise, you have a little sister?" Wade snickered.

Tyler was giving her her own dad's thinking face. She hated it.

"You knew?" Hope rasped and her eyes stung as she forced her head back to look at Wade.

"Knew what?" Wade asked indulgently, obviously amused at the drama of it all.

"That Cable's his dad."

"Sure. Why wouldn't I?"

"He's happy his dad is dead!!" Hope nearly screamed at him, "He wants him to die!"

"Oh, sweetheart," Wade said with such amused pity that her stomach dropped, "Why do you think I'm here? I kill people for your brother."

"You can't!"

"Obviously not, since he dies after you're all grown up," Wade said with such reasonableness that it was freaking Hope out, "Guess we end up failing at that. Sort of puts a downer on the whole thing."

"That's why she's here," Tyler rejoined the conversation abruptly and Wade's attention shifted to him.

"Yeah?"

"She wants my blood sacrifice to resurrect him."

"She doesn't know you very well at all."

"I'm dead before she's even born," Tyler muttered darkly, "and my father apparently never saw fit to more than mention me in passing."

"Ouch, boss, that's cold," Wade winced but added a gaelic shrug, "but you are trying to kill him."

Tyler glared at Wade, but like the Wade Hope was familiar with, it didn't affect Wade at all.

"You gonna help her?" Wade asked.

Tyler laughed, "Absolutely not. I'm chucking her back through that portal and breaking her time travel toys."

"You can't!"

"You'll be grateful for my mercy eventually, brat," Tyler smirked.

"You're the most merciful of them all, boss."

Tyler shot him a glare, "Shut it."

"Oh, that wasn't time for my villainous lackey support line? My bad."

"Don't think I'm going to forget that you help my father save this child's life," Tyler grumbled, clearly annoyed with Wade's future disloyalty.

"Babies are cute. Way cuter than you, boss." Wade shrugged. He grinned at Hope, "I bet you were the cutest little baby, yes you were! Just the cutest of them all!"

This was a twilight zone of horror. That was exactly how Wade started every discussion with another person about her in front of her, followed by her baby pictures, "Oh my god." She was also extra levels of horrified that Wade was flirting with her brother and her brother was flirting back. "Oh my god." Wade flirted with her dad and her dad flirted with him back all the time! They were the worst! "OH. MY. GOD."

Tyler looked amused again as he clapped his hands together, "Let's get you through that portal, yes?"

Wade let her hair go to rifle through her pouches. Tyler stepped closer to actually help him by grabbing her free arm by the elbow. That closing of the distance was all she needed. Hope dropped, letting all her weight fall. Tyler lost his grip as she slid out of his hand. Her shoulder dislocated and Wade swore as he wrenched her back up by a now dangling arm. The pain blinded her, but Hope knew what she was looking for. Her working arm thrust into the pouch. She closed her fist around the orb. Tyler reached for her. She slapped her hand into his, palm to palm around the orb.

The resonance wave swept the room, passing through Tyler and her together and found kin. Tyler shouted in fury as the orb lit up, a dozen runic circles spiralling out of it as the magic spell it contained triggered, needles puncturing his palm for the sacrifice of blood and bone.

In pain, but victorious, Hope laughed. She had won. That was what she and her dad did. They won.

Wade had yanked her back but it was too late. Too late! The entire room was runes, burning in the sky as they ignited one by one as their power was invoked. A body was translocated into the receiving circle.

"Oh, shit," Wade dropped Hope completely and that was the first hint that something had just gone wrong.

The runes winked out, the spell complete. Armor shone in the lights as the body rose, tall and strong and terrible. Stryfe took in the room in a moment of pure confusion for how he had gotten there. Then he grinned as his gaze landed on Tyler, a wide cruel slash of his mouth, and he laughed as he attacked them.

Wade met him in the middle, slamming into Stryfe like a truck, body checking him into the desk. The desk collapsed under the blow, sending them both into a tumble of wood splinters. Tyler dove to the opposite side to get space and drew his gun, firing furiously on Stryfe as Wade grappled to keep Stryfe between him and Tyler.

Hope retreated and slammed her shoulder against the wall farthest from them, biting down on the scream as it popped back into place. How? HOW?!

Blood of my blood, bone of my bone, only offspring alone

No. No. Tyler wasn't. He wasn't!

"You gonna help her?" Wade asked.

Tyler laughed, "Absolutely not."

Did you know? Dad, did you know? Wade, did you ...

"She doesn't know you very well at all."

Her father had no children of his body.

None at all.