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Chapter Text

Hoping Never Hurt Anybody But Me

There are many things in Nathan Summers’ long life that he has regretted doing, saying, thinking…even feeling, on occasion.  His parents raised him to be honest enough that he would not deny those things if directly questioned, and would only bother to hide them because he is also very private.

But in a divergent future, wandering far from everything he’s known for the sake of a child, he experienced a regret which he will never tell to anyone.

Even after watching him betray Stryfe for them, seeing Wade die did not bother Nathan.  It hardly registered at the time, but later he found that he was utterly ashamed of himself. 

Wade had died right in front of his eyes, and he hadn’t even felt a tiny twinge of emotion.  Wade, who had spent years trying fruitlessly to make himself into what Nathan wanted him to be.  Wade, who had, in his own small, broken way, done everything he could to help Nathan.  Wade, who had depended on Nathan, had trusted Nathan, had followed Nathan around like a puppy only to be kicked away (You can’t get mad at him for being what he is, Dom had told him after the mess that had led to Wade being banned from Providence, because broken things can’t fix themselves).

It’s just that Hope is so important, and Nathan couldn’t risk her (still can’t) on a man whose last shred of sanity had been scattered like buckshot.

When Nathan and Hope landed from that timeslide in another divergent future that looked depressingly similar to the one they’d just left (after a brief bit of searching to find Hope had landed an hour before him and hidden in the burned-out bones of a nearby house), it all hit him at once.  He sat down heavily and put his head in his hands and grieved—not for Wade, but for the part of himself that had loved Wade enough to mourn his death.  He honestly didn’t (and still doesn’t) know when that small, beautiful part of himself had died.

Hope panicked a little, and hugged his arm, and asked if he was going to cry.  He didn’t.  She promised not to pull away from him in the middle of a timeslide again, and he wondered fleetingly what she’d seen in that hour they’d been apart (maybe she thought he was upset because he’d been worried about her).

That future, too, was ruled by Stryfe.  X-Force came to fetch him again (without Vanisher and Elixir, but with Sam and Terry).  They found Wade again.  He was not better off, and didn’t get a better end, either.  And even though he could hardly afford the distraction when he was already half-deafened by Terry’s scream of anguish, Nathan felt something.  He gathered the feeling up inside and forced himself to see it.

He carries those two deaths with him now like bullet scars over his heart.

They slid again after they took care of Stryfe and did some tinkering.  There was another malfunction.  They landed in this new divergent future.  Another Stryfe.  Bishop (and it must be the same Bishop, because he had memories of that first nightmare future with Stryfe).  X-Force (with Vanisher and Elixir).

Another Wade, healthier than the other two, though probably not much saner.

When they found the third Wade, Nathan wanted to send him away—to get him as far divorced as physically possible from the bloodshed to come.

But he didn’t die like the others.  In fact, he managed to cut off Stryfe’s head (even Wolverine was impressed by that) and help Nathan fix the timesliding module.

Now, ready for the next jump, hoping that it will be the one that takes them back home, Nathan stares at Wade and doesn’t know what to say or feel.

“Well, against all expectations and previous experience, he actually managed to be helpful,” Dom snorts, and her bemused tone is enough to tell Nathan he’s back in a compatible timeline (the last Dom loathed Wade and kept hitting on the Laura from that timeline).

Laura grunts in amused agreement.  In Logan’s arms, Hope gives a tired giggle.

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you how many times the fate of the world’s rested on him, then,” Nathan delights in saying with just a trace of a smirk.

It’s unfortunate that Dom and Wade have never really gotten along (in spite of bonding over mutual frustration with Nathan and the fact that she is often far kinder to Wade than Nathan is), especially here, in this place, where that precious, fragile mind has been stretched and twisted and turned-around so much and still managed to have something like a sense of heroism (he tells himself it’s heroism, because he doesn’t like the thought that it’s some misguided need for his approval, not after what happened to the other Wades in the last two futures he and Hope fled to).

He walks over to where their unexpected helper stands, several yards apart from the team that came to retrieve Nathan and Hope this time.

This Wade isn’t his Wade (nor was the last one, nor the one before that), and he’s glad for that.  He doesn’t like to think of such awful things happening to anybody, let alone someone who tries so hard, and Wade could literally be tortured for centuries—possibly millennia.

Wade stands there, eager to please as he’s been for their whole trip, and Nathan just watches him for a while.

“You’ve been a great help,” he says.

“Yeah, well, y’know how it is,” Wade replies with a shrug.  “Or…well, you don’t, because you kind of weren’t here and stuff, being dead ‘n all.  And it was nice t’see Neena again.  And I missed you.  A lot.  Stryfe wasn’t nice to me like you are.  Not anymore.  He used to be.  He was really nice, at first, and it was easy to pretend, but he’s not you, at least I hope he’s not, because he did some really not-nice things to me, and it’d be kinda sucky if I let you go back to your time and the other me and you were really Stryfe.”

Nathan doesn’t know what to say.  Having his suspicions about mistreatment confirmed is disquieting, and another dark reminder of what he could become.

“Did you have to?” Wade asks in a hushed voice.  “All those years ago, did you have to blow everything up and save me and let me think you were dead?  Because when you showed up again, I really wanted to hit you.  And cry.  And hit you.  And then when you really were dead, I waited again, and I said, ‘It’s okay, he’s just pretending again, he just went somewhere and he’ll come back.’  Only you didn’t, because you hadn’t, and you weren’t.  Because you were dead.”

He doesn’t have an answer to that.  From day to day, Nathan does what he thinks will do the most to benefit mankind, purely because he has the capacity to do so much harm.  It’s why he’s been protecting Hope for seven years (‘going on eight,’ she’s taken to saying lately).

Wade cocks his head, scratches at his cheek through his tattered mask.  “Well…just in case you’re planning to do anything like that again when you get back…don’t.  Please.  It doesn’t have to be you.  It could be somebody else.  There’s whole teams of somebody elses out there, just waiting to do it for you.  It doesn’t have to be you.”

Nathan shakes his head.  “It does,” he says apologetically.

It seems to make Wade think for a little while.  He looks around, at the ruined buildings, at the sky, at the team of mutants huddled together and waiting for Nathan to finish with this godawful leavetaking that none of them can stand or comprehend.  Then Wade’s shoulders sag a little, and he says, “Oh,” in a very small, very defeated voice.

Suddenly, that dead part of Nathan that loved Wade comes back to life.  It aches so fiercely that he wishes it hadn’t.  “I’m sorry.  But the world needs Hope, and Hope needs me.”

Wade looks up at him with wide, earnest, centuries-old eyes.  “But…I needed you.  He needs you.  Doesn’t that count for something?”  But he just shakes his head in answer to his own question, looks back at Laura and Dom and Hope.  “Needs of the many, ‘n all that.  Can’t blame ya; they’re a lot prettier ‘n me.  Lot younger, too.  I’m comin’ up on two thousand soon, y’know.  ‘Nother thirty years or so.”

He wants to say it’s not about that, but he knows this is Wade’s way of avoiding being confronted with the feeling of helplessness he’s always held toward Nathan’s work ethic.  “What will you do now?” he says instead.

“Dunno.  Maybe I’ll go back to trying to kill myself.  It never works, of course, but hoping never hurt anybody, right?  I haven’t tried jumping into a volcano.  That might do it.  Or I might just keep regenerating the whole time and end up burning to death for the rest of eternity…that would not be fun.  Hey, uh, I don’t s’pose you’ve got any ideas?  I know the whole ‘making my brain go splodey’ thing doesn’t do much for long, but maybe you could try something like molecular decomposition?  Y’know, dissolving me?”

At the peak of his powers, he probably could, but he doesn’t think he has the stomach for it, even if his powers weren’t running on empty.  If he tried, he might start crying, and then there would be a lot of explaining to do to the others (especially Domino, since he solemnly promised her that he was over his ‘unhealthy attachment to that gibbering psychopath’).  “I’m sorry,” he says again.

“No sweat.  Just exploring all the options.  Death hasn’t been returning my calls since the twentieth century.  Total overreaction, too—I stood her up once.  She’s one of those girls that’s so obsessive she thinks you’re cheating every time you go to the gas station for a six pack of Duff and a jumbo bag of cheesy puffs.  I mean, you’re worth it ‘n all, but it’s really stressful and tiring and I’d really like a rest from loving you, Nate.  One thousand, nine hundred ‘n forty years is a long time to love somebody who was only actually in your life for, like, six, and abandoned you almost five times.”

Nathan glances at the girls (any excuse to look away from Wade).  Dom taps her wrist to signal him to hurry.  “I have to go now,” he says, and his voice sounds thick around the guilty lump in his throat.

“Yeah, hurry back to him,” Wade says jovially.  “Let him hope.  Like I said, hoping never hurt anybody, even when you always choose her over me—over him, whatever.”

“I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

“That’s okay, I’m used to losing you by now.  Go on, before their atoms chronologically destabilize ‘n stuff.”

Nathan allows himself the luxury of shaking Wade’s hand.  Any more, he thinks, and he’ll find it too hard to leave.  “Take care of yourself, Wade,” he says.  “And keep hoping, all right?”

Wade beams, and Nathan remembers that he’s always thought of Wade as a bizarre analog to Mary Magdalene—beautiful and tarnished and perfectly, horribly loyal.

“You had me at ‘hello,’” Wade says, like he did so long ago on Providence, forgiving everything.

Nathan really does start to cry then.  In his mind, he sees Wade coming to their rescue, attacking Stryfe for them at the last moment and being ripped in half by the tyrant when he lets his guard down.  He sees Wade shuffling through Stryfe’s palace in a haze of delirium, rambling about being good and staying put ‘because Nate told him to,’ staggering into the line of fire, sprawling in a sea of his own blood like a puppet with cut strings while Terry shrieks and attacks Stryfe tooth-and-nail.

He walks back to the retrieval team, takes Hope from Logan, who has the good grace not to mention the wetness on Nathan’s cheeks.  He inputs the timeslide command while the others take off their armbands.

The awful, dead future-world vanishes from view with Wade smiling and alone in the smoking ruins, and Nathan holds Hope close and hides his tears in her copper hair.  She, too, says nothing; she is seven, and more than grown up enough to understand after seeing him grieve Wade twice already with dry eyes.

When they land, a glance at a news stand tells him they’re back, they’ve finally escaped whatever timestream hiccup they were trapped in.  X-Force is nowhere in sight—depending on which future timeline came most directly from their home timeline, they could be in three or four different places in or around New York City, and they had errands of their own, in any case.

That doesn’t matter so much.  There is only one person he wants to see, and there are really only a few places to find him.  Failing those places, Nathan would be lost, but he’s willing to set out a bear trap baited with chimichangas, if that’s what it takes.

Hope is tired; Nathan lets her sleep in the cab.  She’s still sleeping when he pays the cabbie, hitches her up onto his hip, and takes the creaky elevator up to a familiar, broken-down apartment.

He knocks just as someone on the other side yells, “Aw, c’mon, she’s a Cylon, too?!”

The door jerks open.  There’s a gun in his face.

“Would this be a bad time for me to quote Jerry Maguire?” Nathan deadpans.

“Nate!”  Wade regards him blankly, as though startled, but lowers the pistol.  Something explodes on TV, and Wade whips around to gripe.  “Dammit, Weas, you can’t even pause the stupid thing when I get up to answer the door for my mysteriously not-dead sort-of-ex-ex-boyfriend who vanished for almost two years?!”

Nathan raises his eyebrows.

Wade looks back at them, eyeing Hope thoughtfully.  “Or maybe six-ish on their end, from the looks of the munchkin.  Time paradoxes are whacky like that.  Like this one time, when I was doing the legit hero thing again for shits ‘n giggles and brownie points to maybe get into the X-Men, and Reed Richards had this big inter-dimensional bubble thingy—”

“Seven-ish years,” Nathan corrects softly, smiling as he lets Wade’s babble wash over him.

Suddenly, Wade steps back and opens the door further.  Weasel and someone in a Hydra uniform are sitting on the couch, trying to eavesdrop surreptitiously while staring at a paused Battlestar episode with conspicuous focus.  “Oh, shit!  Sorry, Nate, got all sidetracked ‘n stuff.  You wanna come in?”

He does.  Of course he does.  It’s the whole reason he’s here, after all.  Instead of saying so, he just takes a few steps into the apartment and lets Wade keep talking.

“After the Providence-go-boom thing, I picked up some of that weird micro-brew beer you like, not that I was expecting anything, but I was kinda hoping you’d stop by for a little drinky at some point—’cause hoping never hurt anybody, right?—even though everybody else was saying you were dead.  Sandi ‘n Inez had to use all their feminine wiles on Hayden to get me bereavement leave, too, since it’s apparently not in the terms of employment for Agency X.  Does the kid sleep through ‘splosions okay?  I don’t think ya wanna put her in the bed, ‘cause I just saved enough to buy one, finally, and the mattress smells all brand new ‘n plasticky ‘n stuff, but Inez got me these killer satin sheets, which I think were supposed to be some kinda hint, so it’s not so bad, really, except when Hayden starts in with the jokes about how she’s just trying to talk me into letting her do untoward things with my pert behind—that’s usually the part where she says you beat her to it but she has a thing for widowers, and the guys laugh uncomfortably while I get all depressed, and Sandi makes these sniffly fangirl faces at me and pats my shoulder and—okay, hugging.  Hugging is nice.  Do I get a kiss, too?  Because that would totally—mmph.”

“It’s good to be home,” Nathan sighs against Wade’s for-once-speechless mouth.

.End.

Chapter Text

Hollow

Wade is nervous.

He hasn’t been this nervous since…okay, he’s never been this nervous, but the last time he was almost this nervous was the last time he tried to ask Terry to dinner, and that was ages ago.  Years, even.  Like, three.

He has Nate in his bedroom.

Nate being anywhere at this point is a frigging miracle (one Wade probably doesn’t deserve and isn’t about to start questioning too closely), but Nate being in his bedroom is so many shades of awesome that something very not-awesome has to be iminent.

Nevermind the fact that Nate is currently in his bedroom sleeping next to a seven-year-old kid of whom he is wayyyyy overprotective on Wade’s nice shiny new bed (that still has a faint new-furniture smell) in Wade’s very not-clean-enough-for-a-little-kid apartment because they just got back from the future and Nate was too tired to go anywhere farther away.

Nate came right over, as soon as he’d seen they were back, he said.  Wade was the only person in the world he wanted to see, Nate said.  He missed Wade so much, he said.

At that point, Wade shouted Bob and Weasel out of the apartment to hide the fact that he was crying like a teenage girl.

Hope roused a little at the noise, took one look at him, and smiled a big, dopey smile that Wade has never had a little kid direct at him.  “Hello again, Mister Wilson,” she yawned.  “You don’t remember me yet, but I met you about a couple thousand years from now.  You were really nice to me.”  And then she went right back to sleep on Nate’s shoulder.

All thoughts of being jealous and gripey and mean to the kid immediately fled Wade’s mind.

The kid likes him.  Nobody likes Wade.  Even the people he’s ‘friends’ with can barely stand him.  Sandi only thinks he’s funny, and Inez only likes his ass.  Nate and Terry are the only ones who approach some form of actual liking.

So he dragged a spare blanket from the closet and flapped a hand toward the bedroom and mumbled that Nate and Hope could have the bed.

At which point, he had Nate in his bedroom.  In his bed, even.  Clothed and accompanied by an adopted daughter, unfortunately (because Wade has kinks, but, ew, no thanks), but still much better than the last two years of depressing Lack of Nate.

The lights are out, he left the TV turned way down.  He’s jittery, and doesn’t want to sleep, in case it turns out he was dreaming all along and he wakes up to (once again) have no Nate.

A muted sound snaps him out of a doze, gun in hand before he’s even opened his eyes.

“Just me,” Nate says, turning off the TV and sitting down on the floor beside the couch.

Wade blinks.  “Thought you were ‘sleep,” he mutters, shoving the Uzi back under the couch cushion.

Nate shakes his head.  “It’s silly, I know…I kept worrying I’d wake up and you’d be…gone.”

The significant pause makes Wade think that Nate means some other word than gone.  Dead?  He raises an eyebrow, rearranges his skewed blanket so that it covers his feet again.  “Oh-kay.  So, uh…what?  Thought you’d come out and stare at me while I sleep or somethin’?  That’s a little controlling and creepy even for you, Nate.”

For a while, Nate doesn’t say anything.  He reaches out and tugs at the edge of Wade’s mask.  “Never used to wear that around me, when you weren’t on a job.”

Wade self-consciously swats Nate’s hand away.  “Don’t wanna freak out the kid if she wakes up before I do.”  Not when she likes him.  The longer he can keep her smiling that sweet little smile like he’s the coolest guy she ever met, the better.

“She’s seen worse.”

She hasn’t.  Wade scoffs bitterly, “People say that, but they always change their minds when they see my face.”

Nate grabs his hand and squeezes tightly.  “Wade.  She’s seen worse.  She may ask questions, but she will not scream.”

Wade just squirms.  He wants to get away, but he doesn’t.  Even before living two years thinking Nate was dead, he would’ve craved such simple physical contact from anyone let alone the big dork he was maybe-sort-of-probably in love with.

It seems like a very sudden thing, having Nate leaning above him and sliding a cool metal thumb under the mask.

“Um,” Wade squeaks, heart racing.  “Hi.”

The smile on Nate’s face is both pained and relieved at the same time.  “Hi,” he whispers back.  “Can I take it off and kiss you properly?”

He almost says something like ‘you can take off anything and kiss me however you want,’ but he abruptly remembers that Neena got a goodbye kiss and all he got was a handshake, and it stings so much he wants to knock Nate’s teeth out.  Instead, he pushes Nate’s hand away and rolls over, yanking the blanket tight around his shoulders.  “Yeah, well, why don’t you go find Neena, if you want someone to kiss?”

“I don’t want to kiss Dom right now, I want to kiss you,” Nate huffs, like Wade’s being stupid.  “Anyway, I saw her yesterday and I haven’t seen you in almost eight years.”

“Wait—yesterday?” Wade echoes, confused.  “No, nevermind, I can never understand all that tangled-up time-travel shit.  So what you’re saying is, you can get raspberry Icees any day of the week, but you’ve been craving a cherry Slurpee, and the future doesn’t have Seven-Elevens.”

Nate looks totally lost.  “What?  What the hell do Slurpees have to do with anything?  And aren’t Icees and Slurpees the same thing?”

“Actually, there’s a subtle but noticeable difference in—stop trying to sidetrack me!”  Wade frowns fiercely and grabs the gun from under the cushion again.  “You.  Back in bed with the munchkin.”

“Are you really going to shoot me?” Nate asks evenly.  “I don’t heal like I used to.”

He doesn’t?  Wade files that away for later questioning and moves the barrel of the gun from between Nate’s eyes to a more harmless spot just under Nate’s clavicle.  “All the more reason to do what you’re told for once.”

“I don’t want any more misunderstandings coming between us,” Nate says, and leans closer.  “If it would make you happy, I’ll swear a notarized public oath that I’ll never sleep with Dom again.  I saw…a lot of things in the future that made me realize I’d taken something very important for granted.  How long have we known each other, minus the two years Hope and I were gone?”

Wade has to think for a bit.  “Uh…I guess…like, six years or something.”

Nate flinches like Wade punched him in the gut (and no, you distrustful readers, he didn’t).  “And how many times would you say I’ve abandoned you?”

That one hurts, and Wade jabs the muzzle of the gun against a pressure point beside Nate’s shoulder.  “If we count you running off into the future, four.  Almost five, if we count you tricking me into ‘porting off Providence.  Not exactly the best show of gratitude, by the way, when I went to all the trouble of betraying the X-Men while wearing yellow panties—”

“Yellow panties?”

“Long story.  Where was I?  I lobotomized you to save the world, found a baby alien to fix your arm, chased you across dimensions, raised you from bad-guy-induced infancy, solved a murder mystery—”

“You turned out to be the murderer.”

“—helped you take over a country—”

“Dom did that, actually.”

“You want me to fucking shoot you, don’t you?”

“Sorry, go on.”

“—played conscience so you’d save the world from that alien mind-eaty-thingy, and showed up heroically at the last minute to help get all the people off Providence.  Also?  Neena’s pointed guns at you way more times than I have.”

“And she’s only actually shot me twice.”

“Well, I only shot you…uh…let’s see, five, six, seven…twenty-two…twenty-eight…”  Wade trails off as he loses count (and steam).  He points the gun away, clicks the safety on.  “Okay, so maybe the abandoning thing was usually kind of justified,” he mumbles finally, feeling awful and hollow and useless like he has for almost two straight years.

But Nate hugs him.

Hugs him!

“No,” Nate chokes out.  “Never.”

“Um.  What?” Wade manages.

“You don’t deserve that.  What I did was wrong.”

Okay, stop.  Total Twilight Zone.

Wade thumbs the safety back off.  “Who are you, and what have you done with Priscilla?  I’ll warn you now, I shoot Skrulls.  I once shot a shit-ton of the little bastards, a bunch of which looked like handsome green versions of me.  The schmoopy stuff I could write off, because the Lemming King of Providence had his sappy moments, even with me—but if you utter a real apology, I’ll know for sure you’re some shapeshifting alien thing, and I swear on Bea Arthur’s grave, I’ll shoot you in all the worst places to shoot a man.”

Nate leans up with a sad little smile and doesn’t say anything.  He just sits there with that look like he’s thinking it instead.  Definitely the real Nate, then.  “Well,” he says softly.  “You swore on your dream girl’s grave, and I wouldn’t want to get shot in some of the imaginative places you probably have on your list.  I won’t say it.”

Wade subsides to a sulk and puts the gun away again.  “Damn right you won’t.  Now, just assuming you’re really Nathan Askani’son Gesundheit and just assuming I’d be willing to let you kiss me after you left me here and let me think you were dead for two years…just assuming all that…”

“You let me kiss you before,” Nate points out.

“That’s different; I was in shock.  The point is, assuming all that, why the hell would you wanna kiss me, anyhow?  I’m sure you had yourself another smokin’ hot future-wife—is that the second, or the third?”

Nate folds his hands over Wade’s sternum and settles down like he means to wait as long as it takes.  He raises his eyebrows.  “Wade, are you asking me to make an honest woman of you?” he teases with a straight face.  “We’d have to drive to Connecticut.  It’s scenic, but I hear Connecticut is irrepressibly boring.”

And Wade can’t take it anymore.  He bursts out laughing and quickly covers his mouth to keep from waking Hope in the next room.

And then Nate smiles at him, and he slowly starts to realize that he’s not laughing now—he’s crying.

“You’re a dork,” he sniffles, and shoves at Nate’s shoulder.  “It’s so not cool to joke about that.  I’ve read the back-issues—hideous things happen to your spouses.”

“Do you love me?” Nate asks, not budging an inch.

“Oh, God…”  Wade rolls his eyes, even though Nate can’t see through the mask.  “We’re not allowed to ask that question.  You made that rule, forever ago, and I said I’d be okay with it as long as it applied to you, too.”

“You can ask me, if you want.”

Wade sneers.  “No, thanks, I like being able to pretend the answer’s something I’d like.”

“How do you know you wouldn’t like the real answer more?”

“Because I know you,” Wade snaps.  “Remember?  Six years?  Almost five times?  That’s not a great ratio.  Add in multiple PDAs with Neena and multiple instances of ‘oh, it’s just Wade, shoot him in the head or something, he’ll be fine later,’ and the number you end up with is something close to ‘if you’ll believe that, I got a bridge I’d like to sell you.’”

Nate makes a face like he wants to cry—which is so not fair, all things considered—but just says, “You’re right.  Can I kiss you now?”

“Nuh-uh, you never answered my question.”

“And you just said you didn’t want to hear the answer.”

Wade’s head starts to ache while he works through that one.  When understanding sets in, he determines he’s definitely misinterpreting something, somewhere, but he chooses the optimistic possibility as his own private reality.  “Maybe just a little one,” he concedes.

And Nate slides the mask off and kisses him just right, exactly the way he always liked it, and Nate takes advantage of the distraction to slip his hands under other articles of Wade’s clothing (not that it matters much by that point, because Wade could be fully dressed and still feel naked without his mask), and does wicked, evil, beautiful things that make him moan so loud he’s sure he must have woken poor Hope (and ew, it’s not cool to wake up to the sounds of your dad sexing somebody up).

By the time they’re done, he feels awful again.  He feels like molestation victims must feel.  He feels like he was talked into something he wasn’t sure he really wanted, just because there was a shiny promise of something nice that he didn’t end up getting.  The fact that he enjoyed the sex is neither here nor there—the fact that Nate is always, always acting like Wade’s nothing to him and still had the balls to wax emo makes Wade feel used.

And not just used, but used up.  It’s like the day he found the paperwork on Sandi’s desk and read that nasty little phrase—paid time-off for bereavement—and suddenly Nate was really, officially, dead.  He feels too empty to feel.

Nate kisses him again, mumbles something that Wade can’t bring himself to pay attention to, gets up and goes back to bed (Wade’s bed).

Wade sits up and turns the TV back on and manages to fill the emptiness with numbness like always.

Hours later, someone tugs at his blanket.

“Are you okay, Mister Wilson?”

He frowns.  Bob’s hands aren’t that little.  Bob’s voice isn’t that high.  He glances over.

It’s Hope.  Her eyes are wide and concerned.  But Nate was right—she’s not screaming.  It’s like she doesn’t even notice his face.

“Huh?” he mumbles.

“Nathan made breakfast.  Pancakes, because he said you liked them.  He said your name lots of times, but you didn’t answer.  Are you hungry?”

He makes a face and turns his gaze back to the TV.  It’s the day’s reruns of violent old cartoons.  “I don’t think I want anything Nathan cooked.”

“I could make something for you instead, if you want,” Hope offers, and hops up onto the couch next to him.  “I don’t know how to make much, but if you’re mad at Nathan, I’m sure you’d want anybody else’s cooking.”

Incredulous, he looks at her.

She still has that same earnest look on her face.  “It’s okay,” she says.  “Sometimes Nathan makes me so mad I want to hit him.  He drives most people pretty nuts.”

The child is made of solid gold.  He already decided to like her, but now he’s sure he’s going to love her to bits.  He’s going to spoil her epically, and teach her everything a cute little mutant girl needs to know to get by (like where the best food stalls are, how to get a cab in rush hour, and how to break a man’s hand in five places with surprisingly minimal effort).

“Gimme a minute to go get clean clothes,” he says finally.  “We’ll leave Nate here with his yucky pancakes and go get some Belgian waffles down the street.  Way better than pancakes.”

“Really?  Could we?”  Her little face lights up, and shoves away Wade’s numbness.

He smiles at her.  “Sure.”

She hugs him tightly.  “Yay!  You’re the best, Mister Wilson!”

“Call me Wade.”

“Okay, Wade!”

And Wade tells himself it’s Nate’s own fault if he looks disappointed holding a big plate of pancakes all alone in the kitchenette.  He tells himself it doesn’t make him feel guilty or ungrateful.  He tells himself it doesn’t make him want to shoot himself (again).

Wade’s gotten very good at telling himself lies.

When he’s dressed, he comes back out to the living room to see Hope smiling that same ‘you’re so awesome!’ smile at him.  She takes his hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world.  “Let’s go eat waffles, Wade!”

Nate adopting a mutant messiah, Wade decides, may be the best thing that ever happened.

.End.

Chapter Text

Home

Wade, as it turns out, is unreasonably good with children.  He and Hope commune on some strange, partly-sane, childishly oversimplified plane of thought that, according to Wade, consists mostly of Eskimo puppies, calico kittens, and a repeating mantra of ‘Nathan is my favoritest person in the whole wide world.’

Nathan finds the assertion suspicious, mostly because Hope has no idea what a puppy is and the only cat she’s met is Sandi’s full-grown spoiled brat (also, Hope would wrinkle her nose at the word ‘favoritest’).

For his part, Nathan honestly forgot what it was like to be around a (comparatively) healthy Wade.  He forgot the junkfood and the pillow fights, the ubiquitous TiVo marathons and the board games with questionably altered rules.  He forgot what it was like to be woken in the night not because someone or something was attacking, but because Wade was feeling bored and amorous (and probably lonely).  And, when they first got back and the pangs of fondness were the strongest, he forgot why he’d ever worried about Wade being anywhere near Hope.

It was jarring, the first time Wade got a call while they were visiting.  They’d been back a week, moved into the X-Mansion by the third day.  Wade had thought nothing of answering his phone, asking if Hayden had a preference regarding lethal versus non-lethal, and casually replying that he’d head out as soon as Nathan had taken Hope home for the day.

The part of Nathan that wants to protect Hope at any cost chose that moment to start screaming that he should take Hope and run.  The part of him that loves Wade and remembers the way Hope smiled to see him alive and well…made him stay in spite of any risks.  Every weekend that Wade isn’t on a job, any time Nathan has an excuse to run an errand in Manhattan, Wade (and sometimes Bob or Weasel) is conscripted as a babysitter.

For her part, Hope gets along with Wade in the same easy, accepting way that she got along with her adoptive mother.  He takes her to all the best food stalls in Manhattan.  She loves his projector, and asks for different faces on each small adventure they have.  He sneaks them into Broadway shows.  She explains the plots when he gets lost.  He lets her feed the pigeons in Central Park.  She stops him from wandering out into the street without looking both ways.  He looks downright desolate every time they go home for the day.  She clings and pouts and begs to stay the night, but Nathan very, very rarely says yes (because even Wade has admitted that his apartment is neither kid-friendly nor particularly sanitary, and because Hope is supposed to be spending her days on school, and, yes, because Wade’s occupation does still bother Nathan on occasion).

On Halloween, Wade took Hope trick-or-treating.  Rachel put Hope in a miniature Marvel Girl costume.  Wade just threw on jeans and a tee shirt and went without his mask (and got quite a few compliments on having a ‘wicked cool zombie costume’).  They pulled a greedy little bait-and-switch trick where they would periodically deposit most of the contents of Hope’s trick-or-treating bucket into a big recycling bin in the back of Weasel’s car—people had a tendency to put extra candy in the sadly empty bucket out of pity.  They had so much fun (and got so much candy) that Nathan didn’t have the heart to say no when Hope asked to stay the night.  It was a holiday, after all.

The weekend after, they went to the museum.  Hope was terrified of the Egyptian exhibit (thanks to tales of mummies’ curses), but loved the dinosaur skeletons.

Already, great plans are being made to get them a good street-side view at the Thanksgiving Day parade at the end of the month.

Today, Nathan went to see Irene again, chatting and telling stories of lost time.  She wants to interview him soon (she hopes it’ll finally land her a coveted job with Time).  Hope and Wade disappeared just before lunch and were back before three.

“How was today’s adventure?” Nathan asks her, as they drive back to the mansion.  She’s been silent most of the way, and he hopes that talking will cheer her up.

Hope shrugs.  Her face in the rear-view is still gloomy from saying goodbye again.

“Come on,” Nathan coaxes.  “I was talking to Irene for ages, and I know you two slipped out…  This time of year, there should be all kinds of Christmas displays up.  There’s always lots of lights and decorations at Grand Central.  And there’s the big tree in Times Square.  Maybe you went to one of the toy stores to see Santa Claus?”

She rolls her eyes.  “Only little kids believe in Santa, Nathan.”

He laughs.  “Did Emma tell you that?”

“Miss Darkholme did.”

“Wade believes in Santa.”

That gives her pause.  She stares at the telephone wires whizzing by outside the window.  “I don’t think he does,” she hazards finally.  “I think he pretends he does.  He doesn’t believe in much, you know, even if he did clap his hands with all the kids when we went to see Peter Pan.  Anyway, Wade is a little funny sometimes—like he was in the future—like his brain doesn’t work right.”

“I know,” he sighs, slowing down as they arrive in North Salem.

“I’ve wanted to ask for a long time, Nathan…why were you so mean to him back then?  He was trying to help us, but you told Mister Logan and the others to ‘gut him and leave him.’  I’ve never heard you say anything so mean about anybody.  Why would you say something like that about somebody who loves you so much?”

He swallows thickly as they wait for a red light.  “I was worried for you.  The last time I saw him before that…wasn’t long after he’d done some very bad things.”

Her eyes grow round as she stares at his reflection.  “So…” she says in a very small voice.  “If I did something bad…maybe you’d say that kind of thing about me?”

“I hope you don’t ever do the kinds of things he does sometimes,” he replies.  “He kills people, Hope.  That’s what his job is.  When Mister Hayden or Sandi or Outlaw call him on the phone, it’s to send him off to kill someone.”

“So what?  You kill people.”

“That’s different.  I killed bad people to keep you safe.  He kills all kinds of people for money.”

Her lower lip trembles, and she makes a determined face.  “Well, what kind of person did he kill, when he made you so mad that you’d tell people to ‘gut him and leave him’?”

Nathan turns onto Greymalkin Lane, stomach churning.  “Lots of people,” he says flatly.  “And he double- and triple-crossed me several times—he shot me in the back of the head.  He once killed an innocent person in a place of peace, and didn’t even remember it.”

“Who?” she presses.

“The man’s name was Haji Bin Barat.  He was a former terrorist.”

“What’s a terrorist?”

“Someone who kills innocent people to get political attention.  They terrorize, hence terrorist.  But he’d given that life up.  He’d come to Providence looking for peace.  I spoke to him myself more than once, and I’m sure he was completely reformed.”

“I don’t think someone like that would ever look for peace,” Hope says firmly.  “And if he was that kind of person, and he was close enough to talk to you and stuff, I know I wouldn’t like it one bit.  I’ll bet Wade didn’t like it, either.  I’ll bet he found out something, like about the terrorist wanting to kill you, and then he saved you, but you never even knew about it, because he didn’t want you to be sad that someone you thought was nice turned out not to be.  That’s the kind of thing Wade would do, you know.”

He does know.  He types in the gate code and pulls up the drive.  “He’s unpredictable at the best of times.  When we met him in the future, there was no way to know whose side he was really on.”

They sit in hostile, stubborn silence until he parks the car in the garage and turns off the engine.

“And before he killed Bin Barat, he’d promised me he would try his best not to kill people anymore,” Nathan tells her.  “So, you see…he broke his promise.”

“But he did try, it was just really important right then, if he thought he was protecting you from someone bad.  And you don’t ever make any promises to him, so you can’t break them—Neena said that.  She barely even likes Wade, and she’s lots nicer to him than you are.”

Nathan flinches.  Hope is so pure and so honest that she sees the truth far more often than he’d like.

“You’re still mad at him, aren’t you?  Even after all this time, even after we saw him die twice and he rescued us from Stryfe and we came back and you said you missed him and he cried.”

He is.  He tries so hard not to be angry about it anymore, but he is.  It’s why he always carefully guages Wade’s mood before he lets them wander off together.  Something in him still mistrusts Wade, worries that Wade’s timely arrival at the end of Providence was a fluke, that some voice in his head will tell him that Hope is the enemy and needs to be killed.

Hope has worked herself into a fine tantrum by this point, angry and red-faced and wiping impatiently at tears.  “Well, I’ll tell you where we went today!” she shouts.  “We went to FAO Schwarz, and he sat on Santa’s lap and asked for a life-size Barbie, some fancy gun with a lot of numbers in the name, and to spend Christmas with you and me.  He even promised to be extra-good and everything.  You big, mean, horrible…meanie!”  She gets out of the car, slams the door, and stomps her way into the X-Mansion.

He sits there for a while, hating himself, listening to her words echo in his head.

That’s why Wade always looks so heartbroken when they leave.  He’s afraid that Nathan will find some fault in him, will decide not to bring Hope again, will decide not to come back.

One thousand, nine hundred ‘n forty years is a long time to love somebody who was only actually in your life for, like, six and abandoned you almost five times.

He presses his forehead against the steering wheel.

Someone knocks at the car window.  “Nathan?”

He jumps a little, startled.

Emma smiles.  “Are you going to sit in there and mope forever, darling?  Come inside and have a nice hot cup of tea.”

He doesn’t know what kind of Christmas Agency X usually has, he realizes.  They’re a motley bunch, and all of them misers.

She arches an eyebrow at him.  “According to Hope, he doesn’t spend Christmas with them.  He stays at home and watches television all alone.  No one ever invites him over, you see.  A long, half-sincere parade of ‘oh, you should come’ and ‘you’d love her roast turkey’ and ‘it’s always so much fun’ is not the same as an invitation.”

Nathan clears his throat.  “Excuse you,” he says pointedly.

“Oh, please, you were thinking loud enough to wake the dead.  Come inside, or I’ll fetch your father, and he’ll feel the need for another one of his awkward father-son talks.  By the way, Hope has announced to the household that she’s not speaking to you.  She had some colorful and profane words for you, in her head—I’m surprised an eight-year-old knows words like those.”

He grimaces.  “She grew up around rebels.  And she spends as much time as she can around Wade.”

“Weekends and whenever you have business in the city?” she says slyly.  “Do you make him pay child-support, too?  Will he get to see her more often if he promises to get a better job and do community service?”

“Move, or I’ll open the door in your face,” he grunts.  He’d like to open it in her face, just to teach her a lesson for digging into other people’s business.  He imagines Dom and Irene must often feel the same way about him.

She steps back.  “Broken things can’t fix themselves, darling.  And you’ve never yet chosen a particularly gentle way to go about fixing him.”

“You sound like Dom.  She’d follow it up with a reminder that everything I try to fix ends up more broken.  And what’s it to you?  You don’t even like Wade.”

Emma snorts and tosses her hair.  “Fine.  You can do whatever you want.  Hope and I will see about inviting Wade to Christmas.  He’ll have a proper invitation and everything.  And we shall make him a Christmas card.  I have a whole box of scrapbooking supplies that would be absolutely perfect for homemade cards.  We’ll have such fun, and Wade will feel so loved.”

“All right, enough,” he begs, waving a hand as he steps out of the car.  “Let her cool down a bit, and then we can call a truce over Christmas cards.”

Emma has on her ‘smug face,’ as Bobby once termed it.  She looks unbearably superior and snobbish and just a little evil when she makes that face.

She makes him a cup of tea (chamomile with honey, to soothe frayed nerves).  In the big common room, Hank is planning out decorations while Hope gives surly, monosyllabic input.  When Nathan’s tea is almost gone, Emma goes and fetches a big cardboard box and two pairs of scissors (one is small enough for Hope to use).

“The kitchen table is the perfect place for it,” she tells him.  “We can spread out all we like, and it doesn’t matter if we lose a glue dot or a scrap of paper somewhere along the way.”

She leaves again and comes back with Hope in tow.

“I have special hole-punches for edging—loopy edges, curly edges, snowflake edges,” Emma says.

Hope jerks to a stop in the kitchen doorway, glares mutinously at Nathan.  She has Dollpool clutched to her chest (she inherited the mangled patchwork thing that first night they stayed with Wade, and she adores it the way a normal little girl would a smiling porcelain-faced doll in a dress).  “What’s he doing here?” she demands.  “It’s not like he cares whether Wade gets a Christmas card.”

Emma starts setting out patterned papers and foam shapes.  “And I’m sure he feels very bad about not caring.  He gets that from his father.”

“He should feel bad about not caring,” Hope declares, taking a seat.  “Wade is the nicest person I ever met.”

“Well, you’re a special case,” Emma says charitably.  “Wade is very fond of you, so of course he’s very nice to you.  Now, what color should we start with?”

Nathan reaches into the box.  “His favorite color is red.”

Hope is not impressed.  “I’m surprised you know.”

“This color,” he says, setting out a sheet of deep crimson.

“It’s not fair.”

Emma pauses in setting out decorative shapes and stencils, brows raised lightly as she looks at Nathan.

“What isn’t?” he asks, picking out a scrap of evergreen.

“That you’re still mad at him,” Hope says impatiently, as if it should be obvious.  “Wade isn’t like other people.  I may just be a kid, but even I can tell there’s things wrong with his head.  I mean…he isn’t stupid, but his brain doesn’t work right.  That’s not his fault, and it’s wrong of you to be mean to him because of it.  It’s like…getting mad at me for being a girl.”

Emma trims the green and passes it to Hope.  “Let’s put a pretty edge on that, hm?”

And Hope nods dutifully and selects a holly-leaf edge punch.

Nathan feels helpless and scolded.  And tired.  He’s so tired of constantly looking over both shoulders, of not even trusting the people closest to him.

“Perhaps the first step to fixing Wade,” Emma suggests, taking the edged paper and carefully writing the word ‘merry’ in intricate silver letters, “is to remind him that it’s all right if it takes a while.”

“How do we do that?” Hope wonders, watching the pen move.

Emma smiles.  “By telling him, of course.  When he looks worried he’s done something wrong, just hug him and tell him that it’s okay, because he’s trying.”

“He always looks like that when Nathan’s around,” Hope says crossly, finding a paler green.  “And Nathan only ever hugged him once that I saw.”

Nathan gives up with a sigh and holds forth an edge punch that will make Christmas-light patterns.  “Your little friend there looks like he could stand to have his eye re-threaded.”

Suspicious, Hope glances down and gently nudges one of the scuffed white buttons.  “Hm.  I guess so.”

He reaches out slowly and touches her shoulder.  “I’m not great with art, but I like to think I’m something of a handyman.  I’ll leave the card-making to you ladies while I get the sewing kit from my room and fix him right up.”

“Neena says you’re eff-word-ing terrible at fixing things,” Hope says, eyeing him dubiously.  “Everything you try to fix ends up worse than when you started.”

He doesn’t know what to say (possibly something along the lines of ‘dammit, stop talking to Dom so much’), but Emma saves him by taking the light piece of green from Hope and starting to write ‘Christmas’ on it.  “Well,” she reasons, “he certainly won’t get any better at fixing things if he never gets any practice.”

Hope sets Dollpool carefully on the table.  “I guess so.  If he ends up with three eyes, or one leg, or something like that, you’re not gonna be allowed to fix him anymore.”

Nathan salutes, goes to his room, digs up the little sewing kit he used to pack on their travels.  He comes back and sits down. 

Even as she helps Emma stick things together with glue dots, Hope keeps darting glances at Nathan’s hands.

He’s very careful.  He mutters an apology when he snips the fraying old stitching.  He threads the needle slowly, uses precise stitches, knots the new thread snugly.  The wide-eyed little face stares up at him blithely, almost trustingly.

And maybe that’s why he tried to separate himself from Wade, why he tried so hard after Providence to give up on trying to fix him.  The fear that, if he botched the next attempt badly enough, Wade wouldn’t let him try again.  The idea of Wade no longer looking at him with innocent feelings like annoyance, affection, trust—but only sadness and shame and fear, like in those terrible futures Bishop chased them to.

The world blurs slightly.

“Nathan,” Emma says, sounding surprised.

Suddenly, Hope is clinging to him, face hidden in his sleeve.  “I’m sorry I called you a meanie and said you were horrible,” she mumbles.

He realizes, embarrassed, that he’s crying over a silly stuffed doll, and wipes his eyes.  “Oh,” he says.  “No, I am a meanie.  And horrible, sometimes.  I know we just visited, but how would you like it if we went to see Wade again on Saturday?  We could bring him his Christmas card and spend the night so we could stay up late watching re-runs.”

“That would be awesome,” Hope tells him.

.End.

Chapter Text

Family

The world is a strange place, and life can be oddly normal at times, even for time-traveling mercenary world-saviors.

Nathan feels weirdly domestic sitting on a park bench watching Hope play with Bob’s children (and he feels dreadful about it, but he can never remember their names, in spite of the fact that they are the only friends Hope has her own age).

Without his Hydra uniform on, Bob looks like a mild-mannered, henpecked sort—neatly combed hair and neatly pressed shirts and slacks.  He has a plain, forgettable face, perfectly suited to the life of a semi-villainous minion.  He watches over the three children not in the worried, fretful way one might expect, but with the carefree, attentive manner of a practiced parent.  He knows which shriek means ‘push the swing higher!’ and which shriek means ‘no, not that high!’, he is apparently the final authority on sandcastle engineering, and he seems to be master of monster imitations for destroying said sandcastles.

“If you turn into that, I’m never sleeping with you again,” Wade casually warns.

Nathan looks over at him.

The shirt Wade’s wearing today is one of the newer ones, black with sloppy red lettering that says Team Wade in all caps (he told Nathan that it had something to do with someone named Hal being played by someone important in some movie, but Nathan doesn’t keep up with movies and actors these days).  Wade gestures vaguely to Bob, who has been ‘conquered’ by the kids in time to save one of the castles.  “That?  That’s pathetic.  That’s the kinda soppy ‘my kids may think they’re almost eight, but I think they’re three’ crap that gets husbands walked all over by their bitchy, demanding wives.”

Nathan has only met the woman twice and hasn’t been able to piece together an opinion of his own, regarding Allison.  Bob portrays her as sweet but perhaps a little bossy.  Most of Agency X considers her to be nosy and officious.  Wade loathes her and often says Bob should get a divorce for the sake of health and sanity (whose, Wade never mentions).

The children have moved over to a jungle gym, where Hope perches at the top like a princess and Bob’s kids convert him into a siege ramp to attack an imaginary dragon.

Nathan shrugs.  “She should be around children her own age.”

“That what Frosty the Snowbitch toldya?” Wade wonders.

“It’s common sense, Wade.  But yes, Emma did suggest it.  She said Hope spends too much time around ‘violent mercenary types.’  Which was probably aimed more at Dom than you.”

“Damn straight.  Neena’s lousy with kids.  She spends half the time complaining about you, and the other half playing dress-up with Hope.”

The princess has been freed from her tower by now, and the kids are running away from some new monster.

“By the way, I slept with Inez.”

“Of course you did,” Nathan replies automatically.  His brain catches up with his ears, and he blinks.  “Wait—when was this?”

Wade shrugs.  “Year ago?  I dunno.  You were dead, that Frank Castle prick almost killed me, I remodeled her house…  I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that you slept with Neena while you were sleeping with me.  Like, same day and stuff.  And never offered threesome.  So stick that in your righteous anger and smoke it.”

The kids have sticks (swords?) and are now chasing the monster up a tree.

“I’m not angry,” Nathan says.

“You’re not?”  Wade sounds disappointed.

Confused, Nathan turns to face him.  “I’m sure we discussed things like ‘open relationships’ and ‘the difference between faithfulness and monogamy.’  Outlaw is a nice girl, and very pretty.  She likes you, and you like her.  For obvious reasons, sex with her would involve several experiences I could never give you.  I don’t understand why you want me to be angry about it.”

Wade hits him in the back of the head.  “You’re supposed to be jealous, you jerk!”

“Ow!  Why should I be jealous of Outlaw?  Last I looked, she wasn’t staying in your apartment or ordering you never to see me again.  And you’re here right now, instead of doing something with her.”

“Maybe she was busy today,” Wade sulks.

Nathan tries not to look too disbelieving (Hope has scolded him for making that face at Wade before).  “Was she busy today?”

“…no.”

“You checked.”

“…she called me.”

“I see.”

“She wanted to go gun shopping.”

“You would have had fun.”

Wade primly folds his arms over his chest and scowls at Bob, who currently has all three kids hanging off him.  “Yeah, well.  There’s only so much fun you can have with composite semi-autos and silicone funbags, and I had a prior engagement with a pretty redhead.”

Nathan smiles.  “So you did.  You spoil said redhead too much, you know.”

“I spoil her just right,” Wade corrects.

They watch the kids for a while.  They’ve finally toppled the monster into the sand pit and are burying him—if Sandi and Weasel are to be believed, this will be a cause for hours of shrieking from Allison later.

Nathan almost suggests that Wade join them, but holds off for two reasons.  First, in spite of the matter-of-fact way that Wade treats Bob as a pet, Nathan gets jealous twinges when they so much as stand within two feet of each other.  Second, Wade shot down horseplay back in October, the first time Hope begged him to play with them all—he’s too strong, and he worries he’ll hurt one of the kids (and he told her that, without any outrageous fibs or silly excuses).

“She loves you very much,” Nathan says after a while.

Wade doesn’t respond right away.  “She does, huh?”  He sounds predictably pleased.

Nathan carefully takes Wade’s hand.  Ever mindful of the things Wade said the first night they came back, he simply says, “She’s not the only one.”

Wade’s hand tightens on his.  “That so?”

“Yup.”

“You know for a fact?”

“I thought I knew a long time ago,” Nathan admits with a small sigh.  “But I certainly didn’t act like it, did I?  I’d apologize, but then you’d think I was an alien imposter or something.”

“You missed the whole Skrull thing, or you’d understand my paranoia on the subject of alien imposters.”

“Are you crying?”

“No.  Don’t look.”

Nathan just smiles and watches Bob start to flail as his children try to bury him completely.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a hanky on hand, wouldya?” Wade mutters, and sniffs.

Nathan tugs a handkerchief, pressed and smelling faintly of jasmine (because Emma is bizarrely fastidious about certain things), from his pocket and passes it without looking.  He gives Wade a moment to compose himself, then calls out to Hope.  “Hope, let’s go get a snack and pick up something for dinner.”

She jogs over and puts her hands on his knees.  “Do we have to go already?” she asks.

He nods.  “Yes, because growing girls have to eat properly.”

She looks at Wade for help, but quickly scowls at Nathan instead.  “What’d you do to Wade this time?”

“Nothing bad, I promise.”

Wade jumps up, shoving the used hanky into his pocket before lifting Hope onto his shoulders.  “Snack time, shorty.  What should we have today?  Jumbo pretzels?”

“Lox ‘n bagels!” Hope chirps.

Shaking his head at the two, Nathan gets up and grudgingly shakes Bob’s hand.  “Thanks for today.”

“Not a problem, Mister Summers.”

Nathan winces.  “Mister Summers is my father.”

“Right.  Sorry about that, Mister Cable.”

Better than nothing.  “I’d better get going, before Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum wander off on another adventure.”

“You’re Tweedle-Dum,” Wade says.

“You’re Tweedle-Dum,” Hope denies.  “Bye, Mister Bob!  Bye, Danny and Melissa!”

Ah, yes.  Danny and Melissa, that’s right.  Nathan will probably forget again by the next play date, but he makes a mental note of the names while Bob and his kids chorus their own set of goodbyes.

He follows Wade and Hope, trusting Wade’s unerring mental map of food sources to lead them to a good Jewish deli.  “And what are we having for dinner, kids?” he asks them.

“Can we have barbecue chicken?” Hope asks.  “Wade says it’s really good.”

“Barbecue it is, then,” Nathan agrees, and settles a hand on the small of Wade’s back.

It’s a good feeling, to have a family again.

.End.

Chapter Text

Perfect Little Punching-Bag

I forgot to say out loud
How beautiful you really are to me
I can’t be without
You’re my perfect little punching-bag
And I need you
I’m sorry

~Don’t Leave Me, by Pink

It’s early enough that only Nathan and a few others are awake.  He has the suspicion that Hank is still awake, having tinkered with something-or-other through the night.  Scott (like Nathan) has always been an early riser.  Laura and Logan wake with the sun for most of the year, and get up around six in the winter—Laura pretends this has nothing to do with their animal nature, but Logan doesn’t bother to pretend anymore.  Technically, X-Force still has other headquarters elsewhere, but since M-Day they mostly stay in the mansion.  Some industrious young student has been making mountains of scrambled eggs and still shows no sign of stopping.

Nathan feels inexplicably muzzy as he accepts a plate and thanks the boy.

“Keep ‘em comin’,” Logan grunts, already halfway through a full plate of eggs.

There’s an electronic tone of a cell phone, and everyone looks at Nathan.

Blinking, he realizes that he left his phone in the pocket of the hooded sweatshirt he’d pulled on to ward off the morning chill.  He hopes he didn’t miss any calls the evening before while it was lying forgotten at the foot of his bed.  By the second ring, he has it out and stares at the display.

Wade, it says.

He frowns, but immediately answers.  For Wade to be awake at six thirty is not entirely unheard of, but it’s certainly unusual.  “Wade?” he says, feeling slight worry creep up on him.  “You’re up awfully early.”

Across the table, his father makes a face and Logan snorts—one of the few things Scott and Logan have in common is a level of annoyance with Wade’s general presence that borders on homicidal rage.  Nathan has come to accept the fact that Wade has that effect on most people.

There’s nothing but silence on the other end of the line, and Nathan suddenly fears that Wade has called because he needs help.  Just the other day, Wade had been telling Hope, ‘Speed-dial is better than 911—only two buttons, and the people on the other end are more helpful.’  “Wade?” he says again.

~I…I, uh…~ comes Wade’s voice at last, low and hesitant, and maybe a little weak.

“Take a deep breath,” Nathan says.  “It’ll be all right.  Go slowly.  One fact at a time.  Is someone hurt?”

~I don’t think so.~

“Are you okay?”

~Define ‘okay.’~

He doesn’t like the sound of that at all.  He stands up from the table and walks toward the door a few paces.  “Are you bleeding?”

~No.~

“Are all your limbs attached?”

~Pretty sure.~

Nathan lets out the breath he’s been holding.  “All right.  Thank the mother for that much, at least…  What’s wrong, then?”

When Wade speaks again, his voice wavers.  ~Know how you fixed my brain, right after the thing with the Skornn and the spear and lots of people thinking you were dead again?~

He certainly does.  Being able to look into Wade’s mind had let him know that his interest was keenly reciprocated and that Wade, in fact, associated all his strongest feelings of care, loyalty, and trust with Nathan.  Repairing the damage to Wade’s brain was what made him start to fall in love with Wade, and what gave him the courage to attempt to pursue a relationship with him.  “Yes?” he replies, fearing that any worries connected to that time will be, if not world-endangering, then relationship-endangering at the very least.

~I think it maybe might be kinda sorta un-fixing itself.~

Nathan clutches the cell phone and has to stagger back to the table and sit down.

He was so sure he’d done it right.  He was so sure that everything would be better, that Wade would be able to think clearly and remember properly.  Afterward, Wade’s priorities were still skewed, his morals were still questionable, and he held some inconvenient grudges over Nathan’s busybody nature, but his brain worked.

Nathan passes his left hand over his face, rubs the cool metal against his forehead.

Once again, he has failed at fixing Wade.

If he ends up with three eyes, or one leg, or something like that, you’re not gonna be allowed to fix him anymore.

Yes, Hope has said more than once that Wade’s brain ‘doesn’t work right,’ but he always thought she was talking about his sociopathic tendencies.

~Nate?~ Wade quavers, sounding like he needs an answer that only Nathan can give.  Like a kid who rear-ended somebody on the first day driving with a new license, and only Dad knows what to do.

“I’m here,” he chokes out.  “What makes you think your brain is ‘un-fixing itself’?”

The silence stretches again, and Nathan starts to think Wade is too afraid of getting in trouble to admit to what’s been happening.  He almost says something banal and reassuring, but he doesn’t know yet what’s pushed Wade to this point, and he doesn’t want to make more misunderstandings when they’ve finally started to get somewhere.  “Wade, if it’s bad enough to upset you like this and make you call me in the middle of breakfast when you would normally be asleep, I need you to tell me what it is.”

~I’m losing time again.~

Scott shifts.  “Anything that’ll require a jet and a team?”

Nathan almost answers, but Wade is talking again, babbling, spilling it all out—so Nathan quickly waves a hand at his father to be quiet.

~I just lost thirteen hours, according to the morning news crew.  I lost most of yesterday and all of the day before.  I came around at curtain call for a show I don’t remember seeing, and Hope was there, Nate, oh god, I can’t even remember what we did or what happened or how we got there or anything.  I mean, for fuck’s sake, if I could forget where I left you when I was flying around the damn world to save you…if I could kill somebody and not even remember seeing him before…~

Wade sounds like he’s crying.  Nathan can understand—if he blacked out with Hope, he knows he’d be terrified, too.

He wants so much to just say ‘it’s going to be okay,’ but he knows Wade is looking for a solution, for some reassurance that he’ll keep Hope safe.

Emma and Rachel have appeared in the kitchen doorway.  Rachel looks sleep-mussed and only half-aware, Emma looks impeccable as always, but they both practically radiate concern at him when he glances their way.

~I know I should’ve told you sooner,~ Wade suddenly goes on.  ~I should’ve told you the third time, when I was finally sure it was really happening again.~

Nathan blinks quickly, fighting the stinging in his eyes.

It’s happened several times.  Not just the two Wade mentioned before.

~I was worried you’d stop trusting me around her, but I don’t even care about that anymore, I just want her to be safe.  I know you promised her you guys would be back Saturday, but make something up.  Tell her I’m sick.  Tell her I had to work.  Tell her anything—well, I mean, not anything; don’t tell her the truth.~

Nathan only realizes he’s been biting his lip when he tastes copper on his tongue.

~I know that sounds horrible, and it’s really selfish, but I don’t want her to be scared of me, I wouldn’t be able to take that.~

He shakes his head.  “We’ll figure something out,” he says thickly.  “Wade, I…”

But Wade interrupts him.

~Don’t.  Please, don’t apologize.~

Nathan squeezes his eyes closed and presses his fist to his mouth.  Wade knows him so well.

~You tried.  You always tried so hard to fix me.  It isn’t your fault if somebody up there likes me better broken.  I’m sorry about Christmas, after you guys went to all the trouble of inviting me ‘n all, but I don’t think it’ll be a good idea.~

“Wade—” he tries to say, but the brief beep of a disconnected call is his only answer.  Very slowly, he folds the phone closed and sets it down on the table and stares at it.

“What are you going to tell her?” Laura asks quietly.

“I don’t know,” he admits, and has to clear his throat before he can speak again.  “I’m not very good at lying to her.  And I’m very bad at telling her that she can’t see him.  I promised her we’d go back on Saturday.  They were going to go ice skating.”

“And who says they won’t?” Emma says, sliding her hands over his shoulders.

“I’m sure they’ll have a lot of fun with him worrying the whole time that he’s losing his damned mind again!” he snaps without meaning to.

“It’s never worried him before,” scoffs Logan.

Nathan slams his metal fist into the table and entertains a brief fantasy of trying to see how many plasma charges it would take to blast Logan’s face off.

Hank clears his throat meaningfully.  “Logan, I think you’re forgetting that there wasn’t a small girl in his life before.  You yourself were on the verge of abandoning the mansion when you feared you were going too feral for the safety of the children.”

“For now, just eat and think,” Laura suggests.  “Even humans are still wired so that the brain works best when walking or chewing are involved.”

“Laura’s right, dear,” Emma says.  “Go on, eat your breakfast.”

He doesn’t want to.  He doesn’t feel like eating.  He feels sick.

But he’s been a soldier all his life, and his body will eat when he tells it to.  So he picks his fork back up and returns to the dull, mechanical motions of conveying eggs to his mouth, chewing, and swallowing.

I should’ve told you sooner.

Nathan should have noticed it.

Since he and Hope got back, there’s been something…not-quite-right…on the edge of perception, something a little more reminiscent of the old Wade than he’d come to expect after repairing and stabilizing the half-rotted morass of Wade’s memory.  He wasn’t truly aware of it because he’d been away for so long, long enough to forget how hard he’d fallen, how head-over-heels he’d been, how enamored and obsessed and unjustifiably over-concerned.

He went so long without Wade that he forgot what Wade was supposed to be like when he was (his approximation of) well.

Nathan chews his eggs slowly, thinking things over.

He imagines Wade crying alone on that awful couch of his, or maybe making a mess in the apartment he’s started to obsessively clean in case Hope is allowed to stay over.  He remembers all the times he carelessly put a bullet through Wade’s head, or telekinetically exploded half his skull.  He remembers the tone of frail optimism every time Wade would ask (in his roundabout ways) where the line was, how far he could go, how low he could sink before Nathan would just stop bothering with him, the meandering string of ‘would you still try to fix me if I did this?’ scenarios.  He remembers the ghoulish Wade being ripped in half, the mindless Wade face-down on the stained tiles, the lonely Wade still smiling all by himself in a world of nothing left to hope for but death.

He doesn’t know what to do, but he’s got to do something.  He can’t let Wade cut himself off.  He can’t let Wade just…leave.  Sending him away was different—sending him away never hurt like this.

His stomach twists in knots.

“I’m sorry,” he excuses himself, and leaves the kitchen.

He goes outside to pace in the gardens.  All at once, he feels that Wade shouldn’t be left alone right now, and decides to call Outlaw (Sandi won’t be up just yet, and she works too hard for an unexpected early wake-up call).

~Outlaw here,~ she answers with a slight yawn.

“Did I wake you?”

~Cable?  Shucks, honey, it’s no big deal.  Caught me between alarm snoozes, ‘s all.  I oughtta be up ‘n about by now anyhow.  What’s up?~

“Wade is…”  He doesn’t know quite how to say it.  He wants to think of a delicate way, a way that will let Wade pretend to be strong…but Wade has already been dealing with this all by himself for too long.  “Well, he isn’t sick, exactly.  His memory has…gone back to being less-than-perfect.  He’s…he sounded very upset.  Could you do me a favor and go check on him?  I don’t know that he could really do anything lasting, but he might try to hurt himself.”

~Huh.  Finally copped to it, did ‘e?  Hell, he’s been forgettin’ all manner o’ stuff the past couple years.  You don’t wanna know how many times we had to remind him you were dead before it finally stuck for more ‘n a day.  I can tell ya, that caused more ‘n his fair share of tears, and I’m a bit surprised Sandi didn’t take it outta yer hide when you came back.~

Nathan chokes on a breath.  She’s right; he doesn’t want to know how many times Wade asked after him and had to be told he was dead and experience it again as if it were the first time.  “Please, Outlaw,” he says.  “He’s so afraid he’ll hurt Hope that he’s trying to cut himself off.  Please.  I don’t think he should be alone.”

~Then why are you talkin’ t’ me instead o’ drivin’ yer half-metal ass down here?~ she demands sourly.  ~I’ll get myself over there to him, but you damn well better be scootin’ his way fast, or I’ll find you.~

“I…”  He grins wryly.  “Thank you.  I’ll have to wake Hope up and think up some kind of excuse, but then I’ll be on my way.”

~Damn straight.  Seeya in ‘bout an hour, then.~

He stops by the kitchen to ask Scott and Emma to keep an eye on Hope for the day.

He still doesn’t know what he’ll tell Hope.

His feet feel heavy as he climbs the stairs to the second floor of the mansion.  For politeness’ sake, he knocks on her door before opening it.

It’s a big room for such a little girl; a huge bed, a cavernous closet, an old mahogany armoire with faeries and unicorns carved into its surface.  Flowered heirloom quilts, a Tinkerbell nightlight, a poster of She-Hulk, a little shelf of fairytales bookended by unloved pastel plush animals.  In such a big room, with such a small collection of personal things, it’s obvious which items are beloved favorites…the Baum and Barrie collections have deep creases in their spines, a thin spot has been worn on the throw rug where she likes to pace, and the patched and re-patched red and black figure of Dollpool is tucked against her chest even in her sleep.

“Is it time to get up already?” Hope mumbles, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.  “It’s still dark out.”

Slowly, Nathan sits in his usual spot beside her, near the head of the bed.  “I know it’s early.  You can go back to sleep after this, until Emma comes to get you for classes.”

“You’re going somewhere?” she asks.

“I know I promised we’d go skating on Saturday…”

Her eyes are intent in the dimness.  “Something’s wrong with Wade.”

Of course she knows.  She has an acute sense for Nathan’s moods, after all.  “He’s…sick, that’s all.  He doesn’t want to get you all germy.”

She doesn’t believe him.  She’s making one of those unimpressed skeptical faces that he knows she learned from him.  “So you’re going to go see him without me and bring the germs back instead?”

“You want me to leave poor Wade all by himself when he’s sick?” he tries with a pout.

“Don’t be a dummy, Nathan, you can’t just leave him all alone like that.  Go take care of him and stuff.  And if you’re mean to him while he’s…’sick’…I’ll think very, very bad words about you so that Emma gets all stern.”

He huffs a laugh to keep from crying.  “I won’t be mean,” he says, and feels his voice crack despite his best efforts.  “I promise, I won’t be mean.”

She hugs him tightly.  “Well, if you promise, then I believe you.”

So Nathan tucks Hope back in, kisses her brow, and goes to his own room to get properly dressed.  It’s early enough still that the traffic is light, and he arrives at Wade’s apartment without having figured out what he can possibly do or say.

Outlaw answers the door, dressed in jeans and a turtleneck.  Her hair is quite short, and he remembers that Wade once said she usually wears a wig.  She jerks her chin toward the couch.

Wade is there, channel-surfing.  He looks like he hasn’t slept.  He looks like he’s been crying all night.

When Nathan tries to go to him, Outlaw stops him with a hand on his arm, deceptively slender fingers digging into his bicep.

“Ain’t much warnin’,” she tells him.  “If he’s gonna lose the time, y’might never know until he does.  Sometimes he’ll forget it and then remember it three days later.  Sometimes he’ll snap right back and know he’s forgotten, ‘cause he was in the middle of somethin’ before.  Used to be, he just didn’t care, took everythin’ as it came; but with Hope around and you finally pullin’ yer head out yer ass and yer foot out yer mouth…”  She shakes her head slowly and aims a frosty look at him.  “You just remember—you hurt him, and me ‘n Sandi will hunt you down.”

“You’ll have to get in line behind Hope,” he jokes feebly.

Her hand tightens.  “I swear t’ god, Nathan Summers,” she hisses.  “That boy has cried too much over you as it is.  If you fuck this up, you better leave the country and never come back, or you’ll start t’ think ol’ Apocalypse was gentle as a lamb compared t’ me—I swear t’ god.”

He regards her placidly.  “Then let’s both hope I don’t fuck this up.”

She leaves without another word, even to Wade, and Nathan carefully shuts and locks the door behind her.

Slowly, he walks to the couch and sits down.

Five minutes later, Wade looks at him with raised eyebrows.  “Oh,” he says.  “Hey.  When’d you get here?”

“Five minutes ago,” Nathan replies.

“Mm.”

“What are you watching?”

“Well, I’m…”  Wade pauses, frowns at the TV.  “Y’know, I can’t remember.  My head kinda hurts, it’s the damnedest thing.”

“I love you,” Nathan blurts.

“Sure,” Wade dismisses, flipping away from a commercial for another all-in-one mini-blender.

Nathan pulls Wade close, holds him so that he can feel Wade’s heartbeat a few inches below his own.

After a little while, Wade shifts, leans up, kisses Nathan’s cheek.  “I musta fallen asleep or something…when’d you get here, babe?”

“Six minutes ago,” Nathan tells him, fighting tears.

“What’s wrong?”

But he just shakes his head.

“Not telling?  Why, somebody die?”  Wade chuckles and tucks his head under Nathan’s chin.  “Least it wasn’t you this time.”

And Nathan doesn’t know what he can say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.

.End.

Chapter Text

Relapse

It was happening again—Wade was losing time.

When Nate had fixed his brain after the bizarre dimension-hopping adventure, Wade had stopped losing time.  His short-term memory lasted properly through the day, his long-term memory no longer sprung random leaks, he no longer found himself in odd places doing odd things without remembering why.  His brain was normal(-ish), and it had been so damn long since any part of him had been anything even approaching normal…

He hadn’t worried so much about losing time right after Nate left.  After all, everyone was saying Nate was dead, and Wade acknowledged that he was at least a little traumatized by the fact on some level.  He’d heard of people losing whole months while they were mourning, and the worst he’d ever gotten was a week (because Sandi called him every Tuesday to check on him).

And then Nate had come back, and Wade had counted down each day (counted hours and minutes sometimes) until the next time he’d see Hope.  Seeing Nate was nice, and sleeping with Nate again was nice but sort of not-nice (emotionally, anyway), but seeing Hope was downright wonderful (which was not one of Wade’s usual words, but Hope deserved un-Wade-ish words).

But now it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet, he’d had Nate and Hope coming to see him for just over two months, Nate had been all lovey-dovey and domestic for about a week, and Wade was losing time again.

He tried to brush it off the first time, telling himself that he was just distracted.  The next time, oh, just some low blood sugar.  The third time, however, his memory jumped from eating scrambled eggs for breakfast all the way to afternoon in Central Park.

He wondered if he should tell Nate.  Maybe Nate would be able to find a way to help.  Maybe Nate wouldn’t let him babysit anymore.

No, he didn’t think he could handle it if Nate stopped trusting him around Hope.  They’d only be able to spend time together if Nate was with them, and Nate would only let them do dorky ‘safe’ things, and Hope would end up all sheltered and freakish, and Nate would be giving him that look like ‘I thought I could trust you.’

But the sixth or seventh time sealed it.

That time, he went from falling asleep in front of TV to Hope calling his name and tugging on his hand to tell him that it was almost four and they had to get back before they got in trouble.  They made it back in time, Nate kissed him and said they’d be back Saturday morning, Nate and Hope went home, and Wade sat down on the couch and cried for two hours.

He would have to tell Nate.  He’d lost time with Hope.  Anything could have happened while he was out of it.  They had never found a reason for him to have killed Haji Bin Barat.

Maybe Nate would never bring Hope to see him again.  At least she’d be safe.

Wade blanked again, and the news told him he’d lost thirteen hours.  He panicked some more.  He cried some more.  Finally, he called Nate.

It took two rings before Nate picked up, and he sounded groggy.  ~Wade?  You’re up awfully early.~

Wade opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find his voice.

~Wade?~ Nate called again, sounding concerned.

“I…I, uh…”

How should he say it?  Was there a good way to say it?  Was there a spectacularly bad way to say it?

~Take a deep breath,~ Nate said.  ~It’ll be all right.  Go slowly.  One fact at a time.  Is someone hurt?~

“I don’t think so.”

~Are you okay?~

He swallowed.  “Define ‘okay.’”

~Are you bleeding?~

“No.”

~Are all your limbs attached?~

“Pretty sure.”

He heard Nate exhale deeply.  ~All right.  Thank the Mother for that much, at least…  What’s wrong, then?~

He fidgeted and tried not to start crying again.  “Know how you fixed my brain, right after the thing with the Skornn and the spear and lots of people thinking you were dead again?”

~…Yes?~

“I think it maybe might be kinda sorta un-fixing itself.”

There was a long pause.

Wade worried that Nate might have just put the phone down and walked away.  “Nate?”

~I’m here,~ Nate promised, but he sounded tense.  ~What makes you think your brain is ‘un-fixing itself’?~

The bottom dropped out of Wade’s stomach, and he almost lost his courage.  After all, Nate had never believed him before about just how faulty his memory was.  Nobody had.  ‘Oh, sure, Deadpool’s like an ADHD kid on crack, but he’s not fricking amnesiac.’  Except that he really had been.  At its worst, his brain had lost about ninety percent of his short-term memory intermittently throughout the day and pretty much all of it when he slept.

~Wade, if it’s bad enough to upset you like this and make you call me in the middle of breakfast when you would normally be asleep, I need you to tell me what it is.~

“I’m losing time again,” Wade finally managed, feeling the panic and hysteria coming back full-force.  He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.  Now that he’d said it, the words came pouring out.  “I just lost thirteen hours, according to the morning news crew.  I lost most of yesterday and all of the day before.  I came around at curtain call for a show I don’t remember seeing, and Hope was there, Nate, oh god, I can’t even remember what we did or what happened or how we got there or anything.  I mean, for fuck’s sake, if I could forget where I left you when I was flying around the damn world to save you…if I could kill somebody and not even remember seeing him before…”  And he was crying again, even though it wouldn’t help anything, even though it was stupid and girly and useless.

There was another long pause.

“I know I should’ve told you sooner,” Wade went on, needing to explain.  “I should’ve told you the third time, when I was finally sure it was really happening again.  I was worried you’d stop trusting me around her, but I don’t even care about that anymore, I just want her to be safe.  I know you promised her you guys would be back Saturday, but make something up.  Tell her I’m sick.  Tell her I had to work.  Tell her anything—well, I mean, not anything; don’t tell her the truth.  I know that sounds horrible, and it’s really selfish, but I don’t want her to be scared of me, I wouldn’t be able to take that.”

~We’ll figure something out,~ Nate finally said, and his voice was strained.  ~Wade, I…~

“Don’t,” he begged.  “Please, don’t apologize.  You tried.  You always tried so hard to fix me.  It isn’t your fault if somebody up there likes me better broken.  I’m sorry about Christmas, after you guys went to the trouble of inviting me ‘n all, but I don’t think it’ll be a good idea.”

And he hung up before he could really embarrass himself by sobbing like a baby.

So he cried on the couch for a while and generally felt sorry for himself.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Go away,” he called.

There was some brief fiddling and clicking, and the door opened.

Drat.  Served him right for not drawing the chain when most of his coworkers were experts at breaking and entering.

Whoever-it-was locked the door again and came around to sit beside him.

“Go away, Inez,” he mumbled.

“Stop that,” she told him, and hugged him close.  “Cable called.  Told me what was up.  It’ll be okay, honey.  I know it feels like the end o’ the world, but it’ll be okay, I promise.  Even when you had yerself a memory like a sieve, you didn’t just go and attack people randomly, and you didn’t forget fast enough that you couldn’t react to sudden danger.  Just throw somebody into the mix to make sure you don’t walk in front of a bus or somethin’, and you’ll be fine.  Sandi or I could spot ya, no sweat.  Or Cable could.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Hush,” she chided, rubbing his shoulder.  “Shucks, honey, his main worry in all this is that you’re up here breakin’ yer heart all by yer lonesome, and he can’t come take care o’ ya on account o’ Hope would just try to tag along and end up makin’ ya sadder.  Your man loves you, and he loves ya enough to know that you love that little girl even more ‘n he does.”

“How do you know if he loves anybody or not?  Not like he ever says it…”

“You told him not to,” she pointed out.

“I never told him not to!” Wade denied churlishly.  “I just said I wasn’t gonna ask if he did, because I didn’t wanna know if he didn’t.  I learned that lesson pretty damn well, thanks—when it comes to him, I don’t ask questions if I won’t like the answers.”

“Oh, honestly,” she sighed.  “You boys are about as sharp as a pillowcase full o’ guinea pigs.  Both of ya runnin’ around like headless chickens, tryin’ not to disappoint each other while you have a damn pedestal-building contest.  You got any tissues, honey?”

“Bob buys the antiviral kind, so the kids can’t spread germs around,” Wade said, waving toward the kitchen.

She got up briefly, came back with the box.  “Here, blow yer nose.  I’ll be right back.”  And she left.

Maybe she was gone five minutes, maybe five days.  Maybe she came back and left again.  Wade couldn’t tell.

The next thing he was properly aware of (that he could remember, anyway) was being held in big, strong arms.

“Uh…hi,” he mumbled.  “When’d you get here?”

Nate squeezed him slightly, then pulled back to give him one of those long, sad looks.  “Three hours ago.”

Wade looked away.  “Where’s Hope?  Not here, right?”

“Scott and Emma are watching her.  She and Inez both had some very firm opinions on the subject of me sitting at home worrying while you were here all by yourself.”

“You didn’t tell her…”

“No.  I said you were sick.  I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me.”

Wade nodded.  “Good.”

“Wade, look at me.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to look me in the eye when I say this—because I want you to believe me instead of shrugging it off.”

Wade’s eyes stung, but he met Nate’s gaze.  “When you say what?” he whispered, already knowing the answer.

“I love you.  I’ve loved you from the moment I peered into your mind and could see for the first time just how much you loved me.  I’ve never been so flattered or felt so treasured.”

And even though Wade was crying (again…yeah, sure, it was life-altering once-in-a-lifetime true-love crap, but he might theoretically have a shred of manly pride left somewhere…oh, would the humiliating girliness never end?), he could see clearly enough to find matching tears on Nate’s cheeks, and he couldn’t imagine why any of this was happening at all, what he could possibly have done to deserve to be loved by someone who wasn’t just as filthy and evil and broken as he was.

“I took you so much for granted, Wade,” Nate mumbled.  “I just selfishly made assumptions and tried to make everyone fit into the roles I imagined for them.  And somewhere along the line, I stopped loving you, and when I realized I had, I felt so awful.  I met a version of you that had loved me for almost two thousand years, and he reminded me of every single part of you that I’d missed for so long, and it was like a lightswitch turning on in the dark.”

Nate cupped his cheeks, pressed a brief, desperate little kiss to his lips before continuing.

“Dom thinks she can stop me from doing things, but you’re the only one who’s ever really made me see something I’d done as wrong, and I did do so many things wrong with you, but I don’t want to waste whatever time we have left.  I don’t want you to be two thousand years old and wish you could die because all I ever did was leave.  I don’t want you to ever get used to losing me.  So I’m going to stick with you through this, and we’re going to find a way for you to get better again.”

“Mean it?” Wade squeaked.

“Mean it,” Nate huffed with a soggy smile.  “I love you.  So much.  Please, promise me you won’t try to do this all by yourself.”

“Promise.”  Wade grinned.  “Now, whether I’ll remember that promise, or who you are, or even my own damn name…”

Nate just laughed and hugged him close again.

.End.

Chapter Text

Understanding

(Excerpt from recorded interview, 11/20)

Irene Merryweather: Okay, recorder on.  From here on out, it’s all fair game.
Cable: Ah, I see.  So your invitation to ‘catch up and maybe grab a coffee’ was a clever ruse to procure headline-worthy secrets.  I warn you, Miss Merryweather, SHIELD and the United States Government don’t take kindly to having their scandals spilled anywhere but Fox News.  It’s one thing to work for the Daily Bugle…I don’t think you want to work for Fox.
IM: Oh, Nathan, you’re so clever. (pause) All the same, thanks for meeting me.
Cable: You are my chronicler, and you have missed seven-going-on-eight years of my life.
IM: And clearly, some things have changed.  What’s with the doll?
Cable: You’ve met Dollpool, haven’t you?
IM: Er…yes.
Cable: I’m supposed to be keeping him company while Hope plays.
IM: She certainly has you trained.
Cable: I’m told it’s a natural stage of fatherhood that lasts from the birth of the first female child until the father’s death from exhaustion.
IM: …point taken.

Irene isn’t paying attention.  It doesn’t matter too much, with the recorder nestled in her palm capturing every word Nathan says.

The words flow over her like the scent of damp dead leaves and the distant music of the carousel.  Wastelands, post-apocalyptic nightmares, monsters and tyrants and murderers.  A woman.  A war.  A blackened sky over burned soil.

She didn’t like or trust Deadpool when she first met him (not that she’d trusted Nathan at first, either).  Even after he saved her at the end of Providence, she couldn’t fathom why Nathan spends so much time and effort on him, bends over backward for him, trusts him with a child.

But the more she watches Wade with Hope, the more she thinks she might see what Nathan sees.

They’re sharing a bag of popcorn, occasionally throwing pieces to (more like at) the pigeons—unlike their more street-wise brethren, Central Park’s pigeons have spent the last century being fed by children and little old ladies, so they are sluggish and slow to react to projectile food attacks.  Wade’s marksmanship is expert, even in the late November chill, and he’s teaching Hope the knack of flicking popcorn with her thumb (because when your hands are cold, he tells her, the thumb is the last digit to lose coordination).

The smiles Hope gives Wade are trusting and adoring, even more than Theresa’s smiles for him, and he gives her the same smiles back.

“Irene?”

She jumps a little, like a child caught red-handed.  When she glances at Nathan, he grins wryly.  “I’m sorry, Nate, my mind wandered.”

“You had a funny look on your face, like you were thinking very hard about something.”

“I was just wondering why you…” she starts to answer, before she can stop herself.

“Love him?”

She scoffs (again, before she can stop herself).  “Love doesn’t make any sense, Nate, and I don’t pretend it does.  Wondering about that wouldn’t do me any good.  I only wondered why you’d trust him around her.  If the two are related, I’ll call you an idiot and leave it at that.”

Nathan shrugs a little.  “When Barat was murdered, and it was decided that only Wade could have killed him…Wade said he couldn’t remember doing it, and didn’t know why he did it.”

“Right,” she says, trusting that he has a point.

“Did you believe him?”

“I didn’t when he said it,” she admits.  “But it didn’t exactly make sense for him to kill even the world’s most wanted terrorist.  He’d always been a model citizen on Providence before that.  Didn’t even litter.  People didn’t treat him like a monster or talk to him like a simpleton.  He had a nice apartment where he didn’t have to pay rent.  And I’m pretty sure you were sleeping together at the time.  Why would he risk losing all that?  Boredom?”  She shakes her head.  “Even before you fixed his brain, he wasn’t that far gone.”

Hope pauses in feeding the pigeons to throw a piece of popcorn at Wade, who catches it in his mouth—she claps and cheers, and her breath makes a thin little cloud between them.

Nathan shifts.  “I didn’t believe him, either,” he says.  “When I was young again, and my powers were strongest, I could actually make some sense of his mind.  I could read him.  Even Xavier can’t do that, you know.”

Irene waves a hand.  “I remember what you said—like trying to watch TV while someone’s mashing the channel buttons.”

“And suddenly, it was like seeing everything properly laid out at once, with each channel given its own screen so that I could look from one to the next as I chose.”  He sighs.  “There were so many holes…so many blanks…so many things that were wrong or fake or nonsensical…”

She frowns at him.  “So…it really was as bad as he said it was?”

Nathan shakes his head.  “Much worse.  He didn’t even notice how much time he was losing, or how many of the things he remembered weren’t real.  The point is that he was being perfectly honest with us, he had good intentions, and we all just assumed the worst.”

A squeal of childish laughter startles Irene—Wade is pitching pieces of popcorn at Hope’s mouth and intentionally hitting her nose.  Irene can’t suppress a smile.  “Well, he did run, which sends a pretty bad message.  I don’t think I understand how that has anything to do with what I was wondering.”

“Yes, you do.  You’re being intentionally obtuse because you think you can make me admit things about myself.”

She chuckles.  “You’re not a mind-reader anymore, Nathan.  And you’re wrong—knowing something and understanding it are two different things.  I know that Wade is perfectly capable of being harmless, even protecting people.  Hell, he’s saved my life more than once.  But I also know he’s been a murderer for hire for as long as he can remember.  And when I consider those two things together, I still can’t understand how you can trust him with any child, let alone a child who may be the key to saving the world.  You always seemed so certain that he could and would betray anyone, given the opportunity and a sufficiently large paycheck.”

Suddenly, he looks tired and regretful.  “I’m not getting any younger, Irene,” he says softly, and it hurts to hear him say it.

“This time,” she jokes.

He doesn’t smile.  “I’m not getting any younger, and I’ve lived more than my fair share of years.  She’ll still need a protector when I’m gone, and I’ve seen him accomplish some truly great things, especially when he’s protecting someone.”  He pauses, looking at the stuffed doll Hope left in his charge (and Irene notes that Dollpool is in remarkably good repair, for a handmade toy that gets dragged all over Manhattan by a little girl and a psychopath).  “I repeated my mistake, Irene.  Every word he’s said to her, every place he’s taken her, every amazingly precious normal experience he’s given her has told me that he would never hurt her—that he would die to protect her—and I didn’t believe him.”

She tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry as a desert.  “And what changed your mind?”

“Hope yelled at me,” he says, and that wry grin is back.  “She reminded me of what’s truly important…and what really tells you how a person feels and whether you can trust them.  Just look at them together—they’re inseparable.”  He gestures a little, and she follows his gaze.

They’ve run out of popcorn, it seems.  Wade holds Hope up at the right height to use the drinking fountain.  When she’s done, he lifts her onto his shoulders and chases pigeons while she makes laser noises and tells him that they need to make another strafing run to get the last of the Imperial walkers.  Hope’s scarf—purple and green, because (in spite of Rachel’s and Wade’s separate efforts to the contrary) Hope’s favorite superhero is She-Hulk—has started to unwind and trails behind them like the tail of a kite.  They both have big, carefree smiles on their faces.

“I do want to protect her,” Nathan goes on.  “And I’ve gotten pretty fond of her over the years.  I’ve had wives and lovers, and children of my own—but I have never loved anyone as much as he loves her.  Do you understand now?”

“I, um…”  She swallows again.  “…yes.”  When she looks at Nathan again, there’s a deep sense of peace in his eyes that she’s never seen when he talks about Domino.  He really is in love with that manic moron, and it’s taken him all this time to figure it out.  She shakes her head with a sigh.  “Oh, Nathan.  You idiot.”

“What?” he asks, puzzled.

Just then, Wade limps over.  “I think there’s something wrong with my leg,” he says, and turns to one side, where a giggling Hope is wrapped limpet-like around his knee.

“I see,” Nathan replies.  “Well, there’s your problem, you’ve been attacked by a rare Hope-lamprey.  It’s particularly hard to get them to let go.  You have to tickle them.”

“Ohhhh, okay.”

“No!” Hope squeals as Wade begins to tickle her ribs through her coat.  “No fair!”

Wade picks her up while she’s still giggling, sits her on Nathan’s knee so that he can collapse onto the bench himself.  “That was a close one.  I coulda lost my leg.  Not much of a market for one-legged mercs.”

“It would’ve grown back,” Hope points out, retrieving Dollpool from Nathan.  “And Sandi wouldn’t let Mister Hayden fire you; she says you’re her favorite boss ever.”

“Ever ever?”

“Ever ever.  Besides, it would be a scandal, and then Irene would write all about it and they’d have to give her back her old job, and Sandi would never let that happen, because she says the Daily Bugle is full of crap and Irene deserves to write for a real newspaper.”

Irene smiles a little and tightens her hand around her recorder.

“Well, good for Irene, then,” Wade says, and stands back up.  “Know what time it is?”

“Skin o’clock,” Hope replies, pushing up her sleeve and looking at her bare wrist.

“Time to buy you a watch,” Wade chuckles.  “But besides that, it’s time to get going if we wanna sneak in to see Wicked.”

“Yay!” Hope cries, jumping off Nathan’s knee.

Wade seizes her hand, swings her back up onto his shoulders.  She sets Dollpool on her own shoulders.

“Meet back here?” Nathan asks.

“Nah,” Wade dismisses, leaning in for a kiss (Hope giggles and keeps her balance easily, as though she’s gotten used to this sort of thing).  “Go someplace warm.  Even when I forget where I left you, I always find you.”

“All right.  Have fun.”

“Don’t I always?”  Wade salutes and sets off toward Broadway.

“Sneak in, huh?” Irene says with a grin.

“Wade has very particular ideas about paying to see plays and musicals,” Nathan tells her with a slight wince.  “Hope understands that the actors need to make a living, so they compromise by buying tickets afterward if they liked the show.”

“You let him get away with setting such a terrible example?” she teases.

He makes that sad, distant face again, and looks up at the pale, chilly sky.  “He’s been getting worse again.  His memory, I mean.  Sandi tells me it started when I left, but it got particularly bad about a year after.  It’s hard to say whether it’s trauma, or if his brain was tampered with…or if what I did was really nothing more than a bandage.  Some days, his memory is perfect.  Others, he’ll forget what he said ten seconds ago.”

She doesn’t have anything to say to that.  She thinks it must be very painful to love someone who may not remember you in five minutes.

He folds his hands together tightly.  “All I can give him are moments, Irene.  I want those moments to be the happiest he’s ever had, so that if he happens to remember them, he’ll be glad he’s alive.  If that means occasionally skipping school to let them play in the park, I think it’s a pretty small price to pay.”

Irene looks at her recorder, thinks about turning it off, but decides that she might want to listen to his next answer later.  “There are some people who would say…in that kind of situation, you should be spending those moments with them.  Maybe tell him how you feel.  Don’t you think that would make him happy?”

“I don’t know,” he says.  “I can’t tell if it makes him happy or sad.  He’ll accept affection, and our sex life is fine—”

“Didn’t need to hear that,” Irene quickly tells him.

“—but hearing that I love him only seems to upset him.  So I don’t say it very much.”

“Why would it upset him?  He’s probably almost as crazy for you as he is for that ludicrously cute kid of yours.”

“You and I both know the answer to that, Irene.”

But she isn’t sure that what she thinks the answer is matches up with what Nathan thinks it is.  She decides to take the chance that she knows what he’s thinking (the rule of thumb is to find the path of greatest martyrdom, and it’s served her pretty well so far).  “You’re such an idiot,” she snorts.  “It’s not because of the way you treated him.  It’s because he thinks he’s not worthy of somebody who tried to single-handedly stop war and world hunger.”

The startled look on his face tells her that her guess was right.  “That’s ridiculous, of course he’s…”  He grins and heaves a thick sigh.  “Oh, Wade.”

She laughs.  “It’s a good thing you two morons have Hope to take care of you.  I swear, you never would’ve gotten back together without her.”

“And that’s a good thing?” he says slyly.  “You wouldn’t have preferred to step in and play foster-parent yourself?”

Now she does turn the recorder off.  She slips it into her pocket and stands.  “I wasn’t what you wanted.  Domino wasn’t what you wanted.  Wade was.  I’ve understood that for going on three years, Nate.  I think the two of you might be the last ones to get the memo, in fact.  They’ll be about three hours, unless they get bored before the show’s over—Des Artistes won’t kick us out if we keep buying coffee.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Losing Hope or Why Weasels Make Lousy Babysitters

Slowly, Jack Hammer (yes, that is his real name, and yes, it’s possible that his parents were slightly drunk when they named him), known to his friends and colleagues as Weasel, sits down on a bench in Central Park and folds his hands together between his knees.  It may not look like it, but Weasel is having a panic attack.

He long ago mastered the art of quiet panic—when you get paid to break into places and steal things using a laptop, you learn not to make a fuss when things start to turn pear-shaped (lest you alert people with guns and handcuffs).

Bob, Agent of Hydra (technically off-duty and currently in plainclothes), takes a seat next to him, looking similarly calm, but anyone whose instinct for hiding is as well-honed as Bob’s is certainly panicking right now.

“We’re going to die,” Weasel muses.  “Very, very slowly.”

“We?” Bob says in a tone of affront.  “I just got here.  You’re the one who lost her.  How did you even do that, anyway?  It’s not like she’s a toddler—she’s almost eight, for god’s sake.”

But Weasel isn’t listening.  He’s too busy panicking.  His mind chases down a hundred scenarios, most in the category of ‘leave the country.’  The flat in London’s compromised, and so is the one in Stockholm.  Half his fake passports are no good.  He’d have to use the emergency one and forge another during a layover between flights.  It’d take at least four different airports to even begin to cover the paper trail.

No, it’s no good.  Wade may have flipped his lid several times, but sometime before that, he was definitely a cold-blooded assassin—so good at it that it’s bone-deep, buried somewhere under amnesia and fake memories and psychoses.  Unless he managed to hitchhike his way to the Kree homeworld (and maybe even then), Wade would find him, and since Hope has managed to usurp the late Bea Arthur’s place as the most important woman in Wade’s life, what will come after Wade finds him will be very, very, very unpleasant.

“My imagination can’t even begin to fathom the horrors,” Weasel notes, a trifle hysterically.  “It kind of gives up and holds up a ‘censored for graphic violence’ card.  I wonder if he’ll pull my nails out before or after he does the thing with the grater…”

Bob doesn’t seem to be impressed.  He snorts.  “She wouldn’t have gone far.  Where did you last see her?  And there are places Mister Wilson’s not allowed to go, you know—places where whole armies show up and politely ask him to stay away.”

“Asylum, that’s it!” Weasel cries, nodding.  “I could go to Switzerland and beg for political asylum.  I’m sure Cable would honor asylum.  He wouldn’t let Wade hurt me if I went to Switzerland.”

“Is this the same Mister Cable who launched Mister Wilson out of Rumekistan for what was, for them anyway, just a little tiff?”

“Well, I mean, they’d put a twenty-four-hour watch on the borders, and if I ever dared set foot outside the country I’d be vaporized…but I could learn to like Swiss chocolate, I think.  And clocks.  I hear they do great things with clocks.”

“Maybe she went back to Mister Wilson’s apartment,” Bob suggests.

Weasel snorts.  “Doubt it.  She’s not allowed back while there could possibly be unwrapped or unhidden presents.  She promised to be good until Wade came and got her.  Apparently, being good includes being kidnapped or murdered or what-have-you, so that Wade ends up going not just medieval on me, but ancient China on me, complete with water droplets on the forehead and favorite non-essential organs removed.  I didn’t even know Wade knew what a spleen looked like until that time he started using Hayden’s organs to teach some imaginary person about human internal anatomy with song.”

And it’s true.  They all joke about Wade, they all say he has no idea how delicate and squishy ‘normal’ people are.  But Weasel has a feeling that Wade knows exactly how delicate and squishy normal people are, and probably has a mental list of internal organs sorted by how long a person can survive without each one.

The quiet panicking is starting to give way to a desperate need to curl into the tiniest ball possible and sob like a baby.

“You’re overreacting.”

“Hah!” Weasel laughs, because the idea of Bob claiming that someone else is overreacting is just plain absurd.

“Kids wander, it’s what they do.  Mister Wilson takes her all over the island, so she probably thinks of it as kind of an extended neighborhood.”

“What, she heard the ice cream man and went running?”  Weasel rolls his eyes and sulks, because sulking is better than screaming.

“Well, I don’t live on the island, and she’s never been to your apartment…  What’s left?”

“I guess…there’s Sandi’s.  Or the office.  Or half the stores on Fifth Avenue.  Or every Broadway theater.”

Bob sighs and shakes his head.  “You would be a terrible father.  When they hit the wandering stage, the first step to finding them is always the phone tree.”

“Don’t go all PTA on me, don’t you dare, Bob.”

“Shush,” Bob says, pulling out a cell phone and dialing.

Weasel is too stunned and insulted at being shushed by his sort-of-best-friend’s pet minion to do anything but gape.

“Sandi?  Yeah, it’s Bob.  Fine, how are you?  Fantastic.  Listen, have you seen Hope today?  Mm-hm.  Uh-huh.  Well, let us know if you—oh, Outlaw just walked in?  Could you ask her if—okay.  Oh, really?  Thanks a bunch.”

The phone clicks shut, and Bob has a look on his face like he’s single-handedly engineered the downfall of SHIELD.  Weasel contemplates slugging him, but Bob is built like he uses the company gym, and Weasel’s arms are built for typing and tinkering, not beating people up.

“Hope and her little stuffed friend were last spotted window-shopping in the Village.”

“How the hell did she get all the way over there?!” Weasel yelps, leaping to his feet.

“Probably took a cab, since she doesn’t have a subway card or a bus pass.  Why, how would you get to Greenwich Village?”

“Oh, god.  At least we have a shot at dying quickly now.  Maybe we can catch up to her before Wade finds out and goes postal.”

“Before I find out what and go postal?” Wade cheerfully asks, making Weasel jump.

“Jesus, you almost gave me a heart-attack!” Weasel scolds.  He looks around for Bob, sees him peeking out from under the bench (and he has to admit that it takes a lot of talent to get from sitting on a bench to being completely under it in the space of about two seconds).  Shaking his head, Weasel looks back at Wade.

Wade grins.  He’s got the projector set to the Jerry Garcia look-alike (Weasel personally thinks it looks more like the hippie love-child of Jerry Garcia and George Lucas), so it’s a particularly jolly sort of grin.  “Still awaiting explanations, Weas.”

“Uh.  Well, y’see…we kinda—”

“He!” Bob pointedly corrects from beneath the bench.

“—lost Hope.”

Wade goes on grinning for several horrible seconds.  “Lost hope?  Or lost Hope?  It’s a crucial distinction, and I couldn’t make out whether you were saying it with a capital H.”

Weasel is uncomfortably aware that he’s lousy at hiding things and worse at giving bad news.

The grin abruptly leaves Wade’s fake face.  “Are you friggin’ kidding me?!” Wade yells.  “Weas, I left you alone with her for—for, like, two hours!  What the hell kinda babysitter loses the baby in two hours or less?”

Bob’s phone rings, and he hurriedly answers it in hushed tones, still hiding under the bench.  Weasel’s half curious whether it’s Sandi calling to save his life, but he doesn’t dare take his eyes off Wade, who looks like he’s starting to hit the panic stage, himself.

“Holy fucking—Jesus—fucking—shit—fuck—goddamn—son of a—mother-fucking—cock-sucking—sheep-humping—” Wade inarticulately sputters, hands making abortive strangling motions toward Weasel’s neck.

“I hate to interrupt when you’ve got such a streak going, Mister Wilson,” Bob timidly interjects.  “Sandi says Miss Domino’s the culprit.  She swiped Hope right out from under Weasel’s nose.  They went to Greenwich Village to pick out a present for Mister Proudstar for Christmas.”

Weasel lets out the breath he’s been holding.

Wade collapses onto the bench.  “Goddammit.  Fuckin’ Neena.  I fucking swear t’ Christ, if she did this to throw the fuckin’ gauntlet down, I will fuckin’ bring that shit.  It will be on.  I have a twelve-pack of whoop-ass just waiting to be busted open, and other such weird slangy manglings of the English language.  If it’s a catfight she wants, it’s a catfight she’ll get.  I’mma bus’ a cap all up in there.  Fo’ shizzle.”

Weasel’s just glad that someone else is now the focus of Wade’s homicidal mutterings.  “So where are they now, Bob?”

“The office.  Sandi says they’re quietly taking bets on what Mister Wilson will say to Miss Domino when he gets there.”

Sighing, Wade stands back up.  “What’s the favorite so far?”

“Sandi and Mister Hayden both bet on you punching first and asking questions later.”

“And Inez?”

There was a pause while Bob asked.  “Outlaw has good money down on you dragging her into another room and quietly threatening her.”

Wade pulls his abused baseball cap out of the back pocket of his jeans and puts it on before switching off his projector (and he looks even more murderous than Weasel had suspected).  “Wouldn’t wanna disappoint the lady.”

In point of fact, the first thing Wade does upon arriving at the Agency X office is to make a beeline for Hope and hug her half to death.  Weasel doesn’t know if it’s sincere or a guilt-trip, but Wade tells the little girl that he was so scared to hear she’d gone missing that his heart stopped for almost half a minute.  She tearfully promises that she’ll never leave without telling her babysitter again, even if Neena says it’ll only take a minute and it’ll be funny to play a little trick on Weasel.

Domino herself is perched on the edge of Sandi’s desk (and Sandi doesn’t much care for Domino in the first place, but after today she’ll probably be laying down traps).  “It was just an innocent little Christmas shopping jaunt,” she says reasonably.  “I’m certainly far more capable of protecting her than Weasel is.”

Weasel doesn’t know how Wade keeps getting mixed up with all these people who do such bizarre shit and try to be reasonable about it.  No matter how calmly you explain, the fact remains that you used telekinesis to yank up giant bits of space station and make a floating island (that you, incidentally, keep hovering by will alone even in your sleep).  No matter how neatly you lay out the events, it’s still fucked up that you abducted a seven-year-old, possibly-Messianic, been-hunted-all-her-life-by-a-psycho-from-the-future-who-ended-up-nuking-the-world girl from her temporary caregiver because you thought it would be funny.

Yes, haha.  Abso-fucking-lutely hilarious.

Weasel would like very much to punch Domino in her other eye, but she’d probably just drop a banana peel and watch him slip and break his neck or something.  Her whole chaos-theory butterfly-effect creeps him out, and as aforementioned, he doesn’t have the right build for punching people like Bob, let alone trained mercenary assassins.

After two solid minutes of sappy promises, just when Weasel thinks he’s going to spontaneously develop cavities (or go into diabetic shock), Wade stands up, ushers Hope toward Bob, grabs Domino by the arm, and drags her into the next room.

“Damn,” Sandi sulks.

“Thank you, ladies ‘n gents,” Inez says smugly, and collects her winnings.

“I was hoping he’d punch her,” Hayden whines.

“So was I,” Weasel gripes.  “She could do with a good punching.  Scared at least five years off my life.”

“But now you’ve gotten the panic and planning out of the way, at least,” Bob tells him in a cheerful tone.  “Next time you lose Hope, you’ll know exactly what to do.”

“Join a Buddhist monastery?”

“Buddhist probably wouldn’t work, unless it was the ones in Tibet.  Mister Cable wouldn’t let Mister Wilson near those poor pacifists.”

“What’s a pass-a-fiss?” Hope asks.

“Pacifists are people who don’t believe in fighting,” Bob tells her.  “It’s a good thing to be, if you’re a coward.  Mister Cable had a whole island full of pacifists, once.  Mister Wilson says they had the best chimichangas in the world.”

“Wow, really?  In the whole world?”

“Possibly.  Mister Wilson likes to exaggerate, after all.”

Hope tugs at Weasel’s sleeve, and he can’t help but look down at her with a slightly apologetic expression.  “I’m sorry we scared five years off your life and made you think about running away and turning into a pacifist, even if they’ve got the best chimichangas in the world.”  And she’s doing the face, with the trembling lip and the watery eyes, so damn well that Wade must have been giving her lessons.

“Ah, it’s okay,” Weasel reluctantly says, even though it’s not really okay at all.  “Just…y’know…don’t do it again.  Wade looked like he was gonna squeeze my neck until my head popped off.”

Wade stomps back out of the other room (Hayden’s office), lifts Hope onto his hip like she weighs nothing.  “Weasel, no more watching the baby by yourself.  You suck at it.”

Domino (who followed Wade out) snickers.

Wade punches her (Hayden and Sandi cheer).  “Neena, that’s for stealing Nate’s baby.  Bob?”

Bob flinches and hides behind Outlaw’s shoulder.

“Thanks for finding her.  Good boy.  You get Scooby-snacks later.”

Weasel scowls at Bob.  Stupid pets-who-are-good-with-children…

“Hey, I’m the one who found ‘em,” Outlaw points out.  “Bob just used the phone tree.  So how about a little sugar, sugar?”  And she taps her cheek meaningfully.

“Thank you very much, Inez,” Wade dutifully says, and kisses her (she grins and smacks his ass, and Weasel wants to cry because he will never, ever have a woman that hot smack his ass like that).  “Hope?”

“Yes, Wade?” the little girl chirps.

“Our darling Priscilla is never to hear a word of this adventure.  Solemnly swear.”

She holds up her left hand.

“Right hand, scout.”

She hastily moves Dollpool to her left arm and holds up her right hand.  “I solemnly swear to never ever tell Nathan that Neena kidnapped me from Weasel to go shopping because we thought it would be funny.”

“Good.  Let’s go, it’s time for that Abby-tastic NCIS marathon.”

“Yay, Abby!”

Weasel perks up.  “Hey, can I—”

“No Weasels allowed today,” Wade snaps.  “Your apartment privileges are suspended.  Bob, heel.”  And he leaves, with Hope on his hip and Bob scampering after.

Weasel looks around the office.  Outlaw’s handing Domino an ice pack for her eye.  Hayden’s chuckling (which is pretty damn disturbing from someone his size).

Sandi pats his hand comfortingly and passes him the remote to their TV.  “We were gonna watch it, anyway.”

Slowly, Jack Hammer (known to his friends and colleagues as Weasel) sits down on creaky, uncomfortable lobby furniture and prepares to get his geek on.  The last two and a half hours of his life have been exhausting, and Pauley Perrette’s dimples are calling.

.End.

Chapter Text

Skeletons & Spiders or How to Guilt Heartless Mercenaries Into Helping for Free

Wade has no idea exactly what happened, or how they got into the situation in the first place.  He blames shitty plot devices and his once-again-unreliable memory.

He isn’t the right kind of crazy (yet) to have randomly decided Hope needed graphic real-world instruction in the subjects of internal anatomy and dissection by katana (Weasel and random bystanders are another matter, since they’re not young and impressionable).  He’s also not the right kind of crazy to have picked a fight with anyone with Hope around (Bullseye might be tempting, but so far Wade has managed to steer clear of those Dark Avenger assholes while Hope-sitting)—quite aside from Nate going postal afterward, there’s always the slim chance that Wade would be too slow at the wrong time and Hope might be hurt.

All right, if he didn’t jump some poor schmuck walking down the street and he didn’t pick a fight with a supervillain (or superhero, as the case may be)…someone jumped them?

He doesn’t go without the projector when he’s taking Hope out (just in case someone recognizes him), and he doesn’t think any of the bad guys know what she looks like (or that she’s almost eight despite being born about two years ago).

Awkwardly, he digs in a pocket for one of the hankies Nate’s been making him carry in case of smudge-faced little girls and crouches to wipe blood off Hope’s face.  “Uh…sorry about that,” he says.  “You okay?”

Her eyes are wide, and her lips are trembling, but she nods.

Yes, Hope has seen PG-13 movies (and a couple R-rated ones), and yes, she grew up in the middle of a war against cockroach-people, but she probably hasn’t seen anybody use swords before, and even people who have tend to swear off meat when they see the things Wade does with them.

Okay, and on that note—why would Wade bring his swords on one of his adventures with Hope?  He never goes unarmed, especially with the munchkin to look after, but swords are very messy and guns don’t have backswing.

“I, uh,” he begins, sheepishly.  “I don’t s’pose you know how we ended up in an alley with a buncha pureed bad guys…?”

“Outlaw told us to run,” she quavers.  “She said she’d hold them off.”

Ah, another fact to add to the list of confusing facts, then.  Inez is somewhere, beating the crap out of more bad guys.

Wade stands up, looks for a mostly-intact body, nudges it with a foot.  “A.I.M.?” he snorts incredulously.  “What the fuck?”

“Bad word,” Hope scolds.

“Hey, I don’t live with your buddies the X-Dweebs, I can cuss all I want, Tweedle-Dum.”

“You’re Tweedle-Dum.”

“Okay, Tweedle-Dee, since you’re so smart…” he goes on, digging in various Liefeldian utility pouches for something like written orders or a communicator.  “Why would A.I.M. attack us?  Last time I checked, I was actually kinda on good terms with them.  After I explained that the whole ‘savior go boom’ thing was totally the Surfer’s fault and not mine, they gave me an evil alien machine baby to fix Nate with—spare part kinda thing, except that it had its own sentience that he had to conquer ‘n stuff.”

“They said they wanted your jeans.”

He has to pause and think that over before he realizes that he can’t have heard her use the wrong homophone, and he isn’t a mind-reader (thank god), so he has no idea how he knows she misunderstood which homophone it was supposed to be.  Unfortunately, the voices in his head have been unhelpfully mum since Nate and Hope came back from the future.  “Genes,” he corrects absently.  “DNA.  Dunno why they’d want my genetic material—they know by now it won’t do ‘em any good as far as replicating cool mutations ‘n stuff.  At best, it makes hideous brain defects that could, in theory, make somebody immune to telepathy.”

“Immune to tele-stuff?” she echoes.  “So Emma couldn’t see in their heads?”

“People like Frosty the Snowbitch.”  Aha.  Communicator.  And A.I.M. still hasn’t gotten paranoid enough to lock their communicators with passwords or voiceprints or something cool and Mission Impossible-y.  Clearly, they haven’t stolen from any truly paranoid technologists in a while.  He turns it on, presses the button he knows will call back directly to the guy’s base.

~Fire Team Delta, report,~ someone says.

“Fire Team Delta can’t come to the phone right now,” Wade tells the man.  “They just can’t seem to pull themselves together.  I tellya, eff-en-gees, put ‘em under a little pressure and they just go to pieces.  Could you put Mo on the line for me?”

There’s a pause.  Then, hesitantly, ~Mo?  I’m not sure I understand.  Who is this?  What happened to Fire Team Delta?~

“You must be new,” Wade sighs.  “Just hand Modok the mic and let the big boys talk.”

Another pause.

~Ah, Deadpool,~ says Modok.

“Mo, Mo, Mo,” Wade tsks with a shake of his head.  “The quality of your field agents is really falling off.  I’ve got a pet Hydra agent who coulda kicked their tailbones up into their nostrils.  Now, why would you send a bunch of feebs like these after widdle ol’ me, especially after that nice long talk about nifty techno-things and letting me borrow your evil alien machine baby?”

~Borrow?  What a curious term.  As I recall, you never returned the phalanx embryo, so one could hardly call it ‘borrowing.’~

“Yeah, but we negotiated it out all nice ‘n neat.  And jumping me while I’m having a girls’ day out?  That’s low even for you.  I’d expect that sort of thing from the Legion of Evil, or maybe some of Spidey’s arch-nemesises—”

~Nemeses.~

“—but I’ve really come to expect a higher quality of supervillainy from you techno-dorks.  What’s the matter?  Are you bored, is that it?  Is Normie not as fun to steal from as the great Tony Stark?  I could understand that…I mean, half of Oscorp’s coolest new toys are really StarkTech with new labels, and Normie’s kept men aren’t quite as bootylicious as Captain America.  Makes the brain-deletey a little depressing.”

~Do keep talking, Deadpool, Fire Team Alpha should be within seconds of your location.~

“Really?” Wade says, curling his lip.  “That’s the best line you’ve got?  Mo, buddy, you need to start talking to people like that hottie, Diamondback.  She’s got some golden one-liners.  Listen, I was just calling to check in and remind you that my buddy Cable, the Savior, Mr. Messiah himself, likes me better in one piece and has a bunch of mean friends who don’t take kindly to villains who attack women and children.  Sooooo…y’know, gee-tee-gee, tee-tee-why-ell.”  And he tosses the communicator into the air and slices it in half as it falls.

“What are we gonna do, Wade?” Hope asks, tugging on his coat.

“I was thinking hot cocoa and a bath.”

She makes one of those worried little faces she does so well (learned the whole spectrum from Nate, probably).  “Wade, people tried to shoot you and stuff.”

“You get used to it after a while.  It’s a little-known fact that I mastered the art of patching bullet-holes in my favorite shirts.  If Nate hadn’t been a suicidal dumbass and blown up the teleporty-thingy, we could bodyslide out in a jiffy.  I guess we’ll walk home.”

“But what about Outlaw?”

Wade blinks.  “Dude.  Inez is a big girl, she can take care of herself.  As far as I can remember she’s only needed rescuing…I guess twice.  Maybe thrice—no, twice.  Thrice is a cool word, don’tcha think?  ‘Sides, she walks fast, she might even beat us there.”

“Wade!” she wails, dragging at his sleeve.  “Please pay attention!  The man said there were more bad guys coming!”

“Mo’s a big fat liar,” Wade says, as a plasma burst singes the shoulder of his coat.  “Or not.  Hold very still, princess.  Hey, has anybody noticed a distinct lack of so-called ‘street-level heroes’?  There’s all this slice ‘n dice, blood ‘n guts, and not even a whiff of a Friend of the Avengers, tee-em.  Where’s Pajama-Boy when you need him?  Out suing purse-snatchers, no doubt…”

To her credit, Hope does the smart thing—she does exactly as she’s told and stays completely motionless.  It’s a lot easier to block shots and do certain acrobatics when you know exactly where the squishy bystanders will be.

“Wade!” she squeals in alarm, and he whips around.

And things go blank again.

When Wade comes back around, the blackout is explained by a distinctive chill on his face from the mess and goop of being shot in the head from behind.  Someone kicks him unceremoniously in the ribs—he decides to find out whose foot it is before he goes to the trouble of detaching it, because there are people he’s not supposed to maim who would kick him while he’s down.

“Get up, idiot, they took Hope.”

Wade scowls and stands to retrieve his swords.  “So you show up in time to let them shoot me in the brainpan and kidnap Hope, and you’re trying to make it sound like it’s my fault you’re late?”

Tony is probably making all kinds of faces behind his dorky Saturday-morning-cartoon-villain mask.  “Yes,” he grunts.  “I followed the survivors of the team that attacked Outlaw.  Someone was dragging Hope away through the other end of the alley, and when you turned to look, one of the ones I was chasing shot you.  Really, Wilson, what kind of idiot flees into a deserted alley and takes his eyes off the kid he’s babysitting?  Nevermind, I just answered my own question.”

“The kinda idiot your girlfriend likes,” Wade retorts.

“Leave Sandi out of this.”

“Her cat likes me, too.”

“The cat is evil!”

“You just can’t appreciate good pussy.”

“You’re dating a man twice your age who has a superiority complex to rival Norman Osborn’s and kicked you out of both his floating island paradise and his freshly liberated budding democracy!”

Wade doesn’t have a good come-back for that (and the mention of said kicking-out incidents still smarts in spite of Nate’s groveling), so he decides to change the subject.  “So, A.I.M. wants my DNA ASAP plus other gratuitous acronyms and abbreviations.  Why swipe Hope, especially when they don’t know who she is?”

“You’re really that stupid.”

“You have bad breath.”

Tony heaves a sigh and pinches the bridge of his mask’s nose.  “She was with you when they found you.  You protected her from them.  Logically, it makes sense that she’d make good bait.  Now that they have her, you’ll come to them.”

“You sure find it easy to follow their train of thought, Tasky,” Wade says, shifting his grip on a katana.

Tony regards him blandly.  “Wilson, that’s because I actually think.  You fucking moron.”

“Sticks ‘n stones.  Hot blonde chick sewed my head back on.”

“That hot blonde chick is a psychopath working for a megalomaniac.”

Wade waves a finger.  “A megalomaniac who took over the world.”

“And stole a paycheck out from under you.  And ruined what little rep you had.  And had a fit of incoherent rage at you—which I’ll admit is a natural reaction to your repugnant personality.  And ordered you beheaded.”

“You’re side-tracking me, Tasky,” Wade chides.  “Back to the topic at hand…  A.I.M. has Hope.  They want my genetic material.  Retrieving Hope is probably a Trap.  This requires back-up.  And a Plan.”

Tony doesn’t appear impressed.  “I hate your Plans, they usually involve me pretending to be you, which usually involves people trying harder than reasonably necessary to kill me because you are like a goddamn cockroach from hell.  Why don’t you just call your hulking super-man and his team of goody-goodies?  I’m getting really sick of pro bono work.”

“Aw, come on, it’s Hope!” Wade whines.  “Everybody loves Hope.  She’s all bright and chipper and adorable.”

“I’m allergic to the Summers family,” Tony says flatly.  “Their incessant arrogance induces projectile vomiting.”

Wade pouts.  “Okay, I’ll grant you that Scotty McBoyScout strikes a lot of people that way…he kinda grows on ya after a while, and I’m still not sure Hope is technically a Summers, so she’s not nearly as bad.”

“I’m not helping.”

“I’ll tell Yelena that you wouldn’t.”

“Oh, no, don’t do that,” Tony yawns with exaggerated disinterest.

“I’ll tell Sandi.”

Tony focuses sharply on Wade.  “You wouldn’t.  She’d tell Cable.”

Wade grins in triumph.  “I sottly would.  Priscilla will probably hear it from somewhere anyhow.  Of course, you could just kiss me and we’ll call it even, negating all need to tell Sandi who would tell Nate and thus get us both scolded by our girlfriends…”

And oh, Tony is so predictable.  Cringe, complain, capitulate.  “Ugh.  No.  I’ll help you get the brat back.”

“What ‘ugh’?” Wade says, vaguely offended.  “My ass wins prizes and makes mercenaries and supervillainesses swoon.  Your girlfriend tapped it.”

“Sandi would never—”

“Totally did.”

“Liar.”

“How do you know?”

Again, Tony is predictable.  Shriek, sputter, sulk.  Because he doesn’t know.

Wade grins.  “You still haven’t hit a home run.”

“Whether I have or haven’t is none of your business, and I fail to see the relevance.  Quite aside, even if your ass wins prizes—which I find as doubtful as any claims you make to sanity or intelligence—that doesn’t change the fact that I will never in a million years want to kiss you.”

Unexpectedly, the casual slight hurts.

Wade should be used to remarks like that by now.  Most of the time, he is, and the words glance off to the side.  He knows he’s not what most people consider average, or even homely, let alone pretty.  Inez has some fairly warped fetishes, and Nate talks a lot about ‘compatibility of spirit’ and ‘outmoded visually-based instinctive breeding selection’ and ‘unnatural ideals of beauty.’  Hope says he’s not ugly (not that flying cockroach-people are a basis of comparison that lifts Wade’s self-esteem by very much).

But he’s had a pretty bad day, if the current situation is anything to go by.  The weather is damp and cold and lousy.  People attacked him while he was with Hope.  He had his swords for god-knows-what-reason, made kibbles ‘n bits all over poor little Hope during a blackout.  He got shot in the head (he’s really tired of that, by the way).  Hope was kidnapped.  Nate is going to yell when he finds out, and Wade will get in trouble.  And Tony (like most people on the planet) thinks he’s fugly.

He sits down in the grime and blood and slush.

Tony shifts awkwardly.  “So.  Let’s go save the kid.”

“You know what?  Fuck you,” Wade snaps.  “You may be rich and good-looking, but you have a lame codename and dress like fucking Skeletor.  I once kicked your ass while cuffed hand-and-foot.  I know more about your hot, former-exotic-dancer girlfriend than you do—and she’s not sure if she’s ready for a commitment, just so you know.  I’ve saved the world one and a half times.  I’m Hope’s favorite person.  And even if I have a face like three-day-old road kill and my brain’s broken and I forget what color my socks are until I look down, the goddamn savior of human civilization loves me and has admitted to it without threats or alcohol.  So fuck you.  Deadpool wins.”

“…are you done?  You could, by the way, look like Ryan frigging Reynolds and have Bill Gates’ bank account, and I still wouldn’t want to kiss you, because you’re obnoxious.”

Wade gets up, sheathes his swords, digs around for his phone.  He pulls Yelena up on speed-dial.

~Deadpool, what pleasant surprising.  I don’t suppose is social call?  You never take me nice places except to shoot people, I notice.~

“Those dicks at A.I.M. kidnapped an adorable little girl, and Taskmaster won’t help me rescue her.”

“What!” Tony yelps.

“She’s the sweetest little thing, too—she’s not even eight years old.  Shame on you, Tasky, for saying you won’t help me save the poor kid.  Where’s your Christmas spirit, you jerk?”

“I’m not Christian, and Christmas is still two weeks away.”

“Ooh, sorry, politically incorrect and exclusionist of me…  Ahem, where’s your seasonal excitement that obliquely leads to a guilt-induced sense of altruism, you jerk?”

“Oh, piss off, Wilson…”

.End.

Chapter Text

The Itsy-Bitsy Only Competent Person Present

Yelena tapped a gloved finger against her lip.  Tony wished she wouldn’t, because it was far more distracting than it had any right to be.  “Tell me again why it is we cannot just walk in front door and shoot everything?” she said.  “Is only A.I.M., after all.  Their combat efficacy is minimal.”  And it shouldn’t be sexy to hear the word ‘minimal’ pronounced ‘mee-nee-mull,’ but Tony was starting to think Yelena could make a lot of annoying and unlikely things sexy (he blamed her tailor; the guy must have sold his soul to be able to quilt a full leather suit and gloves to her exact measurements).

“Be-caaaaaause,” Deadpool said, “if we just went in the front door, guns blazing, there’d be splodey death, which would draw superhero attention, and then Nate would know right away.  We’re trying to keep this on the dee-ell, so I can maybe break it to him gently.  I mean, there’s gotta be a better way of saying it than, ‘By the way, Nate, I let second-rate Avenger-fodder steal the baby.’”

The blonde cocked a hip (there was a phenomenally distracting creak of kevlar-reinforced leather).  “All right.  Stealth infiltration is possible in theory…A.I.M. preventative security is lousy, but reactive lockdown could cause problem.”

“Your boss manufactures teleportation tech,” Tony pointed out.

She crossed her arms under her considerable bosom.  Things rearranged very distractingly indeed.  Surely she was doing it all on purpose.

Deadpool snorted.  “Sorry, were you talking?  Tony was too busy watching the boobage.”

Guiltily, Tony scowled at the scatterbrained merc.  “I think you’re confusing me with yourself again, you low-class shameless pervert.”

“Ha.  You’re the one who keeps reminding me that my current ‘other half’ hasn’t got boobs.  And I’ve got a sense of shame…somewhere.  Maybe Mister Binky batted it under Sandi’s fridge.”

“I thought I told you to leave Sandi out of this,” Tony growled.

“I didn’t say anything about Sandi, I only mentioned her cat and her fridge,” Deadpool snidely corrected.

“Implying that you lost your sense of shame in my girlfriend’s apartment.”

“Ahem,” Yelena cut in, before their bickering could get out of hand.  “Oscorp teleportation technology is unstable at best.  Prototype Deadpool stole was…”  She grimaced.  “…appropriated technology, not yet fully reverse-engineered.”

Of course.  Tony rolled his eyes.  Leave it to Norman Osborn to steal a bunch of brand new shit from a man twice as smart as he was.

“StarkTech, eff-tee-double-you!” Deadpool laughed.

“It’s just as fast to say ‘for the win,’” Tony pointed out.

“It’s just as fast to say ‘shut up, dick.’”

“Both of you, shut up,” said Yelena.  “At any rate, Deadpool’s plan is…lacking tactically.”

Tony scoffed.  “’Lacking tactically’ must be a Russian euphemism for ‘completely suicidal.’”

Yelena flapped a hand.  “No, that is different phrase.  Finding base, not hard.  Finding girl in base…not so hard with Deadpool’s plan.  Getting girl out without, as you say, ‘splodey death’…very much harder.”

“Don’t be a naysayer, Yelena,” Deadpool said.  “That’s Tasky’s job.  Now, what if we built this large wooden badger?”

Yelena regarded him blankly for a moment before casting Tony a questioning look.

“Bad movie reference,” he said.  “Yet another indication that this plan lacks so much, tactically.”  Deadpool’s plans were never all that great, but if he was resorting to Monty Python, they might be well and truly screwed.

“Yeah, could we maybe hurry this along, before certain people start to get irate and excessively curious?” Deadpool said, finding an intact communicator and wiping off most of the blood.

“All right, all right,” sighed Yelena.  “Hand here, I will trace.”  She attached some kind of tricorder-looking thing to the communicator and pressed some buttons.

A cell phone rang.

“Whitney Houston?” Tony said incredulously.

“Shut up, I couldn’t find the Dolly Parton version,” Deadpool muttered, answering his phone.  “Honey!  Hi!  Wow, it’s so good to hear from you; ‘speak of the devil’ and all that junk.  No, no, nothing’s wrong, why would you think something was wrong?”

Tony fought the urge to smack his own forehead.

“Oh, Hope’s just visiting the little girls’ room with Inez, that’s all.  Okay, you so totally can’t tell whether I’m lying, Mister Can’t-Read-Minds-Anymore, and it’s completely plausible.  What?  How could you think I’m killing people, of course I’m not killing people…”

“Oh, no, the killing part’s already over with,” Tony muttered.  “Hiding things is not healthy for a relationship, and you always repeat things several times when you lie to him over the phone.”

Deadpool flipped him off.  “Well, if I sound disingenuous, it’s only because I resent the implication that I would, in any way, be irresponsible with our precious little red-haired princess.  Yes, I’m sure you didn’t mean it like that, Priscilla, and you can make it up to me later with those fuzzy handcuffs.  Will you buzz off and let us enjoy our girls’ day out?  We were fixin’ to hit that cute little boutique with all the kid-sized designer shoes.  Yeah, yeah.  Love you, too.  Bubbye.”

“You are finished?” Yelena drawled as Deadpool hung up.

“Are you?” he countered.  “Suspicious boyfriends had to be redirected.  It’s apparently a school night.”

“You don’t know what day it is?” Tony yelped.  “Oh, this’ll work out great.”  He could see it now…‘Hi, Modok!  Wow, what am I doing here?  Who’s that guy with the skull for a face?  Let’s shoot him!’

Deadpool snorted and pocketed his phone.  “I happen to know it’s Wednesday.”

“The suspicious boyfriend told you?”

“Yes.  And you’re really one to talk about hiding things in a relationship—at least my sig-fig has seen my face.  Yelena, my dear, you have the base’s coordinates?”

She tossed her hair.  Tony wondered if there was such a creature as a Shampoo Fairy, and if one got her wings every time someone like Yelena did ‘the hair-flip thing.’  “You talked chicken laughter for ages.  I had coordinates of base sometime just before ‘disingenuous.’  I find it surprising for you to know such big word.”

“Chicken laughter is one of my specialties, and a lot of things about me are surprisingly big, sweetheart,” Deadpool said with a wholly inappropriate wiggle of his eyebrows.

To her credit, Yelena managed to stifle her laughter.  “Bozhe moi…  Come along, plan may actually work, knowing our luck.”

“Knowing my luck, I’ll end up bound and gagged with someone gloating,” Tony groused.

“Sounds like a good day t’me, Tasky,” Deadpool said, and smacked him on the ass.

Even for Deadpool, that was pushing it.  Tony ground his teeth together and reminded himself that Sandi scolded people who were ‘mean’ to Deadpool.  “If you ever do that again, you’ll need to grow a new hand.”

Deadpool edged toward Yelena.

“Unless you want your head beaten in with your own arm, don’t even be thinking about it,” she said flatly.  “Now, according to plan, you and Taskmaster will create distraction at front door while I infiltrate central computer to locate child.  Upon confirmation of precious cargo, I will send notification and retrieve if possible.  Remember—do not fully insert—”

Of course, Deadpool snickered.

“—unless absolutely necessary.  Deadpool, word was not that funny.  Insertion requires extraction—”

More snickers.  Tony rolled his eyes again.

“—which will almost certainly require splodey.”

Deadpool bounced and clapped like a five year-old.  “That is so cute.  Can you say that again?  C’mon…splodey!”

She shifted her weight again with another chorus of creaky leather.  Really, it was a miracle she could sneak at all.  “It will make you shut up and get moving?”

“Promise.  Scout’s honor.”

Tony sputtered.  “Scout?”

Yelena rolled her eyes.  “Splodey.  Move before I tie your arms around your neck like noose and have Taskmaster drag you.”

“Oh, baby, you say the hottest things to me,” Deadpool sighed, walking out of the alley and gesturing for Yelena to lead the way.

There was a beep from the tricorder-thing, and Yelena pressed a button.  “Hm.  We seem to be having some bad news.”

In record time, Deadpool was in front of her and shaking her back and forth by the shoulders.  “Whattaya mean, ‘bad news’?”

There was a complicated chorus of leather creaks and fleshy crackling noises, and Deadpool’s arms were tied in a (rather noose-like) knot around his neck.  Yelena primly smoothed her hair back into place.  “A.I.M. base is under attack by Hydra forces.”

“What?!” Deadpool squawked.  “Those…those…assholes!  If they put one teeny tiny scratch on my little Snickerdoodle’s head, I’ll…I’ll…”

“Call Cable and finally get us some real help?” Tony suggested without much hope.

“No!  I am not a goddamn damsel in distress, I don’t need to call my boyfriend for every little thing.”

Tony nodded slowly.  “Every little kidnapping and ransom of his potentially-messianic foster-daughter.  Right.”

“Also, I’m completely not a crybaby, no matter what you’ve read or heard, I just get these runny-eye allergies, and it’s totally okay to cry like a little girl when you’re in the middle of a mental breakdown or at the end of Haley Joel Osment movies.  Besides, Nate was jumping alien sharks in space!  That’s so more interesting and believable than me going weepy on my couch.”

Tony knew better than to ask for any kind of explanation.  Saying something incredulous like, ‘Sharks?’ would lead to something like, ‘In space!  Iknowright?!’ and some horrifically mind-numbing tall tale.  He ignored the extraneous information.  “Okay, no calling Cable, even if Hydra has done terrible things to Hope.  What will you do instead?”

Deadpool gesticulated with his hands (which were currently behind his head from the knot-tying).  “I’ll fucking well call Laura and Neena!  Let those bastards feel the wrath of two angry and hard-to-kill chicks in tight clothes!  Uh, in addition to the hard-to-kill chick in tight clothes that we already have.  Damn, that sounded more mathematically accurate inside my brain.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Tony asked.  “Keep heading for the A.I.M. base, try to interrupt the fight before Hydra can make off with Hope?”

“I kinda figured we’d start there and chicken-laugh our way through it.”

Tony blinked.  The laughing chicken thing must be a Russian joke that he didn’t get.

Deadpool went back to the mouth of the alley, disturbingly comical with his arms still knotted, and looked both ways.  “Now…which way to Mordor?”

“Left,” Yelena sighed.

“He’s gonna get us killed,” Tony muttered.

“Possibly,” the Russian agreed.

.End.

Chapter Text

Into Her Own Hands

When the men in funny yellow suits first dragged Hope out of the alley and off to their base, she had (she is sorry to say) cried a lot.  In her defense, she’d had a trying day—sneaking off with Wade so that he could show her his swords had somehow turned into Wade slicing yellow-suit-guys to ribbons because they shot at him so they could get his jeans, and Wade was forgetting a lot, and then the yellow-suit-guys grabbed her and shot him in the back of the head.

They were already halfway to the yellow-suit-guy secret base before she remembered that Wade would probably be okay, because Nathan had shot him in the head a bunch and he always got better.  After that, she managed to pull herself together and stop crying.

At the base, the yellow-suit-guys introduced her to their leader, some floating giant-head-guy who turned out to be Mo from Wade’s phone call.  He was very condescending to her, which made her very cross (she’d learned that use of the word a week ago from Emma and liked it).  Then they took her to a room (which they didn’t lock) and left her with two yellow-suit-guys (who gave her a box of grape juice and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich).

The nerve of these bad guys!  They kidnap her, talk to her like she’s five (and she’s very-nearly-eight, thankyouverymuch…), then stick her in an unlocked room with lazy guards who think she’ll just sit down and behave.  Well, Hope is not like the redhead on that Scooby cartoon that Bobby likes so much—she refuses to be kidnapped by a bunch of feebs who won’t even give her the dignity of handcuffing her.  Wade taught her three ways to break a full-grown man’s wrist (and she knows they work, because he let her practice on him) and two ways to knock a man out (she had to practice those on Weasel, because knocking Wade out is tough even for superheroes).  If they think she’s going to sit around and wait for the X-Men to come and rescue her, they’ve got another thing coming.

She’s darn well going to take matters into her own hands.

“You should let me go home,” she suggests.  “If you don’t, bad things are going to happen to you.”

Yellow-Suit-Guy Number One turns his funny helmet toward her.  “Aw, they’re so cute at that age…”

“Aren’t they?” agrees Yellow-Suit-Guy Number Two.  “My oldest just turned six, and she’s daddy’s little princess.”

Hope scowls.  “I’m very-nearly-eight, and it’s rude to talk about people like they’re not here.  There are really only two ways for this to go:  I beat you both up and leave now, or you fight back too much and we’re all still here waiting when Wade gets here.  He’ll probably rip your kidneys out through your mouth for kidnapping me.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about us, sweetie,” Number Two says.  “You just eat your snack.  We’ve got a fun surprise waiting for Deadpool.”

“I don’t think Wade will like your surprise,” she tells them.  “I’ll give you one more chance to let me go.”

Number One puts his hands on his hips.  “Now, look, honey…  We’re highly trained scientists, and we don’t appreciate having our valuable time taken up by guarding you.  If you’ll just sit there quietly and be a good little girl, this will go a lot easier for all of us.  We could probably scare up some paper and a pencil if you want to doodle.”

She thinks it through and decides that she would do very bad things to him if he gave her a pencil.  “No thank you,” she says.  “You gave me a juice box—what are you going to do when I have to go to the bathroom later?”

The yellow-suit-guys look at each other (their helmets do, anyway).  “Hm,” says Number Two.

“Hm,” agrees Number One.

“I guess we’ll escort you and stand outside the stall,” Number Two concludes.  “Why?”

Drat.  Okay, so these funny-yellow-suit scientists aren’t dumb feebs.  She really will have to beat them up to save them from Wade.  Fortunately, they’re a lot like most grown-ups—they think she’s stupid and helpless (and if they were actual supervillains, the helpless part might be right, but they’re just henching, so she’s pretty sure she can handle them).

“Just checking,” Hope replies.  “It would suck a lot more to be kidnapped and not be allowed to pee if I have to.  You’re right; I guess I’ll just have to sit here and be good.”

“Attagirl,” says Number One, patting her on the head.

Breaking his hand and kicking his leg out from under him is a lot easier than she expected it to be.  He shrieks like Bob.  She’s quick enough to grab the weird gun off his belt as he falls, and points it at Number Two.

He jumps and holds his hands up.  “Holy crap!”

“The door’s not locked, right?” she asks.

“N-n-not locked.”

“Okay.  Gimme your key card or whatever, just in case.”

“L-look, sweetie—”

She shoots Number One in the knee while he’s still writhing around (he screams and writhes some more), and quickly turns the gun back to Number Two.  “Hurry up, or I’ll shoot his other knee.”

Finally, Number Two starts fumbling around for a card on a lanyard (Rogue taught her that word) and passes it to her.

“Thank you,” Hope says politely as she takes the card and shoots Number Two in the knee.

She leaves them whining and crying on the floor as she heads out.  It’s a right turn, then straight until a T-junction, and another right…  It was Neena who taught her to always pay attention to the reverse of a route.

But now an alarm is going off, all flashy-red-lights and loud noises.  She doesn’t think it’s because of her, but it’s sure to get more people with guns to show up.

“Ess-word,” she sighs, out of habit (the self-bleeping is a habit, not the swearing).  She starts to run, making sure that her finger is outside the trigger-guard (only real losers risk tripping and blasting themselves in the face, Wade says).  Left turn.  Slide the card.  Right at the second junction.

Something explodes ahead of her.  She can feel the heat on her face, and the smoke makes her cough.  Men in green and yellow suits pour through a hole in the wall.

“Hail Hydra!” they cry.

“Oh…eff-word-ing ess-word,” Hope grumbles, and hides the gun behind her, in the waist of her pants under her coat.  Then she throws dignity to the wind and summons up her best cute-little-girl face, big green eyes and all.  “Are you here to rescue me?”

The Hydra guys look confused to see her, and go into a brief huddle.  After a while, one of them turns.  “Are your parents wealthy or politically influential?”

She thinks about that.  Nathan doesn’t really seem rich or influential, but he is famous, and he did have a whole island of his very own that was full of people…  “Maybe?” she hazards.  “If I say that Nathan Summers is my dad, will that make you rescue me?  Or will you just try to kidnap me like the yellow-suit-guys did?”

They go into another huddle.  One of them waves a hand at her.  Another one flails.  They break up.  “Come with me, little girl, and I’ll take you somewhere safe,” says the spokes-agent.

“And your friends?”

He looks at his fellow Hydra agents.  “They’ll have to continue the assault on the facility.”

“Oh,” she says.  “Okay.  Are you sure you can get me out of here all by yourself?”

He puts yellow-gloved fists on green-clad hips and laughs like a cartoon superhero.  “Ha-ha!  Of course I can, little girl!  No one can withstand the might of Hydra!”

“Hail Hydra!” his pals chorus.

“Okie-doke,” she says, and holds out her hand to him.

He takes it and leads her back through the hole in the wall.

“What’s your name, Mister?” she asks, inwardly cringing at having to be ingratiatingly cute.

“Mike,” he replies.  “Agent of Hydra.”

“Mike, Agent of Hydra,” she repeats thoughtfully.  “Do you know Bob?”

“Uh…well, I know a Bob.  Bob isn’t exactly a rare name, even in Hydra.”

“Oh.  Why are you and the green-suit-guys attacking the meanie yellow-suit-guys?”

Mike shrugs.  “The usual.  Arch-nemeses, fallings-out, revenge.  And Modok is supposed to be working on an anti-telepathy serum.”

Aha.  They want the anti-tele-thingy stuff that Mo wanted Wade’s DNA for.

“They aren’t done with it, you know,” she tells him.

He looks at her in surprise.  “How do you know that, little girl?”

Hope is getting tired of being called ‘little girl.’  “My name is Hope.”

“How do you know about the anti-telepathy serum, Hope?”

“I heard the yellow-suit-guys talking about it,” she lies easily.

“Why would they kidnap you, anyway?  If they needed a favor from the Savior, they could have asked.  He’s that sort of person, I hear.”

Hope doubts that.  For as long as she’s known him, Nathan has asked for a bunch of favors, but doesn’t really do favors.  Usually, when people ask Nathan to do things for them (aside from the usual ‘help me set the table,’ ‘take this to so-and-so,’ ‘watch the kids for a little while’ type of things that get asked within a household) he tells them that ‘it’s not his place’ (which Wade says is just a fancy way of saying ‘find somebody else’).

“Gosh, I don’t know,” she says, and reaches her free hand innocently behind her back.  “How long do you think it will take to get away?  I really have to go potty.”

“Oh, we’re almost there,” Mike assures her.  “Just this way, there’s a side door where they take out the garbage.  Then we just go through the hole we cut in the fence and cross the street.  There’s a convenience store down the block that has public restrooms.”

“Thank you,” she says, and shoots him in the knee as she did the two yellow-suit-guys.

Mike, Agent of Hydra, squawks as he goes down.  His gun is bigger, so she takes it and points them both at him.

“I’m really sorry I had to hurt you like that—you seem like a really nice person—but there’s no point in escaping when you get kidnapped if you’re just going to get kidnapped by a different bunch of bad guys.  Besides, if you’re already hurt and looking really helpless, Wade might not kill you when he gets here.  And if anybody asks, please don’t tell them I said Nathan is my dad.  He technically isn’t.  And don’t try to say that Hydra aren’t bad guys, because I know very well that it’s an organization of henchmen—sorry, henchpersons—and only bad guys have henchpersons.  When it’s good guys, they call them sidekicks.”

Mike is trying to keep his whimpering to a minimum in the face of two guns pointed his way.

“Well,” she says, glancing down the corridor.  “I have to go now.  Have a nice day, Mike.”

Hope follows Mike’s directions out the side door and across the street.  It doesn’t look familiar.  After tucking the smaller gun back into her pants, she goes down the block to the convenience store and walks up to the counter.

“Excuse me, can I use your phone?  It’s local.”  She’s not actually sure it is, since she doesn’t really know where they are, but Wade says that claiming the call’s local will make people a lot more likely to let you use their phones (without even having to resort to violence, unless you’re in the mood for it).

The clerk’s eyes take in her purple coat, her She-Hulk shirt and grass-stained jeans, her purple sneakers (Converse, because Wade insists they’re the coolest shoes ever), and finally the big gun she stole from Mike.  He doesn’t seem worried.  He probably thinks it’s a toy.  “Gonna call your parents?”

“My babysitter,” she corrects.  “I was kidnapped, and now I have to let him know that I’m not anymore.”

He shrugs and pushes a beat-up corded telephone over.  “Sure thing, kid.”

“Thank you.”  She dials Wade’s number (the only one besides the X-Mansion that she knows by heart).  He picks up on the third ring.

~Uh…hello?~

She can hear screams and gunfire in the background.  “Hi, Wade.  Everything’s under control.  Did you know that Hydra wants the anti-tele-whatsit that Mo is making?  I told Mike it wasn’t done before I shot him.  Can you come get me so we can go home?  It’s getting late, and it’s a school night.”

~That you, princess?!~

Hope rolls her eyes.  “Who else do you know got kidnapped today?  I was almost kidnapped twice, but like I said, I shot Mike before it was an actual kidnapping.  If we’re late, Nathan’s gonna be really mad—I have a test tomorrow.”

The gunfire stops.  The screams continue.  ~Uh…okay.  Where are you?~

“Are you at the base yet?”

~Not quite—place is crawling with Hydra, so we got bogged down.~

Something explodes.

Hope glances unconcernedly at the pillar of black smoke now rising from the yellow-suit-guy base.  “I’m at the convenience store about half a block away.  The one with the blue smiley on the awning.”

~Gotcha.  Be there in two shakes.~

“Bye,” she says, and hangs up the phone.

The clerk is staring out the window.

“Give it a bit before you call 911,” she suggests.  “Otherwise the Hydra guys will shoot at the firemen.”

.End.

Chapter Text

The Elephant in the Room

Hope is sipping on some strange purple-and-green icee when they arrive at the convenience store with the blue smiley on the awning.

“Here,” she says, holding out a large, semi-standard-issue Hydra beam rifle.

“I will take,” snorts Yelena, plucking it from Hope’s hand before Wade can.  “Consider it reimbursement for labor.”

“I thought we were considering the tying-my-arms-around-my-neck thing reimbursement,” Wade says.

But Yelena tosses her hair (and if Tony’s right, a shampoo fairy somewhere just got a shiny pair of wings).  “That, while fun, does not pay rent.”

Wade nods.  “Ah.  Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, after all.”

“A guy who used to go without food and furniture through sheer ineptitude has no right to sound condescending when he says that,” Tony points out, and Hope nods her agreement.

Wade sulks and mutters, “…ganging up on me…”

“Emergency response will be here in approximately two minutes,” says Yelena.  “I, for one, will be long gone.  Have nice day, Deadpool.”  And she kisses Wade’s cheek before she leaves.

“How?” Tony wonders, watching her go.  “How do you do that with all the killer-psycho-blonde-girls?”

Wade draws himself up with pride.  “Because once you go Deadpool, you never…go…”  He deflates.  “Yeah, I dunno where I was going with that, actually.  Let’s go catch us a cab.”

“Who was that lady?” Hope asks.

“A crazy Russian spy named Yelena,” Tony tells her while he dials something on a cell phone (probably calling a cab) and steps out onto the sidewalk.

Wade draws a katana and points it at the clerk behind the counter.  “You never saw us,” Wade says, doing his Clint Eastwood impression.  “We were never here.  If I get to hearin’ otherwise, you better run someplace where they live in caves and don’t speak English.”

“But you can go ahead and call the fire department,” Hope interjects.

They leave the little store just as Tony is hanging up.  “I called it a block north, should get there soon.  I’m ducking out; try not to get in any more trouble today.”  And he walks away.

“Oh!” Hope cries, reaching around to dig under her coat.  She pulls out a high-tech-lookin’ pistol, flips it around, holds it out to Wade butt-first.  “That’s the one I took off the yellow-suit-guys.  Nathan’s never said so, but I get the feeling he’d be upset if he saw me with it.  Do you know what happened to Outlaw?  Did she beat up her bad guys okay?”

“Yeah, she’s cool,” Wade says.  “Tasky reminded me about her on our way here, so I checked up and got our story straight.”

She gives a little grimace that reminds him a lot of Nate’s ‘And you really think that’s going to work?’ face.

“What?” he asks.

But she sticks her straw in her mouth and mutely shakes her head.

The first sirens are approaching as they reach the corner, but the cabbie who pulls up doesn’t seem worried.

They take the cab to Wade’s place (the painfully suburbanite X-Mobile that Nate drives is parked out front), they hike up the stairs, and Wade unlocks the door (he only locks it to keep people from stealing his stolen TV).

Nate’s in the kitchenette, sipping tea and reading some dippy socio-political treatise from the Times’ Bestseller list (Wade vastly prefers Oprah’s reading lists, which should tell you something about his opinion on bestsellers).

“Honey, we’re home,” Wade calls.

After a moment, Nate marks his place and puts down his book.  When he turns around, the look on his face is enough to make Wade feel like a little kid whose mom found the stashed fragments of a broken vase.  Maybe Nate doesn’t know…and maybe pigs can fly without the aid of jet engines or catapults.

“Uh,” Wade says uncomfortably.  “Are we that late?  I mean, I know it’s a school night…Wednesday, right?  And she has a test tomorrow.”

Nate walks over and tugs at the collar of Hope’s coat.  “This is blood.”

A chill settles in Wade’s stomach.  “Uh.”  Yeah.  Nate totally knows.  The only question is who told.  Tony could’ve blabbed to Sandi, and then everybody at the office would know.  He’ll go down the phone tree later with a gun and a pair of pliers.

“It’s not mine,” Hope dismisses, poking her straw around in the watery dregs of her icee.

“Uh,” Wade says a third time, because for once he hasn’t got a good lie (or even an outrageous one).

“I see,” Nate says.  “And what part of your ‘girls’ day out’ included swords and bloody violence?”

“Have you met Inez?” Wade scoffs half-heartedly.

But Nate is looking at Hope with his stern ‘I have no sense of humor, and you had better not lie to me’ frown.

“The part where A.I.M. kidnapped me and shot Wade and then Hydra tried to kidnap me but Wade saved the day,” Hope says with a casual shrug.

Wade saved the day.

That’s a nice lie.  He likes it.

Nate looks at Wade.  “Why would A.I.M. kidnap Hope?” he asks.  “Do they know who she is?”

“Uh?” Wade tries.  Okay, so Nate didn’t know any details.  Wade will leave out the pliers when he tracks down the snitch.

“Don’t be a dummy, Nathan,” sighs Hope.  “It’s a little bit obvious that you drive me around.  You used to be famous, you know.  Famous people’s kids get kidnapped all the time.”

Well, that’s all true, at least…but Wade still feels awful at the guilt and self-recrimination he sees on Nate’s face.  “Uh, yeah,” he says, waving a hand.  “Yeah, what’s wrong with people these days, amirite?  Kidnappin’ little famous kids ‘n stuff?  Jeez, low-brow semi-villainy, completely feeb, nowhere near as cool as trying to steal extensive DNA samples to engineer an anti-telepathy serum, and hey, wouldn’t it be kooky if they did something like that next?  Did we mention that I totally saved the day and she definitely didn’t rescue herself before I even got there?”  Oh, nervous babbling, why must you have such cruel timing…

“I’m sorry,” the big idiot says to Hope.

She makes the stubborn face she learned from him.  “You better not be sorry enough to lock me up at the mansion and never let me go shopping and stuff.  Sandi says kids should be allowed to see what the world is like, as long as somebody’s there to protect them.  That’s what Wade’s for, right?  A lot of people shot at us today, and all I got was a little bit of blood on my collar—he did a really good job.  He tried really hard.”  She makes some complicated series of eyebrow signals, but Wade’s not really fluent in Eyebrow, so he can’t eavesdrop.

Awkwardly, uncomfortably, Wade shifts his weight and wonders if there’s a graceful way to kick them out before Nate finds out the truth and starts yelling.

Nate suddenly looks so sad.  Then he draws Wade into a hug, holds him tightly for a while.  “Thank you,” he says.

Wade pouts.

Thank you?

What the hell?  What about I’m glad you’re not hurt, or You’re so awesome, or even Good job?

“Uh…” he says, because what he really wants to say includes enough expletives that it might actually upset Hope.

“Wade?  Is something wrong?”

He shrugs a little.

Nate cups his face, kisses his cheek.  “I can’t help if you won’t talk to me.  Wade, you promised.”

“Promised what?” he asks, trying to remember if he might have promised anything inconvenient.

And Nate just gives him that sad look.

“Oh!”  Wade shakes his head.  “No, no, it’s nothing like that.  I mean, my mind’s not magically all better, but the brain-malfunction-thing isn’t what’s bothering me.”

“Something is bothering you.”

Wade sighs thickly.  “Did I say that?  I so didn’t say that.  Nothing’s bothering me, especially not a desire for praise instead of schmoop.  Take Hope home so she can eat her carbs and rest up for her test tomorrow.”

From the long look he gives, Nate may have gotten a clue.  “Well, Hope got kidnapped and rescued, and there was no big news report about city blocks being levelled or civilians being mown down, so…good work, mister superhero.”  He grins.

Superhero.  Wade likes the sound of that.  “So.  You ready to admit that I’m the best babysitter ever?”

“…let’s start by admitting that you’re the best Wade Wilson ever.  The deathmatch for best babysitter can continue after Sandi’s next turn.”

“Curses,” Wade mutters.  “I knew the hot chocolate and the adherence to bedtime would win her some points…”

.End.

Chapter Text

Frozen Effigies

Bob and the girls aren’t the only ones allowed to help Wade babysit Hope.

The list is short and a little incongruous, mostly because Wade and Nate don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on the matter of ‘appropriate babysitters’…but it does go beyond just ‘Inez, Sandi, Irene, Bob.’  Most of the X-Brats were shot down for ‘lacking responsibility’ (shame, too, because Julian is almost as likely to go on prank sprees as Wade is).  Most of the X-Men (and X-Women, and X-Force) were shot down for ‘lacking anything like a sense of humor.’

And, occasionally, Hope voices a desire to hang out with somebody different (which will sometimes veto the requirement for a sense of humor).

So today they have Laura with them.

Wade was skeptical, when Nate first dropped the girls off, but Hope insisted that Laura needed more ‘fun-time’ in her life (and Wade definitely couldn’t argue with that), and Hope seems to really like Laura for some reason (apparently she was with Logan’s ‘grr-argh, we’re so tough’ group who went to the future to save her).

“We’re making a snowman today,” Wade says.  “You cool with that?  Not a very Wolverine thing to do.”

Laura just raises an eyebrow at him.  “I’m not Logan,” she replies.

“No, no, I get that.  Hotter, younger, less furry.  Maybe one or two fewer anger issues, but only one or two.”

“And that’s why she needs fun!” Hope insists.  “Now hurry up and get your coat ‘n stuff.”

He snorts, but ushers them away from the closed door so that he can consult the sticky notes Sandi so thoughtfully made him.

Water off?  He doesn’t hear any.

Stove off?  He goes to the kitchen—yep, stove’s off.

Lights and TV off?  TV’s off.  Bedroom and bathroom are dark; he’ll turn off the living room light when they leave.

Lock door!  And he’ll do that when he leaves, too.

“Those are great!” says Hope.  “It’s Sandi’s writing, right?”

He nods while he tugs on his coat.  “There’s a bunch more, all over.  In case I come around and I’m lost or something.  ‘Cause I didn’t always live here.  I used to live in a house with Weasel and Blind Al.  And then I didn’t.  And then I sort of did again.”

“Tell the story later—we have to make snowmen while there’s still pretty snow at the park.”

Out the door, lights off, lock up.  “Who shall I be today, princess?”

Hope bounces.  “Ooh, ooh, do the one with the messy hair who looks like he might be Bob’s bum brother!”

“Bob’s bum brother it is,” he says, dialing the image inducer.  “Let’s hit the road, ladies.”

“Are we walking?” Laura asks.

“Less likely to get pickpocketed than on a bus or subway car, and you miss a lot of fun stuff by driving.”

“Like sidewalk muggings?”

“We’ve only been mugged twice,” Hope informs her.  “I think the word got out.”

“You were mugged twice?” Laura exclaims.

Wade waves a hand.  “We were accosted by two different muggers.  One of ‘em even walks okay, but he probably can’t have kids, if you take my meaning.  Inez can be pretty mean when she’s grumpy.”

Hope giggles.  “That was a fun day.”

Laura stares.  “Fun.  It was fun being mugged.”

Wade grins and nudges her with his elbow.  “Lighten up, Greenie.”

She stops walking.

Hope and Wade stop, too, and turn to look at her.

“What’s wrong, Laura?” Hope asks.

She’s got a look on her face like she’s just seen a ghost.  “What did you call me?”

Wade shifts feet awkwardly.  “Uh.  Greenie?  ‘Cause…y’know, Logan’s got blue eyes ‘n you got green ones.  Don’t like?  I’ll find somethin’ else to call ya.”

“No, it’s…”  She shakes her head, and she’s back to her composed (if slightly grumpy-looking) self.  “It’s fine.”

They pass the rest of the walk chatting about school.  Hope thinks most classic literature is boring, compared to their adventures and the stories Wade tells, but math is turning out to be fun and easy (she aced her test on Thursday morning).  History is pretty much literature, but with cool maps to look at, and science at her age is mostly about Bill-Nye-style demonstrations (they just got done learning about precipitation and the water cycle, so now she knows why snow falls from the sky).

“So what did you do while I was gone?” Hope asks, while they wait for a crosswalk signal a few blocks from the park.

He shrugs.  “The usual.  Got lost a bit.  Offed some guy in Newark who did bad things to his kids.  Enjoyed stabbing him in the face.”

She looks up at him with wide, curious eyes.  “Bad things?  Did he hurt them?”

“Yes.  And now he’s not going to hurt anybody ever again.”

Laura snorts.  “I wish my job were that simple.”

That irks Wade.  “Shut up already.  You’re a goddamn superhero—at least when you save the world, people don’t try to hunt you down with torches and pitchforks.  So I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear it.”

“I’m not a hero,” she snaps back.  “And people don’t seem to appreciate the things I do to help, either.  I get a lot of complaints when I kill people who probably deserve it.”

“Please, don’t fight,” Hope begs, practically dragging them across the street.  “It’s almost Christmas, after all, and you’re not supposed to be mean around Christmas.”

Wade waves a hand.  “That’s because people don’t give good presents if you’re mean to them.”

Hope ignores him.  “Have you ever made a snowman, Laura?”

The older girl shakes her head.  “No, but I’ve seen it done.  I understand making snowmen began as a tradition in creating effigies to distract evil spirits from real children, so that the children wouldn’t get sick or be lost in blizzards.”

“What’s an eff-uh-gee?”

“It’s a model of a person, usually made out of things like sticks or straw.  They’re used in ceremonies and religions.  It’s meant to be a symbolic substitute for a real person.”

“Congratulations, Encyclopedia-Girl,” snorts Wade.

“I think it’s very interesting,” Hope declares.

“You’ve clearly been spending way too much time around Nate.”

“I don’t think being interested in things is contagious.”

He flaps a hand.  “Sure it is.  Like knowledge, or gossip.”

“Then how come you aren’t interested in more stuff?” she counters slyly.  “After all, you’ve been around Nathan almost as long as I have.”

“But I don’t live with the big mook.”

“You should.  He’s almost bearable since we came back from the future and he could see you again.  He’s a lot less ‘grr, I know everything, so do what I say’ these days.  I think you’d really like living with us, even if Scott and Mister Logan are always grumpy.  The TV’s really big.”

He eyes her, trying to judge how much she means it—whether finding a way to move in would really be that important to her.  He can’t tell.  “I just got my room the way I like it,” he dismisses.

She looks up and makes Nate’s ‘I’m so not impressed’ face.  “Let’s go make our snowman over by the ducks.”

They go to the partly-frozen pond just south of the ramble, pick a spot that doesn’t have too many snowball wars going on nearby (or too many over-excited little winter birds being fed by devoted birders).  Hope bends down to test the snow by packing a bunch between her mittened hands.

“Good?” she asks, holding up the resulting snowball.

Not too thin, not too powdery.  He nods.  “Perfect.”

“Yay!”

“You take heads, I’ll take tails.  We can meet in the middle.”

She giggles and starts to make her snowball bigger.

Laura watches closely before crouching to mimic Hope.

He laughs at her.  “It’s snowman-building, not rocket science.  Chill, Greenie, there’s not really a wrong way to make a snowman.”

Scowling, Laura packs the snow together with renewed vigor.

In short order, they have three big, mismatched balls of snow in a little clearing of frozen grass.  Stacking them gets interesting, because Laura’s exuberance has led to something lumpy and less-than-ideal for balancing in the middle of a snowman.

He waves toward the bare oaks and maples nearby.  “Okay, you girls are on limb duty; I’m sure I can find something for his face.”

“C’mon, Laura!” Hope cries, and drags the older girl off.

While they’re off getting twigs, Wade muses on his options.  Duck eggs make good snowman-eyes, but Hope would probably have something to say about stealing some poor mama-duck’s unborn babies.  Next best thing is pine cones.  A quick jog north-ish takes him to the pines, and he starts poking around the branches and the ground for good-looking cones.

He’s just found two fairly round pine cones for eyes and a longer one to turn into a mouth (and he has a fleeting snicker over the idea of pulling a Groundhog Day on the snowman, but he knows Hope would shriek and be scandalized) when a flash of bluish light catches his eye.

When he turns, he sees something plop into the snow about six feet away.

Well, when glowy things appear out of nowhere, Wade’s ‘cool stuff’ alarm goes off…so, naturally, he goes to have a look.

It glitters in the sun…round and shiny, like a snowglobe.

Wade frowns and picks the thing up, dusting it off on his jacket.  It isn’t a snowglobe at all, but a glass sphere—solid, by the feel of it.  He lifts it to the light to inspect it, turns it just a little and the pale winter sunlight splinters into a glowing white grid.  “What the hell?”

“The timeline resonance extrapolator,” Laura exclaims, suddenly beside him.

He glares at her.  “Number one, sneaking up on me is bad for your health.  Number two, the what now?”

“The crystal ball,” says Hope, peering around his elbow.

“Oh, so you both know what this empty snowglobe is?  Would someone care to enlighten me?”

“You—another you, in one of the futures we went to—said it could tell the future, and that’s how he knew things.  It knew I’d be safer in Stryfe’s fortress than with Nathan and the others.”

Laura looks at Hope sharply, as if having some suspicion confirmed.  “It was able to trace varying alternate timelines,” she adds.  “He called it his ‘magic eight-ball.’  It told Domino that it was a very sophisticated probability calculator.”

Wade gives her a look.  “‘It told her’ as in ‘it can talk’?”

She nods.  “At least, it did when he asked it questions.  Try something.  Ask it what timeline we’re in.”

He raises his eyebrows.  “Greenie, you are a surprisingly curious little kitty.  Okay, uh…”  He holds the thing next to his face like a walkie-talkie.  “What timeline are we in right now?”

They wait.

Nothing happens.

Laura sighs.  “He was always fidgeting with it…maybe there’s some kind of ‘on’ switch.”

He tosses it idly from hand to hand.  “For now, I think we should keep this thing a secret—taking home stuff that slides its way into this dimension is pretty high on the list of ‘weird shit that we will never tell Nate.’  Pinky swear?”

Hope quickly holds up her right pinky and links it with his.  “Pinky swear.  Laura, you have to promise, too.”

“I don’t see why we sh—”  But she stops herself, shakes her head, links her pinky with Hope’s.  “Okay, I promise I won’t tell anyone we found it.  But what are you going to do with it?”

He shrugs.  “I was thinkin’ I might take it to Weasel and threaten him into solemn secrecy.  If it’s really some kind of computer-thingy, he’ll probably be able to figure it out…or, if nothing else, Google it.  Gotta be on Google, right?  Or Wikipedia.  Everything’s on Wikipedia.”

“My fingers are freezing off,” Hope announces.  “Let’s finish the snowman and go get some cocoa.”

Their faceless snowman has arms now, but Wade hears his phone ringing as he goes to add eyes, so he passes the pine cones to Hope and digs in his pocket.  Half a chorus of ‘Single Ladies’ and several wads of pocket lint later, he flips it open and answers.  “Hey, Sandi.”

~“Sorry to interrupt snowman-day, but I thought you might like to know that Outlaw dropped Dollpool off at the office after the, uh…‘incident’ with A.I.M. on Wednesday.  You guys could swing by when you’re done at the park; we’ve got cocoa and marshmallows.”~

“You’re a queen, Sandi.  I will find some awesome way to make it up to you gals.”

~“Darn right, you will.”~

He flips the phone closed.  “Let’s wrap this up, ladies; we have a date for cocoa and marshmallows at the office.  And a certain handsome stuffed buddy has been waiting for you, Hope.”

“Sandi’s the best!” Hope cries.

“I thought I was the best,” he pouts.

She makes Nate’s ‘oh, please’ face.  “Let’s be honest, Wade—you kind of abandoned Outlaw and Dollpool in the heat of battle.”

“Sandi would totally have done the same thing!”

.End.

Chapter Text

Mature

On the twenty-fourth, Wade uses an excuse of last-minute Christmas shopping to sneak off to Weasel’s place before the day can be consumed by Christmas parties.

Nate bitched and griped for about an hour (and Wade had to listen to a long rant about the virtues of a reverse Christmas list), but finally agreed to stay at the apartment and endure morning cartoons with Hope.

Wade was careful to very thoroughly and colorfully threaten Weasel (wouldn’t do to have him tell his silly geek friends he found some nifty future-telling-thing and end up with a bunch of money-grubbers knocking down the door to sell it to some crazy evildoer).

“So?” Wade prompts.

Weasel adjusts a laser-pointy-thingy and types something.  “It’s really advanced.”

“It’s from the future,” Wade reminds him.  “What does it do?  I mean, Hope ‘n Laura said it could trace timelines.  Is that right?”

“Uh…let’s see…”  Weasel wiggles a hand.  “Well, it works on some kind of photonic vibration tech.  Looks like it uses that to do cascading probability calculations.  Maybe.  I’m not a hundred percent on that.  I can’t wake it up from its suspend mode…y’know, can’t hack the screensaver password.”

“You?  Can’t hack the password?”

Weasel scowls.  “It’s not as easy as it sounds!  There’s some kind of five-by-twelve command grid, and depending on what you press, it unlocks some weird shifting symbol lock all over the damn thing.  I’ve identified thirty-seven individual symbols so far, and I got no clue what they mean.  For all I know, the password is the name of somebody’s first pet.  I dunno, Wade, maybe if I had a week or so to work on it…”

“And it may or may not do awesome see-the-future cascading probability calculation?”

After a moment more of fiddling and typing, Weasel shrugs.  “Look, I don’t even know for sure what the thing is made of, let alone what it does.  It could be frigging Skynet for all I know.”

Sighing, Wade snatches the little crystal ball out from under the scopes and shoves it in his pocket.  “Fine.  Thanks for nothin’.  I gotta go find something for Laura for X-mas in time to wrap it before dinner.  I got some parties to crash tonight.”

Weasel reaches for an energy drink, shakes the can a little to see how much is left, checks a different one and takes a drink.  “Well, don’t forget to crash the agency party—the girls will throw a fit if they don’t get to see Hope.”

“Yeah, yeah,” mutters Wade, abandoning Weasel’s secret lab (not so secret, but it totally feels like it should have a hangar door that opens in the side of a mountain).

He has no idea what to get Laura (aside from something that won’t get him disemboweled).  This is why he hates fanfics set at Christmas.  They have a tendency to dissolve into an exhaustive and tedious parade of presents that demonstrate each character’s ‘hidden inner emotions’ according to the wishful fangirl imaginings of the author.

To spite said author, Wade decides to get Laura the first nonsensical impulse item that calls out to him at the nearest convenience store—turns out to be a Hello Kitty keychain that lights up.

He goes home, ignores Nate’s thinly-veiled complaints while Hope cackles over a rerun of last year’s Christmas episode of South Park.  Nate has left the wrapping stuff on the kitchen counter; Wade relocates to the floor so that he doesn’t have to stand up to work.  Poor little light-up Hello Kitty ends up wrapped in neon green paper with slightly intoxicated red-nosed reindeer all over it.  With judicious use of tape, he sticks a green bow on top.  Wade is just about to call it good and chuck it in the bag with the rest of the X-Force presents when Nate clears his throat from the couch.

“Put a tag on that,” Nate says.

Wade pulls a face.  “Why?  I know who it’s for.”

“Have you read the sticky notes on the wrapping supplies?”

He hasn’t, of course (that he can remember), and Nate knows that.  Irritated, Wade grabs the package of gift tags and reads whatever words of wisdom Sandi has left him.

Just because you know who it’s for now doesn’t mean you’ll remember later.

So, pouting because he hates it when Nate’s right (and agreeing with Sandi is usually ‘right’ by default), Wade grabs a pen out of the pile of wrapping supplies and scribbles Greenie beside the word ‘To:’ and dp beside ‘From:’.

“Are you excited about the parties?” Hope asks, coming to survey his handiwork between shows.

Wade looks at her.  “I guess.  Last year, Bob’s marriage was just getting back outta the crapper, so The Nagging Bitch sent him with an awesome honey-smoked ham.  Hayden ate most of it, but he let everybody try a slice first.”

“That isn’t a very nice thing to call someone, you know.  Allison isn’t all bad—she just kind of wishes Bob was more…well, more.  But he’s just Bob.  She’s getting used to it, I think.”

“How about you, munchkin?” Wade asks, tucking Laura’s present into the bag.  “You haven’t met Nate’s old crew of fun-folks-I’ve-tried-to-kill-three-or-four-times.  We’re buddies now, but when I first met Nate’s grumpy wannabe-heroes…”  He laughs at the memory.

Hope bounces.  “What?  What?”

“He was hired to kill me,” Nate calls from the couch.  “So we sent him back to his employer in boxes.  Several.”

“They sprang for FedEx,” Wade finishes with a nod.

Hope’s eyes widen.  “Wow, they’re cool enough to take you out, Wade?”

“I was sent in with inferior intelligence,” Wade corrects defensively.  “Tolliver neglected to mention some of the nasty tricks the brats could pull, and he definitely neglected to mention the fact that Nate was all big ‘n tall ‘n sexy ‘n badass.”

“I’m not sure I care for the use of past tense there,” Nate grumbles.  “Hope, the next one’s on.”

“In a minute,” she dismisses, helping Wade pack up the wrapping supplies.  “So who else will be there, besides Neena and Laura and Warren and Josh and Jimmy and Mister Logan?”

“Let’s see…the annoying hick kid, the grumpy Mexican guy and his super-grumpy space-ninja boyfriend, the loony blonde chick, radiation-boy…Terry—you’ll like Terry, she’s nice…”

“Oh, for the Mother’s sake,” Nate sighs, taking the rolls of colored paper before Hope can drop them.  “Don’t listen to him, they’ll all introduce themselves properly.  I’m going to assume by ‘radiation-boy’ he meant Roberto.”

Hope blinks.  “Mister DaCosta’s going to be there, too?  Wow, your team sure had a lot of old people, Nathan.”

Wade can’t help laughing his ass off.

“Roberto is not ‘old,’ honey,” Nate tells her.

“He is compared to me,” she retorts primly.  “Laura and Julian and the others are just now grown-ups, so they’re not old, but it really seems like everyone else you know is.”

“Psst, except for Logan and the Professor, they’re all wayyyy younger than Nate,” Wade confided in a stage-whisper.

“Wow, really?  Does it hurt your feelings to get called ‘old,’ Nathan?  We can stop talking about it if you want.”

Nate’s just making grumpy faces while he shoves paper and bows and tags onto the top shelf of the hall closet, so Wade sneaks up and grabs his ass.

“Nate’s not ‘old,’ he’s ‘mature,’” Wade says with a cheerful squeeze.

“Like cheddar?” Hope asks.

“Well, I was going for wine…little bit more romantic.”

“What about tea?  Tea’s better when it’s old.”

“Mature, princess, mature.”

“Right.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Promises

Wade ignores the vaguely hostile looks aimed his way—two seconds later, everyone’s distracted by Nate and Hope coming through the door.

“I come bearing presents,” Wade says brightly.

Neena shows him to a corner of the half-furnished living room.  “I know, I know, they’re supposed to go under the tree,” she sighs, waving to a table full of gifts.  “Boom-Boom really let me hear about it.  But I figure most of us are too old to be hunkering down and digging around on the floor.”

“I like the decorations,” Wade says as they unload the bag of presents.

“You like my plastic pre-lit tree and my completely unsentimental mass-produced plastic ornaments?” Neena snorts.

He bumps her with his hip.  “Hey, the fact that you’re not satisfied with it says something about you.  And at least you tried.  I’m pretty sure half the guys here have nothing up at their places.”

She eyes Laura’s present, arching an eyebrow at the bizarre reindeer and their Katamari color palette.  “And what about you guys?”

“You kidding?  It’s baby’s first Christmas, we have a live tree with about twenty pounds of tinsel on it.”

Neena laughs.  “I can imagine her with a package of tinsel; must’ve made her day.  Wade, my present is rectangular…I hope you didn’t get me anything that goes boom.”

“What do you take me for?” he gasps with feigned offense.  “Please tell me you have alcohol.”

“What do you take me for?  We’ve got a couple gallons of nog.”

Wade gives a mental cheer.  He knows he can’t keep his mouth shut long enough to avoid gruesome dismemberment unless he’s got alcohol.

“It’s the only way to keep Laura and Logan sociable for more than about ten minutes at a time,” she adds.

So he follows her to the kitchen (it’s nicer than his, he notes with envy), where she pours him a big mug of ‘eggnog’ that makes his nose sting when he sniffs it.  “Awesome!  You have officially saved the day, Neena.”

“Well,” she says, a little awkwardly.  She shrugs and looks out at the rest of the gang busily shaking Nate’s hand and introducing themselves to Hope.  “You and I don’t often see eye-to-eye, Wade.  But you’ve always done right by Hope, and you’ve certainly done right by Nathan more than I have.  Sometimes you deserve to have your day saved.”

“Golly,” Wade says, because he doesn’t really know what to say.

Neena makes for the door.  “Drink yourself a few mugs of that stuff; we’ll start the presents as soon as I can get everyone to stop treating Hope like someone’s new puppy.”

Wade snorts into his mug.

Neena rolls her eyes and grins.  “Seriously.  ‘Oh, she’s so cute, where did you get her?’”

“Alaska,” Wade replies cheekily.  “Nate brought her home, and you know me—I’m a sucker for the big innocent eyes, and she’s better house-trained than I am.”

Slowly, Neena takes several steps back into the kitchen.  “Hey, Wade…you know when Nathan was gone for so long that we all thought he was probably dead?”

He gulps the rest of his mug of eggnog and refills it.  “As a matter of fact, Neena, I know exactly when Nate was gone for so long that everybody but me ‘n Daddykins thought he was dead.”

“…okay, I want a picture of the look on Cyclops’ face if he ever hears you call him that,” Neena snickers.  But her mirth fades quickly.  “I know why he didn’t believe it—he didn’t want to believe it.  It’s a parent thing, and probably a Summers thing.  But you didn’t just believe—you knew Nathan wasn’t dead.  Any time someone mentioned it, tried to convince you, you acted like they were lying to be mean, like kids on a playground.  How did you know?”

The question is unexpected and a little disorienting.  The almost-two-year stretch between Nate hopping off to the future and Nate unceremoniously knocking on the door is an unpleasant blur of fits-and-starts in Wade’s faulty memory…an endless parade of pitying glances and ‘it’s time to let go’s.  He shifts his feet a little, fidgets with his mug (an X-Force mug, chipped on the bottom), shrugs.  “He promised.”

Neena stares at him like she doesn’t quite understand what he’s said.

“Nate promised it wasn’t goodbye.  It’d be a while…but we’d meet back up.  So.  Y’know.  Obviously that meant he was gonna be back eventually.  Just because it took him a little longer to get things taken care of, and he didn’t manage to get back to the right time…”  He shrugs again.  “Sometimes, I got this feeling like he meant that I wouldn’t see him again until like a thousand years from now…but a thousand years isn’t forever.”

Neena shakes her head and makes an apologetic face.  “Nathan isn’t very good at keeping promises.”

“Weren’t you the one who told Hope that he doesn’t make me any promises he can’t keep?”

She blushes, ruffling her hair.  “That’s not actually what I said.  I said he can’t break any promises to you because he never makes you any.”

Okay, so that’s not quite as nice a thing to say.  But it doesn’t change what happened.  “Yeah, well, he promised—he said, ‘I promise this isn’t goodbye.’  And a couple years later, he knocked on my door with a princess on his hip.  A big promise like that…he would’ve found a way to not break it.”

Neena suddenly shakes her head.  “I’d better get out there, or they’ll never stop fawning over her.”

“Neena.”

She hesitates.  Maybe she knows what he’s going to ask and is dreading it.

“You really think he didn’t mean to come back?”

“I think he meant to try to come back,” she waffles.  “The important thing is that he’s here now.  And Hope’s here, and she loves you to bits.”

For several seconds, Wade just drums out a rhythm against the mug of eggnog.  “Every once in a while, you are a very cool person, Neena.”

And then she waves her hand at him and rolls her eyes again and mutters something.  And she leaves him there in her sparse, just-moved-in-clean kitchen, drinking spiked eggnog and trying not to think about all the promises no one makes him.

.End.

Chapter Text

Mistletoe

They overslept on Christmas.

Nathan feels he can be excused a little oversleeping, after the way they spent Christmas Eve…

Nathan prefers to have gifts picked out, purchased, and wrapped long in advance, especially for manic seasons like Christmas.  For Hope’s sake, he was lenient and allowed until Thanksgiving for Christmas lists to be finalized (he got two wish lists, both in crayon, one with considerably better handwriting but slightly worse spelling than the other).

Reverse Christmas lists, however, did not seem to have occurred to Wade, and the three days leading up to Christmas were spent buying and wrapping presents for Agency X and parts of X-Force (because Wade said he only cared to give presents to Dom and Terry, even though Hope insisted on presents for Laura, Logan, and Jimmy, too).

On top of that, Nathan had been invited to at least seven Christmas parties, one of which he couldn’t turn down and another of which he wouldn’t, and Hope insisted that Wade tag along all through Christmas Eve and Christmas.  So they somehow jammed three Christmas parties into one night.

They had a leisurely dinner, at least—some nice little Italian place in Brooklyn, where Wade ordered ‘pasketti’ in spite of Hope’s giggling admonitions that the word is pronounced ‘spaghetti.’

The first party of the night was X-Force, hosted at Dom’s new place.  Aside from casualties, they were nearly all there—everyone whose name had at some point appeared on the X-Force roster.  Dom, Terry, Laura, and Logan were the only ones who didn’t look surprised to see Wade.

A lot of time was devoted to exclaiming over Hope (and the associated flurry of hugs and ‘how are you’s and ‘Merry Christmas’es).  There were a lot of introductions, because everyone wanted to meet The Child, the reason Nathan had vanished for the better part of two years.

Wade disappeared somewhere along the line, and was only finally located long after Dom opened the present he got her (a small photo album she immediately hid, which makes Nathan wonder what was in it).  By that point, Wade had a suspicious mug of eggnog (Tabby, Laura, and Logan all had similarly suspicious mugs) that he nearly spilled when Dom hugged him and thanked him for the gift.

The end result of the party at Dom’s place was that Tabby was a bit drunk, Laura had some strange light-up keychain she wouldn’t stop grinning over, and Hope had pronounced Shatterstar ‘almost as cool as Wade.’

The second party was the SHIELD Christmas Charity Ball, and the only person there who didn’t look surprised to see Wade was Nick Fury.  Almost everyone else looked faintly disgusted, but Wade ignored them with practiced ease and flirted with some pretty cover models before Irene could appear and drag him away.

Some very formal greetings were exchanged with various ‘high muckedy-mucks,’ as Wade would call them.  Pepper Hogan managed to divert any reporters who tried to get too close to Hope (by steering them toward Tony Stark).  Much to Nathan’s surprise, Steve Rogers was there (the ‘alive’ part was what was so surprising…clearly something else he’d missed while he was gone) and shook his hand heartily—and Hope was treated to the unparalleled privilege of dancing with Captain America by perching on the toes of his shoes (the photographers probably sprained things trying to whip their cameras out at record speeds).  That time, Wade reappeared in a minor uproar as Jennifer Walters punched him hard enough to turn his head rather farther than it ought to go, and Nathan had to sit him down while Hope helped him get his head straightened back out (and Hope kept excitedly reminding Wade that he just got his neck broken by She-Hulk, and she’s famous).  When they finally escaped, it was nearly eleven; fortunately, Sandi had said Agency X tended not to start until about midnight.

Sandi and Outlaw cheered when they opened the door to the mercenary office.  They put a kiss on each of Wade’s cheeks and dragged him toward the tree and the buffet (where Weasel was calmly swatting Alex’s hands away from the food).  Bob waved (he was wearing his Hydra uniform plus goofy stuffed reindeer antlers and a bad sweater).  Taskmaster was petting (read:  trying not to be flayed alive by) Sandi’s cat (who was also wearing antlers).

Hope wasted no time in informing everyone that Wade got slugged by She-Hulk, and he shifted the attention back to her by tattling that she danced with Captain America and would probably be on twice as many front pages by morning.

They ate food.  They drank suspicious punch (and Nathan was all the more suspicious of it when Sandi gently took Hope’s cup away and filled it with soda instead).  They opened presents.  They told stories.  They made a toast to Wade and Alex.  They sang carols (slightly out of tune).  Sometime just before three, when Hope was very droopy, Nathan convinced Wade that it was time to head home.

So they set off with goodbye kisses from the girls, wishes of ‘happy holidays’ from Bob and Weasel, a half-hearted wave from Taskmaster, and a stern reminder from Alex that Wade should ‘hurry up and get back to pulling his own goddamn weight around here.’

It was half past when Hope and her plush companion were tucked into the air mattress Wade had bought sometime after Thanksgiving.  After that, Nathan got to play Santa.  It took him forty minutes to make sure all presents were set out under the tree properly and stockings were sufficiently stuffed (including a little one for Dollpool, because Hope insisted).  Then he spent five minutes fighting Wade off and ten minutes giving in and tiring him out as quietly as possible, and then, finally, they put on pajamas and went to sleep.

Even the former master of Providence and liberator of Rumekistan had a tendency to oversleep when exhausted and kept awake until after four.

Wade, on the other hand, never overslept on a day he was sure to get presents—a testament to how much he’d worn himself out that week (between shopping, a minor contract-theft, and the three parties).

Hope, in the fine tradition of young children everywhere, was wide awake by seven.  It was eight-thirty before she got tired of waiting for them to wake up.

“Nathan.  Nathan.  Wake up, already.  It’s Christmas.  Come on, I never had a Christmas before.”

“Mm-hm, jussa secon’,” he mumbled, rolling over and tugging Wade closer.

“Muh,” Wade complained at being stirred from his pillow.

They were left alone long enough for Nathan to drift back off.

And then the bed started to bounce.  “Come on, come on!” Hope cried.  “Come on, you guys, it’s Christmas!  I wanna open presents!”

“Prezzens?” Wade chirped, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Yes, presents!” she repeated, still jumping.  “We have to open them soon, so we can get dressed and drive back home in time for lunch and the party and everything!  Emma will make that face if we’re late for lunch, and Mister Logan will say ‘that’s what you get for inviting Wade,’ and then Terry ‘n I’ll have to make faces at him and think bad words loudly in our heads.”

But Nathan was still pleasantly drowsy, and didn’t particularly want to get out of bed.

“Le’sgo,” Wade slurred, patting Nathan’s shoulder.  “C’mon, there’s prezzens.”

“I know, I wrapped most of them,” Nathan muttered, trying in vain to hold on to his human space-heater.

Somewhat clumsily, Wade slipped free and landed half-off the bed.  “C’mon, Nate, ‘s Hope’s first Christmas.”

It took five more minutes for mercenary and seven-year-old to drag Nathan out of bed and into the living room.

Hope made coffee and cocoa, because Nathan said he wouldn’t open a single present until he’d had enough caffeine to unstick his eyes.  So they sat around sipping their respective steaming beverages, grown-ups on the couch (Wade in flannel pants and a Deadpool tee, Nathan in frumpy Xavier Institute sweats) while Hope (in very girly purple-and-green She-Hulk pajamas) sat next to the presents and examined their tags.

Wade dug up a polaroid camera from somewhere—good thing, because even with coffee, Nathan wasn’t really very awake for the presents.  There was a lot of excited bouncing from Hope, a lot of carefully edited exclamations from Wade, and a lot of hugs and kisses from both.  For his part, Nathan sleepily managed to process each of his own presents and thank each gift-giver in turn.

Proper consciousness set in around nine-thirty, when Wade and Hope were playing with their new toys while Nathan was supposed to be watching the parade with Dollpool.  He parted them from their loot, shuffled them off to a hot bubble bath (Hope had immediately fallen in love with bubble baths when they got back from the future) while he dug around for something Wade could wear to the party without causing undue grumbling from either the X-Men or Wade.

Toys and wrapped presents were packed up, children overgrown and otherwise were dried off and dressed, and they were all buckled into the car in time to prevent tardiness to the picnic.  Wade and Hope sat in the back seat playing ‘I Spy’ while Hope cuddled Dollpool and Wade clutched his invitation (he was very protective of it, as if afraid someone would steal it and he wouldn’t be allowed to stay at the party).  The news stands were covered with pictures of Hope dancing with Steve Rogers (Hope was appalled, but Wade seemed to find it funny).

The mansion was decorated the way Hope and Hank had ordered, the kids had gotten to do the tree all by themselves, and someone (probably Bobby or Julian) had violated the long-standing no-mistletoe rule by picking the busiest and most public doorway to booby-trap.

Nathan is a firm believer in the no-mistletoe rule, because his past teammates, while open-minded, always preferred a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding their (rather complex) relationships.  He can’t imagine the sort of fainting spell that would have come over the women of X-Force if they’d trapped Rictor and Shatterstar under the mistletoe…

People were awkward at first, but Hope was, as always, inseparable from Wade, and disapproving glances and remarks were kept at bay by the sheer force of her presence.  So Nathan ate with the grown-ups and listened to chronicles of the year’s life-changing events (along with a lot of ‘oh, Nathan, you’re back’ and ‘welcome home’ and ‘isn’t she just the sweetest thing’) while Wade and Hope sat with the under-fifteen crowd and compared presents (and Hope once again shared the tale of She-Hulk knocking Wade’s head around the wrong way).  The kids seemed to think that Hope’s new cell phone was the coolest present she’d gotten, but she insisted the giant collection of Crayola supplies bestowed by Agency X was the ‘ultimate present.’

By that point, several semi-unwilling victims had been kissed under the mistletoe, some tricked by crushing schoolmates (Julian pretended to be annoyed at having been caught under the mistletoe with Laura, but he radiated an awful lot of smugness for someone who didn’t want to kiss her), some forced bodily by snickering teammates (Scott loathed public displays of affection, but he eventually stopped complaining and kissed Emma just to shut Bobby and Rachel up).

After lunch, more presents were opened.  It was good that Wade had insisted on giving Hope toys instead of clothes, because all she got from the X-Women was clothing.  At least she isn’t like most children; she’s hardly ever had clothes that fit her, so getting clothes (especially cute and feminine clothes) pleases her immensely.

Still, Christmas is about things you want, not things you need (according to Warren, Josh, and Julian, who all agree with Wade about the wrongness of giving children clothes).  The boys all gave her variations on the theme ‘little girls like those, right?’, including a Barbie that will probably end up painted green and a Little Pony that will no doubt find itself painted like the Death Pony from Robot Chicken (Hope had roared with laughter at that sketch).

While dinner was being prepared, the men were relegated to the common room, watching all the usual Christmas movies (because that’s all that’s ever on television on Christmas Day aside from news and parades).

Nathan knows a lot more about cooking than most of them, out of combined necessity and the future’s blurred gender roles, and he nearly always at least offers to help in the kitchen.

Ororo had to reassure him three times that everything was well in hand before he left them to their work (and probably gossip, knowing the X-Women and various female friends and relations).

Hope had been watching him like a hawk while the ladies shooed him out, and when he turned to go back into the living room—in fact, nearly the instant he walked under the mistletoe—she did what any determined young child of a single parent would do, and dragged Wade right into Nathan.

Which led to now.

“You have to kiss,” Hope informs them with a smile of immense satisfaction.

There is awkward silence from the men and children gathered around the television, which draws the attention of the women in the kitchen, who all lean out to see what’s up.

Scott looks as though he might wring Bobby’s neck.

Bobby looks mortified.

Mystique looks vaguely ill.

Emma looks smug.

Wade looks as though he’d like to drop dead on the spot.  He won’t meet Nathan’s eyes.

These people don’t like him, after all.  Many of them might even hate him.  And Nathan is everyone’s best friend (well, except for Logan, but Logan doesn’t get along with very many people).  Wade likes to pretend he has a thick skin, but when the whole world is loudly wondering why someone like Nathan would ever have anything to do with someone like Wade, some of it gets through by sheer saturation.

“Be a good sport, Nathan,” Ororo urges, much to the agreement of earlier mistletoe victims.

“Yeah, Nate!” Rachel adds.  “We Summerses don’t back down from anything, even a li’l good-old-fashioned Christmas-time PDA!”

“Why can’t I be exempt like Rogue?” Wade asks.  “I mean, those of you who know what I look like—you sure as hell wouldn’t wanna kiss me, right?  Nobody would.  It’s dumb.”

“Don’t lump me in with you,” Rogue says a little crossly.  “Ah’ll have ya know, there are people who wanna kiss me.”

And everyone laughs.

It’s not funny, Nathan wants to shout at them all.  Stop making it into some sick joke.

But he doesn’t say it.  It won’t make Wade feel any better, after all, and it’s useless to make these people ashamed of acting like that if Wade still feels like the butt of some cosmic prank.  Nathan shakes his head.  “And, hard as it may be to fathom for those who don’t understand his…’charms’…there are people who want to kiss Wade, too.”

Logan snorts and sips his beer.  “Well, Summers?  You gonna kiss yer man, or ya gonna keep yappin’ about it?”

Nathan gently frames Wade’s masked face in his hands and leans in.  The kiss is soft and chaste, and Nathan means it from the bottom of his heart.

Rachel and Hope are cheering.

“Ooh, Ernest Saves Christmas,” calls the kid who stole the remote while all the grown-ups were busy gaping.

Like a flash, Wade has Hope scooped up into his lap and on the couch.  “Best Christmas movie ever,” he tells Hope, who obligingly settles down with Dollpool facing the television.

The spell is broken.  Women bustle back into the kitchen.  Men and youngsters shuffle and shove until there’s enough space for everyone who can’t or won’t sit on the floor.

Nathan starts collecting Hope’s presents and taking them up to her room.  He takes the time to unpack her clothes from their stay at Wade’s; it calms the burn of anger at the way the onlookers gawked and snickered.

He waits downstairs for a commercial break.

“Can I borrow Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum for a family conference?” he interjects over the sound of a pair of twelve-year-old twin sisters fighting over whether they should watch other channels during the ads.

“You’re Tweedle-Dum,” Wade says, nudging Hope.

“You are,” she counters with a grin as she hops out of his lap.

Prying eyes and ears are everywhere.  Nathan suddenly feels that this would only be properly private in his room, so he beckons them to follow.

Wade seems somber.  He sits on the foot of Nathan’s bed and tugs Hope back into his lap like a shield.

Nathan sits beside him and draws him close.  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he mumbles.  “If they want to be bothered by it, that’s their problem.  You and I didn’t slog through all that mess of trying to fix each other just to have other people look down their noses at us and tell us we shouldn’t have bothered.”

“Slog is a word?” Wade asks skeptically.

“Yes.  To move with difficulty through muck or mire.  See also:  wade.”

“The muck and mire part or the difficult part?”

Nathan smiles.  “All of the above.  For better or worse, my heart tells me you’re the one.  I’ve had wives, I’ve had lovers…each, in his or her own way, made me feel that we could happily spend the rest of our lives together.  You make me feel that we could happily spend the rest of forever together.”

“I dunno.  Forever’s a long time.  I might run outta cheesy puffs.  You know what I’m like when I run outta cheesy puffs.”

“The point is,” Nathan continues, before Wade can successfully sidetrack him, “I love you.  I can’t stand the thought of you hating yourself, and those people have no right to make you feel like you should.”

Hope squirms around until she can hug Wade.  “I love you, too, Wade.  You’re my favorite person in the whole world.  I wish you would come live with us, here, so I could see you every day.”

Wade huffs a laugh and pets her hair.  “If you saw me every day, you’d get sick of me, munchkin.  And there’s nowhere near as much fun stuff to do out here as there is in the city.  And, jeez…the commute would kill me.”

“No way.  I couldn’t possibly ever be sick of you.”

“Glad to hear it, Tweedle-Dum.”

She giggles.  “You’re Tweedle-Dum.”

Nathan smiles and kisses Wade’s temple—he can feel Wade’s pulse through the mask, and the heat of Wade’s skin.  He can smell detergent and bubble bath, and barbecue sandwiches from lunch.  “I’m sorry I’ve always tried to make things go faster.  I can’t fix you overnight; no one can.  And I’m not patronizing and egotistical enough to lie and say that you don’t need to be fixed, either.  Things aren’t right inside your head.  You know it, and I know it.  And I did what I could for the physical aspect of it.”  He rubs Wade’s shoulder.  “But you’ve been through some awful things in your life…survived things that would have broken any man or woman I can think of…fixing that takes time.”

“It’s okay if it doesn’t happen fast, as long as you’re still trying,” Hope explains helpfully.

Wade hugs her very carefully, as if he’s afraid she might break, and leans his chin on the top of her head.  “I’m trying very hard,” he whispers.

“I know you are,” Nathan says hoarsely, squeezing Wade’s shoulder.  “I know.  And I’m so proud.”

“Don’t say it!” Wade yelps, shoving at him half-heartedly.  “I hate when you say that stuff, it makes me all…”

“Sniffly?” suggests Hope, peering up at them with a little grin.

Wade rubs ineffectually at his nose through the mask.  “Shut up, smarty-pants.”

Nathan smiles and pats Hope’s knee.  “You’re missing your movie.  We’ll be down in a bit.”

Hope giggles and slips out of Wade’s grasp, scampering for the door.  She knows about things like romance, and sweetness, and private moments.  She’s seven-going-on-eight, after all.

When the door closes behind her, Nathan slowly tugs Wade’s mask up and off, and passes him a clean hanky from the drawer.

Suddenly, Nathan realizes that this is only the third or fourth time he has ever seen Wade cry about anything.  He’s seen Wade elated, livid, upset, despondent, grieving, hysterical…all with dry eyes and barely a hitch in his voice.  It only seems to happen when Nathan tells him beautiful things.  I missed you.  I love you.  I’m proud of you.  Nathan doesn’t know whether that means Wade cries from happiness or sadness.

“Don’t look,” Wade mumbles, hiding his face in the hanky.

It’s unbelievably endearing, like so many things about Wade.

Smiling, Nathan leans close and trails kisses down Wade’s jaw to coax him out, tugging at Wade’s hands until he can align their mouths properly and give poor Wade the kiss he deserved out there under the mistletoe.

Wade clings to him after they part, settling against him and rubbing a cheek against the plain grey sweater Nathan has on over his white dress shirt.  “Perfect kiss,” Wade says softly.

“Oh?” Nathan teases.

“Sexy, but not ‘hey, let’s fuck.’  Sweet, but not ‘let’s go design a nursery and think up baby names for our grandkids.’”

Nathan laughs and places another light kiss at the corner of Wade’s mouth.  “Blow your nose, and let’s get you back downstairs before Bobby and the boys start placing bets that we’ve snuck away to have sex.”

“We haven’t?” Wade asks with a little pout.

“Not during the party, Wade,” Nathan says firmly.  “Besides, this is the very first time you’ve gotten an invitation to a Christmas party, isn’t it?  You should be downstairs enjoying it.  After dinner, there’ll be mulled cider and caroling.”

“Woot, caroling!”

.End.

Chapter Text

The Big Game

Hope stared down at the field with great concentration.  “And it’s a game, right?”

“No, it’s war!” said Cessily.

“I don’t think it is,” Hope replied after a moment.  “I’ve been to a couple wars, and there were a lot more guns.  And a little less swearing.”

“It’s a sport,” Julian told her gently.  “It’s like an organized war.  Playing a game with teams, to see which team is the best at it.”

“Like hockey,” Bobby added.

Ah, hockey.  Hope understood hockey.  It was one of the few sports she’d ever watched on television (Neena was a feetball fan and Laura loved hockey).

She nodded.  “Well, that makes a lot more sense, then.  And the guy with the black shirt and hat is in charge, like a referee?”

“He’s the ump.”

“I thought an ump was a kind of gun.”

They stopped watching the game and stared at her.

She blinked back at them.

“Hot dog and soda for Tweedle-Dum!” Wade called, making his way down the row of seats.

“You’re Tweedle-Dum,” Hope casually contradicted.  “Wade, isn’t an ump a kind of gun?”

“Machine pistol.  Or submachine gun, if you get the right gear on it.  Doesn’t jam as much as an uzi.”

“See, I told you,” she said to Bobby.  A sip of her soda showed it to be a slightly watery Sprite (she liked her soda a little watery, because it still felt weird to drink something with bubbles in it).

“In baseball, ‘ump’ is short for ‘umpire,’” Julian told her.

Hope stared down at the field again while Wade took his seat back, then hopped into his lap.  “I think I get it now.  They hit the ball with that stick, and then they can run around the square until somebody catches it and throws it at them.  If they make it all the way around, they get points.  If they hit it really far, people complain, and if they hit it over the line, people are really happy and fight over the ball.”

“Dude,” Bobby sighed in despair.  “Wilson, you’ve been seriously neglecting the kid’s cultural education.”

“Hey, she lives with you guys,” Wade snorted.  “Sports education should be part of your whacky X-School curriculum.”

“I dunno, I think she’s got the gist of it,” said Julian.

“Sandi said sports are responsible for the country’s plummeting academic standards,” Hope informed them.  “Taskmaster said the only real point of sports is to give people an excuse to sit on a couch getting fat while the people playing get rich.  And Scott said that Bobby constantly cheats when they play sports at the mansion.”

“Dude,” Bobby said, aghast.

Wade patted her head.  “That’s my girl:  mind like a steel trap, mouth like a Seven-Eleven.”

They managed to watch the game in relative silence for a while.  Hope found it all very tedious.

After five or ten minutes, Hope said, “There’s an awful lot of taking turns in baseball.  And nobody’s been knocked down or gone flying through the air.  Hockey is much more exciting.”

At that, Bobby and Cessily jumped out of their seats, shouting at the same time and more or less unintelligible for it.

“—American pasttime—”

“—skill and strategy—”

“—way better than—”

“—more to sports than brainless violence—”

“—best game ever invented, next to co-ed strip Twister!”

“—a fricken Canadian sport, anyway!”

They huffed and puffed, apparently finished with their respective tirades.

Having long since learned that arguing with shouting people was pointless (being several feet shorter than most people and having a great deal less capacity for volume), Hope just placidly took a bite of her hot dog.

Julian waved at the field.  “Well, if the ump keeps making these kinds of calls, she’ll get to see plenty of violence.”

Hope sat a little higher on Wade’s lap, craning her neck.  “So why is the guy with the stick arguing with the referee?”

“Umpire,” Wade corrected.

“Whatever.  Don’t they give people fines and kick them out and stuff in baseball?  They do in feetball.”

“Football.”

“That,” she agreed, much more interested now that the stick-swinger was yelling and pointing.  Then he threw the stick down and punched the umpire in the stomach, and everyone in the stands stood up and cheered.  All the other players flooded onto the field and started up a brawl, like a barfight in a movie.  She took another bite of her hot dog and tried to decide which side of the fight she should be rooting for.

“Looks an awful lot like hockey now,” Warren said, just before Bobby and Cessily joined the rest of the crowd in shouting advice to the battling players.

Hope nodded her agreement.  “This is awesome.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Substitution

Billy flopped down on the couch and sighed happily.  It was so good to finally have some space.  No classes (Easter weekend, or whatever politically correct thing college called it).  No hyperactive speedster brother (or his malfunctioning sense of personal boundaries).  No parents bugging him that he hadn’t visited in at least a month and ‘shouldn’t feel that being moved out meant he couldn’t come to them for advice.’  No ‘grown-up’ heroes sending them off to deal with some minor baddies so they could hold press conferences.

There was only so much a guy could take before people started disappearing in a flash of blue light and reappearing on the roof, or in Alaska, or in the middle of the Atlantic.

“Oh, come on, he was so out!” Teddy yelled, jumping to his feet.  “You saw it, he was totally out!”

“Mm-hm,” Billy said agreeably.

“This has to be the worst season in the history of baseball.”

“Sure is.”

“…you’re not even listening to me, are you?”

“Not a bit.”

The phone rang.

Billy had every intention of ignoring it.  If somebody really wanted to talk to him, they could call his cell, and if it had been a hero thing, it’d be the Avengers communicator ringing.

But Teddy glanced anxiously between the phone and the television and made a sound that reminded Billy of his bratty brothers when they didn’t want to do their chores.  “Last inning…three points down…twooutsbasesloaded,” the blond whined, and flashed his best Sad Puppy Face, complete with trembling lower lip.

“God, stop,” Billy groaned, heaving himself back off the couch.  “I’ll get it.  Dork.”

“You’reawesomeIloveyou!” Teddy called after him.

Muttering to himself about stupid blond boyfriends with epic pouts, Billy picked up the house phone.  “Avengers Tower,” he sighed.

~“Billy, thank God!  Where the hell is everyone?”~

He blinked.  “Johnny?  Cap and the gang are off doing some big thing for SHIELD, so they left us in charge of rescuing the city for the day.  Kate and Cassie went shopping and dragged Jonas along to carry stuff, Tommy supposedly had a date, and I think Eli’s off being pompous somewhere.  Why?”

~“Could you babysit?”~

Billy really wished he was the kind of guy who could say, ‘No, I was planning to vegetate until my boyfriend’s stupid baseball game was over and see if I could get laid, finally, for the first time in two weeks.’  Instead, he just rolled his eyes.  “You’re seriously going to ditch Frank and Val while Sue and Reed are trying to patch up their marriage?  When you promised her you’d never ditch again?”

~“Yyyyeah, it sounds bad when you say it like that, but this is my last-last-last chance with this girl, because I kind of ran out on the last six or seven dates for hero stuff, and she said she’d forgive me if and only if I went crawling on my knees begging for forgiveness within the next fifteen minutes.  Crap, fourteen.  You’ll never know they’re there—these three practically watch themselves.”~

He frowned.  “Three?  You’re ditching while they’ve got a friend over?”

~“It’s just Cable’s kid.  She’s totally maintenance-free, she’s lived through wars and kidnappings and having people like Julian and Bobby for babysitters.  Billy, I swear to God, I will sign any and every piece of memorabilia you want.  I’ll give you fricking autographed nudes if that’s what it takes, man.”~

“Stop, jeez, I’ll do it,” Billy grumbled, blushing.  “But you seriously owe me one.  Like, on the scale of taking Cassie and Tommy out for drinks in the next state.”

~“YES!”~

Billy winced and held the phone away from his ear.

~“Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou!”~

“Yeah, sure, whatever.  Hurry up, or your date’s gonna be pissed.”

Just as he was hanging up the phone, he heard a terrible cry and a heavy thud from the other room.  Billy, however, was far too well versed in the ways of obsessive sports fans to be worried.

Teddy was sprawled face-down on the floor, occasionally flailing like a kid having a tantrum.

“Strike three?” Billy guessed.

Teddy just groaned.  After several seconds, he turned his head and arched an eyebrow.  “So who was it?”

“Torch looking for a babysitter so he can go AWOL again.”

“Aw, Bill, you didn’t,” Teddy yelped.  “We finally have real alone-time for the first time in months and you promised that hothead jerk you’d babysit so he could go work on his Tony Stark impression?”

“You know Stark’s not like that anymore.  He’s a douchebag, but he doesn’t sleep around.”

The blond snorted and rolled onto his back.  “So Johnny’s taken up the mantle of shameless philanderer in Stark’s place, whatever.”

“Don’t be so jealous,” Billy said.  “The Avengers and the Fantastic Four have always been friends, and it’s gotta be tough finding people who are willing to watch a telepathic prodigy.”

“But you know Val…she’ll make me do faces.”

“Maybe she won’t.”

“Shyeah, that’ll be the day…”

So, heaving another sigh, Billy put his hands on his hips.  “Look, it can’t be any worse than stopping an intergalactic war, you big baby.”

“But Kl’rt bravely sacrificed himself specifically so that I could be a lazy earthling!”

“Well, part of being a lazy earthling is doing your weird friends favors so they can get laid.  He promised to reimburse our lost Tommy-free time.”

When Teddy just sat up and sulked in that adorable overgrown-puppy way he had, Billy knew he’d won.

A few minutes later, Johnny Storm was ushering three age-mismatched kids down the hall.  Billy thought he recognized the little red-haired girl from the SHIELD Christmas charity thing (hard to tell, between three glasses of champagne and sneaking away with Teddy).

“Okay, kids, be good for Billy, because Uncle Johnny has urgent grown-up things to do…and, uh, don’t forget our deal.”

The redhead held up her right hand very solemnly.  “I promise I won’t tell Nathan—”

“Or Sue or Reed or Ben!”

“—or Sue or Doctor Richards or Mister Grimm that you ran away and left us so you could go crawling on your knees to beg Delilah to take you back.”

“Greatokaybyekids!” Johnny yelled as he sprinted for the elevator.

Franklin frowned disapprovingly.

The redhead looked at him and shrugged.  “What?  I won’t tell Nathan or your parents or Mister Grimm.  But I might tell Wade.”

Billy shifted from foot to foot.  “Uh.  Hi, kids.”

“Billy!” shrieked Valeria, latching onto his leg.  “Do something magic!”

“Uh, maybe after you introduce me to your friend?”

“My name is Hope,” said the red-haired girl, holding out her right hand.

He shook her hand.  “Mine’s Billy.  Nice to meet you.”

“You look an awful lot like Tommy,” she noted with an expression of deep suspicion.

“Yeah, twins do that sometimes.  How do you know Tommy?”

She lost interest in him and started looking around the front hall.  “Oh, he’s always mooching around the mansion, hitting on people.  Used to be mostly Laura, but Julian made some seriously mean faces at him, so he switched to Cessily a couple months ago.  I hope you’re not like him, because aside from being funny and good at blowing things up, he’s really annoying.”

Franklin nudged her.  “Billy’s cool.  He likes She-Hulk and Spider-Man.”

“Really?” Hope said, and her eyes lit up with excitement.  “She-Hulk is so awesome!  I saw her at Christmas and got to say hi and everything, but she didn’t really say hi back, which is okay, because she was mad at Wade at the time because he said something that was probably rude, and she broke his neck big-time, like punched his head completely the wrong way around.”

Teddy peeked out into the hall.  “Did Tommy get back and I missed the announcement?” he teased.

Val immediately let go of Billy’s leg and ran to Teddy.  “Teddy, Teddy, do Cap!”

“Aw, Val, don’t you like just seeing me?  What if I turn green for you?”

“Cap!”

Billy ignored the pointed look his boyfriend gave him.  “Have you kids had your afternoon snack yet?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Frank replied.

“Well, there’s bound to be something around here.”

Val’s happy squeal informed him that Teddy had caved and turned into Steve.

“Not bad,” Hope pronounced.  “I danced with Mister Rogers at Christmas because Nathan said I should.”  She wrinkled her nose.  “Nathan’s a big fat traitor—the pictures were all over the front page the next day.  You know, this is the second time today I’ve been dumped with a different babysitter.”

Billy led the way to the kitchen.  “Oh?”

“Wade got an emergency job, so I asked if I could go see Franklin.  He’s been teaching me to play chess.”

“She’s from the future,” Frank said helpfully.  “She only got here six months ago, so there’s still things she doesn’t know about.  Like chess and baseball.”

“I went to my first baseball game last weekend.”

Billy nodded and grabbed cheese and deli meats out of the fridge.

“I’m not sure why people like it so much,” Hope went on.  “I thought it was boring until the fight started.”

“That’s because baseball is boring unless there’s a fight,” Billy snorted.

“Baseball is not boring!” Teddy called from the other room.

“Baseball is very boring,” Billy whispered conspiratorially as he reached down bread and plates for the kids.

Hope went to the fridge and got the mustard.  “I know lots about TV and movies and music,” she said.  “Nowhere near as much as Wade, but when you get to spend every weekend with someone like Wade, some of it rubs off.  And I know where all the best food stands are.  And I know every inch of Central Park.”

“The whole thing, huh?”

“She does,” Franklin confirmed.  “Val, come get your snack.”

“Not until Teddy does Luke.”

Billy grinned to himself.  Any time Val was around a shapeshifter, she insisted on seeing all her favorite superheroes.

Hope ignored the ham (Frank took her share), but piled on the turkey and the Swiss cheese.  “I know how to break somebody’s hand now.  I mean, I knew how to break somebody’s wrist way back in November, but it wasn’t until last week I finally got the angle right for the hand-breaking-thing.”

Billy blinked.  “Wow.  Did Cable teach you how to do that?”

She looked at him in a way that was unpleasantly reminiscent of the way most people had looked at him all through junior high and high school—yeah, that same old “what a weirdo” look.  “You obviously don’t know Nathan very well.”

Franklin carefully pulled the crusts from around his sister’s sandwich.  “Remember, Billy:  Mister Cable doesn’t like violence anymore.”

“Because he’s a total hypocrite,” Hope muttered with a roll of her eyes.  “But Sandi says that a girl who doesn’t have some way of defending herself is almost guaranteed to end up a victim.  It’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.  Or was that knives?”

Teddy finally carried Valeria into the kitchen and set her down on the counter.  “She made me do Clint and Pete, too,” he complained.  “She’s an evil little slave-driver, that’s what she is.”

“I’m an evil little angel,” Valeria corrected.

A Hives song started playing, and Hope set down her sandwich to dig a phone out of her pocket (an even nicer phone than Kate’s, some super-cool StarkTech thing in purple) and answer it.  “Hi, Wade,” she said.  “Johnny had to go beg Delilah to take him back, so we’re at Avengers Tower.  No, Mister Rogers and the old people aren’t here.  Of course we’re not alone, don’t be a dumbass.  Billy and Teddy are here with us.  Valeria keeps making poor Teddy turn into other people.”

“Yes, pity me,” Teddy said, pouting.

“Wade, I’m not sure you know what that word really means,” Hope said, frowning when Valeria brandished her crusts like monster-claws.  “Well, I don’t think Billy or Teddy would mind if you wanted to hang out with us until Frank and Val go home; maybe we could all watch a movie.  No, Wade, Val isn’t old enough for that one, it’ll scare the ess-word out of her.”

When she paused to listen again, Franklin nodded. 

“Yeah, that one’s okay.  Uh-huh.  We’ll be waiting.”  And she hung up.

“Princess Bride,” Franklin said.

“I didn’t ask,” said Teddy.

“No, but you were thinking of asking.  Sorry.”

Billy slouched against the counter while the kids finished their sandwiches, helped them rinse the plates when they were done.

Then someone blustered down the hall.  “Greetings, Avengers young and old!  Or, well, just young…and nubile…”

Billy almost dropped the plate in his hand.  “Oh, no.  No, no, no.  This is not happening.  Not on my nice, tranquil Easter vacation.”

But there was no mistaking that voice and that freakish obsession with the Young Avengers…

“Wade!” Hope cheered.

Deadpool entered the kitchen in full gear (plus an extra gun or two) and scooped her up.  “There’s my princess…”

Teddy pointed.  “Your babysitter is that creeper?”

“So weird,” Billy mumbled.

“Pfft,” scoffed the crazy assassin.  “Your boyfriend is a green-skinned shapeshifting alien prince, and you think this is weird?  Compared to most father-figures in this city, I’m a model daddy.  Let’s watch us some Princess Bride, kids.”

“What’s Princess Bride?” Valeria asked while Teddy lifted her off the counter.

“Only one of the best movies in the history of ever,” Deadpool said.

“He’s got us there,” Teddy admitted.

Val beckoned.  “Come on, Billy, I’ll share Teddy’s lap.”

“So generous,” Billy said drily.

“Hey, you were the one dumb enough to say yes to the Flamer,” said Deadpool.

“It’s hardly his fault,” Hope defended.  “Johnny offered autographed nudes.”

Teddy made a choking sound.

“I said no to those!” Billy squawked.

.End.

Chapter Text

Further Adventures in Kidnapping

“We’re back!” Cassie called excitedly.  “Ohmigod, Billy, there was this super-hot guy at that awesome little used book place in the village, and he was completely checking Jonas out.”

“Shhhhh!” hissed the occupants of the couch.

“I will take your things to your room, Cassie,” Jonas said.

Cassie huffed and flounced to the couch to see what could possibly be more fun than one of her rare ‘blonde moments.’

From the looks of things, Billy and Teddy were watching The Princess Bride with Val, Franklin, some costumed dude, and the world’s most adorable little redhead.

“Awwwww, who is that, she’s so cute!”

And Cassie, not being one to hold back when it came to the family and friends of superheroes, plucked the kid up from the couch and hugged her.

“No touchy!” snapped the guy in the red and black costume, drawing a gun.

Of course, Kate reacted by kicking the gun away and instigating a full-on ninja fight.  Teddy was thoughtful enough to pause the movie.

“I remember you now,” Cassie said.  “You’re that Dead-Dude or whatever, the one Osborn set up for the Skrull thing at the baseball stadium.  Cable wanted you to switch sides during the war, but you wouldn’t.”

“Unlike some people,” he retorted.

“Up yours, I was sixteen and kind of a chicken.”

“You were in a war, Wade?” asked the redhead in Cassie’s arms.  “And it’s Deadpool, by the way.”

“Sorry,” said Cassie.

“I was misled, manipulated, and emotionally blackmailed,” Deadpool told the kid, ducking a flying kick.  “Also?  Nate was being a real bitch at the time.  Long story, princess, not now.”

“Did you at least get paid?” the redhead wanted to know.

“No.  I got tranquilized and tied up in several rolls of duct tape.  Nate’s whole ‘I know what’s best for you and I’m only doing this because I care’ act was in full-swing.  A messy divorce ensued.”

“Wow, Nathan can be a real asshole sometimes.”

On the couch, Billy sputtered and belatedly covered Val’s ears.

Cassie laughed.  “My name’s Cassie; what’s yours?”

“Hope.  And no, Nathan is not my dad.”

“Nathan as in Cable, right?”

“Yeah.  Who’s your pretty friend?”

“That’s Kate.  She’s the new Hawkeye, got the bow and everything.  Kate, maybe you could let up now that the gun is out of the picture?  If Billy and Teddy and the kids were fine with him, he probably wasn’t actually here to do anything bad.”

Kate snagged Deadpool’s arm and threw him (there was a nasty-sounding pop from his shoulder and he cheerfully said “ow”).  “He pointed a gun at you.”

“Sorry about that,” said Hope.  “Wade can be a little overprotective of me.”

“See?” Cassie said, stepping closer.  “And it’s not like he actually shot at me.  So we can all just—”

The world flickered like a snowed out channel on an old television.

About two seconds later, the static cleared to reveal a huge lab on the other side of a glass barrier.  Cassie, Hope, Kate, and Deadpool had been teleported to some crazy guy’s basement.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Cassie huffed.

“Well, well, what an unexpected surprise!” someone chortled.

“Modok,” Kate growled.  “You’ve got a lot of nerve, kidnapping a pair of Avengers right out of the Tower.”

The icky floating genius snorted loudly.  “Avengers, pah!  Rest assured, my dear Miss Bishop, you and Miss Lang were not included in our plans today.”

There was a crunching noise as Deadpool shoved his shoulder back into place.  “Twice in one day, Mo?  You guys are getting fucking persistent.”

Cassie set Hope down and rolled up her sleeves.  “Don’t worry, guys, I’ll bust us outta here in a jiffy.”  She reached for that confident feeling of bigness that had been resting in the back of her mind, tried to grow…

…and got nothing.

“Cass, what’re you waiting for?” Kate hissed.

“I—I’m trying,” Cassie replied.  “It’s not working!  Nothing’s happening!”

Modok kicked his stubby legs and clapped his hands.  “Yes!  Absolutely nothing, my dear!  You were not part of the plan, but that containment canister was designed to hold quite a few troublesome individuals, your father and Dr. Pym included.”

“Ah, here’s the problem,” Deadpool said, plucking something tiny from his shoulder.  “Teleport-lock-on-transpondy-thingy.”

“A bit late, but a good effort,” Modok told him.

Hope put her hands on the glass.  “You are a mean and condescending person, Mr. Mo.  I’m not sure what you have in mind for your anti-tele-stuff serum, but it’s probably not good, or you would’ve just asked Wade nicely.  And you should probably know that Nathan will not be happy if he finds out about this.”

“That’s Nathan as in Nathan Dayspring,” Deadpool added.  “As in The Savior.  As in the kid’s adoptive daddy-o.”

The A.I.M. stooges in the lab started to gasp and mutter.

“You’re bluffing,” Modok scoffed.  “After all your shenanigans of the last two years, you expect me to believe that The Savior would be idiotic and masochistic enough to let you near his offspring?”

“Okay, first of all,” Hope said crossly, “he said adoptive.  Nathan is not actually my actual father, and I really wish everybody would stop perpetuating the ridiculous misconception that he is.  You don’t have to be related to somebody to love them and want to take care of them.  Second of all, Wade takes way better care of me than Nathan ever did.  And third of all, Nathan and Wade are, like, crazy in love.”

“Really doesn’t seem that way, with all the news clips of them beating the crap out of each other,” Cassie pointed out.

Hope shot her a glare and sniffed disdainfully.  “What would you know?  Your boyfriend’s a robot.”

Cassie blinked, sure that Jonas had still been wearing his holoform as he took her stuff to her room.  “Wait, how did you kn—”

“Android, precious,” Deadpool corrected, patting Hope’s head.  “Smarter than a robot.  So, anyway, Mo…you’ve got about fifteen seconds to let us go, or you’ll be losing another nifty A.I.M. lab.”

“Bah!” growled Modok, scowling in a way that only a guy whose mouth literally stretches the width of his entire body can.  “If it weren’t for Hydra’s timely attack, you would certainly have had a much harder time destroying the last lab!”

Cassie looked around their glass and metal prison; even if she couldn’t shift sizes, she could still be an extra pair of eyes.  She didn’t spot anything that could help them, not even a conveniently large ventilation shaft or some other movie-cliché.  Her eyes caught Kate’s, and Kate gave the tiniest nod—concealed in her palm was her Avengers communicator.  Cassie made a frustrated noise and looked around the cell again before holding up her wrist and staring at her watch.  In her peripheral view, she saw Kate tap her leg twice.

Okay, so Kate had hit the tracking function about two minutes ago.  Billy would be porting the team in any second now.

“Y’know the coolest thing about watching movies in Avengers Tower?” Deadpool drawled, digging around in a pouch on his belt.  “Stark and his super-buddies leave all kinds of cool shit just lying around.”  He stuck a quarter-sized disk on the glass wall.  “Like miniature shaped charges.”

“Cass, duck!” cried Kate.

“Oh, sh—” Cassie yelped, diving for Hope.

The sound of the tiny explosive going off was muted, but it still left Cassie’s ears ringing.  The curving glass wall hadn’t shattered, but there was a huge spider-web pattern where the charge had gone off.

“You fail to impress me, Deadpool,” said Modok.  “It will take more than some little toy explosive of Stark’s to get through the containment canister’s shell.”

“Way to go, you psycho!” Cassie yelled.  “You could’ve killed us, and the stupid wall’s still there!”

“Patience, grasshopper,” said Deadpool, drawing a big pistol from his hip (someone had painted ‘Mr. Bang-Bang’ on the barrel) and pressing it to the center of the cracking.  “Mo, say hello to Mr. Bang-Bang.”

The gun was much louder than the shaped charge, and a huge ring of the glass blew open like a flower.  By that point, Modok was floating for the door at top speed, and the A.I.M. scientists were running and shouting and snatching up ray-guns.

“S-stop where you are!” one cried.  “Don’t move!”

“Stay down, Cassie,” Hope whispered, tugging at Cassie’s sleeve.

Deadpool just unconcernedly holstered his gun and drew a pair of swords from his back.  “I’m in a bad mood.  Anybody who doesn’t leave now is going to lose a limb.  Anybody who shoots at me is going to lose two.  Anybody who shoots at the ladies is going to get cut in half.  Questions?”

A volley of bullets and lasers answered him, so Cassie wisely cowered in the back of the containment canister with Hope and Kate.

Gradually, the gunfire slowed and stopped, interspersed with shouts, screams, begging, and a cheerful running tally of severed limbs.

In a flash of blue light, three of their teammates appeared.

Billy was already busy offering an excuse, as usual.  “Sorry it took us so long, but we had to get changed, and then Tommy showed up and we had to explain what was going on, and—”

“What the hell happened here?” Tommy interrupted, using his foot to nudge a one-armed guy trying to surreptitiously crawl away.

Deadpool sheathed his swords.  “I did,” he said happily.

“It was awesome!” Hope declared as Cassie picked her up and carefully stepped over the broken glass to get out of their ruined prison.

Kate straightened her skirt and ran a hand over her hair.  “It kind of was,” she grudgingly admitted.

Tommy immediately glomped Kate (and few people can glomp so quickly or thoroughly as a speedster).  “Oh, Katie, my love, it’s so good to see you unharmed—”

“Hand off ass,” Kate growled.

Tommy’s hands went back to polite places.  “You know, it’s all thanks to me that you were rescued.  Eli’s busy scrubbing his grandma’s floors or something, and Jonas was sitting around all ‘durp, I’m a robot, I think I should stay with the kids,’ and B and T were too busy making out…”

“Oh my god, Tommy, we were not!” Billy shrieked.  “I’m going to sell you to the circus, you little liar!”

“And I don’t think they really needed to be rescued,” Teddy added, grimacing as he stepped over somebody’s severed leg.

“Ew,” Cassie whimpered.  She passed Hope to Deadpool and tried not to look at the mess he’d made of the A.I.M. personnel.

“All in one piece, munchkin?” he asked.

“Yup,” said Hope.

Then Cassie realized something.  “Hey, wait, nobody in the Tower would just leave a mini-charge lying around, especially since Frank and Val visit so much.”

“Well, if that’s true, then where did I get a whole roll of them?” Deadpool countered, waving an opened roll of mini charges.

“I’m pretty sure someone would’ve noticed if you’d broken into the armory or Stark’s lab,” said Kate.  “So obviously, you broke into my room.”

“I didn’t break anything,” he denied.  “But your lock was disappointingly easy to pick.  Is the patriotic La Perla for anybody special, or do you just wear it around under your clothes?”

“Ooh, La Perla,” Tommy said with an appreciative leer.

“A circus can be found that will take an amazing legless loudmouth who blows things up,” Kate muttered.

“But I have legs.”

“I can fix that.”

For once in his life, Tommy took the hint and backed off.

Cassie scratched her head.  “Well.  Sorry we weren’t much help, Deadpool.”

“No sweat, blondie,” Deadpool dismissed.  “They very coincidentally managed to get exactly the right Young Avengers.  Replace one of you girlies with anybody else on the roster, and they would’ve been toast.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cassie asked, supremely offended.

“That I was caught unarmed and you couldn’t shift,” Kate answered.  “A.I.M. have been fighting the Avengers for years; their containment cells are probably set up to counter gamma-related powers, Pym-powers, basic repulsor blasts…”

“Partridges in pear-trees…” mumbled Billy.

“Can we get back to the movie?” said Hope.  “It was almost time for the happy ending.”

“Seven to beam up, Mr. Kaplan!” added Deadpool.

“Dude, seriously?” Cassie giggled.

“Suck it, blondie.  Star Trek is quality sci-fi.  Energize!”

.End.

Chapter Text

Upon a Time

Nathan has always suspected Hope might be an artist.  When the child was very, very young Nathan’s wife discovered a small, mostly-empty box of chalk and showed her how to make marks on stones and bricks and crumbling pavement—and even then, she had watched everything with her clever, brilliant eyes and carefully copied her adoptive mother’s movements.  Nathan came back from his patrol that day to find a garden drawn on one wall of the house and his girls pretending to be explorers in a lush green wilderness they had only seen in ancient vids.

On their first full day home from the future, Wade firmly decreed that coloring books were an essential part of a normal childhood.  So they came back from breakfast (Nathan still doesn’t understand what he did to make Wade so angry that first morning) with eight crayons and five dollars’ worth of coloring books.  They spent most of the day stretched out on the floor, Wade coloring everything in red and black and Hope meticulously filling in the pages in the most sensible colors possible (given their limited palette).

Sandi was the one to reveal that colors could be mixed, and Emma was the one to first provide blank white paper.  Then Hope saw Peter painting one day, and there was no turning back.

Hope started to draw on any and every piece of paper she could get, from discarded receipts to sticky notes to notebook paper.

In a brief meeting to review Hope’s Christmas list, Sandi and Inez told him that they had ‘lots more paper’ and ‘more colors’ covered.  At the party, Hope looked a little worried about the size of the wrapped box with her name on it, but she literally squealed with glee when she saw what was inside.  There were pads of newsprint, little spiral-bound sketchbooks, markers, colored pencils, pastels, watercolors, and crayons in every color Crayola makes.

And there was a single leather-bound book of vellum.

This book she has dubbed her ‘chronicle,’ and she has been steadily adding to it since.  She started from the beginning, the earliest things she can remember.  The pages she has worked through are covered continuously, edge-to-edge, front and back, in painstakingly accurate colors.  Her talent is obvious, and Nathan is glad that Peter doesn’t seem to mind giving her a little instruction here and there.

Grey sky, black earth.  The colony, the woman who was her namesake, playing catch in the yard, the house with the chalk garden.  The roach-people.  Red clay deserts, the ruins of Salem, Stryfe’s first fortress.  Bishop.  Laura and Jimmy and the others.  Dom.  Wade.

The ruins of the second world lead off into a space of conspicuous blankness that picks up again in the red-skied third future with Wade again.  The metallic walls of the armory are reproduced so exactly that Nathan suspects Hope spent quite some time there.

“What’s this empty part?” Nathan asks, though he suspects he knows.

Hope caps the marker she’s been using on a coloring book and sits up on her knees to look.  “Oh,” she says.

“What?” Wade asks, leaning over.

Hope takes the book from Nathan and flips it to the beginning.  “It’s my chronicle.  You know, a true story about me.  Like a biography, but lots more exciting.”  She looks up with a little frown twisting her mouth.  “Why do so many stories start out ‘once upon a time’?”

Wade shrugs.  “Because it doesn’t really matter when they happened.  So it means ‘at some time, there used to be…’ and then whatever.  A princess, or a castle, or a kingdom.”

The answer seems to satisfy her, because she turns back to the book.  “Well, this story starts out in the future, but I don’t really know when exactly.  Once upon a time, in the future, there was me and Nathan.  This is the house where we used to live.  There’s Nathan’s wife, and the garden we made.  It wasn’t real plants, but it was hard to make things grow in those days, and we were lucky to have just our grass and our tree.”

“Ooh, Bishop, scary,” Wade says when she turns the page.

Bishop and Stryfe stand in a space that never existed (or maybe she just drew them over something unrelated), big and imposing, but Bishop is by far the more demonized of the two, with his angry expression and his mechanical arm held like a monster’s claw.  Comparatively, the looming specter of Apocalypse on the facing page is a bland monolith, almost benevolent in his neutrality.

“So Poccy saved the day?” Wade asks.

“I’m not sure who you mean, but the grey man picked me up and gave me back and took Stryfe away and then we left.”  She turns the page, and the ruins of the second world dissolve into a void, which then slowly becomes the third set of ruins.

Wade traces a finger across the pages.  “Sooooo…the world went all blank, and then it came back?”

Hope shifts a little.  “I don’t like that part,” she says softly.  “It was bad.  I don’t want to draw it.  Maybe when it’s been longer…”

“It happened only a few days before we got back,” Nathan explains.

So Wade just pets her hair and lets her turn the page again.

“And then you took me to the palace, and I hid with Q until you let me out again.  Here’s the city—I’m sure it was Manhattan, because that part looked a lot like the Chrysler building.”  She points.  “And there’s you and Nathan talking right before we left.  …aaand this is the cab where I fell asleep, and when I woke up, there you were.  I had a good feeling about you from the very beginning.”

Wade laughs.  “You even put Bob and Weas in the background!  Good memory, munchkin.  And there’s the mountain of pancakes from the next day, and us on the floor coloring…  Did I ever tell you about the time I filled a whole swimming pool with pancakes?”

Hope puts her chronicle aside.  “A whole swimming pool?  Really?”

“Uh-huh.  It was so Neena would be okay when she fell through the skylight.  Long story.  Anyway, I spent the whole morning flippin’ flapjacks and dumped ‘em all in an empty pool.  But before that, I had ‘em all stacked up like the Rockies.  It was epic win.”

“Like the Rocky Mountains?  How tall?  Taller than me?”

“Taller than me.”

“Cool!”

.End.

Chapter Text

Belong

“No.”

Wade scowls and leans in his chair to peer out the window of the restaurant for the millionth time.  A few hundred feet away, Julian is trying to look cool while pushing Hope on a swing and talking to Laura (Wade is pretty sure it’s a plot by Hope to Get Them Together, because she’s turned into an evil little matchmaker since Christmas).  “And why the hell not?” he asks.

Nate calmly drinks his iced tea.  “Because Hope is barely eight years old and needs specialized education in a safe, stable environment.”

“Shit, drop her with the Fantastikids every day; the telepathic brat’ll teach her everything she needs to know about life, the universe, and everything.  As an added bonus, if she survives his dad’s ongoing attempts to destroy the world—”

“Reed has never actively attempted to destroy the world,” Nate corrects.

“—then we know she’ll be just fine when Armageddon hits.”

“Shall we turn the question around?”

Wade grimaces.  “Let’s not.”

But Nate is unrelenting.  “She wants you to live with us.  She is going to stay at the X-Mansion, where the X-Men can protect her.”

“That statement shows a fundamental lack of faith in the Avengers that I find very disheartening, Nate.”

“The Avengers give your apartment a wide berth.”

He huffs.  “Oh, like they have any room to talk…  I only blew up a few sort-of-important buildings, and only when there was a good reason for it, like a Skrull invasion or Normie’s goon squad trying to kill me.  They’ve done worse as fricking collateral.  Hell, that Speed kid blows shit up on purpose because it’s fun.  I’m not denying that it’s fun to blow shit up, but it’s kinda irresponsible, and the fun falls a little flat when people keep making you pay damages.”

“I’m waiting to hear a good counter-argument.”

“Me ‘n the girls can protect her just fine, and the Avengers ain’t the only ones who ‘give my place a wide berth,’ as you so eloquently put it.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“I like my apartment.  It’s spacious and full of my cool stuff, and completely off-limits to people who hate me.”

“Oh, Wade,” Nate sighs, and shakes his head.

“Don’t you fucking shake your head and sigh at me!” Wade growls, looking out the window again.  “Like I’m just some fucking delusional little high school kid throwing a fucking PMS tantrum, just because maybe I don’t feel like willingly living in a place where I’ll be surrounded by people who’d just as soon see me wiped off the face of the planet.  Like this is some stupid emotional callback to fucking Christmas and fucking overreactionary almost-suicide-attempts.  Fuck you, Nate.  Fuck you.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

He slaps a hand down on the table, making the ice cubes in Nate’s glass jump.  “I’m not, and you goddamn well know it.  They can keep it quiet as long as they only have to see me once a month, tops—they start seeing me every day and she’s gonna get to hear a very comprehensive list of my character flaws.  You think she wants or needs that?”

Nate makes a sad face, like he wants to apologize.

“Don’t say it,” Wade whispers.

“Okay,” Nate says, but reaches out and takes his hand.  “But we talked about this at Christmas.  Do you remember?  In my room, after the mistletoe?”

He does; he tightens his fingers around Nate’s.  “I remember.”

“She’s so tired of saying goodbye to you, Wade.  Just…just give it a try, just for the weekend.  Maybe they’ll surprise you.”

The words lodge a bitter lump in Wade’s throat.  “That’s the thing, Nate—people like them never surprise me.”

He hears Nate swallow thickly.  “I…”

“Don’t,” he says again.  “Please.”

But Nate has apparently decided to be stubborn, because he reaches over to take Wade’s other hand.  “Wade, look at me.”

He rolls his eyes, but eventually obeys.  “What?”

“Hope deserves at least one proper parent, and you are, quite frankly, embarrassingly good at the job.  I’ve tried.  For eight years, I’ve tried.  I’ve been pretty piss-poor at it.”

Wade scowls.  “Yeah, well…why the fuck can’t I play daddy from the comfort of my hard-earned independence?  It’s been more than six months, she’s gotten to see plays and musicals and movies, she got to meet half the super-hero community, she’s made a ton of friends—even with my brain springing more leaks than a rowboat made of colanders.  How the fuck is she better off in fucking posh suburbia?”

Nate just sits there silently for a while.  “Children need stability, Wade,” he finally says.

“Which is it?” Wade snaps.  “Does she need me, or does she need stability?  Because the two don’t really go together.  I’m kind of the opposite of stability, especially with my amazing Swiss-cheese memory.”  He tries to pull his hands away, but Nate’s grasp is unyielding.

“Please, just try it,” Nate presses, and his expression is as close as it ever gets to a pout.  “Just for the weekend.  Come home with us, and if you really can’t stand it, I’ll drop the subject.”

Wade hesitates.  He looks out the window again to see Hope and Laura riding the merry-go-round while Julian gives it the occasional push.  “And how exactly do you think I’ll react if I suddenly find myself surrounded by strangers without knowing how I got there?  Didn’t think of that, did you?”

When Nate’s hands slip away, it’s all the answer Wade needs.

“Nope, didn’t think so,” he mutters.  “Look…it’s a nice little fairytale, Nate, but I can’t do it right now.  Winky the One-Eyed Jerkface would literally have my head on a platter if I spaced out and somehow decided it would be cool to shoot an X-Dweeb.  Unless this gets fixed—”

“Until,” Nate insists with a catch in his voice.

“Your goddamn optimism is really fucking depressing,” Wade grumbles.  “Fine.  Until this gets fixed, I can’t live with people I wouldn’t immediately recognize.”

“I’ll find a way.”

And Nate’s got that scary-determined tone that he gets sometimes, the one that usually shows up right before he runs off to get killed…and Wade thinks guiltily of that little future-tech snow globe thingy again, the one Hope and Laura and Weasel said could answer questions.

“Wade?”

“Hm?”  He realizes he must’ve been quiet too long.  Outside the window, Hope is petting a dog while its owner talks to Laura and Julian.  “Oh.  Just thinking.  I’m doing pretty good today; only had one skip this morning, and it was just fifteen minutes.  Maybe it’ll fix itself, and you won’t have to do anything stupid and drastic.  And before you even start, don’t make me any promises.  Not about this.  You’d just end up doing something stupid and drastic to keep your dumb promises.  Goddamn lemming.”

“What if I promised not to do anything stupid and drastic, hmm?” Nate teases.  “Then I couldn’t possibly do something stupid and drastic to keep it.”

“Smartass.  Narrative convention says that the moment you make a promise like that, something is doomed to happen that’ll make you go back on it.  So far, you’ve done a pretty good job of never breaking your promises to me—”

“Two for two isn’t exactly—”

“—and I don’t want you to start,” Wade finishes loudly, ignoring the interruption.

Nate leans over the table and kisses his cheek (some bitter single girl at a nearby table says, “Ugh, get a room…”).

The door of the restaurant opens, and Hope and her babysitters come in.

Julian grabs Hope around the middle like a sack of meal and swings her over one shoulder.  “We have something of yours.  If ya want her back, leave a million bucks in a black suitcase under the third bench from the left.”

“Yeah, right,” Hope calls over his shoulder.  “I’d eff-word you up, Julian.  Now put me down, please.”

“Oh, you’d ‘eff-word me up’?” he asks, but sets her back down.

“She would,” Laura says.  “She could totally take you.”

Hope stands on tiptoe to peer over the table at them.  “Did you talk about it?”

She knew what they were going to be talking about.  How the hell is he supposed to say no with her standing there with those big green eyes, looking all cute and hopeful?

Wade covers his face with one hand and punches Nate in the arm with the other.

“We did talk about it,” Nate says carefully.  “But we decided that now’s not a good time.  Until Wade gets better, it’s the same as babysitting—he doesn’t want to accidentally hurt somebody at the mansion.”

“Oh,” she says, and she sounds like someone just canceled a trip to Disneyland.  “Well…why can’t we just live with Wade until he’s better?”

He hears movement behind him.

“Because you have school, sweetie,” Laura replies, picking Hope up.  “I know it sucks, but everybody has to go to school.  Even I had to go to school.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  And some of the kids at the mansion only get to see their daddies once every few months, instead of once a week.  Nicole and Claudette and Monet only get to see their daddy twice a year.”

“…then I guess I’m really lucky.”

He breathes a sigh of relief.  Thank god for Laura.

“Wade?”

He looks up and forces a smile.

Hope is perched on Laura’s hip, and Laura passes her over to Wade.

“We are so lucky we get to see each other so much,” he tells her.  “So.  What’re we doing next week?”

“Sandi’s been wanting to see Avenue Q, and she says she thinks I’ll like it.”

“Muppets singing about sex, relationships, and society?  What’s not to like?  Let’s go take Sandi to see Avenue Q next week.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Airplanes

Heightened senses are good for a lot of things.

Laura can smell when someone is sick before they ever show symptoms.  She knows who’s coming to see her before they knock on her door.  She knows when someone, somewhere on the grounds is hurt.  She can hear the ice cream truck a block away (she happens to think fresh fudgesicles are the greatest treat known to man).  She can hear cars pulling into the drive and tell the difference between cars and between drivers.  She can see birds on the other side of the lake, can identify the species by their cries.

But she can’t read minds.

She glances at Julian, sitting beside her on the roof while Emma, Scott, and Nathan help the kids aim their telescopes.

“Ever-so-slightly to the southeast, dear,” Emma tells Claudette.

“Wow, you can see the rings and everything!” Hope exclaims.

Laura wonders what Julian is thinking, or if he’s thinking of anything at all.  “It’s a nice night for it,” she says carefully.

He glances at her.  “Well, that’s why we’re up here.  Why they’re up here, anyway…”  He jerks a thumb at the kids.  “We’re up here to make sure people don’t fall off the roof.”

She wishes she had more experience at reading moods from scents and sounds.  Logan can tell the difference between ‘that brat won’t leave me alone’ and ‘I’m having the worst day ever.’  Laura counts herself lucky to understand smells like angry and afraid and happy.  Maybe it’s because she barely understands feelings.

She can tell that Julian’s attracted to her, but that doesn’t mean much.  You can be attracted to someone and still hate her guts, and Julian has a tendency to get snappish over her actions in the field.  He calls it bloodthirstiness; she calls it thoroughess.

She thinks they’re getting along now, between the kiss at Christmas and all the time they spend together babysitting Hope, but she can’t be sure.  Long-term interpersonal relationships weren’t part of her training.  So many things weren’t, and ‘winging it’ isn’t something that comes easily to her.

“You don’t care for stargazing?” she asks.

He shrugs.  “Stars’re all right, I guess.  But there’s plenty of things down here on earth that are worth looking at, and I bet none of these kids spare a second glance.  Glaciers, and rainforests, and snow-covered mountains…”  He shrugs again.

Laura feels out of her depth.  She feels like they’re having separate conversations in different languages.

“I dunno, L,” he sighs, gazing out at the lake.  “Sometimes it just feels like…why are we bothering to try and save the planet from alien invasions and stuff if we’re just gonna teach our kids to love the stars?”

“Even without help from aliens, those things are going to vanish, someday,” she says.  “It’s human nature to destroy things.  If we teach them to love the stars, there’ll still be something left for them when the forests burn and the glaciers melt.  Look at Hope—when she first got here, she barely knew what ice and snow and trees were; she couldn’t even imagine having enough of them together to make glaciers or rainforests.  But she knew what stars were.”

He scowls at her.  “Yeah, I didn’t expect you to understand.”

Frustrated, she just looks at him for a moment before getting up and jumping down to the lawn.

No, she doesn’t understand.  She can’t understand.  She’s a freak among freaks, little more than a broken doll.

She stalks her way down to the lake and sits in the grass.  Everything was simpler when she was locked away from the world, when all she had to do was what she was told to do.

“Too young to be makin’ that face, girlie,” Logan says softly, suddenly crouched beside her.

“What face?” she asks.

“That face like nobody’ll ever love ya and ya shouldn’t even bother.”

Embarrassed, she looks away from his piercing gaze.  “Maybe I make faces like that because I’m so young.  Useless, childish, hormonal little faces that go with useless, childish, hormonal thoughts.  Thoughts I didn’t have before I came here.”

He grunts.  “Don’t fuss over it so much.  Either he’ll come around, or he won’t.”

“Oh, thanks,” she mutters.

“Hate to break it to ya, but there really are plenty o’ fish in the sea, and you’ll have a few hundred years to catch another if this one gets away.  Best advice I can give ya is to not worry about fuckin’ it up.  Because I guarantee ya, it ain’t the end of the world if you mess up a few times tryin’ to woo somebody, and things just go better if ya don’t waste yer time worryin’.”

“I don’t want another fish.”  She stares moodily at the stars.  Sheepishly, she adds, “…I suppose everyone says that.”

“I ‘spect so.”

She hugs her knees.  “I just…  I mean, I try to be normal, I really do…”

“No sense in that,” he tells her.  “Woulda thought livin’ here woulda taught you by now, there’s no such thing as ‘normal.’  There’s just what we do ‘n don’t expect from people, and it’s better to get people to expect what you give than to give ‘em what they expect.”

She looks over at him and wonders (for the millionth time) whether this strange feeling of confused gratitude is what real families feel, what daughters feel for fathers.  “I wish I knew what he was thinking,” she mumbles.  “I wish I knew when sharing my defective freak thoughts will just piss him off.  I wish I knew what the hell I’m doing.”

He laughs and rubs a hand between her shoulderblades.  “Girl, ain’t a one of us knows what we’re doing when it comes to bein’ in love.  That’s why I say don’t worry about it.  And him bein’ a man under the age of thirty, you don’t wanna know what he’s thinkin’.”

Far behind, she hears someone coming down the ladder, jogging across the lawn with short strides.  The wind carries Hope’s scent to them before the girl calls out.

“Laura, what are you doing way down here?  I thought you were sitting with Julian.”

Laura just gives a miserable, self-deprecating little snort.

Hope plops down on on Laura’s other side.  “The lake is really pretty tonight.  It’s still amazing thinking that the water is actually okay to swim in.”

“Considering what we took you from, it sure is,” says Logan.

“Ooh, a shooting star!” Hope cries, pointing.  “Make a wish, Laura!”

Laura looks, and she hears the distant rumble of jet engines.  “It’s just a jet taking off from Danbury Municipal,” she sighs.

“And shooting stars aren’t stars at all,” Hope counters authoritatively.  “Airplanes count, if you really mean it.”

“Can’t hurt,” Logan says.  “Stick o’ dynamite goes a long way, when it comes to fishin’.”

So Laura closes her eyes and wishes that her fish won’t get away.

Hope presses close to her shoulder.  “Remember, you can’t tell it, or it won’t come true.”

She opens her eyes again, and can’t help grinning when she sees the earnest look on Hope’s face.  “And you’ve had a lot of these airplane wishes come true?”

“Just one.  But I really meant it.  Wade’s had a whole bunch come true.”

“For guns and Mexican food?” Laura teases.

“No, dummy.”  Hope rolls her eyes.  “He makes those kinds of wishes, too, but that’s different.  Nathan loves him, and he made that wish on an airplane instead of a real shooting star.”

Laura feels abruptly sorry for Wade, and then sorry for herself.  “I don’t think it’s the same.”

“Sure it is,” Hope says with a shrug.  “But if I tell you why, that’ll spoil everything.  We don’t want to jinx your wish.”

Laura stares at the little girl beside her, and for the first time she really believes that things will be better if she just stops worrying.  She leans back onto her hands and watches the red and white lights drift across the sky.

“I’m sure you’re right, princess.”

.End.

Chapter Text

The Traveler

Nathan was angry when he caught a glimpse of Bullseye (and Wolverine’s son) slinking into Wade’s apartment building.

He thought he played it off well, telling Wade and the girls to go on toward the park without him.  Expecting a confrontation, he paused by the front door to retrieve the plasma rifle stashed in the heavy armoire that served as a coat closet.

Nathan was downright furious when he saw that not only were Bullseye and Daken poking around in the bedroom, but two more uninvited guests were present, too.

He certainly didn’t like the fact that these strangers were dangerous enough to have a pair of psychotic mercenaries at their mercy.

And then the one with the swords started babbling about inter-dimensional travel (Nathan got a very firm sense of Wade-ness the moment the man opened his mouth), and Nathan decided that his day was officially ruined.

Now Daken and Bullseye are gone, and Nathan is standing in the doorway of Wade’s bedroom, holding a plasma rifle on a sheepish killer and his exasperated partner.

The stranger (Nathan doesn’t want to think of him as Wade—he’s too different, too pretty in a nasty, superficial way that reminds Nathan uncomfortably of the whole Façade mess) shuffles his feet awkwardly.  He glances at his hands, seems to realize for the first time that there are still swords protruding from his knuckles.  “Oh, uh…sorry,” he mumbles, and flexes his arms so that the blades slide in.

Nathan spares a moment to wonder about the mechanics of arm-length pieces of metal and the mobility of elbows—then he dismisses it, deciding that a world with the technology to support inter-dimensional travel could have collapsible blades (the Askani had certainly had access to similar things).  “I’m waiting for an explanation,” he says evenly.  “Who are you, and what are you doing in Wade’s room?”

“I can tell you’re gonna be exceptionally grumpy about this,” the stranger sighs.  “So let’s start with nice, calm, gunfire-free introductions.  Hi, Nate.  I’m Wade Wilson, but since that could lead to some confusion, you can call me the Traveler.  Yes, with a capital letter, it’s weird, but I’m kinda stuck with it, long story to do with accidentally bouncing between a few hundred alternate universes.  I’m waffling on whether I should capitalize the ‘the’ in front, but then it would feel kinda like a band name.”

“And your companion?”

“Jamie.”

“Logan,” the other man grunts in annoyed correction.

“As for why we’re here, we didn’t have any particular intention to arrive in your Wade’s room,” the Traveler goes on.  “We’re here for the cute little empty snowglobe he has stashed next to the porn.”

Nathan’s eyes dart downward before he can help himself—he almost shoots the Traveler when the man suddenly bends to pick up the crystal sphere.  “What is that?” he asks.

The Traveler winces.

The expression translates itself in Nathan’s brain automatically as Wade-speak for ‘the explanation is long and detailed and likely to get me yelled at.’

And then Wade suddenly leans around Nathan’s elbow and says, “Oh, this is why you came back.”

Startled, Nathan flinches.  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Wade.”

“Dude, why are people always so shocked and dismayed to find that I can do the stealth thing?” Wade mutters.

“I know, right?” agrees the Traveler.  “Do they let you drive?  Because they don’t let me drive.”

“No; they don’t let me fly, either.  I don’t get it, man—you’ve flown one aircraft, you’ve pretty much sorta-kinda flown ‘em all, right?  If Murdock from A-Team can do it, it can’t be that hard.”

“Exactly!”  The Traveler nudges Logan with his elbow.  “See, Jamie, I told you you were overreacting.  Flying that over-computerized hunk of junk with my brain?  Complete cakewalk compared to figuring out how to fly an Apache.”

“I’m never riding in anything you’re flying, Wade,” Logan growls.

Pouting, the Traveler looks away.  “What if it was a choice between a helicopter and a nuclear explosion?”

Logan raises his eyebrows.  “Wade, you can teleport.  You can teleport with a passenger.”

“I’ll have a good comeback for that later.”

Wade holds up his hands in a ‘time out’ signal.  “Since you’re me, you know I hate to interrupt adorable boyfriend-on-boyfriend bickering, but can somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”

The Traveler holds up the crystal ball again.  “This thing.  It probably showed up all on its own at some point, maybe in a flicker of blue light.  Right?”

“Like a timeslide,” Wade confirms.  “Yeah, back in December.”

Nathan frowns over the fact Wade never mentioned this before.

“Well, its name is Eight-Ball, and it’s a photonic-resonance-based sentient computer.  I don’t actually know how much I’m allowed to tell you guys—”

Nathan bristles and starts to argue, but the Traveler holds up his free hand and keeps talking.

“—because traveling through the timestream, especially laterally, can cause all kinds of weird shit to happen and we don’t want your timeline to destabilize and collapse.  Anyway, this doohicky is supposed to help you save the world.  I’ll teach you how to use it later.  For now, you just hold onto it and go play while the time-travelly-types have a talk.”

“I resent the condescension, other-me,” Wade complains, but holds out his hand and takes the crystal.

“Hold onto that,” the Traveler says again.  “You’ve probably been having trouble with mercs and villains lately, right?  Ninety percent chance it’s because of that.  Make sure they don’t get it.”

“Righty-oh, Gandalf,” Wade replies with a lazy salute.  “Secret, safe, got it.  I’ll leave you three jerks to yap about the space-time continuum, because I’m late for a very imporant date.”

“Be careful,” Nathan tells him, still keeping his eyes (and plasma rifle) on their ‘guests.’

When he hears the front door click shut, he backs out of the bedroom doorway and nods toward the living room.

The Traveler thoughtfully closes Wade’s sock (and porn) drawer with his foot on his way out.  “Quick question—just a formality, since I recently had a bad experience with an Evil Nate—what are your thoughts on ruling the world?”

Nathan watches the pair prowl to the couch and sit.  “That anyone who thinks he can or should is probably insane.”

“I like that.  ‘Or should.’  That’s a good addendum.  Gets rid of that little loophole you usually leave yourself.”

“Well, I’ve been told more than once that I don’t understand enough about people or human nature to properly lead more than about six at a time.”

“God, it’s a bona fide fuckin’ miracle,” laughs the Traveler.  “You may be the most sensible Nate Dayspring I have ever met.”

“Summers,” Nathan mutters under his breath.

The Traveler blinks at him placidly and reaches into a cargo pocket.  He draws out another crystal ball, this one slightly milky in color.  “Hey, Effcee—you still awake?”

~Yeah,~ the thing says in a synthesized voice.  ~But being awake in a pocket’s kinda boring.~

“Which Nate is this?”

~Nathan Dayspring WM339-Gamma.~

The Traveler gestures.  “There you have it,” he says.  “According to the Network, and therefore most of the multiverse, it’s Dayspring.”

Sighing, Nathan shoulders his rifle.  “All right, fine.  Now explain to me what this ‘Network’ is, and what those crystal computers are.”

After a moment of staring in silence, the Traveler closes both hands over the sphere and sets it down on the coffee table.  “Since Wade recognized the signs of a timeslide, I’m gonna assume you’ve done the time-travel thing.  I’ll assume that means it’s safe to go ahead and give you the Cliff Notes on the timestream and the Network.”

Nathan raises an eyebrow and waits.

“Time doesn’t flow in just one direction or speed, and it deals in possibilities.  With me so far?”

“It’s the driving principle of timestream theory and timesliding, yes,” Nathan says impatiently.

The Traveler holds up a finger.  “My God, you are being really, really bitchy.  Is it because of your whole ‘I’d rather talk to your face instead of the projector’ thing?  Because I hate to do it, but you’re one of the only people who’s never made a big deal outta my looks, so I’ll turn the thing off if it makes you less pissy.”

He considers it.  Now that it’s come up, he doesn’t know why he assumed the handsome face was real.  “It would certainly go a long way toward assuring your honesty.”

When the false face flickers out of existence, they sit in silence for several seconds.

It’s more obvious that the marring of this Wade’s face was done by a surgeon’s hand, and that sets off a curl of anger in Nathan’s gut.  “Was it Killebrew?” he finds himself asking.

“No.  Didn’t get a Killebrew.  To make up for it, Cornelius was a little less sane, and tried to stick a lot more mutant powers in me.  And a demented-ass Speak-and-Spell in my brain.  Apparently, that makes me suitable for saving universes.”

Nathan nods.

The Traveler makes a face.  “Okay, moving away from that unhappy little almost-flashback…  When I say ‘the Network,’ I mean ‘the Fate Timestream Maintenance Network,’ a huge-ass neural network that keeps the timestream stable.  The crystal balls are nodes of that big ol’ neural network, so they’re called ‘Fate Nodes.’  I dunno why the names are so dorky, I didn’t come up with ‘em.  Q said ‘Fate’ is spelled out ‘F-473,’ y’know, all leet and junk, so I’m sure it’s supposed to stand for something technical.  Anyway, the Nodes can do all kinds of cool shit, including lateral timeslides—slides between alternate universes—and timeline extrapolation—predicting the future.  We—me ‘n Jamie,” he clarifies by gesturing to the two of them with his thumb, “—came to your universe to switch on Eight-Ball and add a few security features before we run off to make a certain dimension-hopping baby-killer very dead.”

Nathan frowns.  “And why are you doing it?”

“To save the multiverse,” the Traveler replies in a bored tone.  “And yeah, because Forecaster promised to take me to meet Bea Arthur when we get done.”

With another nod, Nathan finally relaxes.  “I believe you.”

“Oh, thanks, Priscilla, means a lot t’ me…” snorts the Traveler, getting to his feet and picking the Node back up.

Logan looks from one of them to the other.  “Jeez, you really have a hell of a love-hate thing with this guy.  And he’s seriously your usual boyfriend?”

“Yep.  Through most of the multiverse.  If a Wade Wilson has a steady man, it’s always a Nate.  Now you know why I wanna get this shit over with and go home to our nice no-Nate world.”

Nathan grimaces.  “I’ll help.  But on one condition.”

The Traveler gives him a deeply suspicious glare.  “Well?”

He gathers his courage.  “Wade’s mind…isn’t exactly in perfect working order.”

“You say that like it’s news,” grunts Logan, earning a nasty kick to the shin in retaliation.

“I want you to fix it, if it can be fixed.”

After a moment of silence, the Traveler only laughs derisively.

“Please,” Nathan says, gripping the Traveler’s arm tightly.

“Watch the goods, pal,” Logan growls, standing up.

Nathan spares him a glance.  “Please, Wade, I don’t beg, but I’m begging you.  You know how it is with me—everything I try to fix ends up worse than when I started.  He wants to be able to trust himself with Hope.  You’ve been to places with technology beyond anything I’ve ever seen…” he says, gesturing toward the Node.  “You must have some idea how to fix this.”

Slowly, the Traveler shrugs off Nathan’s hand (bruises of desperation fade from his pale skin like condensation evaporating).  “Okay, jeez.  Don’t get all weepy on me, Priscilla, you know what your schmoop does to my overall sense of self-worth.”  His hand flies over the glass sphere in his hand, tapping and turning and flipping it on his fingers, lighting little symbols all over its surface.

~Really?~ the thing says reproachfully.  ~You put me to sleep for all of three minutes?~

“I didn’t feel like dealing with interruptions, Effcee,” snorts the Traveler.  “Is there a way to fix whatever’s wrong with WM339’s brain?”

~Clarify WM339,~ it retorts snidely.

“Wade Wilson, you smartass,” the Traveler says, and bounces the thing off the floor with a bell-like chime.

~Ouch, ouch!  Violence is not the answer, Wade.~

“Always worked pretty damn well for me.  Answer the question, or I’ll chuck you again.”

~Hmph.  There’s more than one way to ‘fix’ a brain.  Do you want it to work the way it should?  Do you want it to work the way it used to?  Do you want it to work reeeeeally well?~

“Well?” the Traveler asks Nathan.  “Do you want Dumb Wade, Smart Wade, or Evil Genius Wade?”

“I’m not convinced you got the order right,” Nathan huffs.  “Can we get it working the way it should?”

The surface of the sphere flashes with lights for a moment.

“Hey, I don’t like that thoughtful pause,” Logan says.  “You better not be planning one of yer ‘evasive responses.’”

~For your information, Grumpy Bear, I had to scan Keeper 176’s brain in order to formulate the most accurate response.  So nyah.  It looks doable.  We’ll need the Node.  And somebody with laser refractors and particle accelerators and stuff.  Y’know, physics-y things.  Do you have a moral preference between Tony Stark and Reed Richards?~

“How about neither?” the Traveler grunts.

~You’re being unreasonable, Wade!  We need one or the other, so pick one.~

“Tony’s probably busy,” Nathan puts in.  “But I think Reed said he had the week freed up for pet projects and family time.”

“Family time,” scoffs the Traveler.  “With his parenting skills, there’s not much difference to him being there or not.”

Nathan doesn’t agree, but he knows how futile it is to argue with a Wade who isn’t hostile to him, let alone one that is.

The Traveler points a finger dramatically into the air and flips on his image inducer (or holographic projector or whatever he’s calling it).  “To the Baxter Building!”

“To the park,” Nathan corrects.

“Unless you were maybe plannin’ on fixin’ the guy’s brain without him?” Logan adds.

“Beam it out, fix it, beam it back?” the Traveler tries with a shrug.  “Like he’d miss it?”

Nathan folds his arms over his chest.  “Hope would miss it.”

“Oh, sure, play the adorable-adopted-kid card…”  Sulking, the Traveler leads the way out of the building.  “Y’know, even the evil versions of her are cute.  She does snarky very well.  You, you’re just an asshole when you’re evil.  Not that Bloodthirsty-BDSM-My-Name-Is-War-But-You-Can-Call-Me-Master Nate from one of the Apocalypse dimensions wasn’t also completely hot…but Nates manage ‘annoying prick’ and ‘sexiest man alive’ simultaneously all over the multiverse.”

“Excuse you, darlin’,” mutters Logan.

But the Traveler just laughs and nudges his companion.  “Don’t sweat it, Jamie.  You rate at least ‘sexy sturdy fetish toy.’  And you have the added bonus of being less than half the obnoxious jerk Nate is.”

“I apologize for my very existence,” Nathan says with heavy sarcasm.

The Traveler stops and jabs a finger into the flesh side of Nathan’s torso (it’s undoubtedly going to bruise, and Wade is sure to ask odd questions).  “You are more officious and interfering than the worst mother-in-law, you are constitutionally incapable of admitting when you’re wrong, you have all the romantic sensibilities of a concussed llama, you’re a boring father and a lousy rescuer, and almost every multiverse incarnation of you that I can think of would only lose the title of ‘world’s worst boyfriend’ to a drunk crackhead polygamist who beat his girlfriends.  And you already mentioned your compulsive attempts to fix shit that always end in shit being more fucked up than ever.”

The words sting—even moreso because, from what the Traveler has said, the multiverse doesn’t really give Wade many other options for a lasting relationship.  “I don’t think I’m actually that bad,” Nathan protests.  “As far as being a bad boyfriend, anyway.  I was always a good husband.  I’m certainly getting better at the boyfriend part.”

Snorting, the Traveler turns and continues down the sidewalk.  “As for the rest of it, there’s a reason none of the Keepers are Nates.”

~Ooh, we used to have one,~ says the crystal ball.  ~The one who built the Database.~

“And he constitutes what percentage of total Nates?  Go ahead and count all the subject designations separately.”

~Querying the Database…~ the thing says, and twinkles blue.  ~Approximately .01%.  Yeah, most versions of Nathan Summers, Nathan Dayspring, and Nate Grey have unacceptably high levels of chronometric entropy.  Prone to changing their minds and instigating fresh subject diversions.~

“Yes, thank you, whatever-your-name-was,” Nathan sighs.

~I know the introductions were hurried, Nate, but I can’t believe you don’t even remember my name!  I’m hurt, I really am.  I am Forecaster, a sentient node of the F-473 Timestream Maintenance Network.  If it makes you feel better, at least you’re not the version of Nathan Dayspring that made sure Wade died a lonely, pathetic loser by precipitating the near-extinction of the human race.~

“It really doesn’t,” Nathan huffs.  “The fact that there is a version of me that would do something like that is very distressing.”

~Well, you made world-saving-endeavors possible by letting your Wade babysit Hope.  Yay, the odds of the survival of the human race in this timestream bundle are 31% higher than in neighboring branches!~

“Hey, no spoilers, Effcee,” the Traveler says, shaking the thing slightly.  “Don’t need him trying anything dumb…er than usual.”

While they wait for a crosswalk, Nathan draws a deep breath.  “So…you’re very knowledgeable when it comes to timestream travel?”

The Traveler glances at him.  “Yeah.  I’ve heard a lot of lectures about timestream theory.  Some from you, some from Forge, some from Hope—and she oughtta know, since apparently timestream theory is all about resonance.  Rule number one—a timeline can only be erased by having its resonance phase leveled.  In most cases, that means destroying the world or everyone in it.  So if you go back in time to try and save the world, it’s a wasted effort, because the world’s already been saved.”

“That doesn’t make a lick o’ sense,” Logan says.

“Jamie, shut up, the future-tech people are talking.  Rule number two—exerting a conscious effort to change a known event will actually create a resonance with the event, and tends to cause the event.  That’s a reduced-entropy-paradox-thingy, I forget the right term.”

By trying to end Apocalypse’s reign prematurely, Nathan may have somehow ensured it in some timeline.  “Wonderful,” he sighs.

“And rule three,” the Traveler says, as the signal changes, “is that stable time loops only matter to people alive on both ends.  They happen every day in places with time travel, and the timestream barely even hiccups.  Hell, most of the time only the Database Administrator can tell the difference between a subject that’s in a loop and one that’s not.”

“And because of the second rule, he’d only be able to get out of the loop if he had no idea he was in it in the first place?” Nathan guesses.

“Pretty much,” the Traveler confirms.  “So when he asks you if he’s in one, the only sensible answer is ‘no.’”

Nathan doesn’t like the sound of that.  “Is he?”

“Yes and no.  He can’t timeslide.  Wades don’t timeslide.”

“You clearly do.”

“I’m defective.  It’s a standing rule—it has to do with our construction on the chronometric level, something about stream-spanning limited omniscience, multi-media empires, fanworks, and invisible walls.  We’re pretty much all the same resonance, so if we timeslide, we get mixed up with each other.  If we want to travel through time or dimensions, we have to use something besides sliding tech.  Since he can’t timeslide and I’m pretty sure that’s the only non-magical time travel this place will come up with for a while, he gets to sit still while the timestream loops around him.”

“Oh, no,” Nathan breathes, and he suddenly realizes he’s contributing to the futures he saw.

“Oh, yes.  That loop is crucial to the work of Wade’s Node, apparently.  It’s fixing a really nasty problem caused by some Bishop besides the one we’re after, and that’ll only happen if it’s here now, in the past, even though it won’t get built for another couple thousand years.”

“There’s no way around it?” Nathan asks, even as the Traveler hurries toward Wade and Hope and Inez (they’re sitting at Alice’s statue with a picnic lunch spread out around her on the mushroom table).

“If there were, and I told you, it’d defeat the purpose,” the Traveler retorts, and knocks on Wade’s skull.  “Message for Wade’s Brain:  you’re off to see the Wizard.”

“But I don’t like Kansas,” Wade says.

“Borin’ as hell,” says Inez.  “Flatter ‘n a coyote on the Interstate.”

“What’s a kai-oat?” asks Hope.

“Like a dog, but dumber.”

But it seems the Traveler is no longer in a patient mood.  He sets a hand down heavily on Wade’s shoulder.  “Look, pal, that shiny crystal ball is gonna get these nice ladies killed unless we get it locked down ay-sap, and somebody begged me to get your brain fixed first.  Let’s go.”

.End.

Chapter Text

The Emerald City

Reed Richards already has a labcoat on and about half a zillion gadgets set up when he buzzes them into his lab.

Wade turns to Hope and nudges her toward an edge of the room.  “This is gonna be really super-duper boring, precious, so how ‘bout you go chill with your buddy Franklin?”

She stares up at him for a while, but doesn’t say anything.  Instead, she obediently goes over to where Frank is absently toying with what looks like a braille Rubik’s cube.

“Franklin told us you’d be coming, even before you called,” Richards says.  When he sees the Traveler playing with Forecaster, his eyes light up.  “Oh, my…  Is that one of them?  The photonic-resonance-based computers?”

“Introduce yourself, Effcee,” says the Traveler.

~Hello, Reed Richards WM332.  I’m Forecaster, the hundred-and-nineteenth Node of the F-473 Timestream Maintenance Network.~

“Fascinating…fascinating…” Richards mutters.  “WM332—that’s a designation of some sort, isn’t it?  A database entry?”

~Yep.  The letters are for your timestream bundle.  I’m not really allowed to tell you anything else.  Not yet.  Anyhow, I can get Eight-ball to do some passive genetic restructuring stuff, assuming you have the right wavelength of laser on hand.~

“Passive genetic restructuring!” Richards echoes giddily.  “Absolutely fascinating!  Is it all right if I take some measurements for future study?”

~Well, shucks, I guess you could try…this timeline is pretty fricken dinosaurian, though, so it’s not like you’ve got the right materials or power sources to do anything with whatever data you get.  And this is only gonna work because it’s a Wade, and he’s Eight-ball’s Keeper.~

Instead of discouraging the mad scientist, it seems to make him even more excited.  He stretches an arm to fetch some kind of StarkTech digital notepad from across the room and starts writing rapidly.  “I see.  Is there some sort of genetic quirk of Wade Wilson that carries across alternate dimensions?  Perhaps something that permeates the fabric of space-time itself?”

Wade makes a face.  “I hope not.  Permeating, really?  Ew.  Sounds kinda…incontinent.”

The Traveler snickers.

~Ummm…actually, we don’t really know how Wades do it.  They’re special.  They kind of violate almost everything we know about how the timestream works.  But the Core knows how to make Nodes match their Keepers, and from there we can do some really cool stuff with resonance.  I mean, I said it was ‘passive genetic restructuring,’ but it’s really a special kind of re-tuning, not that you’d know what I mean by that.  And I probably should shut up now, because I think you aren’t supposed to know this kinda stuff.~

Richards nods while he writes.  “A phasic re-tuning process…something based in string-theory…possibly related to the concepts of hyperbolic chronometry and an individual probablistic chronometric wavelength.  That would both connect and distinguish separate versions of a person in alternate dimensions.  Theoretically, a person could have such similar wavelengths in different realities as to gain special knowledge, share experiences, perhaps even ‘travel’ in some metaphysical way…explains clairvoyance, déjà vu, premonition, twin bonds…”

“Okay, wow, yeah,” says Wade.  “That’s enough of that shit, before you turn the universe inside out and unmake existence or something.”

“Sorry,” laughs Richards.  “I just get so carried away sometimes.  I have to show this to Tony later, he’ll love it.”

The Traveler frowns.  “Is he allowed to do that?” he asks Forecaster.

~…DBA says yeah.  So, I guess…shrug?~

“Don’t emote, you’re worse than my stupid yellow boxes.”

Wade perks up.  “You have Lybbie, too?”

“…I am never calling them that,” mutters the Traveler.  “Maybe Sybbie.  Or Faybie.”

“Faybie?”

“Fucking annoying yellow boxes.”

Rude much? says a very small and sulky yellow box in Wade’s peripheral view.

“Moving right along,” Nate says loudly.  “Our goal at the moment is to set up the equipment.”

Wade glances toward the kids to check on Hope.  Frank seems to be explaining something—possibly his latest experimental shrink ray or space laser or whatever…the kid’s like MacGyver meets Doctor Evil.

By the time Wade looks back, the Traveler is writing something (or maybe drawing something) on Richards’ cool StarkTech clipboard.  “He’s not gonna be the same, of course,” he’s saying.

That causes Wade some minor concern.

‘Not the same’ as in…smarter?  Or ‘not the same’ as in ‘shaped like a Pokémon,’ or some shit?

“What do you mean?” Nate demands.

The Traveler eyes Nate like he’s the most annoying person in the world (which…okay, yeah, he totally is sometimes).  “Duh.  How do you think your personality would change if you suddenly had more-than-perfect memory?”

That sounds totally leet!

“More-than-perfect?” says Wade excitedly.  “Like…remembering things I have no way of remembering?  Because that would be badass with awesome sauce.”

“Busy, talk later,” the Traveler replies distractedly.

The technobabbling starts up, and Wade tunes out.

Giant laser thingies get moved around the room, a creepy-looking table (complete with restraints—is there some whacked-out mad scientist emporium that sells shit like that?) is set up in the middle, gadgets and whatsits get hooked up and programmed.

At some point, the Traveler and his pet Wolverine go over and talk to the kids for a bit.

Wade’s hand itches for a weapon when the guy pets Hope’s hair, but he figures even an evil version of himself wouldn’t stoop to hurting a cute little kid (he’d scare some of them, sure, especially the mean ones, but not hurt them).

Then the Traveler scrubs a wrist over his eyes and stands.  “Since Eight-ball’s gotta be awake for this,” he says as he comes back to where Wade and Nate are, “might as well teach you how to wake him up.”

Wade pulls the Node out of his pocket.

The Traveler glares at Nate.  “Fuck off somewhere, Priscilla.  You, of all people, have no business knowing how to operate a timestream-cataloguing super-computer.”

Nate sighs, and Wade almost wants to apologize for his other self’s bitchiness…but really, he has a good point.  So Nate goes to help Richards plug things in and calibrate stuff.

“You’ll need light,” says the Traveler.  “It’s a failsafe.  Hold it up and turn it until a grid lights up.”

Wade turns to face the windows and looks through the Node.  When he finds the angle, it’s beautiful—the twinkle of indirect sunlight flares briefly before dimming, and glowing white lines trace their way across the surface of the sphere.

“The thing works on three-button commands.  Top row on the back, just right of center.  Second row from the top on the left.  Bottom row on the front, two columns right of center.  They should all light up blue.  If you get a different color, you fucked up and you have to start over.”

Obediently, Wade looks through the grid and finds the squares described by the Traveler.  He gets it right on the first try and grins like a fucking moron.  And then he gapes at the thing, because it’s back to being beautiful—those unfamiliar symbols Weasel talked about are sliding and flickering all over the thing, and if he watches them long enough, it’s like seeing music turned into dancing lights.  As for the symbols, they look like what you’d get if you crossed Thai with something Tolkien came up with and then turned it sideways.

“Okay, now find the little one that’s holding still and has a curly thing in the middle that looks like a lower-case rho.”

“This one?”

The Traveler leans over his shoulder.  “Yeah.  Means ‘hope.’  Take the Node in your right hand and put your thumb over that symbol.”

“Okay.”

“Now turn it right side up and pretend it’s a knife.”

Whiskey tango foxtrot?

For a moment, Wade only stares at his counterpart.  “You mean like…throw it at somebody?”

“No, moron.  Just think to yourself ‘I’m bored and I have a knife.’”

He almost makes another sarcastic retort, but the Traveler looks like he’s been having pretty much the worst day in the history of bad days.

Then the Traveler pulls a knife from his boot and starts to flip it between his fingers.

As he watches, Wade feels the twitch of reflexive motion in his forearm, the tingle of restlessness in his palm, and he starts to fidget with the Node.  Some of the movements are a little awkward, because he’s used to doing them with pens and knives and silverware, not with baseball-sized glass globes.

Something inside the thing flashes white for a moment, and a synthesized voice speaks.  ~Greetings, subject designate Wade Wilson WM339-Omega.  Node 119 Forecaster has transmitted parameters for minor cerebral re-tuning on the genetic level.  This unit is ready to serve.~

“Cool beans,” Wade says.

The Traveler takes the Node.  “Eight-ball, do you acknowledge me as an authorized physical-contact user?”

A blue light twinkles in the depths.  ~Yes, subject designate Wade Wilson BT562-Omega.~

He frowns at it.

Wade watches closely.

Maybe something’s wrong with it?

“The Auditor said you were supposed to be super-smart and super-sentient.  You sound an awful lot like a Dumb Node.  Why?”

~Certain artificial limitations were placed upon this unit shortly after construction by its manufacturer, the computerized collective intelligence known as the Quartermaster.  It may be possible to amend this situation with the appropriate Keeper commands.~

“Not my job,” snorts the Traveler.  “For now, there’s a crazy asshole hunting Nodes.  So I want you to lockdown into full standalone mode.”

~Independent operation would further hamper this unit’s capabilities.  Resonance extrapolation accuracy would fall by 11.3%, range by more than 23%.~

“And the multiverse will go boom if the Hunter manages to find you by tracing your transmissions to the Network.  Don’t fucking argue with me, you glob of resonant filth, or I’ll teleport out over the ocean and drop you in the fucking Mariana Trench.”

The Node beeps and flashes red.  ~This unit finds your attitude objectionable, subject designate Wade Wilson BT562-Omega.  However, the requested lockdown has been enstated.  This unit is currently functioning in full standalone mode.~

The Traveler sets the thing down next to the lasers.  Then he hooks an arm over Wade’s shoulders and huddles, close and conspiratory.  “One thing, before we do this,” he says, and his dark eyes are intent on Wade.

“What?”

“If you were in a stable time loop, would you want to know?”

…the hell kinda question is that?

Wade shifts.  “Well…I guess…probably, yeah.  If I was.  Why, am I?”

The Traveler fiddles with the knife in his hand, flipping it.  “You?  No.  Listen…things are probably gonna feel really different when your brain’s fixed, okay?  Like I said, you’re gonna have a way-better-than-average memory.  And you’ll be able to do math again.  Can you even remember what that was like?”

Bristling indignantly, Wade gives his counterpart the one-finger-salute.  “Screw you, I know enough to count my paychecks and figure interest rates.”

The Traveler smirks.  “And before Killebrew fucked you up, you could’ve done that in your sleep.”

“…okay, what?”

“Seriously.  I’m talking Tony-Stark-and-Reed-Richards level math.”

“Where the hell did I learn that?  I’m pretty sure I dropped out of high school sometime around ‘y equals x plus three.’”

The Traveler just keeps staring at him for a while.  “No one taught you.  You just know it.  You opened up a book once to look up all the words, but they were in your head even before you knew what they meant.  It’s the same way no one taught you how to shoot a gun or throw a knife.  More-than-perfect memory.  It’s a Wade thing.  There’s just some stuff we all know how to do.”

That’s…kinda creepy.  Like, on the order of Magneto’s weird obsession with teenage boys creepy.

Suddenly uncomfortable (and yeah, a little scared), Wade pulls away from the Traveler’s side.  “And…and this isn’t gonna hurt or nothin’, right?”

“You’d have to be a damn idiot not to expect this to hurt,” the Traveler points out.

He breathes a sigh of relief.  “Good.  If you’d lied and said ‘nah, it won’t hurt a bit,’ I woulda been really pissed off.”

Smirking, the Traveler jerks his chin toward the creepy table.  “Hop on, Wade.”

He does (with some reluctance), and Richards hums a happy tune while strapping him in.

“Okay, Stretch, let ‘er rip.  Everybody else, cover your eyes and look away from the horrible blinding laser beams.”

Richards settles some welding goggles over his eyes and pulls a big lever.  Lasers start to hit the crystal ball, sending brilliant sparks of colored light all around the room.

When Nate fixed Wade’s brain years ago on Providence, it had been an overwhelming rush of sights and sounds and feelings and time hitting him all at once, pressure and discomfort and dizziness, like going through a centrifuge on a high setting.

When Reed Richards’ funky photonic resonator and the nifty crystal ball fix his brain right, he feels like someone is steamrolling his entire body.  Fortunately, he blacks out almost immediately.

In his mind, he sees lights again…the dancing symbols from before.  He knows he’s never learned to read this weird language, knows he’s never seen it until today, but he understands what they mean now.  ‘Flight’ just zipped by, and there’s ‘ocean’ down to the left.  That one’s ‘fire,’ and the one next to it is ‘light.’

Then they all flicker into nothingness, before two final symbols pulse white and disappear.

World.  Death.

Yeah.  Totally ominous.

Gradually, he regains consciousness.  He feels the cool of the air conditioning first, then starts to hear voices.

“How do we know if it worked?”

“I could set up a cerebral imager—”

“He’s waking up!” Hope says.

Wade opens his eyes.

They’re all gathered around and staring at him.

He’s tempted to quote Firefly.

“Wade?” says Nate, reaching for his hand.  “How do you feel?”

“Smarter?” he tries.  “Is that a legitimate answer?”

The Traveler looks thoughtful for a moment.  Then he says, “Eight hundred and eighteen times three hundred and twelve.”

“Two hundred fifty-five thousand, two hundred and sixteen,” Wade replies automatically.  He blinks.  “Okay, what the fuck?”

“It worked,” the Traveler announces, and wanders over to where Eight-ball is still sitting in front of all the lasers.

“He’s all better now?” Hope asks.

“Yup.”

She squeals and bounces in place.  “Yay, Wade can come live with us!”  Then she scampers to the Traveler and attaches herself to his side like a limpet.  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Careful sitting up,” Richards suggests.

Wade lets them help him, and his skull still takes a moment to throb and spin.  Then it clears, like healing from a crowbar to the forehead.

The Traveler has lifted Hope to his hip, and passes her to Nate.  “Here, I’ve gotta have another chat with Wade.  You stick with your dad and—”

“Nathan is not my dad!” Hope snaps.

He placidly pats her on the head.  “Okay, rephrasing.  Stay here and keep Nate outta trouble while I go have a chat with your dad.”

Something like hysteria bubbles in the pit of Wade’s stomach.  He’s someone’s dad now.  Hope’s dad.  That’s a million times cooler than the more-than-perfect memory.  He follows the Traveler over to the window, away from everyone else.  When the Traveler holds out Eight-ball, he takes it.

“Be careful with that thing,” the Traveler says, tapping the Node’s surface.

“Why?” Wade asks.  “I mean, it can tell the future, more or less…so wouldn’t it be able to tell us if somebody was coming to get it and kill us all and destroy the world?”

The Traveler peers at Wade with narrowed eyes.  “Maybe.  But knowing the future can do things to a guy’s sanity.  And I’m not sure how sentient the thing still is, even locked down.  Think about that—if it can predict the future and it’s got a will of its own, it might do shit like keep secrets from you to get you to do what it wants.”

“How is that bad news?  You said the thing’s part of some big computer bent on preserving the universe, right?”

“There are two kinds of people that the Network pays close attention to,” says the Traveler.  “People with high chronometric resonance and people with high chronometric entropy.  High resonance means they’re likely to do things to a timeline that will stabilize it—they make the world a better place, they fix it when it gets messed up, whatever.  High entropy means they’re likely to do things that will destabilize shit.  If a timeline loses enough stability, it collapses, which changes the stability of other timelines, and the only way to fix things once that happens is to make other timelines collapse.”

Wade nods slowly.  “Like pruning a tree.”

“I was gonna say ‘like playing Jenga,’ but the tree thing is better.  So the good news is that Hope has high resonance—the Network will do what it can to take care of her.”

“And the bad news?”

“Most Nates, yours included, are high entropy.  You’re probably lucky nobody’s showed up to assassinate him for the good of the timestream, and it’s entirely possible that Node of yours could try to get him killed.”

Wade drops the thing and wipes his hand compulsively against his shirt.

The Traveler picks it up with a sigh and holds it out.  “But you’re this thing’s Keeper.  For whatever reason, the Network thinks you need this thing to save your world.  So, as one Wade to another, I’m gonna tellya that you should hold onto it, maybe turn it on once a year or so and ask it if the world’s in peril yet…but don’t get caught up trying to solve all mankind’s problems with it.”

“I don’t want it,” Wade chokes, backing up.

“For once in your worthless life, stop being so goddamn selfish,” growls the Traveler.

He flinches, feeling more scolded than even Nate has ever managed to make him feel.

“You hold onto it, you use it, maybe Nate dies—so what?  He dies all the time, and when he’s not busy dying, he’s busy abandoning you or being disappointed in you.  But that thing can and will save Hope’s life, and Hope is about a zillion times more important than Nate.  So just suck it up and be careful.”

Reluctantly, Wade holds out his hands, and the Traveler drops Eight-ball into them.  “’S easy for you to say, you’ve got a not-Nate boyfriend,” he grumbles.

“If things get really bad and you absolutely have to unlock it, don’t trust it.”

Wade looks at the innocuous lump of glass and feels nauseated.

The Traveler clutches at his shoulder, metal-boned fingers digging in painfully.  “Pay attention, Wade.  I’m serious.  Some of these things are about as close as you can get to ‘evil’ without having Dr. Doom call you up for a tea party.  Nodes can’t lie, but the sentient ones are very good at hiding and bending the truth.  Ask it very smart, very pointed questions and expect very precise, very literal answers.”

“Like a genie?”

“Exactly.  This Node is very important, and if you unlock it, people will start showing up to kill you for it.  People from other universes.”

“For serious?  It’ll draw crazy time-travelling murderers?”

“Like flies,” the Traveler mutters.  “Nodes give off a special resonant signal in any case, but reconnecting it to the core processor will make that signal show up in all kinds of weird timelines.  Now, it’s been real, and I wish me ‘n Jamie could stick around and enjoy the scenery, but we’ve got a subject designation of Lucas Bishop to murder for the good of the multiverse.  Peace out.”

Feeling suddenly anxious and subdued, Wade follows his counterpart back to the group.

“Thanks for cooperating, everybody,” the Traveler is saying while he pulls his Node out of his pocket.  “Richards—thanks for not managing to blow us all to kingdom come.  Effcee, let’s hit the Core and see if we can find the Hunter.”

There’s a flash of bluish light, and the two visitors vanish.

In Nate’s arms, Hope squirms and reaches for Wade, so he takes her.

“Let’s go home, Daddy,” she says.

Okay.  The hell with doomsaying, possibly-evil super-computers, and nasty foreboding almost-premonitions.

Wade Wilson is officially the happiest man on the planet.

.End.

Chapter Text

Secrets

Hope watches Nathan and Wade and the other Wade talk with Doctor Richards.  Franklin is supposed to be ‘keeping her occupied’ so the grown-ups can have their little discussion.  Instead, he’s explaining what they’re talking about.

“It has to do with changing things in his DNA,” he tells her.  He has tried using more technical terms, but she doesn’t understand enough about science just yet, so he’s been working his way down to her level.

“Oh,” she says.  “Okay.  Because it’s the funny parts from Mister Logan that made his brain work wrong.  That makes sense.  Will he still heal fast?”

Franklin frowns for a moment.  “Dad isn’t sure.  But the thing is.”

She looks over to where Wade is fidgeting with Eight-Ball and the other Wade is holding the other crystal-ball-thing.  “Which one?”

“The one that’s lit up.  The other one isn’t thinking.”

The other Mister Logan walks over and crouches next to them.  “Hey, kids.”

“Hello, Mister Logan,” they both reply.

“Oh, you’ve heard of me,” he says with a grin.  “They tell me the version you guys have is shorter and meaner.”

Hope snorts.  “He’s not nearly as mean as he pretends.  I don’t have any trouble with him, because he has a weakness for redheads and little girls.”

He rolls his eyes.  “Yeah, Wade keeps tellin’ me I’m the same way.”

“Are you?”

He chuckles.  “I guess I am.”

She looks over at the other grown-ups.  Nathan and Wade look excited.  The other Wade looks tired…so tired…  “How long have you been looking for us?”

“Hm…maybe a little less than a couple of hours now,” says Mister Logan.

“Then why does he look so tired, if it’s only been a couple of hours?”

He doesn’t say anything, and when she looks at him, he seems surprised.

“It’s because of Nathan,” Franklin says, and they both look at him.  “Being around Nathan makes him think of too many things at once.”

“Yes,” says other Wade, startling them.

“You gotta stop sneakin’ up on me, darlin’,” mutters Mister Logan.

“Stop thinking of me as ‘other-Wade,’ Hope,” he tells her with a lopsided grin.  “It’s way too dorky.  If the wording gets confusing, just call me ‘the Traveler.’  Everybody else does.”

The Traveler.  It settles somewhere in the back of her mind, makes itself at home, fits like there was a certain little space just for it.

The Traveler settles down beside them with one knee up and the other leg stretched out.  “Hey, princess,” he says, just a greeting.  Like he hasn’t been hanging around with them for twenty minutes now.

“Hey, Wade,” she says, and sits down to pat his leg.  “You look tired.”

“I am tired.  But that’s not important.  I’ve got some secrets I have to tell you, and I need you to promise you won’t tell anybody else.”

She looks at Franklin and Mister Logan.

“They’re okay,” the Traveler says, waving a hand.  “Jamie’s coming home with me, and Frank knows when it’s better not to tell people something.”

“Okay,” Hope says, holding out her pinky.  “I promise I won’t tell anybody about the secrets you tell me.”

He smiles at her, and it’s warm and comfortable, just like Wade’s smile.  Then he links his pinky through hers.  “Better not, or I’ll come back and tickle you to death.”  The smile goes away.  “Things are probably gonna be okay for a while, but then they’re going to get very, very bad.  I know Nate’s been telling you over and over that you’re supposed to save the world, you’ll know what to do when the time comes, blah-blah-blah.  Well, there’ll come a time when people start to ask you what they should do, and I want you to follow your heart when you answer them.  Okay?”

She nods.

“You’re gonna miss some of the worst stuff, because you’ll have to leave—”

“Leave?”  She doesn’t understand.  Leave Wade?  Leave Nathan?  Leave Laura and Neena and Inez and everyone?

He makes a sad face, like he wants to cry, but he smiles and pets her hair.  “Yeah.  Leave.  You’ll have to leave everyone.  Everything.  I know it’s scary…and you’ll have to be very brave.  But if you don’t leave, you won’t be there after it’s all over, and I think we all know you can’t trust Wade to save the world all by himself.  You need to be there to help him.  Okay?”

“And that’s what Nathan meant?”

He rolls his eyes again.  “Nate never knows what the fuck he means.  Sorry.  What the eff-word he means.  But, in a way, yes.  When the time comes, you’ll know what to do.  Because no Wade I’ve met has ever raised you wrong.”

She watches him for a while.  “You’re called ‘the Traveler’ because you’ve been to a bunch of different worlds, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How many of me have you raised?”

The Traveler huffs a laugh, but he doesn’t sound like he finds anything funny.  “I guess…twelve or thirteen of you, personally.  I don’t think I’ve ever been to this timeline before, though, so there’s probably a lot of others where there’s a Wade raising a Hope.”

She puts her hands over his on her hair.  “You don’t have one of your own, though, do you?”

He means the laugh he gives her this time.  “Considering the Network uses you to fix broken timelines, I take that as a good sign.  You know I love you, munchkin, but I love my home, too.  It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“I promise I’ll be brave,” she tells him, very solemnly.

“That’s my good girl,” he whispers, and if he’s crying a little, she can pretend he’s got something in his eye.

.End.